Chapter Twenty-Nine
"Commander Shepard, I heard you were dead," Garrus said, and that was the first thing I actually heard once the shock of 'guts and glory' subdued.
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," I mumbled, still half-dazed, and quoted Mark Twain.
"Shouldn't pay attention to gossip," Shepard opted for saying, before sparing a glance my way.
What was she looking for? Oh, right.
"Garrus Vakarian," I grunted out.
"Garrus," Shepard said and nodded. "So, you're Archangel?"
"Well, after you didn't take me up on my offer in the presidium to join you, I had to do something with my life, so I thought 'why not go to Omega and clean the house'? Better go big or go home..." he chuckled, the Turian making a short chortle sound as he did. "Seems like there's a lull in their attack, but it won't last."
"They're planning to infiltrate from below," Shepard replied.
"Ah damn, I should have checked the basement better. There's an emergency shutter that might work...but I don't work well at short distance."
Shepard grinned and pumped her shotgun. "I do. And by the way, I help you out of this, you're recruited for an extremely important mission."
"I suspected it was something of the sort," Garrus said, "Commander Shepard wouldn't bother for anything else."
"Miranda, stay with Garrus," Shepard said, "Jacob, you're with me."
I remained silent. There wasn't anything I could suggest here, the mission was pretty straightforward and linear; there wasn't any way I could help, and frankly, I wasn't in the mood for helping -even if it was nigh impossible they might need help.
Jacob was quick and precise, not as precise and quick as Shepard, but good enough that when he opened fire, he meant to kill and usually managed.
I watched quietly. There was...less brutality in Jacob's kills than with Shepard.
Shepard made gory messes, while Jacob's were cleaner.
They were...ah, his bullets had to be incendiary. There was no blood gushing out from the holes because they burned to a close. They left behind neat corpses.
Funny how I realized only then there was a difference between a neat corpse and a messy one.
The shutters were closed, with much rejoicing from my inner voice as the slaughter came to an end.
And then, finally, the mercenaries tried their last ditch effort.
But it didn't work.
Shepard didn't even have to dirty her hands.
The Mechs' targeting parameters had been altered, but they hadn't been weakened at all. With their shields up, their armor and their weapons, the moment they turned on they began a slaughter of blue suns, eclipse and blood pack so great that the rest of the mercenaries still alive began to high-tail it.
If they had had a gunship, they might have stuck around, but a very loud explosion overheard just as the mech went rampant...told me the trap had worked.
There would be no gunship, no more attacks...and no Garrus with scars.
I had just changed a very minor thing of Mass Effect Two.
This didn't make me feel any better.
The Normandy's space shuttle arrived to bail the group out, and as we did leave, Garrus began asking questions.
Funnily enough, Shepard delegated Miranda on answering, as she said absolutely nothing more, and kept glancing my way as if waiting for answers I could not give.
"Just don't act like an ass when you talk with him," I deadpanned. "It's not difficult."
She still kept glancing at me.
"What is it now?" I sighed. "You know, you can always wait until we're on the Normandy to finish whatever conversation this is about."
Shepard grumbled, but didn't say a word until we finally reached the Normandy, and from there...she high-tailed it straight to her quarters and closed the door behind her.
"I was trying to point out you could near your ear to my helmet, because I had deactivated the audio feeds," Shepard hissed.
"Oh," I blinked. "Sorry. Didn't realize that."
Ka-chink.
The hell.
Even a 'sorry' warranted it now?
"Can Garrus be trusted?" Shepard asked next.
"Yes, yes he can," I said. "His old team of Omega was betrayed by a guy he'll find more about later, and when he does, he'll want you to aid him in killing him."
"Sounds like an easy thing to do," Shepard grunted.
"Yeah, I expected you'd say something like that," I sighed.
"You know, I was wrong," Shepard suddenly said. "You can't be secret services."
"You still think I am? Come on," I grumbled.
"Well, whatever you are, you're clearly quite weak when it comes to blood and corpses."
"Ah, so you noticed that, uh," I said. "Well, sorry Miss Guts and Gory, but what can I say? Not everyone's at ease in a shower of innards."
"That Vorcha was looking for it."
"You used your shotgun to impale him from the balls, aim upwards, and then opened fire. No. He wasn't looking for it. You wanted a shower of guts and you got one. How you even manage to still be alive without following...what is it you soldier have, 'trigger discipline'? Discipline? Do you even know the meaning of the word?"
"There was no risk involved," Shepard said, and I snorted.
"Of course, because he was the last one, unarmed, and wounded. You merely took pleasure in killing him in the messiest way possible, for no other gain. You know, I would have understood if you had killed him like that first, to scare the rest. Psychological war, I understand. Blood spraying around to scare the allies, I get it. But there were only three people there. I wasn't looking. Jacob looked, but didn't want to, and the one woman who pulled the trigger was smiling and laughing like a two-credit junkie getting her addiction fixed!"
Shepard tried to pull the chain.
Fortunately for me, nothing happened.
"There is a fixed distance between us that I cannot exceed. As long as I don't, you can't use the chain to physically coerce me, and even if you do pull it, I can always keep on elongating it." I drawled.
"Compensating for something?" Shepard retorted.
"Really? The Great Commander Shepard goes for dick-length jokes? I expected better from you. Each link is forged from a sin you committed, you know?" I offhandedly remarked.
Shepard stopped pulling.
"Are you serious?"
"No...I'm just...yanking your chain."
I snorted and then began to laugh.
"It's not...that was...horrible," Shepard snarled, trying her hardest to keep a normal face, even as her shoulders trembled softly. "Horrible."
"You tell me," I shrugged.
"So, my road to redemption and saving the galaxy also passes through not making gory messes on the ground?"
"Yes, that would be very, very nice," I deadpanned.
Shepard snorted. "I've got to ask: why are you here?"
I shrugged. "Good question."
"Well?"
"Well what? I don't have an answer to that," I said. "One night, I went to sleep in my bed. The next day, I was on another world, in this form. You're not the first one I'm trying to help, and you're not the first one that will suffer when I leave."
"Wait. Wait a tick. You're leaving?" Shepard asked.
"Can't say more than that, or the rules change," I sighed. "Better this way. You won't have to suffer me for all of eternity, and heck, depending on how things go I might be gone by next week, or the next few minutes."
"Uh, interesting," Shepard acquiesced. "So, what are you? A dead soul?"
"I am a Super-Imposed Interdimensional Traveller," I said. "At least, that's the definition I gave myself. There...hasn't been any indication, any warning, any message sent my way so...I'm working on assumptions."
"If you assume, you make an Ass out of you and me," Shepard replied calmly.
"Really?" I sighed. "Anyway," I dismissed the issue with a hand wave, "Who am I or what I am isn't important."
"I tend to think it is," Shepard deadpanned. "The future of the Galaxy rests in my hands because I'm Commander Shepard. What do you have on your side that makes you fit for the job?"
I blinked.
Fit for the job?
She was...questioning whether what I did was...right or not.
And...I could see the logic in it.
I had been going around the worlds trying to fix things, but I was doing it...without following any type of reasoning, or order. I wasn't forced to fix the world. I could let it run its course.
"I've seen how everything ends and begins," I said in the end. "I have seen action and reaction, cause and effect. I have seen heroes rise and villains fall. I have seen the fabric of the universe you inhabit and the tropes that compose it. I am not fit for the job, but I can do it. Just like you. Frankly, they should have taken someone else to do the job, but you were the one chosen. You keep on...fighting that, in your head. Every single time you make a decision, you're fighting yourself. You're trying your hardest to prove they did the right thing making you a Spectre, isn't that right?"
Shepard bristled. "You're talking like my psychiatrist after Akuze. 'Were you perhaps trying to prove something, Private Shepard?' I survived. I was the only one of my company of fifty that survived, and all that bastard wanted to know was if I had survived because I wanted to prove something to the higher brass!"
"I highly doubt a psychiatrist would say something as crass as that," I deadpanned. "I think what he actually said, and what you misinterpreted, was that you always wanted to prove something to yourself. You survived because you wanted to prove to yourself that you could," I said calmly. "You survived the attack on Mindoir because that deep fire inside you demanded your survival. I cannot understand, Shepard, but I can empathize."
"I don't need your sympathy," Shepard growled.
"Nor am I offering it," I drawled back. "I can understand where you come from, but I will not watch a spoiled child hurt those around him when a couple of slaps will set him straight."
"Come again?" Shepard blinked.
"You stopped being a scarred soldier the moment you became a commander, Shepard," I hissed. "The moment they gave you men under your command you should have been with them, at their side. You sacrificed them like they meant nothing, you 'got the job done' all right, but you stopped eliciting my sympathy in that moment. There is no sympathy in me for you right now, because you don't deserve it. In the future, who knows, you might. But right now I feel only disgust in your regards. We can banter, we can talk, we can trade jibes and bad puns, but I will never feel sympathy for a brutal slaughterer with no remorse or conscience."
"They called me the Butcher of Torfan, and I find it amusing a guy who can't stand the sight of corpses would dare to speak this way to me, you know?" Shepard drawled. "If you were here in the flesh, I'm pretty sure you'd choose your words more carefully."
"Ah, Shepard...and what if I didn't?" I retorted.
"Then I'd hit you."
"And what if I still didn't?"
"Then I'd hit you again, and again."
"And in the end, what if I still did not yield? Would the great commander Shepard bash my head against the side of the room, the floor, and then what, space me?"
"Yes," Shepard nodded. "To all but the last. I'd keep on hitting you."
"So you'd be no better than a batarian slaver breaking in their new slaves."
And to that, Shepard stopped.
She literally froze on her spot for a moment.
"That's not..."
"That is," I stressed, crossing my arms over my chest. "That is precisely what this is. Let me guess, you met with one of those who were captured, right, on the Citadel? Maybe she was even a childhood friend, who knows. And she had a gun pointed to the side of her head, and she wanted it to stop. She didn't even remember her name, did she?"
Shepard was actually having troubles breathing.
"And what did you do, uhm? What did you do when you saw someone broken, when you saw someone so utterly broken they wanted their masters back?"
"Just what are you," Shepard whispered. "What are you, you damn fucking bastard!" she howled and tried to grip my neck, but merely went through me. "WHAT ARE YOU!?"
"If I presume correctly..." I said calmly, "You shot her down."
Shepard's shoulders trembled.
"You see Shepard, this does not amuse me," I said. "But the only way to build on occupied land is through destruction. Your mind has infrastructures on it, broken, hazardous infrastructures, and it is high time they leave the place. They placed a mad dog on this job, but what the galaxy need isn't a mad dog. What they need is Commander Shepard. You're good with a gun, but take that away and what are you, uh?"
"I'm a Spectre-"
"You aren't, not any longer. Declared dead. Funny how being a Spectre was so in before and now it no longer is. And you know why? Because you chose a human controlled council, and because of that they won't believe you on the Reapers, they won't help you and you won't become a Specter until Earth is charred to dust by the Reapers' first wave of attacks!" I snarled at her.
"And bam!" I clapped my hands together, "You'll get the title of Spectre back, but it will hold no meaning any longer! The Reapers will advance, consume, devour, modify! Men, women, children! You think I'm pathetic for feeling sick at the sight of corpses!? Who is the sick one between us two!? Do you feel nothing at the sight of a husk made of a child, uh!? Is there even a shred of humanity left in you, or is it all gone, because you're not human, but merely 'Commander Shepard, help me or I'll gore the shit out of your corpse' !?"
"Keep your moralistic judgments for those who want to hear them," Shepard hissed out through clenched teeth. "I cannot be broken by the likes of you."
"Oh Jane," I shook my head. "My poor, poor child."
"Stop with the condescending tone! I am not Jane to you and I'm not a poor child!" she shrieked.
"You are already broken," I deadpanned. "What I'm doing? I'm putting the pieces back together with glue. Let me see if I can guess the great train of thoughts that is 'Commander Shepard'."
Shepard brought her hands to her ears. "Not listening! Not listening! I am not listening!"
"Earth was a shitty place, but Jane Shepard had a nice and happy family. She was a bit of a tomboy, always playing with the other kids in the sprawl, always going back home with scraps and wounds. Her parents loved her very, very much, but they knew that if they stayed on Earth, she'd end up in a street gang, maybe the Reds. They couldn't have that."
Jane Shepard stopped walking in circles, but still held her hands to her ears.
"So they decided to sell everything they had and start a fresh, new life on Mindoir!" I exclaimed, "And for a while, everything was happy. That really was a good period of life for Jane...until at sixteen, the Batarians arrived and started killing or kidnapping people to resell as slaves. Shepard's family died, and she enrolled in the Alliance's System Fleet for a chance at revenge. Or maybe was it because you wanted for it to 'never happen again'? No, I'm pretty sure it's because you wanted a chance at revenge, deep down. You're such a festering pool of hatred, you can't feel anything else. And you did it. You passed the tests, became a grunt soldier. And then they sent you on Akuze with fifty other people. An entire marine unit, all made of people that knew each other, had bled together, had toiled together, all friends, maybe, all with dreams and hopes..."
And I clenched my right hand firmly to a close. "And they all died, all of them, from the first to the last," I hummed. "But Jane Shepard didn't. She didn't, because she was the very best of them all. Out of fifty, she alone reached the extraction point. She, alone, survived. She no longer had a family, she no longer had friends, and now, she no longer had a unit."
I sighed. "What a sad, sad story. But now, sadness becomes anger. It becomes an angry story, a disgust filled one. Instead of accepting the pain and growing from it, Shepard lashed out against it. She demanded everyone to be as strong as her, as powerful as her, as quick minded, quick witted, precise as her. She could do the job, so why couldn't the others? She was assigned men under her command. But she didn't treat them as human beings."
I neared my face to hers. "Human beings break, don't they? And they die. Or they are lost. Or they are enslaved to the batarians and go mad and you have to mercy kill them. No, Commander Shepard wanted people who were as strong as her by her side...and guess what, the world isn't Commander Shepard."
"Stop talking," Jane pleaded.
"And so they died. They died but Torfan was taken. And when it was done, when those who remained where shell-shocked by the brutality and the slaughter, when one fourth remained, and Jane Shepard already thought 'yes, I can make them friends now!' reality hit Jane Shepard like a bag of bricks." I shook my head. "Nobody wants a Commander that sends his or her men to death. You scarred them, hoping to make them like you, but they weren't like you. And they hated you for making them like you, didn't they?"
"Stop talking. You weren't there. You can't know."
"And that's not all," I whispered. "No, Commander Shepard's tale has her become a Spectre! Here comes the chance of changing everything! Here comes the chance of proving what she's worth! But no, no! She can't fuck it up! She's fucked up everything until now, so this one thing, she's got to make it work!"
"Why are you doing this to me?" Shepard pleaded, but I pushed on.
"And that's why, that's why you didn't take Garrus -he didn't follow the rules. Why you killed the Rachni -they were a threat. Why you killed Wrex -he was a problem. Why you gleefully went on a rampage of death. To make your point valid. You stopped Saren, didn't you? You did what you could to make people like you, and wonders! They didn't. You tried so hard, didn't you? And they didn't want you. You were the child nobody wanted to talk to, nobody wanted to play with, and that nobody would have ever loved."
And I took a deep breath, and brought a hand to my forehead, exhaling loudly.
"And I am sorry."
Shepard looked at me, unsure.
"I am oh so sorry, my child."
"I am not-"
"You are," I said quietly. "I got it all right, didn't I?" I whispered. "Every bit of your backstory, of your background, every single one of your reasons, I got them right, didn't I?"
Shepard grimaced, and then nodded once.
"I should have gotten something wrong," I whispered. "But I didn't. I was guessing, Jane. Each step, each word, I was guessing, and yet I was right. Do you understand what I'm saying? You are my child because I created you."
"I-I...I don't understand what you're trying to say."
"A character is defined," I said, "By what is written. Take a story book. The Charming Prince is charming because he has a pointy sword and a horse, and fights off a dragon to rescue a princess. He embarks on a quest, but where did the prince come from?"
Shepard remained awfully quiet as he spoke. "It's never said, isn't it? The prince was born of a King and a Queen, that's logical. He's a prince. But what were their names? What were their names, Shepard?"
"I don't know?"
"See. That's what I'm talking about. That's precisely what I'm talking about. It's never mentioned. You can put 'John and Jane' 'Jacob and Miranda' 'Hululu and Hulula' and it won't change a thing. But...to get it right, on the first try, without knowing...your background, your backstory, your origin, they bear a mark I would recognize anywhere."
"What do you mean?" Shepard asked, trying to keep her voice sure. "That it was planned?"
"No more than a story is, Jane, no more than a story has the main character face trials ahead to grow up and mature. You still don't get it? You're too perfect. Your life's shit, but you're too perfect. You never miss a shot. You're never wounded."
"I died," Jane flatly said.
"That was a Game constriction."
"A what?"
"Not important now. What is important is that you are my child. My mind-child, my brain-child."
"Because you knew all of my life?"
"Because I know your motivations, Shepard. I know what you want to do now and I know why. I know what you harbor and what you wish for. I know that if anyone at all hugged you in this precise instant you'd start to cry like a broken toddler-doll."
Shepard bristled. "That's a lie."
"Is it?" I remarked. "I am thinking it's exactly what would happen, hence, unless I'm mistaken, it's what you're feeling."
"This is so screwed up it's not even funny," Shepard said after a moment. "It's got to be something else. I mean, you don't look older than me, you can't have..."
"A week later," I said. "A month later. Years later. They're what? Three words? Two? Decades later. That's two words. And what happens in the middle? Hand wave it away. Tell me every single day of your life from birth to death. It's an impossible task, and they're not important. That's the gist of it: it's not important. It would take me...five minutes, max, to come up with someone like you."
"Look here now," Shepard mumbled. "I am not a five-minute thought! I am a real person, and-"
"Oh, I never said you weren't Jane, I just said you are my brain child made manifest."
"You've got to have a screwed up sense of imagination to conjure up someone like me."
"All for the masses' entertainment. Do you know how much people would love to see a 'tough and strong and bloodthirsty' woman break down in tears? And I play to their expectations. I play so much to their expectations that they don't even realize I'm doing it. Until I strike hard and fast with some sort of new ground..." I slowed my breath down. "Like...you know...something like this."
I shrugged slowly, very slowly. "I know this entire thing has been engineered by something beyond my control, for reasons beyond my understanding...I understand this, I get this, but...it's not fair. What happened to you is not fair, Jane, and I am sorry."
Shepard began to laugh bitterly.
"You are sorry?" she asked. "You are sorry? You come here from nowhere, insult my pride, insult my life, smash and trample everything I believe and am, all for your own conceited sense of justice, and then you tear me apart and you expect me to believe you? You expect me to take your 'sorry' at face value? You expect me to have listened through all this tripe, all this judgmental sermon, all this crap, all to hear you ramble on and on about some bullshit 'five minute imagined thing' that I should be? You're mad. I'm not imagined. You can conjure any naked Commander Shepard in your head that you want, but I'm not them. I'm not. I'm real. And you weren't there. You weren't there on-"
"On the mud of Torfan as we fought through the lines of Batarian slavers," I said softly as Shepard spoke.
"You weren't there on Mindoir when the slavers descended, when the Batarian's knife dug deep in my mother's neck," Shepard spoke at the same time as I did, and her eyes were wide and she wanted to scream, but she couldn't stop. "And you weren't there when my father screamed and they hit him again and again on the ground until he stopped twitching, and you don't know what it feels like to watch a child's charred corpse on the ground hit by Batarian's lasers, and you don't kn-STOP SPEAKING!"
I grimaced.
"They're mine," Shepard whispered. "They're mine. All of them. They're my thoughts, my memories, my recollections."
"And they are my ideas," I said calmly. "They are my ideas. You drew the short end of the stick, Jane, but..."
"Are you god then?" Jane asked softly. "Is this what you're trying to tell me?"
"No, of course I'm not god," I deadpanned. "If this were Evangelion, I'd go on a long rant, but thankfully it's not so I can merely say: not touching that argument with a two-thousand mile long pole of Adamantium."
"I'm...false," Jane whispered. "I'm what? A story character? A...you spoke of a game," so she was a keen listener after all, "I'm a game character?"
"No," I drawled. "In, shall we say, 'countless realities' you are nothing more than bits of coding, of zeroes and ones. In here, in this world, you are real. You are a human, you have real emotions. You. Are. Real."
"But..."
"Countless realities. Countless. Infinite. In one you've got blue hair, in another red. In one your family's alive, in another they're dead. This one...you are precisely as I would have imagined you, if I ever wrote a story with a Renegade Shepard."
Jane clenched her fists.
"I want to punch you hard on the face."
"I am not responsible for your state. Even without me, you would still have existed. Don't mistake cause and effect. It wasn't me thinking of you that created you. I just had a thought one day, and you are just so casually a Shepard that fits the bill of what I thought. With countless infinities, it is easy to find the right one, provided you can access all of them."
"So, if I'm...like the one you imagined, what happens next?"
I sigh.
"This is my greatest shame...but you get a happy ending."
There was silence. It was long, and stretched. And it was awkward.
"What...did you say?" Jane asked softly.
"You get a happy ending," I said quietly. "It's...it's embarrassing to say but...you get a happy ending. All my stories do. I...I can't stand tragedies."
"You."
"I."
"You."
"I," I nodded softly.
"You can't stand tragedies."
"Uh-uh."
"W-What about...my family, that's..."
"A background never exposed to the reader unless warranted. More than a few lines are sufficient to deliver emotional turmoil, connection sometimes, and usually make the reader think 'Oh my god, that poor woman, I can empathize'. Empathy with the protagonist is a desirable trait."
"I-I...I am not a character to empathize with!"
"Not with that attitude, you're not."
Jane gripped her neck with her right hand. "But...do I have free will?"
"Of course you do."
She blinked. "What?"
"Free will isn't something I, or God-Author, can control. Of course...think of it as a train floating on tracks. The moment you decide to do something, then you do that. If it's entertaining for the masses, then the 'train' stays on your track. The moment you do something the readers wouldn't like, like, say, claim how beautiful and loving Reaper Sex is, the 'train', that is the Author, merely writes of how you kicked Krogan asses, and it's no longer 'your' story, but the story of a Shepard who, instead of talking of Reaper Sex one night, spoke of Krogan butt-kicking."
"I'm confused," Shepard mumbled.
"Don't think about it then," I shrugged. "But it doesn't matter at the moment. What matters is that you don't need to worry about that. You're free to do whatever you want to. Take a gun, point it at your head, pull the trigger and die. It's no longer going to be your story that the Author will follow. Simple as that."
"Why not?" Jane asked.
"Because you're what makes a story interesting," I said. "The Protagonists make the story interesting, the supporting cast helps them, and the antagonists defy them."
"I...I think I'm going to have a headache," Jane said, and slowly sat down on her bed's edge. "It's...too much."
"You're the first one I've told this about anyway," I replied. "It might be a good thing, or a bad thing."
"What do you mean?"
"There's this thing called 'Meta'. Imagine playing a game of blackjack while knowing the cards the dealer's going to deal. You're cheating with knowledge you aren't supposed to have."
"But you do have this knowledge," Shepard pointed out. "Maybe because you're meant to use it?"
"If that's the case," I snorted, "I don't understand. This could be a scientific experiment, a test, or a mere shit and giggles thing. But I can't understand why I'm not told the who. I don't have an overarching plot, an evil enemy antagonist to fight off...and this scares me."
Shepard didn't speak, still lost in her own thoughts.
"Because it means my enemy is something I can't fight. And the unknown...oh, how we fear the unknown..."
"You know," Jane said suddenly. "Brain child of yours or not, there's one thing I think you'd do better to know."
I raised an eyebrow.
"You sound like such a pretentious bastard with all your 'I know' or 'It's like this' or when you blabber on about this shit. Keep it to yourself, and do the world a favor."
She fell with her back against the bed.
"And stop being such a jerk, Brain-Daddy."
I blinked.
"The hell did you just call me?"
"I'm your brain-child, so that makes you my Brain-Daddy. Now, if you're done going through the middle-age crisis..."
"You rebound surprisingly quickly," I muttered.
"It's a requirement of being a brain-child of yours, apparently."
I snorted.
I chuckled.
"Well, that's good to know, because you see-"
Ka-chink.
Ka-chink.
Ka-chink.
"The moment you trust me," I whispered, "Is the moment I disappear."
Clunk.
And then there was only darkness.
//Got that. Got him? Got him!