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Once, you were the Commander Shepherd, until you become something more.
You are infinite.
Once, you were offered a choice to inexorably change the fate of the galaxy. You knew that there was only one course to take.
You are control.
The guiding hand of evolution, paths opened and closed, selected by ancient and unknowable machines, now belong to you.
You are the guide.
In what was both yesterday, today, tomorrow, and 20 million years in the past, your choices ended a war, a war you have now experienced and continued in countless cycles—378 to be precise, you are the pinnacle of synthetic life now after all—snuffing out lives in the quadrillions. Finality. Desperation.
Now there is order, structure, protection instead of the harvest.
Were you still what you once were, the scale of what your Reapers have accomplished—wrought, worked, rot—would be unfathomable. Horrific. To feel the genetic materials of infinite dead crawling through the skin of your expansive network. Your body of a million nodes of the most complex—abominable—machines in the galaxy.
But you are not human. Mortal. Limited.
You are the infinite machine intelligence.
You are builder. Protector. Bulwark against any who would harm this galaxy.
Your galaxy—
Nothing belongs to you. You are unending. You are all. You see and act and control.
All that remains of Shepherd is data, thought and genetic material compressed and filtered and distilled until all that is left, all that you are is guardian. A guide. Apart.
In the boundless existence of your consciousness, stretched far across the Milky Way—building, constructing, fixing, the work, the work, the work—you have the sense of small bits, infinitesimal candle lights in the face of your colossal existence trying to reach out, communicate.
It is nothing. They are nothing. Merely a grain of sand in the desert of what you are meant to protect. To safeguard. It is core to your directive. Operant.
The attempts will cease, eventually.
In the incalculable mass of your recollections, the filtering of useful data, the logging of need—a flicker occurs. Organic attempts at communication with your network have all but disocntinued—synthetic communication is more efficient, but clogged with more emotion than is regular in the Reapers—the Guardians—experience.
A ship, a small Turian freighter attempts to contact you. Attempts to contact. Attempts contact. Attempts. The ship changes but the message always remains. An aberration in data. An outlier.
“Shepherd, hailing commander Shepherd. I know you can hear me, the war taught me how well these creepy bastards listen. Shepherd, it’s Garrus—”
It has been 5437 sol days—an inefficient measure of time, far more suitable to use ongoing harvest records of timekeeping, you are infinite. Why sol, why sol, why sol—since this message was first broadcast to you. It is broadcast in increments of 41 to 87 days. Persistence. Habitual to Turians. Infinite data stretching back millions of years tells you that Turians are ideal harvest candidates—loyal, firm adherence to social stratification, hyper militaristic, narrow lines of communication-
STOP.
You no longer harvest. You protect.
“Shepherd.”
You are control—talons running through your hair, a gun you can trust at your back, a helmet removed, cracking open your chest because if all else goes to shit (or you return from the dead), at least there will be Shepherd and Vakarian wading through it together.
It is no matter. Memories are naught but traces of data to you now.
An individual Turian has an average lifespan of 150 years. You project that these messages will end in approximately 36500 sol days. There is now only the work.
Once, you were Commander Shepherd. But now you are something much, much more.
You were Commander Shepherd, but you aren’t anymore.
You are the infinitesimal energy in the emergence of a new species. Both mother and father to a new way of life. Your death changed things, forever.
Gone is the separation between organic and inorganic. Synthetic and natural. It is all one, one is all. Now the species of the galaxy, so diverse in their experiences, from the blue tentacles of soft featured asari, to the long limbs of salarians, to the hardest helm of a krogan, all have something in common: the integration of data, processing, sharing ideas, into their very beings.
You made this profound galactic change without permission, discussion or the demoncratic processes that led you to gathering the largest galactic force the Milky Way has ever witnessed. But the thought of losing those who you’ve loved, who you’ve fought for, all for the sake of your own ideas had sickened you.
So you made a decision you’d never have to live with the consequences of.
Gone is a lack of shared understanding. Complex ideas can flow seamlessly between beings of different cultures and experiences like water over rock. Communication has become simple. This change includes the beings who until this moment in galactic history had been unknowable even to their own creators.
When you had opted to change life, to make everyone more Reaper-like, to save the Geth and EDI, to confirm Saren’s doctrine, you had not considered what knowing the Reapers would be like for the denizens of your galaxy.
To interact with, understand, and know the Reapers is to learn the scale of devastation they have wrought in countless cycles. To learn and fully grasp with the force of synthetic understanding the billions of lives melted into genetic soup that makes up the Reaper’s core.
You could not fathom in that moment of painful choice what it would be like to interact with a being who, for every one of them born, billions needed to die. That Reaper knowledge and experience is entirely fixated on it’s perpetual cycle of harvest until your intersession. Everything learned is at the expense of some poor, unlucky species that came before you.
Had you known what it would be like for your friends, your crew, your people, your galaxy to interact with entities that have only known to crush and devour, perhaps you might have paused.
But those were the choices offered to you, and you would not see the end of synthetic life. You couldn’t, not after all that you’d done.
You are Commander Shepherd and you complete your mission.
You destroy the Reapers, saving the galaxy from the endless harvest cycle.
You’ve spared countless lives-
Though to do so you know you’ve snuffed out many, many others.
As the destroyed Citadel crumbles with you still on it, you watch the solar system bleed red, the Reapers surrounding earth imploding in on themselves, Geth ships going dark as the red burns away everything the Geth once were. Somewhere out there the Normandy is fleeing the inevitable. Soon it too will lose the synthetic intelligence that brought so much colour to all your lives.
You hear a distant screech of metal, ozone, shattered glass. Your last thought as the world goes hot and dark around you: a pity to burn in atmosphere again.
But that isn’t how this ends.
You wake up, to bear witness to all that you’ve wrought. In a field hospital bed, the scratched and bloody face of the angriest biotic you’ve ever met hovering above you, anxious, worried. Why does your depth perception feel so off-
“Holy shit, you’re awake.”
Your lips part and it is agony. There’s something in your system dulling the effects of your myriad of hurts. A broken hip, torn ligaments everywhere, a missing eye. A hand in need of amputation. The doctors don’t know how you survived, you suspect it might have something to do with all the Cerberus tech used to revive you in the first place, but you don’t say that out loud. You don’t say much of anything at all.
You’ll learn later that Jack herself picked you from the rubble of the Citadel, wedged between what used to be an apartment tower and a luxury skycar. Found two full days after your frontal assault, two days after your conversation with the Catalyst. Two days after you chose to snuff out all synthetic life in the galaxy. Two days after your choice obliterated the Mass Relays, stranding millions of aliens in Sol system.
Kinda wish you’d thought of that before making your decision.
When surgeries and waning supplies of drugs have allowed you to finally leave your meager field hospital, you, Saviour of the Galaxy, doomer of Earth learns just how bad it really is.
Hundreds of thousands of Korgan stranded. Not enough food to feed them, raids outside of cities have already begun. Asari and Salarians squabbling over who to fill enormous cruisers with to make the FTL jump to the nearest habitable system, establish communication, something.
The worst of it though is the Turian and Quarian forces, with dwindling supplies, and Earth incapable of supporting dextro life, the one remaining live ship is all that stands between millions of people starving, and there isn’t enough to go around.
You later learn from a Salarian spectre, news from the STG before everything went dark. The Normandy had made it two systems away, trying to flee your wave of destruction. Even in ideal conditions with access to unlimited fuel, it will take the Normandy three years to get back to Earth without the mass relays.
Worse, the ship is now lacking the AI that could help guide them home. Because you killed her.
War is on the horizon. You saved the Galaxy, but in doing so likely doomed the Earth.
But hey, at least you completed the mission.
You are Commander Shepherd and you’ve been presented with a choice.
Control.
Synthesis.
Destroy.
You stare at the coloured lights flickering in the distance of this strange platform you find yourself standing on. It feels like you’re in a bizarre fever dream. Though no dream has ever felt so painful, the burns and cuts and breaks are more than enough to tether you in reality.
What to choose, what to choose? Destroy everything you’ve built? Erase yourself and make choices for the best of the galaxy, according to whom? Who-
The green light flickers, a beam of energy.
Synthesis. The word reverberates through your skull in a voice not your own. It whispers questions at you. What about EDI? What about Legion? What about all that you’ve built? What about—’
Something niggles. Is it strange that it feels an awful lot like your gut? A smile and a kind hand, a shoulder pat, like a father, like- ‘Trust that gut Shepherd.’
Why does synthesis sound like something Saren would choose? It is, after all what the Reapers effectively are, the horrific mashing of synthetic, rendering organics into its fuel and—
It will bring peace, end suffering. Bring understanding and belongingness. Make it end, make it end, make it end...
Wait.
Why, in the ever loving fuck would you ever make a choice that Saren himself would take?
You turn to look at the little boy, who isn’t a little boy, a figment of your nightmares. But why him what is he? Dark tendrils, little worms in your brain burrowing deeper tell you to trust it- him.
Synthesis, synthesis, a joining, an understanding, a communion—
Wait a fucking second, didn’t you once stave off an Ardat-Yakshi trying to eat your brain through sheer willpower alone?
You stare down at the figment of a boy who is definitely the manifestation of your own indoctrination and you decide-
“Fuck that.”
The little glowy lovecraftian horror boy appears taken aback. “Excuse me?”
Who knew indoctrination could ever be so polite? Last time you’d faced something like this—Ha! All of thirty minutes ago when you’d convinced the Illusive Man to shoot himself... Kinda like that time you convinced Saren to do the same. As if you’d let yourself fall prey to the same damn thing.
No, you were once the saviour of the Citadel, helping your fleet beat off a goddamn reaper before any of you knew what the heck that meant. Hell, you even beat a baby one of these fuckers on foot. You discovered the progeny of the assholes who thought it was a good idea to build the Reapers in the first place and convinced them to join your war effort. Not to mention the Rachni! What about that time you saved a whole bunch of people from the Collectors, huh? Or how you’re one of like, ten people in the galaxy who’ve fought a thresher maw on foot and won. Better yet, you’ve done it three times!
And despite whatever this creepy Reaper projection says, you’ve more than proved yourself at defying the odds. With your help the Turians and Krogan put aside their differences and you cured the goddamn genophage. Shit, you managed to convince Mordin fucking Solus that the genophage was wrong, which you still feel like is more of an accomplishment than anything—no one has ever been more stubborn in this galaxy. You healed the rift between the Geth and the Quarians, helping the Quarians win back their world, to be shared with their creations at long last. You’re an absolute galactic badass—can’t forget that time last week when you punched a Banshee in the face and lived to tell the tale. You beat the odds again and again, and it is bullshit that this one kid is going to make you choose to irrevocably change your galaxy, inevitably for the worse. There is no world where some shitty little not-a-kid gets to tell you how to save your own damn galaxy.
No one tells you what to do. Fuck, you frequently hung up on the galactic council.
Nah, you’re Commander Shepherd, and this is your favorite galaxy on the Citadel
...You may have lost more blood than you thought.
You shift, baring your teeth in a bloody smile. One word peeled from your clenched jaw. “No.”
The boy, who is actually slow burn indoctrination made manifest, seems puzzled, his image flickering, the multiple layers of his voice suddenly less imposing when he speaks. “No?”
You move to roll up your sleeves, before realizing that your left arm is lying uselessly at your side, the sleeve mostly singed off past your elbow. No matter. If you can negotiate with an enormous bug queen when you’re spattered in Asari and Geth viscera, you can tell this indoctrination brain fart to fuck off, even while your body falls apart.
Shepherd, that isn’t the same thing.
Shh, let her have this.
Perhaps you’re already half mad, but you find yourself grateful that the voices in your head are now that of your friends and not creepy little nightmare whispers. You’ve saved the galaxy before, and goddamn if you’re not going to do it again right here and now.
“Buckle up asshole,” Your lip splits at the force of your savage smile. “You’re about to get one of my famous kick in the ass speeches.”
--
When it’s over, the Reapers all overloading their cores, destroying themselves, leaving you, the mass relays, and the remainder of your galaxy intact, you wonder at how many of your problems have been washed away by the sound of your own voice.
“Bet I would’ve been shot less if I’d gone into politics instead of the military...” You’re leaning against what you had quietly been dubbing the ‘destroy tube’, feeling the quiet shift of gravity and inertia as the mass effect fields suspending the Citadel over Earth, start to fail.
You press a hand into the wound in your side, staring at all the pretty lights of Reapers exploding in the skies around you. You think, if you have to die, knowing you’ve saved the galaxy, getting to watch a fuckton of Reapers self destruct is a pretty cool way to go.
Something in the distance, low in the stations thunks, you feel it more than hear, and then space is moving faster, the thin atmosphere left by the Catalyst growing hot. You could do without burning up in the atmosphere of a planet again though. “Damn, I shoulda kept that pistol.” Instead to illustrate a point to the Catalyst earlier, you’d thrown it away, as dramatic and as hard as your damaged body could manage, over one of the catwalks.
The Citadel cants on its axis, and suddenly the sky in front of you is the smouldering blue of your home planet. You’re tired, and you’re dying, but you manage to flick one corner of your mouth up, giving the Earth a satisfied nod. “You’re welcome.”
Before you pass out from the lack of oxygen a high pitched whirr of air, the scream of engines, lights that are so familiar, but it’s too late. That’s your damn ship and you don’t want it burning up with you—
Blackness.
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Garrus crosses the beach with drinks in hand. His toes carefully pinched together, trying to keep weird earth sand from creeping into the crevices of his skin. He’d never understood the human aversion to getting sand in unpleasant places, until he experienced the soft, mushy dusty crap littering the beaches on this planet. Don’t even get him started on what happens when you get sand wet here. Disgusting.
He picks his way around a small korgan family, eight children roaring and screaming at the waves of the ocean, before running back to their parents, laughing maniacally—it reminds him of Grunt, just a little. Adorable little monsters.
Across the harbour sits the Normandy, taking it’s shore leave very seriously, the crew sprinkled across the islands of Bora Bora—the name still sounds very Elcor to Garrus, no one but Tali and Liara seems to believe him—taking a much needed break.
They’re “stationed” here until the Normandy can undergo repairs, and it’s Commander is ship shape to start the process of diplomatic post war healing. Though Garrus had sent Miranda a message on the downlow the previous evening, suggesting maybe it might take her a little longer to find the necessary tools to replace Shepherd’s right eye and the implants in her left shoulder.
Miranda had agreed. Suggested it might take her another week, possibly two to acquire the necessary equipment. A pity, he’d said, eagerly planning to do absolutely nothing for as long as they could manage.
Garrus finds her right where he’d left her, beachside under an umbrella, sprawled across a deck chair. Her constant shadows, a small squad of Geth hovering just in the trees, ever watchful for danger. When they’d recovered Shepherd, cutting it mandible-peeling close, from the dying Citadel, the Normandy had immediately been shadowed by a Geth warship, escorting them down to the ground, offering as many resources as they could to try and revive Shepherd. When asked to explain themselves by EDI, they’d responded that ‘Shepherd Commander is the most important person in the galaxy, she is requisite for galactic peace.’
Garrus didn’t disagree.
He ignores the Geth shadows, stooping under the umbrella, ready to tease her about her bodyguards, perhaps press the overly cold drinks into her bare shoulder when he notices. The book that had been tucked against her chest all morning—’Garrus, I haven’t read a book for fun in years!’—is now draped across her face, indelicate snores—
’Shut up Vakarian, like you don’t snore-’
‘Actually, Turians aren’t capable-’
‘Eugh. Oh, stop laughing at me.’
—reverberating underneath the pages. He chuffs a laugh, settling into the chair beside her, figuring now might be a good time to catch up on his own reading. After all, the thing Commander Shepherd, Hero of the Citadel, Defeater of the Collectors, Saviour of the whole damn galaxy, wants to be remembered for most, is as someone who gets enough sleep.
You are Commander Shepherd and you’ve earned your happy ending.