He was immediately brought back to reality when he tried to sit up. The unbearable pain once again wreaked havoc on his body and mind. His armor had simply melted off along the chest, exposing the skin, which now felt as if someone had pressed a scalding hot metal rod to it. He couldn't see the damage, but from just the way it felt, he guessed that it was extensive. It wasn't looking – or feeling – good elsewhere either. His left arm was clearly broken somewhere along the elbow, as were probably all five of the fingers.

Clenching his teeth, Shepard slowly rolled onto his stomach. Quickly, he realized that he had been lying against a pile of concrete rubble. Summoning every last ounce of power available, he desperately tried to claw his way up.

His efforts were rendered futile as soon as he tried to use his left hand for support, receiving nothing but soaring pain as a consequence. As he tried to stay upright, a piece of concrete he had been holding onto broke loose, and he slid back down the pile, losing the tiny amount of progress he had made.

A painful grunt escaped his throat.

Was this really going to be it? Was he, after all the sacrifices he had made, after all the hardships he had endured, going to die because of a damn pile of rocks?

Shepard closed his eyes, trying to recollect his thoughts. As small as the pile of rubble was, it blocked his way completely, and crawling over it was likely impossible in the shape he was. More rubble lay to his left and right.

He cursed, silently.

It seemed like the only option left for him was to turn around. Even then, he couldn't be sure if the path he was facing away from currently was any clearer than the others.

But he couldn't give up. He had to find another way.

And so began the arduous effort of turning his broken body to the other side. He frequently had to pause to catch his breath and rest his aching muscles, protesting against every little movement, every twitch he made. The entire upper half of his body filled him with pain at the slightest contact with the ground. At least it was a reminder that he was still alive. A cynical smirk came across his face, littered with cuts and bruises, at the thought.

By far the most difficult part of this process was to shift his lower body along with the rest of himself. It required every last bit of his depleted core strength to slowly drag his numb legs around.

After what seemed like an eternity, Shepard managed to turn around and face the opposite way. Ahead lay some sort of a hallway of indeterminate length. He could only see ten or so feet of it before the rest of the white façade got swallowed in a veil of darkness, not penetrated by even the slightest bit of light.

Sensing that he had no other options, he started crawling towards it, putting most of the weight on his right arm and using his left occasionally for support, even if it screamed in throbbing pain every time it touched the ground.

It didn't take long for the effort to become unbearable. He was running out of air quickly and had to stop on multiple occasions just to catch his breath and recuperate. Or hope to. Each time he started moving again, Shepard felt more and more fatigued. The energy he was expending, wasn't coming back. Now, even keeping his head upright was an almost impossible task.

He cast a quick look in front of him. The darkness-enveloped part of the hallway seemed no closer than it was at the start of this grueling trip.

Feeling spent and hopeless, he slumped back down on the ground, only to get pierced by another flash of pain as the wound on his chest issued a reminder of its presence, earning a painfully desperate groan out of him.

Trying to find even a temporary reprieve from the pain, Shepard shifted his body to the right side, putting most of the weight on the intact right arm.

He felt defeated. Nothing was going right, and the progress that he'd made so far might have been negligible at best.

He closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to calm the storm that was raging in his mind. Maybe letting go was for the best after all?

A sudden realization dawned on him: He wasn't even sure if the Crucible had done its job.

The moments before he fell unconscious had been a blur. He remembered executing a command on the terminal meant to terminate the processes powering the Reapers, but he couldn't recall or even focus on the details. His body and mind had been too overwhelmed.

The only logical conclusion that came to his mind was that the Crucible had deployed an EMP blast of some sort, or a kill switch, which disabled the machines. The action did crash the Crucible's system, so it must've done something. But what that something was, he couldn't be sure of. Hell, there was a big chance he wouldn't live long enough to find out for himself.

So far, he'd been assuming that his current location was still the Citadel. The telltale signs of a battle – explosions and anti-ship gun barrages – seemed to have gone quiet. That meant that the Crucible had done its job and disabled or destroyed the Reaper fleets. Or it could've indicated something more grim – the ancient machines managed to eradicate the remainder of the galactic forces in the time he was out. Shepard hoped and prayed that the latter scenario wasn't true, but the pessimist in him refused to let go of the idea.

It was becoming exhausting just to think about things now. Drawing in a breath, with an audible wheeze, into his still intact lung and exhaling slowly, Shepard relaxed as much as he could, without sending his body screaming in pain again.

The last bits of energy had been depleted. He was done.

He had given his all to prevent another harvest of pain and horror from being cast onto the galaxy. It was now their job to ensure that they made the best out of this opportunity. If the worst didn't come to pass, that is.

He felt ready and at peace for the first time in years. Even if everything was out of his control now, he felt thankful that it was finally coming to the end for him. He was ready to go.

"I need to know you're always coming back."

But some rogue part of his mind disagreed, and he was swiftly pulled back from that blissful state by Liara's words echoing in his mind again.

Damned promises! He cursed in his head, wanting nothing more than the sweet release of death to come and rescue him from the hell that had become his very existence.

Mustering the last remaining bits of strength, Shepard shifted onto his chest and tried to push forward. Nothing budged. No matter how hard he strained physically, or pushed himself mentally, his body just wasn't responding anymore. Even the excruciating pain radiating from his scorched chest felt like little more than an afterthought. The damage had finally caught up to him, his battered form too frail now to do anything other than barely sustain his existence.

He slumped back down, a short whimper of defeat escaping his lips. An overwhelming sense of doom came over his mind, for the first time in his life. The end was finally here, after skirting around him so many times in the past, and his fate now lie fully out of his control.

His life flashed before his eyes: his youth in the slums on Earth; His teenage years of crime and delinquency; The enlistment to the Systems Alliance at 18 – when his life truly began. It was followed by many missions and his stay in the N program. A quick flash of faces of the men and women from his unit – the same one that perished on Akuze. Then came his time onboard the Normandy – the missions, the people he lost; His hunt for Saren, his first death, meeting Liara after two years and helping her become the Shadow Broker; The Suicide mission and the elation of knowing they'd beaten impossible odds and came out to the other side with the whole crew alive. The Reaper war followed, passing through quickly, lingering only on the destruction of Earth, Palaven and Thessia. These planets were more than simple statistics – they each represented members of his crew, who had been there for him. Unfortunately, he couldn't avoid their suffering. Rannoch was the exception, of course, but it did little to offset the pain that wreaked havoc on his soul.

Inevitably, his visions circled back to Liara, and the time they'd spent together – rare interludes of peace and tranquility in his years filled with death and destruction.

"I am yours"

"I'm always coming back"

It stung even now, as he lay dying in some nondescript part of the Citadel, the last lease of life slowly abandoning his body. He may have managed to save the galaxy, but he'd lost gravely in the process.

Occupied by his thoughts and visions, Shepard was unaware as the world around him dimmed, and the lights finally went out of his eyes.