In case you guys still get emails every time I update, let me apologize now. I have a DeviantArt account that I do post most of the same stuff I do here. Somehow, I never posted this giant series there, so I'm starting to do that now. This chapter happens to be one of the worst, in my opinion, and I wanted to clean it up before posting it. I made no changes to it, aside from cleaning up some places and fixing grammar. So sorry, minions and minion-ettes. You still have to wait for my next piece.

With deepest sincerity, MGA.

Also, I literally went through the entire story and fixed as many grammar punctuation flaws I made. I went nuts for a few hours, hoped this fixes it.

My eyes shoot open just as the red explosion reaches me. My lungs fill with air and my nerves scream in pain. I yell as every burn and scratch comes to me. I grit my teeth and try to stand up. Every muscle and bone protests, but I manage to get on my feet. It takes a few seconds for everything to become clear again. I remember the run down to the beam, Hammer getting wiped out, Harbinger... That last laser... But what about the Citadel?

I look up and see the beam still glowing strong, surrounded by the explosions of ships deep in space. Wait. Why is there still fighting? I set off the Catalyst. I remember the Illusive Man killing himself, Anderson dying beside me... That weird child telling me about the cycle and our "preservation." I shot that container. This should all be over... I should be dead... Unless...

Indoctrination. It has to be. All these years of fighting around Reapers and their artifacts: they had to add up. Getting hit must have weakened me enough for them to get control for a little bit. It's the only thing that makes sense. Why wouldn't they try to do that to me? Just took them longer than it would have for other people. I hope it only affected me.

I try to step towards the beam, but my body screams in surrender. I give myself a shot of medi-gel, and the pain-killers flood my system. My muscles move again with complaints, just enough that I can fight again. My chest piece took the brunt of the damage, melting into my skin and hardening in a new shape across my torso and arms. The recon hood is all but gone: just a few bits of it and one working lens for my right eye. The rest of my gear took superficial burns. Nothing to stop me. If they think that laser is all they'll need to kill me, they're wrong. All they've done now is piss me off. I pull out my Paladin, throw in a new clip, and walk towards the beam.

A moan beside me makes me stop in my tracks. "Shepard..." Anderson is leaned against the support around the beam, bleeding badly.

"Admiral!" I yell, rushing to his side. "Hang on, Anderson."

"Are there any survivors?" he groans through his teeth as I apply medi-gel.

"Not that I've seen..." I mutter. What happened to Ash? And Javik? Not them too...

A Reaper laser comes out of nowhere and rips through the ground beside us. I grab Anderson by his shoulder and drag him behind a destroyed tank.

"SHEPARD!" Harbinger screams, sending another laser over us.

"Shit!" I shout to myself. Not even my Black Widow will do anything more than piss him off. "Anybody on this channel! Someone answer me, damn it!" I scream into the comms.

"Shepard!" Joker shouts back. "Tell me that's you!"

"It's me, Joker! We're pinned down at the beam! Harbinger's here! Can you distract him?!"

"I'll do more than distract that son of a bitch!"

The Normandy strafes from the FOB, letting out a barrage of missiles and a Thaxis beam right into the side of Harbinger. He rocks from the impact and shifts his beams towards Joker.

"COME ON! TRY AND HIT ME!" Joker yells, laughing like a mad man as the Normandy starts pulling flips and spins around the beams. One gets close, but Joker keeps the ship just out of the beam. "TRY AGAIN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

"Give him Hell, Joker!" I yell. "I'm going to the Citadel!"

"Stay safe, Shepard..." Anderson moans from the ground beside me.

"Hang on, Anderson. We're almost done."

"No... I am..." he mutters. He closes his eyes and his head droops down. That's another friend this war has taken. Not... one... more...

"Aaron!" Tali's voice screams as I get into the Citadel beam.

"Tali!" I yell back. "Where are you?"

"All of us are at the base! Joker, EDI, and the other crewmen are the only ones on the Normandy!"

The beam picks me up like the beacons did, leaving me hovering a few inches above the ground for a brief moment before I shoot up.

"Are you ok?" Tali asks in fear from the comms.

"I'm fine, Tali. I promise," I say softly. The whole time I was up there last time, in my dream... All I could think about was leaving her alone in this world... "I'll come back, Tali. We'll get more time. I promise."

"Keelah se'lai..." she mutters.

I come to a stop at the end of the council chambers. Of course. There's Reaper wires laying everywhere on the ground and running along the ceiling. Bodies of too many are in piles in corners and right in the middle of the walkway. What the Hell were they doing up here...?

"I'm going for the master control unit at the Councilor's podiums!" I shout, changing the channel briefly to the Alliance freqs. "Make sure the Crucible fleet is ready to get in there the moment I have the arms open!"

"We hear you, Commander," Hackett announces. "We're on our way."

The next thing I do is change back to my first channel. "Tali..." I sigh into the comms. "Can you still hear me?"

"I hear you, Aaron..." she whispers, her voice cracking with tears.

"Listen to me, Tali. I will come back to you." My own voice starts to break as I try to keep going. "I love you. You are the only thing that has ever been worth fighting for to me. You are worth more than I've ever given you, and everything I will give you when I get back. I promise you I will come back. And I promise I still want to love you after this is all over. I will be with you on Rannoch, in our little house. I promise you Tali..."

I finally realize what I thought was blood running down my cheeks is tears. "I will come back for you. I love you."

"I love you, too..." she cries, barely audible. "I'll hold you to that promise..."

"Good... Say a prayer for me, baby girl."

Paladin in front, I charge up the stairs towards the Councilor's podiums. Where it all began... Where it all will end...

I get to the top, and the Illusive Man's standing in front of the controls, blocking me. I stop at the edge of the platform and train the pistol on him.

"Move. Now," I order.

"I can't do that, Commander."

He looks just like he did during my dream, with the suit, Predator pistol in his hand, and the same metallic veins running down his face.

"I won't ask again," I say coldly.

"You can't stop me, Shepard. I won't let you. I can still control the Reapers. I can use the Catalyst to-"

I cut him off with a bullet straight to the face, but it doesn't hit him. It's stopped by a barrier, or a shield. He glows a dark blue blue as biotics charge up in him. The Reaper tech... It must have done the same thing it did to Grayson... And he took down half of Aria's forces. Shit.

He biotic charges just as I dive for cover behind the plants. I pop off the rest of the mag into his back, but the barriers stop them. He turns and opens fire with the Predator while I haul ass for the pillars to the side. What's left of the goggle's HUD screams my shields are down by the time I reach cover. Paladin's not gonna cut it. I swap the clip and pull out my Punisher.

"This is what we stand to gain from control!" he shouts.

Biotics hold him ten feet in the air, giving him an open field of fire on me. We both unleash our clips wile I run for more cover. At least fifty of the bullets strike him before I get down behind another planter, but my HUD says his barriers aren't even registering the damage. You have got to be fucking kidding me!

I hit him with an energy drain, and it drops enough to see it on the meter. Thanks, baby girl. That trick will be handy. It only dropped his barriers about a tenth, but he doesn't have armor. I can work with that. Just keep going, Commander... he's not invincible.

"Shepard, we need those arms open now!" Hackett orders over the comms.

"I'm working on it!" I shout back, peppering the Illusive Man with more bullets and energy drain as he floats in the middle of the bridge.

"Are you still this blind?" he asks while throwing the planter like a rag doll. "Can you not see what we can become?"

"I see you've become just as mindless as your troops and the husks!" I shout. I take cover behind another support pillar. "You've lost sight of everything you fought for. Instead of fighting the Reapers, you're fighting for them!"

"That's not true! I'm fighting for humanity! For our evolution!" A volley of Predator rounds tear through the air where my head was a second ago.

"Our "evolution" is us killing the Reapers, not becoming their minions!" When the next barrage comes, I sabotage the pistol, making it explode in his hand.

"You can't stop me, Shepard!"

I feel myself being lifted up by his biotics and pulled towards him, right in front of the console. He keeps me locked straight up with his stasis while he brings me to him and wraps his hands around my throat. "This is the price for not seeing the big picture," he says, choking me and holding his face an inch from mine. "This is why you have to die."

"You... first," I mutter. I get an energy drain off from my omni-tool, stunning him enough to drop his stasis and pull on me. I slam my hands down on his arms and break his grip. The second my feet touch the ground, they push off. I land on top of him, then the grip of the Punisher breaks his nose while I pull out a grenade.

"Block this."

I stick it to his forehead and take off down the walkway to escape the blast.

I'm in cover when the grenade goes off. He screams in pain after the shock wave subsides. Son of a bitch survived it. I peak around the corner and the HUD shows his barriers are down. Still have to kill the Reaper tech in him, though. Grayson regened faster than a krogan, and I bet with the Reapers in spitting distance, it'll be even faster. Don't back down... Make these bastards pay...

"SHEPARD!" Harbinger screams, except from the Illusive Man's mouth. The human's voice is still there, but it's layered with the Reaper's. "DIE!"

He throws a warp that destroys the planter and knocks me to the ground. I empty the clip, but it doesn't even stagger him. The incinerate behind it, though, knocks him back and lets me find cover behind the next garden. HUD says he's down to three-quarters health, but he regens it before I can even swap out the clip. Need to hit him hard and fast, right now.

I hear him gear up for a singularity while I switch to my Black Widow. I roll from cover just as it floats into the air, spinning like a paper weight thrown by a child. He pulls his hand back for another. Too bad the first bullet between the eyes stops him in his tracks. The back of his head explodes open, raining bits of blood, bone, and tech across the podium. HUD says just over half health. The second hits him right in the teeth, punching another massive hole. His jaw comes clean off and flies across the room. Less than a tenth left. The third in the nose puts him down permanently.

I reload the clip, but keep the rifle out and trained on him. I approach slowly, ready for him to try and get up again. He twitches a few times, but doesn't move. I stop over him and flip him onto his back with the barrel of the rifle. He's actually alive, barely. Most of his face is gone, but his eyes are still there. The steel blue stare back at me in fear, in surprise. He's free from the Reaper control, and now the broken human is coming out. Guess Harbinger decided his puppet wasn't worth the trouble anymore.

"Hey... Still hearing me?" I ask calmly. His eyes stay glued to me, blinking occasionally. "I'll take that as a yes." I open up the console and open the Citadel arms, just like I did, what, four years ago now? "Crucible, you are clear to dock. Get your ass in gear," I tell the comms.

"We're on the way, Shepard," Hackett chimes in. "Let's finish this."

"Understood. Waiting on dock."

I return my attention back to the Illusive Man. He's still breathing. I bend down to his face. "What was it I told you about a year ago? 'I'll save humanity, and I won't sacrifice the soul of our species to do it.' Well, look. I did it. In your quest for power, you sold your soul to these bastards, and you lost sight of what was going on. That is why I can defeat them, and you can't. I don't care about the power. All I want is our freedom."

I stand up and put the barrel of the rifle against his left eye. "This is for all of the soldiers we lost because you had to have your way." The bullet tears out the rest of his head.

I kick his body off the walkway and hear it crash to the pile below. Guess they kept more bodies down there, like they did in the dream... What the fuck were they doing up here? I drop another grenade down for good measure. The explosion rattles the podium, and the heat rakes my skin. No way he's getting up from that.

I look back out the window. The arms are finally open, and the Crucible is coming. Hackett wasn't kidding when he said it was a massive project. It has to be bigger than an actual Reaper, bigger than the tower. Seeing it come to attach is more than a little unsettling... Earth flaming behind it sure as Hell ain't helping.

"YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED!" Harbinger screams. I see him charging towards the tower, opening up to let loose his lasers again. He'll be here in seconds.

"Get that son of a bitch docked now!" I yell.

"Five seconds!" some engineer yells back. "Four, three, two!"

"SHEPARD! YOU WILL DIE!" I see the laser charging up when the station shakes.

"We're docked!" the engineer shouts.

A bright red button appears on the console. I slam my fist on it just as a beam tears through the glass and into the ceiling above me. The barriers immediately seal the air in, but the beam lights the roof on fire. The Crucible glows blue for a split second, then sends beam right into Harbinger. An ear-splitting screech erupts from him. He feels the pain. Oh, the irony... He screams in agony as the beam refracts through him, and into another Reaper. This one sends out a massive blue blast around him, then shoots the beam to another. The process repeats itself in under a second, bouncing from Reaper to Reaper. Earth glows dark blue as the beam makes its round on the planet, then shoots out past us and towards the relays.

The ceiling starts to collapse above me. Falling bits of flaming metal rain down around me, trying to take the podium with it. I run for the elevators, praying that the beam works both ways and is still open. A big chunk crashes in front of me, almost crushing my toes when it hits. Shit, shit, SHIT!

I leap the stairs in one jump, then the second case in two. I can see the beam is still open, glowing blue on the ground. I keep sprinting for it, avoiding the debris and flaming plants on every side. The entire room is flaming now, not far from Purgatory ship back during Jack's escape. Though now it's corpses burning... The choking smell of burning clothes and flesh is suffocating, which is the only thing reminding me this is real and not a horrible nightmare...

I clear the last staircase when a sheet of metal collapses on me. The hot metal burns my back and arms while the weight shatters my ribs. It pins me to the ground under it, stopping me achingly close to the beam. I feel the skin on my head start to catch fire while I slowly crawl across the ground.

"You've got to get out of there, Shepard!" Hackett screams over the comms. "The tower's about to collapse on itself!"

I try to shout back an answer, but I can't find the strength or the oxygen to do it.

I keep inching my way closer and closer when my arms give up. My muscles surrender to the pain and the exhaustion. I try to pick them up, but they just lay on the ground. I scream at them to move, but they don't. They ignore everything I tell them... Eventually my head follows suit and lays on the now scorching hot metal. Nothing moves. Not one of my limbs listens to me. They gave up on survival...

This is it...

I'm really going to die here...

I feel the flames start to lick my skin, but they feel cold instead of burning. It's almost unreal, watching my arm start to melt and peel away. Was this how Dad felt on Mindoir? When those bastard batarians decided he wasn't worth being a slave and got him with a flamethrower? Like Mom, when they just shot her while I cowered under the rubble of my roof? Lieutenant O'Connor, back on Akuze, when the thresher maws melted him? Did the death of all of my friends and family feel like this? Not painful, but almost like a hallucination?

I don't feel any pain... Just numbness and my own heart thudding against my melting chest... After almost fifteen long years of fighting... This is what it feels like...

Huh...

"AARON!" Tali screams. "PLEASE! KEEP GOING!"

I see her face flash before my eyes. All the perfect details from last night and the last year. Her soft, raven black hair. Her perfect white skin, highlighted by the implants around her temples. Her white and red eyes with all of the love in the galaxy in them. Her lips as they kiss me...

"YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULD COME BACK! YOU PROMISED ME!" I hear the tears in her voice... That sorrow... That one thing that could motivate me to go through Hell... The sound of her voice in pain...

And I'm causing it.

I promised her... I promised...

I pick my head up and press my arms against the ground. They find enough strength to get me up some. I get onto my back and pull my legs to my chest. The metal moves enough for me to get one leg away. I put every ounce of strength I have into that leg and move the sheet off of me. It slams to the ground as I scramble for the beam, less than two feet away from me.

Just as I reach it, it glows brighter than ever. I feel it pick me up again, but I lose consciousness the moment it takes me.