A week in the first hotel room was all he lasted before he made the mistake of looking up Archangel on the Omega news sites, and then the owner of the place threw him out on his ass for destroying shit that didn't belong to him in a fit of grief. He moved as often as a quarian after that: a night here, a few days there, drifting off to another district or another colony in a haze. Occasionally he thought about killing himself. It never happened for one reason or the other- in truth he didn't want to die, but he was having trouble remembering why. It wasn't like he did anything worthwhile- he drank when he couldn't sleep, he counted the cracks in whatever ceiling was over his bed, he woke up in cold sweats whenever he did sleep with the voices of dead friends cursing him, same old same old.

He realized of course that Garrus wasn't actually dead maybe a month or so later, because no one had his body. They would have wanted that trophy, but none of the merc groups even had so much as a piece of his armor to throw up on the extranet to gloat about. And no one knew his name either- remains would have been scanned for that kind of thing. The feeling the realization gave him was two-tone, somewhere between joy and abject terror and that's about when he decided to disappear.

Finding a source that could help him that seemed legitimate was slow work, and even once he did the service was shit so he had a lot of downtime between communications. He was too nervous to go out with his old Boss back on the scene gunning for him, so with all that time just sitting on his ass in his shitty hotel room he ended up signing up for a good turian porn service. After looking up Archangel's supposed fate his libido had hit rock bottom, but it seemed to be returning now. You know, because he was a horrible excuse for a person. It wasn't as if he could loathe himself much more than he already did, might as well get off while he was at it.

The one he settled on was expensive, but it wasn't like he had anything else to splurge on besides booze. Everywhere he slept was a shithole and he barely tasted his food, he had no friends, he didn't go anywhere but bars... Fuck, it was a nice one, run straight off Epyrus by turians with turian tastes which meant military organization and efficiency- it remembered his favorite companies and actors and kinks and he didn't even need to read titles most of the time because they were all color-coded. He was browsing through the system's recommendations while waiting on a call when a red title interrupted the varying shades of purple and blue and he had to check to remember what genre the color even stood for.

Xeno porn? What the fuck was xeno porn doing on his dash? Purely out of curiosity about the mishap he clicked the link.

Lantar recognized the turian actor on the cover immediately as one of his favorites, a pale grey Palaveni native who knew what to do with his dick and was willing to put it in anything as long as he was on top- but his normal white colony markings had been obscured and drawn over with a painfully familiar geometric blue set.

Oh, fuck.

The summary he'd skipped at first confirmed it- Veral Irin was playing Garrus Vakarian. He was downloading it before he even had the chance to think about how fucked up this was.

A flick of his talon sent the vid to the screen on the wall and he already had his pants off before it registered between innuendoes that 'heroes of the geth invasion of the Citadel' meant the human was suppose to be Commander Shepard. She didn't look at all like the woman he'd seen in the photo in Garrus' room, her proportions were almost turian in slenderness with her exaggerated human chest providing some of the visual weight of a carapace. They'd gotten the skin and the hair right in color but that was about it, the intensity she seemed to have had even in a smile in a snapshot was entirely absent.

Shit, was he seriously thinking about watching porn of the man he'd betrayed and the dead woman he was in love with? What the fuck was wrong with him? Not that fucking far gone, he wasn't that much of a... but when he was moving to shut it off Veral/Garrus purred in a well-faked Cipritine accent to introduce himself and started breaking the seals on his armor piece by piece and...

He was lying on his back in the artificial darkness with the heady smell of his own seed flooding his olfactory senses when his omnitool buzzed on the floor. Sticky hands fumbled for the thing as Lantar rolled across the mattress, managed to get the com patched through and swallowed heavily to stabilize his voice before answering. "Yeah?"

"Livius, we've got everything set up for you. The credits cleared and you've got tickets to the Citadel in the morning. Nice doing business with you, enjoy your new life." The guy on the other end hung up before Sidonis even had the time to register the use of his fake name- no fucking people skills from the guy who was running this operation, but his methods worked.

So he was going to the Citadel. Heh. He'd never been there before, there were millions of people there right? Should be easy to hide one pathetic little turian in. For maybe the hundredth time he asked himself why he was doing all of this, but he'd started to figure out it was because Cassius had gone to a lot of effort to keep him alive and he had to at least try.

... He'd liked Cassius. It wasn't just the sex, he'd gotten to like the time around that too. He liked drinking with him, laying there watching him, listening to him talk- not only for the accent but the things he'd say. True the guy was a terrorist and a traitor but what the hell could Lantar complain about that after what he'd done to his own friends, with no greater reasoning than keeping his miserable ass alive? He loved Garrus, as fucked up as that sounded with what he's done to the guy... but he'd liked Cassius, and he wouldn't have minded if the merc had taken that second ticket for himself. Damn, but I don't really deserve that do I.

A few minutes of almost peaceful quiet was all he gave himself before pulling his tool up again- he should probably figure out what time it was so he'd know when to go. And delete the fake Garrus porn while he was at it, that was just a level of fucked up he didn't need to be indulging in. He knew even as he did it that he'd probably end up buying the damn thing again at some later point, but a temporary victory was still a victory and he had few enough of those these days.

Compromised?

How the fuck had he been compromised?

Shit he didn't go anywhere, he didn't talk to anyone, he barely saw any fellow turians from Invictus who might have been able to recognize him from his childhood and he'd fucking blown up everyone he knew in Vult, how the fuck-

Clothes, he had to put on clothes, something that didn't stink for the meeting he needed to leave for right now- he was halfway through fastening his shirt when he realized it was the outfit Cassius had given him. Of fucking course it was the outfit Cassius had given him, it was the one damn thing he felt compelled to take care of anymore. He didn't have the fucking time to think about this, he really didn't.

Lantar walked through the wards nervously, the bright colors and fluttering conversations of the people around him only making him jumpier than usual- the fact that he hadn't slept for two days probably didn't help. At least he wasn't drunk, though if he was he probably would have been able to sleep and shit, fucking shit- On and on his head spun in circles like that until he managed to find the spot. If he didn't sit down he was going to collapse and he hunched over heavily on a bench with the thick taste of fear in his mouth.

The polite sound of a quarian woman clearing her throat nearby broke him out of his spiral- that was the signal right?- and he stood to face her. Huh, she didn't look like any of the contacts Fade liked to use, they had always been tough ex-cop types or volus on the opposite end of the spectrum, and while she was small she had a shotgun slung on her hip that Weaver would have been proud of. It was hard to tell with her alien physiology and the mask and all, but she looked almost as uncomfortable standing there as he did.

...Wait, did Fade ever even send women? Something felt... off about all of this, but he was too anxious to be able to think too far into it.

"Look, the sooner this is over the better, I can pay-" Lantar has been talking so fast he was jabbering until she stepped out from behind the quarian, who hightailed it out of there as speech completely deserted him for pants-shitting terror. He didn't question how she was alive or knew who he was or why she was here- there were exactly two thoughts able to cling to existence in his head as he stared at her. One, he was right and she looked nothing like the woman in the porno. And Two, oh fuck I'm going to die.

"Sidonis, we need to talk."

The human woman's voice was water calm but her face was not happy and all of her not happy was directed solely at him. He blathered something quickly and tried to bolt but her grip was insane for someone so small and squishy and it held him in place like a vice. Standing far too close for comfort, she locked eyes with him and spoke with a downright threatening level of casual "There's three hundred thousand credits worth of sniper rifle trained on your head right now- I should know, I bought him it- and you should really listen to me if you want to live."

Well... he wasn't going to argue with the woman. They sat on the bench again, her as calm as a statue and him with his hands and mandibles fidgeting so badly he couldn't- nothing would come out of his mouth but panicked sputtering so she started the conversation again.

"My name is Shepard, and a friend of mine wants you dead."

"It's Garrus, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Thank the Spirits" came out in a rush, a hand pressing over his face. "For a while there, I thought he was dead."

"He nearly was." The expression on her face was grim as she stared ahead. "But he's alive, and he wants you dead. Normally when he tells me he wants to kill someone I'm more than happy to make it happen, but that's not happening this time if I have anything to say about it."

Lantar jerked slightly in surprise to stare at her. "What- didn't he tell you what I-" Oh fuck, he didn't tell her he... Spirits, don't let the woman know about that, about the whole horrible...

"He told me that you sold him out to the mercenaries on Omega, that every one on his squad but you died and now he wants to remedy that." Thank the Spirits, she didn't know about the whole illicit attempted affair disaster. Small comforts. "But this isn't like Doctor Saleon. This is way too personal for him and it's fucking him up more than shooting anyone is going to help."

For a reason he couldn't distinguish she grimaced, digging in her ear and- oh. Shepard sighed, rolling her com between her many-fingered hands. The ends of her lips rose slightly but there wasn't any humor there he could see. "Could barely hear myself think he's yelling at me so much about being in his shot."

Without warning that expression was gone and she had locked eyes with him and Lantar realized that he couldn't move if he tried- there was an air about the woman that was absolutely commanding, the fire in her gaze shaming the flame of her hair. "I don't care about what happens to you. I don't care if you live or die, but I've seen what happens to soldiers who kill people who used to be their friends. If he needs you dead for his peace then so be it, but I'm not having him take that burden on his shoulders."

Torfan. Fuck, she was the one on Torfan wasn't she.

"I love that man, but ever since I've found him again he's been so wound up in what you did he won't even speak to me, and I'm scared to death for what this anger is doing to him. So either he decides to let you go or I shoot you myself, but either way this ends today." And she put the com back in and reactivated it.

After that she and Garrus seemed to be having an argument about her cutting him out of the conversation that he could only hear half of and he stared in quiet misery at his knees. Whatever last stupid, insane hope he'd held on to had been crushed by those four words from her. Not like it mattered. He was fucked, and whatever Spirits had delegated to bring Commander Shepard back from the void wouldn't bother with him.

"-Damn it Garrus, you're so blinded by your own anger at yourself that you're-"

That jerked Lantar out of himself, grim shock on his features. "What? Don't fucking tell me that he's- this is my fault! I'm the asshole that did it, I'm the one that-" Shit, what else could he say? The few miserable things he could try to defend himself with about being a lovesick idiot he couldn't bear to say in front of this woman. He couldn't say anything.

The realization that this was really happening and that his life extended out no further than a matter of minutes didn't come as a rush, just a quiet cold knowledge that couldn't be shaken. Oh. So this was it.

He stopped trying to defend himself and pushed to his feet to lean heavily on the railing as he just started listing off the reasons he should die: the sleepless misery, the guilt that swallowed everything else, his shiftless uselessness, his unflagging cowardice. "I'm a dead man anyway. Just... get it over with." Lantar let his forehead sink to touch the metal of the railing, its coolness washing the last of his nerves away save one quiet regret.

Sorry Cass. Looks like I'm disappointing you too.

He was ready for the bullet. It just didn't come.

"Sidonis?"

"... huh?" Why would she still be talking to him?

"I said he's letting you go."

He stared at her. Halfway through her repeating the statement he realized she was no longer standing in the line of fire she'd kept herself in their whole conversation, and he was remaining unshot. Fuck.

"... oh." He stood straight again, his legs trembling under him. "I... Tell him I..." Tell him what, what the fuck could he say? "Tell him... I'll try to make this up to him, make this right. Somehow."

He left. No one shot him. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The lights of the wards passed in a neon blur as he wandered aimlessly, no real idea how long he walked or where or why. All that registered was that somehow he was still alive, that Garrus didn't want him dead, and that he had to... somehow he had to...

His feet had put him at whatever this ward's C-sec office was, and there was a turian officer giving him an odd look for hovering wordlessly on his doorstep for three minutes. Sidonis swallowed through the heaviness in his throat and spoke up- he barely recognized his own voice.

"I... I want to report a crime."