seventeen
"So, you're Anderson or Shepard."
The sound of the ocean hissed and swelled into a great sigh before crashing onto the beach of memory.
Shhhhhhhhhhhepard.
He was Shepard.
The thin skin of nothing that slowly enclosed the struggling entity strung across space, the protective bubble holding Kat captive, the kernel of self in a hidden section of the Citadel, the being who had existed without purpose for two hundred years, the man who had plunged his hands into two columns of blue fire to end a war. The man who had made a choice, who had had to make so many damned choices; who had been so bone-achingly tired. All but dead. Who had been called upon to make one final sacrifice and had done it, willingly, knowing his trip up the pipe had been made on a one way ticket.
The man who had watched Anderson die, who had been powerless to save his friend at the last.
The sensation of pain rippled through him, not only the memory of his death, but all the pain of before. Riding the wave of a Reaper beam, fighting his way to that point. Being broken, broken and broken again. The bodies and the gore. The stink of blood and burnt flesh, hot metal and decay. Death. He could hear a scream, a million screams, and the low, ominous rumble of war.
And he could hear his name, over and over, as they called on him to fight, to keep fighting, to hold it together, to do what no one else could do, or wanted to do.
Shepard.
Emotion rolled through him, touching off the points of remembrance. He quaked and the asteroid trembled beneath him. Tendrils of black battered against his skin, seeking to poke holes in him, and Kat rolled across the floor of the cavern, crying out as her arm struck an outcropping of rock. He pushed back, thickened the substance of his self enough to cushion her bone, but she would still bruise.
His sense of loss was so great, he thought he might fall through the bottom of the galaxy. A thirst for vengeance took away the breath he did not have, though he could not pinpoint the target. Anger rocked him.
He wanted to scream, but he had no voice. He wanted to withdraw, make himself into a pebble that might be crushed beneath the weight of a million million deaths, the sound of his memories, but he could not. He existed, and while he had consciousness, he had to fight.
He was a soldier.
He was Shepard.