A/N - The idea of a duty roster for visits to Kat has me chuckling even now, I hope you appreciate it. Also, I wanted to give insight into the minds of the rest of the crew during this ordeal, and who better to do it than Garrus and Liara? They are my Shepard's two best friends, after all~

It took two more days for the doctors to state with stern looks on their faces and much hemhawing about "not out of the woods yet" and "still too early to say" that they were "cautiously optimistic" and Kaidan immediately rejected it as a new mantra. Alive alive alive was much shorter, much easier, and in the end, said more than "cautiously optimistic" anyway. Still, it was a relief to hear that Shepard's intracranial pressure had stabilized and the danger of neurological trauma seemed to have receded, as had the danger of infection. The doctors allowed Kaidan and Hannah to provide a limited list of approved visitors to the nurses, provided that the total amount of visitors was restricted to two at a time.

Since Kaidan and Hannah spent anytime they were not on duty sitting at Kat's bedside together and had in fact developed a strong and easy friendship – in the end, Hannah was so much like Kat that it was easy for him to grow close to her - they solved things in the most democratic way two career military people could. They wrote a duty roster.

For every hour of visiting hours (although Kaidan and Hannah were not limited to only visiting hours, the hospital staff had long ago stopped trying to enforce that particular rule) they had slotted which two people would be in Kat's room. In most cases, the hours involved one or the other of them with a random crew member, but there were rare times when they both had obligations that took them out her room at the same time.

Which is how, three days into the rotation, Garrus Vakarian and Liara T'Soni found themselves sitting together in Shepard's room. They had both already seen her once - Liara with Hannah on day one of the rotation, Garrus with Kaidan on day two. They had both, although they hadn't discussed it until now, felt the same about the visits. They were afraid to truly react, to show the emotions they felt at seeing their leader, their hero, brought so low, in front of the people who loved her best. So they had sat their hours out in stoic silence, after exchanging polite platitudes with their partner.

Now, however, they could finally, with great relief, be honest. With each other, with themselves. They had both been there from the beginning, and they knew each other as well as they knew her. There were no polite facades or empty platitudes necessary between them - indeed, it was highly unlikely that such things would even succeed. The polite lies should be saved for people that needed them. Garrus and Liara did not. Instead, Garrus said the first thing that came to his mind when he looked upon the pale and damaged face of his best friend in the galaxy. "She looks like shit."

Liara let out a surprised laugh at his candor, then sighed and sank down into the chair at the bedside. "Yes, she does," she agreed with resignation in her voice.

"Do you remember the first time she was seriously hurt?" Garrus inquired, taking up his post leaning against the far wall of the room. He supposed he should take the other chair, touch her hand, do something to acknowledge the love he felt for the woman lying there so still and somehow small, but he couldn't bring himself to. He just couldn't reconcile himself to the fact that the woman that had been bottle shooting with him on top of the Citadel months before, allowing him in her typically graceful and intuitive fashion to have his moment of glory (oh he knew she had missed on purpose, and likely she knew that he knew, but such was the nature of their friendship that the fact would never be mentioned between them) was now lying pale, silent, still, damaged on the bed. Liara's reply brought him out of his musings.

"After Noveria, that damned space station full of rachni," Liara said, remembering now herself. She had been groundside on that mission, as had Garrus, working feverishly to get Shepard back to the Normandy after she had been overrun and poisoned by the rachni. By the time they had delivered the Commander to the medbay and the capable hands of Dr. Chakwas, she was ranting with the rachni poison and barely conscious. "I thought Kaidan was gonna kill us for letting her get hurt."

Garrus laughed softly, thinking that he had worried about that himself. It was rare for Kaidan to not go groundside - Shepard and Kaidan were a truly formidable team in combat and Shepard was reluctant to take on a mission without the security of their synchronicity. Garrus mused that Liara might not realize that Shepard had tapped her for that mission as a way to help the asari get back into things after Benezia's death and as a symbol of her trust.

"I know she took me to help me," Liara said, surprising him with her intuition and making him wonder if becoming the Shadow Broker had also made her a mind reader. "I blamed myself for letting her down."

Garrus frowned, his mandibles shifting with the expression. "It wasn't your fault, Liara."

"Oh, I know that now," she said calmly, "but the girl I was then," she sighed, "I doubted myself more often than not."

Garrus nodded, accepting the truth in that statement. The asari had truly grown over the years he had known her. He wondered how much of that was due to Shepard, how much was the galactic conflict they had been engaged in for all the time they'd know each other. A question for sharper minds, he thought, deciding that he'd never know.

"It was Kaidan that comforted me," Liara said, continuing her memory. "Ironic, I spent hours avoiding him, afraid that he'd blame me, until he finally cornered me and then he was the one that made me feel better."

"What did he say?" Garrus asked, having actually never heard this tale before.

"He asked me if I did everything I could. I thought about it for a moment, reviewing the mission in my mind again. I told him yes. He nodded and asked me if I had followed every order Shepard had given. That, I didn't have to think about, I nodded immediately. He turned to me and looked me right in the eye and said 'then let it go. Bad things happen sometimes, it's not your fault that this did.' Then he turned away, said that Shepard was fine and I could see her whenever I was ready." Liara smiled in memory of the simple comfort Kaidan had offered with quiet reassurance, even though she had seen the tightness around his eyes and the obvious distress that Shepard had been hurt.

"Yeah, he has a way about him," Garrus agreed, "he takes care of people."

"Yes," Liara agreed, thinking that summarized their friend quite well. "So who takes care of him now?" she questioned the turian who had become her friend as well.

"Good question," Garrus replied in soft tones, turning to look out the window. He didn't have an answer for her.