First and foremost: Many thanks to my beta (and gamma, delta, ad nauseum) reader, Sapidus, for being patient, generous, keen-eyed and quick-minded. I also owe an enormous debt to Link for tolerating my neuroses with unflappable grace, and always keeping the coffee on.

Second (and secondmost): Lyrics are "Flowers of the Forest," Scottish, ca 1765.

Third (and finally): Please R&R!

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As Commander Shepard's vision swam back into focus, the first thing she saw was... nothing.

Blind. The thought, simple and elegant and terrifying, ripped through her mind and tore her from her daze. She shot forward, hands scrabbling across the ground in front of her.

She flexed her fingers against the floor. Tile. Normandy tile. Her shower.

Not blind. Steam.

Fuck.

Heart slowing, she leaned back against the shower wall and sighed tiredly. The steam teased down into her lungs with each breath, settling heavily and sparking a fit of coughs. Visible even under the flushed scarlet of her skin, a patchwork of bruises started at her feet, wound up over her legs and disappeared out of sight on the upper reaches of her torso. Her knees, she noted with a distant irritation, were still twitching with spent adrenaline as they stood curled in front of her.

Shepard's pruned fingers brushed her face gently. She could feel the congealed remnants of unwashed cleanser behind her ears. Biting back a sigh, she rubbed the area vigorously and shook her head.

The water coalesced into rivulets down her back as she hauled herself carefully to her feet, pressing against waves of vertigo. One hand against the wall for support, she bowed her head under the spray and tried to pick sense from the jumble of her own memories. Images came back to her piecemeal: the light of rage in the Illusive Man's eyes when she told Joker to drop his signal; the Normandy swarming with the precision chaos of a battle frigate in retreat; bruised and bloodied crew members rushing between stations with untreated injuries. Chambers--Chambers!--barking orders at the crew to clear the way, one hand on Shepard's elbow. Kelly had completely ignored Shepard's orders to attend to the others first, making the commander wonder briefly just how bad she had to look to drive the normally deferential yeoman to insubordination. The thought had been cut short as she found herself dragged into the elevator, a steely-eyed Chambers standing silently beside her.

Frustrated, Shepard had tried irritably to dislodge her elbow from Chambers' grip, but her arm only jiggled pathetically in response. She barely noticed as Chambers led her from the elevator. Exhaustion or no, Shepard was sure that a rookie yeoman--even one as stubborn as Chambers--shouldn't have been able to restrain a former Spectre with nothing but a hand to the elbow. Her military training kicked in, and she began to objectively map the aches in her body; there was a dull throbbing in her right shoulder, and she noticed that she was correcting for a slight weakness in her right leg, but otherwise...

Shit.

The wave of adrenaline receded without warning, strength ebbing from every limb and uncharted pains rising in its place. Shepard's knees gave a violent shake as she pushed forward. The pain in her shoulder, previously a small ember of intense discomfort, flared outwards and down her chest and arm. Every step sent a shockwave through her ribs. And Christ, her ankle...

Preoccupied with taking inventory of her injuries, she noticed the weakness in her ankle a beat too late. She fell like a stone.

From nowhere, a hand snatched at her good shoulder, catching her mid-fall and dragging her to her feet. In the same instant, Chambers snatched at her right elbow, wrenching it in the attempt and causing blazes of pain to shoot out from the wound in her shoulder. Shepard collapsed into a cascade of profanity spanning several languages even as her arms were hoisted around two pairs of shoulders for stability.

When the pain receded enough for her eyes to refocus, she found herself staring at the ceiling of the medical bay. Chakwas was hovering over her with a pen light.

"Commander." The doctor's voice sounded garbled, as if Shepard's ears were underwater.

"Stay with me, Commander." She squinted at the light. Sounds began to resolve into words--"bullet," "stubborn," "bleeding"--though she couldn't immediately identify the voices behind them. Shepard blinked the spots from her eyes as the ceiling tiles sharpened into focus.

She groaned slightly, but immediately regretted it as Chakwas, looking for all the world like an angry mother about to lay into her misbehaving child, appeared at the edge of her vision. She tried to roll her head to face the doctor, but pulled back with a curse as her neck sang with pain.

"Hold still. You've lost a good amount of blood." She could hear the irritation ramping up in Chakwas' voice. "You scared the soul out of poor Yeoman Chambers."

Shepard gave a tentative flex of her left hand. Pleasantly surprised to find it functioning, she raised it to her throbbing temples. "What?"

Chakwas appeared again at the edge of Shepard's vision, holding up one gloved hand. A red-gray ooze--medigel mixed with a hefty portion of blood--coated her fingers. "You're covered in this from collar to hip. You took a slug to the shoulder."

Shepard closed her eyes as her stomach gave a small turn. The sight of her own blood was by no means alien to her, but when combined with the rusted gray sludge it formed against the medigel... she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the rising cramp in her gut.

A familiar voice rumbled from beside her, just outside of her vision. "It's not all that bad, Shepard. Just looks like you ripped open a varren and took a bath in it."

Shepard nearly laughed with relief. Garrus. She tried unsuccessfully to tilt her head toward him, but only caught a glimpse of blue-gray dancing at the edge of her vision before the sound of armor latches unsnapping pulled her attention back into the moment.

Even without looking, Shepard could tell that Chakwas--and an assistant, though she forced herself not to speculate who--were moving down her side, swiftly stripping her to her weave undersuit. The residual adrenaline that had previously been confined to her twitching fingers instantly flooded her body in an irrational, instinctive panic. Pain temporarily forgotten, every nerve fired in a simultaneous flight reflex as her body screamed to grab on to her disappearing armor and take cover.

Blood pumped in her ears as she grappled for control of her own expression, acutely aware of the half-dozen or so bodies darting around the med bay. She found her last ounce of calm and gripped it tightly as the panic slowly melted into impotent embarrassment.

A pinching squeeze on her left shoulder brought her back around to herself. She swung her eyes to her left to find Garrus glaring down at her with the silent intensity of a mining laser. She recognized the expression--fringe flattened back, eyes dark, mandibles twitching--as one he reserved for calling out her more egregious bullshit. His talons had found their way between the remaining pieces of armor to dig into the weave underneath, clasping a touch harder than was necessary to restrain her. Shepard countered his glare with one of her own, though the result was lackluster at best, dampened by pain and the screaming humiliation of being stripped in front of her own crew.

She would have given anything at that moment to be anywhere other than on a table, naked aside from her skin-tight weave suit, Garrus hovering over her--she would kill the bastard if he smirked--and God knows who wrenching off the last of her waist armor. In a moment of cruel irony, she noticed that the pain in her neck had died down under the adrenaline rush, giving her a slightly improved view of the spectacle.

She searched Garrus' face with a glare of defiance, bracing for the inevitable flippant comment. It didn't come. His eyes were boring holes into her own, and, she noted with a degree of relief, not straying south. The small comfort did little to dampen the humiliation that roiled inside her, and Shepard's eyes trailed to Garrus' free arm, which hung limply at his side. She furrowed her brow. When...?

Images flooded back to her before she could push them from her mind.

She heard him yell, saw his footing give way as the platform shifted; he fell out of sight. Instinct thrust her forward. She threw herself down the crumbling floor, kicking off a broken tile to catch up with him. His arm reached for her. The world went silent around her, columns collapsing mutely into dust in the periphery of her vision. Then, a tug that threatened to take her with him as talons found wrist, fingers found armor. There was a sharp jerk--her body skidded--his arm twisted. Sound slowly returned as he swung with spent momentum. A curse broke through the silence; Garrus. Alive. Relief, unspeakable in its intensity, flooded her as she saw him claw his way back over the edge of the platform.

Then Chakwas was there, pushing him aside and snapping Shepard from her reverie. Garrus stepped back obediently, though Shepard imagined she saw a hint of reluctance dance across his features. Chakwas reached up and unfastened the last pieces of armor from Shepard's good shoulder and arm and prodded the elbow with an impatient finger.

"Flex," she ordered curtly. Shepard obeyed.

"Well, at least there's no nerve damage," Chakwas said, returning to the other side of the bed. "Wiggle your toes."

Shepard fought to keep the rising frustration out of her voice. "Doc--"

Another voice chimed in. "Do what she says, Commander. I know it's not your style, but just this once."

Shepard's stomach sunk. Jacob. Of the entire crew, it had to be him. He had been the one helping Chakwas pull armor from her prone body, leaving her in a skin-tight suit that left little to the imagination. Jacob was a professional, and Shepard had never caught him leering openly, but... she knew. The sheer awkwardness of the whole situation was almost too much for her to bear. She prayed that the occasion was solemn enough--and the room sufficiently full--to keep him from enjoying this scene on some weird level. She clamped her eyes shut against a rising shudder and wiggled her toes.

Chakwas, apparently satisfied, retrieved a canister of anaesthetic and moved to Shepard's side. Shepard was startled to see that the entire right shoulder and sleeve of her suit had been removed while she was busy trying to stare a hold in Garrus' head.

"Alright, this is going to sting for a minute." The Doctor unwrapped one end of the tube and shook it. "Though somehow I think you've had worse."

The attempt at humor, however well-intentioned, only served to reignite Shepard's exhaustion-fueled indignation. She knew better than to try and talk Chakwas down, but she wasn't entirely helpless. In what she knew was an ultimately pointless gesture of defiance--or spite, she could really go for either--she held up her good hand in the universal sign of refusal. "Save it for somebody who needs it, Doc."

The doctor, now visibly exasperated, opened her mouth to reply when Zaeed appeared silently at Shepard's side. She was surprised to see that he looked even shittier than the others; she had ordered him to escort the crew back to the ship, and he'd apparently had a hell of a time of it. Without a word, he raised a bottle into Shepard's line of vision, shaking it once for emphasis: whiskey, and mostly full.

Shepard's heart leapt with gratitude. She longed to snatch it from him and down the whole handle, but could only manage to lift her bad arm a few inches before Zaeed placed the bottle in her hand, adding his own grip for support.

Chakwas looked at Zaeed, somewhat surprised by his appearance. "As the Commander said, you should save that for someone who needs it." Shepard noticed the smile touching the corner of the doctor's eyes, despite her attempt to sound stern.

"Do you see anyone else who needs this right now?" Zaeed responded with a small shrug. "General anaesthetic. Plus, it'll knock you on your ass long enough to let the doc work in peace," he added to Shepard.

Shepard looked at him with what she hoped was obvious thanks and, with help, raised the bottle to her lips. She took a deep, long daught--more of a chug, really--followed by another. By the time she lowered the bottle, a quarter of the whiskey was gone. A shallow sigh escaped her chest as the room began, inch by inch, to shift comfortably out of focus.

"Done so soon?" The smile wormed its way into Chakwas' voice as she leaned over and began cleaning the bullet hole.

Shepard looked at Zaeed and smirked--or at least tried. She wasn't entirely sure what her face was doing. "What happened to using rage as an anesthetic?'"

"Booze is more convenient," Zaeed replied, a small smirk working its way onto his face. "And you don't look nearly pissed off enough not to feel--"

Chakwas wrenched the slug from her shoulder. Shepard choked back a scream as she felt the ragged metal tear from her, her right side exploding in a flash of pain. She reflexively shot forward, only to meet a flurry of hands pushing her back down.

"--that," Zaeed finished. Shepard fought to bring her breathing back under control as the world spun around her. She looked down at her right arm, where Zaeed's hand was pinning her wrist to the table. Her knuckles were whitened around the neck of the bottle, arm straining to wrench it toward her already-beaten chest. Lucidity grappled for a foothold in the back of her mind. A bottle that size, with a spasm that strong, could have cracked another rib. That... She breathed deeply. That could have been bad.

Zaeed released her wrist--leaving the whiskey, she noticed gratefully--as her muscles finally uncoiled against the table. Jacob was standing next to Chakwas, his hand holding down the wounded shoulder. He smirked at her silently, though his attempt at nonchalance was ruined by burn marks in his armor, the swelling around his right eye, and Shepard's lingering horror.

Shepard closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The cold air dragged the lingering taste of whiskey down into her throat. The persistent, instinctive urge to flee the scene had faded slightly, only to be replaced by an intense but resigned embarrassment. Garrus' hand on her shoulder served as a firm--and secretly welcome--reminder of the futility of mounting an escape attempt. In her current state, any fight would be over long before it even began... and just this once, she was secretly thankful to be absolved of having to make a decision.

Besides, she thought as the room swam slightly before her, his hand was warm, and oddly comforting where it pressed against the dip of her collarbone. She was missing several pints of blood, a few cubic inches of flesh and bone, and likely half her mind, but she somehow felt more comfortable and secure than she had in a while.

She peered, feeling slightly lopsided, at the whiskey. She'd have to ask Zaeed where he got the stuff.

"Are we done, Doctor?" she asked, trying, through the haze of alcohol and pain, to sound irritated.

"Not by a mile," Chakwas answered. "But since I know you won't stay down here without restraints--and I don't think Officer Vakarian is willing to stand there all night--" she felt Garrus press down in warning--"I'm willing to give you the quick fix and send you to your quarters. Under supervision, of course."

A curse flew under Shepard's breath as Chakwas held up the monitor pack, encased in clear virgin plastic. It was smaller than a printed magazine, moderately flexible and only about as thick as a datapad. Shepard was painfully well-acquainted with the things, having suffered more than her share of injuries, and normally she tolerated the annoying stiffness they created between her shoulder blades without complaint.

But this one, she realized with a sinking feeling, interfaced with EDI. She had no personal beef with the AI; Joker had warmed up to her help, and Shepard found herself minding her presence less and less--but that tolerance certainly did not extend to interfacing her own body, nanotech and all, with the AI's network.

After a few minutes of Chakwas' continued prodding--and half of the remaining whiskey--Shepard managed to haul herself over to a chair in the corner of the med bay, under Chakwas' order to sit still and wait while she attended to the more critical cases. Once she had resigned herself to being stuck in nothing but her weave suit, Shepard found the journey almost tolerable. Time ebbed and flowed oddly as the whiskey took hold, and she found herself forcing her eyes open in a fight against her growing exhaustion as Chakwas flitted among the crew members who wandered in and out.

After a few minutes, Chakwas reappeared with the monitor. She pulled a screen around the corner and had Shepard sit on a stool facing the wall as she began to unzip the back of her suit. The wet, sucking sound as her suit pulled free from the medigel layer against her skin was no less disgusting for being familiar. Shepard swallowed the flood of sarcastic comments that rose in her mind. Most of them were in poor taste anyway.

Moments passed in silence as Chakwas gently wiped Shepard's skin clean, before turning to the burns that streaked across her back. The raw skin stung and turned cold where the rubbing alcohol evaporated, causing Shepard to shiver slightly.

"You seem unsatisfied with your treatment," Chakwas said dryly, her low volume barely masking the edge of concern.

Shepard looked at the wall, her blood pressure rising a point. "I don't like being stripped to my skivvies in front of my own crew."

Chakwas snorted lightly. "Surely you've had to field-dress a wound before."

"This is... different." Shepard felt the doctor's hand slip slightly at the pause. She ignored it. "These people are counting on me. I'm not some N7 rookie, and they're not my classmates."

Chakwas seemed to consider that. "I won't apologize for doing my duty as a physician." The sound of ripping plastic hit Shepard's ears as Chakwas unwrapped the monitor. "But I will say that I was unaware of how personal this issue was for you. And I promise that I will exercise all due diligence in clearing out any unwelcome guests if the need to 'strip you to your skivvies' ever arises again."

Shepard turned her head slightly. She thought that she'd heard a smirk at the word "personal"--but maybe she was imagining it.

The warm, sticky sensation of medical adhesive spread over her back, followed by a firm pressure as Chakwas applied the monitor. After a few moments of fiddling, it hummed quietly to life.

Chakwas ran her hand over it once again and gently pressed a few buttons. "I know you're not a fan of these, but it is a necessary precautionary measure. Joker's been wearing one since he arrived, believe it or not."

Shepard blinked. "Wait, Joker? The same Joker who smeared grease on EDI's camera lenses?"

"Don't be so surprised." Chakwas checked the adhesive around the monitor's edges and turned Shepard around to examine the front of her torso. "It's encrypted so that it can only be read by the medical systems and EDI's communication subprograms. And it's a one-way transmission; I can't do anything from here, and neither can she. Except maybe talk about it."

The two fell into silence. Behind the screen, their voices low, Shepard didn't mind the examination. Chakwas' tone, the way her hands moved swiftly and with purpose, reminded Shepard of the nuns that had been so omnipresent in the slums back home. She had lost track of the number of visits she and her gang had made to the women, bearing with them every kind of problem from broken bones to desperate pleas for sanctuary. They were always taken in, and salves and admonitions were delivered in equal measure. Only as Shepard grew did she realize how hawkishly the women had watched over the ragged bands of children who roamed like small merc gangs through the back alleys and sewer tunnels. The alley behind the church, ironically, was one of the favored places for scrapping; nobody died there. Every time things got dangerous, every time a kid had been in danger of losing more than just his dignity, the nuns had thrown open their doors and rushed to the scene.

Shepard thought that Chakwas would have made a good nun.

After applying the last of the bandages, Chakwas turned her around and zipped up the back of her suit. Shepard rolled her good shoulder slowly, feeling the monitor's edge bite against the soft inside of her shoulder blade. With only one good arm she wasn't going to be able to do much about the discomfort.

Distracted by her self-examination, Shepard barely noticed the sound of rustling fabric until Chakwas' jacket was draped across her shoulders. Her head snapped up to the doctor, who was leaning over her in just a tee-shirt and pants, adjusting the neck around Shepard's chest.

Her voice was warm, and slightly embarrassed. "It's not much, but it should provide some modesty until you reach your quarters," she said. Shepard felt her face melt into a tired, and unspeakably grateful, smile.

"Thanks, Doc." Chakwas merely smiled back at her and slipped back through the curtain.

No sooner had Shepard put her feet on the floor than Chambers was suddenly at her side--she secretly wondered where the woman had been hiding--helping her out of the med bay, into the elevator, and into her quarters.

Where, she remembered with a grouse, she had promptly fallen asleep in the shower.

Resting her forehead against the cold tile, Shepard gently fingered the bandages on her torso. Gauze mapped the thermal burns and near-misses she'd taken in the fight, but the wounds themselves were eclipsed by the dull ache that groaned through every inch of her body.

She turned the water off and sighed. The swimming in her head was making standing more unpleasant by the second, and her limited mobility would have made any serious attempt to wash herself a painful exercise in futility. Too tired to try, she dragged herself from the shower, half-heartedly ran a towel over her head, and struggled into loose combat pants and a tee-shirt.

The monitor, the presence of which she had been able to ignore up until now, pinched her skin insistently as she settled the shirt over her shoulders. In a moment of exhausted anger, Shepard flung her good arm over her shoulder, grabbed the monitor through the shirt, and pulled. It broke free from her skin with a loud rip before clattering to the floor. Shepard cursed as her reddened skin recoiled at contact with the shirt.

EDI flickered to life by the door. "Commander Shepard, I advise against tampering with medical equipment."

Shepard glared sideways at the avatar, though she wasn't sure how well the AI could interpret body language. "Fuck off, EDI. I've had a long day."

The AI paused, and Shepard realized that her voice had come out much hoarser than she'd expected. She really didn't sound good.

"Please rest, Commander."

Shepard shook her head. Her eyes trailed slowly over to her terminal, which blinked with unread messages. She felt her stomach sink. "EDI, how many messages do I have?"

"Seventeen, Commander," the AI responded automatically. "But I advise that you rest first, and respond once you are fit for duty."

Shepard slowly lowered herself into her chair and turned to face her terminal. "Dismissed, EDI." She thought she saw the AI linger for a moment before obediently vanishing.

Shepard attempted to scan her messages. The characters floated in the air before her, rearranging themselves into garbled nonsense. She rubbed her eyes; they were a few hours out from Omega, with days' worth of preparations still left. No time for sleep. Not now.

--

In the grand hierarchy of Garrus Vakarian's shit-list, being kept waiting was a generally low-ranking annoyance, stuck somewhere between bars with loud music and having to do his own laundry. But when combined with an intractable AI (much higher on the list) and the possibility of facing an impossibly mulish Shepard (somewhere near the top), the end result was fast-tracked straight to the top ten slot. EDI wasn't doing herself any favors by giving him time to mentally shuffle the order of things, either.

Most of the other things on that list, though, were at least corporeal, and could appreciate the finer points of a pointed gun. Unarmed (and not entirely clear on whether EDI could experience pain) he was relegated to glaring at the lock on the door as if he could override the access code by sheer force of will. Eventually EDI would have to give in. If she held out, well, he was sure a well-placed word with Joker and a few swapped wires would ease the negotiation.

He growled in irritation. "Will you just let me in?"

He wasn't sure if he was projecting, or if EDI actually sounded smug. "Doctor Chakwas left strict orders that the Commander was not to be disturbed." There was a small pause, as if the AI was considering how best to phrase what it said next. "And the Commander has been... agitated."

Garrus registered the unusual pause with more than a small degree of concern, but channeled his irritation into his voice. "And I have to return the armor that was--rather unceremoniously, might I add--taken from her in the med bay. That way, she'll be properly geared to throw herself into a new disaster tomorrow." That, he admitted inwardly, and to make sure she hasn't fallen asleep at her damn desk. "Think of it as preventative medicine."

He noted the ship's silence with satisfaction before the doors slid back. "Very well. However, please be sure to minimize the duration of your visit. Commander Shepard needs to rest."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, and stepped inside. Once in, he unceremoniously dumped the pile of Shepard's armor onto EDI's holomap, causing EDI's avatar to flicker and vanish. Satisfied that he had at least banished any visible reminder of its omnipresence, he turned to face the rest of the room.

The Turian version of a grimace crossed his face. She was asleep at her desk.

Part of him--the part that wasn't bogged down by painkillers, exhaustion, and the persistent ache in his freshly relocated shoulder--was tempted to quietly set the image before him as the new network desktop background. Her body was splayed out at an impossible angle, her roller chair pushed back in a maneuver that he was sure would add a back cramp to her existing problems. Jumbled characters trailed across the terminal screen from where her hand had landed on the keypad. A cup of coffee--cold, he noted upon inspection--sat amid the splashed results of near-misses with the pot. Her head was nestled against the crook of her good arm, face turned to the opposite wall, and he wondered almost idly if she was drooling. To cap it all off, she looked like she was dressed for basic training.

The momentary amusement faded, frustration slowly boiling to the surface in its place as he unconsciously balled his talons into fists. He would follow her--had followed her--into certain death and back again. She was a force of nature that blew through obstacles with a kind of focused intensity that he'd never seen in any other soldier, human or Turian. It was hardly surprising that people trailed after her starry-eyed even when she threatened to put a bullet in them.

But in her eternal, almost effortless focus, she had one glaring blind spot: herself. No matter how far the universe and fate bent to keep her alive, she never thought of herself as an integral part of her mission. She was cannon fodder for her own objectives, and it drove the rest of the crew--or at least the ones who knew her well enough to see her own recklessness for what it was--absolutely mad. Those moments when her blatant disregard for her own life threatened to topple the entire mission were enough to make his fringe stand on end.

Savior of the citadel, nightmare of the Collectors, avatar for the hopes of the human race... And here she was, passed out over an endless stream of minutiae because she refused to stop long enough to move ten feet to her own bed. Garrus thought he might have admired her focus if it didn't piss him off so badly.

For a moment, he considered leaving her in place. It was only partially out of personal spite toward Shepard for letting herself reach such a sorry state, though he couldn't deny the clench of anger he felt looking at her. Standing with her in the med bay, he had been a captive audience to one of the most unsettling displays of discomfort he'd ever witnessed. Chakwas and Jacob--the thought made even the Turian cringe a bit--hadn't seen the subtle spectacle that played across her expression as they peeled plate after plate of armor off her beaten body. The sight of her laying there, staring at the ceiling hard enough to burn a hole in it, was something he wished he could forget. He had seen corpses in better shape. The years under her command had taught him to distinguish her Commander Shepard mask from actual calm, and the sound of those snaps had sent the mask into a strained overdrive. Even through the carefully-structured passivity, each snap had caused a new wave of panic to wash along the undertones of her expression, playing silently along the corners of her eyes, the flares of her nostrils, the furrow of her brow. Humans were hardly subtle in their facial expressions, but Shepard was an iron mask. To most people she would have looked like a statue in shifting light, but he had caught every flicker of impotent rage. After that display, he wasn't eager to sneak up on her in any state where she might feel vulnerable.

He peered down at the commander, wondering how best to wake her without startling her, or aggravating anything already broken. Seeing no better way, he hesitantly reached a hand out to her shoulder--the good one--and touched her lightly.

Shepard shot up like a round from a hand cannon. Garrus snapped his arm back and fell into a defensive stance. Shepard's eyes darted wildly about the room before landing on him. Garrus bristled, flexing his talons; if she got a hold of him while in a panic, he would be in for another visit to Chakwas. After a tense moment, recognition slowly dawned in his commander's eyes. She stared at Garrus in silence; he responded in kind, keeping one eye on what he hoped was her unconsciously clenched fist.

Shepard's eyes drooped closed for less than a heartbeat before she snapped them open again. She arranged her face into the perfect picture of composure, her eyes studying Garrus' stance. "Garrus. What are you doing here?"

Garrus watched her warily. "I came to drop off your armor," he said with a small jerk of his head toward the pile. He noticed her hand relax; he wasn't sure she had known she was making a fist. "And to make sure you hadn't managed to break anything else between the door and bed."

Shepard blinked. She glanced over at her bed blankly, as if suddenly remembering she had one. She looked back at Garrus, then at the terminal in front of her. He wasn't sure if she had even registered his comment about her armor. "Thank you for the... concern. I just have to take care of a few things." She looked at the terminal, a bit longer this time, her eyes slipping into a thousand-mile stare. But when she turned back to Garrus, the familiar spark of life had returned. For just a moment, she looked just as she always did; alert, focused, with a laugh dancing somewhere at the edge of her expression. But it was only for a moment, and the spark flickered as she looked away. "Thanks, though." She turned her chair back toward the desk with an air of dismissal.

He didn't leave. Instead, he righted himself, folded his hands behind his back and stood at ease. A moment of silence followed, which he eventually broke.

"Well, don't let me keep you." His voice was deadpan, his stance the picture of military discipline.

Shepard didn't turn around, but he could see the irritation ripple up her back. If she was a Turian--and there were moments when he was startled by how close she came--her fringe would have been flaring. "I'm not a goddamn invalid, Vakarian."

"Never said you were, ma'am."

She turned, then, and Garrus saw her eyes flash at the honorific. He felt a tug of guilt at goading Shepard in her broken state, but he couldn't help himself. Toying with Shepard was like playing with fire; half the fun was in letting it flare as close to your skin as you could without retreating. He hadn't been burned yet, though part of him suspected it was only a matter of time.

He shook the thought from his head. Besides, he reminded himself, he'd be there if she didn't make it, just like before. Harmless fun with the half-dead commander, that's all.

Another moment of silence passed between them. Shepard's eyes were scanning his face, calculating just how far he was going to push her. Rising to the bait, Shepard slowly and deliberately pressed her left hand against the desktop and hauled herself upwards.

For a moment, Garrus thought she might actually make it. But for Shepard, "upwards" ended directly on her bad ankle, where it promptly reverted into "downwards." She staggered, clawing at the edge of the desk as she lost her balance. Garrus swooped in and righted her, one arm around her back.

He looked down at Shepard, who leaned heavily into his side. She was avoiding his gaze. Her body sagged with exhaustion, bravado abandoned, and Garrus felt a distant twinge of guilt. She had just been humiliated twice in front of her own crew, and it was now glaringly obvious that she couldn't make it more than a few feet under her own power. Even with his help, she would be tripping over herself before she could reach the stairs.

He paused, weighing his options. After a moment he held back a sigh, and, hoping she would recover quickly from a third embarrassment, moved. With a fluid gesture, and before Shepard could protest, Garrus bent down and scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other across her back. He began to carry her across the room.

"Garrus..." she started, with what sounded like an attempt at a growl.

He ignored the wasted threat. He didn't blame her for being angry; she had been stripped, goaded, and now carried like an invalid by her own crew member. For the first time in recent memory, he almost regretted baiting her.

Almost. He knew she could take it; there was some comfort in the back-and-forth, the sarcasm and verbal sniping that had become so ingrained in their interactions. He would have been more worried if she had simply sit there and taken the ribbing gracefully.

"Now don't get too used to this," he said sardonically, depositing her on her bed. "I'm not in the business of being a personal shuttle. And frankly, I'm not bulletproof enough to carry you around."

A meager smirk formed at the corner of Shepard's mouth. He had to fight back one of his own as a small knot of worry, which he hadn't even noticed was there, unwound in his chest; at least her sense of humor was intact. It was a start.

He pulled a sheet loose from the edge of the bed and draped it over her. As he did so, he noticed her eyes drift shut and the tension fade from her shoulders as her body slowly melted into the mattress. He hated to admit it, but the effect was strangely satisfying. "Chakwas ordered EDI to keep you locked in here for the next twenty-four hours. You won't be welcome on the bridge in the meantime. In fact, I'm pretty sure Chambers has orders to shoot you on sight. Gardiner will bring your meals tomorrow, and Miranda is overseeing the preparations for docking." He was pretty sure she wasn't listening, but threw in the specifics to be safe. "Everything's in order. Get some sleep."

He stood and glanced once more around the room to make sure that everything was in place. She had been too tired to do much damage to her belongings, though he mentally noted to hit the fishtank's feeder button on his way out.

Shepard's voice floated up from behind him. "Hey, Garrus." It was barely audible, and coated with sleep.

He turned to look at her. "Yes, Commander?"

She peered from between her eyelids, ignoring the subtle jab as a smirk unfurled languidly across her face. "Sing me a lullaby?"

It was Garrus' turn to laugh. He grinned down at her. "Right, Shepard. Me singing." The thought of Shepard cringing under assault from a Turian chorus gave him an added kick. "Maybe someday when we've run out of material for these little matches of ours. Then, I'll just have to sing you to death."

But he wasn't sure Shepard even heard him; her eyes were closed, her body as still as a corpse under the sheets. She wasn't going to be up for a very, very long time.

I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling,
I've tasted her pleasures, and felt her decay;
Sweet is her blessing, and kind her caressing,
But now they are fled, and fled far away.
(Scottish trad.)