I had a fic idea today - there's no way I would ever have time to write it (barely have time on my existing storyline), so if any of you want to take this and flesh it out, feel free:
A Quarian on pilgrimage hears of a ghost ship on the outer edge of the Maroon Sea Cluster. She's a solid engineer, if a little overconfident, so she decides to rent a shuttle to try and find the ghost ship. An entire freighter would make an excellent pilgrimage gift. Naturally, she can't afford anything but the cheapest ship rental... a shuttle that looks in even worse repair than the ships of the Flotilla.
She finds the ghost ship, stuck in a gravity well on the far side of a supergiant gas planet. Unfortunately, her shuttle's systems utterly fail and she is stranded on abandoned freighter. Intense radiation from the local star makes distorts communications, and she doubts her distress beacon is able to reach anywhere outside of a few light years from her position.
Strangely, the ship's drive core is still functional, and she finds nothing wrong structurally. It appears that the ship is stranded due to damage wrought upon its systems by crew themselves. Ship's logs tell the rest of the story - spores being transported from a survey planet back to research facilities in the Alliance escaped their containment canisters and drove the crew mad. The Quarian finds them in various states... some dead in their sleep, others killed by their own madness when they struck volatile materials on the ship (such as power couplings).
The Quarian is utterly devastated from what she sees, but she manages to pull herself together, giving the crew a proper burial in space and venting/re-cycling the ship's air supply to remove all trace of the spore that caused the madness.
Having no way to call for help, she turns to the task of repairing all the systems damaged by the maddened crew. The shuttle is dead, and her only option is to get the freighter mobile again. It's a daunting task, but one made slightly easier by the fact that there is a supply of Turian foodstuffs in the cargo hold - at least she won't starve.
As she starts working, the feeling of being alone on such a large ship beings to get under her skin, utterly unnerving her. Quarians are very social by nature, and are used to being constantly surrounded by others, be it on the Flotilla or off. To her mind, even the disdain of those she met on her pilgrimage would be better than this.
After about a week, she finds something while tracing an anomalous power draw... within the medical bay is a covered stasis pod she missed the first time through the ship. Inside is a human spared from the spores due to the sealed chamber. Logs show that he is a coma patient, an Alliance cadet being transported back home after an accident sustained during shore leave. The freighter was commissioned to transport him because it happened to be the one with the most direct route... talk about bad luck. Other than a first name, "Jeremiah," and a report of his injuries, there is virtually no other information listed about the young human.
The Quarian, grateful to have any kind of company, begins to treat him in the same manner that Tom Hanks treated Wilson the volleyball during Castaway, except to a much greater degree due to Quarians' highly social nature. She places his pod on an anti-grav dolly and starts to drag him around with her as she repairs different parts of the ship. She talks to him, imagining his responses and using him as a backboard for all her ideas on how to get the ship operational.
The repairs drag on... the job that seemed so easy before is now daunting in scale (I'm picturing a freighter about the size of the Strontium Mule from ME2). To ward off the feeling of solitude, the Quarian beings to invent a back story for the cadet, one that becomes more and more elaborate as time passes. In her mind, he goes from being a passive accident victim to a stranger who unexpectedly starting helping her on her pilgrimage.
Suddenly, he wasn't anymore a passenger on ghost ship, but the one who had first told her about it and had helped her find and repair it. He had been injured while helping her with the repairs, and she had the pod put him in a medically induced coma for lack of any better option.
Weeks turned into months, but the ship was coming around. The Quarian had taken to sleeping in the stasis pod, desperate for any kind of contact. It was during one of these nights that the cadet finally woke up, the continued disturbance of the stasis pod eventually jarring him out of his coma. Suffice to say, it was a rude awakening for both of them, but the human's shock was quickly overshadowed by the realization that he had lost all personal memory. The trauma that caused the original coma had given way to amnesia.
It was a gap the Quarian was only too happy to fill. By now, her mental image of the human was so complete that she had no trouble relating every detail of how they 'met' when she started her pilgrimage, to how he had helped her find this derelict and how he was planning to come back with her to the Flotilla to present it to her new captain.
With no reason to doubt her, the cadet helps her as much as he can as he slowly recovers and regains the use of his body. With two people working, the repairs come much faster, and within another month, the freighter is finally ready to fly. The two of them manage to get it up to FTL speed for long enough to escape the comm-scrambling radiation of the local star and send a message to the Flotilla.
The Flotilla is absolutely thrilled to receive such a high-quality ship, despite the need for additional repairs, but the Quarian's new crew is highly skeptical of the human's presence. Given the level of her pilgrimage gift, they humor the Quarian and help provide quarters and provisions for the man. Naturally, there are many questions, and while her fantasy is elaborate, eventually, the other Quarians start to find holes and inconsistencies which only serve to frighten both the Quarian and the cadet. They turn to each other, but are still confused despite the common comfort.
Eventually, the Flotilla is brought to high alert as a task force of Alliance destroyers shows up, led by none other than the 5th Fleet Commander. Turns out the cadet is Jeremiah Hackett, none other than Admiral Hackett's youngest son. When the Flotilla registered the name change on the freighter, it alerted the Alliance and summoned the task force.
When the full story comes out, the Quarian is extremely confused and upset, two versions of the reality of the past eight months clashing in her mind. How could Jeremiah have met her at the start of her pilgrimage if he had already been in a coma by then? It is only now that the rest of her ship realizes how far gone she really is. With apologies, Jeremiah is returned to his father, though he doesn't know what to believe. The Quarian is crushed, and is taken to a medical ship for treatment.
10 months later, the Quarian doing what work she can, piecing her mind together. She cannot stand to be left alone, and the medical staff always makes sure she is assigned to large work teams. Out of the blue, an odd shadow appears on the other side of her cubicle's curtain. It takes her a while to recognize the outline, but it is none other than Jeremiah, now a newly graduated 2nd Lieutenant. His personality is different, now that he's regained his original memories and personality. But he's returned to get to know her as his real self. Thanks to Commander Shepard's efforts to open up diplomatic relations between the Alliance and the Flotilla and Admiral Hackett's influence, Jeremiah has now been assigned to the Flotilla as an official liaison. As yet, he has no official duties, so for now he offers to work with the Quarian so she won't be left alone.
Lividity... I'm looking at you. This has your style written all over it.