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Chapter-Specific Notes: Takes place following Parts Answering Parts: Chapter 11, The Best Bridge
Nightmares.
As little as Shepard enjoyed the images that troubled her, they had been the constant companions of her resting hours for so long she simply tended to regard the time as being for as long as she could remember.
It wasn't true, of course. Not technically.
She certainly remembered a time before Akuze. But the memory seemed so distant as to be detached, almost unreal.
The feeling reminded her strongly of waking up in that Cerberus lab, feeling that her surroundings-not to mention the situation-were both typical and completely inexplicable. She wondered-and she worried-about whether or not the armor-familiar and unfamiliar at once-she'd donned would come to seem more natural to her than the armor it had replaced. Worse, she was certain she already knew the answer, and it wasn't one she liked. But...that was life. It was survival. It was one of the few certain things in a very uncertain existence. So...in a way, that damned armor was the most comforting thing she had.
Except, of course, when she wasn't wearing it.
And she wasn't wearing it now.
Which was actually a bit surprising as she couldn't quite remember how she had ended up in bed at all... let alone wearing the comfortable-but-unyielding skintight underweave to her armor and not one of the tank-and-boxer combos or oversized t-shirts she usually slept in.
That, coupled with the strange, pressing silence of her sleep, the absence of her nightmares, was unsettling in the extreme.
Her head felt full of cotton wool, dark, heavy, silent.
Her heart felt full of lead, sinking into her stomach, making it churn in a way she didn't quite understand.
She stumbled out of bed, lurching toward the console of her armor locker. As might be expected, the rest of her armor was there, stowed away with obvious care, not exactly in the way she usually stored it-her belt, for example, was resting, folded, on top of her chest plate instead of coiled up and set aside with her boots and gloves- but absolutely gleaming with care, as if it had just been polished.
She didn't remember taking her armor off. She didn't remember storing it. She didn't even remember cleaning it-a long and tedious job if any-but...it seemed as though she did remember something...something buried deep within the stifling weight suffusing her skull and her limbs.
A flash of something...light?
A strangled scream.
Muffled groaning.
The smell of blood, distinct and definite, but faint.
Maybe her sleep hadn't been nearly as untroubled as it seemed. A bit disturbing, that the thought should be so reassuring.
Something about the smell-beyond its mere existence-bothered her, though she couldn't quite identify the source of her concern.
As for the question of her nightmares, well...they usually jerked her upright, right out of a deep, sound sleep.
It seemed, somehow, deeply ominous that the images should be so...subtle. So elusive.
Like the difference between a highly-trained infiltration team and a full-frontal assault; the action on Virmire compared to the Battle of Torfan. It wasn't hard to say which was bloodier, really, most violent. On the other hand, in the long-term scheme of things, she had a feeling she knew which was more effective, even more devastating to the other side.
The other side.
She looked around, startled, suddenly reminded of the alien space of the room she occupied.
The large, luxuriously-appointed room.
Clean, open, elegant.
The cramped little bed, scarcely more than a cot, regarded as such an honor on any Alliance vessel, replaced by a huge double bed. Fluffy pillows littered the surface like rubble littered the floor of a building after an explosion, but the rumpled black and white linens still showed evidence of their previous crisp cleanliness, in spite of what seemed to be some faint splotches of almost-blue discoloration...
She shuddered in surprisingly violent reaction, though a split second's reflection was already telling her it was probably a trick of the light, defraction from the large, empty aquarium that had so unsettled her sleep ever since she'd boarded this ship.
This ship.
The Normandy.
But not her Normandy.
This ship didn't belong to her. It didn't even belong to the Alliance. It belonged to Cerberus.
A Cerberus ship. She was on a Cerberus ship.
Shepard shuddered again, harder, and wrapped her arms around herself without thinking, shrugging up her shoulders as if doing so would dislodge the tension that seemed to have settled over them.
A glint of light from the direction of the desk caught her eye.
The picture.
If she stepped forward, it would flicker into life as if it had never been extinguished. Kaidan's frozen face. His dark and tender eyes. His taunt, sensual mouth, suggesting, only suggesting, his small, sweet smile.
She wanted to step forward. She wanted to turn away and pretend she had never seen it.
She wanted, more than anything, to know who had put it there...and why.
It could be, she wanted to believe it was intended to be, a kind gesture, meant to offer her some hope, some comfort, some consolation, a feeling of belonging in a strange place.
And it probably was.
Something Kelly might have done or, maybe even Miranda-odd as it was to think of the coolly-collected woman performing any action meant to impart a feeling of warmth-but whether the picture was intended as a kindness or not, Shepard couldn't help feeling unsettled at the sight of it, because when she saw Kaidan's face on her desk, all she could see was a sort of veiled threat, a reminder of how much Cerberus knew about her, about her past, about the people she cared for...people they could hurt if she didn't cooperate...and the Illusive Man may well have intended her to see just that.
Shepard huffed a sigh and reached up to rub the back of her neck. Her fingers came in contact with the warm, slightly rough surface of her undersuit, and memory seared through her like a shock of plasma.
People who could get hurt.
Turian flesh under her fingers, warm and rough.
People she cared for.
Her vision swam in and out of focus. The room swayed, looking black around the edges. She stumbled back and to the side until her back pressed against the wall. She slid along it until she managed to find the floor and sit on it, leaning forward just enough to rest her forehead on her knees. The sound of her own harsh breathing in her ears amplified, lilted, took on a strange harmonic resonance, became a short, choked gasp, repeated over and over like a prayer before dying.
Garrus.
She could see a single blue eye looking up at her, dilating until it held all of eternity.
She hadn't realized she'd spoken aloud, but EDI's voice was lapping at the edges of the swirling vortex that threatened to engulf her and drag out, out and back, back into the void...
"-rian,previously known to Cerebus only as Archangel, Operative Lawson has instructed me to inform you that-as of this time-he is still living."
Shepard released a lone, shivering sob. If she'd had the energy to care, she might have looked around sheepishly to see if EDI had noticed, but the AI continued to speak. Shepard let the words wash over her like the lapping waves of the Elysian Sea, until her body felt nearly boneless with relief.
"Although she did not mention it, her current vital signs would seem to indicate that Operative Lawson is nearing exhaustion. This is not surprising, as she has been on her feet since you departed the ship at 0600. I believe she may have observed that this is one of many reasons why it would have been wise to recruit Mordin Solus previous to any other potential operatives. As she did not enunciate clearly, however, I'm afraid I may have extrapolated her meaning incorrectly. She insists quite clearly, however, that she will remain as she is, in Medbay, until Dr. Chakwas has no further need for her services."
"Tell them I'm on my way to lend them a hand," Shepard said as crisply as she could manage, and hauled herself upright to yank on the zipper of her undersuit. The weave peeled away from her skin slowly, releasing a faint miasma of the same blood-smell she'd been vaguely aware of earlier. Now, more consciously, she realized the oddity she'd thought she'd detected was probably the smell of copper instead of iron.
Giving herself a firm injunction not to think about it, she put the undersuit in the laundry drawer of the armor locker, hauled out standard shipwear boots-and-utes and began applying them.
"I cannot," EDI said. Shepard blinked, wondering if she'd simply projected that faint suggestion of regret onto the AI's level voice.
"Something wrong with med-com?" Shepard asked rhetorically.
"All systems are functioning properly at this time," EDI said, sounding almost smug. "However, Operative Lawson-"
"Just who runs this ship?" Shepard snapped. "Me or Lawson?"
"You do. Illusive Man's orders, Commander Jane Shepard is named Acting Captain, Operative Miranda is named Acting XO by order of the Illusive Man."
Shepard made a garbled noise of frustration. If she hadn't been simultaneously terrified for Garrus and outraged with Miranda, she might have been amused.
"Look, Commander, no one wants you calling the shots more than I do," Joker's voice intervened, making her jump, bumping her shoulder into the bulkhead. Some things, some small part of her thought wryly, never change. And thank god for that. Some days, she'd take what she could get. This was definitely one of those times. Hell, it's one of those lives, she thought, a little more consciously, and snorted around a wry grin. "But Operative Lawson-and her annoying little watchdog, here, too-are right about this one. You're no medic. Even if you were, doctors aren't supposed to operate on family. Your old squad...we were your family. We knew and we were damn proud of it."
"Dammit, Joker," Shepard hissed, taking a deep breath, sagging back against the bulkhead, one boot still clutched in her hand. "What did you have to go and say something like that for?"
"You mean something you can't argue with?" Joker's smug grin was apparent even through the audio feed.
"You know I do," she said and sighed.
"Just one of the many duties you keep me around to perform," he retorted. "You'd be lost without me, you know."
"Huh. I knew there was a reason I'd saved your ass," she said flippantly, then froze as the silence on the other side of the com channel changed. "Shit, Joker, I didn't mean-"
"Yeah, sure, Commander, I know."
Shepard shrugged her shoulders again and dropped her boot.
"And, uh, Commander?"
Shepard grunted shortly, both afraid of saying the wrong thing and preoccupied with the removal of her other boot.
"Thanks. For saving my ass."
Shepard snorted. "Makes us one-for-three doesn't it? I'd say I still owed you. Probably always will."
"And don't you forget it," Joker quipped, sounding more like his old self. "I might want to collect."
"Well," Shepard said, smiling in spite of the ache in her heart and the fear in her gut, "you know what they say."
"What would that be, Commander?"
"A man's gotta dream."