She stormed down the hall with purpose, shoulders set and posture demanding respect. "I want a cover set up every ten feet and two soldiers behind each cover. One fires while the other reloads," she ordered, watching with satisfaction as her men did as she instructed. "They will not get by us."

She turned when she got to the end of the hall, hands clasped behind her back, eyes scanning her men for weakness as they settled into their position. A soldier skidded around the corner, panting and out of breath. "They're…. they're coming." he said, collapsing to his knees at her feet. "We can't stop them…"

"Wrong," she said, not moving from her ridged position. "We will stop them, they will not defeat us."

Somewhere in the building there was an explosion that shook the ground under their feet. "They've broken through the left wing. They just keep coming. We can't—" the transmission cut out. The soldiers in the hall looked at each other, doubting their abilities.

"We can win this, we can…" another explosion sounded, this one closer, and actually made her unsteady on her feet. "Damn it," she spat, pulling off her helmet and rubbed her four eyes. "It's only two of them!"

NaS

"I'm just saying, we are dating, you should be comfortable talking to me about things." Nihlus said over the gunfire.

"Nihlus, this really isn't the time," Shepard growled as she slammed her first against the ground. A wave a biotic energy cut through the air in front of her, ripping apart a bench that a merc was trying to hide behind. He raised his weapon to fire at her, but Nihlus waved his lit omni-tool in his direction.

The soldier screamed as his gun exploded in his hands, the shrapnel sinking into the kinks in his armor. "I never get tired of that," he said as he ran to catch up with Shepard. She had progressed immensely with her biotics, still had trouble conserving it though. "You could say thanks to me saying your life by answering the question," he suggested. She sighed and turned to him, pulling him down and kissing him, her tongue sliding past his teeth. He kissed her back out of reflex, his hand going to the small of her back and pulling her against him. She grabbed his pistol and shot at a merc that was trying to sneak up behind him. He spun them and she shot at the merc who was trying to flank from the other side. "Have I told you that I love you lately?" he said when they pulled back.

"Yep," she said, handing him back his pistol.

"You going to answer my question?" he asked.

"Nope," she said as they took point on either side of a door.

"You are stubborn, Sam," he said, observing how she flinched.

"Don't call me that," she said and hit the green panel on the center of the door.

"Not until you tell me why not," he said, moving with her to fire at anyone who might in wait. "Shit," he muttered, grabbing Shepard and dragging them behind the safety wall at the top of the balcony they were on. Bullets riddled their kinetic barriers from the four turret droids hovering in the air in front of them. He hissed as a bullet made it past his kinetic barrier and sank into his arm.

She wormed her way out of his grip and assessed the damage. "You really need to stop this protecting me bull shit," she said as she inspected the wound. Med-gel from his suit was already stopping the bleeding.

He cupped her cheek with his unhurt arm, "Never," he said dragging her down and pressing their foreheads together. She kissed his forehead and picked her weapon back up.

"Four turret droids, eight soldiers on the ground, and two snipers on the opposite balcony, did I miss anything?" she asked as she checked her heatsink.

"The guy with the rocket launcher by the door," Nihlus said, putting his assault rifle away and pulling out his own rocket launcher. "But mine's bigger."

She smiled. "You take out the snipers and the rocket launcher?" she asked.

"You sure you can hold your barrier?" he asked. They tried it in practice and she wasn't able to hold a very strong barrier for long.

"I work well under pressure," she said as her body started to shimmer in blue. "Trust me, big guy. Give me a boost?"

They moved so he was crouching with his back to the wall, his hands clasped in front of him. She crouched as far back as she could get without being exposed. "I don't like Sam," she said before she stood up, sprinting at him. She landed her foot in his hands and he threw her as hard as he could into the air. She flipped in the air, her biotic barrier absorbing the bullets from the 14 sources of bullets being shot at her. The guy with the rocket launcher never got a shot off, but a nice size explosion filled the space he had been in. She landed on the nearest turret droid, ripping off its side paneling like Nihlus had shown her how to do. She pulled an important looking wire out before she jumped to the next closest turret, using her biotics to give her enough force to make it. "First one is yours," she said over the coms.

"Virus already sent," Nihlus said as he sniped the last sniper. The first turret sparked before it turned to the soldiers on the ground and started firing. He took a second to watch her work. She finished with the second turret and flipped elegantly to the ground as the two hijacked turrets took out the other two and then each other. He jumped off the balcony to join her as she made sure the mercs were dead.

"Do you think this place really has information on the missing crew?" she asked, brushing back the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

"If it doesn't we'll just keep looking," he answered.

She nodded and pulled out a cigarette, "Well let's hurry up then, Kol will have our heads if we are late for dinner again." She took a long breath through the cigarette as they progressed through the next door.

"We were late for a very good reason," Nihlus defended.

"Stopping to fuck in the back of a transit is hardly a good reason," she countered, turning the corner. Nihlus grabbed her and dragged her back as fire started filling the next corridor.

He purred at the memory, Shepard pressed down against the transit's back seat, her legs wrapped tight around his waist, her breaths coming in gasps.

"One, that was a very good reason," he said, drawing his weapon as Shepard gathered her biotics. "And two, don't get careless."

"Me? Careless?" she said, acting hurt. She laughed before she charged around the corner, charging straight through the covers that had been placed down the hall. The mercs hiding behind them dove and cowered to the sides to avoid her path of destruction. She let out a war cry as she pulled her fist back, readying to slam it into the batarian leader's face.

"We need her alive," Nihlus snapped at her as he sent out a virus that dismantled the merc's armor and weapons.

Shepard stopped her fist inches from the woman's face. She didn't even flinch, but her eyes narrowed as her lips turned up at the corners. Shepard looked down, seeing a pistol pressed against her stomach. "Bitch," she spat at the batarian pulled the trigger. The shot punched through her dwindling biotics and it was too close for her kinetic barriers to do anything about, but if Shepard learned anything from her hardships, it was how to ignore pain and keep going. She reared her fist back and punched the batarian hard in the face. The woman slammed against the closed door behind her, head knocking against it, and crumpled to the ground.

"I said, we needed her alive," Nihlus growled at her, coming up now that the rest of the mercs were either dead or running away.

"She isn't dead," Shepard said, stumbling back, her hand against her stomach.

"Shepard?" Nihlus asked worried.

"I'm fine, I'm fi…" she stumbled against the nearest wall and slid down to the ground.

Nihlus moved to her quickly, seeing the darkening mesh around her stomach now that he looked. "I told you," he growled, voice stern and worried. "Don't get careless." He pulled her hand away and ripped the mess and her undershirt to see the damage. The bullet wound was above and to the left of her belly button. It was bleeding badly so he took out the remaining supply of med-gel from his suit, not bothering to open it, instead he inserted the needle at the end of the tube of medicine into her thigh and directly into her bloodstream.

She tried to beat his hands away, "That much will…" she blinked as the drugs quickly poured into her system "put me to sleep…" Her eyes drifted closed and her body went limp.

"Better than you bleeding out," he said as the bleeding slowed and stopped.

The batarian shifted and Nihlus left Shepard against the wall. "Don't even try," he said, the barrel of his pistol to her head.

She paused, moving her arm back beside her body, knowing she wouldn't have a chance to grab her gun a few feet away with the pistol to her head. "What do you want?" she spat through gritted teeth.

"Your merry band looted a ship about a year ago, just shy. You took the people on the ship hostage and sold them." Nihlus said, his eyes set in a hard glare. This was a side of him few rarely saw. He normally tried to keep the tone light, better for negotiations, but not for this scum. He had a very poor opinion of people who trafficked people against their will.

"You're looking for those aliens… the ones like her." she said, nudging her head in Shepard's direction. "Thought we had killed her, damn bitch nearly killed half my crew with metal bullets, now that's a throwback."

"Where are the humans?" Nihlus growled, his finger going to the trigger.

"We sold them to a couple fighting pits on Omega," she laughed. "Good luck finding any of them alive."

"Not all of them," Nihlus said, halting her laughter, "What about the three?"

"They are all dead,"

"Then you are no use to me and I shoot you," Nihlus countered, firing a shot. The batarian woman flinched, her eyes squeeze shut tight. "The next one goes is going in one of your eyes, you have enough of them."

The woman opened her eyes and looked at the metal on the door that was damaged by the shot, not even an inch from her head. She turned and glared up at him. "An asari who is friends with our leader came and asked to buy one, but the only ones left were the ones the fighting pit didn't want. A cripple, the one you rampaged one of our slave ships to get, and the three old ones who wouldn't be able to put up a good fight."

"Where are they," Nihlus growled.

Her omni-tool beeped and she grinned, "There is my back up, you're out of time," she spat at him.

He sighed and shot the batarian in the leg before going back to Shepard, tossing her unconscious body over his shoulder. "Why do I suck at interrogations so much?" he muttered to himself. "But alright, I tried nice… ish…" He turned back to the merc who was clutching her shattered kneecap, a immobilizing, but not fatal wound. He picked her up by the neck and forcefully pressed her hand to the red lock on the door. After a second it recognized her and opened with a beep. "You want to talk about throw backs? How about a DNA lock."

She cursed an untranslatable word at him as he forced her out the door and into the center of the compound.

It was a large open room built like a greenhouse with the vine like plant that the primary ingredient in red sand climbing rows of pillars towards a glass ceiling. "No wonder you don't want anyone in here so bad, this is enough to make a couple hundred tons of red sand. Would be a shame if it burned," Nihlus said, starting to move them into the center of the greenhouse, hoping that, in addition to the cover, being in the middle of their cash crop would make them hesitate on what type of weapons to use.

He set Shepard down in the middle of two of the rows, careful not to get her too close to the plants, being a biotic she could have a reaction from them. He barely managed to get back to the batarian when the glass ceiling above them shattered and two airships entered the room. Nihlus growled and pointed his gun up at them, but they didn't fire, just hovered. Nihlus had been right, they were wary of setting their crops on fire. His mandibles twitched as he accessed the battlefield. The airships wouldn't have come in if they didn't plan on some kind of attack. That meant that the airships were the eyes and the distraction. He turned and fired into the wide leaves, his ears picking up on just the slightest noise. He heard the familiar noise of the bullets hitting a kinetic barrier.

"Gotta do better than that," he said with a smirk. With their cover blown they moved faster, from all sides, and Nihlus was soon popping heatsinks quicker than he could reload them. The mercs were losing a lot of men though, Nihlus just had to keep it up; he couldn't let them win. His kinetic barriers fizzed out and he felt the bullets sink into his armor, several landing in the mesh between the pieces. He bit his tongue to stop the cry of pain as he kept shooting. He sank to his knees, but kept firing at the movement among the vines.

"Nih…" Shepard grumbled sleepily behind him. He turned to look at her, never letting up on the fire. A bullet grazed his throat. He let out a violent cough and fell to the ground, the gun falling into the dirt beside him. "Nih," Shepard said, awake enough to process what was happening. She pulled herself up and put a shield around them, but she had used too much of her abilities and the shield fluttered and died. "You idiot, you gave me all of your med-gel didn't you? You fucking idiot," she cried, crawling to him under the gun fire going on around them. The fire stopped and Shepard let out a shaking breath. If they weren't firing that meant they were being closed in on. Shepard pressed her hand to the wound on Nihlus' throat. "You idiot… you aren't invincible," she said and he let out a gargled laugh. She swatted at a leaf that was against her head and when she looked at her hand it was lightly dusted with a red powder. "Nihlus… are these plants what I think they are?" She plucked off the wide red leaf and twirled it in her fingers by the stem.

"Shep…ard… no…" Nihlus choked out, trying to take the leaf from her, but she shook off his weak hand.

"We're getting out of here," she said before she shoved the leaf into her mouth and started eating it, and then another one, and another. The affect wasn't as quick as with its refined form, but after half a dozen leaves she started feeling queasy. A laugh bubbled past her lips as she shoved a seventh one in her mouth. A hand rested on her ankle and she looked down at Nihlus on the ground beside her. That was right, he was hurt, and the people that hurt him would pay. Gathering up her biotics was easy now, the blue hue bright all around her.

"Biotic!" one of the mercs shouted before the rain of bullets started again, but this time when she made a barrier it held. She let out a scream as she punched the air, her biotics following the motion and ripping through the forest of red sand vines. The vines ripped and tore, flying back with the body of mercs. She held out her hand and spun in a circle, ripping down the vines around her and throwing the mercs that got in the way. One of the gunships above that she hadn't noticed started firing at her, the bullets bouncing off of her barrier harmlessly. She roared as she raised her biotics up and caught the gunship in a wave of downward energy. It crashed down several yards from them in an explosion that set the field on fire. She laughed at it, breathing the smoke from the plants as it continued to fuel her powers. She grabbed Nihlus and the batarian woman's arm and started dragging them through the burning field, their barrier keeping them save from the remaining mercs, gunship, and fire. She didn't know how long it took to get back to the loading dock where their ship was waiting for them. She barely registered Kaidan talking to her, his hands going to the bleeding wound on her stomach. She brushed him off and went to the cells in the back of the cargo bay, slamming the woman inside one and turning it on. Then she looked down at Nihlus who had passed out at some point. She stumbled on her feet and fell to the ground beside him. The red sand high was dwindling and it wrecked through her body. She convulsed and threw up, choking on it until Kaidan pushed her to her side.

Nihlus

The next thing he remembered was being on a hard bed in the med-bay. He was only in his pants for clothes, covered in bandages and IVs, but it wasn't his bed Kaidan and Kolyat were surrounding. Shepard was on a bed a few down from him, Kaidan and Kolyat were trying to hold her down so they could bandage the wound on her bare stomach. She screamed and threw them off with what was left of her biotic strength, blood dripping from her nose from the extended use. He groaned and forced his weak legs out of the bed. With the metal stand the IV was on for support he limped to Shepard's bed.

"Nihlus, you're hurt really bad, you need to lay down." Kaidan said, surprised to see Nihlus on his feet, but didn't let go of Shepard's thrashing arm.

Nihlus ignored him and took Shepard's face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. After a couple seconds she calmed down. Her breathing was still heavy and rapid, but she let Kolyat and Kaidan tend to her wound. He pulled back when they were done and slumped on the bed next to hers. She reached out and touched a bandage on his leg that was turning blue again.

"Shit," Kaidan said, taking the bandages off. "You pulled out your stitches… You need to be still, I'm not good at sewing." He threaded the medical needle again and sewed Nihlus' wound shut again. Nihlus didn't even flinch, he was flooded with so many pain killers he could barely feel it.

"I've had worse," he joked with a laugh. "But thanks…"

Kaidan glanced up at him, but returned his gaze to the wound. "Don't thank me, Shepard wouldn't let us touch her at all until you were ok," he admitted.

"She is stubborn like that," Nihlus said, leaning over a bit to take her extended hand in his. "Stubborn, crazy, reckless, uncaring for her own safety." She pinched the softer skin of his palm and they both shared a smile.

Kaidan finished bandaging Nihlus' leg again and moved back beside Shepard. "What happened to you two anyways?" he asked, helping Kolyat hook up Shepard's IV.

"How do you know how to do this, Kolyat?" Nihlus asked, ignoring Kaidan's question for the moment.

"My dad… he has keplar, when he was still around I'd help mom give him his medicine," he explained, looking down away from them.

Nihlus looked at how Kolyat's neck turned a darker red, a drell sign of not wanting to talk about something. Rather than press the issue he turned to Kaidan. "Well this one," he pointed at Shepard "got herself shot, so I gave her my med-gel to stop her from dying and it made her pass out. Then we were in a big field of… you wouldn't know the name, it's the plant that makes red sand. We were surrounded and I got shot down… a lot and Shepard took that as a 'I'm going to ingest enough of these plants to overdose' before she went on a biotic rampage while dragging me and our batarian friend out of the merc base."

"It worked," Shepard groaned as she turned on her side and vomited into a waste bucket beside her bed.

"You could have died," Nihlus snapped at her.

"We would have died if I hadn't—" she was cut off by more stomach contents wanting to make themselves known.

"Kaidan, can you get the jar of charcoal that is in the cabinet? It will help absorb some of the drug," Nihlus said and Kaidan came back shortly with the thick black liquid.

"No, that stuff is nasty," Shepard groaned.

"Too bad," Nihlus spat at her. "I'm not having you overdose and choke on your own vomit." She pouted at him, but took the cup Kaidan handed her and tossed it back.

"Ugh, that is a different level of nasty," she groaned before she threw up again.

"Both of you get some rest," Kaidan said before he and Kolyat slipped out of the med-bay and turned the light off.

Nihlus slid back onto the bed beside Shepard and laid down, their hands still tangled together. "Thank you for saving me," he said in the dark.

"Always," she said with a smile, "I won't let you die on me."

Sometime in the night Shepard woke up from the usual nightmares and felt Nihlus tug on her hand, pulling her towards him. She got up from the bed and stumbled over to his. She tried laying down beside him, but their IVs kept getting in the way. In fact every position they tried was complicated by them. Finally Nihlus just pulled her on top of her, her head on his chest and legs in between his.

"Your wounds," she muttered, already drifting back to sleep in the safety of his body heat.

"I'm fine," he said, rubbing her back. "Get some sleep."

Nihlus gave it a day. One day of lying in bed doing nothing but stewing in boredom and painkillers. After that he wrapped himself in a loose jacket and some sleeping pants— a pair that he hadn't even known he owned with how little use they got—and took liberty to ignore "doctor's" orders and roam the ship. Though he did refuse to let Shepard follow suit.

"Hypocrite," she barked at him as he left the med-bay.

"I'm a Spectre, I do what I want," he replied back with a shrug. "You are a Spectre's girlfriend, you do what he wants, and I want you to stay all cozy in bed until you stop vomiting. Imagine if you vomited on the fish tank, that is just unsanitary." She threw a pillow at him and he laughed as he caught it. "Love you too," he said, ducking out the door before she threw something heavier at him.

When she couldn't see he let his face contort in pain, his hand going to his side, but only for a moment. He had had worse, and he needed to check on everything, their "guest" included. Checking on their ship and figuring out where the humans had them drifting was first. He limped his from the back of the ship where the med-bay was to the bridge, squeezing himself into the cockpit behind the pilot's chair that Joker was in.

"Wow, you walk almost as bad as I do." Joker commented, looking back at him. "The warden know that you're up?"

"I'm guessing that you're referring Kaidan?" Joker nodded. "No he doesn't, besides I'm… I wouldn't say fine, but I'm not dying." Joker let out a quiet laugh through his nose and turned back to the ship's controls with a shake of his head. "Plus I haven't ripped out any stitches in at least six hours, can't let Kaidan's sewing skills get rusty. Now…" he placed a hand on the ceiling and leaned forward, looking out the window. "Where are we?"

"On our way to the Citadel so Mordin can patch the both of you up." Joker said, tapping the screen that had the coordinates for the closest mass relay locked in.

"No," Nihlus said quickly.

"No? The both of you look like hell and whatever patch work we can give you isn't going to be enough." Joker said sternly. "With how reluctant to take it easy you and Shepard are we are going to run out of bandages trying to keep everything closed."

"If we go to the Citadel I will have to turn over our prisoner." Nihlus growled, gesturing widely down the bridge. He winced and returned his bandaged right arm to his side. "I can't question her if she is in C-Sec."

"You're a Spectre, can't you just go all 'I do what I want' and get her in to interrogate her?" Kaidan asked, coming up beside him. "And you're bleeding again," he added, pointing to the blue bandages on Nihlus' arm.

"Yeah, I'll deal with it later," Nihlus said, stubbornly. "And the problem with that is that she is a General of the Blue Suns, they teach anyone who has been around for more than a few years to resist interrogation methods. The only thing that will break that woman, really break her are things that I cannot legally or morally do. There's only so much shouting that I'm a Spectre can do."

"Wow…" Kaidan shook his head and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. "The Spectres just keep sounding more and more corrupt, don't they?"

Nihlus growled loud enough for the humans to hear and his mandibles twitched. "And so what if we are a bit? We do what is needed to be done, what others are too tangled in politics and law to do. You've been to war, you know what I'm talking about. Shepard knows what I am talking about." He stood up straight, giving him a good foot on Kaidan. "When you get down to it all soldiers have a little of a monster inside of them. I do, Shepard does…" he could see how that made Kaidan mad "you do."

"We aren't monsters, we defend people, morals, rights," Kaidan growled.

"Like the children you have killed? You were defending them? Do you think your spirits justify the slaughter of them?" Nihlus prodded, his voice dark. Kaidan grabbed the front of Nihlus' jacket, his fist raised. "You and I aren't so different. No, the only difference is that I accept what I am, what I have to be. You on the other hand hide behind excuses and then tell yourself that 'it won't happen again.' But it will, and you won't make the call. I know that, Shepard knows that, hell I bet Joker knows that."

"I want to be left out of this," Joker said, sinking further into his chair. Yeah it was cowardly, but what was a cripple going to do against a six foot human and a seven foot alien.

Nihlus chuckled and turned back to Kaidan. "Are you just going to sit there with an angry pout on your face or are you going to—" Kaidan slammed his fist into Nihlus' jaw, making him stumble back and his head snapped to the side. He spit out a bit of blue blood and moved his jaw from side to side, testing. "Not bad," he said, looking back at Kaidan, his right mandible hanging lower than normal after the hit. "My turn." Before Kaidan could put up a defense Nihlus slammed his fist into his face. It made contact with his eye and slammed him into the co-pilot's chair, out cold. Nihlus stared at him for a long second, trying to get his breathing under control. "We are not going to the Citadel, take us somewhere else, preferably outside of Citadel space," he barked at Joker as he went back down the bridge.

He looked at the bandage on his arm, now a deep blue after that punch had ripped out more of the stitching. He slid back in the med-bay, making Shepard look up from her omni-tool. Her eyes went to his arm and she quickly got out of the bed. "What happened?" she asked, touching his arm with the tips of her fingers. She looked up at him and put a hand hovering over his right mandible that was drooping noticeably and had started to swell.

"Kaidan punched him," he said, going to the cabinets and getting a needle and sutures.

Shepard balled her shaky hands into fists. "I'll take to him." she said sharply, turning towards the door.

Nihlus caught her with his left hand. "Don't, I egged him on." he said and held up the needle to her. "And I need help." The cut was on the back of his outer upper arm, he couldn't reach it and see well enough to stitch himself up.

She looked at him and then down at her shaking hands. "Can you do this?" he asked, not wanting to force her.

"Yeah… I think," she answered, taking the needle. "And how did you open this again?" she asked as he sat down on one of the beds. She sat beside him, turned so she could work on unwrapping the wound.

"I punched him back," he said, as if it was nothing.

She sighed, "Why do you have to be an asshole?" She put the bloody bandages on a metal tray and brought the needle to the wound, forcing it through his tough skin where the break in the stitches was.

"I am an asshole," Nihlus said and tried to give her a smile, but it was lopsided as his injured mandible refused to move much.

"True," she said, bring the needle around for another stitch. "But underneath that you are sweet, kind, caring, but you refuse to let others see it."

"Of course not, it would ruin my bad boy image." he said, wincing as she put it through his skin again. Shepard's bedside manor was terrible when she wasn't coming down from red sand, let alone the shakes, and tremors, and sweats she was currently going through. "The ladies love the bad boys."

She poked his side hard, "You're taken," she grumbled and put in the final stitch to replace the loose section. She cut the wire and placed the needle on the metal tray among the discarded bandages.

"But they don't know that," he said, earning a light slap to the back of the head. He laughed and pulled her close, resting his head on her shoulder. "I am very happily taken," he purred, his hands tracing circles on her hips. "I love you, Sam."

She didn't say anything, about him saying her first name or the three words she couldn't get herself to say back. Instead she wrapped her arms around his torso and they sat there, just holding each other.

A/N: Hey I'm back, hopefully with a lot more stability writing wise too. So I know I have been MIA for months, but moving across the country can do that. And then there were problems about switching to a new desktop, Word not wanting to function correctly, ect. Anywho, I have an amazing desktop that my fiancé built for me and am playing housewife so I will be writing a lot more again! Hope you liked the chapter and thanks for sticking with me through my chaotic life and being understanding. Please review and tell me what you thought of the chapter.