So, I was about to post Chapter 8 when I noticed I never posted Chapter 7. I'm sorry about the wait for this chapter. I don't even know how long it's been sitting in my computer, finished. On the other hand, after your long wait, you now have two brand new chapters instead of just one.

I believe my wonderful beta, HisuiNekome, has read over this one, but I'm not sure so, if it is riddled with errors, I apologize.

As always, the Mass Effect universe is the sole property of Bioware; I'm just joy-riding.


Karin Chakwas was reviewing Alenko's medical records when the Turian Spectre walked in. She knew little about Turians; she had met a few during her service. She could even say that she felt reasonably comfortable tending to one, but she didn't consider herself an expert on their culture or expressions so she wasn't quite sure why the imposing man came into her clinic. "How can I help you, Spectre Vakarian?" she asked cordially.

"I have a bit of a headache, and I was wondering if there was something you could do about it," he said in a sly, charismatic way that was probably useful with younger women in bars. Overall, she wasn't necessarily surprised by the tone itself. The man was a Spectre; confidence to the point of arrogance was probably the rule instead of the exception. She was rather amused though that he tried such a tone on her, which probably meant that he wasn't used to humans and couldn't quite calculate her age right.

"I have some medicine that could help, but if you were alluding to something else, I'm sorry to say that I'm old enough to be your grandmother," she said with the same dry humor wherever anyone happened to express such an interest. It still amused her just how many men, human or not, tried to pick her up.

The Spectre's turian smile just got wider, and for a minute, she really thought that he was serious about wooing her. Then she noticed a minor hitch in his expression. Most of her knowledge of turian expressions was theoretical and antiquated. She had been serving with the fleet during the First Contact War, but as a medical officer, she had been lucky enough to have a little direct knowledge of turian expressions. She was very rusty though, having not spoken on an extended basis with a turian since the war's end, and that was why she wasn't surprised that she had missed the playful tilt of his mandibles. "Who says that would be a problem?" he asked innocently, knowing by her expression that she had seen he wasn't serious.

She chuckled. "Too bad for you that I know your father. I doubt that he would approve." And just like that: she saw his playful, happy expression fall. She didn't know what Vakarian senior had done to make his son so unhappy with the very mention of his name, but she felt that it was a shame. From what she had seen of Spectre Vakarian so far, his father should be extremely proud of him.

"About that headache medicine?" he asked kindly, but the humor was gone from his voice. She was almost sorry to see it go. She was sure that he was rather out of his depth, and she was probably one of the few people on board that wouldn't hold it against him if he asked for help. There were several members of the crew looking for any excuse to hate the man.

She knew that offering her help point-blank would undermine the young man's confidence, which he needed almost as much as knowledge of the crew, so she simply crossed the room to the medical supplies cabinet and took out the appropriate bottle of pills. She handed a couple to him and replaced it back in it's place on the shelves. "Is there anything else that you need, Spectre Vakarian?" She made sure that her expression was open and reassuring.

He seemed to weight the decision before crossing the med bay and sitting across from her. He seemed to have moved on from her causal reference to his father. "I was wondering if you would be comfortable telling me your estimation of the crew's mental state," he said cautiously. "Within the bounds of your oath," he added quickly as if to make sure he didn't offend her. "I know that humans have a thing about doctor-client confidentiality."

His knowledge of her oath pleasantly surprised her; she knew that there was no such thing in his own society. She smiled reassuringly. "Of course, but I'm surprised that Shepard hasn't already brought you up to date. She sees more than even I could."

Her words seemed to have surprised him. "I didn't know that you knew her that well, Doc," he said, his mandibles tightening apprehensively. He was probably worried that Shepard had gotten to the whole crew.

"I don't," she said easily as if she hasn't noticed just how uncomfortable he had become. "Captain Anderson has run across her several times, and the Alliance has their own file about her. She is known to have an almost freakish understand of human expressions and motivations, which one would also assume she carries over into other species from her job description."

This seemed to alleviate some of the worry cased in the man's face, but she could tell that he wasn't completely notified by her response. He was cautious too. Now that was a good sign. "So you have had no direct interactions with her before she came aboard with me earlier today?" He asked, his mandibles held tightly to his face.

"I was asked to look her over when Williams escorted her aboard during her Alliance detainment," she clarified, trying her best to be as honest as she could and reassuring at the same time, "but, before that, no. I have heard stories from various members of the Alliance about her, of course, and I trust Captain Anderson's assessment without reservation."

He looked at her a few moments longer than necessary for his translator to catch up to her words, as if he was trying to calculate their credibility and her honesty. In the end, he seemed to accept her explanation, however be it, with some reservation. "Sometimes I think she is just playing all of us, and I can't help but think we're all caught up in her spell," he muttered, almost so quietly that she wasn't sure if he was still talking with her.

She chuckled at his comment nevertheless. "I dare say that you are probably right, but we really have very little choice. She is the only hope there is if we want Saren caught. Personally, I think working with her is the lesser of two evils: leave Saren out there or work with her."

He seemed shocked and awed by what she said. He probably wasn't expecting such an easy and pessimistic answer from her, or he just didn't know that she could hear him. "You're not worried she is going to get us all killed?" He asked, his defenses nearly brought completely down.

Chakwas needed a moment to think about that. It was a distinct possibility, one she had accepted when Anderson had told her what was going on, but she hasn't quite took the time to think about whether or not it was worth it. She didn't need long to come to an answer. She had seen Alenko brought in here on the back of Williams, she had seen the tattered looks in their eyes when Eden Prime was brought up, and she had seen the dead bodies of Jenkins and the Commander. "It's a distinct possibility, but I think it's worth it, as long as Saren is brought to justice."

He seemed surprised by her answer, but he recovered quickly. "You think like a Turian, Doctor," he said with a smile, but underneath, she could still see his concern. He didn't like the idea that he was the one that had to make those decisions. Perhaps she had judged him too harshly, too quickly. It seemed he wasn't as foolishly confident as his predecessor.

She smiled at his comment and the realization. "I'll take that as a complement." For several moments, they just sat there in silence: she was waiting for the medicine to kick in, and he seemed to be trying to think of a way to approach a subject. She was content to wait; it was better than spending most of her time in the med-bay by herself.

"Shepard suggested that you might give me some additional information about the crew," he said with another easy smile. It seemed as if their conversation had put them in a standing of friendly. They weren't quite friends, but they certainly had an understanding.

She smiled back at him. "Certainly. Where would you like to get started?" If anything could be said for the situation that she had found herself in, at least the man running the mission had a good head on his shoulders. They spent several hours talking over Shepard's observations and suggestions concerning the crew, and they both eventually came to the conclusion that she was right. He would just have to trust in her ability to read and manipulate human emotions and motivations.

They were just wrapping up their conversation when Joker came over the intercom to let Garrus know that Shepard and Wrex where fighting in the cargo hold. She was amused by the Turian "face-palming" at that announcement, but he turned to her and said that he had to make sure neither one of them did unrepairable damage to the ship. On his way out the door, he promised that they would have a chance to talk again. She just hoped that he was capable of making sure that no one would be needing her help after this. It would really be a shame to lose him just as she was starting to like him.


The fight was already over by the time he stepped out of the slowest elevator that he had ever seen. Shepard was barely being held back by a struggling Gunnery Chief Williams. She didn't look as torn up as he expected from a human-Krogan battle; he had seen a couple of those in bars on the Citadel, and they never ended well. The protuberance from her face (a nose, he thought they were called) didn't seem as straight at it use to and there was a red liquid (he had to remind himself that human blood was red, not blue) leaking from it.

Wrex (being a Krogan) didn't seem hurt at all, but Garrus was surprised to see Alenko and little Tali successfully blocking his access to Shepard. Alenko was as calm as a VI, but his skin glowed the tell-tail blue of biotics. Tali, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly how precarious her position was. All she really had against the towering Krogan was a shotgun about as big as Wrex's forearm. The young girl was visibly nervous, but it was clear that she had no intention of backing down.

Wrex and Shepard were screaming various profanities and cultural insults back and forth. Most were about each other but several of Shepard's dealt with Wrex's mother, which didn't seem to bring out the response from the Krogan that she wanted. Both of them were getting more and more aggravated at the seconds flew by.

He noticed all of this in the time it took him to take a step out of the elevator. In the seconds it took his other foot to follow, he noticed that no one was paying any attention to the fact that he had just stepped on the deck. Even though he knew that the situation was moments away from blowing up once again which could result in additional injuries, he took a few seconds to himself to prepare physically, mentally, and emotionally to the only option he had left.

"This is over!" he said in his most serious, commanding tone of voice. It was the exact tone of voice that he had heard his father use so often in his childhood; it was the same tone of voice he heard whenever he couldn't dodge the 'accidental' meetings with his father since his induction. He hated that he had to use that voice; he hated how similar he was to his father on the occasions when he had to use it.

But it was that tone of voice that successfully stopped another intergalactic war from erupting on his ship. Everyone stopped, even Shepard, to turn to him in surprise. Poor Tali seemed visibly shaken. Alenko and Williams just shifted their eyes to look at him for a fraction of a second to make sure who he was; they knew that all of their attention needed to be on their respective charges. It was nothing more than a quick combat appraisal. Wrex looked at him for several moments but shrank down from his combat stance. Shepard however, speared him with her eyes and held his gaze. It was a battle of wills, and he couldn't afford to let her win. Eventually she dropped her own aggressive stance.

"Chief Williams, get Shepard up to see Doctor Chakwas about her injuries," he ordered with the steel of his father's voice, and he hoped that Williams knew that it was in no way directed towards her. But he needed to keep Shepard and Wrex separated until their tempers cooled, and he had to remain in control of the situation. "Lieutenant Alenko, Tali'Zorah," he said when Williams and Shepard were safely secured behind the closed elevator door, "you are dismissed. Thank you for your timely action." The words of thanks sounded wrong in his father's tone just like they always had.

Alenko merely nodded his head in acknowledgement and walked over to wait for the elevator. As far as Garrus knew, the man was off-duty, which meant he was probably heading to the mess. As soon as she was released, Tali scurried toward engineering, which probably meant that she was late for her own duty. That left him and Wrex relatively alone, and it was about as private as he could hope for. As Alenko and Tali'Zorah headed their own ways, Wrex lumbered over to a supply crate and leaned against it calmly. It seemed like the bulk of the Krogan's anger was already gone.

Garrus followed him, but he dropped his father's tone. Even with as little as he had used it, he usually needed alcohol to get over it. "What the hell just happened, Wrex?" he asked, but he was pushing back on the commander's attitude and tried to appeal like a friend. It might not work with the Krogan, but he couldn't handle any more commander mode today. "I thought you and Shepard were close. Why the sudden need to rip each other's heads off?"

From the readings coming in from his visor, he knew the krogan's calm exterior was nothing more than an act, a false front. His hearts' beats were elevated, and he could tell that the mercenary was purposefully controlling his breathing in an attempt to bring them down. "We started talking about the genophage," came the too calm reply. "It's one of the few things we don't agree on."

Garrus supposed that he shouldn't be surprised that Shepard had a Krogan best friend and supported the genophage, but he found himself completely unsurprised by that revelation. She was known to be a ruthless strategist after all. She probably admired the creators' blindness to how much damage they would cause to the Krogan people. "For some reason, I'm not surprised that Shepard is for the genophage," he said with a friendly tilt of his mandibles. It would do him no good to end up in an argument with the powerful Krogan like Shepard had.

Wrex chuckled. "I suppose expecting her to change her mind over the course of our friendship is a little much to ask." Every reading he was seeing so far suggested that the Krogan was completely (as least as much as a krogan could) relaxed.

It made sense that the two of them had gotten into an argument about the issue before, and if they could still remain friends without someone stepping in to stop the physical harm from being severe, then it would stand to reason that they could still remain friends after this as well. But being in charge meant that he had to check and make sure. "So you and her aren't going to have any additional issues streaming from this."

That caused a laugh to come out of the krogan. "Of course, not! She still owes me a couple favors."

He didn't know what that had to do about anything, but he was rather sure that he could trust Wrex's word that his argument with Shepard was over for the time being. "So long, Wrex," he said making his way to the elevator so he could check on Shepard. Wrex no longer had any issues, but he needed the both of them to play well with others.

"Vakarian," Wrex said as a form of goodbye.


Oh, Keelah, had she just held a shotgun against a nearly charging krogan? What had she been thinking? Tali was still shocked that she had reacted like she had. It was instantaneous; she hadn't even taken the time to think about it before leaping into action.

She had been walking out of the elevator on the way to her first duty in the Engineering department, and she had been so excited to see the guts of this ship. It was so advanced, and she was going to be allowed to see exactly how it worked. Then she walked into a minor war though.

It was chaos. There were biotics and fists and raised voices. At first, she was just shocked by the sight before her, but after several minutes, she realized that Shepard and Wrex were in the middle of an all-out brawl. Williams and Alenko were trying to break them up, but everyone else was staying far out of their way. The two human soldiers had no hope of pulling them apart without help though.

She wasn't even sure why she got the idea that she could help, let alone that she should, but she just started walking towards her locker nonetheless. She pulled out her trusty shotgun without a second thought and walked over to where Alenko was unsuccessfully trying to keep Wrex from crushing Shepard's head with his bare hands. At the time, Shepard appeared to be leaning against the Mako dazed.

"Don't even think about it," she said stepping in front of the Krogan and beside Alenko. She had her shotgun all ready and its business end pointing at the angry krogan, but Wrex took one look at the gun and just smirked. That's when she remembered that Krogan weren't like Quarians; even a shotgun couldn't take down a Krogan with one shot.

Nonetheless, Wrex just looked at her with that smirk on his face and said, "You've got a quad, little Quarian." At the time, it almost sounded like she had gained his respect, but it couldn't have been anything other than her auditory filters warping his tone. She was suddenly terrified. She had come on this ship to stay out of danger and now she was in the middle of it. And it was all because she hadn't thought the consequences through once again.

This time though it ended without anyone getting seriously injured. Her Turian commander stepped out of the elevator and put a stop to the entire situation. Everyone had dismissed the man as just another young, untested Spectre without command experience, but in an instant he had changed that entire assumption. Everyone knew that he was capable of keeping the various members of this crew in line.

She couldn't deny that she was starting to appreciate his ability at showing up just in time to save her. In fact, she wasn't sure if it was just appreciation she was starting to feel for the debonair Spectre; if it wasn't for her immune system, she would probably try to see if there could be something more between them then friendship. But she was a quarian, and she couldn't risk time outside of the suit. She didn't understand the appeal of the various suit stims; if she was going to be involved with someone, she wanted to feel their skin on hers.

Of course, these thoughts made her miss a little of Engineer Adams' explanation of several engine matters, but she was able to fill in the details on her own. Without hesitation, she got on a terminal and started working on optimizing engine outputs. Within moments, she could feel Adams back in a position where he could look over her shoulders in response to her work. Luckily, it was because her work resulted in positive changes. Before the end of the day, he seemed to feel completely comfortable leaving her on her own.

She was going to like her time on this ship.


Doctor Chakwas was already done examining Shepard when he made it to the medical bay, and he had to admit that Shepard already looked as if the fight had never happened. Her nose was no longer crooked, and the blood was gone. To him, her eyes seemed a little foggy, but he was no human medical expert.

"Doctor," he said with a nod of his head as he walked into the room, and she made her way over to him quickly. "How much damage did she sustain?" He could tell from the serious and rather angry look on the doctor's face that the answer wasn't about to be good.

The doctor looked uncharacteristically serious and was speaking almost in a whisper. Luckily, he was a turian, and his hearing was better than the average human. "I'm not quite sure," she answered slowly as if she had more to say. This wasn't an answer he had been expecting so he let her continue. "Most of her wounds were healed by the time that she made it to the clinic. Williams mentioned that she had reset her own nose in the elevator, but all I can see on her scans are some hairline fractures. She also seems to have a minor concussion, but if it is healing as quick as her nose, then I can only guess that it use to be major. "

This shocked him. Unless humans healed at lot faster than he knew, this was unusual to the extreme, and he couldn't help but wonder why. He also knew that he was in no way an expert on human beings so he decided that it was probably better to be thought stupid now than later on the battlefield. "That level of healing isn't normal, is it?"

"No, Spectre Vakarian," the doctor said in an erie way, "it is not." She then shifted a bit in a way that suggested that she was very uncomfortable right now. "I can only surmise that she has had genetic tailoring for fast healing and probably more besides. There is a theory about nanites being put into the blood stream to increase healing, but none of those studies have gained approval to test on humans yet. Whatever she has done to herself, it isn't legal."

"If you two are done talking about me now," Shepard said with a raised voice. As quietly as Chakwas had been speaking, it sounded nothing less than a minor bomb going off, even though he knew she hadn't even raised her voice that much. "I would like to have my tongue lashing now." And with that, the conversation with the good doctor was over, to be taken up later when they had time.

"If it's all right, Doctor, I'd like to have a moment alone with her," he said in his not-quite father-tone. His sub vocals however betrayed his true concern about the information that he had just been told. Who knew how much tailoring Shepard had undergone; she might even have cybernetic implants for all they knew.

"Of course, Spectre Vakarian," she said graciously. "I'll just be out in the mess hall if you need me." She didn't seem put out by the request at all, but she certainly didn't hurry. Luckily for him, Shepard was still recovering from a certain amount of her concussion so he didn't have to deal with her glaring at him.

He turned to Shepard as soon as the doctor had left the room and tried his best to spear her with a glare. "What the hell just happened, Shepard?" He was furious with her. He had put some faith in her to get the more xenophobic members of the crew on their side, and she just went and attacked one of the few aliens on this ship.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to close my eyes for this conversation," she said without opening her eyes. "It helps healing if I don't focus on too much at one time; and if I'm lucky, I might be completely rid of this concussion before we reach the Artemis Tau cluster." He was almost worried since she had a concussion that she would fall asleep, which he knew was bad, but hopefully, she wouldn't if he could keep her talking.

"You didn't answer my question," he growled. It was like she was purposefully trying to avoid the question, and it made him mad. She said she was here to help him, but she was picking fights with fellow crew members and putting everyone in danger. She was doing nothing but making his job harder.

"I just got Williams on your side," she said so unquestionably that he couldn't help but believing the exact opposite. How was picking fights with fellow crew members getting anyone on his side? It didn't make any sense to him.

"Really?" he asked suspiciously. "Because what I saw was you trying to kill a fellow crew member and Williams holding you back. You blew whatever chance you had to gain their respect and trust. They think you're some crazy person now, and you're going to have a hell of a time trying to change that."

"I'm not trying to get them to like me; I'm trying to get them to like you." She sighed exasperatedly. "Williams is a little xenophobic. So by picking a fight with Wrex, I proved that I am unstable, and since you were the one that got the entire situation back under control, she now sees that you are capable of leading. Nice commander voice, by the way." He was happy that she still had her eyes closed because her last sentence had him grimacing. The "Commander voice" she was complimenting was the same tone that his father had always used, and he didn't want to become him. Ever.

"You really think that getting Williams on my side was worth possibly pissing off Wrex forever and almost sending him into a blood rage?" If her theory worked, he didn't understand why she had chose Wrex. Out of everyone on the ship, he was the most dangerous person to anger, second maybe to Shepard, but his reservations still stood. A Krogan in the middle of a blood rage would cause a lot of damage to ship and crew. That risk wasn't worth the gain.

Shepard just laughed at him. "You really think that Wrex was that angry with me?" her eyes were still closed, but he could feel her amusement and mockery just the same. "If Wrex and I were really fighting, then he wouldn't have stopped just because of Alenko and Tali, and Williams most certainly wouldn't have been able to hold me back."

He had thought that Wrex being held back by Alenko and Tali was weird. Perhaps her reasoning was sound, but if what she was saying was true, then she had confided in Wrex what her plan was instead of him. That meant that Wrex knew about the crew not trusting him. He needed everyone on this crew behind him, including the grumpy Krogan. "I wish you hadn't done that, Shepard," he said with a sigh. "Wrex knows that I'm having problems commanding this ship without you now. I need him on my side just as much as I need Williams."

"Wrex is on your side, Vakarian," she answered assuredly. "He trusts me absolutely, and if I say that you're trustworthy and capable of commanding this ship, he trusts you and respects your ability to command. He knows I wouldn't have put you in charge if I didn't think you could do it."

That calmed most of his worries, but he still wasn't quite comfortable with the older Krogan knowing who was really in charge of this entire thing. He liked the illusion that he had it all under control, even Shepard, but he guessed that he never really had a chance to keep that illusion. Best to move on to other possibly dangerous matters.

"The Doctor is concerned about your healing ability, more specifically just why it is so fast," he said as nonchalant as he could manage. If Shepard had gotten illegal transplants, then she wasn't likely to want to talk about it with him.

And sure enough, he was correct. She opened her eyes at that comment and focused them on him with the same intensity that she had given Wrex just moments before. "Good thing that's none of her business then," she said clearly and with emphasis. She clearly was telling him to drop it without directly saying it.

He wasn't one to be intimidated so easily though, not even by her. This was something that he was suppose to take care of as a Spectre, and he wasn't about to just turn a blind eye just because she didn't want to talk about it. "Shepard, if you..."

She cut him off right there. "Whatever makes my healing so fast is none of your damn business, Vakarian. Even if it was, it's in my system now, and the only way you could turn it off to study it is by removing it, which I am not about to let you do. Drop it!"

He looked her in the eye, and he could see the threat. They had just started working together; they didn't trust each other as far as they could throw each other. Perhaps he could get some information from her if he could gain her trust. Going after Saren was unlikely to be a short endeavor; he had the time. "All right, Shepard," he said getting up from his chair. "I'll drop it. For now, anyway."