Curious Jealousy- a F!Shenko Fic

Chapter 8: Revelations and Comparisons

Kaidan sat up in his bed and read the files. He would have tossed everything in his stomach after seeing the pictures that accompanied the first entry (of course, it took a while before they actually got any better, but the first ones had been a shock), but he hadn't eaten anything recently. All he could do was read the log in stunned silence- nausea was a side-effect.

The pictures had been bad- beyond anything he could have ever imagined-, but the way that the logs read was just as bad. The person in charge wrote as though it wasn't a person- wasn't Shepard- lying on the slab. The person she was operating on might as well have been a surgery dummy.

Reading and seeing what had happened to Shepard was hard. At first, he was angry with her. How dare she give him something like this- how could she be so sick? Then, after a while (about the time the logs started reading six months since acquisition of Shepard), he understood. He had questioned if she had been dead or not- as though it was her idea to jump into bed with Cerberus. This proved that she hadn't gone willingly (or knowingly, for that matter) to them.

He wondered if she had even read the files.

He hoped not.

Her skin had been charred, as were her internal organs. There had been parts of her skin that remained intact, but not enough (Then again, he thought, anything short of completely intact wasn't enough.). One of the sections of her original self that remained was a small section behind her right ear. The picture showed that the small tattoo was there. He wondered if it had survived the complete reconstruction.

There was a memory related to the discovery of that tattoo, but he was afraid to focus too hard on it. That had been a very intimate moment between them- the first and one of the few. He pushed back the memory as hard as he could. He wasn't ready to revisit that particular one yet.

Maybe later.

"Major," a voice had him yanking his face away from his omni-tool. "If that's what is keeping your heart rate elevated, perhaps you should put it up for a while."

Kaidan looked up at her with haunted eyes before giving a shaky smile. "You're probably right."

Doctor Michel picked up a remote and turned on the news. "Well, this isn't much better, but it should still keep your heart-rate down a little."

"Yeah, you're probably-"

"-true that Commander Shepard is here?" a news caster asked a Turian.

"Sure is. Her, another human, and an Asari unloaded from a shuttle like they were going to stop the entire war right here," he explained. "But, Commander Shepard looked like she could do it alone- and, Spirits, let me tell you, I believe it."

"What do you mean by that, General?"

The Turian looked straight into the camera with an expression that was equal parts awe and disbelief. "She ran out of heat sinks at one point. Any other soldier would have stayed behind cover or hunted for back up clips, but she didn't. She jumped out of cover, bounded over fallen enemies, and shoved her omni-blade through one of the Reaper drones- what we all call a Cannibal."

"You sound impressed."

"And rightfully so. She dances with danger and comes out in the lead. It's truly something to witness."

The camera panned back to the caster. "Well, there you have it, folks. Commander Shepard is out risking her life to give us another day. Until next time, this is Hayden Forbes with ANN."