A/N: This one gave me tons of trouble. I've been sitting on it for months. In fact, it's the one that held this whole thing up. I like it and I don't, but I'm a seething mass of neuroses, hoorah! Grrr...
The Illusive Man/Renegade! Femshep: Dark and a bit dirty. I'll call it "M" to be safe.
Hints of Garrus/Renegade! Femshep
He had known he couldn't trust her to fall in line for him, not like Miranda, but he'd funneled billions into her reconstruction nonetheless. He knew about her contact with the Prothean beacon and her crusade against the Reapers. He knew all about Torfan, and some choice bits about her personal history that even the Alliance didn't have on file. Shepard was something of an obsession for him.
Back before that whole affair with the Citadel, she'd caught his eye when she'd slaughtered all those Batarians. It sent a message, not just to the four-eyed bastards, but to the rest of the galaxy. Humans were not to be taken lightly and they weren't afraid to make their own stand.
It was a gesture he admired for its cool efficiency and diplomatic acumen. Initially he thought it a lucky accident, the work of someone who didn't understand battle tactics. He expected her to emerge a broken shell, stricken with PTSD and instability - someone whose guilt would never let her see the bigger picture. Her claims of sentient ships and ancient conspiracies sounded more like the ravings of a madwoman. Her promotion as first human Spectre could be dismissed as a political bone thrown to the Alliance. But she found Cerberus operations. She destroyed the clumsy ones and treated every mission with the same brutal efficiency he'd witnessed on Torfan. And when she'd sacrificed her lover on Virmire, but saved the asari-led Council… He'd known beyond the shadow of doubt she was brilliant.
Aliens flocked to her, and followed her into victory. She was a sign of the times, of what could be. She was unpolished and carried herself like a thug, but her demeanor belied her strategies. She hadn't the subterfuge to be the Illusive Woman, but she was more than just a figurehead to lead humanity. She was the best humanity had to offer and others fell in line because they recognized that. Other species fell in line because they recognized that.
Miranda was jealous, though she denied it. But Miranda was beautiful, brilliant, and infused with a potent mixture of ambition, self-loathing, and loneliness that made her disgustingly easy to manipulate. He knew all her buttons, from the ones in her head, to the one between her legs that brought her screaming and writhing beneath him.
He didn't trust her. He didn't trust any of the women who fascinated him enough to be bedded more than once. But he knew she was his creature, and as long as he gave her what she needed, she would be loyal. He knew how to get under her skin, how to make her love and loathe him at the same time.
Shepard was a different story.
He was not unattractive for his age, but he knew she wouldn't just fall for a pretty face or a tight ass, despite her relationship with Lieutenant Alenko. He was very powerful, some women got off on that alone, but she was a force to be reckoned with, and she knew precisely what she was worth and what she was capable of. His power would not bring her over. And so what he had on her, other than a multi-trillion credit black-ops organization and his own glorious view of a dying star, was his cunning and his machinations.
She was an asset. The queen on his chessboard. The human trump card.
That was all. That was it. There was nothing more.
Oh, and she had a great ass.
"Surveillance…Lawson…AI…sequestered data…" Garrus and Tali were talking, but Shepard had heard all she needed to.
And to be honest, she wasn't surprised in the least.
Mordin and Tali had extracted surveillance tech - bugs, programs, cameras – from her quarters. Tali and Garrus had systematically removed what they could in the private areas of the ship. But someone was replacing them. Someone with a skintight bodysuit and the Illusive Man's arm jammed up her ass making her sing the Cerberus theme song.
Miranda was reading Shepard's messages.
Tali, Garrus, and Shepard were reading, intercepting, and modifying Miranda's messages. And Shepard kept a close eye on her crew.
Yeoman Chambers bore watching. Her notes – psych profiles – were especially interesting. The stark technical jargon and harsh but accurate observations clashed with Chambers' pleasant persona. The girl didn't get her position as ship shrink (and chief Shepard-watcher) by being sweet and effervescent. Come to think of it, she was probably reading Shepard's messages too. It seemed that no one onboard understood the concept of "private terminal."
Save the universe. Advance human interests. Recruit elite aliens to do the dirty work. It was a simple enough plan – she'd done it before, with less funding and a weaker body. It was a sad day when Commander Shepard, N7 marine of the Systems Alliance had to rely on aliens over human aid. Racism wasn't the source of the sentiment – it was personal: years of stellar service, of history, of loyalty were all for nothing. Cerberus rebuilt her stronger than before, and as far as Mordin or Chakwas could tell, they hadn't installed any fail-safe or behavioral protocols. Never mind what Williams said on Horizon, brainwashing wasn't even an option. Shepard always looked at the end result. (Williams lived because the bomb had to go off. Kaidan died because the bomb had to go off. Whether or not she loved him never factored into the equation. It was that simple.)
Shepard found she trusted the aliens more. They didn't have a human complex – as a species (and politically), humanity was a loud brash teenager. Boohoo, no one respects us. Boohoo, we make sacrifices and the Council yanks us around. Boohoo, the aliens are all against us. They weren't necessarily wrong, but they were goddamned whiners who needed to suck it up and deal. No one liked a crybaby. The aliens in her crew (with the exception of teenaged Grunt) didn't have anything to prove. They knew what was at stake and they knew the importance of the mission. No grumbling about speciesism or whatever the fuck politically correct issue some idiot was pushing that week. They did their jobs well and they didn't spout a load of bullshit. It was refreshing really.
Garrus stood at her right hand, Tali at her left. If walking through fire to find Saren hadn't cemented their loyalty, the recent missions had. Tali still held her place on with the Fleet. Sidonis was dead. She would have killed him herself, but that was Garrus's prerogative. They would go to hell and back for her. It was odd, these stirrings of affection, fierce and tight around her heart. She would never say so, but the ties went both ways.
She had never been a paragon of virtue. She'd made her reputation at Torfan and no one would mistake her for anything but a consummate pragmatist. Cerberus's morally reprehensible actions didn't bother her – it was their flagrant irresponsibility and blind fanaticism. Two years ago, their inefficiency and to some degree, their hypocrisy (thorian creepers, rachni slaves, thresher maw experiments – for a pro-human group they certainly were obsessed with alien lifeforms), irritated her. Shepard didn't take too kindly to people shooting at her.
She was even less patient with people who played her.
Chakwas had reminded her that she could have her scars fixed in the medbay. The doctor knew better than to repeat the feel-good bullshit about thinking positive. Shepard would have bet a quad that Chambers had something to do with that claptrap. Shepard declined both options. She had built a reputation on intimidation and brutality. She should damn well look the part. Why waste the platinum? She and Garrus could be a matched set. Add Massani's ugly mug and every merc group in the Terminus systems would piss their armor rusty.
A cold fury settled like a stone in her gut. The pieces of everything were coming together now, falling into place quickly, perfectly, a monstrous gestalt. Shepard berated herself for not seeing it sooner. She'd been outmaneuvered and badly.
"I know that look, Shepard." Garrus lingered by her empty fish tank, pretending to admire its ambient light. "When that hardness comes into your eyes, a lot of people end up dying." His tone was careless, flamboyant, but his gaze remained on her face.
"We are crossing through the Omega Relay, Garrus." She sipped the wine he brought her, more out of politeness than appreciation. Her old comrades had earned a grudging measure of respect and civility, in private of course. In front of those she did not trust, everyone was treated with equal brusqueness. "A lot of people are going to die, no matter what I do."
He tilted his head back. "If that's your motivational speech, you're going to need to work on it some more."
She made a rude noise and stared at the wall.
"It was that bad, huh?" Garrus's mandibles flared as he turned to look at her.
"This has nothing to do with you," she said curtly. "I blew off some steam and now I have things to consider."
If he was a lesser man or a softer one, like Kaidan Alenko, Garrus might have been offended. "Do you want me to leave?"
"If you keep talking, yes." Shepard crossed her legs and leaned back on her couch.
"I'll be here if you need me," Garrus said, and seated himself at her desk, browsing the extranet with practiced silence.
Shepard glowered at her empty fish tank and wondered how well he handled a gun. Those implants in his eyes weren't just for show. The Illusive Man had not survived this long by being weak. But right now, the idea of tearing out those shiny blue eyes and squeezing them between her fingers, it made her very happy inside.
She'd gotten very good at that on Torfan. Batarians took a lot of pride in the number of their eyes. Once upon a time, Shepard had loved her family very much… Mindoir was another world, two or three lifetimes ago. Torfan only slightly less distant. But there were still batarians everywhere. Idly, she wondered if her fingers remembered how to execute that maneuver.
She tapped them together, flexing each segment. Reflex flowed through her knuckles and they popped loudly, lacking the sound of slimy jelly, crushed lens, and screaming batarian.
There were some things she would never forget.
Shepard still didn't have the perfect fix on the Illusive Man's angle. And for someone she'd never met, she spent far too much time thinking about him. Even with the surveillance equipment in her quarters disabled, Shepard still felt his presence here, from the insignia on her uniform to the tiny logo stamped on the tiles of her floor. Cerberus was everywhere, and she could not forget it. She would be a fool to do so.
He was cunning, brutal, and did what had to be done. Shepard respected that. Polished and smooth like the best of politicians. Ruthless and resourceful like the best military leaders. He wound his lies so tightly with truth, she couldn't separate them, so she was forced to accept them at face value and then spend long nights unweaving his work. She was smart, but he might just be smarter. Where she lacked subtlety and finesse, he glided right through. Where Shepard was a butcher, he was a surgeon. Oh, she could see to the heart of the matter, she understood military tactics and intimidation. But he constructed complex gambits, engineering long-term contingency plans for just about everything. The Collectors were maddening enough, but staying one step ahead of the Illusive Man grated on her nerves.
Where was that dying sun he seemed so fond of? EDI was calculating the coordinates for her, without Miranda's knowledge of course. The Cerberus-hired crew was gone, and Miranda could only spy on so many people at once. Her "second-in command" would be too busy focusing on just what Garrus was doing in her room to monitor all of EDI's processes.
"You all right, Shepard?"
"My throat isn't closing," she said. "And obviously yours isn't either."
He laughed off her vitriol and shook his head. "Just checking."
She was Shepard. Not a copy. Not a facsimile. Not a half-souled clone. Two years and cutting edge tech did not change this. Death did not change this. Having found it once, painful and alone, it wasn't quite the bête noire it had once been.
She hadn't changed, but Williams and Liara had. Wrex had given a warmer reception than both of them and he was a goddamn krogan.
The Illusive Man had to know this of course. He knew bringing her back as Cerberus would isolate her, maybe make her more amenable to persuasion. She had never been a paragon of virtue. Shepard made her reputation doing what had to be done. No one mistook her for anything less than a consummate pragmatist. Selecting her new team, surrounding her with Cerberus loyalists and adding a few Normandy crewmen – either to emphasize her old team's betrayal or try to lull her into a sense of complacency.
He knew the quarians would be at Freedom's Progress. He may have even suspected Tali would be among them. Given Cerberus's relations with the Migrant Fleet, he may have been counting on Tali to renounce Shepard.
The wine was bitter on her tongue. Tali'Zorah vas Normandy might have hated Cerberus, but she trusted Shepard, even if the Commander was sending her to her death. Tali may not have come to her right away, but she did eventually, and Shepard of all people understood that sometimes the mission came before personal feelings.
Omega. Virmire. Torfan.
Contrary to William's assertions, she had not forgotten what Cerberus did. But she had less trouble accepting things like that – war, death, reality. Cerberus's carelessness made humanity look bad. After all, if it was going to produce things like Jack, it should have made them more…functional. They were too frivolous with their power and money and their xenophobia irritated her to no end. Their big picture was an impossible idiocy. Humanity wasn't strong enough to dominate the galaxy, and forcing themselves to be would only mark them like the krogan and the rachni.
And his flagrant attempts to manipulate her infuriated her. The worst part, she admitted grudgingly, was that he was good at it. Jacob had been Cerberus's answer to Kaidan. He was Kaidan 2.0 in another color with less angst. He was a trap, moreso because he didn't even realize it. Jacob could be manipulated, and by extension Shepard, or so the idea went.
Shepard might have loved Kaidan, once upon a time, because he was everything she wasn't. She might have loved him as a conscience, as a reminder of what was good in humanity, as a man on a pedestal, but she had known it would not last. Back then it didn't matter because she hadn't expected to walk away from Sovereign alive. After Horizon, Shepard had almost made the same mistake twice.
The thing that held her back, restored her focus, was the wild card the Illusive Man hadn't counted on. (Legion didn't count because she didn't trust them either. Grunt didn't count because strongest krogan or not, he had the brain power of a varren). Garrus had waltzed back in, adjusted her perspective, and reminded her exactly what needed to be done.
Oh, the look on Miranda's face had been priceless. Garrus had replayed the video footage salvaged from his scanner. Shock and then anger twisted Miranda's smug little expression and Shepard knew that someone had dropped the ball on intelligence.
She won that one by default.
The Illusive Man thought he was playing with run-of-the-mill Alliance soldiers. Williams hadn't taken any of this well. Undoubtedly Kaidan wouldn't have either. The bastard understood humans. He knew she would be vulnerable, especially if alone after two years. But he failed to understand the rest of her squadmates and there was her slight advantage. That, and his fuckup with Archangel. He'd never intended to give her back any of her old crew. Tali was a late suggestion and he probably assumed the young quarian girl had the least amount of influence. He'd badmouthed Liara first chance he'd gotten, alienated the quarians as best as he could, and made damn certain the Alliance didn't trust her. He gave her no news of Wrex either, something that would have been easy for him to find. Did he expect her to forget the rest of her people?
Jack had been a slap in the face. A shiny bear trap in minefield – the message was pretty clear: look who else rabidly despises Cerberus - do you want to be like her? The second part of that was just as odious: if Jack traveled with Shepard, they might have an easier time acquiring the biotic down the road.
The Collector ship debacle was the final insult. She'd mistakenly assumed that the Illusive Man respected her intelligence. Withholding critical information because he was worried she'd compromise his gambit was too much. She'd respected his intellect – even if she didn't agree with his methods. She reported back to him as a courtesy between…allies; it was a formality really with Miranda on board. Believing she would be the weak link in his plan was too much. He had brought her back. He could damn well let her do her job.
Betrayal, she understood. Necessity. Sacrifice. Whatever he wanted to call it.
But the fact he thought she would give away the ruse… That pricked her pride. Shepard was no stranger to black ops, subterfuge, and counterintelligence. He thought she would compromise the mission? Bullshit. Either he respected her enough to let her run her own galaxy-saving mission, or he didn't – and if he didn't, why would spend so much on the Lazarus Project? Oh, he knew she could return from the Collector ship, warned or not about its trap. But he wanted to toy with her, to make her sweat, to see her jump through hoops.
He wanted to remind her that even from far away, he could still fuck with her. That even if she was The Illustrious Commander Shepard: Savior of the Citadel, he still held the power. This was her suicide mission and his ego trip.
The Collectors she could handle. Point and shoot till they stop moving and shut the hell up. The Illusive Man wasn't so simple. The bastard had gotten under her skin, thrown her off balance with a betrayal any rookie could have seen a mile away. Of course the Reaper ship had been a goddamned trap. That ship was cursed, an albatross around her neck, a massive gaping blindspot that any sane creature could step right through; she had to personally blow it to bits just to get some peace of mind.
Shepard fumed throwing back the last of the wine and glowering at the wall consoles. It was a cold rage, one that would last long and carry her through the battle with the Collectors, because make no mistake, she was coming back, and she would deal with the Illusive Man appropriately.
"Commander," EDI's voice echoed in her room. "We are approaching the Collector base."
Growling, Shepard straightened her collar, smoothed back her hair, and forced a level calm back onto her face. She was commander. She had a ship to run and a galaxy to save.
Rubbing the scratches on her arms, she glanced at Garrus. He sensed her gaze and looked up, flashing an awkward turian smile.
"After the Collectors, he's next," Shepard said.
Garrus's smile turned predatory. He didn't have to ask who or what she meant.
Half her crew was a Reaper slushie. The rest she'd sent back with Mordin – he was good at protecting large groups of panicked and injured civilians. The second fire team consisted of Morinth, Miranda, and Jacob. The fire team. The decoys.
Letting "Samara" lead was a tactical disaster, but not a mistake.
The galaxy did not need an ardat-yakshi. Shepard did not need Cerberus operatives.
Disabling his security was easy enough for their quarian hacker. Tali relished the job. And Garrus, the way he laughed made her bare her teeth, filling her with something primal. Fucking turians. The remnants of her crew, the ones who chose her over Cerberus, covered their flank.
The ones who hadn't?
Shepard had been willing to let them go, save for one. That one knew too much and played too many games. Yeoman Chambers did not leave the Normandy in one piece.
She left Garrus and Tali alone outside the door to the Illusive Man's chambers.
He was standing when she came in, facing that burning red star, and when he turned to look at her, his eyes glowed geth-blue. She wondered then what technology he had managed to reverse engineer or if he had traded for it, done business with the Collectors.
"You destroyed the base," he growled at her, pinching a cigarette between his fingers. "You destroyed it. Why? And don't give me that bullshit about humanity losing its soul or some other PR you fed your crew. You're far too practical to buy that."
Shepard laughed, enjoying the feel of his rage, his impotence. He stalked forward, glowering at her.
"Well?"
No questions as to why she was here or what she intended to do. He was still hung up on that goddamn Reaper construct.
"Because I knew it would make you squirm," she said, smirking. Her teeth were perfect, straighter and whiter than they'd been before. Wilson's vanity, or so she heard.
"You…" he gaped at her incredulously. "You…what?"
"Obviously you think I'm some kind of idiot," Shepard offered, that smirk cemented on her face. "Making me jump through hoops, feeding me bad intel to see how I react, putting spies in my midst."
Shepard tossed something at his feet. It was pink and wet and slick. He stared at it.
"Chamber's tongue. I heard you had some affection for it. If I'd known it was that easy to shut her up, I would have done it ages ago."
He said nothing. She savored it.
"So you've gone mad," he said slowly after a time. "The human mind can't handle resurrection, I see."
"Wrong again," Shepard said and she walked over to the bar, deliberately picking through his stash. She found a particularly rare and smooth whiskey that she would have never been able to afford on her Spectre/Alliance salary and poured them both a glass.
The Illusive Man quirked a brow, unsure of where this was going.
"I blew up the base for a number of reasons, all of them practical. I also hacked into their computers and downloaded a great deal of interesting information. Did you know the vorrcha are an offshoot of a Reaper reengineered race? They used to be peace-loving tree-dwellers or something equally quaint." She smiled beatifically at him.
The Illusive Man took a large swallow, processing exactly what she was saying.
The tech was not lost. And Shepard had it.
"The base was falling apart. It might have been fascinating to study, but we had no way of securing it, of guaranteeing the Reapers couldn't use it against us. I took their knowledge and destroyed their construct. I suspect they don't realize I have the former."
This changed a lot of things.
He sipped his scotch.
"And I suppose you're here to tell me everything," he drawled, fingers brushing a concealed panic button.
"Not everything, and don't bother. We've rerouted the security protocols," she said without inflection.
He smiled politely, knowing it was time to sit still and listen.
"Tim, can I call you that? Unless you're willing to divulge your real name. The Illusive Man is more of a mouthful than you'll ever be, save for some kind of sick krogan implant. Hmm, I wonder if you've already researched that one, Timmy…"
She watched him twitch slightly, the way his chin jerked and his shoulders tightened. Chambers' notes had been very helpful.
"Do as you like," Tim said.
Shepard laughed. Like he could stop her. She leaned in, hearing him suck in a breath, feeling his pulse quicken under her fingers, his strange pupils did not dilate, but she'd read Chambers' personal diaries on him. She knew, in theory, how he would be in bed, and how to use that against him.
So she told him what she wanted him to know, things he probably already knew, with hints of useful information sprinkled between the lines. The Reapers were coming. They needed labs to reverse-engineer the tech. They needed an army. Maybe she trusted the Alliance a little more than she trusted Cerberus. Maybe she'd consider another alliance with Cerberus with renegotiated terms. Maybe she trusted the Council. But maybe both erstwhile allies would jump at her beck and call if she brought them Cerberus.
He wanted to fuck with her?
Fine. But Shepard wouldn't lay there and take it like a bitch. She'd give as good as she got. Ideas, cruel and twisted and maybe just a little exciting, streamed through her mind. She had been Cerberus's tool. Chambers speculated on the nature of Timmy's obsession with Shepard. She would never trust him, but she could still use him. Unlike with her crew, sentimentality and a kind gesture would not earn her his loyalty. Shepard had to give him something no one else could. There had to be a reason he would bend to her demands. She contemplated it for a moment, under his alien gaze. She was reminded of Zaeed. Of Samara. She spared the first, and destroyed the latter. Tim had good odds, but it was a matter of loyalty and failing that, necessity.
In the seconds of that it took for her to make up her mind, she wondered if she was making a terrible mistake.
"What next Shepard? Do you kill me and present my head on a platter to the Alliance? Buy back your commission in blood?"
"Tempting," she admitted. Cerberus of old had three heads. Not for the first time did she wonder if Timmy was a stalking horse. She ran a bare finger against his throat.
"Or do you have something else in mind?" His voice was rougher and she could feel him tensing.
"Yes," she said, and slapped him across the face. "Now get on your knees."
He went down faster than she would have liked, but he put a respectable fight, for someone getting what he had always wanted. She bit back a laugh as she ground her boot into his sternum, watching him flail beneath her. Yes, this was what he always wanted, maybe just not how he thought he'd get it.
When he was bruised, and defeated, and panting on the floor, Shepard began undoing her armor seals.
Sweat beaded on his brow and glared at her defiantly. It would have been a lot more convincing if he wasn't so hard.
"You're fucking that turian," he hissed as she pinned his shoulders to the ground. She regarded him coolly, like a science experiment, a bystander, a nobody. It made his blood boil.
"Oh yeah, he's a great lay," Shepard laughed as she rode him. "Jealous?" Imperious and in control, Shepard held him there, unmoved by their coupling. She could have been calibrating guns, or hacking a console, or mining for resources. Maybe all of the above.
"You're sick, Shepard," he groaned as she squeezed him with her tight inner muscles.
"Maybe, but that turns you on, doesn't it?" she mocked, her expression infuriating in its serenity.
He growled and lunged forward, throwing her back onto the ground. Still inside her, he tried pinning her arms down, sinking his teeth into her neck. She swore and twisted, rolling him beneath her.
"Bad Timmy," she rumbled, licking her lips, and the fight within him died. "You love it, the sheer depravity of it all. That's why you hired Chambers. She'd spread for anything, and let you watch."
"Chambers was a slut," he agreed.
"And that's what you liked about her you sick hypocrite." Shepard's fingers tangled in his hair and yanked his head back, exposing his throat. "It's almost too perfect, the head of Cerberus is a closet xenophile."
"Fuck you."
"Sure am." Her answer was predictable, but it excited him nonetheless. "So I wonder, did you get Lawson to do this for you too? What'd she like? Batarians? Turians? Krogans maybe?"
The image, all shameful and rough made his hips buck.
"You liked that," she murmured, licking his nipples. "Just like you love what I'm doing to you now."
He gritted his teeth, the scorn in her words making his blood course faster. Yeah. Maybe. Fine. She might have had a point. The Cerberus mentality reassured him: he'd gotten what he wanted. Right now he was fucking the Savior of the Citadel on the floor of his office, it didn't matter how he got here.
When he finished, and she didn't, she smirked and pulled herself off him, satisfied that he knew he was inadequate. Maybe if circumstances were different, she could have enjoyed herself, but this had not been about pleasure.
Men, even Timmy, thought with their dicks. She wasn't so naïve as to think she'd secured his loyalty, but she'd done enough. She'd worked him out of her system and she'd taken the first step to breaking him to her will.
As he gazed up at her, dazed a little, she smirked and took his lighter out of his discarded jacket.
His blue eyes hardened. But she wasn't fooled.
"I will tell you something you already know." She turned, watching him, his cigarette in her mouth. "I loved Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko."
"Is that why you left him to die on Virmire?" He smirked at her, tone innocent of cruel intent. He was a very good pretender.
"Maybe," she admitted, crossing her arms. "But I needed a tech and that bomb needed to go off. It was that simple," she ground out, daring him to disagree.
"So why did you love Lieutenant Alenko? Was he that good in bed? I've looked over his service record. Impressive, but an odd choice. He doesn't seem to fit your…lifestyle."
She laughed, cold and clear, and flicked the cigarette butt onto the floor. "That is…exactly why I appreciated him. He reminded me of every reason why I wanted to save humanity. He was kind, gentle, and goddamn decent. Something neither of us would understand. He was a fucking idealist who thought just because he'd been through some rough patches that he understood how the universe worked." Her smile was bitter and cold. "He loved me because he thought underneath it all, I was a good person, someone he needed to save."
"A novel idea," he admitted. "I never thought you would look for a white knight."
"He was a blind fool." Her words were gentle, her teeth were bared. "And in the end, even if he claimed to understand my decision, I broke his bleeding heart before I sentenced him to death. That is the kind of lover I am."
Harsh and cold and magnificent as the void of space.
Shepard believed in taking what she could get, where she could find it. She never believed in perfection or happily ever after. Shepard has loved many men, but she has always loved pragmatism more.
Renegade!Shepard fought me a lot. I know what I wanted this piece to be, but I don't know if it actually succeeds. Bah. I am cynic!Sensoo.
