Curious Jealousy- a F!Shenko Fic

Chapter Twenty-Four: Hurt

Shepard and Kolyat stood together in the hospital for a long time in silence- he mourning his father and she mourning a friend. For people who had not lived lives as they had lived theirs, there may have been quiet, sympathetic words spoken, but that was not who they were.

Tucking her hair into her hat, Shepard squeezed Kolyat's arm and gave him a small, weak smile. Words escaped her- this was not a situation that required an empowered speech and a call to battle, this required words that she didn't know how to use. She also wanted to apologize…but those words, too, were beyond her. She wanted to express sympathy…but couldn't find the words.

She was just too tired.

"Thank you for being here, Commander," Kolyat murmured.

"If you need anything- absolutely anything-…don't hesitate to contact me," she insisted.

Shepard bowed her head and hurried from the room. She needed to be far away from that damn hospital. Nothing good ever came from being required to meet someone in a hospital- at least not according to her track record.

She pressed the elevator call button and waited impatiently for it to arrive (We manage to master space travel, she thought bitterly, and we still can't manage to speed up the damned elevators). Without thinking, she scratched her right arm and let out a curse as she winced.

"Damn it!"

She was about at the end of what she could handle that day. Between almost getting shot by Udina and Thane's death, she didn't really want to deal with ripping the hastily applied medi-gel off.

But the universe didn't really much care what she wanted and she was left standing there bleeding through her spare BDUs.

"Lia!" a familiar- and annoying- voice chirped from behind her.

Yeah. That was also on the list of what she didn't want to deal with.

Plastering on a semi-acceptable face, she turned around. "Adria, it's so great to see that you're okay."

Was it petty that seeing her covered in blood gave Shepard a sick satisfaction?

"Oh my goodness!" Adria gasped, rushing forward. "You're bleeding. Come on; let's go get you patched up."

"It's not a big deal," Shepard insisted. "It's not going to kill me."

"Lia."

"I'll just have my ship's doctor take care of it when I get back. Worst case scenario, I lose some blood and have to throw out this pair of BDUs."

Adria gave her a disapproving look that was eerily similar to Chakwas' (They must learn that look in medical school, she decided). Sighing, Shepard shrugged and nodded her head, following Adria to get all stitched up.

"Were you in the battle?" Adria asked conversationally as she ushered Shepard into an empty room.

Shepard thought hard on how to best answer the question before nodding. "Yeah, I tried to save as many as I could."

"You sound just like Kaidan," Adria said off-handedly as she walked over to some cabinets to get the necessary materials to stitch Shepard up. "I suppose it's true that all of you in the Alliance are a lot alike."

With caution, Shepard pointed out, "All of us have the same basic training."

"Yeah, but then there's the different kinds- biotic, tech, basic soldier, and all the stuff in between. Not to mention all the letters and numbers!"

This was one of the reason Shepard had limited personal interactions with civilians. They didn't grasp the magnitude and amount of pride military personnel had in their jobs. Each letter represented a different code for a vocation in the Alliance- a lot more than all the letters and numbers.