Disclaimer: I do not own or have any rights to representation of Bioware, EA Games and any other mass media trademarks within this fiction. Characters belong to Bioware. All is represented within the context of private entertainment.

Notes: This story takes place after the events in Mass Effect 3 (it contains obvious spoilers). It features Solana Vakarian, but I only played the games, I didn't read the novels and such. Therefore I'm making things up, as needed, about the turians and about Garrus' family. If I'm wrong, bear with me. Poetic license.

I'm also taking in consideration the events in my story Symphony of grief and hope, but there's no need to read that story to understand this one. Basically, most of Palaven was evacuated, population transported to other turian worlds, and the reapers were defeated a few months ago. Garrus is on Earth. Mass relays were destroyed because of some sort of dark energy configuration that also disintegrated the reapers, and the starchild was Shepard's hallucination.

Please, if you notice a grammatical error or misuse of words, let me know so I can look into it. English is not my first language.

Solana Vakarian didn't have a good night's sleep. She sat on her bed, glad that she didn't share it with anybody anymore, because she was in such a bad mood that she was ready for a fight. If she had been still in a relationship, she would have ruined it that day. She growled for a while, and doing that soothed her enough to start her day. Sort of.

Slowly, she got rid of her sleeping clothes and started to get dressed for her job. Her eyes once again noticed the scars on her body, product of the war. She and her father had barely escaped alive from Palaven, when the planet had to be evacuated from the reaper's attack. She hated those scars with a sentiment, but most of all, she hated Chatti. She didn't think of it as a real turian colony, with all the green lakes and the green mountains. How could a turian live on a world where there was water and vegetation everywhere eyes landed at?

She finished dressing, had some breakfast, and headed out for the power plant she worked at. She was the engineer responsible for controlling the temperature of the core, during her work hours. Basically, if she messed up, the whole place could explode, so she liked to think of herself as the woman keeping everybody alive on her shift, back on Palaven. On Chatti, however, she wished sometimes the whole thing would burst into flames and kill her, just that she didn't have to look at so much green for another day.

Solana entered the plant. She murmured some greetings to other workers and headed straight to her workstation, relieving Dimas Tamrek, the engineer responsible for the previous shift. Dimas had a big crush on her, she could tell, and she wasn't even slightly interested. He always stayed for a while, sitting in the next chair, as she took control of her station. Every day he tried to make conversation, and she tried to ignore him.

The room she worked at was spacious, with multiple terminals, screens, and a big shielded window from which she could see the core. There were also windows on the other three walls, to the adjacent rooms and the corridor. As many as ten people could work there, but normally there were one or two. The engineer Vakarian ran some standard checks, yellow light illuminating her face, oblivious to the workers rushing from one place to another at the corridor behind her.

She was beautiful and she knew it, but she didn't care. Her fringe was the envy of females and a topic of conversation among males. Her eyes were sharp, vibrant, and her waist inspirited crazy desires. She did nothing to enhance her natural attractiveness, however she kept receiving all kind of invitations. She wondered sometimes if this men would be so insistent if they could see the scars concealed by her clothes.

All the tests gave normal results, and Solana sat back on her chair, ready for another day of work checking at the screens. She had totally forgotten about Dimas, until he spoke from the next chair.

"Have you slept well?" he asked. She didn't know if his voice was inherently irritating, or if only she found it to be so.

"No." she answered bluntly, in a tone deterring further conversation.

"That's so bad." he commented. After a little while, he asked, "So, how have you been?"

"Same as yesterday, and the day before that." she practically barked at him.

"Hey! Not in a good mood?" asked Dimas, and she wanted to punch him, but she refrained. "What happened? Have you heard from your brother, is that it?"

"Don't. Mention. Garrus. Again." she was ready to jump at his throat. Why did he have to make things so difficult? She knew he had been born on Chatti, yet another reason to hate the colony.

"Why not?" Dimas insisted. "He's your only brother, isn't he? What he did on Earth was remarkable, working with Commander Shepard. Although working is not all that he did with her, if we are to believe the rumors..." he chuckled.

Solana jumped on her seat, and grabbed Dimas by the collar. Her attitude was menacing, her light blue eyes glaring in outrage. Dimas recoiled in his seat, raising both his hands in an attempt to placate her. "Enough." she growled. She sat back on her seat, staring at him. "Yes, my brother is with the human woman. He also took a rocket to his face, and it obviously affected his judgment, because I don't see how else would a turian even think of it."

"Well, she's not any human woman..." muttered Dimas.

"No, she's a spectre, which is worse." she glimpsed at a screen and then turned her eyes back to Dimas. "Spectres are bad news as it is, doing what they think it's right in the best case, but with almost no control, and going rogue like Saren in the worst-case scenario."

"Spectres are necessary." he remarked.

"Perhaps. Still I don't see why my own brother have to be with one." she turned to look at the screen. "Aren't you tired? Don't you want to go to your home?"

"What for?" Dimas asked, shaking his head. "Nobody's waiting for me in there. I need a good woman to keep me company..."

"Then go find her instead of wasting time here." she retorted.

There wasn't much he could say or do after those words. He murmured some goodbye words, and left. Solana sighed in relief once she was alone in the room. She really missed Palaven, she missed her friends and companions. She missed her mother, who died on a salarian medical facility when the reapers attacked. The irony of life was that she was getting better from her condition. There was no known cure for Corpalis Syndrome, but the salarians had selected her for a clinical trial. They offer had solved her concerns about the high cost of her mother's treatment, since the trial was of course free, and had very promising results. Solana also missed her ex boyfriend. He had survived the reapers, only to cheat on her two months after the war ended. And lastly, she missed Garrus.

She reached for a terminal and quickly wrote:

"Garrus,

"I miss you, you big fool. Contact your sister. And lose the human woman, you can do better than that. You really aren't that desperate for company, are you? Even if you were, I'm sure there are some desirable turian women stranded on Earth, with our fleet.

"Love,

"Sol"

She sent the letter, knowing it would take some time until the operators of the quantum entanglement communicators would deliver it to Earth, but that was the only available form of off-world communication after the relays were gone.

Solana sighed. She had a long day of work ahead of her, and nothing to lift her mood for the time being.