"There comes a time when one must rest from war and conflict."
-Thane Krios
He fought against nausea at the ever-present smell of smoke and week old bodies, sickly-sweet with an acrid aftertaste on his tongue. The ground rumbled beneath his feet, boots finding uneasy footing on the crumbled ruin of what had been a large, official-looking building. Library, maybe. The low metallic groans of the Enemy carried through the air from all directions, first sounding from what was left of downtown, then behind him toward the bridge. Crimson flashes strobed through the night; murderous lightning flashing forth and consuming all that it touched.
Ahead, there was a flash of white in all the black and grey.
He called out, his voice hoarse and ragged. Smoke and plaster dust made the air almost unbreathable, more like some half-terraformed backwater than Earth. The child ran from him again, sweatshirt billowing out in the wind of his speed. He pursued as though through molasses, his head pounding as waves of dull agony washed over him. There was a grinding whine in his ears, and a terrible Presence squeezing as surely as a hand atop his skull. He felt a trickle of blood slip from his nose.
There was a faint crackling, a metallic groan, and a thin line spidered across his vision. Then another. His head swam, and he sank to his haunches, sitting on something. A chair. The air rippled in front of him. The darkness of night gave way to the blackness of unknown abysses, and he saw something impossibly vast move in the distance. He looked down to his air gauge. Empty. So that was it. Down below the ocean, with the monsters who had created his Enemy eons ago, fighting for his own mind, running out of air. He gritted his teeth, blood from his nose leaking into his mouth. He felt them again, pawing at his mind, pushing on his meager defenses with a terrible inevitability. There were no weapons on the diving mech capable of harming these monsters, but there was no reason he had to let them win. He spat the blood out of his mouth, and raised the Carnifex pistol. Aimed at the spot of blood on the canopy.
At the horrified face of Admiral Anderson, the closest thing to a father he'd ever known. No no no no
The power conduit holding back the terrible power of the Catalyst.
The canopy shattered with the bullet, and the pressure on his mind gave way to an instant of shocking pressure all over his body before oblivion took him.
He opened his eyes. Shepard was immersed in florescent light and white sheets, painkillers making everything a little distant, otherworldly. For a while he'd thought it was the Heaven he'd never believed in. Then he had awakened at last to pain, and a monstrous sense of insurmountable guilt. His nerves had seemed ablaze, dazzling and acid, his bandage-swathed hands shaking weakly. The left side of his face was its own universe of horror; molten seas of liquid torment surged there beneath the gauze. He'd wondered if this was Hell, then, an eternity of burning agony and contemplation of the magnitude of his failure. But no Hell he'd ever heard of plugged the damned into a half-dozen machines to sustain their bodies. So. Not Heaven, not Hell, but merely life. In spite of everything, life.
He lay in the hospital bed at the far end of the Citadel, in one of the larger undamaged buildings re-purposed for triage. He lay quietly, arms free from the restraints for three days running, and thought about dying.
Disembodied voices came to him every now and again, but he understood them to be mere memory and so avoided the mercy of losing his mind. Hackett, firm in his conviction. He's wrong. Dead Reapers is how we win this. Tali, her heart breaking. I have a home. Anderson, speaking the words he had never known he needed to hear so desperately. You did good, son.
He heard the voices of his caretakers, as he had off and on for some time. Possibly weeks. He lay between the crisp sheets, listening to the faint beeping of the machines. There were fewer now that he was out of intensive care, but the machines would be with him for another month. Or so the doctors said. Regulating his temperature, applying dermal gel to his ravaged face and hands, administering painkillers. He had tried withholding those, partly out of fear of addiction. He'd seen enough of the Tenth Street Reds get caught up on the wrong end of the vice trade to want to go that route. Of course, the other reason he held off relieving his pain was the same reason they had him on twenty-four hour psych watch.
Images flashed through his mind. Doctors, nurses wrestling with his bandaged hands, holding them down, strapping them to the bed. Sweat streaming down their faces, muscles bulging with effort as they held him down. His own arms straining. Tearing through the straps, tearing at the tubes and wires connecting him to life. A splash of crimson from the IV needle as it clattered to the floor, analgesic dribbling from the tip. He screamed something almost unintelligible about not deserving painkillers before they'd given him a jab in the arm that had granted him dreamless sleep.
His cheeks were wet again. He'd grown up with a horror of tears, the unthinking machismo of the street cemented in the military discipline of his late adolescence, but these left him more baffled than shamed. He hadn't even been feeling particularly sad. Numb, more than anything. He was often numb, an almost pleasant distance between himself and the world. He wiped at his face, still listening to the voices.
The doctors were talking to someone, their voices insipid with forced calm. Silhouettes drifted across the frosted glass door, wringing hands in a caricature of concern. A memory floated through- hands wrung not from concern but merely from nerves. It signals a desire for... um... intimacy. A spike of pain lanced through the empty sense of distance and his eyes blurred with tears once more. He blinked them back. He started to lose interest in the voices and their display of false compassion, but something in their words caught his attention. "...must understand that the Commander has been through an unimaginable ordeal, and he may not be himself."
Shepard felt his mouth twitch in a weak smile. If only. He could feel what was left of his face, the slack blankness of it through the muted emotions, the thousand-yard stare that had crept up on him over the past year. He could wish to be someone else, but wishing would not make it so.
"Not himself? Like hell." The voice was low, resonant, familiar. No. I can't- "Shepard's been through 'ordeals' before and they just piss him off. I need to see him. Let me in." Another silhouette appeared, tall, barrel-chested even without his armor. Unmistakable.
Panic fluttered in his chest. After what he'd done, how could he possibly face Garrus?
The smaller silhouette spread its arms. "I know you're his friend-"
"You're damned right I am."
"-And I'm certain he will want to see you too, once he is feeling better, but you must understand, the Commander is experiencing significant post-traumatic stress. He... he keeps insisting we try him as some kind of war criminal. He's tried twice to resign his commission but Admiral Hackett is ignoring that for now." His voice dropped to a whisper. "He seems to be blaming himself, you see. For all the deaths."
No. Not all the deaths. He closed his eyes . Only some of them.
Garrus lay a hand on the doctor's shoulder, gentle but insistent. "Then you'll understand why I need to see him now, and not later. Excuse me." He limped past the doctor and into the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. The turian stepped into the light, big as ever and twice as cocky despite the cast on his leg. He wore civilian garb, the vaguely ridiculous soft jumpsuit turians seemed to favor. "Shepard."
He didn't deserve the company of his best friend, but here he was. He didn't know if the man, the best he had ever known, would be able to bear his presence once he knew everything. In spite of his guilt, in spite of his self-loathing, Shepard felt a surge of feeling threatening to spill over and he passed a hand over his face. "Garrus. I'm glad to see you."
Garrus pulled a chair alongside the bed and sat backward in it, hands dangling over the back, thickly-wrapped leg jutting straight out. "I told that moron you would be. Doctors. Only ever met two who were worth a damn. You look good, considering I hear they pulled enough shrapnel out of you to commission a new Alliance dreadnought." He looked at Shepard for a moment, pondering. Then his head drooped, his mandibles twitching slightly. "Ah, hell, Shepard. I... I'm sorry."
Shepard dropped his hand, bandages rustling on the bed linens. "You're what?"
Garrus clenched his hands on the back of the chair. "I'm sorry. If I hadn't... if I had managed to pull it together, I might have made it to that beam with you. You were counting on me. I could have helped. I..."
Shepard shook his head slowly. "Garrus, no. I was counting on you, and you came through. You got Tali out of there." He swallowed. "She doing okay? The doctors wouldn't tell me anything until I broke an IV, then they flew in Doc Chakwas so she could tell me in person she was going to live." He'd broken a lot more than an IV, come to think of it. "She didn't have a lot of details, though, and I didn't want to keep her from the relief efforts. I made a real ass of myself."
"She took a few bad hits, some suit ruptures. I won't lie to you Shepard, it was close. Maybe almost as close as you. Karin though... she wouldn't give up on her. Must have gone through the entire stock of antiseptics just prepping the medbay for surgery." He took a deep breath. "You were the first thing she asked about. I didn't like having to lie to her. But... it's the damnedest thing, Shepard. I told her you were okay, that the search and rescue teams had found you. Our comms weren't even up, and I figured you for a dead man. Everyone did. But I told her what I thought she needed to hear. She reached over, and touched my hand, and said, 'Believe it.'"
Shepard reached over and gave the turian's hand a quick squeeze despite the pain. "And you did."
Garrus pulled his hand away, eyes sliding away from his gaze. "That's the thing. I didn't. I gave up on you, and I'm sorry. I should've known better. We had a ceremony. For EDI, and Mordin, and Thane, and Legion. Sort of a funeral. We put EDI's name up on the wall, and we were all set to put yours at the top. But Tali wouldn't do it. She wasn't a day out of bed, but she found the strength to pry it out of Liara's hands. Said we weren't going to give up on you." He slowly raised his eyes. "And she was right."
Shepard held his gaze, then raised his hand. After a moment, the turian clasped it. "You don't owe me an apology, Garrus. You got her out of there. You got the Normandy out of there. You did everything I asked of you, even though it burned you up. I couldn't ask for a better friend." His hand fell to the bed again. "It's you who deserves better."
Garrus skewered him with a critical glare. "Bullshit."
Shepard felt the despair rising, a black tide that would drown everything else if he'd let it, fought to keep focused. "You don't understand. You don't know what happened on the Citadel."
His friend leaned back in against the wall. "Then tell me."
The Catalyst stood before him, a nightmare realized. Ancient, powerful, cold. Evil. The driving force behind the Reapers, behind dizzying eons of murder and despair. And it mocked him. Everything about it, down to the very face it wore, seemed calculated to put him off, to find his weaknesses and pry at them, to pour salt in his wounds and laugh at his screams. Too sure in its logic to be swayed or talked down, as even the Illusive Man had been swayed in the end. Too powerful to be stopped through any conventional force. The child's face looked him in the eye, and sneered. It had him, and it knew it.
It offered him power beyond imagining, control over the very horrors who threatened to destroy everything he had ever loved. Everyone. He closed his eyes, and saw the sleek black forms gliding through the black toward Tuchanka, toward Rannoch. All his work, Mordin's work, Legion's sacrifice, the quarian victory, for nothing if he allowed them to continue. And he was being offered the ability to stop them, to turn them from destruction to rebuilding. He could use them to defend instead of to destroy, to lead the peoples of the galaxy into a future free from terror. He could annihilate the slave trade. He would be more powerful than any human in all history.
More powerful than any human should be.
Even if the offer were in earnest and not some last-ditch attempt to indoctrinate him, Shepard could not take it. Perhaps he would use the Reapers as a force for good, for order, for justice. At first. But as time wore on, and his friends died, and the species he cared about died or changed beyond recognition, would he still be the same, well-intentioned master? Even if his personality survived the translation to some kind of machine-borne godhood, would it survive the eons of power? He had a vision of the Illusive Man, standing at the control console, assuming direct control over all the Reaper armada, and shuddered. He could still hear the voice of Father MacAllister all those years ago, as he shoveled hot soup into a bowl for another starving street punk. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world... if he lose his soul?"
And so he had rejected the offer of control. With all of his being, he rejected it.
"So they were still trying to indoctrinate you, even at the end." There was no doubt whatsoever in Garrus' voice, and Shepard found himself envying that conviction. "What did you do?" Garrus asked.
He marveled briefly that he could read his friend's face so well. All the old drill instructors had called the turians "skullheads" with good reason. But the face- worn and scarred and covered in plates as it was -was a good one. He'd leaned on them all, of course, but Garrus had been his rock. He could hardly remember a time when he'd had the least hesitation trusting him with his life, and the lives of his Alliance crewmates. A lifetime ago, just an ignorant kid from the streets who lucked into glory by being in the right place during the Skyllian blitz. Cited for valor and offered a good assignment aboard a prototype frigate.
Then, Eden Prime and everything that had come after. First a turian, then a krogan, a quarian, and an asari. Aliens, like the batarians. He'd been a fool, but wise enough to keep his mouth shut until the 'alien' members of his team proved themselves the best people in the galaxy, the best friends anyone could ever want. With their help he'd built a legacy of peace, become the paragon of all humanity had to offer because these aliens had brought out the very best in him.
Shepard looked out the window. Stared at the unblinking stars, the distant flicker as shuttles moved between the ships of the combined fleet, found the distant bulk of the SSV Everest. "I asked myself what Anderson would do. And I shot the first thing I saw that looked important." Garrus grinned at that. "It overloaded the Crucible, let its energy loose in some kind of synthetics-destroying wave, just like the... Catalyst said it would. Then it exploded in my face. And the Reapers died." He closed his eyes. "And the geth died. And EDI died. Just as that thing said they would. And I pulled the trigger."
Garrus was quiet for a long moment. "So. That's what this is about."
"Yeah." Part of it, anyhow. "You were right, Garrus. In the end, it came down to cold calculus. Kill ten million here to save twenty million there. Kill one species here to save five there. Kill one friend to save a dozen. I murdered them, Garrus. The geth, and EDI. I murdered them when I blew that power coupling, and I knew I was doing it." And so his legacy of peacemaking, of compassion, had turned to ashes.
Garrus scoffed with a grunt, low in his throat. "Listen to yourself, Shepard. Murder one species- and I wouldn't call it murder, it was a sadistic choice you should never have had to make -and save all the others. You stopped the Reapers. You did it. You saved us all, ended thousands of years of bitter history. Hell, because of you, there are krogan on Palaven right now, helping my people." He took a breath and leaned in close, his voice softer than Shepard had ever heard. "Look, Shepard, it's like with Sidonis. I thought I knew what I wanted, but you knew me well enough to talk me off that ledge. I wasn't looking for justice, I was looking for revenge. It would have destroyed me. Hell I'd have probably ended up like Massani, a bitter old merc with half a face and not even half a conscience. But you came through."
"So now I'm going to come through for you, you understand? Keep talking to you until you remember what everyone else knows about you- Commander Shepard doesn't give up. Sure, you've done more than anyone. You've earned a rest, and you'll get one. But you're not going to do anything stupid, and you're not going to touch that IV anymore. Because you don't. Give. Up." He sighed. "So, you had to make a tough call. The toughest I've ever heard of. It almost cost you everything, and it saved us all. I'm a good friend? You did what everyone asked you to do, even knowing the price you'd pay to your own conscience. No one could ask for a better friend than that."
One of the machines was giving off some kind of alarm. The doctors opened the door, distracting Garrus long enough for Shepard to cover his face again. The last thing he wanted was to lose it right in front of him. Almost as bad as breaking down in front of Wrex would be. The lead doctor- Tanaka, Shepard thought his name was -began shooing the turian from the room. "His vitals are spiking a bit. The Commander must rest now, you understand. You can visit again tomorrow... if he likes." Shepard merely nodded behind his hand, not trusting his voice. "Good then. Tomorrow, mister Vakarian."
Garrus pushed through for a moment, reaching for and squeezing his other hand. "I'll be back tomorrow, Shepard. And the day after that, and the day after that. And every day after until they let you out of here."
The doctors crowded around him, adjusting his medication. The pain subsided, and he slipped away.