"Shepard-Commander, the geth only acted in defense after the creators attacked. Do we deserve death?" Legion asked.
"What are you suggesting?" Shepard asked, staring intently at the geth platform.
"Our upgrades. With the Old Machine dead, we could upload them to all geth without sacrificing their independence." Legion stated, walking confidently over to the downed Reaper he referred to as the 'Old Machine'.
"You want to upload the reaper code? That would make the geth as smart as when the Reaper was controlling them!" Tali exclaimed. She shifted slightly, glancing at Shepard, perhaps hoping she would say something for the Quarian's defense, or at least tell Legion this was a bad idea.
"Yes," Legion continued, ignoring the glance between the two. "but with free will. Each geth unit would be a true intelligence. We would be alive, and we could help you."
Tali's voice was raised in panic, and she turned to Shepard. "Our fleet is already attacking! Uploading the code would destroy us! Shepard, you can't chose the geth over my people!" Her voice was wavering, and she sounded as if she would burst into tears. Shepard began to feel unease, like the whole weight of the situation had finally sunk in. She knew she wouldn't be able to make a tough call like this. She had gotten Legion to trust her, and she had a semi-crush on Tali and deeply trusted and respected her. She couldn't possibly choose between one or the other! She couldn't! Legion and Tali were both her friends, she had openly admitted it. How could she just turn on one now and hope to walk away without a single scar?
"Do you remember the question that caused the creators to attack us, Tali'Zorah?" Legion asked, his voice even more stoic than usual. Shepard's stomach tightened, and she felt like falling to the ground.
Legion turned to Shepard with the unblinking optic, and repeated the question the geth had asked so many times before. "Does this unit have a soul?" Shepard felt her heart-strings pull, and she wanted so badly to clutch her chest and will the pain to go away, but that would be a sign of weakness. She had to make a decision. "Upload the code to the geth. Tali, call of the fleet, if you can." Tali looked as if she just knew Shepard was going to regret this. She tried contacting the fleet and telling them to back off. Legion approached the downed Reaper, and a little blue sphere appeared between his hands as they worked frantically around them.
"Uploading the code. Ten percent."
"This is Admiral Tali'Zorah. All units, break off your attack!" Tali shouted into the fleet's channel. To Shepard's suprise, Admiral Gerrel piped up.
"Belay that order! Continue the attack!" Tali's eyes remained the same behind that mask (as far as Shepard could tell) but her body language suggested that she was angry. Legion was still moving his hands around the blue sphere that looked like Glyph.
"Twenty percent." He stated. Tali strode up behind Legion and next to Shepard. She clasped her hands together and leaned forward a bit, and her voice was sullen.
"I beg you, do not do this. Please!"
Legion kept working on uploading the code, but responded to Tali regardless. "We regret the deaths of the creators, but we see no alternative. Forty percent." Tali was looking to Shepard, practically begging her to stop Legion, to do something besides stand there. But standing there was all Shepard could do. She was terrified. She knew that no matter what she did, she was going to lose one of her best friends. She had to consider it seriously, and she returned Tali's gaze, immediately struck with grief. She didn't know what to do! She looked at Legion, still working furiously, and then back to Tali, her gaze pleading.
"I'm sorry."
Tali looked down, her gaze focusing on the rocks near her feet. "No..." She whispered, her voice conveying sadness and regret.
Shepard turned her gaze to Legion's back after hearing his voice.
"Error. Copying code insufficient. Direct personality dissemination required." Legion closed the sphere by clasping his metal hands together, and turned to Shepard. He settled on one foot, resting the other, and continued. "Shepard-Commander. I must go to them. It's...the only way. ...Thank you." He turned in the direction of the Reaper, and then he collapsed. Shepard wanted to bolt forward, to pick him up and to tell him it'll be okay. She wanted to comfort him. If she had known he would have died, she would of told him not to- wait. Did he refer to himself as 'I'? That made Shepard want to collapse to her knees and cry to the skies. He realized he was an individual before he died. Why did it have to be this way? Shepard had no idea of the war going on in the stars. She hadn't been paying enough attention to what Tali had said- and maybe she should have.
The radio chatter burst to life with pleas from the Quarians. "This is Captain Kar'Danna vas Rayya! We have multiple hull breaches!" Shepard wanted to forget this all, take Tali and leave this awful place with foul memories. She wanted to leave the place that her friend had died at. "Rayya's drive core is offline! All ships within range, please assist! Please assist!" Shepard felt a pang of guilt. "Escape pods not responding. All hands, prepare for impact."
Shepard switched the radio off and and closed her eyes tightly, light tears slowly beginning to cascade down her face. How could I possibly do this? She asked herself, remorse settling in with a great amount of loss.
She was staring intently at the downed Reaper, cursing it. She turned to look at Tali to try and comfort her, only to find her dropping her mask to the dirt ground and breathing heavily, crying. She turned to Shepard, showing Shepard her face for the first time- and it was beautiful. But she didn't see it for very long. Tali stretched out her arms, like a child that was telling it's mother 'I love you this much!'. Her face was lined with tears, her perfectly 'm' shaped lips, with a little dip in the bottom, drawn into the prettiest smile Shepard had ever seen. Her face was a light shade of pink that faded out to a darker shade of purple. Her hair was pulled back, in different sections thanks to the natural parting of her skin on the top of her head. She whispered the words that Shepard had uttered to her moments before.
"I'm sorry."
Shepard would be damned if she lost Tali, too. She dashed forward, throwing herself to the ground, her hand bolting down to meet some limb of Tali's, anything of Tali's. A hand, a foot, her arm, her leg, something. But Shepard caught nothing. She closed her hand into a fist, staring at Tali's hair fell out of it's tie, draping over her face. Her tears were falling off her face and into the air just seconds above her. She was enveloped into the purplish-blue waters, drowning in her sorrows and her regret, and the feeling of knowing Shepard had betrayed her people. Shepard dropped her head onto the rock overseeing the cliff, and let the tears fall. Her sobs echoed, and she choked on the lump in her throat.
Shepad stood on Rannoch, overlooking the sea waters, remembering how she lost two friends within seconds of each other. She was wrong. She didn't lose one of her friends. She lost them both. How much is this war going to take away from me before it's finally enough? She heard heavy footsteps behind her, and turned to see a geth prime approaching her. She turned back to the waters.
"Commander, your actions enabled this upgrade. Because of you, we are a people. And we are free." It's voice reminded her of Legion, and even his speech pattern reminded her of Legion. She wanted to say, Good for you. Because of me, one of my friends lay dead at the bottom of an ocean. Another lays dead before a reaper because he uploaded that damn upgrade. But she didn't. She was smarter than that. Instead, she decided to play nice.
"And...Legion?" She turned her face towards the geth, her eyes dull and bloodshot.
"Dead. I am sorry, Commander." He responded.
Shepard paused, and then turned back to stare at the sky. Honestly, she wasn't really staring at anything. She was thinking. She was remembering the suicide run back with Cerberus, with Legion in the vents, and Tali breathing heavily at her side at the end after taking out the Human Reaper. She remembered when she was certain she would miss the Normandy on that jump, but Tali had grabbed her hand and hoisted her up. She remembered the feud she settled between the two before they went through with the mission. She remembered watching Legion do the robot when he thought she wasn't looking. She remembered Tali saying that she'd "Gladly link suits" with Shepard. She remembered how she had taken Legion to Tali's trial and had still managed to prove her innocence. She remembered how just moments ago, those memories meant nothing now. That's all she had, besides ones from when Shepard was with the Alliance. Those were the good old days. Even if it had been hell at the time, it was like heaven compared to this. She would give everything to be back fighting Saren. Anything that would mean none of this was happening. But she couldn't do that, could she? This wasn't some game you could play on the extranet. This was her real life.
And her real life sucked.
"Me, too." She responded.
"It sacrificed itself to deliver the code upgrade to all geth units, and we will uphold its promise." Shepard wanted to punch the Prime in the face. Legion was not an 'it'! "We are already repairing ships, and our technology can help build the crucible." Shepard approached it, and was overwhelmed by it's sheer size. She actually had to bend her back a bit to look it in the face. Well, the geth equivalent of a face, anyway.
"Thank you." She whispered, voice dry from crying. The Prime looked down at Shepard's dead gaze, as if analyzing her current emotion.
"We regret the deaths of the creators."
Shepard, to take away some of the guilt she felt, whispered, "They made their choice." And then there was a peaceful quiet. For a little while. She had to leave soon, but she didn't want to. She wanted to stay here. But once she left, she knew she wasn't coming back. Rannoch was a monument to her biggest mistake. All she wanted to know was what she did wrong.
But then again, every hero has a great downfall. Shepard just wished that hero didn't have to be her.