Scars 1

⟨⟨ Hey, Sol. Long time no see.

Something happened a few days ago which made me think I should ... ⟩⟩

Garrus shook his head, staring unhappily at the half-finished message on the inner screen of his visor. This draft wasn't going any better than the others. Why was it so hard to put things into words? He'd expected to be finished with this hours ago, and yet the more effort he put in the worse the draft started to sound.

⟨⟨ I'm sorry that … ⟩⟩

Maybe he should be taking a break.

They'd spent almost three days on board Shiala's ship since leaving Omega. Three days recuperating and trying to work out their next steps. If pressed, he'd have to admit that recuperating was taking up rather more time than trying to work anything out. If lying awake at night feeling sorry for yourself counts as recuperating, anyway.

Time to take stock, then. What were the facts?

On the face of it, the mission to Omega had been a clear failure. The expert they'd been sent to find had been murdered, and he and Shepard had both only narrowly survived the Blood Pack's kidnapping attempt. Then again, meeting up with Shiala and her squad had been a definite positive - if the Matriarch that Shiala worked for couldn't help Shepard, then he doubted whether Shol's supposed expert would have been able to either.

And on the third talon, there was the news that Kumun Shol, the billionaire who'd sent them to Omega in the first place, wasn't on Klencory anymore. Not that he'd actually said that he was, thought Garrus, thinking back over their previous short conversations. But if he wasn't, then where in the galaxy was he? For that matter, how had the volus been able to pull enough strings to get Shepard detached from her unit? A direct intervention in Hierarchy military affairs wasn't the sort of thing Shol should have been able to pull off by himself. It was … well, it was the sort of thing that Spectres did, wasn't it? Was Nihlus more involved in this than he'd let Garrus know?

Then there was the salarian they'd picked up. Garrus still wasn't sure what to make of him.

The asari vessel they were on wasn't large, and it hadn't taken much time for him to wander all the way across it.

"Ah, Vakarian. Glad you stopped by. Wanted to discuss something with you. A delicate matter."

He hadn't meant to visit the salarian; hadn't really been conscious of exactly where his feet were taking him.

"Have been re-analysing the Commander's scans," the salarian said. "Beta wave patterns unusual, worryingly so. Fascinating, really, but … ah, must admit that prognosis not good. And evidence suggests beta wave deterioration likely to be paralleled by concomitant physiological decline."

"She's getting worse?" he said. His voice sounded more plaintive than he'd hoped. I thought she was getting better, he thought numbly.

The doctor nodded impatiently.

"Have examined documented cases of exposure to Prothean and suspected pre-Prothean technology. Not my field, but was able to pull some sources together."

The salarian passed him a data pad, which Garrus accepted without looking at it.

"More cases of such exposures on record in recent years than would have guessed. Victims " - Garrus wished he'd chosen a different word than that one - "are usually treasure hunters, amateur explorers or simply unlucky passers-by. All show remarkably similar responses, though proximate cause not always clearly defined.

"Common initial side-effects include insomnia, paranoia, auditory and visual hallucinations-"

Well, that doesn't sound good.

"Hallucinations?" he said. "Like the visions?"

Mordin shook his head. "Spoke with Shiala, asari captain. Mind meld confirms that warning message was present in beacon. Not subsequent hallucination, though provenance and authenticity of message still open to question…"

The salarian shook his head again.

"No, sources suggest initial symptoms are more subtle. Whispers on the edge of hearing, familiar faces glimpsed in strange crowds, fragments of music when others hear only silence. Surviving accounts are quite evocative."

"Open to question?" he asked, curiously. "You think this warning might be some sort of hoax?"

"Hoax?" the salarian shrugged. "Perhaps. Or simply out of date. Protheans have been dead for millennia. Not clear why any warning they might have left should still be relevant. Message likely not meant for us, in any case.

"Curious, all the same." Mordin conceded. "Hope you don't mind if I stick around. Would like to see what happens next. But, ah. Would suggest keeping an eye on the Commander. Later stage symptoms somewhat serious."

Garrus left the salarian, pad still in hand, and headed back to his own makeshift quarters. Rather than read Mordin's notes, he found himself staring at the unfinished message to his sister again. Staring past it, really; eyes not taking any of it in.

He remembered one summer, years ago - he must have been five or six years old. Long enough that he couldn't remember much more than a few isolated moments. Piecing things together, it must have been the summer they left Cipritine to go and stay in the countryside with one of his mother's relatives. When he was still that young, his father had sometimes been able to get away from work during the holiday season. However he'd managed it, the whole family had been together that summer.

One morning Solana had woken him up early, before dawn, and taken him out to the garden to show off her latest discovery. They'd crept out of the house, as quietly as they could, careful not to wake their parents. In the pre-dawn light, with Menae and Nanus both still visible as dim smudges on the horizon, the gardens were eerily beautiful. Nothing like the crowded streets and tunnels and urban sprawl of Cipritine.

After a short trek over the grass, past a small glade of trees and a carefully tended rock garden, they'd reached the discovery Sol had been so keen to demonstrate.

A pair of scorpion wasps, steel wings flickering as the sky grew gradually brighter around them, guarding a thorny bush, leaves curled up and half-dead in the waning darkness. There was something wrong with some of the leaves, he'd seen: Something … alive? He'd looked at his sister, puzzled. Was the plant sick?

"The wasps laid their eggs there last night," she'd whispered solemnly, eyes never moving away from the strange shapes undulating beneath the silvery leaves . "They're having a family."

Oh. Suddenly the shapes had seemed very fragile. Sol had taken one of his small hands in hers and - as the sun rose over the gardens - they'd watched together as the plant's leaves began to open up and the eggs inside began to hatch.

That had been a good day, he thought. Back then he'd thought his sister was the smartest turian in the galaxy. If only he-

It was too late for regrets.

He'd had three days to finishing writing this message. Three entire days with nothing else to distract him. Spirits, Garrus, you've had years. But now they were docking at the Citadel again - he'd wasted all that time. With a sigh and a curl of his smallest talon Garrus dismissed the mail client, message unfinished just like it always was.

[[ You have unsent messages that have not yet been uploaded to the extranet.]]

He was getting sick of the program telling him that.

[[ Do you want to save them? Y / N ]]

His hand snapped shut, overriding the prompt.

[[ Messages deleted. ]]

⟨⟨ Hey, sis. Sorry that I've not been in touch. I wanted... ⟩⟩

What did he want, anyway?

The Citadel was always changing, yet always on some fundamental level stayed the same. Every time he visited he felt like a stranger; as though all the landmarks that should have been familiar from previous visits had been moved about and re-ordered. Quite possibly they had, of course: the Citadel's Keepers were notorious for doing just that, and it didn't seem to be possible to stop them. But there was more to it than that, he thought. Something fundamentally inconstant and fluid about the station itself.

His father had told him many stories about life on the Citadel. Stories which made the place seem dangerous, or exciting, or mysterious. But nothing about it that made it seem like home. Not like Palaven. Maybe that was why his father had never fought harder to bring the family out here; beyond their mother's job at the University.

The Citadel hadn't been built for turians, or for salarians or asari either. The Council species occupied it, but they didn't truly own it. It was easy to take it for granted, but there was something bizarre about living in an artificial world whose founders had vanished millennia ago and which ran on rules nobody alive even pretended to understand. Something about the place just made his plates itch.

Maybe it was different for the people who actually lived here. But he didn't think so.

The asari embassy was located in one of the nicer areas of the Presidium, of course. Some things don't change. He was heading up the stairs with Shepard and Shiala when the message came through on his visor. C-Sec. He wasn't expecting anything from them; didn't recognise the name of the sender.

⟨⟨ Apologies, Spectre Vakarian, but we have a situation … can you come down to C-Sec Academy when you get the chance? ⟩⟩

"Ah," he said. "Sorry Commander, I'm afraid something's come up."

With a quick promise that he'd be back soon, he turned and headed back down the steps. Shiala would be able to escort Shepard the rest of the way, after all. The asari had insisted that the Matriarch would want to speak to him as well, but he couldn't imagine it was urgent. He still hadn't quite figured out what the Matriarch was to the commando: employer, surrogate parent or spiritual instructor? Maybe a mixture of all three.

The quickest way to the C-Sec Academy from the Presidium level was by elevator. At least that much had stayed the same since his last visit. When the keepers start messing with the elevator shafts, he thought, that's when will really be in trouble.

He paced uncomfortably in the silence of the elevator, wishing it would move faster or at least that he had somebody to talk to. Being alone and cooped up like this, it was all to easy to start remembering things that he'd rather not think about. Garm smirking down at him as he lay bleeding out on the floor; Shepard falling silently backwards through the shattering window.

Or, before that … he'd been about eight years old, he thought. Picked up by his mother one day after school, and taken away - not back to the house as he'd expected, but instead out to a strange complex of buildings he'd never seen before. Cipritine District Hospital, he'd read on a sign they hurried past. Sat in the back-seat of an unfamiliar aircar while his mother and father had a long, heated but whispered conversation on the vid-phone.

Then sat again, waiting in a room full of strangers while his mother talked to other strangers in white clothing.

"Mom," he'd asked nervously when his mother came back to sit with him, "Did Sol do something … bad?"

"Bad?" his mother seemed surprised by the question, and Garrus wondered if he'd missed something important she'd tried to explain. "No, dear. Your sister did something very brave."

"Father seemed-", he'd paused. "Really angry." Father had been at work, on the Citadel, but was coming back to Palaven to meet them now. Garrus hadn't been able to make out much more of that part of his parents' conversation.

"He wasn't angry," his mother corrected him, carefully. "He was worried. Solana could have been badly hurt. We were both worried she had been."

"Then can Sol come home soon?"

"That depends on what the doctors say, Garrus." she'd said. Her voice was bright but her subharmonics were strange - not like anything he'd ever heard before. "Let's hope so."

She'd fallen quiet then, and Garrus had gone back to playing with the extranet reader he'd borrowed from a receptionist.

He'd spotted a picture of Sol on the local news site - one of the ones he knew she didn't like, taken last year when her clawball team finished as runners-up in some competition or other - and a picture of the local metro station, one of the old deep ones that doubled as an air-raid shelter. He had tried to follow the story as best he could, puzzling quietly over unfamiliar words and phrases like funicular and breaking load and drainage trench and carapace fractures..

He'd decided it wasn't a good idea to ask his mom about them yet. She'd only take the reader off him again.

Later, when Father had arrived and all the family were gathered around Sol's hospital bed, it was his mom who seemed the angriest. Father just sat there, quietly, in the background. That was more frightening than if he had been angry. Garrus had never seen him so quiet before.

"What were you thinking, Solana?" she asked, not for the first time. "They say you jumped down onto the tracks, you-"

His sister had seemed half asleep, to his eyes - it was only later that he'd understood she was still feeling the effects of a very large dose of painkillers.

"I read ...," she'd answered, slowly, then seemed to lose her train of thought. "Is the kid okay?"

Her eyes had passed over Garrus and he'd felt a moment of pre-emptive outrage. I'm not a kid, he'd thought, furiously. I'm almost ten. She wasn't looking at him though. Some other kid? He remembered wishing he'd asked his mother to explain the news story after all.

"He's fine, Sol," their father had said quietly. "The family wanted you to know. I think they were hoping you'd come and see him later, when you're feeling up to it."

"But Sol," his mother had interjected, not content to stay quiet any longer. "You could have-"

She'd broken off, looking upset. Solana had looked - concerned, he'd thought, but not like she thought she was in trouble.

"It was the right thing to do," she'd said, looking their father in the eyes and not blinking. "Somebody had to do it."

The elevator door finally slid open, and Garrus shook his head. He hadn't thought about those days for years.

C-Sec Headquarters hadn't changed much since his last visit. That had been … two years ago, maybe? Certainly before he'd been formally made a Spectre. He had a vague memory of meeting Nilhus here, a long time ago.

This was the office he was looking for; the door standing open. Nobody had challenged him on his way in, he realised. Perhaps they were expecting him. Or maybe you spent too long on that asari ship and you've forgotten what it's like to be just another turian in the crowd.

He glanced inside the office; where a single middle aged man sat typing at a desk.

"Chellick?" he asked.

"Ah, Vakarian," the officer at the desk said. "Thank you for responding so quickly."

He wasn't surprised to see that the detective who'd requested his presence was a fellow turian. Most of C-Sec were, after all - he'd seen a couple of asari on his way in, and he knew there were at least a handful of batarians working for C-Sec as well, but those were very much in the minority.

"You know, I used to serve under Castis Vakarian, back in the day." the detective volunteered. "I'm sure he'd be …"

The detective trailed off, platitude unfinished; if Chellick really had served under his father, then they both knew that Castis Vakarian wouldn't have approved of Garrus having joined the Spectres.

"Is there anything I can help you with, Detective Chellick?" Garrus asked carefully. He really wasn't in the mood to talk about somebody else's idea of the good old times.

"I hope so, sir," said the C-Sec officer, finishing whatever he'd been working on at his desk and standing up.

"We brought in a human a couple of nights ago," Chellick said. Now we're getting to the point. "Picked a fight with a couple of krogan down in Archos."

"And he's still in one piece?" Garrus was impressed. Picking fights with krogan tended to be the sort of mistake that people only got to make once.

"One piece?" The officer shook his head. "Vakarian, it took four of my men to pull her off the krogan that was still standing upright. If we hadn't taken her amp off of her, … well,

Garrus mentally reviewed the list of human biotics he knew who could go toe to toe with multiple krogan. It wasn't a very long list. For that matter, neither was the list of human biotics he knew, period.

"If it was up to me, we'd leave her in lock-up until somebody more senior decided if we were going to charge her for all the damage she caused. Or if it would be simpler to just kick her off the station for causing a public nuisance. But the thing is, she mentioned you by name."

The list he'd been compiling in his head was really very short. Oh, this is not good.

"Okay, Officer," said Garrus. "Let's go down and see her."

[[ You have unsent messages … ]]

Garrus snapped his hand shut before the message had even finished scrolling across his vision.

[[ Messages deleted. ]]

⟨⟨ Solana, I know it's been a difficult few years, but ... ⟩⟩

It felt strange to be here, walking through the halls of C-Sec Academy. In another life, another galaxy, he might have ended up working here. Somehow he didn't think that that would have worked out very well.

Chellick waited outside the cell block while Garrus went inside.

" '... and his Lordship says to me: "That's Chapaev! Shoot Ivan, shoot!"' "

He didn't recognise either of the names. But he wasn't surprised to find that he recognised the voice. The speaker was facing the other way when he arrived, and had clearly been expecting more of a reaction. She stared levelly at the guard outside her cell for a few seconds, then cleared her throat.

"You see" she explained, "It's funny because …."

The guard came to attention when she spotted Garrus lurking in the hallway outside; after a brief pause the human turned around as well, eyes . Jennifer Nicollier, he reminded himself. The biotic from Eden Prime.

"Oh," she said flatly. "It's you."

"Hello, Nicollier," he said. Her only answer was to slump back against the wall of her cell, eyes shut.

He had a sudden memory of another conversation, years ago, on-

No.

He wasn't going to think about that now.

"I hear you've been making friends," he tried. She didn't respond. He thought briefly about just walking out of the cell. Surely he had better things to do with his time than this?

"I suppose you had a good reason for fighting krogan in the Wards," he said instead.

"You never fought krogan before, Vakarian?" she asked, not looking up and not waiting for him to reply. "It's fun."

He just waited, patiently as he could. Some suspects really want to talk, he remembered his father telling him once. They just don't realise it yet. The best thing you can do is leave them to it. Not that the biotic in the cell was a suspect, as such. He wasn't sure exactly what she was. He wasn't really sure why he was here.

Nicollier choked back a noise that might have been a laugh, holding her head in her hands.

"So you have brought my amp, or are you just here to gloat?" she asked.

"Gloat?" he asked mildly.

She didn't pause for as long before answering this time.

"We just got back to the Citadel," she said. "The Resolute, I mean. After you pulled the Commander off on whatever special mission you had … well, the Captain was pretty mad about that. But we got new orders almost straight away. So it's not like he had a choice."

Her hands were still clasping the sides of her head, fingers reaching towards the back of her head for a biotic amplifier that wasn't there.

"We were breaking up a human trafficking outfit operating out of the Boltzmann system," she continued. "Right under the Council's nose. Assholes pretending to help people but actually selling them to batarian slavers."

Her voice was oddly flat, as though she was giving a report on something that had happened to somebody else.

"There are a lot of desperate people on Bekenstein," she said. "Refugees, runaways, or just the plain unlucky. They'd take their money, tell them they'll be waking up on Horizon or Terra Nova, then ship them off to Khar'shan or Omega or fuck knows where. But they're only humans, aren't they? I guess C-Sec have more important things to do. Statues of krogan to keep safe from vandals, ornamental fish to protect. Serious things like that."

Nicollier glared up at him and beyond him to the open door leading out into the Academy. She shook her head and let her arms drop flatly to her sides.

"Blackwatch agent found the slavers' base - a disused refinery out in orbit around one of the outer planets. We were able to get a small group on board without without the enemy noticing. Snipers and scouts, with a couple of biotics for support."

"We were meant to go in and extract the ringleader," she said. "Alive. I guess the higher-ups figured he could be persuaded to help identify his contacts .

"We had to sneak past the holding pens to get to the command position. In theory, the people they picked up got stuck in cryo-pods before they ever realised that anything's wrong. Small mercies, right? But a few people wake up early, I guess; or maybe they just ran out of pods. Or the pods weren't the right size for the people they were picking up."

Her voice wavered for a moment.

"All those kids in cages…" she trailed off, fingers clutching at nothing.

"You were supposed to bring him in alive, right?" Whatever his father's advice, Garrus had a feeling he could guess where this story was going.

"Screw you Vakarian," she snapped. "He's still alive. I know how to follow orders. Nobody told me he'd have to be pretty."

Her foot tapped out a nervous irregular pattern on the cell floor. She didn't seem to be aware of it. He found himself wishing that she'd stop, but he didn't say anything further.

"When we got back to the Citadel last night," she continued, "Captain told us we were all free for shore leave for a few days. Some of the others got a group together, went to celebrate. I didn't feel like celebrating though. I wasn't happy we'd caught them; I was angry that they'd got away with it for so long."

"So after a couple of drinks I made my excuses and left. The others probably assumed I was going back to the ship, but I went further down into the wards instead. Knew I wouldn't be able to sleep without seeing those damned cages again.

"Ended up in some awful bar full of drunk turians and dancing asari and a couple of krogan mercenaries. Don't really know what their problem was. Maybe they don't like humans, maybe they were looking for trouble. Maybe I tipped their rycol over the table and asked them what they were going to do about it."

She smiled humorlessly.

"I wasn't lying when I said fighting krogan was fun," she said. "Hadn't ever done it before. They were really mad about that rycol."

Garrus glanced around the cell dubiously. "I'm not sure the consequences are quite as fun," he said. "C-Sec have all these annoying regulations about not starting mass brawls in the middle of the Citadel, and not throwing krogan into walls."

"It's not like the krogan are going to press charges," she shrugged. "I didn't break anything that won't grow back. And C-Sec seemed to sit up and pay attention when I threw out your name."

You owe me, she didn't say. I'm calling in a favour. Not out loud. But it wasn't as if she had to.

"You know Vakarian," she said, in a different, more somber tone than before. "Growing up, I-"

She scowled,

"Honestly," she said, "The Commander and the crew are the only family I've got left. So if you were planning to tell me you got her killed too, now would be a great time to do it."

She glared at him, making eye contact for the first time since she'd started talking. Her expression reminded him of Shepard, somehow, although other than the obvious species similarities the two humans didn't look all that similar. But the Commander had had a similar expression when she confronted him back on board the Resolute; when she'd compared her crew to a family.

I can't protect them from everything, she'd said, But I can protect them from themselves.

He didn't think Shepard would be thrilled to know he'd left one of her crew sitting alone in a C-Sec cell.

"Shepard's fine," he said awkwardly, hoping he wasn't lying. "She's on the Citadel now, in fact. I think … ah, excuse me."

I can't believe I'm doing this.

Garrus stepped outside and summoned the C-Sec detective back over. Chellick looked at him inquisitively without speaking. A good turian, waiting for orders.

"Sorry, Chellick," he said. "I'm going to need you to let this one out. Spectre business."

He hoped Chellick wouldn't ask for any details of this Spectre business. Not that it would matter if he did: Spectre authority was absolute. He didn't think his father would approve. Do things right, he'd said, Or don't do them at all. This definitely seemed like it belonged to the latter category.

"Ah. We'll need her amp back, too." he added apologetically, cutting off the C-Sec officer's summary of the various financial penalties and charges to which he'd apparently just agreed to assume liability

He looked away as Nicollier refitted her amp. It seemed somehow intrusive to stare, he thought. She seemed a lot less on edge with the amp than she had a few moments ago.

"The commander's in a meeting down at the asari embassy," he said. "I think she'd be glad to see a friendly face."

"Thanks, Vakarian," the human said, reluctantly, rubbing a hand over the back of her neck and stretching her arms out as she stood up.

She walked ahead of him as they left the building, back towards the central elevator up to the Presidium. They didn't speak, which was fine with him.

At the door of the elevator she turned, looking back over her shoulder and glancing over him.

"You look like shit, by the way," she said. She didn't sound sympathetic.

[[ You have … ]]

[[ Messages deleted ]]

⟨⟨ Solana, I know I can't unsay some of the things I said when we last spoke. But we're family,and I just- ⟩⟩

[[ You have unsent messages that have not yet been uploaded to the extranet.]]

[[ Do you want to save them? Y / N ]]

[[ Messages deleted. ]]

"The Matriarch will see you now."

The asari receptionist's tone made it pretty clear that this was an honour he'd do well to cherish. Spectre or not.

Nicollier took a seat next to Shepard, who greeted her with a surprised smile. The Commander seemed better, he thought. More like her usual self. At least as well as he could judge, having only known her for a little over a week. He probably should get around to reading that pad than Mordin had handed to him, he thought. Knew that he probably wouldn't.

He'd looked around for Shiala when they first reached the embassy, but there was no sign of the asari commando. He'd have to try to chase her down later, he decided: the receptionist's increasingly disapproving tone suggested that he'd already waited long enough.

When he entered the chambers where Benezia was waiting, he found the Matriarch standing with her back to him, facing the glass screen that separated the room from the vacuum of space. From here, the Serpent Nebula looked alarmingly close - a looming cloud stretching miles into the sky or, with a sudden shift of perspective, a glittering blue sea into which they could slide into in a moment. Standing before it, Matriarch Benezia looked as though she stood at the eye of the storm, the fulcrum about which the whole nebula spun.

A calculated pose, he suspected, but effective all the same.

"So. You are the Spectre I'd hoped could locate my daughter."

The asari's voice was deeper than he'd been expecting;

"Many of my sisters think me an idealist," she said, turning away from the window. "Or a trouble-maker. Someone who meddles in galactic affairs. They say that it is not fitting for a Matriarch to trouble herself with the troubles of hanar or quarian refugees, or with the diplomatic efforts required to resolve the military posturing of the turians and the batarians. That it is right and proper for an asari maiden to spend her early years on such childishness, but as the centuries pass she should move on to more refined, more spiritual concerns.

"I have always counselled against this view," she said "Argued against the isolationists and autarkists; tried to make the case that the asari must look beyond the Athena Nebula and our own affairs. That we have a duty to the rest of the galaxy, not just to our own kind. But now I find my only daughter pulled into a convoluted web; hiding out who knows where, her life threatened by both the ghosts of the dead past and the new alien allies of the turian Hegemony. And now I am afraid that I was wrong, all these years. Perhaps those who cautioned us to focus ourselves on the problems of Thessia have proven themselves wiser than I."

She fell silent for several seconds, and turned back to the window.

"Forgive me," she said quietly, looking out at the glittering lights of the nebula. "I grow old. And my Liara is still so young. You do not know the responsibility that comes with being a mother: to bring forth a life, to steer it toward happiness or despair."

Garrus could see himself reflected in the dark glass of the window; could see the asari as well, looking out beyond him into the empty darkness.

"My daughter did not always have the childhood I would have wanted for her," she said. "Perhaps no child ever does. I could not always be there when she needed me; there was always just one more politician to meet with, one more conference to attend. She had so few friends of her own age - my fault, perhaps. Her father and I, we ... well. Things ended badly between us."

She shook her head, still staring through her own reflection into the lights of the nebula and beyond.

"On good days we would sit together in the gardens and I would tell her stories of the ancient days, of Athame and her battles with the gods, of brave Lucen and wise Janiri. But there was never enough time."

She shook her head, turning away from the window decisively and taking several quick steps towards him.

"I believe you are acquainted with Nihlus Kryik," she said. "Nihlus is … a friend. Or at least, an ally."

"An ally?" he asked. "What are you allied against?"

"War," she said. "The current stalemate in the Traverse cannot last for long. It must be resolved, in one way or another. Either both sides heed the voices of reason and step back from the brink of disaster, or ..."

She let her voice trail off.

"My mother told me stories of the Krogan Rebellions," she said. "She lived through them herself, of course. The skirmishes and pirate raids are bad enough. I have no desire to see total war between the Hierarchy and the Hegemony. One can only imagine the devastation: billions dead when the turian fleets bombard Khar'shan, countless turian citizens sold into slavery in the Terminus Systems, other nightmares not yet imagined."

She sighed, eyes still seeming to stare past Garrus even though the starscape was behind her.

"The galaxy is vast and full of untapped potential," she finished, with the cadences of a politician slipping unconsciously into a frequently-rehearsed speech. "Surely enough for all its inhabitants to live and grow together in peace. Yet will we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?"

Benezia frowned, eyes focusing back on his.

"The galaxy is full of destabilising influences. Voices whispering poison in the ears of the Primarchs and the Overseer, promising glory and triumph and easy victories. Different voices, different motives, but the same corrupting message. Not to mention outside forces like the Shadow Broker or Aria T'Loak or this new Cerberus group."

Her voice had grown quieter as she spoke, but still seemed to echo in the otherwise silent room.

"And I can no longer contact Nihlus. My old ally seems to have vanished."

Well, that's not good. Garrus tried to remember the last time he'd managed to get in touch with Nihlus himself.

"Saren Arterius is also missing." Benezia said softly. "Nobody in Council Space has seen him for months. I believe the Hegemony are quite worried by this. I know that I am worried. Arterius is not, I fear, a man who believes in peace."

Yes, Garrus thought, I imagine they would be worried. Saren's hatred of the batarians was said to date back to his first Spectre mission, when he had helped to liberate the human colony worlds. Other people said that the batarians were somehow to blame for the death of Saren's brother a few years later.

Saren was a respected figure on Palaven and beyond; somebody whose reputation had only grown in recent years. After the war four years, many - like Saren - had argued against the Council imposed ceasefire. A short, inconclusive war followed by years of uncertain peace was not the turian way, the traditionalists had argued. A shamed enemy was only a more dangerous enemy waiting in the future. Sooner or later, Garrus suspected, the traditionalists would have their way. Just as Saren wished.

Saren was also one of several Spectres that Nihlus had warned Garrus to stay clear of. Not because he was one of the Spectres, like Vasir, who Nihlus suspected of being in the employ of the Shadow Broker. ("He's not corrupt, Vakarian," Nihlus had snorted when Garrus had hesitantly raised the idea. "He's just psychotic.") Nilhus had hinted that Saren was linked to a number of officially accidental deaths in Council space, including that of the batarian ambassador Jath'Amon just a few months after the second Blitz.

"I can't prove any of it, of course," Nihlus had conceded ruefully. "And neither can the Hegemony, or they'd be calling for Saren's head for sure. But you must have noticed that the new ambassador isn't one of their upper caste. They're not willing to risk another 'shuttle malfunction'."

Benezia seemed to make a decision, as she looked down at him. Or at least, she accepted that her decision had already been made.

"Please help find my daughter, Spectre Vakarian," she said softly. "I cannot promise it will help avert the war I fear is coming, but it will at least bring me some peace. If there is any truth in the visions of your Commander Shepard, we may all be running out of time."

"Is-" he started, then reconsidered his question. If Nihlus really was missing, as Benezia claimed, then he was more on his own that he'd thought. But then again, so was the Matriarch. And Nihlus going missing could explain why Benezia had been so keen to meet him; sounding out a potential new Spectre ally. Strange that she'd rather work with a turian that a fellow asari though, isn't it? He was going to have a lot to think about.

"How is she?" he asked instead. He'd only paused for a moment.

"I have done what I can," she said, frowning slightly. "These visions … even second-hand, the experience was unnerving. Fire, destruction - everything I have worked for so long to prevent. And yet I could not see clearly: if the Protheans knew more about the disasters they foresaw, it seems they kept it hidden."

"Perhaps your daughter will be able to help explain things?" he said. Doctor T'Soni was supposed to be an expert on the Protheans, after all. But Benezia frowned, shaking her head slightly.

"I fear I cannot promise this," she said. "Perhaps I should encourage you to believe this, but I do not know. My daughter is very young, and there are those who find her ideas … unpersuasive."

She didn't say she was one of them, but then again she hardly needed to do. Garrus didn't need much empathy to imagine what it must have been like for the Matriarch's daughter, growing up in the shadow of an illustrious parent and never quite living up to their expectations. He felt a sudden unexpected sympathy for the daughter of Matriarch Benezia.

Maybe that was why he agreed to help, in the end. Besides, if he was going to be looking for Shol anyway - and he didn't need to talk to the Council to know that they'd want to know where the volus was - it was hardly going to be any extra work to look for one asari archaeologist.

"Vakarian … " she said thoughtfully, just as he turned to leave. "There was a C-Sec officer of that name, a few years ago. By any chance, are you-"

"My father," he said, more stiffly than he'd intended. "He's … ah. He was on Kahje."

"Then I am sorry for your loss," she said, bowing her head slightly in understanding.. "He was a most interesting man. Never forget that family is a privilege, young Spectre. As well as a responsibility."

Back in the antechamber, he took a deep breath. There was something deeply unsettling about talking to a person who had first walked the halls of the Citadel half a millennium ago. Somebody who had been alive when Primarch Visolus signed the Treaty of Altakiril; who had lived through the Revolt on Matrium; who had been a witness to the Geth Wars and the fall of Rannoch. Doubly so when that person had apparently met and remembered your own father.

There was work to be done - he'd have to go and speak to the Council, to start gathering leads on Shol - but he took a few seconds to calm himself first.

The prompt on his visor flashed invitingly. A blank message window, just waiting for-

⟨⟨ Sol. Can we talk? ⟩⟩

He fired the message off without giving himself any time for second thoughts.