Take you away from that empty apartment you stay
And forget where the heart issomeday
If ever you loved me you'd say it's okay
It's okay to be angry and never let go
It only gets harder the more that you know
When you get lonely if no one's around
You know that I'll catch you when you're falling down
We came together but you left alone
And I know how it feels to walk out on your own
Maybe someday I will see you again
And you'll look me in my eyes and call me your friend
14: Empty Apartment
Ashley Williams was back.
The bartender had little comment for her return. He didn't want her there; the unwelcome aura surrounding him was enough to make anyone walk away and find another place to drink. But Ashley wasn't just anyone. The man didn't scare him. As much as he beat his chest, shot her menacing looks, and cracked his knuckles, she knew he was full of hot air. He didn't dare take her on, and she knew this.
But the whiskey was strong enough so that she didn't care either way. All that mattered was her and the drink.
It was strange, really. She should be feeling ashamed at having digressed to this again, but she didn't. Instead, she felt relieved. Gone was the façade of normalcy, gone was the pretence of being able to move on. The haze gave her an odd feeling of serenity, which made her think of one of the prayers she'd learned as a girl…
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Obviously, her situation was something that she couldn't change. Why bother? She might as well enjoy the alcohol while it lasted. Her encounter with Anderson on the Presidium hadn't made things any better, anyhow.
"Dammit, Anderson, half a colony is gone! They're probably dead! How—"
"What would you have had me do, Williams?" demanded Anderson. "We couldn't divert valuable resources to a colony in the middle of the Terminus without knowing for sure if the threat was genuine! The Alliance is already stretched thin as it is."
"You mean by sending your 'resources' into pointless turf wars with washed-up pirates and slavers? What does that accomplish? Nothing! That platoon on Commander Walsh's ship could have guarded Horizon and saved a lot more people! What are you trying to do, Anderson, run us all into the ground? What if they come for colonies in the Skyllian Verge? Will the Alliance simply stand by and watch then?"
"Chief Williams, to the best of our knowledge there is no chance that a Collector attack will hit a colony in the Skyllian Verge," Udina scoffed.
"That's not the damn point!" Ashley was fuming. "There could be! Has it ever occurred to you that maybe they're building up the strength to take a colony like Elysium?"
"We'll address the problem if it becomes plausible," snarked Udina.
"Was that your mentality when Shepard warned you about Saren?" Ashley said quietly.
There was a deadly silence. Civilizations rose and fell in the time it took for someone to finally speak. When Anderson did, his words, quiet as they were, crashed down on her like a sledgehammer.
"Get out of my office, Chief Williams," he said. His voice was soft and vicious. "Don't make me court-martial you for insubordination."
Ashley ground her teeth and turned her heel, making a point to give Udina a death stare. She pretended not to notice Anderson slump down in his desk and bury his face in his hands.
It wasn't to say that she didn't understand, because she did. Udina was an asshole, and Anderson was the human Councillor as well as Rear Admiral to the Systems Alliance. There was enough pressure on him to make an average man crack like an egg. With a re-run of the Cold War that was their feud with the Batarian Hegemony, growing tension between him and the Council, and the disappearing colonies, and the one million other burdens that came with his job, her confrontation must seem like an unnecessary headache. What time did he have to look after one grunt? It had been two years. She should have healed by now, but she was far from it. Shepard's resurfacing on Horizon had taken the tender stitches from her deep cuts and ripped them open, so that they were gaping and bleeding and scarcely recognizable.
She didn't understand. Ashley was a good person; she had sinned in her life but she always made an effort to compensate for her sins. She had killed, but they had all been bad people. Where in her life had God seen fit to make things so hard for her?
She thought back to something an asari pilot had told her once, during one of her tours before meeting Shepard.
"Bad things happen to anyone, even good people," she'd remarked, not looking up from her work. "I think the only people I've ever met who didn't understand that were humans. Turians, too, but mostly humans."
She'd understood, at least a little. When her father had died, she'd realized what the pilot had meant. Meeting Garrus, and learning about his teen-angsty, daddy-issue filled backstory, was more. Losing Shepard, though…that was incomprehensible.
Her grief, her inability to move on, was like the salt on the wound. It would have been better if she could've just moved on. Two years ago, she knew that she would have. But somehow, she was wrong in her assessment of herself. And Ash hated being wrong. Especially about herself.
She downed another shot of whiskey. There was something to be said about drinking and being merry, after all.
A/N: Short chapter was short, and I apologize. Chapter 15 will be up in a matter of days.