She dreams of falling, the Crucible glowing like a solar flare around her.
She is a meteor, diving to Earth in a blaze that will leave her empty, devoid of life and light.
Shepard dreams of heat, warm and then too hot, engulfing her, burning. Burning is so much more painful than freezing, devoid of oxygen, of breath.
It hurts. She wants to scream, wail her agony to the unforgiving stars that glimmer amongst the corpses of dead ships in the ocean of space.
She thinks briefly of Mordin, Kaiden, Thane, Anderson. All those who have gone before her.
It hurts. Dying hurts.
A whimper slips past tortured lips.
A dim noise comes to her. She is a flame, burning with all her heart and soul, how can she hear anything?
"Shepard? Commander Shepard?"
"Got a life sign! Over here!"
She is a meteor, crashing to the ground, flame nearly gone, smothering in the ash of a world struggling to survive in the remnants of the Reaper war.
A flanged voice breaks past the pain, the familiar drawl comforting. "We've got you, Shepard. There's no Shepard without Vakarian, remember?"
Burned lips cannot smile, but she remembers.
"Always."