Chapter Text
"I'm sorry to see you go, Garrus," I say, as we step out of the Normandy's airlock and onto the docking platform. "You sure you want to go back to C-Sec? I know you weren't happy there."
"No," he says. "But it's the best way forward." Except he doesn't actually say forward – the word he uses would more directly translate to inward, as usual for turians. The reason I know that is because I have my translator turned off.
I've been learning Audan – the most common turian language – for years. After months of working alongside Garrus, I'm finally fluent to the point that I don't need the translator at all, only checking it when I think I've missed something. He figured out halfway through his tour on the Normandy, and since then, we've been practicing on purpose, him quizzing me with metaphors and literary allusions. It helped a lot.
The only problem is, I am physically incapable of replying in the same language. The human vocal system just isn't meant for Audan sounds. I can hear it, read it, and write it, but if I try to speak it, I sound like a dying cat. I'm not intelligible for more than a word at a time, and that's as good as I'm ever going to get. Sometimes, being human sucks.
"So, how much paperwork do you expect to write before you give up?" I ask, grinning at him.
"Hopefully not much," he says, flicking his mandibles. "You know how many offers I've gotten. I just need to make sure I'm in good standing with C-Sec before I scram." We step off the docking platform into a waiting skycar. Its door seals around us before it shoots us off toward the Presidium. "If I could do my Spectre training with you, I would in a heartbeat."
"I would take you in a heartbeat. The Alliance just won't let me." I sigh, leaning into the soft seat. It's a little dirty – maintenance must still be backed up after the Battle of the Citadel. "They spent a lot of time and money on their first human Spectre. They won't stand for me working with a turian when I could be cranking out number two. No time for Reapers either. Idiots."
"You sure you don't want to just leave?" Garrus asks. "I know you've been in the Alliance all your life, but it's easy for Spectres to change sponsorship. Your oaths are to the Council and the galaxy, not to them."
"I know the Alliance technically can't hold me, but I'd rather not piss off the people who pay for my spaceship," I say, rolling my eyes. "Not many human groups can pony up for a Spectre's ops budget – not unless I want to work for Cerberus."
Garrus laughs. As if. "You don't have to work with the humans. After all, you've got a whole galaxy's worth of brass on your chest. Any nation would gladly buy you a new spaceship." He inclines his head. "Might even have decent dextro rations on it."
"It might... but, Garrus, it'd be a black eye to the whole human species if the first human Spectre decided to turn coat. I can't do it."
He nods. "I understand, but if you can't do anything to prepare for the Reapers..."
"Then the politics will cease to matter." I sigh, rubbing my forehead. "Maybe in a year, if they haven't eased off by then. Or after another Spectre goes through." I shoot him a look. "You trying to claim me for the Hierarchy? Because I gotta say, I don't envy your paperwork."
"C-Sec's attitude toward paperwork and regulations is all asari." He does the strange head-tilt-mandible-flick thing that translates as a turian smirk. "Saren used to be one of the most popular turians alive, remember? Most of us love Spectres. It's dad who's the weirdo."
The skycar sets down at the station on the Presidium. I look out at the crowd – it's as bustling as ever, and seeded with reporters, paparazzi, and everyone else I'd rather not talk to. I quirk a smile. "Helmets on," I order.
Before the skycar's door opens, we're both hidden from the world behind heavy armor. Sure, it's a little uncomfortable, but it'll also save us a lot of grief. They won't see us – and they definitely won't hear our conversation, now transmitted over encrypted audio link.
"Who do you plan to work with, once you leave C-Sec?" I ask.
"Not sure which yet – Blackwatch, the special ops branch, is more my style, but I hear the Intelligence Service is going to be handling the Reaper investigation." He lowers his head. "Also, my sister works for Blackwatch."
I snort. Garrus can be a bit intimidated by his sister. I don't get it – not like she's ever helped take down a Reaper. "I heard the same thing about the IS," I say. "They wanted to talk to me, actually, but the Alliance said no. Bet they think it'll look bad, if they don't take me seriously but the aliens do."
He nods. "I'm sure that conversation would have ended with a job offer..."
"Already made my choice." I raise an eyebrow, though he can't see it. "Didn't the Hierarchy piss you off lately? You never did tell me what that was about."
"Right. That. I probably shouldn't tell you, but I guess it's over, so..." Garrus huffs, a burst of static over the line. "Do you know what reclamation is?"
"Garrus, you know how many turian military dramas I read! Of course I do."
Reclamation is one of the Hierarchy's oldest living traditions, one that lasted all the way from the classical period to the Krogan Rebellions to the present day. Turians believe that the history and the valor of a family name or military unit is a living thing – its spirit, they call it. To stop that spirit from being extinguished when a big name ends up on the wrong side of a war, they created reclamation. If you defeat an enemy in just and honorable battle, you win their name and everything that goes with it. Spirit, history, valor – not to mention the material inheritance.
"You... tried to claim the Arterius name?" I ask. It's certainly old enough to be worth it.
Garrus huffs, a burst of static over the line. "No. Actually, I nominated you."
"Oh," I say, blinking. "Oh, wow." I pause midstep, just to process it – that Garrus tried to walk me straight into one of those turian dramas. Not that my life hasn't been wild enough, but I'm no turian. I never expected this. "And you didn't tell me?"
"It's not the done thing," Garrus says, shifting from foot to foot. "The submissions are meant to be private. It just doesn't matter now."
"They said no?"
"Not technically. They're waiting a year in case any blood descendants show up... which, practically speaking, means no. I'm sure he had a platoon's worth of bastard children. But none will come with more valor than you, and they know that." He turns back toward C-Sec headquarters, and starts walking. "They're going to wait the year then let the name go extinct."
"Because I'm human?" I ask.
"Far as I can see. Aliens have won reclamation before, but apparently you're a bridge too far." He shakes his head – a human mannerism, one I know he picked up from me. "Traditionalists," he mutters. "Ugh. At least it's not over yet." He turns his helmet back toward me. "Where are you off to next?"
"The Alliance is sending us to hunt geth in the Terminus."
"That sounds pointless," Garrus says.
"Yeah, but it gets Ash and the others some Spectre hours, which is what they really care about." I shake my head. "You'd think if I'm this famous, some people might actually listen to me."
We stroll through the door to the C-Sec administrative headquarters – a small office, mostly meant for Council business, but then I'm a Spectre. My business is Council business.
Executor Pallin is out, but his secretary is in – and he has quite a queue of people waiting for him. We could probably skip to the front, with our new fame... but neither of us is that kind of jerk. We get in line with the rest.
"Oh, no," Garrus deadpans, leaning closer to me, his hand naturally slipping into mine. "You're no toadying politician. Who'd pay attention to you?"
I squeeze his hand and nod, and let him figure out that I'm grinning. I take a deep breath. The contact is comforting. It feels good – especially knowing that we'll be parting ways here.
We're not dating, but we could be. We have that kind of closeness between us. I've never dated an alien before, and I don't think he has either, but we've spent so much time together... I don't think it really matters, to either of us. Not that we've actually talked about it. God forbid we communicate. But I don't think I'm reading him wrong.
The problem is that we're separating. He's going back to C-Sec, I'm returning to my Spectre duties. We won't see each other again for, potentially, months. I'm scared to start something now, and I think he is, too. Long distance is hard. We don't know if we'll stay close when we're so far apart. And we both live dangerous lives – what happens if one of us doesn't come back from a mission?
We lose ourselves in simple, mundane conversation, as the line slowly proceeds forward.
"And you are?" interrupts the secretary, looking crossly at us.
Oh, right. Our helmets are still on. We take them off as Garrus steps up to the desk. "Inspector Garrus Vakarian and Spectre Alyssa Shepard," he says. "We're here to do the paperwork for my return from Spectre leave."
The secretary's eyes widen before darting from him, to me, to him, then back to me again. For a moment, I think he's actually going to faint.
~~
I tumble and writhe in open space over Alchera. My suit is breached, my oxygen dwindling. My ship is going down in pieces around me. And there is no backup.
I'm dead.
It's not a surprise, not really. I'm a soldier. I've been preparing to die for a long time. I imagine it every time I plan out a mission, and I've had more close shaves than I can count. But this is different. I have a mission, to defend the galaxy from the Reapers – and I wasn't even working on it. My last days, and I spent them wasting time in the Terminus. I should have taken Garrus's advice and gotten out.
Garrus. I laugh – just a single short peal, all the air I have left. I miss him. And I hope it doesn't break him when he finds out.
My hand is already starting to freeze, but I can move it far enough to trigger my suit's thrusters, pointing me up to look at the stars. And the attacking ship, still unidentified, its engines beginning to fire. It's not a Reaper, nothing like Sovereign. I don't know what it is – it's massive, but with a strange, craggy, almost organic-looking silhouette.
And as I watch it get away, I feel rage build up inside of me. My head runs through my equipment and my options again, even though I know I have none. My mission was left undone, and maybe the whole galaxy will suffer for it. I'm not done, and if there were any price I could pay, anything at all—
~~
I wake up with a jolt, like I've been shot with a practice round. My eyes snap open, only to fixate on a gigantic device hanging right in front of my face – some strange glass-and-metal contraption. I only just catch sight of the last glimmers of a strange amorphous light within before the machine goes dark, its rotors whining as they slow down and then stop.
"You inserted her?" asks a frantic, desperate voice from above me. A turian woman, untranslated. "What are you thinking! We're going to lose her!"
I try to move, to look around. I can't get very far – I'm tightly bound to what seems to be an operating table, cocooned in noisy medical equipment, so surrounded by sensors and wires and gadgets that I can scarcely see the shiny white ceiling above. A turian woman's head peeks out from behind an alien gizmo I don't recognize – the one who'd spoken, I thought. I catch sight of another turian, this one a man, just before he speaks.
"I just barely exposed her, Chief!" he said. "500 milliseconds, like we agreed. She went right in! Like she's a turian!"
"Hello?" I try to ask – except that's not what comes out. Instead, I make a strange quiet squeaking sound, utterly unrecognizable. Something is very wrong with my throat. Or my brain. But the doctors don't seem to notice.
"But she's not a turian!" says the other doctor. "Her biotic imprint shouldn't be able to insert, not until we've modified the body – and we haven't even started on that yet!"
I try again, and get the same squeak. This is... not good. But I wouldn't be a Spectre if I weren't cool under pressure. I can still make some sounds. Maybe it's brain damage. Maybe it's worse, or stranger. My mouth and my tongue and my throat feel wrong – I don't know how. But I can still explore them, making all sorts of weird, alien noises while I search for ones I can use.
"She did," says the man nervously. "Look at these charts – she's not just inserted, she's awake!"
Yes! I nod, and the medical equipment jostles around me.
"What?" the woman says, clearly horrified. "But that's— Sedate her! Now! We don't know what damage this could be doing to her!"
"Yes, Chief!" the man says, pushing a button on a control panel. Liquid shoots through a tube, and I can already feel myself start to drift away.
"Good," the woman says, before leaning down to look at me. We make eye contact, and she draws back in shock. "Do you... see me?" the woman asks.
I nod again. "Hhhello," I manage to rasp, just as the world dissolves into darkness.
~~
"Commander Shepard," someone says, and I startle into wakefulness. The voice belongs to a turian woman – it might be the same one as before, but she's translated into English this time. "Can you understand me?"
"Yyessss," I say, as I open my eyes to, probably, the same operating theater. Most of the equipment has been cleared away, leaving just the basics – the turian version of a vital signs monitor. The two doctors from yesterday are standing overhead – why am I being tended by turian doctors, anyway?
"How are you feeling? Are you all right?"
I take a moment to self-assess. My body feels intact. It feels good – nothing hurts at all, aside from my rather hoarse throat. But it sure doesn't feel how I left it. "I fffeel fine, but... ssstrange," I say. "What happened?"
"How much do you remember?" asks the woman.
"I woke up here... before," I say. "You both were here, and a big machine, shutting down. You were fffrantic. Something had gone wrong. You didn't expect me to be awake. I caught your eyes before I was... sssedated." Evidently that was too much speaking for my strange throat. I erupt into a coughing fit – one that sounds more like Garrus's than mine.
"Right," she says, looking a bit nervous. "And before that?"
"Got ssspaced," I hiss. "Suit breach. Thought I wasss... dead."
"You were," she says gravely. "Your body fell to the planet's surface, and was almost completely destroyed. Even with our technology, we couldn't repair it. Instead, we chose to replace it, to bring you back in a new body. A different one."
"What do you mean... different? Why do I feel so ssstrange?"
She takes a deep breath, the wobbling of her mandibles betraying her nervousness. "We brought you back as a turian."
I just stare at her for a moment, repeating the words over in my head. A turian? How is that possible? No one has ever changed species before!
But then, I was dead – no doubt about that, I got spaced in hostile territory with no backup. If the turians found a way to bring me back after that? I can believe that they could turn me into one of them, too.
And, well. There are worse species for me to get turned into. At least I know the language.
"Show me," I finally rasp.
"Can you move?" she asks. "There's a standing mirror to your left side, if you can sit up."
Can I move? I try, stretching my limbs out – they definitely don't move like they used to, but they are moving, and I can feel them. When I wave my arms in front of my face, I can see that they have three-fingered hands and white plates.
Setting my hands down on the mattress beneath me, I lever myself upright, clumsily swinging my legs off the edge of the hospital bed. My eyes lock with the mirror, and for a moment, I can't process what I'm seeing.
A turian woman sits there, draped in a gown of thin white cloth that leaves her arms, her legs, and her cowl exposed, and leaves little of the rest to the imagination. It's more than I've ever seen of a turian before.
It takes an awkward, jerky wave of my hand before I can really process that it's me.
I take my time looking myself over. I have bone-white plates, with rough, ink-black skin between them. My face is a bit smoother and a bit more streamlined than Garrus's was. Typical for female turians, who aren't so rough and spiky as the men, though I do have a star-shaped face – the plates below my eyes stick out, like Saren and few other turians I've met. My eyes are a pale blue, and set in long, narrowed gaps between my plates. They're a striking shape that, to my still-human sensibilities, makes me look like I'm suspicious of something.
I'm not an expert on turian faces. Before now, the only one I've spent all that much time with is Garrus. But I, at least, don't think it's too bad.
I look over my shoulder, making eye contact with the turian doctor. "How did you do this?" I ask. My voice is getting smoother the more I talk, but a distinct accent remains. I already knew turians could produce all the sounds of English, but not very well. Evidently not without hurting our throats.
The male doctor looks eager to respond, but the female doctor quiets him. "Later," she says. "Once we're sure it worked."
"Right," says the male doctor. "We expect you'll need physical therapy to adapt to your unfamiliar body, and... we'll be asking you some questions, to make sure your mind is intact. Please do tell us if you notice either physical or mental ill effects."
"I understand."
The male doctor taps at his Omni-Tool. "If you could please name for me all the members of your mission squad during your hunt for Saren Arterius?" he asks.
"Garrus Vakarian," I say. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Urdnot Wrex, Liara T'Soni, Ashley Williams, and... killed in action on Virmire... Kaidan Alenko." I blink. Ashley was on the Normandy when we were shot down. "Wait, is Ash okay? Actually— is Joker okay? Is everyone okay?"
"Ashley Williams is okay. She's back in Spectre training, I believe with an asari. I'm not sure about the others..." He looks to the other doctor.
"Lieutenant Moreau also survived," she says. "But he's to be court-martialed for disobeying your order to abandon ship. I believe he's presently confined to an Alliance space station awaiting trial. Given your death, public opinion is against him. He might avoid prison, but it's unlikely they will ever allow him to fly again." Poor Joker. "I don't have the full casualty report memorized, but I know that twenty-two people went down with the Normandy – including you."
My mandibles are trembling – I reach up to feel them, shivering like twigs in the wind. "I see," I tell her, and though the words are in English they still sound distraught in an undeniably turian way. "Thank you for telling me."
"I apologize – we shouldn't have brought up such a raw subject that way." She sighs – a mannerism oddly similar between humans and turians – and changes the topic. "It's been three human months since you were attacked. In your system, today's date is December 18th of 2183."
"Three months," I echo. So much time lost, and who knows how much longer before I can get back to work.
"You'll need to head to another room for physical therapy," interrupts the male doctor. "Do you think you can walk, Commander?"
"I'm... not sure." Gripping the edge of the surgical table firmly, with hands significantly stronger than I'm used to, I slip over the side and try to get to my feet. I do. My legs and arms seem to move largely as I expect them to. But I'm keeping myself upright only by my grip on the bed, wobbling and shaking around – my sense of how to stay upright on two legs is clearly shot. "Balance... is a problem," I hiss.
"I understand," she says. "That's not surprising. Try this." She wheels a metal frame in front of me – one that looks suspiciously like a turian version of a walker. But this is no time for pride. I accept it, my hands tight against it, and take a few tentative, shuffling steps. "Good. Now follow us."
The two doctors head out into the hall, and I squeak slowly behind.
I... have no idea what I'm doing. This is quite honestly insane, and some part of me wants to scream or punch something or drop to the floor, sobbing. But... I think back to my last thoughts as a human. I have a goal, to defend the galaxy from the Reapers. And as a human, I never achieved it. I thought I failed, but now I'm back. I have a chance to complete my mission, and for me, that's enough.
Whatever comes next, I will stand and fight, as I always have.