AN: Hey, look, I'm back! I know, I know, short chapter is short. I'd tell you that the next one will be longer but I can't guarantee that at all. ^^ But, hey, I'm getting back to a regular schedule so, you know, there's that. ^^
I'm terrible and was so tired last chapter that I forgot this so, double thanks to everyone who reads with special double thanks to everyone who follows/favs and double, extra, super thanks (with apology cookies) to Barleyguy, Verdandi73, 1054SS325MP, and vampitup1317 (totally agree with the song choice, btw ^^)for the reviews. You guys (double) rock!
Hope you enjoy! ^^
Chapter 49 - The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few. Or the One.
"So…"
Kira raised an eyebrow as she looked across the mess hall table to see her… boyfriend, she supposed, though she was still not in any way used to using the term. "What?" she asked him as he seemed to be regarding her carefully.
"Just… wondering if this is going to be a common occurrence," he said, indicating to the wound across her cheek.
She just raised an eyebrow. "You know that getting hurt is just a part of the job, right?"
"I could have taken the hit, Kira. You didn't have to take it for me."
She smirked at him. "Aw, did I bruise your ego?"
He rolled his eyes. "You know it's nothing to do with that. I just… I don't like seeing you hurt."
She found herself blushing and faltering a little at his concern. His subharmonics were trilling with embarrassment, along with that new tone that he had stopped censoring over the past few weeks. Ever since she had gotten out of the hospital, really. "Cai… I don't like seeing you hurt either."
"I know, it's just…" He sighed, before shaking his head. "You know, I get the feeling that, no matter what I say, it wouldn't change anything."
Kira smiled. "Smart boy."
Kira stood at the base of the crumbling tower, watching as Mordin willingly stepped to his doom.
"I don't understand!" she argued. "I told you what would happen! You had the time to fix it."
Mordin shook his head. "Had time but there is no other option. Cannot risk altering the timeline."
"And why not?! We've changed it over and over again. Why not like this?"
"Because I must see this through. There can be no room for error."
Kira choked back tears, shaking her head. "There has to be another way."
"Can't save everyone, Kira. You used to know that."
"Just because we can't, doesn't mean we shouldn't try!"
"Must pick your battles. Only end up hurting yourself otherwise."
"There truly is no convincing you, is there?"
"No. There isn't."
Kira paused for a moment, folding her arms. "Then I suppose this is goodbye," she said, putting all of her effort into keeping tears from falling.
He nodded, heading to the lift. "Had to be me," her told her. "Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
"You okay?" Garrus finally asked Sophia, unnerved by her continued silence, as everyone filed out of the shuttle, leaving the two of them as alone as was possible outside of their quarters.
She shook her head. "I… I just don't understand. If Kira told Mordin about what would happen… There must have been some way to avoid this…"
"Not any that were guaranteed to work. Mordin knew that doing things this way would definitely cure the krogan. To him, that was an acceptable trade."
"I know that, I just… It might have been acceptable to him but it's not to me. I can't… We can't keep losing people, Garrus. I can't keep burying friends and pretending it's nothing. What if next time it's…" She trailed off before taking a deep breath and continuing. "I am leading my family into a war and I know that it could kill me to lose any one of you."
"Soph, Tom and Kira are grownups. They don't need us worrying over them. They'll be fine. As for you and me, we win or die together."
"There's no Shepard without Vakarian," she confirmed, leaning forward to press her forehead to his browplates.
"No. There's really not…"
"So…" Tom started as the lift went down. "Grandfather will leave the ship once we reach the Citadel."
"Which one?" she asked, absently.
"Titus, of course."
Kira looked a little surprised, finally pulling out of her thoughts. "I… I guess I hadn't really thought about it… It's not as if I've really been here for him to bother me."
"Yeah, I wasn't even sure you were up to date with our human grandfather still being alive."
"Do you think there will ever be a point at which we get so jaded that we're no longer surprised by the surreal turns our lives keep taking?"
"Yeah, I hit that point back when we extracted my quarian daughter from a Cerberus maturation pod."
"Fair enough. So… Have you talked with him?"
"With who?"
"William Shepard."
"No," Tom admitted, shrugging. "Between looking after Thee and running interference between Mom and Grandfather… I haven't had the time. I assume you haven't?"
"No. I should probably go and rectify that…"
"Well, tell me how it goes. I really have to go and relieve Chakwas from babysitting duty."
"Alright. I will," Kira assured her brother as he left on the crew deck. She continued to ride the lift down to engineering.
She was a little surprised to find that he had left open the door to the cargo bay he was using as his quarters. Still, she knocked against the frame of the door as she approached.
He turned around, frowning for a moment as he saw her. "Kira, right?" he asked.
"Yeah," she confirmed.
"I thought you were running missions with your boyfriend."
"I was. But, at the end of the day, Mom needs all of the help she can get, so we returned."
"Right… And 'Mom' would be Sophia?"
"Yeah. Too surreal for you?"
He laughed a little at that, shaking his head. "Just… This was not how I imagined meeting my granddaughter."
"Well, if you didn't imagine this with both of us displaced in time, how did you imagine it?"
"I'm not entirely sure that I did. I mean, my life got pretty surreal from the moment I met Rosa. Hell, probably even before that. I stopped expecting a normal future a long time ago. But… I don't know… I had hoped that Sophia would grow up normally."
"Yeah, but then she probably wouldn't have met my dad. The good and the bad all seem to balance themselves out, given enough time."
His smile widened a little. "Victus was right. You do take after your grandmother."
"You two actually talked?"
Will's gaze dropped at the surprise in her tone. "I know that he and Rosa were… close, after I died. He doesn't have the best poker face. Or maybe I just spent too many years playing poker with Sil..."
"And that didn't… I don't know… piss you off or weird you out?"
He shrugged. "I was dead. She deserved to be happy. She and Sophia both."
"I know what you mean," she admitted. "When I came here… I left someone behind. They moved on and I was left trapped here. But here's a pretty good place for second chances."
Will gave her a sad smile. "That it may be. You know, as much as this isn't exactly what I had hoped… I'm proud of the woman Sophia has become. As well as the family she has raised. Or will raise… You seem like a good kid. I'm glad that I got this chance to get to know you."
"Even including my turian dad and brother?"
"Yep. And my quarian great-granddaughter. I never had a problem with other species, Kira…" He trailed off, clenching his teeth as he brought his right hand up to his left side, clutching near his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" Kira asked, moving over to help.
He nodded as the pain seemed to fade. "It's nothing. Just an old injury…"
"Like a rod through the chest?" Kira asked, earning a surprised look. "I looked over the data from the Cerberus lab. Some of it had already been deleted but, even with what little I had, I figured it out. Or, at least, I suspected. And this confirms it. Lazarus may have perfected the process but Aurora hadn't. They couldn't bring you back fully. That was why they kept you in stasis. Not just because they hadn't retrieved Rosa but because they knew that, once they had you out, you would only last for so long. You're dying, aren't you?"
"Yep. Definitely take after Rosa," he joked, trying to brush off her concern. However, he quickly realised that she wasn't buying it. "Look, Sophia is in the middle of a war right now, she's losing people left and right. The last thing she needs is to know that I'll probably be next. Not when she's just learned to be happy about me returning."
Kira was about to argue when she stopped herself, simply laughing humourlessly instead. "And now I know where I get the 'hiding things from my family' gene from…"
"And here, I thought I was in for a lecture."
"I may have many flaws but I like to think that hypocrisy is not one of them."
"So, what is it you're hiding? You know my secret. It seems only fair that I should know yours."
She gave him a careful look for a moment before bringing up her omnitool, shutting the door and disabling EDI's listening devices.
He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think it would be that easy."
Kira shrugged. "I… Admittedly, I'm not sure that I'm doing the right thing here. That I should keep the truth to myself. The last time I did… it didn't exactly end well. As much as I hate to admit it, I need a second opinion. And I can't trust anyone else not to blab."
"So… why do you trust me?"
"Because if you tell my secret, I'll tell yours."
"You know, I would object to you using blackmail, if it wasn't how most of my best friendships started…"
"You too, huh?"
"Side effect of the job. So, are you going to tell me this secret or not?"
Kira shifted awkwardly, seemingly not entirely sure of the answer to his question. Eventually, however, she spoke up. "How… How much do you know about my brother and I?"
"Just that you're Sophia and Garrus' children and that you travelled thirty years into the past."
"But not how exactly we were born?"
"No. Though, I have to admit, I am curious."
"Cerberus built us. We were… We were supposed to be their spies. Or, at least, we would have been if I wasn't defective. Mom and Dad found us before we could be terminated."
"But that's not the secret?"
"No, everybody knows that part. The thing is, I went to visit the base where we would be created in this timeline. Tom and I agreed that the atrocities that would be committed there… they weren't worth it. I went to shut it down and retrieve a piece of technology. Only… in our timeline, a lot of the project files had been erased when the base was abandoned. Here, they hadn't been."
"And those files contain information that you're keeping to yourself?"
"Pretty much."
"So, what is this big secret?"
"Tom and I… We were built as a pair. It was why they were going to terminate both of us for my defects. The only thing is… I had assumed that it was just Cerberus cruelty. I mean, why not kill him if he would be of no use? Only, they didn't have a choice. Killing one of us kills the other."
"Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want to tell him that."
"We're in the middle of a war. I don't want him to worry that every decision he makes might hurt me. Equally, I don't want him to pay for a failure I might make. Which is why I'm working on a way to sever our connection. Until I manage it, however, I've been keeping this to myself."
"How close are you to a solution?"
"I have one. But it's… not pleasant. I would rather not use it if I can avoid it. But, the longer I wait, the more missions I go on, the more risk I'm putting Tom in."
"You know, he's going on missions too."
"Look, if I die, I die. Maybe I'll have a handful of people cry for a bit, if I'm lucky. If Tom dies, he leaves behind a bondmate and child. I'm not going to fail him. I can't."
"Even without this tie… You still might lose him, Kira."
"Not if I can help it. Which I will be in a much better position to do if my death won't mean his."
"Kira… Don't be so quick to die. Not even for someone you love. Try focusing on getting both of you out alive."
"Which, of course, I will but… Look, I've thought about this and I am the most expendable. More than Mom or Dad or Tom or Tali or Nihlus… If there's a situation where a casualty is inevitable, as often happens in war, better that it's me."
"Kid, you're not the most expendable. I think you'll find that, dying as I am, I currently occupy that spot. If anyone's going to do any heroic dying, leave it to me. Not to mention that, as I hear it, you're some kind of genius. I can think of a million far more helpful things you can do than die."
Kira looked away a that, folding her arms tight across her chest. "I… Thanks, I guess. I just… Having Tom's life tied to mine has me seriously thinking over my own mortality. I've never really been… careful. I never saw any reason to be. Until now."
"Maybe that's not such a bad thing…"
