Previously...
Kolyat agrees to perform undercover work for Milar. Miranda attempts to make amends with Jack. Shepard informs Garrus that their next stop is Alchera.
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Shepard looked at the galaxy map from her post at the top of CIC. Multiple systems flashed, and she could pull up the tags associated with each one. Each flashing star system represented hope, although it usually came with a price. So far, they'd been lucky, and the price had been low. Injuries, close calls, but no casualties. She didn't know how much longer their luck would hold out.
Currently, the Normandy was cruising in the Shrike Abyssal, having just finished a survey mission for the critical resources needed to outfit the frigate with the upgrades her crew had suggested. She allowed herself a small smile thinking about her crew. Mercenaries, vigilantes, terrorists, assassins. Hell, even the asari justicar could be considered a ruthless force of destruction in spite of, or maybe because of, her rigid adherence to a strict Code of ethics and laws. Shepard spotted the note referring to Kasumi's request to steal back her partner's graybox and made a mental note not to include Samara on that mission. She needed someone a little more...flexible in their thinking for that mission.
Her gaze went to the Amada system with its blinking ring and notes. There was no reason to delay the jump any longer. She suppressed a sigh, but only just. Kelly's hearing was good, and the crew counselor was standing only a few feet away.
Kelly was a good kid, a little overly cheerful, and far too inclined to pry into anyone's private business if she thought she could help them reach closure, or make peace with the past, or whatever nonsense counselors were always spewing. She seemed young to have a counselor's license, but Shepard had already learned that the Illusive Man had given her the best people and equipment money could buy, so she had no doubt that Kelly was superb at her job. Shepard hadn't had much experience with counselors in her life, and she didn't intend to start now. Unfortunately, since this was a Cerberus ship, she didn't have veto power over the crew, only over the specialists she was recruiting.
"Joker, set a course to Amada. We have unfinished business at Alchera."
"Aye, Commander." Joker's usually acerbic voice was somber. Normandy had been orbiting above Alchera, a low grav, low pressure icebox of a planet when it had come under attack by a Collector vessel. The Collector's devastating beam weapon had completely overpowered the SR1's shields, slicing right through the hull in CIC and crippling one of the main engines. The suddenness of the attack took everyone by surprise.
Even now, Shepard felt a chill run down her spine as she remembered stepping out into the silent vacuum of the ruined CIC. "Like someone walking over your grave."
"Did you say something, Commander?" Kelly's face had innocent concern written all over it, and suddenly Shepard couldn't stand to be here any longer, standing at the console of the new Normandy SR2. It was too familiar, and too different at the same time. These weren't Alliance navy manning the station; the posts were filled by Cerberus operatives. She wasn't Alliance anymore. She was...Shepard frowned and considered. Not Alliance, still Spectre, probably Cerberus.
Shepard stepped down from the galaxy map and headed toward the elevator without answering Kelly. Not that it mattered. Kelly knew exactly why they were headed to Alchera.
Shepard harbored no illusions that she had any privacy aboard the Normandy. Cerberus ship, Cerberus crew, Cerberus AI monitoring every transmission. Even two of her top specialists were Cerberus operatives first and foremost. Miranda Lawson, genetically perfect genius, had spent the last two years of her life learning everything possible about one Commander Shepard. Jacob Taylor was supposed to be her right arm, another perfect example of humanity in a Cerberus uniform, except that he was another thing that was too familiar and too different. Former Alliance, now Cerberus. It was uncomfortably like looking in a mirror. Hell, even her uniforms now had the Cerberus logo on them. Everything except her replacement N7 armor. She had made a point of keeping that, but now she wondered if it was worth it. The Alliance couldn't make up its mind if it should claim her or not. Dead or not dead? Decorated N7 hero or terrorist?
She stood ramrod straight waiting for the elevator doors to open. It wasn't until they closed behind her and the lift headed up to her cabin that she slumped against the wall. More than once, she contemplated ripping the Cerberus badge off her uniform, but dammit, for all intents and purposes, she was Cerberus now. They were the only ones who took the Reaper threat seriously. The human Alliance and the galactic Council refused to listen to her warnings. They had so little time left, and she didn't intend to waste it playing Cassandra to those who wouldn't listen. So she worked for Cerberus and the Illusive Man.
Sometimes, like today, it made her skin crawl. She remembered the horrific experiments by Cerberus that she had busted in her hunt for Saren two years ago. Experiments that involved creating the perfect shock troops or experimenting on lost souls. She had a perfect example of one of those lost souls wallowing underneath Engineering right now. Jack had been a baby stolen from her parents simply because she showed enormous biotic potential. Cerberus had tortured her for years, tearing her down physically and emotionally, trying to find a breakthrough to increase her already formidable biotic power. Against all the odds, they had succeeded. That didn't make it right, though.
Did it? A betraying whisper in the back of her mind wouldn't be shut out. Shepard had been guilty of using the ends to justify the means plenty of times in her life as Miranda had pointed out in the past. Miranda had also defended those operations as either rogue or unmonitored that had gotten out of hand. There was no proof, one way or another. Either Miranda was telling the truth and Cerberus wasn't a terrorist organization as portrayed by the Alliance, or she couldn't trust the woman who had brought her back from the dead and she really was working for the devil.
The elevator doors slid open and Shepard shrugged her shoulders. She entered her cabin with a weary tread and pulled out her hardsuit. Time to go to Alchera.
Time to pay her respects to the twenty men and women who perished in its orbit.
Time to face the fact that she was one of those who died over Alchera.
"Commander, I'm ready." The tall turian leaned against the shuttle door in his unmistakable blue armor, sniper rifle poking up over his shoulder.
"Garrus, if I'd wanted you to come with me, I'd have told you. You're not going."
There was a flash in his deep-set eyes, and his mandibles tightened. "You can't go down there alone. What if you run into looters? Mercs?"
"EDI already checked. The planet's cold. No detectable life signs or heat signatures anywhere around the crash site. It's safe."
"Oh yeah? You can't even go into a bar without someone trying to kill you."
"That was Omega. If someone doesn't try to kill you once a day, it's a slow day." Her own features tightened as she remembered the gut wrenching pain from the poisoned drink the batarian bartender gave her. If it hadn't been for Cerberus' implants, she probably wouldn't have survived. It had been Garrus who'd dragged her back to the Normandy as she convulsed and vomited all over him.
"I'm going. You need someone to watch your back." The turian straightened up and stood between her and the shuttle door.
"Garrus, this is an Alliance mission..."
"Cut the crap, Shepard. Since when do you take orders from the Alliance?" Garrus overrode her explanation. "I think dying gets you out of the service, no matter what race you belong to."
"Garrus." Her tone warned the turian he was getting dangerously close to the limits of insubordination, even given the wide latitude she normally allowed him. "It's not an order. It's a request from an Admiral. The Alliance isn't willing to send an individual ship across the Traverse, and if they sent a fleet, it would be an act of war. The Normandy is the only one with the stealth and the firepower to safely travel this part of the galaxy." Her voice dropped. "Besides, like I told you the other night, I owe it to them. To my crew."
His shoulders relaxed a little, and he stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, I was there. Remember? Overwhelming odds. No one could have predicted that ship, and there was no way we could have faced it head on. You did the right thing. You gave the order to abandon ship and saved most of the crew. We might have all been dead if you'd acted differently. And speaking for myself, I think my odds of coming back from the dead are pretty damned low," he finished with a lazy drawl. "Unlike a certain hero."
"Hero, Garrus? You and I both know we just did what had to be done. Looking back, it sounds fantastic, but at the time, we were just running and chasing Saren."
"Hero," he confirmed. "I distinctly remember the word hero being used in all the vids and books about you. 'Savior of the Citadel.' 'The best example of humanity.' You know how politicians like to talk."
"I hope you got your own share of accolades. I couldn't have done it without you. Without everyone." She smiled and reached out her hand to grasp his shoulder. Friend to friend, momentarily leaving the commander behind.
Garrus laughed once. "Of course, with lots of lengthy speeches about how I'd served the Hierarchy and would inspire future generations to dedicate themselves heart and soul to the turian cause. Even got a medal, the Silver Hand of Veraes."
"That's great, Garrus. Glad to see they finally recognized how important you are." A little bit of the soul-crushing weight had lifted, but she couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. "But you're still not coming." She lifted a hand and stopped him before he could speak. "I appreciate it. I do. But I just have to do this by myself."
He was silent for a moment, his normal cockiness gone. "They were my crewmates, too, Shepard." He stared straight at her, daring her to deny his claim.
Something twisted inside her gut. He was right. He was as much part of her crew as any of those they'd lost. She'd pulled him out of C-sec as soon as she'd been appointed Spectre and started hunting Saren. He'd been with her every step of the way. Feros, Novaria, Ilos. Garrus and his sniper rifle, keeping her safe, evening the terrible odds so that they had a chance. At her side when they fought against that hideous travesty that used to be Saren. She would never forget his smile of relief when she crawled out from the rubble after Sovereign had been destroyed. And now, two years later, he'd vowed to walk into hell by her side.
"Alright, get in," she told him. His mandibles twitched in a grim smile as he ducked into the shuttle. They seated themselves as the shuttle slid out through the kinetic barriers and headed down to the frozen wasteland of a damned world.
The shuttle landed just to the south of the main wreckage of the Normandy SR1. The door lifted and Shepard jumped out. She stumbled in the lower gravity, then caught her balance. The shakes and tremors were mostly gone, but her reflexes were still slow, and it was impossible to access her full strength yet. Fortunately, this promised to be an easy mission, physically. She only hoped she was strong enough emotionally.
Snow glittered brightly everywhere. Overhead, Amada was a small pinprick that cast a wan yellow light. Alchera was the core of a failed gas giant. It had water ice, but its atmosphere was predominantly methane and ammonia. Shepard allowed herself one deep breath, then forced a calm over her body. It was almost as if she were gearing up for battle. She needed that calm. She had a limited supply of oxygen in her suit, and allowing herself to get upset would only waste her air.
There was a small hill to the side, and she jumped up the five feet to the top. The Normandy SR-1 wreckage was spread across a wide swath of the landscape in front of her. The biggest section of the wrecked ship was to her right. It was tilting into a deep chasm, but it looked steady enough for now. The chasm was only a couple of hundred feet deep, and the ship section looked firmly wedged against the far cliff. In front of her, she could make out another large section. It looked like the dome over the CIC and pilot's section, although it was so crumpled that she wasn't sure.
Garrus made a similar jump and landed delicately beside her to survey the landscape. "Damn Collectors." He turned to look at her. "How you doing, Shepard?"
She touched the button to opaque her helmet against the sun. She didn't need it, but it would keep Garrus from being able to see every emotion that flitted across her face. "I'm fine, Garrus. Let's just concentrate on the mission."
Shepard activated her suit camera and panned around again to get a sense of the landscape. There was a light wind stirring the thin layer of snow. It wasn't strong enough to be felt through her hardsuit, but she could imagine it whispering over her skin nonetheless.
Shepard brought up her omni-tool and activated the Alliance scanning program. Every Alliance soldier's dogtags had a chip built in for just this sort of macabre disaster, where they might have to be recovered in hostile territory. The omni-tool hummed for a moment, then projected a map populated with tiny dots. Shepard sighed. The dots were scattered far and wide across the frozen landscape. Not that she expected anything else. The Normandy had been cut into pieces even before it had fallen to its death on Alchera. She didn't see how it had held together as well as it had. She tried not to apply the same thought to herself.
She shared the data to Garrus' omni-tool and gestured to the closest dot. She had her low-grav legs now and bounced across the rock and snow until she was on the dot. She started shifting some crates, the low gravity and her cybernetically enhanced muscles tossing them a good twenty feet away. Garrus was right behind her and started helping.
The sudden sight of a charred blue uniform brought a gasp to her lips and her hands stopped for a moment. Ever so carefully now, she moved the last two crates off the body. Her legs failed her, and she sank to her knees next to the body. The cold from Alchera seemed to soak down to her bones, and an uncontrollable shiver started in her hands.
"Just meat and tubes on a table." Jacob's words rang in her head, over and over, pushing out any other thought. Shepard felt her gorge rise and that immediately brought her back to her senses. You did not vomit in a space suit. Ever. She bent over, letting her helmet almost touch her knees as she fought to get control of her breathing. It was fast and reedy.
She braved another glance at the mangled body that she knew had to resemble her own when Cerberus had recovered it. No, no. I was in a hard suit. I had more protection than she did. It couldn't have been that bad. It couldn't. It couldn't. She clenched her hands hard, but the suit gloves prevented her from digging her fingernails into her palms. At that moment, she desperately wished for some sort of pain to remind herself that she was alive, something to counteract this pernicious cold and the sight of the mangled and charred body in front of her.
"Shepard! Shepard! Snap out of it!" Her head snapped backward as Garrus shook her shoulder violently. "Shepard, that's not you!" he growled over the comm. She must have been speaking out loud.
Garrus picked her up and turned her so she couldn't see the body. "Listen to me. Breathe, Shepard. Deep breath in, hold it, breathe out." She hunched over, hands over her midsection, trying to block out everything but Garrus' voice as he talked her down. She didn't know how long they stayed like that, with him between her and that gruesome sight, listening to the steady monotone of his voice until she finally felt strong enough to stand upright. "I'm better. Thanks, Garrus."
"You sure, Shepard?"
She nodded and slowly looked at the body again. She knelt awkwardly in the thin methane snow, and with shaky hands, reached out and carefully removed the dog tags. "Specialist Amina Waaberi," she read, "may you rest in peace." Her voice was shaking almost as badly as her hands. She wished there was more she could do, but recovery of the bodies was impossible.
She focused on her breathing again, brought it back under control, and pushed up to her feet. She overcompensated and jumped three feet in the air, arms windmilling to keep her balance as she floated back to the ground. "You didn't see that," she told him as he snickered over the comm.
"See what? The famed Savior of the Citadel, lifelong spacer, so rattled that she forgot how to stand up in a low grav environment?
"Yeah, yeah, yuk it up. I know what you're doing."
"Is it working?" There was too much worry in his voice, in spite of his attempt at levity.
"Not really. Alright, that's one." She manipulated the omni-tool interface to remove this dot and focused on the next closest one.
Garrus emphatically made her stand back a couple feet while he found the corpse and retrieved the dog tags from the second and third bodies. As much as she hated to admit it, she was grateful to Garrus for interceding until she could regain her equanimity. It wasn't getting easier to see those mangled corpses, but she had a mission. She had promised Admiral Hackett that she would recover every soldier's tags and place a memorial to honor their loss, and damned if she wouldn't do just that.
The next dot brought them to the CIC. She mounted the steps to the galaxy map, but the image existed only in her mind. Its intact ghost warred with the warped and twisted metal that made up the handrails and the consoles around the map. A black square caught her eyes and she bent to pick up a data pad. It still had power and she flicked it on. "Pressly," she whispered.
She laughed and cried at the same time as she read through his entries, detailing his change of heart concerning the aliens on his ship. Rough, but honest. She hadn't liked him at first, had ridden him hard when he first started speaking against recruiting aliens as part of the Normandy's crew. But she saw that Tali and the rest had done far more to effect his change of heart than any of Shepard's speeches ever had. "God rest, Pressly," she whispered as she set the data pad back on the destroyed galaxy map.
"Shepard, look over here!" Garrus called. She bounded down from the wrecked CIC toward his location. "Should have known if it could survive your driving, a little drop from orbit wouldn't destroy it." The Mako rested on a slight hill, partly covered by shielding from the Normandy, but still intact.
The sight of the Mako, looking like it was perfectly preserved in all this chaos, did lift her spirits. She remembered her, Garrus and Wrex careening around mountain slopes that a goat couldn't have navigated. "You know, I purposefully flipped it a couple of times just to see if I could get Wrex to squawk. He never did. Got you more than once," she said, forcing the lighthearted teasing tone.
"You had us heading for a rock spike upside down, Shepard! You expected me to stay quiet in the face of your insanity?" he asked incredulously.
A smile twitched on her lips. "Wrex did. Actually, he just chuckled when I flipped it and landed on the back two wheels. I think he was having fun."
"That krogan has a quad of steel," he replied fondly. "That was the trip where I kicked you out of the driver's seat and took over. You were better on the guns anyway."
"Yeah, Wrex and I would tear it up. Mercs, geth...didn't matter. Good times," she whispered.
Garrus wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged. "You should send him a vid when we get back. He'll get a kick out of the Mako surviving."
She nodded absently as she checked her map. Only a handful of tags remained to be gathered. They were grouped into two pockets on opposite sides of the valley. "Let's split up," she told him. "We can collect the tags, set the monument and get back to the Normandy."
"You sure, Shepard? We've got plenty of oxygen left. No need to rush."
She felt her tiny blush of amusement from the Mako memories wash away in a surge of irritation. She'd let him come with her because she felt guilty, but she didn't need him babysitting her every move. She couldn't get off this planet fast enough. The emotional roller coaster was almost worse than the actual task of collecting the dog tags.
"I'm fine, Garrus," she replied curtly. "Just go." Setting movement to words, she stomped off toward the other side of valley. Unfortunately, stomping in low gravity meant she jumped a ridiculous height in the air and had to windmill her arms for balance on the way down. She waited to hear a snicker over the comm, but he wisely kept quiet.
She was searching near a short cliff face when an unnaturally round, snow covered rock caught her attention. She wandered over to it and brushed the snow off to reveal "N7", deeply scarred by its fall to Alchera. She stumbled and fell backward onto her ass in the snow and rocks. She'd found her helmet.
That's me. I was there. That's where I fell!
Her vision went dim as all the blood drained from her face. She couldn't catch her breath as she stared blankly at the patch of snow, expecting to see her own corpse lying there. Immediately, she was thrown back in time, remembering vividly being thrown clear of the SR1, knowing in her heart that there was no going back, a victim of gravity's ruthless grip. Then hearing the hiss of air leaking out of the ruptured hose. Panicked, she grabbed her air hose behind her neck with trembling hands, reliving those last terrifying moments. She felt a hot flash sweep over her and gasped for air again, imagining burning up in Alchera's thin atmosphere.
There was no air in her helmet, she was going to suffocate! Desperate, her fingers scrabbled against her helmet locks. Air! She had to have air and there wasn't any in her suit. Something flashed red in the corner of her eye, and her ears were pounding in time with her thudding heart. The fingers of one hand caught on a helmet tog, then slipped off due to the tremors that were back with a vengeance.
She heard voices dimly through the pounding in her ears, and that red light was flashing with strobe-like intensity into her eyes. She tried to grab a rock and smash it into her helmet, but her hands wouldn't move. The world tilted crazily, and she felt like she was spinning endlessly in space. Her lungs burned and her body arched as she gasped for air that wasn't there. "Can't breathe! Can't breathe!" she gasped as her fingers clenched again in a futile attempt to unlatch her helmet.
A sudden bright flare from Alchera's sun blinded her before a shadow blocked it out. She was spinning in space, the sun blinking bright in her eyes for a few seconds before she spun away from it. She didn't want to die! She wasn't ready!
Something was off. The blinking light was red, not Amada's watery yellow, and the sun wasn't rotating. She wasn't moving. Slowly the voices in her head started to resolve. One was a familiar flanging voice that was frantically saying her name over and over. The other was a mechanical voice repeating a series of sounds over and over.
With a disorienting snap, the outside world came into focus and the words in her helmet made sense. "Warning. Safety override. Unsafe external atmosphere. Warning. Safety override. Unsafe external atmosphere. Warning..." The red light was a safety alarm trying to warn her against unfastening her helmet.
"Shepard! Calm down! Breathe! You can breathe. You have plenty of air in your suit. Breathe!" The shadow in front of the sun was Garrus' scarred armor. Even though she couldn't see his facial expression through his tinted visor, the fear in his voice came through loud and clear. Blinking the tears away, she turned her head to the side to see why she couldn't move her hands. The reason was obvious. Garrus was kneeling on one arm and holding the other to the ground in a grip so tight bones would have been grinding in her wrist if it weren't for her protective armor.
The heat in her body flashed to ice cold as she realized she'd been about to commit suicide by opening her helmet. Her suit's VI had protected her from her own fear and stupidity until Garrus could get to her. Her stomach convulsed again, and she had to swallow hard to keep the contents down. Her hands started to shake and she began to keen in bitter sorrow and despair. Over and over the thought kept circling her mind that she'd almost died again. Alchera seemed determined to be her death.
"Shepard, calm down. Breathe. That's it. Breathe for me. You're safe. You're not in space. You have plenty of air. Just breathe." Garrus continued his litany to try and get her to back to rational thinking.
Thank God for Garrus, flashed through her mind. He would always have her six. She was suddenly absurdly glad he had guilted her into bringing him. She fought to bring her crying under control. "You can...can let me...go now," she gasped feebly into the comm.
"You sure?" he asked warily. "You're not going to flip up again and try to take your helmet off?"
"Flip out, not up," she corrected with her eyes closed. She was utterly exhausted, and even if he let her go, she wasn't sure she had the strength to do anything at the moment.
Tentatively, he let go of her arm, although his hand hovered just above it, as if afraid she'd try to remove her helmet again. When she showed no signs of moving, he eased his knee off her other arm. "You okay now, Shepard?"
"No, Garrus. Not in the least," she said baldly. "But I don't think I'm going to have another panic attack." They sat there in silence for a very long time. Garrus was obviously unwilling to leave her side, and she wasn't ready to move from this spot. She couldn't lie on her back on this hellish snowball forever, though, and eventually she struggled to sit up. Garrus assisted with a hand behind her back. "Oh god," she gulped as she saw her old helmet sitting in the snow by her knee. She must have grabbed it at some point. She pulled it into her lap and cradled it against her body. Tears were falling off her chin and it was horribly annoying that she couldn't wipe her face clean.
She traced the outline of the 'N7' with her gloved fingertip, over and over, sometimes tracing the deep grooves that ran across the symbols. Her VI beeped at her, informing her she was down to sixty minutes of air.
She slumped over the helmet. "How many more tags?" she asked dispiritedly.
"Six."
"Alright, let's go."
"Shepard, I can get them. Let's get you to the shuttle..."
She didn't even bother responding. She wasn't going to hide in the shuttle while he retrieved the last tags. She owed her crew more than that. She climbed to her feet, battered N7 helmet clutched tight in her left hand. Together, they searched the stark windswept landscape for their remaining crewmates. No words passed between them, but they didn't need them. It was a return to the dark old days on the SR2 when she was desperately trying to come to grips with what the Collectors and Cerberus had done to her. Garrus had listened to every lament and conspiracy theory she'd had, then calmly talked her down. She was relying on innate stubbornness to get through one minute, one hour at a time, and Garrus was providing wordless support.
At each corpse, he refused to let her be the one who retrieved the tags, but he handed them to her to place in the bag. She lacked the energy to complain.
Finally they had them all. Her VI informed her she was down to thirty minutes of air, and she passed that on to Garrus. A low mmmm was his first response. "You gobbled up a lot of Os, you know." She nodded. "Let's get that monument set and get you back to the shuttle so we can get you out of the suit."
As they trudged through the snow, she asked, "How much air do you have left?"
"Little over two hours."
Yep, she thought grimly. Alchera definitely wanted her dead. Too bad she didn't feel like cooperating.
She stowed the bag with its precious contents safely in the shuttle while Garrus maneuvered the monument out of storage. It was bulky, but lightweight, even more so in Alchera's low gravity. Together, they took it to the CIC and positioned it on a solid piece of rock. She touched a button at the base, and bolts fired at all four corners, anchoring the monument to the ground. She knelt in the sparse snow in front of the monument and ran her fingers along the plaque.
Here lie the remains of the SSV Normandy SR-1 along with the remains of twenty of her crew members. Their bodies may lie far from the warmth of their homeworld, but we call their spirits and memories back to be part of us forever more. Respect this hallowed ground and its honored dead.
Shepard wasn't a religious person. Her parents had taken her to chapel in a few of the larger ships and stations, but the words of God never measured up against the immensity and majesty of the stars she could see out every porthole. Compound that with the total lack of any memory or supernatural experience when she died in orbit over this very planet, and her meager faith had taken a major beating. Nevertheless, at this moment, she felt compelled to say her own prayer.
"Please, God, watch over these men and women, and take them in your embrace. The Alliance says it hasn't forgotten them, but it's not doing anything to avenge them or to safeguard the rest of humanity from the Collectors. I swear I will protect humanity, no matter what it takes. I will take any resources I can get, any ally who will stand with me." She paused and lifted her gaze to the sky as a tear rolled down her cheek. "Please, God, I will do everything in my power, but I can use your help, too. I can't do it alone."
Garrus reached out to take her hand in his. Armored gloves made it awkward, but the sentiment came through loud and clear. "You won't ever be alone, Shepard. I swear by all the spirits of Palaven, we'll get through this."
She tightened her hand around his. "I couldn't do it without you, Garrus. There's no Shepard without Vakarian"
"Damn straight. So stop trying to do everything alone. You've got me, and you built a great team, Shepard. Use it," he told her.
The sun hadn't moved, but then the day was almost sixty hours long on Alchera. Garrus ushered her into the shuttle, but she didn't climb in right away. She paused at the doorway and stared out over the wreckage of the Normandy. There was her old life, broken and scattered, bones of ship and crew left to decay under an alien sun an unimaginable distance from Earth. But up in orbit, she had a brand new Normandy, bigger and better. She still had Garrus. She had a new crew. And now she had Thane.
She'd wring every bit of usefulness out of Cerberus and the Illusive Man, forge new alliances, and build something stronger and better out of the ashes of her old life.
She looked up into the sky again. Not a bad analogy for her life. The phoenix rising from the ashes, brighter and stronger than ever before. Shepard turned her back on Alchera and everything it held. Garrus closed the shuttle door and they headed for home.
A/N: Thank you to Orchidellia, my beta reader!