The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this you should not grieve.
The glory of the Self is beheld by a few, and few describe it; a few listen, but many without understanding. The Self of all beings, living within the body, is eternal and cannot be harmed. Therefore, do not grieve.
-The Bhagavad Gita
She had forgotten, in her long sojourn among the stars, exactly what it was like to spend time in a place where the environment was not maintained by machines. The bright summery days of the Presidium were still and mild, the unchanging sun never hot, the illustrated clouds never throwing any cooler shadows. The bellies of ships were much the same, if less grand. Whatever temperature was comfortable, whatever dryness or humidity was desired, could be programmed into the computer and made a constant reality. As she touched down on Mindoir, the sun just beginning to cast the first rosy lights of dawn over the peaks of the distant western mountains, she felt the bite of nights coolness still pervading the air and realized she had forgotten to bring a sweater. Thinking back, she realized that she did not even own one. Shivering, she unpacked the bundles of supplies and strapped her M-6 into a civilian holster. The rest of her weapons and armour she packed into one of the storage cupboards aboard the shuttle before she sent it back up to the Normandy.
To her left the stain of their fire still marked the earth, and as she shouldered her packs and started walking she could smell a faint reek beginning to emanate from the broken down back door of the town hall. Gritting her teeth, she quickened her pace and headed down for the main road of the settlement on the bottom of the hill. She still was not sure exactly how she was going to do all that she needed to do in just two days, but it seemed like a good enough place to start.
Hours passed with no indication but the slow crawl of the sun overhead. She remembered that Mindoir had thirty-five hour days, the arch of the sun overhead slow and languid, the blistering heat of mid afternoon making the hard lifting and carrying of the morning hours impossible. She let the last bundle of dry wood fall to the ground and groaned, stretching her aching shoulders as she stared up and down the little street. Tufts of hand-sized, five petal flowers were everywhere, although beautiful they would cause an unsightly rash if she tried to pick them. Retrieving a bottle of water from her supplies she left the stacking and tying of wood for the afternoon and headed up into the meadows, toward the orchards in the far north-west of their fields.
She laughed at the sight of the Dekkum, rabbit-sized, three-legged mammalian creatures that were leaping through the long grass, making shrill chirping noises at each other. As she passed they paid her no mind, skittering away if she came to close but otherwise ignoring her almost entirely. There were no predators in the mountains, only a few poisonous plants and a stinging lichen. They had never had any reason to fear anything. As she made her way into the cool shade of the trees, the faint, sickly-sweet aroma of rotting fruit carrying on the sweet breeze wafting down from the snow-capped peaks overhead, she breathed a sigh of relief seeing the long blooming vines and carpets of speckled blue and yellow flowers underfoot. The flowers were important, and she doubted any of the dry reserves put in by the widows all those years ago had held together.
She sat in the shade, eating one of the ripe plums she had found still clinging to the lower branches and began making garlands, her fingers easily remembering where exactly to push the needle to keep each blossom securely fastened, and yet keep every petal in place. Her thoughts wandered during this mild, almost pleasant work in the cool, fragrant meadows with even the ominous stain of the haunted settlement obscured by the branches of the trees. It was easy to forget the distasteful nature of her task here, where the air was so sweet and clear, where only the beauty of Mindoir displayed itself for the world to see. She must have sat for hours, though the sun barely moved and the sun-baked meadows beyond shimmered in the blistering heat. Eventually, since she was alone, she took off her black shirt and pants, kicked off her boots and sprawled in the cool grass amidst the long bands of interlinked flowers, inhaling their smooth, sweet scents. The light filtering through the leaves above was so shockingly familiar it was almost easy to believe she would hear her brothers calling at any moment, or see them skitter through the branches overhead.
She never knew what had become of Rajan and Timir, or any of her family really. Anderson had told her they were dead, gunned down in the fields by batarian slavers as a last cruel act of defiance. But she knew that he really did not know what had become of them, many of the chosen slaves had been loaded onto the shuttles and abducted by the time the Alliance touched down. They could still be alive out there, in batarian space, slaves in some mineral mine or servants in a savage household of violent aliens. She had long ago abandoned any hope of ever finding them.
How easy it was to lie here and let her thoughts wander back to them now. She had not thought of them with any detail in years; had not even thought of their names, had never called their faces into her mind and reflected on how much she looked like them. They had been three of a kind in a way siblings seldom were outside of tiny, isolated communities such as this, best friends despite the seven years spackled between their births. She could almost hear their voices, gruff with the passage of years, in the back of her mind.
She COULD hear voices.
Shepard sat up abruptly, reaching for her gun in the grass beside her. They were coming from far off, carrying over the flatness of the rolling meadows. She was on her feet, pulling her clothing on, when they finally materialized into real words.
"This goddamn shitting heat is killing me." Someone was saying, and from the deep timbre and vibration of the words she could tell it was a batarian. She pulled her shirt on and buckled her boots before she went slinking forward, seeking a thicker patch of underbrush to provide cover while she searched for the source of the voices. She tapped at her omnitool, sending a message to the Normandy to alert them of what was going on. The reply came a moment later.
'We are engaged with a hostile ship, Shepard. Help will be dispatched as soon as possible, but evasive maneuvers are advised.' A cold chill settled at the base of her spine. She had been down here fourteen hours. What was going on here?
"Settle down." A harsh command from a voice she recognized with icy dread. The angry young officer she had just jettisoned from the ship. What were they doing down here? What did they have to gain from tramping around a planet defined only by its propensity for venomous flora and fauna, and a steadily mounting host of skeletons? "We'll be off this rock as soon as Eclipse deals with those do-gooders overhead. They should have cut and run when they had the chance."
There was a murmur of agreement, punctuated by the continuing irate swearing of the overheated member as the group crested the small hill overhead. She could see them through a break in the branches and crouched down lower, keeping herself as submerged among the undergrowth as possible. The captain was not among them, and that did not surprise Shepard in the least bit, and the mouthy officer seemed to have replaced him, standing at the head of the column and scanning the tree line.
"I don't see anyone." Someone volunteered unhelpfully. The officer turned to stare at him and the man quieted.
"Someone dumped those supplies and that big fucking pile of wood in the middle of that road. Someone is here." The leader pointed out as though explaining something to small child. "Doing god knows what. Since there is only ONE ship in the area it bears assuming that one of her crew is that someone doing god knows what. Since we want to kill everyone, it therefore makes sense to look for this person and smash their head in."
She squinted as they began their descent toward the trees, wishing that all batarians could be as stupid as the sheepish looking one walking drag. They would find her here for sure, and she turned, beating a stealthy, hasty retreat only possible because she had spent so many hours playing hide and seek among these very same trees. Cold sweat was pouring down her back.
So they were working for Eclipse. They must have gotten the captain to call them up and warn them about what was going on when Shepard had kicked them off the ship. She swore inwardly, her jaw clenching as she pressed her back against a tree and took a few long breaths. She had seen the glint of metal in their hands, guns salvaged from the corpses in the town hall no doubt. No armour, so she had a fighting chance, but she had not kept her armour either. She had been so distracted by everything going inside her head that she had never considered the fact that her enemy may not be as stupid as she gave them credit for being.
And now she was most probably fucked.
She sent another message to the Normandy, advising them of the upgrade in her urgency and received no reply. An Eclipse ship was no fringe pirate troop of slovenly petty criminals. They would know how to fight, and though she was confident her crew would be able to eliminate them, it would take time. Until then, she was definitely on her own.
She could hear them begin to crash through the underbrush and growled. There was only so much orchard to hide in, eventually she would reach the other end and then there would be nothing but barren meadows stretching for half a kilometre or more in every direction. She would be totally exposed and without protection, easy pickings for even the most inept of snipers. She pressed herself against the bark and glanced back, the rustling and crunching of bushes far behind her the only indication of movement. They seemed to have fanned out slightly, searching in a wide swath rather than all tramping along together. She swore softly, and began picking her way from tree to tree, scuttling along in a half crouch wherever she could use bushes or clusters of fern for cover.
She had to wipe her hand and readjust her grip on her M-6 as she reached the end of the column. There were only nine of them now, without the captain, and they were spread about ten feet apart as they picked their way through roots and over fallen trees in the overgrown trees. She waited, pressed behind a thick apple tree as the nearest one came closer and closer, his rifle swaying from side to side as he only half-scanned the trees before him. Like the others, he was none to convinced that it was necessary to comb the place as thoroughly as their new captain insisted. She could hear his boots crunching in the stillness, ten feet away, then seven, six, five. She would have to act soon, be quick and quiet, muffle the blast into his body or try to collapse his trachea before he could shout. She had been trained to do it, even if she never had and he was without the usual chin guards or impact resistant Kevlar. Her entire body tensed, charged with violent energy as she waited.
Someone cried out from the other end of the orchard, perhaps finding her garlands and she heard him shift, turning toward the sound, his back to her. She struck, swinging around the tree and slamming her knee into his, crumpling his leg. As he fell she caught his scream, slamming her hand over his jaw and wrenching, using his falling momentum to crack his neck. She kept her hand firmly in place to muffle the gurgle of his death and then lowered his body slowly to the ground. She stopped, listening intently.
No one seemed to have heard anything. She could hear distant arguing, something about wasting time, hunger, heat, and moved forward while they were still distracted. Eight left. Eight batarians against one human woman, even if that woman was Commander Shepard, were not odds she liked. The next batarian appeared around the bend of a tree, gun slung carelessly against his side as he waited for an order to come from the bickering higher officers. She slid forward in a slick, deadly panic. Fear was screaming in her ears, telling her that at any moment he was going to turn around and blow a hole in her from crotch to neck. She was not Thane, trained in the art of silent death, she had only adrenaline and survival instinct keeping her alive. Still, he did not turn and she clamped her hand over his mouth as the muzzle of her M-6 buried itself in his spine and squeezed off a single shot that lost itself in the closeness of the forest and the noisy fighting. She lowered the second body to the ground and took off again, her hand now streaked with the strange pinkish blood he had spat over her hand as he died. Seven to one. Her odds were getting better.
It sounded like the new captain had finally closed the argument, and that they were moving forward again. She fell back a little, putting herself behind her next target. EDI had advised evasive maneuvers but there was no time for playing hide and seek, waiting for them to inevitably find her. She had to start evening the odds, even if doing so made her stomach feel like it was boiling. As the third back appeared before her she sighed and took a deep breath, focusing her mind. Hesitation here would kill her.
She would have her panic attack after everyone else was dead.
She heard the stick turn under her foot, and the tiny snap it made, as she zeroed in on him. He was turning, his voice rising in the first tentative notes of alarm when her hand shot out and slammed into his windpipe, collapsing the delicate tube in on itself and cancelling his report as he instantly began to choke. She slammed him backwards, into a tree and punched him once in the gut. As he doubled over she raised her gun and slammed it into the back of his skull. He fell over dead.
The damage was done though, as she heard his companions begin calling out to him, wondering what was going on. She retreated back, into a thick patch of spiny bushes, ignoring the long white tracks its thorns left on her arms. Momentary discomfort was acceptable for this kind of cover. She was grateful for it when the nearest of his companions emerged, ludicrously alone, in the small area between trees where she had left the body. As he stared down in mute amazement, she put a bullet between his eyes, the detonation of the gun cracking through the otherwise quiet orchard like thunder. As it echoed through the distant meadows she heard the crunching of the other approaching batarians stop and then resume again, instantly more cautious and slow. She swore, and retreated to another patch of thick undergrowth, further away and crouched down on her stomach, looking for boots around the pair of bodies she could just barely see. A pair appeared, and then another. She could handle two.
"Yeah, both of 'em are dead." She could hear someone report as she pushed herself back to her knees, still crouching down. "No sign of anyone outside of a bullet hole and a broken neck." He paused, hand pressed to his ear as his partner scanned the overgrown paths between the trees for their elusive stalker.
She had never used a warp burst on an opponent who was not sheathed in heavy armour, and the sounds he made as blue fire tore him apart made her sure that she never wanted to use it again. Even as she sank three bullets into his companion, she was already turning to put one in him just so he would stop that terrible, terrible shrieking. The thing that slumped back, exploding open from every seam, and was lost among the fronds of fern and bush resembled nothing living. She fought the stale, acrid taste of vomit that threatened to climb up the back of her throat as she moved steadily further back, trying to keep some idea of where her remaining hunters were. They had stopped moving for the moment and she breathed deep, a sigh of relief as she paused to catch her breath.
"We know its you, Shepard." The voice startled her, it was so close. She had thought that they would be in front of her, and far to her right. But they sounded like they were right beside her and she turned, fleeing with quick and mostly silent steps. She hoped they were like most people who worked on ships, woefully unaware of what it took to maneuver over real ground. "Who else could take down six of my men down like that? Fuck, and when you didn't even have the decency to give us a clean death when we asked for one. Well that can go both ways, bitch. Don't count on a bullet to the brainstem when we get our hands on you."
She had not been, but hearing it put a fresh thrill of fear in her. Even though the day was still blistering hot, she was shivering when she popped her thermal clip and slid another into her gun. She had left most of her clips with the rest of her supplies, down in the settlement. Twelve shots left, for three pissed off batarian pirates. That should be easy right?
She glanced around the tree she was using as cover as she heard them moving forward again, as silently as they could but still not as quiet as her. She had advantages they simply did not, and decided to use them as she flitted between the trees to try and work her way behind them again.
They were on to her though, staying close together in a triangle formation as they moved through the trees. Any time she tried to line up a shot she realized she could not afford to compromise her position. One of the others would get a bullet in her, eventually. At the very least they would get into cover, and force her into a shootout that she did not have the ammo to afford. Swearing to herself, she continued to circle them and they continued to hunt her, held in check mostly by their captains unwavering hatred of her and the patience it was building in him.
"I wasn't always a pirate, you know." He started speaking, his way of letting her know he knew she was out there, moving just beyond his vision. She ignored his attempts to draw her out and kept ducking under the bushes, sneaking between trees and trying to lure him into some clearing where they would be exposed and give her the upper hand. "Once, I was a farmer. Batarians have those too, did you know? We grew something very similar to these strange sweet things you love so much. I was happy there, but my brother always wanted to see the stars. Adventure, you know?"
She frowned, peeking around the tree she was crouched behind as the trio crashed through the bushes fifteen feet off, making a wide arch as they headed due north. They must have been at this for hours, the light was beginning to slant as the sun sank lower in the eastern sky, heading for the jagged horizon. As much as he tried to keep his voice level and confident, Shepard could tell that this little speech was just an expression of his growing impatience. Better to let it simmer.
"He signed up with a ship as soon as he was old enough to pass for someone who was old enough to be of use in space. Wasn't particularly good at it, but it so happened that he showed up at just the right time for an amateur. The Terminus Systems were going to war, the Blitz as your people call it, against the Alliance. We were going to burn your pitiful planets and enslave you all." He laughed, bitterness dripping from every syllable. "And you beat us. Fair enough. You held out, and we retreated, and you followed us to punish us as was your right by every military law."
She could see where this was going, and it lit a fire in her chest that it was shockingly difficult to control. Torfan again. She was going to be lectured on war crimes by a fucking batarian, who was even now slinking through the trees of her childhood trying to kill her. Her grip on her pistol tightened and she moved to follow him as he continued to move northerly through the trees.
"My brother was one of the ones who lived to retreat. They dug themselves in on a little moon in the Dregan system. Torfan, it was called." She could hear the brittle anger in his voice, the snarl as he continued to break through the underbrush, his four eyes searching the empty expanse as her two trained on the back of his head. Her hand itched with her want to put a bullet there, in the soft flesh at the base of his skull. She held back, grinding her teeth as he pressed on. "Where you slaughtered him."
She sighed, rubbing at her eyes. She had long ago come to accept that what she had done at Torfan was wrong, that she had a price to pay for the bodies she had left there. Being lectured on it now was so unnecessary, there was nothing anyone could blame her for that she did not already have covered herself.
"Which was fine. Batarians don't surrender to humans, even if those humans are better, faster and stronger than they are. It simply isn't done. He wouldn't have been a real warrior if you hadn't killed him." He spat, she could hear it splattering his rage among leaves. "That's what pisses me off so much, you see. If you're going to be a limp-dicked coward who can't kill with a modicum of respect, you could have left me my brother. But no, you took him and then you wouldn't afford me a simple warrior's dignity when I asked you for it. That's why I'm going to take my time with you Shepard. That's why I'm really going to enjoy choking the life out of you. More so than usual, I mean."
She could see this was not going anywhere. They were at an impasse, both of them too well aware of what was at stake to jab out and make a stand. Or at least, he was. As much as he accused her of being a coward, she knew he would never break formation, never plunge out into the forest alone and meet her face to face.
The first bullet took the man standing on his right out, punching through his temple and out his eye in a wash of flying grey matter. Shouts of alarm from his surviving guard as he spun, his eyes snapping automatically to her position as though he could smell her. Maybe he could. Were batarians supposed to have better senses than humans? She could not remember, as she swung around to the other side of the tree and planted two bullets in his other companion. The man went down, thrashing in the bushes before she could tell whether she had killed him.
The blast of his gun coincided with a seizure in her arm as a cold dart sunk into the flesh just under her shoulder, tossing her back against a nearby tree. Her other hand slapped against the impact point, feeling ragged flesh, sudden wetness blooming against the fabric as her gun dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. The cold was being replaced by heat now, a sharp agony spreading as the scent of hot copper hit her. She looked up, as he attacker closed in on her, hands latching themselves around her throat.
He lifted her up, boots swinging as she tried to kick him, and pinned her body against the tree. Her hands shot to his, the blood on her fingers making her fingers slip ineffectually against his rock hard grip. She sucked a tiny gasp of air in, and then his grip tightened and she was suffocating. She tried to hit him, her wounded arm doing little more than brush ineffectually against his hands.
"Eclipse wanted you alive, Shepard." He snarled. "They think you're valuable. But they'll just fuck me out of any cut of that money anyway, so I like this option better. I'm going to savour watching the light go out of your eyes."
This was too familiar, the pressure in her chest, the sudden strain of her tendons as her lungs fought to swell. She grabbed one of his wrists as he started to laugh at her, her eyes rolling into the back of her head and raised her damaged arm above her head.
Bearing down on his elbow with hers sent agony tearing through her open wound and the torn ligaments underneath, but she carried through it and his grip finally tore away. She gulped air as she fell sideways, slamming her damaged shoulder against the ground. The world spun and seized as she sagged and he kicked her in the stomach, forcing the air from her lungs. He had abandoned his gun sometime after shooting her, intent on finishing this with his hands and bent over her, reaching out.
She brought her knee up into his gut and he grunted, pitching forward so she could punch him in the face. As he veered to the side, swearing violently she fought her way to her feet, looking for her gun. He had already recovered by the time she spotted it, half-hidden in the underbrush a few feet away. He hit her with the back of his hand, her nose exploding in a way that was almost familiar. Her mouth filled with blood and she screamed and spat it at him. He roared in response and dived at her, knocking her defending hand aside and delivering an uppercut that made her jaws snap shut and her head spin. A moment later he had his hands around her throat again and threw her violently to the ground.
"I'll give you credit, Shepard. You're one tough bitch." He laughed, wiping blood from his cut lip off on the back of his hand as he kicked her deliberately in her open bullet wound. She moaned and curled up, holding her face and arm in one hand each. She was having trouble concentrating, her thoughts vibrating between her ears as she struggled to stand. That made him laugh even harder and he flipped her on to her back and leaned over her, his breath tainted with acidic batarian blood and half-digested food. It made her stomach pitch violently and she gagged. "But it's time to give it up. I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill the famous Commander Shepard, the Butcher of Torfan, the Saviour of the Citadel, the White fucking Knight of the Terminus Systems. Me." He laughed shortly. "Life is full of surprises."
He was strangling her again, his hands like a ring of iron around her throat and she had no strength to resist this time. He filled her vision, blocking out the trees above, his stink chasing away the smell of earth and grass, his heavy breathing and her desperate choking shattering the stillness of the undergrowth. Her world was full of him, his savage glee smudging into a swirl of menacing colours as the world began to grow numb, her lungs burning now and awareness slipping away. There were no needles of stims and medigel to draw it out, no horrific terror as she exploded on the inside out. This was like going to sleep. Like resting.
A gun shot went off, and then suddenly there was air again, flooding her grateful body with such force that tears filled her eyes and poured down her face. She gulped, gasped as she tried to sit up and the world spun so powerfully that she collapsed backwards again, gagging.
"Shepard?" Dusty blue eyes filled her vision and suddenly there was a strong arm on her shoulder, helping her sit. She opened her mouth to speak, and instead puked all over her saviour and herself. Moaning, she slumped over and put her head in her hands. Even with the hands gone the world seemed flat and out of focus for the first time in months. She had finally grown so used to seeing everything with perfect clarity that the absence of it was now painful.
"Siha?" She looked up again, black eyes now as Garrus tried to wipe her sick off his armour. She opened her mouth and made a wet hacking sound. Her hand shot to her throat and found it already swollen under her fingers, no doubt turning purple. Thane touched it to, his face dark as his cool fingers probed the damaged flesh. "Are you going to be alright?"
She nodded. She was Shepard. She was always alright, no matter what happened. That much was clear among the sluggish mush of her thoughts. He did not look convinced and rather than trying to help her stand merely picked her up off the ground, cradling her against his chest with ease. She thought about fighting him, but her arm hurt so bad, and the world was still spinning in and out of focus and she was so damn tired that nothing really seemed to matter.
"She has a concussion." She heard Thane say, and then Garrus said something back and then they were moving, trees and bushes flashing by in a wild mashing of colour and shape.
"Stay awake, Siha," She heard Thane say, jostling her urgently. She perked up, slinging one arm over his shoulders and trying to stay alert. "Talk to me. Tell me something interesting."
He wanted her to form thoughts right now? She shook her head but he continued to bounce her uncomfortably in his arms, keeping her from putting her head down and she struggled to find something to appease him.
"When we first came down here, I wondered how of all the places on Mindoir, we just happened to wind up here." She said finally. Thane glanced at her and she winced, shielding her eyes as they left the cover of the trees and emerged into the meadows. "It doesn't really make sense, not really. Unless some things really are inevitable. Unless I was meant to be here, to undergo all of this, to struggle and suffer."
"No one is meant to suffer." Thane replied. She had never asked him much about his religion, such discussions seeming too riddled with opportunities for conflict or miscommunication, but the way he spoke now made it sound like a deeply held belief. "Suffering is created by people."
"Of course it is. I created the suffering I underwent here." She replied. "By doing what I did on Torfan."
"Shepard…" Garrus sounded concerned but she just shook her head, quieting him with a look from her bleary yet serious eyes.
"It's okay Garrus, it's better than okay. This is my karma at play, a natural pattern of life completing itself through events on so many different levels of importance it's difficult to really understand. All of my life has conspired to bring me to this point, as it always has." She got the sense that she was rambling, but no one seemed to mind. Even as she paused Thane readjusted her in his arms, his jarring steps making her shoulder throb painfully. Her thoughts fluttered from subject to subject so rapidly in this state that she soon forgot what she had said, and was talking about other things, fragmented half-thoughts that spilled out before they were even finished forming. By the time they got her to the ship she was rambling nonsensically about how there were no fish in the Presidium lake.
Her companions remembered though. Such a strange thing to come from their Commander, who had spent most of her life insisting that she was not special, that there was no great path laid out for her. It must have been the concussion, of course, but the seriousness of her lacquered eyes haunted them during the entire long shuttle ride back during which she described the ceiling to them in great detail. Whatever was happening to Shepard, whatever haunted her down there on that planet, it worried them all.d