Title: Mass Effect: Rebirth

Rating: M

Disclaimers: I don't own Mass Effect or any of its sequels. That wonderful distinction belongs to Bioware. I merely borrow the characters for awhile and put them back, slightly used.

Spoilers: Mass Effect 3 spoilers abound (Don't complain to me if you chose to ignore this and had your game spoiled.

Additional disclaimers: I love the Mass Effect Series. That said, I was absolutely heartbroken (Hear that Bioware? You broke my damn heart) at the ending of ME 3. This is my solution to the conundrum that the ending presented.

For the purposes of this story, Joker and the Normandy (along with all its mysterious inhabitants), did not suddenly crash land on a mysterious planet (Seriously, wtf was that?)

Everything else is fair game.

She had been sleeping a long time.

Here, in the end of all things, she dreamed.

At first, the dreams were blurry, indistinct. Feelings more than emotions. Pain. Sorrow.

But there was joy there. Love.

But there was also emptiness.

As she walked among the sea of familiar forms, she felt an unmistakable dread settle over her body. Faces old and new smiled and nodded as she walked by. Her mother. Sister. Kaiden. Joker. Dr. Chakwas. Ashley. Garrus. The list could go on and on. But there was one face was inexplicably missing.

And in the end, it was the only one that truly mattered.

"You did it, Shepard."

The voice was warm. Fatherly. Familiar.

"Anderson?"

So then she was dead.

His form was blurry, indistinct at first, shrouded in a thick white mist, droplets seeming to coalesce and then separate, a blurring, shifting form that refused to completely emerge from the shadows.

"You did it, Shepard. The Reapers have been destroyed..."

Somehow, the victory seemed hollow, her stomach twisting as she thought of all she had sacrificed, all she had lost to get here.

"...at what cost, Anderson?" the pale eyes lifted, green gaze blurring with unshed tears. "The geth, EDI, I couldn't save them, save any of them."

"There will always be casualties, Shepard."

"I committed genocide!"

Butcher of Torfan.

Shut the hell up!

"Did you have a choice?"

A pause, during which Shepard frowned. She had destroyed all synthetic life. It had been that, or try to control the fucking Reapers (and she still hadn't been entirely convinced she could control one) despite what that child (had it been a child?) had said. That, or...

Why didn't I go with the last option?

"Good question. Why didn't you?"

Flashing a scowl at the figure in front of her, Shepard's eyes narrowed in irritation. "Because I couldn't force that change on the entire galaxy. It wouldn't have been..."

...right. Or would it?

"An eternity of peace, harmony between organic and synthetic life? What's not to like?"

"Because it's not life!" Balled fists curled up in frustration, the pronouncement spoken with such startling vehemence that it surprised even herself. Tears began to sting behind her swollen eyelids. "Life is about struggling and fighting. There's chaos there, but there's peace, and happiness, and joy." A pause. "It's about loving someone so much that you can't bear to see them go... It's..." the grief was overwhelming, nearly rending her in two as she fell to her knees, regarding the entity in front of her with a reddened gaze. "It's..."

A long pause, her own words echoing inside her mind.

"I'm not dead." her voice was flat, devoid of inflection, staring numbly at her gore encrusted hands, her tattered clothes, realizing, for the first time, that the figure that stood in front of her bore no sign of injury. No bruises. No blood. "Anderson, I saw you die."

Anderson smiled. "Anderson did die. But I don't think I needed to tell you that I'm not Anderson."

Shepard laughed mirthlessly. "Who the fuck are you, then? God? Or am I hallucinating?"

"I don't know. Are you?"

"Quit answering my questions with more questions!"

Not-Anderson smiled. "My dear, all the best questions are answered with more questions."

"So if I'm not dead and not hallucinating, where the hell am I?"

Not-Anderson leaned forward, resting his chin on an uprighted fist. "That is the very question you need to answer."

Shepard sighed, her head dropping. At the corners of her temples, she could feel the throbbing begin.

"Let me make sure I've got this straight." She pressed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose. "The Reapers are dead."

"Yes."

"The Geth are dead."

"Yes."

"EDI is dead and the Mass Relays are destroyed."

"Yes."

"But I'm still here."

"Appears so."

"How is that even possible? When Cerberus remade me half of my parts were fucking synthetic! That was the point. All synthetic life was supposed to die."

Not-Anderson just smiled at her.

"So the kid just lied? And give me a fucking straight answer."

Not-Anderson shrugged. "As you wish. The answer is no."

"Then how the fuck am I standing here?"

"My dear, you just answered your own question."

Shepard frowned, her mind mulling over the questions in her mind. "I just..." her voice trailed off. Half my parts are synthetic.

Half...but not all.

"I'm still alive."

Not-Anderson nodded.

"Then why am I still here?"

Not-Anderson leaned in, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Good question. Why are you?"

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Shepard."

There was no response, but then, she hadn't really expected one. Her lover hadn't woken, not even once, since the Reapers had been defeated. At first, it had not been by choice, keeping Shepard in a medically induced coma had had been the only thing keeping her alive, according to doctor Chakwas, who was leading the team of medical professionals in charge of her care.

Liara T'Soni buried her face in her hands, rubbing tiredly at eyes that burned from never-ending clouds of ash and smoke from pyres that burned around the clock. The makeshift field hospital that housed the galaxy's savior was in the middle of a heavily fortified Alliance base that had been established in the chaos of the weeks that had followed that final memorable battle.

A battle that Liara barely remembered thanks to the degree of injuries she sustained. One minute, they had been speeding towards Harbinger at what amounted to a last ditch suicide run, the next she had been waking in this very facility, under Chakwas' cautious eyes, and they were telling her that Shepard was dead.

A lump formed in Liara's throat at the memories. It had taken three Asari orderlies and two doctors to keep her pinned to the bed when she'd been told about Shepard. She had refused to believe it, screaming at the top of her lungs even until they had been forced to sedate her. When she'd been awoken, Ashley Williams was sitting in a wheelchair in the corner of the room, bruised head to toe and covered in bandages.

One look into Ashley's eyes had confirmed the worst, and Liara had simply burst into tears.

"I saw her into the beam," Ashley whispered, her eyes bloodshot and reddened from her own private battle with grief. "I..." the Lieutenant Commander drew a deep, shuddering breath, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. "She contacted Hackett from inside the crucible." The brunette had clamped a hand over her mouth, a choked sob erupting from deep within her chest. "It exp..."

It exploded.

Liara had watched footage recorded from Hackett's flagship nearly a dozen times, listened to the garbled remnants of her beloved's voice confirming her location nearly twice that, sinking deeper and deeper into inconsolable grief.

A week passed, then another. Cleanup crews began to shift through the rubble, identifying what remains there were among the millions who died.

Then, the unexplainable happened. Cleanup crews searching near the site of Harbinger's fallen shell made the most startling discovery of all.

Someone had survived.

The armor was the ruined remains of a burnt shell, and at first, the body had nearly been mistaken for one of the many husks that littered the battlefield.

It had moved.

Startled shouts had echoed across the fields, a full squadron of Alliance marines closing in on the remains before turning the body over.

Only to find see the face of their much-beloved Commander Shepard.

She was alive, though just barely.

Exactly how Shepard had survived was a mystery. With no food, no water, and none of her Cerberus upgrades, by all rights she should have been dead a dozen times over.

Liara had refused to believe it, not until Chakwas had wheeled the Commander's broken body into her room.

Since then, she had refused to leave Shepard's side, even for a moment.

A choked sob escaped Liara's lips. Goddess.

"How is she?"

Liara looked over her shoulder, blue eyes studying the familiar form of Ashley Williams by the door. Still in a wheelchair as a result of her injuries she'd sustained in the final battle, Ashley had come by nearly every day to check on her beloved commander, ever since Shepard's body had been pulled out of the rubble.

"I..." a pause. "I'm not sure," Liara admitted. "She hasn't woken... Not since..."

"What did Miss Cerberus have to say?"

Liara frowned. Ashley had been vehemently antagonistic to Miranda ever since the former Cerberus operative had arrived on Hackett's flagship within a day after Shepard's body had been recovered. How she had learned about Shepard's recovery even Liara wasn't certain, but the former Cerberus operative had risked everything, including a lengthy incarceration for her previous involvement in the terrorist organization, to come to earth.

Only Hackett's direct intervention and the faint had kept Miranda from being arrested outright. He'd allowed her to speak to doctor Chakwas, who'd immediately made her the second-in-command of the team responsible for saving Shepard's life.

Understandable, since Miranda had the dubious distinction of being the only person in the galaxy to bring a person back from the dead.

It was an enormous sacrifice on her part, one that Liara had fully appreciated. Kept under nearly constant surveillance, the extremely private Lawson was essentially an Alliance prisoner, confined to quarters and kept under heavy guard whenever she wasn't in the surgical suite with Shepard.

Liara sighed. The guard was probably for the best. Even though Miranda had left Cerberus, there were a lot of people who held bitter grudges against the now-extinct organization, especially since they nearly cost them the war.

"They managed to reconstruct most of her previous repairs using grafted and cloned tissue – without any of the nanites or technological enhancements that formed the basis of her prior reconstruction." No small feat, either, given that the death of the Reapers had brought with it the death of all forms of higher computer intelligence.

"Any word on when she's going to wake up?" Ashley's tone grew a touch softer, sympathetic eyes searching and meeting Liara's own saddened gaze.

"They're..." a deep, shuddering breath, "not exactly sure. That she survived ... whatever it was she survived, was a miracle in itself. But no one can give me an answer on why she is still asleep, and I..." Liara's voice trailed off helplessly, the familiar frustrations beginning to make themselves known.

Ashley pushed the chair forward, until the wheels nudged the side of the bed and she was close enough to rest a hand on the asari's shoulder. "Hey, don't worry about it. The commander will wake up when she is good and ready. Hell, she deserves a break, especially with as hard as she worked."

Liara nodded, her lips pressing together to keep the familiar sob from making itself known.

"Why don't we head to the mess, get a bite to eat? Maybe get some fresh air?" Liara looked far too pale, lost far too much weight, to be considered healthy. Dark blue smudges appeared permanently fixed under her eyes, and the hand-me-down sweats they had managed to find for her hung loosely from her thinning frame.

"It's okay, I..." her voice trailed off at Ashley's frown. Why was everyone so insistent that she leave Shepard's side? Didn't they know just how close she had come to losing her, not just a first or a second, but a third time?

Ashley's hand closed gently on the asari's wrist. "Liara..."

A low groan interrupted further conversation.

Two sets of eyes, one brown, one blue, turned towards the source of the voice, equal parts of shock and horror etched into their features.

Commander Tristan Shepard was awake.