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Chapter Text

Year 2177
Akuze – Low Operational Orbit (LOO) – 0400hrs EST
Fenris Station
Alliance Marine Expeditionary Unit - Eagle Company

The motorpool rang with the sounds of operational tempo, as screaming power tools and demanding shouts fought for their place amongst the din of preparations. Pneumatic impact drivers whirred on rusty bolts, swapping out bent wheel housings of the four M35 Mako Infantry Fighting Vehicles for refurbished rims. Warning klaxons blared as overhead cranes effortlessly plucked stained engine blocks out from the rear of each vehicle, replacing the ruined, monstrous power units with fresh engines straight from the foundries on Mars.

The Alliance forward operating station Fenris, hanging in LOO above Akuze, was on edge. Non-comms and junior officers pressed technicians to complete repairs ahead of schedule. Junior enlisted frantically dodged forklifts careening around corners, rushing to find their units. Everyone could feel it in the air, the operation felt makeshift, haphazard, and without much of the equipment that the gargantuan Alliance logistical machine could normally offer. Make it work was the motto of the day.

A pasty, pimple-faced marine sprinted towards the Eagle Company IFVs, with the back of his shirt untucked and his rucksack precariously swaying as his newly issued boots squeaked on the concrete flooring. Glancing down at his omni-tool, the enlisted man was blind to the world around him.

"OOOFF-," the marine eked out as the air was driven from his lungs. Pvt. Matt Johnstone, all 60kg of him, had brought up solid against a duffle bag full of gear, as well as the 105kg of officer that happened to be carrying it at the time.

The 2nd Lieutenant eased the bag off his shoulder and scooped the proned man off the ground in a single motion. The Lt.'s mouth didn’t quite reach a smile, but he was bemused at both the kid, and Johnstone's unsuccessful attempt at growing peach fuzz on his upper lip. The private seemed to have been attempting to grow the lacklustre moustache while on leave, as spotty facial hair fell outside of regs. Evidently, the young man had been pulled back onto rotation a little too soon, the thin line not quite that.

Johnstone snapped a hasty salute once back on his feet, despite the Pvt's air appearing to be driven from his lungs, "Sir! Sorry Lt. Shepard Sir!"

Lt. Andrew Shepard returned the salute and gave a quiet at ease before picking up Johnstone's bag along with his own, nodding in the direction of their ride. With Shepard leading, the pair wound their way through the maelstrom, deftly dodging other members of Eagle Company, and a forklift doing shuttle runs of 155mm mass accelerator rounds to the hungry IFVs poised in the garage. Johnstone hid in the shadow of his nearly 2m tall guide, safe from further low speed collisions as they approached their fireteam's chariot.

"Oh blessed day," a voice dripping with forced sarcasm intoned. "Our saviour hath climbed down from the mountain, forsaken his N Selection to grace us with his presence."

Captain Sorel did not look up from his data pad. Twelve years Shepard's senior, the veteran officer did not cut the inspiring image he once did. Soft around the middle, with greying temples and a worsening demeanour, any aura of command that Sorel still possessed was inertia from better days, when he was a better soldier.

Shepard let silence hang in the air after the obvious goad. The bait not taken, Sorel eyed the Lt. and spoke first. "Didn't make the cut I take it?"

"Don't know," Shepard lied flatly. "Postings won't happen until they have space in Rio to run a class, and they're short on seats. The Blitz recruitment surge has every training unit booked for months, even Vila Militar."

At least that part was true.

"Well, don't worry if it doesn't happen, it's mostly political. Who you know," Sorel smiled before continuing. "Then again you're a glowie, so odds are good you're fine."

I'm sure 'it's political' is what you told yourself when you pulled your application from selection. Once upon a time Shepard would have gnawed off his tongue trying to bite back a reply to the insecure Captain, but the days of valuing Sorel's opinion had long passed.

"Anything else Sir?" Shepard stoically replied, eyebrow raised. "The dismounts were pulled off leave last minute, I'd like to check them over."

Sorel stowed the data pad. "Yeah there is actually. Stevenson is off on medical, so V-1 needed a gunner. I moved Amani to my vehicle, Johnstone is her replacement for you."

Apparently Johnstone was still 'in' the conversation, looking at Shepard. Stiff as a board at attention, he tried to suppress a growing smile at the news.

Sorel awaited a response from Shepard, head slightly tilted. The Lieutenant’s tongue took a chomp after that latest quip, but he maintained composure. We're not being subtle if Sorel has noticed, Shepard thought, chastising himself. With a quiet acknowledgment and a salute, the junior officer spun on his heel and made for his team, Johnstone scampering behind.

A Mako IFV team consisted of three crew members to man the vehicle; a driver, gunner, and electronic warfare/sensor operator. A further five could be held in the passenger hold, in this case including the XO of the company. They worked in tandem with the three other vehicles in the platoon and other support elements when fully deployed. The danger for enemies was in thinking that the 155mm main cannon, or the coaxial machine gun were the primary threats. Instead, the six trained dismounts with anti-material rifles, top-attack anti-vehicle rockets, artillery spotting, drone warfare integration, and more were the true concern for any opposing force. It was less about the weapons that each individual carried to the battlefield, but rather how each marine acted as a conduit for the rapid deployment of overwhelming combined arms.

In an ideal deployment support elements such as self-propelled artillery, in-atmo air power and more would be on-station or at least primed for 'warheads on foreheads' in order to coordinate with the flexible, lethal dismounts for a variety of situations. Time and time again, this had proven to be a devastating form of modern manoeuvre warfare against the thin defence lines and fortifications of pirates and slaver forces on the frontiers of Alliance space.

The problem was, none of the support equipment was available for this mission. And rather than working in a company sized element, the personnel on hand only allowed for a four vehicle expedition, not even platoon strength, let alone a company.

Shepard skimmed the ops plan on his omni-tool, leaning back against his Mako as his brow furrowed. The objective was a small collection of early colonial pre-fabs, set on a plateau between steep mountain chains. Supposedly the engineering team and housing contractors had gone dark, and satellite images showed minimal to no movement of equipment or personnel. Given the early days of the colonial project on Akuze, the planet did not have full 24hr global satellite recon, and whatever occurred happened during a six hour satellite blindspot as the orbits of the available surveillance crossed over to the far side of the planet. No civilian or military personnel were in the remote area, as it was separated from the main efforts of pre-colonization.

If it was slavers, they were fast slavers. If it was pirates, they were tidy pirates.

Something is wrong.

Shepard was jolted from his concerns by a tug at his sleeve, which was followed by a quick salute from a subordinate.

“Lieutenant, if you have a moment?” The voice asked.

Stood behind the rear of the Mako, beckoning him to a corner out of earshot was Cpl. Sadira Amani, her raven hair wound in a bun that you could bounce a credit chit off. The pair rounded behind a 4m high shelving unit full of spare parts, their conversation cloaked under the white noise of a thrumming fuel pump nearby.

Sadira wore an infectious grin of perfectly straight, pearly white teeth, which contrasted sharply off her deep olive complexion. Cpl. Amani was the headstrong daughter of highly successful lawyers on Earth, who were mortified that their only child enlisted as a ground pounder in the fringes of known space. Amani's grades and aptitude scores would have let her waltz into any Alliance trade or civilian university she wanted, which she certainly planned to do at some point. The problem for her parents was, such cultured plans were going to happen after she'd 'seen and saved all there is in Alliance territory.'

"So?!" Sadira queried, flexing her Farsi accent for effect as she looked up with green eyes, the golden specks of her irises caught in the bright warehouse lighting. "How did it go?"

Wordlessly, Shepard pulled a piece of folded heavy stock paper from inside his jacket. Sadira didn't get past the N1 training letterhead and the first word 'Congratulations' before she wrapped her arms around Shepard's waist and clasped them behind his back, her head on his chest.

"Told you so," she said quietly, before quickly backing off to an 'appropriate' distance to the superior officer. The space between the pair grew, but Shepard felt the tension linger in spite of it. "Best of luck in Rio, Sir."

Shepard replied with mock indignation, trying to redirect the conversation. "Didn't think you'd be so happy to see me leave."

Sadira raised an eyebrow, and straightened her spine. Donning an air straight out of the Alliance's legal corps, JAG, she snapped back a razor sharp retort, but her eyes belied the mirth behind her words. "I assure you Lieutenant, my mood is purely a result of the Alliance making an excellent decision in selecting a promising officer for its coveted N school. Seats at the Villa are few, and I'm pleased to observe that this selection process was clearly thorough."

Shepard opened his mouth to speak, but Sadira asserted herself, as if she was submitting closing remarks to a presiding judge. "Furthermore, my interest in this selection is purely for the betterment of the Allianc- nay, Humanity. The reasons why I believe this promotion is such an astute decision have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that while at N school and assigned to your subsequent postings, you'd fall under the Alliance SOCOM hierarchy, and would be completely removed from the chain of command of this current unit."

Sadira was barely holding back a laugh by the end of her spiel.

She's going to go far, if she doesn't get herself in trouble first, Shepard thought to himself as he looked down at Sadira and her poorly contained grin. Shepard had met the then private while docked for refit at Arcturus, she enroute to her first posting, him enjoying a brief leave. They had crossed paths at a civilian bar, one of many off-base haunts for civvies and military folks alike on the station of 45 000. Neither had properly asked the right questions about their professions at the time, and grew close during the weeks of refit.

This of course resulted in quite a surprise for both when Sadira was issued new papers, falling under Shepard's command just prior to departure from Arcturus. But Shepard had to give her credit, she had been a consummate professional since, the hug the largest indiscretion since becoming aware of their new dynamic. Yet a tension had lingered, thoughts of unfulfilled promise on both minds. Despite both following regs to the letter, even the perpetually absent minded Sorel had noticed.

Shepard's voice took a darker tone, "You'll be fine without me, just keep your head up and look to your NCOs. It's a big galaxy, and a long career. Make sure you see the end of it."

"Yeah. Yeah," Sadira said, nodding, as she looked down, deep in thought. "That just means you'll have to promise to visit me on my adventures with the intrepid Captain. You know, to check in."

"See Sorel again?" Shepard replied with a grin, "Oh fuck that, you're on your own."

Sadira fired a soft punch into Shepard's arm as the pair walked to grab their gear, laughing as they went.

"You're an ass, Sir."

Year 2177
Akuze – Groundside
Communication Outpost E2-18
Alliance Marine Expeditionary Unit - Eagle Company (Platoon Size)

The plateau was an ideal location for a small scale landing port to facilitate further development. The wide, unobstructed plain was free of large vegetation or bodies of water, and was sheltered by nearby mountain chains from harsh winds or major storms. Said mountains were far too hazardous to host long-term communications gear, so a compromise was made to have the local ground-to-LOO transmitter installed alongside the future landing site. A wide field of muddy grass from the spring alpine runoff would have to be reclaimed for commercial or residential construction, but would hardly pose an issue to colonial development.

Driving rain fell in sheets, a chorus on the roofs of the advancing Makos, the grey curtain a reflection of the mood within the platoon.

Shepard squinted to view the pre-fabs through the precipitation, taking in the bodies that lay on the ground around the structures. Sitting in his Mako, V-4, the young officer held his jaw in his hand, eyes darting to find an explanation as the platoon rolled slowly towards the site. There were no obvious signs of battle, no scattered foreign weapons, equipment or transports. There were no scorch marks from landing craft, no distress beacons set up, and the facilities were not put to the torch. Some construction vehicles appeared to be knocked over, and some of the buildings had scarring, but these were without explosive residue or sign of gunfire.

The only other clue was that the ground was churned in deep trenches that ran in wide circles near the buildings. Shepard couldn't make sense of it, but he wasn't a civil engineer. Several unmanned excavators were nearby, and the Lieutenant thought that perhaps these channels were part of a larger pre-construction preparation for the marshy soil.

"3Alpha to 1Alpha, thermals showing body temperatures of 27°C versus an ambient temperature of 16°C. Bodies have likely been here for 12 hours or more, and we are showing at least 14 separate individuals. All ages." The radio squaked the news to all soldiers groundside. The message was for Sorel's vehicle, but it was broadcast on the general channel for the platoon from Eagle Company by Sgt. Hernandez in vehicle 3, aka V-3.

"1Alpha to 3Alpha, can you get an idea of what caused the fatalities? Any idea what weapons hit the civilians?" The ranking officer Sorel replied.

"Captain… these are thermals at a 16km range, in driving rain, and our targets are caked in mud," Hernandez answered with incredulity, dropping radio etiquette

Shepard groaned internally at the stupid question that had been laid plain for all to hear, but hid his frustration from the squad. He keyed up his mic quickly to divert attention, "4Alpha to 1Alpha, permission to launch FPV drones for close recon of the site?"

"Negative. I don't want them to know we are coming until we are right on top of them," came the reply through the radio.

Shepard looked around at the growing unease in his squad sitting about him in the rear of the IFV. The helmets all had polarised visors, but even without seeing the eyes of those in his command, he could tell from their shifting weights and sagging shoulders that their confidence was rapidly fraying.

"4Alpha to 1Alpha, can we speak on secondary?" Shepard requested, hoping the private channel would prevent further disunity in the platoon.

"4Alpha on secondary," Shepard said quickly on the private channel.

"1Alpha on secondary. Go ahead Lieutenant."

"Sir there's no sign of battle from orbital imaging, it's highly unlikely that we are facing any organised or near-peer military foe. In such a case, the element of surprise is not needed, we can bullrush a handful of squatters," Shepard let the analysis hang for a moment before continuing. "But honestly I think this may be a natural phenomena, I mean, just look at the buildings and vehicles thrown about. Perhaps a gas pocket release, storm, earthquake or local wildlife. Nothing would be lost by sending in the drones for recon."

The captain's reply was sharp on the radio, "No Lieutenant, I think this was a mutiny, or something similar. Some disgruntled staff, religious nutjobs or anti-human aliens sabotaged this station with the heavy equipment and killed the others. I don't want any of them getting spooked and fleeing, stow your drones."

Shepard looked down and flexed his hands inside his gauntlets in frustration, the cool matte blue armouring a far cry from the silvery knights of old, "Understood sir. Returning to primary."

Shepard already knew the answer, but asked a platoon-wide query to both focus the crews, and to make the point to Sorel, "4Alpha to specialists, any mines on ground pen radar? Or passive electronic emission leaks from the area?"

The responses chimed in as the 4 vehicles rolled towards the objective.

"V-1 negative all."

"V-2 negative all."

"V-3 negative all."

"V-4 negative all."

Shepard knocked on the hull to get everyone's attention, as he half hunched in the cramped vehicle's hold, "Don't assume pirates. Pay attention, stay smart, use what information you have. Make decisions, don't wait for someone to tell you what to do," He said with a booming voice to the group of early twenty somethings looking up at him for guidance. He then sounded out a familiar refrain of his, "Get the objective. Everyone goes home."

V-4's crew straightened up and nodded their heads upon hearing the last line. "Yes sir!" They snapped back.

The makos rolled forward, the engines roar, and grinding wheels in the muck all to be heard. The crew remained silent, until an update blared in their ears.

"All vehicles, 1200m to target."

Shepard cursed under his breath. There was still no sign of what was going on. As V-4 lurched towards the site, sputtering through the mud, the transmission began to shudder, rattling the whole vehicle as the driver laid on the pedal. The Lieutenant didn't want a motionless vehicle in a dynamic situation, it might as well be a tomb. "Patel, what's going on with the truck?"

Sgt. Patel rolled out his response in a cool, unflappable tone, a Mumbai accent peaking through. "Nothing Sir. The shaking is not coming from the vehicle. I don't know where the tremors are coming from."

It happened. A bolt of lightning, not from the sky, but from below.

"ALL VEHICLES, WIDE DISPERSAL, FLOOR THE ENGINES" Shepard bellowed over the radio as the hands of Hades threw open the gates of the underworld before him.

The response to combat varies from person to person, and situation to situation. For almost everyone, as adrenaline surges through their bodies their vision narrows, and their mind closes off audio stimulation to at least some degree. Fine motor skills deteriorate, and higher cognitive functions cease, the body resorting to what it believes will keep you alive that very moment. A novice marine unholstering their pistol may shoot themselves in the leg multiple times as they bring the firearm up on target, their mind flooded with signals of make the threat to my life go away as they hammer down on the trigger , oblivious to what the muzzle of the gun is pointing at.

The finest riflemen have always fought through this to deliver accurate, lethal rounds on target despite the obvious handicaps.

Shepard always felt that the finest leaders on the other hand had a semi-sociopathic detachment from danger. Rather than fight through limitations of cognitive function, lack of audio processing, and club-like fine motor skills, their minds had reached a point of removal, of detachment from the reality of the moment, which required a catalogue of experience to pull off. The trauma inherent in obtaining such experience would inevitably forge some, and break others. There was no shame or glory in either.

Shepard felt the adrenaline flood behind his eyes, his blue-white biotic corona flare, and time slow. Each second took a minute to pass, as his mind read the screens before him, heard the screams on the radio, and felt the movement of bodies rising to action in the Mako.

The creature, later to be known to the Alliance as a Thresher Maw, was a towering cylindrical skyscraper of chitin, acidic bile, and greasy, oily muscle. Future popular vids would show the creatures as lumbering, inevitable predators, but it couldn't have been further from the truth. Their mass was tightly coiled, finely evolved muscle wrapped in flexible sliding plates of thick, organic armour. Maws would react and snap out at prey or threats with preternatural speed, and overwhelming force.

With the dirt, rocks, and debris still yet to reach their apex from the subterranean eruption, the maw snapped its long claw with the whip-speed of a scorpion's tail clean through the roof of V-2. The light-pole sized blade punctured through the top of the main cannon, disabling the vehicle and leaving the IFV folded in half after the beast ripped its claw back out as it had come in.

The creature was faster than the IFVs, and the vehicle’s armour offered no protection. The crew would have to remain inside to get effective fire on the beast from the main cannon, but the risk to the rest within was too great.

"FULL DISMOUNT, MAXIMISE DISPERSAL!" Shepard bellowed into his mic as the roar of the engine consumed the passenger bay, "Drop the Marines at pace if you have to, and spread them out! Lose all non-essential gear, I want everyone light, and fast!"

As the assault ramp dropped, Shepard grabbed the collar plate of the closest marine, Pvt. Bell, and threw him out of the still moving vehicle, not even relying on his biotics. The nineteen year old landed with a wet thuck into the wet clay, and to the young man's credit, he immediately came up firing on the creature with his rifle.

What is Sorel doing?! Shepard wondered as the Lieutenant's own V-4 dropped off marines at 100m intervals, minimising the chance of multiple casualties from a single maw strike. Shepard could see V-3 performing the same function as his own IFV, dropping off marines on the opposite side of the maw in random, wide dispersions. V-1, Sorel's vehicle, on the other hand still had its ramp up, its crew still locked inside the communal coffin.

The main cannons of the three remaining vehicles boomed at regular intervals, and the machine guns chattered in the gaps between the mass-driver rounds being loosed. Roaring engines, the hiss of vertical thrusters, the cacophony of small arms fire, and the wet splatter of heavy clay under the tires of the Makos were a maelstrom of noise.

The plateau on Akuze had become an amphitheatre of chaos, ringed by the mountains.

Four marines from V-3 had clumped unknowingly, their eyes fixed on the beast, not maintaining dispersion. Seeing such a prime target the maw spun and unleashed a torrent of acidic bile, which clung onto the body suits of the marines. Steam rose as the ichor ate through their plating, and screams soon followed. Shepard saw a private trying to wipe his faceplate clean, just before the same arm fell off unceremoniously, melted through at the elbow. Others pawed ineffectively as the bile ponderously chewed through their plating to the organs within.

The weapons of the marines did have an effect, but the shots were not coordinated. The maw would dive under ground and spring up closer to where it believed a Mako or cluster of dismounts would be. Inevitably, the panicked men and women would get target fixation, their mind zoning in on what the 'threat' was. Shepard watched as hundreds of small arms rounds went aimlessly towards the claws of the beast, the terror stricken soldiers drowning in their fight or flight responses.

"Small arms, I need rounds on the eyes and nostrils, you can't get through the plating but you can disrupt its targeting! Grenades and anti-tank rounds, just make contact, it's moving fast, and it's not a standard target profile, your VIs won't be able to make precision shots," Shepard said as the last of his unit got out of the rear of V-4. "Main cannons, aim for joins and gaps in the armour, and follow up shots in areas that have already been struck. Stop overheating your barrels, this isn't ending anytime soon!"

Shepard felt the bottom of his stomach lurch as he heard the quick reply from the lead vehicle. "V-1 gunner copy."

Sadira. He had forgotten she wasn't in his crew.

The Lieutenant stood behind his vehicle crew of V-4 as they intensely focused on the nightmare before them.

"Patel. You have V-4," Shepard stated flatly. "Your job is to survive."

The eyes of the three crew flicked towards him, with a little more steel in their spine. Satisfied, Shepard jumped out off the assault ramp as the Mako pitched through a ravine of wet muck, and he landed in a heap, immediately caked in clay in the driving rain.

It was chaos. Though difficult to make out across the field and rain, Shepard could see that about a third of the dismounts had already been cut down, or melted into the mud.

The steady booms of the 155mm cannons continued to echo through the mountain ranges, as the three remaining IFVs poured fire into the hate-filled monstrosity. Shepard had grabbed a light machine gun, but carried nothing else. His fury exceeded that of the maw, and with a biotic aura flaring wildly, he shouldered the massive firearm, hauling the trigger to the grip, spitting a rope of high calibre rounds towards the eyes of the creature. He let out a guttural roar as marine after marine were scythed to pieces by the thresher before him in the distance.

To his right, a pair of marines sitting in the mud held one another. One was crying as they stuffed medi-gel soaked gauze into gaping holes in their friend’s chest. The recipient of the medical care may have already died. Shepard blinked hard, ground his teeth, and tried not to look at them. Those two were not the only tragic scene unfolding in the mud of that unremarkable planet. 

Stay focused. They need me.

Suddenly, the Lieutenant saw V-1 break from evasive manoeuvres and gun the throttle in a straight line dash. With its ramp still up on the rear of the vehicle, Sorel's IFV still carried its full complement, a mighty prize for the thresher. 

What are they doing?! 

"1Alpha to all units, you're ordered to commence a fighting retreat," Captain Sorel’s voice cracked into the radio.

Shepard could only watch in desperation. He knew from the second the engagement began that the maw was in favourable terrain, and its speed vastly outstripped the trackless IFVs that could only ponderously grind through the muck.

The Lieutenant desperately keyed up his mic, "4Alpha to all units belay that order you can't outr-"

It was too late. The maw had slithered behind V-1, its heaviest chitin armour plating all that was exposed to the air, its face and underbelly hidden as it pursued the lead vehicle. Once within range, it burst out in a flurry of violence; One. Two. Three strikes.

The plunging blades savaged the fleeing Mako, severing it into three clean pieces, along with the crew. One of the dismounts made some plodding crawling motions out of the ruined carcass of V-1, before his body caught up to the fact that it was missing its lower half at the waist.

Shepard stood dumbly, the LMG hanging limp by his side. Smoke rose from V-1, quietly wafting upwards as if nothing untoward was happening at all.

At that moment, V-3 broke, and dashed in the other direction. Firing backwards as it rolled over a burrow created by the maw, its tires spun fruitlessly, the engine screamed but the IFV made no progress. The thrusters along its undercarriage flared, but at such a steep angle this just pushed the vehicle back into the bottom of the trench.

With the chain gun chattering, V-3's 155mm cannon fired its last round into the face of the maw just before it came upon the immobilised vehicle, sending chitin plating flying in all directions. Enraged at the insolence, the thresher disgorged its corrosive ichor onto the Mako and its crew fleeing out the back of the ruined IFV. The results were predictable.

V-4 and its handful of marines were all that remained.

"We are out LT!" Patel yelled over the radio. "That's the last of the rounds for the cannon."

Shepard snapped back into the moment and keyed up his mic, "Continue evasive manoeuvres as long as you believe you are able. If the truck is stuck, ditch it."

The newly ranking officer surveyed the battle. His people were getting butchered, less than a handful remained and his one good cannon was out of rounds. The smoking wrecks would still have ammo. But 155mm rounds were huge.

"Patel, stay alive. I'm going for the shells," Shepard declared.

Shepard dropped the LMG into the wet muck and tore off in a sprint as the maw pursued V-4 relentlessly. Patel was pulling unpredictable, expertly handled changes of direction and speed, all the while handling the ruinous terrain for the wheeled vehicle. Johnstone plinked the thresher with the last of his machine gun rounds before nervously airing, "Co-ax barrel is out. Melted."

Shepard's feet churned through the muck for 400m as he made the mad dash to V-3, the closest of the two wrecks that hadn't cooked off its ammo. He was keenly aware that the sounds of small arms fire had vanished, but pushed the implication to the back of his mind.

Copper flooded his mouth, his legs ached from exertion, and his lungs burned. He could barely see out of his mud covered visor, but with a thump against solid metal, Shepard knew he had reached the shredded Mako.

The hull was still sizzling from the ichor, steam still rising. Empty skulls with smoking eye sockets stared lifelessly up at Shepard as he threw open the blowout panel doors.

While not as cumbersome as traditional 155mm artillery shells, the munitions before Shepard were massive pieces of ordnance for a single person to carry in any quantity, each weighing roughly 40kg. Finding a torn off piece of floor plating, Shepard took the bent sheet metal and fashioned it as a sled, loading up a dozen rounds from the auto loader. Gripping handholds on either side, Shepard forced his legs deep into the mud, ploughing his way out of the wreck and to an open patch of field to rendezvous with V-4. He willed his biotics to assist him with the task, this last desperate hope.

The Lieutenant roared in pain as he churned through the muck, the tendons in his hands pulled taut to snapping as he dragged the sled along behind him. The fingertips of his gauntlets gouged out the inside of the metal, and his heels dug deep grooves as he pulled the munitions up, and out of a burrow where the maw had passed through.

His biotics were shedding waves of energy like a blue and indigo aurora borealis. The synapses of his brain flared with voltage imbalance as his body emptied itself of all electrolytes and fast consumption sugars. Every ounce of energy rushed to the frontline of his mind, leaving lactic acid to build and boil on his musculature.

His already slick skin felt a wet tickle as a line of blood began just under his nose, and he heaved the sled over the last berm before the clearing. All the while, V-4 gunned its engine, slammed its brakes, and fired itself up onto three wheels, Patel barely keeping the Mako from flipping on its side.

"Patel I have the rounds, meet me in the clearing 600m from your five O'Clock," Shepard eked out as he gasped for air.

"Copy," The cool Sergeant responded, focused on his task.

V-4 rounded a wide arc with its erratic turns, and began gunning at Shepard in a general direction, making sure not to remain on a straight line. The maw burrowed again, slithering in frustration after suffering the grievous wound to its face from V-3.

"If you can get it to commit to a direction, fake it out, swing my way, slow down, and I'll run this up the ramp in the back," Shepard spit into the radio as his chest heaved for oxygen, his mouth dry as the desert.

Patel executed the plan to perfection. He faked a straight line run, and just as the maw erupted from underground, hammered the brakes and spun in the opposite direction, jinking the thresher. The beast dove beneath the marsh, roaring at its failure.

The Sergeant took his chance, arcing V-4 towards Shepard and-

The front wheels sunk into a water filled crater, high centering the Mako.

"Ah fuc-" Patel managed before the thresher spewed up from under the IFV, firing it into the air, end over end. On the descent, the maw dexterously skewered the falling V-4 clean through the hull, pinning its prey to the ground with both talons, causing a fuel explosion instantly.

Then, slowly, deliberately, the maw pulled apart its claws, opening the vehicle like a pack of potato crisps, flames licking the inside of the hull, as limp forms of the marines slumped out from their seats. Shepard faced down the monstrosity across the open plane as it sized him up from a distance. Shepard was at this point a blazing torch of blue light, which seemed to puzzle and cause a moment of hesitation in the monster.

Alone. I'm alone.

Rain plinked off Shepard's mud caked helmet as he looked down at the sled of munitions, roughly 450kg of industrially produced hate, but without the means to deliver the Alliance's good justice.

It was then that Shepard could see just how close Eagle Company had gotten. The maw's face had one of its mandibles torn off, its lower 'jaw' open to the air. Most of its exterior plates were peeled back or blown away, leaving gaps that exposed the oily, heaving muscle beneath, scorched and rent in several places.

The maw chattered, twitching its remaining mandible before putting its enormous bulk into motion, locked on Shepard.

It doesn't want to go underground with those injuries if it doesn't have to.

The maw picked up speed, now 600m away. Shepard clenched his fists, willing his amp to allow him one last eruption of biotic malice. A screech scythed through the rain as the thresher deliberately ploughed through the muck towards its last victim, the beast savouring its final foe.

<450m> Shepard’s HUD highlighted in the top right of his vision.

The Lieutenant closed his eyes, reaching out to the 155mm shells. He focused, feeling the interaction of gravity between all things. The pull of the mass between him and Akuze, as well as the thread between him and his clothing. The disparity in the mass of the planet, and the insignificant creatures such as himself. The relativity, the intricate dance of stars, planets, dust, and all parts of existence.

<300m>

There it is. The pull of gravity between Akuze and the shells, 450kg of steel weighed down by a fundamental force of the universe.

<270m>

His left hand released the fist he had been clenching, and turned over an open palm as he called on the polarity shift of mass effect fields, upending the shells with raw dark energy. The twelve rounds began lazily floating upwards, turning end over end as he forced his hand to repeat the slow mnemonic patterns.

<185m >

Shepard opened his eyes and peered through the small gap in the mud on his visor, focusing on the yawning wound on the face of the maw. As his personal reaper of death barreled towards him, the Lieutenant reached out into the fabric of reality, and twisted it for a single moment. He found the thread of gravity that bound that vulnerable point of the maw and the shells, and unbalanced the equation in a supernova of blue light.

The rounds tore off with the acceleration of a rail gun, and three found purchase in wet meat inside the chitinous armour plating. Upon passing through the maw's soft openings, they stopped against the inside of the thresher's back exoskeleton.

A screech, a pause, a moment of doubt, of confusion as the maw realised 125kg of steel had deflected through its innards. Shepard felt the rounds in his mind and closed his left fist, crumpling the shells in a crude crush of biotic energy, at the same time as he brought up a barrier with his right hand. All three rounds ripped open at once with terrible vengeance.

The creature's exo-skeleton was instantaneously unmade, as if each piece of chitin and bone were suddenly magnetically polarised and thrown in opposite directions. Oily muscles and ichor were incinerated in the three fireballs, sending blackened strips of organic slop to rain down across the plateau. There was no shudder or death throe of the creature. A stump below ground was all that remained.

A few seconds later, a booming echo returned from the mountains, their acknowledgement of what they had witnessed. And then, silence.

Shepard would never remember how long it took him to cross the ruined, pockmarked field. Blood freely trickled from both ears and his nose due to the biotic exertion. He stumbled, fell into craters, knee deep in muck. His body rejected movement, and he must have passed out face down in the mud at least once. But he didn't know. His limbs moved in an automaton fashion, independent of his mind, grinding towards his subconscious objective.

Upon reaching V-1, the Lieutenant looked down to see Sadira still in her gunner's seat, her head limp to the side, a piece of piping through her chest. A quick death, with no long goodbyes or heart felt confessions in the rain. Green eyes stared off into the distance, empty without the spark that had been behind them.

Shepard gingerly removed his helmet. As the fading adrenaline failed to conceal his injuries, his hand protested at even flicking open the seals.

Staring up at the unremarkable slate grey sky, Shepard was that child on Mindoir once again.

Once again, alive. Once again, alone.

Chapter Text

Year 2178
Athena Nebula - Parnitha System
Thessia - Armali Polis
T'Soni Estate

"Sometimes I wonder why we ever bothered with spaceflight," the matriarch wondered aloud, standing on the shore as small waves cast themselves from the lake, not quite reaching the asari's sandals. She delicately held a novilus fruit in her hand, the fluorescent magenta and pale blue produce filling her palm as it hung from the tree above. Plucking it off the branch, the elder asari took a bite, and surveyed the warm body of water before her. "Despite my years I'm reminded how blessed we are that this is our corner of the galaxy."

The three asari stood on soft white sands with open footwear, wearing delicate clothing that fluttered in the warm breeze coming off the lake. The stances of each betrayed the dynamic of the situation, two matriarchs were discussing matters that the third, a young maiden, would have to endure. Clear turquoise waters stretched to the horizon, calm winds swayed the nearby trees in the orchard, and birds sang songs that carried for miles. A palette of pastels sprayed colour across both flora and fauna of the Thessian ecology, born from the rich eezo environment, with an evolved plant life that embraced bountiful colour and beauty. It was polite company in a polite setting.

"I certainly find it comforting whenever I return here," Liara T'Soni stated. The maiden post doctorate noted an undercurrent in the sudden declaration by Matriarch Analan, and was certain the conversation would be led in some direction.

Analan, a longtime confidant of Benezia and a regular figure in Liara's upbringing, began walking along the shoreline, fruit still in hand. The T'Soni pair followed behind the matriarch as she spoke, "You needn't scamper around the galaxy to advance your studies Liara. From what I can tell, you could do far more from Thessia."

By the Goddess I can never make sense of what matriarchs are actually saying when they speak, Liara thought to herself.

Liara knew that Analan held a number of prestigious official positions, and had unofficial influence over even more. While asari society participated in a true democracy, and there were few specific legislative or executive persons; governmental and non-governmental institutions still followed a traditional hierarchical framework seen in most other species. These bodies, such as universities or publicly funded research groups, held outsized influence in the machinations of power with the absence of true governmental figureheads.

"I am not sure that I follow your comment matriarch," Liara began, careful not to offend. "I apologise if you were under the impression that I had field assistants, or a research team that could carry on my work while I remained here."

Coughing to interject, Benezia said, "If I may, Analan, we were discussing the possibility of… re-focusing some of your work, Liara."

"There is an opening within the Xeno-Archaeological Research Board, an affiliated co-chair with the University of Serrice. Given your recent publications on the topic and decades of work with the school, you were referred to me by many. Including your mother," Analan said plainly. "The position also receives significant funding from a trust established by the Temple of Athame congregation here on Thessia, of which I understand you are a practitioner."

Liara turned her head towards Benezia, mouth slightly agape. She would certainly be interested in working on the board… but in four to five hundred years. Liara knew most of the members of the Board personally, and knew their opinions of her stance on the Protheans.

"I… I was not aware that I had been recommended for such a position," the maiden said in surprise.

"You've done excellent work Liara, I think it would be an appropriate switch in your career," Benezia said in a manner that implied it was a settled decision.

"What duties would be required of me?" Liara began as her head spun, struggling to balance the social dynamic while logically thinking through the new information. "I am not sure I would be able to appropriately manage my current work with these new responsibilities."

Analan and Benezia shared a sideways look as the trio stopped, now much closer to the T'Soni estate. Analan, with a slight edge of frustration, spoke first. 

"Liara, this would have to replace your current arrangement."

"I see," Liara began with hesitation. "I am still not quite sure I understand how I fit into this. My theories are quite well known for being controversial, particularly with many of the established seniors on the Board. Without being in the field to locate additional evidence backing my assertions, I believe that I would simply not be of much use."

Benezia interjected, "Liara, there is a wealth of knowledge on the Protheans and other races that could use fresh eyes and fresh thoughts. You would be given clearance to restricted material, you would have your own research team. You would be expected to make a case for a new direction of the department both internally and to the wider asari voting body to be more in line with your beliefs of the Protheans."

Liara's eyes shot wide and her voice caught the edge of a tremble, "I, I do not believe that I would be a suitable leader in this matter. Surely there is someone more qualified to articulate a new direction for an asari organisation such as this!"

Analan was visibly annoyed by this point. "Liara, you are being asked to take a chance, to come out from the shadows. We need someone to give the department a new focus. I know you have always seen yourself as a researcher but for the time being we need you to play the part of… well not a politician, but you would have to begin to learn to work with others. Your ruins aren't going anywhere, they'll still be old rocks when you complete your term."

Benezia quickly added on, but with soft tones appropriate for a mother, "There are some changes in the galaxy taking place. Ripples in the deep, that may come to the surface in time. You are uniquely placed to help us with that, even at your age, even if you don't feel that you are ready."

Liara knew her limitations of insight and detecting minute social cues, however in this case, it was glaringly obvious that both Benezia and Analan were dancing around some hidden truth that they refused to share.

"I would feel far more confident making a decision on this if I knew more of what your concerns were," Liara articulated.

"That information would come in time," Benezia answered quickly. "But you can't be privy to the details until you're actually working in the position I'm afraid. We are bound by laws that cannot be bent, even for you."

"Well, what will it be Liara?" Analan said, getting to the bottom of the matter.

Liara's head spun. What on Thessia were they implying? Why would they want her to be involved in this department at all, let alone in a leading role? Until this very conversation, Liara was under the impression that her mother simply tolerated her choice of profession, assuming that Liara would grow out of it and change paths in a later stage of life. But here they wanted her to take on a position that she was ill-suited for, with major political implications for the two matriarchs if she failed. How was she supposed to debate and articulate her theories with hostile, intelligent experts when she was intimidated by her own mother and a friend trying to offer her a prestigious job? No, I can not do this, Liara decided, before taking a moment to steady her voice.

"I appreciate the confidence you have in me but I am afraid I do not share your same beliefs," the maiden began. "Perhaps after I am somewhat more experienced it would be an agreeable arrangement."

"Given this conversation I see that you may be correct in that Liara," Analan said stiffly.

The conversation moved on from the topic, however the remaining time together was little more than a formality. It would have been rude in asari culture for Analan to leave on such a sour note, tradition demanded that a more positive or at least neutral mood was achieved before departing.

Once she was gone, Liara and Benezia retreated towards the family estate. It was not a sprawling, gargantuan manor as Benezia's wealth and influence may have dictated, but rather a tasteful structure, built into the hillside facing out to the sparkling Lake Kournas. Sleek, curved, matte white layers overlaid one another, like a pile of books stacked haphazardly. It was a beautifully designed home, appearing modern, while retaining an organic aesthetic perfect for the Armali countryside. It sat in a field of pale magentas and blues, the plants reflecting the pastel colours, while drinking the deep green light spectrum from the star around which Thessia orbited. The single celled organisms in the lake dyed the water in a crystalline turquoise, completing the stunning scenery so associated with the Armali region. Liara could see why so many species travelled from far and wide to unwind here, and counted herself lucky to consider this her home.

As the pair crossed the small wooden bridge over the brook that wound around the central part of the estate, there was silence between the two. Liara was naturally quiet, and could pass hours without speaking in perfect bliss. Benezia on the other hand rarely missed an opportunity to engage with her daughter, particularly given the months and years that sometimes passed between chances to meet in person. The matriarch must have been concerned, or angry, about Liara's decision for the elder asari to not have spoken by this point. 

Unusually, Liara broke the silence first. "While I do appreciate that you believe I am ready for such a step, I would prefer in future if I could be advised of similar expectations in advance."

Benezia walked through the patio entrance of the home, the glass doors parting automatically on silent tracks. "I am afraid, my daughter, that life will soon come at you faster than you are prepared to deal with it," she said ruefully.

Liara was exasperated. Why can she not speak to me plainly!?

"Mother, can you please tell me what this is all about?" Liara asked, following behind Benezia to the kitchen.

Benezia did not answer straight away. Pouring herself a portion of a translucent pale green drink, she grasped the stemless glass goblet and eyed her only child, "I will be leaving for some time Liara. There are important matters I must attend to, and I cannot trust anyone else to complete them."

"You have not answered my question," Liara sniped back, surprised at the spine in her own voice. "Why am I suddenly being offered prestigious positions reserved for matrons and matriarchs? Why are you so suddenly opaque with me?" Liara knew she was overplaying the last question, her mother had always kept secrets from her.

"Because things are about to change that will not wait for you to be ready!" Benezia stated loudly as an immutable fact. "I had planned for these discussions to happen years from now, but I am a servant to time, not its master," she said with an edge of regret, and sorrow. "I know you want to hide from the galaxy, to pretend that you can be a maiden wandering from dig site to dig site without a soul around or expectation placed on you, but things. Are. Changing."

She is impossible today! What has her bothered so? Liara could not remember a time when Benezia raised her voice like this. "How can I possibly be expected to do something about this when all you will tell me are mysteriously vague notions and warnings?"

Liara saw it. A flash of doubt, a parting of lips, a gaze sent to the floor for a moment. Benezia brought her attention up into Liara's eyes and Liara knew right then that her mother wanted to pour out what she knew to her only daughter. The matriarch had always kept secrets, but had never flaunted the fact. Liara did not ask questions, and Benezia let Liara live her life without responsibility or burden. This was something totally different.

"Mother, please. Just tell me what is going on," Liara pleaded, staring intently, stepping towards her mother and holding Benezia's forearms.

Liara knew the matriarch to be carved from stone, her face a marble Athame bust from the heart of the temple. But here the great Benezia was, emotion plain as day on her features, a seed of a tear in the corner of the matriarch's eye, her love for her daughter obvious to anyone who could have seen her in that moment. Benezia's mouth opened to speak, and for a moment, Liara thought the whole thing was going to come rushing out.

Please, Mother.

"I can't," Benezia finally said, her composure regained. "You just have to trust me."

Liara was genuinely angry at this point. Here she was, not even told that she was meeting Analan, and then ambushed by the two matriarchs. Out of nowhere, she was expected to turn her life upside down on a moment's notice. She was being told to give up her work, and based on what? Vague warnings and 'just trust me?' The whole thing made her feel violated, as if her concerns, desires, or wishes did not factor into this at all. She felt like a pawn to be moved around by the two elder asari in their political power games, and resented that she had ever been offered the job.

"No," Liara stated finally, with a rush of blood in her face, letting go of her mother's arms, "You are not being fair to me. This feels like I am just being played by the both of you for your legacies and your politics."

"Of course not Liara!" Benezia said, backtracking fast, "I just don't know how much longer I will be around, I won't always be able to protect you from everything going on in the galaxy." The poised matriarch was unravelling, an event that hadn't happened in hundreds of years.

Liara was incandescent. How could she be 'ready' for a Board position, yet so incapable, so inept, that she couldn't even be told what it was that Benezia was protecting her from? The whole thing felt like a grand manipulation. 

"You say you are protecting me but I am not allowed to know from what. You say I am ready for something I am uncomfortable with, and tell me to just trust you," Liara took a deep breath, "Why? Why should I trust you? Tell me something so I will know that this is not just two elder matriarchs that are worried about their legacies."

Benezia's words were just flowing out, faster than she could hold onto them, "Liara, I am worried about what is to come, and if I'm gone, and you're just a researcher and haven't built up protections, and because of who your father is-"

Because I am a pureblood.

Liara did not hear the rest, it all made sense now. The coyness of the topic, the 'danger', the prestigious position that she could be justified being put into. Even Analan, childless, without an heir to carry on any of her work had been a surrogate father to Liara. Each matriarch was a goddess in their realm, but neither could defeat time. And all they had to leave the galaxy was Liara. Dirt-covered, asari-fathered, loner, Liara.

"You are embarrassed of me," Liara said quietly, "The pureblood researcher, not even accepted by her peers, who will do nothing with her life. That is your legacy. You can not bring yourself to say it."

Liara's world swamped with black swirls around the corners of her vision as she turned towards her room.

"No, Little Wing, please," Benezia said desperately, tugging at her daughter's arm, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, "That's not true! That's not what I meant! "

Liara brushed her off, walking to her solitude, to familiarity, to safety. Benezia stood frozen in the kitchen, any semblance of composure lost. A titan of the asari people, shattered into a million pieces, leaned on the island counter top for support.

Eventually, Benezia walked to her daughter's room and stood outside the closed door listening, as she had done for over one hundred years, with the matriarch's whole world lying in the bed just beyond.

The door never opened.

In the silence that followed, a small ping escaped from the matriarch's omni-tool. The title of the message read:

[<PRIVATE BINARY HELIX EXECUTIVE LIST - URGENT>]

Chapter Text

Year 2183
FTL Travel - Enroute to Citadel
SSV Normandy SR-1
Staging Area - 3 Deck

The coffin was an off-black tending towards charcoal grey, with soft curves along the edges. A sharp, glossy line of cobalt blue ran the length of the box, offset to the right. On the top left, opposite the stripe, was the stately sigil of the Systems Alliance, reflecting the overhead lights with a mirror sheen. That symbol and so many of the people it represented reviled her and her family, yet she could only look on the capsule in the cargo bay of the Normandy with a quiet reverence, despite its contents. 

“Doesn’t feel right giving a turian those colours,” Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams said to the almost empty cargo bay. Her eyes darted towards the second coffin, which was draped in a red and white flag with the sigil of Eden Prime. “Especially not when there’s one of us nearby.”

Ashley could see the Lieutenant set his jaw before responding. Kaidan Alenko had been methodical, cautious on the battlefield on Eden Prime. She had watched him think about every action before he took it, and she had wondered if it was because everything about that fight was a complete unknown, with an unfamiliar enemy. As the battle went on however, as everyone else settled into the rhythm of combat with the synthetics, Kaidan had remained unwilling to act on reflex and instinct alone. And now, in the dim light of the lower deck she could see this extended to his social interactions as well. 

It dawned on her that he probably didn’t even notice he was handsome. That, or he would overthink the fact and never take advantage of it.

“Don’t think there were a lot of options, Chief,” Kaidan finally answered. “The Normandy doesn’t have a morgue.”

“Could have just left him,” she said bluntly.

Alenko’s face scrunched. “Return to the Citadel without the Council’s dead Spectre?”

“They'll blame us anyway, what difference does it make?” 

“They will blame who they should, Saren,” Kaidan said with a sigh. “Besides, it wouldn’t have been right.”

“Relax El Tee,” she said, crossing her arms. “Only joking.”

The Lieutenant eyed Ashley with a glance that let her know that he didn’t quite believe her, but also that he wasn’t willing to call her out on it. Whether that was because he wanted to avoid confrontation, or he was simply affording her space due to the loss of her unit, she couldn’t say.

Her answer came quickly. 

“You good?” Kaidan asked, matching her crossed arms.

She met his gaze. The body language, the upward inflection at the end of ‘good’, every marine, hell, everyone in the business of trauma knew what the actual question was.

“I know you’re not fine. Are you not fine to a level that I need to be worried about you?”

“Yeah,” she answered, suddenly interested in the floor. “Yeah I’m good.”

The silent conversation within the conversation. If a civilian was looking at this, they’d have thought that nothing was occurring. But for a soldier, the gait, stance, where the eyes went, these all might as well have been neon signs flashing the running dialogue in each person’s head. Ashley watched Kaidan’s eyes run up from her toes to her crown, then back down. The scan with his retinas was akin to an omni-tool looking for broken parts on some piece of machinery. 

Williams found her spine and brought herself up to meet the evaluation. Based on what she could tell, Alenko hadn’t been with the Normandy long. Jenkins was a loss, as any marine was, but there wouldn’t have been time for the Lt. to really… really know who wasn’t going back home. She knew, as cold as it was, the way Jenkins went out made it easier as well. Poor decisions, bad luck, and a rookie doing rookie things. Explainable fatalities let you sleep a little easier, let your mind rationalise mortality.

All part of the game.

“I’m fine,” she reinforced, and sat her weight into her boots with a stronger stance. “Being off planet helps. This… Normandy, Spectre, N7 stuff is all new to me… there’s no reminders, y’know?”

“Okay,” Alenko replied. “Let me… let me know if that changes.”

Ashley nodded. With a bit of her confidence back, she could feel a wrinkle of her normal personality come out. “Won’t have time for moping anyway. Riding with an N7? Shepard that N7? I’ll be destabilising regimes and sabotaging infrastructure by the end of the month.”

Kaidan let out a cough, brought his hand up to his mouth, and had a strange expression all of a sudden. Williams cracked a smile and continued, enjoying the opportunity to push the uptight officer’s buttons.

“Maybe even knock off some rich brat on the Citadel? Stir up some unrest in a terrorist group? Get information out of a batarian with a grav-car battery?”

A voice spoke from behind her, “And before you know it, nobody can take a photo of you because your face always comes out blurred.”

Shit . 

“My sisters always said I had a face for radio, Sir!” Ashley barked as she snapped into attention.

If she wasn’t in a salute so stiff that she might shatter, Ashley might have punched the Lt. right in that stupid grin that he was barely hiding. Despite him not giving her the heads up of the approaching Commander, Alenko did come to Williams’ aid by grabbing Shepard’s attention.

“Feeling better, Sir?” Kaidan asked Shepard as the N7 stepped into view of Williams, giving the ranking officer a quick salute. 

The Commander’s face was taut, his eyes boring into the coffins that lay before him. Ashley knew Shepard had been having a rough go in the med-bay after the beacon, even if the N7 hadn’t been aware of it himself. There had been small railings put up around the edges of his bed to keep his seizures from sending him to the floor, and discussions were had about whether they needed to stop at a planet-side hospital. Thankfully, Shepard had come around, and the decision was made for them.

Williams took the chance to size the newcomer up, as this was her first time seeing him in fatigues. She quickly decided she wouldn’t be asking him to spar. His whole frame, even without his armour, moved with… weight inside of the uniform. She didn’t quite understand how he had managed to walk up behind her without her hearing.

He stood a full head and then some over her, with a surf of wavy black hair on top, trimmed at the sides. His intense hazel eyes were still set off on the coffins in the distance. He had various pock-marks of small light coloured battle scars on his exposed forearms, which stood out against his light olive complexion. She guessed he had a sprinkle of Mediterranean heritage, a little similar to her own, but that hardly meant anything about where he grew up in these times. 

But she also took notice of the shadow of stubble on his sharp jawline, and small scuffs on his well-used boots. He clearly wasn’t a stickler for all the minutiae that so many officers were hung up on, and she doubted he was a ladder climber looking for promotion. No, there was an aura, a whiff of the aroma that special forces had. The spooks in the night, the amorphous blob that could never really seem to be pinned down to a place or unit. Hopefully he doesn’t have the same arrogance. Williams had dealt with the infuriating ones who thought themselves outside any rules. 

She was snapped out of the thought when Shepard answered Kaidan’s question. 

“I seem to have regained the ability to discern dreams from reality, which is a bonus.” Shepard took a sip of his water bottle and regarded Williams. “Any lingering effects for you?”

“No Sir, you tossed me before anything really… started,” she said quickly. “Sorry about the beacon. And for messing everything up.”

Shepard’s eyebrows went into a furrow. “Were you in possession of information that let you know the beacon would do that?”

“No Sir,” she said rigidly.

He took his eyes off her and stared at the turian’s casket. “Then there is nothing to apologise for, Williams,” Shepard said, the matter apparently concluded. 

He’s practical. That’s a good sign. “Thank you Sir.”

The Commander nodded and continued. It quickly became clear that he was down below decks for tasks, not idle chit chat. Shepard produced an OSD, and handed it off to Alenko before speaking, “Council reps are going to pick Nihlus up for the autopsy. That OSD has all of the imaging and forensics from the scene, I need you to do the handoff for chain of custody. They’ll want to do their own investigation, but if Saren is in the mix, make sure we have copies of everything before we turn it over.”

“Copy that,” Alenko answered easily, pocketing the OSD.

Ashley noticed the Commander didn’t acknowledge Alenko’s response. He was staring past Nihlus’s casket towards that of the young Jenkins.

“We found his parents; they moved to Elysium after Jenkins signed on. They don’t know yet,” Shepard said. 

“At least they won’t have to call it a training accident,” Alenko added quietly.

Right. Williams felt a rush of emotion, and let out an audible sigh. So many deaths in the 212. So many officials in black hats, going out to wives, husbands, and parents to tell them the worst news. The long approach to each residence, the dour look on the face of the officer relaying the ill tidings, the family member already figuring out what they’re about to be told. At least the shit show on Eden Prime was big enough that it couldn’t be hidden behind the tired ‘training accident’ excuse. So many times it was easier for the Alliance to shield itself behind those two words, rather than admit they had been somewhere they shouldn’t have. It was a small comfort to Williams that her comrades would not be covered up in the classic lie, and their families would be told where their loved ones had fallen.

“Commander,” Alenko began. “If you’re still recovering, I can type up the report. Neither of us really knew him.”

“No, that's fine, I've got it,” the N7 said evenly before turning towards Williams. “Captain told me you’re staying?” Shepard asked with an arched eyebrow. It was as much a statement as a question.

“Yes Sir, looking for some payback. Figured this was the place to get it,” she answered, matching his gaze.

He nodded, and for the first time, the corner of his mouth tugged at a smile, but it never quite formed.

“That it is Chief,” he said, turning back to the elevator. “As you were.”

Careful not to embarrass herself further, Ashley watched the Commander leave through the elevator on the far side of the cargo bay before she spoke.

“Smooth,” Alenko said after it was safe. 

“You’re supposed to cover me on all battlefields Sir,” she fired back at him.

“I did, you just need to work on your situational awareness.”

“Yeah well,” Williams began, turning to the dead turian Spectre lying in an Alliance casket. “There’s a lot to get used to around here.”

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Serpent Nebula
Citadel - Presidium
Ambassador Udina’s Office

The Alliance Captain pressed on the glowing orange button to terminate the audio playback, as the sound of the recording fell away to the ambient pleasantries of the Presidium.

Captain David Anderson’s fingers tapped along the keyboard while his other hand held his jaw, his molars firmly ground against one another. He let his gaze drift off to nowhere as his mind ran over the events of the day. Udina had a particular penchant for throwing him off his status-quo, but the usual mood after one of the ambassador’s calls was frustration, not contemplation, as it was now. No, Udina was actually a great help at this moment, it was simply the message that had been passed along that troubled the old veteran so.

The quarian Tali had been located, and the audio evidence secured. Anderson had just heard it himself for the third time, and a preliminary analysis showed that the meta data behind the recording was consistent with the story of the young engineer. Perhaps, deep in the layers of technical morass, there was fabrication or deceit in the file’s structure, but as of now everything appeared to be genuine, which hurtled events toward an inevitable conclusion.

Commander Shepard was going to be named the first human Spectre. And yet, history about to be made was secondary to history already written.

The Reapers. 

Anderson couldn’t shake the feeling. A deep, knowing chill had settled into his bones. When Shepard spoke of the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime, the old N7 had believed the Commander, genuinely. But a part of the Captain had found the revelation esoteric, and felt that there had to be a more grounded, logical explanation. He had wagered that in time Shepard would be proven correct, but the answer to the problem would be a manageable one. 

But this? Anderson just knew. This was the single moment where it all began to unravel, where the permutations of the revelation began to unfold. To what end he couldn’t say. 

My life will be measured in the time before this day, against all that remains after it, he thought to himself somberly.

The door to Udina’s office slid open with a quiet hiss, and the silhouette of an armoured marine passed through the threshold. The ambassador was elsewhere, frantically making preparations, and intertwining himself into the process of Shepard’s ascension. Anderson had no doubt that Donnell’s name would be stamped in triplicate over every form, news release and document before the matter was settled. Anderson couldn’t bring himself to care about the shameless self promotion. No, Anderson was not concerned with the machinations of politics. Nor was he even really considering the galactic threat, except in the abstract. This moment, this meeting, was a last chance; a deep breath before the plunge.

Commander Shepard snapped a crisp salute before sitting down in the chair opposite the elder Alliance officer, with Udina’s desk between them.

“How are you doing, son?” Anderson asked warmly.

“Finally got a handle on things here,” the marine began, “Glad to be proactive, instead of just putting out fires. The team was anxious before, but now the crew seem confident, ready.”

Anderson had to admit, Shepard looked better than he had since they touched down on Eden Prime. David knew the N7 hadn’t slept much recently, instead relentlessly hounding leads around the Citadel, finding useful contacts, and hammering enemies all across the Wards. But now, the marine had his familiar spark and hunger back. He looked as he said, 'ready'. Sitting in the chair across from the Captain, Anderson knew that he was looking at humanity’s first Spectre, there truly was no other option than Shepard. The Commander was pulling others into his orbit, they were already beginning to fall in behind him. Alenko and Williams had begun skipping their Captain, instead going straight to the junior officer even if the matter was more appropriate for Anderson's rank. Even the non-human crew were not immune to the effect. Garrus, while disillusioned, had given up his career at C-Sec for a human he barely knew. Wrex, the ancient battlemaster, was deferring to Shepard despite having possessions older than human space flight. Tali was the final piece, a member of the enigmatic and sparse quarian peoples, signing onto a military expedition on an Alliance warship despite the risks, and few promised rewards. 

Was the Commander aware of this effect he had on others, this gravitational pull? If he was, he hadn't shown any signs he knew of it. Little more than a week after landing on the Citadel, Shepard had secured allies. Now he had secured evidence. Soon, he would secure his place amongst the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance Unit. Once again he was proving he was the one to get things done when it counted, coming through with solutions as he always had. Anderson had seen this behaviour first hand aboard the Tokyo, and had heard the tales from that redacted period Shepard had spent with the N program. Others would lean on him for solutions, and the young officer would entrust no one else to take on the task that he set his mind to.

And that is the reputation you will end up suffering for, Anderson concluded ruefully. 

“We were all doing a lot of reacting. The Normandy, Nihlus, Eden Prime, Saren…,” Anderson began, hiding his consternations. “Always behind the 8-ball. Never the ones setting the pace, so it’s good to be on the offensive finally. Tell me about the new crew you’ve secured so far.”

Shepard nodded, seeming confident of his choices. “They’re good. It’s going to take some work getting them all to not step on each other's toes, especially in the field. But I don’t think we can pull this off without their outside help. You’ll like having them on the Normandy, even if it takes some getting used to.”

“I’m not doubting our new allies if you’re wondering,” Anderson replied. “Udina and a few others are kicking up a bit of a stink. Especially with the Normandy being what she is.”

“He can get bent,” the N7 said with a dismissive wave. “I trust Tali with the Normandy’s drive core schematics more than I do him.”

Anderson chuckled in agreement, even if he couldn’t say it out loud. 

“Don’t worry, I approve of what you’ve done so far,” David answered, tapping a pen on the desk. “Any issues I should know about?”

“None Sir,” Shepard said, as he eyed his superior with a slight suspicion.

“Good,” the Captain said as he looked down at some papers, shuffling them idly, trying to buy himself some time.

“You didn’t call me here to talk about people you’ve already read up on,” Shepard stated plainly, staring down the Captain.

He knows something is up. The Captain knew Shepard was awful at deception himself, but he never seemed to have a problem seeing through it in others. That himself and the young marine had spent so much time together didn’t help the ruse.

The senior marine wet his lips, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together in a tight steeple. He began with hesitation, but found his voice as he spoke. “The truth is... I... I just wanted to give you a heads up. The Council has yet to formally declare you a Spectre, but it is that, a formality. You will be provided the Normandy with all her crew, and I will step down. Congratulations Shepard.”

“You’re losing the Normandy?!” The Commander asked incredulously in an outburst, apparently ignoring the good news that had just been relayed to him. 

Anderson gave a small laugh at the reaction, “Yes, but don’t worry, it’s time. I didn’t picture this would be how my career was sent towards its twilight, but I guess we never do see it coming.”

“I’ll still be Alliance and the Normandy is still an Alliance ship. We’ve been a team since the Tokyo, this can work," the soon to be Spectre rattled off quickly.

The now-former Captain of the Normandy couldn’t help but allow himself a small smile. He didn’t relish ending his time on the frontline with Shepard, he had hand-picked the junior officer to come along to the new Normandy from their old posting. The prototype frigate was supposed to have been a smaller, more manageable ship, one where Anderson had intended on rehabilitating Shepard’s career into something more traditional. A chance to come in from the cold realities of the Commander's days with wetwork. 

David's eventual reply was calm, and measured as befit his experience. “And what happens to the chain of command when I order you to stand down on something, but you, as a Spectre, rightly go ahead and do it anyway?”

Andrew's mouth was drawn in a tight line, his eyes narrowed, and he did not speak. Anderson saw the wheels turning, as the young man realised that this was the only way. It had never failed to surprise Anderson when emotion was painted on the Commander like this. The young man before David was brutal, Anderson was under no illusions about what Shepard had done in the quiet corners of the galaxy. He was an N7 himself, he knew what the game was, what was required. But when the vague, redacted reports had crossed his desk, even he had taken a second glance at what the Vila Militar program had become.

"I am sorry Anderson," Shepard said with a cold, understanding gaze, but warmth in his voice.

The Captain gave a small smile, and looked away. So am I, Andrew.

And so, here they were. The hopeful mentor and the calloused student, snatched away just before the important lesson. The teacher stalling to make up for lost time they would never get back, knowing the trials his favourite pupil was to endure in the days ahead. David winced internally at the suspected horrors that would be inflicted on the closest thing to a child that Anderson ever had.

“She’s a good ship, maybe the best. But you know that,” Anderson began, switching the subject to halt his train of thought. “The crew are in sync, and Joker is the best pilot you’ll get. I think you’re right to bring in the ones you have already, tracking Saren is going to take a different sort of team than the Alliance can giv-”

“Sir, forgive me but,” Shepard said as he leant forward in his chair. “You’re stalling again.”

Saw right through me. Anderson sighed, resigned to the fact that even though he didn’t want it to be true, this soldier before him was the only choice. Beacon aside, this was both the man who had to take on Saren, and to be humanity’s first step into the orbit of the Citadel Council species. Anderson just wished it was someone else.

Will you look back on this moment at my age Shepard? Will you harbour anger, and regret for the choice you will surely make? Or will you die before you truly know what you are about to give up?

Do you understand what burden you are about to shoulder?

As the Captain's eyes roamed over the N7 before him, he noted the barest touches of aging, and experience settling into the early stage wrinkles on Shepard's features. Barely thirty, the Commander could hardly be called a young child, or naïve, but there was so much that the marine had yet to learn about things beyond the sight of a rifle. Anderson's mind wandered back over a mental summary of his own decisions as the moment hung between the pair. The senior Officer recalled his failed Spectre bid, his broken marriage, and strangely, Kahlee Sanders. He idly scratched his fingernail on the edge of one of the gold-yellow stripes at the end of his dress uniform sleeve which denoted his position within the Systems Alliance. A hard earned rank, that marked both a distinguished career and the costs he had paid along the way. 

It’s time to rip off the bandage.

Anderson pushed himself up out of his chair, and walked towards to the railing overlooking the Presidium pathways below. Shepard followed wordlessly, and there was a heavy pause before either spoke.

The younger of the pair broke the silence first. "Sir, what is really going on?"

The Captain sighed quietly, not looking at his compatriot. “I want you to know what you’re about to do. I want you to know that you don’t have to do it.” 

David felt the Commander's quizzing stare burrowing into him, but he couldn't look at Shepard yet.

“...Sir?” Shepard asked, begging the obvious question.

“This… this is going to be different. Just trust an old man when he tells you that he’s about to give you his ship, his whole career, and it feels like he’s the one cheating you,” Anderson said with immense guilt. “I don’t know where this will lead. I don’t know where it will end. But you don’t… you don’t have to do it you know.”

“I think you may be overstating the problems with becoming a Spectre,” the Commander stated, brow knitted in confusion.

Anderson wet his lips before he finally let the whole thing out in a torrent. “It's not that. Well, not just that. Everything is going to change. You’re not going to simply be a dirty little Alliance secret, knocking off terrorists on the back sides of far away moons. You’re going to be the face of this. All eyes will be on you. They will turn to you for everything, they will lean on you, squeeze you for all you’re worth. And when you fail… even the tiniest amount… and you will... at best they’ll forget you. Maybe it’ll be worse than that.”

Shepard lifted his chin, and spoke softly. “You mean the beacon. The Reapers.”

David nodded. “It’s not being a Spectre, it’s tying yourself to this prophecy, this vision. This is… this is real. You know that. But what you don’t know is that they will wrap you around this anchor. If it fails, it’ll be on you. If you succeed, it’ll only be because you dragged them kicking and screaming to the light.”

The young marine bit his lip and nodded slowly, his focus still out on the passing pedestrians below on the well manicured paths of the Presidium. The lives he would be charged with saving, as they jeered, and ridiculed him from the sidelines.

Anderson noted the contemplation, and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder, staring Shepard down. “I just… I just want you to know before you go climb those stairs and accept our poisoned chalice. You don’t… have to do this.”

The Commander searched over Anderson’s face. Shepard took his time, and the weight of his stare told the Captain that the young man knew in his soul what he was signing up for. He was to fight the external enemies, the Sarens and the geth with gun in hand, while the internal ones in the Citadel and on Arcturus tried to cut out his legs beneath him. He was to take on the greatest of tasks, for all life in the galaxy, with neither fanfare nor support. No clarion trumpet on the charge into war but rather a begrudging ‘fine’ from the lips of the power brokers of Citadel governance. To bleed and die in redacted areas of space while they grumbled about the political inconvenience it caused them. 

But the job had to be done. This was real. The Reapers would not wait for a committee to decree it so.

After the pause, the soon to be Spectre shook his head, and made his decision. 

“You're wrong. I do have to do this,” Commander Shepard stated with finality. “I will do this.”

Anderson closed his eyes as the guilt washed over him. The choice was made.

Godspeed, my son. To whatever end.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Artimus Tau Cluster - Knossos
Therum - Prothean Excavation
Bottom Level

Biotics could be likened to some of the specialised equipment Liara often used in the field. A regular piece she employed in her research was a two part device; a floating drone would take thousands of 3D renders of an area every second with optical tracking, laser range finding, and ultrasonic returns. Liara could then combine that data with a small handheld device for any particular, close up investigations, detailing the surface of the object in question down to the nanometer, charting every bump, raise, crevice and imperfection.

It was a well documented and certified system, accepted in academic circles without controversy and often used in industrial surveying for billion credit projects. The issue was, all conditions had to align for its proper employment. Wind, rain, fog, electromagnetic interference, excessive movement, and more could all throw off returns, and cause a great deal of headaches in post-site data analysis and filtering. It was of course possible to still have acceptable results, but only through acumen and determination.

Similarly, two days of being suspended in a Prothean security field, without water, food, or rest, had severely crippled Liara's ability to form even the most basic biotic mnemonic patterns with acceptable results. Her muscles had seized and spasmed as soon as the field had dropped and she called on their use to stand. She was a specialised piece of equipment thrown into the worst set of circumstances.

Given that her mind lacked the ability to correctly process her balance and spatial awareness, she was hopeless to effectively manipulate the diametrically opposed strands of gravity and dark energy as the maelstrom of movement swirled about her on Therum. She fruitlessly tried to throw disruptions towards the synthetics and krogan nearby, but she knew she was having no effect.

Luckily for her, the unknown group of heavily armed people did not seem to have such issues.

"Drone out!" A female quarian shouted, standing over Liara, next to the elevator's control panel. A bright orb rapidly fabricated at the end of the suited woman's omni-tool in a web-like invocation, before tearing off at an unseen adversary.

"Suppressing," a human woman shouted as her rifle flared. Liara saw a tall turian in a blue suit, and the powerful looking human female were shouldering rifles that thundered with malice towards the mechs. The roars of the two soldier's chattering guns poured fire, sending sparks across the metal strut that was serving as cover for the two synthetics.

"Keep them down," a male human with a soft voice and dark ‘hair’ shouted back. Liara looked up and saw that the man had accessed her suit’s internal network, and was running diagnostics while holding up a barrier with his other hand. He deftly managed the two tasks at once, while ducking from return rounds pinging off the console.

A krogan, but not the one that had been leering at her through rippling security fields, roared, his shotgun barking as fast as the heat dispersion mechanisms would allow. The firearm vented vapour, blared loudly in protest, but continued to spit rounds at the mechs behind the strut.

Without a care for the incoming fire from the two soldiers laying down suppression, the krogan ripped the mechs out from safety with his bare hands, flinging them against the wall. The machines, sliding to the floor, made no movement to return to their feet, and unknown fluid seeped from their tubing. The reptilian soldier's gleaming red eye darted about, searching for more prey. To his dismay, the only remaining foe was already engaged.

Liara's would-be captor, a yellow skinned krogan battlemaster, shook the platform as he stomped towards a large male human before him. The quarian had overloaded the krogan's firearm, which in turn caused the warlord to eagerly toss the shotgun aside, relishing the excuse to grip onto his foe with hand and claw. The krogan's battle cry was only surpassed by the shuddering of tectonic movement in the rocks surrounding the elevator shaft. Metal clanged against metal as the environment shifted in response to thousands of tons of sediment realigning itself.

" Die , insect!" The krogan spat at the human clad in black armour before him, his shields flaring as the Alliance soldier fired at the advancing beast. Undeterred, the battlemaster swatted away the human's rifle with a casual backhand of his right fist, then came around with his left to send the marine sprawling in the same direction as the disarmed gun.

The human was sent careening on his back, sparks flying as his armour skittered across the elevator platform. The krogan followed up, pouncing with uncanny agility for his bulk, as the human tried to throw the massive assailant back with biotics. The display sent a shockwave through the krogan, but the inertia was too much, and he crashed on top of the marine.

"Shepard!" The turian yelled as he raised his rifle, but he held his fire. Liara could see that any shot by the turian risked hitting his ally on the floor beneath the attacker. Flustered, the turian yelled at the red-eyed krogan, "Wrex, get him off the Commander!"

Blows rained down around the marine on the ground, pushing deep indents into the metal flooring. The Alliance soldier shrimped and twisted away, throwing up biotics to deflect the krogan's fists off course and into the ground beside him. Each time, the hands of the great battlemaster just missed the human on his back.

The whole room converged to the fight on the floor, dashing to assist as Liara watched on. In frustration and blood rage from the biotic evasions of his fists, the krogan atop the marine instead opened his mouth and leaned down to swallow the face of the human wholesale.

As the krogan leaned in, a right hand shot up from below, a black gauntlet wreathed in biotic energy. It grabbed the top spike of the krogan's head plate and wrenched it to the side, which caused the krogan's neck to twist askew.

Then, in fluid concert with the glowing blue hand on the krogan's crown, a fluorescent orange blade erupted up through the tongue of the beast, visible through its open mouth, the hilt of the sword pressed against the bottom of the krogan's jaw. The marine roared, and ripped the fabricated omni-blade through the soft meat of the battlemaster's trachea, which sent the beast into a convulsion. Blood poured down in a torrent, covering the N7 logo on the man's chest, spilling over the entire area as the hearts of the battlemaster continued to thrum. Ripples of blood pressure pushed the edges of the pool further and further with every beat, as the din of battle fell aside.

"Move!" The human female shouted at Liara as the krogan's limp form was pulled off the soldier on the floor by his compatriots. The very walls were caving in, and Liara's unexpected rescue party were not remaining to savour their victory in the collapse. In her daze, and with the sudden attack by the krogan and his synthetic soldiers, she did not fully understand why these humans and their allies were rescuing her. But understanding would have to queue behind survival, so she obeyed the bellowing marine before her without question.

Liara tried to stand to flee with the group, but her knees had other ideas, buckling immediately under the weight she placed on them. With ease and apparent annoyance, the female marine dove under Liara's armpit, wrapped an arm around her waist and whisked her away, as the heavens came down around them.

Year 2183
3 Days Post Therum
FTL Travel - Enroute to Citadel
SSV Normandy SR-1 - Mess

Liara had become too familiar with the deck below the main thoroughfare of the SSV Normandy, to which she had been confined for the last three days. The medical bay was her home for the first, where she became acquainted with the pleasant Dr. Chakwas, a capable physician but lacking in the mission critical information she needed. From the second day onwards after being medically cleared, Liara was provided a space in a closet for use, as the care beds were required for the revolving door of concerns that the busy clinician was required to resolve.

Since then she had felt perpetually in the way. As the Normandy was a small military vessel, every inch of space was required to serve a utilitarian function. If a square metre did not provide a service, it was used as storage for another area that did have a purpose.

The crew were much the same. The marines would quickly scarf down food in the mess, before whisking off to other destinations in the ship. The female soldier she had seen, named 'Chief', 'Ashley', or 'Williams', was no longer shouldering a rifle, but organising troops, addressing minor concerns, and enforcing military regulations. 'Lieutenant', 'Kaidan', or 'Alenko', the male who tended to Liara, was a regular go-between for the bustle of the ship, and its captain. Though strangely, he was not titled ‘Captain’ as far as she could tell. She wondered if her translator was having issues with Alliance terminology, or if there was a deeper disunity at play. 

None of the humans stopped to discuss their mission with her, and Liara’s questions were met with 'it's classified'. As she milled about the mess, staring at the walls and ceiling, boredom and curiosity mounted in equal parts. She could not even tour the ship, as the drive core in the lower decks, and navigational suite on the main were both off limits to her. The reason for her rescue had not been fully explained to her satisfaction. She struggled to believe that a highly equipped and trained Alliance strike team just happened to be wandering about remote mines on far flung systems. 

But they were not hostile, and she was grateful for their intervention. In fact, she was quite enjoying the mystery of it all. She had noted strange little patterns that begged for further exploration throughout the ship and its human crew. 

For example, the men appeared to eat with other male colleagues, despite the sex based biological differences having nothing, that she could see at least, to do with the consumption of food. When one human, she believed the term was, yawned , other humans would do this as well. Was there a scent released? Was it a kind of speech or body language? Did they even know they were copying the behaviour?

Mysteries on mysteries! But no answers to be found for the most important one of all, why were they on Therum?

Liara's fingers flew over the datapad she had been provided. <Connection Failure> was the response the device blinked back at her as she tried to access the cached version of the extranet that should have been available on the Normandy's network during FTL travel. She had not expected it to work, as there had been a block on her network access since arriving on the Alliance ship, but there was nothing to be lost by trying again. Her omni-tool, as well as her records and data from Therum had also been seized, which didn't seem entirely unexpected upon entry to a classified warship. It was a shame regardless, as the extensive downtime would have allowed her to process those findings that escaped with her from Therum.

With a sigh for all the unanswered questions, she walked towards the drink dispensary, though she was hardly thirsty. More out of habit than anything else, she tapped the 'Hot Chocolate' button, staring blankly as a cup was dropped into the receptacle, the plastic container awaiting the drip of brown fluid. Liara had previously learned her lesson not to touch the 'Coffee' icon, which she was certain was a bitter cleaning fluid, or dextro-based alcohol.

Over Liara's shoulder she could make out Williams, who had entered the mess. The marine was filling a tray, her face in a stern expression. Liara had deduced that this was a baseline demeanour for the fearsome woman. Cautiously, Liara approached the soldier, hovering at the edge of Ashley's vision without quite announcing herself. When the human finally turned, the asari held out her hand in the manner she had practised in the restroom mirror. Right hand out forward, not in a flat line, thumb facing up, and a slight bend at the elbow.

"I wanted to thank you for saving me in the mine on Therum, Ashley," Liara said in a bright tone, her hand still extended.

The human took a moment to regard the asari before laying down her tray. "It's Williams," came a neutral reply as she shook Liara's hand unenthusiastically. "And don't worry about it."

I was certain that Ashley was the appropriate name to use in this situation. I will have to look into this further, Liara thought quickly. And she was not sure how she was not supposed to worry about being crushed by geological instability.

Humans in general may have been a mystery to Liara, but their social habits were an absolute enigma. Their mannerisms and culture had not been cross-pollinated by centuries of contact with other Citadel races, leaving the humans with their wholly unique style of interactions. In Liara's few encounters with humans prior to Therum, and since coming aboard the Normandy, she found she could never predict what one of them were going to say next when compared to species that had been long exposed to galactic cultural exchanges. She wondered if this would fade away in her lifetime as generations of humans grew up with other species and galactic culture, becoming more like the rest of those in the Milky Way. 

An intriguing idea formed. They may change, true. Or what might they change about us? They are so assertive in their place already, it would be foolish to assume they will not have effects on my people and others.

But while these humans often made Liara feel hopelessly lost, the archaeologist was quite fascinated by the strange microcosm that was the Normandy and the people that made it their home. It was with growing disappointment to the young asari that her curiosity was not being reciprocated.

Williams, still standing in front of the scientist, took up her tray again, pointing her body towards the elevator as the scientist was lost in her thoughts.

"Are you having… lunch, Williams?" The asari asked as she tried to extend the stale interaction before Williams left.

"Uh, no," the gunnery chief replied, nodding her head to the door. "Just cleaning some of the gear."

“Do you need assistance? I have time,” the newcomer asked hopefully.

“Nah, I uh, I have a handle on it,” Williams answered awkwardly.

"Ah, I see," Liara replied, noticing that there was only one interested party in the dialogue.

Without a response, the Gunnery Chief wordlessly walked off with the tray, taking the elevator to the lower level, leaving Liara awkwardly in the centre of the room. With resignation, the archaeologist picked up her hot chocolate from the machine and settled into a chair at the end of the mess table. Marines sat down soon after, always leaving a space between themselves and the asari. The humans held their conversations with each other as if Liara was an inanimate piece of furniture. They finished their meals, and others took their place, continuing the cycle of indifference. A few soldiers went so far as to openly discuss the mission on Therum, acting like the main consequence of that very mission was not sitting next to them.

What is it I am missing? I do not believe I have affronted any human customs…

Liara, once again lost in her thoughts, was blankly staring at the top of her drink when she finally realised that someone was standing over her.

"Doctor?" came a voice from above.

He was taller than Kaidan, and much heavier across his upper body, though the ‘Commander’ did have similar features to the… ‘Lieutenant’ . This man’s eyes were hazel, skin a light tan, and his… 'hair' was dark, very short on the sides, but thick and wavy on the top. She could not imagine what it would be like to have such a mop of random threads on your head, or the sharp stubble.

His physical features were prominent, but his social manner was not eccentric. He had a reserved intensity, a paradox that was difficult to explain. Whereas Kaidan, rather, Alenko, gave an air of approachability and compassion, this man gave the opposite. His demeanour and aura rarely turned off. When Liara had watched how Shepard held the gaze of crew reporting news to him, she suspected he blinked less than other humans. In fact she was sure he did, because she had counted.

Today, he was wearing a short sleeved Alliance uniform, showing forearms that were as wide around as her own calves. He had a strange discoloration of skin on a palm sized spot just under his collar, and a long scar on the back of his hand. A chill took her as she remembered the blade the Commander had plunged into the krogan's throat with that very hand.

"Doctor?" The marine tried again, having received no response from the first attempt.

"Oh, Commander!" Liara said as she leapt to her feet, knocking over her drink. She held out her hand again as before.

"Dr. Liara T'Soni, I'm Commander Andrew Shepard," he said as he shook her hand. "If you have a moment I'd like to go over some things with you," he said, gesturing towards a room that had been off limits to her previously.

"Oh yes, of course! Please, lead on." 

Finally, some answers! She thought to herself as her step developed a spring to it.

They rounded a corner, before the Commander slid his hand along a sensor on the wall as they entered the room, which caused the overhead lights to brighten the spartan, windowless space in response. Liara quickly understood that this was the Commander's office, with what she assumed was his living quarters in an area beyond. A couch, a small table and a computer station with a chair occupied a small living space for guests in the they room they currently occupied. A double sliding door in the distance remained closed. A thick binder with paper pages lay on the desk, its spine bent from repeated use.

Shepard sat in the computer chair, Liara on the couch, with the table between them. He handed her a bottle of bright blue fluid, and opened one of his own.

"Chakwas says your sugars are down," he offered as an off hand comment before beginning, taking a swig of his own drink.

I have not gone as unnoticed as I suspected, Liara realised with a strange unease, but she accepted the gift gracefully. “Thank you, Commander.”

Shepard leaned back in his chair, and began his explanation in calm, but serious tones. “It is past time you receive the truth, as I pride myself on being upfront with people. Half because I try to be honest in my work, and half because I am a terrible liar.”

“I am sorry, but I do not understand how you could have lied to me given that this is the first time we have spoken,” Liara said, feeling her features pull in confusion.

“A lie of omission,” Shepard answered calmly. “To be blunt, I am with the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance Unit of the Citadel Council, and you have been a person of interest in our investigation into the former Spectre Saren Arterius and Matriarch Benezia T’Soni.”

The acronym rolled about in Liara’s mind for a moment before the hammer dropped. He is… a Spectre? Am I in custody!?

“I am under investigation by the Citadel Council?!” She asked with a panicked voice as the bottom fell out from her stomach, the pieces falling into place.

“Were,” Shepard replied. “For full disclosure, Citadel Integrated Intelligence Services has run… invasive tests on your communications equipment and off-site servers since you’ve arrived. Additionally, undercover agents have made contact with persons familiar with you, and checked sites of interest.”

Goddess. Liara’s face flushed with the invasion of her privacy, and her innards lurched at the implications. They sent agents to speak with people that know me? Did they go into my home?

“For… for what purpose?” She asked timidly. “I cannot fathom what I could possibly have that is of interest to the Council or its Spectres.”

“In a word? Benezia,” the Spectre answered pointedly. “We had to be sure that you were not playing the helpless hostage in order to get a spy into our ship.”

“Mother?! We have not spoken for years! Has she done something horrible?!” Liara shook her head vigorously as rambling words and justifications flowed out of her. “I swear by the Goddess I am not a spy for anyone!”

“I agree,” Shepard raised a fist in front of his mouth, and coughed back a laugh. “You are most certainly, definitely, without a doubt, not, a spy. But I believe you still may have a part to play in this situation.”

Her pulse slowed. “Thank you Commander, I am glad that you have come to that conclusion.” 

Though I am not sure what was so humorous. 

Liara cautiously probed the Spectre as the situation developed in her mind, “But I also do not understand, why do you need me here if I am not under investigation any longer?” 

The Spectre twisted around in his chair, and grabbed the binder on the desk behind him. He leaned forward and slid the tome towards her. “Because I’ve gotten as far as I can on my own.”

What is this now? Another secr-

Liara gasped as soon as the cover fell open from the binder. She was wrenched out of her seat, and into the contents of the scenes playing out before her, the death throes of an entire people. The pages were covered in crudely drawn hand sketches, all centred around a theme. The drawings lacked any artistic merit, and were not done with correct proportions or techniques. But the inspiration, the source material was disturbingly accurate. Detailed. Precise. Organics were being killed by synthetics in droves. Organics wearing clothing matching statues and busts she had seen. They were fleeing from buildings made of materials she had touched, and were using technology she had read about in ancient texts. The images were unerringly, disturbingly lifelike despite the lack of verisimilitude, each individual dying in abject horror seemed to have a soul that was bleeding through the page.

I know these people… these places…

"These are Protheans," Liara began as a lifetime of study responded to what she saw before her. "No, this is the end of the Protheans!"

The Commander nodded, obviously satisfied with her response. “Correct Doctor, well done.”

Is there another researcher who shares my opinions? Have I missed something that the Alliance has found? Liara spoke quickly as her mind raced. “Where in the galaxy did you come across these images?” 

Shepard tapped his head and gave a self-deprecating look, "Apologies for the poor sketches, I've never claimed to be more than an ape with a gun."

Liara stared at him, puzzled. Shepard filled in the blank before she answered, "There was a working Prothean beacon on Eden Prime, I accessed it before it was destroyed. It shows the Protheans being killed off by synthetics that were called the Reapers, agents of a cyclical, genocidal pattern stretching back millennia. It's what Saren was after when he invaded the planet with his Geth. The same ones that were after you."

Liara’s mouth hung open for a moment at the implications of what had just been so casually thrown into the air. He just… confirmed my life’s work. In a few sentences he has validated decades of study, effort and doubt. He can not understand… there is no possibility he knows what this means.

Liara, having regained some of her faculties, spoke quickly as she unpacked what she had just heard, "You… this is in your head! You could re-write hundreds of years of study, you could back up my theories!" the scientist said as her voice picked up tempo, "This is one of the most incredible finds in centuries, do you have any additional evidence that we could investigate?”

Shepard held out his hands as if to staunch the deluge of dialogue from the elated scientist. "Doc, it all happened in a rush during the attack. My mind is still unwinding what it all means. I just read some of your work, and that of your colleagues. This is as far as I got on my own."

The chain of logic, of solving the problem came together for Liara in a rolling wave of consciousness. She had long possessed an ability to take in a huge array of new data, and in a storm of logical, stepwise functions, distil the information back down into the outcome or conclusion she needed. Thankfully, this situation appeared to be fairly simple;

The beacon was on Eden Prime, where there had been news of an attack on the colony outpost she saw on the extranet before the krogan arrived. At the time, she thought this seemed like such an unusual target. But if there was a working Prothean beacon, that would have been worth any military venture, even for the Geth, particularly if it held information on these Reapers. And if that was Saren as Shepard had said, the turian would certainly need not just expertise on the Protheans, but someone who had studied their downfall, and noted the cyclic nature of extinction, a rare intersection of study. Shepard also clearly needed this skillset, as he could not unravel what all the clues meant, similar to Saren. If Shepard was after Saren, he would try to intercept him at where the turian was heading, rather than striking him at his base of operations. It would only make sense then, that both current and former Spectre were competing for her help, as well as Benez-

A sobering realisation came as the links of the chain continued. Her mother had mentioned working with Saren with Binary Helix in years past. She must have allied with him if Shepard and Saren were both pursuing Liara's assistance.

"You suspected I was involved in the attack on Eden Prime. Those poor colonists…," Liara said out loud, understanding the harsh reception from the crew. Her blood ran cold, "My mother…"

"There was only a possibility you were involved," Shepard said soberly, "but we know she was. We are still not sure of the extent."

"How many…" Liara began cautiously, a tremble in her voice. "How many people?"

Shepard stared at her for a moment, then replied with a flat tone. "There's no answer that will make you feel better." 

"I suppose you are correct," Liara muttered, digesting the new information.

The cold reception I received, it was not because of what I said, but what they suspected I did. Suddenly, she dreaded facing the crew.

Mother… What have you done? When did your path go so astray?

Liara was seated, head bowed, her gloved fingers squeezing one another with anxiety. She had not spoken with Benezia for years, but this was so beyond the pale of what Liara remembered. 

Mother always had plans that ran into the darkest corners of our galaxy. But never with such… malice. How could I not have seen any signs? Could I have intervened… or… did she need my help…

A firm hand grasped her shoulder, the palm large enough to wrap around the joint on her slight frame. Looking up, she saw Shepard was crouched to her level, an image of concern on his face as he looked her over. Liara did not know at that moment if it was his genuine expression, or the warm contact, but his gaze bullied the fears and anxiety in her mind, daring the emotions to challenge him.

"It's not your fault," Shepard said with genuine empathy. "No matter how much grief the crew gave you, we are not our parents."

"Thank you," Liara answered, meeting his gaze. "For the rescue, and for letting me know all this."

"Don't worry about it," Shepard answered with a warm tone and infectious smile that she couldn’t help but mirror in kind. It was strange to see him with that demeanour, and it was only fleeting, but she already wished he did it more often. It suited him.

That phrase again, ‘don’t worry about it’. My mother is on the run from the Citadel Council. My life's work has just been validated, but the evidence is hidden in this human's brain. There is a galaxy harvesting race of synthetics hanging in the nether. How are these humans so ambivalent?

"I am afraid I have quite a bit to worry about Commander," Liara said quietly as thoughts turned back to recent revelations. "Despite your best intentions."

"Then apologies, but I will be adding another thing for you to mull over," Shepard answered, returning to his chair. "What would you say to working with me on the Prothean problem? You can have full access to the data, and you can help me catch Saren."

Liara’s mood lifted a little at the offer. "What are you proposing?"

"There are two paths," he said, taking his time. "The first option, you are retained on a full time, on-call contract to be the Normandy's consultant for all things Prothean. The Council would set you up in a protection program on a planet of your choice. There, you could ride out this storm, safe from further attacks, as I feed you data, which you in turn analyse for me."

Immediate access to Prothean relics and evidence normally restricted to the highest levels of Council permissions? Liara's head swirled with possibility.

"And what is the other path Commander?" Liara asked, though she was not sure what could top the previous offer.

"Stay," he said flatly, looking at her with his arms crossed on his broad chest. "Do what it takes to learn to fight like an Alliance marine, and get your hands on what we find, as we find it. You would be putting in hard yards, especially at the beginning as you catch up to speed. But you'd be there, catching things we miss as we chase Saren across the galaxy."

Liara's instant reaction was torn in two directions, one intense longing to be there when a future relic, such as a working beacon, was found. Equally powerful was the desire to be as far away from the intimate, brutal violence that was required to get there, such as what she had seen on Therum. 

She considered the situation, and queried the Alliance commander, "I am not sure why you would need an untrained soldier, instead of another Alliance marine on your team for expeditions."

Shepard sat unmoving, his expression falling back to the serious demeanour she was more familiar with, "Officially, the reasoning would be that our mission cannot wait for us to play call-tag with an off-site consultant across the galaxy. Which would be true. I do need someone like you telling me what is important for review while we are on scene, this is not my area of expertise."

Liara nodded, admitting that the logic did make sense, "And the unofficial reason?"

"I'm going to kill Saren," Shepard rolled out, the statement hanging in the air with the certainty and lack of emotion of a newly created fundamental law of physics, "But I am not writing off Benezia."

Liara's gut wrenched. She eyed the scar on the side of Shepard’s neck, half hidden behind his collar, before looking into his deadpan expression. How easily he had declared the delayed execution of the turian former Spectre. How easily Liara believed he would do it.

"You would trust me in that scenario Commander?" She asked, her mind drifting to the uncomfortable possibility of being present for a clash between her estranged mother, and this cold Spectre.

"Trust is not easily achieved in a single conversation, Doctor," Shepard answered without inflection. "But I believe you would do what was right."

"Why would you take that risk for me? We have just met, and myself and Benezia are not close," Liara asked with curiosity.

"A discussion for another day,” Shepard answered flatly. “In the meantime, I suggest you think over your options.”

There is a story there, but I suspect it is not one I am privy to, Liara realised, before moving on. “May I have some time to consider your offers?"

"Of course," he said, nodding. "Everyone here needs to be in it for the long haul. I ask a lot, and safety isn't guaranteed."

Liara stood, brushing herself off as her mind raced with possibilities, "Thank you Commander," she said as she made her way to the door.

"Doctor," Shepard interjected, bringing her to a stop with a jolt. He held out the binder in one hand. "I figure you might have some downtime coming up."

Liara's eyes lit up with a rush of excitement as her mind turned back to the Prothean question, which had been buried by more acute concerns since Shepard revealed the beacon to her. "I… Thank you. I will take excellent care of it," she said with delight, her legs already primed to whisk her away with her new prize. Shepard raised an eyebrow at her eagerness, and gestured to the doorway, allowing her to race off.

As T’Soni turned from the cabin, binder in hand, the eyes of the crew considered her, but she did not care. The looming deadline of a decision for how to proceed, whether planetside or aboard the Normandy, did not matter at that moment. Benezia's fate, and the fate of the galaxy could wait. For during the walk from the cabin to her cramped quarters, Liara's mind was unravelling the knot of mystery, contradiction, and wonder that was the fall of the Protheans, with fresh desire and passion for her life's work.

She eased onto the cot in her room and sat cross legged, with the binder open in front of her. Hours passed, with the images on one side, and her restricted datapad on the other as she took notes of each design. She tore through the contents, back to front, several times over, before her eyes became glazed, unable to absorb anymore information. Reluctantly, she set the tome and datapad aside, and lay on her back, exhausted.

To her surprise as she lay in the makeshift bed, further questions of the Protheans never materialised. Curiously, it was the other object of mystery and contradiction that she had met that day that she mulled over, considering the new information she had learned which clashed with her presumptions about both humans, and the ship's captain. Commander. Not Captain.

A ridiculous thought came over Liara. She wanted to go back to his cabin and ask him more questions about his vision. She knew it was wholly inappropriate, but the desire lingered. 

If I could get him to re-attempt the drawing of the clothing on page thirty eight, I might be able to better determine if it was of the style’s revival in the third-age expansion such as found on sites in the Hades Nexus, or if it was related to that in the core-worlds…

Liara’s mind pictured Shepard drawing a new sketch to clarify her questions, and she could not help but think of the scars on the back of his hand, and subsequently, the one on his neck. 

Where in the galaxy did those occur? Was he a Spectre then?

Her mind ran with possibilities, before an uncomfortable thought confronted her. A cool tingle ran down her spine as she recalled the torrent of blood that poured from the krogan’s throat, and the horrific spasms it made as the enormous brute had died so pitifully. Where curiosity had been, apprehension had taken its place, and with it, concern for Liara’s estranged mother.

She bit her lip and shook her head. A dilemma for another day.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Artemis Tau Cluster - Sparta System
Edolus
Groundside Expedition - Mako IFV

Wrex wondered how such a long life would affect his memory of past jobs. He always knew that as the decades and centuries passed, the little missions would meld, split apart, and reform again in his mind. They would cross over, switching details, and whole chapters would be completely lost to time. As long as his subconscious kept the important lessons, he had never much cared. 

But today he was trying to recall the specific details of a specific contract, no easy feat given the length of his career. The elder krogan had been trying to compare his assignment as a bodyguard for the volus diplomat Snacol Tan, the one who had put a hit out on Aleena many moons ago. He had always touted the soft gig as ‘the easiest job he ever had’. It had been the simplest credits he would ever earn, with the highest likelihood that he would get to spend them. 

But now he was trying to figure out if there was a new claim to that title.

Riding on the Normandy thus far was giving Snacol a run for his money. Maybe it was the Alliance, or maybe it was just this ship under Shepard. It wasn’t that they weren’t fighting anything, they never seemed to stop fighting. Wrex hadn’t killed this many people in… well maybe ever. It was just that everything ran so smoothly. Even the mess on Therum, with an exploding volcano, a battlemaster, and geth had still been operated with the normal military precision and practised habits. Alenko and Williams were hard to tell apart until one of them started glowing. They had the same training, the same equipment, the same tactics. Killing had never been so sterile. 

Wrex was starting to miss working alone. A malfunctioning gun in one hand, a bottle of ryncol in the other, a suit that hadn’t been serviced in months, and a mess of enemies with no intel or preparation. Riding by his quad, making it up as he went along. It wasn’t smart, but it was fighting. This felt more like business than killing. 

Maybe I should find another job before I lose my edge.

Can’t complain about the pay though. Or the food, he thought, looking about the rear of the Mako as it thundered along the planet’s surface. He pulled out his bag from under his seat, rifling through it. Locating the object of his search, a sealed plastic bag with a haunch of pork, he pulled the bone and its attached meat out with one hand, biting wholesale into the femur and tissue. He tore half the meal off on his first attempt, a second would be all that was needed to finish the pig’s leg off completely.

Williams looked away from him, scrunching her nose at the display. Wrex turned his head to the side to regard her with a large, wet eye as he chewed, enjoying her discomfort. The others averted their attention, trying to avoid his gaze. 

Maybe Saren will be worth the fight, he hoped as he swallowed a portion of the leg wholesale. 

“Beacon is still ticking over with the distress call,” Alenko stated to the crew in the six wheeled vehicle. 

Wrex eyed the second in command, the ‘Lieutenant’, who was looking towards Shepard for a response. Wrex found the ranks of the Alliance so humorous. It was obvious who was in charge, stripes and icons weren’t needed to tell who the leaders were. A few seconds of watching the Spectre and Alenko interact would settle any doubts about leadership, even without rank insignias or similar. What a pointless way to complicate war.

Unless the humans promote ones who don’t deserve the rank. Then it's even worse than pointless. Wrex considered that, and was glad for krogan simplicity. 

“Commander?” The Lieutenant tried again.

Shepard frowned. “I copied.”

“Orders?” Alenko quickly asked.

Wrex gulped his remaining portion of pig leg and cast his gaze towards the Commander and his XO. A tenuous unease had settled over Shepard, one Wrex hadn’t seen before. The human was a brutally powerful biotic, with a temperament similar to Wrex’s, though admittedly on the cooler side of things. The Spectre did not suffer fools nor cowards, and hadn’t even blinked when Wrex had coated the inside of Chora’s Den with Fist’s organs. This aura was out of sorts. Normally orders were doled out in sharp, punctuated fashion that left no room for interpretation. Hesitation, consideration, or indecision were never on the menu.

The krogan didn’t know the Commander well enough to say what was causing the change of mannerisms.

“This feels a little familiar Lieutenant,” Shepard stated in a sterile tone.

“Familiar?” Alenko asked with an inflection in his voice.

“Did any helmet-cam footage or comm recordings make it to an off-site server?” Shepard asked his crew, ignoring the XO’s question.

Joker’s voice crackled over the radio, “Sir, I’ve been in touch with Kahoku’s team and none of the marine’s transmissions made it off the planet. Seems to have been a comms blackout, jamming or equipment failure.”

Shepard’s subsequent silence indicated his opinion of those explanations for the lack of information of what happened to the missing marines. But the human’s even-keeled manner returned when Shepard queried his second in command. “Does the Alliance have any sat-footage or probe returns in the area?” He asked Kaidan.

Williams, turning her gaze away from Wrex, looked at Shepard. “Nah, there isn’t any serious recon out here in the Sparta system. Scans wouldn’t be more than once every few weeks.”

“So they came in blind.” Shepard flicked through a few screens on the console in front of him before responding, his demeanour stiff, cold. He continued, airing further analysis to the occupants of the vehicle. “Flat region, high moisture content in the soil, little bedrock showing on ground-pen radar.”

Wrex caught Alenko doing his nervous tic, running his fingers through the side of his hair. Something is afoot here. The krogan sat a little forward, trying to monitor the responses of the humans. Kaidan has deduced the issue on his own.

“Alenko, check Alliance records to see if the marines deployed here had any fires available? Airpower, artillery, or something above the infantry kit. I need to know if they were sent out with only dismounts and IFVs, or if they were supported at all,” Shepard demanded.

“Yes Sir, right on it Sir,” Alenko replied immediately. An imperceptible waiver was warbling at the end of his voice. If someone wasn’t looking for it they wouldn’t even notice it was there.

Alenko knows something I don’t. Wrex saw that Williams was fidgeting with her rifle and re-checking her gear, instead of acting with the same cocky swagger as usual. She is nervous. All the humans are. Wrex hated being left in the dark. But he felt a pleasant shot of adrenals at the unease, the unknown feeling of risk settling into the rear of the Mako.

Maybe this will be something interesting.

The turian let out a laugh. “Shepard, do Alliance missions to routine distress beacons always involve checking every rock with scans?” Garrus said, his flanging voice cutting the silence. 

A closed fist quickly struck Garrus in the arm. Williams had hit the turian and was shaking her head, her eyes boring into the former C-Sec officer as she made the human gesture for silence.

Ashley then spoke with a shaking voice towards Shepard, “Sir, you uh, you need me to get anything prepped? You think it might be something big?”

Shepard’s silence hung in the air as the Spectre contemplated. The Mako continued to roll forward as the N7 checked over several screens of situational data for the region.

Enough of this. Wrex ground his teeth in frustration and fired off a quick message to Williams. 

“What is going on?” The krogan asked over a private text channel. 

The reply from the Gunnery Chief was sent to Tali, Wrex, and Garrus, which only contained a single word and an attached file. “Akuze.”

Wrex could see the one-eyed visor of Garrus begin scrolling off a long, detailed string of text characters, as the turian’s mandibles twitched nervously. A low, reverent tone came from Vakarian’s throat, and a soft ‘Keelah’ could be heard coming from Tali’s direction. 

“No support for the marines Commander,” Alenko answered, his search of the previous operation completed. “They were only deployed with a Grizzly, no other elements in-theatre.”

Wrex was nearly thrown out of his seat as the Mako came to a full stop, equipment being tossed about the interior of the cabin as Shepard stomped the vehicle into an emergency brake. The Spectre stared out the window at the flat horizon in the distance as the local star began setting on the mountain tops ahead. 

“Erratic, low level seismic activity detected ahead, 2800m. Could just be noise, but…” Alenko ventured as the engine of the Mako continued to idle below their feet. 

“It’s not noise,” Shepard said calmly. “It’s a maw.”

Williams blew out a long breath she had been holding. “Good catch Skipper. We can regroup with an Alliance patrol and get down there with a proper force.”

Wrex felt his hand wring the grip of his shotgun in anticipation. A maw? How did Shepard know?  The krogan heard murmuring between the humans as they planned their next steps. As they argued quietly, Wrex skimmed the summary of the file that Williams had sent along. 

He killed a maw on foot. Wrex shifted his weight as his hormones flared, his fight or flight response activated. His biology subconsciously felt challenged upon learning that a human pup had matched his achievement during his Rite of Passage centuries ago. Was this propaganda? Surely it had to be made up. It couldn’t be done. Wrex felt his back tighten, and could see in his visor reflection that his pupils were dilated in preparation for a showdown.

Why am I bothering to feel threatened?

The rush of krogan biology paused, hesitated. Wrex considered the implications of the situation, but not for himself, rather for his people and their future. 

He has done nothing but assist me in my goals. He has made no move to take anything of mine. Why would I be threatened by his strength? I gain nothing by defeating him. I simply lose a powerful ally.

His lip curled at the corner. A perfect lesson played out against the backdrop of Tuchunka’s greatest predators, the maw and the krogan, with the human playing the example of his Alliance. New on the galactic stage, without prejudice or hate for Wrex’s species. The humans and their Systems Alliance were a powerful, rising force in the galaxy. Old ways would demand that the krogan challenge them, to put them in their place to prove who was the strongest. But the old ways weren’t going to work anymore. Especially not if this human youngster was right about his visions.

Time for change on Tuchunka. 

Wrex felt his awareness return to the conversation going on around him as the engine of the Mako flared to life, the wheels churning towards the distress beacon. 

Kaidan probed his superior officer cautiously. “Sir? There’s no other Alliance ships in the ar-”

“One time is bad luck,” Shepard rolled out with frigid syllables as the temperature in the Mako plunged. “Twice is planned. We are securing those marines and that beacon. Alenko, get Joker on the horn, I want the Normandy to pound that thing into the planet’s core.”

As Kaidan, Williams, Tali, and Garrus looked at each other in abject terror; Wrex let out a low rumble in anticipation. 

A worthy challenge. A worthy leader. 

A human battlemaster? What a concept.

Maybe I'll stick around to see how this plays out.

Wrex’s doubts about the Normandy were left in the mud as the Mako roared towards the subterranean horror in the distance. Wrex did not know it then, but his life, and those of his people would forever be changed by the decision he made that day to intertwine his fate with that of the Alliance ship and her Spectre. But in that moment all he knew was that a maw needed slaying, and he wasn’t going to let anyone else be the one to finish the job.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
13 Days Post Therum
Hades Gamma Cluster - Farinata
MSV Ontario

Kaidan was a capable soldier, he knew that about himself. He wasn’t the worst, nor the best shot. He was neither the fastest, nor the slowest in a physical trial, and wouldn't count himself as the sharpest or dullest on cognitive assessments. He could hold his own in any fight, but he also knew each time anyone, even the very best, entered combat they were rolling the dice. Each time someone engaged in a fire fight, they were adding another percentage point in the statistical likelihood that they took a wrong step, caught a stray, or simply found someone better on that day.

Throughout his career the Lieutenant had always relied on his biotics to shore up those odds, and it had always kept him in the fight for one more round. His overclocked L2 implant, and his years of dedication to mastering his craft had kept his ticket from being punched time and time again.

Except today, as he faced down a fanatical pack of fellow L2s, he had the dynamic quite literally turned upside down on him.

"You little shit-" Williams yelled as a biotic pull yanked on her ankle, sending her sprawling onto her back. A string of bullets raked up the side of the shipping container within the hold of the MSV Ontario, as the heavily armoured marine crashed down onto the steel floor, her rifle flailing wildly.

The culprit of the undesired re-alignment was a wide-eyed biotic terrorist fleeing the area, clad in little more than a t-shirt and cargo pants, blindly firing a pistol over his shoulder in the vague direction of the vertically challenged Gunnery Chief. Kaidan rounded the corner of a container, sighting down the now-empty hallway, covering Williams as she regained her footing.

"Thanks El Tee," she said quickly, clearly embarrassed about her displacement.

"All of you, stand down!" Shepard bellowed through the voice-amplified speaker on his hard suit, repeating the refrain he had already stated. "This is Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy, here with the authority of the Citadel Council and Systems Alliance. Lay down your weapons and show me your hands!"

Shepard, flanked by Wrex and Garrus, was walking across the intersection of the long hallway that Kaidan had already been staring down. The trio had their eyes trained on something out of Kaidan's vision, off to his left, in the maze of shipping containers within the Ontario's cargo hold.

Suddenly, by way of response to Shepard's demand, a 1m x 2m steel crate, surrounded in biotic energy, came flying out from the darkness and caught Garrus straight in the chest. Kaidan heard the turian's armoured plating crack, and the veteran C-Sec officer let out a painful groan as he landed on the hard flooring. Garrus rolled onto his side, clutching his sternum with his hand, as he coughed up blood.

Wrex immediately spun and fired blindly into the unknown, his voice and shotgun roaring at the insolence, but striking nothing.

Shepard instead stowed his weapon, as his biotic aura flared. With a motion after his rifle was stored, he brought two hands up in a quick gesture, and sent waves of dark energy swirling about an enormous shipping container sitting beside the dark corridor. With a wide, swinging motion of his arms, the metal box began moving along the floor with a dread groan, the grinding steel on steel contact protesting at the burgeoning inertia. Kaidan felt dark energy swell, and the container picked up speed, as it was sent screeching along the hard flooring towards the unknown in the corner of the vessel, with bright sparks trailing behind its path.

A pair of screams were heard just prior to the crate sounding a sickening crunch, and a wet pop against the wall. Kaidan deduced coldly that the last of the terrorists in the hold had been dispatched as the crate came to a rest.

Wrex nodded at the commander approvingly, letting out a low grunt, as Shepard's indifferent eyes flicked towards the two Alliance marines. The N7 was unmoved by the gruesome execution. 

Kaidan tried to impart a similar aura of sterility.

"Secure the door while I get Garrus," Shepard ordered. The Spectre dashed towards the prone turian, hitting a slide along his knees, as his omni-tool lit up to administer aid before he had even fully stopped. Tali also fell in alongside the human, a ream of diagnostic data flashing by on her omni-tool, fed straight from Garrus's suit.

Ashley and Kaidan moved in lockstep to cover the only door remaining, the threshold beyond which Chairman Burns and the last of the terrorists would be held. As their heart rates slowed, and vision widened, the Alliance soldiers shared a sideways glance, each of them obviously harbouring the same concerns.

Lt. Alenko was thrilled to serve under Shepard. On the field, the Commander was a tempest of biotic energy, and a brutally efficient soldier. There were no qualms about his willingness to lead from the front, nor his tactical decisions. Kaidan was on a technically advanced warship, pushing the edge of human capability, in a race to save all organic life as they knew it. There was no higher calling, nor did he believe there was a more capable leader or crew to take on the task.

It was just the pace of their operations. Deep down Kaidan had reservations that they would catch the rogue Spectre and his army of geth in time, what with the Council refusing to take the hard measures necessary to surround him in contested space with a full naval expedition. And yet, with this most impossible of tasks before them, Shepard was intervening in every Alliance and Council space problem, no matter how trivial they seemed compared to their main mission.

Shepard wasn't even willing to simply forward information, or investigate a matter before moving on. He, the first human Spectre, would be out there, wringing his hands around whatever pirate, slaver, terrorist or other unfortunate scumbag had caught his attention. Even this mission, with the L2s that Kaidan was sympathetic to, should have been handled by other military forces.

Shepard, it seemed, was unwilling to triage. Everything was a priority one.

And the cracks were beginning to show. The Normandy was a prototype frigate which needed dozens of hours of downtime maintenance at a capital repair facility for every hour in stealth operation. Even the routine, but excessive, FTL travel was pushing the drive core and auxiliary systems to near breaking in these early days of the operation, and they were nowhere near Saren and his geth yet. Stores were running low, munitions were being consumed faster than they were being replaced, and gear was being overused to the point of ruin.

That is to say nothing of the crew. Stims and caffeine would only get you so far, and Alenko was sure that a well-rested Garrus would not have been caught by the crate. But the turian and Shepard had just 'resolved' the C-Sec officers' longstanding pursuit of Dr. Saleon, barely even pausing for a bathroom break before deploying again for this mission. Kaidan could not begrudge them for pursuing the medical horror show that they had found, but the Lieutenant couldn't help but feel that they were going to pay the price down the line. It was a matter of time before someone's ticket was going to be punched.

And these were just the missions that they had run on the way back to the Citadel.

Kaidan just hoped it wasn't going to be the galaxy that had its time called early because the Normandy couldn't say no to a few sympathetic causes. 

A grim thought crossed the Lieutenant’s mind. Or maybe, Shepard just thinks his crew are disposable in the line of duty, meat for the grind. After all, who knows what actually happened on Akuze?

"Williams, Wrex, get Garrus back to the med-bay," Shepard barked, snapping Kaidan back to the moment. "Tali, Alenko, on me."

The two teams split off, with Shepard taking point on the door leading to the bridge of the Ontario. They fell into their usual pattern, as the shotgun wielding Tali put herself immediately behind Shepard, and Kaidan soon became the third one in the stack. With all parties on one side of the door, this prevented deadly blue-on-blue crossfire should opposition forces be right on the other side of the entrance.

"I'll get the priority target, whoever has the Chairman. Tali, Kaidan, hit any others with speed. Overheat their weapons if there are three or fewer targets. If it's more than we can disable on first contact, weapons free. Understood?" Shepard rattled off quickly.

Kaidan was surprised. He assumed Shepard would have issued a kill-on-sight order regardless of circumstance. Hostage situations were supposed to be a clean execution, no Alliance op would attempt a less-lethal option as per policy. 

Rather than argue, Alenko simply answered. "Understood Sir."

Kaidan gave Tali a double pinch on her quarian equivalent of a hamstring, which let her know he was ready to breach the door. Tali then in turn gave the back of Shepard's leg the same signal, and Spectre activated a command on his omni-tool which sent the door sliding open. With barely a hairline crack between the frame and the receding panel, Kaidan heard two soft pings in the room beyond, before a loud pop sounded that sent the audio reception in his helmet into a static filled fuzz.

It happened in a lightning flash. They stormed onto the bridge, Tali and Kaidan overheated the weapons of the two guards on the left and right sides of the room with practised efficiency. In truth, the pair of untrained terrorists had been so disoriented by the flashbang, and were so unprepared for the speed of professional military operatives, that they were wrong-footed by the whole situation. They dropped their searing hot weapons to the ground in a clatter, and threw their hands straight into the air.

The leader, it seemed, was made of sterner stuff. The flashbang had temporarily blinded him, and his shotgun had risen enough that its discharge went just over the head of the kneeling Burns. He groaned, and went to bring the firearm down on Shepard, when suddenly the hostage taker was violently slapped aside by an invisible torrent of energy. Shepard glowed blue, his hand extended towards the ringleader of the operation.

In a similar sound to that in the hold, the leader landed with a wet crunch against the wall to Kaidan's right. The terrorist was unmoving, his head was at an impossible angle, and a bone was pushed up against the skin in his neck.

Burns flew up, wrapping his arms around Shepard, who did not react. The Commander's eyes were trained on the body lying on the floor, and he was indifferent to the hostage.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" The politician yelled in relief as Kaidan and Tali moved to secure the two shell shocked guards. Chairman's Burns' cries of happiness rang about the Ontario, as all other sounds fell away.

2183 - 13 Days Post Therum
Post MSV Ontario Operation
FTL Travel - Enroute to Citadel
SSV Normandy SR-1 - Main Deck

Kaidan held a large mug of coffee in his hand, enjoying the warmth against his palm as he rounded up the stairs to the CIC. The soft twirl of the galaxy map lay before him, its twinkling stars each an unknown quantity, but a possible destination for the unshackled and free ranging Normandy SR-1.

Enjoying the moment to pause and breathe, he was confident that there would be no more unexpected calls to action, given that they were just a few hours from the last relay before hitting the Serpent Nebula, and the Citadel within it. As Alenko appreciated the galaxy map, he heard a muted conversation full of laughter in the communications room, and moved in to investigate.

"... and so then, the thresher was all like, BLAWR !" Joker was seated, waving his arms around in a mock impression of a swaying beast, with several lit screens of the comms room behind him. Liara was in the chair opposite, transfixed on the pilot, eyes wide with naivete, clearly not treating Moreau's stories with the scepticism that they warranted.

"Oh Goddess! Were all the children and their mothers OK?" She asked with a hand over her mouth.

"Yeah, so you see," Joker said with a swooping gesture of his hand, imitating the Normandy, "I flew in and was all like, pew-pew, pew-pew, but pulled up at the last second, catching the maw with the thruster venting. I had to get in so close, because I had to make sure I didn't hit all the children, and the single mothers, like you said."

"It was good that you were so accurate then!" She replied. "I can see why so many of them called you to express their admiration after such a daring display."

Joker, with a slight change of expression into one of annoyance, had evidently caught Alenko out of the corner of his eye, and cut the story short, "Yeah but you know, the rest of the team were away doing something else so don't ask them about it."

Liara turned her head then to acknowledge the newcomer. "Lieutenant Alenko! I hope I have the naming convention correct now. Flight Lieutenant Moreau was just telling me an incredible tale."

Alenko smiled and locked eyes with the pilot, who made a silent gesture for Kaidan not to correct her. The Lieutenant instead directed the conversation away, lest he become party to Joker's lies. "Leaving Doctor?" Kaidan asked, nodding towards the asari's bags around her chair.

"Yes I will be departing your ship at the Citadel I am afraid," she said with disappointment. "I believe I can assist in you-, our , mission from a more appropriate location," Liara spun in her chair and gestured to the monitors behind her.

The numerous display screens in the comms room had been set to watch live streaming of the helmet cams of each individual crew member. The setup was clearly configured for a high level commander to organise ground troops during operations, an underused feature of the Normandy. Vitals, weapons status, and more were all visible on screen, in surprisingly high detail. The image on screen was of Tali's POV, courtesy of her helmet mounted camera, taking a guard into custody on the MSV Ontario, paused at the end of the recording.

No wonder I've never seen this. Shepard would die before letting an operation happen without him.

Liara, looking at the screen, explained her thoughts to Kaidan. "We watched your team's progress on this outing and I have come to the conclusion that I would be a hindrance to your efforts. Your team operates with considerably more… urgency , then I would be able to keep up with." 

"I can't fault that logic, it's an extremely challenging environment, even for career soldiers," Kaidan said in return. "But I am glad you're working with us, even in a remote capacity."

“As am I Lieutenant Alenko,” she answered with a smile. "I am fortunate to have the chance to repay your rescue, and of course the subject matter is not one I am averse to." 

Kaidan noted a flashing icon in the corner of the bottom right screen, near to where Liara sat. He nodded in its direction, “What’s that there? Is there an issue?”

Liara had a look of surprise, turning to see what it was that had Kaidan’s attention. As she did, it became obvious that the icon was for a single member of the ground team’s status, alerting them that the suit had powered down after the mission as was routine. Kaidan couldn't make out which suit it belonged to.

The asari’s head fringes tinted at the top edges slightly and she replied quickly, “Oh nothing to be concerned with, I was just monitoring the team during your excursion.”

Kaidan noted no icons for any other crew members on her screen, but decided not to press the issue. "Well, all the best Liara, don't be afraid to reach out if you have questions and the Commander isn't answering.” 

“I appreciate that, I will avail of your offer as needed,” she answered politely.

“Yeah well,” Joker said light heartedly, trying to bring the conversation back. “If your archaeology department requires a stealth drop into hostile territory make sure you call the real hero, not one of those ground pounders.”

Kaidan turned his head, and allowed himself a small smile as he replied, "Joker, the Normandy should have some recordings of your daring feat should it not? Perhaps the Doctor would appreciate some footage of what you were describing."

Feeling the pilot’s stare drilled into the back of his head as he turned away, Kaidan smiled to himself, and took another sip of his coffee before making his way below decks.

SSV Normandy SR-1 - 3 Deck - Staging Area

Kaidan knew that 3 deck, particularly the staging area, would be silent at this time of 'night' aboard the ship. Wrex, Tali, Garrus, and Williams all followed 1 Watch, which was functionally a dayshift if you were on Earth Standard Time. Most of the alien and regular ground crew that went with Shepard were kept on the same day-night cycle, so they were all sleeping prior to the Normandy's arrival at the Citadel.

But the ship still needed staff during all hours. So during the Normandy's 'night', marines filtered through hallways, ready to secure landing sites or respond in case of an emergency. Technicians and engineers conducted repairs and scheduled maintenance of every system. Cooks prepared food, while orderlies, able seamen and more completed the myriad of tasks that never sprung to mind as critical on a warship, but were no less required. The only difference was, on 2 Watch, things felt calm, like city roads at 0300hrs, where vehicles slowly make their way around empty streets as the odd pedestrian strolls lazily from building to building.

Kaidan loved this shift. He was required to be ready and able for ground missions, but as the XO of the ship, he was in charge of its operation while Shepard and the others slept. These mutually exclusive tasks often meant his schedule bled into both halves, but he truly relished his chances to live as a night owl. It always felt like there was time , compared to the frenetic pace of the day operations. A coffee could be savoured, a task considered, a report given its due importance.

As the Lieutenant made his way to his gear locker in the staging area, he heard a sound out of sorts with his nocturnal domain. His hair stood on end, not from anxiety or a flight-fight response, but from the static field of dark energy discharges. Unconcerned, but curious, he peered into the darkness of the staging area by the Mako.

A lone male figure stood in the centre of the room, wearing workout clothing drenched with sweat. He was panting with exhaustion, chest heaving up and down. His hair was a mess, his posture slumped, and his eyes glazed, unfocused. Small arcs of blue energy discharged off hairs on his arms, whisping up and away into the aether. Shepard was surrounded by several pieces of equipment and stores, ranging in size and dimension, but all roughly about the same mass, Kaidan guessed 75-120kg. Large circles were scratched into the flooring at random locations, some matching the resting places of the items strewn about, some missing the mark.

"Commander?" Kaidan asked, unsure of the situation.

The Spectre turned towards Alenko, apparently aware of how strange it all looked. "Just needed some practice."

Alenko looked around, and continued walking towards the Commander, ensuring he was close before speaking in a low tone. "Is everything OK Sir?"

"Yeah just," Shepard made out between deep breaths, "working out some kinks."

Kaidan looked at the equipment and considered what he saw. Shepard was clearly drained from biotics, and all of the dummy practice targets were of a particular size. The distances marked off would be ones that would have fit within the bridge of the MSV Ontario; tight quarters to control the inertia of anything being manipulated. A pile of empty high-sugar, high-electrolyte paste packets was haphazardly collected nearby.

These dummy targets are the size and weight of people. Judging by those packets, he's been practising for hours.

"Something… wrong with the last mission Sir?" Kaidan ventured cautiously.

"I'm surprised you of all people didn't see it, Alenko," Shepard said as he grabbed a water bottle.

What was I supposed to see? There was only one thing that stood out.

"I was caught off guard when you blanked the leader, based on what you said prior to the breach," Kaidan said plainly. "But he had lethal force directed at a hostage, you were well within any policy or training to do what you did."

Shepard, staring at Kaidan, replied in low tones, "I didn't mean to."

Kaidan frowned, "What?"

"I didn't mean to kill him," Shepard said between deep breaths. He started slowly doing the mnemonic forms with his fingers to demonstrate to Kaidan what he was struggling with. "I just, I couldn't get the polarity shift to switch-back quick enough. I've never had much luck with a turn around of inertia in a tight space like that."

Kaidan’s chin rose as he began to understand. “A pull strong enough to decentralise him from the hostage, and then a change in direction with enough juice to stop the momentum, but on a gradient of force that doesn’t turn his innards to mush. Not an easy manoeuvre.”

“Eloquently put,” Shepard said as he grabbed another packet of energy paste.

Kaidan shifted uneasily. It still seemed like there was something he was missing. He decided to risk it, and prodded the topic again. “Nobody will fault you for a terrorist’s death. I didn’t even notice you made a mistake until you said your intentions. I wouldn’t lose sleep over the fact he didn’t make it.”

Shepard rolled his head with disinterest, “Yeah, I’m not too worried about that dirtbag.”

“Sir,” Kaidan stated cautiously, gesturing to the crates. “You do seem like you’re a bit wound up by his death.”

Shepard let out a sharp snort, and shook his head, disagreeing with his second in command, "Nah, fuck that guy, he earned it. Just…" he said, his voice trailing off as he tried to catch his breath.

"Just?" Kaidan queried with an arched eyebrow.

"...What if it was one of you?" the Commander asked.

Kaidan frowned in confusion, "What do you mean?"

"Is it so surprising,” Shepard started with a laugh, clearly humoured by Kaidan’s stubborn obliviousness, “that I am not indifferent to the accidental manslaughter of my subordinates?”

Ah.

Alenko saw what Shepard was picturing. A crew member, needing to be pushed up and out of the line of fire, or their barrier reinforced, or any of the many ways that biotics support their fireteam, dead. Lying against a wall with a broken neck, eyes vacant, killed at the hands of the person they followed into battle because Shepard couldn't be trusted with the lives he held. An understandable mistake, with no malice or intent, but the result final all the same.

It was a feeling he knew too well. He hadn’t meant to kill Vrynnus, he just wanted him away . And yet when it came to human biotics the intent never mattered, it was always the result. Whether it was the public scrutiny, an Alliance review board or an overly critical self-analysis, there was no bottom to the well of questions that inevitably sprang out of such a death. 

Kaidan felt a rush of guilt, for having doubted Shepard's attitude towards his crew's mortality earlier that day. The Commander was playing the matter off with humour, but there was an undercurrent of genuine unease in the Spectre.

"Maybe you just can't do it all Sir. And that's OK," Kaidan let out, trying as much to assuage his own guilt as answer the Commander. "Maybe you just have to accept some things are going to go wrong."

The words were barely out of his mouth when he realised he was just repeating old refrains. Things he had told himself a million times to try and make the image of the dead turian feel more palatable.

“I might have to highlight the matter of pots and kettles here Lieutenant,” Shepard replied with a slight tilt of his head towards his second in command.

Got me. 

“Uh, yeah,” Kaidan started, a hand running through his hair. “Maybe I am not the one to lecture about hesitation or wanting the perfect outcome. Glass houses and all that.”

“Any reason for why that is?” Shepard asked with keen interest. 

Kaidan’s hand came down to rub his face in consternation. “I just… I’ve always been cautious. I guess I’m always willing to wait until I have control, especially when it comes to my biotics.”

Shepard crossed his arms, and cocked his head. “That’s obvious, but it’s not the why .”

“I guess it’s not.” 

The Spectre held his stare, “Ok, I won’t pry.”

“No, you’re not prying. It’s all good… I just don’t want to whine. I’m fine,” Kaidan said, immediately regretting that he showed weakness to the N7.

“Is it whining if I am the one asking?” Shepard said flatly, still staring down the Lieutenant.

The question caught Alenko out, suddenly aware of the level of interest shown by a renowned former special forces operative, now the very public face of the human race’s entry into the small club of Council politics. Kaidan started answering the Spectre cautiously, and before he knew it, the story of Vyrnnus, BAaT, and more was all out on the table. He didn’t even realise what was going on until he was already too far committed, and simply had to round out the final admission of what had happened to the turian instructor. It felt strange, laying out his greatest regret to the person he least expected to care or appreciate how it shaped Kaidan as a man.

As Kaidan finished the story that began so long ago, it dawned on the Lieutenant that Shepard had sidestepped talking about himself. Alenko felt relieved to get the matter off his chest, but there was an odd unease that the story surfaced at all, when they had supposedly been talking about the Spectre.

In the quiet that hung after Kaidan’s admission, he asked Shepard a question as his weight shifted back and forth in his boots. “Sir, wouldn’t this have been in my file?”

“I’m sure it is.”

Kaidan raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t look?”

Shepard shook his head, “Anderson trusted you, so I had no reason to go poking around. If there was anything you thought was important, I’d rather hear it from your perspective, not from a civilian typing a report.”

Kaidan opened his mouth to speak, still wrong-footed by the whole conversation. Eventually, he settled for a simple nod. 

“Thank you Sir.”

“You’re an excellent officer Alenko, more than you give yourself credit for,” Shepard replied honestly. “It’s a long career, make sure you see the end of i-”

Kaidan paused, unsure why Shepard had stopped. “Sir?”

Shepard shook his head again, turning away. “Nothing. Deja vu.” 

Finally recovered from his exertion, the Spectre flared his biotics once more, one of the objects rising in response as he resumed his training regime. “Back to the grind. As you were.”

Kaidan took his leave, and noticed his coffee had become cold. He wasn’t sure how Shepard throwing boxes around resulted in him feeling comfortable enough to spill his darkest secrets, but it was there in the open now, and he was none the worse for it. Alenko’s opinion of his Commander had shifted significantly, though strangely, he still did not know anything more about the Spectre.

But as Kaidan rose up a floor in the elevator, he came to the conclusion that he might have to revise his estimations of Saren's survival after all.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Serpent Nebula
Citadel Docking Bay - Alliance
Gangway - Normandy SR-1

“Shhh!”

Williams glared at the absent minded technician, who had been speaking into his headset, his eyes bored into his datapad. The male engineer had been deep in his work, but the Gunnery Chief had shot out an arm to block his passage as he walked down the gangway from the Normandy to the Citadel’s docking bay. Liara appeared startled at Ashley’s intervention, as T’Soni had seemed transfixed on the scene playing out before the two women on the platform of the Normandy's berth.

Three C-Sec officers were standing nearby, helpless. They had enlisted the assistance of Shepard with a suicidal, mentally ill woman who had been freed from a batarian slave transport. The teenage girl had escaped from her rescuers, but had relieved a batarian corpse of its pistol, which she was now waving about dangerously. The poor, unstable human was mumbling incoherently, and none of the officers could understand what she was saying. 

It was not that she was speaking in a language that they couldn’t understand. It was that she wasn’t speaking any language at all, rather just making sounds that almost seemed like words.  

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Shepard said, far down the platform from the Normandy, as he held out his hands in a sign of contrition, and patience. 

The young woman spit out a string of unintelligible noises.

Did she never learn to speak? What did the Batarians do to her… ? Ashley was swallowed by an overwhelming sense of empathy for this young, tortured soul.

Shepard typed into his omni-tool and held up the device to show the text he had written so that the woman with the gun could see it. The teenager shook her head, and yelled some angry noises in response. It seemed that the girl didn’t know how to read. 

The poor thing. 

A flash of understanding played across the face of the Spectre as he held his ground, his hands still extended. Slowly, he formed a distinct sign with his fingers, and performed a simple gesture, which appeared very specific. The young woman nodded, and returned the gesture to Shepard. 

“She’s deaf,” Ashley realised, before quietly advising Liara of her deduction. “And she doesn’t have any communication software…”

“How would the Commander know that … language?” Liara whispered while trying to make the same gesture with her hands. 

Williams shrugged, and typed a quick command into her omni-tool. The device started producing a text readout as it analysed the conversation between Shepard and the distressed former captive. Ashley leaned towards Liara and let her read the output to try and follow along.

“I want - help <error>,” Williams's readout stated as Shepard signed to the girl.

The young woman shook her head, and signed back, “No, -hurt …masters. … have - help-.” 

The readout on Williams’ screen struggled to capture the entire conversation, clipping in and out. Shepard and the girl were far down the docking bay ramp, and many of their hand gestures were blocked from view by their bodies and the large shipping crate separating the two groups.

“... My - Andrew. I … Mindoir-”

“... Know how - sign?” The girl asked.

“- brother- …  virus, n <error>” Shepard replied with his hands in patient gestures. 

“Me - virus… too,” she signed back.

“What… name?”

“- don’t get a name! Don’t - one!” The girl said with a wild wave of her hands.

“<error>... Parents call you?” Shepard asked.

“...Talitha. But parents … forget them-... Master new parent… Th-” 

Suddenly, Talitha let loose a blood-curdling screech, but used no words. She lunged towards Shepard, pushing the pistol into his chest with one hand, and used her other to pull down his collar, exposing the scar on his neck. 

Liara gasped, and the C-Sec officers brought up the muzzles of their rifles in the direction of Talitha.

But Shepard maintained his stance, and did not react to the recently freed slave. Rather, his only motion was to shoot a sideways glance towards the men on the gangway. Williams cautiously put her hand over their guns, and told them quietly to stand down. She couldn’t believe that Shepard was taking that sort of risk. But it was hard to imagine herself doing any different if it was her in those shoes. 

The Spectre returned his gaze to the young woman before him, and she rapidly signed in his face, the gun still at his chest. 

“You had- mark! - chosen … maste- leave! Why- … special?”

“I cut -mark off…”

“- you … escape!”

Shepard shook his head. “I wasn’t spec- … fought, and I lost.”

Talitha scrunched her face. “How- … di- you … get out?”

“My dad-.”

Talitha settled down somewhat, and tilted her head. “And… escape?”

Shepard shook his head again, but with more weight this time. “No. - only … me.”

Talitha scrunched her face again in confusion as Shepard signed again. 

“Alliance- fail. Soldiers - … failed.”

“Soldiers… weak too?” Talitha signed. 

Shepard nodded. 

Talitha seemed to think this over, her face still scrunched. “Not - … only me ? Weak?”

“You - here - must be strong.” Shepard signed with a grim smile. 

“No … I know I - weak…”

Shepard shook his head. “You… -never had a chance… be strong. Let - … <error> ?”

Liara gasped to the left of Williams, which was mirrored by the C-Sec officers as Talitha slipped her arms under Shepard's armpits and began sobbing uncontrollably. The sound was erratic, with no words even attempting to be formed. Ashley wasn't surprised that Shepard returned the gesture, but she was caught off guard at just how… paradoxically unnatural his large frame crouching over for a hug seemed, yet how right it looked. Talitha buried her forehead on his sternum as the Spectre held her close, and relieved her of the pistol in her hand without issue. 

“Fucking monsters,” Williams spat out as she ground her teeth together. 

“Hmm?” Liara said absentmindedly, still transfixed on the scene playing out before her. 

“Batarians,” Ashley growled.

Liara lifted her head, and what Williams saw in the asari’s eyes completely caught her unawares. The anxious, over-cautious scientist had balled the bottoms of her long sleeved shirt into her fists, and had swallowed hard. “Your people came to the galaxy when I was a decade out of grad school,” Liara said with her bottom lip trembling in indignation. “And you have been shown nothing but pain since you opened the Charon relay. Goddess. So much has happened. The turians immediately fired on you without thinking, then the slave raids in your colonies. And now your Eden Prime, Saren, his geth, the Reapers…”

Ashley’s face flashed confusion and surprise at the outpouring of enraged sympathy. The situation was emotional to be sure, but she hadn’t expected the response from the socially distant asari who was older than her, Shepard and Alenko put together. 

What it must be like to live for so long. To have decades to look back upon in your mind, to delve on that all experience, yet to still have centuries laid out before you in promise of a better tomorrow. Ashley felt the strange dichotomy that overcame her whenever she spoke to Liara. That the usual naivety of the person before her was tempered by the inertia of the sum knowledge of such… history. That behind the facade of innocence was a truly wise and rich experience that could catalogue over a century of living.

“By your standards, human scars of slavery are very recent,” Williams said quietly. “When aliens from dark, unknown places stole whole cities of us… well. We kinda freaked out. We still do.”

Liara gulped, and nodded in understanding before she looked in the direction of Talitha and Shepard. Her gaze was long, and her quiet voice distant. “So the Commander’s scar on his neck is not a battle injury. How… how old would he have been?”

Ashley whispered, seeing that Shepard was scooping up Talitha, and would soon be within earshot. “Sixteen.”

Liara didn’t answer immediately. Her face scrunched in anger and indignation, which still looked so out of place on her features. It cast the asari in a completely new light to Williams.

“I hope I do not have to tell you how young that sounds to an asari,” Liara answered finally, breathing deeply to steady herself. 

The teenager draped across his arms, Shepard was now walking towards them. The paramedics and C-Sec officers were preparing the stretcher and radioing their superiors to advise them of the update.

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come…” Ashley began the old quote, looking at the girl who would at least see tomorrow. “...Whispering ‘it will be happier.’”

“A beautiful sentiment, emblematic of your uniquely human spirit,” Liara said, as her voice fell back towards its usual cautious, even-toned manner, her eyes on Talitha.

“We’re a hopelessly romantic bunch,” Ashley said before adding, “Or we are dangerously selfish.”

“And we are not all like our governments,” Liara said, her eyes still full of determination. “Garrus, Tali, Wrex, me. We will help you even if the Council will not.”

Shit, she thinks I hate aliens. Williams felt a wrench of nausea and guilt overcoming her on hearing Liara’s words. It wasn’t that she didn’t like aliens. Garrus, Tali, Liara… Hell, even Wrex had been a huge boon for the Normandy. They had all put in their absolute best to try and help this human ship in its mission. They weren’t being paid amazingly, and there was no glory on a classified warship. The alien crew weren’t really getting anything out of following Shepard, other than they thought it was the right thing to do.

It was just like Ashley had told Shepard. It’s not that she didn’t like them, or they didn’t like humans, it's just that they were going to look out for their own when the chips were down.

But… why wouldn’t Liara think that I hate them? Ashley was forced to reckon with her own behaviour and attitudes towards the new crew members. She had completely cold shouldered Liara when the newcomer was lost in the mess hall. She hadn’t even asked the young asari about how she felt about pursuing her mother as an enemy. Ashley shared a workspace with Garrus and Wrex, but hadn’t ever reached out to them to even play a hand of cards. And to top it off, the Gunnery Chief recalled that she had let slip a couple of less than fair comments about both the blue skinned scientist and suited Quarian when joking with the other marines. 

No, I may be right about whose governments are going where when the fighting starts. But I’m not Udina, and Garrus isn’t Sparatus. I haven’t been fair to them.

Ashley was lucky that she did not have to respond immediately as her mind swirled. Shepard finally reached them with Talitha, who evidently took the sedative without issue. He handed the semi-conscious teenager off to the paramedic that attended with C-Sec, and whispered something to the medical practitioner, before hand shaking a few of the officers and sending them on their way. 

“Sir, forgive the verbage,” Ashley said with a shaking voice as she watched the young woman being wheeled away, “but that was good shit. Well… well done Skipper.”

Liara nodded in agreement, but held her silence at the gravity of what she had seen. Ashley caught the asari’s eyes run up and down the Spectre, in a way Williams couldn’t help but notice as significant.

“Appreciated Chief. As you were,” Shepard concluded gravely, with a tight nod to both her and Liara before he turned towards the Normandy. It was beyond obvious that he did not wish to speak of the matter.

He is going to skin the next slaver he meets, Ashley internally concluded. The thought jarred with her own revelation about how anti-alien she had been. Jerks and saints, just like the rest of us, she tried to remind herself, taking wisdom from Alenko’s refrain.

Liara spoke with conviction as she turned to Ashley, her indignation simmering beneath her cool poise. “I will return your favour someday Gunnery Chief Williams, for your rescue on Therum. I will assist you in finding Saren and the Conduit in the best way I know how, and would be glad to help you personally in any way I can.”

The scientist's face was serious, but Ashley couldn’t help but break into a smile. “You don’t owe me anything T’Soni.”

“And yet I wish to do so all the same,” Liara said, her mood turning towards her usual, lighter tone.

The asari smiled and bowed her head slightly, before turning towards the ship’s gangway. Ashley knew that Liara had been meeting with Alliance representatives and preparing for her offsite position, instead of availing of the Citadel while the Normandy replenished supplies and underwent refit. She hadn’t taken a moment for herself since being provided freedom on the Normandy. She had been a solitary figure wandering in and out, asking for nothing and burdening no one.

I can do better than I have. 

Ashley gently grabbed the asari’s arm, stopping Liara in her tracks. “I’ve been meaning to ask, where did you get your armour? The one I saw you trying on when the liaison team came by.”

“I… asked the supply requisition officer on the Normandy to arrange for an appropriate suit,” Liara answered with a quizzing look. “I did not think much of it, as the item will likely stay in a box at my office anyway.”

“And you… haven’t had any issues?” Ashley asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Not per say, though it is quite uncomfortable as I am sure all military suits are,” Liara replied. 

Oh no. 

“Never let men decide what field equipment fits a woman,” Ashley snapped, but not at Liara herself. “There has never been a military in human existence that has found the proper pair of pants for female operatives, let alone armour that can survive hard-vac.”

Liara’s face stitched in confusion. “So you’re saying it’s not supposed to…” she started before whispering the suit’s mal-adjustment issues into Ashley’s ear. 

“Oh my God no!” Ashley declared before taking Liara by the arm towards the Citadel elevator. “This just won’t do. Come on, we are going to the quartermaster’s office, and we’re gonna get you some proper gear before you leave us.”

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Serpent Nebula - Widow System
Citadel Station
Transit - Departures

"Now departing, THESSIA, flight number AC3928 from docking bay D-39"

"Now departing, THESSIA, flight number AC3928 from docking bay D-39"

Liara turned over her boarding chit in her hand and reminded herself that the announcement on the loudspeakers was not for her. The temptation for her contract had been to return to familiarity, to Thessia, however it was clear that not even CIIS could protect her on Benezia's home world. The roots of the matriarch's influence would be intertwined in every asari settlement, and so another arrangement was made. Liara was advised that a human planet with a high alien population would be the best solution for her situation. She could easily integrate with secure Alliance communications, Saren and Benezia would have the least amount of influence, and the humans were throwing wads of credits at every biotic, ship engineer, doctor, and more as they played catchup on the galactic stage, which made a cover story simple, and believable. After all, the best kind of cover was the one you didn't have to explain to yourself.

And so she became Van'ri Parnus, a private tutor for a secluded, wealthy family on Terra Nova that preferred to keep their lineage out of the limelight. She would be expected to train one of the heirs to the family fortune in biotics, galactic species mannerisms, politics, and more. She had traded her lab attire for a smart, collared brown leather jacket, and athletic trousers that harkened to the style of an asari commando. Her boots were high topped and laced, with a low flat heel, indicating that she was ready for a dynamic situation, and was not purely interested in fashion. She had donned a number of dark markings that ran along her head fringes, and added a supplement to her diet that gave her skin a slight indigo tint.

Disguise secured, she had been set up with a place in the 'home' for the 'family' in question that she would be serving as a live-in tutor. In truth, the home would be a well appointed office for her to work in, with secure communications to Alliance command, and the Normandy. The family on the other hand were actually a number of Alliance agents that would be busy with their own tasks, who would rarely have reason to speak to her. But the cover was perfect, and she would have very little interaction with any other parties, which in her opinion was a bonus.

And so Liara T'Soni sat in the Citadel terminal awaiting her shuttle. She regarded the pipeline of moving bodies in the pedestrian causeway nearby, with its press of organic mass trundling through security checkpoints and duty-free storefronts. Every species imaginable, every combination of clothing, age, and description could be seen as the herd of bipedal cattle pressed through the crossroads of the galaxy. The collection of noise was loud; shoes squeaked on the floor, suitcases were rolled along broken wheels, and exasperated voices of couples in arguments could be heard. Neon signs competed for space, some offered directions, some demanded purchases. Crying infants screamed over it all, as tired staff members looked on at the horde with exhausted expressions.

Liara meanwhile sat on a ventilation grate in a far corner, her back against a tall pillar that held up a window facing into the Serpent Nebula. She stared out at the gaseous clouds that formed the backdrop for the parade of vessels silently drifting by, as she drank in the stillness. The scene was beautiful regardless of context, but contrasted to the hot, humid mess of bodies nearby, the silent panorama was mesmerising.

She glanced at her omni-tool, noting the multiple clocks still running at various times on her main display screen. It was 1230hrs Citadel Standard Time, meaning she still had forty minutes before she would be expected to board for Terra Nova.

In her periphery she also noted it was 0430hrs on Earth Standard Time, the Normandy's chronometer of choice. That meant 2 Watch would be finishing up their rotation soon, with the various trades doing handovers for the oncoming shift, letting them know of developments that had occurred while 1 Watch slept. Dr. Chakwas would be turning on her kettle to boil, and Williams would be found walking to the staging area, headphones on, ready for a brutal workout belowdecks. Kaidan would be wrapping up the duties of nightshift, walking with a datapad, checking off tasks that had been completed to satisfaction before he went for rest. Wrex, Garrus and Tali would be rising to make their way to the mess to mingle with the marines, and to take up their specific trays of food that would have been set aside for their unique diets.

And Shepard would be patrolling through it all, coffee in hand, surveying his domain, fielding questions on the ‘morning’ walk about the ship as a parade of crew approached him with concerns.

An unexpected feeling came over her. I miss them.

"Excuse me, is this spot taken?" A voice asked, pointing to the unoccupied area next to the window in front of Liara.

T'Soni turned and saw that a familiar face, a fellow alumni from the University of Serrice, was standing nearby and had turned towards her. 

"No," Liara said reflexively, but realised after that she probably should have lied. Goddess, I am off to a bad start.

At the approach of the individual towards 'Van'ri', two humans, who were busily pretending to read documents in their hands, snapped their heads towards the asari who had asked the question. The human male and female, Liara's undercover escorts, slid their dominant hands up their legs towards concealed M-12 Locust SMGs under their casual wear.

Liara knew the intruder to be Dr. Elyria Rael, an Associate Dean of Liara's former department. The faculty member of the University of Serrice would have had few reasons to interact with Liara during the maiden’s time at the school, as the two asari operated in different orbits. The late stage matron was of a level within the institution that her portrait was hung alongside former faculty members, and she would have been regularly seen at fundraisers and conferences, surrounded by people who wanted to tell her something, or wanted something from her. Liara on the other hand, could have been found in the library, in the lab, or in the library.

Rael would have had almost no reason to recognize Liara, or to be aware she existed at all, except as an abstract name on published papers she disagreed with. Liara looked nothing like her old self, so even if Rael had known who Liara was normally, there was almost no chance the matron would make the connection. 

Yet espionage was new territory for the young maiden, so naturally she began to worry that her cover was already blown.

Luckily for Liara, the two human agents had clearer minds, their postures easing as they realised that their charge was not in danger. The female of the pair looked Liara up and down, obviously taking note of the rigidness of her posture and general unease. The human snapped off a quick message on her omni-tool and sent it to the anxious rookie 'agent'.

<If she talks to you, talk. Being suspiciously quiet or rude is in fact suspicious. People like to talk about themselves, keep the conversation on her.>

Liara gulped, and acknowledged the advice internally. She kept playing with her omni-tool to obscure the fact that she had been using the messaging application from Rael.

"Miss your flight too?" Rael asked as she set herself down against a pillar opposite Liara, her bags laid about her feet.

"No, I am still waiting," change it to her, Liara remembered. "Where were you heading?"

"Thessia. There's a symposium where I am supposed to give a lecture," Rael said with a sigh. "Guess I am swapping timeslots with someone for tomorrow."

"What was the topic?" Liara asked.

"It's all a bit technical," the matron said dismissively, clearly thinking the matter was above the head of the person across from her. "But in simple terms, there are signs that the catalyst for the fall of the Prothean Empire was a widespread, long incubation pandemic. It got around the population before they realised what was happening, and it started a chain of events leading to their downfall."

Out of reflex Liara clutched the bag to her left, which contained the binder with all of the images Shepard had drawn from his visions of the Prothean beacon. Confident it was still in her possession, she replied with feigned ignorance. "Is that so? Crazy to think a flu brought down a race that made mass relays."

Rael frowned, obviously annoyed with the response her theory prompted. "Like I said, it's quite technical."

She is so convinced, and so wrong, Liara thought as she looked at Rael. For decades Liara had been dealing with people like her, those who believed their experience and status let them dismiss her ideas out of hand. They would inevitably fall back on some fallacy, appealing to the idea that their theories would become more obvious once Liara had grown out of her maiden years. Each of them would have each other's backs, reinforcing the idea that this age-based elitism was acceptable, and that Liara's arguments were outlandish.

At the time she had been intimidated. These people had long centuries of inertia behind them, and their words carried weight. They held the purse strings, which meant they controlled what projects got funding, and which theories could be pursued with experimental rigour. They held influence in academic journals, and peer-review committees. Liara had needed them to believe her and to take her seriously.

And, if Liara was being honest, she had also wanted them to like her.

"What about you?" Rael asked as she tapped her omni-tool absent mindedly, clearly frustrated with the non-responsive device. "Where are you headed?"

"Terra Nova," Liara answered, providing as little information as possible. "For work."

"A human colony?" Rael answered with a snort. "Dancing?"

"Teaching," Liara replied sharply. She felt a prickly defensiveness at hearing Rael’s tone.

"That's for the better. I'm glad people like you are bringing them into the fold, they have so much to learn," Elyria said as she gave up on the frozen omni-tool.

An image of a stealth ship, peerless in its sleek design and function flashed in Liara's mind. A crew, hastily forged to take on the greatest threat to the galaxy. Marines alongside alien races, willing to entrust their lives to species that looked down upon them. Humans, each at an age an asari would not dare leave their hometown, with naught but their friends, firearms and belief at their side, striding off to fight unknown horrors in the night.

A man, staring a snarling krogan in the face, undaunted.

"They have their qualities," Liara said quietly, staring out the window.

Liara found herself thinking of a conversation in years past, one she had long put behind her. She had been in a kitchen, herself and her mother, arguing over Liara taking a position not unlike what Rael held. How insurmountable the responsibilities seemed, how important the chair in which she would sit. And now, knowing of the Reapers, of Saren and his geth, Liara simply could not bring herself to take Rael or her work seriously. How hilariously wrong this matron was, her life wrapped up in a world of academia, politicking, and social scheming. How inconsequential that symposium would be, how oblivious its attendants would all be to its impotence.

Dr. T’Soni stared out at the exchange of ships in the nebula, each wordlessly setting off or returning home. Each the protagonist in their own story.

Through the window, hundreds of tendrils of the Citadel docking bays could be seen, like fine, whip straight hairs sticking out perpendicular from the long arms of the Wards. In one, a small Alliance freighter was being released from the clutches of the docking clamps, steam and debris floating off in zero-G as the mass of the steel brick slowly fell backwards from the station. It was little more than a civilian cargo vessel with a lovely blue paint scheme, but the romance of not knowing its destination or purpose gave it an aura in its silent waltz.

Liara knew the Normandy SR-1 was sitting in some dock not unlike that one, with hurried hands passing over it in frantic repair. Before long, the overdue maintenance would be complete, and it too would fall away from the Citadel's embrace and flare its thrusters, off to destinations Liara would not be privy to. To see untold wonders she would view through vid screens, to experience trials and tribulations she would hear of after the fact.

"I am afraid, my daughter, that life will soon come at you faster than you are prepared to deal with it." Benezia's words rang in her ears as if her mother was standing right in front of her.

Liara sighed, her breath catching on the clear window. Am I to forever be the scared scientist? To hide from risk and responsibility on some remote world?

A man, who knew everything and nothing about her, had extended a hand of trust. After a single conversation, he was willing to bring her with his crew, despite not knowing what would come next. To put a gun in her hand and have her stand by his shoulder, to face down whatever came.

Out there, on that ship, lay answers to her life's work, and the only hope of stopping the repetition of genocide that befell the Protheans. A lifetime of mysteries and curiosities were latched onto that docking bay in the distance. And here she sat, waiting to be whisked away to safety. Like she had always done, letting others take on the risks and unknowns.

Not this time.

"What am I doing here?" Liara said out loud. One hundred and six years of life had led to this moment, and she had finally woken up.

Rael squinted, her brow lined with confusion. "What?"

Wordlessly, Liara picked up her bag, fumbling with the boarding chit that was in her hand. She walked straight up to the human operatives, and placed the pass on the male's lap.

"I have to go," she said with a smile, as she tore off towards the destiny awaiting in a far-flung docking bay.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Serpent Nebula - Widow System
Citadel Station - Bachrjet Ward
Warehouse District 53-TP1 - Unused Office

Garrus was a military man. Given that he was a turian, that would seem redundant, but it was an important characteristic to note in his current environment. On the bottom floor of a sprawling, decaying office compound in a decrepit wing of the Bachrjet Ward, this was a fact that he tried to keep reminding himself.

The building had once been a headquarters for a wealthy import-export logistics company. Its slate grey colouring with glossy white accents was of a corporate style that had long fallen out of fashion. A huge entrance way opened into an atrium, with a glass ceiling soaring seven floors above the ground. The walkway through the atrium was wide enough that a small freighter, or large transit shuttle could have been pushed through, though either may have clipped at the edges.

Dead plants, nearly decayed into dust, sat in huge pots that lined the two sides of the walkway. On either side of the atrium, abandoned offices overlooked the grand approach to the heart of a dissolved company.

It was here, in this ruin of an unremarkable corporation, that the Normandy's new crew members found out what it meant to be an Alliance marine under the command of Shepard. The objective was to 'unify standards' so that the team would operate under one model on the ground, rather than the current mishmash of military policies and non-military training.

Garrus was not so sure that the result was unity. Shepard had had the company's fitness pool re-filled, and created his own version of human ‘Hell’ on the Citadel.

" Move Miss Rayya! They are all waiting on you!" Bellowed Williams at Tali as the female marine monitored a suite of numbers on her omni-tool. "Nobody starts until you get that heartrate up!"

Garrus wanted to evacuate every fluid in his body. This was the eighteenth round of this process, and his vision had narrowed to a pinprick. His hands were useless clubs, and he was barely processing audio information. He knew the game. Sleep deprive the trainees the night before, then get them to sustain a heart rate at a high enough level for an extended period of time, before introducing stimuli that would spike a response similar to fight or flight, rendering decision making extremely difficult. It was one of the ways to simulate the most dangerous situations in combat; Not when a particular event was happening outside of you, but when your mind was collapsing on the inside, unable to process the information being given to it.

And Spirits did he forget how much it sucked.

Tali, Garrus, and Liara were doing laps in the former corporate pool, wearing heart rate monitors and VI assisted augmented reality visors. Once the cardiovascular threshold had been reached and sustained for the time period set by the trainers, the group would be told to exit, handed a weapon, and the session would begin. They would run to a designated location of the abandoned office building, and the VI augmented reality would overlay a scenario that they would have to navigate through.

Wrex had initially refused to participate, and so Shepard had taken his place. The large, gleaming eye of the krogan had remained fixed on the small organics putting in great effort, particularly the two non-military newcomers, Tali and Liara. After two rounds of the scenarios, ego and pride clearly took over, and the ancient battlemaster started doing shuttle runs with the enormous plant pots, and began falling in behind the Spectre for each combat drill. He wouldn’t participate in swimming, but otherwise, he was committed.

But they were now on round eighteen. At least, Garrus thought it was eighteen. He also didn't know what year it was.

Tali was barely keeping her head above water. Liara could be heard gasping for air on each stroke, her arms slapping against the surface in inelegant flails. And Garrus, well. Turians don't swim, they just delay drowning.

"94% heart rate, that's GO TIME PEOPLE MOVE MOVE MOVE!" The gunnery chief screamed at the crew, finally satisfied with Tali's cardio output.

Tali threw her chest over the edge of the pool and slumped onto her side, dragging her legs out of the water. She rolled over again, coming up on her hands and knees, swaying back and forth trying to regain balance. Kaidan grabbed her by the shoulder, and thrust a shotgun into her fumbling fingers, the firearm loaded with tracking equipment to coordinate with the VI simulation. He pushed her off in the direction of Wrex, who had fallen on his face in a crash, dropping the pot he had been carrying. With a roar he pushed himself up and grabbed his own shotgun, refusing assistance.

Liara pulled herself out of the pool but immediately doubled over, retching, spewing equal parts vomit and chlorinated water. Shepard, his eyes glazed as he mindlessly ran towards the scenario start point, was passing by her at the time. Without hesitation, he picked her up, muddying himself with the discharged mixture, and helped her with a half carry to the awaiting trainers, who handed the two exhausted trainees ammoless weapons for the drill.

Garrus was the last, as befit a turian trying to survive in an aquatic environment. He reached the edge of the pool, trying to haul himself out, but he just couldn't. Tali, Wrex, Liara were all at the start point, and no matter how much he willed himself, he just couldn't get the force down through his arms to push himself out, and he fell back in with an inelegant splash.

Come on… come on… don’t fail in front of everyone…

Vakarian groaned in pain, and curled his fingers around the lip of the cursed container of water. Then, he willed every ounce of his being, closed his eyes, and-

-was dragged out of the water with a crash, falling on top of one Andrew Shepard.

Wordlessly, Garrus nodded, which was returned by the Spectre as both gasped for air, neither able to speak from exhaustion. Content that they were partners in their shared misery, they clasped hands, clambered up, and raced for the start point with the rest of the crew, falling into the stack formation.

Garrus's left shoulder slammed into the wall, and he leaned his weight against the thin sheet metal. The VI fired up, overlaying the decrepit corporate hive with a dark metal theme, similar to the pre-fab buildings that often housed pirates on remote worlds.

Shepard was on point, followed by Wrex, Tali, Liara and then Garrus. Each were heaving their chests, trying to suck as much oxygen in as they could, desperate to bring down their heart rates. 

Of all the people in the stack formation, Garrus was most surprised to see the still somewhat purple tinted Liara, who was sporting some of her abandoned alter-ego. There had been a few moments where Garrus wondered if Alenko or Williams were going to intervene on the session for medical necessity on behalf of the asari, but Liara had waived them off every time, somehow managing to get back to her feet and power through the scenario. She was struggling immensely, she didn’t know what she was doing in an organised military operation, but she was clearly willing to do whatever it took to get there.

Garrus eyed her as he readied himself to give her the go signal. Just before he gave the start, he saw that Liara had her pistol muzzle raised, nearly pressed into Tali’s back in the tight cluster of operatives outside of the door.

“Only…,” Garrus gasped between breaths, keeping his voice quiet, “point at… what you want to kill,” he said, putting his hand on the top of Liara’s firearm, pushing the muzzle towards the ground. 

T’Soni’s lips were chapped, mouth dry, and her eyes were glazed, but she nodded in understanding. She mouthed what Garrus assumed was the asari word for ‘thank you’, before she returned her focus to the doorway in front of her.

The orders came up on the VI headset:  <Neutralise Op - Pirate Base. Enemy VIP escaping out the rear of the building. Move to intercept and eliminate. Weapons free.>

Garrus sent the GO signal up the line. He saw Shepard press open the door with his left hand, shouldering his rifle with only his right. On first light, with barely a hairline crack visible into the room, he made contact with some ‘enemy’ unseen by Garrus, and sent a rope of simulated bullets through the cresting door, before storming in after the rounds he had sent into the beyond.

The rest billowed in after, and Garrus saw the imposed scenario play out before them. Low level lighting softly illuminated the corners of the large, rectangular room that had furniture flipped on every side, with broken cover available all over. The simulated room was a mess hall for a dingy pirate operation, with kitchen appliances on one side, and a large overturned table in the middle. 

Shepard and Wrex had cleared the closest corners, putting rounds immediately onto their two targets who dropped from the fire. Tali and Liara had both fired frag grenades down into the hallway beyond at a target running for cover. Liara’s had skipped off a pillar in the middle and exploded without anyone nearby, but Tali caught the wall to the side of the head of the simulated enemy, timing his passage perfectly. The VI fizzled out the contact, and she moved to secure the hallway entrance. 

“Obstacle; clearing,” Garrus voiced.

Shepard and Wrex moved into the side of Garrus, covering his flank and six. “Moving,” Shepard aired as he fell alongside letting Garrus know he was safe to proceed. 

Garrus swept the area behind the table with the muzzle of his Kolvalyov VI, finding it empty. “Clear.”

“Target is escaping out the rear, reform and move,” Shepard barked into the radio, advancing on the hallway before him.

The group fell in as they had practised, approaching the T-junction on both sides, popping out to sweep in a manner that prevented blue on blue fire. With no contacts, they reformed again, with Garrus falling in the rear, keeping his eyes behind the group.

As the pack made their way down the hallway on the right side of the T-junction, blood continued to pound behind Garrus’s eyes. Sharp breaths echoed in his helmet, sucked in and fired out between his bared teeth. His job was to cover the six as the rest of the stack moved up through the narrow passage, clearing doors on left and right, as the point man, Shepard, monitored their advance to the front. It was an unstated exercise in trust, as no person could cover all 360 degrees.

The heavy whine of a turbine could be heard spinning up in the distance, ahead of Shepard. 

“Double time,” the Spectre stated, and the pace quickened. 

The mission update ran across their screens: <VIP Shuttle Preparing for Takeoff> 

The thunder of their metal boots clanking on the hallway floor was a drum roll. There was no subtlety. 

They came up on the exterior exit, a double wide door that opened to the clearing in the rear. Sounds of a shuttle whirring outside could be heard through the threshold, so Shepard and Wrex moved shoulder to shoulder. The stack came up on the double wide, and the two behemoths barrelled through the doors, brute forcing their way with meat and biotics as the metal frame opened with a thunderous crack under their combined mass.

Shepard and Wrex broke right and left, as Tali sent a streaking tech munition grenade from her underslung launcher straight between them into the open door of the shuttle. With an arc of electricity, the servos within the craft whined and sputtered. The VIP simulation, a turian, snarled in the shuttle door of his now immobile vehicle, and reached for a rifle.

The rest of the group poured into the opening, but Garrus could only monitor over his shoulder with glances. He could hear the battle playing out, but had to cover the rear. 

Liara keyed up on a human guard, who was raising his rifle at the enormous Wrex barrelling towards him. She quickly signed a biotic form, and let loose a pull that snatched around the guard’s ankle. The hapless human, who was retreating backwards while bringing his gun to bear, was sent pinwheeling end over end, away from the battle, and precariously past the edge of the shuttle landing pad. With a quick cut of the air with a flat palm, Liara ended the effect, and the human plummeted to a familiar wet crunch below.

The roar of gunfire, biotics, and tech munitions continued, but Garrus had to keep the watch on the six, and the hallway, facing the opposite direction. After a couple familiar bursts of Wrex’s shotgun, a new update populated at the top left of Garrus’s HUD:

<VIP Eliminated - Extract Safely>

Just as his eyes flicked away from the text, a body rounded the corner, an enemy commando. Garrus set his shoulders, bringing the rifle to zero on the simulated asari’s torso, his finger coming off the frame to the trigger to neutralize the pirate.

But Garrus hesitated halfway through his trigger pull; the asari had no weapons in her hands. A tug of C-Sec training kicked in for a quarter second, but it was all it took. 

"Shit," he barely got out. 

Crushing, but perfectly balanced pressure collapsed on all sides of him simultaneously. Garrus was trapped, expertly held in place, unable to move naught but his eyes. Caught in the stasis field, he was powerless but to look on as the asari calmly pulled out a pistol as she walked up to him. Reaching up towards Garrus, she executed the turian from inside the minimum effective range of his shield, a single shot to his temple via an outstretched arm as the asari moved on to the rest of the group.

Garrus’s HUD flashed red, error messages showing across the screen before the simulation was powered down. Alenko stood nearby, and ended the stasis effect that had pinned the turian, allowing him to take off the visor. 

Looking around, the other squadmates had their session ended sooner after, the asari evidently being dispatched by Wrex, with a deep rumbling grunt of satisfaction as his shotgun fired a simulated round. 

Wrex and the others reformed, taking off their equipment, laying it to the side in a heap. Garrus stood alone in the hallway, hands on his wide hips, recounting his failure. Mumbling conversation could be heard in the distance between the other participants, as Williams and Alenko ran over the results on their omni-tools with Shepard. 

Garrus hated the wait. He could see Shepard being debriefed in the distance by the other two humans, who would no doubt advise the Spectre about the turian’s failure, and subsequent ‘casualty’. He just wanted the bandage ripped off, to be shouted down by the superior officer so he could just get it over with. Turians brooked no such failure in their order of battle and he had been given little reason to believe that Shepard was a forgiving sort either. 

And the hard truth was, he had subconsciously looked down on the human in the early days of the Normandy’s expedition. Not intentionally of course, but it was hard to take the short, soft, fragile species seriously when it came to matters of war. They didn’t move with the speed of salarians, nor the grace of asari; they had neither the strength nor durability of the krogan, and barely a generation of them had grown up with exposure to the wider galaxy. They were selfish, with none of the discipline or adherence to the greater social good like those in the Hierarchy. There was absolutely no reason to think that they could hold their own, let alone count themselves amongst the premier fighting forces in Citadel space. 

So logically, if one of those creatures had made it to be a Spectre, surely, Garrus had thought, he could make it if he re-applied for the elite unit. 

Yet time and time again, he had been forced to face reality on the ground. Shepard would be standing over a defeated enemy, and Garrus would be running behind him, trying to keep up. The repeated evidence was beginning to grate at his confidence. 

“You know what happened I take it?” Came the question that Garrus had been bracing for, as the Commander approached. 

Garrus let out a slow reply, “I do.”

“Well?” Shepard asked, waiting for the turian's explanation.

“When the asari came through the corner I readied, but she had both hands in front and I s-”

“You're not a cop anymore,” Shepard stated flatly, cutting Garrus off. “Stop worrying about being hauled in front of the media and a review board.”

Garrus tilted his head. This wasn't how he expected the conversation to go. There were tactical mistakes, his gun had been at a sloppy low ready, his grip was loose, he hadn't pre-planned his reaction to likely scenarios. 

But the Commander was staring him down, awaiting a response. 

“I… suppose that's a good point,” Garrus answered finally. 

Shepard stood cross armed in front of Garrus, almost eye to eye, but still shorter despite how tall he was for a human. And yet the Turian had never felt so small as he did under that withering glare. 

“Stop worrying about what others will think,” the Spectre started. “Palin. Your father. C-Sec. Me.”

Garrus felt his mandibles twitch. The critique scythed through his soul. He wished Shepard would have just dressed him down. He wanted to snap back, but his turian instincts held back his tongue from arguing with a superior officer. Or maybe it was the fact that deep down, he knew the human was right. 

“You'll bleed out on some moon if you keep this up,” Shepard cracked off at the turian. “Stop saying you want freedom to make your own snap decisions, and just take it.”

Garrus wished Shepard had just… hit him. It would have been easier. Even a scathing rundown of the tactical failures in front of Wrex would have been preferable to the Spectre’s analysis. 

“Yes Sir, I'll…” Garrus said between breaths, still exhausted. “I'll do that.” 

“We’ll see,” Shepard said with disappointment as he walked away towards the other humans. 

Spirits. Garrus began fidgeting with his equipment, rooted in place as his mind spun. 

Was Shepard right? Garrus’s instinct was to reject it. But if the human had missed the mark, why did Garrus feel like an elcor had kicked him in the stomach? Lost in his thoughts, Garrus was oblivious to the approach of a much less threatening asari than the one he had seen previously. 

“Thank you Garrus for the…,” Liara began between panting breaths, “...help. With not shooting our friends I mean.”

“Such as it is,” Vakarian mumbled. He just wanted to be left alone. 

“I believe a small error at the end of a long day is preferable to the rookie shooting our Quarian ally in the back,” Liara said politely, clearly trying to lift the mood. “Even with simulated rounds, it would not have been ideal.”

Garrus ran a hand over his mandibles. “It's just… a lot. I am not used to making so many mistakes.”

“If you require inspiration on how to make more, I suggest you review the footage of Chief Williams teaching me how to handle firearms,” Liara said with obvious light hearted self-depreciation. 

“You'll be alright, we have your back,” Garrus answered. 

“And everyone here has yours. That is why we deploy as a team, correct? So we can watch out for one another?” Liara asked with complete innocence. 

Garrus chuckled. She was right. He was being overly self-centred, not thinking of the group.  He wasn't upset because of how his mistakes were affecting others, he had been worried about how it made him look. How it changed his ‘position’ in the completely irrelevant, invisible ranking of who the strongest warrior was aboard the Normandy. A completely egotistical indulgence that went at odds with everything he had supposedly touted as turian superiority. 

How very… ‘human’ of me. 

“Well, if you can come out from hiding in that office of yours, I'm sure I can help you get up to speed,” Garrus offered to T’Soni as he started cleaning up the equipment. “There's a lot of time between deployments and the Mako staging area has room for scenarios.”

“I want to make this work, and I have so much left to learn,” the asari said to him, her features darkening slightly. “I will take you up on your offer.”

Garrus nodded, and cracked what counted as a turian smile. “Saren doesn't know what's coming for him.”

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Kepler Verge
Newton System - Ontarom
Unknown Laboratory Compound

“I need to know!” Corporal Toombs screeched in an unhinged desperation. “WHY?!”

Wrex lolled his head back and forth as he held his shotgun loosely. The third rate mercs that had assaulted this backwater research facility on Ontarom were not worth picking over. He poked his toe out, and idly flicked a rifle out of the dead hands of one such casualty lying on the floor. Piece of junk. Not even worth bending over for the salvage. The rest of the defeated ‘crew’ were equally poorly equipped. 

And now there was one remaining member of the group who had killed the scientists. Some ex-Alliance corporal named Toombs. Seemed to know Shepard. Kept yelling about Akuze.

This human ‘Toombs’ is shattered. Maybe the Alliance report had some half truth about what happened on Shepard’s mission. Wrex wasn't pleased about having to share his achievement with a member of a species with only one nervous system, but the evidence that it had occurred as reported was starting to pile up.

Dr. Wayne certainly played the part of the nervous, innocent civilian. But Wrex could tell that Wayne's smell was wrong. His manner of speech was wrong. His feigned ignorance of Cerberus’s crimes had been poorly acted. Wrex wasn’t an intelligence officer. He didn’t know anything about spycraft. But he knew all about cowards. 

“B-b-b-b-ut Mr. Shepard, you can’t possibly believe this deranged man?!” Dr. Wayne stammered, with exaggerated hand gestures of innocence towards the Spectre. “He has no evidence!”

Wrex leaned in, letting the side of his plate and nostrils linger just in front of the doctor’s nose before he interjected into the back and forth. “Takes more to make a liar out of a good man, than it does to make him lose his mind.”

The krogan let his shoulder sink into the chest of the doctor, and wheeled around to face Shepard and the rest of the crew. He didn’t know why he felt so… compelled. Why he was so invested in this matter? This Toombs character didn’t kill a maw. But how many did? Toombs had lived, and that was worthy of respect. He didn’t deserve to be put under a knife for it. 

He didn’t deserve to be called a mad man. 

“Corporal Toombs!” Shepard bellowed, putting his gun away. 

The traumatised soldier blinked, as if he was surprised that anyone was in the room with him. Wrex saw the recollection, a soldier responding to that sharp bark of a commanding officer. The instinctual reaction that demanded attention. The Commander had bought himself a moment, a window. 

Shepard tilted his head, and stood at a distance from Toombs that was just inside comfort, but too far to think he was a threat. “I’m not going to lie, I’m not going to hurt you. I just need you to talk to me before you do anything, OK?”

Toombs didn’t answer. But he nodded. His eyes fluttered and his gun lowered, away from the Doctor.

Wrex was surprised. He had seen the Commander shear a screaming salarian’s horns apart with biotics not twenty minutes ago. Shepard had watched Wrex splatter Fist across Chora’s Den and had nodded in approval. But here the Spectre was, gun lowered, hands out, eyes soft. Not concerned for anything in the galaxy except the mumbling wreck of a person that he used to lead. 

Shepard isn’t acting. This is his man, his responsibility.

An uneasy thought crossed Wrex's mind after the previous revelation. If you wanted to take that Spectre down, that right there is how you'd do it. 

He stowed the information away. It was born of old habits, not current necessity. The Normandy's Commander didn't deserve such scheming. 

Wrex kept his baleful eye on Wayne, hovering just close enough to ensure the doctor remained uncomfortable. But the krogan’s thoughts were on the Spectre and his interaction with a mumbling, wrecked, but loyal soldier. Wrex wanted to lash out and tell the N7 that this Toombs wasn’t worth his time. That the Spectre was weak for even bothering with a pitiful welp that hadn’t the quad for battle.

But somewhere, deep in one of his stomachs, Wrex knew this was the way. The krogan race had lost too many good men and women to stubborn ideals of strength. A broken soldier could be brushed off and put back into the line. Strength was not just the blade you wielded but the comrade you carried. But his people had ignored these realities for so long. Saying them out loud would make you look weak, and so the obvious truth was hidden under ego and bluster.

I’m too old to be taking lessons from a human pup, Wrex thought. But he knew better than to dismiss wisdom, no matter the source. It’s why he was still alive, and his father was not. 

“I need you to be alive tomorrow,” Shepard whispered to his corporal.

Toombs’s teeth were chattering, his head nodding. “I-I- I can do that. For you Lieuten- Commander.”

“Not for me,” Shepard said, still in a near whisper. “For you.”

“Sir, Ok, Yes. Sir. Yes…”

Shepard maintained the stare as he spoke, with Toombs looking at the floor, “And after that, we can talk about you making it one more day.”

Toombs nodded, his eyes fluttering.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. They did,” Shepard said in hushed tones.

The Spectre pulled Toombs in front of him, and placed his forehead against the shattered marine’s. And in a manner that chilled the marrow of an old battlemaster, Shepard locked eyes with Toombs and made an oath. 

“I will find who did this to us.”

“Yes…” Toombs started. “Yes, SIR.” He barked unexpectedly as he snapped into a salute, his mouth quivering. 

Shepard’s gaze cut steel bulkheads as he turned to his crew, and made a sterile order. 

“Take Corporal Toombs to the Normandy. See that he receives immediate treatment at an Alliance facility. Secure this compound, and scrape every iota of data from its servers. Contact the nearest Alliance vessel and have them secure Dr. Wayne and the rest of this dump.”

“Understood,” Tali said, buckling under the Commander’s glare. 

Garrus, Tali, Kaidan, and Ashley all filed out, making their way to complete the orders given. Wrex lumbered forward and took his turn to leave, to follow the others out of the laboratory. 

Shepard shot out a hand, blocking Wrex’s path, and met the krogan’s eye. “Not you.”

A predatory spike of adrenals flared through Wrex. He turned one of his crimson eyes to Dr. Wayne, the lone occupant of the room now that Toombs had been led out by the rest of the crew.

Shepard, barehanded and without a weapon, slowly began walking up to the nose of the spindly, cowardly doctor.

“Have you watched a man pull his own guts out from a smoking hole in his stomach? Trying to scrape the thresher bile off?” The Spectre spit out as his lips curled.

“Of course not! Thi- thi- thi- is absurd!” Wayne stammered. 

“Have you held a soldier’s face in your hand, so they couldn’t look down at the stringy meat that used to be their legs?”

“No no no, no you have the wrong idea, I have no connection to-”

Shepard slowly advanced on the doctor, pushing his chest into Wayne’s, yelling downwards as his eyes plunged their hate into the Cerberus agent. “Have you ever watched a crying marine call their best friend ‘Mom’, while that same friend tried to stuff bandages into their chest? As they bled out on some ball of rock before they saw twenty!?”

“I respect your position but you have no evidence that I-”

“A lot of parents had to bury their children,” Shepard snarled. “A lot of husbands and wives asked me for answers I didn't have.”

“B-B-B- I don’t even know what this Cerberus is-”

“But you're going to give me those answers,” Shepard said as he balled his fist with a handful of Dr. Wayne’s hair, pulling the head back as the doctor gave a yelp of pain. “What. Is. Cerberus.”

“I, I, I, wish to avail of my legal counsel,” Dr. Wayne stammered. “I do not consent to this line of questioning!”

Wrex found himself strangling the gun in his hands in irritation. This little worm. Shielding himself behind a piece of paper. Some rules that a rich snob made in an air conditioned office. 

Shepard spread his hands in amnesty, backing away from Wayne as he answered. “Wrex, restrain the dear doctor if you would,” the Spectre rolled out evenly. 

“Wh- what are you doing?” Wayne asked desperately. 

“You're correct. You do have rights,” the Spectre said, nodding sagely. “How … improper of me.”

Wayne was put on his back on a flat medical chair. Holding the doctor’s arms, Wrex looked down and could see smug satisfaction creeping across Wayne's face as the human looked upwards at the ceiling lights. He thinks he's getting away with it. 

Wrex snarled as his opinion of the Commander plummeted. Is Shepard going to let this welp escape with what he did to his Krantt? Let this… cretin… hide behind words? Such a warlord was not worth following.

His was not a world of espionage, but Wrex had been around long enough to know how these things went. This grubby worm would fold in a backroom deal, or disappear in an ‘unfortunate incident’, only to reappear with a new identity on some backwater world. Wayne would never see trial. If by some miracle he did, nothing would come of it, and Cerberus would remain untouched, their plots unspoiled, Shepard’s unit's lives unavenged. 

As Wrex smouldered in rage, the Spectre upended a nearby garbage can, scattering loose detritus across the floor without care as he turned on a water tap. He was out of vision of the doctor, who was still looking up at the krogan.

“I am glad to see that you know your place soldier,” Wayne fired off towards Shepard. “It is important to remember why we have such rules.”

The self-satisfied smirk of superiority remained on the face of Wayne. The doctor clearly was of the same opinion as Wrex regarding his odds. Once Wayne got into the hands of the Alliance he was home free. He would never see a courtroom. 

He thinks he is getting away with it. Wrex wanted to throttle the little shit, and it wasn't even his soldiers that died. 

Judging by the lit up omni-tool, Wrex could see that Shepard had received a private call request. 

“Alright… OK. Mhmm. Six hours? OK, copy Alenko,” the Spectre said into his radio before ending the short exchange.

There was a scrape of metal on metal as Shepard dragged the now full garbage can towards Wayne. The Spectre stood over the head of the doctor, looking down at the man lying on his back. 

“According to my XO, the Alliance has dispatched a ship. Sgt. Ira McCullough and her team of MPs of the Alliance cruiser SSV Warsaw will take you into custody when they arrive. You will be afforded all the rights and privileges of an Alliance citizen. The soldiers on board will act in the most professional manner in handling your case when they get here,” Shepard stated with a frigid chill.

Leaning down, so close as to almost touch their noses together, Shepard made sure that the doctor, explicitly, intimately, understood his next words.

“... But they aren’t here yet,” the N7 growled, placing a wet cloth over the mouth of the doctor, whose self-righteousness drained along with the colour from his face.

Wrex’s lips curled into a smile. He should have known better. Wayne fruitlessly thrashed against the krogan’s restraint as Wrex held him down. In just minutes, answers to Shepard's questions flowed as freely as the water spreading across the floor of the room. 

As the clear fluid seeped under a nearby doorway, Wayne’s muffled screams rang out around the haunted metal halls, and the murky world of Cerberus became a little clearer.

Year 2183
Arcturus Stream - Arcturus Station
Lower Deck 7 - Civilian Access Area
Commercial District

Wrex found his target sitting in the far corner of the dingy bar, the human’s back set to the wall in a booth. This establishment, Mick. E. Fynn’s, was an odorous dump, set away from the main thoroughfares of the Alliance military station. It had taken multiple elevators and quizzing looks from locals who wondered why anyone would bother seeking out the dive, before Wrex had found the flickering, cheaply made signage that signalled his arrival at his destination.

It was just the sort of drinking hole that Wrex liked.  

The scattered, cheap faux-wooden furniture sat on thin, stained carpets, which covered the metal flooring of the station hanging in zero-G. Wrex knew little of human culture, and even less about style, but whatever theme the bar was trying to pull off wasn't working.  

Officially the Normandy had stopped for quick resupply and low level maintenance, but Wrex knew Shepard’s real goal, which was to put the screws to contacts in the Alliance regarding what he had learned on Ontarom.

As Wrex sat himself down at the table across from Shepard, the Spectre barely flicked his eyes up to acknowledge his new arrival. The ‘wooden’ bench groaned under the weight of the battlemaster, but held despite the furniture’s protest. The krogan flared his broad nostrils, which stung from the potent aroma coming off the amber drink sitting in a fist sized glass in front of Shepard. The Spectre was deep in thought, scribbling something on one of the many pieces of paper in front of him. 

Decidedly unimpressed with the lack of reaction, Wrex deliberately stuck a finger down into the glass, which could barely accommodate his digit, before pulling it out to taste the drink.

“Not bad,” Wrex declared after the sample. 

“It's actually a bit shit,” Shepard answered, head still down, gesturing his hand vaguely in the direction of the bar, “but it's the best they got.”

“Hell of a thing, this Cerberus,” the krogan said, enunciating the last word. 

The Spectre slapped his pencil down on the table and levelled a stare with obvious intent. That word was not to be said out loud.

The desired attention attained, Wrex grinned. “Going after them?”

Shepard spread his hands, gesturing to the numerous diagrams, flow charts, and notes on the papers in front of him, as much to say “Obviously.”

Wrex rustled his shoulders and leaned in, turning his head sideways to focus one gleaming eye towards the human. “Why not your precious Alliance? Or your Spectres?”

“Why the questions?”

“Because we are already five to a quad. Because we are already too busy. Because I want to know your why it has to be you,” Wrex snapped, pointing a finger in the Commander's face. 

Shepard didn't regard the digit, or take the bait. “Didn't think a krogan would care,” he said evenly.

Wrex smiled. “And yet…”

“You rely on someone else two times, you get burned three,” Shepard said, taking a long swig of his drink, unruffled by neither the gloved finger that had been in the liquid, or Wrex's goading. “If something is important, you handle it yourself, and it gets sorted.”

Wrex released Shepard from his eye’s baleful glare and nodded. “Good.”

The Spectre scrunched his face. “What?”

“You do something like what you did today because it has to be done,” the krogan rumbled out, brokering no dissent. “Not because you get your kicks from it. Had to make sure I knew which way you went.”

It was Shepard’s turn to level a piercing glare. “Kicks? Like krogan taking off from Tuchunka to pinch freighters and bully unarmed volus?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Wrex said, looking around. “Nothing good comes from getting your quad off that way.”

“You planning to do something about it?” Shepard asked.

“Yeah, I got a plan. This Saren thing needs seeing out, but I'll get back home. Make a few changes,” Wrex stated as his red eye returned to meet Shepard’s gaze.

Shepard raised an eyebrow of apparent approval, but played it off with a dry affect. “If you go on the warpath, mind leaving Earth alone?” 

“Depends,” Wrex answered with a smirk. “Listen, I got a thing. Was thinking of renting a ship, doing it myself. But figured you might want to come along.”

“Yeah, of course,” Shepard said easily. 

“You didn't hear what it was,” Wrex said, tilting his head, failing to hide his surprise. 

“So?” The Spectre asked, genuinely confused. 

Wrex let out a satisfied grunt. You should have been born a krogan. What a waste.

“Just let me know where and when,” Shepard said as he returned to his paperwork.

“Careful,” Wrex grumbled in respect at the flat out reliability of the Spectre. “I’m beginning to like you, human.”

Spared from further discussion of feelings, or an explanation about the sentimentality of his family armour, Wrex was saved by a gaggle of the Normandy's crew who had stopped to do a double take at the entrance to the bar as they had walked by in the hallway.

“There you are!” Williams let out as she halted in her tracks, turning into the establishment. 

Side by side with Ash was Liara, followed soon after by Garrus, Tali and Kaidan, who was assisting a hobbling Joker. 

“Trouble,” Shepard said with a sidelong glance at Wrex who nodded in agreement.

Ash stretched her fingers up high, and made a sign for ‘five’ at the bartender, before expertly navigating through the rickety, ill-placed furniture towards the booth in the rear. She snapped a quick salute, evidently remembering at the last moment who she was speaking to.

“T’Soni finished her courses, and we got her fitted out with the rest of her kit,” Williams began, as if to explain why they were ashore. “Figured we'd squeeze out some shore leave before departure.” 

The grumpy bartender in a stained apron approached with five bottles of non-descript low quality lager, set on a tray with a not insignificant amount of spillage sloshing about. Ash neatly grabbed the necks of two bottles with one hand, passing one of them off to Liara, before taking a swig of the other.

Shepard stood up, and reached out to clink his glass off the gunnery chief’s bottle, before doing the same to Liara’s. “Celebrate the wins where you get ‘em,” he said with what appeared to be genuine approval of the diversion. 

“This is… this is good is it?” Liara asked with great scepticism after a very small sip.

“Eye of the beholder and all that,” Kaidan said as he surveyed his own bottle dubiously. 

T’Soni took a second mouthful and scrunched her face, drawing a belly laugh from Williams beside her. 

“You get points for trying Freckles,” Ashley said as she took a heavy gulp of her own drink with a practised hand. 

“Ready for groundside?” Shepard asked with an eyebrow raised towards Liara.

“I do not relish the potential for combat,” Liara said, putting the bottle on a table behind her. “But thanks to the efforts of your team, I believe I am ready for it should the need arise.”

“Asari are weird,” Wrex grumbled as he snagged the drink T’Soni had abandoned.

“I’m sure she will find something of interest,” Tali said teasingly with her modulated voice.

Shepard’s eyes darted. “Nobody told her?”

Liara’s face instantly broke out into lines of worry. “Told me what?!”

“We are going to Feros,” Shepard said, side-eyeing the asari. “Something about an entire city of Prothean make.”

After a sharp gasp from the archaeologist, the Spectre was immediately cornered by Liara whose hands began dancing about as a stream of questions poured out of her. The others shuffled out of the way to let the Commander take the barrage of queries on his own, abandoned to his fate. 

Tali, Garrus, Kaidan and Ashley continued idle chatter, including Wrex in their circle but not expecting any responses. Urdnot Wrex watched the entire dynamic unfold, his gaze surveying the group. 

Shepard. First the warrior. Then the comrade in arms. Now, the careful inter-species diplomat. The Commander of a ship full of races that would otherwise have nothing to do with each other, united in a common goal. Wrex had watched him over the last couple of months. Saw how he made his rounds through the ship, meeting each member of the crew on their own terms, in their own ‘quarters’. Letting them speak where they felt comfortable. He'd always manage to get them to give up what their motivations and interests were, but relinquished nothing in return. 

The krogan looked him up and down, admiring the clever bit of gamesmanship. That’s his enemy’s daughter he’s speaking to. A battle won without firing a shot, and a new ally gained. 

Liara was consumed in her Prothean conversation with the Spectre. Shepard's body posture said he wasn’t disinterested either, but it might just have been professional courtesy. It was always hard to tell what was going on behind the human’s eyes, unlike the others of his species. There was an outsized amount of living behind those irises, and it would have been a mistake to measure his age in how many years he had been kicking around the galaxy. Wrex would never tell Shepard this, but there were times the krogan saw shades of the turian Spectre behind the human’s gaze. Though he had only met Saren once, something in his gut rankled in small moments when he saw the N7 silently gliding about the Normandy, as he had seen the turian do on that freighter years ago. The two had more in common than the Commander knew.

He doesn’t need to know how close he’s flirting with that line.

Hours passed, and more bottles and glasses piled up, which meant that decorum and social caution began to slip away. Joker was badgering Tali about the feasibility of a mass effect powered hoverchair, which evidently had to include 'lightning guns' for 'self defense'. Shepard and Kaidan were talking about Alenko's hometown on the Canadian West coast, and the fineries of various brands of maple syrup. In a rare slip, Wrex overheard Shepard admitting to living in the area the same time that the Lieutenant had, and the two were trying to determine if they had crossed paths. No connection had been made, but the glimpse into the enigmatic Spectre's background was of interest all the same.

Liara seemed to have her attention split between two conversations. Garrus and Williams were recounting the funniest moments of her training, and T'Soni laughed along politely as they did so. But the krogan couldn't help notice that the asari's eyes would flick towards the two officers, and their discussions of the North American Rocky Mountains.

The krogan smiled, in his own fashion. He was enjoying himself, even if he spoke very little. He wasn't wary or distrustful of anyone around him, nor this sterile, boring human space station. Being around the Normandy's crew... felt like the first time he had let his guard down in decades.

A strange Krantt; but maybe that's why I'm still here.

“... Well, before the night runs away from us I’m going to steal my chance,” Shepard said, easing himself up from the end of the table he had been leaning against. 

Wrex glanced around. The other humans also rose to their feet, and gave the Spectre their full attention. Evidently there was some cultural cue at play that had passed him unnoticed. Garrus, Tali, and Liara did the same after they realized what was going on, and looked to their Alliance partners for guidance on how to proceed. 

The Commander ensured he met the gaze of each crew member in turn. He took a light hearted tone, but it held an undercurrent of severity, and consequence with each word. He regarded the dingy pub about him, which had naught but a grizzled drunkard at the bar, and a disinterested bartender cleaning glasses. Both were out of earshot. 

“An appropriate podium,” Shepard began, as contentment formed on his features as he regarded the bar. “For a crew such as us.”

Wrex could see keen interest falling across the assembled members, their postures turning toward their ship's leader. Shepard so rarely demanded to be the center of attention, instead preferring his quiet one to one dialogues across the ship. 

“For those who are unaware or have forgotten what 'Normandy' refers to, her namesake's story cannot be retold in a few short words. What she represents, however, can be.”

A deep silence blanketed the ship’s ground team, aside from Shepard's words.

“In our darkest night, a great gamble was made. Bold soldiers, keen minds, and brave hearts hit at the enemy where he thought they could not,” Shepard stated. “They struck with the fury of the gods through the eye of a needle. They seized their slim chance in spite of the odds.”

A dark cloud fell over his speech. Shepard’s expression pulled into a grimace. The group shifted their weights with unease.

The Commander growled. “We must do the same. I don't have to tell you the stakes.” 

The vision in his mind. He knows what awaits us. What will fall upon my people if we fail.

Fear. Wrex could see the faintest of the emotion of terror trickle into the expressions of all the others in the gathering. Though the Normandy’s crew had not glimpsed the Spectre's Prothean message, the instinctual dread was palpable all around him. It hung like mildew's odour, not so overpowering as to be spoken of, but tingling the backs of nostrils all the same.

So it was natural that Wrex was caught off guard, when the next thing that Shepard did was smile. 

"And yet, somehow, you lot have me convinced that we are gonna pull this off,” Shepard stated with an infectious, confident smirk. He let the sentence hang, and then held his glass aloft. “So I raise a toast to you all. You didn't have to sign up for this, but here you are.”

The Spectre held out his glass, gesturing for the others to do so. Wrex, as delicately as he could, clinked his bottle off the several others. 

“To you, the Normandy,” Shepard stated simply. "Thank you."

A raucous cheer went up in the slightly inebriated group. The mood lifted. Williams slapped Alenko on the back, clearly harder than she meant to, which prompted a bewildered look. Garrus, Tali, and the other non-Alliance members looked about to see if there was any other human social cue to follow up on, but realized that the 'toast' was over. They relaxed, and began speaking quickly about the lost cause that was Saren and the Reapers, and the futility of the struggle versus the mighty Normandy. 

Shepard however, turned to the quietest of the group. "Congrats are in order for the final member of our crew," Shepard said as he stepped towards the asari, and started to put out his hand for a formal shake to seal the matter. "Welcome aboard Dr. T'Soni."

"Oh! I, uh-," T'Soni said quickly, obviously caught off guard. Liara sort of leaned in, and looked like she was about to shake Shepard's hand, before awkwardly throwing her two arms around him in a hug. 

The Spectre froze, and only showed a stunned stare, as if he had been ambushed by enemy fire. Alenko raised an eyebrow, and Williams burst out in another belly laugh, holding her hand in front of her mouth to stifle it. Even other non-humans, Garrus and Tali, shook their heads at the misunderstanding. 

Shepard patted Liara on the back, before returning the hug awkwardly, and began chuckling himself. 

Liara's fringes plunged into a deep shade of purple, and curled slightly at the back, which Wrex knew to be their equivalent of blushing in humans. She quickly pulled herself away in horror at the faux pas. 

"Commander! I apologize, I thought...," she stammered quickly. "You had your hand out, which I believe to be a handshake, but I read in some literature that if human's body posture was on such an angle it meant that... well..."

"If you really were an assassin that was your chance Doc," Shepard said with a smirk. 

Liara's mouth fell open in abject horror. 

"He's teasing you. Meant to cover that in Marines 101, its a good thing," Williams said as she chuckled.

Ashley, well into a number of beer that required two hands to count, huffed, and leaned towards the asari she had trained. "Fuck it. Come here Freckles," Williams said as she pulled Liara into a hug. 

The newly minted custom went around the group, each taking their turn to congratulate the newcomer in their own ways. Wrex settled for a nod, but this was compensated by Joker who held an embrace a little too long.

The impromptu gathering ended up stretching on for hours. Eventually, the crew filtered back to the ship in twos and threes, but by the end of the night all of the Normandy’s crew seemed to have gelled into at least a professional bond, if not outright friendship with one another, which had already been solidifying over the last few weeks.

Late in the evening Wrex stood outside the gangway of the Normandy, peering out at the stars from Arcturus. A space station built entirely in the recent portion of his lifetime by a rabble of upjumped monkeys who had just discovered penicillin. He stewed on the comparison of the pace of their development versus the regression of the krogan. The salarians uplifted us. The humans did it on their own. We whine about turians, but they tried to put the humans down too. Where we fought a needless war, the humans quickly learned the rules of the game. They won their battle in the halls of the Citadel, rather than on a ruined home planet, with a soft genocide settled in their DNA.

And now, which of our species are still flailing about, unable to reach the stars?

Wrex’s internal lamentations for the state of his people were interrupted by boisterous laughter. Liara, Garrus, and Shepard were making their way towards him, hands gesturing about, as stories were being swapped between the three in easy fashion. Liara appeared to have partially ceased her relentless questioning of the Commander, and the trio had that unfakeable aura of comrades in arms. 

Shepard gave Wrex a knowing nod, obviously acknowledging what the two of them had done earlier on Ontarom. Liara and Garrus remained oblivious, and the trio entered the Normandy to leave Wrex to his thoughts.

Two weapons at a time eh Shepard? A smile ready for allies, and a fist cocked for those who disagree. The krogan mused as he looked at the Alliance logo on the Normandy. That was a turian with the Commander. A turian whose people were at war with this Alliance Navy but a few moons ago in the eyes of a krogan lifespan.

Wrex knew that he was going to have to pull off a similar trick as Shepard had. He would have to smile and shake hands, and stand between the clans to get them to work together. And when the cameras were off, and the lights low, he would have to clear out the trash that were holding back his people. To treat his 'Toombs’s right, and to take out the 'Dr. Wayne’s when needed.

That's what it was going to take to drag the krogan to glory. And Wrex had seen it all play out in this lone male of a diminutive species, in his tiny kingdom, the Normandy.

But is his influence confined to his ship? The implications of Saren, the Geth, the Reapers begged an interstellar question. We will have to see where all this goes.

The krogan people's iron was hot, and needed forging. Dark days lay ahead. But the krogan were up to the challenge, with the right leadership.

Wrex just had to kill a couple turians first. 

Chapter Text

Year 2183 - Day 3 of Expedition
Attican Beta Cluster
Theseus System - Feros
Thorian Cavern

Though they were never her first choice of literary or media consumption, Liara had been conditioned by numerous action novels and war vids to believe that combat came in short, emotional, punctuated scenarios. And from what she had seen in her short time aboard the Normandy, that belief somewhat held true. Long periods of preparation and anxiety for the marines were interrupted by quick, violent excursions before Shepard and Co. ventured back through the airlock of the ship. The returning soldiers would inevitably be covered in soot, broken, bruised, but alive and ready to move on.

What she was unprepared for was a grinding, attritional struggle. And for her first combat expedition with the team, she unfortunately found just that in the besieged colony of Zhu’s Hope on Feros. On her second day she thought she had reached her breaking point. And yet she was about to witness her third sunset in this ruin of a settlement.

Dim, angled rays of sunlight in the dying afternoon filtered through brown dust flakes hanging in the air. The skeletal frameworks of the long vacant skyscrapers towered above her, peering down in judgement as she scurried about in panic, her armour clattering against the stone walls for cover. The immediacy of her situation contrasted sharply against the slowly decaying mausoleum that was the Prothean city.

Liara clutched a snub-nosed rifle to her chest as she pressed her shoulder blades into a sandstone pillar behind her, letting the back of her helmet fall against the rock. Nausea boiled, and her mouth became wet with saliva, a warning that more vomit was not far behind. These… creatures. The smell. The awful smell. It clung like an ichor to her tonsils in the back of her throat, a slick syrup of rotting plants and decaying bodies that was undiluted by any amount of water from her suit’s reserves. She ran her tongue along her cheek, as if she could push the sensation out of her mouth, to no avail. 

Liara wanted to give in. To just sit and slide down the pillar and let the situation overcome her. Her legs were numb from days of gruelling expeditionary rucks and sporadic bouts of adrenaline fueled sprints to cover. First there had been the geth attack on the colony. Then the expeditions into the tunnels. Another outing, to the base of operations in the Exo-Geni tower. And now… just when she thought reprieve was in sight, the colonists, and the Thorian. Her scalp was coated in tiny pin-pricks of itch and discomfort, as a migraine raged inside her skull. She had blown past any acceptable use of biotics, and had no experience in managing the side effects in these conditions after three straight days of exertion. 

The recycled water in her armour had almost run dry due to inevitable losses and inefficiencies. That which remained was a brackish, mineral tinted slurry, though Liara was not in a position to refuse any hydration. Their team had found a couple of energy bars, which were little more than caloric bricks, in the back of the Mako, which Williams and the others passed off to the biotic squadmates. Liara had felt guilty, and had avoided the gazes of Tali, Ashley, and Garrus as she greedily stuffed the chalky foodstuff into her mouth. There had been no other option. Shepard, Alenko, and herself had drained their bodies of all their reserves, and were a danger to not just themselves but the whole team without replenishing their sugars. Wrex, as befit an elder krogan, had a vast store of nutrition in his developed hump, and had simply made a passing comment on the weakness of the other species. 

It was too much. Her body begged her to just close her eyes and surrender. When was the last time she had slept for more than a couple of hours? Would it hurt to just… lie down? 

A pang of guilt struck her for the indulgence of the thought. I am completely out of my element, and I am a burden to the team, she concluded ruefully.

A shrill warning blared out of a rifle nearby, followed by a string of human lexicon that Liara's translator told her was profanity. It must have been Williams, who barked something incoherently and fired off a frag grenade, which reported back a few seconds later. The shudder and crack of the pressure wave reverberated around the semi-enclosed space that housed the Thorian and its creepers.

Bits of the flora-fauna hybrids sprinkled on the floor around Liara as a result of Williams’ explosive device. The Thorian below bucked and heaved, making unholy sounds as another asari clone was spewed forth from places unknown. Liara knew it would be at least a minute before the commando arrived, their team, led by Lt. Alenko, had made it up three floors, and the Thorian was situated on the bottom level. There was a moment to breathe, but nearby gunfire continued to chatter all the same.

Liara glanced over her right shoulder towards the combat that was still grinding onwards as she took her pause behind her hidden pillar in the corner. There were two creepers crawling on the floor on their chests, fingers splayed, reaching up towards Williams with vacant ‘eyes’ as they dragged their dismembered legs behind them. The creatures defied classification. They were a plant… but they were not. Their moans, movement and shape spoke of a humanoid being, and the echoing sound of their cacophony in the building had sent chills up her spine. But despite her instinctual reaction, she knew they were not people. They did not bleed, and their severed limbs did not protrude bone and muscle but rather cellulose fibres, akin to a thick vine hardened over centuries. 

Putting these creatures down did not provoke a reaction in Liara, not like the other events of the day. She had killed someone for the first time. Many people, if you counted the geth, but definitely at least one traditionally organic ‘person’. A colonist of Zhu’s Hope had fought through the effects of the Thorian gas grenade and had been about to shoot Alenko in the back. The Lieutenant had passed over the colonist thinking she was incapacitated, leaving himself defenceless. As the woman raised her pistol towards the unaware Alenko, Liara had fired on the colonist on instinct, sending seven panicked shots into the civilian’s unarmoured body in a wide grouping. The asari’s breath caught as the memory flashed. She had not had time to process the significance of the event. The image of the poor colonist, not in control of her own decisions, lying motionless on the stone floor in an expanding pool of blood burned in her mind. Dr. Liara T’Soni had killed a person. I am a killer. It was such an unsettlingly binary distinction. 

Her breaths became rapid, and shallow.

A small, three digit number flashed in the corner of Liara’s HUD. Her heart rate was absurdly high. She was spiralling. She had to get this under control. 

I can do this. By the Goddess I will do this.

Liara let out a long, unsteady exhale, and allowed herself a moment to close her eyes. Her mind reached back into lessons learned nigh on a century before; ones bestowed to her by the priestess Isahin she had met as a child in the temple near her home. The matron had been an excellent teacher, seemingly finding delight in the questions from asari youth which were often blunt to the point of unintended rudeness. The priestess had always taken these queries in stride and helped so many find their place in the world. She was adept at explaining how Athame was there to guide, not to dictate.

Liara had always found it regrettable how other species scrambled to find their place in the galaxy in the short time allotted to them. They often would be led astray by those who made the problem too grandiose, the scale presented in a way their mind could not conceptualise. The common mistake was to make the question more complex than it needed to be. Asari had the benefit of centuries to consider this issue, to base themselves with serene confidence in knowing how they fit into the cosmos, a luxury not afforded to most of the galaxy’s inhabitants. This was one of the many things other species misunderstood about the asari joining, an opportunity wasted on those that never bothered to delve into Liara’s people’s culture beyond the most basic of instincts. The chance to experience another perspective of reality was not a trifling nor insignificant moment, no matter how much a union might be normalised.

The truth was, in order to find an axis to orbit in your own perception of the galaxy, you had to realise that you were an embodiment of the universe experiencing itself. A complicated sounding explanation, but an exceedingly simple one once a person allowed themselves a moment to sit with the idea.

Liara took her hand and ran it along the sandstone pillar behind her, feeling the palm of her gauntlet catch on the rough surface. She took in the sounds surrounding her, not contemplating their meaning or origin, but rather acknowledging that they simply were. She was in a time and place, a fixed point in an infinite system.

I am the product of a chance so infinitesimal, that to be here, to experience this, is so rare as to be impossible.

She took a deep breath.

I am a collection of the base elements of the galaxy. I am the product of billions of years of events uncatalogued, to reach this moment, as is this rock on my hand. The air in my lungs. The light filtered between the spires above rests on my face after travelling from a star hung in the void. 

Liara felt her heart rate slowing, as her awareness seeped into the environment around her. She could feel her tendrils of understanding snake through the rock walls. She heard the creatures in the room beyond, and intrinsically sensed the distant uses of dark energy. 

I am the product of decisions of others, and decisions of myself. My torments do not exist, except how I perceive them in my own mind.

The taste in her mouth was acknowledged, but the disgust faded away. The pain in her limbs persisted, but held no sway over her. The worry she felt for her fellow crew was a warning of possible eventualities. The anxiety was considered, and allowed to pass through her body.

These people, the humans, the quarian, the turian, the krogan, they are all shades of the same universe, experiencing itself in different ways. 

She thought of Garrus, so kind to her during the training that she struggled with. Tali, who had spent hours of her downtime to help Liara re-program her sleeper pod profile for asari physiology. Ashley who had become a sort of grumpy sister, one Liara never had. Kaidan who had been the first to simply… talk with her in the mess hall for no other reason than she looked lonely. Wrex who had stood between her and a charging krogan, enraged at the other’s insolence. 

And Shepard, who went without saying. She bit her lip. Her heart skipped when she realised she did not know where he was in the compound. She felt indignation at the possibility that one of these creatures could be hurting him. 

Athame guided and protected us in our earliest days, when we stumbled at our first footsteps. The Normandy’s crew have all displayed her highest virtues without knowing.

And that was the true difference between the teachings of Athame and Siari. Siari followers would often fall into passive contemplation, as the asari peoples were so wont to do. In the Athame doctrine, it was not enough to just know where your place was, but to use that knowledge to make decisions, to protect and to receive help in equal measure. A proactive empathy, to assist where able and to receive the same with grace.

I am here, in this moment, and I can affect change.

Liara’s gauntleted fingertips clawed along the stone pillar, scratching the pock-marked surface in defiance. Her hand balled into a fist.

These are my friends. I can help them.

In that moment she felt clairvoyant. My friends. Such an alien concept. People she wanted to protect, not out of simple kindness but fierce loyalty. I have killed for them, she contemplated ruefully, but with resolve that she would do so again. 

I can do this.

Liara rolled her head back and forth and let out a long exhale, bouncing on her toes as she gripped her rifle with commitment. She rounded out from behind the pillar to see Williams firing sharp bursts of rounds into dead creatures on the ground. Whether this was for the human’s own satisfaction or to be sure of the creature’s demise, Liara could not say. The human female acknowledged her approach and nodded towards the rest of the team. Liara fell in beside Williams wordlessly, raising her rifle to fend off any aggressors with renewed spirit.

The familiar distortion of air pressure, and subsequent pin pricks along Liara’s skin let her know that dark energy was being channelled nearby and that the pace of battle was picking up again. Soon after, she heard a crunch of fibrous beings being thrown into a hard stone wall, and then the voice of her squad leader on the radio.

“Bravo team, reform on me, we are getting separated,” Alenko said over the mic.

Williams lead the pair to find the other half of their squad, to find Wrex and Alenko in the next room casually dispatching proned Thorian creepers in the same manner that the gunnery chief had. 

“I just heard the Thorian create another clone,” Liara said with confidence to Alenko. “I believe we should prepare ourselves accordingly.”

“Copy,” the Lieutenant said with exhaustion, rubbing his helmet absentmindedly. “Shepard, another commando coming your way.”

“Got her here, she just took off up the stairs,” came the reply over Bravo team’s radio. A small knot uncurled in Liara’s chest upon hearing the response.

Wrex took point facing the stairs, snarling in anticipation of another showdown with a commando clone. Williams and Alenko took the two sides, and Liara the rear of the loose formation as they approached the doorway that led up from the lower tiers. Biological residue collected around their feet, reaching just below their ankles, and there was little in the way of cover in the room. The ruined tendons of the Thorian’s support node hung overhead, blasted apart by charges that Alenko had set several minutes ago. 

The asari commandos were certainly lifelike in appearance and combat ability, but devoid of any self preservation instincts or natural mannerisms. As Liara’s group set up their ambush for their enemy at the turn of the staircase, even with Liara’s limited tactical experience she could see that this was an absolutely ruinous scenario for the clone coming up the stairs from below. And yet, she could hear the asari’s footsteps approaching the landing beneath her all the same.

“Found the last node; charges set, coming to you Bravo,” Tali radioed. Alpha team had completed their task, and were enroute to Bravo team. 

“Contact,” Wrex said sternly as his rifle roared to life with a rope of bullets sent down towards the lower level, through the openings in the staircase.

Williams and Alenko stepped beside Wrex’s wide shoulders to throw rounds in the same direction, keeping the asari pinned. Alenko thumbed his pistol’s mode selector and launched a propelled tech munition just beyond the scant cover that the commando was hiding behind, catching her with the electrical explosion. 

The three continued to spit heavy calibre hate towards the single combatant, zeroed in on their target down below. Liara scanned back and forth behind them, watching for other enemies coming from other directions. 

“We have her pinned, Shepard can you approach and clear?” Alenko radioed.

“10-4, don’t let her slip into the shadows. Don’t want any surprises later,” Shepard answered. 

“Copy all.”

Soon after the request Liara heard a secondary roar of gunfire from the lower area, and a wet grunt that could only mean the clone had been ripped apart by the trio below. She was tempted to look down to see the result, but knew her task was to monitor for-

“Chief Williams!” Liara yelled, slapping the human on her back in panic, trying to alert her. 

A Thorian creeper had shambled around a corner and had locked onto Williams, cocking its head back to spew its acidic bile onto the soldier. The Gunnery Chief had obviously fallen to tunnel vision, and her eyes had been locked down on the platform below where the clone had been, instead of maintaining awareness to all her sides. 

Liara brought her rifle up to fire on the creeper but the broad shouldered human cut off her firing lane unintentionally. Remembering the first mantra of firearms that had been drilled into her, Liara checked her muzzle as she repositioned around the marine, trying to get a clear line of fire for both bullets and biotics. 

With an unholy gurgling sound, the creeper tilted its head back and spewed forth its bile in a torrent, dousing Williams wholesale across her entire armour. Liara came up firing with her rifle shouldered, held only by her right hand, the firearm bouncing as she struggled to maintain its recoil with only one limb. Her left hand at the same time signed a crude mnemonic form to simply make the creature go away, a brutish club of biotic energy tossed haphazardly to interrupt the torrent of ichor. 

Liara’s first rounds scattered up the flooring, then through the legs but eventually into the meat of the plant material, rifling holes through the creature's chest and head as the recoil caused her muzzle to climb. As the rapidly dispensed rounds reached the dozens, her biotic blast finally connected, and the monstrosity was sent pinwheeling into a nearby half wall, where it came apart at the hips, shredded completely in two. 

Liara snapped back to look at Ashley and the rest of the squad who were in the first moments of shock, their minds racing to determine how to react. Williams looked up at Liara, eyes wide behind her visor, her white armour completely coated in a slick of steaming brown-green bile that reeked of unholy decay. 

Williams made a gagging sound and her shoulders convulsed, followed by a spray of vomit inside her helmet, causing the inside of her visor to go opaque with the discharge. 

Steam was rising from the bile. No, not the bile. That is her armour! 

“Chief Williams needs immediate assistance!” Liara screamed into the radio to all members on the air. 

The obvious statement shook Alenko and Wrex into action, who began trying to fruitlessly scrape off the bile with scrap pieces of material they could find on the ground around them. The acidic liquid was a viscous ichor, and the pair were getting thimblefuls with each pass at best, despite their frantic pace.

The plating of Williams’s armour was holding, despite the sizzling sound and bubbling visual as the exterior coating stripped off the suit in whole flakes. The seals and joins however were coming off in chunks, and Liara saw that in just seconds, the colour of Ashley’s skin could be seen where dark synthetic material should be.

Stood before them, Williams hunched over, hands raised before the visor that she couldn’t see out of. A muffled scream could be heard inside the helmet, but her radio had ceased function. She was trapped inside her suit, dying, and had seconds to spare. 

Shepard, Tali and Garrus arrived at that moment at the top of the stairs, looking on at Williams in wide-eyed horror. The trio began scrambling, running in different directions to find solutions, screaming about where water could be located in abundance.

Water. 

Time slowed, and Liara felt a chain of understanding flow in the gap between seconds. They had repaired a water main in the tunnels, it was of Prothean make, and appeared to be gravity fed from the upper reaches of rainwater collection in the towers. They were lower than that point in the Thorian’s cavern, it would stand to reason that if she could find a similar piping system…

Ashley had fallen to her knees, and guttural screams could be heard inside her helmet as her hands tried in vain to pull the melting armour off her body. Smoldering vapours of the melting joins in the armour rose in ill-fated whisps above Ashley. Everyone, even Wrex, looked desperate and helpless, trying to assist without success. Liara however, moved with purpose.

Where are you… 

Liara rushed to the nearby stone wall, calling upon all her knowledge of Prothean architecture. While it wasn’t her area of expertise, she knew enough of their basic patterns and hoped the logic would apply across many locations. Similar to how she could navigate another asari’s home on a far flung colony, she prayed the same thought would hold true that many Prothean buildings would follow common tenets.

She ripped off her gauntlet and pressed an open palm to the wall, sending small, high frequency biotic pulses as she moved down across the stone structure. No… no… too thick… no that is a structural support… no…

Shepard was bellowing into his radio, demanding that the Normandy send a medic team to their location. Kaidan was trying to push the bile up and off the chief, flicking it off his own gloves which sizzled in protest. Tali was furiously typing something into her omni-tool, trying to reconfigure a fire suppression system into something useful. Wrex and Garrus had torn off in different directions, trying to locate a bundle of fabric, a body of water, anything.

Liara meanwhile kept biotically tapping the wall, trying to find a section that had decorative cladding, but was not load bearing. She shut out the conversations around her, as the urgency of the voices tending to Williams were not helping her concentration. 

Come on… Goddess please do not let he-

There. Without thinking, acting on pure instinct and desperation, Liara curled her fist into a ball, one wreathed in a wild corona of blue and white. Her suit warned of an air pressure drop, believing the rolling distortion of relativity a loss of atmosphere. 

She screamed, plunging her fist into the thin sheet of rock which gave, but did not break. She slammed her right fist into the cracks, again and again until finally she was thrown half into the hole she had made from the momentum she had applied. 

Before her was a burst pipe made of flexible synthetic material, roughly 10cm in diameter, spraying wildly from its recent puncture. 

“Bring Chief Williams here!” Liara yelled. 

The others looked up, shocked at what had unfolded without their notice, but quickly recovered and dragged the smoking husk of Chief Ashley Williams over to the piping. Before the woman had even arrived, Liara had grabbed the tube with both hands and wrenched it down. The flowrate of water was strong, but the pressure was not high enough to get the sticky residue off her comrade in time to save her. 

With both of Liara’s hands tied up with holding the pipe and pointing the torrent of water at the prone Williams, she locked eyes with Alenko and Shepard.

“Narrow the flow, we need more pressure to get it off her,” Liara explained quickly to the two biotics.

To her relief they both understood immediately pressing the water inward, forming a narrow nozzle at the end of the piping to spit the water out at incredible speed. The ichor began ripping off Williams due to the sheer pressure being applied, and soon the ground was flooded all around them in a wide pool of water.

It may have been only seconds, but it felt like minutes. Time continued to stretch in its distortion as the globs of ichor flicked off Williams, sizzling until they found their end in the dilution of the expanding flood of water on the floor. The group rolled her over, letting Liara, Alenko and Shepard spray all parts, meticulously ensuring that no amount was hidden under some crevice of plating. Once the worst of it was gone, the pressure slowed, but the current remained on any exposed skin, just as Liara and any other person who had spent time in a laboratory setting would know.

With the worst of it gone, the medical team arrived with a stretcher, and took proper care of Williams with all due haste. 

Liara looked at the others. They were in shock, but not due to Williams’s injuries. They were all staring at the asari, as if they had witnessed an act of Athame.

Year 2183 - Day 3 of Expedition
Attican Beta Cluster
Theseus System - Feros
Thorian Cavern

Metronomic drops of water struck some unseen place below, free falling through the circular chamber where the Thorian had hung for untold millennia. The asari commando was found sitting on the edge facing the open chasm, her back to Liara, unaware of the archaeologist’s approach. 

Liara hesitated at a distance. Shiala was sat in deep contemplation, her head bowed, her hands clasped. What am I going to say to her? Liara wondered. In truth, she was more anxious about what answer she would receive, than what she was going to ask. 

She plodded softly towards Shiala, stopping at the edge of the commando’s peripheral. 

“I am glad you were unharmed,” Shiala said over her shoulder towards Liara, who stood to the acolyte’s right. “I apologise for any issues that my… replicas caused.”

“Thank you. I am fortunate that the Normandy's crew are so competent,” Liara answered as the pair felt out the dynamic between them. “I do not believe that any long term harm will come from the encounter.”

Liara felt Shiala run her eyes up and down her person. The commando’s gaze stopped on a deep gouge across Liara’s shoulder pad. “You have changed. Benezia said nothing about armour or rifles.”

T’Soni straightened her spine. “I suspect my mother has had an even greater transformation than myself.”

“And you would be right,” Shiala answered with a grim expression. 

“What…” Liara began, without knowing where to start. “What has become of her?”

“Not just her. All of us, all the acolytes who followed her to Saren,” Shiala stated, closing her eyes. “I told you and the Commander about indoctrination, but I believe the wrong impression was taken from my words.”

Liara frowned. “What is the truth of the matter then?”

“I made it sound like… like the effect made you easier to convince, that it made us weak willed. That was not the case.” Shiala bit her lip, obviously struggling with the memories of the sensation. “We were all changed. Fundamentally. But Benezia's teachings allowed us to sequester a small part of ourselves, once we realised what was happening, though it was too late to turn back. Locked in glass cages of our mind, our bodies acted on someone else’s logic. Banging on the walls, we screamed for someone to hear us.”

Goddess, this poor woman, what she has been through. From indoctrination to the Thorian, no wonder she was ready to offer her life so cheaply.

“Shiala, I apologise, I do not mean to cause you distress,” Liara said, taking a seat beside the former acolyte. 

“It will find me regardless.” Shiala answered grimly. 

Liara did not know what to say. The obvious question hung in the air, but she did not want to press the matter. Shiala had shown nothing but kindness to them, and was clearly coming to terms with the fresh scars on her person and soul. It would have been selfish to interrogate the former acolyte so soon after her traumatic events.

“She loves you,” the commando said quietly, as if sensing Liara’s desire. “Locked away in the depths of her mind, she does, even now.”

Liara let a slow breath out through her nose, but words caught in her throat. 

Shiala continued, her gaze still down into the well where the Thorian had fallen. “When she fell to indoctrination, when she changed, it was the first time we ever heard of you from Benezia herself.”

“You believe she loves me because… she did not speak of me?” Liara asked, confused. 

“Of course,” Shiala said with a small smile. “When she was herself she kept a barrier between us acolytes and anything to do with you. I see now that it was to let you grow as your own person, and not to be dominated by her personality, or ours. It was only when she changed that we were permitted a glimpse of Dr. Liara T’Soni through Benezia. She would not lose her feelings for you through indoctrination, they are just now sealed behind clear glass.”

Liara nodded, and swallowed hard. “Thank you Shiala. That is… that brings me more comfort than I expected.”

“I apologise if that introduces a dilemma for you,” Shiala ventured carefully.

Liara’s head snapped up, and she frowned in confusion.

“The human you travel with. He is hunting Saren and your mother,” Shiala explained.

“He has not hidden his plans from me,” Liara answered sharply. 

“I see. Just know that in the joining I… there was…” Shiala started with a flutter of discomfort on her face. “Let's just say I do not envy your predicament.”

T’Soni spoke quickly with burning curiosity, “What did you see?”

The former acolyte of Benezia squinted, trying to recall the memory. “Little. He evaded me for the most part. It was what I felt. It was like walking into a room as a discussion ceased, but the aura of the matter was still hanging all about you. His time with the human commandos…”

Shiala shook her head, centering herself. “I will not speak further; those are his stories to share, if he wishes.”

Liara replied with disappointment. “I see. I should not have asked. He has a right to his privacy, as do you.”

The commando smiled, “Your curiosity is not unwelcome, but you are right, I shouldn’t speak of it. I… I can tell you that Benezia was heading for Noveria. I don’t know what she intends there, but I know that was the last plan I heard of before I was abandoned to my fate. You may ask what you will, but I have little more to offer.”

“You have already been a great assistance, and have answered my questions Shiala, thank you.”

Shiala regarded the other asari, and asked quietly, “What are you going to do?”

“I will do what I can for Mother. But Saren must not succeed, and I will not let my feelings be that which prevents our mission,” Liara said cooly, as much to herself as the other asari.

“You are not as young as I was led to believe,” Shiala said warmly. “My second incorrect assumption.”

“What was the first?” Liara asked.

“I was not expecting any information in my joining with Shepard to be news to you,” Shiala said with a hint of a smile. “You took a very… protective stance when I reached out to your Commander to give him the Cipher. I thought you may have already had access to his mind.”

Liara felt a heat in her fringes. “I… he… he saved me on Therum, and is helping me with my life’s work. I owe him a great deal, and you were an unknown.”

“I see,” Shiala said, her grin belying her thoughts on Liara’s statement.

Am I so transparent about my interest in the visions in Shepard's mind? 

Liara turned Shiala’s comment over in her head. Is it just the visions that have my interest? 

No, her curiosity regarding Shepard was purely academic. It was just that the mission was so dynamic and perilous, and the stakes for the galaxy were so high. It would be natural that emotions would flare, and responses would be exaggerated in such times. Shepard had been kind to her, and allowed her a great opportunity to be aboard the vessel, to see untold wonders and be privy to Prothean information she would never obtain otherwise. It would only be natural that she felt some obligation to him. She was also part of his crew, and would defend the Normandy’s commander against any foe, like she had Kaidan earlier in the day. 

They had spoken numerous times in her quarters, and they had developed an easy dialogue whenever they met. She thought back to the night on Arcturus, when she had pestered him about questions which he took in stride, and had even formally welcomed her to the team. But he had that same dynamic with everyone, even the ornery krogan. It did not mean there was anything unique or unusual going on. The only thing unique about their relationship, compared to say, that which Shepard had with Chief Williams, was Liara's academic interest in the Prothean visions.

I was just having a natural, protective reaction for a friend that I care about. Yes, that is the explanation. Nothing more.

Year 2183 - Day 4 of Feros Expedition
Attican Beta Cluster
Theseus System - Feros
Thorian Cavern

The water main was deceptively simple, and elegant in its design. That Liara, with absolutely no engineering expertise, could even approach an ability to repair the piping system in the colony was a testament to the foresight and planning of the Prothean builders so many thousands of years ago. As the marines continued to sweep through the tunnels and nearby roads to ensure the last of the geth and Thorian creepers were dealt with, and the medical staff tended to the colonists, Liara had taken it upon herself to assist with some repairs of the basic infrastructure for Zhu’s Hope alongside Tali and Alenko.

Idle hands inevitably lead to wandering minds, and Liara found that her thoughts frequently cast back to the colonist she killed yesterday. The image of the rent holes in the woman’s body leaking an unholy amount of deep crimson had kept Liara up most of the night, despite the asari’s exhaustion. She wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and sleep for days to recover, but the asari continued to find herself assisting the colony in any way possible. Perhaps it was out of empathy. Perhaps it was to assuage her own guilt. Regardless, the manual labour was a welcome distraction. 

“Do asari archaeology programs usually offer engineering minors to their students?” A voice asked lightheartedly.

Looking up from her kneeling position beside the water main, Liara saw Shepard standing over her, holding out a large hand to help her up. T’Soni grasped it, and found herself whisked onto her feet with ease. The scientist quickly brushed off her dusty clothing as she focused on the Commander.

He was out of his armour, in Alliance fatigues, with only a simple pistol on his hip. An odd sight that was rarely seen outside of the Normandy.

Liara wiped her brow of sweat as she replied. “Alas I must admit, I struggled with mathematics. Particularly vector calculus.”

“I suspect our definition of struggle differs,” Shepard answered with a sidelong look. “92% average?” 

Liara quickly converted her mark to the base ten number system that she had become familiar with since joining the Normandy. “91 actually.”

“Truly an academic delinquent,” Shepard replied with a roll of his eyes. He ran his hand along the piping system that Liara had been working on. “You may have to settle for a career in Prothean biological waste transfer.”

“An unfortunately odorous fallback if my academic credentials are tarnished by supporting your visions,” Liara retorted with a grin.

“Hey now, they were almost Ash’s visions.”

“Would she be capable of making accurate sketches of the beacon’s message? Or would they be similarly… interpretive?” Liara asked teasingly.

“Oh, they'd be worse,” Shepard said with a laugh, shaking his head. “Much worse. Think like…” he held up his fist in a downward stabbing-dagger motion, as if he was gouging a rock on a cave wall.

Liara chuckled, but felt a tinge of guilt. “Perhaps we should not speak ill of her while she is recovering.”

Shepard scrunched his nose. “She’d be mad if we didn’t,” he said, before tilting his head towards a nearby thoroughfare that spanned two enormous towers. “Come on, there's something I need to speak to you about.”

She followed Shepard onto the free-floating pedestrian walkway, as the winds whipped about the pair. They made their way into the midspan before Shepard leaned on the railing, overlooking the vast expanse of crumbling Prothean architecture before them, framed by the late afternoon sun as the tumbling clouds twisted below. A quick plunge of vertigo took Liara as she looked down, with no ground to be seen beneath her feet save for the crumbling metal rebar and patches of ancient concrete. She steadied quickly, and took up a spot on the railing beside the Commander.

He looked oddly contemplative, and Liara could not pinpoint the reason for it.

“You did well today,” the Spectre ventured. “You probably saved Ash’s life.”

Liara felt a rush at the acknowledgement. I suppose I did. I had not thought about that, I have been so consumed by… well. The life I did not save.

“Thank you Commander. I am glad I could return the favour to Chief Williams, given what she did for me on Therum,” Liara said with a smile. 

The mood of the Spectre remained. It appeared he was… hesitating? Liara couldn't tell. He had ceased any levity, and could only be described as deep in thought. 

“Feros is basically one giant Prothean ruin, correct?” Shepard asked quickly, changing the subject, as he looked up at the looming, vacant skyscrapers overhead. “You should take some time to explore. On your own terms. Clear your head.”

“Perhaps another time. I…” Liara said. “I would feel guilty taking personal time while everyone else was assisting the colony.”

A pause hung. Shepard sighed almost imperceptibly.

He is definitely stalling. But for what reason? 

“Is, is something the matter Commander?” Liara asked with worry in her voice.

The tone he took had a severity, and a depth that Liara had never heard from the Spectre.

“You know,” he began, but stopped. “Shit. I'm not good at this,” he said, running a hand through his dark, wavy hair.

“Not good at what exactly?” Liara asked.

He looked her over, and his eyes met hers. They had worry in them. Is he concerned about me?

“I didn't take it well, my first one,” Shepard said quietly. “The guy died badly, and… and I went looking for answers in the wrong places.”

That… I have never seen that Shepard.

Liara was floored by the sudden admission, and subsequently at a loss for how to respond. She had desperately wanted to know what was under the veneer of the Normandy’s commander, and yet here the opportunity fell into her lap, and she was frozen in place, unable to follow up. 

The first time Shepard took a life. Was he Alliance? She cast her mind back to Talitha on the Citadel docking bay. Was he a child? Noting the darkness of his tone, she wondered if it had been… less than legal. The implications were disconcerting. 

Her mouth opened and closed, her questions not quite forming into words. In the absence of a response, the Commander shifted his weight and his demeanour, and his momentary lapse of vulnerability completely disappeared under his metaphorical armour once more.

“I…” Liara began, trying to catch back up to the topic as her mind raced. She stammered out a couple more words, but Shepard had already moved on. He gave a small clearing of his throat, and pushed himself off the railing. 

“Well, Dr. T’Soni, since you won’t take my recommendation of enjoying the ruins on your own,” the N7 said as he stood up straight. “I am ordering you to give me a tour of the Prothean structures in this area so I can better understand my visions.”

And just like that, the chance is lost. Liara chastised herself internally.

“But Commander, I do not believe that these ruins have anything to do with the Prothean beacons, the timeframe is complet-”

“Doc,” Shepard said, cutting her off. “I know.”

“Then why… why spend your time here with me? Surely there are others that need your attention more than myself?”

Shepard let out an exasperated sigh. 

“Because I've been trying to be more civilised than outright saying ‘you shredded a colony’s head nurse as your first kill, and it will live rent free in your head until you deal with it’,” he said finally, his awkwardness fully disappeared behind his usual demeanour.

Liara wanted to crawl into a hole. Of course. Goddess, why am I so dense when I speak with humans? Especially him. Of course that was what he was dancing around for all this conversation. 

“I am sorry Commander I…” Liara stammered. “The… event was disorienting. I am quite exhausted, sleep has eluded me.”

“Saying the problem out loud is a good start,” Shepard said as he gestured towards the heart of the ruins, indicating he wanted Liara to follow. “Come on. You're taking time off. It's not negotiable.”

She nodded quickly, and followed behind him. Try not to say anything foolish again Liara…

As they made their way towards the heart of the ruins, embarrassment was slowly replaced with cautious anticipation. Shepard didn't seem perturbed with her, and she was caught off guard by both his patience and the fact that he was concerned for her at all.

“Tell me something interesting about what I'm looking at Doc,” the human said, his curious eyes surveying the crumbling skyline before him as they headed down the walkway. 

“Of course!” She began, “But first… I was just wondering if…”

“Oh?” Shepard asked, looking surprised at the hesitation.

“...I was wondering if it could just be, ‘Liara’, not ‘Doctor’, if that is OK with you,” Liara asked hopefully, looking up at the man beside her. 

“Easily done,” Shepard answered with that rare, broad smile that sent a warm sensation blooming through her chest. 

She smiled back in kind. She wasn't sure why the change mattered to her, but it apparently did.

And so they walked with only the sounds of small stones crunching underfoot as they made their way into the deserted Prothean city, once teeming with a bygone way of life. Her body was still feeling the effects from the trials of the last few days. She was sleep deprived, malnourished and dehydrated. The image of the empty eyes of the colonist woman churned T’Soni’s stomach with anxiety whenever it flashed in her mind. But those concerns fell away with every step along the walkway with Shepard as her voice picked up with excitement. Academic passion slowly, but surely, replaced the maelstrom of physical symptoms and mental malaise she had been suppressing. 

In the crumbling skyways of Feros, with kilometres of naught but cloud below them, they strolled to no particular destination. As they meandered, she realised Shepard did not have a location in mind, and was letting her guide their path to what she deemed of interest. The surrender of control in the situation’s dynamic was a strange sensation to Liara, one she had never imagined having with the leader of the Normandy, the Spectre, the N7, Commander Shepard.

The sky was the strange tint of an off-brown filter, and the thick airborne particles lazily floated downwards, settling on the ruined infrastructure before them. The galaxy paused, and allowed the two their moment in time.

Liara began her explanation with trepidation at first. But soon, unbridled passion for her life's work bubbled up, overwhelming all social caution. She launched into a long, rambling stream of consciousness about the history of the Protheans with complete abandon. She detailed how the Protheans had probably lived out their lives on Feros. She laid out the competing theories, the supporting arguments, and where her own conclusions lay. For a time, Saren, his Geth, and the rest of the galaxy vanished behind stories of a departed people, as Liara indulged herself in having a captive audience of one. Shepard for his part asked probing questions, made jokes, and seemed to be invested in listening to her extended monologue. Liara didn't know if he was simply being kind, or if he was genuinely interested, but at least he was playing the part. 

And for now, that was enough. The gnawing guilt for the colonist’s death was tempered, and as the evening wore on, it faded from thought completely.

She only noticed that hours had passed when the sun's rays fell behind the horizon. The backsides of the structures were now cloaked in shadow, and the ambient reflected light coming through the twisted metal and broken concrete was dim.

As the pair turned towards the route leading back to the Normandy, Shepard spoke on a different topic as the ship came into view. “If you have any lingering doubts about whether you belong on the Normandy, you can punt them out the airlock.”

Liara felt a wash of relief come over her. She had already begun to feel that she had a small toehold to cling to in this frenetic new life she was leading. And yet, hearing it out loud from another meant so much more. 

“Thank you Commander, that is very reassuring,” Liara answered, her words understating just how much the affirmation meant to her.

“Shepard,” the Spectre corrected, shooting her his now familiar sideways glance. “Since we aren’t doing titles anymore.”

Liara dared not overestimate her ability to read into human behaviour, but surely, surely this was a sign that he saw her as a friend; more than just a fellow member of the crew.

She had wanted this. But to Liara’s surprise, she was taken by a rush of realisation that she wanted more. 

I should ask him. This is my chance. 

“Comm-, Shepard I,” Liara said, taking a breath. She internally recited the line that she had practised repeatedly in her quarters. 

Be direct, to the point. Offer a solution to the problem, don't make it about my curiosity. Just say what I have practised…

“I believe I can help you with your visions from the beacon. You need not try to draw them out on paper,” she rattled off as fast as she could spit out the words, but forgetting half of what she was going to say.

Shepard gave her a quizzing look, but then answered his own internal question. “You mean join our minds, like with Shiala.”

Liara felt a prickly, defensive cold run up her spine at the memory of the transference of the Cipher. Why should one of Mother's acolytes know what our Commander has been through? There was a tinge of envy that someone who had been so recently an enemy was given a glimpse at the Spectre’s deepest histories, when he was so guarded with the rest of the Normandy. 

Why is that crossing my thoughts? This is about the Prothean question, not what Shiala saw.

Liara coughed into a fist before continuing.

“Yes, I am positive that much is lost between those mediums, despite your best efforts,” she answered. “I believe we could find something to help us regarding the Conduit.”

Shepard gave a non-committal grunt, and started running his fingers through his hair. “We’ll see.” 

Goddess, I have overstepped. I went too far.

“Sorry Shepard, I should not have suggested it!” Liara stammered. “Just forget I said anything.”

The Spectre held his hand out, gesturing for calm.

“It's fine, just…,” Shepard said, his face in discomfort. “Having her root around in there wasn't… ideal.”

Of course. It was likely deeply uncomfortable. Humans were so rarely experienced in how to navigate a joining, particularly one that, in theory, was intended to be a bridge for such an esoteric property. That it involved the transference of an entire peoples essence would be disorienting regardless of ability.

“Do you wish to discuss it?” She asked, feeling lines on her face form in concern. 

“No,” he answered flatly. He did not seem mad, but it was clear that the matter was settled.

“OK. Know I will never pressure you into such a thing, but I will help in any way I can,” Liara said quickly, reaching out to his shoulder in the manner he had in their first meeting, hoping that the gesture was appropriate. 

“Smooth words to unlock the Prothean vault T’Soni,” Shepard replied, tapping his temple, as he turned to acknowledge the Normandy crew approaching him.

And just like that, my chance is gone again. Perhaps the gesture of touching his shoulder was not suitable, or perhaps he chose not to acknowledge it. 

Liara opened her mouth to speak, but before she knew it Shepard had been swarmed by fast-talking crew members who had noticed his return. Duty called, and her moment in time had come to its end, falling away with such unfulfilled promise.

Dr. T'Soni couldn't help but feel that she had just let… something slip through her grasp. She could not be sure what. The disarming dry humour was a regular feature of the Spectre, often used to deftly redirect conversations away from himself, or to wrong foot others to get them to open up about their own troubles. 

Whatever that chance was that eluded her just now, she realised that she wanted it. Not in a passing curiosity, but a genuine hunger for more of whatever she had just touched on. That split second when Shepard, unprompted, felt that she was the person to tell of the first time he took a life… that felt like the real person. Not the ‘Commander’ Shepard, but Andrew Shepard. 

Has anyone else on the Normandy seen the ‘Andrew’? The question brought more questions.

It was not lost on her that they had been alone together when the mask had slipped. That perhaps… maybe there was a modicum of trust. Of closeness. Something that went beyond a professional camaraderie that not even the other Alliance members were privy to.

Liara ran a hand across her scalp, letting her fingers furrow in the grooves between her fringes. I can not go back to my life of solitude. I want this. 

As Liara stared out into the fading daylight, a thought crystalized. 

She still clearly, obviously, wanted to see the Prothean visions scorched into the Commander’s memory. But a new mystery worth unlocking had wormed into her mind. In the last few weeks, a desire to decode the contradiction that was the Spectre had burrowed under her skin, and reminded her constantly of its unresolved nature. It had been growing, and after Shepard’s surprising outreach, could no longer be ignored or suppressed.

Liara walked out of the docking port, back to the skyway they had just traversed, her eyes on the last vestiges of the sunset. The scientist approached the edge of the skyway, just at the midspan, and went to find a spot to take in the last of the day. She tested a piece of rockcrete with the toe of her boot to ensure its structural integrity before taking a seat, her legs dangling above the clouds below.

She mulled over a question she knew she had no answer to. A series of contrasts that could not be resolved.

A long walk through a ruin with a friend in need. A blade driven into a krogan’s throat. 

A warm embrace for a forgotten slave. A cold indifference to violence.

A fierce loyalty to a broken comrade. A blood soaked history. 

A galaxy’s responsibility shouldered without question. A looming axe hung over my mother’s neck. 

The formerly reclusive scientist sighed. For all the unknowns and unanswered mysteries that remained, one had been unequivocally resolved. 

Her interest in the Normandy's Commander was no longer purely academic. 

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Voyager Cluster
Columbia System - Nepheron
Normandy Cargo Bay - Low Nepheron Orbit

“Hang on Chief, that line isn't sitting right.”

In the low level hum of preparations in the staging area of the Normandy, Kaidan stood behind the Gunnery Chief, who was in a T-pose as the Lieutenant checked her gear once more prior to the jump. Alenko had dutifully tugged on every strap, line, and edge of armouring, checking for loose parts or ill-fitting equipment. He was glad for his thoroughness, as on his third pass over he had located a seating for a run of cable that was ready to let go. He re-secured the attachment, glad to have found at least something to improve on the chief’s suit prior to the mission. 

After all, in-situ repairs were notoriously difficult during a High Altitude Low Opening, or HALO, jump. Modern technology may have replaced the traditional HALO parachutes, but the acronym had remained all the same. 

“El-Tee,” Williams said with a smile hidden inside a helmet, as she looked back over her shoulder. “I've never been so glad for your neurosis.”

Kaidan frowned, but did not reply. This was serious, but he knew by now that levity from Ash did not mean that she wasn't aware of the gravity of the situation. The ops plan was like nothing he had ever been a part of. It was an N7 operation through and through, and the Lieutenant quietly had reservations about the capabilities of the crew to execute accordingly. Himself included.

Alenko had never been given a seat on a proper airborne course, and he knew damn well that the perpetually sidelined Williams had never made it off planetside until the Normandy. Perhaps Garrus had received higher level training from the Turian Hierarchy prior to his C-Sec days, but if he had, it would have been long ago.

Enroute to Nepheron every fireteam member had rehearsed their part again and again on the VR sims. The Cerberus base, their target, was staffed by elite operatives, with high level anti-tank countermeasures. The structure was on a wide, unobscured plane, and it had to be assumed that loitering drones would provide a transparent battle space, meaning that any frontal approach by the Mako was functionally suicide. 

No, the Mako team, Bravo, would have to wait for insertion by Alpha squad.

“You're set Vakarian,” Shepard said, slapping the side of the ribs of the turian. The Spectre was even keeled, but Kaidan had caught a glimmer in the N7’s eye. Not of anticipation or excitement. Not the usual pre-mission jitters. 

It was a frigid, predatory glint. 

They had found Kahoku on Binthu. And when they did, the body was barely cold, it couldn’t have been more than a few hours between the hypodermic needle being pushed into the Admiral’s arm and their arrival. At the time Kaidan thought that the biotic static coming off the Commander was going to arc in forked lightning. Since then himself, Garrus and Tali had poured over the data retrieved from the three sites, and it all pointed in one direction, a trail that Kahoku had already staked out for the Normandy to investigate. It corroborated whatever… other intelligence the Commander had secured. 

Cerberus. Kaidan didn’t think much of Kahoku’s analysis of them, despite the late admiral getting the organisation correct. This went beyond a ‘rogue black ops’ team. The experiments, the sophistication, the infrastructure. If they were truly rogue, where was the revenue stream coming from? How were they maintaining a multi-planet supply chain? 

The analytic side of Kaidan's brain had been pouring over the inconsistencies when he found the manifesto that had been posted after the First Contact War. Many government agencies had tried to scrub it from mainstream news sources, but just like anything on the extranet, nothing was ever truly lost. What he read chilled him. And it didn’t sound like it was put together by ex-Alliance goons with a chip on their shoulder. This was a person, or persons, with a vision. Those they rallied to their banner might have varying capabilities, but Kaidan had an unsettling concern over what the organisation was truly able to accomplish. 

Is this an iceberg? Are we just scratching the 10%?

Evidently free of such ruminations on the other side of the bay, Garrus nodded in thanks towards the Commander and re-checked his rifle before attaching it to the hard point harness on his back. Kaidan noted that the turian was unusually quiet. He couldn't fault him for the nerves. 

“90 seconds,” a VI blared over the loudspeaker. 

The ambient lighting changed from white illumination to a red glow. The edge of the ramp lowered, revealing the night sky on the dark side of Nepheron. 

Moonlight cast over the tops of the thick cloud cover below the Normandy. Kaidan had been expecting howling winds, but the air at their near-space altitude was so thin that the great beyond before him was all but silent. Alenko could only really hear his own heavy breaths inside his closed helmet. In … and out. In… and out. He felt himself steady as he peered over the edge at the precipitous fall before him. 

“Full blackout,” Shepard stated to the group as the visor tinted on his helmet. Kaidan looked over at Garrus and Williams who had disappeared into the inky dark of night, faintly outlined by the ominous red glow that swamped the cargo bay. Kaidan’s eyes adjusted to the lower light level, as he had decided to hold off on engaging his night vision. 

All lights and comms were to be disengaged for the drop. Cerberus were running a completely sterile facility, in total electronic emission silence, so the Normandy’s crew could not even engage a GPS signal or radio chatter. Wireless communication or transmission of sensor data would be like setting off a flare in the sky of the unpopulated world, letting the supposed ‘rogue black ops team’ know that an advanced ship was in the area through passive sensors watching the sky.

But the emissions silence was a two way street. It also meant that Cerberus soldiers on the ground would not be in wireless contact with each other. Hardlines would no doubt be present in the facility, and in an emergency situation Kaidan was certain that all hands would immediately begin broadcasting. But for the opening, crucial moments of their strike they could get the drop. And if done right, there shouldn't be a reprisal from the targets.

Risky as it was, Shepard’s plan had merit. To drop with the fury of an avalanche, but the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. 

Just don't mess it up Lieutenant. Kaidan thought to himself as he scrunched his toes in anticipation of the jump. 

“20 seconds.”

Kaidan glanced left and right. Williams and Garrus were astride of him, Shepard directly ahead. The Mako loomed ominously in the red glow cast across the staging area. Refuelled, rearmed and ready for deployment, the IFV was nonetheless a far too large radar return for a covert drop. Tali, Wrex, Liara, and a handful of the shipboard Marines stood ready at its side, awaiting Alpha’s go-ahead for Bravo’s turn to engage.

“10 seconds.”

Kaidan couldn't hear her, but noted that Williams had her head bowed, and a tight fist against her chest. A prayer. The Lieutenant wasn't religious himself, but he could not begrudge the temptation to ask for deliverance. 

“5 seconds.”

Garrus raised his head and cast a quick glance at Kaidan. Alenko dipped his helmet in acknowledgement, which was returned solemnly by the turian. 

“Mark.”

Go time. 

The red glow flipped to a forest green, and the squad moved to action.

Into the deep. 

Four hard stomps, his arms thrown wide, and Kaidan launched himself off the edge of the Normandy’s ramp into the fringes of Nepheron’s carbon dioxide atmosphere. 

The roiling volcanoes and their molten river offsprings etched deep orange and crimson veins across Nepheron’s surface. The heavy black ore contrasted sharply off the near fluorescent glow of the lava churning through the canyons with ponderous determination. 

A cool line of white-blue signalled the edge of the planet’s aura, demarcating the threshold where the slate black sky, pin pricked with starlight, began. Alenko knew his modified suit was constantly taking in both the landmarks below, and the stellar map above, feeding them into the inertial guidance system as his free-falling body gained speed. Traditionally, a planet with an atmosphere like Earth would have the ‘edge of space' set at a limit similar to the Karman Line, at roughly 100km. Jumping from the ship's bay at 39km above ‘sea level’, the Normandy’s crew would be hard pressed to say that they had leapt from true space to the ground level of Nepheron. 

But looking out at the curvature of the planet, with abject silence all around him except for his breathing, and air so thin that he couldn’t feel so much as a ruffle on the outside of his suit, Kaidan decided that this counted as close enough. 

Radio silence maintained, Alpha squad plummeted towards the target below. Without satellites broadcasting positional data, and the Normandy on zero emissions mode, the VIs of the four suits had to work overtime to determine the correct pathing to land exactly on the compound. Visual scans noted the stars, landmarks, and positions of the other free falling soldiers. Internally, accelerometers, gyroscopes, worked with external wind speed sensors and atmospheric pressure barometers to constantly update the operative to their correct heading. 

Kaidan knew the issues with any inertial system was the accumulation of errors. Set on a beginning fixed point, with the sensors trying to account for changes, it was inevitable that drift from the initial orientation would occur. 

And on a five minute drop, with speeds over 1300km/hr in the thin upper atmosphere, Kaidan wished he was blissfully ignorant of the technical burden of their insane operation. 

The four soldiers, with limbs held out to maintain orientation, continued to plummet. They had attached large, single use armour panelings to their suits that would activate small control surfaces to adjust course during atmospheric drop, then deploy mass effect fields and thrusters prior to impact to mimic the parachutes of old.

His whole body shook. Forty five seconds into his descent, Kaidan saw just how rapidly the ground was approaching, but he knew there were still minutes to go. He was well over the speed of sound on Earth, and had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't going to burn up on re-entry. 

You don't have the surface area or speed to accumulate air and convert it to plasma. You won't combust into a fireball. Focus. 

He glanced left and right. Like a plummeting bird of prey, Shepard had his eyes unflinchingly locked on his target below, even though it was shrouded in cloud, as if he could will his eyesight through the obscuration. Williams was closing and opening her hand repeatedly, and making small gestures towards her emergency chute cord, her nerves almost getting the better of her.

Hold Ash. Hold. You can do it. 

She must have heard Alenko’s thoughts. She looked up, met his eyes through their visors, and the twitching stopped. 

They passed through denser air, and the reinforced drop suits began rattling as they plummeted towards the surface. Shepard had chosen the night side of the planet on an evening with low lying cloud cover. He didn’t want any chance of a Cerberus soldier looking up and seeing a drop trooper being back lit by one of Nepheron’s moons, or a lucky night vision goggle return at closer range. 

What this did mean though was that Kaidan was going to have to trust his sensors and inertial guidance, as he wouldn’t have a visual of the target until they were right on top of it. 

<1.0km TO TARGET, 3.2deg NE TRAJECTORY> flashed in the upper right corner of his HUD. 

The cloud cover was becoming too dense. Kaidan couldn’t see any of the other drops. He engaged his NVGs and scanned his surroundings.

Shepard, where did you go? The Spectre had dropped out of the controlled ‘starfish’ body shape to gain speed, and was now completely out of range.

<700m TO TARGET 1.2deg NE TRAJECTORY>

Garrus and Williams swung back into view, with the turian nearly crashing into Kaidan as he angled his trajectory back towards the pack. 

<400m TO TARGET - 0deg MAINTAIN HEADING>

This wasn’t just cloud cover, it was straight fog across the valley. Telemetry and internal guidance suggested that there were mountain peaks to his left and right, and that their squad was plummeting between them. Collections of water droplets formed and then streaked across his vision, blurring his objective.

<200m TO TARGET - MAINTAIN HEADING>

The top of the compound burst into view just ahead of Kaidan, marked with a signature bloom of a mass effect field generator flaring into action. On his CO just a couple dozen metres below, Kaidan could see that the familiar blue distortion, as Shepard’s drop-suit modified his mass down to a point that the onboard thrusters could slow his descent to a non-fatal speed.

The blue corona of the mass effect generators cascaded outwards as Shepard’s backpack and forearm mounted thrusters engaged, expending their full charge in a burst of white and orange counter-force against the plummeting marine. 

As the torrent of concentrated fire whipped the misty fog vapours away, the rooftop of the compound burst into full before Alenko.

Two Cerberus Operatives. And the local comm tower. The latter was his target.

As the Spectre landed, his thrusters and mass effect generators cut out, and his full weight sat into his boots. But the N7 was not back on his heels but rather on his toes, hitting a running stride as the first of his two feet reached terrestrial contact. 

One. Two. Three. Three powerful strides and the enormous marine, made even larger by the augmented drop suit, launched himself at the Cerberus operative, just as the rogue black ops agent was turning his head to acknowledge the coming footsteps. The bear of an N7 had the inertia of an ore freighter, and it barrelled into the flat footed Cerberus agent.

Shepard, leading with a left knee and a cocked open right hand, caught the back of the Cerberus soldier. The Spectre drove his knee into his target's lower spine, and the palm of his hand into the base of the helmet. The Cerberus soldier was slammed into the ground face first, and with a surge of biotic energy, Shepard drove hundreds of Newtons into a thin line at the base of the skull, severing the spine. The target was dead the instant he met the structure’s roof, never having seen his killer. 

Alenko dropped onto the rooftop, immediately seeing that the remaining Cerberus soldier had keyed in on his commander. But Shepard had been explicit, the XO and Garrus were to ignore all hostile threats and immediately break for the comms relay to introduce a feedback loop of garbage passive sensor data to shroud their physical presence, their electronic communications, and the Mako drop. Kaidan rushed the large bank of electronics and withdrew the hardened computer off his back, a keyboard and large display screen unfolding from the rectangular brick of hardware. Finding an input jack, his fingers flew over the keys, and to his great surprise, the access methods Shepard gave him prior to the drop green-lit access to the network immediately. 

Kaidan really didn't want to think hard on how Shepard had obtained a comms login and Cerberus encryption handshake credentials. 

Meanwhile, the other Cerberus soldier on the rooftop had a split second choice, activate his comms or raise his firearm towards the meteoric assailant that had just dispatched his comrade. The Cerberus agent chose the latter, and brought up his gun on the onrushing Spectre. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan saw the agent’s finger come off the frame, as he sighted down on Shepard. But the Spectre was operating on a plane with different physical rules, and deftly turned his left hand upward as his right gripped the severed spine of the defeated foe. 

The upturned left hand signed a simple mnemonic form that Kaidan recognized. A stasis effect crushed inwards on the remaining Cerberus agent, pinning his being into perfect petrification, as every square millimetre of his body had diametrically opposed dark energy plunging in on both sides. Shepard’s right hand released the rear of the neck of the agent facing down into the roof of the building, and the angle of the defeated foe’s spine reported the prognosis of recovery with no words. 

The Spectre calmly approached the frozen Cerberus soldier’s being. Without passion or sound, he thrust an omni-blade up under the ribcage, before the orange blade retreated back out with a slick of red. Shepard disengaged from his foe, and when the biotic effect ended the Cerberus agent collapsed to the ground, with an ever-expanding pool of blood forming on the rooftop.

Garrus had landed by now, falling beside Kaidan at the comm tower. The pair did not acknowledge the dispatching of the two enemies, instead turning to their frantic technical task. Ashley was the fourth drop to land, her athletic grace catching her as she powered down the drop suit and un-harnessed her rifle, as if she had done this a thousand times before. She scanned the horizon for additional hostiles, occasionally bringing up her weapon’s sight. 

Shepard and Williams approached the anti-vehicle drone cache on the roof. Several dozen automated top-attack single use munitions were housed in the rack, awaiting the go-word from the Cerberus agents. The Mako crew would’ve been vaporised, Kaidan noted crudely. There were enough to easily overwhelm the defence countermeasure systems of the transport vehicle. This is a disturbingly well equipped group.

The Commander and Gunnery Chief set their electronic tech munition charges on a delay, synced with the estimated Mako drop.

Nepheron’s atmosphere was unbreathable, so the team’s helmets were all on. An amplified flanged voice cut the air, but in quiet volume, rather than over the radio. “20 seconds until comm and sensor disruption Commander.”

“Good work you two. Get it done,” Shepard said towards Alenko and Vakarian as he unholstered his rifle affixed with a suppressor, and prepped for the breach. 

Shepard and Williams approached the door leading down into the compound as Vakarian and Alenko finished their task. Both the Commander and the Chief’s eyes darted around to maintain situational awareness, and they were bouncing on the balls of their feet, ready to storm the Cerberus hive.

Despite Shepard’s eagerness, Alenko allowed himself an extra few seconds to ensure that the garbage sensor readings were feeding back properly into the Cerberus communication lines. He saw that his intrusion software was showing repetitive but slightly changing patterns of the ambient Nepheron environment, as well as simulated audio and visual returns of the Cerberus agents walking about, as if they were still alive. 

With root access to the system from Shepard’s intel, he also noted that there hadn’t been any alarms raised on the interior, or on the exterior perimeter patrols. 

“Still clean,” Alenko said as he rose to his feet. “We’re good to go.”

Shepard rolled out a calm order, “Alpha to Bravo Team, you’re clear to drop.”

“Copy,” came the gravelly voice of the krogan.

Shepard, Williams, Alenko and Garrus fell into a stack on the door. Their rifles all had extended suppressors attached to the barrels, and the long guns themselves had been modified prior to the drop. 

Rather than always operating on the assumption that their enemies would be hard suited, Shepard had predicted that the interior of the facility was likely staffed with capable soldiers and agents, but not ones prepped for combat. Without the need to overcome suits and their shieldings, there was less need for the high energy, low mass rounds to be spit out at the absurd speeds that a modern rifle would in a firefight. 

Instead, Garrus, Williams and Alenko had set up a selector mode for the guns. The internals of the firearms would shave off larger pieces of mass from the ammo block, but launch them at subsonic speeds. This would not be enough to overcome modern armouring, but against unshielded targets would have a similar effect to a pre-mass effect technology .300 blackout round, but with far superior metallurgy and the benefit of ME. And without the need to ignite a gunpowder based propellant, the sound level was drastically reduced.

The end result was a whisper quiet hiss, rather than a crack everytime a round was sent downrange, with little loss in stopping power, provided the enemy was wearing clothing.

The modification fell in line with the goals of the operation. First and foremost was Alpha’s task. They were to stalk through the compound and secure the central database in a manner that prevented a purge of the system, in order to lock down every scrap of electronic information in the facility regarding Cerberus. 

The secondary mission was Bravo team in the Mako. They were to make planetside and drive to the front of the compound, defeating, but securing as many live Cerberus agents on patrol in the area as possible. This was due to Alpha being on a blow through tempo, and with them lacking numbers or the IFV, they were unable to secure any live prisoners, and would have to result to lethal kinetic force in every conceivable situation. 

The Spectre shouldered his rifle with one hand, and tested the doorknob on the entranceway to the stairs leading down into the compound. “Locked. Garrus?”

“On it,” the turian replied quickly, his hand flying over his omni-tool. 

Shepard looked at the others. “Use the time,” he said quickly as he pulled the rip-cord on his bulky, augmented drop suit. The chunky, single use plating pieces fell off to reveal a slimmed down, more nimble N7 armouring. Alenko noted the suit had a soft trim of unknown material around the corners of the boots that made no sound as Shepard stepped, and the joins of the armour similarly glided over one another in eerie silence. Ambient light seemed to drown in whatever coating was on the outside of the armoured panels, and with a quick check using his FLIR NVGs, Alenko saw that Shepard’s thermal imaging return was exactly matched to the wall behind him.

Alenko made a point of pride of being abreast of the latest developments in military hardware, even if it was a cursory thing. He shouldn’t have been surprised at such an innovation being withheld from the rest of the Alliance, but the implication begged the question of just how departed the N7 program was from the frontline marine.

But most of all, Kaidan saw that Shepard’s armour was gouged, scuffed, and lined from extended use, despite obvious preventive maintenance clearly being employed. How many worlds has that suit seen I wonder… 

In the few seconds required to action the order from Shepard to Garrus, Kaidan and the rest had relieved themselves of their drop suit panels as the shunt program searched for the lock in question. The team had root access to the network but did not know intuitively how to navigate the Cerberus UI and security system. The pregnant seconds felt like hours, and there was tension laced into every command from Shepard, and every nervous exhale of the rest of the team.

As the last of Ashley’s thrusters came off her suit, Garrus looked up from his omni-tool. “Should be good Commander.”

Shepard nodded, and shouldered his rifle in his right hand, pressed against the joint. With his left, he turned the handle and walked through the door as it opened. 

The portal led to a stairway leading down and to the left, on utilitarian grey metal steps. Sterile white paint lined the narrow walls on either side, matched by the cold lighting coming from the fixtures above. 

The team quietly padded down the stairs, their eyes levelled at the thin passageway. The stack came upon the turn to the left, and Garrus sent the signal up the line for Shepard to take the corner and clear. Kaidan stalked behind Shepard, near enough that were the Spectre not wearing a helmet Alenko could’ve counted hairs on the back of his Commander’s neck. Then…

A person. Kaidan’s breath caught and an arc of paralysis lanced through him, causing a twitch of maybe a quarter second of hesitation. The Cerberus soldier had a pistol on his hip and an atmospheric helmet on, but no armoured suit. The unexpected being was down the stairs, looking up, maybe two metres in front of Shepard, slightly more for Kaidan.

In the amount of time it took the eyes of the Cerberus man to change from surprise to understanding, Shepard’s rifle had already unleashed several muted sounds of thhffft. Thhhffft. Thhhfft. 

The man’s lower jaw caught the first round, then three through his cheeks and another two into his forehead as the man’s head snapped back, small sprays of blood coming out the rear of the skull. The tinkle of the shattered pieces of the atmospheric visor falling onto the ground was the loudest sound to be heard. 

Shepard lunged forward, his rifle still in his right hand, as he lashed out with his left and caught the Cerberus agent by the front of his shirt, lest the man fall to the ground in a heap. Without breaking stride, the Spectre silently placed the deceased man slumped against the wall, with the former agent’s head held together by the remains of the enviro-suit helmet.

The Spectre peered down the last of the stairs, obviously knowing their team was hidden from view, but aware they would be visible if they went any further. He held up a hand sign.

Direction? The mute signal from his fingers requested to Garrus. 

Vakarian returned the query. Straight, 2 doors, left, straight.

Moving, the Spectre’s hand stated.

The team padded their feet down the stairs and into the main thoroughfare of the compound. A short, wide intersection of multiple doors into the wings of the small building stood before them. The only ambient sound was that of a humming generator powering the facility. 

Kaidan intentionally, expertly, placed his foot one over the other so as not to trip or bump any obstacles. The world felt like it was holding its breath. 

To the right, ‘Dormitories’, and ‘Storage’. Orienting himself and knowing the rough size of the facility, Kaidan knew that the rooms to the left were the more substantial of the two sides. Those rooms on the left were labelled ‘Mess’ and ‘Operations’. 

Ahead, ‘Server’. Their objective. 

“Mako groundside; no issues,” came the rumbling voice of Wrex over Kaidan’s radio. “Rounded up the exterior patrols. Coming to you.”

“Four prisoners,” Tali confirmed. 

“Copy,” Shepard said quietly, only audible through the radio, the sound not escaping his helmet.

Alpha team filtered forward like rolling clouds, an ominous, billowing agglomeration of tac gear and hard stares heading towards the portal on the far side of the lobby. A double wide door hissed open at their approach, the metal sliding apart without issue. 

Shit, Kaidan thought as he came through the door. Three armed guards. Unlike the one in the stairway, they wielded long guns, and they were walking in the same direction as the stack, their backs showing to Alpha. Additionally, they were wearing heavy armour. Alenko and the crew could flip their mode selector to traditional rounds, but they were still a good hundred metres of winding hallway and doors from the server room. The sound would alert anyone beyond, and blow the whole op wide open.

Luckily, the decision had already been made. Shepard whispered quickly into the radio, so that the nearby enemies could not hear, “I’ll lift, three of you, get inside minimum effective range.”

Right. Any shield on an armoured soldier was not a skin tight suit of bullet proof magic. Rather, it was a field that existed some distance away from your person that intercepted and either stopped or slapped aside incoming rounds. Placing the muzzle of a firearm inside that field, and pulling the trigger, would render the whole thing moot. 

Shepard fell to the rear, letting the three other soldiers move up ahead of him, as the trio of Cerberus agents talked loudly to each other as they walked down the hallway. 

The Spectre signed, 3, 2, 1…

The Cerberus soldiers were silently grabbed by an ankle each, and inverted with a quick lurch as dark energy ripped their limbs upwards, their feet pointing at the ceiling, and their heads towards the ground. Ashley, Kaidan and Garrus stormed ahead. 

“Hyuhhhh-!” one Cerberus operative managed, before she was set upon by the former member of the Eden Prime 212.

Garrus and Williams had beaten Kaidan to their targets, and he saw that they pointed their rifles down at the bottoms of the chins of the inverted Cerberus agents. Kaidan followed suit, ending his quick sprint by pushing his pistol down into the jaw of a heavy set Cerberus soldier.

In a little more than a second Alpha had closed the gap with the guard patrol, and with a flurry of ‘thfft’s, the Cerberus guards were executed as their bodies lazily floated through the hallway. Shepard lowered them to the ground rather than simply ending the biotic effect and letting them crash in a loud heap. 

“They may have heard that gasp,” Shepard said into the radio. “Double time.”

Kaidan, Ashley and Garrus nodded in agreement, and fell into formation as the four soldiers powered through the rest of the hallway. The only other obstacle prior to the server room was a single woman holding a clipboard, which she dropped to try and raise a pistol. Her thin Cerberus long sleeve shirt did little to stop the four guns that tore her to pieces.

Then, before the group, a large bay door, with an overhanging sign. Server Room.

Garrus had preemptively keyed a command, and upon reaching the threshold he cast a gesture at his omni-tool which sent the large bay door rolling open to allow them entry. The four Normandy soldiers stormed into the room, rifles sighted, their eyes scanning about.

The Lieutenant didn’t know what he was expecting, but it hadn’t been what he saw. A single technician was holding a coffee in one hand, and reviewing a datapad in the other. The man was engrossed in his work, and walking slowly past a glowing orange console in front of an enormous server bank. 

The computer and its drives filled the full two stories stretching up, reaching the roof that the team had dropped in on. There were no arrays of screens or numerous terminals for scientists to interact with, save for the single input/output device behind the lone Cerberus man.

This is it, the target. But what’s that smell…

Kaidan’s suit had flipped to intaking the ambient oxygen rich environment within the facility, conserving the reserves that he held within his armour for breathable air. The filters within his Armax Arsenal produced Predator suit were top of the line, but they struggled to keep up with the scent trying to power its way into Alenko’s lungs. 

The server rack before the team was smoking, but not on fire. There were no flames licking at the edges, and there was no smell of burning material. Alenko surveyed the metal flooring and housing, and noted millions of small, pock marked sizzling stains that were bubbling softly.

An acid bath. Kaidan’s body tensed. That would have taken several hours, the process would have begun before they launched their operation. Possibly a superheated chlorine trifluoride mixture introduced directly to the drives. Hard to deploy the near flesh-eating capabilities of Spectre software recovery programs if the hardware is molten...

The engrossed technician jolted into awareness, and his omni-tool lit up. His hand moved to action a command on the virtual interface but he was preemptively scythed down by a torrent of rounds from the entire stack. The Cerberus man’s muscles in his legs turned off, and the rest of his body fell limp unceremoniously as he went face first into the metal with a crunch.

“Get that omni-tool,” Shepard barked at Kaidan as the Spectre sprinted towards the console. 

Kaidan quickly got onto his knees and rolled over the dead technician, ignoring the slack jaw and tongue lolling out as he did so. He grabbed the man’s limp hand and used the fingerprint to activate the orange projected VI. 

A menu of communication and alarm options appeared, the last thing the Cerberus man would have seen. Alenko exited, and flicked back to the program that was previously accessed before their arrival. 

It was a message reader, evidently from a hard copy OSD that had been delivered by hand from an unknown location. The text on the screen sent a chill through the Lieutenant.

<Agent placed in Arcturus reports that a unit may be enroute to Nepheron. Be on guard, attempt to capture or eliminate the strike force, but preemptively purge Cell records in case of breach. Issue cyanide capsules to be placed in a molar of each agent to prevent information leaks.>

Alenko retrieved the wrist mounted omni-tool and slowly made his way to Shepard. The Spectre was staring with deadpan eyes at the blinking message on the console before him;

<Records Expunged - Purge Complete>

The message seemed consistent with the molten, sizzling pile of slag that used to be hardware before the pair of Alliance marines. 

“Get to the dormitories, secure whoever you can, alive,” Shepard hissed between his teeth towards Garrus and Wiliams. 

The turian and human nodded, tearing off in the direction they had come from. A radio message blared in the team’s ear from Tali at the same time. 

“Commander, they… the ones we have in the Mako… I don’t know what’s going on! They’re shaking, we are trying to stabilise them!” the quarian screamed.

Immediately after, Williams reported from the dormitory, “Skipper, they just… they’re all foaming at the mouth! Lying in their beds! As soon as we walked in!”

“It’s cyanide! Do what you can-” Kaidan bellowed into the radio.

Shepard pulled off his helmet, and then gripped the thin metal housing of the server bank as he leaned on the console before him. Kaidan saw his Commander’s gauntleted fingers curl, the steel giving way and indenting under the Spectre’s barely contained fury. 

Kaidan could hear an exasperated “Fuck,” escape from the lips from Shepard, but it was not aired over the radio.

The Spectre had pulled the operation off perfectly. They had been incisive, rapid, and positively brutal. They had taken no casualties, every risk had been calculated and minimised with exacting precision. 

Kaidan had never seen anything like it. Shepard had lived up to every expectation and rumour. 

And yet, it wasn't enough. 

Kaidan didn't dare approach his CO. But Alenko swore he could hear a soft murmur as he raced off to recover any data he could. 

“I'm sorry Toombs,” Shepard whispered to the dark.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Attican Beta
Hercules System
Normandy SR-1: Orbiting Eletania

The penlight was crudely effective at its job. Liara blinked rapidly after the first test, trying to dispel the anti-shadow silhouette of the medical instrument. The halo of light faded, just in time for a new one to appear, as it passed back and forth in a different pattern than it had before. 

Dr. Chakwas’s face was obscured behind the light source as she spoke. “Your pupils are responding, eyes are tracking well. No nystagmus, horizontal or vertical…”

The human doctor made several notes on a screen that was not visible to Liara. T’Soni felt a dull tension in her trapezoid and lower back from being in a stiff, seated posture on the medical bed for so long. Chakwas had been thorough, to be sure, and she seemed to have no end to possible tests to be run. But the asari had to wonder if the physician was intentionally prolonging the examination as a form of mild retribution. Chakwas had strongly advised against Liara activating the Prothean orb on Eletania, but the asari hadn't been able to pass up the opportunity. She was at the limits of her knowledge regarding the Protheans, and the investigation into the Conduit had completely stalled. 

Excluding a joining with Shepard to extract additional data from the Spectre’s visions, Liara had reached the end of her capabilities. The fact that the orb had revealed an entirely unrelated, incredible, momentous finding of Prothean intervention on human development was a very strange form of disappointment. 

Any other time, this would be the most important thing in my life for numerous years. Yet in the hunt against Saren, Liara only felt tired resignation in the discovery.

Without warning, the well-oiled track of the portal into the medical bay parted its steel curtain, and in stepped a stranger. Not a person Liara hadn’t met, rather a man she no longer recognized.

Dr. Chakwas acknowledged the newcomer with a thin smile. “Hello Commander.”

Liara’s mouth parted in surprise as she took a moment to process the image of Shepard standing before her. He was not injured, nor damaged in any way. He was simply… run out. Dark circles were under his eyes, his hair was unkempt, and he carried a datapad with a slight tremble in his hand. Likely from stim use, staying up all night trying to, as the humans say, ‘squeeze blood from a stone’.

T’Soni looked on at the human male and a pang of sympathy ran through her. Since his return from Nepheron he had been enveloped with the task of retrieving any leads or information from the few surviving pieces of evidence regarding Cerberus, while juggling the other tasks from Hackett and the hunt for Saren. Judging by his appearance and the tense moods of his meetings with Tali, Garrus and Alenko, neither their technical expertise nor that of Citadel Integrated Intelligence Services had yielded any results. 

The physical effects were obvious, but so was the human’s resolve. He clearly had no intention of showing, or leaning into, the effects of recent events. Shepard forced a professional stance and expression as he greeted the two occupants of the room.

“Doctor Medical and Doctor Prothean,” Shepard answered with his best attempt at lightheartedness. “Is now a bad time?”

“Not at all,” Chakwas answered. “Liara here appears to be perfectly healthy despite my concerns, which vexes me as I do love my patients, but so hate being wrong.”

Liara smiled at the accented human speech coming from her caretaker. Even filtered through a translator the clinician had an air of gravitas, yet despite this Liara found Chakwas so approachable. She was younger than Liara, but only in the crudest of metrics. Dr. Chakwas carried a weight of experience and an aura of seniority that the asari couldn’t help but respect every time they spoke.

“Has the Alliance’s coroner’s office reached out to you?” Shepard asked Chakwas, cutting straight to business.

“Yes…” the physician began, crossing her arms as she looked at the Spectre. “I am afraid that there is little the autopsies could deduce, other than the Cerberus agents involved were human, and that some had once been Alliance. A few civilian contractor types with exceedingly boring backgrounds. Faked, no doubt.”

Shepard grimaced. “Send the information to Alenko anyway, we will see if we can dig up anything.”

The Spectre ran a hand over his face, as if he could push the fatigue out of his skin if he rubbed hard enough. “Liara, did anything come out of the orb on Eletania?”

“A great deal but… nothing related to Saren or the Conduit. I am sorry,” Liara said with disappointment. 

The Commander’s shoulders dropped, and he closed his eyes momentarily. “I see,” he said quietly. 

“Commander, I am not breaching medical confidentiality in saying that you clearly need rest, because anyone looking at you can plainly see it,” Chakwas said as she approached him. 

Liara had to admire the physician’s confidence. She strode so easily up to the large marine, who stood a full head and then some over her, and doubled her body weight. The Commander was the ship’s ‘captain’, outranked her, and was the first human Spectre. Yet Shepard did not even flinch as Chakwas pulled up her omni-tool to scan a subdermal implant on the soldier, and began tugging at various limbs and bits of skin for a cursory medical review. 

“Shepard, in medical terms,” Chakwas said sharply as she continued her preliminary procedures. “You look terrible.”

“All that schooling to come to that conclusion, hey Doc?” The Spectre said wearily. 

Chakwas huffed loudly and put her hands on her hips. “Saren threatens us all. He is a foe unlike anything you have ever faced. You simply aren’t up to fighting your way out of a wet paper bag at the moment, and I suspect the rogue Spectre and his army of Geth will not be so forgiving as moist compostables.”

“Excess coffee consumption has gotten me this far,” Shepard said as the doctor continued fussing over him.

Chakwas pulled down a bottom eyelid, and shone the penlight into the Spectre’s eye. “You’ve had more than coffee by the looks of things,” she said with a scolding voice as Shepard’s enlarged pupil failed to respond to the bright light. 

“Just been eating my vegetables,” Shepard said, playing off the accusation. 

“Hmrph, I've never seen a carrot mimic the effects of dextroamphetamine,” Chakwas said with finality. “I’m prescribing rest, food, water, and more importantly, an order that you begin delegation and prioritisation.”

“Finding Cerberus is important,” Shepard said, with some firmness in his voice that replaced the humour from before.

“You,” she said, jabbing an accusatory finger into his chest, “have more on your plate than anyone in the galaxy at the moment, and you’re in the buffet line already grabbing seconds.”

Liara quietly pulled up her omni-tool and began searching the various terms that had been translated, lost in the metaphors and double meanings that Chakwas had so brazenly barked at the ship’s leader. 

“I’ll have you know Doc,” Shepard said, firing back at the doctor with levity, “I was actually coming by to ask for help.”

Chakwas rolled her eyes. “Asking for more medi-gel for your ridiculous injuries does not constitute admitting that you need assistance Commander.”

“That wasn’t what I meant but...I will actually have to grab some on the way out if you don't mind,” he said, directing the conversation away from himself. 

“My talents are wasted on this madhouse,” Chakwas said, shaking her head and throwing her hands in the air.

“Liara,” Shepard said, ignoring Chakwas, “how long would you need to prepare for a joining?”

"Oh!" The question caught Liara completely unawares. I… this… is he serious? Are we possibly going to be initiating a joining here? In this lab? Or perhaps later, or maybe his question is exploratory? Maybe he is still debating. I should try and maintain a professional tone, I do not want to seem too eager after all, but I also do not want him to think that I have no interest in the matter…

Liara realised that her mouth had been hanging open, and a few seconds had gone by while her mind raced.

“I…” she began, still completely off centered. “I could be ready this moment! There are no technical preparations, though there are numerous articles and guides that you could read, in fact I have a series of audiobooks that should be of assistance, a thirty-two volume series-”

“I somehow haven't quite finished the last ones you sent to me,” Shepard answered.

“Oh, I hope you do, they are a good foundational block to understand some of the basics, however I would recommend a further reading if possible…”

“Make whatever preparations you require and I will meet you at 2200 at my office,” Shepard said neutrally, cutting the discussion short. 

Liara could tell in his stance and voice he was not enthused about the prospect of the task. He is only doing this because he has run out of options.

“Yes of course, I will… OK,” Liara said as she began frantically scrolling through her omni-tool for relevant texts. 

Shepard nodded, and turned to the door. After he left, there was an awkward silence as the human doctor leaned against a nearby wall, arms crossed, staring at the asari in front of her.

Liara felt the eyes of Chakwas run over her in appraisal, and the physician arched an eyebrow. “Will I need to be prescribing anxiety medication?”

“That will not be necessary,” Liara said as her blood pressure dropped to normal. 

The human doctor met the asari’s eye and let out a tired exhale through her nose.

“It's not you, you know that right?” Chakwas said.

“I do not know what you are referring to,” Liara answered, less than honestly. 

“Why he hasn't shown you the visions, when by all rights he should have months ago,” Chakwas replied. 

“I am not sure what other deduction there is to form, when he was willing to join with Shiala so easily,” Liara said quietly, voicing out loud a fact that had been bothering her for some time. 

The physician spoke with confidence. “Well the obvious facts are, ‘A’, because it had to be done before the chance was lost. But I would argue, ‘B’ was more important, which was that he didn't care if Shiala saw.”

“I am sorry?”

Chakwas remained with crossed arms. “Come on Liara, you're an intelligent woman.”

Liara felt a cascading line of internal thought processes unfold, as if a dam had been pierced by Chakwas's words. The answer was so incredibly obvious, once it had already been solved.

He does not want me to see. But he did not care if Shiala could. He cares what I think.

“I had not considered that…,” she said as the wheels of her mind turned. 

“I don't know, well, anything about joinings, but I know soldiers, and I know him,” Chakwas said with an overture of seriousness. “Just… be careful.”

What would it be? Something he is ashamed of? Liara considered the problem. It would be wrong to assume that Shepard was embarrassed or ashamed of anything. But the concern and curiosity lingered. The infectious need to know, that bug that had burrowed under her skin was flaring back to life and was impossible to ignore.

Is there a darkness that he is hiding? What if he is a cruel person, deep beneath feigned concern? Or perhaps there is some training or incentive from the Alliance that he has to keep secret?

“Is it the N7 program? Or perhaps his pre-Alliance life?” Liara mused out loud.

“Liara,” Chakwas said in a scolding tone, "that is you not being careful.”

The scientist nodded and squeezed her fingers as he thought quickly. 

Keep it focused on the Protheans, do not go looking for answers to dangerous questions.

“I understand, thank you for all the assistance,” T'Soni said to the human physician. 

Chakwas gestured to the door and gave the asari a stern expression, like a school teacher suspecting a student had just cheated on a test, but hadn’t actually seen the act. 

Liara turned towards her office to re-read texts that she had already memorised. The joining had to go perfectly, this could possibly be her only chance to see the Prothean visions. She had to erect the correct barriers, and navigate this properly. 

I need to be the scientist, not Liara. 

She had eight hours to prepare, and yet it did not feel like enough.

Liara’s subconscious mind had expected a negotiation, a signal, or some sort of greeting at the door. It was strange when she came up to Shepard’s cabin, and found that the green sensor let her pass without issue. The barrier had never actually existed, and the fact that this forbidden place was so strangely accessible struck her as odd.

Shepard was sitting on the couch, an array of papers before him on the small office table. There were two datapads, both softly glowing, showing reams of slowly updating data. He looked no better than he had in the medbay, and a cup of coffee sat nearby.

He was deep in thought, and didn’t react as she entered. 

Liara took a tepid step into the room. “I can come back at a more appropriate time…” 

The marine snapped out of a revere. He double tapped a datapad, clearly checking the clock on the display. “Oh, I uh,” he said, laying down the papers in his other hand. “Lost track of the hour.”

Liara nodded her head slightly, and moved into the cabin. The scientist in her had been dreaming about this opportunity to see the Prothean visions since she came aboard the ship months ago. She had spent countless hours preparing for this just in case the opportunity ever arose. Her decades of work, for which she had forsaken almost all other obligations and wants, could be validated in the next few minutes. There was nothing she had ever wanted more than what was locked behind the eyes of the Commander of the Normandy. 

Yet here he was, sitting, apparently having forgotten about the whole thing. 

I suppose I was hoping that he was looking forward to this as I have.

Dr. T’Soni tried not to show the disappointment that ran through her, and kept a tight posture.

As Shepard tidied the work space, Liara’s eyes drifted down to one of the datapads on the table in front of the couch. A blinking icon demanded attention, showing a title, and a three digit number in a small bubble that indicated extensive messaging use:

[<External Mail> Aberdeen Psychiatric Institute - Patient Toombs Correspondence]

She internally winced, and tried to remind herself that while the visions might be the most important thing in her goals, that she was the main character of her own story, but not necessarily his. She heard the stories of what had occurred on Ontarom. She had spoken with the other crew about Cerberus, and Akuze, what little of the latter that they knew. She had been informed about the poor broken Corporal who had been on the knife edge of murder, or suicide, and had been plucked at the last moment from the consequences of either. 

And now, the flashing message only served to stoke her curiosity about those rumours and wild tales of felled maws, and heartbreak of the highest order. 

Focus. Keep this on the Protheans.

She gave a polite expression, and sat in a chair opposite Shepard, who gave her his full attention from the couch. 

Liara spoke, trying her best to sound unbothered by the previous disappointment. “Have you completed your tasks? I would like to run through a few things with you so you might better understand the process.” 

“I haven’t, but they will have to wait,” he said with a tired expression. “It’s past time that we get you those visions.”

Liara’s pulse quickened. So he was going to go through with it. I am moments from touching an actual Prothean message, and the Cipher. The essence of what it is to be one of that species. 

She did not have words for the anticipation. She bullied her mind into concentrating on the task before her, not its possibilities. 

“OK,” the scientist said, steadying herself, taking a moment to close her eyes before leaning towards him in her chair.

“I must be clear… our minds are not similar to a library where one can simply look for an appropriate label. Your own memories, and mine, change, reform, and are not given neat parameters to search,” Liara recited from one of the many texts she had read over the last few months in preparation for this moment. 

Shepard held her stare with intensity. 

He may have lost track of time, but he is certainly committed to this. Perhaps the joining may work… 

The Commander returned to speaking in the manner that Liara was accustomed to, the fatigue hidden somewhere deep within him. “Shiala sort of just… dumped the Cipher on me, and I wasn’t really playing a part. How do you get something from my mind?”

“It will be less me, or you…” she said, gesturing with her hands to emphasise the point. “And rather it will be us. We will be sharing nervous systems, memories, ways of thinking. It will be disorienting, but I believe that as long as we both think hard on the Prothean vision and the Cipher, our minds will be directed there.”

“Makes sense,” Shepard said as he nodded. “Anything I need to watch out for?”

“Emotions or… simply strong ideas. It’s hard to explain, but if some… base feeling dominates over rational thought, it may bleed into what our shared consciousness will be drawn towards. Your moths on Earth are an excellent metaphor. They will always gravitate towards a bright flame.”

“OK. I guess the last question is… how,” he said, holding out his hands. “How do we start?”

Liara stood up, and beckoned for Shepard to do the same.

“Much the same as before with Shiala but…” she began. “...we shall be much more precise than what you experienced previously. There are ways to quickly impose a joining, or Goddess forgive me for even saying, force one, but nothing of that sort will be occurring here.”

This is the dangerous part. Shiala was vastly more experienced than myself, and… well. She did not have to worry about being distracted by other items of interest in the Commander’s mind. 

Commander Shepard stood in front of her, looking at her expectantly. She bit her bottom lip, trying to recall the process from memory.

“For a union, you would want to focus on the person alone. What you desire, or admire in them. Emotions that bind you, actions and reactions between your two bodies, and similar. Try…” Liara stuttered, and brushed some lint off her labcoat. She felt a rush, and stumbled mentally as she regained her place in the sentence. “Try to avoid that, and stay focused on simply bridging our two minds. We are to experience a joining for an idea, not a true melding of two persons.”

Shepard nodded, awaiting further explanation. 

She let her gaze linger on his green-brown irises, feeling the barest threads of connection already forming. I did not notice he has those bright flecks in the green parts of his eyes…

Pinpricks ran up the back of her neck as her body’s biology turned towards the possibility that a melding was approaching. 

She held out her bare hands, palms up, and nodded towards them. He correctly placed his hands on hers, the rough calluses scratching her. His light olive skin colour contrasted against her deep blue tones.

“First, focus on my mind, then work backwards. Understand and accept the space between us, the air we both breathe. Then acknowledge the threads that bind us, physical, such as our nervous systems touching, and non-physical, such as what we have seen and done together,” Liara said as she involuntarily squeezed his hands a little tighter. 

She could feel her eyes turning black at the edges, as her vision haloed with blur.

“How do I know when we are connected?” Shepard said, his eyes becoming glazed.

“You will know. When you cease being just… you,” she said as her vision continued to narrow, “And we are… us, focus on what you want ‘us’ to see.”

She could feel the threads of her nervous system overlapping with Shepard’s. It was like falling off the edge of a precipitous waterfall, the speed beginning slowly, then with a rush, as she was thrown out from safety into a free fall.

Her awareness of the cabin about her sagged and warped. She no longer acknowledged Shepard’s hands on her own as two pairs, but rather as a single bridge between them. 

“The Cipher, and the vision,” Shepard said, his speech off its usual cadence.

The mind that had been Liara had nearly completely bled into the other. She was not entirely the single being she had been just a moment previous.

“Umm… yes,” she replied, struggling to recall what Dr. Liara T’Soni had been saying. “That.”

One, and both of them, had a sharp intake of breath. Neither were distinct persons. They plunged, as one, into a shared mind, as the Normandy disappeared. 

A looming wave of the Cipher hung over the head of their bridged consciousness, and crashed with the force of a tsunami.

An ominous, undeniable feeling overwhelmed the pair immediately as the joining was formed. The Cipher was not something to be seen or looked at, but to be experienced. Not a property to be taken in through the eyes but born from inside the body, and brought outwards to be understood. 

The stored embodiment of what it was to be Prothean was supreme in its quantity, and devastating in its ability to envelope the now joined persons. No other sensory data could be acknowledged. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, all of it was blinded as the sum experience of an entire peoples was shoved through a funnel the size of the eye of a needle, pressed against their shared minds as the information tried to plough its way in. 

Time had passed since the Cipher’s acquisition on Feros. One of the two minds in the joining had spent time decoding the information every night during fitful sleep. And yet, these weeks later, that same mind still churned in its desperate efforts to find analogues that crossed species, millennia, and culture. The Cipher was so utterly beautiful in its alien nature, it was an expression of the same physical galaxy that they inhabited now but in such a foreign manner. So much had changed across the aeons since the Protheans walked the space between stars. So much was the same. Viewed with different eyes, with a different inertia of evolution, culture, society, morals, needs, wants, desires, hopes, dreams, aspirations. It was as humbling as it was enlightening. 

It was a singular, true gift to the mind that was Liara. An ultimate expression of the joining and its potential, to view the same universe in not just a different mind, but a different time. 

One mind was focused on keeping the attention on the Cipher, struggling in its inexperience with the sensation of being joined. The other soul was distracted, pouring over the new information with ravenous curiosity, glee, and inquisition. That second mind had an inverted hunger. Each bit of information that was imparted only served to expand its appetite for knowledge. 

Seconds, minutes, hours, or days passed, and eventually the Cipher was experienced by both minds. Its true meaning would have to be sorted and analysed outside of the joining, but the base data was imparted. 

There was something else that had to be seen. I remember that. The hungry mind thought to itself, and subsequently, to the other.

They poured effort into turning the direction. Like a heavy ship coming about in rough seas, the momentum was considerable, and the course correction took time. Eventually the hunger relinquished its appetite for the Cipher and turned towards the visions from the Eden Prime beacon. 

The apocalyptical warning from the Prothean beacon was incomplete, but terrifying even in its broken form. It was like it was watching half the frames of a vid that made no sense, yet it still managed to impart a deep, instinctual, evolutionary fear. An idea of death, but more than simply the end of a life. An end of all life. It was nauseating in its power. Some biological part of both minds in the joining reacted in terror. That animal reflex that spans from the smallest rodent to the apex of thinking life. The automatic impulse to preserve genetic code from darkness.

In the vision, the details were so… exact. The message relayed by the beacon may not have been complete, but that which did exist was so terrifyingly real. As if each Prothean dying could be touched, their clothing felt. Their wounds stitched closed if only you could reach them.

What was the Conduit? Who knew. What exactly were the Reapers? Couldn’t be sure. But the images whipping by the frontal lobes of the two joined beings were undeniably pointing in one direction. 

Genocide. Extinction. Oblivion. Nothing.

Information was coming in too quickly. The combined effects of the Cipher and Prothean visions were too much. Neither mind was an expert in the joining, and their desires were mismatched. One wanted to impart the information, but reluctantly did so. The other had a streak of desire to investigate that could not be denied. A curiosity with no limits.

There were more questions to be answered.

And at the edge of the second mind, a need for knowledge that went beyond Protheans begged to be satisfied. The curiosity grew more confident.

Just at that moment, the sum total of the two imparted experiences blew the doors off the stability of the joining.

The two souls, two minds enwrapped, were ripped off their balance by the torrent of exchange and knocked onto the metaphorical floor. They ‘staggered’, disoriented, like they were plunged into water, not knowing where the surface was. Time was not on their side, a panic rose, hearts pounded. Were they drowning? What was going on? Which way should they go?

Did something happen? Were they in danger?

One of the two saw an exit to the disorientation. A bright light in the distance. The other hesitated, tried to pull the one chasing the temptation back. But there was something… instinctual. It had to be seen. They could not deny it. A base, deep need to chase that light. Something in their body told them they had to do it.

Words tickled in the back of the curious mind. Be careful.

Half of the consciousness tried to pull back, but it was lost in the realignment, struggling to find the surface of the proverbial water. It's non-physical arms flailing, not finding purchase. 

The curiosity could not be denied. It would just be a quick peek. It was important. Everything in their body said that it had to be seen. The questions had bothered them for so long. How bad could it be? 

It had to know. The answers were right there.

It reached out, and touched the forbidden fruit.

Prothean visions, genocide, culture, history, and more all fell away. Grimy human skyscrapers with stained windows rose. Squeals of trains on rusty tracks could be heard, as gritty concrete came underfoot. A pile of untended garbage bags sat in the corner, flies buzzing around the feast. A crush of people filtering by appeared, hasty in their walking pace and temperaments.

The two minds were somewhere else now. They saw a shared experience through the eyes of a single person, in perfect clarity. A memory.

You look around, and spot your travel companion. The bag is heavy on your thin shoulder. You are small. Your clothes don’t fit right.

The blue eyed human boy with you, no more than nine, sets down his duffel bag on the curb as he too glances around the busy, disgusting terminal. He frowns, taking in the people walking by, not finding what he is looking for.

He does not speak. He gestures to you with a hand motion. You understand it intuitively.

“Where’s Mom?” The other boy signs to you.

You had a few hours to consider what to say, but never found the right words. When the shuttle you were stowed away on dropped out of FTL, you received the message. She hadn’t even been able to send it herself. It was from a friend of hers.

“She’s not coming.” You sign back quickly, unable to think of something to lessen the blow. 

The boy’s lip quivers and his face pulls in in disgust. 

“Maybe something happened,” you sign, knowing that it is a lie.

The boy doesn’t sign. He just shakes his head.

You hug him. You’re only twelve yourself, but he is yours. Your Dad is somewhere in the colonies. You are on Earth. 

Hopefully Dad is sober. Maybe it will be better this time. He cares, sort of, but has problems. You were tired of being hungry. Tired of clothes with holes. Of making your own food. So you left. That was a long time ago.

You hold your brother tighter. Nothing will happen to him. You will figure it out. That’s your job.

Always has been. 

The skyscrapers disappear. You’re in a sparse, rural setting on a planet with a different ecosystem. It’s evening. Smoke is rising from the low lying buildings, which obscures the sunset.

He’s dead.

You are sixteen. Your Dad’s face is slack. The rusty pistol is still in his hand, caked in mud. You don’t think he knew how to use it. 

Beside him is the body of the batarian your father shot. Point blank. The slaver got him back. It’s the one who marked you. Your neck still hurts. The smell of burning skin fills your nose. 

But there’s no time. You wrench the pistol from your Dad’s limp hand, and run. Towards the shuttle. They’re taking your brother. 

Behind a smoking home, you see two soldiers in cobalt coloured armour. You scream, pointing at the slavers in the distance. The soldiers say they are waiting for reinforcements. It’s not safe. They won’t move.

The batarians are loading your brother onto a shuttle on the far side of the field. He yells to you, but it's not words. You go to run, the soldiers grab you. They say it's for your own good. You’re large, for your age, but they are men. They have what you later would get, gene mods. They take your broken pistol.

Your biotics flare. For the first time, you can't hide them. A gauntlet hits you, you pass out.

The shuttle. The soldiers. Both gone when you awake.

You're alone. You hate the soldiers. They failed you. 

You stare up at an unremarkable, slate grey sky. 

You never see your brother again.

The grass and mud of the colony turns to hard metal floors and walls, and an empty table with chairs. Both of you have been to this place. Arcturus.

You’re tall now. Not thin either, like before. Someone has your gun. Not allowed in the meeting. 

You expected the officers. They want to know what happened. Why a platoon of soldiers are dead. 

But there’s a doctor with them. You didn’t expect that.

... She had a piece of pipe through her chest...

You keep that to yourself.

They ask many questions. Ones they already know the answers to. You reply, they seem to accept what you say. 

They ask about Captain Sorel. You don’t lie. You just try not to yell. The other officers have hard faces. They won’t say it, but it’s what you already know. They blame him, not you. 

They say you are alive because you're skilled. You know better. You're alive because you didn't rely on Sorel. Sadira did.

The doctor asks many questions then. You are glad you didn’t yell. You answer. You spy the top of the letterhead on the doctor’s sheet. It’s the ‘N’ school program. 

The doctor signs the bottom. You put your signature on the page. You find your calling. 

Dark days follow. 

The last memory is not a memory. It has no single place, yet it has all locations. Images flash by quickly. 

“I have to do this,” you told the old friend. Captain Anderson. That was his name. When all this began.

You are on Earth. But also Thessia. And Sur’Kesh. It changes, because it hasn’t happened yet. You dream of it every night. You awake every morning to cold sweats. 

The Reapers are here. You don’t know what they look like, you squint but can’t make them out. You didn’t learn in time. You didn’t find out what the Conduit was.

Saren won.

The bodies float down the Seine in Paris, but also through Cipritine on Palaven. Worlds burn. Crying parents smother their babes, lest they be subject to the end of days.

You have already died. A hero's death, you did what you could. The Council didn’t listen. You were left to figure it out alone.

But it wasn’t enough. Everyone relied on you, and you failed. 

Dead turian, salarian, krogan eyes, human eyes and more, all staring upward. An asari, face down. Your heart pounds. She’s holding a gun, dead on the ground. This one is different. It hurts, more than the rest.

You failed. A lesson learned. But no history books to write it in.

“Enough,” a voice insists. The light fades. 

A hard stop came next, with a rush of vertigo, sending the cresting wave of unified thought and emotion to crash upon the shore of reality, the contiguous being shattered into pieces.

The unravelling of the threads of the joining came in long, drawn out pauses as Liara untwined her being from Shepard. One soul became two, and then morphed into distinct minds, separate, and aware. Liara opened her eyes to see that she and Shepard were standing face to face, her holding one side of his jaw with her hand, the other hand of hers on his shoulder. The Spectre’s hands were gripping her, with a strength that caught her breath.

T'Soni's eyes focused into reality once more, as fuzzy shapes snapped into distinct objects. She was close enough that she felt the Commander's breath as he opened his vision. 

The two revealed orbs were cold.

Oh Goddess… A plunging realisation took Liara as she recalled what she had witnessed, and what it meant she had done. Oh no. Oh no nono Oh no… Her veins ran like icy mountain streams as the depth of her curiosity took root in her mind.

Liara took a sharp inhale, before her words came out in a torrent. “Shepard,” she said pleadingly, “I am so sorry, I am inexperienced, I thought that I had taken measures to-”

Shepard cut her off without speaking. His jaw set, and he took a deep breath, staring her down.

“Doctor, you don’t have a malicious bone in your body. I know it wasn’t intentional,” he said, removing her hand from his face. “But we are done here.”

Doctor. The title, rather than her name, stung her to the core.

Liara nodded in acknowledgement, her heart sinking. Her hands quickly retracted from him, and she held her own shoulders, bringing herself inward. 

She turned at the doorway, stopping and sparing a last glance from the threshold between the office and the CIC. Shepard had already retreated to his cabin, and the door was closed. 

She had the Prothean beacon visions. She had the Prothean Cipher. She had gained more in a single flash of consciousness than she had in over half a century of toil, hardship and graft. 

And yet, all Liara could think was what she lost. 

A dawning realisation picked up speed and smashed into her. She thought of what it meant for him to crack open the door on Feros, when he brought up the first life he had taken. He trusted me. He might have told her all of this in time anyway. Foolish, stupid, hasty curiosity.

Liara’s legs whisked her into the medbay, and she walked past Chakwas without acknowledgement before retreating to the office beyond. She found a corner, placed her back to a wall, and slid down to sit in a heap on the floor. The weight of her head fell into her hands. 

In the gaping hole of the failure of the joining, all pretence in Liara’s mind had evaporated. She had danced around the idea of what compelled her interest in the Commander, but it had been obvious for some time. Yes, there was the Prothean question. Yes, she wanted to understand the duality of his life. 

Those may have been the sparks but what she acknowledged now was… she just wanted to be with him. She wanted him. She wanted Commander Andrew Shepard.

It was just that simple. It had been for so long. It was obvious once it was out of reach.

And he may have felt the same way, before all this. She thought, remembering asari on the ground. Was that me…?

Goddess, please. Do not let this be the end.

She had been desperate to know the cause of the contradiction in behaviour. How someone could be so genuinely concerned for those around them, yet so willing and ready to commit acts of horrendous violence without a second thought. But there were no grand conspiracies, no persons behind the curtain that explained Shepard’s N7 history. No hidden depravity or maliciousness in his soul. No Alliance brainwashing, behaviour conditioning or control chip. No callous disregard for the living. No dark heart of evil that he was hiding.

She had simply been naive to the cruelty of the true galaxy. Talitha wasn’t unique. There were thousands, maybe millions like her and Shepard. Liara’s rich, cultured upbringing on the safest planet in the galaxy was the outlier, not these people that have faced the horrors from the darkest corners of reality.

The Commander was just the sum total of a thousand failures of the reality around him. A lifetime of self-reliance because trusting another meant only pain. He was simply a man in a galaxy that taught him failure could take everything from a person, and he was terrified of it. He had to take on the tasks of the world around him because he couldn’t trust anyone else to get it done. But he still cared, and couldn’t stand to see those he loved get hurt. 

So like everything else he trusted nobody else to take on the greatest of tasks, to fight against the Reapers and oblivion. And he was willing to damn his soul to get it done.

Noone had ever given him a hand to pull him up from the floor.

And in her haste, Liara had failed Shepard like all the rest. Another example of why he was right to bring others into his orbit, but only to arms length, and never closer.

She closed her eyes, to shut out all she could.

I am so sorry Andrew. 

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Horsehead Nebula
In Transit
Normandy SR-1: Staging Area

“Chief, the wiring diagram should be in the maintenance package I sent you,” the comm on the workbench blared. 

“Yeah I’m looking at it,” Ashley answered sharply.

“And you’ve put in the new cable seating?”

“Yes,” she said with frustration. “But now I have a wire with a bare end in my hand.”

“So put it in the receptacle with the red tag?” Alenko’s voice said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

Gah. Stupid tech heads. They act like this is reading a book, when really it’s interpreting hieroglyphics.

Williams stuck her tongue out to the side and bit it in concentration. The pair of exposed copper wires had to be threaded into the seated jack of the backplate of her armour just so…

A spark of blue, a quiet pop and thin trails of smoke were the results of her precision. 

“God DAMMIT!” She bellowed to the staging area of the Normandy, drawing looks from Garrus, Wrex, and the other crew members working late into the ‘night’ aboard the vessel. She threw the backplate in frustration into the lockers nearby.

“What happened?” Came the voice of Alenko over the comm again.

“Sir, with respect, you let a monkey do surgery is what happened,” Ashley answered. 

A muted laugh crackled through. “Fine, I’ll be right down.”

It was well that the Lieutenant took more than a moment to appear at the elevator, because Williams required the extra few minutes to prevent herself from insubordination. He eventually approached her corner of the Mako’s bay, the dark ambient lighting failing to hide his slight grin. Her outburst had evidently drawn the attention of the other crew nearby, and soon after Garrus and Tali followed suit behind Alenko, and approached her station.

“Sir,” Ashley started. “I don’t know how you thought I should be the one to install this new heating unit.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Alenko said with a small laugh, picking up the back plating of Williams’s armour to appraise the damage. “I’ll give it a once over before we hit Noveria.”

“I am not familiar with human designs, but are those scorch marks supposed to be there?” Tali asked mockingly, gesturing where the electricity had arced.

Ashley narrowed her eyes, feigning anger at the quarian, but the facade quickly broke down. 

“Yeah uh, I don’t think you’re turning this city of mud to one of marble before we hit that ice ball,” Ashley said, gesturing to the pile of tools and technical failure on her table. The backplate was not alone in its disastrous outcome.

“We won’t let you freeze,” Alenko said, raising an eyebrow as he viewed the armour. “I’ll get this fixed, can’t have you dropping into the ice.”

“You’re too heavy to carry,” Tali added.

Ashley nodded in satisfaction, and gave a small flex of her arm to emphasise the point, as well as the definition in her bicep. “Damn right I am.”

Garrus fake coughed, with the clear intention of directing the conversation. He shifted his weight in his boots, and crossed his arms. “We are getting close to planetfall. Have we… have we figured out anything about indoctrination?” 

The group didn’t answer immediately, but instead regarded each other with difficult glances. The question wasn’t really what the turian had asked. The query was a little more personal to the Normandy’s crew than the idea of the indoctrination syndrome in the abstract. 

“Has anyone spoken to her about it?” Tali ventured cautiously. “I mean she knows, but…”

Alenko grimaced. “I meant to swing by her office yesterday but got tied up. Totally forgot about it. Shepard has been face and eyes into the Noveria mission planning and the fallout from Nepheron, so I doubt he’s been by either.”

Ashley absentmindedly twirled the now cool soldering iron in her fingers, the device acting as an outlet for her nervous energy. She let out a sigh.

“What a shit situation,” the marine summed up.

The group nodded grimly in agreement. It really was that simple. Everything they had dug up pointed to Shiala’s information being true. Benezia was on Noveria.

The eldest Williams child stewed on the issue. No matter what she had come up against in her life, whatever headwind she faced, she always had had her sisters and parents to lean on. And in turn, whenever they faced hardships she was there to help, whether in person, on a comm, or in spirit. Their little pack to face down problems, and to celebrate triumphs. They might bicker, fight and disagree, but they were bound in ways that transcended the distances between them. Even when she was physically by herself, it had always felt like they were present with her in some way.

So Ashley had a two fold problem in wrapping her mind around the issue of Benezia and Liara. The first, was that the idea that the scientist may have to gun down her own mother, who in turn would be trying to kill her daughter was… almost inconceivable. But what was even more difficult was the idea of being so alone. Williams didn’t think that Liara had anyone to reach out to about this. It was a sad realisation that this crew might be the closest thing she had to a family. Williams and Liara were friends to be sure, but Ashley would never approach the asari if she had her own problem of this magnitude. Ashley had the Williams pack back home, and after that, some very close friends she had developed over the years that were close to being one of the clan. The galaxy never felt empty, not when you had such a network of close ties that you could ring up at any time.

This new idea that Ashley might be one of the closest people to Liara was even more difficult to process, because this very crew was the one preparing to take down the only familial relationship, that Ashley knew of at least, that Liara had in her whole life. 

Poor kid. Ashley thought to herself, ignoring the obvious age difference.

“She doesn’t have to go, right?” Garrus asked hopefully.

Tali turned her head towards him. “Would you ever let something like that happen without you? What if there is a chance Benezia can be talked down? You’d have to know.”

“Man,” Alenko said simply, shaking his head, before letting out a sharp exhale.

The quiet hung for a time after that.

Eventually, Ashley frowned, and looked at the others. “We don’t have long before Noveria,” she said, pushing herself up. “Someone has to go up and it doesn’t look like it's gonna be any of you.”

“I thought you had to get your enviro-mods installed?” Tali said with surprise. 

“I do, so you’re all going to do it for me,” Ashley said as she walked backwards to the elevator, pointing finger guns at the other three. “You’re going to do the technical stuff that I slept through in basic…”

“And I’m going to go be a big sister.”

Dr. Chakwas wasn’t in her usual domain when Ashley made it to the doorway of the office adjacent to the med-bay. The sensor on the side showed a red glow to indicate a lock on the door, not uncommon practice for when work was being completed, or if someone simply didn’t want the door to slide open for every person who passed by the automatic sensor. The marine listened for the sounds of presence inside, and tapped her knuckles softly on the doorway in a polite knock.

No response came. 

“Liara?” Ashley asked in surprise. 

Again, the return was only silence. Williams knocked harder, but the door remained shut, and nothing could be heard in the room beyond.

Williams made her way out past the mess and up to the cryo-sleep pods, checking the occupants of each. The asari was not any of them.

The Chief stopped a passing marine who was returning a tray of food to the disposal unit. “Hey, have you seen T’Soni?”

“Yeah she went in a few hours ago,” the private said, nodding towards the med-bay, his hands full. “I’ve been out here doing up requisition forms since, she hasn’t come out.”

“Thanks,” Ashley said as she nodded at the private, but frowned, and stomped off to the door with concern. 

Is she OK?

Upon reaching the threshold, Williams typed in an authorization code into her omni-tool to force open the lock. The med-bay office was one of the lowest security areas, and did not require officer status to activate the safety protocols. The doors parted to reveal a much more tranquil scene than the marine expected. Liara was sleeping peacefully at the desk, a computer monitor glowing brightly, casting deep shadows on her head fringes, as her back rose and fell slowly with each breath. Her limp form was slumped over, and a digi-pen was still in her hand, indicating what she had been doing immediately before exhaustion took her.

The frown of concern on Ashley’s features was replaced quickly, as she took in the asari sleeping before her. The scientist looked like an undergrad having fallen unconscious studying for a test, with papers, datapads and the brightly lit terminal all strewn about. 

Ashley moved closer, letting the door slide closed behind her, and she activated the lock once more to ensure that the no doubt private conversation would remain just that. She reached out to Liara’s shoulder to rouse her, but held off, and looked at what was before her in the asari’s workspace. The books, papers and more were all related to human histories, culture and guides to understanding the species. The datapads had reams of dates, timelines and more. 

But the terminal screen was the most interesting. Ashley felt a little guilty at the invasion of privacy, but given the circumstances, she excused herself in just checking in on what had the asari’s attention in these most serious of times. 

The arrayed screens showed numerous folders with catalogued articles, extranet searches, and more. Each topic had been re-reviewed several times at least since she had arrived, with numerous sub searches delving back into the topics in recent days. The folder structure was expanded to show branching flowcharts, and subsequently, thought processes of what evidently ran through Liara's mind over the last few months.

- Human Development Timeline - Numerous textbooks and primers
> Subsearch - Wright brothers, spaceflight, mass effect discovery
> Subsearch - Human perspective of discovery of other intelligent life

- Human Colonies- Several downloaded news casts, multiple official Alliance press releases, and census/high level data of population and industry 
> Subsearch - Human colonies - security
> Subsearch - Life on human colonies
> Subsearch - Mindoir 
> Subsearch - Eden Prime, Eden Prime Geth, Eden Prime Benezia T’Soni

- Akuze - A conspiracy blog, and a single official result lacking in detail of event. 
> Subsearch - Akuze hidden story, Akuze Cerberus, Akuze coverup
> Subsearch - Corporal Toombs
> Subsearch - Thresher Maw injuries (immediately closed)
> Subsearch - Cute animal videos

- Audiobook (paused) - Understanding Human Behaviours for Asari - Volume 6

- Cerberus - Numerous empty searches, conspiracy blogs. No official pages from the Alliance or other reputable news organization
> Subsearch - Cerberus manifesto

- N7 program - 15 searches. Numerous recruitment, official press releases. Little hard information.
> Subsearch - Criticisms of program
> Subsearch - Known operations
> Subsearch - What does N7 really mean
> Subsearch - Human black ops programs history
> Subsearch - SAS, JTF2, Delta, KSK

- Commander Andrew Shepard - 24 searches. Numerous official releases. A couple of conspiracy websites. Mindoir, Akuze not mentioned in profile.
> Subsearch - Shepard career
> Subsearch - Shepard girlfriend
> Subsearch - Shepard wife
> Subsearch - Shepard boyfriend?
> Subsearch - Shepard Normandy
> Subsearch - Shepard Spectre Induction Video
> Subsearch - Shepard hometown

Ashley sighed quietly, and almost on instinct, was about to put her hand on the back of Liara’s shoulder blades in sympathy, but retracted at the last second. She wasn’t sure how much the others had clued in, but to Williams, the idea that the asari was falling hard for the Commander was not news to her. There were all the classic signs. Everytime Shepard entered a room, Liara’s body turned towards him. She looked at him after she spoke to a group, she reacted just a little too strongly whenever someone took shots at him. 

But even knowing all that, she hadn’t realised how deep the scientist was in over her head.

She has it bad for Skipper. I hope it’s not a one way street.

Ashley pulled an office chair up next to Liara, and gently rocked her shoulder, trying to rouse her to consciousness. 

“Hey, Hey… Liara,” Ashley said calmly as she shook the shoulder of the sleeping T’Soni.

Suddenly, the asari sucked in a deep gasp of air, and snapped into a rigid seated posture, startling the marine. T’Soni swung around with wide eyes and stared down Williams.

“Woah! Liara it’s ju-” Ashley said as she grasped the arms of the asari to keep her from lashing out.

In perfect English, Liara asked a question in a manner as wild as her eyes darting about the room. “Where did the kid go?!” The scientist asked desperately. “Someone get him a trauma kit!”

“What, what ki-”

“Teenager with a rifle! Shaved head, right over there-” the asari said, panting, pointing to an empty corner.

Ashley, still holding Liara’s arms, turned and looked at the indicated area of the room. There was nothing.

“He… he was… I shot him…” Liara said, her speech going from English back to the asari dialect, sending Williams’s translator into intermittent activation.

Ashley looked at the scientist with concern. Liara in turn stared down at her hands which she flexed repeatedly, seemingly surprised that they were blue.

The breaths of T’Soni slowed, and Ashley cocked her head sideways, scanning around, before settling on the asari before her. Liara calmed, and her pupils formed an appropriate size to the situation, as her body settled. Williams relinquished her tight grip on the scientist’s shoulders, and spoke in soft, slow terms, as Liara cast her gaze to the floor.

“You… you don’t speak English do you?” Ashley asked, already knowing the answer.

Liara gulped hard, and shook her head. She closed her eyes in a long, hard blink.

“You’re OK, it’s safe. Nothing happened,” Williams said quietly, digesting the implication.

The asari nodded. She brought up her attention to the marine with her. “I will be fine, I am sorry for startling you.”

Ashley shook her head as she digested the situation. “I am guessing you two finally had a joining to pass on the beacon’s message?”

Liara nodded grimly.

“I didn’t know the melding would do that.”

“It is not supposed to,” Liara answered darkly. “I made a rather grave mistake.”

Oh, Freckles, oh no… Ashley’s heart ached for the asari. It had been obvious since she came aboard that Liara adored the Commander, even if T’Soni hadn’t fully acknowledged it. She never would have meant anything by such a mistake, even Williams knew that. But Shepard was a private man, and Ashley did not imagine that this had gone over well.

“I am sure it will be fine,” Ashley said, squeezing Liara’s knee in reassurance.

T’Soni couldn’t meet her gaze. “This is one of the better ones. I believe that the young human lived, at least in some capacity.”

Ah fuck, this is real bad. But Liara didn’t need to know that. Ashley had played the older sister many times before, helping Abby, Lynn and Sarah navigate the messes of their young lives. Williams was sure that the principles remained the same. The nervous reaction of someone with anxiety and guilt would probably make the situation worse, and the best course of action was to let time smooth emotions out as the details percolated into existence, rather than take hasty action before all the facts were known.

No amount of back and forth will get her out of this spiral. She has too much going on, and I don’t know her well enough to navigate these problems.

On the spot, Williams decided to lean into the reputation she had early on the Normandy, and hoped some humorous shock value would shake Liara from her tailspin, before she did something rash.

Ashley leaned forward, and spoke with a mockingly gruff version of her own voice. “Luckily asari are like salarians right? Only thirty to forty years kicking around to worry about a mistake anyway?” 

Liara squinted at her, not believing what she was hearing, before letting out a sharp bark of a laugh. Williams internally had a rush of relief, her gamble obviously paying off.

“You were never that obstinate,” Liara said, throwing her head back in disbelief. When her chuckles finally settled, she looked at Ashley. “If you met me at our equivalent of 25 years old in our development, and the asari had been thrust into a galaxy where everyone was trying to enslave or kill us, I might have said some rather silly things.”

“See?” Ashley said brightly. “Everything comes around, and it's never as bad as we think.”

Liara looked off into the distance and smiled at nothing in particular. “You humans… you…” 

“We what?!” Ashley asked with fake offence.

“I have just grown extremely fond of you all. Your spirit is to be admired,” Liara said, her attention turning back to the marine in front of her. 

Ashley gave a mischievous smile, and kicked T’Soni’s shin playfully, before nodding towards the monitor with several open tabs. “Some more than others?”

To the asari’s credit, she did not try to deny it. 

“Perhaps. Though I hope you will not spread such information around,” Liara said, with a heavy tone of embarrassment.

“Your secret is safe,” Ashley said, laughing to herself. “Liara and Shepard. Day one of the Normandy, I’d have lost that bet. But now? I could totally see it.”

“Even after all this?” Liara said with a guilt edged voice. 

Ashley flicked her hand dismissively in the direction of her asari compatriot. “You’re on the ship aren’t you?”  

Liara frowned. “Yes?”

Williams looked at Liara with exasperation. “Do you think, Commander Shepard, would suffer someone he hated on his own ship?” 

“I suppose he would not, though I am sure I am required for the mission,” Liara said, but now with a thin line of hope.

Ashley snapped an answer back quickly. “Yeah and you were gonna do that offsite in the first place!”

Liara considered the advice, before nodding in concession to the human’s argument, finding no fault in the logic. “You… you are quite good at this you know.”

“I ain’t no consort,” Ashley answered with a smirk.

“No,” Liara said sincerely. “You are more. A friend, if I am not mistaken.”

“You’re not mistaken,” the marine said before her smirk changed into a genuine expression of empathy. “I actually came up to talk to you about Noveria, not boys. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t up here dreaming up nightmare scenarios, alone in your dark room.”

“The fact that you came by, tells me more than any words you could form on the topic,” Liara answered with warmth. “Though I hope Mother can be returned safely, I have made my peace with whatever the outcome is with Benezia. I am sure I will be heartbroken in the worst scenarios, but I believe I am ready to face that risk all the same.”

There it is. The hidden wisdom behind the unintentional mask of naivety. 

Ashley wet the corner of her lip as she struggled to follow up. “I don’t know… well very much at all. And certainly not anything about situations like this. I just want you to know I will do what I can. For you. For your mom.”

Liara smiled at her. “You know, deep down, I knew that. But it is comforting to hear it all the same. Thank you Chief Ashley Williams.”

“You’re welcome, Dr. Liara T’Soni,” Ashley said with genuine empathy, mirroring the awkward naming expression. 

The Normandy will get you through this storm Liara, even if the worst should come to pass. See you on the other side, good or bad.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Athena Nebula - Parnitha System
Thessia - Armali Polis
T'Soni Estate

The Normandy didn't have a reason to be on Thessia. There were several closer stations for refit and resupply. There had been multiple relay jumps, during which time they had passed numerous Alliance outposts or colonies that would have been closer, and more appropriately equipped to handle the prototype vessel. The ship absolutely did require an overhaul, as the Normandy’s engineers were wont to remind all that were within earshot. The heat sink slurry was in desperate need of a discharge and refill. There were many electrical issues that couldn't be accessed while in flight or or easily fixed while in zero-G. The dextro-rations needed a top up. If you gave engineer Adams an hour, he'd find a way to fill it with a queue of suggested hardware and software upgrades and changes that should be tweaked in the ship that was not only the first of her class, but of a new line of warfighting frigates.

These were all things that were decidedly more difficult on a far-off, non-Alliance planet of several billion non-humans. And yet, Shepard had tolerated no dissent when he ordered Joker to make for Armali from Noveria. He hadn't given a reason. Nobody dared ask. 

The return of Benezia's body was an objective that went unspoken. A short detour would not imperil the mission, as the Normandy was still awaiting an update from the Citadel Integrated Intelligence Services regarding next steps. It was an inconvenience, but nobody spoke about it.

So here sat Liara, on the hillside of the T’Soni estate, facing the reflection of the moon on Lake Kournas.

The grass was too long. 

It was a simple thing. But it occurred to Liara that the menial tasks and routine upkeep of the T’Soni estate had never previously entered the maiden’s mind. As was the case in all trifling things, Benezia had delegated or automated the maintenance of their home to such a degree that her focus could always be fixed on the more important aspects of her life, the more important questions. Things like the fates of nations, trending political winds, esoteric arguments of the place of the asari in the order of the galaxy. 

Things like an only daughter. 

She is gone. 

Liara sat amongst the too-long plants, looking out over Lake Kournas as she ran her hand through the stalks of the unkempt garden. It was a sign that the galaxy would continue to glide through its long waltz, undeterred but changed in the most minute ways. That her Mother’s death marked a slight deviation, but life would advance all the same. 

Liara didn't know what she had expected this day would be like. Her mind was an organ wrapped in cotton, sound came in like it was cast through water or over a great distance. People spoke, but she hardly listened. Events occurred all around her, but she simply translated from moment to moment, detached and removed from reality. A third person spectator watching from afar, but not actually present. This wasn't her real timeline. She would return to real life someday, this was just a temporary departure from her normal existence. She would get back to the way things were supposed to be. 

That was, of course, not true. Logically she knew her life was different now. But aside from the grass, everything else around her seemed nauseatingly unchanged. 

A gathering rustle of noise was followed by an unintended bump of shoulders as the Gunnery Chief plunked herself down onto the hillside with Liara, sat right beside her. 

“I'm so sorry Freckles,” Ashley said, somehow mingling the teasing nickname with a genuine, deep empathy, the woman's green eyes lacking the confidence and swagger they normally held. 

“Thank you, Chief Williams,” Liara said with a weak, forced smile. 

“I…,” the broad shouldered woman began, her eyes shimmering in the corners. Words failed the marine, and she simply settled for a seated bear hug, hauling the asari into a clumsy embrace. 

“I don't know what I'm supposed to do,” Williams whispered to Liara.

“Neither do I,” the asari answered quietly. 

The pair held each other and the silence for a long moment.

“I can only imagine,” Ashley stammered as she released the embrace. “I just keep thinking if it was my mom… like that…” 

Liara closed her eyes, trying not to picture the gruesome reality of the showdown on Noveria.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way, I just… shit,” Williams followed up quickly, chastising herself. The marine was only being as clumsy as Liara had been on several occasions. She knew that Ashley meant nothing offensive by the faux pas. T’Soni certainly sympathised with the cross-cultural struggle. 

“It is OK,” Liara said calmly. “I know what you are trying to say. As I told you before, I made my peace with this possibility, though I was aware that it would still… elicit a reaction. None of which is your fault.”

The tension in Ashley’s frame eased. “Thanks… I…,” she said, not finding the next words.

A pause hung.

“What… what do asari normally …” Ashley asked slowly. “Are we supposed to say something or…?”

Liara pulled up her feet and crossed her legs. 

“Nothing so official as what your human customs dictate.”

Ashley’s eyes remained fixed on Liara’s pupils, still waiting for guidance. 

“When someone passes, we do not have a singular event or gathering to pay respect to the life that was lived,” Liara said as her fingers anxiously twirled the long blades of dry grass. 

“Each person can attend to pay their respects in the manner that was appropriate with their relation to the deceased. Some may never attend the site of the body, instead performing acts of charity in their own lives in a manner that reflected the virtues of the dead. Some visit the bygone person’s remains, to express that which was not stated in life.”

“I suspect given recent… revelations about Mother, I may not have many visitors to accommodate,” Liara said quietly, forcing a grimly lined expression of dark humour as she stared at the ground between her legs.

Ashley looked out over the lake before she spoke. 

“Can I say something for her?” The marine asked with respect. “Personally, like you said. I don't know her, but… I know you.”

Liara nodded, and Ashley bowed her head, intertwining the fingers of her two hands, placing them in her lap. Williams’s eyes closed, and her lips formed silent words in an internal monologue that never reached the asari. 

After a long moment, the marine’s eyes re-opened, and she let out a steady breath before rising to her feet. 

“Anything you need. Anytime,” Ashley said with a warm touch before she left towards the T’Soni residence up the hillside to meet with the rest of the crew. 

Liara nodded slowly in acknowledgement, and turned her gaze out to the lake. 

Since leaving Peak 15, she had tried to project the image of the strong team member, with the expected asari poise, and a stubborn refusal to break down in front of the Normandy's crew. It had been a long transit from Noveria but Liara had held, and relinquished little in the many conciliatory conversations since their departure. But here, at her childhood home in the black of night, her willpower was flexed to breaking. 

Thankfully, the predictable sounds of the soft waves on the shore, and the cool breeze coming up the hill soothed such nerves. And the sight of Armali before her was a beautiful one. Against Saren and the Reapers, she was reminded that this was a home worth fighting for.

Tonight, it looked like the stars themselves were reflected off the lake, but she knew better. There were no sources of artificial light on Lake Kournas, and starlight was not that which was shining. Instead, the crests of the inky black waves were highlighted by the bioluminescent freshwater plankton, activated by the tumbling motion of the surf. The microscopic organisms charged during the daylight, and expended their capacity in flares of light blue corona, not dissimilar to the visuals of a mass effect field.

Their infinitesimal moment to shine, to blaze against the rolling darkness. 

Facing out into the night by the shoreline, silhouetted by that erratically sparkling marine life and pale moon glow, was Commander Andrew Shepard. 

His arms were crossed, and as Liara could tell, so were his thoughts. He had already said the right words on the transit to Thessia. The ‘I'm sorry’s, the ‘do you need anything’s. But there had been little else. Sterile exchanges had replaced the spark between them since the joining. They weren't unfriendly, just… distant. Easy conversation had been replaced by weak smiles and professional tones.

She could see his current consternation was a more personal malaise than the fate of the rachni. Liara knew he had believed Benezia could be reasoned with, or taken alive. He had underestimated Shiala’s warnings about indoctrination, and probably blamed himself for it. He had not said these concerns out loud, but there was little Liara could not now read in his stance after being privy to the winding corridors of his mind. 

He signed himself up to the responsibility of protecting her life, without me asking him to. He tried to carry that task, despite never meeting Mother before he did so.

Even after I violated his mind.

Liara pressed her face into her open hands, and ran her fingers down her cheeks. She was still tight-roping her feelings for the late, estranged matriarch, and trying not to slip and fall into the abyss of self-destructive speculation. Thoughts of wasted years and pointless silences between her and Benezia were abound. Guilt sprung up from unexpected places with spontaneous geysers of what if, and you should have. 

That bottomless well of questions without answers did not help her ongoing fear that she had ruined the unique relationship she had cultivated with the Commander. Her curiosity had trespassed on that vulnerable corner of his memory. A chill had fully descended between the two, and whatever… something it was that had slipped through her fingers on Feros seemed like a distant memory. 

Goddess, please. She just wanted to go back to that walk through the ruins. Those simple few hours that could have happily lasted for a lifetime.

She had spent decades of her life in solitude. Years spent in seclusion had been perfectly enjoyable, happy even. Yet now, Dr. Liara T’Soni felt so achingly alone. It hurt. She had no elaborate prose or detailed explanation for it, other than it just hurt. 

In one hundred and six years I have had two people I would speak to about this, and now, in a single week, they are both lost to me.

Like one of the flickering lights on the lake, a flash of hope crossed the blackness of her mind. But. He came to Thessia for a reason. Maybe…

As she twirled the nearby blades of grass between her fingers, a quiet resolve solidified. If something ever happened to Shepard… she couldn’t bear this feeling again. To have regrets, like she did with her mother. Solitude had been an easy refuge.

So many wasted years, in fear of bridging the space between me and Benezia. It had been so much easier to hide and wait. To be safe, alone with my thoughts, rather than face them with another. To think that I was going to get another day, and one after that.

Liara let out a breath. She had to take another risk, like she did on the Citadel. Time was a rapidly evaporating luxury as she had learned on Noveria. And she had to know if she was the asari in his vision, and if she was, if he still felt the same way as he did then.

I will either cross this gap between us, or be rejected, but I will know.

As she approached the beach Liara took off her shoes, placing them in the grass as she walked through cool sand, wriggling her toes. She padded her way up next to the Spectre, the waves lapping just in front of the pair. 

She stood beside Shepard, the two facing out to the water. She had planned a few things to say, but in the end, a simple fact unintentionally escaped her lips. 

“She’s gone.”

In wordless response to the sudden declaration, Shepard’s arm came across Liara's lower back, his hand settling on her left hip. His fingers and palm firmly held the joint at the beltline, and Liara was pulled into the side of the Spectre.

Her breath caught. A rush of relief bloomed inside her. The contact melted away the anxiety and trepidation that she could be rejected at the onset, and the pent up energies of the last few days came out in a torrent.

Her head instinctually turned in towards his chest, and she buried her forehead and cheek into his pectoral as her arms slipped around his waist. He had pulled her in with one arm, but she threw herself into the embrace, letting her body be swallowed in the simple physical reassurance. The tactile message he sent with no words but the loudest of meaning:

I am here. With you, for you.

A sob almost came out, but it hitched in her throat. She took a deep inhale through her nose, letting his scent fill her mind. 

“Tell me a story,” came the deep voice.

Liara looked up with an expression that requested elaboration. 

“A happy one,” Shepard said in a near whisper. 

What do I say? What stands out? 

A runaway wave rushed up past the breaking point of the previous ones, soaking Liara’s shins, grains of sand grazing her as the water receded as it had come in. 

Then, a thought formed, as she was inspired by a memory of days nigh on a century past.

“There was one Mother loved to tell,” Liara began. “I could not have been more than… eight or nine. Which I believe to be about three in your human years.”

The Spectre’s mouth curled at the corner, encouraging her to continue. 

“There is a species of aquatic animals, small ones, called 'nirees',” Liara said as she momentarily held out her hands to demonstrate the diminutive length of the creatures. “They reside in many of the lakes of this region, feeding on the plankton. They are not dissimilar to your fish as I understand.”

“When they mate they throw themselves on the shoreline in a process called ‘beaching’,” she said, gesturing to the sandy spot in front of the pair. “My very young self was ignorant of this, and simply thought they had forgotten how to swim, and needed help.”

Liara felt the lines on her face break into a wide, unabashed smile. “As Mother told it, I ran up and down the shore throwing the fish back into the water screaming ‘nur-ees! No! Nur-ees! Go back!’ I thought they needed to be saved. I was grabbing them by the handfuls and throwing them into the lake.”

A warm chuckle snuck out from Shepard. Liara continued. 

“The local anglers would traditionally scoop up their catch whenever the mating season starts and the fish roll in. Apparently there were a few of these asari nearby, as there were every year. Mother wouldn't let them near the beach, so I could continue my little rescue. Being… very young, I was quite oblivious.”

Liara’s eyes flashed up at Shepard. “I threw them all into the water, and Mother led me away before they floated back to shore. She let the little fib last, and told me that I saved all the 'nur-ees'.” Liara flexed the mispronounced word, hoping that Shepard’s translator would understand the childish speech.

“Throughout the rest of my youth, whenever I told her about a hero in a book I read, or fawned over the justicars, she would ask me ‘but how many nur-ees have they saved?’ Even when I was older, she loved telling that story to everyone, particularly if she wanted to embarrass me in a polite way,” Liara said, her voice still carrying the laughter from before. “I think half of Thessia knew about my ‘rescue’.”

Liara let her vision unfocus as she cast her mind back, deep in thought of a memory that happened more than three human generations past.

“I know the fact is not a shock to you, but we live for quite a long time. I think… I think that Mother loved that story because I was always that little girl. Her little girl. After a century of well… life together, she liked to go back to when everything was as simple as her daughter saving ‘fish’ on a warm summer morning.”

The voices and chuckling petered out at the end of the story, but not all at once. As the pair fell into silence again, memories of recent events came back, with the surety of the waves on the shoreline, and all the sorrow that they carried.

Liara felt lines of moisture run down her cheeks. The first since Mother's death.

It was Shepard who spoke first, turning his head to look at the asari by his side.

“See Liara…,” he began, in a quiet voice. 

The Spectre took a thumb and gently wiped a tear from the scientist’s face, as Liara looked up at hazel eyes. 

“She's still here,” he said, with an unflinching gaze.

Liara would never remember exactly how it happened, but it did. 

Without pause or consideration of what she was doing, Liara slipped her arms out from around Shepard’s waist, and grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt. She stood on her toes, pulled him towards her, and herself up towards him. 

And she kissed Commander Shepard. 

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Exodus Cluster - Asgard System
Asteroid x57 - Approaching Terra Nova
Groundside - Mako IFV Deployment
Initial Touchdown

Garrus heard the double click of his own tongue echo within his helmet. A common tic of his that he did whenever he was deep in thought.

He sank his elbows into his quads, just above the knees, as he squat down to better inspect the body before him. The female human engineer, early forties he guessed, was still wearing a light atmospheric suit. She was sprawled on the floor, dead of the concussive force that had run through the small, enclosed pre-fab research office on the asteroid's surface. C. Hymes. Garrus said quietly to himself as he read on the tag on the collarbone of the civilian issued outfit. Not the source of the distress call then. They would have to keep looking.

“Come on, we need to find Kate,” Shepard said to the general channel on the fireteam’s radio as he made his way back to the Mako. The rest followed behind the Commander.

Garrus trailed the rest of the group, scanning his surroundings. His instincts as a C-Sec officer had softened throughout much of the Normandy’s campaign. Most of their objectives had been clear, and their opponents predictable in their professionalism. There had been little use for law enforcement investigational skills when military intelligence gathering methods were by far the more appropriate resource in all their recent expeditions.

Often, that was because dealing with rational persons was easy. Military members, Geth, even Saren fell into predictable patterns of best practice, policy, training, and experience. A turian soldier, despite what they may say, had an awful lot in common with a frontline Alliance grunt. Intuiting the intentions and behaviours of the other was usually a simple task. Decisions predicated actions, which lead to more decisions, with a subsequent reaction followed by another decision. Each turn of behaviour, provided enough evidence, could be mathed out given enough time and resources. All that you required was advanced technology or well placed sources to gather the raw data, and people smart enough to work through the problem.

It was the untrained, erratic members of the public that made for both the most interesting cases, and the most frustrating roadblocks. Totally illogical, stressed, panicked reactions were difficult to rationalise and determine from available clues. Recreating someone’s steps was difficult when they themselves didn’t know where they were going. You weren’t guaranteed an answer by high fidelity recon imaging, or powerful simulation software. It was up to the investigator to be smart, but in a strange way. To think on the angles, rather than down the line.

As Garrus looked at the small satellite office pre-fab, with scorch marks of explosives on the door, he couldn’t help but feel the pull of… something like that. That the manner in which this unremarkable engineer died marked such a deviation from the smooth operation of their usual opposition. The scene before him screamed either improvised, poorly executed, or panicked.

Not Geth. And no rookie would normally be given breaching duties on a lightweight, low-drag op like this. So they can’t all be military. 

Questions continued to mount.

The door had been blasted twice, and not because it had to be. There had been a general use explosive charge set in the centre, with the intention of inducing a buckling failure in the middle of the steel door. But this was a double pane reinforced framed entranceway, any professional would have known that. Buckling the exterior pane would not give you access to the room inside. 

Amateurs. Garrus thought to himself.

The turian cocked his head as he looked at the ruined door. The attackers got in on the second try. A small, shaped charge had been placed directly on the thin locking mechanism just below the handle. An expert then, someone had taken over for whoever screwed up the first go at the door. The lock was not in the traditional place, the second person had known what to look for. 

A mixed group, whoever they are. 

Garrus used the edge of his boot knife to cautiously lift a loose flap of the synthetic exterior suit worn by the dead woman. The hole in the suit was just under her raised arm, below the armpit. Upon further inspection, he saw that the cavity in the ribcage was a series of gunshots, in a tight grouping, smaller than his fist. A burst from an assault rifle, and not caused by shrapnel as he had assumed. 

Vakarian cast his eyes onto the woman’s head and noted the obvious trauma. The skull was caved in. Hymes had been killed before the intruders got into the room, and whoever shot her knew that, but poured fire into her all the same. 

Hate. Garrus surmised. Whoever shot this woman knew she was dead. They just hated her.

Good to remember. 

“Vakarian, come on,” his radio barked at him. 

Garrus dragged his toes in the dirt as he took a last look at the body and the scene before him. He quickly took the omni-tool from the dead human and left the office reluctantly. There were so many angles to explore. So many clues left undocumented. But time was not on his side. 

As the turian made his way back to the Mako in a half-run, he paused, his eye catching on a colour out of sorts with the dark brown asteroid surface before him. A piece of paper packaging with a waterproof synthetic backside was torn off, and sticking out from under the edge of a footprint. He picked it up, dusting off the wrapping. The paper side was unremarkable paper composite, but the other was a wrinkled commercial branding in elaborate synthetic material. Iranis Industries Ltd. 

Also worth remembering. 

Garrus eventually settled into his crash-seat beside Tali. As the Mako’s engine roared to life, he pulled up the deceased engineer’s omni-tool and began flicking through the various screens before him. The quarian looked at his work with interest. 

“It’s in decoy mode,” Tali said confidently. 

“Mhmm,” Garrus agreed. Decoy mode was a clever bit of tech that they were all required to install on their omni-tools. Alliance protocols for frontline members stated that they were to have interfaces that, upon detecting an intrusion attempt, would render a convincing but false set of internal information. What the Alliance omni-tool would actually be doing was running counter-intelligence on the hacker’s hardware and software, harvesting as much data from the intruder as it fed the garbage intel, keeping them interested and locked into the device. Hymes must have been on secondment from the Alliance to liaison with the rest of the Terra Nova team. 

The trick wouldn’t work on a true pro of course, because they would be aware of the device's capabilities. If a hacker couldn’t bypass the decoy mode themselves they would just abandon the omni-tool lest they lose their own data. But in that way, the Alliance got what it wanted anyway. 

“Hacker bought it too,” Garrus said as he continued to flick through the many screens that had been left open. Things that the engineer wouldn’t have interest in. “He went deep.”

So, Garrus surmised, this had to be the amateur who tried to hack the tool.

“Anything useful?” Tali asked. 

“Maybe,” Garrus replied. The turian keyed in his credentials, and the device responded. It immediately started showing a ream of data that it had parsed from the poorly trained black hat that had attempted to brute force their way into the engineer’s device. 

The display chimed and concluded its analysis of what intrusion method had been used. 12mice_Running.tfL, Garrus read to himself. The supposed hacker had used a basic, darknet script that had been thoroughly found out and solved by various lettered agencies years ago. A cheap, generic plug and play piece of software that was once upon a time a moderately useful tool for gaining entry into systems on the lower tier of the security architecture. Something like… a small governmental agency without a budget or security clearance. A company that cheaped out on IT. A private server at a businessperson's home. 

Why would you ever use that script on a modern, deeply encrypted, military grade piece of kit? Garrus flicked to a private channel.

“Vakarian to Moreau.”

“Hey gorgeous, what do you need?”

“Got what your people call a ‘script-kiddie’ here. Want to see where they bought it, and hopefully, who did the buying” Garrus said. “Can you link me with whoever is on long-comms today? I’ll send them the details. Need a dark-net info dump scrape, won’t be able to do it with the shoddy signal down here.”

“Sure, it’s Dubyansky on that station today, I’ll send it over to him. You using Spectre clearance?”

Garrus almost quickly answered 'No', but hesitated. General Alliance intelligence operations software would be able to scrape for account information on grey or black market info dumps. Vakarian wouldn’t be catching the leader of this attack on x57 that way, but the amateur? There was a good chance he bought the script with something that might resemble a lead. 

If Garrus used Spectre intrusion programs though… I’d need to ask Shepard for clearance, and he might say no. I can’t have him telling me to ignore this just yet. Just play this close to the chest for now.

“Not for this, I’ll let you know,” Garrus answered to the pilot. 

“Copy. Dubyansky will page if we get a hit,” Joker said, cutting the comm.

Garrus stowed the omni-tool and checked his rifle. The fusion torch was near. 

“Eyes up, turrets,” Said Alenko as the Mako jerked in an evasive pattern. 

Act fast Normandy, I will need that information, and soon.

Year 2183
Exodus Cluster - Asgard System
Asteroid x57 - Approaching Terra Nova
Groundside - Mako IFV Deployment
Final Fusion Torch

Garrus rounded a corner in the structure housing the third fusion torch alongside Liara and Alenko. The path had already been cleared by Alpha team. Bravo, his group, was simply tasked with searching for an office to try to locate a program or pass that would allow entry into the main facility on the asteroid. They had run into little resistance in the third torch facility, but equally, had had little luck in locating a device that would allow them entry to the final building on the giant rock hurtling towards Terra Nova. 

The steel walls on either side of the passageway surrounding them reflected the sterile bright light in a mirror sheen. That is, most of the walls were shining, except for the areas where there was… newly introduced material covering the glossy metal. 

The turian did a double take as he stalked down the corridor. The hallway was wide, with few obstructions or items of interest ahead of him. But on his right there was a slick of viscera, and an agglomeration of what was once a set of kit for a frontline batarian slaver. Up off the ground, the wall was bowed out, and a canvass of red fluid was interspersed with bits of meat. 

Garrus heard Alenko behind him let out a small gasp of surprise when he saw the carnage. There were no bones left longer than a half dozen centimetres, and the hardsuit was caved in at the centre. The organs and muscle tissue were thrown into the wall with such biotic force that they were still clinging to the smooth metal, though bits were slowly beginning to fall to the floor. Teeth crunched underfoot.

Vakarian noted the armour. Export model from Batarian State Arms. Not standard issue Hegemony gear for enlisted soldiers, but rather a suit that was sold to mercs, slavers and the like. The logic of what had happened to this slaver-pirate was not difficult to deduce. 

Garrus saw Liara look at the ruined ‘body’ with an emotion he couldn’t quite nail down. Like a sadness, but not for who she was looking at, nor for herself. The turian flicked a piece of broken armouring over with his toe, to reveal a crudely painted bit of a shoulder pad. The insignia belonged to some slaver gang whose name the turian could not recall. He had crossed paths with their body-traffickers during his time at C-Sec. 

“He had it coming,” Garrus said to the unusually distressed asari.

“I am quite aware,” she answered distantly. “The Hor’Lal Enclave is not infamous because of widespread charitable acts.”

Hor’Lal Enclave, that was the name I could not recall. Though in truth, Garrus was surprised to see that Liara knew not only of the symbol, but of their actions specifically. 

The asari shook her head quickly, and repeatedly, as if she was trying to cast cobwebs out of her eyes. Garrus began to approach her, but she dismissed him with a small hand wave. 

Odd, he thought to himself. 

“We need that facility pass,” Alenko re-affirmed. 

Garrus nodded. “Alpha broke right, it seems to be the main area of the torch. Let's clear the few rooms on the left and regroup if nothing turns up.”

“I agree,” Kaidan stated. “Move out.”

The trio fell into the usual formation, scanning their surroundings on all sides to ensure that they were not taken unawares. In the other torches, there had been patrols or scattered batarian forces off in ones and twos throughout each compound. However here, aside from the smeared single soldier, there hadn’t been any of the similar sized groups. 

They may know we are coming, and have collapsed their forces for a single fight.

“Dubyansky to Vakarian,” his private channel audio blared inside his helmet.

Garrus gestured to his helmet, and then at Alenko, indicating that the Lieutenant should take up the point position in the group as Vakarian moved to comms. The turian fell into the rear of the stack as he replied to the long range communications technician aboard the Normandy.

“Vakarian here. Go ahead,” the turian replied quickly as the team made their way down another hallway towards the office spaces.

The human sounded disappointed. “Got… quite a few hits of purchases of that script, even when accounting for the OS and hardware information you provided from the hacker’s omni-tool. Any other parameters I can add?”

My hacker isn’t a soldier. Neither was that slaver pasted across the wall. 

“A few. Mix and match them as needed, I’m not sure which combination will be the right one,” Garrus said, as he mulled over his bits of evidence. 

“OK, what have you got?” 

“Bomb packaging with Iranis Industries, which is a Volus corp that regularly skirts Citadel sanctions to trade with the Hegemony if I remember right,” Garrus began. “Some guys with the Hor’Lal Enclave here as well, so you can cross reference with Alliance databases.”

Vakarian paused, and then considered his options as his team moved forward. Those are obvious. What's the lead within the lead? What is the weird, civilian thing that this guy did?

Hate. The amateur hated the humans. This asteroid strike was more than a slave grab, obviously, but there seemed to be some discontinuity in the behaviours of the two halves of the group. The amateur was an ideologue. The rest of the team may just be hired muscle, or a unit lent out by the Hegemony.

I wonder if the amateur is affiliated with a Hegemony lobby group rather than the military? A religious, or advocacy party maybe? 

“Check… check that list against devices that have passed through Citadel space open intra-net logins. It may be the same platform he has now. I bet he passed through Council space on official third party business, and didn't secure or spoof his identity,” Garrus said, growing more confident with his idea as the words rolled out. “Likely he’s not a known criminal but someone with a diplomatic presence, or adjacent to one, like an aide.”

“Hmm,” Dubyansky began, contemplating the plan. “Yeah I like that, but I might need Spectre clearance. I'll let you know.”

Garrus heard the double click of his tongue in his helmet again. He felt strongly that there was something to this. He didn't have time to explain to Shepard about his hunch. If this fusion torch facility wasn't abandoned, either Bravo or Alpha team were probably entering a firefight any second now. Distractions wouldn't do.

At least, that's what he was telling himself. In reality, he knew he was nervous that he would be told ‘no’ for use of the Spectre codes, and that’s why he wasn’t asking.

What was the human saying that Shepard had told me? Better to ask for forgiveness than… 

“Contact,” blared the general comm channel as short roars of assault rifles rang out across the facility. 

“Move,” Kaidan barked as his pace tripled. Liara and Garrus surged behind him to follow. 

Year 2183
Exodus Cluster - Asgard System
Asteroid x57 - Approaching Terra Nova
Groundside - Mako IFV Deployment
Final Fusion Torch - Main Hall

Bravo team stormed onto the upper gantry, faced with a half-wall before them, as shots and explosions rang out on the main floor below them. The large, semi-open hall of the final fusion torch was alive with the cracks of sound and light beneath Bravo, as Alpha was in the heat of a firefight. Ricochets and bits of material flew off the various machines and steel obstructions that the combatants beneath them were using as cover. 

The two teams locked in combat on the main floor were bisected by a gap in the available items to hide behind, that ran through the centre of the room. Only the unleashed varren crossed the kill zone, before being mercilessly gunned down by the N7’s team.

“Enough!” Came a batarian voice, trying to sound more commanding than it actually did. “Stop!”

From the source of the voice, a hand came out from behind the batarian’s cover, a large metal pump, which continued thrumming as the torch pushed the asteroid towards Terra Nova. The limb frantically waved in an apparent plea for a parlay. 

“Why?” Came a dark, heavy voice of a Spectre, in no mood for games. Shepard ripped off a casual spray of rounds towards the batarian who spoke, to make the point that they should remain where they were. The N7 then silently gestured to his compatriots to take up better positions on the angles while the fighting subsided.

“I’m not dying for Balak’s nonsense, and I have what you need,” came the voice, a little steadier than before. 

Alenko, Garrus and Liara advanced in a low crouch towards the half wall. Garrus took up position next to a tall pillar that ran from ceiling to the floor below, and connected with the waist high obstruction to maximise coverage. Without sound, he withdrew his sniper rifle and stood a foot back from the pillar, able to see all that was going on below him, but also minimising the risk of spalling striking him off the pillar on return fire. 

Shepard, obviously reluctantly, began speaking with the batarian nearby about what the terrorist could offer him.

Six bodyguards still alive, the leader who is speaking, and two remaining varren, Garrus analysed through his scope. His finger remained on the frame of the rifle, but twitched in anticipation of the return of hostilities.

“Dubyansky to Garrus,” his private comm channel blared, and he lost track of what Shepard was saying in the meantime.

“Not a good time,” the turian hissed with frustration as the reticle of his sniper hovered over where he guessed one of the batarians would come out of cover.

Shepard and the leader of the batarians were speaking more quickly now, but Garrus couldn’t track their conversation and the one on his radio.

“I’ll be quick,” the human voice asserted. “You aren’t getting anywhere in this search without the Spectre clearance.”

The hesitation Garrus felt regarding what he was about to do would be difficult to explain to a non-turian. Logically, the correct play at this moment was to not use the code for a mere hunch, and then explain to the N7 after the firefight was over about whether to proceed. The Citadel Integrated Intelligence Service’s software suite would make mincemeat out of any security measures through… less than constitutional means. A dragnet of data that could be pared down by the immense server banks on planets beyond, which could, with a couple of words from his mouth, give him exactly what he needed. 

What if Shepard cancels the search? I don’t have anything concrete to point to. And I can’t very well say it is my gut. But I know I am right. I can’t let this lead pass me by.

It grated against everything that was in him as a turian. He was doing this on the sly, behind his Commander’s back, against Citadel Council regulations. Maybe Shepard considered him as a friend, he liked to think so. And he was lying in his place.

Spirits, forgive me. 

“The Commander is under fire, but has authorised the use. Find out who this guy is,” Garrus said, gripping his rifle tighter as the lie escaped his mouth. 

“Copy all,” Dubyansky said with a tinge of excitement in his voice. He clearly was not questioning the order, as it allowed him to play his part with the most powerful sig-int tools in the galaxy.

As the private channel closed, it quickly became apparent to Garrus that negotiations were not proceeding very well.

“... thought it was just a quick slave grab, I didn’t sign up for this,” came the voice from the floor below.

At those words being spoken, Garrus was truly brought back into awareness of the scene beneath, as the temperature of the room plunged, and gravity buckled.  

To his right, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alenko wince at the words, and Liara brought a hand up over her mouth in reaction, her brain not accounting for her helmet.

The light filters on Garrus’s visor stuttered as an unexpected corona of white-blue vapours filled the bottom left of his vision, where Shepard was behind cover. The Spectre, behind a large crate, upended both of his hands without warning. Vakarian couldn’t see the N7’s expression behind his helmet, but the former C-Sec officer could make a rough guess at the dark visage.

In response to Shepard’s demands of his biotics, rolling waves of distorted reality enveloped the large, two storey high air exchange machinery that dominated the centre of the room. The steel supports groaned under the shearing forces of dark energy that were playing with the physics of the machine’s existence. The batarians that were using the massive piece of machinery as cover began to panic and run in different directions.

Gunfire erupted. The audio filters on the turian’s helmet crackled at the sudden change of near silence to a cataclysm of violence in the room below. Garrus, undeterred, held a steady bead on the bit of cover he had picked out prior to the firefight resuming.

A helmet of one of the bodyguards popped out to the side of a cargo container to fire off a quick snap shot in Shepard’s direction. Vakarian’s reticle smoothly dropped to square the dot on the forehead of the batarian, and without even having to pause, Garrus loosed a single, massive round that resulted in a bloom of red that canvassed the wall behind the now-former slaver. 

Bolts, struts, and other small, critical pieces of the heat exchanger’s supports in the centre of the room suddenly popped off, firing across the level as the weight of gravity and dark energy were applied to angles that the supports were never designed to accommodate, at magnitudes their materials could not endure. Blue-white flames licked the edges of the piping and beams, as an unholy material groan, combined with the screech of shearing metal, sounded the enormous item’s demise as force was applied just enough at the very top of the structure, towards the direction of x57's attackers.

The 12m high air exchanger toppled forward, its two main support legs popping out of the metal flooring as even more bolts fired off into the air. Thousands of kilograms of steel and heavy materials fell over into the direction of the batarian that had been speaking to Shepard. The soldier or slaver, Garrus was still unsure, jumped out from behind his cover into a firing lane, but it did not save him. A tube of air ducting came loose from the falling semi-structure, sliding out and crashing on top of the body of the prone batarian. The dark armoured attacker let out gurgling sounds that certainly indicated internal injury, but he was still thrashing as far as Garrus could see, meaning he wasn’t done yet, despite being pinned at the torso and legs by the pile of steel. 

The remaining five batarians were a mixed bag of responses. Two calmly, and correctly, repositioned towards a nearby wall to avoid being flanked by the Normandy’s crew. The remaining three were a mess of hip-firing, and fake-bravado laced war cries. 

Not soldiers then, or they'd have moved and returned accurate fire.

Alenko fired off a tech munition into the group of non-military batarians, which sent their weapons into shrills that warned of overheating. The slavers instinctually clustered, hiding behind the same large steel cargo crate for protection as they tried fruitlessly to resolve Kaidan’s successful sabotage. 

Bad move, Garrus thought, but did not intervene. He trusted his team to resolve that opportunity.

Liara, to her credit, noticed the grouping of enemies and threw her two hands into a swirl, signing a mnemonic for a singularity at that exact point. The three hapless fools windmilled about as the dark blue orb fought a winning battle against the laws of physics. Tali immediately cracked off an arcing grenade that exploded in a mess of jumping electrical forks, ripping off much of the value of their shielding.

The slavers continued to rise and fall in a regular cycle, like a water wheel on a slow river. Each time the terrorists rose above their cover, their bodies hopelessly thrashing about, they were gunned down by controlled bursts of assault rifle fire from the rest of the team. Their shields flickered in protest momentarily, before winking out, and allowing the dozens of small holes to be torn through their helpless bodies. 

Garrus meanwhile, kept his eye on the two actual soldiers who were making their move on the far side of the room.

“Two advancing on your ten Shepard,” Garrus intoned into the general channel. 

“Copy,” the human said, his hands free now that his deconstruction of the enormous HVAC device was complete. 

Garrus saw Shepard unsheathe a huge light machine gun off his back, which unfolded in multiple steps as he did so. The Spectre coolly stalked forward and fired off a frag munition ahead of the two batarians that were advancing along the wall. They were too far back into cover to be truly caught in the blast, but it quickly became apparent to Garrus, that was the point. 

The two soldiers dove backwards where they had come from to avoid shrapnel, landing prone as the bits flew over their heads. As they tried to scramble up, they immediately discovered that Shepard's trap had been sprung. The Spectre had calmly glided over to their predicted landing spot, and as the two chests crashed onto the metal floor, the batarians could only look up in defeat at the looming grim reaper. 

Shepard’s enormous gun roared to life, and a rip of rounds tore through the faceplate of the first proned batarian, and a second later, the other was dispatched with equal disinterest by the cold N7. 

The two batarians lay lifeless, their former heads a mess of material attached to stumps of necks. Shepard held his stare on their bodies. Satisfied, he then turned to the remaining opponent, the one caught beneath the machinery. 

Garrus stood with the rest of the crew on the upper balcony, who were ‘securing the area’ only by name. The marines of the Normandy were in two rough groupings, but everyone had at least one eye on the scene playing out between the batarian on the ground, and the Spectre looming over him.

“Ach-,” the batarian spit out, the words commingled with blood, which splattered inside his visor.

The batarian’s bloody coughs could be heard even outside the terrorist’s helmet. A deep crimson slick was forming under the mess of meat and metal, as each pump of blood pushed a little more out through the three holes caused by shards of metal tubing that had punctured the batarians’s suit. 

The slaver was pinned, bleeding out, gagging for air, but most certainly alive, and aware of his surroundings.

Shepard squatted down, his elbows on his knees, and his glutes on his heels. He tilted his head slightly, as if he was simply curious in the matter, and casually pressed the button to slide the visor of the batarian’s helmet open, letting all four eyes meet the Spectre’s two. 

“Human,” the dying man hissed through blooded teeth. “Your pathetic-,” he attempted as another round of coughing took him. 

Shepard did not reply with words. He flicked the seals on his helmet and laid it to one side as the man on the ground looked up. Shepard levelled the batarian with a stare, judging the dying man, not giving him the reaction he was trying to provoke.

Garrus watched his Commander regard the batarian without emotion. The marine was waiting for something that the turian couldn't deduce.

The four eyes of the batarian, in his last moments, focused on the side of Shepard’s neck.

“NO!” The batarian bellowed. “I have not been killed by… a lowly slave…” 

Shepard let a thin lined grin form. The batarian continued sputtering in indignation, dying with the knowledge that his end came by the hands of the lowest rung of the Hegemony’s caste society. 

The Spectre’s smirk held until the slaver faded out. It was only then that the expression, and the scar which marked where Shepard’s branding had been cut off, disappeared behind the hiss of the N7 helmet being locked back into place.

“One of them has a pass,” Shepard said evenly, though a hint of satisfaction snuck out. “Let's find this Balak.”

Year 2183
Exodus Cluster - Asgard System
Asteroid x57 - Approaching Terra Nova
Groundside - Mako IFV Deployment
Main Facility - Central Chamber

“Nurlah Shurluk, a preacher from a radical sect of the state religion,” Dubyansky said to Garrus over the radio. “That's your guy. He's a nephew of the leader of the group, who seems to have partially funded this attack. Nurlah’s inclusion in the strike team seemed to be part of the deal for Balak getting financing.”
 
Garrus once again filtered to the back of the group as he took up comms. Alpha and Bravo had reformed for the final assault on where they suspected Balak to be, a large central, circular chamber in the main facility of x57. They were still outside of the building itself, trying to make entry, as the terrorists inside had locked down all the doors. 

Vakarian pondered his options. “What can we do with this?” 

“Anything, with enough time to get through the encryption. Right now? Less options,” the voice replied. 

Tali was still working on the door. The pass they found on Charn’s body was deactivated, but in haste. The quarian was sure she could gain access to a deeper repository of the security architecture, and reactivate the pass’s valid status, but she needed a few moments. Even so, the quick thinking of their opponents was notable. Balak and his team were likely the best operatives of the group, and their quick, impromptu security measures reflected that. 

Garrus was impatient, he realised. Terra Nova was getting closer, hanging overhead like a spherical countdown timer. He snapped back a reply to the human comms technician. 

“What do you see? What if we had time?”

“There's a lot of messages, but they're encrypted. The leader, this Balak, sent off a bunch of orders to your guy in rapid succession, but I can't read the contents.”

Meanwhile, Tali let out a small cheer at her victory over the building’s security system. The door cracked open, and the leftover atmosphere inside the airlock hissed into the empty skies of x57. The team moved in, cautiously.

I need something, and fast. I need an edge in this fight, there's no way they plan to handle us straight up. They have to have something else planned, I want to be ready. What mistakes might Nurlah have made? A civilian… put last minute into a high speed op… 

“Dubyansky… what was the login the preacher used for their burner account when they bought the script?”

“Uh…” the human replied, and Garrus could hear typing. “It's long, but I have it here. Why?”

“Try it on his omni-tool and get back to me.”

“He wouldn't use his diplomatic credentials as his omni-tool passcodes.”

“No, but he might have used his poorly hidden ‘clandestine’ dark net username and password,” Garrus said hopefully. “Especially if he was in a rush and thrown into this.”

“Ooo… I like that, I'll get back to you.”

The Normandy's crew continued pushing on.

Shepard, as always, was leading from the front. The stack passed through doorways, cutting their angles, and advancing with eyes open and sensors activated as they watched for mines, traps, and ambushes. 

But their foe was not so subtle.

In dramatic fashion, Balak revealed himself atop a staircase, on the highest ring of the circular atrium of the facility. The bloviating batarian threw himself into a back and forth with Shepard, as Garrus’s helmet rang with another call.  Balak too easily threw himself into a rant justifying his actions, and was consumed by his chance to take out his frustrations on a celebrated N7.

“Garrus it's the hostages,” Dubyansky spit out in a panic over the radio. 

“What?”

“Your amateur, Nurlah, they didn't trust him with fighting or anything else. They set up bombs around the hostages and left him to guard them.”

Hostages. The word cut through the turian. That was Balak’s ace in the hole. Kate Bowman and the rest aren't prisoners. They're hostages.

“That's not surprising but doesn't help me find them,” he said quickly. 

“No, Garrus, they had to tell him exactly where to go. And he locked the door,” Dubyansky said with quickening anticipation. 

That’s more than enough. I can get to the hostages, but not with the rest of the team. 

He knew he should let Shepard know about what he was planning. But the Spectre could hold the raging batarian's attention, while Garrus slipped out the back. And Vakarian told Shepard… it might tip off the terrorist ringleader in any number of ways. The Spectre’s stance, speech, a turn of his head, all of it might spoil the initiative that Vakarian had earned himself. 

So Garrus, already at the back of the group, unassumingly, and quietly, stepped even further away from the heated dialogue between Balak and Shepard. Rounding behind the pillar in the centre of the room that ran from ceiling to floor, he got into a half crouch and scurried behind a set of crates nearby. The batarians fanning out on the upper ring of the large atrium hadn’t caught him. He had stolen his chance. 

“Dubyansky, upload the details, and quick. I’m on the move,” Garrus whispered into his helmet. 

“Done,” the human answered. The turian asked no further questions, and dashed off to the other side of the facility. 

Garrus expertly snapped his rifle around corners, prepared for resistance at every turn, but never found it. As the voices in the distance became more and more echoed, he took a chance, and broke into a full on sprint, only slowing to bring up his firearm for quick checks as he made the turns. 

His feet pounded into the steel flooring and his chest heaved as he sprinted across the facility. 

“Should be on your next left,” Dubyansky stated, evidently monitoring the turian’s movement from the Normandy. 

Garrus slowed for his last two steps, and brought his rifle up to his shoulder in a stable platform. As he broke the threshold of the hallway, he saw a lone batarian pacing nervously back and forth, unaware of his approaching demise. 

Vakarian, still advancing, let a stream of fire out of his gun, watching with satisfaction as the shield flickered in protest before winking out. Nurlah grunted as rounds tore through him, and managed to get a single shot from his pistol off, which went harmlessly up into the ceiling. The turian wasted no time in getting the door open with the data obtained by Dubyansky. 

The turian dashed inside, and was met with what he had dreaded. Three engineers, and a large improvised explosive device.

“Can any of you stand?” Garrus asked quickly as he put his rifle away.

A human woman, bound at the ankles and her wrists behind her back, looked at him in fear, before hope flashed over her features. She seemed to understand what was going on faster than her coworkers. “Get me out of these and I’ll help you free the rest.”

Garrus quickly withdrew a knife, and cut the plastic restraints with ease. “Kate?” He queried as he handed her a secondary blade to go to work on the bindings of the rest of the prisoners.

She nodded, but rather than elaborate, ran over to the others to free them. In short order, all of the parties were standing, and they made their way to the door with all haste. 

“Wait,” Garrus said, withdrawing his rifle, holding out his arm in front of the onrushing engineers. He had to check the hallway first.

Vakarian cut the pie of the doorway, scanning from the left to right before doing a snap peek out to check for hostiles. The last thing he needed, this close to the finish line, was to have a group of unarmoured civilians gunned down on his watch, after he had taken matters into his own hands. 

It’s clear, he realised to his enormous relief. 

He held a finger in front of his ‘lips’ as he had seen the humans do, and gestured to the rescued hostages for silence. The three of them nodded in understanding, and in a quick, low crouch, made their way out of the room.

“Back through that doorway, find a safe place to hide,” Garrus said quietly as he gestured the way that the Normandy’s crew had entered through, towards the Mako. Given that there appeared to be no terrorists trying to intervene on the hostage rescue, Vakarian estimated that they were all staying with Balak for the last stand.

As such, Garrus followed the hostages as far as the threshold of the entrance to the facility, watching them scurry away from the firefight in the distance towards a hidden chamber to await the rest of the team. 

A nagging understanding tugged at the corner of the turian’s mind as he turned back towards the hallway that would take him back past the hostage room, and towards the central chamber. I thought there would be more gunshots…

Garrus made his way back towards the room where the hostages had been held, carefully sweeping the oncoming areas with his rifle, but trying to keep a respectable pace. The sounds of battle were subsiding in the distance, with only sporadic roars of controlled bursts.

This sounds like a cleanup operation at this point.

Vakarian opened up his radio channel to advise the rest of the status of the hostages. “Garrus to Alph-” he started.

Suddenly, over the sounds of diminishing gunfire and explosives, Garrus heard the growing, and rapid stomps of a soldier approaching. The rhythm of footsteps were coming from a distance, from where the fighting had been taking place. 

A survivor? Someone fleeing the battle? Maybe Balak escaped the fight? Garrus brought up his rifle and looked down the optic. He trained the bead on the hallway before him, where he had led the hostages to safety. 

Suddenly, a black armoured figure tore past his crosshairs, pistol in hand in a full on sprint, oblivious to all around him. A red stripe on the arm, a locked gaze on the hostage’s room. Garrus correctly held his fire, but put it all together too late. He yelled in vain with an outstretched limb, fingers splayed, “Shepard, no!”

Just as the Spectre reached the room where the hostages had been, an explosion roared. Shepard was thrown back into the hallway, skittering across the floor, face down, unmoving. 

“Garrus to Normandy, we need a medical team here ASAP, Shepard got caught in the blast,” he rattled off as fast as he could. 

Come on, not like this. I should have been faster on the radio… Come on…

Garrus ran over to the face down Shepard, and opened his own omni-tool to check for a diagnosis. No spinal injuries, clear to move him.

He rolled the Commander over, and took off the human’s helmet to appraise the damage. 

To his immense relief, the Spectre’s eyes rolled back and opened, facing him. Instead of shock horror, or another sign of medical trauma, what Garrus was met with was… surprise. Genuine confusion was what was pouring out of the Commander’s irises. The Spectre was unsteady, and he tried to get up on his own, his hand slipping along the floor as the effects of the concussive blast played their part on the human's organs responsible for balance. Shepard rolled back and forth, not catching purchase on the ground, his brain’s trauma not letting him stand.

Garrus held out an insistent hand in front of the N7. Shepard looked at it as if he had been asked to create a Navier Stokes mathematical proof on the fly. As if he had absolutely no idea what to do with the turian’s outstretched limb. 

“Up you get Commander,” Vakarian said simply. 

The Spectre finally grasped the offered hand with a iron clasp, and pulled himself up with the combined strength of the two soldiers. The two stood, but Garrus kept a hold of the human’s shoulder to ensure his balance didn’t give out.

“I couldn’t let Balak escape…” Shepard began, his voice still slurred from the obvious concussion. “I got the detonator out of his hand, but he keyed a backup timer…”

“Of course, but-”

“The, the hostages. How many died? Can we save any?” The Spectre said, his eyes shaking in their sockets, his hands trembling. Garrus’s HUD warned that Shepard’s suit had detected internal bleeding. He needed a doctor. 

Garrus gripped the shoulder of his friend tighter, to reinforce what he was about to say. “Shepard, I got them out. Before the bomb went off.”

“What?” Shepard said slowly as his eyes focused on Garrus. Despite all the Spectre had seen, it was this that brought out genuine bewilderment in every ounce of the human’s expression.

“Yeah, they’re all alive. You got the bad guy. Terra Nova is safe. Everyone lived,” Garrus said calmly, noting his CO’s fragile state.

Powering through the medical trauma, something in the human changed. Shepard’s face showed that internally, the Spectre had just developed a deep, profound realisation. The Commander locked his gaze with Garrus, and the turian would remember the expression to the end of his days. 

Where a fear of failure had been, there was now a deep seated trust in the human’s eyes. An expression that Garrus could never capture in words. 

“You got them out,” Shepard said, his pupils forming to the correct size, and settling on the turian in front of him. A calm replaced the anxious, frenetic energy in his voice.

“Yes I did,” Garrus said, with equal parts pride and guilt in his tone. “I had to use the Spectre clearance though, I’m sorry for not telling you.”

“I’m not,” Shepard said, gesturing towards where the hostages had been. “You had a plan, a damn good one by the sounds of it, and you had the guts to do it yourself.”

Garrus held his tongue for a moment. The Spectre’s expression remained. With his broken stance steadied, Shepard's bloodshot eyes were becoming calm, in a way they never had been before, at least not that Vakarian had ever seen. Despite Shepard’s injuries, it was as if the human had put down a great weight he had been carrying after a long day of toil. He trusts me to get it done when it counts. The emotion this imparted to Garrus was surreal. The turian immediately knew he would do anything not to lose this new confidence he had earned. 

And some variant of the sentiment was reflected in the N7. Vakarian felt a strange tingle along his skin as he looked at the broken Spectre. What violence that human implied in his aura. What lengths the N7 would go to for those close to him. Garrus felt that he may have just crossed into that circle, and the implications settled strangely into his consciousness.

The other members of the team came around the corner, pulling out their omni-tools and medi-gel as they keyed up their radios. Alenko was barking orders. Joker could be heard over the comms.

Garrus settled for a simpler balm. He put his arm across his friend’s back and half carried him as they made their way to the Mako. 

“Let’s get you home Commander.”

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Local Cluster - Sol System
Orbiting Luna
Normandy SR-1: Sleeper Pods

It was not real. I am fine. 

It happened long ago, and not to me. 

Liara opened her eyes to the near perfect darkness, and let out a breath. She held out her hand to press down on the softly glowing pressure plate within the cryo pod. The command resulted in a hiss, and an unsealing of the chamber she had slept in, though sadly her rest had not been for the desired number of hours. 

The nightmare would have been traumatic if it had happened a few weeks ago, but by now Liara was well accustomed to the unwanted intruders that had made themselves so comfortable in her resting hours. She was becoming more adept at steering the flashes of memory into the Prothean question, redirecting her mind from focusing on military history to that of the ancient race. Tonight had been a little too vivid, and she had been forced to simply pull the plug rather than try to navigate her sleeping thoughts back to the beacon and the Cipher. 

This approach to managing her dreams had proven to bear twice the fruit than she expected. Progress in decoding the beacon had been steady, and her reactions to the random flashes of someone else’s past were far more muted than they had been early on. 

I have fragments from the deepest parts of his mind, yet I have such simple questions left unanswered, Liara grumbled internally. Thessia had clarified some queries, yes, but it had also opened up others.

But no matter her other concerns, the nightmarish sensation was still an intense one, and Liara had learned by now that sleep would not come easy for at least an hour or two. As she stepped out of the pod, her feet led her towards a usual routine, her conscious thoughts not having quite warmed up to what was happening yet. 

The cup of hot chocolate was half full when she realised another person was nearby. She nodded as a way of greeting Lieutenant Alenko, who was typing out some report on a terminal he had set up on the mess table. 

“Again?” He asked with a sympathetic expression. As a regular on 2 Watch, Kaidan was often around when Liara was forced to take a walk from her pod. She had not told him the truth of why she was forced to awareness, and simply stated that it was a medical issue. Alenko had the good manners not to pry any further.

“I am down to one in every five nights, which is a notable improvement,” she said, taking her first sip of the too-hot beverage. Her tongue burned slightly. 

“There are a number of marines available to step in for Luna,” Kaidan stated. “Take a shift off to get caught up on sleep if you need it.”

Liara could almost feel the rings of fatigue around her eyes. “I may avail of that offer, as I suspect we are heading into uncharted territory before long.”

Alenko’s posture changed in a way that signalled he agreed with her. “Shepard just received a message from CIIS, I think this may be coming to a head soon. If you need rest or recovery, make sure you do it now.”

Liara did not bother asking further questions, knowing that the matter would be classified until it was deemed necessary that they were informed. “I appreciate the advance notice. I will leave you to your work.”

Kaidan nodded and turned his attention back to the laptop in front of him, the soft blue lighting illuminating his serious expression.

Liara made her way upstairs. Her strange routine had oddly included the helmsman, Joker, in its pattern throughout her previous sleep disruptions. The brash and abrasive flight lieutenant was a fascinating window into Alliance and general human culture, with his inability to hold back or filter any thoughts that formed in his mind. She had immensely enjoyed her chances to speak with him on a wide array of topics, ranging from various cultures in Earthen countries, to human development timelines from children into adulthood, to the pilots favourite ice cream flavours.

And so, she plodded along. Her current topic of interest she intended to bring up was whether Joker believed that a schism was forming between Earthbound humans and colonists. With a sub 200 year lifespan, Liara surmised that many humans, like salarians or turians, may develop distinct cultures apart from the homeworld, to the point of having difficulty reconciling these discrepancies when reunited. Asari, with their millennia to travel between systems, still had that issue, but it was not so pronounced, due to the fact that they rarely lived exclusively on one planet throughout their entire lives. 

Dr. T’Soni framed the question in her mind as she approached the cockpit, noting the pilot was in his chair, leaned back, with his boots visible. Jeff’s feet were kicked up high on the dashboard, as the male looked out over Earth, which was squarely set in the centre of the window on the bow of the Normandy. 

She paused, a distance behind the chair, and simply regarded the cradle of humanity hanging in the nether before her. Its curling white clouds, deep blues, and jagged coastlines. The Normandy had become a second home to her, and this was the birthplace of that mobile part of her psyche. Liara could not help but feel an undeniable tug at her emotions just looking at the planet.

How they have affected me in such a short time, she thought warmly. It brought hope for their integration into the wider galaxy.

Liara then moved to ease herself into the co-pilot’s seat, but quickly realised that it was not Jeff Moreau beside her. No, the male to her left filled the seat with far more mass than its usual occupant. 

“I gave him the night off,” Commander Shepard said simply, looking over at Liara. “Might have to get the ship’s ordnance involved tomorrow if things go sideways on Luna.”

Liara gathered herself, and gave a polite smile. “I am not displeased that we are stealing a moment, if I am being honest.”

And she was being honest. There had been a few words on Thessia after… well. That. But as per usual, the crew had swiftly interrupted their moment on the beach, and almost immediately upon returning to the Normandy, the distress call from Terra Nova had come in. Since then, Shepard had been in the medbay, recovering for days from the blast intended for the hostages. They hadn’t had a moment to really talk.

I still do not know what we… are. If we ‘are’ anything. Was it just a rush of the moment? 

Her mind turned to more immediate observations. Shepard still looked worse for wear. He had small tubes protruding from just behind his ears, devices to stimulate the healing of the eardrums and inner tube hairs damaged by the overpressure of the explosion. She could see stickers and monitoring devices raising parts of his shirt, evidently glued to his chest to monitor the damage to his lungs and other internal organs. His eyes looked dry, or just off somehow, but admittedly they were much better than they had been on the asteroid. A shaved patch on the side of his head had a small sensor glued to his skin, evidently monitoring for further brain damage, or alleviating some identified issue. Liara couldn’t be sure, that level of medical intervention was beyond her understanding.

Regardless of the asari’s abilities, she could accurately determine that he was not in great shape. It should have been a surprise to her that he was up at all, let alone in such a decent mood in the cockpit. 

But he was Shepard, and that was just who he was. 

“So?” He said simply, gesturing to his homeworld. “What do you think?”

“It is beautiful, Shepard. I would like to explore it in person someday,” she said, as she looked out at the bright blue ball that meant so much more than the sum of its geography and its eleven and a half billion inhabitants. 

“It does keep it all simple,” Shepard said, looking at Earth looming before him. 

Liara looked him over, knowing him better than anyone on the ship. He had that same pensive look, clearly mulling over some issue. She found it humourous how incapable he was at hiding his mood. But by now, she was fully comfortable with simply asking, rather than dancing around the topic. “I suppose at this point in our journey, my question is not ‘is something on your mind’, but ‘what is on your mind?’”

Shepard smiled thinly, and took a sip from a bottle of pre-mixed medicinal cocktail before him. “I was going to brood alone, you know. It's your own fault for interrupting.”

“I seem to have developed a habit of intruding on such things,” Liara said with light self-deprecation. 

“Then this is the part where I say that I’m just mad my team is going to Luna without me tomorrow, with such bravado and barrel chested-ness,” Shepard said, mocking himself. “Oorah, let me at ‘em and all that.”

Liara let out a small chuckle. “But you are upset they will be going without you no?”

“Yeah of course, but,” Shepard said, returning the chuckle. “That’s not the point.”

Liara let the muted laughter hang, knowing he was going to get to the heart of the matter on his own time.

Shepard laid down his bottle, and opened his omni-tool. “I received an offer,” he started, before a pause. “From the Shadow Broker. They said they had the information I wanted on Cerberus, and that they'd make a trade.”

The Shadow Broker. Liara knew what the cost would be for such information for Shepard. He was a Spectre, humanity's first Spectre, their beginning foray into the inner circle of galactic politics. Through him, an unscrupulous trader of secrets could bend the man to breaking, could wrap him about the finger of the clandestine organisation. The inevitable extortion would surely set humanity back decades, and the defence against the Reapers even moreso. And that didn’t even account for what it would do to him personally.

“And what was your reply?” Liara ventured carefully. 

“Nothing,” the human said simply, glancing in her direction. “I haven’t answered.”

“My followup to that is a bit obvious,” she said, in a serious query. “What will you say?”

Shepard smiled, evidently acknowledging that he was stalling. “Depends. I had a strange thought when the message came in.”

“I sincerely hope that you are not implying that you plan to outmaneuver the Shadow Broker?” She asked with concern.

The Spectre shook his head, and calmly sighed. “Nothing so ambitious. To my surprise, my first thought was what one asari scientist might say if I did accept the Broker’s terms.”

Liara’s heart skipped, but she held her silence, waiting for him to elaborate. Shepard scrunched his face, and wet his dry lips.

“The fact that the question crossed my mind at all, meant it came with its own answer,” he said quietly. He stabbed the message that was displayed on the omni-tool, deleting it, before closing the device entirely. 

Shepard exhaled through his nose in regret, and allowed himself a long blink. The expression he held was a deep guilt, and resignation for the decision. But it was made, and Liara knew he would never go back on it.

Liara got up from her chair, and manoeuvred herself to the dashboard in front of Shepard. He eased his feet off the console, and the two looked on at each other in mutual understanding.

“You have not failed Toombs, nor any of the others. You have talents, but are not capable of everything. If you wish to avenge them, the galaxy must still exist to do so. If what you say about Cerberus is true, they will still persist after we have defeated Saren, and we can find them.”

“We,” he said simply.

“Yes, we. I should not speak for the rest of the crew, but… I believe I have made my own affections fairly clear,” she said, looking up from the floor with blushing fringes. “And regardless of our personal dynamic, I would never let you shoulder this by yourself.”

Even broken, bruised, and covered in medical sensors, he had an air of confidence and light humour in his chair. “And if I said that once this Reaper errand is over, I’d like to try out that dynamic you speak of?” 

Liara's cheeks struggled to contain the unabashed smile that ran roughshod over her. “That would certainly be my preference.”

Shepard nodded in satisfaction. Instead of speaking, he looked over his shoulder, around the back of the chair, and down the long hallway of the Normandy. The deck was empty, and they were alone. 

He gestured for her to take up a spot with him on the pilot’s chair.

Liara eyed him sceptically. “Are you sure? Your injuries are considerable.”

“I won’t tell Chakwas if you don’t,” he said mischievously, taking her hand.

Liara carefully settled herself onto Shepard, sitting on his lap, and lay with her back onto his chest. With a couple considered movements, they found a comfortable position to gaze out into the void at the cradle of Shepard’s species. 

“Your turn,” she said with a grin, letting the side of her head fall onto him.

Shepard’s brow scrunched in confusion, and Liara was pleased that she got to complete her wordplay. She made a callback to what Shepard had said to her on their walk through the ruins of Feros, with simple happiness that she hadn't experienced since their long discussion together.

“Tell me something interesting about what I am looking at,” she said with a gesture towards Earth.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Sentry Omega - Hoc System
Virmire
Air Defense Tower

“It's OK Skipper. I don't regret a thing.”

Ashley switched off her comms to face oblivion on her own terms. She had heard it in Shepard's voice; He really thought he was going to reach me. 

But Skipper had met his match. The Reapers were just a step too far, a burden too heavy. That foe that would not lie quietly down for the N7 but stared back and forced him to bleed. She heard what Sovereign had said. She didn’t know if Shepard could pull this off.

Guess I’ll never know.

She wasn't mad at him. She knew if Shepard could claw through a rock wall with his fingernails to save her, he would do it. There was no Hell or high water he would not wade through. Only time could stop him, and of course that was the toll that was called today. Of course it had to be her. 

No, instead it was the smarmy ambassador Udina that crossed her mind in the waning moments of her life. Sat safe in the Citadel, hands steepled, contemplating what fourty credit appetiser he would be having with lunch. Him and all the other soft, pastry eating, back stabbing bureaucrats that would see tomorrow's sunrise.

All while she bled, and died, before ever seeing thirty.

It's not fair. 

Ash let out a roar of defiance at the injustice. She had done everything, everything right. No shortcuts, no easy roads. No cut corners. She loved her family, raised them well, and would never get to see how their lives would turn out.

Abby. Lynn. Sarah. Wherever you are, grow up proud and strong OK?

A house unbuilt, a home unmade, children she would never have. Old age she would never see.

Family dinners with an empty chair.

I'm sorry Mom.

Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the Eden Prime 212 shouldered her firearm and strangled the trigger into the grip, loosing a rope of rounds down range, spittle flying from her mouth as she bellowed in rage. A deep, guttural, desperate cry to shake the Heavens from their complacency as her last seconds ticked away.

An insistent timer inexorably counted down in the top right of her vision. She felt the grains of sand grinding beneath her boots as she twisted her stance in response to her weapon's vicious recoil. Her senses expanded. Her mind took in all that there was to see with the last moments of her life. The muted sounds of her thumping rifle, the inorganic squeal of the synthetics that died as they pushed without self-preservation towards her. The weight of the armour on her shoulders, the heat from her gun, the partially filtered stench of explosives, blood, and sweat.

Geth fell in droves as they relentlessly pushed into her kill zone. Platform after platform stalked up towards her only to each meet a dozen rounds of unrelenting fury from the overheated barrel of the young woman's light machine gun. 

Her firearm blared warnings, the salarians around her cried out as they were driven back, but the citadel of heavy armour and indignation strode forwards toward the synthetic monstrosities as they fell before her lance. 

The number in the peripheral of her vision became two digits. 

I am going to die.

Ash’s fingers unhooked the seals under her chin, and she cast her helmet aside, wanting to feel the blue sky on her face before the end. The morning Virmire rays kissed her skin as another group of geth rounded a corner. She ripped off her full cord of grenades, tossing the belt end over end before putting a burst of rounds into the casings of the munitions in the distance. 

The subsequent explosion threw the twisted metal bodies and sent their fluid spraying across the platform as the chief advanced, her face scorched from the incendiaries.

Warm, salt air blew in from the ocean, the crashing of waves just audible between the breaks in battle, heard over the chittering of the regrouping Geth. 

Her timer was gone with her helmet. But as the Normandy crested over the rooftops she knew that she had defended the tower and redeemed the Williams good name. She would never get to see how this all ended. The rest was in the Normandy’s hands.

Give ‘em Hell Skipper. 

At the end it was not a prayer on her lips, nor the expected Tennyson prose in her heart, but a much simpler sentiment. As the eldritch forces of the Reapers, the treacherous machinations of Saren, and the cold calculus of the Geth closed in;

A lone woman stood in the sand, with a rifle, defiant. Unbroken. With her incandescent human spirit shining all the brighter.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Rage. Rage, against the dying of the light. 

Rage. Rage, against the dying of the light.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
FTL Transit
Normandy SR-1
Medbay Office

Liara tapped the terminal screen and exited from the compiled lists of papers, which brought her to the array of abstracts that she had prepared for each publication. The summaries she had created were an attempt to condense an enormous amount of second hand sources that speculated on the likely features of Ilos, though she took little pride in her quality of work. The half baked, quickly assembled array of articles was Liara’s futile attempt at giving the team a window into what they were in for on the lost Prothean planet, in what was sure to be a perilous race against time once they hit the uncharted ground.

Several Prothean excavation sites around the galaxy had contained explicit or implied references to Ilos. Literary works praised its unique architectural and artistic motifs when compared to that of other areas of the empire, due to the planet's deep affiliation with the Inusannon. Surviving academic documents repeatedly referred to several institutions, such as the Nal'Shar observatory, and the sprawling hive of academia that was the Shin-rath complex. Each of these and more were held in high esteem as places of research and learning. 

But there was nothing that actually said what the Normandy would find when they got to Ilos. Or what the Conduit was. 

The number of times that Liara had scrolled through the list of titles before her probably had three digits. She was looking for something, anything, to give them an edge against whatever they were flying into. She had the Cipher, decades of experience on the topic, and a fierce motivator of the impending fight against Saren. But she was not capable of magic, so no matter how many times she had glared at the screen, it yielded no bounty of apparated treasure. 

With a sigh, Liara collapsed the folder structure entirely and began its migration onto an OSD. Being mostly small images and text files, the transfer was over almost as soon as she clicked the button. 

Yet minutes later, she was still holding the disk in her hand, turning it over, sat at her desk. 

She was stalling. 

Why am I delaying telling the coordinator of this whole mission the intelligence that I have gathered?

The answer came quickly, because the question was a foolish one.

It is not the intelligence report that I am putting off.

Liara ran her hand over the OSD with the information about Ilos. She was being overanxious, she knew, but she also had a kernel of genuine worry that could not be dismissed. She had previously, as the humans say, ‘stuck her foot in her mouth’ with other Alliance members and Shepard himself. She had done more than that in the joining. And now, she was supposed to speak to Shepard in his cabin. Alone. On what may be her last night alive. She could just send the data over the network but…

I recall how it felt to let one chance slip through my fingers on Feros. I also remember how poorly the joining transpired. Though in truth, I may never live to see a day where I regret tonight’s actions, or inactions. 

With leaden legs, she intended to make her way towards the Commander’s cabin, but somehow found herself walking into the head, despite the fact that she did not need to use the lavatory. As she entered the restroom for one, Liara considered her appearance in the mirror, and brushed some non-existent residue off her bare scalp. She fiddled with her clothing, and smoothed out some wrinkles that were hardly noticeable in the fabric. She checked her teeth for stray bits of food stuck between them. There was nothing.

Anything except actually making the long walk it would seem…, Liara thought to herself, gripping the sink.

What do I want from this night?

The answer was as obvious as it was intimidating. She had no idea what she was doing, but she wanted to do it. Her heart raced at the idea, both in anticipation and anxiety. Worries flared, and the memory of the failure of the joining spiked in her mind. But the desire remained all the same.

What if he says no? As terrifying a prospect as that was, it was almost preferable to another failure in a melding of minds. Except in this case it would not be a simple joining. 

She let out a long breath. 

Liara had some hours before Ilos, but not eternity. A decision had to be made. Taking the small handful of water that the tap surrendered, she washed her face, squared her shoulders, and steadied herself in the mirror. 

The cabin was not far, and the icon on the sensor at the door was green. As she crossed through the doorway, she saw that Shepard was sitting at his computer. Without word, he glanced from her towards a chair next to him as he continued typing on the console. 

“Just finishing something up.”

Liara took up the chair which was close enough to the screen that she could see what he was working on. He did not seem to be hiding the text from her as he typed sparingly at the keyboard.

A letter to Ash’s family. The prose looked nearly complete, but there were several sections that were highlighted or underlined, as if he was not sure what to say. The archaeologist felt a pang of loss. Williams and her had become close, especially just prior to the end. The human had been so young.

So much life she would never get to see, Liara thought sadly. She already missed the nickname that Williams had bestowed on her. Liara would never hear it again.

“Anything for Ilos?” Shepard asked, gesturing to the OSD in her palm.

Right. She had forgotten about the justification she had given herself for coming over here in the first place. 

“Well I have created summaries of all available second hand sources that spoke of Ilos, but though the amount of material is substantial, the applicability to our mission is sadly not so,” she said.

“Nothing urgent for me to review, I take it?” he said, running a hand through his hair.

Liara shook her head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Send it around to the crew, just flag it as non-mission critical,” he said, turning back to the letter.

Liara sent off the file to the wider Normandy crew, and then looked up at the Spectre. He was pressing a couple of keys, but not getting far. His expression held a shallow frown. 

“I just…” he began, gesturing at the screen with exasperation. “How do you even…”

“Words could never capture her, nor her sacrifice,” Liara said to the still cabin air, thinking of the unique soul that was Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams.

“I've never known what parents want to hear,” he said, scratching the back of his head.

Two emotions ran through Liara. One of empathy for the man that never really had a family, and one of guilt for how she had come by that information. She held her tongue. It was such a risky topic, and Liara did not trust herself not to say something inappropriate.

Especially not tonight.

An awkward tableau hung. Shepard tapped the desk idly a couple of times, before hitting the lock screen hotkey. He regarded the blank monitor for a moment, then turned his swivel chair towards Liara.

“You ready?” He asked simply, the pair facing one another.

“I…,” she began. “No. Though I do not believe any amount of time preparing for Ilos would give me confidence.”

The Spectre made a dismissive gesture. 

“You are, even if you don’t know it,” Shepard said with unshakeable resolve.

He believes in me, even when I do not believe in myself. What do I say? How do I turn this towards… well…

Liara feared that time would run out, or, once again, an opportunity would skip past her. She had to just spit it out. T’Soni knew she did not have the social acumen to engineer a situation where it would be natural. This was as close as she would get.

She steadied her breathing, and went for it.

Shepard’s hands were clasped in front of him as he leaned forward in the chair. Still in her own seat, Liara leaned forward as well and touched his fingers gently with her own. “There… is another reason I came by, and it was not just to deliver the OSD. But if I am being honest… I am quite worried about a repetition of the last time I spoke to you in this cabin…”

Shepard’s expression and slight dip of his gaze let her know that he understood exactly what she meant. 

“I once told you, right here, that I am a terrible liar,” Shepard said to her. “Well, that's still true. So when I say I have no regrets about the first joining, and no fears about a second, I hope it settles your own worries.”

Liara’s heart skipped a full cardiac cycle. Her mouth twitched, betraying her anticipation, and relief. She surveyed his features, finding only honesty. 

He really does harbour no resentment or fear. And… He… he said he will… But does he know that a union goes beyond what happened before? Perhaps I should clarify…

“I, I, that is excellent! But… you should know that technically a union can be quite different to a joining, and well I would not want you to not understand what I am asking…”

“My answer stands,” Shepard said as he stood out of his chair. He pulled lightly on Liara’s outstretched hands, and she followed him up out of the seated position.

“I… I have never actually been in a uni-,” she began, her voice shaking, her gaze unable to meet his. “That is to say I…”

“Neither have I,” the man said calmly, letting the obvious fact that an asari union was so alien to him hang in the air.

“Shepard…” she said standing near him.

It all clicked into place.

Of course. This is as much an unknown for him as it is for me. Even moreso. She was needlessly overcomplicating this, as she so often did. 

I want this. Tonight.

Liara felt her mind slow down as the pointless anxiety melted away. She cocked her head and found the confidence to regard the Spectre’s face above her. 

And that is the point is it not? Life, real living, is a series of firsts, not cautious comfort in secluded safety. I have come this far, learned so much, risked everything… and lost some of myself as well. But it has all been worth it, to be here, now. My life will be long, Goddess willing, but it will never be infinite.

She had returned to the Normandy not just to save the lives of others, but to begin her own. Her physical being would have been secure on Terra Nova, or some dig site, but she would have missed so much. It was staggering to consider how her life had changed based on that one decision. She had travelled the galaxy, seen untold horror and sorrow but equal elation and triumph. Friendships had been forged both in the fires of combat and in the laughter echoing about a dingy bar. 

Mysteries had been answered and more questions were yet to be unlocked. A thousand unearthed Prothean relics could never match what knowledge she had acquired, with even greater prizes taunting her from the horizon. She stood amongst titans on the battlefield, with her finger on the scale of civilization itself, based on her actions in the next several hours. She had changed in innumerable ways, and would never be the same person again. Even if she were to flee to a forgotten planet, in some unremarkable corner of the galaxy, she would only be living a lie. She could don the persona of Dr. T’Soni, wear her lab coat and put her head to rest in a tent for one, but it would all be a mask over the truth.

The shy scientist, content with just the scattered remains of civilizations, was forever lost to time, and Liara T’Soni of the Normandy had taken her place.

Life is here, on this ship. With my new friends, with everything I have seen and done. With what I am now, with all I have acquired and all I have lost. Living is being in this cabin, with him. 

If this is my last night, I want to die with no regrets.

Liara let out a shuddering breath of anticipation and took a step closer to Shepard. She trailed a finger down the side of his forearm. It was corded with muscle, and had no give despite her touch.

His gaze plunged into her own, and he ran a large hand up her waist, the grasp enveloping her side. She let out an inaudible gasp at the sensation.

“It was you,” Shepard said in a voice just for her.

Her brow scrunched in confusion, but her hands wrapped fully around his forearms, pulling herself towards him. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her body temperature raised a few degrees.

“The asari,” he whispered.

The one in the vision.

“What exactly … I do not want to misinterpret-” she started, but her breath caught as a hand softly held the side of her face.

Shepard brushed her cheek with his thumb. “Let me show you.”

He kissed her without reservation. His fingers wrapped around the back of her head, just under her fringes and traced the deep grooves. The sensation went down her spine. His other palm bodily grasping her by the hip.

She met his lips with her own. Cautiously at first, and then, with abandon. 

She didn’t care if she was doing it right. She didn’t care about anything else except this. This contact, the rush, the desire. Not thinking about the next moment, only the one she was in.

Liara threw her lab gloves off in some direction that she didn’t notice. Her hands free, she ran her palms under Shepard’s shirt and greedily surveyed the hard peaks and valleys within. He didn’t resist. He seemed to like it. Was she doing it right? Maybe, but she didn’t know. Her anxiety finally gave way to pure, simple pleasure.

The touch, the being with someone, him, the access to his body. It was intoxicating. She wanted more.

A hand, wide and rough, expertly peeled her lab suit over her shoulder, pulled on the back, and the one piece garment slid down her lithe frame. The hand followed the fabric down, trailing along her bare back aligned with her spine. She shuddered, breaking from the kiss as her chin rose with a gasp. Shepard’s lips ran down the side of her neck.

“Mmm,” she let out quietly.

A palm met the centre of her chest, and pressure soon followed. She was walked down, three paces, and her back was pressed into the nearby cabin wall, the cool metal starkly meeting Liara’s shoulder blades. Her lips found his again, and her hands tore off his shirt in clumsy tugs and tears, before finding his belt line with an equal lack of grace.

Rushed passion compensated for her shaking hands. As Shepard was relieved of the last of his garments, she looked down.

Him. Her. Exposed to each other and the world. His skin was smoother than she had expected. The muscles under it firmer. The feeling of contact… more than she ever hoped. 

He was looking down at her, hungrily. His hands grasped just below her hips, and he suddenly scooped her off the ground without pause. Her legs wrapped around him, and she held his face in her hands. Their biotic coronas flared, first fighting each other, then melding as the vapours intertwined, drifting into the far corners of the room. She hovered there, pressed against the steel wall, holding his gaze in her palms.

Hazel eyes met blue irises in the dim cabin light. He wanted her. She wanted this.

She felt the whites of her eyes flood with black swirls. The words never really escaped her throat. They weren’t needed.

“Embr.. et-…” she eked out.

Reality blended with the unreal.  

They were in the cabin and they were not. Two souls rocketed towards a collision in the distance, as their bodies intertwined right before each other.

Rules were bent, physically, with biotics, and others, through the joining. Time stretched and contracted simultaneously. Nervous systems bled into one another, sensations were shared, given and taken. 

Time passed, bodies slid over one another. Before long, she was close. She could feel he was too.

The world fell away. It was just those two in their moment, their pocket of existence. The rules of the galaxy be damned.

At the apex, they were floating, suspended in the air. Waves of biotics shed downwards as items in the room lazily turned over, suspended across the cabin. Liara had once again wrapped her legs around Shepard, greedily pulling him in as her hands did the same. Andrew’s body enveloped her. 

Her mind blanked. Her head turned to the side, her fingernails carved furrows into his back, and her jaw swung open as she cried out.

She felt herself shudder. Shepard’s head tilted up, a primal growl escaping from his throat. 

Time. Space. Him. Her. Two bodies, two souls. It all collided in a cataclysm, the end of the road, the depth of the well. The collision in the distance had been formed.

A true union.

The cabin vanished. A black sky of non-reality enveloped them, with naught but a clarion blade of white light coming from a burgeoning star in the centre of its line. A timeless infinity stretched out where dimension had no meaning, and laws had no hold. Two disparate souls had become one at the peak of the union. Now, once again split they were two, but joined, a linked future and destiny ensnared. The galaxy’s fate rested on this pair of spirits, so long adrift and isolated. Each were once lone trees on breaking shorelines, their hardened roots ready to face the coming storms on their own terms. 

Those two bodies, now formed and intertwined, locked their eyes in mutual contract of the coming task.

Let the galaxy throw what it may in its dying light. 

They would face it together.

Reality came slowly. 

Liara felt fingers that were not her own trail down the gaps on her scalp, and she let out a content murmur at the ticklish sensation. 

She eventually discovered that she was sitting on Shepard’s lap, straddling his legs, chest to chest with the Spectre. His back was against the wall of his cabin, their upright bodies on the bunk that no longer had sheets. 

Items were haphazardly strewn about the room. It would seem that the biotics had been real…

Her head was nuzzled into the nape of his neck, her hands up on his back, holding his bare skin. She was sore all over, but in the best sort of way. 

“Goddess,” she whispered into his trapezoid.

As a wordless reply, she felt soft lips kiss her neck. Liara in turn settled her weight down into her hips, and sunk her arms deeper behind him. 

Everything else could wait.

They stayed like that for a time. Each feeling the other’s chest rising and falling, the exhaled breath grazing their partner’s skin. This was the eye of the storm. For all the swirl about them, they paused, and drank the still moment. 

But the galaxy would not continue to be denied.

A soft repeating chime from an omni-tool in the distance became so insistent, that eventually their stolen moment was forced to fade away. Liara craned her head out from the comfortable position to look at the man in front of her, and pushed a stray hair to one side of his face. 

“It occurs to me now,” Liara said with an equal mix of humour and embarrassment, “that I do not know if I am supposed to remain or take my leave.”

“You stay,” Shepard said, smiling. His features were so close to hers that their noses were nearly touching. “It’s five hours until the drop.”

She felt her face line with a broad smile, upon hearing the answer she was hoping to receive. “I am not in a position to decline. Your ship, your rules, Commander.”

“No,” he said, returning the easy expression, his humour coming back along with his focus. “There’s only one rule. No crumbs in the bed.”

Liara laughed softly, and indulged herself by using Shepard's firm chest to ease herself up off him. “A civilised asari would never,” she said as she rose, kissing his forehead as she untangled their limbs.

She slunk herself down onto her side, as Shepard went to retrieve the missing sheets and to silence the assertively blaring electronic device. As he did so, the surrealness of the situation began to set in as the rush of the moment subsided. 

Liara internally had a disorienting realisation as she reckoned with what had just occurred, and everything in the months leading up to it. She imagined the reaction if she had suggested to her past self, the one lost in the mess hall, accompanied by only a hot chocolate drink, that this was where she would be as the fate of the galaxy hung in the balance. That tomorrow she would be at the tip of the spear, ready to lay down her life to defend people she would never meet, rifle in hand, friends by her side; a relentless huntress determined that all species would see tomorrow. 

She imagined telling that past Dr. T’Soni that Liara would be in this cabin, naked, both in body and soul. That she had found a strange reflection of herself in a human man, as different as they were alike. Two lone spirits in a cold galaxy, their paths crossed at precisely the right instance.

She smiled as she remembered the old prose from the priestess Ishahin, and turned it to the moment. We are the product of a chance so infinitesimal, that to be here, to experience this, is so rare as to be impossible. She was blissfully content with the idea that she had seized such an improbability.

A bundle of sheets landed unceremoniously on Liara's head, and soon after, a 100kg plus weight flumped beside her, sending her slightly into the air as the mattress bounced. 

“I’m going to kill Joker,” the Spectre said as Liara fought her way out of the prison of the duvet.

“For recent or past infractions?” Liara asked as her head poked out from the covers.

Shepard angrily stabbed the omni-tool with a finger, indicating what the source of the ‘urgent’ ping was. “A culmination of both. It’s been a long time coming.”

Liara ran her eyes over the man beside her as he tossed the device to his end table. This.. this Shepard may be one that only she was privy to, but the Normandy’s crew and those beyond would always be tugging at him for his attention. 

“No rest for the wicked, I believe your saying goes,” Liara said with a small smirk, looking at the situation about the cabin.

“I'm calling in sick,” Shepard said with a huff. His arm snuck under Liara before pulling her towards him, chest to chest. “Alenko is in charge now. He can deal with the glowy robot turian.”

“You will suffer no arguments from me,” she said as she was tugged in, her head resting just under his chin. Liara shuffled her hips and shoulder towards the body before her, and she squeezed out the last light and space between them. Her left leg sank in between his. 

Her hand roamed his back, as she greedily drank in the simple contact. They didn’t speak, but the embrace didn’t need words.

She let out a breath into his chest. This… was worth… everything. 

It had all been worth it. The Normandy. Staying here, with him, us. My new friends. No matter what comes next, I made the right choice.

She hoped, somewhere, that her Mother would know that she would be on Ilos tomorrow.

I was ready for life when it came, Mother. But she knew it wasn’t just her choice. It was also a risk that another had taken on her behalf.

“Thank you,” Liara said into Shepard’s chest. “For taking the chance on me.”

Liara could feel Shepard shift slightly, as if he was surprised by the admission.

“My finest moment as Normandy's Commander,” Shepard answered lightheartedly, before turning more serious. “But you only get to say that once Liara.”

“Oh?” Liara asked.

“If this,” he said nodding towards her curled up into him, “is going to work, we are equals. You don’t owe me anything.”

“I accept your terms,” she said, nudging herself closer. “Andrew.”

As if to seal the matter, the last thing she felt before her eyes closed was a kiss on the top of her head.

Sleep came easy that night, though Ilos and the Reapers were just hours away.

But in that dim cabin, that didn't matter. Nothing else truly did.

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Serpent Nebula - Widow System
Citadel Presidium
Council Chambers

“If we prove ourselves useful, Sovereign will spare us from the coming storm! There is no. Other. Way!”

The crackling, arcing exposed wires, blaring klaxons, and flashing emergency lights cast background ambience in the normally manicured political space. The gravity on the Presidium usually sat at a cool 0.3Gs, aided with mass effect fields to prevent the governmental dignitaries from accidentally missing a step or bouncing about during a normal walk. But here, in the heart of the Citadel, at the top of the steep climb to the Council’s arena, were two titans, locked in a duel to determine the fate of all things. The tension of their showdown was that which now set the rules of physics, as all life hung on balanced scales between them.

Under their mutual stare from across the Council’s pedestal, gravity bowed out, and swallowed the nearby planes of existence. The vortex circling them was not from biotics, nor from Reaper technology, but from the sheer mass of consequence that their argument demanded. Time warped, and slowed to a crawl. Sound distorted. Everyone held their breath.

“Yes, you are useful now. But you are only alive because Sovereign needs you! Where was he for the last fifty thousand years? Where was this plan for synthesis between organics and machines all this time?!” Shepard spat, casting an accusatory finger towards the floating turian on the far side of the room. “Why is this suddenly an option at the eleventh hour?!”

Shepard snarled, and spoke with a visceral hate that Garrus hadn’t even heard during their showdowns with Cerberus, or the slavers on x57. 

“It’s using you, and it’s telling you this because you want it to be true! Because you’re in too deep, you’re justifying what you’ve already done!”

Saren barked back at the human, but there was an imperceptible waver in his voice, as if he was convincing himself as much as the man before him. “No! This is the only way, don’t you see why I am doing this? This is more than just you and me! This is for all life!”

Then, the N7 fully removed himself from the partial cover, and stomped up to the centre of the dias to let the full weight of his words bear down on the turian on the far side of the room. “There is no negotiation, no working with them. It’s all bullshit. You will be cast aside like the rest of us as soon as the Reapers pour through the Citadel and they no longer need you!” 

Garrus saw it. A non-turian might not have. The instinctual, subconscious flicker of a mandible that implied doubt, and conceded not only the point but the high ground in the social dynamic. Saren’s true personality winked at them just for a moment, before being swallowed by the Reaper’s implant control once again.

“You… you might be… AghhHH!” Saren began before being contorted in pain, as Sovereign exerted his influence. “… I…”

“LOOK AT THEM!” Shepard commanded, pointing out of the large bay window that would normally frame the backdrop to the Citadel Council members. In plain view, straight out from the human’s finger, a turian cruiser of the Citadel Fleet was being hewn in half with contemptuous ease by Sovereign’s glowing red lance. The enormous Hierarchy vessel ruptured instantly, casting pinpricks of vessel debris and turian corpses in an ever-growing bloom of inaudible destruction. 

“I know you. I know what you’ve sacrificed for the Hierarchy, and then the Council in the dark corners of the galaxy. What choices you’ve justified that had to be done to save your people out there. Your people. Those same ones clawing at their throats right now in the cold, dark void as they drift to graves we will never find. Is that machine what will save us?!” 

Saren’s implants tried as they could, but the former Spectre roared, and forced his head to turn and look over his shoulder at his comrades, young turian soldiers being cast into a frigid, lonely death with the indifference that only a machine could impart. Saren’s breaths became heavy, and in stuttering motions, he brought his gaze back to meet the human before him.

The N7 levelled a stare that could have been fired from a dreadnought, and then answered his own question. “No. What will save us, is you making the hardest choice of all. For the thousand lives just lost on that ship, and the trillions more you are about to condemn.”

It was a subtle relaxing in Saren’s face, but an undeniable peace flashed over the features of the turian Spectre. And in that moment he truly was the Spectre, not Sovereign’s puppet. Garrus saw Shepard and Saren lock eyes, and though they were separated by incompatible genetic material, there was a deep bridge of mutual understanding between the two men, who had simply fallen onto different sides of the knife’s edge. Two souls that took opposite paths on a forked road in years past, now bearing the consequences of the decisions that lead them to this point.

“Thank you, Shepard,” Saren said simply as the muzzle flashed under his chin. The turian fell backwards to eternal relief through thick panes of glass, his indoctrination finally cured.

Shepard’s immediate rise to action implied that he knew he did not have time to savour the victory. The Spectre stowed his heavy assault rifle onto his back, and gestured at his crew with haste. “Garrus, take someone down and make sure the job is done. Alenko, same goes for the geth behind us, I don’t want to catch one in the back.”

Garrus nodded before taking off in a run. “Copy, Commander.”

“Understood,” Alenko snapped back quickly as he tore off as well.

Wrex growled beside Garrus as the pair dashed for the fallen turian. “Saren denied me my own revenge. This will have to do,” the krogan grumbled, his enormous fingers curling around the shotgun he held. 

“Joker, raise the Fifth. Get me Hackett,” Garrus heard Shepard bark after the human dashed off and reached the central control console.

Fallen debris of the Presidium gave them an inelegant means of reaching the body of Saren. Garrus, and Wrex made their way to the ground below, as Kaidan and Tali went to confirm the demise of the Geth along the stairs. Liara chased after Shepard towards the console.

Clambering down from the main floor to the garden below, Garrus and Wrex finally reached Saren’s corpse, which lay peacefully amongst a large horticultural well of expertly tended flowers and shrubs. His limp form, laced with the tubes and the haunting aethermatic glow of Reaper technology, looked grossly out of place amongst the soft greens and natural textures of the plants surrounding him. 

Garrus’s silent appraisal was interrupted by the sharp crack of a shotgun, as Wrex fully removed half of the forehead of Saren’s corpse with a blast. 

“Hmmph,” the krogan stated, unimpressed. 

“Not a guy who should be leading an army of krogan,” Garrus said, looking at their defeated foe laying amongst the weeds.

“No,” Wrex said simply, then tossed a question towards Garrus. “Where is the turian heart again?”

Vakarian eyed up the krogan’s pupil size, and heavy breathing before deciding not to highlight where the organ was on his own body. Garrus instead flicked a switch on his rifle to activate the visible laser designator, and pointed it at the place on Saren’s chestplate that the organ would be behind.

Wrex’s shotgun roared once, and ripped open the ribcage. Two more blasts disintegrated what remained. A partially satisfied hrrmmph escaped the monstrous mercenary.

“Want to do the same to the Geth back there?” Garrus said, gesturing towards the dozens of defeated foes in the stairway. It was a genuine task, as the self-repair mechanisms and cyberwarfare suites on the damaged platforms were possible risks, particularly if the crew had to remain here for some time. 

“Beats standin’ around,” Wrex agreed. The krogan made his way towards the others and trundled off in the direction of the prone synthetics in the distance.

As the stomps became more distant, Garrus noticed that his helmet’s audio was picking up a conversation above him. On instinct he turned the gain up on that frequency band, and quickly realised it was a discussion he was not meant to be privy to. However, the subject matter was so grave, he could not bring himself to break the connection. 

As he stood vigil over the corpse of Saren, rifle loosely trained to ensure no trickery ensued, Garrus’s mind wandered up to the talk taking place over his head. It quickly dawned on him the implications that it held not only for the battle at hand, but for the fate of galactic power, and the survival of higher organic life as they knew it. He was only catching bits and pieces of the hushed words over the crackling of battle damage in the Presidium, and the gunfire in the distance.

“... the Fifth’s ships, those crew, they’ll be crushed. I don’t know if we will have enough left for Sovereign… even with the Ascension…”

“... Humanity can not stand on its own in this…”

“I don’t know…”

“We can do it… we can save them and… Sovereign down…”
 
“... about … the fight after?”

“... Earth is not alone anymore.”

“... What if… fleets… don’t come?”

A pause followed, and a clearing of a throat. A voice spoke louder, and more clearly. Garrus could guess who each sentence had belonged to before, but in the final declaration, it was undeniable. 

“You can trust us Shepard, the Alliance will not stand alone when the Reapers arrive,” Liara stated, in a manner that implied there was background context in those words that Garrus was not aware of.

“Shepard to Moreau,” the Spectre said grimly. The response was inaudible to Garrus.

Shepard spoke as if it were a confession on a deathbed. “Open the relay. Save the Ascension and the Citadel Fleet. It's all in your hands now.”

A moment passed, where all that could be heard was a gauntlet’s palm material touching a backplate.

“I am so sorry Shepard,” Liara empathised. “I know what the consequences are for your decision and… even if it was the right one, I wish it did not have to be you.”

“In one sentence, I’ve ensured the Williams family will not be alone in their mourning,” he said darkly. “But… thank you Liara.”

“It… it was a choice no person should have to make.”

“In time, we will look back on this decision as one of the easiest,” came the terrifying, prophetic voice that spoke of a vision Garrus was not privy to, but the other participants in the discussion had seen.

A chill took him.

Vakarian had never been much for the religious beliefs of his people, though he did defer to the traditionalists when they spoke of the spirits of a military unit, or the turians as a whole. And even if he had not believed there were beings of another plane that inspired people or organisations, he had always acknowledged that there was value in the idea, even on a practical level of military morale or civic mobilisation. 

But in that critical moment, where all roads, threads, decisions, paths, lives, deaths and more all intersected at this singular nexus that was the Council’s chambers, Garrus swore he could feel a spirit’s influence. Not of victory, or hope, or anything so aspirational or beautiful. Not of a dream of a better tomorrow nor a breaking sunrise over a mountain top to savage the dark of night. 

No, the spirit was of survival. And Shepard was its avatar, for all peoples, all species. A haunting darkness stole the soul of the turian, and suddenly he was truly afraid for the coming days, and their long nights. What unholy human Spectre had been born of horrifying experiences and terrible choices to be such a vessel for survival. What unnatural champion was required to face down eldritch horrors from the dark beyond. A waking nightmare filled the turian’s vision, of the grim profile of a thousand Sovereigns blocking out Palaven’s star. Of what survival implied.

In response to his dread, Saren stirred. Red lightning arced, and the deceased turian’s skin flooded with nanites, as they reassembled his biological properties into something truly alien. Instinctually Garrus hammered down on his trigger to pour fire into the horror, but the rounds never reached the rising form. The shields that flickered to life were of a magnitude that should only exist on a starship, not a small organic sized being. Garrus’s efforts were but a breeze on a mountainside. 

Fear gripped him. 

“SHEPARD!” Garrus yelled with a shaking voice, as his trigger remained glued to the frame, the rifle rising with recoil as the unholy visage of Saren, now black as night, levitated up from the ground. Vakarian fired off a tech munition, but the device sailed harmlessly past the monstrosity, its electrical charge never activating. 

I. 

AM. 

SOVEREIGN. 

The macabre collection of tubing and red energy declared the obvious fact, with the rumbling low bass that shook marrow from the bones. The voice was primal, from a time when the planets were molten, sculpted by some God’s hand. 

Sovereign pressed four limbs into the wall behind him, and launched himself at Garrus with preternatural speed. Three forearm-length razor sharp claws at the end of an arm swung in a wide arc as the body sailed towards Vakarian, their target the turian’s neckline. 

In the millisecond he had to react, his body moved unconsciously, and a thought formed at the same time. 

I may die, right here. The prospect was so… Real.

But just at the critical moment, as those plunging blades ached for the arteries in Garrus’s neck;

They missed.

Liara’s two hands were wrenching upwards in crude mnemonics, her teeth bared, molars grinding. Flames of biotic discharge licked up her hands and onto her forearms as she uplifted Sovereign, sending him just a fraction off course, enough to spare her turian friend. 

Shepard loosed all his rifle's explosive munitions in a steady thrum of crack crack crack as the blooming grenades chased the skittering shamble of a former turian across the garden floor. The Spectre laced the rounds with unerring accuracy, but the quarter second it took for them to reach the ground below from the platform above was enough for Sovereign to dodge their effects, and erect shields to deflect the arcing pressure waves. 

“Alenko get your team over here!” Shepard yelled into the general channel.

Sovereign’s swinging, broken jaw unhinged and reformed, the cold eyes taking in the new threat. Out of the tubing in the mouth, superheated red plasma streaked out in a line, directly at the structure just below Liara and Shepard. A precisely placed shot, which melted away the ground they were standing on, and prevented them from diving back into cover. 

With the floor shattered beneath them, the pair tumbled forward into the garden below, as they frantically threw up biotic forces to slow the 10m fall. The haphazard lifts and pushes arrested, but did not stop the tumble. Shepard landed in a heap, groaning as he pulled himself to his feet. Liara screamed in pain, clutching her shin, which sat askew at a nauseating angle. 

Are we all going to die today? Is there no heroic last stand on Palaven? Is this it?

Garrus looked at his fallen friends, and back to the stalking monstrosity as its four limbs clambered about. 

RESISTANCE. 

PROLONGS.

SUFFERING.

Sovereign snarled, and jumped for the head of Garrus once more, but this time the turian was sure footed. He fell on his back to dodge the charge, raking bullets up the chest of the Reaper slave as it sailed over his head. 

Liara's suit was already reforming to splint her broken shin, and the blinking icon in the corner of Vakarian’s HUD told him that emergency medical aid was being administered. 

Shepard, his assault rifle lost, withdrew a pistol, which barked as fast as the internals would allow. A stream of heavy rounds from the modified HMWP X slammed into Sovereign as the creature tried to turn around towards Garrus. The Reaper roared as his shields flickered under the disruption.

The Spectre continued to glide with confidence towards the horror, drawing its attention from the prone Turian, undaunted in his advance as his pistol fired from a stable, moving platform.

Sovereign leapt again, his target the N7, but the man did not move. He met the Reaper with a splayed hand, a wall of biotics, as he forced every kilogram of his weight into pushing the monster back, his feet grinding into the steel flooring as sparks flew under his boots. 

“Liara!” Shepard yelled in her direction. 

From a seated position as her broken leg went into impromptu traction, Liara, evidently flooded with pain killers, signed a stasis effect, pinning Sovereign in place with the perfection that only a species with a thousand year lifespan could master. 

Her eyes were glossy and unfocused from the drugs, but she grit her teeth and threw her being into holding the effect. 

“Garrus…,” she eked out through pain and medication.

This is it, Garrus realised as he scrambled to his feet. The former C-Sec officer dashed towards the Reaper locked in a biotic grapple with Shepard, and placed his rifle within the minimum effective range, the muzzle against Sovereign's remaining temple, and let the firearm roar in white hot, chittering flashes of hate. 

Ammo rounds fired at relativistic speeds ripped into the augmented corpse of Saren, and the puppet of the eldritch master howled in frustration. 

But instead of dying, it cascaded red lightning, throwing Garrus and Shepard across the room into opposite corners with the force of the proximity blast. 

With that same indifference that the capital ship fired at the cruiser, Sovereign sent a stream of red energy into Garrus, which the former C-Sec barely managed to twist away from. The arced lightning scorched his armour, overheated his weapon, and sent him reeling. The turian immediately coughed up blood from the impact. 

“Shepard… I…” Garrus croaked out as he tried to raise a hand, which fell back to the floor as the world swam in darkness. 

I failed.

The ruined Reaper body was in its death throes, and made a cold, calculating decision as it surveyed the Spectre and his two injured companions. Evidently satisfied it had dealt with the turian, the eyes of Sovereign turned to Liara, who was still frantically trying to stand, with one hand against the wall for support. 

FAILURE.

BECOMES.

YOU.

SHEPARD.

Sovereign launched towards Liara, its red mouth glowing as the asari raised her eyes from the floor, only to see the oncoming Reaper barrelling towards her. Six long claws reached out, awaiting contact with the injured asari in her lightly armoured suit.

It was then, that time stopped, and physics broke.

Shepard translated across the entire span of the garden. Not dashed, not ran, not jumped. Translated. 

A flash of almost pure white energy had cracked in a ball at one side of the room, and the Spectre, in a tunnel of biotic non-reality, had instantaneously closed the distance to Sovereign, knocking him on a path away from the asari. At the point of collision, the N7 drove the red stripe of his shoulder pad into the chest of the synthetic monstrosity, and as the metallic being was driven back, Shepard doubled up the impact with a sweeping, upwards backhand, laced with a crack of biotic force. Sovereign was sent sailing towards a far wall with undeniable momentum, and a reverberating pressure wave shattered all the remaining glass above. 

What’s more, as Sovereign rocketed backwards, Shepard did it again. 

Another tunnel formed, and the lance of Shepard’s charge barrelled into the pinwheeling Sovereign, smashing the two bodies into the back wall, away from Liara. The steel bulkhead convexed outwards in a deep indent. Within the crater he had just made, Shepard throttled the neck tubing of the ruined corpse of Saren in his left hand, squeezing the spine in his gauntlet to test every bit of the Reaper’s material strength. 

WE.

ARE. 

INEVITABLE.

The primal voice made the declaration with supreme arrogance from some place within its being, as the shattered limbs of the creature clawed at Shepard’s helmet, carving deep gouges across his forehead and visor. The Spectre was unmoved at the lashings.

Garrus and Liara clawed their way towards the battle taking place on the far wall as fast as their bodies would allow, but were staggered sideways, and then onto their backs by an upending of dark energy. The well of simulated mass was deep, called from the underworld by the necessity of the task.

Shepard’s right fist cocked back across his body, as his left hand pushed Sovereign’s spine into the wall. The closed digits in Shepard’s fist were a beacon of blue-white incandescence, and the space flooded with a swirl of twilight and brilliance. Garrus’s automatic visor tint engaged as he tried to look at the small star forming, both in brightness and the gathering density of distorted, fake gravity. 

Shepard unleashed his fist into Sovereign with momentous inelegance. The collisions of the gauntlet into Sovereign, without visual context, sounded like a starship smashing into a planet at relativistic speeds. Again, and again, and again.

“YOU-” Shepard bellowed as the first blow struck. But no follow-on dialogue, or indignant line followed. He simply grunted, roared, and was lost to rage.

The Spectre unleashed a torrent of blows that could have been launched from a railgun. A second, a third, a fourth. Each tore off massive chunks of the Reaper, and what remained dangled precariously from the spine still gripped in Shepard's gauntleted fist.

A fifth biotic missile landed, but it was only for good measure. With it, there were no pieces of Sovereign left larger than a palm of a hand. The waves of biotic energy cascading off of the Spectre could have been vapours falling off dry ice, partially obscuring his being from view under a cloak of descending blue and indigo smoke. 

But organics were not meant to wield such forces, and already, the N7's hands were shaking.

The Spectre turned to face Garrus and Liara. Vakarian could see through the human’s scarred visor that his eyes were red, and were leaking blood at the corners. The N7 wobbled, swayed, and fell backwards in a limp heap, unmoving.

“Shepard!” Liara screamed as she hobbled, both due to the injuries in her leg, and the fact that her inner balancing organs struggled to navigate the return to normal gravitic rules. But with all her might, she crossed the distance towards Shepard in desperation.

“No, no, no…” she said as she fell onto her knees beside him, fingers rapidly trying to find purchase under his ruined helmet. 

Soon after, the rest of the crew scrambled down the broken piping and structural beams to the garden on the lower terrace. Alenko, the most experienced and educated medic in the group, bullied his way through, barking orders at the healthy members of the team to tend to Garrus and Liara, as he fell beside the asari to triage the injuries of his CO. 

“What happened?” Kaidan said quickly to Liara, while doing a preliminary wet check to try and find entrance or exit wounds. “Was he shot?”

“No… he…,” Liara said, gesturing to the tunnel of destruction through the plant life, and the subsequent impact against the wall, with the remains of Sovereign below it. 

“Shit,” Alenko muttered as he brought up his omni-tool diagnostic data. “That’s going to be internal.”

Garrus was vaguely aware that Tali was gesturing an omni-tool at him, and tailoring his suit’s responses to his various medical ailments. Alenko, Tali and Wrex were all screaming into their radios, as the world slipped away from the turian under black swirls of anaesthesic and blood loss. 

Chapter Text

Year 2183
Local Cluster - Sol System
Earth
Northern Hemisphere

Liara could hear the sand. 

It was a strange thing to note, but the fact that the fine grains on the beach in this small Earth region made the same sound as that of the sand on Armali was an amazing revelation to Liara. The infinitesimal grinding of billions of pin pricks of degraded rock against each other as the waves rushed up and down the shoreline reminded her of where she grew up. It was a pleasant connection to make between their two homeworlds.

But that was where the similarities in the two locales ended.

Her home was one of soft rolling hills, blues and magentas, and ankle high waves off the lake. Soft breezes and plentiful fruit. A cultured, artisanal place bursting with life. 

But here, on this island adrift in a stormy ocean, she was dumbstruck by the severity of the landscape. Sheer, jagged cliffs of dark brown rock towered a hundred metres above her head. Thin, scratchy bits of green shrubs and grasses clung to life at the tops of the walls of stone. Crashing waves threw themselves with such force against those sentinels of slate, with a terrible rumble from some place in the underworld. Birds flew in and out of unseen hiding places amongst the crags above, pounding their wings against the incoming gusts of wind, which threatened to smash them against the unforgiving walls.

Here, on a beach in an alcove cut out between the pillars of geology, she and Shepard found themselves far from the life of the Normandy. They were on the tail end of a magical few weeks on Earth, where the pair had hid from the prying eyes of the wider galaxy, and let others answer the pressing questions for a time. 

Liara was sat on a large boulder set in the sand, as Shepard walked ahead in the distance towards the shoreline. Her thin jacket held back the stiff breeze and ocean spray, but the air off the water was cool all the same. A high summer sun tried to poke out between clouds, but thick overcast and thin drizzles of rain had denied Sol all throughout their coastal hike. Apparently this was usual weather for the region.

Liara surveyed the Spectre, who stood at the break of the waves, framed by the dark, sharp, slags, violent surf and hardy vegetation. She noted the birds, the plants, all this life clung to the edges of the world, surviving as best it could against the oncoming gale.

There are parallels between the subject matter and the backdrop in this painting…, she mused.

But people could change, and grow in ways an environment could not. Liara smiled as she watched Shepard crouch down to acknowledge the dog that had run up to him. The elderly canine, Biscuits, was a resident of the inn they had been residing in for the last few days. The equally senior owner of the bed and breakfast had requested they bring Biscuits along as a favour for him, which the N7 happily obliged. 

Though the animal was quite… wet, and somewhat unhygienic, the dog was unabashedly sweet, and Liara had grown to be quite fond of it. She approached the two as Shepard and Biscuits wrestled playfully. 

“You’re gonna gimme that,” the Spectre grumbled in a not-serious affect to the four legged canine with him, as he tugged on a piece of driftwood in the dog’s mouth. 

Shepard was being gentle, not pulling too hard on the stick in the dog’s grasp, lest one of the few remaining teeth fly out of the jaw of the poor animal. The golden haired canine had a limp beginning to form in one of its back legs, apparently an early sign that it has a genetic condition called hip dysplasia. The animal seemed not to be aware of his impediment, and dashed about all the same.

The Spectre eventually wrestled the item free, and held it over his shoulder in a teasing manner. Biscuits looked on in awe as if the N7 held the elixir of life. 

“Go on!” Shepard yelled, tossing the treasured item into a shallow area of the water. 

Biscuits raced off, as much as his hips would allow.

“Did you… win?” Liara asked, not understanding the dynamic.

“The prize is just more fetch,” Shepard answered. 

Liara frowned in confusion, but this was quickly resolved. Biscuits, freshly out of the ocean, proudly trotted back, his trophy held high in the air. 

The dog locked eyes with Liara, and continued his walk towards her. 

“No, no, no!” She cried out, laughing, as the soaking wet, long haired canine came right up to her shins, and started shaking himself off.

“Gahh! No! Go get Shepar-” she stammered as she wiped off her face, before glaring at the human. “You told him to do this didn't you?”

Satisfied that Liara was thoroughly soaked, Biscuits made his way back over to the ordained stick thrower.

“Nah he just likes you,” Shepard said, scratching Biscuits behind the ear, before sneakily pulling the driftwood out of his mouth again. 

“Affection is the criteria is it?” Liara said slyly. 

With Shepard focused on the game of fetch, Liara snuck up behind the Spectre as he tossed the toy for the dog again. She wrapped her soaking wet arms and chest around him from behind, and rubbed her cheek on his jacket, ensuring that he took on his fair share of the moisture. He laughed without reservation, a warm sound, and did not resist. 

“Yeah I earned that,” he said, laughing. He was gripping the forearms that Liara had wrapped arms around Shepard's chest. "I remember when you used to stomp around like an elcor. Look at you now."

She grinned with satisfaction. “My future as a commando looks promising.” 

Shepard tilted his head in thought. “There are pros and cons to that idea, now that I think about it.”

“Are there?” Liara said with an arched eyebrow, even though Shepard couldn't see her face behind him. 

“Well, you'd probably be sent to serve on an asari vessel, an obvious downside,” he began. 

Liara mocked indignation. “I should hope that would not be in the boon category!”

Shepard ignored the provocation. “On the other hand, the issued equipment…”

“I am not sure I understand…” she said, before the realisation hit her. “Oh,” she groaned as she released the hug, and playfully hit him on the back of his shoulder. 

Shepard favoured her with a smirk over his shoulder, but the expression disappeared as he looked around the beach. “Do you see…," he started. "Where's Biscuits run off to?”

The nearby beach was clear of other people, or dogs for that matter. Sounds of waves crashing could be heard, but no barks or pitter patters of wet paws on the sand. 

“Ah shit,” Shepard said quickly as he broke into a run. “Biscuits! Come here boy!”

Liara looked up to see a spinning tail of golden hair in the distance, up on a trail leading away from the beach. The glimpse of the canine quickly disappeared behind low level brush, the dog obviously having locked onto something of keen interest that he was chasing. She joined Shepard in jogging up the beach and towards the path, but when they got there the four legged animal was gone from sight. They followed the trail as far as they could, before it forked, and there was no sign of where their charge had gone.

“Biscuits!” Liara yelled loudly, before trying to ‘whistle’ as she had seen Shepard do, with middling success. 

Shepard was crouched, and pointed a finger towards an unremarkable indentation in the moist ground. “He took the path to the interior, away from the ocean. He’s running at a good clip too.”

Liara looked at him with a raised eyebrow, indicating she did not quite believe that he could tell that from the mess of other footprints on the well-used path.

“I’m serious! Come on,” Shepard said, coming out of the crouch and breaking into a jog again. 

“Did you regularly track animals in that manner growing up?” Liara asked as they made their way along the new path. 

“There's good eating as a kid in the country, even if you don't have a credit to your name,” Shepard answered dryly, before continuing. "The city lacks similar delicacies. Pigeons and rats don't sit well with my stomach."

Liara's mouth hung open. Is he teasing me or did he...?

The Spectre looked at her with a smirk. "You know, you make it too easy sometimes."

The asari rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Some day I will stop believing anything you say."

"I'll cherish it until then," he answered with a grin.

They wound their way through the picturesque countryside, over rolling green hills, as curious livestock looked on, chewing their grass with indifference. Every now and then Shepard would stop and double back, locating some obscure golden hair caught in an errant branch, or a particularly unusual disturbance of the grassy fields nearby. Apart from the worry of losing a prized member of the family of their temporary landlord, the easy jog along the trail was lovely. Eventually their search led far enough away from the beach, up over the hills, and down again into the next alcove, this time to a little fishing town set along a wooden pier. 

The path of loose dirt, thin roots, and hard stones gave way to a chaotic order of cobblestone streets, as modern cars and cargo vans glided along their routes. The contrast of the hyper-modern transportation against the backdrop of the saltbox homes and businesses, with their brightly coloured clapboard siding, was an odd sight, but charming in its own way. 

The pier nearby held a dozen workers tossing lines, bringing in their catch, or hauling gear out to their vessels. They paid no mind to the pair as Shepard and Liara wound towards the town’s ‘centre’. 

Shepard threw his hands up in defeat. “Not going to be able to find anything here. Let’s start asking around.”

Liara and the Spectre took a side of the street each, going along, asking shopkeepers and residents if they had seen Biscuits. T’Soni could not help but notice that, barring a few exceptions, each of these people were so genuinely… interested in assisting her. There had been a few times where she had to politely excuse herself from a conversation, reminding the person in question that she was searching for a lost dog, and did not have time to chat. Said individual would inevitably advise her that she was welcome to return for tea, once the rapscallion had been located. 

She wondered if these people were a product of their landscape. That such harsh growing conditions and lifestyle would necessitate a cooperative, welcoming culture. She not only had to remind herself that she was working with a very limited data set to come to such a conclusion, but also that she was looking for a lost dog, and not on an academic endeavour. 

T’Soni rounded a corner to hear a chorus of loud voices, and a jovial, upbeat song, which was out of sorts with the rest of the quaint, subdued settlement. She came to find an establishment about the size of a large home, squared off and coated in bright lime green clapboard shakes. A wide, ornately carved sign had a cartoonish picture of a fish holding a mug of beer in one of its fins, though Liara couldn’t read the wording inscribed in what she assumed was English, but wasn’t sure. She decided to enter.

The thick, wooden door was painted in a naphthol red, and had a brass handle, polished to a mirror sheen in an uneven fashion by decades, or centuries of hands passing over it. The heavy portal swung wide to reveal a bustling interior of a tavern, so unlike Mick E. Fynn’s on Arcturus, yet the theme clearly was what the pale imitation was trying to recreate. The flooring, the shelves, the tables and more were all handcrafted with real wood that had weight. Each piece of furniture and decoration had a thousand nicks, stains and scratches that told silent stories of the lives that had been lived in this remote town. Little nooks, small rooms, and alcoves jutted off from winding corridors. Brass taps were on the bar, and leather bound books were stacked on the shelves. Liara was awestruck by the warmth that was conveyed without temperature. She fell in love with the bustling romance of the place immediately. And that was before she even took in the patrons of the bar.

There were dozens of people crammed into the place, of a variety of ages and descriptions. Old men with hard faces sat on stools at the bar, with their elbows pushed out wide to mark their space. Groups of young friends gathered in clusters about the open, creaking hardwood floor, each holding a glass of varying liquids, their faces red, their laughter hearty. 

A group of musicians sat about a table near the front window were playing instruments she had never seen. The rest of the patrons gave them a wide berth, a custom that everyone in the establishment appeared to understand. A drum of animal skin thrummed, sending a beat through her chest. Stringed wooden devices were teased into joyful sounds with long, strange rods, and a woman sang a song of the sea, her voice seasoned with the salt of the world around her, and long years of hard living. Liara felt disappointment in that she could not understand the words in their native tongue, as there appeared to be some play with the rhyming sounds that her translator could not emulate.

“W’a cannae git ya?” An aged bartender, cleaning a glass with a large cloth, barked in a thick accent which her translator struggled to manage. 

“Have you seen a dog? Golden coloured? He took off from us on the trail, and we have not been able to locate him.” Liara asked. 

“I ‘aven’t,” the barkeep said as he hacked a cough. “Where’d e’ git off to?”

“We lost him at the beach, and he made it to the town but…” Liara began.

“Yeah we are looking for-” Shepard said as he entered through the door behind Liara, before his attention snapped to a far corner of the bar. “Hey!”

Liara looked to see what had grabbed the Spectre’s gaze, which was the object of their search. The golden haired canine was lapping water out of a bowl. A bowl with the name ‘Biscuits’ on the rim.

The bartender picked up on their stare. “O’, you wasn’t after a dog, you was lookin’ for Biscuits! Shulda said so b’y. Woulda saved time, ‘tha’s me brother’s dog.”

Liara stared at the bartender in bewilderment. She was pretty sure that he wasn’t making fun of her, and she was also convinced that he genuinely believed what he just said made sense. Lost in her thought, she wasn’t aware of a presence behind her, until she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see an image most out of sorts with the traditional human decor. A turian, who was making the image of a pistol with his fingers, held a glass in his other hand.

Garrus fired off a round from the ‘gun’ towards Shepard and Liara. “Trap sprung. Turian invasion of Earth complete.”

Liara looked past Garrus into a far corner of a back room, through a winding nonsensical corridor of creaking beams and stained timbers. The crew of the Normandy were sat about a large table, holding up their own mugs towards Shepard and Liara. 

The Spectre smiled broadly and clasped the hand of the turian before him. “Vakarian, it’s good to see you man.”

“Took some doing but,” Garrus said, still with a smug look of satisfaction now that his plan had succeeded. “Joker bet me I couldn’t put a stop to your romantic exile in dramatic fashion, and I took it as a personal challenge.”

T’Soni shook her head in disbelief, and let out a sigh. “Just… how brittle are those bones of Jeff’s?” She said with fake bravado, flaring a slight biotic corona around her fist, which drew a couple stares from the locals about the bar.

“Easy Liara,” Garrus said with a laugh. “In truth everyone was in on it. It was just Joker’s idea, and my plan. They all wanted a moment before we jumped back in the fray, and they wanted that moment to be away from Alliance eyes.”

“No issues with the locals?” The Spectre asked.

“Nah everyone i’ve met keeps assuring me everything is ‘no trouble a' t’all’, even us dextro types,” Garrus said with a poor attempt at an accent, while trying to do air quotes with a reduced number of digits. “Though I’m going to be honest, I never pictured this being your hometown Shep. It’s a bit quaint. Might damage your reputation.”

Liara quickly glanced at Shepard to see his reaction. She was the closest with him of all the Normandy, and perhaps of anyone alive as she was coming to understand. But she had to remind herself regularly that she had known him for just less than a year at this point. There was still so much she didn’t really get, such as how he felt about topics like this.

But if the Spectre was perturbed, he didn’t show it. 

“Nah, it wasn’t home really, we didn't stay long,” he said evenly. “This was just my favourite spot.”

“That counts as home enough I believe,” Liara said, bumping her shoulder into him intentionally. Shepard smiled at her, conceding the point. 

“One of the locals took a few of us out on his boat this morning after we landed,” Garrus said, gesturing towards a seasoned, white haired man near the corner of the bar, who was in the middle of spinning a long, exaggerated story to a group of university aged students. “Taught Tali to fish, saw a few whales, gave us the history of the place. Didn't even mention he lost a relative in the First Contact War. Bought me a beer… Couldn't bring myself to tell him I couldn't drink it.”

Garrus took a sip of his canned drink, notably dextro-safe. He looked about the establishment. “More of the Hierarchy need to meet people like that.”

“A soul born of a land that should never see a Reaper,” Liara said with quiet conviction. She had already developed an outsized attachment to the area, even though they had only been here a short time.

“Damn right,” the turian replied. “Come on, I shouldn’t hog you two to myself.”

They were led through the maze of the crowd, drawing no shortage of onlookers, as such a bizarre grouping of species in the remote Earth settlement warranted. Garrus, and to a lesser extent Shepard, ducked their heads beneath a low hanging wooden beam to make their way to the table in the far corner of the bar. 

The music still reached this space, but it was dimmed by both distance and the raucous reception that the final two members of the Normandy’s crew received. Handshakes, high fives, hugs, and more all went around the room. Food, drinks and more were pressed into Liara and Shepard’s hands, with promises from several others to be the next ones to buy a round of chips and gravy, or a pint of stout.

But no reception compared to the krogan, who had just returned from relieving himself in a nearby barn, as he could not fit into the lavatory of the old building. 

“SHEPARDDDD!” Wrex bellowed, stomping towards the human. He caught a chair with his thigh, unintentionally sending it flying across the room with a crash in a far corner.

Liara watched with trepidation as the krogan’s mass swamped over the human, enveloping him in a bear hug that only inebriation could induce. Thankfully, though Shepard was staggered back by the bullrush, the smiling Spectre managed to both yell out his reply, and to maintain control of himself and the dark coloured pint glass in his hand. 

“WREXXX!” The human managed as he was knocked back several steps, wrapping his arms around the bulk.

The krogan was joyous in a way that Liara had never seen. He rattled off a tale directly to Shepard with a happiness she didn’t know he could muster. “The bar owner! He said that his country’s whisky was better than the other country’s whiskey. They spell them different apparently,” Wrex said, proud of himself for being so caught up on the minutiae of human alcohol affairs. “And so he could be rid of it, I drank… the one the owner said was inferior! All of it! He didn't even have to ask me to!” 

“All the Scotch?” Shepard said slowly. “Do we… do we have a plan for paying for that?”

“Bahaha, no worries small human! Soon I shall return to Tuchunka, and I will repay the bill from my empire’s overflowing coffers,” Wrex said as he put a thick arm over the shoulders of Shepard.

“Apologies, but my greeting will be considerably less physical Liara, I do hope you’ll forgive me,” Dr. Chakwas intoned towards T’Soni, clinking her glass off the asari’s as she spoke. Wrex, and a steadily growing group of people surrounded Shepard, and Liara had to relinquish him to the crowd.

“Somehow, I am not disappointed in that development,” Liara said. She was glad that the physician had sought her out. 

“And neither am I, for your own recent development,” Chakwas said slyly, looking towards Shepard, who was currently negotiating with an intoxicated Tali, who wanted to build Joker a hover-chair from available parts in the tavern, and a broken-down taxi outside.

Liara blushed, and took a sip of her clear wine. “Yes, well. It very nearly did not happen, as I refused to take a doctor’s good advice.”

“Remember that, the next time you haunt my workspace,” Chakwas said warmly, taking a longer sip than Liara had before becoming more serious in nature. “You two will be good for each other I believe. There is so much hardship and toil, such a simple happy thing should not be minimised. Though…”

“Hmm? Though… what?” Liara queried, noting the subtle undercurrent in the doctor’s voice.

“I suppose my off-duty appraisals would be somewhat inappropriate now that he is a taken man,” she said with a mischievous grin.

Liara’s mouth hung open in shock. “Doctor!”

“Come now, I’m a consummate professional. I take my practice very seriously, and I put my patients first and foremost in all I do!” Chakwas said quickly. 

“But I’m not dead,” she said with a wink towards the asari, before nodding at the Spectre. “Well done my dear.”

T’Soni thought she had blushed before, but whatever colour was escaping her fringes was likely a first for both her and the asari as a whole. Luckily, she was unintentionally saved by Lt. Alenko, who was passing by her with a drink in each hand, as well as a somber visage. Kaidan approached an unattended table in a far corner, and laid the bottles of cheap lager in front of the empty chairs. He stood quietly, and inhaled deeply through his nose. His exhale was long, and ragged.

The humans, enlisted and officers alike, ceased in their conversations. Soon after, the non-Alliance came around to what was happening.

Chakwas's gaze dipped, and she brushed her cheek with a hand. "For Ashley," she said to Liara, nodding at the empty table. "And Jenkins."

"Blessed are we, to have known and seen," Liara said firmly, but barely above a whisper. "A soul who carried us, our hopes and dreams. A soul we still know, but which shall never again be."

The human physician, so normally quick with a response or delicate turn of words, simply regarded Liara in silence.

"My people have largely forgotten the Athame scriptures," Dr. T'Soni explained slowly, her gaze unfocused, as she cast her mind back to old lessons in the unremarkable temple on Lake Kournas. "I do not believe the Goddess's teachings should be so readily discarded."

Conversations were muted, and respectful for a time. The two bottles on the table remained, and those chairs went unfilled for the rest of the night.

But eventually, the mood returned. And when it did, there was an air of complete detachment from pretense or inhibition. Hours passed as stories were swapped, and 'grievances' aired to the mock offence of many. Tali showed Garrus a complicated quarian drinking game that involved dextrously using multiple straws. Joker won a bet, and demanded that Wrex carry him in a chair on his shoulder whenever the pilot needed to navigate the building, which to everyone's surprise, the krogan honoured. Kaidan was approached by a local red-haired woman, who stole him away to dance in the room beyond, to the lively music of the stringed instruments and the steady drums. Despite his shy and reserved demeanour, he even seemed to enjoy himself. 

And with that, the dam had been broken. The strange, foreign, aloof crew of the Normandy was now being approached by the fast talking patrons of the bar, who came in groups of ones and twos, then gaggles of five or more. No longer confined to the parlor room, the night spilled out into the entire bar. 

Excusing herself from an intellectual discussion between Joker and Pressley, wherein the prepared meals of the ship were ranked in order of tastiness versus gastrointestinal discomfort, Liara scanned for her target before the night escaped her. She downed the last of her glass of wine, and seized a chance, shouldering her way through the tightly packed crowd, her 'excuse me's' barely heard above the music and conversation. 

It didn't take her long to find Shepard, surrounded by residents of the town who were badgering him about the mission, and telling him about the area. They evidently hadn't figured out that he used to live there.

"May I steal your guest gentlemen?" Liara said. She noticed a slight slur in her words.

Shepard turned to her, and raised an eyebrow in suspicion. "What are you up to?"

"I require a dance partner of course," she said slowly, with maximum effect to enunciate his discomfort.

Commander Andrew Shepard, for all of the well earned acclaim and capabilities, simply withered under the request, and glanced at the floor. The other members of the conversation stifled their chuckles with sips of beer.

"I uhh," the Spectre said with concern, and an equal mix of apprehension on his face. "I can't dance."

"I know," Liara answered with an unrestrained smile, grabbing his hand. "That is the point."

Life. That was the term Liara would use to describe the rest of the evening. The small tavern, with her new family, the Normandy crew, was bursting with life. Such a simple word that captured everything that an 'infallible' and timeless being like a Reaper could never understand. That blend of hope, laughter, joy, happiness, and relief that poured out of each person in attendance.

And just like life, the night inevitably had to come to its end. 

After many hugs with slapping of backs, handshakes, laughter, and goodbyes, Liara and Shepard found themselves leaving out the front door. Some of the lower enlisted begged the pair to join them in seeking out further inebriation and tom foolery, but the Spectre and the scientist politely declined. 

The night was cool, and Liara could see the bare hint of vapours in her breath. Lights flickered in the bedrooms of a few of the houses they passed as they walked, the last of the town's residents to head off to bed. Pedestrians were few, and all that could be heard was the soft clinking of the rigging of the ships in the harbour, as the vessels listed slowly in the soft sea state. 

They made their way back to their lodging, drinking in the stillness as they went. The peaceful walk reminded her of Feros, despite the landscape being the polar opposite of the Prothean planet.

“We could stay,” she said quietly, as she looked around at the charming homes, and blissful calm of her surroundings.

Andrew, not Shepard, regarded her with an understanding gaze. He sighed, and nodded his head. “Yeah, we could.”

“Just… fade into the background,” she said as she reached out to hold his hand. “Let others take up the fight. We have already done so much.”

Shepard gave her a weak smile. “You aren’t even convincing me, let alone yourself.”

Liara had to laugh, though it was a low, contained one. “I know. It… it will be us. The Normandy. The second you stop yelling, they will stop listening. I do not trust them with this.”

Shepard’s features took a dark turn at that. “It’s already begun.”

Liara’s breath caught at the implication. She did not want it to be true, especially so soon.

“They’ve already started saying it was a Geth dreadnought.”

I should have known. My people have too much influence, and they always want to believe that nothing is wrong, until the truth is forcibly shoved into their face. I had hoped a Reaper corpse falling into the Citadel was enough, but even that was apparently too subtle for the machinations of asari politics.

Liara had a glib, joking answer, but thought better. She remembered the visions from Shepard, of the dying people on every homeworld. 

Instead she bumped softly into his arm, and looked up at him.

“We can do this,” she said quietly, once she had his attention. “We can beat them.”

Shepard took a deep inhale. 

“That’s not enough,” he said bluntly.

Dr. T’Soni looked at him across his shoulder. Shepard frowned a little at the state of the task they were to take on, and spoke like he was making both an admission and a promise. 

“We see this through, but we...” he said, not finishing the sentence. "We make it. We see the other side of all this."

Shepard kept the grip on her hand, and looked out at the stars. Liara joined him in appraising the distant pin pricks of what once held wonder, now fear. They were beautiful, and terrifying in what their potential held after Virmire. 

“I am with you in this, and everything after,” Liara swore to the cool night air. 

Shepard pulled her closer as they continued their walk along the cobblestones to their cabin in the distance.

“About that everything after… I’ve already thought of what our next trip should be,” he said to her in a brighter tone. 

Liara felt a strange tingle. The simple idea of normal life was delightful, and she couldn’t hold back her smile. “Are we going to the gleaming mountains outside of Cipritine? Are we off to the see the lights of Illium?” 

“Nothing so traditional,” Andrew answered, clearly pleased she hadn’t guessed his plan. “I believe I told you we’d get you back to Ilos.” 

“I will hold you to that one,” she said with a wide grin. 

Liara did not know in that moment, that of the two pledges, a return to Ilos was by far the easier. But she would find out what her oath would cost in the coming days, as the Normandy took back to the stars.