A/N

Two chapters today (37 & 38). :-)


Mom,

They tell me you're on your way: Hackett authorized special leave for you. It'll be good to see you. I'm bored out of my skull here. After Akuze, I needed three surgeries on my leg and then the skin grafts...so I was mostly drugged out of my mind. They're expecting only one surgery on the arm and then a maintenance dose of medi-gel.

I'm sure you've seen the news feeds, so you must know we're heading towards a full-out war with the reapers. We need to be ready. I need to get out of this hospital. There's work to be done.

Love,

your daughter, Commander Camina

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Mom,

Yeah, there's just...so much to be done. So much to talk about. I don't even know where to start. The discovery of that Prothean facility on Ilos...that conversation with the VI...and then what happened to Saren. Maybe it's not right, but part of me still feels sorry for him.

I keep thinking about how, on the last planet we visited before hitting the Mu Relay, there was a thresher maw. First one we'd seen in weeks, and it decides to show up right before the showdown with Saren. Like an omen. Like it's some kind of messed-up version of a "spirit animal" for me. Oh, the galaxy is about to throw something huge at Shepard? Let's start off with a thresher maw, just to get her warmed up…

And I keep thinking about Kaiden. About a mission from a few weeks ago when we found a rachni nest. Yes, of course, exogeni was responsible for them...but, for most of the mission, we didn't know that. I thought it was the rachni queen's fault. My fault. I kept doing calculations in my head on how long it would have taken the queen to get here. Useless calculations, since I know nothing about them as a species or even how they travelled through space, but still...Kaiden could tell that the potential for guilt was eating away at me. Between one of the waves, he pulled me aside, putting our helmets together so we could talk off the comms.

"Commander, it doesn't matter if they're here because you let the queen live. You need to get your head back in the game."

"Of course it matters," I snapped back. "The little monsters have killed how many marines? Those deaths might be on my hands. It's just like…"

I couldn't say Akuze. I didn't need to.

"Look," Kaiden said, glancing over his shoulder to check if another wave was on its way, "You gave the queen a chance to do the right thing. You gave her the choice. If she chose the wrong thing, that's on her. Not you. You gave her the choice. That's all. It wasn't wrong to let her choose. Even if it is her...and we don't know that yet. This isn't guilt you should own."

He looked away for a moment, glancing to where a sun would be rising in only an hour or two.

"And, hey, I hope you realize that means something, coming from me." Kaiden continued, his tone now dark. Haunted. "I murdered someone, remember? And, let me tell you, I replay that scene over and over again...but I can't imagine me not doing anything. So I have to live with that every day. Realizing not only that I was the kind of person who would kill to protect the helpless...but that I still am.

"If I can't manage to feel guilty over that...well, Commander...you definitely don't get to feel guilty over this. Got it?"

I remember smiling sadly at him, opening my mouth to reply-I can't even remember what I was going to say-but then one of the marines shouted a warning and our biotic auras bloomed around us, like twin stars trapped in each other's orbits. And we dove to each side of the barrier, throwing the rachni into the sky.

That thing Kaiden said to me helped me get through the rest of that mission. And it helped me get through Kaiden's death. I tried his experiment. I tried to imagine me not going after Ashley and Kirrahe's squad-and I can't. And I try to imagine Kaiden not insisting on staying behind to arm the nuke...and it just doesn't make any sense.

I've had plenty of more moments like these in the past few days: moments where I should feel guilty, but I can't because I can't regret the choices I made. And, as Kaiden said, I can't own guilt that belongs to another. Like Saren. I told him he was indoctrinated on Virmire. I let him see he had a choice. I still think he could have walked away from Sovereign on Virmire – that enough of him was still intact, that if he'd chosen to listen to then, this all would have played out very differently.

When it was too late—that was when he finally tried to make a choice: lifted that pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.

In his circumstances, I would have done the same thing.

But it didn't matter. Sovereign brought him back. Or used what was left of him, at any rate, to keep fighting long past the point of reason. If I'm being honest, that's what terrifies me most about the reapers: if Sovereign is any indicator, at least, these are not machines that have been coded with the same kind of logic we use. I'm no tech expert, but I would have expected an AI to calculate the odds of failure and then disengage as soon as the odds swung towards its own destruction. Instead, Sovereign fought instead of fleeing back into the darkness. Which tells me that either the reapers are operating by laws of logic beyond our understanding...or that they're more like us "flawed organics" than Sovereign cared to admit.

And, Mom, honestly, I am so sorry. You are the one choice I am not so sure about, because, you see, I knew the Killamanjaro was in the fifth fleet. I knew that my choice to protect that damn, idiotic, self-serving Council could have resulted in your death. I can't even begin to describe the relief I felt when I saw the Killamanjaro logged on the docking registries. When your name didn't appear on the casualty lists. Yes, the Council will be needed to hold the galaxy together, to keep all the disparate peoples and their agendas focused on preparing for the reapers.

If I'd sacrificed the galaxy to save you...maybe I could have forgiven myself, but I knew you'd never forgive me.

We'll need to talk about this when you arrive, won't we?

Great.

Love,

your daughter, Commander Camina

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