She is thirty-three years old. She is thirty-one; she is three.

Or perhaps she is twenty-nine, because she finds herself in the familiar dimness of the SR-1's cargo bay. She inhales deeply, somehow expecting the scent of roses, but the room only smells of mechanical lubricant and gun oil, all mingled with a trace of stale sweat. Just for a moment, she lets herself believe the years she remembers are only a dream, a nightmare filled with rogue Spectres and rogue AIs and rogue sentient starships bent on the destruction of organic life. She lets herself believe she will turn around and see Captain Anderson leaning against the wall, a question about how she likes the place already forming on his smiling lips.

But Anderson isn't the ghost who haunts her here. She knows that. She knows it even before she takes one, two, three steps forward and sees Ashley leaning against her station, arms crossed over her chest, hair pulled back in its regulation chignon, a pistol at her hip and a small armory clipped to her back. She's no longer wearing the Sunday-best dress or the patent Mary Janes or the lopsided knee-socks. Instead, she's in her old Phoenix armor, the pink and white blood-tinged in the hold's reddish light. Her helmet sits next to her on the weapons bench, faceplate cracked. Shepard looks closely and then wishes she hadn't; the cracks are seamed with dark that can only be blood.

Startled, she looks again and sees the wound, an impossibly small hole right in the middle of Ashley's forehead. Blood leaks from it slowly, running in rivulets down her gunnery chief's grim face. Ash doesn't appear to notice. Her dark eyes watch Shepard carefully, warily, as if uncertain what kind of reception she will meet. That uncertainty, that wariness, stops Shepard in her tracks, and a deep uneasiness wells in her gut.

"What happened?" Shepard asks. When she tries to remember, she sees trees, hears whispers, and puts a hand to her side, expecting to see it come away as bloodstained as Ash's face. Her palm is clean, though, when she raises it, and the fabric beneath it dry. Looking down at herself, she frowns. Instead of armor or a uniform, she's wearing a gold-embroidered blue dress. She doesn't recognize it, and knows she should.

"It's just a bump," Ashley says. Before Shepard can argue, Ashley unfolds her arms and gestures vaguely toward her. "I told you. It's your nose."

Sure enough, Shepard touches her fingertips to the soft flesh of her lip and they come away stained dark. She tastes the familiar metallic tang then, and wonders how she could've missed it before. She clears her throat, but the flavor remains, sick and bitter. Dropping her hand, she hides it in her skirt, as if hiding will make its bloody burden disappear. This, too, is something she should remember. She knows it. She has seen it before. But when she searches, she only feels the curious sensation of drowning, and that doesn't make sense at all. Ashley watches with a sniper's intensity.

Shepard turns in a slow circle, facing the lockers she knows must be as empty as the rest of the cargo hold, as empty as the weapons bench. Ashley's gaze burns into the bare nape of her neck. "Where is everyone?"

"Everyone?"

Shepard stops, suddenly aware she does not mean Wrex or Garrus or the Alliance requisitions officer, and turns back to Ashley. She clears her throat again. The taste of blood only grows stronger. Her dry lips crack as she parts them to speak. "The little girl. The teenager. The—the one in the white dress."

Ashley nods, running the flat of her hand back over her hair even though there are no flyaway bits to smooth. A trickle of blood trails down the side of her face, hypnotic, almost black in the dim light. "Only you here, Skipper. You know that."

"Only me." Shepard pauses. "And you."

Ashley's hand falls back to her side, her eyes huge and heartbreaking beneath the wound that marks her forehead. She waves in the general direction of the Mako. "What do you say?"

Shepard follows the gesture and, impossibly, the poker table from the retrofitted SR-2 (not a nightmare, then, those years; not a dream) sits on the raised platform square in the middle of the hold, set for two, chips and cards already in place. "Didn't know you played, Chief."

For the first time, Ashley smiles. The grin cracks a little of the drying blood caked on her cheeks, but it also starts a fresh trail flowing. Shepard's head hurts in sympathy, a faint ache between her brows. "Oh, I play."

"That a challenge?"

"A promise," Ashley insists, already heading for the table. "I know how you are about winning." A shadow passes over her face, swift as a sigh. "Or maybe it's the losing you hate. Even when it's not your fault. Even when there's nothing you can do to stop it."

They both know Ashley is not speaking of cards. They both know the repercussions of a choice, the weight of that loss. The blood in her throat swallows her words, and she in turn swallows the blood.

Ashley offers Shepard the deck of cards first, and when she demurs, Ash begins to shuffle them with an expert's precision. Shepard's better at Skyllian Five, but when Ashley suggests good old fashioned Texas hold 'em, she agrees to it readily enough. They start off with small bets, trading wins and chips and good-natured ribbing back and forth. Ash is good. Solid. So Shepard doesn't cheat even when she knows she could. It would only mean a few more chips in her pile and a few less in Ashley's, and in a friendly game like this winning hardly matters, no matter how much she hates losing.

"My dad taught me to play," Shepard says, throwing a few more chips into the center, willing to bet high with a pair of queens in her pocket. "Back when I was more interested in the pretty cards than what they stood for. 'Play the hand you're dealt, sweetheart' he always said, when I wanted to give up. Not big on folding, my papa. Cost him, I suppose. But also taught me to be fearless."

In real life, folding's just not an option. Not really. So you take that two of clubs and ten of diamonds and you run with it, baby girl, and you hope the river's kind.

Ashley inclines her head, smiling over her cards, meeting Shepard's bet and raising it further still. "You telling me you've got a good hand there, Skipper? Or an awful one?" Shepard cocks an eyebrow, but feigns nonchalance. Handy skill, nonchalance. "My dad taught me, too. But my mom was better. Don't think my dad ever even realized it. She was all about the psychology. Wasn't afraid to lose a hand or two if it kept her opponents in the dark about her real skill."

"Sounds like someone else I know."

"My sisters are all cutthroat. We used jellybeans instead of chips. I can't play poker without the strongest craving for sugar." Ash laughs, and wins the hand with an impossible pair of aces in the hole, made a set by the river. She whistles when Shepard turns over the ladies in her own hand. Even the turn's Queen of Spades can't help her. "Bad luck, Skipper," she says, collecting her winnings and smirking a little. Shepard tilts her head in a show of respect; Ash had forced her to swallow that loss hook, line, and sinker. Ashley's still smiling a little to herself as she shuffles and deals. Shepard's pile of chips is smaller now, but she has the Queen and King of Hearts to work with, so she attempts to draw Ashley out, to get back in the game.

It's not over until it's over, sweetheart, her father's voice says, close enough to be real. She's afraid if she looks to her left she'll see him.

She's afraid if she looks to her left she won't.

A drop of blood splashes from Ashley's chin onto one of her pocket cards.

Shepard says, "We didn't talk like this enough."

The smile fades, dies. It's not as violent as an explosion watched from a viewport, but it hurts Shepard all the same. "We didn't get the chance, Skipper," Ashley says. "Didn't get a chance for a lot of things. No use crying over spilled milk. Raise."

"I never really understood that one," Shepard admits. "But my mom used it all the time."

"All moms do, I think. Some kind of mom code."

Shepard toys with the stack of chips directly in front of her, lifting three or four at at a time and then dropping them back into their neat pile. The flop hasn't given her anything to work with, but she doesn't want to fold yet. It feels too much like failure. "Didn't get a chance for that, either," Shepard says quietly. "Sorry."

Lifts the chips. Lets them drop. Clink clink clink. It almost sounds like voices, like crying, like whispers in trees. Shepard stops. Lifts a marker. Really looks at it. And then gasps, dropping it to the table where it bounces and rolls away from her.

"These aren't chips," Shepard says.

"You play the hand you're dealt." It is still Ashley's voice, but strange and strained, as if heard muffled through water or carried too far on the wind.

"But they're not chips." She pushes her chair back from the table, hard enough to make her carefully stacked piles clatter to the green felt. Faces gaze up. A dozen familiar faces. Even more unfamiliar ones. Their eyes watch her when she moves. So many. Too many. She's sick not to have realized it earlier; she's been carelessly throwing pieces on the pile like they were no more than play money. "I can't play with these. They don't belong to me."

"But you've been playing with them all along, Shepard. Remember what your dad said." It's the same tone Shepard last heard over crackling comms, Virmire's sun hot on her cheeks, serious and desperate and a little angry, a little sorry. Now go back and get the lieutenant and get the hell out of here. Life and death. Choices. "Play or forfeit. What's it going to be?"

Shepard covers her mouth with her left hand. Blood runs down the back of her throat, down the curve of Ashley's cheek.

What do you need me to do?

She knows. Of course she knows. She drops her hand and rises, leaning on the edge of the table, staring down at the unhelpful cards already visible. All diamonds, sharp as knives. "How much am I worth?"

"Not enough."

Shepard shakes her head, disbelieving. "How many?"

"Skipper, you—"

Shepard lunges across the table, smacking the tops of her thighs hard into the lip, and grabs the edge of Ashley's breastplate, hauling her close. She's near enough to smell the blood now, and the unmistakable scent of burning flesh, and under it all the roses, those damned roses. "How many can I save, Williams?"

Ashley doesn't attempt to pull away, doesn't close her eyes, doesn't flinch. She'd never flinched; Shepard had always admired it. Break, says a voice she doesn't want to recognize. Break, dislocate, snap. End it. "It's too late, Commander."

"No," Shepard snarls, giving Ashley a single shake.

Ash bows her head, surrender and sorrow all at once. "They stacked the deck a long time ago, Shepard. It was never a fair match. You can't win."

The chips on the table are definitely whispering now, those same old ghosts and a thousand more, a thousand thousand, Garrus' ruthless calculus in action. It is Virmire on the table, and Aratoht. It's the Second Fleet. It's Mordin and Kal'Reegar and Hilary Moreau. Her hand tightens, but not to hurt, not to shake. To hold. To keep safe what she knows, she knows is already lost.

"Everyone loses, Shepard. Everyone loses sometimes."

"No, Ash." Finger by finger, Shepard releases her hold on Ashley's armor. Finger by finger, she lets her go. "I see what you're trying to do. I do. But I'm sorry. I'm all-in, and you're not supposed to be here."

Ashley's eyes close, lashes dark against her cheeks. Tears spill, making tracks in the dried blood. "You'll have to carry this on your own," she says, touching her forehead.

Shepard cups Ashley's cheek in her palm and shakes her head. "It's like you said, isn't it? I've always been the only one here."

As Shepard's hand drops away, Ashley is already beginning to fade. "They'll kill you."

"They can try." Shepard touches her lip again, but this time when her fingers come away stained with blood, she doesn't hide them. She drags them across her brow, her nose, her cheek. A promise. "But if they're not going to play fair, neither will I. Because that's the other thing my papa taught me, Ash. Play the hand you're dealt, sure. But when the stakes are high, it doesn't hurt to hide an ace up your sleeve."

Shepard cracks her knuckles, pop pop pop like gunshots. Let the bastards come.

#

Solana thought she was imagining things—or that her overtired, overburdened mind was playing tricks on her—when she heard the faint moan. Glancing up from her stack of datapads and their horror of information, however, she saw Miranda still fast asleep. Heart thudding, she looked toward Shepard's bed and found open eyes watching her. Shepard reached up to touch her own upper lip, moving with agonizing slowness, and her brow furrowed deeply when she peered at her fingers. This appeared a hopeful sign to Solana; something remembered. Shepard had arrived with dried blood caked beneath her nose, but of course the doctor hadn't left it. Solana turned, glancing out the medbay window. Dr. Chakwas was in the mess, pouring herself yet another cup of coffee because she didn't want to resort to more potent stims. Not yet, anyway.

Before Solana could knock on the glass or call out or ask the pilot to page Chakwas over the comms, Shepard blinked at her, lips already turning up in a faint smile that did more to assuage her fears than anything else possibly could have, and said, "We really have to stop meeting like this." Wincing, she pressed the heel of her hand to the center of her forehead and settled her head back against the pillow. "Ugh. She wasn't kidding about the headache."

"What-how much do you remember?"

The smile twisted, turned dangerous. "Enough. Now where's your brother? He and I have work to do."