The Dresden Effect: Prologue, Part II - Awakening

[fightyourfoes]

Shepard has intermittent dreams, from time to time. (And yes, the narration realizes this is redundant phrasing. At the moment, it doesn't care.) Mostly she dreams Harry was with her when she faced Saren. Sometimes she dreams about the Protheans. Sometimes she relives the vision from the Beacons.

Most of the time, though, she's entirely unaware of everything.

So, when blurred vision begins to return to her, she thinks she's dreaming again. The pain quickly annihilates that supposition, though. Everything in her is on fire, and not in that nice, pleasurable way either. Her breath comes in hard, shallow pants.

A female voice, soprano-pitched, with a thick English accent that Shepard can't place in her delirium, comes through the haze, faint and muffled. "There. On the monitor. Something's wrong."

"She's... reacting to outside stimuli," answers a gruff tenor. Not Harry, Shepard thinks immediately. "Showing an awareness of her surroundings." A pause. "Oh my God, Miranda... I think she's waking up..."

A blurry female figure (and, Shepard's befuddled brain somehow manages to observe, a very, very sexy female figure) hovers over her for a second on her right before turning away. "Dammit, Wilson, she's not ready yet! Give her the sedative!"

Shepard's heart is racing even faster now, far beyond even its normal, active pace. She's breathing still faster, head pounding, heart pounding, absolutely everything in agony. She tries to lift her left arm, only to have someone clamp onto her wrist and push it back down. "Shepard. Don't try to move, just lie still," the woman tells her, English-accented voice attempting to be calm and soothing. Not that it's really working. Something causes a vague pressure inside one of Shepard's arms, and her heart speeds up even more.

"Brain activity's off the charts," says the rough male voice, panic evident there. "Heart rate's still rising, stats pushing into the red zone. It's not working!"

"Another dose! Now!" The woman—Miranda?—commands, turning to face the source of the voice.

More pressure in her arm, and then Shepard's vision starts to cloud over again, voices becoming more distorted again, heart slowing its pace. She struggles to stay awake, but that soon proves to be futile.

The man breathes a sigh of relief. "Heart rate's falling. Stats going back to normal. That was too close. We almost lost her..."

"I told you your estimates were off," the woman snaps, clearly angry. "Run the numbers again." Then she turns back to Shepard, wavy brown hair falling over her shoulders. The last thing Shepard sees before the black takes her again is the woman's lovely face and eyes, violet staring into blue-grey before the void embraces her.

Comments

[asloyalascanbe]

Once Shepard closes her eyes, Miranda stands up straight again, running a hand through her hair, her own heart pounding, though not nearly as hard as Shepard's had been a moment ago. "Go back to the tests," she tells Wilson. "I'm going to tell Dresden what happened." She strides out of the room and goes to find the wizard.

[thepizzalord.livejournal.com]

Harry's been on base for a few days since his last assignment ended. Cerberus has him going out with small strike teams to evaluate his combat abilities, particularly in how his voluntary techbane reacts to geth systems.

He comes by to see Shepard every day he's on the station. He's watched as she's progressed from charred, unrecognizable lump into something that actually resembles a person, and she's finally starting to look more like Shepard. Her hair is still growing back, and her flesh is barely holding together over shattered bones and shredded muscle, but he can recognize the lines of her face.

It's hard to see her like that sometimes.

He's found a quiet room on the edge of the station that overlooks the stars. He spends a lot of time there when he's not with Shepard, thinking or working on something that's not for Cerberus. Right now all he's doing is staring out, trying not to see the Normandy against the starfield.

[asloyalascanbe]

Miranda makes a few inquiries to locate Dresden and finds him in his quiet room, staring out at space and looking... well, quite forlorn. She approaches him slowly, heels deliberately clacking loudly against the floor.

"Dresden?" she asks quietly. "I have some news for you."

[thepizzalord.livejournal.com]

He doesn't look up when she approaches, but the word news has him turning to meet her eyes. "What is it? Something wrong?" He lives with the unstated fear that something will happen, and Shepard will stay dead forever, so naturally he's rather worried.

[asloyalascanbe]

Miranda sits nearby. "Shepard woke up," she says, simply. She gives him a moment to take that in before she continues, "She—her body wasn't ready for the stress of it. We had to sedate her again. I'm not sure when we'll be ready to wake her up again, but it's a good sign."

After a moment, she adds, "Some of our brain activity readings indicate that she's been dreaming, too. That's also a good sign. I don't think it'll be much longer until she's active again."

[thepizzalord.livejournal.com]

Harry is elated, and yet, horrified. "She woke up like that?" He can't even imagine how much that must've hurt.

Dreaming. Good sign. At least that part is good news. He hopes she isn't reliving the destruction of the Normandy, or any number of the countless horrors she's seen. "Not much longer as in a few weeks, or months?" And how long has it been, anyway? Over a year? Two? It's easy to lose track when you're not living somewhere with seasons.

[asloyalascanbe]

Miranda nods. "We had to give her two doses of sedative to get her back under again. She was clearly in pain. Hopefully the next time she wakes up, we'll be finished with the project."

Miranda shakes her head at the question. "There's no way to say. I'd estimate a few months, perhaps. We'll have tests to run after, to make sure she's exactly as she was when she died." She doesn't say her next thought out loud. If she isn't, we've failed.

[thepizzalord.livejournal.com]

Hopefully. They'd damn well better.

And that's the other part of his unspoken fear. When she first approached him at the Normandy memorial ceremony, she'd used the words "we hope." As in, there's a chance Shepard might not mentally make it back. She could be an empty shell, or broken bits and pieces, or with no memories whatsoever. She wouldn't be Shepard. It would be as bad as losing her all over again, except worse. Because this time he'll have had years to dread it, and hope.

And he can imagine what Cerberus will do if the project is a failure.

"She'll be all right," he says, to convince himself as much as her. He refuses to believe otherwise. They can't have done all this for nothing.

[asloyalascanbe]

Miranda gives him a small, sad smile before she stands again. "Yes. She will be," she says, determination clear in her voice. "I need to get back to work. I'll leave you to it."

With that, she leaves Dresden to his thoughts.