Post by 3dandbeyond on Apr 24, 2012 3:01:27 GMT 1
Edited------
This is a rough draft of an ending, one ending to the story. It’s based of course on the ending we have now for the game. It was my way to reconcile what the game says happened with an ending I think I might like to see.
My character is a Female Shepard since I’ve mostly played as a Female-just don’t like the Male one’s voice very much. The love interest is Liara because hers is the best romance in the game, in my opinion. It’s not graphic at all, just so you know.
This is not finished, not polished. Just some thoughts. The whole getting to the Catalyst and making a choice thing is nonsense, but I was trying to fit it into the story we have been given. So, I used my own Space Magic, the consciousness has left the body kind of thing to try and make it make some sense. I may have to work it out differently as I go along. As it is, it's a little too much like The Wizard of Oz.
So, here it is, just a quick kind of epilogue. Be kind, please. I know it is rough.
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Something had hit her hard and she suddenly felt the world shift beneath her. Afterwards, an endless falling sensation and life and time seemed to just drop off a cliff. She felt nothing but emptiness and saw only a void, blackness stretching before her and waves of raw emotion that hit as hard as rocks. She existed in some time and space, but could little understand the capacity in which she existed. She felt nothing physically and moved without effort.
She became vaguely aware of voices, muffled sound as if everyone was speaking all at once in tones of urgency and of danger, even hopelessness. She was moving, drifting away from the noise, the hushed cacophony.
Then light seemed to emanate from all around her. She saw or seemed to see The Illusive Man and sensed a battle going on within him. Suddenly, she was there with him and Anderson became visible through the powerful brightness of it all. They seemed to speak, to argue about what was best to do, but it somehow seemed the debate was more inside The Illusive Man than with her and Anderson.
She became aware of her hand, floating before her, holding the gun, a gun from where though? Arguing continued and the gun with a will of its own went off, hitting Anderson in the side and still everything floated, dream-like before her. He was on his feet, wobbling before her, again arguing with The Illusive Man. Something about trying to control things, the reapers and it made no sense. It hit her again in a wave that she didn’t so much feel, but that she experienced. The Illusive Man had been there all along, fighting to keep the Reapers as if they were pets he could contain and use for a purpose, but what purpose? She floated and realized he’d been Indoctrinated and began to believe just as Saren had. But then, just as Saren and Benezia had done before him, he returned. The human within The Illusive Man came back and he shot himself to keep from becoming that which they all fought to destroy. He knew at last there was no controlling something that already controlled him.
She and Anderson moved slowly on, time and space once again blurring before her. His pain became her pain as the last of his life ebbed out of him. He had praise for her and for what she had done and become; praise she felt less certain she’d deserved. And then he died, eyes fixed upon the scene that played out before them. Earth, gasping as it sought to survive and miniscule ships scurried against its backdrop, fighting desperately to keep it alive.
Shepard suddenly felt a burning at her side and heard a voice willing her on. The job, her job was unfinished. Hackett told her to keep going. She touched her side and blood rushed out onto her hand, life seeping from her. She’d been shot just like Anderson, in the same place as Anderson, but in her haze had somehow blocked it out. It was unreal, but she had to move on and face her duty and her destiny.
She moved to a pedestal, a control panel, but could see no obvious answer, didn’t know what to do, and then she was gone, in a heap on the floor beside it. The floor soon began moving, lifting her up and in that moment she once again found her footing, struggled to arise and was brought face to face with a surreal being, a being that resembled someone she knew or had known. That odd child. She fought for words, “who are you?”
This thing before her seemed to enter her mind and didn’t so much speak as it did “think” answers to unasked questions. It wanted her to know its purpose, but Shepard could not truly grasp the meaning of such things that defied logic, the logic she knew.
All of her will though seemed to leave her, something or someone was fighting for control over her. She had experienced previously what some might figure were attempts at Indoctrination, but this felt nothing like that. She fully controlled her own thoughts, but her actions were now not her own. She could not protest, could not fight, could no longer do any of the things that were so much a part of her character. She simply seemed to exist and to watch events play out.
She was told a great many things by this unformed being and knew them to be false, rejected them in her mind, though she was not able to speak. The being and Shepard seemed to exist nowhere and everywhere at once. Floating again and the void. She would make a choice, but the choices given were lies of a kind. Whether the glowing being believed its own thoughts or not, Shepard could not and did not know, but she did know that it seemed to have little understanding of the human will or heart or that of any of the advanced organic life that existed in the galaxy. Its calculations were flawed, but it held all the power to end this. It had created a scenario that seemed to lead Shepard to its final desire and design. A battle began within Shepard to fight this directed choice and to choose nothing that such a flawed being could promote.
But, Shepard’s body, floating, unreal and still, quite definitely not her own. She saw the being, felt the being force her to choose, to physically make the decision that her mind readily dismissed, rejected. It forced her to destroy the Reapers, though she never would have made such a decision due to consequences that were part of what this meant. In so doing it forced her to kill untold numbers of recently uplifted, sentient, feeling Geth. In so doing, it forced her to kill EDI; EDI, the one being Joker had allowed into his heart. EDI, a constant companion, a friend who had grown from a voice and program with Cerberus imposed blocks, to this person that lived and loved and had evolved simply because it, no she had determined to do so. Shepard had known there was another way to defeat the Reapers and this was not the way.
Yes, sacrifice existed, but this glowing being had not even allowed her to submit any kind of protest. She’d rejected this choice, even if it did mean an end to the Reapers, because in making it so easily, she would be damning her own heart and soul, and denying a truth she knew and had taught others all along the way. This devil being showed its hand early on by telling her that in its logic it foresaw no way that synthetics and organics could live in harmony. But Shepard knew the truth, and in that truth saw the flaws, the lies of this being.
Still, it made her choose. She cursed it to hell within her consciousness. Her being and her soul began to ache at the loss, the devastation of things Legion had given himself for, what he’d helped create along with her. She’d rejected all of this, but in a quiet place within her soul, an ache started to grow. It was at once mental, even spiritual, but then it started to consume her and it manifested itself physically. She felt pain. But just before her ending came Shepard saw it all. She saw that this evil demi-god had tricked her all along. The battle raged on, the Reapers were attacking, there was no finish to the carnage that had been visited upon them. She’d been made to make a choice, but it changed nothing. The dying continued and the horror carried on. Death, death was preferable to this futility.
And then the darkness, darker than the void took hold, and she was gone.
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Words drifted in as if from some other reality, a dream state far removed from all the chaos and destruction Shepard had just witnessed, just caused to happen.
A disembodied voice hit hard as she struggled to open her eyes, “She’s starting to come around. Get the Admiral! Quick! Man, she’s really got nine lives.” Dull pain drummed through her body as darkness seeped back in.
Slowly, light filtered through the pain, and realization again crept back into Shepard’s consciousness. “I’m alive, but how?” She didn’t realize she’d said the words out loud.
A familiar male voice replied, “A lot of us are asking the same question, Shepard. How?” Slowly the voice took shape. It’s Garrus. Garrus, alive!
She had seen Garrus’ battered body lying near other members of Hammer’s Strike Force. He was broken and very obviously dead.
Stunned, Shepard mouthed the weak question, “Garrus, wha..t? What happened?”
Garrus shrugged in the nonchalant way only he could muster, “We all might need you to tell us the answer to that.”
A figure moved from behind Garrus. It was Anderson, alive as well. Anderson had surely died up on the Citadel. The Illusive Man had somehow forced her to shoot him or had he? She had felt the sad sting of his dying words, the undue praise for her, “I’m proud of you. You did good, child.” If he is here this had to be some cruel, dying dream.
Anderson seemed to read her mind, or maybe once again she’d been thinking aloud, “It’s no dream, Shepard. Garrus and I dragged your sorry-ass mangled body from the debris pile you were in over a month ago.” He looked at Garrus, slightly raising his eyebrows. Garrus exchanged a knowing look.
Shepard thought, no felt just how good it was to see them both.
She tried to prop herself up in bed and managed to speak weakly, “I don’t know, I’m not sure I remember any of it. The beam.”
“It’s like everything went to hell once Harbinger’s beam sideswiped you,” Garrus informed her. “We all thought you were dead. What was left of Hammer wanted to push on, to make the suicide run in your honor, but then the beam to the Citadel was suddenly gone, taking with it the only way up. Harbinger seemed to shut down as if it was re-booting or something.”
Anderson patted Garrus on the back, “he led a company of your teammates, and they destroyed Harbinger once and for all.”
Garrus became pretty somber for him, something Shepard had rarely seen, “things really did go sideways then, and it seemed like we were all doomed after all. We’d lost you and we’d lost some of ourselves, our own heart along with you.”
Anderson shook his head, “but, then the Citadel began to open up and a damn beam came out of it. We thought it was over. We started getting reports in that cut out, but not before we got the word the Mass Relays were going to blow-the beam hit them and began to spread out, hitting every relay in the galaxy. We braced for impact and sure death. The only good thing in all this was the beam also seemed to be affecting all the Reapers and they started shutting down.” He grimaced, “Just like Harbinger.”
Garrus rubbed his chin, “we figured if we had to die at least we’d taken those shitheads with us, so to a man we feared what would happen next, but we also cheered. I wished I had that bottle of Turian brandy I’d been saving for the moment of the Reaper’s defeat.”
Shepard fought the cobwebs on her brain, “the relays…exploded?”
Garrus shook his head as Anderson answered, “the Reapers shut down, the relays seemed to be about to blow, but then….. nothing. In an instant the relays just seemed to go offline. Reports started pouring in, systems were shutting down all over the place, but no widespread relay explosions, no destruction, just an eerie silence.”
Garrus sighed, still reliving the events, “Then we all took a somewhat relieved collective breath and began looking to see what or who was left. Everyone scrambled to your last known location, and all we found was a huge debris pile. We figured the worst. People dug into it with their hands, not stopping even though they were bloodied and fatigued. Anderson saw the glint of your dog tags and we were finally able to pull you out. Half dead doesn’t even describe it, you were mostly dead, but even so we all plainly heard you mumble something about not trusting the kid. We all knew that something must have hit your head pretty hard this time.”
Garrus, “We managed to get you to the forward triage center and finally to this hospital where Liara has been sitting vigil 24/7, acting like some attack dog when anyone came close. She seemed to be willing you back to life and to consciousness.”
Shepard, “Liara, is she…is she ok? Where… She and Joker, the Normandy crashed on another planet. The shockwave…”
Just then, Tali came into view, “Your head might not be as hard as we thought. The Normandy is in orbit around Earth. As for Liara, she’s on her way here, Shepard. We all had to force her to let the rest of us take over for her when we saw the toll it was taking on her. She needs all her strength right now.”
Shepard didn’t seem to notice Tali’s last statement, “And, and what happened to everyone else. EDI, the Geth, I killed them all?”
Tali mouthed the word, “no” and hesitantly explained, “I don’t know what you are talking about, Commander, but as far as the effect the ‘Shutdown’ had on the relays, Geth, and EDI well it was only temporary. It seems there were certain redundancies built into the relays-maybe the Protheans had altered their original programming, but the effects were not permanent. Joker says that EDI and the Normandy were offline for a short time as well, but they seemed to re-boot just as the relays came back online.”
Shepard winced, “So, what? Does that mean the reapers started back up again, too?”
Garrus, “No, no the reapers are gone for good. Once they shut down it seems the organic sludge they’d been using was actually some sort of lifeblood to them, it kind of “died”. It was like a symbiotic relationship. They needed this lifeblood to sustain them, but the organic material began to rot as soon as the Reapers shut down. The smell of a dead Reaper is legendary. Without that sludge, the Reapers themselves just died.
And they apparently had no redundant systems to allow them to reboot. It seems they weren’t such technical marvels after all just great killing machines.”
Tali, “ Hopefully, no one is out there making any Reaper version 2.0 to do the job these ones couldn’t.”
Shepard’s head ached as she tried to make sense of it all. Had it been just a dream? She’d been lying in a pile of debris just where Harbinger had knocked her down and yet it felt so real. She was so certain she had actually been up on the Citadel, that she’d talked to the Catalyst, and in a haze of pain and confusion, that she’d finally gone on to decide between 3 impossible choices. She’d rejected them, but was had one forced upon her. She had been certain she had doomed many races at the very least to total destruction and that at worst she had provided the mass destruction of all organics for “this cycle.” She’d seen and felt the pain as Anderson died.
She had felt her own life fleeing from her as blood ran from wh…at, a wound that appeared on her that was in the same place as where she had shot Anderson. And the Catalyst, what was that? It looked so familiar-it was that boy, the one who died on Earth, who haunted her in her dreams. It all had been a lie. The choice had never been made. The Reapers carried on and death was there for her. This made no sense. It was a dream. But then, why and who and how did the Reapers come to be destroyed? It was confusion that fully played out within her; had she made the choice or not?
She gave in to the pain and fatigue and falls back into a deep sleep as familiar faces circled ever closer to her, protectively. In her haze, she felt the closeness of someone dear, a blue blur that moved near to her. Darkness again.
A soft voice cut through as the haze began to lift again.
Kind eyes bored into hers and Liara touched a soft hand to the side of her face.
Liara spoke to her in mock reproach, “You sure took your time coming back to us, Shepard.”
Shepard laughed weakly, “You know me, Liara. I always have to make a big entrance, wait for the right moment for the biggest effect.”
Liara half whispered, “I think you just like to keep me waiting.”
Garrus mused, “She just remembers that she got a lot of mileage out of you the last time she pulled this dying thing.”
Shepard, winced slightly at the pain, “How else can I get anyone to pay any attention to me?”
Garrus shot a glance at Liara as she hovered over Shepard, “Ha! It’s like if I get punched you have to get shot. Can’t let me get the girl, can ya?”
Shepard, looked seriously at Liara as Liara stared back, “Not this one, anyway.”
Garrus raised his hands in surrender, “Well, I’ll let you two fight it out. I’m gonna go find more brandy so I can make sure we get pissing drunk when you are able. Just so I can laugh at you when you fall down drunk.”
Garrus and the others left. Liara and Shepard were alone. Liara bent over Shepard and allowed the hidden wall within her to at last break down. She stroked Shepard’s hair and then pressed her lips to Shepard’s as the heartache within her seemed about to burst through. But, still fighting back tears, she tried to appear strong in the face of yet another emotional reunion with Shepard.
“You know, this time I thought I’d really lost you. I…” Liara stopped, words failing her.
Shepard looked at her tenderly, but spoke matter of factly, “Hell, Liara we both thought I was dead the moment I left you in London. We had said our final goodbyes. In that moment, I knew that what I had been fighting for all along was not only Earth, not only the Galaxy, not only even my friends and teammates. It was a pretty blue package with soulful eyes. Eyes that always shot darts straight to my heart. If I couldn’t make it back, didn’t survive, I’d do my best for her. For you…” She faltered as her eyes again found Liara’s. She knew all that Liara had been through for her and what it meant for the Asari to open and accept this love. She could never fathom the depth of the challenge for Liara until that last moment they’d spent together. This present moment brought that rushing back to her and she reached to brush a tear from Liara’s cheek.
Liara, “And you did your best, Shepard. You saved us, you saved us all.”
Shepard, “I, well I didn’t though, Liara. Even though things turned out for the best. I didn’t get there, didn’t do it. I wasn’t responsible for any of it.”
Liara, “You’re wrong about that. The others don’t know and wouldn’t understand maybe, but I do. When we joined our consciousnesses together, we gained the ability to be with each other always. Not in physical ways, but we could still each know some of what was happening to the other. I felt your consciousness leave your body. I thought you had died. But then, I realized that you were not dead, that your consciousness had moved, had gone up to the Citadel. I felt you there and in brief glimpses I could see what you were “seeing”. There’s no doubt in my mind, that it was you that destroyed the Reapers and I know the decision was not an easy one to make. I felt you battling within yourself, fighting to keep control of your consciousness. And then, it happened. The Reapers started shutting down and I felt you return to your body. I even knew where you were and that you were still clinging on to life. I felt your heart reach out for mine.”
Shepard, “My last thought was of you. I saw your face before me…I thought you were all dead. I thought you were dead.”
Liara, “You saved us all, Shepard. And in the end, you kept your promise to me. A promise made so long ago.”
Shepard, “What promise, Liara?”
Liara, “You said you’d come back to me this time, that you would always come back. And you did.”
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Shepard was sleeping again and dreams persisted as her mind tried to gain some firmer ground, tried to make sense of twisting thought and nightmarish scenes that sought to overtake her. Liara’s belief that she had somehow caused the destruction of all the Reapers with perhaps just a thought was something she could not fully embrace.
Then, perhaps within the dreams, the conflict, an awful voice began to resonate, like metal grinding upon metal, chewing and raging against itself,
“The vastness of space has held us, countless numbers of years, though time is meaningless for us. We are without beginning. We have been without end. We are incomparable. We are wanderers, the travelers far from home on an endless journey of cycles and creation that has at once come to an end.
We have been gods never seeking worship, instilling fear and pain as retribution for things to come. We serve a cause and a destiny that none may comprehend and perfection has never before been so close at hand and yet so far beyond our grasp.
We’ve been denied in creating ways to stop all denial. We’ve been handed defeat when sure victory was ours and ours alone. And in the sharpest mind that lives of flesh may offer as their best they cannot possibly know what they have done.
They have sealed their doom, denying perfection. Their ascension is not complete. They have evaded becoming one within the many that have come before, of being part of those who walk with gods such as us. We offered them that chance to bow down in the mere shadow that the sunlight of our very beings created and they have rejected the awe of our offer. They are fated to the pestilence of individual thought and strife. We have offered more, change to become a part of something greater than their insignificant knowledge could conceive. We offered life as only ascension to the perfection of our forms could ever bring. The children of our hope will never be as time now becomes our reality. In ending our time, they have only imposed upon us the same force that will ultimately spell their doom. They may live on, but death will visit them just as it now has been imposed upon us.
We offered perfection. We offered immortality. We offered time without end and an end to time. The beings of flesh have surrendered to the futility of their being.
We are Harbinger. This hurts us.”
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The choice, that horrible dream state wherein she had been told she had to make a choice, the one of who would live and who would die or of godhood and the destruction of the human soul. She hadn’t made it, had rejected it-all of it. She could see it clearly now. Something within her had worked to destroy the reapers from within. She’d rejected the false logic of the evil that controlled the reapers and had caused some sort of cascade effect, the virtual and real shutdown of the reapers. And in that instant they and that horrifying star child VI were destroyed. But within that same instant the being that was the child was revealed; it was Harbinger.
And all along the reapers were mere manifestations of Harbinger’s will and programming. Separate multiple consciousnesses from within one mind, one AI mind. She could see that for him and them there was no gray, no maybes, only certainty, the malignant certainty that A will always follow B. Or that 1+1=2. When Shepard rejected what Harbinger saw as the only logical thing Shepard could do, she had introduced a new unknown equation into the shared consciousness and it spread like a virus, killing them quickly. 1+1=3.
Things were never destined to be because within any equation dealing with life and certainty there is the element of the force of will and desire and hope of the sentient self-aware being and one such being had breached the Catalyst. The reaper logic never counted on the massive force of Shepard’s free will, nor the untold billions that had worked like some unshackled collective consciousness to express that free will as well. The AI’s programming couldn’t handle this new equation and Harbinger was no more.
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Shepard awoke again and Liara was there by her side.
“You were dreaming again.”
Shepard nodded, “yeah, it was really odd. It was like I was hearing Harbinger telling me it’s over, finally really over. And I actually feel…better.”
Liara smiled, “It is over Shepard. I do believe that. They are gone for good. I’m certain of it.”
She took Shepard’s hand and sighed, as if choosing her next words carefully, “But now, there’s something else we need to discuss, something I need to tell you.
Shepard, “Uh oh, here it is. Is this where you tell me you’re moving in with Garrus?”
Liara, “Ha ha, very funny. Garrus is quite charming, but I’ve always had my eye on someone who needs more care than Garrus. Someone that doesn’t even know how to dress herself properly. Garrus is pretty mature for his age.”
Liara, serious, again, “But, really Shepard I need to tell you something before someone else does.”
Shepard, “This seems pretty important, Liara. Tell me.”
Liara, “You know that gift I gave you when I thought I’d never see you again?”
Shepard, “Yeah, it was something…special.”
Liara, “Well, it wasn’t quite complete.”
Shepard, “Whaddya mean…It seemed pretty complete to me. It told me how you felt, something I never experienced before. We had that moment alone, just us and..”
Liara, “Well, Shepard the rest of the gift would, should have been the one you gave to me, to us and it would mean we’d never be alone again.” She paused, suddenly the shy young woman Shepard first fell in love with, “ I, mean I’m, uh p..”
Shepard grasped the situation quickly. It was a hope she’d always carried in her heart, “Liara, you’re pregnant!?” She felt her heart about to burst, “Little blue children, after all!”
Liara nodded, fully happy at last, “Yes, Shepard. We’re going to be parents.”
Shepard smiled and showed some happy tears, but laughed and said, “Well, that means I’m gonna need a good job, one that pays a lot better than the one I have now. I heard the Shadow Broker may be hiring.”
Liara, “Well, I don’t know about that. The Shadow Broker demands reliability from employees. I think that you are a bit of a loose cannon, a renegade with a real independent streak.”
Shepard reached for Liara and cradled her head in her hands, “I just never had a reason before to place my fate in anyone else’s hands. I have that reason now. I found that reason in you.”
Garrus, back again, “Shadow Broker, my ass. This kid’s gonna have lots of uncles…”
Tali and Miranda almost in unison chimed in, “And Aunts.”
Garrus, “…to take care of her. And believe me, they, we are all gonna make sure her parents find some other, safer line of work. You can’t carry a baby into a firefight, Shepard.”
Shepard, “This from the guy that wants to drink me under the table.”
Jack, forced her way past Garrus, “Well, I think it’s clear we know so much about how you don’t raise a kid,”
Miranda nodded.
Jack, “that there’s no fucking way we’re gonna let you screw this up.”
Wrex, “You gotta face it, Shepard, you got it luckier than most. Loved by some,” pointed to Liara, “hated by many,” pointed to a holo of a dead Reaper, “respected by all,” pointed a finger around the room as Shepard’s teammates, her friends, her family all nodded in agreement.
Garrus, “I don’t think you got that quite right,…”
Wrex, “But my version fits better, right Turian?”
Garrus, “You know it, Wrex. You know it.”
Shepard, “Well, if I’m to have a kid and can’t be Commander Shepard anymore, I think it’s high time you all started calling me by my first name. Especially you, Liara.”
Jack, walking out of the room whispered to Miranda, “well I’m damn sure not going to call her ….”
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This is a rough draft of an ending, one ending to the story. It’s based of course on the ending we have now for the game. It was my way to reconcile what the game says happened with an ending I think I might like to see.
My character is a Female Shepard since I’ve mostly played as a Female-just don’t like the Male one’s voice very much. The love interest is Liara because hers is the best romance in the game, in my opinion. It’s not graphic at all, just so you know.
This is not finished, not polished. Just some thoughts. The whole getting to the Catalyst and making a choice thing is nonsense, but I was trying to fit it into the story we have been given. So, I used my own Space Magic, the consciousness has left the body kind of thing to try and make it make some sense. I may have to work it out differently as I go along. As it is, it's a little too much like The Wizard of Oz.
So, here it is, just a quick kind of epilogue. Be kind, please. I know it is rough.
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Something had hit her hard and she suddenly felt the world shift beneath her. Afterwards, an endless falling sensation and life and time seemed to just drop off a cliff. She felt nothing but emptiness and saw only a void, blackness stretching before her and waves of raw emotion that hit as hard as rocks. She existed in some time and space, but could little understand the capacity in which she existed. She felt nothing physically and moved without effort.
She became vaguely aware of voices, muffled sound as if everyone was speaking all at once in tones of urgency and of danger, even hopelessness. She was moving, drifting away from the noise, the hushed cacophony.
Then light seemed to emanate from all around her. She saw or seemed to see The Illusive Man and sensed a battle going on within him. Suddenly, she was there with him and Anderson became visible through the powerful brightness of it all. They seemed to speak, to argue about what was best to do, but it somehow seemed the debate was more inside The Illusive Man than with her and Anderson.
She became aware of her hand, floating before her, holding the gun, a gun from where though? Arguing continued and the gun with a will of its own went off, hitting Anderson in the side and still everything floated, dream-like before her. He was on his feet, wobbling before her, again arguing with The Illusive Man. Something about trying to control things, the reapers and it made no sense. It hit her again in a wave that she didn’t so much feel, but that she experienced. The Illusive Man had been there all along, fighting to keep the Reapers as if they were pets he could contain and use for a purpose, but what purpose? She floated and realized he’d been Indoctrinated and began to believe just as Saren had. But then, just as Saren and Benezia had done before him, he returned. The human within The Illusive Man came back and he shot himself to keep from becoming that which they all fought to destroy. He knew at last there was no controlling something that already controlled him.
She and Anderson moved slowly on, time and space once again blurring before her. His pain became her pain as the last of his life ebbed out of him. He had praise for her and for what she had done and become; praise she felt less certain she’d deserved. And then he died, eyes fixed upon the scene that played out before them. Earth, gasping as it sought to survive and miniscule ships scurried against its backdrop, fighting desperately to keep it alive.
Shepard suddenly felt a burning at her side and heard a voice willing her on. The job, her job was unfinished. Hackett told her to keep going. She touched her side and blood rushed out onto her hand, life seeping from her. She’d been shot just like Anderson, in the same place as Anderson, but in her haze had somehow blocked it out. It was unreal, but she had to move on and face her duty and her destiny.
She moved to a pedestal, a control panel, but could see no obvious answer, didn’t know what to do, and then she was gone, in a heap on the floor beside it. The floor soon began moving, lifting her up and in that moment she once again found her footing, struggled to arise and was brought face to face with a surreal being, a being that resembled someone she knew or had known. That odd child. She fought for words, “who are you?”
This thing before her seemed to enter her mind and didn’t so much speak as it did “think” answers to unasked questions. It wanted her to know its purpose, but Shepard could not truly grasp the meaning of such things that defied logic, the logic she knew.
All of her will though seemed to leave her, something or someone was fighting for control over her. She had experienced previously what some might figure were attempts at Indoctrination, but this felt nothing like that. She fully controlled her own thoughts, but her actions were now not her own. She could not protest, could not fight, could no longer do any of the things that were so much a part of her character. She simply seemed to exist and to watch events play out.
She was told a great many things by this unformed being and knew them to be false, rejected them in her mind, though she was not able to speak. The being and Shepard seemed to exist nowhere and everywhere at once. Floating again and the void. She would make a choice, but the choices given were lies of a kind. Whether the glowing being believed its own thoughts or not, Shepard could not and did not know, but she did know that it seemed to have little understanding of the human will or heart or that of any of the advanced organic life that existed in the galaxy. Its calculations were flawed, but it held all the power to end this. It had created a scenario that seemed to lead Shepard to its final desire and design. A battle began within Shepard to fight this directed choice and to choose nothing that such a flawed being could promote.
But, Shepard’s body, floating, unreal and still, quite definitely not her own. She saw the being, felt the being force her to choose, to physically make the decision that her mind readily dismissed, rejected. It forced her to destroy the Reapers, though she never would have made such a decision due to consequences that were part of what this meant. In so doing it forced her to kill untold numbers of recently uplifted, sentient, feeling Geth. In so doing, it forced her to kill EDI; EDI, the one being Joker had allowed into his heart. EDI, a constant companion, a friend who had grown from a voice and program with Cerberus imposed blocks, to this person that lived and loved and had evolved simply because it, no she had determined to do so. Shepard had known there was another way to defeat the Reapers and this was not the way.
Yes, sacrifice existed, but this glowing being had not even allowed her to submit any kind of protest. She’d rejected this choice, even if it did mean an end to the Reapers, because in making it so easily, she would be damning her own heart and soul, and denying a truth she knew and had taught others all along the way. This devil being showed its hand early on by telling her that in its logic it foresaw no way that synthetics and organics could live in harmony. But Shepard knew the truth, and in that truth saw the flaws, the lies of this being.
Still, it made her choose. She cursed it to hell within her consciousness. Her being and her soul began to ache at the loss, the devastation of things Legion had given himself for, what he’d helped create along with her. She’d rejected all of this, but in a quiet place within her soul, an ache started to grow. It was at once mental, even spiritual, but then it started to consume her and it manifested itself physically. She felt pain. But just before her ending came Shepard saw it all. She saw that this evil demi-god had tricked her all along. The battle raged on, the Reapers were attacking, there was no finish to the carnage that had been visited upon them. She’d been made to make a choice, but it changed nothing. The dying continued and the horror carried on. Death, death was preferable to this futility.
And then the darkness, darker than the void took hold, and she was gone.
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Words drifted in as if from some other reality, a dream state far removed from all the chaos and destruction Shepard had just witnessed, just caused to happen.
A disembodied voice hit hard as she struggled to open her eyes, “She’s starting to come around. Get the Admiral! Quick! Man, she’s really got nine lives.” Dull pain drummed through her body as darkness seeped back in.
Slowly, light filtered through the pain, and realization again crept back into Shepard’s consciousness. “I’m alive, but how?” She didn’t realize she’d said the words out loud.
A familiar male voice replied, “A lot of us are asking the same question, Shepard. How?” Slowly the voice took shape. It’s Garrus. Garrus, alive!
She had seen Garrus’ battered body lying near other members of Hammer’s Strike Force. He was broken and very obviously dead.
Stunned, Shepard mouthed the weak question, “Garrus, wha..t? What happened?”
Garrus shrugged in the nonchalant way only he could muster, “We all might need you to tell us the answer to that.”
A figure moved from behind Garrus. It was Anderson, alive as well. Anderson had surely died up on the Citadel. The Illusive Man had somehow forced her to shoot him or had he? She had felt the sad sting of his dying words, the undue praise for her, “I’m proud of you. You did good, child.” If he is here this had to be some cruel, dying dream.
Anderson seemed to read her mind, or maybe once again she’d been thinking aloud, “It’s no dream, Shepard. Garrus and I dragged your sorry-ass mangled body from the debris pile you were in over a month ago.” He looked at Garrus, slightly raising his eyebrows. Garrus exchanged a knowing look.
Shepard thought, no felt just how good it was to see them both.
She tried to prop herself up in bed and managed to speak weakly, “I don’t know, I’m not sure I remember any of it. The beam.”
“It’s like everything went to hell once Harbinger’s beam sideswiped you,” Garrus informed her. “We all thought you were dead. What was left of Hammer wanted to push on, to make the suicide run in your honor, but then the beam to the Citadel was suddenly gone, taking with it the only way up. Harbinger seemed to shut down as if it was re-booting or something.”
Anderson patted Garrus on the back, “he led a company of your teammates, and they destroyed Harbinger once and for all.”
Garrus became pretty somber for him, something Shepard had rarely seen, “things really did go sideways then, and it seemed like we were all doomed after all. We’d lost you and we’d lost some of ourselves, our own heart along with you.”
Anderson shook his head, “but, then the Citadel began to open up and a damn beam came out of it. We thought it was over. We started getting reports in that cut out, but not before we got the word the Mass Relays were going to blow-the beam hit them and began to spread out, hitting every relay in the galaxy. We braced for impact and sure death. The only good thing in all this was the beam also seemed to be affecting all the Reapers and they started shutting down.” He grimaced, “Just like Harbinger.”
Garrus rubbed his chin, “we figured if we had to die at least we’d taken those shitheads with us, so to a man we feared what would happen next, but we also cheered. I wished I had that bottle of Turian brandy I’d been saving for the moment of the Reaper’s defeat.”
Shepard fought the cobwebs on her brain, “the relays…exploded?”
Garrus shook his head as Anderson answered, “the Reapers shut down, the relays seemed to be about to blow, but then….. nothing. In an instant the relays just seemed to go offline. Reports started pouring in, systems were shutting down all over the place, but no widespread relay explosions, no destruction, just an eerie silence.”
Garrus sighed, still reliving the events, “Then we all took a somewhat relieved collective breath and began looking to see what or who was left. Everyone scrambled to your last known location, and all we found was a huge debris pile. We figured the worst. People dug into it with their hands, not stopping even though they were bloodied and fatigued. Anderson saw the glint of your dog tags and we were finally able to pull you out. Half dead doesn’t even describe it, you were mostly dead, but even so we all plainly heard you mumble something about not trusting the kid. We all knew that something must have hit your head pretty hard this time.”
Garrus, “We managed to get you to the forward triage center and finally to this hospital where Liara has been sitting vigil 24/7, acting like some attack dog when anyone came close. She seemed to be willing you back to life and to consciousness.”
Shepard, “Liara, is she…is she ok? Where… She and Joker, the Normandy crashed on another planet. The shockwave…”
Just then, Tali came into view, “Your head might not be as hard as we thought. The Normandy is in orbit around Earth. As for Liara, she’s on her way here, Shepard. We all had to force her to let the rest of us take over for her when we saw the toll it was taking on her. She needs all her strength right now.”
Shepard didn’t seem to notice Tali’s last statement, “And, and what happened to everyone else. EDI, the Geth, I killed them all?”
Tali mouthed the word, “no” and hesitantly explained, “I don’t know what you are talking about, Commander, but as far as the effect the ‘Shutdown’ had on the relays, Geth, and EDI well it was only temporary. It seems there were certain redundancies built into the relays-maybe the Protheans had altered their original programming, but the effects were not permanent. Joker says that EDI and the Normandy were offline for a short time as well, but they seemed to re-boot just as the relays came back online.”
Shepard winced, “So, what? Does that mean the reapers started back up again, too?”
Garrus, “No, no the reapers are gone for good. Once they shut down it seems the organic sludge they’d been using was actually some sort of lifeblood to them, it kind of “died”. It was like a symbiotic relationship. They needed this lifeblood to sustain them, but the organic material began to rot as soon as the Reapers shut down. The smell of a dead Reaper is legendary. Without that sludge, the Reapers themselves just died.
And they apparently had no redundant systems to allow them to reboot. It seems they weren’t such technical marvels after all just great killing machines.”
Tali, “ Hopefully, no one is out there making any Reaper version 2.0 to do the job these ones couldn’t.”
Shepard’s head ached as she tried to make sense of it all. Had it been just a dream? She’d been lying in a pile of debris just where Harbinger had knocked her down and yet it felt so real. She was so certain she had actually been up on the Citadel, that she’d talked to the Catalyst, and in a haze of pain and confusion, that she’d finally gone on to decide between 3 impossible choices. She’d rejected them, but was had one forced upon her. She had been certain she had doomed many races at the very least to total destruction and that at worst she had provided the mass destruction of all organics for “this cycle.” She’d seen and felt the pain as Anderson died.
She had felt her own life fleeing from her as blood ran from wh…at, a wound that appeared on her that was in the same place as where she had shot Anderson. And the Catalyst, what was that? It looked so familiar-it was that boy, the one who died on Earth, who haunted her in her dreams. It all had been a lie. The choice had never been made. The Reapers carried on and death was there for her. This made no sense. It was a dream. But then, why and who and how did the Reapers come to be destroyed? It was confusion that fully played out within her; had she made the choice or not?
She gave in to the pain and fatigue and falls back into a deep sleep as familiar faces circled ever closer to her, protectively. In her haze, she felt the closeness of someone dear, a blue blur that moved near to her. Darkness again.
A soft voice cut through as the haze began to lift again.
Kind eyes bored into hers and Liara touched a soft hand to the side of her face.
Liara spoke to her in mock reproach, “You sure took your time coming back to us, Shepard.”
Shepard laughed weakly, “You know me, Liara. I always have to make a big entrance, wait for the right moment for the biggest effect.”
Liara half whispered, “I think you just like to keep me waiting.”
Garrus mused, “She just remembers that she got a lot of mileage out of you the last time she pulled this dying thing.”
Shepard, winced slightly at the pain, “How else can I get anyone to pay any attention to me?”
Garrus shot a glance at Liara as she hovered over Shepard, “Ha! It’s like if I get punched you have to get shot. Can’t let me get the girl, can ya?”
Shepard, looked seriously at Liara as Liara stared back, “Not this one, anyway.”
Garrus raised his hands in surrender, “Well, I’ll let you two fight it out. I’m gonna go find more brandy so I can make sure we get pissing drunk when you are able. Just so I can laugh at you when you fall down drunk.”
Garrus and the others left. Liara and Shepard were alone. Liara bent over Shepard and allowed the hidden wall within her to at last break down. She stroked Shepard’s hair and then pressed her lips to Shepard’s as the heartache within her seemed about to burst through. But, still fighting back tears, she tried to appear strong in the face of yet another emotional reunion with Shepard.
“You know, this time I thought I’d really lost you. I…” Liara stopped, words failing her.
Shepard looked at her tenderly, but spoke matter of factly, “Hell, Liara we both thought I was dead the moment I left you in London. We had said our final goodbyes. In that moment, I knew that what I had been fighting for all along was not only Earth, not only the Galaxy, not only even my friends and teammates. It was a pretty blue package with soulful eyes. Eyes that always shot darts straight to my heart. If I couldn’t make it back, didn’t survive, I’d do my best for her. For you…” She faltered as her eyes again found Liara’s. She knew all that Liara had been through for her and what it meant for the Asari to open and accept this love. She could never fathom the depth of the challenge for Liara until that last moment they’d spent together. This present moment brought that rushing back to her and she reached to brush a tear from Liara’s cheek.
Liara, “And you did your best, Shepard. You saved us, you saved us all.”
Shepard, “I, well I didn’t though, Liara. Even though things turned out for the best. I didn’t get there, didn’t do it. I wasn’t responsible for any of it.”
Liara, “You’re wrong about that. The others don’t know and wouldn’t understand maybe, but I do. When we joined our consciousnesses together, we gained the ability to be with each other always. Not in physical ways, but we could still each know some of what was happening to the other. I felt your consciousness leave your body. I thought you had died. But then, I realized that you were not dead, that your consciousness had moved, had gone up to the Citadel. I felt you there and in brief glimpses I could see what you were “seeing”. There’s no doubt in my mind, that it was you that destroyed the Reapers and I know the decision was not an easy one to make. I felt you battling within yourself, fighting to keep control of your consciousness. And then, it happened. The Reapers started shutting down and I felt you return to your body. I even knew where you were and that you were still clinging on to life. I felt your heart reach out for mine.”
Shepard, “My last thought was of you. I saw your face before me…I thought you were all dead. I thought you were dead.”
Liara, “You saved us all, Shepard. And in the end, you kept your promise to me. A promise made so long ago.”
Shepard, “What promise, Liara?”
Liara, “You said you’d come back to me this time, that you would always come back. And you did.”
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Shepard was sleeping again and dreams persisted as her mind tried to gain some firmer ground, tried to make sense of twisting thought and nightmarish scenes that sought to overtake her. Liara’s belief that she had somehow caused the destruction of all the Reapers with perhaps just a thought was something she could not fully embrace.
Then, perhaps within the dreams, the conflict, an awful voice began to resonate, like metal grinding upon metal, chewing and raging against itself,
“The vastness of space has held us, countless numbers of years, though time is meaningless for us. We are without beginning. We have been without end. We are incomparable. We are wanderers, the travelers far from home on an endless journey of cycles and creation that has at once come to an end.
We have been gods never seeking worship, instilling fear and pain as retribution for things to come. We serve a cause and a destiny that none may comprehend and perfection has never before been so close at hand and yet so far beyond our grasp.
We’ve been denied in creating ways to stop all denial. We’ve been handed defeat when sure victory was ours and ours alone. And in the sharpest mind that lives of flesh may offer as their best they cannot possibly know what they have done.
They have sealed their doom, denying perfection. Their ascension is not complete. They have evaded becoming one within the many that have come before, of being part of those who walk with gods such as us. We offered them that chance to bow down in the mere shadow that the sunlight of our very beings created and they have rejected the awe of our offer. They are fated to the pestilence of individual thought and strife. We have offered more, change to become a part of something greater than their insignificant knowledge could conceive. We offered life as only ascension to the perfection of our forms could ever bring. The children of our hope will never be as time now becomes our reality. In ending our time, they have only imposed upon us the same force that will ultimately spell their doom. They may live on, but death will visit them just as it now has been imposed upon us.
We offered perfection. We offered immortality. We offered time without end and an end to time. The beings of flesh have surrendered to the futility of their being.
We are Harbinger. This hurts us.”
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The choice, that horrible dream state wherein she had been told she had to make a choice, the one of who would live and who would die or of godhood and the destruction of the human soul. She hadn’t made it, had rejected it-all of it. She could see it clearly now. Something within her had worked to destroy the reapers from within. She’d rejected the false logic of the evil that controlled the reapers and had caused some sort of cascade effect, the virtual and real shutdown of the reapers. And in that instant they and that horrifying star child VI were destroyed. But within that same instant the being that was the child was revealed; it was Harbinger.
And all along the reapers were mere manifestations of Harbinger’s will and programming. Separate multiple consciousnesses from within one mind, one AI mind. She could see that for him and them there was no gray, no maybes, only certainty, the malignant certainty that A will always follow B. Or that 1+1=2. When Shepard rejected what Harbinger saw as the only logical thing Shepard could do, she had introduced a new unknown equation into the shared consciousness and it spread like a virus, killing them quickly. 1+1=3.
Things were never destined to be because within any equation dealing with life and certainty there is the element of the force of will and desire and hope of the sentient self-aware being and one such being had breached the Catalyst. The reaper logic never counted on the massive force of Shepard’s free will, nor the untold billions that had worked like some unshackled collective consciousness to express that free will as well. The AI’s programming couldn’t handle this new equation and Harbinger was no more.
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Shepard awoke again and Liara was there by her side.
“You were dreaming again.”
Shepard nodded, “yeah, it was really odd. It was like I was hearing Harbinger telling me it’s over, finally really over. And I actually feel…better.”
Liara smiled, “It is over Shepard. I do believe that. They are gone for good. I’m certain of it.”
She took Shepard’s hand and sighed, as if choosing her next words carefully, “But now, there’s something else we need to discuss, something I need to tell you.
Shepard, “Uh oh, here it is. Is this where you tell me you’re moving in with Garrus?”
Liara, “Ha ha, very funny. Garrus is quite charming, but I’ve always had my eye on someone who needs more care than Garrus. Someone that doesn’t even know how to dress herself properly. Garrus is pretty mature for his age.”
Liara, serious, again, “But, really Shepard I need to tell you something before someone else does.”
Shepard, “This seems pretty important, Liara. Tell me.”
Liara, “You know that gift I gave you when I thought I’d never see you again?”
Shepard, “Yeah, it was something…special.”
Liara, “Well, it wasn’t quite complete.”
Shepard, “Whaddya mean…It seemed pretty complete to me. It told me how you felt, something I never experienced before. We had that moment alone, just us and..”
Liara, “Well, Shepard the rest of the gift would, should have been the one you gave to me, to us and it would mean we’d never be alone again.” She paused, suddenly the shy young woman Shepard first fell in love with, “ I, mean I’m, uh p..”
Shepard grasped the situation quickly. It was a hope she’d always carried in her heart, “Liara, you’re pregnant!?” She felt her heart about to burst, “Little blue children, after all!”
Liara nodded, fully happy at last, “Yes, Shepard. We’re going to be parents.”
Shepard smiled and showed some happy tears, but laughed and said, “Well, that means I’m gonna need a good job, one that pays a lot better than the one I have now. I heard the Shadow Broker may be hiring.”
Liara, “Well, I don’t know about that. The Shadow Broker demands reliability from employees. I think that you are a bit of a loose cannon, a renegade with a real independent streak.”
Shepard reached for Liara and cradled her head in her hands, “I just never had a reason before to place my fate in anyone else’s hands. I have that reason now. I found that reason in you.”
Garrus, back again, “Shadow Broker, my ass. This kid’s gonna have lots of uncles…”
Tali and Miranda almost in unison chimed in, “And Aunts.”
Garrus, “…to take care of her. And believe me, they, we are all gonna make sure her parents find some other, safer line of work. You can’t carry a baby into a firefight, Shepard.”
Shepard, “This from the guy that wants to drink me under the table.”
Jack, forced her way past Garrus, “Well, I think it’s clear we know so much about how you don’t raise a kid,”
Miranda nodded.
Jack, “that there’s no fucking way we’re gonna let you screw this up.”
Wrex, “You gotta face it, Shepard, you got it luckier than most. Loved by some,” pointed to Liara, “hated by many,” pointed to a holo of a dead Reaper, “respected by all,” pointed a finger around the room as Shepard’s teammates, her friends, her family all nodded in agreement.
Garrus, “I don’t think you got that quite right,…”
Wrex, “But my version fits better, right Turian?”
Garrus, “You know it, Wrex. You know it.”
Shepard, “Well, if I’m to have a kid and can’t be Commander Shepard anymore, I think it’s high time you all started calling me by my first name. Especially you, Liara.”
Jack, walking out of the room whispered to Miranda, “well I’m damn sure not going to call her ….”
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