When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile, his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake, Human Poet
Days on the SR2 had a way of melting into each other, a senseless stream of hours populated by data and painful formal conversation. He had been trained for command at Calypso Technical Academy, one of the best schools in the galaxy. He knew the tricks for inspiring respect, fear and camaraderie. But what had once come so effortlessly to him had become an arduous chore. He spent every conversation looking for a way out, and though he was a good liar and really wanted to talk he left every conversation relieved that it was over.
He spent the majority of his time at his terminal or working on his omni-tool. His thoughts were clean and focused, uncluttered. It had taken him slightly more than two weeks to get caught up on two years worth of battle tech. He sent his attack droid floating around his quarters, burning playing cards out of the air as he flicked them at him. He read, extensively. Technology, population charts, Prothean discoveries and, of course, everything he could find about the Collectors. He combed the Cerberus network and educated himself on two years of shifting politics, Alliance expansion, fleet movements, covert intelligence and cutting edge science. He filled himself with data, until it shut out all of his more complex thoughts.
Intelligence had been his saving grace before, and he reached out to it again. Emotions were black, snarled, complicated things. It was so much easier to let himself be numb.
He slept infrequently, and he had bad dreams.
It was the ships night cycle, a six hour period of dimmed lights that was supposed to stabilize the moods of crew members by simulating a more organic environment. Shepard had read the studies and found the science dubious at best, but he liked the night cycle. People unconsciously walked softer and spoke quietly. His cybernetic senses were very sensitive and though it had been almost a month he still wasn't used to them. It was easier to go out and about during the night cycle.
It was also the only time that Jack every ventured above the engineering deck, mostly to raid the mess for what everyone was calling food these days. Today she also carried an armful of books from the ship shelves in the observation deck.
Shepard was attempting to eat, but like so much else that had become a chore. Protein gruel was a tasteless, gluey wad that contained all the protein nutrients an active soldier needed. Hard tack, a square biscuit with the consistency of a petrified sponge provided vitamin and mineral nutrients. The enhanced vitamins in the water gave it a chemical aftertaste that lingered past everything else. All in all, it was an unappetizing meal and Shepard had yet to discover he had an appetite for anything.
He was spooning gruel down his throat when Jack paused by the mess table and gave him a brazen, uncommunicative look.
"Do you know what they say?" She asked. She had a habit of sticking out her jaw when she was talking to him, like she was ready for a fight.
"I know what a lot of people say, you'll have to be more specific." Shepard found the best way to meet her was with stone. That was the way he met most people these days, but it was particularly effective on Jack.
"I mean Lawson and the Illusive Dick-Head," Jack's red lips curled back over her teeth in a snarl, "they say you're afraid to go back to the Citadel. That's why you haven't picked up that thief yet, even though you're past due."
"Is that what they say? Interesting."
Shepard had a theory the false darkness was what gave Jack the courage she needed to venture above her cave in the engineering deck. Of course he knew better than to ever, ever mention that to her. Usually she was up and gone but he suspected the absence of other crew members had given her the opening she needed to start this conversation.
"You don't have anything to say to that?" She asked, sneering. Jack never made any secret about how she felt about him, Shepard had to give her that. He appreciated it.
"I said it was interesting," he replied, shrugging. "I'm not going to tell them they're wrong. Are you?"
She laughed, resettling her burden and studied him in that predatory way she studied everything.
"William Blake," Shepard broke the moment of silence that hung between them, pointing at the book jutting out from under her elbow. "Pretty old school, Jack."
"What chicks with tattoo's can't like the Romantics?" She asked, pushing the book further into her armload of provisions so the spine was no longer legible. She narrowed her eyes at him. "That's Romantics with a capital R. If you crack wise right now I'm going to blow your head off."
"Noted. Anyway, I was going to say that I understand why you like them. I like them too," he spooned gruel into his mouth. It was texture with no flavour, a mealy slime that stuck to the back of his throat. "Especially Blake."
Jack held herself like the feral dogs in Trinidad when you offered them a scrap, always on the brink of running as they examined what you had to offer them and decided if it was worth the risk. They rarely decided it was worth the risk, and neither did Jack. This time though, because they were alone in the mess hall and because Shepard was more interested in fighting through another meal he had no real desire to eat, she seemed to decide it was worth it. She sank onto the edge of the bench opposite him.
"You read poetry?" She asked, cocking one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows at him. Her voice dripped with mockery.
"I could say the same thing to you," Shepard replied, glancing up at her as he hacked at the hard tack until a manageable hunk crumbled off one corner. He chewed it with determination. Eating was making him feel sick to his stomach.
"Yeah, I guess so. But I don't know Shepard, poetry is all about passion. I might be a lot of things, but I don't think anyone could tell me I don't have passion. You on the other hand," she smirked, "have all the fire of a frozen stone."
"Very poetic," Shepard nodded. "I guess it's more accurate to say I used to read poetry. I haven't been able to find the time for it lately." Or anything. Life was work now, and nothing else.
Jack studied him in silence for a moment as he gulped water to help him wash down the clinging crumbs of the hard tack.
"Do you remember when you told me we weren't so different?" She asked suddenly. Her gaze was intense, more intense than it had any right to be. He'd just been trying to eat for once, he couldn't remember the last time he had.
"I do," he wiped his mouth and pushed his tray away. He couldn't struggle through that and this conversation at the same time. He leaned back in his seat and gestured for her to hand him the book. Jack spilled her provisions out on the table and sorted through them for a moment before she found it.
"What did you mean by that?" Her eyes were narrow, dangerous slits. He'd seen that look on her before, and didn't like to be its target. "We seem pretty different to me."
"We're two sides of the same coin," Shepard replied, flipping through the book. It was Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, fully illuminated with all his original etchings. Shepard felt a pang somewhere in his chest as he remembered himself, in another life, reading a book very similar to this one. "I was a lot like you once."
"Angry?" Jack's pouted at him, her eyes skeptical. "Frustrated with the world? Hardened by your experiences?" She rolled her eyes. "Don't psychoanalyze me, Shepard."
"I don't need to psychoanalyze you to understand what it's like, Jack. I know." He found the poem he was looking for. A grinning tiger looked up at him from the depths of a black jungle.
"You understand what, exactly?"
"What it's like to be an animal. To be brought so low you actually stop being human. To live the rest of your life knowing that it's impossible to ever be normal, that you'll never find a place in this galaxy that feels comfortable. I know those feelings," he caught her eyes, refused to release them. They stared at each other.
"Because of your poor, disadvantaged childhood on the streets," Jack asked finally, "or because you read some Cerberus head-report-?"
"I've read a lot of what Cerberus has on file about you Jack, but I don't need their psych evaluations to understand pain. I understand what happened to you because of what happened to me."
She scoffed, standing and gathering her things together.
"You can keep that," she said when he tried to hand the book back to her, "I don't feel like reading it anymore."
There was a time, he thought, when he would have been able to make this conversation turn out the way he wanted but he couldn't figure out how he might have done it. Trying to touch Jack was like reaching into a pit full of razors.
"Thanks for the heads-up about the Illusive Dick-Head," he said, turning back to his meal. "I might call him that the next time he rings me up for a chat."
Jack didn't laugh. Hadn't he been funny once? It was hard to remember being that person. His life seemed to be composed in compartments. He was never the same for very long. He thought about what she'd said after she left as he finished force feeding his unresponsive stomach.
The Citadel. Even thinking about it sent a prickle of cold sweat running down his spine. Miranda and the Illusive Man were right, he was afraid. But a Commander didn't admit that to anyone, not even to himself. Especially not to himself.
The station itself didn't hold any special terror for him, and he definitely wasn't afraid of the Council. But the Citadel represented many things, and it held many memories. Most of them were good. Varren burgers and oceans of liquor with Alenko and Williams, blowing up action figures with Tali, traipsing drunk with Garrus through the back alleys and picking fights with racist salarians, laughter and ego and victory. All the things that had composed his former life.
And now he was... whoever he was. And his life was... whatever it was. And none of that, especially not the laughter, was a part of anything anymore. Knowing that, what benefit could there be to going back there? All it would do is remind of what he once had and what he could never have again. That, in and of itself, was not what scared him. Memories and change had long ago lost any power they had to influence his decision.
What scared him was the reality of the place, and the people who inhabited it. How was he supposed to talk to Anderson? How was he supposed to explain this to him or try to justify what he was doing? He hadn't cared enough to do it with anyone else, but he'd have to say something to Anderson. One didn't lie to the human Councillor, but more importantly one didn't lie to their oldest, dearest, truest friend.
There are some things that a man just doesn't do.
The thought was like a slap, like a dash of cold water, like a sudden breath of air after too long underwater. Shepard dropped his fork, and the sound it made as it clattered across the table and fell on the floor. He bent down and picked it up with shaking hands, replacing it with his mostly uneaten food. His mind felt numb, and when he tried to think back he found his emotions sluggish and unresponsive as they ever were like he was trying to think through syrup.
Shepard shook himself and smoothed the frown lines away from his forehead. He could feel the deep wrinkle that only showed itself when he was truly upset settled down the centre of his forehead and ran his fingers over it. A few deep breaths and his hands were steady, his face was clear, and he was in control again.
He had incineration tech to review. Drive core advances to familiarize himself with. He was downloading a trilogy on supersymmetric string theory and the holographic principle. There was really nothing he needed on the Citadel anyway, nothing urgent at least, and other things really needed to take precedence. The Krogan he needed to collect. The Collectors he needed to destroy. Supersymmetric string theory was really very interesting.
Shepard got up and scrapped his tray into the organic recycling unit. His hands were steady as a surgeon's. If anyone had been around to see him at that moment they would have thought that nothing was wrong with him at all.
He had intended to return the book Jack had left with him to the observation deck, but suddenly he didn't want to run the risk of bumping into someone who might expect him to talk to them. He opened it as he waited for the elevator and scanned the contents. Titles leapt out of him, connected to poetry he'd once loved. He opened to the first as the doors slid open, just distracting himself until he got up to the real reading that was waiting for him in his room.
Three hours later he hadn't put the book down for an instant. Of course, it was still just a distraction. Everyone got distracted once in a while. It wasn't like poetry, or varren burgers, or action figures really mattered at all, not when faced with serious work. His face was a piece of stone, assembled into something that could barely be called an expression.
If anyone had been around to see him at that moment they would have thought there was nothing wrong. Nothing wrong at all.