Author's Note: I should say that I have nothing against Mordin as a character. He's awesome, and one of my Shep's best bros ever. That being said, he's a salarian, and the krogan do not have the best relationship with the froggy species. But, no Mordins were hurt in the writing of this chapter.
As soon as she, Zaeed, and Mordin stepped out of the Tomkah, Shepard knew something was wrong. huge chunk of rock went flying past them, not intended to hurt but to get their attention. Wrex roared, a sound of unbridled fury—and something else she couldn't place that flooded her bloodstream with adrenaline.
He stomped over to them and stopped a few yards away, then pointed at Mordin and growled, "I want the frog off my planet. Now." He motioned to the scout at his post nearby, who grabbed his gun and approached them with a sadistic grin. "Escort him back to the shuttle."
"Wrex—" she started, but he held up a hand and made a snuffling sound like a rhino about to charge. He might as well have been breathing fire, he was so angry.
"I will—" deal with you "—talk to you in a minute. Zaeed, go with them." The merc in question looked to Shepard first and Wrex growled. "What, do I have to pay you first? Go."
"Go ahead," Shepard said, not taking her eyes off Wrex as if that could keep him from flying into a rage. "Get back to the shuttle and tell the pilot to bring the two of you to the ship and standby. I'll send word when I'm ready for pickup."
"You sure that's a good idea?" he asked, cocking his thumb at Wrex.
"He'd never hurt me." He looked up at her and for a moment, she wasn't too sure about that sentiment. "Right, Wrex?"
It took him a few seconds to answer, but he finally manage to rumble between gritted teeth, "No, I won't hurt her." Zaeed appraised him for a beat, then he and Mordin headed to the shuttle accompanied by the scout.
She stepped slowly down to his level and started to ask, "Okay, what the he—"
"Not here. With me, now." He stormed off and didn't even look back to see if she was following. They trudged across the Urdnot camp to the outbuildings that lay just outside the ring of torch light, separated by a treacherous stretch of shadowed rocks. The whole way, they said nothing to each other, although he could feel her apprehension like a palpable aura behind him. He knew he should reassure her, but he couldn't just now; his head was a red haze of anger at the conversations he'd heard. Fragments of phrases flitted in and out of his head, making it hard to concentrate.
(never killed with medicine)
(piles of dead children that never lived)
They stumbled across the jagged landscape, and Wrex took up a torch at the perimeter of the low building that was reserved for visiting females. Wrex walked on numb legs as he entered; it contained a double row of private rooms with beds, bathing troughs, and not much else. One of those rooms had been set aside for Shepard and himself, but he wasn't sure what they'd be doing anymore. Talking? Fighting? He certainly wasn't in the mood for what he'd gotten the room for in the first place.
(rest, young mother)
(optimal growth . . . like gardening)
Shepard went into the room first, and he slammed the door behind him harder than necessary, then punched it for good measure. Impotent rage was the worst kind; he was pissed off and heartsick, but there was no one to kill for it. No, this was much like the genophage itself—an invisible foe that had to be fought in one's head, not with one's fists.
(could have cured the krogan—they'd have rejoiced)
(krogan were adapting to genophage)
Wrex growled and stalked back and forth across the floor, but had to stop before he drove himself crazy. He was acutely aware of Shepard standing against the wall, very still and anxious.
(adapting to the genophage)
He sat down (except what he did was closer to positioning himself beside the bed and letting his knees unhinge) and turned on his omnitool to play the recording of her conversation with the salarian again, in case there was some detail he'd missed that would clear up the whole thing. Shepard watched with dawning understanding on her face and she closed her eyes against the sinking feeling in her chest that told her just how badly fucked this situation was.
There was a tiny click, then her voice sounded in the closed space.
"-n't expect you to be this disturbed over a dead krogan, Mordin."
"Why, because of genophage work? Irrelevant. No—causative! Never experimented on live krogan, never killed with medicine. Her death not my work, only reaction to—"
"Whoa, whoa, back the thought-train up a bit." She started to sound angry there, and Wrex knew that this was where she started to take it personally. Maybe she was more like a krogan than he'd originally thought. "You really believe you never killed anyone? That's really what you think?"
"Of course. Genophage merely slows birth rate, one in one thousand. Optimal growth without risk of overpopulation."
"You heard what that guy from clan Weyrloc said. 'Piles of dead children.' I'm pretty sure that wasn't a metaphor. The genophage doesn't just stop fertilization-sometimes it triggers spontaneous abortions, or results in stillbirths. There's enough left to bury, Mordin."
"Familiar with genophage? Not many aware of mechanism, fewer still of the krogan adaptation to it." He didn't even try to deny what she'd said. There was a short pause and a sharp intake of breath, then, "Familiar with krogan, clear from the beginning. With one in particular? Ahh, I see. Clan leader, Urdnot Wrex. But, more than simple friendship—krogan don't discuss genophage with just anyone. Romantically involved, then?"
"I'd be very careful who you told that to," she growled. Shepard sighed from across the room. She'd always hated having to keep their relationship a secret.
"Of course. Political suicide to be seen as biased toward krogan. But perhaps, another reason for rejecting genophage?"
"That's not really the point. You're saying that you never killed anyone, and I'm telling you that you're fucking blind if that's what you think. Females go wandering off into the wastes because they can't stand the idea of being less than useless if they're infertile. They hope to be eaten by thresher maws because they'll never know what it means to have children of their own. The males have been killing each other over miniscule tracts of land and the rights to the females for more than a thousand years. Miscarried babies are put in mass graves and mourned by their would-be mothers. And as if that wasn't enough, you killed their future. You murdered their hope, and that's so, so much worse."
Hearing it like this, the stark details of the genophage laid out like this, closed a vice around his heart and wrung the sorrow out in harsh, bitter drops that burned where they fell. When he looked up at her, she met his gaze with an answering sadness and that chased away some of the anger that gripped him.
"If you insist on comparing the systematic genocide of an entire species to fucking gardening, I will rip your spleen out through your nostrils, do you understand me?"
"Not—maneuver not medically possible—" He was stuttering in his surprise, and Wrex was viciously glad to hear it.
"And you may have noticed that I am very determined when I put my mind to something." She sighed, and Wrex could almost see her raking her fingers through her hair. "Let's just finish this and get the hell out of here."
"So," came her voice, small and so unsure that it hardly sounded like her at all, "you heard."
"I did. There's one part that sticks out to me, though," he said, "when he says something about 'krogan adaptation'. Does that mean what I think it means, Shepard?"
"Yes." She started to go to him, then decided against it and leaned against the wall again. "The salarians found that your people were starting to adapt to the genophage, and that the birth rate was picking up again. Mordin and his team were assigned to modify it and bring it back to 'optimal range' again." She looked almost as outraged as he was about it.
"How long did you know?" That was the one question he really needed an answer to. "Was it before you came here, or after?"
". . . Before." He frowned, and she rushed to explain. "But I was going to tell you as soon as we could meet alone. I didn't want to say anything in front of the others."
"Probably wise," he admitted. They were silent for a long time and the rage ebbed away, leaving his muscles twitching and his blood cool and stale. He needed to work out the residual tension before too long, or he'd never get to sleep. "The intangible enemy, the one we fought for so long . . . and we were winning." He hung his head, and a moment later her hand was on his head, stroking, soothing. "Then those damnable amphibians came and pounded us back into the dirt again. Why can't they just leave us alone?"
"I'm so sorry, Wrex." She knelt down in front of him and cupped his face in her small hands, obviously relieved that he wasn't angry at her. "I'll figure out a way to fix this, I promise."
"And just how are you planning to do that? Strap him up and torture him until he does what you want? Because I'm fine with that idea."
She gave him a wry twist of her lips and shook her head. "No. You didn't see his face when he found out that Maelon was working for Clan Weyrloc voluntarily. Give him some time, and he'll come around. Somewhere, deep down, he feels guilty as hell for what he did."
"That's your plan? Give him time? Meanwhile, my people are dying, Shepard, and when the Reapers come, we won't be able to replenish our numbers fast enough to make up for the losses. The krogan will go extinct while we wait for that bastard to come around."
"I can't make him do it, Wrex."
"I could." But he already knew what was wrong with that idea before she started to speak.
"He could just as easily sabotage it, and no one would know the difference until you realized no new krogan were being born at all. No, he has to decide on his own that it's the right thing to do. It won't take him long—salarians are notoriously quick thinkers, after all. I'm betting that he'll figure it out right after we hit the Collectors." Assuming he survives, she thought, but didn't say.
He let out a long breath and let his head fall against hers. "How the hell do you stay so calm all the time?"
She laughed softly and nuzzled his cheek in that way she did that reminded him why he tended to call humans 'pyjacks'. Not that it was unwelcome—far from it, actually. "I don't. You heard me tell Mordin I'd rip out his lungs through his nose, right?"
"I think it was his spleen. And I'd pay good money to see that." He brought his hands up to her shoulders and dragged them down her arms. It had been two years since he'd touched her, and he could feel the anger from before begin to turn into something else. "It's good to see you again."
"I missed you." She rose up onto her feet and he pressed his face against her stomach, wrapping his arms around her thighs. Her fingers traced the deep gashes in his crest, then grabbed the top edge and pulled him closer. "Wrex, can we not fight anymore?"
"We were fighting?" he asked, and the words were muffled by her shirt. He started to pull it up to expose her skin and the sigh that earned him turned his blood to fire. "Usually, when krogan fight, someone ends up bleeding or dead."
"We could call it a fight, just so we can have make-up sex." She shoved him back on the bed and crawled over him, straddling his hips and rising up over him. Her green eyes gleamed in the torch light as she looked down at him with a mix of lust and amusement.
"That sounds like a plan."
"I thought so."