"Garrus!"

Shepard skidded to a stop in front of the turian's body, sliding down behind cover. Garrus lay there, staring blindly at the sky, his breath coming quick and shallow.

"Garrus, are you alright—? Hold on, I'll get you out of—"

She had grabbed his shoulder, and was making ready to pull him to cover, when she felt a hand on her arm. She looked up sharply to see Mordin, the salarian—lips compressed thinly, chin angled towards the turian. He was hunched down behind what had been some kind of counter, beckoning her back.

"Shepard," Mordin said, urgently, "his spine—no way to tell if fractured—keep him still—battle needs finishing."

She turned back to Garrus. The turian lay, bent awkwardly in half, one arm pinned under his armour. His eyes—crystal blue irises set in black scleras—stared fixedly out at the world, darting back and forth to track unseen shapes. Shepard couldn't tell if he could see her or not, turian faces were hard to read at the best of times, and there was nothing in her friend's rigid expression to suggest he could tell she was there.

"Garrus," she said, trying to speak loudly and clearly above the noise around her, "Hey, Garrus, can you hear me? Can you—" she felt her voice beginning to shake as the next layer of adrenaline pouring into her system lit up her nerve endings and flooded her muscles, "tell me if you can feel your legs, or—"

She heard gunfire, and her brain kicked into gear. She leapt away from the turian reflexively, drawing the incoming stream of bolts away from where he lay. The twin M350 cannons on the front of the gunship roared, spitting out a line of bullets that lit up the air in the room.

She landed behind cover, sniffed heavily, rubbed at her chest. The bullets splashed across the room, shredding curls of splintered metal out of the walls and sending them bouncing and scattering across the floor.

Shepard couldn't get Garrus, now, she knew; panic fluttered in her chest as options flitted behind her eyes—one gunship, evenly spaced cover, two windows: they could get under the window sills, to avoid rocket fire; or they could stagger themselves around the room, to cover each other from both angles; they could trade off shooting ranges, rapidly, moving from segment to segment of the room to keep the gunship off balance—she knew that mantis ships weren't incredibly mobile when it came to lateral movement, their mass damping fields couldn't allow fo—for

She coughed, awkwardly. Something was caught in her throat. She tried to clear her throat, and found that there was something blocking it—a tight, hard twist, that made breathing hard and seemed to—

She closed her eyes, tightly. She had been so happy to see him. Just for a moment, the galaxy was a brighter place, but then… She understood, she was sure, why Garrus had looked at her like that. The quiet accusation in his voice. The question.

'Where were you?'

And now, a minute later, he was grievously, terribly injured, unable to hear her, (unable to see her?).

Garrus, please—

She opened her eyes again, and caught Mordin's gaze. The salarian was looking at her with concern, bordering on worry.

"Shepard…" he began.

"No," she said, quickly, "I'm fine. Use the north-east corner of the wall, trade back and forth if it tries to get a bearing on us by switching windows."

She knew the worried look on the salarian's face had not been for her feelings. Shepard was supposed to lead them, and if she fell apart now, not only would they have to be without a commander, they would have to support a compromised teammate.

"Grunt," she said, forcefully, willing herself through the vortex of feelings in her chest.

"You with us, Shepard?" Grunt's voice rumbled dryly through her earpiece.

"Stay back to the wall—south—your shoulders will make too big of a target for any of the floor cover. You have a big gun—work the missile pods, and the engines if you get an angle."

"Alright."

"Mordin," Shepard turned briskly back to the salarian, "how do you feel about fire?"

"Blind him," said the salarian, brightening up, "solid idea—weaken canopy?"

"Yeah," she said, "I'll try and get an impact shot through."

"You can't save Archangel!" the batarian inside the gunship cockpit bellowed, in triumphant rage, "you get in the way of the Blue Suns and we'll tear your world down, we—!"

Shepard broke cover long enough to let off a single, high-powered shot. It burst off the armoured canopy of the gunship, momentarily stunning the pilot into silence. The gunship swerved, and opened fire again. A rush of gunfire splash off the wall behind Shepard, as she dropped to the floor again. Mordin ducked out from behind the wall, and launched a searing plasma bolt, which sailed across the room, and lit up the front of the gunship. Searing plasma residue roiled across the ship's armour—the burnt olive colour-coat evaporated and bubbled out of the surface of the metal it had been ingrained into.

She leapt upright. The gunship fired. She dove to the side, fired back. Metal popped—the canopy was weakened. The gunship fired. Missile pods opened. Wrex took a shot. The missile veered off awkwardly. Shepard littered the cockpit with bullets. The gunship spit a pair of rockets through the windows of the building and rolled away.

"Get down!" Shepard called.

Boom.

Garrus' body moved, half-rolled over by the force of one of the explosions. Shards of metal like burning dust scattered across his face, ripped his battered skin into smaller and smaller shreds.

"No!" Shepard yelled, unable to stop herself.

She couldn't see the turian's breathing through the heavy layers of his armour, and it terrified her. She leaned over, trying to see if she could see movement on his face.

Movement. His mandibles twitched, contracting tightly to his face. He was trying to regulate his breathing, she could tell—which meant he was going into shock, and he knew it.

The gunship circled them cannily, its pilot turning the cockpit to the side as it hovered, in an effort to catch any incoming fire on its relatively undamaged flanks.

Shepard let off another impact shot. The chunk of metal hissed through the air, and struck a point on the gunship's nosecone. The ship bucked and swerved. There was a moment while it wobbled uncertainly in the air, and then it departed.

Silence.

Shepard was at Garrus' side instantly.

"Mordin," she said, "quickly: how's he doing?"

Mordin appeared at her elbow.

"Blood loss—hm—entry wound..." he said, "There. Crack in armour—bolt would've entered—grazed an artery perhaps. Medigel? ...inactive. Good."

"Good?" queried Shepard, warily.

"Vakarian," said Mordin, loudly, "Vakarian, Can you hear me—"

Garrus gurgled, snorting blood and crusted dirt. He coughed.

"Archangel, can you hear me," said Mordin.

"What do you mean 'good'?" Shepard asked, concern over-riding her reluctance to interrupt the salarian as he tended to her friend.

Garrus breathed, hoarsely. He blinked, his eyes—creased in pain—focused. His jaw trembled as he fought to speak.

"Ss—g..." he said, "th..." his eyes flickered, and began to drift closed.

"Archangel," said Mordin, louder, "Archangel, you have to l—"

"Garrus," Shepard shouted, "Garrus!"

Garrus's eyes snapped open. His entire body seized, bending in half like a fish, as he struggled to sit upright. Mordin caught him, held him still.

"Now, don't move," he said, quickly, "G—" he looked at Shepard, and she reflexively avoided his gaze, for reasons she wasn't sure of.

"Garrus," he went on, turning back to Garrus, trying to keep him upright and stable, and struggling against the weight of his huge, armoured frame, "can you understand me."

Garrus tried to move his mouth, stopped. A groan escaped his throat. Shepard saw the piece of metal pinning his tongue to the inside of his mouth and the fluttering creature of panic in her chest leapt and turned over; her fingers twitched as the urge to help—to do something—ran through her body again.

She caught Mordin's eye.

"Garrus," she said, "just nod."

After a second, he nodded, stiffly.

"Do you know where you are?" asked Mordin.

Garrus, after some hesitation, held up his left hand, awkwardly. Finger and thumb curled around each other, facing down. Omega, thought Shepard.

"Omega," said Mordin, Garrus nodded. "Do you remember us?"

Nod. Eyes flickered to meet Shepard's gaze. Another, slower nod.

"Good, can you feel your legs?"

Groan. Nod.

Somewhere in the back of Shepard's mind, a warning alarm went off. She sat upright, leaning back onto her heels, looking around for the source of the alarm.

Nothing presented itself to her senses, but something... something in the room was wrong.

Mordin talked quietly to Garrus, assessing, diagnosing. Shepard stood upright, the warning was getting stronger. Was it—

The noise? The sound of Omega seemed to be getting… louder.

She sprinted over to one of the windows, then to the next. No sight of the gunship anywhere. Nothing beneath, nothing above, but still...

She listened carefully. There was a gentle crackling in her ear—noise coming across the radio. Their communications were encrypted, but Omega was a hive of radio activity, communications, legitimate radio, pirate broadcasts, shadow networks. No-one could get a clear channel on Omega.

Mordin was rapping gently on the back of Garrus' armour, pressing, trying to gauge where, if anywhere, the turian's spine was injured.

The oppressive, warning feeling grew. The mantis gunships were remarkably quiet, and it was hard to discern their noise from the muted, echoing ocean roar of Omega, but Shepard was almost sure that she could hear it. She stared around the room, listening to the noise intently.

She noticed Grunt, the krogan, looking at her in thought.

"What is it," he said.

She stared mutely at him, then shook her head. I don't know.

He looked at her, and then wandered slowly over to the window. He rested an arm on it and looked out. To the passing observer, he was just taking in the view, but Shepard immediately realized the uncharacteristic deliberation with which he moved. He was purposefully acting casual. He could feel it, too.

Mordin was passing his omnitool over the glistening, blue-black fissure in the Garrus's armour, and the omnitool's display caught Shepard's eye. Seen through the reverse, it was too skewed for her universal translator to decipher the salarian symbols, but she immediately recognized the leaf/node abstraction of the Medigel interface. The salarian was dangerously low on the stuff.

"I'll do it," said Shepard, quickly, reflexively, reaching to brush his arm away, "You only have two capsules left; you don't have to use your supply on him just because he's my friend."

Mordin glanced at her, archly.

"Shepard," he said, "intentions admirable—but, not doing it as a favour. Archangel—Vakarian rather—competent soldier—held off three mercenary groups—I would think th…" He stopped.

Shepard was conscious that he was staring at her, but her attention was suddenly elsewhere. A noise she had just heard, a microscopic clang, a flattened note barely on the edge of hearing. She spun to face the window, gun drawn.

"The roof," said Mordin. He leapt upright to join her.

Taut ropes sang and hissed. Shapes swung through the windows—bone-bleached rings on sky-blue—glowing eye-plates shining like lamps in the dark. Blue Suns.

"Grunt!" Shepard called warningly.

Grunt was already in action. One of them had rappelled in barely three feet from where Grunt had been waiting by the window. Before Shepard had begun to fire, the krogan—a huge knot of muscles bound to a hair-trigger impulse for violence—had swung the butt of his gun around, broad-siding one man back out into the empty space beyond the building.

Shepard scattered fire across the first wave, trying to reach as many as possible before they could orient themselves, and the mercenaries dove for cover. She kept firing until the the gun's heat-stop went off before reaching for her shot-gun—There were too many for her to keep down with spread-fire, and it wouldn't take them long to realize it, she had to—

Her hand came away from the assault rifle tacky. She looked at it, quickly, assessing.

Blue. She had touched Garrus while trying to drag him to safety, and his blood had come off on her hands. All over her hands. It was painted on up to her elbows. Beneath her, Shepard could see more of the blood, spreading across the floor, into the cracks, against the soles of her boots.

It took only a few fractions of a second before she swung back into action, but she knew, suddenly, that if she did not get him help quickly, Garrus was going to die.

With that, the last shred of caution she had been holding on to evaporated. She brought her shotgun up and vaulted across the room. She planted her feet wide, ready to bolt, and poured three rapid shotgun blasts into the faces of mercenaries near to her. One of them screamed and toppled back, the other fell silently, blood spilling from his suddenly inactive eye-plates. Shepard sprung forward into cover again as the other mercenaries realized what was happening and began to open fire. She turned and let off another shot. Shepard worked to her own plan—trusting in her squad to know what to do in a close firefight, and they did.

Mordin fell back into the dark interior of the building, drawing in the mercenaries and outflanking them. Grunt leapt from window to window, unleashing the contents of his shotgun, and surprising and disorienting new members to the firefight as they swung through.

The battle raged on between the two groups. Shepard found herself fighting with desperate abandon, all but throwing herself physically at the mercenaries to take them down.

The gunship appeared again.

Shepard destroyed it.

She saw it appear, and the thought crystallized in her mind.

No.

She skidded across the floor, low, kneecapping someone with the flat of her gun. He fell hard to the ground, and she rolled over, slamming the gun butt into the back of his neck. Mass effect fields did not react well to slow projectiles and Shepard heard his neck pop. She hurled herself forward again, over cover. One of the gunship's bolts caught her shield, and she felt the charge die, felt the electric tension go out of the air around her.

She dropped to the ground.

"Mordin, cover me."

"Just a tick."

Froosh. The wall of flame cast light across the room, illuminating even the shadowed corner Shepard hid in.

"Shepard," Mordin's voice spoke quietly in her earpiece, "you're charging it—feel I must point out: it's a gunship—plans?"

Shepard's mind raced. No. No plans. She'd run at it in desperation. What had she been hoping to do?

She looked down at the weapon in her hand. A shotgun. Shotguns couldn't touch armour, they spread out too much force across the surface. At best she could—

Yes she did. She did have a plan. Her breathing sped up. She sat up against the heavy bench which had sheltered her. She toggled a switch on the side of her shotgun. It blinked and chirruped at her, and a different symbol popped up on the free-floating HUD the weapon projected.

"Ice," she said into the radio. She stood up, brought up her shotgun. She heard the guns mounted on its nose begin to spin up. She could see the pilot's figure through the glowing, cherry-red composite glass and the smoking metal. The world seemed to slow down. Shepard pulled the trigger.

The blast of her shotgun was a cone of fine powder snow—glimmering white—drifting down to the city below in the wake of the cold, amazingly cold, super-chilled metal shrapnel—cooled to two hundred degrees below zero—which was pounded flat into the surface of the gunship by the force of the blast. The gun bounced off her shoulder and back onto the trigger finger, firing again, and again.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

The armour on the front of the gunship screamed. Rivets popped out of their sockets. The edges of the armour around the canopy buckled and split at the edges, and the glass shattered, instantly, tearing into shards as the ice-cold shot warped and cracked the too-hot metal.

The smoking shotgun fell from Shepard's hands, her shoulder was numb, her arm felt like it had been pulled out of her socket. The blood on her hands sizzled and steamed. Shepard heard the gunship firing. She reached for her pistol. A bolt hit her shield, which dropped out of commission. She brought the pistol up. Felt something pull at her stomach, her left shoulder.

She aimed. She fired.

The gunship pilot jerked in his seat. Slumped. The gunship stopped firing. It hovered there, in the air, a few meters away.

Shepard turned around, started to run to Garrus. She blinked, grunted, looked down. Blood leaked from her armour—a bolt had punctured the weave protecting her flank, and a rivulet of blood ran down her stomach and across the inside of her leg. She looked at her shoulder. A piece of the pauldron had been shattered, and the metal splinter that had done it had been deflected into her collar-bone, where it stuck half-in and half-out of—of...

It was better not to think about it.

She felt dizzy.

Her suit alerted her to her medical condition with an alarm. In a second or two, she heard micro-motors inside the suit's core begin to whir. Pumps cycled. Medigel was being distributed.

Soon, she stopped feeling the uneasy distress which her body provided as a precursor to actual pain. A blue-green foam slowly crackled through the tear in her suit. She felt it expand through the weave around her shoulder, and it quickly mantled the chunky metal shred that was currently occupying shared space with her collarbone.

Mordin had wasted very little time getting Garrus mobile. After establishing that his spine wasn't damaged, the salarian had administered the rest of the Medigel—cannibalizing a spent capsule—the only one left—from Garrus's non-functioning suit.

Grunt had scooped the turian up in his arms, and carried him downstairs. Shepard had done her best to hurry after them, but something gave in her stomach, and she found herself listing awkwardly as she walked.

The salarian buzzed around outside her head, attempting to talk to her about her condition. She tried to focus. She couldn't.

She had to.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" she said, turning to the salarian.

"Best not to run in your condition—trauma—damaged dorsal musculature—could result in a tear."

"Garrus," she said. Thinking had begun to be a labour.

"Recommend walking anyway," replied Mordin, quietly, gently, "will arrive faster if you're conscious."

Shepard looked at him.

"Yes," she said. She looked down at her omnitool, thumbed through it. Prodded clumsily at the virtual button. LTS ADMN. Unity.

There was a whir as her suit used up the remainder of her Medigel capsule. She felt the haze in her mind clear, replaced by an icy, but lucid, stillness. Her body tingled, at the same time conveniently going numb in all the places it hurt. The cuff of her omnitool ejected the capsule with a thoomp, and it bounced off the floor, rolling away behind her as she strode on.

They walked across the bridge. In the distance, the gunship floated, lifeless. Listing slightly, it drifted slowly away from the building, into the depths of Omega.

They walked through the makeshift barricades and fortifications, in silence, that the three mercenary groups had installed—now abandoned in the face of their failure.

Near the end of the complex, they were accosted. A group of ragged, nervous thugs approached, bearing a dubious assortment of weapons.

"Wh—" one of them asked, mildly taken aback by the sight of the four battered fighters. "Hey, how's the battle goin'. What's goin' on?"

Shepard looked at him.

"It's over," she said, simply.

"Oh... Oh!" The young man's voice sounded noticeably happier, behind his face mask. "Did we win?"

"...Yeah," said Shepard, tiredly, "we did."

She gave the mercenary a punch on the arm, and she and her squad traipsed onward towards the landing where the batarian Blue Suns had dropped them off. Behind them, she heard the hired guns begin to converse happily and with bravado, talking about whether or not they could expect to get their money, and what they would do with it once it was theirs.

They met the batarian driver. He approached them with his weapon drawn. Asked them what they thought they were doing with Archangel, and what happened.

"We killed everyone," said Shepard.

The driver said he didn't believe them, he circled them—still pointing his weapon at them—and retreated into the abandoned headquarters. After a while, she heard distant cursing.

They commandeered the Blue Suns' car, and drove back to the parking lot from which they had made their departure 20 minutes earlier. It seemed, to Shepard, like hours ago.

"EDI," said Shepard into her radio, finally breaking the exhausted quiet that hung over the group.

"Commander?" EDI's reply was prompt and efficient. It was past midnight, or what passed for midnight on the forsaken hull of Omega. EDI did not need to wake up.

"Get Joker," Shepard said.

"Would you like the Normandy to begin departure preparations?" EDI's voice was quiet, placid.

"No, we're not leaving yet," Shepard said, woodenly. She was too tired to express her emotions. Far too tired. "It's… It's complicated."

"Mr. Moreau is sleeping, Commander. This is not his shift."

Quiet, placid… Reproving? Did computers do that? Shepard struggled to find a way to explain what had happened to the ship's computer. I lost a friend, got him back, and I'm about to lose him again. An old shooting buddy is visiting. We're being shaken down by an ex-cop. Stop asking me questions.

"He'll want to be awake for this," Shepard said, "get Dr. Chakwas up, too. Tell her to get ready for a patient—we're bringing in Archangel—he's in trouble."

"…Yes Commander," the subtle rebuke in EDI's voice, real or imagined, had gone. The radio was silent, except for the occasional crackle of static. They walked on, through crowds, toward the ship. A few people they passed stared, most didn't.

Jeff 'Joker' Moreau's voice came across the radio.

"Commander," he said, drowsy and irritable, "I was in the middle of this dream, okay? It was perfect, and I am going to regret waking up from it for the rest of my life, so if you can't tell me why EDI gr—"

"We found Garrus."

"Wh—Garrus?" He sounded no less sleepy, but mildly impressed, "You found Garrus on Omega?"

"Garrus was Archangel. He's been badly injured, we're bringing him in now."

"…Hhhow injured is badly injured?" asked Joker, cautiously, "is he…"

"It—he's not doing well," Shepard said, feeling bleak, awkward, and horribly helpless, "I thought you might as well know."

"… Shit," whispered Joker.

"We'll be there in a minute."

They were there in a minute. Upon request, the airlock decontamination cycle was skipped.

From there, the night passed in an anxious, blurred haze. Shepard sat outside the medical bay, staring blankly at the floor. She couldn't sleep, but she was too tired to stay awake. Joker tried to stay up with her, to keep her company, but he was never especially good at handling tense situations.

"Hey Commander," he'd said, Shepard looked up at him.

"He'll—he'll be alright," he'd said.

"Right?" he'd asked, vaguely addressing the ceiling, "Won't he, EDI? Probably?"

"I cannot say," EDI replied, "the extent of his injuries defy my ability to—"

"Nevermind EDI," Jeff said, hurriedly, "Nevermind, it's—it's good, EDI, it's good."

Joker had grumbled something about robots and souls and basic feelings and—eventually defeated—he'd hobbled back to bed.

Once or twice Shepard got up and paced awkwardly back and forth across the broad room—through the mess, to Miranda's quarters and back. Miranda was asleep, Shepard supposed—nothing to wake her. Eventually, Shepard began to hurt again—her untreated wounds complained. EDI noticed, inquired. Shepard shrugged it off.

As shifts changed, people began to notice her. Rumour began to creep around the ship that Commander Shepard's Friend Archangel was in trouble. As Joker's shift began, and, Shepard assumed, the pilot had woken up and started talking, things got more drastic sounding.

He was another Spectre, (almost). He was about to die (nearly). He'd bled all over the deck when he came in. He had a giant hole in his face. EDI didn't know if he could be saved.

The cook, waking up to make what constituted breakfast on the ship, had awkwardly shuffled around and offered her coffee, or some kind of meal. She'd thanked him, but she knew she couldn't eat now. The cook had looked so dismal at this, that she almost felt bad, and quickly realized that perhaps she could do with a cup of coffee, after all.

He had pumped her a steel mugful of the black brew, and it sat, steaming hot and oily, on the bench beside her.

Eventually, to lend to the appearance, she took a sip.

It was not the flavour (bitter) or the caffeine—but something about the hot liquid pouring down into her stomach woke part of her up. It was soothing—almost relaxing—and Shepard had drank about half of the cup, when Dr. Chakwas emerged, exhausted, and informed her that Garrus was stable.

Shepard stood up, sharply.

"You're sure?" she said, tersely, almost not wanting to believe it, horribly afraid in case it wasn't true.

"Yes," replied the doctor with a tired smile, "It was difficult, but Mr. Solus and I have managed to put our friend back together, I think."

Shepard looked at her, blankly. Then Shepard laughed—a hollow, weak laugh.

"Can—" her voice was hoarse, she tried to stop it grating, and whispered, "can I see him?"

"He'll be asleep, but… yes, you may."

Shepard stepped into the medical bay, as if she was stepping into a temple. She stepped over discarded pieces of Garrus' armour and slowly approached the flat, medical bed, where Mordin Solus stood, changed out of his own armour and into awkwardly fitting surgical garb.

"Ah, Shepard," he said, looking up from the control interface of the surgical system which hung, inactive now and suspended from the ceiling, over the body of…

Garrus.

He lay there, quietly, and—turned as he was, his injured side facing away from the door—he looked...

Peaceful.

"Surgical procedure successful—expect full functional recovery in one to two weeks," said Mordin, "cosmetic recovery may take longer, of course, but…"

Mordin talked, but Shepard looked at Garrus.

He was wrapped in neat dressings, injuries had been tended to that Shepard had not even been aware were there. Most of his armour had been removed, and what remained had been covered with a sterile sheet, to prevent dust from reaching the wounds during surgery. Shepard could tell he was breathing now, his bared chest rose and fell, slowly, the thin plates in his skin catching the light as they shifted. The heart monitor nearby measured out the funny, skipping turian heartbeat. Beep, beep-beep. Beep, beep-beep. Beep, beep-beep.

Mordin had finished talking. Shepard looked at him. He gazed back inscrutibly, and she thought he might be waiting for her to say something.

Shepard laughed again—another breathy, raggedy laugh. A sense of incredible relief surged through her body. She stood up, and felt a huge weight lifted off her shoulders. Her mind felt clean and unconcerned. She smiled—she could smile!

"He's," Shepard said, "he's c…"

She blacked out.