Chapter Text
After an abbreviated orientation ("You're ex-Alliance," they say, "we work similarly enough that you don't need the full training," and she feels sick), her first assignment is security on a space station where they're working on a "Project Lazarus" - all they say about it is that it's not potentially dangerous to others, which is not at all comforting to a woman who knows her Bible, and that protecting it, not anyone nor anything else on the station, is her main priority in the event of an attack. Unlike the operatives she'd found wearing cobbled together armor to defend Cerberus bases on the colonies, she's issued with a slick monochrome uniform with gold highlights, their new insignia on the breast, and a small shield generator in the back which the Alliance would consider too expensive.
She reports to "another ex-Alliance" operative, who looks vaguely familiar - it's a week before Taylor's the one to realize he remembers her face from Eden Prime, where he'd been with the 211.
"I ended up on the Normandy," she says. "I worked under Commander Shepard until she..."
Damnit. It's been months since the Normandy went down and she still can't bring herself to say it.
"Huh," he says softly, patting her on the shoulder when it becomes clear she's not going to finish her sentence. "Think I might've just worked out why they assigned you here."
Ashley tries to look confused rather than pinning him with the weight of her sudden focus, because she'd assumed this assignment was somewhat random and/or skills based. "What do you mean?"
"It's just a hunch," he says, shrugging. "Not worth talking about yet."
"Maybe they just thought I'd work better with someone else who was on Eden Prime and didn't realize we were in different units," she theorizes, and watches Taylor visibly relax.
"Maybe."
Every time someone asks her why she joined up, or she sits down to write her heavily coded report to the Alliance (on an unassuming e-mail address that looks like it could be one of her sisters), or someone insults the Alliance in front of her, she feels like all eyes are on her, like one wrong word or facial expression will reveal her as a spy. Gritting her teeth and staying quiet in the face of abuse is easy compared to outright lying or even stretching the truth, no matter how much practice she had with her Alliance trainers.
For once in her career, the fact that Cerberus's assignment is boring and easy is a blessing, since just being here is stressful enough even without actively spying (her orders say to wait until you're well established and more comfortable with the passive recon). Taylor tells her the only time he's fired his gun here is for target practice, and he's right: This isn't like the bases they'd found on planets; this is in deep space, with no planets around for lightyears upon lightyears. Their supplies are dropped off weekly, and external shielding, cannons, and security mechs are their first lines of defense. An attack seems even less likely than it had on the parade of agricolonies she was assigned to.
(Of course, she'd thought nothing would ever happen on Eden Prime, and then her whole life turned upside down, so she can't rule anything out here.)
During one of her many quiet duty shifts, it's tempting to finally e-mail Kaidan. To get his read on this assignment (he would know what to look for, have suggestions on files to hunt down once she has clearance from both organizations), to apologize for losing touch when he (she) needed it the most, to see what he's up to now.
But that would be against orders and put him at risk too, and she could never put him in Cerberus's sights, no matter how much she misses him. Her own family doesn't know she's here, fed a cover story with people within the Alliance ready to back it up. He can't know.
She projects Alpha Centauri and drafts him e-mails about her cover story but never, ever sends them. The idea of lying to him is even worse than the reality of radio silence.
(She never did promise to write him back.)
Taylor - no, Jacob now - is easy enough to get along with that the friendlier they become, the worse she feels about lying to him. The frustration that led him to leave the Alliance for Cerberus is much the same as hers, he doesn't beat around the bush, and his warm, steady presence almost reminds her of Kaidan. It's hard to reconcile a friendly human being with the atrocities she's seen from Cerberus in the past.
(It's similarly hard to believe such a friendly guy is hooking up with the cold lead scientist, but something had to be wrong with him besides the whole Cerberus thing.)
She's almost enjoying an after shift beer with him (she never allows herself to get drunk here, too scared she'll lose control and let the wrong thing slip) when he looks over at her and asks, "Williams, did they tell you what they're working on here?"
She shrugs. She's been speculating based on the name, but doesn't have enough information yet to confirm it. "Just that it's not likely to be dangerous to other people."
He tells her.
It doesn't sound any less crazy written down in her report. It sounds so crazy that the reply demanding confirmation is almost immediate, but of course she doesn't have any proof more concrete than what Jacob told her, and there is no way she can get it this early into her assignment here.
He's sleeping with the head scientist, she argues, to no avail. He's in a damn good position to know.
Her mission abruptly gets refocused to confirming the purpose of Project Lazarus. As the weeks go on, she watches her assigned guard shifts and patrol routes get into the bio wing and closer and closer to the main lab, until finally she can see Officer Lawson, Wilson, and the other scientists through a window, clustered around an operating table.
A lab technician moves for equipment, and suddenly she forgets how to breathe, because there's the side of Shepard's face on the table.
"I didn't believe you," she tells Jacob later, when he asks how her first shift guarding the lab went. "Not until I saw her in there."
"Yeah," he says, nodding. "I figured she might have been why you were assigned here: You were on her crew; you'd want to protect her above anyone else here."
"I heard her die," she says. It's the first time she's told anyone besides the Alliance psychiatrist who evaluated her before they let her train for this assignment.
Making a sympathetic sound, he squeezes her shoulder, far less awkwardly now than a week after her arrival. Eventually, he asks, "Did you recognize her?"
She nods. "I only saw a little, but... Yeah. That was her."
"Huh," he says, surprised. "She was meat and tubes when they brought her in."
"It's really her?" she asks, hardly daring to hope. "Not a clone or a really well disguised mech or something?"
"I'm pretty sure it's her," he says. "Miranda's orders are to bring her back exactly as she was."
"Jesus," she murmurs. She pauses, contemplating another beer, because after seeing her dead lover being operated on, she feels she needs it. "Do you really think they can do it?"
Jacob's silent for a long moment, and then says, "If anyone can, it's Miranda."
Find out how, says the Alliance. And what for.
Actually seeing Shepard makes her mission so much more real. She spends every guard shift and patrol that takes her by the lab looking inside. She swaps shifts to get into the bio wing, and when other security officers question it, reminds them exactly whose squad she was on in the Alliance, and never gets questioned again. She starts uploading data miners provided to her by Alliance techs, trusting her siblings in arms to write them so that they can't be traced back to her. Never mind her orders, never mind how much Shepard helped the galaxy, she needs to know this for herself, needs to know what exactly a human supremacist terrorist organization wants with the woman she loved.
She's on her fourth straight night cycle shift and trying to put the pieces together when one of the security mechs unexpectedly starts up and turns to face her. The geth and Sovereign left her twitchy around synthetics, so she shoots it before its bullet even activates her shields, but it's not the only one.
"Shepard," she says aloud, her assigned first priority in the event of an attack (and she's assuming this is an attack; the mechs and their software are too well maintained for this to be a bug), and then she's off, shooting her way towards the lab. If this was an Alliance facility under attack, she'd feel worse about not helping others evacuate beyond taking out the mechs in their mutual way, but this is Cerberus, and she has her orders from both organizations she's working for.
(The survivor's guilt will hit later; she knows that from Eden Prime. Though this is Cerberus and many of them are more gung-ho about Cerberus's purpose than she pretends to be, she's been working alongside them for over a year now, and they've been working to resurrect the woman she loves.)
Some of her usual routes get blocked by debris and fires bigger and hotter than her uniform's shield generator can handle. When she gets turned around by a goddamn YMIR because she frankly doesn't have the thermal clips to solo a heavy mech, she ends up running into Lawson behind a crate, shooting the leaders of what looks like a steady stream of mechs pouring into the hall with accuracy Ashley can only approve of. She didn't even know Lawson could use a gun.
"Have you seen Shepard?" they say at once, and Ashley follows hers up with a "Damnit," because if Lawson's asking too, that's not a good sign.
"I woke her up," says Lawson.
"You what?!"
"I've had visuals on her, and we've been in radio contact," Lawson continues calmly, as if Ashley hadn't said anything. "I've lost contact now, but we had a set of armor and a gun ready for her in the lab in case of an emergency like this."
"You gave a gun to a woman who died in '83?" Ashley echoes. "Does she even know how to use thermal clips?" The transition as the new technology had developed and spread had been rough enough for her, but the last gun Shepard used was an HMWP Master Pistol - with a cooldown system.
She usually finds Lawson hard to read, but there's no mistaking this deadpan look. "She figured it out fast." Lawson's fingers fly in what takes Ashley a second to recognize as a biotic mnemonic, slamming a mech into the floor. She hadn't known she was a biotic, either. "Operative Williams, I was directing the Commander to the shuttle bay. I suggest we secure a shuttle for her in the event that she makes it - the Illusive Man wants to see her on another facility."
"Good plan," she has to admit, and she takes out a couple of mechs that were pinging too close on her radar. "Did you personally piss off all the mechs or something?"
"I suspect our traitor figured out I was helping Shepard," says Lawson. She studies Ashley for a moment. "He didn't count on me getting help in return - we can cut through a lot faster now than I would have on my own."
Ah, to be as arrogant in her assumptions of survival as this woman. Ashley bites her tongue, instead repeating, "'He'?"
"Wilson," she says, and then clears another few mechs. "Williams, let's move."
Little by little, as they make their way to the shuttle bay, she gets Lawson's theory out of her, and she has to admit it sounds solid. While she hasn't interacted much with the science nor medical teams, her limited impressions of Wilson had been poor enough that this doesn't seem entirely out of character for him.
"Do you think Shepard was ready?" Ashley asks, watching Cerberus staff take the other shuttles the way she'd watched the Normandy's crew bundling into the escape pods. She's leaning on the last one.
"She wasn't fully healed."
And yet she sent her off in an attack with a gun which has an unfamiliar mechanic. "What do you mean?"
"We implanted her with cybernetics, both to help hold her together and to strengthen her." Lawson shifts, watching the door closest to D wing. "Her body, particularly her face, has had some adverse reactions to them; we were planning to fully insulate them."
"I'm not a scientist," Ashley reminds her. "What kind of adverse reactions?"
"Scarring."
Ashley scarcely has time to imagine this before the door opens to reveal Shepard, Jacob, and Wilson. Lawson shoots Wilson immediately, and Shepard clocks this, then looks up only to catch sight of her over Lawson's shoulder.
"Ash?"
All it takes is one look and her nickname for Ashley to realize that she's still in love with Shepard, that two years broke her heart but did not leave the pieces of it behind. Loving her and Kaidan had been like breathing, so natural once she gave into it that she didn't notice it any more, but right now she's incredibly aware of both.
"Shepard," is all she can think to say.
Pushing past Lawson, Shepard goes straight to her side, turning around to draw her gun on the Cerberus operatives. All they really need is a hardsuit for her and Kaidan or someone else from the Normandy and this could have been two years ago. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Wilson was behind the attack," Ashley explains, putting a hand on her arm to gently lower it, only for Lawson to cut in with the laundry list of his crimes.
"You're the woman from the comms," Shepard realizes, and Lawson nods. "Okay. Is this Cerberus's idea of due process?"
"Ah, Jacob," Lawson sighs. "I should have known your conscience would get the better of you."
As Jacob starts to argue, Shepard turns to face Ashley, with that look that says she's the only person in the room to her. It's her first real look at the red, glowing scars across Shepard's cheek. Ashley has to hold herself steady. "Ash? What is happening here?"
"Cerberus has spent the last two years bringing you back to life," she says, trying not to completely break down in the presence of two Cerberus operatives who outrank her. "The Illusive Man wants to see you once we get out of here, probably to tell you why he did it."
Shepard looks at Lawson, then at Jacob, then back at Ashley, and puts two fingers on the Cerberus insignia on her uniform, her eyes halfway from questioning to accusing.
"It's me," Ashley says softly. "I'm still your Ash."
It goes quiet enough for her to realize that Jacob and Lawson have stopped talking and may have in fact heard her last sentence. Ashley stands at attention in an attempt to regain some composure. "Let's get out of here, Shepard."
"What about the other people on this station?"
With a sad smile, because that question is definitely the same Shepard she was before her death, Ashley shakes her head. "This is the evac area. I've seen a lot of people leave." And a lot of people on the floor. "You're our first priority, Shepard, not anyone else."
Frowning, Shepard indicates Jacob and Lawson with a nod of her head. "Do you trust them, Ash?"
Hers is the only familiar face Shepard's seen since her revival, she realizes, her stomach twisting. Ashley nods. "I've been working with Jacob for over a year, and I got here with Lawson's help."
Shepard takes one last surveying look around the station, then nods, opening the shuttle door. "Okay."
They pile inside, Lawson programming the autopilot to another station whose name Ashley doesn't recognize from the files she's seen. Shepard sits close enough to feel the tension in her posture, and without thinking Ashley puts her arm around her, only to immediately feel Jacob and Lawson's gazes on her. She has to wonder, then, how much Cerberus really knew about the woman they spent two years and seemingly unlimited credits bringing back to life.
They don't mention it, though; Lawson merely suggests more evaluations which Jacob, to his credit, tries to veto.
"The Illusive Man needs to know that Shepard's personality and memories are intact," Lawson replies.
"It's her," says Ashley. She hasn't removed her arm from Shepard's shoulder.
"With all due respect, Operative Williams, your personal relationship is likely clouding your judgment," she says, and Ashley chalks this up as another use of with all due respect to mean kiss my ass. "Jacob?"
He pulls up a file on his omni-tool, and both Shepard and Ashley bristle when the first question is whether she remembers Akuze.
"Yeah, I remember that Cerberus attack," says Shepard. "And I also remember meeting the only other survivor after you'd tortured him for years."
"Our cell wasn't involved," Lawson says coolly, as Jacob cringes in his seat.
"So, the Battle of the Citadel," he says, a blatant attempt to change the subject. "What happened next?"
"Humanity was offered a spot on the Council," Shepard says, still glaring at Lawson. "I recommended Captain Anderson for the position."
"He's the first human Councilor now," Ashley says, thinking of the news vids, internal memos, and post induction rumors. "And he hates it."
"I feel like I should track him down and apologize," Shepard says with a grin at her, and Ashley can't help but grin back.
"We should run some more tests," Lawson says, but this time Jacob successfully shuts her down.
While Shepard 'meets' the Illusive Man, Ashley opens her secure line to the Alliance, demands further encryption, and then lays out the attack and Shepard's revival. She hopes - she prays - for orders to take Shepard and go back to the Alliance.
What she gets is orders to stay in place, to keep an eye on Shepard as well as Cerberus. You are in a good position to study whether this is really the Commander or whether they have her under control, without any collateral damage to our personnel and assets.
What about me, she wants to demand. I'm the collateral damage - I can't keep doing this - but all she types is, Understood.