Hurry up and wait.
Shepard was awake again, pacing the length of the empty CIC, Viatrix bouncing slightly on her hip. She'd woken up about 0400 hours, complaining of colic, and Shepard had taken her down to walk it off. Garrus was sound asleep. He'd taken the last couple of outings and she had been awake anyway.
So far, Shepard's experience of motherhood had been… abridged. She was feeling the aftereffects of labour, and some of the exhaustion of pregnancy, but she knew her experience was incredibly different from most child-bearing people's, and thus she didn't really know where to turn.
It didn't help that her baby was a completely different species. Viatrix didn't have teeth yet (Garrus said those usually came in somewhere around eight months, a little later than most human children - Shepard wasn't looking forward to that particular stage of development much), but she certainly had a voice on her, and even though Chakwas had come up with something similar to turian baby formula, thanks to the information Aelianus had given her, Viatrix was still colicky and complained frequently. It made meetings rather amusing, when neither Shep nor Garrus could weasel their way out, and when they couldn't get a babysitter. (Liara loved taking care of Viatrix, and Traynor particularly enjoyed it too. But, strangely enough, the communications officer of the Normandy and the Shadow Broker didn't really have a whole lot of free time.)
And this was only day twenty.
Shepard sighed and turned on her heel, walking back down towards the galaxy map. Viatrix had settled down a bit - she liked being walked - but was still grumbling. Shepard could hear her little tummy rumbling and bubbling. Maybe she'd talk to Chakwas about changing the formula a bit.
Hurry up and wait. It's all her life felt like these days. Wait for Viatrix to be hungry. Wait for Viatrix to fall asleep. Wait for herself to fall asleep. Wait for somebody to call with another problem. Wait for the next meeting. Wait for Garrus to wake up. Wait for Liara and Tali to update her about the Citadel or the relays. Wait for her next checkup with Chakwas.
Wait, wait, wait. More waiting.
The Citadel was still not fully powered up, almost thirty-six hours later. Apparently, the reboot function on an eons-old space station took a while. Tali thought that it was probably only booting up the basic systems, and that once someone managed to get into Citadel Control, they'd be able to manually restart everything else. And then they had to figure out how to move it, too. That was going to be fun. Shepard was glad she didn't have to do that particular job. Tali seemed to be getting even less sleep than she was, and that was saying something.
Shepard wandered through the boardroom, the communications room, and back into the CIC. The Normandy was still only being staffed by her main crew - the skeleton of squad members and the handful of enlisted personnel and NCOs that had tagged along on the emergency extraction from Earth all those months ago. No night shift, really. You barely needed one, when the ship's commander was awake at all hours and you had an unshackled AI. Unorthodox, sure; effective, more or less; recommended, definitely not. But no one was really looking too closely, even ten months after the end of the war.
She couldn't believe it had been that long. Granted, she'd only been awake for about three weeks of it, and so the battle of London seemed like only yesterday, but then so did Akuze, and so did Alchera, and so did the Collector Base, so she wasn't really in a position to judge.
In any case, it was beyond time they all got out of the system. Miranda had sent her a message, earlier that day, with some barely-audible transmissions she'd snagged from the shortwave networks on Earth. You couldn't get much out of them, but Miranda had gotten enough to be worried, and it took a lot to worry Miranda. From the looks of them, someone wanted to start a civil war, or two, or three, and that was bad news. Not entirely surprising news, granted, as post-war years are always fragile and easily upended, but disappointing news all the same if it turned out to be true.
Shepard wondered if they were likely to hear similar rumblings through the krogan and turian populations as well. Nothing like a galactic war to show you the problems with your chosen governmental systems. Or completely destroy them, in the case of Earth. Humanity was only barely scraping along right now, with the remnants of the Alliance making sure that everyone got food and water. It wasn't exactly martial law, but it wasn't not. Shepard figured another two months at most before people started to feel safe enough to be frustrated. And when everything's broken already, what does it matter if you get angry? She knew the feeling.
Viatrix whined. Shepard switched shoulders and hummed tunelessly to her. She calmed down. Shepard sighed and yawned. Nearly 0500 hours now. They had a meeting with the mass relay reactivation fleet at 0900. She'd have to wheedle some sort of stim out of Karin or she was going to fall asleep at the boardroom table.
The fleet was scheduled to leave two days from now. The Normandy would be picking Grunt, Wrex, and Javik up from their various spots all over the globe: they'd been helping with rebuilding efforts and the Alliance had shipped them wherever they needed massive things moved. Shepard was honestly looking forward to seeing them more than she was looking forward to getting out of the system. She and Garrus had decided ages ago that Wrex would be godfather to any child they ended up with, and she couldn't wait to tell him. Secretly she thought he might get a little teary. Grunt would have a sister of sorts, too. That would be fun. Wrex would make a fantastic addition to the babysitter crew. She might actually get some sleep on the way to Tuchanka, where they'd be dropping both krogan off. She was hoping to see Bakara, too, before they left.
Turn on her heel behind Joker's chair, back towards the main room. Watch the little lights flash. Listen to her breathing, to Viatrix's breathing, to the subtle hum of the ship. There was just enough ambient noise on the main deck to drown out the rustling in the back of her mind.
Why had the Citadel started up? Was it on some sort of a time delay? After Reapers, wait for a while, then start yourself up again for the next cycle? It made sense, she supposed. But she couldn't shake off what Tali had said. Something biological. Something organic. Strange, for Reaper technology, to need something organic. But then, the Reapers probably hadn't bothered messing with the Keepers for a very, very long time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Held true for apocalyptic-scale machines of destruction too, apparently. So if they hadn't had to change the Keepers, and thus the Keepers had never changed, or hadn't changed in a very long time, and if any attempt to tamper with the Keepers - and therefore learn about Reaper bio-engineering - resulted in a puddle of Keeper goo … well, it was no wonder that nobody could talk to them. Their masters were dead.
But even dead gods can dream, as they learned in orbit around Mnemosyne. And there were still Reaper derelicts floating around everywhere in the Sol system. Many of them had been towed into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but no one was quite sure what to do with them.
What if the Reapers weren't dead?
Shepard closed her eyes, held Viatrix a little tighter. She didn't really remember a lot of what had happened after she'd reached the beam to the Citadel. She remembered lights, and a lot of blood, and a lot of pain. She remembered arguing herself hoarse but she couldn't remember who she had been arguing with, or what they had been arguing about. She remembered the feeling of desolation and hopelessness, replaced by resignation and acceptance. She remembered that she had made an impossible choice. She remembered that she had known she was going to die.
It didn't make sense to her, that she was standing here now, in her ship, holding her daughter. It didn't make sense that she was alive, that any of them were alive. She couldn't remember what she had done. By rights, she should have been dead. She couldn't remember if she had thought everyone else should be dead, too.
She couldn't remember, and it drove her mad.
Hurry up and wait.
Hurry up and wait.
Hurry up and wait...