AN: A hundred thousand thank you's to my reviewers. Your encouragement is priceless.

Time Will Tell

The Normandy's crew stared unblinkingly, stunned and unable to come to terms with what had just happened. It was bad enough thinking that Garrus was dead. It was even worse now that his blood was on their hands.

Inside the gunship, Kaidan was fine. Either he wasn't injured, or his body's response to shock prevented him from feeling any pain. Whichever it was, he knew he had to get to Garrus. The turian had been sitting in the cockpit when the ship went down, spinning out of control before it pitched forward and crashed on its nose. Still dizzy, he made his way towards the front to see if his friend was alive.

He was. He had been laying face-down on the dashboard, arms splayed out, but he was working on sitting up when Kaidan approached.

"Take it easy," Kaidan warned him. There was a lot of blue blood. Kaidan had to get him inside to the med-bay. Luckily, the Normandy had stopped firing. Whether that was because the message had gotten through to them or they figured he and Garrus were dead, he didn't know.

Garrus looked over at Kaidan, twisting, then coughed. "Have we landed?"

In the lopsided space, it took a little tricky maneuvering to get close to Garrus. Kaidan braced his legs against the dashboard, showered with splintered glass, and said, "Yeah. We landed."

Liara's head snapped up. There was movement coming from inside the gunship. She jumped to her feet. The vehicle tipped towards a more upright position, metal groaning. Then, two familiar figures came limping out of the ruins.

"They're alive!" Liara exclaimed.

Indeed they were. Though they did both look worse for wear. Kaidan was supporting Garrus by the arm, wrapped over his shoulders. The pair was covered in exhaust and grime that had accumulated from their previous adventures on Illium's skyway. But they were breathing and moving and walking, and that was all Liara cared about.

"Tough bastards," Zaeed muttered from the back. But Liara didn't hear him. She was running towards Kaidan and Garrus, overjoyed at their return.

"You're alive!" Liara repeated. She threw herself at them, flinging her arms around their necks. "Oh, Goddess, I thought for sure that I'd lost both of you."

"Good to see you too, ma'am," Kaidan said. There had been moments when he was sure they'd be lost as well. Garrus nodded his greeting, the pain preventing him from doing much more. Liara released them, for the first time realizing the state that Garrus was in.

His weave was completely soaked through with his own blood in some places. His face was streaked with blue and red, some of the gore evidently not his own. Liara whirled around, facing the rest of the crew. "Tell the doctor to be ready! Go!" she said urgently. They all dispersed from the entrance, clearing the way at Jacob's command.

"Everyone should get inside," Kaidan said, glancing back at the flaming wreckage. There was a look in his eyes that worried Liara. She was going to ask what it was when Samara and Thane approached, relieving Kaidan of Garrus and taking him onto their own shoulders. The two of them led him aboard the ship as gently as they could manage.

Jacob, Liara, and Kaidan followed at a distance. A few servicemen rushed past with fire extinguishers to deal with the gunship. The authorities would be sure to investigate if the mess was not dealt with. The trio strode onto the bridge and Jacob asked, "Wait. Shouldn't Shepard be with you?"

He was right, Liara thought. Their locations had been the last. What if the bombs had gone off before they'd been able to save her? Kaidan swallowed before saying, "She's not on Illium."

"What?" Liara and Jacob chorused. They continued on to the elevator, waiting.

"She was never at any of the locations," Kaidan explained.

Jacob had gathered that much. "So you're telling me that we spent all this time for nothing?" That was more or less what Kaidan was telling him. Yet it hadn't been completely in vain. After all, they had saved a handful of lives, though Kaidan knew that more innocents had died because of them than lived. But they'd also figured out that Shepard was off-world. Unfortunately, that opened up a lot more possibilities than it ruled out. "What now?"

Kaidan stepped inside the elevator. "I don't know." But there was someone in the med-bay who would.

Upon entering the med-bay, Garrus, Samara, and Thane were greeted by a young turian with a pistol. "Get back or I'll – oh, it's them." Daryn lowered his pistol, almost disappointed. He was sort of looking forward to firing the gun and proving his worth.

Dr. Chakwas popped up from where she was hiding behind an over-turned gurney. Now that there wasn't any impending danger, she got straight to work. "Set him there," she said, pointing to one of the beds closest to Samara and Thane. They did so, both of them working with surprising tenderness.

"Gahh," Garrus said as he leaned back, screwing his eyes shut as if he were trying to block out the pain. The doctor came over after washing her hands, then began investigating the turian's wounds.

"What have we here?" she said, half to herself, half to Thane and Samara. Her quick hands were already unclasping Garrus's chest plate. Thane helped her pull it off to reveal his underweave, sticky and wet around his abdomen. Thane bit his tongue. There were a lot of blue patches where there shouldn't have been. But that didn't faze Dr. Chakwas. "Got yourself a few scratches, eh, Vakarian?" She was cutting the material away with a pair of surgical scissors, clearing the wounded areas.

Blood trickled out as Garrus breathed. The people that had been hiding in the med-bay from the alleged attack filed out the door, sensing that the doctor needed her space to work. A few of them, including Daryn, glanced at Garrus as they passed. As hurt as he was, they were just glad to see that he was alive. Dr. Chakwas also nodded to Thane and Samara, giving them the okay to leave and silently thanking them for their assistance.

Over her shoulder, Dr. Chakwas addressed Miranda. "Bring me the remaining dextro compounds. Officer Vakarian over here needs to get cleaned up."

The Cerberus agent left her post at Oriana's side to rifle through a drawer. At that moment, Kasumi came through the door, towing Kaidan by the hand. "Look who I found!" she crowed excitedly, bouncing over to where Garrus lay. "You two made it! I'm so happy, I think I could kiss you, Garrus." And she did just that, planting her lips on the side of his head that wasn't covered in blood. She even stole one from Kaidan. After all, she was a thief. She was sneaky like that.

But she took a second look at the injured turian and released Kaidan immediately. "Poor baby," she crooned, taking hold of his hand to comfort him. Her free hand brushed over his bare chest. "Everything's going to be okay, don't worry..."

Miranda appeared at Dr. Chakwas's side. "This is all that's left, I'm afraid," she said, handing the doctor a few nearly empty bottles and vials with dextro labels on them. "Most of our dextro supplies were used on Tali." The quarian's wounds had been rather extreme, and considering her weak immune system, Dr. Chakwas had applied antiseptic and painkillers with a heavy hand. Something she was beginning to regret.

Dr. Chakwas got to work filling syringes with the contents of the bottles. "It's been a while since we've restocked." Then, she muttered under her breath, "Of course, Cerberus tends to skimp when it comes to the aliens. Bloody Illusive Man spends millions on Shepard, but not a drop of morphine for Garrus."

Garrus chuckled softly. "Rations always did seem blander," he joked through the pain.

Miranda pretended not to hear, tossing her hair over her shoulder and flouncing back to her sister. Chakwas stuck the syringe into the turian's arm then looked up at Kasumi.

"I'm not going to remove the bullets when he can feel it like this. Can one of you run up and get as much dextro alcohol as you can carry? We're going to need quite a bit."

Seeing as Kasumi's hands were entangled with Garrus's, Kaidan jumped to his feet to volunteer. "Where are they?"

Kasumi gave him directions. "Port observation. On a shelf behind the bar, you can't miss it. While you're there, if you could be a dear and mix me a cosmo..."

"Kasumi!" Dr. Chakwas scolded the thief.

"I was only kidding! Careful, or you'll sever an artery!"

Kaidan left Garrus in the capable hands of the doctor and the thief and made his way to port observation, noting the changes in the Normandy that he didn't have time to investigate when he first arrived. For example, the lounge. He snorted, and under his breath, muttered, "Civilian vessels."

He wasted no time in sorting through the contents of the bar shelves. He grabbed all the dextro he could find and made a nice little row of them on the counter, their colorful liquid casting a mosaic of light on the back-lit lounge. Kaidan had just placed the last bottle in the row when he heard something clatter to the ground.

That something was a small gray and orange device with two ports on either side of it. Kaidan reached out to set it back on the counter when it suddenly initiated playback. " - ormation we found is all here. It's big, Kasumi. If the Council ever got wind of this, the Alliance could be implicated... Please, Kasumi, destroy these files."

The rest of the message played, but Kaidan barely heard it. His mind was reeling with his new discovery. Files containing information about the Reapers, with the Alliance's fingerprints all over them. What would happen if the Council knew about the Alliance's involvement? Humanity would lose its seat on the Council. Maybe even forfeit its embassy on the Presidium. This was bigger than when the geth turned on the quarians, or even the Krogan Rebellions.

Keiji Okuda, the owner of the graybox, had instructed Kasumi to destroy the information to keep her safe. But she hadn't. Kaidan knew that Shepard had to have had some influence on Kasumi's decision. So why did she want to keep the information? Was it possible that she wanted to blackmail the Alliance? Shepard would certainly be motivated to. She could leverage concessions that would help her fight the Reapers. Or maybe she still held a grudge from when the Alliance shunned her for working with Cerberus. But the Shepard that Kaidan knew wasn't the type to hold a grudge. Although, he wasn't sure that she was that same person anymore. It was like Garrus said: she'd moved on.

Whatever her reasons, that still left Kaidan the problem of what to do with the graybox. Once he'd seen the files, he couldn't exactly unsee them. His conscience would not let him rest if he did nothing about it. But if he took the graybox, he'd have to leave the Normandy immediately and abandon Shepard. That was not an option. As confusing as the situation was, Kaidan cared about his commander, and he knew that he had to do whatever it took to get her back. The way he saw, Kaidan had one choice: copy the relevant information and deal with it later. He needed time to think over what was on the graybox, and even more time to decide what to do with it. And time was something he did not have.

Thankfully, the information on the graybox was already decoded. It was an enormous amount of data so it took a moment to get just the bits about the Alliance. Even then, the files were mixed in with Keiji's memories, but Kaidan would be able to piece everything together when the mission was over. As it was, he was in serious need of a stiff drink. He unscrewed the cap to a half-full bottle of whiskey and chugged down several gulps before scooping the dextro alcohol into his arms and heading back over to the med-bay.

When Kaidan returned, Garrus was adamantly trying to sit up. "I'm fine, Doc. Let me – Alenko, thank the Spirits." He took one of the bottles from Kaidan and began drinking from it heartily, making Kaidan wonder which spirits Garrus was referring to.

"Alright. Try not to move," Dr. Chakwas said, holding a delicate pair of silver prongs in her teal gloved hands. Without waiting for any confirmation, she got to work digging out the first bullet. It was relatively quick since the doctor had performed the procedure countless times before, but the sudden stabbing, twisting lance of the steel prong was enough to make Garrus choke on a mouthful of heavy liquor.

Dr. Chakwas plonked the blue-stained bullet on a metal tray. "Chin up, Vakarian," she said. "Only eight more to go!"