Author's Note: This one's a little longer. And possibly too full of stuff? It was that, or multiple short, possibly choppy chapters. Hope you enjoy anyway.
Liara pulls some strings, and they dock at Illium for repairs. Nothing fancy, since Shepard knows the Alliance is going to do a full retrofit soon. Just enough to keep the Normandy flying. Once Shepard is satisfied that the ship is spaceworthy (okay, really, once Tali, EDI, and Joker are satisfied that the ship is spaceworthy), she goes to Liara with the Shadow Broker data.
Once they've blasted their way through Illium, killed Tela Vasir, located the Shadow Broker's ship, and put the Broker himself down, Liara stands in front of the bank of displays and gulps. "I... I'm supposed to do this, aren't I?"
Shepard winces. "You saw that? Really, Liara, not if you don't want to. I don't want to push you into this."
"But you need the data," says Liara. More and more audio feeds are asking for direction. "And... I do want to... I think." She closes her eyes, opens them, and steps forward. "This is the Shadow Broker."
Shepard turns away. Garrus is hauling himself off the floor, swearing. "Every damned time, Shepard," he gripes, rubbing his head. "You'd think I could dodge it when I know it's coming."
"I thought turians didn't know how to duck."
Garrus just growls. He's quiet while they say farewell to Liara and head back to the Normandy, the kind of quiet that means there's something on his mind. She bumps him with her elbow as they wait for the elevator. "Something you want to talk about?"
He hesitates. "Yeah. In private."
She nods. Once they get up to the Loft, he turns toward her and says, "We need to talk about Aratoht."
She tenses. "What about it?"
"Don't do it alone. Take me with you. Or somebody else."
She's already shaking her head. "No."
"Shepard..."
"No."
"Two days, Shepard. They'll have you for two days, and you'll get out of there with moments to spare."
She folds her arms. "And you know I'll be all right."
"Something could go wrong. I'll still feel better if you're not alone."
"I don't want you implicated in it," says Shepard. "To work with the Hierarchy, you're going to need your record clean. But really, I don't want anyone else implicated in this."
Kasumi says, "The Alliance is hunting me down anyway. I could help."
Shepard nearly jumps out of her skin, and both she and Garrus reach for their sidearms. The thief materializes, smiling. "Come on, guys, you know I wouldn't hurt you."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to startle a marine?" Shepard holsters the weapon. "How much of that did you hear, Kasumi?"
She shrugs. "Enough to get the gist. You're about to head off and do something dangerous. Nothing unusual about that, except this time you're going solo." She perches on the arm of the couch. "I also know about this looping thing you keep telling other people about."
Shepard groans and covers her eyes with one hand. "Great. This is just great."
Kasumi says, "Why don't you tell me about it, Shep, and I'll see if I can help?"
Garrus says, "She needs to break a woman out of a batarian prison and—"
"Garrus!"
"—and it turns out that she's indoctrinated and holds Shepard for two days, and Shepard will have to destroy a mass relay to stop the Reaper invasion."
Kasumi goes very still. "Whoa. What happens when you destroy a mass relay?"
In the silence, Shepard glares at Garrus, who looks unrepentant. Finally Shepard says, "It blows up the entire system with it. Three hundred thousand dead."
Kasumi purses her lips. "What if you don't destroy the mass relay?"
"Then the Reapers invade. That relay is like a master key to the relay network; from there they can hit every relay at once." She shakes her head. "We can't—we're not ready." She looks at Garrus. "You need six months to prepare the Hierarchy. Anderson and Hackett need more time to work on the Alliance. Tali can do some good with the Admiralty Board—"
Garrus doesn't quite snort, but it's close. "Have you even tried to change it, Shepard?"
"I—" She's never tried bringing someone else along. She's tried changing the scenario in different ways, but it always seems to work out the same. She's almost resigned herself to it. Not only to the three hundred thousand deaths on her conscience, but the fact that the Reapers hit the batarians first. Their deaths buy time for the rest of the galaxy.
Almost resigned, but not quite. "We need more time," she says. "Time to prepare. It's better if the Reapers hit us system by system. Ruthless calculus. You know this, Garrus. Why are you pushing this?"
"Because I see how it weighs on you. And because they'll lock you up for months for this."
Kasumi offers, "If I come along I can probably break you out of wherever they're holding you before two days are up."
Shepard sighs. "EDI, are you listening?"
"Yes, Shepard."
"Is it possible to evacuate the Bahak system in 48 hours?"
"That depends on how many vehicles are available for evacuation, Shepard. The Batarian Hegemony's Ministry of Information Control makes accurate estimation difficult. There are believed to be several batarian military installations in the system, but the Alliance does not have good intelligence regarding how many or how large."
"Can you give me a guess?"
"I do not guess, Shepard, I estimate. It is theoretically possible to evacuate the population within the period specified. However, I also estimate less than 5% probability that your warning will be believed."
Shepard swallows. Honestly, she's faced worse. "Well. We won't know unless we try."
#
She and Kasumi drop onto Aratoht. Shepard still wants to shield Garrus and the others from any ties to the situation, so it's just the two of them. Shepard tells Kasumi, "Whatever you do, don't let Kenson see you. And if I get overwhelmed on the Project base— when I get overwhelmed—stay back."
She nods. "Will do, Shep. You can count on me."
With Kasumi as her guide, Shepard actually manages to get to Kenson without attracting any attention. When they reach their stolen shuttle, Shepard holds the door for a moment, over Kenson's protests, long enough for Kasumi to get aboard and tap Shepard's arm to indicate that she's done so. As they fly to the asteroid, Shepard considers confronting Dr. Kenson. The woman catches Shepard's glance. "What?"
Shepard licks her dry lips, unsure of the risk. "Are you sure you're not indoctrinated, Dr. Kenson?"
She blinks several times, rapidly. "Of course I'm not. The Project is intended to stop the Reapers." For a moment a shadow passes over her face. Then she shakes it off. "I couldn't be indoctrinated."
Of course, she is indoctrinated.
Shepard suspects that Kasumi is helping her out in the fight at Object Rho, but she never sees the thief. Eventually the indoctrinated troops overwhelm her.
She wakes up to Kasumi saying, "Hey. Hey, Shep. Are you okay?"
She groans. Her head feels like it's been stomped by a herd of elcor. She sits up and finds herself in the Project's lab. Kasumi is watching her anxiously. "I let them patch you up," she says. "Then I took out the medtech, but I wasn't sure I'd given you the right dosage to bring you around."
"Well. Here I am," says Shepard. "How long was I out?"
"Three hours, about."
Shepard hauls herself off the gurney. "All right. Let's do this."
They still have to fight their way through the station, activate the Project, and fight their way to the comm tower and extraction point. When they get to the array where Shepard can attempt to warn the batarians, Kasumi waves her off.
"This is what we came here for," Shepard points out.
"Yes, but we don't want them to trace the signal to here, or they'll find out and stop the asteroid," Kasumi points out.
They send the warning after Kasumi's made some modifications to the signal, get themselves to the comm tower, and wait. The Normandy can pick them up any time, but Shepard thinks it's best to wait until they're sure the asteroid will actually hit the mass relay. She asks EDI to keep track of the batarians. She wants to give them as long as possible to evacuate.
"They are beginning evacuation procedures, Shepard," EDI informs them after a couple of hours. "They are also attempting to locate the Project."
"Can you interfere with their scanners so they can't find us?"
"I will attempt to do so."
More waiting. Shepard paces. She and Kasumi take it turns to sleep. Garrus suggests, over the comm, that now someone else could come spell them, and Shepard refuses.
In spite of everything, the batarians do not completely evacuate before the mass relay is destroyed. There's too much squabbling among batarian authorities; it turns out that the initial evacuation efforts were authorized by a minor official, and his superiors attempt to stop it later, calling the warning lies and propaganda. And most of those left behind to die were slaves. But those were the batarians' choices, not Shepard's, and she sleeps a little easier that night.
She still has to face the consequences of what she did. The batarians are enraged and demand extradition; the Alliance asks that she turn herself in. Shepard lets Garrus, Miranda, and the rest of the team draw up extraction plans if things go differently than she thinks they will. In the meantime, she makes plans to take everyone home.
She's pretty sure, from hints that Hackett and Anderson drop, that she's facing her usual time of house arrest. The question is what to do with all that damned free time on her own. Typically she runs and swims and lifts weights, but it's hard for her workouts to take up more than four or so hours a day. The first time around she got bored and started reading. Trashy novels at first, then eventually classic human literature. By this time she's worked her way through the major classics of every alien culture (and found she kind of likes asari epic poetry) and tried out a bunch of crafts. None of them really stuck as a hobby. Maybe this time she'll go back to trying to learn the turian language.
With any luck, this time the loop we'll end, and she'll get to use that knowledge when she retires with Garrus.
#
They've already made stops at Omega and Illium and in the middle of nowhere, for Legion to rejoin the geth collective. The Citadel is their last stop before Earth. Most of the crew will disembark here.
Shepard's in her cabin tidying up her stuff when the door slides open behind her. "Hey," says Garrus softly.
"Hey." She turns around and sees the look on his face. "Only six months this time. It'll be fine."
"Six months, you think," he corrects.
She raises her eyebrows. "You were the one who wanted to play Aratoht differently."
He winces and looks away. "I know."
She immediately feels bad. I told you so, always a crap move to pull. She crosses to him and touches the side of his face. "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair. I'm glad we saved some lives."
"Yeah," he sighs. "I just hate not being able to be there."
"Only six months," she says. "Come on, Garrus, where's your sense of optimism?"
He looks down and pats down his pockets as if he's looking for it. Shepard starts laughing. Garrus looks over his shoulder and then scratches his head. "I don't know, Shepard. Maybe it fell out of the Mako some time or other."
"You can't use that one any more," she protests through her laughter. "I've gotten really good at driving that thing."
"I rode with you when you weren't," he counters.
She winds her arms around him and looks up into his dear, familiar, alien face. For a moment, she's struck by the unlikeliness of all of it, not just the bizarro space-vid loop plot they've been living through, but the sheer implausibility of finding love and trust and support in the arms of a stranger from another planet. She shakes herself out of it. "Yeah, you did. That's why I'm glad you're here."
He hugs her back and leans his forehead against hers. "So. Six months, you say."
"Six lonely months."
"Lonely?"
She leans into him. "Locked up under house arrest, and nobody but James to keep me company." She sighs theatrically.
"Oh, that's a real shame." His hands find their way under her shirt. "Now me, I'm going back to Palaven. So many turian women on Palaven, did you know? Just about every other person you see is female."
"Shut up," she laughs.
"And millions of them are unattached."
"You would never." She plants a series of kisses along his neck and jaw.
His breath catches, and he kisses her back. "You're right. I would never."
They don't say much more for the rest of the night; touches, sighs, and groans communicate enough.
#
In the end, it's just Joker, EDI, Shepard, Dr. Chakwas, and a tiny skeleton crew that brings the ship back to Earth. Shepard puts on her dress blues, a perfectly-tailored uniform shipped to her just for the occasion. Before heading out the airlock to make her surrender, she tells Joker, "Whatever you do, don't let them take away the Mako."
Joker blinks at her. "They're about to arrest me, too, Shepard. What the hell do you think I can do about it?"
Oops. She forgot the Joker doesn't know he's going to be consulting with the retrofit team. Fortunately for her, EDI intervenes. "I will endeavor to prevent anyone from removing the Mako, Shepard."
"Why do you care, anyway?" asks Joker.
Shepard sets her jaw. "It's my Mako. And it stays with the Normandy." She thinks, Besides, it still might come in handy.
#
Six months.
House arrest sucks.
Shepard works out. Every day. Hours a day.
She asks for schematics for the Citadel, so she can try to figure out where that spot where she's talked to the Catalyst is. Anderson looks at her skeptically and refuses. Security concerns. She rolls her eyes. She's not planning to blow the place up.
Unless it's really, really necessary.
Liara manages to smuggle her some plans, which she studies surreptitiously. Liara also manages to get her the occasional letter from Garrus or Tali or another friend. Those she reads again and again. Anderson checks up on her now and then. Kaidan and Ashley are nowhere to be seen.
She re-reads her favorite works of literature. She goes through the lessons from Humans CAN Learn Turian! (with omni-tool app to simulate harmonics). She downloads a calendar app, too. She remembers the date of the Reaper invasion.
And she marks off the days.
