The Last Poet of Rannoch
The sky is falling.
You stand on the edge of the cliff and watch it crumble. Shooting stars, flaming and bright, make their way down. They paint the arriving dusk with their red glow.
You watch them fall, and you feel your heart shatter with them, like it was up there too: a dreadnought now aflame, plummeting down towards the planet's surface, metal screeching and crew screaming. Until there's only an empty void and cold dead wrecks.
The Fleet burns.
The quarians burn.
And you shatter away.
You were so close. So close to succeeding. So close to home. You were home. That's where you are standing now, on the sturdy rocks and soil of Rannoch. By now you should be celebrating the victory of the war you all had been fighting for so long.
You think of the house you were going to build. You think of the living room window and its view. The same view is now stained with thousands and thousands of dying ships.
Burning.
Falling as dust on the homeworld they had been fighting for their whole lives, homeworld they had so very nearly reclaimed.
That you had nearly reclaimed.
Your hand rises, slowly, and almost without a conscious thought you detach the mask from your suit. You let it fall to the waving ocean below. For the first time in your life you breathe the air of your home.
You turn around to see the back of the man you trusted, the man you thought you might have loved, in multiple ways. As long as you have known him, that man has stood beside you, supported you, saved you again and again.
And now he has betrayed you.
This you cannot comprehend – why, Shepard? – you cannot fathom. Even if your mind wasn't currently like a blank ashen wasteland that no tears and cries could portray, you couldn't understand it.
That man took you all the way here only to destroy you.
Because there is nothing for you here anymore.
No people.
No home.
No purpose and no will to live.
So you choke out I'm sorry.
And watch Shepard turn.
Watch the blue eyes widen in realization and shock and horror, his mouth open in a shout.
You spread your arms at the same time Shepard starts to move. He is already too late. Maybe he always has been.
You watch him run towards you, shouting – TALI! – and reaching out as if he could do miracles again, eyes on your face, seeing it uncovered for the first and the last time.
And then you cannot see him anymore, because you are falling, falling down from the cliff and towards the storming sea and sharp rocks.
You watch the sky above you, see the ships burn to ashes in the atmosphere as they fall.
And you are falling with them.
You fall and you watch the cliffs of Rannoch, the monuments of natural beauty you should have had so much more time to admire.
They wrote poems of those cliffs, you think.
Maybe you will write them too, Shepard had said.
You watch the cliffs as you hit the water, and nothing comes to mind.
AN: The first time I played Mass Effect 3, I couldn't save both the Geth and the quarians, and ended up choosing the Geth. The following cutscene was the most horrible moment I have ever experienced in any game, book or movie I have ever played, read or watched.
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I don't own Mass Effect.