Out of suffering and fire emerge the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.

-Shaelgrath, Krogan Battlemaster

In the beginning, he was born.

That's where the story started to get confusing. Intelligence has been proved empirically to be, in most instances, determined by genetic background rather than random chance. Not in all cases, but it most. A random genius popping up in a mire of genetic backwash like Trinidad was laughably unlikely, he knew because he'd done the math once and laughed at it.

So, logically, if the chances of him actually having been born in Trinidad were that remote he should look elsewhere. He was definitely Latino, if not necessarily Cubano. He'd searched for reports throughout South America of missing and dead children in the years before he had a memory, but nothing aligned itself. He sent his DNA to a few likely cases and it came back negative for a match.

He came from nowhere. An anomaly with no explanation behind it, a roll of the dice that had apparently panned out rather well for God or Fate or whoever was rolling.

But he was born, and for some reason he ended up in Trinidad. That much is certainly a fact.

If there is a Hell on Earth and it is not Trinidad it must at least look an awful lot like it. He remembered thinking that as a child, and when he got older he thought it was a strange thought for a child to have. He has a very good memory, it comes with being smart like he is, and his memories of his time there have always been crystal clear.

Growing up was hard. Over time the memories lost their ability to draw blood, but he could never dream of denying what he was. He can remember the first fights, before the drugs started killing him, he can remember how elated he'd felt to finally have power over someone else. Those memories are worse than any other.

The Alliance had saved him from that. When the other recruits were jostling each other and boasting while the Admiral gave his inauguration speech Shepard had been still as stone. His face was still impressively bruised from his altercation with Arturo and his stooges in the alleyway five days prior. It had got him several sideways looks, as did his freshly coloured crimson hair and his ratty clothes. He'd managed to buy better, cleaner ones than what he'd had before, but he was still dirty and he still looked like a street kid.

Every word the Admiral said was precious to him. He soaked it in, felt it nourish whatever new thing had sprung up in him and driven him from the streets of Trinidad. It was like food for his starving soul. If he closed his eyes and thought he could still bring every word of it up from memory, with no fumbling or mistakes. It was the first time in his life he had ever heard of anything that sounded like it was worth believing in. He believed in it instantly, passionately, with all the strength his stunted black soul could muster.

When he said the words and swore his life and service to the ideals of the Alliance, he meant it. The Alliance saved him, and for that it got his life, and his loyalty. Above and beyond all other things, he believed in the Alliance and he would fight for it until the day he died. He'd made that vow at fifteen and spent every day of his life living up to it.

And it had never done him any harm. Even when times were bad, even when he was wading through hell with every muscle screaming, he had always known he was exactly where he was supposed to be. And in between the hell he had met people that made him feel like an actual, for real, totally not faking it human being. He spent the last years of his life living well, and he died for something he believed in.

Some things were simply meant to be.

And some things were most certainly not meant to be. No one was meant to come back from death. No one was meant to walk around carrying that coldness inside them.

It was... difficult at first. That was to be expected, he thought, but there wasn't really any time to deal with it. He was grateful, in a way, for how things had turned out. Work focused him. Facts and data spreads and tech charts were more therapeutic than anything else he'd found in the galaxy. A few hours with the new omni-tool specs and his thoughts had ground down to computer level, all numbers and jargon. That he could handle. That was easy, like not really thinking at all.

So he worked, ate, and slept. He found he didn't have to do much of the last two anymore. His appetite was non-existent, and Miranda spouted off some regenerative neurosurgery techno-babble to explain why he never really seemed to need more than four hours sleep at a time. He watched his muscles get sinewy and hard under his skin. Whatever Cerberus had done to him made him stronger, faster, more efficient in every way. He hated it. His body didn't make sense to him anymore. He spent hours exercising, trying to get used to it, and he made some progress but it was never enough. He felt like he was walking around in someone else's skin.

Sometimes he just wanted to grab Miranda by the shoulder, shake her and tell her all of this, all of it, has been some sort of huge mistake. The wrong mind had come back to his body, and she should just pull the plug, put him back in the ground, or wherever it was they found him, and forget about this whole stupid, insane, unbelievable plan. He never did it, of course, because it wasn't a mistake, he was Shepard. But sometimes that didn't matter. Sometimes he wanted it to be a mistake.

"How's the memory?" Miranda asked.

Her voice was like a jolt of electricity, shocking him out of his own thoughts and plunging him back into attack mode. He'd been trying to figure out if she made him so angry because he hated her or because he hated what she'd done to him. It's probably a little bit of both. Her ice-queen facade made talking to her feel like he was stabbing himself in the brain with needles every few seconds. He put up with her though. He was even polite. Most of the time.

"My memories are fine, Lawson," he turned his shoulder on her, purposefully.

"You seemed a little woozy in the shuttle ride. I wanted to see if things were getting clearer."

Shepard ran a hand over his face, feeling the armour plates on his fingers catching on his brand new scars. They itched constantly, but his self control was absolute. He never scratched. Chakwas would kill him if he started scratching them.

"I said I'm fine. Is it pursuant to Cerberus protocols to initiate personal conversation in the field, Lawson?" He looked over his shoulder at her. His new eyes were better by far than his old, organic ones. He could read the tension standing out in her neck and around her eyes with ease, see the muscles in her legs and back tighten as she stood up straighter and gathered herself for the offensive. Miranda held everything in, he could almost see her curling in to protect herself. He smiled to himself and turned away, examining the Omega skyline.

"It's hardly personal, commander," his newly improved ear drums could filter out the squalid ambient ruckus of Omega and zero in on her bringing up her omni-tool. He glanced over his shoulder again and watched her fingers move, reading her keystrokes as easily as if he were leaning over her shoulder.

Unresponsive. Remote. Unemotional.

"Right. I might think our mission is to retrieve Archangel but-"

"Your mission is to retrieve Archangel, commander," Miranda frowned and typed in 'arrogant' before deleting it and replacing it with 'passive aggressive.' "My mission, on the other hand, is to ensure you continue to operate as required by my organization. Now, how is your memory?"

"I. Said. I'm. Fine." Shepard turned back to Omega, ignoring her as she continued to type. "I don't want to play shrink with you right now, Lawson. And don't think you can get me interested in doctor either."

"I wouldn't dream of it," she closed her omni-tool. He could feel her standing straight and angry behind him, hear her shifting her weight from side to side, hear the carbon fibre of her gloves creaking as she balled her hands up into angry fists.

Shepard didn't really know what she had expected from him. Had she not read his service record? There was a score of commendations and an impressive number of medals in there, but the majority of the data volume was taken up by commentaries on his generally pigs-ass-stubborn personality and penchant for insulting superior officers. The smile didn't make it to his face, but he took personal pleasure in listening to her storm away to check their departure time with the Blue Suns driver.

"Are you really Commander Shepard?" Zaeed asked, sliding in from his peripheral vision and settling back against the steel siding that had been crudely welded to the side of the balcony to make it 'safe.'

Shepard arched an eyebrow at him, and turned a little so they were facing each other directly. He looked the aged mercenary up and down, as though seeing him for the first time. Appraising him. Zaeed waited for him to be done with a bored expression on his face. Shepard felt something alarmingly like a smile tugging at the corner of his lips and for no reason at all he suppressed it, pushed it down and kept his face smooth and neutral as a stone carving.

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, I watched you on the vids. Your interviews and shit, after that business on the Citadel. Always thought you were a bit of an ass, to be honest. Stupid haircut. Stupid smile on your face all the time," he pulled out a cigarette and offered him the pack. He just snorted when Shepard shook his head no.

"You didn't strike me as a fan. Did you want me to sign your chest plate?"

"There, that sounds more like it. But black hair, angry look on your face all the damn time... where were you really for those two years, Shepard? What's got you looking like the world is ending?"

"You've got a lot of questions for a mercenary that's only here for a paycheck."

"You don't get this old in my line of work if you're not good at surviving. I saw you down in those slums, Shepard, I know what you are. You're a damn good soldier, and I know good, but more importantly you're a born killer and you've got all the instincts that requires. So if something's got you looking worried like that, it's something I ought to be worried about to." Zaeed lit his cigarette with an impossibly antique lighter that made Shepard want to laugh.

"I really was dead for two years, Zaeed."

The mercenary studied him for a moment. The eye on the scarred side of his face was milky blue and blind but the other was wickedly sharp and intelligent. Shepard spared a moment to think that, if his life had gone just a little differently, he would not be so terribly different from Zaeed. They were cut from the same cloth. He wasn't sure how he felt about that revelation.

"No shit," Zaeed laughed and puffed on his smoke. "Really? Well I guess that explains the angry look." He paused, exhaling a cloud of pungent grey smoke. "What was that like, then?"

Shepard looked up at him sharply. No one had asked him that question yet, and he found himself totally unprepared to answer it. His stone face felt close to rupturing for a moment but underneath he was still stone, still in control. The moment passed and he shrugged, resettling the weight of his armour.

"It was cold," he said, off-handedly.

The boy arrived then, so they all packed themselves into the small car and took off. Shepard stared out the window at the dirty sprawl of Omega and thought of Cuba. But there was no sea here, no bastion of sanity in the violence and poison air. He turned away from the window and fiddled with the new tech on his omni-tool instead. It was terrible to be so behind the cutting edge in tech. Everything he knew was horribly outdated, even the guns worked differently now. He felt like a relic, grasping at a new world and slowly, oh so slowly, discovering he didn't want to have any part of it.

"Commander," Miranda called for him as the ensigns hefted the stretcher and headed for the elevator. "If I could just-"

"Later," Shepard ordered briskly.

"It's not like you can-"

"I said, later!" He barked, shooting her a poisonous look over his shoulder as the doors to the elevator opened. Garrus' head was encased in a balloon of field dressings, most of them already soaking through with dark blue blood.

Shepard could feel his heart thundering wildly in his chest, and he was sweating more than he had when he'd been charging across a battle field or trying to take down an airship from the ground. Cerberus had streamlined his body, it worked better than it ever had before, but even they couldn't do anything to help him deal with the panic that was driving all his senses into overdrive. Turian blood had a funny smell to it, a hint of tar and cinnamon. Shepard squeezed into the elevator beside the ensigns.

Mordin was already in the med-bay when they arrived. He ordered the ensigns out and when Shepard hovered, unsure of what to do he rounded on him with a scalpel in one hand.

"Not going?"

"No."

"Help, then."

Mordin made him wash his hands, and then he was holding Garrus' face down, pinching arteries as Mordin readied clamps, holding wads of cloth in place to soak up blood as Mordin examined the burnt, gaping hole in his friends face. After what seemed like forever Mordin reached for his tools and shooed him away. Doctor Chakwas had been readying equipment but she replaced him now.

"Can't do anything else, Shepard," Mordin informed him briskly. "Wash up and apply ointment to counteract possible allergic reaction to Turian fluids."

"Is he going to make it?"

"Turian healthy, sturdy, has other scars. Survivor. And he has a very good doctor," Mordin didn't look up, but he must have felt the stare Chakwas was giving him. "Two very good doctors."

Shepard looked at them bent over Garrus' prone body and swallowed hard. After a moment he turned, and washed the blood off his hands.

He left the med-bay with his jaw set. He had responsibilities. He couldn't afford to get bogged down in this. He knew Mordin and Chakwas would get the job done. And Mordin was right, Garrus was a survivor; if he could survive Ilos and Omega he could survive that. He looked over his shoulder, felt the grim lines of his face soften for a moment. It felt strange to have a real expression on there again.

"Don't die, Garrus." He said softly. "I need you here."

He found Miranda in her office. He walked in and took the seat across from her without being invited. They studied each other for a moment.

"Sometimes I have trouble putting things in order," he opened. She looked surprised, and he ignored it. "I have a lot of violent memories and sometimes they get kind of... tangled. It's getting better. And it doesn't affect my performance or my ability to lead."

"Your thinking is clear?" Miranda leaned forward, studying him. "You don't get confused?"

"We've fought together enough for you to answer that question for yourself, Lawson. Have you ever seen me out of control?" Shepard met her eyes. He could feel her discomfort. The mechanical eyes had none of the soft, expressive qualities of their organic counterparts. They were like wet marbles, hard and lifeless and alien in his human face.

"There was that scene in the hangar bay," she said cautiously.

"I wasn't out of control. My friend had just had half his face blown off and you were trying to hold me up with some dick-measuring bullshit. Was whatever you had to say to me really that important, Lawson?"

They studied each other for a moment.

"No," she admitted finally. "It obviously wasn't."

"What did you want to say?"

"That we needed to have this conversation," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "I don't want us to be enemies, Shepard. I'm not looking for a friend, but it doesn't help either of us if we're at odds."

"I agree," Shepard stood up. "So you'll have to sort that out."

"What does that mean?" Miranda frowned, sitting forward in her chair again and glaring up at him.

"Figure it out, Lawson. I'm not Cerberus. I'm Alliance, and while I might have to bite the pillow with the Illusive Man I don't recognize any authority you think you might have. You deal with that in whatever manner you see fit, but you deal with it." Shepard's face was stone as he looked back at her. "That's an order."

Up until that moment he hadn't been sure he was really the superior officer here. Miranda obviously had her own agenda, and her position adjacent to the Illusive Man muddied the chain of command. More than that, she was obviously used to being obeyed. There was an air of expectation about her, as though she were entitled to Shepard's respect and counsel. He had to make it abundantly clear that this was not reality.

"Understood," she said after a moment, settling back into her seat. Her eyes were glacial. There was a moment of silence while they just continued to look at each other.

"Sir," she finally added, stiffly.

"Thank you," he saluted her, the crisp, all-the-proper-angles salute that had been drilled into him through two and a half years of military training. He felt almost like himself again. He almost smiled. Almost.