"How is he, Doctor?" came the faded words. His sight was darkened, he was drifting away, but those nagging little noises just wouldn't let him rest...
"Bad," said the second voice. Female. Well spoken. 'Doctor' was a clue even his addled mind could grasp – Chakwas. That probably meant he was in the med bay.
"What do you mean bad?" the second voice interjected. Male. Rather hoarse. Kaidan, maybe? Garrus? "Bad, or bad?"
"Bad," the doctor sighed. "Multiple bullet wounds, fourty percent burns, and I'm pretty sure his back's broken. His heart's approaching failure, he lost a lot of blood before you reached him..."
"How much blood?"
"Kaidan, I know that look, and the answer's no." So it was Kaidan, then...
"What, you're just going to stand back and do nothing?"
"Don't you take that tone with me, Lieutenant!" Chakwas hissed, with a note of anger Shepard had never really heard in her voice before.
"Why the hell not? You're letting Shepard die!" Kaidan roared back, equally furious.
"You know it's not that simple! There's no guarantee it would even work!"
"It might buy him some time. Do it."
"No anaesthetic, Lieutenant."
"I don't care, for the last time, do it."
"I... this could kill you, Kaidan," Chakwas moaned. "I've got no way of monitoring it until you collapse from shock..."
"If we try it, I could die," Kaidan muttered. "If we don't, Shepard will die. Get an IV, and do it."
The voices fell silent once more, but noises were still drifting in and out of the black void Shepard occupied, all set against the ever-present hum of the Normandy. The clattering of people moving around and rummaging through cabinets came into earshot – a minute or so later, he heard a pained grunt, shortly followed by a stabbing sensation in his own arm, numbed though it was. Dull instinct, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, told him to open his eyes and search for the source of the pain, but his eyelids were too weary, and refused to co-operate.
"Are you alright?" Chakwas murmured, cautiously.
"Fine," Kaidan grunted – he was closer now, maybe only a foot or two from Shepard. "Is it working?"
"His blood pressure's rising... It might force his heart to work..."
"Can it do that?
"It certainly seems to be. The pressure of blood forces circulation by simple physics. In theory..."
"In theory? What about in reality, Doctor?"
"In reality..." Chakwas sighed. "His heart rate is rising, so is his blood pressure. That's fine for now, but if the wound re-opens, it just means he'll lose blood even more quickly. Besides which, you can't last forever..."
"I can last long enough."
"Long enough for what? At best, this is a delaying action, Kaidan, it won't cure him..."
"Then how do we cure him?"
"I don't know, damn it!" The outburst seemed surprising, not only to Shepard in his unconscious observation, but to Kaidan too – there was a sharp intake of breath from the lieutenant, at Shepard's side.
"Then talk me through it, a second opinion never hurts."
"You're not a doctor, Kaidan..."
"Well, the only other doctor on this ship is in the next bed, unconscious, so you'll have to make do with me. How is she, anyway?"
She? Did he mean...?
"Critical... She took a hell of a beating down there, but Javik carried her out."
"You're joking."
"I know, I know... but it's true, according to Garrus. He pulled her away from the Conduit and stood his ground until we reached them..."
The Conduit? Javik? Then that could only be...
"Damn it," Kaidan cursed. "It's bad enough losing Shepard, but Liara, too?"
Bang. With a brilliant white flash, light flooded into Shepard's eyes, and the subtle hum of the Normandy became an echoing din in his ears. All five beautiful senses burst into life, and his head span with the effort of comprehending it all. Before he quite regained control of his limbs, he felt himself falling – his head shook with pain from a blunt impact, and a loud cry escaped someone's lips, not his own.
As he looked up, he was astounded to see the air shimmering blue – in his confusion, he had begun to ripple with biotics. His armour, reduced to a blackened mess in the battle, was gone, leaving him stripped to the waist, with the trousers of his uniform covering his modesty. That, however, was the least of his concerns, as he grabbed the side of the bed and tried to drag himself upright. He had toppled out of bed, dragging some piece of machinery at his bedside with him, and Chakwas was staring at him apprehensively – he only began to realise why as he felt the sensation of warm, fresh blood trickling down his arm. Looking down, he saw a half-buried needle sticking out of his elbow, snapped clean in two. It was an image that only made sense once he looked up to see Kaidan, teeth gritted, with the remains of an IV cord – and another needle – hanging out of his own arm, dripping blood.
"What the..." was about all he could manage to mutter, slurring the words as he did.
"Hold still, Commander," Chakwas murmured, cautiously advancing on him. On the other side of the bed, Kaidan raised a biotically-shimmering hand, as if wondering whether to knock Shepard out again. While he was distracted with Kaidan – events were moving rather too quickly for him to keep track of two people – Chakwas advanced on him, and unceremoniously ripped the severed needle from his arm, before pressing a piece of cloth against it to stem the bleeding.
"What were you doing?" Shepard mumbled, dazedly.
"Blood transfusion," Kaidan grunted. "It worked, didn't it?"
"I..."
"Easy, Commander," Chakwas said, soothingly. "Maybe you should lie down, you've had quite the ordeal..."
"Where..." the Commander stammered, in reply. "Where's... argh, where's...?"
Finally, spinning around, he found what he was looking for. Liara was lying, quite still, in the bed next to his, eyes tight shut, breathing shallow. At the sight of her, his legs gave up, and he crumpled to his knees. Chakwas made some forlorn attempt to pull him upright, but it was a pitiful effort from the outset. Only when Kaidan paced over to help did they manage to drag him onto the bed and lay him down – even then, his eyes were still fixed on Liara.
"Can you give him a sedative, Doctor?" Kaidan muttered, disregarding the fact that Shepard could hear them.
"No... it could stop his heart," Chakwas replied, also ignoring him, and ensuring his heart would beat all the more quickly for fear of stopping. "I hate to say it, but the stress is keeping him conscious. Keep an eye on him, I need to check on Liara..."
Shepard's eyes still didn't leave Liara's bed, as Chakwas crouched over her, checking the various readouts and charts on her omni-tool. After a moment, Kaidan dragged a chair between the two beds, rather deliberately blocking his view.
"She'll be fine, Commander," he whispered.
"I could see that myself, if you'd get out of the way," Shepard grunted.
"And here I thought you'd have cheered up a bit..." Kaidan groaned.
"Cheered up?" the Commander spluttered, feeling a fresh vein of anger ripple through his brain. "Why the hell should I cheer up? Liara's dying in the next bed, I'm dying in this one, and to top it all off, I don't know whether we won or lost, and it's all my fault!"
By the time he finished, he was panting rather heavily, and the edges of his vision were blurred. Kaidan, however, was smiling gently, and it was irritating beyond words.
"There it is," the lieutenant murmured. "That needed saying, didn't it Commander?"
"Sod off," Shepard snapped.
"If you're finished," he replied, ignoring the curses altogether. "I'll skip right to the bit where I prove you wrong. First, Liara's not dying, not on our watch. And neither are you..."
"And Earth?"
"We don't know yet," Alenko admitted. "But whatever happened on the Citadel, you did the right thing."
"Kaidan, since when did you get this naïve?"
"Shut up and listen, Commander."
The retort was strange, unprecedented, even. In all the time he'd known Kaidan, Shepard had only known him to lose his temper twice – after Virmire, and Horizon. It was such a surprise that Shepard found himself temporarily mute, and Dr Chakwas peered over at the two of them with a look of concern.
"The turians, the krogan, the asari, salarians, quarians, geth, hanar, drell, elcor, volus, batarians..." Kaidan recited. "They all followed your lead, Commander, why do you think that is?"
"Necessity and loyalty."
"Trust. Following you to Earth was one thing, but giving you the Crucible? It was a complete unknown, every prediction we had said it was massively destructive, hell, it could have wiped out the whole system – you were the only person the galaxy trusted enough to make that decision."
"Yeah? Well the galaxy should have trusted someone else."
"Get over yourself, Shepard! You don't even know whether we won or lost!"
"Alright," Shepard muttered, somewhat randomly.
"Alright what?" Kaidan replied, eyebrow raised quizzically.
"Alright, I'm going to find out," the Commander nodded. With that, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and got shakily to his feet. Almost instantly, his knees buckled, but he kept himself upright, barely.
"Shepard, get back to bed," the lieutenant sighed, wearily.
"No, no, you're right, I should at least get my facts right before I start moaning about the end of the world!" Shepard yelled, staggering towards the med bay door. As he left, he heard Kaidan turn to Dr Chakwas, and with an exasperated sigh, mutter:
"Great. Three years of being a selfless hero, and now he chooses to be an ass."