Notes: TBCH it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember what this word meant outside of physics.

Resonance

It'd been one week since the crucible fired and the Reapers fell. Hours later, search and rescue found Shepard buried under rubble on the Citadel. Four days since the remains of their fleets started to back home. Three days since doctors said that while Shepard was still in critical condition, she was stable. Only this morning, they said she was well enough for visitors. Admiral Hackett wished he was here under better circumstances.

She always looked smaller and less intimidating than she was until someone was right next to her. Even as he settled into the armchair at her bedside, she still looked tiny and impossibly weak. She used to be one of their best operatives. He'd always wanted her for fifth fleet. After only a few weeks working with her, Anderson told him that in ten years, they'd all be working for this woman and he fully expected it to happen. Now, she was covered in monitors and cultured skin and bandages and IVs. The parts of her face that weren't cut to hell and back were filled in black and blue. There was an unmissable void in the coarse beige blanket where her right leg should have been.

"Hello Steven," she croaked. As she rolled her bandaged head towards him, he decided to write that off as painkillers. "You here to break me out?"

"Bored already Captain?" The corner of her mouth twitched. For all she'd done, she'd more than earned a promotion. There wasn't anybody left who could tell him she didn't deserve it.

"Just tired of the feeding tube," she said, cracking her eyes open. Her voice was cracked and dry and gratingly slow. "I'd bring back the Reapers if it meant I could drink coffee again."

"You're awfully glib for almost dying," he said. He chose to take that as a good sign.

"Almost dying is Tuesday," she wheezed. She turned back to look at the ceiling and tried to lift her arm. Even that set her O2 intake skyrocketing "Also on enough painkillers to kill a horse. Can't be this chatty for long. If you're here for business, get to it."

"You're the only person who knows what happened on the Crucible," he said. "I need your statement."

She went quiet for a while and her breathing grew labored. The rush of air through her tubes was almost oppressive. Slowly, he saw her arm inch towards a remote. He reached out to nudge it closer.

"Don't!" she rasped. In all his years working with her, he'd never before heard her raise her voice. "It's all I can do myself!" One short sentence seemed to take more out of her than the Crucible. It took an impossibly long time for her to reach it and her hand shook as she pushed down on the button and the bed raised her up so she could sit.

"Whenever you're ready," he said, setting his datapad to record.

"Sir, I barely made it to the Citadel," she said. These words sounded easier than anything else she'd said today. "By the time I made it to the Crucible, Anderson was standing over Jack Harper's body. He told me to go, that he had it under control. So I ran. I wasn't there when the Crucible fired and I was knocked unconscious by the blast. The next thing I knew, I woke up here." He suspected they'd find discrepancies in her story when they had the time and resources to thoroughly investigate the Citadel's wreckage. Whatever it was, it would be easy to cover up.

He turned off his datapad and set it on the nightstand. "Off the record, how much of this is true?" he said.

"Does it matter Sir?" she said, leaning back onto her pillows and staring at him out of the corner of her eye. "It's a better story. Gives the galaxy a martyr to rally around while it rebuilds. David Anderson, Soldier, Councilor, Defender of Earth, gives his life to save the galaxy while a disgraced Spectre flies around playing politics."

"You never played when it comes to politics," he said. Maybe if she recovered enough to be up to it, he'd bring her a bottle of scotch and he'd get the real story. For now, he'd take this one. It was more useful to him than the truth.

After all they'd been through, and to inspire for all that was to come, the people of the galaxy deserved heroes. Shepard was a divisive figure. A manipulative, backstabbing bitch to some, all but a saint to others. A martyr was more useful to them now than the broken woman in front of him.

Shepard, who made her life telling people stories, who she was, who she wasn't, why they should follow her, do things her way, knew the power of a good story. Stories gave people hope, made them believe that all the monsters they were facing could be overcome. They needed someone more than human to inspire the galaxy to get back on its feet again and in a hospital bed, with not just a skeleton but a whole morgue in her closet, she wasn't going to pass.

It didn't hurt that she'd never wanted the world's attention and in case she could go back to work, she could return to relative anonymity.

"Oh I played Sir, but I played to win," she said. Even mostly immobilized, she managed to convey a look of the cat that ate the canary. "My personal effects are in the dresser. In the top drawer, there's an omnitool that used to belong to Harper. Your crews found it in the wreckage."

"I'll be sure to send commendations where they're due for retrieving such important intel," he said. After he found suitable persons to attribute credit, he'd be sure to send her something in thanks. "Anything else?"

She nodded painfully. "Later. Tired," she said. "Stay if you want."

"If only I could," he said, slowly standing up. He could only stay away from the galaxy's remain leadership for as long as necessary. "It's going to take a lot to repair the damage the Reapers caused and there's not enough hours in the day."

"Sir, before you go…" She struggled to sit up on her own, but only managed to raise her head a few inches off the pillow. "…any word from the Normandy?"

He could tell her that it sustained heavy damage picking up the MedEvac shuttle and when the rest of the fleets dropped out of FTL at the rendezvous point, the Normandy hadn't been among them. There were new ships still coming home, but with each passing day, it grew less and less likely that the Normandy would be among them.

Shepard knew the power of a good story and right now, it wasn't just the rest of the galaxy who needed one.

"We have more ships coming back every day," he said, gingerly putting a hand on her shoulder. "When they come in, you'll be the first to know." Her cracked and bruised face broke into a rare smile. She knew the odds, but it was a good enough story to give her a little more reason to fight.