As a blind vote, Shepard wouldn't be able to see who went against her out of spite, but she had a good idea who it would be before the vote started. The blind vote was reserved for when an act was considered beneficial enough to one council race that voting against it could be seen as enough of an aggressive act to prompt bad blood. Turning one council member against another, even if the beef remained between the two, could easily escalate slowly into something nasty. The blind vote was useful.
But in cases like this, where the proposed act benefitted essentially all of the voting races enough that there was no reason to vote against it, surely it was in the interest of everybody to see who was working against that and ask why.
No
good
reason, at least.
Her name was on it, that was a reason. There were still a lot of people in the galaxy that opposed anything with her name on it on principle. Still a lot of people that, years later, held grudges.
Some of them with good reason, but it wasn't worth shooting down something beneficial for everybody... surely.
Shepard turned a pen over and over in her hand and stared at the computer screen. She never liked dresses, this one was no different. It wasn't even that it was an outfit designed for how it looked first and how it felt second, she wore makeup, she could live with that. The collar was sharp, almost chin-high, and had an edge that was plastic-y enough to seem laminated. There was a big seam of the same stuff running in a line down both the back and the front. It caught the light on cameras, made the wearer seem to glow, but it was also designed for standing in front of a camera, not sitting in place where the crease of shiny material could dig into her back and bend but not properly fold at the waist. Even standing in front of a camera, the collar still dug into her neck. She missed armor. Hell, she almost even missed Alliance regulation uniforms. The ones that the cadets complained pinched and chafed. It was amazing what you could get used to. And what you couldn't.
The computer chirped, it confirmed that everybody had voted, waited for everybody to confirm that they had seen the confirmation, then displayed the results with almost dot-matrix slowness. Yeas 5, Nays 6.
She fought the urge to stand up and start barking at the council angrily, It hadn't worked when there were three of them, it wasn't going to work when there were eleven. It was the last act for the day, so when each got the results, they almost all simply nodded, rose slowly, and joined up to talk as they left or scurried out on their own. It was like herding cats the best of days, it was hard to keep them in a room together. Shepard leaned back her chair with her hands behind her head, trading the front plastic digging into her stomach for the far less familiar back plastic digging into her spine.
"You know, I didn't think they'd actually do it."
Naylana, the current Asari councilor, had stuck behind. She slid her chair over to Shepard, who kept staring into space for a moment before she responded.
"Could you get me the names of everybody who voted no if I asked you to?"
Naylana plucked the pen out of Shepard's hand and set it into its holder almost compulsively, "On the record, no. Off the record, can but shouldn't."
"The measure benefitted everybody, try to tell me it wouldn't have gone through if my name wasn't on it."
"Is that why you want a list of names? Are you going to make it your duty to hunt down the wrongdoers?"
"What else do you want me to do?" Shepard grunted frustratedly, "In the past six months, I haven't no-voted a single act that wasn't total horseshit, I'm playing by the rules here. And yet, here I sit with a noticeably unscratched back."
"And have you let them know that's what you're doing?"
"I'm not screaming it from the building tops, but I've told some where I stand on their measures."
"That's the problem," Naylana gave her chair a little spin, "You're a politician, not a soldier. Nobody gives a rat's ass about what you say you're doing."
"So what, do I need to play golf with these guys? Smoke cigars and drink at the same clubs?"
Naylana grabbed a printout from one of the computers, "Okay, Balak, right. Even without me telling you how he voted, we both know how he voted, right?"
Shepard scoffed, "You mean the council member that hates my guts the most?"
"Yes, the council member who hates your guts the most, and who happens to get along very well with a couple of other races who aren't thrilled about sharing a council stage with Commander Shepard."
"What, are you saying he's turning people against me?" Shepard started, but then stopped when she realized how genuinely paranoid she was starting to sound, "What does he want me to do? What do any of them want me to do? Go back in time and undo the choices I made? I can't break bread with the enemy if the enemy doesn't want to meet me halfway."
Naylana seemed genuinely frustrated, "Shepard, you're not a kid and neither am I. We both know that he doesn't just hate you for the fun of it. Just because you voted for something with his name on it doesn't mean you're breaking bread with him, or even that you're trying. He's angry now for the same reason he was back then, he doesn't feel like he's being heard."
"Then what do you propose I do?"
"Actually break bread with him, try a little cultural exchange, sit down and talk about your differences. Be a fucking adult about it."
Shepard grimaced a little at the thought, "I always thought the wining and dining was more of a... Naylana thing."
"It's that or you go find out what Batarians do for fun. Invoke Cultural Exchange, I'm telling you. Offer him some wine, tell him to bring something Batarian. It's not like you have to get in bed with him for favors, I'm asking you to do the part of your job I taught you about where you talk to other people."
"Wine, really?" Shepard's face scrunched. It was kinda hard to picture Balak drinking wine. But it was also kinda hard to picture him petting a kitten, or showing human decency... or smiling.
"You didn't hear it from me," Naylana pulled up her omni tool and punched something in, causing Shepard's to ding. "Everybody has a preference, you know? He's a drinker, but not a mopey or an angry drinker. Red wine is well-liked by his kind. Even if he's an outlier, it also... makes their food go down easier."
Shepard pulled up her omni-tool and winced, "That's... not cheap."
"Think of it as the money you aren't paying in outright bribery."
"And what if..." Shepard trailed off.
"It goes horribly, horribly wrong?"
"Basically."
"So long as you don't poison him or put your foot in your mouth, worst thing that happens is that you give him the wrong idea. Not like his opinion of you can get any lower, right?" Naylana stood up and started to leave.
"Wrong idea, how?" Shepard asked.
