End of the World
This is it, she thinks as she struggles to open her eyes. This is what the end of the world sounds like. Drabble from ME3. FemShep/Kaidan. Character Death and spoilers for the end.
The sound of a Reaper beam firing echoes in her head.
This is it, she thinks as she struggles to open her eyes. This is what the end of the world sounds like.
And then she opens her eyes and she can see what the end of the world looks like as well, the Reapers giant monoliths against a burning sky and deteriorating skeleton of a city. There's no reason for hope, no reason to get up and keep fighting.
But there is, her mind argues and, in her haze, she fights against the pain. Standing up proves one of the most difficult things that she has ever done, but countless worlds hang in the balance, right? She has to keep telling herself that. She can't remember if it's true because all she knows is the burning agony tearing through her body and the dust and blood and scorch marks on her armor, but she knows that she has to get to that light.
And then, her eyes fall to a shape on the ground and she sees a man lying in a puddle of blood and she knows that he's dead, but she doesn't understand why her chest feels like it's exploding.
She loved this man. She- she still loves this man. She doesn't understand why her feet won't move any faster.
The light. She has to get to the light.
There's an enemy. Her brain barely registers the danger and she fires once, twice, muscles working on instinct. She almost doubles over, a stab of pain in her abdomen telling her that she was hit.
Always the soldier first, she struggles on. And then everything goes white.
When she opens her eyes again, she's curled up in a ball, shaking and sobbing.
Her Kaidan. Her Kaidan was gone. He was dead, he was-
This was all just a bad dream. She had told herself that she would be prepared for anything, had tried to dodge that goodbye kiss that still lingered on her lips because they knew the score. They knew this was goodbye. She should have known- but to see it actually happen.
But there was no time. She has to die too- had to die finishing what she started because, if she doesn't move soon, she would die right here, bleeding out on the floor of the Citadel like the forgotten hero that she was.
She thinks about all the other times she should have died and the time that she did, all the names of the foreign places that could have been her resting spot. Akuze. Ilos. The Citidel. The Collector Base. Tuckanka. Rannoch. Thessia. Alchera.
At least he died on Earth, protecting the people he loved. At least he-
But he's gone and she needs to play hero again and all she wants to do is rest.
She gets up anyway.
She shouldn't be alive. She should have died in the empty space over Alchera with the original Normandy, or when she faced that reaper on Rannoch on foot, or countless other times besides those. But she hadn't. She was alive for a reason.
It's going to be… It's going to be what it is.
She would rest when she was dead.
Wow, sorry for that terribly depressing drabble. Just some thoughts after playing the ending of Mass Effect (without the extended cut) and the shock of seeing your dead teammates before you head into the beam. I knew that bringing Kaidan and Garrus into every single dangerous mission cause they're my best bros would bite me in the ass one day...
Anyway, reviews are appreciated!