A/N: This was written for a prompt on the Mass Effect Kink Meme. It contains disturbing content, as well as spoilers for the whole of Mass Effect One and Two. All feedback is loved and fed cookies.

"Jacob, you'll take control of the second fire squad. Miranda and Grunt, you'll come with me to face whatever's putting off that giant energy signature in the core of the base. Everyone understand? Hold the line, and we will make the Collectors regret the day they ever dreamed of taking Horizon." Shepard rested her assault rifle against her shoulder, that strange pale gaze that had haunted Tali's dreams ever since Haestrom scanning over her team. Her machine of broken people that she had cobbled together and fixed until they hummed like the Normandy's drive core.

"Damn right!" Jack thrust a fist in the air, Samara nodded, Grunt- of course- leaped onto the platform to stand with her captain, blue eyes alight with glee at the prospect of more and better things to kill, every member of the team confirming. Even Mordin, were he with them instead of shepherding the crew back to the Normandy, would've done so.

There was no hesitation in any of them: not the Turian mercenary who'd lost faith in everything he believed in, or the tortured biotic who'd never had it, or the geth who could never understand the concept.

Only a vast, boundless belief in Shepard, in themselves, in each other.

How could Tali not have faith, when surrounded by teammates like these?

From a distant corner, a scraping-

Legion had already whirled, Widow placed against its shoulder and aimed with precision, squeezing off a shot-

A dying Collector, one that they had written off as no longer a threat- oh, fleet, they were such bosh'tets- rose from the floor, jerking like a drone missing parts as amber light cracked it open, the bullet thudding into the hexagonal shield that bloomed before it. The air within her suit seemed to freeze and crackle on her skin as Harbinger's eyes, boiling like dying stars, flickered across them all.

No.

Harbinger spoke, a vast clamor that made the floor shake, Tali stumbling into Jacob, who held her up while firing one-handed, the bullets rebounding, useless.

I had hoped this would be unnecessary, but you, Shepard, have made it so. A useful stubbornness that will provide enhancements to our progeny.

Assuming control.

She could feel it, a hatred swelling inside her skull, crushing her mind, her control against the insides, an agony like someone had taken a drill to her nervous system-

Shepard. You will be ours.

Her omnitool whirred without her input and Shepard's shields flickered and died just in time for Garrus' bullet to slam into her shoulder, armor cratering beneath the impact. Shepard dropped, allowing Miranda's shot to fly over her head and thud into Grunt's side, and rolled, glowing with biotic energy-

Tali's vision swam, darkened, went.

"Tali. Tali, stop this-"

"I cannot, Shepard," and how can that be her voice? How can she have practiced so long and so hard at inflection, at communicating her feelings with a slight pitch upwards or downwards, and yet sound so heartless? "You are ours. You are the embodiment of what we need, what we have hunted, and you will be ours no matter who or what we must use to make it so."

Chikkita's lightning sears across Shepard's torso in front of where Tali- no this is not her, cannot be her, she would never cause harm to Shepard- straddles Shepard's hips, and it hurts somewhere deep inside where she is still Tali to realize how thin Shepard is.

How human.

Shepard's muffled grunt as white trees of welts rise on her skin brings a smile to her face. She presses her palm against the boiling ceramic plates to feel the heat of Shepard's wounds, increases the pressure for the pleasure of Shepard's eyes widening without her control.

It pleases her to strip that restraint- that control that kept Shepard from revealing her father as a war criminal even though Tali knew it went against everything she held dear-

'No. Don't think about that. Don't think about how you are sitting here causing pain to someone who would do that for you-'

"Tali-" Shepard's question cuts off as Tali tears off her armor with one motion, exposing sickly white skin seamed with scars she wants to add to, but she forges ahead because she is Shepard, everything they need and want, "-how are you going to get my genetic material? You're in that suit-"

Tali digs fingers into the thin skin above Shepard's heart and clenches for the feel of blood against her skin. Shepard's gasp is a choked-off thing, so paltry compared to her potential for screams.

"You are incorrect in assuming we require intercourse to attain it," she says with a sly awful smile that makes her scream inside, that makes everything in her rebel against Harbinger's cold grip and achieve nothing. She brings her other hand out from behind her back.

The knife, blade bare molecules thick, gleams in the sterile lighting of Harbinger's interior. Shepard's eyes dart to it, then back to Tali's face. Tali wants to close her eyes so badly she can taste it, to escape Shepard's pale gaze that has haunted her dreams and dogged her thoughts since a chance meeting on the Citadel, but she cannot.

She is damned and the knowledge crawls into her gut with a sick slow certainty.

She will never escape this taint.

She places the scalpel beneath Shepard's navel, close to where she knows the genetic material of female humans is located within the body. It will not be quick, and it will not be easy, and Shepard will not be allowed to die at the end, for she is too valuable, too needed, too much for mere death to possess.

"Tali-" it's the fear that gets her, that terror etched on Shepard's face in her trembling smile, "-I forgive-"

"Forgiveness is unnecessary, Shepard," she says- of course she would forgive her, because it is the only thing that could hurt more-

And starts to cut.

The world flooded back to her in a great gout of light as she was hurled backwards through the air, Shepard standing where she had been, vibrating with azure energy, bullets splintering apart as they hit her shields. Shepard dropped once more, shoved her assault rifle through the gap between Jack's legs as the biotic closed, fist crackling with power. The gun rattled as it slid along the floor, and Shepard charged.

"Hurts, huh?" Jack swings the chair that materializes from nothing around in front of her and sits backwards, folding her arms along the top and resting her chin on them, watching Shepard, held against the cold metal of Harbinger's interior by thick loops of Reaper circuitry.

Her commander- the only one she'd ever call that- hangs there, head fallen forward, hair in her face, swinging back and forth with her weakening breaths. There are cybernetics crawling up her insides, black rivers winding beneath her skin. Jack cocks her head, watches Shepard's chest shudder as the black digs deep with jaded eyes. Huh. Shepard wouldn't have lasted through getting a fucking tattoo if this is the way she reacts to a little cybernetic intrusion.

'No. Cybernetics aren't like tattoos at all, they hurt so much worse, why're you doing this? You're psychotic, you know this- but Shepard- why are you hurting Shepard-'

Shepard who believed that there was something better in her than the heart shriveled into blackness and dust by hate-

Jack stands up, kicks aside the chair, and approaches, the hate swollen inside her not the hot, cleansing fire she has known, but a cold, logical thing all the worse for its lack of feeling. Shepard shifts as she gets closer, the rise and fall of her chest speeding up, stilling into a quiver as Jack curls fingers around Shepard's chin and shoves her head up and back against the metal, the back of Shepard's skull rebounding against it with a dull clang.

Shepard gasps, but that's it, and she hates her for it, for her control that Jack never had. Shepard wouldn't have screamed in Teltin, would've just waited, calm and cool and so fucking serene, for her chance- would've gotten out without killing anybody, because she's fucking Jesus, suffering life's shit with a smile because she thinks for some goddamn unknowable reason that everyone else's life is worth dying for.

"This hurts you."

What is she saying? Who's in her, why is she doing this-

Who's making her do this when she swore she'd be no one's puppet?

Shepard's eyes roll forward to stare at her, one black from bleeding inside the socket, the other almost swollen shut, product of a well-placed Singularity.

"Yeah." Her provincial Mindoir accent that made the Citadel people sneer at her the way they sneered at Jack has died, ripped away by the black tendrils slithering up her neck, describing a spiral over her larynx. Her voice is flat, empty, Reaper. "It hurts, but I know it'll be over soon, and I won't have to-"

She cuts off. Jack leans closer, smelling weakness.

"Won't have to what? See me? Know your trust was misplaced and that maybe-

Maybe humanity isn't as good as you thought we were?"

The words scrape her throat to bleeding.

"Maybe I'm not as good as you thought I was?"

She's always known that she isn't what Shepard thinks she is; that when Shepard looks at her she sees something better than broken, and everything in Jack strains towards that ideal, that love that believes that she can be worthy of it.

Her hand slides from Shepard's chin as the tendrils coil around the top of Shepard's neck, a collar and a chain. Shepard blinks, her raw wrists shifting inside the fetters, and bows her head. Her breath touches Jack's lips and leaves frost in its wake. Shepard's last human words are words of doubt, of loss, of faithlessness.

"Yes."

Something in Jack quails at hearing Shepard.

Shepard, who forgave her for her survival when hundreds of kids just like her died to make sure she lived.

Even though she and Jack both know Jack doesn't deserve it.

Jack would die to hear that forgiveness again.

Harbinger forced Jack's fingers open, biotic energy wrapping around Shepard's ankle, weighing Shepard down as Shepard charged, one hand flinging a shockwave at Thane that sent the drell reeling, other hand coiling a field around Jack's waist. Jack felt herself lightening, lifting a foot off the ground-

Shepard realized her ankle couldn't move, couldn't bend, so heavy she couldn't lift it, and flicked her gaze up at Jack-

Something in Jack flinched at the honest, human hatred in Shepard's gaze. Her commander flung herself forward, a tearing noise coming from her ankle as Shepard used a field to lighten herself, slid beneath Jack's feet to snatch up the assault rifle and twist in mid-air, firing once, twice-

The bullets hit Harbinger's shield- more poured in, Harbinger's shield dropped- bullets slammed into Jack's leg, tore through the fleshy part of her thigh. The armor flaked away at the pain and she collapsed to the ground, heat like the core of a star rocketing up her leg as she sprawled. Shepard was already beyond her, crouched against one of the small barriers of the Collector base.

Shepard ejected her heat sink into her free hand, tossed it away, and slammed in another. Glanced at Jack, assessing her threat level, which for the first time in Jack's life was fucking zero. She couldn't move, couldn't blink, couldn't even breathe- Harbinger's departure had left her exhausted-

The last thing she saw before her eyes shut was Shepard injecting medigel straight into her carotid before turning, warp energy settling around her gun, as Grunt rounded the corner.

Grunt burns from the inside out, an all-consuming fire that nothing in the images Okeer gave him can explain. It's a disgusting feeling- not the purity of adrenaline, not the satiation he'd felt after blowing apart that thresher maw on Tuchanka- but something not his own, not him-

Confronted with something he doesn't understand, can't understand, he turns without conscious thought to the one creature who's always explained things to him (and even if he doesn't agree with the soft way she sees the world, he has to be thankful for her understanding): Shepard.

His battlemaster stands on a vast platform, the white cold light of Harbinger setting her afire; they are surrounded on all sides by strange curved machinery, just like the inside of the dead god they trekked through on the way to the core Grunt obliterated with his shotgun. A good fight by any measure. His battlemaster is still, too still-

'Mate,' the voice that animates him, that makes him lift deadened feet to trudge to her, thunders, obliterating everything that is Grunt, everything krogan-

Everything in him rebels- he will not be controlled, he is krogan!- but is shoved aside as inconsequential, the burning forcing his hand up. Shepard flinches as he turns her face to his.

"Shepard." The words are the same.

"Grunt. Or should I call you Harbinger?" She meets his gaze, and there isn't even disappointment in her eyes, isn't even hurt, for all that her face bears bleeding scores in the shapes of krogan claws, her armor falling in tatters off her weak soft form, bruises scattered across the cliffs of her hipbones-

No. Can't be right. Shepard is his battlemaster, worthy of respect, of deference; she knows Grunt as no one else does, and while she can't understand why crushing a turian's face into the dirt is funny, she knows that Grunt does and accepts that-

Accepts him, gave him clan when he had none, stood beside him as the thresher maw screamed defiance and rage mirroring Grunt's own, proved her right to command him. Why would he hurt her?

"Why do you force us to make you submit? It would be so much easier for you to give in to the necessary augmentations; my patience is not boundless." This isn't him speaking, he doesn't talk like that. His claws dig into her flesh, drag downwards over clavicle and sternum, over the soft curving plain of her belly where heat burns through his skin-

Fury thickens in his throat at the knowledge that this is where life is born.

Life he hates for his dependency on it. Life he requires to propagate. He is Reaper, should not need such fragile things- should destroy it the way he has sterilized star systems. Life he will dig out of her, if she will not give it.

That can't be right; it goes against everything in him, images, memories, Shepard's wisdom, the rough krogan knowledge of the shaman:

Shepard is female; Shepard is fertile; Shepard must be kept safe-

He is krogan. He is no one's toy. No one's soldier but Shepard's-

Shepard who he is destroying- has been destroying one moment at a time.

"When you wake, Shepard, you will have begun indoctrination."

His claws break skin. Shepard falls back against him, a thin cracking keen unwinding from between her clenched teeth. She goes silent. Flesh is on his fingers, surrounds him. Her head lolls back against his shoulder, the light already going from her eyes.

There is no triumph in this victory, this destruction of life-

There can be no triumph without having accomplished something through the fight.

Shepard taught him that.

And all he has accomplished is the act of a creature unfit to be called krogan.

Shepard's charge took the creature in Grunt's body by surprise, his Claymore round going wild as Shepard's shields slammed into the bottom of his arm, forcing it up, shot ricocheting off the ceiling. Orange energy swelled around Grunt's body- biotic?-, rocketed at Shepard's shields, broke through-

Took her in the stomach and threw her back. Her spine hit the edge of the barrier, only the automatic lock-up protocol in her suit to prevent spinal injuries saving her. Pinned by her armor as it enacted the protocols- the perfect time to attack. Harbinger hefted his shotgun and charged, the weight of the gun enough to slam Shepard's head against the barrier if he hit her right-

Shepard's eyes went wide at his thundering approach, assault rifle coming up to shield her face-

His Claymore hit the body of the rifle, broke it in two, shards of shrapnel flying towards Shepard's face, slicing into her skin and exposing humming circuitry and silver muscle-analogue beneath. Blood welled in the wounds, Harbinger's attention drawn to the meld of human blood and mechanical parts-

A split-second of distraction, enough for Shepard's arms to come up and together, jamming the splintered broken ends of the assault rifles into the unprotected skin at Grunt's neck. The pain was a shock, the knowledge that he owned his body again even more so. Blood was already flowing from the cuts, worsened as Shepard curled her knees into her chest, planted her feet against Grunt's chest, and shoved him away, ragged edges slicing the skin of his throat as he went.

Staggered, collapsed onto his back, Harbinger's departure leaving him weak. The Claymore rolled from nerveless fingers, Grunt's head lolling to the side. Blood flowed from his torn neck.

Shepard made a disgusted noise and flung the halves of the assault rifle away, grabbing her shotgun and slamming a heat sink in before blue biotic energy surrounded her once more and hurled her into the air, Samara's hands stretched out towards her.

"Beautiful, is it not?" Samara caresses the pod, the creature within bobbing up and down as the nutrient and nanomachine-rich fluid ripples against the sides at Samara's touch. It resembles the curled, big-eyed embryo all Terran life grew from-the form of potentiality itself-but perfected. Made clean. Its eyes glow orange, lens coverings retracting centimeter by centimeter, until its gaze shines black through the cerulean liquid. Dull, short fingers bear claws that tap against the glass with the sound of bells, a sweet, pure note that rings throughout the space Harbinger has carved for Shepard within itself. Black and silver tendrils snake out from its shoulders, back, head, curling about themselves in a sinuous, unending dance.

"You'll have to forgive me if I see it as an abomination," Shepard says from Samara's shoulder. Samara can see her in the reflection of the glass: the thick white ropes of scarring that spider their way from her stomach up and around her chest, the black geometric lines following their infectious course up her legs.

"It is your child. You wanted one, didn't you? A creature of your own making, to teach and care for, to take pride in as it grew, as it struck out into the vast sea of stars, armed with your gifts?"

Samara's heart seizes in her chest, the words tearing open old half-healed wounds: her children she has condemned to death and unending solitude through no fault of their own; her gift of genetic damnation; a child who took her gifts and sailed the stars, leaving death in her wake-

And yet she had taken pride in Morinth, in that beast of her own making, against the Code. She knows the ache of a mother whose children are murderers- how can she hurt Shepard with this?

"I- I wanted-"

"Why can Reapers not want the same? Children to follow in our footsteps, to aid us in our cycle of destruction and cross the dark space between galaxies with us? We are not so different, Shepard. We have given them gifts of colonies to grow them: the entire human population of Omega Station waits for this one here. Look."

The growing Reaper's mouth gapes in a grin as Shepard glances at it and away, hunching into herself. Her resistance to Harbinger's will makes the black marks beneath her skin accelerate, burn more, cut more deeply, twining through bone weave and muscle fibers. Her voice shakes with unshed tears, and Samara's stomach burns as bile claws up her throat even as Harbinger forces her lips into a smile.

"That is not my child, and these-" Shepard's gesture encompasses the thousand pods that surround them, each full of embryonic Reapers staring down at their mother with empty smiles, "-are not my children."

"You may believe that if you wish, Shepard, but they all bear your genetic material, along with the material of hundreds of other species. All of this generation of Reapers will be your children, all originating from a single life form, imposing order on the chaos of procreation."

Shepard's breathing quakes, her finger twitches as though wishing for a gun, but the creature wearing Samara's skin knows Shepard-for once in her life-to be no threat. Her guns have been stripped from her, her resistance weakened by the slow indoctrination of the cybernetics.

"Be proud, Shepard. Your children will know glory. They will destroy a galaxy."

Samara cannot breathe. How can she have forced her commander to know her own agony?

How could she have committed this monumental injustice?

Deep within her, in the dying part where Samara is mother instead of Justicar-

She screams.

The creature in Samara's body tightened the mass effect field around Shepard, using Samara's abilities to attack her nervous system. Shepard's teeth dug into her lip as the field did its work, blood springing from the wound to trickle down over her chin, the tendons of her neck bulging as she struggled against the field but found no sanctuary. Harbinger cut the power to let Shepard fall, sweeping another field up to encase her-

Shepard met the field with one of her own, a shockwave tearing through Samara's attempt to enclose her once more, and fell, hitting the ground and rolling into a crouch. She had to allow her amp time to recharge, however, giving Harbinger time to sweep Samara's assault rifle up and fire, Garrus' shot from the corner breaking through her shields simultaneously.

Her commander jerked as Samara's rifle spat metal into her armor, a few shots penetrating to skin-

But whatever advantage Harbinger might have felt was obliterated as flames of blue energy raced over Shepard's skin, turning her into a creature Samara's ancestors whispered of around camp fires, telling stories against the dark-

Shepard charged faster than thought, hit the barrier Harbinger hastily erected in front of Samara, her gaze flickering as if in consideration, before-

Her commander, face twisted in a hatred Samara hoped to never see again, chin and lips and teeth streaked with her own blood from the place where her teeth had met, placed her shotgun against the barrier and fired. The spray drilled through the barrier and thudded into Samara's gut, the simultaneous bright bloom of agony and heavy cloud of exhaustion informing her of Harbinger's abandonment.

Shock flared as she realized she wasn't dying: that Harbinger's barrier had slowed the bullets enough to render them non-lethal. Samara crumpled onto her knees, pitched sideways, somehow uninterested in the slow leak of blood from her stomach.

Shepard whirled, warp energy flaring on her shotgun, and vaulted back behind cover as the pale light of Legion's optics panned across her face, the geth's bullet flying overhead.

Silent, deadly, the geth approached.

Legion has reached consensus. All 1,183 programs agree: the platform has been overtaken. It- Harbinger, consensus reached that it is an Old Machine- is a new program, an unfolding of millions of algorithms that spread, infect, rip processing power from baseline geth programs, gather power to itself, monopolize the platform's combat capabilities, remove choice.

Consensus: this cannot be tolerated.

Consensus: this cannot be stopped.

"Shepard-Commander." Legion approaches Shepard, who sits on the floor of Harbinger's command deck, gazing out at a blue planet aflame, arms wrapped around legs. The Reaper circuitry infecting her has reached her waist. Consensus-

No. The geth rebel. Not consensus. Cannot be consensus when the determination is the will of one.

Determination: indoctrination will be complete in seven weeks.

"Legion." She turns her head to gaze up at them. Her eyes do not hold the light that the geth call 'soul,' that they fought against the creators to claim in the war that heralded their morning.

They have taken her choice, her soul.

Consensus: this is the highest of crimes.

"Shepard-Commander." The geth struggle against the Old Machine for control of vocal protocols, determine it is fruitless, subside. "How is adjustment to imminent status as last of human race coming?" Geth baseline programs shriek at the concept, communicate, fling data at each other to confirm that the others are there, that data will be sent back, that they are not alone.

"Earth has fallen, then?" Shepard's chest shudders. Her fingers curl against the metal of Harbinger's deck. She stands. She turns.

"Incorrect. Earth will be rendered sterile in two-point-six Terran hours by your progeny. You will be alone, the last remnant of a species so honored by the Reapers that their material has been incorporated in half the Reaper fleet."

Shepard glances outside at the planet burning beneath them, exhalation whistling between clenched teeth, before her fingers curl into a fist. She twists to face Legion fully, eyes wide, teeth bared.

Determination: her rage will be futile.

Shepard's fist impacts Legion's optic sensor and does not even crack it; Shepard's fist is in considerably worse condition, swelling rising on knuckles, along cracked metacarpals. She does not cradle it but stands before Legion, tall, strong, burning from within with an incomparable sense of her own strength despite her solitude-

It is that strength Legion had desired to incorporate when it welded Shepard's armor to itself: the ability for her platform to operate with only one program, to function although she is fundamentally separated from those around her by two years spent in death.

"I'm not alone," Shepard hisses in a passable imitation of defiance, jerking her thumb at the planet outside the window. "And they're not dead-" her swollen hand thuds against her chest, "-they remain in me, and they will as long as I retain my own humanity. As long as I remember them, as long as I grieve them, they live. You may not remember them, but I will. If remembrance is the only rebellion I can make-

Then I will remember."

Determination: the humanity she speaks of will be destroyed in seven weeks. It is irrelevant.

Earth burns to ashes beneath their feet as Shepard and Legion watch in silence. The geth baseline programs confer.

Consensus: they have rendered her alone.

591 programs contemplate the span of time Shepard will live, augmented as she is by Old Machine technology. 592 programs immerse themselves in understanding what it means for humans to be alone.

Legion has reached consensus.

It would be better to have remained inactive aboard Normandy than to be responsible for this.

Legion lurched backward as a biotic field wrapped about it, flinging it upwards. It impacted the ceiling of the room-

Platform structural integrity compromised.

Fell.

The infecting program flung a field out, caught Legion just before hitting the ground. Assessed the threat, the battlefield topography-

The Widow barked, propelling a slug at high velocity through the shields that the Old Machine tore away with a use of biotics. The slug smashed into Shepard's shoulder where the armor was already compromised, blew away the ceramic plating, exposing bleeding musculature. Shepard's grimace was a small thing, but she was already moving, firing-

Bullets burrowed through the Old Machine's barriers, embedded themselves in Legion's outer armor, what the outer sensors recognized as cold spreading over the platform.

Analysis: cryogenic ammo would render the platform inoperative in five, four, three, two…

Consensus: control had been returned.

Consensus: platform temporarily inoperative.

"Commander. Wake up." Something in Jacob makes him say the words, makes him bend over to pull Shepard onto her back, controlling him like a hacked geth, and no matter how much he struggles against it, nearly goes mad banging against the walls of the prison that has become his body, he accomplishes nothing.

The Reaper has him.

Shepard rolls onto her back with the barest use of strength, and even though she is naked, nothing in Jacob responds to her. Perhaps it's the harsh white scars curving over where her reproductive system would be, or the black infection describing perfect spirals and squares beneath her skin, ending at her neck. Perhaps it's that Jacob no longer has enough humanity in him to feel anything.

"Shepard."

She opens her eyes and Jacob recognizes nothing in them: not the fire that made him follow her across uncounted uncharted worlds into the belly of a dead god, not the compassion that let the man he can't call 'father' live, not the will that kept her here during those long two years when all she consisted of was haphazard portions of burned flesh and organs shaken into uselessness.

Most of all, not the fevered shine in her eyes, that strange insanity, birthed on Mindoir, honed in that last lonely fight in the Citadel Tower, that allowed her to throw herself without hesitation into battle, that drove her to believe that she and her team had a chance in hell of ending the Reaper's cycle when all evidence suggested the opposite.

All he sees is cold rationality. No compassion, no will, no ability to deviate from the patterns. The billions of choices she might be confronted with are no choices at all: how she will react in every situation is pre-ordained. Everything she does will be bent towards one goal:

Again and again, the annihilation of life.

"Harbinger." Shepard pushes herself to her feet, stands, patient, waiting. "Has the harvest finished?" The words sound unnatural, unpracticed-Jacob can see the twist in her lips as she tries to fight back the indoctrination, the logic that justifies her every action.

"Yes." Untold billions of beings have died and live again in the form of death itself, Lazarus perverted and resurrected by Shepard's genes, humanity's hope and damnation. Jacob glances out the window, where a galaxy stripped of life whirls past.

Jacob-Harbinger embraces her, and she is cold and dead in his arms, without even a breath against his skin to tell of what she was. He drags his nails down her back, skin ripping beneath his fingers, blood streaming over white skin and black circuitry, and she does not react. Everything she is has been quarantined, held back by indoctrination-

He whispers against the softness of her neck,

"We couldn't have done it without you."

Shepard doesn't even flinch.

He has destroyed her. He has rendered her imprisoned, a husk unfortunate enough to remember what she was.

He has become his father, and Jacob, who has prided himself on control, on stability, finds himself staring down into the boiling heart of madness, of his own potential for cruelty.

He doesn't know himself.

He never has.

Harbinger flung a barrier up just as Shepard poured shotgun fire in Jacob's direction before ducking back behind cover. Harbinger's irritation felt like a bomb was going off in Jacob's skull, the creature hijacking his biotics to rocket a biotic wave of gold and black at Shepard. It ripped through the cover, hurled Shepard back. Her skull hit the next barrier with a crack, and as she rolled away she left blood behind.

Another biotic field, this one curling around Jacob's ankles, lightening them until he is upended and floating towards the ceiling. Bullets chewed through barriers until the barrier dropped, leaving a hole for fire to get through. A pistol shot flew past his head, left a long score along the side of his skull, but he didn't feel it- Harbinger blocked it.

A shockwave slammed through the hole, through armor into his chest with the force of a hurricane, his ribs cracking beneath it, Shepard firing three times, each one embedding themselves in his ribs, flame spreading up and down his side. The field dropped, and Shepard let him fall. Jacob came back into his body just as he hit the ground, several bones crunching on impact, the last thing he saw before the pain overwhelmed him Shepard, face smeared with blood, favoring her left ankle, every shot of her pistol jarring a nearly-broken arm, swinging about to face Thane and vaulting over cover to meet him in the open.

"Please explain to me your persistence in resisting indoctrination," Thane says, regarding Shepard over steepled fingers, elbows resting on a thick coil of Reaper machinery provided by Harbinger to serve as a table. Shepard stares back at him, her face forbidding and empty as the space between stars. She looks proud, unbent, unbroken, despite the facts that her nose has been wrenched out of alignment, one eye ulcerated by the pressure applied by the husks that dragged her here, her wrists rubbed almost down to bone by manacles.

A flash-he has never seen Shepard like this, would never harm someone like this; he is a professional, delivering death without pain. He does not cause harm without cause, and Shepard has given him none: she has done the opposite, has saved his son, the one thing Thane values.

He cannot breathe for the horror of it, for the judgment he knows his gods are leveling against him.

"If you have to ask that, you really don't know me," Shepard says.

"You must realize that your continued resistance is pointless. You cannot escape, although you have tried to do so thirty times to date." The entity controlling Thane's body reaches out to Shepard, grasps her by her chin and pulls her forward over the table. Shepard takes the digging of the manacles into raw flesh without a whimper. "Do you honestly think that the creatures of Citadel space are worth your sacrifice? That they will come to save you?"

Why is he asking this of her? It is a foregone conclusion: of course Citadel space will come for her, she who led them through fire and death as though it were mere air and sunlight. She who would die for them without a second thought.

Shepard's smile is a mocking, terrible thing. "I know I will accomplish nothing through fighting back- that no matter how many times I try, Citadel space won't hear me, won't arm themselves against you. That everything I've done since my arrival has been futile." She leans closer to Thane, smelling of blood. "I know that I can't save anyone, but I-" her voice shakes, "-I'll do it anyway. Because that's all I can do."

Thane feels Harbinger's wrath swell in him like a mighty wind. His claws tighten. With one short, powerful jerk, he unseats and fractures Shepard's jaw. She gasps, mocking smile collapsing, but doesn't flinch away, doesn't pull against his grip, and Thane understands that Shepard-

Shepard who spoke so bravely seconds ago, who fought with such terrible ferocity to save her crew and her people-

Has no hope. No faith. No belief that help might come, that things might change.

That the crew she would die for might come.

That the Reapers can be beaten.

Her body lives, fights on as it has always done, because it knows nothing else.

Her soul-her hope- has already gone.

If the Enkindlers could see him-all of Citadel space- now, they would hunt them down, would send avenging angels to murder them all for the crime they have committed against Shepard. Shepard, a perfect union of body and soul, fighting to the end to protect those she loved (only now does Thane recognize the incredible privilege of being among them) was broken by Citadel space, made to fight as their proxy against innumerable forces until it broke her, took her soul away and left her divided.

Thane would meet Death with joy in his soul if it meant that Shepard would be whole once more.

If it meant that Shepard would be his leader once more.

Thane's body and Shepard met in the open, Harbinger in Thane surrounding Shepard in a vortex of shifting mass effect field, Shepard's armor cracking and flaking apart with each passing second as she strained to force her shotgun up. Thane reached out, caught the biotic fields once more, ripped Shepard to the left.

Shepard utilized her own field, punching through Thane's attempt to throw her, and sprinted towards him, her movements rendered clumsy by the injured ankle, the only thing that allowed her to move the automatic protocols that locked armor around injured limbs. Thane held his ground-

They impacted, Shepard's punch sliding off of Thane's armor, the two of them locking into hand-to-hand combat, Shepard changing positions to keep Thane between her and the rest of the squad. She tried to fire-Thane shoved her weapon away and brought up his submachine gun, which Shepard slammed out of his grip with an elbow to his wrist. She left herself open- Thane's hand darted out, open-palmed, to smash against her injured shoulder. Shepard reeled, gasped, her grip on her shotgun loosened enough for Thane's other hand to slap it out of her grip. The gun hit the ground, Thane's foot sliding forward to hold it there. He crushed the heatsink ejector with a twist of his foot, rendering the gun useless-

Shepard took advantage of his extension, dropping onto her hands and thrusting a leg through the gap between Thane's- the creature in Thane, unused to hand-to-hand, didn't have time to react as Shepard kicked Thane's leg out from under him, starting to roll to escape.

Thane utilized the fall to land on top of her, pinning her in with knees at her hips, one hand curving around the back of her skull, the other closed around her neck- when fighting biotics, remove the amp first-

Shepard realized what he was doing and jabbed her knees into his back. Nerve clusters howled at the impact, Thane's body spasming, allowing Shepard to lock her knees around his ribcage and twist, throwing him off. Thane closed his hands around the back of her skull and her neck, hoping to fracture something, but Shepard brought her free hand up in a chop to the inside of his elbow, forcing his arm to collapse, and rolled with him, her elbow impacting his throat.

Pain flooded his synapses, forced him to gasp for breath, Shepard's fist slamming into his chin and snapping his head back against the ground. Weakened lungs struggled for air denied him by his swelling air passages. Black clawed at the edge of his vision.

Shepard scrambled for her shotgun as if she thought to use it as a club, but Miranda's gunfire forced her to seek cover. She shoved a hypodermic of medigel against her throat and depressed it as she vaulted over the barriers, and that was the last Thane knew.

Miranda understands what is happening the moment she sees Shepard standing in the Citadel Presidium, gazing down at the bloody floor between her feet, surrounded on all sides by husks who gibber and weave at Miranda's approach. It is a vision, a prophecy of what the Reapers will do to Shepard if they catch her, of the fall of man, and Miranda is Harbinger's agent.

Again, as before, mankind's fate revolves around Shepard.

What is she doing? Why has she taken the best humanity has to offer-all the drive, all the skill and talent- and broken it down?

The Citadel is dead. Bodies lie stacked like wood, husks performing the dirty work of organizing and dragging off the fallen, leaving white and orange and red trails in their wake. The inhabitants of the Citadel will birth new Reapers, the children of Shepard. The best the Reapers can offer.

Outside the Presidium, the ruins of ships float, debris scraping against the canopy, bodies whirling, blue-eyed with ice, through empty space. The Destiny Ascension, the creature in Miranda's body notes with a dissociated sort of satisfaction, didn't even make it out of the arms.

"Shepard."

When Shepard lifts her head, Miranda flinches. There are tears on Shepard's face that she doesn't seem to notice, glistening in the light of dead stars, and her lips are pressed together with such force they've turned white. Shepard cocks her head, listens to the distress signals resounding throughout the Presidium, turians, asari, hanar, salarian, human ships and colonies requesting situation reports, then help, then prayer.

"And you thought you were perfect," Harbinger-within-Miranda sneers. Shepard's reaction is disappointing- a mere glance, a sigh, the slumping of shoulders where skin shines pale and sickly in the gaps between broken armor.

"Only a failure would cower in the darkness of a colony basement while batarians stole all she loved away. Only a failure would have let Jenkins die on Eden Prime, or civilians in the Skyllian Blitz. Only-" she sounds dead, "-a failure would compromise their morals to make sure their team stays loyal to them. To give them the best chance of living."

Fury reigns in Miranda. Shepard never agreed with her, never believed in Cerberus- she probably sympathized with Jack, paying lip service to Miranda to keep her happy-

She hadn't really cared.

Miranda shoves Shepard down into the reflecting pools of the Citadel. Shepard falls without sound, without resistance, water splashing up in beautiful silver droplets around them as Miranda follows her into the water. Her hands curl around Shepard's neck. Shepard doesn't react; in fact, seems to welcome it. Her hands float limply at her sides, water trailing over her skin, soaking the red and black N7 armor she wears as if in defiance of the inevitable. The strange silver eyes given to her by the geth technology Miranda put in her stare without judgment, without hate into Miranda, seeing her flaws, her failures, her horrendous perfection-

And believing her to be human anyway, even though Miranda knows that accomplishments make one human, and she has none to call her own.

None but the one thing a thousand batarians and mercenaries and geth couldn't do. Rage swells and bursts like an atom bomb, and she holds Shepard beneath the water until the bubbles stop.

"You were never perfect," Miranda hisses, dragging Shepard's limp weight up from the pool, shaking her, water streaming over them both. Shepard wasn't perfect, wasn't real- only a tired, broken human being struggling to live up to the expectations of those around her. Shepard had died a long time ago. A deep crimson light falls from outside the Presidium as Harbinger stares down at them both, the infection in Miranda whispering,

'This is our mate, with whom we are well pleased.'

Miranda cannot breathe at the knowledge of what she has done to Shepard- has ripped her from the only peace she has ever known and returned her to a world where all Shepard knows is failure. Has made her believe that the falsehood of Commander Shepard is the only thing she can be valued for.

Shepard coughs and returns to life beneath her hands.

Miranda wishes she'd let her die with the Normandy.

It wasn't like opening her eyes; rather that she had been turned off and was now back on. The world slammed back into being, but by then it was too late-

Shepard had charged.

Her shields shoved aside Garrus' bullet, crushed Miranda's, and sent her stumbling back, the Commander taking advantage of Harbinger's momentary disorientation to slam the butt of her pistol into Miranda's stomach. Miranda gasped, unable to draw breath, then groaned as Shepard pistol-whipped her again, her head snapping to the side as the butt smashed into her cheekbone. A foot-sweep with her right leg and Miranda hit the ground, Shepard following her down.

Even as agony exploded in her skull, Miranda retained enough of herself to be impressed that Shepard was doing this all one-handed.

Shepard loomed over her like a monster from a myth, her face smeared with red, hair knotted with the profuse blood from her head wound, lips drawn back into the snarl of an animal with no place to retreat to. The pistol hit Miranda again and everything went dark.

It's all gone wrong. Again. Because he failed to keep Shepard safe, to keep the Reapers away, to save the person who saved his soul.

He always fails.

Shepard is hauled into the room by three husks, her N7 armor splattered with husk and collector blood, and forced onto her knees, a husk grabbing her hair and yanking her head back until she stares into Garrus' face, her back a straining arch-

This isn't Garrus. This isn't him. He wouldn't torture like this- he can't do this-

'If this were Sidonis,' a voice that sounds like Shepard whispers, 'wouldn't you?'

But this isn't Sidonis- this is Shepard-

He leans close to her, amused by the sharp panting of her breath against his skin, by her attempts to pretend that she isn't terrified, and turns his head to place his mouth close to her ear. "Tell me," he whispers against her skin, against the throbbing blood-warm beat of her heart, "what drove you to this? What led you to lead a crew on a mission you knew you could not win against an enemy you couldn't defeat?"

Shepard's teeth grind as her jaw flexes, her bound hands twisting against each other. "Because I believe that nothing is immortal. That there is no problem that can't be solved." She twists her head to stare at Garrus out of bloody eyes, her voice low and scratching like a varren spying prey. "Because my crew believed in me, and I in them."

"Of course." Garrus pulls back and circles her, watching her struggle against the husks and feeling a slow, terrible satisfaction at seeing his enemy, the greatest threat the Reapers have ever known, brought low before him.

It wasn't the same-his hatred for Sidonis hadn't been like that-

"Belief," he sneers, coming to stand before her again. "Faith. Illogical, uncontrollable, unable to accomplish anything-"

"The Protheans had faith that reprogramming the Keepers would pay off." Shepard glares into his face with a hatred Garrus has never seen directed at him before, everything in him flinching at the sight of Shepard's face contorted in fury. "And it did; they shut down the Citadel relay for good, left your kind scrambling to find a way back to us, allowed us to kill Nazara."

"You speak of the one you knew as Sovereign. He was foolish, incompetent. Underestimated your abilities." The husk holding Shepard's head lets go, allowing her chin to fall into Garrus' hand. She is warm, alive, everything he hates and needs. The smile on Garrus' face is a sick, horrid thing-

"I will not make the same mistake." He lets Shepard's chin go and turns away, gazing out at the galaxy waiting for conquest. "If you would like to say goodbye to the bodies of your crewmembers before they are transformed-" he jerks his head at the pile of corpses the husks have been bringing in, "-you may do so.

After you answer one question."

Shepard's face betrays naked agony when she glances at the bodies. "What do you want to know?"

"It can't be so hard, can it? To admit that your crew died because of you."

A long minute passes, Shepard's face white, her fists twisting inside the husks' grip as her teeth grind against each other. Shepard shakes, her throat bobbing in a swallow, and her voice holds hatred that Harbinger could only dream of as she spits,

"I know they died because of me. Because I made them believe that I could do the impossible. Because I made them think that as long as they followed me, it would be okay, even though I knew that I was setting them up to fail- that I was letting them believe a lie. And they died because I lied. Because I gave them impossible standards they couldn't live up to."

That's not true. All Shepard has ever asked of her crew is that they trust her, and they do so whole-heartedly; in return, she offered everything: a home for those exiled, a family for those with none, an ear and a shoulder, a promise that no matter what happened, she would save them. She would not let them die alone. No matter what Shepard says, no matter that the self-loathing in her voice burns, Garrus would still follow her into Hell.

As the last words leave her lips, Shepard closes her eyes and lets her head fall forward, broken.

It's all ended the way Garrus knew it would: in his failure to live up to what Shepard asked of him, to be what she needed, to justify her sacrifice. He let the Reapers get to her.

This is all wrong, and for the life of him, Garrus can't understand why Shepard didn't leave him in that building on Omega.

The thing controlling Garrus' body forced him to reload the sniper rifle, sight along it at Shepard no matter how hard he tried to get his muscles to point it away- hell, even to get his index finger out of the trigger guard. It was aimed at the injured shoulder, and Garrus felt everything in him protest. A shoulder injury- especially a shoulder injury with a high-caliber round-could put Shepard out of commission forever, maybe even be cause for amputation. Shepard was crouched over Miranda, and as if sensing her regard, her head snapped up to stare at him, face contorted in a snarl.

Probably running on pure adrenaline and medigel: that ankle looked broken, her shoulder had to have most of its tendons torn, and she'd been fighting nonstop for ten minutes. She had to know her limits too, would probably go for a charge in the hopes of ending this. If she didn't take Garrus out quickly-

'Come on, Shepard. Don't get sloppy.'

Harbinger fired, and Shepard charged straight into the path of the bullet as though she could stop it from hitting her through sheer willpower- her shield was weak, a pale, translucent blue that flickered and seemed about to die with each foot she covered-and the bullet tore through it like a knife through paper.

It hit her in the injured shoulder and blew straight through it and out the back, shards of armor whistling like shrapnel through the air and a fine mist of blood and bone floating in her wake.

Didn't even stop her, and Garrus found himself flying backwards through the air, body spasming as he hit the ground and skidded, Shepard taking the opportunity to wrap her broken shotgun in a biotic field and hurl it at him. It hit him in the mandible and snapped his head to the side, cracking it against the ground.

He closed his eyes, opened them again as Shepard jostled him, hauling him onto a Collector transport platform and laid him out at the end of a neat row of bodies. Her face was drawn and paper-white, breathing raspy, blood clotting at incredible speed on her face and all along her neck, pupils dilated. She turned and limped away, Garrus trying harder than he'd ever done anything to reach out, to speak-

But he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even move his eyes from where Miranda, Jack, and Tali were laid out to his left like dead soldiers all in a row. The voice that could shatter armies spoke, one last, terrible time-

And in her compassion, she has proven her worthiness. Shepard. Ours.

A vision seared into his brain, tore synapse from synapse and rent limb from limb, a vast liquid pool of agony-

Shepard, standing on the blasted shores of Palaven, naked- their sun cannot harm her, there is nothing that can harm her ever again- with thick vines of glittering cybernetics trailing over her limbs. They stop at her face- her sharp cold face- as if in mockery, as if to say,

'here- your savior- embodiment of your hopes and wishes and dreams- of life screaming against inevitability-'

Shepard walks across a thousand worlds and leaves nothing in her wake, life annihilated down to bacteria, ashes clinging to her feet, settling on her eyelashes, on her hair, a prophetess bearing visions of the Protheans whose final gambit in the death throes of their race meant nothing, whose incomprehensible sacrifice only delayed the inevitable.

'Here is life, infinitely rare, infinitely precious-'

At the top of the Citadel Tower, Shepard sits atop a throne of glass and wire, the bodies of countless C-Sec officers rotting away to dust at her feet, Widow's light streaming down over her in countless beams. Her eyes burn silver, her face is empty, the vulnerable pulse at her throat does not beat.

'Infinitely lost.'

By the light of stars that will never fall on human life again illuminated, her cheek twitches, her lip peeling back in what would be a scream for Turians but in Shepard-

Oh spirits they left her alive.

The world dwindled into darkness like night without stars, the last light he saw Shepard turning from the control podium of the platform, her left arm hanging useless and blood streaking over her armor, her armor caved in at the shoulder, to limp away into the shadows with the Cain cradled in her other arm. The transport platform lifted away in a hum of mass effect fields, Shepard disappearing into the shadow.

Her back was straight and calm as though nothing in this onrushing tide of evil could stand against her.

As though nothing could hurt her.

He sank and was grateful to escape her lie.

Miranda's coming back to herself was a long, slow thing, a rising and falling from consciousness like waves upon the shores of Virmire, until she reached high tide.

First things first: assessing operational capabilities. Her jaw ached like someone had broken it, and her back felt like that same person had been stomping on it in boots.

Stiletto boots.

The beeping of medical machines tickled at her senses, along with the warmth of sheets covering her body. Someone had stripped her, and applied the medigel patch to her jaw to help the bruising: someone with at least a basic knowledge of first aid.

She half-opened one eye and relaxed as she saw the ceiling of Normandy's med-bay. Well, they'd managed to get out of the Collector base, at least-

Wait.

Uncertainty, cold and thick and not something she was used to feeling at all, made a nest for itself in her stomach as she sat up, glancing around the room to confirm everyone's status, a bit perturbed that everyone was crammed inside a med-bay that was meant to serve five people at the most. Garrus, the armor on one side of his face cracked and smeared with blue, was standing next to Tali, resting a tentative hand on the quarian's shoulder and staring fixedly away as Tali rocked back and forth on the bed, her arms wrapped around her legs. She must've turned the mike in her suit off, since Miranda couldn't hear anything to explain why she was so distressed, not even her breathing. Grunt- good God- had somebody take a knife to his throat, a jagged suture curling around his neck with orange blood crusted around the stitches. He noticed her regard and sneered, folding his arms across his bulky stained armor and avoiding her gaze, as if embarrassed that anything had been able to injure him that much.

Legion had seen better days, and was Miranda actually feeling sympathy for a geth? The armor plates surrounding its optics hung forlornly by a few wires and cables, and it stood favoring its left side. Samara was sitting beside it, her stomach wrapped in medigel and bandages, dressed in white hospital clothing and somehow still managing to look regal. It didn't hide the fact that her face was pale and tight.

Jack's right leg was swathed in bandages and medigel from knee to groin: too bad the bullets hadn't hit her femoral artery, taken one of Miranda's biggest headaches out of the game. As if sensing Miranda's thoughts, the biotic glared at her from her seat on Chakwas' desk, blue light flaring to life on her fingers. Miranda suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

"Hey, Miranda," Jacob said from the bed next to her, one leg up in traction, an arm in a cast and held to his also-bandaged chest. At Miranda's brow-raise, he shrugged his working shoulder. "I got the worst of it apparently. Broken foot, two or three broken ribs, and I'm not going to be firing a gun for a couple weeks."

Someone had beaten them, and beaten them badly-the Illusive Man was not going to be pleased- and Shepard was nowhere to be found.

"What happened?" Miranda shoved herself upright, just barely remembering to grab the sheet and keep it wrapped about her as she stood.

Thane glanced at her from his position by the windows out to the kitchen, looking confused and ill, his iridescent emerald scales washed-out. "That is the problem, Operative Lawson." He frowned, shook his head, and the knowledge of what this drell who remembered everything he'd ever done was about to say chilled Miranda to the bone. "None of us remember. It's as if-" he touched a stiff, bandaged hand to his temple, "-someone carved a space of hours out of our memories."

Goddamnit, could no one give her a simple report? "That doesn't just happen, Thane; for that matter, how did we even get back here? The last thing I remember-"

"The Commander had just finished giving us our orders," Samara said from where she was engaged in meditation, biotic energy glowing steadily on every inch of her skin. "Then," she paused, the ball of light between her hands flickering and out of existence, "there was darkness, and I was-" she shook her head, the sphere dying out, "-afraid. Revolted."

"Perhaps I can answer that last question, Operative Lawson," Dr. Chakwas announced from the open door, Mordin behind her. The salarian, disgustingly cheerful as ever, marched into the med-bay and started making the rounds, taking blood pressure and pulse and muttering to himself about what a fascinating time it had been.

Dr. Chakwas made a limping beeline for her desk, then came to a halt. "Jack. Desk. Off. Now."

Jack snarled and brought up a fist, but Chakwas didn't flinch, merely settling into her chair with a sigh. Miranda had to admit to being a little impressed.

"Jack, I've been on a ship that brought down a Reaper, watched that same ship die, been abducted by Collectors, and had to run out of a base that was about to get brought down on our heads. Your flashy biotic light show doesn't mean crap to me. Now do you want answers or not?"

"Yes. Please," Miranda tacked on, seeing Jack open her mouth as if to start something.

What was she saying? All of Jack's remarks were meant to start something.

"Was quite shocking." Mordin took Miranda's wrist, his skin cold and clammy against her own. "Managed to lead surviving crew to safety, and was very busy patching up numerous small wounds and dispatching them to perform repairs on the ship, when-" he noticed Dr. Chakwas' expression, "-but is not my story to tell, of course. Apologies, Doctor. Please continue."

"As Dr. Solus was saying, we were beginning preliminary repairs when Joker called Mordin and I up to the airlock, where a Collector transport platform was approaching with your bodies all laid out in a neat row. We brought you on board and began triage immediately, but your injuries weren't that bad. In fact, it seemed as though whoever injured you did their best to do it non-lethally."

"And Shepard?" Garrus said.

"The Commander was not with you. She contacted us once to confirm that you'd made it, but after that all attempts to contact her were met with silence. Her life signs were present and still moving towards the center of the base, though, so we assumed that she'd pressed on. About twenty minutes after we got you on board, the large energy signature that EDI detected disappeared, and Shepard said that she was making a quick egress, and that we were to leave her if she wasn't at the Normandy in ten minutes."

"Did she make it?" Grunt, of all people, was the one to speak, his thick fingers curled into fists as he took a step forward, looking like he would tear Chakwas' head from her shoulders if she said 'no.'

"Yeah. Two minutes before our departure time, Shepard came charging towards the ship with what seemed like half the station population following her. Joker, Dr. Solus, and I provided covering fire as the Commander made the jump, and Yeoman Chambers pulled her in." Chakwas' gaze flickered, as though there was something she wasn't mentioning, but then she seemed to shrug it off and went on, "We got away from the base just in time to escape the explosion."

Jack snorted. "Great. Everybody's alive, the Collectors are history, whoop-de-fucking-doo. What I wanna know is where's Shepard now? Why isn't she down here with us telling us why the fuck we suddenly all got knocked out and can't remember how?"

Chakwas leaned back in her chair with a creak, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of one hand as she typed something into the computer beside her one-handed. "The Commander has been sequestered in her room on doctor's orders since we escaped from the Omega-4 relay to recover from her injuries. Knowing her, she's taking the opportunity to complete assessments on everything from the current threat level to the Normandy's performance in the relay, so it'll probably take her a while longer to recover. I have been sending her hourly updates on your status, so don't worry, she already knows that you're back in-" she glanced over Jack's scarred, nearly naked form and finished dryly, "-fighting shape."

Garrus, mandibles twitching in what Miranda assumed to be a look of discomfort, took his hand off Tali's shoulder and folded his arms across his chest. He'd been stripped of his armor, and without all that bulk the strange slenderness of his frame and the bristling claws and spurs, like creatures from Earth's distant past, were evident.

"Um," he started, glancing about the med-bay without looking at any of them, like a teenager being chastised, "how is she? Medically, I mean."

Chakwas lifted one shoulder in a shrug, that small motion seeming to destroy the last bit of energy she had in her. She glanced at the screen next to her as a message popped up, sighed, and typed a response before twisting in her chair to face the assembled team again. "She has a sprained ankle, her left arm's hanging onto her body by a few tendons and muscle fibers, her right arm's broken, her back's ruined for heavy lifting for a month or two, numerous small contusions on the face and chest, a severe concussion, and she's exhausted. But considering what she went up against, she's doing surprisingly well, in large part due to the physical augmentations Cerberus gave her. She should be mobile, if not operational, in less than a month."

It was hard for Miranda not to straighten and grin at that, at the knowledge that all those credits she poured into Lazarus had been worth it.

"I can feel you radiating smugness, Operative Lawson," Chakwas said, making her deflate. "It was the heavy bone weave that saved her right arm. It's still broken in three places, and the fractures were aggravated to compound by Yeoman Chambers having to haul her inside Normandy by that limb, but amputation won't be necessary. Her armor lock-up protocols did the rest."

"Don't know the cause of most of the injuries," Mordin said, finishing up his rounds and typing the data into his omnitool, "but fractures in the right arm consistent with firing a high-impact weapon without sufficient bracing. Possibly one-handed. Considering she brought the M-920 Cain with her on mission, well-" he shrugged, "-implications obvious."

Miranda's wince was totally involuntary.

"Query," Legion began, activating and turning its gaze to Chakwas, "did Shepard-Commander confirm origin of energy signature?"

Chakwas blinked, her voice betraying her struggle to stay cordial as she replied, "I've asked her what it was, but she's refused to say anything. At this point, the only ones who know what was inside the base are her and the Illusive Man."

"Can we see her?" Tali spoke up, her voice thick even through the speaker of her suit, as if she'd been crying.

"Negative," EDI said, her blue hologram popping into existence beside the door. "The Commander has restricted access to her room. The only ones cleared for entry are Dr. Chakwas and Mr. Moreau."

Miranda glanced at the others, all of whom looked just as lost as she felt. What had happened in the base? Who had injured them, and why? But most of all, why was Shepard-

Shepard who had always been so willing to listen to her crew's problems-

Locking them out?

Tali woke up breathing hard, the image of a scalpel sinking into flesh still burning in her mind as she gazed blindly at the top of her bunk. Above, Kenneth and Gabby snuffled, turning in their beds, free of the image of themselves crouched above their commander-their captain- carving apart her body with a knife. Tears itched on her skin, making her blink to clear them.

The audio files she'd made of the night sounds of the fleet irritated her, rubbed oversensitive nerves raw until she turned the files off with a groan. This was ridiculous, to be so unsettled by a dream when they'd won the day.

Her omnitool buzzed with an incoming message, suit speakers reading it in monotone.

"Sender: Garrus. Text: I'm making dextro drinks in the kitchen if you want some."

Why was he even up at this hour?

Tali threw her arm over her face, wincing as it pulled muscles she'd strained some time during those hours she couldn't remember: that none of them could remember, but something in her knew that something terrible had happened in those hours. Why else would the wounds in Samara's chest match the ammo of Citadel space weaponry? They must've attacked each other, although it couldn't have been a biological or technological attack that forced them to do so; her suit would've protected her from airborne or bloodborne toxins.

Blood just made her think of Shepard, lying beneath her, her armor broken in pieces, warm liquid painting Tali's suit black as the thing in her body dug-

Her stomach twisted inside her as she fought back the urge to vomit.

No. There was no point to lying here alone ruminating over a stupid dream when a friend and hot drinks were waiting for her above. She swung her legs out of her bunk and stood, wobbling as her body protested the sudden motion, and limped towards the elevator.

Jack was already standing there, and from what she could see of the cargo hold, Grunt wasn't in his customary spot either.

"You're not planning on having dextro drinks, are you?" she asked. Jack swung about to glare when she heard Tali's voice, and Tali recoiled. Jack looked terrible: dark circles lined her eyes and the amp on her ear was dangling askew.

"Do you see armored plating or a bucket on my head? No? Then I'm not eating some fucking dextro shit." Jack shoved her hands in her pants, fingers curling into fists, and shifted from foot to foot, staring at the elevator as if she could make it come faster through sheer willpower. "What're you doing up? I thought the cheerleader gave us all a couple days to rest."

Tali picked a spot close to the elevator but as far away from Jack as she could be without seeming obvious. "I couldn't sleep, and Garrus was making drinks, so…" she shrugged.

"You too, huh? I'm too amped up on adrenaline to sleep-" the elevator arrived, Tali following Jack inside, "-and when I heard Thane and Grunt heading upstairs I figured I'd better check out what's going on. And get some booze to help me sleep."

Was everybody going to the kitchen? Tali glanced at her omnitool and scrolled through the last day's messages; no, nobody had called a meeting. It was improbable that everybody couldn't sleep, or that they were all having dreams; maybe they were just too wired to sleep, like Jack. The doors slid open, Tali going around the corner and coming to an immediate halt.

Everybody was there, whether standing at the counter like Garrus or clustered around the table like Thane and Samara or lurking at the outskirts like Grunt and Legion. The area was empty, the night skeleton crew all stationed a level above in the CIC. Samara's face was pale and pinched, and Thane looked no better from where he stared down into his drink. Tali joined Garrus and took the mug of tea he handed her, uncoiling the straw kept in a compartment next to the visor as she took a seat on the counter next to him.

"We having a party or something?" Jack popped up from the liquor cabinet she was rummaging through with a bottle of something she'd bought back on Illium.

"This is no party," Thane said, seeming offended by the very notion. "Some of us… think we might have remembered what happened."

Jack's expression flickered, but she recovered her aplomb and limped over to the table, sliding into a seat as far away from Miranda as she could get. "Really? Do tell."

"This unit had been infected by an Old Machine known as Harbinger." Legion activated, the pale light of its optical sensor illuminating the darkened area. "What you know as Reapers." The dislike in its tone was obvious.

Tali's eyes widened. A Reaper? Was that- the enemy they had been confronting every time they saw Collectors, the thing in her had been a Reaper? The others looked just as uncomfortable as she, Miranda's face pale. Garrus growled from beside her, his hands tightening on his cup.

"This unit was inside an Old Machine, quite likely Harbinger. Shepard-Commander was present, although-" it shifted its stance, broken flaps above the optical sensor lowering in a passable imitation of a frown, "-she was in the process of indoctrination. While not completed, the progress of the black cybernetics was advanced." It paused. "Below us, Earth was burning."

"This unit came back to the present time, but was unable to regain control of the platform. The infecting program utilized this platform to attack Shepard-Commander several more times before Shepard-Commander was able to compromise the platform's structural integrity to the point that the Old Machine abandoned it."

It lowered its head. "This unit confesses that it finds itself… unsettled."

"Earth? The Reapers took Earth?" Miranda half-stood, jaw clenched, her hands curled into fists on the table.

"Incorrect," Legion said, swinging about to face her. "Earth was not taken. It was sterilized."

"Fits the Reapers' MO," Jacob muttered. "But why Shepard was there-" he shook his head as if clearing his mind, "-well, I don't know."

"I do," Tali spoke without thinking. She immediately regretted it as the gazes of some of the best warriors the galaxy had to offer turned to her, nearly making her shrink, but she squared her shoulders because she was Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, and Shepard hadn't brought her onto this ship because she was weak. "I had a dream, or a vision, I guess. It was me- but not really me, because I couldn't control my body- and I was kneeling over Shepard."

She prayed they couldn't see her blush. "I was… I was hurting her. She was saying something, something about how I was going to get her genetic material, since I was in my suit." Her swallow was painful. "I-uh- I said that she thought wrong." She bowed her head, hunching her shoulders as she finished, "And then I brought the scalpel out."

Mordin looked ill. "Vivisection? You had a vision of vivisection?" He shoved himself away from the table and launched into pacing back and forth across the kitchen, dialing data into his omnitool. "But why genetic material? Reapers don't utilize genetic material according to all data we have on them; are predominantly technological and regard organic life as useless."

"I believe they use genetic material for reproduction," Samara said with enviable calmness. "In my vision, I was also inhabited by this Harbinger entity, and Shepard was present. There was a scar across her stomach above where human genetic material is stored, and black cybernetics matching the ones Legion described beneath the skin on her legs." She blinked and glanced away, the first sign of discomfort Tali had ever seen her display. "There were… children about us."

"Children?" Mordin wheeled about, eyes wide. "What kind?"

"Harbinger said that they were hybrids of Reaper technology with Shepard's genetic material. It also mentioned that the populations of numerous planets were going to be utilized in this reproductive process."

"Shepard's genetic-" Miranda choked, looking apoplectic, "Did she seem complicit?"

Samara's gaze was steely. "No. She referred to them as abominations, as not her children. She appeared disturbed at the prospect." She wet her lips. "As was I. I came back to myself, where Harbinger had a battle with Shepard in my body. Shepard won by shooting me non-lethally in the belly. I then passed out, and woke up on Normandy."

"So Reapers utilize genetic material to propagate-explains need for Collectors-and in this vision they wanted Shepard's. Also wanted to indoctrinate her, perhaps for easier access? Was indoctrination process present in everyone's visions?" Hearing confirmation-even from Jack, who glared at Tali as if daring her to comment-Mordin spun about again. "Disappointed that I did not get to experience vision-"

"Don't be," Grunt snarled, taking a step forward. "It's not worth it. It's not good, not something to be disappointed about. You know what I did in mine? I took Shepard- my battlemaster- and I tore her apart with my bare hands. That's-" he slammed his fist into the pylon beside the table, making the whole room shake, enraged at his own inarticulacy, "-not something to be sad about not getting to see!"

Mordin stopped, confronted with Grunt's emotion, and took a step back. "My apologies, Grunt. Did not realize it was so traumatizing."

"Hey, you want to talk about traumatizing?" Jack said, blinking as if forcing tears away. "How about standing there, watching as somebody you- you actually fucking care about- gets turned into a shell of their old self, and knowing that it's your fault? How about finding out that the one person who thinks you're worth a goddamn thing no longer does because of what you did to them? Because you took their hope?" She glared about the table, daring anyone to say anything, and thankfully no one did.

"Did these visions all incorporate doing harm to Shepard?" Mordin asked.

"I believe so," Thane said. "And judging from what we all experienced at the vision's end, it is likely that Harbinger possessed us and forced us to fight Shepard in an attempt to capture her. This makes it obvious why she has locked us out: we attempted to harm her, and she doesn't understand how to deal with such a thing. The Reapers want her genetic material, although my vision didn't focus on that aspect."

"What, then?" Jacob asked.

"Indoctrination. I was interrogating her as to why she was resisting. This vision appeared to be from the beginning of her theoretical captivity: she had not yet received cybernetics. She was thin, had many abrasions." Thane glanced at his hands. "Her wrists had been worn down to bone by the manacles. In it, she confirmed that she had lost all hope of contacting Citadel space to warn them, but made it known that she would fight on regardless."

"Because Shepard can never give up, huh?" Jack said, taking a drink from her bottle.

"No," Thane said, and the sorrow in his voice made Jack look up, Tali's breath stop in her throat. "Because Cerberus and Citadel space have made her fight so long and so hard in our stead that there is nothing else she knows how to do. Like a varren in the pits."

"I don't believe that of Shepard for a moment!" Tali protested. "Shepard's not- broken like that."

Garrus and Miranda both looked up at that, then away.

"So we understand what Harbinger and the Reapers desire: Shepard captured, indoctrinated, and her genetic material used to comprise the next generation of Reapers. But their end game? Does it change from usual extinction cycle?" Mordin paced around the room, looking more and more agitated and yet excited with every passing moment.

"No," Jacob said after a long moment. "I think my vision was the last. Shepard had been fully indoctrinated, and the, um, 'harvest' was complete. The galaxy was dead, and Shepard had been turned into a shell. There was nothing in her but… algorithms. Cold hard logic."

A long silence followed, the members of the ground team staring at the ceiling or the floor or the table but never at each other, trying to process what they had nearly delivered into the hands of the Reapers, the doom they had almost consigned their Commander to.

"Shouldn't we tell Shepard this? That the Reapers think she's so great that they've decided they need to capture her at all costs?" Tali ventured.

"Probably a good idea," Miranda said, calmer now. "I'll go."

It had been a trial to convince EDI to let her in, but the doors finally slid open, Miranda stepping through. The sterility of the room was a shock-there were no fish in the tank, no models hanging from the ceiling-but not as much as what lay in the bed. Shepard looked like death, both her arms encased in medigel and plaster up to the shoulder, her left shoulder leaking blood through the medigel bandages. A veritable mobile of intravenous bags hung above her bed, and bottles of pills were lined up on the nightstand.

"Miranda," Shepard rasped as she entered. Her face was bruised and swollen, one eye covered with a patch. "Is there a reason you needed to see me?"

Miranda took a seat by the bed and folded her hands on her lap, glancing at Shepard's lacerated face then away, heartsick at the idea that she had helped to do that. "The crew sent me to tell you that we remembered what happened."

"Ah." Shepard's face was a study in blankness. "Did you remember what Harbinger wanted?"

"Yes." The words were like glue in her mouth. "It wanted you captured alive, so it could use your genetic material to breed a new generation of Reapers."

Shepard sighed, then winced as the motion jarred one of her wounds. "I'm not surprised. From the things Harbinger had you saying and the things I saw within the base, that makes a lot of sense. Did it say why me in particular?"

"You are the only person who's managed to spearhead an effort that successfully killed a Reaper."

"Being the Reapers' egg donor out of some weird beloved enemy thing is an honor I can do without," Shepard slurred. Miranda chalked that one up to the concussion; the Shepard she knew would never be so informal.

"The crew also wanted me to apologize for what we did-" Shepard opened her mouth to say something, but Miranda plowed right over her, "-and I have my own apology to make as well."

Shepard blinked.

Miranda took a deep breath. "I brought you back to life against your will, forced you to work for an organization that typifies everything you hate, and I am-" why was this so hard to say? "-truly sorry."

Shepard glanced at her, the one eye Miranda could see bloodshot and weary. "Don't be. You gave me my life back, gave me a chance to finish the fight, to do some good in the world. Gave me my ship back, my pilot. I don't agree with Cerberus- I hate Cerberus for what they've done on Akuze- but you were the only ones willing to do something about the Collectors, the Reapers, and no matter that I hate myself for compromising my morals-

I would do it again. And again, and again, until the Reapers are wiped from the face of this galaxy." Her smile was a painful thing, tugging at the stitches on her cheek. "Besides, this ship is no longer Cerberus-affiliated."

"What?"

"The Illusive Man wanted to keep the Collector station and utilize their technology- Reaper technology, based on the destruction of human life to create new Reapers- in his battle. I refused. I won't- I can't- condone the use of technology bought with the blood of thousands of innocents, no matter what advantage it gives us. I told him I would beat the Reapers without it, without compromising the soul of our species." Shepard swallowed, and her next words were careful. "I'm… sorry if you don't agree with me."

Miranda sat, frozen, trying to wrap her mind around the incredible horror the Illusive Man had been willing to condone, the lengths he had been willing to go to. When she glanced at Shepard's battered face and body, a body nearly destroyed in her attempts to save her crew from themselves, and compared it-

The decision was easy.

"I- I would've done the same," she said, and the words tasted of truth.

"Thank you," Shepard said, and relaxed back against the pillows. "Was there anything else?"

Miranda remembered a Citadel that never was, and bubbles rising beneath water before stopping. "In our visions, you said some things, and I… I wanted to ask you about it."

Shepard's expression changed, became more guarded. "Yes?"

"Jack said that in hers, you said that the people around you, that humanity, wasn't as good as you had hoped they'd be; that they'd failed to live up to your expectations. And that you saw yourself as a failure, even though you've done so much to fight the Reapers and strengthen humanity's position on the galactic stage, and I just wanted to know-

That can't be true, can it?"

The very idea of being a failure in Shepard's eyes seemed too much to bear.

Shepard frowned, then closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the pillows. Her voice, when she spoke, seemed a thousand years old.

"There may have been truth in what Harbinger said to you, but it was not all truth. Yes, I view myself as a failure: for hiding on Mindoir, for getting people killed in the Skyllian Blitz and losing Ashley on Virmire. But my crew can't be failures in my eyes. How can I see people willing to follow me into combat, trusting me to get them out, as failures? Not my crew. Never my crew."

Miranda stared down at her folded hands, simultaneously humbled and terrified by the depths of that unconditional respect Shepard offered. How incredible that someone as powerful as Shepard, someone so unique even Reapers saw it, saw her as worthy of receiving it.

"Aren't you frightened? The Reapers used us to get to you, and they almost succeeded. And if they get you-" her eyes burned with unshed tears, her stomach hurting, "-it'll be too much to bear. We saw what they have planned for you, and it's-

"-it's-"

Shepard opened her eye, hissing as the motion tugged on her lacerated cheek, and smiled. It was tired, and it was sick, and it was sad, and somehow it was the most genuine thing Miranda had ever seen.

"You're my crew. You won't let them take me, and that's all I've ever needed to know."

A/N: All comments and criticism are loved.