Author's Note. This is a slight alternate universe fic, since I'm not following things exactly. Why? Because rainbows and sunshine that's why.
Though its going to take a while to get there. I really want to play with the idea of Shepard as a broken hero having given everything, and then borrowed more, to win her victory and having to pay that debt back in painful healing.
I don't claim to know what I'm doing when it comes to writing and I'm in need of an editor so bear with me. Or don't. Go ahead and flame, after all I'm not expecting much attention for this.
Anyways as it stands, here is the first chapter, more incoming as I find time and energy to work on them.
The Beginning in the End. Chapter 1, The Citadel.
The Illusive man stared at Kate with glowing blue eyes. His face was slowly deteriorating into a mass of reaper implants seeming to grow more corrupted by the second. He wore a pathetic expression of sadness and grim realization. Despite the glowing reaper implants there was a final bit of humanity in his eyes. The Commander's words had broken through to the man he used to be, and he knew what he had to do with his one remaining moment of clarity
"I tried Shepard…" He said a resigned voice.
He drew the gun to his temple pressing aside the finely combed strands of grey hair with a trembling hand. In single rivulet of sweat rolled down his torn face, to disappear among the ghastly tech that perverted his body. A Carnifax wasn't a subtle weapon, and the Illusive Man's head exploded in a mass of pink gore and blinking implants and splattering wide across the floor. He fell with a wet thump on the white metal floor, a pool of black blood slowly growing from the wound. The small lights in in his now dead eyes blinked out. It was over.
The commander exhaled and felt herself barely able to stand, every fiber of her being was weary. Her once iconic armor was a pitiful mess. The ceramic plates were shattered and blasted away, its surface partly boiled. The housings were cracked, seals were obliterated, and nanofiber mesh between panels was burned away to reveal charred skin. She wrenched off her ruined helmet, tossing it to the floor with a loud clatter. She regretted the motion instantly, bare nerves lit up in pain along her left cheek as raw, red, rancorous flesh met air and drew a nauseating wave of pain. Her chin length red hair fell in a tangled mess. matted with sweat and blood small strands sticking in clumps to her blackened cheek.
She had barely the strength to lift her feet and stagger towards the glowing controls. They calmly beckoned, small lights gently dancing her field of view. Grimly she stepped over the corpse before her. Yet another she couldn't save. Her eyes snapped from the mess to back to her goal. It flickered in green and amber as the color drained out of her view. This time death was coming so very slowly. She knew exactly what the feeling of was. Not long ago she had felt the very life slowly seep from her failing body, the darkness closing in as brain centers slowly shut done one by one into the eternal embrace. Just lie down for a moment. It would be ok, nobody would judge. She came so very far. They could understand if it was so very hard. Kate grit her teeth and fought it. It was so much harder to fight when it felt so very gentle there was no panic this time, no feeling of the very air being drawn from her lungs, or the sensation of the saliva boiling off her tongue.
She staggered the monumental final steps to the console. Alien characters shifted to recognition as the Cipher pulled from a recess of her brain. It was a matter of pressing a few buttons and a great rumble trembled though the colossal station. With an agonizing slowness, the arms retreated opening up to a full view of the battle raging outside. The allied fleets were holding steady, but for how long? It was the eerily quiet of a vacuum, only the oppressive rumbling of the colossal station's machinery in motion greeted her ears.
"Commander?" came a familiar, and strained voice. It was Anderson he was still alive. She looked over her shoulder slightly astonished. The older man sat there, his face drawn but alive. He looked so very tired.
She hobbled over while small points of light lit like fireworks behind her. Every one an impact with the force of a nuclear bomb. There were so many the space around earth seemed to sparkle. As the arms opened, the massive construct of the crucible slowly, silently descended. She collapsed next to the Admiral, her dear friend. Hell he could be her father as far as Kate cared. Unbelievable relief spread though her body. She didn't ever want to get up. Her arms fell to her sides too weak to move. There was no fear, only acceptance of the inevitable.
"We did it…" She replied. Her vision had no color in it now. Her head swam, it was hard to even think.
"We did" Anderson paused and gave a small cough. He looked out to the desperate battle outside "Its quite a view…"
Shepard looked up and smiled, the irony didn't escape her "Best seats in the house." Her mind flashed to Liara. The Asari had followed Shepard down in Operation Hammer. After Harbinger descended and blasted away the entire strike force, Shepard saw no trace of the Asari. No trace did mean no confirmation of KIA, there was a small reason to hope… She chose to imagine Liara had lived, and then felt the crushing sadness that she wouldn't see those blue eyes again.
"It feels like its been years since I just, sat down." The older man's head was rolling awkwardly to the side. Shepard didn't notice, as she was lost in her own, final thoughts.
"I think you earned the rest. Anderson?" The admiral only groaned in reply "Stay with me we're almost through this." She encouraged. It was a reflex, she didn't even believe her own words. There it was some small hope she might survive popping up again. The dizzying pressure pushed that out of her mind. She was a solider, she knew why she felt so crushingly tired, and what would happen when she finally gave into it. The slug in her side burned where her stomach should be. She resisted the urge to imagine what her surely splattered organs must look like. At least a gut wound killed slowly. There was one thing left to do. Funny she was shot in the same place as Anderson, funny she never felt it. She looked at her hand, stained in a sheen of red blood.
"You did good, I'm…proud of you." He said, his voice fading. There was no inhale.
"Thank you sir" She responded, only to see the still form beside her. She was too tired to cry, too wounded to even feel her own pain. "Anderson?" She received no reply. She hadn't expected one. She needed only to close her eyes, close them and just rest for a little while…. "I'm sorry Liara, I hope you are ok." She whispered.
"Shepard! Commander? " The squawk of her radio brought the insistent voice of Stephen Hackett. It broke her out of the gentle lull. A fresh surge of energy shot down her spine.
"What do you need me to do?" She started to roll to her feet. She could barely move, but her body felt light and clumsy, like she was controlling like a marionette.
"Nothings happening, is there something you need to do on your end?" The voice held thinly veiled terror crushed behind the cold façade of command.
"I'll just…take a, take a look." She walked back for that console, each step felt like running a marathon. She managed 3, and collapsed just a foot from the console. She summoned everything she had, crawling the few inches until she could reach its bulkhead with one arm. She hauled her form up, only to feel her blood soaked fingers slip. Her head hid the metal floor hard. She couldn't move. With what was doubtlessly her last breath she whispered, "Liara."
Shepard listened as the ghostly apparition of the child explained the final choice. "Synthesis." She could convert all life into a melding of organic and non-organic life. Her weary eyes flipped from the hologram to the green pillar of light. It was going to be her salvation. She took a step and faltered. Suddenly her feet seemed welded to the deck. Something felt wrong, a presence beckoned in the black of her mind. Like fists pounding on a stone wall it was screaming her to stop. She tried to force it back, the reapers were far too close. She must find salvation.
Seconds past, and the catalyst crossed its arms, annoyance seemed to radiate from the diabolic billions of years old AI. "Shepard, you must chose, your kind will not last long. You are their only hope of salvation." The child spoke, its voice a grating mockery of a real child's. Everything here was a mockery. She looked up at the fantastic emitter that was the Crucible connected to this chamber by a massive beam of buzzing energy. Arms each the size of a starship in their own right anchored what looked like a giant gun to the space station. Her vision blurred as the blackness fingered out into small tendrils at the edge of her vision. "You cannot return to them Commander, there are no other options. You. Must. Choose." It commanded in its flat, dead voice. She felt the pull of its voice. She must, came so far.
The woman, her redhair burned and streaked with blood, looked around. Her head pounded, it felt like she was clawing at her own mind just for the luxury of this small bit of hesitation. Her body burned, the wound at her side flowing wetly. Hell the child was right, if she waited long enough, she wouldn't be deciding everything. Again her vision dimmed, the color of the battle faded but the three platforms, the resonated in red blue and green. They resonated in color when blood lost drew the color from her sight.
"Fuck…Liara I can't, keep my promise." She cursed her voice trailing off into a whisper as a shudder ran though her wracked body.
The radio squawked again, It was Hackett, naked desperation in his voice. "Shepard! Hurry, make that thing fire. Its our own hope of salvation, the Fleets are being torn to shreds, we are dying out here."
It snapped into her mind again, a screaming voice, screaming. She struggled, fighting it, but it persisted clawing into her awareness. It was screaming, a mind tearing at her. She fought the voice back, the pressure urging her to stop. That was just what they wanted. Kate curled her face into a snarl as she resisted.
"Shepard!" came a familiar, breathy voice strained in agony. Kate's green eyes shot open wide as she spun around. The already pale woman, grew even more white at the sight.
"Liara!" She shouted, mouth falling open she regarded the staggering figure. The pretty Asari was a wreck. Her side bled deep purple, pouring from just below her ribs as the deep tear in her suit spoke an unthinkable wound. Her face was ashen grey from blood loss mirror Kate in her own way. She was bruised, with more purple blood trickling down into her eye from a indigo gash in her fringe that winked shut. She held a limp arm at her side and slowly staggered to Shepard. Kate gasped forgetting all her pain and hobbled to the asari as fast as she could. With a small cry the maiden stumbled and lened against Kate her knees giving out. The slid to the ground against each other.
"Kate, I heard everything. You must decide, you must chose and save us all. Please. Forget the promises, this is so much bigger than us." Tears formed in Liara's wide eyes as she fixed on Kate. She had a foot in death's door, her skin so very pale compared to her eyes. They glittered even in the light, brilliant cobalt. The redhead gave a strangled sob, trying to shut her eyes against what had come. She felt the pistol slowly start to slip from her hand. First Anderson, now she could hear Liara gasping her last breaths against her shoulder. Why, why couldn't it be somebody else? For just a moment she wanted to toss some other poor sod into that beam so she could have those blue babies.
"Kate, dearest, you are our salvation. Without you we face distruction, we need our vanguard…Join with them, join with them and save us." She said rising a trembling hand to Kate's cheek gently caressing.
Kate blinked. Her hand tightened around her pistol. She sat bolt upright. That. Fucking. Word. Why where they all calling her their salvation? The voice was screaming in her head, god what did it want? She sat back on her heels and looked back at the platform it was so few steps to each option and that bastard not-a-kid waited. She had to do was chose. Her mind was screaming. She would have screams but her body didn't have the energy. She looked back to Liara, the Asari was crying, her eyes pleading.
"I can't be with you much longer, do it Shepard, only you can."
"No." Kate said. The fog cleared from the windows. She saw the screaming voice, she saw herself trapped in an oily black cage, screaming. She was beating against the walls an a rage.
"What…you must, Kate you must, I…I need to you do it. Without it we will all die.. I will die." She said dropping the emphasis on the word.
"No" Kate grunted and pulled her body back, away from the battered form of her lover.
Liara tried to hold her, urging her to stay with her her good hand scraping at the ruined armor trying, and failing, to fine purchase "No you must, I…"
Shepard narrowed her eyes and slowly lifted the pistol to the Asari's forehead. Her blue eyes went wide in stunned shock. It was the most painful expression Kate had ever seen, the look of primal fear, of horrified betrayal. Fresh tears drew light on the purple rims of her eyelids. "Shepard?" She spoke only the name in a dismayed whisper.
"No." Kate pulled the trigger, the report echoing through the chamber, echoing inside her mind. Time seemed to stop as Shepard watched the bolt spark on the floor behind her, flowing in what felt like full seconds later, the spray of purple blood. The shocked face of her lover hung forever in the air, the tense muscles slowly went slack. The blood formed into droplets, the heavy pistol jumping in her grip, shaking upwards in recoil and slowly Kate's muscles and tendons sprang it back down as Liara's corpse started to fall, her ruined head trailing the body its final rest.
Shepard already had her back turned long before the blue body gave a soft thump on the cold metal floor. She marched, gaining power with every step. She leveled the heavy pistol at the large electrical conduit. Shot after shot rang out as she walked closer. Its casing cracked, it sputtered fire and arcs of electricity blasting blue into the air. She savagely snarled, firing shot after shot after shot until white hot fire erupted around her.
When she opened her eyes, the room was no longer there. She was lying before the console, her eyes focused on the dead eyes of the Illusive Man, her face in the pool of black, dead blood that drained from his ruined head. She groaned and rolled over, looking for the other corpse. Anderson was gone. Was he ever there?
An engaged growl reverberated though the commander's mind at she at last forced out oppressive weight she never realized was there. Now SHE was screaming inside her head her true awareness marched with her one again. For the first time since she stepped on Earth's surface she could think clearly, a clarity she never even realized she had lost. She rolled onto her back and thrust her left hand before her face. It was dry. Only the glove of her ruined armor stared back at her no hint of blood. A rush of strength found the woman, coupled with a crippling rush of pain as the real sensation of her burned and broken body crashed into her awareness. She was burned, horribly burned, and smell only confirmed it. She pressed the button on her palm to activate her omni tool. Nothing. The orange holograms sputtered and flickered out. Leaving only polymer armor plates melted into Her arm. She pressed the radio, simple static and then that too died. Hackett never called.
She rolled to her knees with a strangled groan. It wasn't complete, she understood now. The almost had her, and she never knew. They couldn't be trusted no matter how they were converted. She hauled her broken form up over the console. They had some close to victory, to claiming Shepard herself as their own. The cipher embedded in her mind morphed the characters in a form she could read.
It was clear. The catalyst was there. She could configure the parameters of the energy burst. Red, green and blue, she could chose, but there wasn't time. If only she had a geth. She searched frantically though the systems, there must have been a profile. She saw a block, floating red ad it was highlighted by her query. She excluded it. She searched again, trying to set up a profile for human-made AI and VI. It wasn't EDI, but it matched a pattern, a very human mode of thought. Would it work? She had no way of knowing.
Would she doom an entire race, fry her own augments, ones that connected broken nerves, replaced lost organs? She couldn't know, god she fucking wished she had a scientist up her. She scanned over code, a decade old training on programming let her feel like she understood some of the commands, but she sighed. It might as well have been encrypted. Did EDI have backups? She sighed. The problem was, THEY couldn't be trusted. They couldn't survive.
Unsteady hands moved on their own activating functions. She was just a spectator as her body already knew what to do. A few motions and soon the station, all however many billions of tons of it started to hum. It quickly built, growing louder and louder until it was a deafening roar. Bolts of electricity jumped though the conduits of the room, crackling as they turned air to plasma. Energy glowing around her Instinctively she took a few steps back.
Far below her, a brilliant light started to grow. It grew brighter and brighter until it outshone the sun itself. In a single instant, all reality seemed to stop. The room around her started to shake, panels breaking free and falling away. The station was tearing itself apart. She felt, rather than heard, the blast and then there was only darkness.