Frigid wind skirled snow around armored boots as she hunted among the bones of a dead ship for the shiny bits of metal that were the only remnants of her crew. The cold pierced through her, grasping the warmth from her body with covetous fingers. Jingle of metal, a pile of dogtags filling her hand, overflowing and scattering across the ice. She scrambled to catch them but the cold made her slow. Clumsy. Her knees hit hard when she fell, cracking greaves too frozen to bear her weight. Armor crumbled and fell away, icy air poured in to every crevice, furious ghostly hands eager to peel away her living protections and drag her into the cold.
Where she belonged.
Tears froze to her cheeks. Sobs hauled crystals of stabbing cold into sluggish lungs through gritted teeth. Numb fingers pawed at the tags, trying to gather them even as she died. Again.
Across the ice, wind tumbled a piece of debris, bouncing almost merrily toward her. It landed with a thump inches from her face, and she recognized her old N7 helmet. The one that had betrayed her before, suffocated her in the vacuum. Slowly, almost sensually, its mask began to slide upward. She tried to push away, scrabble backward away from her murderer on limbs that no longer had feeling.
The mask snapped open. She screamed.
Shepard woke with a gasp. Sat bolt upright and grasped the edges of her bed with crushing fingers. The room's enviro-controls clicked on in response to her movement, and the real world came into focus. Light and warmth and windows just starting to glow with pre-dawn light. Sweat-tangled sheets, plain walls, white noise hum of a building full of people waking up outside of those walls.
Alone. Small bed, nobody with her. No disembodied AI voice to answer a plea for reassurance disguised as a simple call for spatial position and ETA to the next relay. She could ping the door and summon one of her guards just to see another person's face, but then she would have to explain herself and "I had a bad dream" was about as likely to make it past her lips as one of Mordin's showtunes.
So she hauled her ass out of bed and set methodically about her usual post-dream routine: move the body, remember that it's alive; move the brain, remember the facts because the dream was a lie. She was a terrible liar when it came to other people, but apparently when she was asleep she could lie to herself just fine.
Clammy sweat-soaked skivvies were peeled off and replaced with Alliance-issue PT clothes. All of the known galaxy at their disposal, and the human military had found nothing better than cotton shirts and drawstring shorts. Calisthenics were her only option for exercise (no equipment had been provided, presumably to prevent her from carving a treadmill into a really big shiv), so she moved to the center of her living space and launched into the regimen that had been drilled into her body since basic training.
That had been a shock, one of many she'd absorbed in the first days after coming back to life. She hadn't expected her "new" body to have the muscle-memory of the original; the first time that she automatically transitioned from lunges to push-ups was also the first time she got to visit Dr. Chakwas. Turns out, when your hands are too surprised to catch you on your way to the floor, less qualified body parts get the job. Like the face.
Limbs moving smoothly through exertions as old as human military itself, Shepard was able to focus her thoughts. Review what had really happened on that frozen heap of a planet. Catalogue the truths to banish the lie of the dream.
Truth: though she would never admit it aloud, she had put off visiting the Normandy SR-1's crash site for as long as she could. But as the odds of surviving what the galaxy was throwing at them started looking slimmer, she knew that she had to do it before there was no one left who could. Every offer to accompany her to Alchera's surface had been turned down. Some more forcefully than others. Some repeatedly. She could see the hurt in Joker at being left behind, hear it in his parting quip ("Bring back souvenirs!"). There wasn't a lot of gentleness in Shepard, but she had used every ounce she had on him, for all the good it had done. The planet's surface was all ice, though. A bad place for a brittle skeleton to walk.
Standing in the center of her old ship's corpse, she had been bitterly glad to be alone. It felt right. A haunted house should only be wandered by its ghosts.
Radio silence was the unspoken protocol for that particular mission. No sound met her ears but the whistling of the wind.
Truth: the wind had that slightly tinny quality of her helmet's auditory sensors, not the fierce howl of the dream. The cold had no hope of reaching her through armor designed to withstand open space. Inside her suit, she had been warm and comfortable and safe. And she always would be, so long as no ships exploded violently around her and severed her O2 line.
Hours had passed while she sifted through the snow and rubble, walking under hull struts that arched above her like the ribs of some immense beast. A star whale, beached and wounded and helpless, bleeding out on a strange shore. Shepard had dusted the frost from a piece of hull plating that bore the letter N of her old ship's name and whispered, "I'm sorry."
The hollow buzz in her right ear reminded her that the comm channel was live. Anyone listening would hear her. So she swallowed the rest of her words and tried to express them all simply through the pressure of her hand on the hull, briefly wishing that she could strip the glove and touch the frozen metal. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry you died alone out here. I'm sorry you're alive again, up in the stars, new and improved and expected to carry on with the fight and forget that you had ever been anything else. I'm sorry for you, and for me, too. And after I leave this planet, I will never feel sorry for us again.
Truth: of all the reasons that Shepard loved the Normandy, this was the simplest and most honest. They were two of a kind.
The monument was set in the center of the debris field, in a spot that looked sheltered enough to keep the little statue from being overcome by snow too soon.
After that, the search had gone more quickly. Twenty sets of dog tags filled her hand. Bakari, Draven, Pakti, Tucks, even Navigator Pressly; each name was called back over comms, reported in case she didn't make it back with the tags, for some reason. A section of the helm's nav-panel was tucked under her arm, Joker's souvenir, and she had just turned back to the shuttle when her boot kicked a rock that made a hollow thunk. She nudged it with her toe, and a thin layer of snow sifted free to expose an N7 helmet. Her N7 helmet.
There was no telling how long she had stood there and stared at the thing, but it was long enough that whoever was listening on the comms had hit the squelch, checking that the channel was still live. That brief silence of the ever-present buzz in her ear brought her back, reminded her that there was a ship full of crew and a galaxy full of troubles waiting for her. With her free hand, she scooped up the helmet and took it aboard the shuttle with her. The broken O2 line dragged over her arm like a nerveless limb. A dead, powerless thing.
Truth: she had climbed into the shuttle and flown herself back to the Normandy SR-2. Which was exactly the opposite of dying on that planet.
The normally empty shuttle bay was bustling with a half-dozen crew when she disembarked. Doctor Chakwas had somehow coaxed Joker far from his customary roost at the helm; the two of them were walking the length of the cavernous room, going through the exercises that she always prescribed and he always avoided. Two crates had been pushed together to form a table; Tali perched on one end, fiddling with her omin-tool, while the rest of the space was taken up by a fully disassembled sniper rifle. Garrus meticulously cleaned each piece, standing in that casual-deadly hipshot way that said he was on his guard. He and Tali both were keeping a close eye on the only person in the room who had not served aboard the old Normandy SR-1.
Miranda leaned against a bulkhead, somehow making the posture seem sinuous. Unlike the others, she made no pretense that she was there for any reason but to wait on Shepard's return. It was the closest thing to honesty that the woman was capable of.
Shepard stood for a moment, expression studiously neutral. Her ground team knew the look; Tali powered down her omni-tool and slid off the crate, Garrus quietly emptied his hands and folded his arms. Shepard turned back to the shuttle and sat on the edge of the doorway, the better to gather up her finds from the crash site, pulling them within easy reach. In her peripheral sight, she saw Miranda push away from the bulkhead and cat-foot in her direction. Just because the Cerberus operative had been in charge of the project that had brought Shepard back to life didn't mean she knew the Commander well enough to know when to back off.
"Welcome back, Commander Shepard," Miranda's smooth voice was just accented enough to be interesting, as calculated as everything else about her. "I trust that the monument has been well placed?"
"It has."
"Excellent. I'm sure that must have been hard for you. I look forward to reading your report." There was a slight edge in her voice. Miranda had been one of those who had to be told twice that she would not be accompanying Shepard to the crash site. At the time, it had seemed odd for the ship's XO to hound the Commander so persistently, particularly for a mission that wasn't at all Cerberus-related. For most people, one no from Shepard was enough. Of course, now she knew why.
Shepard answered without looking up, carefully stacking the dog tags in the palm of her gloved hand. "Oh, I won't be writing up a report on this one."
There was an affronted pause. "May I ask why?"
"Because laying the Normandy SR-1 to rest is none of Cerberus's business." Her calm voice hardened with controlled anger, and she sensed her team's response. They began moving closer, shamelessly eavesdropping, "But when you file your own report, the secondary report that you always file, the one that's not about the mission but about me ..." Shepard finally looked up, locking eyes with Miranda, "... you can tell the Illusive Man that I got his message."
Miranda tried for confusion, but fell short. It just wasn't an expression that her tailored features were suited for. "I'm not sure what you mean, Commander. What message?"
Armor creaked softly as Shepard leaned into the shadows of the shuttle's hold to retrieve an object. With an underhand toss, it flew in a gentle arc across the brief space. Reflex brought Miranda's arms up to catch it. She looked down, turning it over in her hands.
"Is that ..?" Joker started to ask, but didn't need to finish the question. Of course he would recognize it. He had watched the O2 line snap from the window of his escape pod.
"It's the helmet that killed me," she explained for everyone else's benefit, her stare never leaving Miranda, "The helmet that the Lazarus Project team peeled off of my dead skull in a lab on their space station."
"And somehow that helmet made its way to the crash site, where Shepard could just happen to find it?" Garrus drawled coolly, but she recognized the stewing disgust in his sub-chords. "How convenient."
"Shepard, I want you to know that I had nothing to do with this." Miranda met her gaze and held it steadily. There had never been a lot of flinch in Operative Lawson, "I admit, there was a time when I agreed with the Illusive Man's assessment that you needed the occasional reminder of who was in control - "
"In control? Of Shepard?" Tali could pack a lot of scorn into that sweet little modulated voice. "If you believe that, I've got some beachfront property on Rannoch to sell you."
"Yeah," snorted Joker, "Illusive Man? More like Delusional Man."
Truth: her team always had her back. And somewhere along the line, they had all gotten sassy.
Miranda ignored them in her aristocratic way, "- but when he presented me with this idea, I strongly advised against it. I've seen you in action, Shepard. After you helped me with Orianna, I just … You're a …" she tossed her head (prettily), gaze roving as though looking for the right words, "... force of bloody nature. No leash in the galaxy could hold you, if you didn't allow it. Leaving this," she tossed the helmet back to Shepard, who caught it easily with one hand, "for you to find would, in my estimation, have the opposite of the intended effect."
"Is that honestly what you told him?" Only Dr. Chakwas could manage to sound both disdainfully disbelieving and utterly polite. Classy.
"Yes. It is." Miranda's words were clipped; she was starting to look cornered. Shepard gestured, and her team eased back slightly, chagrined. Miranda went on with an air of self-quoting, "Tug on her leash too hard, and she will tug back. And when she does, the leash will snap."
Shepard gave a single nod, leaning back to recline slightly against the shuttle. The hard edge lingered in her tone, but it was losing its bite. "Looks like you know what to file in your report, then."
Miranda knew a dismissal when she heard one. "Of course, Commander." Lips pressed together in displeasure, she turned and sauntered to the elevator, the natural rhythm of her stride drawing inevitable attention to the parts of her anatomy most revealed by the slim fit of her Cerberus uniform. In moments she was gone, leaving the former crew of the Normandy SR-1 alone in the shuttle bay.
Joker was the first to break the silence. "Anybody else wonder how she gets into that outfit? I mean, is there oil involved, or does she just paint it on every day?"
"Outfit?" Tali folded her arms and popped out a hip. "And here I thought that was just the color of her skin, and she was wandering around in the nude." Joker guffawed, Dr. Chakwas chuckled, and Garrus just stared at the young quarian with his mandibles quirked for a long moment before huffing a laugh.
Shepard let their levity wash over her without being touched by it, though she sensed it was at least partly for her benefit. Alchera was just too raw, her anger with the Illusive Man simmering too high. Propping the broken helmet on her knee, she reached into the shuttle and pulled out the jagged piece of nav-panel from the SR-1's helm.
"Here. Souvenir," she handed it to Joker, "Can't say I never got you anything nice."
"Oh gee, Commander, you shouldn't have!" sarcasm was the man's native tongue, "Just what I always wanted, a hunk of freezing cold … space ... junk …" his words trailed off, the momentum of humor draining out of them as he took a closer look at what he held in his hands. He brushed fingertips across the surface, an echo of the deft patterns of flight, and his voice came softer, "Wow. I … thanks, Commander. Really." He ducked his head, the brim of his cap hiding his eyes from her.
Elbows propped on knees, Shepard jostled the dog tags still clasped in her gloved hand. Their gentle metallic music seemed to call the attention of the small group.
"Next stop is picking up the Reaper IFF, then after that it's a hop through the Omega-4 relay. No ports between here and … whatever's there." A ripple of movement ran through them, feet shifting, heads nodding. "We've come a long way. Lost a lot of good people." The words seemed to pull from her mouth, like something she couldn't have stopped if she wanted to. Gravity. "But we've found these twenty again. So now it falls to the living to carry them the rest of the way home."
Counting out five tags for each of them, she silently passed the burden to her team until each of the four of them had a bundle of shiny metal in the palm of their hand. Which left her own hands finally empty. "Save the full list to your omni-tools. This way, even if not all of us make it back, the knowledge of the fallen will."
Setting the broken helmet aside, she rose to her feet. Joker was frowning at the tags in his hand; he looked up, lips parting to speak, but Garrus cut him off, "Been a long day, and tomorrow'll be even longer. Probably we all need to get some rack-time."
She slid him a half-frowned glance, "Is it night-cycle already?"
The worried purr of his sub-chords belied the nonchalance of his words, "Yeah, you were down there a while. Somehow we managed to get by."
Suddenly restless and desperate to get out of her armor, to leave the shuttle and the planet and its cold silence behind, Shepard just nodded and strode away to the elevator. Her team would forgive her brusque departure. They always did.
Truth: the souls of her fallen comrades had been left safe in the hands of those who had survived. Even when the Collectors had abducted the crew, Dr. Chakwas had kept the tags she had been given safe, strung around her neck with her own. All twenty sets of tags had made it back to the Alliance. The living had brought the dead home, delivered along with Commander Shepard, who was a little bit of both.