Pain. Pain. Not the kind that medgel can fix either. The lucky to be breathing kind and every breath is a fire hot poker into my side, into me, tearing me apart in three billion pieces.
I wake up multiple times, unable to move, just breath. Keep breathing. One breath, two breath, three…blackness
Then, the pain has eased. It's like it's behind some firewall. It's still there, but it's distant. Thoughts don't formulate they just pass over the ocean and feel distant. Grey, static, grey.
I blink. I don't hear. I just breath.
It's so many more fitful awakenings. It's nightmare after nightmare. It's fighting inside of me and vomiting up nothing over and over again, and choking on it.
It's not knowing if I want to live like this. Sometimes the pain is more than I can bare even behind the firewall of medgel. This stupid existence of grey and nothing, but pain and fighting for breath, sometimes having something else force breath inside of me.
It's not knowing what the crap I'm doing or where I'm at or even who I am.
Then, it's someone holding my hand. I don't know how long it has been, but the pressure is good. My eyelids flutter as I try to push them open. More effort than I remember and there is something blue and white in front of me.
The voices are far away and I'm too exhausted to fight my eyes open again.
But the curiosity is there and then, I think blue. Little blue children and I remember with a flash what I'm fighting for. Then, the nightmares rip through me, even more violent: Husks, Banjees, horrible things, thresher maws, and reapers and dead bodies. Hands, knees, feet, bones, spinal chords, blood splattered everywhere like some cheesy horror vid. Soldiers, dead so many dead.
"Shepard." That voice. I know that voice.
"Liara…" my voice cracks, barely a whisper ripping through me and I start coughing. I feel wet on my cheeks and my eyes flutter open and focus on that face. "Dreaming?"
"No, Shepard. I'm real," she says with a sigh. I know that sigh. I know her. I try to touch her cheek, the tears there. She's hurting, but I can't. The washing of pain through me is too much, running over me. "Don't try to move." She holds the hand I tried to move. "You're hurt."
"Am I going to make it?"
"I think so," she says with a shaky smile. "They say you still have some fighting to do, but this…this….they don't know you. My Shepard. You'll fight them all to hell and back."
"It hurts," I tell her. She leans over and I feel the heat of her cheek pressing against mine. Those precious tears running down my own cheek.
"I know….I know," she says and I feel more tears. "Will you keep fighting for me or are you done?"
"Not….done," I tell her. "But tired, precious." Her eyebrows knit and I see a hint of a worried smile.
"Then, sleep. I'll be here or not far away," she assures me.