Chapter Text
1.
When Zaeed first really noticed Doctor Chakwas, he was laying on one of her tables with a fractured leg and an arm reduced to mincemeat from a hard fall onto shrapnel-strewn ground. It had been a stupid accident that made him fall, and he had been in the middle of disgustedly berating himself for acting as immature as a jumpy recruit fresh from Basic when she was suddenly hovering over him.
“You’re lucky this isn’t more severe,” she had said in matronly disapproval. “The point of armor is usually to protect oneself wholly from environmental hazards. Unless those tattoos are some form of heavy skin weave, I think you’re missing that point.”
“Yeah, well,” was all he’d been able to muster in reply. Chakwas patched him up, slapped a thick coating of antibiotic sealant paste on his arm – and God did he lament the damage done to his original ink, there was only one tattooist on Omega he trusted for touchups and there was no time for shore leave – and then booted him out of her medbay.
That had been some months ago, and now he sat in the Citadel in the docks, watching ships pass by the broad, clear windows that looked out into the nebula. Shepard had come and gone, and to Zaeed it seemed the cares and worries she carried had bent her back, beating her down into constant weariness. Zaeed knew the look better than most.
He felt the same way, though not as keenly as Shepard did. He was sixty…what, five now? Six? Hell if he could keep track accurately half the time. But he didn’t feel old. He felt worn out. When he’d been a young man he’d have been in his element with this new goddamned war, going out into the fray and burning the bastards, laughing with the sound of blood pounding in his ears.
Now? He was wiser.
Shepard was burning out. But Zaeed, who liked the woman for her fierce combat skill and little else, was not particularly concerned for her. It was the idea that the doctor who so faithfully followed her would burn as well that bothered him. But even then, why? She’d given him cheek a couple times, patched him up, even saved his life once or twice. And she had a way of smiling when she thought no one was looking, a small smile that quirked one corner of her mouth and made her eyes crinkle at the corners-
“Christ,” Zaeed muttered, passing a hand over his face. She didn’t even think much of him. He’d heard her opinion of him quite clearly after the Eldfell-Ashland refinery, at his rage as Vido flew away unscathed. She’d cared for his burns with an expression that spoke of deep, repressed dislike. That had made for a pleasant sleep-over in the medbay. Awkward silences avoided only by faking sleep, and then slinking out of the crew deck like a whipped dog to hide back in his room.
Zaeed felt a creeping flush of humiliation burn the back of his neck at the memory, steadily working up to his face. Chakwas had an inexplicable power to embarrass him, and if that wasn’t the most pointless thing in the world he didn’t know what was.
He wondered if she ever thought of him. He had not been much of a pleasant creature to look at, even before Vido had shot him. She was so clean and sterile she practically squeaked when she walked. And there was that faint perfume she wore, something artificially flowery, probably just a dab at the wrists and behind her ears. The scent had lingered on Zaeed’s skin when she’d touched him, removing bandages or applying medicines or a hundred other little things that required her to get far closer than he was normally comfortable with – with anyone, really. Letting people get close generally meant they had more opportunities to injure, maim or incapacitate. Zaeed couldn’t even remember the last time he hadn’t reflexively stepped away from someone trying to close on his personal space, even medics.
Her, though. Her he hadn’t minded so much, no matter how much cheek, or dislike, or disapproval.