Chapter Text
“Come back to me.”
As the words escape her lips, she realizes that it’s an unfair ask, a wildly unrealistic one. No one knows what exactly could be waiting for him once he takes that beam up to the Citadel to activate the relay. She doesn’t care. For better or worse, and these past years have delivered both, she has always been by the Commander’s side, fighting arm-in-arm. Now, he stands resolute, promising her everything will be alright, a promise he has no way of making.
She knows that an entire Mako tank just exploded practically on top of her, and that if any shrapnel had compromised her suit she would be at serious risk of infection, especially with the battlefield’s conditions. She knows in her rational mind that she has no chance of making the trip to the beam in her current condition, but to Tali’Zorah vas Normandy, the time for reality was over. She wanted nothing more than for her commander to turn around and run onto this ship with her.
We could evade the Reapers, she thought. The Protheans had held out for centuries against Reaper forces, plenty of time for a human and a quarian to live long full lives on some forgotten world somewhere. Where the Reapers wouldn’t find them until it was too late. They could live their happy life together like they always talked about, sure, Rannoch would be gone, but it wasn’t home. Home wasn’t the Rayya, or the Neema, or even the Normandy. Home was him.
There on the ramp her eyes locked on Shepard’s, she watched his inner turmoil. It killed him to leave her behind, they both knew it, but they both also knew there was no other way. Shepard had to get to the Citadel, and Tali would only slow him down, or worse; die trying. Shepard was saving Tali from herself. Praying that maybe he could make it back, or, in the increasingly likely case he didn’t, the woman he loved would live on.
She tried to force good thoughts into her mind as the Normandy’s engines roared to life, the ship taking to the sky. As she was half-dragged, half-escorted through the airlock and onto the Normandy’s second deck, her eyes immediately darted to the forward window, fixing her eyes on the rapidly shrinking form of Commander John Shepard. Ignoring the cacophony of noise that exploded in her auditory sensors as officers shouted over one another, she could barely make out her Turian escort Garrus Vakarian, one of her oldest friends, muttering anxiously to himself.
She tried her best to resist his pulling, staying as close to the forward window as she could, needing to see as much of the Commander as possible before they were separated. She watched that shrinking form as Garrus moved her, hauled more accurately, towards the elevator, transfixed as she watched that form, seeing too the creaking maw of the Harbinger. She saw Harbinger prime his weapon and fire. A red, hot beam. A beam of death. She saw every second of the beam striking the ground. Watched dust explode into the sky, before getting quickly swept aside in the frantic energy of the battle going on below. As she was finally corralled in the elevator, she stared with a manic energy looking for the silhouette of the man she loved, but the figure was no more.
Tali screamed. A panicked, primal scream. The robotic tinge of her mask’s vocalizer added to the haunting melody of the sound, a sound that drew panicked glances from all personnel on the deck, all freezing in the moment. Tali tried with all her might to wrestle free from Garrus’s grip, wanting nothing more than to sprint across the deck, through the airlock, and down to where the Commander once stood.
“Tali! It’s over, there’s nothing we can do.” His voice was enough to break her manic state, if even for a second. She stopped her struggle, collapsing to the floor of the ever-glacially moving elevator. The energy having faded from her with such a sudden wave, Garrus could do little to stop her fall.
“Shepard… no.”
The Turian buried his face in his own shaking hands, while Tali began to sob the most heart wrenching sobs either had ever heard. A tragic, guttural cry, that she wasn’t sure she was even capable of producing before it burst out through her lips. Garrus breathed deeply and quietly in tune. Neither spoke a word.
—------------
It was the smell that greeted him first. An acrid smell, one built from a myriad of sources, each of which was as pungent as it was unpleasant. Ash and fire, mixed with the unmistakable scent of burning flesh raked at his nostrils, taunting his lungs with air that would be near impossible to breathe even without the copious amounts of smoke.
Ah yes, the smoke. His chest heaved as he attempted to breathe, but if clear air existed on the grounds of the Citadel, he was struggling to find it. Even as he lay motionless among the mess, no amount of air was proving to quench his desperate thirst, as his throat and chest ached more and more with each passing breath.
It was lying in this pile that Commander Shepard came to a startling realization: he was breathing. Not just breathing, he was alive. All at once, as if activated by a switch, Shepard’s eyes flew open and jerked his entire body forward, desperately attempting to sit up, with nothing but a slight shrug of the shoulders to show for the effort.
I’m alive. How? Where?
His mind now engaged, ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, and most upsettingly ‘why’ would almost certainly have flown through his mind as well if not for one additional hurdle that was rearing its ugly head: everything hurt.
Shepard felt his vision blur and darken as his body came to realize just how much pain he was actually in. His breathing became even more rapid as he felt himself in the early stages of losing consciousness, gritting his teeth and groaning as he tried with all of his might to keep his wits about him.
Not quite alive. Dying. I’m dying.
Trying to gauge the true extent of his injuries, the Commander craned his neck down with great effort, his eyes resting on his chest and legs. His N7 armor was well and truly destroyed now, what little remained intact after Harbinger’s blast was now shattered and useless in the best places, gone entirely in the worst, small segments of hyperweave undergarment poking through.
Ok. Well, my torso’s not actively impaled on anything. That’s a start.
He knew that Harbinger’s blast had likely caused at least a handful of broken ribs and some serious damage to his leg, seeing as it nearly left him unable to walk. This though, the explosion at the catalyst coupled with what he could only imagine was a not insignificant fall? He seriously doubted he would be able to stand, let alone walk.
Flexing what muscles he could he slowly began testing what limbs he still had a modicum of control over, a painful and arduous process.
Right arm? As he flexed, white hot pain ripped through his entire arm, radiating into his chest. Glancing over he noticed the clear signs of his shoulder being dislocated, but the more visually concerning was the blood-soaked jagged metal spike that tore through his flesh. The entire rest of the arm hung lamely at his side, motionless.
Shit. Not good. How about my left?
Feeling his hand close into a fist, he bent his elbow and tried lightly rolling his shoulder, and with every movement came intense pain, but it was a pain that he could bear if it meant getting to use his arm.
Trying constantly to get his legs moving, he flexed and twisted his body but had no luck. He could feel them, God can I feel them, ascertaining that the damage probably wasn’t spinal. He mused over whether or not any Cerberus cybernetic they’d plugged into him would be able to heal him enough to move if he laid and waited, before quickly deciding that action now was more likely to get him out alive.
His omni-tool was on his lame arm, inaccessible, but he still felt calling for help may be worth a try. Reaching his left arm across his chest, he hissed in pain, poking at his opposite forearm, trying to determine the condition of his omni-tool. After what felt like hours of pain pulsing through his good arm, the orange omni-tool roared to life for a brief moment before petering out. Clearly he needed a different plan.
He was merely beginning to plot, when a familiar voice echoed through his ears, freezing him completely still. What little blood was left within him ran cold as the form materialized in front of him, calling out to him with a venom that had haunted his dreams since he heard it first over a year prior.
“Hello again, Shepard.”
—--------------
The medical bay of the Normandy SR-2 held a viscous tension that sat deeply in the guts of everyone it contained. Tali’Zorah vas Normandy sat upright on the edge of a cot staringly blankly at the opposing wall, while the only administrator, the vessel’s long-time practitioner Dr. Chakwas, carefully tended to Tali’s Turian escort. Shortly before moving to Garrus, Chakwas had spent an extensive amount of time checking Tali herself for injury, settling on a moderate hairline fracture in her leg and a likely concussion, both of which would heal given adequate time to rest.
The greater concern for Tali’s wellbeing it seemed was the integrity of her envirosuit, something Chakwas had very cautiously vouched for, with the caveat that Tali herself would need to make the ultimate determination. Critical a task as this may be, for now, the Quarian woman was content to take the Doctor’s word.
Her eyes still stung with tears, but this far into her spiral, the urge to heave and sob had all but left her. So she continued to sit gazing unblinkingly forward, mind consumed in thought, while holding a tube of nutrient paste limply in her hand. Chakwas quietly had placed it there encouraging her to hydrate and energize, but if the act of simply ensuring she didn’t contract a serious infection was too much, eating would be a truly herculean task.
Garrus winced and swore under his breath as Chakwas set his arm in a fairly rudimentary human-style splint. On normal terms Chakwas surely would have insisted the arm be cast, but knowing the emotional state of her patient, as well as the Turian people's tendency to pride themselves on toughness over injury, she opted to spare his ego as much as she could.
In between his muttered utterances of “spirits” as well as more colorful Turian vulgarities, Garrus’s mind dwelt only on the cause of his injury. He recalled the exact moment he realized the incoming Mako, and how as he tried to dive, his foot sank into the Earth’s uneven soil, causing the awkward landing that crippled his arm. The ensuing explosion only left additional aesthetic injuries, but he knew by then that no matter what he could possibly do, Shepard would be forced to finish this on his own.
He had tried to listen past the exchange between Tali and Shepard on the on-ramp, trying to focus on the beam to alert should an influx of Reaper troops descend on the ship, but No Man’s Land, as Hackett had called it, lived up to its name. As Shepard backed away from the ramp, waving them to go, Garrus could see the pain in his Commander's eyes. He knew how hard it was on the Commander to leave them behind, so when he and Tali saw him be struck by Harbinger’s beam, his stomach dropped. In the elevator to medical, he and Tali both were sure he was gone.
Then the Citadel’s arms opened. Sure, anyone could have opened them, but as the Crucible was fired and the Reapers were silenced forever, everyone knew that only their Commander could have done it. By the time Garrus got the nod from Chakwas to leave, early reports were coming out regarding the survivors on the Citadel, and early estimates were grim. Even more so for those at the center of the blast, he thought, as he avoided everyone he could en route to the observation deck bar, where he opened the tallest bottle of Dextro alcohol he could find, and began to drink.
Tali’s eyes quietly followed Garrus as he walked out of medical before she returned them to their original position, then dropping her whole head down towards her knees. Hours had passed since she overheard the news of the victory over the Reapers, but it was only recently she had come to overhear the Normandy’s marooning on some planet near the Sol system. It was just as she was beginning to process this new information that the Spectre Ashley Williams came bursting into the Med Bay carrying a body over her shoulder. Limping in quietly behind her was Joker, the ship’s helmsman.
“I… I have no idea what happened. Once the… thing… from the Crucible hit, she just collapsed!”
The unfiltered panic in Joker’s voice was enough to ground Tali for the first time since departing Earth, and she began frantically looking around at the chaotic scene in front of her. Joker was in tears, leaning most of his weight on a cot while Ashley lay down the body, which Tali now recognized as EDI, beside him before moving to try and open the door to the A.I. Core.
“It’s locked with some… encryption. I have no idea where to even begin, this isn’t my specialty.”
“Locked?” Joker gasped exasperatedly “Damn thing’s never been locked before, why now?”
Ashley retorted with a confused stammer, which only elicited a now fully manic Joker to unload a series of Earthen cuss words while tears quickly began to form at the corners of his eyes. Carefully he moved himself over to the door, still shouting, and began to examine it himself while Ashley stepped away in a clear attempt to give the pilot as wide a berth as possible.
In the commotion, Tali managed to catch the gaze of Dr. Chakwas, who she noticed was looking at her expectantly. Quickly flicking her eyes to the door, Tali got the hint. It’s only a matter of time before they make the ship’s chief engineer get involved. She gripped her nutrient paste, nodded thankfully to the kind doctor, and quietly made her escape.
Tali reached the elevator with haste, and working on auto pilot, punched in the Normandy’s first deck, the home of the quarters she so frequently considered her own. It wasn’t until she came face to face with the door to the Commander’s private quarters that she realized exactly what she had done, dropping the nutrient paste in scared shock hearing it clank off the metal floor.
Stepping forward she put her hand out, but paused. I… I can’t. Without a further thought, she collapsed to the floor in a puddle of tears, where she cried until she was too tired to resist her heavy eyelids.
—--------
The unmistakable figure of the Illusive Man stood mere feet from where Shepard was laying. The Reaper implants in his neck and eyes glew faintly, no longer the strong icy blue color they once were, flickering like a dying flame. His suit was still in its usual pristine condition, marred only slightly by the medium sized scorch mark and bullet hole that sat in the center of his chest.
“So this is how it ends? This is where all that money went? What a waste.”
Venom dripped off the Illusive Man’s tongue as he regarded Shepard in his haggard condition. He shook his head derisively while taking a drag of a cigarette he seemingly produced out of thin air, flicking its ash at the Commanders immobile feet.
Shepard was beside himself. Had all of this work fighting Cerberus been for nothing? No, it couldn’t be. He refused to believe it. The Illusive Man for all his faults was still just a man. Flesh and blood, same as him. Bad example. He brought me back to life, why couldn’t he revive himself? He dismissed the thought.
Shepard tried everything he could to express his displeasure at the Illusive Man’s sudden appearance. Trying to speak, Shepard produced a throaty growl that came coupled with a frightening amount of gurgling. I think I’m bleeding internally. Whatever I’m going to do, I should do it quickly.
“What you’re going to do; is die. Here. Alone.” the Illusive Man gestured around to the smoldering rubble that encased Shepard like a tomb, “in a testament to your failure.”
Failure. The word hit Shepards ear with a sour quality. The Reapers had been stopped, for good, that much he was sure of, but could he really take solace in such a victory? EDI, the Geth, all those years spent fighting them, all the risks he had taken, the people he endangered to broker their peace with the Quarians. And he had snuffed them out. Not just a few. All of them, individuals finally becoming whole just enough to appreciate what he was taking from them.
“Though I’ll say.” The Illusive Man continued, “Dangling those suit rats out on a line to get the Geth’s fleets? It was impressive. But tossing away the scraps once you were done with them? That’s something befitting a role like mine. A titan of Humanity’s interests.”
Shepard felt sick. He thought back to the Catalyst. The Illusive man had been right. Reapers could be controlled, they could have been turned into a weapon for Shepard to wield as he saw fit. Am I really that much better? But then he regarded the Illusive Man’s use of the Quarian slur. He thought of Rannoch, of Tali. Remembering the woman he had done all of this for lit a fire in his gut as the Illusive Man continued,
“But no! You chose to be a pawn. To the council. To the Alliance.” He grinned devilishly, “To me.”
Enough! Tired of the endless monologuing, Shepard began willing himself to rise, gritting his teeth so hard he thought they might break. His legs shook and seized, moving far more than before, but still frustratingly little progress could be made.
Arms then. Slamming his left fist into the ground, he began pushing himself up, feeling his shoulder sliding slightly up the jagged metal it was impaled on, further ripping at the already delicate skin. His face turning red with effort, he watched his shoulder rise, before he found himself totally unable to breathe, crashing back to the ground.
“It ends here John!” The Illusive Man was yelling now, “You’ll be a pariah! They’ll hate you! Why fight it?”
The ringing in his ears was louder than it had ever been, head pounding, lungs aching, he pressed his fist into the ground again, letting out a guttural, gurgling scream, blood spewing from his mouth as he did so. He needed to free his arm, needed to crawl out of the pit he found himself in. He needed to make it home, to her.
“I…” , still gurgling, still struggling, Shepard attempted to speak again, getting closer and closer to freeing himself from his trapped position.
“I… promised.” As the word left his mouth, he threw all his weight to the side, feeling the spike rip through even more skin as he dislodged his shoulder, now laying sprawled on his chest. Reaching his working arm as best he could, he began to crawl from the wreckage, feeling the jagged metal scratching his chest as he did so.
Reaching the top of the pile to his side, he turned his head back, noting that the vision of the Illusive Man was nowhere to be seen. Dirty trick, brain. He mused, before laying flat on his back, face staring up at the stars from what he could finally see was one of the Citadel’s arms. The Commander sighed, scanning the stars, trying as best he could to locate Rannoch.
In his new elevated position his Omni-Tool weakly began to beep, but the exhausted Commander was too delirious to notice. There, I think. That would have been home. I’m sorry, my love. He reached his good hand down towards his pocket, digging out a photograph and placing it face down on his chest. He didn’t want to know the true condition of the photo of his beloved’s face, but just knowing he had it provided him some small solace.
As his body grew increasingly cold, he could have sworn he felt the familiar feeling of a gloved, three-fingered hand taking his, and as a smile crept across his face, the world went dark.