Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect. All associated characters belong to BioWare. Do not sue.

Author's Note: This is for Roughdozer, who gave me the challenge for this chapter, and who has supported my original novel without fail. You've been an awesome friend.

Sound the Bugle: Part II

When the door chimed, Shepard called for it to open almost immediately. Her voice still hadn't completely returned to normal, but in the eighteen hours she'd been aboard Kaidan's ship, she was feeling a lot better.

A lot better meaning her entire torso was wrapped in bandages under the shirt he had given her, and that one of her legs was broken and in stint and brace.

She was propped up against the headboard of the bed, reading a book someone had written about her childhood, claiming to also be a Mindior survivor, who then took interviews from people who had known her from Elysium.

It wasn't half bad. A little inaccurate at parts but, she supposed, nothing truly ever was. Maybe when things settled down she'd pay the author a visit and set the record straight.

When Kaidan entered she gave him the smallest and gentlest of smiles. Now that the effect of the drugs and relief of being found had settled (but not diminished), seeing him was a beautiful gift slightly tainted with the guilt of regret.

He came to sit on the side of the bed, gently lifting her hands long enough to look at what book she had pilfered from his library.

"Ah, a good piece," he ventured, thoughtfully. "It made you out to be more of an idol than a human. Not that I'm discrediting what you've meant to the galaxy. It just didn't make me feel closer to you, as I had hoped it would when I purchased it."

She tilted her head sadly, still trying to smile. "When did you buy it?"

"Last year," his velvet voice rumbled. "About a year after you'd been declared missing in action, this came out."

His voice drifted, and they were both left in the void, reliving the distance, the time, and all the other things they had lost in this journey.

Since Shepard had come-to again, the galaxy seemed to spin slower. It was over. It was all over, and it put into perspective just how hard she had really fought. And just how much she had really lost…

Just like she had realized, buried under that Reaper rubble and she couldn't rejoin the universe after something like that. Something that huge and you can't go home again.

And now it was just this. He sat there, watching her, as they both felt the heaviness of everything that had stood in their way of being together was lifted from their shoulders. But the weight still ghosted there, with the memory of how much had already been stolen from them.

"Kaidan, I…"

"I know you did what you had to," he said, a weakness surrounding the irises of his eyes. "I knew if there was a way, you would find it. And you have. You'd accomplished all you wanted to."

"Not everything…" she breathed. She set the book down next to her. Technically they were in his quarters, but only because he'd given them up for her to recover in. He'd hardly been able to spend time with her, too busy with the aftershocks of what had happened.

She was starting to get the impression he was the new poster child for the Alliance, and had a lot of reports to file. Still, she thought fondly, he'd look a whole damn lot better on the ads than she would.

"So much has changed…" Kaidan tried, looking as if he wanted to touch her but unsure if it would be okay. "I don't even recognize it out there anymore. The political, cultural, physical, and emotional recovery will take centuries."

"At least there will be a chance to recover…" she said, a twinge of worry in her voice.

"You did good, Shepard," Kaidan's brow furrowed at her tone. "You save everyone."

"For how long?" She met his eyes. "I… I stopped the Reapers, yes. And now there's nothing and no one to keep the galaxy from tearing itself apart."

She united the people under one goal, against one enemy. And peace would follow for many years, maybe even centuries. But it was in the nature of a free-willed person to self-preserve. And war would soon enough begin again, against the other species.

"I feel like I just took away the hedge clippers. Things may grow wild and chaotic now."

Kaidan seemed hurt, even angry, but he appeared to try to cut her some slack for the repetitive blows to her cranium. "I can't believe you're saying this."

Shepard tilted her head, shaking it a little. "Kaidan, I'm not saying the Reapers should exist, come on. This is a philosophical discussion. What they did was so terrible and disgusting I can't even talk about it anymore, I'm tired of the whole mess…

"But someone, somewhere, created them. Someone along the line grew so powerful and so advanced as to make the machine that would take over, probably kill their creators, and begin their own cycle of growth and reproduction. And whose to say this won't happen again, in another millennia, from humans, or Salarians, or Turians? The Quarians have already simulated something similar…

"I'm scared, Kaidan. Of what we are."

Finally, in understanding, Kaidan bowed his head. Tentatively, he stretched his calloused fingers towards hers, and she laced her hand through them.

"We can't… do anything about that, Shepard. We have to hope for the best. If good people like you and I still exist in that millennium, then they'll fight. And if the bad wins out then maybe whatever destruction occurs to an evil society is well justified. We can sit here and hypothesize all we want but it's not our battle. We're done."

In contemplation, Shepard stretched out a finger tucked through the hair around his ear, feeling so much love for him still she knew trying to hide it would be ridiculous. She didn't feel like hiding anymore anyway. That part of her was done too.

"I am done, Kaidan. And I think I know how I'd like to spend the rest of my life, in peace."

There was finally a small tilt to his lips. "You have a plan, Shepard?"

She smiled gently and inclined her head next to her for him to lay with her. He did, sensing from her, she was sure, that she wasn't going to question 'them' anymore.

As soon as he was settled, she rolled and turned into him, cuddling into his chest and arms, which he had carefully snaked around her as to not harm her.

She didn't answer for a long time. It had been years since she'd been his arms, and it felt like coming home. He still smelled like him, felt like him… It was like the first time she'd been this way, but better because there was no encroaching battle on its way to end it too soon.

"I spent every single day missing you," she said into his shoulder. "Every damn day knowing this was where I was supposed to be. I never thought I would get it again."

There was a small shudder from the man she was burrowed into, and his breath shook a little across her ear, as he squeezed her tighter, but remained silent.

"Had we been any other two people in the galaxy, I wouldn't have let anything come between you and I being together. I quite literally felt like I didn't have a choice. And that's the hardest thing I've had to sacrifice for this war.

"I just… I want you to know that I never stopped belonging to you, Kaidan."

"Shepard…" he said her name, but no words came after. He held her, and stroked her hair, and breathed her in.

A part of her wanted to hear the words back, but in her heart it didn't matter. She already knew. He'd come to find her when no one else had. It was in the way he held her, the way he said her name. And even if he didn't feel the same, it wouldn't have changed her mind about saying the words.

If he did feel the same… there would be many years to come for him to both say and show it.

"Who all knows I'm alive?" Shepard asked softly, nuzzling his neck with her lips and nose.

He swallowed, fingers tangling in her hair softly while he pet her. "Anderson, the council. Hackett, though the order has come down that an announcement not be made until you make it to the citadel. I'm sure Liara knows by now, in her way."

"If I ask her, she won't share that information."

Kaidan gently leaned her head back so he could see her face. She felt his thumb brush over her cheek bone to catch the silent tears that had snuck out. Not necessarily joy or sadness, just an excess of emotion.

"What are your thoughts?"

His brown eyes were embracing her in warmth, so accepting now of all that had happened and all that would go unsaid simply because it didn't need to now. They didn't need to talk about the hurt that had been caused between them because it was over now. And now that they actually had a future, it didn't need to be discussed further.

"Go away with me, Kaidan," she pleaded. "I can't go back there. I don't want to wear a uniform again, no armor, it's time to hang up the dog tags.

"We'll let the Council know I'm retiring. Anderson, Hackett, we'll tell Joker, and Garrus, Tali, all our friends that I'm alive, but to keep it a secret. Let the universe think I died for the cause."

A part of her had, the part that had lusted for battle.

"And you can retire too, and we'll go to some nowhere colony, maybe one of the ones that was taken by the Collectors, and try to rebuild it. The quiet life, you and me. Helping on a small scale…."

"Have a family…?" He asked, testing her.

She'd never let herself think about it when he asked about what she wanted before. She'd never in a million years think it would come to pass. And she didn't want to miss it when it didn't.

"Yes, Kaidan," she breathed. "We'll be normal humans. No more war."

Kaidan was silent for a long time, leaving her hanging, pleading with her eyes as he combed the hair from her forehead for the longest time before answering.

"I think the council will agree you've earned it."

"Is that a yes?" She breathed excitedly, lips already smiling.

"Yes," he finally said, mirth reaching his eyes and making her heart swell.

Finally… she was going to get the chance to be human.

He kissed her, repetitively, and happily, all over her face, peppering her with love, one kiss for every time he had said he'd loved her and she couldn't hear it.

And if you asked Shepard years later, even after every battle scar and gunshot she went through to save the galaxy from complete destruction, she would say this day was when her life truly began.

In the years to come, the universe went through its first joint-intergalactic renaissance. It seemed every race had been changed by the Great Reaper War.

The Salarians and the Krogan made a pact, a cure for the genophage in exchange for Urdnot Wrex limiting the season for reproduction. Wrex agreed in the effort for peace, and soon Krogan numbers stabilized at a constant and slightly exponential rate like all the other races.

The Geth withdrew from the Quarian homeworld, leaving to make a place for themselves on an unsettled planet where they could evolve by themselves, in peace, and the Quarians returned to their place of birth. In a few decades, they were able to feel the sun on their faces again, some, for the very first time.

The Rachni, after being properly thanked for their aid, returned to their world as well. This time, however, the council offered to allow one to stay as a diplomat, and ambassador, the first step towards welcoming them as a part of the galactic community.

Records were sealed on every soldier, human, and alien directly involved with the fight against the Reapers. It seemed these people were the most eager to find a quiet life, and only a few, Garrus Vakarian, Urdnot Wrex, and Tali Zorah, took a direct role in the new government and direction of their people.

Miranda and Jacob returned to Freedom's Progress to help the colonists there, then moving to Horizon, then Ferris Fields, each time helping to set up a network for defenses, and finding ways to take pride in helping humanity's progression in a more personal way.

Kaidan Alenko's filed was tightly and cleanly classified. Only awards, special commendations and a small note about early retirement could be found even by the highest military personnel. And even these could only guess he was tired of the fighting.

For those that new of his love of Shepard they assumed her death for the victory of civilization had turned him into a proud but regretful hermit.

Shepard's file could not be located.

A year or so had passed before a survivor of Mindior got a package with four notebooks inside, all the details and answers to any possible interview questions she might have had for Shepard neatly scrawled inside and anonymously donated by "someone who knew Shepard closely".

Councilor Anderson, though in a position above speculation, would every once in awhile make unlogged calls to the Terminus systems. And every so often one of the original crew would find a need to go to Illium, and manage to refuel in the same most mundane and infant of colonies.

Honor's Landing, was a baby colony quite literally starting with the arrival of two retired commanders, and two ship crew's worth of humans, all of whom accepted and praised the leadership of their captains. Officially, the colony was headed by Kelly Chambers, who eventually was joined by an unexpected and unplanned romance with Jeff Joker Moreau.

But Kaidan and Shepard remained close by to aid them; building, unpacking, resupplying, doing the heavy lifting until Shepard herself was too heavy with child to do so.

The people of Honor's Landing led happy, safe, and small lives. And eventually the colony would be in the history books as the one most representative of the strength and determination of humans, through and after the war that could have destroyed us all.

To the rest of the Galaxy, Commander Shepard was a woman immortal in memory. The pinnacle of not just humans, but of what spirit had to offer, and determination. A picture of the best in all people, whether wrapped in scales, feathers, or envirosuits.

So many of her deeds went unnoted by most. But there were stories of the compassion of Commander Shepard, when a Drell told his own son that the woman had reunited him with his father in the midst of it all.

A young mother, raising her son with the help of her brother in law, realized only after it all that the same woman that had saved them had convinced her to do the gene therapy that saved her son.

Everyone that have ever come in contact with the commander, no matter how brief, shared the stories after she had passed, feeling honored to have known her.

It was in this way, that through the steady course of time, and by the iron pen of history, that Commander Shepard became a legend.

Thank you all for the read! And thank you again, Roughdozer, I hope this meets your satisfaction.

Also, if Mass Effect is a style you like, you may like my original series "Lankora's Legacy: The End of the Line" which can be found on my Deviantart, and .

Peace and love!

-Zing-baby