madamebadger:

And YET ANOTHER Ashley headcanon, because… because.

There’s a reason that Ashley shut Shepard down so fast on Horizon. It’s not that she was angry (although she was), and it’s not that she was hurt (although she was that too—that it had taken Shepard so long to come looking for her; that Shepard hadn’t come looking for her at all but had found her by accident). It’s not even exactly that Shepard was working for Cerberus, although that’s part of it.

It’s this:

Shepard can talk anyone into anything. Shepard could talk cats down out of trees and fish up out of lakes. Ashley saw Shepard convince a dozen people on a dozen colonies to do things they would rather not. She saw Shepard talk down Wrex when he was boiling with the rage of a thousand lost generations.

She saw Shepard talk to Saren.

Ashley knows, knows, knows that Shepard could talk her around. There’s no question of it. Shepard could talk Ashley into a Cerberus ship and onto a dubious mission. Given fifteen minutes Shepard could talk Ashley into seeking the lost treasure of Puff the Magic Dragon.

And Ashley can’t risk that. It’s not that she knows that Shepard is wrong. But she doesn’t know that Shepard is right. And she knows that with five, ten minutes of listening to Shepard, she will follow her, right or not.

So she shuts Shepard down, turns away, because as much as Ashley is loyal, she is also moral. She can’t risk doing the wrong thing for the right person. She can’t risk setting aside her ethics for her loyalty. It’s a choice that tears her in two halves because she is loyal, down to the marrow of her bones… but she has a moral direction deep inside her, and she can’t risk losing that either. She can’t risk doing the wrong thing just because it was Shepard who asked her to.

And she knows that if she lets Shepard talk, she won’t be able to tell anymore. Partly because Shepard is so convincing. Partly because she wants so much to be convinced.

So she turns her back—and she hates herself for it, and later she will rewrite her message of apology a dozen times and weep over it. But she does it anyway, because that’s the only way she can remain Ashley Williams, and not a shell of herself. That’s why she walks away. It’s not anger, it’s not spite, it’s just truth.

(A year later, Tali will ask, hesitantly, “Why didn’t you come with us?” And she’ll say, “Because I had to know who I was before I could tell where I was going.” And Tali will understand, in the end.

Shepard will never need to ask.)