Miranda Lawson stepped out of the beaten four-by-four truck onto the battlefield. The cool, November morning air forming a fleeting, misty cloud as she exhaled, surveying the desolate piece of charred, blackened earth under-foot.
She walked towards an overturned armour truck, and the crackling of leaves brought back the sound of the crackling fire. In the distance, a raven crowed. It sat upon a concrete pillar, which resembled a gravestone, staring at her with curiosity.
Despite the cloudless sky above, the colourless landscape sent a chill through her, no noises, no life, no trees or animals. Like a black and white photograph; all the shadows clear to see. She zipped the jacket of her coat, nestling her nose behind its warmth as the wind howled across the dead, desolate plane.
Craters dotted the earth around her, undoubtedly impact marks from artillery, thrown equipment, and Reaper tracks. A miles long scar cut into the ground like a gaping wound as far as she could see; like a highway of destruction leading to a fallen Reaper at the end of the road, miles away. This was a graveyard of thousands. She could feel their bodies beneath her feet.
"Hey!" Diana's voice sliced through the silence like a knife. "This is where I lost the feed." She finished, jogging up beside her.
Miranda stepped closer to the scar, peering down into the trench it had created. Cautiously, she slid down the few meters to the bottom, her boots sinking in the muddy, ashen, dirt. She stood, slapping dust from her fatigues, and adjusted her backpack. Shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, she peered up at her traveling companion.
"Are you coming?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
Diana Allers followed eagerly after, sliding down on her side, scraping blacked dirt down with her. She wore the same clothes she'd had since the victory day; heavy pants reinforced with Kevlar at critical points, a long-sleeved shirt with tanned camouflaged sleeves, covered with a compact Kevlar chest-rig. A weighty backpack adorned with a single trauma kit, marked with large white lettering over a black patch that read 'MEDIA'. Her black hair pulled into a messy bun, underneath a worn and tattered plain, faded-brown baseball cap she associated with some form of luck.
She and Diana had formed somewhat of a tepid friendship in the weeks after the Reapers fell, finding company in their united quest to find the man at the center of it all. Having spent most of her life on her own, Miranda was used to solitude, she even preferred it. But her time aboard Normandy had changed her; softened her to friends and friendship, and she found herself glad to have the fearless reporter with her. Despite never serving together, they shared a common bond, a common experience: Commander Shepard.
"Looks different in the daylight," Diana said, snapping pictures of the long, straight trench with the old camera around her neck. "Back at the HQ, watching his feed; I kept thinking, if we got through it, it was going to make a helluva documentary." She smiled wistfully.
Miranda had watched the footage many times, studying the grainy images thoroughly searching for any evidence of what had happened.
"You were part of Sword, weren't you?" Diana asked, as if she hadn't heard the story a thousand times already.
Miranda tried to quicken her pace, the mud pulling at her boots. "Yes." She answered.
Diana smiled gently, abandoning the small talk, and turned her attention to the long road ahead. For a while they were silent.
As the sun started to warm the air, the day somehow started to feel a little lighter. Miranda swore she could hear a bird chirping in the distance, for once not drowned out by the squawking of a crow.
"Did you always want to be a journalist?" She asked Diana, suddenly feeling guilty for shutting down her earlier attempts to fill the quiet.
"No," Diana started, smiling in earnest. "I actually wanted to be a ballerina."
That caused Miranda's head to whip around in surprise, having difficulty imagining the broad shouldered, jocular woman in a pair of point shoes and a pink tutu. "Really?"
"I'm actually classically trained," she said, mockingly bragging.
"How remarkable." She quipped.
"I had a scholarship to the BAB. That's the Bekenstein Academy of Ballet, for you uninitiated." She continued. "I broke my leg in my first year, and that was that. Had to find a new passion in life."
"Something altruistic about the pursuit of the truth?" Miranda asked, more dismissive than she'd planned.
"Nah." The snideness of Miranda's comment rolling off her back, "I saw that movie, you know the one, 'Shoot', and I switched my major the next day. Got a job at a The Bek and begged my way onto every embed they had to offer. Eventually, the Alliance got sick of me following them around, so they offered me a job."
"So, less about the relentless quest for the truth and more about the money?"
Diana made a sound, imitating a gameshow buzzer. "Wrong again. My parents are – were – quite wealthy." She did her best to hide the sadness in her voice as she trailed off.
"Sense of adventure, then." Miranda finished, diverting the conversation away from unhappier topics.
"Exactly." Diana agreed. "Some might call it propaganda, but I really enjoyed my job. And Normandy…man. That was the penultimate posting for me. To follow him around…that vid after the genophage was cured was the most viewed video in the galaxy. Ever." She said wistfully.
They came upon an overturned Tomkah in the middle of the trench. It must have rolled several times to cover the distance. As they continued their journey, more and more debris dotted the landscape, hollowed buildings casting shadows where they stepped. Whereas casualties had been collected around the site, parts of others still lay around them as they approached the apex of the Reaper corpse. Soldiers and volunteers were afraid of this place. The conduit beam, the place where it all ended.
"He told me to stay safe." Miranda said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them as they approached the end of the road, Reaper towering over them in the distance. "I told him no promises."
"He wasn't exactly one for safety, though, was he?" Diana chirped back. "He took one look at the death beam blasting towards him and said 'Fuck it'".
"Sort of his style."
"Wasn't it, though." Diana said, smiling. "I didn't know him as well as you, but if anyone could survive something like this…"
Miranda stopped and turned towards the other woman. "Listen," she started, sternly. "This isn't a rescue mission. Even if we somehow manage to find him, I won't be able to extract any kind of information unless his brain is intact and whole. Look around you." She gestured to the sea of destruction around her. "There's nothing left."
Diana sighed, letting her camera hang around her neck. "I know," she said quietly, "I know there's not much of a chance. But there's a chance. Sometimes it's alright to have a little hope, Miranda."
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes and chastise her for her foolishness. Instead, she waved her hand dismissively and carried on with the walk.
"Come on. We're almost there." She said, Diana's footsteps falling behind hers.
By the time they reached the apex, rain threatened to break loose from the newly formed clouds in the sky. The Reapers massive form loomed over them, and suddenly the air chilled in its shadow. Miranda tried to imagine what it would be like to have stood here that night, rain hammering down, horns bellowing in the darkness. The red beam of death carving devastation into the ground.
Just ahead of the reaper, they came upon a yawning crater; the site of the conduit beam. Bodies of reaper thralls lay in scattered piles, still smouldering weeks later, flies buzzing around the decay.
"It's only reapers here." Diana coughed, covering her mouth from the stench. "Alliance would have collected the wounded and dead weeks ago."
"They might have missed something," Miranda said, climbing her way out of the trench towards the conduit crater. Some of that hope Diana mentioned making its way to the forefront of her mind. Humans and aliens alike still feared 'ground zero' as they'd come to call it. Its proximity to the reaper only made that fear worse.
Diana ventured further, snapping photos as she went. "I'm going back to get some shots of the approach with the vidcam, okay?" She called. Miranda responded with another wave of her hand.
"Like a needle in a bloody haystack." She muttered to herself, scanning the charred earth beneath her. She widened her search, climbing a pile of large bricks several hundred meters away from the conduit's zenith. In the distance, she could see Diana walking and talking into her camera, no doubt explaining the carnage behind her.
A glimmer in the rubble caught her eye, the sun reflecting in the debris. She bent down to inspect it, and her breath caught in her throat. She held the small piece of metal in her hand, half the size of her pinky finger, a bright green stripe curved into the cool silver. It hung from a leather necklace, broken before the tied knot. She'd seen this simple piece of jewelry around a certain asari's neck, years ago, and again around Shepard's the night they last spoke.
"Find something?" Diana asked, jogging up beside her, the breathlessness of her question snapping Miranda out of her stupor. She turned to face the reporter, holding the trinket in her hand.
Diana exhaled, her eyes blowing wide.
Miranda smiled at her, genuine and intense. "Seems like some hope was appropriate, after all."