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The air on her skin was as warm and wet as the air in her lungs. Stifling. Like it had its own presence. She was sweating a little, and the soft sheets clung to her legs as she shifted in the wide bed around her. Blinking open her eyes, and she could see the room bathed in golden red light flooding in from the open wall high windows. Birds were chirping outside, their cries repetitive and melodic, like the background beat of a song. She didn’t remember ever hearing birds that sounded like that. Farther off was the ocean, pale sand and glimmering water stained by the beautiful clouds of the sunset.
Above her, the ceiling fan was on its lowest setting, and rotating in lazy, hypnotic circles.
She didn’t remember getting into this bed, but it felt strangely familiar, like the penthouse on Ilium she had visited with Liara, or a farmland vista on Eden Prime. Maybe she had been dropped off here to rest. …What had she been doing before?
Whatever it had been, it was tiring. She must have slept through the entire day. With a groan of one who had just been roused from sleep, she sat up and stretched her back. The tension and ease of her muscles felt amazing.
It was when she placed her feet on plush carpet that she noticed the rest of the room’s features. The bed was a king sized one, delicate white sheets and a cherrywood frame. In front of it was a modest TV screen within a matching bureau. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw glowing screens atop a dresser. She circled around the bed to find picture frames with holographic displays. There she was in many of them, smiling back at the camera.
Garrus, with his arm thrown around her shoulders. Tali, beaming and waving. Joker and EDI were in the background. The two of them had entwined their fingers. She couldn’t help the warm feelings of happiness that bubbled up inside her, at how great everyone looked, so unconcerned, so carefree. It was such a shame that things weren’t the same anymore.
They weren’t? Confusion replaced the pleasant feeling briefly. Had something bad happened? She couldn’t remember anything bad happened… not in a long time.
She looked to a different photograph. There she was, posing with a bunch of Krogans on Tuchanka. Wrex. Grunt. Bakara. Other members of the Urdnot clan. Even Urz had wiggled his head into the frame of the image.
Her and Anderson, placing a hand on her shoulder, looking rugged yet dapper with that cap on his head.
A photograph of just Miranda, a softer smile on her face.
Jack, in front of her students, smirking as if just about to turn around and give them a playful, but harsh lecture.
She set the last photograph (one of Thane and his son, both of them looking like high school students having their picture taken) and sighed. She hoped everyone was doing alright.
The doorway next to the drawer was open, and she decided to step out into the hall. The place was like a condo, she must have been staying there for a while. The other doors, numbered with metallic plates, were vaguely familiar. She turned one way, and then another, and found herself in a wide common room,
The entire back wall of the building was panes of glass, and outside she could see the heavy greenery of the outside garden. The leaves and fronds of the plant life swayed in the breeze outside.
The common room had a collection of sofas and love seats surrounding a holographic projector in the center, which was currently displaying swirling planets and constellations. For a few moments, she was entranced by the motions and patterns of the lights. Star systems appeared and disappeared, and nebulas formed and shrunk as it moved about through the galaxy. It stopped on the beautifully colored slice of the Perseus Veil nebula, and it was then that she noticed the person sitting in one of the loveseats.
It was a human. He was clothed in simple, dark colored suit, vaguely reminiscent of the environmental suits Quarians wore. In fact, there was a lowered hood around his neck. She almost questioned herself if she was looking at a Quarian, but the five fingered hands and simple shoes stopped her short. Plus, she could see his face. His skin was pale, almost unusually, and his dark hair shaved short to his scalp.
He was staring at her, and she didn’t recognize him.
“Hello?” she offered, in greeting.
The human returned a friendly smile.
Maybe he was just a guest here. But, even though she had never seen his face before, there was something very familiar about him. The intense, ice blue of his eyes was the most striking. Where had she seen that blue before?
There was a door in the center of the glass wall, and she decided to go out of it, to see the beach, Maybe then she’d remember where she was. The other human watched her as she left.
Outside, the air was just as hot and lush, and she tasted salt on her tongue with every inhale. It was cooling down a little as the sun dipped further into the horizon.
She lifted a hand to brush away tree branches and palm fronds, ducking down to step through foliage. Her bare feet touched warm, silken sand, and out of the garden was the long expanse of the beach leading up to the water.
Cry of seabirds echoed out, and mixed with the sounds of rustling grass, tall in patches amongst the sand.
She looked to the west, and saw the great red of the setting sun peering out from between darker clouds. She looked to the east and saw the endless blue approaching night, and the glowing lights of the tall skyscrapers built along the beach.
A bird’s cry deepened into a strange, frightening sound. Like the blare of a horn or the roar of a beast. A blade of cold stuck into her spine, cutting through all the warmth around her.
Earth. Buildings, falling, torn through by molten metal. Dark shapes coming from the sky, outstretched arms of the--
“Shepard Commander.”
She snapped out of the horrible thoughts in her mind at the sound of a voice familiar to her and whirled around. “Legion--?”
The human from the lobby stood in front of her, looking down with those blue eyes.
She blinked and furrowed her brow. “You’re…”
“Shepard Commander, are you alright? You seem troubled.”
She didn’t know what to think. “You’re a human…?”
There was worry on his face. It was a strangely soft expression, in his raised brows and the downward curve of his lips. “Of course.” He answered, as if it should have been obvious. And it was… obvious, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t he be?
No, not at all. Legion was a Geth. Mechanical. Synthetic. Armored, one eye, moving pieces, tubes. “But you’re not. You weren’t.”
He wasn’t human before this. Before.
But he reached out, and took one of her hands in his and she startled at the sudden warmth of the touch, the smooth feel of his skin, the dips and rises of his palm. “We are now.” She curled her fingers around his, lacing them together, and was astonished at the simple pleasantry of the gesture. He returned the gesture, and granted her another smile.
Geth.
Geth. Quarians. Rannoch. The war. The heretics—Reapers.
Her memory returned in a sudden torrent that was incapacitating. As if floodgates had been broken, she remembered everything. Fleeing Earth, leaving Anderson behind, her crew, curing the Genophage, the Quarians waging war against the Geth again, and the fact that she had--
She had agreed to enter the Geth Consensus with Legion.
She drew back away from the human in front of her, covering her face in both her hands.
“….Where am I, Legion?”
He was quiet.
“Where am I, right now?” she demanded, looking up to see that unknown face looking back down at her.
He looked saddened. Reluctant. “You are at the Geth Comm hub, accessing the Consensus.”
“How long have I been here?” It felt like days. Maybe longer. At the realization she felt a sudden fear in her chest. Panic.
As if to reassure her, as if he could feel that fear, Legion was quick to answer. “You have been connected to the Consensus for a total of five minutes, thirty five seconds. During which time we disconnected the Geth from the fighter squadrons and removed them from the Consensus.”
She remembered that now, stepping through the holographic world of data, watching the glowing lights disappear from the city. “Then what is this?” She gestured at the beach all around them.
“…It is a virtual environment. We have created it, for you.”
The answer stopped her short. “What?”
“Your perception of time is different within the Consensus than it is with your mind. We created this environment as a pleasant… refuge. For you.”
She didn’t know what to think. Everything around her, the sand caught in between her toes, the wind moving the hair across her neck. It all felt so real. “Why?”
Legion turned away from her, frowning at a spot on the beach. Then, he turned his head back to face her, and his blue eyes were pleading. “We would like you to stay here.”
“Stay… in the Geth Consensus?”
He nodded.
She swallowed hard. “Legion, I can’t. I can’t stay here.”
“Is the environment not to your preference?”
In a sudden rush, everything around them changed, the sand and water and condo moving far, far away out of sight. The world came to a sudden stop and she was standing on a balcony many stories up. Outside cars were flying past, and she could hear their engines and the occasional honks and beeps of traffic. She looked back and saw a studio apartment, gleaming from hanging ceiling lights and reflective wooden floors.
“We can alter it to whatever you like.” She looked back and Legion was closer to her, still looking so saddened.
But she shook her head and placed her hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, but my squad needs me. I need to get back to them. I mean, they’re still waiting for me. And besides, as nice as this is… I wouldn’t want to be alone in here.”
He took her hands in each of his, curling his fingers in between her own. “You would not be alone. We would be with you.”
Her jaw fell open of its own accord. The nature of the offer was distracting. Tender. Affection she would have never expected from the Geth. But.
“Legion, you altered my memories. You tried to make me forget that I was in here!” Anger replaced the complacency.
He flinched away for a moment at her words, before shaking his head. “We did not alter your memories. We only did not want you remembering the negative ones. We wanted you to remember the good. Your companions. The Normandy.”
She recalled the photographs on the drawer.
“You can’t do that, Legion. You can’t just try and make me forget.”
He let go of her hands, and they slowly ran up her arms to her shoulders before she was pulled into a loose embrace.
“Shepard Commander. If you leave here, it is very likely you will be killed by the Old Machines.”
Despite herself, she leaned into his chest. He was warm under the layers of clothing.
“I know that.” She bowed her head, resting against his shoulder.
She felt lips against her brow. Then, words against her skin. “We do not want you to die.”
She breathed out a sigh. His scent was strange. Human skin, mixed with metal and the burn of a thermal clip. She didn’t know how to handle his worry. That fear for her life. Many had expressed a concern like that, but Legion was somehow trying to… save her like this.
Part of her was tempted to stay like this. Waking up in a warm bed wherever she desired, with no worry, no fear in her life any more. Of course she would be tempted. Just as she was tempted when Liara talked about a ship disappearing into the vastness of space. Running away, leaving everything behind…
With an inhale, she separated herself from Legion. His hands fell to his sides, his brows low and solemn.
She reached out, and cupped his cheek in her hand. She turned his face so he would look at her. “If I took you away to a machine where you couldn’t help your people, you wouldn’t want to stay, would you? Even if you were safer there?”
In her touch, he shook his head. “No.”
“Even if I was with you?”
She saw him hesitate, his gaze traveling up and down her face. “…No.”
“Then you understand why I have to leave.”
Legion shut his eyes, the bright blues disappearing behind heavy lids. This time, he was the one who parted, stepping out of her touch. “Acknowledged.”
The world around her blurred again, and the cool night air faded into a distinctive lack of sensation. The city skyline blackened into the night and the sounds of the city faded into nothingness.
The surface under her became neutral metal.
They had returned into the raw data of the Geth Consensus.
Before her, a bright light burst from the platform, and an access pod just like the one she had entered from rose up from empty space.
Beside her was the glowing holographic form of the Geth machine. “Enter the access point, and you will exit the Consensus.” Legion gestured towards the virtual device with a three fingered hand.
She took a step towards before faltering.
“Legion?”
“Yes, Shepard Commander?”
“Do you promise me that when I enter that thing, I’ll be leaving the Consensus?”
He bowed his head. “We do.”
“Promise me that I won’t be in here anymore.”
“We promise you, Shepard Commander. You have made your decision. We… understand.”
She turned away from him and continued towards the last access point. The pod hissed and opened as she approached. She stepped one foot inside before looking back at the waiting Geth.
“Hey Legion?”
“Yes?”
She smiled at him, “I’m not going to die, alright?”
Maybe one day she’d come back to this place.
She stepped inside the device, and stood stiff as it closed back down around her.
Bright white light filled her vision.
Raw sensation laced up and down her nerves, deeper than flesh and skin.
Then she was back, in the Comm Hub in orbit around Rannoch. Garrus and Tali looked relieved, and caught her in their arms as she stumbled out of the pod.
The Geth was still next to them, unmoving as he too disconnected from the Consensus. Then Legion’s optic shifted, turning from red to bright, bright blue.