Happy harvesting, @bluesnyder! I’ve been working on this fic for you all month, and I’m happy that it’s finally in a state I’m happy to share for @masseffectholidaycheer! I hope you like it!
Shepard had been afraid—terrified, even—as she gasped at her rapidly diminishing oxygen supply, never sure which would be the last breath until …
Once the shuddering, strangling panic had subsided, death wasn’t so bad really. Dark. Warm. Indifferent. Shepard could’ve stayed there forever. And she’d expected to.
Or maybe that wasn’t really death. After all, how could anyone have expectations when they were dead? Maybe she just didn’t remember being dead because there was nothing to remember. Maybe the darkness, the warmth, the indifference had been the coma—her resurrection. Lazarus Project, as Cerberus called it. But no matter how many biblical allusions they used, nothing could soften the harsh, jagged light that came with waking up.
From the cold, hard slab of Lazarus Station—could they not at least have found something, anything, to make her comfortable? even just a blanket to swaddle her back to life?—to the “skylight” of stars and vacuum that taunted her every time she tried to close her eyes for a moment of rest, her new “life” felt like she was walking on eggshells. Not that she had to step lightly or avoid confrontation, but that no matter how tender and careful her steps, destruction was inevitable. Shards of broken relationships and two years of time lost cut into her like glass, and no medi-gel packet, no tourniquet, no pressure in the galaxy could stop that bleeding.
You’d think Shepard would be angry, resentful even. But she wasn’t. She was too empty for anger—for any emotion, really. Or was it too full? Gasping for something, drowning on nothing. Fitting, for the living dead. A walking contradiction.
Not that she had much luxury to reconcile those contradictions. From the moment she woke, she’d been reaching for a gun—arming herself, shielding herself, following a voice that only gave orders. That voice didn’t ask if she was all right. It didn’t care if she felt disoriented, going from death into battle instead of the other way around.
She hadn’t been awake—alive—more than a few hours, and she was already being debriefed on what was wanted—demanded, ordered—from her. And of course she would do it. What else was she going to do? Go back to bed?
