A/N: I just finished. And I had to write this. So I did. Everything in it happened in my playthrough.
It was quiet in the Skyranger. Streaks of flame danced in the sky through the cockpit windows. The briefing holopanel was quiet. Command had nothing to say to Strike-One. They sat there, just quiet. There was an empty seat on the starboard side.
"Did she have any family?" asked Crater. The hulking Israeli sat on his jumpseat, heavy plasma gun leaning against one knee, rocket launcher against the other.
Doc shook her head. "Not any more. Her brother bought it during Operation Ghost Engine. I think her parents were killed early on, Seamus never talked about them."
Dozer regarded Doc steadily. She'd been on every mission XCOM had ever deployed. She'd been there for all of it, from the first abduction response mission to the time they'd blown through that underground base. Doc was French, and a hint of it tinged her accent. She was also a spectacular field medic and the only reason they'd made it off that damned ship alive.
Most of them, anyway.
Dozer glanced at Crater, and both of them looked at Septic and Lady Grey. Dozer and Crater were both Israeli, but they felt a strong sense of brotherhood for their teammates, the Canadian and the German. Pixie, however, they had loved. All of them had adored the fiery little Irish sparkplug, and she'd died on that vast, inhuman temple ship. She'd been different since she'd gone into the Gollop Chamber back at Central.
Dozer shuddered with memories. He'd escorted Pixie down to that chamber, deep in the bowels of the base. She'd insisted, begged, cajoled, demanded the right to be the one to interface with the strange Ethereal Device. The Commander had been reluctant, but Pixie had traded ruthlessly on her brother's name on the memorial wall. She'd signed up the day he died, and she'd worked harder than anyone else to avenge him. When she'd emerged from psi testing, glowing with that unearthly power, she had taken it like a sign. The aliens had taken everyone from her - her parents, her home, and even her beloved big brother. Now she was going to make them pay.
And she had. Oh, she had. Dozer had no idea what Pixie had seen in that glowing purple abomination, but whatever it was had sent her straight to the Commander, and the Skyranger had taken off twenty minutes later, XCOM's best troops aboard, kitted out with the finest weapons and armour that the most accelerated R&D program in human history could produce. They'd faced all of humanity's enemies in that ship, and Dozer still didn't really understand what had happened in there. It had been like Pixie could hear the Ethereals speaking to her. But it hadn't slowed her down, and those psionic storms she could produce! Dozer had discovered the Gift deep within himself, and he was widely regarded as the best Mind Controller in XCOM, but even he couldn't have made those terrifying purple saucers that ripped and tore at anything trapped within. He'd seen two of those lumbering death-machines the scientists called Sectopods lumber out of the shadows, and while both he and Crater had flayed them with rockets, he knew it was that tearing, eye-searing rift that had finished off both war machines before they could tear the team apart.
Doc shook herself. She was the senior officer here. Team morale was her duty, even now, when it looked like - dare she think it? - they'd finally won.
"Good shooting in there, Lady Grey," she said, and meant it. The German sniper's lethal accuracy had come in very handy in the very last chamber of the ship, the magnetically-contained plasma of her sniper rifle blasting through the Uber Ethereal's defences like a hot knife through butter. It was fortunate, perhaps, that killing the Uber Ethereal had disabled his minions as well, because those bodyguards had looked very tough.
Lady Grey simply nodded. She didn't speak much under any circumstances, and right now Doc knew she was tearing herself apart. Doc and Lady Grey had both been on Operation Ghost Engine with Seamus O'Doherty and Doc knew Lady Grey had blamed herself for the lad's death. It wasn't fair, but Doc had seen Lady Grey's laser round go wide, leaving a muton alive that should have been dead, and young Seamus' armour had been no match for the plasma fire that followed.
If she'd saved Seamus, Pixie wouldn't have joined XCOM. And she'd be alive now.
"Septic," continued Doc, "nice work in there against those mutons - and that beserker."
Septic looked up from her alloy cannon and nodded. She'd charged in, sliding under a wild blow, to get off a point-blank shot against a muton. Lady Grey had picked off the muton's partner, but then one of the red-skinned beserkers had charged Septic - who'd looked up without a hint of alarm and blown his head clean off.
"Thanks, Doc," replied Septic, finally. Her voice sounded rusty, hoarse. She'd thrown herself against the door to the cathedral, banging on it, screaming for Pixie to follow them out. Dozer and Crater had had to drag her away from it, still screaming.
The holopanel snapped into life, and Doc felt her heart stop. No. No, they couldn't do this. Not another mission, not now. Not after all they'd been through, please, couldn't it just stop?
But it wasn't a briefing screen that came up, it was Bradford, the Central Officer. There was dust on his shoulders and in his hair, and the base behind him seemed confused. People were standing about, talking and gesturing at screens.
"Strike-One, this is Central. It's... it's over, Strike-One. We won. I know what you've been through today, but we've won, Strike-One. Humanity is safe."
