With finals in full swing right now, this update was slow to come. It is a bit shorter than usually, but with one more paper and one more test left to go, I will hopefully spend more time on these things in the summer. Please enjoy, and please share any thoughts you have. I love reviews!
Note: I know exactly jack-shit about medicine. Most of the recovery and surgery talk in the next few chapters will be made up on the fly. Space magic.
She woke with less pain in her limbs, the gentle hum of activity outside the medbay a reminder to her that she was still alive. Shepard opened her eyes after a blissful moment of listening, and she found herself joined by Crassia and the little turian child she saw through the windows not long ago. He was a stark contrast to the woman who held him, red against silver. He slept in her arms, the first time Shepard ever heard him silent. Sleep must have been rare for him, or maybe turian children did not sleep as much as human babies. Her doctor's watchful eyes left the child in her arms and focused upon the Commander.
"Morning. You sure did sleep for awhile. They kept you knocked out for two days," Crassia said to her after a tentative moment, as if watching the Commander to gauge her wakeful state.
"Morning.. who's that with you?" Shepard spoke.
She lifted herself slowly into a sitting position, letting out a grunt as her arms strained to lift her with no aid from her legs pushing her upward. She reached behind herself and moved her pillows about, trying to get them in position. A small adjustment of the pillows behind her gave her a place to rest, and she settled down gladly. Shepard swore she felt something crack in her back, like a pocket of stiffness dissipating. It was beginning to seem more and more likely that she really had been in that bad for that long.
"He has a lot of nicknames, no real name that stuck with him. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father died on Tuchanka, and we don't know of any extended family. Its bad practice in our culture to name a child not in our family," Crassia looked to Shepard, speaking after a long moment," Would you like to hold him?"
Shepard nodded in response to the question as Crassia stood, slowly delivering the sleeping turian into her arms. He rolled with little coaxing from either woman, and she found that he fit into her arms much like a human child. She cradled the back of his head with one hand, ever mindful of his short fringe. His feet and hands were so small, talons hardly pointed at all. His little head pressed right up to her chest, apparently a universal resting place for a child in the arms of a human. He weighed more than a human child of a few months, but it was not an unpleasant weight.
She knew the welling emotion of adoration in her chest may well be misplaced, but the gentle weight of the child was enough to remind her she had done something good to keep little lives like his safe. Shepard focused on his face, making a mental note of the much lighter skin of his neck beyond his dark red facial plates. His quivering mandibles, moved by sleepy breathes, made her smile. She could not, or would not, look away from him.
"He's pretty cute. Can't imagine why no one wanted to take him in."
"Taking care of any baby is heavy work, and we all have a lot on our plates. I think most people were scared to take on that kind of attachment."
"He reminds me of Nihlus," Shepard said.
"The Council Spectre who recommended you, right?"
"Yeah," She confirmed," I think its all his coloring, though. Is it a common thing among turians?"
"Lighter brown plates are the most common and genetically dominant, like brown hair is for humans. I guess you could say silver plates are like blond hair, and the little one's plates like your hair. Some of it is influenced by where their ancestors are from too. Palaven has a pretty stable temperature, but radiation levels in certain places definitely had an impact on the coloring."
Crassia's eyes never left the Commander. The human relaxed as she held the child in her arms. This had been a good idea. If she learned anything of the Commander from Garrus' stories, it was that she coped with things much better when people depended on her.
"What color are his eyes?" She asked.
"Blue, actually." Oh, that was the answer she was hoping for.
"You're going to be a lady killer," Shepard laughed to herself as she squeezed the little one tighter to her chest.
"How are you feeling this morning, Commander? Better?"
"My bones hurt less, and I don't have a headache. Its a start for recovery," she turned her gaze up to Crassia," I can't wait til I can get up on my own. Being bedridden is embarrassing."
"Then I'll make the recommendation we handle the breaks in your legs next. There will be therapy to get your body used to it, but you'll be able to get out of bed alone,' Crassia said.
"When will I be going under again? What did they get done?"
"We're going to give you two days before we do anything else, to make sure the spinal implant took to you correctly. Your upper body's skin and bone weaves are active again, so by tomorrow we should be able to remove the cast around your chest for good. There's going to be a lot of observation and therapy after your next surgery, but with people going to the surface, we should get you a real room soon."
"I'd like to sleep in a real bed."
"Can't imagine that's very comfortable. Its been a long time since I've been stuck in one of those," Crassia sounded sympathetic.
Shepard imagined no one liked being stuck in a medbay for an extended amount of time. If she had only taken a rocket to the chest, seeing as her face is not nearly as durable as a certain turian's, she might have walked out after a day. The damage from the Reaper beam and the explosion from the Catalyst definitely put her out of commission for awhile.
"You know... There aren't many people left on this ship, if you'd like to take him every once and awhile for someone to keep you company. Turian children aren't so difficult to take care of early on, and their noises are pretty easy to interpret. I can teach you how to take care of him, and I can bring his supplies in, leave them in reach for you."
"Does that mean I get to name him?" Shepard hesitated.
"Only if you want to, and if you two get along well enough, he's going to need a permanent home."
Well, shit. She was basically offering the kid up to be adopted. Shepard made the mental note to remember that. Perhaps she would fall in love with the little child in her arms. Part of her already adored him.
"Nihlus, then. That's what I'll call him."
"It seems like a good, honorable name," Crassia smiled.
Shepard believed the older turian knew exactly what she was doing with the smile the came up on her face. The delighted sub vocals underlying her voice betrayed her.
"He sleeps like a rock," Shepard smiled as she turned her gaze down to the baby," How long has he been asleep?"
"A few hours. He'll wake up again soon. They never sleep but three or four hours at a time."
Shepard decided she could live with that, a little friend to stay up with her when she had nothing more to do than stare at the wall. She could make the time for naps with him. All of the rest she could get would be beneficial, and she knew herself well enough not to lie about why she welcomed the child so easily. She would not be alone in there anymore, and he needed someone, anyone to take him.
She would decide if this would be a permanent arrangement at a later date, but her heart was already making those preparations.
As expected, time on the Normandy sped up with the inclusion of the Doctor's engineers. Each day that went by, they managed to make a little more progress. The human known as Ariadne comandeered Jack's old spot beneath the main level of the engineering deck, and rarely did she leave it. Her loud and boisterous nature Garrus had been exposed to on the shuttle quieted the moment she set herself to work, her headset blaring music into her ears and projected blue prints in front of her right eye. She slept only five hours each night, and she took no breaks. The quarian female that had accompanied her delivered rations and water to keep her going. Ariadne never stopped working. It seemed all the women on the ship were devoting themselves to some kind of work.
Liara locked herself away after a day of attempting to help where she could, turning to what information she still had available. She never once talked about what she was doing when Garrus saw her, but he began to feel a little concerned for what she buried herself in. Tali disappeared into the AI core every morning, doing only the spirits knew what. He assumed it had something to do with Edi, but he never asked. Traynor began fiddling with the communications networks in her off time, trying to extend the reach of the Normandy to other systems. So far, she had no luck. Only the ships above the planet would respond when contacted. Of the three normal crewmembers who dove into work, she was the only one who told Garrus was she was up to. She wanted to be able to reach the medical ship Shepard was on so they could all say hello.
Spirits knew that they needed the encouraging sight of their Commander.
Ariadne invited Garrus to work with her on the third day, and for the first few hours, they spent their time welding the rest of the pieces to her machinations. It was not until the noise of their omni-tools was silenced that she began to speak.
"Ya know, six years ago, if someone would have told me that Shepard would be in a devoted relationship to a turian, I would have believed them," Ariadne laughed.
"I don't think she would have believed it," Garrus responded.
"Probably not. Even way back when, I didn't think there was a human in the galaxy that could handle her for more than a month or two. I told her that every time we went out. She's fucking crazy, as far as human women go. Nobody gets in her way. Never did, even before she was N7. Gotta be a helluva man to not fall over dead from a heart attack with the shit she does."
"Are you insinuating I can handle her?"
Ariadne laughed," Shit yeah I am. Whenever we were in contact with each other, she talked about you, which was new. She only ever mentioned Alenko once, and that was when she was getting pissed off at him. That's what girls do, talk about their men sometimes. Even girls like us."
"Tell me more about the two of you, it seems like you were really good friends," Garrus asked.
The engineer obliged without a second thought," We were stationed on the same ship for awhile when we were N6 rank, before Akuze. She led a ground team with me, a Vanguard N6 named Diana Quinn, and an N5 Soldier named Aliana Howell. We ran together for awhile before we all got separated to different ships. We got together on long shore leaves, and we have a huge bash when we all got to N7. We got together again when she got assigned to the Normandy, and again after that shit on the Citadel. We were all at the funeral. Haven't had the chance to all get together since."
"She never talks about her early career."
"No reason to other than all of the friends we made together. We bunked most of the time when we were stationed on the Aries. Our missions were pretty routine," Ariadne said as she cracked open her water bottle.
"I guess most of us had pretty uneventful early careers in comparison to the last few years," Garrus relaxed in his seat.
"Damn right. Even me. Can't say it would have been as eventful without the Doc."
"Do you even know who he is? Do any of you?" Garrus looked at her.
"I do. There's three other people in the fleet who know him, and two in the Sol system. If he decides he can trust you, he reveals who he is." Ariadne became a little standoffish, uncertain of where he was taking the conversation.
"I just don't understand how you all feel safe under his command, not knowing who he is."
"Did you -really- know who the Commander before the two of you became intimate? Is the name really that important?" Ariadne asked him," I mean, his actions spoke for him before I ever knew him. 'The Good Doctor's is as much his name as what he was born with. Besides, weren't you -Archangel-? Didn't your men trust you without knowing your real name?" Ariadne was willing to play this game. She shot right back.
"Most of them knew."
"Dangerous, don't you think? He has so many people to take care of that if he reveals his name, he's in a lot of danger. His family would be in dang-"
"He has a family?"
"A daughter, and a wife he never divorced," she revealed.
"So he hides his name to protect them?" Garrus continued to question.
"Hell if I know. He does a damn good job of protecting the people he's worked with before now. He's a good man, Vakarian. Better than most I've ever met, and the best I've ever seen come out of Cerberus."
"Cerberus?"
"Yeah. Its pretty common knowledge he ran with them for awhile," Ariadne paused, turning off the blueprints in front of her eye," Its where he got me and a lot of the scientists on the research vessels. Some of them are Dr. Brynn Cole's people, but most of them started running even before her. He kept a wide net for people that wanted out and even for those that weren't human. The C-Sec guys on the liveships came for their families. The Salarian engineers came because they knew that the Dalatrass made no friends at Shepard's war summit, and war waits for no politics."
Garrus snorted slightly at that," They would have made better use of themselves at the Crucible."
"Not necessarily. They're with us now and they're in a position to help with rebuilding efforts. Some of the people who worked on the Crucible are going to have a much harder time getting out of that sector to do the same. Displacing all of the galaxy's brilliant minds to one place makes for a shitty rebuilding effort everywhere else if you ask me." She finished her long winded statement with a drink from her water, stopping for a brief break from their work," Not all of the ships are equipped with stealth systems, but they are a lot safer than some of the colonies. We were able to move and get out at the first sign of Reaper activity, so he saved a lot of lives."
Ariadne turned her gaze to their handy work, inspecting the seams of the welding where it attached her augmented Reaper device to the drive core. Occasionally, she hummed as a sign of approval. It seemed that whatever work they had done was sufficient for her to handle without a whisper of disapproval or an unkind joke made in his direction.
"Well, at least you're here now," Garrus said after a lengthy silence.
"I'm just glad I can help you lot get back to Shepard. She'll need you, you know? She's strong as hell when she's in a fight, but she can use all the support she can get anywhere else. Your aunt good with her patients?"
"Yeah. She came home to help my mother when she hit the worst of her disease. We pulled her out of the Salarians' care so she could die at home. Its what she wanted. My aunt never left. Neither did my dad," a mournful subvocal left his throat. The human seemed to pick up on it.
"Must have been damn hard to handle with the Reapers on their way, to lose your mother like that. My parents are long gone... Shepard's dad just disappeared on her when she was little, and her mother's military still. In that department, she had it fairly easy during the war," Ariadne turned the blueprints on her visor on once again, indicating a nearing end to their conversation.
"I know she'll take good care of Alice, and that's what matters. I've coped with my mother's death already."
Ariadne made a noncommittal noise of acknowledgement. Their conversation was declared ended, and the work returned to. Not another word was spoken between them after that as their worked continued for two more hours. The welding and wiring finished, all that remained was configuring it for use on the Normandy. She still promised that they would be out of the system by the end of the week. She had three days with all of the help that came with her engineers to fulfill her promise. No member of the crew had the patience left to wait.