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Garrus reached for the bottle of brandy, upending it over his glass and letting the last of the liquid trickle out, making sure to get the last drop. The bottle had been full not that long ago, he remembered somewhat hazily. He had waited until his father left for the base and then started drinking, and here it was the middle of the day and the bottle was empty. Was it the middle of the day? He looked up at the window, squinting, to determine the light level. Yes. Time was passing at its usual glacial pace. And to think he used to complain that the days were long on the Normandy.

Thinking of the Normandy had been a mistake. He tossed the empty bottle behind him and drained the last of the brandy from the glass. He considered tossing it, too, but he might want it later. He would want it later, who was he kidding? Massive quantities of alcohol was the only way he was able to close his eyes and not see the flaming pieces of the Normandy falling all around him, not hear the squealing scream of metal coming apart—not to mention the shrieks of the wounded. And, worse, the emptiness where the voice of Shepard should have been.

He had stuck it out with the rest of the survivors for a little while after the crash, but it had become clear very quickly that the Alliance wanted them all gone. The Alliance crew had been reassigned to different ships within weeks of the crash, and the aliens had been politely but firmly provided with a final deposit of credits into their accounts and sent on their way. Liara was already gone by that point, having received a mysterious message of some kind that had distressed and excited her in equal measure, as far as Garrus could tell. Credits in hand, and without Shepard to hold them, Tali had gone back to the Migrant Fleet and Wrex had returned to Tuchanka. Which had left Garrus at loose ends. Kaidan had been reassigned, too, and Garrus hadn't minded that. For all that he and the lieutenant were friends … Kaidan's vocal grief over the loss of Shepard had rankled within Garrus. Graceless and unbecoming as it was to be jealous that someone else had a better right to mourn the dead, that was exactly how Garrus had felt. It had been a relief to have some separation from the way Kaidan had carried his broken heart on his sleeve.

He had tried C-Sec briefly, but the Citadel had changed so after Sovereign's attack that it no longer felt like home—and C-Sec hadn't changed enough. The red tape was still thick enough to trap a person for the rest of his life. No, C-Sec was not going to be a long-term solution. Or a short-term one, for that matter. So he'd left.

Without a better option, he had come home to Palaven, where he was staying with his father. He had spent a week drinking his way through the days and in the evenings doing an elaborate dance to keep his father from signing him up in the turian military.

Shepard would understand that, wouldn't she? he thought. She knew he had never been meant for the regimentation of military life. She had, though—or she had tried to be. He'd never met anyone who worked harder at being the best soldier they could be … and since he was a turian, that was saying something.

Tapping his omni-tool, he pulled up the extranet, typing in Shepard's name. He scrolled through the news reports about her death, and the features on her battle in the Citadel. They were already whitewashing that, blaming Saren as a rogue Spectre allied with the geth. All trace of Sovereign, any mention of the Reapers, had been thoroughly scrubbed.

There it was. Shepard's official bio, or as official as it got unless you intended to hack the Alliance database. Zia Shepard. Military kid. Dragged from base to base all her life. There was a fair amount about her mother, Hannah Shepard, but nothing about a father. Garrus wondered about that. Had he been left behind in the course of Shepard Senior's career? Been killed in the line of duty? Shepard had been a small child during the First Contact War, so it was possible. Garrus's own mother had died young, shortly after the birth of his sister. He had been raised by his father, aided by a succession of nursemaids. He wondered how it had been for Shepard, raised only by her mother. He thought about asking her.

The reality that he could never ask Shepard a question again struck him like a blow to the chest. He gasped audibly with the impact, his throat closing and aching. Automatically he reached for the glass, getting it halfway to his mouth before he realized it was empty, no relief or comfort to be found inside it. Staring at the bottom of the glass, discolored from the brandy, Garrus asked himself if this was really how he wanted to respond to her death, if she would approve of how he was spending his days.

She wouldn't, he was sure. He could practically hear her now. "Get it together, Vakarian."

"I'm trying," he muttered to the shade of her.

Pulling up the extranet picture of her mother, who looked just like an older Shepard with hair, he wondered if she also had a similar voice. His finger hovered over the vidchat button. Maybe he should call her mother, tell her …

Tell her what? That he had been Zia's shipmate? That she had occasionally confided in him? That he found himself utterly lost without her? That he had no right to feel that way, because she had loved someone else? He could only imagine Hannah Shepard's reaction to that amount of unnecessary soul-baring.

Clearing the browser, Garrus moved his hand away from the omni-tool. It had been a foolish impulse to use it in the first place. Zia was gone; all the extranet entries in the galaxy couldn't change that. Neither could bottle after bottle of turian brandy. Soon he was going to have to make a decision about what to do with his life, how to move forward.

He had never seriously considered the turian military; the past week had convinced him that he couldn't live with his father, and being under his father's command would be a nightmare. He could go back to C-Sec, try it one more time. Probably he should. He had been good at the work, even if he hadn't enjoyed the protocols and procedures. Shepard had been all about the rules and regulations, the trappings of the military lifestyle. Maybe he owed it to her to give it another chance.

Aimlessly, he hit a few buttons on the omni-tool, ending up on a newsvid site, watching Shepard's old friend Emily Wong report on some kind of gang activity on Omega.

Omega? Garrus sat up straight, forcing himself to pay attention to the vid. Omega. Haven of criminals, hotbed of gang activity. An enterprising turian could do some good work cleaning up there, especially if he emulated his former commander and gathered a good team around himself. And there would be no one hovering over his shoulder quoting chapter and verse.

Clicking off the omni-tool, he got to his feet, waiting until his knees stopped wobbling beneath him. He would go to Omega, and he would make a difference, and he would forget the Normandy and Zia Shepard … someday.