4. SAVE
She found herself intact and upright, watching a little tendril of red dust unfurl from its freshly ruptured container.
Fucking hell. They were all the way back at the entrance to the Eclipse base. She'd rewound seventeen minutes.
She was really starting to get sick of Illium.
Well. If she remembered correctly, she had some mercenaries to murder before Miranda started yelling at her again. And now she knew exactly where they were hiding. Shepard made grim sport of it, flinging yellow-armored bodies left and right, pulping skulls into paste with relentless efficiency.
The drug sang in her head. Krios didn't even get off a shot.
She stalked forward, paused to breathe in another deep pull of dust, and hauled the Heavy out from where she'd been tucked behind the door. One hand held her still while the other caved in her face with a Warp. Shepard let the body fall.
"We're done here. Let's push on."
Krios was staring at her, his head tilted thoughtfully.
Shepard ignored him and strode ahead, arms wreathed in blue flame.
"Commander, the drug is toxic," Miranda said, looking a little bit unnerved. "You shouldn't expose yourself."
"I know what I'm doing, Lawson," she said, and punched an Engineer clear across the docking bay.
Miranda's eyes narrowed. "Shepard, don't be foolish. It could cripple your nervous system."
"I'm invincible," Shepard replied, utterly serious, standing dead still in a swirling fog of red.
Miranda tackled her to the ground.
Shepard smirked up at the ceiling. She remembered.
Their argument repeated itself nearly beat-for-beat. She tried to muster up the same anger and urgency she'd felt the first time. She was too tired and heartsick to be properly furious, but the urgency was there in spades: it was critical that Miranda believe in her. She was the only one left.
A truce was settled. Shepard's heart eased slightly.
Her mind hummed, weighing odds, making contingency plans. She couldn't do this alone, after all. She had to strategize. Miranda was a work in progress, but she needed to get Jacob on her side, too. That ought to be simple; he was ex-Alliance, like her, and he already respected her.
She also needed to win over Chambers. That would be trickier. She knew the bubbly airhead thing was a facade. Cerberus wouldn't have hired an airhead to keep an eye on her.
She needed Mordin. He was mission-critical against the Collectors, and also the one person on the ship who might be capable of outsmarting EDI. But salarians weren't generally big on loyalty and self-sacrifice. She had to find a concrete way to demonstrate to him that she was his best bet in this game.
If she could get at least those four behind her back, maybe they would stand a chance of survival when the Illusive Man inevitably decided she'd outlived her usefulness.
And, well— Garrus would probably be helpful too. Her all-consuming fury had died along with the rest of her. In the cold light of her new life, she could now acknowledge to herself that he was an... unlikely candidate for defection to Cerberus.
But still. If she hadn't handled Lawson, she could have been stripped of command. Reclaimed by Cerberus repo men. Locked in a padded room. Tested. Reprogrammed. Carved up for component parts.
Shepard wouldn't make the mistake of trusting anyone like she'd trusted him. Never again. They were done.
"Move out," she said. They moved.
She slammed open the side door and kicked the frightened asari out from under the desk.
"I'm not one of them!"
"I know exactly what you are," Shepard replied, and put a bullet in her head.
Miranda nodded in approval.
Shepard smiled thinly. Baby steps. Operative Lawson would be working for her in due course.
Krios watched her again as they made their way down to the docking bay.
"Krios," she said.
"Yes, Commander?"
"Do you think I'm disconnected?"
He faltered in his stride. "You know drell philosophy?"
"Just a little," she said. "A friend told me about it once."
Krios regarded her with eyes as black as the void of space. "...No, Shepard. Your mind is alive, and your will awake."
She was in position well before the FENRIS mechs dropped. While the dogs were still all jumbled together and finding their feet, she called out for a coordinated artillery strike of heavy Warps.
A deafening biotic explosion and some bullets took care of that problem. A few more took care of the gunship.
Move out.
Shepard cocked her head, looking down at the wobbly volus. "You need help."
"You need help," he retorted. She tried and failed to contain a snort of laughter. That was probably accurate. Too bad she was baselining a thousand levels beyond Chambers's undergraduate in psych.
"Have a nap," she suggested, with a judicious application of force. She could keep herself in check for now. It was time to go kill an Eclipse commando.
By the code, I will serve you, Shepard. Your choices are my choices. Your morals are my morals. Your wishes are my code.
Holy hell, she thought, looking down at the thousand-year-old warrior kneeling before her, overwhelmed with a sensation of godlike power. Maybe she stood half a chance against the Illusive Man after all.
They walked back to the ship in neat formation. Miranda was in the back talking quietly with the Justicar, her body language unusually deferential.
"Krios," Shepard said.
"Yes, Commander," he replied. He scanned the shadows while they walked, hunting out Eclipse proximity mines.
"About when Miranda and I... disagreed," she began. "If she had drawn her gun back there, would you have stood with her, or with me?"
He turned to her, brows raised.
"You can be honest," she added hastily. "I mean that. Miranda raised important concerns. I know my command style is, uh. Unconventional. I'm trying to see how I should adjust."
"I would stand with you," he said. "No adjustment needed. I respect Operative Lawson greatly, but there is no doubt."
"Really?" She blinked. "Cerberus owns this ship. Cerberus owns Miranda. You'd be making a powerful enemy."
"Not as powerful as you." He tapped his fingers against the barrel of his rifle. "If I crossed you, I think I would only keep breathing just long enough to regret it."
She let out a breath, unsure if she was more pleased or chagrined. "...Am I cruel?"
"Hardly. You are fierce, but swift. An executor of justice. I'm honored to have a place on your team."
His version of her sounded pretty damn good. She decided she wanted to try to live up to it.
Shepard smiled at him. "You're all right, Krios."
He smiled back. "You too, Siha."
By the time they lifted off of Illium— fucking finally— she felt like she'd been awake for a straight year. She wasn't even really that angry at Garrus anymore. She didn't need to yell at him. She was just... done.
The galaxy was a shitty place, after all. You had to be prepared for the very worst from everyone.
You couldn't take it personally when they delivered.
Shepard walked the Justicar down to Starboard Observation, and left her to her meditations. Her feet took her halfway up the stairs to the battery before she remembered. Shit.
She pulled a neat U-turn into the mess, pretending like she meant to do that all along. Parked her butt on Gardner's counter and chatted him up for a bit. Stole a couple of beers from the fridge when he wasn't looking, because why the fuck not.
She popped her head into Engineering, listened to Daniels and Donnely trade some verbal jabs, and then went downstairs to have a chat with the one person on the ship who was reliably more insane than her.
"Hey," said Jack. And then "Hey!" when she saw the beer in Shepard's hand. Shepard tossed it to her, and hopped up to sit on top of a crate, legs dangling over the side.
Jack cracked the top open and took a long pull, humming in appreciation. "I'll say this for Cerberus: they don't skimp on the good shit."
Shepard couldn't bring herself to respond. She raised her bottle in a silent toast, and drank.
The walls hummed with the weight of the drive core overhead. It was oddly relaxing, being this close to the beating heart of the ship. Her biotics pulsed gently in time with the field.
But Jack was immune to relaxation, and could only tolerate silence for so long. She drummed her thin fingers against her seat. "So... what? You didn't come down here just to watch me drink a beer."
Shepard smirked. "Can't a pirate queen spend a little quality time with her first mate?"
Jack rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Shepard. Either say what you gotta say, or piss off."
Shepard contemplated.
"Everyone's calling it a suicide mission," she said finally.
Jack snorted. "Yeah. Dunno about you, but my plan is to survive."
Shepard took a swig of her beer. "Well. You know what they say about the best-laid plans."
"...Go oft awry / And leave us nought but grief and pain, for promised joy," Jack quoted.
Shepard raised her eyebrows, beer paused halfway to her mouth.
"—Anyway." Jack shook her shoulders, looking uncomfortable. "So it's a suicide mission. So what? I never stop fighting for my fuckin' life in this hellhole of a galaxy." She rubbed a hand over her stubbly scalp. "Everyone's out to fuck over everyone else, whether they admit it or not. Only thing different about the Collectors is they get to fly around while they do it."
"Maybe so." Shepard rested her bottle in her lap. "If you knew you were gonna die tomorrow, would you do anything special?"
"Shit, no."
"Really? Nothing?"
"I already live like I might die any second. If you don't, you're either fuckin' stupid, or a pussy." Jack jabbed her tattooed fingers at the air for emphasis.
Shepard smiled. Jack had such a refreshing outlook on the world. And such a delightful way of putting it into words.
Jack swung her legs up underneath her and propped her chin in one inky hand. "If I knew for sure I was gonna bite it, though, I'd wanna go out in a blaze of glory. Strap myself to a cruiser, fly it straight into Cerberus HQ. Carve my name into a planet. Blow up a sun."
"A sun," Shepard repeated, a look of divine inspiration crossing her face. Now that would be... spectacular.
"Whoa," Jack said, alarmed. "What's this all about, anyway? Making plans to off yourself in a supernova?"
"Nope," Shepard said truthfully. She was still in the gathering intel phase.
"So what's your deal all of a sudden?"
I'm immortal and pissed off. I'll die in a supernova if I want to. "I'm not on the Alliance payroll anymore," Shepard said out loud, shrugging. "And we're headed past the point of no return. Figured it's as good a time as any to try some crazy shit."
"Yeah?" Jack grinned. "What're you thinking?"
"Well, probably not carving up planets or blowing up suns." Yet. Shepard took another swig of her beer, and rolled the bottle back and forth between her palms. "Something more subtle. I dunno. Plant rotten varren meat in Udina's office. Hack the Council's holoprojectors. Every time they say 'unsubstantiated', it comes out 'Reapers.'"
"You've lived a sad life," Jack said. "Five-year olds could come up with nastier ideas."
Shepard scowled. "Yeah, well. Why do you think I came to you? I need advice."
Jack arched an eyebrow. "I dunno. Scuttlebutt is that you pulled off some pretty hardcore shit on Aeia and Illium."
"Christ," Shepard muttered, shaking her head. Gossip on ships traveled at FTL.
"So..." Jack stretched out her arms. "We have any room in the budget for some of that dust? I bet I could do a shitload of damage on that stuff."
"Feel free to put in a requisition order with Miranda," Shepard said pleasantly. "I'm sure Cerberus can spare the credits."
Jack made a horrible face. Shepard smiled at her.
"—Hey." Jack set the beer bottle down with a thunk, and shifted back and forth on top of her box. "I, um. Listen, Shepard. You've been all right. You got me those files, you always come down here to talk with me about whatever, and you don't care when I yell at you, and... You're all right."
If it had been anyone else, Shepard would have tortured them for going all mushy on her. But Jack was special.
"Thanks, Jack. That means a lot. You're all right, too."
She meant it. Mostly. The woman was a head case, but, well. Fellow head cases had to stick together.
Jack leaned forward. "I got a favor to ask."
Shepard left the sub-deck in an unusually mellow mood, and went back upstairs to her quarters. Time to write up her field reports for the missions on Illium. Remembering multiple different versions of each made this chore a bit trickier than it used to be.
She left the cabin lights off and worked in the darkness, kept company by the empty glow of her fish tank, and the silent weight of the stars overhead.
He came later that night and let himself in. He looked momentarily startled to find her sitting in the dark, but then reverted to just looking pissed off.
"Shepard."
"Vakarian," she replied, trying to force her heart rate down to a more normal level.
"We need to talk."
For a moment she considered brushing him off. Probably best to just amputate the rotting limb and get it over with. "So talk."
He folded his arms, mandibles clamped shut, and leaned back against the curved glass of her fish tank. His spiky, broad-shouldered frame cut out a black silhouette against the pale blue. "I went to chat with Lawson. Seems whatever you did on Illium really made an impression on her."
"I'm the savior of the galaxy," she said, and returned her attention to her datapad. "Sometimes people notice."
His eyes narrowed. "What did you say to her?"
"I said a lot of things, Vakarian. We were down there for hours. You'll need to be more specific."
"You know exactly what I mean. How the hell did you get her on your side? What did you tell her to convince her you're not—" He stopped himself.
...Okay, maybe she was still a little bit angry.
She waited, let the silence drag out.
"—Crazy?" she finally offered, with a poisonous smile.
"I didn't say that."
"You were just trying to think of a way to say it that wouldn't get your ass handed to you." She stood up. Tapped her datapad against her palm. "Ordinarily, I would throw you out at the next fuel station for undermining my authority with my XO."
His shoulders stiffened.
"But as we both know, this isn't an ordinary situation. I still need you on my team." Shepard stepped forward. Gestured him towards the door. "We're hitting Pragia tomorrow. Lucky you. Be ready at 0800."
He drew one long-fingered hand over his face, looking as tired and careworn as when he'd pulled off Archangel's helmet on Omega. "Shepard—"
"We're done talking, Vakarian. Get out of my quarters." She took another step forward.
He didn't move. "I went to Lawson because I was trying to keep you alive."
"You went behind my back to Cerberus," she said. "I'm not really interested in your reasons." She took another step, putting herself squarely inside his personal space.
He tilted his head to look down at her. His face fell into shadow. She couldn't see his eyes; only the steady blue glow of his visor, and the outline of one sharp cheekbone against the darkness.
He unfolded his arms and bent his head down slightly, put his face near hers. She could barely see anything, but she felt the heat radiating steadily from his skin. The stillness in the air told her they would touch if she leaned forward just enough.
She was so close she could even make out some of the glowing text scrolling past on his visor. And some fainter words that looked, oddly enough, like they had been scratched in by hand.
"I went to Lawson," he said, his voice low in her ears, "because she's the only other person on this ship who actually gives a damn about you. Even if it's just pride in her own work."
Something grazed her wrist, making her jump. One long, warm finger slid down along the knife edge of her hand, and curled gently into her palm. "It was the only thing I could think to do."
She yanked her hand away. Bared her teeth. "We're done, Vakarian. There is no excuse."
"Shepard." His voice dropped even further, hitting a low, jagged frequency that sent a cascade of ice down her spine. "I'll go. Just tell me what you told Lawson. If it convinced her... maybe it can convince me."
Shepard narrowed her eyes. She'd had to resort to evasions, bullshit, appeals to a higher authority, and ridiculous circular logic to get Miranda to back down. Miranda knew her body from the inside out, but she didn't know her very well at all.
If Shepard tried pulling that same crap on him, he'd make EDI lock her in her quarters for her own safety.
Now there was an idea. "EDI," she said, not taking her eyes off him.
The little hologram popped up by her door. "Yes, Shepard."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Yes. This was right. She was furious, but she needed him on the Normandy. If he came up here again, got in her face with his sanctimonious bullshit again, defended taking a no confidence vote against her to fucking Cerberus, again— she couldn't guarantee he'd stay on the good side of her airlock.
"Officer Vakarian is to be restricted access to Deck 1," she said. "Effective immediately."
"Yes, Shepard." EDI flickered. "Officer Vakarian, I'm afraid I must ask you to leave."
"Really," he said, looking at Shepard.
Shepard stepped back and folded her arms. "I have nothing else to say to you. Get out."
"Don't worry." He pushed off the wall, drawing himself up to his full height. "I'm gone."