Maribellas - Beautiful female … meant more toward a younger female or one with a greater social distance from the speaker.

Asperta - Rough housing, wrestling play

41 Days ASR

Shepard jolted awake, her nerves screaming as if they were being individually electrocuted. "Ow." Lifting her head, the only part of her that didn't hurt, she looked down to see Garrus lying beneath her. Well, that explained all of her body parts either being asleep or in agony. "Got to stop falling asleep on top of the boney, spikey boyfriend," she grumbled.

Garrus jumped under her—that explained what woke her up—his hand leaping to his radio. "Yes?" He bolted upright sending Shepard tumbling off the couch. A quick lunge and a long arm answered her yelp, catching her before she hit the floor.

Pulling her in, he nuzzled her forehead, but then turned his attention to his comms. "Sorry, Doc, I just tried to fling your patient across the room." He chuckled. "Well, you know how she can be." He glanced at Shepard out of the corner of his eye, his mandibles high and spread.

"Glad you're proud of that one," she whispered and then punched him in the shoulder. Scrambling up, she turned on her heel. "Because you will pay for it."

Garrus's soft laughter followed her to the bathroom. "So, Doc, are you and Mordin all right with taking a trip to Palaven?"

Shepard paused inside the door as a heavy, very unhappy rumble rolled across the room. She almost turned back, but then nature demanded that she take care of its demands first. Once the door closed, she couldn't hear anything Garrus said, but that rumble had been an angry one. Something wasn't looking good. Considering both her luck and her earlier headache, she felt safe laying money on that being the cause.

She stabbed her elbows into her thighs, dropped her head into her hands, and yawned.

Note to self: Turian massages induce a comatose state. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery.

A slow smile blossomed as the past two years settled in her head. It wasn't perfect, nor complete or happy, but there, and suddenly she knew how to be Jane Gwendolyn Shepard again. That blank spot had taunted her, laughing at any attempt to reclaim her life. How could she move forward not even knowing if she was the same person?

But she was. Her body had stopped, but the rest of her had continued on, and in the most stubborn, self-destructive way possible. She laughed, low and wry. How could she doubt her identity with an MO like that?

Her smile spread. And Garrus had been fine. Damn, but he'd been fine. Yes, he took refuge in his dreams, but he hadn't been falling apart. His dreams amounted to going home at the end of a long day at work. He hadn't needed her, as comfortable as her presence there became. Nihlus … . Well, as arrogant as she'd been thinking he needed her, he hadn't. She'd been a shadow at midnight, not even offering shade.

As much as Garrus wanted to make her their mystical spirit guru, she knew the truth. She hadn't done anything. Garrus's compassion and Nihlus's undying hope had proven to be the heroes. The best thing she could have done for Nihlus was leave him to Garrus. The pair of them were a genuine miracle.

Talons rapped against the door, distracting her. "Kahri? You ready to get packed up? Forty-five minutes."

She tidied up, washing her face and hands, then headed out. "I didn't get unpacked," she said, giving him a wide, easy smile. "You didn't give me time before throwing family members at me and ripping my clothes off." Stepping into him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and looked up. The teasing died when she met his eyes. "What's going on, big guy?" Rage and fear smouldered, magma beneath the ice, a combination she hadn't seen at that intensity since Feros.

A single, wooden shake of his head bounced her concern off into a corner. "Don't know yet, but Dr. Chakwas and Mordin will meet us on the Passch as soon as we can get over there. She wants to run a few more tests to see what caused your headache."

Shepard stood on tiptoes and pulled him down for a kiss. She started as it impacted against rigid mouth plates. Ouch. Switching to humour, she said, "Trust Cerberus to put me back together using bargain parts they bought over the extranet." Pressing her brow to his as that attempt slammed into the wall as well, she let out a soft sigh. "You know whatever it is, we'll fix it. That's what we do."

His mouth didn't move under hers when she kissed him again. Whatever had him rattled, it was taking all his concentration to hang on to his temper, and he wouldn't be cuddled out of his concern. In the time it had taken her to pee, the air had shifted from moonlit spring night to an incoming storm so charged that it raised the hair on her arms.

"Okay, let's just get ready to go," she said, letting her disappointment bleed out along a sigh. "I can convince you to kiss me once we've met with Karin."

She pulled away. "Can I get some laundry done on the Passch? All my stuff is packed, but this uniform is all I've got that's clean." Looking down at her kit, she cocked her head. "I'm sort of surprised it hasn't crawled across the floor to find somewhere to spawn." Smiling when he shot a cautious, 'I didn't know clothes could get that dirty' glance at her duffel, she turned and walked over to his closet. "You, on the other hand, aren't packed, so let's get moving, General. Your chariot awaits."

That finally got a reaction out of Garrus, although not a verbal one. He simply stalked over to his closet and dragged out his duffel, already mostly packed, just in case. Between them, they finished his packing and loaded their gear into a car in under ten minutes.

The silence followed them into the car, growing heavier each second until it neared levels sufficient to crush the vehicle into a meal tray.

Shepard reached over, wrapping her hand around his. The question burrowed its way up her throat, tenaciously clinging to the back of her tongue even as she tried to swallow it down, but she caged it behind her teeth. Pressing him to tell her what Chakwas had said was about cutting a hole in the silence to make herself more comfortable, so she simply laced her fingers with his talons and waited. Whatever had set his teeth on edge would reveal itself once they reached the Passch.

"Great glowing asses of the Enkindlers." A whistle of awe and delight greeted their entry into Archangel's second docking bay and her first glimpse of the fleet. "Look at you! Aren't you all beautiful?" The Ypres docked in the public docks, and she hadn't had time to spit let alone explore Archangel's assets.

Well, Archangel's less personal assets, anyway.

Excitement prickled along the back of her neck as she looked over what she knew amounted to less than a quarter of the fleet. "They're amazing, Callor." Pulling her hand free, she sprung to the edge of her seat and stared out the window, neck craned, eyes wide, her fingers gripping the dash like a child trying to see over a candy counter.

"Oh! What are those?" she asked, stabbing a finger at a line of medium frigates. What looked like a series of focusers and emitters covered their hulls. Shooting a glanced over at Garrus, she asked, "Shield strippers?"

He nodded, a slight smile flicking his mandibles. "We call them Stingers. They can take down the shields of nearly any ship out there in a single hit. The geth basically upsized their energy drain tech and stuck it inside a hull." He let out a long breath, his neck arching a little, betraying his pride. She reached over and took his hand again. He deserved to be proud. What he'd done with an idea and a little bit of cash amazed her, and she didn't think it would ever stop amazing her.

Garrus pointed to a line of large frigates. "The Stingers are basically glass cannons, so they always go in with at least a few heavy frigates."

Shepard grinned at him, then turned back to the view: row upon row of sleek black and gold ships. "They're gorgeous, and not at all bug shaped. How did you talk the geth out of that?" When he didn't answer, she squeezed his fingers. As they progressed down the docking bay, one of the dreadnoughts appeared, hanging in space just outside the massive hangar doors, far too large to dock. Shepard whistled again. "Wow. Add that baby to my christmas list."

She leaned back in her seat. "How many crew on one of those beauties?" she asked, her mind racing, trying to encompass the size of the organization.

Garrus shifted, straightening a little. "Not as many as you'd think. Despite being half the size of the Destiny Ascension, they only require an organic crew of fifteen hundred." He chuffed. "Only fifteen hundred."

"Geth crew?" Shepard's mouth twisted a little. "Bet the council will love that. Another reason for Archangel to be public enemy number one."

A sharp chuff answered that. "If our breaking the Treaty of Farixen wasn't reason enough." Shrugging, sharp enough to cut, he stiffened. "Not that it matters. Even with the integrated geth servers, I don't know how we'll ever find enough crew. Archangel has exploded lately, but still, we're just over five thousand strong." He squeezed her fingers, mandibles twitching once before drawing in tighter than before. "Would have been a lot fewer if someone hadn't dropped a tiny, redheaded nuclear weapon on the mercs."

Shepard pulled his hand to her lips, then allowed their laced fingers drift down onto her lap.

One-handed, talons moving deftly over the controls, he brought the car in to land at the end of the Passchendaele's ramp. "All the frigates were running with skeleton crews. And now, with all the shipyards shut down, we aren't making fighters for the carriers … not that we have enough trained fighter pilots." He let out a ragged sigh as he released her hand. "Not concerns for right now, however." He shrugged his armour up his shoulders and tugged at its yoke.

Shepard nodded and climbed out. Leaning into the back seat, she grabbed her gear. "I swear I carried all this stuff off a ship less than twenty-four hours ago," she said, not sure if she was joking or complaining. She boosted her duffel up her shoulder, and sorted a gun case into either hand before looking up at the ship. "So much for our couple of days just for us."

Garrus awaited her at the bottom of the ramp and wrapped his arm around her, gun case and all. "We'll find some time. And I think you'll like Adrien. He's a troublemaker, too."

The shuttle bay teemed with activity: crew stowing gear, several helping the quartermaster with a shipment of supplies, still more checking systems. Judging by sounds of life echoing everywhere, the Passch must not be heading out with a skeleton crew that trip. Conversation and laughter, banging metal and sliding crates rang off the hull: the familiar, welcome music of her life. She breathed it in, filling herself with it.

Shepard didn't get a chance to answer the troublemaker accusation before two cadets trotted up to relieve them of their kits. "Both for your cabin, General?" one asked, then immediately turned a red so brilliant that it put Sparky's blushes to shame. "Um, I mean—"

Garrus simply passed his gear over. "Log our weapons in with the quartermaster, then my kit goes to my quarters." The general slipped Shepard's duffel off her shoulder. "Anything in here that you don't want people to see?" he asked her without any trace of his usual humour.

Shepard shook her head, a chorus of popcorn crunching sounds betraying the extent Garrus's tension had infected her. "Nope, nothing scandalous, just stinky." She stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders.

Garrus passed her duffel to one of the cadets. "Take this to the laundry, then it can be sent up to my quarters." A curt nod answered their salutes. "Thank you." He slipped his arm back around her, guiding her past the nearly full elevator to the stairs.

Shepard chuckled as she trotted up the curved staircase. "Sick of slow elevators?" she asked, casting a quick glance back.

Garrus climbed three stairs at a time, his stare fixed on the deck plating. "And I didn't want to ride up with twenty people eyeballing us so they could giggle about how adorable we are later." He passed her at the top, and held an arm out to guide her. "The layout of the heavy frigates is almost identical to the Normandy," he said. Crew deck has my quarters, Captain L'Tsai's quarters and medbay all in the stern; galley and dining midship; crew quarters, heads, gym, and lounges in the bow."

"She's gorgeous, General. A worthy flagship." She stepped into his side and took his hand. "So, let's stop fussing and stalling, and go find out what Karin told you that has your teeth clenched so tight that I can hear them shattering."

Gripping her hand tight enough that it hurt, he nodded, and led the way. Just before they reached the medbay door, the docking clamps released, their heavy thump and shiver reverberating through the ship.

Shepard closed her eyes and smiled as the inertial dampeners kicked in, her belly doing a little swoop in the fraction of a second between Omega's gravity holding her to the deck and the Passchendaele's taking over. "That never gets old," she said, turning a smile to her wall of angry turian. Despite softening ever so slightly, he just pulled her toward medbay. She sighed. "Being hauled around like a misbehaving puppy does, however."

Her right brow arched when he didn't even twitch. Maybe she was dying. Could they have missed a massive brain tumor or brain-snacking parasite in the plethora of scans she'd had over the past week or two?

When the door opened to medbay, Shepard stopped short, letting out a low whistle as she ogled the immaculate, gleaming banks of state of the art equipment. "Holy crap. Look at this place. It's like walking into a really clean oven, but with beds and snazzy equipment." She let Garrus pull her over the threshold. "Is it bad that I want to take vid to send to TIM, just to see him cry."

"Shepard, come in and hop up on a bed," Dr. Chakwas directed, her lack of preamble grinding up the last kernel of Shepard's humour. The doc gestured toward the first of eight beds, hovering as Shepard did as she'd been told. Both doctors crowded in on her, their haste dragging handfuls of bad-tempered nettles down her spine. She expected Garrus to overreact to any and all threats to her wellbeing; them, not so much.

Mordin's scanner attacked before Shepard even managed to get settled. "Okay, so you know ... you two are freaking me out. Stop it. What's going on with my head?"

Chakwas looked from Shepard to Garrus before she activated her omnitool and focused her attention on her scans. "Did you see Operative Lawson before you left?"

Shepard spun to face Garrus, slapping a hand against his chest, banging on the door. Why the hell had they locked her out? "Miranda? What does Miranda have to do with my headache? I was joking about the cheap replacement parts."

Garrus stepped up behind her, pressing his hand in the center of her back, but spoke to Chakwas, "I didn't see her, and my people reported that she returned to the Ypres immediately after I confronted her."

Shepard stabbed a hand up between them. "Hold up. Stop talking around me. What about Miranda?" Something cold and slimy wormed its way through her guts drawing an ugly picture. She winced away from it before the connections started linking up in her head. "Someone had better start explaining what the hell is going on before I let the twitchy inner bitch loose."

Mordin stepped in front of Shepard, the set of his mouth even more grim than usual. He stared at her for a few seconds before he began tapping at his omnitool. "Captain, discovered something during last scan." He opened a graphic file, presumably of her brain. A speck about the size of her baby finger nail glowed near the base of her skull. A web of spider-silk tendrils snaked out of it, weaving a fine web that appeared to infiltrate most of her brain.

Shepard leaned in to look at it and then shrugged, trying for casual dismissal despite the churning in belly. "We've never been introduced, and I don't know if you noticed, but I have a metric assload of tech inside this skull." She glanced from one to the other. "I only breathe and have a pulse because of a tiny supercomputer, but I couldn't tell you where it is or what it looks like." Glancing up at Mordin, she waited for him to explain, but when he just started another scan, she asked, "Was I being too subtle there? What the hell is it?"

The salarian looked over at Chakwas, his hand lifting to rub at his lip. The silence between them screamed as it added a cheese grater to the nettles raking down Shepard's spine. Instead of answering her, they turned to one another, apparently communicating telepathically as they compared data.

She let out a thin, exasperated hiss when the scanners turned on her again. "Okay, come on, people. More information, less drama."

Garrus rubbed her back. "Let them finish their scans, Kahri. They'll explain when they're done."

Shepard huffed. "When has patience ever been one of my virtues?"

Karin looked up from her omnitool and stepped away from Mordin, her face a study in professional compassion. Despite the fact it meant bad news, the effect eased Shepard's nerves somewhat. At least it wasn't strained bewilderment. "It's a behavioural modification chip, Shepard."

Shepard stared at the doctor for a solid minute, her brain trying to comprehend the sounds that had entered her ears. Liquid nitrogen poured into her head, flash freezing everything but for a single, impotent sentence that parroted the doc.

"Behavioural modification chip." Her voice disappeared into the resonant throbbing of the engines, the gale-roar of the air vents, and the thunder of her blood rushing through her veins. No wonder the docs had stood there checking things over and over. No wonder Garrus looked as though he could bite straight through the hull. Cerberus had hacked her brain.

"Yes, Captain." Karin let out a long, tight breath, slamming a door on the deafening silence. "A control chip, to put it crudely."

"Burn it," Shepard said without even a second worth of thought, the words hissing between clenched teeth. Liquid fury dripped down her cheeks, but she didn't give the tears the satisfaction of wiping them away. Her entire return from the dead amounted to a lie. No, not a lie, a joke. We need Captain Shepard to lead us in the fight. Bullshit. They needed a fucking puppet to hold up and dance for the kiddies.

Sweet fucking … . Every time Miranda activated that damned omnitool … . How many bloody times had that thing come up, right in her face? Dance dead soldier girl, dance. A rush of acid, sour and powerless, raced up her throat, but she bullied it back down.

How entertaining she must have been, stomping around, taking control. How many decisions made over the past month and a half had actually been hers? She could pretty much guarantee that anytime she'd changed her mind or backed down it had been the damned chip. The thing's tendrils itched and burned beneath her skull, mocking her.

The medbay dropped as silent as it had been cacophonous the moment before. She bit back the tears, cooling the fury by sheer force of will. They'd get no more of her than they'd already taken. Not one gram.

"Burn it." When Mordin hesitated, Shepard looked to Chakwas. "Leave it in place, but fry the fucker. Make sure it can't so much as change my coffee order." She gripped the salarian's wrist when he moved away, the expression on his face far from convinced. "Not a single word leaves this room."

Chakwas nodded. "Our loyalty is to you, Captain, not Miranda or the nightmare she works for." Professional concern morphed ever so slightly into fear for a friend. "But this thing has tendrils spread all through your brain. We couldn't remove it even if you wanted us to. And if we try to overload it, those filaments could do some serious damage to your brain tissue." Her jaw clenched, as much a tell as Chakwas could allow herself. "Not to mention what an electrical discharge could do to your implants, including the computer that keeps you alive."

Shepard braced to say she didn't care what happened. Living as a slave to Cerberus, being forced to do who-the-hell-knew-what … . No. She'd rather be dead.

But then Garrus cleared his throat. "If this thing has been in her head for the last month, why is she just getting headaches from it today?"

"Because we slept together," Shepard said, speaking even as the idea solidified in her head. "She heard about our night and started cranking it up." She glanced back. "She used it three or four times just in the space of the briefing. Most I can remember prior is twice on the day you were shot by the rocket."

Garrus nodded. "She's worried that you'll tell Cerberus where to go."

"Yeah." Shepard took a deep breath and straightened, bracing the heels of her hands against the edge of the bed. "So, how do we kill it?"

Mordin bent over the computer on the desk, his fingers flying over the interface. "Device possesses defense mechanisms. Need to disable in one strong attack without damaging rest of implants or brain tissue. Difficult. Perhaps impossible."

Chakwas stepped between Shepard and the salarian, her entire body angled for a fight. "Any attack strong enough to disable the chip could well burn out the rest of the captain's implants if not her entire neural network. I don't make a habit of electrocuting my patients." She shook her head, a solid wall of denial that Shepard knew wouldn't back down. "If the chip's defenses shunt the energy, sending it arcing through her skull, brain injury would be the best we could hope for."

Mordin's fingers sprang to his mouth, his brows lowering over narrowed eyes. "Possible to attack physically. Enter skull, use precise laser directly on chip. Defenses aimed to deflecting exterior attack or accident." He focused back on the computer for a moment, but Shepard could see the wheels turning. "Yes. Yes, should work. Minimal danger of disability or death." He looked up, his features animated in a way that almost frightened her.

"Define minimal," Garrus said, his voice a low growl that rumbled out of his chest.

Shepard wouldn't mind that definition either considering Mordin was suggesting using a laser to fry a tiny piece of tech buried inside her brain. She looked back to Karin. "Living through the procedure is my first choice. What do you think, Doc?"

Karin scowled. "It could work, but the chip isn't just sitting on the surface of your brain with a little heat resistant pad beneath it." She turned back to her omnitool. "This would be intricate brain surgery, and we'd be digging through the part of your brain that is responsible for balance, movement, and coordination."

"So, I could end up disabled." Shepard twisted to look into Garrus's eyes, his hand like a brand burning through the back of her uniform. His ice-blue stare met hers, a false calm circulating between them, the eye of the hurricane. He'd never tell her not to do it. He respected her too much, and he knew her too well. She was also pretty sure that if their places were reversed, he'd be telling them to do the exact same thing. Her general would never allow himself to be anyone's slave.

"They don't get to steal all of this from me," she said. Certainty and resolve calmed the nettle sting along her spine, a balm that seeped into her muscles and settled into her bones. "They don't get to steal you away from me, and they'll try again and again."

He nodded and his hand dropped away. "I'll be back in a second." Without meeting her eyes, he spun on his talons and walked out the door.

The mattress squeaked under her palms, the only sound as both doctors concentrated on their omnitools. Shepard walked her butt back a little on the mattress and glanced at the door every ten seconds.

Dr. Chakwas cleared her throat after a good ten minutes, stepping into Shepard's narrowed vision. "I'm assuming that you're going to bulldoze through the risks and want this done now?"

Shepard braced her hands and leaned forward, pulling her shoulders up to her ears. "Will waiting change anything? Can you better prepare given a day or a week?" Looking up from under shuttered eyelids, she shrugged. "If you can tell me that waiting will severely increase my odds—"

A tiny grenade wrapped in cotton batting went off inside Shepard's skull, dropping her head straight into her hand. A wall of napalm rolled along the midline of her skull, flooding her eyes and filling her nose with the scent of old copper. "Damn it." Pressing the heel of her right hand into her temple, she glanced up. "Scan me, Doc. I think she's putting the whammy on me again."

"Damn." Chakwas looked up at the door when it opened. "Did you do this?" she demanded, as Garrus stepped through, followed by Nihlus. The orange of her omnitool burned far too bright, sending Shepard into retreat behind her eyelids.

"I did," Nihlus said. "We're almost to the relay. Garrus wanted to test the chip's range, so I contacted the Ypres, told Yeoman Chambers to pack Shepard's gear." Two long strides crossed the floor, and then his talons brushed over her hair. "Are you all right?" He sat on the other side of the bed, his hip pressing against the small of her back.

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, I'll live. Just don't do that again." Leaning into Nihlus a little, she focused on Dr. Chakwas. "Burn it."

The doctor nodded and let out a long sigh. "I don't see that we have a choice." She lifted her omnitool. "We'll need to do some very precise scans to map out the surgery, so you'll have to be sedated." Her manner softening without losing the professional corners, Chakwas closed the metre between them. "I'll keep you under for the entire procedure. When you wake, you may experience disorientation, dizziness, difficulty moving or speaking."

Nihlus pressed in behind her. "We'll be here the whole time," he said, a warm hand wrapping over her ribs.

Shepard looked at Garrus, who stood closer to the door. He nodded and stepped up, his arm circling her shoulders as he leaned down to press his brow to hers.

"They've got to disable it before she does damage," he said, his voice a low, comforting rumble despite sounding as though he wished he could be saying anything else. "But Nihlus is right. We aren't going anywhere."

Shepard kissed him and smiled, trying to pass her certainty on to him. She'd come through five by five. She knew it. "Hey, I'll be fine. They used to do this sort of thing to people's brains all the time and call it treatment." Shepard shrugged, tilting her head a little to one side. "I might wake up sane."

"Wrong part of the brain, and it was a barbaric practice that was discontinued over a century ago, Shepard," Chakwas said, her protest strident and stiff-backed. "And it was never proven to cure mental illness of any sort."

Shepard let out a long, dramatic sigh. "Damn, well, a girl can hope, right?" She gave Chakwas a wink and glanced back at her torins. "Let's get this show on the road. I want to have a little vacation time once we get to Palaven."

Chakwas levelled a stern finger at Nihlus and Garrus. "If you two are staying, disinfect and keep out from underfoot"

Chuckling, Shepard shrugged. "You heard the doctor, get moving and stay out of the way." She grinned, then pulled Garrus in for another kiss. "See you in a couple of hours. You owe me some days without any craziness."

That time he kissed her back, his arms pulling her in tight. "You'll get them," he promised before releasing her.

Ducking her head a little, Shepard beckoned Nihlus over into a hug, then took a deep breath. "All right, Docs. I'm all yours."

Mordin passed her a gown while Chakwas lowered the privacy shades over the windows. Equipment rolled in from everywhere, and quicker than she would have guessed, she found herself face down with her head in some sort of padded clamp-shaped torture device.

"Hey, you two." Shepard reached out her hands for Garrus and Nihlus. She squeezed Garrus's hand. "You were wrong, you know?" Letting out a long, sighing breath, she relaxed into the drugs' heavy, warm sleepiness. "I did nothing but lurk in the corner for two years. Every brave and beautiful thing you did was all you." She squeezed their talons. "I didn't do anything but watch."

"Shepard … ." Garrus crouched down next to the bed.

Forcing her eyes open took more energy than she would have thought, but she managed to peek out from under her ozmium eyelids. "If this doesn't work, take care of one another."

Her torin leaned in to nuzzle her ear. "You're going to be just fine."

Nihlus just reached out to stroke the hair around her ear, those remarkably green eyes narrow and glassy.

Smiling, eyes refusing to remain open any longer, Shepard faded into the black. "Damn right, I will be. I love you … ."

The rabbit hole opened beneath Shepard, sending her tumbling head over heels into the darkness.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Later

The darkness peeled back, not whole and elegant like the curl of a perfectly peeled mandarin, but in tiny pieces, disjointed and patchy, torn apart like an old navel orange.

Shepard forced her eyes open. Shapes, light gray blur against a dark gray blur, moved around her bed. Dizzying. Her stomach heaved, and a white blur appeared under her head. She tried to wipe her mouth, but her arm remained stuck to the bed, impossibly heavy. Someone stepped in to do it for her.

"Captain?" A dark shape appeared above her, blurry and washed out into shades of grey. "Captain! I need you to remain calm."

Miranda? Wait, where was she? Pain chopped her into wafer-thin slices. No. No, she couldn't be … . She'd woken up. Panic grabbed hold of her diaphragm, yanking at it until all she could do was gasp in shallow, ineffectual breaths.

Shepard tried to lift her head, but nothing happened. Trying to move her hands and feet, she discovered that they didn't move either.

"It'll be over in just a few more moments, Captain," the woman said, the blur of her face leaning over. Miranda? Chakwas? "Just stay calm and breathe slowly. We're just assessing your motor coordination."

Breathe slowly? She couldn't get any air. Her hands insisted on leaping to her throat, but they wouldn't move. Why wouldn't anything move? The blurs began to swirl around her in lopsided orbits. Her stomach heaved again. Air! Damn it, she just needed air!

"Shepard hyperventilating," a sharp male voice said. Wilson? No … Mordin. "Heart rate becoming erratic.

She winced away from a bright, orange light as it exploded above her.

"You're fine, Shepard," the woman said. Chakwas?

It had to be Chakwas. Why couldn't she think? She'd woken up. Over a month ago, Miranda had dragged her back half-healed and in unbelievable pain, but alive.

Garrus! Where was Garrus? She'd found him … was back where she belonged. She tried to speak, tried to call for him, but a fine croaking sound was all that she could muster.

Then a strong, calloused grip encircled her hand, and a steel gray blur appeared next to her. "You're okay, Kahri. It was a long surgery, but they deactivated the chip." Talons brushed her cheek with the gentlest of touches, calming her frantic heartbeat. "They'll let you go back to sleep in a second, and when you wake up, you'll be back to normal."

He nuzzled her cheek, mouth plates gentle and comforting. "Go back to sleep. Nihlus and I are right here."

"She should drift back off now," Chakwas said from somewhere above. "Things are looking very … ."

You would have to be half mad to dream this up.

We're all mad here.

Still later ...

Strong arms wrapped behind her back and under her thighs, cradling her tight against an angular body. Shrouded in softness and warmth, she melted into the comfort and safety of those arms, her whole body deliciously heavy and loose. She smiled as the faint sounds of traffic and hushed conversation drifted into the stillness, wrapping her in a beautiful, familiar cocoon … one she hadn't experienced in a long time.

"We're just about there," Garrus whispered, his breath soft on her face. How did he always manage to smell like autumn and cloves? "Go back to sleep."

Instead, Shepard opened her eyes. Darkness filled the car, bodies in the other seats, hushed in the soft glow of the control panel and the lights flickering past. Eyes slipping closed, she curled into her lover's arms. "It went okay?"

Garrus kissed the top of her head. "It went better than they expected. You might have a limp and a bit of dizziness for a few days, but when the swelling goes down, you'll be one hundred percent." He let out a long sigh. "Go back to sleep. We'll be at my parent's home in a half hour."

Shepard smiled and nodded then glanced toward the front seat. "Hello, sir."

Herros chuckled, the warm rumble so very much like his son's. "Good to see you again, Captain."

Shepard leaned up to kiss Garrus's mandible and snuggled back in. "This is my favourite place in the galaxy." Another yawn cracked her jaw then the rabbit leaped up and yanked her back down the hole.

42 Days ASR

Cool air, damp with rain, curled past Shepard's nose, teasing her with the sweet scents of rich earth, succulent plant life, and flowers. She took a deep breath. Oh, the flowers! Spicy with a honey tang, like clover in late June, it danced with a feminine, exotic perfume. The scent reached down inside her, whispering softly of romance and a more amorous sort of love as it curled deep into her belly. A gentle smile eased across her face as she filled her lungs with its magic and stretched out, purring like a fat, happy cat as silky-soft covers caressed her from head to toe.

Nothing better than waking up in a cozy bed on a rainy morning.

Lifting her head off her poofy, cylindrical pillow, she looked around the room. A peaceful sort of watery, blue-gray light trickled in through a large window that curved to follow the winged shape of the wall. Even though the room was foreign, she definitely recognized the gangly turian featured in holos on the walls and scattered on shelves.

Shepard sat up and crossed her legs, grinning as she took in her Callor's history. Shelves of hideth turram trophies, academic awards, datapads, action figures—action figures! She resisted the urge to squeal a little … barely—covered two walls. Art spread across the other walls and squeezed into every spare space. Sweet baby Jesus, the art!

Heart beating hard and steady, Shepard climbed out of bed and walked over to the closest, her hands lifting to her mouth. Awe battled with disbelief. Her Callor had drawn or painted all of them? A smile blossomed behind her fingers. Of course he had. The combination of that eye, that perception, and that big, gorgeous heart … how could he not be an artist? She reached out to run reverent fingers along the edge of a painting, her heart aching with a quiet joy at witnessing that hidden piece of her love.

From simple sketches to lush landscapes and portraits painted in pigments of all types, the walls exploded with a beauty and talent that would have made her mother light-headed. She stopped in front of a piece done in charcoals or something similar. Herros and a young turian, Solana, she presumed, sat hunched over a game, their expressions riveted and priceless. Herros was winning, that was clear from the arch of his neck and the cocky set to his shoulders. Solana looked ticked off and determined to kick his butt.

"Oh, Garrus," she whispered, "you beautiful genius. What the hell were you doing in C-Sec?"

After another moment, she turned to walk over to the window, testing her limbs as she went. Her balance felt a little unsteady, and her left leg kept threatening to give at the knee. Considering they'd shot a laser into her brain, she couldn't really complain. No, definitely more profound gratitude than complaints. Garrus and the docs had freed her from chains she hadn't even known enslaved her.

She looked out through the rain-spattered glass but her view of the grounds below were obscured by a huge canopy. Oh well, she supposed the only way to discover what hid beneath it was to head down and see. She turned back to the room, spotting her kit at the end of the bed, but no sign of a note of anything to tell her where Garrus had gone.

Unsure about the protocol of waking up alone in an unfamiliar turian household, she opted for getting dressed and seeing if she could find Garrus. Hopefully wandering the house wasn't incredibly rude.

She dressed quickly, but then sat on the side of the bed for a few minutes, basking in the wonderful sense of peace. The Cerberus station had felt like a giant venus fly trap. The Ypres still felt like enemy territory. Omega felt grimy and revolting. Nowhere she'd been since she woke up had just felt like … well, like a home.

Pushing up, she walked to the door and opened it, peeking out. A hallway curved toward a set of stairs. Probably a good place to start. Or it would be, if she didn't have to pee quite so badly. Bathroom first. She cringed slightly and turned away from the stairs, hoping for an open door. Were turian toilets different from human ones? Accidentally peeing in a closet might not be the best way to meet her boyfriend's mother.

She found the washroom, and even managed to figure out how to work the facilities, but winced as the plumbing shattered the quiet, introducing her to the household. Guess what everyone? Shepard's up and peeing! Good morning, Vakarian household!

Tiptoeing, she made her way to the stairs, and then down into a huge, beautiful room. A massive earthwork fireplace stood in the center, a sitting room on one side, what looked like a kitchen on the other.

"Good morning," a soft, flanged voice said, drawing Shepard's attention to a chair in front of a set of open glass doors at the back of the house.

"Hello," Shepard replied, creeping forward a little. She smiled at the frail but elegant tarin dwarfed by a heavy mantle of blankets. "I hope it's okay that I just came down."

The female turian turned, the movement appearing to cause her pain that didn't show in her gentle smile, the expression as lovely and welcoming as the home. "Of course, maribellas. Come and sit with me. Garrus and Nihlus are sparring, but I see far more asperta going on out there than actual sparring." A thin, trembling arm appeared out from under the blankets, pointing to a chair. "Please, come and sit, Jane. I've been looking forward to meeting you for … well, for two cycles." The tarin smiled, a soft flutter of mandibles. "May I call you Jane?"

Shepard wiped her palms down the front of her trousers, and hurried over. "Oh, of course. Yes, sure, Jane is fine." She offered her hand to the female, wincing at her social clumsiness. Good lord, you'd swear she'd been raised by wolves. "Sorry, please forgive my manners."

"There is nothing to forgive. Welcomed as family, enter our dwelling, and take your ease." Garrus's mother gripped Shepard's wrist, the dry contact stronger than the captain would have guessed. It and the tarin's kind, open expression settled her nerves instantly.

"Please sit. We can get to know one another while they play." She smiled, dark, brilliant blue eyes sparkling. "I'm Garrus and Nihlus's mari, by the way. My name is Treana, but my friends call me Trea." Again, that graceful sweep of mandibles. "I'd be honoured if you felt comfortable to use the more familiar form."