Landing Zone Charlie

2130 Zulu

10 October 2186

London, Occupied Europe, Terra, Sol

"Look at it," Ash grunts, shuddering at the sight of war-torn London gliding past below them. "It's like it isn't even Earth anymore."

Kelsa peers over the edge of the Kodiak's open hatch, taking grim note of the urban hellscape; crumbling concrete, burning cars, dead bodies rotting in the street. Bloodstains so old she wouldn't've been able to tell them apart from rusted asphalt if it weren't for the implants in her eyes. Take away the stray Reaper here and there, and she'd be hard-pressed to say it wasn't the Garden after twenty-odd years of neglected overgrowth. "Looks like home to me," she gruffs, unshipping her spear-chucker and lowering into a crouch as Cortez brings them down to deployment level. Her finger pulls back on the trigger, and the familiar click click click of the weapon gathering tension thrums reassuringly up her arm.

"I heard that," Vega barks, mistaking her meaning. "A little rusty and dusty, but nothing the Alliance can't fix once we've kicked these pendejos back to Hell."

Kelsa doesn't answer him in words, but she glances to her left and right, taking one last look at her human squadmates. This is it, she tells herself, nodding. It feels like all her life has led her to this fight, today. Every kill a lesson, hard in the learning. "Almost there," she breathes, as much to herself as to her squad, and she vaults out of the hatch without further elaboration.

New cracks vein out across the tarmac in rings when she lands; despite the nanofibres in her bones, she can't completely ignore the ache in her hips as she rolls out of her dent and sights down on her first Reaper of the night. A big brute goes down when that first superheated spike splits its head open, and Kelsa's three strides down the alley before her squadmates land-much more gently than she had, but both still hard enough to make it count. Kelsa's body count increases by another brute and a handful of husks before they catch up and add a few more bodies of their own to the pile.

The three of them fall into a familiar rhythm, one she and Ash have shared since those first few tense days on the Normandy, years ago. They hardly have to speak as they cut their way through the wreckage that used to be London, each of them a killer honed by this war, each able to taste how close they are to an end. Kelsa can't see beyond that end, can't see beyond the next wave of enemies, the next rack of her shotgun.

Win or lose, she can't see a place where she'll be able to put down her gun. War's been a fact of her life since she was six years old, and the harder she fights, the harder it is for her to picture anything else.

Brutes, banshees, marauders, husks. Dozens of husks, hundreds, an unlimited supply for her and her subordinates to cut through on their way to the Reaper that's keeping air support from being able to land. There's only the mission, the next foxhole, the next bit of burned wreckage to use for cover. The next enemy to defeat on the way.

Nothing looks as good as those Thanix missiles when they streak into the Reaper's red core. It's a tiny one, as these things go, but it lights up the sky as it falls, another victim to Kelsa's insatiable appetite for conflict.

"That's how it's done!" Vega boasts, taking his pleasure in surviving. No matter how skilled he is at it, to him the fight's a means to an end. Ash, too, heir as she is to a legacy of soldiery. They're fighting for something, families they have or might one day make, families they'll never meet and futures they'll never know.

What is Kelsa fighting for? A chance to make a home and family with Liara? To make up for lost time and missed opportunities with Sam? She thought so, in those quiet moments with Liara on the way to Earth, but she can't square the asari's gentle touch with the blood on her hands now.

The answer eludes her as they carve their way to the forward operating base, to Admiral Anderson and the best hope they have to put an end to this fight, once and for all.

The Normandy has already landed in what passes for the FOB's green zone by the time the humans arrive, as have dropships from Tuchanka, from Rannoch, from Asari and Turian spaces—though none from Thessia, nor from Palaven. Her own crew is disembarking and taking their marching orders from Anderson's lieutenants, some of whom must have been rawboned recruits a few weeks ago, but they've all got season on their skeletons now.

Liara herself is inside the compound, such as it is, conferring with Anderson at a strategy table. Kelsa catches the old man's eye and he blinks, hard, like he didn't imagine she were really back on Earth, despite the presence of the ship he'd given her, the lieutenant she'd given him. "Goddamn it's good to see you," he hails her, after she answers his beckon. "Thanks for clearing that bastard off the runway for us."

"My pleasure," Kelsa retorts, the honesty of the sentiment shining through in her smirk. "Thanks for staying alive long enough for me to put my boots on Earth one more time." One last time, she doesn't have to say. She looks from him to Liara, who seems relieved and apprehensive in equal measure, ever mindful of the reason behind Kelsa's decision to delegate strategy to her; with this many Reapers around, Kelsa can't ignore the tinny reverberation in her teeth, in the marrow of her bones. Her stomach turns under Liara's gaze, that flicker of hope warring with the certainty that whatever the future holds, the next few days are going to be a symphony of destruction unrivaled by any she's conducted before.

They'll have to be, if any of them have a hope of seeing the sun rise on a world without the Reapers.

"I'll leave you to it," she tells them. "Just let me get a few hours of rack time on my ship, and then point me."

Both her lover and her mentor hesitate, but they don't openly demur, and Kelsa turns back to the Normandy. As soon as her mentor and her lover are out of view, she can't keep the grimace from stalking across her face, the cybernetic flesh tingling through the cracks in her face. The crumbling base is chilly in the autumn night, and that chill sticks with her even when she makes it to the Loft. When she closes her eyes, she can almost believe she's back in Michigan. "Soon," she whispers, without meaning to.

"Soon."

Forward Operating Base

1850 Zulu

12 October 2186

London (disputed), Terra, Sol

"I said I wasn't going to stand idly by while you fought to free your home planet," Liara whispers, "and I meant it."

Kelsa's torn; they're standing in an anteroom in the decimated compound, ten minutes before go-time. Ten minutes before Kelsa and Garrus and Anderson are set to lead the spearhead to Harbinger, to the Beacon, and the Citadel beyond. She knows this, she's allowed herself to know this, because in ten minutes she'll embark on what is almost certain to be the last fight of her life. And, standing here in this room, looking into Liara's cerulean eyes, Kelsa wishes her last fight had already happened, that she could put her down her gun and never pick it up again. Under Liara's gaze, she can't feel the chill of Michigan any more, though she knows it's waiting for her, out there on the battlefield. "It's gonna get ugly," she gruffs, unable to maintain the asari's gaze, unable to entertain the fantasy it inspires within her.

"Not to you," Liara points out. Her lips curl into a small, sad smile. "You still believe that the fighting is the only beautiful thing about you."

"Not when I'm with you." The words come unbidden, her eyes still unable to rise to meet her lover's. "You make me feel...more. Like something else is possible, like there might be…"

"A happy ever after?" Liara wonders, almost idly, before her smile fades and she takes the human by the shoulders. Her eyes are softer than Kelsa expects, when she finally meets them again. "You know as well as I that we've both seen too much bloodshed to sleep soundly, no matter what happens. But it will be over soon, one way or another."

There's something-probably a lot of somethings-that Liara isn't telling her, but Kelsa knows better than to ask. Instead, her own hands slide up Liara's back, pulling her close, and she closes the last of the gap with a kiss far more tentative than she'd intended. She doesn't pull away when the kiss breaks, her breath playing over the asari's lips in short, ragged whispers, her eyes heavy-lidded and out of focus. "When I'm not with you," she breathes, "I can't remember why I ever thought I deserved better than what I got. I'm…lost, without you."

"Kelsa," Liara whispers, almost a groan, and she dips her head forward until their foreheads rest, each against the other. "I wish you could see yourself the way that I see you. You are…the most remarkable woman I've had the pleasure to know."

Kelsa's skin tingles wherever it touches Liara's, and she feels the same tingle spark within her chest as she buries her face into the crook of Liara's neck. "You can fight by my side," she muses, "but there's going to come a time when you've got to pull out. The Citadel...might be a one-way trip."

"I'm prepared to face that eventuality," the asari assures her.

"I'm sure as fuck not," Kelsa grunts, mindful of the strength in her limbs as she wraps them more tightly around her lover's torso. "I'd… rather die myself than watch you die," she points out. "I've known that since I gave up the Collector base to get you back."

"So I must watch you mount the Citadel, knowing that my absence will keep you from envisioning a life you might have beyond it?"

"Unless…" Kelsa swallows, hard, and she pulls back to look into Liara's face for a long moment. "You were serious about what happens when asari bond with someone."

Liara's brow-ridges draw down as the implications sink in. "Are you certain, Kelsa?" When the human can only nod, a mist of concern plays over the asari's features. "We as much as promised Samantha that we wouldn't pursue a bond until we'd won."

"I know," Kelsa says, her voice hoarse, harsh with regret, with longing. "I…can't say that she'll get over it," the soldier allows, "but I'd rather break her heart by living than break it by dying."

That mist across Liara's features evaporates, and the tingles across Kelsa's skin change abruptly, like sparks sowing deeper into her flesh. "As you wish," Liara says, her tone clearly indicating that she wished it, too. Blackness emerges from her pupils, spreading rapidly until it covers her eyes. "Embrace eternity!"

Citadel Beacon Approach

0215 Zulu

13 October 2186

London (invested), Terra, Sol

"Joker," Kelsa barks, her voice rougher than it's ever been, "I need a priority evac at my location-two principals. Yesterday!"

The pilot's Aye, aye comes without a quip, and it'll only be a matter of seconds before he arrives. Garrus is sucking fumes and coughing blood after he nearly got crushed by a rogue APC that just scattered them. Liara, for her part, is hiding the agony of a shattered shin from the same event, but it's clear that she won't be leading any charges anytime soon, regardless.

They don't speak, but they don't have to; Kelsa can feel the asari, almost like they're one person across two bodies; her own shin aches in an echo of what Liara must be feeling, and her heart strains with the other woman's worry and regret. I am sorry, she doesn't have to say, those cerulean eyes locked firmly on Kelsa's face in those last few moments.

"I love you," the human repeats, just to taste the words on her tongue one last time, to feel the vibration in her throat and see the joy they bring across Liara's face, even in the midst of her agony.

The Normandy swoops in and Garrus pulls Liara up onto the hangar bay's lip, with the help of EDI and Cortez, who lay down suppressive fire on the husks drawn to the appearance of the ship. Kelsa stands, wide open, not breaking eye contact with Liara until the hangar bay doors pivot the asari out of her sight as the ship heads out of the cauldron.

Then, after a breath, Kelsa turns around and starts the climb to the summit of the last hill. Anderson and his lieutenant, Coates, are nearly there, along with a platoon of resistance fighters. Beyond lies the Beacon, connected directly to the Citadel out in space, where they'll need to go if they want any hope of winning this war. Kelsa shoulders her gun, stepping deliberately toward the maelstrom, almost unable to believe that it's about to be over.

Elation takes root in her chest when she realizes that the bond with Liara is still there, a bridge to her lover's heart, a reminder of what she stands to gain by waking through the fire. It can't die away like it has so often, can't leave her, can't let her forget that she's more than the enormous sum of bodies she's left behind, even as she adds to the pile.

When she crests the hill between Coates and Anderson, she doesn't join in the battlecry that the others use to hurl themselves into the final push. She doesn't seethe with her usual battlefield intensity, doesn't relish and secretly loathe every life she takes. And when the gigantic lobster of a Reaper descends over their position, she doesn't scream or turn to run; she pushes on, filled with the certainty that she can only keep moving forward.

SHEPARD, comes the voice, rumbling from within her very bones. It's haunted the outskirts of her thoughts since shortly after she was resurrected, and she recognizes it instantly.

"Harbinger," she whispers, certain that it can hear her just as clearly as she can hear it. "I'm going to kill you."

She says it without a glimmer of a boast, but still without any sense of how mad the sentiment truly is. Even as the kilometer-long machine begins raking over her comrades with its laser beams, scorching the already-barren earth around her, Kelsa doesn't stop advancing, doesn't look away from the machine's lifeless orange eyes.

YOU HAVE EARNED YOUR PLACE AMONG THE SOVEREIGN, Harbinger pronounces, after a moment, as though it had been considering her worthiness. Then, without ceremony, it swipes its laser across her path.

Kelsa closes her eyes, just for an instant, but she only feels the merest hint of warmth bathe her. The warmth lasts only for a heartbeat, however; soon it is replaced by a bitter chill, enough to punch the air out of her lungs. It's enough to tell Kelsa that she isn't dead, not quite, and when she opens her eyes again, she isn't entirely surprised to find herself on Zug Island in the middle of winter.

"I've been waiting for you," Jay says, appearing in front of her just as his words form in her ears, standing for all the world like he's been there for years. He isn't the boy on the cusp of manhood that he was when she killed him, not too far from this very spot. He's a man grown, now, in an Alliance uniform, with a fair few scars of his own. He's the man Jay always knew he'd become, until that old gangster talked Kelsa into shooting him in the head.

He's John Shepard.

"How've you been, Kay?" He talks like they're old friends, like they're sitting at a dinner table instead of standing across from each other in the middle of an abandoned scrapyard in Kelsa's head.

"Better than I have since I died," Kelsa admits, understanding the truth of her words as she speaks them. She can still feel her bond with Liara in this place, maybe stronger than ever. "At least the first time."

"Over Alchera, you mean?" Jay asks, smiling indulgently, like they're sharing a joke. "That was some mighty fine heroing you did, if I do say so, Kay."

"It shoulda been you," Kelsa says, still not moving, still not shivering, despite the cold. Her breath clouds around her when she talks.

Jay's doesn't. "I'm not so sure about that, Kay. I never was as strong as I tried to make you think I was." His eyes fall to her hand, and she feels a weight come into being there. "I couldn't take the gun away from you, when the time came."

Her eyes follow the line of his gaze down to her hand, where she isn't terribly surprised to find the gun she'd used in this place, the gun she'd tossed away.

The gun she'd killed him with.

"Not then," she allows, studying the weapon, turning it one way and then another, bringing it closer to her face and then further away. Her trigger finger stays outside the guard. "You'll probably have a better chance this time, if it comes to that."

"Will it?" The question has no more weight than anything else he's said since he showed up, or since she showed up, or since she died under Harbinger's beam, a second or an hour or a whole lifetime ago.

Still, there's an edge behind his eyes that wasn't there before, and wasn't there when he was alive, either. She only sees it for a second, but a second is enough. "I don't think so," she decides, against every instinct she's honed over her long, bloody lifetime. Instead she throws the weapon away again, harder and farther than she managed when she was a kid, before Cerberus and Alchera and all the rest.

Jay frowns, disappointed, and she can see now how wrong he is, all the ways this avatar falls short of her memory. "You were supposed to be worthy of becoming sovereign," he says, his face suddenly cracking as red as hers on her worst day. His eyes glow the same dull orange that she sees in the depths of her own. "Prove to me you're worthy, Kelsa. Don't let me down again."

Kelsa's brows draw down, and she takes another frigid breath. "I'm sorry, Jay," she breathes, her vision fogging with her exhale. "I'm tired," she admits in a low gruff, "and I don't want to be what killing you made me anymore."

"If you are not worthy," Jay hisses, with subtle mechanical notes vibrating beneath his voice, "then your people will truly be lost. You must kill me. You must prove your worth to take your place among the stars. You must become sovereign."

It falls into place, then, the feeling she's had over the last few months. "You haven't been indoctrinating me," she admits, speaking the suspicion out loud for the first time. "You've been testing me. Trying to tell if I was ready...for what?"

She looks beyond him, then; through him. In this, the cold winter of her dying mind, she sees Harbinger inside him, bleeding through, orange and red and as black as intergalactic space itself. She doesn't even need an answer, then; she knows, as much as she's ever known anything, that Harbinger has claimed her as the core of the next Reaper. The next Sovereign, to replace the one she killed, and the one they tried to build after that.

THIS IS YOUR DESTINY, KELSA, Harbinger tells her, shimmering through the fading vision of her first victim. YOU WERE MADE TO DESTROY THEM; TO BECOME THEM; TO ASCEND FOR THEM. THE CYCLES MUST CONTINUE.

She sees it, then; she has but to step forward, to take Jay's life in her hands again, to squeeze that life through her fingers until nothing's left but blood and cold, cold flesh. It feels to her like every breath she's taken since that winter's night has led her back here, tipped her toward this decision, this inexorable fate.

But she's tired...so tired. Even here, in the space of her mind, her hips and shoulders ache with the weight they've carried, and her fingers burn with desire her bloodlust and bed lust haven't been able to satisfy. "Sounds nice," she says, in a sigh, finally feeling the cold start to crawl over her skin. "But I'm not interested."

Jay's face twists into a grotesque, scarred phantasm, his eyes shining a deep orange, Harbinger's steel glinting behind them in consternation. THE CYCLES MUST CONTINUE, he repeats, and suddenly he has the gun she killed him with, way back when. IF YOU ARE NOT WORTHY, WE WILL JUST HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER.

Every instinct screams for her to lunge forward, to overpower him and snatch the pistol from his grip, to bury three rounds in his forehead before his heartbeat sounds off twice. But her legs don't move, and she closes her eyes. "So be it," she breathes, clinging to the connection she'd forged with Liara, that bond she feels deep in her heart.

Minutes pass into what feels like hours, and the darkness behind her eyes deepens, and her world narrows to the width of that intangible connection. Even when she tries to open her eyes, all she sees is darkness, and all she feels is the familiar tingle beneath what once was her breastbone. Eventually even that dissolves, until there's nothing left.

Nothing eventually resolves into a diffuse ache which slowly suffuses the vast emptiness. The pain sharpens, by degrees which take an eternity to tick over, until the contours of her reality conform to the shape of limbs and a torso. The pain takes a rhythmic quality, each beat bleeding into the next over the expanse of an eon, until her world becomes a thin stripe of bright, hot light, cutting across her like a horizon.

Slowly, ever so slowly, that horizon smears and resolves into the sterile med bay of the Normandy. Each wave of pain follows a ragged, wet breath, and it takes Kelsa far too long to gain command of her throat, to croak out a groan. She finds herself strapped tightly to the bed, wrapped up in carbide from her neck to her ankles.

Liara's sitting up on the bed beside her, while Aria T'Loak stands at her feet; the former looks as exhausted as Kelsa feels, but grateful, while the latter looks bored and haughty and just a tiny bit haggard. "I can see in her eyes that it worked," the older asari snorts, dismissively. "I'll be on my way, now."

The doors hiss as Aria departs, leaving the room to Kelsa and Liara, with the still-sleeping hulk of Garrus off to the side. "It's over," Kelsa grunts, barely able to form the syllables.

Liara's hand brushes lightly over her cheek. "We're still breathing," she allows, her brows drawing together as she smiles. Then the smile falters, and she looks into the distance beyond Kelsa. "The cost was great, and we still are not guaranteed victory, but…"

"We're still breathing," Kelsa says, leaning into the asari's gentle grip. It's enough, for now.

It's enough.

A/N: Annnnnd here it is, a few years late, but Kelsa's path of destruction through the Milky Way is at an end. I want to thank coffee_maker at AO3 for all of her excellent beta-reading, and everyone of you for reading.

Until next time,

Riptide