“I had to choose. I chose you.” “But why?” Shepard ground her teeth hard enough to hurt; pressed her lips together as if that would make it easier to hold back the truth. “You don’t want to know the answer to that,” she said, hardly above a whisper. She wanted to tell Ashley—or, she would have, if this were a perfect world where her decisions had no consequences and her gunnery chief would not look at her in disgust.