Disclaimer: I don't have any ownership of Mass Effect or any affiliation in BioWare (as much of a fan of their games as I am). This fic contains cursing, a little violence, and a style of writing that will likely annoy 75% of you.

I'm very aware that second-person prose irks a lot of people. Furthermore, I'm aware that present-tense can be a bit of an acquired taste, and that a lot of people just error out when they see long paragraphs and very little dialogue. As it stands, these three things are the way the fic began to write out in my head, and after some thought, I decided to do as my head asked. As a result, it only took a couple of sittings to write, so I'm just going with the flow.

You're twenty-eight, Vakarian, and you're still in C-Sec. You thought you would like being an investigator, but you're still the kind of idiot that only goes for the really ambitious investigations. And how has that worked out for you, hmm? Remember Dr. Saleon? Well, sure, it started as an assigned investigation, but most officers find the shipments and cut them, then declare the job done. Not what you're supposed to do, but everybody everywhere cuts corners. Most officers have family in the flat they return home to, kids with birthdays and spouses that cook their favorite dinners. They have a reason to go home early. You're twenty-eight and still single, Vakarian, and believe you me does your sister and mother rag on you about it.

Anyway, you don't have someone waiting for you in your apartment, so you can't just leave well enough alone. And what have you learned by this? That's right: the more work you put into something, the more it hurts when your work is tossed aside. And now, whenever you have to do sweeps in the black market, you will know exactly where those organs came from. You almost wish you never found out.

That's an important word there, Vakarian: almost. Know what that word is? That word is the naïveté and the stupidity you still blindly clutch to, calling it "hope" in a fragile attempt at honor. At heart, you're still the same idealistic fool, and all the red-tape still hasn't managed to squeeze out the last bit of blue-blood from it.

So, what are you doing, now? That's right: chasing a Spectre. Oh, part of you knows that your father would be proud, but it's a dumb move to top dumb moves. As sure as you feel you could get evidence, you know the risk is high, you know the evidence has to be damn good to not only convince Executor Pallin, but the Councilor. Saren is a damn big name.

You jumped a little too quickly at the chance to work with the human commander that was also investigating him, and you would've been well fucked if she didn't agree. The first human Spectre… oh, Dad would be proud, but, to be honest, it's been a while since you've last spoken to your father. You talk to Mom more, but maybe that's because she's becoming more sedentary lately so she has time to buzz you up. She isn't moving around as well as before. Part of you thinks that's age, but the other part that isn't ready to give up your bachelorhood—the part that sneers every time it's rubbed in your face that you have nephews and nieces—reminds you that she isn't that old.

Commander Shepard isn't like your family at all. Not even like Solana, as firebrand as your sister can get. Shepard is one year older than you, but the way she carries it makes you think of her like you did your section leader back on the field when you were young. He was a family man. And it's clear by how she talks to you at first that she thinks you're naïve, too. Because you're a cop that wanted to hop aboard with a Spectre with romantic ideas of bringing justice without hindrances, and it kind of stings how true that observation is.

You're twenty-eight, Garrus , but maybe you're right about it being time to leave C-Sec.

.-.

You're twenty-nine and a vigilante with a squad of your own, because even being a Spectre had too many strings attached. Attached to a council that still doesn't acknowledge the Reapers, attached to the Citadel that's been destroyed in your eyes in more ways than one, attached to a Spectre whose death was simultaneously grieved and waved away like only the public sphere can accomplish. Omega is not where you imagined you'd be at this age.

Then again, where did you see yourself?

You overhear Butler talking about his wife. As expected, Vortash started growling about how humans can't learn to stop jabbering about nonsense, but Mierin pats her batarian nephew's shoulder as she always does. She's twice his age but still a maiden by asari standards, and newly in love with Sensat. Then you suddenly remember that everyone in this squad—all eleven of them—have families in one way or another.

Just last year, you couldn't imagine settling down, and a part of you still doesn't see it in your future. You're most likely going to die here, Garrus, with a bullet in your head to match all the ones you've made in other heads. But now, leading a family of people with family themselves, you come to understand it all a little better.

You now know the part of you that berated you for not being jaded and disillusioned was the immature, naïve one. It was innocent, and suddenly you feel as though you've lost that last piece of purity. Hope and justice do exist… they're just not as kind as you wanted to believe.

Here, sitting in the base with your men, you're now standing on the edge of a precipice, staring in the vacuum ahead. And what do you see? You see your father, and you now understand what it means when a man is told his only son should forego family building and become a lifer in the military because he's a good candidate to become a Spectre. You understand the fear and anger in his eyes every time he glances over Solana's shoulder during video chats, if he happens to be visiting her home, and you understand that the anger was never directed at you.

And nearby, you see Shepard, looking at you with the same face you saw when she made her choice on Virmire, hand up to her comm in her ear. She was unyielding, even if she was somber, even if she had regrets. What let her be so unyielding was the pride she felt for her soldier. Ashley had a glorious death, more honorable than getting spaced, you suppose, but you think your father would trade his glory for yours, too. And you'd trade a good death for your men.

Ripper and Weaver get into an argument, knocking you out of your reverie. Erash starts jabbering about a new stabilizer he wants to try out, and the base is roaring with socializing. It makes you chuckle a little and you realize that you're at the officer's table, looking across your soldiers during Mess.

You're twenty-nine and you really might've found your niche in this crazy galaxy.

.-.

You're thirty years old, "Archangel", and you know what it feels like to be betrayed. Turian discipline tells you that this was your fault, and it opens the door for that immature part of you to come back and say, "I told you so!" But the mature part is bigger and stronger, and it points over to your father's eyes through the vid link: sad, angry, and frightened. And then it points over to Shepard's face when she chose Ashley to die at Virmire: stony jawed, tears flecked off, and proud.

You still have the good fight to fight, and even though their deaths are your fault, giving up when you've gotten this far and letting two years of work run down the drain would definitely be your fault. Guilt doesn't make a turian drop his arms and turn his back. Guilt makes a turian learn from his mistakes, get up again, and go to the next damn mission. And when turian discipline also tells you to take care of your men, that includes taking care of the ones that betrayed you. Personally.

All three of the big gangs fell down on your head so severely that you imagine their members tumbling down in an avalanche during times you need a chuckle. And after you holed yourself up at the bridge, you imagine them like a river of bodies, haplessly running down the stream into your scope. This might be your last stand, or you might last out long enough to rise like a phoenix, as humans like to say.

Unfortunately, they're getting a little smarter by sending in hired mercs to soak up more of your stamina and ammo. A war of attrition is hard to fight when you're strong-holding alone against a siege, and all the gang leaders really have to do is bide their time. The noises outside your door remind you just how close they are at breaching your last defenses. You think for a moment that this might be enough to finally take you out until you see a small team in the back jump over the wall, obviously better outfitted and with better training than… anyone else so far, really. And who is that on point?

A goddamn ghost. That is who's on point.

Okay, let's be clear. You've never been superstitious, and your brain is at least firm and wrinkly enough that you shouldn't be having any hallucinations (both qualities of yourself you've damned a couple times in the last twenty-six hours since at least then you could shuffle off the burden a little). But if that Shepard down there isn't a spirit or a dream, what the hell is she? And why is she here? Your questions end up dying away when she open fires on the mercs ahead, and you decide that it really doesn't matter, as long as she gets to that hatch quickly. You switch ammo over to concussive and, after a good long look through the scope to be sure, you give her a pop. Her shields go, and she dodges down and through at the fevered pace you remember from before.

With that little motivation, she reached the stairs and took out the guys that have been knocking at your door the past few hour. You don't even have to turn to make sure that it's her walking through, because you know Shepard.

You're thirty years old and now the commander is calling you "Archangel". You really should take off your helmet and set her straight after you kill the last guy behind the crate.

.-.

You're thirty years old, and it takes you a while before you realize the commander is still twenty-nine. She did look younger to you at first, and you thought that maybe it was Cerberus' reconstruction that did it when it wiped away all her scars. But new scars replaced the old, and she still looks young to you. Then it hit you that the commander didn't get younger, but you have grown older. Two years have changed you drastically, but Shepard is still the same woman.

She recognizes that you've grown, and, to be honest, you don't like that. She treats you more like an equal than a soldier, and you're not ready for that. You came onto the Normandy to be the alien in the room away from the humans, again, to run schematics, perform for the mission, and fight by her side like before. And you nearly fooled yourself that it could work out like that.

You thought going after Sidonis would be like going after Saleon. By all outward appearances, the circumstances were the same. But the moments catch up to you exactly how much has changed. Even if she's heading on the battlefield, when you get to Harkin, that smug bastard's face is already peering up at you from the floor before you realize you took control of the situation. Feeling like a leader shouldn't scare a part of you; if anything, it should invigorate you. And it has… in the past. This must be anxiety from what has happened to you; does someone like you who can't see betrayal before it happens deserve to lead anyone? Maybe after you clean up your own damn mess, you'll be fine.

Shepard did as you asked and drew Sidonis out into the scope, then stepped aside for the shot. Running didn't help poor Lantar and he fell to the ward floor a beat after the pop from your rifle. You feel pleased with yourself at first, but rendezvousing with Shepard reminds you about Saleon, and how different your roles were. You told her the target and she ordered you to kill him. And you just ordered her to get out of the way for a shot. It still felt wrong, and all you want to do is get off the Citadel right now.

There are few words said on the taxi back to the Normandy, but she does say that she would have liked to beat up Sidonis, but "he was your kill, Garrus." That makes you shiver, and she notices. She asks you if you regret what you just did, adding a sarcastic remark that "it's too late now if you do." You laugh and tell her that you have no regrets, because you heard an undertone in her voice that said, "I'd take responsibility for his death for your conscience," and you realize that's not what you want.

And now you know why it disturbs you, because being a leader means you can't follow anymore. The commander is still your commander at heart, but if she had come to life a little earlier, if you were both twenty-nine and you had to choose between following her and leading your men, you'd be stumped. Maybe you would be angry, like Alenko was on Horizon. Maybe you would feel betrayed that your commander was now working for Cerberus, and have to decide it was unacceptable to join her because you have your own priorities.

You exit the taxi, and a news report about a scholarship on Earth named after her blares out through the ward. You give a chuckle, thinking about the irony of the situation, but you see the color wash out of Shepard's face, eyes wide as if she was dunked on with cold water. It's because now, despite everyone telling her she's supposed to be dead, reading particulars on the Lazarus Project, and having it thrown in her face that two years have passed without her, it just hit her full on that she died. And you can tell that from watching her, because you've had your own share of revelations recently.

You're thirty years old and she's still twenty-nine, but both of you are still learning and growing so… it's okay.

.-.

You're thirty-one and your eyes light up when you see the love of your life, who is recently thirty. It's been almost a month since you last saw her. You missed her birthday, and it annoyed you because it's dividable into an integer by the number of fingers on her hands and yours. It's a silly thing to be upset about, especially when it couldn't be helped due to the imminent Reaper threat, but you like putting down little milestones in your life. You had to be satisfied with syncing for a vid chat.

Not long after you left from helping Liara, the whole crew decided you were going to need as many people and as much firepower as possible. Even if the SR-2 was twice the size of the SR-1, it wasn't going to be able to carry everything, or all the people they were going to need to fight. As things ended up, you came to Palaven to get a new frigate, and even without discussion it was already assumed that you were going to be the CO.

You had to come to terms with a lot while you were on your native world, but you found that you'd already left behind all your misgivings back on the other side of the Omega-4 Relay. Father was not disappointed in you; he yelled at first and gave you the cold shoulder whenever he saw you, but he seemed to always be there to give you that cold shoulder. Solana screamed when she saw your face… oh, right. Your scar. You'd actually forgotten about that. But she got over it quickly, and was otherwise overjoyed to see you. Your mother was the hardest to see, but seemed the happiest for the visit. She would improve, the salarian doctors said, and one surreptitiously pulled you aside to commend you for your donations. Right before you left, your father embraced you and, with a thick voice that told you everything that he can't say for his pride, suggested you come back and visit every once in a while. "Your mother would like that."

Someone jokingly suggested Archangel as the name of the new ship, but the benefactor who funded the purchase (as you were no longer under Cerberus funding) had already decided it for the new crew. And, you had to admit, the Patriarch is a good name, since the pilot drove it like an old, rampaging krogan (perhaps Joker spoiled you a little). It seems that Aria didn't want to let her little joke about her trophy die with his death. And you built that second team, with a skeleton of loyals from Shepard... including Kaidan and Liara. You thought that would go badly, but they worked just fine with you. "Water under the bridge," was Kaidan's philosophy.

And here you are, landed on Earth, and your squad falls lock-step beside Shepard's, because you know how she commands, and she knows how you work. The two of you aren't just fighting side-by-side anymore; you're leading side-by-side. The you one year ago that feared what leading meant seems so young, now. She makes a gesture towards a tower—"Big Ben" is its name, your visor notes—and throws something to you about sniping positions.

There's a part of you observing the battlefield outside of yourself, and it decides that you should be very glad you will likely never settle down and have children. You know that seeing your son in the same deadly position you're taking now would scare the hell out of you, especially if his stubborn sense of justice outdid your attempts at rerouting it into slightly tamer professions like C-Sec. You will likely die on the battlefield, and Shepard deserves a more glorious end than she had last time.

You're past hoping that one of you would die before the other out of the false altruism love infects people with, but you can't help but think dying together would be a pretty nice way to go.

Abominations fall by your scope. Any husk approaching the vanguard were mowed down by pistols, assault, and biotics. Anything attacking the flanks didn't fare any better. You see more Dragon's Teeth in the distance, and you wonder just how big the population of this human city was before the attack. But it doesn't really matter, does it? You're kicking ass, and, for the moment, you're fucking immortal, even against the legions of the dead. Walking into Hell is pretty well standard, nowadays.

You climb the tower to see a human sniper, worn out in such a way that reminds you of when you were thirty. The lot of you are about to approach, but Shepard stops you as the squads go out ahead and kisses you with those soft human lips you came to love. It makes you chuckle deep in your chest and hold her as close as your armors will allow.

"A month is a damn long time."

"Tell me about it."

She smiles and the two of you join the others just when they started to wonder where their leaders went. Then you let her do the talking to the human sniper, because you like to watch when she preaches at people, and this is her planet. The tired human regards you all with a bleary caution you can understand, from a time and a place that seemed very dark from the inside. This man will be thankful later, because he's about to have his ass saved in more ways than one.

You're thirty-one, she's thirty, and you're still thankful about what she'd done for you, because she made all those foggy, dark years worth it.