Awareness came back slowly. A white room. Voices she couldn't quite make out.
Shepard was lying down, on something firm. Nearby, something electronic beeped, quiet and steady. There was pain, but it was a distant, dull thing. She felt like a balloon tethered to that faraway pain, her thoughts bobbing around aimlessly on her own. She had to think about opening her eyes. Her eyelids felt heavy, stuck together. It took an effort to pry them apart. Then she blinked slowly in the dim light.
Safe. That idea sank into her thoughts slowly. Safe, on a bed, in some kind of sickbay. Not Normandy's sickbay. With that idea, Shepard blinked again, more sensations starting to register. The sheets that covered her were white and starchy, the bed tidy and regulation, but the walls and ceiling a little dingy. Hurt pressed in on her too, but it still felt far away, not important yet.
What was important, was... it seemed to take a long time to finish the thought. Where. Where she was. Hospital, it must be. Hospital ship? She didn't feel the subtle hum of a drive core, but she might be missing it.
She'd survived. She didn't know how, or where she was, but she'd survived. It seemed like she should be happier about that, but happiness felt as distant as the pain.
Painkillers, she thought. The good kind. The kind that spun you around so much it cut you off from everything. The pain had to be waiting right on the other side of the painkillers, and she'd feel it just as soon as she moved.
She moved anyway. Yes, there it was: pain shot through her right shoulder, and rippled through her ribs. Why always the damned shoulder?
But it wasn't as bad as she expected; bad enough to make her breath catch, that was all. Her neck pinged sharply as she tried to lift her head. Stubbornly, she held it up anyway, long enough to see that all her limbs were present and accounted for: two legs lying under the sheets, two pale hands on top of them. She dropped her head back down, making her neck creak, and breathed in and out slowly while the pain subsided, back to its side of the tether.
She was alive and intact. That was surprising, actually. In fact — hadn't she been burned? She thought she remembered burning, but her skin looked normal now.
She did remember burning. She remembered the smell of her armor scorching and cracking. She'd been shot at least twice. She'd definitely thought she was going to die. But maybe her cybernetics had kicked in. Obviously someone had found her in time.
Her breath caught, and unease floated in to join the muffled surprise and happiness and pain. Just how long had she been out this time? Days? Weeks? Months? Surely not years, not again.
No. She had to believe not years. Weeks since London, maybe. Weeks since —
Panic sheared through the dull haze. She was alone. Where was her crew? Garrus? What had happened to the Reapers? What about EDI and the geth? Was the war even over? She couldn't just lie here in a hospital bed while the war kept raging out in the beyond. She was Commander Shepard, she was supposed to be out there, with her crew, leading the fight —
Her breath was coming faster, and her ribs hurt keenly now, throbbing in time with her breaths. Whatever was beeping was beeping faster now, too.
Oh. That was her, wasn't it? Some kind of monitors. Consciously, Shepard took slow, careful breaths. If she was in a hospital, if there were monitors, then there must be somebody watching the monitors, and whoever it was would have answers.
With an effort, she lifted her hand. Her shoulder twinged as she fumbled her way to the button on the side of the bed. Pushing it felt like a minor victory. Not up there with ending Kai Leng or destroying the Reaper on Rannoch, but, oh... about on par with liberating a fuel refinery from Cerberus.
She only had to wait a few minutes before a middle-aged medic bustled in. The sight of the familiar Alliance medic's uniform unlocked something in her chest that she hadn't even realized was tight.
"Commander, it's good to see you awake," the medic said cheerfully. She checked the monitors and proceeded to run through the standard vitals checks with brisk efficiency. Shepard complied with the instructions and answered the medic's questions. Nothing she said seemed to mar the other woman's calm demeanor, so... that was probably good.
"How long have I been out?" Shepard asked when she had a chance.
"It's been about three weeks since, um. Since the battle," the medic replied. "You were checked into this facility two days after that."
Shepard let out a slow breath. Three weeks, that wasn't so bad. It didn't explain where her crew was, and she hated the feeling of missing time, but three weeks... she could catch up with that.
The medic continued, "We're on Terra Nova, by the way. Most of the allied forces rendezvoused here after retreating from the Sol system. Everyone has set up administrative posts and hospital facilities here for the time being. Until the relay network is up and running again, of course." Her mouth twisted, and her eyes darted to the side for a moment. She set about adjusting the bed so Shepard was sitting up instead of prone.
"The relays—" Shepard said, but she couldn't get the question straight in her head before the medic plowed on.
"You're doing very well, Commander. Healing remarkably quickly. It must be the augmentations, eh? I haven't seen implants that sophisticated before. I think we can taper off on the painkillers." She tapped a couple of buttons on the machine by the bed. "It'll give you a clearer head. Just push the lever here for another does if you're in too much pain. Are you feeling up for any visitors? There's someone waiting to see you, and you can have a few minutes for a visit, if you like."
Relief coursed thorough Shepard at the idea of seeing a familiar face. She took a deeper breath and regretted it when her ribs throbbed. Someone she knew — Garrus, probably, or maybe Tali or Liara or even Miranda, but hopefully Garrus — someone, anyway, who could tell her what was going on, help fill in the details. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that."
"Great, I'll send her right in." The medic left, footsteps tapping quickly away over the floor.
The pronoun was disappointing. Shepard only had a moment to feel the disappointment before she heard a flurry of voices in the corridor, the medic saying, "Right this way, ma'am, yes, that's the room," and then a woman appeared in her doorway.
"Val! You're alive!"
She stared at the apparition in front of her, but it never resolved into anyone she expected to see.
Her mother was dead. Val Shepard knew this, with a cold, bone-deep certainty. She had seen her mother dying, riddled with half a dozen shots, when she'd sprinted back from her morning run to their smoking house. (The slavers preferred their captives younger. More trainable. More compliant.) Val had stood in the doorway gasping for air, her legs burning, and her mother had been choking on her own blood when she'd told her daughter to run, find her father, hide, anything. Val Shepard had spent a long time trying to forget the sound and the sight of blood spilled across their tidy kitchen floor.
This mother didn't seem to know that. She was already striding into the room with arms outspread.
Shepard cleared her throat. "M- mama?" she said, tentatively. "I don't... I don't understand." Her thoughts spun in turmoil. This made no sense. Was she hallucinating? It couldn't be the painkillers, could it? Everything felt almost too sharp and clear; she could have wished for the comforting distance of her first awakening. Was it the Reapers, messing with her head somehow?
Her mother — or whoever she was — checked herself and regarded Shepard with her brows drawn down in a way that was so familiar Shepard's shoulders hunched instinctively. The ghosts of shame and adolescent resentment seemed to gather around her. How many times had she been on the receiving end of that look?
"Valenka." The woman shook her head. "Forgive me. Val. I know we haven't always seen eye to eye, but how could you think I wouldn't come when you needed me?"
Shepard had to fight the urge to squirm under this maternal disappointment. "It's not that... I just... I thought you were dead, Mama." She couldn't believe the words were coming out of her mouth. She couldn't believe this was happening. Was it some kind of plot? Cerberus, maybe? But how, why have someone pose as her mother?
It couldn't... it couldn't possibly be true, could it? Were her memories that fucked up? Her head hurt, an ache like someone pounding on her skull. Val lifted one hand and pressed it against her temple. This woman didn't look quite like she remembered Mama looking, like the handful of pics she'd kept all those years. Her face was more lined, brown hair shot through with silver strands. She wore it longer than it had used to be, pinned up in braids.
The woman's face cleared, her brows going up. "Oh, no, didn't you get my messages? Mindoir evacuated in time, devochka. We're fine. We're all fine." She crossed the room, patted Val's arm, and kissed her on the forehead before she could say anything more. "We're not even sure the Reapers actually reached the colony," she said, settling into the bedside chair. "Your father and Misha are anxious to get back and see how much damage there is. Once the relays are repaired."
Shepard sucked in a breath, blinking back tears. "Dad? And Misha?" She had to have lost her mind for real this time. She was hallucinating. Or it was a very complicated, very bizarre plot that she didn't understand at all. She couldn't possibly have had delusions of an entire life in which her family had been slaughtered... could she? What kind of person would do that?
Her mother patted her arm again. "They can't be here, dear. I tell you, it was such a relief when the comm buoys came back. At least we can talk to each other again, once in a while. Your father is helping to coordinate supplies and relief to the refugees. Well, I suppose nearly all of us are refugees, one way or another. Misha is on Eden Prime, he was fighting with the militia there."
Val closed her eyes. Her throat felt tight. She remembered her second brother as ten. A sweet, good-natured boy who was fascinated by bugs, who'd had trouble with the school bullies until she found about it and put a stop to it. Impossible to imagine gentle Misha with a gun in his hands. Her forehead seemed to burn where her mother's lips and touched it. She licked her lips and had to try twice before she could get the words out. "And... what about the others?"
"Vanya was wounded a few weeks before the last push. He's recuperating on Titan. Oh! He sent you a message. He says—" She checked her omni-tool. "—'tell V I'm glad one of us was in London. Sorry to miss it.'"
"London," she repeated numbly.
Mama frowned at her. "Don't you remember? Should I call the medic?"
Val rubbed her forehead. "No, I thought I was in London, but..." But she'd also thought her family was dead. Ivan — no one called him Vanya but Mama, even when he was small — was her youngest brother. He'd been only seven when he died in the wreckage of his school.
Her mother stroked her hand, gently. "Operation Hammer, they called it. I don't know all the details. But the medics said you were injured then. There were a lot of casualties. We weren't sure you'd survived at first. It took me a week to track down which hospital they put you in." She made a little disapproving grunt. "The military, they're always losing things."
The details matched, at least, but why... how could she remember her family dead so clearly, if they were all alive and well? What was Mama even doing here? If... if she was really Mama. Shepard licked her lips again. "Did we... did we win?"
Mama was silent for a moment, frowning again, and dread gathered into a knot in Shepard's stomach. "I suppose we must have. The fighting's over, at any rate."
Val frowned in her own turn. "But?"
Mama's lips pursed. Her shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. Val recognized this expression, too: it was the one Mama used when she didn't understand something, but didn't approve of it anyway. "Well. The Reapers stopped attacking us, at least."
"But they're not gone?" Val tried to sit up. Several monitors beeped shrilly.
"Now, now, none of that," said Mama, leveling a glare at her. "Didn't that nurse tell you anything? No. They're... fixing things, I suppose. The comm network. The relays. That... energy wave that ended the battle must have done it, but if anyone knows why, they're not saying." She pursed her lips again.
Val collapsed back onto her pillow. Her heart fluttered like a wild thing in her chest. "Fixing things. The Reapers."
Mama shrugged. "So it seems. Can't believe everything you hear, you know. They were the ones to blow it all up, so they might as well fix it, but I don't know why they'd help us."
Shepard didn't know, either. That wasn't the outcome she'd wanted. She'd raised her gun and fired. "I don't understand," she said softly.
Mama laughed. "Nor you nor anyone, eh? Don't worry about it. You concentrate on getting better."
Shepard stared at the ceiling. She'd thought she would die, but here she was, and her family was somehow, impossibly, alive: Dad and Mama and Ivan and Misha and— "Mama, you told me about Dad and Misha and Ivan, but not Alex." For a moment dread caught at her throat; what if Alex had been gone for a long time already?
"Oh, Sasha sent me a note to say he's well. Came through as soon as the comm network came up. He didn't say where he is, though. Something classified, I suppose, you know how he is." Mama shook her head.
Did she? When Val was sixteen and Alex was twelve, he had been the smart one, clever and prickly and small for his age, and she'd overheard the teachers saying he could do great things if he had a better attitude. She didn't think of him as secretive. But then, he'd be — he was — twenty-eight now. A lot of time had passed. People changed. She'd changed. When she was twenty-eight, she'd been an N7 operative already. What were her brothers, since they were alive? "Right," she said faintly.
"It's strange, I came here looking for you, and they thought I meant the other Commander Shepard." Her mother kept stroking her hand absent-mindedly. "I had to tell them, no, no, I mean my daughter. I've been here two weeks, and still I correct someone almost every day." She sniffed.
Val swallowed. Her throat suddenly felt dry. "The... other Commander Shepard?"
Her mother frowned, as if she were particularly dense. The motion of her hand stopped. "Da, you know, the famous one? John Shepard? The Spectre? From the Battle of the Citadel?"
Shepard's heartbeat pounded in her ears. Everything felt too dry and too cold. She was distantly aware that her lower lip had cracked. Wildly, she cast out a line. "I thought... didn't he die years ago?"
"That's what they said." Mama leaned forward, her pale eyes bright. "You can never trust the news, you know that. If you ask me, it was all a cover-up from the start. Some kind of undercover assignment they didn't want anyone to know about. Working with those Cerberus people, maybe. You know how they are."
Val flinched at the words, and the intensity of her mother's stare. "They who, Mama?"
Mama sat back in her chair, waving her free hand dismissively. "Those Council people, probably. Who knows with aliens?"
Val blinked, not sure whether her mother thought the Council was behind the cover-up, or Cerberus, or what. Mama kept talking, oblivious to Val's expression: "Anyway. That other Shepard is in this hospital, but no one's let in to see him. Everyone's talking about it in the halls. They don't expect him to survive. Burned to a crisp, they say, and still in a coma."
Burned to a crisp. Shepard remembered heat, suddenly, and pain; her armor cracking, and a voice saying, You will lose everything you are.
Val shook her head and looked down at her arms, quickly, but the skin was intact. Pale, traced with green and yellow bruises, but not scorched or blackened. "Oh," she said faintly. "That would... be a shame."
"Are you all right, dear? You're white as a sheet." Mama frowned.
Shepard looked away from her concern. "I'm just... tired."
The medic from before stuck her head in the room. "How are we doing here? Oh, Mrs. Shepard, I should ask you to leave. Our patient needs some rest."
"Already?" Mama's hand tightened over Shepard's. "I've only been here a few minutes."
The medic gave her a tight smile. "Rest is very important to recovery, ma'am. I'm sure you know that."
"Don't be ridiculous, I'll hardly be any trouble. She needs her mother."
"Mama," Val interrupted. "Let's not argue?"
Her mother turned toward her with a frown, but her expression softened almost at once. Val winced. She must look truly terrible. Her mother had always liked to fuss over the children when they were sick.
Mama gave her another pat on the hand and rose. "I'll call your father and brothers and tell them you're awake. Have them call me any time you want to see me, dear."
"I... I will, Mama."
She closed her eyes as her mother bent to kiss her cheek. She smelled... right. Like Mama. Those faint whiffs of tea and lavender and something distinctly Mama. It was a scent that made her powerfully homesick, and she couldn't bring herself to look as her mother's footsteps retreated out of the room.
The medic came over to check her vitals again. "We'll try you on solid foods the next time you wake up, okay? It must be nice to have your mother here." She sounded a little wistful.
"Yeah," Val said, "it's just... strange."
The medic nodded vigorously. "I got word from my dad just the other day. It's such a relief, to know he made it, you know? Since so many people didn't."
"I... guess I got lucky," said Val, feeling dazed. "It sounds like the whole family's okay."
The medic sighed. "That is lucky. And you're really recovering well, too. But get some sleep for now, all right? I'll dim the lights, and you can call if you need anything. The button's right there. Someone's always on duty."
"Thanks."
After the young woman had left, Val Shepard stared at the ceiling.
What the hell was happening?
Her mother was here. Her mother was dead, but she was here. She was Val Shepard, she wasn't the famous Commander Shepard. The Commander Shepard, the one from the Battle of the Citadel. The Spectre.
If she wasn't the first human Spectre, who was she?
She was Anna and Daniel Shepard's daughter. Alex, Misha, and Ivan's sister. She hadn't been those things since she was sixteen.
What was going on?
Maybe she was hallucinating. There was probably a better than even chance of that. Maybe she'd finally snapped, and this was some sort of delusion. Or maybe the whole life she'd thought she'd had until now had been the delusion. A psychotic break? Maybe she had never regained consciousness after all, and this was all some sort of dream?
Experimentally, she let her fingers dig into the soft skin of her waist and pinched, hard. It stung.
Not a dream, then. Probably. No whispers in the woods, this time, no child bursting into flames. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that her mother should be dead and she was here.
Her crew. Where was her crew? She couldn't have just... made them up, could she? How could she? She never would have invented half of those people.
Or maybe, just maybe, someone was screwing with her. Could be Cerberus. Or... someone else. There were plenty of people with grudges against her. But what could they possibly gain by presenting her with a false version of her mother?
Where was the lie? Which life was the false one? The life she had, but couldn't remember, where she was one of the lucky ones who'd survived the war with mother, father, and brothers alive? Or the life where she stood alone, the only survivor of a catastrophe, with a glittering career and an assortment of friends to hold her together?
She kept looking at the ceiling, but she could not resolve the question for herself before her eyelids grew too heavy to stay open.