Being the only whose state requires an overnight stay in the medbay due to extensive blood loss definitely sucks: Shepard is confined to bed with next to no distraction, and Chakwas gnarled at him so badly that he had no other choice but comply. When he hears the door open, he thinks that it's her, about to give him a Talk for finding him shuffling with a PDA instead of sleeping.
The person entering, though, is Jack.
He cannot recall her visiting any part of the ship voluntarily before.
"Hey," she says, rather uncertainly as she stalks over to his bed. "You still look a bit... fried," she indicates the burns on his right cheek and shoulder, symmetrically with where the scars of Akuze used to be on the left side.
"Had worse, but I guess I'd be fried completely if not for you. I don't think I've thanked you properly for that yet, have I?"
"Yeah, yeah, I guess that makes us even, though it's not like I'm keeping scores…" A nervous gesture. "But, hey, I wanted to tell you… it's… fuck, you were right and the Alliance bitch was wrong… uh, that friend of yours, I mean." She runs her hands over her scalp. "Fuck, I'd never thought I'd be saying this… if Cerberus is what it takes to stop the Collectors, then Cerberus it is and fuck the bastards later, and if she doesn't see it, she needs to get her head out of her arse."
Jack is standing there, breathing hard but her eyes do not flinch, and she probably doesn't realize that she has just twisted the blade in the wound. It is not her fault, though, and if not for Ash, he would have been high-fiving for hearing her say this, and so he musters an answer: "Thank you, Jack. It means a lot to me."
He's underestimated her. "You still look like someone kicked your puppy."
"Ash is a friend, we've been through a lot. I guess I hoped for more… trust. And what she said…" his voice trails off as he feels his bile rise again.
"She has shit between her ears," Jack offers helpfully.
He hates what he is going to say. "In a way, she was right. It's not me any more… Cerberus changed me." Seeing her frown, uncomprehending, he says slowly: "They didn't only reconstruct me, they rebuilt me. I'm faster, stronger… I can take more and I heal more quickly. I… I probably wouldn't have made it today if not for their improvements."
Slowly, very slowly, Jack walks over to his bed and with a slight hesitation, sits on its edge. "It sucks," she says softly, "knowing that you are what you are owing to them." Her eyes gain a distant, pained look for a moment, before they grow hard again and she gives him a feral grin. "The only thing you can do is to carve thank you into the bullet that you will put through their fucking head. At least that's what I keep telling myself."