A.N: The question of what could happen after ME3 was just too good an experiment to pass up. We shall see how this goes... Enjoy, dear readers! And please let me know what you think! Cookies for all!
Coming Home...
She didn't exactly know how long she had stared into the abyss; minutes, hours, months. It didn't much matter. The stars were beautifully quiet with their twinkling, familiar lights. She remembered looking up at them as a child, pointing out each constellation, her innocence tied to the wonder that was the sky. That alluring call to the unknown was the exact reason why she had joined the Alliance. She wanted to be a part of that mystery—that fantastically looming adventure that was the void above Earth.
Jane Shepard had achieved that ten-fold. She had defeated Saren, conquered a Reaper Destroyer while on foot, and destroyed a collector base that was deemed a suicide mission. Effectively and with the help of loyal teammates, she had saved the galaxy now three times over. Granted, it came with the high price of collaborating with Cerberus—not to mention dying.
Her breath hitched, pain radiating throughout chest, as a shiver began along her shoulders. She remembered what it felt like to float weightlessly through space, a tear in her suit, the cold vacuum seeping in and suffocating her. The galaxy was a cruelly cold place. Shepard's life had always felt consumed in the eternal struggle of fighting and surviving.
If she had known, as a child, that her death waited for her in the stars would she have still wanted to explore that mysterious sky? Would she have still applied for the Academy, had she known the tough choices that would face her after Cerberus thrust her back into the world?
The conversation with her mother echoed through her mind. "Even when you were little you dreamed of the life you have."
Not all of the galaxy was cold. There were parts of it, people in it that still resonated hope and belonging and warmth.
Her chest heaved and a wet cough emerged as she tried desperately to suck in air.
She managed to lick her lips, the bitter tang of blood sitting uneasily on her tongue. The memory of the first time she had tasted her blood on his mouth plate, came flooding to the forefront of her thoughts. He had bitten her, perhaps a bit too hard in the heat of passion, marking her as his bond mate—it was within his kiss that she had savored the moment; savored the pain with the unbelievable pleasure.
Garrus…
His name echoed sweetly through her mind. Her senses slowly began to filter back; the mere whisper of his name breaking her from her trance. She worked to sit up, slowly trying to move her elbows beneath her for leverage. But her body was cocked back at a strange angle and the movement caused a searing pain down her back and down into her hips. Defeated, Shepard stilled.
Garrus might be on his way over to her. He always watched her six and sometimes had the uncanny ability to shoot the targets in front of her before she could pull the trigger herself. She both hated and loved that in him. Aside from the minor annoyance of his competitiveness on the battlefield, it was also his way of protecting her. Warmth filled her stomach at the thought—he was the only soldier that she had ever trusted with both her life and her heart.
He would be looking for her…
With great effort, in an attempt to search for him, she managed to turn her head. The scraping of pebbles on the rubble beneath her head assaulted her ears and the world spun dizzyingly out of control.
A moan escaping her lips, she squeezed her eyes shut to stop the spinning and regain her equilibrium. Her head felt like she'd been hit with a concussion grenade, or that night she'd foolishly challenged Wrex to a drinking game—she'd won by a minimal margin, but suffered for it the next morning.
After a long moment, she slowly opened her eyes.
The world was skewed in the shadowy night but she was barely able to make out the silhouette of half pummeled buildings. On the flickering red horizon sat a fallen Reaper ship. Large boulders, twisted metal, and debris surrounded her—something heavy lay across her lap. She didn't—couldn't make out any movement to her flanks. Earth was eerily quiet.
Suddenly, she smelled it. Smoke… Ozone… Death…
A tear stung as it rolled down her cheek and she fought to keep her lips from quivering. Shepard struggled to turn her head back to the stars, the armor on her chest and neck felt stiff and… sticky.
She'd done it. War with the Reapers hadn't been easy, but she'd done it.
Shepard forced a swallow, a knot thick in her throat.
At what cost?
She desperately wanted to return to that abyss above—wanted to stare for a few more minutes and forget everything again before she too faded away like all the others who had lost their lives in this war…
Working to find the constellations that were familiar, Shepard found it an easy distraction from her thoughts. They were the same star clusters that she'd had a fondness for as an innocent child: Orion, Andromeda, Canis Major, Fornax…
If she squinted, the stars would begin to look a bit like the sultry lights that dangled from the ceiling of the bar in the Silver Coast Casino. Once, Garrus had swung her around there on the dance floor, his movement was surprisingly graceful—at least compared to her own. It was a dance that he had no business knowing. But he did, all the same. He had smirked, his mandibles flaring when she hooked her leg around his hip. He had stretched her suggestively, testing her flexibility—a move that he then purred to her about being so much more fun in the bedroom. And, by the stars, it was.
Shepard blinked, taking another shallow breath when she realized that she couldn't feel her toes—the very toes that Garrus had made curl in absolute bliss that night: it seemed so long ago.
Her throat tightened, something wet lingering in the back of her mouth. Shouldn't he be here by now? Scooping her up into his strong, muscular arms, pulling her to close to his plated chest and reassuring her that everything was going to be okay?
At the thought, she cracked a half smile. If someone had told her five years ago that Commander-fucking-Shepard would be longing to be coddled on the battlefield, she would have punched them in the throat.
But the truth of it was profoundly different—foreign to her, even. Garrus rescued her in more ways than one. Throughout the years he had been there, even from the beginning, mending her wounds and easing her pain. When she could trust no one else, she knew she could trust him. He made the grit of any aftermath soften and would help wash the blood from her hands.
The blood…
That damned wall outside the elevator on the Crew Deck flashed before her eyes—the names of all those who had died under her command long burned into memory.
A sick feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. EDI…
Her name would be the next plate upon that wall.
But what could Shepard have done differently? The Catalyst's choices were painfully difficult; the consequences before her, impossible to comprehend.
Shepard remembered being wounded. She remembered hunching over and shuffling up the ramp, her life-blood seeping with every step, leaving a dotted trail in her wake. She remembered hesitantly raising the pistol to the power coupling and the tears, the turmoil mixed amid her physical pain. Could she really—truly—kill all the sentient synthetic beings within the galaxy? The entire Geth race? EDI? …
Shortly before they had suited up for that final battle, EDI had confided in Shepard; because of her, EDI was finally beginning to feel alive. EDI wanted to live a life. She wanted to explore the boundaries—wanted to explore a life with Jeff.
Shepard tried to imagine Jokers face when he found out what Shepard had chosen to sacrifice—when he found EDI's lifeless body. Would he think it was all worth it?
Shepard had felt Garrus beside her, up on the Citadel, even though she knew he wasn't actually there. "What have we been fighting for all this time, Shepard?" He had asked, his subharmonics low, while she stared at the power coupling. "What did they die for? Wrex, Ashley, Thane, Anderson…"
Her heart had ached when each of their faces flashed before her eyes. Her original mission was to destroy the reapers. But the mission had gotten so much more complicated, so convoluted… It wasn't so simple anymore.
She had felt his large hand on hers, his fingers tight as they grasped the trigger guard. She had felt his strength lifting the gun at her side.
He helped her pull that trigger.
Shepard knew that it was the only way. She knew she could never control the Reapers and let her crew mates die in vain.
Garrus' image had dissipated, but his added strength did not.
"Even if I'm not there, you'll never be alone…"
Shepard forced herself to remember that she had loaded Garrus onto the Normandy with the rest of the crew before reaching the beam. She had given them an order to leave her and the SOL system behind a trail of dust.
Shepard opened her eyes, once more to the familiar stars above her.
Hopefully the Normandy was far, far away in that beautiful void.
It would be better this way—safer for them; Jane Shepard tried to convince herself, swallowing hard. But the harsh reality of the situation hit her hard in the stomach. She was fading away, like the dying stars flickering in the sky above. The image of him carried her through the Citadel to destroy the Reapers, but never again would Garrus Vakarian carry her off the battlefield.
"I'll meet you at the bar."
….