All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

43. 1-36: All the Stars, Part I - Loss

End of Section 1

1-36

All the Stars, Part I - Loss

---

In small steps at a time, it was revealed that yes, JD had survived being shot in the head.

Was it the slow pump of his veins? Or was it the barely there breaths? Mai Gul does not remember. All that she knew when she found him again, to hold his body once more when the battle was done, was that he had been truly and honestly alive. Realizing that Mai takes flight with him again, yelling for the Normandy to land, yelling for aid, any aid at all, ignoring the Covenant around her, watching a Spartan desperate for life until the Normandy lands and she flies in and goes straight to the Medbay.

In the course of the day's chaos, Chakwas hardly has time to realize how and why Cash, who had been a wonderful, procedural assistant in managing the affairs of the medical staff and matters of the Normandy, is talking, as if a man, at the holostand given to her as JD is brought in, rattling out likely routines and procedures that must be done to him immediately. Chakwas is the only one to see him, the rest of her nurses outside tending to the rest of the Normandy crew.

Mai had carried him all the way here, from the bomb, to that medical bay, her face hidden behind helmet, his body crooked into her arm where her hand could not hold. Chakwas didn't know what to think of, when she did take off her helmet, just before the process of life saving started, that trails of tears rolled down from her eyes. Her face did not know how to cry.

A woman who had been the embodiment of power, and here, Chakwas was the only one able to do anything for JD. She did not know what to do but to watch on from her height down onto him as Chakwas gingerly shed his helmet off of him and saw the damage in full.

She shouldn't have looked. She shouldn't have seen what JD looked like, the side of his face blown through, missing an eye, his skull exposed. For all the gore that she has seen both Human and Covenant and now even more, when she looks upon JD, his face blown apart like an absurd piece of meat, she collapses against the wall and stays there.

It's a grueling two hours with Chakwas and her new AI assistant, without question, helping her, guiding her when needed, going back into his dumbed down persona when a nurse from outside darts into the Medbay to collect more supplies with the other wounded, but it is a job that is done silently on Chakwas's parts as she does as she was trained and saved a life. Pieces of metal, bone, all come out to a waiting stainless steel pan with wet pings. A handful becomes a dozen, and a dozen because several dozen. Only the constant beep of a heartbeat given instrument over the systems is the only hint that JD is alive at all, in any portion.

Mai can do nothing but wait, but think, and remember every moment she had spent with him in those last three months and how she would give everything just to live those three months again, again and again. Why? She didn't care. She wanted to. She needed to. Despite the uncertainty of their new life, despite Shepard, despite Saren, and an entirely new galaxy and the Covenant still existent, she wanted to go back, to do it over again, to change anything just so this would never have happened.

She wanted JD to be okay.

She strips herself of her armor as if aflame, the difficulty of it even with only one hand barely stopping her. She had barely noticed, barely cared at all the fact her right hand had been gone. Her body would not allow her to feel the pain. Down to her tech suit, she digs for a rope and a wheel to hold in her remaining palm as if a beacon, an anchor to a divine power distinctly Human.

Mai Gul did not know how to pray, but she tried, she fought, she held her mother's Wheel of Dharma in her grip, and begged for anything, everything, just for him, for the first time in her life.

Mai Gul begged silently, to the walls, to the world, to the flesh, to Chakwas doing her best, to Cash hooking into the medical implements of the Normandy and getting a direct read out of the body called JD before him. She begged Shepard, wherever she was, that somehow, she had an answer to this, that she could save the day as the galaxy told her she was able. She begged God and gods above to intervene, to do save, to help, to heal, to protect him. She begged the Devil, and all those who were listening, that she would trade anything as long as he could live the life that she would've died for. With nothing and no one else to beg to, with no answers given back, she prayed to the last constant she had known in the lives she could've lived, and the crunch in her hand could not be heard as she concentrated all of her will for one last try, one last attempt.

Mai Gul prayed to all the stars.

For the first time in all records, Cash observes from the corner of his senses what it looks like when a Spartan prays to a power greater to themselves. Even as an AI, Cash cannot calculate their odds of landing in the lives that they do, but what he can calculate is this:

In that galaxy, there was a mathematical probability of 400 billion stars.

In all the universe: one hundred billion galaxies.

And for each speck of stardust in the cosmos and perhaps more, as Mai had realized in ink black horror that swallowed her heart whole, there was still only one of each of them.

There would only ever be one Jonathan-Jameson Durante.

The weakness of the Spartan programs, from Jorge to Linda, to Lucy and Alice, to Mai and the Master Chief, was something that Halsey and all her successors and compatriots could never fully cover. They were human. JD had finally, in dying light, done what he had wanted for her: For her to become Human.

It had been a tragedy.

---

Seylu Karonee has chased ships before. She's chased Jackal pirates and the Humans as they fled the might of the Covenant, hoping to live just a few hours more. In that galaxy, the Relays make it a trivial matter, only impeded by careful usage of their slipspace drive. As long as they knew the connecting relays, they could reasonably guess where and when Sovereign would be as it made its flight.

More than that, the Quarian's immediate mobilizing had its benefits as the Ardent Prayer reconnected with the Covenant battle net at large, now a web made between Quarian ships in all of the galaxy. The Quarians would cover the other potential exit paths of Sovereigns as ships converged on the relays of the galactic east, Sovereign's only reasonable option as it bled across the stars plainly seen as it kept going toward the Perseus Veil.

The Ardent Prayer would see Sovereign for minutes at a time between jumps, Banshee and Seraphs scrambled hot as the plasma cannons laid fire into its scars made by its glassing.

The way it bled across space with ancient oils, skin shedding, it had been a battle damage that marked more than just its wounds. It marked the Covenant itself.

"We have inbound communications from a Quarian scouting picket. Rear Admiral Keltac vas Malta hailing."

With a nod the communication line was open. "Admiral."

"Shipmistress." How satisfying it was to Karonee to be referred by that title again by others. "Under orders from the Prophet of Destiny and the Flotilla we have been assigned underneath your command. Keelah se'lai."

"Keelah se'lai." Karonee had answered back as Sovereign blipped out of existence into the stream of the relay, her eyes narrowed at it and then the galactic map sent up into a 3D holographic display. "Admiral, it appears that the Beast has only a short handful of jumps to make before it retreats into the Veil. I need you and your ships to tail it, wherever it goes. Light the fire beneath it."

"We'll chase it all the way back Home if we need to." Home: Rannoch called to them. Karonee knew she would never see her Sanghelios again, but it was not a consideration when these Quarians had not seen it in generations. The word weighs heavy, and it propels them forward into battle still. It was the same for any soldier of the Covenant that had died in war anyhow: never seeing home again.

"Fighters wing have returned." The report comes again for what feels like the fifth time that day. There is no fatigue in their good chase as she looks over to the hangar master and gives him a nod before returning to comms.

"All in good time, Admiral. We'll see if we can cut them off, right at the Veil." She curled her claw into a fist, leaning back into her grav chair as the crew without question had aimed their navigation sensors right at the edge of safe space, before the Perseus Veil. "A pincer."

The Admiral had affirmed, his ships beginning to turn away toward the burn of the debris and the path out from the Mass Relay. "Good hunting."

"Likewise." She cut the line, and the Prelate had been there still over her shoulder like a shadow. "Events are moving at quite a pace, don't you agree?" The armored Prelate said nothing as it looked on, the energy stave that it wielded at its own weapon held like a staff.

"The Great Journey stops for nothing. Not even our change in circumstances. Divination manifests differently for all those souls beholden to this life." It said with as much belief as the prophets themselves.

Destined by Gods to kill Devils and Demons. It was a life worth living.

"Borer charged. Estimated time of re-entry one day relative time and four hours local."

She nodded at the crewman's report. "Make it so. The Beast will be cut off."

Quarian ships entered the Mass Relay, pausing only to see the slipspace rupture of the Ardent Prayer blink into existence, and the ship itself disappear into the void.

---

Elsewhere, in Human space, a hundred different traffic controllers of space lanes and jurisdictions are seeing their lines overtaken as fleets of the Citadel move forward, cutting through for the sake of a frontline about to be established where the Ardent Prayer was to emerge. The Alliance had long a military access treaty for transit, given that Human space had formed a blocker between Citadel Council territory and the wider Attican Traverse and the Terminus Systems, however not on the scale that called for the largest flotillas of military might to flow through the relays. Not since the Krogan Rebellions had ships from every Citadel race flow in formation, forming a bulwark.

A Flotilla to join the Flotilla.

Every space navy in the galaxy had their plans in place for a Geth offensive, but those had been procedural plans made for a distant what-if, not an eventuality, or even a reality as manifested.

Turian battleships and Salarian frigates formed with Asari sloops, fleets postured for political bordering between the Council races all dropping their charades and turning toward the galactic west.

Galactic crisis called for action, and action was an excuse unto itself as the galaxy witnessed once again a combined martial force of the representative entities go on a just crusade.

Balak, proud Batarian and terrorist that he is, sitting in a cell in an Alliance maximum security prison overhears it from his guards radio about the war that has started without him, he finds his first spark of joy in years since Shepard put him away knowing that the Council will find itself with loss in what is to come.

A Turian, found guilty of stabbing nearly a dozen Humans on the Citadel, sits next to him that day in that blinding white facility, in Humanity's Kuiper belt where those guilty of crimes against Humanity in the galaxy were left to rot. "Seems like we're getting left behind." The Turian mumbled, hearing the same report from the radio.

Balak snarls, hand curling around his fragile spork. "They're getting too ahead of themselves."

"Of course, of course." The Turian is more amused than anything, but there was hope in disaster always, even for the lowest of the low.

---

"Was it worth it, leading the Covenant to Virmire?" Miranda Lawson asks the Illusive Man through quantum comms. She's in position, ready to go to any number of galactic flashpoints that were likely to arise to push people in their place for Humanity's interest. She's not alone. At least a hundred other assets are ready and waiting, made active with the ratchet of history rolling forward. The Illusive Man would be proclaiming a power far beyond him if he had known that this was to be the result of Virmire. That wasn't his type of prediction and analysis, but what he and his organization had been adapt at was making the best of a highly fluid situation.

With Council ships streaming across the eyes of more Humans than ever before, fears stoked over distinctly alien menaces and unknowns, there was a time for a certain viewpoint and belief to foster: Humanity had to step up, or else be stepped upon. But that was the abstract of it. Today was for the actualization of smaller dominos to be tipped.

"I think it's worth it if it means that the ruling powers that be will be even more distracted, more open to certain affectations… But you know that, Miss Lawson." The Illusive Man sits back, nursing the cigarette in his mouth, savoring smoky tobacco aged a hundred years as he envisions his own future. "The Spartan and the ODST will now be cut loose, given reports. I'm sure we can arrange for them, can't we?"

"We'll get their personal situations aligned to our table." Miranda affirmed promptly. On her end she was looking over a dozen other status updates that had all reported to her about the fate of the galaxy but they all could wait for this reconvene with her boss. "We have multiple assets placed within Hackett's fleet that are currently tailing the Migrant Fleet from Altis. I presume that they are to still watch in place?"

The Illusive Man blew another cloud of smoke, nodding, but an addendum was to be added. "We'll have them reorient toward observation with the Covenant and Quarians, but if the opportunity arises to still gleam what they can from closer encounters with the Geth. Just because the Covenant are our main concern right now doesn't mean that all the work we've done for years can now be put asides."

"Of course." Plans in place, agents ready to go. The organization bubbled beneath a surface unwatched. "And what of Shepard?"

A shame. He didn't need to have been hooked into Alliance communications to know what would be done to her would be doing a champion of Humanity a disservice. She would've been useful, in another life. Perhaps she still would be again, but the tangle of her life is perhaps a knot too dense for even Cerberus to touch upon without it unraveling and putting in danger more plans. He has always believed what she's seen in her head, heard her cries for the Reapers. If not outright, then in just the idea of the Reapers: a menace that would blight out all current forms of life and systems, a danger, a threat. Something that Mankind had to prepare for, with or without the galaxy. The fact that it had been a reality, the Reapers, had only been a better catalyst.

"Observation only. If the need arises for her, we can return to her case. But for now, I think the Commander will be occupied otherwise to truly be useful for us." Shepard was still Shepard, no matter what. A once in several generation person, he knew, but even she had her failures, flying too close to a sun, even if she didn't even know it. "Miranda," he says her first name, drawing her attention as she squares her shoulders. It's uncharacteristic for both of them, but these are new, strange, untrodden times. "See to it that we don't lose the Spartan. You have an open check, and full clearance. Draw her into the fold.

She had a few ideas, very much so, burning in her mind. Her answer had underlined all of that as she turned off the comm and went to work, for the sake of Cerberus. "Understood."

---

The hours after the battle on Virmire, after the last Geth stops shrieking and its metal chassis goes limp, is no less a blur to Shepard than the battle itself as, once again, a tropical paradise planet has come to be the junction point for the entire galaxy it seems. Heaven itself was in disorder. As galactic fleets of all colors moved to bolster the political lines between the powers that be, racing to a once forbidden veil, Virmire is not forgotten, and becomes the first test of a new order, a normal of galactic relations.

The ghost of the Normandy is the first to arrive. SSV Ardennes lands on a quiet beach, near the incapacitated Mako of the Normandy, and out from its mouth an older man in a profession where people die young, flanked by a man who wore sunglasses eternally and a man with a cleft lip. Only the older man in the center is in any armor, a rugged scarf digging up from it to his neck.

When they arrive on Virmire it truly is an alien world, for on the walls of Saren's facility is not Geth and the forces of a familiar galaxy, it is the Covenant instead. If there's any familiar face among the Covenant one of them greets the three men almost as soon as they land and the Ardenne's Marine force spreads out for security around the ship.

"Usze Tahamee." Cleft-Lip says the name of the blood red armored Elite that approaches him. The only way any of them can tell that this is specifically Usze is by the scar left by Mai.

Usze is momentarily put upon by the utterance of his name by a Human, but this was to be expected. Flukes of contact had turned into normality, and so it was expected that he, of all the Sangheili asides from Shipmistress Karonee herself, would be the one to speak with the Humans. It was his role, and he would play it if the Great Journey demanded, as it had demanded today. Not a proud warrior standing on Virmire had been left untouched, and he had his own marks. Blood red crimson showed the black marks and scorchings of a Geth come too close or a Krogan testing his mettle. None survived, and all who stood with the Covenant remained.

His energy sword was hooked at his side. It had taken enough blood today, arms crossed as he let the Humans finish approaching him. "Your Commander Shepard has set up a casualty collection area for your kind within the facility walls."

"And of the Spartan?" Sunglasses presses instead. As if they spoke on a selfsame understanding. The tenacity pauses Usze, his mandibles slowly ebbing in considerate thought.

"The Demon, she is…" He struggles for words as he turns. "She lives."

He had never seen a Demon mourn before, and because of that the Covenant witness swirl.

Commander Alec Ryder has no time for the political games that Cleft-Lip and Sunglasses have played with the galaxy at wide. No, his only concerns are his people, and of his greatest mentee. The sand below is peppered with glass and debris, soaking in smoke and a battle not yet hours old, but has been settled for all time beneath the hum of Covenant shuttle craft and aircraft above doing perpetual presence patrols. On the ground, Elites and Brutes with their appointed Jackals and Grunts fan out from the facility out into the coastal rock to find survivors or remnant Geth units. None are there, however. Absolutely none. The contingent of the Covenant left behind on Virmire are under the provisional command of Usze as it stands, but there is no enemy to fight, just a presentation to put on for a galaxy rushing toward them.

The Humans follow Usze as they walk back toward the defensive walls separating facility from beach, the gravity launchers still there ferry troops up and down as proper. Usze and Ryder have no problem with it, nothing to fear, but the two agency men are a little less graceful as they are thrown up the wall. They land with a thud, on their sides and ass, but Ryder takes to it easily on his feet, and for that Usze finds his amusement for the day, private little emotion as it is, as they look from those walls down on a sundowning scene of a battle waged for the sake of future times and ancient forthcoming. Without reference, the facility does look like a Covenant one, Wraiths and Covenant troops setting up for the long stay, prefabs of Covenant lavender set up besides the stone and steel of Saren's need. From what defensive installations remain, they cook, sending long black lines into the sky amidst orange backdrop, piles and piles of Geth parts amassing as Grunts drag them to them.

Hundreds of Geth. Hundreds.

It reminds Ryder of Torfan and the pieces of living beings that had been accrued during the cleanup, post battle. All the same this bore Shepard's mark, even in Covenant skin.

A silver Elite, propelled by a jet pack, lands before the four of them, in hand a jet pack for Usze as he silently accepts and imparts it onto the back of his armor. "Major Nazhumee. Them." Usze gestures to the two plain-clothed agency man, still taken aback by the scene presented. Without word Ke Nazhumee walks over and with his large claw palms the back of the two Humans as Usze offers an arm to Alec Ryder. With a strong clasp Ryder nods and isn't surprised as he is lifted up off the ground as the two Elites fly across the facility with the assistance of flight. Below: ruin painted purple. What had happened here may have had Shepard's mark, but it was a Covenant victory, undoubtedly.

More than that, the Covenant know it.

There was an area for landing pads built into the facility, their flat spaces where Shepard had chosen to set up now. The Normandy sits in it, nestled coldly, battle scarring present, burns from thrusters being kicked on in combat form, but nothing permanent. Like a mother bird it broods over its people There is no real Human presence here. Just remains. Like toy figures below, those below are frozen until slowly the group descends upon them.

It's a scene that marks an end: Rows of body bags. Thirteen in total.

Human and Salarian. From out of the shadows, not easily seen from above, Captain Kirrahe survives with some of his men, having taken formation with Shepard all the same quietly as they lick their wounds and collect their dead.

Mission failure? Mission accomplished? They do not know anything except that it is over. They hide in that same shade of a canvas from the sundown rays, and let the Humans tend to their own webs they weaved. Kirrahe is glad he survived the day, but he does not look forward to the next few days and the realization of what this mission really means. The old principle of that galaxy remains, after all this time: mass effect.

The riddle of history, history, it was steps, meant to be performed by players, almost like a dance. He knows this. Salarians are not long lived in this world, but what they do in life echo eternally, and will live far longer than their bodies or the remains of their bodies. This promise is what kept some of the STG to their posts, to the death, and here today, they danced that danced in a way that their footprints on those sandy beaches would remain there forever more. But they do not know the name of that dance, or the title of their actions. They do because they are, and what they are doing eludes them past a certain point that it becomes ethereal, their god. Not the political reason, not the martial, real reason: stopping Saren, but the reason that was at the bottom of a spiral of whys that they could not answer but knew existed because it existed in the same way of heavens above. Their higher powers would speak for them, put down in the dancers that followed them.

Alec Ryder's boots hit the pavement, and those Humans alive, five of them, know the tone of his boots well. There is no reunion however, sitting against chairs found, against supply crates, tired and spent and half-dead but still alive. Still alive compared to the Hitmen that lay in body bags. Husks looked more alive than them, but death itself seems to haunt the one Human woman on her feet, looking down on the rows of black bags in silent prayer, hands holding each other, her hair flowing in winds the same color.

Shepard cannot look away from the dead. She will not, silent murmuring on her lips that of memories and stories told and their names, her teeth and tongue repeating the motions over and over and over until they are burned in her mind that is tight and untampered and raw and tender. She is well acquainted with death, and the men and women in her life that were no longer.

She knows who holds her shoulder, and she doesn't even turn.

"Alec…"

"Jane."

The oldest living N7, and the living legend meet again, and at their feet are those that served them. Hitman was originally Alec's team, and here they were, cut, torn to pieces, and presented as ritual offerings before a mission that has exploded into a war.

"They never spoke of after a service. All of them." She goes on, she talks, she continues their lives even if they cannot. "No retirement, no ranch or home. Just this. This service. Until it was done with them."

The condition of a soldier was as such, from the oldest stories of Babylon to space age lessons now. It was a lesson that Shepard had learned, every time the dead died for her and knew that it had been a chance. She knew what death was, and it often had been in her name, because of her.

"I failed them."

"Shepard." Ryder presses once with her name. "We all know what we signed up for."

Inside of her head lay the memories, the knowledge, of another galaxy through the mind's eye of Mai Gul. Two separate partitions now: Reaper, and Covenant. She understands the rage now that bites away at her, but like today, it had all come too much, too soon, and of all the actions she takes, she chooses to mourn and care for the dead before, sometime soon, she knows, she collapses to a merciful black.

"I didn't sign up for this." She finally turns to the teacher that made her an N7. "Do you have any idea what all of this is."

He, more than anyone else, would know, so he nods and stands away, revealing the two intelligence agents that came with him. He doesn't know if it's a mistake to do so, but when he does he knows that Shepard has not come back down from a combat high as she flies at one of them, and it is Sunglasses that takes the punch that breaks glass upon his face. Alec Ryder could've stopped her, he had been quick enough, but he didn't, he couldn't in a way that wasn't physical. The punch flies across Sunglasses face, and his sunglasses are broken, black shards that disappear onto the ground below in crunch-made stars as he backs up, and reveals eyes that glow a fibrous, technology blue.

"You knew!" Shepard screams as she pivots to Cleft Lip. "You knew about all of it!"

You knew, you knew, you knew. The words that break upon them in a way that they, as spooks, habitually deny, but then the impossibility that washes over them makes them fear for their live as, Sunglasses, on the floor, gestures wildly to Alec before Shepard finishes rolling back her fist for Cleft-Lip as he scoots back on his heels, his back hitting Usze's front instead. Shepard does not pause as she presses up against Cleft-Lip despite Alec holding back her gauntlet, Usze not moving.

"You knew that these aliens were genocidal zealots from day one! You knew that Mai and JD fought against them in a way no one in this Galaxy could ever know save for them!" She spits, she barks at Usze, standing unphased, looking down on her. "How dare you let me on this mission, when the Covenant were here!" Her voice stretches, scratches, her throat is raw and cracks as Commander Shepard bleeds a renegade's heart onto the floor before them. "They have murdered billions."

"And the Reapers, this threat, to OUR galaxy, threatened trillions. What's done is done." Cleft-Lip spoke calmly, but he still waited for the strike, one that Alec held in his hand. Shepard let him hold her hand back, still ready, still waiting. "What, do you think that is within our power, our right, to hold accountable every single individual that washed up on Altis that day?! How- how do you know?"

She ignored the last question, and her fist only curled further, wanted justice further, to drink from it as if otherwise she felt like she would die. There was still time in the day. "It's our responsibility to justice, to all of those innocent dead because we know!"

Sunglasses picked himself up from the ground, shards of his shades stuck in his face, but wiped away leaving specks of blood pooling on his skin. "Commander Shepard, you forget yourself. You forget that the reality of the galaxy cannot be so easily answered by your simple beliefs. Anything you feel for the Covenant is a consequence of such universal complication that we cannot possibly approach them in a way that is so simple as morality."

"Then what is this all about?! Why am I even here?!" Commander Shepard screams so loud that the stars have to listen.

If not for justice, if not for morality, if not for a better way, then for what?

Commander Shepard made her decision long ago the second she born new life into this world.

"You are here for the sake of the Systems Alliance and Humanity." Cleft-Lip answers, and it is the only answer that he can give straight as he pushes off of Usze, the two Elites silently seeing a childish race unfurl at the seams. "Commander Shepard, you are being relieved of command of Chief Durante and Chief Gul. That's what we're here for, and here for only. We'll be leaving our Marine compliment with you until you are relieved by another Alliance force."

Alec had gritted his voice, holding himself back. Age had told him the truth of the world, and only affirmed it when it crippled his wife. "Do as they say, Shepard. I don't like this anymore than you do." More losses. More losses she cannot stop. She can stop nothing, and her arm goes limp in Ryder's grip. "I'm sorry."

Cleft-Lip takes another look around. The two people mentioned are not there, missing. The initial reports on their status had been simple, but heavy in their nature. The two agents looked for them through fear and pain, that spotlight of the Shepard put upon them over righteousness. The Systems Alliance intelligence apparatus are the descendants of intelligence agencies and spy groups of the 20th and 21st century. Mossad and the CIA, responsible for assassinations and usurpation of popular movements and moral leaders all in the name of a standing system. They remained today, and Shepard detested them all. For among their descendants, Cerberus, and all of their ilk, had been of them.

"Do you even understand what Mai is?" Shepard darkly growls, coming from the very pit of her, beyond time.

"She is Humanity's future, she is a blueprint that has proven her effectiveness and must be followed after if we are to survive in th-" How assured, how right had the two agency men been as Cleft-Lip answer.

Shepard knows the truth, however. Truer than war, truer than History. Her words carry weight, and they stop the world.

Shepard speaks. "She's someone's daughter."

A name is in her mind's infinite eye: Halsey. A legion of men and women walk across battlefields in iron armor with power the like of old gods. She proclaims them as Humanity's next step. Her work saved the Human race. Protectors and progenitors and ultimate soldiers in the face of total extinction. The truth is far, far simpler than that. The truth is that they were the sons and daughters of fathers and mothers, taken, stolen. Mai Gul had a mother, and she had been stolen. She had been stolen from family and love, and stolen from herself. The Mai Gul that Shepard had known was not Mai Gul. The woman in Mjolnir was war machine known as Mai-B312.

Usze Tahamee hears this for the first time, standing witness, and a seed is broken into him. He knows it like a Needler's rounds breaking into his shields. Nothing he would be concerned with, but with it delivered a small something, a small shard, a new perspective to a conflict that Humanity fought without the Covenant.

Ke Nazhumee sees something in his commander's eyes, and it is dangerous.

"Where is she?" Cleft-Lip has no response to this fact, so Sunglasses asks instead.

Shepard has killed before and vindicated only by hindsight and history. Could she do it again?

A hand touches her shoulder: her mentor's.

Don't.

Alec Ryder knows who Shepard once was, and the loss that propelled why she fought. In the matters of children, she would burn down the Galaxy in their name.

Shepard can do nothing then, her shoulder slumping, the dead of her own responsibility at her feet. Always where she walked: those that could not because of the enemy's she's made and the providence of God. Ancient peoples would call her a witch, and more and more she believed that, at some point, there was a fire, a stake, for her. Though there is no fire today, no hell hath coming that would absolve as much as it would be worth.

She gestures behind her, toward her ship in defeat.

"They're on the Normandy."

The two agents begin to walk asides her, to the Normandy, but she reaches out before Alec can catch and Sunglasses' arm is taken by her. She looks at him with eyes begging.

"Let me say goodbye. Would you let me have that, at least?"

To defy Shepard this would be to create someone far beyond the Alliance to control, this the two of them know as Shepard let's go of the arm and step back. They nod, both of them, letting her slowly turn herself and walk to her ship.

Alec Ryder does not exchange words with Shepard, she only pauses in his presence, shoulder to shoulder, going opposite ways. The resonance of pain between them is shared. Commanders that have lost. Loved ones, gone. A mother, a father. Her future, his past. Shepard has an idea of what will happen to her after this mission, and that future had been set in stone like the blood of Alliance Marines.

Shepard disappears into the Normandy, and sea salt wind blows the smell of battle away, just for a moment as body bags flap in that low draft.

"What're you two doing?" Alec Ryder looks to the two Elites, squaring on Usze, a familiar Elite from months ago.

"This is not your world. We will… as you say, stand by."

"This isn't your galaxy." Alec speaks back to Usze, and the two of them are amused. The Elite nodded once with that mutual understanding.

Usze spoke back, "The heirs of your stars have failed to rise to the challenge. The path you were promised, forgotten by you. We are all lost. Only the strong will find the way." To know God completely and utterly, and more than that, to be known as the inheritors of that divine mandate, it created a confidence in Covenant words that had been so unlike any of the Council or of that Galaxy. The Covenant had their mission while the rest of the Galaxy scrambled to accommodate, to rise as well.

The Alliance 7th Fleet is next to arrive, quickly followed minutes later by the first collection of Spectres flying in on caravans of their own. Over Virmire, the carrier that carried its lineage across centuries called for Commander Shepard. "SSV Enterprise to all Alliance callsigns on this net, please respond. SSV Enterprise has arrived over Virmire." Admiral Hoshi Hirano had called across the open net. Asides her ships, Spectres that had arrived made their descent down.

"SSV Normandy to SSV Enterprise. Copy you clear." Shepard does not respond, but Joker, more than willing, does so. "It's ah. Sort of a mess down here. Respectfully. Ma'am. Admiral. Admiral, right?"

The pilot of the Normandy's reputation preceded him as Admiral Hirano deeply sighed, but the events of the day had affected him in breath too, for even over the radio there was a weariness to him.

"Admiral." She responded, seeing the shuttle craft of Spectres approach Virmire, this damned planet. "Forward me all reports from the Normandy and get me a line to your comm net."

A voice had hijacked Joker's. "XO Alenko. Linking to your net now. We're all yours admiral. Be advised the Normandy's ground complement is mission kill."

"I'm sorry to hear." Hirano had, with two fingers on her bridge gestured to her Marine compliment commanders to prepare for deployment. "Is Commander Shepard condition green?"

A beat on the radio. Silence. She feared the worst. "Negative. Commander Shepard is command unfit."

"Understood." The Captain of the Enterprise, Admiral Hirano, she had been there for history before. Like so many other ship captains she had been there for the Skyllian Blitz, the Elysium and the mop up, for Torfan, bloody Torfan. Shepard had always been there, and history brewed again beneath her. More than that, Admiral Hirano had owed Shepard her life. She was not alone in the galaxy to have that claim, but she was perhaps the only one who had been an admiral of the Systems Alliance Navy. "All ships of the 7th, we are here to keep Commander Shepard safe. She has her own war to fight, but the Big E won't let her go alone."

"Aye captain!"

The 7th fleet had took its position over Virmire in the name of the Systems Alliance, shuttle craft descending down onto Virmire to take part in the galactic game, but the Spectres had their claim first.

They touched down in their own clearings across the island of the facility, greeted immediately by Covenant first, out gunned and out manned twenty to one. Two dozen Spectres find themselves on Virmire, and among them, Avitus Rix is one, a communication signals kit onto his armor. He carries with him Nihlus, in his ear and the ear of all Spectres.

"By the decree of the Council. We're taking control of this situation." The former Turian admiral, now turned Spectre, his neck half-metal, declares to the Covenant as they land in the rocky outcroppings. In the canopy of those rocks, Jackals look down upon them with rifles trained and Hunters and Brutes stand tall. A single Brute approaches them, battle worn, hammer buzzing. The Brute Mercaius answers the Spectres in a group. He stands larger than all of them, a beast made into a soldier of a Covenant.

He snorted once, looking down on the Turian Spectre. "So, you have decreed, now enforce it then." Mercaius did not move for several seconds after that, Elite and Brute alike in that area ready to fight, energy swords greedy for organic blood after the day. Glory was to be found and taken. The Spectres all knew the stakes, the energy of the planet coming down to them. If Altis had been the door mat, Virmire was to be the Covenant claiming their spot. Amused at their tension Mercaius had turned over and let the Spectres do as they would. The message was understood: The Covenant was not supplicant to the Council and never would be.

Spectres pass between rocky towers, water beneath their feet as the day grows long, the shadows sticking to them like tentacles, constricting their breath as an alien force looks upon them and feels not the galactic weight centuries have been built on.

The world had been flipped upside down, and no amount of force could ever turn it back.

It is the Spectres that have arrived on an alien planet this time as they make it to the facility, the draw of the Covenant recognizing them for what they were, past the weapons, the armor, the writ of passages and political power they yielded. They were only people while they, the Covenant, had served the Gods. In battle and war the Covenant remembered what it was, from the haughtiest Elite to the lowliest Grunt.

"This is bad." An Asari Spectre whispered to Avitus, holding her pistol at her side as if it could do anything meaningful against the pair of Hunters that followed them like their own shadows. Avitus could not concentrate, however. Here he walked where his mentor did; Saren Arterius had been here to brew his plan against the galaxy. This was hard proof, harder than any audio message could be and he knew more yet could be uncovered.

Evil had been uncovered here. Evil remained.

The Spectres had all spread from where they could. Nihlus in their ears telling them what to look for, what to dig into, and where to go as information came. Communications had been set up with the Normandy's XO, but it had all proceeded at an uneasy pace as the Covenant looked on and let them do as they wanted. They stood aside, they let them play out their actions, but they looked down upon them all as a stern parent watching a child make their mistake. On the backs of every Spectre the direct impression that they were being taught a lesson, unspoken, was felt. They melted into the walls, into the scenery, omniscient to their troubles, neither helping nor impeding.

A burning hole in Nihlus's data stores burned. It was that message from the Human AI, yet unopened, but an anchor that kept him drowning that he could not cut away from. It assured him of his own life, that he had still been a born Turian, in the fact that he felt the fear from it. The Humans had a term for what that data packet was: Pandora's Box. If he were to open it, to know what laid within, he had heeded that AI's warnings: The historical path of his own galaxy would be undone completely in an ungodly display. History was a divine being. Beings, through the course of their life change by the events they are exposed to, but in the end they are the same being from beginning to end, even holding forgotten names or future prospects. The concept of mass effect rings loudly through History in every History, change a constant as holy as God itself. But what had happened with the Covenant, with their arrival, it rang of a murder, and to open that data packet was to Nihlus the same as plunging the knife itself into the heart of History. The course of events that didn't end in galactic massacre was held on a string, and the string twisted and twisted and twisted and twisted and Nihlus was the only one to see it.

But madness was not for him. There was still a galaxy, a system, a Council to maintain.

Kirrahe makes contact with them all, but not by explicit choice. His yellings attract the several Spectres to him and the remains of his STG team as they stand before the entrance to the Krogan labs and the bays that collect Krogan yet to be born without the Genophage below.

Urdnot Wrex does not stand alone, blocking him access. He stands with five other Krogan, as old and as battle-veteran as he. (There would be six, but that sixth one laid in a pulp by Spartan hands for crimes against a man that could never be forgiven.)

(In the same way generations of unborn could not be forgiven.)

"Do you understand the implications of what uncontrolled access to this cure would mean for the galaxy!" Captain Kirrahe is not done yet when fears become found. "I sympathize with your plight, but there has to be a control of-"

"The Krogan were in control by the Council once before. We've lost so much because of it. I refuse to let this happen again." Wrex stood united with Krogan from five different clans, their colors burning like a rust colored rainbow, all there for the same reason: Krogan life and life itself. He spoke, fangs bared, shotgun drawn, all of them united.

Kirrahe had felt several Spectres behind him back him up, the situation abundantly clear. If there had been a cure, if there had been a way to rid Krogan of the Genophage, every Krogan left in that galaxy would come to Virmire and sip from that fountain. Beyond that, a Krogan resurgent was promised. More problems. More conflicts. More war promised in a galaxy tearing itself apart.

One of the Salarian Spectres, unnoticed, tried to bring up his omni and send out a hack to the Krogan's weaponry, however it was his arm that popped and fried as he recoiled away, right into the chest of a Brute, recoiling away, disheveling the Council forces.

"Don't." From a corner, hidden behind all the Krogan, a small voice. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya emerges. She knows what side she stands on. She stands on the side of the people who had been forgotten or turned away by the Council. She stands for the truest among them. She stands for downtrodden and wronged. Her mother's poncho flows in Virmire wind, and she holds her own line in the sand, a Krogan shotgun in her hand.

If Wrex could spare some of his face to look proud, he would've. "I've made a deal with the Covenant. A deal far better than any I've ever seen from the Council." And behind Kirrahe, Mercaius emerged again. "You'll get what you want." Wrex does not lie. His arsenal is far more effective than subterfuge and removal of the truth. "But you need to let us be. If not," He turns to Mercaius and recognizes a brother, "I'm sure there those who would understand better."

---

The Veil is to their back.

The Ardent Prayer emerges from Slipspace the same way that it does, every time: from the void. Karonee knows this place by heart. It was where Sangheili shipmasters train their skills in the milky dense astral fog where they could not rely on instruments alone. The Reaper, the Beast, would want to disappear just the same into it.

In the time in Slipspace however there was a plan made and hatched, inspired from the very beginning.

"Shipmistress! We're flaring all of our drives to lag behind but you'll only have so much of a window!" The scattered, garbled transmission from the Quarian ships FTL had been hazy, but it transmitted enough. There had been only one shot at snaring the beast.

Silently Karonee stood on the bridge, arms and claw movements alone dictating her orders as fighters were deployed, the Ardent Prayer poised at the distant Relay.

"We have high contact spikes, staggered line in the Veil behind us!"

Behind the Ardent Prayer Geth ships responding to an ancient gods cry for help form. Far more than the Ardent Prayer can take alone numbering eighty and climbing. Their specks in the cloudy distance fast approaching. All or nothing. The shipmistress held onto her half-cape in trepidation, but any anxiety, any regrets, could not be kept in the face of challenge. Elites were born to fight, and fight she would.

"Emerging from the Relay! The Beast!"

The monster appeared once again, new smoke trails, more damage from the pursuing Quarian picket but it did not stop as it blipped into existence, firelight in its damaged hull revealing red eyes. The eyes of the infernal on that leviathan.

No stare down could happen, not as the Ardent Prayer shook from impacts from plasma cannons shot from deeper in the Veil.

All controls were sent to her command console, a single button was all she needed as an energy whine inside of the Ardent Prayer rose as planned. No cannons fired, no fighter ships were deployed, the entire crew hunkered down as the Ardent Prayer rose and rose in its internal noise like a planet breaking. The Beast screamed out in space, seeing safety and the obstacle in between. It rushed it down, damage trails leaving bits and pieces of itself adrift forever.

Distance was measured in time: Twenty, fifteen, ten seconds.

The Ardent Prayer rattled as more and more plasma fire racked its shields behind it, a swarm of Geth ships about to burst out the veil like hornets protecting their home. In front of it: a monstrosity.

Karonee remembered the Brute Chieftain that consoled her, once, long ago. He, a chieftain of a clan that only knew loss in the war against the Humans, and her, a female Shipmistress, put down because of her gender. When she had lost and lost because of something she could not help, it was the Brute Chieftain that told her to keep the course, for final victory, in spite of it all, would be more than those who did not have her trials could ever reap.

On that day, centuries divide and realities apart, Seylu Karonee chose to be the reaper of her victory.

Five seconds distance, and it was lights out. Karonee closed her eyes and let it happen.

She slammed the button on the console and the power of the Ardent Prayer cycled, as consequence of the Borer being charged, overloaded, and then discharging its prompt critical status. As had happened over Altis, the power of slipspace and the methods used to cut across the stars, incompatible with element zero clashed.

On that day Sovereign knew what it was like to have its breath stolen from it.

A bubble poured out from the Ardent Prayer throughout the Perseus Veil, the lights of all technology that relied or was auxiliary to element zero blipped out, reset, corrupted and upset by a different, new type of power.

The stars had never been so cold.

The bubble had passed through Sovereign and its form had buckled, its remaining limbs twisting into shear angles as if shriveling up. Behind the Ardent Prayer Geth ships also buckled, machine screams silenced.

Then, the growling, the flare. Ardent Prayer remained.

Reaching the relay distantly, whatever reaction spurred by the slipspace discharge had dissipated, but not enough so that the relay did not sputter itself, its rings locking in a metal crash that could be heard for lightyears. Tumbling out of FTL the Quarian ships emerged, missing the bubble as planned, but dragged out of FTL as the relay shuddered. Their formation was not clean, not organized, but they had been up and ready to fight.

Fight they would.

Karonee opened her eyes again and she had awakened in a target rich environment and gave her orders: "Deploy all fighters! Open fire all guns! Prepare the transports for boarding!" The crew came alive again and the battle was on.

"All Quarian ships, you are cleared to engage all Geth behind us!" Overwhelmed, overcome, the Sangheili communication officer could not but cry out for the sake of his own homeworld: "Keelah se'lai!"

Rear Admiral Keltac vas Malta's ship rights itself quickly in sync with the rest of his group, square boxes litter the firing computers of all his gunners on all of his ships. In the distance, however, he thinks he sees through distant fog, whether or not it was real, a planet.

Keelah se'lai was a promise said for every Quarian, the wish for the Flotilla and all the struggles of the children. It was hope it was dreams it was a memory lost. For Keltac's fleet, it was a promise finally fulfilled for in that field of stars lay before them the meaning of that phrase: By the home world I hope to see one day. For the first time in generations, Quarians see their way home, and it is through so many targets easily killed.

Keltac gathering himself in awe is filled with a determination, murderous, vindicated. As the Covenant had delivered them a promise, so too would he promise them: "All gunners on all ships! Fire as they bear! For the Great Journey!"

For a picket as small as Keltac's, it was enough when the gunners and the loaders saw in their vision the way Home, and so many targets that were so easily killed. Balls of metal fire filled the star space rapid fire toward stalled Geth ships, sailing over the Ardent Prayer and the Beast. Pops in the veil came slowly, but soon thunder and lightning from Geth ships exploding from impact lit those astral clouds in heavenly display.

"Fire everything!" Keltac screamed, and his crew followed. They followed orders because they needed no orders to do as they did. They fired as one ship destroyed became three, and then three a dozen, and then a dozen thirty, and then more and more as a targeting gallery was made of the paralyzed. The strength of the Covenant and their magic was given to them and they smited the stars of machine heretics. The Geth answering an ancient god were defeated. They could not do anything as they were frozen alive and their true makers unmade them. They didn't abandon ship, and they did not surrender. There was no surrender the Quarians would accept from them. The Quarians kept firing not until their ammo reserves ran dry but rather their cannon barrels overheated and warped, the mass drivers slagging shots like shotgun pellets into the Veil.

In that moment, the Galaxy, the Council, could not say anything. This was Quarian retribution for suffering.

This was what victory looked like.

All the while the Ardent Prayer fought the Devil. Its plasma cannons and torpedoes opened up, shearing and burning through the many limbs of Sovereign, its tail chipped away at until, like so many aquatic creatures that took over the shelled monsters that it seemed to emulate, it was left with only its body. Each time a joint or armor would break it broke like bone, like flesh. It could not scream. All it could do was feel pain and pain alone.

"A false god. That's all you are." Karonee spoke to it as the stars were on fire around her, Geth ships burning and continuing to be destroyed.

The Prelate was already gone, and the remaining ground forces of the Ardent Prayer had poured out of it in Spirits and Phantoms as they approached the Beast, escorted by Seraphs and Banshees. In one of those Banshees was the prelate themselves. It would lead, it would go into its heart.

The troops deployed all were meant for EVA, the doors of the transports swinging open as they came upon the hull of the Beast, still hot with damage as Covenant fighters circled it. Troops, stepping out onto its black hull had immediately gone to plant charges, superheated plasma rigs tunneling into its shell and downward, piercing, prodding. Was the ship dead truly as it floated motionless? The Covenant did not care as inroads were made, and infiltration tunnels cut through.

The Beast was still a vessel, and inside of it were hallways and passage routes for whatever designers of it once were. These ways were cut into from the outside, and as the vacuum sucked its way in, the Covenant entered as well.

It would've been preferrable to simply blast the ship into nothingness, but there had been one life form detected onboard.

The Prelate entered, its spindly form entering easily as several Elites in their chrome, ranger armor entered behind him. It's armor had been entirely sealed so there had been no issue there as it silently activated its energy stave, its light illuminating the organic mechanical hallways that echoed the sound of death.

A sensor crewman on the Ardent Prayer read directions into the battle net:

"Proceed down this hallway and then take a left. From there, on ahead."

The Prelate and its group followed the directions, followed by faith alone sometimes in halls that had no light that they did not themselves provide. The ribbed patterns of the blackened walls were as if they had been moving with them, but such trickery was beyond them. This was a machine, and had it not been for someone in its dark heart, it would've been destroyed like the synthetics around it.

They walk on ancient metals and structure, the Prelate knows for they have walked among these types of places in their old world. High Charity is of the same towards its great center and the Keyship. The stuff of its creation is more ancient still, but they who walk it and what they walk on are of two different ferments with no respect for one another. The Prelate has no respect as they find a door. A wide door, more recent in design than the halls they walked through. They know its pressurized still, for life breaths in it. One Ranger swivels around and, with his pack, deploys a plasma barrier that forms to the hallway behind them, self-pressurizing as the door is opened and the depressurization is blunted by the plasma barrier behind them.

In a pool of blackness, Saren Arterius floats. The pool is slick with sludge and his blood, but it drains slowly as the Prelate and the Elites approach, swords and rifles drawn on the naked Turian, dying.

Saren Arterius is alive, but the Covenant does not intend to take him alive.

He breathes in pathetic breaths more rasps than air. The pool he sits in drains, and he is left to a ribbed floor with pathetic remains. His head barely tilts and knows who has come for him. "I know what you are, vile beasts. How easy it must've been for you for your own progenitors, Forerunners, to be the Gods they were." Saren spat on the ground as he writhed inside of a dead god. "Actual gods."

If there is surprise to the Prelate as Saren spits their lore at them, they do not show it. At least they speak on equal understanding. "Then you understand that what guides our actions is true." The Prelate spoke calmly. "Your death is of divine providence, by the instruments that carry it out."

The Prelate was envious of Saren in that moment. His role in the Great Journey was being fulfilled. All Saren could see was irony, heresy, disgust. He spit some of himself out onto the floor as he lay limp, bullet holes from Shepard, from the Demon, remaining, not yet healed, and never would be. At least he could smile.

"Even being here, in the hull of this great machine, its tendrils have found a home in you. You can't stop what's coming." The Prelate had enough of this talk of a mad man. Even some Humans had died more pridefully than this in silence, gripping its stave tightly before shifting it over to one side. Saren knew soon what was to happen. He smiled. "Maybe I should've let Shepard kill me. At least she would deserve it. You." Saren closed his eyes and breathed his last. "This is not your Galaxy." For all that accusation rung true, the Covenant had an answer.

The Prelate rolled their arm back, blade up high, and gave the answer of Destiny: "It will be."

When Saren's head lops off his head, it does not roll. His body falls with it, as if still attached. Blue eyes look up at the Prelate wild, as if not knowing it had been dead yet. In these final moments of Saren Arterius's consciousness he finds his head picked up by the Prelate and held, looking into the dark eyes of the future that he will never see.

---

One last reckoning before Virmire tides over and a new chapter begins.

Mai wants to be told why JD isn't talking, isn't up, isn't conscious. She wants to know why he breathes, and yet is not truly alive. She knows why without answer, but she wants to be told. Chakwas is dead tired, but Mai demands, and she cannot deny this woman from another world, who brought along an AI into her space that she cannot question or care about as she sits at her desk and palms tired eyes. So many dead today. Maybe she didn't do enough. It was the same with JD.

After he is cleaned up, after the bandages applied and the surgery is cleaned up, the tin full of shrapnel and bone, after Mai is attended to herself with a quick surgery she barely feels or cares for by Chakwas with a super-heated scalpel, she explains, standing on the opposite side of the bed of Mai, she sitting on a chair brought to her so she can remain close to him. An x-ray is brought out with an MRI on a screen above the bed, and Mai's eyes looks to it like a battle plan she can dissect and find the secret of victory in.

"The bullet, as far as I can gather, was shot at near point-blank range, but Chief Durante was able to raise his right arm up," Chakwas demonstrates herself, "Blocking the most explosive elements of the projectile with his gauntlet armor and, of course, his flesh and bone. It shattered, so much so that we found pieces of his ulna as shrapnel embedded in his face, but we already have replacements in the form of porous artificial structure being printed and grafted now."

"And that was enough?" Mai can't quite hardly believe it. Rush drugged Insurrections she can believe surviving headshots, but this was far more miraculous.

Chakwas nodded. "Perhaps. The projectile then," Chakwas traded out the x-ray of his arm to his face. "Punched through his helmet, and, due to the adjusted trajectory because of these prior impacts, swerved off into his left eye. I presume he turned his head in reaction to his situation, hence right arm to left eye." Chakwas' finger follows through. "It was on a downward angle, too, but with enough force to punch through all the way to the back of his skill in a clean line, just barely, taking out this… IFF chip that he had on him just beneath the skin."

"Hence," Cash finally speaks up from his pedestal on Chakwas's desk behind her. The good doctor is so tired she cannot be surprised by him and all that he means. "Why all systems thought he was dead."

She nods along to him, "Cash has told me that an… Engineer, of the Covenant, also applied shielding to his body during the battle. The resonant shielding also by the Engineer helped keep… well, keep matter in, in the most delicate way of saying things." She wanders in explaining, this part of the job never got any easier. "He's missing now a considerable amount of his cerebral cortex." He was shot in the head. Mai knows what that looks like, and why it was so effective for her. "The damage is dire."

There is a body before Mai right now, a whole body. Damaged, injured, yes, but she had seen worse in UNSC or Insurrectionist field hospitals. She had seen worse, and yet still those men and women had been awake, talking, and very much alive. JD might've lost some of his face and an eye, but he could be up, he could be talking. He could be there.

He wasn't.

"But he's not gone." Mai spoke as if it had been a missing fact. It wasn't overlooked at all by Chakwas. He was not brain dead. Far from it, but the activity from his brain had been so nascent that it could've been save for constant abnormalities that counted as a pattern. He was not dead, but he was not alive. "He could become better?" She asks, she hopes. She should know better.

Chakwas hears Mai's voice. It's never been like this. It's young, it's innocent. It's hopeful. She cannot bear to lie. "…There are cases of people surviving traumatic brain injuries, entire hemispheres being damaged even, and living regular, happy lives… but, this is very traumatic."

Bit by bit, Mai's face melts, it forms, it hardens, it goes through a private cycle of grief she does not know how to hide or process. Like a Rorschach test it becomes many things at once until Chakwas decides to look away from her, and instead at JD below. He breaths, but not much else. "If Chief Durante does wake up, it is inevitable that his mental and physical faculties will not be as they were. He won't be the same." She pauses, and Mai keeps herself glued to JD at his wrist. "I'm sorry."

"He can live, can't he?" All she needs is a yes. All she needs is a future with him. She sees nothing else otherwise.

The best Chakwas can do is this: "We shall see, Chief Gul. None of us can know if, and when, he will return." She closes her eyes and remembers all the stories, all the cases like these. She knows the likelihood of JD waking up. She knows enough that she cannot tell her. When she opens them, Mai has not moved. "We can't do anything more for him."

All Mai wants now is just one more day. She wanted a life at least, on Altis when they had shore leave, that they could've spent together. She wanted a day where they just simply were, and not bothered. Mai wanted him back, and the way that she looks to JD nearly breaks Chakwas.

She has to leave before she succumbs as well, leaving Mai and JD not quite alone, but close.

Five minutes pass and Mai does not move, looking at his face. Her entire life she knew what to do because her entire life was war, was battle. There were always actions to take as concerned the enemy and that had been kill, a skill she was supremely oriented to do. But not this. Not anything else. Not without him. She wants to touch his face, but the bandages are in the way, and he is now so fragile she fears her own touch. Her hyper awareness is gone, because Cash has to call her twice.

"You two." He starts, as if any other conversation on any other day. "You two are lucky beyond a measure than I can even articulate in word or number."

Lucky. She doesn't know that words meaning if it could be applied to today. She doesn't speak and lets him continue.

"You end up in a universe that is not only culturally understandable and slots you in, but is more or less the exact same galaxy. They speak English for chrissake!" Cash's hat is off on his hologram, and his voice is, somehow hoarse. "And then he survives a headshot! An honest to God headshot and by all means, if he pulls through, best case scenario, he loses an eye and some bits and pieces of skull and bone. Bah gawd. I'm taking him out to the casino after this."

Mai says nothing. Not a snap at his bedside manner. Not a question. Not anything. She is silent, she doesn't care. All she does is stay with JD, leaving Cash alone with his words, failing. His hat is in his hand, and he sighs. "I'm sorry. I'm just, trying to stay positive." Still, nothing from her, but that's okay. What else can he do? "I'll leave you two alone, I've got some plans to put together, now that I'm uh, well, Chakwas and Shepard knows what I am so hee hoo. Just a heads up, Shepard's inbound."

---

Commander Shepard steps onboard the ramp of an empty Normandy well deck, and she almost mistakes JD, sitting at his station as he usually does, up against the wall usually hidden by the Mako. The Mako is not there however, and the Well Deck is empty and disheveled from the maneuvers of the Normandy as performed by Joker. Sitting there, disrobed of her armor, in the fatigues of the medical staff, is Liara T'Soni. The floor of the well deck is slick from disinfectant, but no matter how much could be wiped, the sheen of blood remained. Liara looks up to the ceiling of the well deck aimlessly, mouth half open. History flows through her mind of one of its oldest lessons: War never changed. War, more specifically, never changed what it did to people. The mechanism, the technology of war would always change, but war itself and its effects on the living would not be mistake or ever changed for as long two beings lived.

Liara stares up into the dark. The horror, the horror. In her mind: the answer to the Reapers. Not the answer to them, but of them. This was what the Reapers were trying to stop, deep down. She knew, she just knew from thousands of years long pictures that had accumulated in her hundred-year-old brain. Why did her mother die? Because of this.

She understood now.

She stared up at the ceiling and let it wash over her as Shepard passed her by, haunted.

The crew deck had been a mess, the dining table unbolted and having been set up against the wall to clear for a larger triage center. It's cleared out now, most of the medical work being done outside. Garrus sits there, on the stairs leading up to the stasis beds, a ventilator and an air tank by his side, his breathing rough and harsh but at least steady. If he wanted to talk to Shepard, he couldn't. A solemn nod is all he can give as he concentrates on breathing, in and out, a metronome of morbid type. His eyes partly darts at the side of the Normandy with the Medbay. He knows who's in it, and he can't bring himself to see him.

The Medbay is left for one person's treatment.

Shepard had thought it a miracle when it was discovered, and how outstanding the fact had been that Jonathan-Jameson Durante was alive.

She was not given the full report, save for the one message as she tended to the dead outside. This was her first time in the Normandy since stepping off again.

A monitor connected to him beeps of a heartbeat, wrapped up, down to his skinnies in the same bed that Shepard had found herself in after Eden Prime. Nearly all of his head covered by a ghastly wrap of white bandages that only his right eye and tufts his hair and mouth below peeked out of. Had any not knew him, they would think him a man dead there. But no words or thought comes from him. No sound save breathing that is no louder than a rat's whisper. JD survives, but he is not there.

In a corner of the room his armor sits, bludgeoned and destroyed, his helmet with its hole put asides differently into a secure container, bits and pieces of red and red particulate stuck to it. The ODST armor is not alone, however. By its side is what one might mistake as Mai, disassembled. But Mai remains, sitting by his side, down to her own fatigues as well as her right arm lays hung by a sling, missing a hand.

Shepard doesn't know what to expect from Mai, but any option she would accept. Her skull being caved in by her would feel right to her now.

When the door opens and when she finds them, Mai does not move. She does not render salute, she does not become that perfect weapon, perfect military woman.

Shepard knows who and what she is now, and all of her horrible history. No doubt she too knows that she does, but it does not matter anymore. Maybe if she had found out earlier. Maybe in a different life. But not this one.

"I'm sorry." She starts. "I shouldn't have left him alone." The plan was to return to the bomb, and forces were needed elsewhere, but any explanation would not be enough. "It should've been me."

Mai's face does not move from look at JD's as he lays there, the bed slightly canted by its head, angling him up.

"Orders were orders." She responds neutrally. Not like a person. Like a machine. Shepard remembers this tone. It was from day one of knowing her. JD had melted that away. Not her. As she had tried to bond to the crew, both Human and alien, Mai alone was unreachable, but JD had her well in hand. Now he was gone.

The beep of JD's heart goes on and on for at least a minute. Shepard is frozen in the doorway, but it closes behind her, leaving them in the dark, the only light that of the monitor's above JD and his x-rays, glowing.

"If I can do anything for you…"

"You can leave him alone." Mai says. Not maliciously. She simply says, not even looking at Shepard.

"I- I can't. Jonathan is mine to take care of too." The words are her mistake that she cannot stop, and Mai, finally, looks at her. Electric blue eyes burn hot on a face that is unmoving. Those eyes could kill, and, perhaps, maybe, Shepard does want them to. "I can't do, nothing."

A step. She takes it, closer to them. Mai is on her feet. Her warning needs no words.

"If I had known earlier, I would've burned down the Covenant and the Alliance for you." A twitch in her face, Shepard sees it. She takes another step, and then another. Fear. Shepard finally feels that fear that the rest of the crew must with her. The shadows seem to drape her like one of their own, and her eyes seem to unbuckle from her head, looking at her directly. "This mission, it wasn't meant for you. He didn't deserve this… You don't deserve this."

"I don't deserve…" Mai stops herself, straightening herself taller even. She towers over Shepard even with the distance divide. "Commander, I advise you to leave this room."

"This is my ship, Mai."

"Don't." Her remaining fist curls, and from the tension of her flesh it spools up, and out, until it squeezes something in her eyes.

Mai Gul does not know how to cry, but her tears flow anyway as her face remains stone, and her irises burn of hatred in her heart. "You don't know what I'll do if you don't leave."

Shepard does know. She knows Mai will kill her.

That's fine.

"What I want you to do is… to feel. To feel this. To feel for him. I know you want to."

"You have no idea what I am feeling right now, Commander." Mai cannot put it into words. She does not know them, and her body, her training, her indoctrination does not let her. But something deep inside her fights.

"I know loss, Mai."

"Not like this." Mai's voice cracks. Something inside of her cracks. That was not a Spartan speaking. That was a Human. It burned within her, it yearned to be known. Mai tried with all her might to fight it down, to punch it down, to pulverize it and destroy it so that she may never have it. But she couldn't. It was a part of her born from the man who lay before her. It was a part of her that Shepard had known, because she knew that pain too.

She knew that pain because if secrets were to be revealed, fair was fair. It'd been years since she had talked to anyone who didn't need to know this. It'd been years since she confronted this history of herself. But it was a sin worth confronting, it was what she was going to take to her grave, but as long as she lived, so too that pain.

It was the pain of being a woman.

It was the pain of being-

The latches of her armor are depressed, and quickly released, the metal collapses to the floor leaving Shepard unarmored, and her clothes accessible for this: "I was a mother."In a tear, Shepard's shirt is off, and beholden to the world is a scar, snaking up from her stomach. The eyes of Mai on her c-section scar burns more than the air. She speaks fast, she does not pause for she urgently wants Mai to understand that yes, she knew loss.

She was mother to her men. Mother to her ship. Mother to those she would protect. Though those terms passed by those listening, they realized there was a weight to her words that meant something far more, and yet far simpler.

Shepard ghosted her fingers over her stomach and her hands had held it as if there was life within again. She remembered fondly before the memory turned to bitterness. "I had a child."

Mai had looked at Shepard, and the ghosts of those she had known had been over her shoulder. She had overheard these stories because her mind would not let her filter out these words as she brushed by UNSC troops. She had heard this spoken by an ODST that had been serving since Harvest: The vast majority of UNSC forces had a generational shift within it. At first when the Covenant had come, it had been mothers and fathers, fighting for their children back on their homeworlds, away from the frontlines. By 2552, it had been those children come to avenge the death of their parents. It was anecdotal, of course, but those ODSTs and Marines she had known that were parents, they had fought with such a ferocity, and yet such an ambition and future sight, that it had been a loss that even she felt immense sorrow in to see them get cut down, leaving behind lives.

That haunting aura, that knowing condition, the one that had made Shepard a part of who she was and how she cared, it had manifested in something that she had confided in her now as JD lay gone between them.

Her fingers clamped down, softly, over her stomach still.

"I was… different." She started, explaining in the dark. "It was after Elysium, shore leave after the fact. I can hardly remember his name, but he was there and I just needed to feel good and he made me feel good and-" Normally Shepard had been so good with words and yet she faltered here. "I was offered leave, after Elysium, after getting awarded for what I did. I asked for nine months."

"You gave birth?" Mai finally let out.

She remembered that day very well: in her Earth apartment in California, she had called for a doctor and forced them to sign an NDA. Both for them, and for herself.

"I couldn't bring myself to abort, but," Shepard winced, looking up at the ceiling. "I had a career, a goodness to honest amazing career ahead of me. I couldn't just lose it all to take care of a child. Because, Hell, if I had tried, that kid wouldn't have been mine. It would've been the Alliance's, they would've ended up like me: Alone."

Busy parents, too timid to bring them out into the galaxy for fear of their safety. It was how Shepard herself was made.

"I didn't let them tell me if they were a boy or a girl. They took them away for adoption as soon as I gave birth. I never even saw… saw." Shepard's eyes were distant, watery. "I never saw my baby. I lost them as soon as they were born."

Shepard knew loss in every way. Commander Shepard was a mother, and Mai could not tear her eyes away from her now. The hate drained out of her. The aggravation. For Shepard, however, she could not stop what came from herself as her own fists curled and she tried to stop her own tears, clamping her eyes, stopping nothing.

"It was a mistake!" She bawled like thunder, her voice hoarse. Too much today, and too much in the past, colliding in her heart that broke her down. "A mistake!"

Commander Shepard cried, and she hated herself for it. Who was in that room right now didn't need her like this, but she couldn't stop. It had been too long and her life had been too lonely on her pedestal. "I am the way I am, because maybe, just maybe, with whoever lovely parents I hope they ended up with, I think to myself: What I do, it might affect them, and I have no idea who they are." Shepard had finally walked across that final distance to Mai and to JD, staring into her eyes, telling her truth, her belief, her reality. "I have made this entire galaxy my child. That is my burden, my responsibility, and because of that I lose every day, Mai."

"I've lost so much. I've lost JD, and now, I'm about to lose you." You, she did not say, who has lost her own mother. Mai's eyes deeply sink into themselves, and she is frozen, taken, by Commander Shepard's words finally. But it is too late. For everyone. "Please, Mai. Feel his loss. Process it. Because it is what he would want for you."

"You-…" Mai forgets to breath through all of this, stopping her words before she even starts. "How do you know that?"

Shepard wipes her eyes, but she can see Mai clearly, and her strong arms are held by Shepard as she reaches out and feels, confirms, that this is a Human standing before her. Not a Spartan. "Because, he loved you."

That word meant so much: love. It is a word that Shepard thinks of often, and it is a wide word. But it is an important word.

Those words hit Mai in the chest. A diamond bullet through the cold space that has wound up tight that burns her. "I don't know what that means." Her words are weak, and they are scared.

Words and wisdom that were meant for her children are instead given to those who she comes across and needs it. That was how Shepard came to live with herself. This was how Shepard finally connected with Mai Gul in soft words, heart to heart. "I do not know how he loved you, but he did. In his own way. He loved you. I saw it every day he was with you, and I know it true, because it shows in you."

"…What?" Breathlessly, Mai does not understand.

"It shows in what you did." For all of what went wrong, what Mai had done to the bomb, it was an act of one sole proprietor: Love. "The galaxy is cruel. It takes, and it kills, and it crushes without reason or sanity. Do you know how many lives I have seen perish in front of my very eye? In the memories that have been given to me?" And Shepard has stars behind her, the lighting of the room dims to Mai, and it's just Shepard: standing alone in the dark. "Too many, but I can't just keeping doing the same to the galaxy in turn. I can't." She begs, she pleads. "Even if that's what happens."

"I don't know what you mean… I can't understand you." Mai pleads with Shepard, but Shepard goes on the word spilling from her begging Mai likewise to take them.

"This galaxy is cruel." Shepard says again. "But love is real, and what we do in the name of love is so powerful. Don't you understand that?"

It's Christmas. On New Jerusalem. Mai and her mother are not Christian, but the city does not care. On that day however, a service was held by a nearby church in their part of town. The church was open to all, regardless of faith. It was warm, and food was being served. For Mai and her mother, it was momentary sanctuary in those cold, brutal months and in that they joined Christmas mass. These words echo from childhood to now, and in them she finds the meaning of Shepard's words:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Shepard's hand moves over Mai's arm, feeling flesh and blood of a woman at war, and she can feel her shaking.

"You changed the path of History for him." Shepard's words barely cut above the hum of the world around them, the shadows and tears forming anew cloud her eyes. "If only I loved as strong as you, Mai Gul."

So much to say. So much to ask. But no answers would ever come to Mai today. The Spartan does not remember what it is like to love alone, because there is no action she can do to bring JD back. But that word hangs in the air and so she takes it like a gun, holding it in her hands, unknowing of what to do. She is not sure if it is as Shepard says, but if she can even come close to this approximation of what it is, then she would accept it. More than that, she would give it all back, just for him.

(In the days, weeks, and months following, she reads the definition of that word, over and over, and sees it plastered from memoirs of great heroes and great soldiers. She reads those words and still does not understand what it means alone.)

Shepard can bare it no more, shirt picked up, put back on, her armor gathered up, the two women wound tender and raw. There is no closure here. No ending. Just continuance. Tomorrow would come, and they would need to be there whether they liked it or not.

"I should go." Shepard speaks, and she too returns to what she needs to be.

The room is cold and dry and dark, and Shepard winces, turning her head away and leaving them alone, finally. She was due for somewhere else, away from there, away from that cauldron of history that her being there was too much at hazard for the powers above her could tolerate.

Mai returns to JD's side soon after she leaves. He heard none of it, but she still wishes she did. If she had done this because of him, wouldn't he come back because of her? She hoped, she wished, she would stay by his side to see if he did.

Shepard spoke to her about the strength of her love, of every aspect of her, and yet, for all her strength it still was not enough. She had given it her all, and he was still gone.

Mai Gul had never felt weaker.

Her remaining hand, uncovered by suit or pretense, move without her permission, but she is thankful for it as they find a place on his right forearm softly, and gently she feels beneath superhuman touch the gentle pulse that he was, in some way, still alive.

If he was there, she wonders what words she could speak or sign to him. She wonders how much would be said without her even knowing and what she needed to tell him. In the end, however, her mind melts into a fuzzy white mournful noise because he can't hear her (even if she so desperately wanted him to hear).

These are the words that would perhaps soothe her soul for now:

I'll be here for you.

I was lost without you.

You're all that I have.

She does not know those words yet, however- cannot will them into her truth and speech. What she can say is this however: "I can't lose you."

With that promise, the Lone Wolf curled up at his side, and would remain there for as long as she needed.

---

The End of Mass Effect 1

All the Stars continues in

The interbellum period between Mass Effect 1 and 2

Section 2: Arc of the Covenant