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To The Stars
By Corvus no Genmu
Part Two: A Celestial Reasoning
It was quiet here…
There was feeling with no pain…
There was light but it was not blinding…
There was darkness but there was no fear…
She was sitting… at the counter of a bar. Yes, she was certain that it was a bar just from the way she sitting, hunched over the counter and nursing a glass that she had either emptied already or was not yet filled. She wasn't the only patron but she was the only thing truly visible in this place. The others were shadows, vague and undefined as they moved about her, their words nothing but the whispers of an autumn wind though she could almost swear to having heard her name more than once, sometimes in surprise… but almost always in despair…
It seemed even here she could not find true peace.
But it didn't matter.
She would wait for him.
A creaking of a door opening made her turn to look over her shoulder and her breath caught in her throat.
Out there was pain.
Through that door was fear.
Waiting on the other side for her was love.
Life, that's what it was.
She rose up from her seat and started towards the opening, one hand reaching out towards the open door but stopped herself short. She had died once before and would have been content to stay dead. No one has ever before been graced with a second chance at life as she had been. What right did she have for a third?
The utterance of her name in differing variations made her turn back to see those who had already gone on ahead. They stood in silence before her before moving as one and pointing to the door that lay waiting for her. They were smiling, urging her back from whence she came.
She turned and walked out the door.
"Well… that's not as epic as I thought it'd be …" muttered Joker as he managed a glimpse of the Crucible firing off into the depths of space. He couldn't spare any further scrutiny, not when he had a Reaper on the tail of the Normandy. In the copilot seat, EDI was working away at trying to discover whether the Crucible's firing meant anything beyond an incredible amount of energy discharge the likes of which astounded the AI not its output but for its speed. In a matter of minutes the beam had fractured forth into the depths of the Milky Way Galaxy and was gone just as quickly.
Still, she spared a moment to chastise her lover.
"Jeff, please don't try and re-enact that particular film."
Joker didn't respond beyond a teasing smile that suggested his innocence before he twisted the Normandy downwards in a tight spiral just in time for the Reaper giving chase behind them to receive a laser blast to the face from one of its own kin.
"I'm no leaf on the wind, EDI! I'm a bird!"
"Yes, so you have been called approximately three-hundred and seventy two times."
"Really? Damn!" Joker managed to twist the Normandy just in time for its cannon fire to fly harmlessly off into the depths of space rather than colliding into friendly ships. Turning the ship around to make sure that the scanners hadn't inexplicably malfunctioned on him but he knew it to be true with EDI's stunned utterance.
"The Reapers are… gone."
"Yeah… Yeah I can see that…" Joker could indeed and triple checked the scanners once more. Not a single Reaper alive or dead in range of the Normandy's top-of-the-line (thank-you-very-much-Illusive-Man-may-you-rot-in-t he-deepest-pit-of-varren-shit) sensors. "But… where'd they all go?"
"While I cannot even begin to conjecture the possibilities of where and why, I can speculate as to the how."
"The Crucible… She did it!" Joker would have added a joke, a snide remark even, but whatever words he had waiting at the tip of his tongue choked deep in his throat as the Crucible suddenly disengaged itself from the Citadel. "The heck?"
"Jeff… Jeff, I think it's about too—" Too late, the rockets ignited and with a speed far superior than the device could truly possess, it was launching itself far and away. In half-a-blink, EDI calculated its course and trajectory. "JEFF!"
"I'm on it, I'm on it!" Jeff launched the Normandy into pursuit.
But it was out of the pilot's hands to try and unwind the skein of fate. The engines of the Normandy roared at full power but the ship became alive as it deviated from the course that Joker had set for it. Joker heard EDI's shocked exclamations as her hands blurred across her console, trying to find sense in the senseless actions of the Normandy, but he could not spare a moment to listen. Not when he was fighting against his ship to try and save the life of the woman whose life had ended once by his hand, however unintentional, and he'd be damned if he'd let it happen again.
Too bad he had no say in the matter.
Shepard had expected to find herself awake and alive. Heavily injured beneath a pile of rubble or slowly healing in a medical room, preferably the Normandy's. Shepard had certainly not expected to find herself standing in the depths of a seamless void neither of darkness nor of light. Nothing surrounded her, not even a color for whether it is white or black, both were still a something and this was naught but a void of nothing. Turning back, she saw that the door remained with the place she had left behind a second time still open to her but it was neither the door nor its domain which made her eyes widen and mouth drop open in a soundless gape. What she saw should have startled her. Should have had her cursing in shock, maybe even making an oath to God, but she couldn't break the silence. She wouldn't dare.
Not in front of such a beautiful sight.
When she had first seen it, Shepard had thought the Catalyst a being of starry light but such a thing was as a penknife to a sword, both quite sharp but only one can truly cut to the quick. The Catalyst had been a seeming, an illusion based on visuals it perceived through the eyes of its Reapers, but this? This was no mere thing as a projected copy. It was entire galaxies moving and swirling with every color on the known spectrum, comets and meteors streaking forth across shuffled wings, and with a slight lowering of its majestic head atop a swan's neck, revealed eyes like a pair of blue moons. It was massive as a mountain and yet could be no larger than the Normandy itself. It shone like a sun but was as dark as a starry night. She knew it not for what it truly was but what it resembled.
Yet it was not a definition of "what" that she asked but rather a question of…
"Who are you…?"
Its eyes widened by the smallest fraction, a blade of grass bending down amidst an emerald field would appear far more noticeable, but there was no missing the small upward twinge of its reptilian mouth. What it had expected and what it was met with were not the same and so it was both surprised and pleased by a question uttered by one whose race was but a suckling baby in the infinite expanse.
Stargazer.
A thousand voices whispering gently as one in her head surprised Shepard not for the expected pain of such telepathy but how soothing it was and how it seemed to echo more in the depths of her soul than that of her mind.
She saw how the claws of the Stargazer still lingered atop the doorframe and asked, "Are you the one who opened the door?"
Yes.
She swallowed but did not look back to where she had left for fear that the sight would entice her to return. "Can they step through?"
The Stargazer's eyes blinked once but its bemused expression did not falter.
The one can only open the door. It is for them to decide to step through it.
The four whom had enticed her to step through the open door flickered for a moment, their heads moving as though communing with one another before the closest of them stepped forth to the open door.
And closed it.
"Why?"
For his comrades. For his mistakes. For its people. For his world. All beside you, with you, but never because of you each of them left as they wished to leave. No matter the length in which they have stayed, they have no reason, no purpose, to return.
"And I do…" It wasn't a question though it sure sounded like one in her head.
The Stargazer's gaze was unwavering as it answered regardless.
Yes.
"But why me? Out of all the lives lost in this war… Why me?"
The Stargazer's wings rustled along its back, its serpentine tail curling about in the air behind it as it stalked forward with the grace unbecoming of its massive size. It treaded lightly, touching the unseen ground beneath it with its talons first before putting the whole of the foot down. Its hands clenched and unclenched, dexterous fingers twiddling with gently rapping claws.
The door vanished with a swish of majestic tail, wiping away the vestiges of something and leaving the two of them alone in the eternity of nothingness.
Though we may open the door, never before has there been one knocking upon it, banging with all their might to rip it free from its hinges and drag from within a single, solitary soul. The one was nearest when it occurred and admits to… curiosity. What was this one soul worth to earn the attention of one? To that end, the door was opened but even so, a soul cannot be dragged forth unwillingly. You walked out the door then just as you had now, but never once did you stop running, stop to turn and look back at those whom you left behind. The one closed the door behind you and we had turned away, thinking nothing more of you though you bore the mark.
"The mark…?"
It cannot be seen or felt but it is there. A marking of greatness that can make the Root of Creation tremble as every choice made, every action undertaken, can spell damnation or salvation for all who are in your path. Yours would call it a Marking of Fate. Ours has come to call it a Sign of Destiny.
"… You really are what it was looking for, aren't you?" asked Shepard, her eyes not quite meeting those of the Stargazer as she referred to the Leviathans' traitorous AI that had spelled not only their own damnation but that of the entire galaxy for countless millennia. "Some kind of god?"
The one is closest to that which called itself the Catalyst sought… but no such thing as a god may walk the mortal coil as we do. We could not have granted the Catalyst what it truly wanted had it sought us out from the start. We would have tried if it had managed to draw our gaze, despite what it had wrought in its search for an answer. The one chose not to acquiesce a practitioner of genocide.
The Stargazer's eyes narrowed and the stars within its massive form shimmered red as blood.
It took as many lives as there are years for our shared universe. Death was a kindness the one was not so willing to grant but the one did so regardless. The Catalyst and all that it had created blight this universe no longer.
"If you could have stopped it before, why didn't you back when you let me come back to life?" demanded Shepard. "Countless races perished to the Reapers for eons! How can you have been unaware the entire time?!"
The wings of the Stargazer flared open, meteors capable of reforming whole worlds in a wave of fire and ash flared across them as it roared in unified voices upon the human at its feet.
We are not the deities the Catalyst sought! Our eyes do not forever watch all that occurs throughout the entirety of this universe! Do not presume to think us without our own trials and tribulations, that we are not equaled or lesser to others. There are things… Beings that have existed long before our own, before this universe was even a speck of light in the eternity of nothingness. Be thankful that they too were not drawn to your galaxy for they would make a innocent child's antics of the Catalyst and its Reapers. The one still caries the scars from the last encounter, scars that would sunder your planet!
Shepard did not turn her eyes away but she did back down with a slight bowing of her head, an easing in her shoulders as she released a tightly held breath of air. "You're right… I'm sorry."
The Stargazer blinked and reddish hues of hellish light faded once more into the calm oceans of azure and green.
Accepted… The one apologizes as well. Had the one kept an eye upon you, perhaps things would have occurred differently. Perhaps not. What is past is past, the present continues, and the future a mystery unfathomable. You earned the one's attention again and so the one came to rectify the mistake the one or us all should have corrected.
"How did we…" The Stargazer's eyes narrowed and Shepard corrected herself. "How did I get your attention?"
The Crucible.
"What? The Crucible called you here? I thought that I could only use to—"
It was a strange thing to hear, a thousand and one voices snorting as one…
Destroy. Control. Synthesize.
The Stargazer shook its horned head.
No. Those are what the Crucible allowed to the Catalyst so it could not discover the truth. The Crucible was built by the hands of the current generation of life in your galaxy, according to the echoes of all whom lived and died to try and bring the Crucible into creation. Those echoes and those whose voices continue now were carried forth throughout your galaxy, heaved upon the shoulders of the Catalyst's own desire to witness us in the corporeal. Yet, even in such a roaring storm, only a few could truly be heard and of them, yours was the loudest of all.
"So… that's it? You heard my voice and curiosity is what brought you back to destroy the Reapers?"
The Stargazer's eyes blinked twice before its head tilted slightly to the right.
Curiosity beguiled the one to listen, but it was the unity that invoked the one into action. However, you have misunderstood the one. The one did indeed destroy the Catalyst but the one had not done similar to the Reapers.
"What?" gasped Shepard, "But—you said that—"
They blight this universe no longer. Remember, for every Reaper born an entire civilization was massacred. To destroy the Reapers means to destroy them as well. The one could not forgive the Catalyst for the genocide of the living. The one would not, shall never, condone the same for those departed.
"If you didn't destroy them…" Shepard hesitated for a moment. "Then what did you do with them?"
The Stargazer's crocodilian lips stretched back in a fanged smile that could very well have been an amused grin. It approached her and walked further past to gaze out at the nothingness behind her. A solitary tap of clawed toes and a path appeared and at its end… was nothing.
The answer lies in the corporeal. The one trusts it will be a welcomed surprise for you and your entirety.
Shepard glanced up at the Stargazer before her eyes settled on the long stretch of road whose end she could not see but knew what lay there waiting for her. "It's a long way to go."
It is if you wish it to be.
Damned if it wasn't talking to her like that on purpose… "Don't suppose you can give me a lift, huh?"
No.
"Yeah, I thought as much…" Shepard sighed. She started down the road and was surprised to find herself accompanied by the Stargazer. She looked up at it but saw that its gaze was locked at the road's end and with a small smirk Shepard set her own gaze upon it.
There was nothing more that needed to be said.
To Be Continued...
Fin