Chapter Text
2187 - Citadel
Her first assessment, which is that she managed, against all odds, to survive, hinges mainly on the rapidly intensifying pain throughout her entire body and the relentless ringing in her ears that makes it impossible to hear herself think. Moving is out of the question: even the rise and fall of her chest is excruciating and she fears that blacking out again will seriously impede her goal of continuing to live. From her vantage point she can see the charred shell of her hardsuit, a red emergency light blinking just inside the collar beneath her chin, her bare arms, raw and red. Further down, the awkward angles of her legs disappear into a vast field of debris. Above her lies the expanse of space dotted with stars, still and silent behind a miraculously unbroken kinetic shield. She wants to close her eyes again: concentrating on anything too long lets the other thoughts slide effortlessly away, and she knows there is something she should be doing but cannot settle on.
Less reassuring, and a direct contradiction to her original assessment, is the presence of the dead woman sitting next to her.
"You're dying, Commander," says Ashley Williams. She is perched on a twisted section of metal a few feet away, dressed in her familiar Phoenix armor, eyes dark and face impassive, her voice crisp and clear despite the ringing. "You're bleeding out."
"Always with the good news," Shepard rasps, barely audible. Her throat feels like it has been rubbed with sandpaper, her lips parched and cracked. The smell of smoke and singed flesh burn in her nose. Familiar. Too familiar.
"You picked a decent place for it. Maybe you'll even catch a last glimpse of Earth if you time it right." She rises, crossing the room to gaze out into space. Her footsteps are silent and no debris shifts in her wake.
"Why are you here?"
Ashley turns. She is strangely solid against a background that is decidedly wavering under Shepard's unsteady gaze. Behind her, the stars are blurred, dancing streaks of light.
"I wonder how they'll remember you," she says. "Oh, they'll sing your name to the heavens at first. Savior of the galaxy. That will stick for a while. Everyone loves a hero."
"Why are you here?" she asks again. The familiar coppery tang of blood is on her lips.
"It's a face you recognize," replies Ashley simply. It doesn't answer the question, and Shepard opts for another.
"Where am I?"
"Where do you think you are?"
She is maddeningly calm.
"I don't..." Shepard probes gingerly at her memories, trying to banish the fog, but it's like chipping a statue out of a block of stone. Disconnected fragments rise to the top: a bright beam of light, shouts over the static of a radio, a mouth warm and hard and desperate against hers. Frustration builds inside of her; the betrayal of her own mind is harder to accept than the betrayal of her body.
"The Citadel," she says slowly. "But I don't...I don't remember how I got here. Why I'm here."
"The Citadel," confirms Ashley. "All alone, dying in a pile of rubble."
A distant alarm begins taking root. Something important she's forgotten.
"You have a few choices," says Ashley, facing the void again. A sliver of blue shimmers at the edge of the field. "You can close your eyes now, drift off and never wake up. Painless. More than you deserve. Or you can keep hanging on by your fingernails, bear the pain for a few more hours, and choke to death on your own blood."
The sliver of blue is growing: Earth rising on the Citadel. She can't tear her eyes away. A funny feeling suddenly fills her throat. A familiarity she can't place.
"No one will find your body," Ashley says. "No one will bring you back this time."
And everything comes crashing down at once, a pile of disjointed memories hitting her like a tidal wave. Earth. Her mission. Her crew. Being tossed like a ragdoll across the room by the force of the explosion. The crucible. Red light so intense she can see it through her eyelids, a sound like the end of the world, fire and heat and pain and pain and pain...
"What happened?" she demands. "Did we win?"
"I don't know any more than you do."
She tries to raise her suddenly leaden right arm, gasping at the fresh onslaught of pain that floods her body. It falls against her chest, still short of its goal, and she steels herself for another attempt, drawing breath after painful breath.
"Why bother? You aren't going to get any answers. You're just making it worse for yourself."
She won't panic. Can't. Her right hand makes it to her earpiece and the faint buzz of radio static joins the droning in her ear.
"Normandy, do you copy?"
Silence. Static. Anxiety gnaws a hole into her already frayed nerves.
"Normandy, this is Shepard. Do you copy?"
Nothing.
"Sucks to be abandoned, doesn't it?" says Ashley.
"Who the fuck are you?" snaps Shepard. "You aren't Ashley. Ashley was goddamn helpful. So why are you wearing her face and what the fuck do you want from me?"
"Do you really want to die alone?"
"I won't die here." She switches channels and activates her earpiece again. "Does anybody read me? This is Shepard. I need a goddamn pickup before I bleed to death! Joker! Talk to me, damn you!"
"No one is coming for you."
"Can you please either help or shut up?"
Ashley strolls back to her and sits down again. Were her eyes always this dark- black and cold, full of contempt? Surely not. "Okay. You want help? Let's see. Are you even speaking into that radio, or do you just think you are?"
Shepard realizes with a jolt that she's right. When she concentrates on moving her lips, the taste of blood comes back full force. When she tries to speak, only a short, harsh sound makes it up her throat.
"You just don't have the energy. You've lost too much blood and your consciousness will be next. Death is a blast, right? Mine certainly was. Literally, thanks to you."
I'm sorry you died, she says- thinks- to Ashley. I made the decision I had to make. It was nothing personal.
"Tackling some of the guilt instead, huh? Okay, I'll play. That's bullshit. There was exactly one reason I died, and if I had known that sleeping with you would be a pass to getting out of there alive I'd have considered it."
He was the higher ranking officer. There wasn't time to go after you both. It's the same story Shepard has rehearsed over and over again, has reassured herself with on those long nights when she couldn't sleep and wondered endlessly whether she'd made the right choice, has reassured him with on those same sleepless nights. I couldn't risk the whole team. We'd already cleared the path between us and Alenko. Your position was an unknown.
"Bullshit," says Ashley again, softly. "Does that help you sleep at night? You went after him because you broke regs and let your feelings get in the way. Some commander you are. Was the sex worth it, at least? It would be really embarrassing if you went to all that trouble and then he, I don't know, publicly dumped and humiliated you in front of your crew. Oh wait."
Shepard's left arm remains stubbornly still where it lies at her side and her right is not interested in any further movement after its journey to reach her earpiece. Her breathing is getting shallow, the pain in her chest too intense to handle anything deeper. If she could just close her eyes for a second...
"Of course, now that you reconciled, I'm sure he'll take comfort in the few short weeks you spent together between your first death and this one. How many people can say their lover died twice? That'll be a great icebreaker for his support group. Assuming he's still alive, anyway, and that's pretty doubtful."
The sound doesn't quite make it, but Shepard's mouth shapes the worst word she knows and she summons just enough strength to jerk her upper body into a sitting position. A veil of black descends briefly over her brain and then retreats; she falls to the side with a small, agonized groan. Tears leak down her face, but she grits her teeth: her goal is so near...
Earth is fully visible now and Ashley stands silhouetted in its light, arms crossed over her armored chest, watching as if Shepard's suffering is mildly interesting.
"What do you think is going to happen if you're rescued?" she asks. "Look at yourself. You'll never be fit for service again. What good are you, Shepard, if not a soldier?"
"I don't know," huffs Shepard, the words coming rough and raw and accompanied by a wet cough. The blistered fingers of her right hand find the omni-tool on her left forearm and activate the emergency signal, then override the medi-gel system.
Mission complete. She rests her head against the cold chunk of tile beneath her, listening to the faint beep, watching the lights dance over her arm as the pain slowly fades to numbness, medicine flooding her veins.
It's getting harder to keep her eyes open.
"You've been down this path before," Ashley says quietly. "The big goddamn hero. How long did that last the first time? Did the Council wait five minutes after you died to hush everything up and toss it out of an airlock? How long do you think it will last this time?
"Dead heroes are more compelling than live ones. People love to dig up dirt on living heroes, and you're positively filthy. How long til someone reminds the public about all those poor batarians you slaughtered? All those faceless mercs you mowed down without flinching? That lively little soldier you abandoned on Virmire? And your crew, of course. What happens when Commander Shepard comes back without her crew?"
They're alive, thinks Shepard fiercely, though the fog is seeping into her brain again. Her cheeks are curiously wet.
"What's left for you to live for? This vicious chain of events isn't sustainable, Shepard. You survived Mindoir to walk into Akuze. You survived Akuze to die alone in space. You came back to suffer as a traitor and a war criminal. You got out of house arrest just in time to fight an impossible war. What's next? What does the galaxy have in store for you after this? Do you really want to find out? Has any tiny scrap of happiness been worth what you've suffered to get it? Don't you just want to rest?"
She does. "I'm so tired." She can't remember the last time she wasn't tired.
"Just give up, Commander." Her voice is still soft, oddly soothing despite the venom behind her words. "Give in. It'll all be over soon."
And God, but she wants to.
Her voice is nearly silent, a pathetic whimper. "I'm not ready yet."
Ashley's voice is soft, too. "Neither was I."
Shepard drifts in and out of a daze for what could be hours or weeks for all she knows. The overdose of medi-gel makes everything soft and improbably funny. Particularly hilarious is the idea of her crew finding her, Commander Fucking Shepard, barely clinging to life in the gutted remains of the Citadel, utterly out of her mind on painkillers and talking to a ghost.
What a laugh that will be, she thinks. Joker will never let me live it down. She pictures the look on Kaidan's face, exasperation mixed with relief. Don't ever fucking do that again. And Garrus. Of course she'll do it again, it's Shepard we're talking about here.
They're alive. They have to be.