Bigger Picture

Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or any of the characters here portrayed, they belong to their creators. I just took them for a while to practice my writing skills.

Bigger picture.-
by negativefeeling

John woke up with a scream. The eternal night on the skylight window showed him that he, as well as Earth, were just tiny grains of sand in that humongous space. The vision of it all was calm and alluring, like the sea when the water makes ripples on the surface and their eventual waves. He tried to imagine his small planet among those stars he could see.

But there was still something that bothered his heart.

"Bigger picture made of small pictures. Too many variables".

The words still clear in his ears, made him feel dizzy and uneasy, almost to the point of throwing up.

"I... Made a mistake!"

And the salarian was about to fix it when he pulled the trigger. His destructive nature would surface in the most stressing moments. DAMN. DAMN. DAMN you Shepard!
He didn't know what to do next. He was a traitor to his friends. Was it really necessary to kill a friend? Was it? He shot him in the back, what honor was up to that? He left him crawling to the elevator while he turned his back on his friend that was bleeding trying to save a world.

"I'm trying to save my own world too...", John said to himself to reassure.

He had always considered himself a honest person, as honest a ruthless soldier could be, and now he had broken, like a shattered mirror. There was just one hurt soul but there were thousands of reflections looking back at him with utter disappointment.

Shepard hid his face behind his hands. Reality was too depressing. He didn't want to look.

He did it for Earth's sake, for the rest of the Galaxy's sake. The words didn't help at all. That was something a rat would do, telling himself that a wrong doing was fine when it was for other right.

He remembered the time he had talked to Eve, the female krogan, and she was so level headed that it seemed that the change was possible because she was going to fight for it with all her heart and he had betrayed her memory. He felt dirty. If Wreav wasn't so eager to revenge, if he was more like Wrex, -or better yet- if Wrex were alive, maybe... then maybe it had taken another direction.

But then Eve died and Wreav didn't have any clear intentions of quitting on the revenge. It seemed that they couldn't reason with him to stop on his thirst for bloodshed. Or maybe there it was. There was no point right now. Eve was a proud female, she was convinced into rebuilding their civilization to the past splendor, leaving away the hatred and starting from zero. She would have been a great leader.

Now...

He had condemned the whole race to the extinction. Millions of stillborn krogans, as well as other dead in internal wars, would weigh on his soul forever from now on. What is the point of choosing something right, like saving his whole species when other is going to disappear from the Galaxy? He hadn't got an answer.

John shook his head, but the gloom face wouldn't shake off. The Reapers were out there and were going to wipe every living form out of every known inhabited planet, so he needed all the help he could get to save his birthplace. Yes, Earth first. And then everyone else.

Being Commander is lonely, and he'd probably .never get used to that. John felt warm on his cheeks, seconds before he realized that he was crying. He knew that sometimes he had to take hard decisions, and that not everyone would agree and not everything would be okay.

It was so much weight on his shoulders. He knew from the start that it was going to be a hard task, but he was already used to it. He'd lost friends now and then, acquaintances and allies were lost and found or even retaken. The worlds kept spinning around their stars and he wouldn't be the first or last one to betray a friend for a greater good.

However, he kept feeling miserable.

"Bigger pictures made of small pictures", Mordin had said with regret on his eyes.

"Too many variables", Shepard repeated the scientist's words loudly, gripping tightly his fists.

Too many variables...

End.