Everything around Shepard was dark.

It felt almost like a inescapable darkness that was repeatedly closing in on itself, placing him in a cocoon-like state, and Shepard felt himself suffocating within it. There was a strange feeling that accompanied the darkness, a warm, tingling sensation that soothed his muscles and skin. Shepard could do nothing but feel his eyes close. He was weak, and had lost the strength he was famous for. As his eyes closed, he fell into the darkness, letting out a deep sigh of relief. Numerous images flashed through his sub-conscious mind, and no matter how hard Commander Shepard's brain tried to figure out what they were, it left him confused.

Shepard remembered someone. Her face was unforgettable to him, her features burned into his sub-conscious. Her hazel eyes were welcoming, and Shepard remembered her soft skin against his, comforting his battle-worn body. Her long, brown hair was smooth and silky, and her pearly white teeth made Shepard feel loved.

Ashley.

As he tried to focus on her, to keep himself thinking, but the loving image was replaced by others. Terrible, disturbing images that haunted Shepard's very dreams. He remembered a forest, the trees all the same, their bark all gnarly and rough and the leaves dead on the branches. The grass died as his feet touched it, replacing the lush, green colour with a wilted, brown one. The sky wasn't how he remembered it. The welcoming blue had been swapped with a blood-red colour, and the clouds had gone from white to grey, like the colour of smoke.

He could hear the laughter of a small child, perhaps of the age of six or seven. Shepard remembered the laughter, he remembered following the child throughout the forest. As he thought about the laughter, it was replaced by a loud, booming noise, like a low-pitched shriek. It echoed throughout Shepard's dreams, the recognizable feature of his enemy.

The Reapers.

Shepard's eyelids snapped open, and he immediatly became aware of where he was. The tingling sensation he had once felt had been replaced with an intense pain, and he remembered the wound he had sustained in the Citadel. A gunshot to the stomach, it had ripped through his clothing and through his skin, causing it to badly bleed. He felt the dried blood on his left hand, where he had been desperately compressing the wound to try and buy himself more time.

He closed his eyes once more, trying to remember the soothing darkness that he had been resting in before, but the black had been replaced by the pink of the back of his eyelids. In a vain attempt, Shepard opened his eyes and tried to move himself, causing the wound on his stomach to start bleeding heavily once more.

He tried to move his hand to compress the wound, but found that his tendons and muscles had locked up. Shepard lay back down, and felt the cold of the concrete on his skin, it sent shivers down his spine and a familiar feeling coursing around his body.

Shepard gasped for breath, the pain was unbearable. He had suffered many injuries during his lifetime, but the Commander knew that he had been seriously hurt this time. He tried to groan, but felt nothing but the feeling of condensation come out from his lungs. It hurt him to breathe, it hurt him to speak.

Groaning against the agony inside his head and chest, Shepard tried to shift his body weight onto his left side, only to realize his body was trapped under a very large and heavy piece of debris. Gasping and coughing against the increased pain that the movement had caused, he fell back onto his back. Helplessly pinned beneath a steel beam, Shepard opened his eyes and quickly shut them again as a blinding light invaded his skull.

Having to squint against the harsh light of the sun, Shepard opened his eyes and slowly took in the surroundings, forced to blink multiple times before his vision cleared enough to make out the objects around him. As he looked up, he found the source of the light was making his head beat uncontrollably, like a drum. A couple of fluorescent lights were loose on their exposed wiring, casting shadows and illumination on the walls and scattered debris below them.

The destruction around him told a story. He wasn't exactly sure where he was, but from the gaps in the debris he was trapped inside, Shepard could make out blackened pieces of furniture, and places where walls may once have been, but there were now just gaps leading into the darkness beyond them. The floor was composed of cobblestones, and were causing Shepard to be lying uncomfortably, pressing into his back as he lay on them.

Everything around him seemed familiar, like a place he had perhaps once fought through. Shepard closed his eyes and tried to remember, taking in the things he had seen and matching them with recognizable features in his memories, and then they all slotted into place, like a jigsaw had just been completed in his head.

London. The Conduit. Anderson...

Anderson hadn't survived. The shot he had taken from the Illusive Man had taken it's toll on his body, coupled with the injuries throughout the war and the devastation outside the Conduit...it had been too much for him. Shepard remembered him well, his face was burned inside his head. Anderson had been his mentor, and Shepard was his greatest success. Shepard had always looked up to him. He had always seemed invincible, like nothing in the world could hurt him. He had been through many toils, many failures and many disasters, and still he survived. And now, just as victory was within their reach, he had been swept from the world in a moment.

Shepard felt tears forming in his eyes as he remembered his words, the consoling sentence he had whispered into the Commander's ear before he let go.

You did good son, you did good...I'm...proud of you...

Shepard felt the tears roll down his bruised cheeks as he remembered his mentor, they waters swept down his cheeks without feeling, everything was numb from the pain and the cold. Shepard remembered that there had always been something about Admiral Anderson, like an indomitable strength that kept on moving forwards without stopping. And it was that strength that drove Shepard and motivated him towards everything he had accomplished.

And Commander Shepard would let this strength drive him throughout the situation he was in now. Anderson wouldn't want him to die like this, he would want him to survive. And Shepard would not die yet, not whilst his comrade had died giving him this chance.

And this mantra echoed throughout the halls of his mind as the pain became unbearable, and Shepard lay back and immediatly lost consciousness upon contact with the cobbles.