Chapter Text
Hackett is long gone from the med bay, but Shepard is paralyzed. Her feet dangle from the cot, and her fingers dig into its frame; she has no doubt that she’s dented it.
She has committed genocide; by blowing up the Alpha Relay, Shepard has stopped the hearts of 300,000 people.
Every inch of Shepard’s skin is numb.
The Normandy is bones. The only people on board are herself, Hackett, Joker, and EDI, and EDI is the ship, so she doesn’t really count. On the deck below the CIC, Shepard screams. There’s no one around to hear her. With grief and fury and anguish, she wails.
She has toed the line under infinite circumstances. This time, she’s crushed it.
How many children has she murdered? Shepard’s cheeks are wet. Not long ago, she had thought she didn’t even have the capacity to cry anymore.
All it took was recognizing her lover’s dead wife. All it took was killing a planet’s worth of civilians. Shepard screams until her voice is hoarse. For months she’s worried that Cerberus turned her into a monster, but it was the Alliance all along. Hackett sent her on a mission, and the disregard of a cell of scientists left her with an impossible choice.
A star system to keep the destruction of the galaxy at bay.
The rage isn’t Cerberus. Shepard’s vision is clear, and the agony is her burden.
“EDI,” Shepard says, voice hollow, sore.
“Yes, Shepard.” EDI’s words are soft.
“A course for the Citadel, please.”
“Admiral Hackett has requested a drop-off on Earth.”
Shepard smiles in disbelief. The favor that he asked for has turned into an atrocity, and he has the audacity to try to set a course on her ship?
“Tell Hackett to go fuck himself. I’m spending a day on the Citadel, and then I’ll taxi him home and turn myself in.”
There is a pause, but then EDI repeats herself. “Yes, Shepard.”
Shepard waits until Hackett disembarks to do the same herself. She’s unstable; the fury swirls in her gut, and she wants to blame Hackett, but she made the choice. It wasn’t even a choice. There was never another decision that she could have made.
The Citadel feels sterile. Shepard would actually be happy to go back to Earth if not for the fact that it meant she was getting locked up. Shepard swallows hard and lets the feeling of her boots hitting the station ground her.
One step at a time. Tali’s in Huerta.
Actually, that’s just another failure, isn’t it? Tali’s in Huerta because Shepard let her get taken, and because Shepard didn’t get to her fast enough. It’s hard to shake the guilt.
“I’m here to see Tali’Zorah vas Normandy,” Shepard says to the asari receptionist, who nods.
She scrolls down a datapad and then types something on a terminal. It’s very clear, to Shepard at least, that her request is not a priority. Shepard’s sure there really are more important things going on in this hospital, and it isn’t the receptionist’s fault, but it’s taking too long and Shepard is tired of being fucked with. “I’m a Council Spectre, and if you don’t get me in there to see Tali right now, there is going to be hell to-”
“Shepard.”
Shepard doesn’t realize how heavily she’s breathing until a soft hand presses onto her shoulder. Miranda’s voice clears the fog of fury. The asari receptionist looks unimpressed with Shepard’s outburst, and Miranda says, “I’ll take her back to Tali if that’s alright?”
The receptionist, apparently unaffected by Shepard’s outburst, nods.
Miranda steers her in the direction of the ICU. Shepard offers the information up freely because she doesn’t want to carry it by herself any longer. “The Bahak system-”
“I know,” Miranda says softly. She doesn’t tell Shepard how she knows, but her network had been as broad as the galaxy while she was with Cerberus. Shepard doubts that it’s collapsed completely. Miranda continues, “You just missed Thane. He was here this morning.”
Another spear of guilt lances Shepard’s heart. She hadn’t even thought to ask after Thane with how consumed she’s been by what she’s done. “Is he okay?” she asks lamely, like that makes up for the fact that he has barely crossed her mind.
Miranda nods. “Yes. He can tell you himself, but the surgery went better than I expected because Mordin has no regard for protocol whatsoever.” The door in front of them slides open to a small viewing room with a large glass pane. “It’s a clean room,” Miranda says, and Shepard nods. Tali lies on her back with more tubes than Shepard can count attached to her suit, either asleep or unconscious. Shepard can’t tell.
“Is she going to be okay?” Shepard asks softly.
Miranda nods. “They think so. She’s stabilized a little more every day.”
The fist around Shepard’s heart unclenches just the minutest fraction.
“You didn’t die on me,” Shepard says when she finally sees Thane. She’s asked him to meet her at the dock; anywhere else, and this goodbye won’t be a goodbye at all. Shepard’s been loyal to the Alliance since conscription, but her loyalty has never been to the institution. It was to Anderson, and Hackett, and every crew she served with.
The Alliance proper she doesn’t care that much about. She never has. That wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows her as more than a symbol.
When Thane opens his arms, Shepard buries her face in his chest. His body rumbles with subvocals when he says, “They did the impossible.”
Shepard inhales the gun oil smell of his coat. “Your Kepral’s–”
“Neutralized, as long as I don’t abruptly decide to fully reside on Kahje again.” Thane’s voice is lighter than Shepard has ever heard it, and despite everything, she can’t help but smile. “So all that’s left is to figure out what’s next in a world where I never thought that I’d have a future.”
And that quickly, the joy of seeing him is swallowed by a goodbye more inevitable than most. He’s asking her a question without voicing it – where do we go next? – and Shepard is going to a place where he can’t follow.
She smirks instead, though he can’t see it. “It’d be nice to get some time with Kolyat, wouldn’t it? You’ve got plenty to catch up on, and now you don’t have a suicide mission or a terminal illness hanging over you.”
Thane exhales a laugh. “True enough. But nothing has changed for us. My arm is yours. And if the Alpha Relay is any indicator, you still have need of it.”
He mentions it lightly, as if it’s just another day on the job. Shepard can feel her throat constricting even as she fights to keep her voice level. “I have to face consequences for that. I’m going back to Earth.”
He frowns and pulls away from her. The loss leaves an aching hole in her chest. “Consequences?”
He was never going to understand. The Compact has swallowed too much of his life. “I wiped out the Bahak system, Thane. Someone has to pay for that, and I’m the one that pulled the trigger.”
“You were given an order,” he says. “I do not know the details, but you would never have been in the vicinity otherwise. The blame does not lie with you.”
She sees it, his logic. How can the weapon carry the fault? Shepard was forced into the situation by a superior officer. To Thane, that distinction means everything. The Alliance (and Shepard herself) perceive things differently.
She will bear the burden of those lives until the day she dies for good. Shepard shakes her head. “This isn’t a negotiation. I’m going back to Earth, and I’ll take my punishment the only way I know how.”
On the chin, with the knowledge that I’ll probably never see you again.
He should lash out in fury, but he won’t, because he’s Thane. He could tell her to forget the Alliance; with their skill sets, they could disappear anywhere in the galaxy. Cold fury burns in his eyes, made all the darker by the blackness of his pupils, and she wonders what a Thane undamaged by the Compact would say.
But that isn’t who he is. And even though he disagrees with her on a fundamental level, Thane understands duty better than anyone that Shepard has ever met.
“When your Alliance realizes that they are vilifying the wrong human,” Thane says, “Come find me.”
Shepard doesn’t know if that will ever come to pass. Both her hands are balled into fists, and she’s looking at the ground when she feels Thane’s lukewarm lips press against her forehead. He’s too composed to show whatever he’s feeling, but when his fingers brush her cheek for a ghost of a second, Shepard thinks he might be quivering. He has all these years to live now, and Shepard doubts that she’ll be able to see any of them. It’ll be a miracle if she ever goes anywhere but Earth again.
She looks up and says, “Thane–” but in the brief second that the action takes her, he’s disappeared, and she’s alone with only the ambient noise of the Citadel for company.
Shepard takes a shuddering breath and steels herself before walking in the direction of the Normandy.