wherever the tradewinds take me

Another ME-related drabble in a first person POV of Shepard post-ME3… R is for Reports…

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Since I’ve really wanted to write lately but just haven’t been able to get anything finished I went with this writeworld prompt.

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There’s only so much a person can do to hold a galaxy together before she starts to come undone herself. There are only so many times an old soldier—one whose age is measured by the weight on her heart and not the years since her birth—can buckle down and give it their all. It’s hard work. Tough on the body and damn near brutal on the soul.

And when that battle is done, when those proverbial walls have stood against the storm, what’s left? What does that person do then, when everything that they were and everything they are doesn’t feel like it’s really theirs anymore? After the healing and learning to walk again. After the months of meetings with brass and having every action, every decision, called into question and scrutinized. After all that, what was left?

Doubts, even though the end goal was accomplished in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Pain, even though the bones had been set and prosthetic fitted. Fear, because she knows she’s just a broken soldier, a fragile pawn. It doesn’t matter that it’s a hero’s title she carries now.

That’s what was left. 

Those were tough things to live with, but she’d done it before and that had to be something. It had to be some testament to her courage and her will. To her ability to see things through to the end. 

After all she was a soldier, through and through. This was just a different tactic, another way of knowing when to shoot and when to duck for cover. When to advance and when to retreat. It was about knowing that even though the clip was so close to overheated it shouldn’t last that she could squeeze out one more round. She could steal a deep breath, center herself, and put the pieces back together one more time.

rinatan:

It wasn’t about being an anchor, even though it kind of was. It wasn’t about reminding the defender of the galaxy that they had one more person to protect, one more to be lost among billions if they weren’t careful enough, because the truth of it is that there are some people who could never be misplaced. They stand out no matter how much the try to blend in. No matter how much the hunch of their shoulders or shuffle of their feet could be mistaken for any one of the people around them.

No, it’s about making sure the person who always did the protecting was protected as well. It’s about realizing that the one who was so unique that you’d never think they’d get lost among the masses was the easiest to lose. They didn’t get lost in the way a child misplaces a favorite toy only to rediscover it at bedtime. It was more like the penny that faded into the depths of English Bay when you dropped it overboard just to watch it swirl into nothing. When it was gone there was no getting it back.

It was too easy to get lost beneath all the expectations. Labels were tossed around like dice at a casino full of gamblers with nothing left to lose. Hero. Savior. Defender. Murderer. Criminal. They were heavy things, those titles; even the good ones. They bowed backs and weighed down feet. They could suffocate someone who hadn’t spent their whole life learning how to breathe in spite of them. They could shackle ankles and imprison a person’s spirit as surely as the Alliance could jail an officer willing to make a hard call—an impossible call—even when it was the right one all the same.

That’s why it wasn’t meant to be an anchor, even when it was. It wasn’t to add to the burden, but to take from it; a gentle reminder that there was one less thing to worry about, one less thing to be pulled under by. It was the twine of one finger, then another. It was the gentlest of touches, the softest of promises—that even when the galaxy was falling down around them there would be someone there to save the hero like the hero was saving them.