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If there’s one thing John Shepard has always been able to do well, it’s take a punch.
A bloodied knuckle cracks across his cheek, and he rolls with the blow, the impact taking him off his feet. The force of his skull bouncing off the solid deck of the ship’s cargo bay stuns him momentarily, and in that pause his opponent finds their in, following him to the ground. One armored knee grinds into his left arm where it lies pinned at his side; the other lands squarely on his chest, cutting off his pained hiss as the air is pushed from his lungs. Blow after blow from a heavy fist connects with his face until instinct finally kicks in and he throws up a clumsy semblance of a block half a second too late.
The ship lurches forward, unbalancing his assailant, and for a too-slow moment their fight is abandoned as they both roll precariously down the ramp toward the high-rise towers of the Citadel flashing past them below.
He scrabbles for purchase, but the ramp floor wasn’t designed for anything to catch, and it isn’t until the very last second, with legs dangling above certain death, that his fingers hook the indent of a tire track. Fire shoots up his left arm when he tries to pull himself back to relative safety and there’s nothing under his feet to give him leverage, so for a moment he just hangs, catching his breath through the sharp twinge of an unhappy rib, and waits.
He doesn’t need visual confirmation to know his opponent is in a similar position; the other man’s labored grunts tell him enough.
It’s unsurprising, albeit a little disappointing, that they’ve both survived. He can count on one hand the number of times the plan hasn’t gone completely to hell, so this would almost be funny if he weren’t, well.
Boots stomp down the ramp and then his crew is there, sliding to the rescue.
It’s not his arms they’re reaching for, though, and when he sees something like sympathy in the almost familiar brown eyes of Kaidan Alenko, that realization lands like lead in his gut.
He isn’t dumb; he’s known the score with Maya Brooks from the beginning. You don’t spend as long as he has in this line of work without getting a feel for which of your colleagues would sell you to the highest bidder for a hot cup of coffee. Still, it smarts a bit to see her shrewd, skittish gaze from the shadows of the cargo bay and know by the downturn of her mouth that she’s written both the mission and him off as a lost cause.
His adversary wriggles as he’s hauled off the ledge, and that pulls his attention. Looking at him is like looking in a mirror of what his own life should’ve been, and John knows without needing to ask that they share everything from a faded scar crossing a thick left eyebrow to the crooked pinky toe broken in youth that never healed quite right. He knows things that even the Cerberus techs who created him wouldn’t, because he was designed to be the same. Only better. Reflexes faster, bones stronger, because the real thing was apparently so indispensable to the Cerberus mission that even a hangnail could throw the entire thing.
The two are identical in damn near every way, finding themselves in equally precarious situations at present, and yet the Kaidan from memories that aren’t his and a man he knows only from a file rush to save the inferior original without sparing him much more than a passing glance.
That feeling of being almost, but not quite, is acid in his veins, burning its way through his system and pooling in his throat until its venom has nowhere to go but out.
“Look at you,” he sneers. “What makes you so damn special? Why you and not me?”
The real Shepard doesn’t answer, chest heaving as he catches his breath from down on his knees, but he does turn a look over his shoulder, and his expression is smug. He takes Kaidan’s extended hand, and doesn’t let go right away after he’s been pulled to his feet.
“What about the clone?” Kaidan asks.
Well, shit, he thinks. If he’s lucky, this’ll end with a bullet to the brain. Easy, clean-ish, what he would do if their places were reversed. But luck has almost famously been on any other side than his, so he spends the next longest 20-seconds of his life trying to mentally prepare for the inevitable boot to the face that sends him careening down to ruin someone’s day on the surface of the Citadel.
He was designed with too much hero-complex arrogance to have considered suicide organically on his own, but in this moment, with nothing to lose and no one to care either way, he finds the idea easier to swallow than he would’ve imagined.
Real Shepard cocks his head, considers.
He sees the calculation being done; knows the question being tossed around.
What do you do with two John Shepards?
He searches the familiar lines of his own face; braces for malice from this parallel judge and executioner. Instead, he finds genuine hesitation—a slow, considered weight—and the sheer fairness of it turns his hatred into a white-hot blaze.
Without warning, Real Shepard crouches down to him and extends a hand.
“Here,” he urges. “Take my hand.”
“And then?”
“And then you live.”
As if whatever comes after this could even qualify. Cerberus has sunk too much into this pet project to let him go, and the Alliance barely tolerates the one Shepard they know about as is. No, he thinks, and the freedom in making this one choice for himself fills him with a terrible kind of relief.
“For what?” He snarls back.
And then he lets go.
~
When John Shepard wakes, it’s to a feather-light touch fluttering across his cheek and an ache in his chest. He’s back in his bed, only it’s softer than he remembers. That touch breezes over his face again, but this time it’s followed by a sharp sting. His eyes fly open to a clinical white light directly overhead, and he squints into the blinding glow. Instinctively, his hands lift to defend himself, but handcuffs on both sides bite into his wrists when he pulls.
“Easy,” a feminine voice chastises, “You’re going to make your injuries worse.”
“Liara?” He blinks a few more times, and the fuzzy blue outline of the familiar Asari takes shape.
Why would Liara be anywhere near a Cerberus outpost? He thinks thickly, brow furrowing in confusion. Unless-
“Kaidan saved your life, and Commander Shepard had you brought to the med bay so your injuries could be treated while he figured out what to do with you.”
Ah, fuck.
“Should’ve just let me die,” he croaks.
There’s a pause that tells him Liara agrees, but she says simply, “That’s not Shepard’s way.”
When his eyes finally function, he takes stock. He is, in fact, in the med bay. His armor has been removed along with his shirt, exposing a torso wrapped in gauze and covered in mottled purple bruising. Liara is perched on a rolling stool beside the bed he’s been confined to, laser-focused on the antiseptic swab she’s rolling gently over his cheekbone. His bed sits facing a wall of windows, beyond which a variety of familiar faces with expressions ranging from openly curious to stern sit gathered around a big table beside the galley.
The feeling of being a science experiment isn’t new to him, so he watches them back from his side of the glass like an animal in a zoo, meeting each pair of eyes with practiced neutrality. He saves his own gaze for last, and there’s something complicated in the blue eyes that look back at him, but it disappears before he can identify it. The commander says something that quiets the group, and then he’s standing, pushing in his chair. He types in a code that opens the med bay door with a soft mechanical hiss and then he's there.
Without a word, Liara rises. She reaches a hand out as if to touch his arm, but catches herself and pulls it back before she exits.
Commander Shepard is silent, arms crossed over his broad chest. Even though he’s dressed casually now, his demeanor exudes quiet confidence.
It had been strange enough facing off against himself in a fight, but whatever is happening here now, without the adrenaline-fueled focus of the mission at hand, is even more surreal. The silence between them grows until it’s gnawing at him from the inside and forcing him to speak.
“It didn’t make sense to let me live.”
The corner of the commander’s mouth twitches. “Call it professional courtesy.”
John’s tone is matter-of-fact. “Cerberus will come after you, and they won’t give up until they find me.”
“I have no doubt about that.” He shrugs as if this is both an obvious fact and of little consequence.
“So you’re going to kill me yourself.”
The commander snorts. “I’ve never been in the habit of making life easier for Cerberus, and I’m not about to start now. Maybe you should consider switching sides.”
Now it’s John’s turn to be incredulous. “Is your Alliance that much better? You’re just as much of a pawn as I am; you just hide it under the charade of self-righteous morality you call justice.”
John knows he’s hit a nerve when Shepard’s jaw flexes. He has the same tell.
When he speaks again, his voice is more brusque than before. “You’ll be confined to this room until a decision has been made. Meals will be brought to you. Don’t try anything or I’ll see to it that you’re ejected onto whatever's left of the nearest Batarian prison colony.” He smirks outright this time. “I hear they’re big fans of ours.”
He turns to leave.
“In another life,” John stops him, just before the door opens, “I could’ve been you.”
Commander Shepard looks at him, and something that feels like pity flashes across his features, there and gone in the space of a breath. “No, you couldn’t.”
~
The next several days pass slowly, and he finds himself looking forward to meal times more for the company now than as a marker of the passage of time. In the beginning, breakfast, lunch, and dinner are the only constants, delivered by crew members he doesn't recognize. They never speak to him, though whether that's due to some residual deference for the face he wears or direct orders, he can't be sure. Before long, though, nervous officers are replaced with the figures from his memory who linger at the door to make idle small talk or bring two plates and pepper him with questions. The cuffs come off after the first few days, and at some point after that, a table with one, and then two chairs appears. His crew’s faces live in his mind with such unsettling precision he could easily mistake their past for his own, were it not for the quiet hesitation in every look they give him.
Liara is the first to break the false Shepard embargo. Her natural curiosity wars with what he can only describe as frustration, as if his very existence is both a puzzle she needs to figure out and something she should’ve already known. He gets the feeling there’s something more there, but she doesn’t offer, and he doesn’t ask.
Mostly, he just observes. The commander doesn’t visit again, but his presence is impossible to miss. He watches this unexpected group of misfits gather for meals sometimes, sees the easy way they laugh with each other, and it makes something tighten in his chest. His own crew over the last year had been made up of a rotating cast of mediocre operatives with names he hadn’t concerned himself with learning. Those relationships, if they could even be called that, were built on a healthy amount of fear that isn’t present on the Normandy. Commander Shepard appears to make himself available to everyone, but from the way he and Alenko orbit each other, it’s clear he has a favorite. John envies the easy connection between them that belies the years of shared history he’s not sure he has with anyone.
After a week, there’s only one person left who hasn’t come to the med bay.
For some reason, he has fewer memories of Kaidan than of anyone else. He remembers him in fragments too broken not to be caused by Cerberus interference, but he doesn’t know why they would’ve bothered. He catches himself staring on more than one occasion, trying to shape those lost memories back into existence through force of will alone. Sometimes he can feel their hazy tendrils curling at the edge of his awareness, but the more he concentrates on the specifics, the faster they seem to drift away like smoke. Almost as often, he looks at Kaidan to find that thoughtful gaze already fixed on him.
Two weeks into his sentence and with no clear end in sight, he comes out of the cramped emergency wash station he’s been using as a shower to find Major Alenko sitting at his table with two plates in front of him. He approaches slowly, swallowing down his surprise as he reties the drawstring of the sweatpants sitting low on his waist.
“You pick the short straw this time?”
Kaidan laughs, and the sound slides between John’s ribs.
“Actually, I volunteered.”
“Then I hope I don’t disappoint,” he jokes, sliding into the other chair.
Conversation between them is easy while they eat until eventually Kaidan lowers his fork.
“I wasn’t going to talk to you,” he confesses.
“What convinced you?”
“Shepard thought I should.”
John considers that, chews slowly, swallows. “Your Shepard is waiting for me to join the Alliance.”
When Kaidan’s earnest eyes search his face, John fights the urge to look away. “What’s the alternative?”
He doesn’t have an easy answer for that, so they return to their plates in silence until Kaidan takes his leave.
After that, they see each other once a week. Sometimes they have dinner, but usually they play cards.
“You and the commander are close.” He observes one afternoon when Kaidan stops in with his usual deck.
If Kaidan is surprised by the observation, he doesn’t show it. “Yes.”
A long minute passes, with the only sound between them the shuffling of the cards.
“Do you think we would’ve been that close?”
He thinks he may have caught him off guard this time because his russet eyes are wide when they dart up to John’s face and then back down at his cards just as quickly. Kaidan pulls the king of hearts from his hand and places it face up between them before he answers.
“I’m not sure a universe exists where we aren’t.”
John absorbs this but offers no response. “Liara said you were the one who saved me.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I’ve already watched you die once,” Kaidan’s voice is quiet. “I couldn’t do it again.”
~
The loosening of his leash starts small, first with him being transferred to crew quarters when space is needed in the med bay, and then from there, the assigning of tasks. Nothing major, and nothing the mechanical dog on board couldn’t also do, but things to be responsible for nonetheless. A chair is saved for him at dinners, where Joker suggests alternative names that he's quick to shoot down. They settle on John, and it's a fair enough compromise between who he was created to be and who he's becoming that it sticks.
He’s not sure when it happens, but he knows Shepard sees the truth on his face when he eventually stands before him again after a full month on board the Normandy. Those ice-chip eyes search his face in silence for a full minute. John doesn't know what the Commander is searching for, but he must find it because Shepard nods, then extends a calloused hand.
Somewhere along the way, these people, this ship, have grown on him, even if he knows it can only ever be temporary. For now, he finds himself happy to taste-test a new recipe for Vega, or argue rifle specs with Garrus.
What was taken from him stays gone. Those memories of people and places that weren't ever his follow him like a shadow; always present at the edges of his vision but never quite close enough to touch. In the quiet gaps between moments when Kaidan and Shepard think no one is looking, the ache for a life he'll never have settles into his chest like lead, heavy and inescapable.
This ship won’t ever be his home, not really, but it’s the closest thing he’s ever had, and for now, that’s enough.