Redemption

GARRUS

He stood by the window, his arm resting on the glass over his head. The city was dark below him. Panting with unrest, full of screams and blood that shouldn't have been spilled. His team had done good work tonight, but it didn't feel like enough. Pissing off the different merc bands was tedious work. They couldn't go too big this soon or they risked unraveling all the work they'd put in thus far. But getting under the skin of the various gangs was slow work. Disrupting meetings. Diverting shipments. Just keeping them on their toes, in simplest terms. It would lure them out eventually, Garrus knew. But the downtime was unbearable.

Though, he couldn't be too upset. They'd performed remarkably well tonight. Near perfect execution, and now that they had a well rounded team it made it even easier. Zara had proved to be all he'd said she'd be. And a few of the members she hadn't won over her first night were shaking her hand afterwards. Sensat pratically tripped over himself raving about her. You were amazing, Zara! I couldn't even follow you, you were just there one second and not the next and BAM just a blue light and BAM again! That was beautiful! Even Weaver had something to say, and Garrus had never heard the guy give a compliment in all the time he'd known him. Nice work, Erash. Good to have you aboard.

Vortash still wasn't convinced, but Garrus wasn't worried. Even if he didn't trust her, he had to be able to see her value in combat. And right now that outweighed any potential ulterior motives she might have had. Though he was still skeptical on that part. Zara Erash didn't fight like she had another agenda. She'd ripped through those Blue Suns thugs full tilt. Fighting with nothing held back, laughing as she did so, pulsing blue and grinning like a woman with nothing to lose.

They were back at the base now, and the rest of the team had joined them. They'd just come back from messing with an Eclipse shipment and had apparently been very successful. The twelve of them crowded the half-finished tower. He could hear muffled laughter a few rooms over. The clinking of glasses. Most of them were celebrating a job well done. But Garrus was too restless to join them. He wanted to keep working. Keep killing, keep progressing towards the end result. He refused to believe his body was incapable of running without rest or food. He wanted to be a machine. Just fight back against Omega's darkness tirelessly until it was completely eradicated. The numbness that came with each job was like a drug to him. Downtime let him think too much.

Something moved from his right. He turned his head, pushing himself off the window a bit, and came face to face with Zara Erash. She was certainly a change from the rest of the faces that made up his squad. Most of them were mean and scarred, ugly as all hell and hardened. Zara was quite the opposite. Her face was lean and clear. Her markings were dark around her eyes and the corners of her mouth and created an arc like stars around her crest. Her lips were full, eyes sleek and skin dual parts silken and impenetrable.

And the way she smiled at him, that slight tilt to her mouth –he'd admit to being a little uneasy in her presence. Scarred ex-military were one thing. Beautiful women were another.

"You've got this whole sexy brooding thing going on over here," she commented easily, leaning up against the window so she was facing him, "You look way too serious for a job well done."

He cleared his throat. He chose to ignore the sexy comment, for that was an adjective so far removed from him he barely had it in his vocabulary. And for the fact that he often found himself tongue tied around women like Zara, and had no game whatsoever. He gestured to the window and the dark picture of Omega outside.

"Just admiring the view," he said.

Zara snorted, following his eyes and looking out at the smog filled expanse too.

"Not much of one," she said.

The two of them were silent for a moment. He stared out into his dark city, watching his own demons stare him right back. He wondered how many demons Zara saw in the cluttered mecca below them.

"So you know how I ended up on Omega, but I never got the chance to ask you," he said, wondering why he was asking.

He didn't make it a point to know his squad's personal history. Most of them had families back home. Some of them were probably using aliases. Garrus never pressed the issue, as long as they were loyal to him and worked for the common goal he didn't much care who they were outside the team. But Zara was a special circumstance. Her history before joining was fairly unorthodox.

Though he wouldn't deny his curiosity was more selfish than anything. He wanted to know more about her just for the sake of knowing. He'd never met anyone like her before. Someone who'd probably seen more death and destruction in her life than he ever would. Someone who tucked her demons away just like he had, and put on a mask to keep anyone from asking about them too. His mask was an alias. A tight lipped professionalism. Hers was all bravado and sensual appeal. But underneath, what were they really?

He watched her tear her eyes away from Omega to look at him. Her lean shoulders shrugged a bit in her dark armor.

"I was already with Eclipse back on Ilium. My unit moved over here to handle shipping tainted eezo when they started needing more manpower to handle the goods," she said.

"And how'd you end up with Eclipse?" he asked.

He couldn't help but feel like she'd been given the short end of the stick in life. Zara had a face and a presence that belonged somewhere other than mercenary work. She might have made a great business woman, or a government official, or something more fulfilling. Something that might have let her sleep at night, or make a family. But she laughed when he asked, as if her history was all it was supposed to be.

"A lot of young asari on Ilium with no money start stripping. I followed the trend, and then stripping wasn't paying the bills so I started having sex for money too. And that line of work is only bearable with a lot of chemicals pumped in your system so by the time I was seventy I was hooked on red sand," she explained, her finger starting to draw invisible patterns on the window, "One of my clients ran with Eclipse and he said he could get me in if I wanted. I was broke from the drugs and pretty damn pathetic otherwise at that point so Eclipse sounded pretty good. Money, training, expensive equipment? And all I had to do was kill someone to get a uniform."

She laughed bitterly. Garrus watched as her armor seemed to unfurl from her, showing an angry woman who had been wronged underneath. But she was stronger than most. She made no apologies for her life before this. That was something he could admire. Turian values were similar.

"You haven't had the easiest life," he commented, unsure of what else to say.

Her eyes stared straight out the window.

"I did what I had to, to survive," she said, "I didn't like killing but I didn't like the idea of dying before I hit ninety either."

She turned back to him and reached forward, brushing a what looked like a spec of dry blood off his armor. His mandibles flexed in response. He felt as though he'd been burned through his hardsuit.

"I did a lot of really shitty things to get by," she said and then flickered a smile at him, "But that's why I'm here now. I'm ready to try and make up for that. And you've got my golden ticket to redemption."

He couldn't stop himself from asking, "You really think it'll all even out?"

She didn't seem perturbed by his asking. She shook her head.

"Not even a little."

Someone broke a glass in the next room and a chorus of laughter followed. Zara turned her head over her shoulder, smirking a little. Then she looked back at Garrus.

"But doing the right thing, protecting innocents, taking out the bad guys -it'll help me move on."

Move on. The words hit low, diving straight through his chest and cracking open against his insides. He felt the weight of it bleeding through him and was struck by how similar they were. They'd come from completely different places. And yet here, standing by the window of a broken city, they longed for the same things. An impossible, unreachable peace after lives spent fighting.

"I'm glad you're here," he said suddenly.

He surprised himself, and seemed to surprise Zara as well. Her eyes widened a little and a grin touched her dark mouth. As if she'd caught him looking at Fornax in the bathroom or something.

"Are you?" she asked slyly, and Garrus tried to brace himself for whatever was about to come out of her mouth next.

Thankfully, a rough voice saved him.

"Erash! Get over here and take a shot, rookie!"

The two of them turned from the window to see Butler. Human, mid-thirties with a shock of blond hair. He used to be a security consultant here on Omega before he got sick of playing by the rules. Garrus had met his wife when he recruited him. Nalah. Sweet woman, even sweeter for letting her husband go off with Garrus and understanding his reasoning.

"We'll talk later," Zara promised him, her hand drifting across his shoulder as she peeled herself from the window and made her way over to the small group drinking around the table.

Garrus watched her go. Butler slapped a hand on her shoulder and lead her over to the group that chorused with praise as she arrived. He turned back to the window. Omega churned under him with Zara's voice in his head.

Move on.

He wondered if she believed it.