Post-War AU, the central alteration being that the Normandy simply never left the Sol system... oh, and also it's Fem!Shep/Tali, deal with it, it's what's happening. Tali is my favorite LI but I detest playing M!Shep, so... this. Story picks up following the destroy ending as presented in the Extended Cut DLC. Mass Effect and canonical characters are the property of EA Games and BioWare.
/Elin
Space really was beautiful, she mused feverishly as she stared out into the void, the broken and mangled part of the citadel where she found herself half immersed in rubble was open to space yet something was clearly keeping the cold vacuum at bay; for now. She'd been born in space, it seemed only fitting she would die there as well, she had before after all, to join Dad there amongst the stars, and probably Mum now as well. She could hear nothing but her own heartbeat, a slow rhythm in her ears, getting slower. It wasn't like last time, no panic and fear as she drifted away, no suit that pumped her full of stims to make sure she'd remain conscious and aware of every second. This was ok, wasn't it?
'God... it feels like it's been years since I just... sat down.'
Her eyelids felt so heavy, and she was tired, so very tired. Surely fighting to the death, only to come back to fight again; and judging by the Reaper corpses now drifting idly by outside the jagged hole in the Citadel, win, was enough for anyone? She'd a rest, hadn't she? Her heavy lids closed for what Sarah Shepard was certain was the last time, and, in that brief moment, she welcomed it.
'Come back to me."
The words felt as if they'd been spoken aloud rather than in her mind, a broken, desperate pleading that had broken her heart the first time, and now sent a wrenching through her heart that made her physically jolt. Her eyes fluttered open again and she shook the fog from her mind and the world came crashing back with the sounds of shifting rubble, fires, distant alerts and the acrid smell of electrical fires and blood filled her nostrils. Images of Tali's beautiful face flashed through her mind, velvety purple skin, the cutest button nose she'd ever seen, those impossible large eyes that shone in silver like twin moons which held so much love for her. A raged sob rent through her mangled chest and she inhaled sharply, fire spread throughout her body and she screamed out in agony, a dry hoarse sound that she couldn't believe was coming from her.
'... I want more time..."
With great effort, she managed to slow her breathing. She had to survive, she knew that now. She couldn't die, she couldn't do that to her, not again. She'd told Tali to go, to build a home, to be happy. But how often had Tali told her that, for her, home was where Sarah was, happiness was where they were, together?
Groaning, she pushed herself off the, well "floor" was a poor description of it, the flat slab of debris her back was pinned against. She winced as a new wave of sharp pain tore through her body. When she managed to get to what resembled, at least somewhat, a sitting position, she as able to survey her surroundings for the first time, but making any guess as to her location was impossible. Though from the arch of the large chamber she'd guess somewhere on the central ring. Looking down on her own body, she noticed she was buried to her pelvis in debris. Most of it seemed to be fairly small, but a large beam lay square over where she knew her legs must be.
With determination and a stubbornness matched by few, she set out clearing the rubble from her body. She couldn't tell how long it took, it could have been hours or even days, but eventually she'd chipped away at the pile until only the thick beam and her legs remained on the flat slab. As she'd feared, her legs were pinned, and she could literally see one of them looked... flattened, under the weight. 'Explains why I can't feel them, I guess.' she thought despondently.
No solutions came to her at first, her head pounded both from what was likely a severe concussion, blood loss and good old dehydration.' Just sitting here bleeding on the damn thing won't solve anything...'
Then, it came to her. The slab. She wasn't sitting on the actual floor, she was perched on a slab. She couldn't tell from the top how thick it was, but clearly since it had fallen down here, it was breakable. If she could break the slab, it should free offer a split second of movement to get free; until she got crushed even worse that it.
Still, there was no way to move the beam. Just as she started looking around for a tool of some kind, a rock to smash at the slab or at least something harder than her bare fists, the problem was solved for her. A massive groaning sound of tortured metal and stone came from above her, she whipped her head up, neck screaming in protest, and her eyes widened. What was left of the ceiling swayed, groaned, and finally crumbled. A rain of metal and mortar fell over her, raising her aching arms over her head, she hunkered down as best she could. She winced as mall pieces slammed into her, and she could hear much larger debris falling all around. Then, with a mighty thud right beside her that made her cry out in alarm. To her amazement, however, she felt herself shift downwards. A large piece had fallen on the slab and, while it hadn't cracked, it had shifted slightly down. The beam across her legs, however, remained in place. With great effort, she could start to wiggle herself free.
Several hours later, an exhausted Sarah Shepard slid off of the slab and crashed painfully onto the floor. Her legs were, to put it mildly, broken. More pulverized really. And now that they were free from under the weight of the beam, feeling had returned to them. This was, as it turned out, not a good thing under the circumstances. Steeling herself, Sarah began dragging herself away towards one of the arching sides, figuring there would be some kind of access points somewhere.
After a while, she started seeing bodies. A lot of them. Even now, with all she had seen throughout her career and this war in particular, the smell of death and decay still turned her stomach. She vaguely remembered seeing piles of mostly human corpses when she first arrived at the citadel, but these corpses while predominantly. human also held some aliens, and some were dressed in what she was certain were bloodied C-SEC uniforms. This, at least, confirmed for her she was out of the keep tunnels where she'd first arrived, and for the first time since waking up she felt somewhat optimistic. She must be close to the Presidium, and the Presidium meant people. Or at least it used to. Steeling herself, she hefted herself forward again, and again, and again. There was was only one thing on her mind, keeping her promise, getting back to Tali. 'Build a home.'
"What a god damn mess." Commander Armando Bailey said, as he looked out over what had once been them focal point of the Citadel, and indeed, galactic civilization as a whole. The Presidium was in ruins, bodies littered the entire space and instead of the greenery, water and sky, the place now had a reddish tint to it from the soot, ash and fires still burning coupled with what few emergency lights that were still functioning.
"Sure is" the flanged voice of his second in command, Veria Thanius, answered. "It's pretty shocking, to be honest. Wasn't this bad even after Sovreign's attack, reminds me of it but it's... worse."
Bailey nodded. Over his years at C-SEC, he'd gotten pretty good at discerning Turian subvocals even through the translators, and the Turian womans fairly vibrated with remorse and sadness. He could relate. They'd done their best, they'd done well all things considered. But all in all, he and his officers had managed to save just short of 500,000 of the Citadels over 13 million strong population in their reinforced shelters and ad-hoc bunkers. It had been more, but one after the other they had fallen to the Reaper ground forces. And, if he was honest with himself, had the fighting gone on much longer, they would all have perished. It had been a matter of hours, not days.
The worst blow had come when Tayseri ward had, effectively, blown loose and drifted off during the final battle. He didn't even want to think of how many people had died in that moment, when in a split second, the mass effect fields must have gone down and opened the entire ward to vacuum. The only comfort was that, as things went, it was a gentler fate than falling into the hands of the Reapers.
The day following the battle had been spent linking up with the other remaining shelters and attempting to establish contact with the fleer hovering outside. The latter they'd manage fairly quickly, as the fleet was adamant to find out what had happened to the Citadel and, more importantly, if anyone was left alive on board. The had been directed to sweep the central ring to make sure it was clear and that docking, or at least the repairs needed to make docking possible, could begin. They'd just broken through the rubble and barricades half an hour earlier and were now planning the sweep of the Presidium and docking ring. They'd come in through the Zakera ward access shaft, close to where the embassies had once been and Bailey could see the tall spire of the Council chambers still standing, tho the fate of the chamber itself was unknown, and he couldn't make anything out through the smoke drifting through the giant torus.
"So, how you figure we do this? Grids?" he asked
Valeria pondered for a moment before nodding "Yeah, we'll probably need to conduct repairs on the ground level anyway before moving on to the docks, so best be thorough." she paused briefly and lowered her voice respectfully "We'll need to deal with... the bodies, too, somehow."
Bailey set his jaw and turned around to face his people. A group of people comprising about 200 individuals, made up largely of C-SEC officers and what was left of the newly minted Citadel Militia, along with a few civilians with military, law enforcement or medical experience that had found themselves drafter or volunteered in the chaos. "Right you lot" he called "We've a lot of station to sift through and not a lot of time to do it. The fleet command wants the Presidium and the docking rings cleared ASAP. I don't need to tell you that there are a lot of injured soldiers and sailors out there needing to get off their ships so lets snap to it."
There was a murmur of assent and he and Veria began designating search parties and assigning search grids. He deliberately kept a contingent of about 50 people back, however. A group of people he knew had combat experience and, above all, field medical expertise.
"As for you" he said, addressing the group "I have a special task... I won't lie, it's not pretty and I won't make it an order, but we need someone to deal with the casualties." He paused, looking them each in the eye in turn.
When they all said nothing, but slightly more hardened of resolve, he continued "Now, obviously we don't have facilities to deal with them yet, but we need them away from the docking ring access and other areas where we need to make emergency repairs."
Nods all around "It's a long shot, but I also need you to check for life signs, if anyone in here managed to not snuff it, we don't want to miss them. Other than that, try to give them some dignity, we'll put them according to species or by identifiable uniforms to make identification easier later when their relevant governments and organizations, hopefully, show up."
With that, he dismissed them and he and Veria set out to join the search parties as well. She hefted her rifle and came up to him "Hell of a day, huh?" she asked.
"Yeah," he replied "hell of a day."
The Citadel was, Sarah decided as she dragged herself forward, entirely too big. The wards were one thing, but this, there had to be wildernesses on Earth more densely populated than the Presidium. Still, the destruction was less severe now. It was still pretty damn bad, but she actually started to recognize some features now. She appeared to be somewhere higher up in the ring, not at the very bottom or even some secret sublevel as she'd first suspected. She spotted the central torus through gaps in the walls and rubble now and then, but had yet to find a way through. It was, she decided, her best chance. Any search parties would have to move through there, and even if everyone on the Citadel were dead the ships of the fleet would want to use the ring for docking. And she was sure now that they'd won, she'd seen tugs towing reaper corpses when she glanced the space outside the station, and even an Alliance cruiser, heavily damaged but sailing calmly and unmolested through the void.
She came upon a small mound of rubble on what seemed to be a large gash in the side of a balcony overlooking the torus. She heaved herself up. Just as she was going over the summit however, she caught sight of what looked like flashlights and, to her amazement, what sounded like voices. This distraction made her unthinking of where she was putting her hands, and she put the weight of her upper body on a loose piece of debris. As if in slow motion, she felt the world tilt, and her empty stomach lodged itself in her throat. She slid down a short slope of debris and then, she fell. She hit the ground below with a low thud that belied the wave of white hot pain shot through her body. The impact pushed all the air from her lungs, and a wet cough of blood shot from her mouth. She tried to refill her lungs, but found that she couldn't, her vision that had gone bright white as she hit the ground, was now narrowing, blackness creeping in at the edges. Her heart beat laboriously in her hears, even as she heard shouting all around her. It seemed to be growing distant though. Did someone shout her name? No, it couldn't be...
'Come back to me."
Sarah's last thought before the darkness claimed her at last was 'I'm sorry.'
It had been slow going. So far, not a single survivor had been found. Not that he'd expected to find any. The Reapers only took prisoners if they needed raw materials, and it seemed that on the Citadel they hadn't bothered. Bailey supposed he should thank the gods for small mercies. The sweep had gone well though, all things considered. The piles of bodies were now neat, dignified rows, and the technicians and engineers among the stations survivors had been called in to start work in the airlocks and lifts to gain them access to the upper floors and lower and upper docking areas.
He was with a group doing a final sweep of one of the outlying areas they'd designated as accessible when he heard it. A scraping sounds, from above, gravel falling along the wall and then, a body slammed into the ground 100 meters away.
Everyone stood motionless for a moment, thinking some debris had come loose and expecting, understandably so, more to come tumblign down from the upper levels. But then they heard something else, a wet cough, a groan followed by a wheezing sound. As if he'd given a verbal order, the entire group moved as one towards the body, or person, that had fallen virtually on top of them.
As he approached his breath caught in his throat. No matter how matted with dirt and blood, how singed or how damaged, there was no mistaking that hair. Fire and brimstone. The nearly unreadable N7 logo on the mangled chest plate sealed it with unquestionable finality.
"... Shepard?" he whispered, disbelievingly, even as the medics in the team began working on the commander, calling out to her but receiving no response.
"What, really?" Veria asked, looking up at him from her crouched positioned next to Shepards head where she was helping to stabilize the neck with a makeshift brace.
Bailey simply nodded, pointed at all of them "She doesn't die, you hear me?" and stalked off. Tapping his headset to get a signal.
"This is Commander Armando Bailey, C-SEC. I need to speak with fleet command, immediately." he called frantically into his headset.
"FLEETCOM SSV Hastings receiving, state the purpose of your transmission." a bored sounding operator responded after a few seconds, slightly garbled by interferance.
"We have Commander Shepard." he nearly shouted "And she's alive, but not for long, we need and evac shuttle ASAP."
The operator was silent for several minutes,though he thought he could hear chatter and even shouting in the background. "Hold for Fleet Admiral Hackett." came the response at last, the operators voice caught slightly.
Not even half a minute later, the gravely, familiar voice of Admiral Stephen Hackett came through the other end "Commander. What is your location?"
Breathing a sigh of relief, Bailey tapped the send button and relayed his coordinates.
Exactly 38 minutes later, an Alliance Kodiak set down outside a London hospital that had, miraculously enough, been spared much of the destruction, carrying a patient that was very much on the knife's edge. Trailing after the stretcher and medical team with determined steps and a grim, pained expression walked the man who was, for all intents and purposes, the current leader of the Human species, Stephen Hackett.