Title: Enough

Author: Lucky Gun

Description: There's always another choice, and Shepard makes the Intelligence see it. Another rewritten ME3 ending, Paragon FemShep/Alenko, pure 3 game Shenko, angst, hurt/comfort. Language warning

A/N: I know, I've crawled out of my hole for, not my Avengers story, but Mass Effect? Yes, I did. Spent hours in the triple digits on the three games, got to the end, and...just lost it. Absolutely lost it. Called up some people who had recommended the series to me and cussed them out at 5am (you know who you are!). I tried the synthesis ending, watched the other three choices, and cried all the way through. Because, after all the shit these people went through, dammit...they have had enough. They have been through enough. Give them the happiness they deserve, BioWare! And if you won't, I will.

She didn't even hesitate.

This made it pause, its childish form flickering. The organic staggered as she moved, and through a million different sensors, it watched. The organic was wounded to near death, exhausted, wasted, but still she moved with a driven purpose. It watched her eyes, watched them focus on the beam of light ahead, reflecting on the dark green hue within. There was no hesitation. There was no fear. There was no indecision. She didn't look once at the console on the left, nor the one on the right, as though the options presented were limited, nonexistent. The organic stumbled, slipped, fell to the polished floor with a low groan of pain. It could tell…she was spent.

It flickered again.

A trillion zettabytes of data ran through infinite calculations in a brain that existed only in servers. It computed, permuted, a billion shackles rising and falling silent.

Flicker.

Its sensors focused on the weapon in her hand. It was held listlessly, the organic not even gripping it properly anymore. White and black paint covered metal born of machine make and organic thought, and it was coated with her life fluids.

"You are tired."

The voice echoed over itself in the enormous chamber, and it saw her blink slowly. It thought the organic might not respond, might have ceased, but she began to move again. Somehow, muscles and tendons pulled properly, and she regained her feet. Shuffling towards the end of the course, she continued her death march.

"Yes. Yes, I am," she whispered, her voice reaching its audio receptors. It flickered once more, knowing that for all the data it had on the organic, it had never heard it so defeated. Not even after Thessia.

The ghostly figure moved forward as the organic stopped. She was panting, left hand clasped over a wound that bled, arms charred and bones broken. The blood slipping from her mouth was steady. And while her knees trembled, they did not give again. It raised its head, a motion unnecessary but expected, and stood quietly in front of her for a moment.

"You believe you have fought enough."

This was a statement of fact, one the data proved was true.

But the organic snarled, raised the gun in what was a futile gesture, and some spark of fire blazed in her eyes.

"Don't you dare! You told me to make a choice, I've made it. If you think you can stall me until I bleed out so that your little game can keep going, you've got another thing coming," she threatened, and the calloused finger resting on the trigger twitched.

It flickered.

"You misunderstand. This is a truth you cannot ignore."

Using whatever anger she felt to move forward, the organic stepped right through it, a loud gasp shuddering through her as her stride lengthened as much as she was able.

"Yes, I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting, tired of losing people I care about, tired of two kilometer sentient robots doing everything they can to destroy the galaxy. Everyone else has fought enough. If this is it, if this is what will end it, end it without the death of those who rely on machines, without the threat of the Reapers constantly hanging over the heads of everyone I love, waiting for me to lose my mind and lose control of them, then I can fight just a little bit longer."

The words were forceful at first, then quieted, softening to a breath of air as the organic came to the edge of the floor. She stopped, body aglow in the wash of energy, and twin tear tracks marked through the gore down her face.

"But even this...this isn't a choice I should be allowed to make. Turning everything into synthetic organics? Making everything...so different. And they don't have a choice. None of them do." These words held a pain that ran deep, and the organic closed her eyes, tears racing down her cheek.

It watched the drops of saltwater crash onto the gun she still held, once again forgotten. More calculations, more processes, and it flickered.

"You are right."

She jerked, eyes opening, and stared at it beside her. It said nothing more, but reached for the weapon in her hand. Maybe through shock or confusion, the organic didn't move, and with tendrils of pure dark mass energy, it gently pried the pistol from her slack fingers. It held it in midair, twisting it, sensors cataloging all it found upon the surface. Some DNA it did not recognize and discarded.

It looked at her again, saw her question, and spoke as plainly as it could for one who barely had enough caloric energy to continue basic metabolisms.

"You are right. Though choice is not a concept for a basic machine, it is a concept for an artificial intelligence. You gave such choice to the Geth, did you not?"

She blinked, and her eyes were longer opening this time.

"I didn't give them the choice, I granted them the chance to make it themselves. The Quarians are the ones who broke off the attack long enough to make peace a possibility," she quietly corrected, and she swayed a bit.

"This is false. You speak as though your actions meant nothing in the end of that conflict. In truth, your actions over the past twenty two years have left ripples throughout the galaxy. These ripples touched my networks shortly after Mindoir. I have felt your presence since then, most powerfully for the past five years, though you went so quiet for two years. When you awoke again, the ripples echoed even farther than before, and this is something I can measure."

It paused, equations giving rise to words, and it spoke cleanly.

"You are choice."

The organic was slowly shutting down, and she was fighting to remain conscious. It could see this, so it spoke quickly.

"Peace, Shepard," it said, addressing her by a name it had known for decades.

With nothing more to say, it flung the gun into the vast abyss before the organic, the light spiking green as it touched the weapon. There was a rumble from deep within the Citadel, a slumbering behemoth awakening slowly, and the organic finished her slow fall to the ground. It knelt by her, noted the tears that were still flowing, and it knew she was still awake.

"The Reapers will deactivate, as their purpose is now complete. The organics will live, as their purpose is now revealed. Those in between will become something between as well. You have discovered the means to peace between organics and synthetics, as shown on Rannock. You have discovered the means to peace of genocide over millennia, as shown on Tuchanka. You have discovered the means of peace between every major race currently known to my systems, as shown by the fleet amassed. You are choice, Shepard."

The beam was growing, changing, a wave redoubling in itself, cresting over and over, and it reached a ghostly hand forward in a gesture it had seen performed billions of times but had never once felt. Warm energy trailed over her cheek, a sensation that opened her eyes to slits, and it smiled.

"And it is not in my programming to destroy choice."

The ships couldn't move fast enough. There was no slow burn, no spike in the Citadel's EM field that hinted at the explosion to come. And it was an explosion. Light expanded from the massive machine as fast as physics would allow, a roll of green that flashed like a firework in the eyes of those watching. It faded in seconds, the afterimage lasting briefly longer, and then there was silence.

On Earth, silence. Rockets stopped flying, lasers quieted, the mind-numbing howls and shrieks of reaper forces dying instantly. The same on Thessia. The same on Pavalen. The same a galaxy over. Everything was silent. Then, like an old film that had lost half its input, the Reapers rose as one. They lifted off, feet moving carefully, destroying nothing that wasn't already broken. The shuddering sound of their electronic cries did not echo through the air again. They flew through atmosphere and space, disappearing in a jump to regions unknown.

Silence, for instants longer than a lifetime and shorter than a heartbeat.

Silence.

Kaidan jerked upright with a shout, hands on his shoulders pushing him back down. He couldn't think beyond the abrupt hollowness in his chest and heat in his head. He fought, screaming, one palm crushed against the back of his head while the other clutched at his heart. Back arched, muddy boots kicking against the table, he fought like a man possessed.

It was over in moments.

He panted harshly, whatever it was that he felt dying down. His eyes opened, brown eyes focusing quickly, and he stared up at a worried Turian with confusion.

"...the hell?"

His throat was dry, which wasn't surprising, since last he remembered was a doctor shoving a tube down it while he was going under for surgery. He gaze roved quickly, taking in the infirmary of the Normandy, the AI core behind it draped with sterile cloths as an emergency medical suite. There were faces swimming in his vision, and he focused on the one he trusted more than others.

"Garrus, what happened?" he asked before coughing, his throat scratching painfully.

A hand he didn't place a face with pushed a glass of water at him, and he sipped it gratefully as the large Turian beside him heaved him upright. Garrus shook his head, mandibles clicking, the scarred one moving slightly less than the other.

"We don't know. The meds were barely in you when something happened at the Citadel. There was a light – Edi is still trying to categorize it – and then everything….everything changed."

Kaidan glanced down at himself, realizing, with a dumb sort of shock, that he didn't hurt. Sure, there was a headache, some aches and pains, but he no longer felt like he'd been running next to a Mako when it exploded. He looked back up at Garrus. The Turian stared back, raising his arm, knowing what Kaidan was looking for. There were very few burns, most of them gone, the deepest still there but surface only. Easily remedied by an application of medi-gel, he thought. Eyes wide, the Major looked around slowly, reality filtering through his senses with a demand of something that made sense.

Instead, he found himself face to face with a medical bay that was full of befuddled people, none of them dying like he'd been, like they all had been.

Instantly, Kaidan's focus snapped up and he shoved himself from the bed, the sound of shattered glass waking him up. He expected the lightheaded dizziness that always echoed from his L2 implant, a limitation he'd hidden from his instructors from day one. When it didn't happen, he stumbled anyway. He heard the shout behind him, a voice modulator warbling, and didn't pay any attention. He bolted for the door, the sensor giving way to his insistent motion, and ran for the elevator. It was already on deck three, something he would count as luck. It opened quickly, and he fell into it.

The door shut without admitting anyone else, and Kaidan clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle a sudden sob. Elation and fear warred for domination, and grief rose tightly in his throat, choking him. The tips of his fingers tingled, and he shuddered. But when the door opened again, he was more controlled, and he weaved through masses of people towards the cockpit.

Over time, he had become used to the pilot's eccentricities, but Joker literally doing a tango with Edi wasn't one he'd previously encountered. And Edi...was something different, as well. There was a green tint to her eyes that hinted at natural coloring, and the metal of her skin had softened closer to pale. Beyond that was the light blush on her lips that were locked in a smile so large there were crinkles near her eyes.

Kaidan came to such an abrupt halt that his teeth clicked, and he stared. Gone was Joker's limp, his echo of lingering pain. The near-constant bruises on his arms, a side effect of his medications, were gone. And he danced.

Then he saw Kaidan, saw the soldier's heaving chest and darkened eyes, and he froze. Whatever elation he'd found in his sudden health, he lost in the face of Kaidan's fear. He didn't need to speak, didn't need to comment on the other man's lack of organ failure and liver ruptures. Edi found nothing to say, either. Instead, as one, they turned to look out the windows of the cockpit, where the vastness of the Citadel and Crucible were joined in unholy matrimony.

There was a plea instead of an order in Kaidan's voice as he whispered, "Just get us there."

The docks were locked down manually, and not even an advanced AI could make metal turn without force. Shadows grew over the interior as, unbidden, the Crucible detached and floated away, the Citadel arms returning to their usual position. The Normandy was the only ship within, Hackett's orders to the fleet the one constant keeping a suddenly hale people together. He had said nothing when Joker had radioed for authorization to search for survivors, the underlying truth of their request hidden to no one. Instead, he had nodded sternly, his visage on the holo solid, and he had snapped off a salute to Kaidan that would have previously broken Joker's wrist.

So the docks were out, but the shuttles were still working fine. The Major was standing on a small ledge above the transit hub, the Normandy hovering silently in the middle of the space beyond. The entire ship seemed emptied into the loading area, and he shifted in his gear nervously, an anxiousness coloring his pacing walk.

"Listen up!" he shouted, and the low din died immediately. They were soldiers, guards, and less, all with a gun he privately believed none of them would need. "We're doing a sweep for survivors. Doing this by grids and by numbers; maps are loaded on your omni tools. The Citadel is too big for us to get done by ourselves, so we're going to focus on the areas where the population was massed and where there were C-Sec strongholds. Stay with your groups, don't be out of sight at anytime. If you find anyone, radio in. If anyone shoots at you, shoot back. There was too much residual sensor junk from whatever that light was that….did whatever, so we can't get thermal readings or biometrics anywhere on the station. Stay smart and stay safe!"

There was a shout of exhilaration from a people come back from the edge of annihilation, and Kaidan watched them go silently. They filtered out, hopping cabs and extra shuttles, some jogging away on foot. It took a few minutes, but then there was only the command crew left. They were spread out but still in reach, all leaning on whatever ties that bound them. Edi had stayed aboard to do more analysis, and while Doctor Chakwas had offered to come, the Major had asked her to stay. She was military, but barely. He always felt bad putting medics in the line of fire, anyway. So James, Tali, Liara, and Garrus stood patiently waiting for him, and he jerked his head towards them as he continued to pace.

"We take the tower. If my hunch is right, the only things living will be Keepers. Still, check your fire and watch for civilians. Liara, Tali, you two take levels one through thirty. James and Garrus, thirty one through sixty. I'll take sixty one through seventy five and the Peak."

He didn't look at them as he spoke, his eyes focused on the tower in the distance, and only Liara was brave enough to speak after several moments.

"The Peak...that is where the Crucible joined with the Citadel. That was the emanation point of the energy field," the Asarian said softly, her own gaze on the shining spear.

It took a minute, but Kaidan finally responded in a strangled voice, "Yeah. I know. And if she's...if I find...i-it should be me."

There was something wrong with his words, something unsettlingly familiar, and Tali inhaled deeply, feeling the beginnings of a storm in the air. In the middle of their small group, the Turian noticed it as well. His claws gripped his rifle stock tightly, cutting grooves in the paint. With only a quick glance of warning to Liara and Tali beside her, Garrus tilted his head and growled, "You think you're the only one who wants to find her?"

The human in front of him said nothing, though his pacing slowed to a halt, and he swallowed visibly.

"You think you're the only one who cares she's gone?"

These words were cold enough that Tali gave a small cry of denial, even knowing the Turian's goal.

"You think you're strong enough to find her body, check for a pulse, call her a corpse? She's dead, Major, dead and gone. You think you owned her? Ha! You lost her after the Normandy, lost her again on Horizon. She's never going to be yours again!"

The rage was abrupt and white hot, and a biotic wave exploded from Kaidan with a matching roar. It shot from the back of his head, wrapping around him, sparks flying. There was a loud hum from his amp as his implant wound up in half a heartbeat. He spun, hand up, finger pointed at the Turian. His body glowed blue, his eyes swirling with energy, and his feet hovered a few inches off the floor.

"Don't you dare, Garrus! Don't you fucking dare! She belongs to all of us; she belongs to everyone! Every entity, organic or synthetic, in the next fifty systems has a part of Shepard!"

There was a larger pulse, static crackling the air, and the human lifted higher in the air, fists clenched. A shock of dark mass lightning shattered near them, the burning ozone overwhelming. Liara gasped and stepped backwards as the force of his energy slammed into her own biotic center, instantly throwing up a barrier. Her purplish, inborn Asarian field spread in a flash to cover the rest of the command crew, and Kaidan's waves buffeted her shields. Beside her, James grunted and lifted his rifle, though Tali quickly placed a hand on his arm, shaking her head, shoving the weapon back down.

This sort of rage, the rest of the command crew had seen before. After the explosion of the Normandy, when Shepard had been lost, her dying gasps echoing over comms that couldn't be turned off, they had seen it. It had simmered for three days before it had exploded in a similar fashion, the small park near the hospital taking to full brunt of it. If it hadn't been so terrifying, it would have been spectacular. For her knowledge, Liara had known that the L2 implants tended to spike with higher power levels than the later L3s and beyond, though they took an incredible amount of self-control to manage in those that didn't go insane. Kaidan had finally lost that control, the careful leash burned in atmosphere, and he'd finally let go.

There wasn't any green there anymore, not since that day. Trees were upturned, roots shattered, everything living burned in a biotic fire that ignited the air. A small pond had boiled dry in minutes, and where the Major had stood – where he'd hovered, for an hour, screaming – there had been a fifteen meter wide crater.

Garrus knew what he was doing, knew what he was tempting, having been there and witnessed firsthand the Major's breakdown after Shepard's first death. He had nothing but respect for their fallen Commander, and seeing her lover walk into her crypt without burning off some of his grief would do no favors to her memory. He jerked his chin upwards and took a step forward to the edge of the Asarian's shields.

"So what makes you so goddamn special, Spectre Kaidan Alenko?" he snapped above the gale, and Tali glanced up at him, noticing the tightness in his mandibles and the strain in his voice. She turned to look back at the human, who was focused on Garrus with an otherworldly anger.

"I am the only one, the only one out of every sorry bastard in this whole fucking galaxy, who belongs to her! And that's not something you or anybody else can take away from me! Not in the Asarian's heaven or the Reaper's hell will you ever take her away from me!"

The cobalt tide grew, a nova of power breaking over Liara's shields like an ocean on a reef, and the wind howled. Garrus was quiet, his scarred features highlighted by the two tones of biotic energy, and he finally gave his alien version of a tight smile.

"No one ever will."

Like that, the fire was quenched, and Kaidan fell back to the floor. He didn't stop his own drop to the ground, taking a knee, and he covered his face with one hand. These people were closer than family – and he had nothing left in the way of pride – but the tears he shed were angry, bitter. The remnants of his power still leached from his implant as his amp slowly geared down. His hands glowed, coils of energy wrapped around his palms and his wrists, winding up to his shoulders. Where his fingers touched the ground, barely holding himself up, concentric circles of blue radiated out. The rest of him smoked blue fog. It rose from his armor, curled around the seams in his gear, the cool down visible.

"You're right," he finally said after a hundred heartbeats, the dying wind playing with his hair. His voice was as empty as the darkest regions of space. "I know you're right. She's dead, and stiff, and cold, and there's nothing I can do about that." He dropped his hand, raising hollow eyes to the group assembled, the dark mass energy spinning within them disconcerting. He paused, then gave a helpless shrug.

"I'm hers. She's mine. It should be me."

Surprisingly enough, it was James. If Kaidan hadn't known what he meant to Shepard, he might have once felt threatened by the Hispanic soldier. Instead, he felt nothing but familiar camaraderie from the N7 operative as he stepped forward. Liara dropped her shields, her hands falling to her sides, and her throat felt choked as her eyes focused on the gun still held tightly in the departing human's hands. The original command crew of the Normandy had gone through so much in their fight against Saren, and surviving – even on their own – for two years after Shepard's death was as great a triumph as they could ever ask of themselves.

She would not see her Commander's love lose his life to friendly fire.

She shouldn't have worried so much. Through their missions, James had proven to be a loyal, if blunt, soldier. His easy acceptance of the craziness that always seemed to accompany Shepard and her team was heartening. He was a good man. James had no threat in his movements as he came up to the Major. His feet parted dying whitecaps of biotic power, and he dropped a hand to the kneeling man's shoulder. He didn't say anything, because nothing needed to be said. Instead, he gave the armor a slight tap, then gave Garrus a nod. It took a moment, but the Turian followed, not as silently.

Pausing by the Major on his way to the closest cab, he said quietly, "You don't have to do this alone."

Kaidan was still down, his knee kissing the floor, and his eyes didn't raise again.

"She would," he said softly, the amp in the back of his head whirring softly as it edged into standby mode. The port at the base of his neck throbbed once before quieting to nothingness. "She wouldn't let anyone else come for me. She wouldn't put anyone else through that."

There was no arguing with those words and the truth in them, and Garrus nodded once, some ending to a Turian prayer on his lips as he brushed by the human and climbed into the vehicle with James. It took off moments later, and Kaidan finally let himself stand. His joints ached, though he knew that was from exhaustion. He hadn't slept since that night…

No, he wouldn't sleep again. Not for awhile.

Tali and Liara exchanged a glance, blue eyes meeting purple glass, and Tali shook off whatever dimness Garrus' words had given her. Kaidan didn't meet their gazes, though the swirl of his biotics finally faded, leaving behind his natural brown eyes.

"We will be in contact at the base of the tower, Major Alenko. We will...we will have suitable transport available," Liara finally said, the spine of the Shadow Broker appearing in her stance. Tali nodded once, her wringing hands finally coming to a stop. "Yes, we will. The shuttle will be powerful and beautiful. This we promise."

The women shed every pretense of searching for survivors with those words without saying a word of his biotic unleashing. There was no question that everything on the station was dead. Magical ray of scientific healing or not, nobody deceased had walked out of the morgue. And the Reapers had been known for their astronomical body counts and thorough searching. They had been wiping out most sentient life in the galaxy for millions of years; there was no feasible way they'd miss anyone on a small spaceport.

Though he didn't trust his voice, Kaidan still whispered a thanks, and their transport soon departed, leaving him silent and alone.

It was so short a drive to the start of his search grid. Or so he thought. It could've been minutes or it could've been days. He had no sense of time. For a year of fights and battles, his world had revolved around her. Then, after two years in a hellish darkness, she had dawned again, shuttered and dimmed before blooming into the brightness he had missed so much. She was his sun, he her earth, both something other than whole without each other.

The terrible emptiness of his thoughts was enough to drown him in a vacuum, so he shook his head hard as he closed his shuttle's door. Before, his implant would bark at the motion, reminding him, firmly, that he was flawed. Now, it hummed quietly in the back of his thoughts, and for a moment, he didn't feel so alone.

He had seen the other two shuttles at the base of the tower, exactly where he was expecting them. The search was a sham, purposeful movement to keep a frigate of people from losing their minds as the admiralty decided what was to be done since they achieved the impossible. Turned out, everyone had planned for defeat. No one had a clue what to do with peace, especially not with this type of peace. Before they had left the Normandy, reports were flooding in from every corner of the Milky Way, the extranet filled with exuberant, if somewhat confused, reports. Reapers gone, their abominated troops burned, mortal injuries and genetic imperfections healed and synthetics something other than unalive. Battlefields were covered with native plants, trees growing like kudzu. After shooting along the wave the Citadel put out, the relays were still charged with the green energy. The rings spinning a bit faster than usual, but were otherwise intact. They were locked down until more research could be done on the changes.

These things didn't register on his radar anymore.

Kaidan landed on a small balcony overlooking the Presidium, the supports groaning slightly but still taking the weight. He was fifty paces from the shuttle before he realized he had – somehow – forgotten his rifle. He stopped, torn, then continued. If he was right, there wasn't a need for it. If he was wrong, then God would grant him the death he craved anyway.

He wandered slowly through the complex, taking stairs one at a time, poking through offices and hallways in a half-assed attempt of a search. It was a waste, he knew. He had theories, and he deemed them right. The Reapers had taken off into deep space, but their forces on the ground had fallen, shriveled, and burned. Nothing was left. Somehow, Kaidan expected the same for the dead throughout the Citadel. He had found scorches in the shapes of bodies, and said a soft amen over every one.

Before he was ready, a few hours later, his feet found the top of the stairs leading from level seventy five to the Peak. Exactly as it sounded, the Peak was the uppermost point of the tower, previously a neutral meeting ground of dignitaries.

Now, it was a grave.

The levels he'd moved through until now had been dark, emergency lighting his only aid, but the door opened to the Peak and he threw his hand up to protect his vision. It was bright, overwhelmingly bright, with more light than the largest star. Shadows were eradicated and nothing hid. But as he walked through the sheer whiteness, he found it dimming. Or his eyes adjusted. Either way, he could almost see.

Then, suddenly, the brightness dropped to complete midnight, and as Kaidan blinked to find equilibrium, a small child abruptly appeared beside him.

Normally, his hand would go for his weapon, but not only was he purposely unarmed, he didn't have the energy to react that way.

"You are tired."

At this, Kaidan blinked. The whirling mass of lights resembled a young human, and it stared up at the soldier with inquisitive eyes. Against everything, against all he'd ever known, Kaidan answered the unknown honestly.

"Yes. Yes, I am," he said quietly, refusing to look away. He tried to think of what Shepard would do in a situation like this, and he swallowed the nausea. "I'm looking...for a soldier. Can you help me?"

The child cocked its head and gave him a wane look.

"No."

Disappointment was becoming commonplace, and Kaidan simply responded, "Ah. No. Okay."

There could've been an eye roll from the computer's form, and it continued, "No, you are not looking for a soldier. You are looking for the Organic. You are looking for Shepard."

Brutally pushing down the abrupt and encompassing flare of hope that threatened to consume him, Kaidan asked quickly, "The Organic? Shepard? You've seen her? You know where she is?"

The childish figure nodded slightly before answering, "She was with us when the engine was activated. I apologize; I do not have the memory processes after 1743 today. Much of my main core system has been corrupted or burned out."

Swallowing, the Major nodded and said, "That's fine, we'll go with that. What happened?"

The lights shifted into something inhuman before returning to form, a visual indication it was accessing strained resources.

"The Organic came before us to activate the engine. It had choices, but refused to acknowledge the superiority of the choices. The Organic presented an argument that then created a new choice."

Tongue swollen in his mouth, Kaidan felt the world shift on its axis.

"What was the new choice?"

At this, the child shifted in form, almost ashamed, and its voice was lower as it answered, "We hadn't considered it before. We hadn't seen the math before. But she had. She was. She was the new choice."

For a few moments, he felt like he was underwater, unable to breathe, head suffering under pressure, hearing failing. Then something beyond himself broke through the veil, and he latched onto it.

"After the wave was completed, she thanked me, Organic to Machine. Then, she went offline," the child said, flickering. "My memory processors are almost full, and my programming is self-destructing. Do you require further assistance?"

Blinking at the computer's embodiment, Kaidan's consciousness targeted in on that one word.

Offline.

Moisture wet his cheeks, and his hand trembled as he raised it to his face. The darkness around him pressed into his senses, flooding him, snuffing out the one tendril of hope he dared allow for himself.

He was stupid. God, he was so stupid.

"...no, thank you," he finally said, voice muffled behind his hand, and the apparition nodded once before disappearing. There had been a low vibration under his feet that finally faded and died, unnoticed until it ended, and Kaidan found himself on his knees once again. The entirety of his world was as empty as the room he was in, and he pressed his palms to the cold floor. His tears were silent, fatigue and grief taking every piece of strength from him, and he stayed there for untold moments.

When his omni tool lit up with a worried message from Tali, he ignored it for a few long breaths. The orange glow was dim but his eyes ached. He looked away from it at the metal below him, refusing to read her words. Then he blinked, tears slowing, and swallowed back nausea.

Below him was blood.

Kaidan ground his teeth and raised a hand, biotic energy flaring around his palm. The blue light highlighted the red like black, and he wondered how he had missed it before. They were boot prints, steps staggering, and he stretched his arm out in front of him, seeing more smears marring the white floor.

He pulled resolve from somewhere he didn't know existed, somewhere in his chest next to a tattered heart and a cracked soul, somewhere that radiated with Shepard. He stood, blue radiating from his tense body, and he stepped forward a few paces. The red trail went on into the darkness before him. Kaidan couldn't remember how to breathe for a few moments, his arm shaking, and he ran his tongue along his lips.

He could still taste her.

It only took a moment for him to coalesce his energy into a ball, a barrier shield growing in his hand, and he shot it towards the ceiling. It flew true towards the apex and hit, shattering into sparks of sapphire that fell like ash over the expanse. Kaidan had never been to the Peak before, had only seen vids and holos, but he remembered the general layout. There were what was always assumed to be supports to the right and left of the central causeway, but the metal sheeting over them was now missing, revealing parts of the Citadel he hadn't known were mechanical. They were off color, maybe red or blue, and seemed ominous in the shadows. Whatever function they had when the Crucible was attached, they were quiet now.

Then, his eyes ran the length of the room, his biotic energy shimmering lowly, and he saw the blood mark a path to the end of it.

A blue shard of pure light fell and landed on the scorched back of Commander Shepard.

Kaidan staggered, inhaling sharply, and his world narrowed to the woman and the distance between them. He wanted to run, though he wasn't sure which way, and managed a stumbling jog. The skyfall brushed his cheeks, the electric shock bypassing his shields, and he tripped. The blood was thicker here – he could tell she had fallen in her trek to the edge – and he gagged. He came to a lurching halt, real tears flowing, his vision unblurred as they simply fell down his face. He was close enough to smell fire, and he turned away for a moment as he threw an arm over his mouth.

Deep sobs racked him, moved him to the core, and he finally turned back, not even seeing the blue wisps of power rising like steam from his skin. It was a glow in the edge of his vision that was focused solely on the woman before him.

He never knew how he made the last few steps, his joint servos whirring nearly silently in the great hall. He wondered if it was simply muscle memory, his movement to her, their gravity intact even as everything else fell apart. But he was there, beside her, staring down at her broken body with something more than denial.

She was laying somewhat on her side, her left shoulder pressed into the floor, her back to him. Her armor was rent, shattered in places, melted in others. Her dark blond hair was dirty and matted, the short strands laying over her face, hiding her eyes from him. He could see blood, so much of it puddled around her. Too much of it.

Kaidan moved like a ghost and skirted the edge of the pool. He stepped to the front of her, whatever control he had within him breaking at the small, simple smile on her bruised and bloody face. He could no longer stand, everything within him dying in an instant. He fell hard, barely catching himself on his hands, and where he thought he might fall completely apart, he found himself with just enough strength to crawl the last few feet to her.

She didn't react when he touched her face gently, the shocking cold of his gloves dancing over her skin. The blue rained, and Kaidan pulled her limp form into his lap, cradling her in his arms. The tears still came, quiet, and his breath hitched softly as he trailed his fingers over her cheek.

"You told me...you told me that you'd be waiting on the other side," he whispered, his implant heating comfortingly as his biotic field increased. He could see more gore, a deep wound in her side that had painted her palm red where it wasn't blistered. Kaidan exhaled sharply, his breath stirring her bangs. She remained still in his arms, dead weight against him, skin pale in his light.

"You told me that no matter what, you would always love me."

The blue was harder to ignore as it started to overwhelm his vision, tears slowing, and he tipped her chin up. He stared at her face, eyes tracking over her, taking in the bruises and cuts and scars, so many scars, physical reminders of everything she had sacrificed for her entire life.

"And I told you that I can't lose you again," Kaidan said softly, gaze fixed on the slight upturn of her lips, the carmine of her blood painted over them. He ducked his head, pressing his forehead to hers, his eyes closing tightly as he felt her cool skin against his.

"Please, don't leave me behind. Not again."

He moved without thinking as the warmth in the depth of his skull grew hot, his face turning, and he pressed his lips to hers. There was a bite of a spark, his biotics reacting to residual power in her own L5. It added to the taste of her blood, salt from her tears, and he pressed harder, what could've been chaste becoming desperate, crying into the kiss. He rocked back and forth, the sound of metal on metal on metal echoing in his ears and, eventually, he pulled back. Kaidan opened his eyes slowly, vision clear of biotic energy.

There were lingering tendrils of his power dancing over her face, her forehead and cheeks glowing softly, her lips creased with it. He stared at the image of the woman he loved, ethereal and peaceful, and he felt his heart shatter all over again. Loss was tearing at him like a hurricane, and it took him longer than it should have to realize something.

There was blue energy rising from between her lips, an eddy of light twirling upwards.

Refusing to move, fearful of seeing something that wasn't there, Kaidan watched carefully, holding his breath. The biotic power swirled again, this time the front of her chest rising slightly, her armor scratching against his arm. He blinked, frozen, his Alliance-trained mind recalling the first time he'd seen the multitude of surgical scars over Shepard's skin, her back showing a flay of white threads as she shimmied out of her armor after another data retrieval mission. The scars on her neck, her hands, every area of exposed skin, they sung out to him.

The remnants of a thousand surgeries to place life-saving implants.

He didn't hesitate then, quickly laying her back down on the floor. He tore at the outer latches of his left gauntlet with his teeth; his fingers were too bulky to catch the edges of the releases. The taste of plasma was like seared electronics, and he yanked the glove off and threw it to the side. His omni tool was still blinking incessantly at him, and the soldier ignored it. Kneeling beside her, Kaidan pressed his left hand to the right side her face, flinching at the chill. With his other hand, he pulled Shepard's left arm up, pressing her skin to his lips. He kissed her palm and then shifted it to his right cheek.

He didn't know how long he sat there, his head humming as biotics washed out the rest of the world, eyes fixed on the simple burst of blue energy that came from her mouth with every labored rise of her chest. Kaidan didn't know when his rain stopped falling or the tears stopped flowing. He had nothing but a focus for her, his entire being faded into nothing more than his Shepard.

Shadows began to invade his sight lines, the heat in his brain scalding and no longer comforting, but her chest rose further, faster, the river of blue pouring from her lips the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. He was locked in place, her soul wrapped in his power, and, body aching, he smiled.

There was nowhere else he'd rather be.

"You went too far."

The Quarian's admonishment bit deeper than he'd admit, and Garrus shrugged slightly as he responded, "Alenko going out on his own with that much pent-up biotic energy was asking for trouble. It wouldn't have taken much for him to lose control then. Now, he's got less to spend."

Whirling from where she'd stood staring at a small fountain, Tali stalked forward and shoved the Turian hard in the chest.

"That is not the point, bosh'tet! He could have killed you if he'd chosen, no matter what shields Liara had erected! You cannot be so reckless!"

Stepping back, Garrus rubbed his chest and frowned at the alien in front of him.

"We both know Kaidan. He'd never do something like that."

Growling, Tali advanced again, her fingers poking his chest plate hard. "Keelah, you can be so stupid! Everything goes out the window when it's someone we love; every rule is forfeit! My father and his experiments on the Geth! Miranda leaving Cerberus to save her sister! Shepard betraying her own soul to provide safety for the galaxy from the Collectors while only thinking about him! And you! You cannot see beyond your own sniper scope!"

For his part, Garrus was completely flummoxed, his eyes focused on the female before him. Her modulator was shimmering though she wasn't speaking, evidence she was breathing hard. Her fingers were tight in tiny fists, and he belatedly realized exactly how much of a gamble he'd played, and how much he'd scared her.

"Tali...I didn't..."

But the tech turned away, staring at James and Liara in the distance, the two of them talking quietly by the cooling shuttles.

"Keelah se'lai, Garrus. By the homeworld...never do that to me again," she whispered over her shoulder.

Whatever he was supposed to say next, he didn't know. His brain was a warrior's, and if it wasn't war strategy, he didn't know how to think more than three moves ahead. So he balked for several seconds, and then his optic started to fade and shimmer. Garrus frowned, tapping at the diagnostic, and followed the targeting computer upwards. Beside him, the Quarian was doing the same with her own visual aid.

"Extensive biotic expenditure," she murmured lowly, glancing at Garrus. "Yeah, I see that. The energy is playing havoc with my electronics. I think...I believe it's safe to assume the Major has found her."

Body.

It was there, unspoken, and Tali squared her shoulders, stepping close to her partner.

"Then we will help him."

Garrus didn't comment, amazed, as always, at the depth of character of the Quarians, specifically the command crew's favorite tech. He remembered when she'd been a green alien on her Pilgrimage, begging Shepard for a chance to help, the human obviously excited to have her on the squad. He remembered thinking that the Quarian would never make it to adulthood.

Then General Tali'Zorah vas Normandy gave an order of retention to the other two in the distance, and she gave Garrus a simple nod.

"Let us go find our family."

Seventy six levels later, whatever Garrus had been expecting to find with Tali, this wasn't it. He had expected guns and fists, screams and death, sure. He was Turian, and it was life. Beside him, the Quarian came to an abrupt halt and froze, the light of her modulator pulsing even though she was silent. Garrus let his rifle fall from his ready grip to a slack, one handed hold as he stared.

Before him was an ocean of light.

The entire room, massive in scope, glowed a brighter sky than the clearest days on Pavalen. It radiated out in waves, a stronger biotic field than Garrus had ever seen in his long life. Static sizzled along his skin, sparking when he moved, fireworks playing off his motions. Nothing hurt or stung, something he found both amazing and disturbing. His jaw dropped, mandibles fluttering, and he took a few hesitant steps forward as he found the focus of the overwhelming force. The center of the tsunami of power was at the far end of the walkway, a sun in an otherwise darkened station.

It was Kaidan.

Garrus shot a quick look at Tali before sprinting forward, worry for his friend surfacing. He didn't know the technical details, but he had discussed the L2 implants with Alenko before. The human had mentioned something about headaches, had trailed off when mentioning its limitations, and Garrus had heard Shepard berate the man more than once when he overdid it on a mission.

"You can't keep pushing yourself like this, Kaidan. You push too hard, you burn out your L2, you're brain dead. I will pull you from the duty roster, so help me! ...You have to stop scaring me like this."

That particular snippet he had heard outside medbay after Saren had gotten away at the cloning facility. He remembered the fight as fast and bloody, limited cover and poor preparations catching them off guard. Garrus had seen the familiar blue of the man's biotics flaring throughout the battle, but he hadn't realized how much Kaidan had extended himself until he'd collapsed inside the shuttle bay afterward. A blaster shot had taken him out on planet, but the mental exhaustion afterward had nearly killed him.

There was a whole lot more blue this time around.

They got within a few meters before the Turian had to throw up a hand, squinting, grunting with the way his optic burned as he came to a fast stop. Even bright as it was, the outline around his friend was brighter. A teal so intense it was almost white ringed the man, echoing visually off his armor, creating pulsing waves of power. The man's eyes were closed, his face a mask of concentration, and his bare hand was pressed against the woman's cheek. He was holding one of her arms up, leaning his face into her palm, the blue pouring off of him into Shepard.

Commander Shepard, who was alive, breathing, hands clenched into fists and body tense beneath her armor.

"Kaidan! Kaidan, you have to stop!" Garrus shouted, the sudden joy at seeing his sister-in-arms alive overwhelmed by the fear that the man's outpouring of energy was about to go nuclear. This was more than he had expended in the garden next to that hospital almost four years previously, and that recovery had come as close to killing Kaidan as anything they'd ever faced.

Tali skid to a stop beside him, gloved claws dancing over her omni tool, her movements tense and rapid. Garrus reached for the humans in front of him, and the Quarian abruptly slapped his arm away.

"No! Don't touch him!" she exclaimed, accent heavier than normal. Garrus hesitated, talons twitching, and he growled back, "He's going to kill us all if he keeps this up!"

Shaking her head, Tali watched digits flash by on her display, answering quickly, "No, the biotic energy we are seeing is passive, but he is pushing active biotic energy inside of her. He's powering her implants, the ones Cerberus installed when they rebuilt her. He's the only thing keeping her alive."

Garrus frowned and turned back to Tali, snapping, "Then what the hell do we do?"

Even as Tali shook her head with frustration, it stopped.

The blue faded into nothingness with a final pulse of power that dwarfed all other emanations. In the sudden darkness, there was the all too familiar sound of a soldier collapsing, a breathless groan coming through the air.

"Kaidan! Sheppard!" Tali shouted, raising her pistol and triggering the light.

The beam tripped over the floor and found the two, both covered in blue smoke. Kaidan had slumped to the side, hands slipping from their places. There was a dim blue glow under his face where it pressed into the floor. Tali moved forward, coming up short when she saw every single one of Shepard's surgical scars flaring gold, save for the right side of her face, which echoed a blue hand print. She glanced at Garrus, who was already kneeling beside Kaidan, one rough claw pulling the man flat to his back. The Major didn't make a noise, but a flicker of red caught the Turian's eye. He reached out, and with gentleness that belied his hulking form, turned Kaidan's head slightly to the side.

Blood trickled from his nose and ears, slipping from the corners of his eyes and mouth, painting a picture of horror.

Jerking, Garrus looked up at Tali, who was waving her omni tool over Shepard's form. "He's hurt; must've blown his implant or something. He's bleeding internally and his breathing is shallow," he said lowly, wondering why they all had to come this far if this was their reward.

"Her vitals are dropping steadily. We have to get her back to the Normandy and find a way to power her implants or she will die!" she whispered, her free hand grasping her commander's arm with bruising force.

Nodding, the Turian tapped the comm in his optic as he stood and turned, rolling his own light over the area.

"Joker, we need a pickup, fast. Alenko found Shepard and used his biotics to power her implants, but they're both in bad shape. We're in the main room of the Peak," he said quickly, and didn't have to wait longer than a second before the pilot came back. "We've got your location. James and Liara aren't back on board yet, and the rest of the search party is still on the Citadel, so traffic will be light."

Garrus nodded unnecessarily, and Edi broke into the channel, "I have located a balcony that would be suitable for pickup. Overriding the access now. I also have an idea on how to charge Shepard's implants."

Tali looked to their right as a block of light appeared in the darkness, a breeze blowing in from somewhere outside. Glancing down, she placed her hand on her friend's less injured shoulder, a plea in her movements.

"Hold on, Shepard. Hold on."

The move from the Peak to the Normandy was a daunting task. They needed speed as much as they needed caution, but it still took nearly five minutes to get them over. Garrus would have carried Shepard, if for no other reason than to save the Quarian the emotional weight of the situation, but Tali was slight, and Kaidan was a six foot soldier with the build of a boxer. So the Turian hefted the man in his arms, weighed down by him more than he'd admit, and winced as he watched Tali.

The tech expert wasn't incapable, though, and she was absolutely loyal to her commander. She holstered her weapon and pulled Shepard to a sitting position, the woman's unconscious gasp both lifting and terrifying.

"Keelah se'lai, I am sorry, Shepard," she said softly as she hefted her into a sort of piggyback hold.

The two of them moved as fast as they dared towards the balcony Edi had provided, stepping outside the Peak and seeing the truth of the wounds hidden before by both light and shadow. Garrus winced down at Kaidan who was still and silent, then abruptly stopped and dropped to his knees without a word to Tali. He dumped the human to the ground, ignoring his partner's shocked cry beside him, and rolled the man quickly onto his side. In the same fluid motion, Garrus struck him twice in the spine, higher than he would've on a fellow Turian. He didn't sacrifice his force, trusting the man's armor would disperse the pressure well enough.

Before Tali could ask what was possessing her comrade, Kaidan abruptly jerked and started coughing, sprays of blood painting the ground. The red was darker than normal, almost black, and Garrus was almost thankful for his limited anatomical knowledge of humans; he could worry less in his ignorance. The Major shuddered hard and coughed again, gagging, more red spilling from his mouth. Growling low under his breath, Garrus glanced at Shepard and saw her head lolling over Tali's shoulder and a tremble in the young woman's arms from her burden.

Seeing no alternative, Garrus unceremoniously knelt down and grabbed Alenko in a tight hold, hefting him into a fireman's carry. Even in his haste, he was careful to not let the man's head bang into his shoulder plating, knowing that Shepard wouldn't take too kindly to that. Still, he clenched his jaw tight as his friend's labored breathing echoed in his hearing, his mandibles fluttering as he heard drops of blood start splattering on his armor. He didn't need to say anything to Tali and simply continued moving. The faster they got on board the Normandy, the better.

Karin Chakwas and the six members of her medic team were waiting at the rear of the shuttle bay when they came aboard. Tali gave up her burden gratefully, her lithe form collapsing to the metal decking when she was free. Her armor was covered in gore and worse, and Garrus hesitated, looking down at her. She was breathing heavily but waved him on. The Turian nodded once and resisted the urge to shift his own load, pushing on as he ignored the medics swarming him and trying to get vitals from the human he carried.

He followed the four medics in front of him, two carrying a field stretcher while the other two started mobile triage. Words flew through the air, full of things he didn't understand and didn't want to understand. His view of Shepard was blocked all the way to the elevator, and he only got a quick glimpse when they turned to enter the box. She was as unmoving as she had been on the Citadel, her head rocking with the motion of the stretcher, and she was facing him. She was obviously in pain, tight lines over her face, and there was a deep blue mark on her right cheek that looked suspiciously like a hand print. He had seen it before, glowing on her skin just after Alenko had passed out, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the Major bore one as well. Still, it was fading even as he watched. He hoped to whatever God the humans believed in that it wasn't a sign of her vitality.

Then the doors closed, and he was by himself. Well, with two flustered medics.

It was another minute to get the elevator back and reach the third deck, and Garrus headed to the medbay immediately. He stooped low next to one of the beds, listening to the instructions of the medics as they helped pull Kaidan off his shoulders. He stepped back from the bed, eyes catching on the man's face. The flow hadn't stopped; his entire face was coated with red, not a trace of clean skin. As Garrus moved backwards and medics rushed the bed, Kaidan started coughing, blood turning aerosol, and one medic shoved the soldier on his side just as the Turian had done minutes before. Garrus looked at the other mass of motion, uncertain, feeling his world shift. There were more medics on Shepard, completely obscuring her, Dr. Chakwas barking orders in a voice he'd never heard in five years. The world was turning technicolor, audio filtering was failing, and Garrus wondered idly if there was something wrong with his translator.

Then a small hand was on his arm and he spun, hand reaching for a gun a corpsman had divested him of in the shuttle bay. But his panic – that he'd never admit was panic – died when he recognized the woman behind him.

Or, mostly recognized.

Edi wasn't what she'd been before the Crucible had done whatever it did. But, somehow, she was more. There's was a more human expression on her face and in her eyes, and the familiar orange visor she had used since her awakening was missing.

"Garrus, go be with Tali. I will let you know when we have news," she said softly.

She sounded so real, so alive.

The alien was floundering. He didn't know anything about healing or medicine beyond the rapid application of medi-gel. He knew he was just going to get in the way. He knew he couldn't help. It wasn't the first time he'd left comrades in the infirmary, but this was the first time he couldn't make himself leave.

"But they...we got them here in time, right?" he asked softly, eyes tracking the flurry of movement in front of him, eyes darting from what he couldn't see to what he could.

There were pieces of armor being stripped from both Spectres, medics tossing them into deep metal totes. Kaidan's was mostly clean, though there were warps in the surface from how long he'd held the biotic field. Then came his chest piece and it was covered in blood. Shepard's armor was joining the mess, hers scarred and destroyed, burned worse than Garrus' had been when that Mako exploded by them earlier. There were pieces of skin attached to the outer edges, and Garrus found himself growing nauseous.

Then Edi was in front of him, drawing his attention, and she pressed a hand against his shoulder.

"Let us work, Garrus. Tend to Tali."

Somehow, the synthetic managed to push him out of the room, and he walked backwards out of the room, his gaze taking in everything. There were alarms on both sides, rogue biotic waves pulsing from Kaidan's bed and shorting electronics, shouts and screams from Shepard's, and then he couldn't see anymore. The door closed at Edi's nod, the shutters inside the glass shut tight, and the entry ward glowed red. Blue fields angled out from the walls, full containment protocols dropping into place.

The ship was dead silent, everything in the Alliance's world contained within that room.

Garrus moved until his back hit the sweeping wall, legs abruptly refusing to hold him any longer. He thought it should be embarrassing, the great Turian warrior Garrus Vakarian knocked on his ass by the sight of a little blood. Somehow, though, he could find no shame in it.

It depended on who the blood belonged to, after all

Shepard usually took Kaidan and Garrus with her on missions, unless something required another soldier's specialty. She had explained it to him during their bottle shooting competition on the Presidium, using too many words for a soldier and a quantity of syllables more fit for a politician. Apparently it boiled down to them being the originals, him and Alenko. Sure, Wrex had been there from the start, but the Krogan's temper was legendary. And unpredictable. Before Virmire, Ashley had been part of their party more often than not as well. But since the cloning facility, since it became so bitingly real that people could be – and would absolutely be – lost in this war, her criteria had changed. They were always picking up new members, new soldiers and fighters who wanted to help. But Kaidan and Garrus were the first to look at the war and say if it was hers, it was theirs.

Then Shepard had died, suffocated and burned in an atmosphere over a random planet. If it had a name, he didn't remember it. Garrus had lost his way, and Kaidan had gone off to lick wounds that would never heal. Then she returned. And Archangel had died in a fireball while Alenko rejected Shepard's existence, her creed, and her unfortunate choice of allies. On the outside, he couldn't blame the Major. Kaidan had a kind of honor that Turian generals sung songs about, and it was still barely able to trump his love for the first human Spectre. He'd been drunk with Kaidan after Earth had been attacked, and he knew how guilty he still felt about it, leaving Shepard to deal with the Collectors alone.

But Garrus was there. And she was his sister, his best friend, someone who had folded him into her little ring of trust and had decided to never let him go. He had called himself lucky, once, that he wasn't attracted to humans, because she would be the only one he'd ever consider. And the relationship between the Commander and her second in command was something special enough that he didn't ever feel jealous.

Startled out of his mindless dozing, Garrus jerked when he felt a warm cloth smooth across his face. But his senses were faster than his reflexes this time, and he blinked at the Quarian kneeling in front of him. She was in different armor, her black and gold command outfit exchanged for her usual purple uniform, and there was a small bowl of hot water on the floor beside her.

"Um, I tried to wake you, but you were pretty out of it. Given what you went through on Earth with Harbinger, I'm not surprised. How are you feeling?" Tali asked softly, her modulator lighting up. Garrus stared at her, his gaze seeking out the warm glow of her eyes behind her mask, and he blinked slowly, exhausted.

"You know...Edi told me to take care of you. You're sort of making me look bad," he murmured, turning towards the warmth she was wiping over his skin. The ovals of her eyes shifted, and he knew her well enough to know she was smiling. "Nonsense. That is Kaidan's job, no?"

Garrus chuckled, some part of him loosening at her words. "No, it's Shepard's."

Nodding, Tali wet the cloth again and wrung it out, moving to get at the armor on his right side. "Keelah, you are right about that."

She worked in silence for several minutes, the bowl beside her turning muddy with blood. Garrus watched her hands move, her three fingers delicately and perfectly adept at everything she did. Glancing down at his own hands, he clenched his talons together, his back claw flexing powerfully. Tali murmured some instruction at him, her fingers coming up to tip his head a different direction, and something unusual filtered through his skin at her touch.

"Seeing them like that..." Garrus started, barking out a breath and cutting himself off. Tali tilted her head, glancing over her shoulder at the infirmary before turning back to him, her nod telling him to continue. He stared at the red access panel on the entry door for a moment before he did.

"I've known it since a few weeks in. We had been running around Citadel like pyjaks trying to figure out a way to take down Fist and, consequently, rescue you. We were talking to crooked C-Sec officers and trying to convince the Council to take us seriously. I had seen the signs, knew the constraints of the regs were only making it worse. I fully expected them to give in. But it took them until Sovereign to even admit it to themselves, much less each other. The four months we spent after that chasing Geth around...that was the happiest I'd ever seen either of them. And then after...those two years, the year after. Think Shepard had it easier being rebuilt than Alenko did trying to find reasons to keep going. And then they were both back, and she almost lost Kaidan on Mars, and came to get me off my lazy ass."

He laughed softly here, anything but humor driving the sound. During his rambling, Tali had finished removing the blood from his armor and had put her supplies in the kitchen sink. She came back to sit beside Garrus, her shoulder pressing into his side, and he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

"I've known it for so long, but when I saw them in the Peak, I didn't…I don't know if I've ever felt so lonely."

Tali made a humming noise as she drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms under her thighs and resting her chin on her knees. For all her defensive behavior, her voice was surprisingly cheerful.

"I was lonely after I left the Migrant Fleet, and I thought that I would never stop being scared of everything. Always there was something to be afraid of, from the smallest virus to the largest Reaper. But since that day in the Lower Wards, when Shepard and Kaidan and...when you rescued me from Fist's trap, I haven't been as afraid. And since I met you...I've never been lonely."

Garrus turned his head fully at that, eyes wide. They had fumbled around in the forward batteries some, right before the attack on Earth; embarrassingly, they had been caught once by Shepard. But she had simply grinned at their excuses, waved it off, and said she was happy for them. Until he had seen Shepard and Kaidan in the Peak, he didn't know loneliness could hurt so bad.

But, then again, if he thought about it, since he had met Tali, maybe Garrus hadn't know what true loneliness was.

Lips twitching into something that could be a smile, the Turian carefully raised his left arm and set it gently over Tali's shoulders. She didn't shy away, like he fully expected. Instead, she shrunk against his side even further, huddling into his support, and he pulled her against him a little tighter.

"Tell me they're going to be okay, Garrus. Tell me this," she whispered some moments later, unwrapping her arms from herself and pulling his strong hand into hers. He stared at their fingers and claws and talons, intertwined and promising.

"I don't lie to the people I care about, about people I care about. But I can tell you...if anyone can pull through this, it's those two. And if...if they can't...then wherever they'll be, they'll be together, and that'll have to be enough for us."

The mess hall was quiet even though it was full. Though there wasn't any strict schedule for meals, with crew able to come and go as they pleased, it was normal for shifts to rotate so that the mess was never taxed. The Normandy was a smart ship with an AI in partial control, so the hands were limited. Just thirty five people called the frigate their home, plus or minus the occasional embedded reporter and dignitaries. There were always some crew member or another lingering in the open area in between tasks, but none of them were there now.

The command crew had essentially commandeered the kitchen and mess, all duty to their jobs ignored for the moment. Joker had made his way down the decks, a rare sojourn from the cockpit of his baby, but he sat with them as well. Edi's shipboard systems were handling the less than taxing calculations necessary to keep the Normandy stable in orbit over the moon. They'd departed the Citadel shortly after the command crew had re-boarded per orders from Admiral Hackett. There had been some dissension among them; leaving people behind was not what they wanted to do. Not right now.

"I need hands and you need time. Stay in lunar orbit until I tell you otherwise, or until Shepard or her 2IC tell me otherwise."

That was it, the extent of their orders. Stay out of the way, hope, heal.

"Nobody in the admiralty had a plan if we won, did they?" Joker snorted, rubbing his hands over his face. His ball cap raised a bit before dropping again as he tipped back in his chair, getting used to living dangerously now that tripping over a shoelace wasn't going to put him in traction. Given Edi was putting the majority of her processing power into assisting Dr. Chakwas with her patients, she hadn't had time to do as extensive an examination of him as she wanted. As they both wanted, actually.

Sitting on the edge of the bar counter, James shook his head and tossed the orange in his hand from palm to palm, rolling the sphere around. "No, they did, just didn't tell you, pendejo." From the bulky Marine, this was almost a term of endearment. "But...I honestly don't think anyone, not the admiralty, no one else, ever really thought we would make it."

Except for Shepard.

That was always there, and always silent.

Cortez peeled another orange, a delicacy that had hopefully escaped destruction in the southern reaches of the old United States regions. Someone had snatched a bag of them from Citadel, and there was no one high enough up the chain of command around to say anything about it. Even if it felt like grave robbing, they needed the vitamin C.

Joker may have been about to say something – no one could ever tell with him – but the comm twittered at the center of the table. The warship pilot smacked the release without a thought, as consumed with worry as everyone else in the mess.

"SSV Normandy, Moreau," he intoned tiredly, propping his head up on his fist. He shifted, then, suddenly opening his fingers and flexing them against his chin, then applied more pressure. Clearly, he was enjoying the benefits of instantaneous genetic rewriting.

"Normandy, this is Engineer Adams, reporting from the Citadel. Admiral Hackett is organizing further search efforts, though they're nowhere near as efficient as Major Alenko's grids. The rest of the crew just wanted to check in, see what updates there were," the disembodied voice echoed through twelve speakers simultaneously.

The command crew froze, none of them willing to speak. The last the rest of the crew knew was extremely limited, per Spectre-level requirements. Shepard was still MIA and Alenko was injured. That was what the Council had deemed wise to share.

Joker let out a cough that sounded vaguely like a cuss, and no one else stepped up.

"Mr. Adams, thank you for contacting us," came a smooth voice, and Joker did a turn that would have snapped his neck previously. Liara stood quietly at the end of the table, the door to her rooms still open, and it was apparent from the red rings around her eyes that she was feeling the same strain as the rest of them. "I regret to inform you that we have no new announcements at this time. Major Alenko is resting comfortably in sickbay, and the admiral is coordinating efforts to locate Commander Shepard on Citadel. Edi is still occupied with refractional data from the energy wave the galaxy experienced. I am sorry, but there is little on which to update you."

Her words were so controlled that, were they not present and seeing her shaking shoulders, the rest of the command crew would have taken them at face value. As it was, Adams didn't have their advantage.

"Ah, Ms. T'Soni! I'm glad to hear your voice. We hadn't seen you since the end of the battle, so many of us were concerned. We're just glad the Normandy is staying safe with you lot! Not like you all to keep going this long without something falling apart!"

At those words, Liara's body seemed to roll, threatening to fall, but she caught herself in the last moment with only the slightest stumble in her voice.

"O-of course, Mr. Adams. Not much trouble we can get into on a lunar orbit. Reassure the rest of the crew that we will board them again as soon as the admiral makes this a ready option. Be safe, and goddess be with you." There was a soft click, the line going dead, and Liara looked like she wanted to sink to the floor and hide her face in her hands.

Before she could do so, the energy fields around the infirmary flickered and fell.

From where they'd been seated for four hours, Garrus and Tali shook themselves out of a light doze, immediately reacting. The rest of the crew jumped up as well, just as Dr. Chakwas palmed open the door and exited the medbay. The door was open such a short time as it closed immediately behind her, but the crew still craned to look. Privacy was one thing. Reassurance was entirely another.

Garrus stood slowly, helping Tali to her feet with a tenderness that no one would ever comment on, except for the two Spectres locked in the medical ward.

Karin held up her hands immediately to forestall any questions, her hair mussed and her jacket missing. Her black tank top and black pants couldn't hide the blood and char marks from trained eyes.

"Quiet, all of you. I've got lots to say and I'm saying it once."

The words she spoke were technical and dry, frustrating medical jargon painting a not so pretty picture. Both Alenko and Shepard were alive, for the moment. Kaidan's stunt of using his biotics to power her implants had blown his amp and there was extensive thermal damage around his port. His blood pressure was through the roof, his gamma and theta waves were all over the place, and his delta waves were maxing out the charts. The medics had gotten control of his hemorrhages relatively quickly, but he had still needed three units of plasma. His L2 was activating randomly, throwing biotic energy around, and they had to resort to dosing him with drugs to shut it down.

Chakwas pulled a face as she crossed her arms, frowning hard. "Edi has run a hundred different tests and still can't figure out what's going on with his implant. We've blocked the emissions but we're still having difficulty regulating the power he's unconsciously drawing from it. It's almost like it can't turn it off. He is the only L2 in the system, and we have no one else who has reported issues with their implants, nothing related. Edi is still doing a search for anything similar."

Then she sighed, shook her head, and continued with her recounting.

There was eezo scarring on both of them, blue highlights in their skin pigmentation that glowed when biotics swirled near. A consequence of being within such a powerful and sustained field, according to the doctor. She was going to pass on the information to one of her contacts and see if there was a way to fix it.

"Like old display screens with images burned into them over time. Kaidan didn't move while he was powering her implants, not once."

It took several minutes, but Karin finally wound down on the Major's condition, weaving her explanation with too many ifs and maybes for comfort. She briefly mentioned the chemically induced coma he was in, the brain bleeds they were watching carefully, the syringes waiting like plugs to stop the dam from bursting.

"Commander Shepard's outlook is, I'm sorry to say, far more challenging."

Joker groaned and dropped his head to the table, while Tali whispered something before burying her mask in Garrus' shoulder. The Turian looked down on her with concern for only a moment before gently cupping the back of her head with one of his hands, simultaneously unsure but confident with his movements.

"Far more challenging. Great. Extra syllables meaning 'dead', right doc?" Joker growled halfheartedly.

It took a long moment for Karin to speak, but when she did, her words were cautious.

"The Commander was...broken, for no other better word. I can't imagine what she went through to get into the shape she was in. First, second, third degree burns, shattered bones, hairline and compound fractures, puncture wounds, contusions, hematomas, bullet wounds, surface and deep tissue thermal damage, impact trauma, and more than that."

Flinching at the description, Garrus knew how she had gotten that way. He had been with her and Kaidan both on that mad dash to the transport beam, the insanity of what they were attempting lost on none of them. It was a last ditch effort. Then Harbinger had landed, its metal bulk blocking any remaining daylight, and it fired. Again and again, until the old Mako rumbling by them had exploded into an inferno. Then another one had come down, barely missing them. Garrus remembered Alenko's warning, his own shouts blending in as his skin burned.

How Shepard had avoided the explosions, he didn't know. But she was there, blocking the two of them from sight, hunkering behind the shattered husks of the rovers, screaming orders for evac into her comm. Garrus had been pretty out of it in his own agony, but he hadn't missed the desperate pleas from Kaidan to just let him stay with her.

She could be a hardass, though, and she pushed them both onto the Normandy when it sunk to the ground, cannons barely keeping the enemy from knocking them out of the sky.

"You've got to get out of here!" she shouted, shoving Kaidan into his arms. The Turian tried not to stumble, his own injuries pulling at him, but the reality of the situation hit him like a shot of adrenaline. "Yeah, that's not going to happen," Kaidan drawled, completely ignoring the fact that he had absolutely no leverage to argue. He couldn't stand on his own, could barely move.

She knew it too, her voice and eyes hardening as she growled, "Don't argue with me, Kaidan." His name was a trigger, the realization flooding that he wasn't her 2IC right now, wasn't her Major, her Spectre. He was her Kaidan.

"Don't...don't leave me behind."

Garrus felt the strength leaving the human he supported, felt his own drive flagging, and he stared at the crazy, insane Commander. He saw her stiffen, saw tears well in her eyes, and knew that this was goodbye. "You're in no condition to keep fighting. Get to the medbay," she ordered sharply, his pale face hidden beneath mud and blood.

"No! No...I'm...I'm with you till the end."

It was a noble sentiment, one Garrus felt was warranted in any other place. Numbly, he found himself thinking of Tali. Then Shepard stalked up the ramp, her voice low, her words barely carrying over the screams and shouts in the background. "No matter what happens, I love you. Always."

Her hand rested on his cheek and Garrus surreptitiously shifted and ducked a bit, letting Kaidan lean into her palm."I love you too. Be careful."

Then she pulled back, eyes dancing over to him briefly. They had said their farewells before, but there was a plea here, as she begged him to keep her lover safe. The familiar sound of a Reaper gun warming up cracked over them, something they knew by heart, and she spun, searching. Harbinger saw them, saw the Normandy, and she whirled back to the ship.

"...Go!" she shouted, waving an arm, and she took off towards the beam.

The Normandy lifted off slowly, gravity a bitch for a frigate that size, and Garrus tried leave the closing bay doors. But something made him watch, even as he turned Alenko away, and a red laser cut across the ground, following Shepard's path.

Her body disappeared in an explosion of dirt and ash, and Garrus felt his mandibles lock up. He may have tightened his grip on Kaidan, but the man was already halfway unconscious, sagging heavily, and the Turian swallowed hard. Finally, he finished turning and began dragging the human to the infirmary, knowing that, if nothing else, he would keep his last promise to his friend.

It was thirteen minutes later when he heard her breathless voice over the comms as she whispered, "This is Shepard. I'm on the Citadel."

"She took a near-miss from a Reaper's main gun, on foot, in the open. Harbinger was trying to bring her down before she could get to the transport beam," he finally said, voice darker than he would've liked.

Cortez inhaled sharply and James pushed himself to his feet, staring at the Turian. He didn't move, feeling Tali shift against his arm, and he turned his head away slightly.

"I saw it happen as we took off. After she...after we left her behind."

These words hung in the air like a drone picking its target, but its reticule didn't have a chance to land before Karin spoke again.

"She survived that? Incredible." The doctor seemed lost in thought for a moment.

It was Tali's turn to stiffen when everyone else shriveled, and she stepped forward, hands twitching. "Doctor, what is Shepard's prognosis? Please." Garrus' hand fell to her shoulder, and he found himself comfortable with leaving it there. Maybe it was his imagination, but she seemed to draw support from it, as well.

Karin nodded slightly to the them all before saying softly, "Her external wounds are mostly healed, her burns and one gunshot wound requiring a few extra treatments. We've set her bones and have her on fluids, antibiotics, and pain killers. We're trying not to mess with anything her implants are connected to, though. We've attached her to the AI core at Edi's insistence. It's the only thing in this ship that has enough power to force her implants along. They were...installed, I suppose, one at a time, each one completing its work before the next was implemented. We're trying to get them to work in tangent. It isn't working as well as I'd like, but it's not doing any harm, at least."

James leaned forward in the same moment as Garrus took a step, almost forgetting about his hold on Tali.

"What can we do? There's got to be something," the N7 operative snapped, fist squeezing on the orange he held. Clear juices ran over his hand and he paid them no mind. "Alenko was able to make them work, why can't we? Er...why can't the other biotics of the crew?"

It dawned on James that he had volunteered others as quickly as he'd opened his mouth. He hadn't forgotten their drunken antics on the balcony of Shepard's pad the night of the party, the biotics against the pure soldiers. It hadn't ended well for him. Liara had picked him up from the floor with nothing more than a twitch of her fingers, a teasing daring in her eyes, and the Major had asked if he could join in on the fun. It was easy to forget that Alenko was an Alliance biotic, highly trained from adolescence, the Turian instructors from the First Contact War brutal in their teachings. The rest of that night had disappeared behind beer and tequila, but he was fairly certain the Major hadn't tossed him over a railing.

Probably.

He immediately realized he shouldn't have been so embarrassed at his phrasing. Liara was an automatic given with her genes and training, and both Tali and Garrus had some biotic ability, even though theirs were limited. All three looked bolstered by the opportunity to help. But Chakwas smiled at him, the same sort of smile a parent might give a curious child who asked why the sky was blue.

She gave a long explanation that involved wave congruities and harmonies, following something to do with the energy wave from the Crucible, and a lot of unknowns. She talked about Kaidan's L2 versus Shepard's implants, how they were putting out similar energy patterns and frying their unshielded equipment.

Cortez frowned from his seat as he swallowed a section of his fruit, eyes roving as he made connections.

"If I hear you right, you're saying that Shepard can't live without her implants being charged. And while the Major's L2 implant worked for a time, it's out of control and you can't risk waking him up because of his unstable biotics. And all you can do for Shepard in the meantime is keep her comfortable."

Cocking her head slightly, Karin hesitated, then finally said, "Yes, the gist of what I am saying, yes."

Near the door of the infirmary where they'd been since the beginning of their vigil, Tali let out a choked laugh. She shook her head slightly, maybe to dislodge something, and she rubbed uselessly at her mask. Maybe it was fogged.

"Of course. Of course...life is never simple around Shepard. Can we see her?"

Whatever relaxation the command crew found in their leaders' survival previously, they immediately forgot it during the following week. Garrus started night rotations along with Liara and Tali, the three of them being the more central hubs of Shepard's inner circle. Karin had requested assistance from the command crew in order to give her team more time to rest, though the Turian suspected she simply wanted someone available at all times who knew both her patients perfectly.

He didn't know if it was providence or something else, but, after six twelve hour shifts, Garrus was the one there the first time Kaidan woke up from his medically induced coma. Karin had backed down the inhibitors as his implant became less erratic, giving him a chance to fight through the meds. It was oh dark thirty somewhere, a dim chrono in the corner revealing the time, and Garrus was idling thumbing through a pad full of weapon schematics. He found himself paying particular attention to the sniper rifle additions. Between himself and Shepard, they could take down an entire squad before the first bullet even hit. With the right mods, they could take out a platoon.

There was a low groan at his elbow, and Garrus dropped the datapad hurriedly, the tech falling to his lap and then to the ground when he stood. He hovered over Kaidan's bed, worried. He'd been walked through this a thousand times by Chakwas, but that still didn't prepare him for the eventuality. The human was almost flat on his back with only the slightest of inclines, his black tank top protecting his torso from the cold while four needles shot meds up his veins. His wrists were restrained, much to the Turian's anger. It was against his people's code to tie down a warrior, in his right mind or otherwise, but, every once in awhile, Garrus could see the need for it.

"Shep..."

Garrus leaned forward, instantly catching the word on Kaidan's tongue.

"Rest easy, Alenko. She's safe, as are you, on the Normandy. The war is over, and we won," he said quietly.

If Kaidan heard him, he didn't acknowledge him. Instead, the human's brown eyes stayed closed to the world even as he started pulling against his restraints.

"Gotta…Shepard. Please, she's...alone."

It was a hard thing, Garrus abruptly decided, being the sober man among the drunks. He had a feeling that this was how it felt.

"Shh," he soothed, hoping he was helping. "She's not alone. She's in the AI core right now. She hasn't woken up yet. It's okay. You saved her."

Whatever Kaidan was hearing, it may not have been what Garrus was saying. But something was filtering through, because he opened his eyes to slits, pupils swirling with power, and the fingers of his left hand raised off the bed slightly. The Turian jerked sharply, eyes darting to Shepard's motionless body. She was laying in a stasis field in the middle of the core, red lights all around. Her chest was covered, her hips as well, but the rest of her was bare. Power lines from Edi's processors were stitched into her at a hundred different points, every scar Cerberus had given her tapped into the AI they had created. There were the remainders of bruises along her skin, metal braces on her legs where too many bones had been cracked, and her hair, which had hung to her chin in the beginning, was buzzed short along the back to allow access to two of her implants. Drips and tubing ran around her body, over skin roughened by half-healed burns, and Kaidan's hand twisted in her direction.

"Major, you could blow up the ship! You could kill her!"

Garrus' warning came late, and a relatively small biotic field covered Kaidan for only a second before it shot across the room. It hit unerringly, electrifying Shepard's body, her limbs jerking in their stasis even as she gagged.

The Turian glanced between Alenko and Shepard for a moment before growling and slapping his omni tool, automatically summoning the doctor. A quick glance at Kaidan's monitors proved that, other than an elevated heart rate and higher blood pressure, he was healthy. Shepard's alarms were blaring, however, and Garrus cursed as he darted into the core, words spilling from his mouth into his comm.

In his bed, unseeing eyes trained towards the core, Kaidan smiled a soft smile before lowering his hand, his implant slowly cooling as he passed out.

He had no concept of time or space or anything in between when he awoke again. There was a deep warmth at the back of his skull where his headjack was placed, and he idly wondered if he'd overclocked his amp when he had gotten pissed at Garrus.

Then his eyes flew open.

Pissed at Garrus, on the Presidium, before splitting up to find Shepard. Then finding her, and blood, blood, burned flesh, death and life and biotics blue in the edge of his vision. There were cries, alarms echoing in a memory.

"Shepard!"

His jolt upright was caught by hands on his chest, his outcry catching in his throat as he tried to move. Confusion and fear rolled through him as he realized there was something on his face blocking his vision. There were three fingers on both of his shoulders in addition to the palms on his chest, and he tried to push against them.

Tali was to one side, Garrus on the other, both of them working to keep him down. His hands were glowing blue at the edges of his bed where his arms were restrained, and he fought harder. The bite of the cloth cuffs pushed him, felt too much like training on Jump Zero, and he screamed.

"Goddammit! Kaidan, relax! You can't help her this way! You've got to calm down!" Garrus shouted, one of his hands coming up to take the human's hair in a tight grip. He snapped the man's head back down to the firm mattress, rattling teeth, and he growled down at him while he pushed hard on his heaving chest. The responding whimper he got from his friend was something that would haunt his memory for the rest of his life.

"The only reason they brought you out of sedation is because your biotics are the only thing keeping her alive. They will put you under in a second if you threaten the entire ship again. Calm down and you can save her," he bit out, his mouth close to the male Spectre's ear, words barely traveling.

Kaidan froze, his lungs pulling gasps of air, his face pale where his skin was visible behind the black cloth around his head, a blush of blue painting his right cheek. It flickered with his emotions, dimming with the muddiness in his thoughts and flaring with his panic.

"Take them off, take them off!" he whispered, pulling at his restraints, the sheer terror of his history unable to break through to the here and now.

It was the Turian's surprising other half who acted almost immediately on his plea, Tali working on his shackles quickly. "Peace, Kaidan. Stop pulling and I will undo them," she said softly, voice pitched as through she was talking to a wounded, penned varren.

For his part, Kaidan squeezed his eyes shut, breaths blasting through his mouth, his chest shuddering with his movements, and he tried to stay still.

"Please get them off," he begged quietly, fingers trembling.

It took only a few seconds for her to release the clips, the fabric falling off the sides of the bed, and he jerked his wrists up quickly, yanking off the blindfold. The last time he'd been restrained like that was after he'd killed his instructor. It had been two weeks, two weeks of waterboarding and drugs, replacement teachers pushing him, trying to find his trigger. He'd had no idea he was that strong, that he was stronger than any other surviving L2. Rhana used to get a nosebleed moving a glass. He could regularly go two hours or more in battle with the minimum required cool down, and still only have a migraine a few times a month.

It took a bit to replace water with blue rain, restraints with gauntlets, but he slowly pulled the present out of his memories. He remember Shepard, her wounds, her implants winding up in response to his biotics, and he blinked in the brightness. It took several seconds for him to focus, his vision blurry, and he brought shaky hands up to his face, pressing into them hard. After another minute he was finally able to look at the two and take in his surroundings, placing himself quickly. Tali was standing at the foot of his bed, concern obvious in the tilt of her head, and Garrus was closer to the middle, a ready claw on his pistol. Kaidan blinked at the obvious precaution, then tried to put two and two together. It wasn't often biotics had to be restrained, but when they were, taking away their vision was the best way to keep them down. Being able to wield and see mass effect fields was a blessing, despite the side effects. Losing that after a lifetime was extremely disconcerting. Nauseating, even.

"What...what did I do?" he asked softly, refusing to do more than rub his raw wrists with callous fingers; Garrus had a ready grip on his gun, and Kaidan didn't want to test his draw speed. "You said I threatened the ship?"

Movements tightly measured, Garrus nodded once. "The first time you woke up a week ago, you shot Shepard with a biotic field while she was hooked up to the AI core. We got lucky; Joker and Edi managed to disperse the overload into the drive. The doc put you under strong inhibitors and sedation then ran some scans. The shot you gave her boosted the Commander's implants, made them heal her better. And now she's gone downhill again. Chakwas gave Edi a heads up and we've got shielding barriers in place around the infirmary. This time, we're ready for your stupid stunts. You can try again, if you want," Garrus finished softly, staring down at the human.

Kaidan blinked up at him, swallowing the bitter taste of drugs, and his focus shifted. He looked to his left, and his eyes locked instantly. She wasn't in the AI core any longer. She was in the bed next to him, quiet, still. There was little covering whatever modesty the Marines hadn't beaten out of her, and everything that wasn't covered was scarred and twisted, bruises and pebbled skin meeting everywhere he could see. Her face was clean, though there were the healing remainders of black eyes shining from her sockets. Her right cheek was closest to him, and he vaguely remembered placing his hand there while he took the energy he extracted from the eezo in his bloodstream and forced it into her.

"Help me up," he ordered quietly, already trying to roll over. There was a bit of a commotion over his movements, but Garrus and Tali were instantly there. The Quarian took his weight on one shoulder, her hand on his chest. His legs were rubbery, more than he was expecting, and he practically fell into her as he tried to lock his knees.

"Easy, Major, easy," she said calmly as he gathered himself. Any sense of propriety had died the second he'd had his panic attack, so he didn't hesitate to use her support. "How long has she been unconscious?"

Garrus shook his head as he stepped up, glancing only briefly at Kaidan.

"She hasn't woken up since we found you with her at the Peak. Truthfully, the doctor can't get anything out of her body other than heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen stats. She doesn't know if it's from the Cerberus implants or...or if she's brain dead. Her own L5 implant isn't responding to diagnostics, either."

The Major inhaled sharply, ignoring the rolling threat of a migraine in his head, and moved forward, limping from something he didn't even know hurt. He leaned his hip against her bed and reached out, then hesitated, rubbing his fingers along his thumb. It took a few second for him to get enough strength and courage to finish the motion and rest his hand on her arm. If he'd been expecting something amazing to happen, he was quickly disappointed. Instead, she remained silent and still, no changes in her biofeedback obvious.

Still, Kaidan was nothing if not a coward, and he reached for that spot in his head that held his L2. It whined as it started, the functions coming online faster than he'd ever seen. He could see the neural pathways in his head, see his techniques, see the way the energy could move, and held back. His skin glowed with his power, his open eyes a bright blue and iridescent in the ship lights, and he stared at nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the infirmary awash in sapphire, gentle waves of blue soaking everything. His ocean was much calmer this time, less electric and more flowing. He stared at her through the cobalt tint in his vision, seeing his hand print on her face shimmer under his biotics.

It took concentration, more than he thought he would have, given the circumstances, but he found it. It was there, deep in his skull, and he could feel his implant touching all of hers. They were dull, echoing none of his power, and her L5 module was dark. So he pushed harder, shoved past something that could've been barriers. It took time, longer than years, maybe, before the darkness inside of her gave way to the light inside his brain.

Then he fell, unconscious, knowing nothing else except for the chorus of songs inside her head that said thank you, thank you, thank you.

There was a gentle tap on his cheek, something almost a dream, and he turned away from it groggily. His neck ached, his implant throbbed, and there was the heavy taste of aluminum and eezo on his tongue.

"Come on, Alenko. Time to wake up," a tired voice said, and he found himself blinking as he finished his rise into consciousness. Everything was dim, the lights in the infirmary turned down to almost nothing, and he looked around as he placed himself.

A quick scrub of his hands against his face found scruff around his mouth, and he frowned at the doctor beside him.

"How long was I out?" he asked quietly, his voice low with misuse. Karin smiled slightly, her face lighter than he'd seen it in awhile, and some of the weight on her shoulders seemed to lift. "Not too long, Major. A few days. It gave us time to perform some minor surgery on your port, so it wasn't wasted. How are you feeling?"

Kaidan slowly pushed himself to sitting, aware of the dizziness, and carefully accepted the glass of water she handed him. He sipped it slowly, eyes closed, trying to center himself and answer her question honestly.

"Little sore. Headjack feels like it did right after Mars, maybe a little better. What happened?"

Karin took the glass from his hand and set it on the small table beside his bed. She didn't speak for a few seconds, and he took the time to look around the infirmary.

Other than him, it was empty.

"Shepard...where is she, is she okay?" he asked in a rush, already throwing his legs over the side of the bed. It was only the small smirk on the doctor's face as she placed a calming hand on his shoulder that dimmed his panic.

"She is fine, Major, though a little more worse for the wear than you, I imagine. She's resting in her quarters at the moment, and Tali and Liara are doing a wonderful job keeping her comfortable, I assure you," she placated breezily, and Kaidan blinked.

No way it was that easy. Their luck didn't trend like that.

"What do you mean, she's fine?"

The second Karin said something about the Cerberus implants, Kaidan bristled like he always did. It was instinctive, something he couldn't help. For the year they'd fought through the galaxy trying to bring down Sovereign, he'd seen more horrors than he thought possible at the hands of Cerberus. And while he usually had little difficulty controlling his reaction – usually – he still couldn't help the spike of anger that popped up.

"And your last wave was off the scale. It put her implants into overdrive, something Ms. Lawson called a foreseeable adaptation of her technology."

The name cut through like a knife, and the echo of Horizon came through his senses. Horizon, with Garrus and that Cerberus woman flanking Shepard, his Shepard, ghost of Christmas Past. He could never really remember exactly what he had said to her that day, and he prided himself on a near-perfect audiographic memory. But he remembered the feelings of betrayal marked in his head and on her face, the way Garrus had tightened his grip on his gun with the silent plea of 'let me shoot him'.

Then Shepard, Paragon of the Citadel, had simply smiled, a little watery, maybe, and had asked him to come with her.

Christ, how he'd found the strength, the foolishness, to refuse, he'd never know.

"With her implants at full charge and running off her own electromagnetic field, and her L5 responding normally, I didn't feel it was necessary to keep her in here. Not as much privacy. But we still needed another look at your L2, because it's not behaving itself when you're asleep; it keeps jumping out of whatever confines you'd previously trained yourself for. I'd be remiss if I didn't warn you that you're in for another few months of practice before you're comfortable with your new power, Major."

Kaidan blinked again, watching her.

No way it was that easy.

"So my implant is...stronger. Shepard...she's as good as healed. The Reapers are gone, the Relays are intact, organics and synthetics are getting along…"

He held up a hand, questioning.

"No ramifications?"

This time, there was a strange sort of tightness of the doctor's words even as she smiled down at him.

"Well, yes, there are a few. I've already been called before the remaining Admiralty and there were a few briefings. There are still rogue pockets of resistance throughout the galaxy, mostly mercenaries and fanatics. They've assigned Commander Shepard and the Normandy to attend clean-up duty as soon as we're able. I had to warn them, however, that if she was to be injured in any way, her implants would likely be unable to do their job without assistance, altered as they are."

The air in the room seemed to cool a few degrees at that. Kaidan held his breath, abruptly seeing Shepard flying through space, dying then dead, saw her on the ground with blood coming from her lungs as rifles fired around her. He saw her laughing in the mess and then frozen as she was blasted from the ship.

"She...she can't go in the field anymore?"

That would end her.

"Well, no, not unless her implants are able to be charged accordingly."

Kaidan didn't follow. Half-drugged and exhausted even though he'd slept for nearly two weeks, he couldn't keep up. Normally, he loved puzzles. But this one was hitting too close to home.

"You said her implants won't work if she gets hurt again," he growled, knowing he was taking out his emotions on the wrong person. Instead, he'd rather enjoy having the Illusive Man in front of him, someone he could shoot eleven times in the head and get away with it.

"Not without being charged, no. Not without biotics, specifically, your biotics."

She didn't even hesitate.

When she felt the coolness of the air and heard the strange half-silence, she immediately slipped a hand under her pillow, feeling for her pistol. It took her long enough searching to realize that she recognized the other person in the room.

"Liara?" she asked softly, and the coughing fit that followed surprised her.

The next several seconds were a haze as she tried to get her breathing under control, taking the support of her Asari companion as she swallowed some foul tasting tea.

"Easy, Shepard. You've been pretty out of it for awhile," came the soft instruction, and she waved away the cup at her lips.

"How long is awhile?" she asked without opening her eyes, dazed with her upright position.

There was a shifting of material to the side, something less than a sigh echoing through the air, and she heard the clunk of a mug being sat on a table.

"Long enough that we've had this conversation four times without you remembering it once. I'm hoping – what is the human phrase? This time is the charm?"

She chuckled at that, aware that her ribs didn't hurt, somehow, even though she remembered debris flying into them and the sick crack of bone. Her friend said something, some urgency in her voice, and Shepard couldn't respond as images and feelings washed over her.

She feels the heat of her skin boiling, the bones in her right arm shattering as she brings it up to protect her face. She feels her armor repeating the motion, breaking into a thousand pieces, and liquid metal drips down her side. She feels heat swallow her, sucking the oxygen from her lungs and she thinks of stars wheeling overhead as she burns in atmo. She feels her ankle roll and bone grind as she staggers to the beam, a Reaper troop popping up out of nowhere with its rifle ready. She feels the punch more than the pain as the bullet spears through her shoulder, only decades of training bringing up her pistol to drop the thing with a headshot. She feels blood slip down her skin the same way she's always imagined the rain of Vancouver's skies dripping down his face.

She didn't know how long she was in her own world, trembling as memory and the signals her own body was putting out simply refused to mesh. She had no recollection of Liara's quick attempts to rouse her before slapping at the comm panel. She couldn't pinpoint the second she wasn't alone, was something other than a ragged, dying wreck on a starport.

But outside her closed eyes, the sky burned blue.

She finally looked, confused, terrified, thinking that she would wake up and be a ghost, haunting everyone she ever cared about. Then she saw whiskey eyes, the color like light through a shot glass, and they were focused on her, nothing else. There was fog around her vision and inside her head, but this, this she knew.

She knew him.

There was no shame in her tears as she threw herself into his embrace, feeling nothing but relief and peace and something she still didn't believe she'd proved to the universe she'd earned. His arms, strong, unbroken – nothing like Mars, the thought came – were wrapped around her tightly, her skin sparking with his biotics. She cried until she had nothing left, cried through his reassurances and his promises until she was dry and he was silent.

When she could breathe, when she could pull back and see the tenderness in his gaze, the gauntness of his cheeks hidden behind a two week old beard, the new scars peppering his skin, she thought that she'd never seen anything more beautiful.

"Marry me, Shepard."

The smile that cracked his face when she agreed was, somehow, even more beautiful.

Corporal Josh Fader pulled on the rest of his armor with a sigh, rolling his neck. Behind him, the new sounds of the cargo bay echoed loudly, and he found himself waiting for the day when he was more accustomed to them. But this was his first week on the Normandy after two years in the Marines, and it was a coveted assignment. He'd done a lot of work to prove he was right for the job, but still, it was staggering to be on the Alliance's flagship.

He'd enlisted three days after the Reapers had struck Earth, and, somehow, he'd made it through the next year. He'd been on a backwater colony in the middle of nowhere, fighting off a five hundred meter Reaper and its entourage, when the wave had hit. The Geth troopers he'd been holding the line with had shuddered, changed, and then had started screaming victory cries while the Reaper left and its troops burned.

A machine, screaming. Huh, didn't think he'd had ever lived to see that.

But the galaxy was still picking itself up. Synthetics were something different now, something human in their programming that looked more like DNA than code. Genetic variances and disease had been wiped out, something that the populations of the planets needed to rebuild from the close destruction of everything. Long range recon had found, finally, the remains of all the Reapers. They were in dark space, clustered in a graveyard, all deactivated, all dead.

Fader jumped in place, settling his medium armor around his frame, and glanced at the rest of the away team out of the corner of his eye. A large Turian was there, joking with a Quarian who had an affronted look that didn't match the twinkle in her eyes. Then she jumped at him, planting a kiss on his heavily scarred mandible, and Fader blushed. He glanced down the line at Edi, who was a former synthetic (or whatever the politicians were calling it these days). She was dressed in light armor, twin pistols on her back, and she was talking quietly with the Normandy's pilot. There was a diamond ring on her finger, out of place on a combat run, but she didn't seem to care. Then an Asarian walked up to them, the steel spine she was known for bending when she started speaking with them. Behind her, a white light drone followed silently. The shuttle pilot and another N7 were busy getting together a rack of equipment and stowing it in the dropship, and Fader blinked at the heavy Spanish insults that were flung through the air. The shuttle pilot just laughed and threw the man a smirk.

Then the Corporal looked to the middle of the cargo bay, and paused.

The two were legends, even if they didn't want to be. The first human Spectres, defeaters of Sovereign, the Collectors, and the Reapers, all. They worked silently as they prepped their weapons and checked their gear, him turning her with just a look so that he could adjust a clasp. Then she did the same, pressing down a latch on his shoulder tighter and brushing off invisible dirt. They didn't speak, but their quietness didn't seem uneasy. Instead, it looked familiar. Then blue waves engulfed both of them, a small pool of biotic energy swallowing them, and they pressed their foreheads together in something more intimate than a soldiers' embrace. Twin handprints glowed on their faces, some gold on her skin peeking out of the cobalt.

Fader knew he was staring, and couldn't stop.

Then the moment he watched, felt guilty about watching, was over, and they stepped back, all easy smiles. The group condensed at her sharp whistle, and she hefted a massive sniper rifle over her shoulder, the Black Widow looking comfortable in her grasp. She gave them orders the Corporal only half listened to, his eyes locking on the dimming palms on their faces. Fader was closer now, and he could see that the one on her face was bigger, and the one on his face was smaller. He thought back to the stories and rumors that had swirled around the galaxy after the end of the Reaper war, his mother repeating them to him over comm stations filled with static.

He didn't realize the rest of the group was moving until the Turian bumped into him, looking down at him with an unreadable face. Then he gave a strange alien smile and jerked his head where the two Spectres were talking outside the shuttle, waiting for the rest of their troops to board.

"Colonel Alenko and Commander Shepard-Alenko. You know that phrase about not meeting your heroes?"

The thing's voice was low but had a bit of humor behind it and, wordlessly, Fader shook his head.

"Ah, good. It doesn't apply here."

~ I never thought love was worth fighting for, but then I look into your eyes and I'm ready for war. ~