The alarm ringing through the Normandy is that level of sharp that it's skull piercing. I can feel it vibrating in my brain, and I'm grateful for an excuse to put my helmet on after dressing in full armor. I grab my Carnifex out of habit; I make sure the guardian angel pin is on my color out of sentimentality. And then I go find out what the hell is happening to my ship.

It's mayhem outside my quarters. The lights are on alarm out here as well, red and glaring. Everyone seems to be running. "Joker?" I speak into my comms. "All these chickens have their heads cut off. Where do you need me?"

"Distress beacon," he answers immediately, not a touch of his usual snark or humor. What's happening to my ship is also happening to his; I can feel his tension, and I can relate to it.

"On it."

I join the running around, racing through the med bay and into the office that Liara has occupied for a year. From there, I take a hatch down; there is no time for the slow as molasses elevator today. The distress beacon is triggered in engineering, and I navigate through mayhem there. Engineer Adams in his element and commanding his crew to keep control of the ship.

Reality hits me when I stare at the controls for the distress beacon. A mayday signal. An alert to the Alliance and any nearby ships that the Normandy is in grave danger. We need help.

The ship rocks violently, and another even higher-pitched alarm is triggered when multiple fires break out around us. Something just hit my ship, and now we're on fire.

The doors to the Cargo Bay open and stay open automatically, allowing anyone in Engineering to escape and get to the escape shuttles. I nod to Engineer Adams, and he starts directing his team that way. There is nothing else they can do. We need the distress beacon.

Another hit nearly knocks me off my feet, but I stay steady and start the command code to launch the beacon.

"Shepard!" Kaidan shouts for somewhere behind me. He's getting closer, judging by volume when my name is shouted again.

"Distress beacon is ready to launch," I tell Joker over the comms before moving to the fire closet. Damage control, but it's something.

Kaidan rushes in and stumbles to a stop, panting heavily in full armor. "Will the Alliance get here in time?" he asks.

In time. We're going down, we're getting wrecked. But we don't have to die. I am not ready to die. Especially when he's not even answering my calls.

"I'm not doing this just so they can find our frozen corpses," I snap, turning to toss the other fire extinguisher to Kaidan. Now there are two of us throwing chemicals on engineering fires while something is attacking and breaking my ship. Fuck. "Get everyone onto the escape pods," I shout at him, moving to take down some of the flames near the door so he can get out safely.

"Joker is still in the cockpit," he tells me. "He won't abandon ship. I'm not leaving either."

Of course. We've only been chasing Geth for the last couple of months, so I managed to forget that Kaidan has such a violent and damaging hero complex. I grab the back of his armor and yank him away from the fire, throwing him toward the door.

"Get to the shuttle! I'll take care of Joker." I push him again and then head for the hatch again, back up the CIC where I can get my stubborn as sin pilot.

"Commander," Kaidan calls from behind me. I step up onto the first rung, and he shouts, "Shepard!"

"Kaidan, damnit, go!"

That gets him moving, and I hesitate for a just a moment until I can hear him directing crew toward the shuttle pods. The pods upstairs are being released as well, each one dislodging with a hiss that manages to be loud even over the screaming alarms. And then I step into the CIC, and it's absolute chaos.

Everything is on fire, the heat so strong that I have to cover my face with my forearm. The ship feels like it's rocking and choking even more violently up here. An explosion to my left makes me stumble and not because of force, but because it was in my quarters. My room, my home for the last year and some months.
The room where Garrus and I...

And now it's gone.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday," I hear Joker calling into the comms, a public call to any nearby networks, I know. "This is SSV Normandy. We've suffered heavy damage from an unknown enemy."

I shake my head and push on, forcing one foot after another against the instability of the ride and the hell raging around me. Just when I think it can't get any worse, the doors open to the bridge, and I'm...in space.

Entire chunks of the ship have been ripped away, and we are full-on exposed to space. The silence is daunting, especially when I'm aware that there is chaos and literal fire around me. My suit automatically triggers my gravity boots, and movement becomes a little more difficult. It's disorienting as hell feeling like you're on a zero-gee planet while inside your ship. Well, sort of inside. The nearby planet looming so large that it feels like I could reach up and touch it is a reminder that I am not completely inside.

This kind of damage is not from another normal ship. This is big. This is Reapers.

But I don't have time to deal with that. I need to get my pilot. We've gotten lucky enough somehow that there is an intact escape pod waiting for us, and come hell or high water - or Reaper - Joker is getting on that damn thing.

"Come on, baby, hold together. Hold together!" Joker is pleading with the ship over the comms. His voice cracks, and if I didn't know better, I'd think he was crying. He can cry in the escape pod.

He has set up a barrier so that he can remain in the cockpit and in his seat, breathing and secure despite the fact that he's not in armor.

"Come on, Joker," I call him, grabbing the back of his chair. Every system in this cockpit is going berserk; I don't know how he can even hear himself think. "We have to get out of here!"

"No!" he snaps at me. "I won't abandon the Normandy. I can still save her."

"Joker, stop. The whole ship is on fire."

"Shepard, I - "

"Joker!" I shout at him, needing a lot more self-control than I really have right now to keep from shaking him violently. "The Normandy is dead. Just like us if we don't get the hell out of here."

"No, we just have to..." Joker trails off and then breathes, "Oh, no." The tone of his voice is like a punch right in the gut. "They're coming around for another attack." He grabs for the ship controls and tries something - I know from his movement that something is supposed to happen, but nothing is happening.

And then everything happens. A blinding red light flashes in front of the ship, and then disappears for a moment just before the ship shudders and rocks and rolls and slams us around. I nearly fly into the wall, but goddamn Joker is still fiddling with controls like he can do any damn thing to rescue this ship.

I take a look back from the cockpit and see a beam from the Reaper ripping my ship in half. Tearing it in two like paper.

"We're going," I inform him. This time, I give the stubborn fool no opportunity to argue, and instead of asking, I take Joker by the arm and physically remove him from the chair. Whether it's adrenaline or Joker's illness, I can yank him around like little more than a sack of potatoes.

"Shepard!" he protests. "Oh, shit, watch the arm!" I double-check that he has a mask on before pulling him out of the cockpit with me. Gravity is a little weird, but I manage to get him to the door of the escape pod without any real issue.

I lose my hold on him and my footing when an explosion manages to be loud in space, a place that is supposed to be devoid of sound. It's like being in a vacuum, a force stronger than any person or weapon who has ever hit me yanking me backward while jerking Joker right out of my arms and into the pod. I manage to grip some wall of the ship that I can no longer even identify, my legs floating out behind me along with the chunks of the ship being sheared off.

"Shepard!" Joker screams, reaching a hand for me. He's not floating. He's okay. He's in the escape pod.

And the button to release it is right in front of me.

I could use the button inside the pod, of course. I could pull myself back over to the escape pod, get inside, and then send it off with both of us inside. Another explosion rocks the remains of the ship, and my decision is made for me.

There is very little chance that I can get back to Joker and release the pod before this entire ship blows. We'll both die.

I look up at Joker. He's only wearing a mask so I can see the look on his face. I can see the horror; I can see that he knows what I'm planning.

"Shepard, no!" he screams, trying to leap for the door.

I slam my fist into the button, and Joker is gone is a split second. The slight motion is the last straw for the Normandy. One more blast throws me backward, but there is nothing to catch me. I move as if in slow motion, floating when I should be getting tossed hard.

It's a disturbingly excellent view of the remaining explosions that blast anything remotely familiar of the Normandy into burnt and flaming bits that are quickly suffocated by space before they'll be frozen. It's gone. Everything we did for the last year is gone.

My body wants to gasp, but something is wrong. There's not enough air for it. Only then I notice the pressurized air in the form of vapor floating in front of my helmet. My suit is leaking.

I am going to be the next piece of the Normandy suffocated in space.

Panic hits first. It's extremely disconcerting to be trying to pant and breathe heavily when there isn't enough air to allow for that. Quickly, black spots form in my vision, and my head starts to spin with a burning in my chest. This is it. I survived the ship exploding only to suffocate in space with no one here to rescue me.

Garrus would rescue me if he were here.

He's not here. He isn't here, because of me. Because I pushed him away.

The muscles all over my body burn and seize with a lack of oxygen. I can't squirm anymore, can't control. All I can do is float.

I'm going to die here, alone, and ripped apart by space because I refused to let Garrus in. Because I'm selfish and stubborn and incapable of intimacy. I threw away the best thing that's ever happened to me, the best person I know because I'm desperate to control my life, and now here I am, totally without control.

I'm going to die without ever having told Garrus that I love him. I'll never have a chance now. He'll never know.

The dark void of space starts to enclose on me, dimming the light of the nearby planet and any remaining flames. It all goes dark. It's not peaceful, the way I imagined death would be, and it doesn't come with a sense of knowing I did my best.

What do any of the accomplishments mean when I didn't have love? None of it means anything without Garrus. Not even my death.