Author's Note (and apology): Anyone who follows me on tumblr knows already I did not anticipate the break between updates being so long. Unfortunately I ran into several weeks of really awful real life stress, involving a number of illnesses-both my own, and of people I love-and fic-writing fell to the wayside. I'm really, really hoping not to leave you so long between chapters again. Thanks for sticking with me, folks. I really appreciate it.


"About fucking time," Jack muttered, pushing herself away from the bar as soon as Garrus entered. He was a little surprised to see no open bottle, no dirtied glass. "I wanted to blast this bitch straight to hell five minutes after meeting her, and the feeling's only getting stronger."

Given how long Jack had been in here alone with her, Garrus was a little surprised to see Moira Callahan still alive. He said nothing, however, and he tried to let neither relief nor disappointment ruffle his expression. Jack shifted her stance, crossing her arms over her chest and fixing him with a look mixed of equal parts confusion, annoyance, and disgust. It wasn't all that different an expression than the one she usually wore, but the concern in the lowered tilt of her brows was new, and he didn't miss the flicker of distaste as Alenko strode to the center of the room, obviously taking charge. She hardly gave Garrus' father a second glance. If she'd been the subject of the interrogation, Garrus would've marked this as her first mistake. Exactly the kind his father preferred.

Before Garrus could finish silently counting to three, his father ordered, "Out. Now." Or, rather, Kaius Vakarian ordered it. Tough as he'd sometimes been, this wasn't his dad. This was Detective Vakarian, Citadel Security Investigation Division, who—rumor had it, and Garrus knew for truth—had scared more than one perp quite literally shitless. Some rookie C-Sec officers, too. Hell. Some veterans, though none of them ever admitted it.

Jack blinked, her lip curling in a disbelieving sneer. Garrus, bland as he knew how to be, lifted a shoulder, and then looked away, as though the view through the observation deck's window—it was raining again—was more interesting than anything she might have to say.

"The fuck?" Jack retorted, her voice rising on the second syllable, both a question and a warning. Garrus wasn't sure if it was meant for him or for his father.

Where Jack was a grenade beeping its last warning before detonating, Garrus' father remained stolid and implacable, meeting her sputtering rage with cool disapproval. It took some effort not to wince in sympathy as his father said, "It was not a request. And I am not in the habit of repeating myself."

Jack's lips parted slightly, even as her eyebrows reached for her hairline and the tips of her fingers began to spark ever so faintly blue. Moira Callahan, Garrus noted, smiled slightly, watching his father with gratitude, and doubtless already preparing a speech thanking him for coming to her rescue. Garrus swallowed the derisive laugh burning in the back of his throat. Jack took a step away from the bar, her right hand rising in a distinctly confrontational manner. "Yeah? Well, I don't say things twice when once'll do either, asshole. If you think I'm letting this bitch out of my sight after what she did to Shepard, you've got another thing coming. Something like a fucking biotic uppercut to your smug—"

Alenko raised a hand, less confrontational than Jack, but effective enough to warrant a pause even if no hint of biotic blue played around his fingers. "That's enough, Jack. Vakarian."

"You think I can't take both of you? Just give me a fucking excuse."

"You are no more than an angry child," his father said. "This is no place for children."

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Moira's shoulders began to relax, and the smile brightened her eyes.

"You misunderstand," Alenko went on, as though explaining something simple to someone being deliberately obtuse. "You're not leaving. Detective Vakarian's not leaving." He turned a cool expression on Moira. "No one's leaving until I get some answers."

Moira stiffened as though struck, and her lips froze in their premature smile before the pleased expression shattered like bullet-hit glass. Her knuckles whitened, but she smoothly turned the twitch of her hands into a fold, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin haughtily. No one, Garrus thought, looked particularly impressed. Playing to an audience already determined to hate the show, he imagined Shepard saying. It wasn't quite her voice in his head, but it was close enough to sting, close enough to hurt. Close enough to make him wonder if seeing what he'd seen in Shepard's eyes had sent him spiraling backward again, if his own grip on reality was, perhaps, as tenuous as hers appeared to be. He inhaled, long and slow, holding his breath at the apex until the burn of it grounded him again.

"I have a right to counsel," Moira said, with the kind of petulant arrogance that raised questions about how Jack had possibly managed to keep her cool as long as she'd done. He was pretty sure the Jack before Grissom Academy would've left nothing more than a bloodstain in her wake, without a second's hesitation or a moment's regret. Answers or no answers.

Garrus had to hand it to Alenko, he didn't miss a beat. He stepped just close enough to make both his position of superiority and his potential as a threat perfectly clear and said in a low voice, "If these were normal circumstances, perhaps. But I'm afraid they aren't. You and I are going to have a conversation."

"I don't have to talk to you. I know Alliance protocol, and Citadel Security holds no jurisdiction here. I get a lawyer. Fortunately I have a very good one on retainer. I would like to see her now."

"Fuck this," Jack said. "Fuck you. And definitely fuck lawyers. What the fuck did you do to Shepard?"

Alenko and Moira Callahan both ignored her. Her hands glowed blue for a moment, but she only rolled her eyes and turned away, setting her palms flat against the bar's surface until the biotic light ebbed. The Jack before Grissom Academy wouldn't have had that control, either. Garrus understood her frustration all too intimately, but held his own position, leaning against the wall near the door with his arms crossed to keep from physically removing the unbearably smug expression from Moira's face. If Jack could rein it in, so could he.

A corner of Alenko's mouth turned up in a knowing smile Garrus recognized as one pulled directly from Shepard's mess with me and I'll mess with you repertoire. He wore it surprisingly well. "I see you're under some misapprehension about what's going on here, Mrs. Callahan."

One pale brow arched as if Alenko had said something distasteful and she couldn't believe her ears. "Only inasmuch as you're under some misapprehension about just who I am and how much—"

"Allow me to introduce myself," he interrupted. "I'm Kaidan Alenko." He didn't sit, didn't bring himself down to her level. She was forced to crane her head back to look at him. Garrus tried not to think about the wide open target that left of her bare neck. You know what else is bad for business… "Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. We have reason to believe you kidnapped and tampered with one of our agents. Under these circumstances, you'll find very little authority exceeds my own."

If she felt dismay, her expression betrayed nothing of it. Garrus supposed foolishness and bravery could share a number of characteristics, but in this case he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and credit her with the latter. He couldn't find a shred of anything but dislike for her, of course—Shepard hated so rarely he couldn't help trusting her judgment—but he began to suspect some of the steel in Shepard had been forged at this woman's anvil. Whether by necessity or observation, he wasn't certain. Perhaps, in the end, it would only be another reason to despise her.

Instead of arguing or pitching a fit, Moira settled back in her chair, crossing her ankles, and running her palms down the shimmering satin of her lap. The jewels on her fingers glittered. She lacked only a glass of champagne to complete the picture of decadent ease. The smile returned. "There's been a misunderstanding, Spectre Alenko," she said with graciousness so perfect Garrus knew it had to be feigned. Jack's eyes narrowed. If Alenko had feelings about Moira's new tactic, none of them showed on his face. Garrus' father stood just behind Moira, a wall of intransigence, close enough to be menacing but not yet a weapon to be used.

"Then you won't mind if we analyze your perfume. Witnesses claim Commander Shepard was disturbed by a smell, and you were, by all accounts, standing very near her at the time. You'll also be certain to allow us full access to your properties and holdings, and you'll comply with any and all requests we make of you or your people. Since there's been a misunderstanding, as you say, and you are perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing."

"Of course I'm innocent," Moira said. "Kidnapping? My dear boy, we rescued her. Just in time, I might add." She sighed and began to rise, as if this assertion was enough to clear her name. She'd forgotten the turian behind her, however, and before she could get to her feet, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder, sending her gracelessly back into her chair. Her lips twisted with disgust, though she didn't quite jerk out from under the restraining digits. Jack smiled with something like contentment. If contentment could be so dangerous. Without deigning to acknowledge the hand, Moira added, "You are no doubt intimately familiar with military bureaucracy. By the time the left hand finished deciding it was appropriate for the right to act, I assure you, you'd have been recovering a corpse. My actions required no miles of red tape or orders copied in triplicate."

"Convenient," Alenko said, turning his hands over and lifting his shoulders in a mild shrug, "that you happened to be in exactly the right place at the right time. Your son was stationed in London, I believe. I trust he was the source of your excellent intelligence?"

"You cannot tell me you'd have done differently." Her eyes flicked to Garrus, and her brows lifted in silent challenge. Garrus met that gaze, but impassively, giving nothing, and after a moment she raised a hand and gave her fingers a dismissive wave. This injured him more than the woman's misplaced defiance, though he tried not to show it; he'd seen Shepard banish importunate reporters and bothersome politicians with precisely the same gesture countless times. "Consider his position. Scattered fleets. Downed communications. That blast of energy that destroyed every unnatural creature in its path. He knew I had resources the Alliance simply couldn't muster. Of course he contacted me. He knew I had the capacity to do what the Alliance wasn't in the position to accomplish."

"Yeah, you're a real fucking hero," Jack snapped. "Leaving her fucked up and alone on that pile of shit junkship in the middle of nowhere, with her memory like swiss cheese. Just tell me where to send the fucking medal."

"Not my decision," Moira insisted. "The offending parties have since been terminated."

Alenko rocked back on his heels. "You admit you had them killed?"

Moira's eerie, too-delicate laugh made Garrus' plates itch. She leaned forward, her nose twitching like a varren scenting blood and desperate for a kill. "Their employment. Through appropriate, legal, non-lethal channels. You are, of course, welcome to contact them. I trust you'll find them duly repentant. But most definitely alive. Honestly, I suspect one of them may have had ignoble intentions from the beginning. Perhaps you'll be able to ferret out the truth where we failed." A crease marred her unnaturally unlined forehead. It looked forced, but it did glaze her face with a patina of sympathy. "You must understand I would never have treated her so callously. My God. She's practically a daughter to me."

Garrus, unlike Alenko, had conducted enough interrogations—of both perfect and dubious legality—to feel the unpleasant shift of power in the room. His father evidently felt it, too, because the rumble of his voice when he spoke held more than a hint of threat. "One might question your use of the word practically, Mrs. Callahan." She twitched, but didn't look at him. "One might even assume that, juxtaposed as it is with the others, it destroys the sentiment altogether." His hand, still resting on her shoulder, tightened, crinkling the smooth fabric beneath it. A muscle in her jaw jumped, and this time she did attempt to free herself. Unsuccessfully.

Alenko collected himself in this moment of reprieve, casually linking his hands behind his back. "Moira. Can I call you Moira?"

"I'd prefer—"

"Moira," Alenko repeated, narrowing his eyes. "Out there you may be a woman of some consequence. I don't doubt you are. But in here? You are nothing. And you are no one. No one is coming for you. You do understand that, don't you?" The only indication of understanding was a slight thinning of her lips. Alenko nodded as if she'd answered in a manner he approved of. Perhaps she had. "Thus far, I've been civil. I have asked questions and you have given me lies for answers. I have no patience for lies, Moira, and no patience for liars."

Without warning, without even the flicker of blue sparks that had betrayed Jack, Alenko flung his hand out, lifted a bottle of liquor—hopefully the undrinkable dextro brandy—and flung it across the room. It passed close enough to Moira's head to ruffle her perfect blonde bob before shattering against the far wall with a shrill crack. Cloying alcoholic sweetness filled the room, strong as a fist to the gut. Alenko's mild expression never flickered, never changed, never gave even a hint at what thoughts were playing out behind it. "I am the only thing standing between you and everyone else in this room, on this ship, and I alone hold the power to save you from them. Or, alternatively, to expunge from the record anything they might do to you if your answers continue to disappoint."

Because he was looking for it, Garrus watched the war rage behind the mask she wore. In the end, she inclined her head slightly, and a little of her defiance ebbed. He even thought it might be honest. "Very well, Spectre," she said. "You've made yourself clear."

"What were your plans for the commander?" Alenko asked evenly. "And please, don't insult either of us by claiming it was merely a well-intentioned rescue. A rescuer would have brought her planetside immediately, and handed her over to qualified medical personnel. A rescuer wouldn't have sent DNA and dog tags, or led the Alliance on a scavenger hunt to find her."

"I bought her," Moira said simply, as if the words weren't horrifying, as if she were only discussing ownership of a property or a particularly fine skycar. "She's mine. She needed to remember that."

Silence, abrupt and heavy and sick, followed. Garrus kept his arms locked across his chest, but couldn't stop his hands from curling into fists. Jack's lips parted; he thought they formed a voiceless expletive. Alenko blinked, and this time a flash of blue did echo around hands as angry as Garrus'.

"Explain," Detective Vakarian barked.

Moira smiled, sharp as broken glass. It left ragged cuts. "She was such a good girl. Quiet. Polite. Always listening. Remembering. My God, what she could have accomplished."

Garrus spoke before he could stop himself, "I hardly think Shepard's list of accomplishments is lacking." He thought the look Alenko shot him was meant to be quelling, but instead it just smacked of desperation.

"Explain," his father repeated. "Now." A shiver ran the length of Garrus' spine, and he wasn't sure if it was a chill at Moira Callahan's coldness, or his father's anger.

Though it cost her the last semblance of indifference, Moira took this moment to pull herself roughly away from the grip that held her. In the same motion, she turned and rose, glowering contempt and seething rebellion. "I am not afraid of you."

"You should be," he said. "If you knew my feelings on slavery, I assure you, you would be."

"Slavery," she scoffed. "Please. Three times I've pulled that girl out of the fire, and how does she repay me? Silence. Defiance. Open hostility."

"What do you mean, three times?" Alenko asked sharply, before Garrus could find his voice to snarl the same question. "Shepard insists she's had no voluntary contact with you since the day she enlisted."

"I daresay orphanages seem romantic; in practice they are anything but. We opened doors for her, offered her the whole bloody world. And she spat on it. She spat on us. Because she's an ungrateful child." This time the gesture of her hand wasn't dismissive, it was cutting. "And whether you approve of my choices or not, it was a rescue this last time, and I defy the Alliance to have provided the medical care I did, without access to this ship and its doctor. You think a common field medic could have put her back together? You know what she is."

"What about the second time?" Garrus asked, unable to mask the hum of dread in his subharmonics.

"But you already know," she said, turning the force of that cutting smile on him. What he saw in her eyes made him want to take the words back, swallow them, blow them up. But he couldn't. He couldn't. "Four billion credits is so very much money. Where the hell did you think Cerberus got it from?" She laughed again, and Garrus indulged in a moment of imagining just what he'd have to do to her in order to balance the scales, because death was too kind a fate.

Follow the money, he thought. But we didn't. Not far enough. Another cardinal rule of investigation. Another mistake. Another fucking failure. "And Maya Brooks? Did you bankroll her endeavors, too?"

"If at first you don't succeed," Moira murmured. "Offer someone with exceptional skills and dubious morality a great deal of money."

"But it was never a plan that made any sense," Alenko insisted. "You could never have hoped to dupe—"

Before he could finish, Moira was enveloped in a bubble of blue light, lifted, and thrown. Against the wall and directly into the puddle of liquor left behind by Alenko's earlier demonstration. Moira's head made a horrible-sounding thud that echoed through the silent room.

"Damn it, Jack," Garrus said without heat, allowing himself a moment to enjoy the awkward tangle of satin-clad limbs because his visor told him Moira was merely stunned and not dead. "We weren't finished with her."

"I didn't fucking kill her," Jack retorted, tugging on the hem of her jacket and flashing Garrus a feral, satisfied grin. "And don't think that didn't take effort."

Alenko sighed and pushed a hand back through his hair, leaving it in uncharacteristic disarray. "Can't say it wasn't on all our minds," he admitted.

"Still the behavior of a child," Garrus' father admonished, though the truth in his subvocals spoke rather clearly of approval.

"And I'd do it again," Jack said, shooting the prone figure a murderous look. "Fucking Cerberus."

The door opened just as Garrus was starting to cross the room to shake Moira awake again. Grunt filled the doorway, scowling in a manner he usually reserved for talking about imprints of ripping off turian fringes or snapping salarian necks. "We've got a situation."

"You weren't supposed to leave your post," Garrus said. Alenko sighed again.

"Left the Prothean in charge. Glowing and muttering about primitives. No one seemed ready to piss him off." Grunt shrugged. "Yet, anyway. There's a woman out there. A lawyer, she said. Would've handled it on my own, but she's got a whole squad of mercs with her." Grunt's voice took on as plaintive a quality as it was possible for a krogan to achieve. "And Shepard said no bloodshed." He jerked his chin at Moira. "Not that you seem to be following the rules."

"She's not bleeding," Jack said. "Much."

Garrus shook his head, holding up a hand in Shepard's signal for silence. "I need more time."

"I'll buy you what I can," said Alenko, smoothing his ruffled hair back with both hands. His brow furrowed. "I may be a Spectre, but there's no Council. Someone's bound to put the pieces together, Garrus, and I'm not willing to start a galactic incident over this."

Too late, Garrus thought. Out loud he only said, "We may not have a choice," and pretended to ignore both Alenko's dismay and his father's understanding.