Chapter 2: Mother's Pride

I eat my food in silence and listen vaguely to the words that are exchanged between my wife and her daughter. Even though she's lived with us for few months now, Carina's behaviour has barely changed. She's still infuriatingly quiet and reclusive, but she's obviously warmed up to her mother. Sam seems the only one who can get her to smile or speak in full sentences. This makes me jealous, but not of Sam.

After dinner she puts the dishes in the dishwasher while Carina watches. When she's done Sam takes the child upstairs.

I don't move from my seat. I think about the rifle and my mother. My thoughts are a tangled mess, a jungle of questions without answers. Did Hannah Shepard own an M-7 Lancer? It's possible, more than likely in fact, and the more I think about it the more certain I become that she must have. She had a vast – no – a massive arsenal of firearms. I don't know if they were just collector's items or if she actually used them in battle, I was not allowed to touch or even go within ten feet of them.

What I was allowed to do was memorize their names, manufacturers, firing rates, every single fact and figure concerning every weapon she owned and every weapon she didn't. It was all very educational. One of my earliest memories is of me staring up at the wall on which many of my mother's guns were displayed. My current task was to be able to name all the sniper rifles in the enormous collection, but I was stuck on one large, intimidating black rifle. My mother sat at her desk, going over reports, I think.

"…Naginata?" I guessed meekly.

My mother didn't need to look up from her PDA to know I'd gotten it wrong. "Start over, from the top."

I proceeded to get it wrong again, twice, and finally my mother rose from her chair. She walked wordlessly over to the wall and took down the troublesome rifle which name I could not remember. It seemed almost weightless in her hands. She had a look in her eyes I knew all too well. It was the one she wore at the firing range.

She began walking towards me, and my childish mind thought she was going to shoot me, which of course was ridiculous. She was holding a sniper rifle; if she was going to shoot me with it she would have done it from much farther away.

She pointed it at my face, slowly and steadily bringing it closer to me. My entire body was shaking, and when it was only inches away from the tip of my nose, I wet myself. It was pathetic. The cold, hard barrel pressed against my lips, pushing them into my mouth.

"Open up." Hannah Shepard's voice was as cold and collected as always and I did as it told me without question. She didn't need a gun to make me obey her.

I was trying my hardest not to let the metal come in contact with the inside of my mouth. It was worth far more than a small child and I couldn't imagine what the woman would do if I left saliva or tooth marks on it. I didn't want to find out.

"Level IX of the Hammer sniper rifle line. It was first introduced by turian-based Elanus Risk Control Services in 2154 and was heavily used by their army in the First Contact War. It can fire 1.3 shots before overheating." I remember those sentences perfectly. She was an excellent teacher.

Her eyes asked me if I understood. I did, but I was crying uncontrollably and the rifle was so far down my throat that I was choking on it, so I just nodded fervently up and down.

"Good." She took the gun out of my mouth. I managed to get my next attempt right and was told to move on to the shotguns.

Hannah Shepard must have known from the moment she was diagnosed with pregnancy that her child would be a soldier; anything else would have been unacceptable. That's why she had to start training me early. While children on earth and human colonies were playing with dolls and stuffed animals, I was on an Alliance station, being educated in their chain of command. When they were learning times tables and division, I was being taught how to most efficiently kill a turian. I fired my first practice gun at age six. I moved on to real ones two years later. It wasn't until I enlisted at age eighteen that I found out that this was not considered to be a normal childhood. Why that is, I still don't understand.

I was just another obstacle in her climb up the career ladder. Due to her efficiency and professionalism both in and out of the field, and her importance to Alliance operations, her higher-ups decided to cover up the fact that she became pregnant with me by fooling around with her own XO, a rare breach in her regular discipline and professionalism. But seeing as I found this out by eavesdropping at a conversation between two particularly chatty crew members on my mother's ship when I was seven, they could hardly have done a perfect job.

I guess this was why she drilled me so viciously; she couldn't allow me to cause her any further humiliation. I had to be the perfect soldier, I had to be her. I can't fault her; I would have done the exact same thing, and she did an admirable job.

I don't want to, but I have to look at the rifle again. Sam said she moved the box to the living room when I sat down at the dinner table, but the underlying uncertainty in her voice told me she'd seen what was inside it. I doubt she knows what it is, but I suppose that a rifle being sent to her house would freak her out whether it was an M-7 or a Vindicator.

I open the cardboard box carefully. I don't know why I do it 'carefully', there's just no other way for me to open it. The Lancer is still there, lying unmoved at the bottom. The idea of touching it, of picking it up, is too foreign to even strike me. I just stare at it uselessly. I can almost feel it staring back at me. A taunting, malicious grin is spreading slowly across its barrel. A pair of small, wicked eyes forms over the laughing mouth. The image my mind is creating is borderline cartoonish, but I do not find it funny. I am no longer asking whose it is or why it was brought to me. I am no longer aware of what I am thinking.

"What is that?" Sam is standing behind me. Her voice is stern. This is one of the few things I am scared of.

"It's an M-7 Lancer."

"That's not what I meant." That wasn't what she meant. "Why is it in our house?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

She's interrogating me, and she doesn't believe me. That's what hurts me the most. I'm good at lying, I've been doing it all my life, married life being no exception. I lie to my therapist, to myself when I pretend to care about Carina and to Sam when I tell her I am happy. And never once has Sam called me out on my bullshit. Not because she's stupid, I think she sees through a lot of it, but because she loves me. It's the easiest way to tell if someone does. But now, for the first time in a long while, I'm telling the truth. And for the first time in a long while she doesn't trust me.

She walks around the couch, stopping in front of the coffee table, making it the only thing that's separating us. The panoramic windows behind her are pitch black. Somewhere, the dog is barking.

"Are you ever honest?"

I look up at her, five years old again, pitiful and pleading. "Sam, I'm telling you the truth."

"You don't know what that word means." She's releasing months of pent up frustration with me all at once and she's doing it in short, mildly irritated sentences. But it still hurts, because this is the first time she's wounding me intentionally. If I was a different person I would be crying right now, but that's not something that I do.

"I love you, Sam." I've never meant this more than I do right now.

Her eyes widen when I say that, they widen with anger. She begins to exit the room.

"Where's Carina?" I don't know why ask this. If I'm trying to show I give a shit about the girl then I am actually lying.

"Why do you care?" The kitchen door slams shut.

I'm lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, wide awake. It's the one thing from my childhood I never seemed to grow out of. Sam went up the stairs to spend the night with Carina. Most nights the girl wakes her up and asks Sam to sleep in her bed and keep her comfort, so I'm used to going to bed alone. But I've never liked it. Not since I met Thane.

This was the first time we've fought, and it was probably the most timid argument I've ever partaken in. It was also more painful than any gunfight I've ever fought. But really, the last few months in this house have felt like one long, passive war. I prefer regular wars, the kind you win with armies and firepower.

It wasn't marriage that did this to us. I know this because the first thirty days after the wedding, our 'honeymoon', as Sam called it, were heaven. We didn't go anywhere. We had just found our (Sam's) dream house and most of earth was still in pieces anyway. Neither of us had an urge to see what it had to offer. We were more than happy in the suburbs of Oxford.

We'd spend entire days inside, but they'd be perfect. We'd order whatever food we wanted to eat and she'd try to teach me how to play chess and various strategy games, but her lessons would only last ten minutes or so before we were both on the floor, fucking like animals. I don't think we finished a single game. These days it isn't the same, it's almost as if it's a part of some sort of routine we have. And when Sam moans my name it sounds habitual, as if it no longer holds any meaning to her.

Sam was the one who wanted to live here. For all I cared we could have moved into my apartment on the Citadel, but Sam had "fallen in love with the city" when she went to university there and I wasn't about to oppose what she wanted. Before I was detained in Vancouver I had only been to Earth once, and I did not much care for it.

I shouldn't have reminded myself of that. It's not a memory I like to dwell on.

I was ten and it was my first time meeting a relative. I had been excited when I found out we were going to visit Earth, but so far I was not impressed. Copenhagen seemed to be little more than hallways, white metal tubes, and docking bays (we did not go outside once during our two days on the planet, I saw my first tree at age 18). Nothing I hadn't seen in space.

I assumed Alice, the woman hunched over in the hospital bed, was my grandmother, though my mother never fully explained our connection to her. She was white as a ghost. Her skin, wrinkles, clothes and eyes; all of it was completely white. The room followed the same theme and the feeble old woman in front me almost disappeared into the bleached walls and machinery. She looked like a crumpled piece of paper. She didn't look at me. She didn't look at anything. She just looked.

I don't know how long my mother and I sat there. It felt like hours, but it was probably closer to fifteen minutes. I remember closely studying my mother, trying to decipher the expression she eyed Alice with, but her demeanour was as cold and unreadable as always. It did, however, seem slightly forced; as if it wasn't coming to her as naturally as when she looked at me.

I was scared, of Alice, of my mother, of earth. Like I said, I was pathetic as a child. I shut my eyes and listened to the medical equipment and the clock on the wall's desynchronized noises. I wanted to leave. Earth was a horrible place and I missed the vast nothing of space.

"Xiola, bring Alice her medicine. It's in the bathroom cabinet."

I shot out of my chair at my mother's words. I always did when she gave me an order, but in that moment I would have been happy for any reason escape the tenseness of the room. I hurried into the bathroom. I had to pee, so I locked the door and sat down on the toilet seat and began to urinate. The bathroom was also completely and unnervingly white, but Alice and Hannah Shepard weren't there, so I liked it better than the bedroom. I didn't want to go back out there. On the wall in front of me I could see the mirror on the cabinet reflecting the ceiling. Inside it was Alice's medicine. 'She can wait a few minutes more', I thought. 'I don't have to go back just yet'.

When I returned with the medicine Alice's machine had stopped beeping. If Hannah Shepard's face had a trace of an expression on it, that expression was relief.

The glowing digits on Sam's alarm clock display three red zeroes and a four, but not in that order. The TV in the living room is on. It can't be Carina, Sam tried letting her watch cartoons once; she didn't show the slightest interest. This leaves only one other possibility.

I have an incredible urge to go out there and talk to Sam, but I know I shouldn't. I'm probably the last person she wants to see right now. Scratch that, I'm definitely the last person she wants to see right now.

And what would I even say? I'm sorry? The only person who's ever made me stoop so low as to say those words is Hannah Shepard, and furthermore, sorry for what? For agreeing to act out this childish vision of a marriage with her? For following her every command and sacrificing everything, my career, my life, just to make her happy?

I breathe out. Sam is the exception, I remind myself. Sam is the exception.

I don't realise that I'm climbing out of bed until my naked feet make contact with the icy floorboards. They're still not used to the feeling of hardwood under their soles. Sam sees something in elaborate, old-fashioned mansions with wooden everything. I don't.

As I drag my body through the kitchen and towards the noise of the TV I still don't have a motive, but when has that ever stopped me before. Or actually, maybe I do. Maybe I'm worried that if I don't confront Sam now I'll never see her again. Maybe I'm so paranoid, so in love with her that I think she will start filing divorce papers against me after one petty argument.

Probably.

She's standing with her back to me, facing the colossal TV mounted on the wall. I'm not used to seeing it on, I can't remember the last time I turned it on. It's when I see her like that, standing alone in the living room with her arms unconsciously wrapped around her own waist, that I remember that it wasn't just a petty argument. Not to us, because this wasn't how things were supposed to play out. Our marriage, our future together, this wasn't how Sam had envisioned it.

The screen is the only source of light in the room, and it's casting an abnormally blue glow over us. It's showing a familiar scene: burnt corpses lying among the ruins of a devastated building, cranes lifting away the rubble, only to find more bodies and wreckage underneath it. This is all I need to see to know that it's a news vid. It seems all they show these days is footage of the on-going rebuilding efforts all over Earth. I can hear the newscasters voice clearly now, but none of it registers. All I'm interested in is Sam.

I stop when I'm about five metres away from Sam. She has undoubtedly heard me approaching by now, but she hasn't said anything or turned to look at me. I was hoping she would, since I still don't know what to say. I stand there for a couple of minutes, unsure what to do as I feel the tension rise between us once again, even though I can't see her face. Finally, I'm forced to speak out, if only to stop the tension from rising even higher.

"What city is that?"

"London." Her answer comes immediately, and there's an indisputable tinge of discord in her voice, causing it to fall into a strange combination of sadness, sympathy and resentment.

"Oh."

Silence falls between us again.

There are countless things I want - have - to tell her, but I don't know what any of them are, so I just stand there. I've killed Reapers, destroyed an entire solar system, but I can't set this right.

"…Hannah Shepard…"

Until now, every sound coming from the TV had gone completely over my head, but those two words singlehandedly drag me back to reality. "…what?"

Sam's body twitches. "They're talking about your mother." The strain on her voice is even heavier this time. "They found her body."

My feet hammer against the floor as I move to stand next to Sam, my eyes wide and fixed on the screen. It's hard for me to make out the words, but I manage to catch enough to understand.

"…London…Whitecross Street…recently uncovered bodies…badly burnt…DNA testing revealed…Rear Admiral…nah Shepard…Systems Alliance…officially declared… dead."

I don't blink once through the entire segment. I'm completely frozen to my spot, unable to move.

They found her body.

Your mother is dead.

Hannah

Shepard

Is

Dead

You knew this, I tell myself. You knew she was dead. But I am slowly coming to realise that I did not. It was the most logical explanation for her disappearance, yes, and so I clung to it like a security blanket while secretly waiting to hear it be officially confirmed. But this, just like everything in my life it seems, is not how it was supposed happen.

This isn't how I imagined what my mother's death would feel like. I'm not sure how I had imagined it, but it was not like this. Maybe I didn't imagine it at all; after all, I haven't spoken to her in over a decade. Once I officially joined the Alliance she no longer needed to keep an eye on me, and when I became the first human spectre and stepped out of her shadow, she no longer held any relevance to my life whatsoever. Needless to say, I haven't given her much thought in the latter half of my life, (Except for lately when I've looked to her parenting for pointers on how to deal with Carina. But unfortunately, though brilliant, the Hannah Shepard parenting method proved ineffective in this house), maybe I just forgot that she was alive. And that she could die.

And more importantly, who the fuck sent me that rifle?

Sam is hugging me. She knows nothing about my mother. When I woke up at the hospital and was informed that my mother was still MIA, I insisted to her that I didn't care. She probably thinks my reaction is due too grief and I don't mind letting her believe that, because this is the first time she's embraced me in weeks.

And still, something about it is wrong. Her compassion isn't real, not quite. Because even though, in her eyes, this is horrible news, it must be getting harder for her to feel sympathy for me. She's doing this because she knows it's what she's supposed to do at a moment like this, not because she wants to.

I don't know how long I stand there. After a while, Sam lets go of me and goes to bed. I'm not sure when that happens either. The broadcast ends, something else comes on, I'm not paying attention. My mind is processing on many things, too many things; so many I can't even focus on one thing. It's all a mess, a big fucking tornado of confusing bullshit and I'm caught right in the middle of it.

And then I realise I'm in the backyard. I didn't notice myself exiting the living room, but I must have been standing here for a long time because my body is shivering and the otherwise damp and dewy grass feels almost dry beneath my feet. I don't go out here much. The trees behind the picket fence are high as mountains and above them hangs Earth's black, ever looming sky. It unsettles me, it always has. It looks down on me the way my mother always did, the same way Sam looked at me this evening.

The dog, which had been sleeping on the veranda, stands up and looks at me accusingly before quietly slipping back inside through the glass door and I am left all alone in the night. My mother, Sam and her daughter, I'm tired of thinking about nothing but these women, and after I finally manage to push them from my thoughts I'm left with just one word that for some reason echoes in my skull.

Whitecross.

A/N: Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up, but I ended being a lot happier with it than the previous one. Unfortunately, the next one might take even longer, now that my vacation is over and I have less time to write.

Also, thanks everyone who's taken the time to review. I really, really appreciate it.