Tears running down her face
Intense love lost in the drops of rain
A life ended with the touch of a button
a flash of red
a new beginning
Chapter 1: Rubble
–-"Y'know, I always thought you were a god,"
-"Don't leave us like that,"
-"You're better than that,"
-"So much better,"
-"Why won't you wake up?"
-"Won't you take my hand?
-"Won't you—"
I'm awake.
Light.
Little cracks of it in between the crevices and valleys of dirt and stone he was being crushed by. Not much, not enough to confirm to himself he hadn't been torn apart by either the explosion or the falling debris that made up what was left of the chamber from which he had made humanities' greatest decision. In fact, he was certain he was dead – or a husk at least – but he wasn't, to his surprise. He tried to flex his feet and gained no feeling, leading him to much worse conclusions.
He didn't really much mind being dead at that moment. It was a firm, content feeling he experienced. Much like a kamikaze pilot feels right before his regret kicks in. He knew that he had done what Johnathan Alex Shepard could do in that life. He knew he had peaked – that he had reached his apex as an organism.
But he didn't know he had won.
He was reminded of a song that played in the nightclub Silas B on Illium: "Raijin" had gone on sale the day the reapers took earth. The artist, Olis Unis, was killed in his home-town of Missouri within the first three days of the attack. The song still played on in nightclubs around the galaxy; nightclubs that hadn't been burned to the ground, sliced and diced and dismembered. Blissfully ignorant nightclubs full of happiness and false awareness; but while the people are dancing to Raijin, they are dancing to the final testimony of Olis Unis, a salarian of 18 who finally signed on to Nyusa Records and had fed his cat a little later that day than usual. Olis Unis, a salarian who's mother had a slight cough and had asked for her son to please send her that new song he was working on – she always loved to hear him working on it while washing dishes. Olis Unis, who, as a boy, contracted sickness and could never really socialize with the other kids. Olis Unis, who met a girl at a concert who showed him what it meant to be loved.
Olis Unis, a musician, a son, a boyfriend and a casualty. A living thing and a statistic. What will he be remembered as?
What Olis Unis never could say in words, he said in Raijin. And Raijin will be his memory.
Shepard thought about Olis Unis many times throughout the months leading up to this moment. Raijin topped the charts in the Hevo market for only days before the galactic economy collectively broke apart and all that was left of Hevo was art assets and lines of frustrating code.
Raijin played in Shepard's ear on repeat during his morning exercises and when things got a little dry on missions. He could constantly be seen barring the world out and bobbing his head to the mysteriously thin and full world of Raijin.
"I want to hear that again," Shepard whispered, clinching his hands.
"In Silas B."
He shuffled his shoulders, forcing the rocks on his shoulder to dig deeper into his collar bone. Shepard cried out in pain, gritting his teeth together and squeezing his eyes shut. He opened his eyes and saw that the little specks of light that had painted his face like a sniper's red-dot sight had grown larger. He struggled with the rocks pinning his shoulder down for what seemed like hours before the tears forming in his eyes from the pain were blocking his vision. He leaned over and wiped his eyes on what was left on the tattered N7 armor he had fallen to the earth in. He attempted to lift the rock off his arm with biotics, but his Amp had been destroyed with the EMP he had set off just hours earlier.
Shepard began to feel claustrophobic. His left arm was not pinned but it was broken and charred, rendering it painful but not unusable. He tried to use his legs to kick off the gravel covering his thighs but they wouldn't budge. He screamed miserably and began to convulse in fear and frustration. He reached his left hand down to the melted holster that housed his Carnifax and realized his gun was still there. He pulled it out and inspected the weapon. He had eight shots left. He pointed the gun at the dots of light above him and fired. The dirt exploded and opened a deep pocket revealing little more light, but the dirt that had been disrupted fell directly on Shepard's face. He wiped the dirt from his face and fired again, this time more precisely at the largest hole. It opened with the bullet and a large ray of light hit the middle of Shepard's chest. Shepard looked above his shoulder's captor. There was nothing above it that would possibly break the rock enough for him to move his arm and there was no way he could move it himself, with him being barely alive and such.
He changed to cryo rounds and shoved the gun against the widest area of the rock and pulled the trigger. After firing, he pulled the gun away and began picking away at the icy remnants of that section, until he hit hard stone. He did this again and again until the rock was small enough to push away.
His arm, finally being free but just as immovable as eighty-percent of the rest of his body, lied next to him peacefully. His left arm seemed to be the only thing movable on his person. He rolled onto his side and began pushing at the dirt in front of him. To his surprise, the dirt seemed to behave almost like a sheet of cloth; bending around his touch but not breaking. He fired a round into the area and he was interested to conclude that it was, indeed, cloth. Better yet, the bullet seemed to travel a while before hitting something solid. Shepard knew that would be his best chance to escape.
He clawed the sheet away and began dragging himself forward. His hands touched the cool material that he determined to be metal and pulled himself with a newly found will. He crawled for a few yards until he was in a chamber that was tall enough to move comfortably in.
He decided to see if he could use his legs now that he was out of his prison. He rolled onto his back and took his boots off; his feet were bloody and scalded and was surely missing a toe, but didn't look irreparable. He looked down and worked his hands around the skin on the foot that wasn't deep red or black. To his sincere joy, he felt a slight poking feeling – like an isolated version of your leg falling asleep and angrily waking up.
"At least my cord isn't snapped," Shepard thought out loud.
He tried to remember the exact way he used to flex his toes when he went jogging but simply couldn't recall. He flexed his quadriceps which seemed to force his toes to react. He focused intently on his big-toe and worked hard to make it move just an inch, which it did. He rolled onto his stomach and decided to put more weight on his legs. He pushed off the ground with his working hand and tried to balance on the two meaty appendages that, all things considered, are truly lucky to have survived this abuse. An intense, deep pain shot through his entire body from this effort, but he managed to balance enough to keep upright. He put one foot in front of the other and managed to keep steady, not without a great effort.
He began shuffling forward toward where he heard the final sound of the bullet he fired. After fifteen minutes of seemingly endless, painfully slow walking, he saw a makeshift doorway made of the broken foundation and supports of the structure. On the other side he observed a gray, dull light emitting from the furthest regions of the location. He moved there slowly with extreme caution, lest his leg give out or a Brute decided he didn't want to die with his brethren.
Finally he reached the doorway and noticed the gray light seemed to get brighter the further down he went. He was finally able to see outside through the cracks in the rock. London had never looked better.
Well, to Shepard that is. Surely to those protected in their doomsday shelters London would appear to be the site of a nuclear winter, and that wouldn't be entirely wrong.
He pushed the rock to the side and made a hole in the wall just large enough for himself to squeeze through. He stood in the light of Luna on his home planet Earth and sighed, smiling at the smoky remains of the alien species that gloated about their certainty of victory. He sat down against the cleanest-looking rock he could find and decided he would worry about finding people later. He was sure he had major internal and external bleeding, but right then he couldn't care less.
"Raijin," Shepard said to the moon, and then it was dark.
"You know, Donavon Marsi is a much better candidate academically," Udina mused.
Chapter 2: Ashes
"We are here today to honor many great soldiers," Garrus preached from atop a crate in the cargo bay of the Normandy to the remaining dozen-or-so crew members on board.
"Not just the ones who made headlines. Soldiers who are going home unknown. Soldiers who had no experience in the war but still fought and died, not just for humanity, turiaity or kroganism, but for the future of all life, no matter how small."
Garrus named all the people on the Normandy who passed away during the Battle of Greater London.
"Marco Mendez, Jennifer Colis, Nhraak Mais, Sanjay Moas, Danielle Raus, Markus Bradley, Nathan Newport and Bryan Kisoa all died today, not of heart disease, diabetes or robbery. They died defending our children, our people and the bacteria that makes us alive. They are beyond heroes. They are, and will forever be, legends."
"Over eighty kills between them all, these soldiers were part of the Normandy's crew and volunteered to venture into London in a decoy shuttle in an effort to distract the Reaper dreadnought, codename Atrax, away from the base-of-operations in east London. They departed in the Normandy's escape pods to a close-by warship where they boarded an M-18 Undercut Tactical Large-scale Shuttle (UTLS). They were put onto the ship and instructed to fly directly in front of Atrax' frontal weapons. This, being a suicide mission, would have frightened or even deterred lesser beings. But not these beings, oh no, these humans simply locked their jaw and asked where the gas pedal was.
The shuttle's back thruster was burned by what can only be referred to as the Reaper's laser. After grounding, the soldiers radioed command and reported their mission was a temporary success, though Atrax would not be distracted for long. Nhraak Mais suffered a broken arm, to which he refused medi-gel for unknown reasons.
After explaining their current condition, Command issued them the squad name Junpei and instructed them to return to command for further instructions. They had come ill prepared for a ground mission, only having a Carnifax pistol and a grenade each to speak for. They began walking towards their destination when they were swarmed by a rogue cell of Cannibals, seven in all. They managed to take them down without casualty, though Colis was shot in the shoulder.
They moved on, Mendez carrying Colis who's bleeding seemed to be getting worse. They walked into an open stretch of land, about the size of a baseball field, and sat down to rest. Reportedly the group began figuring out their next course of movement when a large horde of Husks, Cannibals and Banshees approached Squad Junpei and began gunning them down. Mais was the first to pass. His death was quick, a simple bullet to the head. The others, all besides Mendez, were slowly but surely picked off by the husks.
Junpei was able to kill half of the massive horde, but were simply overrun in the final stages. Mendez pulled the pin on his grenade as the Reapers converged on him and released the trigger as the husks were mere inches away, taking his life with, as Mendez would put it, 'A big fucking bang.'
These people, organisms, bacteria, anthropoids, whatever you want to call them, single-handedly killed more opposition than any non-infantry squad of all time. This squad, Junpei, will forever be remembered, not as grunts; mindless guns with happy trigger fingers, but as brave, dedicated soldiers. They will be remembered as Squad Junpei, Axe of the Normandy."
"I am Squad-leader John Alex Shepard of the 4th platoon of the Earth's Alliance International Ground-and-Star Fleet, and I have failed."
Chapter 3: Private Ceremony
Nobody was told to meet in the starboard observation platform, but everyone did.
Garrus arrived first, simply wanting to have a drink and view the stars. Tali followed after, wanting something similar but with harder alcohol.
The rest of the crew seemed to file in with the same purpose: to forget. To forget Shepard ever existed and their adventures were done with only the people who survived.
But Shepard isn't the kind of man people just forget. Even with the alcohol and the funny stories, Shepard leaked into their minds all at once. The laughs and buzzes stopped almost at the exact moment, all that was on their minds was John; him and his terrible dancing. Tali lowered her head, allowing the stars to reflect off her visor and faintly illuminate her narrow face, and she started crying. The visor silenced her heaves but her shoulders betrayed her. Garrus backed against a wall and slid down, feeling the welling up of emotion all too childish. He fought hard to keep himself in check. Shepard wouldn't have wanted Garrus to lose sleep, much less cry about him passing. That was the problem with Shepard; the man was a stone. He never had to fight his emotions because he never had an emotion he didn't want. He was completely in control of himself. This made him forget how hard it was for other people to maintain even the slightest amount of that composure.
Garrus brought his legs to his chest and buried his head in them. He also cried.
Ashley approached Tali and buried herself in her hands. She and Tali cried together.
The rest of the crew simply stood solemnly. Javik was the first to speak.
"You know," he said.
"I know little about this grieving process, as in my cycle we never even considered a fallen comrade with nothing but revere and honor, though only for a few seconds before we had to feel the same thing for the next one. But, I..." the prothean trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words.
"I will always feel for Shepard."
The stars in the sky were bright in that room. They could have turned off the lights and been brightly illuminated from far away galaxies. The stars in their hearts shined all the brighter with Shepard's influence. He had bettered them. He had picked them up and dusted them off, he had recruited them as mere scavengers, dirty vagrants and disgraced C-Sec officers; but he looked at them as equals, not superiors or inferiors. He looked at them how he would look at his most trusted friend.
When he ran for the shuttle off the collector base, when he jumped from the cliff and reached for Garrus's hand, he did this not as a galactic hero, but a fragile, mortal human. He was not a God. He could die, same as a regular private.
Garrus stood and reached for Tali's hand, which she took. He clicked his mandibles, closed his eyes and looked upwards.
"Siraak En Noglaakt Poa Likad," which, in the Turian tongue, translated to "In our hearts, let him not be forgotten".
And then they remembered him.