Work Text:
The Coming Dark
Shepard could feel the blood running hot through her veins, her respiration deafening inside the helmet as she put down wave after wave of Reaper Tech-infected Alliance soldiers standing between her and the imminent fate of all life in the galaxy. The whine of the intercom bearing Dr. Kenson’s voice rang inside her soul.
“You won’t stop me, Shepard! You won’t take this from me!”
Commandos, elites, pyros, corrupt VI bots, all fell in the smoke of gunfire Shepard waved away with one hand ejecting the clips of the Phalanx pistol. Their bodies hit the ground like the clinking bullet shells. One after one, their rattling bullets sang to her. Give up, Shepard. The Reapers will come. You cannot stop it.
Shepard’s footsteps pounded on the creaking metal as she fled through the station housing the Rho, until finally Dr. Kenson was in view. “That’s far enough, Kenson!”
“Commander Shepard, you are forcing my hand,” Kenson screamed.
“We can fight it! It doesn’t have to be this way!”
“It does for me.”
The flick of a metallic detonator cap and the thumb poised over the trigger was the last thing Shepard remembered before blinding light, then nothing. In the blank space, she thought she could see her body being thrown against an invisible wall and broken into pieces. Far away she could see the faces of her crew, Liara, Garrus, Tali, Jack, all turning to look up in horror at what they knew was coming for them. The shadow of the harbingers fell over them, engulfing them in darkness. Visions of the harbingers reaching for ships in the void of space. The smell of burning flesh awakened her as the saccharine voice of the intercom droned. Warning, impact imminent. Warning, impact imminent.
“Normandy, I need extraction! Do you copy! Joker!” Static warbled over her helmet comm as she ran toward the elevators, stooping for the pistol as she went.
Shepard felt like she was running through a never-ending dream, except for the cold air burning through her lungs. Above her the world spiraled through space toward the enormous Alpha Relay. The voice of the harbinger over the holo comm echoed Kenson. “You are merely dust in this cosmic wind. Why fight what is inevitable, Shepard?”
“No. We will fight it, we will sacrifice, and we will find a way. That’s what humans do.” Her voice sounded confident compared to the terror that gripped her throat, threatening to constrict. She slammed her fist on the comm console, shattering it. The vision of the harbinger warped and groaned with static behind her as she ran toward the edge of the deck.
“Normandy, do you read!”
“Commander, we’re coming in for extraction. Just hang on!”
Oh thank god, Shepard thought as she sprinted along the edge of the asteroid base's upper complex. As the Normandy dived in alongside, Shepard flung herself off the edge of the asteroid and dove into the open airlock, slamming her hand on the lock closure controls as Joker spun the Normandy toward the relay. There was a flash of blue lightning and then everything became quiet.
The sound of the spoon clinking against the titanium cup of coffee Dr Chakwas had offered her thundered in her ears as her gaze drifted back from far away.
“Three hundred thousand Batarian colonists, Shepard. What were you thinking?”
“It would have been trillions more if I hadn’t done what I did. What choice did I have? Kenson had me knocked out for two days. We only had minutes to spare before the Reapers would have shown up through the Alpha Relay.”
Hackett scratched his stubble with one hand. “Well, whatever the reason, I trust you made the best decision you could have. But this could mean war with the Batarians, which will seriously hamper our forces if the Reapers do come through. They’ll want a trial.”
“I’ll turn myself in if I have to.”
“Good to see working with Cerberus hasn’t stripped away your sense of honor, Shepard. Just be prepared to face the music in your best dress blues when that day comes.”
Shepard stood to attention. Hackett nodded, taking his leave. Her eyes drifted back into the distance.
Jacob and Miranda were equally aloof, though it was a familiar kind of reservation to Shepard, who was used to dealing with the gruff cool of Alliance military. During a short debrief with the Illusive Man, Shepard recounted to them the events of Aratoht and The Project, turning over the evidence of Reaper invasion in addition to what she could offer about the projected fallout in Human-Batarian relations.
“How likely do you think it is the Batarians will be out for blood right away?” inquired the Illusive Man, the mechanical blue of his cybernetic eyes piercing through the obscurity of the cigarette smoke.
“The Batarians are ill-tempered. They’ll want someone’s head on a platter sooner rather than later. Sorry for the turn of phrase,” Miranda said, turning to Shepard with an apologetic look once she realized what she had said. “We may have to move quickly on the Omega relay to avoid…complications.”
“Let ‘em try it,” retorted Jacob, buffing himself up and cracking his knuckles. “It’ll be a good day a Batarian decides to corner us in dark space. We can take ‘em.”
The Illusive man shifted, trailing more smoke out of the corners of his mouth like some dragon in the shadows. “Be that as it may, if we are deterred from our mission much longer, it won’t be the Batarians we have to worry about. We’ll let the Alliance sort that out. All our focus should be on the Omega and the Collectors. Give me the status of your dossiers, Shepard. What is your projected time frame?”
Shepard folded her arms together, squeezing her arms and digging in her nails to try to
will herself back into her body and display the confidence she knew was expected. “We have a crack team. They’re loyal. We should be ready to move out once we secure the IFF.”
Shepard could feel the blue electronic eyes burning into her, but her own gaze lingered on the table before rising to meet them. She could feel the Illusive Man probing her for weakness, information, or assurance that she was loyal, that she was going to take up the mantle he had spent so much time and money to craft for her. Shepard felt hollow. Behind her stone façade, she could feel the ghosts of Batarian colonists crowding her mental space. Their eyes were empty, damning almost, as they stared.
After a moment, the Illusive Man broke eye contact, sitting back in his chair and flicking the ashes from his cigarette, seeming satisfied at least for the moment. “Good. Once you acquire the device, contact me for final steps. Cerberus will at last find the final frontier, and what lies beyond the veil of the unknown. Until then.” There was a quick clip of sound as the quantum link was broken, leaving Shepard with the other Cerberus operatives. Shepard sighed, already tired even though the mission had not yet begun.
As she stood pensively by EDI’s terminal, Jacob and Miranda passed by.
“Final leg of the journey. After this, paradise or no paradise, we’re gonna kick some ass,” Jacob said, holding out his hand for a casual handshake.
Shepard took it, bumping shoulders with him, trying to grin but the darker emotions were written into her face. Jacob hardly seemed to notice, likely wrapped up in his own worries and trying to pass them off as bravado. Miranda’s had landed on Shepard’s shoulder.
“You did the right thing, commander. It was us or them,” she said, attempting at sympathy, though it still rang with her signature coldness. Shepard nodded.
“I guess we’ll find out. Dismissed.”
Jacob stood to attention with a salute. “Commander.”
After Miranda and Jacob had departed, Shepard’s gaze lingered on the holographic display of the Normandy SR-2. It flickered, glowing faintly like stars as it stared quietly back at her. Something burned inside Shepard’s chest, but she did not have the words to name it. Turning on her heel, she left the briefing room, running from the feeling.
As she wandered the Normandy, she felt restless. The quiet of the ship annoyed her. She watched the Thessian sunfish for a while, perused logs. As her hands reached for the framed dog tags Liara had brought her, she faltered. Liara’s words had been kind, but they still had not calmed the turbulent sea of Shepard’s guilt.
“Three hundred thousand Batarians, Liara. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t—”
“Shepard, there was nothing else you could have done. There just wasn’t time. You saved us time to prepare and saved the lives of everyone in the galaxy. Just like you always do.”
Shepard had let the words drop into the silence between them, like everything else. She remembered Liara’s freckled face and her eyes, large and wide with sympathy ran through her like the blue lightning of a relay. She was so beautiful. Shepard wished there was some way she could never see those blue eyes cry again. “What if it wasn’t enough?”
Liara’s embrace, soft and cool, enveloped her like a shroud, shielding her from the horror for a moment. In her arms concepts like forever somehow had a meaning. Liara brought Shepard a calm she knew could never last. Not for someone like her.
“It is enough, Shepard. You spend your every moment in this life running from one problem to the next, rescuing those without the strength, changing people without the heart that beats inside you.”
Shepard could feel the blue scales of Liara’s hand over her heart.
“In this moment, it is enough. You are enough. And no matter what happens when the Reapers come, you made a difference for the better for so many. We will be ready for them.”
The feeling of the soft brush of lips against her cheek faded slowly, even after Liara had turned to go, her sweet smile and wise eyes disappeared behind the hydraulic door slides for what might have been the last time. Shepard couldn’t know.
Still the restlessness did not subside. Shepard stared at the space hamster, watching it nosing around its glass cage for perhaps the thousandth time, finally understanding its predicament. With a sigh, Shepard left the C.O.’s quarters, tapping lightly down the stairs into the lower deck. Jack was throwing knives into a couch cushion. As Shepard approached, Jack jutted her jaw upwards in a nod of acknowledgment.
“Three hundred thousand Batarians all in one go? Not to shabby, Shepard. Blew my body count out of the water in two days. Bitch.” She said, goading the commander with the crass humor.
Shepard laughed despite herself. “What, is it a competition now?”
“You bet your ass it is. One I intend to win,” Jack replied, pulling her knife out of the cushion and pointing it directly up Shepard’s nose.
Shepard raised an eyebrow. Swiftly, she plucked the knife out of Jack’s hand and stepped back to take aim. Jack handed her the rest of the knives, scavenged kitchen wares and shivs cut from the hulls of various wreckage and salvage. Shepard rolled her eyes as she was handed the contraband.
“You’ve got too much time on your hands, Jack.”
“Damn right I do. You’re the one who gets all the fucking action around here. I’m stuck in the bargain basement with the bloodthirsty Krogan and the amazing bubble girl.”
Shepard’s grin was wiley as she tossed the knife into the air and caught the blade between her fingers. She couldn’t even recall where her mind went for the split second it took to cock her hand back and whip the knife forward, followed by the rest of the hodge podge weapons. When she looked over, Jack’s face was incredulous and contorted in rage. Shepard followed her gaze to the couch cushion where all the knives were stuck in a bullseye, some stacked on top of the others in a series of perfect shots.
“What the fuck, Shepard! I’m starting to think you’re the freak on this ship, not me!”
Shepard blinked, perturbed by the sudden absence of awareness. She walked over to the couch cushion and looked down at the blades stuck into it and the stuffing spilling from the many holes. Carefully, the commander pulled a knife free from the butt of one of the whittled shivs and stared down at it in her hand, feeling suddenly blank. Everything around Shepard seemed to stretch out, feeling far away from her. Jack’s voice was a garbled echo somewhere in the deepness of the void.
“Helloooo. Shepard. Hey. Snap out of it!” shouted Jack, snapping her fingers in front of Shepard’s face and shoving her shoulder. Shepard breathed in sharply through her nose, snapping her attention to Jack. Shepard’s vision swam, trying to focus on all of Jack’s tattoos at once. She felt suddenly nauseous.
“Whoa, what the hell Shepard,” Jack said, catching the commander by the elbow and throwing her over onto the remaining cushion on the sofa. Shepard plopped down, pressed her fingers hard into her temple, trying to focus.
“What the hell is this? Don’t tell me you went and got started on the junk.”
Shepard shook her head, still staring at the knife in her hand. In her mind, the dead eyes of a thousand Batarians stared back at her, silently.
“Oh, I get it, I get it. Hey, just because you’re feeling guilty about wiping some slaver bastard colonies off the face of the galaxy does not mean you get to have cold feet now, you hear me Shepard. You cannot just stick a needle in it and expect it to fix your problems, ok? Trust me, I’ve tried. Doesn’t do shit. You just end up coming down after the high and jonesing. Nothing changes. You just feel like half-baked shit on top of shit.”
Shepard looked up at Jack, still feeling somewhat unsteady. “It’s not drugs, Jack. I just—I need a moment.”
“Yeah?! Well what about the rest of us, huh?! We’ll just be floating hunks of space meat out there if you can’t get your shit together! While you’re taking ‘your moment’ the rest of us will out there getting bent over and screwed by giant Reapers,” Jack cried angrily, storming toward the cushion and furiously ripping out the knives, throwing tufts of batting about as she ripped the pleather fabric. Shepard watched her desperately tearing at the sofa.
“I can tell you one thing, I am not going to just float out into Reaper space just to save your stupid ass and just lay down and die with some weak ass, punk ass…FUCK. I am making it out of this alive, you hear me, and I’ll drag your ass out of this hellhole if I have to. Then we’ll be square!”
Shepard’s mouth twitched with a grin as she watched Jack throw down the cushion and kick it under the table. Jack, catching sight of the commander’s grin, narrowed her black smudged eyes and crossed her arms. Shepard’s grin grew into a chuckle and then a hearty laugh. After a moment, Shepard’s mind seemed to clear. She stood up and ran a hand through her hair, wiping away the feeling of the Batarian eyes watching. Lightly, Shepard flipped the knife in her hand before handing it back over to Jack.
“Well Jack, I never took you for sentimental. I’ll have your back. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yeah, well you better not.”
As Shepard turned to step back into the stairwell, she turned back, feeling Jack’s eyes burning holes into her.
“And Shepard. Don’t feel guilty about wiping out the Rho and the Alpha. The universe is better off without those slaving bastards anyway.”
Shepard’s eyes connected with Jack’s dark, hardened eyes. Her own were walled off with steel again.
“Thanks, Jack.”
As Shepard plodded up the stairs again, she hesitated at the T-crossing of the hallway. Part of her just wanted to lay down in her bed and cease to exist, but the thought of more silence and solitude with the watching eyes made her cringe. She could feel her body moving toward the Engineering bay doors before she had even made up her mind. She wasn’t prepared for Tali, who turned at the sound of the door and came to her, throwing her arms around Shepard’s neck.
“Thank Keelah you are alive, Shepard!”
Kenneth and Gabby looked up from the couplings and calculations. Their excitement read on them as the pair joined Tali and the commander.
“Aye, Shepard that was some heroics. Pretty standard for you but hearing about it was excitin’. What was it like talking to the harbinger? Joker said you were on an asteroid hurtlin’ through space and ran and jumped off the side into the Normandy!”
“Ken, give the commander a moment to breathe,” chided Gabby, seeing the surprise on Shepard’s face.
“Aye, aye, right, right. Sorry. Just not somethin’ ya hear every day.”
Shepard patted Tali’s back, stumbling slightly from the impact of the Quarian in her arms. “Yeah, Joker’s got quite the mouth, running all over the place apparently,” she replied.
“I thought for sure we wouldn’t have hit that relay in time. Ken and Gabby had to lift me into the FTL display just in case we had to activate it. Or prepare the weapons array for Garrus and EDI, just in case--” Tali disengaged from Shepard and looked over to the human engineers for a moment.
“So, everyone knows about the harbingers now, I take it. I’m sure Hackett will be pleased to know that the top-secret mission he sent me in on stayed anything but,” Shepard said with a chuckle.
“Well,” Tali fumbled, wringing her hands together. Even behind the obscurity of the helmet, it was easy to tell when Tali was blushing. “I suppose I had something to do with that. But when the crushing weight of imminent doom and the arrival of Reapers is on the table, I think sacrificing a little secrecy maybe isn’t the worst thing….right?”
“I won’t hang you out to dry, Tali. I’m just glad you had my back out there.”
“Now that you mention it, Shepard, why did Hackett send you into that mission alone? Didn’t he realize that it could get…well…crazy? I mean, has he met you?”
Shepard laughed at this. “Maybe that’s the problem. You guys make it look like I’m some kind of big damn hero all the time, but what would I do without you and Chikktika? I’m nothing without the team.”
“Well I don’t know about nothing, Shepard. You’re the glue that holds the Normandy together. Sometimes literally. I don’t know what we would do without you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you are as close to me as one of my own flotilla mates, but this mission…through the Omega Relay….I don’t know if we could do it without you. You are the best of us Shepard, the paragon, I guess. Pardon me if that sounds too honest.”
Shepard’s expression dropped as she remembered the watchful eyes of the Batarian ghosts at her shoulder. “Yeah, some paragon. I let an entire star system get wiped out on my watch, because of my choice. I said I wouldn’t let that happen again, not after Chief Williams.”
“Ashley went into battle knowing the consequences, Shepard. She accepted her fate. And there just wasn’t time to save the Batarians. Frankly, I’m surprised you aren’t just a little bit happy to have fewer slavers on the ground. Three hundred thousand less chances for another planet like Mindoir, maybe. Maybe you helped free people on those planets you don’t even know about.”
“Yeah, until the Batarians wage war on Humans for what I did. They were still people, Tali. Batarian or not, I still promised to protect them, and I—” Shepard’s voice choked off as she clenched her jaw, trying to steel herself against the barrage of conflicting emotions battling for dominance inside her. Her eyes betrayed her pain, if only just, as she stared evenly into the glowing eyes of the Quarian woman. She could feel Tali’s empathy even through the barrier of suit and helm.
“You’re right, Shepard. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Forgive my rudeness,” Tali said, meeting her gaze. For a moment there was a silence in the engineering bay, but it did not last long. Shepard could feel the warmth of Tali’s hand in her own, drawing her back from within the oblivion of guilt that was threatening to drown her.
“Shepard, no matter what happens, you will always be our commander. Our paragon.”
Shepard heard the words trailing behind her like a recording looping through static. She felt the warmth of Tali’s embrace and Kenneth and Gabby’s smiles, and suddenly she was alone again, standing in front of the elevator. The words looped in her mind over and over again.
Our paragon.
Shepard lost track of herself again, this time finding herself standing near the entry to the observation deck at the end of the crew’s quarters. Before she could react, the door of the deck slid open. Beyond there was a great window into the vastness of star space that came into view. Before it sat Samara, holding the glowing orb of her biotic energy between her hands.
“Shepard,” she said without turning around.
The commander stepped forward hesitantly, which felt unusual to her. Hesitance was not survivable on the battlefield, and she had lived by that motto since the days of Akuze. Angry with herself, she stepped forward more forcefully on the second step, causing a loud stomp as she strode forward toward the Justicar and pushed her shoulders back.
Samara did not turn from her meditation as Shepard approached, though she beckoned her to sit. Shepard obliged, folding her legs like the Asari matron. Samara’s glowing eyes stared into the abyss of space.
“Something troubles you.”
Shepard balked, caught off guard. “How could you tell?”
“Asari can sense more than just tone of voice, Shepard.”
“Fair enough,” She said, contemplating the nature of Asari psychic abilities from what she had seen.
There was a pause as the commander and the Justicar stared out into the wilderness of stars.
“What is bothering you?” Samara replied, awakening from her trance. Shepard did not look away from the glimmering of distant celestial bodies for a moment. She tried to form the words, but they eluded her. Almost as if she were afraid that if they were spoken, then the world might begin to unravel. She might begin to unravel.
“The arrival. The asteroid.”
Samara nodded. “You feel guilty for the choices you made there, and what it cost.”
Shepard did not reply, but her silence filled in the blank.
“I have told you that the work of the Justicar is not one understood by many, and feared by some, have I not?”
Shepard turned to look at Samara. The woman’s gaze was steady, but not hard. “You did.”
“And tell me, in human culture, what makes a knight a hero? What makes them righteous? What makes them strong, lauded by all? Surely, all soldiers have a measure of worth, why do humans view knights as heroes, and servicemen as merely that?”
“I guess...I guess because a knight follows their convictions, even to death. They are usually famous for what they’ve done to uphold those convictions.”
“Exactly. Rare is the knight that is remembered alone, separate from their faith. Their faith, and their determination to follow it is what makes them stand out against all the lives lost to senseless violence. Justicars follow The Code more strictly than other Asari, because other Asari could not dream of making the decisions necessary to uphold it. Most people have no idea the cost and the sacrifice that go into pursuing what is right. Making the choice to live in a world of absolutes, giving up pleasure, safety, and complacency for the pursuit of something more. You, Shepard, are a knight, just as I am a Justicar. You make the hard decisions. You sacrifice for the greater good. Not everyone will understand this, nor are they meant to. But you cannot let it turn you from your path, or from your conviction.”
Samara’s hand raised with the grace and command of a studied warrior. Her fingertips found their way to Shepard’s forehead. “Will you meld with me, Shepard? I wish to give you what I can so that you can bring it with you into this battle that we are on the precipice of.”
Shepard nodded slightly. “Yes.”
Samara’s eyes darkened, revealing at thin sliver of light that reminded Shepard of an eclipse. “Then embrace eternity.”
Shepard’s mind was flooded with memories of her and Samara on the mission to find Morinth. Visions of the two Asari locked in battle came into view. She saw through Samara’s eyes as the Justicar overpowered her daughter, felt the pain screaming through neural pathways as she watched the life flow from Morinth’s body under Samara’s hand. Waves of grief and anguish not her own washed over Shepard as she watched through Samara’s eyes as she recalled the day of Morinth’s birth. Holding the small child in her arms and cradling her head close to her bosom, placing tender lips on the forehead of the newborn, filled with rapturous joy.
Shepard’s mind filled with agony as visions of destroyed bodies took the place of happy memories. Dead husks of Morinth’s former lovers passed by, each more gruesome than the next. She saw the desperation in Nef’s eyes, as she talked into the recording monitor through her shaggy, tousled hair. Pangs of guilt and shame colored Shepard’s view as the memories subsided.
In their place, Shepard saw her own memories floating to the surface of her mind. The day she freed Liara from the stasis field on Therum. The faces of the people on Zhu’s Hope as they realized they were free of the influence of the Thorian. The look in Wrex’s eye when he told Shepard that he could trust her. The sound of Ashley’s voice through her earpiece on Virmire, telling her she didn’t regret a thing. As Ashley’s voice faded, Shepard could feel Samara withdrawing her hand.
“I give you these things, so that you remember what you are fighting for, Shepard. Your code is a strong one, a code of justice, of strength, and of unity among all people. You are loyal to the people you love, and you defend what is right at all costs, even if the decisions you make are ones no one could envy you for.”
“And what if I fail?” whispered Shepard. “What if I make the wrong choice?”
Samara smiled but said nothing for a moment. “We fly into the last battle with all the strength our convictions allow us. Only the goddess can judge us in the end.”
Thane and Kasumi were similarly supportive, offering what consolation they could as they watched their captain struggle with the weight of the events of the last several days.
“I mean, what’s the big deal? Maybe those Batarians made it out before all hell breaks loose. Who knows what we’ll find on the other side of Omega. They got lucky if you ask me,” quipped Kasumi, sipping colored vodka as she flipped through one of her contraband books in the observation deck.
“I don’t think that is the point,” replied the onerous growl of Thane’s voice. His face was perched over clasped hands, and the deep black void of his eyes seemed turbulent with thought. “Taking life is not as simple as objects being destroyed.”
“Says the assassin clearly tormented by the memories of everyone he’s killed,” retorted Kasumi lightly, pacing behind the couch as she turned the pages.
“Yes, though the Drell believe the body and the soul can act independently, does not mean that one cannot feel the other. And the soul knows the suffering of others, though the body cannot. When you take a life, the presence of them is felt in the soul, whether or not in memory. I doubt there is any being alive who has been unchanged by the taking of life. It is not the nature of any species, even those battle-minded as the Krogan are, to truly devalue life.”
Shepard considered Thane’s words, stirring her own drink with a straw, watching the pink and blue of the mixed alcohols swirl in the glass.
“Do the Drell believe in forgiveness?” she asked.
Thane’s reptilian eyelids slid slowly over his black orbs as he considered this. “For the Drell, there is no need to forgive. What the body does manifests in the physical world, where time moves forward and continues to cascade. The movement of the body or its forces, electrons, particles, cannot be reversed. What has been done cannot be undone, even if the soul suffers for it for the rest of time. There is no point forgiving what cannot be undone. The soul only requires that it be acknowledged. Drell cannot forget the actions of the body, but in recognizing and allowing themselves to relive the memory, they honor the body and what it has done.”
“And then what?” asked Shepard, trying to sound sardonic, though her expression again gave her away. Thane looked directly into her eyes, seeming to convey a depth of understanding she could not fathom.
“Then, you go on.”
“Yeesh, you’re so intense, Thane. Have you ever considered blowing off some steam? I hear exercise does wonders,” said Kasumi, throwing herself nimbly onto the makeshift bed in the corner.
As Shepard departed the Observation deck, the world seemed to sway, lilting to either side like a ship on tempestuous waters. She shook her head, trying to clear the muddled thoughts as she stumbled forward, one hand on the wall for support. She blinked her eyes a few times, seeing double as the alcohol worked its way through her bloodstream. In the blur, the shapes of dead Batarians with bloodied faces and hollow eyes haunted her. Shepard stumbled away from them, making her way toward the mess hall. As she approached, a few of the crew stopped to salute, and she immediately straightened herself, pulling off a salute and a nod before the crewmen departed again. Once they had all cleared out of the mess, Shepard collapsed into one of the seats. She laid her head down on the metal table, feeling its cool surface soothe the aching pain behind her eyes.
“Heyyyyy, Commander. You up to join me and Garrus for a game of dice and shots? I’m sure you need it. We’re even gonna get EDI in on it. Gonna teach her how to gamble!”
Shepard shot up in her seat, turning toward Joker’s voice. She leaned one elbow on the table as Joker and Garrus came around the corner from the elevator, trying to look casual and amused. “You’re gonna teach an AI how to gamble, huh?”
Near the mess, EDI’s holographic interface appeared. “I told you before, Mr. Morreau, my programming does not allow for manipulations of probability in the manner you describe.”
“Ah, just afraid you’ll lose, huh? I knew it. If you can’t take the heat EDI, guess you’ll just have to get out of the kitchen!”
Garrus and EDI audibly groaned at the pun. Shepard shook her head.
“Mr. Morreau, if you’re suggesting that I am afraid to lose in a duel of probability with you, you would be wrong. My programming doesn’t allow—“
“Yeah, yeah, programming doesn’t allow this, doesn’t allow that. Face it, EDI, you know I’d wipe the floor with you.”
“If you would let me finish, Mr. Morreau. My programming doesn’t allow me to lose to such an unworthy competitor.”
“Ooooh, that’s gotta hurt. What is it you humans say? Shall I get some ice for that burn?” retorted Garrus as Joker crossed his arms.
“Ha, ha, very funny. Well that’s big talk, then. Let’s have this showdown. It is GO time, robot!” Joker exclaimed, making his way toward the table and sitting down next to the commander. As he did, Shepard stood to leave.
“They’ve been at each other’s throats all day. Well…proverbial throats, I guess. Because EDI doesn’t have a—you get the idea. You’d think they were some old married couple or something,” chuckled Garrus as Shepard stepped toward him. He was dressed down, unlike his usual, wearing the customary attire of the Turians in place of his battle-worn armor. His startling blue eyes looked down at her. Shepard could feel the world beginning to tilt again, and her skin paled with the effort to remain upright beneath the shrewd gaze of the Turian.
“Not going to stay and watch the spectacle?” He inquired, shuffling his mandibles in a sort of frown that she had come to know as characteristic to Turians. Shepard avoided his gaze.
“Nah. Much as I’d like to watch you get your ass handed to you by our ship’s superior AI, Joker, I think I’m done for today. Gonna cash out for tonight. Just put down a hundred credits on EDI and I expect the payout tomorrow or in the form of drink rounds on the next Citadel touchdown. Keep track for me, won’t you, Garrus,” she said throwing the last of her strength into bravado as she made for the elevator. Garrus watched her leave, his expression perplexed.
Shepard breathed a sigh as she stepped onto the elevator and leaned against the wall, fumbling with the console, and swaying as is carried her upwards, back toward her quarters. Once there, she stumbled inside and tried to change the music to something calming, but gave up, throwing the remote on the bed. The fish drifted in their tranquil sea as Shepard fled to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, leaning over the sink and closing her eyes, trying to focus all her attention on the sound of the running water. It burbled, striking the metal sink loudly, but it still wasn’t loud enough to drown out the amorphous feelings chasing her. Exasperated, Shepard ran her hands under the water, letting it pool in the cup of her hand before running her hands through her hair. The water trickled down the back of her neck and nose, and the volume of the running water seemed to grow cacophonous in her mind. As she opened her eyes to look in the mirror, the phantoms of a thousand dead Batarians appeared suddenly behind her in the reflection.
“Gahh!” She screeched, throwing a right hook at the glass, which shattered on impact with her fist. Stumbling backwards, Shepard tripped and came down hard on one knee, catching herself over the toilet with one arm. Then, forcefully, the bile came to the surface and she began to vomit into the bowl, willing her body to expel the poison of these memories and return her to her customary calm. She wasn’t supposed to be emotional. She was Commander Shepard, C.O. of the Normandy, famous defender of the galaxy, a paragon among humans. She wasn’t allowed to show weakness, to show mercy to her enemies. And here it was, all streaming out of her. She felt pathetic. As the heaving subsided, Shepard sat back and leaned her head back against the wall, so wrapped up in her thoughts she didn’t even notice the knocking at her door or the whistle of the doors as someone entered.
When she tilted her head up again, Garrus’s familiar form stood in the doorway to the bathroom. The two of them just stared at each other for a moment. Shepard’s façade of stone was shattered, and she knew it. She just waited as Garrus looked her over, haggard, covered in water and vomit, lost. She could feel her fist beginning to throb from punching the mirror. The faucet burbled. A small shard of glass from the mirror fell from its frame and crashed to the floor, interrupting the silence.
“Getting into arguments with the mirror, I see,” he said finally, turning the faucet off with a small metallic squeak. “You really ought to take it easy on the appliances, they don’t stand a chance against you.”
Shepard chuckled, but the breath twisted into a shudder as bitter tears began stinging the corner of her eyes. She looked down, avoiding his gaze again, though she could feel it on her.
“You’re bleeding.” His voice was gentler this time as he stepped forward into the small bathroom and kneeled beside Shepard and took her hand to look over the damage. Shepard watched him, fighting emotions spewing out of her even still.
“You should see—the other guy,” she struggled.
“Yes, yes, I did. Like I said, never stood a chance,” his voice was smooth and deep as he eyed the shattered mirror.
Shepard managed a choked laugh, but it quickly broke down into rasping sobs as she dropped her forehead into the uninjured hand. Hot tears spilled over it, trickling down her arm as her chest heaved with the unspent grief of decades broke free of its dam. All the pain of her youth spent running from the events of Mindoir, her parents’ death at the hands of the Batarians, spending a life dedicated to upholding the law as a marine, only to have it come crashing down as a rogue mercenary working for Cerberus who would be known for wiping out an entire star system. A renegade taking the ultimate revenge on the Batarians who had changed her life all those years ago. It felt like some kind of sick joke, and her whole life was spent waiting for the punchline. Now, here it was staring her in the face.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Garrus,” she sobbed, leaning into the grief.
“I know you didn’t.”
“It’s all—they’ll remember me for—” her voice came in gasps as she careened wildly through the unfamiliar oceans of feeling. “The merc – that came back for—revenge against Batarian slavers. I could have—warned them. I could have—I could have saved them. Maybe if I had tried harder—”
“No, no. No.” Shepard could feel Garrus pulling her into his strong arms. Shepard collapsed into them, burying her face in the linen of his shirt and clinging to it as if it were the only thing keeping her tethered in the vacuum of space. Garrus held her tightly, letting the waves of her ocean crash harmlessly against the metallic plates of his skin. Shepard could feel the rocking of the ship beginning to still again as she emptied herself of all the grief she had spent an entire life and career avoiding. She could feel the ghosts of the unknown dead beginning to fade. As they did, so did her tears. Eventually, her breathing became calm again and she felt empty, but no longer hollow. Garrus leaned back again.
“Come on, I think I’ve got just the thing for this,” said Garrus, offering Shepard his other hand. She slid her own into it and let him help lift her from the floor and guide her back toward the small lounge sofa. She plopped down there as Garrus looked for her first aid station and retrieved medi-gel and gauze and poured them both some wine.
“You know, there’s a couple of Turians in my hometown that are known for making some of the best wine on Palaven. They designed it so that it could be consumed cross-species, for dextros and non-dextros. Real wizards at brewing, those guys. They’ve tried to get contracts on the Citadel to sell it, but the Council hasn’t granted their permit or patent. It’s been almost ten years. Bureaucrats,” Garrus sighed as he busied himself with picking the glass out of Shepard’s knuckles and wrapping her hand with the gauze and medi-gel.
“So, the Council can’t even be bothered to cut the red tape for money. Figures,” Shepard replied, wiping the tears away from her swollen eyes.
“Would have been really lucrative, yeah. I mean, think of the possibilities, right? I guess governments are the same everywhere. Slow to act, and when they do it’s begrudgingly. We’ll leave, kill off the Collectors, and be back before they even decide what to have for lunch.”
Shepard watched Garrus as he sat bent over her hand, and sense of depth overcame her. A sad smile drifted at the corners of her lips as he looked up to meet her eye. A knowing silence passed between them as they both thought the same thing.
“I don’t think we’ll be coming back, Garrus,” Shepard whispered.
Garrus ruffled his mandibles thoughtfully. “Then how will we find out what the Council had for lunch?”
Shepard laughed, nudging the Turian with her good hand. “Probably something that costs as much as it did for Cerberus to put my body back together.”
Garrus chuckled at this, amusement shining brightly in his blue eyes. After a moment he replied, “But seriously, Shepard. What you did, back on Aratoht, The Project. There just wasn’t any other ending you could have gotten. Not with those circumstances, stranded alone on a heavily militarized base in the middle of nowhere with the entire crew infected by Reaper Tech…it just…sometimes things are pushed by the spirit of the battle. And that spirit had other plans than we did.”
“I made the wrong call, Garrus,” Shepard said, shaking her head. “I called the Normandy instead of warning the colonists. I’m just as bad as the slavers that took Mindoir.”
Garrus scoffed, leaning back to take a sip of wine. “I doubt that very much. I think anyone in your position well…they wouldn’t have even gotten there. You know why? They would have died before they even got near the reactor core. Only the unlucky must face such hard decisions. And you know what? Sometimes you make the wrong one. Sometimes you screw up. Sometimes people die. But if you could go back a thousand times and change your choices, would the story really end up different?”
Shepard hesitated.
“Exactly. We’ll never know because we can’t go back. You do what you think is best, and the rest is history in the making.”
Shepard frowned as Garrus’s words hit home. “I remember what I had told Kaidan once. He told me his biotics instructor at the brain academy was a real abusive asshole. He stepped in to defend a girl that attended there with him, but with his strength he killed the guy. He’s never let that go, but when he asked me what I did after my unit died on Akuze, I told him that I just tried to keep going on and do whatever I could not to let it happen again. Fight now, grieve later. Well the later has finally caught up with me, I guess. And I feel like I keep making the same mistakes, letting people die over and over again. Trying to save them but screwing it up.
“All you have to do is try to do better next time than the time before. Be true to the spirit of your convictions. Try to make decisions you can at least live with, or if not, then try to learn from the experience. Some odds are impossible to beat, Shepard, but not all of them. The world moves in mysterious ways that we can’t even see, and we will never see. We can’t know what will happen tomorrow any more than we can see what’s on the other side of the Omega relay. We just have to go there to find out.” Garrus shifted himself nearer to Shepard, wrapping one long arm around her shoulders and drawing her into his side. Shepard leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes as Garrus kissed her forehead lightly.
“Besides, when we get back, we’re going to take a vacation trip to that statue of you on Akuze. I wanna see if they got your…well your dimensions right.”
Shepard grinned.