It's not a silly little moment, it's not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dying breath of this love we've been working on
-John Mayer
It all happened so fast: one minute, she was watching a vid her mother sent her, and the next, she was pulling on her suit, Joker shouting, "Brace for evasive maneuvers!"
They had just barely arrived in the Terminus Systems, where the ships had vanished, and they were already under attack. The Normandy swooped. Shepard took two unsteady steps sideways, grabbing the edge of her desk, holding on as Joker bobbed and weaved. A glance out her window showed light, gold, some sort of beam. She could hear it searing metal, singeing off the pieces of her beloved ship. The lights flickered, and an alarm began screaming. Shepard pulled herself up and reached for her helmet. With it under her arm, she was out the door.
An explosion wracked the ship, the tremors pushing Shepard towards the wall. She dug her fingers in for a moment, before gaining her footing and continuing on. There were shouts somewhere in the ship; a woman screamed, sounding far away, and the alarm blared, fading in and out. From above, Joker's voice was yelling.
"Kinetic barriers down! Multiple hull breaches, weapons offline! Somebody get that fire out!"
The floor shook beneath her feet, and the lights flickered again, going out this time, everything turning to orange and red, on high alert. Her legs moved of their own volition, speeding up, and suddenly she was running past the mess area, to the escape shuttles. Members of the crew ran past her, and she nodded at them, shouting, "Get to the escape pods! Watch out for debris!" She fired up the console at the end of the walkway and began dispatching a distress beacon, even as wires rained from the ceiling and there were more explosions, more fire. Something burst beside her, and a column of pressurized air spat at her. Calmly, almost in slow motion, dream-like, she put on her helmet, clicking it into place. Her oxygen stabilized, and she gazed out at the destruction through glass.
"Shepard!"
It was Kaidan, right behind her. She turned in time to see him don his helmet as well.
"The distress beacon is ready to launch."
"But will the Alliance get here in time?"
She opened her mouth to reply, but there was a blast from beside them. It knocked Kaidan to the side, and she staggered. The screen behind her sizzled out into static. Flames burst around them.
"Shit! They had better. I'm not doing all this just so they can find our frozen corpses." She reached for a fire extinguisher that had rolled near her feet. There was another one beside it; she tossed it to Kaidan over her shoulder. He caught it, righting himself, helping her put out the fires surrounding them.
"You need to get everyone into the escape shuttles," she shouted to him.
"Joker's still in the cockpit, he won't abandon ship!"
Damn it, Joker. Shepard threw the extinguisher, ducking down, reaching for a panel that had burst open on the wall, its wires spilling out. She reached for one that was nearly severed, shoving it back into its port, praying it would hold. The screen behind them flickered back to life, the image faint. She slammed the panel shut, spinning around.
Kaidan grabbed her arm. "I'm not leaving, either!"
She had all of one second to look at him, and everything seemed to decelerate to just the two of them. She touched his hand where he held her, fingers tightening briefly. All too quickly, reality resumed, and she was forced to pull out of his grip.
"I'll take care of Joker. You focus on getting everyone to the evac shuttles!"
She struggled to walk away from him, every part of her screaming to go back. The ship was coming apart, the floor vibrating violently, threatening to throw her down with every step, but she had to move, had to go, had to save them.
"Commander…" Kaidan's voice was hesitant, terrified.
Shepard turned around to look back. There wasn't time enough for words; people were depending on both of them. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. "Go, Kaidan."
"Aye, aye."
He turned, speeding to one of the last available shuttles, helping people inside, urging them on. She could hear his voice; she closed her eyes, focusing on it, wanting to imprint it to the walls of her skull in case this went belly up and she - they -
The ship groaned, and from inside, Shepard could hear them: the shuttles shooting off into space, getting everyone away from the destruction raining down upon them. Everyone but Joker. She turned away from the console, and suddenly a plume of fire surged directly in front of her. She staggered back, holding her arms up over her face. She took a deep breath, before plunging through it.
She could still hear Joker transmitting, his anxious spurts of, "Mayday, mayday! This is SSV Normandy," keeping her going, leading her to him, letting her know he was still alive. "We've suffered heavy damage from an unknown enemy!"
Running through the ship, dodging falling wreckage, she didn't know how the Normandy hadn't shut down yet, leaving them to float helplessly in space. Finding one stairway blocked, she sprinted up the other. The door at the top was stuck. She forced it open, grunting with the strain, and there was a great gust of air and a squelching sound before she stepped through it - and out into space.
The roof of the Normandy was gone. The bridge was exposed, cracked open, chairs and chunks of hull and bodies, the bodies of her crew, lulling serenely, like maybe they were just asleep, only she knew better. Out there, everything was silence, glowing blue, the stars surrounding Shepard on all sides. The only sound was her own harsh breathing. It was like walking through slow, cool water; she took careful steps, eyes darting around for their unknown enemy, constantly alert, wary of the lack of gravity just waiting to send her spinning into nothingness.
She reached the cockpit safely, passing easily through the kinetic shield protecting Joker from the deep cold. He wore a mask, defiantly avoiding her gaze.
"Come on, Joker, we're getting out of here."
"No, Shepard. I won't abandon the Normandy, I can still save her!"
"The Normandy is lost, and if we don't go now, so are we." He didn't say anything. "I know you love her - so do I - but she's gone, and there's no sense in us going down with her. if I can get you a new one someday, I will. I can't do that, though, if we're dead!"
Joker paused, before nodding. "Yeah, okay. Help me up."
She offered her arm, hauling him out of his seat as gently as she could. She had just gotten him up when there was a sudden glow of light from beyond the Normandy's broken shell.
"They're coming around for another attack," Joker said, petrified.
"Hurry," Shepard urged, shuffling with him as carefully as she could, while still moving fast enough to combat the adrenaline wiring her system.
There was the sound of a laser shearing through metal, and more pieces of the Normandy floated away, careening through dead air. There was no time, no time - Shepard shoved Joker into the pilot's shuttle, feeling guilty even as he cried out in pain, but the rattling of the ship turned her attention back, in time to see the light, the beam, sawing off the back end of the Normandy, leaving nothing but the cockpit and coming closer, ever closer, to where she stood.
Time slowed. Shepard thought of the email still open on her wrecked terminal, the vid of her mother waving to her with two fingers from the observational deck of the SSV Kilimanjaro, pointing to the view outside, stars framing a purple gas giant, the light turning her mother's normally pale skin indigo. "Isn't it gorgeous out there?" she asked, smiling. Her teeth glowed an eerie blue.
Shepard snapped back to the moment, as the laser burned away the nearest wall, sparks crackling, screens shattering into black glass. Even through her suit, she could feel the heat of it. The blast knocked her off her feet, but she didn't fall back down, she floated, fairly swimming through the air, straining, reaching for the button to send the shuttle, her fingertips just inches away, then - she got it, and Joker was yelling her name or something like it, but the shuttle door had shut and it was taking off and that was all that mattered, even as she lost her grip on the wall and she spun with no anchor, nothing to hold to, lost in space, and there was no sound but she could see it, like a rocket firing, touching down right beside her, and she was propelled backwards, hitting a wall, and something stabbed into her, and she was floating, floating, and then the Normandy was falling away from her or she was falling away from it, all she could see was fire, burning up the night, and suddenly she was cold, deep cold, and it was hard to...hard to...
Isn't it gorgeous out there?
Breathtaking.
Kaidan could feel the final explosion, even at that distance. Though he knew it would never reach them, not out there, he still recoiled away from the wall, as if it was near enough to strike. For just the second time in his life, he prayed, all the way to the Alliance cruiser that picked them up, all the way to the crowded med bay, where he got a cut on his head looked at, all the way to the second deck, where he paced, watching, waiting for that last shuttle.
And when it finally came, he ran down to meet them, the last of the survivors. And yet, as he passed by the others, filling the hallways with their singed clothes and chatter, he was surprised shocked confused disoriented to see that only one person was being helped out. He waited while the crew carefully maneuvered Joker, who was complaining of a broken arm and possible leg bone fracture, waited for her to step out and take her helmet off, shaking her hair back, her mouth set in a grim line, her eyes already mourning those they'd lost, but she didn't, because it was empty, and she…
They found a spare stretcher for Joker, and carried him past Kaidan. He was wild, cradling his arm even as he struggled to sit up, eyes streaming. "I'm sorry Kaidan, I'm so sorry, I tried - but she-" The crew kept moving. Kaidan could still hear him, repeating like a mantra, like a prayer, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," but Kaidan couldn't figure out why, because he knew any second she would step out and be there, like she always did, like she always was. Always, always.
Kaidan sat there, listening to screams from the med bay and hushed sobs and the announcements from the captain as they neared the Citadel, but not hearing a single thing, because the one thing he did want to hear wasn't coming clear, like a radio patched through too much interference.
He waited all night, but for the first time since he'd known her, she never once appeared.
