A/N - I'm sorry I vanished for years. But thank you to everyone who has stuck around, and especially to the people who have continued to read and leave reviews. Your the reason I'm finishing this off and I'm back writing again! I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter, as always comments are much loved! I'll try to get the next chapter written soon! :)
A Shepard clone.
A goddamned Shepard clone.
Try as he might, Kaidan couldn't seem to stop his mind spinning off into a million 'what ifs', 'whys' and 'hows' about where she had come from and what her purpose was. She personified every single one of his nightmares about what Cerberus might have done with Gina's body while they were resurrecting her, and he hated that they'd had to bring the clone back to the apartment. Her presence ruined what should have been a night of celebration for Gina and himself alone.
He moved his attention from the clone to Gina as her biotics pulsed against his, spiking and pulsing as her emotions heaved and churned. She was on edge, and Kaidan couldn't fault her for that. Afterall, if there was one clone, that meant that surely there were others. Potentially countless other twisted little creations that they had cooked up in the name of resurrecting the great Commander Shepard.
His skin crawled as the clone glanced at him nervously from green eyes identical to Gina's, and it took every ounce of self-control not to show his revulsion.
She seemed harmless enough - she had no weapons, her biotics seemed subdued, and there was something dreadfully desolate and fearful in her eyes. The expression was one he recognised, one of someone who had experienced pain and degradation, and was expecting more to come. Worse still, it hurt to see that expression on a face that was Gina's; in eyes that were Gina's.
But she wasn't his Gina.
In the hours that had followed their meeting, Kaidan had become convinced of that. The clone was just a clone, and his Gina was the real deal. The differences between them were slight, but they'd just kept adding up in the hours that passed. As sympathetic as he felt towards the clone and her situation, his revulsion that such a doppelganger existed screamed the loudest within him.
He didn't like being too close to it; there was something about the clone's biotics which left a strange metallic taste in his mouth. She might look virtually identical to Gina physically, but her biotics felt alien and wrong. Gina's biotics were warm and familiar, whereas this things biotics screamed along his nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard.
Gina was even more sensitive to biotics than he was, and he could imagine how repulsed and violated she would be feeling. Even worse, she would hate that the clone, something cooked up in a lab, was more "human" than she was. The clone had no no synthetic parts, no nanites, no skin or bone weaves to hold her together. To have a version of Gina who represented everything she'd lost thanks to Cerberus and the Reaper Virus would be tough.
Kaidan snuck a look at Gina. She looked tense, and he itched to hold her close and reassure her she was still every bit as human as the clone. Hell, she was probably more human than it would ever be.
Thank God he hadn't said anything out loud about his initial irrational fear that Gina too might be a clone.
How could I have thought that? Kaidan wondered. Even for a moment?
He knew everything about Gina - her taste, her smell, her feel. Cerberus may have put her back together again, and the Geth may have saved her life with even more artificial implants, but she was still Gina. Still his girl. Still the woman that made his heart skip a beat and who he'd willingly have died a hundred times over for.
This thing, this clone, was just an imitation of the real thing.
Kaidan forced himself to focus as Tali and Garrus joined the impromptu meeting that Gina had called at Anderson's apartment. They were the last to arrive and hurriedly joined the others around the dining room table, pulling up chairs and seating themselves. Everyone who Gina considered to be a senior officer on the Normandy, or an important part of their team, had been contacted for the emergency meeting and were now gathered in the Silversun apartment.
Some of them, like Jack and Kaidan himself, watched the clone with abject distrust and hate, with a curled lip and suspicious eyes. Others, like James and Liara, were openly curious, and while they hadn't let their guard down, they weren't openly hostile.
Kaidan glanced at the faces seated at the table and wished they had managed to contact Miranda to get more info on Cerberus and their cloning project. Still, it was a relief that so many of their friends had dropped their leave when Gina sent out the call. Through everything that had happened, these people had supported her - a makeshift family forged in trial by fire.
He tried not to be too hyper-aware of Gina next to him, of the tension running through her body that was making his biotics crawl like insects over his skin, but it was impossible. Her agitation was contagious, and it was a constant fight not to cross his arms and take on a defensive posture.
Instead, Kaidan did the only thing he could think of, the thing which he wished he'd done from the very start; he reached out and took Gina's hand, giving it a gentle and reassuring squeeze as she faced the clone. She squeezed it back, and the grateful look she threw in his direction made his heart contract painfully. Sometimes, in moments like this, Kaidan hated himself: he hated his irrational fears and the damage they threatened to cause.
"You said you'd explain yourself," Gina started, her tone clipped and business-like, and her doppelganger sat up straighter in her chair. "Go ahead, we're listening."
The clone nodded quickly, and brushed red hair behind her ears with her fingers. Her hair was far Ionger than Gina had ever grown hers. It reached midway down her back, and was the kind of rich red that hair can only be when it's never been exposed to the sun. Her pale skin was devoid of Gina's scars, and her eyes, while shaped the same, didn't have the same weight to them. She looked young, naive and incredibly vulnerable.
The more Kaidan looked at her, the more differences he could see between the clone and Gina.
"I don't even know where to begin, but I'll try to tell you everything." She looked nervous again, and spoke haltingly, as though struggling to pick her words. "Cerberus grew me in a lab. I think to be spare parts for you in case something went wrong in the Genesis Project," she gestured at Gina. "When you went rogue and left Cerberus, I thought they would kill me, but they didn't. They-"
"They kept you around to replace me, didn't they?" Gina interrupted, her tone icy. "They planned to take me out of the picture and put you in my place, right?"
Around the table, Kaidan caught glimpses of movement as Garrus settled his hand on his gun, Jack's biotics flared, and James tensed as though preparing to leap to their Commander's aid.
The clone nodded and let out a shaky breath; she'd seen the movements too. "That's right. But even from the start there were problems because I wasn't identical to you in the ways that mattered. I might look the same and sound the same, but even when they implanted your memories into my head I wasn't … right."
She smiled ironically and began ticking items off on one hand. "My left hand is dominant instead of my right. I don't like the same foods as you, and I never developed any kind of romantic feelings for the Major." She gestured at Kaidan and kind of grimaced. "And that's just the surface stuff. I heard about other clones they tried to indoctrinate, but most turned violent or went crazy. I was the only one who they kept, and even then it was only because Maya convinced them that I would be an asset."
"Who's Maya?" Kaidan frowned, did the clone have a friend out there watching them? His neck prickled, paranoia settling over him like a cloak.
"She worked for Cerberus. Maya Brookes was," she drew in a shuddering breath and her eyes hardened. "She was a Cerberus operative, but she was more than that. She made me who I am, and she is the only one who cared enough to help me escape after the Illusive Man decided I was no use to them and should be killed. She was good to me."
The clone paused and swallowed, apparently finding it hard to speak. "After we escaped Cerberus, they sent their assassins to hunt us down and Maya died saving me." The hardness in the clone's eyes had gone, and now they swam with tears. "They took her away from me and now I have no one."
Silence greeted that admission, and Kaidan saw Gina move slightly next to him, an almost imperceptible movement as she visibly relaxed. He could almost see what she was thinking: the clone wasn't her. Even with its clone memories, they hadn't been able to replicate her perfectly.
"So why come to me? How did you know I wouldn't just shoot you on sight?" Gina leaned forward as she spoke and folded her arms on the table. "I was tempted-"
The clone smiled slightly and interrupted her. "No, you weren't. I have your memories, and I know you're not a monster."
Kaidan saw others around the table visibly relax at that statement, many of them nodding. All except for Jack, who continued to bristle, her biotics swirling invisibly around her in agitation. Kaidan empathized; he didn't trust Cerberus either.
Jack scowled and crossed her arms. "Why should we believe you? How do we know this isn't some elaborate plot to get close to us? To get us to lower our guard? It's the kind of thing Cerberus would do."
"No," the clone shook her head. "Cerberus planned to replace Shepard while she was on a mission. The plan was to have Kai Leng assassinate her, and kill whoever else was on the team. Then they'd slip me into her place as the sole survivor." The clone spoke matter of factly, and her eyes slipped over them all and fell on Kaidan last. "I think they wanted a chance to take out as many of you as they could in case someone noticed that I wasn't the real deal. They seemed especially worried about you." She gestured at Kaidan once more. "Your relationship was a problem, and they picked up early on that I didn't have any feelings for you."
Kaidan pondered this.
The clone had been created to be identical to Shepard, but there were things about her, key things, that differed wildly. Why? Research into studies on Nature versus Nurture flicked through his head, but all he could think was that it came down to lived experience. They could implant memories all they liked, but she hadn't lived Gina's life. It was like reading a book about a survival tale versus being the person that survived.
Gina didn't love him because of her DNA. She loved him because of their time together, their experiences. They had grown close because of a hundred little reasons that the clone didn't feel and couldn't possibly know about.
"That isn't enough," Jack's eyes flashed dangerously. "You need to give us a reason to trust you."
Garrus nodded but kept his voice reasonable as he spoke. "She's right, you can't just appear out of the blue, tell us you were created to replace Shepard, and expect us to let you join the gang."
The clone laughed, and it was a hollow little bitter sound. "I don't expect you to trust me, but I'll do whatever it takes to prove myself. I hate them. I hate that Cerberus created me to be someone else, I hate that I was disposable to them, but most of all I hate them because they took away the one person I cared about. If I can give you information that helps, then I will. If I can help fight, then I will. All I ask is that you protect me from Cerberus and," her eyes hardened angrily, and her biotics spiked in a way eerily similar to Gina's when she was emotional, "I want your promise that you'll kill The Illusive Man. I want him dead for what he did to Maya."
Gina glanced around at the faces of her crew; her friends, family, and team combined, and then back to the doppelganger. She drew in a deep breath and nodded, and Kaidan knew she'd made up her mind. "I'm willing to take a chance and protect you, but we'll need to take certain precautions in case you're not who you say you are." Her mouth twitched and she almost smiled. "I'm usually a pretty honest person, but you're not actually me, and, " she shrugged, "I'd prefer not to die again."
"I can run some scans?" Tali piped up helpfully. "To make sure she isn't hiding any bugs or homing beacons?"
Liara nodded vigorously. "And I can reach out to my contacts and see if they've heard anything about Cerberus and cloning. I have a few favors I can call in."
The clone looked hopeful. "I don't care if you have to keep me in the brig, I just want sanctuary." Everyone in the room froze at her choice of words, and she looked from Kaidan to Gina, clearly confused. "What did I say?"
The memory of the horrors of that place, of the cruel experiments that Cerberus had done to whole families, wasn't something easily forgotten. It especially wasn't something that Kaidan wanted to think about on the same day that he'd become engaged, and he forced the nightmarish visions from his head.
"Sanctuary," he told the clone, "is the name Cerberus gave to the facility where it was experimenting on civilians. Whole families, including children, were used as lab rats and either turned into husks or killed."
She looked horrified, then her expression changed to fury. "They're monsters. God only knows what they would have done to me if I hadn't been let loose. They would have experimented on me, or made me into a monster while they looked for weaknesses that might apply to you."
For the first time since setting eyes on the clone, a genuine swell of pity rushed over Kaidan. She was right; Cerberus would have tortured, cut, and ripped her apart if it would have helped them find a weakness to take out Commander Shepard. She would have been little more than an animal in a lab to them.
"Probably," Gina gave her a weak smile, then stood up and gestured for Kaidan to follow her. Once they were out of earshot, she shrugged at him and grimaced. "What the hell do we do with her? I don't think I can have her here, it's too creepy to have someone else with my face living with me."
The thought made Kaidan's flesh crawl, and he repressed a shudder. "Agreed. Perhaps we could assign Liara to her? She's more dangerous than she looks, and I'm sure she'll be more than happy to study the clone, perhaps even do her mind meld thing and see if she can dig anything helpful out of her memories?"
Gina nodded and turned to look over her shoulder at the asari who was studying the clone covertly from under her lashes. "That's a good idea. Jesus, that's a great idea."
Kaidan winked playfully at Gina. "I have my moments."
"Do you think Liara will do it?" She leaned forward as she spoke, one hand resting on Kaidan's chest as she continued to watch Liara.
Kaidan almost laughed, but managed to hold in the momentary reaction. "Gina, I'm pretty sure you could ask her to walk over hot coals for you and she'd do it. Liara was the only one of us with the guts not to give up on you, and to do whatever it took to bring you back. I know she'll do this."
Hell, Kaidan thought to himself, Liara would probably love the idea of studying a clone up close. Especially a Shepard clone.
He did not voice the thought out loud.
"Okay," Gina nodded, radiating relief at the thought of getting the clone out of the apartment and away from her. "Okay, I like this idea. We ask Liara to keep the clone with her while we wait for the Normandy's repairs to finish, and if we get a chance to join Hacket and the attack on the Illusive Man's base, then we will. After Sanctuary I want to make sure that the bastard dies."
They returned to the table, and discussions began in earnest as they bounced around plans to keep the clone safe and how best they could prepare for Cerberus if they did attack. The meeting went late into the night. Liara was only too happy to take the clone into her care, and when Gina raised the idea of Embracing Eternity with her, Liara agreed again, as did the clone. Finally there was only one question left to ask.
"What do we call you?" Kaidan asked as the clone was preparing to leave with Liara. "It's going to get pretty confusing if we call you both Gina Shepard."
The clone shrugged. "They never called me Gina Shepard either. The only person to ever give me a name was Maya, and she called me Jane."
"Jane?" Gina repeated the name back to her, almost tasting it. "I like it."
"It's as good a name as any," the clone told her. "Plus, I like it. I feel more like a Jane than a Gina."
And with that she let herself be led away by Liara, closely followed by Tali and Garrus who were planning on completing their tests and scans before dawn. No one wanted a rogue Shepard running around, least of all one with a homing beacon on it.
After everyone had left, Gina all but flung herself into Kaidan's arms and groaned. "Why tonight of all nights?" she complained. "I was so distracted I didn't even show them my ring." She wriggled it in front of her face, making the emerald flash in the light.
Kaidan laughed and hugged her close, rubbing his cheek against the top of her head. "Don't worry, you can tell your friends when we next see them."
"I still can't believe we're engaged!" She couldn't seem to take her eyes off the ring, and she smiled broadly. "It doesn't feel real."
Her smile was beautiful and infectious, and Kaidan hugged her tighter, kissing each of her fingers as he scooped her up and headed for the nearest bedroom, too tired to navigate the stairs after the long hours of talking. "I should have asked you a long time ago."
"It doesn't matter. I would have waited a hundred years." She nestled happily against him and looked down at the ring again, her eyes sparkling. "Can we have a traditional wedding?" her voice was very hesitant, and he felt her eyes on him as she glanced up.
"A church wedding?" he asked, and she nodded. Kaidan grinned to himself as he realised that the great Commander Shepard had thought about this far more than she'd ever let on.
"I want our wedding to be on Earth. I want to get married in a church, with a white dress, and Liara and Tali as bridesmaids." She laughed softly as Kaidan set her down on the spare bed and threw himself down next to her, exhausted from the hours of conversation. "And definitely no clones!"
"Agreed." Kaidan kissed her, more determined than ever to see the end of this war and to make sure both he and Gina made it out alive.
Because after all the shit Shepard had been through, all the horror and the fighting, she deserved her happily ever after.
They both did.