There existed no words in the English language to describe the gnawing discomfort and unease that one felt when setting foot inside the superstructure of a Reaper. Miranda would know—she had done so once before, back when the suicide mission crew had been looking for a way to safely travel through the Omega-4 Relay. It had started out as nothing more than a faint whisper of dread, which she’d dismissed as the eerie emptiness stemming from the lack of any living Cerberus scientists. Then, slowly, it had grown to a vacuous scream devouring everything it could drown in its wake. So imperceptible at first, and yet so undeniable at the same time.
There had only been a handful of times in her life that Miranda could say had been full of true terror. The first was when she had run away from her father as a child, secreting Oriana away so she wouldn’t have to endure the same mental and emotional abuse Henry had been so fond of. The second, to no one’s great surprise, was when mercenaries had very nearly tracked Oriana down and returned her to their father. Miranda had lost control of her emotions so completely that she’d very nearly killed the only person she’d ever been able to call a friend.
And the third had been walking through the husk of the Reaper orbiting Mnemosyne, crawling through the carnage of multiple Cerberus teams that had torn themselves to pieces. As disturbing as the gore and viscera had been, nothing quite came close to that ever-present yet almost imperceptible trace of unease that seemed to emanate from the colossal structure. She knew now that that feeling could be nothing else but the whisper of attempted indoctrination coming from a long-dead monster, but that did nothing to allay the sickening apprehension churning in her gut. After all, could something so powerful and incomprehensible ever truly die?
At the very least, this time Miranda was sure there were no attempts to invade her mind. Or if there were, they weren’t trying to take control of it. The Wardens had promised them that much.
“This is fuckin’ creepy,” Jack absently commented as they tip-toed down shoddily constructed corridors that were clearly not meant for bipedal creatures. Though Mordin and Legion walked alongside them—the former straining his neck to observe everything in sight while the latter walked resolutely onward—there was no denying that it was, indeed, fucking creepy.
It was well-documented that the Reapers had used the protheans and the keepers before them to aid in the process of new superstructure creation, but both species had been heavily modified to suit those purposes. The keepers may well have always been quadrupedal, allowing them to maneuver on almost any surface, but the Collectors had developed mid-level flight capabilities, thus negating any need for standard walkways or passages. The geth had done what they could in a short amount of time, but the fact remained that the very surfaces they tread upon felt alien and uncomfortable.
“No need for footing comfortable to organic feet,” Mordin sounded off, his high-strung voice bouncing off the angular surroundings. Of course, none of this bothered him. Or if it did, his curiosity didn’t allow him to show it. “Surprising. Architecture clearly not inspired by conventional design, even by AI standards. Very efficient.”
“That’s what you’re focused on?” Jack asked. She put on a good front, but Miranda knew her well enough to know when she was hiding discomfort behind concern; mostly because Jack was always uncomfortable. She just rarely let it show.
“Lack of common organic facilities natural; expected. Still, highly irregular construction. No need for secondary bulkheads, containment shields. No one ever inside superstructure except drones—no concern for safety. More space for power relays, data storage, backup systems. Fascinating.”
Jack sighed dramatically, ignoring the opportunity to keep ribbing Mordin for his obsessive attention to detail. If she passed on a chance to be a snarky asshole, the Reaper had to be getting to her.
“It is not much farther,” Legion said, marching solemnly at the head of the pack as they made their way to the heart of Azraean’s power distribution system.
“Good. Less time travelling, more time interfacing. Though, moving in and out of Warden superstructure likely to be problematic."
“No more than moving between starships,” Miranda added, speaking primarily to take her mind off of her disheartening surroundings. “We'll manage.”
“Indeed,” Legion replied. “If only organics possessed the ability to transmit their data to another platform at lightspeed.”
“Can geth still do that now that you've achieved individuality?”
“The process is different in many ways, but yes, provided the recipient platform is vacant.”
Then onward they continued, trudging through silence that only became more uncomfortable the longer someone went without speaking. Of course, Legion and Mordin surely felt none of it—one being a robot and the other being too intrigued by his surroundings to care—but it suffocated Miranda all the same. She should have stayed on the Armistice and asked Shepard about the disaster in the Omega Nebula. Anything would have been preferable to walking into the belly of a monster.
But as it always did, time prevailed and eventually the group reached their destination: the Warden’s mass effect core. Once more, a similar and yet slightly unexpected sight. Sovereign-class Reapers shared schematics down to the wiring and circuitry. Save a very small number of them, every Reaper was identical to one another minus the data collected from the species harvested in order to construct it. So, given that Miranda had seen the core of the Reaper on Mnemosyne, she’d had a decent idea of what to expect.
And yet, much was different. It had primarily been the geth who performed construction on the devices that would enable organics to interface with the Wardens, and as such they’d instituted a very rigid design in their creations. Organics tended to prefer soft edges, curves, and space to make them feel comfortable. Geth only cared about efficiency, and that couldn’t have been more evident.
The device itself appeared rather simplistic compared to its purpose. There was only meant to be one organic present in each Warden for their impossible plan to save the universe, so a small platform stood in the center of the room for said individual to stand on. Two small columns rose up from the ground at arm’s length, with odd grips sitting atop them that were most likely meant to be suitable for several different species, making it look just a bit uncomfortable for all of them. After all, humans and asari possessed very different hand structures than turians or krogan.
At the base of the platform sat a round, slightly shiny contraption that Miranda assumed was meant to harness the organic’s energy, as the hand grips likely also did. Underneath, a plethora of wires and tubes ran out of sight only to feed into the mass effect core itself. If everything worked as theorized, the temporal biotic power would be enhanced by the Warden and then shot through the relays until it hit the galactic core. With a few dozen other Wardens and organic power sources spread throughout the galaxy, perhaps it would be enough.
Or, that was the ridiculous plan that no one believed in.
“Beautiful,” Mordin breathed.
“Beautiful?” Jack retorted indignantly. “I always knew you were fucked in the head, but how in the shit can you call something like that beautiful?”
“It is our best option,” Legion answered.
“Bullshit. There’s no way. No fucking way. Thing’s just as likely to kill me as it is to power me up. Actually, no, it’s way more likely to kill me because there’s no goddamn way this is gonna work!”
“Jack,” Miranda intervened, pleading for her to stop herself from starting another unnecessary round of bullshit. “Let’s hear how it works first. Then we can decide how ridiculous it is.”
She could almost see Jack biting her own tongue off out of frustration. The past year really had seen her mature considerably, but the impulse to mouth off always seemed buried just beneath her skin. Thankfully, with maturity came an increase in self-control. Just a little one.
“It is precisely as we have discussed,” Legion stated, taking a few more steps into the room so he could stand between the platform and the organics meant to judge its capabilities. “Utilizing this apparatus will yield the greatest results while demanding the least of its user.”
“And what are those demands, precisely?” Miranda asked.
“Stress on the physical body. Just as dark energy manipulation fatigues you, redirecting your energy through the Wardens will be similarly exhausting, if not more so.”
“Redundant power supplies,” Mordin uttered, likely talking to himself as he identified what various parts of the machinery were meant to do. “Stimulant administrators, failsafe medi-gel containers, vital sign monitors . . . hm, energy amplifier? No, conversion unit. Most equipment meant to keep user alive. Highest priority.”
“Because without us, they got jack shit.”
Miranda very nearly spun around and scolded Jack like a child. Had she not been so engrossed in the scientific notion that their plan was actually going to become a reality, she probably would have. As it stood, she was so intrigued by how much effort the geth and Wardens had put into this venture, and at the same time she was terrified of what it implied. The possibility that the Wardens were deceiving them was still a very likely one. What if this stupid plan worked, and they directed all that energy at organics? It would be like a sea of limitless Thanix missiles blanketing the entire galaxy.
But that question had been asked countless times in recent months. And every time, a counter-query also came forth: what if no action were taken due to distrust, and the Wardens’ plan actually was the solution? As Mordin and dozens of others had been quick to point out, there wasn’t a choice to be made. Take the course of action that held a probability of success, or the one that embodied certainty of failure? The answer couldn’t have been more clear.
So there they stood, in the guts of a Reaper while a geth explained to them that this device which was meant to drain them of all their power would be used to repair the fabric of reality. And to think, Miranda had been the one to lead them down this rabbit hole.
“Without them, we have an equally jack amount of shit,” she said, still staring at the device with a sort of resigned skepticism. “This is what we decided to do, right? There’s no use arguing about it at this point.”
Jack’s eyes scrunched together as she tried to form an argument, but the best she could do was sputter monosyllabic objections with no weight behind them.
“It’s safe, yeah?” Miranda asked Legion.
“As safe as a device such as this can be.”
“You know what I mean. I won’t die during the trial run?”
“It is highly unlikely.”
Not the most inspiring vote of confidence, but she had to take what she could get. “Mordin, I trust you won’t let me die here.”
“Of course not.” As always, the salarian needed no time to process what Miranda was about to do. He was likely ten steps ahead of her. “Testing not worth losing biotic potential. Will intervene if necessary. Though, actual initiation may lead to different outcome.”
One again, Miranda could have done with a bit less pragmatism and just a little more comfort. Either way, she expected nothing less. If this actually worked and they actually managed to shoot the healing laser into the center of the galaxy, Mordin would be the first to advocate that the organics interfacing with the Wardens were expendable compared to the fate of the entire universe. Brutal calculus.
But that was a conversation for another time. At the moment, all Miranda had to do was prove that the device could actually siphon her biotic potential and amplify it via the Warden. Then they could all go home and pretend this had just been an extremely vivid fever dream.
Without pausing to consider her actions, Miranda marched resolutely toward the device. She was vaguely aware that Jack reached out both physically and verbally attempting to stop her, but she focused so intently on her objective that it all faded into a dull white noise. She took two steps up to the platform, placed her hands on the grips, and centered herself directly over the discus-looking apparatus at the base of the device.
Then she imagined the Illusive Man’s face, and that smug, arrogant smirk he always wore so proudly. As fury rose to the surface, she felt the surge of adrenaline and power that accompanied her biotic flares, and channeled all of it into her hands and feet.
She wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected. It didn’t feel painful, or even uncomfortable really. She’d thought there would at least be something—some sensation letting her know that her biotic strength was being siphoned off as if she were donating blood. But there was absolutely nothing. After a while she began to question if anything was even happening.
“Fifteen times more than expected results!” she heard Mordin yelling, straining his already high-strung voice so he could be heard. Funny, Miranda hadn’t noticed how loud the room had become until he’d spoken, but she couldn’t deny that cacophony of machinery whirring and hissing. She’d zoned out so thoroughly that when she came back to the moment, it nearly deafened her.
And when she looked up, she could see exactly why. The Warden’s mass effect core pulsed and spun in an excited fashion that Miranda had never seen before, as if it were making a thousand emergency FTL jumps back to back.
But most importantly, a jade aura weaved in and out of the singularity, practically lacing itself with the blue-black energy of the mass effect core. The two distinct forms meshed in a way that made Miranda question if it was really happening, until it all coalesced into a single sphere of greens and blues.
That was when she felt it: the fatigue that always accompanied overexertion. Usually it was a gradual thing, like any physical exercise. At first you tell yourself you can keep going, until eventually it reaches the point where your body begins crying out in protest. This time it hit Miranda all at once, causing her to let go of the hand grips and collapse onto the floor. Legion hadn’t been kidding when he’d said it would be even more draining than normal.
“Practical data model complete,” she heard Legion report in his monotone way. “All readings show success. Warden Azraean has collected the biotic potential provided by Miranda Lawson. All systems nominal.”
“Holy fucking shit, cheerleader!” Jack screamed. “We’re not gonna die!”
----------------------------------------
Grief can do terrible things to a person if they aren’t prepared for it. The last thing that anyone needs to deal with is loss in their life, and fate never seems to be so kind as to allow us any time to process trauma, let alone attempt to brace ourselves for it. In some situations, sure, people are given a bit of a heads-up that suffering is headed downriver towards them, but this is rarely the norm. For the most part, tragedy strikes like lightning and evaporates just as quickly, taking what’s most important to us—or, potentially worse, what we didn’t realize was so important. Despite the heavy rain and the roar of thunder acting as cautionary signs indicating what may happen, it still takes your breath away when you lose something so crucial.
I had lost people before. In fact, my entire life had been defined by the deaths of others. For as long as I could remember, my father’s side of the family only ever talked about my aunt and how much better everyone’s lives would have been if she hadn’t died shortly after childbirth. They believed it so firmly that, even twenty years later, it was still one of the sole reasons used to rationalize why we hadn’t become a thriving Christian family. Because the misery from losing one person had tormented everyone so severely that they simply couldn’t obtain perfection any more.
On my mother’s side, my grandma lost her second husband when I was a toddler. I was old enough that I still have a few hazy memories of him, but young enough to have been relatively unaffected by his death. My grandma, on the other hand, slowly spiraled deeper and deeper into isolation. My mother and uncle tried to help her in their own ways, but she had always been defined by her romantic partners, as many people are. Many of us look to other people in order to find some sense of identity in a loving relationship, only to realize that we don’t know who we are when that person leaves. For some, answers never arrive. They spend the entirety of their lives searching desperately for meaning and comfort in other people, only to feel robbed of their time and effort when the perfect person never comes along. Because make no mistake, there is no perfect person.
I had learned that lesson myself many, many times, and I consider myself fortunate to have learned it relatively early on in life. Looking back now after so many years, it’s clear to me that despite the hardships I faced when I was young, enduring them prepared me much sooner than most for the trials and adversities I would face and will continue to face the older I get. You see, growth and maturity are a double-edged sword. We all want to become stronger, more resilient, and more capable in life, but doing so isn’t a simple process of training to become better. You don’t just decide to be more compassionate or understanding or wise; instead, you’re given opportunities to learn. And learning very rarely ever comes without failure and heartbreak.
The world ingrains us with this idea that every one of us is incomplete without a special person to make us whole, and often it’s far too easy to slip into that mental and emotional trap, thinking that we’ll be forever imperfect until we find our better half. I was one of those people who fell headlong into that rabbit hole, further pushed by the idiotic notion borne of religion that it was my sworn duty to save the souls of anyone I cared about, lest they burn in hell for all eternity. When you love somebody, one of the very worst things you can do is convince yourself that you have to change them in some way. Add the stereotypical savior complex on to that already absurd compilation of dogma and ideologies, and you find you’ve accidentally discovered the schematics to a human time bomb.
A bit dramatic, that, but often the most dangerous thing for anyone to face is their own emotions.
At least two weeks passed after Claire’s death during which I felt like a slab of extremely brittle glass. At least, that was how everyone treated me. One wrong move and I would shatter completely. I could almost see the eggshells they tried so hard not to trip over, despite the fact that it was nothing more than a fiction. Truthfully, I surprised myself with just how well I handled the situation.
That’s not to say that I didn’t have a complete breakdown. I did, internally. Anyone who’s ever dealt with grieving the dead will know that shock can sometimes quell the onslaught of emotion that inevitably follows losing someone you love. Sometimes you experience so much in such a brief moment that your mind puts safeguards in place to shield you from such an overwhelming force. Then, little by little, it lets you experience all of that pain gradually so you can process it effectively.
I hadn’t thought my brain was wired to grieve in such a healthy manner, so it of course came as a bit of a surprise when I didn't just crumble to pieces after Claire's death. It hadn’t seemed like a good thing at first, either. Every time I closed my eyes, the image of Claire putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger replayed with perfect clarity. PTSD. Chakwas didn’t even have to tell me; I’d seen the symptoms before and I wasn’t so utterly crippled by the experience that I couldn’t think rationally.
Even so, I felt a sort of hollow confidence in the realization that I hadn’t fallen into an endless spiral of guilt and self-loathing following the events on Takkan. Each of us present had lived through enough confusion and emotional trauma that it should’ve taken months of therapy just to sort through—and had it happened maybe a year earlier, I surely would have wound up in some chasm of angst and depression. As it stood, all of those emotions and internal struggles did continue to run through my head, but I had a decent degree of control and ownership over them.
After all, I’d witnessed the love of my teenage life come back to spend a solid twenty years with me in that fantasy-land hellhole. Though I knew it had been nothing more than a dream, it was one I remembered with perfect clarity and no sense of dilution. Even weeks after the fact, my mind housed the memories of two separate lives in full detail. Everyone could understand the trauma and grief that naturally came with watching Claire kill herself; trying to comprehend what it must have been like to live a second life and lose everything was another matter entirely. Nobody even had a reference point to draw from that might help them imagine such a thing.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Well, aside from the one person who had also lived it.
A ping chimed on my omni-tool, alerting me to the fact that someone was at the door to my quarters. A subconscious sigh of resignation warned me that I didn’t feel quite ready to entertain guests just then, but I was going to anyway because it had been two days since I’d had company. And as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get the memories of that day out of my head.
The second I saw the blue of Antarom’s eyes, I wanted to slam the door in her face. Nevermind that we were in the future where doors didn't even operate on hinges and therefore couldn't be slammed—if anyone deserved to get shut out, it was her.
But there I stood, unblinking and unmoving while Antarom looked at me like I'd spontaneously developed a severe case of bubonic plague.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” she asked, brushing past me before I even had time to think of a clever retort.
For the longest moment I just stood there, still staring out the open door to my room, fighting the urge to activate the Seer and physically remove the problem from my comfortable place of solitude. I could do it, too; if there was one thing our fight had taught me, it was that Antarom didn't have that much of an advantage on me in close quarters. Especially in the confines of the ship, she couldn't fight me unrestrained without doing major damage. And as brash and headstrong as she was, she also wasn't that stupid.
And neither was I, despite the mountainous evidence to the contrary. So I bottled my frustration, knowing that I had much bigger emotional struggles to deal with, and resigned myself to the fact that I had to entertain Antarom in order to make her leave.
“Let's just get this over with.” I sat at my desk, reclining in the padded office chair as I waited ever so patiently.
She wasn't going for it. Antarom had never been a conversationalist, but she'd also never struck me as the kind of person to beat around the bush. Apparently I'm not as perceptive as I imagine. Instead of engaging, she chose to look around the room and observe what few personal effects I'd managed to accumulate. Having only entered this reality roughly a year prior—and having spent that entire time in the center of the galaxy’s largest and most brutal conflict—I didn't own much, and that was evident from the sparsity of my bunk. In fact, aside from my old blood-soaked BAAO t-shirt hanging on the wall, no one would even know it was my room. Everything else, from the standard-issue military furnishings to the empty walls, had remained entirely unchanged.
“Quaint,” was the only commentary Antarom had to offer. She did, however, stare for an intriguingly long time at the shirt on the wall. Admittedly, it might have been a little odd to memorialize something like a plain piece of clothing, but it was practically the only reminder I had of my old life.
“Seriously Antarom, I've got shit to do. So if you don't mind, just spit it out and let's agree never to talk to each other again.”
One of her brows lifted involuntarily as she absorbed the utter disdain and snark thrown her way. “We still have to work together, dipshit.”
A dry chuckle escaped me alongside a sort of frowning grin. “You really think we're gonna be in the field together after what happened on Takkan?” I gave her a second to think about it before continuing. “We'll be lucky if they don't bench us for the rest of the war.”
“Fuck off. They need us.”
“There are barely any of us left!” My voice echoed through the bare room, causing me to reconsider just how loud I was getting. “We’ve lost half of our ground team—two of whom were indoctrinated. You really think they're gonna let us do anything other than sit in a hole so no one else gets killed?”
She stopped pacing the room, choosing instead to face the wall to my left while the silence mounted between us. She must have thought the same thing at least once; the Evanescent had started strong with a strike team of ten people. While Troy, Adison and I had hardly been skilled combatants at the start of the war, our intel had always been valuable and working with Garrus and the others had shaped us into a force to be reckoned with. Our teammates, on the other hand, had been badasses from the start. The best of the best, hand-picked to save the galaxy alongside Shepard and her crew.
Three of us had died on Tuchanka, in a heroic mission to cure the krogan and give us a fighting chance at beating the Reapers. Their deaths, while tragic and unshakable, were understandable from a logistical standpoint. It had been a clusterfuck of a mission, and that was before the Sovereign-class Reaper had shown up and crushed us.
Takkan was another matter entirely. No one had seen fit to keep me in the loop—and why should they, given that Claire and J’Kal had probably both had their minds taken over by Cerberus?—but my best guess was that the Council saw us all as damaged goods. Troy and Garrus hadn’t even been with us during that op, and they had still been pulled from all active operations after the debrief just like the rest of us.
We’d been given a second chance, and a third. Honestly, we’d probably been given far more than that, and simply didn’t realize it due to the way Hackett preferred to operate. But Takkan had been the last straw. There was no defending us any more. Indoctrination wasn’t something to be trifled with.
“It’s my fault.”
At first I didn’t register the words, or I subconsciously ignored them. Antarom’s voice had been barely more than a whisper, and even that may be generous. The sound emitted from her lips existed on such a low frequency that, by the time it reached my ears, it felt more like a ghost had spoken it from a different plane of reality. That’s exactly how it felt when I did register them, too, because I couldn’t imagine any situation in which Antarom actually apologized.
“What?” I asked.
Apparently she’d taken herself by surprise as well. That, or she just didn’t want to continue because doing so would tear down the fortress of stoicism and self-deprecation that she’d no doubt been solidifying for years. I knew the halls of that building well enough to recognize it in someone else’s eyes.
“Daniels. It's my fault.”
Gut instinct told me to respond with something like, ‘You're damn right it is,’ or, ‘Too little, too late.’ But as soon as my brain took over and thought about those words, I immediately regretted even thinking them. I had spent too many years of my life dealing with the traumatizing consequences of unnecessary responsibility and stubbornness, so I knew precisely how much damage that line of thought could do to a person. No one deserves to feel like the death of someone else is their burden to bear—especially if the deceased took their own life.
A grunt of frustration subconsciously forced its way out of my mouth. Part of me very much still wanted to stay there and blame Antarom for every fucked up tragedy on Takkan. After all, if she hadn't lost her goddamn mind and gone on a murder rampage, maybe Claire wouldn't have felt so pressured to take action. Maybe we could've even figured out how Cerberus was manipulating them and come up with a way to stop them.
Yet on the other hand, Claire herself had been the one to tell me that getting sucked into a well of what-ifs could only make a tragic event even worse. What happened, happened. Pondering what could have been was not only meaningless, but impossible; literally anything could have happened. A meteor could have struck us all dead then and there, and there would be no one left alive to grieve a suicide that would never take place. My relationship with the first girl I’d ever loved could have worked out, leading to a beautiful and prosperous life. I’d seen it firsthand. But dwelling on possibilities rather than reality would only create despair. He who increases knowledge, increases sorrow.
It was all enough to make my brain hurt, and that was on top of the fact that Antarom seemed to be displaying actual remorse for Claire's death. If only people weren't complicated and therefore never did anything unexpected, the world would be a much easier place to inhabit.
“What's this about?” I asked, still not really sure how to respond. All I knew was that regret could be a powerful motivator, and an equally destructive and vindictive bastard. Which one it had decided to be to Antarom, only a lengthy discussion would unravel.
“I'm fucking sorry, okay?” Her eyes widened and her brows pressed together in addition to bending into a frown. I remember the expression vividly, because it's not one you see often. Anger was present in her eyes, but it felt almost misguided in a sense. Like she had no idea who or what she was angry at, and if she were being honest with herself, the anger probably served as nothing more than a mask for something much more difficult to deal with. Either way, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with misplaced raged being directed unfairly onto me.
I didn't answer, because honestly I had no idea what to say. It kind of was her fault, yet it very much wasn't either—and ultimately, what did it matter? It was all in the past now, never to be changed. Yet another lesson I’d learned from my second life. You can’t fix all your fuck-ups.
“Fuck, this is stupid,” she breathed. I let her continue, in part because I wanted to see what the point of all this was, and in part because my brain had failed to form any compelling reason to intervene. Instead I just watched as she avoided eye contact, moving for the sake of motion. She had always portrayed the image of a calm and collected warrior who reserved her emotions for the battlefield, which only made the telltale signs of someone deeply uncomfortable with their current situation all the more noticeable.
“God damn it,” I whispered. “Can’t you just let me hate you?”
A curious look made its way to her eyes, but that didn’t surprise me. My rather peculiar choice of words and vernacular had cemented my lack of popularity even when I was a kid, and I’d never outgrown the habit of speaking my mind whenever I pleased.
“We both suck at this, so let’s just be straight with each other.” I stood from my chair on legs that felt much shakier than they should have, and leaned forward a bit, placing my closed fists on the desk. “Takkan was a goddamn shitshow, even by our standards. I get it. I was under too, and the shit they pulled with me . . .” I drew in a sharp breath, utterly unaware of how difficult it would be to talk about my fake life. “I understand, believe me. As far as J’Kal goes, this is probably fucked up to say, but I might have done the same thing. It was fucking scary how easy the decision was for you, but I do get it.”
Her brow bent into a deep frown, but she remained silent all the same. It seemed she was just as curious as I was to figure out what my point was—because yeah, make no mistake, even I didn’t fully know what my mouth was saying.
“I wanna blame you for Claire’s death. I want to just drown myself in the idea that it was all your fault, because then I wouldn’t have to take responsibility for once in my fucking life.”
“That shit wasn’t your fault either—”
“I know.” A moment of silence followed my interruption, both to digest the fact that Antarom was trying to console me in her own way as well as to give both of us a second to breathe. “I know, but that’s how I’m wired. Everything’s my fault, especially if it involves people I care about. So I wanted to shift the blame to you, because without a target for me to displace my grief onto, I have to deal with it myself. And I’ve been trying to put her memory to rest the best way I know how. It’s just . . .”
I only then realized that my knuckles had turned white and my trimmed fingernails had begun digging into my palms. My heartrate hadn’t elevated, nor did I seem to be sweating, but there was no mistaking the tension that had turned my entire body into an unflinching beam of steel.
“There's no good way to grieve the dead,” Antarom whispered. If not for the Seer enhancing the vibration of her voice, I might not have heard her at all. “Especially in a fucking shitshow like this one. I get that.”
I really wanted to take a long moment to marvel at just how down-to-earth Antarom’s demeanor was in that moment, but sympathy trumps curiosity in those situations. As cold and heartless a bastard as I tried to be at times, I'd experienced too much misplaced guilt and self-hatred to ignore those same traits surfacing in someone else.
I try to be a dick, I really do. But sometimes you just have to cave in and be considerate once in a while.
And sometimes you get slapped in the face for it.
“Don't put that shit on you,” I said. “It's not your fault, and it's not my fault, it just happened.”
“That's shit and you know it.”
“Antarom, stop and think about all the variables that had to come together in order to lead to Claire's death. First, the Reapers. Then Cerberus taking over the latent indoctrination signal. Then Cerberus again for luring us to Takkan, putting us under, and making us go through so much fuckery that we couldn't tell reality from fantasy.”
I knew full well that she had already taken that into consideration, but guilt often forces our minds to behave illogically. All the evidence in the world can't stop a person from blaming themselves for someone else's pain. I just hadn't thought Antarom had enough of a heart to take responsibility for Claire's death, and to be honest, it didn't really compute in my head. All I could do was instinctually respond to the despair emanating from her the way I wished someone had responded to mine.
“Now we might have made some understandably reckless decisions, but that doesn't make it our fault.” I took a deep breath, suddenly realizing how shallow the air in my lungs seemed to be. “If there's anyone to blame, it's Cerberus.”
In a way, I don’t think either of us fully believed that. Or at least, our self-deprecating tendencies tried to convince us that it wasn’t true, and that the guilt still lied solely on our own shoulders. But in another much more abstract way, I at least knew that the words coming from my mouth made more sense than any attempt at selfishly blaming myself for every shitty situation. Even if it didn’t feel right due to past experiences wiring my brain in such a backwards way, I knew it was.
Whether Antarom did or not was a very different story.
“Do you think we might be indoctrinated too?” she asked.
Though my head didn’t turn to face her, nor did my body move at all thanks to the immobilizing bout of reconciliatory fear plaguing it, my eyes found hers and I frowned involuntarily. “What do you mean?”
“They put us under—tried to speed up the process or hijack an indoctrination signal that was already there. Said so yourself, back in the lab.”
Damn. I hadn’t thought she’d listened to a word I’d said after we’d woken up.
“They tried, but we stopped them before it went too far.”
“How do you know that?”
I wanted to give her something concrete to allay her worries, but the only proof I had to go on was what Claire had told me in a state of pseudo-consciousness. At that point, I’d barely been aware of what part of me was real, so I couldn’t very well use information I’d gained during that time as an explanation. Besides, it would probably sound insane.
“Because we’re still here.” Sometimes the simplest explanations work the best. “Dunno about you, but if I'd been indoctrinated, I probably would've pulled the same stunt as Claire. The life I lived while I was under was much better than this fucking nightmare.”
“Better?”
My frown deepened, eyes bent in confusion as I directed my questioning gaze at Antarom. “Yeah. Why? What did you see?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Oh come on, don’t start with that shit. You and me are the only two people who know what happened.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Like hell I don’t. You think I like to share personal shit about myself? I don’t even like to admit that I have personal shit that I don’t want to share.”
“You don’t fucking get it!” she yelled, quickly and jarringly shifting the mood from somber to tense in a way that made my breath catch in my throat. “You got some peaceful happy life? Well I got to relive my worst nightmare over and over again until . . . I almost gave up.”
“Yeah, and?” I asked rhetorically, bordering on belligerence. Base arguments fueled by anger and callousness usually aren’t my cup of tea, but my emotions and thought processes weren’t exactly in the most logical of states. “You think I didn’t want to?”
She shot me a questioning look. “What?”
“You’re not the only one with a monopoly on feeling shitty about themselves. You really think I just broke out of that fucking coma happy as can be and ready to take on the fucking universe? News flash: that shit was fucked for me too!”
“Oh bull fucking shit!” she spat, pacing the opposite end of the room while her gaze drilled a hole through my skull. “You wanna play nice and put Daniels behind us, fine, but you’re not about to even begin to compare your fucking make-believe life to the fucked up shit I saw!”
I don’t consider myself a particularly angry or spiteful person, but I’ve always known that there’s a layer of rage buried somewhere deep beneath my lack of self-worth. For the most part I think I’ve always had it fairly well under control. After all, when you’ve been clinically depressed and suicidal for over a decade, you’re either on a very well-structured regimen of therapy and drugs, or you’re just stubborn enough that you’ve bottled everything up like a cheap balloon filled with too much helium.
But one thing that has always been able to set me the fuck off is when people demean the traumatic experiences I’ve managed to survive. It’s primal instinct—there’s no amount of self-restraint that can keep a person from exploding when their trigger is pulled.
“Don’t you fucking dare judge what I went through,” I breathed. “You know I've only ever been in love once in my entire life?” Antarom’s brow lifted, wondering what the hell that had to do with anything, but I’d expected a similar reaction. “I thought I'd put that behind me and moved on years ago, but I don't think that's really true. Something powerful and unstoppable like that doesn’t ever really go away. She died not long before the war. Vehicle accident. We weren’t even together when it happened. She’d moved away a long time before that.”
Only then did I realize that every muscle in my body had turned to steel. Every instinct and unhealthy tendency I possessed told me to stop talking, but I had to. I needed to get it off my chest just as much as I needed to make Antarom regret going down this path.
“When I was under, she and I were together again. Everything went right; we never split up. We had kids. We had the life and home of our dreams. Or, the one we dreamed of when we were eighteen. It felt like an actual twenty years with the only person who’s ever managed to make me feel happy with my life. But I kept seeing what was wrong, until eventually I tore it all down. Probably out of spite, or self-hatred, or some misguided sense of duty and responsibility. So when I woke up, I had to bury her for a second time, and everything we’d made together along with her. I know it was just a dream, or a projection or something from Cerberus, but the pain is still there regardless. So don’t fucking tell me that all of that was meaningless, or I think I might just kick your ass out of my bunk.”
I didn’t even want to look at her, and I imagine she felt precisely the same. No one else knew the exact details of what had happened on Takkan—not even Troy and Adison. I knew that they both would listen and try to understand and do their best to console me, but I hadn’t seen any point in putting words to something so difficult to describe. Antarom had at the very least lived through a somewhat similar event from the sounds of it, so either she would realize that we’d both been thoroughly fucked or she would continue to be an asshole. Either way, I’d said my piece.
I sat down in my desk chair, finally breathing a sigh of relief after standing so rigidly for what felt like an hour. They say that finally getting traumatic experiences off your chest is always cathartic regardless of how you may feel in the moment, but it made me question if everyone’s emotionally liberating experiences make them feel like they’re tied to cinder blocks.
At the very least, I could tell something similar had struck Antarom.
“I had a sister,” she stated, pausing as if that simple statement alone pained her to admit. “Died when we were still maidens. Ahok fasciitis.”
Even had I known what that was, it wouldn’t have changed what was really important, nor would it have changed the fact that I wanted to be an apathetic piece of shit due to Antarom’s behavior. But even so, I couldn’t deny that there existed a sort of solidarity between two people who had lost loved ones. When it becomes a topic of conversation, you can’t help yourself from trying to relate.
“I’m sorry.”
“You fucking better be. When we were under, you got to live out the life of your dreams and what did I get? I got to see her die over and over again, in a thousand different ways. Every time I thought she’d somehow pull through and beat it, they pulled the rug right out from under me and killed her off.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Suddenly everything made just a bit more sense. Of course, Cerberus hadn’t been there to coddle us. They’d put us under for a very specific reason: to break us down so much that we would give in to indoctrination. In that respect, it stood to reason that our dreams would have been different. Psychologically, different people face stress and trauma in different ways. Not to mention, Azraean had said that my cousins and I were more resilient to its effects than most, and it had been nearly impossible to keep my head while I had been under. I could only imagine how difficult it must have been for Antarom under those circumstances.
And once again, I found myself at a loss for words. Whether it was depressive tendencies, suicide attempts, or mentally blocking out everything I didn’t want to deal with, I’d wrestled with some pretty heavy shit in my day; but even so, when faced with the emotions of another person in the palm of your hand, all the words I could put to paper leave my head in that moment. Sometimes, all you can do is let it be.
“What was her name?” I asked.
Antarom stared at the ground, lost so deep in thought that she might as well have vanished into another realm of existence altogether. “Arina.”
I stopped for a moment just to entertain the idea of Antarom having a sister. It explained so fucking much about her.
“So if there’s one thing I don’t wanna hear,” Antarom continued, “it’s that we’re not good enough to keep fighting, when we’re the ones who have the most reason to fight.”
I nodded, absently keeping a perpetual frown on my face. “That doesn’t change the fact that we’ve consistently fucked up all our missions.”
She scowled back at me. “Can you just take my fucking side for once? Haven’t we fought each other enough?”
Logic and my own obstinacy told me that doing so would be a poor idea, but she had a point. Nihilism would get us nowhere. Of course, optimism was equally as unlikely to help in that particular instance, but I couldn't deny that it had always been exhausting trying to be the voice of reason with Antarom.
And she finally had a good argument. For the first time in the entire eight months we'd been waging war, it felt like I had a very personal reason for fighting.
“You're not right,” I said weakly, “but you're not wrong. At least as far as Cerberus is concerned, this is our battle more than anyone else’s.”
If I’m being honest, it surprised even me that we’d found something to agree on. In all the time we’d known each other, I could think of maybe two or three situations in which Antarom and I had been of the same mind. Most of our conversations devolved into arguments fairly quickly—though in all fairness, that happened with almost anyone Antarom spoke with.
But fuck me running, she was right about one thing. I’d spent so much time in this universe that giving up then and there would have been a tragedy. Everyone we’d lost and everything we’d achieved would mean nothing if we didn’t press on. I owed it to the memories of Claire, J’Kal, Grunt, Koenig and Gorun to keep fighting. And perhaps most importantly, and selfishly, I owed it to myself to pay Cerberus back for fucking with my head so thoroughly.
The latter surely wasn’t the healthiest of motivations, but when you’re thrown headlong into darkness, you cling on to whatever you can find.
“So we’re good?” Antarom asked.
I shot her a questioning look. “You’re joking, right? I don’t know how anyone gets to ‘good’ after all that shit.”
Her face bent into a scowl. “You know what I mean, shithead. We’ve lost half our team in this war. Cerberus fucked us over in a dozen different ways. We can sit here and bitch about it, or we can stir up enough shit until the Council finally sends us to go kick them in the ass.”
“Poetic as always.”
“So are we good?”
Goddammit, there’s no getting around this one.
“I’ve got your back, Antarom.”
She nodded, briefly looked at the floor, and I swear I actually saw some sympathy in her eyes when she returned my gaze. “And I’ve got yours.”
Then she turned and rushed out of the room like she’d just set it on fire.