Chapter 3: Videotape

The little white circle spins and spins on the screen as the video loads. I groan impatiently. My fingers run through my hair. I bite and chew on my lip and the skin breaks just as the first frame flashes across the flat surface. A gasp wrings its way out of my throat and my heart drops halfway down into my gut. I pull my knees up to my breasts where I sit on the floor, wrap my arms around them and fix my eyes on the screen. This is going to be interesting.

When I woke up today I needed a hallex just to get out of bed. That's never a good sign. The morning that followed was uncomfortable, more so than usual. Sam was cautious around me. Instead of being too captivated by her daughter to even notice me, she now shot hesitant glances at me whenever she thought I wasn't looking. But I was always looking, because consuming myself in her disinterest in me was the only thing that would keep my mind of Hannah Shepard.

When Sam said goodbye before she went to work, I think the look in her eyes was… pity. I'm not sure though, I don't think anyone has looked at me that way before, and I would never have thought Sam would be the first to do so. Up until the war ended she was looking up at me, admiring me. I was the one leading our relationship. She was meek, adorable, mine. Now she's none of these things, but I still love her, because there is no one else I can love.

Whitecross

But between dropping Carina off at school and Sam coming home in the evening I was left with a lot of time to kill, and I could only rewind my feelings about Sam so many times before Hannah Shepard started pushing her way back into my mind. I snorted a line of creeper and took the dog for a walk (something I tell Sam I do every day when it's really more like once a week). It was warm outside, far warmer than I'd been made to expect English fall would be. Some of our neighbors were outside in their gardens, watering flowers or conversing with each other over their fences. Their presence annoyed me. Sometimes the soundproof walls in our house make me forget that we're not alone out here.

The dog led me down the suburban streets and for a while the drugged haze I had put myself in provided a decent distraction from my mother, but then I saw her standing in a neighbor's window with medals pinned to the chest on her dress blues and I turned around and started dragging the dog back to the house.

They found her body.

The package was still lying on the coffee table in the living room, taunting me. I tried not to look at it, but somehow the thing still managed to veer itself into my field of vision. I felt sick. I needed a better distraction. I needed to find something.

Whitecross Whitecross Whitecross

And then I thought of Thane. He would do perfectly.

It's not as much as I don't think about him these days, it's more as if he's constantly there in the back of my consciousness but never steps into the foreground. I've made a conscious decision to keep it that way, because if I didn't he would tear me apart.

For the entirety of the time the Alliance had me locked up in Vancouver all I did was think about him, our night together on the Normandy, if he was still alive somewhere out there or if Kepral's syndrome had already killed him. It nearly drove me insane.

But then the Reapers attacked. It was a welcome interruption, one I had been looking forward to.

Actually, sometimes Thane does step into the foreground. He does it almost every night in my dreams. They're childish dreams where he's still alive and loves me. On rare occasions he enters my waking thoughts too; usually when I'm in a shitty place, and I can't control myself. I'll tell myself that it's all his fault, that he changed me, made me forget everything Hannah Shepard taught me. Before I met him I was stronger. Before I met him I never asked for help. Before I met him I was still Xiola Shepard.

And I'm right about all of it.

Sometimes I wonder if I would feel the same about Sam if I hadn't met Thane first. At first I thought I was just using her, just like I had used Kaidan, but after Thane's death I began to notice my feelings for her. It surprised me at first. For a while it even angered me. Until then Thane had been the only person I'd met that I felt something other than disdain for, and I felt that my newfound attachment to my Comm Specialist somehow diminished what we had shared.

But my admiration for Samantha Traynor kept growing and in the end I had to give in, because she did what no drug or liquor in the galaxy could do: she made me forget about Thane. That's why I proposed to her before I boarded that shuttle to London, if she was still there after the smoke and dust cleared, then I wasn't going to let anything tear her away from me.

This is the point where I always stop going down this line of thought because I start questioning if I really love Sam or if I'm just using her, which I'm not. Sometimes I really do wish Thane and I had never met. It only complicated things.

But even the galaxy's most skillful assassin couldn't hold off Hannah Shepard forever, and in the end I needed something more tangible than reminiscing. Which is why I'm now sitting here on the floor, barely breathing as Thane talks to me in his deep, soft voice. Seeing him again feels strange, I've seen him in my thoughts and dreams, but seeing him like this, a real moment he lived caught on film… I can't fully describe it, but it stings inside of me.

Thane tried to send these videos to me when the Alliance held me captive, but those bastards didn't allow me to have any communication with the outside world. I didn't even know about it until Kolyat sent them to me in an email after Thane's death. The message also stated that he wanted to hold a memorial for his father; he wanted to hold it in my apartment. He wanted to share him with people who didn't love him, who had never even known him. I obviously couldn't allow that to happen.

When the first video started playing and I heard his voice coming out of the speakers of Anderson's television I started crying uncontrollably. I hadn't cried since childhood, but I was in too much anguish, too unfamiliar with the emotion, to be ashamed. I had to watch it again after I calmed down so that I could hear him clearly.

I haven't watched them since; I decided it was better to forget him, but unfortunately I wasn't able to do that. Even still, my lips are moving along to his words, mouthing them as if I know them by heart. Maybe it's the drugs still lingering in my system, but it almost feels like he's here, sitting right across from me in my living room. I know he's not, so I resist the urge to reach out and touch him, but I want to. I really want to.

"Siha, I have prepared emails, sent videos, even composed paper letters. I know this will not reach you, but it must be said.

I'd been lost in thought and his voice catches me off guard. It dawns on me…

"I once had no reason to live, then suddenly I had two; you and Kolyat. Circumstances keep us apart, so Kolyat takes much of my time, but… I don't know if it's obvious to humans…"

…this is the fourth message.

"Fist slams the table. She comes to me, fingers cool and soothing. 'Thane, be alive with me tonight.'"

This is the fourth message.

"I cannot forget you. That is what humans say. With us, it is a state called tu fira. 'Lost in another'"

Sadness morphs into panic.

"It can consume us. In case you are in the same pain, I want to say…"

This is why I never returned to these videos.

"…you have made my life better. You gave me you, Kolyat… Even the Omega-4 relay made me feel… purposeful."

This is why it hurts so much. This was a bad idea. This was a very bad idea.

"We are alive, siha. And when we are not, I will meet you across the sea."

No. I'll let my mother in I'll let Hannah Shepard in I just don't want to think about that please I'd rather not remember those things I'm already pitiful and emotional as it is I-

"Get out!"

My body was draped over him, shielding his lifeless body, protecting him from his son and the doctor. I don't know if I was crying, but I probably was. Thane always made me look like such a damn fool.

"Commander, please…" The prayer book was shaking in Kolyat's hands. The bald doctor was cowering behind him.

I turned my head and looked at them. "Get. Out."

They did.

I stayed with him for three more hours, and then I abandoned him.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I just wanted to have sex with her, think about something else for a while. I didn't want to sit on the end of my bed in my underwear while Samantha held my hands in hers. She never even met him. How could she understand?

But for the first time since childhood, I couldn't say anything. I just sat there and let her try to comfort me, and as the minutes ticked on I realized I didn't want her to leave. In the end I buried my face in her hair for a solid thirty minutes. Then I told her I loved her.

"Sam, I want to ask you something."

Everyone in the hangar stopped and stared at me. Garrus, Liara, Javik, every last one of them. I didn't care. The war had gone on for months; they could wait another minute before touching down in London.

Sam nodded. I took her hands and said something I never thought I'd say.

"Will you marry me?"

The silence became even heavier, that is, until someone behind me whistled in mock astonishment, undoubtedly Vega. I reminded myself to leave the bastard for dead on earth if I got the chance. Sadly, I didn't.

Sam's gaze dropped to the floor, some of her black hair falling in front of her face. Her first word came out a sob, but after a few second she managed a yes.

"Good."

I kissed her and stepped aboard the shuttle. The squad followed me.

I should have given in to my mother from the start. She always wins. The problem is I just don't know what to do with her or how to feel about her death. I really don't have much knowledge about her, just unpleasant memories and bad dreams.

I don't even know what she looked like the last fifteen years.

I pull myself up; I walk into the bathroom and wash my face. Then I sit down on the toilet lid. I tap my omni-tool and pull up the extranet. I type in her name.

There are only two pictures. There are only two pictures of my mother on the entire extranet. I start laughing. I laugh for a few moments. It feels strange.

I touch the first photo and a two dimensional hologram of it starts hovering above my forearm. Now that I see it enlarged I'm not even sure it's my mother. It's a formal portrait that looks like it was taken for an ID or some kind of registration. She's dressed in her Alliance uniform and looks intently into the camera, but there's something about her eyes. They look tired. She has wrinkles in her forehead and around her mouth and under her eyes and her hair is closer to grey than black. She's not the Hannah Shepard I remember, not the woman I spent sixteen years cowering in fear of. It does make me feel a little better though, that she didn't die a soldier, but an old fucking hag.

I pull up the other photo. In this one she looks how I remember her: fierce. Fierce and beautiful. She always acted like she didn't care about anything except her job, but I could tell she cared about how she looked as well. Those are the two most important parts of a person's life, their career and their looks. She taught me both of those things.

And then I notice, she kind of looks like me.

I stand up and walk up to the mirror. I hold up my omni-tool and look at its distorted reflection in the mirror. I look at the photo. I look at myself. I look at the photo. I look at myself.

She looks exactly like me.

I mean, I know she's my mother, but she looks exactly like me, and it's freaking me out.

I decide to leave it at this: I thought I didn't feel anything for my mother, then the bitch went and died and it turned out I that I do feel… something for her. There, that's enough psychoanalyzing myself for today.

I check the time; I've been in here for over an hour. I pull the lid up and take a shit. Then I take off my clothes and take a shower. Then I wait for Sam.

Whitecross

I watch as Sam makes dinner, something healthy and nutritious. 'Carina is a growing girl', as she has a penchant for saying. I wonder what she's thinking. What she's thinking about me, to be specific. I met her parents at our wedding and she seemed to have a regular, healthy relationship with them. It makes sense that she'd assume that my mother and I were the same.

Still, whether she's so quiet to give me room to grieve or because she's still angry about the rifle, I don't know. Either way, it's not much of a difference from our usual day-to-day relationship. I look down at my right arm. A miniature of the photo of my mother is still visible on the omni-tool's interface. I get the feeling Sam doesn't want me to say anything either, but I'm curious about something.

"Do you know what my mother looks- looked like?"

"Um…" Caught off guard by the question, she turns her head slightly without looking straight at me. Her voice is hesitant and just a little bit shaky. "I've seen her in news vids. They showed a photo of her last night, before you came."

"What did she look like?"

"I don't know, she had black hair and she… she looked kind of like you, I guess."

I knew it.

She looks down at her preparations without questioning why I would ask her that, but then she turns back to me almost immediately. "You know, your gun is still lying out in the open, in the same room Carina is in?"

What does she think the kid's gonna do, shoot the dog?

"Sure."

I don't see Carina in the living room, but the box is still there in the exact same spot as before. I look down into it, at the rifle, the M-7 Lancer, possibly Hannah Shepard's M-7 Lancer… no, no more of that shit. I'm done with her.

My hands reach down, and for a second I want to wrap my fingers around the Lancer instead of the box, but I manage to stop myself just in time. I haven't held a firearm in so long. I miss it, feeling the weight in my hands, having all that power and control. I could pick it up, but what would be the point in that? I haven't checked if it's loaded, but even if it is, it's not like I could fire it. What would I even shoot at?

Carina?

I definitely need to put this thing away.

I can't think of any other place to put it, so I shove it in under our bed. When get up from the floor and turn around I see Carina staring at me like she always does. For a second my brain thinks she's my mother, which is fucked up 'cause she's six.

"What is that?" she asks.

I reach in with a leg and push the box just a little further in.

"Nothing." Her expression doesn't change. "Sam's probably done with dinner now, come on."

I keep waiting for Sam to say something to me. I don't really have a reason for thinking she will, I just want her to. I'm probably just feeling lonely. Loneliness, that's another thing I can blame Thane for.

But it's after midnight now and she still hasn't said anything to me, so I'm guessing the chances of tonight not being like every other are pretty low. Sam is sitting in the light of her bedside lamp, reading. The scene is so domestic it's disturbing. At least she's not wearing glasses.

She is wearing a t-shirt though, another horrible habit she's fallen into. First it was underwear, and now she puts on that big, horrible gray thing (which does a fantastic job of hiding her tits) when she goes to bed.

She glances at me for a second when I climb into the bed. It's a very neutral glance. It doesn't tell me anything. Eventually Sam turns the light out and the room goes completely dark. I turn over and let my head sink down into the pillow. I hope tonight isn't going to be one of those where I lie awake until the early morning; I've done too much thinking today as it is.

I hear Sam shift just a little behind my back and I remember that there's still something I need to ask her. I breathe in.

"Does the word Whitecross mean anything to you?"

The pause before she answers tells me that this is something I should know. "That's the street they found Carina on.

"That's the street they found you on."

A/N: This chapter was such a bitch to write. Not much happens in it, most of it takes place in Xiola's and she can be pretty hard to write sometimes. It also required her to be introspective and self-critical and she's usually not either of those things, so that made it even harder. I'm still not completely happy with it, there's a lot of telling and not much showing which I feel kind of bad. I didn't want Xiola to just randomly convey information about her past, so I tried to give her a reason for doing so with the rifle and the videos. Not sure if it worked, but at least I finally got it done. Thanks for reading.