Asphyxiation.

Kind of a depressing topic, isn't it? Yeah. It is. But it's the kind of thing you think about when it's happened to you. You might be wondering how I'm sitting here typing this if that's the case. It's a long story and really I don't even know all the gory details about how they brought me back, the ones lying in the stack of files over in the corner cabinet. Miranda brought them by the last time she visited. Where she got them I could only hazard a guess. How? I don't even want to know. I haven't been brave enough to look at them yet. Miranda says she can help when I have questions. Not if, but when. Shit.

Kaidan is lying on the couch. He's pretending to read but his eyes leave the page to glance in my direction far too often to actually call what he's doing reading. Sometimes he watches me like I'm just going to disappear right before his eyes. I might be annoyed if I didn't understand the feeling, if I didn't feel like he might disappear too.

He asked me once about—that day. God, why is it so hard to say? Is it because it sounds so implausible? So farfetched? I died. But I'm alive now. Anyway, I wasn't ready to talk about it then. At least that's what I told him and myself. I wasn't ready. He was so understanding; he told me he'd wait until I was but it has been over a year since he asked and I still don't feel ready. I don't know if I ever will.

Joker told me that they thought I died in the explosion. The empty coffin at the ceremony held by the Alliance was empty because there was no body to recover. In retrospect people's reaction to my being alive makes a lot more sense.

I take a deep breath and hear Kaidan shift on the couch. He doesn't speak but I know he's watching to see if it was more than a sigh, if I'm in pain. The recovery since our battle in London has been a long one and it's not done yet. I'm not as young as I used to be.

"That day," I say out loud. I stop myself; if I'm going to do this I'm going to do it right. "The day the Normandy was attacked…" Closer but still not right. "The day I died."

I don't turn towards Kaidan but I hear him sit up. I hear the book hit the floor with a dull thump. "Yeah?"

I don't start at the beginning because we both lived it. I don't start with our last night together or mention the breakfast we had shared in the mess hall. Instead I start when I turned to him and told him to get the others onto the shuttles while I went back for Joker.

"I didn't say what I wanted to say because it seemed like I would be admitting to myself that I wasn't going to make it," I say, my head bowing underneath the weight of those memories. "I told you to go, like it was an order." I realize in that moment that it was an order. It was an order so I could weigh the odds in his favor. An order so that he might live. I don't tell him that. He probably knows. "I wanted to say everything I felt, but we didn't have time."

Deep breath, Shepard. "I went back for Joker and he was still trying to save her. He would have thrown his life away trying to save her." If there was one thing I could count on to never change it was Joker's dedication to the Normandy. He would love that ship until the day he died.

Dying, yeah, that's what I was talking about, wasn't it? "We were heading towards the shuttle when they came around for another attack. I got Jeff in but the explosion… I was barely close enough to touch the panel and get the pod sealed but I did. I saved him."

Kaidan stands and moves across the room towards me. I feel his warmth at my back as his hands drop onto my shoulders, avoiding the jagged scar that still hurts when I push myself too hard or when the weather changes. "Yeah, you did."

It's just a simple acknowledgement but it's what I need. I don't need to be congratulated for something any XO should do for her pilot. I don't need to know that deep down there's still a part of him that is bitter over losing me.

"I think it was the next explosion that did it. I could hear the air hissing out, could tell by the burn in my lungs that I was in trouble." I remember it all. My lungs had screamed for oxygen that wasn't there. It was dark. It was so cold and silent. It had been in those moments as the Normandy disintegrated around me that I knew the end of my brief existence was fast approaching.

"Of all the ways I expected to go out that wasn't one of them," I admit. "I tried to find the leak even though I knew it was useless. I just wanted to fight."

Kaidan sinks down to sit beside my chair and as he leans his head against my thigh I realize all over again how lucky I am. He's so careful around me, probably more careful than he has to be now but it's just become a habit. I know I need to make it up to him. I want to make it up to him.

But first things first, I have to finish the little bit that's left of my story.

"You told me that your life flashed before your eyes on Mars and mine did too when I was spaced." It flashed before my eyes in London too, but that was another story for another day. "I remember thinking how much we had accomplished and still how inadequate it was. I remember thinking back further to Elysium and then Rio…" I trail off because it's not often I think about those days. It's not because they're particularly painful or enjoyable but simply because I was a different person then, living a different life. I push the memories aside for the moment, for once I know there will be time later, "…but mostly, Kaidan, I thought about you."

His brown eyes are intent on my face and my fingers hover at his temples, stroking the grey streaks in his hair. The corners of my mouth turn up as I do; he likes to tease me that I'm the one who put the grey there. Thinking back on everything we've gone through I don't really doubt it.

I tell him that I was thinking of him as my consciousness faded because it's true. I don't tell him about the pain. I don't tell him that I was begging by some miracle to survive. That would hurt him. It still hurts me. Maybe one day I'll work up the courage to tell him that.

But for now I'm content. I got my miracle. I'm alive.

I'm breathing.