Emony
"Wow, er, that's quite a question..." she shifted uneasily from foot to foot, "you, er... what, you too?" Emony wasn't sure exactly what to say, but she felt very defensive. This woman, with Kaidan? Not her Kaidan, couldn't be the same, but it still felt wrong. How can two people share something so powerful and intimate, and yet find that someone else did the same? That's assuming it meant anything to her - or him. Such an abrupt question, how the hell could she even begin to respond to that? And how could she NOT respond to it?
Emony fought back urges to lash out and build this into an argument; she'd practiced this almost every day since Torfan. This conversation was NOT happening, and that was her response. "Look, this is getting off topic, let's stop and think for a moment." She ran her fingers through her red hair, still distracted. Kaidan had meant everything to her, he'd pulled her out of her past, given her stability and balance. He'd tempered her fire and channelled it into fighting for people who needed help. She'd never realized how much she'd needed him until she met him.
Emony had a reputation of being someone who could get the job done. No matter the cost. But that cost had bitten her in the past, scores of Batarians dead, her own unit almost destroyed. Her fire had burned that day, her anger had driven her, and she'd let it take control of her. Those Batarians were criminals, violent thugs. They'd participated in the attack on Elysium as part of the Skyllian Blitz, and while the pirates and mercs had been held off and driven away successfully, there were some deaths. No-one considered Elysium to have been a failure, it was successfully defended, war heroes gathered the non-combatants and protected them! Lives were saved, a triumph!
But among the few deaths had been an old friend, Tobin. He'd been planet-side visiting family when the attack came. He was an engineer, not a soldier, and they'd been close friends for years since basic training, his geeky shy nervousness was endearing, but he had a very sharp mind. During the attack, he'd tried to protect his squad, and had run out to repair a shield generator. He'd managed to repair it, but it was too late to protect himself. His was the first personal death she'd encountered, and it had fuelled her fire on Torfan. The fleeing Batarians never stood a chance, for too long the Alliance had tolerated these monsters - they were slavers, pirates, mercenaries and barbarians, and she'd made damn sure the Batarians would think twice before ever crossing the Alliance again. Tobin shouldn't have died that day, the line had been crossed, and Emony had to put a stop to these attacks.
Facing death was something she had to do all too often, but when it was personal, it burned - she burned, and an unrestrained Emony was not something to question. But Torfan taught her a painful lesson. Her own unit had sustained many losses, and the surrendering Batarians were gunned down without mercy. As the rage started to subside, she saw one wounded Batarian looking up at her, his torso ripped to shreds from a shotgun blast at point blank range. He'd looked up at her, as the last breath left him, and his three remaining eyes stopped blinking. She stopped, looked around at the horror all around her, looked at her hands, covered in the blood of one of her squad from her failed attempt to stop the bleeding from a piece of shrapnel that had pierced his chest.
She'd vowed there and then that she would do all in her power to never again sacrifice lives unnecessarily where there was a peaceful option. Tobin had been a genius, and his skill with engineering saved lives. Emony was a soldier, a biotic, and so much more, but the part of her that he had spoken to was the intelligence inside, the part of her that could reason and debate. Her anger on Torfan was not how he should be remembered, his patience, attention to detail, and sharp intellect had won him the respect of his fellow crewmates, and of Emony herself, and that was what should be carried on. She used those skills, honed them over the years, and her personal mission would always be to rise above petty insults, to find the path of least resistance, and to protect those she loved with her life. Keep them safe, then she'd never have to mourn them, or avenge them.
Death's the most painful part of life. The death of others hurts more than your own death, because you can never leave other deaths behind. They stay with you, they are with you always, and they come back at inconvenient times. She often had flashbacks to moments in the mess hall, Tobin sitting in front of her, moving peas around on his dinner tray, discussing how and why a pea is a pea. How peas on a tray with curves would roll in a specific way. It was endearing, it was sweet, and it was non-threatening. Most guys had an agenda. He didn't. Other deaths stay, remain, and come back. Your own - physically hurts, but you don't have to live with it.
Unless, of course, you get brought back to life, Cerberus throw you back into the fray, your former allies and friends have had to go through mourning for two whole years. They've had to live through that pain, the flashbacks, the memories. She'd done that to them, she didn't have to live with that guilt until Cerberus brought her back. And then she was back, and they were not.
Tali - she'd had other things to do when they'd reunited, but seeing her again was such a warm feeling. Her awkwardness reminded Emony of Tobin in many ways. Garrus - he'd jumped at the chance of working with her again, and she'd been so very grateful. His friendship had been a rock, his own lust for vengeance resonating within her, and she'd done everything she could to stop him from his own personal Torfan. No-one needs to live with those memories, no-one should have to be called a butcher.
Wrex? Damn him, he had a throne! She'd grown to love that pig-headed Krogan, he was so very predictable, but such a powerful ally, and a dry wit that had caused her much amusement in the past. When she'd met him on Tuchanka, she saw a leader, and she was so proud of him. He was pushing so hard for peace, he had grand ideas, and someone as crazy as Wrex might just pull it off.
Kaidan. He was Alliance, his hands would naturally be tied, full of orders. Their relationship had broken regulations, their symbiosis as biotics had made for an immense powerhouse on the battlefield, but all of that had been shaken by her death. But unlike her, his grief had not grown to anger in the same way. His even-tempered approach had given him a darker outlook. Their meeting on Horizon had been painful. His utterance of "loved" in the very past tense cut deeper than she ever thought possible. She saw the hurt, betrayal in his eyes. She stood before him, representing the very organization they had worked so hard to destroy. She felt like she'd been kicked, battered and left defenceless after their meeting, and yet she understood and forgave him all the same. He clearly didn't have as much intel as she did about the attack on Horizon, which gave her concerns about the Alliance intelligence networks. The Illusive Man did not share, which made no sense. If his goal was to protect Humanity, then surely sharing intel made sense?
Instead of vengeance and anger, Kaidan had shown his personal hurt to her. He'd been attacked by the Collectors - the same Collectors that had attacked and destroyed the Normandy SR-1, leaving her scattered remains on Alchera. Leaving Shepard dead. Yet Kaidan was angry with her, for the hurt she caused him, for not leaving with him in that escape pod, and not angry with the Collectors. Because she was there, the Collectors were not.
She fought back the memories, and as she did so, Emony realized that neither Andrea nor Alan had said anything. She turned to them, "So, while I don't want to dwell on this, but bear with me a moment... it seems that Kate and I have both had a relationship with Kaidan, ... er different Kaidan's..." she coughed, this was not her normal sort of conversation, and she was very much out of her comfort zone. "but I take it neither of you have? And yet, in your realities, Kaidan is still alive, but not Ashley? surely one of us must have saved them both? Someone must have seen a better path?" and in that moment, she saw something. A reason for them to meet, a reason for being in this place, and the all-important strategic value of being in the same room with yourself having made different decisions. What if she'd made a different call? What if...
"We each have made important decisions - what if, between us, we figure out where we made different decisions. We can pool our knowledge of the outcomes, we can find common ground, we could end up with crucial intelligence that could help sway the outcome against the Reapers! Can we even do that? Or are there too many points that are different?" she looked over at Andrea, who was starting to look agitated.
Andrea
As she processed that thought, Andrea's brain was running on overdrive. She'd never been with Kaidan, though she'd been tempted all those years ago, it seemed here she was with two women who had chosen otherwise. She balanced the ideas that had been put forth, pacing the floor, "Well, I don't know, but it's worth a shot". This Emony had a point. Andrea thought through all she had learned about these three so far. As she looked around at the other others, the physical differences were so noticeable. They each had different opinions and had made some different choices. But with some key common events shared, there had to be more in this that could be used for some strategic advantage.
She continued the line of thinking and started to bake that thought. "We know there are differences between our realities - I'm not and have never been with Kaidan for starters, Ashley died on Virmire along with that Salarian STG unit in my reality, but there has to be something we can use out of this that could help us." She paused for a moment to think but Alan stepped in and interrupted her train of thought, "but while I lost Ashley, Captain Kirrahe made it out alive with some of his squad".
Andrea stared at him, taken aback "What? How the..." she looked at Kate, who shrugged "yep, he made it for me too". "And me," concurred Emony. As Andrea's mouth snapped back closed, she felt her jaw go tense, how the hell did they save him? She'd tried her best, disabling a satellite uplink and fighting off the Geth while Ashley and Kirrahe had played the diversion card, but she had been unable to stop the Geth Flyers in time. They must have found a way. Andrea felt alone in the room once again. Would that one hunt her down too? Would his death prove to be her undoing? One life can make a difference - but there must be plenty more forks they each made, these three couldn't have all made the same choices. Andrea thought back to some of her own mission-critical decisions - she had to try to limit it to just the ones that would have forked. The past couple of years had certainly been eventful, but she started to filter the events down to just a few such decisions to choose from. All those damn reports she'd had to file were back in the forefront of her mind, explaining and justifying every action and decision she had made to her superiors.
"Ok, so back when we were fighting Saren, I remember there was a moment when I had reached the Citadel Tower, and the Destiny Ascension called in for help." She looked round at the others "I chose to advise the Alliance forces to hold back from assisting - the council were a bunch of incompetent idiots, and I figured that we'd need those forces to protect the rest of the Citadel from Sovereign." she sighed. "I guess politics has never been my strong point - but I did wonder what might have happened if I had found a way to save the Destiny Ascension, the Council and the rest of the fleet, AND bring down Sovereign."
Kate suddenly piped up, "I saved the council - bunch of fucking idiots, but I was a Spectre, they were technically my commanding officers... I had to save them as my duty. I sent in the fleet, saved the council. My decision contributed to the loss of a bunch of Alliance ships, but the Council was saved..." Andrea sighed in frustration, "but that's just it, the cost! The council read all my reports and they did NOTHING to defend the Citadel! They ignored all the evidence, threw it all back at me, grounded my damn ship then had the audacity to ask for help! You sacrificed human ships and hundreds of lives for THEM?" She looked over at Alan and Emony - who both said "I saved the council" at the same time. Andrea chuckled, "freaking circus. Are you two twins? no, wait, we've done that one... ok, so I am the only one that lost the council? Was there no way to save the council at minimal cost?"
Emony shook her head, "There was a choice, I saw no way to save both the council and the fleet AND defeat Sovereign." But Andrea was already lost in thought, trying to replay the scenario in her mind. Was there anything they could have done differently? There had been no way to contact the fleet before she'd arrived at the Citadel. After the improv trip through the conduit, the miniature Mass Relay that directly connected Ilos to the Citadel Presidium, she'd had to race to reach the tower before Saren and Sovereign had enough time to execute their plans. The Reapers were waiting for a signal, and she had to do everything in her power to stop that from happening. She had been standing in the tower, the alarms blazing. Garrus and Wrex by her side, she'd made the call to abandon the council with ease. Sacrifice some for the good of the many, and those guys were weasels.
"After that, humanity finally got their seat on the council, and Anderson was made the human Ambassador..." she was cut off abruptly by Kate, "Anderson? I recommended Udina, rat that he is, there's no way I would force that kind of political bullshit on Anderson!" Andrea looked over at Emony and Alan, "so, you two?" Emony and Alan double-act "Anderson". Andrea held a hand to her head, "Shit - this is really messed up..."
And yet they were all still standing there talking to each other, in similar situations. "This is crazy, I lost the council, I had to go back to the Citadel and face scorn and bile from shop owners two years later, and yet here we are having all just attacked the Collector base. You would think a fork like that would have serious implications, a real branch in our realities, and yet here we are!" if a life-changing decision like saving or abandoning the Council had little long-term effect, how could this encounter change anything? "We make all our choices and yet here we are now - all of us. All these realities are forked and branched and all that, and yet we're still here." Kate shook her head, "it's too early to make that call, we still don't know enough about what we did after that point to jump to conclusions. There could be something really important we're overlooking - carry on, what happened to you next?"
Andrea continued "Ok, so given those choices, based on what I've heard from each of you, and Kate has already said most of this, but it sounds like we all had to deal with the Normandy being destroyed a couple of weeks later, regardless of who was in charge of the council. We all, presumably, got spaced in the process, and woke up in a Cerberus lab two years later - am I right?"
The silent approval of the others was deafening. They all had the same experience of being rebuilt by the Illusive Man. They all went and met up with Garrus, and ended up at the Collector base. "I lost Kirrahe, you all saved him. I kept the base, you all destroyed it. I lost the council, you all kept it, and we are all here standing in the same room." As Andrea thought through the options, she started seeing a path, but really didn't like where it lead. Despite all the decisions she had made, the impact on other people's lives and the consequences of those decisions, so far the central theme was that her own path hadn't deviated that much from those others standing in front of her, despite all her choices. "Does anything we do have any real impact on the outcome, or is the timeline of Commander Shepard a constant across the universe?"
Alan jumped in, "You can't think like that!" no, you just couldn't think that way, it couldn't work that way, could it? "That's just crazy talk - you've affected people's lives," he could see Andrea's downward spiral starting to escalate, and hastily added "you've saved lives on those Alliance vessels, those soldiers and their families live because of your actions" Andrea spat back "and how many humans suffered on the citadel because of my actions? I had to listen to Bailey and his team dealing with anti-humanity violence, I lost my Spectre status, then got shafted by the Alliance when I was trying to save Human colonies!" She felt her fists harden as her temper rose. "So how was it when you got back to the Citadel? Did you get to grovel and beg for your Spectre status from the oh-so-wonderful fucking Council?" This kiss-ass idiot was really pissing her off.