Hustle Rose - Metric

Shepard sat at Ashley's bedside, gripping her friend's hand tightly, tears threatening to spring into her brown eyes.

She couldn't believe that she was here again, watching an ailing squad mate and friend while she remained unscathed.

Since the attack on the Collector base, Shepard felt a change within herself. She began her career as a Commander as a compassionate woman with an interest only in saving lives. But her priorities were changing.

Cerberus had ruined her when they made her immortal. The word itself was thought of with contempt. Each person that she watched die brought her endless pain with the knowledge that she could have saved them and walked out of it unharmed. But they still followed her; they still fought as if she was an asset that needed to be protected.

Her thoughts ventured back into the base, when she watched Legion be gunned down closing the doors to protect the team. It was hard to believe that he had changed her entire perception about the geth people, and that she would have once considered him an enemy but now considered him to be a brave friend who fought hard for humanity. When she watched him fall, it was like a part of her died with him, knowing that she could have jumped into the fire to save him but he chose to sacrifice himself instead.

Her grip on Ashley's hand tightened. Every single day she thought of Jack, Jacob, and Legion. On the SR-2 she had thought of them as soldiers and friends. But she had forgotten the most important part: they were people. They had been toddlers at one point; they would have learned to walk and talk and be beautifully innocent. They had families, friends, pets, lives. That was, of course, before she recruited them on the Normandy and they died under her lead. Consistent helplessness had absorbed her during her time in incarceration, but it began to reform into something new.

Sure, she destroyed those Collector bastards and their base. But she knew they weren't the real enemy. The real threat. The real reason why she had lost so many crew members and the real reason why she had watched hundreds of humans burn and be destroyed back on Earth.

It was the Reapers. Everything was the Reapers. But they wouldn't stop just because Zoey managed to save a few lives on the way. The only thing they knew was death and destruction, and that was exactly what she was going to give them.

Shepard...

The voice had been as clear as if it was right beside her. She jumped and gazed at Ashley, but it was foolish: the voice was male, deep, rumbling, both disturbing and beautiful. Her senses heightened and her eyes darted around the room, but she caught no movement.

She began to relax after several minutes of silence. She remembered that she had barely slept since Anderson had retrieved her, and attributed the voice to sleep deprivation.

Yet, when she stood and made her way to the Presidium to meet with the Council, the memory of the voice remained in the back of her mind like an itch she couldn't scratch.

She was walking through an ever-changing terrain. There was an unexplained purpose behind her travels; she knew there was a destination that she desperately had to reach, but she didn't know where or why so she let her feet carry her. First she was in a desert, endless acres of sand and dune under the relentlessly hot sun rays. She climbed to the peak of a dune, and when she looked down she saw jungle that stretched for miles and miles. She jogged down the dune into the humid jungle, dense and alive with the long-forgotten sounds of birds, howler monkeys, and millions of bugs. The hike through the jungle was long, and although she heard the animals she saw nothing but marsh and trees until they thinned to reveal a massive city with buildings that reached into the clouds. Reproachfully she made her way through the eerily empty streets, waiting for another soul to join her but finding none.

Then she heard the sound that awoke fear in the deepest part of her: the rumble followed by the sharp grinding of a Reaper laser. Sovereign came through the clouds, his massive arms opening to grip to the top of one of the buildings.

"We are the vanguard of your destruction, Shepard." His voice was deep and booming, reverberating through her sinew and bones. "You are weak. Your efforts are hopeless. Humanity will be destroyed."

The sharp grinding reverberated through the air as his laser hit the ground directly by Shepard, close enough that she could feel the extreme heat but far enough away that she was left unhurt.

When she recovered herself to see the path of destruction from his laser, she heard a far off scream. There was a body on the ground. The scream, high pitched and terrified, grew louder and louder as she neared the body.

Two realizations came to her instantaneously: the body was Garrus, and it was she who was screaming.

Her eyes flew open and she sat up in bed, covering her mouth to hide the scream. She closed her eyes and gasped for breath, her heart aching as the lucid dream played over and over again in her mind.

Perhaps Mordin was right. It was possible that she did have PTSD. But she was a Commander: her job was to lead, and to be strong to her team, not cry to them about her nightmares.

She shook her head to clear it and stood. Today was going to be an incredibly important day, for both the war effort and for her. She would get the Primarch and the support of the turians, and hopefully she would be able to get a lead on the location of Garrus.

Hope springs eternal.

Garrus had to use all of his military training to maintain composure as he jogged to the base, his breathing steady.

Although on his path he reminded himself repeatedly that the ship may not be the Normandy, and even if it is it may not be Shepard commanding it; but he still had to hope.

When you watch your fellow soldiers become utterly destroyed by an unstoppable enemy, hope is all you have.

He slowed his pace to a walk when he reached the main gate, on the receiving end of a salute from the officer on duty. It was still a strange sensation to have men saluting him instead of the other way around.

A lot had changed since he landed on Palaven six months ago. However, his feelings for Shepard were one thing that hadn't.

He entered the gate and crested a ridge just inside the base, his heart stopping when he saw a Kodiak shuttle parked just outside the gate.