Nihlus shifted as he started to wake up. There was a bad kink in his neck and he turned his head to lessen it. Something brushed against his nose tickling it. He twitched it, trying to get rid of the irritation. When that didn't work he swatted at it, hitting something hard. And then something hit him hard in the jaw. "Ow," he said and jolted awake, seeing Shepard beside him, her fist still in the air after she had hit him.

"In her defense you hit her first, swatting at her head." Liara said from her computer, smiling at the funny exchange. Shepard's hair had been tickling Nihlus' nose, he swatted her in reflex, and she punched him in a sleepy response.

"Sometimes I forget that such a defenseless looking creature can really do some damage." he said and sat up. Shepard grumbled up at him and rolled away from him, curling herself up in the chair.

"She had to; given what she has been through she wouldn't have made it far without being able to hold her own." Liara said and went back to typing.

It made Nihlus uneasy how this stranger suddenly knew more about Shepard than he did. "What do you mean?" he asked and tried to finger the emotion, coming to realize it was jealousy. He had spent months with Shepard, yet he knew so little about her, and now this woman knew her whole life story, it didn't seem fair.

"She is a soldier." Liara said and Nihlus nodded, he knew that much. "She had been a sniper in place called Af… ghanistan…. I think that is the pronunciation; I think it is a country on her world. Her country and theirs have been at war for a long time. This mission, taking the Normandy out for a test run, was supposed to be a reward for her good work, an easy mission to give her a break."

Nihlus looked down at Shepard sadly. She was supposed to be rewarded and now she was surrounded by strange creatures who couldn't understand her without any idea when she would be able to go home again. "It must be hard, not being able to talk to anyone, not knowing when you will be able to go home, see your family, your… partner." he said and Liara shook her head.

"I didn't feel any homesickness when I melded minds with her, just concern for her crew." she paused in typing and looked up at Nihlus. "And she doesn't get along with her family, they disowned her for joining the military, from what I can tell they tried to get into contact with her after her last medal, but she rejected them. Also I didn't see any lovers, she is alone."

Nihlus felt really bad at being happy about that. Sure if she didn't have a lover waiting for her that meant she was available, but from how Liara put it Shepard didn't have anyone to go back to. He rubbed his sore mandible, "Do you have anything I can put on this? She really hit me hard." he asked and Liara nodded, going back to typing.

"There is some ice in the fridge." she said, nudging her head in the right direction.

He stood and stretched, earning a crack from his back. "Thank you for doing all of this for us, you wouldn't believe how many asari I have asked." he said as he limped to the fridge.

"How did you know of me anyways?" Liara asked without looking up from her terminal.

Nihlus grabbed an ice pack as he thought how to answer. "You haven't gone unnoticed, and I heard some rumors that you have an open mind and a kind heart." he said after a second. "It was those qualities that would be the most willing to help Shepard's and my situation." He limped back over to the chairs and sank down into one. Shepard was awake now, probably had woken up when he had moved. She looked at him press the icepack to his jaw, and then back down at his hurt foot. "You have a mean right hook, Shepard." he said to her as she scooted off her chair and sat down in front of him. Little pale hands undid the locks on his boot and wiggled it off his foot. He cringed in pain as the melted metal was pulled off his plates.

"Sorry," she muttered once it was off and she got a look at his injured heel. "Wilk i sorry ta, Nihlus." she said, guilt clear in her voice.

"It's okay, Shepard, a little lava burn won't keep me down." he tried to soothe, his mandibles flaring into a smile and his sub-harmonics cooing softly in reassurance.

She smiled back at him for a second and then went back to looking at his foot. Carefully, she messaged pressure into the sore plate, making him relax under her many fingers.

Liara paused in her work to watch them, observing Shepard, and smiled. Yes, this new species would fit into their society nicely.

Joker

"Shep… Shepard…" Joker mumbled as he came to, his body stiff and sore from sleeping on the hard floor. He carefully pulled himself into a sitting position and looked around, almost shocked to see himself still in a cage. It didn't make any sense, Shepard knew where they were, and there wasn't anything that would keep her from a friend in trouble. She was literally like an unstoppable force of nature. So why was he still in a cell? Where was she?

"Jeff," a voice said from the cell across from him and he saw Frog-boy looking worried at him.

"I'm okay," he said and shifted so he was sitting against the wall, letting out a hiss of pain as he stretched out his leg. "Don't worry, Shepard will come… we just have to wait and try to stomach the crap they feed us." Even as he said the words he wondered if they were truth, but what else could he do but have faith.

Kaidan

The bell rang, signaling the end of the fight, as the four eyed alien stopped moving under his hands. Kaidan was panting hard as he pulled his thumb out one of the dead alien's eye socket. The alien announcer to the fight said something that got the crowd going, cheering at the blood shed that just occurred under his hands. It disgusted him, in these people and in himself that he was going along with it. It was just survival for him, the aliens they put in the dome arena attacked him and he fought back, and the crowd cheered, and he was rewarded with food. They only ever fed him on days he fought in this caged dome, it made him look forward to the fight, as they wanted.

The door to the holding cells opened and he walked through it quietly. The other prisoners glared at him as he walked by and into his open cage. Once inside the door shut and a pile of slop was dropped into his cage by a pipe above him. He scooped it off the ground and hungrily into his mouth. It tasted like hell, but it felt amazing to have something in his stomach. Once the initial hunger was subsided he looked to the cage next to him. A huge alien sat in it, it was clearly reptilian, with a large hump on its back, and small eyes set wide apart on its face. Kaidan had never seen the creature be brought out for a fight, meaning it never got fed.

"Hey," he said and the beast turned its red head towards him, red eyes glaring. Kaidan swallowed slightly and scooped up another handful of the glop. "Here." he said and put his hand through the bars, holding the food out to the creature.

It growled at him, probably wondering what strings where attached to this kindness.

"Look, I don't want to be here, and if I'm going to get out I am going to need help, and you clearly are… huge. So take the food, maybe we can get out of here together." he said and dropped the glop into the creature's hands. "My name is Kaidan, by the way." he said and the creature looked up at him after eating the gift of glop. "Kaidan." he repeated and pointed to himself.

The beast let out a grunt and turned back away from him. "Wrex." it said after a moment.

"Alright, Wrex, let's… not kill each other." he said and settled down for the night.

Nihlus

The tremors where getting worse and Liara told them it was time to go. Her ship would be there in a few hours to pick her up before the large quake her sensors picked up would hit. So Nihlus called down his ship with his omni-tool. "Would you like any help loading your things up while we wait for the ship?" he asked Liara, who was carrying boxes of artifacts into her little lab.

"No thank you." she said politely. "Some of the artifacts are delicate, not that you are incapable, but I would rather do it myself." she said and he nodded.

His ship landed a bit away and he called Shepard over. "You'll send me the program of her language once you finish it?" he asked.

"Yes, it should be done in a few days." she said as she carried in another box.

"Good luck," Nihlus said before going inside his ship with Shepard. "Well in a few days we can talk." he told her as he settled down into the pilot's chair and lifted them into the air.

They were on their way to Illium to restock, inform Aethyta that her daughter was well, and not in distress. He was sure Shepard had noticed that he was in a sour mood, he was also pretty sure that she thought he was mad at her. In truth he was just trying to distract himself. He sighed and looked over at her across the cargo bay where she was doing some kind of stretching poses. 'Once we can understand each other I can explain that my kind gets stressed when idle.' he thought and finished putting together his sniper rifle, having just finished cleaning it. "Shepard, the night cycle is about to start." he said as he checked the time on his omni-tool. "Let's get some sleep, we should be at port the day after tomorrow." he said and she looked at him, not understanding any of that. He sighed and walked to her, picking her up and over his shoulder. She let out a cry and struggled in his grasp, but she was laughing. He laughed back, "Bed time," he said and carried her back up stairs and set her in front of her room.

She looked back at the door and rolled her eyes, turning to go inside, but he grabbed her and pulled her close, his forehead pressed against hers. "Sleep well Shepard." he purred and she shoved him off, her cheeks turning red like they sometimes did. He laughed and ruffled her hair before retreating to his room. He couldn't help but smile as he undressed for bed. Everything between them had gotten so routine, so normal, joking between them just came so naturally. "Woman, you're going to be the death of me." he said as he slipped under his sheets. She hadn't been in his life very long, but he couldn't imagine his life without her. When he thought he was going to lose her on Nepmos was almost more than he could bear and he didn't want to feel that way again. 'She'll stay on my ship from now on… no more missions… no more chances to lose her.' he thought and let himself drift off to sleep.

Shepard

Shepard went into her room and pulled off her shirt, switching to a tight tank top. "So much better," she said with a sigh of relief as her body was able to breathe in the hot air of the ship. She would have already been wearing the thin shirt if it hadn't been for Nihlus being grumpier than usual. Whenever she wore clothes that showed off a bit of skin he tended to dislike it. His kind was probably very modest, or at least their women. Either way she was trying to not bug him anymore than she already had with whatever she had done to make him mad. "He is probably still upset with what happen on that lava planet." she said to herself and went to look at herself in the mirror. Her hair was getting long, nearly to her shoulder blades. How long had she been with Nihlus? How long was her crew missing? She shook her head, trying to banish the thoughts, and when they persisted she grabbed her switch blade. Going back to the mirror, she opened the blade and held it up to her red locks, cutting it off so it hung just above her shoulders. She spent the next hour trimming it up, doing a bad job with only the switchblade, but at least know she couldn't be reminded how much she failed her crew by it.

After it looked decent she curled up in her bed and tried not to think about her crew, it wouldn't help them to think up worse and worse fates. There was too much time to think without anyone to talk to.

Nihlus

He was taking a nap in his pilot chair when his terminal beeped with a message for him. He stretched and opened the message, reading it sleepily. As he read he got steadily more excited and by the end his mandibles were spread into a grin.

Spectre Nihlus Kryik,

I have created the program you asked for and attached it to this message. Uploading and installing it to the omni-tool will take a few hours at best and it is probably full of glitches, her language is very complex and full of words that sound the same and have very different meanings. Some words are even spelled the same and mean two different things. But it should be enough that you can work out most of the bugs with use.

If you need any more help feel free to contact me and I will reply when I can.

Liara

He opened the file at the bottom and sent it to his and Shepard's omni-tools to be installed. He stood and popped his back, stiff from falling asleep in his chair. Now all there was to do was wait. Considering how excited he was he figured it wasn't going to be the easiest thing.

Shepard was in her room, doing whatever it was that she did when she was alone, so he slid into the shower. There were worse ways to pass the time. After the shower he went down to the engine room and cleaned up any residue, not that it was a lot since he did it regularly. This time, though, he was extra thorough, just trying to burn time.

And then his omni-tool beeped, signaling that the installation was complete. He put down the rag and bottle of cleaner and tried to force himself to walk back upstairs. He stood outside Shepard's door trying to figure out what he would say to her. What did you say to someone in a situation like this? They already knew each other, but they had never talked. He knew little about her, yet he knew her well. 'Damn it, Nihlus, just go in and figure the rest out as things go. You have never had a problem talking to people before.' he lectured himself. As he tapped the door open a voice in the back of his head reminded him that Shepard wasn't just another person.

She was lying on her bed, her legs bent up at the knee, arm with her omni-tool over her head as she played a mindless game. He stood there just looking at her, his mouth slightly open, still at a loss for what to say. "You're being creepy, Nih." she said without looking away from her game.

He smiled a bit, so the translator was working. Now that he could understand the voice that spoke from the woman he craved it only sounded more alluring. It wasn't until she sighed and sat up, putting the game away, that he realized he still hadn't said anything.

"Alright, big guy, what do you want?" she asked and looked him over, trying to read his body language. He just stood there like a fresh teenager whose cowl hadn't even grown in yet, trying to think of something to say. "Can you act it out? Give me some sort of hint?" she asked and slid off the bed and moved in front of him. "Come on, I'm not a mind reader, Nihlus." she said, starting to get annoyed. Spirits, he loved the way his name sounded in her voice. "Come on Nihlus, what is it boy, what is it?" she said, her voice getting high and she patted her thighs with her hands as if she was talking to an animal and he couldn't hold it in anymore, he busted out laughing. She shook her head and with a roll of her eyes she headed back towards her bed. "Fine, come back when you want to actually—"

He cut her off, finally finding the words, "You know I can understand you, right?" he asked and she jumped. What started out as a trip turned into her elegantly jumping onto the bed and she stared at him, legs pulled up to her chest.

"What?" she asked. "You mean all this time you…"

"No," he said and held up his hands. "No, this is a new development. Remember the planet with all the lava? And the asari?" he asked.

"You mean when you tried to kill us and the blue girl who lived on that hell." she said and he chuckled.

"The 'blue girl' was an asari, that is her species, her name was Liara." he explained, getting that bit out of the way. "Anyways we visited that 'hell' because she agreed to help me upload your language to our omni-tools." he explained and brought up his as a visual aid.

"Oh… wait… how did she know my language?" she asked, already starting to piece it together.

"Asari have a special ability that allows them to merge minds with someone to share information." he explained and saw Shepard clench her fists, her jaw set hard in clear dislike. "It wasn't something I wanted to put you through, especially without your permission, but we didn't have much of a choice." he tried to sooth her.

She shook her head. "It's fine, I just… I've been through a lot." she said, her voice hollow. "But this is good, we can understand each other and now I can finally ask." she said and stood back up. "Where is my crew?" her voice went serious, eyes piercing.

"I don't know. I only found you on the ship, barely alive I might add." he answered truthfully. "I know the band of mercs that attacked you and I have several feelers out for them, but so far everything has been quiet. After having two of their bases attacked by a Spectre they are probably trying to lay low." he said and watched her eyebrows scrunch down at the word Spectre.

"You're a what?" she asked and he chuckled.

"Let's get lunch and I will tell you everything you want to know." he offered and went into the kitchen. "Spectres are an elite group of soldiers, we patrol the less law abiding areas of space and deal with things that the Council can't open do themselves." he explained.

"Council?" she asked and he let out a trill at how quick she was.

"The Council is three individuals of different species, a turian, salarian, and an asari. They govern most of the galaxy." he explained as he out the things out he needed to make them lunch.

"Asari are the blue girls, but what are the other two?" she asked and hopped up onto the counter beside him.

"You remember Mordin, the doctor who fixed your leg?" he asked and she nodded. "He was a salarian and I am a turian." he explained.

"Oh," she said and looked thoughtful.

"I'm curious through, you called asari 'blue girls.' Did you have names for the rest of the species?" he asked and her cheeks turned a little red.

"Yeah… I called the salarian ones salamanders, it's a type of lizard back home." she said and looked away. "And I called turians spikes." she muttered and he busted out laughing.

"Seriously? That would be like me calling you squish." he teased and she punched him in the arm, not hard enough to hurt herself on his armor. "Speaking off, what do they call your species?" he asked and she blinked.

"I'm… we are called human." she said, not realizing that wasn't obvious. "What was that space station where Mordin was? And why did we leave in such a hurry?" she asked, taking control of the questioning again.

"That was the Citadel, it is sort of like a capitol, the Council lives there." he told her, glancing up from the cooking. "And we had to leave so fast because they had ordered for you to be killed." she tensed at that and he brushed her hair behind her ear. "But they have agreed so long as I keep you out of more trouble that they will leave you be. I understand that you were just scared, alone, with no one able to understand you."

She shied away from his touch. "I didn't mean to cause you trouble, I just… I have people relying on me, I have to find them, and I couldn't just sit in a bed anymore." she explained.

"If they relied on you that means you were the commanding officer?"

She nodded, "Yeah, newly promoted, supposed to be some sort of reward to have a mission that I was just to sit on my ass and watch stars go by…" she said with a sigh. "And now my whole crew is gone, could be dead, and could be worse off than that. Hell I handpicked Joker… I got my best friend into this and I'm powerless to do anything." she confessed.

"Joker, was that the one on the transmission?" he asked and Shepard nodded again. "The other guy he was with called him Jeff."

"Jeff is his name; Joker is the nickname he can't seem to get rid of." Shepard said and looked down at the food. "Why did you almost let me starve?" she asked.

"There are two different types of DNA, dextro and levo. I had no way of knowing which you were and didn't want to risk you having a bad reaction." he explained. "And good thing too, you're levo, all the food I had on board was dextro."

"So you're dextro?"

He chuckled, "No, I just figured that I would fill my ship with food I couldn't eat for no reason." he said, his sub-harmonics full of sarcasm.

"Ha ha, you are so funny." she replied dryly with a roll of her eyes.

Shepard continued asking different questions, such as what was the name of the places they had been to, what the mass relays were, how she healed her broken leg so fast, and kept it going until she couldn't think of anything else. Then there was silence between them once more as they ate.

Nihlus looked up from his food at her, debating if he should ask. It was silly, but he wanted to know her. He wanted to know her likes and dislikes. "What is your favorite color?" he asked, making her pause.

"What?" she asked, her nose scrunching a bit.

"What is your favorite color?" he repeated, maybe the translator was glitching, like Liara said it might.

"I heard you," she said and rubbed the back of her neck. "It was just random." she said, looking away. "I don't… I never really thought about it I guess."

He laughed, "You never thought what your favorite color was?" he asked and her cheeks turned a little red.

"I know what colors I like, but I don't know which would be my favorite." she explained and thought about it. "Green… maybe? I wear a lot of green, not bright green, but forest green. Bright green makes me look like a Christmas tree with my red hair."

He smiled, "I have no idea what Christmas is, but I think you would look good in green." he said, sub-harmonics humming out in pleasure at the thought, imagining it bringing out her eyes. Her cheeks turned redder and he looked at it curiously. "Why do your cheeks do that? Turn red like that?" he asked and it went darker.

"I…" she put her hands over her face.

"Was that a bad thing to ask?" he said, worried he had offended her.

"No." she said from behind her hands. "It means embarrassment, and pointing it out usually makes it worse." she explained reluctantly.

"You're embarrassed?" he asked. Spirits, she was adorable. His sub-harmonics let out a coo as he resisted the urge to go to her and hold her.

"Shut up about it." she snapped at him and quickly get back to her food, eating it a bit faster than normal.

"Okay," he said, his hands up in defense. "Another question then: How old are you?"

She paused from shoving food into her mouth to look up at him. "Well I'm sure a year on my planet is different from yours. I mean the days are even off." she said and he leaned forward a bit.

"Off? How long are your days then?" he asked.

"A day is twenty-four hours with sixty minutes in an hour and sixty second in a minute." she explained, pausing to let that information sink in.

"Why not just make it by tens? Why sixty and make it complicated?" he interjected.

"Oh that is nothing, you should have seen our measuring system before we all finally switched to metric. It was twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, and… one thousand seven hundred something yards in a mile." she said with a laugh.

"That makes no sense."

"I'm not done," she said, holding up her hand to silence him. "There were sixteen ounces in a pound. There were two pints in a quart, and four quarts in a gallon. The boiling point of water was two hundred and ten and the freezing point was at thirty-two. To say that the human race 'makes no sense' is an understatement. And the only country who ran off this system was America; everyone else dealt with tens and kept it simple. A long time ago they even had it all set to go to switch it over and stopped it because the leaders of the country decided it would be too hard to get used to. The switch didn't even occur until about twenty years ago after the discovery of element zero on mars."

He was laughing with her at this point. "Okay, but back to the original question, how old are you, it should at least be in similar to the standard." he said once the laughter started to die down.

"I'm twenty-three." she said with a smile and Nihlus paused. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"It's just… Liara had said you were twenty-four." he said and she flinched at the reminder that someone had been in her head.

"No, I turned twenty-three about a month before we left Earth… Oh…" she said, realizing where the confusion came from. "That's right. I got a birthday card from my parents. They got my age wrong and put that I was twenty-four."

Nihlus looked at her in a kind of shock. "They forgot the age of their own child?" he asked, bewildered.

"The fact they remembered it was my birthday at all was a first, it doesn't surprise me that they didn't remember how many years." she said dryly. "We never got along, they wanted a different life for me, and I didn't want to be their puppet. I enrolled in the military at the age of eighteen and was disowned for it."

"But now they are trying to take you back?" he clarified.

She gave a short bark of a laugh and crossed her arms. "I earned enough metals and honors that they no longer see me as an embarrassment to have as a daughter. They have been begging for me to 'Come back into their life' for years now. I tell them no each time, and each time I get just a little bit more colorful in the way I tell them." She was bitter now, stabbing at her food a little too hard as she went back to eating.

"I understand, me and my father never got along and it created a wedge in my parents relationship." he said, trying to relate to her. "I was always a troublemaker. So when I was sixteen and my father died my mother pushed me to enroll into the military to 'straighten me out.' I hated her for it, I hated following someone else's orders."

"Not a good trait for a soldier." she commented.

"No, I constantly got my ass chewed out for doing 'reckless' things, though they normally always worked so they couldn't be too mad. It did stop me from getting promoted though." he said with a shake of his head.

"But you did get promoted, you're a spectator now, right?" she asked, confused.

"I am a Spectre." he corrected. "And yes, but that is because that reckless behavior caught the attention of one and he put my name forward. It isn't military though, we work for the council." It was clear she was still confused so he went into greater depth. "Every species has their own military that protects their own personal territories, sure the council can call on them to aid if need be, but the council doesn't have an army of its own. The Spectres are separate from any military. The only way to get into them is to have your name be put forward by one. Another turian named Saren put my name forward and mentored me for my first few years."

"You talk about yourself like you're old." she commented and he chuckled.

"I am older than you, if that is what you mean." he chuckled. "I am thirty." he said, sedating her curiosity.

"Seven year difference then." she said, contemplating it.

"Is that a lot?" he purred, getting a bit flirtatious.

"No," she said shrugging, oblivious to his tone. "Just means you're experienced."

He laughed, it could be taken perverted, but he was pretty sure that wasn't the intent. "I am experienced in several ways." he assured her. "I could teach you a few things if you like." he added, still being flirtatious.

She stood up with her empty plate. "Maybe sometime, depends on what you wanted to teach me." she said with a smile.

He watched her as she washed her plate. It was a good thing she couldn't hear his sub-harmonics or she would have known exactly what he wanted to teach her.

A/N: Well it is what all of you were waiting for. We found out where Joker went, what happened to Kaidan, and Shepard and Nihlus can understand each other. As always thank you Cyan for editing this chapter. Please review and tell me what you guys think, I enjoy your feedback.