"Spirits, Shepard," he murmured as she stripped off her under armor weave and the tank top underneath - she was covered in scalpel cuts, angry purple bruises, and her knuckles were a mess of blood. Mordin set to work immediately, calibrating the tissue regenerator and passing it across her skin as she gingerly hopped up onto the bed.
"It's not as bad as it looks, the only real issue is the blown out knee. Took a fully armored boot right to it." Sure enough, the swelling and redness around the joint couldn't hide its awkward turned-out angle. At the corner of her eye, Mordin opened his mouth. "I know what you're gonna ask, and no, I don't know what all they did. Kenson sedated me for nearly two days. It's only thanks to my Cerberus metabolism that I got up at all." She picked up the datapad Tali had given her earlier to continue typing furiously.
Miranda clucked her tongue and flicked open her tool. "Full body scan it is. I swear to god, if the damned Alliance scrambled any of my hard work here-"
"For the last time they were indoctrinated, Miri. The whole goddamn station was." She looked up at Tali. "After all that shit with Sovereign - how many reports did I write that the Reaper tech needed to be shielded? All of it, even the smallest bit?!"
"Shepard, hold still," Mordin interrupted sternly. She complied, and he resumed his work.
"Where did you guys say Chakwas was?" Shepard shifted. Mordin glared at her and poked a finger a little too hard into bruised ribs. She hissed in a breath. "Not that you aren't brilliant, Professor."
The room went quiet. On the bed across from her, Joker glanced at Garrus and Tali before speaking. "That's because we didn't say where she was."
Miranda snapped her tool closed and exhaled. "There's no point in beating around the bush. The crew was abducted, Shepard."
The Commander blinked once before jumping to her feet, and then promptly hit the ground with a cry of pain when her knee didn't hold her.
"What the fuck?!" she screeched.
Garrus and Mordin each grabbed an arm and hauled her back up onto the bed. Her sniper's subvocals had settled into a calming, pulsing hum the minute he'd carried her in here. It was now rubbing her nerves raw. "Garrus, please, whatever you are doing, turn it off, would you?" she snapped.
The noise immediately stuttered to a stop, and he pulled his mandible in tight.
"What the fuck happened, where are they, and by who?!" Shepard rubbed her knee, looking first at Joker then Miranda.
"The ground team was nearly in full mutiny mode, demanding we set out to look for you, so I took everyone planetside to run drills together and work on tactical cohesion as a group. While we were gone, EDI was running operational trials on the IFF when she detected a signal from the Reaper code which was actively transmitting the Normandy's location." Miranda sighed. "The Collector ship showed up. They boarded us and made off with all the crewmen but Joker."
Shepard turned to the pilot with a horrified look.
Joker shrugged. "Really, it was EDI that saved me and the Normandy. She cleared the ship."
"You were all here with no protection when the Collectors came," Shepard murmured. "God, Jeff, I'm sorry."
EDI interrupted. "Commander, there's an incoming transmission from the Alliance."
Shepard sighed. "Thanks, EDI. And thanks for not killing us all, and for saving Joker. I owe you."
The AI took a moment to seemingly contemplate before responding. "You are welcome, Shepard. As I told Operative Lawson, you are my crewmates. It is not my wish to betray you."
The soldier nodded. "Alright, I can't walk EDI, so forward the coms to the med bay."
"Commander Shepard?" a stern male voice came over the speakers in the room.
"Yes."
"Alliance vessel SSV William Tell requesting permission to dock with the SSV Normandy. Forwarding coordinates."
"Roger. Setting you up with my pilot to get you our ETA." She nodded at Joker, who stood and hobbled out of the med bay. The com clicked off, and she turned to the Professor. "Mordin, what do you think about this knee? What's the time frame?"
He flicked on his scanner again, finger rubbing across his wrinkled chin. "Sedation necessary. Can rebuild it - Miss Lawson and I both? A few hours."
"Do it. The Collectors have accelerated our timeline through the relay. EDI, call everyone on the ground team in here, please."
Tali handed her a pair of black sweats and her N7 hoodie. "Thanks," Shepard murmured as she tugged them on. She hopped back around the bed towards her ground team, who quieted as she came to a stop before them. "Joker, what's our time to the William Tell?"
"Four hours, Commander," he answered over the com.
She exhaled loudly and rubbed a hand over her face. "Okay. You all already know more than you should here, but I'm not going to get too into specifics in the hopes of not taking all of you down with me. So, long story short, it was me who set that asteroid into motion."
Everyone in the room knew well enough not to gasp. Jack was pacing back and forth, Samara stood rigidly. Jacob was shifting his weight from foot to foot. Garrus was leaning against the back wall with Zaeed and Grunt on either side of him. Zaeed was looking uncomfortably between her and Samara. The Justicar's presence alone was causing a bead of sweat to roll down the back of the Commander's neck too. The asari's stony countenance didn't move an iota as she stared her down.
She continued. "On that station there was indisputable proof that the Reapers are hitting our system. NOW. That relay was considered the alpha relay, with a direct shot to the Citadel. I even spoke with Harbinger. Again." Shepard dug two fingers into her temple. "So, I sent that asteroid on a collision course right before they came through."
She looked directly at Samara. "I am quite aware of the 300,000 deaths on my hands. I tried to get a message out to the batarians to begin evacuation, but I was stopped. I felt, and still feel, that despite the high toll, this is what I had to do to prevent the beginning of a galaxy wide extermination campaign. I destroyed the only proof I had, so the only thing you can do is judge me by my character. I'm sorry to put you in that position, Samara. I will accept whatever you decide - after we deal with the Collectors."
Shepard leaned back on the bed and looked at her team - her friends. Thane was directly at her elbow, his face tipped down toward her, radiating calm. Kasumi's eyes were hidden by her hood, but a smirk played on her lips. Grunt smacked a fist into his palm. Legion was raising his light shutters quizzically, Miranda was full of grim determination, one hand on her hip.
"We are enroute to an Alliance ship. I suspect I am about to be court marshalled. If the batarians find out the Butcher just wiped out one of their colonies… well. You all know where that is gonna lead. But I will not abandon our crew to whatever fate the Collectors have cooked up for them. I will not go quietly, I may have to add treason to my list of recent misdeeds, but I will not allow myself or us to be detained now. We are going through that relay, and we are getting our people back. You all have roughly eighteen hours until the jump to get your affairs in order and contact loved ones. Ground team dismissed."
The Commander stood up from the bed, careful to keep her weight off her knee, and saluted as straight as she could tolerate. She reigned in the shock that tempted her mouth to hang open at the sight of Admiral Hackett in the flesh, tall and foreboding in the med bay with her. She shouldn't have been surprised that he would come though. What a fucking mess.
The man saluted back and stepped closer. "Commander. Glad to see you alive, and it looks like you are recovering well. Must have been a real mess down there." He looked a lot older than he had in the vid message they'd had before Bahak.
"I wasn't expecting you here." Shepard sat back on the bed to stretch out her newly recovered knee.
He sighed. "I sent you out there as a favor to me. I hadn't planned to come in person either, but that was before the mass relay exploded and took out an entire Batarian system. What the hell happened down there?" His voice dropped as he spoke, becoming darker and deeper.
"Have you received any intel yet?" Shepard adopted his tone to mirror it back. Like hell she'd let him think he could intimidate her. Though, It was probably foolish to probe him for information; even if he had heard anything he wouldn't be so careless as to reveal his contacts. But it'd be nice to have some idea if the Alliance was watching her as hard as she suspected.
"All I know is I sent you in there for Dr. Kenson and only you zipped out just before the mass relay went nova. I'm assuming you can fill in the leap of logic there." Hackett folded his hands behind his back and leaned over her, blocking the overhead light.
Not one to be cowed, she straightened. "I verified Kenson's proof. She was right, the Reapers are coming. She had been indoctrinated from an unshielded piece of Reaper tech - everyone on the asteroid station was. Kenson sedated me for two days against my will. She was no longer willing to stop the invasion before the timer ran out, but I woke up, and I sure as hell stopped it. I tried to get a message out to the batarians, but she interfered. I did have some footage from my suit cam before I was knocked out, but after I recovered my armor, I found that they had damaged my hard suit and stripped the footage." Shepard pushed her datapad into the Admiral's chest, forcing him to take a step back away from her. "There's my report. I did what I had to do."
He grabbed the pad. "So Amanda was indoctrinated… God, what a shame." He turned his back to her to pace a few steps. "And you believe the Reaper invasion was really a threat?"
"Absolutely. She'd been receiving intel from the fragment for who knows how long. Her team had come up with calculations based on that information to countdown until the Reaper's arrival. They had a big clock in the middle of the station and everything. I stopped it with minutes to spare, Admiral." She looked down at her hands and continued in a murmur. "I even spoke with Harbinger, the bigger, badder brother of Sovereign. We aren't anywhere near ready to combat them, sir."
He turned back toward her. "I'm sure it's all in the report," he said, holding up the pad. "I won't lie to you, Shepard, this is bad. If what you are saying is true, we absolutely cannot afford a war with the batarians - not with the Reapers on the galaxy's edge. The batarians will want blood, and there is just enough evidence for a witch hunt. They've been looking for an excuse to wage war on us since we poked our ugly heads into the galaxy scape. They know there was a human ship here, and whispers left the prison. Luckily you did a stellar job sabotaging the surveillance there, so there's been no physical proof yet. But once word gets out, that it wasn't just a human, but you," he shook his head.
"What are you saying exactly, Hackett?" Shepard felt icy fingers drum down her spine.
"I believe you when you say you did what you had to do, Commander, but there were over three hundred thousand batarians in that system. All dead."
"Yes. I realize how many innocents died. Three hundred and four thousand, nine hundred and forty-two of them. But how many sentient bodies inhabit the galaxy? Hm? That's just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of lives on Earth alone. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of asari and turians on their respective colonies, the salarians, the krogans - and how many hanar and elcor are out there?"
Hackett held up his palms. "I said I believe you did what you had to do. People like us - we are the ones who have to make the tough decisions that get people killed. But no one else believes the threat is real, and I'm sure they won't until it's here, killing them."
"What do you suggest?"
"Evidence against you is shoddy at best. I'll do whatever I can to throw off the scent, but... at some point you will have to go to Earth, and face the music Shepard. I can't stop it, but I will make them fight for it." He sounded at least convincing about it.
"I save the damn galaxy from the Reapers again and I'll get charges because of it? I'm getting real sick of being the Alliance's convenient little scapegoat." The Commander stood to look him in the eye, her voice dangerously low. "Your scapegoat, Hackett."
The Admiral narrowed his eyes and his lips pulled into a tight line. "Think about it, Shepard. I'm not your enemy here. Giving the batarians the Butcher would mean nothing to the Alliance if it avoided open war. So be ready, when Earth calls, you'd better be there with your dress blues on and pressed." He turned and strode out of the room.
The Commander threaded hands into her hair and pulled, swallowing a growl of frustration. "Joker, set course for the Omega relay as soon as the Admiral is back on his ship."
"Aye, Commander."
Music blasted through her quarters, jangling credit chits and half-drunk bottles on the coffee table with every beat of bass - leftovers from the "girl's night" she, Tali, Jack, and Kasumi had had a week ago. Shepard sat with her legs splayed out under the table, her armor strewn around her, mouthing along with the words as she polished an ablative plate. She bent her knee tentatively now and then, trying to chase away the stiffness after its rebuild. She huffed a breath as it creaked painfully. Dammit. She needed to be 110% within 8 hours. She stood and moved to the center of the room and dropped into squats and climbers.
The door chimed.
"Come in," she called over a loud guitar sequence.
Garrus's large frame was backlit by the hallway light as the door retracted. He stood there for a few moments, uncharacteristically hesitant. She jumped up from the floor and waved him in. Shepard held up a finger and trotted over to the speaker controls by her nightstand to turn down the music as he came down the stairs and stopped near the couch.
"What's up, Garrus? Do you need something?" she asked.
He studied her for a few moments. She was no longer the lean, wispy thing she'd been when he first came aboard. She was hard muscle and more familiar lines again as she stood in front of him.
Garrus presented the bottle of wine he had been holding behind his armored back and set it down on the couch table. "Best chiral-neutral wine I could afford on a vigilante's salary."
"Oh, only the best on the eve of our eminent demise." Shepard scooped up two lowball glasses from the table and traversed the stairs to rinse them in the sink. She walked back down to the couch as he pulled off pieces of his hard suit and set them on the coffee table with hers.
"Whoa there, Romeo, shouldn't you at least ask first?" A smirk ghosted over her lips.
His mandible fluttered. "Romeo? Ask what?"
"Well, for humans, when a man bursts into a girl's quarters with wine and starts undressing, that's usually about the universe's worst come on." She set the glasses down on the table near where he'd plopped on the couch.
Three well practiced fingers set to dismantling his rifle. "I'm hurt you'd think I don't have more charm or class than that. I'm here to continue our tradition," The Commander merely blinked in response. "Come on, don't tell me you've forgotten the night before Ilos? We spent the entire night cleaning our weapons and telling war stories."
"Oh! I remember. Man, are we good at traditions or what? And this time we won't have some 500 year old Krogan one-upping us on stories. Tell you what, you keep my glass full and I'll even shine your Mantis." Shepard sat on the floor opposite him and folded her legs under the table.
"Absolutely not. No one messes with a man's Mantis. You can keep the weird human music on, I'll pour the drinks, and if you really want, you can shine my boots." He tipped a healthy portion of the electric blue wine into both glasses.
She laughed. "Gee, insult my music and my cleaning skills all in one go. You haven't truly lived until you've heard Freddie Mercury's angelic voice, okay?" She took a sip of the azure liquid and grimaced.
"That bad, huh?" Garrus tipped some of the wine into his mouth. He coughed as he swallowed, leaving his mouth open for a second with his tongue out like it had harmed him. She hid her smile at his reaction behind her hand.
"Whoa okay," he turned the bottle's label toward his gaze. "It's like they tried to compensate way too hard for all the stuff they had to take out of it with an overbearing amount of… whatever fake sweet this is."
"That's sweet to you? That is hella sour to me, like a warhead."
"I didn't know humans flavored their warheads," he said, voice laced with amusement.
Shepard threw a credit chit at him. "It's a type of snack."
Garrus chucked a rag at her. "Put on your Freddie. What other chance will we get?"
The Commander sighed as she scrolled through her omni-tool to pick a song. "You're right. Even if we survive, I'm going to get locked up… or worse."
He paused in inspecting his barrel. "So, the Admiral really came to court martial you?"
"Well, no, not yet. He came to warn me that the batarians were sure to figure it out at some point, and then at the very least I'd be court martialed."
"What's worse than a court martial?"
"Handing me to the batarians?" Shepard sipped at her drink.
He grimaced. "Like hell. They can't do that, can they?"
"I sincerely hope not. But, we've got a suicide mission to live through for that to happen. I'll worry about it after the Collectors."
Garrus nodded. "Saren and Sovereign were a suicide run too, yet here we are. If we come back, we can have a bonding ceremony, then you can be a protectorate of the Hierarchy. It'd be fun to watch the Alliance try to jail you then." His mandible pulled back as he carefully wiped down each piece of the Mantis.
Shepard choked and inhaled the horrible chiral-neutral wine, which sent her into a spastic coughing fit.
Her sniper thumped her on the back with a deep chuckle. "Finally got you back for that drink you made me inhale at Dark Star, Shepard."
Once she'd caught her breath, she looked up at him. "What the hell?! How far up the primarch candidacy are the Vakarians?"
Garrus sighed and set his scope down. "Really? That's the first question you ask? That's not something they just extend to the primarch. Besides, I don't think that'd even work for humans. Maybe if we painted you blue…" He stopped rubbing the shining compound on his stock to put a finger on his chin like he'd seen so many humans do. "Nah, still wouldn't work. No offspring."
"Whoa, the Hierarchy extends citizenship protections and diplomatic immunity to asari?" she asked, eyes rounded.
"Is it that weird? There are plenty of asari/turian couples out there."
"No, that's the only porn I could find after all. I'm just shocked that autocratic, by-the-book turians made exceptions for them in your government." She picked up her chest piece and began scrubbing.
"It's not all that common for couples to apply for bonding and citizenship, though. But there've even been some asari that weren't assigned to auxiliaries that have been through basic. Never could understand why, if I was biotic I'd do commando training - that'd be much more tailored to them." He paused his rambling and inhaled. "You didn't find any porn?"
She snapped her eyes to his. "What? You did?" His mandible twitched. Shepard stretched her leg and pushed his shin with her foot. "You dog, you'd better share!"
"Okay, okay, fine." Garrus flicked open his omni-tool. "Must have been those extra two years of extranet experience over you."
"Garrus! Did you just admit to becoming a turian/human porn connoisseur for the last two years?!" Shepard threw her head back and laughed at his bewildered jaw movements. "It's okay to admit it, it's the legs, I know." She pulled a limb from under the table and stuck it out in front of his face.
"I don't know what a connoisseur is, but need I remind you it was you who came on to me first. A poor, young, handsome turian beleaguered by your evil wiles - that I might add are not your weird pudgy feet and way too many toes." He poked a talon into the sole of her foot, causing her to shriek and pull it away.
"I did not! That was you all the way, big guy, all that… growling and looming." He threw his polishing rag at her and they both laughed. "I'm just a poor damsel, drawn in by perfect headshots" - she set her chest piece down to mime shooting a rifle - " and a sexy voice attached to a swaggering, sarcastic turian."
"Ooohh… so my voice is sexy, huh, Shepard?" He put ridiculous effort into the deep reverb of his sub vocals as he said her name and grabbed her arm to drag her around the table and up into his lap.
"No, no no no, I'm not going to finish cleaning all of this with you here! Garrus!" She made a strangled noise as a long bit of fleshy tongue found her earlobe while she tried to wriggle out of his grasp. "I was going to share the porn I found too, but not now buddy!"
"Mmm… we could make our own. You can't say that wouldn't be a hell of a bolster for turian/human tensions after the First Contact War," he murmured into her neck, his sub vocals vibrating through them both.
Shepard smiled as she settled her knees on the couch on either side of his hips. "He just casually drops that we should get married and make porn for a living."
"It worked, you laughed." He squeezed her thighs and pulled back to look at her. "Relax, Shepard, you've been rigid since the minute I walked in - I can nearly hear your muscle tension. You did what you could at Aratoht. I don't see how that could have ended any differently. It wasn't your fault the Collectors got the crew - you weren't even here. EDI saved Joker and the ship. Hope isn't lost. I know you'll get them back, and you'll get us back through that relay too. I believe it. I believe in you."
He'd been like this before Ilos, too: an endless well of calm encouragement. His words coated her like soothing balm on chafed skin. Her mouth hung slightly ajar as she sucked in a breath. He touched their foreheads together.
"Garrus..." Her voice broke, betraying her spectacularly.
"I know what you're thinking, and you aren't him, Shepard. You aren't Saren. He had no one and nothing but indoctrination. You have me, you have the team - we won't let that happen."
Her lip corners pulled up. "How do you always seem to know what I need to hear?" She sighed heavily and slid off of his lap and onto the couch. "Even after this though… we aren't anywhere near ready for them, Garrus. No one is listening, and we've been yelling for years now. The Reapers are going to tear through our galaxy like tissue paper."
He nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right. All the more reason we need to come back, so that at least someone is ready. How much time do you think you bought us with that asteroid?"
"I don't know. A year, maybe? Months? They're already so close to batarian space… Garrus, did you get a hold of your family?" Shepard's eyes were large, imploring. She had such a soft spot for people's family concerns.
He exhaled. "Yeah, I spoke with my mother and Solana. Oddly, they are both off-world at a salarian colony right now. Mother was enrolled in a very expensive Corpalis experimental trial by way of a large anonymous donation and word from a Dr. Solus. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
She smiled. "It was the least I could do to assuage my guilt in taking away her only son. The trial is going well, the symptom management potential alone is extending lives by years. Mordin assures me they're getting close."
"Thank you, Shepard. Really. But this was always my decision," he hummed.
"Tell that to my brain, it hasn't quite figured that out yet." She waved a hand dismissively and picked up her drink to take another sip. She shivered at the grotesque taste. "No need to thank me, other than armor I've got nothing to spend Tim's blood money on anyway."
They resumed cleaning their armor and weapons in amicable silence.
"So, I read those Dark Knight comics you sent me." Garrus glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "I've got some new ideas about what to do when I retire."
Shepard scoffed. "When you retire a millionaire from our porn escapades?"
"Naturally. Think what I could do on Omega with some of the equipment he has."
Shepard bent forward as she laughed, holding her stomach.
"Commander? We're forty minutes to the relay," Joker's voice cut through a foggy, half realized dream. Shepard blinked awake, not realizing she'd fallen asleep. She sat up groggily, and took a minute to register that she'd been snoozing on top of a decidedly pointy turian carapace, tucked under a turian arm. A carapace and arm that were attached to a still asleep Garrus Vakarian, breathing in deep, rhythmic breaths.
"Garrus," Shepard pushed his bicep. "Gaaarruus, hey, we fell asleep," she hissed, shaking his arm harder. He snapped his eyes open and jerked to a sitting position. She had to put a hand out to his carapace to keep them from knocking heads "Whoa, sorry big guy, I didn't mean to scare you."
He frantically looked at her and around the room. "We fell asleep?"
"Yeah, you okay?" She stretched and slid off of him to gather up armor pieces.
"Fine… just trying to decide if I'm dreaming," he yawned loudly.
She chuckled. "Well, if you didn't do that purring thing it wouldn't have happened. I can't remember the last time I slept solidly though - especially without nightmares."
He huffed and swung his legs off the couch to stand. "Turians don't purr."
"What do you call it then? You were even doing it down in the med bay." Shepard assembled her shotgun with practiced speed.
"It's… subconscious. We don't always realize we're doing it. When… someone… around us is distressed - it just happens as a reflex." He fumbled over the words.
She raised an eyebrow. "Okay… well, we've got forty till the relay. You ready?"
Garrus nodded and began snapping hard pieces to his under armor. "As I can be."
