Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect. This fictional story is not making me any money (unless BioWare takes note and decides to pay me). However, if I get antsy and create a language or alphabet, that does belong to me. (You unfortunate people that have read my other, incomplete fanfics know how that goes.)

Author's Note: My husband decided to tease me about Mass Effect by playing through the majority of it when I was at work, and he would tell me all the cool things that happened. Having never used a PS3 in my life (playing a DVD on it caused me grief), I decided to undertake the impossible. Left to my own devices, I played through the trilogy in less than three weeks. I have not had a geek obsession this encompassing since Lord of the Rings in 2002, and 'Trapped As A Mary Sue' is what resulted from that. You are also additionally warned that I don't always finish my fanfictions. Get attached at your own risk.

A Hundred Memories for the Journey Home

Prologue

The nameplate rested across the end of the bed in the captain's cabin. For the fifth time in as many minutes, Garrus Vakarian found he was staring at it. The overhead lights gleamed off of the smooth patina, blotting out the first few letters of 'Shepard'.

Shepard. How's that bar looking up there? he thought, then immediately chastised himself. They couldn't be sure. He couldn't be sure she was really gone. Whatever Shepard had done, she had done for the greatest amount of people. Of course, Joker couldn't admit that right now. He had closeted himself in the AI core, and nobody save Liara had dared to disturb him. Liara only bothered him enough to make sure he was at least still eating something.

Tali was doing the same for him. She was the only other dextro on board the Normandy, and Garrus suspected that she and Liara had a secret pact to make sure everyone was going to get through the next few days while the upended galaxy sorted itself out.

He was staring at the nameplate again. Garrus shook himself and stood, wincing as the still-healing wounds on his right arm and leg twinged as if to remind him of his last moment with Shepard. Doc Chakwas had patched him up, but Garrus didn't even know that he cared enough right now to be grateful.

Tali's voice resonated in his skull. "Shame on you, Garrus. The thanks is that Shepard wanted you alive—wanted us all alive. She loved you enough to send you back."

She'd sent him back. Made him leave her. The logical part of his brain knew that he'd already lost too much blood to make it to the conduit when she'd hauled him to the Normandy. But the sorrow clouding his judgment meant that he could continue to blame himself for not arguing the point—that his presence would have made a difference in whatever had happened at the Crucible.

That at the very least, they could have walked into that bar in heaven arm-in-arm.

"Garrus?"

He turned, too mentally exhausted to be surprised that he hadn't heard the cabin door open. It was Vega, still with a bandage showing above the collar of his white shirt. He had taken a bad hit outside the conduit, too. They'd both been in no shape to do what Shepard had insisted she take on herself. Garrus hadn't seen James since the big marine had been released from the medical bay. The only reason Chakwas had kept Garrus longer was because he'd needed more blood transfused, and it took longer for a turian. Something about finding just the right soft spot between the exoskeletal plates.

James was looking past him to the nameplate on the bed. "You made the right call, Scars—not putting that up."

"Did I? What if it's false hope?" Garrus said, his subtones flat.

Instead of responding to the obvious barb, James gestured. "Come on. Traynor's called a meeting in the starboard observation lounge."

Garrus was unable to mentally process the request. He had hoped for an argument, a consolation—anything to tear his focus from the raw, aching feeling that was Shepard's absence. "A meeting? Why?"

"Cuz unlike some of you lolos, she's been working her tail off to reestablish any kind of stable connection with the Alliance," James said, his eyebrows drawing together. He gestured again, impatiently. "She wouldn't say anything until everyone was there."

Garrus was suddenly acutely aware that his face hurt. He consciously unclenched his jaw and had to work his mandibles loose from their locked position. Then he had to remember to take a breath as the cabin hazed out of focus briefly.

"Woah, hey, Scars. We gonna have to go see the doc again?" James asked, his bantering tone emerging for just a second. "You okay?"

He steadied himself against the empty fish tank for a moment. "What…?"

But James was shaking his head. "Traynor wouldn't say anything," he repeated. "Kaidan threatened to fire her, and she still wouldn't budge. She's got some—"

But Garrus was already moving past him. If there was news to be had, he needed it. At this moment, he felt like he had never needed anything so badly before. James followed him, eyeing him up and down as if afraid the turian might still consider falling over.

The elevator's descent to the third deck seemed to crawl. The Normandy was operating at seventy-five percent of optimum efficiency, and all of that efficiency had been EDI. Joker's landing on this unknown planet had been textbook, but once Donnelly and Daniels had confirmed that EDI's artificial body was no more than an empty shell and the AI core burnt out, he'd been uncommunicative. Garrus felt that somehow the pilot blamed him for EDI's loss—because Shepard wasn't there for him to lash out at her.

"Whatever choice she made, it was the wrong one!" he'd heard Joker shout at Liara. "She could have done something differently; there had to be another way!" It had taken time, but Liara hadn't given up. Her soothing, straightforward manner took all the fire out of Joker's anger, just as Tali's straighten-up-and-cheer-up attitude had lifted Garrus out of his darker moods.

The elevator doors opened and James led the way to the lounge. The door was propped open, likely because all of the Normandy's crew was attempting to squeeze itself into the small space. Tali was waiting for him outside. She straightened up when she saw him, and let out a little 'ahem!' that cleared an immediate path for Garrus and James.

Once they made their way through the crowd of standing servicemen and women, they could see that the other squad mates were assembled. Liara was standing at Traynor's shoulder in front of the large window, and Kaidan was pacing in a little circle off to one side, shooting Traynor aggrieved looks. Javik was also standing, but in opposition to Kaidan's jittery movements, the Prothean was remarkably still and calm. Near Javik, the reporter Diana Allers was poised with her camera drone, ready to capture everything. She'd had no contact with her news network since the abrupt end of hostilities, but that wasn't going to stop her from recording everything as it happened. The Normandy had been the front line of the Reaper war, and even if the story was late, people across the galaxy still cared about her crew and the efforts they'd made. That was what Tali had told him, anyway.

Tali ushered Garrus to an empty seat and pressed him down onto it. Liara glanced up from the datapad she was reading and offered him a small smile. It didn't tell him anything.

Little conversations had sprung up among the crew, but Garrus didn't want to hear them. There could be no more speculating on his part—he had already imagined the worst for himself. He had once told Shepard that he wanted one thing to go right…and now this.

The quiet talking in the room abruptly stilled as Joker limped through the crowd of people. He looked terrible; red-rimmed eyes, his beard even scruffier than usual. His gaze locked on Garrus, and his eyes narrowed significantly. The turian knew that Joker was less than pleased to see him. But then the pilot's gaze turned aside, and he sat gingerly on a seat suddenly vacated by Engineer Adams.

"All right, that's everyone," Liara said, glancing around. A few nodded to confirm, and Diana started up her camera drone. Traynor squinted a little into its light, but she straightened up and began.

"As you all know, all communications buoys within a significant radius of the mass relays have all suffered damage. We landed in a dark spot and have been patching these buoys as we make our way back into the edge of the Far Rim."

That was where Joker had jumped to, as fast as he could get the Normandy to cooperate. He'd tried to outrun the Crucible's energy field as it had passed through the relay system…but it hadn't been enough. The lights had gone out throughout the ship, the engine had hiccuped as Joker was on a final approach to the unknown, agrarian planet…and EDI was silent. There had been a tense moment when Garrus felt the cybernetics in his face and torso seize up…

No. He pushed the thought aside. He didn't know how much of Shepard's body was controlled by synthetic devices; the logs they had found in the Illusive Man's base were non-specific, and he'd never talked with Miranda Lawson or Jacob Taylor to know the details of Project Lazarus. All he'd ever cared about was that she was back. The commander—his commander—was alive. He'd followed her once and she'd never led him astray. Garrus could have followed her anywhere; she'd been his purpose ever since she'd shown up on the Citadel, fear in her eyes at what she'd seen on Eden Prime, but still possessing the overpowering determination to do what she had to. She'd found Saren, faced Harbinger, done a hundred impossible things—that was why he loved her. Choosing him over any of the other men that had expressed an interest in her was just one more impossible thing. And he'd used to say to her, "You do three impossible things before breakfast each day."

Traynor was still talking, mapping a course that would take them back to the local cluster—back to the Earth that had been ground zero. It wasn't Shepard's home, he knew that…but it was her home in loyalty alone; the place where humanity had had its start. Though she'd never lived there, she had fought to keep it; fought for a future he didn't know she could ever see.

"It should take approximately a hundred days to get back Earth," Traynor was saying when Garrus managed to pull himself out his dark self-reflection. "The Pylos Nebula relay is expecting us to help as much as possible with the work; when that's completed we'll have a straight jump to Phoenix Massing, which should be back online when we get there. The Caleston Rift relay is the true problem; the overlapping shock waves from all the clustered nearby relays did a lot of damage. Once we're there, we're going to coordinate with supply ships and again, help in any way we can to repair the relay." The communications officer glanced over at Liara.

Liara pulled her datapad out from where she'd tucked it under her arm. "With the last comm buoy going active, we were finally able to tap into the Alliance's network again. Reports from Earth are still coming in, but there are tentative casualty lists. In addition, I have been able to get other reports through my own network. Lists from Palaven, Thessia, Tuchanka, and many other planets are available."

The room was still, waiting for Liara to continue. Kaidan had frozen in his frenetic pacing and his dark eyes were locked on the asari.

In a steady voice, Liara went on, "Commander Shepard's name is not on any of the lists." Garrus tensed, and Tali put a steadying hand on his arm. "And that…is…because her name appears on the intensive care unit list of the medical ship Zuckerkandl."

The last sentence was like a bombshell; the reaction of the crew spread in a growing wave. There were laughs, there were cheers, and Garrus wasn't sure what to do; he wasn't even sure he'd heard correctly, but Liara stilled everyone with a wave of her arm.

"Commander Shepard needs our help. The synthetic and cybernetic implants Cerberus used are intact, and the best surgeons on the ship are working daily to keep her alive…but they're losing. Doctor Chakwas is the one that suggested we could help."

The platinum-haired doctor stepped forward, out of the crowd. "It worked for Shepard before, and I believe it will work again. She needs our memories of the best times, the most inspirational thoughts. It is no great sacrifice to us to let Diana record these moments and send them to Shepard. I propose that each day until we get back to Earth, we send something to her. We can record in groups, or alone."

"Diana has graciously allowed us the use of her drone," Liara said. "It can edit and transmit for you, and will be here in this lounge for use."

"If it's not, you know where to find me," Diana spoke up, her round face uncharacteristically somber. Then, a small half-smile appeared on her face. "Just remember that the drone keeps a log, so no funny business."

Kaidan stepped forward as little conversations began to spring up again. "As acting CO, I know I can speak for a lot of us in saying that we can do this. The commander brought us through a lot—all of us. She's done shopping trip runs, listened to us fight, tell jokes, even walked in on a food fight and laughed it off—all because we were her crew."

"We are her crew," James corrected. "Lola wouldn't leave us hanging, ever." He glanced around, and his fellow crewmen nodded. "And that food fight was Donnelly's fault."

"That's what we need," Chakwas said with a smile. "And, I daresay, it will help morale around here, too."

"We should be at the Far Rim's relay by tomorrow," Traynor said. "Its repairs are going well; we may be able to use it in a few days. Until then, we'll be helping ferry supplies in the system." She glanced at Liara, and then at Kaidan. "That's all I have, Major Alenko."

Kaidan jerked his head in a single nod. "Dismissed, everyone."

The crewmen slowly began to disperse and a few of them went to talk with Allers, but Engineer Adams, trailed closely by Donnelly and Daniels, approached Joker. The pilot was sitting very still, his eyes focused somewhere out the window behind Traynor and Liara. "Flight Lieutenant...we have an idea for you. When we got contact back with the Alliance, we asked them for the hardcopy data from the Luna base, of the Titan VI. We think that maybe...we could...well, recreate EDI manually."

For a long moment, Joker continued to look out the window as if he hadn't heard anything. Adams shifted from foot to foot and Daniels traded an uneasy look with Donnelly. Then, abruptly, the pilot stood up. He fixed the three engineers with an unreadable look, and nodded to them. "I have a ship to fly," he said, adjusting his cap with deft hands. "And I have a lot of duty shifts to catch up on. We'll...talk later." And with that, Joker marched out of the observation lounge with as much determination as his condition would allow.

Garrus suddenly realized he was now the center of attention. For his part, he felt as if he were numb. A thousand images washed over his mind's eye, and he looked up at Liara as if for a cue. What should he feel? He couldn't think straight. The one good thing that's happened to me...

Thankfully, Tali shifted the group's attention. "That can't be everything, Liara," she said pointedly. "Did the doctors contact Miranda? She knows everything about Project Lazarus, she could help."

"Until they fix the Exodus Cluster relay, Miranda's only available for consult over video calls," Liara replied. "But she's doing everything she can. Also, the Cerberus facility with all of the powerful, expensive equipment used was destroyed. The medical ship is the best they could do. With all the other rebuilding, resources are short."

"But they're gonna do whatever it takes, right?" James asked. "They wouldn't bail on the commander now."

Liara sighed and looked down at the floor before shaking her head. "Admiral Hackett assured me that Shepard's in the best hands possible. I'm still working on getting the full report about what happened. I've seen pictures of the Citadel, or what's left of it, but as I understand it, Shepard was found in London."

"But we know she got up to the Citadel; how'd she get back down?" Kaidan asked in surprise.

"It's Shepard," Garrus found himself saying. He stood up and fixed Kaidan with a fierce look. "She does three impossible things before breakfast." He took a deep breath, and for the first time in several days, it didn't hurt. "Thanks, Liara." Tali poked him. "And Tali."

James coughed. Garrus smirked a little bit at him. "All right, I get the point, Vega. I'm sorry."

"All this snivelling for a primitive," Javik said disdainfully, shaking his head.

Liara sounded startled. "But you always said Shepard was an avatar of this time...oh. You were joking."

The Prothean gave the asari what passed for a smile. "The commander is an avatar. She is our victory."

"Come on," Kaidan said, waving Diana over. "What do you say we start the next hundred days with a message from us?"

The teammates looked around, and heads nodded. "Yes." "You got it." "Absolutely."