Shepard woke alone.
There was no dramatic moment of clawing her way out of the rubble of the citadel, no more pushing herself past the brink and beyond just to survive. Instead it was sterile fluorescents that greeted her, the wheeze and tick of hospital equipment and the stale taste of the tubing snaking down her throat. Needles and sticky patches of monitoring probes peppered the parts of her body that weren't wrapped and taped in gauze. The medical staff, more of them volunteers than actual trained professionals, kept her conscious hours in control. It would take time and resources they didn't have to fully wake her at this point and Shepard only silently blinked. It was enough.
She could rest.
The new post war world met her as a slow tide. Easily welcomed pushes into her empty medicated sleep, quick whispers from the visiting staff about the recovering earth and galaxy beyond. By the time she heard the low apologetic voice of her physician, felt the cool touch of the asari's hand as she demonstrated how to put on her new left leg, Shepard thought herself stable enough to finally wake up.
The reapers had scorched her earth and the galaxy at large. Medical treatments that would have returned her skin to its satiny texture, brought her a new cloned limb, were all too strained. Resources were scant, communications were dodgy, and the celebrations of survival had long passed by in favor of somber rebuilding. When Shepard finally grew accustomed to her new unfeeling leg, to the strain of her burn scars, to the two missing fingers on her right hand and how her eyes watered intensely from any light brighter than a candle, the Normandy's crew had returned.
"Damn, and I thought I looked like shit." Garrus's throat hummed wetly, the only warning before Shepard was wrapped in wiry turian arms and surrounded with frantic purring. Shepard choked on her own cough, securing the tinted visor back in place before the rosy light of sunset could strain her wounded corneas. Tali and Liara had to strong arm their way past Garrus, the quarian's helm steaming up as she hiccupped through her sobs while Liara buried her face in Shepard's shoulder.
"You were dead."
"And you believed that?"
Surprisingly it wasn't Vega that nearly broke her ribs all over again in a hug, but Joker. Shepard hooked an arm around his shoulders, blunt nails digging into the shoulder of his uniform.
No one mentioned EDI's absence.
Too many people lingered around her in what the hospital considered a mess hall. Shepard didn't miss how her crew didn't shy from touching her. Teasing shoulder brushes, fingers gently cupping her elbow, talons petting her hair. The contact would have made her uncomfortable if she weren't doing the same. She brushed a thumb over Garrus's scars, tugged on Tali's hand, patted Vega's back, rest her chin on Liara's shoulder, squeezed Javik's arm where their skin wouldn't touch. They were real. Alive. Maybe the sacrifice had been worth it.
But then she'd catch Joker's eyes, see the empty smile when she jokingly called them both cripples.
The crew dispersed, helping with recovery efforts as Shepard struggled to get back to some semblance of independence. Funerals and vigils for the dead were small pockets of quiet in the flurry of rebuilding. Tears were hard to come by after a certain point, then came a velvet blessing of apathy. It wouldn't last, maybe someday this emotional curtailing would crawl back to destroy her, but for now it was all she had to survive.
Blinking, Shepard endured the cold sting of her medicinal eye drops. Slowly her eyesight was repairing, but her vision and light sensitivity were still questionable. Edges were blurry, lights were loud starbursts of bleaching pain that stung her frayed nerves, but it was getting better. Checking she'd secured her prosthesis she pushed herself from the cot, hiding her eyes behind dark glasses before venturing out. There was someone that had been on her mind, niggling at the lip of her thoughts over the past few days. Someone that had likely needed her help well before the final fray with the reapers.
"Javik."
The prothean turned his head, two eyes zeroing in on her. The commander had slipped into place as an organizer of what remained of able bodied forces on earth, leading from the ground. He looked well. Taller, prouder than how she remembered him. His scarlet armor shone dully in the late evening's golden light.
"You look good," she moved to his side, looking out over the camp of aid workers and crates of organized cargo. Some groups had broken for supper, gathered around radios listening to the efforts of repairing the mass relays or news from other worlds. Javik faced forward, hands clasped behind his back.
"We have survived the reapers. For the first time I am free, my people avenged. Of course I am good." Shepard smiled slightly at his confidence. Maybe it was his voice, how he carried himself, or that river of almost comedic arrogance that sustained him, but she felt herself relax. Gave herself a moment to forget she'd damned thousands if not millions of synthetic beings.
"Commander," Javik's rolling voice clouded her memory of darker times, "I have had time to think while you recovered."
"Penny for your thoughts?" she asked, shifting her weight from one foot to another. At his irritated look Shepard rubbed her brow, "sorry, human idiom, just a way of asking what you've been thinking about."
He continued on as if she hadn't spoken. "Before, we have talked of your motivations." Shepard knew instantly which exchange he spoke of. It felt like years ago but the conversation was only weeks old in reality. They'd disagreed on her methods, her protective shielding of Legion and EDI from Javik's prejudice. Shepard knew the Protheans were imperialistic but tended to leave Javik's smug superiority for Liara to dismantle. On this one occasion Javik had pushed her too far and Shepard had pushed into his personal space, trapping him against his water table as she snarled her life's quintessence in his face.
"The machines are my friends, Javik, they deserve as much of a chance as the Krogan or your damn protheans. I will tear Harbinger apart with my fucking nails before I bow to any of these reaper bastards because I'm the damn wall. Sometimes I don't like you Javik," she'd laughed, a pop of surprised caustic sound, "I can't decide if I fucking hate or love you, but I will do more than die to make sure you get to live in a world without reapers. If you have to share that galaxy with machines then you will damn well do it."
She'd left him in the cargo hold after that, all fury and flame she'd sought out and challenged Vega to some sparring to cool down. Shepard never heard another word about the geth or EDI from Javik after that, though the serene smile EDI had given her on the bridge that evening hinted she'd viewed the chastising with more than a touch of enjoyment. At the thought of her, Shepard felt something in her chest wilt.
"I thank you, Shepard," Javik turned, blinking his too many eyes, "I thought it an impossible thing for you primitives, the promise you made. But clearly I am mistaken. I am…overwhelmed, now that the reapers are no more. I find there is much to consider now, things that no prothean in ages had the opportunity to think upon."
"Wow," Shepard coughed into her shoulder, shaking hands going to flip open the cap of her water canteen. Studiously not looking at her companion she drank, licking moisture from her lips. "That, that means a lot," she croaked, fingers itching for something more to do, to fidget with.
"Fuck it," she grasped his hand, her damaged fingers lacing strangely with his. Javik went stiff but didn't pull away. Shepard stared hard at their joined grip, blinking rapidly as the eye drops further blurred her vision. "Javik you deserve to be selfish for the rest of your fucking life, hell, you're a goddamn war hero and whatever you do I'll have your back. Just live for yourself, you know? A lot of people died. Make that sacrifice worth it." Scrubbing an errant tear from her eye she felt her head spin slightly, her withdrawal from potent pain killers making itself known. She needed to get back to her cot at the barracks before she couldn't keep her balance.
"I'll talk to you later –"she stopped, blurry gaze snapping to the hard grip on her hand. Warily, her eyes crawled up his armored chest, coming to meet Javik's fearsome stare. Then she felt it, a butterfly's wing beat of crumbled memories stirring in the dust. Just as the smell of Thane's favorite tea filled her mouth she clutched at Javik's armor, muscles shaking as toned arms, rough with scales curled securely around her waist. Shepard stood pressed flush against him, cheek resting on his chest as Thane slipped one hand beneath her shirt, tracing meaningless symbols over her hip, up her spine, palm coming to rest flat between her shoulder blades.
"Siha," Thane's voice was beautiful, sand over stone and river flow over rock bed. Within that siren's song, beneath the cool chest that she rest, the black curl of sickness already strangled his breaths. With ugly clarity Shepard recognized this memory. The one that Javik had come across in life support, the one that he showed her when he'd asked after her relationship with the ailing drell he found traces of all over the Normandy. Like rainfall the image around her fell away, replaced with a London whose visage was crumbling knives of skyline, and strong arms around her housed in armor in place of leather. With a swallowed cry Shepard jerked in his hold, cowering back from it all even as Javik only grasped her tighter.
"You speak these words but do you hear them? The dead are not honored by any self imposed seclusion," he pulled them together more firmly, their bodies meeting at every line his armor plates allowed. Shepard grit her teeth, eyes shut tightly as she tried to pull free again only for a calloused thumb to draw along her cheek and with it unearth the blush of another memory.
She was in her hard suit, reloading her faithful Black Widow while she and Javik shared cover. It was tight, cramped, their armor clinking together as they angled their way around one another. Soon she was half draped in Prothean, his chest to her back and long crouched legs framing her own. It was uncomfortable, distracting, exhilarating. His first mission since he'd judged himself fit to fight again. Shepard swung her scope, an enemy lifted clear off the ground, momentarily suspended, her finger squeezed the trigger and rifle cracked the shot. The bullet ripped through the Cerberus grunt's helm, shattering skull and armor as grey matter erupted. The foamy tendrils of aquatic green biotics flared, tightened, and then slammed the grunt's body to the ground. Behind her Javik hummed his approval, the vibration pooling through his armor into hers and travelled to the apex of her thighs.
The memory shifted, tilted, melted and grew into Shepard's apartment. It was fresh after her attack at the sushi place, her dress still damp and smelling like fish with pieces of allegedly shatter proof glass stuck in her hair. Javik was laughing with her over her legendary escape from the ambush, Shepard leaning on her thighs as she tried to get a breath between guffaws. Then the evening flew forward, away into a time later, and they were in bed. Both clean and stripped of armor, legs and bodies damp with sweat caught in the sheets as they breathed liquor flavored kisses over one another. Blunt nails on too many fingers raked over hard plates, a mouth with too many teeth biting and scraping over silken skin as hips drove into hips. Hungry hands explored one another's alien anatomy until they'd mapped one another's bodies over and over, desperate to blur the lines of separation. With a final plunging thrust, her arching back and tightening thighs, the edges of the moment spilled into Shepard firmly denying herself the wish that she could have another night like that with Javik again, of telling herself she wanted nothing from him, it was only one night.
Her eyes snapped open and she clutched at Javik's armor, shaking her head. His tri fingered hands slid down her back, easing frayed nerves and stilling her trembling. "Javik, stop it, you don't want this. I'm not – "
"From your own lips I have been told to live for myself, to make the sacrifice of others worthwhile," he slipped a hand into her hair, tugging until her head tipped back and their eyes met. "You have told me to be selfish, commander. I will." Shepard would have been horrified at the broken sounding breath she made if she could focus on anything but Javik's mouth on hers. She shook in his hold, trembling hands moving to stroke his ribbed throat. She wanted to push away, keep herself whole and hidden, but Javik wasn't allowing it. Strong hand clamped at her hip, the other wrapping her hair until she bore her throat in offer. Lips and teeth met her pulse point, scraping livid hot lines in their fanged wake and his tongue lapped at the salted flavor of her skin. She keened as her sensitive burn scars were treated with such loving abuse.
Shepard's knees had turned to water; she relied entirely on the possessive grip to stay standing. She hadn't felt so filled to bursting in so long, her skin flushing hot and throbbing with each beat of her burning heart. Javik's rumbling sounds only made it all so much worse, bringing her neglected and healing body to a sublime ache. With the last scraps of her control she pushed free, stumbling back and catching herself against a crate.
"Uh," Shepard said smartly, catching her breath. "That, I wasn't – wow." She fully sat, giving into the fragility of her healing body and its unused muscle mass. Javik crooked a smile, sauntering to stand over her. The rough of his finger pads stroked along her cheek, over the burn scars and fresh skin alike. Shepard took a sharp breath, sighing as she leaned her cheek into his palm.
With a lick of her kiss bitten lips she peered up into Javik's numerous eyes, "I'm not totally opposed to some selfishness."