Chapter 10

Joker fell back against the opposite bed, twisting out of Ashley's grip. White hot but familiar pain stabbed through his body. Ash had let go of his arm for an attempt to reach the control panel for the rest of the restraints.

Idiot, idiot, idiot! He cursed himself.

"Joker?" He heard the blessed hiss of the medical bay door opening and Chakwas's pleasant voice. "I thought I heard—Shepard! Quick!"

The next few moments were a blur of activity. Joker saw it all dimly through a haze of pain. Shepard rushed in, wrestling Ash's arm away from the control panel, Chakwas digging around in her stores for another sedative. Kaidan soon ran in too, only half dressed, his omni-tool active.

"Commander should I use the sedative?" Chakwas emerged from her stores, glancing from Shepard struggling with Ashley to Kaidan.

"No, let me try overload. Be ready in case it doesn't work. Shepard, stand back, this might hit you too," Kaidan said, voice taunt with worry as Ashley trashed against her restraints. Shepard nodded and at some unspoken signal, ducked out of the way. Ashley swung her arm up, but Kaidan keyed his omni-tool and there was a crackling flash, a smell of ozone, and then Ashley's body was arcing, eyes popping, jaw clenched.

A sudden, terrible silence filled the room and then alarms began shrieking. Chakwas rushed over. "She's going into cardiac arrest!"

"EDI, hack the chip, now!" Kaidan barked, running to Chakwas's side as began CPR.

"Kaidan, the defibrillator," Chakwas ordered, continuing chest compressions on Ashley.

"Hacking control chip," said the AI, her soothing voice out of place in the chaos of the medical bay. Shepard saw Joker huddling off to the side, face in a grimace of pain. She led him to a more distant bed closer to the AI core. She didn't know how to set the bone, but she could at least give him pain medication; she'd learned that much for herself at least. Joker didn't seem to notice the hypospray she gave him, but after a moment, the wild-eyed look faded and some color returned to his face.

Joker glanced up at Shepard, then looked down at his cradled broken arm. "Sorry."

She reached out to touch his shoulder but thought better of it. "This is partially my fault. I should have warned you." She ran a hand through her hair. "What a mess." They watched Chakwas and Kaidan work on Ashley.

Finally, Chakwas and Kaidan stepped back, and Joker heard the monitor beside her bed give out a steady beep, beep, beep. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. She was alive. Alive but did the hack work?

"Success," EDI's voice intoned. "I have full access to Chief Williams' control chips. Putting them on standby mode. Please be warned that this will not be a permanent solution. Cerberus network protocols indicate a high probability that they will attempt to regain control of their asset. Continued restraint is recommended."

Shepard stepped up to the bed, staring at the breathing tube that they'd had to insert in Ashley's mouth. She glanced at Kaidan.

"When will she wake up?"

He dragged the back of his wrist over his forehead. "A few minutes? A few hours? I don't know."

In some unspoken decision, Kaidan and Shepard stayed by the bed, waiting. Chakwas tended to Joker's arm. He stopped by the bed when she finished, staring at Ashley, then left.

Shepard stepped out to get them all coffee. Several cups later, EDI spoke into the silence. "Dr. Chakwas, Chief Williams' brain patterns indicate that she is waking up."

Chakwas looked at the monitors, nodding her agreement with the AI, and gently removed the breathing tube. Ashley coughed and gagged a little as it slipped out. Chakwas held the back of her head, letting her sip a mouthful of water to soothe her throat. Ashley blinked slowly as she became more awake, looking around the medical bay with confusion. Shepard and Kaidan stepped close to the bed and looked up at all of them crowding around, her expression bewildered at first and then with dawning horror.

"Oh God," she whispered, sounding like a prayer. 'What have I done?"

#

"Are you hungry?" Shepard asked Ashley, setting the tray on her lap. Ashley's bed had been adjusted so that she was sitting up, though, per EDI's recommendation, they kept her restrained except for her head. Since she'd woken up, she'd made a remarkable recovery. Normal victims of a heart attack would still be weak but as Shepard had predicted, the Cerberus cybernetics didn't keep her down for long.

Ashley didn't respond; she was looking at the door, eyes distant.

"I could have killed him, Shepard," she said in a hoarse voice. Chakwas said the hoarseness would go away after a day or two: the breathing tube had scraped her trachea raw.

"But you didn't. Joker understands—now that I've told him about the control chips." Shepard shifted in her chair. "It was my fault for not telling him. It never would have happened otherwise."

Ashley looked back at her, eyes red-rimmed. "It was horrible. The control chips only controlled my actions, but most of my thoughts were my own. It's like being possessed... able to see what was happening but not able to do anything about it." She looked away again. "You shouldn't even be talking to me. Who knows what I might do? What might be transmitted back to Cerberus?"

"EDI is keeping an eye on your control chips. She says that as long as they're disabled, your retina cameras won't transmit either. Right now, you're you."

Ashley nodded. "Right… you'll need to explain that one to me. Who's Edie and what ship are we on because the chip made me fight to not get on it when you called it the Normandy, but this sure doesn't look like the Normandy I remember."

Shepard sat back in the chair, transferring the tray to the side table. "Well, that… is a long story."

Ashley turned to look at her, a small smile on her lips. "Well, you've got a captive audience, Skipper. Shoot."

#

Ash finished swallowing the last of her food, eyes wide as Shepard finished the story of the past three years.

"Well… damn, Skipper, I don't know what to say." She stared at Shepard. "When you said that you and the LT had issues—you weren't lying."

Shepard shook her head. "The end of all sentient life as we know it and you're worried about my love life?"

Ashley shrugged. "Reapers are above my pay grade, but old fashioned human romance? That's something I can understand."

"We'll be okay," Shepard said. "The one good thing war does is put the unimportant things to the side. Kaidan and I… we'll be okay."

A slow smile spread over Ashley 's face.

"What?" Shepard asked warily.

"Gimmie that terminal, Skipper," Ashley said, gesturing at Chakwas' desk. "I want to check something."

Shepard stood up and retrieved the terminal, setting it on the food tray and rolling it close so Ashley could reach it. Ashley grinned again and began typing, her fingers dancing through a console screen, enlarging one screen with a flick and dismissing it with another.

"What are you up to?" Shepard asked, sipping her coffee.

"Lingerie shopping. For you."

Shepard choked. "Ash!"

The other woman cackled with glee. "You're not getting out of this one. The girls back in the 212 had a sacred tradition of buying lingerie for bachelorette parties. Marines don't get many chances to wear fun stuff, right? And I know this is something you would never do for yourself. Poor Alenko would have to deal with regulation sport bras and granny panties if you were left to your own devices."

"But I'm not getting married!"

Ashley shrugged. "Maybe not now. But it'll happen."

"Ash—"

"I want to do this, Shepard. Let me have some fun, eh?"

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. "Just… don't get anything with leopard spots."

"That's the spirit!"

Ashley made her purchases with a flourishing swipe of her hands and shut down the console. "I'm having it delivered to your PO box on the Citadel, 'kay?"

"Oh great. I can pick it up with Anderson looking over my shoulder."

Ashley only cackled again.

A/N: Many thanks to my beta girlfromgraz and a RL friend I have who works in cardiac surgery at a local hospital for the tips on making the heart attack scene more realistic.