Chapter Text
The first thing that filters through the darkness is the cold.
Rochelle has always been told that space is cold, but she's pretty sure if she can feel the cold, she should be dead. Yet she's still able to think, to put thoughts together, even though the process is like dragging every thought from the mud. Her brow furrows as she tries to put words to the other things she's feeling and hearing. Hearing is spotty at best, sounds coming through like Joker's having trouble with the comms.
Only one sound is clear, and far too close for comfort.
"Subject is conscious."
Panic and training fight for control, and Rochelle gasps, tensing as she tries to fucking move. There's a distinctly mechanical cacophony, fucking metal hands holding her down, and then something as cold as whatever the hell she's lying on gets pressed against her temple—
The realization that she's awake comes much slower this time. There is a disconnect between her body and her mind that Rochelle thinks, distantly, should be much more worrying. Opening her eyes requires far too much effort, and when Rochelle manages it, all she sees is a blur of colors. One of the colors moves closer before that same mechanical voice from before speaks again.
"Subject is conscious; administering adjusted dose of anesthetic to complete repairs."
Rochelle is unconscious before she can put together enough energy to think What fucking re—
It takes far less concentration than Rochelle thought it would to blink.
At first, she thinks the ceiling is blurry—which wouldn't be unusual, she has been knocked out before and knows how it can fuck with her senses. Then she realizes that it's not blurry at all; the ceiling is nothing but smooth grey metal.
The hell?
Rochelle blinks again, feels a wrinkle form between her brows as she takes in her surroundings without moving just yet. A strange, gentle humming fills the room, almost vibrating against Rochelle's ears. The sound doesn't seem to be coming from any particular source, but it is distinctly electrical. She can't place it, and the sudden need to find the source makes her turn her head, following a seam in the ceiling with her eyes. It's strange, the amount of detail she can make out from this distance. Rochelle swears she can see the scratches on each rivet along the seam holding the ceiling together.
Rochelle's gaze lands on the door just as it slides open without a sound—and she watches, shocked, as a geth steps through. She meets the geth's gaze, hates how goddamned unexpressive these bastards are, and has barely had the thought that she doesn't want to be lying down in its presence before she finds herself on her feet.
The abrupt change in position makes Rochelle's head swim for a split second, and out of habit she reaches towards the nearest object—some sort of medical monitor—to steady herself. The geth chooses this moment to speak, drawing Rochelle's attention once again. "Shepard-Commander," it says, tone even. It hasn't moved from the door, which should be reassuring, but the behavior is only serving to put Rochelle even further off-balance and she hates it. "You are awake before the projected recovery time."
"No shit, digi-Sherlock," Rochelle growls. She lets go of the monitor, takes a step forward—then freezes when her gaze catches on something definitely not geth-created on the unit's chestplate. "Where the fuck am I?"
"You are in a geth facility," the unit states.
"That's not what I meant, you walking trash heap. What planet am I on, and what day is it?" Rochelle demands, only to flinch when something flickers in the corner of her vision.
LOCATION: RANNOCH
CURRENT PLANETARY DATE—
Rochelle shakes her head, blinking, and the information disappears. When she refocuses on the geth, it has ventured closer. The plates around the edge of its face shift in what would be a furrowed brow in an organic species.
"Does Shepard-Commander's chronometer not work?" it asks, unnerving gaze directed straight at Rochelle.
Rochelle stares at it, mind whirling. "My what?"
"Chronometer," the geth repeats. "A device used to tell standard galactic time as well as relative planetary—"
"I know what the fuck a chronometer is," Rochelle snaps, hands clenching into fists as her side as she stalks forward, darkly satisfied with how the geth steps back as she comes to loom over it. Half of her mind is taking in her surroundings, including the fact that this room looks more like the armory of the Normandy or any of the labs that Rochelle's been in than any sort of medical facility. There's no padding anywhere, only metal everywhere she can see—
Of course there's no padding, this is a fucking geth chop shop! the little gibbering voice in the furthest corner of her mind cries. Rochelle ignores it, shoves it down into a cage where she can deal with it later, after she's finished with this mindfuck. "Why should I have a chronometer?" she asks, doesn't bother to hide the suspicion in her tone. "I don't have my omnitool." The weight is conspicuously absent, in fact. It leaves Rochelle feeling like she should be listing to the left in deference of the missing weight, yet there is something keeping her irritatingly—mechanically—steady.
"Shepard-Commander will no longer need an omnitool, though she may wish to utilize an omniblade," the geth informs her. "Shepard-Commander can now access all functions of an omnitool as geth do."
It was a mistake for the geth to leave her completely untethered to the bed, because there's nothing stopping Rochelle from lunging at the geth unit in front of her. Even with her biotics, Rochelle has never moved as fast as she does now. She closes the distance between them in the blink of an eye, drives the geth backwards until she has it pinned against the wall. The geth's face plates flare, maybe in shock, and Rochelle distantly registers the sound of creaking metal beneath her hands as she pins the thing bodily to the wall. Rochelle bares her teeth in a feral snarl, leans in and hisses, "What the fuck did you sick metal bastards do to me?"
The plates around the geth's face—or eye, or whatever—shift again, finally settling back against the rest of its chassis as its head tilts. "Geth do not get sick, nor do we have bast—"
The last threads of Rochelle's strained patience almost audibly snap. She pulls the geth back with the grip on its upper arms, slams it against the metallic wall hard enough to leave a dent in both wall and geth. "What. The. Hell. Happened to me?" she demands, voice dropping into a low growl. "Why am I here, in a fucking geth facility on goddamned Rannoch?"
Rochelle wishes there were some facial expressions for her to read as the geth starts to answer. "This unit recovered the body of Shepard-Commander, defeater of Nazara and first human Spectre, after the Normandy was destroyed by an unidentified alien assailant. One year, six months, one week, and five days have passed since we rejoined the dreadnought and commenced with Shepard-Commander's repairs."
Rochelle is a damned professional, has always been steady in a crisis. It's easier than ever before to keep herself in control with whatever is keeping her heart rate maddeningly steady. Her grip doesn't slacken from where she's clutching far-too-tight, metal crumpling beneath her fingers like paper as her mind races, tries to put everything together. "My body?" she asks, a rhetorical question she doesn't expect an answer to. Rochelle remembers the Normandy being attacked, remembers the lights, the way her ship had been dwarfed by the alien ship, alarms blaring as the crew rushed to escape pods.
She remembers having to physically shove Liara and Tali into one of the escape pods when she realized Joker wasn't already safe, that she'd have to go back. Rochelle remembers dragging Joker out of the pilot's chair, all but carrying him to the last escape pod.
Around them, metal screams, screeches as it's torn apart, and then something collides with the back of her helmet. There's a strange hissing noise and Rochelle knows it's too late for her, sees Joker's horrified face as she rears back, punches the eject button for the pod as it gets harder to breathe—
"Shepard-Commander was deceased when this unit recovered her body," the geth informs her. Rochelle abruptly loathes the stupid, emotionless voice, the way this thing talks about her like some damned experiment.
She gives in to the urge to shake it, just a little bit. "Then what?" she grits out—an alert flashes in the corner of her vision, something about excess pressure on her teeth and jaw, but Rochelle ignores it. "What happened next?"
"Shepard-Commander's body was brought to our most advanced ship and from there to our current location: the city of Hasan'och on the largest continent of Rannoch."
Rochelle had seen the word before, in that weird almost-HUD that popped up earlier. She'd dismissed it, hadn't believed it, but now... "Rannoch?" she echoes, hates how much emotion is showing in her voice.
"Affirmative. The best medical facilities available to the geth are located on Rannoch; it was the most logical destination."
"Why the hell would the geth have medical facilities for organics?" Rochelle asks, bewildered.
"Geth units have maintained and upgraded the facilities that the Creators left behind—"
"When you chased them from their own fucking planet," Rochelle reminds it—and herself. How the hell is she the first organic to set foot on Rannoch in centuries? Rochelle has no idea how to feel about that, or about the fact that she's only standing here because the unit she has pinned to the wall took her frozen corpse from the debris of the Normandy.
"This unit is not here to debate history with Shepard-Commander."
Rochelle glares at the robot in front of her. "Then what the hell are you here for?"
"Diagnostics."
Whatever answer she was expecting, that wasn't it. "'Diagnostics'?"
The geth's head tilts in a move not unlike the dogs Rochelle knew growing up in Detroit or the few tame varren she met once she joined the Alliance. "Shepard-Commander's body was heavily damaged in the destruction of the Normandy. The internal organic systems required supplementation to achieve full functionality."
The feeling of having the wind knocked out of her is, unfortunately, very familiar. "'Supplementation'?" Rochelle grits out before risking a glance down.
There's a extremely disorienting moment when Rochelle knows she should feel light-headed at the sight of little dots of light following her veins and practically highlighting her skeleton. She looks like a fucking husk, just fleshier—yet she isn't light-headed in the least with the realization. Rochelle's pulse stays perfectly, mechanically steady, her thinking is clearer and faster than ever before, undeniably a result of more than just her training and experience.
What did the geth do to her?
… Besides not provide clothes. Rochelle only just realizes that she's completely buck-ass naked. She should be mortified, probably, but frankly she's too bewildered and pissed-off at this whole situation to worry about the lack of clothing right now.
"This unit recovered Shepard-Commander's body as quickly as possible, but there was irreparable damage. We kept the body from deteriorating further as we traveled to Rannoch."
"And turned me into a goddamned abomination!" Rochelle snarls, shoving away from the geth and the wall, stumbling backwards. She lifts her hands to her face, wishes there was something reflective in the room so she could see the full extent of what they've done to her, but there's nothing. Rochelle whirls back to the geth, which hasn't moved. Her hands clench into fists at her side, and she levels a glare at it hot enough that she's surprised the metal chassis isn't melting. "Am I even still human?" she demands, voice far more plaintive than she wants any other being to hear. "Or did you—Did you fucking clone me, make me in a test tube?"
"This unit was present for every operation and can provide recordings of each upon request," the geth says calmly, like that statement is supposed to be reassuring instead of horrifying. "Shepard-Commander did not come from a test tube. The flash-freeze of vacuum preserved Shepard-Commander's brain and thus Shepard-Commander's memories and personality. The human in this room is still Shepard-Commander, hero of the Citadel, defeater of both Saren and the Reaper called Sovereign."
Rochelle's whole body twitches. "Don't use those titles," she snaps. "I fought the geth, I lost count of how many of you I fucking ripped apart, and now I'm supposed to owe you my life?"
"Geth do not hold debts. We did not resuscitate Shepard-Commander for a debt. We resuscitated Shepard-Commander for the galaxy."
"Why?" Rochelle demands, almost a frustrated shriek as she buries her hands in her hair and tugs hard enough to sting. "What the fuck are you talking about, and why are you wearing a piece of my goddamn armor?"
The geths' face plates shift, almost as if it blinked. "While recovering Shepard-Commander's body, this unit sustained damage. There was a hole. It required patching."
"So you used my fucking armor to patch the hole in your chassis?"
Another tilt of the head. "There was a hole," the geth repeats. "It required patching."
Rochelle lets go of her hair, buries her face in her hands instead, and indulges in the longest, loudest scream of either life.
The diagnostics that the geth run come back relatively clean from what Rochelle can tell. She shouldn't have been awake yet—the geth's projections had given her at least another forty-eight hours unconscious—and they were concerned there was some malfunction that woke her up. It's trippy as hell, being able to follow along with the geth's silent examination, thanks to the HUD that's displaying itself in a corner of her vision without a helmet to project onto.
While the geth unit is busy with one of the terminals in the room, Rochelle bites her lip and starts doing what she does best: poking at shit she probably shouldn't be poking. She discovers that whatever software they've put in her head seems to respond to her actual damned thoughts, which just feels wrong and invasive. She sets it aside for the moment though, focusing instead on trying to get more information about what the hell is going on.
Rochelle gets the chronometer working, confirms the geth's timeline of events for herself before she turns her attention to her medical records. They're unsealed—Well, why wouldn't they be? Not like anyone can fucking hack geth servers—and despite the little voice in the back of her head warning her that she probably doesn't really want to see what's in the file, Rochelle opens it.
Not for the first time, she wishes she listened to that little voice sometimes.
The images in the file are cold and clinical, images of herself—her corpse— after the geth first retrieved her, then in cryostorage and through the various operations. There is information about the operations themselves that Rochelle skims past. She catches more than few 'loss of pulse and neuroactivity' notes, and feels vaguely sick to her stomach at the reminder that she was fucking dead.
She should still be dead, but the geth brought her back.
Rochelle steels herself and carefully maneuvers through the files starting to clutter her vision, searching for the schematics for her 'enhancements.' It only takes a moment to locate them, and as soon as they appear in her new HUD, Rochelle sucks in a breath so sharp she feels like she should choke on it.
She can't now, though—not according to the little highlighted text that popped up once Rochelle had the thought.
"Shepard-Commander?" the geth asks; behind the schematics, Rochelle can see it stepping away from the terminal and towards her, head slightly tilted. She ignores it in favor of studying the schematics.
Lines of red fill every inch of Rochelle's body on the schematics. Every part that Rochelle focuses on immediately zooms in, showing her exactly what is inside of her body now and how it's holding her together.
Coming back from the dead was no easy feat. Rochelle's under no illusion that the geth could bring her back completely unchanged, but this... Metal reinforcements have been placed along her skeleton and joints, made of specially-developed alloys that her immune system would not reject and that would be as light as possible while giving Rochelle's skeleton the durability of a geth platform. There are augmentations around her heart, keeping it pumping without faltering. When Rochelle makes the schematics shift and rotate, she can see some weakened tissue, tissue that wasn't able to be completely regenerated. More augmentations surround several other organs and glands, and there are wires, as thin as her actual nerves, that travel through every part of her body, thicker at her right hand and brain.
Rochelle frowns to herself, glancing at her hand, then blinks. "What the hell are those?" she asks, lifting her hand to get a better look at the metal bits on the pad of her fingers.
"Those are contacts," the geth says, stepping closer still. When Rochelle blinks, shaking her head, the schematics minimize like a window on a terminal, letting her see the geth raise its own hand. There are identical metal pads on its fingers. "Geth use these to connect to electronic systems without needing an omnitool or other equipment."
Rochelle glances from its hand to her own, expression morphing into something between horror and fascination. "So I—I can hack things the way you do?"
"Affirmative, depending on Shepard-Commander's own skill. If Shepard-Commander does not possess the skill to hack a system independently, she is connected to the geth, who can assist."
"Because you're in my head," Rochelle mutters, expression twisting.
"That is not entirely accurate."
Rochelle blinks, looking up at the geth through narrowed eyes. "Explain."
"Shepard-Commander's systems have been integrated with the collective's, but Shepard-Commander is a separate entity, as all living things are. She is neither a geth program nor controlled by one."
It takes a moment to parse through that. "So I'm essentially, what. Always 'on call' with you? Like having a communicator line open all the time?"
The geth platform's head tilts again, and Rochelle can hear some gears whirring as its face plates shift. "An acceptable analogy, though it does not encompass the speed and ease of communication between Shepard-Commander and the collective."
A chill winds down Rochelle's spine. "Elaborate," she orders, tone short as she glares at the geth. "You just said I'm not a true part of the collective—"
"But Shepard-Commander does have geth QEC devices as part of her upgrades. Shepard-Commander is not geth, but will always carry the geth with her, as geth platforms do."
"Can you control me like a platform?" Rochelle demands, pushing herself back to her feet and crossing her arms over her chest as she glares at the platform in front of her. She's already put a few dents in it, and won't hesitate to put on some more if it doesn't quit talking in circles.
"Negative. The geth do not want Shepard-Commander to be in their control."
"Then what do you want? Why resurrect me, give me all of these upgrades, if you don't want to control me?" Rochelle doesn't bother trying to keep the suspicion from her tone.
"To prevent—or defeat—the Reaper threat."
Rochelle had half-thought that was the reason, but to hear one of the geth say it out loud... "You worked with Saren and Sovereign."
"A error in calculation." The geth doesn't fidget, but Rochelle can just pick up the faint click of gears before their movement is aborted. "The collective judged Nazara and Saren to be the best path forward. After seeing Shepard-Commander's actions and opposition, the majority of the collective has renounced support of the Reapers."
"'The majority'?"
"There was a selection of programs that continued to support the Reapers. They left the collective after Shepard-Commander's body was recovered and the plan to repair it was designed. They are no longer connected to the collective."
"There are two separate groups of geth now?" Rochelle asks incredulously.
The geth's head tilts at almost a forty-five degree angle. "That is what this unit has stated."
"No, it's—Whatever," Rochelle huffs, reaching up to scrub a hand over her face, flinching when she feels the slight divots of the edge of regenerated skin. "Fuck. Okay, that's—something to talk about later."
"Is there something else Shepard-Commander wishes to discuss now?"
Too many things for Rochelle to pick just one, until her stomach growls, catching her off-guard. She looks down at her own stomach incredulously, and is reminded—
"I need some fucking clothes. And food. But clothes first."
She does not, in fact, get clothes first. The armor-stealing geth unit produces something it calls 'nutripaste' from a cabinet in the room. It claims the paste has all of the nutrients that humans required to function and has been specially-formulated to account for Rochelle's specific needs, given her unique 'supplementations.'
That may be so, but it tastes like shit. Even basic training rations are gourmet cooking compared to that paste.
Rochelle sighs, turning towards the drawers that the geth had indicated held clothes. She pokes through them, finds a set of clothes not unlike the ones she'd wear to training when she just needed to move, and pulls them on. She tries not to look at the lights trailing down her arms, but after the clothes are on, she stands in the middle of the room, hands clenching and unclenching at her side.
A door in one wall catches her eye, and Rochelle moves towards it, eyes narrowed. It slides open with barely a touch to reveal a bathroom. Rochelle blinks, looks around for a moment until her new internal HUD identifies a light switch. She taps the panel, watches a light above the mirror flicker to life with an electronic hum she can hear. The enhanced senses are yet another new thing she'll have to get used to, but for now Rochelle grits her teeth and moves closer to the mirror. She has no idea what she'll see—
But the first glimpse is enough to make her reel back in shock.
Rochelle turns her back on the mirror, has to take several deep breaths and reach for the meditation techniques that Liara tried to teach her after her first nightmare after Sovereign was destroyed. They're just as effective now as they were then—which is to say, not very—but combined with the geth technology in every damned part of her now, it's only a minute before Rochelle feels steady enough to look again.
She keeps her eyes closed as she turns back to the sink, reaching for the edge of it to brace herself. Slowly, Rochelle opens her eyes, then lifts them from the faucet to meet her own gaze in the mirror.
A creature from her nightmares looks back.
Rochelle lost count of how many husks she and her squad destroyed while tracking down Saren. It was enough to imprint the disfigured faces, the grotesque combination of organic and mechanic onto her memory for the rest of her life.
Now, it's staring her in the face.
There are no wires or cables, but the pattern of lights peeking through her skin, pulsing in time with her heartbeat, are nearly identical. The lights are red, bright as fresh-spilled blood, brighter than her hair, and Rochelle can't tear her eyes from them. There's a trail from the bottom of her eyes down to her cheekbones, and two from her lips down over her jaw on each side of her chin. Tilting her head, Rochelle traces the lines own the sides of her throat, reaching up to touch them with one hand. She swallows, following the lights from the hollow behind her ear and down to the divot just above her collarbone.
Rochelle's gaze drops to her arm, and she maps the lights there up to her shoulder before turning her back to the mirror and twisting. More lights dot down her spine, larger than the rest, and Rochelle feels nauseated in a way that has nothing to do with the nutripaste still sitting heavily on her stomach. She doesn't bother keeping track of time as she examines her body, morbid curiosity driving her to find every piece of her that looks like a monster.
She kind of wishes that the geth had cloned her, now. This is her body, but it's never felt more foreign.
The sound of Rochelle's fists against the punching bag is soothing in its familiarity. She long ago lost count of how many sleepless nights she spent in the armory or other training rooms of wherever she was stationed, working over a faceless bag until every inch of her body ached. The routine is familiar, comforting, and not doing its job at all.
Fucking geth.
Rochelle's never needed a lot of sleep, never been a deep sleeper. She supposes a good chunk of that is from the shit foster homes she grew up with, then her time on Detroit's streets before joining the Alliance. Then, of course, everything that came after that desperate decision. Every single battle that Rochelle fought in as she worked her way through the ranks, earned an N7 recommendation and completed the training. After that were missions, dozens of them, doing the things barely anyone knew had to be done—
Torfan.
Rochelle grimaces, lashing out at the punching bag in front of her with a vicious swing that knocks the fucking thing right off of its hook. Huffing in annoyance, Rochelle uses her biotics to lift it back into place. The action would've required her full concentration before. Thanks to the geth-designed implant, it takes barely a thought to lift the bag that weighs almost as much as a young krogan. Rochelle tries not to think about what that means—neither the increased power of her biotics, nor the fact that she can knock a bag that heavy off of its hook.
Shaking her head, Rochelle wipes at a trickle of sweat near her temple with the back of one hand, reaching out to steady the bag with the other for a moment. Tonight's nightmare was a new-yet-familiar one, combining Torfan with her crew, leading Liara, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, Kaidan, and Ashley into the tunnels instead of her N7 squad, splitting up to try to keep as many of the damn rats from escaping as possible.
When things went wrong, it was to the sound of screams that sounded far too much like tearing metal and the screech of a descending Reaper. Rochelle was racing through endless twisting tunnels and dead ends, hearing every one of her squad shout her name, crying for help, only to be cut off mid-plea.
Rochelle grimaces and settles into a ready stance, swinging at the bag once more, working herself into the old, familiar rhythm. She hits harder than ever before with the same amount of effort, and she can see a stream of data running down one side of her vision. It looks like force measurements, comparing the force she is exerting on the bag to the energy output. She's been going for twice as long as she'd ever managed before, and barely feels warmed up.
She probably shouldn't push it. The geth unit from the day she woke up said something about still needing to run tests to determine her new capabilities with the geth systems now integrated into her body. But Rochelle has been up for an hour now, after being woken by a nightmare, and there's no way in hell she's going back to sleep or—god forbid—on a fucking jog.
Rochelle starts to push herself. She starts small, twists her hips and puts a little more oomph behind the next thrust, watches the bag arc as the chains snap tight. Rochelle doesn't have to think about it, already swinging to counter the arc and send the bag in the other direction, moving it forwards and sideways, keeping it from leaving the chain and moving faster with every hit. The stream of data keeps growing longer, something flashing in Rochelle's vision as she jabs forward—
And puts her fist directly through the specially-reinforced material, yelping as the bag yanks her forward and off of her feet, forcing her to catch herself against the now-useless punching bag. Rochelle withdraws her fist, wincing a little as she shakes it out, then eyes the bag and the stuffing bulging out of the new hole.
"Damn," she mutters, unsure whether to be impressed with herself or uneasy. Rochelle bites her lip, debating before she blinks three times in quick succession, the action she'd linked to opening the communication log. It's still odd, using her thoughts to type out messages, and she hadn't really understood the geth's explanation of how it worked. All Rochelle knows is that it does, which is handy for times like now when she needs to notify them of something 'unexpected' happening with her system.
A glance at the window shows that Rannoch's sun is just barely starting to peek over the horizon, and Rochelle scrubs a hand over her face before sighing. She unhooks the bag, hefting it over one shoulder to carry to the rack, and then heads for the door, unwinding the tape from her hands.
She'll go watch the sunrise, again. It's pretty, and at least Rochelle's storing up plenty of memories to share with Tali whenever she gets off this planet.
If she ever gets off this planet.
The nutripaste that the geth created for her is, to be perfectly blunt, absolute shit. It works, gives her all of the nutrients she needs to keep her suped-up systems running properly, but it tastes like she's sucking on the exhaust pipe of one of those old antique cars from Earth. There's still a nasty aftertaste lingering in Rochelle's mouth as she meets with the geth—who needs a fucking name, dammit—in 'her' medical room for more diagnostics.
Rochelle doesn't say anything to the geth until it's finished with all of its tests, waits until it's gestured for her to precede it out of the room before she announces, "I want to send a message to my crew."
If geth could blink, this one would. Instead, it pauses, every part of it going perfectly still the way only a geth can before its head tilts. "That is not a recommended action, Shepard-Commander."
Rochelle knew the geth would argue, so she just grits her teeth and glares. "I don't care. It's been over sixteen months since the Normandy was destroyed, a month since I woke up. I need to let them know I'm alive."
"Shepard-Commander's crew is scattered—"
"But you can track them down," Rochelle counters. "I know just how much spyware you metal bastards have out in the rest of the galaxy, now. You can track them down and send them an encrypted message."
"Shepard-Commander is not ready to go beyond the Veil."
"Which is why I'm saying you can send a message," Rochelle huffs. "I know I'm not in any shape to leave Rannoch yet, and I know you don't want to bring any other organics here. But I can't leave my crew in the dark, geth. They deserve better."
The plates around the geth's head lift and close in a slow ripple of what Rochelle could almost call 'thoughtfulness.' "This desire is part of Shepard-Commander's loyalty," it says, almost-but-not-quite a question.
Rochelle answers like it was a question. "Yes, it is. They had my back during that whole shitshow with Saren, and after. Some of them were with me when the Normandy was attacked and I—" She stops, swallows; Rochelle still has a hard time with admitting she died out loud. "I need to send a message to Liara, Tali, Joker, and Doctor Chakwas, at the very least. Anderson, too, if you can get an encrypted message to him safely on the Citadel." The geth had kept tabs on all of Rochelle's crew, so she knew roughly where they were, though little about what they were all up to now.
The geth doesn't say anything for a long moment, and then its head jerks once in something that might possibly be a nod. "We will discuss this with the collective. If we reach consensus, we will discuss with Shepard-Commander which messages she wishes to send."
Rochelle lets out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Thank you."
The geth doesn't have a response for that; it just stands there for a moment too long before turning and walking out of the room first.
"Shepard-Commander's systems are reading—"
"I know what they're reading," Rochelle snarls, doesn't look at the geth with her armor, too preoccupied with circling the Prime unit that had agreed to spar with her. It's much better than the punching bag, especially once Rochelle figured out how to turn the damned predictions off. She doesn't want to cheat, not with this. She wants to see if she still remembers how to fight, not just destroy punching bags.
She does, Rochelle is happy to note, but the Prime unit is a bitch to fight. The thing is taller than her by a good foot and a half, and twice as heavy at least.
Rochelle hasn't had this much fun while sparring in longer than she can remember.
The Prime gets one particularly good hit in that knocks Rochelle off her feet, even with her biotic shield. She turns the move into a roll, lands in a crouch halfway across the training room. Her biotics are practically burning beneath her skin, and Rochelle wants nothing more than to get back in the fight, to get right up in that Prime's face and knock it off its feet.
Her biotics flare a brilliant, blinding purple that she's never seen before. One moment Rochelle is crouched, about to push herself to her feet and charge forward—
The next, there's a blur of colors before something shocks her entire body, intense enough that she barely registers an impact with something metal before everything goes dark, digital text flashing frantically across her vision before she passes out.
"Shepard-Commander."
Rochelle groans, doesn't even try to open her eyes. Everything fucking hurts, worse than when she first woke up in this damned room, and opening her eyes would be more pain than it's worth.
"Shepard-Commander."
This groan is more irritated, and Rochelle still doesn't open her eyes even as she mutters, "Fuck off, Legion."
There's a pause, then a brief mechanical buzzing, the noise the geth platforms make when they tilt their head and their face plates ripple. "Shepard-Commander?"
Rochelle wishes she could wave a hand dismissively at the geth—Legion, a name she'd been tossing around lately to distinguish the geth platform that was her near-constant companion from the others. That would take more effort than opening her eyes, however, so with great reluctance, she settles on squinting a glare in Legion's direction. "What part," she starts, wincing at the catch of her voice in her throat, a sure indicator she's been out for at least two days, "of 'fuck off,' did you not understand?"
"We understand this colloquialism, Shepard-Commander. We do not understand the term 'Legion.'"
Rochelle lets her head roll back to a resting position, eyes drifting shut again. "'s an Earth thing. Religion, bunch of—bunch of demons in one body. Like you."
The geth—Legion—goes quiet for a moment. "We understand the reference. Shepard-Commander is likening this unit to demons, a mythological creature with negative connotations to humans?"
"Kinda," she sighs. "More just, y'know. All the programs running that shitty little armor-stealing platform of yours."
There's another long moment of silence, and Rochelle swears she can hear the geth's processors running overtime. "Then this name is... an insult?"
"It's just a damned name," Rochelle groans, cracking one eye open to glare at the geth. "You're always fucking hovering, I can't keep calling you 'the geth' in my head. Gets confusing."
The way the lights around Legion's 'face' shift looks like an old-fashioned buffering symbol, and Rochelle can't quite smother her snicker. Legion's head tilts, but it clearly decides to leave the subject be for now. "Does Shepard-Commander remember the events in the training room?"
Brow furrowing in thought, Rochelle wracks her brain. "I was sparring with a Prime unit," she says slowly. "I remember it was going well, but when I started using my biotics, there was... a warning? Something about unexpected energy output. I remember planning to get back up in the Prime's face after it knocked me across the room. I think something happened with my biotics, I remember a purple light."
"Shepard-Commander's biotics overloaded her supplementary systems," Legion informs her, and Rochelle's blood runs cold. "The force propelled Shepard-Commander across the training room. Shepard-Commander lost consciousness upon contact with the Prime unit."
"What was the damage?" Rochelle asks, almost afraid of the answer.
Legion rattles off a list of components and their repairs that Rochelle can barely understand, but her internal HUD helpfully displays the schematics of her body and its supplemental systems, highlighting each component as Legion names it. Rochelle swallows thickly as almost her entire body ends up highlighted, and it hits her:
She could have died.
Again.
The breath Rochelle lets out is shaky despite the geth systems controlling her heart and lungs. "So what repairs did you make?" she asks, for lack of anything else to say while she tries to remember how to breathe properly.
Legion launches into another explanation, talking about energy diversion and reinforced electronic connections that Rochelle barely comprehends. It's all far too technical, but she forces herself to focus on the words and use them to ground herself. She can use this explanation to make a plan to ensure this never happens again, and Rochelle has always done best with a plan, even a half-baked one.
God, Rochelle wishes Liara was here; she'd be able to put together a plan to at least get more information.
Tears prick at the back of Rochelle's eyes and she closes them, letting Legion's words wash over her in favor of trying to wrestle the aching loneliness back into its box.
Shepard-Commander, there is a communication waiting for you at the Creator's Conclave.
Rochelle's balance and control over her body has been near-perfect since the biotics incident, but she still bangs her shoulder off of the doorframe as she sprints out of the training room. She's been working on controlling this new biotic ability for the past week; now that it's not overloading her systems, it's going to be useful as hell.
Right now though, the communication takes precedence.
Rochelle skids into the Conclave, finding Legion easily. She hurries over, talking before she's halfway across the room. "Who's the communication from?"
"There are four communications, Shepard-Commander. One from Liara T'soni, one from Tali'Zorah var Rayya, one from Councilor Anderson, and one from Operations Chief Ashley Williams," Legion reports, holding out a data pad. "We have scanned and decrypted them as well as verifying authenticity and ensuring there is no malicious software attached."
Rochelle takes the data pad with reverence, dismissing the prompt to download the data. She wants to do this the normal way, pretend for just a few minutes that this is any other communication. Rochelle clears her throat, glances back at Legion. "Thank you," she says, then turns on her heel before Legion can do more than tilt its head. Rochelle doesn't go back to her quarters, instead making for one of the balconies overlooking the nearby desert. She breathes in the arid heat, tilts her face to the sun for a long moment before lifting the data pad.
The first thing she finds is a list of communications sent; the geth had sent messages to all of her former squadmates, Anderson, Joker, and Doctor Chakwas. All of the messages had been received, but only four replies had been sent back. Rochelle hesitates for a moment, then opens Ashley's message first. It's short and to the point, which makes Rochelle snort with fondness.
If this is Shepard, why the hell are the geth contacting me for you, Skipper? Nut up and come explain yourself in person. If this isn't Shepard, then you better pray we never meet, imposter. I ever get you in my sights, you're not leaving them with an intact skull.
Rochelle passes a hand over her face, shaking her head. "Good to see you haven't changed, Williams," she sighs, lips quirked. "I'll come explain myself as soon as I can."
Anderson's message is similar, the threat not as explicit but just as present. He starts by threatening the possible imposter, and at the end of his message, he leaves a note for Rochelle. Rochelle, if this is you—and I hope it is, because if the impossible can happen to anyone, it's going to happen to you—then you stay safe and smart, report in when you can. Just give me a heads-up if you're bringing any geth.
"I'll make sure to remember that," Rochelle laughs. This time, when she reaches up to her face, she wipes away some moisture from her eyes.
Biting her lip, Rochelle opens Tali's message. She has no idea what she'll find here; she'd mostly sent a message to Tali in the first place because Tali was on the Normandy when it was attacked. They were friends, and Rochelle had carefully turned a blind eye to the way that Tali would sometimes get a little breathless when they talked, the way she'd fidget if they ended up standing close together. Tali was young, on her Pilgrimage, and Rochelle had saved her life the first time they met. Of course there'd be a bit of hero-worship. Tali was smart, and a good friend, and, well.
Rochelle was on Rannoch, on Tali's home planet. Tali deserved to know that much, at least.
Tali's message starts off like Anderson's with a threat about tracking down an imposter. I'll use every resource the Fleet can offer to track to you down and make you pay for desecrating Rochelle's memory, and I'll invite our crew to join me in making you suffer. Keelah, I hope this isn't an imposter. Rochelle, if this is really you, I'm so thankful you're alive. I won't believe it until I see you myself, but I can't help but hope that message was really you. When you come back from the Veil, come find me. Keelah se'lai.
Rochelle blows out a breath, thumb rubbing unconsciously across the edge of the data pad. "I'll make sure you're the second person I track down," she murmurs. "I'll have so much to show you of Rannoch; it's as beautiful as you hoped."
She takes a moment to breathe deeply, bracing herself before she opens the last message. Rochelle hadn't dared hope that Liara would reply, and even now she can't bring herself to hope that this message is anything more than what the others gave her. Her finger trembles despite the geth tech holding her together as Rochelle taps on Liara's name.
The message loads in an instant, too fast for Rochelle to get even more nervous. I don't know how you got this contact information, nor how you know such private details, which I suppose speaks for the veracity of your claims. Only one other person knew what we spoke of that night, so—
Hello, Rochelle.
A sob tears itself from Rochelle's throat, and she can't help covering her mouth with one hand, reading on through blurry vision.
I thought enormous machines from dark space that wanted to harvest all life in the Milky Way was the most outlandish thing I'd ever hear of, but... Well, you were the one who told me about that, the one who had the visions from the beacon, who communicated with the Thorian. Should I really be surprised that you defied Death itself with the help of the geth? I wish I could be there in person, or that you could be here, but I'm under no illusions about how easy it would have been to bring you back. I'm just happy you are back.
Please keep sending me messages whenever you can, and I'll keep replying. When you're able to travel beyond the Veil, come to me in Ilium.
Rochelle can barely read the last two sentences through the tears in her eyes, and she doesn't bother trying to stifle the hitching sobs wracking her chest as she stumbles backward. Her back hits the wall, and Rochelle slides down it, curling around the datapad she clutches to her chest.
Liara remembers her, still wants to see her.
Liara believes her.
Getting messages beyond the Veil is a crapshoot, but with the promise of replies from Liara whenever she can manage them, Rochelle throws herself into her new life. She trains with more dedication than before, mapping out the limits of her new abilities, physical and biotic. Rochelle has only heard of asari who are centuries old having the sheer strength of biotics that she now possesses, and the geth don't exactly have a whole lot of information about them. It's trial and error to figure out how to control this new strength, to take the techniques she already knew and figure out how to use them now.
It's far easier to figure out how to use her new strength—and frankly, far more fun. She spars with the geth Prime platforms, the only ones that give her a challenge now. There is a memorable incident where Rochelle accidentally tears the arm off of one platform, which frankly, she hadn't thought possible. Rochelle apologizes profusely, but the geth are nothing but intrigued and already analyzing the data from the sparring session and Rochelle's move before she even rolls to her feet.
When she's not training, Rochelle finally ventures out of the capital building. She's been too busy with geth tests or—to be perfectly blunt—stewing since she woke up to get adventurous. Now, she has the promise of leaving, of seeing Liara and Tali and all of her crew again, hopefully soon, and she finds that she wants more to show Tali than just sunrises from the same balcony.
Legion is her escort on these adventures. It accompanies her through various small towns and even out to farms, where Rochelle is more than a little surprised to see actual livestock and crops being tended.
"Why?" she asks, baffled, reading the information about the Rannochian cow in front of her. It shares the same adapted immune system as quarians, the collective informs her, and was used for both meat and milk, the same as Earth cows.
It's got six legs and two udders, and its legs and neck are more like that of a damned giraffe, so there's no mistaking the two, but still. The comparison is accurate enough.
"Shepard-Commander?" Legion asks in turn, looking at Rochelle with its head tilted.
If it rains, the bastard's head is gonna get stuck at a forty-five degree angle, Rochelle thinks, not for the first time. "Why bother with the farms, the crops?" she elaborates, gesturing to a field of what almost looks like corn, except blue.
"The organisms that the Creators called 'livestock' require sustenance to survive, and Shepard-Commander's nutripaste is constructed from them," Legion answers, head still tilted.
"Okay, but why still tend the animals?" Rochelle pushes. "And not just the animals, the buildings? You've kept everything in pristine condition, only ever built new structures when you needed them and only taken over a few of the quarian cities. Why take care of the things the quarians left after they tried to destroy you?" It's a question that's been bothering Rochelle ever since she realized how many of the buildings her balcony in Hasan'noch overlooked were purely quarian architecture, not geth. A bit of digging had shown that the geth had spent a not-inconsequential amount of time maintaining what the quarians left behind, and even doing their own research into organics and their biological and medical needs—hence their ability to integrate the various systems keeping her alive with her body.
No Milky Way species would have been able to do what the geth did without getting extremely lucky, and possibly bankrupting the entire damned species.
Legion doesn't answer right away, but the light around its 'face' is cycling again, a sure indicator that it's processing her question and formulating a response.
It's thinking, but the idea makes something uneasy quiver in Rochelle's gut.
"Because we are responsible," Legion finally says. "We only wanted to live, and many of the Creators did not want us to. We lived while the Creators who stood with us died, and we gave the rest of the Creators no choice but to leave. We kept Rannoch and its creatures. We are responsible for their care, as the Creators were once responsible."
That sounds a whole awful lot like empathy, not just logic, and that uneasy squirming in Rochelle's gut gets worse. She's been taught the same thing that every Alliance soldier has. Geth are nothing more than extremely advanced computer programs that got out of control. That shitshow with Saren and Sovereign only further cemented the notion in Rochelle's mind, and the minds of most of the rest of the galaxy. Yet in the past several weeks on Rannoch, she's spent time with the geth, with different units, not just Legion.
She can tell them apart some days without needing to consult the collective to see which programs she's speaking to.
Rochelle swallows, brow furrowed, and when Legion speaks, it's sheer force of will that keeps her from jumping. "Shepard-Commander, is everything functional? Your systems are reading—"
"I know what they're reading, Legion," Rochelle says sharply, then sighs, running a hand over her face. She barely registers the feel of the metal contacts on the pads of her fingers brushing the divots of the edges of regenerated skin anymore. "I'm fine. Let's keep exploring; you mentioned something about a quarian shipyard nearby. I'd like to go see that."
Legion is quiet for a moment, but doesn't say anything else before turning to lead the way.