He didn't believe the words he was shouting to the group of marines in front of him. The one simple lie that was the backbone of the forces that now stood behind him would be tragic if he took the time to think about it.

"We can beat the reapers."

He had convinced so very many that it was right and now he was leading a ill fated charge back to his doomed planet. Despite all this, he went forward anyway, remembering an old poem his mother had made him remember. A mother that by now was almost certainly dead by the Reaper's hands.

He knew that it was impossible, he knew that most of their forces would die while trying but he also knew something else. He was going to win. It had taken her hours to explain to a younger Sheppard what the difference was in what could be done and what had to be done but as a man he fully understood it.

He would do the impossible because he needed to. He had a crew behind him, a race behind him, a galaxy behind him, and even though all logic told him to turn tail and run he strode forward. They would win, they would scatter the Reapers ashes across the galaxy and the universe would remember them, not as the 600, but as the Normandy.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.