Shepard

With Garrus, the Primarch, Tali, and Liara safely transferred to their respective races, the Normandy docked with the Montreal to trade over the wounded soldiers Chakwas had been caring for since the battle on Earth. As she oversaw the transfer, Kaidan paced at the airlock while he attempted to look command-like.

She was so close. So close to him and he had to wait for the transfers to be done before he got there. At the moment, he couldn't have hated command more if he made an active attempt to.

Chakwas signed off on the last soldier and turned to him. "Do I have to sign you out too?" she said, voice light. He forced a smile and shook his head, and her voice lowered. "Are you ready, Major?"

"I have to see her," he replied. "I don't have to be ready."

She nodded, and they started through the airlock. At the other end stood a woman who looked almost exactly like Shepard, her graying red hair chopped to her jaw just above her admiral stripes. She turned her light gray eyes on them, and Kaidan saluted. "Ma'am."

"Stop," she replied. "Walk with me. We need to talk."

"Uh . . ." A few limping steps sounded behind him, accompanied by a few not so limping ones, as James and Joker made their way through the airlock, caught sight of her, and fumbled through salutes. "Yes, ma'am."

She started off at a brisk pace, casting a glance over her shoulder to make sure that Joker could keep up. He half waved, having brought his crutch to make sure he could move a little bit faster than he usually could. "Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard," she said, extending her hand as they walked. Kaidan shook it. "I believe we briefly met once at a formal function after the Battle of the Citadel." She looked exhausted, he thought, with dark circles under her eyes and a sag in her shoulders. "I knew you were important to my daughter, but it came as quite a shock when they checked her dog tags and found that one of them belonged to you. Which, by the way, you both know is a gigantic flashing sign pointing at fraternization."

James glanced over at Joker as they hung back behind Chakwas. "They what?"

Joker scoffed. "You didn't know?"

"Know what?"

"What the hell did you think you painted that shotgun for?"

"He proposed to her with a shotgun?" James shook his head, not sure if he was

"And then," Hannah continued, still striding through the hospital ship and ignoring the people who quickly stepped aside to avoid them. "Then there was the matter of the engagement ring that was attached to the entire thing. It didn't take any real effort to put all the pieces together."

Kaidan opened his mouth to explain. "Stop. I met her father during a tour of service and I'm involved with a fellow admiral. I'm the last person to make any sort of comment on fraternization. What I wasn't expecting was to find out that she turned the right to make medical decisions over to you."

"I wasn't aware she'd done that either, ma'am."

"Damn, shit just keeps getting more real," James murmured. Joker nodded, grimacing as he nearly stepped wrong on one of the slippery hospital tires.

"Stop. If she pulls through you'll be my son-in-law, not a major. Or at least you'd better be." They piled into the elevator. "Your mother has been here as well. She came through as part of the routine medical scans they're giving survivors. Someone mentioned that a soldier had come in wearing one of her son's dog tags, and she managed to bludgeon her way through at least twelve different layers of red tape."

"She's fine then?"

"Yes." Hannah tapped her hand on her thigh impatiently. "She's fine."

"Ma'am," James interrupted, after he and Joker had shared a slightly awkward-feeling look. "Shepard."

Hannah sighed. "She's still in bad shape. You won't be able to go in the room."

"Why not?" Joker said.

"Her immune system is incredibly weak. She suffered extensive burns and internal damage, and the doctors don't want to take a risk." The elevator drew to a stop and Hannah strode back out, Kaidan trotting to keep up with her. His hands shook, and he thrust them deep into his pockets. "The closest we can get is the glass outside the isolation room. And even then they don't want us to stay for too long. She's up here on the left."

They drew to a halt outside the window, and Kaidan's breath caught in his throat. He didn't notice the steadily growing shrine of datapads and thermal clips outside the isolation room, or the nurse in full isolation gear checking the room. As he raised his hand and pressed it to the glass, all he saw was his Shepard.

The other two noted that she looked too thin and frail, limbs and what they could see of her chest covered in crisp white bandages with large patches also on her face. Her chest moved with the regulated movements of a ventilator, tubes and lines sticking out of the bandages and connecting her to at least twenty machines. Her vibrant red hair, the hair he loved, had been shaved down, partially because spots were also covered in white bandages and partially because nodes measuring her brain activity added even more wires to the ones measuring everything else.

All Kaidan saw was his Shepard, helpless and at her weakest and he'd fought so hard to get home to her only to be separated by a wall of glass while she fought death alone.

"Her fifth and last graft surgery was yesterday," Hannah explained. "They're hoping that she'll be ready for actual visitors in a few days, provided they take."

Kaidan could barely hear her. His ears roared, and he rested his forehead on the glass and closed his eyes. He needed to touch her, to assure himself that she was real, and she was really there. Chakwas took a glace at him, then stepped back to talk to Hannah a little more about what the doctors had said. Joker took her place next to him, glancing back at James before the marine leaned against the glass on Joker's other side..

"You all right?" Kaidan stared blankly into the room. Joker cleared his throat. "Alenko?"

"I need to be in there," he whispered. "I can't just stay here and do nothing."

Joker swallowed and nodded, looking back into the room as something clicked behind them. "Ah, good. You've arrived."

Kaidan didn't move, but the others did. "Ms. Lawson," Hannah said. "You've made your calls?"

"Yes," Miranda continued. "Major Alenko, may I speak with you, Doctor Chakwas and the Admiral in private?"

Hannah gently rested her hand on his shoulder. "Come on."

Numbly, Kaidan followed them down into an empty isolation room, leaving Joker and James outside Shepard's room. Miranda closed the door.

"If you looked at the records sent with Admiral Hackett, you know that Shepard is showing little to no brain activity. I just made some calls to a few . . . contacts . . . from the Lazarus Project. There is a way to jumpstart her neurological activity, but I didn't have time to compile the risks before the Admiral ran off." She leaned on the empty cot. "We need to discuss them."

Outside Shepard's isolation room, James shook his head. "Think he's gonna be okay?"

Joker shook his head. "I don't know what he's going to do if . . ." He cleared his throat. "I wouldn't worry about him unless this magic fix Miranda's prescribing doesn't work."

James nodded. "Yeah. Not gonna look forward to that."

"You'll be the one handling him," Joker replied. "We'll send Liara in if he starts going biotic."

"Was he that bad the first time?"

Joker frowned, then shook his head. "Worse."

#

The decision was made to attempt to revitalize Shepard's brain with the same tech that had been used during the Lazarus Project (though a milder method as her brain wasn't dead, just not working) as soon as she was cleared for interaction with uncovered humans.

That came about two days later, when the doctors were able to prove that the grafts had taken and her immune system was greatly improved. Kaidan waited in the glass-walled room that was now a simple ICU ward, head in his hands, as Miranda shuffled Shepard and the doctors off towards a surgery room.

Hannah paced by the window, hands behind her back. Her lips were pursed, and it didn't look like she'd been having any further luck sleeping. Kaidan himself hadn't sleep since they'd made it back, spending most of his waking moments either looking after his mother or staring helplessly into Shepard's isolation ward.

And now it was what they'd termed D-Day. They were hopefully jumpstarting Shepard's brain, and he sunk further into himself.

She was gone for most of the day, with no news. Kaidan's omni-tool continually pinged from people messaging him, asking whether or not it worked.

After twelve hours, they spotted Miranda clicking down the hallway and carefully removing her smock, the disposable fabric partially stained red. "They're cleaning her up," she explained as she entered the glass-walled room. "But there has been a considerable increase in her neural activity."

Kaidan nearly collapsed in his chair. "Then it worked?"

"She's better off than she was," Miranda replied. "That much is for certain. I can't tell you when she'll wake up, but it didn't take long the first time."

They wheeled Shepard in then, plugging her back into the removed machines and reattaching the neurological nodes. A long, ugly cut bisected the top of her head, sutured and medigel'ed and bandaged. As soon as the neural pads were back on her skin, the monitor peaked with the activity that hadn't been there just that morning. Once the nurses had vacated, Kaidan stepped forward and carefully brushed her hand. It felt bonier than usual, and he swallowed.

"Hey," he murmured, thumbing her arm. He didn't notice Miranda leave with a slow look at him, or Hannah walking up to her other side and leaning heavily on the bed.

"She probably can't hear you," Hannah said, though she gently rested her hand on Shepard's arm just the same.

"Does it matter?"

She sighed and shook her head. "No."

Kaidan sighed and reached into his pocket, rubbing his thumb over the raised text on Shepard's dog tags. He carefully pressed them into her hand, curling her limp fingers around them. "Wake up," he whispered. "Please. For me."

Hannah gazed at him, then back down at her daughter.

Please, she willed as well. Come on, Marrakech. Please.

#

Shepard felt the first twinges of feeling, flooding every inch of her with a pain that was more discomfort than the searing agony she was acquainted with. She felt - floaty. Yeah, floaty. Floaty and sort of awkwardly uncomfortable.

She also couldn't move.

Somewhere a door slipped open. She instinctively tried to open her eyes, yet found that she couldn't. In fact, she was completely immobilized - the rest of her body may as well not have existed, except that she could feel the discomfort. The heavy weight of a ventilator mask rested over her face - no, a tube, forcing air into her lungs. Her gag reflex must have been on vacation, she mused drearily. The low, steady beep of a heart monitor chimed somewhere by her ear, low and distant like it was worlds away.

The hell had she done this time?

"Has there been any change since last time?"

Kaidan. Oh, that was Kaidan. She'd recognize his voice anywhere. She almost tried to form his name, but she had forgotten that she was frozen in place.

"Well," someone replied. Chakwas? "There is a marked increase in her neurological activity, and the remaining damage to her organs is healing well."

"Do we know if . . ." He trailed off, likely receiving a nod or headshake in return. The statement seemed to come from further away than the monitor . . . so far away . . .

#

Despite the Alliance's best attempts news eventually leaked out about Shepard's condition. And Kaidan was surprised that, when he called Allers to tear her apart, she'd seemed legitimately shocked about everything. The leak turned out to be one of the doctors that had initially operated on her bragging about working on Commander Shepard, then offering everything but a room number as proof.

Fortunately, after a week of people trying to come in and visit her - and "people" means hordes of requests to board the Montreal and tromp through ICU more due to aliens not understanding how human hospital ships worked - the Alliance formally issued a statement. Hackett, the unofficial face of the Alliance after the deaths of most of the higher-ups on Arcturus, ended up in front of a crowd of reporters of various species crammed into the cargo hold of the Orizaba as the Victory Fleet continued to float aimlessly around the Sol system.

"Six hours after the Fleet returned to Sol," he started, his usual calm demeanor just as strong in command as it was in front of what few reporters had traveled with the Fleet or been on the Citadel and survived. "Three members of the rescue team sent to locate the Council broke off to search for Commander Shepard. She was located and taken aboard the SSV Montreal in critical condition. At the moment, she is still recovering, though is still considered in critical condition. Thank you." He took a step back and turned.

"Admiral!" one of the reporters shouted, and he turned back.

"I don't recall saying this was a question-answer session," he replied, then nodded to the Orizaba's captain. He didn't look pleased with the task of trying to shoo off twenty irritated-looking reporters, but Hackett just wanted them off the ship.

Besides, he had another meeting with the damn Council in ten minutes.

A/N: Wow that chapter was shorter than I remembered.
Sadly I don't have time to add anything.