#well sometimes the leader of the SSV Daddy Issues can have Mommy Issues instead; as a treat

[astorythatwritesitself]

Survivor's Guilt

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Title: Survivor's Guilt Fandom: Mass Effect Rating: T Length: 2,634 Content notes: Xenophobic (as applied to non-human ME species) rhetoric, general Cerberus bullshittery, Poor Parenting I guess? Summary: A general, an ambassador, and a commander walk into a bar to discuss the most important part of any tragedy: How will this look to the wider galactic scene?

Characters: Hannah Shepard, Donnel Udina, Original Human Character(s)

Tags: Cerberus (Mass Effect), Akuze (Mass Effect), I feel Hannah's whole... Deal here needs a CW but fuck if I know how to describe it, Contempt for your kid? Xenophobia?

Addy's fighting for her life, and I'm raiding the bar in a fucking penthouse.

The situation will be what it is either way, though, so why bother facing it sober? Hannah snatches up a good-looking bourbon and considers the glasses neatly lined up along the counter.

Donnel and Sandra walk in to her taking a swig straight from the bottle.

“Is this… necessary, Shepard?” Don says, while the General takes the nearest stool and buries her face in her hands.

“Oh, absolutely, Ambassador,” Hannah says with a sharp laugh. “We've lost a colony. We've lost a lot of good soldiers, and the one we have left is-”

“Would you care to share, Hannah?” Sandra says, mostly drowning out Don's muttering of something to the effect of ‘political nightmare’.

“Get your own. It's not your kid patched up like a quarian ship out there, is it?”

Her eyes sting.

Her throat burns.

It's just the alcohol, Hannah tells herself.

For a few moments there's nothing but the sounds of Hannah rummaging for a glass and some ice, while Sandra pours herself a healthy dose of wine. Don opts for a bottle of water. Hannah considers doing the same - should do the same, she’s not exactly young anymore, even the one pull there means a hell of a headache awaits her tomorrow.

This entire month has been headache enough already. Raids and pirates and smugglers galore, the Council giving humanity the shaft yet again by refusing to allot the barest of resources, refusing any allowance for more troops in this sector or that one - but being ever so eager to allow the Alliance to push forward on some new class of ship, so long as those plucked-chicken shits were involved in every step, and now -

Hannah pours a double shot and downs it like the crap she used to smuggle onto campus back in Kingston, pointedly ignoring how much of it ends up on her sleeve as she pours one more.

It's Don who finally breaks the silence. “How do we even begin to approach something like this?” he says. The calm in his voice is borderline offensive.

“Carefully?” Sandra replies, removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. “We start from the top -”

“We lost a colony,” Don shoots back. “That's bad enough - we could have recovered from that. Even the asari have lost colonies in the Traverse. Losing so many soldiers on top of it-”

“To threshers. Everyone is afraid of those things-”

“Which is precisely why they know to look out for them!” Don storms forward, slamming a fist on the countertop, hard enough to make the ice rattle in Hannah's glass. “To avoid them! While we, instead, build a town on top of a nest, without having the slightest idea of their presence! How on Earth must that look?”

God, is that all it's ever going to come back to? Hannah thinks, taking a slow sip and rubbing her temples as Don and Sandra continue bickering. Image - it always comes back to the image. She'd joined the Alliance to advance humanity and leave a legacy to the stars. Joined with the C's after Shanxi turned those dreams into a nightmare of survival, stayed on as they became Cerberus, because it was clear the Alliance wouldn't do enough, not when it could make them look bad to some glorified animals who'd happened to get their first. Days and weeks and years of bureaucratic bullshit, while innocent people got rounded up and branded and sold like cattle-

And yet here you are, sitting pretty in the PR department after all, she thinks, closing her eyes. The other projects advanced humanity, but here were the lucky bastards who had to make sure they looked good doing it; two Alliance grunts and a politician who'd made Hannah genuinely consider snorting her weight in red sand, just to flip him upside down and see if that'd shut him up for a few minutes.

“Do you have anything to contribute, Shepard?”

Speak of the goddamned devil.

“Oh, I think I've contributed plenty to the situation already,” Hannah says through a wretched sort of smile, one that only grows as Donnel's expression sours further.

Sandra, meanwhile, has started pacing. “No matter what, we need to do some damage control - we're not going to come out of this looking good, but something like this could absolutely tank colony enrollment, among other things. Could go as low as after Mindoir. Lower, even, this is the second major hit inside of two years…”

“Exactly. Why in god's name would anyone even want to be a colonist at this point?” Hannah snorts. “Leave the comforts of Sol for a rural pisswater that makes Earth's slums look luxurious in comparison, and if you're lucky, you can assist smugglers and pirates for a few credits! Lord knows the Alliance can't help you, we're spread so thin we can barely hold ourselves together; and the Council won't help us, because god forbid they take some responsibility for bombarding a new species who had no idea they had stumbled into someone else's backyard. Now they tell us we can't make so many ships, can't go here or there without risking interstellar incident; but oh, we're useful guns to take out their fucking four-eyed problems, so they dangle just enough help until the Alliance is in too deep to actually pull out, and we're too damn scared to say fuck them all and strike out on our own.”

“That would be suicide at this point, anyway,” Sandra says, shaking her head. “That's why we need someone in their ranks - they've got a millennia’s head start, but that's all they have on us- god.” She rubs her forehead and leans against the wall. “Can we just blame Anderson for this?”

“Get in line,” Hannah mutters, glancing over at Donnel, who looks rather like he's chewing his own tongue for a moment.

“His being a Spectre wouldn't have made a difference in this situation,” he finally says.

“Might've. Fourteen years is a long time - we could have more weight in decisions. More information. Even if the Alliance's general standing didn't increase, we could have sent him - or another one; I imagine if he'd succeeded, we'd have at least one more by now - in alone, instead of an inexperienced lot-”

“With all due respect, ma'am, shut the fuck up. You know damn well we wouldn't have sent a Spectre even if we had one,” Hannah snaps, raking a hand through her hair. “Yes, the colony went dark, but how the fuck were we supposed to know what was down there? Akuze has never even been targeted by pirates, it was supposed t-” Her breath hitches, and for a moment her voice won't work, and when it does, it's so quiet, there's no hiding how it shakes. “It was supposed to be safe, goddamn it.”

All those families. All those kids.

It's too long before Sandra speaks up again, and Hannah nearly misses the words anyway. Too busy trying to tally up all the names.

“You raise a fair point, Shepard,” the general says in a measured, thoughtful sort of voice. “Udina - you're also right, everyone else knows to keep away from the threshers. That's… likely why Akuze was so quiet, now that I think about it. But do we know what to look for? From orbit, or on the ground? Could we have prevented it in the first place?”

“The most I've ever heard is to be suspicious of flat circles,” Hannah shrugs. “Nothing about how to detect them from orbit, god no. Seismic readings are the most we can get for any lead time.”

“Both the settlement and the unit's camp were on a hill, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we'll work with that,” Sandra says briskly. “It's not much, but it is honest - we genuinely had no idea what to be wary of, and if anyone else did have any clue… well, clearly, they didn't think we needed to know.”

“A tragedy,” Don says, and Hannah wants to throw the watered-down remains of her drink in his face at that tone, that smarmy, holier-than-thou tone all politicians got. “A tragic, fatal mistake. The Alliance, naturally, will do all in its power to prevent such another lapse of information - but will the Council do its part? Will they deign to share their knowledge with the newest additions to the galactic community, or will they show that they simply want us out of the way?” He sighs, shaking his head. “It's as good a start as any, I suppose.”

“Might wanna omit that last part for the masses, but cheers otherwise,” Hannah says, forcing herself to down most of what remained in her glass.

“Then, the next matter-”

Oh, motherfucker, you’d better not-

“Shepard. Do we know yet, if she will pull through?”

“Adrian's stable. It looks like the grafts should take,” Hannah says, staring into her glass and gripping it far tighter than is necessary. Deep, slow breaths, she tells herself, but god it's hard to do that and conjure up her husband's voice as he'd rattled off the assessment. “Damage was. Mild, all things considered. Deepest injuries were to her head and neck, but nothing debilitating, nothing some weaves and metal can't patch up. She inhaled some of it, even, but they're pretty sure she'll be able to breathe on her own, once they can take her off the sedatives, doesn't appear to be any irreparable damage. Just some scarring to her throat.

“By current projection - if there are no surprises, she should be physically fit within a month. Isn’t that lucky? But it's only three days in, who knows what the aftereffects could be? We barely know how to detect those things, much less what happens if anyone survives.”

She stares into the glass, into her own murky reflection, trying to shut out Don's relieved sigh. Trying to shut out the question she knows is coming, trying to shut out the subsequent thought, because it is such a terrible, hideous thing, but -

“Do either of you have any idea what will come down, then?” he asks.

God, it would just be so much easier, if Addy had died as well.

“Still in the air.” Sandra at least has the grace to sound somber. “The reports are still… I'm still going over the data, as it were, and discounting Shepard herself, the three of us are the only ones who know the exact… circumstances…”

“Oh, just fucking spit it out. It looks like Adrian fell asleep on her watch, and then abandoned her fucking unit to the worms, is that so goddamn hard to say?”

“But she did send the distress call before they surfaced-”

“Oh yeah, a whole two minutes before; if she'd been awake and paying attention-"

“- and who in their right mind would blame anyone for running in those conditions? We have provisions for extraordinary, unprecedented, or unforeseen circumstances-”

“Which is great for avoiding a court-martial, but how the fuck is that going to sound to those freaks who've been watching her?!” Hannah pounds the countertop, just barely resisting the urge to shatter the glass instead; god but she just wants to see something break.

Don sinks onto the stool beside her. Slowly, fucking primly, he takes another glass and the bottle, pouring out a drink with shaking hands.

“Fourteen years,” he finally says, barely more than a whisper. “Fourteen years before they even thought to give us another chance. Shepard was our best hope, now…”

Now we're lucky if we get one in our lifetimes, Hannah thinks. The alcohol's finally working, it seems, because the thought conjures nothing but a numb, detached disappointment. At the situation, yes - but mostly, (and she's less loath to admit this to herself) at Adrian. The only child she'd ever have, and goddamn blessed - sturdy, smart, strong. Stellar aim. A human biotic who could make some true use of the skills, and what did she do with it? Tech, medicine and diplomacy; thank god she'd at least found the idea of sabotage as interesting as negotiation, enough to accept those invitations to the villa-

God. Would that still continue, after this?

“Shepard is our best candidate,” Sandra says. The words almost echo, the silence had been so complete. “She saved those aliens during Elysium, when their own kind were willing to let them be collateral damage, the Council loved that. The exact details of Akuze can be sealed - the important question is, would she say anything?”

Hannah closes her eyes, considering - Adrian could be so goddamn stubborn sometimes, but… “I don't think so,” she says. “I’m not positive - but I'm fairly sure, especially if I can talk to her when she wakes up.”

“If she can keep this quiet, then so will the Alliance,” Sandra says. “No demerits. N training remains open. We treat this as nothing more than the tragedy it is. We had no way of knowing the worms were there. There was no time to evacuate, they struck before she could distinguish them from an errant tremor. Circumstances being what they were, Shepard made a call no officer should ever make, let alone one so new to the position, and it ensured there was a survivor to even tell the tale.” The general nods, almost smiling now. “We could even play this nicely to the Council species - at the Alliance's expense, unfortunately, but personally I'd rather one of ours among their ranks, get us into shaping policy instead of being shaped by it. The asari will patronize us no matter what, so why not use that? Shepard's barely more than an infant so far as they're concerned, let them pity her. The salarians might have some respect if we frame it as a tactical retreat, they're always criticizing our refusal to admit defeat.”

“And the turians?” Don asks.

“Oh they'll blame the Alliance no matter what,” Hannah says, surprising even herself with a downright chipper tone. “Hell, we could tell them the whole thing down to the last detail, and those idiots wouldn't put any of the blame on Adrian either way. It's always on the superior officers for not knowing if a recruit isn't ready - now how in the fuck are you supposed to know that before put them out there?”

“Correct, if not the most… eloquently put,” Sandra says, narrowing her eyes slightly as they meet Hannah's. “The Alliance takes the brunt of the blame, and Shepard… well. Everyone's afraid of the thresher maws - even batarians, even the krogan. Yet here's one of ours, alive and fairly well in the grand scheme of things, after being ambushed by a nest of them… quite the angle, isn't it?”

“I suppose,” Don says, though his expression still looks grim. “This is, of course, assuming Shepard recovers, and that she's found mentally sound - “

“This isn’t gonna break my kid, Christ,” Hannah says, heedless of how the words begin to run into each other.

“- what's to say this won’t happen again?”

“I might’ve raised a fool, Donnel, but I didn't raise an idiot.” Hannah pushes away from the counter, getting unsteadily to her feet. It sounds like they've got a handle of things, no sense exhausting herself further, not when there's a hangover in the works. Not when she has more work in store later on. “Adrian knows better than to make the same mistakes twice. Hell, if I were a betting woman? I'd say she'd rather die before let herself fuck up like this again.

“So long as she does it after we've got another candidate or a Council seat- and she doesn’t pull stunts like Harkin in the meantime- I’m content. Now goodnight, Ambassador, General. I’d like to get some rest before heading out to the hospital."