Finally Awake

Kaidan yawned as he disembarked his shuttle. The cruiser-turned-hospital still drifted aimlessly above Earth, processing and overseeing routine medical checks and emergency care for the million or so people still alive on the planet and the millions on the Victory Fleet.

Four months after the battle on Earth, two after their return to the Sol system, work was beginning on the Charon relay. A heavily damaged turian dreadnought had sacrificed its mass effect core and eezo had been carefully harvested from some of the damaged Reapers, and was being stored in a facility beside the relay while they attempted to figure out what to do with it.

The krogan had been posing a problem, but Wrex had put them to work on the Citadel and Earth, continuing to search for remains, move rubble, and some rebuilding. Many of the unoccupied soldiers were doing what they could planetside or on the damaged spacestation, with help from idle ships. At this point, they were merely trying to keep people occupied. Garrus, Tali, and Liara had visited the comatose Spectre a few times, though they were mostly kept busy by their respective species. The relays were the most important, immediate concern, though some scientists had begun to work on power and water grid. But the non-human races were understandably focused on repairing the relays.

The Normandy was tasked with running supplies and personnel between the relay repair teams and the rest of the fleet, still hovering in orbit above Earth. Kaidan stretched as he stalked down the hallway towards Shepard's ICU room. He'd moved his mother, still reeling from his missing father and not ready to return to Earth, into Liara's old room, and other personnel with rescued family had moved into Allers' old quarters, life support, and the observation decks until other quarters could be arranged.

Not many were quite willing to move back to Earth just yet.

He hid a yawn with his hand, pressing his other into the lock and leaning on the jamb. Shepard still had apparently not woken up but just about two weeks before she'd started breathing on her own, a vent mask kept on as a precaution rather than a necessity. The short, hard chair that he'd grown very accustomed to was still next to the bed, hardly having moved from its position earlier that day. He stared at her, counting her breaths. Slow, deep, even . . . almost as if she were finally peacefully asleep rather than in a partial medical coma and partially in a real one.

One of her doctors slipped by him. "Major."

"Any change today?" he asked, following the man in as he scanned the screens and took notes on his datapad.

"Her neural activity has been peaking to normal levels more regularly, which indicates brief returns to wakefulness," he said, scanning the machine's history. "And as you know we've been cutting back on the drugs keeping her sedated. Hopefully this combination will encourage her to come out of her coma." He stepped back and nodded, apparently pleased with the progress. "We'll check her to see if her GCS has changed in the morning."

"Any idea if -"

"We'll see. We can't rush these things, Major."

"Thank you, Doctor." Kaidan resumed his seat and reached out for Shepard's hand, leaning forward to plant the lightest of kisses on her forehead. Ever since they'd started trying to bring Shepard out of her coma he'd slept at her bedside, intent on being present if she awoke sometime in the late hours. He couldn't help not being there during the day - he was still in control of the Normandy, after all - but he could be there for her at night.

Besides, Hannah Shepard was still coordinating the Crucible scientists, and she did most of that from her omnitool at Shepard's bedside during the day.

As he always did, he whispered updates to her as he rested his head on the bed next to hers. He doubted she could hear, but he chose to keep her updated like she would want. No one had started killing on another, the turians and quarians were still working together to survive, the quarians were still trying to reactivate EDI and the geth, the Reapers hadn't spontaneously reactivated, progress on the Charon relay was going well, and it was all because of her. She didn't stir, the slow rise and fall of her chest never ceasing, kept steady by the soft whir of the ventilation machine. He carefully wrapped his hand around hers, avoiding the IVs tracing their way out of her pale skin.

All of her wounds were mostly fixed. The extensive fractures, healed. The lungs, almost fully functional. She'd just been so exhausted by the end, and he knew that it'd only been sheer force of will, forcing each step because she knew someone had to, and it was better her than anyone else.

He glanced back up at the screens, reassuring himself that everything was normal, that her heart beat with the gentle slowness of a woman previously in peak physical condition and not the thready beat it'd been once before. And he stared silently, hopefully at her still features until his eyes quietly slipped closed and he fell asleep himself.

#

Shepard felt the weight of the mask first, her dimmed senses telling her of a drive core back in her implants - implants that felt strange, actually - and the slow chirp of medical equipment before registering the sound of slow, steady breathing, almost in her ear. That overruled the other information, which was unimportant. Someone was breathing. Almost in her ear.

She ventured to open her eyes. Dim, like an Alliance ship - she ventured more, then turned her head slightly to the side where the breathing was coming from, the motion nearly draining all energy out of her. Her vision still blurry, she recognized the breathing and smiled between puffs of forced breath. A dark head swam into view, obviously Kaidan and obviously sleeping, just barely resting on the pillow beside hers. His hand gently held her own, stretched out at her side to hold it without moving and jarring the IVs likely connected to it. He looked hideously uncomfortable.

With that slight turn of her head, Shepard realized she'd used up what was left of her energy. Slowly her half-cracked eyelids drooped again, and she slipped back into sleep, her head sliding down the pillow a little more to rest on top of Kaidan's.

#

"We'll check her quietly."

Kaidan stirred slightly at the voice. He wasn't usually a heavy sleeper, far from it, so the abruptness and the fact that he hadn't heard anyone come in disturbed him.

His light sleeping had made sleeping with Shepard a bit of a pain - she tended to have nightmares quite a lot, usually coupled with an abrupt awakening, a startled mewling noise that occurred before she could stop herself, and then a quiet settling back both into him and her pillow with another attempt to sleep on the nights that it didn't lead to a bout of insomnia that saw her walking the ship.

He started to move, then became aware of a strange pressure on the top of his head. Without another twitch, he opened his eyes to see a nurse, an orderly - Michael, actually, the usual orderly - and Shepard's doctor standing at the foot of the bed. "Don't mind us," he said, noticing that Kaidan was awake. "We're just here to check her."

With that, he realized that the pressure on top of his head meant that Shepard's had slipped at some point, coming to rest nestled on top of his hair. He carefully moved so that she wouldn't slump to the side, settling her back fully on her pillow. "This, ah, isn't really what it looks like," he mumbled hurriedly. The doctor waved his hand.

"Please, Major. Your secret is safe with us."

He probably looked more visibly relieved than he wanted. "Uh, thanks." He scooted the chair back slightly in the small room and stood, retreating towards the rear of the room to give the trio room to work.

The test to determine how comatose a comatose person was had essentially remained unchanged for a few hundred years - improvements made, better ways to conduct the tests added, but not altered. It still remained the best test for humans. He leaned back against the wall, checking his omni-tool. Nothing new had come in.

Shepard was already pulling off yet another miracle. One doctor familiar with her medical files had commented that this was worse than the shape she'd been in after Elysium. And she'd been unstable for two months, unable to breathe unassisted and doctors fighting to just make sure the damage repaired itself, then barely stable and finally stable over the last two. Like always she did she hung on to life - sometimes with the flimsiest of grips, but always hanging on. Shepard was stubborn, and it was hardly surprising that she was refusing to let death take her again.

The doctor leaned over the bed, trying to get Shepard to respond with a simple voiced request. Usually this received no response - Shepard still lay there, eyes closed, breath regulated by a ventilator that hummed alongside the bed.

But this time . . . this time, something was different - the smallest flicker of Shepard's eyelids. Kaidan thought he was seeing things, his desire for her to ever wake up again overtaking his knowledge that she may never. But the doctor jerked slightly, almost as if he hadn't expected it.

"Can you hear me?" he asked quietly, the nurse and orderly suddenly tense. There was the briefest flicker again, and then her eyes cracked the smallest, tiniest bit. Kaidan straightened, again not sure if he was imagining it or not, but hoping against all reason in the universe that he wasn't.

Then Shepard tentatively opened her eyes the rest of the way.

It was like Christmas.

Kaidan took a half-step forward, feeling hopeful for the first time. "Hello," the doctor said. "Name, rank, serial?"

It was the first thing anyone asked a soldier when they were waking up, an ingrained response drilled into them by the several weeks at bootcamp as the immediate answer to a medic who asked or an interrogator if captured. Shepard was no different - half the time, as he'd found out, she would spit it out without being asked if she blacked out for even half a second.

Her reply was murmured, broken, and barely audible, but present. Shepard, Marrakech. Lieutenant Commander. 5923-alpha-charlie-2826.

Kaidan couldn't move as the doctor continued the rest of his exam, seeming almost in shock that Shepard had actually done something other than lay there, flinching away from pressure or mumbling incoherently on really good days. For Kaidan, it was like he was dreaming. Shepard was awake.

"I think someone wants to see you," he murmured, then glanced in Kaidan's direction. "We've finished, Major," he said, louder this time. "Let's give them some room."

The trio of medical personnel left, and Kaidan stiffly stepped forward. "Hi," he said quietly, sinking back into his chair. Shepard looked up at him and smiled blearily.

"Mm," she replied, still smiling weakly behind her mask. He gently brushed a piece of hair back from her face.

"I . . ." He started quietly, then rested his hand fully on her forehead. His hand was shaking but he couldn't help it, and he swallowed hard. "Marra . . ."

"S'ok," she hissed, voice rough and harsh and quieter than it'd ever been, her words slurring together. Her hand twitched, and he moved his from her head to it. "'M not dead. Jus' banged up." Her brow furrowed the slightest bit. "I think."

He smiled down at her, relief blurring his eyes. "You know you did it," he said. "The Reapers are gone. You did it."

She made a noncommittal noise and smiled blearily again. She looked ready to fall back asleep any moment, and he knew she probably wouldn't remember anything he said to her later. But it didn't matter. She needed to know. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, smoothing her shave scalp. "I love you, Marra."

Her hand squeezed his weakly as her eyelids flickered again. "Kai," she said quietly, her voice coming out as even more of a low whisper than before.

"Yeah?"

"'ll you be here when I wake up?"

He nodded. She probably couldn't even tell if this was real. "I'm not leaving. Promise."

She smiled weakly again and let her eyes slip closed. He settled on his chair again, checking his omni-tool and starting to fill out a form for a brief leave of absence. He wasn't needed to handle the galaxy. He was needed here, at least until she knew what was real.

#

Shepard slept mostly, waking up long enough to smile weakly and say hello to a visitor, and very rarely carry on an actual conversation before slipping back to sleep. The doctor assured them that this was normal for a person coming out of a coma - long periods of sleeping interspersed with short periods of confused wakefulness. For mostly everyone who wasn't one of her doctors, life progressed as normal for the next month. Hannah still managed the Crucible scientists from her spot at Shepard's bedside, surrendering it to Kaidan at night.

He'd only seen her awake one or two times since the first day she'd woken up. She'd woken up, smiled weakly at him, and then fell back to sleep with hardly a greeting.

Kaidan didn't know what she knew. He didn't know if she knew that her hair was gone, its growth stunted and kept shaved for the modules monitoring her brain activity. He didn't know if she knew that one of her femurs was only held in place by metal rods, or that the same was the case with her right forearm, or that her left shoulder was stabilized with screws and likely always would be though her arm and leg may someday return to normal. He didn't know if she knew that she was now gifted with a metal plate in her head, though she'd likely approve if it meant she could better headbutt krogan. He didn't know if she knew that she'd lost almost all of her muscle mass, that the doctors didn't know how long it would be before she'd be able to walk again if she even ever was, that they were trying to transfer her to a restored facility either in the Midwest or on the restored arm of the Citadel for physical therapy. He didn't know if she knew that most of the skin on her limbs had been grafted after her armor had melted into her flesh.

He doubted she knew any of that. No one had even attempted to tell her much of anything, not when the doctors told them that she'd likely not remember anything the next time she awoke.

As he closed her door behind him, he was surprised to see her twitch. "Shepard?"

"Kai?" Her voice was still weak, but he could clearly hear her. Kaidan hurried to her side.

"Hey." His hand brushed over her head, her stubble grazing his palm. The nodes on her skull had slowly begin decreasing in number since she'd first woken up, and she smiled up at him as his hand skimmed her.

"No one will tell me how bad I look," she murmured, her eyes comparatively bright.

"How're you feeling?" He was eluding the question she hadn't asked, and he knew it.

"Better." She looked back at the IV bag dangling over her head. "They've stopped sedating me."

"Pain?"

"Hell yes." But she gave him a brave smile from under her oxygen tube. "So. How bad am I?"

He settled into his chair and clasped her hand in his, brushing her knuckles with his lips. "Beautiful as always," he replied quietly.

"Kaidan . . ."

"Don't Kaidan me. I mean it."

"I want to know."

He sighed, and explained. She had very little muscle mass left. She had metal holding parts of her body together. But she was beautiful and alive and his.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked, still holding her hand between his. Shepard squinted, looking up at the ceiling.

"I . . ." He rubbed her hand with his thumb, avoiding her IV ports. "I sent you away. Kaidan, I didn't . . ." A single tear slipped down her cheek. "I-"

"Sh. Sh. It doesn't matter." He reached out to touch her face, brushing the wetness away reassuringly. "I'm here now. It doesn't matter. Do you remember anything after that?"

She frowned. "It's a blur, but I . . . Anderson . . . Anderson's dead." He nodded, but didn't want to tell her that she'd missed her mentor's funeral in London. "And so is the Illusive Man. But I don't . . ."

"That's the last thing you remember?"

Shepard nodded, but her eyes darted towards the window of the ICU ward. "Yeah. Did everyone make it?"

"Yeah. Everyone made it. Garrus and Tali and Liara have been in here a few times. Javik's doing what he can on the Charon relay."

"What happened to the relay?"

He thumbed her wrist again. "The relays were deactivated. Everyone was stranded here after the battle."

"Oh . . . And no one's killed one another?"

"There's been some close calls." Shepard gave him a small smile, but there wasn't any real warmth behind it. "What's wrong?"

"Kaidan . . . I need to know what happened. What . . . how were they stopped?"

"No one knows. There was an explosion from the Citadel, and the Reapers just . . . stopped. Their drive cores exploded - completely inert." She nodded. "We lost EDI and the geth."

If it had been possible for her sickly-pale skin to go whiter, it would have. "What do you mean?"

"They deactivated. We crashed, and the quarians are still trying to get the geth online. They . . ."

"What about EDI?"

"They're working on her as well, but so far, no luck." Shepard released a slow, shuddering breath. "Shepard?"

"I thought . . . I thought it was just a nightmare," she murmured.

He frowned, rubbing her hand again. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She swallowed a few times, looking away from him. "I can't," she whispered finally, studying the glass wall. "I just . . . I don't even know if it was real. I don't even remember it all. I . . ." Shepard looked back at him, another tear tracing her skin. "Kaidan . . ."

Kaidan shimmied onto the bed next to her, carefully pulling her into his arms. "Hey, hey. No matter what happened, you did it."

She pressed herself closer to him, turning her face to nestle in his neck. He tucked her under his chin, the stubble gracing the top of her head bristling against his throat.

"You did it," he whispered again. "You did it and I love you."

A/N:

Jillian: 3 Have some more feels.