Sometimes Grace Continuity: Some two years prior to Sometimes Grace I, "Passover."

I

Spaced

Blown away.

Space isn't made of stars and planets, asteroids and comets. Mostly, space is empty, and black, and cold. Void. Void of matter or gravity or air. Life cannot survive in space.

An object in motion remains in motion with a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. When there are no external forces, it just keeps going. A woman blasted away from a ship into space, away from matter or gravity or air, just keeps going, at the velocity at which she was blasted away. So when she kicks her legs and jackknifes her body and flails her arms, but there's nothing to push against, nothing to pull against, no friction whatsoever, she Just. Keeps. Going. Away from the wreckage of the ship and the escape pods, out into space.

Spaced.

Nature abhors a vacuum, rushes to fill the emptiness, but a vacuum abhors nature, too. The gas in a severed oxygen line rushes out to fill the emptiness of space, but space rushes in to snuff out the woman lost in it. Mostly, space is empty, and space is big. In the struggle between the air from the oxygen tank and the vastness of empty space, space wins. The air has a long, long way to go, and it gets too thin for the woman kicking, jackknifing, flailing, traveling at the velocity at which she was blasted back from the wreckage of the ship and the escape pods, out into space, until she is acted upon by an external force.

Acted upon. How cruel, how utterly cruel that this particular woman should ever be so passive, at the mercy of cold, heartless physics. She has never been so helpless, never so inactive before. Always before, she has been the external force to cause change, never the object of another's action, never the victim. Before the blast hit, she saved a man's life. The pilot of the wrecked ship. Her friend. She effected that salvation upon him, caused the change that meant he'd live and wouldn't die. But now she cannot change her own state.

Space is mostly empty, but it is not entirely empty. It isn't stars and planets, asteroids and comets, but they do exist in it, and exert their own forces on a woman, drowning in emptiness with a severed oxygen line, trying desperately to exert her own force once again and control her fate. But a planet's force, a planet's gravity, is greater than that of one woman, even this very extraordinary one.

A woman, blown away, spaced, now caught in a planet's gravity, no longer drifting. Falling. Falling until she hits the air the planet's pulled around it and it begins to exert its own force upon her, too. Then falling, falling and burning as the gravity pulls her more and more strongly toward the planet below, and her own force against the air, resisting the change, resisting extinction, heats up the gas molecules. No longer drowning in emptiness, but the air is too hot to breathe, and the pressure is such that the woman's lungs can't even inflate as she begins to burn. Her hair catches fire first, inside her helmet. Then the rest.

Maybe she's dead already, maybe she's not, but if she's not, it won't be long. She'll be gone long before she hits the earth and is pulverized, a smear on the ground, bone fragments and blood and pulpy flesh.

Spaced. Then, tragically, not.

In her last conscious moments, her mind a haze of pain and panic, disordered from lack of oxygen, the laws of physics that have made her their plaything, the woman would scream if she could. But she can't. There is no air in her body with which to voice a sound. She can only cry out in her mind, Nonononononono I'm not done yet I don't want to go don't make me nononono I don't want to die. Then the pain or the pressure or the lack of oxygen is too much, and she blacks out. Then she is dead.

A/N: If this is the first fic in The Disaster Zone you've checked out—well. That was a depressing chapter to choose to make an entrance on. Welcome anyway. Have a look at the other entries in the series. In order they are:

Nobody's Child

Little Beth

Soldier

Awakening

However, I would also like to announce another Mass Effect fic, outside of the Disaster Zone series. As you can see from the note above, this entry in The Disaster Zone comes alongside another fic in progress. While Resurrection follows the pattern of the other entries in that it is a focused series of one-shots devoted to the character development of Beth Shepard, Sometimes Grace will be a complete novelization of Mass Effect 2 (really my favorite in the series). Sometimes Grace features Beth Shepard, but while she is the deuteragonist and catalyst for the story, Sometimes Grace is more concerned with Garrus Vakarian's perspective, struggles, and development after his stint on Omega.

Sometimes Grace is the reason updates to Resurrection will come once a week rather than twice a week. It is also the reason why after Resurrection, The Disaster Zone is going on indefinite (but certainly not permanent) hiatus. While I have no intention of making Disaster Zone fans wait for the appropriate chapter in SG to read more about Beth, posting Shepard before SG's conclusion just feels wrong. DZ fans may want to check out SG, or vice versa. I just want to keep you both informed.

As ever, I welcome your input on the news or the story proper and will respond to each review personally, but response is not required.

Best Always,

LMSharp