Chapter Twelve: Into the Red
Shepard can't help her hands from fiddling with the hem of her dress. She feels like a fake in this dress; it's blue with tiny white flowers and a little woven belt that needs to be tied in a bow under her best. Whoever designed it meant for some tiny housewife and not a well-trained marine, and she's sure she looks like a hulking gorilla in it. It's utterly opposed to everything else in her wardrobe, and not just because it doesn't have an Alliance logo anywhere on it. This is the sort of dress a homemaker would wear, the sort of dress a mom would wear... Which is exactly why she chose it.
Damnit.
Who's she kidding? Like putting a dress on will suddenly make her an okay mother figure. Poor kid doesn't know what she's getting herself into. Surprise! Your birth mom is a discharged former hero who's also responsible for one of the largest genocides in recent history.
The door hisses open behind herself, and she spins, her hands wrapping around herself. This whole plan was completely stupid.
"Commander, you -" says the Lieutenant and stops short seeing her in her dress, face laid wide open with some emotion she can't pinpoint. He blinks.
"It's too much, isn't it?" she asks, running an angry hand over her super short hair – another thing that ruined the whole mom vibe she was going for. "Fuck, I knew it would be. I should change."
"No," says the Lieutenant, and his voice is soft. He looks her up and down, this tiny, secretive smile playing on his lips. "You look – well, it's good."
Her eyes narrow. "Thank you for that standing ovation, LT."
He holds up his hands in surrender. "I was just trying to pay you a compliment. You look real good, Commander." His eyes come to rest not on her chest or legs, but on her waist. She doesn't mind, and that makes her feel uncomfortable. It's only because she hasn't had a man look at her like that in a while, she tells herself. Not since, well, maybe Kaidan a few times. It's... nice.
And it shouldn't be. She's a marine, for god's sake, not some primpy socialite. She doesn't need James – people to look at her with approval.
Shepard wants to ask for confirmation one more time, but she won't because fuck that, she doesn't need validation from other people, and if she does, she certainly doesn't want anyone else to know about it. She takes a deep breath. "Okay. Let's do this, then."
Squaring her shoulders, she walks up to the Lieutenant, ignoring his amused expression. He doesn't take her by the arm like she expects, but puts a hand in the small of her back and leads her from the room. He shuts and locks the door behind her and then they're off, his hand falling away. She wonders if there aren't regs about this sort of thing – although she was never technically found guilty of anything (just in case she was actually right, Anderson told her), she is still a prisoner and a dangerous one at that. Do they just let dangerous prisoners out without cuffs?
Her mind is latching onto anything it can to avoid thinking about what's coming next. She realizes she's picking at her cuticles and forces herself to drop her hands to her sides. When that becomes unbearable, she crosses her arms. From behind her, the Lieutenant chuckles.
"You this twitchy before all your missions, Commander?"
She glares at him, annoyed that he doesn't cower from her anymore. She's Commander fucking Shepard. With an angry puff she says, "No."
"And this is scarier than taking on a Collector base? Than travelling through the Omega-4 relay?"
"Oh hell yeah," mutters Shepard. "By a million lightyears."
He doesn't say much to that because they've come to the cafeteria and oh god, there she is.
Shepard's daughter sits at a table by herself, a lemonade already in front of her. Her hair is thick, like Shepard's, but it's a little lighter, the sun catching strands of gold. It's curled into a braid that drapes over her shoulder. She's got that same lanky frame that Shepard remembers hating when she was a teenager – all straight lines instead of curves, small breasts instead of full. The girl glances around the room, and Shepard's breath hitches to realize that they have the same colour eyes. Jesus, the girl could be her clone, except that her skin is a little paler and there's the faintest spread of freckles across her nose.
At the risk of sounding completely vain, she's the most gorgeous thing Shepard has ever seen.
"Lieutenant," she says, "I've changed my mind. You should take me back to my room. Now." She twirls on her heel to march back the way they came, but the Lieutenant's large arm blocks her path.
"Uh-uh, I don't think so Commander," he says. "You've been waiting for this for weeks. You know how many strings Anderson had to pull to get this approved?" He's frowning, more serious than she's ever seen him. "You march yourself over there and at least say hello. It's not good manners to stand up a lady."
Shepard glances over her shoulder and rubs her chin. "I can't. What if my enemies use her to get to me?" She could see the rebuttal forming on his face and quashed it before it could fully materialize. "And – don't tell me it won't happen, because that's exactly what the Collectors did. I'm a liability. She's better off not-knowing me. I mean, she only knows my first name right now, and maybe she put two-and-two together, but there's no confirmation right? Better she goes back to her normal, safe life."
"Until the Reapers show up," adds the Lieutenant, voice hard. He melts right after, but only a little and says, "This about her, or is it about you?"
A knot of fear sinks to the bottom of her stomach. She knows he's right – of course he is – but damnit, she can't. She says the only thing she can think of, which is, "Fuck you."
Something like anger slashes across his face. "Listen, I know this isn't my place, but you're Commander Shepard. You've taken on missions that would make big strong marines sit in a corner and cry for their mommies. Now, man up -" He falters for a moment on the phrase, but shakes his head and powers on, "and just, go say hello or whatever." One large hand comes to rest on her shoulder. "You can't protect everyone from everything all the time, Shepard. Not even yourself. You gotta just... go for it."
She quirks an eyebrow at him. "I had no idea you were that deep, LT."
"I'm going to pretend like there's no insult to that statement," says the Lieutenant seriously, "and finish by saying that I'm all chock full of layers. Like a cake. A delicious one."
The laugh erupts from her throat without her say-so, and she clamps a hand over her mouth to try and stifle it. The Lieutenant's eyes are bright, and she can't help her smile as she sighs and nods. "Yeah, okay." With a deep breath, she turns herself around and takes a few steps forward. She stops when it's clear that the Lieutenant is going to give her some space. "Hey – James? Thanks."
The way his mouth falls open is totally worth it.
Of course, the thrill lasts all of two seconds and then she's once again a bundle of nervous energy. What the fuck. She's – okay, she was – Commander Shepard. Took on Reapers. Took on Collectors. Killed more mercs than she can count on her fingers and toes. Survived a Prothean mind probe. Flying through the Omega-4 relay, she kept her head. Four minutes to go before a potential Reaper invasion? No problem!
She swears her feet feel like they're wearing mag boots – or just a dozen cinder blocks. She picks her way through the tables, fiddling with her hands coming to a stop before the table. She says, "Dahlia?"
Those blue eyes swing upwards. They take her in for a second, before the eyebrows raise straight up to her hairline. Confusion paints itself onto her face. "Commander Shepard?" says Dahlia, and there's more than a tinge of disbelief. She looks behind her to where two men sit waiting – in suits, no less – with equal expressions of confusion and surprise.
"It's not technically Commander anymore," says Shepard, lamely. She clenches her hands together in front of her. "I was going to get Admiral Anderson to tell you straight out who I was but – well, security leaks and the like. He wasn't sure it would be prudent." Shepard laughs, but it's strained and suddenly she's looking at her shoes. "I kind of hoped you wouldn't actually recognize me."
Which is sort of like wishing raindrops into diamonds.
The girl takes a second too long to answer, so Shepard continues, "But if this is too weird, you know, I can just... go. We can pretend this never happened."
"No!" bursts Dahlia, on the edge of her seat. "No, it's okay. Just – do you want to sit down?"
Shepard does so, glancing once to the suited men. "Those your parents?"
A real smile crosses Dahlia's face. "Yeah." She glances over her shoulder at them and gives them a little wave. They wave back, and Shepard can't help but wonder if she's supposed to wave. God, she's never been great at personal relationships, and now she remembers why. Dahlia returns her full attention. "So I guess you're my mom, then?"
"I guess so," says Shepard.
"You're really young. I mean, I saw Kayleigh Shepard on the papers and my dad joked that it could be you, but we never really believed it 'cause... We were expecting someone older." Dahlia tugs on her braid.
"That's... understandable," says Shepard. "I was sixteen when I had you. Not really the best age to be having a kid."
"That why you gave me up?"
Shepard allows herself a small, bitter smile. "Things... didn't go as I'd hoped. My life wasn't great. I couldn't imagine bringing a little person into it, making it work. It wouldn't be fair. You deserved better." She folds her hands on the table. "Was it worth it? You happy?"
Dahlia nods. "I just... I wondered. I'm getting ready to go off to a private school and my parents were looking into medical records. They found your first name, and with a little digging, found out you – well, not you because we didn't think it was you – joined the Alliance so I asked them to keep looking." She smiles slightly. "It was kind of weird, finding out you were a soldier. I'm – I don't think I could ever do that. I'm not really the soldier type."
"What do you like instead?"
"Music," says the girl, but bashfully, like she's ashamed.
But Shepard is utterly charmed. She doesn't even need to get the details to know that she for sure made the right call all those years ago. Not only does she know nothing about music, but if she'd kept that baby, well, it was doubtful she'd ever have been able to afford any sort of lessons at all. "What do you play?" she asks.
The conversation lasts like that for quite some time. It doesn't get too deep, even though from the way Dahlia's eyes widen and her hands grip at the table, she's on the cusp of asking about Shepard's military exploits a couple times. Probably, her parents told her not to ask things like that. Good men. Shepard would have had to take a careful revisionist stance on some of it. She's pretty sure they're in the clear when Dahlia drops a bomb – just, not the bomb Shepard was expecting.
"Do you know anything about my biological dad?" asks the girl, chewing on her lip. "The info we got never mentioned anything about him."
"I – no," says Shepard. "I don't know who he was or what happened to him." The lie curls up and festers in her gut, infecting her bloodstream so that her face is too hot. Something she's learned along the way is sometimes a pretty lie is much better than an ugly truth, and this truth? It's one that Shepard has shoved into the back of her mind and plastered over with shiny wallpaper and fancy pictures in frames.
Shepard's done a lot of things in her time – bad, nasty, ugly things. But Dahlia's father, well, he's the one that taught her that life isn't fucking fair. That love and family and all that shit won't win the day. And despite that, years later, Shepard's still waiting to be proven wrong. To know that, in the grand scheme of things, those things do make the difference. She doesn't quite believe it yet. Love didn't save all those batarians, and love certainly didn't save Tybalt.
To Shepard's immense relief, Dahlia takes this at face value. Of course, that relief turns to self-loathing when she realizes Dahlia's only done so because she can think of no reason not to trust her birth mom. Shepard needs to turn this around, and quickly. She says, "Can I meet your parents?"
Dahlia waves over the two men. They're the tiniest bit hesitant, but they meander their way over. They're clean, nicely dressed, and Shepard stands to shake both of their hands. Their names are Todd and Sanjit Misra. They're smiling, but she can see what it costs them in the hard planes of their faces. They don't trust her, and she doesn't blame them. If all she had to go on was the news feeds, she wouldn't trust her either.
"We never really expected it to be you," says Todd Misra, one arm draped protectively around Dahlia.
"I didn't really expect the message I got, so I suppose we're even," says Shepard. She's buried her hands between her thighs to hide how tightly they're held together. Now that they're here, she doesn't know what else to say. She's smiling so that her cheeks hurt when a shadow looms over the table.
"Sorry to interrupt, folks," says James. "Just got to talk to the Commander, here." He leans over her chair, his mouth to her ear. His breath tickles her ear. "The Defence Committee wants to see you."
"The what?" whispers Shepard, frowning.
"Defence Committee." James shrugs. "Anderson's got their panties in a bunch. They apparently now believe you about the, uh." His eyes glide over Dahlia and her family, and his mouth thins. They can't hear him, Shepard's sure, but he's being cautious nevertheless and she appreciates it. "The friends we're expecting. Anderson showed them some pretty compelling proof, they're saying. Some sort of video." They stare at each other then, a battle of the wills.
She slips out of the awkward birth mother skin she'd been wearing and into Commander Shepard, standing in one fluid motion. Dahlia's clearly bewildered, but she has eyes more for James than for her, staring at him with all the potent awe only a teenager can manage. Just as well. Shepard lays her hands flat on the table and says, "Dahlia, could you excuse your parents and I for a moment?"
The girl jolts, looking to her parents for advice. Todd fishes out a credit chit from his pocket and sets it in her hands. "Go get yourself something to eat, sweetie." Everyone watches her until she's out of hearing.
Shepard leans across the table, voice low. "If you love her, you better start taking precautions now."
"Shepard," says James, and her name is a warning.
She ignores him. "Something's coming. Something big. You want my advice? Don't let her go to that school. Keep her close. You make sure that you have plenty of supplies on hand – food, water, medication – and a way off planet if you can. Try not to do anything public – a private shuttle, maybe, or a ship."
Todd and Sanjit are looking at her like she's started reciting an ancient asari porno or something. "She's been waiting months to get into that school," says Sanjit at last. "You're asking us to take the word of a... You're asking a lot of us."
"I know," admits Shepard, hanging her head. "But this... Did you see the footage during the Battle of the Citadel?"
Todd scratches his chin. "I was there when it happened."
"Picture that, but ten thousand times worse," says Shepard. It's dramatic, the way she's doing this, but she needs these two men to get the picture. Of course, she can't just throw out the Reapers are coming because thanks to reports from her crew on the SR2, she knows no information about Sovereign's true identity was ever leaked to the public. Fucking politicians.
"Shepard," cuts in James, "we have to go. Now." He takes her by the arm, like they're back at square one, but she rips it out of his grasp, pulling up her omni-tool.
"This is my private extranet account," she says. "If you need anything, please, just let me know." The tool fizzles out of existence. Shepard allows herself to break from resolute Commander for just a moment. "Tell Dahlia – it was really great to meet her, I guess. That I'm glad she's... I'm glad she's not me."
She pushes herself away from the table and offers her arm to James. He doesn't take it. He raises an arm like he's going to caress her somehow, but she must be really out of it because he just beckons her away. From her place at the snack bar, Dahlia looks up, eyes flying over Shepard like a little bird. Shepard gives her a short wave, then pushes all her weight into her shoulders and strides out of the room, the perfect soldier.
o-o-o
"Did you mean it?"
Shepard pulls her arm from off her face and props herself up on the bed. Every bone in her body is exhausted from spending the last few hours talking to the Defence Committee. She's told them everything she knows about Reapers, dissected every little bit of that Prothean beacon still floating in her brain, covered every angle of attack she used on the proto-Reaper on the other side of the Omega-4 relay. Still, they had questions. How do we stop them? What can we do? What are your suggestions?
It's a far cry from before, when they were ready to stuff an apple in her mouth and hand her over to the hegemony like a sacrificial pig.
"What are you talking about?" she says with as much patience as she can muster.
James is leaning against the door frame, gaze focused inwards. "What you said about being glad that Dahlia wasn't you?"
She falls back onto her pillows and puts her arm over her face once more. That meeting with Dahlia, it seems years away instead of hours. She wishes she'd gotten the chance to say a proper goodbye, but it's probably better this way. The war that's coming, well, Shepard doesn't have any illusions. She's going to fight like hell, but the Reapers aren't exactly her biggest fans since she destroyed Sovereign and then the Collector Base. From Harbinger's tone, he had it out for her. She's been lucky so far, but that luck, well, it can't last forever.
"I thought we agreed you weren't my shrink. Have you taken up a new day job, James?" she asks, hoping to disarm him.
"No. I – fuck." Shepard peeks long enough to see him running a hand back and forth over his hair. "I just don't get you, Shepard. You've done things that most people... Why aren't you proud? I'd be getting free drinks all the time if I were you."
"I am proud," she says, a knife of anger slicing towards him. She drops her arm heavily to her side, and rolls herself into a seated position. "I've done some damned good work. I've saved a lot of lives. I'm not perfect, no, but hell, who is? That doesn't mean I don't want better for her."
"What could be better than that?" cries James, hands up in the air.
Shepard wants to be young. She wants to have his sort of conviction. He's still rearing to go for the fight, and yeah, she is too, but the problem is she knows exactly what's coming. Those Prothean visions, they're still in there. She can see worlds falling one by one. It's not just about the fight anymore, not just about the adrenaline or the Alliance. It's about survival. She's done what she's done because nobody else would, and she wouldn't change that. But Dahlia...
"I think the problem is that we're not distinguishing properly between better and important," says Shepard. "I've had an important life, sure, but I'm sure there are, I don't know, street merchants out there that have had better lives. Dahlia said today that she can't imagine herself fighting. If it were in my power, I'd make sure she'd never have to. She could be happy, living here on Earth, having a normal life. If I could make it so that she never had to see what I've seen, do what I've done... Her life would be less important in the grand scheme of things, but it would be better." She rubs her arms. "Do you understand what I mean? I don't know that I'm explaining myself great."
"You mean, you don't want your daughter to see all the shit that's out there in the galaxy," offers James.
Not exactly how Shepard would've put it – okay, maybe exactly how Shepard would've put it, if today hadn't thrown her so far out of orbit – but he got the gist of it. "Not that it's going to matter when the Reapers show up."
"Hey," says James, taking a few steps into the room, "she'll be okay. You warned her folks. You did the best you could."
"Yeah," says Shepard, but it's leaden.
"And didn't someone say we were going to kick their shiny metal asses the hell out of our galaxy?"
Raising an eyebrow up at him, she says, "I don't remember saying that."
"Well, not that exactly, no. But the feeling was there." He shuffles a little bit, face sheepish.
She stares up at him. "You know what James?"
Since he's suddenly put on the spot, he freezes. "What?"
"I think we're almost friends," she says, and means it.
His smile is slow to appear, but once it does, it covers his face. He actually looks pretty pleased with himself. "No shit," he says. "You might be right."
Shepard can't figure out when the hell it happened, but she can't manage to be upset about it either. She also can't help but smile back. Most peculiar of all, she's pleased with herself too.
Thus concludes Skin and Bone. I would like to thank everyone who read, reviewed, followed and/or favourited. I have a sequel in the works - called The Trade of Kings - which will follow the events of ME3. The first chapter should be up soon. I've got quite a few pages started on it, but it's still really rough. So keep an eye out or follow me if you're so inclined. Thanks again!