Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The mess was still, silent.

She'd never say it out loud, but she liked what Cerberus had done with the place. Sure, she'd rather be on an Alliance ship, but Cerberus knew their décor. It was bright white now, shiny, nearly chrome, and offered a steely silence at eleven o'clock at night, which was exactly when she liked to sneak out of her cabin.

She wasn't a fan of her cabin -- it was far too large. She'd rather just have a bunk and a foot locker. The mess offered something a little more ... military? If that made sense. Either way, it was wonderful to sit, alone, where it was quiet, with a glass of milk she'd stolen out of the fridge. Cerberus didn't take careful notes on rations, she could do that now. Besides, they were paying. She had no beef wasting Cerberus supplies.

She'd discovered that she loved to sit there at night until her glass was empty and try to think of nothing.

Which was why it was such a shock, when the elevator opened to the mess, and Shepard was greeted by a a full compliment of Normandy crew.

She stood there for a second, contemplating slipping away -- maybe no one had seen her? But then, why was the mess full? There was Miranda, Jack, Gabby, Tali, Samara --

Kelly spotted her. She could tell, her face lit up. "Shepard!" she cheered, and hopped up from her seat to go greet her. "That's crazy, when you didn't reply, I thought you hadn't gotten the invitation!"

"Invitation?" There was a party on her ship?

"Yeah, didn't you get the email? We're having a girl party tonight!" Kelly clapped her hands together. "You even remembered to wear your pajamas!"

"I, uh -- " Shepard looked around. Kelly wasn't kidding, before her was every female crew member in oversized tee shirts and big billowy cotton pants. (Well, excepting Jack, but what do you do.)

Speak of the devil, she saw Jack sneer. "I didn't know Shepard could be out of a uniform. I figured she showered in it."

Kelly rolled her eyes with a smile on her face. (She had sessions with Jack, Shepard thought, couldn't she tell that Jack was being sincere?) "Look, come on over here. Gabby made cookies."

She thought about it – late night cookies were fine, but they weren't the greatest bribe to keep her in the mess. "What exactly do you do at a girl party?" ashed Shepard.

Tali giggled. "Eat crap, wear jammies. I bought Framacks to Framacks, too!"

"What?"

"It's this old Quarian game where you put down a card, and then you put down another -- you know what, I'll just go get it, it will make more sense."

And so, that was how Shepard's quiet late night milk drinking session turned into her sitting at the mess with everyone else holding cards marked with strange green fruit.

"All right, so I put a card in the middle," said Tali, "and then you look through your cards and see if one's related. Then you put it in the middle and tell us how it fits." She shuffled through a large stack of cards sitting next to her. "All right, first card is ... the Citadel!" She placed a card in the middle of the table.

"I'm going to put my Blasto card down," said Kelly, scooting a card toward the middle of the table. "Every time I go to the Citadel, I hear an ad for a Blasto movie."

"Ooo!" said Tali, putting a card down next to Kelly's. "I'm putting down a turian card. Because they run C-Sec."

Shepard shuffled through her cards. Krogan, biotic amp, dextro-dna ... she didn't have anything good. Finally, she put a card down on the table. "Batarian."

"Batarian?" said Kelly. "How does that relate?"

"Because last week, when we were on the Citadel, I got some ammo for my pistol which I used on that Blue Suns punk on Ilos. He was a batarian."

There was a pause, and a few wide eyed stares. Shepard wasn't sure how to react, so she simply said nothing. It was a match, wasn't it?

“I would have never thought of that,” said Gabby, plainly, and the game went on.

Shepard felt a little shy about playing any more cards that game, even though the krogan one would have been a good one for the time she was on shore leave and found some krogan face plates at the Citadel's indoor pool.

Somehow, though, she got the impression that that would have also gotten wide eyed stares. She kept her cards to herself and slipped out as soon as the party dissipated.

Thankfully, they weren't there the next night, allowing Shepard to have her mess time in peace. Apparently girl parties were not nightly events.

As she sat there in the stillness of the night, she thought she heard something ... grunting? It was soft, whatever it was. Why in the hell was there *grunting* on her ship?

She was able to trace the sound down the hallway, to the main battery. She knocked on the door. "Hey, hello? Who's in there?"

“Err, just … just a second.” It was Garrus' voice.

There was a slight shuffle, and then she saw the door lock spin open. She made a face. She didn't want to, exactly, but what she saw before her was pretty awful.

Garrus had managed to peel about half of his bandages off himself. The small gauzy pile left behind on one of the cargo trunks was sticky with blue blood -- some of it had dried, of course, but some of it was fresh, likely disturbed from when he had pulled the bandage off.

And then, on his face, you could see the bloody blue hole that the rocket had left. It hadn't started to heal over yet. The blood shone in the dim light of the room.

"I ... er, hi," he said, trying not to be awkward.

She shook herself out of the moment, out of seeing all of that blood. Not that she was a stranger to it, but it was different when it was a friend. "Whoa, hey, Garrus, can I help?"

"Err." He obviously hadn't intended for Shepard to walk in on this moment. "There's ... if you could just make sure that I've gotten all of the gauze off?"

He turned his face and bent over a bit so she could see better. Actually, he hadn't done that great of a job -- little fuzzy bits of bandage were sticking out of various bloody sticky spots. "You missed a few -- here, I'm going to try and pick them out." She paused a moment. It was gross, sure. Incredibly gross. But, there really wasn't such a thing as cross chirality diseases … probably? ... so at least it wasn't as dangerous as getting human blood all over her. Steeling herself, she reached up and plucked a piece of cottony fluff out of the wound.

She looked around a bit. Garrus, figuring she needed some place to put her trash, pointed to his heap of bandaids. Making a mental note to never, ever sit there again, she put her fluff in the pile and went back to picking.

"There," she said, finally, once she had cleaned out the wound. "You ought to be good." Good was a relative term, the places that hadn't healed up yet were starting to leak blood again.

"Thanks," he said, and put a hand up to remove the last piece of bandage from around the back of his mandible.

She stopped him. "Hey, I'm already bloody. Let me."

"Are you sure?"

She shrugged. "I don't mind." It was kind of a lie, but like she said, she was already coated in turian blood. Besides, the last bandage was sort of wrapped back around his mandible, it looked hard to get by one's self. She actually had to tug at it a little.

"Oww! Careful!"

"Sorry." She tossed the bandage in the pile. "What's the next step?"

He pointed below the console. "Disinfectant. I keep it down there."

"Sure thing," she said, and went to get it.

"You know you don't actually have to -- "

"Nah, I'm kind of having fun playing nurse right now," she said, only half lying. She was glad to help, but secretly wished that it wasn't so nasty.

The disinfectant was a red liquid in a clear bottle. She sloshed it around a little -- she was more than used to the green disinfectant that Chawkwas had slathered on her many a time. There was clean gauze next to the bottle.

She poured some on the gauze, and then hesitated -- did disinfectant sting turians like it did humans?

"Shepard?"

"Oh, right. Sorry." It probably couldn't hurt any more than a rocket to the face. She shook herself out of it and, very gingerly put the disinfectant on his face. It made him wince; she hated watching it.

"Err, sorry -- "

"It's fine, it just stings a little." His voice didn't sound fine, but she decided to take him at his word.

(art forthcoming)

Garrus walked her through wrapping the gauze through his mandibles and on to her face, and then she taped them back on. He patted his new bandages. "Hey, you're pretty good."

She shrugged. "Aww, thanks."

"No, really, this is much better than what I can do on my own." (How would he know? He wasn't looking at it! Shepard decided not to say anything, though. Take a compliment when you can, she figured.)

"Hmm." She crossed her arms over her chest. "How often do you change it?"

"Every night."

"Then I'll be by every night to change the bandage," she said.

"Really? You don't have to, you know."

"No, I'd like to. I mean, you got that on one of my missions. I'm sort of responsible.”

His mandibles shifted. Did he look amused? Who really ever knew with turians? "I'd argue that that was MY mission that YOU were on."

"Ah!" she smirked. "Then that's why you got your face blown off, I wasn't in charge."

He opened his mouth, probably to say something smart, but then closed it again. Instead, he started to laugh. She couldn't help it, she began to laugh too.