Like ruined paint on a waterlogged canvas, Shepard's days start to run together in an only vaguely recognizable blur. She goes through her missions on automatic, exhaustion showing telltale in her aim and speed; there is only so much a shot of stims can cover, and at this point they serve only to raise her heart rate, doing nothing to clear the fog from her mind and body. She knows it's stupid, that eventually the risks are going to catch up with her...but there seems to be no way out. No solution that is cost free.

As Garrus' shattered body heals, his mind seems to fragment worse. Dr. Chakwas explains that it was not unexpected. That during any traumatic experience the mind concentrates first on the damage to the physical form, ensuring survival, before attempting to deal with the mental and emotional repercussions. Shepard listens numbly, the words trickling like sand through her tired brain, relishing the hot burn of Gardner's acrid coffee on her tongue, and the slight surge of caffeine through her body. In a quilt sick way she dreads returning to her quarters. Dreads having to watch Garrus pacing the room with jittery, nervous energy, eyes fever bright as he stares down horrors only he can see.

Sometimes Garrus seems almost normal, and that's the hardest time to deal with. Its those flashes of sanity, or normalcy that cut at Shepard the deepest...a glimpse of her friend, of what he could have been before Omega chewed him up, and spat him back torn and broken.

Shepard had always wondered if her and Garrus would have progressed beyond friendship if he had stayed aboard the Normandy. Now, when he looks at her with a flash of his old self, combined with a heartbreaking vulnerability, she wonders even more about the could-have-beens. What could they have become, or would it have changed nothing at all? Would she have still spiraled into oblivion in the cerulean haze of Alchera, would Garrus have still chased his own obsession into the hungry jaws of Omega? In a way, Shepard hopes it would have changed nothing, to think otherwise was too cruel to imagine.

"Where's Wrex?" he had asked during a moment of lucidity, one thin hand holding a piece of Shepard's armor he had been helping clean. "He was going to Tuchanka I think, try to beat some sense into his people..."

Shepard starts to tell him, but she sees the telltale muscle tremors start in his arm, and she has to turn away before she has to watch the sanity drain from his eyes. He drops the armor like it burned him, lunging back from her, gasping for air as the panic sweeps through him, leaving him shivering in a corner while Shepard quietly racks her half cleaned gear, and tries not to scream.

The nights are hell. For five nights, Shepard drags herself up when Garrus screams out in the grip of yet another horrible memory. His broken voice is terrible to hear, begging phantom tormentors for some scrap of mercy; and Shepard holds him while he shivers and cries, mind wracked by inescapable memories. On the sixth night, Shepard simply cannot force herself to rise, and listens, exhausted and riddled with guilt, while Garrus wails out his torment alone. Eventually he cries himself into an delirious half sleep, and turns away from Shepard when she tries to rouse him in the morning.

That morning Shepard had wanted to do nothing more than find a quiet corner, but a commercial transport frigate had chosen that moment to run afoul of batarian slavers, and Shepard had assured the desperate ships captain that the Normandy would be inbound within the hour. Joker brings the Normandy out of its silent stealth mode once the transport is in sight, the ugly bulk of the Batarian ship mantled over the smaller vessel like a bulbous hawk over its prey. The haze of vented oxygen brightens the stark black of the surrounding space in elegant, but deadly, swirls of vapor.

Resistance is immediate the second they board the transport. Batarian shock troopers, varren snarling at their heels, hit them the moment they clear the first airlock. The heavy boom of their assault weaponry shakes Shepard somewhat out of her daze, adrenaline pushing the bone deep weariness aside as she ducks behind a bulkhead to avoid a rattling hail of flechette rounds. Without instruction, Jack drags their opponents from cover, laughing high and wild, as Grunt strafes the twisting forms with incendiary fire. The broken forms of enemies, blackened and burned, twist and multiply in Shepard's vision, and she triggers another round of stims from her hardsuit, keeping cover until the burn sharpens her aim and eyesight.

The corridors and cargo storage spaces of the transport are the usual horror shows of a slave capture. The batarians have little use for the aged, the infirm, or the very young, only those able to be sold immediately are taken. Shepard tries to look impassively over the pile of discarded bodies tossed into a storage room; but she knows the image of streaks of blood on a doll clutched in a baby-soft, blue hand, and the way the turian boy was still sheltering his little sister even in death, would come back to haunt. Even Grunt was silent, his gaze strangely contemplative, and Shepard suspected that the krogan, more than any other race, would view the slaughter of children as a consummate waste.

The screams of the captives draws them to the main cargo hold. By the time they are in position, Shepard is starting to feel the rough burn of muscle fatigue overwhelming her stim doses, body simply pressed beyond reasonable limits. Perhaps that's why, as they move forward, Shepard forgets about the small electrical bay the ship schematics had showed on the right.

The first sign that anything is wrong is when the burning weight of an electrified submission net scores against Shepard's face, burning hot enough to blister as it tears down her kinetic barriers with a hiss of static feedback. Clawing at the electrified monofillament threads until they fall apart around her, Shepard spins to face the slaver behind her, staggering as a sudden impact against her chest rocks her backwards. The batarian goes down shrieking in a blast of incendiary shotgun ammo, body twisting and cracking in the sudden flare of armor warping heat.

Shepard turns to thank Grunt for his intervention, when she sees Jack staring at her, tattooed face pale, plush mouth set in an almost comical 'O'. As Shepard starts to shout out to the biotic, asking her whats wrong, she realizes her mouth is strangely full, watching stunned as she spits a gout of crimson across the floor.

What?

There's a strange pressure on her chest, and Shepard looks down at the heavy blades protruding through her armor with an odd detached fascination.

That's not good...

Shepard hears an odd thump, and realizes numbly that it was the sound of her knees hitting the metal of the bay floor, sending a shock through her body. She tries to keep a grip on her assault rifle, but it spins out of her grasp, and blankly she thinks Garrus would give her shit for handling a weapon like that.

Oh god Garrus...not again...I can't breath...

Grunt is grabbing her, surprisingly gentle with those big paw like hands. Shepard can hear Jack yelling something, but her voice bleeds into a haze of static, and the thick, coppery tang of blood fills Shepard's mouth, spattering against her chin. The biometric warnings built into her hardsuit are screaming a warning, the tone blurring into a distant buzz.

I'm so sorry Garrus...so sorry...

Shepard can feel Grunt running, his desperate, jouncing steps making the weight on her chest double. She tries to tell him it hurts, but her voice wont work, and all she can manage is a wet kind of rasp. She thinks of Garrus waiting for her, and her throat chokes with tears and blood. The gray walls are bleeding into darkness, running like ink in Shepard's fading eyes.

This is going to be so hard on you...be strong...

The light panels on the roof are blurring into a haze of colors, fading to encroaching darkness at the edges, Shepard's head flops limply against Grunt's bicep. Her jaw flops limp and she bites her tongue, feeling the distant sharp sting, and the hot wetness of more blood in her mouth. Grunt is yelling, his desperate voice like a jumble of falling rocks in Shepard's skull.

You never knew...I wanted to tell you...

Its Alchera all over again. Shepard can feel the numbness starting to spread from her hands, like dipping her limbs in ice water. Her breath stutters faintly in her chest, lungs heavy and unresponsive, each wet breath a monumental effort. The hiss of the airlock sounds like a howling roar; she sees a hazy flash of gray, and Chakwas's hands are rough and hurried against her skin. Shepard wants to tell her 'take care of him,' but only a mist of blood comes from her mouth.

I need you to live...because...

Distantly Shepard can hear the shrill whine of machinery, someone is fumbling at the pressure seals on her armor, cutting away the crimson clotted underweave, peeling it back like a second, bloodsoaked, skin The medical lights are dot like in her vision, fading into the distance in a surging wave of black. A distant monitor screams a jangling tone of alarm, and all Shepard has left are those torturous could-have-beens.

I think...

Mordin's voice is a distant babble. Shepard smiles a grim, bloody smile; Mordin will take care of him. There's a slight sting against her elbow, and Shepard fights the anesthetic as it drags her down into the waiting darkness, somewhere in that dark is the curve of a sunrise over Alchera. Waiting...again...

I love you...