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Chapter Fifty-Three – Tidings

Garrus yanked the sparring pad strap tighter around his wrist, fumbled it, and just used his teeth instead. He heard Shepard's answering laugh and settled for glaring before he braced himself on the mat. "Preferences?"

"Something simple," she said. She eased her own footing, loose-limbed and clad in shorts and a grubby vest, one short sleeve dipping over her shoulder. "You go over the data?"

"From Aria T'Loak? Yeah." He tipped his hands up and gauged her distance. "That was delicate there for a while."

"She wanted results," Shepard said. Two lithe steps took her closer, gloved hands curling. "That was the deal. Flexibility."

"That and she had to know there was no way in hell we'd lean on Bailey to let someone like Sederis out and about."

"True." Her first two punches landed, hard but measured, tightly controlled.

"Don't know about you," he said thoughtfully. He paused long enough to absorb the thudding impact of her next swing. "But I'm not all that good on how she reeled us in with that before dropping Omega on us."

Omega, he thought, Omega all locked down and glittering with Cerberus symbols and Aria T'Loak would've damn well known they couldn't've backed down, not either of them. Omega, where somehow the Illusive Man – or someone speaking his words - had gotten his claws into the messy warren of the station and tried to tame it.

"Got to give her credit for contracting her dirty work out," Shepard muttered absently.

She adjusted her balance, her shoulders tightening. Her follow-up strokes sent him back two paces before he caught himself. After he'd noticed how she was grinning at him, challenging and sweat-speckled under the unkempt thatch of her hair, he responded as fiercely, shoving her back and back. Retaliating, Shepard darted sideways, the heel of her hand sending one of the pads jolting.

Garrus laughed, knowing how she moved, knowing how she eased it back in here – just a fraction – so that it became something like a game, the ferocious back-and-forth pattern familiar. He walked her backwards across the mat, each shielding block with the pads soaking up her strokes.

After she'd pushed him back the same way, she held up her hands and said, "Okay. I'm done."

He sat on the bench, aware of the ache in his shoulders. Almost absently, he worried at the straps again until he had them loose.

"Thoughts?"

"Omega doesn't change," Garrus replied. "She'll think it does, and maybe little parts of it will. But the parts that matter, the parts where people get hurt and keep getting hurt – that'll never change."

"But?" She perched beside him, working the gloves off.

He tilted his head. "But what?"

"What else are you thinking?"

"And here I thought turians were meant to be unreadable," he said wryly.

"Not when you're around me, you're not," she told him. "Well, maybe sometimes. When you're really working at it."

"I'm thinking I'm really uncomfortable about the idea of going back to Omega," he said.

"Uncomfortable."

"Sure, unless you want me to say no, no way, absolutely no fucking way," he amended drily. "Which was admittedly my first reaction."

"I get it." She shifted on the bench, looking up at him.

"But if Cerberus are dug in there, I'd sure as hell want to know why." He hesitated. "Omega's the ass-end of nowhere. No one would blink if the station exploded tomorrow."

"Which," Shepard said, echoing his own tone, "Makes it the perfect place for Cerberus to set up shop."

"Yeah," he said, breathing the word out. "Anything on Petrovsky?"

"Liara got her hands on some intel, along with what Aria brought with her. He's been around a while. Started out Alliance, First Contact War."

Garrus clicked his teeth together. "So he's thinking humanity's been shafted and thrown himself in with Cerberus."

"That'd be my assumption." She rubbed at one sweat-slicked shoulder, her expression thoughtful. "Intel points to him being smart. Shrewd."

"What's the catch?" he asked, and felt it when she laughed, her frame shaking against his. "Apart from the fucked-up terrain and the fact that it's Omega, I mean," he added.

"Catch is Aria wants this done small and fast."

"How small?"

"Just me," she said.

He paused, aware that half of it – more than half of it, crawling and insidious and still under his skin – was the roiling jumble of his own memories, of all those stretched-out hours spent looking down at that damn bridge, of how he'd locked himself up inside his thoughts and sometimes, painfully, he still did.

"What did you say to her?" he asked, hearing his own voice waver.

"I told her she could take her strategic recommendation and shove it up her ass," Shepard said blandly. "She might've spent years ruling Omega from a chair, but I know how combat works on the ground. She wants the help on the ground, she can agree or go find someone else."

Despite himself he laughed. "Can't quite see someone like Aria T'Loak taking that well."

"She didn't. But hey, we're all about negotiation, so she gave an inch on numbers, and I gave an inch on muscling in on her plan."

He leaned the side of his head against the top of hers. "Thanks," he said, very quietly.

"Don't thank me yet. You're coming with me."

"Rather that than pace around here wondering what the hell's happening down there."

For slow, easy moments he sat beside her, feeling the easy rhythm of her breathing.

"You want to hear some actual good news?" she asked teasingly.

"Stun me."

"I was talking to Tali earlier. Basic settlement on Rannoch is proceeding with no deaths so far, a few fights, and a lot of misunderstandings. But," she added, smiling. "They've got geth and quarians plotting out settlement sites together, and they've also sent separate squadrons to liaise with Hackett."

"It's working," Garrus said, and blinked. "Don't tell Tali how surprised I just sounded. She'll never let me hear the end of it."

"Bet she never thought she'd have to sign off on a troop movement order for a bunch of geth."

Garrus laughed. "And I bet Hackett never thought he'd accept one, either."

When she stretched, one hand idly sweeping through her hair, he asked, "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Always and anything, you know that," she answered instantly.

He paused, wrestled with what he wanted to say, figured it was probably going to come out tangled anyway, and said, "Does Kaidan seem better, to you? I mean, less taking himself off to his quarters every time we get back on board?"

"Yeah, he does." Gently, she added, "And I know what you're really asking. We've talked it through and he's fine. Or he'll be fine."

Garrus groaned. "That obvious?"

"A little," she said lightly.

"I guess I haven't known what to say, so I haven't said anything."

Shepard smiled, soft and not mocking. "It's fine. Humans are as good as avoiding saying anything as you lot are."

"My lot," he protested. "Stupid, really. Too much clean-up after the Citadel, and then I figured it wasn't quite the right thing to suddenly drop into conversation in the mess hall. Or, you know, the armoury or anywhere else."

"I get it," she said. "Sometimes we wrap so much up in what we do. How much time we spend running around getting too much done too quickly. Means it's easy, too easy sometimes, to let the downtime run away."

"Or, you know, it could be that the last time I ever considered saying something along the lines of hey, I know you and her used to be together, but now we're together, I was about eighteen," he said drily.

Shepard laughed. "Can I make a suggestion?"

"Sure, unless it's about how I arrange my workstation."

"That abomination has never been arranged," she retorted, smiling. "Use his first name around him a bit."

Garrus blinked and said, "Shit. I haven't been, have I?"

"I'm honestly not sure. Sometimes, maybe. But feeling like you're stuck on the outside can be tough."

"Yeah, I hear that."

She hauled him up off the bench, her hands sliding down to his hips. "Come on. Time to go convince everyone that retaking a station full of Cerberus troops stuck inside the shell of an asteroid is a good idea."

Garrus laughed. "My advice? Don't use those words. Any of them."


Joker drifted halfway to sleep, his chin on the flat of his hand and his elbow planted precariously on the very end of the chair arm. Footsteps on the walkway behind startled him and he flinched upright before he muttered, "Yes?"

"How long have you been sitting there?" EDI asked, her voice calm.

He winced. "Since the ground team left."

"Jeff."

"I know, I know." He squinted at the main console screen, filled with the jarring angles and red glow that was Omega, floating. He'd been staring at it for hours, at the glittering array of Cerberus ships that ringed the slant of the asteroid.

The comm station crackled, followed by Shepard's voice, brief and terse. "You hearing me?"

"Got you clear," he answered. "You get inside alright?"

"It was tricky," she said, her tone lightening.

"Define tricky."

"Cerberus mechs, ongoing gang warfare, and power outages. So yeah, it's a shitstorm down here."

"Workable?" he asked.

"So far I'd say yes. But I'd wager it's going to take us a hell of a lot longer than we assumed."

"Hey," Joker said genially. "I've got nowhere else to be right now."

"I'll hold you to that. Shepard out."

"It's just," Joker said, never once tearing his gaze from the glowing display. "Shit. Every time we're near this place, something goes spectacularly wrong."

EDI sat, folding herself nearly in the other chair. "Go on."

"Well, first time we got a call out here, Shepard found Garrus." He swallowed and added, "I saw it when they carried him in. I'll never understand how the hell he still had his head attached."

"Turian physiological structure is particularly well-equipped for –"

"Yeah, yeah," he said gently, and threw her a lopsided smile. "I know. They're very tough, and I've seen the armour he wears on top of it."

"What else?"

"You mean apart from the Omega-4 relay hovering right next door, and all the nasty things on the other side that ripped big holes in my ship?" he said, before he amended, "In the ship."

EDI's expression shifted into something suspiciously like a smile. "I understand," she said. "Go and find yourself some more coffee. I am perfectly capable of taking over for a few minutes."

"False modesty right there," he muttered. "And anyway, aren't you supposed to tell me to lay off the caffeine?"

"As if you will sleep or rest while they are down there," she said, her gaze – deliberately, he suspected – flitting back to the console.

He took himself down the walkway, too aware of the twinge in his back, just below his ribs. In the CIC he nodded to Traynor before ambling past the last of the workstations. He loitered for a handful of minutes in the mess hall, listening to Tali and Adams before they asked him for an update on Omega.

After he was sitting in the cockpit again, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug, he said, "Alright. That was a good idea."

"Thank you," EDI said wryly. "I have them occasionally."

"You've got to stop developing that sense of humour. It's getting worse."

A slow hour crawled past, and another, the console screens staying frustratingly unchanged.

"Jeff."

He blinked. "Uh. Yeah?"

"I can hear you thinking from here."

"Now you're scaring me," he said drily. He leaned back in the chair, absently rubbing at the back of his neck.

When the comm station buzzed, he reached for it. "Normandy."

"Still alive," Shepard said in response, her voice burred flat with fatigue.

"Good to know. Need a pick-up?"

"No, we'll come to you. Inbound shuttle, ETA fifty minutes."

"Okay." He hesitated before saying, "How'd it go?"

"Technically, on the ground? Fine," she said.

"But?"

"But Cerberus are way ahead of us."


Brisk steps took Shepard into the briefing room, the reek of smoke still clinging to her armour. Scorched patches showed through on the back of both her gloves, and the twinge in her leg sharply informed her she'd taken one too many hard falls today. Behind her, Garrus and Vega were as battered, the grueling long hours on the station turning them all quiet.

She discovered the others already there, Liara and Tali seated while Kaidan paced. EDI leaned over the display, her hands flickering over the keyboard, Traynor flanking her.

Shepard paused, sucked down a slow breath and said, "We've got a significant leap forward on just what the hell Cerberus are doing. That's the good news."

"And the bad?" Kaidan asked.

She leaned forward, wondering just how she was going to unpack the chaos and clamour of the day and form it into words. "Alright. Bear with me, because the short version isn't all that short."

Brusque she explained, how Cerberus had sent a transport ship loaded with adjutants – rippling, fast, their frames lit up by their punishingly strong biotics – onto the station. How Petrovsky had carved the station apart, districts locked down and always mechs on patrol, cordoning the streets and whittling down the territory until the residents had been pushed back onto gang turf.

"And the worst part," she said, pausing long enough to grin crookedly. "Is that these things weren't taken from the Reapers. They were made."

Silence answered, until Kaidan said, "They made them."

"Using prior research on Reaper tech. But these things, however much they move like Reaper troops, however much they sound like them, they are Cerberus troops."

"Shit," Kaidan mumbled.

"These things are different," Vega said. "They move like fucking lightning."

"And they're infectious," Shepard said, hearing the bleak ring of her own voice. "I – shit – we all saw it."

"Reapers alter their captured or killed enemies," Liara said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, that's we thought too. But this is different. Calling them infectious is about the only way I can describe it." She paused, glancing across the table. "I'll forward our findings, along with footage that I want you all to go over."

"So we don't yet know if Omega was a test-case for these things," Kaidan said.

"Or if we're about to run into them on the regular," Shepard said.

"Wonderful."

"And Petrovsky?" Liara asked.

Shepard allowed herself a small smile. "On his way to spend the last of his glory years staring at the inside of a cell while Alliance intel pry out every secret he knows."

"Good," she said fiercely.

"Anyone sees something I've missed after I write this up, let me know. Anyone has any ideas, thoughts, anything, you know where to find me." Shepard straightened up, unlatching her hands from the table. "Okay. Dismissed."


When the door closed behind Garrus, he fought the impulse to give in and lean against it. Instead, he made his way across the floor to the armour stand. When Shepard just sat, still fully armoured, he laughed and said, "And here I was trying not to mess up the furniture."

Groaning, she staggered back upright. "Now I feel guilty."

"No, you don't." He fumbled the catches on his shoulder and swore. "That was, well. Hell of a day."

"Came through breathing."

"Yeah, yeah. We did."

Silently he peeled off the rest of his armour, scuffed and battered and a dent offensively close to being a puncture on one of his greaves. His thoughts kept spiraling back to it, to how different it had looked, how abruptly he'd had to realize that he didn't know his way around Omega anymore.

Not since Petrovsky's troops had changed it, had installed those shimmering shield walls and barriered off bridges and sloping walkways. Not since he'd had to relearn how Omega fit together, ladders and warrens of tunnels and more than a few times he'd stepped out onto some filthy ledge, the drop beneath stomach-churning. Not since he'd stood wrapped in the darkness, Shepard's back against his, while the others hunted for the nearest generator.

Not since he'd heard it, that fucking sound – and she'd heard it at almost the same time, her whole frame going rigid – and they'd blindly scanned the shadows for anything, something.

He remembered how it – the creature, the adjutant – had crashed hard into him, swinging him and toppling him in the same shockingly fast motion.

"Hey," Shepard said, and he felt the brush of her hand on his wrist. "Okay?"

"Yeah." He added the last piece of his armour to the stand and blurted, "No."

"I understand."

Her touch retreated – briefly, and only so she could finish pulling on a crumpled grey shirt – before she guided him across to the couch. After he sat, she curled herself between his legs, one of hers over his knee and her back to his chest. She settled his arms around her and they simply sat, wordless, until the tension eventually leeched from him.

He buried his mouth against the nape of her neck, tasting sweat and grime and her under it. The dry ends of her hair dragged against his tongue.

"It won't change," he said. "She'll just turn it into what it used to be and I can't work out why the hell that bothers me so much."

"It bothers you because you were there."

"Wasn't there for that long."

"Long enough."

The quiet stole back in, easier this time. Garrus let his thoughts go vague, aware only of the way she was tangling her hands around his, her fingers wiry and strong.

"You know," he said absently. "For a while there I thought you were going to let Aria tear Petrovsky apart."

"Hah. I should've. That or done it myself. But," she added, and shrugged. "It wouldn't have mattered how much intel we pulled from his consoles. There'll still be information he's only carrying around in his head."

"Yeah."

"You ever come across the Talons?"

"No. At least, I don't think I did. From what Kandros said, they'd've been small back then. Clawing out their own squares of territory, sure, but still small." He tipped them both sideways on the couch and felt Shepard's answering laugh, almost a sigh. "And, well. I was too busy pissing off as many other gangs as I could."

"I thought you didn't have many biotics," she said, and shook her head. "Shit. That sounded kind of insensitive. I mean, I thought there weren't all that many turian biotics."

"We don't have many biotics," Garrus answered drily. "And we don't like them, either. So we shove them into specialist units - cabals – and pretend that they don't scare us."

"Giving away cultural secrets now?"

"Very funny."

He gathered her tighter against him until he realized he was clinging to her. She said nothing – because she knew him, because she understood, and it made him ache – only clamping her hands over his instead.

"Mind if we stay here?"

She shifted, moving until her head was pillowed on the inside of his arm. "Best idea I've heard all day."


Shepard glared down at the cards in her hand and said, "How the hell do you do this, Vega?"

Across the table, he grinned and shrugged. "Hey, I can't help it if I'm just so much better at this than you are. Commander."

"Nice." She flicked two of the cards down. "Just put me out of my misery fast, okay?"

"Where's the fun in that?"

After Shepard endured a third round of humiliation, the afternoon wore away slowly. She sat beside Garrus, listening to the easy lilt of the others around her. James, coaxing Kaidan back into the game for just one more round, while Tali quietly answered something Cortez asked about the Flotilla.

"Not a chance," Shepard said, when James tipped his chin towards the table. "The only way in hell I'm ever playing with you again is if we're all drinking."

"Sounds like a wager," James responded, grinning. "Might take a while to get rid of all the Reapers lurking around, so we should do that soon."

"Yes, because I am absolutely condoning everyone on duty getting drunk at the same time," she retorted mildly. "We do that, and you just know something will try and board the ship, eat the ship, or some combination of both."

"You're such a pessimist, Commander."

"Part of my job."

"Hey, Commander?" Cortez asked.

"Yeah?"

"The things on Omega," he said. "The adjutants?"

"You're in real danger of damaging the atmosphere," she said drily. "Go ahead."

"We know Cerberus still has – or had - interest in the Collector base you took out, right?"

"Yeah, I was thinking the same," she said. "Given Omega's proximity to the relay."

"We destroyed the base," Tali said.

"I'd say we destroyed most of it," Shepard said, nodding. "Doesn't mean they didn't sift through whatever was left. There's always something left over."

Garrus shifted beside her, leaning forward. "The way the Illusive Man reacted? They'd've gone over every inch of that place a hundred times in order to find something."

"I just cannot imagine wanting to go back there," Tali said, softer.

"Me neither." Shepard added, halfway to smiling, "But then, Doctor Bryson had an honest-to-god bit of Sovereign in his lab."

Kaidan blinked over the fanned-out spread of his cards. "I get that he was studying Reapers, but why would you keep it that close?"

"It was shielded."

Kaidan shook his head. "No, that still wouldn't work for me. What did it look like?"

Shepard bit back a grin and said, "Shorter than expected."

"Really?" Kaidan groaned. "That was awful."

"I have my moments."


Later, Shepard meandered back to their quarters, her thoughts a faint, pleasant mix of nothing more jarring than the last stories they'd exchanged, Vega attempting to one-up Garrus until both of them ended up laughing. Vaguely aware that it was too early to justify ducking into the rec room, she settled herself at the console and waited for the screen to brighten.

The afternoon's messages were mostly predictable, a hefty Crucible update and then a report from Bailey detailing just how damnably clean Udina's personal terminals had been. Next she skimmed a brief message from Wrex – Reaper scouts still sniffing around Tuchanka, but being booted back ten paces for every one they slunk forward – before moving on to Fifth Fleet movements from Hackett. Last, she opened a message from her mother and found herself smiling.

She scanned the message twice, the words there brisk and familiar, a couple of lines about the Crucible – huge, just huge, and looking like it might just come together after all – and the rest about her, about Shepard, about how she was fine, better than fine, wasn't she, because she had to be. How she was missed, that sentence short and almost brusque, but Shepard understood, because how many times could you type out the same words, all of them echoes of each other, trying to make sense of it in words.

She kept her reply short – yes, she was still breathing, yes, the news from Rannoch was mostly true, depending, yes, it was always good to hear from her, anything – and stared at the words. For a moment she hesitated, figured she was being absurd, and added a last pair of lines.

I know it's too soon to talk about catching up properly, but how about we work out some vidcomm time? Comms are shaky out here, but it'd be good to actually see you.

Before she could reconsider, she sent the message, wondering why she'd had to wrestle with it at all.

Because she'd dropped out of contact for two years, she thought. Because she'd let herself get away with a handful of short messages here and there. Because the days were running too fast and too vicious.

She leaned back, propping her boots up beside the console.

The comm station buzzed, Liara's voice following. "Shepard? Are you busy?"

"No," she answered automatically. "Come up if you want."

She'd finished scrolling through the last of the day's incoming messages by the time Liara stepped inside. She looked up, saw Liara's rigid expression, and said, "What's wrong?"

Liara paused. "I've received a message from Councilor Tevos."

Shepard straightened up. "Go on."

"She's asking that we go to Thessia."

She listened, aware of how Liara was pacing, her hands twisting against each other. Thessia, and to a temple, she understood, and to meet with scientists. How there might – should, would – be something lingering there, something with tenuous links to the Prothean data, to the Crucible.

"This is urgent?"

Liara stopped. "Very."

"Okay." Her fingers found the comm button again. "Joker, you awake?"

"Always," he answered.

"Set me a course for Thessia."

"Thessia," he echoed. "Can do, Commander. Details?"

"Details to come," she told him mildly.

"Understood."

"Thank you," Liara said. She sat, folding herself into the chair, her hands flat over her knees. "There are reports of Reaper troops already on the ground."

"Then we'll push through them." Shepard swung her feet down and onto the floor. "This temple."

"Raised for the worship the goddess Athame."

"It's gotten you rattled," she said.

"Yes." Liara leaned forward, her forehead furrowed. "And no, not just because of how abruptly they are saying they can help with the Crucible."

"Yeah, that part jumped out at me as well."

Liara's gaze skipped past Shepard to the wall and the floor and back again. "The temple itself is, well, rather oddly inconspicuous."

"How do you mean?"

"The Athame doctrine is not one followed by many now. And," Liara said, as if she was steeling herself. "The temple has classified government funding."

"They've got something there."

"Something that they have always had there," Liara said, her voice softer. "Shepard. I don't know what this means."

Shepard leaned forward. "Means we figure it out."

"Yes." Something in Liara's eyes sharpened. "I'll go over anything and everything I have on the temple, and why it might be considered important or perhaps more crucially, unimportant."

"Yeah. I'll lean on the Council, see if they want to be a little more open before we get there."

Liara smiled. "When have they ever wanted that?"

"Hah." Shepard grinned and added, "I'm still willing to be surprised."