Rib From Adam

by hanktalkin

Nobody wants to die. Not even freaks of nature.

Wit the lamps are too low and the whisper too near my ear, she tells me what will happen if Lazarus wins. It is detailed, and true, and it chills me as the words curl around the shell of my ear, a fear entwined with my very existence. It'll never let me go. An axiom and a motivation all in one. It keeps me quiet as I flip through dossiers, putting together fragments of old ANN stories, Omega rumors, Blue Suns internal reports, it thrums in the back of my head. I've given the fear its power. I do not want to die.

So when a hand—gloved and unrecognizable—extends down to me, I don't have the pride to refuse. There's too much fear coiled here in this cultivated body for pride. When the hand reaches down and offers to trade in his unknown for my gruesome certainty, I take it.

#

The receding of my cell door startles me. The light from the hall is bright. I raise a palm to blot it out.

It's Lazarus, silhouette blinding.

"What are I doing here?" I ask, voice startled into colorlessness, not even managing a bitter inflection in time to give the words shape.

He crosses the threshold, and my sight adjusts to his presence, seeing his helmet is gone. "I think I was pretty clear up on the ship." When I say nothing, he adds, "you're coming with us."

I frown suspiciously. I'd come to accept that whole spiel was merely a convincing pitch in the heat of the moment, an effective way to get me to turn myself in. Funnily enough, up until C-Sec came and slapped on the cuffs, I'd almost bought it—at least in the confused and tangled part of my brain that desperately wanted to live.

Now, even that's gone, only thing left is an empty buzz where belief should be. "I don't think that's likely," I say blankly.

"Do you want to stay here?" he asks.

I squint. "You're never going to convince C-Sec to let me go anywhere. The Alliance won't be happy with a lot things I am today." Clone, attempted murderer, war criminal, traitor, though I doubt I can officially commit treason against a government I never legally belonged to. They'll still find a way to saddle me with it.

"You don't give me enough credit," he says. "I talk to Bailey half an hour ago. You're being released on Spectre authority."

His omni-tool glows, and I see him splashed in orange while disables the cyberlock on my cuffs. I scrutinize him while he does. It feels like I should be impressed about the weight he's thrown around, but that tangled part of my head is still choked with weeds, and it makes it hard to care. Go with him or don't, and if I had spine it might be an actual choice. If I was like Rasa, I'd already be formulating a plan, acting the part a grateful pilgarlic, humbly biding my time until I could make the jump out. But Rasa never taught me those sorts of tricks, so I stand, peer at him, and follow him again out into the artificial sunlight.

#

Within a week of my arrival on the Normandy, it's attacked by company of prodigal children.

I haven't met many, wouldn't like to again, wouldn't even count this as a meeting as I avoid the places they congregate. Their chaperone is just as loud, messing around and with them, half teacher and half untamed thing herself. Lazarus is always where she is, smiling more than I've ever seen him, joy reaching his eyes in ways Alliance propaganda never managed to capture. I wonder idly if they're fucking.

Then I remember I don't have to wonder. I've read these files a hundred times, both Rasa's and my research, committed every detail of resurrection to memory. At the time it seemed unimportant, a morsel of gossip to file away while I was busy figuring out how to chew and memorizing the names council-controlled systems. Now I observe, and can't help but feel two years of irrelevant knowledge blister.

The Normandy doesn't allow me the luxury of keeping to the shadows: even the most meandering bend is too exposed, the nooks and crannies flattened into military austerity. I cannot slink, though the other Spectre accuses me under her breath when she thinks I can't hear. I do hear, as well as the murmured warnings Lazarus gives in response. Still, I feel her eyes on me whenever she's near, and the AI's eyes whenever she isn't. There may be nowhere to hide, but pretending to is within my means. The hanger bay is easiest; it's unfamiliar without the walls of cargo and the sound of gunfire, but even still I find a secluded area behind the dormant UT-47. There's a bunk not too far, meant for an on-call shuttle pilot, one that would be claimed if Cortez weren't so gun-shy about sleeping outside the pods.

I don't mind him. Cortez. Or even Vega, for that matter. It's a pattern I've noticed, that anyone from before the Alpha Relay is willing to shoot on sight, even the AI, though the synthetic is a lot better at hiding it. New blood, however, is still undecided on whether they want to kill me or not.

"Hey. Lookalike. Up for a match?"

I'm there, further from my nest than I usually am in the no man's land of the hanger, but still within what I usually consider a hostility free zone. Conversation, of course, is an act of war, but everything in Vega's posture speaks of ease, or at the very least confidant casualness. Cortez has an eyebrow raised, but only for a moment, then he too drops into affability.

"Match," I say.

"Yeah, match." He's up, no longer leaned against the procurement terminal, but rolling his shoulders as he paces around the gym floor. I recognize the stance, the way his hands float to his chin, bringing memories of boxing matches from the feed. "C'mon, I know you like a good fight. Only thing anyone knows about you. Let off some steam."

This is…some sort of test. I don't know what kind, or what Vega wants, or why Cortez is just watching when usually he's got a piffy comment for just about anything Vega does. Circling closer, I don't let my shoulders relax, sizing them both up. Is this to see if I'll back down? Prove I'm no threat?

That hardens my teeth against one another, and I set one foot on the padded part of the floor.

"I don't see any gloves anywhere," I say. My hands flex. I've noticed lately how used they are to holding a datapad, how hard it is to stand still without something occupying my fingers.

His fists, and the corners of his mouth, curl up. "This isn't some grudge match, Loco. We're just a few soldiers cutting loose."

"That isn't my name."

That, apparently, initiates the match. He throws a punch. My hands, only beginning to mirror his, do not put up an admirable defense. He catches me in the jaw, and laughs. "No? Commander didn't like it either."

"Maybe don't give him a concussion within the first fifteen seconds," Cortez says from beyond where my vision swims. "Commander's also not going to like you breaking his clone."

Hand to hand. I know this, I've bled this. I stand, surprised so see Vega waiting for me. Stupid. Rasa would have pressed while she had the upper hand.

I swing, I swing again. Both come against Vega's forearms and he smirks, "yow! Alright, alright I get it, you got fire. How about Bandito then? That work for you?"

But I'm ignoring him now—him and the peanut gallery—as my swings grow hotter, remember the paths they're supposed to take through the air, the lines they make in my body. Vega gets me again, but then he doesn't and I land my first hit.

"Still think this was a good idea?" Cortez asks, not bothering to hide to his amusement.

Vega's still cocky, but only on his lips, and I can see the concentration past his usual bravado.

Each of his swings meet my blocks, and I get him hard across the chin. He's losing ground now and I pursue, and I get him again, and then again. I no longer count. The focus is faltering underneath him, sweat leaking off his face and stirring the blood underneath his nose and I press my advantage: his ribs where I know I've struck him so many times that they're bruised, his guard where it's getting sloppy, my mind on fire because you can never guarantee that, never rely on that, if Lawson came through that door right now and you didn't have your gun, are you just going roll over and die like some-?

My whole body jerks in pain. There is something on my back and my knees are on the floor even though I don't remember them getting there. There is a voice—Cortez, it takes a second to identify—shouting, "tell them to get down here now!"

Cortez has my in arm bar. Immediately, I lurch backwards, but my reflex only earns me a shout of pain as I twist the wrong way, and he tightens the lock further. There is blood rushing in my ears and the AI buzzing instructions and a lot of wet on the floor beneath me, and my mind is still fire fire fire-

Vega is lying nearby. I'm pretty sure I was just been beating the shit out him.

There is shouting and I am still trying to throw Cortez off when Lazarus's voice cuts through. "Hey! Hey! Stop th-"

Whatever he says next is cut off in a wave of blue. Cortez slides away and I am suspended, immobile, hovering off the ground as my muscles lock up. As my view shifts, I can see the source. Shadow Broker stands in the elevator, her hand raised in and crackling with biotics.

"Hey!" Lazarus demands again, but this time to get my attention. It is hard to give, with the my most basic bodily control lost to me. "I'm going need you to calm down, alright? Hey! Look at me."

I could, but my pupils ping around inside my skull faster than I can think.

He turns. "Put him down. I can't get through to him like this."

"With all due respect Commander," the Shadow Broker says, voice clipped, so many orders given through it, all disguised, all followed. "I don't think that's a very good idea."

"Someone once told me that when they say 'with all due respect' they really mean 'kiss my ass'."

"Commander. I would never."

Their eyes lock. She studies him, then me, then where I see Vega trying to sit up while the ship medic pushes him back down. The Shadow Broker draws her hand into a fist.

Lazarus is in front of me before I touch the ground. I try to shuffle back but won't let me, grabbing my arms and saying, "I don't know what the hell that was, but you need to get a hold of your. Nod if you understand me."

I want to take a moment to remember how to breathe again. It feels like there are broken bits of bone rattling around inside me, asking me to take a swing at him and get him out of my face. Instead, I nod, because that is easier.

He nods back. "Okay, that's something. Can you tell me that you're out of it now?"

It. Does he even know what he means by it? I still want to beat him senseless against a steel wall and I've read enough of his life to know he has no experience with hostage negotiation. He's talking from his ass, things about existence he has no hope of understanding, and I channel every fiber of hatred I have for him as I stare him down and say, "yeah."

No sigh of relief, but he does breathe hot out his nose. The grip loosens, and he turns to the crowd. "Look, we're just going to go back here and talk. Nobody punch a hole in anything while I'm gone."

He's pulling gently on my arm to bring me deeper into the hanger, but my blood still doesn't feel like it's resumed normal flow quite yet, so I don't fight as he brings me to where everything isn't stained quite so red. He lets me sit down inside the UT-47. It feels wrong him being here, soiling it with his presence, but I was stupid if I thought I could keep this as a sanctuary forever.

He says, "should we talk about that?"

I say nothing.

"I can't have you beating up my squad every time they piss you off. It's probably going to happen a lot."

I scratch at my ripped open knuckles, and again say nothing.

His gaze is downwards at me, always, always, and I force myself not to turn away. I don't want his judgment, nor his pity. I tell him only, "I won't."

"Good," he relaxes, and I allow myself to look away. With a tilt of his head, he adds, "I trust you."

I stop picking at my knuckles. Then, I resume, and pretend I hadn't.

He glances out the blackened windows, at the scene unfolding. Subject Zero is there now, apparently looking for Lazarus and trying to get someone to argue with her about it.

"She's one of there's too," I say.

Why I say it, I don't know. Maybe something to fill the dead air. Maybe she bothers me more than I've admitted even to myself.

When he only blinks at me, I gesture vaguely in her direction. "Subject Zero."

"Her name is Jack."

"…Jack."

"Cerberus is shit at picking names." He lets it hang in the muffled shuttle for a minute too long. After a moment, guardedly, he asks, "what should I call you?"

"Whatever you want."

"What did Brooks call you?"

"Rasa," I bite sharply, though not in answer to his question. "Her name is Rasa."

He pauses. Not long, though, and asks, "what did Rasa call you?"

A grim line straightens my mouth, iron or copper, something unpleasant and metal that sits unset on my tongue. "Minuteman."

"Should I call you that?"

I am alone on this ship, floating in the middle of the star-made sea. I should be formulating a plan, mulling over my next move, making do with the resources at hand while I plan to kill the man in front of me in his sleep. Rasa would have had every person on this ship in motion by now, singing to her tune without even realizing it. She would have a mask and an angle and something to stand for.

Left to my own devices, I cannot even decide what to do.

The other Spectre pulled Lazarus up by the scruff of his neck, and the Archangel dragged them both to safety, and I knew I was going to die and Rasa left me to my own devices.

I tell him plainly and with no quarter, "don't."

#

There were times when I could tell when I'd done something wrong, when her mouth didn't bend into that little half-smile of hers, when her response was chilled as she reviewed whatever I've been working on. It is a rule that I would never know what I did, how I had disappointed her today. Maybe I was tired this morning and took a tone with her over coffee, maybe I labeled my files in that way she hates. Seeing her scan over a datapad with tight disappointment reminded me that I would never survive without her, that if she wasn't watching my back, Lawson would find me within the week. If I become too callous, too unpleasant to deal with, she would decide it wasn't worth her time, and take her effort elsewhere.

So I would supplicate. I would find her when the lamps were too low and approach cautiously, circling my arms around her and pressing my nose into that spot she likes. It would be instant, the way she would. Like she was waiting for me to do just this. And I acceded, to anything, to whatever it was this time, wordless and tugging her toward the bed as I watched her confident smirk return in the dark. She'd welcome me with acknowledging kisses, accepting my placation, holding me until uncertainty fled.

Then, when her breathing was steady beside me, I could allow the relief to wash in. I'd earned her love, and for a moment I could pretend I won't have to do it again.

I wake with the ghost of her hand on my inner thigh.

Wake is an inexact descriptor, for I've been lying in my bunk for eons with the phantoms caressing in places unsolicited, but it feels like waking when I finally stand and shake them free.

The night cycle is in full swing, and I am echoingly alone at the lowest point in the Normandy. If I think—and I can't help but think, most days I wish I could just turn it off—maybe I'm at the highest point. The gravity is as artificial, if it simply…switched…I could suddenly be king of the world.

Pointless. The relativity of all things makes my teeth hurt.

The emergency lights illuminate my way to Vega's punching bag. He still doesn't have any gloves for it, but that's never stopped him, and may as well not stop me. The first punch feels like nothing, but everything only ever has one first. The assault breaks the skin on my hands, and my form is so poor I feel a twist in my wrist as a janky punch hits the side. Then my thumb goes, snapping into the wrong position and sending a whole jolt up my arm. I keep going. I'm going to keep going, until I'm dead, until I break whatever memories of her are still on my skin.

Cortez finds me barely conscious, kneeling underneath the bag, blood smeared on Vega's pristine equipment.

I may not have slept for three days, but I still have the wherewithal to think he shouldn't be here this early. There is no call to the AI this time, or journey to find Lazarus. Instead, he puts one shoulder under the arm he nearly dislocated a few weeks ago, and lifts me onto the steel chair of his workstation.

"Vega's going to find a way to blame me for that," he says of the blood. For some reason, he's chosen now—dropping me and getting a first-aid kit from a drawer—to decide to prattle. It's unnerving when I've barely heard him speak more than three sentences, but maybe he only seemed reserved in comparison to Vega. "Somehow him getting his ass beat by Shepard 2.0 is my fault too, though he's not as mad about that one as I think he should be. You nearly gave him a concussion."

"Hm," is all I deign.

"If you ask me," he says, while dabbing medi-gel onto each of my knuckles, "You shouldn't wake up from something like that and the only thing you have to say is 'happens'. But Vega's a pretty easy guy to get along with. Lets most things roll off him."

My thumb is now set firmly against the rest of my hand, the splint so tight I can't move it. I don't know if this is because Cortez has some secret skill in field medicine, or because he's just using the kit as liberally as he can.

Staring at my hand, the white lump that's been shaped into a perpetual fist, I ask, "why are you doing this?"

He shrugs.

"I could have killed you."

"Shepard's hard to kill," he says. "Plus, A lot of people try to kill us. Most of them with less reason."

"I don't need your pity." The snarl I meant is faded by exhaustion, a grumble against a man who isn't intimidated.

"Too bad," he says. "It's what you got."

"Go to hell," I say. "me, Vega, him, you can all go to hell. I don't want anyone's sad looks, and I don't want your help."

"So what do you want to do?"

My silence is all that greets him.

"If you think it's as simple as saying 'I don't want your pity' is going to make people stop giving it, don't have a real good idea of what people are like."

"You're just like him, you know? That patronizing therapist bullshit. It's obnoxious."

He closes the kit. "You're way to bothered by people being nice to you."

"Right, because keeping me like a pathetic trophy is some great testament to human empathy." The gauzed hand is already starting to itch. "I'm tired. You know what I want, Cortez? I just want it to stop."

"What's it?"

I'm not just tired, but bone tired, fatigue weighing me, threatening to crush me into a little trash cube and shoot me out the airlock. I tell him, "fuck if I know."

Somehow I manage my way back to my bunk. Cortez could have helped or he might've not, I'm not really sure either way.

#

"Suit up," Lazarus says.

Somehow, I'm holding an armor plate and, more importantly, a gun. I don't know if Cortez blabbed or Lazarus is saying balls to Alliance orders, but he's shoved the gear into my hands and expects me to put it on.

When I don't move, he says, "You want to be an asset? Prove it. We go planetside in two hours."

The realization that this is happening, he's serious, thumps in my chest. I'm not giving him an opportunity to change his mind.

Kallini makes me regret it instantly.

Every move in the dark of the desolated and flickering alien building stirs something deep, something that knows how far the unnaturalness runs. Asari with their secrets, with their superiority so rooted in the fabric of their being, it's a wonder they don't walk crooked with how far they have it shoved up their asses. They may pretend their influence is pure, but I wonder how long this building has stood. How many centuries have they been corralling their dirty laundry into this cold corner of the galaxy?

A reverberation agitates the sloping concrete. Lazarus motions us down, and even though I'm rather be poised than hidden in this nest of vipers, the rumble bores again into the back of my skull, and I relent into cover. For a moment, there is only my heartbeat, and the imagined echo of my squadmates'. Then, with no warning, the sound is here a third time, close enough that I recognize it for what it is: a scream.

The Archangel mutters, "Spirits, what is that thing…?"

There are no answers for that. Not I nor anyone can give. The body sliding into view stretches, twined unwillingly in horrifying ways, and there is rage in the scream that makes the other flinch, but at which I downright convulse. Only I can hear it. The call underneath. The one of pure, agonizing pain, shifting between the vocal intonations, begging for someone, anyone to make it stop. The one of someone shamed and discarded and then violently unmade.

I do not lose my lunch after I kill the first one. Nor the second. The third, I break from the pack without them noticing, and find myself in a girl's room, at which point I dry heave against a cold wall and pretend not to notice the dozens of handmade ceramic pyjacks arranged in loving collections. I reappear at the Archangel's side with my helmet back on and do not wipe away the sweat at the back of my neck.

The Justicar talks. Her daughter dies. The other one Lazarus hauls into the elevator, still screaming her sister's name.

The ride up takes too long. It is as though the elevator's downward journey was somehow a tenth the distance of its ascension, warping physical space around it so the asari's crying lasts for as long as possible. Her face is in Lazarus's shoulder, and he rubs her back, and tells her he's so, so sorry.

The air outside tastes of death on this crumbling, prison of a world. The asari doesn't hug her mother. I try to think past my own mind, an endless wail still resounding inside it, as though through higher function I can avoid it like a folder I don't want to open.

And then the Justicar is dead and there is one more bloodstain to add to the canvas.

I stare at the ground as purple washes up to touch the edge of my boot. I've winded up next to Lazarus, close enough to hear him mutter into his comms, "call us a ship."

My head snaps up. "You're leaving her here." It's not a question.

He gazes blankly at me. I've tried never to stare too long into familiar eyes, ringed brown and heavy as they, but now I can't stop and I see the helplessness there. "She wants to stay."

"She's going to kill herself." Another thing that is not a question. He heard her. He knows.

He stares at me with those despairing eyes, and doesn't speak until Cortez says he's coming in for a landing. There is rancor within me as the shuttle lifts away, follows me all the way to the hanger. Archangel disperses, as does Cortez, and I want nothing more than to wash away husk blood and the grime of indoctrination on my skin. When I return, I find that although the squad has disbanded, Lazarus is still there, gaze boring into his helmet.

"She…" He is talking to me, even as catches his own reflection in the thin sheen of glass. "I never understood her. Never."

"Samara," I remember. The name is not right on my tongue. "I think she knew what was going happen. Probably as soon as she set foot there."

He hangs his head. "She always seemed like…she knew what the right thing was, even when the rest of us didn't. I liked that about her. Trusted she'd always know what to do." I notice his thumb run over his dog tags, the hum of spaceflight drowning out the tinkling sound. "You were the one who came back right."

"…Me?" I check behind me, and then back to see him drop the arm with his helmet.

"You." He rubs his face. "You know Torfan, right? Of course you do. You never shut up about all the shit you know about me." I take offense to that. I feel like I've spent a lot of my time in his presence pointedly shutting up about the things I already know. "Every single solider, every single person under my command…dead. And they gave me a medal. I know that stupid fire is still burning there?"

"The Shepard Memorial Fire," I say. He glares at me. Okay, point taken.

"No cost too great. We won, after all. Then I die and I come back and I just." He's got his fingers locked in his dog tags again. "Can't do it anymore."

When the suicide mission went out, I was hoping for just that. The Collectors needed to be destroyed and Rasa still needed Cerberus resources so I did my part, but Rasa thought if Lazarus never came back at all, then maybe there could still be space for me in the Alliance. A sole survivor. He'd already established contact with the Council, with some of his old associates, it would be almost easy to slip into his place.

But for me, there was never any doubt he would succeed. Even with how much I hated him, the hours I'd spent pouring over his life let I know he would never let a mission fail.

That's what makes me realize what's changed. "You can't make sacrifices."

He wrings his hands. "The old Shepard, he would have gutted Kai Leng and Udina before they even got started. Hell, he probably would've broken out of lockup eight months ago, consequences be damned. But I remember the first Normandy, what is was like to just…lose everything. I don't want to go through that again. Can't go through it again. When I think about it I just-"

He laughs. It's not a pleasant sound. I don't think I've ever heard him laugh before, and like when I saw him with Jack, it strikes me that I nothing about him at all.

"I couldn't do what Thane did for us. What Samara did for her daughter." He's still thumbing the dog tags. "You're the only one between the two of us who bothered to keep a spine."

"To be fair, I probably wouldn't have jumped in front of an assassin either," I shrug.

"Would you have let my men die to just to win?" He asks. Silence is my only answer, and he goes on, "I just think that, this time, it won't be some moon base, or the Council. This is the whole damn galaxy, and if it comes down that I need to choose between the Reapers and Ash, or Garrus…."

I sit. Beside him, and his forehead wrinkles slightly. I should probably tell him that he'll make the right call, or at the very least that no one can tell what the future will bring or some hanar crap like that. But if I inherited the temperament of the original Shepard, he definitely wasn't a well of emotional complexity, so instead I just sit there, shoulder against his. There is a beat, and a muffled thanks, and the reward of silence.

#

"It was thinking," he rushes out, too fast in the pre-mission shuffle when all my concentration is on prepping my armor and keeping grenades from going off accidently. "That your name could be Ji-tae. Since you don't have a preference for anything else."

I hand is tangled in a mass of cluster grenades, and when I glance up at him, mouth slightly open, all I can manage is a, "what."

"It's our name," he explains hastily. "Nobody ever calls me it so-"

"I know what your first name is, jackass," I say. "Why the hell would you call me that?"

"You know, if you let me finish explaining sometime, I'd probably tell you a lot faster." When all I do is glare at him, he continues, "it's just that, it's been so long since I've been anything but 'Shepard' or 'Commander', or occasionally 'Shepard-Commander'. My whole adult life, just that. Ji-tae doesn't even feel like me anymore."

"So I your get my sloppy seconds?" I ask. "Gee, thanks."

"That's not what I meant."

No one's listening, Cortez is doing pre-flight checks, and the Shadow Broker is giving last minute instructions to her VI before takeoff. I awkwardly go back to sifting through my own gear.

"If that's a no, then…"

"No," I say clumsily. "No, it's fine. That's fine. I don't really care."

The chaos and the prep outside continues, and Shepard goes back to his gear, fiddling with a pulsar as it refuses the snap in place. There is a sheen of muck in my stomach, and I hate it. I shouldn't care about this additional, stupid thing he's said that doesn't matter, and even if it did is should make me pleased, not queasy.

"Do you think anyone's going to actually call me that?" I say eventually.

He shrugs. "Maybe."

The annoyance doesn't fit right inside me.

As we drift closer to Horizon, I watch him from the corner of my eye. He wears Thessia like a second skin, hanging around his cheekbones and the tightness in his frown, and I know the screams he's hearing because I hear them too. Despite the two thousand year long deception we'd uncovered there, the bitter rage towards their self-righteousness has fizzled away, like Minagen through the bottom of an uncoated canister. Instead, I now have ghosts in my head. I have ghosts, and other things Rasa never prepared me for.

Like the voice of a teenage girl, fizzling over the comms, telling us to turn back now.

"Lawson…" I repeat, the girl's last name.

"Miranda's sister?" Shepard asks. "What's she doing here?"

Kai Leng, Lawson, a nemesis falling from a roof as a harvester flies overhead. All of this is compounding, and if I'd thought I'd been stripped clean of Cerberus as soon as Rasa birthed me from that tank, then I was sorely mistaken. Their hooks are still in me, yanking my every limb, twitching my rifle at sudden noises, spinning around corners I've already checked. And then Lawson, the real Lawson, speaks out of a crackling emergency broadcast and my innards contract.

"Hey," Shepard says, shaking me slightly. I haven't move since her transmission ended, staring forward at a blood splattered wall. The marionette strings snap my rifle against my chest. "You okay?"

"We need to get this over with," I tell him through gritted teeth.

Over with. I don't know how this ends with my survival unless I leave now or catch Lawson off her guard. I have my helmet tinted dark across my face, but she'll take one look at I and she'll know, because I can't hide from those eyes, only run. Rasa trained me and warned me and kept us both safe, but there were two of us against the forces of the Alliance and Cerberus combined. The goal was to survive one more day, stay quiet just a little longer, always with the promise that my chance was right around the corner.

The facility powers on, and I wonder why I ever thought I could change anything. Slaughter without purpose, death without blood, I shoot down monsters but the there is still the certainty that something much worse is waiting for me, and the Shadow Broker side-eyes the way my hands shake. I hate the place where the water drains. It reminds me of the tank.

A ladder is all that separates us from her and Leng and whoever else is in charge, and when I reach her she is

Dying.

She lies in Shepard's arms, a thin stream of blood from the corner of her mouth and talks to her sister like they're the only people in the world. The first instinct, the one that this is some sort of trap, fades as she does. I stare dumbly as Lawson reaches up to tenderly touch Shepard's face.

I find myself moving closer. There should be something to bring closure to however many years of fearing this woman. Something I can say. Maybe I will even gloat that I will go on where she will not. But then her head rolls back, and she is still.

Her voice plays on the broadcast. I am left with no one in the world who can hurt me. This time, Shepard helps the grieving sister into his arms, and takes her with.

#

"She was…" I say as the UT-47 rattles with atmosphere. "Invincible. It never occurred to us that she could…die."

"She always tried to give that impression, yeah." He does not question the us, and I do not say the things about Lawson I want to say. We allow each other small mercies.

Maybe, there was no us. Maybe Rasa realized Miranda was just as mortal as everyone else, and the fear I thought I saw in her was merely my own she chose to reflect back. Maybe the reason we tell children ghost stories is the same reason we remind them that we'll never die.

#

"Ji-tae," he grumbles, disappointed, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Runnin' away from home, Ma," I say drily.

Sparks flick against the escape pod, the casing hard against tampering, but once I'm inside it will bow to my will. I keep trying to use my omni-tool as a screwdriver, but I really need a Phillips head, and each defeat only lasts a half minute before I take another stab and think maybe this time it'll work.

"You know," he says, folding his arms, "even if you do get that working, EDI's not going to open the door for you."

"I know." I hiss as a spark lands on my bare forearm.

"Those pods don't actually have their own controls. They're designed to send out a distress signal and wait for rescue."

"I know." My teeth grind in concentration, omni-blade slipping again.

"Then why are-"

"Because what else am I going to fucking do?" I stand and spin to face him, throwing the useless blowtorch aside. "Rasa is alive. She's sitting on the Citadel right this second and I haven't been doing a damn thing for three months. I should be-! Gah! Fuck!" I kick, and send the torch skittering.

He watches it go, unamused. "And why do you need to kill her so bad?"

"Because she left me to die, because she betrayed me, because she raised me, take your pick." I begin to pace, but now my foot hurts and I hobble in the middle of the shuttle bay. "But I've just been sitting, and if I'm not going to kill you, then the only one left is her."

"Nice to know you've gotten over the whole killing me thing," he remarks flatly. "Do you actually want to kill her?"

"No." Left, pain. Left, pain. "But I should."

"But do you want to?" he repeats.

"I said no-"

He gets in my way. Right there, in my path, and grabs me by both shoulders. "Then don't." I choose not see him. "Ji-tae, listen to me. She's going to spend the rest of her life rotting in a cell. She can't control you anymore."

I close my eyes. I don't believe him. Not when I woke up less than an hour ago with her breath still on my neck. I shake my head.

"Hey, look at me." Still I refuse. He gives me a slight shake. "Look at me."

I open them, slightly. "She's still here. Always. Every thing I am, everything I do, it's because she made me that way."

"If that's the case, then killing her won't undo that." I stare ahead at my matching face, whose expression is kind and holds something for me that I only ever thought I saw in Rasa's. "She's millions of miles away right now. If that hasn't stopped it from hurting, then the poison's too damn deep, Ji-tae. There's never an easy fix."

"I just…" I feel sick again, or maybe there's something else wrong with my head. "I just want it to stop."

He hugs me. My body goes stiff, but I don't fight him. Not this time. "I know. I know. Me too." And then he promises, "soon."

#

The remaining days before the world ends I spend lying in my bunk. It's only when Shepard comes back from the Cerberus base, shaking and empty handed, that the news spreads throughout the Normandy, and I haul myself to a standing position.

"Earth. Never been." Everyone either ignores me or shoots me a distasteful look, which is usually what happens when I talk.

Only Vega refuses silence while everyone gathers jitterly in corners, waiting while Hackett and Shepard disappear into the war room, and offers to go blow off steam.

I frown, "I really hope you don't mean a rematch."

"Hah, nah." He slaps me on the shoulder. "Old fashion way."

So off we go, he, I, and Cortez standing at the starboard side window, slightly buzzed, and beholding thousands of ships gathering above a burning planet. I'm still warm in the fingers by the time we touch down.

I've never bean to Earth, and at the rate this place is going I may never be here again.

The air tastes like burned things. I don't want to think too heavily on what those things might be. Every second compounds the sinking in my chest, and how stupid I was, how shitty Rasa's plan was to begin with. All those times I thought I could do better, that I could lead humanity out of the tangles of galactic politics to triumph—laughable. This is our last ditch effort to a hopeless end, and even Shepard isn't going fix it.

Then there is the screeching, the yell of distress in my comms, and I gawk as the UT-47 crashes and burns in an arc over our heads.

"Cortez!" Shepard shouts over the line, barely heard between Vega's shit shit shit shit, but all I can do is stand and stare at where the blue shuttle disappeared.

We aren't going to win. There is lead in my blood and my bones and we aren't going to win.

"I'm fine Commander," in my ear, but that only restarts my heart for a second. I look at where the UT-47 disappeared, jaw slowly clenching, Shepard relaying him instructions to wait for evac. He's as dead as if the whole shuttle had gone up in smoke.

"Ji-tae, come on," he says when I don't move. He notices where my helmet points. "Normandy's coming for him, he's going to be fine. We're the ones who have to get our asses out of here."

I think of Cortez, whose specialization is in emergency transport and communications. I think of the sidearm he keeps under his seat. I think of the last twenty marauders I met, who took a heatsink a piece to take down.

"Dammit!" is the last thing I hear before I'm over the closest barrier, and then Shepard's and Vega's shouts recede behind me entirely.

"I'm going to need your coordinates," I say into my comms as I run through sections of twisted rebar.

"Shepard?" Cortez coughs, startled to be back in demand. "I told you I'm fine-"

"Not Shepard. He's unfortunately on his way to get sucked into a giant laser. Now give me your damn coordinates."

There is a pause. He does.

I find him with his leg crushed in between the pilot's seat and the door of the shuttle, husk hanging around his neck as it tears into him. He shoves his pistol into its head, and it splatters back, falling into the co-pilot's seat. There's a second one hanging from the UT-47's roof, and before he can re-aim, I shoot it to pieces.

He jerks back to avoid it, and twists his leg in a way that definitely can't be good if we're going to make it out of here on foot. Keeping my rifle at the ready, the smoke concealing what I know is there, I approach the half-open cockpit.

"Push back on the console, I'll leverage the door. Got it?" He takes a second, acknowledging that I really am there, that I'm really not Shepard, that I am going to get this thing off him. He nods. "Good. Three, two, one-"

Metal groans, screaming like it's alive, iron and copper and something unpleasant. my boots slip in the ash that has been building on the streets for months, war grinding down skyscrapers until the planet finally chocked its last breath. Both Cortez and I wheeze with exertion, but then his leg pops free, blood slicking metal until it's just wet enough.

"Shit," he says when he puts first weight on it. I slide an arm under his shoulder, and he adds a, "thanks."

"We need to move," is all I reply. Even now I hear the strange chattering growl of a brute echoing somewhere to my right. "Normandy has our location?"

"Told them six minutes ago."

"We'll get to a clear pickup." I scan the horizon, eyes landing on rubble flat enough to drop the bay door. With a jerk of my chin I point, "there. Update Joker. We'll be there in four."

We aren't. Each of us firing with one hand makes slow going, and only halfway to rendezvous, a prickle goes up my spine as I hear an approaching scream, trailed by the warp of air. Without even considering, I bring the both of us behind an overturned car, and meld into silence.

It paces past. Long toes scrape on pavement whenever it forgoes its charge, pitifully creaking another howl. It will not see us. It cannot see us. The familiar wave of revulsion rises in me, and suddenly it is not just about the limited ammunition or the manpower, but if one more of them glowers at me with those profane sockets, I will die from its sight alone.

Slap. Slap. The warble of atmosphere. I wait two more teleports, the cry fading in the distance, before I finally pull Cortez to his feet.

"This is really hell, isn't it?" he asks when I reach the top of our destination, peering over tanks burning in the distance and highways choked with bodies. I say nothing. He knows the answer.

The Normandy doesn't arrive. Ten. Fifteen. The two of us take potshots at any ground forces that come close, and each count the seconds individually. There is the sound of a banshee, I think the same one, until I hear its song joined by two more. Cortez and I look at each other.

Our time allotted slips away. The banshees draw closer.

But then the engines roar. The Normandy swings into view over a shattered construct of glass, turning as it blasts my eardrums until we can see its hatch lower.

I help Cortez across the gap but- "Vega?" He's there, covered in blood but still reaching to help Cortez hobble in. "Where's Shepard?"

The grim line across his dirt-spattered face speaks before he does. "He made it in."

I turn. The Crucible is firing a beam of hot blue into the earth, and the people who were supposed to make it up there are standing around a broken corner of London instead. "You left him?"

There is a laugh, raw and pointed with uncovered self-hatred, and he says, "You did first, Bandito."

I've wasted too much time already.

"Hey! It's too late man!" calls after me, followed by Cortez's agreement, but I run away from him a second time, across no-man's land, to where annihilation has its heart. I run until the Normandy shoots off into the atmosphere behind me, until I'm alone on the doomed homeworld.

I make it half a kilometer before the Crucible explodes.

#

"Hey. Clone. Help me move this."

I gape, eyes hollowed, crevassed by dehydration as they blink out at her. "My name is Ji-tae."

Jack's disgust might have been harsher if her face wasn't already taut with exhaustion. "Whatever. Just get over here."

I do. He won't be under this bit of emaciated Citadel either, but I do.

When it existed, the Citadel was 44.7 kilometers long, and weighed 7.11 billion metric tons. The two of us cover 13.88 cubic kilometers on average, foraging through debris that have spread out over 190 kilometers of uninhabited island at the very least, and have lost at least 23% of their mass on entry of Earth's atmosphere.

Humans have been known to survive in collapsed mines and buildings for weeks or years, our bodies rivaling the krogan when it comes to rebounding from near-fatal injuries, a strange combination of adrenaline responses and elasticity of the bones. But. Fresh water ran out days ago. There is no steady stream of supplies for any survivors under fallen London.

Her biotics curl metal as the tendons in my arms provide aligning force, and I move the space debris, finding nothing underneath but the fried remains of organic matter sticking to the side of it. A lot of the Citadel has been like this. I think about Rasa, dead during the first attack. Later liquefied. I sit down.

I refilled my canteen yesterday from a burst basement pipe. It tastes like mud and whatever's poisoning the ground since the Reapers landed. As I drink, I hope I didn't come all this way to die from cholera. Wouldn't that be the perfect end to a perfect story.

Jack sits too, and I pass her the bottle. I didn't mean to find her in the chaos following what no one could quite believe was victory, but after the initial ecstatic yells—the back slapping, the wandering through the yelling soldiers like a stranger—the giddiness had worn off, and people either started to look for orders or just sit down and cry. And Jack, comparatively, was such so damn loud, I couldn't possibly not listen to her. She was threatening at every Alliance officer she could get her hands on, most of whom were only ranking because every man above them was dead.

It wasn't surprising she didn't get results. The consensus on the mention of Shepard was to hang one's head and not trust yourself to give my thoughts voice, incase it gave anyone too much hope. This was a man who was to be honored now, to be thanked for his sacrifice, and people prefer their heroes dead. And to stay dead. (The day his "survival" was announced to the galaxy, vandalism on the Shepard Memorial Flame went from a yearly occurrence to a monthly.)

When it became clear that a search party was hours, or maybe days away, Jack went off into no-man's land without a look back. If it's ever said we were matched in our ill-advised ways, that we were a pair of ghosts walking off to our doom, I resent that sentiment. I at the very least, stole some rations and a bit of medi-gel before going after her.

"He's dead," I tell her when she hands me my canteen back.

She swirls some mud in her mouth and spits. "Yeah? Then why are you still here?"

"What the hell else am I going to do?"

This is the only real question left in the universe. I have nothing, and I've brought unneeded deaths down on my own head. I saw what happened to those ships still in orbit when the Crucible self-destructed: they fell, hundreds of them, like and entire flock of birds each with an arrow in its heart. The combat VIs shorted, the comms broke down. If I was to guess, it would everything based on Relay—and, conversely, Reaper—technology that decided to give up the ghost, but I have no one around to regale my delightful theory to.

The gist is, I hauled Cortez across half a battlefield—his leg bleeding, his teeth gritting beside me, away from his one chance at cover—to put him in ship to die. The Normandy is gone, but if I'd just let him be, Cortez wouldn't have had to join them.

The last thing I'd said to Vega was to blame him. The last thing I'd said to Shepard was nothing.

"Oh quit your bitching," Jack tells mo. "You moved half the shit I have."

I shrug. "I'm technically only two years old. I think I've done pretty well, considering."

The full weight of that hits me. There are thirty years of my life that simply do not exist, and I will spend the remainder of them on a defeated planet with a woman who hates me. Unless of course I decide to turn back now and return to the humanity that also hates me. What did I ever really want? And not Rasa, but me, I who was so embroiled in the fear and the glorious hope that there was never a middle ground. No just surviving. No dirty but potable water.

"Would you say you're and expert in things of the fucked up nature?" I posit.

"Do you think you're ever going to talk like a fucking human being?" she mocks right back. Then she leans against a piece of road. "But yeah. I've seen some shit."

"I was sleeping with the woman who woke me from the tank. The woman who raised me." I can feel her attention, but she does not raise her brows, does not cover I with those drippings of pity I so loathe. "We were. Partners. She said I was going to save humanity, that I was her…hope. And she'd say that but, she'd always be one step away from deserting. She'd make me feel like I'd failed her, was currently failing her and I'd try to keep her from leaving with whatever she wanted. Sex. Promises. Whatever I thought was going to keep her close."

Saying it aloud makes I realize she knew. She knew what she was doing the whole time. How many times had I seen her play her subtle machinations against a mark, provide just enough details to let them fill in the gaps, and never realized when she showed the same face to me?

Jack whistles. "You're right, that is fucked up. Doesn't mean I haven't been there done that. Why are you telling me this?"

"It's easier when it's someone who doesn't care." The sun is setting. It's funny how it still does that, despite everything. "We should go back."

"We? You can fuck off if you want. Why the hell should I go back?"

I am thirsty, I am hungry, but most of all I'm tired of this. "I don't know. You want me to give some big damn speech about your kids or how you have so much to live for and shit like that? Do I look like Shepard to I? Don't answer that." I roll my neck and burn my retina against the sun. "Just…come back."

She spits at me, yells at the rising moon, flings rubble around with her biotics, and cries maybe twice but she does, eventually, come back.

#

"Jack! Jack!"

It's one of the tall, noisy children, I don't remember which one. He's running at us as soon as we're within sight of the circle of tanks, his arms about his head as though we're going somehow miss him and change course. She sighs, and the two of us keep at a steady, plodding pace.

He keeps yelling, all the way to us. "Jack, they found him!"

Only then do we run.

#

Hospital is generous.

Alive is more.

When I first see him he's like a long raisin who's been given the highest security as no one can do anything but slap on medi-gel and pray someone finds a medic. By day four they know he'll make it. By week four, he looks almost human. I spend that time lurking outside his tent, threatening anyone that if they so much as ask me for a spare part, I'll skin them alive.

Then he's awake and Jack is inside the tent. If anyone can hear her cry, it won't be from lack of effort on my part. The minor rockslide I cause during their reunion only causes some surface-level vehicle damage.

When she's gone, and they've had their time together, and I've given him a minute to get his bearings, only then do I see him. There is no cowardice in me. How could there be? There is no room left for it.

"Hey," he says. It's soft, though his face is still in a state of perpetual peeling.

I stand in the doorway.

His smile falters. "Don't do that. Not now."

So I come. I kneel because chairs are in short supply and the hospital they're going to move him to hasn't been cleared of its own ceiling quite yet. I kneel and I grip the edge of the bed.

"I kept wanting to say," he stutters, still medi-gel woozy. Still only hours since his first consciousness. "And I just kept not bringing it up but. I want you to meet our mom."

"Our mom," I repeat.

"Yeah. When I ran I just kept thinking," he rambles, "that I want you to meet her, and I think she'll like you."

It's too much.

He still can't be offering me this, compassion, after I've failed him this much. Failed Rasa, failed him, failed myself.

I look down at the burned hand on the sheet. "Shepard. They're all dead. The Normandy they're all-"

"They're not." He says it so firmly, it startles me out of the beginnings of my confession. He says it as fact, a fact he has been considering for a long time. "Not them. I know they made it out."

And for the first time—is this really the first time I've actually listened?—I understand why everyone believes him. Why, when he says we're going to win, people are willing to give in to their faith.

I start to cry. I rest my head on the bed and cry, and he says nothing but puts a burned hand on the back my head. Even that must hurt him, but still he does, and I cry because I am alive. I am alive on a dead world, but if he tells me it's still worth protecting, I might just believe him. There are years that have not yet been stolen from me, and for the first time they're truly mine, and no one can have them again.