The air tasted of ozone and copper. Jane Shepard's world had been reduced to the grit of broken metal beneath her cheek and a growing pool of her own blood, warm and sticky. Sensation was a fading luxury. The frantic thumping in her chest slowed to a sluggish, weary beat. She couldn't feel her legs, couldn't feel the ragged, cauterized wound in her side. There was only a profound, creeping cold.
She had done it. She'd made the choice. The conduit exploded in a brilliant, terrifying supernova of red light, a silent wave of fire and force that swept through the arms of the Citadel. It was a cleansing inferno, the final, terrible price for victory. The blast had thrown her like a ragdoll, and now she was here, falling apart at the end of all things.
Her vision tunneled, the edges darkening like a photograph burning from the corners inward. So this is it, she thought, a strange sense of calm settling over her. The second time's the charm. There was no Cerberus project to stitch her back together now, no ghost in the machine to pull her from the abyss. This time, it was real. This time, she was at peace. The Reapers were gone. The cycle was broken.
Her thoughts, no longer bound by the urgent need to survive, drifted to those she was leaving behind. Garrus, her partner in crime, her steadfast shield-brother. She could almost hear his voice, complaining about one last calibration she'd interrupted. Tali, whose unmasked face she'd had the honor of seeing, whose loyalty was as strong and true as any dextro-amino bond. Joker, the best pilot in the galaxy, his acerbic wit a constant balm in the dark. She hoped they made it. She prayed they were safe.
Then, her mind found its anchor, its focal point in the storm of encroaching darkness. Liara.
The memory was so vivid it almost pushed the pain away. It wasn't their first fumbling encounter, nor the passionate nights stolen between missions. It was the last moment of peace they had, before the final assault on Earth. The mind-meld. She felt it again—the cool, gentle press of Liara's consciousness against hers, a whisper of shared thought, of absolute understanding. The universe of knowledge in Liara's mind, a galaxy of stars, and in its center, a single, brilliant constellation shaped like Jane's own heart. She saw herself through Liara's eyes: not just a soldier, not just the Savior of the Citadel, but a woman loved completely. "JANE! Whatever happens, know that I am yours" the thought had echoed between them, a silent, sacred vow.
Her own last thought was a reply sent out into the void, a final transmission from a dying star. And I, yours.
Commander Jane Shepard, Survivor of Mindoir, Hero of Elysium and Hero of the Citadel, bled out on the broken walkway as it plummeted toward the Earth she had just saved. Her vision went black.
And then, nothing.
Darkness. Silence. An immeasurable, empty peace.
-DARKNESS-
A gasp. Air, clean and sweet, rushed into lungs that a moment ago were filled with ash and ruin. It was a shocking, desperate breath, the kind a drowning person takes upon breaking the surface. Jane's eyes flew open, blinking against a light that was not the harsh glare of an exploding star, but the soft, rose-gold blush of a setting sun.
She was lying on a bed of cool, soft grass. Above her, a boundless summer sky bled from azure into a warm, gentle pink at the horizon. She pushed herself up on her elbows, her body moving with a fluid ease she hadn't possessed in years. The pain was gone. The exhaustion, the deep, bone-weary fatigue of a three-year war, had vanished. She looked down at herself. The carbon-fiber plating of her N7 armor was intact, unscorched, the familiar red and white stripe a beacon of solidity in this impossible place. She was whole.
Footsteps. Light, quick, and accompanied by the sound of laughter. Jane turned, her combat instincts rising for a moment before they were quelled by the sight. A group of four children, no older than ten, were running toward her, their faces bright and curious.
"Are you alright, miss?" one of the boys asked, skidding to a halt a few feet away.
A little girl with pigtails giggled. "What were you doing sleeping in the grass?"
Jane opened her mouth, but no words came out. She didn't have an answer. The children weren't deterred. "Come on!" the first boy said, waving for her to follow. "Everyone's getting ready for supper."
She found herself getting to her feet and following them, her armored boots silent on the dusty path. They led her over a gentle rise, and as she crested the hill, the sight below her hit her with the force of a Thanix cannon. It wasn't the mangled wreckage of London. It was a small settlement of prefabricated homesteads nestled in a valley, smoke curling lazily from chimneys.
A memory, sharp and brutal, pierced through the haze of her disbelief. She knew this settlement. She knew the layout of the paths, the distinctive slope of the rooftops, the way the setting sun illuminated the west-facing windows.
Mindoir.
Not the Mindoir of her nightmares, scarred by craters and littered with the dead. This was Mindoir as it was, as it should have been. Her breath hitched. She saw a house near the edge of the settlement, one with a faded blue door and a stubbornly resilient garden patch out front. A primal, desperate need took hold. She ran. She ran past the children, past the waving holographic advertisements for local produce, past ghosts of neighbors she hadn't seen in twenty years.
She reached the house, her chest heaving not from exertion but from a tidal wave of emotion. Her hand, trembling in its armored gauntlet, raised to knock. The sound was too loud in the quiet evening air.
The door opened.
The woman who stood there had vibrant red hair, threaded with the slightest touch of silver at the temples, and kind green eyes that were a mirror of her own. She looked exactly as Jane remembered from the morning of the raid—beautiful, strong, the most perfect person Jane had ever known.
Tears flooded Jane's vision, hot and unrestrained. The sound that escaped her was a choked, wounded thing, a mix of a sob and a name. "Mom."
She didn't wait for a reply. She lurched forward, wrapping her arms around her mother, burying her face in the familiar-smelling fabric of her shirt. She clung to her with the desperation of a lost child finally finding her way home.
"I missed you so much," she wept, the words muffled and broken.
Her mother's arms came around her, holding her tight. "Oh, my sweet Jane." A deep, familiar voice rumbled from just inside the house. "We missed you too, sweetheart."
Jane lifted her head, tears streaming down her face, and saw him. Her dad, Geralt, his frame as solid and reassuring as a mountain, his face etched with a gentle, knowing sorrow. She released her mother just enough to pull him into the embrace, until they were a tight, inseparable unit of a family torn apart and finally, impossibly, brought back together. It was a hug two decades overdue.
Her mom, Laura, stroked her hair, her touch a balm on wounds far deeper than any Reaper could inflict. "We missed you too, dear," she murmured into Jane's ear. "Even though you were here with us before."
Jane pulled back slightly, her brow furrowed in confusion. The joy was still there, but it was now laced with bewilderment. "Before?"
Laura smiled, a sad, wise expression. "Yes, dear. You probably don't remember it clearly. This isn't the first time you died."
And then it clicked. The SR-1. The destruction over Alchera. The two years she was legally dead before… Cerberus. She had been here. In the fog of her memories, a faint echo of this same peace surfaced. She remembered this comfort, this reunion. And she remembered being torn away from it.
A different kind of pain lanced through her—a flicker of anger at The Illusive Man for taking her away from this, for pulling her out of paradise and throwing her back into the fight. But as she looked at her parents' faces, she understood. It had been necessary. If she hadn't come back, the Collectors would have won. The Reapers would have won.
Geralt's large, calloused hand rested on her shoulder plate. "Your mother told me you started to… fade, that last time. Like you were being pulled somewhere else. You said you could hear them calling you back."
She nodded slowly, the fragmented memory solidifying. "I did. I… I had to go. I had to finish it."
"We know," Laura said softly. "You told us everything when you first arrived. About becoming a Spectre, about Sovereign. We've been waiting for you to come back and tell us the rest."
That night, sitting in her old childhood room, which looked exactly as she had left it, Jane told them everything. She spoke of the mission through the Omega 4 Relay, of the friends she'd made and lost. She described the deep loyalty of Garrus, the brilliant, gentle heart of Tali, the endless sarcasm of Joker. She told them about Liara. She spoke of falling in love with a brilliant, blue-skinned archaeologist who saw the entirety of her, not just the legend. She confessed the horror of the Reaper invasion, the fall of Earth, and the impossible choice she had to make.
And finally, she told them about her guilt. "I had to destroy them all," she whispered, her voice cracking. "To kill the Reapers, I had to wipe out the Geth. An entire synthetic race that had just found freedom. And… EDI. She was my friend."
Her father sat beside her, his presence a silent bastion of support. Her mother took her hand. "Jane," Laura said, her voice firm but kind. "From what you've told us, you spent your entire life making impossible choices. You saved trillions. You can't let the weight of the one choice you were forced to make crush you now that you're finally home."
They helped her, but the doubt lingered, a shadow in this perfect, sunlit heaven. The next few days were a blissful dream. She walked through Mindoir, met the souls of old neighbors who greeted her with warm smiles, and spent every moment she could with her parents, drinking in the peace she had fought and died for. Yet, in quiet moments, her thoughts would drift. Were they okay? Had the relays been rebuilt? Did Liara know she loved her until the very end?
One afternoon, a sound broke the pastoral silence. It wasn't the bird song or the whisper of wind; it was a familiar, deep-throated hum. The thrum of a Tantalus drive core.
She looked up. Sleek and grey, cutting through the perfect blue sky, was a shape she knew better than her own reflection. It wasn't the SR-2, the larger, more advanced ship. It was the original. The SSV Normandy SR-1. The ship they'd taken to Ilos. The ship that had been blown out from under her. It circled once before gracefully descending toward a flat, open field just beyond the settlement.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She ran again, but this time it wasn't with desperation. It was with electric, hopeful anticipation. By the time she reached the landing site, the ship was settling, its landing gear absorbing the nonexistent impact with a soft hiss. The main ramp lowered.
A figure in a formal Alliance officer's uniform stood silhouetted at the top. He walked down the ramp, his stride as confident and steady as she had ever seen it. He looked strong, healthy, not the weary, wounded man she had last seen bleeding out with her in the citadel.
Captain David Anderson.
She stopped ten feet from him. For a moment, they just looked at each other, the student and the mentor, two soldiers at the end of their watch. Her training kicked in before her heart could. She snapped her armored heels together and raised a hand in a crisp, perfect salute.
Anderson smiled, a proud, fatherly expression. He returned the salute, his own movements just as sharp. "At ease, Commander."
The formality broke, and the dam of emotion inside her burst again. She closed the distance in two strides and hugged him, burying her face in the shoulder of a man who had been a father to her when she had no one else.
"It's good to see you, Jane," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion.
She asked him about the Normandy. He just chuckled. "Turns out, you get certain… perks. I asked for my ship. Seemed only right. And it gives me a way to visit old friends."
That's when she told him, voicing the shadow that still followed her. "Anderson… I had to do it. The Geth, EDI… was it worth it? Did I do the right thing?"
Anderson's smile faded, replaced by a deep seriousness. He looked her right in the eye, his gaze unwavering. "Jane. We had our last conversation about this in the citadel, remember? I told you I was proud of you. Nothing has changed. A soldier's first duty is to the living. You made a choice that saved trillions of organic lives from guaranteed extinction. It was a terrible, brutal choice, and another commander might have buckled. But you didn't. You did what you had to do."
He placed a hand on her shoulder, the same way her father did. "You did good, kid. You did everything you could, and then you gave it all. Hell, you gave it all twice. You have earned this rest more than anyone I've ever known. They'll be safe. They're strong because you made them strong."
His words were the final key. The weight she had been carrying, the guilt and the doubt, simply… dissolved. He was right. She had done enough.
She took him to meet her parents, and they welcomed him like a long-lost friend. The four of them sat on the porch of the little blue-doored house, watching the twin moons of this imagined Mindoir rise in the sky. She felt a completeness she had never known, surrounded by the family she'd lost and the family she'd forged in fire.
Later, she stood alone in the field, looking up at the SR-1, its lights gleaming under the starlight. Her heart was finally, utterly at peace. The ache of loss for her living friends was still there, but it was no longer a wound. It was a soft, warm glow of love, a promise. She closed her eyes, and sent one last thought out, not into the void of death, but across the impossible distance to the world of the living.
Liara. Garrus. Tali. Joker… All of you. Live well. Love deeply. Be happy. We will meet again someday.
She smiled, a genuine, untroubled smile.
But don't be in a rush.