Chapter Text
Just as she’d predicted - and as she’d desperately hoped - Shepard’s suspension was lifted no more than six months after she returned to Earth.
Nevertheless, being grounded by the Alliance had taken its mental toll. It was baffling. Shepard couldn’t make sense of the situation no matter how hard she tried. How did she go from saving the galaxy - A second, fucking, time - how could she go from that, less than a year ago, to this?!? Sitting at a conference table surrounded by politicians who only talked for her, never to her.
Well… it didn’t start that way. Her court appointed Judge Advocate had insisted - begged for - her to shut up after the first deposition ended in Shepard cursing out the head of the prosecution. But, she couldn’t help it. All this debate about the Alpha Relay and the destroyed Batarian Colonies was pointless. Of course she would’ve saved them if it had been possible! It wasn’t a matter of human supremacy - like that bone-headed prosecutor suggested in his opening remarks - No. The truth was, those lost lives weighed heavily on her shoulders, then and now. They always would. Even though Shepard tried to warn them. Even though she radioed a call for them to evacuate before hailing the Normandy. Even though they would’ve been just the first system - of an entire galaxy, as Earth’s brightest politicians seem to forget so easily - to fall to the Reaper invasion if she hadn’t destroyed the Alpha Relay. It killed her to sit through the trial silently, and be made out as some careless monster, while the Alliance leadership decided what to do with her. What a waste of time. A whole council of humans arguing over the ethics of war without noticing a new one was dawning. She found every wasted second absolutely maddening. Why couldn’t they see that everyone was on the same side? Why couldn’t they understand that there was something bigger - much bigger - on its way.
As bad as the trial was going, her time spent outside of the court room had been only marginally better. Shepard was on house arrest - A nice house, notably, - but a glorified prison nonetheless. She found no comfort in the cushy furniture, predictable meal-times, and truly brainless civilian televids - ‘ What the Hell is ‘Love is Blind,’ anyways? Why are people being locked in rooms, drunk, instead of preparing for war?!’ She’d enjoyed the classic superhero cartoon here and there as a child, but this shit was ridiculous - With the vid terminal turned off, the silence of surface life made Shepard want to bash her head into a wall. It was too quiet, but at least she had a window. At night, she looked up at the stars and wondered if the Normandy had been grounded too. During the day, she watched as the world passed her by. All those people… living their regular lives without any care or concern for what was coming next. At this rate, Shepard was convinced that they’d never know - not until it was too late - all because their leaders were too scared of the truth to share it.
She did, however, have one saving grace during suspension. Lieutenant James Vega, System Alliance Marine. What he lacked in tact, he made up for in his disdain for bureaucracy. Vega was assigned as her prison guard - a fact, he too was not thrilled by at first - but his position quickly evolved into personal security, confidant, and sparring partner instead. Shepard had been suspicious at first, but his immediate and utter dismissal of POW protocols won her over. They talked often - which was, technically, not allowed - James leaked military intel to her constantly - definitely not allowed - and some days, his company felt like the only thing stopping Shepard from dying of boredom altogether. They’d become fast friends. In hindsight, she suspected that had been Captain Anderson’s plan all along.
However, even with the company, getting benched by Alliance was fucking brutal. Time crawled by at a snail's pace. With every passing day, Shepard became more and more desperate to get back on the Normandy and watch Earth shrink in the rearview display like the little blue marble it was - But not like this. Never like this.
Local Cluster (Sol System) - Earth - Vancouver, Canada - Alliance North American Headquarters
It was mid-afternoon. Sunlight danced through the apartment window and cast long shadows of her furniture. The warmth of its rays felt nice on Shepard’s face, although she’d prefer to feel the heat of a different star - truly any other star, at this point… - Way down in the courtyard below her window, she noticed a child running in circles with his arms outstretched. He was waving a little toy spaceship around playfully. She squinted, wondering what model it might have been, before a brigade of hasty footsteps drew her attention to the door.
The door slid open. James strode into the room and stood at attention, “Commander.”
“You’re not supposed to call me that anymore, James.”
“Not supposed to salute you either.” He shrugged, “we’ve gotta go, the defense committee wants to see you.”
“Sounds important.” She tossed a datapad containing Vega’s latest confidential transmission onto the couch and followed him down the hall. “What’s going on?”
“Couldn’t say. They just told me they needed you, now”
From the second she stepped into the Alliance headquarters, Shepard knew something was wrong. It was swarming with Alliance personnel, and every single one of them seemed tense. One familiar face in the crowd caught her attention.
“Anderson,” she clasped his hand in a firm handshake. It felt like ages since she had last seen the Captain - No, the Admiral, now .
“You look good, Shepard, maybe a little soft around the edges. How are you holding up since being relieved from duty?”
She glanced down and pressed her palms against her stomach slightly - bullshit! - before following Anderson down the hall and towards the stairs. “It’s not so bad, once you get used to the hot food and soft beds,” her words dripped with sarcasm.
“We’ll get it sorted out…” Anderson replied knowingly.
“What’s going on? Why is everyone in such a hurry?”
“Admiral Hackett is mobilizing the fleets. I’m guessing word’s made it to Alliance Command. Something big is headed our way.”
“The Reapers?”
Anderson paused on the stairs leading up to the committee chambers and turned to face her, “we don’t know, not for certain.”
“What else could it be?” She pressed. “You know we’re not ready if it’s them. Not by a long shot.”
He sighed, shaking his head, “tell that to the defense committee.” With that, they turned and continued up the stairs.
“Unless we’re planning to talk the Reapers to death, the committee is a waste of time.”
“They’re just scared. None of them have seen what you’ve seen. You’ve faced down a Reaper. Hell, you spoke to one! Then, blew the damned thing up. You’ve seen how they harvest us, what they plan to do to humanity. You know more about this enemy than anyone.”
“Is that why they grounded me? Took away my ship?”
That stopped Anderson in his tracks again. “You know that’s not true,” he jabbed a pointed finger at her chest, “when you blew up the Batarian Relay, hundreds of thousands of Batarians died-”
“-It was that or let the Reapers walk through our backdoor!” She argued right back.
He let out another exasperated sigh, softening slightly, “I know that, Shepard. And so does the committee. If it wasn’t for that, you’d’ve been court martialed and left to rot in the brig.” He continued down the long hallway, glancing back every few strides while speaking, “I just need you to do whatever the hell it takes to help us stop The Reapers.”
A clerk was waiting by the doors, tapping frantically on her datapad as they approached. “They’re expecting you two, Admiral,” she motioned for them to follow.
From behind them, another woman’s voice greeted Anderson and then called out to Shepard. The voice was familiar, and it wasn’t one Shepard ever expected to hear again, especially not with a friendly tone.
Shepard turned sharply, “Ashley?”
The last time she’d seen Ashley was on Horizon, nearly a year ago. They’d been at an impasse: Ashley viewed her work with Cerberus as unforgivable, and Shepard had seen it as unavoidable. They’d left on bad terms. But now, here she was: Gunnery Chief Williams, with her hair down and her formal dress blues on.
“Lieutenant Commander,” Anderson greeted her with a handshake, “how’d it go in there?”
“I can never tell with them” Ashley’s brow furrowed, “I’m just waiting for orders now.”
“Lieutenant Commander?” Shepard questioned.
“You hadn’t heard?”
“No…” She couldn’t keep the iciness from chilling her tone, “I’m a bit out of the loop these days.”
“Admiral…!” The clerk prompted impatiently.
“Come’on!” Anderson gestured towards Shepard and followed the clerk. With one last sidelong look at Ashley, Shepard swept by her and strode into the council chambers.
The lower rank soldiers and operatives saluted Anderson as they walked in. Shepard had been there before, but the huge glass windows overlooking the city skyline never ceased to amaze her. It was a striking reminder of the lives at stake if she failed. The Defense Councilors were waiting for them at imposing, raised benches. All three of them looked stressed. To her surprise, Shepard noticed that Councilor Udina was not present. Although she had chosen Anderson to be the Council’s first human representative - the only good politicians are ones who don’t want the job - she still expected to find Udina involved in defense preparations.
The Councilors stood as they entered, “Admiral Anderson… Shepard.”
“What’s the situation?” Shepard replied bluntly.
“We were hoping you would tell us. The reports coming in are… unlike anything we’ve seen. Whole colonies are going dark. We’ve lost contact with everything beyond the Sol relay…. Whatever this is, it’s incomprehensibly powerful…” Another clerk passed Shepard a datapad. Its contents confirmed the councilor’s timid report.
“You brought me here to confirm what you already know. The Reapers are here.”
A hushed murmur resonated throughout the chambers. The Councilors exchanged concerned looks before one of them turned back to her, sheepishly offering, “then how do we stop them?”
“Stop them?” It was almost laughable. ‘Now, you want to stop them!?!’ She wanted to shout, ‘like I’ve been trying to do for years? Fighting against all manner of enemies - including idiotic politicians like you - to stop them? Even giving my life to stop them?!” But she bit her tongue, responding evenly instead, “this isn’t about strategy or tactics. This is about survival. The Reapers are more advanced than we are. More powerful. More intelligent. They don’t fear us, and they’ll never take pity on us.”
Another clerk called out to them anxiously, “Admiral! We’ve lost contact with the Luna base!”
“The Moon?” Anderson replied in disbelief, “they couldn’t be that close already.”
The third councilor turned to her compatriots, worried. “How’d they get past our defenses?”
“Sir, the UK Headquarters has a visual.” The Clerk cued up a grainy omni-tool clip of a soldier screaming unintelligibly. Then, Shepard heard a sound she knew too well: The deafening, low-pitched hum of a Reaper cannon. The display briefly panned to show visuals of a massive Reaper crushing whole buildings as it touched down on the city. Then, the screen went black. White text blinked, “Signal Lost.”
Anderson turned to look at her, “why haven’t we heard from Admiral Hackett?”
The Clerk typed furiously in response, then a huge wall-to-wall holographic display blinked to life across from the Councilor’s desk. It lit up with news feeds from around the world. All of the vids and clips showed the same sickening sight: Reapers, and lots of them. Their particle beam cannons fired massive lasers in all directions. The blasts eviscerated people, cars, and structures in a snap. Other news feeds showed Reapers opening to dump hoards of writhing, hungry husks onto the streets. The sight of them made her skin prickle. Those were humans, once. People. From where, she’d never know.
“What do we do?” One of the Councilors cried hysterically.
Shepard stalked towards them, seething, “The only thing we can. We fight or we die.”
“We should get to the Normandy,” Anderson agreed.
A low, rumbling hum emanated through the council chambers. Through the vast window, the sky seemed to darken. They could only watch in horror as a massive Reaper emerged from the clouds. It crackled with electromagnetic energy as the red particle cannon powered up. There was barely time for a warning before the lethal beam descended upon them.
“Go!” Shepard screamed, “Go, go, go!”
The impending blast lit up the whole room. She heard the sound of the glass shattering just before a great shockwave knocked everything and everyone off the ground. The Councilors’ desk was sent soaring over her head. Then, a second blistering laser beam scorched through the gap where the window used to be. Another shockwave hit Shepard like a punch in the gut and her body flew backwards. She collided with the opposite wall, hard. ‘No armor….No shields…’ she winced silently. The blow knocked the wind out of her and she rolled limply to the ground. Everything looked fuzzy and dark. She could barely hear the screams over the ringing in her ears.
Anderson’s shouts were muffled by the chaos but eventually she heard him, sounding closer by the moment, “ Shepard…! Come on, get up! ”
She opened her eyes to find Anderson reaching towards her. He pulled Shepard to her feet and steadied her. “Here take this. We’ve got to get moving.” He held out the pistol, hardly waiting for her to take it before pushing her towards the exit. He activated his earpiece with a few hasty taps of his omni-tool, “This is Admiral Anderson, report in, anyone. Lieutenant Commander Williams, is that you? What’s your status? I can’t reach the Normandy, you’ll have to come to me. We’ll meet you at the landing zone, Anderson out.”
The hallway was a bloodbath: no signs of life anywhere. Most of the doors and stairways were obstructed by fire and debris and whole walls had been blasted clean through. Outside, it sounded like some horrible symphony of gunfire, mechanical chatter, and screaming. They emerged onto the rooftop of the Alliance compound. Reapers, as tall as skyscrapers, had descended on the city. The skies above them were teaming with Alliance fighters, civilian shuttles, and hostile Oculus drones. The crafts zipped through the smoke in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
“Come on, Shepard. Ashleys’ headed to the Normandy. They’ll pick us up if we can get to the spaceport. Let’s move”
She spotted their destination, the shattered landing pad near the waterfront. It was far away on the other side of the compound. There was no time to waste, the whole area was already crawling with husks. Shepard and Anderson raced along the structural supports and rooftops, pausing only to brace themselves for cannon fire and the powerful shockwaves that followed. They leaped across gaps, scaled up and down ladders, and hurdled over concrete barriers. Eventually, Ashley’s transmission crackled to life through Shepard’s own earpiece,
“...we’re almost to the Normandy. I’ve got Lieutenant Vega with me, but we’re taking heavy fire…”
It appeared that Anderson and Shepard weren’t much better off. The gnawing, raspy sound of husks was growing louder. They were scaling the walls like spiders! She trained her pistol on them and fired until, one by one, the husks fell lifelessly off the side of the building. There were two more of them on the next floor down, clawing wildly at the locked doors and windows. Shepard bailed down the ladder rapidly and fired, point blank, at another husk. The heat clip of her pistol clicked pathetically. ‘Out of ammo…’ She scowled.
“Have to take these things out the old-fashioned way,” Anderson instructed. “Don’t let ‘em grab you.”
Quickly, while the husks were distracted, Shepard clocked one of them with a hefty pistol whip. Its charred skull crunched beneath the muzzle of her gun and then it crumpled to her feet, dead. She dispatched the other husk just as another low hum erupted from a grounded Reaper nearby. It was so loud that Shepard felt the vibrations shake the floor beneath her. They had just enough time to dive behind cover and then the particle beam swept towards them. Glass windows exploded outwards in a vast thoom of fire and smoke. It blasted the door open too, providing a way forward.
“We’ve got to find a way out of here.” Anderson ordered.
They were lucky to find the next room only slightly in shambles. A locked door still stood in their way. Shepard waved her omni-tool across the holographic passkey and the door slid open about six inches. Just wide enough for another husk to reach through and grab her.
“Watch it!”
She reeled back, tearing her wrist away from its desiccated fingers, before swinging as hard as she could. She pistol whipped the thing so hard that its jaw detached from the rest of its face. Just like the others, it was dead before it hit the floor.
The doors slid closed again and the passkey turned red with a dismissive beep. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath. She eyed the slight gap between the doors before shoving her fingers into it and prying. Inch by inch, the gap widened until she had enough space to shove one shoulder in between. She pushed with both arms until the space was passable. “This way.” She huffed through gritted teeth.
Admiral Anderson ducked beneath her arms, “nicely done.”
“Not so ‘soft around the edges’ now, am I?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
A clattering sound caught her attention. She turned quickly, expecting another husk, but there was nothing. Nothing… except for the glimpse of someone’s shoe - small… like, for a child? - as it darted through an open vent near the floor. Perplexed, she followed. The doors slid shut again.
“Hey…!” She whispered.
The faint shuffling inside the vent silenced abruptly, but the aluminum still amplified the sound of rapid breathing. She crouched down to look, and inside, was a boy. It was a miracle he’d survived the blast. His face was dusty and tear-streaked, but he appeared uninjured. He had blue eyes and cropped blonde hair and he was wearing a smoke stained grey hoodie. No blood, as far as she could tell. He looked to be around eight years old, and more importantly, he looked terrified. She’d never seen a pair of eyes so wide with fright. He shuffled further back into the vent.
“It’s okay…” She tried to speak softly.
“Everyone’s dying,” he whispered back.
“Let me help you.”
The boy’s gaze darted from her face to her outstretched hand and back again, “are there zombies still?”
“Actually, they’re called- Nevermind. They can’t hurt you anymore. They’re gone.”
“I saw you kill them.”
“I- uh… well, yes. But we needed … It’s because… Hmh.” She grimaced. Shepard racked her brain, grasping for a family-friendly way to explain why she turned several husks' brains into slushies right in front of the kid. She finally landed on, “... they’re the bad guys.”
“Are you a zombie hunter?”
Another rumble shook the building as a laser beam tore through the city. It sounded close.
“Come here. I need to get you someplace safe.”
“Are you???” He insisted.
Shepard let out an exasperated sigh. She wasn’t great with kids, mostly because she’d hardly spent any time around them since she was a child herself. She was a soldier! She could bark out orders and commands to her squad all day, but with kids? This couldn’t be worse.
“Sure, Kid. I fight aliens too- uhh… just the evil ones, I mean. Now, take my hand-”
“-Shepard!” This time, Anderson pried the doors open, and they stuck. “In here!” He scowled at her, perplexed
“I’m sorry, Sir, but there’s a kid, I need to- Just give me one more minute, Admiral!” She answered frantically. The horrible thought, ‘this kid is gonna die because I have the maternal instincts of a fighter jet’ intruded her mind . She shook it off and turned back towards the vent. She pleaded, “listen… There are still bad guys - different bad guys - out there and I don’t want to leave you because they can be scary if you’re alone. If you come with me, we can find your parents together.”
The boy’s shoulders sank and he looked down, dejectedly.
‘Fuuuuuuuuuuck.’ she cursed herself silently, ‘God Dammit, dead parents? We don’t have time for dead parents!!’ Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling like her own worst enemy. She was out of ideas and out of time. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the boy behind. She just… couldn’t! Frantically, she blurted out one last-ditch effort, “if you come with me I’ll teach you how to kill zombies!”
He looked up at her, eyes as wide as saucers, before answering with the quietest little “ok” imaginable. Then, he took her hand.
“Wait!” The boy suddenly cried out.
She almost died when the kid dove back into the vent a second time. But he quickly returned, clasping something tightly against his chest with both arms. The realization hit Shepard like a speeding bullet. It was a model spaceship. The model spaceship! The same one she’d seen a boy playing with in the courtyard not even an hour prior. She hadn’t recognized him before. ‘ How strange that our paths would cross again…’
But there was no time to think about that now. “Shepard…” Anderson insisted.
“I’m ready…” The boy reached up to grab her hand again.
“Um, actually why don’t you hold this one.” She said, swapping him to her non-dominant side, “in case I need to- I mean, in case the bad guys come back.”