Mass Effect 3: Leaving Earth

By: Shadow Chaser

Author's Notes:

I'm one of the people who was a little disappointed with the choices presented in the final decisions of the ending of Mass Effect 3, and so have taken upon myself to do the only thing I can do: write fanfiction. As such, this will take a bit of the endings presented and mix it up a little. Shepard and the galaxy will not go quietly into the night – they will fight with every fiber of their being and choose their fate. As such here is the scenario presented…

Notes on Shepard:

Paragon Vanguard (with bits of Renegade), zero casualties from the Suicide Mission, Destroyed Collector Base, cured Genophage, and left Rachni to die, faithful to Kaidan Alenko through all three games.

Story:

Prologue – An End, Once and For All

It was as if a million needles stabbed into each and every single one of her nerve endings as she stood there, staring at the ghostly avatar of dark energy that was the Creator of the Reapers. She unconsciously pulled her left hand closer to her stomach and bent over a little, trying to ease the pain. Her right hand gripped the pistol tightly, the only thing that was keeping her from collapsing to the ground as her world swayed around her.

"Will you not choose?" the boy suddenly spoke up and Shepard blinked, not realizing that she had been staring dumbly at the boy for the past few minutes. The distant thumps of explosions raging across Earth and in space made her look sluggishly up past the boy, past the arms of the Citadel to see the fierce battle still being waged.

She could imagine, no, she heard the electronic buzzing roar of the Reapers as they screamed their rage and hunger against the coalition she had worked so hard to build in the past few months. Shepard closed her eyes, suddenly feeling so tired, so weak.

"I…have no right to choose," she finally whispered in answer to the avatar's question.

"But you are the first to reach here, the one who has the will-"

"Stop," she shook her head a little, feeling sharp shooting pain along her neck as her burns and wounds chafed against the smoldering remains of her once pristine armor. Hell, she figured the armor was the only thing keeping her from bleeding out. She could feel something wrong inside her – that last blast from Harbinger before she had managed to crawl her way into the transportation beam had nearly killed her. "Please…just stop."

Silence greeted her request and she opened her eyes again to see the dark energy avatar staring plainly up at her, as if still expecting an answer, a choice.

Shepard sighed softly again, coughing a little before wincing as she felt something tear inside her. She was dying, she could feel it. And this thing…wanted her to choose? Choose the fate of the galaxy, of the whole universe, she supposed. There was more than the Milky Way Galaxy and she had no doubt that the Reapers also harvested other life on the galaxies far away in distant parts of the universe that they could only dream of. So if she had to choose the fate of the galaxy, well, that was one nasty choice.

Each one presented had both merits and denunciations. By becoming one of the Reapers and thus controlling them, she could forever stop this cycle; go back to dark space and sleep. She could even prevent the Reapers from ever harming this galaxy or the others by slowly killing them through starvation or whatever they did to reproduce. She could force them to fire upon each other and kill themselves and she would die too in that ensuing battle. But it would be outside of the galaxy, it would be contained.

But by destroying the Reapers, she could ultimately end the threat that had been plaguing every "cycle" of life; end it once and for all. But all synthetic life would be gone too, the mass relays would be destroyed and faster than light travel would be limited as only the most powerful ships, dreadnoughts and cruisers would have the capabilities. Even then, the nav points would be completely useless by then, having relied on the relays for precision so that one did not end up in a near by sun or star. Plus, there was EDI to consider, and even Legion's sacrifice for the Geth. And herself, if she really wanted to consider that. The avatar had warned that she was more synthetic than organic and thus would perish.

The third option was a merger of the two beings, a hybrid of organics and synthetics. Again, she would lose her life, using her own DNA and implants to create a fusion that was akin to Legion uploading himself to the Geth Collective. Even though she and Kaidan had patched up their relationship and committed to each other, she knew deep down that he would never want such a life for himself, that he could not bear to live as some sort of freakish hybrid. Neither would Garrus or even Wrex after what they had seen with Saren. The only one she suspected would not quite mind, but even then have her reservations was either EDI or Tali though she suspected Tali would feel differently. She could not subject her closest friends to that life, not without their consent.

And that was ultimately the main problem.

The avatar said that she could choose, but Shepard knew she could not. She could not play God over the galaxy, could not choose the fate of so many. She had fought to defy fate, to defy expectations her whole life. She had fought to save as many people as possible, ever since she had lost her family on Mindoir and her unit on Akuze. She could not throw all of that hope, all of that effort away because some ancient intelligence deemed her most worthy of deciding the fate of the galaxy.

But you did choose, you chose to save Grunt and his Aralakh unit and sacrifice the Rachni Queen, a nasty little voice spoke in her head and Shepard pressed her lips tightly together. You held that power in your hands. And you also chose to save the Krogan by curing the Genophage. You chose the fate of a race, surely the fate of a whole galaxy of people is no different?

"It's not my choice," she hissed out tightly between her teeth as she stared from left to right at the three diverging paths.

"You must choose," the avatar suddenly spoke up and Shepard stared at him, anger filling her. She realized that he had whispered those words in her mind, and glared at him.

"Stay out of my head," she hissed quietly, her left finger twitching a little as it pressed against her stomach, her knee jerk reaction to using a mnemonic movement of her biotics. However, she was able to restrain herself from lashing out as she felt a spike of pain in her already dying body. She had been unable to user her biotics, her broken and battered body having barely enough energy to keep her from collapsing to the ground.

"Your friends will be saved if you choose," the avatar-boy gestured casually towards the space battle raging around them, the hums of the various fighters and ships passing by with guns blazing followed by the electronic buzz-roar of the Reapers. The hint was not lost on Shepard as she realized what the avatar was saying: Choose now and many of them will be spared on all fronts of the war, not just Earth itself. Linger with your choice and many more will die before this war is brought to an end.

"If you do not choose, the cycle will begin over again," the dark energy pulsed a little.

"But didn't you say that I was the first to make it up here?"

"Yes," the boy smiled a little, "and for that, you have your choices."

Shepard shook her head, "I won't choose."

"Then your civilization will perish," the boy did not seemed disturbed by it, and in fact looked a little disappointed. "You were the first-"

"There's another way," she suddenly smiled, the first time in a long time, a genuine smile. She realized what her ultimate fate was and what needed to be done. When Major Kirrahe had told her that the STG would support her against the Dalatrass' wishes, she had received a roster of all STG members and a very familiar name had stood out to her. She was not too surprised that he was a member of STG, but then again Chorban was always interested in ancient technologies and races that were virtually unknown.

In one of her preparations to help the Citadel weather the Reaper invasion, she had contacted him in secret to see if the Keepers could somehow be communicated with and given orders and had used whatever leftover research was on Ilos to help Chorban with his assignment. She had also asked Liara and Javik for their help in regards to Prothean science, though Javik was not that helpful in that regard.

She had only hoped that when the Reapers brought the Citadel to Earth, many of the civilians and refugees had left though she suspected that was not the case in her crawl of the sewage system towards the central core.

"There cannot be-" the swirling dark energy seemingly shook its head.

"There is," Shepard removed her left hand from her stomach and slowly straightened, switching her pistol to her left hand and activated her omni tool. "Admiral Hackett, how many life signs are you reading on the Citadel?"

"Just yours Shepard, but I thought Anderson-"

"Sir, I request that you disengage from Reaper forces near the Citadel," her lips twitched up in a sad smile as she continued staring at the avatar of the boy whose expression looked like it could have been carved from glass.

"Shepard, what are you-"

"The Crucible was a trap, sir. A cleverly designed trap by the Creator of the Reapers to destroy civilization as we know it," Shepard continued before look at the avatar, "I will not choose from your choices, I will choose from my free will. Shepard out."

She cut the connection off before Hackett could say anything else, knowing that the Admiral was either furious at her, or would heed her warning and move the fleets out of the blast radius of the Citadel. She hoped it was the latter instead of the former. There only need be one more death in this war and she was not going to sacrifice anyone else. She tapped her omni tool again, this time inputting the remote commands for the Keepers that she knew had helped probably process and harvest the bodies in the tubes that she had walked in.

Chorban had given her these codes in case she needed to forward them to Captain Bailey or anyone else in C-Sec. As she finished her request and closed her omni tool, the orange glow fading away from her hand, she looked at the avatar-boy.

"You choose destruction of the weapon that your civilizations have spent months building?" the boy asked as a deep rumbling hum started to fill shake the area. A few seconds later the blaring of an alarm resounded beneath her, where the heart of the Citadel was before she had been taken up on the platform.

"Each one of your choices presents me with a logic that I can't quite wrap my brain around," Shepard heard her omni tool beep and brought it up again to see a countdown timer as the rumbles started to shake. She could barely stand, but managed to keep her feet steady. "Each one will stop the Reapers which only begs the question, how. How would it stop the Reapers? Then it occurred to me that it has to be a command function, a code of sorts. Either a code to destroy the mass relays and destroy the Reapers, a code to control them, or a code to merge all synthetic life. You could claim that it's eezo or something, but what it comes down to is that the Citadel is a machine construct.

"The Crucible is a machine construct. There is nothing organic about the two. They both function with command and command lines from organics into a highly computerized system; synthetic and able to be broken, either wirelessly or otherwise. Legion proved that when he changed his people. So since you claim to be the remnant Creator of the Reapers and only appeared here, at the end when the Crucible was joined with you tells me that you are a synthetic. Because if you were an organic, then you could not have survived having two halves of your life separated. When one half was residing in the Citadel, the other in the Crucible, it meant that each civilization that tried and failed to build the Crucible failed and was subsequently destroyed; which means that you are able to stop the Reapers with a code of sorts – you are connected to them."

The rumbles grew and Shepard swayed from the massive vibrations. However, she still managed to keep on her feet and instead pinned the avatar with a glare, "If I destroy the Citadel, the heart of your code, it means that it will stop the Reapers. We'll have to probably kill them one by one, but we can kill them knowing that they can't haunt us afterwards, that they are not coming back."

"And what if you are wrong? The choices are the only way to save your galaxy-"

"I'm not wrong," Shepard shook her head, "Either the Reapers will end up short circuiting because you, the Citadel and maybe the Crucible, are not here to direct them, to guide them, or they can never, and will never use the Citadel again. There will be no more cycles of destruction after this one."

"There is always the mass relays-"

"And it will be easy for us to lock them, for future generations to lock them and never open them. Because you said the Crucible can destroy all mass relays. That means, destroy the Crucible will also stop a command code to access a mass relay by the Reapers in future generations."

"But synthesis between organics and synthetics-"

"It's something I will never force upon anyone. Not after what Cerberus did to me. For all I know, I still could be a VI who thinks she's Commander Shepard," Shepard had to hold back her tears as she echoed her words back to Kaidan while they had been hunting down the Illusive Man at his base.

"You could control the Reapers-"

"I could do that; I could destroy them in dark space. But I will never become one of them. I do not want that power, that Godhood," she glanced at her omni tool, five…four…three… Kaidan, I'm so sorry. I love you… "I'm Commander Rinaran Shepard, Systems Allian-"

Author's Notes:

Yeah, was not happy with the choices presented in the endgame. I get it, I really do and part of me admires that type of ending where Shepard dies (well, there is a chance of Shepard not dying in one of the endings), but for a game like this, it pretty much kind of irked me that for all of the good that I have done, what was all of it for when everything was either destroyed, set back a few hundred years, or hybrids?