The silhouette of Shepard's N7 armor coalesces amid the smoke and flames that burn through the mess deck of the Normandy. She stands tall, shoulders back against this threat like she stands against every other.
"Distress beacon is ready for launch." Her voice is calm, like it's just another day. Like the ship isn't falling to pieces beneath their feet.
Kaidan reaches out mentally, trying to grasp some of her composure for himself. Fingers slippery with sweat—from the heat or nerves he can't be sure but probably a bit of both—fumble with the helmet clipped to his waist but he follows her lead, locking it into place and taking a sucking breath at the filtered air that pumps through it before he speaks again.
"Will the Alliance get here in time?" A tiny sense of pride fills him when his words come out without the waver of fear that still clings to his back.
"They'll be here." She glances over her shoulder at him as she wrenches open the metal door housing the fire extinguisher. "We just need to hold on. Get everyone into the escape shuttles."
Kaidan shakes his head. His attention turns towards a sparking electrical panel, something he's capable of managing. "Joker's still in the cockpit. He won't abandon ship. I'm not leaving either."
"Damn it!" Her gloved hand pulls him, hard, as she jerks him around to face her. Though only her eyes are visible through the visor, the green in them flash with anger. And maybe, if he looks close enough, he could see the fear in them too. He doesn't let himself look that close. He needs her strength. "I need you to get the crew onto those evac shuttles. I'll haul Joker's crippled ass out of here."
"Negative, Commander. I'll get Joker into the pod. You launch that beacon and meet us up there."
He doesn't wait for her response; doesn't listen for another order he has no intention of obeying. He hurries in the opposite direction, knowing she can't chase after him and launch the beacon. He'd ask for her forgiveness later.
The door at the top of the stairs opens, venting both the air and the noise of the devastation silently into the vacuum of space. His own harsh breath echoes in his helmet, the noise increased tenfold without other sounds to temper it. The curve of Alchera above him, visible through the blown-out hull, would have been a sight to behold had the circumstances been any different.
It's slow going as he moves through the skeleton of the CIC, the clunk of his mag boots against what was left of the floor more felt than heard. The kinetic barrier that protects the cockpit shimmers in front of him as he works his way down the bridge, ducking and dodging around terminals that float in zero g, secured to the ship by umbilical cords of wire that disappear behind charred wall panels.
"Joker! We need to go!" Kaidan shouts as he phases through the protective curtain. He stumbles against the artificial gravity still maintained in the protected space, catching himself on the back of his friend's chair.
The pilot doesn't bother to look up from the controls. "No! I can still save her."
"We're going." Kaidan growls from between his clenched teeth. "I'm not letting you die here."
He pulls the stubborn man from his chair, ignoring Joker's cry of pain as something in the pilot's arm pops. Joker doesn't have the strength to fight Kaidan and both of them know it. Broken bones could be fixed. Death could not.
"Where's Shepard?" Joker's voice is frantic, the severity of the situation finally sinking in as Kaidan deposits him in the small evac pod just off the cockpit. It is the only one left, and their only chance of survival.
Fear grips him once again with her icy fingers and Kaidan's heart stops in his chest, making it hard to breathe. He'd pushed it aside as he made his way up here, focusing only on the mission, but it is back in full force. Shepard should have been here by now. He pauses at the porthole of the evac pod, his brain knowing he can't go after her, his heart feeling that he can't possibly leave her behind.
As if in answer to his silent prayers, dark armor rises from the bottom of the bridge. Behind his mask, Kaidan's face splits into a grin. Almost there.
"Kaidan!" She screams, the sound of her voice deafening over their suits' link.
A beam of yellow light cuts through the side of the ship like a knife through butter as their attackers return to finish the job. The best the Alliance and Turian Hierarchy have to offer gives way to the mysterious ship and the Normandy, or what's left of it anyway, rocks and shudders with her dying breaths.
The mass effect field that generated the a-grav plane beneath the cockpit sputters out. Gravity fails. The beam continues on, intent on utter annihilation.
Shepard pushes against zero-g, but trying to move fast in mag boots is a fruitless endeavor. Each step has to be measured. One foot at a time, a slow slog through molasses where a single misstep would send you spiraling into the void. Kaidan pushes too, trying to reach her. Needing to hold her. They only have to beat the beam.
Behind him, the only remaining life pod explodes in a fiery blast, the flames a bright flashbulb as the oxygen in the pod combusts and then disappears in the blink of an eye. Vaporized. The force of it radiates outward in a perfect, spherical pulse that shoves them in opposite directions. Kaidan can only watch as Shepard tumbles further away from him with every breath.
She soars out past the debris field, spinning out through where the CIC used to be, the curve of Alchera an icy, beautiful backdrop. Free. The Alliance only has to find her before her oxygen runs out. She is Shepard. They will come for her. She would live.
Two stars orbiting the same point, circling each other closer and closer. It's no surprise that the galaxy can't contain them. An inevitability really. He doesn't begrudge this fact. She's always burned bright, a brilliant light in the darkness. The supernova she'll become will spawn new stars, new sparks to chase away the shadows. His part is over and, for awhile at least, he got to bask his face in her glow.
These are his last thoughts as his body crashes into the skeleton of the ship. There is no pain. Medically speaking, not a good sign. But he feels no pain as the world fades to black. Only relief.
Shepard would live.
She wakes, gasping against the pain. Eyes the wrong color stare down at her, glacier blue instead of warm honey. They've sedated her before she can form words, before she can ask the question she desperately needs an answer to.
The next time she wakes, the facility is under attack. A disembodied voice—the one that belongs to the cold eyes—orders her around. Orders her to grab a pistol. To put on armor. To duck in cover. Orders Shepard around like a god directing its puppet. She balks against the commands but has little choice except to obey as enemies close in on her position.
Shepard is cheated out of answers again and again as a seemingly endless supply of mechs attack. The allies—or at least non-enemies—she finds dodge and evade her questions. One of them, in an attempt to earn her cooperation admits that they're in a Cerberus facility. That the Alliance had declared her dead. That the Illusive Man, Cerberus's de facto leader, spent billions of credits to bring her back. She grits her teeth against the knowledge and presses on, determined to find someone who will give her the answers she really wants. What she's doing there. Why. Where Kaidan is.
A single shuttle pad, their only way off the station, lays just ahead behind the dim red glow of a locked door. It springs open with a hiss, revealing a woman in a white, latex catsuit. The pistol in her hand kicks and the man who'd unlocked the door crumbles at her feet, red seeping into the white and gray of his Cerberus uniform from the hole in his throat. The remaining Cerberus soldier and the woman, Miranda, argue for a moment about the dead traitor, but he's a no-name to Shepard. He's not the one she cares about and she spares no pity for the corpse of a terrorist.
Miranda holsters her pistol and turns to Shepard. "We need to go."
Shepard doesn't budge. "I'm not going anywhere. Where. Is. Kaidan?"
"Gone." There's no warmth, no sympathy, in the woman's voice as she delivers the news. It's just facts to her.
Shepard's stomach churns and her heart stops. She wonders if they can bring her back from this. Is there some kind of science, a gel maybe, to fill the emptiness of a shattered heart? She swallows, trying to find enough air in her lungs for words. "You brought me back. You can do it with him."
"Shepard." The guy playing good cop places his hand on her shoulder. "You were meat and tubes when they brought you in. Bringing you back wasn't easy."
She shrugs him off, not even sparing him a glance. "Why?" she asks Miranda. "Why me? Why not him?"
"Don't you get it?" Miranda narrows her eyes at Shepard. "You're the only one worth saving. Everyone else is expendable."
A single shot. A spray of red on white hexagons. A second body falls beside the first.
"Yes. They are." Shepard's voice is devoid of emotion as she stares at the body of the raven-haired woman. She turns to the last Cerberus lackey and raises her gun, tilting it toward the shuttle bay. "Take me to the Illusive Man."