Disclaimer: Everything recognisable is Bioware's. Everything else is mine.

A/N: And here is the fourth chapter. But God how LONG it took me to get this out of my brain! My apologies for the delay, all. As you know, I cherish feedback and suggestions, so if any come to you while you're reading, don't be shy about dropping me a line.

Happy weekend everyone.

Yours faithfully,

L.G.

Day 2

Two messages define Shepard's day

Time, it's said, passes slowest when you want it to pass quickly. Get your hands on something hot, and a second will feel like an hour. Get your hands on someone hot though, and an hour feels like a second. In the Captain's cabin aboard the Normandy, Ami Shepard was having one of those 'hands on something hot' moments. Hypothetically speaking at least. It'd been two days since she left the Citadel, and for the love of all that's holy it felt like two years.

She was sat at her private terminal now, simmering down after a massively unhelpful vidlink conversation with the Asari Councillor regarding the possibility of coming together with Humanity and other races in the effort against the Reapers. A pile of data pads five tall sat on her desk to her left, and a mug of coffee was on her right. Neither of these things had her attention though. She was looking at the little makeshift calendar in the lower right corner of the screen. It was eight boxes wide, and the first two were each home to a little 'X'. One for each day she'd been out on the job.

Touching her fingers to the haptic interface, she moved the cursor over box number three and circled it longingly before glancing at the clock.

[14:05:26] it read.

Which meant it was much too early to even consider crossing off that third box.

There were still six days until the Normandy was due back at the Citadel.

Six whole days until she would see Thane again.

Not that she was counting or anything.

With a vaguely disgruntled grumble she abandoned the calendar, raked her fingers through her hair and fanned the data pads out in a half circle on her desk, glancing across them as she gave her jaw an absent itch. When she felt the still faintly dry skin beneath her fingers, she couldn't help but grin.

He was inescapable, it seemed.

The morning after her meeting with Thane, she'd woken up covered in blotches of prickly heat. Anywhere he'd touched her had broken out in the stuff. There were spots on her brow, her cheeks, on her jaw and throat, between her fingers, along her forearms…Everywhere!

She'd cursed herself black and blue for not thinking to use the creams Mordin had left for her, but let herself off the hook when she realised, after a frantic search of her quarters, that the Alliance had kindly disposed of the stuff in her absence. Luckily, after a mortally embarrassed trip to Dr Chakwas and a well-known white lie – 'It's psoriasis doc, I promise' - she'd managed to procure something to calm her skin down, and while it wasn't nearly as effective as Mordin's ointments, it did the job. She was barely red at all now and the itching had died right down, though she hoped that it'd be cleared up entirely by the time she saw Thane again. She'd never lie to him, but if she could omit information that would cause him to worry, she would.

Shaking off her contemplations, Shepard edged her seat over a little so she was level with the data pads she was working on, and set about syncing them so the feeds they were showing her ran in tandem. Reports of Reaper activity across the five sectors of the galaxy - Inner Council Space; Outer Council Space; Earth Alliance Space; the Attican Traverse and the Terminus Systems - scrolled down as they were updated.

Most of the data were things like casualty reports, Reaper sightings and observations by key eyewitnesses. Anything that might allow her to get a feel for how things were progressing. Of how the Reapers were conducting their invasion. She sought patterns, searching the details for the logic that underpinned them. If she could see that, perhaps the enemy would seem less like an iron fist that crushed all in its way, and more like a real foe. One that could be defeated through tactics and martial strength.

It was a long shot, sure, but she was a soldier to the bone. She had to do something.

Looking at the data available at present, the trouble seemed more or less confined to the southern sectors of the galaxy. There were outlying blips here and there, but Earth and Palaven were, as yet, the only home worlds to have been hit.

As the numbers ran, the Commander sat her chin in her hand and let her mind work over what she knew. What fleets the Alliance had left had scattered after the assault on Arcturus, but they were in contact and, despite the losses, were at acceptable strength. That said her mother, the newly promoted Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard, had contacted her recently expressing concern about the way the war was playing out.

'It's not the trenches that're bothering me' she'd written, 'it's the boardroom.'

The fact that the message was cryptic didn't bother her. They had their own way of writing back and forth when either or both of them was on active duty and couldn't give specifics. But expressing concern about the 'boardroom' - the Brass; High Command - that was new. No one wanted to be heard speaking doubtfully about the Alliance's ability to handle the war. Doubts though were not in and of themselves a weakness, and they weren't unique to the elder of the Shepard women either. Ami herself had raging doubts which, if she thought about it, could be alluded to as an issue with 'the boardroom' too.

Bluntly speaking, she didn't think all the faith High Command had in the Crucible was warranted. She'd been ordered to go along with the thing's construction, and she was, but it brought her back right up to think that the fate of the entire galaxy was seemingly resting, not on its tactical and military strength, but on a slip of data found by an Asari who was looking for it in a Prothean archive on Mars.

It was too damn easy.

Too convenient.

But she was a soldier. If her superiors didn't ask, she couldn't say.

...Or...could she?

Her mother had sent her a missive expressing her concerns after all. If that wasn't a request for an opinion from a superior, nothing was. She'd need to be discrete of course, just like Hannah had been, but the fact that she had sent her a message at all hinted at the Alliance's lines being secure enough to make the threat of having her arse chapped for insubordination minimal.

Leaving the array of pads alone for a moment, she shuffled her chair back over to her terminal and opened a new window. She then logged into her mail account, opened a new message page and began piecing together what she wanted to say.

What she wrote, and what her mother would read it as, were entirely different.

To: [shepardHG.6742]

Subject: Re: How's the weather?

/Senior, good to hear from you.

Hi mum. I got your message.

..

The trenches are hot, but we're moving on through.

We've been on the frontline, but we're not in immediate danger.

Got a call from a man about a thing.

We're doing routine pick-up-and-drop missions at the moment.

Lots of fire in the south of the disc.

The southern areas of the galaxy are getting hit hard.

..

The ornament on the boardroom table is ugly as all hell.

I'm worried about what High Command is planning/talking about/doing.

It needs replacing with a new one.

I think we need a new plan.

Want to go shopping?

I want to talk to you about the new plan I think we need.

Money's tight, but a little browsing never hurt anyone.

I haven't got a blind clue what this new plan should be yet.

..

Make my coffee black. Two mugs.

When we next meet, I'll need a strong drink and a long talk.

..

Best regards,

I love you.

..

Junior.

Amial./

After a quick read-through to check that the phrases she'd used were as accurate as possible, Ami clicked the [Send] button and closed the page. She doubted anything would come of sharing her concerns, but she felt a hint better having done so. At least she and her mother were on the same page now.

Happy with her progress thus far, she scooted her chair back towards the data pads and made a quick inventory of the numbers. Nothing much seemed to have changed in the few minutes she'd been occupied. Palaven was still haemorrhaging lives by the minute and Earth was just as bad off. No real activity had been reported in the northern sectors yet, but it was early days.

She reached to pick up a couple of the pads then, but stopped short when her terminal blipped at the receipt of a new message.

Huh, she thought, either I caught mum just right or…

With a quick shuffle she was back where she'd been moments before, her fingers poised over the haptic interface. A couple of clicks took her to her inbox and she glanced at the new message, only to have her stomach practically fall through the floor when she saw its subject.

[A Message Incoming] it read.

Even though the sender's address had been redacted, she knew by the way those words had been written that it was from Thane. He was empathetic to how paranoid she was about being misled by an impostor masquerading as someone she cared for, and made a habit of leaving traces of himself within the notes he wrote to her to make sure she knew they were genuine. Sneaking his favourite contraction of her first name into the title was but one of the multitude of increasingly inventive ways through which he reached out to her in his writing.

Muffling a squeak she'd have sworn blind didn't come from her, she opened the message, scooting closer to the screen as she did. As soon as she read the first word, imperfect memory be damned, she could almost hear him reading right along with her.

/Siha,

..She looks at me, her eyes calm, back straight. 'We're back in eight days' she says, 'and if, by then, you've sent your medical files over to Chakwas so she knows what to do with you when you arrive, and if your doctors here clear you to travel, you're as good as conscripted.'..

It is done.

I await you.

Count with me. Six days now.

- Thane/

After she'd read and re-read the message, Ami allowed herself a couple of minutes of utter and complete uselessness. She simply sat, absorbing every word and digesting the information the note contained while grinning so widely her jaw ached. He'd actually done it. Was actually coming. Suddenly things felt just a hint more serious.

She'd need to bring Dr Chakwas up to speed on all of this sharpish.

When she'd visited her yesterday morning in search of an antidote to her skin issues, she'd been careful not to openly acknowledge that the problem had been caused by Thane. The only nod she gave to him was calling it 'psoriasis', which was her code-name for Drell-caused itching of all kinds, and she only did that so the doctor didn't give her something that could inadvertently make the reaction worse. Outside of this though, she hadn't even mentioned having seen Thane, let alone spoken of how well he was or of his want to re-join the Normandy.

There were a couple of reasons for this.

The one she would have given off the cuff if asked was that she just didn't want to get her hopes up, or get Chakwas's hopes up for that matter, about the possibility of her mate coming aboard. She knew the woman cared for him in her own way, and knew as well that she'd be awful disappointed if a second opinion from Huerta debarred him from travelling with them once more.

Keeping it to herself had been hard. She'd even become a little short with her when she tried to examine the blotches on her face more closely, but she'd reined herself in, and had escaped with a pot of skin cream and her composure intact.

Mostly.

And that 'mostly'..that little wobble she'd had which made her snap at the doc, added to the fact that she hadn't so much wanted to leave as soon as the pot hit her fingers, but NEEDED to if she was going to keep it together.. that was the second reason.

The real one.

When she'd returned to the ship after seeing Thane, she'd been torn. On the one hand, it was all she could do not to scream 'HE'S CURED!' at the top of her lungs, telling everyone who was close enough to listen of the miracle she'd witnessed. Hell, if it'd been anything else, any other wonderful piece of news, the entire Citadel would've been lit up in neon lights as she shared it. People would have been recruited for a night of making merry, Garrus would have summarily drunk her under the table, and the next morning all concerned would've conceded that the hangovers were well worth it and moved on.

But this?

This was so damn personal to her that the neon lights and hangovers treatment wasn't even applicable. It wasn't something she could celebrate with booze and then move on from. There was no moving on from it. It's effect was too wide-ranging to escape. All of a sudden, the stress that'd been building for a year was gone…the worry was gone...the months of preparing to lose Thane while still remaining a functional asset in the war she knew was coming were made useless, because now she wouldn't be losing him at all. And that feeling...that…freedom was like nothing she'd ever experienced before.

Emotionally speaking, she'd gone nova in reverse. The explosion came when Thane told her he wasn't dying. And now she was quiet…well, quieter...self-contained but ready to explode anew. She'd been reset in a sense. To follow the nova analogy, she became a brown dwarf, fizzling away to herself but primed to go if the circumstances were right. And the circumstances would have been right if she'd screamed, hollered, strung up lights and got lashed with Garrus. She'd have ended-up either going to pieces every second sentence, weeping pathetically into her drink, or snapping when the volley of well-meant questions she'd have received but wasn't ready for overwhelmed her.

And that was unacceptable behaviour for a woman in her position.

The people here, especially those who considered her a friend and confidant, needed her to be strong for them. To be a unifying force, and a person upon whom they could lay their worries. None of them would benefit from seeing her as the emotionally spent wreck that, beneath the mask of 'Shepard', she actually was. Below the ever-ready surface, past Shepard, past Ami even, inside, where no one but Thane was allowed, she was the wreckage left by three years of constant conflict and an acute, year long period of Keprals-brought fear and grief. The wreckage of a person who had functioned out of duty and necessity, and who now, in light of the most unexpected and beautiful circumstances, could begin to rebuild herself.

So she hadn't strung up lights, run down to the battery and petrified her Turian best friend by balling on his shoulder. She hadn't run down to Chakwas, raided her private reserves and spent the night intermittently crying with relief and drinking deep from the Serrice bottle. She'd given herself what she knew she needed instead – time to reflect and settle in the only place she felt comfortable doing those things. Her quarters.

And it'd paid off.

Now, presently, as she sat at her terminal a day after she'd visited the doctor and squirrelled herself away to spare the crew her intermittent lapses into joy-brought-uselessness, she felt settled. Ready. She could handle questions, hell, she had a list she wanted to ask herself, and she needed Chakwas's help in making sure the Normandy could properly accommodate her beau.

With that in mind, she made for the elevator.

Shepard held out for as long as she could, hiding elation behind her fingers while Dr Chakwas mulled over why she'd been sent the 200 and some page data packet that made up Thane's medical records and fitness for transfer notice. In the end though, when Karin stumbled over the phrase, 'Terminal prognosis retracted', and her jaw give or take hit the floor - the Commander couldn't help herself. Rapturous laughter (and a couple of tears) engulfed both women, Karin hurrying for the Serrice so she and her old friend could toast to this most unexpected, most wondrous turn of events. Never in all her years had she thought that Mordin's answer to what he'd come to call the Keprals Problem would bring on such a complete reversal of Thane's fortunes but, paging through the Drell's medical file between sips of Serrice and Shepard's gleeful running commentary, she realised that she - that they - were witnesses to something of a miracle of modern medicine.

Karin could've lost herself in the literature of it without so much as a second thought, so rapt was she over the intricacies of how this outcome had been arrived at, but Shepard, practical, forward-thinking Shepard drew her back with a question of a much less complex sort.

"Do you think" the Commander asked, "going on the report, that Thane's medical needs could be met aboard the Normandy? I know you haven't gone through it yet" she added quickly when her friend's brows rose, "but when you have, could you keep me in the loop about whether or not it'd be alright to have him here?"

"Of course," Karin nodded, "though, preliminarily speaking, since he's been cleared to travel I can't see there being any problems." Joy warmed her expression again. "We'll need to start planning a welcome home party quite soon, don't you think?"

Shepard had to chuckle at that. "Much as I'm sure he'd appreciate the sentiment..." she said, smirking as Chakwas rolled her eyes fondly.

"He'd leave within five minutes, wouldn't he" she chortled, knowing the man and his habits too well to conclude otherwise. It wasn't that he was antisocial. He just felt distinctly uncomfortable with crowds. The Commander gave a quick nod before draining her glass.

"Without a doubt" she said, sitting the now empty vessel down on Chakwas's table. She held the doctor's gaze a moment before asking, "Hypothetically speaking-"

"Yes."

"-If everything's fine and Thane can come aboard, can you think of anything we could do to accommodate him better? When I saw him at Huerta his room was just perfect. It must've been 29°C in there, and dry as a bone."

"Hmm," Chakwas mused, finishing her brandy and sitting her glass by Shepard's. "There is the Life Support plant, but…perhaps there're other things we could- Hold on a minute." She edged back from the desk slightly, pulling out a deep file draw and fishing through it carefully. "I saved this lot" she explained, giving the draw a pat, "from the Alliance's refit teams when they mowed through and upgraded us. It's old files mostly. Bric-a-brac and…a ha! There we are." She plucked two glossy magazines from between a pair of manila folders and handed them to Shepard.

"What's this now?" the Commander asked, flipping through the pages lightly without opening either volume. Actual, honest-to-goodness, paper-made publications were such a rarity nowadays that finding any was a treat for her. Even glossy things like these were wonderful to fidget with.

"It's called Laksha" Chakwas explained, kicking the draw closed and leaning a little so she could point to various areas on the front page. "It's a publication that's usually printed for Drell, but as you can see-" She indicated a couple of the bits of text describing what was contained in the issue that were clearly written in English. "It can be translated into almost anything. When Sere Krios came aboard, I needed to learn more about his people so I could attend to his needs properly. Hence, my subscription."

Biting back a thoroughly unhelpful quip about the good doctor's interest in glossy Drellish publications, Shepard opened the thicker of the two volumes and took a look at the contents page. To her surprise, outside of a little section on relationships written by someone called 'Kehksi', most of the topics covered were quite practical. Some of those that leapt out at her read,

'The perfect diet for the travelling Drell.'

'Restaurant reviews: Kahje's most famous delicacies recreated on the Citadel.'

'Sloughing brushes: A complete guide to picking the right set for your circumstances.'

And her personal favourite,

'Surviving the molt: How the right sand heater can save you a world of bother.'

She didn't rightly know what a 'molt' was in Drellish terms, but if it needed 'surviving' it must be important.

Passing the first volume off to Chakwas, she looked at the second and, for a brief and thoroughly irrational moment, wanted to hurl the thing out the door. This one, it seemed, was a special edition. A supplement entitled, 'Laksha: Life with Keprals Syndrome'. The title was emblazoned across the top third of the page, white lettering on a purple background, and by the look of its corners, it'd been well read.

Why shouldn't it have been? she thought, tamping down the swell of trepidation the title brought, It must've been useful when Thane went critical. Every little helps, right?

As she looked down at it she realised that, much as she didn't want to think about it, the very existence of this little magazine meant that Keprals was not only the thing that almost lost her the man she loved, but also a society-wide problem. She had known this in the abstract of course, Thane having told her that his condition was common, but she'd never figured out quite how common 'common' was. To warrant its own publication, she surmised, the disease must effect something like the same proportion of Drell that cancer once did with humans.

As that knowledge settled in her mind, she felt the beginnings of a stress-induced cold sweat coming on. One in three she thought. One in five if you're lucky. And, barring Thane, it's fucking terminal. Good Christ, they're dying out.

Sensing the Commander's unease, Chakwas leant against her shoulder gently and spoke up. "The only pages in there you want are the ones with the corners folded over. The topics are mundane. Breathing exercises. Stretches. And the rest- Well, the rest isn't necessary any more, is it" she said encouragingly, letting Shepard slip the volume beneath the one she was already holding so it was out of sight.

She understood.

Wanting to distance oneself from something that caused immense pain was natural. With news of Sere Krios's recovery still being so fresh for her, it wasn't a great leap of logic to make that she was still coming to terms with it being fact at all.

"Not for Thane at least" Shepard said, coming back to herself after that moment's struggle with remembered dread. Giving the doctor a grateful smile, she rubbed her hands on her trousers and put her proactive hat back on. "How about I take the thick one here-" She plucked gently at the first volume, snagging it as Chakwas tossed the offensive second one back into her draw. "And you tell me about some of the things I need to be looking for."

"A wise plan, ma'm" Chakwas replied, snatching up one of the pens sitting in the cup by her terminal and scrounging a piece of paper from her well-loved notepad. Old fashioned as the habit may be, she had always found taking notes to be more productive when using actual stationary as opposed to a data pad, and kept a small stash of pens and note paper for just that purpose. She handed both to Shepard as she thought up her list, knowing the Commander would appreciate using her hands so soon after taking a slightly morose turn.

"Well let me see…" she began while Shepard flattened the paper over the magazine's hard cover and set the pen to it so she could take notes, "We'll need to think outside of Sere Krios's immediate medical needs. I can see to those here in the medical bay." She paused a moment, watching a neat little '1' appear on the paper.

"Let's start with his diet" she said. "I know Laksha has extensive sections on Drellish nutrition. As I recall, the Drell are more partial to protein than we are…"

After a half-hour of note taking Shepard and Chakwas concluded their putting-our-heads-together session, and agreed to reconvene once the doctor had combed through Thane's medical file and come to a decision regarding his re-joining the Normandy. It was a preliminary 'Yes', but she just wanted to make sure.

When she got back to her quarters, Ami put her new reading material down on her desk, her list taking pride of place atop it as she adjourned for a quick shower before getting back to work. It read as follows.

1) Diet - Omnivorous, but protein important.

2) Hot, dry atmosphere needed. 27 - 31°C comfortable range for Drell.

3) Bathing habits? Hot water = steam. Steam is BAD. Sand heaters? (see Laksha pg. 24)

4) MUST do something about my shower. Too steamy. New vent?

5) Sand? For bathing? (see Laksha pg. 30 for interesting ad.)

6) Shedding? (see Laksha pg. 26)

7) Vitamin supplements necessary - rations/purely 'human' diet not sufficient.

8) SKIN CREAM!

9) Clothing? Light shirts seem preferable. Easy on the chest. Will need his size :-)

10) Exercise/physical therapy

a) Physical not a problem

b) 'Vocal' exercises - Not sure on this. Check Laksha. Failing that, check extranet.

11) Website for magazine - Laksha /a/ Kahje - easttown . net

12) Found shop on Citadel owned by Laksha's publisher. A health store. Interspecies, or so the ad says. Will visit on next trip to Citadel. 'Bio-wares Interspecies Health Store'