The Collectors were a symptom of a larger cause.
Commander Shepard and the Alliance operations officer technically agreed with one another about the abducted colony called Horizon, and yet they still argued when they met there. The countermeasure against the seeker swarms worked incredibly well; they had ample time to voice their thoughts to one another.
Mordin wasn't terribly sure that was a good thing.
"You're working with Cerberus, Skipper. Cerberus." The officer's voice contained a striking note of abrasion and her words were acrid against their mark.
Massani shook his head. "Christ, Shepard. How many little nicknames do you have?"
"It's more complicated than that, Ash," Shepard told her. "You have to understand, the Collectors are working with the Rea-"
"I don't understand!" Her disgust was palpable. "You've turned your back on everything we stood for!"
The officer left, and Shepard silently watched her go. There was no one left to save on Horizon after that.
They were all gone.
Neither of the women knew if she was the real Commander Shepard. Perhaps she was only a clone, and the real entity could have successfully saved the colony from the mysterious horrors that would now befall its population. Whoever she was, Shepard was unusually reserved for an N7 marine despite the excessive amounts of property damage that she often caused in the field. She surrounded herself with jagged crests such as Massani or Jack to obscure her softer edges, and during her work with Cerberus she preferred to keep social company with those who hadn't known her before she died. Her voice was kind to the people on her ship and vaguely impatient with those who dwelt outside of it.
She was often furious about all of it, when she thought she was alone.
Shepard pitched her helmet aside in the elevator on the ship with a piercing thrust of sound erupting from her chest, angry and hastily isolated from everything except her own perceived failures on Horizon. The helmet clattered against the wall and then it tumbled until it finally glanced against someone's foot. She looked over with a small start of surprise and Mordin offered her a tilted glance, unsettled and slightly towering next to her in the enclosed space.
"Served with her previously?" He tried to spare her dignity and didn't mention the outburst.
Shepard hastily brushed away the moisture lining her eyes. "Ashley was my gunnery chief a long time ago." A bitter laugh escaped her. "I don't know what I was expecting from her."
"Less insults, possibly. Officially still working for Cerberus," he observed helpfully. "Her assumption was technically correct."
Shepard looked away with a sigh and her hand brushed through her hair. Mordin shifted uneasily while they ascended and she picked up the scorned helmet.
That had been unhelpful.
"Are you trying to make me feel better, or worse?" she asked after a long and awkward moment had passed.
"Better," he assured her.
She stepped out into the hallway in front of the cabin and smiled faintly. "You're bad at it, Solus."
"Aware of that," he conceded when she turned around to face him. He remained in the elevator. "Will still be here, if you need me. Not actually in this location. Tissue synthesis leads to spare time in lab. Would have liked to run tests on your officer friend, perhaps administered mood stabilizer or lamotrigine. Carefully, of course, fatal skin condi-"
The elevator door shut, cutting off the words he tossed quickly her way and closing on the much brighter smile that had landed on her face while she caught them. He descended to the command deck.
He inhaled.
Mordin didn't know if she was the real Commander Shepard. She was, however, one of the very few people who knew of his work and had still remained his friend. Her opinion of the issue had been negative and yet softly accommodating, and when he asked her why she had looked away.
"I found a rachni in the snow, a long time ago," she had said quietly, because it felt like yesterday and no longer was. She pressed her lips into a frown and wouldn't speak further of it. She merely assured him that the species was still extinct when he pressed her for details.
Shepard felt that perhaps it had been a mistake made for the right reasons; it was quite possible that they were both monsters.
Mordin had set it aside. Her opinion didn't matter because his own was the only correct possible answer, but he thought that the gumption of her statements, softened into diplomacy by her obvious sentimental bias toward him, was interesting. On Sur'Kesh, he was still Professor Mordin Solus. Anyone in the Special Tasks Group who had the clearance to challenge him about the genophage simply didn't. Creeping doubts were always swirling at the edge of his mind, unformed and pushed away by rational affirmations and clandestine endearments from the Salarian Union combined with the hard pragmatism of its surrounding culture.
Shepard's human presence was appealing in that aspect; technically unneeded and yet still appreciated for its contrast. Mordin did his best to keep it and she let him, despite their reservations about their own respective histories. He began to let his guard down, ever so slightly, as she remained and she responded by doing the same.
Very few had, before her. They all fractured away under the weight of the genophage's continued necessity while insistently approving of it.
Mordin frowned in the elevator, and then set it aside.