Chapter Text
Military life hadn't allowed Shepard to develop a taste for long showers. But then, she isn't military anymore. The thought puts a bitter twist on her mouth.
The burst of energy, mostly driven by annoyance, has faded, and Shepard leans against the shower wall. She closes her eyes against the unpleasant angle of the spray of the water and stands there. Shepard isn't sure how much time passes, not doing anything but feeling the rivulets of water down her body. She wonders if they moved differently now, new paths making way for new scars.
All of her scars were gone. Cerberus had instead given her a fine webbing of glowing cracks across her face. All of her tattoos were gone. She hadn't been this blank since… years, actually, Shepard realizes. She got her first tattoo when she was 13 - an initiation. She had scars for as long as she could remember, across her knees and one little one on her forearm. Time in the Marines had helped her collect more of both.
When she had first “woken up,” it took her a couple seconds to recognize herself. She has adjusted to her reflection, but now in battle she hardly recognizes herself. They had given her heavy skin weaves, enhanced her bones; she is stronger, less fragile than she used to be. In her old body. Her biotics are more powerful, too. No reason to use an old amp in a new body. She is more aggressive that she used to be, throwing herself out into the fray rather than picking enemies off from a distance. Shepard hopes it makes Miranda second-guess herself.
It has made Shepard second-guess herself. She had a seven minute mile. She could do 48 push-ups and 73 sit-ups in two minutes each. After a standard Warp, it took 2.1 seconds for her biotics to recharge. She could go four hours without food before it affected her mood, and eighteen before it affected her head. She used to know her body inside and out. Now she has no idea what her limits are. Shepard tried to spend a free afternoon in the shuttle bay exercising, but she got called up to Miranda’s office for some emergency or other before she managed to exhaust herself. It had been long enough to know her old limits didn't apply.
Shepard wonders how far she could push herself. If the others around her would let her, or hold her back in hopes of helping her. She doesn't want Cerberus’ help; look at where it's gotten her so far.
Shepard thinks morbidly that this is, at least, proof that Miranda wasn't as good as she thought she was. Or maybe this always lurked in the background, a dark spirit further darkening corners, and the Illusive Man insisted it be brought along. Demons of the past; demands of neurobiology. An overhead window of stars so she could wake up and stare into her mortality.
Shepard wipes water off her face and crouched down to the floor. She tilts her head some, trying to find the ideal angle to leave her eyes open. She finds it. Shepard wriggles her toes and circles back to the big question Kaiden had prompted despite her best efforts. What was the difference between Shepard and an AI with Shepard’s body and Shepard’s thoughts and Shepard’s memories?
Did it matter?
Shepard closes her eyes again and drifts off into the clutching, greedy press of space.
When she emerges from the bathroom, pruned and chilled, her terminal is lit up with new messages already. The music, for once, is off.
Shepard lays back onto her bed and stares up into space above her. Intellectually, she knows she had fallen unconscious relatively quickly, but every second is drawn out when you're dying, and she remembers the long moments of the crush of the vacuum on her body. Maybe that was why the Illusive Man included this view, she muses. To remind her of the crushing emptiness of space. To remind her of what awaited them. She could handle that, Shepard thinks. She could control that.