It wasn't a clear day. Steve didn't wake up expecting one.

There was a taste in his mouth that was gone once he ate something, once he got his routine started—once he headed over to Piccadilly Circus Memorial Field Hospital to see what he could help out with. There were a couple of guys he thought of as his guys, still getting through the tough stuff—like somehow what they'd fought for, how hard they'd fought, wasn't the tough stuff already—and sometimes they said it was good to see him again.

Sometimes they didn't.

'Good to see you again,' he said, because they couldn't take it for granted.

He knew he wasn't their squadmate, their superior, their guy, so why he thought of them as his had as much to do with what he needed as it had to do with what they needed.

So long as he recognized it—and he did—then he could think of it as mutual.

That wasn't something they had too many chances for, not even before everything.

It wasn't that anyone knew how to answer that question about humanity, either. And it was important they kept to the small stuff instead of the bigger issues—names, memories, little things and all of them personal. Favorite foods. What they'd eat if they could. Where they were from. Remembering how to want stuff again, step by step, without having to ask themselves, is the risk worth taking?

If they could answer those questions, thumbing over their dog-tags, skin on metal, looking down at their hands or looking out past Steve's shoulder but getting it—understanding where they were in the present—then it was a good day, even if it wasn't a clear one.

Steve helped out with the bandages sometimes, too. With holding somebody down, hooking his arms under their armpits and feeling them sweat against his wrists. Those were also what he thought of as the good days.

And Vega was good at it. Even better at keeping the kids distracted when it was time for a checkup, but he kept acting like he wasn't around, like he hadn't spent all day in Piccadilly, like he wasn't there with a bunch of fugees even now, letting them climb all over him and mess up his hair.

'Way I hear it, Mr. Vega, you're on your way to becoming London's very own friendly dinosaur,' Steve said, setting up next to a few crates for lunch. One of the orphans was pulling on Vega's ears. 'Kind of like a mascot, when you think about it. Pretty impressive, too.'

'What can I say?' Vega didn't shake her off. 'Go big or get out of town.'

'I'm not sure that's how the saying goes,' Steve said.

'Whatever,' Vega said, twisting underneath the kid's expert hold. 'I'm just benchpressing these little dudes. You know they're heavier than they look.'

So's a lot of stuff, Steve thought, but he didn't say it.

'That's right,' Vega added. 'You guys are helping me out here, not the other way 'round. Now hold still or I'm gonna drop you, and it's a long way down from all the way up here.'

At least he wasn't teaching them Spanish—the Vega dictionary version, from cerveza to pendejo and all the curses in between.

'Just leave it, all right?' Vega had said once, too late at night, way past curfew, standing out back of the gallery while he did chin-ups on a bent lamppost. Whether or not he'd bent it himself, Steve had no idea. 'These kids don't even have— They're gonna learn it sometime. Better they figure it out fast, now, and know how to use it.'

After that, he cleaned up his act.

Mostly.

Steve's lunch tasted like reconstituted waste, but the kids were eating theirs, putting it away whenever Vega tore into something. Steve noticed that. They just wanted to be like him. Then Vega noticed him noticing it and the moment was ruined, just like anything else when you drew too much attention to it. Vega shrugged one big shoulder, sweat underneath the pits of his tee. It'd been white once, but like everything else, it'd changed from what it used to be. Not to something worse, but to something different.

'We're eating proteins,' one of the kids said. 'Stole it to keep our strength up in the wild.'

'Nice one, Vega,' Steve said. 'You're teaching them some real life lessons here.'

Vega grinned, showing teeth. Like a dinosaur—but if it was for Steve's sake or for the kids or both, or because Vega was just doing it because he was Vega, it was too close of a call. Steve didn't have enough experience reading people like engines yet. All he knew was Vega would be Vega whether somebody loved it or not.

At least somebody was having fun. Somebody big—and a lot of little somebodies with him. The kids were using him like his body was a new kind of battlefield, probably not thinking the word itself, but when they stepped on him he just flexed and held it, down on his back between two tarped-up grates, teaching them how to walk over a person without them even feeling it.

'Course, you wouldn't want to try this on somebody like Esteban over there,' Vega added. 'You gotta figure out first who's tough and who isn't.' Steve couldn't see his face, but he knew he was tapping himself on the temple when he continued, 'It ain't all about muscle all the time. Sometimes it's about using your head, too. You got that, ninita? I'm telling you, don't step on anybody scrawny like Esteban. He can't take it.'

'Aw, Mr. Vega, you do care,' Steve said, leaning back. He watched as Vega straightened into a sit-up with a grunt, as the kids scattered laughing, running to their crates to hide. Vega's wrinkled tee rolled up and he pulled it down, fabric straining at the shoulders.

If he was doing his own laundry, that'd explain a lot of the shrinking. Hard to imagine anybody getting bigger instead of smaller these days.

Just dump the stuff in with the rest of mine, Steve remembered offering a few weeks back. It's cool. A couple more dirty t-shirts won't make much of a difference, and since that's all you wear…

Uh-huh, Vega'd replied, which meant no way in marine language, apparently.

Go figure.

He'd been distracted at the time, not even wearing one of his t-shirts, sweating it out getting a wall repaired with a bunch of Turians who, he'd said, weren't even doing the best with what they'd been given. 'Three goddamn fingers, man,' he'd said, wiping his forehead with his t-shirt, then heading back inside the shelter. 'Three. Goddamn. Fingers.'

Sure, Steve agreed. They were good at some things, okay at others, terrible at the rest. Same as everyone else around here. And not everyone had the same advantages.

'Ready or not, you'd better be ready,' Vega said, finishing off his protein. Rations might've been getting slimmer, but Vega wasn't. He was just about the only soldier post-war Steve knew who'd actually bulked up.

'You gonna roar like a dinosaur?' Steve asked.

'Hey,' Vega replied. 'Dinosaurs don't roar, OK? So no, I am not gonna do that.'

It'd been a long time. Steve laughed and Vega did too, even the taste of lunch not enough to sour it. But the Asari volunteer with the black armband clearing her throat next to Steve put the lid on that, whatever it was, something over so fast Steve didn't have time to gauge its structure, much less its meaning.

He knew her not by name but by sight, passing her sometimes when his volunteer shift at Piccadilly was over and he headed back to check in at the National Gallery, some of the PTSD going on in there just as bad as whatever Steve saw in the field hospitals. The Asari had afternoon duty, early evening maybe, and Steve didn't have to know people—people or aliens—as well as he knew models and makes to realize she knew Vega too.

Then again, a lot of people knew Vega.

Not always for bad reasons. Sometimes just for awkward ones.

'Hey,' Vega said. He sounded surprised. 'Something I can do you for?'

'It might not be anything,' the Asari said, 'you know that already—but you told me to alert you if anyone came through with any of those names you mentioned.'

'Names, huh?' Steve asked, but there was something in his stomach and it wasn't the proteins from lunch, tacky leather that left grit in his throat on the way down, that'd form a hard lump anyway. This just helped it tighten up quicker.

'Which name is it?' When Vega stepped forward, Steve was sitting at the right height to hear something pop in his knee—and to get caught in his shadow, big as it was, cutting off the hazy sunlight. He wasn't at the right height to see Vega's face, just his elbow, the vein on the inside and one of the muscles—some flexor or other—twitching once, visibly. 'Which one?'

The Asari pulled out a clipboard, checking it over—twice—which made sense, given the guy bearing down on her, unfortunately making the moment that much more intense.

But she knew her stuff. She'd seen more than they'd ever know. She held her ground, her eyes scanning the info, confirming something for herself that she probably didn't need to. Then she nodded, because she'd never actually doubted what she'd find there.

'He finally woke up this morning, and we got a name from him. He was wearing one of those…commemorative dog-tags they issued; we've seen a lot of them, enough to know not to hope. Of course, it said Shepard on the back, so we couldn't ID him until—'

'Hey,' Vega said. 'Which. Name. Is it?'

'Alenko,' the Asari replied. 'Major Kaidan Alenko.'