12. JOURNAL

She woke up two hours later, cold and stiff, and headed down to medbay.

Miranda lay nestled in a small mountain of pillows, her arm propped in a sling, her swollen face mottled with burgundy and plum. She regarded Shepard with expression of sorely tested patience.

"Hey." Shepard sat down on the unoccupied bed. Her feet dangled over the side. "How're you feeling?"

"Better than I look." Miranda's voice was hoarse. "I heal fast. The brain bruising was minimal, and the bone wraps will fuse by morning. I'll resume duty at 0800."

Charred fingertips crumbling against the ground. Melted flesh dripping from her chin. Shepard shook her head to banish the image. "Just rest and heal up properly. Take a day. Take two days."

"Don't be ridiculous." Miranda struggled to push herself up with her good arm. "We got the intel we needed. We have to secure that IFF. Keep moving— umph— forward."

"Towards what? Another death trap?" Shepard crossed her arms. "Kaidan wasn't wrong about us being manipulated. I don't know how much pull you have with your boss, Miranda, but—"

"Less than you do." Miranda didn't quite keep the resentment out of her voice. "And it doesn't matter. Manipulated or not, we fulfilled our objective. The mission was a success. The Illusive Man bet on you, and won."

"Hell of a gamble. Making it out of there alive was a one in twenty shot."

Miranda scoffed. "That's an absurd exaggeration."

EDI materialized on top of Chakwas's desk. "That is not entirely accurate, Operative Lawson. I have run a number of simulations using data extracted from your camera footage, cross-referenced with tactical analysis of previous missions, and predictive personality models. With your team composition and weapons loadout, the odds of escaping the ship with no major losses fell between five and twelve percent."

Miranda looked taken aback. "...Really."

"However, the historical mission data points do not follow a predictable bell curve. When placed in extreme situations, squad combat efficacy actually increases to a statistically significant degree. This tendency has become quite pronounced in the case of Commander Shepard following her resurr—"

"Thank you, EDI, that's enough." Shepard rose to her feet. "Miranda, I'm not satisfied with leaving our success or failure up to luck. I want to leave it up to superior intel, superior armament, superior teamwork, and superior will to kick ass. We're not going anywhere near the Omega Four relay until we've checked all of those things off our list."

"It's not that simple, Shepard!" Miranda grimaced and rubbed her bruised jaw, then continued more quietly: "Time is running out. The Collectors keep hitting our colonies one after the other, and they're picking up the pace. Our people are dying. Or worse." Miranda thumped her fist against the blankets. "While we just— sit here."

"I know." Shepard spread her hands. Her voice was weary. "Trust me. I feel the bodycount going up every single minute."

Miranda looked up at her, a crease between her brows.

"But I'm not willing to sacrifice strength for speed. No one else is fighting this fight. We are their only chance. We owe it to our people not to go in half-cocked."

"We owe it to them to go in right now." Miranda gestured sharply with her good hand. "You just took on a whole army of them, inside their own ship, with nothing more than an infiltration team. Once we secure the IFF, we could stealth past the relay and do it again. Turn their own forces against them. Vakarian and I could lead separate squads while you—"

"NO," Shepard barked. She put a hand to her temple for a moment. Tried to calm her breathing. "Sorry. But no. Five to twelve percent, Miranda! And even if we win every single ground fight, even if we have the IFF, in the air the Collectors are still faster and stronger and better than us. You saw their main cannon. One hit from that, and this Normandy would go down just like the first."

Miranda frowned at her. "That's supposition. The SR-2 is much more advanced than its predecessor. And Moreau is a highly capable pilot."

Shepard folded her arms. "And you're a highly capable combatant. But if it weren't for your shield generator, I'd be having this conversation with a coffin. You really want to take that kind of risk?"

Miranda let out a slow breath. "...No."

"Good. Moving on. Once we arrive at the Citadel, we'll be docked for the next three shifts. Jacob and Garrus found some contractors who can upgrade our hull plating and main battery. Barring any emergencies, I want to spend the next week consolidating material resources, strengthening our teamwork, and tidying up whatever loose ends are left. We need everyone's heads in the game."

"Acknowledged."

Shepard patted her gently on her good shoulder. "I want you to rest up until Chakwas clears you. I don't care if it's tomorrow or if it's next week. Don't even think about the mission until then. Read a shitty romance novel or something."

Miranda's lips flattened. "Is that an order?"

"Romance novel's optional."

"Then aye-aye, I suppose."

Shepard nodded. The door swooshed open. She paused at the threshold, considering.

She palmed the control panel. The doors slid back shut.

Miranda gave her a questioning look.

"I told the Illusive Man I nearly lost you," Shepard said.

Miranda shifted up a little in her bed.

"He told me that your loss would have been regrettable, but the mission has to come first."

"He's right," Miranda said.

"I told him he was full of shit."

Miranda looked like she was trying not to roll her eyes. "Shepard, we all know the risks. We're going past the Omega Four relay. Casualties are—"

"No. We are not playing this by Cerberus rules." Shepard leaned forward, her face thunderous. "There is no such thing as 'acceptable loss' and I refuse to resign myself to it. We are going to get every single person out of this alive, including you. You will strategize accordingly."

Miranda stared at her.

"Do I make myself clear?"

"...Yes, Commander."

"Good." Shepard tapped the door panel. "Get some rest, Miranda. I'll see what I can do about that romance novel."

Miranda shook her head, her expression unreadable, and looked away.

Her hand hovered over the elevator call button. Shepard glanced back towards the battery— but no. Not yet. She needed to get her thoughts in order first. Rounds.

She stepped out onto the main deck. Chambers had gone off-shift. Joker snored softly in his seat. The research stations and communication arrays sat empty.

The armory was dark and shuttered, but light glowed from the research lab next door. Mordin hummed and flitted back and forth between monitors scrolling with data. Something pulsated inside a specimen containment tube nearby. He looked up, and brightened. Waved her over.

A few minutes later she staggered out of his lab, face flaming.

God. No. He was her best friend, she didn't even think of him like— well, occasionally, but— No.

On to the next deck, and to forget that conversation ever happened.

Thane's door was locked. Asleep, then. Port observation stood empty; Goto was either out or just having fun being invisible. In the starboard wing, Samara sat as still and silent as if she'd evolved beyond the need to breathe. Shepard tiptoed back out the door.

Engineering. Jack glared at her through one slitted eye and told her to fuck off. She received bleary salutes from Donnelly and Daniels on her way out.

Grunt's snoring rattled through the hallway. No need to investigate further. Down at the other end, Massani raised a mug of— something alcoholic, anyway— and invited her to join in. Maybe another time.

While the elevator whirred its way down to meet her, she glanced out of the windows over the hangar deck. Jacob mopped his face with a towel and waved a greeting from his treadmill. She waved back.

The elevator doors slid open. Her hand hovered in front of the controls.

She still felt like she'd been awake for days. She could rest. She probably should rest.

Our people are dying, while we just— sit here.

Shepard tapped the elevator button, and looked up at the ceiling. "EDI, open a line to Goto."

"No need," chirped a disembodied voice behind her ear.

"Jesus," barked Shepard, one hand over her heart.

"Kasumi," Goto corrected, materializing with a smile. "What can I do for you, Shep?"

A little later, Shepard poked her head around the medbay doorframe. "Still up?"

"Of course I am," said Miranda. Her eyes were closed. "Have you ever tried to sleep on a broken clavicle?"

Shepard held out a datapad. "I brought you something to read."

"Shepard, honestly, you—" Miranda stopped and blinked at the title. Identity and Otherness on the Galactic Frontier: Human art before and after First Contact, 2103-2183.

"Eleanor Zegna's last work," she murmured, flicking her finger down the page. "It was published posthumously. I'd been meaning to download it." She looked up at Shepard. "How—?"

"Goto assured me it's a lucid and nuanced exploration of the topic," Shepard said. She scratched her forehead. "I hope she was right. If it'd been up to me, I probably would have gotten you a Blasto coloring book."

"It's perfect. Thank you, Shepard. This is... really thoughtful. I'll enjoy reading it."

"You're welcome." Shepard smiled. "Figured you could use a distraction, trapped in here with nothing to do. You're probably about ready to start chewing on the furniture."

"Not at all," Miranda said. "I'm quite skilled at meditation, actually."

"Yeah, right. I bet you meditate like you're executing a precision air strike."

Miranda let out a startled puff of a laugh. "I guess you know me better than I thought."

She shook her head. Dark hair spilled over her bruised face.

"...It's hard to be around you sometimes, Shepard," she said quietly. "You make it look so easy."

"I— huh? What do you mean?"

Miranda gestured with her good hand at herself, the datapad, Shepard— then made a vague, unhappy circle that seemed to encompass the whole Normandy.

"I don't know how you do it," she said. "Half the time it seems like you don't even give a damn, and you're just making things up as you go along. But you tore through the Collectors like you were born to fight them. Like you were reading their minds. It was incredible."

Shepard tensed. "...Thanks."

"If that were all, I think I could live with it. But people like you. They trust you. And whenever someone needs help, you're just— there, in a heartbeat. No questions asked." Miranda twisted the bedsheets between her fingers. "I thought the Illusive Man was insane for sinking so much of our resources into one person. Now I finally see what he saw, and... I almost can't believe you're real."

Shepard just stared at her, at a loss for words.

Miranda met her eyes. "Everyone on this ship, every single last person, would follow you down into the gates of hell. And they barely even know you."

Look at their options, Shepard thought, half-hysterically. Cerberus would just write them off as a 'regrettable loss.' But she wasn't going to start that fight again.

"I was engineered to be the best at everything. Given every opportunity to maximize my potential. But I never had what you have, and you have it without even trying."

"Miranda—" Shepard began.

"People only follow me because of my track record. My rank. Because they're too afraid not to." Miranda's face was expressionless. "They follow you because they want to."

"Miranda, no. People follow you because you're a goddamned genius." Shepard swept her arm out. "You figured out that the Collectors were bioengineered Reaper constructs just from from looking at their architecture. We didn't even need the intel. We could have turned around and left right then, and you would have put all the pieces together in about half an hour."

Miranda frowned up at her. "I don't—"

Shepard held up a hand to forestall her. "You see the big picture. You aim straight at your goal, and you tear through anything standing in your way. That's who you are, and fuck anyone who doesn't like it." She leaned over the bed. "The galaxy has all kinds of people in it. It needs all kinds of leaders. It needs you, Miranda, exactly as you are."

"Well, look at that." Miranda spread her hands and gave her a dry, bruised smile. "You're doing it again, Shepard. I feel bloody well inspired. Let's go down and find the gates of hell right now."

Shepard glared down at her. "Look. I know you feel weird about being talented and genetically perfect and whatever. Like you were given something you didn't earn. But we're all given things we didn't earn. It doesn't fucking matter what your dad tried to make you, because you're your own person, and you always have been." She crossed her arms. "Everything you told me last night, about Niket, about your hopes for Oriana, about wanting to go to school? That was all you. Your dad didn't make any of that. You did."

Miranda's face flushed. "How— how dare you use that against me. I told you those things in the strictest confidence, and— You just— God damnit, Shepard."

"The hell I'm using it against you! I'm on your side," Shepard snapped. "You may not have what I have, but I don't have what you have, either. Sometimes I think I'd kill for what you have." She made a frustrated sweep with her hand. "If I were you, with all your brains and accomplishments and connections, maybe I could have gotten the council to actually fucking listen to me about the Reapers. Maybe I could have kept an eye on the big picture. Collected and preserved evidence, instead of just scrambling from one disaster to the next."

At that thought, she sat down abruptly at the foot of the bed. History was cracking apart and rewriting itself in her brain. "...God, what that would have changed. We could have started fortifying Alliance defenses. If I were you, the Normandy would still be intact. I never would have died." She put her hands to her face, overwhelmed. "If I were you, maybe I could have saved—"

"If I were you," Miranda said, "maybe I could have had more than one real friend growing up."

Shepard lowered her hands, and turned to look at her.

Miranda held her gaze. "Someone I know once told me to never go down that kind of rabbit hole."

"...Yeah. Well." Shepard let out her breath. "Someone you know apparently talks a big game."

Miranda's expression softened a little.

"All the friends I made on Earth ended up dying," Shepard said after a moment. "Even the ones who signed up with me."

"I didn't know that," Miranda said. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks. Me too."

Silence. Miranda fidgeted with her blankets.

"I don't think you're perfect, Miranda."

"...Why, thank you."

Shepard waved that aside. "I think you're remarkable. I really do. It feels like no one in this entire galaxy gives a shit about protecting anything but their own interests, but... you do. You work harder than anyone else I've ever met. I mean, hell." She gestured at herself. "You don't even like me, and you sunk two years of your life into bringing me back."

Miranda attempted to cross her arms, then remembered one of them was in a sling, and settled back down with a huff. "Shepard, that was a massive undertaking with an entire cell's worth of resources and intelligence—"

"Not my point. My point was that even though you thought it was a crazy idea and a lost cause, you did it anyway. Because our people were hurting, and you cared, and you wanted to help them. So—" She paused. "I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say, here. But looking at you now, who you are now..." Shepard lapsed into silence again.

Miranda watched her, waiting.

Shepard shook her head. "Your dad was so stupid to think that he could create someone as extraordinary as you, and then keep you caged up. He should have known from the instant you opened your eyes, that one day, you would just— explode out into the world. And be free."

Miranda's face went very still for a moment. Then she blinked hard and looked down at her hands.

"Um. Anyway. Good talk." Shepard patted her knee, and stood up. "I hope you like the book. Feel better soon."

"Thank you," Miranda said again, her voice tight.

The door slid shut behind her.

The mess hall lay deserted. Shepard stared out into empty space for a moment.

She'd done nothing but fuck up, over and over again, and Miranda had no idea.

Miranda didn't remember being burnt alive at Harbinger's hands. Getting her skull smashed in by a Scion. Screaming curses as Shepard abandoned her. Miranda thought Shepard was a miracle made flesh.

Shepard exhaled. Fine. It was fine. This was what she'd wanted all along, wasn't it? Operative Lawson in her camp. A true believer.

She scrubbed her hands over her face, then went to poke around in the cabinets. Might as well refuel before the next storm swept in.

She found an acceptable-looking MRE, ripped it open, and wolfed it down cold.

"Commander. Do tell me that wasn't the last of the curry and rice."

Shepard jumped and banged her knee against the counter. "Ow. Uh. Hi, Doc. I think there might be a couple left in there. How's Miranda?"

Chakwas stepped forward to rifle through the drawers. "Recovering well, thank you. I'm glad the jaw fracture was relatively clean. That's never a fun surgery, for either party." She straightened, prize in hand, and raised an eyebrow. "How are you?"

"Oh, you know." Shepard suppressed a curry burp. "Holding up. No injuries."

"Oh?" Chakwas shifted the MRE to her coat pocket and switched on her datapad. The glow spilled over her face and hands. Lit up her silver hair. "Have a seat."

"Here?" Shepard edged back. "Now's not the best time for a checkup."

"Have you been sleeping?"

"What? Sometimes. A normal amount."

"Really? Your circadian rhythm markers are so disrupted, I can hardly make sense of them. Are you sure you're all right? You're not feeling fatigued, for example, or moody? Unfocused? Disconnected from your surroundings?"

"Um. No?" Damnit. She was bad with doctors at the best of times. Shepard tried to quell a rising sense of panic.

"Hm. Well, otherwise, your body seems to be fine. Bathed in unbelievable levels of stress hormones, of course, but that's about what I'd expect. It's your brain I'm more concerned with." Chakwas's finger tapped over a jagged line graph. "There's something quite odd about your biotics lately. Normally your energy output starts around eighty-five percent of maximum, spikes to full once you've warmed up, then gradually declines with fatigue. But look. On this last mission, you had a spike, then another spike, then another..."

Shit! Fuck! Shepard stared down at the graph. "...Huh. That's weird."

"I can't fathom it. Honestly, it shouldn't be possible; that kind of pattern hasn't been seen before in humans. Not even Jack. And I know you're not consuming enough calories to account for the total energy output. So where's it coming from?"

Shepard scratched her head. "I don't know. You'd have to ask Miranda, I guess." Please don't.

"I already did. She's as puzzled as I am." Chakwas squinted up at her. "Pardon my bluntness, but you look a little frayed, Commander. I'm beginning to grow concerned. How's your short-term memory?"

Shepard crumpled up her MRE wrapper and dropped it into the compactor chute. "You know, Doc, that reminds me— I really ought to go write up my mission report while it's still fresh in my head."

Chakwas gave her a flat look.

"I promise I'm doing okay. Well, stressed, apparently, and I guess I'm not eating enough, but we both know that's nothing new. I'm okay. Really." Chakwas still looked unconvinced. "I'll, uh, come see you later?"

"Please make sure that you do."

Shepard didn't flee, exactly, but it was a very brisk walk back to the elevator.

Two hours until shift change. Five until they reached the Citadel. Shepard paced in her quarters. Her ruined armor lay on top of her dresser. She swept it into a drawer and slammed it shut.

She blew out her breath. Picked up a datapad. Might as well actually write up the mission report, now that she was here. Not that the Illusive Man actually needed one, what with all the helmet cam footage and hardsuit logs and the omnipresent hand of EDI, but old habits died hard.

Her fingers ticked over the holographic keyboard. The strange, hybrid ship design. The decomposing pile of colonists. The oddly well-preserved Collector corpse, and its Prothean DNA.

She chewed on a fingertip. That had to be a deliberate gesture. It didn't make sense otherwise. As Miranda had pointed out: Collector bodies disintegrated. Keeper bodies exploded. The Reapers didn't like anyone messing with their toys.

The Protheans were supposed to be the wise and noble progenitors of the entire galactic community. Harbinger could have left the evidence there just to fuck with their heads.

Or maybe it had just wanted to fuck with her specific head. Like it always did.

Did it know about her history with the beacon? Garrus had thought that might be why she was the only one who could hear its voice, but—

Fuck it. It didn't matter. None of this was going into the report anyway.

Back on track. After the corpse came the sea of abduction pods. Then the command console, and the ambush. She'd—

She stared down at the blinking cursor. She'd— wait. Which version of the fight had actually happened?

Which version of her was she supposed to be? Which version were they?

All she remembered now was losing them. And leaving them. The Miranda who had screamed at her, tried to cripple her with a Warp field. The Garrus who'd cursed at her, pleaded with her, told her to run and save herself.

They were still alive when she'd left them. Where were they now?

Maybe nowhere, erased out of existence. Maybe bleeding and burnt in the airless gloom of the Collector ship. All alone in their empty, abandoned universes.

Why hadn't she ever stopped to think about this before today? Why hadn't she considered what she might be doing to them, and not just what she was doing to herself?

What had happened to the Garrus on Aeia? The Miranda on Illium?

What the fuck was wrong with her?

Shepard bent down and rested her forehead against her desk, and sat very still for a long time.

A click and a whirr. Her door lock disengaging. She shook herself back to the present.

Garrus halted at the top of her stairs, sleek and spare in black underarmor. "—Hi."

"Hi," she said, startled. Then had to fight down a rising flush. Goddamnit, Mordin.

He tilted his head to one side. "...Were you expecting someone else?"

"What? No. I wasn't expecting anyone at all." Shepard frowned at her door. "EDI? Why'd you open it without asking?"

The blue-white globe blinked into view. "You lifted the access restriction on Officer Vakarian fifty-one hours ago. Your exact words were: 'Let Garrus do whatever the hell he wants.'"

Garrus flared a mandible in a smirk. "I'll be sure to take advantage."

"This is why nobody likes AIs," Shepard muttered, cheeks still a little pink. "Anyway. What's up? Did you need something?"

"No." He rested a hip against the railing. "I went to see Lawson. She's holding up well."

"She's tougher than she looks." Shepard leaned back in her desk chair and stretched her arms. "Practically had to pull rank to get her to stay in medbay. Cerberus found an enemy IFF for us, and she's already raring to go."

"Ah," he said.

The silence stretched out. Her empty fishtank buzzed in the stillness.

"...What is it?"

"Fighting went well down there," Garrus said.

"Yep."

"We kicked ass from start to finish."

"Sure did."

"Shame that Lawson took such a bad hit right at the very end," he said slowly, watching her.

"Yeah," she said.

"That could have been nasty."

"Yeah." She met his gaze. "It really, really could have been."

They looked at each other for a long moment. Shepard kept her face carefully blank.

Had he watched her carving her way through the ship like a perfect god of destruction, and understood that for what it really was? Or rather— the half-truth, half-lie that he thought it was, that she'd told him, lifetimes and lifetimes ago?

Did he understand what she was trying to tell him now?

Garrus shook his head. Rubbed his hand over the unscarred side of his face. She tried not to remember the burnt, smoking crater in his chest. The way he'd called her a liar with his last liquid gasp.

"I see," he said.

Did he?

There was so much they couldn't say to each other— because of Cerberus, because of a death and life apart, because of all her stupid lies and secrets. She could only hope his alien mind was meeting hers across the aisle of silence between them.

"Sit," she said finally. "You're going to put a kink in my neck."

He stepped down and settled himself on her couch. Crossed one long leg over the other. The leather creaked under his weight.

A pause. "This is astonishingly uncomfortable," he said.

"All flash. No function. Just like everything else Cerberus does."

"...So many jokes I could make at your expense right now."

She shot him a look, then sighed and turned back to her datapad.

"Mission report?"

"You know it." She scowled down at the keyboard. "I've been trying to think of synonyms for 'clusterfuck' for the last twenty minutes."

"That seems a little extreme, Shepard. It was intense down there, sure. But we handled it."

Her brow wrinkled. "...Yeah. We did."

"So what's the problem?"

"Other than that we were deliberately sent unprepared and undergunned into a known trap that could have destroyed the ship and killed us all?"

"Well, it's a Shepard operation." He draped an elbow over the back of her sofa. "I think it'd feel pretty weird if the top brass wasn't trying to screw us over."

Yesterday, she would have laughed and agreed with him.

"—Shepard?" He'd leaned forward to look at her.

"Sorry. I'm just..." She shook her head. "I'm getting a little tired of having to fight on all fronts."

"Ah." He hummed a low note. "Yeah. I can understand that."

Shepard sighed, and returned to her report. The letters on the screen slid and blurred into each other.

Miranda, still and pale, blood pooling around the back of her head. Garrus, broken open and drowning on dry land. The breath bubbling up from his ruined lungs.

She blinked hard, and shook her head again, trying to wrestle her brain into cooperation. She got about halfway through rereading the first paragraph she'd written before having to start over. And then over again.

Miranda, burnt blind and groping in the dark with brittle charcoal fingers. Garrus, clinging to her arms, the ache of betrayal thick in his voice.

She buried her hands in her hair.

"Take a break," Garrus said gently. Shepard snapped her head up and stared at him, disoriented.

He lifted another datapad from where it'd been tossed onto the coffee table. "Let's talk about something else for a bit. What's the next mission?"

She rubbed her eyes. Willed herself into the present. "There isn't one. We're off to the Citadel to get your Thanix cannon, and an asari armor thing that Jacob looked into. I'm not getting us into any more firefights with the Collectors until I'm confident we can come out the other side."

"And after that?" He scrolled rapidly through the files on the datapad, eyes flicking over the text.

Shepard watched him. "...Thane said he has something personal he needs to take care of on the Citadel. He asked for my help."

"Ah," he said. Flicked onward, unfazed.

Perhaps it was just like he'd said. His problem hadn't been with the assassin. Just her. She turned back around and began rifling through her bottom desk drawer.

"You still have one dossier left?" His voice carried over her shoulder. "I thought we had a full complement already. Who's the last person?"

Shit. She stiffened.

A sharp, surprised noise. "—This is Tali."

"Yes," Shepard said, straightening. A bottle of protein-stripped wine in one hand, a pair of glasses in the other.

The datapad dangled from his fingers. Tali's glassy faceplate stared back out at them. "Why," he said.

Shepard set the wine down on the table. "I ran into her on Freedom's Progress."

"I know. You told me that much." He fixed her with a pale stare. "You didn't tell me she was on the lineup for the suicide squad."

"Is that what people are calling it?"

"Shepard."

She shifted. "Tali was— she wasn't happy to see me. Especially not with Cerberus. I don't know if she even thought I was real, and not a lookalike, or a clone, or a corpse with a VI, or something."

His mandible flicked out sharply. "Even if she does think that, it doesn't matter. Let's go get her. We need her."

"Do we?" She looked away, a wrinkle between her eyebrows.

"Of course we do. She's a fighter, and she's a friend. We could use both."

"But what if she—" Shepard gestured. The wine glasses banged against her thigh.

"—Is thrilled to see us? Joins our engineering team? Lends us a fleet of Quarian warships? It's worth a try." He folded his arms. "Unless, of course, you can see into the future."

...Son of a bitch. She glared at him. "Fine. Ship upgrades, Thane's business, Tali."

"Fine," he said, looking satisfied.

"Did you come up here just to bully me?"

"No." He rose from the couch and extracted one of the glasses from her hand. "I came because I could use a good friend, and a stiff drink."

Shepard glanced down at herself, and then the bottle.

Garrus shrugged. "I'll take what I can get."

She popped the cork and scored a perfect 3-pointer into the wastebin, then settled back onto her horrible couch. Their glasses clinked loudly in the stillness of her cabin.

"Here's to never doing that again," she said.

"Here's to bringing bigger guns next time we do it."

"Fuck," she said fervently, shaking her head. "There isn't a gun big enough for Praetorians."

"You'd just complain about it ruining the challenge anyway."

She grimaced. The thrill had burned up along with Miranda's body. "No. I wouldn't. Not anymore."

Garrus shot her a puzzled look. Shit. Of course. He only remembered the version where she'd obliterated everything around them in forty-five seconds.

"...Praetorians really creep me out," she said, by way of explanation.

"Cheers to that," he said.

They drank in silence.

She tilted her head down, pretending to examine her glass, and watched him through her eyelashes.

I've always been grateful, Shepard. For everything about you.

He really didn't remember any of it.

Once, that had seemed like a blessing.

"Christ," she muttered, and leaned her head back against the wall.

"My translator doesn't touch that word," Garrus said. "What's it mean?"

"Huh? Oh. It's the name of a figure from an old Earth religion. I'm not a believer, but Ash was pretty serious about it."

"What kind of a god was it?"

"Not a god, a human. He died for what he believed in, and then he came back to life. Then... I guess he became a god after all?" She shrugged. "I'm not too clear on the whole thing."

"Fascinating," he drawled. "That's all you humans have to do to become a god? Die and come back?"

"Don't sass me, Archangel."

Garrus leaned back into the sofa. "So what did he believe in that he had to die for?"

"A different kind of god than everyone else, I think. It was a big deal back then."

"But you don't believe in this god." He tipped his head towards her. "What do you believe in?"

"Reapers."

He let out a wry chuckle, and contemplated his glass. The stem looked absurdly delicate between his long fingers. "The Shepard I knew before wasn't like this."

Her shoulders tensed. "...Like what?"

"Putting off mission reports to sit around and drink wine. Worrying about whether people still like her or not."

She flashed her teeth in a smile. "I can kick you out and go back to writing reports, if it'll make you feel better."

"No need," he said. "It's decent wine. Hate to see it go to waste."

Another silence. She took a long drink. Rested her head back against the couch. The skylight flickered and pulsed electric blue.

"I miss the old Shepard sometimes," he said softly.

She rolled her head over to look over at him. He looked back at her.

"...But, well." One mandible tipped out in a smile. "The new Shepard is pretty hot shit."

The knot in her stomach loosened. She let out her breath. "Really?"

"Really," he said.

"I thought—" She waved a hand through the air. Kaidan. Tali. Liara. Anderson. "I don't know. Everyone else from before seems like they don't— I thought maybe you—"

"I couldn't tell you what the others think. But as for me..." He looked down. Toyed with his glass. "You were a hard person to get to know, back on the SR-1. We talked, but there was always this— distance. I felt like I was standing in your shadow."

"And now?"

He lifted his eyes to hers. "Now I'm standing at your side."

She ducked her head. Laughed ruefully. "You never saw me as an older sister, did you."

"Not even once."

"Shit," she said, reaching over his knee for the wine.

He made a low, purring noise of amusement. "I saw you as a god."

She gaped at him. Her glass tipped, dripping wine onto her leg.

"And then you died. And came back. And now I don't know what you are, but you're the best friend I've got." He gave an elegant, loose-limbed shrug. "As far as I'm concerned, becoming a god made you more tu— ah, human than you ever were before."

She was still for a long moment, too overwhelmed with gratitude and relief to respond in any meaningful way.

So instead she grinned and elbowed him. "You were going to say 'turian,' weren't you."

He draped his arm over the back of the couch. "Guilty as charged."

"Hey. Do you want to do this again when we land? Properly? We could take another field trip."

"Of course." He drained his glass and sat up. "Sorry to interrupt. I'll let you get back to work."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant—" She flicked a glance at the ceiling, with EDI's invisible cameras tucked in every corner. "—Stay. I do have to work, but I could use the company."

He relaxed back against the sofa. Propped a booted foot up on her coffee table. "I don't know, Shepard. My schedule's pretty packed today."

She smirked. "I have intel that says otherwise. Scoot over."

He just stayed put, and lifted his arm in invitation.

Shepard hesitated.

Goddamnit, Mordin.

Garrus gave her a questioning look. She mentally shook herself, then slid in underneath his arm, and curled her back up against him. He was much slimmer without the armor. His skin was astonishingly warm.

"How long until we reach the Citadel?" His voice rumbled through her body.

She stretched an arm out to grab the pad with Tali's dossier from the table, and poked a button. "Four and a half."

"Perfect," he said, and yawned, good mandible flaring wide.

"You haven't slept yet?"

"Couldn't. Wanted to talk first." He settled his cheek carefully against the top of her head.

Shepard smiled down at her datapad. "I'm not your pillow, Vakarian."

He made a low, contented humming sound. "I have intel that says otherwise."

She opened up her fragmented mission report again, and chewed on her lip.

Her memories of the Collector ship still clawed at her. But pressed up against his warm, solid, alive body— the horror felt a little more manageable.

She knew this much for certain: overthinking it, second-guessing herself, getting caught up in self-hate and fear and guilt and loneliness— that only made it worse. She wasn't doing anyone any favors like that.

There was only one thing to focus on now. She had to make her ship and her crew the strongest they could possibly be. Everything else was tangential. Even her fucked-up immortality. Even her many, many mistakes.

She'd screwed up, badly and often. But she was still here. Still trying. Still learning. She could bounce back from this. She had to believe in that.

Beside her, Garrus's breathing slowed and deepened. His arm slipped down off the backrest and landed with a thump around her waist.

"You're heavy, you turian bastard," she murmured.

No response.

She remembered him holding her back as they stared down the Praetorian, his grip too tight to break. White light and blistering pain. The last thing she'd seen was their armor melting together in the heat.

That Garrus was gone. All the other versions of him, Miranda, everyone else— they were all gone. People had died on her watch before; this wasn't any different, not really. She'd failed them. It was awful. But it was over.

If she wanted to move forward, she had to look it in the eye, and let it go.

She couldn't keep carrying the ghosts with her. She'd never be able to walk under the weight.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and sent a small, awkward, atheist prayer out into the universe.

Hi. It's me. I'm sorry I didn't save you.

Her body still felt bone-tired. But the words were coming back to her. Her fingers flicked over the holographic keyboard, tentatively at first, then with increasing speed and confidence.

But I'm still here. And I remember you. I'll do better next time. I promise.

Above her head, the skylight pulsed blue and violet.

They streaked on towards the Citadel.