He had to admit - Shepard had been right about Earth. Even though the Reapers had torched it to shit, the sky was such a vivid and shocking blue that even now he caught himself staring up at it through a hole in the broken down ceiling.
"Sir, I've already told you, we don't have any shuttles to spare!"
"Hackett's had me on stand-by for two weeks! Someone get that bastard down here to tell me no to my face!" Wrex growled.
His shadow dwarfed the little waif of a human girl behind the desk - she was already cowering and he hadn't even begun to yell. Hmph. When she next opened her mouth to repeat herself, it wasn't his voice that spoke over her though.
"Wrex, how many times do we need to tell you, we went up to search just as soon as we had confirmation that the Reapers were inert - you saw us go, I looked for her personally. We didn't find anything - just a few little pockets of survivors left that station and none of them were her - you know that." Alenko. He came out from a room behind the front desk, using his usual soothing, calm cadence when he spoke.
"Yeah? And how many times do I have to tell you that I'm sick of your reassurances, Kaidan."
The Spectre sighed, and brought two fingers to the wrinkle between his brows. "Wrex—"
"You didn't look hard enough - there's no way - she's come back from being spaced for crying out loud, there's no way she isn't up there."
"We can't spare more resources on the Citadel, Wrex, we're strapped as it is—"
"Need I remind you who it was that made it so you'd still have a planet to clean up? It's krogan labor that rebuilds your buildings, it was the krogan who defended your homeworld, and it was one woman who stopped them—"
"No one is saying they are ungrateful, Wrex,—"
"If you don't drop that 'we're buddies, use his name a lot' tactic you're going to find yourself on the wrong end of my fist, Kaidan."
Alenko clamped his mouth shut and leaned away from the warlord, exhaling loudly through his nose.
How many times now had they gone round and round on this? "We owe her everything - can you honestly look me in the eye and say that you think the Alliance did everything it could to find her?"
The Spectre hesitated a few moments too long. Hmph.
Wrex rolled his shoulders. "You've always been a shitty liar, Alenko. I'm going up there and I'm going to find her." He turned to leave the way he'd come.
"Wrex, there's no way she has survived that long, even if you do find her!" Kaidan called after his retreating back.
"Then I'll see you front and center at her funeral again!" the warlord snapped, striding out of the broken down little building and back out into the sunlight.
Figured. The Alliance had never treated her any better than a pack of varren treats the runt of the litter - he never did understand the loyalty she gave them, especially after Arathot. When the Reapers came knocking she should have done what he'd told her - let the entire lot and everything they stood for burn. Wrex sucked in a breath and exhaled long and loud. Well, she just wouldn't have been Shepard if she'd ever done what he suggested. Hell, he'd never have gone back to Tuchanka if she had been as callous and selfish as he had been. But somehow, the whelp had managed to burrow under his skin, made him believe in something again. Hundreds of years of cynicism undone, just like that. A few beers, a few late night shotgun cleaning sessions, a few jokes and war stories - and even he had bought into her bullshit - 'hook, line, and sinker' she'd said when she came back to him on Tuchanka that first time. He still didn't know what she had been on about, come to think of it.
The old merc dragged a hand up and over his crest as he weaved through the civilian encampment outside the Alliance's make shift headquarters in downtown London, and looked up at the still smoldering remains of the clocktower the humans so cherished. Had it meant something to her too?
Bah, he was getting sentimental in his old age - more and more thoughts like this consumed him, or at least every day since that final fight and Shepard's MIA announcement. He'd asked her things about Earth of course, in those late nights on the SR1 chasing after Saren's worthless hide.
He glanced further up at wispy white clouds. There was a tinge of rain in the air - his favorite of Earth's weather patterns. The smell of rain on Earth was nothing like Tuchanka - the water there was poisonous to the skin, and would likely just outright kill a human. But it rained just water here, pattering down gently or in torrents, depending. Despite the Reaper's damage, he still saw flashes of green and colorful flowers bursting up between cracks in the pavement, giving him just a glimpse of some of the tales that Shepard had told him. Now, with he and his kin trapped on her home planet though, every minute that ticked by seemed to dredge up some new thing he wished he'd asked her.
And now he might never get the chance— no. No. She was there, he could feel it in his bones.
A whistle broke him out of his musings, and he squinted between the humans passing around him before one caught his eye.
It was his replacement - what was his name again? The merc Shepard had taken up with when he could no longer afford to abandon his post. The man with the tattooed arms and 'fuck you, I lived,' scar on his face was standing at the mouth of a small alleyway just outside the cobbled together vender stalls Wrex was walking past. He turned and weaved through the crowd towards the merc. When he was close enough the man nodded at him, then swiveled to lead them down the side street.
"What's the deal?" Wrex rumbled.
The man turned to fix his cybernetic eye on him. "The deal is you want our girl, and I want our girl. Mutual goal."
Wrex bristled. 'Our girl'? Who the fuck called Shepard that? Presumptuous prick. She didn't actually like this guy did she? Well, his daily tiraids in the Alliance offices hadn't been any sort of secret by any means - but he'd never noticed the merc nosing around. Maybe the bastard was better at his job than Wrex gave him credit for.
"Yeah? And where were you two weeks ago?" They zig-zagged through a confusing array of alleys, Wrex following the merc closely.
The merc's face twisted - a feat considering how much it normally looked. "Not sure you noticed, but omni-tools are still useless, so I had to find him on foot." The man stopped abruptly and motioned in front of himself.
Just ahead of them was another face he recognized - Shepard's shuttle pilot. Finally things were beginning to go his way. Wrex pushed past the merc, striding to the pilot, when another human stood from where she'd been crouched off to the side. Ah, that one he knew the name of…. Uh… the little psychotic explosive one. Shit.
He stuck his hand out to the pilot, and to the man's credit he didn't think it even a bit odd for Wrex to use the human greeting - he gripped his hand tightly as if it was the most normal thing in the world. "Hey, nice to see you again Wrex."
"You too… er…"
The man chuckled. "Steve Cortez, sir. I've got the Normandy's shuttle space worthy again - and word is you are in need of a ride."
"The Alliance didn't ground you?"
"They don't even know I'm alive yet - and what they don't know, can't hurt them," Cortez said with a wide, bright grin.
Wrex barked a laugh. "I can see why she talked you up so much." The pilot seemed to stand a bit straighter, but the comment made his lips turn down.
"The Alliance brass are full of shit - we aren't going to let them write her off again," the biotic spat.
Oh, he liked her. "Finally someone is talking sense around here."
"For Christ's sake, don't tell her that or we'll have to listen to her more often," the merc quipped.
"Fuck off gramps, we're all sick to shit of listening to you bitch too," the biotic held up her middle finger.
"Have you heard anything from the inside?" Wrex asked the pilot.
"Yeah, there's still a little bit of low priority chatter on the coms. Sounds like the Alliance expects Hackett and the fleet back to Earth in the next week. Still no word on the Normandy itself though, they haven't seen hide nor hair of her."
Wrex snorted. "Same as her Commander then."
Steve nodded. "Unfortunately. But, the four of us can fix at least the Commander part."
"Make it five. I've got a whelp on my back that would never shut up if I didn't bring him," Wrex said.
The biotic's face lit up. "You've seen Grunt?!"
"Mmmhm. The little bastard lived, believe it or not."
"You hear that Zaeed? Team Blow It Up is getting back together again!" She launched a rock from her glowing fist at the merc.
"Great, I survived the purge just to get blown the fuck up by two psychotic children," he grumbled.
"You wanna meet us back here tomorrow morning?" Steve asked.
Wrex shook his head. "No, I wanna meet back here in 20 - won't take me that long to find him and every minute we waste might be another minute Shepard doesn't have."
All eyes in the little group landed on him - all of them pitying and all of them making his blood sizzle.
"You still think she's alive?" Zaeed asked in a tone that made the warlord want to break him in half.
"Because she is."
"Dear God, this is a fucking catastrophe…" Zaeed whispered as they stepped carefully past remains of the citadel's citizens.
Grunt had his shotgun off of his back the minute they secured the airlock behind themselves. "You'd think the Reapers would have indoctrinated all of them… why were so many killed?"
The biotic shook her head, her voice muffled by her mask. "Because they were sick fucks Grunt, don't try to rationalize their bullshit - you'll go nuts."
Zaeed stopped and turned to look at the warlord. "Mate, if she survived this, it would be more than a miracle - do you understand?"
Anger and something he couldn't place warred in his gut. "Of course I understand. I also know it wouldn't be the first time she's pulled it off."
The merc shrugged, "Well, you're not wrong. But only one other person was ever rumored to pull that shit off and we made him a god, what do you bloody think we'll do to her? For her sake, I hope she really is dead," he murmured.
It was only the blink of an eye, and before Wrex himself had even realized it he had the merc in the air by his collar. "If any of you dare lay a hand on her the wrath of the krogan will raze your planet to ash!" he snarled.
Zaeed held both his hands up in placation. "Im not saying I'll be the one crucifying her for fucks sake!"
Jack levied an impressive biotic fueled punch to his side - even despite his hard suit it made him wince and drop the bastard back to his feet. "Calm the fuck down, we don't need any more pissy fucking grandpa's on this rescue mission or I woulda left Zaeed back on Earth."
Grunt laughed.
"Oy, fuck off would you?" Zaeed said angrily. It wasn't particularly clear if it was directed at him, the whelp, or Jack.
This wouldn't get them anywhere. Wrex sighed and hit his coms. "Do you know if the Normandy was tracking her suit? Did they have any idea where the beam dropped her off?"
"They tracked her - Edi and Joker would likely know, they watched her cams like hawks. But I brought her down to the fight, and when the shuttle was shot down I couldn't communicate with the ship anymore. I caught some of the radio chatter she had…" Cortez paused a few beats too long, and something icy slid down Wrex's spine. "She called for evac… for Garrus. She ordered him back on the Normandy. I heard her tell Joker to 'keep her family safe in there'. It was maybe an hour later she came back with her final ship to ship. It was with Hackett, he told her something was wrong with the Crucible on her end. She eventually answered him, asked what she could do… she didn't sound good. The last transmission she sounded out of it, kept repeating that she couldn't see, that she didn't know what was wrong," he sighed.
Wrex's emotions ran hot under his hide - her final words had been to ask what more could she do? Shepard. You'd done more than enough. The thought echoed through a hollow space inside of him, reverberating off of the inside of his skull.
She should have asked him to the front lines with her. None of this would have happened. Damn his duty, he should have been with her. She'd always been alive under his watch.
Steve continued, "I heard they found Javik somewhere in there, dead from taking the brunt of Harbinger's beam. He was somewhere near where they entered - other than that they've been tight lipped."
"100 credits says they don't ever release any details," Zaeed grumbled.
"She could be anywhere on the station then," Grunt said.
Wrex turned toward an elevator. "No, she'd be somewhere on the Presidium. She got the arms open, so we start there - we fan out, and we cover more ground. Simple."
The little bunch of misfits all nodded.
It was never easy though. Nothing ever was when Shepard was involved. It took more time than he'd like to admit for their little crew to navigate keeper tunnels up to the Presidium, but as soon as Zaeed got the last safety bulkhead retracted, Wrex bolted for the Councilor's auditorium. Let the others go where they wished, he knew firsthand that the master set of station controls was set into the floor there. He'd been with her - hell, he'd been the one to be sure Saren was dead. The first time at least.
The Presidium seemed like it had taken the brunt of whatever had happened when the Crucible fired - there were large sections fully exposed to space, where the hull had caved in under the stress of the energy blast. Backup power was still functioning, but considering all the lifts and bulkhead doors they encountered that were without power, even the massive station had its energy limits and was diverting what remained to the emergency hull shielding. The station's ever present VI was silent, the floor lighting for evacuation routes was off, and come to think of it, he couldn't even hear the low drone of the recyclers. Never had he been inside a Citadel so dark and silent. Girders and duracrete littered the sprawling presidium walkways; trash, rations, furnishings, clothing, and remains filled in what little room there was left to walk. Luckily the door to the Council chambers was already open - a multitude of very Alliance looking boot marks around it. Hmph. At least Alenko wasn't a total liar. Wrex walked slowly around the outside ring of the auditorium, eyes roving the floor for any sort of movement, or anything out of place - a drop of crimson blood maybe, or a boot print in the soot the fires had left behind. His visor readout indicated there was oxygen in the chamber, so he pulled his helmet off to breathe in a lungful of stale, sooty air.
It had seemed like a good idea at first - humans and turians both had heavy metals in their blood - easy to sniff out. Shepard's smell had always perplexed him, but now that he'd been on her homeworld, he could place the scent. She smelled like the wind that birthed her - salt and musk, with an ozone tang of spent heatsinks that always seemed nestled in her hair, and something sweet and smoky that lingered after she'd left a room. But the smell of death and decay overroad anything that could have been Shepard - a realization that settled over him heavily, weighing down every step he took. His scales crawled everytime he lifted chunks of duracreet and twisted piles of metal, and the urge to call for her built until it strangled him.
"Shepard!"
Nothing, of course. No movement anywhere nearby, no sound to be heard in the lifeless auditorium.
Wrex eventually made it to the Councilor's podium, and found the Citadel control console wasn't activated. The seam of the panel was barely even visible in the darkness, soot and debris laying evenly across it.
She had never even been in here, had she? His gut instinct had been wrong.
Failed her again, you old bastard.
No. Not yet he hadn't.
He blinked out into space through a hull breach, the slight haze of the emergency barrier the only indication it was active. The blue glow of Earth through the cracks in the station was the only light in the room, but it was enough to make an open access hatch catch his eye.
He wasn't even sure what propelled him through it at first. As he traipsed down the narrow keeper corridor there was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary - the same smell of decay persisted here as well. The tunnel spiraled up and over the auditorium, and he popped out on a catwalk that crossed high above the seating. He stopped for a moment, peering down over the railing. It was easy for him to recall their fight with Saren far below - well, it was easy to recall the lopsided smile Shepard had shot to him and Garrus when she popped out magically from underneath Sovereign's enormous metallic carcass when he had thought for a few moments the worst had happened.
But she had convinced him that her jests had some truth, maybe humans were made of rubber? What the hell did he know about them? Until months later he got the news on Tuchanka that her ship had been ambushed by a geth destroyer - what a bunch of bullshit that had sounded like. He hadn't believed it had been real at first - he'd thought that the Alliance had had her on some covert mission or something - but two years came and went with no word from her at all. Two years he kept himself decidedly busy, determined not to remember that lopsided smile. But then she had come back for him, with that exact smile and little white teeth. It was like time hadn't passed at all, and later that night cycle she'd shown back up with the welp, victorious over a maw of course. She couldn't ever let anyone outdo her. And damn, what a party it had been for Grunt. Her wild fiery mane and absolutely shitty dancing around the bonfire lived on vividly in his memories. How she twisted to look for him in the crowd of bodies, how her face lit up when she saw him, how scrunched her eyes were when she laughed. He'd seen it a lot that night, after he agreed to bounce around with her. Amazing what a couple of bottles of ryncol could pull out of them both.
Wrex sighed and pushed off the railing to continue along the walkway. It crossed the room and took him into the interior of the other side of the auditorium and still farther upwards until it crested over a long drop.
There. There! A drop of blood - dried down to black, he almost missed it. Adrenalin sent his blood racing through his hearts - there, another droplette. He followed the intermittent trail across a platform into a circular room until his gaze halted on the silhouette of an Alliance issue Carnifax.
She'd been here. She was here, somewhere.
"Shepard!" He called desperately.
Quiet. Nothing but quiet. He could have burst a blood vessel with how hard he strained to hear something, anything, in the darkness.
He bent to pick up the gun. Flaking blood covered the handle.
"Shepard! Shepard, answer me!" He yelled again, and waited stock still to listen - a nearly impossible feat over his thrumming pulse.
There! A whisper of something… something above him? Did he imagine it? Wrex stepped further into the room, craning his neck to make out anything unusual about the ceiling. It seemed like a smooth dome? It was hard to see, even with krogan eyes the darkness was thick above him.
"Shepard?!"
There was definitely an answer to him, muffled but real. She was here. His elation was cut short as his foot kicked something stiff, pulling his eyes back to the ground.
Sat on the ground at his feet was a human in a wide black puddle of dried blood, a fist over his stomach - a human that despite his bloated, pallid demeanor, looked all too familiar. "Oh, no, Anderson," he murmured. He'd nearly tripped over the man.
Dead.
Shepard would be heartbroken.
Across from him he could see another person laying in the darkness, and something clenched painfully in his chest. He stepped closer and breathed a sigh of relief as he realized it was a man, face down in a puddle of his own. Ah, but behind him was a console! Wrex made a beeline for it - this he'd been ready for. He took a knee to remove the access cover in the floor for it and crudely ripped at the wiring inside until he found the proper colors. He reached an arm behind himself to pull a power cell off of his belt and hastily fumbled with the eyelets to connect the wiring. Good thing he'd watched Vakarian do this an innumerable amount of times back when they were after Saren.
The console hummed to life, its screen blinding in the darkness. Shit, this thing was in some language that wouldn't translate to his visor. Button mashing it was then.
It took a few minutes of harried fiddling but finally a disk shaped section of the ceiling separated itself and floated soundlessly down to him.
"Shepard?!" He bellowed as he stepped onto the platform.
"Wrex!" it was hoarse, but it was definitely her! Thank whatever gods humans worshiped!
He activated his com. "Steve, you out there?"
"Loud and clear Wrex,"
As the platform raised him up, he quickly discovered why she was trapped here. The entirety of the dome had collapsed around her and only the slight wobble of the station emergency shielding was left to separate her from too good a view of Earth.
"Shepard, where are you?"
"Here." It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to draw his feet to her.
"Holy shit you found her?!" Steve's voice echoed in his helmet.
"Shepard…" he murmured. He could barely see her - her fiery fringe was matted in dark blood, and most of her body was concealed under twisted metal and duracrete, she had only one arm free of the wreckage.
"Yes, she's here. Get Alenko on the horn, tell him we need the best med team left down there." He lifted his arms to summon all the energy he could muster to his hands, fully intending to lift the wreckage off of her.
"No, wait, don't," she rasped. "If you lift this it will kill me Wrex, just leave it."
He paused, the glow of his biotics lighting her face eerily.
"Wrex, my back is broken, it's fine, just leave it."
With a sigh he dropped his arms and stooped over her. "What do you need me to do, Shepard?" Gently he pushed a chunk of hair out of her face.
"Water?"
Of course - humans didn't have the hump of a krogan, how had she even survived this long? He went to work tearing the water pack off of his back and detaching it from his hard suit. It wasn't long before he had it rigged so she could drink from the hose.
She sucked greedily and he chose to stretch out next to her.
"Alright Wrex, I've got the Alliance mobilized—" Cortez's voice quickly turned into background noise though, as he watched her in the silent darkness. When the pilot seemed done talking he grunted in reply that he'd heard. Her lashes were too dark over skin too pale, her breaths too shallow and too slow with a rattling noise that made his stomachs flip over each other. Her skin marks could hardly be seen under a layer of dirt and flaking blood and the longer he watched her the more obvious it became that his suit couldn't get a read on her metrics. Wrex broke the seal on his gauntlet and tugged it off - she didn't even open her eyes to track the noise. He pressed his palm into her cheek. She was cold to the touch. Suddenly a grey hand reached to grip his, and swimming green eyes fixed on his own.
"You came for me," she whispered.
"Of course I did," he sighed. "I'm just sorry it took me so long,"
She smiled, that familiar lopsided grin. "I've been watching the stars, so it hasn't been all bad. The sunrises and sunsets over her are beautiful," her voice was weak, gravelly. He had to lean close for his translator to work. "There are worse ways to go."
"You're not going anywhere now, Shepard. If you were wanting to die you shoulda thought of that before the Alliance finally let me up here. I've already let your little band of merry murderers know you are here - and, I'm going to have a lot of little bastards for you to meet when we all get home - I'll need your help."
She rasped a laugh and winced, a sound of anguish spilling from her lips. "I suppose you're right, you'll need a babysitter - wow, this'll be the first time someone else not keeping it in their pants will be partly my fault."
He chuckled while rummaging through his thigh compartment. "I've got ration bars here somewhere, do you think you can stomach one?"
"I've been starving for god knows how long, and I still don't want one of those," she mumbled.
"Well try anyway, it's been two weeks since you destroyed those techno bastards." He shucked a bar of its wrapper and tore off a piece for her. She didn't move her arm, so he brought it to her mouth. She chewed, immeasurably slowly while minutes stretched on where he wondered if he shouldn't have chewed it for her - was krogan saliva safe for humans? But eventually she swallowed, and the tears swimming in her eyes finally loosed, leaving a clean trail down the grime on her face.
Humans and their tears - he never knew how to react to them, but hers were an entirely different matter - had he ever seen her cry before? Anxiousness crawled through his plates - they made her smell wrong and it was already so hard to know it was her through the thick odor of metallic blood and decay.
"You came for me, Wrex," she sobbed. "You're here, you're real - I thought I was going to die alone again—"
He bent to touch his crest to her forehead. "Not on my watch, kid."
She clutched his face and warbled a laugh, followed by a wordless cry of pain. "Everyone's a kid compared to you, you old bastard," she said through clenched teeth.
Suddenly swallowing was painful through a throat too tight as her eyes bounced between his.
"Are they really gone?" she sniffed.
"Deader than dead, Shepard. You did good."
She let out a choking noise that scraped at his scales. "Did they make it?"
The one thing he was hoping he wouldn't have to answer so soon. "Yes, the Normandy made it to warp before the blast went off - but it destroyed the relay, so we haven't seen them back yet."
'And we might never, depending on how far they went' was left unspoken between them.
Shepard nodded and closed her eyes. There was nothing left to do but feed her more ration bar and listen to the hollow breath in her chest. They laid silently together until the platform behind him detached away from the floor with a click and disappeared below.
"Alright kid, the cavalry's here. Let's get you home."
Weeks turned into years in the blink of an eye for him - a typical phenomena for someone his age. But certain things were still vivid to him, like the day they'd unloaded Shepard's stretcher from the Normandy's shuttle. The amount of people at the landing strip stretched on farther than his eyes could see, turning into a blur as he looked out over them. Salarians, krogan, asari, turians, batarians, elcore, vorcha - all intermixed with the humans it was a blend of colors and shapes and heights that knew no end, straight to the horizon line.
Even more impressive, they all stood so quietly, he hadn't expected anyone was outside the shuttle's door until he saw for himself. As Shepard was hovered over the tarmac, strapped to machines keeping her alive while they moved her, the crowd shifted in a wave across bodies in a human salute. Every man, woman, and child that he could see raised a hand to their foreheads.
He didn't know what signaled them, but clapping nearest the perimeter began, and it grew and swelled to a deafening din of noise - clapping, stomping, whooping. Thousands of voices came together for her.
If krogans cried like humans did, he probably would have, right then. It was a shame she'd been unconscious for it.
It was easy to remember the first time she'd awoken from the coma they'd put her in to heal, too. The moment he saw those jade eyes again it felt as if it had been the first deep breath he'd been able to take in the months since he'd found her in that hell hole. She'd cried again when her pupils finally constricted to focus on his face - quietly and softly the tears moved across cheeks that were far too gaunt, but that time it had smelled salty and sweet - it smelled like life for the first time - and he had had to wrestle with himself to not just pick her up off that cot and crushing her to him.
Oh, the first night he'd been allowed to stay with her after the innumerable surgeries had been the first time he had ever seen her sleep of her own accord - sans machines hooked to her anyway - and he quickly realized he'd never be able to sleep when she did. She had patted her hospital bed, and he'd obliged her despite how stupidly small it was. How could anyone deny the savior of their people anything she wanted? How did the humans put it? If she said jump you said how high? Something like that, anyway.
They had chatted amicably, like always - talking about their best kills and trading insults even as he was cramped into her bed, feeling like his legs were far too long, and afraid to even breathe on her she was so thin by that point. But when she'd actually drifted off? She'd been curled half into his lap, draped over his thigh and he couldn't remember the last time she had seemed so demonstrably tiny. Eventually it struck him why - because he'd never seen it. Ever since he'd met her he'd only really ever seen her in her armor or fatigues, laughing bawdily with her crewmen in Darkstar celebrating Saren's defeat, climbing up a geth destroyer and yanking until it came crashing down to her feet, headbutting some of his clansmen - that's how he'd always seen her. Larger than life with a personality and presence about four times the size of her soft little human body.
His plates felt two sizes too small as she laid there, her eyes shifting in her sleep. It felt wrong to see her in just a tank top and sweatpants - felt wrong for her to so easily let herself be unconscious around a krogan three times her size, and for her to let him so vividly see the scars and puckered skin that stuck out from under her top. The puffy lines crossed her midriff and back in angry shocks of red that disappeared into the fabric - and not for the first time he wondered how in human hell had she survived long enough for him to find her. She was nothing but soft curves and thin arms, her skin so thin he could see the veins just under the surface of it. It was nearly see-through compared to a krogan and it made his chest constrict painfully. He had gently traced the lines left by the battle on her skin that night.
How could he ever let a creature so small and unprotected sleep without his constant watching eye? How had humans ever become the apex predator on this planet? They'd had to keep night watches, surely? So, that's what he became - the nightwatch over her nightmares.
Why humans so loved to torture themselves while they slept was still something he'd never figured out in all his years by Shepard's side. Back then she'd scream and thrash in her sleep, scaring herself awake in a cold sweat if he didn't deem it prudent to wake her himself. Time eventually lessened her night terrors, but he never did feel comfortable sleeping when she did, after that.
He was with her when she attended Javik's funeral by way of a hoverchair - barely healed as she was, the whole ordeal was traumatic for her. But she was strong, and stoic as she spoke about him. Only Wrex knew how often she relived the protheans' final moments in the dead of night. The humans had damn near erected a shrine for the being that had given his life so that Shepard could fire the Crucible. The stone monument and mausoleum they'd made for him was awe inspiring though - even Wrex had to admit.
He was there too, when she learned to walk on her prosthetic legs. She'd sweat and cry and refuse pain meds while she worked tirelessly - just completely pissed at her new found limits. She'd rage at nurses, and especially at Lawson, Alenko, and Hackett when they came by - she'd even rage at him sometimes. And boy would it piss her off if he didn't at least feign some sort of indignancy at her bluster. Not that he could help it, her anger assuaged his unspoken fears. Every time she'd get upset or yell about needing help to the bathroom, or him having to bathe her, it just meant her energy was returning - that she was getting back, slowly, to the Shepard he'd always known.
The Shepard he'd always loved, he realized now.
Those early years as she healed had been rough, sure. There'd been anger and tears, he'd picked her up off the floor more times than he could count, argued with her more times then he cared to remember - but there had been wonderful times too. Laughter and stories as she grew stronger, and damn did the humans know how to eat. Her friends and crewmen would stop by her room to visit and he found himself introduced to all manner of new foods. He'd even started getting a paunch - krogan weren't meant for this whole peacetime business, when had he ever had to worry about a paunch. But 'steak' was just exceptionally good, one of Shepard's favorites, and she was rarely happier than when someone came to visit her, so he'd go with them.
Ah, the way she'd laughed when she first saw him in human provided clothing, that had been a treat. Even now the humans churned out clothing for their alien guests that were just weirdly fitting versions of the things they themselves liked to wear - she had laughed herself to tears when she saw the 'Fabio' shirt, as she called it. So, naturally, he wore it all the time. Then, she'd been fitted with specialized running prosthetics and she'd been completely insufferable in the best way after that. Fast as the wind she could run then, and she was always down at the therapy track from then on. She'd call out to him, dragging in heaving breaths of air, eyes sparkling as she jetted past him.
"Come on grandpa, too old to catch me?" She loved trying to provoke a reaction.
The taunting always worked on Grunt, he'd charge after her and she would run off, cackling gleefully, her newly grown hair finally getting long enough to stream behind her. Wrex could really make her mad too - if he rose to her challenge to snatch her with the help of his biotics. Getting her mad was still one of his personal joys. Nothing was better than setting her off right before Hackett was due for a visit. Shepard was always a sight and always in rare form when that happened - and few people deserved her ire more than the Admiral. The time she'd head butted Grunt after months of him ignoring her messages was pretty good too though.
Then there was the day they finally let her leave the hospital. The Alliance had set her up with a lovely little stipend that was, of course, nowhere near what they actually owed the woman. Hackett pulled some strings though, and set her up in the sweetest little cottage just off of clear blue waters, where the ocean breeze fluttered the curtains everyday, and the call of birds was sure to get annoying. And most importantly, it was far, far away from the ever present media that had hounded her every second after being hovered out of the shuttle all those years ago.
You'd think the two of them would have spoken more about what the next step of her life would entail - but he'd never been one for words - and when they counted, neither was she. Maybe it wasn't necessary though, because he'd been watching over her for so many years by that point any discussion about the two of them felt contrite. No one had questioned him, and he wasn't keen on answering even if they had. What would he even call it? A relationship? A friendship? Family? None of the descriptors fit. They were soldiers - would always be soldiers. He would watch her six, as she'd always watched his.
Perhaps it was that simple.
So when she'd packed up the meager little bag of her belongings and looked at him? Yeah, it was that simple. He nodded, and she held his arm even though she no longer needed to - all the way to the shuttle.
To his dismay, the whelp and the merc were aboard. Luckily Grunt was just coming to survey the accommodations of his battlemaster. Zaeed, however, had somehow secured a place too close for comfort to Shepard's new home - he was a frequent and annoying dinner guest at the worst of times from then on.
Their days were long though, long and warm and capped with sunrises and sunsets that even he had to admit - were so beautiful that they'd always be in his memories for however many more centuries he'd live. Shepard had taken to wearing long gauzy dresses as she strolled the beaches - just enough see-through for glimpses of her figure, but with enough opaqueness to hide her legs should a rogue reporter try their luck with the island. She was breathtaking, like that. So Zaeed anywhere near her vicinity was a guarantee of the most bizarre plate itch Wrex had ever suffered. Why did just the merc set it off? Him wanting to wring Zaeed's neck was a far more peaceful day for the two of them than Shepard had ever had before, so he quietly continued to suffer the merc's presence. Afterall, it was his victory every night when Shepard took off her prosthetics and bathed, as he was still the person she reached for when she needed help out of the tub, and he was the person whose warmth she unknowingly seeked on cool nights.
The first galaxy wide restoration was communication as the buoy network was slowly restored. The Krogan DMZ was one of the last buoys in place of course, but thanks to turian and even some salarian efforts on Tuchanka, he was finally put into contact with his homeworld. Shepard was with him when Bakara first introduced him to the innumerable tiny faces of so many raucous yearlings through vid call - she'd threaded her fingers into his as his hearts grew tight against his plates. That was probably the second time he would have cried, had he been able to.
And of course, eventually, the Normandy came home to its Commander. Well, honorably discharged Rear Admiral, by that point.
The fanfare after that first transmission the ship sent had been palpable in the damned atmosphere. Every channel he surfed on the extranet showed fireworks in the night and people in the streets. Shepard had been unusually quiet that night - she'd sat out on the porch of their little cottage, her feet dangling over the ledge, and nursed a very cold cup of tea. She hated tea. She couldn't take her eyes off of the water, so he had brought a blanket out and sat with her. He could only guess at the war of emotions that crossed her face in the moonlight.
They'd made for Vancouver the next morning, and she'd slept in the crook of his arm the whole way there.
Days later, when the Normandy finally sailed into view - looking like it had been the chew toy of a massive varren - It was Zaeed, Cortez, Alenko, Grunt and Hackett that stood with him and Shepard - right at the end of the docking platform. Surrounded peripherally of course, by every single being on the planet that had ever heard of the Normandy and her great Commander.
Shepard already had a tear on her cheek as the ship swung wide and the landing thrusters fired - likely because the smoothness of the arc reeked of Joker behind the helm. Shepard took a few tentative steps toward the ship as it touched the tarmac - and Wrex was completely unsurprised that the first legs he could see coming down the cargo ramp were decidedly turian.
"Garrus!" she screamed as soon as the much-thinner-than-he-remembered sniper hit solid ground. The two of them took off on a dead run towards each other like some horrible human romance vod and perfectly in-sync as if they'd planned it.
Steve let out a loud whoop that set off the crowd of people behind them into a cacophony of cheering, clapping and screaming.
Garrus and Shepard slammed into each other at krogan speeds - very decidedly not like a movie at that point, since she bounced off of him like he was a battering ram - but they fell into a puddle together, one laughing and one crying for only a few short moments before Tali's little body rammed into them too. Despite the quarian's helmet, Wrex could hear her wailing from even his distance. Vega was fourth, sprinting out of the cargo hold yelling Lola at the top of his lungs - but Liara beat him to her, rocketing past him in a biotic fueled blur - and was only barely more dignified than Tali as she fell to her knees to sob into Shepard's lap on live TV. Vega stopped for a few hugs then continued his sprint towards the end of the dock.
"Estebaaaan!" he hollered.
It was Cortez that stepped up to welcome the man home.
Traynor was next out, and quickly fell into the Shepard pile. Chakwas was looking far more harried then Wrex remembered, but she was ever the picture of poise and stoicism, even as she pushed through people to wrap her arms around Shepard's neck. They spoke animatedly, and Karin stooped to touch one of Shepard's prosthetics as Adams, and the rest of the crewman began to file down the ramp.
Shepard stopped to speak with each and every one of them, hugging, touching, laughing and comforting them as they gathered around her. They reached for her, with awe written into their brows.
Wrex dared a look at Hackett - who was just standing there at parade rest, a soft smile on his face. Had this bastard not told anyone on the Normandy that she was alive? They'd been in radio contact since the ship passed Saturn, and that had been weeks ago. Hackett certainly had never let Shepard herself speak with them, which was easy to control since she was so far from any sort of interplanetary communication hub where their little cottage was - and suddenly it all seemed too coincidental as he levied a glare on the Admiral's lined face.
The bastard would set her up as a tear jerking news story even now. Anger rippled through his scales even though it shouldn't be surprising. Hackett had been trotting out war hero Shepard whenever it most conveniently suited his political maneuverings since the very minute she had been able to walk again. Any time he needed funding passed for some dubious military rebuild project it was Shepard who showed up on TV to unknowingly distract the masses from the man's dirty work.
She was never mad about it either, even as Wrex himself bristled from the sidelines and even though she should have been.
Finally it was Joker who had shuffled out of the ship last. When he stepped onto the tarmac, Shepard was there, pulling him into her arms. He grasped her tightly as she ran comforting palms over his head and shoulders.
Weeks bled into years, as they always did, after that. Joker and Shepard stood hand in hand at EDI's memorial unveiling - no funeral though, as Tali and the quarians were hard at work, determined to restore the AI and the geth alike. Crew from the Normandy were a common sight at Shepard's house from then on - it always seemed like someone was visiting. Hell, Joker had lived with them for months before he decided what he wanted to move on to. Tali was the most scarce as she was reunited with her people whose fleet was still in orbit around Earth - who were also generously feeding millions of turians also still in orbit and groundside. Garrus was the next most likely person to be over for dinner, and he and Zaeed got on like two volus presented with a business opportunity, much to his chagrin. But even then, Jack and Lawson were the most obnoxious - they were working on a small battalion of explosive little pyjacks that had to come everywhere with them and left the house a mess once gone.
It was one of those evenings, in fact, that he was grumbling about the shitty little bastards and righting the furniture when the news came that a date was set for the completion of repairs on the Sol Mass Relay. Shepard froze in the middle of wiping down the table, and turned to watch the news segment on the vid screen in the living room. He was old - ancient compared to her - it was easy to take things in stride when you lived as long as a krogan. Life came and went, things changed. There was nothing permanent you could ever count on for more than a few decades, or a century at the absolute best. Which explained why he took the news so easily, and she didn't - and he should have been faster to understand that difference, that rift, that age puts between the species. But, he didn't. He carried on stupidly watching her pull away and create distance for days before he figured it out.
Talking about the genophage, and breeding contracts or politics, or even the logistics of his people being trapped on an alien world was easy compared to the subject now set before him.
Neither of them were the type to define things, or the type to talk about anything deeper than what kind of fish to cook for dinner.
So she didn't say anything when he cornered her during her nightly soak. He tore his clothing off and stepped carefully into the thankfully krogan sized tub they'd had installed initially- but despite being careful, his weight still slopped water over the edge and onto the floor. Shepard was unperturbed though, she didn't even look at him, just kept her chin on her arms on the side of the bath.
"Shepard."
She kept her face pointedly turned away from him, so he stretched out his legs, lightly jostling her with his feet.
"Wrex—"
"Jane," He interrupted her and she flinched. She didn't like her first name, so naturally he'd use it anytime he wanted to get under her skin. It worked, she finally looked at him with her nose scrunched. "I was never going to be the dream, you know. The picket fence, and little whelps running around, and all that."
She scrunched her nose deeper. "You think I don't know that? I never once expected that of you—"
"But, if you ask me to be that - I will."
She clapped her mouth closed, her eyebrows nearly to her hairline.
"I know what I'm saying. I love you, Shepard, and I will do whatever you ask of me," he rumbled.
A tear trailed down her face and she heaved in a shuddering breath. "How could I ask that of you, Wrex?"
He offered his hand and she took it, letting him pull her into his lap. "It's easy, you just say, 'Wrex, stay with me, please.' The please is the important part." he brushed away fresh tears with his thumbs.
Shepard shook her head. "I can't Wrex - would you ask me to come with you?"
"No. Never. You'd have to live your life inside a suit, like a quarian. Even inside the shielding, Tuchanka is no long-term place for humans," he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and she sighed into his palm. "Not even the tough ones."
He could never be selfish enough to ask that of her.
She leaned and planted a kiss on the end of his nose, and suddenly there wasn't enough oxygen in the room for his lungs to process. Suddenly he regretted…everything. He should have said more, he should have done more…. He should have been more, and he should have done it sooner.
Such were always the thoughts of someone his age.
"I can't ask you to stay any more than you can ask me to come. I love you too Wrex, but your people need you now, more than ever."
"So we're both a couple of idiots then?"
She smiled that lopsided smile and curled into his chest the same way she had every night for years, and he smoothed a hand over her head, like he always did.
"As long as I live, you'll always be part of clan Urdnot, and Tuchanka will be as much your home as Earth is," he murmured into her hair.
"Jane Urdnot Shepard then?"
"If you really don't like Jane, you could just drop it and be Urdnot Shepard - sounds way more badass anyway."
She huffed a quiet laugh into his shoulder and they sat together like that for a time, both silently processing what goodbye would really mean for them.
Jane peeled her eyes from the statue of her namesake to look up at him. "So what happened next? Did she live happily ever after?"
Ugh. Grunt really needed to stop reading human tales to the yearlings, it was rotting their tiny brains. Wrex shifted his child to his other arm. "Well, yes. She spent her time helping us rebuild, and helping her people rebuild. When she wasn't chasing after your brothers and sisters, anyway."
This many years later Tuchanka's memorial was still his favorite - he'd commissioned an artist from Earth, who perfectly captured her later years in stone. She was sitting in one of those gauzy dresses she liked to wear on the beach, with her arms draped loosely around her knees, looking directly at whoever viewed her. Confident, proud, and soft. The rest of her statues across the galaxy memorialized the Commander Shepard part of her - all of them tall, armored, and intimidating.
Some critics had smartass things to say about the krogan memorial for her, being as gentle as it was - but it didn't matter. She had definitely been the strong, unshakeable soldier they had portrayed when she made history - but this Shepard was the one that had been his, however briefly.
"Did you love her, Dad?"
The question pulled him from his thoughts, and he smiled down at his small, orange plated girl.
"Desperately," he answered. "For all of her days and then some."
