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There is no body to retrieve. Kaidan was right next to the bomb. It’s too dangerous to go down, to try to bring back anything but the few belongings he kept on the Normandy. She doesn’t even have his dog tags.
As soon as she has made her report, Shepard rushes into her cabin and shuts the door behind her. Her breath becomes faster and faster, gasps for air mixing with sobs. She hasn’t felt this since all the therapy they put her through after Akuze, but she remembers the feeling. She is having a panic attack. Fuck.
She forces it down, presses her hands to her mouth to slow the influx of oxygen, force her breath to slow. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Don’t loose control.
Shepard leaves her office minutes later, projecting the same calm and confidence she always does. No one notices that she has freshened up her makeup
-
The feeling of suffocating is...familiar.
She struggles for air, tears stain her face and then everything goes black.
-
“You know I spent a lot of time looking at scans of your brain right?”
Shepard raises an eyebrow at Miranda’s question. “Seems plausible. Why are you asking?”
“Not asking just…”, Miranda looks at her like does sometimes, like Shepard is a science project. “Never would have expected to find an anxiety disorder. In you of all people.”
Shepard shrugs. “Just always had it.”
“And always managed to hide it.”
“I guess”, she has trained herself not to fidget with her hands by crossing her arms instead. If she holds her hands close to her chest it feels a bit like she is hugging herself. “Did you remove it?”
Miranda shakes her head no. “I was told to recreate you exactly as you were.”
-
Shepard can feel herself starting to crumble.
She wakes up from nightmares of Akuze and Virmire and suffocating to the ceiling window of her cabin and more than once the view sends her straight into a panic attack. She doesn’t force them down, deciding instead to just ride it out and try to go back to sleep, but sleeping isn’t easy any more either.
The new crew don’t notice. They just assume she’s like this, tight strung, quick to snap at them. But her friends know her better than that and it’s not long before Tali lures her in to an evening in the casino just to find Garrus already sitting there.
Shepard realizes the ambush but sits down anyway. Garrus waves his arms around. “I know absolutely nothing about what kind of liquor humans drink.”, he confesses “But if you give me a description I’m sure I can find it.”
She laughs “Just a beer. That’s the small bottles under the...yeah those. Thanks” Shepard takes the bottle he hands her and takes the lid of with the practised ease of an Alliance Military Academy graduate. “Is there any Dextro stuff on this ship?”
“There wasn’t and then I brought some”, Tali produces a bottle and Garrus hums in approval.
“How very very unprofessional of you”, Shepard mocks before taking a sip of her beer.
They joke and chat for a bit until Tali stirs the conversation to where they were inevitably heading. “Shep, we’ve been noticing you seem...stressed.”
Shepard scoffs. “I’m pretty sure this situation qualifies as stressful.”
“It absolutely does”, Garrus agrees “But you don’t have to carry the stress alone”
“Says who?”
“Say we”, Tali punches her arm “Talk to us.”
“Fine fine fine”, Shepard raises her hands in capitulation. “I will.”
-
She starts doing a bit better with their help. Garrus and Tali check in with her, force her to talk about how she feels. Shortly before the suicide mission Shepard and Garrus start dating and now when she wakes up in the middle of the night she doesn’t see the void of space anymore.
She sees him.
-
And then everything gets infinitely worse.
There is no time for panic attacks in the Reaper war so she starts forcing them down again, breathing through her hands, repeating her command to herself. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Mordin and Thane die and her head is just constantly buzzing with fear. What if Garrus is next. What if Joker. What if Tali.
Garrus tries to help but it’s not like he can lift off the responsibilities or the guilt or any of it really. Most of the time he just ends up holding her while she screams into her hands.
-
The Geth dreadnought is the worst.
Shepard barely makes it through and afterwards she has to sit down. Garrus is in her ear, sounding worried and she latches onto his voice to pull herself up.
-
“I love you. I will always love you. I never would have made it this far without you.” On some level she already knows this is the last thing she will ever say to him, knows she wont make it back from the citadel.
Garrus looks at her, pleading. And Shapard is calm, so weirdly calm. She’s always been like this in the middle of combat, of true danger. It’s why she joined the military in the first place.
As she looks into Garrus eyes for the last time, she isn’t afraid but she is crushed by sorrow. Crushed by the knowledge that she is leaving him behind and in her head she reverts to her old mantra.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.