Death Wish

-September, 2186

"In my cycle," Javik hid no disgust as he poked at the remains of the Geth Hunter that flickered in and out of transparency as its charge bled out from its capacitors. "a Zha'til colony committed mass suicide when they began to feel their symbiotic AI take over."

The cool breeze of Rannoch's evening air was fresh and tasty. Messalina wiped her brow of sweat before pushing her goggle visors up. The lack of Quarians had definitely left Rannoch in pristine untouched clearness, almost as if it were an unbroken wilderness. The remains of Quarian architecture unused by the Geth had crumbled to dust long ago. Only those buildings incorporated by Geth stood far off, glistening, sterile.

"Your point?" Tali's optics flashed.

Javik, as was his wont, ignored her, tossing the uncomfortable ball of awkward silence to Messalina to defuse.

"Suicide is stupid." Messalina remarked.

"Oh!" Tali chirped, happily. "You mean you were bluffing when you said 'Suicide Mission', the last time?"

Messalina shrugged. "I never coined that word, Tali. That was mostly Miranda's. If I were determined to kill myself, I'd probably have packed the Normandy with a shitload of neutron bombs right through the Omega-4 relay."

Tali paused for a moment at the simplicity of it. "That makes sense."

- March, 2173

"Do you have a death wish, Candidate?"

Chief Ellison screamed at her. Messalina determined that he had no other way of talking. He was always screaming, which must have hurt his vocal cords. It was a plague of modern regenerative medicine that allowed some people the excess that they should never overindulge. Of course, the same could be said about her.

She had broken her arm while trying to break a fall by grabbing onto small ledge. The fall, in turn, was after slipping off the surface of an automated defense tower. It had sputtered to a stop when she hacked it open to disable it.

Her arm was dangling in an unnatural way as she lifted it and toyed with it.

"Do you hear me? Did your fall addle your brain, Candidate?" Ellison continued screaming.

"No, Drill Instructor." Messalina replied calmly. Her accident had suspended the exercise and the other cadets began mulling around them, some concerned, mostly curious. Despite being a relatively thankless profession, the Marines always historically prided themselves as the best of the best. Whatever you could say about pilots, naval officers, or artillery, peak physical condition was a prerequisite of the Marines. And during the Interplanetary Combatives Training, which sometimes failed every candidate, a loss of a competitor sometimes meant the probability of survival for another increased. Of course, no one would say that out loud. Messalina just considered the general lack of a polite "you okay" was enough.

She opened her armor storage and fished out a packet of medigel, slicing it down with her knife. You only received small packets of medigel, with additional requisitions turning up poorly on your candidacy evaluations. The gel began to liquefyand absorb into her skin as she applied it to her bare arms.

Messalina breathed deep before pulling her hand, setting the bone straight for the medigel to do its work. It was unsettling. The pain remained as the regenerative signals in her body awoke accelerating with cascading speed. A dizziness from the increased metabolic load hit her, forcing her to close her eyes for a moment.

"Clear." She said simply, when it was over, flexing her arms. She got up and dusted her training uniform.

"What was the meaning of that stunt you pulled, Candidate?" The man who stepped forward between the Candidates, parting like the Red Sea, wore an N7 insignia. She had never seen him before, but she assumed he was one of the ICT officers evaluating the candidates. "Those guns are placed to see how well you can progress through an artillery covered field."

"I believed that the best way to progress through an open fire zone was to take out the guns firing on the zone, sir." Messalina replied.

The officer frowned, opened his omnitool and checked the gun's status.

"You've caused property damage." he quipped, sarcastically. "I don't care if you're Em Hayes's girl. You get no special treatment in Rio."

Chief Ellison, finding the exercise damaged and indefinitely suspended, barked at the platoon leaders to lead the men back to the barracks. He had only been alarmed at the accident, personally thinking it was a great initiative on Shepard's part. He didn't expect the senior N7 to intrude upon his exercise either. The kid had it rough. One of the youngest candidates invited to the 'villa'. There were rumors that she was being groomed. But Ellison didn't think so. 'Groomed' officers never needed to go through the living hell of the ICT. 'Groomed' officers usually graduated the Naval Command academy.

Shepard had been an enlisted Marine. While she had finished high school early from home schooling, the girl shied away from academics and enlisted immediately. She had shown exceptional promise early on, leading doomed squads out of tough situations... like today.

Shepard, due to her youth, was seldom given leadership. Especially in the 'villa' where officers from everywhere gathered, Shepard's special promotion to 2nd lieutenant pending her completion of the N1 made her the lowest ranking candidate. Even among those gathered from the NCO corps, she was the youngest and smallest, the Runt.

But she stood out in combat. Her platoon leader, Lieutenant Trish was in a bind; her platoon always achieving mission objectives with glaring success, but mostly due to Shepard's unorthodox solo tactics on the field. Ellison could only imagine what she endured back in the barracks, away from the brass.

Shepard had military ties, but nothing extraordinary. Her grandfather, retired and deceased, and her father, KIA, with a mother, a scientist turned full naval officer. It was a weird pedigree. If it had not been for her family, Shepard would not stand out from most of her fellow Marines grunts: a youngster on her own trying to make a living. And then there was Rear Admiral Hayes. While Hannah Shepard had caused a ruckus to ask the ICT to not accept her daughter into their program, Hayes had sent along mixed messages, openly supporting Hannah Shepard while secretly recommending Messalina Shepard. They were one very screwed up family.

Ellison shrugged. Runt or Hero, it didn't matter in the ICT. If you were good, you survived, and this was only week two.

-December, 2185

"She's your granddaughter, isn't she?" Anderson stared at Emily Hayes.

The resemblance was uncanny. You could miss it when just looking at Hannah and Emily Hayes. But when you put all three women together, you could see the faint resemblance. Obviously Emily Hayes had received some form of plastic surgery to diminish the resemblance, either through injury or on purpose.

"You're good." Hayes admitted. All her life she had denied it. But now denial was too tiresome. She was the first female fleet admiral. She had no family of her own. Even in this day and age, a woman working for herself could never support a family and keep a career at the same time. Despite equal opportunity measures, there were always so many hurdles to overcome.

"Does Captain Shepard know?"

"No." Emily turned her chair away from David Anderson. She had abandoned Hannah when she was born. She had hoped that the girl would be adopted, but something in her blood had been too fiery to tame. Hannah ended up growing up in an orphanage, then released onto the streets. When Emily Hayes returned to Earth from a long duty overseeing Gargarin Station, Hannah had worked her way into the ROTC program to help herself through college. The girl was ambitious, if nothing else. With the recent discovery of hidden alien technology, everyone was clamoring for a scientific degree. Hannah had managed to receive full scholarship, but also wanted to go out into space herself. Hayes had next found her daughter as a scientist under Alan Shepard's intelligence team. And so began the relationship to assuage her guilt.

And here now was a broken family of women, three generations of them from mother to daughter. Everyone of them riddled in guilt and self loathing, burning with a passion which could engulf stars, each one as ambitious as hell, and each one hating their mother. It had been easier on Emily when Messalina latched onto her more than Hannah. A selfish part of her had welcomed her granddaughter's attachment, as if it somehow showed Hannah that Emily was not the only bad mother. She would be the first one to admit that it was twisted.

It was easier to excuse when she was young, when a promising career seemed to be heading towards ruin with an unwanted child. Now, without the excuse of youth, there was only guilt.

"I don't want anyone to know." Emily Hayes stared at the stars, as if talking to them.

"It's not my place to tell anyone." Anderson replied.

"Messalina... " Emily tried to explain, to condone her actions, to hide her guilt, "she's all our children, David."

David stood up to leave. He couldn't bear being in the room with her anymore. "I have to go."

"You've never had to be a mother!" Emily tried to justify herself one last time.

"Neither did you."