Since I got a comment about that in the reviews, I'd like to clarify something. Garrus speaks of asphyxia as the end game but I wrote him as suffering from hypothermia. My idea is that turians react so severely to hypothermia that their blood stops circulating and they eventually die of oxygen deprivation while suffering from hypothermia. So he doesn't mention hypothermia as the cause of death for turians that get too cold because that is a given. I wrote him as having hypothermia (research!) but my headcanon is that the effects are much more severe and quicker than they are for humans.
Icky humans and their weirdness coming up in this chapter. ;-)
Light can be painful. It bites through eyelids that want to stay closed forever.
The calm, cold quiet was replaced with noise, a hum and a voice forcing themselves into his mind. He knew that the voice was important, that he should listen but he was so very tired. He wanted to go back, back into the darkness.
Garrus knew that he was waking up but he was fighting it. His body felt too heavy, his skin too painful, his plates too cold. He turned back into the nothingness.
After an endless time of blissful darkness, the noise pulled him back up. Someone was calling his name. He knew that voice, it was vital.
"Garrus, wake up. Can you hear me, Garrus?"
The biting light glared into his eye as he opened it a little. There was a face in front of him, blinding white with dark spots for eyes. He knew that face, it was a good face. It was important.
"You are on the Normandy, in the med-bay, you got a bit too cold," said the voice, "you will be fine, just don't rip anything out, ok?"
He tried to nod but the muscles in his neck felt like they had not been used in years.
"You can sleep now, everything will be fine. I'll be back here when you wake up."
A wave of relief washed through him and he drifted back into the void.
A moment later, that actually lasted for several hours, he woke up again. The skin under his plates hurt. A sensation of a thousand needles running up and down his back made him turn to the side. Only now became he aware of his surroundings.
The light, that previously had hurt his eyes so much, was actually dimmed and held at an orange color like the color of the sunset on Palaven. Next to him, a machine was quietly humming and two tubes, filled with his blue blood, were running in and out of it. The tubes ended in one needle on his arm and one on his neck. He was itching to take them out but he figured that they were probably keeping him alive. On his other arm, another tube with a clear fluid was attached to a needle.
He realized that the bed was more like a survival pod, molded around his body with foam, encasing him in warmth. He even had a warm pad laid over his head, covering his fringe. There was a strange sensation of his plates contracting or expanding all over his body. It felt good and uncomfortable at the same time.
The sound of the door opening made him slowly turned his head to the side. Dr. Chakwas strode over to his bed, omni-tool in scanning mode. She gave him an encouraging smile.
"Good to see you awake, Optione Vakarian. You had us worried." She issued a few commands and began to remove the tubes that had drawn his blood into the humming machine from his arm. "We had to warm up your blood. You had severe hypothermia when Shepard brought you in."
"Shepard?" His voice sounded foreign to him, a croak of someone who had not spoken in years.
"She'll be right here." The doctor administered something into the clear tube on his other arm and looked at the readout on her omni-tool.
The door opened and Shepard stormed in, dressed in just a shirt and socks. She was by his side in seconds, her hands hovering over his face but not touching him. Her eyes had dark shades underneath and a deep, bloody gash across her cheek had the familiar shine of medi-gel sealing it.
"How do you feel? Are you in pain?" She looked him over but still didn't touch him.
He coughed to clear his voice. "My skin..." Speaking was difficult.
Dr. Chakwas spoke up, "You had some frostbite under your plates but nothing serious. There may be some pain and sensitivity but it will be fine in a few days."
"Can I touch you?" Shepard asked with her voice like a whisper.
He nodded, wondering why she was so hesitant. She took his face in her hands and very lightly pressed her forehead against his. He felt her draw in a shaky sigh and a salty tear fell on his mouthplates. His skin prickled but the relief of feeling her close was overpowering everything else.
He raised his hand to touch the gash on her cheek. It took all his strength, his muscles spasming from the effort.
"How?" he managed to croak out, stroking over the gash once before his arm fell back down.
Shepard looked down. "You were freezing, you were in pain. You were barely conscious, you didn't know where you were and what happened. You didn't recognize me." Her finger was lightly stroking over his cheek, and her eyes followed the movement, avoiding his eyes. "I touched your face and..."
Garrus wanted to yell out but his voice didn't work.
But she saw the reaction and looked him in the eyes. "You lashed out. Your skin must have been painful and when I touched you, you struggled and... you scratched me."
I did that?
It wasn't just a scratch, it was deep cut from his talon, a whole section of her skin scraped off. The guilt constricted his throat.
He tried to turn his head away but she didn't let him, holding him with her hands. "Don't blame yourself for that," she said. "You weren't all there, you didn't even recognize me, you called me 'Spirit of Death'. Which is totally going to be the name of my band one day."
He didn't quite understand that reference but he could see that she was trying to make light of the situation. She looked tired and he wondered how long she had worried about him.
"What... how...?" he rasped.
"Let me tell you the whole story," she said and sat down on a chair and took his hand in hers. There were sections of raw skin on his hands but she avoided touching those areas.
"You basically shut down, it was scary, we fell into that snow tunnel and right away you were freezing cold and disoriented. I had no idea turians reacted so severely to cold, you fell unconscious after just a few minutes. I had to get you to a warmer place, quickly. My scan showed some kind of underground building a few hundred meters away, so I put a rope around you and pulled you behind me, sliding over the snow on your back. It was the only way, I couldn't carry you, you were curled up like a ball."
She grinned at him. "At least I was warm that way, lugging you behind me like a horse. Anyway, that building was some kind of storage shed, back from the time when that tunnel was carved. I made a fire with some stuff that was lying around. I remembered that we learned not to warm someone up too quickly, a human would die of a heart attack if the blood vessels opened up too quickly. I didn't know how that was for turians but I figured I would just treat you the same way."
Dr. Chakwas nodded at that. "That was the right idea, my dear, his reaction to warming up too fast would have been the same as if he was human."
Shepard looked thoughtful for a minute. "I put you next to the fire and covered you with a piece of tarp I found. Kept the armor on you, I figured, even if the heating unit was broke, it still protected you. After a while you woke up a bit, I tried to talk to you but you were still disoriented." She absentmindedly touched the gash on her cheek, that was probably the moment when he had hurt her.
"I couldn't reach the Normandy or Alenko but we needed help. So I made an emergency call on open channel, even though the geth would probably hear that just like everybody else. The shed wasn't exactly a fortress but at least it was only open to one side. I built cover out of the storage boxes and waited. Kept the fire going."
She hesitated, her mouth opening and closing and her fingers trailed along the plates on his arm, so lightly that he almost didn't feel it.
Dr. Chakwas looked down on her, a sad smile playing on her lips. "I'll leave you alone now, please let him rest soon."
"Yes, Doc, thank you."
Dr. Chakwas turned off her omni-tool and left. The light was still turned down low and orange tinted shadows played on Shepard's face. A dark look passed over her face but it got wiped away by a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Anyway, guess who was our saviour? Lorik Quinn! He heard a few rumors about some people not being so happy about us being here and when we didn't come back from the trains, he took a few people with him on a search. They found the hole in the ground where we fell in and followed our tracks. I almost shot him when he came around the corner." She shook her head. "He was so proud for finding us. Kept boasting about it to Frank. We got you on a transport and on the Normandy. You were... in bad shape. Dr. Chakwas modified one of the life pods to warm you up and she had your blood circulate through a heater. It.. you were lucky."
She stopped talking and her head and shoulders fell forward.
Garrus used all his strength to raise his arm to put his hand under her chin. His voice seemed to work a little better now and he croaked out, "Jane, tell me everything."
"I did."
"No."
She curled up even more, and the grip on his hand got almost painful. When she finally spoke, her voice was so quiet that he almost didn't hear her.
"I was so afraid. I thought I lost you." She looked up and he could see tears in her eyes. "One minute we were joking around and the next you regressed and almost died. I..." a quiet sob shook her, "I thought I lost you."
His finger went to the cut on her cheek, carefully tracing it. She took his hand and lowered it onto his chest. "Don't worry about the cut, it's nothing. I would have... anything..." She wiped away a tear. "It's nothing."
Garrus wanted to say something, chase the despair off her face. But tiredness began to pull him down.
"Sleep my Angel, everything is going to be fine," she said, her fingers ghosting over his face. "Sleep, I'll be back soon."
Sleep welcomed him like an old friend.
He woke up from the noise of someone running past his bed into the room on the side of the med-bay. He opened his eyes and saw Liara disappear into the room. He heard a sob before the door closed. A short time later, Ashley Williams came into the med-bay. She nodded shortly towards him and went to knock on the door of Liara's room.
"Liara, it's Ash. Can I come in?" She waited at the door, her hand resting on it. After a few moments, it opened and Ashley stepped inside, taking Liara in her arms as the door closed behind her.
Garrus took stock of the pain around his body and decided that it was bearable. He raised himself up on his elbows and slowly raised himself to a sitting position. Dr. Chakwas appeared at his side.
"I see you feel better, Vakarian," she said, looking over the readout from her omni-tool. "I would like to transfer you to a bed, let me just move you closer." She let the pod float on a mass effect field over to a normal bed. With an encouraging push on his back, she made him sit up and scoot over. The backrest was raised and he leaned against it with a sigh, already exhausted by the the movement.
The doctor covered him with a heavy blanket and did another scan of him. "Your blood pressure is a bit high but not alarming. I'd like you to rest some more but I think you can leave the med-bay by tomorrow."
"Is everything alright with the rest of the team?" Garrus asked. "I just saw Liara run into her room."
"I only know that I had to treat some scrapes and a sprained ankle. There was also exposure to acid from..." she looked on her omni-tool, "Rachni? I must admit that was a first for me."
"Rachni?" Garrus felt a chill crawl up his spine, the rachni were supposed to be extinct. The rachni had pulled the galaxy in a devastating war, almost destroying everything. The salarians uplifted the krogan to fight the rachni on their home planet, without them, the galaxy would look very different today.
Shepard stormed in, hearing him call out the word. "Oh yes, rachni, nice isn't it?" She radiated anger like a wild Regrar, even though she did look nothing like that wild predator from Palaven. "They have been breeding Rachni there and - surprise! - the population got out of control and killed everything that moved. That's why they locked up the labs at Peak 15. Binary Helix has some explaining to do." She kept pacing in front of Garrus's bed, a slight limp in her steps.
Dr. Chakwas saw it too and stepped in her way. "Commander, I need to look at your injuries."
"In a minute, doc, I'm fine, really. We have to talk to the Council first. The turian councillor has been bugging me constantly about his turian advisor not responding to messages."
Garrus groaned and looked for his omni-tool. Shepard went to a drawer on the side and took out the omni-tool ring and handed it to him.
"Here you go, check your messages, I set up the camera." She placed a camera drone floating at the foot of his bed and let it project a translucent screen in front. That way they would look directly at the camera while talking to the councillors.
Garrus slipped the ring over his hand, hissing as it scratched over tender skin. He ignored most of the messages that had piled up and only read the ones from the councillor. Most of them were just questions about his well being but one announced that he had forwarded a package from his family to him, hoping that it would arrive on Noveria before the Normandy left. He had no idea what that could possibly be.
Shepard tested the picture, looking that she was in frame next to him propped up on his bed. He trilled his embarrassment about being tucked in bed while talking to the councillors. Shepard smiled warmly at him, noticing his discomfort.
"I know it's not the most dignified position for you," she said, "but the councillors were getting anxious, so I rather have them see you like this than answering a million questions again."
The gash on her cheek looked less red by now but it still pained him to look at it. "Didn't they believe you?"
"I don't know what kind of problem the turian councillor Sparatus has with humans but I think he thought I tied you up in the cargo hold or thrown you out the airlock."
She typed a few commands on her omni-tool but Garrus stopped her with a hand on her arm. He looked towards the door to Liara's lab and hummed questioningly. "What happened down there? Liara just ran through here and was very upset."
"Oh god, yes. I should.. but I don't think she would want me to..." She raked through her hair and stared at the door like she expected it to open any minute.
"Ashley is with her," he said, humming reassuredly.
"Oh yes, good, that's good." She was almost shaking, hugging herself. She still had her armor on but no gloves. Garrus took her hand and let his thumb rub circles on the spot between her thumb and finger. Slowly, she calmed down and relaxed.
"Did you find Matriarch Benezia?"
"Yes, we found her, right at the Rachni queen," Shepard said and Garrus had to hold in a fearful keen. A Rachni queen!
"She was... out of her mind," she continued, staring ahead at nothing. "Something, someone had an influence on her, control. She fought it and managed to snap out of it for a short while. She spoke to Liara, and she told us that Saren's ship can influence everyone around, like brainwashing them." Shepard shook her head and her shoulders fell forward on the memory. "Then she fell back into the influence, began to fight us along with asari commandos. I tried to talk to her, Liara was crying, screaming, trying to get through to her but she was gone. I... I had to shoot her right in front of her daughter." She shook her head in disbelieve, "There was nothing I could do, she would have killed us all."
"Liara knows that," Garrus said, "she will understand."
"Still, how horrible is that? I'm her friend and I shot her mother in the heart, right in front of her, the blood hit her! I... what kind of monster..."
Garrus turned to the side, wincing at the pain and pulled her into an embrace, ignoring her dirty armor. A breath like a sob left her as she hugged him back.
"You are not a monster, Jane, you know that." He took her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. "You did what you had to do."
She took a deep breath and stood up straight, shaking the sadness off. "Yeah, I know. Still, not a good day." She looked around, they were alone in the med-bay, Dr. Chakwas had quietly left without any of them noticing.
"What happened to the rachni queen?" he asked, trying to steer the conversation to something else.
"She sang to me."
"Sang."
"Yes, through an asari she possessed, that's how they communicate. She told me that her children could not hear her song, that's why they went crazy and attacked everyone." She pointed to a few marks on her armor, where acid had eaten away the top layer of her armor. "She was in a cage with a tank of acid over her. I could have killed her. But I let her go on her promise to disappear."
Garrus froze. "You let her go? A rachni queen? Do you have any idea what the rachni did? Spirits save us." He fell back against the backrest, recalling the history lessons from his childhood. The galaxy had almost fallen back then.
Shepard gave him a sad smile. "I knew you wouldn't agree with that. Wrex was also quite vocal about that."
"But why, Shepard? You must have heard about the rachni wars, even if your kind was not spacefaring back then." He just could not understand how she could risk everything like that.
Her eyes turned to small slits. "Yes, our kind, we are just the babies of this galaxy, we know nothing, I get it. Someone should have gotten rid of the babies once and for all when they stumbled into space! How lucky that no one sent the krogan after us." She had gotten louder and the fire in her eyes was almost burning him. She took a breath and calmed down. "She is the last of her kind, killing her would have been genocide."
She looked at him with pleading eyes. "Can't you understand, Garrus? Who am I to decide over the fate of a whole species?"
Garrus fought the fears of the old stories down, he may have decided differently but he could understand her. Despite being such a killer on the field, Shepard had respect for life. "Ok, I understand. I just hope we won't have to fight an army of rachni anytime soon."
"Yeah, I can only hope that won't come back to bite us in the ass one day," she said with a sigh. "But I felt... I felt I could trust her. I can't explain but I believed her promise."
"I hope you're right. The councillors are not going to be happy about this." Garrus squeezed her hand once more and then let her call the council. He looked over her dirty armor. "Don't you want to change?"
"No, let them see that we actually do some work here." She straightened her back and raised her head, only to lower it again with a smile to him. She remembered what he told her about dominant and submissive gestures. He grinned at that memory.
The councillors were expectedly not happy about the rachni queen but they had to accept Shepard's decision. The rachni queen had long left the system and could not be traced.
Garrus listened to her report, he had missed a lot while he was unconscious in the med-bay. There had been a whole lot more fighting with rachni and employees of Binary Helix than he had known. The most interesting part was the information about the location of the Mu relay in the Terminus system. Saren wanted to find something called the Conduit and he had explicitly ordered Matriarch Benezia to get the information from the rachni queen.
The asari councillor looked thoughtful. "The Mu relay was a major hub, connecting hundreds of system before it was lost thousands of years ago. We need to know more about this Conduit so that we know where to look for it."
Sparatus, the turian councillor nodded at that. "Without knowing what exactly the Conduit is, you can only follow Saren's trail. We will forward any information we find." He was going to end the call when Shepard raised her hand.
"About that - your intel sucks!"
The turian councillor stood in shock, his mandibles drooping.
Shepard glared at him through her lashes. "We had no useful information when we got here, we almost got shot as soon as we set a foot in port. The lab was full of geth and rachni and we didn't know anything about that. Saren has an army of geth and a huge ship and none of your sources know where he is? Your intel sucks. If that is the kind of support you have for your Spectres it's no wonder they have such a high mortality rate."
Sparatus pulled his mandibles tight and looked like he was about to explode. The salarian councillor cleared his throat to defuse the situation. "I'm sure we can find a solution..."
"Yes," Shepard said with a firm voice. "I want a team from ANIS dedicated to investigating for us. I'm sure Spectre Kyrik can make all the necessary arrangements."
The councillors reluctantly agreed and ended the call rather quickly. Garrus shook his head.
"You really like making Sparatus angry, do you?"
Her grin was downright wicked. "It does give me a certain joy, I must admit. I wonder if I can make his fringe pop off if I keep at it."
Dr. Chakwas came back as she put the camera away. "Commander, please remove your armor now, I need to examine your injuries."
Shepard sighed but didn't object. Piece by piece, her armor came off and into a transport box and her underarmor as well. Save for her underwear, she was completely naked and waited for Dr. Chakwas to scan her. The coppery smell of blood made Garrus look up. Apparently she had been hit by a bullet at least two times, something had stabbed her upper arm and the rachni acid had eaten through her armor on her hip. Dr. Chakwas began to apply medi-gel to all the injuries.
Garrus had to suppress an angry growl. "Didn't you say you were fine?"
"I am!" She looked down on her body. "Those scratches are not too bad."
The resilience of humans was legendary by now but he was certain that he smelled something else. Something that made a shuddering wave rise up his spine. He scooted closer to her, reached for her before he even realized that he did it.
He sniffed and a protective urge came from some instinctual part of his brain and made him growl. Shepard looked at him with one eyebrow raised and he had to admit that he couldn't explain his behaviour himself. "There is something else," he growled, "something new..." he took another breath and to his own surprise he was getting aroused and the blanket did nothing to hide it.
An amused smile played on Dr. Chakwas lips and Shepard's eyes got wide when she followed her eyes. The doctor did another scan and nodded. "Ah yes, I see. You have finally started your cycle, Commander, it looks like you are ovulating."
"Damn, that means I'll be bleeding in a few days? I really don't need this right now, doc!"
"I know dear but I told you, after what happened on Eden Prime, I had to turn off your implant and it was about time that you let your body have another cycle anyway. You have been postponing that for far too long."
Shepard rolled her eyes. "I'm kind of busy, doc."
"You soldiers always are," the doctor said, "after you have started your period, I'll turn the implant back on and you won't have to deal with this for another year."
Garrus fought through the fog of his arousal that wanted him to grab Shepard and carry her into some dark corner to fuck her brains out and trilled. That got the womens attention and they both turned to him with mild amusement on their faces.
"What is going on?" he asked, suppressing a loud song of desire.
"Commander Shepard has started her menstrual cycle, she will be fertile for the next few days," Dr Chakwas calmly explained, "we usually don't consciously notice the accompanying pheromones but they seem to have an- ahem - unexpected effect on you." She went to her terminal and did a quick search. "There is not much information about the effect of human pheromones on turians, this will be very interesting."
All the tiredness had fallen from his bones and was replaced by feral power, power that made him strong enough to carry her away. He had to protect her, hide her. She was his, his alone and he would take her as his mate and make her forget anybody else!
He reached for her arm, a wild growl rising in him from deep behind his cowl until he gasped in sudden pain. It reminded him that his foggy mind was lying to him.
Shepard came to him on her own accord and he breathed in her divine scent. She kissed him. The world fell away, her lips and her tongue injecting him with life. His arms wrapped around her, faintly he felt the pain as the newly healed skin under his plates was irritated. But he didn't care.
She breathed in just as deeply as him, pressing her forehead to his and his marking scent released in abundance. With a sigh, she pulled away. He immediately missed her presence as a tangible pain in his gizzard.
"Well, it seems like it's a good thing that you are on sick-leave for a few days," she said with a sad smile, "judging by the tent you're making there, you might get a bit distracted on the field." She giggled as she looked towards his erection under the blanket.
He sighed, willing his penis to calm down to end this embarrassing display of his arousal. Thankfully Dr. Chakwas had decided to read something on her terminal, probably more for his benefit than for hers.
She got up as Shepard put her underarmor back on and gathered the box with her armor to leave.
"Commander, I expect you to allow those cuts to heal for at least five hours before you start any strenuous activity." Dr. Chakwas took another look at her omni-tool display. "Other than that, you are cleared for duty but I would like to take another look at your arm before you get into armor again."
"Understood, doc." She turned and made a kiss into the air towards him. "I'll see you later, my Angel, get some rest."
Garrus raised his hand up, placed his longer finger on his forehead and then turned the inside of his finger towards her. This was an old sign, indicating the marking scent between lovers. She probably didn't know what it meant but he needed to do it to show his love.
As she left, taking her pheromones with her, he felt his mind clear. He let his head fall back, finally succumbing to the tiredness of his body.
Dr. Chakwas came over to his bed, arranged the blanket around him and dimmed the lights over his bed.
"I want you to rest some more, try to sleep."
"Doctor, could you give me a rundown on this menstrual cycle that Shepard has?"
The doctor smiled and sat down on the chair. "Well, most humans regulate their hormonal systems with an implant. That implant affects hair growth, reproduction cycles and in some cases it can be tuned to correct imbalances that could cause depressions or mood swings."
Garrus nodded at that. "Turians use implants in the same way, suppressing ovulation is also quite common, especially in the military."
"I see," Dr. Chakwas' face lit up with the joy of acquiring new knowledge. "Now, as you probably know, turian women are fertile about four times in a year. Human women ovulate about every 20 days."
His mandibles fell slack. "Every 20 days? You mean a human woman could get pregnant every month?"
"She stops ovulating once she has gotten pregnant but yes, every month." Dr. Chakwas let out an amused laugh. "I had a conversation about this with a turian colleague, he said that his explains the mystery of how the weak humans managed to overpopulate their planet. It's all in the numbers."
"Spirits, that actually makes sense. And those pheromones..."
"Ah yes, I had not heard about that yet, probably because relationships between humans and turians are still not very common." The doctor looked excited like a kid with a new toy. "There is no research about this but I will investigate it more, discreetly of course."
"What about that bleeding?" he asked, fighting the horrifying pictures in his mind.
"During ovulation, a lining is built up in the uterus to prepare for a pregnancy. That lining has to be shed if no pregnancy occurs." Dr. Chakwas typed something on her omni-tool as she got up. "I'm sure that is also the case for turians."
"Yes, the effund. The expression is not about bleeding but about ejecting something." He found it very strange to call it bleeding.
Garrus felt the exhaustion creep into his body and closed his eyes. Dr. Chakwas excused herself and went back to her desk. He let his thoughts lazily run through all this new information. The rachni queen, the death of Liara's mother, the Mu relay, Shepard standing up to the Council to get ANIS involved and last but not least, the powerful pheromones from his strange human girlfriend.
Without the implants regulation, Shepard would emit those pheromones every month. The craze this caused in his body would probably kill him in the long run. He fell asleep with a new appreciation for that implant.
The things I make the poor guy learn...
Thanks to Credete for quick editing.