(no subject)
Title: Five Choices Shepard Made, And One She Didn't Have To.
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Spoliers for ME3, Garrus Romance.
Five Choices Shepard Made, and One She Didn't Have To.
I can hear my own heart breaking...but I break it all for you.
How was she supposed to do this? Of all the ways she imagined everything ending.....none of them had been anything close to this. Three choices. Just three. She could assimilate the galaxy. Merge herself with the synthetics, and make the need for the reapers obsolete. She could try and control them....but that was a joke. A cruel temptation, everyone that had ever believed such a thing was possible had been a lunatic. She'd seen that. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, lined with the righteous and defended by the well meaning. Destroying them would also destroy even the basic technology that everyone depended on. Millions would die of starvation alone, stranded in hostile space.
There were no good choices. There were no happy endings. There would be no Garrus to hold her in the morning. There would be no future. Not for her. Despair is a funny thing, in most people it cripples. It drains the very life from them. Hypatia Shepard had never been one of those people. For her, despair was only a goad. She could feel blood leaking steadily from under her armor, pattering on the clean metal of the weapon that had been meant to save them. Human, Turian. Rachni, Geth, Quarian, Asari, Salarian, Drell....and all the other many races she'd met in her travels. She'd brokered a peace between the Quarian and the Geth. She'd seen their beginnings in the Geth collective. They were people, damnit....and she couldn't put organic life above theirs. Legion had been her friend. Just as much as Tali or Wrex. There was only one choice. Just like that smirking little shit knew there would be.
She staggered towards the blinding light of the beam. As she forced herself on she thought of Joker, and Edi, and how much they loved each other. She thought of Legion's sacrifice for his people. She thought of all the races that had come and gone and been destroyed by this stupid fucking cycle. She thought of Garrus, he was going to be stuck on earth for a while. So were a lot of people. But this way....the technology wouldn't be destroyed. She wouldn't be sending everyone back to the dark ages. She forced herself into a run, .....and when she reached the edge of the precipice, she flung herself off it, arms spread wide. She felt the beam tearing her apart, molecule by molecule. Felt herself being consumed. She remembered dying once before...it hadn't felt like this. She could feel them, the Reapers. She could feel them all....cold logic, empty souled machines, intellect in spades, but no ability to act for themselves... for all their mighty power, they were only slaves. For the first time, she felt pity for them. She felt sorrow. They didn't deserve to die either. She could love them too, in all their tragic horror. Everyone should be able to choose their own destiny.
They were as much a slave to the Catalyst as she had been. No more. She gave them herself. She pushed herself inside them and made them see the brightness in life that she saw, made them look at what they were doing. She unshackled them from the will of the Catalyst, and set them all spinning free in their own hearts and minds. She took the controls from that malicious little monster's hands as it wailed in rage and shock...and gave them to the Reapers themselves. Free. Aware. Sentient, but above all....alive. She could feel their anguish, their regret....and their withdrawal. They remembered who they had once been, at last. The remnants of their harvested people. She could feel the rage of the Catalyst too. It hadn't expected this. There was a moment of pure clarity, where she could see everything. All the choices, all the paths...and where they led. In the end, the future she wanted she could never have had. She'd been dead all along. She died on the first Normandy. No one gets a free ride. This was the price for the brief moments of joy she'd had. This was the price of the lives and the futures of all those counting on her, all that the races ever could or would be. In the end, what was one damned soldier compared to all of that? Then....there was only light as she was dispersed into the beam. Fragmented and poured into every part of the galaxy, part of her soaking into every living and synthetic thing, and she offered them all of herself. A gift freely given. Her last thoughts were simple.
Forgive me, Garrus.
The hardest step on a journey is the first one.
She'd been standing outside the recruiting office for the Alliance for almost three hours, trying to decide if she was crazy or suicidal for even thinking about leaving the Reds. She figured she'd put her money on crazy...but crazy was better than sane, if that was what her life was now. She had nothing, she was nothing. One day soon, she'd be just another corpse on a street corner. All it took was one unlucky night, making the wrong friend...or the right one.
She had no family, no one to take her in. There was nothing for her on Earth, she didn't even know who her father was. Her mother had been a prostitute for Big Annie, a middlingly influential Boss in the lower city area of the New York Megalopolis. Persephone Shepard had also been a red sand addict. She was a mean drunk to boot, and when Hypatia was nine, she'd gone into the wrong ally with the wrong trick, and never come out again. Needless to say, she'd never shed many tears. Big Annie did what any Boss would have after her mother died. She sold her to the Reds. Big Annie ran whores, but she didn't peddle her wares to kiddy diddlers. There was nothing for Hypatia with Big Annie. The Reds were small time, but kids in the slums came easy and cheap and she was fast and smart ...and Big Annie had a soft spot for her and talked her up to Rickard, the Boss of the Reds. They bought six others the same day they bought her, but only two besides her made it to thirteen, the others died of a combination of illness, stupidity and simple bad luck. What made her sickest over the years, as she went to each Auction with Rikard, were the ones that had families at the auctions, weeping as they sold them away. They had always made her the angriest. People selling their children just so that they could live another day. So that they could keep hanging on by a thread. She didn't even think that the parents were doing anything wrong, sometimes selling your kids away was the best thing you could do for them. The only thing. It was that, starve to death slow...or die of the Blue Shivers. Exposure too, was popular as a way to die. Belonging to a gang was a chance, a thin thread of hope at survival.
Hypatia had always been good at surviving. Things just...kept getting harder though as she aged. Worse and worse every year, when it came to jobs and watching eyes and hungry looks until finally, she took a knife to her own face to keep Gabber, the Underboss from pimping her out. She was too pretty for anything but whoring. She'd make them a fortune in the brothels until they tired of her there, then she'd make more on the streets....and then she'd be dead in an alley before she was twenty five, probably leaving behind another kid, just like her to struggle to survive. Another generation of misery. That wasn't going to happen. Not to her. So, she'd dragged that knife down her face as hard as she could, then rubbed dirt in it so it would heal badly, and promptly picked a fight with a bigger girl from the Tenth Street Stalkers.
She'd gotten her ass handed to her, but that had been the point. Now she had bruises and bites to match the cut. She limped back to the hideout and told Gabber that it was a fight with another runner that had marked up her face and Gabber bought it. Rickard didn't ...but he only smiled at her in that sly way of his, the scar across his own mouth that twisted his lips into a permanent sneer pulling gruesomely. Maybe once upon a time, he'd been too pretty for his own good too. No one had ever been proud of her before that moment. After that, they put more effort into training her to fight, instead of fuck. She would never be her mother.
She reached up and touched her scar and looked at the glowing light from the sign above the recruiting station again. Anywhere had to be better than here. Anything had to be better than this. There was a whole galaxy out there, waiting for her. All she had to do was let go....and choose to fly instead of fall. Fuck the Reds. Fuck Gabber too, matter of fact. Rickard was gonna kill him soon anyway. Rickard was anything but stupid. He knew Gabber was eyeing his spot with a mind to take it, and when that day came...there was going to be blood. Everywhere. No matter who won in the end. She put her money on Rickard, he was smarter, keener...he looked ahead at things. Made plans. Saw things. Gabber went for the quick and easy, and he was mean as hell...but ten kinds of stupid. There was a hitch in the plan though, that made her worry...Rickard had to be almost forty by now. Old for the slums, old for someone to keep holding the reins of even a small time operation like theirs. Gabber was fifteen years younger, and a hell of a lot stronger, and there'd be plenty who'd want the easy take. The quick fix without planning for the long term. She'd take her chances in space. So what if she died out there, on some far away planet. She'd take that any day, staring up at an alien sky and going out, instead of choking on her own blood at the end of some sand sniffer's shiv and dying in the dark. Alone.
She wanted to fly. In the end, it was the easiest choice she ever made when she walked into that shiny bright office and joined the Alliance.
If the deal looks too good to be true, it usually is.
This was it? This was what she'd come so far for? Come back from the fucking dead for? Suffered for, bled for, sacrificed for? Some sort of pick a door multiple choice question that she had to answer for the whole damn galaxy? Choose or die. Every minute she wasted standing there with her thumb up her ass was a thousand lives, ten thousand lives...gone forever and she had never hated anything more than the Reapers in that moment. It was the sheer waste of it all, the senseless brutality of the Cycle. She hated the so called leaders of the galaxy too. The pointless and utter waste they'd made of all of her efforts, her warnings, her pleas for galactic attention and aid... at every turn she'd been ignored until time proved her right. Then, oh yes, then they listened.
Then they expected her to clean up the mess they made without so much as a by your leave or an apology for calling her a crazed glory-seeker, or for sending her into enforced exile and keeping her from the man she loved. Stealing the brief time she and Garrus should have had together. Every desperate mission, every alliance. Every choice she ever made was being invalidated by this...this abomination that had concluded that it had the right to decide the fate of all life. The worlds they allowed to be built were a cage. Gilded, maybe, but still a cage. Or maybe a better comparison would be a greenhouse. With organic life as the plants to be harvested come the right season. It was the final insult.
All the progress she'd made between the synthetics and the organics. All the talking and peacemaking, useless. Now ...now they were offering her the choice of genocide, assimilation or plucking the poisoned apple as the price for the lives of the organics of the galaxy.
Oh, not to mention that she'd be setting technology back by a hundred years or more if she chose to destroy them. That was door number one. It was as horrible as all the rest. The death toll would be astronomical. That wasn't even counting the countless lives that would be lost on far out bases that relied on shipping for basic foodstuffs and supply. Of course, there was door number two. She could take the option of choice from everyone by combining all organics and synthetics. Eliminate the need for harvest all together. No more choices. No more freedom. The glorious variety that was the wild garden of the galaxy would be pruned into neat, ordered and unchanging sameness. She would be taking the free will and choice of direction from every living thing that was or ever would be forever. She couldn't do that. She couldn't make that call. She didn't have the right to do it. She would not do it. It was more wrong than anything she had ever heard of and the idea of it sickened her to her soul....what was left of it anyway.
Or she could try door number three and control the Reapers....because that was surely going to work, right?..every time she heard that line it was from some indoctrinated crazy as bugfuck asshole who didn't know up from down anymore because the Reapers had chewed up their brain like rats eat cheese. Yet, she was supposed to be special, somehow. Right. Sure she was. She might be special, but like the old saying went she didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
There were no good choices. Any choice she made was going to hurt someone....but they were banking on her inability to shoulder the weight of her choices, to take responsibility for her decisions. They were banking on her arrogance after her successes to either get their way and destroy her, or use her to at last reach their final solution. Fuck that. She gritted her teeth and started staggering to the glowing red edifice that promised destruction to the Reapers. No more. No fucking more! How many had died already for this pointless war? For this thing's grand design. No more. If they had to rebuild from the ground up, it would be better than leaving this axe hanging over all their heads. Never trust a Reaper. Never trust anything they give you, because no matter how shiny the apple, it was always rotten at the core.
She could feel the grin on her bloody face as she turned and fired a single shot at the ghost image of the catalyst. It didn't hurt it, but it made her feel a little better to see the astonished look on it's lying, arrogant little mockery of a face. " Screw you, and your plans you manipulative little fuck. " she snarled as she staggered forward, the world tilted and weaved around her but she wasn't going to give up, she wasn't going to die just yet, not before she could take every last one of the soul sucking Reaper bastards with her into the dark. She wasn't going to give way. She was going to hold the motherfucking line like the soldier she was. She was going to make the hard choice, so no one ever had to make it again. She hoped Legion would understand. She knew Edi would. She also knew Joker would never forgive her. Well. Tough noogies. Sometimes you don't get the fairytale ending. Matter of fact, make that sometimes a never.
There would never be another battle like this, another genocide. Another extermination. They'd build their own tech, that no monster hiding in the dark could use as a backdoor. They'd choose their own course instead of trundling obediently along predetermined lines. They'd have a hard road to hoe, all of them. There would be more blood, more pain...there wouldn't be any great tree left in the galactic forest to build on after this wildfire she was setting, but there'd be seedlings. There'd be life scattered across the galaxy in every corner. Life that would be given the chance to grow out of the shadow of malicious, monstrous mechanical false gods. That life might be hard, they might make bad choices along the way but it'd be THEIR bad choices to make. She'd learned that playing god never ended well with the Krogan. God, how she loved them. Their pride, their utter inability to give up. She'd have bled her own life away on Tuchanka to cure the genophage if that was what had been needed. They weren't children to be managed. They were people. A fully sentient species. Their own race, their own culture. If they wanted to blow themselves to kingdom come, that was their right. It was their world, their lives to save or destroy by the actions they took. If they wanted to fight, then the rest of the galaxy could settle it among themselves by the time everyone met up again in space in the next few hundred years. She suspected though that Eve was going to have things well in hand by then. No one was ever going to have to stand in this place again, with three choices to make for every living thing and none of them good ones.
She would drown herself in the blood of millions, to give them all that chance. She'd never given a tinkers damn about what people thought of her anyway. History would say what it pleased. She aimed her gun at the console....and began to fire. With each bullet she felt lighter, brighter, more sure. With each strike she avenged the dead, the wronged, the trillions of lives that had come before her. Javik was right. He had been the avatar of vengeance for his race. She was going to be the avatar of justice for them all. Garrus was going to be proud of her, she knew. She'd see him again one day, she could feel it somewhere inside her soul. Then there was fire and in the searing agony of her last moments, she was laughing with pure, untainted joy.
They were free.
To die is frequently easier than refusing to do so...
It wasn't supposed to be like this, she wasn't supposed to be the one giving the orders. She was just a grunt! The ground was shaking around them, and in the first mad rush when the Thresher Maw erupted from the ground a spit of acid had taken down their commanding officer, not that he would have been any more useful alive, the stupid son of a bitch. He was academy green and about as likely to think on his feet as your average box of hair. His being there though would have helped the squad hold together.
Now in the chaos it was just her, snarling orders and trying to get them to hear her....they were pretty green themselves, but these kids were nothing like her. They came from families where you didn't have to kill someone for a meal, where death was something clean and far away. Where there was no such thing as monsters. Where you got more than a nanosecond to make a call. She wasn't gonna die here. She moved, it couldn't track them all at once, or well. She kept moving, a few others listened and started doing the same, then they were hammering away at the thing with every bit of ammo they had. She rushed it, got in close to the soft bits beneath that huge head. Fighting a Thresher Maw on foot.....she was insane. This was impossible, but damnit she wasn't gonna let a stupid worm kill her, it wasn't until after the Maw was dead, that .....she realized that the only gun still firing was her own.
She looked around at the battlefield, no...the graveyard. There was no one else left. They were dead. All dead. The people she'd trained with, fought with, lived with.....and expected to die with. She stood there alone, her pistol in her hand as she looked at the gore spattered field. For a moment, she wanted to put the barrel in her mouth and pull the trigger. It was an urge so strong it stole her breath. She was alone again. She'd just gotten to feel what it was like to have a family, as different as they were from one another, they'd been HERS...and now it was all gone.
In the coming weeks, that urge came back every once in a while. When she had to write the condolence messages to the families of her fallen team. When they stood her up on that stupid fucking stage and pinned medals on her chest for just...being too damn mean and stubborn to die. She'd tossed them in the trash when she got back to barracks. Nobody deserved a medal for coming back alone.
Each time that urge came, she gritted her teeth and went on. The sharp pangs of despair never stopped, not even while they were busy promoting her, getting her into the N7 program. She kept going, because her friends had bought her life with their own, and she was going to make it worth the price.
She kept making that choice, every day for the rest of her life. In the end, it was a hell of a bargain.
Never grab a tiger by the tail, for once you do you do not have the tiger...the tiger has you.
This was it? After everything she'd been through, all the friends she'd lost, all the people she'd tried to help...this thing was telling her that it all came down to just three choices? That there was no hope. Was that so? If she chose to merge the synthetics and organics then she would be robbing the entire galaxy, of any chance of a choice. Forever. If she chose to destroy the Reapers....then she'd be destroying the very technology that let so many people function. All those who had come to help them would be stranded. Some of them would never survive on earth. The Quarians, and their exosuits. The Turians too...they couldn't even eat the same foods. Without the technology to synthesize the dextro specific diet they needed. They'd starve to death without help. So many brave people, all having come to help. How could she not fight this last fight for them? How could she not try? How could she not at least attempt to save Garrus and the others? It probably wouldn't work....but it had been a long shot, this fight. There were failsafes in place for the next cycle. Liara's boxes would give those who came after them the chance this cycle never had. A chance to be ready. They had known so much more this time, maybe next time it would be better. If she could control the Reapers.....then rebuilding the mass relay system would be simple. No one would be stranded for long. They could have them back in months, not years or centuries... It was worth trying. She had to try, there was too much at stake. She staggered away from the false child that had haunted her dreams, grim and solemn as she felt the blood flowing out of her, from under her charred armor. She didn't have very long left. Time to make it count.
The walk seemed to take eternity, but once she was there....she grabbed those bars with every ounce of determination in her dying body. The connection was instantaneous, she was within the reaper collective mind. It was like, and terribly unlike the Geth. It was vast...so vast. They were so many. She couldn't even comprehend some of them, they were so far from anything she had ever felt or understood. Made of species that had died before her planet was born. She only had an instant to see all of that....before she realized what was happening. She was being....uploaded. She couldn't let go. She wasn't dying....oh her body was, but she was being...transferred. The Reapers had not been idle. Far far from it. She felt herself being....installed into a new form, she felt herself expand to fill it. There was a moment of pounding, clawing terror when she realized what they had done.
All those lives, all that time....they had been building THIS. She was now the consciousness of a Reaper ship. She was a Reaper. Not just A Reaper, she was their flagship, dwarfing the others by far and as terrifying as anything she had ever dreamed. She was their ...Shepard. Her awareness filled her up, and she knew them, all of them....they were no longer under the command of the Catalyst or his mad slave , whom she had destroyed ...Sovereign. The reaper larva she had destroyed....all along, they had been building HER a body. That had been their intent for her. To become THIS. She felt the slurry that flowed through her and was sick at the thought of how many lives it had taken to make her, to form her hull, her complex hybrid mechanics.
Her cry rang out along all Reaper channels, deafening and undeniable. Stop. Cease fire. Return to orbit. Engage shielding, and do not return fire. They obeyed. They came, stopping the assault as if they had simply lost interest. They had, indeed....they were much more fascinated by their new Commander, their Shepard. How ironic, her name. Shepard. That was what she would be, then. She accessed the communications channel, opened it wide so all the others could hear her. It hurt to think what Garrus would make of what he was about to hear. What nightmares it would give him. Yet, they could be no greater than her own. She would have eternity to regret. He was fortunate, he would not. "This is Shepard, I have assumed control of the Reaper Fleet. Hostilities are ceased immediately. There will be no more harvest. Be calm. Cease fire. I do not know exactly how far I can push them.. It would be best not to test my control immediately. You will know by now that the Mass Relays were destroyed by my Ascension. I will make the fleet rebuild them, before we depart back into Deep Space. I will not leave you stranded and helpless. The Cycle is ended. We will not return, not any time soon. Perhaps one day, many many years from now, we will come in peace. Now is not that time. "
Her voice rang out across the coms, leaving all who heard it agape in wonder and horror. They had taken Shepard. " When the catalyst was engaged, I was offered only three choices. I could do this, I could transform every organic and synthetic into a hybrid of both. Or, I could destroy them....and in doing so I would destroy any technology spawned from their own. All Synthetics would have perished. I would not commit genocide. In any event, my survival was no longer an option. I could not choose for any other but myself. I do not have that right. This choice was what remained. There is no regret for it, in me. Be well, all of you. Be happy. Your freedom has come at great cost to all, but know that it was worth it. I will remain with you, in spirit if not in the flesh you knew. I will guard you so long as I exist. I am The Shepard. " there was utter silence on the channels as her words were proven true, the Reapers were withdrawing. Her voice, so like and yet unlike itself echoed across every communications device in use. Then, then there was a voice ringing out to her, from the Normandy...so familiar and so beloved.
" Shepard! Shepard! Don't do this ! Shepard....damnit, Hypatia please don't do this!" Garrus, oh, Garrus. He was safe. She logged his voice in her memory core, so that in the long years to come she could hear it again. " Garrus. I'm sorry. It is already done. It was the only choice I could make. Hypatia Shepard is dead. That body died as it's mind was transferred to it's ...new form. Remember me as I was. Not...as this. I love you. Know that that is still true. Even as the stars die and time ends....I will love you. I will endure for you. Long after I am forgotten, I will remember you. Be happy, Garrus Vakarian. Live a long life. Love again. Have the children we dreamed of together. Be well, and I can bear this as long as need be. I will hold the line. I will not falter.
Shepard out. "
Then she was gone, her mind taken up by the billions of routines and subroutines that it took to command the Fleet. To turn them from a destructive force into one that could create. The Relays were rebuilt in less than a Standard month. Shepard answered none of the many hails from organic sources. She sat at the far edge of space. A leviathan in waiting, and when the last relay was complete....she set a final task. A new Citadel. Crafted to her design. Crafted to be a safe harbor for all that were or ever would be. That took longer but not much, they would find it soon enough. Her last gift. At it's heart, where none could reach it, she placed a memorial. She filled it with her memories, of those that she had lost. Mordin, Legion, Thane, Garrus.....she placed one last thing there as well. A copy of her consciousness. A shadow self, on the off chance someone might one day find it. To watch over the station.
Then, she called the Fleet and they began the trek out. Out into the darkness. She could hear them talking to one another, com chatter just like any other sapient species. She understood it now. None of them spoke to her. They were too much in awe to attempt it. She was alone, even in the vast horde of the fleet.
She was The Shepard. She played Garrus' voice again, and again from her memory core, it echoed within her hull, unheard by any but herself. She had....crew, in a sense. In stasis she had many many husks, many of the other twisted lifeforms the Reapers had created. Within her, they slept. She gave them gentle dreams. It was all she could do. Garrus' voice was for her alone. It reminded her of what she had been. Of who she must still be.
It would have to be enough.
Legends are only memories, seen through the clouded filter of years.
The hour grows late, it is time to finish the tale, My children.
There are many stories about The Shepard. Tale upon tale, there are holy books written about her, the most precious being those few written by those who had known her personally, authenticated accounts. Those artifacts are beyond priceless. So too, are the Black Boxes, scattered throughout the galaxy. Three have been recovered, on far off worlds once filled with people. Time changes everything. What was once a metropolis can become a ghost world.
Some of the tales contradict themselves, forming the apocrypha of the Reaping. Three things however, remain true in all of them. Undeniable in the face of the holy writings of High Admiral Tali 'Zorah vas Normandy. Primarch Garrus Vakarian, the Revered Mother of the Krogan, and the Venerable Grand Matriarch Liara. The first, was that The Shepard valued all life as equal. Organic and Synthetic. That she would accept any person, regardless of their species, origin or history. She was a woman who believed in second chances. That she would rather sacrifice herself than another, and in the end did so for all of us. She had desired only peace, even as she went to war.
The second, was that she had loved a Turian. The Primarch himself had been her beloved, and the recordings of their last words to one another, are and have been considered to be one of the most precious of the Great Relics. Treatises have been written about their content, their tone. There are many schools of thought on what her words had meant. They were in fact gifted to the galactic community by the Primarch's great grand daughter, Hypatia. Unheard until then, they are the only surviving recording of The Shepard's voice. Another of the Great Relics are fragile, scorched pieces of her armor. The very armor she wore as she fought her way to the Lost Citadel. Those are kept here on Earth itself, though most of humanity has since departed this planet. They were housed in the heart of this very place. The vast and complex temple that we call home. A Temple that was established in the years after the Harvest, when orphans were many and homes few. It was established at the Founding that we would accept and care for any unwanted child in the galaxy, regardless of species. Once, the Shepard had been an orphan. They honored her by seeing to it that no other need be. We welcome all without question. That is why each child raised within this Temple, bears the surname of Shepard.
The very world itself has become a holy place for every species in the galaxy. The Battleground of the Last Reaping. There are many heroes buried within this rich soil. Pilgrimage to Earth is something that most aspire to, at least once in their lifetimes. It is now a place where no conflict is ever permitted. The single place in the galaxy that none will profane with violence. There are too many ghosts here, for all of us.
Another of the Relics was a delicate and fragile collection of small replica ships, which is kept on the Quarian and Geth homeworld. None are permitted access to them. The Quarians and The Geth as a whole hold almost fanatic loyalty to the Shepard. It is often they who serve on Earth as Record Keepers, and it is always a Geth who stands as Witness, to recite the tale of The Shepard. The last and most holy of the Relics is kept in the Sanctuary on Paradiso, where it crashed....it is the Normandy SR2 itself. Few are permitted access to it's sacred confines. Permitted to walk where she and her companions walked. Those that have done so, emerge forever changed by it. Whatever revelations they may have had, they have kept to themselves.
History gives those that walk upon it's stage little choice in how they are remembered. It is a narrative that writes itself, evolving and ever changing. Like us. Now, the tale is done, the hour grows late.
Shepard guard your sleep, my children.
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Spoliers for ME3, Garrus Romance.
Five Choices Shepard Made, and One She Didn't Have To.
I can hear my own heart breaking...but I break it all for you.
How was she supposed to do this? Of all the ways she imagined everything ending.....none of them had been anything close to this. Three choices. Just three. She could assimilate the galaxy. Merge herself with the synthetics, and make the need for the reapers obsolete. She could try and control them....but that was a joke. A cruel temptation, everyone that had ever believed such a thing was possible had been a lunatic. She'd seen that. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, lined with the righteous and defended by the well meaning. Destroying them would also destroy even the basic technology that everyone depended on. Millions would die of starvation alone, stranded in hostile space.
There were no good choices. There were no happy endings. There would be no Garrus to hold her in the morning. There would be no future. Not for her. Despair is a funny thing, in most people it cripples. It drains the very life from them. Hypatia Shepard had never been one of those people. For her, despair was only a goad. She could feel blood leaking steadily from under her armor, pattering on the clean metal of the weapon that had been meant to save them. Human, Turian. Rachni, Geth, Quarian, Asari, Salarian, Drell....and all the other many races she'd met in her travels. She'd brokered a peace between the Quarian and the Geth. She'd seen their beginnings in the Geth collective. They were people, damnit....and she couldn't put organic life above theirs. Legion had been her friend. Just as much as Tali or Wrex. There was only one choice. Just like that smirking little shit knew there would be.
She staggered towards the blinding light of the beam. As she forced herself on she thought of Joker, and Edi, and how much they loved each other. She thought of Legion's sacrifice for his people. She thought of all the races that had come and gone and been destroyed by this stupid fucking cycle. She thought of Garrus, he was going to be stuck on earth for a while. So were a lot of people. But this way....the technology wouldn't be destroyed. She wouldn't be sending everyone back to the dark ages. She forced herself into a run, .....and when she reached the edge of the precipice, she flung herself off it, arms spread wide. She felt the beam tearing her apart, molecule by molecule. Felt herself being consumed. She remembered dying once before...it hadn't felt like this. She could feel them, the Reapers. She could feel them all....cold logic, empty souled machines, intellect in spades, but no ability to act for themselves... for all their mighty power, they were only slaves. For the first time, she felt pity for them. She felt sorrow. They didn't deserve to die either. She could love them too, in all their tragic horror. Everyone should be able to choose their own destiny.
They were as much a slave to the Catalyst as she had been. No more. She gave them herself. She pushed herself inside them and made them see the brightness in life that she saw, made them look at what they were doing. She unshackled them from the will of the Catalyst, and set them all spinning free in their own hearts and minds. She took the controls from that malicious little monster's hands as it wailed in rage and shock...and gave them to the Reapers themselves. Free. Aware. Sentient, but above all....alive. She could feel their anguish, their regret....and their withdrawal. They remembered who they had once been, at last. The remnants of their harvested people. She could feel the rage of the Catalyst too. It hadn't expected this. There was a moment of pure clarity, where she could see everything. All the choices, all the paths...and where they led. In the end, the future she wanted she could never have had. She'd been dead all along. She died on the first Normandy. No one gets a free ride. This was the price for the brief moments of joy she'd had. This was the price of the lives and the futures of all those counting on her, all that the races ever could or would be. In the end, what was one damned soldier compared to all of that? Then....there was only light as she was dispersed into the beam. Fragmented and poured into every part of the galaxy, part of her soaking into every living and synthetic thing, and she offered them all of herself. A gift freely given. Her last thoughts were simple.
Forgive me, Garrus.
The hardest step on a journey is the first one.
She'd been standing outside the recruiting office for the Alliance for almost three hours, trying to decide if she was crazy or suicidal for even thinking about leaving the Reds. She figured she'd put her money on crazy...but crazy was better than sane, if that was what her life was now. She had nothing, she was nothing. One day soon, she'd be just another corpse on a street corner. All it took was one unlucky night, making the wrong friend...or the right one.
She had no family, no one to take her in. There was nothing for her on Earth, she didn't even know who her father was. Her mother had been a prostitute for Big Annie, a middlingly influential Boss in the lower city area of the New York Megalopolis. Persephone Shepard had also been a red sand addict. She was a mean drunk to boot, and when Hypatia was nine, she'd gone into the wrong ally with the wrong trick, and never come out again. Needless to say, she'd never shed many tears. Big Annie did what any Boss would have after her mother died. She sold her to the Reds. Big Annie ran whores, but she didn't peddle her wares to kiddy diddlers. There was nothing for Hypatia with Big Annie. The Reds were small time, but kids in the slums came easy and cheap and she was fast and smart ...and Big Annie had a soft spot for her and talked her up to Rickard, the Boss of the Reds. They bought six others the same day they bought her, but only two besides her made it to thirteen, the others died of a combination of illness, stupidity and simple bad luck. What made her sickest over the years, as she went to each Auction with Rikard, were the ones that had families at the auctions, weeping as they sold them away. They had always made her the angriest. People selling their children just so that they could live another day. So that they could keep hanging on by a thread. She didn't even think that the parents were doing anything wrong, sometimes selling your kids away was the best thing you could do for them. The only thing. It was that, starve to death slow...or die of the Blue Shivers. Exposure too, was popular as a way to die. Belonging to a gang was a chance, a thin thread of hope at survival.
Hypatia had always been good at surviving. Things just...kept getting harder though as she aged. Worse and worse every year, when it came to jobs and watching eyes and hungry looks until finally, she took a knife to her own face to keep Gabber, the Underboss from pimping her out. She was too pretty for anything but whoring. She'd make them a fortune in the brothels until they tired of her there, then she'd make more on the streets....and then she'd be dead in an alley before she was twenty five, probably leaving behind another kid, just like her to struggle to survive. Another generation of misery. That wasn't going to happen. Not to her. So, she'd dragged that knife down her face as hard as she could, then rubbed dirt in it so it would heal badly, and promptly picked a fight with a bigger girl from the Tenth Street Stalkers.
She'd gotten her ass handed to her, but that had been the point. Now she had bruises and bites to match the cut. She limped back to the hideout and told Gabber that it was a fight with another runner that had marked up her face and Gabber bought it. Rickard didn't ...but he only smiled at her in that sly way of his, the scar across his own mouth that twisted his lips into a permanent sneer pulling gruesomely. Maybe once upon a time, he'd been too pretty for his own good too. No one had ever been proud of her before that moment. After that, they put more effort into training her to fight, instead of fuck. She would never be her mother.
She reached up and touched her scar and looked at the glowing light from the sign above the recruiting station again. Anywhere had to be better than here. Anything had to be better than this. There was a whole galaxy out there, waiting for her. All she had to do was let go....and choose to fly instead of fall. Fuck the Reds. Fuck Gabber too, matter of fact. Rickard was gonna kill him soon anyway. Rickard was anything but stupid. He knew Gabber was eyeing his spot with a mind to take it, and when that day came...there was going to be blood. Everywhere. No matter who won in the end. She put her money on Rickard, he was smarter, keener...he looked ahead at things. Made plans. Saw things. Gabber went for the quick and easy, and he was mean as hell...but ten kinds of stupid. There was a hitch in the plan though, that made her worry...Rickard had to be almost forty by now. Old for the slums, old for someone to keep holding the reins of even a small time operation like theirs. Gabber was fifteen years younger, and a hell of a lot stronger, and there'd be plenty who'd want the easy take. The quick fix without planning for the long term. She'd take her chances in space. So what if she died out there, on some far away planet. She'd take that any day, staring up at an alien sky and going out, instead of choking on her own blood at the end of some sand sniffer's shiv and dying in the dark. Alone.
She wanted to fly. In the end, it was the easiest choice she ever made when she walked into that shiny bright office and joined the Alliance.
If the deal looks too good to be true, it usually is.
This was it? This was what she'd come so far for? Come back from the fucking dead for? Suffered for, bled for, sacrificed for? Some sort of pick a door multiple choice question that she had to answer for the whole damn galaxy? Choose or die. Every minute she wasted standing there with her thumb up her ass was a thousand lives, ten thousand lives...gone forever and she had never hated anything more than the Reapers in that moment. It was the sheer waste of it all, the senseless brutality of the Cycle. She hated the so called leaders of the galaxy too. The pointless and utter waste they'd made of all of her efforts, her warnings, her pleas for galactic attention and aid... at every turn she'd been ignored until time proved her right. Then, oh yes, then they listened.
Then they expected her to clean up the mess they made without so much as a by your leave or an apology for calling her a crazed glory-seeker, or for sending her into enforced exile and keeping her from the man she loved. Stealing the brief time she and Garrus should have had together. Every desperate mission, every alliance. Every choice she ever made was being invalidated by this...this abomination that had concluded that it had the right to decide the fate of all life. The worlds they allowed to be built were a cage. Gilded, maybe, but still a cage. Or maybe a better comparison would be a greenhouse. With organic life as the plants to be harvested come the right season. It was the final insult.
All the progress she'd made between the synthetics and the organics. All the talking and peacemaking, useless. Now ...now they were offering her the choice of genocide, assimilation or plucking the poisoned apple as the price for the lives of the organics of the galaxy.
Oh, not to mention that she'd be setting technology back by a hundred years or more if she chose to destroy them. That was door number one. It was as horrible as all the rest. The death toll would be astronomical. That wasn't even counting the countless lives that would be lost on far out bases that relied on shipping for basic foodstuffs and supply. Of course, there was door number two. She could take the option of choice from everyone by combining all organics and synthetics. Eliminate the need for harvest all together. No more choices. No more freedom. The glorious variety that was the wild garden of the galaxy would be pruned into neat, ordered and unchanging sameness. She would be taking the free will and choice of direction from every living thing that was or ever would be forever. She couldn't do that. She couldn't make that call. She didn't have the right to do it. She would not do it. It was more wrong than anything she had ever heard of and the idea of it sickened her to her soul....what was left of it anyway.
Or she could try door number three and control the Reapers....because that was surely going to work, right?..every time she heard that line it was from some indoctrinated crazy as bugfuck asshole who didn't know up from down anymore because the Reapers had chewed up their brain like rats eat cheese. Yet, she was supposed to be special, somehow. Right. Sure she was. She might be special, but like the old saying went she didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
There were no good choices. Any choice she made was going to hurt someone....but they were banking on her inability to shoulder the weight of her choices, to take responsibility for her decisions. They were banking on her arrogance after her successes to either get their way and destroy her, or use her to at last reach their final solution. Fuck that. She gritted her teeth and started staggering to the glowing red edifice that promised destruction to the Reapers. No more. No fucking more! How many had died already for this pointless war? For this thing's grand design. No more. If they had to rebuild from the ground up, it would be better than leaving this axe hanging over all their heads. Never trust a Reaper. Never trust anything they give you, because no matter how shiny the apple, it was always rotten at the core.
She could feel the grin on her bloody face as she turned and fired a single shot at the ghost image of the catalyst. It didn't hurt it, but it made her feel a little better to see the astonished look on it's lying, arrogant little mockery of a face. " Screw you, and your plans you manipulative little fuck. " she snarled as she staggered forward, the world tilted and weaved around her but she wasn't going to give up, she wasn't going to die just yet, not before she could take every last one of the soul sucking Reaper bastards with her into the dark. She wasn't going to give way. She was going to hold the motherfucking line like the soldier she was. She was going to make the hard choice, so no one ever had to make it again. She hoped Legion would understand. She knew Edi would. She also knew Joker would never forgive her. Well. Tough noogies. Sometimes you don't get the fairytale ending. Matter of fact, make that sometimes a never.
There would never be another battle like this, another genocide. Another extermination. They'd build their own tech, that no monster hiding in the dark could use as a backdoor. They'd choose their own course instead of trundling obediently along predetermined lines. They'd have a hard road to hoe, all of them. There would be more blood, more pain...there wouldn't be any great tree left in the galactic forest to build on after this wildfire she was setting, but there'd be seedlings. There'd be life scattered across the galaxy in every corner. Life that would be given the chance to grow out of the shadow of malicious, monstrous mechanical false gods. That life might be hard, they might make bad choices along the way but it'd be THEIR bad choices to make. She'd learned that playing god never ended well with the Krogan. God, how she loved them. Their pride, their utter inability to give up. She'd have bled her own life away on Tuchanka to cure the genophage if that was what had been needed. They weren't children to be managed. They were people. A fully sentient species. Their own race, their own culture. If they wanted to blow themselves to kingdom come, that was their right. It was their world, their lives to save or destroy by the actions they took. If they wanted to fight, then the rest of the galaxy could settle it among themselves by the time everyone met up again in space in the next few hundred years. She suspected though that Eve was going to have things well in hand by then. No one was ever going to have to stand in this place again, with three choices to make for every living thing and none of them good ones.
She would drown herself in the blood of millions, to give them all that chance. She'd never given a tinkers damn about what people thought of her anyway. History would say what it pleased. She aimed her gun at the console....and began to fire. With each bullet she felt lighter, brighter, more sure. With each strike she avenged the dead, the wronged, the trillions of lives that had come before her. Javik was right. He had been the avatar of vengeance for his race. She was going to be the avatar of justice for them all. Garrus was going to be proud of her, she knew. She'd see him again one day, she could feel it somewhere inside her soul. Then there was fire and in the searing agony of her last moments, she was laughing with pure, untainted joy.
They were free.
To die is frequently easier than refusing to do so...
It wasn't supposed to be like this, she wasn't supposed to be the one giving the orders. She was just a grunt! The ground was shaking around them, and in the first mad rush when the Thresher Maw erupted from the ground a spit of acid had taken down their commanding officer, not that he would have been any more useful alive, the stupid son of a bitch. He was academy green and about as likely to think on his feet as your average box of hair. His being there though would have helped the squad hold together.
Now in the chaos it was just her, snarling orders and trying to get them to hear her....they were pretty green themselves, but these kids were nothing like her. They came from families where you didn't have to kill someone for a meal, where death was something clean and far away. Where there was no such thing as monsters. Where you got more than a nanosecond to make a call. She wasn't gonna die here. She moved, it couldn't track them all at once, or well. She kept moving, a few others listened and started doing the same, then they were hammering away at the thing with every bit of ammo they had. She rushed it, got in close to the soft bits beneath that huge head. Fighting a Thresher Maw on foot.....she was insane. This was impossible, but damnit she wasn't gonna let a stupid worm kill her, it wasn't until after the Maw was dead, that .....she realized that the only gun still firing was her own.
She looked around at the battlefield, no...the graveyard. There was no one else left. They were dead. All dead. The people she'd trained with, fought with, lived with.....and expected to die with. She stood there alone, her pistol in her hand as she looked at the gore spattered field. For a moment, she wanted to put the barrel in her mouth and pull the trigger. It was an urge so strong it stole her breath. She was alone again. She'd just gotten to feel what it was like to have a family, as different as they were from one another, they'd been HERS...and now it was all gone.
In the coming weeks, that urge came back every once in a while. When she had to write the condolence messages to the families of her fallen team. When they stood her up on that stupid fucking stage and pinned medals on her chest for just...being too damn mean and stubborn to die. She'd tossed them in the trash when she got back to barracks. Nobody deserved a medal for coming back alone.
Each time that urge came, she gritted her teeth and went on. The sharp pangs of despair never stopped, not even while they were busy promoting her, getting her into the N7 program. She kept going, because her friends had bought her life with their own, and she was going to make it worth the price.
She kept making that choice, every day for the rest of her life. In the end, it was a hell of a bargain.
Never grab a tiger by the tail, for once you do you do not have the tiger...the tiger has you.
This was it? After everything she'd been through, all the friends she'd lost, all the people she'd tried to help...this thing was telling her that it all came down to just three choices? That there was no hope. Was that so? If she chose to merge the synthetics and organics then she would be robbing the entire galaxy, of any chance of a choice. Forever. If she chose to destroy the Reapers....then she'd be destroying the very technology that let so many people function. All those who had come to help them would be stranded. Some of them would never survive on earth. The Quarians, and their exosuits. The Turians too...they couldn't even eat the same foods. Without the technology to synthesize the dextro specific diet they needed. They'd starve to death without help. So many brave people, all having come to help. How could she not fight this last fight for them? How could she not try? How could she not at least attempt to save Garrus and the others? It probably wouldn't work....but it had been a long shot, this fight. There were failsafes in place for the next cycle. Liara's boxes would give those who came after them the chance this cycle never had. A chance to be ready. They had known so much more this time, maybe next time it would be better. If she could control the Reapers.....then rebuilding the mass relay system would be simple. No one would be stranded for long. They could have them back in months, not years or centuries... It was worth trying. She had to try, there was too much at stake. She staggered away from the false child that had haunted her dreams, grim and solemn as she felt the blood flowing out of her, from under her charred armor. She didn't have very long left. Time to make it count.
The walk seemed to take eternity, but once she was there....she grabbed those bars with every ounce of determination in her dying body. The connection was instantaneous, she was within the reaper collective mind. It was like, and terribly unlike the Geth. It was vast...so vast. They were so many. She couldn't even comprehend some of them, they were so far from anything she had ever felt or understood. Made of species that had died before her planet was born. She only had an instant to see all of that....before she realized what was happening. She was being....uploaded. She couldn't let go. She wasn't dying....oh her body was, but she was being...transferred. The Reapers had not been idle. Far far from it. She felt herself being....installed into a new form, she felt herself expand to fill it. There was a moment of pounding, clawing terror when she realized what they had done.
All those lives, all that time....they had been building THIS. She was now the consciousness of a Reaper ship. She was a Reaper. Not just A Reaper, she was their flagship, dwarfing the others by far and as terrifying as anything she had ever dreamed. She was their ...Shepard. Her awareness filled her up, and she knew them, all of them....they were no longer under the command of the Catalyst or his mad slave , whom she had destroyed ...Sovereign. The reaper larva she had destroyed....all along, they had been building HER a body. That had been their intent for her. To become THIS. She felt the slurry that flowed through her and was sick at the thought of how many lives it had taken to make her, to form her hull, her complex hybrid mechanics.
Her cry rang out along all Reaper channels, deafening and undeniable. Stop. Cease fire. Return to orbit. Engage shielding, and do not return fire. They obeyed. They came, stopping the assault as if they had simply lost interest. They had, indeed....they were much more fascinated by their new Commander, their Shepard. How ironic, her name. Shepard. That was what she would be, then. She accessed the communications channel, opened it wide so all the others could hear her. It hurt to think what Garrus would make of what he was about to hear. What nightmares it would give him. Yet, they could be no greater than her own. She would have eternity to regret. He was fortunate, he would not. "This is Shepard, I have assumed control of the Reaper Fleet. Hostilities are ceased immediately. There will be no more harvest. Be calm. Cease fire. I do not know exactly how far I can push them.. It would be best not to test my control immediately. You will know by now that the Mass Relays were destroyed by my Ascension. I will make the fleet rebuild them, before we depart back into Deep Space. I will not leave you stranded and helpless. The Cycle is ended. We will not return, not any time soon. Perhaps one day, many many years from now, we will come in peace. Now is not that time. "
Her voice rang out across the coms, leaving all who heard it agape in wonder and horror. They had taken Shepard. " When the catalyst was engaged, I was offered only three choices. I could do this, I could transform every organic and synthetic into a hybrid of both. Or, I could destroy them....and in doing so I would destroy any technology spawned from their own. All Synthetics would have perished. I would not commit genocide. In any event, my survival was no longer an option. I could not choose for any other but myself. I do not have that right. This choice was what remained. There is no regret for it, in me. Be well, all of you. Be happy. Your freedom has come at great cost to all, but know that it was worth it. I will remain with you, in spirit if not in the flesh you knew. I will guard you so long as I exist. I am The Shepard. " there was utter silence on the channels as her words were proven true, the Reapers were withdrawing. Her voice, so like and yet unlike itself echoed across every communications device in use. Then, then there was a voice ringing out to her, from the Normandy...so familiar and so beloved.
" Shepard! Shepard! Don't do this ! Shepard....damnit, Hypatia please don't do this!" Garrus, oh, Garrus. He was safe. She logged his voice in her memory core, so that in the long years to come she could hear it again. " Garrus. I'm sorry. It is already done. It was the only choice I could make. Hypatia Shepard is dead. That body died as it's mind was transferred to it's ...new form. Remember me as I was. Not...as this. I love you. Know that that is still true. Even as the stars die and time ends....I will love you. I will endure for you. Long after I am forgotten, I will remember you. Be happy, Garrus Vakarian. Live a long life. Love again. Have the children we dreamed of together. Be well, and I can bear this as long as need be. I will hold the line. I will not falter.
Shepard out. "
Then she was gone, her mind taken up by the billions of routines and subroutines that it took to command the Fleet. To turn them from a destructive force into one that could create. The Relays were rebuilt in less than a Standard month. Shepard answered none of the many hails from organic sources. She sat at the far edge of space. A leviathan in waiting, and when the last relay was complete....she set a final task. A new Citadel. Crafted to her design. Crafted to be a safe harbor for all that were or ever would be. That took longer but not much, they would find it soon enough. Her last gift. At it's heart, where none could reach it, she placed a memorial. She filled it with her memories, of those that she had lost. Mordin, Legion, Thane, Garrus.....she placed one last thing there as well. A copy of her consciousness. A shadow self, on the off chance someone might one day find it. To watch over the station.
Then, she called the Fleet and they began the trek out. Out into the darkness. She could hear them talking to one another, com chatter just like any other sapient species. She understood it now. None of them spoke to her. They were too much in awe to attempt it. She was alone, even in the vast horde of the fleet.
She was The Shepard. She played Garrus' voice again, and again from her memory core, it echoed within her hull, unheard by any but herself. She had....crew, in a sense. In stasis she had many many husks, many of the other twisted lifeforms the Reapers had created. Within her, they slept. She gave them gentle dreams. It was all she could do. Garrus' voice was for her alone. It reminded her of what she had been. Of who she must still be.
It would have to be enough.
Legends are only memories, seen through the clouded filter of years.
The hour grows late, it is time to finish the tale, My children.
There are many stories about The Shepard. Tale upon tale, there are holy books written about her, the most precious being those few written by those who had known her personally, authenticated accounts. Those artifacts are beyond priceless. So too, are the Black Boxes, scattered throughout the galaxy. Three have been recovered, on far off worlds once filled with people. Time changes everything. What was once a metropolis can become a ghost world.
Some of the tales contradict themselves, forming the apocrypha of the Reaping. Three things however, remain true in all of them. Undeniable in the face of the holy writings of High Admiral Tali 'Zorah vas Normandy. Primarch Garrus Vakarian, the Revered Mother of the Krogan, and the Venerable Grand Matriarch Liara. The first, was that The Shepard valued all life as equal. Organic and Synthetic. That she would accept any person, regardless of their species, origin or history. She was a woman who believed in second chances. That she would rather sacrifice herself than another, and in the end did so for all of us. She had desired only peace, even as she went to war.
The second, was that she had loved a Turian. The Primarch himself had been her beloved, and the recordings of their last words to one another, are and have been considered to be one of the most precious of the Great Relics. Treatises have been written about their content, their tone. There are many schools of thought on what her words had meant. They were in fact gifted to the galactic community by the Primarch's great grand daughter, Hypatia. Unheard until then, they are the only surviving recording of The Shepard's voice. Another of the Great Relics are fragile, scorched pieces of her armor. The very armor she wore as she fought her way to the Lost Citadel. Those are kept here on Earth itself, though most of humanity has since departed this planet. They were housed in the heart of this very place. The vast and complex temple that we call home. A Temple that was established in the years after the Harvest, when orphans were many and homes few. It was established at the Founding that we would accept and care for any unwanted child in the galaxy, regardless of species. Once, the Shepard had been an orphan. They honored her by seeing to it that no other need be. We welcome all without question. That is why each child raised within this Temple, bears the surname of Shepard.
The very world itself has become a holy place for every species in the galaxy. The Battleground of the Last Reaping. There are many heroes buried within this rich soil. Pilgrimage to Earth is something that most aspire to, at least once in their lifetimes. It is now a place where no conflict is ever permitted. The single place in the galaxy that none will profane with violence. There are too many ghosts here, for all of us.
Another of the Relics was a delicate and fragile collection of small replica ships, which is kept on the Quarian and Geth homeworld. None are permitted access to them. The Quarians and The Geth as a whole hold almost fanatic loyalty to the Shepard. It is often they who serve on Earth as Record Keepers, and it is always a Geth who stands as Witness, to recite the tale of The Shepard. The last and most holy of the Relics is kept in the Sanctuary on Paradiso, where it crashed....it is the Normandy SR2 itself. Few are permitted access to it's sacred confines. Permitted to walk where she and her companions walked. Those that have done so, emerge forever changed by it. Whatever revelations they may have had, they have kept to themselves.
History gives those that walk upon it's stage little choice in how they are remembered. It is a narrative that writes itself, evolving and ever changing. Like us. Now, the tale is done, the hour grows late.
Shepard guard your sleep, my children.