Part 2, Chapter 7, Citizen:
"I don't know what I'd do if I lost my 'little wing'," Liara said. Then she turned and looked at Victoria with murder in her eyes. Shepard took this as a cue to leave.
Shepard was numb, her thought process ground to a near halt. Days gone by she would go for a run; get the blood and hopefully thoughts pumping. Now, all she could do was wander aimlessly. Presently she found herself in Benezia's gardens. She looked down at Kelly's grave, freshly mounded dirt with no marker. After returning to Thessia Shepard had made sure that Samara was tended to, and then she tended to Kelly. Her body, what was left of it, laid next to that of Aethyta. A memorial would have to be planned, but not just yet.
The Matriarch had died almost 8 months ago, old age, nearly 1,100 years so far as anyone could tell. Her passing was, fortunately, quite rapid. No years of lingering debilitating illness. No gradual decline in mental faculties. One day she woke up feeling under the weather, a week later she was gone. It was hard on everyone, but devastating to Kelly.
The woman who was trained to council others was, herself, inconsolable. She only came to the memorial service under heavy sedation. It was a good funeral, if such things could be given positive descriptions. There was song, there was even a dance. Easily a hundred Matriarchs from all over Thessia came to pay their respects. In life, at least up until the Reaper War, Aethyta was shunned. Her wisdom was ignored by a people who normally held their elders with great regard and reverence. Afterwards, when some of her views were more palatable to the Asari Republics, she was welcomed home. Still, she preferred to tend her bar on Illium.
The family cried. The family grieved. The family moved on, but not Kelly. For a time Shepard worried she'd take her own life. Eventually she came around, though they never saw the cheerful Kelly-bear again. Something changed within her. She started working more closely with Liara in her Shadow Broker capacity. She was more aggressive, less compassionate. She would disappear for weeks at a time. She resigned from the Alliance inactive reserves.
Kelly was conducting active Shadow Broker operations, and that's where it started. Shepard didn't know the specifics, perhaps she never would. She was sure that Liara would run a thorough post-mortem on the operation. Maybe it was a long-delay sleeper cell. Maybe Miranda's network had been compromised. Maybe she had out right betrayed them, though Shepard thought that unlikely since she and Samara were still alive. Perhaps EDI had missed something. Maybe there was another AI out there actively trying to counter EDI. Maybe there was a hidden sub-routine in EDI's programming no one was aware of. The possibilities were endless. All Shepard knew was the outcome.
Kelly was spearheading an operation to root out a newly discovered Cerberus sleeper cell still loyal to the original Illusive Man. Miranda and Liara asked Shepard to help. Victoria would provide over-watch on a meet with a contact. Samara, somehow without the knowledge of anyone else, found out and decided she wanted to help Kelly. She was standing next to Kelly, right in the middle, when an all-out fire fight started. Quite frankly, she shouldn't be alive.
The fact that Samara still draws breath is due almost entirely to the fact I went full-on Viking Vikki and slaughtered every last one of those Cerberus motherfuckers, thought Shepard. She balled her fist at the memory. A faint biotic field flickered about her body. Shepard's heart raced. She was there again.
It started after Shepard's speech at the Naval Academy Annex. Miranda was delighted to finally meet Samara in person. They had chatted idly for an hour or so and saw Samara off to the spaceport in Vancouver. Shepard told her daughter that she had some Alliance business to attend to and would follow her on the next lighter to Thessia. Kelly rendezvoused with them on the flight to the target area. The detail planning was conducted en route.
At the intersection of two relatively quiet alleys cattycorner to a largely vacant loading apron in the industrial section of New Orleans, Kelly stood leaning against a shipping crate. Her contact would be wearing blue. He would be carrying a package. It was allegedly navigational data pointing to a heretofore unknown Cerberus cell working salvage on some Reaper wreckage left over from the war. It couldn't be transmitted, it needed hand delivery. It was too perfect, it screamed trap. Neither Liara, Miranda, nor EDI could find anything to indicate the information was inauthentic, Kelly went in.
She was unarmored, her only protection a light ballistic weave singlet worn under unassuming street clothes. One pocket of her baggy leather jacket contained a stun baton and a communications unit was hidden in her collar, but she was otherwise unarmed. An EDI subroutine was monitoring the local communications net for trouble. Shepard was the muscle. Victoria posted herself atop a shipping container with a good line of sight down one of the alleys and a decent field of fire over the loading apron. If trouble appeared on the alley Shepard couldn't see, Kelly only needed to take a few steps back to be clear of the directional mines Shepard had planted. On a radio command either Victoria or Kelly could turn that alley into a meat grinder. Shepard was armed with a heavy combat rifle with a medium scope. She concealed herself beneath an active camouflage blanket. She was invisible.
The appointed time came, the man in blue arrived. He demanded twice the agreed upon price for the information. Kelly didn't want to hear it, she insisted they'd made a deal and he should honor it. The man in blue raised his jacket to show a heavy pistol and urged her to reconsider. Shepard centered the rifle scope's 'death dot' on the bridge of the man's nose.
Then, something unexpected happened.
A figure appeared in the alley behind Shepard's position and walked towards Kelly and the man in blue. Shepard couldn't move or she'd give her position away, but the look on Kelly's face when she saw who the individual was made her worry. Then Shepard heard the words she'd heard twice before, by two generations of T'soni women.
"Have you faced an Asari commando unit before?"
Kelly sported a 'what the fuck' facial expression. The man in blue placed his hand on the butt of his pistol. The figure entered Shepard's field of view. Samara! What the fuck are you doing here? Shepard's brain started screaming. Kelly, instinctively, started backing away from the intersection. She was trying to get clear of the blind alley. Samara closed the distance. She wore lightweight body armor of Asari manufacture and a gold gorget about her neck.
"Few humans have."
The man in blue un-holstered his pistol, Shepard pulled her trigger. The shot echoed momentarily off the alley walls, then silence. Then a wet thud of the back of the man in blue's skull striking the alley floor several feet from his rag doll body.
All hell broke loose.
Shepard's thoughts and actions accelerated even further. She watched herself sight in on movement from the loading apron. A pair of shipping containers opened revealing a squad of mercenaries with light mech support. She drilled two men between the eyes before they had a chance to open fire. God damn it! How did we not detect them? In her peripheral vision Shepard was aware of Kelly pushing Samara clear of the blind alley. She was shouting the detonate command into her jacket's collar.
Shepard shot another mercenary through the neck when the directional mines detonated. The blind alley turned into a maelstrom of shrapnel. A substantial amount of debris and fragments flew in the opposite direction as well. Kelly wasn't completely clear, her left flank was peppered. Samara caught some too. High velocity sand and metal pocked her face. Still, Kelly pushed Samara trying to get her clear of the fighting. Her face was a mask of pain and terror, terror that Samara might get hurt.
Shepard dropped the last mercenary and engaged the four legged FENRIS mechs, simple work. For a moment she thought the engagement might be over. Then a flash and a bang and Kelly wasn't there anymore. She was just gone! Samara lay in the middle of the alley, several meters from cover, coated if offal that must have been Kelly just a few moments ago. Her left leg above the knee dangled from her thigh by a chunk of muscle. She howled.
In a biotic flash Shepard stormed from her hiding spot and was upon her daughter. She dropped to a knee, imposing her body between Samara and another squad of mercenaries. Shepard fired rapidly, the mercenaries took cover. Quickly, expertly, Shepard hoisted Samara onto her shoulder and ran to the nearest shipping container. The mutilated remains of Samara's lower left leg slapped lazily against hers with every step, maroon blood spurted from severed arteries. She threw her down hard behind cover and pulled a medi-gel compress from her armor. Samara howled again as Shepard applied it to the stump of her left leg. Victoria held pressure and counted to three. She let go, the medi-gel held. Samara shouldn't bleed out or die of shock.
Victoria Shepard looked at her daughter. Samara screamed, she drew a deep ragged breath and screamed again. Tears streamed from her eyes, her lips were drawn back from her teeth in pain. She looked at her father pleading for help with her tear swollen eyes.
Victoria Shepard ceased to be, Viking Vikki took over. Rapidly, machine like, she ejected and replaced her rifle's thermal clip. "Stay here," she said to Samara, and she was off. Medi-gel coursing through her blood, pain giving way to euphoria, Samara levered herself to peek between the shipping container and the alley wall.
Shepard fired on the move. She dropped one mercenary with a shot to her throat. Threat removed she paid no more attention to her thrashing and gurgling, Shepard grinned. Victoria used her biotics to lift another mercenary fifteen meters in the air and then slammed him back to the ground on his head with spine shattering force. Another she stitched up with three shots; right hip, solar plexus, and chin. The lower part of that mercenary's head disappeared in a red puff.
Finally, Shepard came upon a mercenary desperately trying to reload a rocket propelled grenade launcher. This must be the fucker who fragged Kelly, Victoria thought. Victoria fired her rifle three times; one round into the grenade launcher, destroying it, and another round each into the mercenary's knees. Thermal clip depleted, Shepard slung her rifle. I'm not done yet!
Shepard summoned her biotic power and lifted the injured mercenary two meters into the air. She looked into his face; the mercenary's eyes were screwed shut in pain and fear. Shepard balled her fist and slammed him into the alley wall. He impacted with a dull crunching sound. Armor collapsed, bones broke. Then she whipped her arm away from the wall slamming the mercenary into an adjacent shipping container. Another satisfying crunch accompanied by a bong of the hollow container reverberating under the blow. Blood oozed freely from the mercenary's ears and fractured eye sockets. He looked at her with one eye, the other couldn't move. He moaned.
Victoria bared her teeth and smiled. This is who I am, this is what I do. I am become death, and you will fucking know it! Shepard whipped her arm again, crunch. You do not fuck with Victoria Shepard! Bong. You do not fuck with her friends! Crunch. You most certainly do not fuck with Victoria's baby girl! Bong.
Shepard poured all of her anger into the dying mercenary. He became Victoria's catharsis. All of her pain, guilt, and sadness over lost friends and family flowed out into the mercenary's increasingly mangled body. For a moment she forgot about Samara. For a moment she forgot about Kelly. She imagined purging herself of all of her negative experiences and emotions. She needed this, she needed release. Crunch. Bong. Crunch.
Some time later she remembered Samara and released her biotic grip. There wasn't anything left that resembled a human. Broken armor and flesh littered the ground. A section of rib cage protruded from a dented shipping container. Bits of brain matter were smeared across the alley wall. She wished she could do more, but the trance was broken. Samara!
Shepard turned to look where she had left Samara. She had levered herself out from behind cover to look at her father. Her eyes were wide, her jaw was slack. Shepard knew this look.
Samara was in awe.
Shepard died inside.
Victoria Shepard returned to the present. She was sitting on the veranda overlooking Benezia's gardens. She didn't remember walking back from the graves. Samara was there because she wanted to be like me, Victoria thought. She would never have gone if I hadn't told her all of those stories, she continued. I could have been the one who shot her, it's all the same, this is my fault. Shepard wrapped her arms around herself and gripped tightly. Despite her efforts she cried out in despair. She had almost killed her daughter. She did it, not some faceless mercenary, it was her.
Victoria sobbed. I almost killed my baby girl! She's not safe from me. She's not safe from the stories I've told her, or will tell her. She's not safe from the things I've done, or will do. I saved the galaxy to make it safe for her and her mother and all I do is fuck it up! I can't do this anymore. I can't let this happen again. They'd be better off without me in their lives; I'd just screw it up some more. I'm a monster. I do monstrous things. So long as I exist, I'm a threat to them.
Victoria's sobbing subsided. She knew what she needed to do.