Karipatrem - God-father

Torin - turian male above the age of majority.

Tarin - turian female above the age of majority.

Pulkar Verro - Beautiful mate, term of endearment referring to a male. Verro is used as a short form.

Eden Prime + 2

I had an instructor in N school who always told us to never get cocky, that there was always a worse day coming for us. We rolled our eyes through her lectures; she actually entitled them, 'No matter how bad things get, something worse is coming for you'. I think it was supposed to both terrify and reassure us in some odd way. Maybe she thought the idea of worse coming would make us appreciate even the bad times, allowing us to live in and savour the moment.

Thank god my parents didn't lay all that stupid crap on me when I was growing up. Some days will just plain tear our hearts from our chests, throw them on the ground, and trample them, and no amount of rhetoric makes them any less horrible. We suck up our tears, cling to the things that matter, and we soldier on, because life just is both good and bad. We try not to be too busy to enjoy the former, endure the latter, and we live.

I believed that completely until two days ago, until Eden Prime, Saren, and that damned Prothean beacon.

Now, I know the truth. There's a far worse day coming. For us all.

A ferocious smile cut a gash across her face as hospital staff scattered before her, fleeing the storm of armour and scars that thundered off the elevator and roared across the lobby. Rough and unforgiving, her rage and panic lashed out without mercy, seeing nothing but obstacles between her and her goal. When C-Sec stepped up to either escort her or stop her, a single glare backed them down. Most of them knew her far too well to step into her path. Besides, that turian bastard had sunk betrayal's blade just as deep into their chests.

Scurry away, people. Unless you can help me, clear the path.

"Spectre Nihlus Kryik!" she bellowed, her voice killing every other sound in the crowded lobby. "Now!" If they wanted to keep their hospital, someone would catch up and lead her to her husband. Pausing her charge, she slapped her hand against the door control into the triage ward. Even the second it took for the door to open proved too long a pause. Inertia shattered, a dropped egg unleashing a horde of venomous serpents.

Ni.

His body sprawled across the damned prefab decking, a halo of blue spreading around his head.

'Williams! Alenko! Get that bastard!' The Marines' boots thundered, hollow and metallic, as they raced after Saren.

Her hands shook as they fought to stop the blood. Dear god, so much blood. Fingers, slippery and dripping, fumbled for his medigel control.

"Normandy, I need Dr. Chakwas down here, now!'

She stumbled when the door opened, landing on one knee as the snakes smashed through the cell imprisoning her panic and pain. The slithering mass swarmed over her, dragging long tangles of razor wire behind them. The jagged blades ripped a whimpered cry from her throat as they shredded her guts … damned near cutting her in half.

No! Stomping her emotions into muck, she glared up at the hands that reached to help her and lurched back to her feet.

She needed to keep moving, at least for the next couple of hours. Sanity and function relied on it. A far worse day loomed on the horizon for the entire galaxy, requiring her to prioritize the Spectre. As much as she screamed to be let loose, the wife had to wait. Sucking in a long breath, she shoved her shoulders back hard enough to crack her spine and pushed on.

"Spectre Shepard!" A salarian doctor leaped into her path, already jogging to avoid being trampled. "This way, please."

"What's my husband's condition?" she demanded, slowing just enough to avoid running him down. Even that slight surrender allowed the pain to sear its way up her veins once more. It settled in the corners of her eyes, molten and threatening. She clamped her jaw down so tight her teeth squeaked together and reinforced the walls.

"Spectre Kryik came through surgery better than expected," the salarian reported. He glanced back every other step as if checking to be sure she hadn't closed, a short blade set to sink into the soft spot between his fifth and sixth ribs. Sometimes, she appreciated her reputation for brutal, personal kills. "In coma, on life support. Must understand. Spectre Kryik suffering massive brain trauma. Odds of survival low. Even if he survives, long term prognosis is grim." His hands gave a helpless little supplicating flail. "Apologies and condolences, Spectre."

When the door opened, Shepard bulled past the salarian, sending the lithe alien crashing into the nursing station. Not sparing the doctor another glance and scarcely another thought, she hurried past, her sights locking onto a turian in a set of blue and black armour. He stood alone at the far end of the corridor, an island across a wide expanse of turbulent sea. As Shepard stepped forward, that sea turned to face her, fifty sets of ravenous eyes and greedy, half-open mouths. Damn. Reporters.

She knew of only one way to deal with an army of reporters. Taking a deep breath, she set her shoulders, tucked her chin into her chest, and charged.

Bodies crowded in on her from all sides, but she kept her vision focused on that single figure standing outside the doors at the end of the corridor.

"Spectre Shepard! Over here! Have you heard any news?"

"Rumours say a Spectre is responsible for the attack on Eden Prime? Can you confirm that?"

"Spectre Shepard, how are you holding up?"

"Spectre Shepard, have you met with the council? Is it true that Spectre Saren Arterius was responsible for your husband's murder?"

That word pulled her slightly off course, a single, armoured fist silencing the woman, shattering one of her lying teeth. Nihlus wasn't dead. The doctor said he came through the surgery, and poor prognosis or not, her husband was a fighter. He wouldn't just give up and die.

'We're here, Shepard." The Normandy's shadow settled over her as Anderson's voice broke through the panic. "Get your ass after Saren; we'll take care of Nihlus.'

"Don't you dare leave me," she whispered and pressed a soft, wet kiss against the upper plate of her husband's mouth. Swiping at her face, she replaced tears with streaks of blue and scrambled up, her Mattock settling into her hands, a solid weight of deadly promise.

'And when you catch that son of a bitch, put a half dozen bullets in him for me.'

'Yes, sir.'

The rest of the sea parted ahead of the blood spray, fleeing the rage and brute force that had saved Elysium and bought humanity its first Spectre. Her focus locked back on the turian at the end of the hall, a weapon sighting down a target. When she'd closed to within two metres, he turned to face her.

"What the hell, Vakarian?" she said, strangling a scream down into a rough whisper. The sharp, growling edge on every word scraped her throat raw as they cut their way out. Dropping her shoulder, she rammed the C-Sec officer into the wall. "Two months? You've been investigating that bastard for two months, and you didn't see this coming?" She slammed the turian into the wall again. "You let us walk into that shit pile without any intel."

Strong arms locked around her, pushing her toward the couch along the wall, the torin's superior weight and strength bearing her down once her momentum evaporated. Talons stroked her hair as those long arms pinned hers against her body, the touch comforting. Too damned comforting.

She struggled against the gentle bonds. "Let me go." Jerking hard, she tried to bury her elbows into the seams of his armour. "Get your goddamned hands off of me, Garrus." She couldn't allow him to unravel her control. Not yet.

"There wasn't even a whisper out there, Kat," the investigator said. "I'm so sorry about Ni. You know that I'd have done anything … ." A long breath blew across her neck, a desert wind that scorched her skin, the keen of pain whispering beneath it scouring her clean of rage. "We'll get him through this."

The weight of the torin's face lifted from her neck, and he stiffened, as if seeing the reporters for the first time. "Clear this corridor!" he bellowed, his volume nearly deafening her, while the rage in his subvocals lifted her hair off her skin. "Wilson, Pavilus, stand guard. No one other than Spectre Kryik's medical team, his bond-mate, or myself gets through." He sucked in a quick, heavy breath. "And someone make sure al Jilani sees a doctor."

Their replies echoed vaguely against the sides of the well as Shepard tumbled down into the dark. Without the windlass and rope of her rage, nothing held her at the surface.

"You know I'd have taken that bullet myself, Kat," the turian whispered, his cheek returning, solid and reassuring, pressed against hers. "He's my best friend. You're both my family."

She nodded, her hands bumping and dragging bonelessly over the seams and ridges of his armour as her arms wrapped around him. She turned her face into his neck, taking sanctuary against the warm, rough hide. "You should have been there with us, and not to take Ni's bullet, either." A thick, wet breath caught in her throat, and when she spoke, the words had to clamber through a pinhole. "You could have stopped him or scouted ahead with him." She thumped his back with a fist. "He left me behind with the Marines. Damned idiot and his recon."

The C-Sec officer nodded and squeezed her tighter. "He's going to come through this, Kat. You know he is. It'll take a hell of a lot more than Saren Arterius to bring down Nihlus Kryik."

Fifty heartbeats passed in silence before he pulled away from her. "I stopped by your apartment on the way over and brought you a kit with some towels, soap, clean dress uniform." He tipped his head toward a duffel at the end of the couch his gaze cutting toward the door and back. "Go in, sit with him for a bit, and then take a shower and get ready to face the council. We're going to need their support to bring Saren down."

Shepard took a deep breath, choking a little on the unshed tears that clogged her throat and sinuses. "Yeah. I already contacted Udina, sent him all the hardsuit recordings. Anderson is working on paving the way there too." She gripped her friend's hands tight enough that she saw him wince. "There was something so much worse than Saren, Garrus. So very much worse, but this isn't the time or place to discuss it."

She stood, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck, then shrugged her armour up her shoulders. Taking a deep breath, she set herself straight and square, buttoning everything down. A soldier, an N7, a Spectre … outside the room at the end of the hall, she needed to be all of them. "Meet me back here when I'm done with the council?"

"Of course." He glanced toward the exit. "Apparently there's a krogan smashing his way around the academy. Tried to kill Fist in the middle of Chora's Den." A rolling shrug betrayed a helpless sort of confusion rather than nonchalance. "He said something about Saren, so I'm going to head down and talk to him."

"Good." She softened a little as she met her friend's eyes, one last piece of news to tell. A tiny, brilliant spark of light had burned unacknowledged inside her for more than a day, a source of joy and terror so sharp that it bled. "So, I heard from Mordin Solus on the way back from Eden Prime," she said, her voice burrowing down into her chest.

Garrus stood, capturing both of her hands in his. "What did he say, Kat?"

"It worked." A soft breath puffed from her nostrils as the words that should have been a cause for celebration sat like a lump of greasy snow in her gut. "In thirty-three weeks, a miniature Kryik will be joining the galaxy." The weight of those words landed hard and awkward on her chest, throwing her back a couple of steps before she recovered. "Oh." The word tumbled out, a soft almost-gasp. She stared at the floor for long seconds, brow furrowing until implacable fingers of pressure stabbed into her temples. Looking up, she met his gaze, flailing through rough seas, fighting to grab hold of any life preserver.

The torin smiled and gripped her shoulders, pulling her into a warm embrace. "Congratulations, Kat." He nodded toward the door at the end of the hall. "Go tell Ni. He's been working so hard to make me a karipatrem that it might just be the thing to help him fight his way back."

Shepard nodded and pulled away, twisting a little to free herself of his hands, their grip too tight and too indecently, uncomfortably alive. "Yes, that's why we've gone through all this, Garrus … to make you a godfather."

She turned, the door at the end of the corridor exerting equal and opposite forces: pulling her towards it with the promise of wrapping her fingers around the talons of the torin she loved, and pushing her back toward space … action and revenge, movement to keep the possibility of his loss at bay.

Damn it, Ni, I can't do this on my own.

"Have you called Hannah and Joe?" Garrus asked. From the corner of her eye, Shepard saw him back up a step, a docking clamp releasing.

Taking the first step forward, she nodded. "Yeah, they're running patrols in the Exodus Cluster. The entire Alliance has gone to high alert. They said they'd be on the next ship, but I don't know if they'll be able to get leave. Mom's on track for a promotion when Hirawa retires. Dad might be able to come." A second step and Nihlus's gravity grabbed her, inexorably drawing her to the door. She sighed. As if there had ever been a choice or a doubt. She'd been lost the moment he introduced himself nearly five years before.

"See you in a couple of hours, Garrus." Reaching the door, she palmed the control then stepped through.

Antiseptic and the heavy ozone of the decon field bit deep inside her nostrils as she stopped, waiting for the thick pane of blue light. As the ultraviolet light passed over her, the room's brilliant white and gleaming stainless steel gnawed into her eyes, every bit as vicious as its stench. Taking a deep breath, she searched the room's scents for the slightly sweet, desert sand and spice of her husband. Nothing. Just hospital.

"You've stepped through the looking glass, Alice," she whispered to herself. She closed her eyes and took long, slow breaths, struggling to ignore the inhuman smells. Her life was dirt and wind, sweat and blood, not the carnival hell of surreal madness that descended on Eden Prime. "Spirits, give me strength to keep the Red Queens and Jabberwocks at bay," she whispered.

Steeling herself, she opened her eyes and strode over to the bed. So many bandages and blankets swaddled the deep chocolate-red of Nihlus's hide and plates that only his eyes showed. Dear God. His eyes. Shepard snatched at the railing, the armour plating on the backs of her fingers ringing against the metal as the world tipped to starboard. The floor bucked hard, trying to shake her loose as the swollen mass of her husband's face swam before her. The soft, delicate hide around his eyes protruded out from under his plates, swollen until it shone, the pressure escaping in the only place it could. They'd taped his eyelids shut, and for a moment, her stomach threatened to embarrass her.

She reached out, her hand trembling so hard that she just clenched it into a fist and pulled it back, afraid to hurt him. "Hey," she whispered, then stopped, her mind going suddenly and horribly blank. Damn, it was ridiculous. She'd never been tongue-tied in Nihlus Kryik's presence in the entire time she'd known him. They'd met at the council's party celebrating Donnell Udina's appointment to Ambassador. She'd barely had time to check her coat when the Spectre walked up to her, introduced himself, and they'd taken off from there. They danced for hours, then went back to her place, made love all night, ordered in a breakfast that they ate curled up under the sheets, and never looked back.

For almost five years, her love rarely strayed out of arm's reach. In retrospect, she supposed that she'd lived a fool's paradise expecting it to go on forever.

"Spectre Shepard?"

Shepard jumped, the soft, flanged voice startling her. She stepped away from the bed, having to really look to see the turian doctor almost completely camouflaged—white face plates and white clothing covered by a white smock—against white walls. Only pale green familia notas and her movement gave her away.

Shepard shook her hands and sucked in a deep breath to calm her heart, reminding her body not everything needed a life or death reaction. "Sorry, you startled me a little."

The doctor stepped around the end of the bed, the rattle of the datapad against the bed setting all of Shepard's nerves screaming again.

"Calm down," she muttered under her breath and cracked her neck.

"I'm Dr. Gedarin, your bond-mate's primary surgeon." The doctor snagged the back of a large, rolling armchair and guided it over next to the bed. "Please, sit down." Shepard perched on the edge of the seat, her heavy armour awkward and clumsy outside of its reason for being, watching as the doctor fetched another chair and pushed it over. "How are you holding up?" Gedarin asked, gold eyes studying Shepard with a professional, detached sort of concern. "I understand you were on a mission together?"

Shepard nodded, but remained mute, clutching those moments close, guarding them jealously. The frustrated breathlessness of her husband pulling his usual, 'I'm just going to scout ahead a couple hundred metres. Don't worry, I'll be back in a second' crap wasn't the doctor's to share. The garrotte of terror that had wrapped around Shepard's throat when she heard the gunshot and only silence answered her calls wasn't for sale to the reporters outside. And she'd be five days dead before she allowed the moment of finding the love of her life sprawled and bleeding to be spread across the extranet, fodder for the vultures.

After several moments of silence, the doctor nodded. "Very well. Spectre Kryik has suffered a serious brain injury. The projectile entered at the back of his skull, angled upward." Twisting around, the doctor used her own head to illustrate the entry point and trajectory. "The only reason your bond-mate has any neural activity is that he appears to have thrown himself backward into his attacker at the last second. The bullet was deflected onto a more superficial path." Facing Shepard once more, the tarin leaned forward, forearms braced across her thighs.

Shepard braced herself in return. "The doctor outside said that Nihlus's prognosis is grim." Rolling her chair a little closer to her husband, she peeled off her glove and reached through the railing, wrapping her fingers around the limp, motionless talons. His chill flesh startled her, and she snatched her hand back. Normally, he ran a few degrees warmer than she did. "He's so cold."

"Yes, we're keeping his body temperature low." She nodded toward Nihlus's hand. "Go ahead, the more you touch him and speak to him, the better."

Taking her husband's hand again, Shepard lifted the deep red, calloused digits to her lips and pressed a long, soft kiss against the knuckles. She pulled back ever so slightly. "So what is this grim prognosis, Doctor, and what do we need to do to make it far less grim?"

"He came through the surgery far better than we hoped," the surgeon said. She stood and moved over to examined the data on computer that ran all the machines. "It's still too early to tell if he'll regain consciousness, but we're doing everything we can." The tarin's talons moved with the steady, deft confidence of someone very good at her job who held no emotional investment in the body lying on the bed.

Shepard squeezed Nihlus's talons, a gentle, reassuring pressure. Her hands hadn't stopped shaking for nearly two days. She glanced up at the doctor, nodding her thanks, but her stare returned immediately to the tiny glimpses of white on dark red-brown between the bandages. "So, what is everything you can? Is there anything I can be doing to help?"

"When Spectre Kryik came in, we cleaned out the wound, stopped the bleeding, and began treating the brain swelling immediately. Once the swelling comes down, we'll begin stem cell therapy, neuro-regeneration techniques, and I've contacted a surgeon on Thessia who is pioneering a technique of using the innate asari ability to touch another's mind to help stimulate the development of neural pathways." Her fingers moved over the controls. "Her technique has shown excellent promise with many types of brain injury."

Shepard let out a long, slow breath that she didn't even realize that she'd been holding. She kissed her husband's hand again. "This one's good, pulkar verro," she whispered, her breath warming the tough hide. "She's got you."

The turian surgeon stepped away from the computer. "The best thing you can do is what you're doing right now. Just spend as much time as you can, touching him and talking to him. I have no doubt that he hears you." She turned the monitor so that Shepard could see it, and lifted a hand pointing to a couple of small spikes in his brain scan. "These both coincide with you kissing him." She smiled, her mandibles sweeping slowly. "I'll give you some time alone." She pointed to a red button at the head of the bed. "If you need anything, just press that button."

"Thank you, Dr. Gedarin, I feel very confident with my bond-mate being in your care." Shepard pressed her lips into a tight smile. "I won't be here as much as I'd like, but you'll have all my information and be able to reach me wherever I am. Although, I'll probably call frequently enough that you'll want to shoot me, but he's my entire galaxy." Her lips trembled through another ironed out smile.

The doctor nodded and strode to the door. "It's a pleasure meeting you, Spectre Shepard. I'm sorry it is under these circumstances."

Shepard watched after the surgeon until the door closed then rolled her chair in tight against the side of the bed. "Hey there, verro. I hitched a ride back with the Peterborough. Once I woke up—that damned beacon knocked me out for almost a day—I spent the entire time hiding in the armoury, cleaning their weapons with Williams and Alenko. They know how to keep their mouths shut, so it wasn't a bad run."

She pressed his hand against her cheek. "Chakwas did a hell of a job getting you here alive, verro. She's earned a lifetime supply of that damned ice brandy she likes."

Closing her eyes, she leaned into the side of the bed, the railing icy against her ear. "Mordin called me just after I woke up and um … well, you have to get your ass out of this bed because apparently the tenth time's the charm. In about thirty-three weeks, there's going to be a tiny life form needing protection from his or her mother's ham-hands and complete lack of mothering instincts."

Turning her face into his palm, she kissed the skin, warmer from contact with her. "I'm pregnant." She said the words slowly, testing the feel of them in her mouth. After well over a year of trying, each attempt meeting with heartbreak, she hadn't been sure she'd ever get a chance to say them, and now she could … they amounted to just about the most terrifying words that had ever left her lips.

"You hear me, Ni? You're going to be a pari, so you need to fight this." The tears that threatened earlier began to fall, slow, scalding tracks down her face. "You need to come back to me. I can't do this without you."