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When the Council was safe, when she was sure there were no more threats, she left them where they were standing. There was no more need for her, nothing else that she needed to do for them. Thane needed her. She had never wanted to leave him as he was, never wanted to continue on in the fight, but he had wanted it and she was too well trained to refuse to continue. The run to the clinic was too long with too many stops. Her breath came too short and her fear threatened to overwhelm her as she remembered how much blood there had been.
The sound of her footsteps became a mantra, a steady beat of “Run, run, run” so much like the soft chant of her mother’s last words. It had been a moment of blood and terror that had led her into the streets of Earth, right into the arms of the gang that had looked after her and never paused to wonder why she was alone.
The elevators were too damaged-she’d never regret her own killing efficiency more than in that moment-but she never even stopped as she ran for the stairs and tore through the passageways that she knew more by instinct than by recognition as her thoughts blurred together.
The question of “Are we alone?” hadn’t been answered in the First Contact War or with the discovery of the nearest Relay in the Milky Way. It had been answered nearly thirty years before that with blood, terror, and death the likes of which humanity hid from the rest of the universe. It was a conflict that had shattered the only two sentient species on the planet and had only ended when the other species had all but retreated back into their near perfect isolation. It had taken humanity nearly three decades to believe that the Others had retreated and had spent that time hunting among their own to confirm the sudden absence.
She knew this, knew, because her own family had been targeted on the suspicion that they had been connected in some way and Shepard had run at her mother’s terrified words, at her father’s enraged bellow that had vibrated through the house. She had run from all she had loved until she could run no more. She had hidden that she was a little less than human, a little more than Other. It hadn’t mattered, couldn’t matter that her parents had died to protect that secret.
Now, now, she ran towards the death of one she held dear. People who reached out for her were shoved aside or slid past before they realized who she was. “Run, run, run” was the mantra that drove her, that terrified her, that had pulled her so far into the war. Her reflexes had always been just that much better, her ability to heal just that much faster to have allowed her to survive so much for so long.
She had lived for a long time and seen so much. There was no arguing that and it didn’t matter how she had done it right until it was necessary to care, until she could do something for someone that she loved.
There had been a moment after her first death that she had fallen in love with someone. It had been a moment that had fractured every part of who she was and rearranged what she knew, because it was true.
“You can re-live every assassination you’ve ever made?” she’d asked.
“In perfect detail. Every mistake I made. Every target’s last breath,” he’d answered.
Thane knew what necessity and regret was, knew what it was to be able to count the faces of those that had died because of those that used him for their own ends and she had loved him for it, that shared understanding. He had been the first and only person she had met to know the difference.
Breath coming in short gasps, she finally slowed her pace so that she didn’t run over other patients or injure anyone else. Removing her helmet so that she could breathe a little easier, she strode forward. The doctors and patients were so involved in the problems around them that no one really seemed to register who she was. After the first few questions, she gave up and started looking through the individual patient rooms and shirking the questions that were posed to her until she was ready to scream in frustration when someone gently touched her arm and asked, “Can I help you?”
She turned towards the nurse, her thoughts still tumbling over themselves. She had fought and denied that she was anything less than human for longer than she cared to remember. And here, now, the lies and deceptions no longer did anything for her or the ones she loved.
“I’m looking for a Drell by the name of Thane Krios,” she answered, the words coming in a rush before she remembered Thane hadn’t registered under his actual name.
But the nurse was already looking at his list of patients. “Well, we have a Drell, but not under that name,” he said without glancing up at her.
Briefly, she felt a stab of panic and said, in a rush, “He was injured, stabbed. He’s a regular patient here.”
The nurse made a motion with his hand, like he was trying to calm her as the list switched off. “It’s alright, it’s alright. I see.” He moved slowly towards one room in particular as he reluctantly said, “The doctors were able to repair a lot of the trauma. However, Mr. Krios is in the final stages of Kepral Syndrome.” She nodded numbly at his hesitation and he continued on, “At its worst, Kepral Syndrome interferes with his blood’s ability to carry oxygen and he lost a lot. Now, they’ve given him transfusions, but frankly there was a very limited supply of Drell blood.”
Kolyat’s outline and coloring were unmistakable even through the glass of the window of the room and it was plain who the donor had been. “Isn’t there…anything else?” she asked, glancing at the nurse.
Looking at the nurse’s concerned look and remembering how badly Thane had been injured made something slide into place and it didn’t matter anymore how human she was. It didn’t matter except that she try and that she be there with him, in the end. The past wasn’t what was important, wasn’t what had driven her to this point in the war. It had always been those closest to her and there was the slimmest chance that she could do something for Thane in the here and now.
The nurse was shaking his head. “We did all we could to help him through surgery, but his body can’t replace lost blood with new cells. Too much shock.”
“Then here’s what we’re going to do,” she said quietly and explained the plan as it unfolded in her mind. That the nurse was human helped, but that she was Commander Shepard helped a great deal more towards letting her even try in the first place. It took the quick persuasion of a human doctor and her admittance before Thane, Kolyat, and the humans to convince the two Drells to try one last thing to combat Thane’s final decline.
Later, when explanations would matter, they would say that it had been a combination of stolen Salarian research and Cerberus tech that had fallen into her hands during the course of the war. When it mattered, there would be more talks of further research concerning the Salarian research and a potential break through.
Until then, though, Shepard didn’t much care who knew the how or why of it. All that did matter was the hand that woke her as it stroked through her hair and the steady sounds of the machines monitoring Thane’s breathing and other vitals when she woke several hours later. She hadn’t moved from Thane’s side since the second set of transfusions had been completed, hadn’t budged even when Kolyat had tried to insist that she take the more comfortable chair that reclined so that she could sleep. She’d been awake long after Kolyat had fallen asleep and had finally given into her body’s need to recover from lost blood and battle fatigue somewhere in the early morning and had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on her arms and the very edge of the hospital bed.
The gentle stroking of a hand was what woke her and she could only smile sleepily at Thane. He was smiling, too, and his eyes were barely open, but he was breathing easier than she had heard since the beginning of the entire damn war and it was the best damn sight she had seen in a long time.