Shepard slumped on the couch in her quarters—Anderson's quarters, she corrected herself—her eyes closed with one hand massaging her temples. Anderson sat on the adjacent couch, a small stack of datapads and a cup of coffee that had gone cold on the table before him.

"I told you I didn't need a guard. I always manage to walk out alive. Reassign him somewhere else before he becomes another casualty." Shepard would have paced around the room if she hadn't already worn out her bad leg while dragging James up to the medbay. She settled for leaning forward to poke through the datapads. Most of them were powered down and a few she recognised as the higher-end models, the only ones that Top Secret files could be stored on. "He must be a masochist. I don't know anyone else who would put up with the shit I've heaped on him."

"Despite you not being quite how he imagined—" Shepard rolled her eyes; she already knew she was nothing like how anyone imagined her, "—he still considers you a hero. Besides, he had a rough few months before this."

"The Collector attack?"

Anderson raised an eyebrow. "He told you about that?"

"Not really," she said, flopping back against the couch. "I dragged a bit out of him. He tossed and turned all night in his nightmares after that."

"He sleeps like you."

Shepard gave him a sharp look then shrugged. "I hate sleeping anyway."

"Pity. It might make you less cranky." Shepard chuckled, and Anderson smiled. "You used to laugh more easily, Shepard."

"I used to have more things to laugh about," she said. The smile still clung to her lips, but it had turned melancholy. She stood and stretched before testing her leg with a few experimental steps. Still tender, but another day's rest and it wouldn't be so bad. "I'm going to go check on my incapacitated guard."

"Still running from talking about yourself, I see."

"Well, some things have to stay the same in this galaxy, Anderson," she said and waved over her shoulder before limping out the door.

Technically, she should have a new guard, but she wasn't surprised no one on the ship had volunteered, even temporarily. In the few days since James had been her guard, he'd not only run into a burning building and been poisoned, but he'd also had to deal with her superior attitude. Even Shepard wouldn't willingly take on James's job.

Assassins were a pain in the ass. They were slippery bastards who fought from the shadows, and Shepard had never been one for subtlety in combat. Whoever was on the Normandy—she couldn't believe the assassin wasn't here—was as slippery as they came. She wished she had Thane with her; fight fire with fire.

Shepard made the careful trip to the medbay in silence, trying not to tax her leg. She acknowledged no one, even when they stopped to salute her. It would have been nice to be able to drop in on Joker. He always knew how to make her forget her troubles, but Shepard was still technically under arrest and she knew her boundaries.

As soon as the medbay door opened, the smell of antiseptic stung her nose. Shepard's eyebrow twitched upward when she saw the doctor. He was the same one who treated her on Arcturus Station.

"Doctor Chang. I wasn't expecting to see you on the ship," she said, hobbling into the room and letting the door close behind her.

"I was reassigned," he said, standing and giving her a kindly smile. "The last doctor was one of the casualties from the explosion."

She hadn't met the previous doctor, but the knowledge that someone on the ship had died because of her twisted her gut. She stuffed the guilt back into its box to deal with later, but she couldn't help the remorseful sigh that left her.

"What did you find?" she asked, wondering if Chang would comply or tell her she no longer had clearance.

"Tests on the opened and unopened packages you gave me came back positive for three different poisons," he said, swiping a datapad off his desk and handing it to her.

"Which one did he get?" she asked, scrolling through the data.

"A form of arsenic. Not the most efficient way to kill someone, but I'm betting whoever put the poison in the packages was hoping no one would figure out how to override the doors in time." The doctor turned from her to check over James' vitals. "A hundred years ago and he'd be dead with this amount of arsenic in his system. Someone really hates you, Commander."

She snorted. "I'm used to it."

"Archaic way to kill someone, though," he said, his tone offhand as he sat back down at his desk. He swivelled his chair around and propped his elbows on the arms of the chair, his fingers steepled before him. "The methods of counteracting the poison are equally archaic. We get just one short topic on these old kinds of poisoning during med school. Luckily for the lieutenant, I took a special interest in archaic poisons—a product of reading too many classical novels."

"The classics do love poison," she said with a dismissive nod. "Can I see Lieutenant Vega's files?"

Since the doctor was so forthcoming with James's condition, it couldn't hurt to ask for what Anderson had denied her. Classified information, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't like she didn't already know that James had a run-in with the Collectors. What could be so classified that letting her read his file would be a security risk?

Chang smiled and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Commander, but I was instructed to deny you access when you asked to see the Lieutenant's files"

"Anderson is very annoying," she said with a purse of her lips and resumed her careful walk to the chair beside James's bed. "Do you mind if I wait?"

Chang waved hand in acquiescence before swivelling back to his computer.

Shepard didn't immediately sit, wanting to check over James with her own eyes first. His usually tanned complexion looked pasty under the fluorescent lighting. His breath was barely a whisper, a welcome change to the ragged wheezes when she first brought him to the medbay. If he was a part of her team, she would have murmured into his ear that he'd better wake up soon, or she was going to kick him in the quad. She contemplated patting his hand but it felt too intimate, too comfortable. Instead, she sat and watched the steady rise and fall of his chest.

Time passed slowly. She wished she had her omnitool, but it had been confiscated—along with her weapons, armour and, oh, her whole damn ship—when she turned herself in. Even though the doctor had declined to let her read James's files, he'd offered her a datapad with some simple games to pass the time. He made a point to say said datapad was blocked from accessing the extranet. Damn Anderson. He knew her too well. She'd never regretted serving with him on the SSV Tokyo or on the Normandy until now.

"I'm going to get some dinner. Would you like to join me, Commander?" asked Chang, interrupting her game.

Shepard smiled and shook her head. "I'd rather not test my luck. I'm a much worse patient than the lieutenant."

The doctor laughed and left.

Her reluctance was more about making sure James lived. Not that James was in any danger of dying now, but, still, Shepard had to make sure.

She went back to her game and was in the middle of beating a game's rather stupid AI when a cough broke her concentration. She looked up to find James's eyes open a crack. They looked hazy. She smiled, not caring that the AI had killed her and the screen was flashing 'Game Over'.

"You lied to me, Shepard." Her smile dropped. "You said your food wasn't poisoned."

There was a beat where Shepard stared at him, slack-jawed, before she burst out laughing.

"You must be a krogan hybrid. Only extra organs could have saved you from that much poison."

He chuckled weakly. "I could use a beer as payment for taking the heat for you."

"Can't help you there," she said, standing to pour water from a jug on the bedside table into a cup. She held it out to him. "This will have to do."

She watched him take an experimental sip of the water. If he was worried about it being poisoned, he shouldn't have been. He wasn't the target.

"The doctor will want to–"

James's hand shot out to wrap around her wrist and stop her from going further than the one step back that she'd taken. Shepard hated being touched uninvited, but his hand was a warm cocoon against the cool medbay air. His skin was calloused, a real soldier's hand, and his rough fingers rasped along the sensitive skin of her inner wrist as he let go. She swallowed a lump in her throat and rubbed her wrist to try to get rid of the ghost of his touch.

"The doc did a good job. Let him eat," he said, eyes flickering to the window where they could see the doctor sitting and eating with a few crewmembers.

Shepard nodded when he looked back at her and she made to turn away again.

"I meant stay, Shepard. I could use the company."

His longing for company was so acute that she almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She continued to stand for a few seconds, wondering whether she should go anyway, before she sat again.

They stared at each other in silence. It was easier to talk when they were trying to aggravate each other.

Shepard sighed, leaning back in her chair and stretching her legs out under James's bed. "I'm not good at small talk."

"Well, I'm awesome at it." James shifted to sit more upright in the bed. "Tell me more about the things you'd do to people who steal your food."

Shepard didn't know how long it took Chang to finish his meal because, for once, she hadn't been watching the clock. The only thing that nagged at her was that the feel of his fingers on her skin wouldn't go away.