A/N- Pardon the delay folks, been busy. We're almost there...
The Normandy picked the three of them up some time later and dropped Lantar off at the Citadel. It was an amicable parting, better than he could have ever dreamed of not so long ago. Shepard shook his hand and thanked him and while Garrus still wouldn't use his given name he called him Officer and gave him a small salute. It was everything he should have ever wanted but the weight of the bag on his shoulder was dragging his heart into his feet so it took effort to smile.
He stayed at the docks long enough to watch the Normandy leave, admiring the beautiful ship as she took off into the open sky until she was just a dot against the Serpent nebulae. Then he stayed there a while longer, watching the people come and go in tangles and groups before getting up, carefully shifting the battered old duffel under his arm and slipping into the foot traffic himself. With how busy the Citadel was these days he didn't pass a single person he knew in the crowds. It was only at his last stop that someone greeted him by name.
"Lantar? What is it kid?"
Sidonis gave Linaria a flick of a mandible that wasn't quite a smile. "Hey. I guess it was secret but it's over now so it doesn't matter. I just got back from Omega and I need a favor."
The lines of her face creased heavily at that, concern in her tone as she leaned out of the door. "The news was saying something about... Are you alright?"
"Maybe. Sort of. I'll get over it soon enough anyway but not right now. I already stopped by the office and let them know I was back but I wouldn't be in tomorrow or longer because I really, really need to get drunk. I mean I didn't tell them the drunk part but-"
"Woah woah, stop right there!" Both her hands shot out to grab his shoulders and give him a hard shake, eyes narrowing on him sharply as she pursed her lips. "You are not getting drunk Lantar. You're an alcoholic by the goddess- come in kid, you can stay here and we'll wait until this goes away..."
"I found his apartment Lin."
She stopped trying to drag him in through the door at the way his voice shook. The young turian's shoulders were painfully stiff under her hands.
"Look I already bought the crap and I'm doing it one way or the other. But I'd rather do it with a friend to keep an eye on me. Just... keep me company, stop me when I'm past numbing and only making myself sick. I... I can't do this sober."
"..." Linaria looked at a loss, turning from his face to the bag of cheap colony beer in one hand to the old Palaveni military issue duffel bag clutched protectively under the crook of his other arm. She wanted to say something, he could tell as the worried silence lasted long over a minute before she sighed. "... Alright Lantar. Alright. Just let me tell Mark I'll be gone."
"Thank you" He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, running a hand down his face and more grateful than he could say. A minute or so of standing in the doorway staring at nothing later she came back and they set off. Lin didn't say anything during the walk back to his apartment and simply stuck to keeping close by his side, offering support through her presence.
The door to his place clicked open as he keyed in the code and stepped back to let his friend in first. "I've got hangover meds already, I couldn't remember if the ones you bought me last time were still good. They sell them at the liquor store now." His laugh was rough, half distant. "It's kind of fucked up." For a moment after that he stood there in the middle of the room unsure where to go before settling on the edge of the bed. Beer first. It tasted just as bad as it had when he was a teenager but it should do the trick- he went through two before he could get his hands to open the seal of the bag.
All of the expensive things: his armor, weapons, the brandy, the Vallumian cigarettes in their silver case had been gone by the time he found the apartment. Looters had broken in everywhere they could across Omega and took things like that months ago but they didn't bother with the little things. Lantar had picked up some datapads, a set of holoframes, a small leather pouch that's contents clinked in his hands, the bag itself from Cass' service days on Palaven. His throat constricted as he talked.
"You know, when I opened the door I expected him to be there. Not as a... he would have died somewhere else, fighting, not at home. But just... there, like nothing had ever changed." The first datapad was some old Unification War novel, nothing special. He turned the screen back off and put it down on the bed next to him with care. Two more novels were added to the pile after it, then he picked up a datapad full of letters that had him reaching for another beer before Linaria stopped him.
"You have to slow down or you'll be on the floor" she'd said with a hand on his arm. It helped him resist downing a third in less than ten minutes, Spirits bless her. Skimming over the thing gave him the basics- it looked like messages offloaded from an omnitool for safe keeping, old ones given that they were from Janus and his sister. Looked like her name was Ophelia. There was some old human story Montague had loved with an Ophelia in it, she had ended badly too if he remembered it right. It wasn't comfortable reading so he put it down with the others and reached for something else. A holoframe this time.
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees when he triggered the display. It was Janus, just Janus, standing somewhere looking at the camera without a smile and he recognized the outfit because it was hanging in his closet right now.
"Sweet fucking Spirits!" he choked, staring at it for a few more seconds before unclenching a hand from the frame to grab a bottle of the harder stuff. "I'm not drunk enough for this, fuck..."
Linaria looked at him worriedly and he handed the photo over to her wordlessly before prying the bottle open with his teeth. Her hand gripping his arm again was the only reason he downed half of it instead of the whole thing. She looked at it and them up again, confusion crinkling her face in a way that pulled on her white markings like wrinkles "Who is it? I thought your guy was from Palaven."
"Parthia, yeah. That's his husband." Lantar only stumbled slightly when he stood and walked to the closet, staring inside and taking another slug. It burned going down and fogged his throbbing head like he needed it to. "Judging by where he came up to on Cassius he was about two inches shorter than me, explains why the damn thing never quite fit." and he tossed the outfit Cassius had given him that last day in the Suns base on the bed.
The frame was tilted down in Lin's hands at an angle where he could still see it, Spirits help him. Everything about the thing that had looked awkward on him looked elegant on Janus. It'd clearly been made for his coloring- Darkest plates I've ever seen on a turian, red tats, gold eyes. He could hear that deep beautiful voice murmuring the words against his throat all this time later, fuck it all.
Why was easy enough to understand if you took it on the most basic level- it had probably been the only thing the other man owned that would have fit him- but if you thought any deeper into what it meant... "Fuck." Lantar groaned into his hands again, the mouth of the bottle knocking into his face as he did so but he didn't care. "You sure know how to fuck me don't you Cass? Even when you're not here anymore."
"Lantar-"
"Just, fuck I don't... Lin I don't even know anymore alright? I thought the fucking engagement stones would be the worst thing I brought back but this is..."
"Lantar, you need to explain this to me if I'm going to help at all because right now I don't understand what's going on." That was a cop voice she used on him, it cut through the fog and got him to turn around again.
A breath, two, he was stable. He was as stable as he was going to get right now. "... Janus had been dead for fifteen years by that point. He can't have had much left of him given what'd happened, but he gave me that. He came back for me and gave me that and let me go. I didn't..." The bed sunk under him as he sat down again, the now empty bottle hanging from his talons between his knees. "He didn't have to do any of that. I should have realized it after the fucking forehead touch." and he mimed it unconsciously with the hand holding his face, the soft pad of a thumb over the broad plate. His throat stung as his voice started to keen.
"I don't know how much you know about turian gestures but it's... important for us. I mean it wasn't the full face-to-face thing but it's not something you do casually. I guess the best way to describe it... like a kiss, that lingers longer than it should. He cared about me too." Lantar hadn't been this badly shaken since Cass had turned him in. Spirits, Cassius... "You should have come with me, damn it."
Alone he might have hurled the bottle into the wall and let the keen quavering in his chest overwhelm him and break him down but he had a counterbalance with him- the woman who had practically been his mother for the last year moved over quickly and embraced him while he shook.
It helped more than he could say. He'd be ok later, just... not right now. Right now he had too many things to lay to rest.
Two days of detox aided by meds Lin called in from a clinic contact later had Sidonis on his feet and working again. The situation at the docks was exploding, even with Aria's people leaving in droves to return home to Omega or to fight on the front lines, so he found himself working the refugee camps again. It didn't bother him- he was glad to be able to check up on his kids again. Most were still hanging on, some had died, one or two had found distant relatives to hold to. He did what he could for them.
It wasn't a burden he bore alone. Everyone working down there seemed to be finding small personal missions to keep themselves sane: the asari who always made a point to visit the widow whose wife had died on a mission somewhere halfway across the galaxy to keep an eye on her, the human who always kept a few extra ration bars on him for the kids who needed but didn't want to ask for help to 'steal' from his pockets when he pretended to be occupied elsewhere, the turian who let a young human refugee sleep behind his desk while he stood guard to keep the monsters at bay. With everything they couldn't change... the little things meant a lot and kept them going.
Life was hectic but everyone who was still sane this deep into the war was used to that. They all got a little less sleep, ate worse, held the people they cared about a little tighter as world after world burned. Vices were at an all-time high- the clubs, bars, and brothels filled to bursting day and night. Bars Lantar avoided, he couldn't let himself slip like that again and he was working too much overtime anyway to sit around off-shift with his friends anyway. And he'd never been a dancing person so his vice of choice remained sex, which wasn't hard to come by in a profession full of turian men who were dripping stress from their fringe to their feet. He was actually in bed with a fellow officer taking some blessed time to unwind after a grueling day of work when every damn thing with a screen in the apartment lit up at once.
Both their omnitools, the holoscreen, the list on the fridge, the temperature control in the wall, the flash-heater, the display for the door, all the datapads laid out around the table- every last one turned on simultaneously and scared the living daylights out of both of them. His date for the evening, another Invictus native who'd been with C-sec for 30 years, pulled himself together quickly and rolled off Lantar to pick up his omni and tap at the holokeys to no effect. Lantar himself took another few moments to be frazzled and found that every channel was the same thing, a grey synthetic face looking forward with a strange amount of concentration for a machine.
"We are through Commander." it said in a clipped humanoid female voice. "I have granted us access to every possible source that will not interrupt life support or emergency systems."
"Maintaining signal, ready when you are." That one was from somewhere offscreen, quarian and vaguely familiar but why...
Which was when the synthetic stepped aside and the face of Commander Shepard appeared on every screen in the apartment. Hid bedmate's jaw dropped, but knowing what he did of her Lantar found himself strangely unsurprised. Something this crazy happens it only made sense she had something to do with it.
"This is Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy. People of the Citadel, I need you to listen to me! The Normandy has just left Thessia and in the Temple of Athame we discovered a prothean beacon that contained critical data for ending this war. We were able to secure it but Cerberus' lap dog forwarded a copy of it to his master before we put the bastard down. We're dealing with them now but the information we've been able to decode so far is too dire to wait. The Reapers are coming for the Citadel now. You need to evacuate."
Nothing in her face was exaggerating, her gaze was deadly serious. The two cops looked at each other and began suiting up immediately. Shepard's words continued in the background as they tossed parts of each others' armor across the bed from wherever they'd taken it off in their haste to fuck barely ten minutes ago. Thank the Spirits they'd come here right after their shifts- they still had all of their gear with them. "I've already contacted the Councilors. The salarians are going to take all the refugees they can manage and they'll find somewhere to put the rest of you. My people will remain in contact with the authorities to do whatever we can to help coordinate. I need every C-sec officer and soldier present on the Citadel now to do every damn thing you can to keep the peace. I know I'm fucking up your day revealing this so suddenly but there's no way to do this in a calm and orderly fashion- I owe every one of you a drink when the war's over. Spirits be with you, Godspeed, Goddess watch over you, Keelah Se'lai." The Commander saluted them and the feeds all cut out at once.
Thankfully he'd kept a full weapons locker since the Cerberus attack- there were plenty of sinks stored up and the two of them stocked as many as they could in the pockets of their armor. Lantar grabbed some ration bars from the cabinet as well, Spirits knew when they'd have time to sit and eat again. And after a few moments of staring at his apartment knowing he might never come back here again, he dug under the bed for Cassius' military bag and pulled it onto his back. Everything else could be replaced.
There wasn't time to be scared. That was alright for other people but he was an officer damn it. He brushed a gloved finger over the C-sec symbol emblazoned on his armor and felt a small spike of pride through everything else.
The other cop flashed him a grin. "Ready to go and fight for your life?
Sidonis hefted the Eviscerator he'd pulled off a Cerberus corpse during the attempted Coup onto his shoulder, flaring his mandibles in return. "I'll fight without pause?"
"And when my time comes..."
"-I'll die for the cause" Both of them finished the line in unison. The ridiculousness of a couple of colony kids from the ass end of nowhere quoting the turian national anthem at each other in the face of something its writers couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares made Lantar laugh and dig an armored elbow into the other man's side. They exited cautiously into the hallway where there were already signs of chaos beginning.
It was gonna be a long night...