Waking up to Ash and Dust
She was in the forest again. Her steps were silent as she walked over the leaves and deadfall that littered the forest floor. She couldn’t see anything but trees and the mist that shrouded them. Ashes fell around her, covering everything in gray and shadow. She was alone. Nothing living moved in the twilight darkness that enveloped her.
But she could hear whispers on the wind. If she concentrated she could make out individual voices and words; Mordin’s high tenor “Someone else might have gotten it wrong.” Kaidan’s calm voice “It’s done, Commander. Get Williams and get the hell out of here.” Thane’s thoughtful harmonics, “Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness.” The Illusive Man’s forceful words “Don't turn your back on me, Shepard! I made you; I brought you back from the dead!” Legion's mechanical words with their impossible underlay of emotion "Does this unit have a soul?" And the ever present sound of her own name echoing on the night air “Shepard.”
It was always the same dream. And the one voice she strained to hear, the one she longed and feared to hear was never the one she heard. The dual tone of a certain sniper was one of the few missing from the chorus that called to her from the mists. She wasn’t certain if she was relieved she couldn’t hear his voice, or if she mourned its absence. She had meant it when she had told him she would wait for him. If it took an eternity, she would wait. Now if only I could find the damn bar.
She continued through the woods, Mordin’s voice echoing in a strangely cheerful counterpoint to the gloom that surrounded her.
I am the very model of a scientist salarian
I've studied species turian, asari and batarian
I'm quite good at genetics (as a subset of biology)
Because I am an expert (which I know is a tautology)
My xenoscience studies range from urban to agrarian...
I am the very model of a scientist salarian!
She hummed along with his song, remembering how EDI would broadcast his singing throughout the Normandy when she thought it would boast the crews’ morale. And it did. Everyone from Joker in the cockpit to Jack hiding down in engineering would stop what they were doing to listen to him sing his Gilbert and Sullivan songs.
Mordin’s voice drifted away to be replaced by Miranda’s crisp accents. “Damn it Wilson! She’s not ready yet. Give her the sedative! Shepard - don’t try to move. Just lie still. Try to stay calm.” She remembered this. Remembered the pain of waking too soon from death. She didn’t like remembering that moment of waking. The pain of air in new lungs, of muscle exposed to air and the feeling of her body not being quite right. Of not fitting in her own skin. She could still her Miranda’s voice shouting at her. “Wake up Commander. Shepard do you hear me? Get out of that bed now – this facility is under attack.” She could hear explosions now. Screams and shouting and what sounded like metal striking metal. I trying to Miranda, but I have to find the boy first. The dream never ended until she found the boy, watched him burn.
The voice changed again. Now it belonged to someone unknown. “Wake up. You need to wake up now. We need you. You have to wake up!” A young man’s voice, “He’s very angry that she took his Templars. It hurts to listen to him. You need to wake up!”
Shepard opened her eyes.
She stared unseeing at the rough wooded ceiling above her, trying to figure out where the hell she was, and why wasn’t she dead? She remembered Anderson, The Illusive Man using some form of mind control over her, forcing her to shoot her commanding officer. I shot my friend. It might have been The Illusive Man’s command, but she had been the one to pull the trigger. Shepard closed her eyes against the pain, put it away. She would deal with the fallout over Anderson later. Right now she had to find out where she was, where her squad was, and what had happened after she had blacked out.
Opening her eyes again she turned her head. She was on a rough bed, made of actual wood, in a room with two other beds. Her armor was gone, as was her heavy pistol. Instead she was wearing what looked like beige pajamas that she would not have been caught dead in, had she any say in the matter. At least it’s not a hospital gown. That was the only good thing about them.
Something that sounded suspiciously like an explosion sounded from outside of the building she was in. And of course she would wake up in another war zone. Cursing in three languages, Shepard got herself to her feet, taking stock of her injuries as she did so.
Her ribs were sore, and she could feel a pressure bandage wrapped around her torso. Her left arm had been placed in a sling, and she could tell from the way her vision wavered that she was suffering from a concussion. All in all, she was doing better than she had any right to be. She could remember the pain of a dislocated shoulder, the screaming agony of broken ribs as she struggled to get a full breath. And she was fairly certain a Reaper had exploded on top of her. Again. So how the hell am I still alive, let alone walking?
Her balance unsteady, she made her way out the (wooden!) door and into a large open hall. It reminded her of the church that her grandparents had taken her to when she had stayed with them on Earth. She had both loved and hated those visits. Loved because she was able to explore the Texas landscape with her cousins, and hated because she had never really lost the stationborn’s distrust of open sky. She pushed the memories away, something else to deal with later, and looked at the people streaming in through large double doors at the other end of the hall.
Civilians, some with children huddled around them. Goddamn it. I thought all the civilians had been evacuated out of London! Shepard pushed her way through the crowd of people. She needed to see what was going on, find the local commander, and get back to her ship. What she saw when she finally reached the door made her wonder just where in hell she was. Toto, I don’t think we’re in London anymore.