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Chapter Fifty-Four - Ruins

Luck, Shepard thought, had clearly taken a single look at the city and run for the fucking hills. She was crouched behind the broken edge of a low wall, the air hazy around her, and the corners of her mouth salty with sweat. She froze, aware of the marrow-deep rumbling of the Reaper as it moved, swaying its huge, clawed bulk through the remains of the city.

Beside her, James was rigid, his breathing uneven and rough. "Now?"

"Not yet," she whispered back. "Let the bastard go. Not our priority right now."

"Shit. Yeah. I hear you."

Somewhere overhead, the Reaper moved, the squeal of metal on metal following as it swayed its way through the empty shells of what had been tall, tapering buildings. The low whine of its main weapon sliced the air apart, the red beam slashing across the ground and into a toppled shuttle. The impetus flung the shuttle hard enough that Shepard gritted her teeth.

Forty minutes, she thought grimly. Forty minutes on the ground and so quickly – far too quickly – they'd found themselves close to overwhelmed. The descent had been choppy, Cortez yanking the shuttle past the ferocious scarlet glare of Reaper weapons. The landing had been worse, rocky enough to stagger her before they'd touched the ground, the first plaza they'd crossed too open and seething with ground troops.

On her other side, Garrus was as tense, one arm curled around his rifle and his gaze on the uneven terrain ahead. Sloping stone steps gave way to another avenue, thick with debris and smoke scorched into the ground.

The sky buzzed bright with the Reaper's main weapon, the beam biting into the curve of an archway. Stone buckled and fell and briefly Shepard snapped her eyes shut. She lasted out another slow minute, and another and another until the shining bulk of the Reaper was ahead of them, shadowed by high towers and still moving.

Two quick, speculative steps took her away from the wall. Silently, she motioned the others after her. Fast as she dared – the gloom was thick here, swimming with dust – she crossed to the far side. Vaulting up and over the grey ledge of stone there, she was met by the reek of smoke. Brusquely she scanned the avenue, noting the curve of a roof, somehow still standing. Beyond, she saw crumbled stone and the slanted edges of collapsed metal spars, the grey bones of whatever building had been there.

A whole city, she thought, and cities ringing it, and the whole fucking planet wreathed in flame. The atmosphere blurring with the heat as the Normandy had closed in, thin skeins of cloud peeling apart and showing bright circles of fire far below.

"Commander, you're going to want to see this."

She crossed the last stretch of the walkway, stepping into the cockpit and into the vivid glow of the displays. She noticed Joker's expression first, flat and pale beneath his cap. She followed his gaze to the visual feed and swallowed. "Shit."

"Well, when I said want."

"You meant had to," she muttered, her eyes still on the jolting images there, toppled spires and pulsing ribbons of smoke and the shining shapes of Reapers. "It's okay."

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Going to be rough, even if I can find you a clean path down."

"We'll make it work."

Tortuous minutes took them further across the wide spread of a plaza, slowed when ground troops broke through the ruins of an archway. The shuddering thud of a grenade bought her space, and her follow-up volley knocked another one of the lumbering bastards off its feet. The livid flare of Liara's biotics followed, rippling into the gangling creature – it had been an asari, once, its limbs all dragging now – and sending it sprawling. Another wave chased the first, and Shepard snapped for the others to hold their ground, to push back.

"More coming in left," Garrus said tersely. "Coming in fast."

She was half-crouched behind the slope of a wall. She waited a heartbeat longer until another whiplash of biotic energy surged through the archway. Twisting upright, she saw them, feet pounding hard and furious through uneven stone. Closing fast and relentless and abruptly Shepard realized they were inches from being boxed in.

"Garrus, with me." As briskly, she added, "Liara?"

"Here, Shepard."

A flurry of bullets bit into the wall beside her, and she jolted back onto her heels. "Head on to the temple. Everyone else, you're with her. We'll block them and catch up."

"Of course."

On her other side, Garrus settled his rifle into his shoulder. "What did I do to deserve the you're going to get the crap beaten out of you assignment?"

"You wouldn't have it any other way."

"Well. Maybe not."

She inched along the wall until she had her shoulders were flat against the wall, a gap a foot away letting in swirling dust motes and sunlight. "Okay," she said, once she'd heard the others hurrying away ahead. "I'm on crowd control. You're mopping up."

He barked out a laugh. "One way of putting it."

The first grenade she tossed scattered the first surge of them, the impact close enough to rattle her. The second sent another four of them staggering, their frames going loose and boneless and the others behind still ploughing onwards, implacable. As rapidly, Garrus picked off the three the grenade hadn't toppled. Another shot tore the feet out from under the next creature that clawed itself too close to the wall.

The air above the wall flashed livid. Squinting, Shepard saw an asari – changed, altered – floating, her feet sliding. The asari's arms flung wide, and the surge of energy washed over the wall. Shepard's shields sputtered out and she swore, dropping flat.

"Stay down," Garrus growled.

One shot disrupted the asari's balance, pushing her sideways. When she coiled herself upright again, clenched hands flaring, his next shot shattered her wrists. The asari shrieked, her jaw dropping open. The third shot split her head in half, her biotics crackling into silence.

"They can fly," Shepard muttered, almost to herself. She hauled herself back up to her feet. "Not fair."

"It's more being cushioned by their biotics. I think."

"Charming. Clear?"

He nodded. "For now."

"I hear that."

She jerked her chin at him before she moved, stalking across the plaza. Garrus mirrored her, both of them moving fast and close to silent, skirting the edges of collapsed pillars and ducking past crumpled shuttles. Twice they stopped, desperately listening to the clamour of footfalls, to the rattle of gunfire.

Kneeling, Shepard fumbled for her comm and said, "Liara?"

"Here, Shepard."

"Tell me what you see."

"We have the temple in our sights. I'd hazard fifteen minutes will get us in."

"Cover? Shelter?"

"Workable. We'll stay and wait for you."

She hesitated, her thoughts half on the din of combat she could still hear, the bursting thump of biotic energy slamming hard into metal. "If you can, get back in contact with Outpost Tykis. If they're still there, they've got company coming."

"Right away."

She motioned Garrus on beside her, pushing on until they'd cleared the slope of another avenue and the jagged lift of stairs, the edges brittle and saw-shaped. Another five minutes took them higher, past shining pools and up onto a wide plaza. When she heard Liara's voice again, hushed through her comm, she responded that yes, it was them, and they hadn't brought friends.

Through a door – sparking and jolting open too slowly – they discovered the others, holed up in what might have been an apartment, or an office, or god knew what else, reeking of metal and smoke. On one side, sunlight spilled in through the gaps punched in the ceiling.

"Clear," Shepard said, in answer to the way Kaidan glanced up. "For now. What's the terrain ahead look like?"

"Suspiciously empty," Liara replied. Her eyes were wide, too wide, bright and brittle.

Painfully Shepard understood, the awful, necessary way you had to shove it back, all of it, because it wouldn't - couldn't - make sense right now, not when you were picking your way through the broken pieces of your own past, your own place.

"You said the government sent scientists," Kaidan said. "Would they have had military escorts?"

"Probably. No one's talking out there, though."

"Given what we just slogged through? I'd be keeping quiet," James muttered.

"Okay." Shepard settled her rifle against her shoulder. "Eyes on the sky and let's see what we can find out there."


The temple was silent, still, the quiet wrapping around the high pillars and across the white floor. A blade-edged kind of silence, Garrus thought, tremulous and impatient somehow.

"So." Kneeling, Vega eyed the slumped shapes of the scientists again. "Guess this place is suddenly popular."

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it," Shepard muttered.

"Cerberus," Liara said.

Shepard lowered her rifle. "Unless we've run into a third, completely unrelated party who are interested in what we're doing."

"Funny, Commander," Vega said.

She crossed the floor between the pillars again, each step snapped-out, her whole frame coiled. Watching, Garrus could see the locked tension in her, in the way she was scanning the statue – huge, blank-faced, all pale slopes of stone – again and again as if she could see something under it, inside it.

Flatly, she said, "There's a Prothean beacon here. In the statue."

"No, there couldn't be," Liara responded. "I mean – I've never heard of –"

"You've never been told." She slung her rifle back into the weapon harness. Briskly, she hauled herself up and closer to the statue, one hand brushing along the stone folds. Her hand flattened against it, and Garrus saw how her shoulders dipped. "It's here. We need to get into it."

Briefly, absurdly, Garrus wanted to ask if she was sure, if she wanted to let whatever was buried in the statue into her head. He'd been on Feros and on Ilos and he'd heard about Eden Prime and even now the nerves were jangling under his skin at the thought of it, something else the Protheans had left behind, traces of lives bundled under stone and kept hidden.

The briefing room was splotched with bright lights this early. Garrus blinked, briefly regretted how long he'd stayed up going over C-Sec fill-in reports, and squared his shoulders. "Sorry to bother you this early, Commander."

She was standing over the table, her fatigues crisp and her stance as deceptively easy. Hiding the tiredness, he thought, hiding the way everything had suddenly moved so fast. The last fifteen hours had hurtled past, Shepard's official request dropping onto Pallin's desk and Garrus'd stood there like a damn kid trying not to betray just how frantic he was to get moving.

To get the pieces together.

To get Saren's trail laid out in front of them.

Shepard straightened up, her expression relaxing. "No problem, Vakarian. What can I do for you?"

It was odd, he thought, these first few days on the Normandy. First few days working out where everything was, working out the names of the crew, the humans, led by a Spectre.

"Something you mentioned, last briefing, Commander." He paused. "This beacon. Prothean beacon, right?"

"Right," she said, and smiled. "Not my best decision, that one."

"I was wondering if we could talk about it. If I could ask about it."

She nodded briskly. "Go ahead."

"On Eden Prime," he said, abruptly aware that she already damn well knew everything he was saying, that he was struggling to fill in the silence.

"It sounds crazy," she said mildly.

"Yeah. Yeah, it does."

"You read the report?"

"Yeah, Commander. I did."

"Sounds worse out loud." She leaned against the table, her eyebrows knotting. "We'd found the beacon, but we didn't really know what it was going to do. What it even was."

Garrus waited, aware of the way she was weighing her words.

"It'd been moved," Shepard said. "We secured the area around it. Thought the mission was done. KIA status to log and we needed to get back on board."

Not censuring, he nodded.

"It was," she said, and paused. "Alenko got close to it and it – well, it glowed. I pushed him out of the way and it pulled me off my feet."

"It," Garrus echoed.

"Yeah. I don't remember that part, not really. But yes. It pulled me off my feet and it got in my head and I saw things."

She was looking at him, unwavering and challenging as if she was expecting him to laugh or to call bullshit or to shrug.

"Like what?"

"Flames," she said flatly. "Cities on fire. Ruins."

"You believe it?" Garrus asked.

"I believe that what I saw came from the beacon," she said, her gaze meeting his, implacable. "What I'm trying not to do is pick it apart so much that I get lost in it. I'm not assuming I'm seeing a city, one with a name. If that makes sense."

"Yeah."

"Honestly, Vakarian, I don't know what I saw. When I saw." She shrugged. "But yes, I believe it. Guess I have to." Her grin came and went. "Otherwise it makes me really crazy."

"I don't know," he said. "It might make you the person in the worst place at the worst time."

Shepard laughed, short and sharp and almost as if she hadn't meant to, her eyes lightening. "I think you might be right."

The statue came apart, livid lines of light bursting through the stone. Garrus edged closer, wondering just how long this thing – the beacon itself, spear-straight and shining – had been here, masked. How much the asari government had known. How much, he thought sourly, they had pretended not to know.

He saw the shape of the VI next, green and shimmering. The VI - or the piece of Prothean memory or whatever it was – hovered, seeming to take in the shape of the temple, the dust between the pillars, the fierce wash of the sky through the far archway. It spoke, its voice crisp and unperturbed.

"Reaper presence detected."

"No shit," Vega muttered.

The VI shifted. "This cycle has reached its extinction terminus."

"Wait," Shepard snapped. "Just wait."

The VI turned.

"Wait," she said again. "I have questions, and you are going to give me some answers."


Shepard leaned heavily against the pillar. Her thoughts were upended, furious, as much of a mess as the rest of her, her armour all battered and blood slicking one side of her mouth. They'd been caught out, again, boxed in and trapped and able to do nothing while Cerberus – while Kai Leng – had wandered off with the VI. Nothing but fire back and when they'd gained ground he'd called in gunships, and the rattling clamour had sent them scattering.

She'd pushed too fast and too damn reckless, and painfully she knew it.

"Not hearing anything from Cortez," Kaidan said, his voice rough.

"Okay." Mechanically she straightened up. "Then we get out of here and get to higher ground."

"Commander?"

"We need to move," she said flatly. "Anything comes crawling up here and we're stuck."

At the archway, the ground was hot underfoot, the air shimmering. Her boots skidded against loose stone, and Garrus steadied her wordlessly. Briefly she caught the back of his arm, squeezing as if he'd be able to feel it properly through his armour.

Cautiously, they picked their way around the side of the temple. The sky was heavy with cloud, shadows sliding across the crumbled remains of high towers. Every breath she gulped in was acrid and thick with dust.

"…Commander? Shepard, you reading this?"

She slapped her comm on and said, "Here, Cortez. Tell me you're close."

"Give me five minutes."

"Works for me."

The last stretch of the path stayed mercifully empty. The others stayed as silent as she was, that heavy silence that she knew meant you couldn't frame it in words, not yet. Not when it was still raw, because then you'd be admitting flat-out it was failure, shored up on both sides by bad timing.

When the shuttle set down, she motioned the others on first. She hauled herself inside, the hatch whirring shut on her heels.

"Shepard," Liara said, her gaze somewhere on her own boots. "The temple –"

Abruptly, terribly, Shepard wished Liara'd stayed quiet, wished she'd said nothing.

"Yeah," she said. "What about it?"

"How did they," Liara said.

"They knew about it."

Sharper, Liara said, "You can't know that."

"Your Councilor knew about this and they've been fucking sitting on it. We've been running our asses into the ground, calling on everyone and anyone and they've been nodding along with us. Nodding while they do nothing."

"That's not –"

"You were there with me when we spoke to Tevos," she said, cutting across her. "Remember what she said?"

"This may be the key."

"To what, exactly, Councilor?"

Tevos' head lifted, her gaze sharpening. "To all of this."

"Of course I do," Liara said. She shook her head. "I don't know what to say."

"Neither do I."

"That it was Kai Leng sent there – "

"Yes, I was there as well," she grated out. The words spilled out, viciously fast. "I get it. Illusive Man's got it in for us. For me. You said you were tracking Leng. Or trying to."

"Shepard, I was."

"Then fucking well find him this time." Shepard blinked, forcing back the welling anger. She needed to rein herself in, she knew, wrestle herself steady because it had nothing to do with Liara, and everything to do with the way Cerberus had kicked her feet out from under her.

Her comm crackled, and Joker said, "Hey, Commander. Got you inbound. How'd it go?"

"Not well. What's up?"

"I've got Admiral Anderson on vidcomm. Says he'd like a word. Nothing urgent."

She swallowed back the sour urge to laugh. "Let him know I'm on my way. And tell him he either has great timing or the worst timing."


The vidcomm field rippled, shook and finally steadied. Waiting, hands clenched, Shepard watched until she could make out Anderson's frame, haggard and tired even with the blurred edges of the distance.

"Glad you caught me," she said. "Should I ask where you are?"

"Long story," he answered. "Rough day."

"Here as well."

"Joker tells me you were on Thessia?"

She hesitated, briefly hating it, the silence, the way her tongue felt. He waited, and she should've guessed he would, waited for her to put it into words. How it'd started in the temple, with the beacon flaring and cracking the statue apart. With the VI and how its words had jarred bone-deep. How the gunships had filled the archway and she'd failed. How she'd made herself stop long enough to listen to the Illusive Man and wished she'd taken the time to tear Leng and his remote comm devices apart instead.

"Should've heard some of the bullshit I spouted today. Get us to this temple, and we'll win this war. Get us there, and I can hand you a solution on a fucking platter."

"You done?" Anderson asked.

She froze. "Yeah."

"You know how many times I got my ass handed to me over the years?"

"All due respect, sir, the galaxy wasn't being torn apart by Reapers."

As sharp he said, "You think I don't know the scales and score right now, Shepard? I'm sitting in what used to be a city. I don't stop for more than twenty hours at a time. I'm shoving guns into the hands of very young men and women who look like kids down here."

"And I'm up here with fucking Reapers on my ass and everyone on this ship looking at me like I have some kind of plan," she snapped.

"Then get a plan. Figure it. Someone has to."

Abruptly she laughed, the sound thin and tired. "The unexpected pep talks are always the best, sir."

"Sir?" he echoed, and the jolting lines of the vidcomm display did not quite hide the way his eyebrows arched.

"Yeah, well. Habit."

"How's Vakarian?"

"Garrus? He's fine. Good. Why're you asking?"

"Just the way he had to leave you on Earth," Anderson said, smiling.

"You sentimental bastard," Shepard said mildly.

"I'm not sentimental. You're transparent."

"You give me a speech about hanging to what you need and I'll cut this transmission off," she said, and almost smiled.

"Not fooling me, Shepard. I know you too well. What's your next step?"

"Briefing room," she said, and nodded. "Start by picking up the pieces."

"All you can do."

"Yeah."

"Shepard?"

"Still here," she said.

"Get through this," Anderson said, his tone roughening. "You need to."

"I hear you."

She keyed the vidcomm console off before he did, her gaze on the floor. She was still clad in most of her armour, her helmet and gloves abandoned by the console. Almost absently, she scooped them into her arms.

She discovered the others already in the briefing room, the wall of the silence there assailing her. Past Liara she noticed Traynor, and EDI, her frame silvery and still, waiting. She could still taste Thessia, dust and stone and the sharp tang of scorched metal. After she'd laid her helmet and gloves on the table, she flattened her hands on it and wondered just how the hell to start.

"Commander," Kaidan said. "You get through to Anderson?"

"I did. He's fine." She summoned a smile. "He suggests we get through this."

"That simply," Garrus said, and she heard the half-hidden, burred amusement in his tone.

"We'll work on that part." She hesitated. "I'd say first option is to get after the VI."

"I agree," Liara said. She was hovering, her face stiff and uncertain and Shepard knew she was burying Thessia, burying the thought of it.

"Problem is our friend Leng's disappearing act," James remarked.

"We'll get him," Shepard said, forcing her voice firmer. "No one vanishes. Not forever." She pushed away from the table. "Today was a mistake. My mistake. I pushed us too hard and too fast at the temple. Take some time to work through it. Any thoughts, any ideas, anything anyone thinks of, you know where to find me. Dismissed."

The words rang out hollow, and briefly, jarringly, she wondered if she'd made the right choice. If instead she should've spun them something about how it was a setback, that was all, a step backwards that they would remedy, but they had been on the ground with her and they had seen it.

Long moments later she dragged her head up in time to see Garrus, still there, hands flat on the other side of the table.

"Hey," she said uselessly. "Shouldn't you be sleeping? Or showering? Or anything else than hanging around to see if I have anything more to say?"

"Shepard."

She shrugged. "Sorry."

He crossed the floor until he was beside her, hesitating for half a heartbeat, before he curled his hand over the back of her wrist. "So. What was that today?"

"That was me trying to kill that slippery bastard. And failing. And, on top of that, losing Thessia."

"And less dramatically?"

"I miscalculated."

"Everyone miscalculates," he said evenly.

"I took Liara down there, and she watched her home come apart around her."

"And so did you, on Earth."

"Earth's never really been my home," she said, more waspishly than she'd meant to.

"Not the point and you know it." He turned her hand over so her fingers were laced between his, hers shorter and thinner.

"What exactly do you want me to say right now?"

"Just," he said, and paused. His head tipped to one side slightly, blue eyes raking over her. "You've been lost inside your own thoughts since we left that damn temple."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"That," he snapped. "That's not you. That's you being angry and lashing out because today didn't go so well."

"Noticed, did you?"

"Shepard."

"Garrus, the whole fucking galaxy isn't going so well right now."

"You're not the only one hurting," Garrus growled, the anger finally breaking through the modulated burr of his voice. "You've never been the only one hurting. Wake yourself up."

"So what do I say?" she retorted, as harsh. "We've been losing this whole time, and I just didn't say it that way?"

"Kicking back isn't losing. One failure isn't losing."

"No." She exhaled, the breath rattling from her lungs. "No. Shit. I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"You always say that," she said, and saw the angles around his eyes ease slightly.

"Not always," he protested. "You okay?"

The silence stretched before Shepard said, "No. Not really."

He didn't ask anything else, didn't push. Instead, he tightened his hand around hers, the anchoring pressure there fierce and wanted.


The end of the redeye watch turned the ship quiet. As silently, Shepard quartered the CIC, scanning the last of the workstations still humming. Briefly she checked in with Joker before heading down to engineering, her footsteps measured. She found the corridors there as deserted, Adams still on watch near the drive core. He nodded to her, and mercifully didn't speak.

She had spent too long waiting for Traynor to wrangle the comms back into line before she'd been able to get through to Tevos. To explain, to hear it again in her own voice, to hear how the Councilor had nodded, blankly.

"You must forgive me, Commander. There are preparations that I need to – you understand, I'm sure."

The armory and the shuttle bay were next, the familiar pathways of her ship, her feet knowing each pace and each inch, where she needed to walk softer and where the lights were too low, even this late. Which doors whirred open smoothly and which doors – the third on the way back up – jolted a little. Which half of the crew quarters never seemed to settle down, even this late, while the other always seemed hushed. Eventually she crossed back through the mess hall, untenanted. With a rush of startling relief, she found the gun battery as empty.

After she'd stepped into the elevator, she took herself back into their quarters, pausing long enough to notice that Garrus had left the light near the shower on. She bit back a grin before ducking inside.

After she'd scrubbed the sweat and the grime away, she turned her attention to her hair, still stiff with blood. The short dark strands seemed to take longer, knots catching against her fingers. Eventually, after she'd dunked more shampoo over her head and rubbed it through, the water ran clear, the scalding heat banishing the roil of her thoughts.

Loosely clad in a towel afterwards, she padded back out. She discovered Garrus occupying half of her side in bed and smiled. Easing the sheets up, she slid in, listening to how his breathing stayed even.

"Feel better?"

Shepard laughed. "Thought you were dreaming."

"I'm sharp and aware at all times. You should know that."

"Sure you are."

He hooked an arm around her. "Okay. I was worried I'd have to come argue with you about pacing around for the next six hours."

"And I was worried I'd find you in the gun battery just knowing you have to go over that last algorithm again."

Garrus laughed, and she felt the slight brush of his teeth at the back of her neck. "Makes us quite a pair."

"Yeah," she said, the word turning into a sigh. "Hell of a day."

"Yeah."

"Glad you were there with me."

"Yeah, well. No one else would've knocked those bastards on the ground back quite so fast," he said genially.

"That, too," she told him drily. "I talked to Tevos."

"How'd she take it?"

"Not well."

"Understandable," he said, softer.

She shifted until her back was against the hard lines of his chest. "Yeah."

"Shepard."

"It's okay," she said, and half-believed her own voice, rough with exhaustion. "Hey, Garrus?"

"Yeah?"

"Stay?"

"Hey." Very gently, he mouthed at the side of her face. "Of course."

"You always know what to say."

"No, I just know you."

Aching, she said, "Yeah. You do."