It is courage, courage, courage that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Face adversity with bravery, uncertainty with confidence and live life without fear. Soon you will find that you are completely free.

- Krogan Proverb

The cold got to him more than it used to.

He'd always hated being cold. It was never cold in Cuba, even when it rained it was a place of cloying warmth. The heat soaked into his bones, it covered every day and night in a fine sheen of sweat. Even the sea was warm in the Caribbean, and after that his had been a life of star ships and armour that came with temperature controls built into the hardware. If he was cold, it meant something had gone wrong.

Or, that was what it used to mean. Now the cold was with him all the time, an icy, slimy weight that hung heavy in his guts. It even found him when he slept.

It would start while he was walking down the hallway of the Normandy, heading toward one room or another to complete one duty or the next, but when the doors slid open before him the room was gone and there was only the hungry void, waiting for him. Terror would seize him, rising like bile at the back of his throat, and he would turn to run before he realized he wasn't on the SR2 any longer. The world was a chaos of shadow and flame and he was alone. There was fear, right before the vacuum caught hold of him and yanked him back, into the cold and the smothering blackness.

Usually he woke before he spent too much time there. Sometimes he didn't, and those were the worst nights, the ones where he woke covered in a cold sweat, shaking, as phantom pains chased themselves up and down his spine and his shoulder flared with sudden sharp agony. The dreams were worse when he slept in the bed, and when he woke he was always staring up into the skylight at the void that haunted him, so he avoided his large, comfortable bed and slept at his desk like that was what it was made for.

It was cold in his cabin when he got back from his first outing on the Citadel. He registered it, even through the chaos of his thoughts. His mind was a mire, swamped with memories and emotions and the memories of emotions. He didn't know what to do with himself.

Coming back to life wasn't like waking up. It wasn't gentle or serene, he didn't drift down into his body from on high and float into consciousness. It was violent. One moment it was like he was riding a rollercoaster in the frigid night, a lurching, tumbling, freezing nothingness all around him and inside him, slowly dispersing him back into the universe. The next he was back, smashing into flesh and blood like a meteor made of light. His blood had been boiling hot, rushing through his veins like a locomotive, slamming into the base of his skull with the force of the ocean in a hurricane. He was a smart man and he talked a good game but there were no words that could express the terror he'd felt in those first moments of his second life.

There was no way to explain how it had changed him. He'd thought that nothing could ever be the same.

Shepard settled down on his couch and tried to unwind the tangle the last few hours had made of his thoughts. The couch was comfortable. He'd never used it before, his life in this room had been lived at his desk or tossing uncomfortably at his bed. He'd never considered the space to be his and it had felt, somehow, inappropriate to sit on the couch without an invitation. That was just one more thing that had changed in the last several hours.

No.

The decision had come to him with the same easy confidence he used to feel when he made any decision. It was ninety-percent instinct, ten-percent meticulous intellect. It was breezy, almost casual, barely thought out. It was stone.

No. He would not let Garrus kill Sidonis.

It had been difficult to stand there, feeling Garrus' crosshairs on the back of his head. Every part of him believed that he would never pull the trigger, he knew Garrus and he understood him in many ways better than he understood himself. He did not, however, know Archangel and it was hard to say whose finger was on the trigger in a moment like that.

Through his life he's found there was always a line, somewhere, which he just could not cross. He saw it on Elysium, when that sniveling little Major had tried to order him to stand down and leave civilians to die in his sights. He found it with the Rachni Queen, with Zaeed, and in a hundred smaller places throughout his life. That was one of those moments. There were some things a man just didn't do, and letting a friend surrender to that calibre of darkness was one of them.

It had been difficult, but he had done it and when it was over he had experienced a powerful epiphany in the taxi on their way back to the docks. He couldn't be like this anymore. The decision came to him with sudden force, iron-clad and undeniable.

It didn't matter what had happened to him. Like his time as X, what had happened over Alchera was just one more thing he couldn't do anything about. He'd had his time to mope over it and now it was time to fold it up and file it away in its proper place. All men had their burdens to bear, and if his was any heavier than anyone else's that was alright. No one had ever said being alive was going to be easy, and it didn't seem like he got a choice in the matter.

Shepard got up and went into the bathroom. Shaving cream and a toothbrush occupied the narrow vanity; the rest of the cabinet beside the sink had been largely untouched. He was a military man, he needed hard soap, a razor, and deodorant, nothing more. Cerberus had taken it upon themselves to supply him with cologne and aftershave, lotions and oils and a little box that was probably left there by some shrink who thought he had a sense of humour. It was either impressive or a huge coincidence that it happened to be his brand.

He left the box of dye on the edge of the sink as he pulled the electric clipper across his head, half an inch on the side, an inch and a half on the top. The dye foamed up between his fingers as he rubbed it into his newly shortened hair. He examined himself in the mirror as he let it sit for a moment, working its way down to the roots. His scars had been getting better for days; they used to burn but now they were back to itching.

He'd never gotten used to seeing himself with dark hair. Now he watched the white foam turn crimson as the colour set in, and stripped himself naked for the shower.

Red water ran over his shoulders and down his arms, running in the scars on his forearms until the orange light could barely glimmer through the tide. It was too hot, really, but he liked it. There was something purifying about it, he let it soak into him, past his skin and muscle into the heavy pit of cold that had been gnawing at his gut, holding him with one foot in that crazy darkness Miranda had brought him back from. He remembered getting the Star of Terra pinned on his chest, the proudest and most important moment of his life, the moment he realized what it was he wanted to be. He remembered white light filling him, burning away the darkness until he was clean.

He shook water off his face and turned off the faucet. He dried his hair and used the towel to wipe condensation off the mirror.

That was more like it. He grinned at himself.

Then he got dressed and meditated for half an hour, stilling the wild emotions still running through him, carving everything he had decided for himself in stone. He had decided who he was going to be before, and he could damn well do it again.

He had been an animal, and survived that. He had been a junkie, and survived that. He had been smaller, and scrawnier, than any other soldier in Basic or Tech, he had fought a pirate invasion ten times the size of his squad, battled a Spectre and killed a Reaper. He had died, and he had come back. He had survived everything in the galaxy there was to survive. He couldn't survive all of that, just to be afraid of living.

"EDI," he said as he opened his eyes. He felt very calm, solid, confident, like he was living in the moment for the first time in what felt like forever. "Can you send Councillor Anderson a message telling him to expect me within an hour?"

"Certainly, Shepard."

He pushed himself to his feet, dusting the seat of his uniform off, ran his fingers through his short red hair, and set off. Back into the world.

Garrus looked up from his terminal. His face was very still for a long moment and Shepard thought that maybe coming here had been a bad idea. Garrus had said he didn't want to talk and Shepard had been inclined to believe him at the moment. Maybe coming straight here like this had been a bad idea.

"What happened?" He asked, finally. The mandible on the scarred side of his face twitched, something Shepard had come to recognize as a facial tick.

"I figured my shit out," Shepard said wryly. "Sorry it took me so long."

"I still don't want to talk. Not yet."

"I get that. I have to ask you one thing though, Garrus."

"Yes, commander?"

"Are you still with me?"

There was a moment of silence, a tiny, brief moment not really worth mentioning. It felt like a million years.

"Yeah."

"Because... I need you with me," Shepard struggled, but the words came out this time. He had needs, just like a real person, and there was nothing wrong with that. He couldn't be stone all the time, and that wasn't a bad thing.

"I'm with you, Shepard," Garrus grasped his forearm, his hand firm, "to the end."

Shepard grinned at him, and laughed. He really laughed, deep in his stomach, for the first time since he had come shuddering and gasping to life on Frankenstein's table in the Lazarus station. It wasn't very long or very loud, but it was everything he needed to cement himself back into place.

"Spirits, Shepard," Garrus sighed, "I missed you."

"I missed you too, buddy," Shepard jostled him around, just a little bit, and let him go. "I'll be back later."

"I'll be ready for you then. I just need a couple hours to... you know. Sort things out."

"Don't take too long," Shepard grinned, "we've got a galaxy to save."

"So Shepard," Joker interrupted conversationally while they were preparing to go ashore, "what are you going to tell the Councillors? You've been ignoring their calls and acting like they don't exist for almost a month now. They've probably been all broken hearted and crying by their vid-phones."

"Stuffing themselves with ice cream as their makeup runs?" Shepard asked, coming up behind him with a smile on his lips. Tali and Thane went over their equipment one more time as Shepard leaned against the back of Joker's seat, surveying the constantly updated data stream that summarized the ships condition.

"Going out to the bar and meeting other Spectres for nights of degradation, and then wondering why they sneak out of the Tower in their socks every morning," Joker grinned.

"It's only to be expected," Shepard sighed, "after you've all had this, what is there to go back to?"

"Yeah, I always thought it was irresistible the way you would call them up and then hang up on them after thirty seconds," Joker rolled his eyes. "At least you made yourself pretty again. What are you going to tell them?"

"That depends," Shepard rolled his shoulder, working the stiff joint in circles. "But I'll probably tell them to fuck themselves. I'm sick of people calling me a traitor, and if I have to hear that smug, well-fed Turian bastard say one more goddamn thing about my mental state..." He trailed off, grimacing around the bad taste anger left in his mouth.

"Leave your omni-tool on. I want to see a recording of that conversation," the clouds of stellar dust began to break over the bow of the ship, purple and twilight blue swirling across the gleaming steel. There was a pause.

"What are you going to say to Anderson?" Joker asked. He didn't look up, his smile didn't change, but the question felt different than the rest of their conversation. His fingers flew across the holo-screens but the way he was avoiding Shepard's eyes felt deliberate, they'd had perfectly natural conversations while Joker was navigating their ship through battlefields.

"I haven't figured that out yet," Shepard sighed, rubbing at his dark hair. "I guess if I don't think of anything I won't have any choice but to tell him the truth."

"Let me know how that works out," Joker shook his head as the ship slid gracefully between the arms of the station toward the docks. "I love hearing you try to explain it. And while you're there it would be great if you grabbed some real food for Rupert to try and cook with."

Shepard smiled again, and shook his head.

"Just for you, Joker."

"I knew there was profit in kissing up to superior officers."

I really tried to hold off until the end of the ME2 arc to have Shepard dye his hair back to red because I know you can't change his appearance mid-game, but it just seemed wrong for him not to do it after coming to his epiphany like he did. So I bent reality a little bit.

Also, I can't believe I just forgot about Joker and didn't do anything with him in the first part of the story! Shame on me.