Won't somebody tell me, answer if you can

I want someone to tell me, what is the soul of a man?

The first breath came easy, like a deep inhale followed by a sense of contentment. But the second breath became torture, as the Commander felt his body come alive, in the most terrible of ways.

"Oh Christ," he gasped, sitting up in the hospital bed and shocking the nurses attending him. He brought his hands to his face and found them tangled in surgical tubing and wires. He fought the urge to rip them out, something in the back of his mind telling him that wasn't such a good idea. The pain was overwhelming, starting at his chest and moving outward, no part of his body immune to its touch. His skull throbbed, his legs ached and his eyes watered at the intensity of it all. Over the pain, he became vaguely aware of a nurse at his side, messing with one of the many machines around him.

He felt a sweet rush of relief suddenly, and let himself fall back against the soft pillows, his eyes closing to the world as the pain medication kicked in. He could faintly hear a nurse yelling for a doctor as he slowly slipped back into the black.

The second time he woke, Shepard was in a druggy haze. The intense pain he had felt earlier was still present, but its keen sharpness which had commanded his attention earlier had faded to a dull roar. His mouth felt dry, like it was full of cotton, and his tongue felt swollen and heavy. Even his eyelids seemed to silently protest against his prodding, until he found himself squinting at his surroundings.

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, letting himself gain every inch cautiously, in case the pain decided to rear its ugly head again. When he was fully sitting up, he noticed he had company.

"Commander." Doctor Chakwas stood in her crisp uniform, a datapad in one hand and a glass of water in the other. By her posture she looked weary, but Shepard saw the familiar light in her eyes. She had always been most alive when her services were most direly needed. Somewhere in his mind it registered that she probably had a lot of patients on her hands, but he wasn't sure where the thought came from.

"Chak-was." Shepard choked out weakly, coughing immediately after. The Doctor stepped forward and handed him the glass of water, which he accepted graciously. He quickly drank its contents, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and setting the glass aside. He took another look at Chakwas, who was inspecting one of the machines nearby. He waited patiently for her to speak, unsure of himself where to even start with the questions he had flying through his mind.

"You've been out for three days. When you were brought in, you had four broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a fractured wrist, to name a just a few things. The complete list of your injuries and ailments would take me the better part of a day to recite." Chakwas took a moment to examine her datapad, then resumed.

"It's a miracle you're alive, and to even suggest we owe that to anything other than your implants is borderline insanity." The Doctor sighed, finally looking Shepard in the eye. "And as much as I'd like to let you to enjoy your new found life, I've been instructed to inform the Alliance as soon as you regained consciousness and could hold a conversation. They want to debrief you on what happened up there."

Shepard glanced around the room again, noting a mirror in the far corner. He slowly swung his feet to the floor and disentangled himself from the tubing and wires. Chakwas watched him cautiously as he walked across the room to see his reflection, his eyes never leaving the floor as he navigated his way there. When he finally reached the mirror, he let himself look up and assess the damage.

He had experienced pain in his career before, and had become accustomed to the damage it did. He had grown quite friendly with all of pain's forms: blinding pain, searing pain, dull pain, roaring pain. The bruises and the cuts, the broken bones and the scar tissue, they all left their mark at some point. As he regarded himself in the mirror, he noted that while he had never felt worse, he sure had looked it.

His face was mostly untouched, minus the few scratches on his forehead and cheek. His arms were covered in a motley of bruises, some older than others, and probably still some from before the Citadel. He raised his shirt to examine his stomach and chest, and was surprised to find dark, black markings. The cuts and bruises he could explain, but this left him puzzled. He turned to the Doctor for clarification, but she only shook her head.

"We don't know either. All we know is your implants fought against what it considered infected cells, and left those markings as a result."

Shepard looked back to the mirror, letting his shirt fall back down into place. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Duty never ends, does it?" He wondered out loud, mostly for his own benefit and not expecting any answers. He turned to the Doctor. "Tell them I'm ready to be debriefed."

As far as I can understand, a man is more than his mind

When Christ went to the temple, the people all stood amazed

He was teaching lawyers and doctors how to raise a man from the grave

Author's Note: I am a terrible, terrible person. I've attempted and failed to write more for this story, and am a bit ashamed it took this long to even get this much. Its going to be short and sweet, with just a few more chapters. I apologize for the (major) delay.

Song credit goes to "Soul of a Man" by Blind Willie Johnson (covered by Steven Stern and George Krikes, recently featured in the Mad Max trailer). Cheerio.