Chapter 1: White walls.
The broken Reaper stared at her with its empty eye. She stared back at it, silent and unimpressed, out the barred window. Almost four years ago, those gigantic machines had been the scourge of the galaxy. Now they were part of the landscape. All she had ever heard about the matter was that they were too expensive to move. A few had been dismantled for study or to be used as building material.
She was sitting on the top of a bunk bed, with her legs folded and her hands resting on her bare feet. She was wearing a white tank top and a pair of red sweatpants. Her short blonde hair was tousled, not that she cared. Sunlight came through the window into the small room with white walls, and bathed her athletic figure. It was the same light that the 'real' Shepard had known as a child, when she had to survive alone in the streets of Earth.
Valerie hadn't had the chance of seeing much of Earth's rebuilding. She had started her captivity in a high-security facility, but after two suicide attempts, the Alliance decided that she would be better off in a mental institution. The first one that they had sent her to had been hell. The war with the Reapers had ended only a month before, and the hospital was crowded. The only way to keep her alive had been to sedate her or restrain her. However, everything changed for the better as more people were discharged and she could be transferred to the place she was at that moment. She was receiving actual psychiatric treatment, for a start.
As the months had passed since the transfer, and she gave evidence that she no longer wanted to end her own life, she had been given more liberties. She was allowed to read, watch vids or see the news. That was how she had learned of the death of Commander Valerie Shepard, after months fighting for her life ever since she had been found covered in debris. She had never regained consciousness after the final battle. "If they'd had let me do it," she had commented to the woman watching the news next to her, "I'd be the corpse and they'd have their great hero alive." The woman hadn't said anything, she had just laughed, probably thinking that Valerie shared her level of insanity. She had just shrugged.
Just a few weeks later, the news had transmitted the return of the emblematic Normandy to Earth. Valerie had though of the brief time that she had spent on board of the ship. She had felt great for the short while that it lasted. Even the fight with the now dead Commander had been challenging and had made her feel alive. The memory had a bitter taste, however, because for the first time she had felt the dagger of betrayal puncturing between her ribs.
It took time for her to trust anybody again, but after the time she had spent in the institution, she could say that she trusted her psychiatrist, to a certain degree. Valerie was not longer angry at the Commander, at Hope Lilium or even at Cerberus. She had been convinced of giving life a try, but it was too short to spend it consumed by overwhelming hatred, and she had already lost the first three decades of it.
The door opened, bringing her mind to the present time and her room with the barred window. She glanced to see who had entered. It was Theresa, the woman with long brown hair that slept on the bed below hers. Valerie really disliked her and never made any effort to hide it, but that didn't stop the other woman from wanting to get into her pants.
"What are you up to?" asked Theresa approaching the bed and leaning her arms on it, near the spot where Valerie was sitting.
"Until now, contemplating silence," replied Valerie shifting her gaze at the window again. "You should give it a try."
"You're mean!" said Theresa chuckling. She sat at her own bed, below the blonde woman. "But I like you nevertheless."
"You're free to stop liking me anytime you want." The tone that she employed sounded more tired than upset.
"I can't, you're the most beautiful woman on Earth," Theresa made a pause, and added, "Oh, and doctor Grant wants to see you."
Valerie slipped from the bed and dropped herself to the floor.
"You should have told me that when you came in," she said as she was putting her shoes on, "instead of your usual babbling."
"I'm telling you now!" protested Theresa, laughing softly while she was laying down on her bed.
Valerie left the room and closed the door behind her, before the other woman could say anything else. She walked down the corridors, ignoring the other inpatients that crossed her path. She thought that one of them was screaming something at her, probably the Bible crazy woman. Yielding at her insistence, she had read that Bible book two years ago. It had been pure nonsense to her. No wonder that the hospital staff wouldn't let that woman go home with her family, although she was one of the few patients that actually received visitors.
Valerie reached doctor Juliet Grant's office, and softly knocked on the door. It was a white door with no circuits attached to it or anything else to make it stand apart, other than the name of the doctor written on a small sign at eye's height.
"It's open," came a female voice from inside.
The patient opened the door, and stepped into the office. It was a small room with a desk, three chairs, two bookcases, an armchair and a couch placed below a large barred window. The walls were white, as every other wall inside the institution.
"You wanted to see me?" asked Valerie standing near the door.
"Yes, please come in," said the doctor. She was a woman probably in her late forties, wearing a brown dress under her open white coat. She held her black hair in a neat bun at the back of her head. She was elegant and always seemed to care about her appearance, although some wrinkles were starting to show in the corner of her eyes. The doctor was sitting on the armchair, and had her crutch resting on the back. Juliet Grant had been severely injured during the war, but after multiple surgeries, she had been left with only a minor limp. When Valerie had asked the doctor why didn't she treat it, she had replied that she was tired of medical procedures and just wanted to go on with her life.
The blonde woman closed the door behind her, and sat on the couch in front of the doctor. There was nothing feminine about her position, with her legs sprawled and her back ungracefully leaning on the back of the sofa. The doctor smiled, but the reason for that smile was beyond Valerie's comprehension.
"You made a lot of progress here," said the doctor leaning forward just a little bit on her seat, "and I think that you're ready to leave, Valerie."
"Leave?" she asked, sounding confused. "Leave where?"
"Outside, to see the world," replied Grant with an ample gesture of her arm. "To forge your own destiny."
"My own destiny," Valerie repeated, scoffing.
"There's no reason for you to remain here," insisted the doctor, with a soft tone. "You are no longer a threat to yourself or others. You aren't insane and had never been. The Alliance understands that your circumstances are special. They want you to take a new last name, and hide your origin from the general public. In exchange they will provide you with a lifelong pension. You can return here for regular counseling, as an outpatient."
"You think I need it?" asked the blonde woman narrowing her eyes a bit.
"Life can be confusing," replied the doctor gesturing with her hands, "and you didn't have a childhood or adolescence to figure it out. The counseling is not mandatory, though. Take it just as an offer, to make your life easier."
Valerie lowered her head and kept silent for a moment. Finally, she looked directly at doctor Grant.
"How exactly will I hide my origin?" she asked. "I look exactly like the Commander. Just being out there in the streets will tell people whatever they want to know about me."
She had found over the time that she had spent there, that calling the 'real' Shepard 'the Commander' didn't hurt. After all, she wasn't a Commander herself, given the fact that she had never really joined the Alliance or was promoted in its ranks.
"The Alliance has taken care of that," explained the doctor. "They've altered the records of Commander Shepard's face. Only people who knew her when she was alive will be able to tell that you look just like her. Everybody else will find you very similar."
"People had seen video footage of her," insisted Valerie gesturing with her hands. "You think they won't remember?"
"They've also seen the broadcast of her funeral," said the doctor softly. "It's been years since the war ended. They won't think at first glance that you are her. It would help, of course, if you didn't insist on keeping her exact same haircut."
"It's a comfortable haircut!" protested the patient.
"I know, but you need to assume your own identity," Grant said patiently. "We went over this, Valerie."
"I have my own identity, doctor," she said crossing her legs and arms at the same time. "In fact, I'm quite used at looking at myself in the mirror. I don't believe I'm committing any crime in keeping my hair the way I like it."
"It was just a friendly suggestion," said the doctor moving on her chair, "Nobody has prevented you from doing it so far."
Valerie didn't reply right away, and an uncomfortable silence set between the two women.
"If you agree, you can leave the hospital next week, after an interview with an Alliance committee," said Juliet Grant after a while. "Is there anything else you want to know?"
"They want me to take a new last name, huh?" Valerie asked. "What's wrong with 'Smith'?"
Smith was the last name that she had been given by the Alliance when she was admitted in the hospital, to avoid suspicion from the staff.
"Nothing," replied the doctor. "The only condition is that you don't try to use Shepard's last name. You can keep the name Smith if you like it."
"Yeah, Valerie Smith will do," she said nodding. After a brief pause she added, "I don't think I have any other questions right now."
"Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?" Grant offered gently.
"Nope," replied Valerie getting up from the couch. "I'd like to go back to my room."
"Of course," said the doctor nodding and gesturing to the door with her hand.
She left Grant's office, but she didn't walk directly to her room as she had said she would. Probably that annoying Theresa would still be there, and the last thing Valerie wanted was to put up with her foolishness and her misguided attempts to seduce her.
She went to the common room instead, and grabbed a datapad that contained an assorted collection of books from a shelf. She couldn't concentrate to read, though. Her mind kept going back to doctor Grant's words, especially when she had said that she could forge her own destiny. What destiny? She could have had a great destiny, dying instead of Commander Shepard. She had wronged the woman with her same DNA, only because she had been stupid enough to believe the treacherous words of Hope Lilium, or whatever her name had been. Valerie didn't make excuses for herself, however, neither she felt overwhelmed by guilt. She had acted badly, now she understood that, but she knew that she had been deceived. She was glad that she hadn't caused real damage to the Commander, her team or her ship. Nevertheless she resented that the Alliance didn't let her take the Commander's place during the final battle, as Valerie requested multiple times. There was a good chance that she wouldn't survive it, and they knew it. Dying instead of her would have been a good way to thank her for the second chance. No words of apology would have needed, the Commander would have understood. Nobody needed to ever know that she had existed, they could have simply said that the Commander survived her injuries in the hospital, and she'd still be a hero. A breathing one. Instead of that, the Alliance doomed the 'real' Shepard, and condemned her to have a menial life after the biggest war of all times.
Valerie stood up and put away the datapad. She stared out the window, from that common room with white walls in a mental institution. The corpse of the dead Reaper stared back at her, silent and unimpressed.