A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time that it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.

- Senai Destr

Part of being a soldier is knowing you could die at any moment. They covered themselves with steel and shields and barriers but in the end each of them always knew that any fight could be their last, any enemy could be the one. All his life Shepard had, surprisingly, found that to be comforting. Each fight was just as important as the last. Each enemy was dangerous as any other. Thinking like that kept him focused, stopped him from getting ahead of himself.

He realized that he was dead about three minutes before it actually started being true. The switchboard on his suit was lit up, flashing warnings at him about burns and breaches. The vacuum was getting in, and the air was all running out. Only a whisper got through to him when he tried to breathe, and it wasn't even close to enough.

He spent a moment looking for likely rescue scenarios and came up empty. No. This was the end. He turned off the damage displays that were playing on the inside of his visor. The suit stabbed him, filled him with medigel and stims, but it couldn't really do much to delay the inevitable at that point.

There's an awful lot of pain in the beginning. His body twisted and his hands clawed his throat with animal instinct. His jaw locked so tightly he wondered if his teeth would break. He wanted to scream. He needed to scream. He could hear a sound like a dry wood crackling as it's consumed by fire and realized that his brain was dying. He listened to his brain die, and he didn't scream.

Then it hurt less. That was a relief.

His thoughts became monolithic and slow, they ground against one another and made his eyes water. His mouth was full of blood, and he gasped, just once, and it went dribbling down his chin.

He'd been so focused over the last three months, like a laser on a target. They had been great times, full of victory. The geth were weak, they were driving them back and searching for clues of the Reapers as they went. They were saving lives, being heroes. It had been a great time. He had never been expected a giant fucking spaceship to fly out of nowhere and destroy him.

It was funny. Nothing had really seemed funny since Ash died, but this was funny. If he could have laughed, he would have.

He had no control of his body. His limbs drifted limp in the weightless vacuum, but he had spun naturally and faced the planet now. Alchera. White and frigid and luminous against the blackness all around him. There was fire in the lower atmosphere, his ship dissolving, escape pods. His mind whirred with sudden urgency as he remembered sending Alenko for the escape pods. He didn't know if he, or anyone else, had made it out alive. He never would.

There were worse lives he could have had. His mind spun backwards, looking for regrets and came up with surprisingly few. He had done a lot of bad things in his life, but so much good too. He regretted moments not taken, opportunities not seized. He thought about Virmire. He regretted not putting the moves on Alenko when he had the chance. There had been... something there. Now he would never know what. That was sad. He was sad about that.

Mostly he was relieved. The tension went out of him in one moment, and his vision was dimming. He wasn't really thinking anymore, he wasn't capable of it, but relief washed over him in a wave that turned terror into ecstasy. No more fighting. No more pain. He'd done his best, and that was all anyone could ever do.

He felt accomplished. Redeemed. Like he was sliding into a bath of warm light, and he reached out with everything that was left of him and found Ash's face in the haze. He'd be seeing her again soon.

His eyes closed, and he lost consciousness. Thirty seconds later, he died.

A/N: Just a warning, there are dark times ahead for Shepard. I always thought the game really failed to elaborate on what Shepard actually felt about being brought back from the dead and it made him kind of robot-ish. This Shepard will definitely be feeling the effects of the Lazarus Project much more acutely.

Also, you can expect updates to go down in frequency a little from now on. I had a lot of the last few chapters already written, and I've had a lot of spare time over the last week, but both of those situations are at their end now. Sorry!