Authors note: Oh come on Bioware. I stood with you, when you messed the otherwise greatly entertaining Dragon Age II on the final sprint. But now this...

A word of advice to all of you who have yet to finish Mass Effect 3. Turn back now, while you still can. Turn back, before you have to witness the single greatest middle finger ever flipped to a fanbase in Rpg-history.

And yet, despite all this bitterness – I enjoyed the mass effect universe greatly, and against BW's dedication to destroy it, I refuse to give it up.

Now to fix this mess, and let's all pretend the final assault on earth, and everything thereafter never happened.

Alliance military temporary headquarters, six earth-days after zero hour

When did it all go so wrong? What had happened, for her to end up in a place like this. As the woman was led through the bunkers hallways, it occurred to her that she had first been asking herself these questions a little over four weeks ago.

Four weeks that might have well been centuries, for all she felt inside. Four weeks of fighting, of struggling against the seemingly inevitable. Four weeks, and in a way her situation had not changed at all. Then and now, armed men had dragged her by. Then and now, her fate had been lying in the hands of those impatiently waiting to pass judgment over her.

Four weeks, that had changed everything. The last time she went to court, she had been hailed, openly and secretly, as one of humanities greatest heroes. The last time, she had been back on earth, and she had known the men escorting her, she had been grounded but well treated.

Four weeks ago, Admiral Anderson had been at her side.

All things of the past. She would never see her comrade, her commanding officer, again. She'd never set a foot on earth again. And following the events of what the press had dubbed the zero-hour, few humans would ever remember her favorably.

And yet... even with all the time she'd had to ponder over the last few days of total isolation, she could not find it within herself to regret, to feel anything but deep relief. A sign that throughout the last few weeks her sanity had taken one too many hits perhaps, that the pressure had gotten the better of her at last.

Not that it mattered. She had made her choice, as final as the sentence she was facing. What would second thoughts matter now?

Regardless, the charges had been the same, now and four weeks ago. High treason. Genocide. Plagicide. And she was as guilty now, as she had been back then.

Armored fingers on her shoulder brought her steps, as well as her wandering thoughts to a halt. She glanced over the Marines accompanying her on both sides. A dozen men and women, armed to the teeth. N7 special forces, if the signs on their armor were to be trusted. The closed helmets, the reflecting visors allowed no glimpse at their faces, no chance to make out their feelings, while they pushed her into the elevator, while they took up defensive positions around her.

Perhaps some of them despised her, hated her. Perhaps some of them were nervous, feared that she would attempt to run, to fight her way out.

She planned no such thing. Not that even she could have hoped to take a dozen soldiers on in close quarters, unarmed and unarmored. And she would not have wanted to.

And yet, when the doors of the elevator opened into the courtroom, Commander Arya Shepard could not help but wonder, if any of those men would be part of her firing squad.