A surge of adrenaline suddenly jolted Shepard awake.
In the first few moments, he frantically tried to force himself up, but it was in vain. His legs weren't moving. In fact, it seemed like everything from the waist down wasn't responding to the signals his brain was sending to his muscles.
He had to lie back down. The effects of the surge had turned out to be very short-lived, and now he felt the unimaginable amount of pain creeping back into the functioning parts of his body.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe.
Well, one of my lungs is done for, that's certain, Shepard thought.
He closed his eyes. It seemed as if his body was fighting itself. The mixture of his physical side pooling its remaining resources to keep him alive, and his brain overcome with strange tranquility and helplessness, ready to let go and let him rest for good at the same time, was exhausting. It made the search for a solution to his dire situation all that more difficult.
He took as deep of a breath as he could manage and exhaled, slowly.
Maybe this was it? He couldn't keep beating the odds forever. He should've known this was how the war would end. The only consolation being that the Reapers were gone for good.
And in truth, he did know that he was probably going to end up dead at the end of the Reaper war, just didn't want to admit it. A few years prior, he would've accepted his fate with little resistance. He was an Alliance soldier (and later – a Council Spectre) after all. Ready to give his life for humanity, and by extension – the galaxy.
It would've been somewhat poetic, even. Those men and women from his unit, who got massacred on Akuze, didn't die in vain. He was the one who put an end to a millennia old pattern of destruction. A feat which was out of reach, or thought of as completely impossible, by the civilizations that came before them. That should've been enough to silence the ghosts of his past, to stifle the survivor's guilt that had been tormenting him for years.
Except he wasn't the John Shepard of a few years ago. Not anymore. He wasn't someone who went through life with a chip on his shoulder, trying to get away from a life of crime, poverty, and homelessness which had marked his childhood and teenage years. He wasn't a man who selfishly threw himself into dangerous combat situations in a subconscious hope that his actions would be enough to sate the voices of the past in his head. The same ones, which had tormented him for years after Akuze.
He was a different person now, changed by events which were thought of as no more than fiction a few years back. Sure, that bit of recklessness was still there, but that's just who he was. He'd rather take the brunt of the damage than let even one of his crew get killed again. He was protective of them – humans, aliens – those who he considered as more than his subordinates or colleagues. They were like family to him, something he was robbed of in his childhood.
And then there was her.
There had been a connection between them ever since Shepard opened his mind to Liara for the first time. Even though on the surface, it was nothing more than a simple meld done in hopes of her being able to make sense of the visions given to Shepard by the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime, there was something more to it. Something that lingered on hours and days after. Something that eventually led to them become more than just crewmates to each other.
Ever since they opened their minds, before taking that decisive step onto Ilos in the hunt for Saren, Shepard's life changed for the better. No longer was he fighting for the galaxy – he had someone to protect and fight for as well. The fact that he had made it this far, was in no small part thanks to her.
So it was at this moment, when the fire that had been powering Shepard through life, threatened to finally go out, his thoughts once again returned to Liara.
"I need to know you're always coming back."
Shepard swore silently. He knew what he meant to Liara from their melds. It was hard to imagine the pain that she'd be in, knowing that she had lost him for the second time.
A weak, wet cough coming from his damaged lungs broke his train of thought.
Time was running out, and he had to do something if he wanted to even stand a chance at making out of here alive.
He didn't know what family life looked like, or any life out of the Alliance uniform for that matter. All he was sure of at that moment, was that whatever came after – he wanted to experience it with Liara at his side. He was in a less than ideal condition at the moment, and his odds of survival were likely in the single digits, but he'd be damned if he didn't at least try to overcome them.
With a newfound conviction, he lifted his aching head off the ground. He wasn't done yet.