There's an itch under her skin.
A thousand tiny bugs crawling and she can't do anything about it, can't seem to get her hands or arms or anything to move. The panic swells and chokes her; she's never been good at helpless, but there's no choice right now. It's like her body isn't synced up to her mind; she's aware, but only foggily.
"I told you the anesthetics weren't strong enough," a voice says from above. There's no pleasure in the certainty of it, just annoyance.
"Yes, well, if we went any stronger we'd knock out an Elcor and potentially kill her, so I'd like to avoid—" the other voice starts, stops. Shepard tries to figure out how her body works, where her arms and legs are. "I— did she move?"
Did she? Nice. Shepard tries it again.
"Damnit, Liara," the voice says, except it doesn't sound angry, just shocked. "It's too early."
"When has Shepard ever done things on anyone's schedule but her own," says the voice, Liara. horribly affectionate even in her frustration. "I don't want to put her back under. If she's waking up… didn't she do this last time?"
Shepard, who is pretty sure she's either waking up or having an extremely fucked-up dream, tries to make a noise and instead becomes aware there's something down her throat: a tube, something between her teeth when she presses down and bites.
"Shepard! Shepard, don't move, it's alright." A hand presses against her, five cool points of contact against what Shepard is relatively certain is her face, burning hot. "You're alright."
"You don't know that," a third voice says from the back, low, borderline angry. "You don't even know you brought Shepard back."
"You agreed to this too long ago for you to be angry now," Miranda tells him, unconcerned. "If you're getting cold feet, feel free to leave."
"Both of you should leave if you're not going to be useful," Liara says over the both of them, her hands cupping Shepard's face, working the tube up and out from her mouth. It's ugly; Shepard gags, making an awful choking, hacking noise as it's pulled out. She'd vomit if she had the strength but instead she's just wiped, panting breathlessly, shallowly against it but breathing under her own power at least. "Shepard, can you hear me?"
Words are still impossible. She knows, fundamentally, how they work, understands what they're saying, but her body still doesn't feel like hers. It's a weight, attached to her, but she hasn't yet figured out how to do anything but breathe. The hands on her face shift, one going lower to a different point of contact on her body, curling warm and solid and squeezing. "Shepard, I'd like you to try squeezing my hand."
If she had any idea where her hands were, she would; she'd do anything Liara asked if it were in her power. Instead, she makes a muzzy noise that's almost a groan and lets herself fall back asleep, just in time to hear a disappointed sigh.
The second time she wakes, Liara's still there. There's no fight to get through the fog settled over her body; one moment she's out, the next she opens her eyes, aware. Taking stock of the room, running a threat assessment is second nature even now. There's a low hum coming from the machinery around her: soft, slow beeps in time with the thumb stroking warm circles against the skin of her wrist. That's jarring; she was pretty sure she remembered losing a hand, maybe both, remembers the sensation of heat so overwhelming it overwrote everything else in her brain.
"No, nothing yet. She was supposed to wake up a few hours ago but I don't want to risk it too early. She— oh. Oh, Shepard—"
Shit. Shepard cracks an eye open and instantly regrets her decision, groaning when the blinding white of the room sears her eyes and leaves her grimacing.
"No, keep them closed, I've got it. Glyph? Lights at 20% please."
"Of course, Dr. T'soni."
The next attempt goes better. Shepard cracks her eyes open again and just feels gritty like she'd been hit by the mako and then backed over to finish the job. "L'ra?"
"A moment, Shepard." Something presses against her lips, cool and wet, and Shepard takes two furiously firm drinks of the water. The chill chases away the awful burn in her throat. "Not too fast."
The fuzzy blue shape above her starts to form into something resembling a real person, and Shepard stares for a moment trying to figure out what's happened, why Liara is looking at her like she can't believe what she's seeing.
"S'wrong?" Shepard slurs, vaguely managing to command her hand to squeeze at Liara's - weak, but manageable. Then, even more fuzzily: "Hey."
Liara chokes out a wet laugh and presses her lips against the back of Shepard's hand, her damp cheeks pressed against aching skin. "Hello, Shepard."
Liara doesn't cry, she never cries, not even on Thessia — Thessia. Shepard's hand squeezes Liara's tightly, loosening only when Liara sucks in a slow breath of almost pain.
Thessia. God, Tali. Legion, Thane, Mordin—
It's one thought after another, a chaotic rush of everything and everyone all at once, impossible to sort through the mess of memories, dreams, and nightmares. They're gone. All of them are gone. There's no mistaking it for a dream, some kind of nightmare during whatever coma she was in. The certainty of it is a relief in its own right, knowing some of what's happened. The real question is what happened after? She remembers—
"Shepard, it's alright. I promise you, everything is alright." Liara winds both of her hands around the hand she's all but crushing in return, her eyes bright and watery. "You're safe, everyone else is safe, we can go over what happened when you're—"
"M'fine," Shepard says, despite the fact that she is very much not fine. Now that her eyes are mostly working, she scans the hospital and then looks down her body, which is, unsurprisingly, wrapped in bandages and hooked up to enough machines it's no wonder she still itches. "What the hell happened?"
"Later," Liara murmurs, lifting a hand to smooth back Shepard's bangs unconcerned with the way they stick to her forehead with unwashed sweat. "There's no threat, no reapers to worry about... the only thing we need from you is to get better."
That seems wrong, but Liara... wouldn't lie to her. Probably. At least not about something like this. Shepard squints at her for a long moment and then lets her head fall back against the pillow.
She's out the moment she closes her eyes, certain that if Liara's there, she's safe.
The third time she wakes she feels marginally better - at least, good enough to be fully cognizant of how awful she feels. The itching under her skin hasn't left courtesy of the number of wires she's hooked up
No one else is around, this time, and there's no call button. Shepard pats the bed, just in case, and then glances at the door. They'll probably come in once she starts removing wiring, but she's not going to wait for someone to hold her hand in the bathroom.
Left arm first. She starts unplugging and pulling things off one by one until she's bared her arm. Examining it isn't pretty: scars from wrist to elbow like someone melted a candle all down her arm except it's her skin. Not the worst it could be, but still not particularly great. Shepard flexes her fingers once, twice and she grimaces; the range of motion isn't great, but it should get better. She's used to scarring and can deal with that. She lifts both hands and stares at them for a long moment, willing them to feel like hers. There's a fine tremble in them - worse in the right than the left, but she decides that can be a problem for later.
The right arm is a little better, at least in terms of looks. An incision scar runs from the elbow to wrist, long since healed; how long had she been out? The moment she removes the last device, a pulse monitor, the machines start shrieking. She grimaces, waiting for the inevitable flood of doctors or whoever else to come in, and is surprised when Miranda slides through the door and closes it behind her.
"No call button," Shepard says, starting the arduous process of tossing back the blankets and looking at her legs. They're still there, which is good. It's just— they don't look right, and she's not sure why. Shepard wiggles her toes; they do move, so they're definitely attached to her, but it still feels off. Wrong. "Where are we?"
"A private medical facility run by — ah, private parties." She doesn't quite look uncomfortable, but Shepard frowns at her clear attempt at evasion. "Not Cerberus," Miranda adds."Not Alliance."
Okay. That raises even more questions, actually. Shepard sucks in a slow breath and holds onto the deluge of questions for now. "Okay," she says, instead. One problem at a time. "Do I have clothes here?"
Miranda starts like she's going to protest — Shepard shouldn't be up, shouldn't be moving — but gives up before even giving it breath. They've known each other too long for Miranda to expect anything else. "I'll have some sent down. Careful."
Shepard swings her legs over the edge of her table and stands gingerly, gripping the edge of the bed, and swallows hard against the dryness in her mouth. Miranda starts forward like she wants to help, catches herself once Shepard's steady. "Shower through there?"
"Shepard, we've only just— let someone help you with that, please. I'd rather you didn't fall in the bathroom and knock your head against something."
She's survived — well, whatever this was, on top of the Collectors and everything else; a shower isn't going to do her in. Two steps toward the bathroom and she rethinks it. "I can sit."
Miranda sighs as if this is the single most frustrating thing she'll have gone through all day, then nods. "There's a stool in there for that purpose. Don't drown, Shepard. I'll go fetch something for you to wear."
It takes ages to get from her bed to the bathroom but she manages, one foot after the other until she makes it to the shower and settles heavily on the stool there as instructed. Turning the water on as hot as it will go, she tilts her head up into the spray and lets it run into her mouth, over her face, spitting three times until her mouth tastes marginally less terrible.
Finally, she's able to get a look at herself without the hospital gown. It's her body, she reasons; there's no reason it should feel this weird and unfamiliar, but it does. Her body feels wrong, like she's too big for her own skin, all the edges pressing against each other awfully, awkwardly. She's missing scars, too. Shepard runs a hand down the bare skin of her torso to her belly and traces smooth skin, not scars from where she'd taken a vorcha knife, not where a krogan had shot her point-blank and taken some of her guts with it. There are stretches of achy skin on her back the scarring the same as on her hand. Another dribbled down her hip, on the inside of her calf.
Whatever they'd done — however, they'd done it — had healed some scars and evidently left others. That shouldn't be possible; she'd deliberately left scars, and they weren't there either.
Unsettled, she starts washing her hair with the hospital-provided soap and shampoo; when it's finished, she has a palm-full of red hair she sticks against the wall for lack of any trash bin. Her hair wasn't always this long; Shepard's sure of that. It's past her shoulders at this point, annoyingly so.
At the door, there are two sharp raps and then it opens, Liara sliding through heedless of the fact Shepard's naked and there's absolutely no privacy. Liara's already seen the show; Shepard raises an eyebrow but doesn't reach for the towels. Mostly, she's not sure she'd stay upright if she tried to move that fast.
"Miranda thought you might want something to wear that isn't a hospital gown," Liara says, nudging open the shower door. "You might not have full range of motion just yet, so be careful."
That's a kind way to put "you look like you're about to fall over if I breathe one you" but Shepard doesn't call her on it. "Pants first."
Liara nods, coming in close to offer her arm and together, somehow, they manage to get the sweats up over her hips, and the shirt over her arms and head with minimal trouble, no braining herself on the tile. Small victories. Liara holds her hand, her arm all the way back to the bed until she can collapse face-first down onto it.
"It's alright if you sleep," Liara tells her gently, which is really nice because Shepard's 90% sure that she doesn't have much of a choice in the matter.
"Everyone's okay?" Shepard asks again, more cognizant this time, holding Liara's gaze until she answers. It's the only question that matters at this point.
"Everyone's fine," Liara promises and with that Shepard allows herself to fall asleep again.
The next time she wakes up, eighteen hours later, she feels the best she's felt in ages. That's not saying much, given she's pretty sure she was dead. Whatever cocktail of vitamins and IV and whatever else they've been giving her has been working wonders and when she sits up this time she doesn't feel like she's going to come apart at the seams. With awareness comes the need to figure out what happened, how, and where everyone else is.
It's Jacob who has the bad luck of being the one to let it slip.
It's Shepard who shamelessly uses his conscience against him.
It ought to make her guilty, maybe, knowing someone so well and using every bit of that intel against them, but it doesn't. Shepard digs into Jacob's guilty conscience just as expertly as she used to pry intel about some minor massacre from a shell-shocked survivor on a backwater planet.
She makes it through another shower and when she comes out, hair hanging loose around her face, Jacob is there looking out her window over the city. "Oh! Hey, I just wanted... uh. Just wanted to see how you were."
Shepard leans against the counter, wringing water out of her hair. Hopefully, it masks the fact that she still can't stand upright for more than a few moments at a time without getting nauseated. It seems to work; Jacob looks relieved rather than concerned.
"Still feels like I took a rocket to the face but, yeah, other than that, peachy," Shepard says, winding the towel around her neck. Once she's sure she's able to maintain the illusion that she can totally stand unassisted, she offers him a handshake. He takes it and has the grace not to comment that her hand is trembling with the effort.
"You look good," she says. "How are things?"
Things.
She remembers broad strokes about what's happened with him if she focuses despite the ache in her head, remembers that he'd made mention of someone — a significant other, someone with kids, maybe? When she tries to reach for it she doesn't grasp anything, just vague allusions to something, someone. She probably ought to know, but Miranda'd said earlier that her memory might still be spotty. Shepard tries not to read into just what that means for now.
"Good, good, they're… they're really good, Shepard." Jacob squeezes her hand tightly, just once and Shepard tries to read the look on his face, tries to figure out what it is that's wrong. "Going back home soon, actually. Just wanted to make sure you were up and about. Miranda wanted a little extra backup, too, just in case."
Which...is interesting. Jacob is good, but Jacob's talking about his kids, his family. Miranda of any of them wouldn't actively attempt to separate Jacob from his family unless it was important, and from everything that she had been told so far there weren't any emergencies, so what was important enough that the others wouldn't come, and Jacob would? Unless the others weren't invited. The others wouldn't be invited if Miranda and the others were doing something the rest of the crew wouldn't appreciate.
"In case I go rogue?" Shepard jokes, instead of the other option: in case they get attacked again. Somehow, that seems like the wrong choice. Jacob's face pinches and he looks away, awkward, and oh, oh, she really doesn't like that. Extra back up, if they had to put her down. Fun.
"So. Saved the universe," she tries to recover. "Beat the reapers. Where's everyone else?"
Jacob goes stone-faced, and Shepard scents blood in the water. "They're around," Jacob replies. "I'm sure Miranda can give you the full rundown once you're back up and running at full speed."
"And when's that supposed to be?" Shepard asks. Casually, because everyone else has circumvented this question like it's their goddamn job.
"Docs said it could vary," Jacob dodges. Shepard'd be proud of him if it weren't a little frustrating. For a moment, his face looks pinched, like he's warring with himself on what he wants to say.
"Spit it out, Taylor," Shepard orders, trying for military firmness but achieving 'affectionate teasing'.
"I know you wanna get up, want to get moving, but… you don't have to. You know that right?" Once it's out, he seems to rally. He straightens his shoulders and looks her calmly in the eye. "You did it, Commander. Shepard. You did it. I think you're owed a little R&R."
"Liara said everyone was okay." Shepard begins the arduous process of moving back to her bed having hit the twenty-minute limit of being upright. Once she's settled on the edge of the bed, she dares to take the opening. "I shouldn't be able to get any R&R, Jacob. You and I both know that it was a one-way trip."
Like space cow in headlights. "I don't think you've ever had a one-way trip."
Not by choice. The thought itches worse than her healing skin catches under it and burns. It's never been her choice to be brought back.
"No," she agrees. "That doesn't change it shouldn't be possible I'm back."
Once she says it, she's certain of it. It's only flickers, impressions, but it's enough. She's been burned enough times to know the feeling, the sense memory of holding something hot enough it burned her skin and bone away. Her hands flex against the metal of the bed, so cold it's hot.
Shepard swallows past the bile. "Jacob, I burned. This wasn't recovering my body in space. I deserve the truth."
Jacob's jaw clenches, eyes darting to the door like he's debating running for it. Got him. Jacob's conscience is the softest part of him. "Cerberus was always very thorough," he replies.
Shepard is silent, and Jacob squirms.
"Most of you burned," he continues, under duress. "They recovered less of… uh, you, this time around. But the nanites Cerberus used — you know how you heal faster than everyone else? I don't know the exact science behind it. But the same way it heals you, those nanites came back together. Flesh burned, but everything else didn't. They retained your genetic information to rebuild it. You."
Shepard squeezes the bed so tightly it crumples in her grip. It takes nothing. Just the barest hint of a squeeze, and it folds like butter under her hands. She fights the urge to vomit by breathing through her nose. She had assumed — God, she'd assumed she'd imagined it. Maybe third and fourth-degree burns, something awful and almost disfiguring, but not a miracle of science. But no, they'd scraped up whatever tech Cerberus put inside her and—
"You gathered all the pieces of me together, and what, sewed them back on?" Shepard asks, absolutely no tone in her voice. There's an emptiness settling heavy and cold in her stomach. "Onto what?"
"Shepard—" Jacob looks like he's reconsidering that make a run for the door idea. "Like I said. Cerberus was thorough. That clone that attacked the Citadel wasn't the only one."
"And with the Illusive Man gone," Shepard lifts her trembling hand up and stares at it: the melted, gnarled texture from elbow to wrist, creeping down to her knuckles, over her fingers. Bits and pieces of the real Shepard, all ground up and sewed onto her. The foggy memory, the gaps, the flickers of certainty about some things and uncertainty about others. "I thought— I thought that wasn't possible. The Illusive Man could make a copy, but it wouldn't be me, it'd be—"
"Empty, yeah," Jacob looks up at the ceiling, rallies, and looks her in the eye. "They found a way to fix that."
Fix that. Like she's a tool, something to be rebuilt, repaired, every time someone else decides they need to use her. The indignity of it burns worse than any fire.
On some level, she understood it from the Alliance. The military made no illusions about what you were: you were a cog in a machine greater than yourself, your only duty to keep yourself in working order for the Alliance. She'd been jokingly called a machine so many times it barely sticks at this point.
She never held it against Admiral Hackett or Anderson. They were just extensions of the same machine that spit her out.
With her crew, it was different. They were a team. They had each other's backs. They found a way to fix that.
"I want to leave."
For a moment she's not sure who's more shocked at the words, but she's said them and she stands by them. She pushes herself back to her feet and starts the slow, arduous process of getting together what few things she has here that are going to be useful.
"Shepard," Jacob tries, taking two steps forward and then stopping when she rounds on him. Gentler, "Shepard, come on. You're barely standing."
"Never stopped me before." Shepard scans the room; she'll settle for a scalpel if she needs to but she'd really prefer something else and finds it at the desk where Miranda or Liara had clearly been working remotely from while monitoring her. She pops open a nearby drawer and smiles when she finds a gun in it, attached to the underside of the desk. Smiling feels weird, unfamiliar, but the gun in her hand doesn't. No holster, but she can make it work. Miranda'd hate being called predictable, but some things are. "I know you weren't responsible for this, Jacob, but you can be responsible for helping me get out of here. Or you can leave. Your choice."
It's an excellent play of the guilt card, really. Jacob looks at the door, sighs, and starts unbuckling his holster and adjusting the buckles for someone smaller, shorter.
That's what I thought.
"Where are you going to go?" Jacob hands it over to her and watches her shrug it on, lips pressed into an unhappy line. "Shepard, the relays aren't fully operational yet, you're —"
"If you say not fully operational, Taylor, I will throw you out the window," Shepard furiously tugs at the buckles, the straps until it's settled around her torso, strapped tight. She slides the pistol into the holster and the weight feels comfortable. "Thermal clips?"
"It's loaded." Jacob crosses his arms. A wedding band gleams on his hand.
"Great." Shepard gives the room one last sweep for useful items and then turns on him, between her and the door. "I'm leaving. You're coming with me to the port and helping me get a ship."
"I am?" Jacob gives her an incredulous look and Shepard stares him down until he flinches. Looks away. "First right."
Surprising no one, Miranda is behind the second set of doors when they open. "Shepard."
"Miranda." Shepard crosses her arms and plants her feet, mostly successful at not wobbling like she's drunk. "I'm leaving."
"Yes, I see that." Miranda looks a little like she's sucking on a lemon. She deferred to Shepard when she had to but Shepard can imagine that this isn't the ideal; this is her facility, her work in a way that Cerberus never was. Having Shepard come in and not listen for a second time has to get under her skin like nothing else. "You were declared dead, Shepard. We held a funeral. If you leave— no one else knows. Not yet."
"Yeah, probably not a good look to be playing Frankenstein with Alliance property." It comes out more bitter than she'd like. Shepard tries to draw on that cold emptiness from earlier, rather than the raw fury. Miranda flinches like she's been hit and Shepard isn't sure how she feels about the sense of satisfaction that comes from it. "Also probably not great having to own up to, what, reactivating old Cerberus cells? Digging up old research data that should've stayed buried? Bet the Alliance loved that."
"It's not that easy, Shepard," Miranda's voice hardens in an instant and Jacob's weight shifts, wary. "If you sit down, I'll—"
"Miranda, I'm getting off this planet one way or another." Shepard stares her down and wins. The victory doesn't feel particularly good. "You plan for every contingency. You knew this was an option. I want a way off."
"Miranda," Jacob says, softly, and Miranda stalks past both of them down the hall, smacking her hand against the door sensor.
"After you," Miranda says, icy.
Shepard leads.