The Prompt: Shepard gets executed. Why, how and who is up to you.

The Fill:

So, the Crucible had lied after all. It had been wrong, and Shepard had awoken from that welcome blackness by a team of medics, pawing at her.

She hadn't been able to speak, even as she saw the consequences.

Not for days was she able to form words, and they called it shock and gave her meds that sunk her into dreams that were worse than the insomnia.

No one could have known it would end this way. Not in a hundred years. Even when you pushed aside the war being over, the resources that all the races had suffered, especially this one, that fact that Jane Shepard had saved the day once more and lived to tell the tale.

In the end, it really was the batarians that got her, finally.

It was so goddamn funny.

Shepard hadn't stopped laughing since being captured.

Sending her out to this place that had helped begin her fame, that had taught her what a battle actually was. For diplomacy, she'd been sent. It's time we all worked together now, and buried the hatchet. She was the Shepard; she could bring quarian and geth together and keep the krogan from killing salarians and turians and basically, rainbows could fly out of her ass.

She nearly fell to her knees again, face alight with laughter.

They'd taken her translator from her, but it really didn't matter.

The audience glittered before her. When she attempted to take a bow, received a blow to the stomach and a yank upward.

Would she feel the bullets hitting her? She'd been shot before, and didn't want to relish that pain before oblivion again. Would her life flash before her eyes? Because she really didn't want to relieve all that shit. Even the good times were overshadowed. Should she be tallying up regrets? Honestly, there were surprisingly few.

Jane bared her teeth at the dark eyes watching her. I won.

There were guards there, looking professional and filthy. Raising their guns, listening solemnly as this official leader of the colony rambled on about Shepard's crimes against the batarians. Against the galaxy, the blasphemy, no doubt, of her choice.

Hey, guys, I thought that thing was going to kill me. No fair.

At least her friends had been spared this.

She'd wrangled a vacation away from them all, 'I'll be gone a week, tops,' taking only EDI and Joker. Who were also gone, after dropping her off to meet a shuttle.

They'd hear about this, later on. Go bugshit. Nice, to think about them right now. She could smell ash and blood, all her senses beginning to go into overload as the adrenaline kicked in. That human squirming part, 'no, please, I don't want to die,' thankfully under control. She thought about her friends, the crew members she'd served with, who she'd lost. If there had been a beach resort the last time she'd died, it must have been blocked out.

I should be thinking something spiritual. Or meaningful or clever, at least. I'm like everyone else, who knows consciously that death is coming. Bathetic. This is the last thing I'll see and experience. And of course, I'll the stuff I'll never experience. The birth and raising of a child, old age, marriage.

They were really raising their guns, higher now, the fuckers.

She thought about the first parade they'd given her, first and only. The laughter and applause over her dumb speech, the cameras. Now she was back on a stage, to be judged. There was no one to adjust her jacket, wipe any lint off though the condition of her armor was way past a gentle brush and smile. A touch to her hair. 'I'm so proud of you, Shepard.'

Turning towards her, those piece of shit guns aimed at her, and there would be no biotics to save her, or sniper, no helpful friend.

What would they do to her body? Cut off the head and put it on a stick? She felt ill, maybe her body shutting down. Light-headed. Downright queasy.

I am going to die on this stage as batarian colonist look on with their kids. At least I'm not puking myself. I should think of loved ones. My friends. Family.

Another ten gun salute. Her life was just a constant cycle, wasn't it?

There was no Cerberus to bring her back this time. Maybe that was a relief.

One of them, the farthest on the left was missing an eye. Ten guns aimed at her head was going to fuck her up. Nothing left to put on a stick at least. This is the last thing I'll see and I'll hear those guns going off, won't I, see the barrels pointing at me and this bastard droning in my ear, but I still won no matter