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Charlie Shepard stares at her reflection in the mirror, her eyes glued to the familiar, yet unfamiliar face staring back at her. She looks like complete and utter shit, but she was apparently dead for two years, so what does anyone expect?
There are dark, gaunt, circles under her eyes, making the light blue-gray of her irises stand out against the darkness around her eyes. That she's used to, the pop of color usually in a sea of dark eyeliner smudged around her eyes to get "the look" she goes for, but that's where the recognition of her reflection stops.
Behind her pale irises are mechanical, glowing red orbs—cybernetics, according to those who "resurrected" her. They flash and blink and shine behind her irises in the dim light of the bathroom, reminding her of those creepy Halloween vids with pairs of glowing eyes amidst pitch black darkness.
Her eyes aren't the only thing that's changed—no, it's much more than just that. Her whole body gives off an eerie red glow thanks to the cybernetics under her skin. When she had awoken in that Cerberus facility, Charlie hadn't thought much of the strange, painful fissures in her exposed skin. She rolled off the bed, threw on the random clothes she found over the simple bra and underwear she was wearing, and jumped into action.
She took the pistol she was instructed to grab, adjusted to the new thermal clip system—whoever thought of that switch was a fucking idiot—and started shooting, adrenaline pumping through her veins as she moved from one room to the next. When she met Jacob his answers didn't help, and neither did Miranda's—how had she been dead for two whole years?
She didn't stop after they left the facility. She "met" the Illusive Man, someone she vowed to keep a close eye on, as much as she could with all the secrecy surrounding him. And then she was moving again, receiving armor and her old weapons upgraded just for her, and killing more mechs on Freedom’s Progress while looking for clues as to what happened to the human colonists there.
Ever since Charlie woke up, she hadn't stopped, hadn't had a chance to breathe, until she got on this ship, the new Normandy, and she finally had a minute to herself. She stomped up to her cabin and ripped her armor off until she was back in the simple underwear she woke up in.
And that was when she saw her reflection.
What happened to her finally was kicking in, now that she's staring at herself, now that she has time to think and feel. And she feels, alright—her whole body hurts now that the adrenaline is gone. Whatever Cerberus did to her clearly wasn't finished yet and she's sore as fuck, and the glowing cracks in her skin are raw and tender and ugly.
Charlie's breath hitches when she notices something else in her reflection… her skin is bare. Barring the new glowing scars, her skin is completely empty. Her old scars are gone, her tattoos, her piercings… all gone, erased, as if they never were even there. She suddenly feels naked, and storms out of the bathroom, glancing over her quarters.
There are clothes laid out for her, and before she can grab them, she notices the large skylight right above the bed, the infinite darkness of space littered by little pinpricks of stars and far off galaxies. Charlie used to love gazing out at space, but now she sees it and her heart starts beating faster, her lungs constricting in her chest.
She closes her eyes and grasps onto the railing near her, images flashing into her head—the original Normandy exploding, black, empty space wizzing past her field of vision, red alert notifications popping up on her helmet visor… and then the sensations all come back, hitting her like a train to the chest.
Charlie can't breathe, the air is too thin, she's running out. She's grasping at her throat but it's not doing anything. She hears Kaidan calling for her—oh god, Kaidan—and she's trying to tell him she loves him. She's trying to say she's sorry, but she can't breathe. She can't—
A knock on her door startles her out of the memory, and Charlie gasps for air, finally able to get some into her starving lungs. Breathing heavily, she lets go of the railing she grabbed onto, her eyes widening at the indentations her fisted hand made into the metal. How the hell…?
The knocking sounds again, and she huffs, grabbing the clothes from the neat stack on her bed and then scowling when she realizes the Cerberus logo is on all of it. She answers the door to her quarters without bothering to put the pieces of clothing on, refusing to put that symbol on her body.
"Commander," a red-haired woman in full Cerberus garb starts, "I just wanted to make sure you were settling in okay."
"I'm fine," Charlie practically growls, and she could swear the woman shrinks back a step.
The woman nods. "I'm Yeoman—"
"I don't care. Just find me something else to wear that doesn't have Cerberus' logo all over it," she spits, shoving the clothes into the other woman's arms. "If you fanatical fucks managed to find my old guns, then you should be able to find some normal clothes somewhere."
Without muttering another word, Charlie steps back and shuts the door in the woman's face. Crossing the room to where the bed is, she finds the switch to shut the shutters on the skylight and presses it, probably harder than she needs to, and then starts searching all the cabinets for any kind of alcohol she can get her hands on. When she finds none, she sits on the bed and starts to make a mental list of what she needs to do as soon as humanly possible.
One, buy a shitload of booze.
Two, buy new clothes.
Three, get my tattoos and piercings redone.
Four, get my hands on every Cerberus file about the Lazarus Project.
Five… nail the Collectors to the god damn wall so I can tell the Illusive Man to go fuck himself…
Charlie sighs, her fingers fisting in the sheets of her bed as she takes in her new surroundings, trying to accept her new situation. She focuses on her breathing, and uses every trick she's ever learned from years and years of training to calm down. But, no matter what she does, she just doesn't feel, right, the same way her reflection was her but not her at the same time.
Shit.