Chapter 13: Resurrection

I swam up from the depths of a black, murky sleep, breaking through the surface and gasping for air as a siren blared flatly in the background.

The first thing I felt was a hard slab of metal beneath me, a thin cloth over me, and I realised with a sudden rush of adrenaline that I was stark naked and had no idea where I was.

Everything hurt. When I opened my eyes and was half-blinded by lights, that hurt too. It felt like I'd been used as a punching bag. I grabbed madly at the side of the bed with shaking hands and eased myself up – pain lancing through my arm – to glance around the room. I heard a muffled voice from somewhere, but as my vision blurred into focus all I saw was a lab, a recovery room or something, with no one in it but me.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and I forced deep, cool breaths into my tight lungs. And then my empty stomach contracted violently and I lost all composure as I heaved forward to retch onto the sheet in my lap. It felt like I hadn't eaten in days. I must have been hurt somehow, knocked out cold. I looked down at my bare torso and, in a strange, detached way, I took in the patches of neat scars all over my body. Not just the world's worst hangover, then. There was a deafening ringing in my ears that I hadn't noticed until now, and keeping my raw, irritated eyes open was like staring directly at the sun. I couldn't think. I'd been awake for a few seconds and my mind was already reeling. What had happened?

Kaidan would know, I thought. He was never far when I woke up in the medbay. This wasn't the Normandy, but he had to be somewhere around here. He wouldn't leave me like this.

I flinched and slapped at my shoulder when I felt something tickle my skin, and I grabbed a handful of hair. My hair, thick and shiny and black. It was longer than it had been since I was a child. A cold sweat lanced over my body.

What the fuck.

My hand stung and I realised there was still an IV drip attached, tugging at the skin. I slid it out with shaking, unresponsive fingers and watched, dazed and mesmerised, as blood welled up from the cut. My hands didn't even feel like mine.At last the ringing in my ears began to die down, and I heard my name being called, shouted really, over the cacophony of the alarm. I glanced up at the camera in the corner and focused on the speaker next to it. I didn't even care that I was naked. The voice sounded like a woman's anyway. I wished she'd shut up.

"Shepard. Shepard! You have to get up now, this facility is under attack." I groped at the side of the table, wondering if my legs would support me. They felt as dead and heavy as slabs of meat. "Your scars aren't fully healed yet but you have to get up now – there are mechs closing in on your position."

Mechs, huh? I eased my legs out of the cloth and tried to stand but they buckled from underneath me at once. I got to my feet again like a newborn foal learning to walk. I felt so stiff.

"Where—" I started, and then stopped as my voice cracked and my throat burnt. I found a sink and pulled myself over to it, turning on the water and gulping some down straight from the tap. "Where," I gasped, water running down my nose and chin, "am I?"

I glanced up and came face to face with someone totally unfamiliar. With a start, I realised the smooth glass was a mirror, and I held onto the sink for support as I tried to understand the picture before me. I saw the cracks of fresh scars across my face, in place of the ones I already knew so well. I brought my fingers up to prod at the unfamiliar landscape of skin, at my thick, unkempt eyebrows, and saw that my nails were impractically long. Dark hair fell down to my shoulders, and lights blinked behind my bloodshot eyes.

What am I?

"You're in a medical facility, but there's no time to explain!" The voice crackling over the intercom snapped me back to reality and I tore my eyes away from the mirror, "There's some clothes in the locker to your left, get dressed quickly and get out of there!"

Well, anything was better than trying to fight mechs naked. I stumbled over to the locker and found a plain white vest, underwear and what looked like sweatpants. That was only slightly better, but I supposed it was too much to ask to have a hardsuit ready and waiting. I pulled them on stiffly, my stupid long fingernails grating my strangely sensitive skin. I must have been out for at least a few days. But from what?

And why the fuck was my hair so long?

"I need a gun," I croaked distractedly as I made my way to the door, marionette arms pawing at the counter to keep me upright.

"There's a pistol on your right, just out of the door, hurry, they're almost there!"

I found the pistol but barely had time to load it before the woman over the loudspeaker yelled something about mechs and the doors opposite burst open. I tumbled into cover, my head swimming, and felt the heat of their shots zoom over my head. I leaned my head back against the crates and closed my eyes to take a breath. I was weighed down by lingering anaesthetic, like staying in a bath while the water drained out and you found yourself so much heavier than before. If there was anything left in my stomach, I'd have vomited it all back up. For a moment I doubted whether I could actually take the mechs out – I felt weak as a kitten and my hands were shaking from the sudden rush of adrenaline.

Then, I grit my teeth and remembered who I was. I curled my fingers around the pistol, felt its weight, its balance, and something innate and primal took over. I sucked in a deep breath, reached around the crates and fired. The little 'pop' as their heads were knocked off their shoulders was satisfying. Muscle memory was a powerful thing, and with that power back I felt more in control. Whatever the hell this was, I could do anything as long as I had a gun in my hand and shoes on my feet. Speaking of which…

"Is there another locker with some shoes around here?" I demanded as I stepped carefully around the mechs, my nails getting in the way as I reloaded the pistol.

"No, we weren't expecting this, we weren't prepped yet for you waking up. There was a whole procedure planned but we've had to cut the programme short. Someone's hacking security, they're trying to kill you. I'm doing what I can from my end, but there's—" her voice was cut off by static "—dammit, there's someone else trying to stop me. Listen...ou have to ge...shuttle bay! I'll try to fin..." her voice trickled away as whoever was hacking the security systems shut her out.

I swore extravagantly and pounded my fist on the wall. Navigating an unfamiliar facility with no armour and no shoes wasn't my favourite way to wake up. My mind slipped back to Kaidan, to the last time I'd woken up with my face pressed against his chest and everything had been perfect for those few precious minutes. Maybe he wasn't here at all? But then where was he? He wouldn't leave me alone in a place like this. But what was this place?

I froze, ice shooting down my spine as I rounded a corner to see a logo I recognised instantly. It had been dotted around the bunker where I'd found Admiral Kahoku with needle marks in his neck, and it had shown up again when we'd raided that facility and I got pumped full of shrapnel.

Cerberus. What the fuck did they have to do with anything? If this was their facility, then were they treating me? Experimenting on me? Was that woman just trying to get me out because I was a goddamn project of theirs? I grit my teeth and raised my weapon. No one used me.

I jogged down a corridor, forcing life back into my dead and weary body with every step. When I neared the end I slowed, suddenly hearing the familiar sounds of a biotic hurling attacks across a room. My first excited thought was that it must be Kaidan, but I heard a voice and realised with a stab of disappointment that it was someone else.

I peered around the corner. He was taking cover from a group of mechs, and I figured that, even if he was hostile, I could at least beat a straight answer out of him. I came out of cover and raised my arm to fire four shots, smirking with satisfaction as four mechs went down instantly. I was good at killing mechs. The man turned to me, eyes wide with surprise as I skidded over to the short wall he crouched behind.

"Shepard! You're—"

He froze as I brought my gun to his temple, "You've got thirty seconds to tell me where I am, how I got here and who the fuck you are." I saw the flicker of understanding as he realised I wasn't kidding around, and I thought that at least he was smart.

"You're on a medical station," he said calmly, "you were severely injured when your ship was attacked and you were taken here for treatment. My name is Jacob Taylor, my squad was on Eden Prime when the Geth attacked – you saved my life that day."

I kept my gun pointed at him but slowly eased it off his skin as he let out a long, slow breath.

It came back to me at once in bright, violent flashes – the attack on the Normandy, shouting at Kaidan to get everyone out because I couldn't let myself worry about him, the mad dash for the shuttles, throwing Joker into the last one and punching the release as I was blown backwards, freezing in space, air forced out of my lungs, blind panic taking over, my own armoured hands clawing at my suit-

I inhaled sharply, suddenly back in this unfamiliar room with this man I didn't know, eyes locked on my bare feet. There was a scar missing from the left one, a long, jagged cut that had almost severed the tendons and left me limping for weeks. Scars like that didn't just disappear. Jacob shifted, and without looking at him I brought my gun up again to keep him still.

"What happened to me?" I asked quietly, still staring at the smooth, unblemished skin on my foot where the scar used to be.

He raised his hands in a peaceful gesture, "Look, I'm not one of the scientists, I'm not supposed to be the one telling—"

I cocked my gun, and from the corner of my eye I saw him glance down to where it pointed straight at his neck. There was a Cerberus logo on his armour. The lying little shit thought he could get on my side by bringing up Eden Prime and pretending he was Alliance.

"Don't make me ask you again," I snarled, turning to glare at him, "What happened to me? How badly was I injured?"

And then he told me. I'd died. 'Just meat and tubes'. They'd spent billions of credits rebuilding me, piecing me back together like a puzzle, developing incredible technological advances just to do the impossible and bring me back to life. The Lazarus Project.

I'd been out for two years.

It was a unit of time I couldn't even wrap my head around. He had to be lying. There was no way I'd been lying on that slab of metal for two years.

My hair reached my shoulders. My entire body was stiff and covered in scars. I had no idea where I was or how I'd got here. I wondered if this was how sleeping beauty felt?

Two years.

"Welcome back to your life," he said solemnly as mechs appeared on the other side of the room and fired over our heads.

I swung my arm over the short wall and shot them to pieces, totally indifferent to the fact that I wasn't wearing any kind of protection.

My hands were shaking again, and I felt panic work its way up my throat, even as I kept my face still as stone. This wasn't my life. I didn't know what this was. I'd been enjoying my life for the first time in who knew how long before this happened. Everything had been so close to perfect until—

This had to be a bad dream. But dreams didn't hurt this much.

"We have to get to the shuttles," Jacob said, bringing up a facility map on his omnitool, "Miranda will be—"

I pointed my gun at his head purposefully, amazed and a little offended that he thought he'd be allowed to move yet.

"Get up," I barked. There was a moment where he just looked at me in total confusion. Fucking moron. As if giving me information at gunpoint made us allies. Even if he hadbeen in a squad on Eden Prime, he was with Cerberus now. He got to his feet slowly, eyes on the barrel of my gun. "Listen to me very carefully, Jacob," I started, my voice hard and low to cover the fact that I was still trembling inside and wanted to vomit, "the only reason you're still alive is because I need you to get me out of this facility. I could kill you and take the map from your omnitool instead, but I'm wearing white and blood is hard to wash out. Do you know the way?"

He nodded, looking profoundly uncomfortable, "There's a shuttle bay not too far from here. Miran—"

"Take me there. Now."

He turned away uncertainly, shooting me a hurt look as though I were being cruel to him for no reason. Well, what the hell did he expect? The last time I'd had contact with Cerberus I was nearly killed. I had no reason to trust them now, and if even half of what he was saying had any truth to it, I had a right to be just a little disoriented and paranoid. The idea of being alone and unconscious in a Cerberus facility for any time at all made me feel sick, let alone the two years he claimed. If anything, this little attack on the facility was a blessing. At least now I'd get to walk out of here on my terms, and at least I was armed.

My gun never strayed far from his back as we moved through the facility. Truth be told, Jacob Taylor seemed like an honourable sort, but I wasn't about to believe first impressions when it came to a goddamn Cerberus operative. When he had an attack of conscience and told me, gravely, that he worked for them, I told him the next time he wanted to keep something a secret he shouldn't plaster it all over the facility, not to mention his uniform. Did he think I was stupid? He asked me if it would be an issue, I told him that he was still alive, and he could take that however he liked.

I still felt sick and hungry and drowsy as hell, but at least I had a gun. If I had to, I'd take a shuttle by myself. I was a shitty pilot, but anything was better than this place. Wherever the hell this place was. I didn't believe a word either of them said. I wanted more than anything to close my eyes and be back on board the Normandy surrounded by familiar faces, but the last time I'd seen the Normandy I was stumbling through its carcass with its pilot slung over my shoulder as the world erupted into flame around us. And now I was here.

People called me unflappable. It was mostly true – I just freaked out on the inside, where no one could see, and now I was screaming in panic and confusion even as I stared coolly ahead and snapped out orders to a Cerberus operative I'd just met.

When we reached the shuttle bay and Miranda put a face to a voice, recognition stirred in me and I half-remembered seeing her before, as if in a dream, surrounded by sharpness and pain and bright, blinding lights.

Most of me still thought they were lying and that this was just some elaborate experiment to see how I'd handle things. There was no way I'd been asleep for two years. I didn't know what to think about any of it yet, so I didn't let myself think anything at all. All I knew was that there was one shuttle off the station, and that I could probably take down both the Cerberus agents if I had to, even in my current state. Miranda seemed to read my mind, and pointed out before I'd even said anything that the shuttles were locked with a code that only she knew, and that she also knew the coordinates of the only space station near enough for the shuttle to reach.

There was nothing in her eyes that said she was lying, but then she was a Cerberus agent so no doubt she was well-trained enough to hide it. Still, I reasoned, they'd taken pains to keep me alive, and so had she. The worst that would happen is I'd arrive somewhere I didn't want to be, and I'd shoot my way out yet again. After I stole Miranda's shoes and her newer, better gun.

I pushed aside every alarm bell ringing in my head, and, with the pistol still firmly clutched in my hand, I boarded the shuttle.

oOoOoOo

'I want my fucking dog tags', I'd said as soon as I was shown my new beautiful set of armour. I was told, simply, that they were lost, like most of my old N7 hardsuit, and that I hardly needed them anyway – everyone knew who I was.

They didn't understand. My dog tags meant more than that to me – they were my identity, my life. I had a sort of ritual before missions – most operatives did – and part of it was pulling my dog tags over my neck, the chain running over my face, and looking at the numbers and letters that made up my identity stamped into the cold, hard metal. Sometimes, if I was feeling dramatic and the mission was a particularly important one, I'd kiss them for luck before slipping them beneath my undersuit. It would be my little way of reminding myself why I was there, why it was important, who I was, and why this was the only place I could ever want to be.

I'd see my name, 'Shepard, Jena', I'd remember who that was, and I'd feel whole. It was important, I felt when I'd started in the Alliance, to remember what that name meant to myself and others. It was important to remember what it had taken to get me there, and that I had no excuse for not being at my best, all the time.

Jena Harper died a long, long time ago, and I'd buried her in my mind, left her in the dust.

Jena Shepard had died too, but now she was back. I didn't need my dog tags to remind me that I was her and she was me and there was no escaping that, not ever.

They were lost. So many things had been lost in those two years.

It was like the galaxy's worst case of jet lag, and no matter what I did to ground myself I still couldn't understand how all that time had just passed me by. I felt numb as I scrolled through the last two years worth of galactic news,sitting on my bed in the Normandy. Only it wasn't the SSV Normandy, it was the Normandy SR-2, an enormous ship with Cerberus colours and a Captain's cabin that was so huge it was vulgar. The name was the only thing I liked about it. Apart from the fish tank. And the pilot.

Seeing Joker had brought me back down to earth a little, figuratively speaking.

He'd explained things, told me it really was legit. And then he'd told me what he knew about the others, about my crew that hadn't followed him to Cerberus, how they'd scattered around the galaxy forging their own lives in the time I'd been asleep.

I'd already asked Miranda what happened to my crew before, the people I'd shed blood with on the Normandy. She told me they'd moved on, some had left the Alliance, most had disappeared. Why would they stick around? Everyone in the galaxy thought I was dead. I couldn't understand why she hadn't thought to maybe tell the closest people to me that I was alive. She'd said it was because the project was top secret, and I'd wanted to punch her.

They were acting like I had no reason not to trust them. Like the fact that they'd allegedly spent the past two years building me from the bones up meant I had any reason at all to thank them or believe a word they said. Jacob had told me 'not to worry' about the fact that I'd had a gun pointed at his back all the way through the facility, that he understood why I'd been suspicious. I told him scornfully that I hadn't been worried – the very idea that Cerberus had thought I'd trust him or any of their agents on sight only demonstrated the fact that they had no idea who the fuck they were dealing with.

I tried to imagine what the crash would have been like for my old crew, the people that had known me best, and where they might all be now. Two years was a long time.

I'd died because I was too concerned with getting Joker into the shuttle without shattering his legs to make sure I got on safe. It was a split second, a mistake not a conscious decision. I'd died because of that tiny slip up, and now I was alive. Brought back because of who I was. Ashley had died a hero, and she'd stayed that way. How was that fair? Who has the right to decide that kind of thing?

I still didn't believe it. This new body felt alien to me.

Yesterday had started with Kaidan visiting my cabin for a breathless twenty-five minutes before his shift started, rousing me from a half-dream by pressing his lips to the vein that throbbed in my neck, my hands sliding around his shoulders instinctively, tenderly. I'd given him a kiss goodbye because I couldn't help myself, because all I wanted to do was drag him back to bed, but I let him go because I knew he'd be back soon enough. Today, he thought I'd been dead for two years. I had been dead for two years.

I felt something twisting painfully in my chest. I'd been happy there. The Normandy had become my home, and the crew had become the closest thing I had to a family. Now, those that weren't dead had just...moved on. Forgotten all about me. Should I even try to contact them? Would they even care any more?

Cold air covered my skin like a shroud. I felt limp, vacant.

Of course Kaidan would have moved on. What we'd had was nothing serious, even if as I thought those words a queasy feeling bubbled up in my chest, and all I wanted was for him to be here telling me about the bright side to this nightmare. But I was dead and buried in his eyes. Maybe it was a good thing that my death had cut it off before it got too serious. I felt my fingers dig into the soft blanket on my bed, my arms shaking.

Bullshit. I wanted him here so bad it hurt. For the time we'd been together, my life had been something close to perfect. It was like some cruel joke. Make me care more than I'd ever cared before and then rip it all away.

I should have known, I should have fucking known that this would happen. It was like the universe was telling me I was getting ideas above my station by letting myself feel something other than cold indifference, so it had thrown this into the mix to remind me of my place in the world. As a weapon, a tool with no wants or cares or needs.

My eyes stung, and I rubbed them with my hands as I took a heavy, ragged breath.

I got up, walked over to the huge bathroom as if in a daze, and looked at myself in the mirror beneath the harsh, white lights. And then I stripped off the stupid clothes they'd given me with the fucking Cerberus logo plastered over them, and I looked again at my stark naked body and the story it now told.

My tattoos were still there. Miranda explained that they had touched up most of them after extensive burns erased parts from my skin. She said her orders had been to bring me back exactly as I was before the crash. I was still me, as much as that was possible seeing how I'd been shredded pretty good by the planet's atmosphere, but I had a few extras added. Cybernetics.

The lower halves of my left arm and leg were supported by metal instead of bones, and my flesh had been knitted together by stem cells, nano-bots and a list of other things I didn't understand, so the new meat was just like the old. The bones they'd been able to access easily had been modified too. Advanced medi-gel delivery systems, hardening them against breaks and shatters, things like that. I flexed my left hand. It still felt like mine.

My body was roughly the same shape as I remembered – physiotherapy, targeted electric impulses and cutting edge technology had been employed to make sure I was fighting fit from the moment I woke up. Just as I remembered. But the tapestry of marks over my skin was different, scars with stories had been erased, and new ones were threaded through my body instead. A few moles were missing too, the kinds of things you didn't notice until they were gone. At least the scars on the right of my face were still there, the one slicing through my lip and the gashes in my eyebrows that Kaidan had said looked like wings…

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again when my stomach had stopped tying itself in knots.

My left eye hadn't been salvageable. That was artificial too, though it was so advanced it might as well have been organic.

I stepped closer to the mirror, touched my nose to my own reflection, and searched in the depths of my eyes for any difference. It was impossible to tell, though I noted with surprise that I looked very fresh-faced. Two years was a hell of a beauty sleep, but it left me looking…unfamiliar, to say the least. I saw a pair of tweezers by the sink and immediately started working on my wide, bushy eyebrows so I could feel a little like myself again.

Individual hairs, she'd said, had been planted in my head. They had been grown from my own cells, so they should be indistinguishable from my own hair. Their growth had been stimulated in the final stages of my reconstruction. That was why I looked so unkempt. They hadn't had time to do the finishing touches.

When I'd gone to see the doctor earlier – a friendly face at least – I'd hidden a pair of medical scissors in the sleeve of the jumper they'd given me when I got back. It brought me back to a time when I always had a knife or some other improvised weapon hidden around my person, even when I was somewhere close to safe. It was a childhood quirk of mine, and I was still a good pickpocket. I found the scissors in the pile of clothes on the floor and regarded my hair critically in the mirror. My impulse was to cut it all off, maybe even shave it later. I never had time for long hair, and I never let it get long enough to bother me, but...

Experimentally, I pulled it back. It was long enough to go into a loose bun at the base of my skull. That would do for now. I hid the scissors behind the mirror in case I changed my mind later.

I regarded the pile of clothes on the bathroom floor disdainfully. I'd have to buy some clothes that didn't have that ugly logo on them. I may have agreed to go on this mission of theirs – for now – but that didn't mean I wanted them to brand me like cattle.

If I really was the best humanity had to offer, like the Illusive Man had said, then it wouldn't matter to them how I felt about Cerberus. If he was honest about his goals – something I severely doubted – it wouldn't matter what colours I wore as long as I got the job done.

It was a hell of a job, though. He'd told me I was unique, a symbol of humanity that everyone would unite behind once they saw I was fighting against the Collectors while the Alliance did nothing. I told him he was full of shit. No one got to use me like that, and I didn't care what he'd poured into rebuilding me. So he said he'd understood, that it was my decision. But after visiting Freedom's Progress, that decision had been made for me. Humans rounded up like crops, children abducted mid-meal, helpless, hopeless, and with no one daring to intervene. I couldn't just let it happen. I couldn't. It was two years later, the world had changed, and now this was where I was needed the most. And then, as though reading my mind, they'd given me everything I needed. A ship, soldiers, funds, information and beautiful new armour which fit perfectly. With those, I could do anything.

I picked up clippers and got to work making my fingernails a sensible length – one other thing they'd run out of time to do for me.

Miranda had told me it was an impossible task, but it needed to be done. How many times had I heard that before?

She wasn't the one that convinced me, though. Nor was Joker. Tali helped, when I saw her at the colony and knew, without a doubt, that two years had passed because she was suddenly incredible. What convinced me to go along with the whole thing was the two engineers hiding below deck. They'd been military once, but left when I and everything I'd done had been trashed by the Alliance at the same time as they used me in their fucking recruitment vids. They said Udina had called me 'either mistaken or deranged' about the Reapers. That was why I'd been reading through the last two years' worth of galactic news. I'd wanted to see it for myself, watch the interview he'd given with the one eye that was still mine.

If that was how quickly they discarded me, they didn't deserve me back. The last time I felt ignored and used-up, I killed ten people and flew away, found a new life. This time I'd been killed, but it was still time to move on. I'd served my sentence in the Alliance, and another year on top. I didn't owe them a damn thing. This new arrangement was what I'd always wanted in a way – no rules holding me back, unlimited resources, the chance to work with the very best people there was, doing something that really mattered. If Cerberus was legit, if I really could stop the Collectors and succeed where no one else was even trying, then this was where I belonged.

For now.

That last part was an important addendum, I thought as I pulled on plain, loose clothes and moved around my cabin to inspect every detail of what they'd called my 'personal taste'. They could fund my mission, give me their unlimited resources, and I could do the impossible. As soon as that was done, if they ever became more of a hindrance than a help, I'd drop them. That was simple enough, right?

Then why did I feel so uneasy? Why did I have this uncertainty clawing away at my stomach that told me get out, get out now?

I sat down heavily on the bed and ran my hand over the digital picture frame on the bedside table. It showed Joker and I on the SR-1 sharing a glance, our mouths twisted into smirks from some filthy joke I couldn't remember. Was this supposed to make me loyal to them? Was I supposed to think that if my friend and colleague could trust Cerberus, than I could too, just like old times? They weren't old times to me. This picture could have been taken last week as far as I was concerned. I pinched the screen and the picture changed into a number of thumbnails, all of which had looked like they'd been carefully vetted to make Cerberus seem cuddly as hell and hide any Alliance logos. Me and Chakwas. Me and a group of mercs I'd enjoyed working with. A group of random humans on a colony somewhere looking hopefully at the sky.

"EDI," I called, feeling ridiculous for talking to an empty room.

"Yes, Commander?" the synthesised voice replied. I hated the idea of always being monitored, even in here, even if it was by a computer.

"Can you access this picture frame?" I asked, turning it over in my hands.

"I can."

"I want some other images. From the old Normandy. Pictures of my crew. Can you do that?" I knew it'd be able to, but I wasn't dumb enough to think that Cerberus weren't trying to manipulate me at least a little. They may well have placed blocks on EDI which would prevent it from reminding me of my time in the Alliance too much, or something to that effect. I didn't know how sophisticated an AI it was.

There was a pause where EDI seemed to consider this, and then the screen went blank just before new images bloomed up on the screen.

"Are these sufficient?" The artificial inflections made it sound like it genuinely cared for a moment.

"Yes," I said, tapping my finger on one and feeling a sad smile tug at my lips as I saw a snapshot of Garrus and I checking our guns before a mission, "These are perfect."

I swiped past the next few pictures, amazed at how thoroughly our time on the Normandy had been documented. Kaidan was probably to blame for most of them. He had a sentimental streak that made him want to capture things like this, and occasionally I'd look up to see him snapping an image on his omnitool. I didn't know how Cerberus had got hold of them. I didn't care. It was just nice to see them all.

My hand paused as a picture of just Kaidan appeared. He was sat at the table in the crew's quarters, drink in hand, and he was looking just off camera like...like he used to look at me, with pride and adoration and a tilt to his warm eyes that said he could look all day. I flicked to the next picture and it was of that night we'd all played poker before the mission had taken a turn for the worst. Then I switched it back to the photo of Kaidan and realised he had been looking at me. Even then. How had it taken me so long to notice? How much longer could we have spent wrapped up together instead of trying to ignore each other? I felt a knot in my belly, and knew I missed him like hell, but with that certainty came the understanding that it didn't matter – he'd have moved on by now. And he'd never understand this.

There was an Alliance logo on his shirt, and I remembered the way he'd been after I'd woken up with a shrapnel wound in my shoulder and a fresh scar that was no longer there. He'd said later that he could understand mercs and gangs – their motivation was simple, normally either money or power. But a group like Cerberus, he'd said, that he couldn't abide. People who did evil things and justified them by claiming a moral high ground, a greater purpose, that was something he hated, because it was so easy for them to drag people in, like a cult that said we were the only way to get things done or to protect what you loved. The Alliance wasn't perfect, but they also didn't believe in 'at any cost'. I'd agreed with him then, when I thought Cerberus was just a front for Terra Firma or some ring of mad scientists. Now...well, he still had a point, but I couldn't help but think it was different.

I was in charge of this mission, they'd said. I could have my pick of the most brilliant operatives in the galaxy, the best weapons, best technology, and I could save hundreds of human colonies in the process. The same goals, different methods, at the Illusive Man had put it. As long as that was true, I'd let them fund me.

Kaidan would have to understand. He had to.

I flicked the picture back to the one of us all playing poker and set it down on the bedside table before crawling under the covers and curling up against a pillow to rest my aching body. The bedding was way nicer than the regulation crap we got in the Alliance, that was for sure. As the lights dimmed and I looked at the picture, my eyes focusing automatically on Kaidan, I found myself wishing that my bed, however soft, wasn't so big and empty.

Chapter 14: Riposte – Shepard struggles against the tide, and two familiar faces make help her feel whole again.