The Show Must Go On (His Audition)
Celebrity is a silly thing. Being famous for a singular action, especially an action that wasn't thought about but just done, is a silly thing. On top of that, the singular action got him things. Silly things. Things that he couldn't back down from. Not when she went through all that trouble to do this for him. Never mind that he had to use up a personal day to do this. It's not like he used them. So well known is that fact that the entire precinct was abuzz with rumors not long after he turned in the paperwork for his day off.
It could be worse though. At least he wasn't being invited to speak at some small community function any more. Or being given free things. Those first few months were the absolute worst. Thankfully it died down as time went by and only cropped up on very rare occasion. Like today.
When he met with the producer she had told him to introduce himself too he knew this would be a bad. He's a lead detective, he knows how to read people. He could see the producer's eye go big, which is quite the sight on a quarian, when the producer recognized him. He watched the producer's eyes flicker to the right side of his face and watched those eyes go even wider.
The producer immediately started jabbering to some other people, assistants maybe, about how he had the perfect build and stature they were looking for. How the role was practically written with him in mind. And if the other producers didn't see it the quarian producer would personally beat them until they did.
Word got around and crew members of various capacities came by to see him and say thank you. He told them what he always told them, that he was just doing his job at the time. You'd think a decade would make people forget about him. But the quarians are a very communal society, and a boon done for one of them is a boon done for them all. Likewise a slight against one can get you shut out just as quickly. Which can be a terrible thing as they have the best shops. In his opinion at least. So he was always polite with them, which wasn't hard to do with such charming people.
And of course other people started to ask questions. He was sure that pretty soon the quarians would start to compete with each other to tell the story. Embellishing it even more than it had already morphed over the years. If the quarians loved anything more than storytelling, he sure hadn't found it yet. And of course people of other species would come over and ask him how much of it was true.
Asari tended to like his humility about the tale, humans tended to admire his bravery, krogan his toughness, salarians his selfless nature. His fellow turians understood him when he said he was just doing what had to be done. Even the odd batarian would give him a nod of tacit approval. Once he even had a rachni worker feel the side of his face with a feeler. He wasn't quite sure what that was all about but that sort of sums up Citadel life for you. You never know who you are going to meet or what will happen that day.
Just take what happened 8 years ago. He'd just finished his C-Sec training and was given the day off. So he went to the Quarian Quarter to see a dance recital. Not what you would expect him to do but his sister had been hounding him to come see her. It spoke of just how good a dancer his sister was. Not just anyone got into the Zorah Dance Theatre Troupe and did it jumping the species barrier to boot. And his little sister can really dance. Though he will never tell anyone that he helps her practice when he has the time and they were on the same planet.
It was his sister that got him his ticket and the backstage pass. It's the only thing that saved his life. Things were turbulent then but the turmoil stayed in house as it were. As with most species, they liked to keep their problems out of the public eye of others. So he had no idea there had been a terror campaign by a separatist group that was on going at the time. And he had no idea that bombing a prestigious building full of important people was high up on the to do list of that group.
Fortunately the bomb went off early. The place wasn't packed yet but plenty of people still died. The worst part was that this group had done their homework and disabled the fire suppression system. Those that weren't blown to bits had to contend with the raging inferno that followed afterwards. Now he had gone back stage to see his sister before the show and was only just making his way back to his seat when things kicked off. And then he sprang into action.
All told he dragged 108 people from that burning building by the time help arrived. Most were performers and thus children that he hauled out in pairs. One over each shoulder. When you're pumped full of adrenaline 14 year old dancing girls aren't that heavy. Now this is where things get exaggerated or even politicized. At the time relations were very tense between the Quarian Confederation and the Turian Hierarchy over a couple of rich asteroid fields.
The real terrible version of the story was it was all planned by both sides as some sick publicity stunt. The wackjobs of the extranet always point to how the Hierarchy sent military advisors to help the Confederation stamp down hard on terror groups. Completely ignoring how twisted that conspiracy is, the Hierarchy has always come down hard on any group that harms its citizens. A few dozen killed citizens tends to rile up a state.
A happier version, if such a thing can exist from a tragedy, often portrays him in ridiculous proportions. The fanciest version he has heard personally, has him all buff and shirtless, in shorts, with long flowing fringe feathers as the flames lick up all around him but dare not touch him. Quarian story telling at its finest. Over time he's received some odd gifts but a very well drawn picture of that exact scene is perhaps his favorite. Who it was from he never found out except that it was drawn by one of the dancers he rescued.
The truth of course is nowhere near as flamboyant or as twisted. His fringe was singed something awful, his jacket, shirt sleeves and the lower parts of his trousers he had torn off to use as makeshift bandages. And he felt those flames. He was burned over most of his body though mercifully there wasn't any permanent damage from that. And most renditions of the story find some way of classing up the fact that the explosion had really messed up the right side of his body and face. In this day and age scars can be minimized if one got the right treatment early enough. He never made it to a medical center until hours afterwards. He kept refusing to take up a spot on a medical transport because there were those in much worst shape then himself.
He always told people he just did what had to be done at the time. Rescuing 70 odd kids and 30 odd adults tends to make people think kindly of you. Add in the fact that some of those he rescued were some of the quarian's elite there on the Citadel generated a few favors and a lot of good will. And he wasn't above using that good will if it helped out on a case which it did over the years. If a case had leads in the Quarian Quarter than he was assigned to be part of that case as a uniform. Once he made detective any and all cases quarian related landed on his desk. Once he made lead detective his whole team handled anything quarian related.
This of course led to him building up quite the rapport with quarians on the station and with quarians in general. He was C-Sec's go to guy as the years rolled by. Earned him quite the terrible nickname around the office too. "Quarian Quartermaster" is what people called him behind his back. Partly because he supposedly knew everything there was to know about the Quarian Quarter and was thus their unofficial keeper in C-Sec. The other reason was because his father worked at C-Sec as well. Captain of the section that he was part of. Yeah it's just as enjoyable as you would think it is.
Now it's perfectly normal for people to want to say thank you to you. It's far less normal for them to integrate themselves into your life. And he didn't even see it coming. It seemed so natural at the time and all traces back to his sister Solana.
Solana was the result of his father's second marriage. After his mother died his father got remarried and that is why his sister was 20 years his junior. And she is a really gifted dancer. Danced her way straight out of turian dance schools and into quarian ones. Oh she studied at asari and human ones too but if you wanted the best you went quarian. At least where dancing was concerned. And when he was home on leave he helped Solana practice her routines. When he moved to the Citadel to start up his career in C-sec and after the blast that continued. Only he was helping two girls work on routines from then on.
Solana was a friendly girl and had lots of friends. But everyone has a best friend and Solana's best friend happened to be a prodigy like herself. Coming from the fabled Zorah family certainly helped. The two of them were practically sisters before the bombing and afterwards they were even closer. It helped out some that among the people he had dragged out of that inferno was the then newly minted Admiral Zorah and his wife and son. Since then the Vakarian and Zorah families were rather close. And if the girls weren't at one residence they were at the other. It was rare to see one without the other being somewhere nearby.
As one would come to expect he had a soft spot in his heart for his girls as he called them. It's hard not to when you get to know them. And so he watched them grow up over the years. Or as much as he could with the line of work he was in. He honestly didn't know how his father did it. Especially after his father got promoted up to Executor of all of C-Sec.
Still he was around as much as he could be. He was there when Solana got shipped off to boot camp and she cried and cried and moped for that entire summer. To cheer her up he ended up teaching her some basic self defense that Solana was learning. And he even got her brother Adrian and some of the neighborhood kids in on it as well to make it seem a little more appropriate. Someone his age alone with a girl that age for a few hours a day. He was no nest robber but he also wasn't dead. Any male with a pulse could tell she was already developing into quite the looker. Even at 15 she was quite the beauty with her piercing green eyes, fiery red mane of hair, cute button nose and lovely oval face. Throw in a lithe dancer's body and yeah he didn't need any rumors, no matter how unfounded, floating around.
Now every turian has to serve but not everyone serves in combat arms. Solana did all 8 years of her service in the Special Services branch. This branch, among other things, handled relations with other species. He was pretty sure that his father cashed in every single favor he had to get Solana assigned right back to her old life as an ambassador to the quarians. Officially she was a spreading good will and cultural understanding through the universal medium of dance. Really this meant that her military duty consisted of a physical once every 3 months to make sure she was up to standards. And he just signed off on her evaluations. He made her do the test of course no matter how much she whined about it. They were already bending the rules as far as they would go. He wasn't going to lie for her, even if she was his baby sister. Turians don't lie after all.
Oh, he had retired as a Commander from the turian military, so whoever was keeping track of Solana was more than happy to hand off the paper work to him and take his word on it. Strange yes but it worked. It kept the girls together and happy so things worked out. She even tried taking the physical test a few times with Solana. Failed the first few times until she found out that the entire Vakarian household kept up with the military fitness routine. So she joined in until she could pass the physical test.
She'd been so proud that and truth be told, he was proud of her too. She stopped coming to exercise in the morning after that and he found that he missed her. She was always so bright and cheerful, even if she was completely exhausted from whatever strenuous activities they had just done.
That's when he knew he was in trouble. Naturally he never acted on it for so many reasons. And that was the year the girls decided they were going to start noticing boys. Which meant dressing up. Or over dressing. Or under dressing really. And so much make up. The worst part was he was the go to target to "test" out new looks or lines on.
It all had to do with his proximity to them. Since they spent so much time in each other company they were always together. And it wasn't uncommon for either to have dinner or even spend the night at each other's houses. That is all fine and good. Where this came to affect him was the fault of turian culture. He was fairly sure that had he been human or quarian things would have never happened the way they did.
Turians are rather long lived for a species. Not as long as asari or krogan of course but a 150 years average is rather respectable. Careful family planning helps keep things from getting too out of hand. Though its mostly cultural pressure to make sure one can provide for one's family that keeps population from exploding. Part of that is having massive family housing compounds. It helps the family take care of its members no matter their age or relation to each other. When he was still in the service he would go spend his leave time back on Palaven at the family compound. Where his great grandparents, grandparents, numerous aunts and uncles and cousins all lived. So when he moved to the Citadel he didn't think it odd at all that he moved in with his father and his family. Some of his human colleagues thought it was must be some sort of weird turian punishment.
But that is why he was around the girls in the evenings and on the weekends. Provided he didn't get called in to deal with something. Weekends were terrible. His father and stepmother often left the house which left him alone with the girls. And they were shameless. Well she was. Solana was shameless in that he was pretty sure she encouraged her to be so shameless.
All things considered he thought he handled it as well as such awkward moments could be handled. Thankfully she learned some tact and they were able to strike up a real relationship by the time she was 17. Not in that way. She was still completely illegal according to quarian law. That was just the time she went from being categorized as his sister's best friend to being Tali, a young lady that he knew who happened to spend a lot of time at his residence.
It doesn't seem like much and in all honesty nothing changed between them. But being able to have an actual conversation that had substance to it does change how one views a person. And this change didn't come out of the blue. At 17 quarians start their apprenticeship. For them it's a 5 year program that teaches them the ins and out of a field of study. For Tali it was dancing and aspects such as business management that went along with it.
And at the end of that 5 year process Tali was considered an adult at the age of 22. Truth be told he always suspected that Tali spent her later teenage years at the Vakarian household because they were rather lax about some things. After Solana graduated basic training at the summer of her 15th year, she was an adult in turian society. This meant that she could get drunk or high or do whatever she wanted. Within the confines of the law. And Tali definitely piggybacked off of her best friend.
They weren't overly wild about things. Just smart. The night they got drunk for the first time they had asked him to watch over them. And they had done it on a weekend so they would have recovery time. And so that Tali could sober up before going back to her own house. It was a repeat performance the first time they got high.
And honestly he thought that was the way it ought to be done. The multitude of extra amendments that laws on the Citadel had just concerning humans and various forms of substance consumption were quite tedious. Granted humans had to wait until they had completed a 4 year program to be considered adults and thus could legally consume alcohol or other controlled substances. Salarians were adults after a year while krogan and asari were at the other end of the spectrum with 70 and 100 respectively. But considering the lifespan of the species it all made sense.
Mercifully both cases were pretty tame. Solana turned out to be a loud brash drunk while Tali was a chatty then sleepy one. He was never quite sure what they saw when they were high but they had spent the evening staring at their hands and each other's hair for a solid hour before crashing and sleeping it off. Kept whispering to each other "Do you see?" and "yeah" over and over.
Of course those were isolated incidents. At least to his knowledge neither girl got into any trouble that required C-Sec to show up. But that didn't stop him from seeing her. The year she turned 19 was the year that Adrian turned 17. And Adrian wanted to go into C-Sec. Granted it was a turian institute so Adrian didn't get to have the typical experience of a quarian apprentice. Adrian probably had it worse. Sure once he made it out of the training academy Adrian was placed under his loose supervision. If he worked a case Adrian was one of the officers working that case. That was about as far as the favoritism went. He also pushed Adrian mercilessly as he taught the young quarian what he knew.
And this is where Tali came into the picture. She brought them lunch most days. Sometimes with Solana in tow, sometimes alone she made sure they didn't starve to death. And if they were working late that night she usually showed up with some dinner as well. She'd normally stay and talk to them during those nights. And lecture them about missing meals.
It was routine really. Just like taking her to the C-Sec annual gala was. This too started the year Adrian joined C-Sec. He went stag to the event every year up to that point. In the beginning he went because his father forced him to. As he rose in rank he went because it was good to network and set an example. And because rich older ladies tended to part with their donation money easier if a ruggedly handsome older officer chatted and danced with them. Hey they have to get their funding from somewhere and C-Sec wasn't above pimping him out for an evening. When Tali found out about that she wasn't exactly happy. Solana thought it was hilarious. Until Tali roped her into being Adrian's date that year. He is pretty sure that Tali had to bribe her with a shopping spree. The Vakarian's did alright but the Zorah's were old money in the quarian world.
Between turian freedoms and quarian money, they got into just as much trouble as one would expect. But spirits if they weren't the most beautiful ladies on the dance floor that year. And the year after that. And the year after that. It became a given. It was part of the routine. He still had to do his share of talking to and dancing with donors or their wives but at least he got a few dances with a sparkling young beauty as well.
He's pretty sure that is where it happened. In between dances with donors he would have a break or dance with her. And she had apparently done her research. She knew with donors gave the most and gave him talking points to discuss with them. He'd always been in the running for one of the top "earners" at the gala but that year with her help he took that rather dubious honor. That was also when he found himself taking advice from her. It was always useful and never was unwanted or overbearing.
That too became part of the routine. He found that listening to her usually was a good idea. She usually was right and she didn't pout or sulk if he just did what she wanted him to. And it usually wasn't that hard to do. Granted this time around it was a bit extreme. He had to take a personal day after all. But as she pointed out he never used them until his father was forced to make him use them by C-Sec policy.
And that is how Garrus Vakarian ended up spending a personal day auditioning for some multi species TV show called Mass Effect.