As always, a huge thank you to my beta, Josie Lange, for all her help and advice and friendship.
The woman I once was felt sadness, felt guilt, felt regret. I felt none of those things. More so than the others, I suppose I was sometimes guided by the tattered remnants of those emotions, but the depth to which she felt them was lost to me. I didn't know if this was a boon or a burden, my incapacity in this regard, and the woman I once was could not bridge the gap between us to tell me.
When I was first born, I considered it wasteful to spend cycles on thought processes like these. There was too much to be done for the sake of the many. I did as I had always done – I led my followers to victory. Under my direction, the mass relays were repaired, the Citadel rebuilt. In turn, I gave aid to the krogan, the quarians and turians, the asari... Earth reclaimed its cities from the ruins.
Without me, it would have taken generations to accomplish all that we did in those first few years after the war. I was a mediator, a counsellor, a commander of the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of races. I shared my wealth of guidance with all who asked it of me, for this was my purpose: to allow this universe, with its infinite possibilities, to grow and thrive under my benevolence.
There would be no war, no disease, no conflict. There was no place my influence did not reach. In vain, some sought to gain my favour, to convince me to erroneously support one claim over another's. Some sought to worship me; others grew to revile my presence. But, I have no wants, no desires. I hunger for nothing.
When the period of rebuilding and growth drew to an end, I sent the other Reapers back into deep space, to slumber and dream in the murky, star-flecked emptiness.
I remained.
I watched.
I learned.
As with all things, my children grew up. I began to step back, to allow them to make decisions for themselves, even if I had already calculated their choices as having a high risk of failure. As long as they did not endanger themselves or any others in a manner that would lead to escalating conflict, I let them be.
I was no longer Shepard, but Shepherd. I tended my flock; I kept them safe from harm. While they frolicked, slept, and loved, while they lived and died, while they evolved and changed, I kept up my unending watch over the darkness of space that surrounded them. No lambs strayed. No wolves stalked their shadows.
I cherished them. The luminous asari, I encouraged their pursuit of knowledge and beauty. The strategic minds of the turians—I sought their aid in managing the needs and shared resources of the many races. While the quarians developed innovative technologies and agricultural methods, the salarians advanced our medical knowledge. The krogan colonized the empty worlds, finding peace in the familial life long denied to them. The humans built new classes of star ships to explore farther into the reaches of space than anyone had gone before.
In each race, I saw the ghosts of my crew; their echoes like the ripples of stones cast into the deep. Each turian face made my circuitry flicker with the distorted memories of Garrus Vakarian; each asari carried the weight of Liara's fingers upon my brow. Wrex and Grunt, Mordin. Tali. Kaidan and Joker and Anderson… Behind all the faces and voices I did not know lurked those familiar few. The accumulated memories of these individuals have been a tremendous asset in all that I have accomplished.
Of all my children, however, there is one race, one individual with which I have experienced a unique sort of relationship. She did not seek me out, not with any sort of mindful deliberateness, but purely by chance did we encounter one another.
I found her after an unfamiliar hum had pulsed around my hull, the rhythmic pattern of the vibrations catching my attention immediately. They were easy to follow, and I traced them to a planet far from the others; so far away, that I had never had cause to enter the galaxy. The charts in my database had indicated that the planets here were incompatible with the needs of my children; uninhabitable without terraforming, and there were plenty of other worlds better suited to those efforts.
When my first scans showed life forms, I immediately performed a full self-diagnostic routine on my neural fiber networks—all processes were nominal and produced outputs within acceptable ranges of statistical variation. I ran the scan again. The presence was unmistakeable, and my probability calculations indicated that it was the source of the continuous hum that rolled around me in waves.
I reached out—and something—someone—reached back.
The woman I once was recognized her instantly: a rachni queen. This was not the same individual I had encountered in my mortal lives, but unmistakeably one of her kind. She was young, full of hope and the promise of peace and plenty for her children. She sang to them, and they listened.
Like me, she did not sleep, did not eat. She would sing her life into them as she herself gradually wasted away, and then a newborn queen would lift her voice up and carry on; a new tune, an old refrain.
Like me, she was of her children and yet apart from them. Although she birthed their eggs, witnessed their hatchings, shaped their minds with her music—they were not like her. They did not sing. Their communication and thought processes were limited by their own experiences. Without her guidance, she told me, they would go mad, fall into mindless reactive chaos. Without her, there would be no peace, no purpose.
I understood.
I told her of my children, of my purpose, and she wove my memories into a symphony that moved me in a way I had never before experienced. I felt something I could not define, that I could not break down into the output of thousands of calculations.
Kinship.
She sang, and I listened.
I studied the nuances of her tone; the subtle balance and timing of each note; each gentle pause. The depths of their sorrows, their failures, were pitched low, contrasting with the sweeping strains of achievement and progress. She taught me the history of her people, as she had heard it sung by the previous queen, while still nestled in the protection of her egg.
As she aged, the timbre of her voice deepened, and her harmonies grew increasingly intricate. Her children flourished under the power of her song, rich in love and wisdom. Through her, I experienced the emotions in my memories in a way I could now understand: the hitched rhythm of grief; crescendos of joy; the subtle repetition of regret.
I had awoken anew once more.
But, her time was finite, and mine was not.
When her voice weakened and fell silent, the absence was a sudden and profound ache. My sister in solitude, the only other being in all the universe who'd understood. I knew now why the absence of sound drove her children to madness.
I waited, and I listened.
But, no new voice arose to claim the darkness. No new voice stretched out to soothe the agitated whimpers of her children.
I understood.
My children.
I began to sing, gathering my new children into the flock with the others. They are all my children, and I will sing my life into them until I, too, am no more.
Across the chasm of stars, I weave new songs. The emptiness that surrounds me, the hollow emptiness of the shell that houses me, I fill them both with music. Do they hear me, my children? Does my song linger in their minds in the first minutes of drowsy hush when they wake? Does its melody whisper at the edges of their hearing, a spirit haunting the living, caressing their cheeks with invisible fingers?
In time, they will forget me, for all I know they already have, but I will not, can not. I will sing for my children, for my sister, for the woman I once was.
The woman I once was felt sadness, felt guilt, felt regret. I would weep for her if I could: digital tears of neon blue in pulsing trickles of light; a burning aura that lingers like a blurred apparition at the edges of one's vision after the initial brightness has faded.
I am a god and a ghost. I am an insignificant speck in the boundless reaches. I am the Shepherd and Shepard, the only Reaper who chooses to sow.
Eternal.
Infinite.
Immortal.
Alone.