She looked out onto the great, sparkling expanse and saw…nothing. There was nothing.

She was nothing.

Pain. Pain everywhere. In her chest, behind her dulling green eyes, in the tips of her fingers and toes – searing, intense pain as if she were being dragged through a furnace.

Her head turned to stare at the wreckage, and she blinked rapidly to clear her eyes.

This is it.

She didn't think it would end like this – not now, not after everything she had accomplished, after the battles she had fought.

This…to die like this…was insulting. Embarrassing. Degrading. And, if she was being honest with herself, a little disappointing.

Commander Shepard. The greatest war hero in human history, renowned for her tactical and combat skills that saved her squad on Elysium from impossible odds. Defeater of Saren, one of the greatest threats to all sapient life. Saviour of the Citadel, the first human Spectre!

She had seen it all. She had uncovered the murky truth of the Protheans, shattered the mysteries and speculations, the theories and explanations that professors and scientists had been shoving down the universe's throats for hundreds of years. She was a living legend – known in every household across the galaxy.

The woman who could save the universe with nothing but a pistol and two close friends.

The woman who was as likely to hug you as she was to shoot you.

Humans say that in the moments before death, they experience their life flashing before their eyes, a reminder of all the regrets they had, unfulfilled promises, experiences yet to happen. Shepard didn't see that.

Shepard saw her team standing on the bridge, arguing over who would take the photo. She saw Joker trying to convince Tali Z'orrah to remove her helmet, waving credits in her direction and promising salvages beyond her wildest imagination. She saw Urdnot Wrex standing to one side, pretending not to care. The slight inclination of his great head towards the argument told her otherwise. She saw Liara T'soni and Garrus Vakarian observing the galaxy map, pointing out locations of interest: Liara was mostly attracted to the known sites of Prothean ruins, filling Garrus in on each specific planet's possible link to the great civilization. He just nodded and smiled, but Shepard could tell that he was patching into the Citadel news network through his visor. She had occasionally caught the same vacant look when they were in the debriefing, and when she confronted him about it, he had sheepishly revealed the truth. This memory was special, cherished by her. She had carefully locked it away, memorising each individual's expression.

She briefly noted the absence of one Ashley Williams, but discarded the thought quickly. No. this was a happy recollection. She had paid enough for her decision on Virmire. Now, she would die free of regrets. She had led a good, honourable life, as had Ashley.

She remembered lifting the camera and hearing cries of outrage as the flash imprinted white strips in their vision. No one had noticed their Commander sneak up to the device – an ancient camera that Shepard had insisted on using, claiming it was one of her quirkier possessions from growing up on Earth - save one. Kaidan had watched her with guarded eyes, before sharing with her a mischievous smile, letting his brown eyes smoulder seductively at her. They often shared little private exchanges like this, making the most of what they were allowed before regulations came into play.

Her team. Her friends. They were all here, together. One of the rare occasions when they were all together in the one place, enjoying the good company and the friendship that only going through hell and back together could produce. The people that knew her, as in really knew her. They knew how far she pushed herself, how little luxury she allowed herself, how intensely she felt for her friends; how intensely she felt for Kaidan. She suspected now, that perhaps they hadn't been as secretive as she would have liked. Shepard never had been one for secrecy anyway: she had always very much been an open and honest what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of person. It made her both an easily trusted ally and an intimidating opponent.

The unsinkable Commander Shepard. Holding onto the shade of a memory, refusing to succumb to the shuddering, biting ice that grabbed at her, refusing to give in when resistance was futile. Because that was the story of her life. She never gave up – especially not when she stared death in the face. She had proved that many times over now.

And here she was; suffocating as her lungs slowly dragged in what little air the ruptured oxygen tubes would allow into her helmet. She had always expected to go out with a gun in her hand and a team at her back, taking out as many Reapers as she could – doing her part for humanity.

Instead, here she was, her gun holstered, hands scrabbling at the tubing at her neck in a desperate attempt to stem the pressurised gas leak, with nothing at her back bar that flaming twisted lump of metal that had once been her Normandy, and that damn hunk of rock that had not only blown her life apart, but had also stuck around to enjoy the fireworks.

Shepard couldn't decide whether to be insulted at the obvious gloating, or impressed at the quads they had, knowing full well half the Alliance fleet would be here soon.

And as she began to feel a slight warmth from her re-entry into the atmosphere of whatever blasted planet she had been shooting probes into not twenty minutes before, the tanks in her suit finally emptied into the cold vacuum that pressed down on her. As she stole her final gasps of air, Commander Shepard died alone.

….

Silence reigned. A dark, pressing silence that defiantly roared in the ears of all present. They watched in silence. They wept in silence.

Gone.

It was gone.

She was gone.

Jeff let out a cry of infuriated desperation. Nobody heard him. Nobody was there to stop him as he threw himself against the opposite wall of the pod. Nobody was there to wince in empathy as his ribs let out a sharp crack and his wrist snapped. Nobody was there to console him at the death of his best friend.

"It wasn't your fault, Jeff."

They wouldn't call him Joker. Not now.

But nobody was there. Because he had stayed behind while everyone else had done the right thing. He had tried to throw away his life because he couldn't let go of his pride. And he knew that she would come for him, but he thought he could convince her.

Now she was dead.

And no matter what they said, they would lie to him. They would falsify everything in order to make him feel better about himself. They would lie. Because it was all his fault. He didn't deserve to feel better about himself. He wanted to feel the pain, the self-loathing, the punishment that came with his crime.

Her face swam before his eyes, features set into hard, determined lines as she smashed a fist into the launch controls. His cry of "Nooo!" and the sickness in the pit of his stomach, the shakes and tremors that wracked his body as the pod rode the sudden burst of fiery power. The knowledge that Shepard had thrown him into the pod and given up her own life because he had been so fucking stupid enough to think that he could save a ship with no engines and half of its innards exposed the vacuum of space. The knowledge that he had just witnessed his closest friend either being cooked to death inside her armour, any kinetic shields incinerated by the explosion, or he had just watched her being spaced. There was no way her suit could have survived that magnitude of power that had been caused by the fuel igniting, if the vapour- like ball of flames that continued to blaze even now was anything to go by.

He whimpered, pain coursing through his body.

Jeff did not cry. Flight Academy had taught him what happened to pussies. Instead, he curled up on the floor of the pod, trying to ignore the needling sensation in his side and the deadening of his arm. He had likely trapped a vein with the break.

He couldn't guess how long he lay there for, but when he finally managed to pull himself up into a sitting position and glance out of the reinforced window, the planet they had been orbiting was now several times smaller than before. He tried to find any signs of the wreckage, but either it had crashed into the planet due to the high gravity, or he could no longer distinguish the flames from any other star.

Jeff pulled himself up to the console and activated the beacon.

Almost immediately, he received radio contact.

"Hello? Come in, this is Lieutenant Alenko of the 5th Fleet, come in, is that you, Commander?"

Jeff hung his head in shame. Despite his earlier refusal, his eyes dampened. He cleared his throat, mouth dry.

"Kaidan. Its me."

"Joker? Are you all right? Where the hell is Shepard? We didn't see your pod leave. Tell me she's with you!" Jeff squeezed his eyes shut, white spots invading the cool black behind his eyelids. His tone…it was so desperate. He couldn't tell him. How could he face the shame, the accusing stares, the disappointment that he would receive? He wronged Shepard. He hadn't meant to, he had thought she would leave him once he proved that he could handle it. How wrong he was.

How selfish he was.

"Kaidan, I-I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"

Silence. Silence reigned with a firm hand, beating down any voice he tried to give his thoughts. He let a few tears roll down his cheek and into his scrubby beard.

She was gone.

It was all his fault.