Part 2, Chapter 11, Soldier:
Commander Ashley Williams looked out into the clouds. Without her helmet's infrared, like Shepard she'd taken hers off, she could barely make out her boots as she sat atop Little Tahoma. Still, the skipper wanted to go for a hike, so here she was. Weather was marginal; a cold biting wind stung her face. The Park Ranger at Paradise had only let them on the mountain since they were wearing hard suits. They were ultra-light hard suits, but hard suits nonetheless. Honestly, Ash thought to herself, if you're going to go climbing in a space suit you might as well go somewhere with a view. Olympus Mons was her personal favorite.
Ash caught herself, Shepard was saying something, "…into you."
Damn this taking our helmets off, I can't hear a thing in this wind, Williams thought. "I'm sorry skipper, what did you say?" She looked at her former commander.
Shepard snapped out of what was a dead ringer for the thousand-meter stare and looked at her. Shepard's face smiled, but not her eyes. "I said," she paused, "battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you." She flashed that false smile again, "And please Ashley, call me Vikki."
Oh shit! Alarm klaxons started wailing in Ashley's brain. Shepard had just quoted Friedrich Nietzsche and called her Ashley in the same breath. Since when are you into quoting philosophy? Call me Vikki? That thing with her daughter must have really rattled her. Something was definitely wrong. "Well, since we're getting all literary, what abyss has looked into you," she paused, "Vikki?"
"I never wanted children," Shepard responded. Ash was thrown off by the non sequitur. "I hated them growing up. Too loud and dirty, they were always doing something annoying. I just wanted to slap them. Not that it mattered to me; I wanted a career in the Navy just like my parents'." Victoria turned to look toward where the horizon would be if not for the shifting clouds. She had the thousand-meter stare again. "Then there was that business on Eden Prime, and I had found another reason I didn't want children. The universe was just too fucked up and dangerous, anyone who wanted to bring more life into this universe was a sadist!"
Ashley leaned back slightly. She had never seen this much raw emotion out of her former commander before. It was sobering.
"Then I met her, and things changed," holy shit, is she crying? "I wanted her. I wanted family with her, and there wasn't a thing in the universe that would stop me from getting that and keeping it safe. Not even dying stopped me," she chuckled. "You know, I can't have children?" She looked at Ash, she even seemed surprised, "Cerberus couldn't fix all of the pieces after all, and some things there just aren't substitutes for."
"I fought monsters Ashley, big ones. I helped make an entire hyper-race of living machines extinct. Evil or not, needing to be destroyed or not, I personally committed xenocide. I destroyed an entire Mass Relay once, killed 300,000 Batarians. I've killed people; straight-up murdered a few. I've killed enough that I never bothered keeping count. Sometimes I even enjoyed it. I've sent friends to their deaths. I've watched them die. I killed my mother," Shepard's voice cracked, she paused, "Just like I killed my wife's mother while she watched no further from her than you are to me now."
Shepard turned to look Williams in the face. The fog cleared just enough so they could lock eyes. Victoria's emerald green gaze pieced the space between them with a passionate intensity. "I didn't do it for you, I didn't do it for the Alliance, I didn't do it for the Council, and I didn't do it for the Milky Way. I did it for them. I became a monster to keep my baby safe from monsters, and what I've become nearly killed her. I cannot let her face that same abyss, never again."
Shepard looked out. Suddenly, amazingly, the sky was clear. The Fleet Base's tower lights twinkled. She smiled. For a moment, she was at peace.
And then, the moment was gone.
She took a deep breath.
For Victoria, time seemed to dilate. From deep within her she pooled her biotic energy to a level she hadn't used since the war, even including the incident with Samara. She remembered again how good it felt. A faint mass effect glow enveloped her. "I think, Ashley, this rough beast's time has come round." Then, in a singular act, she did what she felt she must.
Wait, was that a fucking Yeats quote? thought Ashley. Then, faster than she could have possibly reacted, Shepard, enveloped in a powerful mass effect, flew off the top of Little Tahoma in a biotic storm.
Shepard, detached from reality, didn't consciously register that she was now a hundred meters from where she was sitting on the craggy top of a mountain. She didn't notice that there was nothing but two hundred meters of air separating her from the rock face below. Nor did she notice the cold air whistling past her pale white face and billowing through her fire-red hair as she plummeted, head first, towards her abyss.
She couldn't hurt Liara or Samara ever again. She wouldn't doom them to the fate that befell her. She was taking her monster back into the abyss with her, where it wouldn't hurt her family again. A clean break, it's best this way.
Shepard fought and, in her mind, won her last battle.
Victoria Shepard, hero, wife, mother, died with a smile on her face.