When she'd made enough progress in her recovery, Shepard was told she could leave her room if she liked for a little additional exercise, and take her meals in the cafeteria instead of in her room. She suspected she was saving someone a bit of work, not that it mattered. The opportunity to be out of her room, to look at something other than her four dingy walls and be around other people, was too good to pass up.
The food was still mostly packaged rations, but they were starting to get actual cooked food into the mix. It wasn't exactly flavorful, but it was something.
Nearly everyone in the cafeteria wore scrubs; it was a little hard to tell the patients from the staff, except for those people who were visibly bandaged or moving stiffly, like Shepard herself. Shepard took a seat at a long table with a quartet of people at one end, sitting with bent shoulders and carrying on an intense conversation that she couldn't quite hear.
She set to work eating her reconstituted eggs and bland oatmeal and tried to relax. As much as the novelty of being out and about was refreshing, something about the atmosphere in the room had her on edge.
Maybe she was just paranoid.
"I just don't like having those things out there!" said one of her tablemates, a woman with dark curly hair. Her voice rose as she said it, and she pushed away from the table a little.
"Well, as far as anyone can tell, they're fixing the mass relays, so," said the red-haired guy opposite her.
"They're hanging around the mass relays. We don't know what they're doing to them," the woman countered.
The Reapers. They were talking about the Reapers. Shepard stabbed her fork into her eggs and froze, ears straining to hear more. Mama had said the Reapers were out there fixing things.
"I heard a turian patrol fired on one," said the third person, a petite Asian woman who reminded Shepard a little of Kasumi.
"What happened?" asked the redhead.
She shrugged. "It didn't retaliate, but the missiles didn't do anything. Just absorbed by shields, I guess."
"Did it communicate anything?" asked the fourth person, a tall thin black man. "I heard the asari have been hailing them, but they never get an answer."
Shepard swallowed as the four fell into a brief, anxious silence.
"I just wish we knew what was going on," the first woman complained, shaking her head. "All the relays blow in that freaky blue light, and then nothing. I'm telling you, it's creeping me out."
"We heard you," said the red-haired man with a sigh.
"I get it," said the Asian woman. "I'd be lying if I said I was calm about everything. But I think it's best if we focus on our patients."
The black man nodded. "Let the brass and the science wonks try to sort things out."
Shepard lifted her fork to her mouth and ate without tasting the food. She wondered, with a grim sense of humor, what conversations were going on in what was left of high command, behind closed doors. It was something of a relief not to be privy to it, not to have Hackett or one of the councilors calling her up and demand she fix it, somehow, don't tell us how, just make it better, Shepard.
Maybe it wasn't so bad, not being the Commander Shepard.
"If they can sort it out," the first woman muttered. "They're the ones who built that thing in the first place, the, what do you call it..."
"The Crucible," said the black man.
"Some secret project," said the redhead. "Half the galaxy must have worked on it at some point."
"Yeah, are we sure it did what it was supposed to?" said the first woman.
The four of them fell into an uneasy silence until the Asian woman said, "Shift starts in five."
They promptly began gathering up their dishes and trays, and left in a clatter of footsteps and utensils, leaving Shepard sitting alone. She finished her lunch mechanically, one bite after another while her mind wandered. She kept thinking of the Reapers, silent and invulnerable, working away at the relays as if nothing had happened, as if they hadn't already killed millions. Billions, no doubt, once all the numbers were added up.
She dutifully took her tray to the washing station and made her way toward her afternoon therapy appointment. The medical staff who walked quickly past her had, to a person, dark rings under their eyes and tight shoulders. Here and there she caught snatches of low-voiced conversation. Much of it was full of medical jargon she barely understood, probably people discussing their cases, but occasionally she heard someone mutter something about Reapers or relays, and often the other person in the conversation would flinch or glance away. People were tense; her sense of prickling unease wasn't coming from nowhere.
Her eyes met those of a man who'd just been fretting about whether the mass relays would function again. Shepard started to smile, reflexively offering a bit of reassurance, the way she was used to during her errands on the Citadel. His gaze slid right past her, though, and he hurried on his way as if she wasn't there.
The sense of invisibility stopped her in her tracks. She was used to having people's attention, whether she liked it or not.
Lara was still working with another patient when Shepard arrived; she called out, "I'll be right with you, Commander Schafer," without looking up.
"Shepard," she called back.
Lara laughed. "Whoops, sorry, my mistake. Just give us a couple minutes to finish up here."
Shepard sat in one of the stiff chairs and tried to remember the last time someone had mistaken her name. Usually people recognized her. Usually people looked at her with something other than bland, incurious faces. But now, she didn't fit, didn't matter.
Even when she was captaining a Cerberus vessel and commanding a Cerberus crew, she hadn't felt so out of place. Then, at least, she'd known who she was, and so had her crew. No matter what had happened to her, she'd awakened on that lab table feeling like herself. She'd largely shunted the matter of her death and resurrection aside, avoided thinking about it. She could have been a clone or a clever VI or some sort of body double — but it wasn't until late in the war, when she'd encountered her actual clone, that she'd been seriously shaken on that score. She'd relied on her memory, for one thing; she'd spent time thinking about minute details from her childhood that there was no one else alive left to recall. She'd relied on the people around her, on Joker and Dr. Chakwas and Garrus, who'd treated her as if they had no doubts. Even the Cerberus crew had regarded her with respect, even awe, hardly expressing any doubts about her. Most of all, she'd relied on her self, on the bone-deep sense of who she was that hadn't changed, even if the bones themselves had been rebuilt. She'd known who she was down in the center of her psyche.
That sense of self, those memories: those were exactly the things that didn't match her surroundings now. With oblivious strangers around her, regarding her with only mild smiles or harried expressions, her certainty wavered. She felt unbalanced, aimless, and she hated it.
It made her a little ashamed herself. Hadn't she always said she was just an ordinary marine? Nothing special, only someone who'd made the most of her opportunities? Not someone anyone needed to pay attention to? Now nobody looked at her with awe or terror, now she got precisely the amount of attention a busy nurse or therapist could spare for their scheduled patient and no more, and it grated on her nerves. She fidgeted in her chair. Part of her wanted to stomp her feet and fuss like a toddler until someone looked at her.
So apparently she craved attention. She'd learned something new about herself, and she didn't much like it.
Maybe she was delusional, her memories of adulation and challenge nothing more than a broken mind's attempts to comfort itself.
To keep herself from exploring that line of thought any further, she went through her exercises in grim, silent determination, pushing herself until Lara clicked her tongue and told her not to overdo it.
Lara was probably right. Shepard's legs and back and shoulders ached by the time she got back to her room, and it was actually a relief to throw herself back into her bed and stare at the ceiling, resenting how weak her body felt. She dozed, waking up again when her mother came in, bright and cheerful and chattering about supplies and logistics and two people at the office who were apparently starting a romance, even though one of them had a spouse who still wasn't accounted for, and —
"You don't need to come visit every day, Mama," Shepard said abruptly, cutting her off mid-sentence.
Mama's knitting needles stopped clicking and she stared at Shepard. "What, I shouldn't visit my only daughter in the hospital? I shouldn't see how you are?"
"I'm fine. There's not much for me to tell. I'm just doing my therapy every day." Their visits were way too one-sided. There wasn't enough in Val's daily routine to talk about, and once she'd finished, she was mostly listening to her mother go on about her work for an hour, or sometimes more. She couldn't very well tell her mother about the last few years.
"So, what, I shouldn't even ask?" Mama's voice rose, and her accent thickened.
Val sighed. "Just... not every day? It's not like there's much different. You just don't need to hover so much."
"Well." Mama sat up straight and started stuffing the mass of green yarn back into her bag. "I'm sorry my concern bothers you so much." She stood quickly, slinging the bag over her shoulder, and marched toward the door. "You know, some people would be grateful they had their mother with them while they recovered."
"It's not that," Val protested, but Mama was out the door and gone.
Val sank back into her pillows with a groan and rubbed both hands over her face. Stupid. She'd been unsettled all day because no one paid enough attention to her, and she couldn't cope with her own mother's attention. God, she really was an ungrateful brat. Here she was with her family intact, with the chance to know the mother she'd lost in her teens and make amends for the time they'd lost, and the best she could do was complain about it and drive her away?
Back when she was fifteen, sixteen, she and her mother had fought all the time, about what Val wore and how she did in school and she couldn't even remember what else. Apparently she hadn't gotten out of the habit.
She'd thought, in more paranoid moments, that her mother — or whatever impostor was pretending to be her mother — might be spying on her. But this couldn't be a simulation designed to confuse her, could it? The hospital was too realistic, too ordinary, full of tired, overburdened staff with too many patients and not enough supplies. Nobody paid enough attention to her movements and reactions. It didn't add up.
She flopped back into the bed and stared at the ceiling, half-hoping her mother would come back, but she didn't.
Shepard slept restlessly that night. Once she dreamed of Mama scolding her, and woke with a start, and when she fell asleep again, she dreamed again: this time she was sitting beside Anderson, gazing out at the field of stars, where Reapers sailed gently by.
"Beautiful," said Anderson. "So peaceful."
"But this wasn't what I meant," she protested. "This wasn't supposed to happen."
When she woke up, she couldn't remember how Anderson had replied, but she remembered the sight of those vast, squid-like shapes floating dark against the stars.
If she could leave her room for meals, there was no need to stay in it the rest of the time, she decided. Lara had told her she could walk more if she felt up to it, to exercise her legs and build up her endurance. Still, she stepped out of her room in her faded, too-big hospital pajamas with a guilty thrill, as if Dr. Chakwas would show up any moment to herd her back to her bed. Her unexpected anonymity was an advantage here. As long as she didn't trespass into staff-only spaces, no one gave her a second glance. Hell, barely anyone gave her a first glance. She was all too clearly what she was: a patient testing out her legs, making her slow way through the corridors. Nothing unusual, nothing worth paying attention to.
Since she had the opportunity, she tried to map out the facility. At least, it gave her something to think about other than constantly picking at the questions Am I sane? Are they actually out to get me? Hospitals were—
Hospitals aren't fun to fight through.
—complicated buildings at the best of times. The Alliance had taken over an existing hospital on Terra Nova, but various rooms had been repurposed to fit in more patients, and there were hasty prefab additions blocking the view from most of the windows. Rooms that had once held two patients held three, and so on. Shepard's room was private only because it was so small. It was in the original hospital building, and she wondered what purpose it had formerly served. Somebody's office, or maybe even a broom closet. Nothing but the best for the other Commander Shepard, she thought, and her lips stretched into a humorless smile.
She trailed her fingers along the wall as she went, to help keep her balance and stay out of the main traffic lane, and marked the space in her head. So many wings, so many corridors, so many rooms. What had once been a central atrium, open space and greenery, was now jammed full of medics' stations and monitoring equipment, and off-limits to patients. She cast curious looks over her shoulder as she moved away.
All of it looked very ordinary, still. A really detailed simulation, or a really detailed hallucination.
On the third day, Shepard turned a corner while exploring a wing she hadn't been to before, and drew up short. Her feet dragged on the floor, and she pressed her hand hard against the wall to steady herself. There was a pair of guards posted on either side of the first door, armed and wearing Alliance uniforms. It was a plain, ordinary door, no different from any of the others, as far as she could tell.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Is this a restricted area?"
"No, ma'am," said the private on the left, a young Asian woman. "Guarding the room, that's all."
The woman and her partner appeared alert, but relatively relaxed. Shepard nodded and continued down the hallway. She didn't like turning her back on them, even so. The space between her shoulder blades itched. She stole glances back over her shoulder, but neither one reached for a weapon. She walked slowly to the end of the corridor, counting off the six rooms on each side, turned, and made her way back, considering. She had seen marines around the hospital before, on occasion, but not guarding what appeared to be a private room.
She put on a smile as she approached them again, trying her best to look relaxed and trustworthy, and asked, "So I'm curious. Who rates a personal guard around here?"
It was the dark-haired man on the right who spoke, this time. "Shepard."
Her smile froze. For a moment, she thought he was speaking to her, and she wondered, with an edge of panic, if she was supposed to recognize him. Then she blinked and realized what he was actually saying. It didn't take any effort to look shocked. "Whoa. You mean that Shepard?"
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She thought she heard an edge of pride in his voice when he said, "Yeah."
"Huh," she said, her mind racing. "Wow. I'd heard he was at this hospital, but I didn't realize... No visitors, huh?"
The woman stiffened a little, lifting her chin. "No, ma'am."
"He's not in any shape for it, from what I hear," said the man.
"Really." Val leaned one shoulder against the wall opposite them, trying to look casual, and drummed her fingers against the wall. "You ever see him?"
The man shook his head. "Nah, we just take over from the other shift. Round the clock guard, just in case."
In case of what? She wondered, but she nodded as if she understood. "I heard he was hurt pretty bad. Think he'll recover?"
The woman frowned. The man shrugged and glanced at the closed door. "Not from what I hear."
"Ric," the woman admonished.
He shrugged again. "What? Guy's in a coma, hooked up to respirators. Burned to a crisp. If they pulled the plug, he'd die in a matter of hours."
His partner scowled harder and crossed her arms. "You should be more respectful."
He spread his hands. "I'm not saying the man's not a hero, I'm just saying he's not gonna live."
"Burned," Val said, her heart pounding. "That's a rough one."
"We're not really supposed to talk about it," said the woman, still frowning. "And we're not privy to the medical details, anyway."
"Right," she said, starting down the hall away from the room. Easy, easy; slow and normal. She kept her breath and her steps even. "Sorry to bother you."
She remembered burning. She remembered the feel of blood, slick on what was left of her armor, her undersuit, sticky in her hair. She thought she remembered her broken ribs grating together. If the details were fuzzy, was it because she'd invented them, or because she'd been dazed by pain and painkillers?
But John Shepard had burned.
After that, she made a point of walking by the room every so often. Not every day, and not always at the same time. No reason for anyone to get suspicious. The marines she'd encountered were the usual daytime guards; if she went by in the evening, a different pair were on duty. Usually she passed with no more than a nod. Sometimes she exchanged pleasantries about the weather, innocuous small talk. Once, as she passed, the door was open, and she caught a glimpse of the body within, dark and swathed in bandages, with two medics busily at work on either side of the bed. She slowed to a stop that time. One of the medics saw her looking. She couldn't see the woman's face properly behind the surgical mask she wore, but her dark eyebrows drew together. She stepped around the bed and shut the door firmly.
Shepard couldn't even explain to herself why she kept going by. It wasn't as if John Shepard could answer her questions, even if she did get into the room, and she wasn't fit enough to take on two guards, even though her legs were strengthening by the day. She wondered what she'd find, if she could see his medical records. Burns. Coma. Gunshot wounds? Where? But those records were highly encrypted datafiles, and she'd never been a hacker. She wasn't a doctor, either. Even if she had Tali or Kasumi at her side to get her into the records, whatever she found might not tell her much. If only he were conscious, even intermittently, it might be worth the risk anyway. She had questions she'd like to ask him.
Her mind wandered to him even when Mama came back to her room and plopped down with her knitting as if they'd never argued. There he lay, John Shepard, the Butcher of Torfan, Savior of the Citadel. The man who'd ended the war, or so the speculation ran. What had he thought about that? Had he talked to a dead boy on the Citadel? What had he chosen? What had left him scorched and shattered and comatose in a hospital bed?
Maybe, if she could talk to John Shepard, what she ought to do was thank him. He'd carried the burdens of command, he'd made the hard choices, he'd paid the price. It galled her, but maybe that was her own weakness. Maybe it was pure hubris, the deepest, rawest kind of arrogance, to think that she was the person who should have been in that position, that no one else could choose rightly. And why did she want that weight, anyway? Why not enjoy her recovery, her anonymity, the fact that she had her family?
Because she only had one of her families, she tole herself. She still had those personnel files saved to her omni-tool. She looked at them from time to time, when she couldn't sleep. They at least gave her some hope that there was something to the other life she remembered other than delusion. Joker and Kaidan and James were real, the Normandy was real. That much, she knew, even though she didn't have anything else to go on. The problem of what had happened to her had no obvious avenues to explore, no loose ends she could tug at to see what unraveled. Except for John Shepard himself, maybe, but he wasn't a loose end capable of telling her anything.
If there was nothing she could do about it, maybe she should resign herself to the existence she had. She thought about that, sometimes, when she was most tired, dragging herself to her room with aching legs after circling the hospital for an hour. There were worse things than what she had right now, worse things than having her mother chattering on by her bedside. She'd be healed, soon, and she had her career, too, in a galaxy that needed...
That brought her up short. She was good at fighting and killing things, and she wasn't sure the galaxy needed that at all. Especially not if the Reapers were no longer a threat.
She'd never been good at resigning herself, though. And no matter what John Shepard might have done to them, she couldn't bring herself to see the Reapers as benign. Maybe they were just waiting for another day. Maybe they were the ones who'd screwed with her head.
Her thoughts chased each other round and round like circling vultures, day by day. They wheeled around as she stretched her legs and worked through her exercises and wandered the hospital and listened to her mother's chatter. They never landed, and she never arrived anywhere new.