Author's Note: This story was written for the Mass Effect Kink meme. I took some (a massive amount) of liberties with the prompt, but I think the end result was still fun. I really enjoied writing this and the style is pretty far out of my usual area, so it was a fun challenge. If the OP is on here, than I want to thank him/her again for the wonderful prompt. This is the first in what I affectionately call the "Momentum" series and I've got some additions/edits that I want to do on the others before I publish them here.
The Prompt:"I'd like to see a post-ME3 amnesia story where Shepard chooses the Control/"Blue" ending. Shepard's consciousness is uploaded to the Crucible, but instead of Shepard's body being destroyed in the process, only Shepard's post-Alliance enlistment memories are absorbed. Basically Shepard's memories are strong enough to effect the Reaper's consensus. Later (weeks? months? years?) Shepard regains consciousness with the appropriate lack of memories."
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Bioware. I'm just borrowing them.
Each step hurt. Each breath was a monumental task.
"You have a choice."
Forward. There was nothing but forward. An Instinctual and thoughtless movement; just one foot in foot in front of the other.
"Destruction…
Bodies littered the floor. Lights flashed in the hallway. Tripping over an arm, her face fell next to another's. Lifeless eyes stared back at her. She should scream, but there was nothing – no terror, no repulsion, nothing.
Pushing up off the floor with a grunt, she got to her knees, her back hunched as the chain around her neck caught on a fallen beam. Ripping the silver tags from around her neck, she stood.
The dog tags lay on the floor, tossed aside and forgotten. But she, filled with emptiness, moved forward.
"…Or control."
Blue.
Sweet. She licked her lips, enjoying the lingering taste.
Warmth. Strength.
"Let it come to you, like a target falling into scope."
"Jane!" She blinked, standing straighter and glanced over her shoulder. Her right cheek tingle from where she had been leaning it against her shovel.
"Daydreaming again?" Luke Riggins asked. He headed up their small crew clearing out the rubble. They salvaged anything they could find, but most of what they found deserved to be buried or burnt.
Earth was a mess, but it could always be rebuilt. A few Reapers couldn't break the resolve and tenacity of the human spirit. At least that is what she had been told.
Jane nodded softly at Luke. He was a good man, an attractive man with beautiful eyes. She loved his eyes. They were blue.
"Anything useful?"
A rough tongue on her neck. Moaning.
"No." She said, leaning her cheek back on her the hilt of the shovel. His eyes were beautiful, but still so soft.
He shoved her playfully, "Then get back to work."
Right. Work. A monotonous rebuilding of a city she had never been to, of a planet she had never seen. Earth had been a story told to her a night by her parents – tall buildings, thousands of people and a civilization that spanned the stars.
Now there was only dust and bodies; nothing glorious save for humanity's ability to keep smiling. That was during the day though, a night she could hear the nightmares come for them, screams in the darkness searching for those they had lost.
The sun would set soon, and Jane hated the screams, but she hated the darkness more. The sable cloak splattered with stars and a weight that choked her from the inside out, stealing her breath with ice-tipped fingers.
Black. It was always black - wasn't there supposed to be a white light or something?
"Commander!"
Explosions. Shit, suit rupture. Hissing and then silence.
Pressing the shovel into the rubble, Jane shook off the heavy weight of her dreams. Her last memory before the war had been of Mindoir and looking up at the warm sun. Perhaps when they fixed the mass relays she would go back to there, or perhaps, she would try to find those intense blue eyes.
The camps at night were mostly silent. Everyone lost to their own demons, only escaping around the fires with flasks full of moonshine whiskey.
It had been months since the Reapers left and buildings were beginning to look like buildings and streets like streets, but still things mostly looked like pitched tents and a struggle to survive.
She dumped her day's salvage by the storage tent nodding at the soldiers and civilians trying to organize and repair their meager supplies. Pausing, Jane ran her hand over the barrel of a heavy pistol.
Bullets flew past her head, but she couldn't be damned to try to dodge. Just run, move forward. The platforms fell away and she leapt, hands reaching and hoping to latch on to something, anything. A woosh of air left her lungs as she hit the side of the ship, the ping of impacts next to her as the projectiles hit the metal siding. A hand grabbed her roughly and pulled her onto the ship.
She couldn't stop her smile and the euphoric rush of adrenaline. They had made it.
"Something I can help you with?"
Jane blinked, looking at the solider cleaning the trigger mechanism of the pistol. She held the barrel in her hand, but put it down quickly and left the tent.
Grabbing a bowel of soup from the mess tent she climbed away from the fires to the second floor of a broken down building. She could see the whole camp from here, fires burning, people moving, but she was just beyond the light. Hidden in the shadows that still sent a shiver down her spine, but with her back to the wall and all visible exits covered she felt safe. From here she could look down, but she never looked up.
"Hey," Luke said, sitting next to her. Jane didn't jump; she had seen him coming a mile away. Luke liked her, smiled at her, played with her hair, but she…
His voice resonated with different harmonics. It was different, but not unwelcomed.
She wanted something else, someone else. His smile was wrong, his hands through her hair were wrong and he didn't know why she came up here. She tried to explain it to him, but he laughed at her and she hated to be laughed at.
He reached up to touch her hair, and she didn't stop him, because as wrong as it felt, she could almost feel the touch of another – a ghost of a feeling and she relished it.
A year and a half after the Reapers retreated, the Sol relay was rebuilt and civilians were allowed to take transports to other locations. It was expensive and hard to get a spot on a ship, but Jane had managed it. She had always been good at sweet-talking her way to get what she wanted.
The ship was heading towards the Citadel – one of the only other relays currently up. The station apparently had been broken, but most of it had been salvageable and many races pooled together to rebuild it as a sign of hope for the galaxy. It wasn't her final destination, but Jane had to get off Earth and from there…
She had no idea.
Stepping off onto the small ship onto the alien space station, Jane felt almost at peace for the first time since waking up in the ramshackle hospital. She had no real place to go, but finally, she could move forward.
Her feet stepped with a will of their own, winding through halls and up elevators as if they knew the path they needed to walk. She lost herself in the faint memory of sights and smells until she finally stopped, staring out at the ships as they flew through space.
A freedom that she loved, that she could now obtain.
Turning she tripped, and cursed softly as the blood rushed to her knees. That would leave a mark. A three fingered hand appeared in front of her vision, and without thinking she took it.
Standing, and still holding the warm appendage, Jane looked up and inhaled sharply.
"Shepard?" A duel toned voice asked causing a heat in the pit of her stomach and a delicious shiver down to her toes.
Her lips curled and all she could think of was how blue his eyes were.