A/N: Apologies for a short chapter that doesn't do much to advance the plot.
2185
Normandy SR-2 (leaving the Migrant Fleet)
"Professor Solus."
EDI watched through the cameras as Mordin Solus lifted his head up and frowned at the ceiling in his laboratory. "Needed for something?"
"The Doctor is on his way to Shepard's cabin," EDI said. "Though she left no specific instructions, I believe she does not wish to be disturbed at this time. Officer Vakarian is with her."
"Garrus? Hah. Knew it." EDI wondered why Mordin sounded so smug. "Why is Doctor seeking Shepard?"
"I believe he wishes to express his displeasure with her recent actions."
"Ah. Loud argument imminent. Wish me to intervene?"
"You are respected by both Shepard and the Doctor. I believe it would be in everyone's best interest if you were to prevent the argument from getting out of control." EDI waited with something resembling impatience for Mordin's answer, while running through her other options should the salarian refuse.
Mordin nodded. "Of course. Just need to do one thing first."
"Is it something I can assist with?"
Mordin's face split into a grin. "Need to grab snacks. Best entertainment option in a long time."
EDI would never understand organics.
The Doctor was still fuming as he exited the elevator in front of Shepard's cabin. The door did not open for him as he had become accustomed to. "AI," he said after a moment. "Open the door."
"I do not take orders from you," EDI replied, and there was actually a hint of indignation in that artificial voice. "You have made it clear that you are not part of Cerberus, and thus you are outside of the command structure. I do not have to do anything you ask of me."
"Getting a bit temperamental, are we?" the Doctor asked as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and set to work.
"I am tasked with maintaining the well-being of everyone on this ship, among other things. Your presence is currently disruptive. You have disregarded my advice and seek to further aggravate Commander Shepard."
"What does she have to be distressed about?" the Doctor asked, annoyed by both the question and the fact that EDI was blocking his attempts to open the door. He concentrated, seeking her weakness. She was shackled and thus there were things she could not do. It was only a matter of time before he was in.
"Doctor, I would advise you to desist -" EDI's voice cut off as the door slid open. The Doctor walked inside and turned around, using his sonic screwdriver to shut it again. He turned to face Shepard - and noticed that she wasn't alone.
Garrus sat on the bed with his arm around Shepard, their heads pressed together. The Doctor frowned at the sight. He hadn't been aware that their relationship was anything like what their body language currently showed, and it annoyed him that he had missed the signs. They looked up at him, and Garrus got to his feet quickly and stepped between Shepard and the Doctor.
"How did you get past EDI?" the turian demanded.
The Doctor casually flipped his sonic screwdriver and decided to provide no other answer. "We need to talk, Shepard," he said.
Shepard stood. Her face was a stony mask. "I would tell you that now is not the time, but you have already seen that and decided to proceed anyway. So let's get this over with - what do you want?"
"What do I want?" the Doctor repeated. "I want you to live up to your reputation, Savior of the Citadel. You're running around at Cerberus' beck and call, dancing to their tune and aiming yourself at their targets."
"You're not exactly doing much yourself," Shepard shot back. "Not taking the TARDIS out anywhere except to help Samara - which you did without telling me."
"I don't take orders from you," the Doctor said, echoing EDI's earlier comment. "I don't take orders from anyone."
"No, you just sit on your ass and do nothing," Shepard said. She pushed past Garrus and stared him right in the face. "You dangle the prospect of tech beyond my wildest dreams in my face, you tell me that you can travel through time and then you don't do any of it."
"Because I don't know what traveling through time would do to this universe," the Doctor replied. "It might jeopardize my chances of getting home."
Shepard laughed harshly. "Oh. I see. That's what matters to you - getting home. For all your talk about how you think the Reapers should be eliminated - this isn't your fight, is it? You can just walk away and go back to your own universe and everything will be fine in your little world. That explains it."
The Doctor got angrier, both because she was trying to make this about him - and because she had a point. "You're not any better," he said. "You're going after the Collectors because they're the only link you have - but it's Cerberus who pointed you at that link. What could you do if you struck out on your own, Shepard? What could you find if you stopped listening to the Illusive Man?"
"I can't," Shepard said. She turned her back and her hands balled into fists. "I have to listen to that bastard. For now."
"Why?" the Doctor pressed. "Because then you might have to start thinking for yourself instead of just shooting whoever gets in your way?"
"That's not fair," Garrus protested.
"It's all right, Garrus," Shepard said, although the dangerous quiet in her voice suggested it was not, actually, all right. She turned back to look at the Doctor. "We've tried to tell you what kind of world this is, what stakes we face. You don't listen. You think that you can just come in here and wave your magic screwdriver around and everyone will do as you say and it will make everything better. Well, it doesn't work that way. Yes, I run around shooting people - yes, they're also people like me, with hopes and dreams and fears. But they made a choice to become mercenaries and take on potentially dirty jobs. To hold a gun and point it at someone else's face with the intent to kill. That carries no small amount of risk. I take the same risk. If you think I like it, then you haven't been paying attention. I do what I have to do because there's no one else to do the job."
"That still doesn't address why you're working for the Illusive Man," the Doctor pressed.
"And you still haven't addressed why you're not helping me more," Shepard said. "If you're so concerned about how many people I kill, why not use your TARDIS to help me get around these obstacles? Take me directly where I need to go instead of having to fight my way through mercenaries. You tag along and only help when you are threatened. I'm trying to build a team here. You're not a team player."
"That," the Doctor said, incensed, "is not true." Which was as much of a lie as anything he'd said recently. He worked well with people… when he was the one in charge.
"I'm giving you an ultimatum," Shepard said. "Step up, or get the hell off my ship."
"Certain of that, Shepard?" Mordin Solus asked. The Doctor whirled and saw both the salarian and Samara standing in the doorway. What were they doing here? "Suicide mission. Need all the help-"
"He's not helping!" Shepard shouted. "He claims to be, but he's using his version of the word 'help'. Maybe it means something different in his universe." She folded her arms across her chest. "I don't have time to deal with your games. Help, or leave. Those are your only two choices."
"I believe I can provide assistance some assistance on that front," Samara said calmly. "There is something I have just learned. But it is something best discussed in a different location. The TARDIS, specifically."
"That's fine by me," Shepard said. "This is supposed to be an area where I can have privacy."
Samara shook her head, as though she were disappointed. "Shepard, please. I recognize that you are angry. You may even have a right to be. But anger has driven both of you off topic. We must confront the real problem. Let us go to the TARDIS immediately."
Shepard exchanged a glance with Garrus, and Mordin looked uncomfortably between Shepard and the Doctor. But when Samara started moving, they all followed her.
No one spoke to the others as they made their way down to the cargo hold and the TARDIS. They drew more than a few questioning stares, but no one dared to try and speak to them. The Doctor couldn't begin to imagine what Samara might have learned, but he … trusted her. He knew her mind, and he knew that in this case, she would only be doing something she was sure would help.
"I know you were informed of my mission on Omega," Samara said, when they were all inside the TARDIS. "Of the fact that the Ardat-Yakshi fugitive I sought was my own daughter. I intended to kill her, to prevent her from harming others. The Doctor found a different solution. This, and - other matters - left me unsettled. I attempted to meditate, to find my balance once more." She shook her head. "I did not understand why I should have seen what I did until I walked into the argument. You, Doctor - are presently out of balance. And there is a specific reason why, an incident that forced you off balance. One that you were not aware of."
The Doctor frowned. "What are you saying? That my mind was tampered with?" That was … frightening. And infuriating. "When? Were others affected?"
"It is easier to show you," Samara said. "All of you." She looked at the TARDIS console and then acquired the telltale blue hue of intense biotic use. She stretched her hand out and made contact, flooding the room with a violently bright light, and drew them into a five-way meld. Six, if he was counting the TARDIS. Garrus and Mordin's minds felt almost … itchy, like annoyances that weren't supposed to be there. Shepard's mind was different, but still somehow compatible.
Prothean cipher, maybe, the Doctor heard Shepard think. Liara helped me integrate it so I could understand what it was telling me.
Lend me your aid, both of you. Samara's words came through clear and strong, like a bell ringing around him. If we do not stabilize the meld, it may cause permanent harm to all of us.
What do you need? Shepard asked. She had gotten the hang of this quickly.
Strengthen your connection to Garrus. Doctor, do the same with Mordin. I will focus on both of you. We will know soon enough if we have succeeded.
The Doctor thought of Mordin, the salarian's unique way of speaking - his sharp mind and unrestrained zeal in pursuing answers. He tried to reach out to Mordin, draw him in, make him part of the meld. He felt Mordin's mind started to come into focus, a bubbling cauldron of thoughts. The joy he felt at having such brilliant people around him again - Shepard, Tali, the Doctor himself. The determination to do something about the Collectors.
He felt Shepard, too, and was surprised by the level of doubt he found there. A second later, he realized he shouldn't have been. Shepard was trying her best to be a good leader, keep the crew's spirits up. She was unhappy being under the Illusive Man's thumb, not just because of his current tactics. She distrusted everything Cerberus stood for and it went back further than this mission. Years before she became a Spectre her squad had been massacred by a thresher maw, and it had been Cerberus who was responsible for that. Her anger at having to work with the Illusive Man was not that much different from the Doctor's feelings on Cerberus. She felt confident that the crew (including Miranda and Jacob) would side with her if (when) a split came, and that would have to do for now. She would take out the Collectors, because she had said she would (she always kept her word) and then she was done with the Illusive Man and Cerberus.
And through Shepard he felt Garrus, the last mind to slide into place in this unusual meld. The Doctor was surprised by the strength of the turian's feelings, his absolute determination to do what was right, which had driven him from the bureaucracy of C-Sec. The Doctor wondered how he hadn't seen that, when it was so close to his own attitude about helping people. He tasted the lingering confusion Garrus felt over sparing the life of someone who had betrayed his trust and gotten people killed - people that both Garrus and this other turian, this Sidonis, cared about. He had done it for Shepard, because his conflicting feelings had threatened to tear him apart and he trusted her completely - trusted that she had seen the situation more clearly than he could have. Garrus loved her with everything he had. He felt Shepard's sudden awareness of those feelings and the joy that followed as she told him, in a way that words could never have expressed, that she felt the same way about him. The Doctor felt guilty at having spied on what should have been a private moment, but there was no way to do that without fracturing the meld that they had all just worked so hard to slide into place.
Your mind is the strongest, Doctor, Samara whispered. Select a place to use as a backdrop, otherwise the others will try to impose their own ideas and the meld will fracture.
How much of this are you making up as you go? the Doctor asked.
Most of it. He felt her amusement. But it has worked so far, has it not?
It had, and the Doctor knew that Samara had been right to tell him to select a place. It had to be somewhere that was currently relevant to him - a place that had meaning to him, some sort of strong association...
He felt it snap into being around him. Blank concrete walls. Dim lights overhead. To one side, a row of cages, most unoccupied, but one…
"Hello, sweetie."
The Doctor turned around and saw River Song, her arms outstretched through the bars of her cage. That knowing smile that she always wore around him, the one that promised mischief in his future. It was River that gave this place meaning and relevance. Without her, he might never have visited the Stormcage - not once, never mind repeatedly. It was no wonder that she was -
She was here.
Not just her image, but her. He had drawn her into the meld. Of course he had.
"My, my. This is most interesting." River walked through the bars as though they weren't there and leaned on the Doctor, one arm on his shoulder. The Doctor noticed that Shepard, Mordin, and Garrus had all made the transition and were standing nearby. Their bewildered expressions changed to open amazement and curiosity as they took in River's behavior. The Doctor realized that he'd never mentioned River to them, only to Samara. "Six people in the same shared mindspace! How are you doing this?"
"The TARDIS is powering the meld," Samara replied. "Perhaps it - she - wished you to participate as well, River Song."
"So, he told you about me," River said. Her gaze passed over the other three. "But not the others." She looked back at Samara. The glance they exchanged was too understanding for the Doctor's comfort.
If they started working together, he was doomed. "I travelled through a rift, River," he said. "Into a different universe." At least with her, he didn't have to say anything more to explain what had happened.
"Really!" River exclaimed. "Well, that would explain why I don't recognize the species. Come now, Doctor, don't be rude. You've brought me guests and I can't greet them properly."
The Doctor sighed. "River Song, I'd like you to meet Andrea Shepard, Mordin Solus, Garrus Vakarian, and Samara." He indicated each of them in turn. "This is River Song … my ..." How did he possibly explain their relationship?
"I know him, and he knows me," River said, with another one of those smug, knowing smiles. "If you're calling from another universe, I shudder to think the cost it will exact, even with so many people contributing - so there's not really enough time to go into details." She clapped her hands together in excitement. "So! What deep mystery are we uncovering that requires such a setting - and an audience!"
River was right about the cost, if nothing else. He couldn't imagine how this was all holding together. The TARDIS had to be contributing something, which was unusual of her - but she liked both Samara and River, so perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising. "What did you find, Samara?" he asked. "What do we need to see?"
"You faced a creature called the Beast, in your last life," Samara said. "That is when your mind was tampered with."
"My last life?" the Doctor said. "No, that can't be right - that's too long ago."
"You should know by now that nothing's impossible," River chided him. "Samara seems quite certain of this." They exchanged another glance that made him want to bolt. Definitely doomed.
"There is no time to waste, Doctor. Call up that memory."
The Doctor sighed and concentrated, finding the memory. He kept himself open and let it flow into the air around them so that they could all share it.
The setting around them blurred. The Stormcage faded and was replaced by a cavern, ancient and impossibly large. He felt as though something had settled over him - something familiar, but ill-fitting.
The face he had worn in this memory was not the one he wore now, the clothes all wrong. Converse. Pinstripes. Hair that stuck up instead of laid flat. He felt a dying flare of passion, one that he knew had driven him far more back then. Rose Tyler's face, her name - they no longer held the significance they once had.
"I believe in her!"
He stood at the core of the planet Krop Tor, facing down the creature that claimed to be the Devil. He didn't believe it now, any more than he had then. Any second now, his old self would be moving forward, destroying the jars and ending the creature …
His feet were frozen to the ground. He felt confusion, past and present, as well as a sense of wrongness. All he could do was listen to the ancient creature laughing. Harsh and grating, it echoed off the walls, rebounding upon itself until it faded away.
"So, at last - at last I know the truth of what I have seen!"
This had to be the tampering that Samara had spoken of earlier. The Beast had done it? Why?
"I see the web of your life. I see what has happened, what is happening, what will happen. Through you I see that my brethren still live, still thrive, have banished our gods to the deep seas. That you will pass from this universe where I have been trapped into theirs - and your coming will be a sign to my brethren. They will expand their dominion from their universe into yours, and then the others…"
There came another thought, sharper, more present - from a mind both old and new. Shepard's mind. That's what Harbinger said. That they would expand outside of this universe.
Hush. Let this play out. River, of course.
"I don't know who your brethren are, but I will stop them."
"No, you will not. Hear me, Doctor." His past self felt something wrapping around his mind and fought it with increasing indignation and horror. This creature shouldn't be able to affect him. He was stronger than that, stronger than the others it had taken. But nothing he did seemed to be able to stop it. The creature was successfully binding the Doctor, making its words have power over him. He would follow its orders. The creature had left him no choice.
"Your faith has not saved any of these people here and it will not save you. The one you cling to will be lost forever to you by the time you face my brethren. And there will be those that oppose my brethren, there always are - you will oppose them. You will be there, at the thick of it, and find fault with their champion."
In his memory he felt the gravity of the Beast, ancient and terrible with the weight of many minds trapped inside it. He continued to struggle, but his present self knew it was a fight he would lose, because the creature was about to make him -
"Now. Forget what I have told you. You defeated me here. There are no others. And now I die … in triumph, not captivity."
His past self moved again, the conversation banished to the back of his mind - waiting unseen for the day that he crossed into Shepard's universe and learned who it was she fought. And as he moved again, sending the Beast to its death, the scene began to fade and they returned to the dull concrete of the Stormcage's halls.
"That," Shepard said into the silence, "was a Reaper." There was an iron determination in her voice that was impossible to overlook. Shepard was the living expert on Reapers. If she said it, and in that tone...
"But how could there have been a Reaper in our universe?" River asked. She must have gained an understanding of the Reapers from this meld. Since it was River, it only made sense.
"Must have passed between universes somehow. Probably created the hole Doctor used to travel here," Mordin said.
"Somehow," the Doctor echoed. "It also somehow saw into the future. It knew I would come here."
"That's-" Shepard stopped, mid sentence, and shook her head. "You know what, I don't think I get to say that it's impossible that thing saw the future, after everything else that's happened. And it just makes too much sense. It indoctrinated you to act against whoever was opposing the Reapers. You'd never willingly champion the Reapers' cause, but-"
"But pitting himself against a soldier like you would be exactly the sort of thing he would do," River said, nodding. "He has this thing about guns."
"We're aware," Garrus said dryly. "And can I just say how bizarre that was? The rest of you might be used to stuff like that, but-"
Mordin coughed. Garrus turned and flared his mandibles in a grin. "Sorry. Mordin and I tend to stay away from this type of thing."
"To me, it's still only been about a year since that first run with Nihlus," Shepard said dryly. "I wouldn't say that I'm used to it - more like I've just accepted that my life is full of weird shit. If I didn't have the Cipher, and if Liara hadn't helped me make sense of it…"
"I do not think this is sustainable for much longer," Samara said. "We must act to counter the indoctrination. Do you know how, Shepard?"
Shepard shook her head. "I'm not entirely sure. Most of what I know comes from Benezia and Saren. Both of them seemed to be able to shake Sovereign's influence a bit, when they were gravely wounded. And we know what happened to those poor Cerberus scientists." She paused. "You've got Liara's memories, Doctor. She was with me on Noveria. Did she get a sense for what her mother's mind felt like? How different it felt?"
"Find the difference and remove it," Samara said, looking at the Doctor. He knew that she was remembering what he had done to Morinth on Omega.
"Exactly right," the Doctor said, and reached for Liara's memories. The action brought with it an awareness of Shepard more than the others, since she had been there, since she had also merged with Liara's mind. She was focusing on that day, too.
The scenery changed again. Concrete walls expanded and shifted into a large room, equipment around them, the rachni queen in her cage behind Benezia. The Doctor felt Liara's pain at seeing her mother like this, her powerful and beautiful mother forced to obey someone else's will. He felt Liara reach for her mother's mind, finding the cold calculation that had been there before … with a sinister streak weaving them together, a powerful force. Sovereign's influence. Sovereign was using Benezia and would discard her once that use had passed.
Liara can tell when someone is indoctrinated. Shepard's thought was clear. I don't know if she realized that, and I'm not sure…
If she did know, she didn't tell you, and it's a breach of trust, the Doctor thought back, reading Shepard's emotions. If she didn't know, she underestimated or unconsciously limited herself. Neither is a good option.
It doesn't matter now. We know what it feels like. We can find it in you, now, and we'll know what to look for in the future.
Burn it out. That was from Samara - or was it River? More likely, both of them. Remove the corruption.
The Doctor gathered the greasy oil slick that ran through him into a single, squirming mass. It was not an easy task. It had laid inside him all this time, dormant, just waiting for the opportunity to strike. Anger mixed with determination and exploded into a cleansing fire inside of him. He drew upon the strength of all the other minds present to ensure that he got everything, every last bit of it.
You did it. This time he knew it was River. Time to go, I think. You've nearly exhausted everyone here.
River…
Shh. Somehow, he knew that she was speaking just to him. Spoilers.
River, I lo-
The meld ended.
A/N: Okay, so the beginning note may have been a lie.
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