The last thing he remembered was sadness as he pulled the trigger of his Carnifex pistol over and over until the last thing he saw was a certain quarian's face become engulfed in red and orange flames, licking devilishly at his face and scoring heat across his body. He remembered at how he managed to escape the Catalyst's attempt at getting him indoctrinated, by giving him three choices and making two of them sound better than the one he picked.

He was given a choice to lose his body and control the reapers. One he overruled immediately. He would've been no better than The Illusive Man. Even if he could control them, how long would it be until he became corrupted or got his mind taken over by the reapers? Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The next choice seemed too good to be true. Synthesis, a true mutualism between synthetics and organics. The Catalyst claimed it to be the final step in evolution, but Shepard saw the flaw in this. How would they retain their uniqueness? It wasn't right, he couldn't force this on them. So he decided on the last choice, destroy the reapers and all synthetics.

I'm sorry, EDI and Legion, there's no other way. I'm sorry, Tali. I hope you live happily. I love you.

His mind was split in two. Half of it was under indoctrination influence and the other half saw clearly. He warred with himself, but his self will was winning. He barely heard the Catalyst screaming at him about how foolish his choice was and how it threatened him by returning him to the most primitive stage of humanity.

He felt the sharp pain in his back. The pain engulfed him and he felt like his being itself was being ripped to shreds. I have to end this. He continued to walk forward and shot faster, eager to destroy the power conduit. All the while the Catalyst screamed and fired whatever thing it was into his back. Shepard continued to shoot until he succeeded at blowing up the conduit.

He sailed backwards from the flames, pain reaching every inch of his body. Everything in him told him that he was dead, but his eyes were wide open, and he saw the Crucible emitting an orange glow. The galaxy, it's finally safe.

At that last thought, the energy was released and he was knocked out. His cybernetics deactivating.

He thought he dreamed.

He was surrounded by a lush scene of greenery. He was standing, unharmed, on a grassy hill that stretched far down into a field. The sun was high above him and wispy clouds stayed stagnant in the air. Behind him, about fifty yards away, was a rushing stream of water, crashing on the steep rocks that trapped it.

To the right of the river, far away, stood a spectacular view of a mountain range that faded to the color of the sky the higher it stretched. To the left of the river was a large lake the river came from, deep blue and stretching far until the other side was barely visible.

Before him held a curious sight. A forest never ending. The wall of trees was just...there. It stretched as far as he could see to the right past the lake, and left past the mountains. The forest was flat against itself, like it didn't dare grow past an invisible line.

Shepard was uneasy. Something was very eerie about this place. The air was silent. There wasn't any wind, or any sound of wildlife. There were no insects to be spotted and plants other than trees and grass seemed nonexistent.

But the forest. It was just too creepy. The trees of the forest themselves seemed nice, but just the way they were placed, it was too organized. It was well kept, and they seemed to go on forever, it was just nerve itching.

Someone is definitely here, or some group.

As an answer to his thoughts, the sound of light, slow pair of footsteps followed by a thump of something heavy disturbed the angry silence.

Shepard looked for a gun he didn't have. Instead he noticed he was still wearing his armor. He would have to fist fight whatever is emerging if it came down to it. But strangely, he heard...talking?

The pair of voices sounded like they came from some elderly men chatting cheerfully, as if reminiscing on old times. Shepard ran down the hill and stayed a moderate distance from the trees. He soon confirmed what he heard as he saw a vision of two old men, one that had a cane, come into view.

Shepard didn't lower his fists, he didn't trust easy. He didn't know where he was, for all he knew this could be another trick from the Catalyst.

When the men emerged, he noticed the one with the cane was a human and the other was quarian. They looked up and waved to Shepard like he was an old friend, "Look who came back from the land of the living!" The old human called.

"Where am I? What did you do to me?" Shepard threatened. He noticed the old human slumped over his dark wooden cane and had circular glasses. He was bald except for white hair that stretched from the sides of his ears and met in the back of his head. He wore a dark green vest that looked more like a rug and wore a brown, unbuttoned jacket over that to match his brown pants and dark shoes. He looked like a happy old grandpa.

The quarian, however, also leaned over a little but didn't need a cane. He wore a dark gray enviro-suit with a lighter gray visor. Shepard noticed that he didn't wear too much armor, but the smaller pieces he did wear were gold. He also noticed that the thin stretch of fabric that went over his head matched the color of his armor. He looked official, and reminded Shepard of an old egyptian pharaoh.

The two men chuckled and slowly bursted into a hearty laugh.

"What's so funny?"

The human raised his cane and pointed at him with a laughing tear in his eye, "That's the exact same thing you said the first time you were here!"

What?

"You mean, that I'm...dead?"

"Eh, more or less," replied the quarian nonchalantly.

Shepard was shocked. He's dead, and apparently he was here before. How come he can't remember anything?

As if reading his mind the human answered, "Don't sweat it, young'un. You aren't meant to remember this place yet, not for a long, 'time.'" The man mocked the last word.

"Where am I?"

"As he said, you aren't meant to remember for a long time," the quarian answered.

"Is this heaven? Or the realm of the Ancestors?"

They rolled their eyes, "As we said..."

"Why?"

"Because you aren't finished," the quarian put in.

"Finished what? Defeating the reapers?"

The men laughed. Then the human poked Shepard with his cane, "Let me ask you something, is this truly what you want?"

"Is what, what I want?"

The quarian chuckled, "Just close your eyes and think about your greatest desire."

Shepard was skeptical. What did this have to do with anything? He wasn't getting answers and his patience is starting to whittle away. But figuring that he had nothing else left to lose now that he was dead, Shepard closed his eyes.

He felt the grass beneath his feet die and turn into desert, the air was thinning and it felt incredibly hot. He opened his eyes and his breath was taken away as he held a glorious view. He was standing on a rock formation high in the sky, a sun named Tikkun shedding its rays. Looking down, he saw a gorgeous house and further away still, stood a vast ocean. He heard footsteps behind him and realized it was the two men. The quarian spoke.

"Ah Rannoch, it is a beautiful place. Many would not think so from its climate, but home is home, such a shame that so many of my kind could not see it in their mortal lives. But let me ask you, is it odd for a singular organism from a species that did not originate from this world, desire it for its own?"

Shepard thought hard. He didn't desire to take over the planet if that's what he was asking. He thought the question was odd, but then again, so was his answer to the previous one. All of Rannoch was there to bear witness to his desire, so he couldn't really back away from it, literally nor figuratively. Sighing, he thought until he came up with a suitable answer the quarian's pending question.

"I desire what the quarians desire. I wish to give them a happy and long life on their home world. Without threats from every corner of the galaxy."

The human patted his shoulder, "And you did! Except for one."

Shepard perked his eyebrow, "Who?"

He smiled, "The reason why you went back in the first place."

With that, the world around him faded along with the two men and he was left with nothing but darkness. An empty darkness. It's tendrils unwrapped around him and he was met with the most beautiful sight, better than anything else in the galaxy.

It was a young quarian woman, with a purple visor and a purple hood and cloth wrappings that had white whorls to pattern it, her eyes gleamed like the shiniest pearls. Tali. He smiled.

The men's voices reached him through the darkness. Tali didn't seem to hear them.

First the human spoke, "She sees you, too. Although time is irrelevant when you're dead."

Sadness ripped him, "You mean I failed her?"

"Oh, no, no, no! She is still breathing with a heart beating, my friend. She's just witnessing a hole in the fabric of time and space. A form of déjà vu, if you will."

Shepard sighed in relief at the clarification.

"You went back the first time because you did not find her love then," the quarian elder then said.

The shadowy tendrils wrapped around him again as his thoughts darkened, "And now that I found it..." He trailed off sadly. He saw his lover's speaker light darken and she raised her hand it protest.

The human elder interrupted, "Nonsense! Now you must keep that love if you wish to fulfill all the quarians desires."

Shepard heart ached, "How can I? The first time I died I had the means of going back through Cerberus, now nobody can do it again! I mean, I could've used the project on myself, but I didn't know if-" Shepard paused, feeling hopelessly lost, the two men seemed so certain that he would be returning to his corporeal form, but he didn't see why he should. "Why am I going back? What makes Tali and I so important in the universe? Why do we get special treatment?"

The quarian elder laughed, "Sometimes, the universe just needs a little miracle, that is you. You altered the variables."

With that, Shepard heard a snap of fingers and a light appear in the distance. Below the light was Tali, still looking disheartened from Shepard's disappearance. The light shone brightly above here but she seemed reluctant to see what the light itself was. Her head came down, visibly thinking, pondering. It was a few moments before it looked like she came to a kind of decision, so she nodded turned to the light, grabbing one of its tendrils and leaving with one last glance towards the darkness before being surrounded.

"You know, this was before you even shot at that power conduit," said the human.

What?

Light swirled down and enveloped Shepard.

He thought he dreamed.

He took his first breath of new life, forgetting everything except for one name on his lips.

Tali.

His vision was blurry as was his hearing. Pain gnawed at every inch of him inside and out and he felt like he was submerged in water. His body felt heavy and everything screamed at him in confusion.

It only took a moment like lightning to make his senses clear and a moment like thunder to understand what kind of state he was in. He was lying down on a pile of rocks, armor melted to his body, surrounded by blood...his blood. Why couldn't I just die already? His thoughts were hung by a strand. A strand that refused for him to disconnect from life.

He then heard voices. They were barely audible over the sounds of crackling wildfires and structures collapsing in the distance.

"-eck again! Holy hell the man's still alive!"

"Well, don't just stand there, you idiot! Call in a med-evac!"

"On it!"

He looked over and saw two human soldiers above him on a pile of debris, one on his omni-tool. "What happened?" Shepard croaked.

The one not on his omni-tool jumped down next to him. "Hey, save your breath. You're in a really bad shape. Like a bad ending level bad. Your heartbeat flatlined and your all in all just a mess." The soldier turned from Shepard and rifled through his gear, revealing to him a happy sight of medi-gel. The soldier was quick to start applying it.

Shepard let out a lung popping cough. Pain dug deep into his chest and his throat felt like a desert rock desperate for water. His nose felt stuffy and his sinuses ached, and he was very nauseated. His own skin even felt like a scratchy rug. But in all this time Shepard dared not move a muscle, afraid that the pain might become unbearable.

The other soldier came back over the debris and sat down. "They're on their way, ETA two minutes," he said simply as he looked down at the great savior of the galaxy, reduced to a bloody heap of flesh. Shepard was visibly ill, so much that he was pale and his breaths were shallow. If his wounds didn't kill him, then this sickness just might. Shepard didn't want to die like that in front of these guys, that would just be insulting.

"Just hang in there Commander. Focus on your breathing or something," the soldier said.

A minute passed and the soldier that applied the medi-gel spoke, "In case if you were wondering. My name's Redge, and my friend here is "Sweet Street" Sibs. He got his nickname not too long ago. He held off a whole bunch of those zombie things on a road awhile back."

"The only thing I kept telling everybody about the experience was that it was sweet," Sibs chuckled. Redge punched him lightly in the shoulder, "You mean just the guys, to all the girls you told them how horrifying it was, saying you could've died multiple times."

"In all fairness that dying bit is true." Shepard grinned at the banter, it reminded him of him and Garrus.

Shepard croaked, "You mean you were here when the reapers first arrived?"

Sibs looked down despairingly, "Yeah. Never did I imagine giant metallic creatures to swim down from the sky like sea monsters. Never thought, 'hell on earth,' would take a literal meaning. I'm surprised I'm alive."

"Yeah, me too," Shepard chuckled painfully, then coughed.

A loud roar of a shuttle came into view and the soldiers flagged it down. In mere moments people came out and painfully rolled Shepard into a stretcher, his blood staining it a very bright red. Everything was a blur of pain and inaudible voices as a light shined in his eyes. He coughed harder, it felt like his lungs were going to kill themselves. Before he knew it, he was in the shuttle, ready to be taken to wherever.

"He looks like a ghost," one of the medical staff said. The two soldiers climbed in after him and took seats on opposite sides of the shuttle. "Wouldn't surprise me, his pulse was on a flatline when we found him. For how long? I don't know," Redge replied.

"I don't even think that he should still be alive," Sibs added with an air of still-processing belief.

Shepard's headache pounded his brain as the shuttle flew, painfully massaging his mind into sleep as he finally passed out.

TWO WEEKS LATER

Shepard opened his eyes slowly. Warm light cascaded from the windows onto his face, kissing him with gentle heat. He took a few moments of rest before trying to discover where he was. To his left was an abrupt wall that touched his bedside, and to his right was a window and a large machine that beeped slowly and had all kinds of screens, knobs, and colors. He noticed the machine had several cords that stretched over to him.

That's when he realized he had an oxygen mask on, giving him the freshest, purest, rawest air. He looked down and saw a large, white half circular machine stretch across his chest and upper thighs, its white metal gleaming in the sunlight. He also noticed that he wore a baggy white suit that was inflated, so that none of it touched the top of his body. Above him he noticed a small black device that Shepard recognized in helping with decontamination. Am I in quarantine?

He started to test his limbs, he put a slight bend to his knees and elbows. The lack of use caused him to groan with discomfort but not necessarily pain. He felt weak. But he also didn't feel normal. He was hungry, and energy seemed nonexistent. How long was I out? Did I get fed at all? He also felt more susceptible to the air around him, like the faintest breeze could cause his chest to explode. But his skin, his body, it also felt different. He couldn't quite put a finger on it.

The door at the far end of the small room opened and a middle aged man with glasses and a doctor's coat with an oxygen mask on entered. His hair was black on top that faded to gray around his ears. He carried a datapad and a stethoscope. "I ran down here as fast as I could as soon as I saw you were awake," he explained.

"Who are you?" Shepard said with effort, dryness coating his throat.

"I am Doctor Philanskis, I've been taking care of you since you arrived."

"How long was I out?"

"Precisely two weeks."

Shepard's head swam. Current events were still a little fuzzy. He couldn't quite grasp onto what exactly going on at the moment. Desperate for something more solid, he started asking the questions about the past weeks while he was out. He needed some serious catching up to do. Meanwhile the Doctor looked over the machine near the window, testing its many instruments.

"Did we win?"

The Doctor laughed, "We did, thanks to you. One blast from the Crucible and the reapers fell like stones to an ocean. We came back from the Rendezvous Point and were surprised to see you still alive. Or mostly, at least. It was nasty work peeling that armor off your body."

Shepard noticed that the Doctor wore mild self protection clothing, so Shepard was not in quarantine. Which led to his next question.

"What happened to me? What's my condition?"

"Whatever you were doing on the Citadel somehow shot your immune system to hell," the Doctor sighed, "You suffered severe nerve damage. Luckily we reactivated your cybernetics and now all we have to do is wait for your body to learn how to feel again. Meanwhile, I suggest you don't move in any awkward angles or else you will receive an overload of neural messages...it would be a pretty nasty shock."

The Doctor paused at his examination and turned back to Shepard before continuing, "And some geneticists downstairs noticed you been through some sort of mutation. Something about your DNA returning to some basic form, like stem cells, but not entirely. I don't know exactly."

That Catalyst tried to make me less human, I guess he succeeded somewhat. At least now he knew why he felt different.

"There's one last thing, you're malnourished. We fed you a lot of food to keep energy in your body, but for some reason your body rejected most of the food we gave you. You always acted poisoned after being fed. It was terrifying. Right now we know that small amounts of corn, rice, and beans don't harm you. We resulted to sterilizing food and using pastes with human nutrients, but we are even still cautious about those."

Shepard groaned. His stomach growled and talking about food wasn't helping his case. But before he could complain, a loud knock came to the door and it opened to reveal an old man in a pristine, blue Alliance Navy uniform and an oxygen mask over his scarred face. Admiral Hackett.

Shepard quickly lifted his hand in a salute, but a large shock coming from both his shoulder and elbow screamed at him. He loudly gasped in pain and clenched his teeth, dropping his arm.

"Easy, son," The Admiral ordered.

The Doctor came to the bedside and started massaging his arm. "That's what I meant by a nasty shock."

"What can I do for you, sir?" Shepard asked the Admiral.

"Always ready to help, Commander. That's one thing I admire about you. For right now, you can help me by resting. You took a very nasty hit when you saved the galaxy back there. How do you feel?"

"I feel dead. But how are things going out there?"

"Fairly well. A lot of progress had been made in the last two weeks. We were very surprised when we found you. Apparently you crawled to safety after the Crucible was fired. Two soldiers said they found you in a crater surrounded by heaps of human remains. One of them nearly puked in his helmet."

Shepard smiled, "Sibs and Redge, I need someone to remind me to thank them for saving my life."

"Hey, you should thank the two soldiers for saving your life," the Doctor joked.

"Later, remind me later," Shepard laughed. The small interaction caused a memory of something similar come to mind. Back when he was crawling through holes in the Normandy when he was fighting a clone of himself with Wrex and...Tali.

"Admiral?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"Where's the Normandy and her crew? Are they here?"

Hackett's eyes darkened and his mouth curved to a frown. Oh no, God please no. Shepard tried to prepare himself for the worst news. If he was alive and they were...gone...

"They never showed up to the Rendezvous Point. We haven't found any sign of them around the system. Currently, they are M.I.A. We believe they might have suffered some critical damage, we have search parties everywhere looking for them. Quarian Admiral Raan vas Tonbay had provided a lot of help in tracking her down. Goes to show what people will do for those who gave their homeworld back."

Shepard looked down in despair, the Normandy was gone, and so was her crew, and so was Tali. But even still a little ray of hope shined within him, they weren't dead. Until they were found, they will never be dead. They'll make it back, I sure hope they do. Shepard's mind then retracted a few steps back to the Crucible.

"What about the geth?"

"Surprised you knew about that," the Admiral raised and eyebrow. "Right now they are rebuilding. All of them shut down after the Crucible fired. Other species found that some of the geth locked down their memory cores before the blast. Most weren't so lucky. They're remaking a hundred units a day."

"So, they're still alive?"

"Yes, why?"

Shepard took a deep breath and recounted what happened on the Citadel. When he finished, the old Admiral grimaced. "You did what was right. You are right. The fact that you managed to choose for yourself while under indoctrination influence is beyond me. You're a special man, Commander."

"Doesn't feel like it," Shepard groaned.

"Bad things happen to good people, but bad things also make good people. Your influence in the face of extinction changed a lot of lives."

"Thank you, Admiral."

"Your welcome, Shepard. Right now, you need to rest. I'll leave you be." The Admiral smiled under his mask, turned, and left the room.

For the next several days he had updates from none other than the psychotic biotic Jack herself. She informed him that Wrex was also out searching for his quarian niece. Shepard couldn't help but smile a little from the news. It's good to know that he cares about her almost as much as I do. He then smirked to himself. He's probably doing it as a favor.

Shepard was surprised at first when Jack showed first hints of sharing concern about the crew when she assured him that the search parties will find Tali and the rest of the Normandy.

"Maybe your boy scout attitude is rubbing off on me, I still don't like it," she said, but with more expletives.

Shepard only laughed, "Maybe you see yourself as the Normandy, carrying a whole bunch of crazy..."

He paused to give her a meaningful smile. "...A whole bunch of good crazy."

Jack rolled her eyes, then sagged her shoulders, taking his words to heart. "I did find myself on that ship. I guess it is a little sentimental. Thanks again, Shepard."

He smiled a little wider as Jack left the room, glad to see how far she had come. "No problem."

It wasn't long before Shepard got any word about the Normandy, in fact it was only a week later when a messenger came in with very surprising news. However, the week itself was absolutely antagonizing for him as he continued stressing and worrying. He couldn't have been more happy and relieved when he heard what the news was.

"The Normandy is back!"