7 weeks, 2 days and 13 hours later...
At first glance, Vancouver, British Columbia appeared to be a proud, sprawling city, at the apex of human architectural engineering. Gleaming skyscrapers peaked high above the hundreds of smaller buildings surrounding them, piercing the pristine clouds with their sharp angles and jagged spires. Thousands, perhaps millions of windows reflected the rare, but glorious midday sun that evaporated the standing puddles of muddied water throughout the city. People and vehicles lined the perfect parallel streets and sidewalks like sheep following a shepherd, eagerly awaiting a day's outing to the nearest field. At first glance, one would never guess it had seen war and destruction less than a year before. Oddly enough, humans had a tendency to build faster and more spectacular when given a second chance.
Beneath the bosom of this beautiful city, however, beat the tired heart of an old, battle-hardened warrior on the brink of death, unwilling to go down quietly... if one only knew where and how to look.
Walls of stone and metal surrounded the Alliance Base at Jericho Beach like an impenetrable fortress, spreading over several miles. A number of fighter ships were docked, held in place by locking clamps, stone cold and unmoving, like sleeping sentries. One or two hangars on the base were undergoing rehabs, workers on shaking scaffolding with welding torches and visor shades, sparks cascading to cement like hellfire. At least four platoons ran laps around the perimeter, their drill sergeants yelling at them to move faster, to work harder. The Jericho Beach Military Academy stood across the way, a singular white building, stretching toward the heavens, its back facing the English Bay, as waves pounded the base's mighty wall, intent on breaching through the defense. A menagerie of other structures were dispersed throughout the compound, casting long, dark shadows over a central courtyard.
The unmoving husks of once dangerous sentient machines littered the inner yard, their corpses absorbing any light that hit them, unable to reflect back, like miniature scale black holes. Though the Reapers had been defeated and were no more, they still garnered looks of fear whenever a new recruit or private passed by the court.
Jericho Beach had become a burial ground of Reapers and their minions that had fallen in the city. It had occurred to more than just one person, that perhaps the Alliance was attempting to lay to rest the Reaper War, though how the galaxy could easily forget was beyond anyone's imagination. There were still too many burning questions left unanswered that many were unwilling to respond to... even so many months later.
Their lifeless remains could still be seen from St. Gabriel's Military Hospital, some twenty stories up, where Garrus Vakarian stood, behind a large, picturesque window, contemplating moodily over the situation at hand, intent that the human military was seeking... was striving to cover up something it didn't want the general population to know the truth to.
The old adage of don't judge a book by its cover rang disgustingly true. The city's beautiful fallacy reminded Garrus of Illium... a flawless outer shell over top a core that was rotten and dying... The same could be said for the Alliance. Pulling together all its resources and bringing together the might of the galaxy to bear upon the Reapers, turning the tide of the war and then not divulging the whole truth to the public... all for some unseen political agenda... every last bit of it... bureaucratic bullshit... Garrus was convinced the human military was up to something... or knew more than they were letting on, and it made his stomach churn unpleasantly.
In his opinion, as a Primarch, this was not the way to win friends and influence people and keep a firm hold of established alliances with the other races. Unfortunately, not only were they hurting themselves in this endeavor, but they were also hurting the person who single handedly helped them defeat the Reaper threat, and alienating her ought to have been last on their priority list.
Garrus turned from the window and was met with Shepard's still form, laying in her hospital bed. She had not moved or awoken in the last seven weeks, save for the steady rise and fall of her chest beneath the white linen sheets. The doctors were keeping her in a medically induced coma, fearful she might cause more damage to herself than what had already been done. She was in no state to be running around, out of bed, and they were apprehensive that she had done more harm than good, gallivanting around the Normandy, fighting Cerberus troops.
Garrus approached her, gazing at her through troubled eyes. From here, it appeared as if Shepard may have only been sleeping, though the quiet whirl of machines and the steady beeping of a monitor told him otherwise. He ran a hand gently over the red peach fuzz now growing from her scalp. Closing his eyes, he stooped down and placed his own forehead against hers, tenderly, careful not to touch the bandages covering almost half her body and face, protecting the extensive amount of skin weaves and grafts she had underwent over the last two months.
Not to mention the amputation... Garrus was convinced she would be pissed upon discovering that the doctors had removed her left arm without her consent. He himself had fought and argued with them, had pleaded with them not to do it, for her sake. But as it was, the limb was dead, burnt like a pyjack caught too close to an open flame, bones and tissue beyond any meaningful repair. The doctors had been unable to pinpoint what had exactly caused it, the burns unlike anything they had seen. Granted, her face and neck and body had received some injury like the ones on her arm but not to that extent. The medical team operating on her had been capable enough to work around these strange burns and salvage enough skin for the other parts of her body... but not the arm.
For the first six weeks, the situation had been dire for Shepard. Her body seemed to not take kindly to the medications that were being pumped into to her to aid with recovery. Her nanites had waged war against the drugs that were suppose to be keeping her alive, attacking any cells that were beginning repair. The tiny microbots that had been with her since the Lazarus Project were slowly, but effectively killing her. She had burned with a fever so intense that it would have killed any other human being. Her heart rate, adrenaline, white blood count, metabolic rate had spiked so dangerously high that the doctors had been fearful they would lose her. She had also taken to crying out incoherently in her sleep, often times thrashing about wildly to the point where she had to be restrained to the bed, her remaining wrist locked in leather a leather cuff and her body tethered down with a thick strap not unlike the one Cerberus had used to hold her in place in those damn vids.
Garrus had balked the first time he seen the doctors do it, snarling in rage as he witnessed one of the assistants lock a cuff tightly around a wrist too thin it threatened to slip free. It had taken Wrex and Vega to pull the angered turian from the room and Chakwas to yell at the top of her voice for Garrus to listen long enough to understand it was for Shepard's own good.
Eventually though, her own flailing about became nearly so unbearable that between Liara and Chakwas, they suggested that perhaps the outdated and archaic nanites ought to be filtered out of Shepard's bloodstream and replaced with new ones capable of working with, rather than against the drugs. The doctors complied, all other routes exhausted.
For over 50 hours, they all waited with baited breaths, and watched as nothing changed. It wasn't until nearly 51 hours in, did Shepard's raging fever finally break and begin to steadily decrease. At 53 hours, her levels dropped to a more acceptable range. And at 55 hours after the new nanobots were administered, her body slackened and unclenched, falling limp against the pillows, where she currently remained, sleeping quite soundly.
But as it was, last night, Shepard's medical team had informed Garrus, that she was not yet out of the woods. There was the matter of the mind control chip still implanted in her head. They had take a number of scans and found that the chip was imbedded quite further than anyone dared to believe was possible, and that removing it would indeed cause some serious damage to her mental functions. Presently, no one was daring enough or willing enough to attempt an extraction.
They would discover the severity of the device's effects sooner or later, and then, perhaps an approach of dealing with it would reveal itself.
Immersed in his own thoughts, Garrus never heard the door open and shut quietly behind him, his head still bent over Shepard's, just barely touching hers.
"Shepard," he whispered quietly to her, almost pleading with her. "Listen to me... If... if you can hear me... I know you'll make it through this... just like you always do... just like old times... And then we'll go someplace warm... tropical... like we've talked about... I've got a few places in mind that I think you'll really like... And-"
"Garrus..." came a gentle voice at his back. Without turning, he replied, his voice trailing off with a weary sigh, "Hey Liara..."
"Why don't you go downstairs and get something to drink?" she whispered quietly.
After a few moments of tense silence, and disregarding the asari's question completely, he muttered to no one in particular, "Am I crazy?"
When Liara didn't immediately respond, he added, "For getting involved with... with the hero of the whole damn galaxy... for not leaving her side..."
"Joker once told me," began Liara. "That when Shepard pulled you off Omega, after you were nearly killed, it took all of Jacob's and Zaeed's strength to pull her from the medbay long enough for Chakwas to work on you. Apparently, as Joker tells it, she pushed Jacob into the wall, waving her pistol in his face, and broke Zaeed's nose when he tried to stop her. It wasn't until Miranda intervened did she actually stop... So the answer to your question, Garrus... Are you crazy for wanting to be by her side around the clock? You are no crazier than Shepard is..."
Garrus snorted as he allowed himself the briefest of grins before he said, "I'm exhausted, Liara..."
She chuckled, "I think we all are..."
"Not what I meant," he sighed. "Not just from this... but from everything... The chase for Saren, my stint as Archangel, the Collector Base, the Reaper War, playing politics on Palaven, all this shit with Cerberus... I feel... old... older than I ought to feel..."
Liara smiled kindly at him, shaking her crested head, "You're still a young turian..."
"Yeah... but I've seen more in my thirty some odd years than most see in a lifetime... I- we've been through more than any ought to be under any normal circumstances."
"But these haven't been normal circumstances though, have they?" said Liara solemnly. "I do see what you mean though... I'm still in my maiden stage, and yet, I feel as if I've entered into a matron, and I don't even recall when it happened."
Dwelling on this did nothing to settle Garrus' insides so he redirected the course of the conversation, "So Wrex and Tali have decided to return to their home planets for now?"
"Yes," Liara nodded. "Wrex has a duty to uphold not only as leader of Clan Urdnot, but also as a father to his own children."
"Quite a brood he's got now, hasn't he?" Garrus said thoughtfully, scratching at his scars.
"Indeed... and Tali has a whole new planet to settle into, and as part of the quarian Admiralty Board, she too has responsibilities to oversee."
"My father's decided to return home to Palaven as well... He wants to make amends with my sister... " he continued explaining upon seeing the puzzled look on the asari's face. "Neither of us left her on good terms... She didn't quite agree with our... spontaneous departure.
"So with them gone and Miranda gone AWOL," Garrus began counting on his fingers. "That leaves two of us, Joker, EDI, Chakwas, Vega, Kaidan, and Admiral Shepard... What happened with Javik?"
"Oh, our prothean friend is floating around Vancouver somewhere, probably muttering about something to do with primitives," Liara sniggered.
Garrus frowned, "I thought that he had said he was going to go find the rest of his people and finally be at peace with them..."
"He won't admit it, but I think he likes us too much now," Liara said, the corners of her mouth turning upward, causing Garrus to chuckle. "He's grown on me a bit as well," she added absent-mindedly, almost as an after thought.
Glancing down at Shepard once more, Garrus said, "I should check in with Aurelia... make sure everything is still status quo back on Palaven... Perhaps you're right... Maybe I will go stretch my legs for a bit..."
"That's the most sensible thing you've said in a long while, Garrus," Liara whispered, relief flashing across her face. "I'll stay right here should you need anything."
"You will call me though? If anything changes?"
"Of course I will,"
Garrus nodded his thanks and left, shutting the door behind him, completely at ease with leaving the Shadow Broker alone with Shepard.
So I'm not back yet entirely, but I was able to write this out fairly quickly.
I know there wasn't too much to this chapter, but it's just a quick update as to where and what everyone's been up to... and Shepard's on the mend... Again, a slight hint that something bigger and more sinister is looming in the shadows...
Hope everyone enjoyed! And thanks for sticking with me! :D