She was born in blood six centimeters deep, her true self sliding forth from a shell crippled by a lifetime of kneeling behind altars and behind desks, squinting at hundreds of prescribed principles and moralities. The clarity of battle revealed them for what they were, hollow and devoid of any true divinity. The long laborous chants of her childhood had been poetry, thought sculpted around words that passed through her soul on the way out of her mouth. She had believed in them so reverently, terrified that her own emotions were leading her astray. Every twinge of anger, every flicker of doubt had been purged through hours of prayer and meditation, kneeling and begging forgiveness as clouds of choking incense made her eyes sting and water. Command School had been different but similar at the same time, high ideals drilled into her head from every direction. The Holy Law of the Alliance, endless codes of honesty, justice, integrity, courage and rules that dictated how to reach each one. She had believed in those with the same kind of fanaticism. They had defined her, made her back strong and her hand steady. They had changed her, made her what she was.
Until she was really born, there under the violet stone of Torfan in hallways crowded with bodies, the air reeking of death and excrement. She twisted her arm in the crushing grip of the batarian that was trying to strangle her, the bulk of his enormous body preventing her from getting the muzzle pointed at the heart or vital organs. That was fine. A kneecap worked just as well.
He howled, rearing back in agony as his leg crumpled under him. She slammed the butt of the gun into the side of his helmet, feeling his skull bounce against its walls. Stunned, his grip weakened even more and she surged forward, legs toned by hours of training propelling him back, against the floor where she locked her hands around his throat, the flexible fabric that could stop bullets helpless to protect him against what was coming now. Her gun was gone, it had been knocked from her hand. Or she had dropped it. She could not remember.
His fingers groped against her wrists, but there was nothing he could do. Her grip was like steel, so tight her fingers ached and then began to burn fiercely. The chemicals in her blood made everything glow, infused with a scarlet light that made the world startlingly clear. She could see the veins in four eyes exploding, the tongue jutting out between broken teeth, swelling and turning purple as his fighting grew weaker and weaker, his hands falling away, to his sides, his legs twitching less and less violently. Eventually all movement stopped and she was looking at nothing, an empty piece of meat devoid of value. She stood, picking up her gun where it had fallen on the ground beside her. Nothing else moved in the narrow hallway. She did not have to turn Hughes over to know that he was dead, but she did anyway.
The bullet had entered his temple and exploded out the back of his skull where she could not see it. Thick lines of blood leaked down his face, out of his mouth, nose and eyes. A ghastly mask of painful death, eyes rolled back into his skull, slivers of milky glass shot with red. It was no more meaningful to her than the face of the batarian she had just strangled and she let him fall back down, onto the floor. She wiped a streak of gore off the visor of her helmet and moved forward, a gleaming predator in the dim light.
She made her way through three empty hallways and when she came to the final door at the end of the final long stretch of desolate, silent metal she knew this was the end. There was nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide. The last survivors of this grisly business were her and whoever was in that room. They would be ready for her; weapons trained on the door, every one of them a pin drop away from firing wildly with everything they had. She should have been afraid, should have turned back and sealed the door, kept them in and waited for backup. She was not afraid. She did not wait for backup.
The door exploded off its hinges in a geyser of blue biotic fire. She was only a second behind it, shards and splinters of metal exploding around her as she surged into the room. She had picked up Rushes' shotgun when he went down, the artery in his leg ruptured under the suit, filling his shin pads with blood before they could even get the thing open. She used it to blow a hole in the nearest body, wide as her hand. His wound steamed in the frigid air as he fell backwards, crashing into the wall and then forward onto his face.
"We surrender!" The nearest living batarian shrieked, throwing both hands above his head as she rounded on him. He was not armed, and his eyes were wide white circles of terror. She chambered another round, which took off his face and sent him flying back like rag doll, limbs flailing in every direction. His team mates wailed, wordless cries of dismay or prayers to unknown gods.
"Stop! Please stop!" Another headshot from the heavy weapon took the next one down, leaning sloppily to the right, but still enough to take out half his brain. His left eyes stayed in tack, or would have if not for the vibration of his skull when the back of it smashed out and splattered the wall. They gelatinized instantly, sliding down his cheeks like thick tears. She continued the slaughter, deaf to their cries for mercy, their declarations of surrender. She had come here, wading through the stink of blood and bile, to dispense justice, not mercy. They fell before her like grain, bent into twisted postures of death. She climbed over them to kill more, not stopping until she heard silence finally descend.
Just her own breathing, ragged, parched, ripped by screaming that she had not realized she had been doing. And there, by the door, a soft gasp half disguised, a whimper. Someone was crying.
She turned, kicking a destroyed body out of the way, and made her way over. The batarian sprawled before her was wounded, his chest fluttering as something foul leaked through the fingers clamped over his gut. She slipped the shotgun into the holster at the small of her back, drew her pistol instead. At this distance, the blast of the bigger gun would coat her with his death. She looked down at herself and realized she was already covered with every kind of gore, flesh and bits of bone pasted to her gauntlets by coagulating blood. A true goddess of terror. Kalima made flesh.
``Please.:" He rasped, a bubble of blood forming in the corner of his thick lips. "I don't want to die here, a billion light-years from my family on this stinking purple moon."
"How many people begged for their lives before you killed them in the Blitz?" Shepard asked. There was no point to this, she knew. Even if the bullet in her pistol did not kill him, the load of lead she had planted in his belly would. She could smell death on him already, through the air-tight glass of her helmet. She realized, suddenly, that she should not be able to smell anything. That most of what was happening right now was stims, fucking with her brain chemistry as much as her muscle and blood. That didn't seem important.
"Many. And I killed them anyway." To his credit, the batarian did not make any apologies. "So are you just going to kill me? That's not very Alliance of you." He was trying to sound brave, and failing. Or perhaps that was death, blurring his words, making his voice tremble. Either way, she extended her arm, her sight trained down the barrel of her pistol. He looked up at her, at the cold length of steel that spelled his demise. "Please." He said again.
"If you want mercy, pray." She growled. He did. She waited.
It seemed that batarian prayer was akin to that of her childhood, long and archaic with a hundred complex ways of expressing the simplest ideas. Protect me in darkness, guide me through death. Take me somewhere better. They were things she had prayed for all her life, prayed and prayed for until her knees locked and it was impossible to stand. She pulled the hammer on her pistol as he neared the end, and the metallic twang of it made his voice quiver. He was still crying, his voice wet and sloppy.
"Shepard? Shepard are you there? We've just entered the building... god, it's a slaughterhouse in here." Her radio buzzed in her ear, a familiar voice. Lieutenant James Percy. They had known each other since the first day of Command School and been friends immediately. Gone on a few dates, tested the water and backed off when it was obvious that training left little room for anything but sex. He would stop her if he were here, would throw himself in front of the bullet rather than let her kill someone that had surrendered. He would kill her before he let it happen. She turned her radio off.
"May the Destroyer judge you justly." She said flatly, and killed him.
She woke, shaking violently. Her stomach churned and she lurched her way to the bathroom, barely managing to make it to the toilet before dinner made its comeback. Retching wetly, she sagged over the toilet, pressing her burning forehead against her hands as she tried to get control of herself. Her sick smelled like batarian blood, heavy and acidic. She flushed the toilet and stood on wobbling legs.
"Are you feeling unwell, Shepard? Should I summon the doctor?" EDI's pleasant synthetic voice chimed in from above. She had no console in the bathroom, which Shepard had taken to be comforting at first. It quickly became apparent, however, that EDI was everywhere all the time, whether there was a console or not. She might have peed herself the first time EDI interrupted her in the bathroom. Luckily, she had already been peeing at the time.
"No! No, I'm fine. Just... fine." She sighed, making her way back to her main living quarters. Her neck and shoulders and back ached from all the pushups she had done last night before collapsing into a sleep that had been far from dreamless, in the end. Still, she dropped to the floor almost instantly and assumed the first position of her usual yoga routine, longing for something simple and clean that could distract her.
It had been easy to dismiss her dreams of Mindoir as strange, weird even, but nothing to worry about. As Thane said, she would put it back behind her when the time came. There was no harm in revisiting her feelings, as long as she kept it brief. Torfan was different. She could not afford to re-examine her feelings on Torfan, could not afford another bought of listless depression like the one that had followed her explosion. She had invoked the Destroyer on that man before she killed him, for the first time in years she had called upon god, only to ask him to doom her victim forever. Whatever faith she had left, she had lost it that day.
It had taken her a long time to come back from it. Almost a year, though the Alliance had always been very careful to shield the Butcher of Torfan from any backlash from the outraged public. It was only the massive funeral that had been... difficult. Nineteen coffins draped with flags, in the huge open shuttle bay of the SSV Othello. The heavy staleness of recycled air making her head hurt as she stood, arms folded behind her back, ignoring the thousand eyes that cut accusingly into her from every angle. Most of these were not her fault; they had died serving the Alliance, doing what had to be done in order to take that base. They were heroes. When she had made her way back to her room she had left most of them behind, but those last two haunted her, stalked her dreams and waking hours. They had followed her into a hurricane of violent death for no other reason than her own bloodlust. Rushes and Hughes truly were her fault.
Her arm gave out, suddenly, and she crumpled to the floor with a sudden yelp. Her back was stiff as a board, knots curled into her flesh like nails. She stretched and felt her spine slipping out of alignment and grunted, twisting from side to side. That only made things worse. She needed a chiropractor, or to hit something hard and repeatedly. She knew where to go for at least one of those.
"Garrus, how much do you love me?" She asked, poking her head into the main battery a few minutes later. She was dressed in sparring gear, a one-piece affair of snug, flexible material with gel pads positioned to protect elbows, knees and other vulnerable areas. The tall turian at the console turned around, his small blue eyes narrowed in instant suspicion. Her wide, innocent grin apparently did not inspire any confidence.
"That depends." He said, choosing his words carefully.
"On what?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the door frame.
"Whichever answer results in my getting hurt the least." He replied. "So I'm going to say... lots. But I'm calibrating the main gun right now, and it's going to take me another hour and a half at least. So you'll have to find someone else to amuse you."
She pouted visibly but Garrus either pretended not to notice or did not know human faces well enough to understand what the jutting lip and slight frown were supposed to communicate. Off duty, secluded from the rest of the crew, she felt much more natural around Garrus then almost anyone else she knew. Two suicide missions, years of suffering and fighting and bleeding and almost dying (or actually dying, in her case) and they were still together. She could not help but love him, like a brother. A giant, scaly brother.
"I wanted us to toss each other around a little bit." She complained, when it was obvious her sighing and pouting was not going to elicit a response from him. "I'll be gentle."
"You said that last time." Garrus pointed out. "And I didn't walk straight for two days."
She grinned at him until he sighed, realizing what he had said. "Damn it. Look, why don't you go ask Thane to spar with you?"
"What is that supposed to mean?" She huffed, instantly on edge again. She was not in the mood for this `Shepard`s got a boyfriend` garbage, especially not from him when he kept giving Tali those longing come-hither looks. He turned to face her finally, abandoning his rapid typing and fixed her with a wicked, dusty blue gaze.
"Well what I meant, was that Thane has excellent hand to hand skills and could probably give you a better challenge then me." He said, crossing his arms over his own broad chest. "But after that little outburst, I'm now very interested to hear what you thought I meant."
"Asshole. Look, it's nothing important. Al-Jilani had a slow news day and I've now got an inbox clustered with messages from people I don't even know asking me if I'm really dating that drell they saw me on the vids with." She rolled her eyes. "Typical meaningless shit, we've got a swarm of hyper-advanced machines hurtling towards us, intent on devouring all our souls, and the best thing anyone has to talk about is the fact I wore pants to a restaurant instead of a skirt."
"And your new... hair? Is that what that stuff is called?" He gestured to her mop of soft blond curls. "In any case, they were talking about it between murder reports on the Citadel News last night. The anchor is thinking about getting hers done like that."
Shepard groaned wordlessly and turned to leave, burying her face in one slim hand.
"Hey, you're a trend-setter. Who'd have guessed?" Garrus teased, turning back to his own work. She flipped him off as she made her way down the hall. Outside of their protective cocoon of normality she was once again the Commander, and nodded gravely at Rupert as he crouched over the sink, scrubbing at something caked onto the breakfast pots. She headed to life support. Garrus had been right about one thing, Thane was an excellent hand-to-hand fighter. If she could not toss her turian friend around, maybe he would be more obliging.
"Thane?" She called as the door slid open. He looked up from his usual seat, meditating before the glowing orb of the core and a small smile touched his stoic face.
"Shepard." He turned back to the window as she came around, taking a seat across from him. "Did you need something?"
"Actually, yes. I've got some... tension. I was hoping to work through it with some sparring, but Garrus is busy." She leaned her chin on one hand. "He suggested you as a replacement."
Thane regarded her with dark eyes full of meaning that she could not understand. His face was very eloquent, she supposed, in its own subtle way. Acknowledging that did not make it any easier to know what he was thinking, though. After a moment he nodded, only slightly, and pulled himself to his feet.
"That sounds... interesting. I've never seen you use hand fighting on the battlefield. Beyond a well-placed elbow, that is." He tucked his hands behind his back. "I shall endeavour not to be too rough. It has been a long time since I did any friendly sparring."
"I'm not fragile. I was top-ranked in Command School at hand-to-hand. Better then the instructor, by the time I graduated." She replied, standing as well.
"I would expect nothing less. You seem to be the best at everything you do." Thane replied. She smiled, then straightened slightly, banishing the warm feelings his compliment inspired. They were talking about fighting, after all. Not flirting.
"We can do it in the cargo bay." She replied, and then realized what she had said. She headed to the door, a slight hitch in her step, her back turned to him so he could not see the blush blooming across her cheeks. God damn! She needed to get a hold of herself before she went completely insane. She had already had this conversation with herself, convinced herself that it was a bad idea. And she was still in love with Kaidan. He followed her, wordlessly. When she glanced over his shoulder his face was as calm and serene as ever. She stopped herself from growling at him. It was not his fault that she was being such a spaz.
They made their way down, undoubtedly feeding the gossip mill with every centimetre of their descent. By the time they reached the bottom Shepard's mind was buzzing, her skin itching for a little combat even if it was only friendly. Thane noticed and raised one of his brows at her in an expression she was beginning to recognize. It was his teasing face, and he only ever seemed to use it with her.
"Perhaps this is not such a good idea." He commented. "You look like you want to tear something in half."
"I'll be gentle." She promised. He did not look convinced.
There were mats for sparring; she had bought them the day after her first bought with Garrus, after bruising her tailbone when he flipped her over his shoulder. For all his complaints, their fights were never one-sided. He always managed to toss her around pretty well, before she found some way to win. Turians were hard, all scales and thick muscle, but they were also slow and not very flexible. And she had gone to Command School long after the end of the First Contact war. Marine martial arts were designed almost exclusively to kill turians. As they took their places in opposite corners of the mat she let her mind go still, emotion falling away in the face of her fighters focus.
Drell were different then almost any race she had fought, at least without armour and a big gun to help her out. Human shaped, with human flexibility but denser muscles that made them surprisingly strong. He would be just as fast as her, just as flexible, but twice as strong. For the first time, as she faced him across their makeshift arena, she felt a flicker of doubt in her abilities. As they moved forward, each suddenly tense and wary, she caught the trace of a smile on his full lips.
There he was, reading her again, peeling away the mask to gaze at her inner thoughts. It annoyed her, so she struck first.
Muay thai, the art of eight limbs, seemed a reasonable opening strategy. It had strong posture, compact, so she could focus on protecting her soft delicate stomach. Drell had four extra ribs, that descended down to protect more of their vital organs and curved inward preventing uppercuts to the body. Her knee and elbow blows would have to come in from the side, take him off balance before she could use something more subtle with his strength out of the way. He dodged her first blow effortlessly, retreating with soft, catlike steps across the mat, studying her. She growled. She did not want to dance, she wanted to fight. He was still smiling.
She tried again, something more military with longer strides and less leg work, swinging her arm in a feint while her other elbow snuck up to take him in the delicate skin under the armpit. He caught her arm, pulling her to the side and she felt her legs fold under her as he applied an astoundingly well controlled amount of force to her torso. She fell backward and rolled, coming right back up to standing position, knees bent. He cocked his head to the side and kept right on smiling. The look in his eyes was careful, considering. She waited for him, and he began to move forward again.
It went like that for a while, feints and light punches from both of them, nothing brutal, and nothing decisive. She cycled through her vast knowledge of hand-to-hand, trying a little bit of everything, melding techniques and discarding them when they did not work. She was sweating lightly when he moved forward, suddenly fast, suddenly explosive with energy. His first punch was headed for her ribs but she blocked him with her elbow, tucking her knee in and pounding it home, into his side, between ribs and hips. He grunted in surprise and his weight shifted, only slightly. He was so damn heavy and she was pulling her punches too much. She took what she could get, punching him in the centre of his chest, sending him back another step. He spun, planting his foot and regaining his balance before dropping suddenly. His kick took her in the knee, making her entire leg buckle. She let it go and was down on the floor, rolling again. He came after her, punches flying before she could get back into defensive posture. She had no choice but to attack again, or muster clumsy but effective blocks to his lightning fast strikes.
They went back and forth like that, grunting and breathing hard as each tried to gain the upper hand. She could not get him off balance, and his speed was dizzying. She reacted with instinct, her style becoming harder, more brutal and less refined. He shifted accordingly, twisting between her heavy blows to unleash barrages of quick chops with the side of his hand which seemed to find only the most tender and pliant areas of her body. She was getting tired, she realized, furious with herself. She did not lose easily. Especially not when it came to fighting, the only thing outside of giving orders she had ever really been any good at.
She threw another punch, too much weight behind it, too much anger. He side stepped, and then his hand was around her wrist, a grip like stone, cool and unyielding. He pulled her close, trapping her other arm in a position where it could do nothing but unleash weak, ineffective hammer blows against his back. His leg curled around hers and he bent at the waist. Suddenly, nothing in her body made sense, she fell back and he fell with her this time, his hand still gripping her wrist, the bulk of his heavy body pinning her against the mat. She tried to move her legs, only to find his firmly positioned, shins crossed just under her knees. She could barely wiggle her toes. She sighed, blowing a few strands of sweaty hair out of her eyes and glared at him.
"Fine, you win." She growled. "But don't let it go to your head."
He did not say anything and she realized, suddenly, how close they were. His hand was still on her wrist, surprisingly smooth and suddenly gentle. She could smell his breath on her face, warm, smelling slightly of exotic spices she had no name for. His whole body smelled like that, like warmth and strength and strange places she had never been. His lips caught her eyes, they looked soft, the line down their centre making something in her chest quiver suddenly. She looked up and his eyes were wide, uncertain, but full of... of something. After a long moment with neither of them saying anything he pulled himself to his feet, retreating across the mat back to his starting point.
"What was that?" She asked quietly, pulling herself to her feet. That warm ache was starting up again, spreading through her stomach and down. She shifted her weight, her feet bare and cold, sticking slightly to the mats underfoot. He turned around, and his face was neutral, but devoid of its usual calmness.
"You know what that was." He said, his tone only slightly reproachful. "You were a part of it as much as me."
That was true, completely true, no matter how much she would have loved to deny it. She rubbed the back of her neck and her hand came away bathed with nervous sweat. She loved the smell of battle, the warm clean sweat of the serenity she only felt in the middle of intense combat. Now, she stank, and wished she was in the shower or really, anywhere that was not here, having this conversation.
"I... I'm not sure." She said finally, her voice feeble even in her own ears. He moved closer, dark eyes fixed on her, seeing straight through the mask of flesh to the doubt that boiled within her. She stepped back and he stopped.
"I see." Was all he said.
"Thane..." She began, holding up one hand and then stopping, not sure what to do with it.
"You don't have to explain, Shepard." He replied, folding his hands behind his back. It was a way to keep him composed, she realized suddenly. The blankness of his face was not all drell stoicism. He was fighting to keep himself so calm, so still and unmoving. "Perhaps I was being foolish."
"No, you weren't. I've been careless." She replied, shaking her head. "I... it's complicated. But I can't do this, Thane. Not right now." She hoped her realized how much she wanted to, how close she had been there on the floor, pinned under his inviting warmth, everything about him so tantalizing and this damn ache that was present even now, screaming for her to throw herself across the narrow distance between him, to wrap herself around him and let go. A moment of silence.
"There's someone else." It wasn't a question.
"Maybe. I don't know anymore. Like I said, it's complicated." Her skin itched and crawled under the sweat. She should say something else, something less stupid and contrite then the 'it's not you, it's me' speech she had given so far. "I need some time to figure things out."
"So this isn't a no?" That was a question, tilted ever so slightly at the end. And maybe even a little hopeful. She managed to smile, beyond relieved, almost not believing he could actually understand something this well. She had barely understood it herself, even as she explained it to him.
"It's not a no." She confirmed.
He smiled back at her, a strange smile but something none the less, and nodded. "I'm glad. We should do this again, sometime."
And then she was gone and she fell back, sprawled across the mats. She was sweaty, confused, angry and sad at the same time. Her heart thundered in her chest, so loud, so hard she could feel it pulsing through the rest of her body. Her blood sand, and she thought about soft green skin, black eyes, lips pushed up in the slightest smile. The ache was growing, in her stomach, her heart, her brain.
She could not take much more of this.