"The hell I'm not going." Shepard's eyes blazed at the doctor.
He took an involuntary step back and fingered his datapad nervously. "Commander, I know you feel fine, but your condition is still far from stable. Your implants-"
"I can't walk, and you think I'm feeling fine? You're not hearing me." She slammed her hand down on the armrest of the chair. "This isn't about a jailbreak. This is my friend's funeral. I'm going. I don't care if you have to shoot me up with enough drugs to make a dead elephant dance."
"It's not that simple, as I've mentioned several times now," he replied, his words clipped and testy. "You suffered severe spinal damage when the first Normandy was destroyed. Your previous doctors elected to leave the nerves severed and install a large cybernetic suite over the affected area to reroute the necessary signals."
"This is old news." One of the first things Chakwas discovered in her Lazarus investigation was that the raw ends of her spinal column were too damaged to knit back together in the traditional way. This was likely why Cerberus chose a cybernetic solution. To repair it organically, her doctors would have to trim the ends with fresh cuts, which risked even further loss of bodily function if her recovery went poorly.
The doctor was exasperated. "Commander, with all due respect, you're not listening to what I'm saying. The implant is malfunctioning unpredictably. That's why you've had only intermittent muscular control. We can't simply shut it down because there's no guarantee we can restart it. I don't know where Cerberus got their hardware, but I've never seen the like, nor have the two other specialists we had examine it. Without it, you'll lose everything from the waist down and the only alternative is the incredibly risky surgery you seem so blasé about."
"What does this have to do with whether or not I can go down to Earth?"
"There is a reason, Commander, why you are on a ship hospital. Earth has no medical facilities worth the name right now. If you suffer a severe malfunction, without access to immediate medical attention, the results could be catastrophic." He glared at her. "And this is without going into your more mundane injuries, like the eight-inch surgical access stapled up your side. Or the fact that you've got all kinds of delicate organ tissue growing in and even a minor shuttle crash could be deadly. Would you like me to go on?"
"So I'll wear a damned seatbelt. I'm not seeing the problem."
He gave up trying to reason with her. "You're grounded by medical order. Good luck with that."
Shepard's eyes narrowed. Her hands flexed on the wheels of the chair and she calculated her odds of successfully ramming his knees and making a run for it.
At that moment, the door slid open and Major Alenko walked in, adjusting the collar of his dress blues. "Ready to go?"
The doctor opened his mouth to protest, but before he could get a word out, Shepard answered, loud and firm. "Yes."
Her doctor glanced over at Alenko. "She's not going anywhere, major. It's too dangerous."
"Kaidan, it's Garrus," Shepard said, urgently. "I know what I'm doing."
Alenko looked between them for a moment, considering, before he called up his omnitool and tapped in a few commands. "I'm authorizing Shepard for transport to Earth under the recently enacted emergency provisions. The shuttle's waiting, so I estimate you have about fifteen minutes to find and convince someone who outranks me to countermand the order, or you can spend the time explaining how to do this as safely as possible."
"Everyone wants to be a doctor." He threw up his hands. "What are all those years of training and experience really worth, anyway?"
"Garrus was fighting the reapers' arrival back when everyone thought we were insane. Without him, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Alenko tried for placating. "Look, if you knew him, you'd understand."
He pursed his lips and shook his head. "Damned marines. Fine. You need to fly down in a cocoon-"
Shepard groaned. Alenko silenced her protests with a look. "We can arrange that. What else?"
"She must check her bandage every hour, and change it every six- that incision is going to continue draining for awhile. An antibiotic dose with each change. If it starts to stink, or develops a sharp pain, get her to a field hospital ASAP. Same if she develops any back pain, loses feeling in her legs, or feels otherwise strange." He looked over at Shepard. "You already know the drill about prepackaged food. Absolutely NOTHING that didn't come out of a sterile macrobiotic pouch and no alcohol of any kind. Your liver isn't ready for it."
"Right." She pushed the chair forward. Alenko tagged the door for her. She paused for a second and looked back. "And thanks, doc. It means a lot."
His expression softened slightly, and he accepted her thanks with a nod.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Shepard felt ridiculous lying on the floor of the Kodiak, strapped in a medical cocoon. Somewhere between a sleeping bag and a coffin, the device functionally immobilized her and inured patients to external momentums, on top of the dampeners already a part of the craft. She might as well have been in null gravity for all she felt of their reentry.
Alenko lounged on the seats, one leg folded balanced across the other, looking out the window. Not even wearing a seatbelt, she noted sourly.
"Do you know what you're going to say?" Alenko glanced over at her.
Shepard was quiet. "I'll know by the time I have to say it."
He turned back to the window, hesitated a moment, then said, "You know, Garrus came to see me, when I was in Memorial on the Citadel."
Her brow furrowed. "That was nice of him. He never mentioned it."
"It was nice of him. I was bored out of my mind and visitors were just about the only relief. We talked about a lot of things. Old times. New rifles. Traded some stories about Alliance spec ops and vigilante raids. Heh, some of them might have even been true." Alenko sat back and shrugged. "Talked about you a little, too."
"Oh? What about?"
"He wanted to know what my intentions were. Towards you. If you can believe that." He rubbed at a scuff mark on his boot and shook his head. "I told him it was none of his business, and he replied that it was unfortunate you were an only child, because you needed an older brother for situations like this, but he knew the drill and he'd do the best he could."
That drew a bemused smile. "Why was he worried?"
Alenko rolled a shoulder. "He said you were a little…unglued, after Horizon. Hell, I was a little unglued. I had a three day leave after that mission and I'm not sure I was sober an hour of it. It's not important. The point, he said, was if I could cause that much damage when you were under a tenth the stress of fighting for Earth, I'd better be damn sure I wanted this, I mean really wanted this, before I started anything. I resented it, but afterwards, it made me think a lot. About you and me. Us."
"I see." She took it in for a moment. "Why tell me about Garrus?"
"He was a good friend," Alenko said. "We're going to hear a lot today about how brave he was, the greatest of turians, all those high-minded things we say about the honored dead. I don't know that anyone is going to mention that he was just about the greatest friend anyone could ask for. It didn't matter who was or wasn't watching, he'd go through hell for the people he cared for. And someone should stand up and say that. It was the best thing about him."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Just getting her out of the shuttle was an event. The human media was out in force, not only because this memorial was for one of Normandy's crew, but because ever since Hackett's announcement of her survival, they'd been hungry for a chance to evaluate Shepard for themselves. The official statement had not included the name of her ship.
So even after she was unpacked from the ridiculous cocoon, she was reluctant to let anyone help her down the foot or so to the ground from the Kodiak's hatch. Proposals to carry her out were flatly rejected. Shepard was not comfortable with the first pictures of her since the disaster looking helpless. Finally, she agreed to a plan where Alenko arranged the chair on the ground, brake activated, and she sat on the edge of the shuttle and scooted into it. Silly, maybe, but better than weak.
They set up in a field outside of London relatively clear of debris. There was still grass, dotted here and there with clover, the view accompanied by the faint drone of insects. It was jarring after weeks of nothing but images of destruction from Earth. It seemed like half the turian fleet turned out to see Garrus off. The official state funeral would take place on Palaven, whenever the long FTL food haul got there, but for most of the people he fought alongside, this memorial was the end.
They stood in stolid rows. Here and there was a human face, or more rarely an asari or salarian, even one batarian. Shepard caught sight of the Normandy crew stationed near an aisle. Some of the old Cerberus crew, and even some of the surviving Alliance from the SR1, stood with them. She guessed nobody bothered with background checks when volunteers signed up for the resistance. Even Wrex came to pay his respects, though he was near the front, with the rest of those slated for eulogies. His request caused something of a stir in the hierarchy, but given how the krogan helped hold Palaven, they weren't in a position to refuse.
Shepard wheeled herself towards the mourners, ignoring the reporters' camera mechs and terse questions alike. Eventually, she'd have to deal with them, but not today. Alenko squeezed her hand and left her as they passed their crew, and she went on alone to take the place reserved for her.
The ceremonies were as sad and tedious as any funeral. There was a simple podium wired for sound, and a table holding the closed sarcophagus. Shepard was given to understand that what remains existed were in no state for viewing. Generals and diplomats who'd barely known Garrus spoke first, their generic, pre-approved speeches as hollow as their voices. Shepard turned off her translator. The human voice was not equipped for turian speech, but her N7 training had required her to learn to understand it, along with the most common dialect of asari. Translators could be blocked electronically or fail at inopportune moments. Concentrating on the foreign language kept her mind from wandering down darker roads.
Wrex's speech nearly made her laugh out loud. Only the presence of mind to bite her lip, hard, saved her. He clearly didn't care for turian customs or currying turian favor. Indeed, he took the opportunity to put the boot in more than a few times, with obvious delight. But there was nothing but respect for Garrus in what he said- even if it was the backhanded kind of krogan respect she'd come to appreciate more than the ordinary kind.
Then it was her turn.
There was silence as Shepard slowly wheeled herself to the podium. She looked out over the sea of people, all eyes turned to her expectantly. She took a breath. "I hope you'll forgive me if I don't get up."
It wasn't a joke. She knew it was a sign of disrespect in many cultures. The quiet words sank into the crowd. Shepard folded her hands on her lap and looked up at the clouds of Earth, gathering the last of her thoughts. For a second she could almost see a glass bottle spinning in the air. Maybe I should have let him win after all.
"Once upon a time, in a different life," she began. Childish, but somehow it felt right. "Three marines walked into the middle of a galactic mess they couldn't begin to understand. It led them to a young turian C-Sec officer who just happened to be investigating a high-profile spectre named Saren Arturius. His superiors ordered him to close the case. They told him it was an embarrassment to question Saren's judgment. But this C-Sec officer couldn't let it go when he knew wrong was being done on his watch. It didn't matter that those hurt weren't turians or even Citadel residents. He gave the three humans what they needed, though it cost him his career, because there was never any personal sacrifice too great for him to make if it served the greater good. I don't know any story that describes what we all lost here today better than that."
Shepard licked her lips, cleared her throat. You could hear a pin drop. "I was fortunate to call Garrus Vakarian a close friend. Even when he didn't know what to do, even when he made mistakes, he tried to find the right way. We didn't always agree, but we always respected that quality in each other. His humor, his camaraderie and his perspective kept the Normandy afloat in some of her darkest hours, and he'd go to the wall to defend those to whom he'd given his trust. What he taught me was what allowed us to forged alliances with such a diversity of people to defend Earth against the reapers. He was the friend everyone wanted to have, and the man everyone wanted to be. There's nobody I'd rather have at my back.
"That's the reason we're all here today. Because when the allied forces of the galaxy headed into the hell of reaper-occupied London, I asked Garrus to have our backs. And he didn't think twice before promising to do exactly that." She looked up from her lap and out over the crowd. It came to her suddenly that this was the first she'd spoken of those final hours. It felt…odd, hearing it out loud. Like something that happened to someone else. "There were not more than thirty of us left in that final charge. And we knew, as we raced down that hill, the only strategy we had left was the hope that we'd give the reaper too many targets to hit everyone. I was… lucky to be one of only two who made it to our objective. When this memorial is over, I'll go back home to the people who love me, hurt but whole, while Garrus will go back to the people who loved him in a sarcophagus and a state funeral, and that will never seem entirely fair. But Garrus is the last person who would ever feel bitter about his fate. He was happy to serve."
Her voice rose a little. "The turians have lost one of their greatest ambassadors and soldiers, but the people of the galaxy have lost one of their finest heroes. Cold comfort though it is, I hope his father and his sister can take pride in the fact that Garrus' sacrifice insured the future of nothing less than all life in our world."
Shepard wheeled herself to the side of the crystalline pod, and laid her hand on it, looking down into its opaque depths. Then she said, almost to herself, too quiet for the crowd, "Spirits guide you on your last great adventure, my friend. You better be saving that drink for me."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Shepard closed the panel and watched GARRUS VAKARIAN flicker into life on the Normandy's memorial wall. She sat back a bit and folded her arms, rereading each name, holding each face in her mind. She was good with faces and stories. The married couple, Rosamund and Talitha, who were just trying to pay for college. Abishek, who kept a picture of his son taped to his console in the CIC. These were her crew, her duty to lead and protect to the best of her ability. Every commander had to accept that someday, she was going to lose people, maybe even sacrifice people, but it didn't make them any less her responsibility.
Some were closer than others. Her eyes lingered on MIRANDA LAWSON, her very own Dr. Frankenstein. Miranda never understood Shepard's lack of gratitude for restoring her life, or her hostility towards Cerberus. Miranda's ability to brush off the terrorists' many indiscretions as isolated incidents rather than evidence of a pattern of thinking pervading the whole organization defied belief. But in the end, she finally saw the Illusive Man and his machinations for what they were. They both had. In her own way, Miranda was as lost as Shepard, trying to come to terms with the devil's bargain she'd made to protect the things she loved, and what had been done to her without her consent by her father. Shepard never met a ballsier woman. She was happy, in a bittersweet way, that they'd parted as friends instead of rivals.
There were uneven footsteps in the hall, and Joker limped up alongside her.
"Hey commander," he said, though his voice lacked its usual chipper sarcasm. He wore a walking cast on his left leg.
She tore her attention from the board and tried to smile. "Long time no see, Joker."
He pointed with his chin. "I added EDI's name. I hope that's ok."
"She was part of the crew, and she saved all our lives more times than I can remember. She's earned it."
"It's getting awfully crowded on the board."
Shepard sat back, feeling at once wistful and very old. "Yes, it is."
They were both quiet for a time. Then Joker said, "They don't know what to do with all the bodies."
"What's this?" Her confusion was obvious.
He cleared his throat. "There's…well, billions of bodies in all the destroyed cities. The husks at least turn to ash so there's no clean-up there, but with the rest, it's starting to cause problems with disease. Burying them will ruin the groundwater and burning them all at once could reverse a lot of the atmo clean-up they did in the twenty-first century, bring back global warming, assuming all the destruction hasn't already. There's just so many of them. Some of the brass is talking about ferrying them to space and dumping them in the sun."
"God, that's grim." She shuddered. "Any word on the final death count?"
"We'll never know. But they think it could be higher than two-thirds. About half of those were processed, so it makes it harder to count."
Over seven billion people. "It'll never be the same, will it."
"No, commander. It won't. But it's better than no future at all." Joker bit his lip. "Commander, can I ask you something?"
She frowned. "Of course. What is it?"
"Did you know- I mean, when they were building the crucible, when you got up to the Citadel and fired it- did you know what it was going to do?"
"We knew it was designed to eliminate the reaper threat," Shepard said slowly. "I think we all assumed that would take the form of destroying them, but no, we didn't really understand how it worked. We were desperate."
He stared at the board. "Did you know what it was going to do to EDI?"
"Joker-" She laid a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry about EDI. She was a friend, too. I wasn't sure what effect it would have, but she was based on reaper technology. I don't know if she told you- we found logs from her creation in Cerberus' headquarters."
"Would you have done it if you knew?"
"You won't like the answer."
"Commander, she was a person."
"She was a soldier on this ship. She chose that," Shepard shot back, a note of warning in her tone. "It wouldn't have affected my decision for the same reasons you would have flown the Normandy into Harbringer if it would've taken out reaper command and control."
He smoldered. She let him. If he wanted to be angry with her, so be it. EDI's death was on her head like so many others. "What do you want to do for her?"
That startled him. "What?"
"You're right, she was a person," Shepard said patiently. "People get funerals. Think about it, and when you make a decision I'll arrange it."
She clapped him on the back and left him to his thoughts.
The elevator took her down to the shuttle bay. Unlike the rest of the ship, most of the wall panels were still in place, and there were only a handful of cable bundles running across the floor. EDI was deeply integrated into every ship system; retrofitting it to fly without her guidance was proving problematic, especially because Joker was rejecting any suggestion of installing a ship VI, as was standard throughout the Alliance fleet.
Supplies of all kinds were stacked against the walls, and there were more cots than she remembered set up between the boxes. It made sense that while the ship was grounded planetside, the crew had given up operating in three shifts, which put them short on beds. Vega managed to drag himself to attention and fire off a half-assed salute as she rolled onto the floor. "Commander! Damn good to see you, ma'am."
She nodded at the crates. "This your doing, LT?"
He grinned. "Been scavenging what I can. The ship needs a lot of patching. Everyone wants to see her in the air again. Can't wait to rejoin the fight. And rations are tight- unless someone goes down there every week and makes a fuss, nobody gets fed. Someone's gotta look out for the crew, y'know?"
"Appreciate it." Shepard meant it more than she could say. Her crew was her family. She edged up to the desk and started fidgeting with the various pieces of crap Vega kept by his console. "So you've been holding down the fort?"
"Well." He paused. "You were out of commission, and Major Alenko had his hands full looking out for you, which left me and Joker as the only ranking Alliance personnel aboard ship. I mean, the aliens are great and all, but they don't answer to anyone."
Shepard picked up something that looked like a cross between a spatula and a basketball and turned it over, mystified. "Good work."
Vega answered her silent question. "Kind of an improvised com buoy, for close-range communications. Tali'Zorah's idea. It'll let the shuttle talk to the Normandy with minimal interference and no hijacking. She's been working almost round the clock since you blew those things to hell, Commander."
Garrus and Tali in the battery. Tali joking that it wasn't serious. Garrus' amusement. God. I gave her the name of my ship and then I killed her boyfriend. "I thought she'd go back to the flotilla."
"Nope. She didn't want to leave before speaking with you." Vega scratched his head. "Err, Commander? It's been fun and all, playing skipper, but you think you're going to be sticking around?"
"I've got orders to return to the Chimborazo within twenty four hours. Apparently I need continual medical attention." She shook her head. "I don't know, Vega. I need to talk to Chakwas. I want to be down here doing my job, but I don't want to be stuck like this forever, either."
"Understood, ma'am." He saluted again.
Next stop was the med bay. Her bandage was soaked through and itchy as hell. If nothing else, the sheer irritation would keep her on her doctor's schedule.
Chakwas wasted no time getting her up on a table in spite of her protests. "I've been reading your files. The security clearance required for working on this ship is worth something after all, and Major Alenko fed me what I couldn't access. Those doctors of yours aren't worth the paper their degrees are printed on."
"Why's that, doc?" She eyed the console warily as Chakwas fed it a rapid series of commands and her scanners sprang to life.
"They wouldn't return my calls." She clucked her tongue. "If they want anyone more knowledgeable about the Lazarus Project and the nature of all your…alterations, they'd have to speak to Dr. Lawson's ghost. I've got some diagnostics I've wanted to try, a theory about how to make that cybernetic package in your back sing again. But it will take some time."
"How much time?"
"How do you feel about an extended stay?" Chakwas smiled at her.
"I've got to eat this sterile protein crap." Shepard lay back, relaxing a hair. "I don't know if we can work it into our dinner rotation."
She tried to stay still as Chakwas went about the messy and uncomfortable work of changing out her surgical bandage. They had to patch so many leaks that they ended up making one large incision into her abdominal cavity, to give them plenty of room to root around. It was an ugly thing, angry red and oozing, only just held together with large black staples, and it hurt like hell whenever she bent in any direction. Once she was in position, it faded to more of a dull ache, courtesy of the damn pain meds. Shepard didn't like them, but a few days without them proved exhausting to the point it impacted her ability to heal. Chakwas, however, eyed the cut with overtones of approval, so Shepard assumed it was healing as scheduled.
At this point in her life, her skin was a canvas of networked scars, some ordinary, some cybernetic-induced. She never thought she'd welcome the rude orange glow, but now it seemed like the very picture of health, a sign that all was well in her body, and it was the quiescent ones she regarded darkly. There were broad shiny patches of artificial skin now, too, grafts from her burns, slowly being eaten away by natural healing. It would take over a year for that work to finish, but the temporary polymers would prevent infection and allow her to live more-or-less normally, so long as they didn't tear.
Shepard stared up at the ceiling idly as Chakwas prodded her injuries. "I can't shake this feeling that I'm going to deeply regret certain lifestyle decisions in about twenty years."
"Don't be silly, Commander." Chakwas gave her an evil smile. "With a body as beat up as yours, I'd be astonished if you weren't feeling every last one of these old injuries inside ten years."
"Real funny, doc." There were fine cracks in the paint of the med bay ceiling. She made a mental note to get it fixed. Seeing the Normandy like this, in total disrepair, was like an itch she couldn't scratch. "I'm still getting my bearings. How sick is my ship?"
The doctor pursed her lips. "That's a question better suited to Adams. They've been replacing and rerouting cables to get around the problem of EDI. Even worse than that, however, is that the Normandy was part of Sword when EDI went offline. Joker is a hell of a pilot, but it wasn't a soft landing. Her bones are sound but there was extensive infrastructure damage." She gave Shepard a sidelong glance. "Rather like her commanding officer."
Shepard ignored the jab. "And the crew?"
"A few minor injuries from the emergency landing. Everyone was in battle harness, so that minimized the damage." Chakwas shook her head. "As you might expect, most of our current problems are in the area of mental health. Everyone's desperate for information about their homes and families. Lieutenant Cortez got co-opted by Alliance Command for supply runs between the camps, and he's been collecting requests and trying to learn what he can for the others. In some ways, I think the colonials like Specialist Traynor have the worst of it. There's been nothing public since the relay went down."
"I've got higher priority clearance- I'll get on the com and see what I can do."
"I'm sure we'd all be grateful." She taped the new bandage into place. "What about your family? Any news?"
"My mom made it. Nobody's heard from my dad since we lost Mars. It is what it is." Shepard craned her neck. "You about done?"
"For the moment. I'll want to run more specific diagnostics when you're up for it- we need to determine what allows some signals to pass through the implant while others are stalled."
Shepard frowned. "Any reason we can't do it now? This problem is a pain in the ass."
"I know it doesn't come naturally to you, Commander, but you need to take it easy. This isn't like when you woke up in Cerberus custody after two years of medical attention and healing. Push too hard, and you'll end up permanently injured or worse. You're accustomed to ignoring pain and injury- you're much more fragile than you feel."
"Trust me, I'm the last person in the world who wants this to be permanent." Even with the potential for recovery, these limitations were driving her crazy.
"Good. Try to remember that when you're tempted to start shooting at things," Chakwas replied, dryly.
Shepard eased herself to a seated position, working her legs over the edge of the table and stretching, cautiously. It wasn't true paralysis. She still had sensation, and intermittent motion. What she lacked was the fine motor control necessary for balance, and movement reliable enough to get any use from her legs. Almost as if the implant were fritzing out, though unlike the com she doubted a good whap would fix the problem.
At that moment, the med bay hatch split into its five segments and Tali'Zorah vas Normandy stepped through the door. "Dr. Chakwas, I was wondering if you had any peroxide I could borrow- Shepard?"
Tali blinked at her behind the purple mask. Chakwas cleared her throat. "I just received shipment of some new supplies. It's still in the shuttle bay. Now's as good a time as any to go have a look."
Shepard steeled herself. She'd been dreading this moment even more than the memorial itself. Garrus was beyond her ability to hurt. "Hey."
"Shepard," Tali said again, her shock fading a bit. "Thank you for what you said at the memorial. It was everything I wanted to say, but I couldn't come up with the words."
Her throat closed. "I'm so sorry, Tali."
It was harder than EDI. Shepard thought after those logs even EDI understood, given the probable nature of the Crucible, that there might be no way for her to survive the death of the reapers, though they never spoke of it. The machines were too entwined, and EDI had taken additional reaper tech into herself in the course of their mission.
Tali held up a hand to forestall her words. "We talked about this, the last night before we came to Sol. Garrus didn't want to die, but if he had to anyway, he wanted it to be doing something that mattered." Her voice choked a little. "He would have thought this was a good death."
"I wish I could have done more to protect him." And there it was again, the gnawing secret guilt, just like on Virmire. Javik volunteered. He wanted to go down fighting the reapers, like his kin before him. So that was simple. We both know, any other mission, I would have taken Kaidan as my second, and I had good reasons, valid reasons, military reasons to hold him back- but the truth was I didn't think I could live without him and I didn't want to try. Nobody from the Hammer frontlines was likely to come back alive.
Shepard looked at the floor between her feet. How can I even look at her when we both know it should be my boyfriend who's dead, not hers?
"We can't keep guessing at what-ifs," Tali said, almost as if reading her mind. The quarian sat down beside her on the hospital table. "Garrus wouldn't want that. I don't want that. He loved you, Shepard. You were a battle-sister to him. He would have fought you tooth and nail if you tried to leave him behind."
She had to laugh, despite herself, because it was true. Tali's mask was too opaque to see a smile, but it came through in her voice.
"Calibrations," she hissed, and they both lost it, giggling until they were out of breath. "Keelah, do you remember him making up those wild stories with James to pass the time?"
"Or exchanging bad jokes with Joker. Do you remember that time he wanted to buy Grunt a stripper?"
"I don't think anyone leaves a krogan stripclub alive." Tali leaned back. "All those damn questions about the flotilla. I got so tired of answering."
"I asked him about our odds against the collectors one time. He replied that they managed to kill me once and all it seemed to do was piss me off." Shepard shook her head. "It's stupid, but it was just about the only thing anyone said during that mission that made me feel any better. More like myself."
"He was a good friend."
"None better," Shepard agreed. They sat a moment in comfortable silence. "So what are your plans, Tali'Zorah?"
"I resigned from the admiralty. I don't know what the quarian people need, but it's not a geth expert, and it's not someone who, in the hardest of times, would rather be with her friends than her people. I'm serving, but in a different capacity. It's good for everyone." She glanced sidelong at Shepard. "Assuming there's still a place for me on this ship, anyway."
"So long as she's mine." Shepard smiled. "Us vas Normandys have to stick together. There aren't enough of us to spread around."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
A few hours later, as evening was drawing in, Shepard found herself in her cabin. Maneuvering past the step was simpler than she thought, though getting back up it might prove impossible. The VI fish feeder was just about empty. She rooted around under the tank, looking for the refill packs.
"Hey," said a quiet voice from the doorway. Alenko leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "You have a good time with the crew?"
"It was good, finally getting to see them again, and take stock of the ship." She spent the whole afternoon talking with the Normandy staff. Her to-do list was already about three miles long, but that was so familiar it was almost more comforting than stressful. "We're…going to be here awhile. There's a lot of damage."
"Well, I can't say I wasn't hoping for a better prognosis, if not exactly expecting it." He took the bag from her and levered it into the hopper at the top of the tank. Shepard tried not to resent it.
Instead, she changed topics. "Did you find your team?"
"Alive and kicking. Mostly." He frowned, looking as tired as she felt. "We lost two of the injured since I last checked in, but that should be the end of it. Everyone else is either healthy or on the mend. They tipped me off on a few things we should probably look into. Or at least make sure somebody looks into."
"What kinds of things?"
"Your favorite asari didn't make it off the Citadel. Or, if she did, she's hiding it well."
"Oh, hell." Shepard buried her face in her hand briefly, though not with grief. "Let me guess. Her private army of thugs and brigands is no longer playing nice?"
"They took over Brazil."
"What?" Shepard blinked.
"Exactly what I said." He rolled his eyes. "Apparently, when they looked down at the destruction of Earth, their first thought was 'hey, let's go establish our own country!' Hopefully the infighting will them before their plans progress much further, but who knows."
"And everybody's been too busy to do something about it. Great." She tagged the feeder and was satisfied to see the fish swarm to the surface to gulp down the food. The hamster, she discovered, had been relocated to engineering under the care of Donnelly, where it quickly achieved the status of mascot.
They watched the fish. Alenko stood next to her, hand running through her hair, an old unconscious habit she enjoyed too much to call attention to, for fear he'd feel awkward and stop. She put her arm around his legs and leaned against his hip. Having him with her these last few months was the best thing about them. Shepard didn't know how much longer it could last- she was very much on medical leave, and he had skills that were very much needed in the fleet- but she was savoring every minute. At the end of the day, for herself personally, this was all she really hoped for out of a victory. Both of them standing here, safe, on her ship.
Together.
Alenko cleared his throat and looked down at her, quietly. "The last shuttle's leaving in thirty."
At least he broached the subject first. And from his tone, he already knew what she was going to say. "Chakwas tells me she wants to take over my medical care."
"The Normandy's sick bay isn't a hospital. And you need to be monitored around the clock." There wasn't much fight in the words.
"So I'll sleep in one of her beds." She hugged him closer and looked up. "This is my home, Kaidan. I'm not leaving. They need me here."
"I know." He smiled. "It was worth a try.