The course was set for Earth by time they made it back to the Normandy with what little information the Prothean VI had for them. It would take a day to reach the Sol system and the planet of their destination, even burning the mass effect core at its full potential, and the mood onboard had turned somber. The end was in sight finally after all that time, and yet not a soul on the ship could make themselves believe they weren't headed directly for the gallows. They would live or they wouldn't, that was as simple as it was, and the circumstances of their impending deaths were most certainly out of their control. It was time to find comfort in the ones they loved, the friends they'd made, and leave their final messages should they not make it out in the end.
Shepard, when she'd woken in the morning cycle a few hours before they'd arrived at Anadius and subsequently the Cerberus base, had seen the night ahead of her spent beside Kaidan. So much time had been foolishly wasted between them and in her last hours, Shepard had believed fully that of all the places she'd want to be while death was knocking on her door, it would be with him. The day's revelations, however, had left her alone. When the shuttle had docked with the Normandy, Kaidan had been the first one off, seemingly unable to spend another moment in the cramped space beside her. She'd watched him go, wanted to say something as he did, but no words came to mind. Nothing that would fix it and nothing that she thought she had any kind of right to say to him at all. Since then, he'd haunted the ship like a ghost, always slipping just beyond her wherever she walked.
Truth be told, she was jealous. Shepard had only wanted to be left alone with her thoughts since they'd come back. For her crew, though, she made her nightly rounds like nothing had changed at all. They would need to continue to believe in her.
At the end of the night, Shepard retired to her cabin. The doors had scarcely opened for a second when her eyes went to her desk and to the old set of dog tags tucked away in the corner. Shepard took the frame in her hands, pressed her finger tips to the glass, and when she lifted them, she tilted the item until it caught the light and the grease markings of her fingerprints were easily seen. A dead woman's fingerprints, she thought, and in the next instant, tossed the frame back to the countertop.
"EDI?"
"Yes, Shepard?"
She curled her hands around the back of her desk chair, taking in steady, deep breaths as her eyes shut. "I want to know about me, EDI. Can you forward any information you have to my terminal?"
"Of course, Commander," a beat, "they are now available."
"Where's Major Alenko?"
"Observation room. Would you like me to page him?"
"No, I—" She shook her head and rounded her chair, taking a seat, sinking in as she let every muscle in her body relax into it. "Has he said anything to you about what we learned about me?"
"No, and he has not engaged any of the other crew regarding the circumstances, as far as I have seen."
"Thank you," she sighed.
"—But that is not to say he is well, Shepard."
Even if EDI saw all, Shepard was glad the physical form of her ship's AI wasn't there, especially not to catch the sudden tense of her body. "What do you mean?"
"Since returning, he has deviated from his nightly routine. Major Alenko did not join the rest of the crew for dinner, nor did he take the time to answer his personal or Spectre, correspondence. He has, however, called up an old photo of you and he on his omni-tool for most of the evening."
"Not me," she answered, shaking her head, "he's thinking of the other Shepard. We only ever took one photograph together, just the two of us. It was done while the Normandy was in for repairs after everything happened with Saren. He's looking at her."
"Technically correct, but since you two are one in the—"
"We're not."
"I will defer to your opinion, Commander."
It was well into the middle of the night before Shepard disengaged the terminal. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, and yet the rest of her body thrummed on, unwilling and unable to crawl into bed if it meant doing so alone.
Shepard pressed thumb and forefinger into her closed eyelids in a last ditch attempt at restoring proper vision and function, but as she blinked them open, it proved to be fruitless. All she saw, all she thought of, was the hollowness behind the other Shepard's lids, where eyes had once been, the delicate tissue probably some of the first to go. Her own eyes, she knew, were organic but with implants, much like the rest of her. Enhancements, reinforcements, those were what littered through the rest of her body, meant to improve upon where the original Shepard's body had failed and been vulnerable before.
While she hadn't comprehended anywhere near even half of the data EDI had dumped onto her console, she'd understood enough. Enough to know that in addition to everything else, a number of her organs weren't even her own, instead they were vat grown, expensive replacements usually reserved for the wealthy when their livers failed from decades of misuse. The original Shepard's body had been taken apart and studied, replacing the inefficient and weak with the ideal. In the time after she'd awoken from what she'd been told was simply her death, her reconstruction, her return to life, Shepard had thought on an old story back then. Even more now than ever, she believed it to be true. Frankenstein. She was the Illusive Man's monster, stitched together piece by piece and life breathed into it.
Shepard upturned her hands on the lap of her thighs. There had been a small scar there from when she was a child, a raised sliver of shiny scar tissue across the meat of her palm. It had been small, nearly invisible and easily confused with the hand's natural folds and lines, and because of that, it had been something even Cerberus, with all their attention to detail, had missed. The big scars, the tattoos, they were easily replaced and recreated. The things that only she would know, however, were gone.
She traced the place where that scar had once been. If she thought on it, she could see it in her mind's eye, could recall the day she'd earned it over mishandling a knife in her parents' kitchen. And yet, when her eyes sought out what had been with her nearly her entire life, it was absent. No matter how real it felt, it hadn't been her memory. Fingers curling into a fist, she rubbed the the pad of her middle finger over the unmarred skin for a second, and then abruptly and roughly, pushed away from the desk, headed out from the cabin.
The ride down was deceptively slow, the elevator depositing her in the crew quarters. The mess was empty, rare for even this hour, as Shepard had ordered the crew to seek what little rest and relaxation could be afforded on the eve of battle. She'd had every intention of seeking a late meal, but the half-stocked fridge failed to drum up what little appetite she'd had over the weeks. Instead, as she closed the refrigerator door, her eyes wandered back towards the main hallway, in the direction of Starboard Observation. There was no guarantee he was there, but she had a hunch he hadn't the heart to vacate the place that had become his home, second only to her cabin. She hesitated, then swore under her breath and headed for the room in question.
"Was wondering when you were going to show up," Kaidan began even before the doors were fully opened.
She hadn't known what to expect if he was actually there. Perhaps, she hoped, he would have been asleep and just maybe she wouldn't have had the heart to wake him from where he slept. Instead, Kaidan sat on the couch with his back to her, watching the stars. Shepard walked past him and stood at the window, gazing on outward.
"Are you all right?"
"Me?" He coughed, and though she couldn't see him, she imagined his usual habit of drawing the back of his hand to his mouth as he did so. "Yeah… I'll be fine. I know my job."
"I don't mean about tomorrow, I meant about today."
The silence was so prolonged, Shepard would have nearly believed he'd fallen asleep if she hadn't heard him shifting where he sat. "I don't really know what I'm supposed to think. There are reasons things like this have never been allowed, because ethically, morally…"
"Yeah," she nodded, feigning the small, short-lived smile she wore as she craned her neck to catch a glimpse of him.
"I've been sitting here," he said, staring past her and into the distance, "trying to figure out what all of this means to me. You look like her, you sound like her, if I ask you a question from years ago, I've no doubt you'll know the answer. But now we know that despite all of the evidence otherwise… you're not Shepard. Not the one I knew, at least. And I just don't know on what philosophical level this changes things. Maybe knowing what we know now shouldn't change anything, but I can't lie—it does, and I don't know what to do with that."
She wrapped her arms around herself and turned fully, leaning back on the glass to watch him. The expressions he made as he spoke were always so telling, and without seeing them firsthand, she felt as though she was only getting half the truth with him. But to her surprise, he was just… vacant. His eyes flickered to her directly and still there was nothing, a complete lack of anything, good or bad.
"Don't look at me like that," she whispered.
"Like what?"
"Like somehow I'm not the same woman you woke up next to this morning."
His brows shifted downward at the jab. "But are you the same woman I woke up next to three years ago?"
Shepard raised a hand, tracing over the shell of her ear from the top down to the lobe. "I can still feel you kissing me here the first time," she said, and continued to drag her fingertips down along the cut of her jaw. "Do you remember the night before Ilos?" Of course he did. She didn't look for any kind of response, just allowed her hand to fall lower over the front of her uniform blouse, tugging the first few buttons open. She folded back the fabric, exposing the swell of her breast and the deep brown of a larger freckle seated high atop it. "You kissed right here, told me it was yours. I can still hear you laughing as you say it, can feel your hair under my fingers as I run them over you scalp. Jesus Kaidan, I can even smell you." She let the shirt go, letting it hang partially open as she crossed the distance to sit beside him, her body turned in his direction. "You can't try to tell me that memory isn't mine."
"Is it, though? Now you know, Shep—" He censored himself, swallowing the word down. "Now you know it wasn't you, so is it really yours?"
She cupped his cheek, and though he flinched, he didn't pull away. "I know I love you, Kaidan."
Much like the meal they'd had on the Presidium that had started all of this for them once again, Kaidan allowed his hand to grasp over hers, holding it steady to his face. He didn't, however, return the words. Shepard cut the awkward silence short, instead leaning in to press her mouth to his. It was just how it always felt, warm in temperature and in taste, soft but rough around the edges.
"Please," she whispered against the corner of his mouth, her free hand straying to find his other, linking their fingers together.
Though he was willing at first, it didn't take long for Kaidan to fight for his hand's freedom, setting it to her shoulder to push her back. His head shook vigorously, combing his fingers through his hair. "Fuck, I can't. I can't do this anymore—not, not to her."
Shepard shifted back in her seat, unable to move or do anything save watch him as he came apart. Kaidan leaned forward, elbows to his knees as he held his head in his hands.
"I keep wondering if there's something after this life. I'm not religious, but I can't stop thinking about it. What if I die and she's there waiting for me? What if she asks me how I could forget about her so easily, fall into bed with her—" With each word, he grew more distraught, and Shepard felt helpless as she watched. "—Her copy? What do I say? That it was easier to pretend you were the same person when now I know you're not? How do I face her after what I've done?"
"She…" would understand, she wanted to say. They were the same person, and yet, Shepard began to doubt herself. Would she really understand? Even as it was, she felt a quiet jealousy begin to burn in her chest at the thought of having to compete for Kaidan's affections with another version of herself. Maybe the only reason she believed the old Shepard would understand was because she wanted her to. It was the easy answer and it was what she wanted, but was it real? Her head swam as the confusion and uncertainty took root.
"When I think about you and I together now I'm just… I'm disgusted with myself. She's been dead this whole time, her body holed up in some Cerberus lab, and I'm here, pretending it never happened. How," he lifted his head, and when he finally looked back to her, tears were welled in the corners of his eyes, "can I explain to her that every time I said I loved you, they were really meant for her?"
Shepard recoiled from him like she'd been slapped; his words hurt more than the sting of an open palm across her cheek ever could've. No, of course he didn't love her, he was in love with the woman he thought she was. And whether it could be argued that they were one in the same, whether they had the same thoughts and memories and bodies, there was something else, something that could never get proper definition like even the archaic idea of a soul that separated her from the woman that he'd first loved.
Strangled, she barely got her words out. "I don't know."
"Hey—" Kaidan raised a hand to her as though he was to offer comfort, but stopped short. "I didn't mean…"
"I know exactly what you meant," and to stave off her tears, Shepard rubbed the side of her hands against the corner of her eyes. "I've already thought all of it myself. Everything you could ever possibly think—I've already thought it, so don't worry."
"I'm…" He didn't finish his apology and she was thankful for it. It was already too forced, like a child being scolded by his mother and being made to ask for forgiveness.
"At least I know what I am now," she started, "even if it's far worse than I ever imagined. At least I know where I stand."
"Shepard—"
"I'm sorry I came back."
"It's not like it was your choice."
"Yeah," with that she stood up, fastening the lowermost open buttons of her shirt to preserve some kind of dignity as he so quickly turned from lover to stranger. "But you were right not to trust me, weren't you? And I convinced you, made you believe I was her, undid the two years of mourning you'd done. For all of that, I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"I want you to know," Shepard said softly, "that I may not be her in the way we thought, but every part of my body feels like it is. It's like I fell asleep and woke up and now the world is upside down and I just have to deal with it even if I don't know where I fit in, if I even have the right to be here at all. She never got to say it, Kaidan, but when I was—when she was—dying, suffocating after the Normandy exploded," she choked, and to her shock, Kaidan stood, mimicking her action from earlier as he set his hand to her cheek. He sought the answer in her eyes, waiting. "She was thinking that she wished she had been able to tell you how much she loved you. I knew back then, but I," intentional or not, she didn't correct herself, "was too scared to say it out loud. She would want me to make sure you knew that now."
He broke suddenly at her admission, and Shepard did the only thing she knew how, she drew her arms around him, cradled her palm to the back of his scalp as she held him to her. Kaidan engulfed her with his own arms, squeezing her tighter than she'd ever felt before. It wasn't like Horizon, not even the way he'd held her the first night they'd been together again a few weeks back. It was like after all this time Kaidan was finally able to say goodbye as she knew he must've dreamt of for so long. The crook of her neck was wet with his tears and as much as she fought off her own, she was unable to when she felt him shake as he cried.
I love you, she wanted to whisper to him again, for even with what she knew now, all she'd ever known was the life that hadn't been hers. She did love him, but that didn't mean she could even begin to pretend that happiness awaited the two of them together. Kaidan, well, he would always belong to someone else—even if it was her—and if he found the strength to stay as his part of their whole, Shepard wouldn't be able to bear the question that when he looked at her, did he see someone else? She was the old Shepard in so many ways, but at the same time, part of her desired to be loved for who she had been since Cerberus had made her, since she'd been the woman she'd proved herself to be. Asking Kaidan to do that would be the cruelest thing she could think of.
"She loved you," she repeated, and couldn't help herself from kissing the crown of his head, inhaling the sweet scent of his soap, the saltiness of sweat. She needed to remember this for herself. "And she knew you loved her."
They stood like that until their tears had gone mostly dry. Kaidan was the first to pull back and he wiped his tears away rather than let them continue to stain his cheeks.
"Despite everything else, I need you to trust me tomorrow, Kaidan. Trust that I can get us through this."
He tarried, but eventually gave her a stiff nod, the kind a lower ranking officer did their superior, rather than a lover or even just a friend. "Aye aye, Commander."
She nodded and stepped away, biting at the inside of her cheek to keep herself together. Commander, not Shepard. "I'll see you in the morning, Major. Get some rest."
Shepard made it only to the hallway before she fell apart once more, stalling beside the memorial where it stood, large and imposing. She imagined her name on it, just below Mordin's and Thane's, as she reached forward to feel over the empty name plate that waited to be filled.
"Shepard?"
She didn't turn, just pulled her hand back to herself and wiped away the tears from her cheeks and eyes, blinking rapidly in a desperate attempt to hurry away the redness she knew had to be there.
"What are you doing up, Garrus?"
He didn't answer, just came to stand beside her, offering the benefit of not looking directly at her. Garrus had always been good at reading between the lines. "We're not going to add anymore names to this."
"That's optimistic, even for you."
"I was thinking it's about time. I'm overdue for some."
Shepard grasped his wrist, squeezed at him between the joints of armor he wore even at the late hour. "Get some rest." She headed for the elevator.
"You going to tell me what happened today, Shepard? Why Kaidan isn't spending the night with you?"
The doors opened and Shepard stepped inside. "Lovers' quarrel," she offered and shrugged a shoulder as nonchalantly as possible.
"At a time like this?" His brow plate raised and before the doors could close, he joined her in the elevator. "You'll have to try harder than that."
