#ashleeeeey

Post-Mars is pretty awful for Darrian and reminds him a lot of Eden Prime and Virmire.

And he absolutely panicked and just locked up over Ash being hurt. He would have done better if it had been something that he knew how to fix but “head trauma that requires surgery” is not one of those things.

Liara is such a gem there and was definitely also quietly panicking over Ash and also panicking because Shepard locking up like that was new and strange territory.

James watched Darrian tear around the shuttle yelling for Ash and everything he did after that, had no trouble connecting the dots between awkward meeting in Vancouver + previous argument, and went “oh.”

Darrian slid back into tactical/commander mode once Liara stuck her face in his face to get him to focus.

So emotions got pushed off to one side (mostly) while he was telling Joker what to do and talking to Hackett and then he went straight back to worrying and didn’t pay much attention to Liara’s why-don’t-we-try-the-superweapon-Shepard-hello-what’s-your-opinion-on-this conversation.

And then he walked off and past Traynor (which was the third time he’d been in the same room she was in and didn’t register her presence), dumped his armor in his cabin (in hindsight, a bad decision and not a great way to treat equipment. somewhere Gunny Ellison felt inexplicably annoyed), showered, changed, walked past Traynor again, and sat in the med bay with Ash.

Which was the reverse of waking up after Eden Prime to find Ash and Dr. Chakwas there and almost exactly like sitting in the med bay with Ash post-Virmire waiting for her to wake up so he could tell her about Kaidan (instead of leaving it to Dr. Chawkas) except 1) it’s a different ship 2) no Dr. Chawkas around and 3) this time he was just really wishing she’d wake up instead of feeling torn between “I wish she’d wake up” and “I really don’t want to tell her this.”