All These Long Cycles Coming

Torin - Torini plural. Male turian of the age of majority (15)

Tarin - Tarini plural. Female turian of the age of majority (15)

Puer - Child Puerin Puerin - Children

Hinah - Asari for mother (Bearing parent)

Makah - Asari for father (Non-bearing parent)

Kaika - Asari for daughter

Sikah - A ritual knife made from the tooth of a thresher maw

Pyrumavra - A form of warfare that leaves nothing behind, everyone is killed, all buildings, crops, etc. destroyed. The turian equivalent of "scorched earth".

Spurin - Turian word for bastard, but meaning a despicable person, not one of unknown parentage.

1963 CE Sarlik, Oma Ker, Turian Space (48 years later)

In Wrex's experience, being krogan meant stabbing horror and loss in the face with his sikah and carving out a good-sized chunk of cheek meat. It meant sighting a target and tearing through or blowing up everything in between. It meant burning away fear with wildfire. Rage stoked the fire of survival while fear amounted to an organ he needed to tear out and throw to the varren.

Shepard once referred to fighting between Wrex and Grunt as being caught between the Scylla and Charybdis. Wrex loved that. Of course, he didn't know the Scylla or Charybdis from his fat grandmother's arse end, but he got the gist of the metaphor: being dragged under and drowned in violence.

He glanced toward the large window; smoke obscured the city beyond, the sky above, black. Since he'd taken over his clan, he'd used rage and savagery in a calculated way: tossing klixen and varren into the ring to keep his people's minds off the thresher maw coming up under them. Wrex chuffed. Strange to think of fury as a plan … a strategy every bit as complex as one of Shepard's machinations.

So, yes, his history bled a torrent of rage, but terror? No, Wrex crushed terror beneath his boots, bleeding it into the dust. Three days before, a single message smashed his long history of glorious fury, and for the time it took to race from Tuchanka to Oma Ker, terror ripped into him with rabid teeth, consuming sleep and dragging each second into an eternity.

Raxi. Samara. Stay safe. Stay alive.

"Wrex?" Quarn's voice pulled him back, so cool and controlled that it helped whip Wrex's fear into anger. "General Kandros is ready to speak to us."

How did Quarn keep himself from screaming and blasting his way through the pompous idiots that stood between them and their families? Three days ago, the same turian separatists shoved Quarn's mate and son into the same chair as they had Raxi and Samara. Malani and Durrien suffered the same blows if they refused to recite the same message. Every time Wrex blinked, the flickering, interrupted holo images of the people he loved appeared behind his eyelids, making calm impossible.

Samara stared into the recording device, unbroken and strong. Courage shone through her every word despite the filth, mottled black bruises, and blood covering her serene, beautiful face. "The aid camp in the city center of Sarlik on Oma Ker has been captured. I came to Oma Ker to aid the civilians trapped by the conflict tearing … " A taloned hand slammed into her temple, a cry from somewhere off camera accenting the strength of the blow. Samara must have gone off script.

Wrex's jaw clenched, every muscle roaring, needing to charge and kill. The angry cry could have only come from Raxi … his fierce Raxi trying to protect her mother. His breath roared in his throat, his entire body screaming to tear the plates from the bastard's flesh.

"... tearing the colony apart. Last night insurgents captured the camp. They say that if the Hierarchy does not recognize their independence, they will murder …." Another blow, that one harder, leaving a slow trail of new blood running down over her temple. She clenched her jaw, tipping her chin up, so beautifully defiant that Wrex reached out to touch her image. "They will murder everyone in the camp." When she emphasized the word and turned from the camera to glare at her captor, Wrex fell in love all over again.

The brutal hands dragged her from the chair and out of view. A new set of talons shoved Raxi into the seat a moment later. Raxi read the script as her captors wrote it but with no less courage or defiance than her mother.

"Allow a krogan coalition to break the insurgency?" General Kandros's outraged bellow dragged Wrex out of his thoughts yet again. The general paced the war room at the heart of the government buildings, his constantly shaking head dropping a flaming gob of magma into Wrex's gut. "Not if they were the last warriors in the galaxy."

He threw up a hand to stop Quarn before he do more than draw breath to speak. "I don't care who the insurgents are holding; you'll let the turian military handle it." The torin reeked of sour sweat, frustration, and desperation, but he kept his distress buttoned down, no doubt refusing to show any weakness in front of a krogan. Judging by how revolting he found the idea of fighting alongside krogan, betraying that he knew he was losing the revolt must feel as appealing as gnawing off his own head.

Wrex let out a long, regulated breath aimed at keeping his rage intact. As much as he wanted to save the general the trouble and rip the turian's troublesome head right off, he and Quarn had come there to get their mates and children out alive. They'd tried every other angle, even asking the Council to send Spectres to extract the civilians and aid workers trapped in the war torn capital.

Naturally, as always, it came down to Wrex strangling matters in his own hands. Why did governments always claim helplessness? Instead of making decisions and standing to say 'no more', they wrung their hands and made excuses as to why they couldn't just do the right thing. He growled again, low and dangerous. Shepard, and her gift for making people see the truth, couldn't arrive soon enough. He needed help smashing heads together.

He choked down his rage, crimson eyes watching Kandros pace, each revolution across the space cracking the shell controlling his temper, taking it another notch closer to blood rage.

"General," Quarn said, his voice far calmer and more placating than Wrex could have managed even if he'd been struck unconscious, "forget that our mates and puerin are being held by these insurgents. Your units are surrounded and being whittled down. Civilians are dying by the thousands: collateral damage or murdered by either side as rebels or loyalists." He stepped into the general's pacing route. "The krogan, CDEM personnel, and five squads of asari commandos have taken positions outside the insurgent lines. They can end this rebellion today."

The general shoved Quarn aside, bullying past him, a bold move … or maybe just the carelessness of a torin who already considered himself dead. "I don't care if this mindless brute spit-polishes your boots every morning," Kandros said, each word as sharp as varren teeth. "If you think I'm going to allow krogan to put down even the most rabid turian separatist, you've got netichiks eating your brain, Hierarch Quarn." The sheer amount of revulsion accenting the words 'krogan' and 'hierarch' set Wrex's molten gut aflame.

Decan Quarn earned his seat in the Hierarchy serving his people and the krogan faithfully for over a century. Hearing Kandros speak of his best friend like something stepped on in a pyjak cage clenched the clan chief's fists into boulders … mountains threatening to become rockslides. If this pile of rahat thought he could stand between them and their families … between he and Raxi …. No. He'd tear the head off every turian in his way to get to them, and then bathe the colony in a sea of blood and viscera if anything happened to his kaika.

And he'd start with Kandros.

But instead of delivering on the promise of carnage, Wrex turned to meet and hold the general's stare, meeting contempt with contempt. The cracking air seared the insides of his nostrils as he took a long, roaring breath and stretched his fingers until the joints all cracked. "We're not going without our families. They came to help the civilians you've torn apart with your war."

He spun toward the door, a juggernaut digging in to charge. "Go ahead, sacrifice your home; it's not up to me to beat sense into you." Wrex took a step toward Kandros, a vicious smile tearing open his face when the general stepped back. "But if anything happens to my mate and daughter, I'll be back to bleed you slow." He clapped Quarn on the shoulder. "Come on, pyjak."

"Nice try, Clan Chief Urdnot." The hierarch nodded and fell in at Wrex's three. "Unfortunately, you can't talk the stupid or the mindless prejudice out of some people." Once the door closed behind them, sealing General Kandros on the other side, Quarn gripped Wrex's arm in punishing talons. "We can't let him force us out. I don't care what Kandros says or what the Council will do. Malani and Durrien are in there." The hierarch latched onto Wrex's arm, sliding behind him for ten metres before the clan chief stopped. "I need to get my family to safety, Wrex."

Wrex shot a glance back at his best friend, the look dripping with at least fifty litres of 'don't be such a brainless varren pup, of course we're not leaving without them'. Instead of replying to Quarn, he opened a channel to the two hundred krogan waiting in hidden positions around the city.

As soon as the message from the insurgents came in, Wrex announced to the gikgah that he'd be mounting a rescue mission. Volunteers swarmed the training yard. The united clans adored his family and Quarn's: the once-aliens adopted and beloved. In addition to krogan, a large contingent of CDEM personnel, and squads of asari commandos—on Tuchanka to train with Samara and krogan shamans—signed up.

Wrex knew the turian colonial government flailed too deep in the bog of their war to treat the krogan volunteers as anything other than the enemy. So he, Quarn, and Barl scanned the insurgent placements throughout the city and organized their own plan of attack.

Wrex coughed; the air stank of cowardice. He needed to get outside, at least the reek of smoke, blood, and decay was an honest one. "Barl, get them moving," he ordered. "We're on our way out, now." Clapping one heavy hand down on Quarn's shoulder, he pulled his friend along as he strode for the exit, still speaking into his comm. "Time to start saving the galaxy one ignorant pyjak at a time. Drop them and stash them." He glanced at Quarn. "You ready?"

"As ready as I can be at 134 cycles old." The turian stretched, his joints cracking. "I feel 200 today. Far too old to fight my way through a city full of rebel soldiers." He shrugged out of the black robe of his station, revealing the set of light, battle-scarred armour beneath. "Let's end this." He opened his omnitool, sending a ping to Malani in the captive aid camp a half-city away. In under a minute, Quarn's mate returned the ping, the message displaying current insurgent deployment data throughout the camp.

Wrex didn't know how the tarin managed to hold onto her omnitool when the insurgents swept into the camp, seeking shelter from the bombs behind innocent shields. Most of the intelligence didn't matter to him, anyway. His plan didn't rely on intelligence; it relied on rage. Rage and control.

"Is our route still open?" Wrex asked, moving to the front door to check on the rebel lines. Their fortifications surrounded the buildings, standing nose to nose with the defenders' concrete barricades and sniper posts. Pacing, he threw his shoulders in circles and waggled his head back and forth, loosening up for the coming carnage. His first instinct had been to send his warriors charging through the insurgent lines while he argued with the idiots. Instead, he deployed them and ordered them to wait. He needed to be there; he needed to be the one smashing straight into the enemy's ranks.

He waited, his imagination following Barl and the five squads of krogan, turians, and asari as they moved to surround the insurgent lines. Wrex hated waiting. He'd saved the best part for himself, but still, waiting made his feet itch to stomp back into Kandros's office and tear off the general's arms. Growling under his breath, he stopped, watching for a shift in the lines.

"Aralakh to Great Maw," Barl's voice snarled through Wrex's comm, enough emphasis placed on Wrex's handle to make Wrex chuff. Smart ass krogan. Nothing worse. "All teams in position. One massive distraction coming up."

"Go," Wrex ordered before he swaggered out into the defender's lines, larger than life and twice as ugly. Wading through the turian defences as if he not only belonged, but ran the show, he let out a guttural snarl. Time to crack skulls.

He leaped over the stacks of k-rails. The insurgent line hid behind a thick wall of piled sandbags, their rifle muzzles shoved through the gaps: infant maws popping out of the desert to spit their pathetic, watery acid. In the distance, the sharp echo of assault rifles cracked off buildings. Wrex narrowed his eyes, grinning when the heavy bark of krogan shotguns replied. Shoving his helmet down over his head, he sucked in a greedy breath.

Raxi … Samara … I'm coming.

Setting his shoulder ahead of him, a battering ram they'd sing songs about for generations, he charged the wall of sandbags. Bellowing laughter, Wrex smashed the front line into a shower of sand, rifles, and turians. He didn't slow when the insurgents opened fire, shrugging off the bullets pelting his shields, trusting Quarn to have his back. Instead, he dug in, blasting straight through the rebel command tent. Slowing just enough to aim for the two turians he needed, he grabbed their armour at the cowl and barreled right back out the other side.

The booming aerial artillery sound of singularities and shockwaves detonating provided a strong counterpoint to small arms fire, making Wrex's every cell sing. Battle roared through his veins, his blood and breath—like all krogan—but like fighting at Shepard's side, this battle … a battle to defend innocents rather than for its own sake … it filled all four hearts with something stronger than rage or fear.

The fire in his blood began to cool as he raced past ruined street after ruined street, dragging his protesting captives behind him. The entire city seemed to burn. The smoke and decay blurred into a single miasma that bludgeoned its way past his sinuses to sink daggers in his gut. The blood-hued cataracts faded from his vision, rage giving way to horror, individual details registering amidst the relentlessly uniform field of rubble. Fire bombing. His gaze slid over the long swaths of destruction carved through businesses and homes. The dead …. It sickened him ... so many bodies of unarmoured and unarmed civilians—the elderly and the very young—torn up by the bombs, their corpses left to lie.

"Where are the warriors?" Wrex asked, the question an explosive arrow shot straight into his rage. He turned to his prisoners, but one just glared at him while the other seemed to find something fascinating in the dirt.

"Wrex?" Quarn glanced around them before looking at Wrex, his mandibles slumped lower than his shoulders. "Oh. No soldiers amongst the dead." The single whisper resonated through the endless soot-blacked landscape. "Pyrumavra, the resort of dishonourable cowards."

"The Hierarchy spurin don't care where we are," the turian dangling from Wrex's right hand said, spitting words coated in a thick layer of venom. "They level everything to kill us."

"And you dare them to by hiding behind pups and old mothers? Liar." Wrex slammed on the brakes, sliding, struggling for footing in the thick cover of ash before he crashed to a stop. Crimson flashing across his vision once more, he stared past the black steel studs into the remains of a small home.

Tightening his grip on the struggling turians, he lunged into the talkative one's face. "Who did this?" Losing control over his rage for a single round of heartbeats, he shook both torini: rags in a rabid varren's jaws. "You're Murcellus?" he demanded of the torin—he'd use the bastard's rank the day after Aralakh dumped a giant pile of varren shit on his head. "You command this cowardly pack of klixen?"

Remaining silent, the insurgent general glared, his suddenly tight-lipped rage enough to set Wrex's helmet on fire let alone betray the answer.

Wrex shook the torini again, knocking their heads together a little. "Who dropped these bombs?" Once again neither answered. Bracing to smack them together hard enough to rattle teeth—and maybe the truth—loose, Wrex roared. "Who killed these people?" Dragging the torini with him, he strode into the remains of the tiny house. He shoved them down onto their knees, hard enough that they fell face first into a huddle of corpses. A mother crouched, her arms around her three small children, sheltering them with her body.

"Both sides have bombed the other's positions within the city." Murcellus threw himself backwards and clambered to his feet. For a half second Wrex saw a flash of something real—fear, he thought—but then it disappeared behind a curtain of arrogant defiance. "We didn't do this. The rebellion is about creating a government that allows people like this family to live better lives."

Wrex grabbed the rebel general and hurtled back out onto the street, his shoulder slamming into the wall on the way. Once outside, he spun to face the other turian: one of Murcellus's upper echelon. "Well?"

The torin crawled the half metre to the bodies then knelt so he sat on his heels. "Rallia." Gentle, trembling hands rested on the dead mother's head and that of her youngest. "I knew her. These puerin attend school with my own." After another second, he leaped up. Wrex braced to meet him as he charged, but the torin ducked around him at the last second to grab Murcellus. "This stopped being about the people the moment you started using civilians as bargaining chips and shields."

Wrex chuckled, a roar rolling beneath it, deep, slow, and dangerous. "Even your soldiers know what a quadless coward you are." He cuffed the general hard enough to knock him out, his only regret that he didn't have Kandros's unconscious body dangling from his other hand.

"Our families are being held in the aid camp," Quarn said, stepping up beside Wrex, shotgun leading. He gestured toward the field of rubble and the winding trail through it. "We'll get to them faster if you show us the way past the rebel and government positions."

The rebel officer nodded, his slumped shoulders and hanging mandibles igniting a heady blast of satisfaction in the clan chief's gut. Wrex curled his lip as the stink of slaughter invaded his helmet. The stupid pyjaks, resorting to threatening innocents. He understood rising up and spitting in the face of injustice, but hadn't the krogan proven the costs of waging war without mercy and honour?

With the officer leading, Wrex and Quarn made excellent time, racing along the route of fewest guards. Victory tried to muscle its way back in, to take hold of his hearts, but he crushed it beneath his boots. That fight, even won, didn't make a victory. The krogan wouldn't know true triumph until they stood before the Council and the slippery bastards finally promised diplomatic protection and representation for the krogan. That moment might not appear for decades.

He'd given orders to avoid turning the hostage crisis into a political disaster, but all that mattered to him in the moments stretching before him was beating down his rage and taking his family home alive. If turians died … to the pits with them.

Those soldiers they did encounter, Wrex dropped, slamming a heavy fist down on the top of their heads before leaving them sprawled on the ground. Block after block, collapsed street after collapsed street passed by, faster and faster as Wrex's rage drove them, a cruel master lashing them if they slowed.

The air in the city changed the closer they got to the aid camp. Clouds and smoke attacked the tops of the buildings, the wind and ash tearing through them like claws shredding flesh. Wrex slowed, dread leaping out of the pooled shadows and clinging to his hump. A sharp glance cut across to Quarn, who nodded: he felt it. Even their escort started looking more and more like a pyjak in a cooking pot watching the fire build.

"Government troops are moving in," Murcellus's officer said, lifting a hand to his comms. "The outer patrols and bases have gone dark. A few scattered reports of movement in the air. Gunships taking off from the airfield." He spun and leaped up to a second floor where the outside wall had been sheared away, following that with an equally impressive jump to the roof. Grabbing a pair of field glasses from his belt, he scanned the sky. "Gunships also lifting off the roof of the capital buildings."

Rahat! That bastard Kandros couldn't help but leap into the opening left by Wrex's teams. Swoop in, mop up the last few stragglers and claim his glorious victory. For their trouble, he'd make the krogan the bad guys.

"Get down here, pyjak!" he bellowed, then turned to Quarn. "Contact Barl, make sure he has our insurance in place. Kandros is moving in."

"Tarc!" Quarn made contact even before the rebel officer jumped back down to street level, the hierarch firing questions even as he, Wrex, and their guide set back into a run.

Gunship thrusters droned louder every second, and after two blocks, Wrex picked up the rumble of engines and the hum of thrusters from street level. With so much rubble, the turians wouldn't be able to move quickly. No need to worry about the APC's and tanks. He intended to be long gone before they arrived, but the thrusters meant drones.

When Quarn fell silent, Wrex glanced back. "Incoming drones." A rocket impacted the wall just above and behind him, tearing a sharp 'rahat' from between clenched teeth. "Hey, rebel!" he shouted, tossing Murcellus's slumped form into his officer's arms when the torin turned.

Wrex ducked into the side street, leaping a pile of polycrete. "Keep going. I'll be a minute." Chuckling, he charged the flock of drones, a broad, vicious smile spreading across his face. "You'd love this," he hollered, thinking of both Shepard and Bakara … his warrior sisters. He ducked a volley of rockets and ran through a hail of rounds from the assault drones to hurl himself off the top of a pile of rubble. Catching an assault drone by the feet, he dragged it to the ground. He twisted, falling on his back, turning the drone's fire on the rest of its squad even as they turned to level their guns and launchers on him again.

"Come on! Come on!" His taunts faded into laughter as the small flying weapons exploded into schrapel. A piece lanced through the armour at his hip, the pain hardly more than a bee sting with the battle song roaring through his cells. He ripped it out, his laughter manic, and scrambled to his feet. Gripping one of the legs in his hand, he swung the drone like a club, smashing the mindless VI guided toys like … rahat … like toys.

He stopped, breathing hard, the drones in a circle of smoking ruins around him. Rumbling under his feet spurred him back into motion; they needed to get everyone out of the way before Kandros's tanks arrived to back up the gunships.

"Barl, are the shuttles ready?" He snatched up an armload of the drones and threw himself back into a run. "Get us some heavy guns at the aid camp. If I don't get there, take charge. Set up lines and aim for the engines on the gunships. Make sure someone records what both sides do."

When Barl answered that he was already on the way, Wrex grinned, wishing he could see Kandros's face when his gunships fell from the air, their wings clipped. After that day, the entire galaxy wouldn't be able to deny how much he'd refocused his people. He chuckled, the sound sharp and jagged. The Council wouldn't know what hit them.

Wrex knew he approached the aid camp by the sound of gunship thrusters approaching on multiple vectors. They approached low to the ground, between buildings, to avoid rocket fire, so he ran another four blocks before he caught sight of them. Three seconds later, they caught sight of him, the leader peeling out of formation to close on Wrex.

Turning to face the gunship, Wrex dropped all but two of the drones, gripping one in each hand. The gunship opened fire, the rounds stabbing into the ground between them, sending up small clouds of ash. Wrex stood his ground, chin thrust out. Urdnot Wrex killed by a gunship? Not in two thousand lifetimes. Only Vakarian was made of enough stupid and reckless to jump in front of a rocket.

He stared down the pilot, hoping the idiot could see the grin on his face as he waited for it to get close enough. The belch of one of the krogan artillery guns widened his grin. Wait until the turians saw the krogans' invention. Too bad he was going to miss it.

Closer … closer …. Bellowing at the top of his lungs, Wrex hurled a drone, aiming for the thrusters. In a glorious gout of flame, the starboard thruster exploded, throwing the gunship into a quick spiral. A half second later, it slammed into a building and went up in flames. Beautiful! He roared, taunting the others still aiming for the camp, grinning when one took the challenge.

Come on, you bastards! Come to Uncle Urdnot.

The second drone smashed into the tail hard enough to swing the entire gunship around. A loud chuckle roared down the street as the pilot fought for control. Another drone from his pile sent the second gunship careening into first one's smoking corpse.

Enough playing with Kandros's toys. He needed to be between his family and the rest of the forces the general ordered to take the camp. Growling deep and low in his throat, he spun and raced toward the camp, following Quarn's tracks down the street. He'd have to poke the old guy for his distinctive elderly shamble.

Six blocks, and a magnificent, booming orchestra of krogan-led destruction later, he ran into a plate-peeling wall of burning fuel and melted slag. Ducking through the charred remains of a furniture store, Wrex climbed the collapsed roof and slid down the wall of the building next door. He paused to breathe for the first time in nearly two hours, clear-eyed and calm. The camp. Shuttles lined up alongside a field of tents and lean-to structures, the camp looking intact enough that the varren in his gut stopped ripping each other to pieces.

"Makah?"

Wrex spun toward the shout, an almost painful sigh of relief scraping out to greet the glowing blue streak that charged at him. He wobbled a little. Damn, must be dizzy from lack of air in his helmet. Yeah, definitely the helmet. He ripped it off.

"Makah!" A grip like steel bands wrapped around him, his daughter clinging to him, her soft face pressed to his. She smelled of smoke and blood, both aged and fresh. "I told Hinah." She planted a kiss on his cheek. "I told her you'd come for us and kick more turian rebel ass than has ever been kicked."

He lifted her off the ground with one arm, joy and love burning away days of fear. "How's your hinah?"

"Awww, you were worried about us." Raxi laughed, a note of giddiness betraying how much of a toll her captivity had taken, and settled into the crook of his arm. "Are you kidding? Hinah, Malani, and I had most of the rebels on the ground within thirty seconds of Barl's team moving in. Durrien helped a little." His kaika jutted her chin toward the camp. "There she is. See? In one piece."

Wrex barely had time to register Samara's face through all the filth covering it, when—

"Hey! You! Massive krogan!" a dual-toned, feminine voice hollered from behind him.

"Let's go check on the camp," Wrex suggested, hurrying toward the tents. Of course he wasn't running from his best friend's tiny mate. He just wanted to make sure Samara came through as intact as she looked.

"Don't you run from me, Urdnot Wrex. You sent my 134-cycle-old bondmate into battle." Wrex heard Malani limping, her boots scraping across the sooty pavement. He stopped, turning to face her, his free hand held out in surrender. He'd rather face down thirty gunships before Melani Vertis-Quarn. "It wasn't my idea to drag his ancient arse-end out here." He looked past the female to her mate. "I told him he was only fit for lounging on fat cushions, complaining about his aches and pains."

"That'll be the day." Quarn chuffed, his strides strong and true, reminding Wrex that while the torin might be old, he remained strong and vital. "The Hierarchy won't give me fifteen beautiful, young tarini to feed me treats and pour my brandy." His mandibles flicked as Malani cocked a brow plate at him. "What? I'm retired and a notable politician. Isn't that supposed to be what happens?"

Samara announced her arrival by clearing her throat, a soft purr of sound. An armoured hand touched Wrex's face, his attention snapping into focus on his family. A gentle smile said hello, before the ex-Justicar looked to their kaika. "We're pulling out. Can you go back to the ship with the next load of injured and assist the doctors?"

Raxi smacked a rough kiss against Wrex's cheek, then wriggled down. "I'll see you both aboard." She kissed her mother's sooty, blood-stained cheek, then dashed off, hollering and waving to Barl as they passed.

Wrex faced Samara and reached out, hearts all skipping beats as he checked the wounds ripped into her face and scalp crests. "Have the docs looked at you?" he asked, touching her chin with a single finger to turn her head a little. The wounds had been pulled together and smothered in woundex, answering his question, but still, he asked. Neither one of them showed anything more than professional concern in public, the question his code for how worried he'd been.

"I'm fine, Wrex." Samara turned toward the line of shuttles, the first of which lifted off in a murky cloud. "We're prepared to evacuate."

The clan chief nodded, all his previous fear and rage draining away, leaving behind numb exhaustion. "Let's move." He waved to Quarn, the torin standing a few metres away, his arms around his bondmate. "You've got to explain a ship full of rebels and government troops to the Hierarchy."

Barl caught up with them halfway to the shuttles. "Glad you finally got here," he said through a snarling smile. "You should have seen the 77 Maw Rockets burn through those gunships. It was beautiful, boss."

"They couldn't have worked more perfectly," Malani added as she and Quarn caught up. "Broke apart on the shields and released the acid, melted the thrusters right off the wings. Well worth the cycles of R&D we put into them." She shook her head. "It was risky using them, though. The Council isn't going to trust the krogan keeping them to themselves, and they really aren't going to want every merc and pirate having a weapon that renders shields impotent."

"It'll force them to develop their shield and armour tech along different routes," Wrex said, despite feeling the very real chance of doom on the horizon. "They've got to pull their heads out of their asses." Developing weapon tech of any kind was risky, but he'd been given a chance to really prepare for the reapers. That meant not clinging to the tech the reapers left behind. It also meant ending the collectors, but he needed the Council behind the krogan before that. Otherwise, he risked making them galactic enemy number one again.

"We'd better offer the design to the Council as a gift before they find out about it through other channels," Quarn added. He led the way onto the closest shuttle. When he sat, Quarn's long cycles showed in his stiffness and the very genuine gasp of relief at getting off his feet.

Malani sat next to her bond-mate, moving with no less obvious pain, and it occurred to Wrex for not the first time, but in the most real way, that his time with two of his oldest and dearest friends was coming to an end. Despite Durrien and Prilla both working for the CDEM, Decan Quarn's death would hurt the krogan … all krogan.

Wrex sat across from his friend, trying to ignore the weariness he saw in Quarn's deeply lined plates. Losing Decan would gut him, but he and Samara would look after Malani and their children, and their grandchildren. As long as Wrex drew breath, none of the idiot turian's descendents would want for anything.

Samara's arm slipped inside his, her slender fingers weaving through his in an uncharacteristically intimate gesture. It surprised him but not quite as much as feeling no urge to tug his hand away and growl playfully. When he looked into her eyes, he saw the reflection of the same thoughts … the same grief that he felt. The lives of his family and Quarn's were interwoven so strongly that their loss would feel like losing two of his hearts, and he knew it would break Samara and Raxi's hearts as well. He nodded and squeezed her hand.

"So, how ugly a reception do you think we're going to get when we arrive on Palaven?" Raxi asked, flopping onto Wrex's lap. "Should Hinah and I have our barriers ready to go?"

Wrex growled and wrapped his arm around her, crushing her ever so slightly as he watched the expressions flit across her face. "I'm holding you out in front of me, so you better have something planned. Your hinah will throw me halfway back to Tuchanka if you get shot."

Raxi cackled and wrapped her arms around him, and the three of them flew back to the ship in a comfortable tangle.

Before Samara and Raxira entered his life, being krogan meant stabbing horror and loss in the face with his sikah and carving out a good-sized chunk of cheek meat. After holding Samara through the painful, awkward nights post-Morinth, it meant being strength when she buckled, a rough sort of light when she got lost. After holding Raxi while she took her first breaths, it meant burning away fear with something warm and even more terrifying in its own way. He didn't hate it, though: the warmth or the fear … didn't want to tear it out and throw it to the varren.

Ever since Samara and Raxi, being krogan meant grabbing hold of fear, because without it, he might forget everything beautiful that fear brought along with it.

(Sorry for the long wait. Needed to concentrate on one story for a while. The good news is, I want to stay with Stones for a bit ... get us to where Shepard and Garrus show up. Thanks for all the amazing support. You're all just amazing.)