Shepard Crawls
The glowing console lay only a few feet away from his desperately reaching fingers, so close, but still tantalizingly out of reach. With every ounce of strength in his body, Shepard crawled forward slowly, the one goal in his mind pushing him forward despite the screams of his exhausted body.
So Shepard crawled, and crawled, and crawled.
But it seemed for every inch he crawled, the console withdrew another foot away, always out of his reach. Shepard shouted in frustration, thrusting out a hand and dragging himself forward. The pain in his chest coiled up and released, knocking the breath out of him. But the pain didn't stop him, and Shepard pushed on, forever determined.
So Shepard crawls, and crawls, and crawls.
A thousand faces blurred past him, all familiar, but some were darkened, gray to him. So many had died, so many that he could have saved but couldn't, just like Anderson, but others were still very much bright. Tali and Garrus looked at him with a light that encouraged him to move forward. They were still alive, of that he had no doubt, so he ground his teeth and pushed on. Maybe they were hallucinations, maybe they weren't, but Shepard didn't care about what was reality anymore.
Everything was riding on this, every last sentient being in the galaxy. The fleet was burning and dying right outside the Citadel, the last remnants of resistance in the Galaxy. When they were gone, the Reapers would be left unchallenged, and after three years of such conflict and grief Shepard would never allow that to happen, not if he still had breath in his lungs. A bolt of pain roared through his chest, blowing out his lungs. He stopped dead in his tracks, burying his head in his floor, and desperately attempting to suck in breath. Breath in his lungs may be something he was running out of, actually.
Keep on crawling, crawling, and crawling Shepard!
Tali's disembodied voice egged him on, providing him with a flicker of strength. Even with the desperation, the anger, and sadness tearing against each other within him, he continued to crawl forward, his final defiance of the inevitable
So Shepard crawled, and crawled, and crawled.