As promised here's the "epilogue". As I said, the story is done. But this is honestly where I see the rest of Shepard's life. If you want a different ending,… it's just as cannon as this one. PM me, I might write several. I dunno. I almost feel like doing something with Garrus in an alternate post-game fic, but I don't want to retread old ground (which it would inevitably do). Though Skyrim beckons too. Anyway I Hope you enjoy.

Also, a quick message from Krow Blood, my nearly silent partner in crime. He rightfully takes half the credit for all that gets published on this profile.

"Happy newyears faithful readers! This year begins with the end of The Fourth Ooption, and during it we will, hopefully, end Mutatis Mutandis. I cannot take credit for TFO, since most of our chats about it ended up devolving mostly into discussions about galactic Socio-political madness. In any case, what I can take the credit for is mostly prodding this slow sod into actually writing, and threatening to buy a Cattle prod and a plane ticket to force him to write if necessary."

And without further ado, the end of this particular continuity. Thanks for sticking with it this time. Back to Fallout.

My Name is Garrus Shepard. Over the course of my life, that has raised many eyebrows. Few humans have a Turian first name, but I'm proud of mine. I know who Garrus Vakarian is, as does the entire galaxy; the most celebrated Turian war hero in the history of their race. But despite all that my brother David still had a far easier time during our school years. My biotic abilities also made me stand out.

I'm an historian by trade, specializing in the Reaper cycles. My Brother David went straight into the Alliance military, against my father's wishes, I might add. But the Reapers always frightened and fascinated me. How could they not, having read all of my father's books? I suppose in some small way, it's paying homage to his accomplishments. He saved the galaxy, after all, and as my mother was very fond of telling me, he did it for David and I. Though I didn't live through the terror and hopelessness of the Reaper war, in some small way my research helps to understand his accomplishments, and honor his memory. The information I am about to impart is taken both from his journals –may he forgive me for it- and my mother's testament.

As I grew older, I always regretted that his account ends abruptly as it does. He wakes up in a London hospital, reunites with my mother –sharing that kiss that so well defined every sentient being's relief- and that, as they say, is that. The missing section is, of course, his life after the war ended. I don't think he would have allowed me to alter his work, or add to it in any way. However his publisher has kindly allowed me make this posthumous addendum to the latest edition.

I recall one of my earliest memories of my father. It has stuck with me my entire life, though the true significance did not occur to me until much later. He caught my brother and I playing with a model destroyer class Reaper. The toy was fully pose-able. A small red button on the back, if pressed, would emit their signature blaring noise, and the red eye would light up. The toys sold very well across all species, particularly amongst Krogan children, who have a well-documented habit of stomping on them and posting the relevant videos on the extranet.

My classmates were playing with them, and when one of them gave it to me as a birthday gift, I thought nothing of it. Yet I remember with surprising clarity the moment that my father found out. David was handling the Reaper itself. My mother had taught me some basic control over my Biotics, and I was using it to levitate the small model Normandy across our bed, towards the Reaper. There was an argument outside our door as my mother tried to stop him. I believe she was trying to break the news gently, as it were, lest it catch him by surprise.

His face was pale, with a look of such disgust and fury the likes of which I have rarely seen in my lifetime. I cannot remember exactly what he said to us, but I certainly remember his anger, and the way he was so very offended by our simple plastic bobbles.

It took me a very long time to understand and eventually accept that his anger was not at either David, nor myself, but instead at the fact that the Reapers- which had been such galactic bogeymen, such a defining turning point in the history of our civilization- had been reduced to trinkets sold on shelves by entrepreneurs with no sense of respect, nor perspective. In his mind, they had become a joke To us they were fantastical nightmarish monsters. A modern version of the folktale Dragons of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Garrus Vakarian, John Shepard and the Normandy were the equivalent knights in shining armour. Such were the perceptions we had as young boys. It was only as I began to travel the galaxy, researching the Reaper cycles that I understood exactly what those horrific machines are- and they are still out there, somewhere. To think otherwise would be foolish, but I digress. This addendum is about my father, and all I can recall of his time after the Reaper war.

The War was a weight on his shoulders for the rest of his life, and one –by my mother's apparently frustrated admission - he insisted on bearing alone whenever possible. Everyone knows of my mother, of course. Miranda Lawson. Her beauty was as legendary as her hatred of the paparazzi trying to capture it on camera. That hatred was a trait both of my parents shared. As is well known, they stepped off of the SSV Normandy SR-2 and settled on Eden Prime, which they called home for the rest of his life. They traveled quite frequently, to visit old friends, I suppose. My father did his best to avoid honors and celebratory medal ceremonies and such. For himself, at least. He was perfectly willing to make great speeches on the sacrifices of his comrades and the bravery and unity of the Galaxy in the face of such a threat.

It is interesting to note that he showed borderline contempt for a lot of the non-combat personnel who served during the Reaper war, and was particularly hostile to those of Asari and Salarian heritage. I believe that on some level, he felt they hadn't given enough to be treated with the same respect as Human, Turian, Batarian, and Krogan combat veterans. It frustrated him endlessly that the public did not seem to recognize, or care about the differences in the different races' contributions to the war effort. Of even more interest is that despite the fact they contributed the least, he held a certain affection toward those species which formed the Collective of Minor races.

But no matter what he said, and where they went, my family always came back to Eden Prime. It was my mother, not my father, who had had the easier time settling into their new lives. She told me of the nightmares she had eventually forced him to impart to her. Those nightmares didn't help him, of course. The same dream had clung to him for a decade, leaving him with a fearful heartache at least once a week. He abhorred waking my mother up with his screams and frantic movement, and to her dismay he frequently checked into a hotel if he felt he were robbing her of too much sleep.

The dream itself was apparently the same one. At least once every few nights, and the most horrible thing about it was the overwhelming sense of helplessness and dread it imparted to him. It always started on earth, in the small apartment the Alliance had kept him locked up in after the Bahak relay incident. Things would play out fairly close to the way they had in reality. He would be summoned to the council chambers. Sometimes his entire crew including Thane Krios, Mordin Solus, and Garrus Vakarian would be there to greet him. Sometimes it was Ashley Williams. Sometimes it was my mother. No matter whom, it would always end the same way. Halfway through the council hearing, the Reapers' horrible horns would blare and the machines would descend from the heavens and tear his tiny world to shreds. The horrific part was that in the dream, he always knew they were coming. No matter who he warned, no matter how much he shouted, no matter what he tried, they would still land, they would still slaughter, and they would still destroy. And every single time, it would end with him escaping aboard the ghostly Normandy. Fatalistic depression would engulf him as he was forced again and again to face the coming storm. The complexity of the Genophage cure, the stupidity of the battle for Rannoch, the horror of Sanctuary…the final battle in London where the Reapers had even managed to steal hope. The battle where Garrus Vakarian, my namesake, died. All the death, suffering, the hopeless odds and the frantic unlikely fight for survival were always yet to come. He could never escape it. Never completely move past it. His own mind wouldn't let him. Those memories were with him daily, distracting him and preventing him from ever fully being with his family, where he belonged. By his own private admission, there were days when he wished more than anything else that he could cut into his own skull and gouge out the memories. It was incredible, the amount of stress the reaper war was still capable of inflicting upon him, and by extension all of us, so many years after its conclusion.

He'd found the only real trick to avoiding the dream was spending three quarters of an hour listening to classical music before he crawled into bed. One night several months after they'd set themselves up in their apartment, my mother had insisted that he sit with her through all four of Vivaldi's seasons. She had purchased a top-grade sound system, and wanted my grandmother's first gift to be the trial run.

My mother still treasures that copy, even to this day. Hannah was the first real motherly figure my own mother had known, and the two of them shared a very close relationship. Nearly as close as Auntie Ori's. Hannah Shepard's death was very hard on my mother, but I digress.

That night, after listening to Vivaldi, was the soundest sleep Father had experienced since learning of the Reapers, and afterwards he hunted down every piece of classical music he could possibly find, starting with the rest of Vivaldi's work, Then moving on to Handel and Bach. He left the Baroque period shortly thereafter and moved on to Beethoven, Shubert, Strauss, and Chopin. Mother had been delighted with the new direction his tastes had turned, and had happily sent him all of her favorites with several comprehensive, cross-referenced lists, her 'secondary' composers, and recommended playlists.

My Mother is a meticulously organized person. Something my brother and I frequently rebelled against in our teenage years. Though I have apologized to her many times over the past forty years, one of my greatest childhood regrets is comparing her overbearing love of both us to the controlling lunacy her own father had exacted upon her. That moment was the closest my father ever came to striking me. He was not an abusive man, by any means, and was a kind and loving human being most of the time, but there were a few things he would never ever tolerate as long as he lived, one of them being the slightest word said against my mother. He would go to great extremes to protect her, to the point of firing sniper rounds at particularly aggressive Paparazzi. He used his unrevoked Spectre status to sometimes violently override and shut down any attempts at probing into her background. It was through this protection and vehement defense that she largely escaped the persecution which so many other Cerberus Operatives suffered. But I fear I am getting off toping yet again.

My father happily swallowed every moment of every Classical piece my mother recommended to him, always downplaying the real reason for his interest though he suspected that deep down she already knew and was trying to help. Her own accounts have confirmed this to be true.

If anything in the world revealed his inability to let go, it was his bookshelf. He kept it in the living room, storing its contents behind a hardened plastic door after my brother and I had arrived. Garrus Vakarian's visor was the centerpiece, mounted on a custom-made stand. It was given to me as a gift on my graduation from the Thessia Historical College. My father knew I would take good care of it, and I have. However while it was in his care, he surrounded it with various bits of memorabilia he had managed to keep; his N7 tags, the helmet from his N7 armour, and a few other odds and ends. The books themselves had started as a joke. Every time his birthday rolled around, my mother -knowing how much he hated all the propaganda which had sprung up in the wake of the War- purchased a few 'informative' volumes about the Reaper war. The war was frequently analyzed by armchair experts who had sat it out from the safety of Admiral Hackett's fleet. Most of them had never even seen a husk in person, never stared up into the towering red eye of a destroyer, yet somehow they all knew beyond any shadow of a doubt exactly what had won the war.

The popularity of these volumes had irritated my father to the point where he'd fought back, with a little help, penning his own book. It was titled Shortfall: How the Alliance failed us all, and contained his own account of the Reaper war, starting from that fateful day in Vancouver when Admiral Anderson had come to call. He had enlisted the help of a reporter named Khalisah al-Jilani, and the two of them had bonded over their mutual distaste for politicians and bureaucracy. I met Al-Jilani far later as part of my research. We had coffee and an excellent discussion about the Quarian/Geth commune, and it's feud with the Krogan expansionists. While helping him write that book, she had gained a deeply held respect for my father. The book itself was a bestseller. It had been translated into nearly every language in existence, and left him with a large enough fortune to resurrect himself, should the issue ever have arisen again. A few intelligent investments later had found them owning an enormous condominium in the center of Eden Prime's capital. Less than two minutes from the hospital where my Mother had found work using a few of Father's old contacts as references.

Then there were the vids. My father mercilessly chased down and sued any studio trying to use his likeness and story. As a result, while plenty of vids exist about the Reaper war, none of them cover the Normandy's involvement. As far as I know, being excluded did not particularly bother any of his old crew. Not Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy, nor Jeff Moreau, Nor James Vega. I don't believe anyone else's opinions mattered to my father. Aside from my Mother's, obviously. I have often wondered what would have happened if she had told him to sell the rights. I suspect he would have.

A lot of very influential businessmen –not to mention fans- had been upset by the decision, but my Father had stood his ground. One of his deepest fears was the thought of consumerism draining the significance of the war by turning it into a 'pop-culture phenomenon' as demonstrated by the reaper toys. He was not going to stand for the memories of those who had died –Garrus Vakarian in particular- being slighted in such a manner.

After learning of his opinions, the Media had never truly left him alone. The Paparazzi had been following him from the start, though he'd sent them a message with a few well-placed shots from his old sniper rifle. He had hurt a few, sending more than one of them into the ER- straight to Doctor Miranda Lawson's more than capable hands. Immoral? Probably. Illegal? Not so much. The council had never actually revoked his Spectre status, trusting him instead to use his discretion. But after a short time, the reporters and investigative journalists had learned that respectful silence and modest requests for 'a few moments of your time' would at least allow one to escape without a bloody nose.

While my mother had prospered, putting her varied skill sets to use as one of the hospital's most accomplished surgeons, the Reaper war had left John Shepard in a rather difficult position. His main source of income was the book, but he'd started a side business as a security consultant, assisting forces trying to retake ground from the Reaper remnants. He knew his contributions and tactical advice, though sometimes no more than a few pages of text in an extranet message, had saved many lives.

Boredom had eventually lead him back to the keyboard and he'd penned and researched two more books. One of them, Cerberus, was a comprehensive history of the titular organization, with full commentary from all the surviving members he could find including my mother. As a bonus, John had thrown in his own experiences working with Cerberus to take down the Collectors, finally offering the many curious readers an explanation for his public sympathy for the organization. This time, he had included passages and comments from Tali, Joker, and Karin Chakwas, who unfortunately did not live to see it published. Without fail, he visited her grave once a year, up to his own death, and drank a glass of Serrice Ice brandy.

His third book, Archangel, had been written alongside Diana Allers. It covered Garrus Vakarian, their brotherly relationship, and Shepard's first full account of his pursuit of Saren along with abridged accounts of the Collector mission and the Reaper war. Both books, along with the trilogy, sold as a boxed set –Archangel, Cerberus, and Shortfall- had earned my parents a second fortune, all of which had been donated to those Veterans whose lives had been shattered by the Reaper war.

All in all, they had done rather well. They had more money than they would ever need, and plenty of time, though the latter changed after their first child, my brother David. I came shortly after. Despite his personal struggle with those memories, my Father and mother raised us rather well. Generally, my mother was the stricter of the two, the tradeoff for the extra freedom my father allowed was that whenever he required our attention or cooperation, he got it.

I remember when I brought home my first girlfriend- a young Asari, barely forty-six years old. I was in my early twenties at the time. My father treated her with outright hostility, and it drove a deep wedge between us for a very long time. One I have since come to regret. He was always very distrustful of Asari, and Salarians as well. Even up to the day he died.

He never set foot on the citadel again, though it had been cleaned and repaired within ten years of the battle for earth. I visited it when I was twenty-four, and remember being entranced by the architecture, the smoothness of the station and the idealism of the multi-racial inhabitants. My father was disgusted by my infatuation with it. I made the mistake of commenting on the freedom and joy of living at the heart of galactic civilization. He advised that if I ever wanted to experience the true freedom of living on a space station, I should visit Omega.

So I did, and have never been able to stand the thought of living on a space station since.

The Citadel council changed over the years. The original members as he apparently chose, were replaced one by one as each race's internal political structures recovered. Urdnot Wrex is still the head council member, I believe, as is councilor Tevos. But other have changed. My father was offered the position of Humanity's representative many times of the course of his life, and ever y time he rejected it with more venom than the last.

John Shepard died on October 23, 2237, age 83. He was buried in the Turian Blackwatch Cemetery on Palaven, in the same section as Garrus Vakarian. My mother had requested the action, and the Turian government had obliged. His resting place has become a galactic mecca for Quarians, Turians, Krogan, and Geth across the galaxy. I have even observed large amounts of Asari and Salarians in attendance on the few occasions I have been invited there to speak on Reclamation Day, the anniversary of the end of the Reaper war.

Many news outlets were not kind to him after his death. His treatment of the Media certainly did not help, and I fear that the petty and bitter nature of his opinions and actions after the war in many ways overshadowed his accomplishments before and during. It was a weight on his shoulders and a stress on our family. It was without a doubt, the most defining event in his life. One that included two children and a partnership with a devoted and beautiful woman. Yet for all he gained I can't help but feel that the Reaper War, as it did to all touched by it, and by war and violence in general, took away as much as it gave, if not more.

I can't help but feel that in some way, he was robbed.

We all were.

A user named Skllhrt very kindly allowed me the use of his art for the cover of this story. please go check out his profile. There might be cookies :)