The sound of a krogan jumping out of a shuttle onto hard metal plating was unmistakable. Two in close succession made everyone's knees tremble in sympathy as the vibrations rippled through the floor.

"Shepard!" shouted Wrex, striding forward as Steve settled the shuttle down onto the deck. "You should have called!"

Shepard chuckled, bouncing Viatrix on her shoulder. "I was a little busy being dead, Wrex."

"Ah, bullshit." He towered over her by a good two feet, his armour burned and even more battle-scarred than it was before, one significantly large chunk taken out of the left side of his hump armour, just beside his face - it looked oddly like a rocket blast. "Nice to see you. Who's the whelp? Vakarian have a kid while you were out?"

Garrus walked up to Shepard and Wrex, wiping his hands on a rag, having been finishing a thorough clean of the Normandy's stored armaments. "Actually, Wrex, you're right on the money."

Wrex looked at him, squinted, and looked back at Shepard, who was grinning. "Fill me in here, Shepard."

Shepard turned Viatrix around to show her tiny face to the massive krogan. "Say hello to your god-daughter." Viatrix squirmed, yawned, and blinked blearily at the scarred face in front of her.

Wrex looked down at the little turian, cocked his head to one side, then cracked a smile. "You're serious."

Garrus beamed. "Couldn't be more so."

Wrex held out his arms; Shepard passed Viatrix over. Wrex cradled her gently, the delicacy of the motion a striking contrast with his typical demeanour. He was silent for a moment, looking at the baby in his arms, and when he spoke next there was a little more gravel in his voice. "What is she, three weeks?"

"Two and a half," Shepard said softly, "or thereabouts."

Grunt had joined the group at some point during the conversation, coming up at Wrex's elbow. "So you've got a kid?"

She nodded. "Yup."

The younger krogan grunted, pondering the baby turian in Wrex's arms. "Huh. That's a pretty impressive feat, even for you, Battlemaster."

Shepard laughed. "Thanks, Grunt."

Wrex spoke, still gazing at the baby. "...Where'd you find a turian whelp in the Sol system?

"That's a hell of a long story," Garrus replied.

"You'd better be telling me this story over drinks before we leave the system."

The turian chuckled. "There's a bottle of ryncol left from the last time you were on board."

"Excellent," Wrex rumbled. Viatrix wiggled and cooed. Wrex laughed, the deep sound setting her squirming again. "You like that, do you? What's your name?"

"Viatrix," Shepard offered.

Wrex humphed. "Good enough name for a turian. She'll be strong. Wiry, too. She looks healthy."

Grunt broke in. "What else would you expect from Battlemaster Shepard? Any child of hers will be the strongest of them all."

Wrex rolled his eyes and shifted Viatrix to lean against his shoulder, bouncing her slightly, setting her giggling. "Ah fuck, you don't get it, you haven't had the klixen and the maws speech…"

The first people inside the newly-restarted Citadel described it later as eerie, melancholy, and ultimately depressing. In many places, only the emergency lighting had come on, bathing much of the station in a pale purple glow. There were no bodies anywhere to be seen, apart from the stationary Keepers, who were standing, evenly spaced, along the entirety of the Presidium and through most of the Wards. The silent sentinels did not so much as move a muscle as the asari-turian joint spec-ops team worked their way from their docking bay to Citadel Control.

Twelve hours after that first reconnaissance mission into the nigh-dormant Citadel, the mass relay reactivation fleet was scheduled to depart. The final tweaks on each ship were being completed; the remaining ships amassed behind them, ready to go twelve hours later.

It felt like everyone in the system was holding their breath. Ten months of emergency ration hell. Ten months of tending to the wounded with barely enough supplies to go around. Ten months of building field hospitals and lean-to shelters on the ravaged battlefields of Earth. Ten long, long months.

All about to end. Unless it all went to hell. But it couldn't go much further to hell than it already had, so everyone just tiredly crossed their fingers and wearily held their breath.

The spec-ops team signaled back the all-clear. Basic life-support and whatever ancient, arcane power generation systems the Citadel had deep in its core had restarted, but the Keepers remained dormant. Expert opinion held they were waiting for a further stage of reactivation. Based on the data the team gathered from Citadel Control, a complete and total shutdown had not occurred in … eons.

No one was quite sure what to do. Anyone who had been on board the Citadel when the Reapers had moved it before the Battle for Earth was, to put it kindly, not present. In fact, it was quite the mystery as to where they had all gone. The total death toll was barely conceivable, and the missing-persons list would likely grow by billions by the end of the reckoning, but it was certain that the Citadel had been home to at least a dozen million people - considerably more, counting refugees, and it wasn't at all clear how many had managed to escape.

So the spec-ops team spent several hours sitting in Citadel Control, scrolling through technical manuals put together by generations upon generations of asari, and meanwhile, the amassed fleets of the galaxy prepared to leave, streaming out in formation towards the Charon relay while the relay-reactivation fleet waited quietly, two systems over, in the Exodus Cluster.

The Normandy was first in line, and Tali was wearing holes in the floor of the cockpit.

"Calm down," Joker said, craning his head to look over his shoulder. "It's gonna be fine."

"We don't know that," she shot back. "Any of these upgrades could feasibly destroy a ship if it was installed incorrectly. In seconds we could lose some of the best remaining ships in the galaxy. And it would be my fault. All my fault."

Joker looked back at his screen, eyes widening for a second before he laid his hands comfortably over the controls. "Well geez, when you put it that way… I'm glad we're goin' first. And I'm glad we've done this before. At least we won't know until nobody follows us through, right? And it's not like we haven't spent our fair share of time completely alone in the galaxy. I mean we won't really be equipped for repopulating the whole universe but, y'know, could be some fun last days."

Tali aimed a sharp kick at the back of his chair. "Oh, shut up. You're terrible."

"Hey, just tryin' to lighten the mood a little."

Shepard came up behind them, Viatrix on her shoulder. "Just got the go-ahead from the councillors. Everyone's in place, we're ready to roll. On my mark, Joker."

Tali hid her face in her hands. Joker took a deep breath. "Aye aye, Commander, ready when you are."

Shepard ran her tongue over her teeth, inhaled slowly, and exhaled. "Key the comm." Joker pressed a control. "Shepard to all ships: Broadcast general reactivation code in three-second bursts on emergency frequency one. Engage mass relay to the Serpent Nebula. And hold onto your hats, folks."

Joker released the comm control, tapped in the requisite commands, and then grabbed his cap with one hand.

The relay ahead of them pulsed a bright white as they approached it, and then obscured their screen with radiance as they flew into the monolithic, gyroscopic machine. They all felt the familiar tug on their stomachs, like the jolt at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and felt their knees go slightly weak in response - and then the screen was filled with nebulous purple fog, and they saw the handful of ships that had been following them slip into existence alongside them, and Joker keyed the screen to show the aft camera, and the Serpent Nebula relay was sparking and shimmering with energy. One more down, forty-three-ish more to go.

Shepard stepped forward, reached down and activated the comms herself. "Shepard to all ships," she said, "status report."

"Cultrum reporting," came a brusque female turian voice, "all clear. Some electrical failures, but nothing we can't fix."

A deep male quarian voice came in next. "Aza'Riyel here," it said, "all systems are go."

"Marenhal here," a bright salarian counter-tenor continued, "some minor engine overheating due to power fluctuations, but we've pinpointed the source and are fixing it post-haste."

Finally, a light soprano of an asari chimed in. "Sarene reporting all clear. No major issues."

"Excellent," Shepard responded. "Check in with me in twenty minutes or less with a damage report. We'll take it from there. Normandy out."

Tali slumped back into the navigator's chair in relief. "Keelah," she breathed, "it worked. Remote activation worked, and we weren't spat out into some uncharted system somewhere."

"The nebula looks weird without the Citadel there," Joker mused. "Real empty."

Shepard nodded. Viatrix bubbled happily, mesmerized by the swirling purples and blues shimmering in the Normandy's viewports.