Ares hates those who hesitate.

-Euripides

It was one of those moments I hated the most. The absolute stillness, with nothing left to say, gnawed at me. Liara's hand was in mine, a small comfort before the storm. Garrus sat across from me, cradling his Mantis in his arms.

He met me eye-to-eye and nodded. That was all I needed from him, all I'd ever needed from him. Whatever hell might come next, we would walk into it together, as we always had.

If I had one regret, it was that I couldn't take more of the squad with me. I'd have the full ground team before the end, but this insertion was smaller, the first wave designed to do maximum damage for minimum casualties.

For a given value of minimum, anyways. I was a career soldier. I knew what we were going into, knew what had happened on Palaven and Thessia. Knew what had happened below in the hour before I'd left, weeks ago.

I felt the Kodiac shudder beneath me and knew we were airborne. This was it, the point of no return. My hand tightened reflexively on Liara's at the same time hers tightened on mine. Garrus shifted his rifle a fraction of an inch, settling it's comforting, deadly weight more securely in his arms.

That was it. All three of us were experienced operators by this point. Even Liara, who'd barely been able to hold her own in a firefight three years ago, was now a hardened veteran.

Well, not quite it. I turned to Liara to find her already leaning in towards me. For all its briefness, there was a quiet desperation in our kiss, the same desperation that had driven our sex the night before. We were dropping towards the end of the world, of all the worlds, and no one knew what would happen at the end of the day.

One last measure of love and comfort. We gave each other that much before it started.

Cortez was good. He was damn good, the best, but I felt it when our dropship attracted attention for the first time. It jerked beneath us as he desperately maneuvered.

I almost felt sorry for him. He was feeling as much pressure as I was, if not more. He was a victim of the same whims of chance as those of us who fought on the ground, but he knew the fate of the hero of the galaxy rested in his hands, that the assault would fail if he couldn't get me to the ground alive. Not because it couldn't be done without me, but because people would think without me it was over. I knew it too, and I hated it.

Being hero of the galaxy and the responsibilities and tasks that come with it is enough to break a person. Enough to break me. If sex with Liara had been desperate, it was as much me seizing a chance for contact, for solace and support, for a breath of air and a chance to break the surface, as it was our mutual quiet fear of what was coming, of the price of failure.

I felt I as we entered the planet's atmosphere. It's the same feeling, no matter what planet you're landing on or how good the inertial dampeners on your ship are. The sudden jerk when you hit the gravity well, the feel of being pulled in two directions at once, in the microseconds before the dampeners kick in.

I disentangled my hand gently from Liara's, resting it for a fraction of a second on her thigh before gripping the Vindicator on my lap. The bulk of the cold metal and plastic was reassuring as I smoothly checked that it was loaded and there was a thermal clip ready to go.

We all stood up at about the same time. We'd all had too much practice at this lately and could've run a hot drop like this in our sleep.

The ground fire picked up beneath us. I heard the powerful blasts of the big anti-air guns, the ones we had to destroy, layered over the dull roar of hundreds of small arms firing at once.

The roar got louder by the second, and then Cortez opened the doors. We started shooting as a warm breeze, born of the slow fiery death of humanity's home world, entered the Kodiac.

It was the same as every other time. Raise the rifle smoothly, sight the target, pull the trigger and watch as a trio of rounds streaked across the distance between us until they buried themselves in what passed for flesh. Then repeat. Simple, ingrained reflex took over, and I no longer had to worry about the different races fighting and dying in orbit or keeping the peace between them.

I burned through a whole clip in the time it took for Cortez to settle into a low hover. Then we jumped, and it was nothing but the jumbled ruins of broken concrete, shouted warnings, muttered curses and the deafening rage of gunfire.

The fight for that first LZ was short and intense. Crouched amongst the rubble, the three of us fought for our lives, desperately hoping that someone else had made it down, that we weren't alone.

It was close and nasty, my least favorite type of fighting. Garrus had switched to his assault rifle moments after we landed. His Mantis couldn't keep up with the Husks and the Marauders, as much as he would have liked it too.

Nor would my Widow. It stayed firmly on my back for this part of the battle, while seemingly endless Reaper forces threw themselves at us.

We moved up when it was over, reaching street level, only to realize it was most definitely not over. This time, there were brutes.

I had the Widow off my back before I'd even consciously processed their presence. It was habit, born of the knowledge that nothing else could stop the beasts in their tracks.

Liara did what she could. Her biotics slowed the brutes down, while her bullets stopped the lesser threats from reaching me. Garrus covered me with the same unerring precision he always had, his own sniper rifle back in his hands where it belonged.

It was the same routine as before, just with a different weapon. Even a charging brute will stop if you put enough rounds in its face.

Finally, we had a moment to breath. I looked at Liara first. There were small craters in her helmet from shrapnel, but was otherwise uninjured. Garrus was equally unharmed.

Of the three of us sheltering behind a wrecked car, I was the worst off. There was a deep cut along my forehead. I didn't even remember getting it. Only the eyepiece of my visor had kept it from running down into my eyes, instead diverting it so that it flowed down the bridge of my nose instead. It was the price of fighting without a helmet, but the cybernetics were already healing it, so I didn't worry.

"Either of you see anyone else?" I asked, knowing the answer but checking anyways.

"No. I'm sorry." Liara said. Of course she was. That was part of what I loved about her. She'd become a ruthless bitch over the past three years out of necessity, but deep inside she would truly be sorry that no one else had made it here. Sorry for their deaths.

Garrus was sardonic instead. "Sure. I see lots of husks, a few brutes, and I think that pile over there are marauders." He clapped me on the shoulder as he said it. With that single gesture he was able to convey the same sorrow as Liara's words had. More, even, because he'd lost people, lost friends, under his command before. He'd just never say it, because that wasn't who he was.

We crossed the square carefully with our weapons ready. I was on point, with Garrus behind me to my right and Liara on my left. Each of us covered our sectors carefully, watching for the slightest sign of movement. We'd all seen enemies play dead before, and we had no desire to be ambushed. Garrus habitually turned and walked backwards for a step every couple of meters, making sure our six was clear.

Some poor bastards had already died on the building we were heading too. Pieces of their Kodiac were scattered around and I knew that we'd find bodies on the roof. One of them had found enough time to activate a beacon, marking their location. The beacon flagged them as a heavy weapons team, meaning they were carrying on of the Cains we needed to take out the AA. That meant we were going to the roof to retrieve it.

There was only one problem—beacons, even encrypted ones, were visible to both sides if they were both paying attention. There was no way the Reapers wouldn't be paying attention to every signal they could. We were almost unquestionably walking into a trap.

One problem, following the laws that govern all battlefields, quickly became two. We hadn't even finished scrambling through the rubble to reach the roof when Cortez flew by overhead, chased by a harvester. He had time for one last desperate radio call, and then he went down.

It was hard. I hadn't known him long, but I counted him as a friend, and it was always hard to loose friends. He'd survived so much and brought me, brought all of us, in and out of so many hot zones that his skills in the cockpit of a Kodiac seemed impossible.

And now he was gone. Maybe he'd finally rejoined his husband. He might have even survived. I had no way of knowing, so I assumed the worst, like I always did.

There was only one thing I could do for him. It was the only thing I could do for anyone, now. Without hesitation, I shouldered my rifle and returned to the fight.

A/N: This is just a little something I found when digging through my old files.

-PT246