The back of James's head stung from where it hit the wall behind him when they crashed. His shoulder wasn't feeling great either. The cabin was full of smoke, but fire hadn't breached the cabin yet. Shepard's head lolled against his shoulder. Her barrier glowed around her body, so she couldn't be unconscious. She groaned and struggled to sit up in her seat. There was a cut above her eyebrow, and blood oozed down to her temple from how her head had been against him. With her head upright, it started to trickle into her eye, and she wiped it away with the sleeve of her dress blues.

"You okay?" he asked, and she nodded groggily.

James undid his harness and looked across the small cabin at the doctor and the corporal. They were slumped forward in their seats, their harnesses keeping them from toppling to the floor.

Shepard was his priority, though. She'd gotten her buckle undone and stood on shaky legs. Her arm shot out to stabilise herself against the wall, perhaps feeling less confident about her injured leg after the crash. A muscle twitched in her cheek as she gritted her teeth, and James knew that if he offered to help her out, she'd just push him away.

"I'll get the supplies. You check on the others," she said. It was her 'commander voice' and, for once, James didn't argue about taking orders from her.

He checked the doctor first. He was breathing. Shallow, but better than nothing. The corporal and the pilot were the same: knocked out, but alive. A quick glance out the window after James checked the pilot revealed a small clearing. James had to hand it to the pilot for not only finding somewhere relatively safe to crash, but for not killing them all in the process too. Or maybe it was just because the Kodiak was called the combat cockroach for a reason—it was practically indestructible.

He looked over his shoulder at Shepard, who had pulled some of the emergency supplies out of a cupboard and was pushing at the warped shuttle door with her shoulder. He was about to help before she glowed with biotics and blew the door clean off in a squeal of metal.

James would never get bored of seeing that.

He returned to his next priority: getting the doctor conscious. He started to undo the buckle on the doctor's harness but then felt himself lifted off the floor and yanked out of the shuttle. While he liked watching biotics, he didn't particularly enjoy being subject to them. Not when he wasn't expecting it, anyway.

The metal roof of the shuttle was replaced with cloudless blue sky and the pointy tops of pine trees. He landed on his ass before heat and noise knocked him over onto his back. Groaning, he rolled onto his hands and knees.

"You're lucky I kind of like you, Lieutenant, or I'd have left you in there," said Shepard from where she was standing a few metres away from him, leaning against a tree trunk.

James looked over his shoulder at the fireball that used to be the shuttle. There was no way the other three were alive now.

He sat back on his heels, heart racing from his near-death experience. "What the fuck happened?"

"I don't know. Maybe Torig misjudged the angle of reentry." The way Shepard looked away made him think she didn't believe that explanation any more than he did. "We better find cover."

Yeah, she definitely didn't believe the reentry thing. Someone had planted a bomb or shot at them or something equally hostile. He could practically read her thoughts as she eyed the burning wreckage. She wanted to get away from the site, just in case the people who turned up first weren't friendly. James couldn't say he disagreed with her.

He picked up the two bags Shepard had managed to salvage before he pulled up his omnitool to check how far they were from Vancouver.

Shepard's hand clamped over his arm and she shook her head. "No electronics."

James looked at her sceptically, waving to her leg. "They're going to track you anyway."

She shook her head again, pulling up her pants leg to show him the ankle bracelet. There were no lights flashing on it.

"I just checked it. This is just an ugly piece of jewellery now."

He frowned, looking from the device and then back to Shepard's face. "No one's supposed to have the deactivation code for that except Anderson."

Shepard shrugged. "Whoever's after me doesn't mind looking the old-fashioned way if I walked away from the crash. They just don't want the Alliance to find me first."

James stared at her. She was awfully calm for someone who'd survived three assassination attempts in a handful of days and was now on the run in the Canadian wilderness with no armour, no weapons, and no electronics to make the journey faster. Then again, this was Commander Shepard, and she had apparently survived death.

"Is being around you always this exciting?" he asked when they started walking again.

"Pretty much," she said, shooting him a smile over her shoulder.

James couldn't be certain how far they'd trekked through the forest or how long they'd been walking. All he knew was that they were heading southeast, toward where his omnitool had said Vancouver was before Shepard made him turn it off. He wished she'd allowed him just a few more minutes on the omnitool, just in case there was a small town somewhere closer than the ninety klick trek to Vancouver. If they were on paved roads, James estimated they'd get there in four days, but maybe they'd get lucky and someone would find them before that. Since Shepard was insisting on taking the direct, discrete route over mountainous terrain, they were going to be lucky to have enough supplies, let alone have anyone find them.

The sun had already passed its zenith when they crashed and it was now hanging low in the sky. The forest around them had started to darken even before the sky turned a brilliant chaos of red and pink and purple. He was so focused on marvelling at the Earth sky that he barely heard Shepard say his name the first time.

"James! Slow down!"

He snapped out of his staring and turned. She was leaning against a tree trunk with all her weight on her good leg. Sweat beaded on her forehead even though the temperature was dropping rapidly. He felt like smacking himself in the head. Her leg was fine when she wasn't doing anything, but this fast trek on rolling terrain had been hard even for him.

"We'll camp here for the night," he said, dropping the bags he was carrying.

Shepard looked relieved. James didn't know why she didn't just tell him to stop earlier. Then he remembered that she was even more stubborn than he was.

She hobbled over to the bags and dropped to the ground. While she unzipped one of the bags, he opened the other one to see what was in it. Sleeping bag, blanket, flares, matches, basic medkit—the usual survival gear. The bag Shepard was rooting through had a big, red cross on the side of it and his heart sank. She'd probably banked on getting the doctor out as well, and so grabbed the full medkit. It might have a blanket in it, but it wouldn't have a sleeping bag.

Shepard pulled out a torch and turned it on. A second later and she pulled out a packaged syringe, brandishing it in the air like a trophy. She struggled back to her feet and undid her belt buckle. James hastily turned his head away, hoping she wasn't taking her pants off.

"Here. Inject this into my knee."

He held out his hand, still looking away. She dropped the syringe into his palm.

"What's this?" he asked, squinting in the darkness to try to read the words printed on the side.

"Magic."

He looked at her then and congratulated himself for not looking at her underwear. "You have no idea what it does and you want me to jam it into your knee?"

"I know what it does, I just don't know what it is. It makes joints feel better for a while," she said with a shrug. "Or were you planning to carry me piggyback around the wilderness?"

He shook his head and held the syringe out to her. "No way. I barely passed basic med training. I'd probably end up making it worse."

Shepard sighed and snatched the syringe back from him. She sat on the ground again, and James watched her face shift from annoyed to apprehensive, her gaze fixed on her knee like she was hoping it would get better by itself. The syringe hovered over her skin, the tip shaking. Maybe it was just because Shepard's hands weren't steady in her pain, but the intensity in her eyes made him think it wasn't pain that was bothering her.

"Are you afraid of needles, Shepard?" he asked, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice.

She glared at him before injecting herself with so much delicacy that he knew she'd done it a hundred times before, just possibly not on herself. The needle must have gone all the way to the joint, and the hiss of pain that escaped through her clenched teeth told him it wasn't particularly pleasant. He screwed up his face in sympathy.

When she was done, she wrapped the needle in its packaging and tossed it into the bag. He continued to watch her as she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

"You want the bad news or the good news?"

Shepard's lips quirked up into a cynical smile and she opened her eyes. Pain still lined her face but she looked more relaxed. "Hit me with the bad news first."

"The bad news is that there are two blankets but only one sleeping bag."

To her credit, she didn't recoil at the thought of possibly having to share a sleeping bag.

"In that case…" She stood and pulled her pants back up. James snorted. "And the good news?"

"I have no injuries."

She chuckled, shaking her head, and thrust her hands back into the med bag. She pulled out the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"I'll take first watch," she said, taking a seat on a fallen log.

James nodded as he picked up the blanket and sleeping bag.

Of all the people he could be stuck in a forest with, Shepard would have been the absolute last person he'd have wanted a few days ago. Now, well, things change. He liked that she didn't have to be told where the other blanket was or that they'd have to take turns sleeping through the night. He also didn't have to worry that she couldn't keep up with him or that she'd start to unravel psychologically. It wasn't that any other marine with survival training would be useless, but… ah, hell, he didn't know. It was Shepard. James was finding it harder and harder to explain what he thought about her now that he didn't find her insufferable.

James kept his armour on and simply wrapped the blanket around his shoulders before squeezing himself into the sleeping bag. He fell into a dreamless asleep quickly, exhausted after all the adrenaline of the day had worn off.