30 Days of Shenko: 15-Order

In the Alliance military, order and regulations dictated the lives of its officers. It was a hard habit for Shepard to break after all this time. She simply could not get the hang of the whole "weekend lie-in" business; she was wide awake by 7 am every morning, no matter how late she stayed up the night before.

So when Kaidan found her fast asleep beside him one morning, he knew something was wrong. He leaned over and gently kissed his wife on the temple.

"Mmm?" she murmured, shifting her head so she was turned toward Kaidan.

"It's nearly ten," he said. "I need to leave in an hour."

"What?" she muttered sleepily.

"It's almost ten," he repeated, a bit more firmly now. "Brielle--"

"What?" Brielle sprang up, so suddenly that she almost hit Kaidan with one of her flailing arms. Before he could move a muscle, she was out of bed and in the bathroom. He followed her at once.

Brielle was sitting on the floor, heaving into the toilet. Kaidan sat beside her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder as she emptied her stomach.

"What's wrong, baby?" he said softly.

"I don't know," Brielle's voice was nearly a whimper, and the sound of it alarmed Kaidan  far more than anything yet. She sounded feeble, and that just wasn't in Brielle Shepard's nature.

"I'm calling a doctor," he said sharply. "I'm worried."

Kaidan helped Brielle to her feet and guided her back to bed. He climbed in after her and held her close as she cried against his chest for the first time in her life.

By half past ten her sobs had subsided into deep, heaving sighs, and five minutes later they were snores. Kaidan slipped out of bed quietly and called for a doctor. One of the  benefits of being war heroes, he thought to himself, was having a concierge doctor at their immediate disposal.

Even if Kaidan left now, he would be late for his first class of biotic students. In any case, he didn't want to leave Brielle alone to deal with the doctor; he had never seen her so fragile. He would never have believed that "Shepard" and "fragile" were two concepts that ever could meet. He just wished he knew what was happening to her.

Little did he know that from this day forward, the order that dictated their lives ever since life in the military was going to be thrown into chaos for the next nine months.