Beta-read by Saberlin.

Still on Arcturus: 'Foreign' runs relatively concurrent. For those who may ask: chronologically 'Silence' comes later this same day, but I did not want Tali's chapters all clustered together. Because these three chapters (and the next one) take place in a relatively short span of time it should not cause too many issues. Just a heads-up.

-J-

If it weren't for the Arcturus routing system, he would never have gotten to his apartment at all. He knew he probably looked pretty rough, with the sunglasses and the wincing and the flinching.

The lights accompanying the wave of media men swarming towards Shepard still seemed burned into the back of his eyes. Shepard's emphatic 'go, go, go', as though directing a tactical exercise, would be funny once his head stopped hurting.

It was cold in the apartment, but he could not be bothered to turn on the heat, or do anything else to alter the nearly pitch black environment. Why would he?

Alenko did not even kick his boots off before flopping face-first onto his bed. For a moment, he let the suffocating darkness of his pillow inhibit his breathing. Then it got too be too much. He dragged the pillow out from under his head and promptly put it over his head. Even the little movements necessary to do so made him nauseous.

He was lucky, he reflected, not to be puking up his socks.

At least it was dark here. And quiet.

Commlink. If he didn't turn that off, without fail, someone would make some kind of social call. It would be Murphy of the infamous Murphy's Law out to get him—because Murphy was a bastard, and liked to watch people suffer.

Very carefully, trying not to rotate his head too much, he found the commlink and turned it off.

Thank goodness. Don't anyone, not even Admiral Hackett himself, call and ask Lt. Alenko for anything. Lt. Alenko was not in the building. Consider him dead—leave flowers and go away.

When he had the capacity for such peripheral thoughts, migraines always made him cranky.

And an L2-grade migraine was worse than anything. Normal people didn't have a headjack to add to the neck aches. From the crown of his skull to his shoulder blades ran a line of dull, throbbing pain which seemed partly skeletal, as well as muscular. He hated the drugs, but he hated the pain more. Unfortunately, the drugs were on the table, just out of reach, and he was over here...

He rolled carefully onto his side, his brain slapping painfully against his skull every time his head changed position. With his left hand, he executed a careful if clumsy mnemonic, dragging the bottle from the table. He could not even recall why he set it there in the first place. Migraines did interfere with intelligence. He popped two pills dry, and dropped the bottle. Refusing to put himself through anymore pain or discomfort, he simply rolled onto his back, and dragged the pillow back over his eyes. The room could not get dark enough.

Normally, a person could call the apartment quiet as a grave—in the more achy moments, Alenko grumbled it probably would end up being his grave—but when his head ached, silence became necessary…every little noise suddenly became not only audible, but painfully audible.

Audio-sensitivity, photophobia, nausea, pain, the list went on for meters.

He wished whoever was upstairs would turn the music down. On any other day he he would not care. On any other day, he probably would not be able to hear it over his own music, or whatever noise he had running in the background.

But today was not 'any other day'.

He really needed to either climb under the blankets. Orr turn on the heat. Or both. Or take a hot shower and then turn on the heat and crawl in bed.

But the nausea continued to menace him, so he stayed put.

Finally, after an interminable amount of time, the drugs began to work. He wished they could ease the pain running from his neck to his shoulders.

Finally, slowly, he forced himself to sit, up, the nausea quieted to a minimum, the head pain still banging away, roused by movement to torment the head in which it resided. He scooted to the foot of the bed, unlacing his boots, wondering if maybe the retrofit to an L3 would be worth it.

No. Even in this kind of pain, no. Too many horror stories, though why there should be so many stories when the procedure was barely legal surprised him. Blindness necessitating optical implants, scarring, power surges…the side effects could, could, get worse. And then, supposedly because so many biotics survived the procedure but never woke up, remaining in a vegetative state, you were awake on the table. Drugged out of your mind, but awake.

He shivered. He'd take the pain.

He nudged his boots under the bed, removing the danger of tripping on them later, as he shambled about, zombie-like. The thought 'zombie' brought back memories of the husks back on Eden Prime, the LED-blue lights of them searing his vision, even though it was only a memory.

You knew it was bad when remembered light made your eyes and every nerve and brain cell attached to them ache.

Back into the main room of the apartment, over to toggle the settings on the environmental control, then swiftly back to bed went Alenko. The nausea was coming back, making the pain worse, so a shower was out of the question. He wished he had learned how bio-feedback worked. Spacers were known for having cold feet, or perceiving themselves to have cold feet, but migraines had a similar effect, and all the thick winter socks in the world were of little avail when the one worked with the other...

And the hotpack was in the kitchen somewhere. See? No sense of methodology when in pain.

Alenko groaned, rolling over onto his stomach, one arm under his head so he had room to breathe. At least he wasn't on duty. And at least there was no mission running. This was Arcturus. It was safe enough. The void was outside.

The drugs began to work, but slowly, leaving him to wait for the pain to subside enough to go to sleep.