One year later
This wing of the hospital was quiet this late at night, except for the beeps of the life support machines. Here long-term, comatose patients were housed. The nurse enjoyed the relative peace. These wounded soldiers did not expect anything - unlike the outpatients she worked with who seemed to be searching for their Florence Nightingale. Ever since the end of the war everyone just wanted to get married and have babies... The nurse stopped for a second, and stared at her favorite enigma of a patient.
This soldier was found in the rubble of London, heavily wounded and wearing armor so abused no information could be gleaned from it. Everyone assumed she was with the Alliance, or possibly a freelance. With the biometrics system in shambles it was still impossible to find any next-of-kin for the woman. Records destroyed during the war were beyond retrieval.
As time passed, most of the soldiers from the Reaper War either recovered or died. But this one hung on, in between. The nurse supposed the woman was simply too stubborn to die.
But tonight something was different. Scans showed activity in several new areas of the patient's brain. She was waking up!
"I'm gonna need a doctor in here."
A woman's face swam into focus. Shepard blinked again, trying to move her legs and finding she could not. A sense of Déjà vu overtook her, along with a sense of anger.
"What is it this time? Galactic boogeymen who like the taste of human children? Organized armies of thresher maws armed with Cains? Why else would you bother bringing me back?"
At least that was what she tried to say. What the nurse heard was tangled grunts mixed with expletives.
"You need to calm down, honey. You are in a hospital in Los Angeles. You have been comatose for over a year, since the end of the Reaper War." The nurse used a smile Shepard assumed worked to calm most of her patients. She glared back, her eyes like a green natural disaster.
A doctor arrived. "We have not had any luck identifying you, can you please give me your name? And if you have anyone to call, I am sure they would be overjoyed to hear from you. I'm sure everyone thinks that you are dead!"
She was supposed to be dead. That sick Reaper child had lied. He said she would be dead! "The Reapers? They're gone?"
"Yes!" The nurse smiled. "The great hero Commander Shepard died activating the Crucible, but her sacrifice was not in vain. All of the Reapers, and also the Geth died in the explosion. We are in the process of repairing the…"
"Nurse, the patient does not need to hear the state of the galaxy. Please give me your name."
So she was a heroic sacrifice. Would anyone think she was a hero knowing she was the greatest mass murder alive, since destroying the Geth was complete genocide?
Some heroes are supposed to be sacrificed. Usually the enemy they fight is too powerful to survive. But even more so its because the mess they create in finishing the enemy is too large to clean up.
Apparently she was now a model of greatness, for the rest of the galaxy to aspire to in these rough, post reaper times. A message of steadfastness in the face of difficulty. Shame she was about to ruin it… But what if she didn't? Even Commander Shepard could not come back from the dead twice, she decided. All heroes need their rest.
"It's Nash. Uhh…" Her eyes fell on a vase of flowers across the ward from her. "Rose Nash."