Alberts was whimpering.

Marine or not, training or not, a battlefield amputation was always going to be hell. A battlefield amputation with no sedatives, limited medi-gel, and a nervous civilian doctor not quite finished his training probably deserved a few tears. Hadn't they all been laughing and drinking and raising their glasses in increasingly raucous and maudlin toasts just hours ago? To their favorite guns. To ships and planets they'd served on, trained on. To comrades. To the Alliance. To hopes and dreams and always having a cold beer waiting at the end of a long day.

Now Alberts would never walk without assistance again, the batarians were throwing everything they had at an increasingly desperate defense, and they were fighting for their damned lives. The quiet period between exploding bar and exploding gate seemed a thousand lifetimes ago; it belonged to a different woman, a different soldier.

Shepard felt for Alberts. Hard not to. But the private had enlisted. She'd volunteered. She'd known what she was getting herself into. And understandable as it was, the noise was distracting as hell. Demoralizing, too. It played a strange, upsetting counterpoint to the heavy thump of whatever crude shells the batarians were using to attempt to break the defenses. Nothing so dire as that first explosive mess, but the persistence was troubling. The batarian reinforcements, it appeared, had arrived. Theirs had not. Shepard pressed her fingers tight to her throbbing temples and paced. The sounds followed her.

Shepard knew the Alliance had to be on their way. It had been hours. The reports were infrequent, but Elysium wasn't a backwater colony in the middle of nowhere. It was Elysium. It was important. The Alliance wasn't going to let the oldest human colony on the Skyllian Verge fall to a bunch of raiders.

Dammit, Shepard wasn't going to let the oldest human colony in the Skyllian Verge fall to a bunch of raiders. She'd be damned if a bunch of batarian bastards were going cart off Elysian civilians the same way they'd stolen and slaughtered the people of Mindoir. Not on her watch.

She'd been helpless then. Now she wasn't.

They'd already lost too many in the initial onslaught. Graves. Kho. Masaka. Both Smiths. Kwan. Too many civilians whose names she didn't know and couldn't add to her running memorial list. None here, yet, thank God, but attack after attack, foray after foray, feint after feint, she couldn't help wondering whom she might lose first. Rebecca Milton? Felix, who refused to behave like a civilian and insisted on holding the line with the others? Mary?

She lifted her gaze and was met with the sight of Lily, eyes glimmering with unshed tears, helping Mary offer water to the wounded. Herder had taken a hit in his dominant arm, and had merely switched the grip to his off-hand and killed the bastard who'd hit him before letting Doc Ribinski sew him up. Schiffler'd fallen hard and hit her head, and Shepard didn't need the doctor's opinion to know she was pretty severely concussed. They'd covered Kwan with a sheet. Shepard didn't look too long at it, and she didn't think about the batarian she'd—

Shaking her head, she waved Lily over.

The girl's hair was the wrong color and her eyes dark instead of grey, but the age was about right. Shepard wished she'd been half as brave on Mindoir as Lily was being here.

You're not that coward anymore.

"Hey," Shepard said, motioning Lily over. "You should be somewhere safer. With your family. You could hole up in your apartment until all this blows over."

Lily's expression was mixed of equal parts terror and resolve. Determination won. The girl's chin took on a defiant tilt. "I can help. My mom's a nurse."

"It's dangerous."

"Everywhere's dangerous. And I can help."

Shepard clapped a hand to a too-thin shoulder, and the girl inflated under the attention. "You know how to shoot?"

"A little," she said, clearly lying.

Shepard flipped the small sidearm pistol out of the borrowed holster at her hip and offered it grip-first. Kwan's gun. She tried not to linger on the thought. Lily's slim fingers trembled as they took the weapon, but the girl didn't flinch, didn't grip too hard, and held the gun at almost the right angle. "Don't you need it?"

Shepard patted the heavier pistol on her other hip, cocked a thumb at the sniper rifle slung over her back, and shook her head. "Extras. Look, something comes at you, pull the trigger. Got it? Try not to think. Thinking takes too much time. Just do. Batarians have a lot of eyes. Aim for one of them."

The girl's brow furrowed in confusion and she glanced around the room. It made her look even younger, and Shepard glanced away. "Why me, though?"

Shepard said, "Just don't hesitate. Now, can you bring Alberts something to drink?"

Lily didn't move at once. Her dark eyes, already too old, already seeing too much, lingered a moment longer on Shepard's face. Then she nodded. Firmly.

Screw half. Shepard wished she'd been a quarter so brave.

The rhythmic sound of shelling grew louder. Too loud.

"They're going to break through," Alberts gasped, ignoring the water, hands clenching and unclenching around her uninjured thigh as though she already imagined losing it. "We have to fall back. We… we can't hold this position, Shepard."

"We can," Shepard said. "We can and we will." Glancing around, she took in the terrified, pale faces. The marines watched her calmly, waiting for orders. It occurred to her, just for a moment, to wonder why they—even Brunet, even Rebecca Milton, with years and years more experience between them—were looking to her, and then the moment passed and she said, "We can't protect the whole damned planet, but we can protect this spot on it. The Alliance is coming. We know the Alliance is coming. All we need to do is hold the line. They'll come for us."

"How?"

Shepard didn't see who asked the question. It didn't matter. Not really. "I need every bit of metal we can muster. Cutlery. Nails. Jewelry. Anything. Think shrapnel." She looked to the marines. "And I need your grenades. Anything explosive. Fuel, if you can find it."

"But—" Alberts began.

"They are going to break through," Shepard said. "But they're in for a hell of a surprise when they do."

A little of the terror on the expectant faces was replaced by hope. Shepard straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and gave her people, military and civilian alike, a bolstering smile. Then she saluted them, her proud, brave warriors, her last line of defense. "We can do this."

I can do this.

Lily nodded first, and scurried away to find what metal she could, pistol still clutched protectively in one hand.

The batarians were going to rue the goddamned day.

Brunet was the one to approach with the supplies the defense scavenged. He crouched beside her, settling the various military-grade incendiary devices in careful rows and placing a couple of pillowcases full of metal next to them. Shepard wasted no time, gathering several of the grenades and pulling up her omni-tool interface. Bombs weren't hard. Crude bombs were easy. Terrorists managed them all the damned time. But Shepard didn't want something crude. She didn't want something whose blast radius would take her and the civilians under her care out along with the batarians.

She didn't want this to be a suicide mission.

"I'd like to volunteer," Brunet said.

Shepard finished stripping a wire before raising her eyes to meet his concerned gaze. "For?"

His lips turned down in a frown even more heavy with concern than his brow. "To set the charges. To make sure the thing goes off."

"No," she said.

He blinked at her as though he didn't understand the word.

"My bomb," she said, wiggling the stripped wire in front of his baffled face. "My tech. My failure, if it doesn't work." She smiled faintly. "I appreciate the offer, Lieutenant, but this one's on me."

"I could order you. Lieutenant."

"Sure," she replied, pausing to consider the best method for maximum damage. The frag grenades were one thing, but the inferno grenades… they had real potential. "But you already publicly deferred the command to me, sir. Taking it back now might do irreparable damage to company morale, and the civilians will just be confused."

He pushed a hand back through his hair, and with the aggrieved expression and the dark shadows beneath his eyes, he suddenly looked decades older than his years. She wondered if she did, too. Better not to know, really. "Shepard," he pleaded. "You're not even in a hardsuit. You've got no shields if something goes wrong. Command's going to have my fucking head as it is, with what happened to Alberts. And… the… that other thing."

"Lieutenant Brunet," Shepard said quietly, "this crazy scheme's been on me from the beginning. All of it. You and your people would be on the front line now, if you hadn't run into me." She shrugged, holding grenades in her two hands. "I'd have less firepower. We probably wouldn't have survived that first sortie. But the responsibility is mine. I'll make sure Command knows."

He ran his hands down cheeks dark with five o'clock shadow. "That's not how chain of command works, and we both know it. You don't have to be a hero."

"Heroics have nothing to do with it. I'm building the damned bomb; I'm going to be the one to make sure it does what it's supposed to, and to pay the price if the whole thing backfires. Literally." She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "You can hit me over the head, Lieutenant, but unless I'm unconscious? I'm not letting anyone else carry the weight of this."

He sighed. "I could, you know. Knock you out."

She laughed, a single harsh chuckle. "You could. But Findley likes me better than he likes you, and I think he might shoot you between the eyes if you did." She set one of her grenades down carefully and patted Brunet lightly on the knee. "It'll be okay, Brunet. I've got this. Your job is to get everyone else the hell out. I'm counting on you. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, but he looked at her the way someone looked at a corpse laid out in a coffin, and she couldn't pretend the shiver that ran the length of her spine was from the cold.

#

After the ceremony, with the heavy Star of Terra on its ribbon, its weight a personal albatross around her neck; after the party, where she smiled and conversed and sipped at a single glass of champagne, all the while wishing instead to be in a bar with Brunet and Rebecca Milton and her team of survivors; after Rear Admiral Hackett thanked her for her dedication and her service and, silently she imagined, for not whistleblowing the politics that had led to the award being bestowed in the first place, Shepard returned to her hotel, hopefully for the last time. She was ready to get back to work, back to her life, back to narrow beds and the sound of snoring bunkmates. Chen, her guard of the moment, didn't talk to her, and Shepard could've kissed the woman for her silence.

Sherwood, looking a great deal more excited than he'd looked earlier, when he'd been told he'd be missing the ceremony in order to stand guard over an empty room—evidently the Alliance was concerned no batarian agent be allowed to infiltrate and make a mess of their excellent fiction by killing the resident hero—greeted her with wide eyes and a lowered voice. "You have a visitor, ma'am." He grinned brightly. "It's Staff Commander Anderson. He's N7, ma'am. Not just any N7, either. Graduated in the first N7 class. Rear Admiral Grissom himself personally congratulated—"

Shepard chuckled, and Sherwood ducked his head, abashed. "I looked him up on my omni-tool, ma'am."

"You don't say." She clapped Sherwood on the arm and reached for the door. "Suppose I should see what my illustrious guest is here for."

"Probably to congratulate you, Lieutenant Shepard."

"Hell, I hope not," she said, closing the door before Sherwood could utter the inevitable protest.

Commander Anderson had pulled the curtains open for the first time since she'd initially shut them, and he stood gazing out, hands linked behind his back, the sun shining on his face. She blinked at the brightness, and saluted smartly. He turned, smiled. "At ease, Lieutenant. Imagine you've had quite enough pomp and circumstance for one day. I'm Commander Anderson."

"So I've been informed, sir. Private Sherwood is… a fan."

The commander laughed softly, shaking his head and moving away from the window. He left the curtain open, and gestured for Shepard to join him in the little sitting area. Once they were seated, he leaned back and cast a speculative look her way. "So, Lieutenant. You avoiding my messages, or just not getting them?"

She lifted her brows, too startled to hide her surprise.

"Ahh. Not getting them. Makes sense. They've probably got three techs and a week's backlog on your address right now, what with all the congratulations pouring in. And death threats. Not to mention the spam."

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"You're a story from here to Earth, and probably halfway to the Terminus, too. Makes sense you're inundated."

She swallowed and sat up stiffly in her chair, back straight. "May I ask why you're here, sir? Are you from Internal Naval Affairs?"

He frowned. "You mean the business with the batarian prisoner? No, Lieutenant. I'm afraid that's a sin you'll have to carry on your own. I believe the record of it will be expunged. Doesn't match with the picture of the hero they've so lovingly created. Good story. Hardly anyone's asking the really hard, really ugly questions about what went down and why we weren't here in time to prevent it."

"I'm not a hero," she insisted.

Anderson's dark gaze narrowed. He leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on his thighs and watching her above his folded hands. She waited for him to feed her the Alliance party line. Instead, he said, "Who is? Doesn't change the way you'll be seen from here on out." With his chin, he gestured toward the medal hanging around her neck. "Aspire to it. Hell, grow into it." He paused, the kind of measuring silence that made her dread the inevitable question. "Tell me something, Lieutenant. Why didn't you go back to base?"

She bowed her head. "It's in my report, sir."

"I know it's in your report. I want to hear it in your own words."

She wondered if glaring at a superior officer was enough to warrant a court-martial. Maybe if she glared hard enough. "I didn't think there was time. Sir."

"You didn't follow protocol."

"That's in my report, too. I… I know it sounds unprofessional, but my gut told me the gate would be important. Comms were down. I didn't want to let them surge in uncontested. I didn't think anyone else would get there if I didn't go myself."

"And you're not a hero."

Definitely a court-martial-worthy glare. "No, sir."

"Maybe not, Shepard. Maybe not. But you've got special forces written all over you. I'm here to invite you to the villa, Lieutenant Shepard. You're exactly the kind of officer Interplanetary Combatives Training wants."

"No, thank you, sir."

"The next course starts—excuse me? No, thank you?"

She wasn't sure she'd ever witnessed anyone actually scratch their head in confusion before, but Commander Anderson did it now, sitting back in his seat with a solid thump, his expression so genuinely baffled she almost wanted to apologize. She didn't.

"Explain yourself, Lieutenant."

She lifted her chin. Not defiantly, this time, but not cowed, either. "It would be an honor to train at the Academy." She lifted a hand to touch the medal she wore. "You told me to grow into it. I'm asking for a little time, sir. To grow."

"You don't think you'll grow in ICT?"

"I know I would." She grimaced. "But I don't want it connected to, to this. I don't want one to look related to the other."

"You know there's no guarantee you'll be asked a second time?"

She nodded. "It's a risk I'm willing to take."

The corner of Anderson's mouth turned up; she almost thought he seemed pleased, though that didn't make sense at all. "The willingness to take risks doesn't seem to be something you lack, Lieutenant Shepard." He pushed himself to his feet. "I imagine we'll speak again soon enough."

"I hope so, sir."

She saluted again, hoping, as the door closed behind him, that she hadn't just made the biggest mistake of her life.

Somehow, though, as she walked to the window and let the sunlight bathe her face in springtime warmth, somehow it felt more like a beginning than an end.