After the Fall prt 1

After the Fall

Part 1
Rubble

She was aware of being dragged.  When she could force her eye to open she saw dim lights flashing across her vision.  The smell of blood and smoke drowned her.  She might have believed she was in hell, if she put any stock in those sorts of places.  She was numb.  Hadn't there been a lot of pain before?  When was before?  Numb...that wasn't good.  Her mind was going foggy again, fading to blackness.  The dragging stopped and someone was shouting.  "Hey!  Get away from her!"

Blackness.

When she woke again, she did feel pain.  Until then she hadn't been aware that your fingernails and the ends of your hair could hurt, but she swore that hers did.  She also swore aloud, in a faint, breathy voice.  "Fuck."

She heard scuffling, then a face swam into her bleary vision.  Large eyes, very deep brown, were all she could latch onto for a long moment before she realized that a salarian was hovering over her.  His skin was green, a bit like Kirrahe's, but with more compact features.  "You're awake?" he asked.

"What the hell?" she managed.  She didn't dare move anything but her lips.  She wished she could find a way to stop breathing, because even that hurt like hell.

"You're okay," the salarian said, though he didn't sound sure.  "A keeper was trying to drag you away, but I saw that you weren't dead.  They're still piling the bodies."

"Keeper?  The citadel?" her memory was starting to come back.  Hadn't there been a child?  Wait, not a child.  A VI.  Why was it always the VI?

"Indeed," the salarian smiled slightly.  She noticed he had a few darker green bruises on his face and one eye was slightly swollen.

"Did we win?" she slurred.  Her own lips felt like she had taken a mean right hook from James Vega.

The salarian smiled fully this time.  "We sure did!  The citadel took one hell of a beating.  I don't know how many survivors there are in here.  I'm sure there are rescue teams on their way, we just have to hold out."

"I..." she winced.  "I told that little shit to go to hell."

"Little shit?" the salarian asked.

"Never mind.  Do you know what happened to the Normandy?"

"The flagship?" the salarian's eyes widened.  "Did you serve on her?"

The salarian didn't know who she was.  Well, in his defense, all her armor had been burned off, along with much of her skin.  "Yeah," she exhaled the word with effort.

"Wow!  Did you charge the beam?  A few made it up here, I think.  I heard a transmission about it before the comms went dead.  Very exciting!"

She decided to try moving her arm.  The right one.  She recalled her left was pretty beaten up.  She began with her fingers, then moved the arm.  Miracle of miracles, she lifted it slightly.  "Damn.  I don't think I've ever been this beat up," well, not since I died.  She decided to sit on that information for the moment.  She didn't know this salarian.  With her luck he'd turn out to be a criminal and if she said that she was commander Shepard she might just get held for ransom.

"I sewed up your arm," the salarian said, pride in his voice.  Gently he lifted her left arm into her sight.  Long, ugly gouges had been neatly stitched and cleaned.  "I'm a tailor," the salarian admitted.  "It was all I could think to do.  Not so sure about the rest of you.  I used up all the medigel I could scrounge together."

"Where are we?" she asked, after a moment of rallying herself.  Every word took more effort than it should.

"The wards.  We're near my apartment, but it got, well, destroyed.  Technically we're squatters in someone's home, but I don't think they made it because I haven't seen anyone but us for a while."

"The Reapers?" she still couldn't wrap her mind around it.

"The crucible didn't fire." explained the salarian.  He stood up, moving across the room.  She noticed at once that his leg was clumsily splinted and he moved with great difficulty.  Shortly he returned with a glass of water for her.  When he passed it to her his hand was shaking, probably from the pain of his trek across the room.  When he spoke again his voice was tight, "We thought we were done-for.  Finally it did fire.  All the Reapers died.  Just, fell out of the sky, or hung there, like empty puppets."

"Good," she gritted between her teeth.  "That fucking kid can go to hell."  She winced again and he looked concerned.

She attempted to drink the water he'd gotten her, lifting it clumsily with her good arm.  He helped, propping her up.  This motion made it almost too painful to drink, but she forced herself to take a few sips.  "I hope they come soon," said the salarian.  She must have looked pretty bad because his eyes were even larger as he watched her face.

"Me too," she mumbled.

"I'm Tek, by the way," he said.

"I'm..." she was fading again.  She didn't want to, but the pain was pushing her under.  "Commander Shep..." she passed out.

She didn't wake again for a long time.

"Here!  We're over here!  Injured inside!  Help!"

"It's alright.  We've got you!  Easy now!"

"Here, in here!  She's messed up pretty badly."

"Shepard?!  Lorelei?!  Oh god!"

Voices swam in and out of her mind.  She wasn't certain they weren't part of her dark, confusing dreams.  Then she was being lifted.  Carried.  The experience was acutely painful, and he felt annoyed.  Why couldn't she just go on sleeping?  She forced her eyelid open to have a word or two with whoever was jarring her along so rudely.  "Kaiden?"

Sure enough, she was in his arms.  He was carrying her, like a child, across the rubble two where stretchers were waiting.  Her hand groped and she clasped his armor to make sure he was real.  She knew his smell too well to believe this was a dream.  Tears ran down her face.  Lorelei Shepard had not cried more than a handful of times in her life.  Most of her tears had fallen when she was still a child on the streets of earth.  Still too young to understand how to be strong.  Now all her strength leaked away.  She was in someone's arms and she was being carried to safety, and it was about damn time!

He set her on the waiting stretcher.  She heard the chatter and buzz of every rescue worker in the area radioing that they had found her.  Against all odds they had found commander Shepard.  She wished they would be quiet.  She didn't realize she was still gripping Kaiden's armor until she felt him gentlely pull her fingers free.  He lay her hand on her stomach.  "We've been so worried.  Oh, god, Joker!  I have to tell him.  Poor kid has been out of his head."

"Garrus?" she managed to choke out the words.

"He was hit bad, but he'll pull through." Kaiden said.  He looked a little sad, but only for a moment.

"Where...are we going?"

"Earth.  We've set up emergency hospitals there.  Most of your crew is there, except Tali."  Kaiden explained as they began to move.

Shepard managed to turn her head, and saw with relief that her salarian rescuer was also riding a stretcher, being fussed over by someone in first responder armor.  She vaguely realized that she was receiving similar treatment, but took little notice.  "What happened to Tali?" she asked, still too numb to feel really alarmed.

"She's fine," Kaiden reassured her.  Somewhere along the way he had taken her hand.  She was usually the hand-holder.  The strong one when others were down and out.  It was nice to have someone do that for her.  She remembered when doctor Eva had almost killed Kaiden back on Mars.  She supposed he was returning the favor.  "Tali's taken charge," he went on, "Right now she's got everyone listening to her.  It's like they elected her your proxy, what with Garrus down for the count.  She's coordinating fleets, managing rescue efforts, working on the mass relays..."

Go, Tali Shepard thought with a wan smile.  Even smiling hurt.  "The relays?"

"I'll explain later, when you're up for it." he smiled at her and she saw a tear run down his cheek.  He hadn't expected to find her.  He'd thought she was dead.

"Look," the salarian, Tek, spoke up.  She tilted her head in his direction.  "The keepers.  They're still piling bodies.  Why are they doing that?  The Reapers are dead."

"We don't know," Kaiden said, watching a nearby keeper lug what was left of a human torso towards a heap it had made.  "We've been leaving them alone except when they try to put a live person in their pile.  We'll have to try to figure it out eventually, but for now I don't think it matters."

Shepard was feeling distant again.  The voices were beginning to echo around her.  "Kaiden..."

He leaned close, concern in his eyes, "What is it?"

"My ship?"

"The Normandy is great," he said.  "She weathered the storm with the best of them."

Shepard smiled, then passed out again.