Disclaimer: I do not own or have any rights to representation of Bioware, EA Games and any other mass media trademarks within this fiction. Characters belong to Bioware. All is represented within the context of private entertainment.

About the rating: This story used to be rated T, mainly because of the things I left implicit and not fully described. However chapter 20 came out a little violent and I don't want to change it. The good news is that I'll have a little more freedom to write. The bad news is that young teen readers should stop right now, but you shouldn't have played the games either. :)

Notes: This story takes place after Mass Effect 3 original ending, before the Extended Cut was released* (it contains obvious spoilers) but it also expands Commander Shepard's past. A few things happened "off camera" to Shepard during the story arch of ME1, ME2 and ME3, but nothing in the story arch is changed.

It features FemShep (Melody Shepard), Garrus Vakarian, many cannon characters, and a few non cannon.

I'll post a new chapter every week or every two weeks.

Chapter 1 to 8 are updated with corrections. Thank you S3eK for helping me with those chapters!

Chapter 9 to 12 are also updated, thank you X-Shadow. of .Darkness-X for your help!

For the rest, keep in mind that I try my best, but English is not my first language.

I'm writing other stories that offer details about this one, check my profile if you're interested.

Reviews and feedback are very appreciated!

Chapter 1: Star-children know how to lie.

Muffed sounds made their way to her ears, yet her mind was too befuddled to place them. She tried to inhale one more time. It was excruciating. All her body, from head to toe, was screaming with pain, but she could not utter a word. She fought to gather the pieces of her mind, to collect the remains of her strong will, and then she realized her life hung by a slim thread. She stared at death, exhaled, and made the decision to punch her in the face.

The soldier tried to open her eyes, and found herself unable to do that. She had no idea of where she was, or why did she feel something heavy on top of her. Terror took a very solid shape in a corner of her brain, and a sentence, spoken in a gloomy voice, passed through: "I will destroy you if I have to". The rest of her immediately reacted in rebellion. "You cannot destroy me." she thought. "You should fear me!"

Slowly, the noises that made a staccato vibration around her started to make sense. They were sounds of war, which meant it wasn't over. Was it all a vision, a hallucination? Her reason stepped in, timidly at first, increasing pace moments later. Of course there wasn't a star-child, how could she ever believe such a thing? She made an effort to remember all that had happened, all she had learned ever since she had first started chasing a rogue turian Spectre named Saren. She recalled the colonists back on Eden Prime, talking about the noises that seemed to get straight inside one's skull, reverberating across their skulls. She had heard those noises many times, and found out a lot more about the Reapers, about how they worked, about the indoctrination process.

"Wait a minute…" she thought, forcing herself to identify what thoughts had really been her own, and after intense concentration she realized that not all of them had been. But then, it could only mean... had Harbinger... tried to indoctrinate her? Rage filled her, and at that very moment she remembered what she really saw when the conscience of the Reaper connected with hers. She gasped when she realized that she understood now the pattern of dark energy that connected them all. Stupid overconfident machine; it was so sure it would win, that it let her come too close, forgetting that she had had contact with advanced prothean knowledge. However, she shivered when she recalled the other truth she inferred from their patterns.

She forced herself to move. Her eyelids rose, revealing her ocean blue eyes. She noticed the debris covering her, the weight pressing her down, and purposely ignored the drying blood on her skin. With a great effort, she pushed some of the lightest debris, just enough to reach for some medi-gel, and apply it on her most vital wounds. She knew that if she was going to make it, she would have to receive actual medical care, but for the moment that wasn't important. She realized her condition rendered her too weak to realign the patterns of dark energy herself, but she had to survive enough to tell them, to pass the knowledge organic life needed to stop the slaughter.

The radio was emitting static noise, but she brushed away despair with a slight gesture of her hand. She opened an emergency channel and tried to talk, however all she could say was "I..."

"Shepard?" the familiar voice of Anderson replied.

She grimaced from the pain of her accumulated injuries and murmured, "Andrrss..."

"Hang in there. We know where you are, we're coming for you."

Years passed in her mind, all her thoughts focused on staying alive. Finally the vehicle arrived, and Alliance soldiers came out. They removed the Commander from the debris, and loaded her into the transport. An Alliance field doctor removed her armor and started treating her wounds, but her gaze was fixed on Anderson, standing next to her.

"Anderson..." she managed to whisper a while later.

"Don't try to speak, Shepard," he interrupted her. "The Crucible still resists. We developed a new strategy to reach the conduit, and we're going to implement it."

"Listen!" she demanded. Even in her delicate state, her voice distilled leadership, compelled others to obey her. "Panel. Tunnel... under... Presidium... "

"Did you see something? Had any kind of vision?"

"Yes. Dark... energy..." she paused, realizing she didn't know how to explain the patterns she saw. "Must... draw..." she said finally.

Anderson improvised something she could draw on, and handed it to her. She sketched the presidium rapidly, and marked the entrance of the tunnel with a cross. Then she drew some strange patterns and unfamiliar signs all over them. The drawing was indecipherable, nevertheless he nodded.

"We will try to make sense of this. I promise," he told her.

"Reapers... all... galaxy... not..." she whispered, but couldn't continue. She coughed blood.

Anderson put a hand over her shoulder. "We will make it, Melody," he said, calling her for her first name, something he never had done before.

She passed out.

*If you really want to know, I sort of liked the EC. I'm not sure if I would have started this story if the EC had been the original ending for ME3, but in a way I'm glad it wasn't. I have big plans for this story. Now it's part of an alternate universe, but I have no problems with that. Mass Effect was about decisions and alternate paths, different outcomes from different choices.

This story will not include what happened in Leviathan, Omega or Citadel DLCs. I played them all, but I started the story after the original ending, and it's all outlined. Including that content would mess with my plans. :)