"Shepard, hold on." The voice sounded so familiar, but she couldn't possibly place it. She was fading in and out of consciousness, but she could feel her body floating on what had to have been a stretcher and bright lights from over head made it difficult for her to see.
She caught a glimpse of long black hair, and that was it. Her only working eye seemed to close slowly again as it lulled back into her head, sweeping back into unconsciousness once again.
The people who managed to save her had taken the severely wounded Shepard into the nearest hospital to hopefully revive her, but this time just how possible was it for her to be fixed again. She was definitely in better shape than she had when Cerberus found her, but even doctors didn't know how long she could last.
As she sat on the operating table unconscious the doctor was explaining what would have to be done in order to save her, and various nurses were carefully trying to remove articles of embedded clothing and armor from her body. This was even a messy, and dangerous task.
Every single time they managed to remove a piece her heart skipped, they had to work fast in order to wrap her wounds and add medi-gel to the places that needed it the most. They couldn't even remotely give her a blood transfusion from all of the blood loss until they dressed her wounds, but they knew that this woman was known for surviving; however, they still worked as fast as possible.
A few times Shepard woke up in the middle of them stitching her up, and when they were removing cloth that had burned itself into her skin. She would scream each time. The agony was so much that she blacked out each time, and not without the consequences when her heart flat-lined one last time.
They brought her back with an adrenaline shot to the chest, but they were finally finished removing the destroyed armor and burned cloth to finally give her a blood transfusion. And her wounds were dressed prior to the tubes being inserted in her wrists, but damn did she look like hell.
She shouldn't have managed to survive. It had been a death defying stunt she pulled, but she managed to save everyone that she could with the exception of her losses.
Shepard woke up again, and this time in a pale colored room on the hospital bed with both eyes blinking as they tried to fixate on her surroundings. It was so bright.
"Hey, take it easy, Shepard." A voice said, and a hand reached out only to touch her shoulder ever so slightly in the lightest touch yet. "You've been asleep for two months."
Her eyes focused slowly on the face above her, it belonged to Ashley, and a wave of relief washed through the woman. "Damn, only two months?" She tried to smile but it still hurt, and she could see the faint smile on the other woman's lips but there was worry in that look as well.
"Guess I had to have the chance to see you in the hospital bed for once," Ashley said. Her expression was pained, worried, and yet happy all at the same time. "You know, when you came to my bedside when I was in the hospital to."
"Yeah, guess we swapped places this time." Shepard commented, and she tried to sit up but her body ached so much it was a difficult task to achieve.
"I'd stay down, until a doctor says otherwise." The fellow Spectre said as she put a small amount of force behind her hand on Shepard's shoulder to keep her from ripping out any stitch that hadn't fully healed.
"All right, all right." Sighing, the woman relaxed a bit on the bed and refrained from getting into a sitting up position right now. Her eyes moved about the room momentarily, and were suddenly hoping the others survived as well with the last of people present.
Ashley saw the expression on the Commanders face, and her hand fell off of the woman's shoulder almost guiltily as her eyes moved away from her comrade. "Shepard… not everyone made it…"
"What?" Her eyes instantly shot up to Ashley, but that rapid movement was a mistake as the room spun, raising a gauze wrapped hand to her head and closing her eyes for no longer than a few seconds before landing on the other dark haired soldier. "What do you mean? Who… Who did we lose?"
There was a long pause, and the silence was slowly starting to eat away at the woman, clenching her teeth before reaching out to grab Ashley's forearm. "Ash, who did we lose?" Her voice was louder, and demanding the information as the woman could hardly look at her.
"Nearly everyone. We lost nearly everyone, Shepard." The woman told her, eyes directly on the others, and Shepard's hand instantly let go of her.
Silence filled the room then, and Shepard seemed to pale considerably, especially when she didn't know who she lost over the course of the war with the Reapers. It was almost as if she knew that the dead would haunt her dreams forever, as they had during the entire war before this happened. She could feel the pain rising in her chest as tears started to sting at her very eyes, but she was a quiet crier, never wanting others to see her pain.
"With all things considered, you weren't able to lose me," almost on cue the snarky comment arrived from an all too familiar face.
"Garrus…" Her voice never sounded so relieved.