A/N
Written originally for the Mass Effect Kinkmeme
This fic came out much more angsty than I had originally planned and less strict to the prompt it was based off of. But you know how it is.
Just as a clarification, all italicized portions take place in the past, all non-italicized portions take place in the present.
Chakwas stared up at the sky, listening to the insects that called to one another in the wood. She rubbed her arms to stave off the twilight chill, the palms of her hands scratching, rough from the harsh medical soaps she used to scrub out after surgery. Shanxi had been under siege for weeks, from here she could still smell the gunsmoke, the carnage, the death. Still, the beauty of the red tinged sky and twin moons never failed to move her.
The door was open and her supply room lock was fried beyond repair, the materials inside scattered like an exit wound spatter. The most valuable items remained, some of the highest priced vaccines, technical equipment, field organ transplants. Instead, the drawer filled with dressings was empty, and every drawer and cupboard was flung open in haste.
She saw his eyes for the first time, like firelight, glaring back at her from within the woods. He bore no weapons save for a knife that was tucked into his belt, but yet his whole body was a weapon, plated with iron. His hands clutched a variety of bandages, splints, and a few surgical kits, nothing more. Half of it dropped to the ground as he reached for the blade. Within his feral eyes she could see the toll Shanxi had taken on both sides—they were both gaunt, both tired, and both more animalistic than either of them wanted to be.
Chakwas did not fear death, nor did she want to die. She was pure human down to the core, with a love of harmony matching her taste for discord.
"Take it," she said.
The hand on the knife stayed.
"Go on, it's fine," she said.
He continued to stare at her, frozen in place for what seemed like eternity, as if to study her, to memorize her there at that time. Then he picked up the fallen dressings and disappeared into the brush.
xXx
"Move, move, move!" Shepard barked.
The door shut behind Commander Shepard and her crewmates, red-faced and panting. "We've got a medical emergency!"
A turian's arm was slung about her shoulders, and her armor glistened with the sheen of fresh blue blood. His head hung limply to the side, the right side of his face minced into a bloody mess, a few pieces of metal still stuck in. His ear was unrecognizable, the membrane ripped apart. But still, she knew that visor anywhere.
Garrus.
"Put him on the table, stabilize his neck." Chakwas wheeled over the surgical cart. He was bad, but she could save him.
The unconscious turian lay sprawled across the table, the slight rise and fall of his chest marking him as being still among the living. Chakwas had seen many wounds in her long career, but this was one of the worst. Even the tough skin of turians couldn't stand up to the power and shrapnel of a rocket to the face.
She clipped the oxygen monitor to his finger and applied the pulse monitor to the thin skin of his neck, right above the turian equivalent of the carotid artery. She flicked the tough skin twice before inserting the IV needles, the hot skin around the puncture growing cold as the liquid poured in. He was unconscious for now, but with the fluids restored, he'd probably come to in the middle of surgery. Just as turians didn't tolerate temperature extremes well, they similarly didn't tolerate dehydration. For all their toughness, their homeostatic balance was delicate, easy to upset and send into shock.
Worry creased Shepard's brow as she watched the monitor beep with his vital signs, the cracks visible in her usually armored face. His blood pressure was low, his heartbeat rapid.
"Commander, take the helm. I'll take care of him."
"Chakwas, do you need me to send for Mordin?"
"No," she said. "I've handled worse alone in a foxhole." She sighed. "It would probably be best for him to wake up with a familiar face anyway."
Shepard nodded. "I know he's in good hands."
xXx
There, beneath those same bright moons, she met him for the second time, inside the storeroom, opening the door before he could kick it in. She did not know why, but she knew exactly when he would come. He looked surprised at first, hesitant, checking for traps, but she gestured for him to come in, and he shut the door behind him.
"I would have left this for you," he said.
He handed her a medi-gel and a loaf of bread, both rare items. Chakwas didn't know what to say. As it had the potential to be toxic to him, she didn't want to think about where it came from. The images of the pillaged towns she had seen everywhere on her tour sprung unbidden to her mind, the red and blue blood mixing as it ran down the street, but she accepted the gifts gladly. After all, he looked hungry, too.
"It's the best I could do." He was flustered, shaking.
"You didn't have to." She said.
"It's a matter of honor. Yes, I did." He grabbed at the mounds of bandages that she had set up for him and bolted for the door.
"Thanks," she whispered to his back. Nothing answered but the breeze.
xXx
Chakwas carefully unfastened his armor, the latex on her hands sticking to the metallic surface. She undid the clips one by one, listening to them snap.
This was a common part of field medicine, an unconscious patient alone with a doctor, whether from anesthetic or an injury. But somehow she never really found it routine.
In a way, she found the idea stimulating every time she had to do this. She could take off everything, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. He'd have to lay there naked, helpless, open to whatever the lab coat authority saw fit. The thrill she felt scared her a little, but the Alliance screened for these sorts of propensities when they recruited medics. Apparently she had checked out safe.
She really had to wonder about their accuracy sometimes.
She unhooked the collar guard and eased it over his head, twisting it away from his face. There was the heavy bone ridge where the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders attached. She traced a finger over his neck, down the collar. Garrus stirred in his drugged and heavy sleep; Chakwas jumped. The anesthetic hadn't fully kicked in yet to hold him still.
Chakwas had healed Garrus in the past, but she had never really gotten the chance to really look at him. It wasn't polite to stare. She pulled the glove off his right hand, and examined the talons that tipped each finger. She wondered if in close combat he had ever sunk them into someone's flesh, if they had lived. Or perhaps he had scraped them down the body of a lover…
Why was she thinking of this? Somehow she was curious. What was he like as a lover? How many had he taken?
She unhinged the breastplate from the back. It showed a body that was much thinner, tighter than the armor suggested. The broad shoulders 'V'-ing into a thin waist. That was all she needed to remove, but she went further, pulling off his digitigrade combat boots, pulling off the pants and the undergarments underneath. She blushed, but there was nobody to see it, the excitement, curiosity, and embarrassment welling up in her like she was 13 years old again.
At first, seeing him lie there reminded her of her xenosurgical training classes that she enrolled at not long after Shanxi was over, when they practiced on the turian cadavers. But she reached out and touched his hip; he was warm to the touch and it jolted her back to reality. Her hand slipped down from the pointed bones down the powerful but graceful thighs, to his knee and settling along his long leg spur. Even at rest with massive facial wounding, her breath hitched in her throat at the impressive sight.
Her consciousness came back to nag her. No, no…
Sheepishly she covered his bottom half back up with a sheet. But still, she knew it was there, and she kept staring. The thin sheet material that did nothing to hide him, really. She could see the darkness that was his skin beneath the sheer white. The fabric formed points and angles as it broke over the lines of his body. When she put her hand on his leg, she could feel the plating beneath the cloth.
She took a deep breath.
Since when had healing a turian gotten her so worked up? It had been such a long time since she had lost that novelty, yes?
But there was a first time for everything, and it had been a long time since she had remembered what it was like to see a turian in the nude for the first time…
Again, she was lost in thought.
xXx
After the footsteps faded, she pulled him out of the closet. She should have known better than to keep meeting him here, but each night the curiosity overcame her, as well as him. The burrs and leaves clung to her clothes as he lead her deeper into the forest where she had found him. They curled up against a boulder in the shade of a large tree, their sacred place for the past three weeks.
He was a medic just like she was, though he was nearing the end of his term of service, and had wishes to teach field medicine at a school. Their over-extended, constantly attacked supply lines dwindled, making it difficult to get basic medical items, weapons, and dextro food. The ones who were high ranking soldiers were given more rations, and as a medic, he was simply lucky.
Time was frozen; the world was suspended. There was no war, no death, no need to use these "gifts" she gave him. They traded stories; she told him about her life on Earth that seems like little more than a dream now that she was surrounded by hell. He told about his childhood in the outer colonies, moving from place to place with his father before his compulsory military service. It was strange, knowing him, when one of them should have died at the first meeting.
There in the moonlight he held her. It made too much sense and none at all. They fumbled around groping at their starkly different bodies, curious. She knew that she should go back to her post, but somehow she couldn't make herself leave the warmth of his arms. She shuddered when he placed a hand over her shoulder, stroking the thin skin closest to her neck. He was a remarkably gentle creature, his movements as delicate as the grass that tickled her back. He laughed when she knocked her fist on one of the plates on his chest. It was a ridiculous endeavor anyway, and they laughed at their differences and met halfway.
But after that night, he stopped coming. It was okay. She was confused at what was happening, too. She didn't blame him at all.
No, this was for the best. She was sure of it.
xXx
She began cleaning the wounded areas, pulling the shrapnel out of deep blue-stained flesh. The muscles, tendons, and nerves controlling the left side of his mouth were unsalvageable, as they were severed in too many places to count. Chakwas got to work connecting in the wires to the anchor points on his mandible, his jaw, and his pointed lips. Sending an electric current through them, she watched the flesh move as she wished, flaring out, open-shut. Satisfied with her work she implanted the far ends into his remaining facial nerves. She placed artificial skin grafts overtop of it, and began to bandage the wounds.
After adding the last piece of cloth tape, she stood back to admire her work. He wouldn't heal perfect, but he would heal well. She wondered what he would think of when he saw that scar, the enemy who put it there or the friends who saved his life?
It would be about another hour until Garrus would come out from under the anesthetic. Chakwas climbed up on the cot, curling her body into the space under his arm. From here she could see the deep rising and falling of his chest, the heart monitor keeping time with it. The rhythms of the unconscious body were so natural, flowing. Regardless of the species, under deep anesthesia, sleeping bodies acted pretty much the same. It was as if he was the same as…
No.
She stopped, pulling herself off of the space beside him. That was not a place for her to go, regardless of whether her curiosity beckoned. She was a bitter, pervy old woman, but it was in here that she could claim she was not a monster.
No, she was definitely not a monster, just someone with a lot of memories…
xXx
She had found him near the same forest clearing where they had met. The wound to his side was deep, and it just kept bleeding. As best as she could, she pulled him to her clinic with her, his cumbersome and lanky 6-foot-7 frame making it difficult to maneuver through the thick copse. She didn't care who saw her today. Frankly, it didn't matter.
She plunged the medigel syringe into him, the resistance of his thick skin on the needle strange and new. With the forceps, she pulled out the pieces of metal that filled his side, placing a stick between his teeth to bite for the pain. She tried to stitch him up, but the deep indigo blood kept welling up and over her hands. By now, he had passed out, and she had no idea how to help him, nor could she ask.
He was a medic, he held the skills, and yet she was lost. It was ironic, she thought, even when her mind was addled by panic. She tried applying pressure in the familiar places, but nothing stopped the flow. This strange body was something that she knew nothing about, and now there was nothing she could do besides simply try. Just like that night in the woods, she would try and try again, trying to know his body, but now in a different sense.
The gunfire outside got closer and the door opened. But she didn't move to look at them. When he stopped breathing, she breathed for him, mouth stained with that incompatible blue blood that burned on her cracked and swollen lips, until his heart simply stopped pounding.
No! She pumped his chest, reaching for the defibulators. Charge…clear! No response. She tried again and again. Then she tried one last time.
She didn't know when the door had opened, or when it had gotten so crowded. The soldiers standing around looked at her in a mixture of confusion, curiosity and disgust. She looked up, studying their faces, panting.
Somebody touched her shoulder.
"I don't know what's going on here, and I'll ignore it for the time being, but he's dead Chakwas." He said it again. "Chakwas, he's dead."
She stood back, her world reeling.
xXx
Garrus opened his eyes.
Chakwas was still hovering over him. Garrus stretched, groaning in pain as he moved muscles and bones that didn't wish to be disturbed.
"What happened?" He said, or at least that's what she thought he said. It had come out more like a very drawn out 'fwt habba', but years of listening to soldiers come out of anesthetic, especially those with implants, she had gained a skill that her universal translator had never mastered.
"Slow down," she said. "That rocket nearly took off half of your face. I had to reconstruct it with some grafts and cybernetics. There's a slight warm-up time for the cybernetics to learn your vocal biomechanics."
He raised a clumsy hand to stroke his face, which was covered in bandages and a plate that held them together. The lack of finesse caused him to wince in pain as his hand landed a little harder than he wanted it to.
"Here," said Chakwas, taking his hand and guiding it over the wounds lightly.
"Thanks," he said. It was starting to sound a bit more like the Garrus she knew—less like a flanging elcor with its mouth full.
She watched him test his jaw, opening and shutting it. He flared his mandibles, with one moving much further than the other, until eventually they seemed to move together equally. It was nice to see that the cybernetic neuromuscular junctions were beginning to cooperate with his brain.
As soon as Chakwas had been alerted of courses in xenoanatomy and xenosurgery, she had jumped at the chance to take them. Now in some ways, she was far more skilled in mending alien races than her own. As an Alliance medic, it was her secret pride.
"You're a tough one, Garrus," she said, with a labored smile. "I've seen better soldiers than you go down from wounds half that bad." She realized that her hand was still overlaid with his, and she untwined it quickly, shoving the hand underneath a crossed elbow.
"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," said Garrus. His voice had returned to normal, and so had the movements of his face. He glanced around the room, blearily studying his surroundings. "Maybe I'm still dreaming, but this looks like we're on the Normandy."
Chakwas sighed. "Close but not quite. This is a Cerberus reconstruction of the Normandy. Complete with an AI."
"An AI…" he mused before the other word dawned on him. "Did you say Cerberus?" He sat up with a start. "Why are we on a Cerberus ship?" His memories were flooding back to him. "Why is Shepard on a Cerberus ship?"
"Relax," said Chakwas. "I'm here because Shepard's here. They were the ones who rebuilt her after obtaining her corpse. The woman's got enough cybernetics to choke a Geth. You can talk to her later about her choices, but I assure you, she's still the same old Commander Shepard. "
"Well, I don't like the sound of this, but that's good news at least." Garrus sat up unsteadily, and swung his legs out over the side of the cot. He tested his feet on the ground; they were steady enough.
"Are you sure you feel well enough to get up?" Chakwas asked. It was equal parts for her sake and for his. It was so rare for her to just sit and talk anymore.
Garrus grunted as he moved something the wrong way. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I just have to remember not to move my face too much."
He paused. "Chakwas, would you mind giving me a mirror?" he asked. This time when he rubbed his face, he didn't need her help. "All I can feel is bandages. And pain," he added.
Chakwas shook her head. "You said it yourself, there's nothing to see save the bandages. You can check it out to your heart's content in your quarters. Come back and see me if you need more pain killers."
"So it's that bad, huh?"
Chakwas scowled. "Go see Commander Shepard. She's been waiting a long time."
He nodded his head respectfully. "Will do." He chuckled. "I realize I didn't say thanks. Not many could have done what you did for me."
"You're certainly right about that." Chakwas said coolly. "They don't call me the best field surgeon in the Alliance because I could cauterize and stitch." She smiled. "Go," she said. "I'll walk you up to make sure you get there."
Chakwas could hear him talking to Shepard from outside the com room.
A thing for men with scars...
Yes, based on his quixotic stint in Omega, she could tell he was full of scars, now inside and out. Moreover, Chakwas was sure that Shepard had a thing for each and every one of them.
She listened to the ease with which the two of them caught up, both of them not yet even realizing the chemistry between them that sparkled in the air. It should happen; it would happen, the two of them. The world had come so far since Shanxi. It wasn't perfect yet, but now they lived in a wondrous time.
Returning to the med bay, Chakwas reached for her brandy. She wanted some time alone—no, together—with her memories. After all, there is a double standard. Nobody likes a woman with scars.