Chapter Text
Lexa woke up excited. Aunt Sol was here and now Lexa could show her all her favorite places on the station. She’d have to go to school, but maybe they could go out after. To the park and the shops on the ward. Maybe Aunt Sol could help her pick out David’s present for Christmas. All the human kids at school had been talking about it, so they’d had a little lesson on the history and culture of the holiday. Most of it was pretty weird—Lexa did not get the point of putting a tree in a bucket of water in the house, and getting a fake tree made even less sense—but getting something nice for your friends did make sense. And she hadn’t said anything about it, so David wouldn’t be expecting anything from her, so it would be a surprise. Dad would help if she asked, but getting to go shopping with Aunt Sol would be even better.
She dressed quickly and bounced out into the living room. Dad and Aunt Sol were both in the kitchen, leaning back against opposite counters with steaming cups.
“I do have to be at the office today,” Dad was saying with an undertone of apology. “Staff meeting.”
Aunt Sol chuckled. “How dutiful of you.”
He shrugged. “Can’t get out of it. And I’m not a kid any more.”
“Good morning,” Lexa chirped, not bothering to rein in her happy undertones. Both of the adults smiled.
“I called the school,” Dad said, “and you have permission to be absent today.”
“Really?” Lexa bounced in place. “Thank you thank you!”
“They’ll be sending home your assignments, though, and I have to work today, so you and your aunt are on your own.”
“Aunt Sol, we’re going to have so much fun! We can go everywhere and I can show you all the things—”
Aunt Sol flicked her a grin. “Sure, Lexa. You can show me all your favorites.”
Her favorites included both of the parks they most often went to, the one near her and Dad’s apartment, and the other one near David and his mom’s. Then Aunt Sol bought Lexa a new set of drawing pencils, and they got fruit ices for a treat. While licking the last of the sweet cold stuff out of its wrapper, Lexa spied the game kiosk. “Aunt Sol, can we go there next? I want to get something for David for Christmas.” She pronounced the funny word carefully.
“Hm. Sure. What’s that, some kind of human holiday?” Aunt Sol asked.
“That’s right. It’s soon. In, uh... I forget how many days.” Finished, Lexa headed to the kiosk and flicked through the selection menus at the terminal, looking for something they hadn’t already tried out.
Aunt Sol followed along and looked over her shoulder. “He must be a good friend, if you want to give him a gift.”
“David is my best friend. He was nice to me as soon as we moved here.” It was strange to remember those first days. She’d missed Palaven all the time, but all the same, it had been nice to live somewhere new. “We’re in the same study group at school.”
“I suppose you must see a lot of each other, then.”
“Uh-huh.” She narrowed it down to several selections and started playing the demo footage for each one. “We study together after school and play games sometimes, and watch vids, and, oh, Aunt Sol, they have a dog to play with!”
“A dog?”
“It’s like a, a—” Lexa waved her hands to demonstrate the approximate shape and size. “—kind of like a varren, I guess, but lots more friendly and it’s got hair like humans have but all over.”
“Hm. That sounds peculiar. What do they keep it for?”
“I guess to play with?” Lexa went back to the menu of games.
“What about his mother?”
“What?” She rejected one choice and played the vid for the next one.
“Do you see a lot of David’s mother, too?”
“I dunno. I guess so? I mean, I go to their house and she’s there. She’s really nice. She came and stayed with us when Dad was sick.”
“Did she? When was your Dad sick?”
“Um, I forget. A few weeks ago?” Decision made, Lexa punched in her choice and slid her credit chit into the slot. “Sometimes we sleep at their house.”
Her omni-tool flickered with the game access code that the kiosk had sent. She requested an OSD, too, because Dad said it was good to have back-ups, and also the stories about Christmas had talked about unwrapping stuff, so maybe it was important to have something real to wrap up. She had to wait a minute for the machine to produce the disk.
“Both you and your Dad sleep over there?” Aunt Sol asked as they turned away from the kiosk.
For the first time, Lexa noticed a funny undertone to Aunt Sol’s voice. A little sharp, and she wasn’t sure what it meant. “Yeah, a few times.” She liked trying to avoid stepping on the cracks between floor panels, but she accidentally stepped on one and then had to hop to avoid stepping on the next one.
“Really,” said Aunt Sol. Her harmonics still twanged a little. Lexa cocked her head, trying to figure it out.
“Yes. Can we go out for dinner tonight?”
“Sure.” Aunt Sol’s voice smoothed out. “It’ll be my treat.”
#
Garrus had said he’d talk to Sol. It was harder than he’d thought to find a moment.
Shepard had dismissed the notion, said it was okay to “take a little break.” She kept insisting that was fine, when they exchanged messages, but he still didn’t like it, for a lot of reasons. It felt disrespectful to Shepard, and wrong, to try to conceal their relationship, to pretend she was nothing more to him than an old friend and commander. He had wanted to explain what was going on to David and Lexa because he didn’t want to conceal it any more.
For another thing, there was no real point in his trying to lie to Solana. He’d gotten better at that particular skill, by necessity, but Solana had known him since he drew his first breath. There was no way he was getting anything past her.
She didn’t raise the subject herself, though, in spite of her irritation that first night. Garrus wasn’t sure if she was being tactful or just letting the anticipation build.
Or maybe, like him, she hadn’t found the right moment. Lexa was almost always there, for one thing, sticking to Sol as if they were surgically attached. She was full of chatter about school and friends and the Citadel. He had reservations about keeping her out of school for a couple of days, but, well... Sol wasn’t going to visit all the time, Lexa wouldn’t have much difficulty catching back up, and she was so attached to Sol that she wouldn’t be concentrating much at school, anyway.
Lexa talked a lot about David and Rusty and Shepard, too, and Garrus could almost see Solana filing each tidbit of information away. She wasn’t the daughter of a detective for nothing. Instead of asking about Shepard, though, she asked questions about his work, or talked about her work, how the ongoing project of rebuilding Cipritine was going, or the changes to the Citadel. Or they talked about her family and mutual friends and acquaintances he hadn’t seen in the months since they’d come here.
“How’s Dad?” he’d asked over dinner the second night, the three of them out at a turian-specialty establishment that their father had favored during his years in C-Sec. It had reopened not long after the Citadel began its post-war restoration. The family that owned it wasn’t going to let a little thing like the near-destruction of the Citadel drive them out of business. Turians were stubborn that way; hence the fact that Cipritine remained Palaven’s capital, despite nearly being reduced to ash during the war. He didn’t bother masking the undertones of anxiety in his question. There was no doubt his father was still capable, as he reminded Garrus with asperity whenever he expressed concern, but the man was nearly eighty and starting to grow frail.
Sol laughed a little, a strange half-choked sound. “He’s doing well. He’s seeing someone, actually.”
Garrus had blinked. “Really?” There was something very odd about the notion of his aging father courting again.
Lexa apparently agreed. She tilted her head. “Grandfather’s dating someone?”
Sol flicked her mandibles. “Yeah. I like her. She’s a construction engineer. She was retired, but she’s been supervising projects since the war. Lost her husband then, too.”
“Well.” It had been over a decade, after all, and Garrus wasn’t exactly in a position to begrudge anyone else finding a new partner. “It’s nice they found each other.”
Sol gave him a sharp look, and for a moment he wondered if she was about to ask him about Shepard. The restrained atmosphere of the restaurant was not a good venue for a family fight, though, and Lexa provided a diversion by asking, “What’s she like? Does she have any grandchildren?”
Finally, on the third day of Solana’s visit, Lexa wound down and temporarily ran out of things to talk about. Garrus sent her to her room to work on her missed assignments. He wasn’t surprised when Sol came to loom in his office door, propped her shoulder against the door frame, and said, “You know, I’m surprised to find you spending time with Shepard.”
He swiveled his chair to face her. “Why?” he asked, as blandly as possible. “She’s an old friend and comrade.”
Sol shrugged and crossed her arms. “True. I suppose I thought you were quit of her, that’s all.”
There was a hint of a challenge in her voice. He matched it. “Lexa and David happen to be at the same school, and they’ve hit it off.”
“Now that’s a coincidence.”
He decided to ignore the sarcasm. “It’s not much of a coincidence, considering we were both looking for high standards and good security.”
“Mm.” Sol’s shoulders shifted. “And yet, the children being friends doesn’t require you to spend the night with her.”
He sat back in his chair and didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. “Stop playing games, Sol. If you have a question, come out and ask it.”
Her mandibles flared. “Oh, now you’re going to answer questions?”
His turn to cross his arms. “You seem to be picking an old fight, there, Sol. How old is it? Fifteen years?” It was a fight they’d had more than once, both while he was on Omega and afterward. She’d even admitted she understood his reasons for keeping secrets, that time when they’d had it out fully, but she still couldn’t let it go. He supposed he couldn’t entirely blame her.
“Fifteen years sounds about right.” She uncrossed her arms and stepped into his office, the door sliding shut behind her. “Fine. You want a question? Are you involved with Shepard?”
He answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
She took a breath, her hands closing into fists. “How involved?”
“I don’t think I can quantify it,” he said, deliberately literal. “We’re seeing each other. We’ve been spending a lot of time together. The kids like each other. Everything’s fine.”
“Why?” she demanded, her voice harsh. He was grateful that the door blocked sound well. “Why would you go back to her now? Have you lost your mind?”
Garrus sighed. “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? Give her a chance.”
“Why?” Solana asked bluntly.
He offered a narrow-eyed stare in return. “Because she’s important to me?”
Solana folded her arms across her chest again, settling into weight back on her feet. The stance was exactly like their father’s, right down to the disapproving expression. “And here’s where I question your judgment, Garrus. You’re... too attached to this human. That attachment has hurt you. You abandoned the family and left C-Sec because of her. You repeatedly put yourself in serious jeopardy because of her. And what did you get back? She ran off with her human lover the first chance she got, didn’t she? Don’t even try to pretend to me you were all right with that. And now you’re just going to let her back into your life? Your child’s life? After what she did?”
Garrus rose to his feet, matching her intensity. “Going to Omega was my choice. Don’t put it on Shepard. I fought at her side because I believed in her, and I was right. She was right. I think the war proved that well enough. As for the rest—” He swept his hand to the side, brushing the old heartbreak and complications away. He’d had his chance to think his way through them. “That’s between her and me. We care about each other. She’s good with Lex, and Lex likes her. Leave it alone.”
She took in a short, sharp breath. “And what would Mely think about this?”
He should have expected the question, probably, considering it has been on his mind, too, but the suddenness of it caught him off guard. He took a step forward, letting his anger show. “Don’t you dare bring her into this.”
She tilted her head up and met his stare. “She was my friend, Garrus, and I don’t think she’d like to see you chasing after someone who’s hurt you before.”
“She was my wife,” he snapped. “I think I knew her better than you. And she knew all about Shepard and me.”
That was the first thing he’d said that seemed to surprise her. “Really.”
“Yes, really.”
Solana still held herself stiffly, but she dropped her chin. “You told your wife about your ill-advised liaison with your human commander.”
“I told her about it long before she was my wife. I thought if we were getting serious, than she should know...” He trailed off, searching for the right word. “Everything. Who I was. Where I’d been. I didn’t conceal anything from her.”
His sister deflated then, her eyes going to the floor and her shoulders dropping, but she said nothing.
“Believe me,” Garrus continued, more quietly, “I still think about her every day. Not just when I see Lex, but... I haven’t forgotten.”
“Lexa looks exactly like you, and always has.” Solana said it as if she were thinking about something else.
He shook his head. Sol had always said so, and Shepard had said something similar, but he saw Mely very clearly in the way Lexa tilted her head, the shape of her jaw, a thousand other tiny signs.
Solana sighed. “I still don’t like it. How can you possibly trust her, after what happened before?”
Garrus had had his struggles on this subject. Perhaps he couldn’t even claim to be entirely done with them. But in the end, simply being around Shepard did a lot to assuage his worries. “Shepard has never betrayed me,” he said slowly, ignoring Solana’s scoff. “She’s not what you think. She’s one of the finest soldiers and commanders I’ve known, and she sacrificed a great deal—”
“I don’t consider her military career relevant to this, Garrus.”
“The rest... she and I talked about it. Give her a chance,” he said again. “I care about her, Sol, and I’m not going to cut her out of my life just because you don’t like it. Try actually talking to her, and see what she’s really like. Not hearsay or what you saw on the vids. Let’s have dinner again, or something, and this time, try to get to know her a little.”
She was thinking about that one; he could see it. “Fine,” she said at last. “When do you want to do this?”
He shrugged. “How long are you staying?”
#