"Lieutenant James!" The scream that tore through James Vega's dreaming mind, waking him up, was completely his own invention. Shrill and grating, it was enough to make him shout himself.
Sweating and shivering, Vega tried to bring his breathing under control, tried to ignore the clammy-cold sensation clinging to his skin. His pillowcase was soaked with sweat. The rest of his sheets didn't feel much better. He swallowed, then got to his feet, lumbered to the bathroom and filled the glass he kept there with water. The liquid re-moisturized the tissues of his mouth, but did nothing to relieve the sick feeling that came with the dream.
Contrary to everything he'd ever heard, the nightmares had never lessened in intensity, though they had lessened in frequency until recently. Still, it seemed him, he thought as he washed his face in cold water, that the lack of frequency was more than made up for by strength when he did have them.
And now he was back to having them every few days.
He looked into the mirror at his dripping-wet face, found he didn't like the man looking back at him. That was nothing new and it had nothing to do with the dark circles under his eyes or the fact that he was in need of a haircut, or that he really needed a shave.
He'd made a call, and she'd died for it. It wasn't something he thought he could ever get square with. All the logic and justifications in the galaxy hadn't helped one iota. She'd died because of the call he made. Plain and simple.
He knew why the nightmare should come back now. The news had broken days ago: the formerly dead Commander Shepard had (supposedly) blown up a mass relay, wiping out the system it connected to and everyone in it. It was a sickening feeling to hear one's hero being accused of something like that. It was another to have everyone so certain she'd actually done it.
He couldn't just blindly believe it was all bogus…but he couldn't accept that there hadn't been something, some circumstance or situation that might mitigate the fallout. Surely, surely a soldier like that, an N7, wouldn't just go off the reservation. Blowing up mass relays? That wasn't something any terrorist group he'd ever heard of would even think about doing. Mass relays held the galaxy together. Without them, every overarching entity, every system was off doing its own thing. Isolated. Alone.
There were lots of theories about how and why she'd done it; some were plausible, some totally implausible, some of them no doubt started by the Batarian Hegemony. They were claiming the destruction of the Bahak relay was to cover up a crime. That was a bit of a stretch and he doubted anyone really believed it: there were easier ways to cover something up, and if it was a cover-up, no self-respecting N7 would have let a transmission identifying them get out.
That was what puzzled him. He didn't know much about black ops, but it seemed to him that this was one that went sideways. So why had she confirmed her presence once the mission went south? It didn't make any sense.
There were lots of little things about the scenario that bothered him and, if they bothered him, the Alliance no doubt had the analysts going over them with fine-toothed combs. He hoped they did.
Still. Destroying a relay? That was a pretty heavy duty accusation. And there was no doubt that the relay had been destroyed. How were you supposed to do something like that, anyway? Weren't they supposed to be indestructible?
He shook his head. As far as reputation-destroying scandals, this one wasn't so bad. No, that wasn't the way to put it. If his hero had to be destroyed—or, he corrected himself hopefully, the target of a character assassination—then at least it was for explosions and militant action. Not something stupid like 'who's the father?' or politician-esque corruption.
Weird that it should all break after Adm. Hackett made a public address to Alliance Parliament that the Collector threat to human colonies was decidedly over. Details trickling to the masses were hazy at best, but he knew what they meant: they meant that the data he'd recovered on Fehl was utterly and absolutely worthless, leaving the sacrifice he made wholly and utterly pointless.
The data hadn't been worth their lives after all. He could have saved them and the galaxy wouldn't have been out of anything.
The thought hit him like a punch in the gut made him rinse his face again for something to do. Then again as the bile tried to rise. He felt hot and clammy.
No, he still didn't like the guy looking out of the mirror at him.
He shuffled back out of the bathroom, sat down on the edge of his bed, post-nightmare restlessness beginning to set in. Or maybe it was just restlessness in general. When he was awake, could keep his mind occupied, he was okay—more or less. But when he was off duty, when he had time to stop and let his mind drift…that was when he ran into problems.
The strongest tug came from the idea 'start walking and just keep walking.' No set destination. No set objective. Just walk until he couldn't walk any further. Not even literally walk. Just drift from place to place. Could you find what you were looking for if you weren't looking for anything in particular? Or if you didn't know what you we relooking for?
It wouldn't, he knew, help him deal with the guilt, the sickening sense of failure. Running away never helped. But neither had anything else. He'd tried almost everything else.
He felt so lost and didn't know how to get un-lost. Maybe part of him didn't want to. Maybe being found would be worse than being lost.
Vega swallowed hard, held up a hand and watched the tremors.