This choice: Jack was a member of "the all girl's club:" Femshep romance • Go Back... "Is she gonna be... ya know, okay?" Jack said.
The salarian doctor inhaled sharply, "Difficult to say with full certainty. Do not want to be premature. She has experienced massive trauma, her suit was fully compromised, and as much of her body is cybernetic to the point where she needs a bio-engineer more than a doctor,"
Jack's turned away, lips hanging open. She come so close, finding her again after all that. To lose her now, on an operating table, would crush Jack in a way she couldn't imagine.
"But," the doctor's tone shifted to something upbeat, almost prideful, "Shepard is resilient, a true hero's resolve. Not want to heap on praise but Icon for us all really. Recovery probable." The salarian beamed, "Now if you'll excuse me I have other patients to attend to, ones... less fortunate."
Jack didn't blame him. Reaper victims were piled by the dozen into whatever medical service could be thrown together in the London ruins and the few functional hospital ships in orbit, to say nothing of the number of dead. Earth was a graveyard, they should start handing out shovels as standard gear to new arrivals. It was a massive relief off her shoulders to hear the doc's words, but at the end of the day there was only one patient, one woman, that she cared about and she was in there, broken and bleeding on a bent metal bed and it hurt to see her like that.
She pressed a hand against the window glass, "Please," a lonely tear rolled down her cheek, "you promised you'd come back to me. Don't make a liar out of yourself now, okay?"
*
Jack barely moved from her chair in the dingy, hastily sterilized, former-office building that had become one of the most active ersatz hospitals in London. She'd take her meals right there by Shepard's room. To keep herself from drowning in the feeling of being a little lost puppy, she'd visited her students. They'd done her proud when the fire was on and it'd be wrong to let them see her as down as she was when they'd been through as much. She had to be their rock. So she put on her best face with them, cracked a joke or two even. Rodriguez had survived, sans an arm and it was a whole new ballgame for her just learning to live with the prosthetic. But every minute away from her left Jack feeling like something was breaking inside.
Eventually, the word came through, "She's awake. You can go inside."
Jack flung herself across the room and slapped Shepard across the cheek, instantly regretting it but doing her best not to show it. While Shepard gave her a perplexed, "Gee, thanks," look, Jack swooped in for a kiss. It was sloppy and off-guard but Shepard played into it almost without missing a beat. It was her all right. Jack pulled back, trying to smile and regain her composure at the same time, "Don't go dying on me, Girlscout." Shepard smirked, "I'll try not to," and cringed, "This still hurts as bad as it looks. I think I have more bandages and medi-gel in me than blood."
Jack could feel like herself again now that she'd talked to her, felt the warmth of her lips again. It was a miracle seeing a sign of life more substantial than the beep of a machine or the flow of fluid in a tube. She was real again, back and alive.
She tried not to visit everyday, the parade of friends, military officials, and press to see Shepard, the Hero of Earth, made it easier. She found time to eat again, put up her hair, bother with makeup. She helped Rodriguez and her other students. Half her job at this point was playing grief counselor to the kids. It was therapy for herself as much as them. Over the weeks the place began to look less like a crater and more like an actual city again. Jack's heart soared as Shepard progressed, she can stay awake for an hour became she can walk became a discharge--and aside from some irretrievable pieces of Reaper shrapnel, a full recovery.
They didn't wait for nightfall, they didn't even make it out of the building. On the abandoned top floors, in the open air, they went at each other, very long awaited glad-you're-alive-sex. It was the most passionate moment of Jack's life.
*
Shepard technically remained on active duty, the PR department would never let the most valuable Spectre, the Savior of the Galaxy, retire but she had her choice of posts and she wouldn't have anything but right where she belonged at Jack's side, mission: live happily. The Academy temporarily relocated to Argas III, a sleepy rural Alliance colony that had been mostly spared Reaper assault. It was idyllic really, approaching the point of supplanting the ruined Eden Prime as a natural-wonder pleasure planet. Greenery wasn't really Jack's idea of paradise but the students seemed to like it, the fresh air was good for them. Rodriguez had stayed on as staff, a sort of understudy/assistant. Some day that kid was gonna steal Jack's job, and she was damn proud of her, of all of them.
But all the pride in the world wouldn't cure the sick stomachs she's been getting lately. Maybe it was this placid colonial food messing with her? It was more than that, lots of little symptoms that seemed to say this wasn't some local space-flu. When she missed that time of the month, her alarm bells really went off. She went to a med-clinic.
"You're fucking with me, right?"
The human doctor shook her head, "'fraid not ma'am. Pretty cut and dry to me."
"Look, lady, I'm a... I have a... girlfriend, okay."
"Not my business at all what you do, but-"
Jack gritted her teeth, her biotic aura flaring up in pulsing blue waves spiraling around her arms, "I know what the fuck goes on down there! Know how long since I've been with a guy?"
"Okay, calm down. We'll run some more tests but there's no two ways about this, you're pregnant."
*
How is Jack Pregnant?  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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