Sarah looked around at the small camp they'd set up. Their food was set up near the center. The team had scavenged a few supplies from the colony, using it to secure the area from the local wildlife. They had managed to get enough fabric from the colony to set up four make-shift tents.

They were made out of the basic brown and gray fabric that had been available, and supported by several construction poles. The metal itself was actually starting to push through the fabric. Looking at it, Sarah guessed they'd have four nights before replacement tents would have to be constructed.

She sighed, looking down at the now filthy group of seasoned killers before her. Each one had dirt stuck on them, but they had nowhere to clean up. The Akuze colony no longer had working water, and even if it did, the colony itself was filled with looters.

"We can't afford to kill people who would potentially be useful in the war with the Reapers." Sarah had replied, when Jack had suggested that they just eradicate them. Now looking at her team, everyone looking more like they were angry and homeless than the professionals they were.

Sarah looked at her omni-tool, two days until the Alliance rescue team would show up. Two long days. She sighed, dealing with Jennifer and Jack bickering all day long was worse than the isolation had been before. As the soldier heard the two start to raise their voices once more, she said, "Enough, both of you!" marching to the two. "Whatever your issues with each other are, could you please, for the love of any gods that are out there, keep them to yourselves until after we've gotten off this planet? It's been two weeks, and you've done nothing but argue with each other. Day in and day out. If you don't quit it, I will send both of you to your own camps, and not let you access the supplies we have here."
"What supplies, Shepard?" Jack asked, looking at the Commander, "The few scraps of food you've got left?"
"We've got enough to get out of here. So long as everyone keeps their shit together."
"Shepard, you dealt with this when you were on your own last time. This time you've got six mouths to feed, and you are horrible at managing resources. You've gone completely insane since the thresher attack."
"I have to act that way so that they don't think I'm a horrible commander. If I show them that I knew what I was doing. That I knew my team was going to die, I would lose my career. And if I go down, so does all the galaxy. The Reapers'll come, and fuck us up. The only way that this works out for the best is if you listen to me, and do what I say."

"I keep telling Jack that she's overreacting..." Jennifer said.

"There are a lot of things that have to be done in order to make a lie believable, Jack. Everything I have done since the first reversal has been to save as many people as quickly as possible."
"Everything you've done is to make sure that the cheerleader is okay!"
"You saw what happened to me when she wasn't, Jack."
"Yeah. It was fucking pathetic. That Cerberus bitch has you whipped so hard that you literally can't live without her. You're a fucking soldier, Shepard. The first time 'round you were the lone survivor of this mission. You should be fucking used to losing people you're fucking. Yet when Lawson dies, suddenly you suddenly lose all will to live. You fucking let the Alliance stick you in a cell for two years after you blew up the relay. Never tried to get out of there so you could actually be useful in preparing everyone for the arrival of the Reapers.

"You just insisted on moping about your girlfriend being dead. Even two years after she died you hadn't started to move on. You're whipped Shepard, and I can't fucking stand it. On Purgatory you were a cold blooded bitch who got the fucking job done. You put your people in harm's way to get the fucking job done. After that fake bitch died you suddenly quit taking risks. You nearly lost an arm saving people from minor injuries.

"You've lost your spine, Shepard. You're too fucking scared of your team dying to do what is necessary to get shit done. So why don't you quit that bitch who fucked you up so much?"
Sarah looked at Jack in silence for a moment, then said, "I still get the job done, Jack. And I sacrificed twenty plus good soldiers. Soldiers I knew, respected. Men and women I saw as brothers and sisters.

"I knew that I was sending them to the grave. Sent them to the void, because it had to be done in order to protect the timeline. And I may have put my people in harm's way, but it was because it was the only way to ensure the survival of as many as possible. I may have put them in danger, but it wasn't a danger they couldn't handle. I may take small risks with my team, but I never send them to where they will certainly die if I can avoid it.
"There's always another way. You say that Miranda is the cause of me acting softer, but it isn't. You just saw things out of context before. So you assumed me to be something I'm not. Something I've never been. Sacrifices are a last resort, not done at first just because they'll be faster. I'm doing the job right, not fast. If I were trying to end this quickly, I would have done what the Catalyst wanted. Then it would be over. The Reapers would be gone.
"But it wouldn't be the right way to finish a mission. Too many unnecessary deaths. Permanent damage to galactic infrastructure. It would have put us back tens of thousands of years. Shatter the galactic community."
"Well we wouldn't be standing here, with next to nothing to eat. Crammed into a small space for security."
"Would you rather be doing that with no hope for things getting better in your lifetime?" Sarah asked, walking to the center of the camp. She looked around, and said, "Do you know what I had last time I was in this position? A pistol, a knife, the little armor that hadn't been eaten by maw acid, and whatever animals I could kill for food. To start a fire I had to cut down a tree, and cut it into usable logs. To ignite the damn stuff I had to use functions of my omni-tool that I didn't understand to produce heat. It could be a hell of a lot worse than this. Two more days, and then we'll be back in civilized space. Have a medic look over our wounds, get cleaned up, then have a good meal. Two more days, then we're out of here."
Jack nodded, then turned to Jennifer, and said, "Told you it would only take a week to make Shepard lose her shit."

"You did. You win, this time, Jack." Jennifer said, tossing Jack some credits. The con caught them, and said,

"Shepard, I wasn't being serious. I was just curious how you'd react if I flipped out at you like that."
Sarah shook her head, and said, "I can't believe you. I was half tempted to rip your head off."
"Relax, Sarah." Miranda said, looking up at the Commander while tossing a log onto the fire.
"So, two days waiting left?" Jacob asked.
"Yup. Two days, and then we can all go back to our lives and jobs. Then we'll not see each other for a few years."
"Then you'll die." Jacob said, "You sure that you can keep coming back like this?"
"Ninety-eight percent sure. And if not, well, you'll have to work your asses off to cover for my being a corpse."
"If you're a corpse, we're not going to have much of a chance against the Reapers."
"Yeah, keep telling yourselves that. I'm counting on you to win if I die. I'll feel really guilty if my death doomed everyone."
"You could just not die." Miranda said.

"Sadly not an option. If what I've been told is a hundred percent accurate that would just screw everyone."
"Great..." Miranda sighed.

"I know it sucks. But hey, at least I've got a chance to die only one more time. That should be a plus."

"It better be only one more time. I don't want to put you back together more than three times."
"The first two you didn't have any attachment to me, so those couldn't have been too emotionally difficult."

"They were still a massive bloody challenge. Do you have any idea how many tools we had to invent because we needed them and no one had created something like it yet?"
"The files on Lazarus Station said eighteen."
"Out of twenty."
"Okay, it was a bit more of a challenge than I thought. I'll try to get things under control so that we don't have to turn time back to before I died."
"Was everything this weird the first time you went through this?" Jennifer asked Wrex.

"We didn't know what was going on back then." the krogan replied, fiddling with his shotgun.

"Well, if things were normal we wouldn't exactly need time travel to take care of the threat. An ordinary threat can be handled fairly easily. No need to risk destroying the universe to fix them."

"Wait, this shit could destroy the universe?"
"Yeah, if people aren't careful about not changing things, there'll be horrible fucking consequences. There's a reason this shit was mandated to be only used as a last result to prevent enemy objectives from being achieved."
"You still haven't told us who's doing the mandating."

"There's a mandate that I don't tell you. Not before first contact is made."
"What about the bit where one of your people who got nuked showed up?" Jack asked.

"I can't say anything. Everything will be fine, just trust me on this one."
"Why can't you say?"
"Shit will kill you in a way that there is no way to prove that it wasn't just the place you were messing you up."
"Great..." Jack said, leaning back against a tree. "Anything that you can tell us?"

"I'll be fine." Sarah replied, grabbing a small log, and throwing it into the dwindling fire. She stared into it, and images flew through her mind, as she watched the tongues of flame lap at the log. Her eyes glazed over, as another consciousness engulfed her own.

-=0=-

Thirty years the enemy had attacked. Thirty years had they struck my mind. Thirty years they had sought to take me. Turn me into their puppet. Every day the strain of it made me weaker and weaker.

I continued to struggle to maintain my freedom.

But, I was only one man, and they were a legion. I pushed them back time and time again, but it was inevitable that they would take me. I looked around, I could see the flames of what had once been my home. There was nothing left, but bright flames. Those who had once been my friends and family stood around my home.

They were no longer the ones who I had known. They had been taken by the enemy. And there was only so long that I could maintain my own freedom. I could feel them pushing at me even now. Attempting to enslave me. I looked at the pistol at my side. There was only one way I could save myself.

I wrapped my hand around the grip, a single finger around the trigger. I placed the barrel to the side of my head, and I slowly squeezed. For a few seconds, I waited, then finished it. A round pierced my skull as I said, "Lucis entia intra dominium nunc. Colligo hoc loco spiritum meum, ut sanctificarent aeternus."

-=0=-

Sarah shook her head, and said, "That was weird."

"What? The way your eyes glazed over and you started staring really intently at the fire?" Jennifer asked.

"I felt like I was surrounded. Forced to look through something else's eyes in its last moments. Hear its thoughts, just before it took its own life. Listen to its final words..."
"Do you have anything else you could say about what happened? Anything that might help us figure out what was going on?" Miranda asked, concern clear in her voice.

The Commander looked at her lover, and said, "If I could, I would say it. But I don't really know what is going on here."
"You're not mentioning something. What is it, Sarah?" Miranda inquired suspiciously.
"I'm not hiding anything."

"You're a bloody horrible liar."
"Miri, you know me. If I were hiding something from you, it would have to be something that I can't tell you without putting you into unnecessary danger."
"I see. It's regarding... them."
"Precisely." Sarah replied.

-=0=-

A/N: Thanks for reading the latest chapter. Hope you enjoyed it, and if you did please leave a review.