In truth, Adrien had almost forgotten when Wrex informed him that Eve had cremated the recovered remains of the ninth platoon, which was why he had completely forgotten what it meant when the Aralakh relay was reactivated. He felt numb when he accepted the urn from Han. He remembered the volus saying something kind or sympathetic, but Victus didn't remember responding. He carried the urn out of the building, not even responding to Naash when he gave him a questioning look as he passed him. Now he sat alone on his couch, staring at the urn he'd placed in front of him on the short kava table.
The urn was fairly simple in design, made from some kind of white tuchunka clay, but he could tell some effort was put into its make, all the same. A black compound created dark, thin, twisting veins on the urn's surface with no rhyme or reason to them except to stand in contrast to the white color. A silver plaque had been molded to the surface. It read;
Lieutenant Tarquin Victus.
May his ancestors look as favorably on his courage as we do, for we owe him our lives.
Eve's influence, no doubt. As a shaman, she probably had a lot of experience making urns for the cremated dead that they honored. The words and design were very krogan in nature, but the sentiment was the same and it truly was a beautiful piece. Tarquin would have approved.
"You were only twenty," he spoke quietly to the urn.
He raised a finger to hesitantly touch the surface, allowing himself to foolishly imagine the curved portion as his son's browplate. As his talon neared the glossy finish, he inadvertently met the amber stare of his own reflection. He saw his own face. He didn't like the dead eyes that stared back him, accusing him, threatening to overcome him with his own neglected sorrow. Drag him down. Drown him.
He quickly ripped the digit away as if the surface burned him.
"Not now," he told himself, shaking his head as he quickly got to his feet. He collected the urn from the table and briskly strode across the room to a high-mounted shelf.
"I'm sorry," he said, his eyes risking only a single glance into the polished finish before flickering away once again, afraid of what he would see. "I still have work to do. I can't. Not now."
With one hand, he removed a rifle that he had previously positioned on the shelf and then set Tarquin's urn in its place. He turned away from the shelf and raised his omni-tool.
"I need a drink," he typed in as he set his rifle on the kava table and strode out the door without a single backwards look.
"What'll it be, Primarch?" the green-plated krogan -'Sam?'- asked him with a voice far friendlier than he remembered during their first and last encounter. Now that Victus thought about it, he didn't recall the krogan saying a single word then.
"Horosk," Victus grunted.
"On the rocks or-?"
"I don't care."
"That bad, huh?" Sam rumbled. When Victus didn't reply, the krogan trudged off to pour him a glass. Victus decided there was something to be said about Sam's unexpected generosity when he slid a triple over ice in front of him. That, or a hint at a truly sadistic nature to capitalize on a man's grief.
As he raised the glass to his eager mouth he heard a familiar voice from behind him say, "Well here's a reverse scenario, if ever there was one," and Garrus slid onto the stool beside him. The same one, Victus noticed, that he had perched on the night he found him drugged out of his mind. "This can't be good."
Victus was silent for a moment, contemplating whether or not he wanted to tell Garrus the real purpose for wanting to be here. He stared darkly at his glass, deciding it was still too full for his liking so he raised the glass to his mouth again to remedy that.
"I met with the other Primarchs today," he resolved himself to say after he lowered his glass, but kept his hand wrapped tightly around it. "The surviving ones anyway."
Sam had returned to place Garrus' drink in front of him without even bothering to ask what he wanted. Garrus mumbled his thanks before raising the glass to take his own sip.
"Sounds fun," he commented around the rim.
"Lots of fun. Especially the part when I told Louki Fidele that I masturbate to the memory of him losing his leg on a nightly basis." Garrus was in the middle of savoring a second mouthful of his drink. He ended up coughing on it instead.
"Victus, you didn't!" He chided with wide eyes once he managed to clear his airway of his drink. His words were chastising, but amusement colored his sub-harmonics all the same.
"I did," Victus acknowledged cheerlessly before raising his glass to take another swig.
"Yeah, he's going to make me ask." He heard Garrus say to himself. "Do you?"
"I may have exaggerated the nightly part."
Garrus laughed, pressing a hand to his eyes as he did so. The laughter didn't last longer than a few seconds and when it ended, Victus took the opportunity to confess, "I may have also, more or less, threatened to execute the Primarch of Invictus."
"The Primarch of Palaven, everyone," Garrus quipped, removing his hand from his eyes to make a gesture like he was introducing Victus to an imaginary audience. "And to think I assured Solana that you wouldn't have to be reminded to play nice with the other world leaders."
Victus couldn't help but chuckle slightly against the rim of his raised glass despite the mood he had arrived with. Garrus watched him for a moment, smiling, but it wouldn't last. His grin morphed into something scrutinizing as he leveled a skeptical look at the older turian.
"That's odd," Garrus commented, like he suddenly noticed something different about him. "Usually yelling at diplomats leaves you in a better mood than this."
"I don't yell."
"You've been known to yell a time or two."
Victus' smile proved unable to hold out against his soured mood and he felt his face darken again. Garrus must have misunderstood the cause because he suddenly tacked on, "I was just kidding. The Invictus Primarch... he's the one that ordered his troops to cease fire. Fuck him."
"My thoughts exactly," his voice rumbled threateningly.
"Well, if it makes you feel better, and I'm sure it won't, I'm glad they picked you to succeed Fedorian," Garrus said, his sub-harmonics vibrating with encouragement.
"Is that so?" Victus asked. The question was preceded by a humorless hum.
"It's so, but I need you to promise me one thing in order to secure your position at the top of my list of Best Primarchs in History."
"What's that?" He decided to humor him.
"Thirty years from now, if you're still in office and my kid and I show up on your doorstep ranting about a highly advanced race of sentient machines that are on their way to destroy us all, do me a favor and believe us."
Garrus had succeeded at pulling another hard-won smile from the depths of Adrien's despair. He glanced to his side to regard the younger turian fondly. He gave himself a second to confirm his desire for transparency before responding with, "You have my word on that, though... I doubt I'll be holding office on Palaven in thirty years." Then his eyes, once again, sought refuge in the horosk in front of him, watching the ice cubes clink against the glass as he gave his drink a quick swirl. "Or much longer at all."
Any trace of mirth on Garrus' face had been wiped clean, his expression becoming instantly serious. Victus could see the unvoiced question in his eyes that he knew he had to answer.
"For the last topic of the meeting, we all voted on who among us should take Sparatus' place as Councilor once the Citadel is rebuilt." Garrus' posture relaxed slightly in the way a person's posture does when they have heard something they'd been expecting and had already accepted it.
Garrus reached for his glass to take a long quaff and it was only after he returned it to the bar's surface did he look at Victus again and confirm, "They picked you."
Victus acknowledged the obvious answer by waving down Sam for another round. In the time it took the krogan to pour the liquor and slide new glasses in front of them, Garrus continued with a nonchalant shrug in his shoulders. "That's alright. You can still keep your promise. Believe it or not, I sought a meeting with the Counsel before I'd even considered going to my father about the reapers. I knew they wouldn't listen. They never listened to Shepard, but I felt their scrutiny was preferable to my father's."
He paused to laugh softly, finding humor at his own thoughts, and then continued. "I'll also accept listening to the first Spectre of whatever future race we come across when he or she comes to you in the first place." Garrus stopped to stare at the glass, contemplating his next line of thought and then resumed with, "And please don't do this." He made a motion with his thumb and index finger on both his hands, a reference to something Victus didn't understand.
"Air quotes, Shepard called them," Garrus explained upon seeing the Primarch's puzzled expression. "It's a mocking hand gesture in human culture."
"Sparatus did that?"
Garrus nodded. "It became a bit of an inside joke between us- well, it did once she'd gotten past her anger over it. Then it made her laugh when I'd do it," he expounded, as he began to turn his hands over to examine his fingers as he finished, "I guess it just doesn't have the same effect with our hands."
"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Victus admitted. "Sparatus was always a pompous ass."
"True, but if there's anything to be said about him, he became Shepard's... maybe ' favorite ' is too strong a word, but she began to prefer him to Tevos and Valern. He proved to be the most helpful to her after she left Earth when the reapers hit. As you know, he was the one that sent her to Menae in the first place."
"Never thought I'd see the day that I'd have Sparatus to thank for my survival." Victus shook his head slightly at the thought. Though it was also in part to the fuzzy feeling the alcohol was beginning to create in his head.
'And my fate,' he thought quietly.
"It's kind of funny. He use to be Shepard's least liked counselor, especially during our hunt for Saren. He was very critical of her then. They all were, but him especially," reminisced the younger turian.
Victus could tell Garrus was beginning to feel the affects of his own drink by the way his body began to slump in his seat. "But he didn't have much competition after Shepard found Aria T'loak at Purgatory. Some poor C-Sec immigration officer had the unfortunate job to tell Aria that she needed to come along for processing. So Aria simply called up the asari counselor, as one does when suffering a minor inconvenience. After spending years pushing back against everything Shepard, their own damn Spectre, requested she immediately complies with Aria, even asking what else she could do for her."
Garrus smiled as a memory took hold of him and then concluded his story with, "To put it mildly, Shepard was pissed." He then raised his omni-tool, considered it for a moment and then began to swipe across the holo-interface.
"I met her in the shuttle bay afterwards and couldn't help recording this." He hit play and a small holo-screen beamed from his arm onto the bar. Commander Shepard could be seen stomping around the Normandy's shuttle bay.
"'Is there anything else I can do for you?'" She mocked then threw her fist into an innocent punching bag as she stormed past it. Her voice rose. "Are you fucking kidding me, Garrus?"
The camera shook as the Garrus from the past was trying to withhold his laughter, and failing.
"After all the times she's denied any request I made of them, she asks Aria 'is there anything more I can do for you?'" She exclaimed, her pacing feet halted long enough to send a crate flying when it met its fate with a well placed kick. "It's not funny!" She added, rounding on her turian companion. Eyes bright with anger.
The camera shook harder in response, rumbling sub-harmonics vibrating the audio.
"Garrus!" Her arms went up in exasperation. Victus could tell she was putting up a valiant effort to keep the rage in place on her features, but as the camera shook harder, the right corner of her mouth began to quirk.
"Stop laughing!" She demanded. Then the flanged, unmistakably turian, laughter erupted in full, effectively cracking through the mask of anger on the commander's face.
"I'm serious, Garrus!" But her words rang hollow as her own smile split her face in a way Victus was never privy to. Then laughter boiled out of her and it seemed to worsen the louder her turian companion grew. She began to hug her sides, and then threw a placating arm out, waving it in surrender.
"Stop it!" she cried. Her eyes had shut tight as she shook with mirth. "It's not fucking funny, Garrus!"
She managed to reach up for his cowl, grabbing the rim with both hands and seemed to use the turian's larger frame to brace herself as her legs gave out, collapsing against him. Her forehead came down to rest against his armored chest.
"Damn it. Just let me be angry!" She choked out through fit of giggles. Her face pressed hard against his chest. Her little body still trembled with laughter as Garrus' arms rose to encircle her.
The footage stopped. Victus looked to the face of the younger turian and found him smiling at his memories, but he didn't miss the quiver of his mandibles as he suppressed the grief that was there as well.
"I never saw her like that," Victus said in his small attempt to distract Garrus from following the alluring trail of sorrow.
"Few people did," Garrus acknowledged with a nod. "She liked you though. She wasn't sure about you at first. She even asked me if we could trust you."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I said something along the lines of you having a tendency to play hard and fast with the rules, but that betraying an ally wasn't your style." Garrus' face took on a slightly sheepish expression as he finished with, "I may have also told her that, if you did, we'll just have to find another Primarch."
"Good to know where your loyalties lie, Vakarian." It might have been the alcohol that made him say it, but Victus instantly regretted his words when he saw the way Garrus' sheepish expression vanished into a wall of stoicism. He meant it as a joke, of course, but it came served on a giant truth platter and neither turian could deny it. They sat in an uncomfortable silence, their easy comradery suddenly stricken.
"That's why you didn't tell me about the bomb, isn't it?" Garrus at last broke the silence by asking, though it was more of a statement than a question.
As much as Victus didn't want to broach this particular raw subject, he felt it would be unfair for Garrus to go unanswered. He sufficed his answer with a slow nod, but Garrus remained silent, waiting for more.
"I meant it as a joke, Garrus, but you and I both know the truth of it. You were-are my adviser and a damn good one, but your true allegiances were made abundantly clear to me since Menae when you couldn't go five sentences without including her name in at least one of them. You were my adviser, as well as her confidant. You were apart of her crew. Not mine." Garrus stiffened slightly at his words, but didn't give off any hint of objection. Victus pressed on.
"I knew that if I had told you, I would have to place you under orders to withhold information from your commander. Undoubtedly-" he said with a pointed look at his comrade. "-you would have disobeyed that direct order, even from the Primarch of Palaven and I would have little choice but to charge you with treason." That elicited a wince from Garrus.
"If it makes you feel better, I was not opposed to your relationship with her. In fact, I could acknowledge that it had served to my advantage up to that point. Telling you would have done nothing except set you up to fail and potentially fracture the tentative alliance between the commander and I. There was no reason for me to do that. Your loyalties may have lied elsewhere, regardless you had done too much for the Hierarchy to be labeled a traitor. I wouldn't do that to you."
"So you did it for my benefit?" Garrus asked with a tone that conveyed skepticism.
"Hardly," Victus answered immediately, hearing nothing of himself. Only the cold Primarch rang in his voice as he addressed, not his friend, but a subordinate. "It was to the benefit of practicality. As I said, outing you as a traitor to the Hierarchy would serve no one. I saw a problem that needed to be righted with only a small window to do so and it had to be done discreetly, or risk whatever fragile and above all, crucial alliance was forming between Wrex and I. I couldn't risk the commander, his friend, going to him. I couldn't know what he would do." Victus paused to throw back the rest of his drink, knowing he would need it as he approached the end of his story. "Faced with so many unknowns and I could only discern a single assurance. I did know the one and only person I could trust, beyond a shadow of a doubt, with the information." He smiled wryly at his empty glass. "It would be too late when I realized the tactical error I had made."
"How were you able to contact Tarquin without EDI overhearing you?"
"Simple. I wasn't on the Normandy when I called him. I called him from Menae before I even boarded. The thing about being named Primarch is you get access to all the Hierarchy's dirty laundry in a matter of seconds. The satellite watching that-" he faltered for a fraction of second to contemplate his word choice given their public surroundings. "- device detected the movement of the Cerberus vessels closing in on the location and it sent an alert to my omni-tool. With my presence expected on the Normandy and a potential crisis in my hands, I had only minutes to make a decision."
"'That' device. You say that like... You mean there's..." Garrus prodded, keeping his voice pitched low so as not to be overheard. Not that it mattered due to the sparse amount of patrons in the building and Sam had stomped off minutes ago to mess with the still-faulty door. Still, Victus chose to answer his inquiry with only a long, silent look.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," he commented more to himself than to Victus as he reached for the comfort of his glass.
Victus remembered that vidcomm to his son with too much clarity. It would be the final time he would see Tarquin's face, to hear his voice, and the memory twisted a knife his chest. Not because it would be the final time, but because of the formality of the call. It wasn't a vidcomm between a worried father and his son. It was a call between a Primarch with orders to a subordinate.
"Lieutenant Victus," he'd said when Tarquin had answered his call. He used an authoritative timbre to his voice that immediately set the tone for the conversation. Tarquin was instantly at attention.
"What I'm about to tell you is highly classified information and a direct order from the current Primarch of Palaven. Can you confirm the security of your location to the best of your knowledge?" He snapped out, forcing himself to look past the shock that registered on his son's face at the mention of his new title.
"D-dad you're-"
"I asked you a question, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir. I... can, sir," he stammered slightly, regaining his composure.
"You can what?" "Confirm the security of my location, sir." "Acknowledged. Consider this a field promotion to Lieutenant-Commander of the 9
The horror broke through Tarquin's hard-fought composure, shattering it completely. Victus forced himself to ignore the terrified look in his son's widened eyes. His mandibles tightened to his youthful jaw. The pleading look in his eyes... A plead for mercy Victus only wished he could grant him.
"Dad-uh... Sir!" He added quickly. "I'm not ready for... I can't."
"You can. You have to be. This mission is of vital importance to our war effort and you are who I trust to carry it out. I'm sending you your mission coordinates now as well as all necessary proof of your command."
Tarquin's training must have kicked in through his shock because he forced his mandibles to loosen and his face morphed into a mask of forbearance. Victus acknowledged that his son suddenly looked like a younger version of himself. Gone was the little boy he would allow to sneak up on him, pretending he was none the wiser until he struck with his tiny claws and tremendous will. They would roll around on the floor, but Adrien always let him win in the end. Gone was the child that peered shyly around his father's spurs as he used his legs as a barricade when confronted by a stranger. Gone was the young man that spent long nights in the kitchen with his father after deployment, both dancing around bits of their respective missions they were allowed to discuss.
Adrien stared into the cold, hardened green eyes of a soldier about to embark on his most challenging trial yet.
His son, his boy, had gone.
He had never been so proud.
He had never been so terrified.
"Yes, sir," Tarquin said, without an ounce of his usual warmth in his tone. Perhaps even a touch of resentment was present.
"Spirits go with you, Lieutenant-Commander. The ninth platoon does us all proud." He paused to take in the beautiful visage of his son's face, burning it to his memory... knowing he was quite possibly sending his boy to his death.
"You do me proud." Adrien couldn't help himself any more than he could help the crack in his voice. Undoubtedly, it registered across the comm because something flickered across Tarquin's cold eyes, thawing them, but only for an instant and it was gone.
"Thank you, sir. Will that be all?" Was Tarquin's only response.
"Nothing further, Lieutenant-Commander. Dismissed." And he ended the call before any more unnecessary sentimentality could leak in. As Tarquin flickered out, Victus' traitorous hand snapped up reflexively for where his son's face had been. It was some inane attempt to grab him and pull him from the danger he had just sent him towards, but his fist closed around empty air.
He stared at his closed fist against the backdrop of a darkened makeshift bunker. He heard the sound of a reaper trumpet off in the distance.
"Victus?" Color began to bleed into the darkness at the voice, slowly changing the backdrop of his outstretched fist to what looked like a dusty bar somewhere far away.
"Hey!" The voice was urgent now and it came accompanied by the weight of a three-fingered hand on his shoulder. It gripped tightly.
A reaper blared, but as the siren died, he heard words ghost the tail of it.
"Victory at any cost."
Victus gasped audibly and glanced around at the sudden change of his surroundings. His eyes fell first on his outstretched fist. He forced his hand back to the bar and then looked to the concerned turian beside him.
"Fuck."
"Yeah..." Garrus agreed.
"He wasn't ready, Vakarian."
The words flowed from him like a confession. Inside him, the Primarch and the General stood united in their attempt to silence the grieving father in the face of a subordinate, but the alcohol muffled their objections and the father broke through. The horosk left his voice slurred and he sat heavily on the stool, feeling barely able to keep his frame upright any longer. "I knew that. Another year and perhaps he would have been, but the reapers granted us no such luxury. I swear it wasn't out of nepotism or anything of the sort. I needed him to be ready. I knew he wasn't and... I sent him anyway."
"You did what you felt you had to. I understand that. Shepard understood that as well." Garrus' words were kind and perhaps later they would be of some comfort. But not now.
"The thing about being a General... you get to take all the glory for a soldier's work. But at the same time, you also shoulder the burden of their mistakes. The blood of the 9th platoon is on my hands," he turned his weighted head to look Garrus in the eye. "Not Tarquin's," he stressed fiercely.
Garrus didn't try for another platitude. Instead, a knowing look took the place of concern, which told Victus that despite never officially owning the title of General, the younger turian knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Yeah," he confirmed before removing his grip from Victus' shoulder. "I sympathize with Tarquin and no, I'm not just saying that for your benefit. He's... not the only one that made a bad call, believing it was the right one... and got his men killed as a result." Garrus suddenly looked far older than what his actual age would imply. His eyes looked on listlessly as ghosts from his past began to plague his mind.
Victus offered his friend a weak smile, feeling the years of his own life weigh down on it, and he said, "We're all Generals at some point in our lives, Vakarian. As children with wooden swords and plastic guns, pretending to command our troops... Only some of us never grow out of it."