This is the final chapter of this story. I spent grueling nights and days beating my head against my keyboard hoping against hope that a finale would be created out of it. Not a lot of dialogue but hey people don't always need to talk to have a story.

Enjoy. :D

Shepard watched through blurry eyes as the destruction of the galaxy unfolded. She watched a Turian ship get split in two then watched as a reaper flew passed, almost unscathed. Not a moment later the reaper pulled a one eighty and did the same to another ship, a human battleship this time.

Shepard liked to believe that her vision was blurry because she was hurt and slowly passing out. Sadly she knew this was not true. Not the part of being hurt, she was all kinds of hurt.

No, the reason for her blurry vision was because she was crying. Here she was, sitting next to a dead admiral, crying. Who wouldn't? Anderson was dead, by her gun no less, the reapers were still on the loose and causing so much death it was almost unbelievable, the crucible wasn't working and she was hurt. Very hurt. Everything, down to the hair on her head. It pained.

She supposed this would be a good a time as any for some reflection on her life before she died, and she knew she would die, how was she suppose to survive this mess.

Her life could have turned out worse. She could have been a gangbanger, then where would she be right now. Probably dead. Instead she was laying on a piece of experimental technology that wouldn't do what it was meant to do, namely save the universe and make her famous.

She let out a scoff of laughter at the thought. She was already famous. She was the first, official, human spectre in the galaxy. She saved the Citadel, she saved the council and saved countless more people throughout her entire career. Her name was cemented into history, for what little it was worth. She was the best there ever was.

She saw another ship blow up, this time it looked like salarian.

It was a shame the best was not enough.

At least they went down swinging, she thought with a smug grin. It was nice to think that this time around the reapers were actually having trouble.

Another ship went up in flames and her grin faded, her eyes began to go blurry again.

It had meant nothing, everything she had done thus far, it was all for nothing. Any joke she made would not make it better or lighten the mood. Tomorrow was never going to come. She was going to die, her race was going to be extinct, and everything she had ever built would have meant nothing.

It was over.

Shepard gave one last look at Anderson at her side. "At least we tried." Her hollow words went unheard by the deceased man. She closed her eyes and decided that sleep would be for the best.

It took only a few seconds before she heard footsteps approaching, lots of footsteps. Probably Reaper soldiers, she didn't bother to try and fight.

"Sir!" A voice shouted. "They're over here!" She didn't recognise the voice but it sounded human.

Shepard let her eyes leak open, and made a half hearted attempt to turn her head. Heavier footsteps drowned out the others.

"She's moving!" The voice shouted again.

The heavy footsteps began to quicken into a sprint. Shepard again tried to turn but lost balance and began to fall to one side.

"Isabelle!" That voice she recognised quickly and almost jumped awake when a mass of green armour rushed in front of her. One arm of the armour held her upright while she stared at her reflection in an orange visor.

Despite everything she had just thought and everything that was happening, Shepard smiled, because he was finally here and he would make everything better, like he always did.

"Hey dad." She greeted him.

"Get the medic over here!" He shouted over her head before turning to her. "Isabelle, what happened?" He asked in a much softer tone.

Shepard opened her mouth to answer but her memory seemed to missing a few parts, there was something to do with the Illusive man being a bastard, Anderson being shot, the Illusive man blowing his own head off, it was such a vague memory and it only happened about 10 minutes ago. "I don't know." She said. She turned her head to look at Anderson's dead body. "Anderson's dead." That much she knew for a fact.

His helmet turned to the admiral stared for a moment then turned back to her. "We need to leave, Hackett has ordered a full retreat." He told her.

Shepard heard the words but she had trouble processing them. A retreat sounded very sensible at the moment. When your super weapon does not fire, the best thing to do would be to hide and find out why the trigger wasn't working.

"Isabelle, can you hear me?" He asked, one of his gloves came gently held her face. It was funny, the gloves weren't as rough as she had thought they would be, then again everything felt so numb.

She wondered if he actually expected her to answer him. She pondered it as she stared distantly into his helmet. She noted a medic pull in beside her but she didn't think too much of him. Not even when he began to do a medical check on her.

"Did the crucible fire?" She asked looking at her father, she knew the answer but maybe he would know something she didn't, he usually did.

"No." He said, his normally monotone voice sounding despondent

"Why not?" She asked confused, what was the point of a super weapon if it doesn't cause genocide. Then it's just a useless paper weight. She demanded her genocide this instant, preferably the genocide of the Reapers if it wasn't too much trouble.

"We don't know." He said shortly then turned to the medic. "Can we move her?"

The medic nodded. "It looks worse than it is."

"Get her back to the Normandy." Her dad ordered. Several soldiers came forward and helped her onto a makeshift gurney.

As she was taken away she saw her dad order more soldiers around, it seemed he had brought an entire platoon of soldiers with him. For what was unclear. She didn't hear what he was saying but with the way the soldiers listened she was sure it must have been important. It was almost artistic how well he fit the roll actually. The soldiers were more awe inspired than anything else... and so was she.

"Wait." She told the soldiers pulling her gurney. They paused and looked down at her. She pulled herself into a sitting position and shouted across the room. "DAD!" The other soldiers went quiet and stopped moving.

His helmet shot up in an instant and locked onto her. She stared at him for a moment and he jogged over, kneeling by her side.

"Dad, please tell me everything is going to be alright." She heard the begging in her voice and hopped it didn't sound as bad as she thought it sounded, but she was desperate for something, anything that would set her mind at ease, just so she would know that tomorrow was still an option.

He stared down at her, silently. He grabbed her hand in his tightly but not painfully. "I promise, everything will be fine."

She smiled tiredly. "You've never broken a promise before..."

"And I won't break this one." He interrupted her. The conviction in his voice was strong, strong enough that she almost believed him, it was comfort at least. He rose again and the soldiers continued to pull her away. She watched as her father's armour became smaller as she was taken away. It was only later that she realised it was the last time she would ever see that armour again... or the man inside of it

Shepard stared at the white marble gravestone at her feet. It seemed so unreal to her, like some type of vague dream. Often she thought that if she blinked then it would vanish right before her eyes or at the very least that the name would change.

John Mendez. 2121 – 2186

The bastard actually lived to 65 and was still kicking ass on the battlefield. It was almost inspiring. There were no additions to add to the grave, after all what could she have put there? He may have been her father but she hardly knew the man... and yet she knew him better than anyone else.

This was the grave site she had set up. A small area at the local town where she stayed. This was the place where she had attended his funeral. To her knowledge there was a grand event set up for everyone else. She even received an invitation to it, but she didn't want to see the 30 foot statue of him, she didn't want to see the list of achievements he had gotten, she didn't want to see all the soldiers saluting his statue or offering her their condolences.

More importantly, she didn't want to be seen crying in front of the 3000 odd people, of all races, that would be there.

Liara had informed her that it was quite the event. Saying that even Councillor Tevos had made a heartfelt and almost teary eyed speech but Shepard couldn't even pretend to care. She had her own private ceremony with a priest and a gravestone. Nothing more was needed.

Even as she had listened to the priest, she felt numb and teary eyed. It was shameful, but more than anything it was confusing. This was the man who was the worst father ever, the man who had left her in prison as a punishment, the man who had never shown any love more than a hug and she was crying for him.

When the priest had been done speaking he had left, offering her some words of encouragement. Shepard couldn't even remember them, mostly because she had broken down beside the grave stone.

Today she wasn't breaking down though, today she was just visiting. It's been 7 years, going on 8, since the end of the Reaper threat, since the last time she had seen him. Even now, she could hardly believe it.

He had always painted a powerful picture. He had always been a powerful man, not just in rank but raw physical strength. Even at his age. His eyes were always cold and calculating, knowing your movements, knowing the exact right thing to say and sometimes she swore he had better mind reading capabilities than an Asari.

How was he dead? It wasn't possible.

But he was dead, he had kept his promise. Just as she knew he would. Though, had she known the price at the time, she wished he hadn't.

"Isabelle." The name floated through the air. Her name, she was still so unused to it. Everyone else seemed just fine with the change but she still found it odd. Isabelle Sierra Mendez. Only he had ever called her that because it was the only name he would address her by. She never bothered to ask why, but there must have been a good reason behind it.

She turned slightly to see an Asari walk up to her, hand in hand with a smaller Asari barely five years old.

Isabelle smiled as the pair approached. "I told you to wait at the shuttle." She said.

Liara smiled back but the little Asari did not and only stared at the grave stone with a slightly tilted head.

"Sierra was curious what we were doing here." Liara supplied, glancing down at the young Asari child. The young girl looked up at the sound of her name but when no-one continued to speak to her she went back to stare at the grave. "You know how she gets, too stubborn. So much like her father."

Isabelle let out a small scoff. Father indeed. She wished her dad was here, just to see the look on his face when someone told him she was with an Asari and that he was a grandfather of an Asari.

She liked to believe that he would be furious, shouting obscenities, possibly foaming at the mouth, that she would even consider an alien as a partner. Maybe he would finally admit out loud that she was the greatest disappointment in the known universe or that he would perhaps disown her and publicly denounced her.

The reality was... he would have smiled. He would have organised a small party then found an excuse not to be there. He would have said that he was happy for her. She knew that is exactly what he would have done.

She knew because she had learned something about her dad. Something that she had only learned after he was gone and after she had a child of her own. She had learned that he loved her with all his heart.

She knew it every time she looked at her own daughter. The feelings that came to her then, the way she felt herself acting. It made her realise how much he truly cared. That he didn't just sort out her problems for the sake of family.

Every time Isabelle would look at her daughter, she felt the need to stand straighter, talk louder and be the tiniest bit more assertive... just as he always did. She did it because she wanted the best for her daughter and she had already seen the worst the universe had to offer.

From a troubling childhood, to a violent adolescence, only to finish off with a brutal military career. Shepard had seen it all... just as he had.

When Liara had become pregnant Isabelle swore she would not be like her father at all, but on the day she had laid eyes on the tiny Asari, everything was made perfectly clear. It hit her what parenthood actually was.

It was not a simple, "treat your kid right and they will turn out fine." It was the greatest responsibility anyone could undertake with consequences that would sit with you forever. There was no right way to do it. There were guidelines to be sure, but the child still had the choice to accept your authority or not. Isabelle admitted, she had been scared to death, almost to the point where she wished the little child gone.

Then she had remembered what her father told her. 'Your mother, she wanted a child, I didn't.' She understood then. He had been scared as well and turned to the only thing he knew, his military training, the only way he knew to assert his authority and make her listen.

Isabelle had almost fallen into that hole as well and indeed she was still dangerously close to doing so. She didn't know how to be a father; she didn't even know how to be a mother. Maternal instincts be damned, she was a hardened soldier! What did she know about children, Asari children no less? All she could be was a wall of protection... and maybe that was okay.

That was all a father was anyways, they were the pillar on which a family would be built on. The one everyone went to for support, the one everyone expects to solve every problem with a single glare, the one who provided the family with support and care. They were the ones who protected them... even at the cost of their own lives.

"Actually she probably gets it from her grandfather." Shepard said with a chuckle.

Liara chuckled as well. "And let's not forget she is one eighth Krogan."

Isabelle sent her eyes skywards for strength but smiled all the same. Her father and a Krogan. The two most stubborn and powerful beings in the universe and her daughter had genes from both of them... metaphorically speaking anyways, she wasn't entirely sure how asari reproduction worked.

She looked at her daughter as the little Asari pulled away from Liara and took a few steps closer to the gravestone. The little Asari stared at the grave intently.

Whether she liked it or not, Isabelle inherited a lot more from her father than her mother, his determination, his intelligence, his perseverance, his willingness to go to great lengths to help those important to him and most of all, his ability to perform impossible tasks.

Even at only 5 years old, her daughter was already acting more like him than Isabelle liked. The way she walked, the way she looked at others, the way she didn't talk needlessly.

It was a scary resemblance when a five year looks at you with the eyes of a hardened soldier, knowing you better than you knew yourself.

Not that Isabelle was worried or anything. All it meant was that she would grow into a capable and powerful woman.

"Come on, Sierra." Isabelle said. "We're going to be late." A wedding between Joker and EDI was not to be missed under any circumstances. It promised to be an event of the decades.

Sierra turned to look at Isabelle. "Was he important to you?" The little Asari asked

Isabelle glanced at the grave and smiled, holding out her hand to her daughter. The child accepted the hand with her own. Isabelle idly wondered if this was how her father had felt like whenever he held her tiny hands in his own.

"Yes, he was very important to me." She said.

The little Asari glanced at the tombstone one last time then back to Isabelle. "Who was he?" She asked.

Isabelle looked at the stone, her smile remaining even small tears formed behind her eyes

He was the greatest soldier in the alliance navy, the most respected and decorated Admiral in citadel history, the greatest human in the universe, the most trustworthy and dependant being in creation... he was all of these things.

But above all else.

"He was the greatest father I could have asked for."

So what do you think? Too much? Too little? Leave a review and let your thoughts be known. No flames please but constructive criticism more than welcome. :D