A/N: As always, thank you for the reviews, PMs, faves, follows, and other contacts. They mean the world to me :)
The drone of the alarm burrowed slowly into his dreams. A vibration ran through the ground beneath his feet and the forest of neon signs reaching kilometers into the sky pulsed a brief, steady rhythm, reflecting off the ever-present drizzly rain. His eyes opened for an instant but once more the dream claimed him into the world of neverending, circular, garishly lit streets of the city in which he had never felt at home. With a last distortion in the voice of the street vendor, the insistence of the signal finally wrenched him into consciousness.
"Patch it through."
"Ship?"
Feron blinked excess moisture from his eyes as he wrangled himself out from underneath the rustling, silvery thermal blanket. The cabin was gradually brightening, with the monitoring program having registered his vitals shifting into a waking state. A time projection hovered in the air in the center of the small space, telling him he had managed to sleep for a few hours, and the count of events that he had missed in his slumber blinked an uncaring, mocking staccato just beneath. He had turned off the aural alarms, he knew he had… several breaths were captured and set free before he pinpointed the source of the still-repeating noise with a start.
Oh, sh—
Leaping over a small, anchored table — and painfully hitting his shin on it in the process — he lunged toward the bulkhead separating his sleeping compartment from the passenger cabin. Seeking purchase, he gripped the frame of the portal. Despite painfully slamming his shoulder into the hard, tapered edge when his elbow buckled under his sideways momentum, he managed to keep his footing and dash the last few strides to slap his palm onto the panel that swung open the special equipment access hatch even as he shouted the passphrase at the VI at the top of his lungs. A hiss above and behind him caused him to twist around and launch himself toward the strategically placed, low arm rest of a sofa. Timing his step onto the elevated surface, he pushed himself up and slightly to the side, letting his speed carry him through the altered trajectory and right to the hatch in the ceiling. Without bothering to ascertain the solidity of his grip, he waited until his body swung back, its forward velocity exhausted, and pulled himself up through the aperture with a little more effort than he liked to admit.
Come on, hold just another second…
For all that work, the only thing he needed to do in the cramped, humming space was to toggle a manual switch to connect the QEC array into the communications network. Cursing the stupid precautions he had thought might secure the ship from atypical scans, he flipped the small metallic pin up in the engaged position. He drew a short breath to focus himself, and dropped back down through the hatch, landing gracefully into a deep squat.
"Patch it through at my location."
Settling his breath as he straightened up, Feron turned his eyes up just as a slightly bluish-tinted room somewhere far away materialized in front of him, and through the slight pixelated distortion a familiar face—
Ozone smell in the air. Not the equipment, firefight. The intruder in the black and gold armor sets a gun down, plasters hands onto the bloodstained window, brings helmet close, maybe yelling. The other, white and gold, looks over, turns back to the consoles. Electric whine around him wanes. Static plays on his skin. The soldier in black unfastens the clasps holding the helmet in place, pulls it up and to the side, lays it down. It's her. Vigor flushes through his listless body. He sees the asari shouting at him, the window blocks all sound. She turns toward the white and gold, gestures with her hands, animated, emphatic. The other looks up again, around, points toward the console on the other end of the window. The asari moves quickly, touches the panel with an ungauntleted hand. A crackle, rustle echoes in the room, then her voice—
"Feron!"
Arashu…
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"Alenko?"
Kaidan looked past Chakwas and at the woman standing on the other side of the bed. The Cerberus woman. Raven-black hair in a tight knot, dressed in an impeccably clean medical tunic. Her features were unusual, but rather comely. Strikingly so, on this third look he had given her, and more because of her singular appearance than despite it. He nodded, acknowledging her presence and the correctness of her guess.
As he helped Chakwas settle back down, he observed with some satisfaction that she seemed to be much more steady and certain in her movements. She'd been out for…he didn't know how long, seeing as he himself had dozed off for long enough for her to get out of bed and over to the other woman's side of the room…At least several hours of sleep, combined with the IVs and therapeuticals. He could only hope that the others were responding to the treatment equally well.
"Well, you two should have lots to catch up on," Chakwas said, nudging Kaidan's arm with her elbow. "Can I see Shepard and the others tomorrow, Lawson?"
Kaidan settled for a quiet, equivocal grunt and let the two women continue their talk, turning around to tidy up the chair he'd napped in. He pushed the chair back to the wall, and gathered up the blanket he had appropriated from the pile of ones Chakwas had felt she could do without, and folded it up neatly before setting it down on the chair.
"Alenko, can I have my datapad back now?" Chakwas asked impatiently.
Kaidan arched an eyebrow and cast a surreptitious eye at the…at Lawson, deciding it would be best to avoid drawing her ire even if he wasn't quite sure how she'd ended up acting the doctor for the Normandy crew. He knew, of course, that she'd been in charge of Shepard's…recovery, but the woman he had seen on Horizon had seemed every inch the warrior — he could barely envision her an administrator, let alone a doctor. Still, that change was hardly the only one she'd undergone recently. She had been so poised, self-assured…such a stark contrast to the hesitant, almost lost, human woman he now saw.
Lawson nodded to approve the request, but not subtly enough for the pair to escape Chakwas' disapproval; her harrumph was decidedly displeased as Kaidan meekly handed the pad to her. Muttered invective was still quite purposely audible when Lawson cleared her throat.
"Well. I should be going. Try to get some sleep. I'll leave instructions for the attending as we discussed."
Chakwas acknowledged the departing younger woman with a meaningful scowl, and turned back to the datapad without so much as a glance toward Kaidan. He hesitated a moment, watching Lawson's receding back, and then sprinted around the foot of the bed and bounded after her.
Gotta start making inroads somewhere.
Lawson turned to look over her shoulder as Kaidan caught up with her at the entryway, tilting her head and body back slightly and raising an inquisitive brow.
"Listen…can I have a word?" Kaidan asked as he fell in step with the woman.
"…Sure. I'm not certain there's really much that I can tell you that wouldn't be in the charts, but—"
"No, no, sorry," Kaidan faltered. "That's not what I want to talk about, really."
"Well? Go ahead," Lawson prompted when they stepped into the decon room in silence, Kaidan still waiting for an affirmation of permission before continuing.
"I, ah, I just wanted to…thank you for all you've done," he said uncertainly, forcing himself to get it out before he lost his nerve. "For…here—" he continued, emphasizing with a gesture encompassing the ward behind them.
"You're welcome, I suppose…as I understand, you weren't quite sitting on your laurels regarding the Normandy either–"
"And Shepard," Kaidan interrupted. "And for– I know we've been at odds, if mostly indirectly. Cerberus and—" he said, waving his hand and shaking his head in exasperation, "Just… thanks for what you did back then. She wouldn't be around if you hadn't done what you did."
The woman stared at him intently, showing little reaction to his words. Struggling to keep going without an indication how she might feel, he continued as the decon doors hissed open and they stepped into the corridor leading to the rest of the ship.
"I…don't know what your motivations were back then, but that doesn't matter. You made a difference, and I'm grateful for that. I gotta admit that I'm glad that you got out of Cerberus in the end but, you know, regardless… Shepard trusts you, and that's good enough for me. I can't fault her judgment in most things."
"I guess this doesn't sound like much of an apology," he said, turning around and coming to a halt after a few backwards steps to stop her at the intersection, "and I guess it isn't. I can't say if I was wrong about you back then, but that doesn't matter anymore. I know that the way I felt back then would be wrong now, so…just thanks.
"I don't know about being friends, Lawson, but if you need something, I'm not going to turn you away. I hope you can do the same for me," he finished, his courage wavering enough that he couldn't make himself wait for an answer from the intent but impassive woman. Without another word, he turned on his heels and strode into the corridor leading to the crew decks where he had left his kit.
He didn't see her remain standing in the intersection, watching him until he disappeared through the doorway at the end.
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Liara could not help but flash a quick, wan smile at Kasumi's enthusiasm. She hoped it was a good sign her friend was not terribly upset with her…she knew what she had said must have sounded very hurtful even though it was true, and though she had thought her very dear even before. Risking tilting her head for a look, she was somewhat further consoled by the compassionate expression the woman wore.
The terrible nausea and dizziness she suffered every time she had to restrain the Melding to a purely mental connection was finally receding, aided by her quick, steady breathing and the soothing coolness of the juice. She was sure most asari were much better able to control their bodies — her mother and Sha'ira certainly were — but for her, trying to keep herself from encroaching upon the other made it so very hard to keep her own biological processes functional. She was always worried that she would end up neglecting her breathing or disrupting her heartbeat for just long enough to collapse in the middle of a Meld, which would be a very unpleasant experience for whoever she was partnered with. She was eternally grateful that Shepard had immediately agreed to sharing of the physical, too, as soon as Liara had worked up the courage to ask her. The gut-wrenching fear she had harbored those first times they had Melded before she did was still easily summoned from her recollection; then, she could not bear the thought of causing distress to the Commander, and now she could not imagine what might have happened had she not dared to suggest it…would they simply have lost everything then and there, because of her?
She shook her head to rid herself of such thoughts — we won, we did — and immediately regretted it as a new wave of queasiness flared up, forcing her head back between her thighs. Trying to focus on the task at hand, she mumbled for Kasumi to go turn the new equipment on.
"What was that? You really need to try talking into a direction where the sound waves don't immediately get absorbed by pants."
Letting out a giggle despite herself, Liara groaned and forced her body to straighten up slowly, one group of muscles at a time. "I said to go to turn on the equipment…you must engage the two switches on the inner left side of each harness," she said quietly, pointing toward the contraptions around the cluster bays. "Then we can have the VI interface with them."
As Kasumi stepped over and bent down to look for the toggles, Liara drew five short breaths, and pushed herself up off the chair. Steadying herself on the bed frame, she felt her blood rush toward her feet, leaving her light of head until circulation finally fed her brain again a few seconds later. She stole a glance at herself in the mirror projection on the wall next to he doorway, and decided to pull on her tunic to make herself at least remotely presentable for the occasion. The machines hummed to life as she was fastening the small, perfunctory gold clasps on the front.
"Good, now Glyph," she said, pointing toward the box on the desk. Kasumi leaped up and straddled the saddle chair, feeling around for the connectors at the back for a few seconds before finding the correct one and enabling it. As the two women watched, the box unfolded. To Liara's great relief, her steadfast little helper materialized moments later, wreathed in a white spherical projection as it seemed to prefer.
"Good evening, Dr. T'Soni," the machine intoned politely after the briefest scan to identify the asari and swinging around to the human. "Good evening, M. Garondt. Do you prefer that name?"
"Hello…Glyph. Yes, please use that name," Kasumi said uncertainly.
"Thank you, M. Garondt. Dr. T'Soni, there are currently 84,324,654,876 unprocessed events, of which an estimated 17,300 require operator attention. Do you wish to—"
"Glyph, authorize Zoe Garondt to level 2, please."
"Please confirm level 2 authorization, Dr. T'Soni."
"Confirm," Liara said, ignoring the questioning look Kasumi shot at her past the drone trying to hover in front of the human woman's face to record biometric data. "Upload procedure manuals to her omni at your convenience."
Liara stepped in the middle of the room, and beckoned for Kasumi to follow suit. "This part is important, Kasumi, remember the endpoint," she said before turning back toward the drone. "Glyph, re-establish permanent connection to the storm walker."
The sphere wobbled up and down in acknowledgement, and for nearly a minute all was silent with the two women standing facing the back wall, standing side by side.
"I know this sounds stupid coming from me, but this is some real cloak and dagger shit you've got going on, Li," Kasumi noted dryly, but not without a hint of amusement. "Seriously, what is this?"
Liara turned to look at her friend. "You said you needed a new job, did you not?"
The asari felt a swell of relief — and a little guilty satisfaction as she observed the question Kasumi was about to ask turn into a realization — when the wall before them was replaced by a blue-tinted three-dimensional projection of a room or cabin and a drell in the middle of it.
"Feron!" Liara exclaimed happily, almost jumping up in the air at the sight of the man.
"Kisama!" Kasumi exclaimed at her in a mixture of glee and jovial anger. "QEC? Kono yaro-u…" she continued, degenerating into an incoherent string of cursing as she wrapped the fingers of her good hand around Liara's neck and mock-strangled the asari.
"Liara, it is good to see you," Feron greeted them from his side of the projection. "And, ah, your abusive friend…Are you alright there?"
"Yes, Feron, we are fine," Liara replied through laughter as she fought off the smaller woman. "Feron, meet Zoe Garondt. Kasumi, meet Feron."
The drell seemed nonplussed, but waved his hand in greeting since Liara did not seem to have a problem with the woman being there. Kasumi responded in kind, having given up her physical assault and settling for staring at the two alternately.
"Are you safe, Feron?"
"Yes, thank you for the warning. It seems there was some interest in the previous location indeed. I'm currently on Niacal, and don't expect problems although I will probably try to move and find a more permanent base soon. You may be happy to know that Thessia seemed to be better off than I expected."
"That is welcome news, thank you. I hope we can now get some information from there…"
"I can arrange that."
Liara smiled and stepped up to the projection, laying her hand down where Feron's shoulder would have been if he was physically present. A small smile crept up on the drell's lips, too.
"It seems we have much to do, Feron. I…cannot promise my full efforts for some time, I am afraid to say. At least not until Shepard is well, and perhaps not even then. That is why I am inviting Kasumi to assist us."