This chapter contains spoilers for the Leviathan DLC, in case you haven't played that yet. PS, who else is excited for the Omega DLC?

Chapter Eleven: Down Into the Belly of the Beast

Normally, this would be the part where I thought up something really clever to say. People would laugh until they peed. Young kids would look up at me with admiration. A whole harem of women would swoon.

Really, I got nothing.

Shepard and I were close – not as close as she was with some of the people on board, but close. I stuck by her, first because even though she could be a real hard ass, she didn't care that I was the pilot with the gimpy bones so long as I could do my job (and I could, by the way). Then, because she saved my life at the expense of her own – which is a long story and not one I really want to rehash. Finally, because she was my friend and she was wading into a shitstorm of epic proportions, so why not go in style?

I was angry at her for a long time. She saved us, but not all of us. I get it. She made the tough call that nobody else would – or could – make. I know she did the best she could. She always did – always went just that teeny bit outside her comfort zone to make sure that things turned out as best as possible. She tried to make others do the same. And I think that was part of it – my anger, I mean. She was Commander Fucking Shepard, and if anyone could end the war with everyone intact, hell, it was her.

She didn't. There were sacrifices. The galaxy better be grateful they got her instead of me, because I don't know if I could've done what she did. Man, did it hurt. And once I pulled myself out of my own ass, out of my own grief, I remembered that every call she made hurt her just as much as it hurt anyone.

God, I wish I could hate her. I wish anyone could hate her – besides, you know, mercs or Cerberus. People whose opinions matter. I wish they could hate her.

But she's just too good, y'know?

Go talk to James Vega. There's really nothing for me to say.

o-o-o

Life was pretty much hell at this point. James had made a play, and it failed him. But Shepard, she wasn't berating his ass, wasn't court martialing him (if there were still trials going on what with the whole world going to shit), wasn't even yelling at him. In fact, she was doing diddly squat. She was pretending he didn't exist. He didn't get to go along when she made that stupid trip to rendezvous with the krogan, or the one after that aboard the geth dreadnought.

Really, the only shit he'd taken had been from Whiskey, who'd come down a few hours after the mission, his expression livid and his body glowing like a Christmas tree. "What the hell were you thinking, Lieutenant?" he demanded. "How come you didn't let us know that she was injured?"

James had taken a sip of his coffee. "Told Stitches," he said. "After that, it was in her court."

The Major hadn't liked that, not one bit. "What if she'd died down there? Where would we be then?"

"Heartbroken," said James plainly, turning his back on the Major and waiting for some biotic burst to twist him in two. The moments passed by in silence, until he heard the thud of army boots walking away. Good. Let the bastard chew on that. There were more people on board than him who loved Shepard. The guy even admitted that he didn't loved Shepard properly. Jesus.

When the quarians were all regrouping, getting their supplies sorted out for returning to Rannoch, whatever, Shepard decided they were going on an archaeological survey around the galaxy. Apparently, some doctor had evidence that something had killed a Reaper once upon a time, and Shepard, well, she wanted to know what the hell this something was. So did James, for that matter. Anything that could take down one of those fuckers was something he wanted in his corner, thanks.

So that was why he took a shuttle down to the doc's old laboratory without asking for permission. Shepard wouldn't have given it anyways, and he wasn't in the mood to be pretend he was fine with that. And that look on her face when she came through the door and saw him standing next to that creepy husk head? All slack jawed and then buttoned up tight? Yeah, he'd be lying if he said he didn't get a little kick out of that.

"James," she said, her voice too casual. "What are you doing here?"

"Heard you were close to nabbing one of these things," he replied easily, mostly because it was the truth. "I wanted to see what you dug up."

She frowned slightly at that, but in the end, she only shrugged and said, "Fair enough," before wandering over to talk with Ann. Not the best response, but hey, he couldn't really afford to be picky right now, could he?

Ann was hunched over the rail that separated her from the galaxy map. Shepard walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Ann," she said, "I know this is hard, but if there's anything more you can tell us, I need to know." Shepard's hands clung white-fisted to the railing.

"There's nothing more I can tell you," said Ann with a sigh, pushing herself straight and pulling back her shoulders. James recognized that stance. A lifetime of that stance and a stint in the military will get you real acquainted with the body language for someone who's about to do something crazy. Hell, Shepard wore that stance pretty much every fucking day. "But maybe I can show you."

Shepard crossed her arms and skepticism flickered over her face. "What are you saying?"

"The artifact only sends out a signal when Leviathan is controlling someone," said Ann. "So let it control me. We can trace the signal."

Jaw working, Shepard considered the woman in front of her, fingers dancing along her own arms. Finally she said, "I don't like it, but we're out of options."

"You know as well as anyone that we need to find this thing, just like you know how Leviathan will react when threatened," said Ann, wandering over to the creepy orb thing. The woman's hands were bunched next to her sides. "You need to find a way to stop the Reapers, and I need to find the thing that killed my father."

"We still don't know what we're looking for," hedged Shepard.

"Then let's find out," said Ann, and took a seat in front of the orb.

James, he wasn't around for Cerberus resurrections or Prothean mind beacons, but hell, even he could spot the flaw in the plan. And even if she didn't want to hear what he had to say, he was going to say it anyways. "Commander," he said, "this thing we're doing with Ann… It sounds dangerous as hell."

Shepard sighed and dropped her head into her hand for a moment. "Noted," she said, then turned to Ann. "This is pretty gutsy."

"I don't know about guts," replied Ann with a breathy laugh, and James could tell even as he came to stand behind her, that she was scared shitless. "Crazy, maybe."

"Then you're in good company," said Shepard with the ghost of a smile.

"Don't worry," added James, pressing a hand to Ann's shoulder. She was shaking. "I'm going to be right here."

"Okay," she said, "I'm ready."

What happened next, Jesus, he'd have dreams about it for years he was sure. He dropped the shield and it was like something crawled inside Ann's skin to use her as a puppet. She might've been shaking before, but now she was pretty much vibrating with energy, and not in a good way. That booming, deep voice came from Ann's tiny body, even as it bucked against James' strength. Shepard, she seemed unmoved by the entire thing, going toe to toe with the thing inside Ann, with Leviathan, like this was one of her regular showdowns and not some creepy possession.

"EDI, do we have enough?" asked Shepard.

"Partial lock," said EDI.

"You heard her, we've got enough," said James, straining against Ann's flailing body. "I'm hitting the shields."

"Belay that, Lieutenant," snapped Shepard, and he whirled to meet her gaze head on, anger unfurling like some huge beast in his chest. Didn't help that he saw that same anger in Shepard's eyes. She slammed a hand down next to Ann and spoke to the Leviathan, "We can beat them. We can win this."

"The Cycle cannot be broken."

"You're wrong," snarled Shepard. James didn't see her expression, charged as he was with holding down Ann's body, but the only time he'd ever heard Shepard speak like that was with Cerberus. It was rage, pure and simple.

"Maintain connection to narrow the search."

Ann's body was like a ragdoll in his arms. James wove his arms around her chest, sure he was going to have bruises in a few hours from the way her body kept slamming against his own. Something wet trickled onto his arm, and as he glanced down, he noticed it was blood. Now his own anger was mixed with fear.

"I'm stopping this," he said.

"Back off!" shouted Shepard, eyes blazing. Then, to Leviathan: "Where are you?" When she got no response, she pushed her face in close to Ann's and repeated, "Where are you?"

"Beyond reach," slurred the Leviathan.

Glass shattered around him as her body jerked forward out of his gasp. He dimly heard Shepard call his name and remembered the switch. He flipped the shields back on then bounded over to Ann who was slumped on the floor. Shepard stood over her, hands open beside her, but she didn't move. Her eyes were fixed to Ann… who wasn't doing so good. She was bleeding and unconscious.

"Shit," said James, squatting beside her and moving some of the hair out of the doctor's face.

Shepard swallowed. "EDI, update."

Who the fuck was this woman? He glared up at Shepard. "You want a sitrep? Are you kidding me? Look at her!"

But Shepard kept her back to him. "I got it Lieutenant," she said. "EDI, we got a location?"

James didn't hear much of what was said, and he didn't care. He lifted Ann into his arms and couldn't help but notice how light she was in comparison to Shepard. The doctor wasn't his type, not by a long shot, but seeing her like that… He couldn't help himself when he said, "I hope it was worth it, Commander."

"It will be," she said, but she still didn't look at him.

"See you back on the Normandy," he muttered, and was gone.

Once he'd made sure that Ann was being seen, he did just that. EDI had input the coordinates so the Normandy was off shortly thereafter. James lay in his bunk, hands behind his head, eyes closed, and still all he could see was Ann's unconscious face. His muscles ached and his head pounded, and God, did he wish this had nothing to do with Shepard because he couldn't think about the whole thing without wanting to throw up or smash something or both simultaneously.

The woman he'd fallen in love with, she was sensitive and kind and badass and tough and all of those things at once. And she hadn't been in that room at all. In James' mind, it wasn't just Ann who'd been possessed, but Shepard too. Something had been wearing her face, making her choices. This couldn't have been the same woman who consoled that kid David, who cured the genophage, who nearly died protecting those scientists and who shaved her head after an old demon admitted he liked it. The woman in that lab, she'd been cold, and while Shepard could put on a stony front at times – hell, most of the time – she was never that.

But Ann's face flashed through his mind. The doctor at the hospital hadn't seemed optimistic that she'd pull through. The words permanent vegetative state had been thrown about, and James didn't have to be a doctor to know that was fucking bad.

The door hissed open, and there she was. Shepard glanced once at him, then wandered to the back of the dormitory. He heard her tell the other few crew member who were working to scram, and watched the confusion and curiosity war on their faces. There was going to be some new fuel for scuttlebutt.

James didn't know what to expect. He didn't move from his bunk, just watched Shepard's legs wander back over to him. She stood there, her face obscured by the bunk above him, but he made no effort to see her face. Truthfully, he wasn't sure he could look at her right now. The lighting was dim, and for a while neither said anything. For his part, he just listened to her breathe and wondered what the hell she was playing at.

In a very small voice, she asked, "Is Ann going to be all right?"

And because that was the stupidest fucking question he'd ever heard, he snapped, "No. Not even close, Shepard."

Her breath inhaled sharply. "James," she began.

"Don't," he said, his voice hard. All that anger he'd felt in the lab, all that anger that had built up and gone nowhere, it all started seeping out his pores. The last time he'd been this angry, he'd killed a few batarians. Now? He didn't know what to do, so he let it come out through his words. "Don't even fucking try. That was bullshit, Shepard, and you know it."

"James," she tried again, but he was suddenly sitting up, pushing out of his bunk, past her and out into the open. He still couldn't look at her, didn't want to see what was on her face or what wasn't, because either it would diffuse his anger – and he really, really wanted to be angry right now – or it would make him angrier, and no matter how lenient Shepard might be, he didn't think she'd excuse a subordinate taking a swipe at her.

"You're supposed to be a fucking hero, Shepard," he said. "What happened down there… You used her. She was a means to an end. A commodity. What you did to her… You were no better than Cerberus."

The statement fell like a cluster bomb between them. James waited for the fallout, for the impossible force that was Shepard to come sweeping in his direction, but it never did. There was a slump, and when he glanced back, she was sitting on the ground, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at a fixed point somewhere in front of her.

"Have you been keeping up with the reports, Lieutenant?"

James frowned harder, taking a step towards her. "I don't understand what the hell this has to do with Ann, Commander."

Shepard continued on as through she hadn't heard him. "The estimated galactic death toll each day has reached approximately ten million people," she said. "How many people is that a second? How many have died since we started this conversation?"

This was getting real morbid, but James could see where she was going so he decided to head her off. "If you're saying that her life meant less in the long run, I'm sorry Shepard, but that's fucking sick."

"I'm saying her life was precious," said Shepard, words fuzzy with anger and something else. "I'm saying, in a perfect world, I would never have had to do that to her. But time is running out, and I don't have weeks to comb every system in that sector for an ancient weapon that doesn't want to be found."

He was fully prepared to keep being angry until she looked at him, and those blue eyes were bright. Her jaw was clamped and one tear stole down her face. That… James didn't know what to do with that. This was Commander Kayleigh Shepard. She hadn't even cried when she'd been near shot to death. Hadn't cried when the whole fucking world had claimed her a traitor. Hadn't cried when she'd left Earth. Hadn't cried when Mordin or Thane had died. In fact, James couldn't ever recall seeing actual tears on her face.

And here she was, crying for a single woman.

She wiped the tear away, eyes downcast like she was ashamed she let it even be seen. "You once said you would do whatever the fuck was necessary to win this war. Did you mean it?"

Well, fuck. Of course she'd throw that back in his face. "Yeah, but… Jesus, Shepard, that was… I don't know if I could've given that order."

Shepard hoisted herself up, giving her cheeks another wipe down just in case. She stared him straight in the face and smiled, but it wasn't even in the same continent as happy. "That's why I did it. So nobody else had to." Her gaze shifted inward and she nodded to herself. She took a deep breath. "People are counting on me, James. I'm supposed to be this big hero – the one chance to save us all. It's total bullshit, all of it, but people will believe what they want to." She gave a lopsided shrug. "It means I have to be better. Stronger. Less…" She trailed off, and stared at her hands. "Human." She closed them in front of her.

He tried to hang onto what was left of his anger, but it slipped through his fingers like silk. Instead, there was this deep pit where his insides used to be. What he was feeling, he couldn't categorize. For one moment, he thought it might be what it felt like to look into a black hole – awe and sadness and fear and – only in this case, the black hole was a person, and the person was Shepard.

All this time, and he'd never really considered what it would be like to be Shepard. Sure, he'd consoled her, he'd laughed with her, and talked through things with her, but in all that time he spent imagining what it would be like to be in Shepard's place, he never factored in the crippling responsibility. She'd never said anything about it, not once, and damn, but James couldn't picture anything lonelier than a savior at the end of the world.

He didn't know if he could forget what she'd done to Ann, or if she'd even made the right call, but he couldn't argue that she'd done it with the very best intentions in mind. He'd realized recently that she was skirting dangerously close to the edge, but he hadn't thought that maybe that edge was miles back and she was already in a headfirst free fall.

"I'm going to make her sacrifice worth it," Shepard continued. "I promise." Without another word on the matter, she turned and marched out of the room.

And even though James believed her then, he couldn't help but feel alarmed several hours later when she climbed into that submersible ATLAS thing and jumped into the water. It was a suicide run, and though Shepard had an uncanny knack for coming back alive from those, this was a new brand of crazy even for her. He tried to voice his unease, but she and Estaban talked over him and she climbed inside the thing.

"This is fucking stupid," he shouted at her as she fiddled with the controls. She stared at him a moment with those blue eyes, and he suddenly knew what she was thinking. James came close to her new toy and grabbed onto the edge of the cockpit. "You don't need to prove yourself, Shepard, not like this. You dying won't make it better."

"Better move your hand," she said. "It'll get crushed otherwise, and I'll be damn hard to shoot off the Reapers with an assault rifle and only one good hand." She pushed a button and top started to come down, forcing him to jump back with a swear. She opened her mouth, then shut it, taking a handful of lumbering steps towards the ocean.

And then she went down, down, down and he counted the seconds with this own breaths. The feeling was only intensified when she emerged near an hour later after only static on the comm, falling out of the thing with gasps for air and blood running down her face. He ran through the fucking cannibals to get to her, slinging her unconscious form over his shoulder while EDI provided cover fire until he got to the shuttle.

The world seemed to become a blurring white space as he pounded into her chest, forcing her body to recover from whatever the hell had happened down there. When she gasped back into life, it was like everything came back into colour. He pushed her sodden hair out of her face.

"Don't ever do that again," he warned.

Shepard wasn't listening. She grabbed his hand, gasping for breath around her words. "James," she wheezed, "it was worth it. I made it worth something."

He didn't know if the water on her face was from the ocean or from the rain or from her own eyes, and it didn't matter as he clutched her to his chest.

Next Chapter: Shepard does what Shepard does best on Rannoch, and James forces a discussion.