The throne of clan Urdnot is not comfortable. Everything on Tuchunka is rugged and hard, including it's occupants. Of course the carvers were trying to make it impressive, not soft, but some days Wrex feel that they made a special effort to craft a throne that grated with every movement.
Today, trying to settle back into it and just think on everything that has happened, it seems to snag against his armour more than ever.
The Krogan called Grunt has sharp blue eyes, in a shade Wrex has never seen before. When he meets them, hard, as he must, they answer with an openness that unnerves him. Nothing is hidden in them. He speaks too without evasion or any attempt at deceit.
It is in Krogan nature to hide weakness, behind armour and weapons for preference but also with words when needed. Wrex wonders if the boy is just too young to understand that, but now, with the stone of his broken world biting into him, the thought comes that maybe he just has no weakness to hide.
Shepard was with him. He wasn't overly surprised by that; warriors like Shepard don't die choking in the space around some pointless rock. Krogan are not much for introspection and symbolism, but he remembers that Shepard was there when his species lost their hope for the second time. The Commander rose from the ashes, and on returning brought to this world a Krogan unlike any other.
The child may not be salvation, but he has a path. You only had to look at him to see that. His clan cannot afford to let any chance slip though the net if they are to survive, to build again, but he's uneasy. Their hidden aggressor was born in a laboratory, and this boy is no different. Part of him wants to lash out and crack his skull now, before it's too late, and although he knows this response bleeds from the same instincts that are dooming his race better than crawling microbes ever could, they are also what has kept him alive. To ignore them would be suicide, to indulge them could be fatal.
He's an artificial construction, and what is so threatening isn't that he isn't Krogan, but that he's too Krogan. The movements are too familiar, the scales too perfect and unmarred, the perfect pitch of the growl is uncanny in it's flawlessness. The fact that he can fight, can speak, can think like a Krogan only makes it worse, because who knows what thoughts could be whispering behind those eyes, eyes that have no hate or spite because what being can feel hatred towards the dirt? These are things between equals, and he has no equals.
When Grunt first arrived his every movement betrayed his contempt for the sorry state his people were in, his contempt for them. When he returned from his trial, word of the thresher maw bringing a grim smile to the leader's face, he could see it. He could see the glory in the wreckage, in the rubble and corpses.
And he's smart too, and fuck knows Wrex needs a few more around that can think long enough to mind where they point their guns.
The females talk about him often, and that means that he's secure. And Wrex likes him, liked him from the moment he saw him, instincts be damned. For all that he has the clan in an upheaval, he hopes Shepard doesn't get him killed on this strange mission.
He leans back in the rough throne, digging his claws into the grooves left by hundreds of leaders before.