Shepard hated few things with the passion she reserved for her hatred of being bedridden. It didn't matter if it was recovering from a head cold or a gunshot wound (or, evidently, full-body trauma complete with amnesia), she wasn't a good patient. She was very much of the opinion that beds served a limited number of purposes, and lounging about 'getting better' wasn't one of them.
This particular recovery was worse than most, she found, because when she requested a datapad or an omni-tool, she was denied outright, and when she asked for visitors, Chakwas merely shook her head and went back to her work. Even a plea—command, really—for a sitrep was ignored, which might've made her angrier if the doctor hadn't looked so upset about it. Brooks remained heavily sedated, and Samara, deep in meditation, sat at the end of the other woman's bed, legs folded and body faintly glowing. Shepard wondered if it was some Justicar version of rest, since the woman seemed almost to be asleep, and yet she had no doubt that if Brooks so much as breathed the wrong way, Samara would be alert again. Shepard even thought about asking EDI to entertain her, but the AI had been strangely silent. She didn't think she'd heard EDI's voice once since waking, which had to be some kind of record.
Then again, maybe it was only that the doctor's full-scale quarantine extended to artificial intelligence as well.
Shepard mulled this over while she flipped idly through the copy of The Odyssey someone—Garrus no doubt, back when he hadn't been looking at her like she was some kind of Cerberus abomination—had left at her bedside. For once, however, she did not find the story soothing. She couldn't stop thinking about how very long a decade was. She'd been out, what? A week? A couple of weeks? No one would say, but it couldn't have been all that long. And yet the whole landscape of her life had shifted. How unfamiliar had Odysseus' world been, after ten years away from it? Uneasiness twisting her stomach into knots, she left Odysseus strapped to a mast listening to the sirens, and picked up the other book.
This was an even more curious choice, a battered old copy of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Turning the pages slowly, she wondered where it had come from. Her well-loved, dog-eared copy of The Odyssey she recognized at once, but this was not a familiar book, and though Shepard was certain she'd read it in her childhood, she hardly remembered the story at all.
A child had scribbled colors onto the black and white illustrations with a careless hand, heedless of lines or subject matter. Sometimes Alice's hair was red, sometimes dark. Whole pictures were lost to angry black scribbles. None of the chess pieces were either white or red. Still, with nothing else to occupy her time, Shepard read through it from beginning to end, and felt even more unsettled afterward than she had when attempting Homer. Life, what is it but a dream? asked the final line of the poem that closed the book, and Shepard wasn't sure she could answer. Wasn't sure she wanted to.
A nightmare, forgotten on waking, but leaving lingering anxiety in its wake?
Setting the book down, she opened her mouth to ask Chakwas if there was anything else she could read—hell, she'd tackle dry operating manuals or old mission reports or outdated medical journals at this point—but the doctor was folded over her desk, head cushioned on her arms, her heavy breathing almost a snore. Shepard tilted her head and cleared her throat, but the doctor didn't so much as shift. Neither, Shepard noted, did Samara.
Inhaling deeply, Shepard slowly lifted her shoulders. Her clavicle ached, but in a recently-healed rather than a still-broken way. A roll of her affected shoulder brought little pain and a bit of stiffness, but no actual protest. She smiled, giddy with success. After pushing the blankets away, she placed her palms flat at her sides next to her hips, and pressed against them, testing their strength. Here, too, her collarbone gave a twinge, but nothing desperate enough to beg her to stop. Exhaling, she shifted her hips back an inch, and then another. It took an eternity, but eventually she was sitting entirely upright, legs straight in front of her, torso willing to hold its own weight.
The doctor still slept. Brooks still snored. Samara continued to faintly glow.
Shepard frowned at her legs, moving her knees from side to side. Like her collarbone and the curve of her spine, they didn't feel entirely normal, but the pain wasn't devastating. She'd fought through worse, certainly. And hell, if they wouldn't take her weight, at least she was already where she'd need to be for treatment. She snorted a little laugh, knowing very well what Chakwas would say to that. It would involve a lot of swear words, probably. British ones. And a great deal of glowering. Bedside manner would go right out the airlock.
And still, the risk was worth it.
It took some maneuvering not only to lower the bedrail, but to extricate herself from the various wires and tubes attaching her to the nearby machinery without having them set off a plethora of medical alarms. At the end of it she was breathing heavily, her brow prickling with embarrassing sweat. Her heart raced in her chest as though she'd been running sprints in heavy gear, not merely trying to wrestle a medical cot into submission. Leaning against the raised backrest, she took slow, even breaths until her heart no longer thudded and her inhales no longer sounded akin to gasps.
Turning her face to dry the last of her sweat against the thin pillow, she saw the medbay door slide open on a soft hiss. She held her breath, waiting to see who was willing to risk the doctor's wrath.
No one entered. A moment later, the doors slid closed again and Shepard swallowed the bitterness of her disappointment.
Her resolve remained firmly in place.
With a little more force than strictly necessary, she flung her right leg toward the edge of the bed and nearly went tumbling over the side in pure shock when a voice—a flanged turian voice; a female turian voice—behind her said, "Oh, I don't think you want to try that."
Shepard reached for the remaining bedrail and swung around with enough force to raise a real protest from her ribs. A turian woman in a wheelchair sat on the other side of her bed, leaning on one bent arm, expression caught somewhere between amusement and incredulity. Shepard opened her mouth, shook her head, and closed her mouth again. The turian's laugh was low and quiet and enough like Garrus' that Shepard would've recognized a resemblance even without the distinctive facial markings to serve as a bright blue clue.
"I've, uh, had a peek at your file," the newcomer continued mildly, almost as though they knew each other. Shepard let herself wonder whether this, too, was merely something she'd forgotten. But surely, surely she'd remember meeting Garrus' family. "With fractures like those, there's no way your legs are ready to take your weight. You'll only break them both all over again and have to start back where you began."
Shepard blinked, cocking her head. "But where did you—I didn't see anyone come in."
The turian smiled, did something with her free hand, and vanished. Even without a visor to help her, Shepard was able to make out the faint shimmer at the edges of the tactical cloak, but only because she was looking for it, and only because she knew what she was supposed to see. "Nice," she admitted. "You modded the chair?"
The cloak dropped. "And you've managed to pull all your wires without tripping an alarm. You must be unstoppable with an omni-tool."
"Don't remind me." Then she leaned over the rail as far as her aching body would allow and extended her hand. "I'm Shepard. Sorry if I didn't greet you properly before. Evidently I wasn't entirely… well. You must be Solana. Welcome to the Normandy."
Solana perched on the edge of her seat and shook Shepard's hand once, firmly. Even though the turian woman's eyes weren't blue, something in their calculating expression put Shepard in mind of Garrus when he was trying to puzzle through a problem. "You don't remember meeting me?"
"Afraid not."
"But you remember… everything else?"
Shepard shrugged helplessly. "Evidently I don't, though no one's telling me much about the time I was out. I remember… parts of the final push, but nothing afterward."
"And—" Solana stopped abruptly, glancing around the room. Shepard watched her gaze sweep past the sleeping doctor and sedated Brooks twice before returning to her. "Sorry, you're awake and my brother's not here? Does he know?"
Shepard tried to smile, but couldn't manage it. She was pretty sure whatever her face was doing didn't look like amusement. Fair enough. She wasn't feeling particularly amused. She only hoped she didn't look quite as sick as she felt. "I was planning the jailbreak for a reason. I figured if he wouldn't come to me…"
Mouth still slightly agape, Solana only shook her head. "Unbelievable. Unbelievable." Maneuvering the wheelchair until it was wedged between Shepard's bed and the one next to it, Solana pushed herself up onto her good leg, using a grip on the other bed's rail for balance. "Well, come on then," Solana insisted. "You can't walk, but you can take the chair if you think your arms will hold up?" Shepard nodded. "Good. Fine. I'll explain things to the doctor when she wakes." Solana sent a fond look over her shoulder. Shepard echoed it. Chakwas was definitely snoring now, each exhale pushing a fallen lock of hair away from her face, and each inhale pulling it back to her parted lips again.
"If she's pissed, you can always claim I stole it," Shepard offered. Her legs ached as she dangled them over the side of the bed, and she realized Solana was right: they weren't ready to hold her weight. Soon, maybe, but not yet. Still holding onto the railing for balance, Solana reached over and lowered the cot until Shepard only had to shuffle sideways into the wheelchair, supported by her arms. She wheeled herself backward and was relieved when her shoulder and collarbone seemed willing to accept the new strain she was putting on them. "She'd probably believe it."
Solana snorted a little laugh. "She probably would." Then she paused, giving Shepard another of those long, intense, unnerving stares she was starting to think of as Vakarianesque. "It's nice to finally meet you, Shepard."
"Likewise," Shepard replied, and was gratified when the stare shifted sideways into a genuine smile.
Strange, how affecting a smile could be when it seemed an eternity since she'd last seen one.
#
It felt as incomprehensibly bizarre to sit outside her own quarters, hesitating before entering, as it had felt to glide through the hallways of the crew deck strapped into a wheelchair and hidden under a tactical cloak. Not, however, that there'd been many people from which to hide; evidently the Normandy wasn't running with a full complement. She tried not to think too hard about what this might mean in terms of potential casualties. The mess was empty, and she came around the corner just in time to see Kaidan leave the elevator and stride down the hallway toward the observation deck. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself, unwilling to see herself carted back to the medbay before having a chance to speak with Garrus.
Before she could second-guess herself, she clapped her palm to the door's panel hard enough to make her already-abused shoulder throb in protest.
Garrus sat at her desk, back to the door, hunched over a datapad. It brought a smile to her lips to see proof of his presence scattered about on the surfaces. For months she'd told him to make himself at home—"My ridiculously oversized quarters are your ridiculously oversized quarters,"—and for months he'd slipped in and out of these rooms without leaving so much as a ration-bar wrapper behind.
Her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed when she saw all her fish were alive—even the stupid eel who scorned the VI's attentions. Odie was safe in his little glass box on the shelf behind Garrus' head. He squeaked when he noticed her and hid. Bless him.
"Not right now, Solana," Garrus muttered without looking up. He swore under his breath and for a moment Shepard thought he was going to hurl the datapad in his hands straight through her glass case of model ships. "I've tried every damned cipher I can think of. I've run every damned decryption program. And we're still no closer to figuring out the contents of the messages the Empire sent. Or where they went. Or what they might mean."
"You know, if you'd fill me in and let me have an omni-tool, I could probably help with that."
Whatever reaction she'd been expecting it certainly wasn't staring down the barrel of Garrus' pistol with more than six and a half feet of bristling, enraged turian behind it. Without dropping her gaze, she lifted her empty hands. "Garrus," she said, "it's me."
"That's my sister's chair."
"It is. She let me borrow it. I was going to try and walk."
He lowered his gun, but didn't, she noticed, put it entirely away.
"You know me," she said, with a hint of challenge. His mandibles flicked; good, he heard it. "I'm patient until I'm not. And she did offer."
His mandibles flicked again, this time in irritation. "You're injured."
"And you're avoiding me. What did you expect me to do?"
He shook his head and settled back in the chair, spinning it so they were facing each other. Leaning forward, he planted his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between them. The right still held the pistol. She let herself consider how much effort it would take to divest him of it, but didn't act; right now, at least, he was faster than she, and she had no desire to see the muzzle of it pointed at her forehead again.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "Am I a clone?"
"No," he replied, too quickly, not meeting her eyes.
"But you're afraid I might be."
It wasn't a question. He didn't answer. He didn't have to.
"What happened to, 'You're real. A little bit crazy, maybe, but real'?"
He flinched as though she'd struck him.
"Garrus," she said, not even trying to keep the plea from the word.
His gaze flicked to hers before dropping again; she wondered what secrets about her his visor revealed. Her heart rate was certainly elevated. Hell, he could probably hear that much. Still he said nothing, and she had no visor to speak about his state. Even the language the lines of his body spoke told her little more than he was tired and he was sad and he would not let her help him.
Wheeling herself a little closer, almost close enough for their knees to touch, she leaned down slowly and wrapped her hand around the wrist of the hand still holding the gun. He tried to pull away, but she tightened her hold. Not enough to hurt, not enough for him to unseat her, but enough for him to realize she was serious.
"Shepard…"
Using her name was something, anyway. Not enough, but something.
Shoulder aching, she lifted his arm. His fingers spasmed around the handle of the pistol, but he didn't raise it. For a moment she thought he was going to drop it entirely. She kept her grip firm, unyielding.
She swallowed hard, trying in vain to moisten a suddenly dry throat. "If you think I'm—if I'm compromised, if I'm a threat to you, to the crew, to the Normandy—"
"Shepard—"
"We don't lie to each other," she insisted, cursing the way her voice broke on the final word.
He met her eyes then, and she almost wished he hadn't. The grief in his was palpable, a more visceral punch to the gut than anything a fist might have done in its place. She leaned forward until the gun touched her breastbone, the muzzle centered on the thudding heart beneath. One breath. Two. Three.
Garrus' free hand covered her gripping fingers before gently prying them away. Then he reached back and dropped the pistol onto the desk and turned back to face her again.
This time their knees did touch. And his hand didn't leave hers, his long fingers curled around her shorter, slenderer ones.
But grief and distress still thrummed in his subharmonics—even she could tell that much—when he said quietly, "The truth is? The truth is… I don't know, Shepard. I don't know."
"I guess that's a start," she replied, and for once didn't try to hold back the tears that fell when she closed her eyes.