Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or any of its related characters.

"Sound the bugle now,

Play it just for me.

As the season's change,

Remember how I used to be.

Now I can't go on.

I can't even start.

I've got nothing left,

Just an empty heart.

I'm a soldier, wounded

So I must give up the fight.

There's nothing more for me,

Lead me away...

Or leave me lying here-"

-Sound the Bugle, Bryan Adams

Sound the Bugle

Wind.

The only sound.

Not her heart, not her breath, just silence. She couldn't move.

She didn't want to.

She'd done what she'd set out to, what she was born for.

And there was no sound but the wind.

No resounding cheers of triumph. No thunderous applause. No screams of victory. No parade of celebration.

Just the high whistle of wind passing through the edges of stone and metal bearing over her.

And here she lay, crushed beneath the rubble of the controlling central AI core of the Reapers, on a twisted poor excuse of a Reaper base planet. She'd let no one follow her inside. This was her duty, what her whole existence was meant for. Her reason for being.

She was so tired. Not just physically but mentally, emotionally, spiritually… from loss of blood, tears, and heart spanning over the years of a life that had never truly been hers.

This universe had carved her from the raw materials of man, and then stripped her of everything that made her a person. Her family, her friends, her emotions, it had put her in a uniform, named her "commander", and the only thing she had left to associate with herself, her name, died on the tongues that called her by her rank.

She had only ever been a soldier of Alliance. And at the same moment that the first touch of Reaper machines diseased the borders of the galaxy, the last shred of her identity was stolen from even that. Not a soldier, but tool, a weapon, the one thing standing between the continued progress of civilization, and its complete and utter destruction.

She'd accomplished everything her station required of her. And all her beliefs, her love of blue camouflage, her rush of adrenaline when reaching for her weapon, the pounding her heart in the fear that it would be the last beat… all died with the last explosion; the final burst of fire and hissing smoke that silenced the Reaper's last screech of terror.

She was a wounded soldier that had fulfilled her purpose, and therefore must give up the fight. Even the fight for life.

And what life was left for a soldier who didn't have another battle left in her weary and numb arms, anyway?

She couldn't feel her limbs, she couldn't feel anything… not the crushing weight above her, not the pride of success, not even the pain of despair. Was it despair to simply no longer care?

She had nothing left but an empty heart. There was nothing left for her now… Someone would either have to carry her out, or here she would lie, pinned beneath the core system in the last twisted and unfeeling ship.

And no one was coming for her here. What's more is she didn't give a damn.

She wasso exhausted. Could anyone lose so much and not have died already? She'd endured more agony than she could describe. And she'd held on, refused to give up, refused to die because she wasn't done doing what she'd needed, what she had to.

But now that it was over… even that affliction was as silent and still as the very black metal that hid her from eyes of the nearest sun.

She had no desire to hear her name on the lips of the survivors of the Great Reaper War. No need of medals, no want of praise.

Years would stretch ahead of her death, and soon, in the grand thievery of time, even her name would be erased from memory.

She didn't even know if she was breathing anymore. She couldn't feel anything, her nerves deadening in absolute resignation. She'd died once before, but that had been scary. She'd been aware. She'd been defiant. She'd struggled…

This just was. She repeated to herself that it was all over now. This one goal had defined her, and for it she had sacrificed everything that had made her a person. How do you go back to a normal life after that? She couldn't go on, she justcouldn't. She couldn't even start. There was not one step she could take that would lead her anywhere, but right back here.

She was so thoroughly broken.

There wasn't a single light of life left in her future, nothing to guide her through the stumbling dark of her renunciation. Even thinking of trying to think made her want to mentally lay back down.

No… she was done. She always knew she would die here. This was her last adventure. She'd always known that…

Civilization would be realizing soon that she'd won. That they'd all won. That they were free. And that she was dead, officially, permanently…

She could hear "Taps" in her head, more clear than any other synapses her body feebly tried to execute. So soothing, so inviting, like the dull lethargy that had settled in her soul.

She still wasn't breathing, or if she was she couldn't tell. Was she already dead? Her consciousness continued, though hazy and delirious. She spent her last few moments of solid thought imagining the sounds of bugles playing at her own funeral.

Was this how entire lives were snuffed out? Is this how the whole of existence sounded at the end of all things? Did entire worlds and languages and spirits die this way? In absolute silence?

In obsidian abyss?

What was her name? Could she even remember her name? The one thing that still, as of this moment, belonged to her?

"Shepard."

Her brain fizzed and crackled at the edges of its nerves. Recognition, or imagination?

"Shepard…" From somewhere in the distance. From her mind? From the very last sparks of cognitive thought? From hallucinations?

"You areShepard."

A voice that was strong, firm, commanding of her. It meant something to that voice that she remember.

"Remember. Remember yourself. Remember who you are."

She still hadn't moved. She was close enough to death and utter defeat to know now that the voice was in her head. But it wasn't enough yet. Wasn't enough to pull her up to breathe from the crushing waves that pressed in all around her.

A soldier, she told the voice in her weak mind, the effort it took to argue left her that much more weary, and she mentally collapsed again. I'm a soldier.

Soldiers had no names, no families, no lives, no faces... Only deaths.

"You are Shepard!"

The voice had a name now, a face she could identify, a person, a heart, a soul that had touched her so deeply it had stolen hers away with it when he was ripped from her grasp.

It was a reason. A reason to cling to life, if in its insanity, for even a second longer.

"You are Shepard!" his voice repeated. Angry, disappointed in her, frustrated. "Shepard!"

She mentally lifted her head tiredly as he yelled at her, shouting her name in her ear over and over again, wanting it to mean something. He wanted it to mean something to her.

There it was; a pang. A difference in the nothingness that filled her soul in all directions. A small blip of emotion besides the empty void that had filled her heart.

It drew her attention. She cared enough to pay attention.

The voice twisted in her head, melting and molding into a new one. It was her, but in the hard, cold, pissed off tone she had once used against the ringleaders of mass genocide operations and sick-minded scum. Chewing herself out now, and it hurt.

But it was there, she was feeling pain again.

"You've lost you know," her voice spat.

No, we've won. We're done. I'm done.

"You've forgotten us. You're giving up. You've given up on who we are!"

It could've been him, or herself barking anymore. She didn't know, she was still learning to feel again, and it wasn't a really encouraging notion. Death would be less tormenting.

"Yeah, that'd be the easy way out. If you've forgotten yourself then you've nothing to exist for."

She felt a part of her concede with that logic. She was only a second from death anyway-

"Damn it, weren't we worth it!" Was that her voice speaking again? Or…

Kaidan's face behind her eyes. Oh god, how long since she'd seen him?

"Wasn't he worth it! He deserves more from you! We deserved better than you!"

The voices were bleeding together again, and she was losing the energy to try to sort them out. She felt herself slip back into silence.

"Shepard doesn't give up. Nevergives up!"

We WON! She shouted back. The feeling brought her a little closer to the surface though, the scream scorching the inside of her brain.

"Not if you run away, you don't," heat, cruelty, anger. "And quitting is just another version of running away. Dying without a god damn fight is too, so don't even think about it.

"And giving up on you means giving up on him," The voice added sharply. "He's alive because of you so don't you dare give up on him now!"

Kaidan.

She felt it then, cresting on top of the ocean, gasping for air after sinking so low in the deep.

She felt. With a scream her body woke up and she could feel her muscles again. Her bones, her skin, she could feel her organs, her emotions.

And the sheer agony of it hit her all at once, and she shouted again at the sharp and severe suffering. Unlike anything she had ever endured before.

It was then she realized she must've passed out from it during the blast. And as quickly as she had resurfaced she felt herself be pulled violently down once more, death trying to claim her again.

"No," she ground out. She was fighting it. She fought it not because of some dire reason, not because three trillions lives depended on her living, and not because ancient extragalactic war machines were going to wipe out existence. But because she was Shepard. "Failure" wasn't a word, and "give up" wasn't an option.

And she was still a soldier, and this was just another battle, perhaps the most important one of her life because it had to do with her. Not as a champion, not as commander, not as a spectre, but as a person. And for the first time in her life since she was sixteen she had to fight for something she wanted for her, and that wasn't the mission to fudge on.

The pain was excruciating. There was no way to know how much rubble and metal was buried on top of her. But it was dark, it was tight, and she was going to run out of oxygen soon if she didn't find an opening.

He head throbbed painfully inside her helmet as she tried to decide which end was up. She'd tried to run from the blast, so if she'd fallen forward then…

She tried to wriggle and turn to test the security and weight of her surroundings, only to scream in pain again almost immediately.

She was so sore, so god damn sore, and still she berated herself for wasting some of the remaining air. She'd suffocated before, it hadn't been pleasant…

But there was weakness at her feet, loose debris. She tried moving one leg, biting down on her lip almost the second she did. The shin was broken, that much she knew from experience.

She tried to steady her breathing before she attempted again, this time with the other leg. This one cramped as well, but it was usable. Tentatively, stretching and groaning out loud to keep from screaming as her muscles and bones inched this way and that, she pushed against the rock at her feet.

Nothing.

She was about to pant from the effort, but she caught herself, trying not to panic that if she didn't manage this, her revelation might not matter.

Again she prodded, more forcefully this time. It creaked and readjusted, then caught again.

She nearly growled when it got stuck again. But this was her best way out. If she was going to get more air, she would have to kick it and hard.

In her helmet she shook her head.

This is a bad idea…She told herself, before promptly (as usual), following through with her plan.

She hitched her legs as close to her body as she could and then swiftly thrust outward.

All at once a great rumble came from over head, the stone gave, and the rubble on top fell and scattered to fill the void.

And it came down right on top of her.

"Fuck!" Her whole body convulsed in the precise intense twinge of pain as a rock cascaded into place on top of her leg, pinning it to the ground. As the upper chunks began to reassemble in new positions, a second piece dug deep into her back and in doing so applying torturous pressure to her stomach and the arm trapped beneath it. Her curses and involuntary shouts brought the taste of dust, dirt, blood, and tears into her mouth as she cried out.

Most her body was pinned now, except for maybe one arm that she might be able to maneuver. If she could somehow do it without moving any other part of her….

Light. There was light!

She saw it faintly at first, unsure of what it was, but when she focused on it... Yes! In front of her! In some of the tumbling some of the stones blocking her air source must've moved.

This time she ignored her injuries as she stretched the only limb she could and started carefully pulling at the edge of the light.

There were small plinks and solid thunks as the smaller pieces of rock fell from around the opening out onto the other side. It was small, such a small hole, but she could breathe.

She nearly cried again in relief as the pink light of the setting sun filtered through the dust to her face. She could breathe now… in her relief she lay her head down, and sucked the fresh air into her lungs deeply.

But she was still pinned, and weak, and unable to move. The pain was enough to threaten her consciousness, and either out of that, or maybe coupled with pure exhaustion, and in the security of an air source, she let her darkness take her, for what she hoped would only be a moment.

"Shepard!"

She stirred. Or at least she thought she did at the voice.

"Shepard!"

She roused herself weakly. How long had she slept? Hours or days? The voice must be trying to warn her, to get her to wake up long enough to try again.

"Shepard!"

I'm going, I'm going. She answered in her mind as she began to reach the surface of cognitive thought again. As she began to feel her body once more she tried to groan, some of her limbs were numb again, but in a bad way, a dangerous way. Nerves were being pinched and cut off, and the constant pressure of the massive stone digging into her back and therefore her arm was causing an impregnable curtain of ache over the entire core of her body.

But as she tried to vocalize her discomfort, she found her lips could barely move. Her throat was thick with dust, and her tongue lay useless in her mouth. And with fear, she realized she'd been out for longer than she had initially thought.

Her head became woozy as she tried to think, without water, her body would be beginning to shut down. She made herself stay calm, but as she grew more and more aware, she learned piece by piece how much weaker she had become.

She tried to move, even enough to feel the sharp twinge that would come with bodily motion, but it didn't happen. There was only the regular (though sizeable) soreness, and… ultimately, she failed in her attempt.

That was scarier than anything. Immobilized and frozen, helpless. She's never been that way before. All that was left was the calling of her name in her head, to try to encourage her to fight, but all she could do was wriggle her fingers through her air whole, feeling the tempature difference until it would be enough to encourage her to try again.

Her fingers caught something.

"Oh my god…"

That voice wasn't hers. It wasn't even one she recognized. But it must've been her head too.

No, her fingers were being squeezed? Her mind couldn't understand what was happening, because she must've squeezed back.

"She's alive! Commander!"

She nearly groaned. There is was again, that title that rank… this person saw her as a rank, not a person-

"Where?" No, another voice answered that title. Her mind was too sluggish to understand the following shouts and scurrying, but there was the sound of thunder through the rocks as dozens of feet started moving, it made her head hurt.

Then the grind of rock and she shut her eyes tight and clenched her teeth at the noise.

"No, no, pull from the top, the whole thing is on top of her." Too many voices, too many to keep straight. Bit by bit the sharpness was lifted in to a deep resounding ache, light flooded her body and she was free of the debris that had trapped her.

The sunlight was garish and hurt her eyes, and there was a cry of relief from someone that had helped her out, but she remained weakly silent, trying to move her tongue to speak, but her mouth was too dry, and she couldn't form words. Hands began lifting her, turning her to her back, but it forced an agonized cry out of her dry scratchy throat that must've scared them, because she was placed back on the ground almost instantly, but her back was on something warm, something firm, but soft…

"Shepard…" That voice, so rich, her weak eyes looked up, and hands carefully tugged at her helmet. She felt her neck whine and she whimpered, but whoever it was had succeeded in removing it. "Oh Shepard… "

"Kaidan…" she mumbled weakly, not really seeing him yet, she wasn't even sure it was him, but she was hoping. Praying, that it was.

"Water, we need water!" He called quickly as she tried to speak. One of his crew handed him a canteen, and with his free hand her very delicately helped her drink. It couldn't have been more than tap water, but damn it tasted good.

He set it down after giving her enough for her mouth and throat to try working again and she slowly had time to realize that she wasn't just dreaming. "Kaidan..." she tried to say again, still roughly, but more clear than before.

"It's me, Shepard… I'm here. I've got you in my arms, and I'm holding your hand, can you feel me?" his voice sounded so broken, so scared. She'd never heard that before.

"No…" she admitted, "I can't."

There was a sharp intake of breath and her cradle shook for a moment. "Can you open your eyes a little more for me? We need to start assessing your injuries okay…?"

He called to someone else to get a stretcher while she tried. Her lids were weighed down with grime, exhaustion, and dust, and they felt so heavy.

"Come on, Shepard," he pleaded with her. She was conscious enough to figure out his request was more important than just trying to figure out how out of it she was.

She forced them open further with an audible whimper. And she could see more of his face.

He smiled but she could see there was glistening in his eyes. "There you are, Shepard…"

She could see his fingers trace her cheek, but she couldn't feel it. "We've just injected you with some morphine and some Phylactoralix, it's going to put you to sleep, and you'll wake up on my ship, okay?"

She nodded carefully. "What… what happened?" she tried to ask.

"You've been out of contact for days everyone said you must've died but I-" He was breathing too rapidly, too desperately now to form calm sentences. He was emotional, she could see that.

"You came for me?" The words sounded thick in her throat, and rasped through dust and dirt coating to roughly escape from chapped and busted came here? Beyond darkspace? To this Hellish place?

He nodded rapidly. He was holding the hand of her good arm to his chest, dragging her hand up in a path over his cheek and then back down to his chest in distress. His other hand went to her face, somehow combing her cheeks and her matted hair at the same time, nodding again. "Of course, I did…"

His voice choked on the last sentence and he looked down as if to try to regain his composure, but only her body lay beneath him, an odd cough or cry slipped his way from his chest. She felt it through her hand.

"I love you," she tried. Though it was mumbled and dull and not nearly as enthusiastic sounding as she would've liked. But at her admission his eyes shot to hers, and she knew he'd heard her.

He kissed her hand then, the plan, the knuckles, the wrist and then the palm again as if deciding he hadn't had enough the first time. "We're going to get you out of here, okay? I'm going to take care of you."

The drugs were kicking, and as if those words were already true, she no longer feared the darkness that crept around her. She try to meet his gaze for as long as she could, until her eyes fell closed again, this time in warmth and comfort, the last known notification of her senses the firm and kind squeezing in her hand.

This time, when darkness sank in, her whole soul welcomed it. She felt safe, she felt loved, and for the first time since she put on a uniform, and went about the journey that had always been destined to be hers... She felt free.