Disclaimer: I don't own Chakwas or any other character from Mass Effect Series. EA and Bioware own the Mass Effect Series.
The room was silent. Deathly silent. Part of her mind kept telling her to breathe out loud just to keep away the unsettling silence. She looked down at her hands. Trembling. But they weren't dissolved.
Good.
Shakily, she reached for the edge of her bed sheets before tearing them off and swinging her feet over the edge of her bed. She ran a hand over her face, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness of the room. And then, with as much dexterity as one can manage at 2am in the morning, she crept toward the locker where her clothes were and tiptoed out of the crew quarters.
The moment the doors of the medbay swept open to reveal her workspace she felt infinitely better. There was nothing quite like the comfort found in the familiarity of one's professional domain. She settled into the chair at her desk, looking outside the windows of the medbay and watching the skeleton crew work. The entire place emitted a gentle, never-ending hum. It was one of those little things that had always comforted her whenever she spent her time here.
Of course, there wasn't much to do at this time in the cycle; there were no missions being done, no Reapers to fight, not injuries to treat. She drummed her fingers on her desk in thought, the lack of something to do bringing back her awareness of the dreams from before, of the trembling in her fingers and her spine. But she refused to return to her bed or to anything that had to do with sleep. Medical school had taught her to thrive in the times where sleep couldn't be gotten, and even doctors in hospitals who had no patients always had things to do. So surely a military medical officer (especially one aboard Shepard's ship) would have plenty to do.
She took out a few datapads containing medical reports, pharmaceuticals yet to be tested and new ideas for treatment and prevention, her eyes scanning the information but her mind not bothering to register what the words were. Every so often she would tell herself to pay attention to what she was reading, but to no avail. Her mind never ceased its wanderings.
In the end, she just sat at her desk resting her face tiredly in one hand, the skeleton crew outside the medbay just as oblivious to her presence as she was to theirs. Even after six months of work, six months of being safe and sound, six months of having lived something akin to normal life, the nightmares had still come. And still came. She could still feel the weight of the air pressed in when she had been stuck in that pod in the Collector base. She could still smell that foul place whenever she woke up trying to breathe. And the screams – oh God, the screams – that she could still hear from those who hadn't been set free in time. All those colonists, all those innocent peoples. In her dreams, she could still hear them dying.
...Pressley was right. She wasn't alright at all.
A/N: Well well, another mildly angst-ridden Chakwas fic. PFFFT!
No really though, I enjoy writing for Chakwas. She's such an amazing character and I do wish there was more about her out there. The only good thing about there being so little of her revealed is that fans like yours truly get a chance to shunt out their headcanons and stories and so on!
Thank you for reading!