Identity (a Mass Effect fanfiction)

Commander

He had no memory of how he'd gotten off Thessia. To Shepard, it seemed that he went from watching in dumbfounded, stunned agony as Reaper after Reaper landed moments after he had thought the battle half-won to staggering off the shuttle and looking around at the familiarity of the cargo bay as though he had never seen it before.

"Commander. Commander."

The voice was repeating the word gently but insistently, but somehow Shepard couldn't process it. What did it mean? Who was it? It only slowly dawned through the hazy fog that filled his head that the voice was trying to speak to him. He looked over and blinked at the face of the uniformed person next to him. Traynor. Yes. "What is it?"

"The asari Councilor is trying to call you. She's been trying to call since they lost contact with— Well, for quite some time now."

Councilor. Asari. Thessia.

His mind shied away from the words.

"Commander, would you like me to speak to her?"

"No, I'll do it." Those words were automatic. He had said them so often, to so many people. He wasn't even sure what he had promised to do this time, but he was going to do it, because that was how it went. Other people needed things done, and he did them. And it worked. Every time. Except today, because ...

Councilor. Asari. Thessia.

No.

Traynor said, "Okay, Commander." But she didn't look as though it was okay. She looked as though he didn't know what he was saying. Maybe she was right.

She punched the buttons for the elevator, made sure he got on, and made sure he got off again. He assumed it was the right place, but the effort of thinking about it was too much.

He stood blinking in the middle of the busy room. He knew it was familiar to him, but he couldn't seem to remember quite what everything was called. He followed Traynor through some doors. "Here's where I leave you, Commander," she said. "You'll be all right from here?"

"Fine," he assured her. That, too, was an automatic word. He'd been assuring people that he was fine for a long time. He didn't know how not to be fine, even if he wasn't entirely sure what fine meant.

Two other soldiers whose names he couldn't bring to mind ushered him through that room and on into the next one. He followed that into an inner room where a small button was lit up and buzzing insistently. It should stop, he thought vaguely. Was someone going to stop it?

He pressed his arm against the wall and leaned his forehead against it and closed his eyes, seeing Reapers and destruction—but was it Thessia or was it somewhere else? He searched his mind for names. Palaven. Tuchanka. ... Earth. There had been so many places.

The button was still buzzing behind him. He wished it would stop.

"Commander?"

That word again. He opened his eyes and looked at the person speaking. It was another woman in uniform, one whose name he wasn't sure he knew.

"Commander?"

"What's your name?" he said to her.

"Rabinowitz, sir."

"Are you sure?"

She was looking at him strangely. "Sir?"

"Nothing. What can I do for you, Rabinowitz?"

"Commander, it's the asari Councilor. She's ... very insistent. Can't you hear her calling?"

Frowning, he looked around at the buzzer. "That's the asari Councilor?"

"She's calling, yes. Can you— Do you want me to answer it?"

Did he? He didn't know. Maybe.

"Commander?" Rabinowitz said again, more insistently, and he realized he had closed his eyes again. "Commander!"

He blinked, the haze beginning to clear. Commander. That was him. They called him that because he was in command, because ... it was his responsibility.

Like a flood, it all hit him. The Crucible, the Catalyst, Cerberus, Kai Leng ... Thessia. Liara, whose heart had broken almost audibly as she watched the destruction of her home. Those things were on him. They were his fault, because he hadn't been strong enough, smart enough, fast enough. He had failed. He was conscious of a wave of nearly unbearable weariness, just as had come over him as he climbed hand over hand up the debris of the temple, desperate to reach Kai Leng before he disappeared with the information they needed about the Catalyst. That he had eventually made it to the top he knew, but he had no memory of it, no idea how he had forced his exhausted muscles to keep working.

But there was no time for weariness now. He was in charge; he had created this, brought them all this far only to fail at the last minute. He was the one who would have to find a way to fix it, and that would start with confessing to the asari Councilor that he had lost her homeworld, as well as the last hope to save it and everything else.

"Yes," he said to Rabinowitz now. "Yes, I'll take care of it." That was what he did; he took care of things.

Relief flooded her Rabinowitz's face and she left the room, going back to her duties. Left alone, Shepard turned and hit the button, taking a deep breath before the image of the asari Councilor appeared in front of him. "Councilor? It's Commander Shepard. I'm afraid ... I'm afraid I've got some very bad news."