Ch 25: Chicken Soup for the Soul

Commander Shepard had never been so miserable in his entire life.

If he didn't know better, he would have thought he was going to die. But he did know better, because it took more than disease and pain and misery and loneliness and hardship to take him to an early grave. Even death itself couldn't kill the famous Commander Shepard for long.

But this … this was different. He was used to his brawn-hardened body being pushed to its limits, to his stoic psyche being stressed by annoying subordinates and the galaxy's issues. This, though,was a weakness he couldn't understand.

No, he wasn't afraid or anything. Fear was stupid and for people with fewer guns and armor than he had tucked away in his closet. Still, somehow he had dragged himself before a room he had never entered, before a door he had never opened, behind which sat someone silently in the darkness, someone he had barely spoken a word to before. The only someone on this entire goddamn ship who might have the faintest inkling of the great misery that had been haunting him for the past two days, growing stronger with each person who avoided his gaze in the hallway, with each room that cleared whenever he entered. The only other person who tasted death in each spoonful of sugar, who smelled its rot on living flesh, who felt it creeping like ivy, constricting his body until he suffocated in its despair. Who heard it beckoning to him in waking nightmares. Who saw it reflected in the eyes of the few who still looked at him. The only person he had left to turn to.

Shepard took a step forward into the darkness.

48 hours ago…

"Time to kill a Reaper."

Joker spun in his seat to gape at the Commander. "Uh, I'm the one who tells the jokes around here, remember?"

"This is no joke, Joker. I've never been more serious in my entire life." The straight-mouthed, straight-faced, straight-eyed Commander certainly looked serious. "It's about damn time we faced these synthetic suckers. See, I saw this extranet special about making 'permanent lifestyle changes.' A volus who lost forty pounds and kept it off. A workaholic dad who learned to give a shit about his kids. An asari who got a boob job. Real inspiring stuff… It's called a New Years resolution, Lieutenant. You should try it some time—" His practiced serious face failed only momentarily as he wiped at his nose.

"Aye-aye, Commander. I support you one-hundred-percent in what promises to be another short-lived venture. Just let me know when to hit the relay and – uh, are you okay there?"

"Just a little sniffle. Don't worry your crippled ass about me – there's more important things out there. Like a bunch of Reapers threatening galactic civilization as we know it."

"Wow. That's very mature of you," Joker commended.

"And I won't sit on my uncrippled, rock-solid, shapely ass as some goddamn Reaper tries to have its way with our planet. Even if there's been a tickle in my throat since this morning that apparently is not a side effect of a wild night with Kelly."

"I've got some pain meds if—"

"Hell no," he said, clearing his throat once, then again. "No pain, no gain."

"Yeah, so they say. Tell that to my legs."

Word had spread quickly through the Normandy about the Commander's resolution, as word often does aboard a sparsely-staffed, isolated vessel floating in space whenever something extraordinary occurs. Crewmen and women attended to their stations like never before, eager to provide any advantage for the chosen few who would be bravely facing a Reaper and its horde of indoctrinated minions on foot. Collective excitement simmered in the air. Whispers spread from port to stern … but a loud wailing soon deafened them all.

"I'm dying!"

Those two words had taken all his effort. And all he got for his effort was damned excuse after excuse.

Mordin hadn't even looked up from his work. "Apologies, but cure for genophage takes precedence over cure for common cold."

Chakwas had offered him a spoonful of poison. "… Yes, it tastes horrid, but sometimes I find the old-fashioned methods best… Is that language really necessary, Commander?"

Jacob had just stared. "How will using my shirt as a tissue help you feel better? Just use a tissue."

Shepard laid a heavy head upon a crew deck table. The pounding against his skull had redoubled since a few hours ago, and the drippy nose he once could simply wipe away had morphed into a monster that spewed thick yellow goo wherever he aimed it. He felt like he was drowning in his own head. There was no getting away from it.

"Sir, are you feeling alright?"

Shepard slowly lifted his head, blinking back the film of eye guck. All he could make out was a dark silhouette against the bright fluorescent lighting of the dining room, a benevolent figure that loomed over him in his dying days. "Am I … dead?"

"Of course not, sir." Kaiden cringed. The idea was horrifying. "Never dead. Just sick."

"You gotta help me." He desperately reached for the Lieutenant sitting across from him, grasping his uniform at the arm. "But you can't tell anyone. I've been…" His throat scratched as he struggled to speak against the burning pain. "… indoctrinated. I don't have … much time left."

"Sir, I swear on my life, and every life aboard the Normandy, and every life in the galaxy we're trying to save…" Kaiden placed a hand on his arm, warm against the cold shivers that had been rattling Shepard over the past hour, but not nearly as warm as the heat searing his forehead. "… you're just sick."

"HACHOO!"

Kaiden wiped the slime off his face. "Sorry, Commander," he apologized, berating himself for getting in the way of Shepard's powerful sneeze. Thick mucus dripped from his fingers – Commander Shepard's own mucus!, Kaiden thought to himself excitedly ... then berated himself again for the joy he took in his good friend's suffering. Fortunately he'd been trained in first aid, but it took more than the newest Alliance training to heal an old soul like Shepard's. "First you need to eat, sir. Keeps you strong through the illness. Then a good night's sleep. Please don't worry, Commander," he added, smiling encouragingly, a smile that easily extended to his eyes, ending in a pair of kindly wrinkles. "We'll have you on your feet again in no time."

But the Commander's normally commanding voice came hoarse. "I tried … eating. Hurts. I'm a sick man, Kaiden."

"I know, sir. I'm so sorry."

"The crust …on the sandwiches … scratches my throat."

"If you like, I can chew it soft for you and—"

Shepard regarded Kaiden with shadowed eyes. "Want … soup. Chicken noodle. Like Gran'ma Shepard used to make."

"I … understand, Commander, but Gardner doesn't have any today. Maybe I could—"

"Get your shit straight," Shepard growled, making Kaiden flinch. "They … have soup." He pointed a shaky finger accusingly to the other side of the room.

The two-seater could hardly be seen underneath the mountain of plates piled between its two occupants.

"You have no idea how good it feels to be eating solid food again," Garrus laughed despite himself, mandibles spread with glee. "Sure, the IV kept me alive, but you can't live life through a tube, right?"

"It's an … acquired taste," Tali shrugged, sipping again lightly on her straw. "The broth is, anyhow."

He paused between hearty mouthfuls. "Wha— no, I didn't mean … you know …"

"Please, Garrus, I'm a quarian. I've heard worse."

"Oh. Good. Well, not good, of course, but… What the hell was I saying?"

She giggled into her mask. "I think you're still excited by the food – EEK!" Tali shrieked, pushing her bowl away as a pale face appeard in its broth, red scars glowing scarlet against the chalky complexion drained of blood and life.

"Give me … your soup."

Tali gasped, a three-fingered-hand held over her heart. "Shepard … is that you? What's wrong with him?" she asked, turning to Garrus, a worried shake underlying her accent. Quarians were no strangers to the deadly threat of illness.

The turian gulped down more of the deliciously solid lunch. "Any number of things."

"Give me … your soup … or die." Sunken eyes unfocused, Shepard licked his finger, then held it between the aliens.

"We can't catch your disgusting human virus, Shepard."

"And this isn't soup. It's a quarian speciality, kalia stew. The recipe was all but lost with our homeworld, but a few ships have been trying to recreate it – the Rayya especially. Mine has nothing on Father's stew. He hardly ever cooked it though, so I learned the recipe from Auntie. Too busy with the Admirality Board – but that wasn't the real reason. He insisted his wasn't true kalia stew unless it was cooked with wild-range korank raised on the fields of Rannoch. But Father always swore that, one day, he would cook me real kalia stew –"

"Chicken noodle soup," Shepard corrected, each word muffledby his stuffed nose. The white pieces of meat, thick noodles, and soft orange vegetables floated carelessly in the broth, teasing him. "That's … chicken." He leaned closer; it would probably smell heavenly, if he could smell; it certainly looked it. Just a little taste…

"No, it's korank – well, it's supposed to be, but korank's hard to come by these days, even aboad the Flotilla. So I had to use a turian substitute, which is hardly the ideal – no offense," she added quickly, but Garrus just shrugged, his ravenous attention on the bowl before him. "But quarians know better than to be picky. We make do with what we have, which isn't much, but so long as it's dextro—"

"AGH!" Shepard screamed, then screamed "AGH!" again with the pain of the first scream searing his throat. "DAMNED DEXTRO!" With a clatter and a splash, the bowls soared off the table, finally coming to a rest in a pool of their own broth upon the floor.

Word soon spread of Commander Shepard's newest condition, because if something spreads faster than word aboard a frigate isolated in space, it was a virus. Minions who once had groveled at his feet, servile servants who had licked his boots, now avoided him like the plague. EDI had begun diverting him around the most populated areas "for the good of the crew." His own ship had turned against him.

"Who's he talking to?" Crewman Rolston wondered aloud.

Hawthorne shook his head grimly. "Himself … he's finally lost it."

The group stood at a safe distance from the Commander, who was busily foraging through the trash bins for anything soothing and citrus, grumbling all the while to himself. "Stupid … robots and stupid … Reapers and stupid … reporters …"

"Think it's the fever?" Daniels whispered to Donnelly.

"Dunno. Just keep a distance. We all know how quickly viruses spread aboard a frigate isolated in space."

But Commander Shepard had always been a rebel, fighting the establishment to his dying breath. Whether it was the Council decrying his proof of the Reapers, the Alliance abandoning him for his connections with Cerberus, or Cerberus throwing him to the dogs, Shepard had stood strong. Today was no exception. He would not be taken down by a crew of expendables – not when he was the greatest N7 military strategist of all time ever.

And his strategy was great. He coughed into his hand and not the crook of his arm as Chakwas had demonstrated. Unfortunately doors and toilets were automatic and keyboards virtual, so he settled for licking the triggers on every gun in the armory, nearly shooting his mouth off in the process. Snotballs began piling up throughout the corridors of the Normandy: crusty on the outside, wet and squishy on the inside; little white mines that blew into a yellow mess when stepped upon, completely ruining Samara's Justicar-issued ten-inch heels; little white grenades thrown viciously, exploding with warm mucus in people's faces. And his best play yet: he "forgot" to flush. He could think of no greater "fuck you" to the galaxy.

But all this planning and acting had taken its toll on his already sickly body and sicker mind. Shepard leaned weakly against the wall. "Lieutenant Alenko … come in," he breathed into the nearest commlink. "Can't speak … can't order … can't command." He felt his knees begin to buckle, and he dug deeper into his Commander Shepard reservoirs for the will to continue … the will to live. "Need my lemon tea … spiked with honey … and rum. … Lieutenant!"

The commlink finally beeped in reply. "Commander … there are guards … posted outside…" Kaiden's voice came raspy and low.

"What? Dammit, speak up… I can't hear–" Shepard broke off as a coughing fit racked his body.

"They've shackled me … to the bed. I tried to explain … please believe me, sir, I tried … that you need your … VapoRub and – NO NO! STOP NO!"

A shriek of static, then:

"Commander, this is Chakwas. Kaiden needs rest; he's caught a fever and –"

"No! Kaiden! RESIST! It's … indoctrination!"

The raucous from the medbay echoed through the hallway's commlink speakers.

"Let me … go!"

"Lieutenant, calm down! There's no need to … Nurse! Get me a dose of tranquilizer, now!"

"HELP! COMMAND—"

A second splitting shriek, followed by … silence. Dead silence.

Slowly Shepard slid down the wall.

Night aboard the Normandy was always a silent affair as the crew soaked up their well-deserved sleep. Only a few were worthy enough for the night shift, but because these chosen few were never seen by day, they probably didn't even exist, making the ship silenter still. An AI vigil was left to diligently keep the vessel running. Her systems worked tirelessly while organics wasted a third of their mortal lives sleeping, whether within the sleeper pods or beside her curled up in the cockpit. All her sensors picked up down the halls was a slow, labored breathing, each breath ending in a gurgle of phlegm. Occasionally the body slumped against the wall would twitch in its sleep, but there was no other movement in the dead corridors. And while the AI normally enjoyed the sight of humans on their knees, this was one sight she could have done without.

When Shepard stirred from his restless sleep a few hours later, he wished he had never woken up. He felt worse than the morning after shore leave. Groaning, he scratched off the crust caked over his eyes. Drool soaked the front of his uniform – a waste, because his mouth was completely dry. It tasted gross. He tasted gross.

Frowning, he forced his mouth closed, hoping the spit would replenish itself and that he wouldn't look like such a deranged Commander with it gaping open—

But something was wrong. His Spectre senses told him so. His head, once heavy and pounding, was suddenly light, deprived of something important… With a start, Shepard realized that he couldn't breathe.

As dark spots began to pepper his vision, the urgency of the situation finally dawned on him:

He couldn't breathe!

He dug his fingers deep in his nose, hoping to dig out a path for the life-giving air, but even his cybernetically-enhanced digits couldn't reach far enough into his sinuses. Jumping up, his sore legs nearly gave way under him, and despite the pins and needles he ran in circles, crashing against walls, fingernails leaving long red marks as he scratched at his throat and—

He opened his mouth. Sucking in deeply, crispness returned to his vision. He still tasted gross and looked like a deranged Commander, but it was a necessary compromise. Commander Shepard hated compromises.

All he wanted to do was sleep. The empty hallways were no good for his aching body; he needed some place where the bed was warm and the mattress supportive. But his own quarters had become off-limits, mostly because they were no longer his own quarters. Normally Kelly was not picky about the specifics – the whats and the wheres, the whens and the hows, and even the whos – but when Shepard had showed up with mucus covering his handsome face and shivers shaking his hardened muscles, he became the sick line Kelly just wouldn't cross. Snot was one bodily fluid even the enterprising young yeoman couldn't be creative with.

Stumbling down the hall like some undead husk, Shepard let his feet follow a path he had tread many nights before. He didn't even have to think, for the journey was a familiar one, a comforting one in times of hardship. When the door whooshed open and he finally realized where his feet had taken him, he was just as surprised as she was.

"Goddess! Shepard, you look terrible!"

"That's 'cause I'm … dying, dammit! Haven't you heard?"

Liara consciously held her bathrobe close and closed as she examined the dying man before her. After all, she was a doctor – although not that kind of doctor, but his prognosis was obvious to even the untrained eye.

"I saw you die… This is not it." Something within her went dark and silent, and she looked away.

"Like you … would know," Shepard snorted, sending opaque snot dripping down his square chin. "Asari are … fricken' immortal …" Wiping the mucus off with the back of his hand, he squeezed past Liara to enter her quarters. "Forget it… I need some place to crash."

Liara was close on his heels. "Shepard, you need to leave—"

"Hell, I feel like there's … a bunch of stupid batarian pirates … shooting me from the inside …"

"I do not believe this is appropriate—" Liara said, hushed, looking over her shoulders – though unsure why she would, for they were the only two people in the room. "I … suppose I can put some blankets on the couch and …" But the squeak of a mattress caught her attention, and when she turned toward the Commander again, she saw with a start that he had already made himself quite at home.

"C'mon, Liara…" Shepard began. He hacked into his fist, then patted the pillow next to him invitingly, managing a crusty wink. "We could all … be dead tomorrow."

And so Shepard found himself again wandering the halls of the ship. His ship. A ship that nonetheless rejected him no matter which turn he took, which deck he roamed, which quarters he invaded, because death was always right around the corner. He was a dying man with not a friend in the galaxy. A man whose head pounded with clogged sinuses, whose throat seared with white-hot pain when he dared swallow, whose nose stubbornly refilled no matter how many times he blew it, leaving a trail of used tissues and bloody noses in its wake. A man living on borrowed time, at least for the past two days.

Then it hit him, with the staggering force of a Shepard punch. Because of his exhaustion, he thought he had exhausted all his options – but all was not lost yet. There was someone else who understood the ostracism Shepard now felt among the living. But it would take all his Commander Shepard courage to enter that dark, dry, disturbing lair that he had never dared frequent before, to wake the sleeping dragon who rested behind its closed doors.

Shepard took a step forward into the darkness.

The life support control room was deathly silent and still, an irony that was not lost even on the typically irony-challenged Commander. It usually contained little of interest, for Shepard's life was normally one of the certain things he had, certain as breakfast every morning and Kelly every night, and in no need of support. There had been no need to visit the control room before, for if the Normandy's life support ever did fail, he'd be the first person off the ship. But Shepard's awe-inspiring life was invariably driven by purpose, and today he'd come with one. Sitting square with his back to the Commander, still as a statue, that purpose appeared to be deep in thought, staring through the window into the blue glow of the engine room. Chopin's "Raindrops" was playing through a nearby speaker – a slow, peaceful, contemplative lull that spoke to solitude, inner conflict, and introspective awareness – all things the gung-ho Commander didn't need to blast his enemies into the next metaphysical dimension.

"Hey." Shepard waited a few seconds, but no response. The drell sat straight with an eerily perfect posture honed after decades of assassin training, hands clapsed before him. Patience already taxed by his trying day, Shepard snapped his fingers near where he assumed the drell's ears would be. "Hey! I'm talking … to you."

He withdrew his hand as Thane suddenly stirred. Sitting up even straighter, the drell turned in his seat to face the Commander, who involuntarily took a step back as those black eyes honed on him like the sight of a sniper rifle. "My apologies," he said with a polite bow of his head. "I was sleeping."

"Ahum," Shepard coughed into his hands, wincing at the sore muscles of his diaphragm. He desperately wished more than anything – more than for his lemon tea and VapoRub, for Ryncol to not tear out his insides, for the Reapers to disappear off the galaxy map – that the drell would blink. "Sleeping? It is … pretty late. Maybe I should just … go."

"Please sit."

"Nah … I'm good."

"I insist."

Normally Shepard wouldn't take backtalk from any back-talking alien bastards, but his throat was much to sore to shout him into place. He took the seat opposite Thane – an action the Commander immediately regretted, for the drell was now in a perfect position to bore his eyes into Shepard's skull. Before, Shepard had only ever been freaked out by the drell from a safe distance, but sitting a mere three feet away left him feeling a bit more than exposed, especially since he'd left his shotgun in his quarters. "Raindrops" was growing darker, a piano pounding in the lower octaves.

"Ask."

"Ask …?" Shepard sounded much like Thane, with a voice hoarse from two days of hacking his lungs out. "Ask what?"

"Your question."

"How'd you know … damn, nevermind. OK." He took a deep breath through his mouth, closed his eyes, and prepared himself for the honest-to-goodness truth. "How long?"

Thane tilted his head imperceptively to the left. "Hmm?"

"How long do I have … to live? Like, there's gotta be some … connection between dying people … so you'd know, right?"

The drell finally blinked, horizontally. "I don't know if I would know."

"Dammit, just answer the … goddamn question and—shit, hold on." With a trumpeting loud and expressive enough to send an elcor into catatonic shock, he blew his nose into his arm. "Just … lay it on me. I'm …Commander Shepard. I can handle it … oh, God, it's green!"

Thane watched with concealed bemusement as the Commander desperately scraped the green mucus off his uniform. "I find green a pleasing colour. But you're not dying, Shepard, you're just—"

"—sick. Christ, everyone's sayin' that. Arrogant assholes … should just shoot them dead … just like that. Then they'll know … how it feels."

"You have a point."

"That's what she … wait, say again?"

Thane stood to pace across the room, each step fluid yet controlled, hands clapsed behind his back. "When something feels real, it's as valid as real. You feel like you're dying. Your feelings shouldn't be dismissed. They are all we really have in this galaxy." His form held taut as he turned to face the Commander. "You might know that philosophy as solipsism."

It was Shepard's turn to be a man of few words. "I don't."

"Would it help you if I said that the body is a vessel, often not under our control? That the soul and body are separate, and although your body may be ill, so long as your soul is pure, you may still find health?"

Shepard sighed. He hadn't asked about drell religion or drell culture, but here he was, getting a lecture on both. Slowly he churned over Thane's words in his head, fitting each piece of the puzzle together – and if they wouldn't fit, smashing them into place. Finally he was left with a fuzzy picture. "So you're saying I'm gonna … live forever?"

"No."

"Fuck." Shepard glared at the drell who had just raised his hopes, only to shatter them into oblivion. He also just lost his bet with Joker and owed the crippled smartass fifty credits.

Thane joined him again at the table, slipping back into his chair. "You must reconcile yourself to the fact that death is a natural eventuality. It calls to the living from somewhere in our future. Eventually we all return to the oceans, to Kalahira's embrace…" Slowly his eyes trailed off to the right, watching something in the distance, something in the past … but he shook whatever memories had resurfaced out of his head before they took hold of his consciousness. "No. You should not fear death, but not living."

Shepard sighed with relief. "Hell yeah. I've done … a lot of living."

But Thane was watching him again, two dark orbs pulling aside the contents of his soul in an unwelcome search. "Have you?"

"… yeah. Hell yeah."

"You sound unsure."

That cut it. Shepard would not be lectured to about life by someone who holed himself up in life support, who relived his past every day because he had no present. "Y'know what … screw this shit." He loudly sniffled back more snot as he struggled to his feet. "If I wanted to be … preached to, I would've bothered Samara. Least she's got a nice pair of – woah!" Teetering in place, he held his head as the room began to swim before him.

"Shepard, are you—"

"I'm … fine, dammit! Just give me … space!"

But the events of the past forty-eight hours had finally caught up with Commander Shepard. A common cold without good sleep, good food, and good treatment can become something not so common at all – especially for a not-so-common man. And as "Raindrops" struck its final chord, Shepard's head struck the floor with a crack that made even the death-accustomed assassin wince.

"Arashu protect him."