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The Cerberus attack on Sur'Kesh came close to being the end of all Wrex's hopes. Too close.
When he landed the Normandy shuttle he'd commandeered and saw that the pod bearing the last cured female had finally been landed, its walls cracked and blackened from the force of the assault, it took both Garrus and Vega to hold him back and keep him from tearing a few salarians apart.
The female stepped carefully from the pod, moving with a slow and ponderous grace. "Wrex," she said in her deep, sonorous voice. "Enough."
"They nearly got you killed!"
"I am alive because of them." She nodded at Mordin. "Because of him. We need him."
"Will you accompany us on the ship?" Shepard asked her. "Back to Tuchanka?"
The female's eyes swept over Shepard to Wrex, studying him carefully. At last she nodded. "I will."
"Good." Wrex wrenched his arms free of Vega's grasp and stalked to the shuttle. "Let's get out of here. It smells funny."
The salarians glared after him, as happy to see him go as he was to be going. Shepard turned to Mordin. "We may need you." She didn't like the faint dry cough the female had, or the hint of a sway in her step. "I … She has to make it. For all our sakes."
"Of course. Has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong." He smiled, and followed the female, his long-fingered hand under her elbow.
"Nice to see Mordin back," Garrus said. "Although I don't know if we'll be saying that after a few arias."
"Arias?" Vega echoed. "He sings?"
"That's one word for it."
Shepard chuckled, then turned to the salarian scientists who remained behind, talking to them about the attack and generally trying to make sure they remembered the Normandy's visit with something other than open hostility. The galaxy needed the salarians; she couldn't afford to lose their support entirely.
To no one's surprise, when they were back aboard the ship and meeting with the Primarch, Wrex insisted that nothing short of a full cure for all the krogan on Tuchanka would garner his support for the war effort. Victus tried to argue that there was no time, but there was no talking to Wrex once he got something in his head. Shepard was glad to get out of the conversation with her war room intact.
Fortunately, Mordin was there to save the day, assuring everyone that he could synthesize a cure and he was equally confident that he could preserve the life of the female. Since she wouldn't share with him her real name, he had dubbed her Eve, which she seemed to accept.
Dr. Chakwas had graciously allowed Mordin to take over her medbay since his old lab hadn't survived the Normandy's refit, and Shepard headed down there to make sure that the female—Eve—was settling in.
She was greeted with a courteous nod. "Commander Shepard. Come to make sure your bargaining chip is safe?"
"You're more than that, Eve. Yes, I need the krogan to help against the Reapers, but sooner or later the Reapers would have made that point quite convincingly. Bringing you back to Tuchanka, seeing the genophage put right … that's important." She smiled. "And Wrex has been my friend. He may be stubborn and obnoxious, but his heart is in the right place."
"It is now," Eve agreed. "He is a different man since he traveled with you, Commander. Don't tell him I said so, but he may just be the man the krogan need to bring them into a brighter future."
"I wouldn't dream of telling him any such thing." She looked closely at Eve, who looked better than she had on Sur'Kesh, but still had that slight cough and a bright sheen in her eyes that suggested fever. "How are you? Are you comfortable?"
"Given the number of vials of blood Mordin has drawn, I am not certain 'comfortable' is precisely the word, but I am on my way home, and I am preparing to be the vessel to cure my people. One way or the other, because of me, my sisters will no longer have to weep over children who didn't live to be born. That is more important than comfort. It is—it is everything."
Having given thought to children only briefly at the beginning of her relationship with Thane, Shepard couldn't say she understood what the krogan women had gone through because of the geonophage, but the horror and the grief were there in Eve's voice. "I'm glad to help in that endeavor."
"Even if it lasts only a short while because the Reapers destroy the galaxy," Eve finished for her. "Yes. I share that fear, Commander. But everything I have heard about you—and what I witnessed today as you fought your way through a battalion of Cerberus troops to get what you want—makes me feel that our efforts will not be in vain."
"I wish I had your faith."
Eve reached into her pocket and took out a crystal, chipped and jagged at both ends. "Here, Commander. Take this."
"What is it?"
"It is hope. That even in the darkest hour, there is always a way out." She coughed again, harder this time. "Someday I will tell you the story. Just know that with this, you carry my hopes, and those of my people. And you will find a way."
Shepard's hand closed around the crystal. "Thank you, Eve. I'll let you rest now."
Eve nodded, laying back on the bed and closing her eyes.
On her way out of medbay, Shepard stopped and spoke softly to Mordin. "Will she make it?"
He glanced at the krogan, clearly worried. "I think so. Will be tricky. Will do my best."
"See that you do. She's too brave to be lost."
Mordin nodded briskly and returned to his microscope, and Shepard left medbay, still clutching the crystal.