Leviathan - Conclusion
My eyes fluttered awake, but I shut them firmly when the bright lights seemed to burn out my retinas. The room that I was in smelled of antiseptic and I could hear someone getting out of a chair and coming towards me, investigating the sudden disturbance.
"I'm glad to see you awake, Commander," Karin Chakwas' kind, motherly voice said to me. My eyes adjusted a little better to the light and I was able to see again.
"Doctor Chakwas. What happened?" I asked as I struggled to put together my memory of what had happened before I blacked out.
"It's alright, Commander. You're quite safe. The shuttle came back from Despoina with you unconscious. Everyone's quite concerned about you."
"How long was I out?"
"Four days," Chakwas answered matter-of-factly. I looked at her like she was kidding me on, but she simply gave me a steady stare and smiled sympathetically. I could have missed so much and I immediately got out of bed, feeling like I needed to jump back into the action to catch up.
"How is the crew?" I asked the Doctor.
"They're all fine," she said, moving to calm me down, "Garrus has been in charge and has filled Admiral Hackett in on what happened. The Admiral wanted to speak to you if you… when you woke up."
"Do we have a current mission?"
"We've been back to the Citadel and restocked. Then Hackett told us that he'd received a priority message for you from Wrex."
"Wrex?" I questioned, glad that I could be hearing from my old friend again, "what did he want?"
"You'll have to ask Garrus that question," Chakwas laughed, "he's been in contact with the grumpy old Krogan already. But first, if I may, it might be better for the crew to know that you're up and ready again."
"Ready to get them all back into trouble and danger," I grinned.
Upon leaving the med-bay, I was warmly received by the crew members present in the mess. Upon hearing the commotion, Liara emerged from her office and greeted me with a big hug.
"I am so glad to see you, Scott," she said, close to tears almost, "the Normandy has been feeling like… like it was missing something while you were undergoing treatment."
"Thanks, Liara. I'm just happy you're all ok! But maybe you could fill me in on a few of the details… my mind is a bit all over the place."
Liara led me back into her lair, all of the screens that fed her the data necessary to being the Shadow Broker all going blank as soon as I entered.
"Where do you need me to start?" Liara asked as she sat down on her bed. I seated myself on the other side and relaxed a little.
"Ok, let's think..." I pondered the scrambled events in my head, "once I reached the surface, it didn't seem to take too long for you guys to find me. What happened while I was down there?"
"It was strange," Liara told me, "we were heavily engaged by Reaper forces when, out of nowhere, I began to see the artefacts scattered around the camp start to activate. Cortez had just managed to get the shuttle fixed and airborne and we all thought that he was about to go down again. But then…" she gave me a curious look, "some of the Reaper troops seemed to go berserk and started attacking their own kind. One of the big Brutes started carving through the enemy soldiers and even took down another Brute. Then we heard your distress call."
"The Reapers started fighting each other?" I was amazed. Liara smiled meekly as if she did not believe it herself.
"And then?" I asked.
"We had no further reason to stay and we all jumped on the Kodiak as quickly as we could. We found you and headed straight back for the Normandy, but… well that's when it all became very strange, and frightening."
"What?"
"The Reaper that had arrived blocked our path and was about to shoot us down when… there was this blast of energy and the Reaper just seemed to fall out of the sky. It just ceased to exist in an instant."
"At the moment that the Reaper died, I measured an incredible surge of power coming from the artefacts on the ship wrecks," EDI added, "it was Leviathan."
"It was," I agreed, suddenly feeling vindicated that my efforts beneath the waves were not in vain.
"Perhaps now you could tell me what happened down in the ocean while we were fighting on the surface waiting for you," Liara said pointedly. I leaned in, my excitement at such a miraculous discovery coming to the surface,
"We found it, Liara! We found Leviathan. I showed it that it could not hide anymore and it agreed to fight the Reapers."
"What was Leviathan?" Liara asked. I was about to tell her, but then I thought it would best be told to everyone,
"Get the ground team to come here and we'll sit and talk all about it. Then I'll have to talk to Hackett about all this."
"Garrus and I have already filled him in as best we could," Liara said, "but only you saw Leviathan. Only you truly know the answer to all the questions surrounding that mission. And Ann Bryson said that she would like to hear from you when you recovered. And one more thing…" Liara put a hand on my shoulder, "I think you should go and see Tali first."
"Is she ok?" I noted the worry in Liara's voice.
"She never left your side in the med-bay unless we forced her to go and rest," Liara said, "I don't think she was even going to her bunk or your cabin to sleep, just going to the observation lounge so she was still close."
I took my leave of Liara and went straight to the starboard observation lounge where, sure enough, I found Tali sleeping on one of the sofas. She was curled up in a ball with a couple of data pads lying next to her, Intel on Quarian operations and updates on the construction efforts and war preparations on Rannoch. I quietly sat down next to her and very delicately lifted her head and placed it on my lap. Without waking up, Tali shifted around a little until she was comfortable, sub-consciously snuggling herself closer into me.
When I had first seen her sleeping, she did not look like she had been having a restful, peaceful sleep, more of a stress-induced black-out. But now, I felt her body relax more and her breathing became a bit slower as her mind was put to some kind of ease. She knew I was there with her, but my poor wife was so exhausted. I was not going to wake her up and so I let her slumber and gazed out at the beauty of the galaxy on the other side of the window, contemplating life and reflecting on the missions and adventures I had been on.
When I really thought about it, with the constant danger that I found myself in, finding Leviathan really had been the most terrified that I had ever been. When the beast emerged from the deep, my body seemed to turn to ice as I dared not move. I had put Tali through watching me throw myself at this mysterious creature that could kill all of us in an instant if it had really wanted to. I stroked the side of Tali's hood and felt her chest rise and fall, her hand finding mine and taking hold. How I longed for this war to be over, and all the fighting and threats of death would end. I wished that this, lying on the couch together, would become the norm and there would not be the war or our current mission hanging over us, lurking in the shadows around us. Maybe when we had built our house on Rannoch together, we could have a front landing with a bench on it and we could laze around together in the sun, looking out over a lake or at a new Quarian city developing and evolving as its people settled in on their home world.
Some time passed before I heard Tali's voice call out to me softly,
"Are you ok?"
She was still lying with her head on my lap facing out the way towards the window, looking at the stars winking at us as I was.
"I'm fine, Tali," I said, "I didn't want to wake you."
"No, it's ok," her hold on my hand tightened a bit.
"Tali," I said, "I need to tell you that I'm sorry, for putting you through this."
Now my Quarian wife sat up next to me and was silent for a moment before she said,
"I was so worried when we found you. You were freezing cold, we couldn't resuscitate you. Then… I was angry with you. I kept thinking how stupid you were for going down in that mech, how that could have been the last time I saw you."
She needed to vent these feelings and I remained quite as she had a go at me.
"You became so obsessed with Leviathan. You were going to get yourself killed without a second thought and leave us behind, leave me behind!"
"I know, Tali," I told her, careful not to overstep my boundaries, "I know what I did. I wasn't thinking of the bigger picture when it came to you. But I seem to remember a certain Quarian being on trial, and she was prepared to be exiled from her own people, the life she loved, in order to protect them."
Tali looked at me, her eyes hard at first and I thought I had only riled her up more. But she calmed and nodded,
"I remember that Quarian too. And I remember how you have always said that you were going to do whatever it took to get us help against the Reapers. Like I said, I was angry with you until…"
"Until?"
"Until I saw those artefacts light up and the Reaper soldiers started fighting amongst each other. That was when I realised that you had found Leviathan and convinced it to help us. I knew, once again, that you were right. I should know not to doubt your gut instinct."
I laughed a little,
"Sometimes my gut gets me into the worst kind of messes."
"Gets all of us into the worst messes," Tali retorted. "When Leviathan killed that Reaper right in front of us, I only got angrier at myself. I had doubted you, even though I swore that I never would."
"It's ok, Tali," I hugged her, "this mission was the strangest we've ever been on. We'd never come up against so many unknowns before. Don't blame yourself Tali, blame me. I put us all under those circumstances."
"I think you forget how important you are to everyone, Scott," she said, "just don't do that to me again, not even to find a damned Reaper-killer. You're worth more than that."
Tali and I reconciled and stayed in the observation lounge for a while. All I could think of was how much time I needed to make up to Tali after the war. We had first met when Tali was about to be assassinated by Saren's men and everything since then had been full of danger. From fighting Rachni and Sovereign to waging our campaign against the Collectors and rogue Human-VI hybrids. Yet I had always had my team with me, on every mission and everywhere we went, I could rely on them and they could rely on me. Indeed, they were the only reason that I was still alive.
When I went down in that submersible, however, I had cut myself off from them and that was where the mission to find Leviathan became different. I had deliberately severed myself from the team, and perhaps that was why Tali felt a little betrayed. I hugged Tali's trim body into mine and touched my forehead to her helmet.
"I'm sorry, Tali. I don't ever want to do that to you…"
"But sometimes you have to," she replied, "I understand. And, if I really think about it, I would do the same for you, Scott. I love you."
"I love you, Tali."
I gave it a second to let the words sink in before I told her that I needed to get everyone together for the full debriefing. Now was the time for the all to know what really happened with Leviathan and to tell them what I myself had been told, how the Reapers had initially come into being and why they carried out these mass genocides.
Gathering the team together in the war room, I met each of them with the same warm greeting and told all of them how proud I was of their actions during our search for Leviathan. I got Admiral Hackett patched in over the QEC and proceeded to tell all of them everything that transpired when I met the reclusive creature. The revelation behind the creation of the Reapers and the beginning of the harvests, the way that the Mass Relays had been constructed purely to speed up the time that it took for civilisations to evolve, the way that the entire galaxy was just one huge experiment that the AI was running visibly affected everyone.
"So, we're just toys in a massive game. Pieces being moved around a board," Garrus speculated after we had all taken some time to contemplate our startling discovery.
"The Alliance wanted more Intel on the Reapers," I addressed the Admiral, "I'd say we got it."
"This rewrites galactic history as we know it," Hackett replied, "our people will be studying this for years to come. They're already calling it the Leviathan codex."
"So how do we turn the discovery of Leviathan against the Reapers?" Tali asked. On the strategy board I brought up an image of one of Leviathan's artefacts,
"With these. We all know how Leviathan used these to control the minds of people, how it could render them completely lifeless, like it did to Derek Hadley. It can channel its power through the fragments to even bring down a Reaper, so we collect all the artefacts that we can find, and covertly deploy them behind enemy lines."
Admiral Hackett caught on to what I was saying,
"So Leviathan can enslave Reaper troops and create its own army to fight their own kind."
"Exactly! Small, elite strike forces make incursions into Reaper marshalling areas and we create chaos and disruption right in the middle of Reaper territory," I said. "It's dangerous, but I know it will be worth it if it can slow the Reaper advance, buy us more time to get the Crucible built."
"I'll assemble a team to collect the artefacts from Despoina," Hackett said, "I understand there is not a huge number of them, Commander?"
"No," I agreed, "we'll have to limit their use to the most critical fronts, Palaven for one."
"Agreed," Garrus quickly added, "I'll brief the Primarch and Wrex. We could send some to Tuchanka as well."
"We have a potent new weapon in this war," Hackett said to us all, "we will not let it go to waste. This is a big step in the right direction. Well done everyone. You're the best damn team in the entire galaxy. Your exemplary performance continues to inspire the rest of our fight against the Reapers. Keep at it!"