Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (2/?)
anonymous
April 26 2012, 05:11:24 UTC
RESUME
If I have to tear you apart, Shepard, I will.
"Just. Fuck. Off.” She hurled a vicious, desperate Warp into the collector's fiery eyes. Its flesh shredded and flaked into ash. Garrus chuckled behind her.
She shot him an annoyed look, which he ignored. He crouched, sighted, then popped a drone's skull open in one smooth movement.
Nice, she thought. "Something funny, Vakarian?" was what came out of her mouth instead.
"You're in rare form today," he said as he reloaded. "Usually you have to shoot them up a bit first."
"Yeah, well, I'm up to here with this stupid colony," Shepard growled, tracing an imaginary line just below her eyebrows. "And the glowy fucker who loves the sound of his own voice."
"Hmm," Garrus said, and executed another drone. She frowned and turned away, unloading a clip into some upstart who'd been sneaking up to plasma rifle Massani.
She was tense. It was weird. Even when she was in the shit, she never felt-- whatever she was feeling right now. Not nervous, but--
Massani splattered the last one with a quick burst of assault fire, then stood and stretched out the kinks in his back.
The sudden silence and empty battlefield settled over her like a great itchy blanket. Her teammates scanned the perimeter through their scopes, looking for stragglers.
Shepard fidgeted with her armor, poked around listlessly for fresh heat sinks.
"Don't get cocky and wander off, Shepard," Massani drawled. "Bet there's more coming."
"I bet you’re right," muttered Shepard, eyes trained overhead, her teeth clenched, just waiting for the thing to drop in on them.
She was already on the move by the time the two men saw the Praetorian. "Scatter! Stay out of range!"
"Fucking christ," said Massani, running for cover.
I'm getting you this time, you four-eyed motherfucker, she thought, glaring up at the glowing monstrosity.
"What the hell is that thing?" she heard Garrus say, in tones of horrified wonder, and felt her stomach do a sharp twist.
Wait-- how did he not know?
If he didn't know-- how did she know?
"Let's kill it first, then we can form a committee to investigate," she heard herself retort.
Garrus clicked his jaw at her in what she had come to recognize as a Turian noise of exasperation. (He clicked his jaw at her a lot.)
Had she said that to him last time? She couldn't remember.
Wait-- wait. What the hell, "last time"? They'd never fought any Collectors before coming to Horizon. Something was messed up. Her brain was screwing with her.
Shepard shook her head violently. Fixing her screwed-up brain was a Lawson problem. Killing monsters, on the other hand, was a Shepard problem. She reached back for her scavenged Collector rifle.
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (2.5/?)
anonymous
April 26 2012, 05:20:38 UTC
The Praetorian hit hard, but god, was it dumb. Massani cackled as she coaxed it after her, leading it in slow spirals around and around the gun tower.
"Fine time to play Ring around the Rosie, Shepard. Aren't we here to save a colony or something?"
"Aww, Massani," she purred. "You feeling left out?"
"'Ring around the Rosie?'" Garrus repeated. She heard him exhale quietly into the comm. His shot rang out a second later, striking neatly between two of the monster’s glowing eyes.
"Children's playground game," she replied, ducking behind a container as the twin lasers scythed through the air. "Hey Massani, less waxing goddamn nostalgic, more shooting your goddamn gun."
"Cerberus isn't paying me enough to put up with your sass." His assault fire cracked into the creature.
She'd taken a few good shots where bits of her had popped out as she darted from cover to cover. At this point her toes were probably held on more with Medi-gel than skin and bone. A bit of her fancy new alien rifle had gotten melted before she could pull it away.
She was annoyed at herself for that. Taylor would be even more annoyed when she dumped it on him later.
But she was alive and mostly unharmed, playing dance partners with a terrifying floating Collector construct. Garrus was tucked safely away where he could do what he did best, and Massani was-- well, Massani was being an ass. All in all it could be going worse.
And melty bits aside, her new gun was pretty awesome. She straightened up behind her cover, shook off the last of her weird attack of deja vu, and got ready to move. She had this.
If only it would stop that fucking humming.
“I think we’re getting close, Shepard,” Garrus murmured. “It’s looking a little unsteady. I’ve got it lined up for an impact shot.” He breathed out into her ear again, and his rifle cracked across the field.
The humming stopped. Shepard frowned and popped her head out, her particle beam trained forward.
A shadow fell across her face. The creature reared up like a monstrous horse, directly over her head and much, much too close. Its long scythe-like legs stretched out, delicately pointed tips curling around her shoulders. Its plated skin shimmered with biotic fire.
"Shepard!"
She scrambled backwards, firing desperately as she went, but not fast enough.
Fucking hell, not again, she thought, as it dropped down on her with the force of a bomb. Her skull rattled and her vision went black.
Time passed. She couldn’t tell how much. She was on the ground, and it was dark. Something wet and cool was running down her face. She reached up a hand to wipe it away. Her fingers squished into pools of gelatinous slime.
Oh. Those were her eyes.
"Shepard," Garrus said again in her ear, desperate. His subharmonics were shaking.
It'll be okay, she tried to tell him, but her lungs had liquefied.
The humming started again, deafening, shaking her body down to her agonized bones. She heard alien joints whirr and click, felt her mangled nerves shrieking, as the monster unfolded itself and rose off of her.
Her ribcage splintered under its foot. Hot, sticky bubbles rose up in her throat, popped between her lips.
The humming grew fainter as the creature moved off, searching for her teammates.
I'm sorry. It'll be okay. I'll do better next time.
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (3/?)
anonymous
April 26 2012, 06:34:55 UTC
I'm sorry I am bad at reading instructions and forgot to post the prompt separately :(
EXIT
She flowed smoothly from crate to crate, drawing the monster after her in an effortless dance, slicing into it with her particle beam when she had the opportunity, keeping her head down when she didn't. She took zero chances, and wasted none at all.
"Shit," Massani said, reluctantly impressed.
Garrus's rifle flashed in the distance. "Shepard. Are you sure Cerberus didn't implant some kind of chip in your brain?"
She frowned, a little unnerved, as she slid behind a partial wall. "What? Why?"
"It's strange, watching you lead it around like that," he said, his voice low. "It's like you know what it’s going to do before it does."
She huffed. "Give me some credit, Vakarian. You don’t need mysterious powers to outsmart this thing. It’s just a dumb animal.”
"Animal?" He made an amused-sounding clicking noise. "Shepard, it's got laser cannons mounted to its face."
She fired another white-hot burst from her rifle and kept moving. "Okay, not an animal. Hybrid synthetic-organic abomination. With lasers. It's still dumb. I'm smarter."
"You're sexy as hell, is what you are," Massani rumbled. "Been a while since I saw anyone control a battlefield like that. I need a cigarette."
"Simmer down, Massani. This thing isn't dead yet."
She sidestepped a laser that got a little too close and jogged backwards, firing as she went.
"Commander," murmured Garrus's voice in her ear as she sidestepped into cover. "It's looking unsteady again. Get some more distance. I'm taking a concussive shot."
Something twisted inside her heart at his words. Don't, she nearly cried out, paralyzed with the sudden, burning certainty that all of this had happened before and it was all about to shatter into pieces. Everything-- the colony, the mission, their lives-- hinged on a razor-edged precipice.
She hesitated only for an instant. As soon as she had noticed it, the sickly premonition faded away. Garrus's plan was tactically sound. "Do it," she said, and turned and ran.
His rifle snapped. Her feet struck the earth, once, twice, and she felt a biotic pulse slam through her, throw her to the ground.
Shit-- too close. She hauled herself upright and into cover. She’d miscalculated. Overconfident in her foot speed. She'd have to tell Massani off for swelling her ego to dangerous levels.
Garrus spat out a word with a lot of evil-sounding consonants. "Shepard! Are you all right?"
"It's picking itself back up," Massani warned.
"I'm fine. Where’s some good cover?" She didn’t want to risk popping her head out to look.
"There's some stacked containers ahead to the north-east," Garrus replied. "Jump over the one right in front of you and you'll see it."
She took a deep, ragged breath. "I'm running in two seconds. Be ready to unload everything you've got."
The razor's edge was back again and her heart was quaking in her chest. She was astonished to realize that she was absolutely fucking terrified. In the middle of a firefight that was still, all things considered, going pretty damn well. What the hell was wrong with her? She'd spent half her life in firefights. There was no time for this kind of bullshit.
The buzz of the lasers grew louder and louder.
She inhaled, then exhaled. The buzz cut out. She ran.
Behind cover, she trembled, gasping.
"Shepard?" Garrus's gentle voice in her ear. He’d heard her.
She straightened up, clenched her shaking hands into fists. Fuck this. Fuck her stupid brain trying to tell her she was going to fuck it all up. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was Commander fucking Shepard and she was here to murder the Collectors and there was no reason for this poisoned, leaden feeling in her chest, telling her she was making a horrible mistake.
That stupid creature was ninety-five percent dead, and she was here, kicking ass, one hundred percent alive.
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (3.5/?)
anonymous
April 26 2012, 06:45:28 UTC
She stepped out into the open field and leveled her particle beam at the Praetorian.
She heard Garrus shout her name, as if from a great distance.
She felt her shields fizz and hiss and sputter out. Her armor bubbled and smoked. Whatever. She kept her finger on the trigger. She knew her math.
And if I’m wrong, the thought flashed past her and vanished faster than a blink, It’s fine. I’ll just fucking do it better next time.
Three seconds later, the Praetorian was disintegrating into glowing embers, and Garrus was sprinting towards her, long legs carving up the distance between them. She grinned up at him, feeling oddly weightless.
The strange, cold fear had vanished. What had she been so afraid of? She couldn't remember anymore. It didn’t matter.
Garrus skidded to a halt in front of her, his hands hovering in mid-air-- as if he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard, but thought she might kill him if he tried. "Are you completely fucking insane-- gave me eighteen separate heart attacks--"
She just beamed at him. She probably looked like a lunatic. She was fine with that.
He sighed and stopped, put a hand over his face. One baleful blue eye glared out at her from between his fingers. "...What the hell, Shepard."
Massani ambled up behind him, shouldering his rifle. "Daft bitch," he said, but it sounded like a compliment this time.
---
Then Kaidan stepped out. Her relieved, welcoming smile faded at the look on his face.
"I thought you were dead, Shepard. We all did."
I was, she opened her mouth to say, but the words stuck in her throat.
The cold fear sunk its claws back into her heart. She felt dizzy, deoxygenated. Of course she did: her chest cavity had been crushed, her skull cracked open, her skin burnt black and peeling. She'd seen the wreckage on Alchera. She'd seen Lawson's notes.
She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen herself, only a few minutes ago, in multiple pieces strewn over the ground.
I was dead, but now I'm not, except lately I'm hallucinating that I die over and over again and I'm having panic attacks in the middle of battle and maybe also I can read the minds of monsters and I'm can't tell if I'm more terrified that my brain might be cracking into tiny pieces, or that all of this might be real.
"It's been too long, Kaidan," she heard herself say instead, and tried not to cringe at her own lameness.
His brows lowered. “...Is that all you have to say? Two years and you just act like nothing’s happened?”
“Listen, Kaidan, I...” She raised her hand to her face.
What the hell else was there to say? The truth was out of the question. And whether she was dead or alive right now, she was still herself. She had just stopped existing for a little while. Nothing had happened, because there'd been no one for it to happen to.
Who was this bitter, hard-edged man standing in front of her, anyway? She barely recognized him. It pissed her off.
She could tell Garrus was trying very hard not to stare at her in appalled fascination as she floundered, burning bridges left and right.
Massani just lit up a cigar, watching them with open amusement.
Kaidan glanced away. “I-- loved you, Shepard.”
Her heart ached for him, this handsome, furious stranger.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m sorry, Kaidan. I didn’t mean to leave you. I was--" No "--It wasn’t my choice.”
Then one of them, or both of them, brought up the ugly specter of Cerberus. It went downhill from there.
Her Kaidan would have tried to be logical, to understand, to draw her out, even if he didn't like what she had to say. He'd had that singularly rare combination of compassion and cool-headedness.
She'd-- liked that about him.
New Kaidan apparently preferred to yell a lot and make sweeping generalizations.
New Kaidan stormed off. Her Kaidan lay dead and buried.
Garrus patted her arm hesitantly.
Shepard looked up at the sky, blinking, wishing faintly that the Praetorian were still alive. Maybe if it killed her, she could start over again.
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (3.5/?)
anonymous
April 26 2012, 08:32:31 UTC
Aww Shepard that is an awful train of thought.... but this fic? This fic is fantastic! I cannot wait to read more. I will be checking up on this one very often, indeed.
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (3.5/?)
anonymous
April 26 2012, 17:15:15 UTC
I've got all the hugs for you, Shepard. RIGHT HERE
Holycrap, I've gotta say, this is my favorite story right now. I live in all these tiny gestures you make--Garrus facepalming, Shepard grinning like a loon, and so much more.
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (4/?)
anonymous
April 27 2012, 01:49:04 UTC
You guys! :D Thank you for the comments! Emoticons cannot adequately convey how much I am grinning like an idiot right now.
---
SAVE
"Commander! C'mere, you gotta see this!" Joker crowed from the cockpit as they stomped their way out of decontamination. "You're like-- I don't even know. Half Rambo, half Ripley. All badass."
"Half who? What?" Shepard leaned over his seat.
"Old Earth vids. Doesn't matter." He glanced up at her. "Oh, and uh, pretty crazy running into Alenko, huh? All things considered I think the conversation went better with the Praetorian."
Shepard shot him a quelling look. "Aren't you supposed to be showing me something?"
"Right you are, Commander." He pressed a button and a grainy, monochrome video clip stuttered into motion. Judging from the angle (high), the position (distant), and the giant rifle barrel in the bottom of the frame, it had to be the feed from Garrus's visor.
Joker tapped the interface. "Here's where it gets good."
She watched. A tiny armored human strode out into the middle of a distant field, head held high, alien gun held ready. An enormous glowing monster floated steadily towards her. The little human planted herself directly in its path.
It looked like something out of a superhero cartoon. The camera angle shifted suddenly-- video Garrus had bolted upright.
"SHEPARD!" His horrified voice crackled through the speakers. Joker turned the volume down.
The tiny human and the monster squared off and unleashed fiery hell upon each other.
One second. Two seconds. Lightning crackled between them. The camera frame swayed and shook as video Garrus sank back down into a firing stance, loaded a fresh clip and fired a shot, then did it again, and again.
Beside her, real life Garrus twitched. "Somehow it's even more gut-wrenching watching it like this," he rumbled. Massani just laughed.
Three seconds. The tiny human stepped forward, still firing. The monster thrashed its spidery limbs and fell to pieces. Joker let out a whoop, raising his arms in the air.
Video Garrus exhaled shakily and straightened. Joker flicked his thumb on the keyboard, and the image froze.
Shepard grinned up at real life Garrus. "Thanks for the fire support, buddy."
He blinked at her slowly, deliberately: a Turian eye roll. "Yeah, well. I think I can spare a little ammo for a good cause. Like keeping your fragile human ass alive."
"Hah.” She punched him in the arm. “I'm invincible."
He shot her an unreadable look.
"What?"
Joker spun around in his chair. "So, wanna see it agai-- Holy shit, Shepard, look at your armor!"
She looked. Her breastplate had warped and melted in the intense heat. There was a fist-sized circle in the center, over her heart, where the material had turned as thin and transparent as glass.
She tapped it lightly with a gloved fingertip. A spiderweb of cracks laced out from her finger. Chips of paper-thin ceramic broke off and clinked down onto the deck. She poked her finger through the hole, bemused.
"Bloody hell. An instant longer and you'd have bit it down there," Massani said, an eyebrow raised. "You got the devil's own luck."
"Nah. Devil's got nothing on Shepard," Joker said, spinning back around.
Shepard shrugged, trying for casual bravado. The hole in her heart had sent the icy fingers crawling up her spine again, whispering fresh secrets in her ear: she wasn't hallucinating her death. She was hallucinating her life. She wasn't even here right now. She was still lying face-down in the dirt of Horizon, bleeding out and burning up.
A ghost had taken her place in the Normandy, walking and talking like Commander Shepard, but it wasn’t really her. The others just hadn't realized yet.
"Hell of a trophy," Massani said, nodding at her breastplate. "You should hang that thing up on your wall."
Shepard looked down again. Her hand was still raised, hovering over her unprotected heart.
Lawson problem or Shepard problem?
...Fuck it. This ghost can still fight. She straightened up, flashed Massani her cockiest smirk. "You know, I think I will."
Re: Fill: FemShep & Garrus "New Game" (4.5/?)
anonymous
April 27 2012, 01:57:44 UTC
---
"Grab your guns," she announced the next morning, as she barged in through the battery doors. "We're going groundside with Taylor. Checking out a distress signal."
"Hello to you too, Shepard," Garrus said without turning around. His talons clicked over his haptic display.
She cocked her head. "Okay. Hi, Garrus. How are you?"
He flicked a mandible at her. "Oh, you know, the usual. Too good for cover. Convinced of my own immortality. Prone to suicidal rushes into overwhelming enemy fire."
She crossed her arms and leaned back against the battery wall. "You mad about yesterday?"
"Yeah, a bit."
She blinked. She hadn't expected him to admit it so readily. "...Well, it worked."
He turned around finally, leaned back against his console. His eyes dropped down to her chest. "It almost didn't."
Shepard looked down at her shiny new breastplate, fresh from the fabricator. She thumped it with her fist. "I'm fine. See?"
"It was a stupid risk," he growled, his good mandible flaring out again. "We would have had that thing nailed to the wall, if you had just waited another thirty seconds."
She sighed. "Garrus, it was getting too close. I didn't want to hang around and let it surprise us with something even nastier than that biotic knockdown." She unfolded her arms, leaned in towards him. "Sometimes it's worth taking a little fire to finish things quick."
He met her eyes, unmoved. "But how did you know you would finish it before it finished you?"
She frowned. "I just-- did. It was on the edge. I could feel it."
He tilted his head to one side.
"What," she said.
"Not really helping your case against the psychic Cerberus brain chip theory."
She rolled her eyes. "Take it up with Lawson."
"I might," he said darkly, but he stood up and reached for his rifle anyway.
---
2175 Aeia
Mechs. In a tropical paradise. Why was it always goddamn mechs? Shepard crouched behind the barrier, wincing at the singe marks on her armor. Her overtaxed shield generator whined in protest.
"So..." Garrus drawled over the comm. "Is catching rockets face-first something humans like to do for fun, or is it more of a competitive thing?"
Shepard shot an annoyed look over her shoulder, knowing it'd hit him at 50x magnification in scope.
"Competitive, then. You know, you could be in the big leagues, Shepard. I don't think any of them have gotten past you so far."
"Sweet of you to notice, Vakarian," she purred. "I was just trying to beat your all-time high score."
He just laughed, the ass. She made a particularly filthy Batarian hand gesture at him behind her back, and leaned out to check the field. The YMIR was out of range now, having shifted behind a distant palm tree to reload or recharge or whatever the fuck it was doing. She hurled a tech Overload into the cluster of LOKIs nearby. The mechs reeled. Behind her, Garrus lined himself up and knocked out two with one shot.
"Showoff."
"You love it."
"Glad you two are having fun over there," Taylor said, voice strained.
Shepard winced. Taylor was definitely having the least fun out of all of them. Poor kid. She popped her head out again to check on him. He was occupying himself further up, picking off some of the feral, brain-scrambled humans with well-placed shotgun blasts. He ducked behind a crate to reload just as the YMIR came back out into the field, and spotted him.
"Get out of there, Taylor, it's locking onto you!" Shepard unloaded a clip into the YMIR's well-shielded head. It barely even drew the thing's attention. Shit. She'd be better off throwing rocks.
"Getting," Taylor clipped out, and jogged backwards towards their position, firing incendiary bursts at the YMIR.
"Watch your six," Garrus yelled, right before Taylor tripped over a wounded hunter that had been crouching in the grass, and went down.
Oh fuck. It was all about to go pear-shaped, wasn't it? Shepard touched her fingers to her armor-plated heart. She took off running.
"Shepard--" Garrus sounded more resigned than angry.
If I have to tear you apart, Shepard, I will.
"Just. Fuck. Off.” She hurled a vicious, desperate Warp into the collector's fiery eyes. Its flesh shredded and flaked into ash. Garrus chuckled behind her.
She shot him an annoyed look, which he ignored. He crouched, sighted, then popped a drone's skull open in one smooth movement.
Nice, she thought. "Something funny, Vakarian?" was what came out of her mouth instead.
"You're in rare form today," he said as he reloaded. "Usually you have to shoot them up a bit first."
"Yeah, well, I'm up to here with this stupid colony," Shepard growled, tracing an imaginary line just below her eyebrows. "And the glowy fucker who loves the sound of his own voice."
"Hmm," Garrus said, and executed another drone. She frowned and turned away, unloading a clip into some upstart who'd been sneaking up to plasma rifle Massani.
She was tense. It was weird. Even when she was in the shit, she never felt-- whatever she was feeling right now. Not nervous, but--
Massani splattered the last one with a quick burst of assault fire, then stood and stretched out the kinks in his back.
The sudden silence and empty battlefield settled over her like a great itchy blanket. Her teammates scanned the perimeter through their scopes, looking for stragglers.
Shepard fidgeted with her armor, poked around listlessly for fresh heat sinks.
"Don't get cocky and wander off, Shepard," Massani drawled. "Bet there's more coming."
"I bet you’re right," muttered Shepard, eyes trained overhead, her teeth clenched, just waiting for the thing to drop in on them.
She was already on the move by the time the two men saw the Praetorian. "Scatter! Stay out of range!"
"Fucking christ," said Massani, running for cover.
I'm getting you this time, you four-eyed motherfucker, she thought, glaring up at the glowing monstrosity.
"What the hell is that thing?" she heard Garrus say, in tones of horrified wonder, and felt her stomach do a sharp twist.
Wait-- how did he not know?
If he didn't know-- how did she know?
"Let's kill it first, then we can form a committee to investigate," she heard herself retort.
Garrus clicked his jaw at her in what she had come to recognize as a Turian noise of exasperation. (He clicked his jaw at her a lot.)
Had she said that to him last time? She couldn't remember.
Wait-- wait. What the hell, "last time"? They'd never fought any Collectors before coming to Horizon. Something was messed up. Her brain was screwing with her.
Shepard shook her head violently. Fixing her screwed-up brain was a Lawson problem. Killing monsters, on the other hand, was a Shepard problem. She reached back for her scavenged Collector rifle.
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"Fine time to play Ring around the Rosie, Shepard. Aren't we here to save a colony or something?"
"Aww, Massani," she purred. "You feeling left out?"
"'Ring around the Rosie?'" Garrus repeated. She heard him exhale quietly into the comm. His shot rang out a second later, striking neatly between two of the monster’s glowing eyes.
"Children's playground game," she replied, ducking behind a container as the twin lasers scythed through the air. "Hey Massani, less waxing goddamn nostalgic, more shooting your goddamn gun."
"Cerberus isn't paying me enough to put up with your sass." His assault fire cracked into the creature.
She'd taken a few good shots where bits of her had popped out as she darted from cover to cover. At this point her toes were probably held on more with Medi-gel than skin and bone. A bit of her fancy new alien rifle had gotten melted before she could pull it away.
She was annoyed at herself for that. Taylor would be even more annoyed when she dumped it on him later.
But she was alive and mostly unharmed, playing dance partners with a terrifying floating Collector construct. Garrus was tucked safely away where he could do what he did best, and Massani was-- well, Massani was being an ass. All in all it could be going worse.
And melty bits aside, her new gun was pretty awesome. She straightened up behind her cover, shook off the last of her weird attack of deja vu, and got ready to move. She had this.
If only it would stop that fucking humming.
“I think we’re getting close, Shepard,” Garrus murmured. “It’s looking a little unsteady. I’ve got it lined up for an impact shot.” He breathed out into her ear again, and his rifle cracked across the field.
The humming stopped. Shepard frowned and popped her head out, her particle beam trained forward.
A shadow fell across her face. The creature reared up like a monstrous horse, directly over her head and much, much too close. Its long scythe-like legs stretched out, delicately pointed tips curling around her shoulders. Its plated skin shimmered with biotic fire.
"Shepard!"
She scrambled backwards, firing desperately as she went, but not fast enough.
Fucking hell, not again, she thought, as it dropped down on her with the force of a bomb. Her skull rattled and her vision went black.
Time passed. She couldn’t tell how much. She was on the ground, and it was dark. Something wet and cool was running down her face. She reached up a hand to wipe it away. Her fingers squished into pools of gelatinous slime.
Oh. Those were her eyes.
"Shepard," Garrus said again in her ear, desperate. His subharmonics were shaking.
It'll be okay, she tried to tell him, but her lungs had liquefied.
The humming started again, deafening, shaking her body down to her agonized bones. She heard alien joints whirr and click, felt her mangled nerves shrieking, as the monster unfolded itself and rose off of her.
Her ribcage splintered under its foot. Hot, sticky bubbles rose up in her throat, popped between her lips.
The humming grew fainter as the creature moved off, searching for her teammates.
I'm sorry. It'll be okay. I'll do better next time.
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I just. Oh.
Please. Please, continue.
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I love this whole concept. Carry on.
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Just as a PSA, probably a lot more D: moments coming in the future.
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Money quote: "Fixing her screwed-up brain was a Lawson problem. Killing monsters, on the other hand, was a Shepard problem. "
And now we know everything we need to know about this-Shep.
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EXIT
She flowed smoothly from crate to crate, drawing the monster after her in an effortless dance, slicing into it with her particle beam when she had the opportunity, keeping her head down when she didn't. She took zero chances, and wasted none at all.
"Shit," Massani said, reluctantly impressed.
Garrus's rifle flashed in the distance. "Shepard. Are you sure Cerberus didn't implant some kind of chip in your brain?"
She frowned, a little unnerved, as she slid behind a partial wall. "What? Why?"
"It's strange, watching you lead it around like that," he said, his voice low. "It's like you know what it’s going to do before it does."
She huffed. "Give me some credit, Vakarian. You don’t need mysterious powers to outsmart this thing. It’s just a dumb animal.”
"Animal?" He made an amused-sounding clicking noise. "Shepard, it's got laser cannons mounted to its face."
She fired another white-hot burst from her rifle and kept moving. "Okay, not an animal. Hybrid synthetic-organic abomination. With lasers. It's still dumb. I'm smarter."
"You're sexy as hell, is what you are," Massani rumbled. "Been a while since I saw anyone control a battlefield like that. I need a cigarette."
"Simmer down, Massani. This thing isn't dead yet."
She sidestepped a laser that got a little too close and jogged backwards, firing as she went.
"Commander," murmured Garrus's voice in her ear as she sidestepped into cover. "It's looking unsteady again. Get some more distance. I'm taking a concussive shot."
Something twisted inside her heart at his words. Don't, she nearly cried out, paralyzed with the sudden, burning certainty that all of this had happened before and it was all about to shatter into pieces. Everything-- the colony, the mission, their lives-- hinged on a razor-edged precipice.
She hesitated only for an instant. As soon as she had noticed it, the sickly premonition faded away. Garrus's plan was tactically sound. "Do it," she said, and turned and ran.
His rifle snapped. Her feet struck the earth, once, twice, and she felt a biotic pulse slam through her, throw her to the ground.
Shit-- too close. She hauled herself upright and into cover. She’d miscalculated. Overconfident in her foot speed. She'd have to tell Massani off for swelling her ego to dangerous levels.
Garrus spat out a word with a lot of evil-sounding consonants. "Shepard! Are you all right?"
"It's picking itself back up," Massani warned.
"I'm fine. Where’s some good cover?" She didn’t want to risk popping her head out to look.
"There's some stacked containers ahead to the north-east," Garrus replied. "Jump over the one right in front of you and you'll see it."
She took a deep, ragged breath. "I'm running in two seconds. Be ready to unload everything you've got."
The razor's edge was back again and her heart was quaking in her chest. She was astonished to realize that she was absolutely fucking terrified. In the middle of a firefight that was still, all things considered, going pretty damn well. What the hell was wrong with her? She'd spent half her life in firefights. There was no time for this kind of bullshit.
The buzz of the lasers grew louder and louder.
She inhaled, then exhaled. The buzz cut out. She ran.
Behind cover, she trembled, gasping.
"Shepard?" Garrus's gentle voice in her ear. He’d heard her.
She straightened up, clenched her shaking hands into fists. Fuck this. Fuck her stupid brain trying to tell her she was going to fuck it all up. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was Commander fucking Shepard and she was here to murder the Collectors and there was no reason for this poisoned, leaden feeling in her chest, telling her she was making a horrible mistake.
That stupid creature was ninety-five percent dead, and she was here, kicking ass, one hundred percent alive.
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She heard Garrus shout her name, as if from a great distance.
She felt her shields fizz and hiss and sputter out. Her armor bubbled and smoked. Whatever. She kept her finger on the trigger. She knew her math.
And if I’m wrong, the thought flashed past her and vanished faster than a blink, It’s fine. I’ll just fucking do it better next time.
Three seconds later, the Praetorian was disintegrating into glowing embers, and Garrus was sprinting towards her, long legs carving up the distance between them. She grinned up at him, feeling oddly weightless.
The strange, cold fear had vanished. What had she been so afraid of? She couldn't remember anymore. It didn’t matter.
Garrus skidded to a halt in front of her, his hands hovering in mid-air-- as if he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard, but thought she might kill him if he tried. "Are you completely fucking insane-- gave me eighteen separate heart attacks--"
She just beamed at him. She probably looked like a lunatic. She was fine with that.
He sighed and stopped, put a hand over his face. One baleful blue eye glared out at her from between his fingers. "...What the hell, Shepard."
Massani ambled up behind him, shouldering his rifle. "Daft bitch," he said, but it sounded like a compliment this time.
---
Then Kaidan stepped out. Her relieved, welcoming smile faded at the look on his face.
"I thought you were dead, Shepard. We all did."
I was, she opened her mouth to say, but the words stuck in her throat.
The cold fear sunk its claws back into her heart. She felt dizzy, deoxygenated. Of course she did: her chest cavity had been crushed, her skull cracked open, her skin burnt black and peeling. She'd seen the wreckage on Alchera. She'd seen Lawson's notes.
She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen herself, only a few minutes ago, in multiple pieces strewn over the ground.
I was dead, but now I'm not, except lately I'm hallucinating that I die over and over again and I'm having panic attacks in the middle of battle and maybe also I can read the minds of monsters and I'm can't tell if I'm more terrified that my brain might be cracking into tiny pieces, or that all of this might be real.
"It's been too long, Kaidan," she heard herself say instead, and tried not to cringe at her own lameness.
His brows lowered. “...Is that all you have to say? Two years and you just act like nothing’s happened?”
“Listen, Kaidan, I...” She raised her hand to her face.
What the hell else was there to say? The truth was out of the question. And whether she was dead or alive right now, she was still herself. She had just stopped existing for a little while. Nothing had happened, because there'd been no one for it to happen to.
Who was this bitter, hard-edged man standing in front of her, anyway? She barely recognized him. It pissed her off.
She could tell Garrus was trying very hard not to stare at her in appalled fascination as she floundered, burning bridges left and right.
Massani just lit up a cigar, watching them with open amusement.
Kaidan glanced away. “I-- loved you, Shepard.”
Her heart ached for him, this handsome, furious stranger.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m sorry, Kaidan. I didn’t mean to leave you. I was--" No "--It wasn’t my choice.”
Then one of them, or both of them, brought up the ugly specter of Cerberus. It went downhill from there.
Her Kaidan would have tried to be logical, to understand, to draw her out, even if he didn't like what she had to say. He'd had that singularly rare combination of compassion and cool-headedness.
She'd-- liked that about him.
New Kaidan apparently preferred to yell a lot and make sweeping generalizations.
New Kaidan stormed off. Her Kaidan lay dead and buried.
Garrus patted her arm hesitantly.
Shepard looked up at the sky, blinking, wishing faintly that the Praetorian were still alive. Maybe if it killed her, she could start over again.
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This is so good, A!A. I can't wait for more, D: moments and all.
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I like this very much.
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Holycrap, I've gotta say, this is my favorite story right now. I live in all these tiny gestures you make--Garrus facepalming, Shepard grinning like a loon, and so much more.
I can't, Anon. I CAN'T. I LOVE YOU MORE FOR IT
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---
SAVE
"Commander! C'mere, you gotta see this!" Joker crowed from the cockpit as they stomped their way out of decontamination. "You're like-- I don't even know. Half Rambo, half Ripley. All badass."
"Half who? What?" Shepard leaned over his seat.
"Old Earth vids. Doesn't matter." He glanced up at her. "Oh, and uh, pretty crazy running into Alenko, huh? All things considered I think the conversation went better with the Praetorian."
Shepard shot him a quelling look. "Aren't you supposed to be showing me something?"
"Right you are, Commander." He pressed a button and a grainy, monochrome video clip stuttered into motion. Judging from the angle (high), the position (distant), and the giant rifle barrel in the bottom of the frame, it had to be the feed from Garrus's visor.
Joker tapped the interface. "Here's where it gets good."
She watched. A tiny armored human strode out into the middle of a distant field, head held high, alien gun held ready. An enormous glowing monster floated steadily towards her. The little human planted herself directly in its path.
It looked like something out of a superhero cartoon. The camera angle shifted suddenly-- video Garrus had bolted upright.
"SHEPARD!" His horrified voice crackled through the speakers. Joker turned the volume down.
The tiny human and the monster squared off and unleashed fiery hell upon each other.
One second. Two seconds. Lightning crackled between them. The camera frame swayed and shook as video Garrus sank back down into a firing stance, loaded a fresh clip and fired a shot, then did it again, and again.
Beside her, real life Garrus twitched. "Somehow it's even more gut-wrenching watching it like this," he rumbled. Massani just laughed.
Three seconds. The tiny human stepped forward, still firing. The monster thrashed its spidery limbs and fell to pieces. Joker let out a whoop, raising his arms in the air.
Video Garrus exhaled shakily and straightened. Joker flicked his thumb on the keyboard, and the image froze.
Shepard grinned up at real life Garrus. "Thanks for the fire support, buddy."
He blinked at her slowly, deliberately: a Turian eye roll. "Yeah, well. I think I can spare a little ammo for a good cause. Like keeping your fragile human ass alive."
"Hah.” She punched him in the arm. “I'm invincible."
He shot her an unreadable look.
"What?"
Joker spun around in his chair. "So, wanna see it agai-- Holy shit, Shepard, look at your armor!"
She looked. Her breastplate had warped and melted in the intense heat. There was a fist-sized circle in the center, over her heart, where the material had turned as thin and transparent as glass.
She tapped it lightly with a gloved fingertip. A spiderweb of cracks laced out from her finger. Chips of paper-thin ceramic broke off and clinked down onto the deck. She poked her finger through the hole, bemused.
"Bloody hell. An instant longer and you'd have bit it down there," Massani said, an eyebrow raised. "You got the devil's own luck."
"Nah. Devil's got nothing on Shepard," Joker said, spinning back around.
Shepard shrugged, trying for casual bravado. The hole in her heart had sent the icy fingers crawling up her spine again, whispering fresh secrets in her ear: she wasn't hallucinating her death. She was hallucinating her life. She wasn't even here right now. She was still lying face-down in the dirt of Horizon, bleeding out and burning up.
A ghost had taken her place in the Normandy, walking and talking like Commander Shepard, but it wasn’t really her. The others just hadn't realized yet.
"Hell of a trophy," Massani said, nodding at her breastplate. "You should hang that thing up on your wall."
Shepard looked down again. Her hand was still raised, hovering over her unprotected heart.
Lawson problem or Shepard problem?
...Fuck it. This ghost can still fight. She straightened up, flashed Massani her cockiest smirk. "You know, I think I will."
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"Grab your guns," she announced the next morning, as she barged in through the battery doors. "We're going groundside with Taylor. Checking out a distress signal."
"Hello to you too, Shepard," Garrus said without turning around. His talons clicked over his haptic display.
She cocked her head. "Okay. Hi, Garrus. How are you?"
He flicked a mandible at her. "Oh, you know, the usual. Too good for cover. Convinced of my own immortality. Prone to suicidal rushes into overwhelming enemy fire."
She crossed her arms and leaned back against the battery wall. "You mad about yesterday?"
"Yeah, a bit."
She blinked. She hadn't expected him to admit it so readily. "...Well, it worked."
He turned around finally, leaned back against his console. His eyes dropped down to her chest. "It almost didn't."
Shepard looked down at her shiny new breastplate, fresh from the fabricator. She thumped it with her fist. "I'm fine. See?"
"It was a stupid risk," he growled, his good mandible flaring out again. "We would have had that thing nailed to the wall, if you had just waited another thirty seconds."
She sighed. "Garrus, it was getting too close. I didn't want to hang around and let it surprise us with something even nastier than that biotic knockdown." She unfolded her arms, leaned in towards him. "Sometimes it's worth taking a little fire to finish things quick."
He met her eyes, unmoved. "But how did you know you would finish it before it finished you?"
She frowned. "I just-- did. It was on the edge. I could feel it."
He tilted his head to one side.
"What," she said.
"Not really helping your case against the psychic Cerberus brain chip theory."
She rolled her eyes. "Take it up with Lawson."
"I might," he said darkly, but he stood up and reached for his rifle anyway.
---
2175 Aeia
Mechs. In a tropical paradise. Why was it always goddamn mechs? Shepard crouched behind the barrier, wincing at the singe marks on her armor. Her overtaxed shield generator whined in protest.
"So..." Garrus drawled over the comm. "Is catching rockets face-first something humans like to do for fun, or is it more of a competitive thing?"
Shepard shot an annoyed look over her shoulder, knowing it'd hit him at 50x magnification in scope.
"Competitive, then. You know, you could be in the big leagues, Shepard. I don't think any of them have gotten past you so far."
"Sweet of you to notice, Vakarian," she purred. "I was just trying to beat your all-time high score."
He just laughed, the ass. She made a particularly filthy Batarian hand gesture at him behind her back, and leaned out to check the field. The YMIR was out of range now, having shifted behind a distant palm tree to reload or recharge or whatever the fuck it was doing. She hurled a tech Overload into the cluster of LOKIs nearby. The mechs reeled. Behind her, Garrus lined himself up and knocked out two with one shot.
"Showoff."
"You love it."
"Glad you two are having fun over there," Taylor said, voice strained.
Shepard winced. Taylor was definitely having the least fun out of all of them. Poor kid. She popped her head out again to check on him. He was occupying himself further up, picking off some of the feral, brain-scrambled humans with well-placed shotgun blasts. He ducked behind a crate to reload just as the YMIR came back out into the field, and spotted him.
"Get out of there, Taylor, it's locking onto you!" Shepard unloaded a clip into the YMIR's well-shielded head. It barely even drew the thing's attention. Shit. She'd be better off throwing rocks.
"Getting," Taylor clipped out, and jogged backwards towards their position, firing incendiary bursts at the YMIR.
"Watch your six," Garrus yelled, right before Taylor tripped over a wounded hunter that had been crouching in the grass, and went down.
Oh fuck. It was all about to go pear-shaped, wasn't it? Shepard touched her fingers to her armor-plated heart. She took off running.
"Shepard--" Garrus sounded more resigned than angry.
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