Pain, it's a funny thing.
You can prepare all you want for it, but when it hits your brain it's impossible not to be affected by it.
Something else funny about it is that you can experience so much of it that nothing makes sense anymore, yet you can't feel the pain.
Death is another funny thing
People like me risk it every day, but we never really expect to die. Sure it happens, Kaidan, Nihlus, and a galaxyful of nameless, faceless people might die, but it still won't happen to you. Not until you're good and ready anyway.
Here's how it happened to me:
Thrown by an enormous concussive force, I dimly registered the death throes of the Normandy beside me. Angry orange against the black abyss.
As I came back to full consciousness I reflected that it was a miracle of hardsuit engineering that I hadn't been vaporized or sprung a leak. Before I could check my radio however…
PFFFWOOOSHHH!
The oaths I swore as my precious oxygen gushed from 3 or four broken seals would have made even the most apathetic college student blush. Perhaps it was a good thing my radio was not working.
When you're in the middle of getting spaced, you don't give much thought to appearances, I know I didn't. I'm sure I must have looked ridiculously undignified as I scrabbled around and tried to keep my air in with my hands, not that I succeeded. Of course, the splitting headache didn't help either.
After a little while the water on my tongue started to boil as I drifted farther away from the Normandy and any hope of survival. After a few more seconds my vision dimmed and faded out as my oxygen starved brain shut down.
If you want to know what happens after you die, you've come to the wrong place. I can't tell you because I can't remember a thing about it. For all I know I might have gone to an eternal paradise and finally seen what a Turian female looks like… then again, maybe that would be eternal hell…hmmmm.
I really hate hospitals.
You do not, cannot, understand how much I loathe the feel of an operating table beneath me, and the smell! That horrible antiseptic smell! Gah, but that's not what you wanted to hear about was it? Moving on with our exciting tale of resurrection…
I regained consciousness to the sight of bright lights above me and the familiar feel of an operating table beneath me. In the background I could hear some voices muttering, one male, one female.
The Normandy! The crew! How am I still alive? Getting up to ask these questions didn't work out, pain spiked in my.. well… everywhere.. and there was this incessant beeping sound. I caught the names of the doctors as they rushed over to me concernedly; Miranda and Wilson.
"Shepard- don't try to move. Just lie still. Try to stay calm."
Stay calm? Do that yourself! When doctors panic I panic, this is (one reason of many) why I hate hospitals. I'm always the one that hears the things you never want to hear.
Miranda roughly pushed Wilson aside as my heart rate monitor beeped faster and faster.
"Another dose, now!"
Then…blessed coolness flooded my veins and I fell back onto the table. The last thing I saw before the world went black again was the female…Miranda… yelling at the male. Pushy isn't she?
"Wake up commander!" no mom, five more minutes please, I thought sleepily… I was too tired to realize my mom never called me commander….
"Shepard do you hear me? Get out of that bed now- this facility is under attack!" yeah, definitely not my mother. It was a female voice though. I groaned and missed what the voice said next as pain lanced through my side.
I looked up through the windows in the ceiling and saw tracer rounds zipping by along with a nice, satisfying explosion. The woman wasn't lying.
Damn.
A/N: Well there you have it, the first bit of (published) fanfiction I have ever written. Also, I have never written in the first person previous to this. Content was not reviewed by a beta. Please review, I'll make you cookies if I ever meet you should you do this for me.