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Shepard stared at the blinking vid-com signal and saw in them the fires consuming Thessia’s lush verdant. She stood silent, eyes narrow as she watched thousands of years of evolution, the cumulation of a species near perfected, drew closer to extinction with every flash.
Ash and bitterness on her tongue, choking breath in lungs rebuilt never to cease drawing breath. Defeat burned at her soul, a discordant note in her mind, ever louder, running horrible disharmony to her report to Tevos. It sandblasted her veins, rushed rage where blood once ran, as mechanical words snapped from her lips.
She lived, Thessia died, and there was blood on more than just her armor during the mission debrief.
Fury frustrated was not an emotion easily suited to her features, senseless rage not accustomed to her bearing. It screamed off her, even as ruthless discipline clipped her words and kept them even and calm. Shepard never played cards, didn’t gamble with the crew; it was she who played poker on a galactic scale. Never bluffing wasn’t the same as not knowing how. Her calm was picture perfect and flawed in its flawlessness.
There were some uncomfortable with her power, with her influence. They had made their careers on denying her, on discrediting her, but if ever those who whispered about her had needed a true reason to worry about the scale of her influence, she would provide one now.
Let the universe know to what lengths she was willing to go to. If she must first find Hell to march past its gates, if she had to track the devil straight into his own den, if that was all that was required of her to save the galaxy, she would turn burning Thessia into her own blood red steed and ride chase with joy and without faltering.
If Cerberus had not sought war, they had most certainly found her.
***
She wasn’t ready to hear Anderson.
She didn’t listen.
It was easy to smile for a man deeply entrenched in the front lines of a lost cause.
Her luck had always held before, if it were luck. There was always a way forward, a way past, a way around, and failing that, a way through. She had said the words, countless times before: I’ll do it. I’ll get it done. I can. I will.
Practice made perfect but perfection did not required sincerity.
***
They all had rituals. Soldiers more superstitious than black cats on Halloween, they retreated to their post-mission rituals, hoping to find comfort so they can give it to her.
***
“Garrus--”
“Tali.”
“Has she come to see you, yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Me, either. She took this hard.”
“Is there an easy way to handle the destruction of a planet?”
“Garrus! I didn’t mean it--”
“I know, Tali. I’ll let you know when there’s anything worth reporting.”
***
“Jeff, I am concerned.”
“We’re all concerned, EDI. A planet just blew up under our watch. It’s concerning.”
“Not about that. Shepard usually makes rounds to speak with the crew after missions. I have calculated her average time between debrief and first visit to be thirty-eight minutes, though that number is lower when she starts on a deck closer to her cabin and significantly higher if Garrus follows her after the debrief.”
“She’s probably just caught up with something. Talking to Anderson or polishing her armor.”
“Shepard does not polish her armor and she disconnected the vid-link to Anderson forty-three minutes ago.”
“EDI, she had a rough mission. We all did. She’s probably drinking a beer in the shower.”
“Is this a mourning custom I am unaware of?”
“More like a stress custom. A ‘I want my mommy and hate my life’ custom.”
“She has been under considerable stress. My readings from her armor’s metabolic scans suggest she is under more stress than she has experienced in the past. I have records dating back to the start of her service and can find no record of her stress levels being this high, including several battles on Tuchanka and her initial resurrection with Cerberus.”
“...”
“I do not currently have records from the minutes leading up to her death, but I can project that if the current trend were to continue much longer, they may be comparable.”
“You’re saying she almost as stressed out by this war as she was by dying?”
“...It has been almost eighty-three minutes since the debrief.”
***
Garrus calibrated the gun. Focusing on the minute helped him disconnect from the monumental. A way of picking out a single target from a cramped battlefield. When the canons failed him, his rifle never did; he cleaned it by hand and found himself calmed by the act, or by knowing he had a reliable gun ready for whatever came next.
Tali paced. Muttered and cursed in her language. Sang, occasionally, after good missions, more rare all the time. She contacted the fleet, caught up on what she fought for. Reached out to connect, without ever feeling touch.
Liara worked. Dug into the past, followed threads to the future, turned the forgotten into the fundamental. She broke the galaxy into parts, examined, catalogued, and considered each piece’s place in the whole.
Vega exercised, bled the worry and fear and adrenaline from his body, pushed past when he should stop, picked fights with Cortez until the other man gave in and real blood was had, until his muscles sang with exhaustion and the promise of later, dreamless sleep.
Ashley stowed her gear. Cleaned her weapons. And read the books left in the lounge, read first edition, real paper-pages books, lost herself in stories of what had been and what could have been, so she did not have to focus on what actually was.
Javik stared into the waters and saw his people destroyed, knew vengeance to be the weakest of the avatars.
***
Shepard made her rounds two hours after the debrief and the ship breathed a sigh of relief, relaxed into her like a pet finally scratched just so. The crew offered what scraps of comfort they had found, but found themselves comforted instead.
***
He didn’t have EDI’s processing power, but Garrus was fairly adept at predicting and charting Shepard’s movements. He found her curled on her side in her cabin, the blankets of the bed undisturbed. She had taken to keeping her cabin hot for a human, in order to make it more comfortable for him. He didn’t mind; he enjoyed the sight of her in just her lace and never had much use for blankets, anyhow.
Her eyes were red and he didn’t need the vids to clue him in to what that meant. He couldn’t easily remember the last time he saw her cry-- after Horizon, years past, perhaps.
He sat beside her on the bed, stroked claws through her fine, silken hair when she shifted enough to use his thigh for a pillow. The galaxy had been cruel to its savior, left her maltreated and abused. Killed her, sent her on suicide missions, saw her live long enough find herself a villain. Held her up as a war criminal and in the same breath begged miracles of her. Stole friends and family alike with attention only to how dearly they would be missed.
He had picked a warrior for his woman and only regretted the circumstances that made her into the creature he adored.
He bent his head and pressed his mouth to her temple, wuffed a breath against her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. A cold question to some, but an easy one between them-- there was always so much that could destroy them, picking out the specific target blind from a battlefield full was near impossible.
“I failed them,” she rasped, voice hollow with defeat. He could see it in her, the way it sat wrong and grotesque, as if she were wearing his armor.
He combed her hair back from her face, tilted his head up to look at her fish. “I’ve never known you to fail at something you set your mind to something, Shepard.”
She followed his gaze, calmed by the serenity offered by the fish. There were no Fish Reapers, no Fish Councils, no Fish Politics, just flakes of food and easy, warm currents. “There’s an entire world burning.”
“Several,” he agreed. “And Thessia would had burned no matter what we did. You couldn’t have saved them.”
“...Getting that data may have salvaged something. Made the sacrifice worth it,” she protested. “Made it mean something.”
“War’s not over,” he said, looking down at her. He waited, jostled his leg until she finally looked up at him. “They didn’t win the war, Shepard, just a battle.”
He held her gaze until he saw it click right in her head, saw fire flash again beneath her scars.
***
Her footsteps were muted when she came onto the bridge; stocking feet did not make much sound. Despite the artificial system of the Normandy and crisis time zones making short use of the 30 hour cycle, Shepard found the lulls of the crew to be her personal midnights. In the early hours of the swing shifts, people spoke softer, walked quietly, yawned, and worked inside the hush.
Joker flicked her a glance when she leaned against his chair, but otherwise ignored her in favor of navigating, helping EDI run diagnostics. Shepard let her eyes fall half closed, their banter holding her close, as comforting as Garrus’s breath in his chest as he slept.
“Hey, Commander,” Joker said, startled her from her reverie. “You drooling on my chair? This is real leather, you know? Well, sort of, I think it’s actually from some Asari sheep thing, not really a cow, but my point still stands.”
She cracked a smile, reached down to flick his hat slightly off kilter. “Just wondering when you were going to turn off the screensaver.”
“Hah, like you’d know the difference,” he said, settling back in his chair like a king in his throne.
“Where are we?” she asked, watching the readings, trying to sight a location.
“Exodus Cluster. Just passing through on our way.” His hands suddenly became a fury of motion, a maestro warming up his orchestra. The Normandy sang in response, ran through opening chords as her engines kicked into a different gear. The sound resonated deep in Shepard, sang to the very core of her. She felt the engines in her spine, waking her soul, spreading strength through tired limbs.
“Here, watch this.”
The Normandy hummed beneath them, shifted course. Shepard leaned into the forces, steadied herself on Joker’s chair as the ship swung round to the planet nearby, sped closer until shock stole her breath. For a moment, they were in orbit around Earth, then she saw Tyr’s coordinates flash across Joker’s screen and her heart began to beat again.
Joker took the Normandy close, let her flirt with Tyr’s gravity, slingshot her around the curve until Asgard dawned upon them all. Joker’s eyes narrowed against the glare, flare-shields dimming the dash, but it did nothing to diminish the view-- they chased the dawn ruthlessly, Normandy overtaking her in a rosy tipped race. She plunged relentlessly on, crashed through dusk, and before darkness could fall, Tyr lit up beneath them, each fleck of light a life, a hundred lives, and Shepard couldn’t breathe, watching the God of Victory come alive below them, her ship a herald to the birth.
***
EDI rode the elevator with her. “Shepard, I have a question.”
Shepard’s lips twitched at the familiar statement, remembered the echo of it earlier. “Go ahead, EDI.”
“It is more of an observation, really. You are not wearing shoes.” EDI looked pointedly between their feet, Shepard’s in military issue socks, EDI’s turned out with neat heels.
“I don’t always wear shoes, EDI,” she pointed out. “Occasionally, I take off my boots.”
“But rarely when you are outside of your cabin,” EDI countered. “In fact, I only have one record of you not wearing footwear outside your cabin and that was in the main battery, when you and Officer V--”
“Ah--” Shepard interrupted, holding up a hand. She had avoided the topic of her love life for the most part, when it came to EDI. She wanted to continue that happy trend. “Call it a small rebellion, EDI. A childish reaction to too much stress. I didn’t want to deal with anything else today.”
“So you did not wear your boots onto the bridge?” EDI’s brow furrowed as she tried to follow Shepard’s reasoning.
Shepard stepped out of the elevator, smiled lopsidedly. “No one has to save the galaxy in their socks, EDI.”
“I don’t believe I see the connection, Shepard,” EDI protested.
Shepard shrugged. “It’s like pulling the blankets over your head because you’re scared of monsters in the closet.”
EDI’s eyes lit up as understanding dawned. “Oh! It is a psychological coping reaction.”
Shepard smiled and nodded, waving the AI off. She turned down the hall, followed it around to find herself outside Liara’s quarters.
The door opened to reveal an empty antechamber. Past that, six pairs feet, blue, booted, and human. Liara lay on her bed, flanked by Ashley and Tali, shoulder to shoulder, hands clasped. They lifted their heads when she entered, let them fall back again, three odd sisters united by their lost worlds.
“Hey, Shepard,” Ashley said, shifting over, opening a space between her and Liara. “We’re telling stories about home.”
Shepard stared at the three women, then crawled onto the bed between them, caught Liara’s hand in her own, and laid her head down.