Chapter 13: Falling Shadows

Junior was putting the Mantis prototype back on the workbench when Garrus caught sight of movement at the front of the house. He peered over the edge of the roof.

There was a drell at his front door.

Garrus hadn't seen a drell in years, since Thane on the Citadel. He hadn't heard of any that had fought in the Battle of the Catalyst, let alone any that had stayed on Earth. Garrus wondered what this drell could want with him? He watched as the drell raised a webbed fist and rapped loudly on the door.

Junior was talking to Garrus, but he hushed her. Seeing the look on his face, she fell silent instantly. Then, in a gurgling voice that broke at its edges, the drell started to yell something.

Garrus's name. His real name. Damn it.

Junior stood on the roof, head tilted to one side as she listened. Garrus pulled the rifle from her hands and told her to hide. He knew that he could trust her to listen, so he turned back to the drell and soundlessly loaded the rifle with concussive rounds and a heat sink.

He heard Junior's footsteps on the ladder as she raced back down into the house.

He sighted the drell in his scope. He hadn't seen Garrus yet, but all it would take was a glance towards the roof to see the rifle. But Garrus was fairly confident that he could get a shot off before the drell could do much of anything. Maybe even before the drell could throw up a barrier or activate his shields.

The drell shifted and yelled his name again and, suddenly, Garrus could see its scaled face. And he realized he did know this drell after all

Feron.

Which meant that Liara had found him.

He had never liked Feron. No one had asked Garrus for his opinion on the drell, of course, but he thought Liara was an idiot for placing so much trust in someone who had betrayed her—not just once, but several times. The fact that Feron had come through for her in the end…well, in Garrus's opinion, that did very little to balance out the scales.

Still, it would have been easier to kill a nameless drell. His talon quivered over the trigger, torn between the instinct to keep himself and Junior safe and a burning curiousity to find out what the Shadow Broker could possibly want from him.

The hesitation was enough. Feron looked up, straight into Garrus's scope. The Synthesis had done strange things to the drell's eyes: there was a greenish glint across their black surfaces. The green lights lit up as Feron stared at Garrus through the scope. And then the drell smiled.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Vakarian!" he yelled, mockingly.

Garrus knew that he had to pull the trigger now. It didn't matter why Feron was here. All that mattered was keeping Junior safe. And that meant keeping himself safe. He had to do it. His talon tightened on the trigger, Feron's mocking face still in the scope.

Then, the drell stepped aside. The crosshairs were now clearly situated on an asari, who had been shielded from Garrus's vision by the bulkiness of Feron's trenchcoat.

For a moment, Garrus thought it was Liara and, as much as he despised her for what she had done to Shepard, he knew that he would never be able to kill her. His talon dropped away from the trigger, but he kept his gaze fixed through the scope.

No. It wasn't Liara. She was too young: her long arms and legs had the strange ungainliness of an asari teenager, the curve of her hips too straight and boyish to have yet reached full maidenhood. She had Liara's smattering of glowing freckles across her cheeks, the same sky-blue colour to her skin but…but there was something in how she furrowed her brow markings and clenched her jaw that reminded Garrus of someone else entirely.

No. It wasn't Liara. It was much worse. It was her daughter: the daughter that had been produced with Shepard's DNA and without Shepard's true consent.

Feron danced back into the scope, blocking the asari from Garrus's view once again.

"Look," he called, raspy voice singing out through the street, "you can let us in. Or I can stand here all day, shouting out your name. Garrus! Garrus Vakarian! Hero of the Citadel! One of Shepard's—"

"Shut up, damn it!" Garrus growled.

Feron smiled at the reaction, inner eyelids blinking in satisfaction. Garrus pulled the mantis away from the edge and climbed down the ladder back into the house. He kept the Mantis in his talons as he opened the front door.

Feron pushed his way inside without even waiting for an invitation from Garrus. He pulled the girl in after him, looking up and down the street before closing the door behind him. Garrus growled again.

"If you tell that you think you've been followed…"

Feron blinked his inner lids at him.

"No, I don't. Because I've been checking."

Garrus stomped into the kitchen, indifferent if Feron followed him or not. He did. But the asari girl…She just stood there, in the entryway, rocking back and forth on her heels. Garrus realized now, as her jaw clenched and unclenched, that she was on the verge of tears. Her biotics made the air around her crackle with blue static. Feron saw immediately that she was just standing there, so he walked back to her and swept a supportive arm around her shoulders. Gently, he led her forward into the kitchen.

"It's okay, Tiersa" Feron said, voice rasping softly in a tone utterly unlike the one he had use with Garrus. "We're safe now. I promise."

One look at the asari's terrified eyes told Garrus that she believed that as much as he himself did.

Damn. Tali had been right. This girl…she looked so much like Shepard. She sank wearily into one of the chairs at the table, folding her arms across her chest and looking down at the floor. He tried to figure out how old she would be now. He realized that the calculations were easy: she had been alive for as long as Shepard had been dead. She was nineteen, but the asari aging process was already slowing down her growth. Maturity-wise, she was probably the equivalent of a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old human, if you could make such comparisons. Almost twenty years. Damn, that was a long time. How had he gotten so old?

Garrus turned his attention to Feron.

"What the Hell do you think you're doing here? I though you were in the Terminus Systems. Do you have any idea— "

"Shut up Vakarian. Liara's dead."

The words had barely sunk in when Feron's eyes rolled back into his head and he started to chant, slipping into his memories.

"I'm outside in the hallway when I hear the shooting start. I had told Liara that I didn't want to leave her alone with the matriarch, but she didn't listen. Insisted that I wait outside. I run into her office. Liara is on the far side. The windows are smashed. I realize that a squad of asari commandos must have swung down from the roof. The matriarch and Liara are throwing singularities as each other. The commandos start shooting at me when I burst through the doors.

"Liara sees me. Looks up from behind her desk. There is purple blood flowing from her nose. One arm hangs limply at her side. She tells me to keep the package safe. I know that she means Tiersa. I tell her I won't leave her. She takes another bullet in the shoulder from one of the commandos. She tells me to go. Then, she throws a singularity at the doors, pulling them closed. I have no choice.

"I find Tiersa upstairs. She wants to go back. Help her mother. But the commandos reach us when we reach the lobby. Tiersa's barrier deflects the shots as we run into the street. She is in too much shock to cry yet. I tell her not to look back. We have to leave Liara. We have to leave."

Feron shook his head, clearing it of the fog of memories.

"I'm sorry…I…I can't control the memories like I once could."

A heavy silence settled over the kitchen. The last time Garrus had seen Liara had been in that bar in London, the day that Tali had left for Rannoch. He hadn't gone to the funeral. It felt wrong, burying an empty coffin. At that point, he had been sure that Shepard was still out there, somewhere.

So instead of going to the funeral, Garrus had pulled himself into a bar. But he couldn't escape it: the news vids above the counter—above all the counters in all the bars—were broadcasting the funeral. Everyone in the bar had their eyes fixed upon the screen. He tried to ignore it, but the camera panned over the crowd. And there, in the front row, he could see Liara. She was the only one not looking at the empty coffin being lowered into the ground. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the empty chair beside her. The chair, he realized suddenly, that had been meant for him.

He had left the bar at that moment, deciding that he needed to hurt something. There had been enough looters in the chaos that followed the War that he was sure he would be able to find someone worthy of beating to a pulp. But there was no one on the streets. It was eerie. Then, as he passed by shops and homes, he realized that everyone—perhaps every single breathing thing left on Earth—was watching the funeral. He even passed a group of security mechs clustered at the end of an alley, gathered around one of them who was bootlegging the audio from the funeral's transmission.

Everyone on Earth was attending Shepard's funeral. Except for him.

Garrus tried to shake off the shock of Liara's death, and tried to focus on what exactly Feron had said.

"…You…you never actually saw her die?" he asked.

Feron glanced over to the asari girl—Tiersa—and Garrus realized that she must have brought up the same objection.

"If the commandos made it down to the lobby, they would have gone through Liara first," he said quietly.

"They could have incapacitated her," Garrus said, frowning. "She could just be captured."

"I…I went back. Later. After I got Tiersa into the first safe house. I couldn't find a body, but…but there was blood. Lots of blood."

Garrus was still unconvinced.

"All asari blood looks alike. How could you tell it was hers?"

"Look," Feron hissed. "If she were alive…even if she were incapacitated…Liara thought of these things, you know. She had a tracker installed. Very difficult to remove. The tracker went dark even before we got out of the building. She's gone." The green light in Feron's eyes flickered on and off for a second. "Not that you would care," he snapped at Garrus.

Garrus tried to ignore the hatred burning in Feron's murky eyes. Of course he cared. As furious as he had been at her, he'd never wanted Liara dead. Feron's grief seemed real enough that Garrus knew that he truly did believe that she was dead. But he also felt like there was something missing from the picture. He watched the asari girl for a moment. She looked shaken and lost. Surely Liara wouldn't abandon this child? Her child. Shepard's child. The child she had been willing to do anything for, even betray Shepard's trust in order to…force…this child's existence upon the world, all out of some archeological impetus to preserve—and to preserve at any moral cost.

If Liara wasn't dead, she was certainly incapacitated beyond help at the moment. She would never leave the asari child.

"Who did it?" Garrus asked calmly.

Feron shook his head.

"A matriarch Liara was…pressuring…with regards to something about asari politics. I don't know why it was worth killing her. Yet. But I will find out. And then I will kill them. Slowly."

"Yes," said the asari girl, speaking for the first time, "we will."

Her voice was hard and so unlike Liara's. Even when she was acting the part of the Broker, Liara's voice had never lost that soft drop to her words. This girl…she was different. It was Shepard's voice, really—nuanced by asari genetics, but Shepard's voice nonetheless. And the way she lowered her eyes…Garrus realized just how much fury this young asari was struggling to contain.

But Feron laid a webbed hand on her shoulder.

"No. Tiersa, you're staying here."

She stood up, her biotics flaring and pushing the chair to the floor.

"I'm not staying here! With him!" She pointed, disgustedly, to Garrus. "I'm coming with you. I'm going to kill whatever bastards killed my mother. I'm going to squeeze the life from them with my bare hands. I'm—"

Feron stood up as well. He was shouting, his voice crackling at the edges.

"Little idiot! You can't stay with me. I've got less than a month before the Keplar's reaches its terminal stage. Do you understand? This is the last thing I can do—for your mother, for you—and then I will be dead. And then you will have no future."

"I don't care!"

"But I do. And so did your mother. You will stay here until you are old enough. And then you will take your mother's place as the Broker. But you need to stay alive for that to happen. Liara knew there was no safer place in the galaxy than with this turian here. So this is where you'll stay. Understand?"

"No! I won't. I'll blow this house to shreds! I'll follow you! You can't make me stay here!"

Feron reached through her burning biotics and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Tiersa! Listen."

The tears that had been welling at the edge of her eyes started to fall.

Feron held by the shoulders and stared into her eyes, not letting her look away or even wipe away the tears the were streaming down her face, sizzling as they reached the burning freckles of biotics on her cheeks.

"You know that, more than anything, your mother would want you to be safe," he said, almost whispering now. "I will be the one seeking justice. Seeking revenge. That the last gift I can give you before the eternal ocean takes me into its arms. But you…the greatest gift you can give your mother now is to stay alive. It's what she cared about more than anything else."

Tiersa's knees buckled and she sank to the floor. She threw her face into her hands and started to weep. Feron crouched beside her, holding her shoulders, whispering something into her ears that Garrus could not hear.

He coughed. Feron looked up at him.

"Look," Garrus said, "I'm really glad you're taking into consideration my feelings on this matter, but she can't stay here."

Feron's inner eyelids flickered.

"I don't believe you have a choice. She has nowhere else to go. Liara planned for this moment. She knew that her life was always in danger, that someday it would end like this. She needed to know that Tiersa would be safe. You know how important she is—"

"Quite frankly, I don't give a damn what Liara wanted," Garrus said evenly.

Tiersa pulled herself up from the floor.

"Don't you dare talk about my mother like that!" she screamed.

Garrus ignored her, fixing his gaze on Feron.

"I have my own to take care of. I don't have time to deal with the product of Liara's—"

Feron grabbed his arm.

"She just lost her mother, you heartless bastard. And you owe Liara. You've owed her for years. Did you really think it was that easy to disappear from the public eye? You? A prominent turian and Shepard's…companion?" Feron's face broke into a joyless smile. "Liara kept you safe. Found ways to keep the Alliance off your trail. To keep your name and image out of documentary vids and news vids and even Enkindler-damned school textbooks. And I hope you aren't so stupid as to think that those little neighbourhood clean-up operations were really coming from Tali—"

Garrus shoved Feron away.

"I don't care," he said slowly, staring into Feron's unnerving eyes. "I won't have the Broker's child in my house. She's too dangerous. The last thing I need is this kind of attention."

"She's not just the Broker's child, as you well know," Feron said, staring back.

Garrus looked away, mandibles flicking against the side of his jaw. And, as he turned his head, he saw that Junior was sitting on the stairs. She had a pistol in her small hands. And she was aiming at the back of Feron's head. Her hands were not shaking. He wondered, briefly, where the hell she had gotten the pistol from, but he realized that it was the one he kept beside his own bed. Even here, in this moment (even though she was doing exactly what he had told her not to do), he couldn't help but feel a flicker of pride. Junior's brown eyes met his gaze. She tilted her head, slightly, towards Feron—silently asking if she should pull the trigger.

For a moment, Garrus was overcome with the insanity of it all: Liara was dead or captured, Shepard and Liara's daughter in his house, and Garrus's own nine-year-old daughter was offering to kill without the slightest hesitation. Garrus sighed.

"Junior, come here."

Both Feron and Tiersa jerked, surprised at the small human girl creeping into the kitchen with the pistol in her hands. Neither of them had known she was there. Feron's eyes shone with a glimmer of recognition. Then they rolled back into his head again.

"I enter her office. Liara is standing at the monitors. Watching security footage with a wry smile playing across her lips. I look at the screen. A turian. Scars along one side of his face. One eye glows blue. There are two bodies on the floor beside him. A tiny human in his arms. He stops. Looks around the room. Pulls himself out of a shattered window. Disappears. I realize that I know him. Knew him. Once."

Feron pulled himself out of the memory with visible effort. Junior walked slowly over to stand beside Garrus, but her eyes never left Feron and she didn't lower the pistol.

"I think…that moment…that was when Liara decided that Tiersa would come to you if anything were to happen to her," Feron said, watching Garrus. "It was easy to keep tabs on you after she found that security footage. A turian with a human child stands out."

Junior's eyes were wide, flicking back and forth between Garrus and Feron. Garrus suddenly realized what she had to be thinking.

"No…Junior, listen," he said, crouching down. "I didn't kill your parents. Those were the people who were trying to hurt you."

She wrinkled her face, puzzling it out for a moment, but then nodded, accepting what he had said. Garrus knew he owed her more explanation than that, for it had still been Junior's own aunt and uncle he had gunned down, but…but that would come later. For now, there was still the blue-skinned problem sitting at his kitchen table.

Junior looked around the room, frowning. Her gaze lingered a long time on Tiersa's tear-streaked face, but then she turned to Feron.

"What are you?" she asked him. "What were you doing?"

He blinked at her.

"I am a drell. We can re-live our memories."

"What other memories do you have?" she asked, almost suspiously.

He smiled sadly.

"Too many."

"Oh."

Feron glanced down at the pistol she still held between her hands.

"I don't suppose that I need to ask the daughter of Archangel whether she's a decent shot with that thing?" Feron said.

She looked confused for a moment. And Garrus coughed, giving Feron a dark look. Feron shrugged, but Junior had now shifted her gaze over to Tiersa.

"My name is Adrienna. What's your name?" she asked quietly, letting the pistol fall back to her side.

"Tiersa," the asari responded, a little confused that the intensity of the conversation had now shifted to introductions.

"Is she going to stay with us, Dad?" Junior asked Garrus.

"No," said Tiersa. "I'm not."

And that was it. Garrus knew that Feron was right: he never really had any choice in the matter. Garrus couldn't leave this child in danger. And, as much as he hated to admit it to himself, someone needed to go after Liara, and Feron was in a better position than himself to do so. Feron couldn't do that if he still had Tiersa with him. She needed somewhere safe to stay.

"Damn you, Liara," Garrus growled. He took the pistol out of Junior's hands. Then, he stared at Tiersa for a moment.

Finally, he sighed.

"Tiersa…you can stay upstairs. In Junior's bedroom. You'll have to share."

Tiersa stared him. Her eyebrows narrowed. She looked too much like Shepard when she did that.

"I don't really want to stay here," she said quietly.

"I know. And I don't really want you here," Garrus said, since they were being honest. "But do either of us really have a choice?"

The asari looked down at her feet for a moment. Then, swallowing, she slowly shook her head.

"Okay then," Feron visibly relaxed, releasing a raspy breath through his mouth. "I guess…this is goodbye."

He looked pointedly at Garrus. Taking the hint, Garrus took Junior upstairs to give Feron and Tiersa a few minutes alone. Junior stood beside Garrus, obviously trying to think everything through. He owed her so many explanations it was starting to make his head hurt keeping track of all the secrets he had been keeping from his own daughter. He opened his mouth to speak, though he really had no idea what he could say to make any of this clear to her. She was still only nine years old, damn it. He had hoped that…well, honestly, that his past life could remain unknown to Junior perpetually, for her own safety. But, even so, he had assumed that any of these conversations would happen once she was much older. Before he could say anything though, he heard the front door slam as Feron left the house, setting out to find Liara's killers or kidnappers.

Tiersa appeared at the bottom of the stairs a moment later.

"He's…he's gone," she said brokenly. She wrapped her arms around herself, like she was trying to keep herself from splitting into pieces. "Feron…Mother….they're all gone…"

Junior broke away from Garrus's side and ran down to the bottom of the stairs. Tiersa's eyes widened in surprise as Junior wrapped her arms around her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"It's okay," Junior said carefully. Then, she frowned. "No, it's not okay. But we'll keep you safe here. I promise. I'm a very good shot with my gun. And my father…he saved me when I was a baby. So I know that we can keep you safe."

When Tiersa didn't respond—except to stare at her—Junior kept going. She grabbed the asari's blue hand in her own. Junior was trying so hard to comfort the young asari.

"Come on. I'll show you the house. It's…it's not very big, but that's okay. You can use the bed. I don't mind sleeping on the floor. I'm sorry about your mother. I've never had a mother. Well, my parents died when I was a baby. But that's all I'm allowed to tell people, because the rest has to stay a secret. You can keep secrets, right?"

Tiersa smiled sadly.

"Yes. I'm very good at keeping secrets," she said as Junior pulled her up the stairs.

She stopped as they passed Garrus at the top of the stairs. Junior still clutched her hand. Tiersa stared at him and Garrus was surprised to see her biotics flicker in the darkness of her eyes.

"I know what I am," Tiersa said to him. Her voice didn't waver. "I know who my…father…was. And I know how it happened. I hated my mother for a long time because of it. So, for what it's worth, I'm sorry that I...am. I'm sorry that I exist, I mean. I'm sorry that I'm here."

Garrus stared at her and remembered Liara. Not Liara as they had parted, but Liara as they had once been. She had been a friend, once. And he remembered Shepard. As much as he hated it, Feron was right. He owed it to both her parents to keep Tiersa safe. He supposed that he should be flattered that Liara considered him the only person on Earth capable of doing so. It didn't feel like flattery, though. It felt dangerous to have this asari anywhere near him and Junior.

But Tiersa really was still only a child by asari standards. And none of this was her fault. Garrus realized that, as Junior clutched Tiersa's hand in a futile effort to console her, that—of the two of them—only his daughter was doing the right thing.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your mother," he said. "I…I really am."

Something in Tiersa's eyes shifted at his words. But she turned away, following Junior down the hall, before Garrus could figure out what it meant.

A/N:

For those of you wondering about Feron's characterization, it's mainly from the Redemption comic (which explains how Liara finds Shepard's body). He's a little different in the Shadow Broker DLC (a year or two of torture will do that to a guy), but I've decided that it's been long enough that he's probably recovered his customary snarkiness by this point in history. This is probably the only time I'll take non-game lore into account, so I thought I should probably make note of it.

Thanks for reading!