Sole Survivor
Name: Sole Survivor
Rating: T
Characters: Adenna Shepard, David Anderson, Admiral Hackett, Joker, EDI
Pairings: None
Warnings: Descriptions of gore, character death
Summary: Diverges from canon. Adenna Shepard sacrifices herself to end the Reaper threat... permanently. Spoilers for ME3, obviously. More detailed summary after the cut.
Detailed Summary: Diverges from canon. The Crucible is an incredibly powerful energy weapon that uses the Citadel Catalyst to kick out enough power to kill a galaxy's worth of Reapers. But there's just one thing left to do...
------------------------------------ o O o ------------------------------------
"Shepard, we have a problem."
Hackett's voice buzzed in her earpiece as Shepard dragged herself across to the glowing platform. It was about as wide as Shepard was tall, and it would take her where she needed to go. She tried not to look at Anderson's corpse for too long; she could feel tears welling up and her sight was bad enough without her crying as well. She didn't have time to mourn.
"We're taking heavy losses, and I'm concerned for the Crucible's safety," the admiral confessed, a note of worry slipping into his tone. "We have codes to speed it up, but you'd have to input them."
Shepard merely shook her head in response and drummed her fingers against the glowing platform as it slowly slid upwards. A deep, rumbling hum made her entire body shudder - mostly from pain, she had to admit. Her arms felt thick and clumsy, the armour upon them having melted and fused... first to the undersuit, and then to her skin. It had been excruciating, but then again she would have died without that biotic barrier to protect her.
There was a hollow click as the platform locked into place, and Shepard began to haul herself upright. She wouldn't lie on the floor like a child when she died. Her earpiece buzzed again, Hackett choosing a nonverbal cue to try and shake a response out of her, and Shepard finally heaved a sigh. She'd have to answer.
"Hackett, we both know. The Crucible... it won' fire in time. Not if... not if I don't do this," she slurred, staggering across to the main console. The Catalyst was enormous, the glowing silver sphere casting a strange blue light onto her charred skin. It was a drive core of unimaginable proportion, clearly designed to take on the stress of decelerating Reapers from dark space. There was blood on her tongue, and Shepard belatedly realised she'd bitten straight through the tip of it at some point without even noticing. Explained some of her difficulty in talking, anyway. Interesting that it didn't hurt more.
"Never said I w's coming back, Adm'ral."
Her fingers moved slowly across the flickering console, her ruined tongue pushed up against her teeth in concentration. She'd never been the best at tech on the squad, but it was manageable. her biggest limitation was her body, really. Two of the fingers - ring and middle - had fused on her left hand, the skin, bone, muscle and metal all having fused into one barely-bendable glob of matter. Glancing at them made her think of Thane, drowning in air and gasping for breath in a hospital bed, and the tears threatened to well up again.
The code was simple, even with her maimed fingers. A soft warm feeling along her forearms and wrists told her she was bleeding more now. It was running in steady streams from wounds across her shoulders, lower back, thighs. She was a mess. The edges of her vision darkened. It wouldn't be long before she joined... well, everyone else. Her family, her friends on Mindoir, her platoon on Akuze, Jenkins, Kaidan, Mordin, Thane, Anderson... Legion, assuming geth worked that way. She was fairly certain they didn't.
"Are you sure about this, Commander?" Hackett asked. There was a distinct edge to his voice, something like concern or fear. "We need that code inputting... It's our only hope to get the Crucible up to speed. But you..." his voice trailed off, the meaning beneath the words clear.
Shepard sighed and mumbled a quiet 'yes, Admiral', slapping her half-melted palm against the large, round button on the console. A chime indicated the warmup process had been accelerated. The Crucible had needed time to fire, to launch the pulse that would destroy all Reapers in the galaxy.... well, thanks to the Catalyst it would actually be able to, now. Shepard paused for a moment and extended her hand towards the gargantuan mass effect core. Dark energy rolled from it in waves and made her head ache even more than it had been before. She retracted her hand and places it against her head, cupping it where the worst of the pain was. Fractured skull, probably. The once-blonde hair in the area was charred and barely finger-length now.
The humming of the Catalyst increased as it lit up in shades of blue Shepard had never seen before, but she stayed right where she was. There was a railing to hold on to here. Letting go would mean crawling back the way she'd come, and there was nothing there for her. Nothing except Anderson, and he'd had the pleasure of dying.
"Admiral?" she asked quietly, wearily. She waited a moment before continuing. "Tell them I'm sorry. Garrus' bar... s'gonna hafta wait." The core began to shudder violently, the startup protocols flying along at an incredible rate. It would be a matter of minutes, now. The earpiece was silent.
Shepard sighed and began to feel her way along the railing. She wanted her last sight... well. She'd expected this - to die in the field. Seeing Earth before it happened... she suddenly understood why Anderson had been so peaceful. Blood ran from the corner of her mouth and, on instinct, Shepard licked her lips. It served only to mat them further with blood and send a shudder of pain through her.
There. Shepard released the railing slowly, sitting in the middle of the broad circle. Two branches led from either side of where she sat, but what lay down them... she'd never checked. Didn't matter. What mattered was that the Crucible would work... even if she'd never see the results.
The world beyond lit up in white as beams of light lanced from the Citadel, from the Crucible. The Reapers simply exploded, parts spinning out of control. No doubt the Reapers down on Earth were doing similar things. The eezo core practically began to roar, jerking about as every last grain of eezo within it activated. It wasn't far from complete overload.
Adenna Shepard simply looked at Earth and smiled, tears running down her cheeks.
I'm coming home, everyone.
------------------------------------ o O o ------------------------------------
"Shepard? Shepard, do you read me?"
Joker chewed his lip and tried to check in on her omnitool. The signal was dead, and that meant...
"The Commander's hardsuit has been offline for forty-five minutes, Jeff," Edi intoned. "The Catalyst has overloaded. She is unlikely to have survived." The pilot slipped off his hat and ran a hand through his hair.
"I know. It's just... I can't believe she's gone."
The omnitool alert continued to blink with an error, though nobody bothered to keep an eye on it now.
signal lost.
signal lost.
signal lost.
------------------------------------ o O o ------------------------------------
Author's Notes: So I deal with upsetting things a bit differently to most people: I write fanfic about it. This is simply exploring one facet of what I wanted from ME3's ending - a Crucible and Catalyst that wouldn't involve destroying relays, that wouldn't involve some ancient being with a god complex. If you'd like more detail on how my version of the endgame would go, look here for the post I made on reddit earlier today.