"Shepard?"
The gruff voice pulled her from her thoughts like flopping a fish onto the dock. She floundered, sucking in her breath and opening and closing her mouth in an attempt to get air. Somehow, somewhere, she needed to find the words. To find the control.
In the end, she somehow mustered up enough strength to open her eyes, to look up from the tiny corpse in her hands and into the wide eyes of the krogan kneeling beside her.
"Wrex…" she gasped, collapsing into his arms the second he put a hand on her shoulder. He caught her awkwardly, patting her back at random intervals, mumbling, "Come on now," and "Shepard, it's alright," over and over until, finally, she found her words.
"He only lived for two minutes. Two minutes of screaming and crying in pain and then… then he was just gone... "
Wrex nodded and looked gravely at the tiny krogan in her hands, wrapped in a freshly washed blanket, his eyes scrunched closed and his mouth loose, showing glimpses of tiny white teeth. It wasn't the first dead child he'd seen, no krogan had the ability to forget the mass graves filled with tiny burning bodies. But it occurred to him, somewhat surprisingly, that it might be Shepard's first time.
"It happens, sometimes there's nothing we can do about it," he mumbled, flipping the edge of the blanket over to cover the baby's graying face. Shepard looked back down to the blanket, eyes roving over the small hills that indicated the child's nose and crest.
Wrex wrapped his arm around her shoulder and held her as he had so many krogan mothers before. She may have been smaller, softer, more fragile feeling… but she was still as familiar as any of his sisters. He'd comforted too many in his time not to know the pain that she was feeling now.
"He was strong. He fought. He didn't let the void take him easily," the old krogan said, jostling her shoulder gently as another sob escaped the woman.
"I thought….. I thought we cured…"
Her body hunched over on itself, curling more into him even as she brought the blanketed bundle to her chest. Her hands clutched the folds with white fingers, and Wrex heard her teeth grinding between her jaws.
"This wasn't the genophage. This was just a…. defect. It happens sometimes, even to the healthiest of parents."
Shepard shook her head, bringing her forehead down to the child's, her hands shaking. Wrex looked behind her, at the orphaned eggs sitting in the nursery where Shepard had been spending her recovery. His eyes trailed back to her slumped figure, and he drew her to his chest. From his angle, he could see the white scars lining the back of her neck, disappearing down to her shoulder where he knew they bisected her back. A brute's claw mark, earned while dodging a Reaper so she could summon a giant thresher maw. For him. For them. For the krogan.
"I feel like a failure," she sighed, loosening her shoulders until her head fell back against his chest. He looked down and met her gaze, watching a tear trickle from the corner of her eye to fall and land on the blanket below.
"Now you listen here, Shepard," he growled, voice gentle but firm, "You've bled for the krogan more than our own kind has. Look around. Because of you, most of these children will live. Because of you, this place is a nursery instead of a mass grave. No matter what you do, you will always lose some. Krogan accepted this a long time ago. But now, thanks to you, we have a future. This one didn't make it, but the thousands born this year will, the dozens born right here in your care. Don't you dare call yourself a failure, you're Clan Urdnot, and nobody in Urdnot is a failure, much less Commander Shepard."
She closed her eyes as he spoke, listening to the vibrations that echoed through his chest, striking straight through to her core.
"Thanks, Wrex," she said after a few moments. The krogan nodded, reaching down to put his hand beside hers on the tiny form she cradled.
"Does it ever get easier?" she asked softly. He sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently and pulling her up from the ground as he stood. He made sure she was meeting his eyes before he spoke.
"Shepard, because of you, we don't need to answer that anymore."