Few people have ever wished to have a purely rational life. Even smart, logical, clever men usually wish for a life warmed by passion, loyalty and love.

- Samantha Landry, Human Singer

He wasn't sure what he had expected and that, more than anything, made him crazy.

He was always on top of his game, always ready for everything. By the time his initial predictions failed to align themselves he was already past them, already working on the next step, the next move, the next problem. He was never off-balance, and in the rare times he was caught by surprise he knew better than to let it show. That was who he used to be, at least.

Now he satisfied himself with not letting it show, and hoped that was enough.

He'd known Kaidan was here. The entire shuttle ride to the surface of Horizon he had felt downright jittery under his stone face. While they were fighting he had been his usual self, mission focused, grim and terrible and savage. Even Jack had trouble keeping up, because this time it wasn't the mission parameters outlined on his omni-tool, abstract contact points without context or meaning, that were important.

He checked every pod, every shadow, every corner, every frozen, terrified face. Seeing that ship moving away from him into the sky had been physically painful, like every organ was twisting itself around its neighbour inside his chest. Seeing him step out from behind those shipping containers, unharmed but so angry and accusatory... that had been worse.

It had been one of the worst moments of his life, and he included his time as X in that equation. Seeing Kaidan turn away from him had made him feel small, and traitorous, and so alone.

Garrus was a great friend, as stalwart and loyal as any Turian had ever been, and though he never knew how to communicate it to him Shepard hoped Garrus realized how much it meant to have him on the ship. Sometimes just knowing he was there in the forward battery helped, especially on those days when he felt like every part of his life before now had just been a dream.

But Kaidan was...

He was...

He was right, of course. When you said it all out loud it sounded insane, and the parts that didn't sound insane sounded like they were taken almost verbatim from Blasto IV, the one where the evil Volus crime lord catches Blasto and puts him in the pod for six months to reprogram him into the perfect hit man. He didn't know anything about Cerberus, or the tech they'd seeded his body with, except for what they chose to tell him about it. He knew he was being lied to, or at least that the truth was being denied to him. He could have been brainwashed, manipulated, or controlled.

He could have been, but he wasn't. He knew that, because he knew that if Cerberus really was intent on controlling him they would have done a better job putting his head back together. But he couldn't tell Kaidan that. He couldn't tell Kaidan anything important at all, all he could do was stand back and let the other man unload two years of grief on him. He'd taken it with a stone face and a few non-committal, semi-apologetic sentences that felt like they had been put together by someone else.

Shepard ground his teeth together, feeling the muscles of his jaw lock tight. Though his face was stony as ever he felt like his emotions were whirling around him, a storm of black fire that didn't touch the air in the shuttle. The tangles, the complicated snarls of regret and longing and hope and fear had all been burnt away. He had something now, something clear and pure and simple burning in his centre.

Anger. He was very, very angry. Angry at himself, angry at Kaidan, angry at Cerberus and angry at the whole black damn unfair universe.

As much sense as Kaidan had made, as much as Shepard understood how suspicious his story was, he was not feeling kind or forgiving. If Kaidan was standing in front of him he might have forgone the stony, uncompromising professionalism and had Jack blow his head off.

He had never been the kind of man who made friends. He attracted people, almost unconsciously sometimes, but they were almost exclusively military people. One moment you could trust a man to watch your back and the next he was halfway across the galaxy on a whole other mission that had nothing to do with you. Maybe they meant to write, but few of them ever did. There were exceptions to this rule, of course. Ramirez and Calhoun were the most prominent, but there had been others. Joyous Jane, the dour-faced recruit who had stood beside him during the admiral's inauguration speech, Felton, the brothers Nox and Trelford, and of course, always, Anderson. These people he considered his friends and he thought that they probably felt the same way about him, or at least they had two years ago.

Ashley and Kaidan were something different, 'friends' didn't seem like it was powerful enough to explain how he'd felt about them. Shepard had never in his life had anything that even resembled a family, but he thought that it might be something like that. He would have killed for them, and he would have died for them instantly, without question or hesitation, if anyone had ever asked him to. He loved them. The realization came after it was too late to tell either of them, but he did. Or he had. He hadn't been able to sort out whether he still felt anything that intense since coming back.

He knew Ash had felt the same way, she had proved it the way only soldiers did. Thinking about her still had enough power to make Shepard feel like he was a real person.

And Kaidan was...

He was...

Shepard resisted the urge to put his head in his hands, though he wasn't sure if anyone would have noticed if he did. Garrus was staring into nothingness, his face so still Shepard should have taken notes for his own efforts in stoicism. Occasionally the mandible on the scarred side of his face would twitch involuntarily and he would rub the cybernetic sheath that encased that side of his head. Shepard had once observed that the stiller a Turian got the more angry they generally were, but he didn't know what had Garrus so choked up at this particular moment. He should have asked, but he didn't.

Jack was smoking, her feet up on the bench beside her. She was almost sprawled, her posture careless and languid as a housecat in a sunbeam. The smoke smelled foul, but it didn't bother his eyes like it used to, another benefit of cybernetics. It was just one more thing Shepard didn't care enough about to notice. He wondered if Jack had a flask. He could use a drink. He hadn't had a drop since their victory party, after Saren.

"Jack," he was talking before he realized it, "do you have a flask?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him and sat up a little straighter. Even Garrus broke himself out of whatever funk he was absorbed it and turned to look at Shepard, his mandibles twitching.

"Are you serious?"

"Have you ever known me to not be serious?" He asked her.

"I have," Garrus chimed in from the side.

"Shut it, Vakarian," that was something he might have said two years ago. He turned back to Jack. "Do you have a flask or not?"

"Of course I have a flask," Jack produced it from the folds of her baggy prison fatigues and threw it to him underhand.

Shepard caught it and turned it over in his hands. There was a score of soot and half-melted steel in the corner but it appeared to be mostly intact. He cracked it open and a smell like moonshine, cleaning solvents and gasoline wafted out.

"What is this, rocket fuel?" He asked, leaning a little closer and sniffing experimentally. His cybernetic senses were highly sensitive, but he didn't think that was what made this particular vintage smell like poison.

"Not far from it. I bought it off a guy in Omega who called it skud," Jack smirked at him, "if you think your pretty lips can handle it take a sip. It'll get the job done."

"I don't know," he said, feigning caution.

"Don't be such a pussy," Jack taunted him. Her eyes were shining. She obviously expected him to start puking the minute he put his lips on the thing. "Take a sip and I'll give you a whole credit to spend at the requisition terminal."

"A whole credit?" Shepard raised his eyebrow. "How about one for every sip?"

Garrus laughed quietly from his side and opened his mouth but Shepard shifted, as though repositioning himself, and kicked him lightly in the shin pad. Their eyes met, a conspiratory look passed between them. Shepard turned back to Jack and put on an innocent look.

"Why don't we make it interesting?" Jack asked. "I'll give you a credit for every sip you get down, and you give me a hundred for every sip you spit up."

"A hundred versus one? I know I've got scars all over my face, but the head trauma didn't go that deep."

"Fine, even split then but you have to drink the whole thing if you want to win."

They shook on it.

Shepard sealed his lips over the spout and upended the flask over his head. It was only about a quarter full, which was appropriate because he didn't actually want to get drunk. His throat pumped once, twice, three times and he shook the last few drops onto his tongue. It burnt like acid and fire and razorblades all mixed into a single hellish cocktail all the way down and he was slammed, instantly, into drunkenness. If he had been a different man he would have thrown up, or passed out, or possibly done both. Shepard steadied himself with a hand on Garrus' shoulder and for the first time in what felt like forever he grinned, really grinned, at Jack.

"How many sips do you think that was?" He asked.

"Jesus Christ!" Jack's eyes were wide. "How the hell are you still alive? I got that thing half full and had it for almost three months."

"Can I have one of your cigarettes?"

"Are you going to shove the whole pack in your mouth and light it on fire?"

"No." Shepard started to shake his head, but after a moment he paused and his face bent into a thoughtful look. "Well... if you gave me a hundred credits for every cigarette..."

"You don't even smoke, Shepard," Garrus was frowning at him.

"No, I used to smoke and then I didn't, and now I want one," Shepard frowned. "I think I deserve it."

"I guess I can't argue with that."

He took the cigarette but didn't light it right away. His stomach was tumbling around unpleasantly as the alcohol soaked in and he had a feeling that his first cigarette in five, or seven, years wasn't going to help him keep the shuttle clean. He rolled it between his fingers, sniffing the pungent tobacco odour that wafted off of it. The shuttle was feeling a little unsteady as he docked, but Shepard doubted that had anything to do with hardware.

"So you owe me what, like five thousand credits?" Shepard asked, once he had been assured the shuttle had touched down and all the movement he was getting was in his head. "I'd prefer cash, but since we're friends I'll take direct deposit."

"I'll deposit my fist in your face," Jack snarled.

"We shook on it," Shepard protested, though he was still grinning.

"You tricked me! You've been pretending to be this upright fucking boy scout all this time and-" she turned away from him as the shuttle doors swung open. "Whatever, I don't care. I'll pay you Shepard, right after we get back from the Omega-4 Relay."

She sneered at him over her shoulder and swung herself down from the Kodiak. He could hear her angry footsteps on the steel floor of the hangar bay as she stomped away and it amused him, but laughter was still too far away from him. He glanced up to find Garrus staring at him.

"Are you still in there, Shepard?" He asked, his voice unreasonably serious. "The real you, I mean?"

"I don't know," Shepard answered, honestly. "But you'll have a chance to see in a moment, because I think I'm going to throw up everything that's ever been inside me."

Garrus found him a plastic bag just in time, and sat with him as he filled it. Unsurprisingly, skud didn't taste any better coming up than it had going down, and neither did the cold rations he'd been force feeding himself lately. He spat oily bile into the bag, dry heaved one last time, and tied the bag off with a sloppy flourish.

"Done?" Garrus asked.

"The spirit still feels willing, but the body has spit up everything but my naked soul," Shepard ran his fingers through his hair, brushing strands of it out of his eyes. He never got used to seeing it so dark.

"I don't know, I think I see it floating there. Is it a black, cold, twisted little thing that's been closing his friends out for weeks and letting them worry?" Garrus' voice trembled just a little, casual banter giving way to something cold and angry that lurked underneath.

"Garrus..."

"You ask me on a suicide mission Shepard, I get to ask you this. Am I still following the same man? Are you dealing with this, or are you always going to be..." he hesitated, and then gestured up and down the length of him with one taloned hand, "like this?"

"I don't know."

"Which question is that supposed to answer?"

"Both of them. There's not exactly a twelve step program for dealing with this, Garrus," Shepard gave into the temptation that had seized him at the beginning of this trip and put his head in his hands, his elbows braced against his knees.

"Well, I guess the fact that you're drinking again is a good sign."

"I don't know that I've ever heard anyone say that before, especially not to me," Shepard smiled again. It felt strange to smile again, even if it was only faint.

"It's got you smiling again, so..." Garrus shrugged. "What are you going to do about the Illusive Man?"

"What about him?"

"Aren't you supposed to debrief him now?" Garrus asked, motioning to his bag of vomit. "You don't seem like you're in the best state for that."

"Are you kidding? The day I can't pretend to be sober in front of an authority figure is the day you can stop hoping that the real Shepard is in here somewhere."

Garrus chuckled as Shepard rubbed his face and stood up, teetering a little before establishing his balance again.

"Shepard?" Garrus called after him. "Alenko is doesn't know what he's talking about. And he doesn't know what he's missing."

"He's missing a suicide mission," Shepard shrugged, but it was a hard, brittle gesture full of anger, "it's hard to fault him for that."

"Not for me," Garrus had a stubborn look in his eyes, "if you say a man says he's got someone's back, he's got it. He doesn't go back on it when it becomes inconvenient, or dangerous or... ever. A real man stays, until the end of everything."

Shepard looked at Garrus for a long moment. He was still full of anger, but now there was something else there too. Something softer, though he didn't quite have a name for it yet.

"Thanks, Garrus," he said quietly. He hesitated, fighting with himself, with the stony layer he had pulled over himself as protection. "I'm glad you're here."

It wasn't much of a breakthrough, all things considered. But it was enough for now.

I hope this chapter made the direction I'm taking with the ME2 storyline a little clearer. For anyone who might be worried: Shepard will not languish in angst for the next eight chapters, but 'getting back on his feet' is going to be a steady process rather than an immediate one.

On a minor note, I'd planned to try to do character interactions between Shepard and everyone else, but it's become obvious to me that I can't give them all the same love and care. If any of my reviewers would like to see a particular character have a little focus on them, feel free to suggest it in a comment!

And thank you to everyone who has favorited and reviewed this story! It's always great to hear from you.