Alenko barely looked up as Liara slipped into the room. "I guess your connections still work."

"Some of them." She tried a smile, quickly slipping away. "Enough to get me into orbit."

"Heh." He was leaning forward in the only chair the tiny intensive care unit offered, elbows on knees and hands tucked under his chin. The steady beep of the machinery monitoring Shepard's condition, and the monotonous drone of the vid com, filled the air.

Liara strayed a step closer and her eyes drifted to Shepard's bed. "How is she?"

"The same as when we spoke. She lost a lot of blood." He sat back and ran a hand over his hair tiredly. "The doctors told me she was lucky. The energy released when the Crucible fired fried half her cybernetic implants. One of them shorted out and cauterized her primary wound. A few more minutes and she wouldn't have had enough blood left to make it this far."

"It's a one in a million chance." Liara chuckled, more in astonishment than amusement. "That always was Shepard's style."

Alenko didn't join her. He ticked the problems off on his fingers. "She's got serious organ damage, and nerve damage, mostly from the way the implants backfired. They're trying to grow enough tissue cultures to patch the worst of it, and coax at least some of the cybernetics back into life, but there's a lot of triage still going on from the battle. Honestly, she'd be x-listed already, except she's…"

"Shepard," Liara finished, simply.

"Yeah."

She reached over and touched his arm. "Kaidan, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault." He sighed. "I'm sorry I've been so… I know you care about her, too."

"No apologies are necessary. You're tired, and worried." Her expression was concerned. "How are you holding up? Have you eaten anything?"

"It's been a few days. I'm sure I must have…" Alenko rubbed his eyes. The medevac strapped Shepard into a cocoon and flew her to one of the Alliance dreadnoughts, to take advantage of its medical facilities. With Earth in its current state, these fully-equipped mobile hospitals were the best the Alliance had to offer. Even so, her team of doctors was discussing the need to access some of the lab facilities available on the asari ships. After Thessia he wasn't sure the asari would be open to granting the request. Hell, forget Thessia- nearly everyone in what passed for the asari military knew somebody on the Destiny Ascension.

"I'll get you something from the mess." Liara disappeared in a flash, before he could say he wasn't hungry.

He glanced at the vid com. They were running the same stories over and over in broadcast mode. Currently, it was a discussion of the problem with the mass relays. Alenko didn't have much knowledge of physics beyond the few entry-level courses required by his undergraduate program, fifteen years ago, but from what he gathered there was something about mass-energy equivalence and using the relays to carry the reaper-slaying beam across all connected systems. The crucible tried to force more energy/mass through the network than it could handle, leaving the relays severely damaged. It was unclear at this time if it would be safe to transport ships through the system without repairs. The assembled fleet was anxious to find out. With the crucible and citadel destroyed, it was vital they clear out any remaining reaper presence from systems lacking mass relays before the enemy could regroup. So far all that had gotten through were a few garbled transmissions.

Shepard was in the news cycle as well. Her survival, if you wanted to call it that, was being kept under wraps by Alliance brass. It was a good call. The last thing she needed right now was a crush of people trying to get into her room to snap a picture for their headline. The stories were mostly positive constructions of her heroism, but criticism was already creeping in, questioning her decisions, her Cerberus involvement, and why it had taken so long and so many lives to resolve this crisis. Those kinds of stories would explode once Sanctuary leaked. There were even a few biographic pieces from a handful of enterprising reporters trying to get a jump on the market.

He shook his head. The truth was somewhere in the gray, and he didn't think any of these talking heads had the context or knowledge to judge, anyway. Even now, with the devastation spelled out before them, few seemed to grasp the scale of this conflict. It simply defied the human mind.

Liara returned holding two styrofoam cups of chocolate ice cream. "It's later than I thought. Your ships are running on Earth time, not Citadel standard. All they had was what I could scavange from the freezer."

"Ships like this run three shifts. Wait another hour or two and they'll have a meal, if you want it." Alenko accepted the ice cream despite his lack of appetite. He took a tentative bite. Rations on the Normandy were, well, rations, and the Citadel was short on human food. This was the real thing, made from real milk from real cows. Liara smiled as he went for a second spoonful. "Thanks. It might be a long time before we're making ice cream again."

"I didn't think anything could be worse than Palaven. They must have really hated you."

"Nobody can piss someone off like Nathaly."

"She does like kicking the hornet's nest." Liara leaned against the bulkhead and tried her own spoonful. "This is…quite good."

"Asari don't have ice cream?"

"We have flavored ices, like humans, though we make them savory as well as sweet. We don't have an equivalent of your dairy products. No ice cream, no yogurt, no cheese. We never considered milk anything but a source of food for the infants of various species." She popped another bite into her mouth. "That may have been a mistake."

They ate in silence for several minutes. Shepard lay on her bed, head turned, eyes shut, mouth slightly open, as oblivious as any coma patient. Liara asked, "Why do you continue audial output of the monitoring systems? Surely her doctors will be alerted via omnitool should anything change."

Alenko looked over at the injured woman. They cleaned her up, leaving just the bruises, stitched-up cuts, and burns, swathed in white gauze to protect the ongoing skin grafts. Removing her armor alone had taken two surgeries. Shepard was a mess for certain, but she no longer looked dead, for which he was unimaginably grateful. Her skin was warm with transfused blood. "I like hearing it. It's…reassuring."

She tossed the styrofoam into the waste basket. "I won't disturb you further. If there's anything I can do, Kaidan-"

A thought sprang into his head. "Actually, I think there is."

"Name it."

"Do you think you could use your broker superpowers to raise Nathaly's mother? I've tried locating her on the com system but so far, no luck. Communications are still a mess. She should have come in with the engineers from the crucible project."

"It's Captain Hannah Shepard, yes?"

"Rear Admiral." He shrugged. "Wartime promotion. I guess it's harder to refuse in the face of the greatest enemy of your time."

"Admiral Shepard." Liara nodded. "I'll do my best, but my system took a hit as well."

"That's all I can ask."

Just as she turned to go, he said, "Hey. Liara."

"What?"

"Is the ground team holding up okay?"

She paused for thought. "Everyone's holding together. Anderson's death came as a shock. Everyone's still sad about EDI, and Garrus, though I would be lying if I said anyone missed Javik much. The mourning is likely just beginning."

"Garrus. Hell." Alenko shook his head, too worn out for any greater expression of grief. "It could've been me in that beam."

"Shepard kept you back because you were the best person to direct your biotic ops squad, and because if she failed she knew only another spectre would be able to take up the burden." Liara pursed her lips. "Did you truly believe those were her only reasons? Take care, Kaidan."

"You too, Liara. And thanks. For coming."

"Of course." She shut the door behind her, leaving Alenko alone with Shepard and her machines.