Chapter 1: War's End

Commander John Shepard stood at the base of the ramp leading up to the three different panels. One would enable him to ascend to become the intelligence that would control the Reapers. One would bring synthesis of organics and synthetics. And one would destroy the AI and the Reapers, and potentially other synthetics and even Shepard himself.

Synthesis. It seemed so logical. And it was clearly the choice the AI was hoping Shepard would pick. He stood at the base of the ramp. How convenient, he thought, that this should come up, pre-made and ready, almost like…. almost like a video game. That's when he realized that the AI had lost. He closed his eyes and blocked out all senses. As he did so, he could feel coldness against his forearms, the floor against his knees. He concentrated on his hands and knees, feeling the floor as he crawled slowly backward. After a few moments, he reached over with his right hand to feel a leg. Admiral Anderson lay dying, or possibly already dead. Shepard knew that if it could help it, the AI would never allow him to destroy the Reapers. He had lost a lot of blood and his armor was empty of medi-gel after Harbinger's blast. He found Anderson's pistol and opened his eyes.

Now, he was on his hands and knees just a few feet from the control panel, Anderson's motionless body beside him. There was no child. It was the Leviathan created AI using his own memories to communicate. It had been unable to take control of him as it had Doctor Ann Bryson, but it was able to project illusions into his mind. But now, he had broken that power. The three ramps had been a part of an old N-7 VR combat simulator. The child had been killed at the beginning of the war. He had to give it credit. The AI was nothing, if not crafty. But its options had run out.

"Commander Shepard," came Admiral Hackett's voice emphatically. "The Crucible is still not firing. It must be something at your end."

"I'm on it, sir," he replied weakly. Drawing on his last reserves, Shepard stood and forced himself to walk to the control panel. The AI was still trying to influence him, but he forced its voice from his mind. Now, he could see the previously obscured handle. He grasped it and turned it a quarter of a turn to left, loosening it and allowing it to come up from the panel.

"There is no ending to this war that involves the Reapers living," he said to the AI.

Shepard then turned it left again and plunged it back into the panel. The entire station shook violently as the connection was made. The Crucible was armed.

The Crucible fired, rocking the station and everything in it. Shepard rolled to dodge a piece of debris that fell towards him. He took hold of Admiral Anderson and rolled him out of the way at the same time. The floor suddenly erupted in twisted steel and shattered tiles. The control panel was heaved into the air and was now coming down on Shepard. He dodged it, but was caught in more debris from the ceiling. He wasn't dead, but his legs were pinned. He didn't think anything was broken, but he knew he was not leaving. He smiled, knowing that the Reapers had finally been stopped. The cycle had been broken. He could die knowing that he had finished it.

Then Miranda's voice echoed in his head: "Finish this, John. Then come and find me."

I will find you, he thought to himself. Somehow, I will get off of this station and I will find you. Blackness engulfed him.

The energy was released from the Citadel with astounding power, bathing Earth in its red glow and being transmitted through the mass relays. The Reapers fell, as did their troops. The fleets escaped to the rendezvous point and in that moment, millions of years of a repeating cycle of harvest, extinction, and rebuilding came to an end. As the last of the energy was released, the great station sat still once more. The force of the Crucible had caused the station to turn on its axis. Now, sunlight came in through the window that had previously shown the Reapers' devastation of the united fleets. As the warmth touched Shepard's cheek, he awoke and inhaled sharply. He was alive.

"No time to rest," he said aloud. "Time to get out of here and find you, Miranda."

He lifting the wreckage from his legs, he stood, tossing it aside. He quickly found Anderson. The admiral was dead, but while he had clips and a pistol, he was missing the one thing that Shepard needed most: medi-gel.

On a hunch, he checked the Illusive Man's corpse. Paydirt. He knew that the Illusive Man would never leave his station without the stuff. He quickly applied it to his wounds, gathered what he could and began his search for a way off of the Citadel.

Admiral Hackett's monologue:

"The war is over. The Reapers have been defeated. Against all odds, and in the face of the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known, we survived. We suffered many losses. The relays are severely damaged, but we won.

"This victory belongs to each of us… every man, woman, and child. Every civilization… on every world. Now, as we take our first steps toward restoring what we lost, we must remember what it took to win. This wasn't a victory by a single fleet, a single army, or even a single species. If this war has taught us anything, it is that we are at our strongest when we work together. And if we can put down our grievances long enough to stop something as powerful as the Reapers, imagine what we can achieve now that they are defeated.

"It will take time, but we can rebuild everything that was destroyed. Our homes, our worlds, our fleets and defenses. All of this and more. Together, we can build a future greater than any one of us could imagine.

"A future paid for by the sacrifices of those who fought and died alongside us. A future that many will never see.

"And while we still have many challenges ahead of us, we can face them together. And we will honor those who died to give us that future."

At least that was the hope …

#

2190 CE: The war has been over for two years and the cost was devastating beyond imagination. The Council, along with every man, woman, and child on the Citadel died after the Reapers took control of it, leaving galactic civilization in complete disarray. With the damage to, and in some cases destruction of, the mass relays, galactic civilization was effectively over. The non-human fleets were ravaged in the war and trapped in the Sol System. Cut off from their homes, with nowhere else to go, they settled in enclaves on Earth.

With the council killed and non-humans cut off from their home worlds, the Systems Alliance had to accept that after two years, there was unlikely to be a quick solution to the issue. Mass relay technology was still beyond the species of the galaxy; only the Protheans had unlocked it 50,000 years ago and they were long gone. All that remained of the Citadel was twisted wreckage, so the stranded non-humans had to make their homes on Earth.

With the war still fresh in everyone's minds and Earth's population depleted, the aliens were welcomed. In fact, with the Krogan and Turian militaries fighting alongside Alliance military against the Reapers to free Earth and Cerberus found to be in collusion with the Reapers, all of the separatist movements had lost traction. The alien races began helping with the rebuilding efforts on Earth; as the possibility existed that they would be stranded here for the rest of their lives, it only made sense.

With several fleets of non-human ships in Alliance space, an effort was made to salvage the Citadel and, from its materials, construct a new space station. With the new station under construction, and parts of it already in service, it seemed that under the circumstances, a recovery was being made.

Shepard looked at the large case of awards that he had received. It was a large, well appointed, case filled with trinkets that meant very little to him, impressive as they were. They showed off how much he had accomplished, but reminded him of the one thing that he had not been able to accomplish since the war's end: find Miranda.