AN: Sorry for the delay! I've been posting this story on AO3 as well, and while I updated there, I completely forgot that I hadn't updated here yet. But I hope you enjoy, and if you do, please leave a review! I love hearing from my readers.
After stopping briefly by the med-bay to grab some medi-gel for her arm, Shepard makes her way down to the cargo hold, her pace quick and her expression determined. Vega is right on her heels, and while she can understand his desire to be kept in the loop, she doesn't want to field all his questions right now— doesn't know how to field them.
"What the hell's going on?" he's asking her as he jogs to keep up. "Where's Anderson? Where are we going?"
Shepard doesn't answer, just continues moving forward. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Walk towards the armory, grab her old gear, suit up. Then maybe she'll start to feel a little more capable.
"Hey!" James yells. "Answer me!"
"We're leaving," Shepard says, sparing a brief glance over her shoulder at James.
Kaidan's already in the armory, checking the sights on his gun, and he looks up when James yells, but doesn't say anything.
"Leaving? Leaving where? And where the fuck is Anderson?" James asks again.
"Anderson wants us to go to the Citadel," Shepard says, taking a deep breath to calm her emotions. "Rally the other Citadel races, get their support for the coming war."
"Bullshit," James says, crossing his arms. "Anderson wouldn't order us to leave."
Shepard bristles at his tone and has to remind himself that he's just as scared as she is, but she's his commander, damnit, and the last thing she needs right now is someone questioning her decisions, because it's taking every ounce of strength she has to leave Earth.
"Do you think I like it, either?" she says, her voice a quiet contrast to James' brashness. "But we don't have a choice. If we don't get help, this war's already lost before it's begun."
"Forget it," James scoffs. "Drop me off someplace, then, 'cause I'm not leaving. I refuse to abandon Earth."
"Enough!" Shepard yells, all her anger and frustration having finally reached a boiling point. "Don't you think I'd rather stay and fight, too? Earth is my home, Vega, this is just as personal for me as it is for you, so don't you think for a second that I'm abandoning this fight or making this decision lightly."
She pauses, her chest heaving with her ragged breaths from her emotional outburst, while Kaidan remains silent, ever unreadable, and James just looks angry. "We are going to the Citadel. If you want out, you can catch a ride back from there."
"Commander!" the voice comes over the ship's intercom, and Shepard smiles slightly.
"Joker, is that you?"
"Alive and kicking, Commander," he says. "Well, metaphorically speaking, because… you know… brittle bones. Anyways, I've got an emergency transmission from Admiral Hackett coming in for you."
Shepard breathes a sigh of relief. No one had heard from Hackett, they weren't sure what his status was, and Shepard feared the worst. The fifth fleet Admiral was an incredibly capable soldier and leader, but he was still just one man, and the Reapers were many.
"Patch it through."
"Shepard." Admiral Hackett's voice comes through, but it's filled with static and the video is blurry. "We've sustained heavy losses… force was overwhelming… no way to defeat them with conventional weapons."
"Anderon's already ordered me to the Citadel," Shepard says. "We'll rally support from the council."
"Something more important," Hackett says. "First… need you to go to the Alliance outpost on Mars… 'fore we lose control of the whole system."
Mars? Shepard wonders what might be so important there, but it's not her place to question, and it's certainly not the time, so she just salutes. "Roger that, sir."
"…researching the Prothean Archives, with Dr. T'Soni," Hackett says. "… found a way to stop the Reapers… only way to stop them… contact soon. Hackett out."
Liara? Well, at least it would be nice to see her old friend again. And a way to stop the Reapers? It's too tempting to think about, so she doesn't, not allowing herself to hope this will be easy because she knows it will be anything but. "Joker, set a course for the Mars Archives."
"Mars?" The surprise in Joker's voice echoes the surprise that Shepard felt when Hackett mentioned it. "Roger that."
"Why Mars?" Kaidan questions. "What does he think we'll find there?"
"I don't know," Shepard says. "He said Liara's been researching something to do with the Prothean Archives. I don't know what, but if it helps us win this war…"
She trails off and picks up her old N7 chest plate, the one she had custom made to fit her, what seems like a lifetime ago. Back before she died, back before Cerberus resurrected her, back when she knew who she was.
Now? She's not so sure some days. But this armor is her tether, this armor is what reminds her that despite Cerberus, despite dying, she is still Commander Shepard. Alliance Navy. N7 trained.
Somehow, the day she passed N6 training and was awarded N7 status feels like both yesterday and a million years ago. She was one of the youngest recruits to ever make it that far; god, she was so young back then.
She had been so eager to prove herself, during those early years— she felt like she had to, to make up for her first 18 years of life, when she ran with gangs and petty criminals. She was going to be different; she was going to be someone important, someone who mattered.
During N6 training, she'd been the last to run out of oxygen. She'd been scavenging and surviving all her life, why should N7 training be any different? It was brutal and painful and the recruits were told over and over that failing wasn't shameful, that N7 training was designed to weed out the very best of the best, and even making it through the first few ranks was impressive.
But failure had never been an option for Lily Shepard. And so, she'd pushed on, she'd fought and survived and when she graduated on Arcturus Station, she'd stood tall and proud. Finally, she was doing something with her life. Finally, she was proving that she was capable, that she was meant for this, that she belonged there.
And now Arcturus Station was destroyed, and the N7 program seemed like a relic of a bygone era. But the armor in Shepard's hands was a reminder of who she was capable of being, who she used to be, and damned if she wasn't going down without a fight.
Whatever was on Mars, she'd be ready for it. She had to be.
"Grab your gear," she says to Kaidan and James. They would find a way to win this war. They had to.
"Commander, no one's answering," Joker says over comms as the dusty red planet comes into view of the shuttle. "I've been trying to contact them on secure channels, but no go."
Shepard frowns. "Any signs of Reaper activity?" If the Reapers are already there, if they're too late again… she doesn't want to think about that.
"Negative."
"Well, that's a relief," she mutters. "EDI, any thoughts on the matter?"
"The base appears to be online," EDI says. "It's possible the inhabitants were evacuated when news of Earth arrived."
"Maybe," Shepard says. But something about this just feels… off. Wrong, somehow. "Joker, be ready, just in case. We'll know for sure soon enough."
She turns back to sit down, but Kaidan's there, and she can't deal with that right now, so instead, she stands by the door. The sooner they can get off this shuttle, the better.
The back of the shuttle feels far too small for the two of them, but Shepard knows the issue is just being in such close proximity to Kaidan. Were it anyone else, it wouldn't be a problem.
She can count on one hand the number of words he's said to her since Horizon, and it drives her crazy. Horizon. He sends that letter, that letter which makes her feel like maybe there's a chance for them still, maybe they can reconcile, but then nothing.
Even when it was all over, even in the six months she spent under house arrest, he's continued to ignore her. Even though he's known, this whole time, where she's been. How hard would it be to at least send a letter, clear the air?
Instead, coldness radiates from him like Alchera, and she can barely stand to be in his presence without shuddering because, if she's honest—there's a part of her that still feels that magnetic pull towards him that she always has, but what's the point if he keeps ignoring her?
At least if he accused her of horrible things again, the way he did on Horizon, she'd know where he stood, and she almost feels like she'd prefer that. The silence, the not knowing, was killing her.
For reasons more than personal drama, she hates that she has to bring him along for this mission. She needs to be able to trust her squad, she needs to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they have her back.
And as much as it pains her to admit it, she's not sure she can definitively say that about Kaidan.
James lands the shuttle on the surface of the dusty planet a few minutes later and Shepard gazes out at the landscape, trying to make sense of whatever Hackett might be sending them after.
"Still no contact from the base," he says. "But we've got a massive dust storm headed our way, so let's hope we can find this thing quick."
"Great," Shepard mutters. "How long do we have until it hits?"
"Twenty minutes?" James guesses. "Half hour, tops. After that, it's going to interfere with our comm transmissions and we won't be able to keep in contact with the Normandy."
"No time to waste, then," Shepard says. "Let's go." Stepping out of the shuttle, she can see the dust storm on the horizon: a massive, impenetrable wall of dust and debris, impossible to see through. They're going to have to hurry.
"Damn, that's a big storm," James says, letting out a low whistle. "It looks even bigger in person."
"Fairly normal for Mars, actually," Kaidan says. "Dust storms are a common occurrence here."
"Well I'm glad you're so optimistic," James says.
"The way I see it, we've got Reapers invading Earth, the station here is offline and we're on some mysterious mission that's connected to the Prothean archives—a little dust storm is the least of our worries."
"Point taken," James says.
The whole conversation between them is easy, pleasant, and Shepard tries not to grind her teeth in frustration. In the span of a minute, Kaidan has spoken more words to James than he has to her in months. After Horizon, after that letter which gave her a glimmer of hope, but has since gone nowhere, there's been nothing but radio silence and a perpetual cold shoulder.
She knows that there are far, far more important things at stake than her broken heart and her hurt feelings. But damn if it doesn't sting a little to hear Kaidan, the old Kaidan, her Kaidan, making easy conversation with James.
"Come on," she says. "Let's keep moving."
The Martian landscape is barren, the buildings that the Alliance has built for the Archives jutting out over red rocks and brown dirt as far as the eye can see. And yet, despite its emptiness, there's something oddly beautiful about it, in an unsettling sort of way. Maybe it's just the fact that Shepard grew up in a crowded city, used to the constant hustle and bustle of people, but there's something about the quiet that discomfits her. Something about it feels eerie, feels wrong somehow.
She hopes it's just paranoia, but with the station down, she has a sinking suspicion that something genuinely is wrong, and she prays they're not too late to rendezvous with Liara and figure out what it is that Hackett wants them to retrieve.
The three of them move across the barren landscape in silence for several minutes, guns drawn, on the lookout for anything suspicious. It's when Shepard drops down a ladder embedded into the side of a rock that she notices something lying next to a building, a second before James does.
"What's that over there?" he asks.
Not something, someone she realizes with a jolt of horror. A dead body.
"That's Alliance Sergeant Reeves," Kaidan says, his voice tight with emotion. "Looks like he didn't put up a fight before he died. What's going on here?"
Shepard swears softly under her breath. "We have to keep moving. If we can, I'll let… someone know about this, so he can get a proper burial."
The words feel like false promises on her lips, and she hates how uncertain everything is right now. The Reapers are threatening the fate of the entire galaxy, Sergeant Reeves was just one poor, dead soldier in what was going to be a long stream of them. If they failed, it meant total annihilation, but even if they succeeded, Shepard couldn't imagine they'd get through it without heavy casualties. They'd already had heavy casualties.
Could anyone be spared to come back to collect Sergeant Reeves' body? Could anyone be spared to notify his next of kin, to give him a proper burial, to make sure he was honored the way every fallen soldier should be? Were his next of kin even still alive themselves?
Shuddering, Shepard tries to shake off the unease that's settled deep down into her bones. A lot of good people were going to die in this war, and they weren't going to be able to honor the fallen the way they should. She hates it, and she knows James and Kaidan hate it, too, but they have to move on, they have to leave poor Sergeant Reeves behind.
"Something's definitely not right here," James says. "What killed the Sergeant?"
"I don't know," Shepard says, shaking her head. "But keep a low profile until we find out, and stay on guard. We don't know what we'll find at the Archives."
"Roger that," James says. Kaidan is silent, and Shepard once again has to grit her teeth against her frustration—regardless of his feelings for her, she's the commanding officer for this mission, how hard is it to just confirm he understands her orders?—but she has to assume his silence is an agreement.
They turn away from the fallen Sergeant Reeves and head down a long dirt path that runs adjacent to a sheer cliff face. A few shipping crates are scattered along the path, and in the distance, the circular rooms of the Archives rise over the landscape, but everything is so still, so quiet.
Until a gunshot rings out, shattering the silence.
Shepard holds up a hand and Kaidan and James pause behind her. Silently, she gestures for them to stay low and approach one of the storage crates, so they can get a better look at the situation without revealing themselves. Through the scope of her gun, Shepard can see that down the hill, there's an armored truck, and next to it, a group of heavily armed soldiers. Kneeling on the ground before them is an unarmed soldier, Alliance by the looks of the armor. On the ground are two more dead bodies.
But who are the attackers? Swinging the scope back towards one of the armed soldiers, Shepard sees something that makes her blood run cold. A black oval with a pointed top and a break in the bottom, set on the backdrop of an orange stripe. Cerberus.
Before she, or anyone else—because surely James and Kaidan are seeing this, too, and Kaidan, god, what must he be thinking right now, what must he be thinking about her?—can react, the soldier Shepard had been looking at places his gun to the temple of the kneeling Alliance soldier and pulls the trigger.
"Holy shit," James says, and Shepard feels too sick to her stomach to admonish him for talking and potentially giving away their position. "They're executing them!"
Shepard knows that there's protocol to follow. There's at least five or six of the Cerberus soldiers, against Shepard, James and Kaidan. As commanding officer of the mission, Shepard needs to prioritize her own team's safety; she needs to examine the situation, assess the risks, direct Kaidan and James appropriately, and only engage when a plan of action has been determined.
She needs to not leave cover, let out a sound that is somewhere between battle cry and anguished scream, and hit the nearest soldier with the hardest warp she's capable of producing- which is exactly what she does, because she is too blinded by rage to give a damn about protocol right now.
"Well, I guess they know we're here now," James mutters as chaos erupts on the battlefield. There's bullets and grenades flying, and Shepard's body thrums with power, the adrenaline and raw biotic ability that she possesses singing in her veins, reminding her that she's alive.
"Lay down your weapons and you won't be hurt!" one of the soldiers calls out from behind the cover of the armored truck.
Right, Shepard thinks. Because we've all seen the compassion you extend to unarmed Alliance soldiers. Instead of dignifying the soldier with a response, she sends a warp around the corner of the truck and relishes the scream when he's hit, perhaps more than she should.
Beside her, she can feel the biotics radiating from Kaidan, she can feel as he lifts one of the Cerberus soldiers into the air and she finishes him off with a warp. They used to fight like this all the time, in tandem, and it reminds her what a good team they made, back when the world was a simple place, back when Saren and his geth were the biggest threat they had to face.
The battle is over quickly, the handful of Cerberus soldiers being no match for Shepard's rage, Kaidan's biotics or James' skill with assault rifles. There's a long moment of silence after the last soldier falls, and Shepard can feel Kaidan's accusatory eyes on her, boring into her, cold and unforgiving.
I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I—
"Those guys were Cerberus, weren't they?" James asks, cutting through Shepard's internal mantra, as if by repeating the words in her head she can make Kaidan understand.
"Sure looked like it," Shepard says. "I'd recognize that armor anywhere."
"Cerberus." Kaidan spits the word out as if it disgusts him just saying it. "What are they doing on Mars?"
"Good question," Shepard says, trying to run through the possibilities in her mind. What would Cerberus want with the Mars Archives? The last she'd seen of Cerberus was when she told the Illusive Man to go fuck himself and destroyed the Collector base. In all her time with Cerberus—not with them, just using their resources, an important distinction that she has to remind herself of—she'd never known the Illusive Man to express any interest in the Archives.
Their goal was always promoting the advancement of humanity, stopping the Collectors from taking human colonies naturally fell into their ideals. But why the Archives? Why now, after the Reapers attacked? Shepard knew that the Illusive Man thought the Alliance pandered to the aliens too much, and that they weren't invested enough in stopping the colonies from disappearing.
While Shepard disagreed, she could understand that mentality. But the Reapers weren't just a threat to humanity, they were a threat to the whole galaxy, and if there was any hope of defeating them, the galaxy had to present a united front. Was Cerberus really so selfish that they would take something from the Archives, likely whatever Hackett sent her after, to try and save humanity above all else? That wasn't just selfish, it was stupid. Humanity's best chance at surviving was by allying with everyone else— humans, asari, turians, salarians, krogans, everyone had to unite to stop the Reapers.
"You mean you don't know?" Kaidan asks, his tone carefully guarded, and it takes Shepard a second to compose herself before she can respond.
"I'm not with them anymore, Kaidan, if that's what you're asking," she says, her tone equally guarded. Two can play this game.
"It wasn't exactly, but you have to admit it's a bit, ah… convenient."
Shepard reels back as if he'd slapped her. "Convenient?"
"You have a history with Cerberus," Kaidan says, as if he's pointing out the obvious. "In the past, Cerberus has always stayed out of the way of the Alliance, they've stuck to the Terminus Systems and planets on the edge of Alliance space. They've always operated on the downlow. But Mars? That's big, that's right in the heart of Alliance space. And well, you're here, they're here…"
"I…" Shepard opens her mouth and then closes it again. I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I never was with Cerberus.
"You should know me better than that," is all she says in the end. "My… partnership, if you want to call it that, with Cerberus was a means to an end. I was never 'with' them, and I am most certainly not with them now."
"Uh guys?" James cuts in. "I hate to break up this little chat, but we've got Reapers attacking Earth as we speak and something here Hackett wants us to find, so maybe we should… vamoose?"
"Right," Shepard says, taking a deep breath to stabilize her emotions. "Come on, let's go."
She hears the slightest, almost imperceptible, sigh from Kaidan, but he doesn't say anything else as he and James fall into line between Shepard as the three of them continue down the dirt path, guns drawn.
"Look out!" Kaidan calls out before they've made it far. "Cerberus soldiers up ahead, twelve o'clock."
Shepard manages to duck behind a spare crate just as the Cerberus soldiers start firing on them. As much as she hates this whole situation, with the Reapers attacking Earth and Cerberus murdering Alliance soldiers, it feels good to be fighting again, after these past six months under house arrest.
"I thought we took care of security!" one of the Cerberus soldiers yells over the noise of gunfire and biotics. "These guys sure as hell don't fight—or look—like scientists!"
Shepard hits him with a shockwave, knocking him out of cover and James finishes him off. One down, but still too many to go—this group is slightly larger than the last, and they have Shepard pinned down at an awkward angle.
She glances around the battlefield, noting two soldiers bearing down on her position. James and Kaidan have their hands full, so she can't rely on them, and if the Cerberus soldiers have any brains at all, they'll divide up and flank her. Which means she needs to act now.
Slipping out from cover, she hits the soldiers with a singularity, then follows it up with a warp, the detonation making a satisfying thwack as the Cerberus troopers are killed. There's another soldier approaching her head on, and she just smirks to herself. They could at least try to make it challenging. Charging her head on? They should know better than that. She uses her biotics to pull the soldier towards her, then throws him back against one of the armored tanks with bone-crushing force.
It feels good, she feels powerful, but before she can revel in her victory too much, Kaidan's panicked voice calls out.
"Commander, look out!"
Shepard turns in time to see that while she'd been toying with the troopers in front of her, another one had been sneaking up behind her. He starts firing before she has time to react, before she has time to dive for cover, and the assault rifle rips through her shields in no time. She realizes with a sudden panic that she's expended too much biotic energy, and can't access her abilities right now; can't throw out a shockwave to knock the soldier over or a singularity to pin him in place, can't even put up a barrier to block the projectiles.
But before any real damage can be done, Kaidan is there in front of her, throwing up a barrier to shield them both. Once they're both safely guarded, he lets out a growl of frustration and throws out a mass effect, Shepard watches as the soldier arches back in pain and a swirl of purple energy surrounds Kaidan, the very life force of the Cerberus trooper slowly being drained out.
Reave. Since when did Kaidan know how to reave?
Shaking off both the shock of seeing Kaidan wield such a powerful biotic ability and the shock of the Cerberus soldier nearly getting the drop on her, Shepard takes a step back from Kaidan, suddenly angry that he stepped in.
"I'm perfectly capable of using barriers myself," she snaps. "I had the situation under control."
If Kaidan is shocked by her angry tone, he hides it well. "Yeah, it sure looked under control. Why didn't you use a barrier, then?"
Shepard scowls, not wanting to admit that she had been reckless and ran out of biotic power. It was a rookie mistake. The first thing anyone learns with biotic training is how to pace yourself, how to make sure you always have a little in reserve, in case of an emergency. Sure, she still had her gun, but she wouldn't have been able to incapacitate the soldier before he did considerable damage to her as well. It's shameful, and she should know better, but she's not about to admit that to Kaidan.
"I didn't know you could reave," she says, changing the subject. "That's new. Major."
"It's, uh, a new skill." Kaidan has the decency to sound slightly chagrined. "Something I've been honing these past two years."
He turns to scan the battlefield, clearly uncomfortable with the topic, though whether it's because of the secrets he's been keeping from her, or something else, Shepard isn't sure.
"I think we've got them all," he says.
"All clear over here," James says, walking out from behind an armored truck. He pauses, looking around at the fallen bodies. "It doesn't look like they came here in force. The two groups we've run into have both been small, there's been what, a dozen of them altogether? If that?"
"And only a few vehicles," Shepard says, glancing around at the armored tanks parked outside the entrance to the Archives. "How did they manage to get rid of security with so few numbers?"
"They must've had help from the inside," Kaidan says, shaking his head in disgust. "The Archives are an Alliance base; this place is heavily fortified. There's no way you could take it on with anything less than a full battalion."
"You might be right." Shepard glances around the battlefield one last time, then jerks her head in the direction of the entrance to the Archives. "Come on, I'm sure there's more trouble waiting for us inside."
They head up the ramp into the base, Shepard trying to ignore the feeling of Kaidan's eyes on her as she taps in the command to shut the airlock and key up the elevator.
"Commander. Shepard. I need a straight answer."
Shepard grits her teeth together. At least he's finally talking to her, instead of ignoring her. At least he's finally called her Shepard, and not Commander—or worse, ma'am—for the first time since Horizon, but she hates how her heart lurches at the use of her name, because she knows, she knows what he's about to say.
But she has to ask anyways, just in case. "About what?"
"Do you know anything, anything at all, about why Cerberus is here?" he asks, and the tiny glimmer of hope that Shepard was fighting dies instantly. As she thought: he's still suspicious.
"I know, you said you're not with them anymore," he continues, either oblivious to or uncaring of the pain he's causing her, the toll his distrust—him, of all people, who knows her, who understands her—is taking on her. "But if there's anything you're hiding, or anything that maybe they would have mentioned back when you were with them… please, Shepard, this is important."
"Why do you think I would know anything?" She tries to keep her voice calm, rational, but the fact that he's practically begging her, as if he really thinks she knows something, but just won't say it, is equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating and at her core, Lily Shepard is a weak woman. And so her voice wavers, just a little.
"You worked with them!" Kaidan says, his voice growing agitated as well. "More than that. God, Shepard, they… rebuilt you from the ground up. They gave you a ship, resources… they brought you back from the dead. It would be natural to feel some allegiance to them. How am I not supposed to think you might know something?"
"So, because Cerberus brought me back, you blame me for their actions and assume I must know something? Maybe I just should have stayed dead, then, is that what you're saying?"
Deep down, she knows the words are unfair, and when Kaidan flinches, she almost regrets it. Almost.
"No, that's not—" Kaidan breaks off with a growl of frustration.
"Let me make one thing clear," Shepard says. "I do not work for Cerberus. I never worked for them. We formed a temporary alliance to take down the Collectors, and I spent the entire time distancing myself from Cerberus' operations as much as possible. The Normandy may have flown Cerberus colors, but I ran her like an Alliance ship. The moment I had an opportunity to do so, I severed all ties with Cerberus and haven't looked back since."
Kaidan opens his mouth to say something, but Shepard cuts him off before he can.
"I have gladly told the Alliance everything about Cerberus operations and my 'alliance' with them. I have told them every single piece of even potentially sensitive data that I learned during my time there." She pauses, just briefly, just enough to catch her breath and collect herself. "I have had no contact with Cerberus since I destroyed the Collector base and told the Illusive Man exactly what I think of him. And I have no idea why they're here today or what they want."
James awkwardly clears his throat, and Shepard has the dignity to feel slightly embarrassed—she'd forgotten that he was still standing there, and here she and Kaidan were, airing out two years' worth of bad blood and hurt feelings.
"Commander Shepard has been under constant surveillance since coming back to Earth," he points out. "There's no way she's been communicating with Cerberus, Alliance brass would have noticed and stopped her before she could have so much as sent a comm."
"I guess that's right," Kaidan says. "Sorry, Shepard, it's just—"
Whatever he'd been about to say is cut off by the hiss of air as the airlock finishes sealing. Sighing, Shepard takes off her helmet as the elevator starts to rumble and slowly lifts up.
"I shouldn't have to explain myself to you, Kaidan," she says softly as the elevator comes to a stop and they step off. "You, of all people, you should… please, just trust me."
"I want to," he says. "I do trust you, it's just… I only meant…"
His words are cut off once again, this time by a loud banging coming from the air vents above. Shepard snaps out of the conversation, ducking behind the cover of an armored tank and drawing her gun in one smooth motion. In an instant, she goes from Lily, ghost in the shape of a woman, airing out her personal drama at inopportune times, to Commander Shepard, Alliance soldier in charge of an important mission.
"Stay on guard," she mouths to James and Kaidan, who have taken cover next to her. Her eyes trace the sound coming from the vents, keeping her gun aimed at the source, as the noise from whoever is inside travels across the length of the room. After a moment, the grate that leads to the vent is kicked open from the inside, and a familiar asari drops down onto the ledge below it.
Liara. Shepard breathes a small sigh of relief to see her old friend alive— though if she didn't already have enough reasons to hate Cerberus, seeing two soldiers drop out behind Liara, guns aimed at her, certainly fuels the fire. Liara takes care of them before Shepard can react, hitting them with a singularity, before emptying a clip into their helpless, floating bodies.
At times, it's still hard to reconcile this Liara, the one who worked as a powerful information broker on Illium, the one who showed no mercy when taking down the Shadow Broker, with the charmingly awkward scientist Shepard first met back on Therum. Then again, Shepard knows she's vastly different from who she used to be back then, too—this war has changed them all. Hardened them. They've had to adapt, because it's either that or be killed.
Still, when Liara keeps shooting at the soldiers, even when it's clear they're dead, Shepard pauses for just a moment, and it's only once Liara has holstered her gun that Shepard stands up out of cover, not wanting to spook the asari.
James, clearly on edge, keeps his gun up as he follows, and Shepard can't help but chuckle slightly as she puts a hand on it. Sure, Liara's changed a bit since she and Shepard first met, but there's no way she'd ever be a threat to Shepard.
"Easy there, lieutenant," Shepard says. "She's with us."
Liara turns around as Shepard approaches, a slight smile on her lips when recognition hits. "Shepard. Thank the goddess you're alive."
"Same could be said about you," Shepard says, pulling her old friend into a brief hug. "When we saw the situation out there, I was worried."
"Please, I can handle a few Cerberus operatives," Liara says, brushing off the concern. "I saw the reports as they came in, I worried you wouldn't be able to make it out. They hit Earth hard?"
"Yeah, it was hard leaving like that," Kaidan says. Shepard's taken aback for a moment before she remembers that of course Kaidan and Liara both served on the original Normandy, and they're friends, too, and Kaidan has every right to be involved in this conversation.
"Kaidan. I'm so sorry," Liara says. "I'm relieved to see both you and the Commander made it out alive, but… why did you come here? Shouldn't you be out there fighting?"
"Hackett ordered us to come," Shepard says. "He said you've been researching, that you've found something that could help us, and you'd know what to do."
Liara smiles again, this time slightly broader. "I do. Follow me."
"Hallelujah," James mutters. "Finally, some goddamn fucking answers."
"Maybe," Liara corrects. "I discovered plans for an old Prothean device, one that I think could wipe out the Reapers. Nothing is definite yet, but… Shepard, this looks promising."
Shepard pauses for a second, trying to absorb this new information. Could they really have a plan? An actual plan for defeating the Reapers?
"Here? On Mars?" she asks, needing more information before she allows herself to get her hopes up. "We've known about the Prothean Archives for decades now. Why is this only surfacing now?"
"The Archives are a massive place," Liara says. "And up until recently, no one believed you about the Reapers anyways. But now… finding it was process of elimination, mostly, mixed with a little desperation. We're out of time."
"Indeed we are," Shepard says quietly, thinking about the horrific scenes from Earth. Had that really only been that morning? It felt like eons ago that the Reapers had invaded Earth, eons since that child she couldn't save, and Anderson ordering her to abandon the fight, to abandon Earth.
"You bought us time when you destroyed the Alpha Relay, but we all knew that was just a temporary measure," Liara says, looking out the window with a longing sigh. "Since you were under investigation, I knew I had to do something. Thankfully, Hackett agreed, he asked me to use my Shadow Broker resources to find something to stop the Reapers."
She turns away from the window with a slightly sad smile. "My research led me here and has kept me so busy. I meant to come visit you, but…"
Shepard waves off Liara's concern. "It's fine. You had more important things to do, and besides, I was under house arrest. Your occasional messages were welcome, it meant a lot having a friend check in with me from time to time."
Unlike some people. The words hang there, unsaid, and she can't help but sneak a glance at Kaidan. Kaidan, who sent her a heartfelt message after Horizon, Kaidan who gave her hope. Kaidan, who ignored her and never called or visited and Kaidan, who continues to doubt her and question her and accuse her of working with the enemy.
Not like Jacob ever messaged, either, she thinks, but she can't think about that right now. She has a long history of being disappointed by important men in her life, maybe it's time to move on and focus on the present. Focus on something tangible, like the Reaper threat. The war might be a lost cause, but at least it's a distraction from the lost cause that is her love life and she almost, almost chuckles.
"This Prothean weapon," Shepard says, turning back to face Liara. "What is it? How do we find it and use it?"
"It's not a weapon," Liara says. "At least… not yet. It's a blueprint for a device, but I believe it can stop the Reapers. The Protheans came close to defeating the Reapers. They had plans, they had this device, they just ran out of time. But I believe we can use their blueprint to finish what they started."
"It seems too good to believe," Shepard admits. "But I hope you're right. How do we get to where it's stored?"
"The Archives are across that tramway." Liara points out the window at the long, covered passage that connects the part of the base they are in with the research section of the Archives.
"Assuming Cerberus hasn't shut it down," she adds, her eyes flashing with anger.
"Yeah Cerberus seemed hell bent on catching you," James says. "What are they after?"
"They're after the same thing we're all after," Liara says. "The blueprint."
Shepard curses under her breath. "I didn't think they'd be this selfish, but if it's something powerful enough to destroy the Reapers…"
"Then it might just be of interest to Cerberus," Kaidan finishes, shaking his head in disgust.
Before Shepard can say anything else, there's a loud boom coming from the other side of the door on the far side of the room. Shortly after, sparks start flying as someone on the other side of the door—Cerberus, no doubt—does their best to override the seal and manually force the door open.
"Looks like it's a race to the Archives, then," James says, cracking his neck. "Bring it on."
Shepard pauses for a second, analyzing the situation. If she, James, Kaidan and Liara all go on foot to the Archives, then they're all shit out of luck if Cerberus beats them and escapes with the data. They need backup.
"Not so fast, James," she says. "I need you to get back to the shuttle."
"But—" James starts to protest.
"If Cerberus beats us to the Archives, I need you covering the exits. We can't let them get their hands on this blueprint." Shepard dashes over to the console, queueing up the elevator for James. She needs Liara to lead the way to where the blueprint is, and as tempting as it is to send Kaidan away instead of James, James is the better shuttle pilot, and Kaidan's technical skill could be useful if they run into trouble on the ground.
"That's an order, Lieutenant!" she yells when James doesn't move.
"Roger that." James' voice doesn't hold the enthusiasm it did when talking about racing Cerberus to the Archives, but he complies nonetheless.
"I can hear them coming," Kaidan says, glancing over to the door, which has nearly been soldered open. "We should take cover."
Letting her biotics flare out around her, Shepard ducks behind one of the large crates in the cargo bay, her body thrumming with energy. The fight has only just begun, and it will be a challenge to beat Cerberus when they're outnumbered and outgunned.
But being outnumbered and outgunned has never stopped Lily Shepard in the past. She's a Commander in the Alliance Navy, she's an N7, and she's going to stop Cerberus and win this war, no matter what it takes.
When the Cerberus soldiers finally burst into the room, she's ready.
AN: Next chapter will finish up on Mars! I hope you enjoyed and please leave a review, I love the feedback.