The burrow at Ixtli was an odd sight, holes dotted the mountain all the way up to its peak, which was above the clouds. This was the first time he'd ever seen a rachni colony and it was interesting how the holes were almost hexagonal and walking down what he assumed was the main thoroughfare, he saw that it twisted slightly, making him just a little bit disoriented. It was a completely foreign architecture that greeted the small team of two as they ventured further into the mountain.
They liked columns he could see that, there were many, hundreds in the caverns and he watched them spiral up the ceiling. How they stayed up, he had no idea, they didn't seem to be sound structurally and he shook his head in wonder. Grunt paused at times to touch a column here or there, some kind of ritual and Garrus watched him closely, "Why do you do that?"
Grunt turned slightly, "These are keystones, touch one, you'll see what I mean."
Garrus reached out and laid his hand on one cool surface and it sounded a sound deep in his body, making that pool of energy in him ripple and he gasped. Experimentally, he touched another and it resounded a different note in him, complimenting the other. Delighted, he looked at the krogan who watched with a patient smile. "That's...amazing is the word I was looking for."
"Yeah, it's pretty badass." That was the krogan he remembered and Garrus grinned cheekily at him.
They continued to walk down the corridors that wound throughout this hive and Garrus turned to Grunt, "Why did you first come here? Wrex said you were curious?"
Grunt stroked his chin and rumbled thoughtfully, "When I was in the tank..."
Garrus prompted after a bit, "Go on."
"When I was in the tank, when Okeer's voice ground out at me incessantly, teaching, shaping, forcing me to be this perfect krogan, sometimes..." Grunt eyed him warily, "You're not going to laugh, are you?"
"Why would I? You haven't even told me what it is yet." Garrus spread his hands magnanimously, and gestured for the krogan to continue.
"Sometimes I would hear music." Grunt seemed to wait for laughter that was never going to arise from the suddenly quiet turian whose shadow he walked in and the krogan sighed, "I didn't know the word at the time, only the...feeling. It was an undertone to all the imprints. Sometimes I hated it, sometimes I loved it. It made me dream."
"It kept going on well after Okeer was silent and it pulled at me, in my guts." Grunt made a noise that was half laugh half grunt, "When Shepard opened the tank, I heard an echo...from her. I think that's why I really decided to follow her. Sometimes it was louder, sometimes it was not. When it was not, I hated you, Garrus."
"Why me?" Though he already knew and he looked at the krogan who was glaring at him with a touch of hostility.
"Because it meant she wasn't happy or something like that." Grunt shook himself, "She was father and mother to me. Family's important to krogan."
"That's not just a krogan trait." Garrus walked in silence for a time before saying, "Back to the original question."
"When her song left, I looked for a new one. The rachni sing, I heard it on Utukku when we were investigating that missing scout troop and when the Restoration was well under way and I was free to, I came here."
"I could have sung you a lullaby if you needed one, big guy."
"It's different. It's the song, whatever it is. And I found it here." He gestured around to the empty caverns, craggy face full of wonder.
"Grunt," He paused in his walking and the krogan swung around to face him, "It's everywhere. To find it, you only need to look inside."
The krogan frowned and continued walking toward what was a brightly lit chamber just ahead. He slipped his pack off and reached in, pulling out a long tube that was instantly familiar, "You're going to need this."
Garrus took the coriolinus in one hand, startled to see that it was his corio, the one that should be on a water world far from here, "What? How did you...?"
Grunt shrugged and gestured ahead, "She said you were going to need it. We made a side trip while you were busy making speeches."
They entered the chamber together and Garrus saw the bulk of the queen laying on her side in its center, in a bowl of sand that she curled on. The cybernetics from her captivity by the Reapers shone garishly from her flesh and she lifted her head wearily to watch them enter. Grunt sat at her feet, or chitinous legs or feelers or whatever and turned to face Garrus. The krogan shuddered as the rachni took over his voice, it spilled from his throat with an unnatural tonal subharmonic, "The one most beloved, he is here...The promise...fulfilled."
Most beloved? Garrus raised his brow ridges and said hesitantly, "I am here, but for what purpose I don't know."
"The children are gone, their..songs are only...whispers now. But we cannot...find the door. It is hidden." Grunt shifted until he was leaning against the queen and she curled around him, "We are sour, our..song is skewed."
He sat on the lip of the bowl and rested the instrument across his lap, and felt out with his inner senses to hear her. It was indeed skewed, far from true. Whatever it was the Reapers did, it had changed the flow of energy in the being before him. He supposed that's why Shepard had to use the Crucible, to show them the way, but he had no Crucible here, "What can I do?"
"We need a true thing, we need...to hear the notes again. To find the door, to...die." The queen stared at him piteously and his heart thumped for her in her pain. Tears ran down Grunt's cheeks as his eyes begged him not to kill the queen.
"You're the last? The very last rachni?" He asked her, his voice low with apprehension.
"Yes, we are. There will be no...others, no more queens, no...more children of our music."
He rested his head in his hand and inwardly quailed. "You're asking me to commit xenocide. On purpose, this time."
"It is time..for our song to...end. To find new life. As...all beings will...someday." Grunt shook his head at the thought and his mouth opened without his control, "This one will mourn us. He is...sorrowful. Our song, even skewed, has...soothed his raging...heart."
"Are you sure? Are you really certain that this is what you want?" Garrus scratched his fringe, feeling a touch of irritation that Shepard wasn't the one here, but then he felt shame, she shouldered enough burdens.
"We are certain." It had finality tacitly written in it.
Garrus took a deep breath, not sure if he was up to this task, "Then what do I do?"
"Play...the song, the true song."
"What song? Your song? I don't think I can hear what it used to sound like." He searched blindly for it, but it was no where to be found under all that dissonance. He felt a chill roll up his spine and a distant touch on his mind. "Shepard."
And she was there, her presence, but not her body and she whispered in his ear, 'Your song, Garrus.'
"I don't know it-" He stopped and an image of a folded piece of paper occurred to him and the paper unfolded in his mind and the first few bars jumped out at him, "It's not...how do I?"
'It's your song, Garrus. Hear it. And let go."
Shakily, he raised the corio to his lips and played hesitantly what he thought that remembered paper had said and soon found himself fumbling, the queen hissed at him and he tried again. Let go, she said and he did, with a mental unclenching of his worry and doubts and the music flowed from him, true and strong, in a rambling air that suddenly reminded him of what he'd done all along to warm up. So that was part of it and it led him to other places, memories good and bad, it spilled them out like gemstones that had hidden in a bag and he turned them over in his mind as he played them.
He discovered things about himself that he never knew, great and terrible. And that further shaped him, it followed him through thoughts of childhood, the military, C-Sec, meeting Shepard, losing Ashley, killing Saren, those tormented years after Shepard had died, the thrill of seeing her again even in his madness, the blossoming of his love for her, which he'd held in secret for so long. The terror of the Collector base and the triumph after, the friends that filled his life with light, his work on Palaven, seeing Shepard again, losing more friends, the feeling he felt when he first saw his mother's wristlet on her wrist and the melancholy that followed the realization that they were going to die together. It was at this point that he truly did see that his song hadn't been finished and that realization colored every note thereafter, because the song was changing him even as he played it.
His blinding sense of betrayal at her deception, his rediscovery of her as a changed being and the song gently drew to a close on a question. What was next? What wonders were to be found after?
The corio left his lips as he sighed, drifting back down into his lap as his mind whirled with thoughts of wonder and he heard on the edge of his periphery, Shepard sighed as well, her love for him growing even brighter in his heart. The rachni queen shuddered and went still, and he felt that billowing expanding feeling again as her spirit left her body, its regard pinning him with waves of gratitude as it fled to that shore that he saw in his mind's eye, that he could almost see in truth.
Grunt stood slowly and wiped the tears from his eyes with dirty palms. Garrus went to him, carefully not noticing his weakness and said, "I'm sorry, Grunt."
He was swept into a hard embrace and the krogan let him go abruptly and stood away almost shyly, saying softly, "I hear it."
"Good." The two men left that empty place that used to house such a beautiful creature and all her children and got into the shuttle that waited for them.
Kaidan, who'd come down with them but had declined actually going into the caves with them said, "What happened down there? We thought we heard something."
"Just echoes, Alenko. Just echoes." Garrus sat and thought about what had happened. Xenocide was not the word for what had occurred. He wasn't sure if there was a word. The thought that eventually all races would go extinct was not normally a good one, but he could see that nothing lasts forever, except maybe the tide and the consciousness that the beings that guarded it were able to give. His mind filled with fantastical races of different shapes, all carrying this light in them, all different but the same in all the ways that really counted and he found he was glad. So terribly glad.
"Where we taking you?" Kaidan asked the thoughtful turian, who turned with a smile.
"Home, my song is almost done." Garrus saw the words confuse the human and grinned mysteriously. He saw Kaidan look from him to the even more thoughtful Grunt and sigh in exasperation.
He was running from the monsters through Zakera Ward, husks hot on his trail. He turned and fired from the hip, his bullets hitting with accuracy and he grinned as he saw them go down. dozens of panicking people crowded the shuttles up ahead, the docking ring was a no-go, too, that's where the Reapers had first landed. With a burst of hope, he saw one last shuttle that looked like it had space and ran for it, his heart pounding. Cannibals were also closing in on it and he saw the pilot waving at him desperately to move faster and he put on another burst of speed.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a child, a human girl who was just starting to show womanly curves stumble and he diverted his path without really meaning to, bowling over the marauder that crouched over her. He shot that abomination that wore his countrymen's shape until it was dead and helped the girl to her feet. Together they ran for the shuttle and he paused at its door to check for space. It was already packed, there was only room for one and he gritted his teeth as he looked down into hope filled eyes. He took a deep breath and shoved her into the shuttle and she stopped the door from closing with one pale hand, "Wait! What's your name?"
He heard the monsters that shrieked approaching and shot her a grin, "Sidonis. Lantar Sidonis."
"I'll see you at the refuge, Lantar!" He waved in false cheer as the shuttle sped off and turned to face the beasts closing in on him. As he fell under their assault, he thought of Garrus, who'd spared him and now he knew why, it was so he'd have this one chance to redeem himself. He felt joy as the monsters tore him asunder and he fell into that dark place peacefully.
Someone was shaking him awake and he opened an eye to see Vega, whose eyes danced in laughter and he waved the human off irritably, "Yes, yes, I know. I'm adorable when I'm sleeping."
"What were you dreaming about? You were doing this little kicking thing." James laughed.
Garrus cradled his head in his hand and felt this last little scab on his heart peel away, leaving it whole and mostly unblemished and sighed, "A memory about a turian who betrayed me, he saved a girl from the Reapers at the cost of his own life."
"Hmm. Well, at least he made it good in the end."
"...Yes, he did." He took a shuddering breath, letting the last piece of his bitterness go as he exhaled, "I forgive him."
"Anyway, you're home. Los Casa Vakarian." With a flourish, James opened the door of the shuttle and he blinked in the bright light of the sun shining off the water.
He stood and stepped out into the clean air, breathing deeply of the salty aroma of the ocean. Taste the flesh while you can.
He waved off the shuttle and walked to his house, that house he'd had built for him and hummed as he walked its interior, making himself a meal in the kitchen and eating it with gusto. He went to the comms and set up trust funds for his sister's kids and a gift for his favorite nephew, the latest experimental sniper rifle based off the Black Widow design that he would receive on his fifteenth birthday, only three short years away now.
He left messages for key people, not goodbyes, just words that needed saying. Then he grabbed his rifle and went outside, setting up targets at different distances and spent the afternoon taking them out, setting them back up, then shooting them back down again. He relished the recoil he felt on his shoulder, the slowing of time as he focused, and crowed in triumph with every dead center shot.
The sun was just setting when he wandered back inside, putting his things away, cleaning the dishes and getting himself a brandy. He looked ruefully into the glass and thought with a laugh, I never did give up the hard stuff.
But things like this were a part of it all, he'd never shied away from living, except maybe once or twice. All the trials and tribulations were worth going through if it meant he got to experience the triumphs and joys. We rise and we fall only to rise again. Ebb and flow. The tide goes out.
And he left the house to meet the woman he knew was waiting for him on the coast, he could see her already, not quite manifested, she was beautiful and she was deadly, and she was his. He smiled into green green eyes, But the tide also comes back in.
"Are you ready?" She said, holding out her hands. He turned at a noise and saw Liara there, stepping out of a shuttle. He smiled in confused greeting and Shepard said, "One witness. To keep the torch lit."
He nodded, seeing the wisdom of it. Liara was young, she would live for another millenia. And she was wise enough not to let this event spark some kind of religion, "I'm ready."
His hands in hers and she looked into his eyes with fervent love and hope. He heard a soft lilting voice and realized Liara was singing and it seemed a wedding of sorts, suddenly and he ducked his head as feelings of rapture filled him. He felt the edges loosening, his body was a cloak he'd chosen to wear for a time, but it was time for a change. With a mental twist, he was free and his understanding billowed and curled around the planet he'd made a home of, touching the minds of his children in their blue waves with praise for their strong souls, brave and true and he realized that these were Shepard's children also and he turned his regard on her, the being of light that was a mirror to his light, with wonder and she laughed with joy and it reverberated in him. And not for the last time, he followed her to a place where there were wonders to behold.