The coup was over as quickly as it had begun. After the initial shock of the invasion, C-Sec was able to regroup and push Cerberus out. Shepard had arrived in time to prevent the assassination of the Citadel's leadership. Better late than never, as the humans say. The station was left to put itself back together again, slowly and painfully.

I missed most of it, stuck in a field hospital while they tried to fix my hands. That bastard Leng had hit the big tendons in both of my arms. I could move my thumbs, but couldn't curl the fingers on my right hand at all. I could manage some movement on the left, but the doctors made me stop.

At any other time, it would have been a quick hospital visit and a week's recovery. But supplies were growing scarce now. Weaves and medigel were going to the front, and those of us at home made do with old-fashioned methods. So I got my tendons stitched up and waited for them to heal.

Octavia stuck with me. I wouldn't have blamed her for leaving me to sulk in my hospital bed alone. We talked, more than we had in years. Neither one of us had any family left, and in those days no one wanted to be alone.

I think by then we all knew the end was coming. The news reports tried to focus on the victories, but everyone could see the refugees streaming in. Everyone knew about the shortages. Everyone had a brother or sister or parent or cousin missing or killed. The Citadel kept going, but everyone knew it wouldn't last.

For me, it felt like it had been a long time coming. I'd been three times lucky. Those kinds of odds catch up with you eventually.

When the Reapers got there, we were all half expecting it.

We fought, of course. But we were all tired, and none of us had much left to fight with. We could see them surrounding us out in space from the wards while the Citadel fleet made their last stand, before they closed up the arms and left us in the dark with their creatures.

Octavia still had that Cerberus rifle, and my left hand was strong enough to pull the trigger on my regulation pistol. We fought while we could, and then headed for the wards.

Others were doing the same. We passed scattered groups and individuals, all heading away from the Presidium, where the Reapers had cemented their control. Sometimes we would pass a pack of the thralls, the ones that used to be people. We kept our heads down and stayed quiet when we did. We weren't ready to fight that last fight.

We found a tiny place with thick walls and small windows abandoned out in Kithoi. The owners were gone, but they had been turian and they'd left their food supplies. It was as good a place as any. We locked the door and we waited there, in the dark, for the end.

When it came, it was brighter and louder than we expected.

It started with a quiet hum, almost too soft to hear. Gradually, it got louder, a sound like wind through a tunnel, till the floor and the walls shook with it. Octavia and I looked at each other. I held out my hand and she clasped it, and we leaned up against each other and shut our eyes while the world washed red.

When I opened my eyes, everything was still. The shouts and gunfire in the distance had stopped, and it was quiet enough to hear our breath in the room. Octavia opened her eyes, and we slowly separated.

"What was that?"

She shook her head. "I don't know."

We waited, but it stayed quiet, and eventually I opened the door.

My mandibles dropped in shock, and I could hear Octavia's startled inhalation behind me. The Citadel's arms had opened fully. The sky above us was alien, but clear. No Reaper ships in sight. We both stood there staring at it for a long, silent moment, alone in the wreckage of the street.

We spent the rest of the afternoon packing up the food that wouldn't spoil and trying to hook into an open communications channel on our omnitools. We had no luck on the comms, but we knew something had happened. There was nothing left to lose at that point. So the next day, we began the trek back to the Presidium.

It was a nightmare. In the light, we could see the destruction clearly. The clean, smooth streets of the Citadel were ruined, choked with bodies of every species. There was the battlefield stench of blood and bowels everywhere, and the Keepers picked their way carefully among the dead, dragging them one by one into the tunnels.

The Reapers were dead too.

They seemed to have dropped where they stood, whole squads of them fallen in the streets. The Keepers gave them the same treatment they gave everyone else, pulling them into the Citadel's innards to feed the protein vats.

As we got closer to the Presidium, we began to meet survivors, emerging from the wreckage or returning from the wards like us. No one knew what had happened, but no one had met any living Reapers, either.

The Presidium itself was almost unrecognizable. The Citadel tower was still intact, but the administrative offices next to it were nothing but slag. The reservoir had overrun its banks, wetting the streets, and the monuments had been crushed to rubble. Survivors picked through the remains here and there, all wearing the blank, exhausted expressions of people who had grown numb to shock.

It hit me harder than I expected, to see it like that. I'd spent thirty years of my life on the Presidium.

We stood there, me taking in the scene and Octavia watching me. After a moment, she gently touched my shoulder.

"I'm going to see if there are any survivors in the hospital. Will you be all right?"

I got myself together and nodded. "I'm fine. Meet back here in an hour?"

"All right." She gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze and headed off. I stayed there for a minute taking in the details, before continuing on my way.

Out of habit more than anything else, I found my way to C-Sec HQ. It was as wrecked as everything else. Windows smashed and bullet wounds in the walls. No bodies, at least. The Keepers must have cleaned up already.

My old office was clean. Chellick had been Executor after I'd left, and he'd died in the coup. No one else had bothered to move in. The kava machine still worked, and I made a cup just to keep my hands busy. When it was done, I sat at my old desk and drank it, staring out the broken windows at the smoking ruin of my home.

We had been through a lot. Three invasions, each more damaging than the last. I knew the physical damage could be fixed, scars fading until they disappeared. But I also knew we would never be the same again.

I let out a deep breath, and tested the button for the station-wide PA. It crackled to life, and I felt something steady inside me.

You had to start somewhere.

"This is Executor Pallin. All C-Sec personnel report to HQ."