Who Saves the Hero by Kudara

Chapter 9

Dreams

Shepard was standing in front of the tank holding the rachni Queen, the decision to either free her or destroy her hanging in the balance. Risk setting the queen free based only on her word that her race wouldn't try and destroy them all again or commit genocide. Talk about your proverbial rock and hard place.

"Can I speak with you directly? Mind to mind?" The rachni was communicating with the asari in some way. She didn't know if it was possible, but she felt she had to ask.

Liara cautioned from behind her, "Shepard I do not know if that is wise. We do not know what such a mental connection might do to you."

Shepard turned to face her, "For this, I'm willing to take that risk Liara. I have to know, I have to be absolutely certain." She met the asari's gaze, her own determined, sure. There was too much at risk either way. If she killed an innocent, the last of a race that had only attacked because they were indoctrinated by the Reapers, her soul would surely be damned. If she let loose a plague upon the galaxy, millions would rightfully curse her name and hold her responsible for their deaths. She didn't know enough about the rachni to even have a hope of telling whether or not the queen was telling her the truth. And it was the truth that she needed.

"You wish to hear our song." The Queen's words through the asari speaking for her sounded wondering, "If our musics can touch one another, I will sing for you so that you may know the rachni."

Shepard stepped closer to the glass and eyed the Queen's splayed appendage pressed up against it. She really had no idea how to manage this but suspected that was the key. She reached up, pressed her own hand against the glass directly on the other side of it, closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on reach out mentally for the rachni.

Dimly she heard the dying asari that the Queen had been speaking through collapse to the floor. Then she heard something in her mind, like the faint notes of a song briefly heard in the distance. It was enough to encourage her; she reached out mentally once again, listening for the slightest repeat of the sound she had heard. There the notes were again, she sought after them. She was aware for a brief moment of alien thoughts and sensations as her mind and the rachni's brushed against one another, trying to merge but then slipped past. That wasn't exactly what happened, but it was the best description of it she could manage. Shepard didn't let herself be discouraged, she concentrated harder, feeling as if she had a better sense for what she was attempting. She reached out once again and this time when she heard the song she listened for a moment first, concentrating on it before reaching out with her own harmonious note.

Symphony that was what came to her mind first for what she was hearing, but it hardly encompassed all of it. What symphony included colors and scents, as if the very world around them encompassed them in a sensory immersion? The intensity of the sensations coming thought their mental link eased as if the Queen realized that she was becoming overwhelmed by them.

'Listen.' It was a quiet mental command, and then the Queen sang. She sang of loss, and of the mourning of her mother. She sang of the war and Shepard knew the sour yellow note of which the Queen had spoken, the one that had silenced the rachni Queens' songs and forced them to sing its discordance. A suspicion wormed its way through Shepard's mind, was the Queen describing indoctrination? But how? Centuries ago had someone else stumbled on the same dreadnought Saren had found and used it to send the rachni against the Council races? It seemed farfetched, but she couldn't deny that what the Queen had described sounded a lot like what both Shiala and Benezia had told her about indoctrination. What she thought the rachni Queen heard and wondered at it as well, that Shepard might be in discordance with those that had soured her mother's songs.

Then the song the Queen sang changed and the Queen sang of the rachni to her, their burrowing, their building, their harmony with one another, and through it all the song of the queen that guided them. The rachni were not naturally violent. They were protective of their territory and very protective of the queen, but unless someone determinedly encroached upon their territory, their home, they would not attack first. Neither would they pursue once an enemy retreated.

That was enough for Shepard, the Queen had told her the truth. She would release her and let her rebuild her race.

Shepard felt the wonder and deep gratitude of the rachni Queen, that her people would sing once again, and not returned to silence. Shepard firmly demurred; she was only doing what was right. And besides, now that she had heard the Queen's song Shepard felt that she was obligated to make up in some way for the terrible crime the researchers had committed here. Liara's words, that a child left alone in a closet until they were sixteen would not be sane, rang in her mind and stirred her wrath. Neglect on that level was child abuse, pure and simple, and though they might not have understood what they were doing, nonetheless these researchers had abused the Queen's children and had caused them to go insane. And now she would have to go and kill them, the rachni Queen's children whose only crime was that their minds had been shattered by aloneness and fear.

'It is a mercy to end their suffering,' the Queens thought came through their link, 'do not let this color your song with darkness.'

'There is nothing wrong with feeling sorrow over their fates,' Shepard gently sent back. The deaths of the Queen's children would just another regret to add to the brimming cupful she had already, the lives of the indoctrinated asari commandoes, the life of Liara's mother. Damn Saren for setting all of this in motion.

She felt the Queen's steady wondering regard at her response, and then a hesitant request, 'Would you share your song with us?' Shepard hesitated bemused, she had no song as the rachni Queen did, but then it wasn't really a song the Queen wanted just a sense of the human who had decided to let her race live. What she valued, what she believed in, what she loved, what caused anger and wrath to rise within her, Shepard didn't try and think of any one thing just let the Queen's thoughts touch own as her mind moved from one memory to the next. The pace of her thoughts eventually slowed, and then stilled. She could think of nothing else that she was willing to share which she hadn't already shared with the rachni. If the Queen needed nothing more, then Shepard was ready to free her. She needed to make her way to the hot lab and figure out how to start the timer on the thermal charges that would send it deep into the glacier.

'Before we part would you join your song with mine?' Shepard was surprised at first and then intrigued. This she knew how to do, she agreed. The Queen began singing once again. Shepard just listened for a few notes, before joining in. Her voice weaved in and amongst the Queens, dipping below, rising above, their combined voices balancing out each other in parts, in others soaring joyously together in complete harmony. Shepard had forgotten how fun this could be, singing in harmony with another, melding your voice with theirs, giving the song more depth and richness.

Through it all in her mind Shepard danced, her steps guided by their combined voices, by their chorus. Her movement as she flowed with their music, graceful and smooth, her steps sure and strong. The remembered skill from her youth, hours spent each day in the dance studio, in front of the mirrors, practicing under the keen eye of her teacher. She could feel the rachni Queen in her mind, feel her joy at how their songs fit harmoniously together, her surprise and delight at Shepard's impromptu mental dance.

Then their song ended, and feeling oddly reluctant, Shepard withdrew from the link. At the last moment both she and the Queen paused, reached out to one another once again and embraced? She wasn't even sure how to describe it, before the mental connection between them ended.

Shepard opened her eyes, looked through the glass separating them, the rachni Queen and she gazed at one another. She knew the rachni Queen wasn't looking exactly, what the rachni saw when she looked at Shepard was very different from what Shepard saw when she looked at the Queen. Dropping her hand from the glass Shepard turned to the control panel and carefully keyed in the commands to free the Queen. She watched as the glass enclosure rose, the giant rachni inside it no longer looked so alien to her, not after the joining of their minds, and their songs together. The lift locked into place, even now with an exit. The Queen paused for a moment, looked back down at her and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like gratitude, before turning and escaping her prison.

Shepard had to shake her head and smile.

"Shepard?" Liara questioned hesitantly.

"I'm fine," she turned around, "the rachni won't be any threat to anyone unless someone's stupid enough to keep trying to enter their territory after they make it clear their not welcome. There is something though, that sour yellow note she was talking about, I think they were indoctrinated."

"But..." Tali began protesting and then stopped, "You think that ship Saren has was used before to make the rachni go to war?"

"Yes," Shepard responded.

"Who," Liara wondered.

"We'll probably never know," Shepard sighed, "that was over two thousand years ago. Right now we need to get to the hot labs. The other rachni, the insane one's, they can't be allowed to escape and keep killing. We have to sink it into the glacier."

**************

"Commander," EDI's voice woke Shepard from her sleep, interrupting the dream. "You wished to be notified when we were two hours away from the Alpha Draconis system."

"Yes," Shepard sat up, "thanks EDI." The dream was still fresh in her mind; it had been a long time since she had thought about freeing the rachni Queen. When she had visited the Citadel during her ill-fated attempt to get the Councils help she had heard news reports about rachni ships, which then rapidly retreated and disappeared. It sounded like the rachni Queen was still alive; hopefully she and her children were well hidden on some toxic world no one would be interested in visiting. She hoped they were doing well, and perhaps sometime she might even see the Queen once again.

"You are welcome, logging you out Shepard."

She turned her head and stared at the console that was different. She didn't think EDI had really responded to her politeness before.

Normandy, after responding to the MSV Hugo Gernsback distress beacon

Shepard was glad that she had chosen to take Miranda along when she and Jacob went to investigate the fate of the MSV Hugo Gernsback on 2175 Aeia. What they had discovered had been hard enough on Jacob without someone who wasn't necessarily a friend witnessing the depths to which his father had sunk. The last news she had received about the mission was a report from Cerberus that an Alliance ship had arrived to take custody of Ronald Taylor and to help the remaining survivors recover.

She hadn't really planned on the side trip, but when Jacob had come to her with the information that the signal from the distress beacon on his father's ship, which had been missing for ten years, had been picked up, Shepard had decided to delay their arrival at Illium in favor of finding and aiding any survivors. She had known that Jacob was most likely right and the distress beacon had somehow activated on its own, but if there were any survivors and they had just managed to repair their distress beacon after ten years, then surely they were in a dire situation.

The situation on the planet hadn't been as simple as that, but there had definitely been survivors to aid, and Shepard was glad that she hadn't decided to put off the mission until after Illium. Those women hadn't deserved to be used as chattel for even one more day; it was horrible enough that they had suffered such abuse for the past ten years.

As stressful and disappointing as it must have been for him to find out what his father had done, Jacob seemed at peace with the resolution of the situation. Maybe there was something to be said about the idea of getting closure from the past. Cerberus still wasn't quite ready to move Miranda's sister. There was time for her to visit the former Normandy's resting place before proceeding to Illium, and before Admiral Hackett decided to move forward with the Normandy memorial plans without her.

Normandy crash site

As she stared once again at the bluish white surface of the planet which had filled her vision as she died, Shepard found herself profoundly grateful that Garrus and Tali had been adamant about accompanying her, despite her protests that she would be fine doing this alone. It was the first time she had worn a breather helmet since she died; it hadn't even crossed her mind that it might be a problem. Unfortunately it was, the feel of it heavy and enclosing, the narrowed visual range, and the sound of her own breathing echoing in her ears. She was having a hard time pushing the memories of her own death away.

"Shepard, are you alright?" Tali's worried voice in her ear was a welcome distraction.

"I will be," it was as much a statement to herself as to Tali, she wouldn't let this beat her. There wasn't a Collector ship firing at them, the Normandy wasn't coming apart around her, she wasn't floating in space with pieces of her ship flying by her, and her breather apparatus wasn't damaged. There was no reason to feel as if she didn't have enough air to breathe. "It's just that I haven't worn a breather helmet since the Collector attack," she admitted. The quarian reached over and placed her hand over Shepard's and squeezed, about the only place she would feel it. "Thank you for insisting on coming with me," Shepard said quietly.

Tali responded, "I believe the human saying is that's what friends are for?"

Shepard smiled back at her. "Yes, that is the human saying," she confirmed.

The shuttle landed with a slight bump, and both of them rose and looked out the window. It took a second for Shepard to realize that the piece of wreckage she was looking at was the front air stabilizing fin, the name of the ship, Normandy, embossed across it.

Movement out of the corner of her eye, Garrus had come up to stand on the other side of her, "You ready Shepard?" the turian asked. At her nod he reached out and keyed in the sequence to open the shuttle doors.

Cold, silent...those were Shepard's impressions as they stepped out onto the icy surface of the planet. She looked around; shattered pieces of the wrecked Normandy surrounded them. They stood there for a long moment, solemnly staring at the sight before them. Shepard wasn't sure if it had been mere seconds or even minutes before she remembered that they had a purpose for being her besides mourning the past. She cleared her throat, "Alright, we have a mission here. Chose a site for the monument and search for evidence of the fate of the remaining twenty unaccounted for crewmembers."

It took them some time to comb the wreckage site: time to remember and time to find pieces of the past among the destruction.

A pad lying upon the ice near the remains of the CIC, Navigator Pressley's personal Journal: Log 3 [Data Recovered] for a while now, and I'm taking a look back at past entries in this journal. I [Unrecoverable Data] how blind I was at the time. I came on this ship firmly believing humanity was on its own in the galaxy, [Corrupt] Shepard brought all these aliens onboard, and there's no way we could have accomplished what we did without them. I am proud to say [Corrupt] die for any member of this crew, regardless of what world they were born on.

After reading Presley's logs, Shepard handed the pad over to Tali. She had known that the navigator's attitude toward the non-humans in the crew had softened, but Shepard had never realized to what extent. It humbled her; in the end he had truly seen them as she had, as one crew irrespective of their species.

Shepard watched as the quarian read each, and then paused for a long moment at the last. Tali lowered her head and softly murmured "Keelah se'lai," before passing it onto Garrus who was observing them curiously waiting to see what had caught their attention.

"It changed all of us," was Garrus' comment as he handed the pad back to Shepard, and, as she stowed it away for safekeeping, she could only agree.

They found the original Normandy plaque, the one that had hung in the mess area, bearing the crest of the first Earth naval vessel to carry the name, the USS Normandy. A quick check with her omni-tool revealed that the data files within it, the history of the Normandy battle and its significance leading up to the eventual victory of the Allied forces over the Nazi lead Axis, as well as the listing of all the ships and men who fought in it, were surprisingly still intact.

Shepard let her armor covered fingers trace over the broken chevron, read the motto underneath. "Vanguard of Victory." She knew the chevron, broken and thrust through, denoted the assault landing and the breaking through of the Nazi's defenses during the battle of Normandy. Just as they had made the mako drop on Ilos and broken through Saren's rearguard to follow him through the conduit and then defeated him on the Citadel. Killing Saren's cybernetic body, which Sovereign had taken over, had somehow affected the sentient ship itself, causing its shields to drop and allowing the Normandy along with the other Alliance ships of the Fifth Fleet to destroy it.

Shepard had always found it more than a little eerie the similarities between the two battles, though they were separated by vast distances of both space and time. As if the hand of fate had reached down and chosen them because of the name their ship bore, as if the spirit of those allied forces on that beach that day had reached forward in time and charged them to carry their spirit onward, to unite and stand against an enemy that sought to destroy all they held dear. And they had. Human, asari, turian, krogan, and quarian, her crew had united stood as one and they had defeated Sovereign.

Cerberus, and its ultimate goal of human dominance bore enough of a similarity to the goals of those long ago Nazi's to send a chill through Shepard. The Nazi's had sought German domination of the Earth with the Nazi party ruling with an iron fist over it all. Cerberus sought the domination of humans over the entire galaxy, and undoubtedly the Illusive Man saw himself as the perfect choice for leading that human dominated government.

Not if she could help it, Shepard swore. No one would question this plaque going back up in the mess hall of the new Normandy, and perhaps this would stir some of the Cerberus crew to remember the highest values to which humanity aspired, and not the lowest. She looked around her at the wreckage of the SSV Normandy SR-1; there were a few files she needed to add to this plaque, a reminder of what this ship's crew had achieved and the true nature of the enemy they had defeated.

There were still more crewmembers to be accounted for so they widened their search, spreading out and looking for any signs of remains. Mostly what they had found so far had been bits of bones and dog tags, the metal of them meant to be nearly indestructible. She was searching along a ledge when she saw it, lying on the ground next to a bolder and the side of a cliff. A helmet, not particularly a frightening thing except for its colors, charcoal grey and navy blue, and the N7 she could see etched along the side.

Garrus followed her gaze, stepped in front of her preventing her from moving toward it. "I'll get it," he said, then turned around and went to pick it up before Shepard could protest. He picked it up, turned it over to look inside, after a several seconds examination of it he informed her, "There's some blood on the inside of the facemask and some damage to the exterior armor, but otherwise it appears to be intact."

Normandy - after Alchera

Shepard tossed the helmet at Miranda as soon as the door opened; the other woman reflexively reached up and caught it before it hit her in the chest. "You took off my helmet?" she said angrily, "What to make sure I was dead?" All Shepard could think of was the extensive reconstruction of her face, the nightmarish cybernetic glow that still haunted her memories even though any evidence of what lay beneath her skin was no longer visible. Her scars were finally fully healed, the skin of her face now smooth and unblemished.

For just a moment Miranda stared at her confused and angry, then she looked down at the helmet and her eyes widened as she realized exactly what she was holding. She looked back up at the Commander, "We didn't find your body Shepard; the Blue Sun's found you," she explained. "The Collectors made a very generous offer for your body, enough to have every mercenary group in the Terminus Systems searching for it. Cerberus managed acquired you before you could be handed over to them."

"The Collectors?" Shepard echoed, her anger now thoroughly derailed.

Miranda responded simply, "Yes."

Shepard drew in a breath, reached up and rubbed the back of her neck. She met the other woman's blue eyes letting her embarrassment show, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have thrown that at you, and I shouldn't have come in here and just jumped on you like that."

"It's alright," Miranda assured her, glancing down at the helmet, "I can certainly see how finding this down there would be...unsettling. Especially on top of everything else that's happened recently."

Shepard knew Miranda was referring to her memories, the other woman probably even knew about the recent discovery of what had happened to the cipher imprint. "Still I shouldn't have done that," she frowned disturbed now by her loss of temper.

"You didn't throw it that hard," Miranda dryly assured her, "Not nearly as hard as I know you can." Shepard stared at her for a second and then nodded, accepting the reassurance for what it was, she hadn't been that out of control. "Did you want to talk to Kelly?" Miranda offered hesitantly.

Shepard hid her immediate rejection of the idea, "Will she tell me anything other than to get enough sleep, eat right and exercise to manage my stress levels?"

Miranda fought to hide a smile, "I guess you're more than familiar with the speech?"

"You can say that, yea. Chakwas has already given it to me," Shepard commented with a smile, "I'll make more time to sleep and workout, and Rupert has the food covered. By the way, thanks for recruiting him," she added appreciatively.

The other woman laughed, "I wasn't responsible for that, but I'll pass on your thanks."

Hell, Shepard didn't care if it had been the Illusive Man himself, whoever it had been deserved the entire crew's heartfelt gratitude. "I should get going; I've got work of my own to do."

"Umm...did you want this back?" Miranda indicated the helmet in her hands.

Shepard stared at the helmet, her brow creased, "I don't know," she replied after a few seconds.

"I'll have Jacob clean and repair it, and hold onto it for you then," her XO responded.

"Thanks," Shepard replied before leaving.

Continued...