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First and foremost comes the decon. Served you well back on the SR-1, gave you and your crew time to think and decompress, as well as scraping off whatever blood or muck or pollution you still got clinging to your pores and your boots. The showers in the hangar bay made it fast and easy then; the SR-2 didn't have the same protocols when they first gave her to you, so that was the first retrofit order on your pit stop to the Citadel. Alliance standard, of course: even now, can’t take the blue out of you even if it kills you.

After decon comes the hydration and carb break, mostly to prevent an adrenaline crash or biotics exhaustion. Major injuries or potential infections may also get rushed to Chakwas by this point, but those are still rare enough and most of your people are just like you: stubborn enough to prefer letting the field medi-gel do its work. The good doctor did have to instate a mandatory check-in after each mission because she didn't trust any of them (bar Tali or Alenko, really) not to stubbornly limp back to their station instead, and you gotta admit, she’s doing an admirable job. Ash was way too close to losing her arm to a stupid infection by Cannibal bite.

Afterwards, the mission debrief: you’ve always liked them short and sweet and to the point, made a proper art out of it. Discipline or praise get meted out, miscommunications clarified, observations written down for Traynor to sort out (she’s a gem, really). In these recent days of Armageddon, you’ve found yourself having to drag your sorry ass to the QEC and give Hackett in-person reports about the latest Reaper grotesquery and how to put it down. You, Commander Shepard, are the very definition of cutting-edge necrotech, or that’s how that jackass in the suit put it when you first came back; you’ve figured since that you might as well be a good return-on-investment and put an end to the Apocalypse. So far it hasn’t been going that swell, but your field trips and politicking have put the Reapers on the defensive for the first time since the war started, and that’s worth something. It is.

You do your rounds, then. Check your messages, read reports, give permissions or refusals. Your people figure you get most of your thanergy from battle and the bloody path you leave in your way—much like Reapers themselves do, but hey, it doesn’t bother them. They think it’s good that someone can meet the bastards on their own player field. You think that food is looking pretty unappetizing these days, which might explain why your civvies have gotten so loose and why you’ll rarely have dinner before sleep.

Since losing your entire squad to a thresher maw you’ve rarely skipped any step to this routine, bar the occasional force majeure such as your first trip to Omega or the Collector Base, and most recently Tuchanka. Your crew knows to expect your rounds in the two hours following a successful mission, readies their reports for you beforehand. Cortez got your fuel break ready and the decon tuned to perfection to avoid wasting any time. It’s part of your motivation for this whole charade: it gives people structure, reassurance, something to look forward to and confirm that everything is alright. Perhaps it did the same for you, once upon a time. 

These days, your hands are always shaking just the tiniest bit when you get to the final step and take out our diary. I may be overstepping here. Maybe you’re just that tired. But I can’t help but notice the way you’ll delay it some nights, staring at the triple locked secret drawer that hosts a tightly encoded datapad for a whole half-hour before you’ll finally crawl over and take it out. 

Yet it’s the first thing you scramble for when you wake up at the start of the next shift. Odd, and kinda touching. If I could tease you about it I would, but I have the feeling you wouldn’t take it well these days. Which is quite hypocritical if you ask me, considering the first thing you did when half my face got blown off was taunting me for being ugly. That’s fine—you can have the magic powers and the world-saving and the generational politics skills, so long as I get at least one statue at the end of this. I’m still the one with the aim and an actual sense of comedic timing. 

It’s just a shame nobody can appreciate it anymore.

Hell, it’s fine. I’m still here, and it’s thanks to you. That’s what counts. Don’t you forget it.

You take out the datapad. Spend the next few minutes working on the encryption while I watch and silently cheer you on. I’ll take it as a compliment that you didn’t break it immediately, but I also gave you a limited challenge. After all, if I made it too hard, we wouldn’t even be able to talk and I might lose my mind and start carving the walls once you go to sleep. Pray we don’t make it to that extremity.

The damn war is on your mind, as it always is these days. Makes sense. It’s on everyone’s minds, and I won’t grudge you that. One day we’ll hopefully have the time for the longer conversations. For now, let’s stick to the professional. 

You copy-paste the same mission report Traynor finalized for you earlier, as though I hadn’t read it with your own eyes just half an hour ago. Annotate it with a few comments and questions, then at the end of it write your own remarks for me to eventually respond to as soon as you hit the haystack:

Cannibals evolving again; incendiary no longer as effective. Alternatives?

Yeah, I noticed. At least so far they haven’t evolved to eat people alive; at least, not that we know of. Scratch that last thought actually and let's avoid giving Reapers ideas.

Krogan Clan Eynrich asking for some Turians if they’d serve as cavalier to their necro-shamans, but Turians are reluctant. Advice?

Well, the thought is making me want to throw up, frankly, so maybe I’ve still got some ingrained prejudices to work on–but then again they called me a freak for pledging myself to you. I’ll get back to you on that later. Got a thousand years of history to reflect upon, and I don’t think Wrex will take my call even wearing your face.

Our all-seeing friend has caught a lead for Cerberus operations on Idrassi, but she partially suspects it may be a trap. See attached file. Ignore or check out?

First of all, Shepard, that’s kinda adorable. Not that I wasn’t partial to some good old paranoia even when I still had lungs of my own, but come on—Liara is serving right here on the Normandy, she has no need for codenames. Second of all, I’ve already read the file, again using your own frankly massive eyeballs. It absolutely is a trap. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out though. Cerberus’s necrotech could be an invaluable tool to win this war.

Are you in pain?

This is the third time you’ve asked this question. Don’t make me lie to you again. I’m bad at it even in writing.

You don’t write me good night, or goodbye; you don’t make a joke or tell me about Roman history or debate me about gun mods or agonize on the ethics of that planet whose life you sucked up before the Reapers could pour in. I was looking forward to talking to you about that one. But these days your questions are curt, focused on details rather than the big picture. 

I get it: talking about feelings has always been hard for you—we had that in common, and it's why I thought you were the perfect necro to die for. And I'm hardly one to speak. I only managed to open up only once, and it was right before I died gasping in your arms and you panicked and ate me whole.

But it hurts more that you write to me as though I were a helpful VI; as though nothing happened between us right before Omega Four, as though the vows we purposefully broke were just air between the two of us.

Or maybe that’s why you'd rather stick to work talk and avoid everything else.

Shepard, here’s another question that will remain unwritten between us: do you think you killed me? Or do you wish you could have let me die?

YEEEEEESSSSSSSS YEEEEEEESSSSSS YOU GET ITTTTTT YOU GET ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTT AAAAAAHHHHJHHHH