Shepard wasn't awake when Garrus burst into the medbay. Chakwas glared mightily at the disturbance, and her annoyance told him Shepard was merely sleeping and not— He stumbled and reached out to lay a bracing hand against the wall, breathing deeply. Blood loss, he told himself.

Relief, he replied.

The doctor's scowl shifted to concern, but this he shrugged off, pushing himself away from the wall and crossing immediately to Shepard's bedside. He was simultaneously relieved and horrified to find her encumbered by equipment. Still better than meat and tubes, he thought, shuddering. He tried to see improvement even though the difference of a couple of hours' medical attention was hardly enough to erase bruises or replace lost weight or rebuild broken bones. Even for Shepard.

Reaching down, he pushed a lock of hair back from her brow. His visor told him her temperature was back to normal, and the machines were helping regulate her heart-rate. He thought her color was better. Now's the time to do that regenerating like a krogan thing we joke about, he thought at her, not quite willing to speak with an audience. Fast enough to make Wrex proud. Set a new record or something.

Alenko arrived a few minutes later, questions spilling from his lips even before the doors closed behind him. Garrus stood between Shepard and Alenko, as though to protect her from the unwelcome intrusion, but his bravado was unnecessary. Shepard slept on, and Chakwas rose from her desk, laid a restraining hand on Alenko's forearm and said pointedly, "Time enough for a debrief later, Kaidan."

Garrus could hardly blame him—he understood all too well the harried expression and the bruised look of too many sleepless nights. Garrus didn't envy the man the necessity of having been forced to step into Shepard's shoes. Shepard's wasn't an easy path to walk. Alenko scraped a hand through his hair, leaving it in uncharacteristic disarray before casting a troubled glance in Shepard's direction. Garrus didn't want to know what the other man was thinking. Nothing good, by the set of his shoulders or the furrowed brow. "The Admiral wants a word before they retreat, Garrus."

"The Admiral can read the report," Chakwas said.

Garrus and Alenko turned and regarded her with equal measures of incredulity. Chakwas met their gazes with a steady one of her own, arms firmly crossed over her chest. "Steven Hackett has nearly cost Shepard her life more times than I can count, and those are just the missions I knew about. He'll not be bullying patients of mine so soon after such an ordeal. He has a war to fight, and will even have his top operative back to fight for him sooner rather than later. Thank him for his help, Kaidan, but the rest will have to come later. Much later."

Alenko glanced up at him, eyes wide and cheeks ever so faintly flushed. "I, uh—"

"'Yes, Karin' will do nicely. 'Yes, ma'am' if you're feeling formal."

"Yes, ma'am."

She reached for Alenko's arm again, but this time only to give it a reassuring pat. "Deal with the admiral, Kaidan, and then please go get some sleep. We've all been run a little ragged these past days, but you'll give yourself another headache if you push yourself much further. And then you will be of use to precisely no one."

Alenko covered the doctor's hand with one of his own and gave her a weary smile. "Yes, Karin."

Shepard turned her head and murmured in her sleep, and that was enough to have Chakwas shoo Alenko away and banish Garrus to one of the empty beds until she could look him over. He began stripping away his armor, already knowing what she'd find and how easily she'd deal with it. A single bullet wound was nothing to a woman who could mend a face that took a rocket.

Knowing this, he tried not to imagine the worst as he watched her tend to Shepard. The doctor moved with certainty and precision, but Garrus remembered the feel of Shepard dying in his arms, the rattle of her wheezing breath, and wasn't comforted.

And, though he hated hospitals—more often than not they were all desperation and dying and hopelessness, or they were pain and the certainty that a mistake had been made in a fight—he invented reasons to remain in the medbay even after Chakwas had taken a look at his shoulder and patched him up. To her credit, she didn't so much as blink when he asked if she minded him sleeping in the next bed over.

He worded it like he was worried about himself, worried about the possibility of lingering complications, but he knew he wasn't fooling the doctor. He suspected few could. She had an uncanny ability to recognize more than physical illness. Still, she didn't call attention to his little lie. She merely hunted down a fresh set of bedding and told him she'd wake him if he was needed.

Garrus couldn't sleep. He tried. He'd been tired for days, running beyond capacity for days, but the moment he closed his eyes, sleep eluded him. Instead, he lay still and silent, listening to the machines monitoring Shepard's vitals. Keeping her alive. Helping her heal. Every time Chakwas moved to Shepard's side, checking numbers or replenishing fluids or adjusting machinery, she explained her actions aloud. And somehow managed to sound as though she wasn't doing so purely for his benefit.

"I know it's hard to see her like this, Garrus," Chakwas said, glancing up from her datapad after the sixth or seventh time she'd caught him staring and decidedly not sleeping. Garrus ducked his head, even though the doctor's tone held no judgment. "But this is good sleep."

"You weren't there."

She nodded, and when she passed by she reached out and patted the scarred side of his face lightly. "I do know what I'm doing. And she's not the only one who could use a good sleep."

"Later," he replied. Chakwas dipped her head in a brief shake, but didn't push.

He was grateful for that.

When Tali poked her head into the medbay a few hours later, Garrus assumed it was to check on Shepard—very nearly everyone had attempted to visit, only to be chased away by the doctor—but instead of banishing her as she'd banished the others, Chakwas waved Tali in. "How are you feeling, Tali'Zorah?"

"How are you feeling?" Garrus echoed, tilting his head. "Are you okay?"

Tali patted at her side and shrugged. He noticed the fresh patch on her suit immediately. "I've been better. It was… a very bad landing, and it took them… a long time to find us. The infection's under control, though." For a face behind a mask, it always astonished him how emotive Tali could be. And right now she was very clearly disappointed. With a side of frustrated irritation. "Otherwise I hope you know I'd've been on the Valiant to yell at you myself. Staying behind? Really, Garrus?"

Garrus stiffened, mandibles fluttering into a grimace. "I was doing—"

Tali cut him off with a sigh. "What you thought to had to, I know. I'm just… I'm just glad to see you, okay?"

"Yes," he replied dryly, "glad is exactly how you sound. How could I have mistaken it for anything else?"

Tali chuckled, crossing the room to hoist herself up onto the bed next to him. He gave her a moment to take in Shepard's condition, and he could read in the set of her shoulders how upsetting she found it. "She'll be fine," Garrus said, nudging her lightly with his unwounded shoulder. "She always is."

Chakwas leveled a steady gaze at him and lifted one brow pointedly. It very, very clearly said and what have I been telling you all along?

At least she didn't say it aloud.

He waited until the doctor administered Tali's antibiotics before asking, "What happened?"

"Pretty much what you think. We ran into a Cerberus ship… or a Cerberus ship ran into us. It tried to take us out; we escaped. But the Kodiak was pretty hurt; we barely made it through the atmosphere. And then, because of the communications interference, it took forever for the Normandy to find us. I don't remember much about the rescue—I was pretty out of it. But I told Kaidan he needed to contact Admiral Hackett because Shepard said so. And then the admiral didn't want to let anyone board the ship—he thought it was too dangerous."

"I imagine that went over well."

Tali breathed a laugh and shook her head. "Kaidan came storming out of the War Room saying they shouldn't have bothered in the first place if this was the way Shepard was going to be treated after everything she's done for the Alliance and the galaxy, Liara disappeared into her office, and five minutes later clearance for the boarding mission came through."

"Scary."

Tali tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling. "You ever wonder what she knows?"

Garrus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring hard at the ground between his feet. The sound of Shepard's machines was oddly reassuring, the rhythm of beeps and whirs even and regular. "Shepard spent some time with the old Shadow Broker's files. She never talks about it, but every once in a while she'll get this strange look on her face and it's the same damned look she had when she came back from the Shadow Broker's base that first time. Liara looks that way, too, sometimes. Burdened. So no. I guess I don't want to know. The price is too high."

Tali nodded, echoing his hunched posture. "It… it was bad?"

"The worst."

Even with the mask between them, he could sense her sorrow. Her regret. "I'm sorry it took so long."

"Not your fault, Tali. Hell, it wasn't anyone's fault. Except maybe the Reapers. Bastards."

They sat together in silence a while longer, shoulder to shoulder. Finally, Tali said, "Seems like a long time since the beginning of all this, doesn't it?"

"A long time and no time at all."

Tali nodded, pushing herself upright again. She moved a little slowly, a little stiffly. "I know you'll brush it off, but if you want to talk…"

"Thanks, Tali."

She gave a weary chuckle. "But no thanks. You're a predictable bosh'tet, Garrus. I'll give you that."

He echoed her laugh. "I prefer reliable?"

"You would."

He turned away when Tali bent close to Shepard's ear, to give her a moment of privacy. And turning away somehow became lying down, and lying down became his first sleep in days.

He woke to a subtle change in the tenor of Shepard's machines, opening his eyes to see Shepard gazing back at him.

"Hey," she said, blinking, lids still heavy, lips parted in a sleepy smile.

"Hey yourself," he replied, pushing himself upright, crossing the narrow distance between their beds in one long step. Chakwas nodded, hovering at Shepard's other side, checking numbers and screens and readouts. After a moment, she retreated back to her desk, leaving the two of them in relative privacy.

"You're here."

Her hand inched toward him—just a little, an inch, maybe two—before stopping. Her fingers closed into a loose fist and a shadow of something like doubt drifted across her face, stealing the drowsy happiness and replacing it with confusion. He closed the rest of the distance himself, clasping his hand around hers. A moment later, he covered both their hands with his other one, an echo of his double-handed grip when he'd seen her again on Menae.

Back then, he'd held onto her with both hands because he was half-afraid he was imagining her.

This time, he was proving with both his hands that he was as real as she.

Shepard's tongue darted out to moisten her lips, and then she broke into as unfettered a smile as he'd seen in days—weeks. Maybe since their time on the roof of the Presidium.

"We made it," she said.

"Was there any doubt?" He tried to speak with some of his usual easy confidence, the cockiness she so often teased him about, but the tone of his subharmonics was all wrong.

"Of course not," she replied, and the lilt in her voice wasn't right either. "Have you seen how badass we are?"

He squeezed her hand gently. A moment later she shifted her grip so she could squeeze back.

"So," she said, "what do you think about dinner, when I'm up on my own two feet again? It's on me."

"Definitely, Shepard," he replied.

"Good," she said, with a crooked smile, weathered but almost like her old self. "It's a date."