Helpless - Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
"Requesting assistance, Shepard-Commander."
"I'm coming, Legion!"
She was in the Collector base again, but this time she was alone and it was free of Collectors.
"Shepard-Commander, we need assistance."
She was jogging in circles around the room, searching for a valve to open up the vents, but she couldn't find it.
"Shepard-Commander! Help!"
Her heart raced and her breath was rapid in panic. "I'm trying, Legion, I'm trying!" She helplessly patted her hands against the walls, searching for something to save him, but there was nothing.
"HELP!"
She cried out in frustration and punched the blank wall to no avail. She listened to Legion's agonized cries over her comm before they were suddenly cut short. She smacked the wall with both fists and her hands slid down it helplessly.
"You could have helped. You did not." His voice was suddenly behind her and she whipped around. Legion was there, but large chunks of his body were missing and oozing an oily fluid. His head light was flashing, on and off. "You failed," he accused, approaching her closer with his hands out, "YOU FAILED!"
As suddenly as he appeared he disappeared with a blinding flash, and she was suddenly in a large antechamber, his accusations echoing through the high ceilings. There were other, distant voices, bidding her to continue, to move on. She obeyed, moving with hesitant steps, her pistol held in front of her. She stopped abruptly when Jack - or what would have once been Jack - stepped around the corner.
"Look who fucking shows up," she snarled. Her skin had taken on a sickly green tone and was riddled with holes. A black, smoking line crossed from her forehead to her toes, cutting through her clothing so that it hung loosely, charred and battered, from her decimated form. Looking into her eyes was like looking into an endless black hole. "You know, your dumb ass made sure I didn't even make it to this shit hole. How pathetic is that? I got taken out by a fucking Oculus! Not even death in combat? Fucking come on."
"Jack, I-"
"Shut the fuck up, cunt. You know how fucking awesome my future would have been if it wasn't for you? I would have lead those little fuckers at Grissom Academy and done a bang up job. But you fucking ended me," she said, pointing at Shepard. "Feels pretty shitty, huh?"
"Yes," Shepard whispered.
"You know what's shittier? BEING DEAD!" With a petrifying scream, terribly similar to that of a Banshee, she began to crumble, limb by limb, into a pile of ash. Shepard tried to grab her, tried to hold on to any piece that she could, but Jack slipped right through her fingers. She fell to her knees and pounded the ground with her fists, hot tears spilling out of her eyes in frustration.
"I like the sight of you on your knees."
The tone of Jacob's voice, normally calm and warm but now vicious and poisonous, was alarming. "I'm sorry, Jacob," she whimpered.
"Sorry doesn't fucking cut it!" he snapped. She looked up at him and his deterioration was similar to Jack's: his skin was sickly and pale, entire pieces of flesh were missing and leaving gaping holes, and even a part of his skull was blown away to reveal the rotting and dehydrated brain beneath. "If you didn't fail on this base, do you know where I'd be? Not only would I be fighting your failing fight against the Reapers, but I'd be with a beautiful woman - leagues more beautiful than you could ever dream of being - and we'd be expecting a baby girl. But look where I am now, a rotting corpse left to fester at this base."
"Failure not surprising." Now it was Mordin who approached them. His good horn was hanging sickly off his head by a thread, and the gaping hole in his stomach that she had caused stared right back at her. "At least she did not shoot you, Jacob. Abysmal commander. Recommend execution."
"Execute her!" Jack had reappeared, and let out a cackling laugh. "Murder the bitch like she murdered us!"
With a flash, Legion also reappeared. "Murder is the optimal discourse."
They began to chant, the four teammates she had lost in her last year of service. Behind them Jenkins appeared, and Kaidan, and the scores of other crew members she had lost under her command, all appearing to have varying degrees of rot. They began to bear down on her, their rotting stench overwhelming, chanting over and over: murder, murder, murder, murder, murder, murder…
And when she woke she was screaming, wailing, begging for them to stop. Strong, hard hands caressed her back as her breath came in gasps that burned her lungs. The imagery refused to leave her mind, the undead versions of those she had let down, those she had failed. "I murdered them, murdered all of them, why did I fail, I deserve to die!"
"You don't deserve to die, my love, and you didn't fail. You're the greatest commander that I've known, and an excellent fiancée if I may say so myself."
His voice pulled her out of her nightmare and she grasped his cowl and buried her face in his chest until she was able to catch her breath.
Would this nightmare never end?
The door loomed before her, mocking her fears of what was hidden behind it.
Although she was grateful that Sparatus had agreed to meet with her - and she knew he was most likely only agreeing to it because she rescued Victus - her heart pounded at the impending conversation.
"Are you going in or staring at the door?" The guard growled. She shot him a poisonous glare before stepping in, finding Sparatus fringe-deep in stacks and stacks of datapads, some so high that a few from the top had fallen on the floor. Behind the stacks she could see half a dozen coffee mugs, all empty and dirty, and more than a few half-full pill bottles.
"Commander," he said without lifting his eyes from the datapad. "I hope you aren't here to waste my time, it's a precious commodity these days."
"I'm hoping that I can request your help on a sensitive matter."
He looked up briefly to read her expression before his eyes turned back down to his work. "Go on."
"Did you ever find anything when you took that blood sample from me a few years ago?"
His mandibles twitched, and she knew turian subvocals well enough to hear that he was trying to hide his surprise when he spoke. "Results were inconclusive. We could see what the cells were doing but we couldn't determine their origins. Why do you ask?"
"Seeing as Cerberus is now our enemy I thought it would be prudent to find out."
"The Council is well aware of that fact."
"And that implies..."
He scowled. "Council business."
"I have a right to know if I'm being monitored."
Sparatus stood; not angrily, but methodically. "With all due respect, I think that you've done enough sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. So if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of work to get done."
Although she wanted nothing more than to smack the smugness right off his face - especially since she had saved him from the usurper Udina only weeks prior - she thought better of it and made her exit instead.
Damn politicians. She should have known that she would receive nothing but vague implications from him. And she still had another Councilor to meet with: Tevos.
When Shepard stepped out of her meeting with Councilor Tevos, Garrus was waiting for her inside the Presidium Cafe, two steaming to-go cups of coffee before him.
"How's our old friend Tevos?" He picked up both of their coffees and handed Shepard hers before they headed towards the elevator to take them back to the docking bay.
"Looks like our next stop on the homeworlds tour is going to be Thessia. Apparently they might know the location of our Catalyst."
Garrus's mandibles flickered into a grin. "That's good news!"
"Asari cooperation and progress on the Crucible? I'd say it's great news. How's our old friend Victus?" They had reached the docking bay and began making their way to the Normandy.
"About as well as the Primarch of a burning planet can be. He did say, however, that he'll put his recommendation in for our application, but we can't expect any responses until things slow down a bit."
"Couldn't ask for more than that. A step-"
"Shepard!"
Although Shepard normally looked forward to their jovial name exchanges, Wrex's tone of voice from behind paralyzed her with fear. She quelled the bile rising in her throat.
"Wrex, what are you-" She was stunned to silence when she spun around and he pointed the business end of his shotgun directly at her face.
"I know what you did, Shepard. And you disgust me." A wad of green mucus flew from his mouth onto her boots.
Shepard had calmed Wrex down before, and she prayed to the spirits that she could do it again. "Wrex, be reasonable, let's talk-"
"Reasonable, Shepard?" He pushed the barrel of his gun against her chest. "I'm sure that you were being reasonable when you decided to let the salarians continue to commit genocide against the krogan people. I'm sure that you were being reasonable when you shot Mordin in cold blood. He was a friend of the krogan people! He wanted to help us! But you? I considered you my sister." This time, his spit reached her face.
"Wrex," Garrus warned, his subvocals soothing while he held out a shaky hand. It was clear that Shepard wasn't the only one that the angry krogan was frightening. "Shepard had to do what she had to do."
Shepard's voice shook when she spoke. "My people are being decimated by the Reapers. I had to do whatever it takes to stop this war."
Wrex growled. "My people never had a chance to live, and now we'll die like the rest of you. I hope the humans are slaughtered like varren." He changed his target to Garrus's chest. "And you. You disgust me as much as her. You knew exactly what she did but you didn't say a word. Just because you love her isn't an excuse to allow her to commit these atrocities!"
It was Shepard's turn to attempt a soothing tone. "Wrex, you're the best damn krogan that I know. But I know that some of your brothers can be dangerous, and so do you. Can you blame the salarians for wanting to keep the aggression in check?"
"Don't attempt flattery with me, Shepard. Do you know how I found out about your betrayal? When I held my brother's son in my arms. He was dead. You have personally taken away something that I love." His shotgun was now facing Garrus's face. "I can't kill you, Shepard. But I can kill something that you love."
Gun him down, Shepard. He leaves you no choice.
She slowly pulled her pistol from its holster and aimed it at him. "Don't do this, Wrex."
His shotgun turned back to her. "You lost the right to tell me what I can and can't do when I left the Normandy."
"Wrex, don't make a decision you'll regret."
"You took away everything, Shepard. Everything. There are no more regrets for me." He flicked off the safety.
"Wrex-"
"Fuck you, Shepard." His voice was thick with pain. Never before in her life did Shepard regret anything as much as she regretted hurting him - hurting Mordin - at that moment. "Fuck you." He aimed for her chest, planning to incapacitate her before taking out Garrus. He once considered them family, he once would have said that he loved him, but after this betrayal his heart was only filled with hatred.
Shepard gasped as the shotgun shell hit her straight in the chest, sending her tumbling to the ground while the entirety of the air in her lungs escaped. She grabbed her chest, gasping for breath but finding none, letting out a cry of agony as the wound burned and the world around her flickered as she eased in and out of consciousness.
Through her peripherals she found Garrus, watching as he raised his pistol with lightning-fast reflexes and shot Wrex right between the eyes, sending his hulking mass crumbling onto the floor.
As she clutched her chest and the pain abated while her breath returned, Garrus jogged over to her, grasping her bloody palm in his two hands. "Shepard, are you alright?"
"That hurt," she mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut. "Are you alright? I could have... you didn't have to... fuck, Wrex..."
"I had to," he replied sternly. "I couldn't just stand there and watch the same thing happen to you with Wrex as it did with Mordin."
Tears sprang unwillingly into her eyes and she gruffly brushed them away, leaving a bloody streak behind her hand. "What about you?"
"I'll be fine." He gently pulled her to her feet, grasping under her shoulders when she wavered on her feet. The chest wound had nearly disappeared.
Although his words insisted that he was fine, his subvocals said otherwise. "Are you sure?"
"His krogan blood got the better of him. Come on, let's get on the ship."
Sparing her dead friend one last sidelong glance, she followed Garrus onto the Normandy, her mind reeling.