Author's Note: This story is an expansion on one of the side missions in Mass Effect, and occurs about midway through the main storyline.

Disclaimer: All trademarked stuff is Bioware's. I'm just playing in their sandbox, with their toys.

Aboard the MSV Worthington

Registry: Morrison Industries, Shanxi

Currently derelict in space, Ming system, Gemini Sigma cluster

The shore party from the Normandy held position just inside the Worthington's airlock. Shepard could practically feel Tali'zorah's discomfort radiating through her suit, and wondered briefly if taking the young quarian along hadn't been a bad idea. "Tali? You doing all right?"

The quarian's accented voice sounded uncharacteristically subdued. "It's so... empty. I've never seen a ship so empty. So quiet. It's so wrong. This is every quarian's nightmare come true."

Shepard put her hand on the young woman's shoulder and squeezed, putting her face right in front of Tali's helmet in what she was sure was probably a gross breach of personal etiquette among quarians. "I need you to stay with me, Tali. I need you to focus. If you can't do this, I need you to tell me now so I can get you safely back to the Normandy and pull Ash or Garrus to replace you."

"No!" Tali shook herself. "No, commander. I'll be fine. I want to help. I know I can help." Her tridactyl fingers shifted on her pistol grip. "I'm just... I'm with you."

Satisfied, Shepard nodded, giving Tali's shoulder a comforting pat. "Good. I need you with me." The quarian visibly straightened at that, and Shepard allowed herself a small smile. "No one can pull information from a databank quite like you can." She scanned the area with sharp, dark eyes. "It looks like the ship is abandoned."

Beside her, omnitool glowing orange as he swept for hostiles and remote-scanned ship's systems, Kaidan nodded. Calm strength radiated from him. Shepard was grateful; hopefully, his businesslike attitude would rub off on Tali'zorah. "Looks like the critical systems are offline, Commander, except for life support. Minimal propulsion is online, but the drive system is gone. Can't tell from here if it's by accident or design."

"Certainly smells like they haven't been circulating the air much," Shepard muttered. "Smells like the inside of a locker after a long tour." The back of her neck was prickling. "I do not like the feel of this. Weapons free and stay lively, team."

"Staying lively, commander."

Kaidan snapped off his omnitool and checked his pistol with the offhanded ease of long practice. "Careful, Tali," he grinned at her. "You're starting to sound like a marine."

The tilt of her head indicated amusement, even if he couldn't see more than the glow of her eyes behind the amethyst visor. "Well, let me just order an envirosuit in Alliance blue. I'll fit right in in no time."

The banter quieted as soon as Shepard held up her hand. She swept her arm forward in an arc, and she and her team moved deeper into the ship. There was only one functioning door in the hallway they found themselves in, and it led deeper into the center of the ship. The other three were dead. The sensation of being funnelled into a trap grew exponentially.

"Nothing on HUD, commander. Nothing on scan." Kaidan's voice was very low. "I don't like it."

"Yeah. Same." They advanced into the next room, probably the main cargo area, judging by all the battered crates stacked there. The smell of rust and stale sweat pervaded the still air. The three automatically moved into cover positions before inching forward. The back of Shepard's neck was itching like mad. She tightened her grip on her pistol, taking comfort in the weapon's weight.

"D'you hear that?" Kaidan murmured. "Sounded like footsteps."

"Still nothing on scanner," Tali whispered.

Rose found herself braced against a tall stack of shipping crates, Kaidan in a matching pose beside her. She glanced right, found him watching her intently. She made the gesture for "cover me", stepped out and around the crate. There were no moving enemies, but there was a small, red-lit cannister on the floor against the next stack of crates. Fusion cell. Shepard frowned. "Kaidan, Tali, you see that?"

"That's no place for a fusion cell to be. Someone set that there." Kaidan consulted his omnitool and frowned. "As far as traps go, it's crude but effective. Proximity-trigger, nasty enough to make someone not wearing a hardsuit have a very bad day."

"This whole place could be wired." Tali cocked her head to the left, tension evident in her body language. "It would be very easy to hide several of those cells among the crates. If you arrange the crates so that people would have to pass certain points..."

Shepard's full lips compressed into a determined line. "Can they be disarmed?"

"Jury-rigging probably makes them pretty unstable, commander." Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck, frowning thoughtfully. "Depends on the skill of the saboteur. I'd give it a 60-40 chance maximum, and that's not in our favor."

"Fine. We do this the N way." Shepard drew her pistol, sighted and fired. The resulting small explosion sounded abnormally loud in the closed confinement of the cargo hold. "Eyes peeled. I don't want anyone getting caught by this stuff."

There were more jerry-rigged fusion cells scattered throughout the room. Most they spotted; a well-placed shot triggered the small, localized explosion with little more than collateral damage to the immediate area. But the last one was a little too well-hidden, and Tali stepped a little too close in the second before she saw it. "Commander, I - !"

Shepard grabbed her arm and yanked, spinning Tali around so that the quarian missed the brunt of the explosion. Shrapnel and heat bombarded the commander's back, staggering her, knocking the women into an undignified heap of discharged shields and tangled limbs. The smell of scorched fabric joined the mix of stale smells already in the air and made her sneeze once, convulsively. Well, better my hardsuit getting scorched than me or Tali.

"Commander! Shepard! Oh, Keelah!" Tali was frantically patting at her, babbling apologies. "Are you all right?"

"Tali! It's all right. " Shepard coughed. "I'm okay. Shields took most of it." She rolled to her back, wincing. Most didn't mean all, but she'd never say as much out loud. Tali was already on guilt overload.

"I am so sorry!" The waver in the young woman's vocalizer-distorted voice made it sound like she was trying not to cry.

"Tali! It's okay. I'm okay." She coughed again. "Just a little singed." She felt the icy flow of medigel begin to combat the worst of the damage. "And there's the gel. Feeling good. Just give me a minute."

"I think the commander just had the wind knocked out of her, Tali." Kaidan scanned Shepard with his omnitool, then swept it over the quarian. "I'm a little more concerned that your suit might have gotten a minor puncture."

Tali'zorah radiated alarm, her shoulders hunching and her body stiffening. "Oh, Keelah, that's all I need right now. I'll need to run a suit diagnostic. Just give me a minute."

Shepard coughed again, then sat up, draping her arms across her bent knees. "Nicely downplayed, lieutenant," she murmured.

Kaidan didn't look up from the orange glow of his omnitool diagnostics as he scanned her. "Thank you, ma'am. Doing all right?"

Since no limbs were lopped off and there weren't any obvious bloody gashes, Shepard chose to employ the somewhat plastic definition of "all right" that N's favored. It seemed the safest course of action. "Mostly just my pride that sustained the impact damage. I should have seen that damn cell."

The scarred corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Life's full of should-haves, commander. Doesn't mean you need to listen to them."

Shepard raised one eyebrow as she watched him work, gauntleted fingers dancing across his omni display. She felt her hardsuit medical systems refining her treatment under Kaidan's careful guidance. "A philospher and a medic? What else do you do, Alenko?"

Now he did look at her, and the humor in his warm, whiskey-colored eyes was almost worse than the concern she'd been afraid she'd see. Shepard steadfastly ignored the tingle and heat curling low in her belly. "Well, I'm also a wicked ice hockey player."

She laughed quietly, suppressing the wince as she jostled a few bruises the medigel hadn't quite numbed yet. "You beat me. I've never even seen a pair of skates."

"Really? I'll have to take you skating sometime. Ash too."

Her lips curled into a small smile against her better judgement. "That's something I'd pay to see. Ash on skates? That would be classic."

Humor laced Kaidan's husky voice. "You know what I'd pay to see? Wrex on skates."

Shepard laughed outright. Kaidan grinned, and Tali looked over at them both with ill-disguised curiosity as she finished checking her envirosuit. "What's so funny?"

"I'll tell you later, Tali. I think we might need some illustrations for a few of the finer points." Shepard mentally shook herself. Dammit, Rose! Stop thinking about how nice the lieutenant's voice sounds, stow the hormones and get back to work! "All right, team. Let's secure the cockpit."

O o O

The freighter's small, utilitarian cockpit was as eerily empty as the rest of the ship seemed to be. Tali went to the console as soon as Shepard proclaimed the room secured. "The computer is still functioning, Commander. I can access the logs."

Shepard nodded to her, relieved that the young quarian was able to get back to business after being rattled by that blast. "Do it, Tali."

Ten seconds after Tali started tinkering, a man's voice rolled out of the display. "Jacob is showing no signs of brain activity. There's nothing more we can do for him. He wouldn't want to be kept alive by machines, so we're going to disconnect the life support. Dr. Smith is worried about Julia's reaction, though. She can't seem to let Jacob go. The stress is making her implants flare up, causing intense migraines. It'll probably be easier for everyone if we don't tell her until after we shut the life support down. Give her a chance to-Julia! What are you doing here? Why are you- !" The recording cut off the man's scream of pain.

"That... wasn't what I thought I'd find." Tali tilted her head at Shepard, her mask gleaming in the reduced emergency lighting. "Was it what you thought we'd find?"

Shepard scowled. "No. Stay alert. Now we know who and what we're dealing with." She rolled her shoulders, trying to dispel some of the tension building up there. "Let's clear the rest of this wreck."

O o O

They found the crew quarters next, as silent as the rest of the ship. Shepard felt her nerves start to itch, and she couldn't keep the slight snap out of her voice when she said, "Tali?"

"On it, Commander." Tali's gloved hands flew across the crew computer terminal. A woman's voice filled the stale air, ragged and desperate-sounding. "They say Jacob's gone. They say his brain isn't functioning anymore, and they want to shut off his machines. But Jacob's the only thing in the world that matters to me. I don't know how to help him and it's tearing me up inside! I just feel so helpless. So damn angry! Dr. Smith gave me some meds to calm down, but I didn't take them. I can't. Not until I figure out a way to help Jacob. I won't give up on him. I won't!"

Kaidan grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. "This isn't gonna end well, Commander."

Shepard looked over her shoulder at him. "She's an L2, isn't she?" she asked quietly.

It was obvious that Kaidan had to force the words past his tight throat. His already husky voice was rougher than usual. "It's extremely likely, ma'am. Between the emotional trauma and the usual neurological mess from the implant..." He blew out an explosive breath. "I'm just a combat medic, commander, but I know crazy when I hear it."

"Kaidan." Shepard signaled to Tali to pull what she could from the rest of the computer files and stepped in front of him so that the conversation had a modicum more privacy. He was tall, but so was she, and it wasn't too hard to look him in the eyes. "It isn't you. Implant generation or not, this isn't you."

For the first time since she'd served with him, Kaidan looked lost, still rubbing the back of his neck as if his implant site pained him. Or worried him. "It could be," he said quietly.

Shepard was equally soft-spoken, but worlds more intense. "No." She stared him straight in the eyes, hating the agony of doubt she saw there. "That won't ever be you, because you're stronger than that. You were stronger than that when you were seventeen years old. You hear me? This is not you."

She took a step back, less to give him space than to give herself space. She'd lost her emotional distance; worse, she was letting him know it. "Tali? Report."

The quarian shut down her omnitool with a deft touch. "I have everything I can pull from this console, commander."

"Good. Let's finish this. We need to find Jacob, and Julia if we can."

"I don't want to do this," Tali muttered, shifting from foot to foot uneasily. "Looking for the dead... it's..."

"I know. None of us want to do this, Tali. But we're going to." Shepard put a hand on Tali's shoulder and looked her in the face. "The Normandy's crew doesn't back down. Ever. Let's move out."

O o O

Walking into the medical bay felt a lot like walking into a crypt. The man known as Jacob lay, still clothed in spacer's work clothes, on a diagnostic bed, tethered to a life support rig. He looked curiously insubstantial, as if something vital about him was missing.

Shepard looked around the room, scanning for booby traps and exit points. "It's clear. Logs?"

Tali hurried to the medbay console as if the task could protect her from the reality of the almost-corpse across the room from her, opening foreign computer logs as easily as Shepard herself might peel a fruit. An unfamiliar male voice rolled into the still air. "Jacob's not going to make it. His brain was deprived of oxygen for too long. There's nothing any of us can do for him now, except let him die with dignity. It's what he would want. I'm more worried about Julia now. She's showing signs of severe depression. I gave her some meds that should help, but I'd better warn the captain."

The recording hadn't even finished playing when Kaidan's skin tingled with the uncomfortable prickle of an approaching eezo spike. He could feel gravitational forces shearing around something, microeddies of force and mass making his stomach lurch. "Hostiles!" He swung around, leading with his pistol, and falling back to stand beside Shepard.

"Get away from him!" A thin woman, lank hair plastered to her head, charged into the room, eyes wide and wild, biotic blue ramping up a corona around her fists in a sign Kaidan recognized as a throw. Beside him, Shepard fired once before Julia's effect field caught her around the midsection and tossed her halfway across the room. His shots were right behind hers, clustering around Julia's heart. Blood, thick and shockingly red, bloomed across the chest of the wrinkled spacer grays she wore. She was dead before she hit the floor.

He thought, grimly, that it was probably what the woman had really wanted all along.

Shepard picked herself up from the undignified heap she'd landed in and scanned the room for further threats with keen, dark eyes before slowly lowering her gun. "Everyone clear?"

Kaidan automatically checked his HUD for damaged hardsuit signals. Tali registered a clear, healthy green on his scan. Shepard registered some damage - bruising, mostly. Relief flooded through him as the adrenaline cleared. "Clear, commander."

"I'm fine." Tali sighed. "I suppose she was trying to protect him. Even though he was dead, I mean. In a way, this is all very romantic. In a dead sort of fashion. Except I think that the creepy factor is overpowering the romantic factor. Have I mentioned that I really hate this ship? I'm going to have nightmares for weeks, I just know it. And I'm babbling. I do that when I'm nervous."

Shepard just looked at the quarian. "Are you serious? This - " and the hand she waved around encompassed the two bodies, the pooling blood, the battered medbay, "is romantic? Is that a quarian thing?"

Kaidan wiped a hand across his face, disguising his own disquiet with his usual thoughtful professionalism. "No, commander, I see her point." Tali angled her faceplate at him in the posture he was learning to recognize as gratitude. Well, Tali wasn't the only one who needed to be distracted. "Earth has more than a few stories about love in the face of hopeless odds. Romeo and Juliet, for instance. Except it was supposed to be Juliet lying on the bier in a death-sleep, not Romeo."

The commander did that little eyebrow arch that she made when she was curious about something. "Alenko, you read ancient literature?"

"Sometimes, ma'am." He felt himself color a little. "Clears my mind of tech stuff, y'know?"

"Keelah, why would you want to do that?" Tali wanted to know. "Tech is life."

"Tech doesn't always mean life, Tali. It didn't work for this poor guy. Unless... " Shepard reclipped her pistol before she walked over to the life support apparatus, and Jacob's body. "Kaidan, can you take a look at this? You're the medic. "

Kaidan already knew what he'd find, but he checked the readouts thoroughly because she asked it of him. "There's no neural activity, commander. None. He's brain dead. The body's there, but he's not."

"This is no way to go," Shepard muttered. She scrubbed her fingers through her dark hair, loosening it a little from the tight confines of the regulation bun she kept it in. "He should be given peace, and dignity. Not kept in some half-life at someone else's whim."

Kaidan kept his eyes on the medical equipment, scanning the numbers, watching the readouts that indicated no hope. "I'm assuming the Worthington's crew tried everything they could, commander. I'm sorry." His voice deepened, gentled. "Even with the Normandy's more extensive facilities, there's nothing we can do for him."

"There is one thing." Shepard reached out for the kill switch on the life support machinery. The machine beeped once, a digitized requiem, before powering down. There was absolute silence in the medbay for a long moment as the shore party watched the last lights on the life support blink and gutter out. Then the commander turned on her heel and strode to where Julia's rapidly cooling corpse lay sprawled just inside the medbay doors and crouched next to her.

"Shepard, what are you doing?" Tali nearly squeaked, stepping backward.

Shepard stood, Julia's body cradled in her arms. Congealing blood from the woman's chest wound smeared the breastplate of her hardsuit and dripped slowly to the floor. "She loved him," she said simply. "She loved him and she couldn't save him. But she can be with him at the end of things. We can give them that much."

She placed Julia on the narrow life support bed next to Jacob with as much care as Kaidan had seen her use with injured crewmates, then stepped back and bowed her head. He moved beside her, offering... he wasn't sure what he was offering. Tali followed, but not so closely, the angle of her head indicating curiosity and confusion.

"May the Maker bring you the grace and peace in death that was stolen from you in life, Julia and Jacob," Shepard murmured. "Rest well."

Kaidan kept his head lowered out of respect and watched his commanding officer out of the corner of his eye. There was a smear of bright blood on her cheek. Sweat made the few stray tendrils of hair around her face curl into tiny ringlets. There was a darkening bruise on her forehead from where she'd met the floor. But it was the sorrow in her face for total strangers that burned itself into his brain. He knew he'd draw her as he saw her right now, to remember this moment. Not the death. He hated remembering the death. No. Kaidan wanted to remember the hope. Not just for Jacob and Julia, but for him.

Shepard had just seen what could easily have been his potential future, the ticking timebomb that was a first generation human biotic, and she hadn't flinched. She hadn't turned away. She hadn't looked at him as if he were a monster, or less than human. She hadn't seen a freak, or a weapon, or a statistic.

She'd just seen a man.

It was almost painful, how much he wanted to believe her.

But she had been wrong about something, too. He wasn't as strong as she thought he was. He wasn't strong enough to just be the loyal lieutenant. Maker help him, he wasn't strong enough to keep himself from this slow, inexorable slide into loving her. The best he could hope for was that he was strong enough to keep his feelings from showing, because he honestly couldn't see how to leave himself a way out. Not this time.

Kaidan closed his eyes, his left hand balling into a fist. What the hell am I going to do?