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If It Meant Living-47: The End of the Beginning

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If It Meant Living - Chapter 47
"The End of the Beginning"



Title: If It Meant Living – Chapter 47:  "The End of the Beginning"
Author: Graceyn
Game: Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2/Mass Effect 3
Characters/pairing: femShep/Kaidan
Disclaimer: Bioware owns all rights to Mass Effect and its characters
Content Warning: Violence, Language


Author's Note:  ME3 ENDING SPOILERS FOLLOW.  If you have not finished ME3, bookmark this chapter and return when you have (and please, do return).

ME3.  99% incredible, amazing, totally-worth-it conclusion to the trilogy – everything I could have hoped for and more.  The last 1%…not (if you are interested in my further thoughts, visit my latest Journal entry.  But I will not let 15 minutes of travesty rob me of the enjoyment of the best video game series created to date.  

So…we begin at the end.  Or rather, my end (or possibly my middle…my end perhaps remaining to be seen).  Why start at the end?  Because before you commit to stick with me and this story for many months, you deserve to know that we are going somewhere worth going to.

UPDATE: The reception to this chapter has been amazing, and I'm so glad it was able to help others deal with the endings, much as writing it did for me.  I am very proud of the story told in this chapter, and it will always be near and dear to my heart.  However…now that this fic has been written in its entirety, I can say that this chapter should be viewed as an alternate-universe one-shot, similar to "Parallel Realities."  Much like "Parallel Realities," it is well worth reading – but it is not the actual ending to this story.

The actual ending is even better.



Earth, 2187:  Final Confrontation with the Reapers

She ran.

As Harbinger came into view beyond the brilliant white glow of the Conduit, Shepard left them all – Kaidan, Garrus, Anderson, what was left of the Hammer forces – she left them all behind and sprinted towards the light.  She ran with every ounce of strength she had.

It wasn't enough.

Harbinger fired its deadly beam at the space in front of the Conduit, and the world exploded.  The ground lifted up and broke apart, bodies and tanks went flying, the air turned red.  She was hurled into the air, crushed against the side of a tank – a sharp pain searing into her mind through the rush – then tumbled to the ground.

Her vision swam; the breath knocked from her lungs; she struggled to move and was assaulted by pain from every direction.  She collapsed back to the ground and fought to breathe, while imposing calm on the madness.  First rule of combat – panic means death.  

By the time the breath at last came, she had assessed the critical damage – a dislocated shoulder, a sprained wrist and ankle, a nasty gash on the forehead, a busted lip, bleeding from the nose of unknown origin.  Her armor was a wreck – burnt, crushed, or just gone.  But most of all…there was a hole in her side, above her waist.  Near as she could figure, she had been impaled on a protrusion from the tank.  It was the kind of wound that the automatic medi-gel system in her armor would have kept in stasis until she could get to a medical facility…but her armor was gone.

She steadied herself with her good arm, shakily stood, and fixated on the Conduit.  It didn't matter.  There was no time or chance or hope for doctors or treatment or any help at all.  There was no time to turn around, to see if Kaidan or Garrus or Anderson had lived or died.  

There was only time for one last desperate fight.  And she would fight, as long as there was the smallest chance of victory.  The odds never truly mattered in the games of life and death – and this was the ultimate game.  All the marbles.

As Harbinger swung around for another attack, she whispered…I'm so sorry, Kaidan…and stumbled into the Conduit –

– and fell into Hell.  

It was the Hell of Dante's Seventh Circle, complete with a river of blood.  She had no idea if the bodies immersed in the river of blood were the "violent" sinners that Dante had seen, but she rather doubted the Reapers had stopped to make such distinctions.  More likely they were simply mothers and fathers, children and elderly, soldiers and farmers…and they were all dead.

She didn't know where in the Citadel she was, anything that might have otherwise been recognizable covered in blood and gore and darkness.  But there was only one way to go – forward.  She clamped her hand over the gaping wound in her side and started to move – then remembered her dislocated shoulder, turned and slammed it against the wall and back into its socket, screamed at the jolting pain, collapsed to her knees before ordering herself to stand up – and resumed moving forward.

"Shepard, are you here?"

She jumped at least ten feet in the air in surprise, jarring her already-sprained ankle in the process.  

"Shepard?  Anyone?"

She touched her comm.  "Anderson?"

"Shepard, thank god.  I made it into the Conduit behind you, but we must have come out at different places."

She smiled, though it probably looked like a grimace.  "I'm glad.  I didn't know if you'd made it."

She could hear him grunt with exertion, or pain.  "Yeah, it was a close one.  I've only got one path, so I'm just going to keep going forward."

"Same here.  With a little luck – does luck still exist? – we'll end up at the same place."  She paused.  "Anderson…how bad is it where you are?"

"It's a goddamn abomination."

"Yeah…here too."

"I see a – " his voice broke up in static.

"Anderson?  Anderson, do you read me?"  There was nothing but static in response.  She took a deep breath and kept going.

The hallway of death eventually turned into a slightly brighter hallway of death, then a ramp that wasn't covered in blood, then a vast, shining traverse leading to an open chamber above.  She could see the twinkling lights of the Citadel arms as she agonizingly slowly drew near the chamber.

***

Shepard stumbled into the chamber just in time to see the Illusive Man shoot Anderson in the gut.

"You bastard!" she grunted through teeth clenched in pain and rage.

The Illusive Man turned to face her, and the horror was revealed.  His neck and portions of his face were covered in a weaving of blue glowing wires, his skin cracking open to reveal a blue glow beneath it.  She grasped her gun hand with her good arm and started pulling it up.

"Shepard, wait, I can control the–"

"You indoctrinated little shit."  She pulled the trigger and shot him between the eyes.  He fell backwards over the edge of the platform and into the abyss of the Citadel.

She dropped the gun and tried to run to Anderson, causing a fresh gush of blood to pour out from the wound in her side and through her fingers.  She ignored it.  He was still alive when she reached him, but his stomach was a bloody mess mixed with the black of his uniform.

"It's okay, I've got you."  She slowly drug him against the raised dais in the center of the chamber and propped him up against it, then collapsed beside him.  The arms of the Citadel were slowly opening to reveal an Earth on fire and a great battle raging above it.

"I think I got it working…I'm not sure – "  He was interrupted by a fit of gurgled coughing.  

…She was a girl kneeling beside her father as the world exploded around her.  "Dad!  Dad, hold on!  Let me help you."  He reached up and grasped her arm, letting out a horrible gurgling cough…   

"Hold on, Anderson.  I need to…"  There was no medi-gel.  There was no anything.  There was nothing she could do for him, or for herself.

He seemed to understand, and let out a long breath.  From afar the Crucible began its approach through the now open arms.  "Hell of a view…"

She tried to smile through the pain, cognizant she was beginning to get dizzy from blood loss.  Time seemed to slow to a snail's pace.  

"Sceni – scenic vistas!  Do you two not see this?  It's magnificent – incredible – beautiful…"  She turned to Kaidan, gesturing out at the marvel beyond.

She could see him smile behind the helmet.  He mouthed, silently, "Yes."  But it seemed he looked only at her.


"Was even better the last time I was out here…"

Anderson slowly breathed in and out.  "God…feels like years since I just sat down…"  His head dropped to his chest.

She struggled to reach over and lift his chin.  "Stay with me!  We're almost through this, dammit."

He looked up at her and smiled tenderly, grasping her hand with his.  "You did good, child…you did good.  I'm so proud of you…"

Anderson's hand went slack in hers as his chest rose for the last time.  She stared at him for a moment, tears in her eyes, and gave his hand a final squeeze.  

"Goodbye, old friend."  

Then she dropped her head back against the dais and closed her eyes.

***

A blinding light through her closed eyelids forced her awake.  She struggled to open her eyes…and was met with Heaven.  

A bright white beam of light rose in front of her, and all around her were the stars.  The battle continued to rage, but from here it seemed not deadly but beautiful, a choreographed dance of light and fire.  She was lying on a pristine glass-like floor that seemed to glow from within.  Out of the corner of her eye a shimmering, translucent presence was walking towards her from out of the light.

It was the boy from the vent on Earth.

Had she died?  Was there really a Heaven after all, and she had joined that innocent child in it?  But where was everyone else?  Her father would be –

"You need to get up."

She shook her head roughly.  The apparition-boy had a haunting, echoing voice, as though it was a thousand voices speaking together.  Yet somehow it was calming, reassuring.

"I need to stop the Reapers.  How do I do that?"

"We will see.  I control the Reapers.  They are my solution."

She limped after him, but found she could move better than before.  Strange.  Well, rage was a hell of an anesthetic…  "The solution to what?"

"Chaos.  The created will always rebel against the creators.  But we found a way to stop that from happening.  A way to restore order for the next cycle."

His voice was lulling her, caressing her.  She tried to shake her head, escape the fog clouding her mind.  But she seemed to move so very slowly…  Dammit, Shepard!  Snap out of it!

"I prefer my chaos to your genocide, thank you.  I'm here to break your cycle."

"No, you can't.  But we must find a new solution.  This Crucible you have constructed has changed me, created new…possibilities.  But I can't make them happen without your help.  You can of course destroy us if you wish.  But in doing so you will wipe out all synthetic life, including the Geth.  Including you, as synthetic parts returned you to life and keep you so."

"Regardless, that is not a true solution.  In time, your children will create synthetics, and the chaos will return.  But if you can control us…"

"Control you?"  How the hell could she control an entity that was so old, so powerful, that it created the Reapers, up until five minutes ago the oldest and most powerful beings in existence?

"Through the power of the Crucible, yes. "  

As if…order the Reapers to leave, you die, they turn around and come back 50,000 years later – or sooner.  Some solution.  Worse, the Illusive Man had thought he could control the Reapers.  He was delusional.  Indoctrinated.

"But there is another option – synthesis.  Add your energy to the Crucible.  Everything you are will be absorbed, then sent out.  The chain reaction will combine all synthetic and organic life into a new framework, a new DNA.  Synthesis is the final evolution of life."

It had a certain elegance to it.  She supposed she was already synthesized, and she seemed to be okay.  Then she remembered Saren.  He thought he was the fusion of organic and synthetic, the next stage of evolution.  He was delusional.  Indoctrinated.

"One last thing.  No matter your choice, releasing the energy of this Crucible will destroy the Mass Relays.  You have a difficult decision to make.  Now choose."

His voice reverberated inside her head.  She was suddenly reminded of Morinth.  A whisper, swirling around her mind, insisting that she submit.  Choose.  

She stood up straight.  "No.  Your choices are false.  They are based on false premises, leading to false conclusions.  We have broken your cycle without you.  We have found peace between organics and synthetics.  The created no longer rebel against their creators.  We don't need your solution.  Now tell me how to fire the weapon."

"There is no weapon.  There is only a solution.  You must choose."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then the cycle will continue.  The Reapers will harvest all advanced civilizations and help them ascend.  And this Crucible will be destroyed, so that the cycle may continue and order will not be threatened by future civilizations.  You will gain nothing, and lose everything.  Choose."

Goddamn fucking shit. Hell.  She sunk to her knees and dropped her head.  

She came here to destroy the Reapers, and that's what she had to do.  But to kill all the Geth, just when she had helped give them life, give them identity, give them selfhood.  It was a travesty.  To kill EDI, when I'll be damned if she just might have found her soul…  

She sighed deeply, her heart broken.  She heard Thane's voice in her head.  We carry the weight of our decisions, Shepard.  You, of all people, should know that.  And so she did.

She pulled herself up off her knees, turned and marched over to the power conduit, gun raising as she did so.  She sighted down on the glass housing, and pulled the trigger.

Everything exploded, and then all was black.  She dreamed.

***

The blackness was interrupted by Hackett's garbled voice.  "–ard, are you there?  Anderson?  It isn't working, nothing's happening!  Shepard…Anderson…please respond!"

Shepard opened her eyes in confusion.  She was lying against the dais in the control chamber, Anderson unmoving beside her.  The Crucible was docked and linked to the Citadel.  

She must have lost consciousness for a few moments…but…apparition-boy…the Catalyst…the solution…the…goddamn but that was one fucked-up nightmare!  She would consider other, deeper possibilities regarding the vision later…should she live.  

She crawled to the control panel then struggled up.  All the pain, all the blood, rushed back to the forefront of her perception.  Oh yeah, this was what real life felt like…on the worst of days…at the end of days.  

"Hackett, this is Shepard.  Give me a minute, I think I can get it working."

She gazed at the control panel, the blood seeping from her side and the dozen other injuries forgotten.  In her mind were the visions from the beacon, the story of the Protheans from the Cipher, the memories from Javik, the lessons from the Prothean VI.

Anderson could never have made it work.  No one – in this cycle at least – could have made it work.  Except for her.   She carried within her the knowledge of the Protheans, and their knowledge of those before them.  She carried within her the key.  She knew exactly what to do.

She reached up with her good arm and input a series of commands.  Almost immediately a hum began to build, the air began to shimmer with energy.  She looked up and watched as a red light began to form at the top of the Citadel, hazy and indistinct at first, then sharper and more focused.

For all that she did know, she had no fucking idea what the Crucible was going to do.  A sudden stabbing pain in her side brought back the harsh reality of her predicament.  She was alone, and she was dying.  If the beam didn't kill the Citadel and her, the worst of her wounds would soon do so.

She tore her eyes away from the growing power above her and looked down.  The bright white glow of the Conduit stopped far below her, where it effused out to fill the chasm.  That must be where it "dumped" its passengers, as it had dumped her.  From here, it seemed…so far away.  The light was beginning to undulate and flicker.  It was beginning to go out.

She was a girl kneeling beside her father as the world exploded around her.  "Dad!  Dad, hold on!  Let me help you."  He reached up and grasped her arm, letting out a horrible gurgling cough.  "Graceyn… you're so grown up, so beautiful, so strong…"  He coughed again, this time sputtering blood down his chin.  "I need you to do something for me, okay?  You survive.  Find a way to survive.  Live."

She looked out at the stars and smiled through the pain and exhaustion.  "I will, Dad."

She leapt into the light.



Kaidan stepped out of the apartment building and into the devastation, still limping slightly from the fractured leg he had suffered in Harbinger's attack.  The heavy bruises and lacerations were healed, the concussion cleared; in a few more days there would be no physical evidence remaining of his particularly close brush with death.  

The mid-day breeze still carried a chill; he took the jacket from over his arm and slipped it on.  He paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, surveying the landscape.  Everywhere he looked, his eyes saw ruined, crumbled buildings, roads interrupted by gaping craters, vehicles crushed and tossed like toys.

But he also saw blue sky – a blue sky dotted with construction cranes in motion, with vehicles whizzing by.  The devastation was unimaginable in scope, but the work of rebuilding had already begun.  Whether it was nameless individuals stepping outside the next day and cleaning up the rubble from their street or massive multi-agency rebuildings of entire cities, the human spirit had reemerged in the dawn light the day after the Reapers fell.

The Crucible had done something to dark energy.  The vast wave that had rushed out of the Citadel had somehow altered its properties.  The Reapers were built around dark energy – they had, for lack of a better term, been fried.  They had exploded into pieces large and small, covering the landscape.  Worries about indoctrination were rampant in the early days, but the Reapers appeared to be well and truly dead.

Of course, mass effect fields were also based on dark energy.  The Relays ceased to function.  All mass effect fields ceased to function.  Biotics ceased to function.  Biotics had been a part of his being for so long, he still felt a little hollow from the lack of them.  On the plus side, no more migraines.

With the lack of mass effect fields, the fleets over Earth had a harrowing time of it.  Entering planetary atmosphere with no stabilizing fields was bumpy at best, ship crushing at worst.  Most managed to land safely – but not all.  And now the surviving fleets of a dozen species were stranded on Earth with no easy way home.  FTL no longer functioned, having utilized mass effect fields; without the Relays traveling to other systems meant decades, if not centuries.  The best minds on the planet were hard at work trying to figure out a way to get the Relays working again; but no one had truly understood them when they did work, much less now that they didn't.

His eyes scanned the promenade as he walked down the stairs.  There.  She was leaning against the railing off to the right, gazing out at the harbor.  He snuck quietly up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.  She flinched.

"Sorry, I forgot for a second."  He loosened his hold slightly but kissed the top of her head.

She reached back absently and touched where tight bandages under her clothing held her side together.  "It's okay.  It doesn't really hurt anymore, it's just…sensitive.  And itchy as hell."  She leaned back against him and sighed.  "Turns out growing new skin is an annoyingly itchy process.  I'm glad I was in a coma the last time I had to do it."

He smiled against her hair.  "Well don't scratch it, we're going to need that skin."  He nuzzled the nape of her neck then kissed it softly.

"Yeah, yeah."  She grinned.  "Wrex commed while I was waiting for you."

"And what did our friendly neighborhood Krogan have to say this time?"

"He asked me for the 4,357th time when the Relays were going to be working again so he could get back to his people and his girlfriend and start making babies.  I told him I still didn't have the slightest idea and could he please pester Tali instead, seeing as she is at least a member of the group working on the problem."

"And?"

"He said that Tali was entirely too sweet to yell at, he was afraid he would make her cry and he wouldn't even be able to tell.  So I told him to pester EDI.  He said he had already tried that.  EDI had responded that she was unable to calculate with greater than 27.45189 percent quantifiable accuracy the likelihood of the Relays working in the next year, thousand years, or ever."

"He loved that, I'm sure."

"He replied, and I quote, 'What the hell does that mean, robot girl?'  To which EDI responded, 'It means I do not know.'"

He chuckled as he pulled her hair back behind her ear and kissed it gently.  "Did you make a human out of the AI, Shepard?"

She shook her head slowly.  "Nah.  But she may have made one out of herself."  

She paused.  "I didn't want to get Wrex's hopes up prematurely, but Tali told me yesterday she thinks they're close to figuring it out.  It looks like the Crucible altered the atomic structure of dark energy, perhaps by as little as a single electron.  If so, she thinks we'll be able to adjust our tech to use it again.  God knows it won't be easy or cheap, but…it means a future for everyone."

"That's wonderful news."  He took a moment then to just enjoy holding her.  He had come so close to losing her again, to losing everything.  He should have lost everything, they all should have.  But for the impossibility of Shepard.

"So what do you think?"

She smiled and squeezed his hand against her stomach.  "I think your Mom is lovely.  I see now where you got your kindness."

She couldn't see it, but he grinned in mild embarrassment.  "Yeah, I suppose that's true.  She was a bit more subdued than usual, obviously…losing Dad, losing so much.  Just like everyone.  Thanks for giving me a few minutes with her in private…I think she's going to be okay, eventually.  She's strong."  

He paused.  "But I guess what I really mean is, what do you want to do?"

She sighed dramatically.  "Well, the docs still won't release me for active duty, so for now I guess I want to stare at oceans with your arms wrapped around me.  But after…"

"I heard they offered you the head of the Inter-Species Council.  Seeing as you managed to get them all to fight together, guess they think you can manage to get them to live together."

She smiled slightly.  "Actually, they offered me any post I wanted…and there are a lot of empty posts.  But yeah, that one in particular was mentioned."  She turned around in his arms to face him, her nose wrinkled up in disgust.  "But a desk job?  As if…"  He interrupted her with a kiss.

After a minute she pulled back and looked around at the devastation.  "There's so much rebuilding to do, they need so much help here…everywhere…it's just…"  She glanced up at the sky wistfully.

He smiled tenderly.  "I know.  Your home is out there, the entire galaxy."

She looked back and met his eyes for a long moment.  

"No.  My home is with you.  So I guess the real question is, what do you want to do?"

His heart nearly burst with love and wonder, but he just grinned mischievously.  "I want to find a working restaurant and get lunch.  Come on."  He pulled her off the railing and draped his arm over her shoulder as they picked their way through the rubble-covered street.

She glanced up at him as they walked.  "Did I tell you that when I was up on the Citadel and the Reapers were trying to indoctrinate me, I dreamed you and the crew of the Normandy were stranded on a far off Land of the Giant Lost World planet?"

He thought for a minute then looked over at her, a puzzled frown on his face.  "That's insane."

"I know…"
The story of Commander Graceyn Shepard - life, death, rebirth, and life once again - in her own voice.

Welcome back :)!

Companion art piece, "Indoctrinated": [link]

First - Ch. 1 "Beginnings" -> [link]?
Previous - Ch. 46 "Arrival" -> [link]
Ch. 47 "The End of the Beginning" -> Viewing
Next - Ch. 48 "Lockdown" -> [link]
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Dreamrstar's avatar
I actually hadn't considered this ending. I wish it had been an option .