A/N: Shepard is trapped under the rubble and is visited by old friends. This is soo angsty, dark themes, this first chapter ecspecially, but I promise it gets better! It's based on A Christmas Carol so it obviously has a sugary sweet, fluffy happy ending! Promise!

Shepard woke up with a pain in her chest. She could barely breath, and when she tried, it hurt like hell. A deep ache, a strange mixture between a knife wound and an acid burn. She would know, she was all too familiar with both. The burning, the stabbing, the sheer pain. It was too much.

Breath. In. Breath. Out.

Or don't?

Or don't. A small voice, a drumming through her brain like a cadence, a mantra, a siren song tempting her to give in, to give up, to end this. To be still, to be silent, to be free of her reconstructed body for good.

That sounded particularly appetizing in her current state. She didn't think she was hallucinating, although it was hard to tell with the haziness in her head, the pounding between her eyes, the odd sense of euphoria that swirled around her when she held her breath slightly, the act momentarily ceasing the fire ravaging her body.

It felt good. It felt right. Don't fight it. Let it take you. Let it embrace you. Let it envelope your body with the promise to numb all your pain, all your suffering, all your anguish and bitter hatred. And...all your love?

How easy would it be to just let go? To let the pain of her broken body slip away into the darkness? The suffering she'd been through all her life, to let the weight that she'd been carrying since she stepped foot on Eden Prime to fade into a peace...a peaceful...a peaceful death?

She tried to move, tried to free herself from the huge hunk of rubble that was held on top of her by gravity.

Gravity: the force that attracts a body toward the center of the earth, or toward any other physical body having mass. More accurately to her, the thing that was crushing and burying her alive under a hunk of twisted metal and concrete. A chunk of the Citadel, if she had to guess.

She had to move. She needed to free herself, but it was too much. The debris was too heavy. She was too weak. Her suit was concaving against her and digging into her body. The heavy weave that was supposed to protect her was slowly transforming into her tomb, wrapping around her body until it finally consumed her.

But wait...?!

She wasn't wearing armor. It had disintegrated before her eyes when Harbinger blasted her with its red heat. It was her own bones that were threatening to collapse inward on her, to cradle her organs before smashing them into mush.

"Well, now everything makes sense," she said. She thought she said. She felt her lips move but she didn't hear the words. No vibrations on her eardrums, only the movement of her chapped and splitting lips, painful even to the touch of her own tongue when it licked them.

Yes, it all made sense. She was dead. She died. She didn't make it to the beam, didn't make it onto the Citadel, didn't face off with that asshole. T-I-M. She never shot Anderson. Relief. She didn't get onto the platform. She didn't talk to the ignorant piece of photons that was the Catalyst.

She should have known. Surely, an all encompassing machine would have been able to solve the organics versus synthetics problem IF that really was its goal. For fuck's sake, she did and she's a nobody.

She's just a former street thug gang banger turned First Human Spectre all because she knew how to use a gun. Big fucking deal. There had to have been others that were just as worthy, more so even, to fly the Normandy, to be the face of the galaxy, to make a decision so big it would reverberate till the end of time.

Right place, right time. Elysium. It wasn't even her ticket. It wasn't supposed to be her vacation. Her friend got sick. Fate intervened. Now, all these years later, it was catching up to her. Fate was a cruel mistress and she was set on rectifying her mistake. Making her pay for stealing someone else's.

OH GOD! It fucking hurts!

If she was dead, why did it still hurt?

Hell?

Shit.

Hell, she was in hell. She should have known that too. She should have known that her sins would have caught up to her eventually. God, she had so many, so many mistakes, so many faults to atone for. She was dead so she obviously didn't save the galaxy like she set out to do. That was supposed to be her penance. That was supposed to absolve her.

But it didn't.

And now, it was gone. It was too late. She was in hell. This was her torture chamber. Garrus was wrong. There was no bar, only pain. Only everlasting torment. Only Hell. Only his demons to wrestle with until the end of time, for an eternity.

Damn, that was a long time. That was going to be a long time. So long that she couldn't even comprehend it. Eternity. That was forever. There was no coming back, no escape. There was no end. It was infinite.

How long had she been here? How long had she been suffering? How long had she been trapped like an animal in a cage waiting for death? Hoping for death to relieve her of her painful burden. She was already dead; there would be no relief. Ever.

In eternity, time had no meaning. It could have been seconds, it could have been centuries since she woke up. Since she took the first breath that stung every inch of her. But it only felt like minutes.

That in and of itself was torture enough. Mental torture. The pain was fresh and raw. Even if it had been a millennia, it all felt too new, too novel. Almost too much for her to bare. It felt like she just woke up and took that first strained breath under the weight above her that was pinning her down to the scorched Earth.

She tried to look around. Her head felt sluggish as if her brain was swimming around in there freely, sloshing around in aqueous fluid. It would hardly cooperate. Not that it mattered. Not anymore. From what she did see, there was nothing. She was in a barren waste land, alone with her pain and her suffering and her hell.

Fire and brimstone piled up everywhere. She couldn't make out the horizon, only the destruction around her. But it was peaceful, serene. The foggy haze of war painted like a priceless piece of art in a museum. The colors blending together into an exquisite work by the gods themselves. Red and grays. It was so beautiful that it didn't look real.

She didn't want it to be real, but she smelled it. She smelt the burning of bodies, the burning of buildings, the burning of souls. She couldn't see them, but she knew. War had an aroma that you could never forget. It seeping into her nose and took up residence in a deep part of her brain that refused to be cleansed. That would never be cleansed.

She couldn't see the bodies, but she knew...

KAIDAN!?

She didn't see him. There was not a glimpse of that dark obsidian hair, those honey eyes, the ever present stubble on that chin of his to been seen.

"Kaidan!" she yelled. Tried to yell? She felt her lips moving but she didn't hear the words. She didn't hear a reply. She didn't hear anything but the swirling of blood through her own ears, the crimson life fluid flowing and moving in her veins.

"Kaidan?" She yelled till her lungs burned like fire, like lava was oozing out of every orifice and drowning her, like napalm coated the tissues inside her waiting patiently for a match, like she swallowed sand.

Nothing.

She felt the tears running down to her temples, the stinging of salt in her eyes. There was a panic overtaking her, the primitive need to protect her mate, to make sure he was alive, to make sure he wasn't here with her in hell. She didn't want to see him, not here in hell. But she did.

Spirits, she did. So badly, she so uncontrollable did!

Darkness.

XoXoX

She woke up to a heavy warmth on her cheek. She breathed deep. It hurt. She didn't have to turn her head to know that it was the sun beating down on her. The rays slipping slowly through the heavy air to reach her, to burn her, to punish her by waking her up so that she could feel the pain that her body was enduring.

It was morning. Or afternoon. Or evening. She didn't have the sense to care. She didn't have the strength to, either.

At first, she thought the heat was from the fires coming to claim her, the fires of hell. To mark her skin with their flames, to burn her so hot without burning her up. For all of eternity. She sighed in relief when she realized that it wasn't. Just the sun. The small round circle of light that gave life to the entire planet.

The sun? Why is there a sun in hell?

"I'm not dead." This time she heard the words.

She knew it was true. She was still alive. That's why she hurt so badly but wasn't sizzling, why her skin wasn't blackened and blistered.

She cried again. Out of sadness to still be suffering, but also out of a strange feeling of joy, of relief, to know that she was so close, to know she was on her way to death. She wasn't there yet, but she was close, and getting closer by the minute.

She wanted to be there already. She didn't want to hurt anymore. She didn't want to feel the sinking feeling in her chest that she was the sole survivor, that she was the last remnant of life in the galaxy. She didn't want that burden. There was only her in this place. No one else. She was alone. She was going to die alone.

The Reapers would find her soon. They would lay the claim to her body that the empty flames would not. They would end her suffering.

How did everything get so fucked up? Why was she wishing for the Reapers to save her? How could she think that, hope that, want that, after everything they've done, after everything she'd seen? After all the fighting she'd done against them? She was wanting them now, to find her, to end her.

I just want everything to be over. I'm sorry, Kaidan...I'm so sorry. I failed you. I failed everyone. And I'm so tired. So fucking tired. I hope you're safe. In Heaven, in the afterlife where you belong. Away from all the pain I've caused you. You deserve so much more, so much better.

"Skipper," came a soft voice out of the silence.

She froze. That wasn't hard to do. She was trapped after all, pinned, in too much pain to move, to look around much.

"Hey, Skipper? Over here," the feminine melody rang out. The sweet sound almost made her ears bleed with its beauty.

She blinked and turned her head slightly in the direction that she thought she heard the voice coming from. But there was nothing there. There was nothing, no one, anywhere. The voice had come from everywhere at once.

"Shepard! Look at me!" the voice demanded.

It sounded so familiar, so safe, so heavenly.

Suddenly, out of the hazy red of war, she saw the outline of a body, a person, a woman. She sauntered closer as her eyes tried hard to focus on the image before her. She was close to death, circling the wagon. Her brain was starting to spit out the chemicals associated with death that Mordin had told her about. She was just a mirage. She couldn't be real.

But why a woman? She wanted to see Kaidan. Kaidan was the face that was supposed to usher her into death. The last thing she saw as she let go for good.

Goddamn you brain! You couldn't even give me that? Fuck you!

The woman was wearing a bright pink dress, the fabric flowing in the dusty wind. She couldn't make out her features, but she looked fit, toned, the body of a soldier, she assumed. She walked closer and closer until she blocked out the midday sun on her face. Then, she leaned down and smiled, warm and kind.

That's when she saw her face. A face she never thought she would ever see again. Maybe hoped that she wouldn't. Like an angel in the red haze, she was beautiful. But her guilt. Oh god, her guilt. She sacrificed Ash for Kaidan, for her own selfish gain, for the heart that couldn't bare the thought of losing the only peace it had ever found in this life.

"ASH?!"

This was it! It was over! The pain was going to end. She was going to lead her to...to...

But how?

She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve to be in that bar with Garrus. She didn't deserve to be happy, to be safe, to be with them, with Kaidan behind the pearly gates. She was beyond redemption. She lost Ash, Mordin, Legion. Pressly, the twenty souls on the SR-1 and countless others.

And again on the Catalyst, she forced a rash choice on the galaxy. Another selfish decision she made only for the possibility that she could be with Kaidan once more.

Control.

Synthesis.

Destroy.

"I'll never doubt you again."

"I'm gonna fight like hell to hold you again."

"I'm sorry about Horizon, again."

I'm going to die, again.

She destroyed the Geth. She destroyed EDI, a friend. She shot Anderson...

Yet, here she was!

Here she was, to take her to Heaven. To lead the way.

"I love you, Kaidan. Always."