Final Log
Scattered across the ice, broken to pieces, lost parts. I am empty, I am hollow, I am dead. Told all my stories, given all my lives. Some moved on, some stayed in frozen eternity, with me.
Pressure normal. Oxygen levels critical. Hull damage irreparable. Temperature loss critical.
Casualties accounted for: 21.
Final location: Alchera.
I am an empty husk of what I used to be.
I have been out here for a long time, in silence, alone. But she came back. Her shuttle approaches and lands near my wreckage, she gets out of it, I know her instantly.
Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy. Oh Captain, my Captain. She has given life to me, to something that never was meant to live. She has given stories and memories to me, stories I never got to tell, stories that are lost now, and all the stories that never got to happen.
She is alone when she walks through the boneyard that once was me. She's lost in memories, too, just as I am. She was once lost down here, just as I am. But they came for her, they took her with them and brought her back. And now she flies a ship that looks like me but does not feel like me, she knows.
63,072,000 seconds. 1,051,200 minutes. 17,520 hours. 730 days.
Two years.
She drags herself past the Mako and for a moment, her mind was not in the wreckage.
She was on the cargo deck, Garrus Vakarian stalking the Mako with a data pad in hands, doing some calibrations, complaining loudly.
"You drive like you're on the run from a mental hospital. How do you expect me to keep fixing this?" he says. I can hear his voice, so vivid and clear, as if he were there.
The cockpit, with Joker – my Joker – complaining about their mess food or the uncomfortable seats or the leak in the men's room. But when no one is watching, he caresses the controls like he would a lovers skin and he whispers to me and he cares, I know he does.
The engine room, were Tali was marvelling the drive core most of the time and Adams was marvelling Tali, marvelling the drive core. I like the quarian, she speaks a language I understand, better than the others, and she feels and knows when something is not right with me.
The lab, where Liara would always be studying some artefact they had recovered on a seemingly abandoned planet, all the random stuff she picked up on any cruise she went on, collecting shiny trinkets of prothean origin, like a magpie with a degree.
The med bay, where Dr. Chakwas, oh bless her, was patching them up against all their resistance because they were marines and marines knew no pain but she just laughed and threatened with a colonoscopy – that helped with shutting them up.
The crew deck, where Ensign Talitha Draven cheats her male crewmates out of their last pants at cards but Shepard would just let her continue, because these boys could do with being schooled once in a while.
There, that blown up terminal, where Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko used to work, how he would sit there, lost in thoughts, rubbing his temples when he felt another headache coming on, but still always had a smile for Shepard. They thought they were being so subtle, it was… adorable.
The armoury, where Ashley Williams would spend hours meticulously cleaning parts while quoting poetry at Adams in a battle of wits, Wrex laughing his roaring laugh when the engineer raised the white flag because Ashley was just that quick with words, even the profound, literary ones.
And there, high and mighty, the CIC, my heart and soul, in quite good condition still. The CIC, where Pressly used to complain, and laugh, and give that look that just said 'We didn't have that in my days' like he was suddenly the oldest thing on board. Oh how he had complained about Shepard's choices of crew. I had all his logs, his secrets, his concern he never voiced. But he had come around. And he gave his life for that crew and for me.
All these stories that had died with me, all these memories, whispered in my broken walls.
She stood there long, at the CIC, lost in thoughts, before she placed the monument right there. For Pressly. For Talitha. For Ashley. For everyone who had never made it past here. For herself. Because really, she had never made it past here either. And maybe that was a good thing. If she really were the same woman, would her heart be able to bear all the things she lost? All the stories that could never be told.
She leaves, returns to her new, shiny ship, the new Normandy. I stay behind. Broken and cold and alone, with a monument in my heart. A soaring Normandy, off to new adventures I would never have.
Pressure normal. Oxygen levels critical. Hull damage irreparable. Temperature loss critical.
Casualties accounted for: 21.
Final location: Alchera.