With stern eyes and a fierce moustache, his father's face filled the screen like a propaganda broadcast from an old-time totalitarian regime.

"Kaidan, my boy," he began, "I see this Yeden Brime and I recognize it immediately, immediately I know what is happenink. You maybe can't say because is classified. But I know. Yeveryone sees turian Spectre and geth, but dey don't know what is really. Salarians." His huge black eyebrows moved closer together than they already were. "Salarians behind dis!"

Just offscreen his mother said, "Peter, honey, can you ask Kaidan what he wants me to do with his planets? I could hang them in Nina's room?"

"Dad," came Elena's voice from the background. "Nobody said they saw any salarians.."

"Nobody NEVER sees salarians! Dey HIDE!" The huge onscreen face turned as his father rebuked his sister. Then he stared piercingly again. Peter Alenko always stood too close to the camera in his strange transmissions, so he could talk right into it. "Dey hide," he whispered fiercely. "Dey make tings happen. Yalways plottingk, never shleep. You have to watch yeverywhere."

"I'm cleaning out his old room for Elena."

"I YAM TALKING TO MY SON. HE IS MY YONLY SON. DO I GET FIVE MINUTE TO TALK TO HIM? MY FLESH AND BLOOD?"

( "God, mom, I'll do it." "Oh, honey, no brothers want their little sisters to go through their things." "I've already stolen all his Star Wars stuff worth stealing." )

"Salarians WERY clever, Kaidan. You have to be smart boy, huh?" The huge face suddenly was pained: his father's mouth turned into a wobbly line, and his stern dark eyes became shiny. Even the moustache seemed to droop. "My boy is so smart, dey won't get you. Oh malchik! You be careful!!"

The huge face receded, and you could see that in reality, when he stood away, he was a scrawny, sinewy man, a full head shorter than his wife and daughter. He looked bittersweet and dignified, wearing his typical suit and tie with the cufflinks a grateful client had bestowed him. His whole posture was that of brave sadness and longing for his malchik. He always dressed up for vidmails, which was always weird, considering that he normally dressed in shorts and Hawaiian-type prints, no matter how bitter the Vancouver cold. Yet another mystery in the bizarre enigma that was Peter Alenko, infiltrator, captain (ret).

He seemed about to give up his time to his wife or his daughter, but there came a second wind, and fervently, he rushed back up to give his last advice: "Remember, dey come for you when you are tired. Get stims, yand a good shtrong knife for to cut dem necks open. Hyold on tight when you grab dem, " -- his father grabbed an imaginary alien in a headlock to demonstrate-- " salarians WERY shlippery!!"

"Hell yeah, Kaidan'll show those nasty salarians!" Elena had apparently revised her opinion and was now on the Kill Salarians bandwagon.

"I thought it was turians?" His mother looked puzzled. She was holding a very small boy's sweater in atrocious colors and a design that looked like it came out of the 70s... and not the 2170's, either. "Kaidan?" She glanced off screen for help, like a deer in headlights. "Is it still on? Do I just talk into it?"

"Yes, mom." Elena peeked into view, grinned, and waved. She was a tall girl with a thick head of dark hair, like him and mom. But it was clear who she got the eyebrows from. "Hey Kaidan. I'm moving back in with the spawn, I've got a job at the university now. So we're cannibalizing your stuff."

"Kaidan, baby? I'm cleaning out your old room for Elena, and, well, you know I didn't move anything so it's still how you left it, but. Well it's just that I don't know what to do with your things, and I know you're busy now, but.. " She was holding onto that awful sweater with an anxious grip.

Kaidan thought that she could just hand his stuff down to Van, he'd grow into it, probably. But his love for his nephew would prevent him from suggesting such a dire fate. Even if those kids made him watch The Lion King every time that he visited. All twelve of them. Back to back. He knew every word to every song, every line in every scene, and the power of love kept him stoic whenever they would put the disc in and that terrible red sun would dawn on the Serengeti one more time.

"I hate to throw out a perfectly g-good sweater, maybe I could pack it away." Mom was-- oh no, mom-- she was starting to choke up, now, and she was struggling to say, "Do you think.. does this still fit? No? My baby's got so big!" She wiped her eye on the sleeve. "What should I do? Here look at it." She held out the awful sweater and then put it up to the screen, accidentally blacking out the console. Aw, mom..

"Oh my God," Williams breathed.

"Yeah," Kaidan said. Then he realized Chief Williams was standing nearby. "Chief," he said, "how long have you been there?"

"I d'know, LT, I came to talk to you and then I saw that moustache, and I got pulled in." Williams made her dark eyes very big, as though she were completely spellbound.

Kaidan tried to hide his smile, clicking off the transmission and turning to face her, going into lieutenant mode. "What can I help you with, Williams?"

"I have no idea. I completely forgot now." She looked weary but in good spirits. She had that glow of someone who feels in their very being that they are in the right place at the right time, content with their lot in life. Although tragedy brought her aboard the ship, she clearly loved being on the Normandy and it seemed her place was always here. He liked that.

"I'm sorry I missed all the fun," Kaidan told her. "What was it like, the prothean ruin?"

"You would have never known how old it was, since it was really well put together. I couldn't believe their technology still works.. but well, I guess it isn't so surprising if we're still using their mass relays all the time. But mostly it was dark and full of killer robots. A shame about it being destroyed, though."

Kaidan nodded. "Well, it was bound to happen some day. The protheans built their city in an area of concentrated volcanic activity." He was sorry for the loss of the ruin, but it wasn't fair of the Council to complain about that to Shepard, not when they had previously left it there to be abandoned all this time. Surely they could have raised funds or tasked people to do something about it before the inevitable.

"Sorry you didn't get to come along. I tried to convince him, but commander hates you." Her light and teasing voice shifted then into a quiet and firmer tone, down to business. "I don't mean it like that, lieutenant. I don't know why, but it can't be anything personal if he doesn't even know you. I wanted to ask him about it but the turian was with us."

After a moment of consideration, Kaidan told her, "Shepard's the commander and he makes the decisions. Garrus was a good choice for the mission. He's an excellent shot, and his training would have come in handy if there'd been asari commandos. Apparently, he's had some experience in subduing biotics."

Williams looked unconvinced of his non-answer, but she didn't press. He wasn't going to discuss the commander behind his back, even though-- and especially because-- he had wanted to go down to Therum on the mission.

"At least it wasn't a trap," he said, then. So many bad things could have happened, so many destructive scenarios, that it was a relief to just find the asari scientist a victim of her own foolishness. However well-intentioned.

Williams smirked. "Too soon to tell. I'm going to go get a coffee.. I've got CIC duty in a minute. I'm so glad to just stand there for an hour, really, 'cause my butt is so sore from the Mako. I'll never sit down again."

This made him laugh. "Talk to you later, chief," he said, and then an afterthought came to him, as he glanced back at his workstation. "Williams, well, I guess you were able to get a word to your family? That you survived Eden Prime?"

"Yeah, as soon as I was able. I was kind of worried I didn't hear anything back.. I wondered if it got through, you know? But my family just knew I was fine. They weren't worried."

"I get this feeling that it would take a lot more than that to kill you, Williams. You're stubborn."

"Absolutely, LT." She drifted away with a smile, and then stopped, letting out a snort. "You want to know how concerned they were? My sisters were like, 'oh, so you're on that new ship now, that's cool, you know Shepard and that Kaidan guy are like oh my God sooooo cute, like seriously.'"

Before he even realized he was, Kaidan laughed a little, blushing; there was just something about her tone of voice and her general way of being, just that frank, blunt tomboyishness that made her easy to talk to and work with.

"I know. Well, go me. Livin' the dream." She rolled her eyes. "See ya, LT, I gotta get topside. You know, I like looking at the galaxy map, especially when a nebula reflects off the XO's head. It's amazing..." She made a starburst with her hands as she walked away.

Kaidan watched her go, and shook his head with a smile. Then he braved the rest of the transmission.

*******

Navigator Pressly watched Shepard up on the stand. He was gazing at the galaxy map and Pressly wondered what he was thinking; the past few days had taught him that he knew less about Shepard than any of his former commanding officers. It was not only that he was so young-- he could be Pressly's son-- but that he was so private also, and that his very nature was shrouded in secrecy. Biotic powers and abilities-- which were only the stuff of vids and legends when Pressly was a boy, and now reality-- were relegated to a one-line description in his brief profile, and read 'Satisfactory completion of biotic training, class designation 'adept'".

Torfan was only a footnote: 'significant use of powers against overwhelming enemy numbers.' Pressly wished he hadn't been so eager to discuss Torfan with the commander, but Shepard needed to know that he was on his side and that he had also fought the batarians. The commander had reacted poorly and Pressly was trying to work his way back into Shepard's good graces; it appeared that the young man had an interest in far-off planets and systems, and so now Pressly was sharing the sights of distant worlds and their readouts and trivia. With their proper names. Shepard sometimes got mixed up and would use the turian word for them.

Right now, Shepard was returning to the planet Klendagon, which Pressly had shared with him earlier. He was spinning it slowly, this way and that way. Pressly supposed that the huge trench on its surface was the point of interest for the commander. It was not believed to be a natural feature.

"They think a weapon did this?" Shepard asked him. He was running a fingertip across the holo of the world.

"Yes, sir, it's what the salarians believe, at least. They say the trench came from a glancing blow from some mass accelerator. Can you imagine?"

Shepard was closing and opening his hand over the world. "I wonder what they were really aiming at." Pressly surreptitiously sped the orbital scaling, and Klendagon wooshed out of the commander's reach just before Pressly paused it again. This appeared to amuse him. Chief Williams was watching them with quiet interest and curiosity; she was on post here for the moment, and Pressly was starting to like her. A good kid, a good soldier. Shame about the unfortunate name. Pressly would have changed it if it was him.

"Don't know, commander. There's no reports of damage on any other object in that system. Maybe they obliterated it completely."

"Like Alderaan," Shepard murmured, and Pressly wondered if he should know the word. Was that another turian name? Poor kid-- thrown to the turians like that. God knows what else they put in his head. It just wasn't right.

Melody Xuan was looking up from her console with a slight smile.

"The thing I wonder about," Pressly ventured, as he liked things like this, "is how they built a weapon that big in the first place. And where they built it. Did they tow it in from out of the system, or did they build it there? And why?" He'd had conversations like this with Adams, but there was a difference between Shepard and Adams on this matter; Shepard would wonder right along with you, whereas Adams would give an exhaustive lecture on physics and astronomy, eventually meandering into obscure and baffling topics.

"Maybe it was just one of the guns on a ship," Shepard was saying. "A huge ship. And no one ever needs a reason to destroy anything."

"Too true," Pressly murmured.

Moreau's voice was coming over the comm system now. "Commander, I've got the admiral. I had to pull him out of a meeting, but, anyway, you want me to patch him through?"

"Do it."

"Well, Shepard. It's Hackett."

Shepard straightened. "Sir, I'm in the Knossos System. We have Benezia's daughter and we're bringing her back to the Citadel. C-Sec can deal with her, she's their problem now."

"I suppose that's sensible. Someone will meet you there to brief you on the geth situation. We're getting an increased amount of geth activity on the edge of Alliance space."

"Saren."

"I don't know how he does it. I thought the quarians couldn't even control the geth."

"I think they're following him because they want to. They believe he'll bring back the Reapers.. or turn them into Reapers."

Hackett sighed. "They're machines. I don't think they believe anything, but maybe Saren has found some kind of device."

Shepard went on, saying, "I'm in a bind. I need a Prothean expert for this mission."

"I suppose you're right. With these incoming reports, there's no telling where he could be. There's a lot of geth activity, and we're talking planets, systems. If it's Protheans that Saren's interested in, we could bring someone from the Mars team out of retirement. You know they'd do it in a heartbeat. Someone we could trust."

Pressly had entertained similar ideas, and Melody Xuan had pulled up records and research with mixed results.

"I had some crew look into it already," Shepard said. "They're Prothean experts.. on the Martian ruins. For the rest of the galaxy I need an alien."

"I suppose you could find a salarian or something.. "

"They live too short a time to have personally visited even a tenth of the places we need to know about. And I don't know if I trust salarians."

"Liara T'soni is Benezia's daughter."

"I know. But if I'm alone on this.. I don't see any better options."

"Maybe you could talk to the Council yourself. Not Udina. I don't see what the hell else they're doing with their fleets. Sure as hell not doing anything about the batarians. They could spare a couple ships."

"That's what I want to do. I'm going to go to the asari councillor.. I want to mind-meld with her."

"Hell, kid, who doesn't?"

"I meant.. I want to share the vision with her. From the Prothean beacon." Until now, Shepard hadn't mentioned a word of this plan. Pressly blinked up at the commander, watching his face, but he saw by that moody and serious cast that Shepard was serious. "Then she'll understand the gravity of the situation. Saren is after some Prothean superweapon."

Hackett sighed. "I don't know. I don't like it."

"I've already thought about that, but I don't think she can read my mind and find anything sensitive about the Alliance.. or our biotics program. But that's part of why I called. There have to be some experts or studies on asari-human telepathy. I won't do if it they say it's a bad idea. I wouldn't do anything to hurt the Alliance."

"Shepard, do you really think it would convince her? And the others?"

"I think they'll have to agree once I show them the proof. "

"Shepard, that won't be good enough for them. They'll just say you're crazy, seeing things."

"I don't see things."

The admiral sighed a second time, and in a flat-out, no-bullshit tone, said, "Johnny, you once testified under oath that your imaginary friend helped you massacre the batarians."

Oh, dear lord, Pressly thought. Hackett doesn't know Shepard's in the turian CIC. Everybody heard that.

Shepard looked as stunned as everyone else, though he recovered more quickly and made his face blank. "That's not fair, admiral," he said quietly, letting go of the riser like it had suddenly turned red hot.

"You're on the record. But no, maybe not fair, but that's how people see you and they'll use it. The Council is going to maintain the status quo and it's an easy excuse for them not to believe you. You're in no place to try to convince anybody on any fuzzy, mystical grounds. You can't win that way."

The CIC and nearer bridge crew were all suddenly absorbed in their duties, and Pressly took some minor consolation that they appeared more embarrassed for Shepard than afraid, given this wild revelation. Williams looked angry, all of a sudden, defensive.

The commander didn't answer right away; he kept looking into the galaxy map, looking behind him. Pressly wasn't sure he wanted Hackett to know that he wasn't speaking to Shepard alone, but he had to say something to defend his commander. But Shepard saw him start to speak and silenced him with a sudden 'don't-you-fucking-dare' kind of look.

"Well, then," Shepard said, snapping back into it. Shepard looked like he was more determined to be more mad about the whole thing than miserable, though he tried to keep the anger out of his voice. He didn't want Hackett to know. "What do you think I should do-- sir?"

"I don't doubt the beacon contained some kind of information, and, shoot, I'll even believe Alenko's report that you were transmitted this information somehow. You can use that as a basis of where to look for Saren next, but remember what your goal is-- and it isn't an obscure point of ancient Prothean mythology. It's how Saren controls the geth. The geth are the problem here, not Prothean fairytales. When you talk to the Council, concentrate your arguments on what we know for certain."

"I still want my chance with the asari councillor. I won't just give up without trying." Shepard's voice took on a bitter tone, then. Williams gave a subtle nod of encouragement from the sidelines, though he couldn't have seen it.

"I'll have some experts rounded up and see what they have to say. But I'm making no promises. I don't want her looking into you, or any of this weird, mystical crap, if the risk outweighs any gain. And I've made clear what I think about this."

"There's another thing, sir."

"Yes?" Hackett sounded weary.

"I want the final report on the storming of Torfan. I want it sent to my executive officer and my chief medical officer. I want my crew to read it, so that they know that I didn't get my men killed, and that anything strange I said or did was the result of a bad amplifier interacting with my nervous system. I want them to know that I was fully cleared of any wrongdoing. I want them to know that my decisions are sound."

"Shepard. That was five years ago. If we thought you were honestly insane, would you have been promoted? Rumors and bad press are one thing.. but command decisions are another thing entirely. I wouldn't worry about it."

"No worries here, sir. I'm sure me and my imaginary friends could stave off a mutiny." Shepard smiled now, a cruel smile, and he was visibly fraying, losing his temper. "This is a small ship, Hackett. In deep space. Rumors and bad press are stronger than command decisions. I don't want fear and suspicion getting in the way of all those Prothean fairytales I wanted to investigate."

"Shepard."

"I was thinking after we get through nuking the Reapers, we could move on to Rumplestiltskin and Pinocchio. Because y'know what? Fuck Pinocchio in his lying puppet ass. He'll never be a real boy if I have any goddamn thing to say about it."

"Very well, Shepard. I'll have Miss Woods send along an abridged copy of the final report."

"Appreciated."

"Hackett out."

"So sorry about that, sir," Pressly said to Shepard. "You know, it's my fault, I should have said something."

The commander made a 'forget about it' motion with his hand as he stepped down from the riser.

"About the asari councillor," Pressly said, then, awkwardly.

"Pressly, are you an expert on alien telepathy?"

"No, sir, but--"

"Then I don't want to hear it right now."

Pressly nodded a 'yes, sir' and let out a sigh. He thought everything had been going well enough before this. He watched Shepard go, Chief Williams peeling away to follow him immediately. She looked ashamed with herself, as ashamed as Pressly felt for not saying anything earlier. But what could he do?

"Welllp," Moreau's voice came over the CIC. "That wasn't awkward at all."

Pressly was going to have to say something to the crew, then. Great.

*******

"Don't you have work to do, Williams?"

Shepard was in no mood for any sympathy, or to be followed. The damn ship was small enough as it was.

"Yeah, but, wait, commander," she was saying, and she added, "please," in kind of a quieter undertone, as though this was just as embarrassing for her as well. "Look, that wasn't fair.. your vision was real and it's important." Her quiet tone became stronger, as though she felt now that she should be angry for him, instead of embarrassed. "If your amp made you act weird back on Torfan, well, I don't see what's so hard to understand. Hello? It plugs right into your brain. You're lucky you lived."

"Hackett's got a blunt way of saying things. I've always appreciated that. Somebody like Kahoku would never say something like that to my face. And he makes my point for me. People think I'm insane. I need to prove these so-called visions are actual pieces of information from a Prothean computer. They need to understand that this is more than just Saren. It's important and involves everyone."

"I don't really think the aliens are gonna do anything to help us, anyway, commander-- I just really don't. Not the turians, at least."

"Know a lot about turians, chief?"

"No.. but I know about politicians."

"Well what the fuck else can I do? Tell me, Williams. If the Alliance and the Council won't help me.. who will? Who will I rely on? The daughter of the person who help destroy Eden Prime? Like I can trust her to put her finger on the map? She'll fuck us over and two hundred years from now, no, not even a hundred, maybe like twenty years, when this all blows over, her and her mom will be laughing and drinking cosmos like this all never happened. I should go down there and make sure that bitch never wakes up."

"You've got us, sir. You've got the Normandy."

"Do I really? For how long? Dismissed, chief."

He saw a flash of something across her face, and she lingered a second under his hard stare before she gave a salute and faded away. He made for his quarters with an irritated growl, hitting the wall twice on the way there, stopping only because people were in the mess. They stood immediately with an 'officer on deck', and he just hissed by.

Williams didn't deserve that. Hell, she was about the only person, aside from Adams, who didn't care about his reputation. Alenko, maybe, but he couldn't figure out Alenko and biotics were different, not to be trusted. He'd gone through a lot of trouble to make her stay permanent. Hell, he was still going through it. Why wouldn't they just accept her fucking transfer?

And shit, he just trashed her, but he didn't want her sympathy. If he just played it cool and hard, like it wasn't a big deal, then it wasn't a big deal. Soldiers didn't get hurt feelings. And everything Hackett said was true enough.

As soon as the cabin doors slid shut behind him, Shepard whipped one of the chairs up in the air and bowled it into a table. Then he flipped it up, and slung it around. His bag slid off the surface and went open everywhere, its contents flying. He loved the dark blue and black blur of dark energy, seeing it, knowing it was his will. Chairs and tables was nothing so grimly satisfying as watching the physical manifestation of his rage.

Then he saw that he had ripped an old paperback Dune out of his bag, and the bookmark had (shit!) slipped right out of it. Fucking great, he was going to have to slog through all that again, and like he'd have time before the Reapers came and wiped everyone out.

Shepard was pissed.

How in the hell was he going to find Saren, if they didn't come through for him? Even if they had him down to a planet, then what? It was as though somebody had handed him a map of Earth and told him to find some guy.. somewhere. The Great Wall? The Chartres Cathedral? Maybe a station on Antarctica. Or a koi pond on Hokkaido. A forest clearing in Germany. A McDonald's bathroom. A cornfield. The Sahara. A baseball diamond of an American high school.. in some state, somewhere. Christ, that was only one planet as an example, and there were millions of solar systems in the galaxy, billions. How was he supposed to have any fucking idea, when the Council and all its STG teams didn't even have an inkling of Saren's intentions?

This wasn't even what Nihlus wanted him for. Good God, if only he'd lived. If only the geth had just shot Saren the first time he saw them; if only they hadn't listened to his shit and stayed behind the Veil. Him and Nihlus could be well on their way now, on some adventure, who knows, just the two of them. They'd be in Terminus right now. They'd be at World-With-No-Law. Of course Nihlus wanted him to defeat the batarians. He knew what the turian was thinking. A mad, bad, crazy animal to set loose on the blinks. He'd do it, too, no remorse, and then everybody else could stand around saying they had no idea how vicious Shepard was, really, no one could control him and it's a shame (fingers crossed) about the batarians. He'd do it so they would never hurt anyone again. He still saw Janey in his dreams sometimes, not many times but enough to remind him why he was left to live. He still saw those last terrible moments, and how his father had looked, the stunned face of a man who could never comprehend such evil in the world.

But now Shepard was just mad, bad, and crazy with a different mission, one that involved cooperation and implicit trust in something that was admittedly a little strange. But he saw it. The beacon images were real-- confusing, splintered, but they were real. The Council had to understand this.

Shepard surveyed the destruction of his room. The victory was hollow, and he was feeling a sudden fatigue from the exertion of his powers. Rather than pull one of the chairs upright, he slowly sank to the floor. He had to come up with another plan just in case. If he couldn't trust Liara, he could just go where the geth are. Saren's controlling them somehow, promising the return of the Reapers. Or to turn them into Reapers.

Then he thought: but if they won't help me, why should I bother? Saren's their mess. Let the Council deal with Saren, he's their creature, and the geth. Let everyone think I'm still after Saren, shout it far and wide, and secretly go into the Terminus Systems..

With a sullen growl, Shepard put his head in his hands and brooded. He picked at the tangled mess of his ruined destiny, and then he started thinking a cold and evil thought, a tiny whisper in the corner of his mind: What if the Reapers returned.. and took the batarians instead? Better them than you? Why would it matter, one way or another? Flesh is flesh. It makes sense, doesn't it?

The idea was so simple, so perfect. No. He shook it off like an unwanted hand on his shoulder. He stood up. No. He couldn't just ignore Saren and give up. Not after what Saren had done. He had killed Nihlus and ended his mission, and ended every mission he would have gone on. Saren had killed all those people on Eden Prime. They needed an avenger. And Anderson never deserved what Saren had done to him. That, too, would be answered for.

Then Shepard thought: this is Anderson's cabin. I shouldn't trash it.

He scooped up the thing closest to him, which happened to be a plastic dinosaur, and with a weary smirk he took it and the back of a chair. He dragged it slowly to one of the consoles and set it up right.

Might as well finish chief's paperwork. I'll make her remember that when the crew comes round with the pitchforks and torches.