Review reply: Arodri and lordheistra222, for reasons that will be explained in a couple chapters, it's gonna be a while, but I WILL write the family reunion, don't worry. :)

Chapter 41: New Horizons

I am not defined by my tragedies
I am defined by those who helped me overcome them

From the second they landed, Terra felt like they were already too late. The colony was too quiet, the invading ship a grim presence, the sky flecked with seeker swarms. It wasn't hopeless—the Citadel had been just as bad off when they took down Sovereign—but this was different. She knew what it was like to watch helplessly as the colony she called home fell apart. She used that. She had to stop this.

With Garrus and Grunt behind her, she was pretty confident they were ready for anything. When they saw their first Collectors, she got to know the face of their enemy. As well as she could before Garrus shot that face repeatedly. She couldn't blame him, considering these were the same monsters that killed her. Frankly, it only took a matter of two seconds before she was doing the same. Then it was a matter of two seconds before Grunt roared and charged in, bowling them all down. Turned out bringing the krogan was the correct answer.

If only the rest of the mission was so simple.

"Commander—" Joker's voice cut through the COMM after a moment, "—getting all kinds—interference—can't maintain—"

Garrus took a moment to check their COMMS. "The Collectors are disrupting communications."

Terra sighed. "Guess we're on our own."

The very next corner they turned, though, they found an even bigger problem to worry about. A squadron of Collectors flew in, and right as the fight was about to break out, one of them suddenly writhed and glowed before bursting with power. "We are Harbinger."

And we are taking cover, Terra winced, pulling Garrus behind a crate and signaling Grunt to follow suit just as the empowered Collector opened fire on them with what looked like blasts of dark energy. She didn't wanna know how they were doing this, she just knew they needed to be stopped. So they focused fire on the big guy. It was tougher than the others, but it went down just the same. Which was a mistake. The inevitable reinforcements brought another one. She really didn't wanna know how they were doing this. When the squad finally managed to take down this batch of Collectors, she thought it was best for them to hurry towards the next area.

The term that could best describe what the Collectors were doing in this village would definitely be "nightmare fuel." It didn't take long for the squad to stumble upon some of the colonists being watched over by the swarms. Said colonists, they quickly determined, were paralyzed but fully aware. By the time that effect wore off, they'd all be sealed in those pods and dragged onto the ship. Terra finally figured it was best for her to not think about it that way and for them to keep hurrying before that could happen.

After clearing a few more Collector squadrons, they found their way into a panic shelter where a mechanic was hiding. A mechanic with some good news and some bad news, though he might have been convinced it was the other way around.

The good news was that the Alliance had installed some defense towers that could easily batter that Collector ship if they could just get the targeting system online.

The bad news was that Ashley Williams was the one the Alliance had sent to install them and there was no sign of her.

Now Terra knew they had to hurry.

So hurry they did. They raced through the last section, one notably devoid of any more colonists in seeker stasis due to their proximity to the ship, and straight to the field containing the targeting computers for the GARDIAN batteries. Exactly Garrus' forte. Terra and Grunt held off the husks and other abominations being sent their way long enough for Garrus to hack the system, shut down the jammers, and connect EDI to the GARDIANs. Everything was going well until the Collectors realized what they were up to. Then it was a matter of holding their ground as husks and Collectors and those "Harbinger" freaks flooded them from all sides. And just when they thought they were clear, the big guns came out. Luckily, Terra had some big guns of her own in the form of a flamethrower she'd grabbed on Zorya. This monstrosity didn't fall easily, but it fell just the same. As soon as it did, the batteries came online and the Collector ship was under fire.

And just as quickly, the ship took off.

Terra had been holding it in so far, but seeing that ship take off with all the colonists aboard nearly broke her. She couldn't save them. Now they were going to suffer.

Just like Mindoir.

When that mechanic came running up and demanded they do something, it just made it worse for her. He knew those people. She couldn't imagine what it would be like for him and the other survivors now. She didn't want to try to imagine what it would be like for the ones that didn't survive.

Garrus was right behind her, though, and he saw how much this was affecting her. He was right there to take her side and let her know she had done enough.

"It was a good fight, Shepard," Grunt agreed.

"Shepard?" the mechanic perked up, "Wait, I know that name." He turned to face her again. "Right. Some type of big Alliance hero, right?"

"The Alliance hero." All eyes turned to see Ashley Williams herself standing there.

Terra smiled now. This was the first time she was seeing one of her old squad-mates alive and well since she came back (besides Garrus and Tali, of course). There was a special kind of relief to be gained from it.

After the mechanic stormed off in a huff, Ashley approached carefully, apparently inspecting Terra as if to make sure it was really her. When she was satisfied it was, she smiled and held out her hand. "I thought you were dead. We all did."

Terra didn't take her hand, though. She was so glad to see Ashley OK in the middle of all this that she did what she hadn't gotten to do with Tali on Freedom's Progress and jumped to hug her. "I was. And you have no idea how happy I am to see you again!"

Surprisingly, Ashley hugged her back. "We all missed you so much. You were more than our commander, you were…" Then she thought it over. "Wait." She leaned back to look at her again. "If you were dead, then how are you here now?"

Terra sighed, wishing she had a better answer. "Cerberus brought me back."

Ashley was shocked. Then appalled. …then sickened. "You're with Cerberus now?"

"No! It's not like that! They just wanted me to look into the missing colonists."

"I don't believe this! I thought those reports had to be wrong, but you're telling me it's all true?!"

Terra was stunned to hear that. "Reports? What are you talking about?"

Ashley shook her head, still clearly upset. "There was word going around that you were back, that you were with Cerberus. I never would've imagined they were true!"

"Ash!" Terra snapped, "Think about this for a second! Cerberus goes against everything I stand for! You know I would never play nice with them unless I had absolutely no other choice!"

"And what if they're playing you into thinking that?! What if they're the ones behind the attacks?!"

"You saw it was the Collectors, and they're working for the Reapers—!"

"Or what if they did something to you?!"

Garrus had to step in now. "I'm in this, too, Ash. You don't think I'm looking out for her to make sure that doesn't happen?"

Ashley scoffed. "No offense, Vakarian, but when it comes to her, you're a bit distracted."

"That's too far, Williams," Terra quickly cut back in, "I'm already trying to fight this on two fronts. Don't add yourself to it."

Ashley didn't listen. She did the one thing Terra couldn't take and turned her back on them. "I have to report in. I'll see you around."

"Ash—!" Terra started to call after her, but she still wasn't listening. She was already gone.

Garrus was right by her side as always, but he didn't know if there was anything he could do this time. "Terra?"

She stepped back before he could touch her, not even looking at him as she turned her COMM on. "Joker, pick us up. …I've had enough of this colony."

The rest of the day didn't go any better. After dropping her weapons and armor in the armory, Terra had to talk to the Illusive Man about what went down. What he said only made her suspicions grow until she outright asked if he was the one feeding those reports to the Alliance. He was. He didn't even bother trying to deny it. He said it like it was a perfectly logical thing to do rather than a permanently damaging mark on her reputation and, even worse, an experiment on the Collectors' behavior that put Ashley and everyone else on Horizon at risk. At that point, she wished for the first time that it wasn't a holo-COMM so she could jump across the room and throttle him. Instead, she had to listen to him "justify" his actions and strategize what their next move would be. He was sending over three more dossiers to build the team with and he would let her know when next he found something.

She wasn't looking forward to the next call.

While she was busy with that call, Garrus took that time to stock his weapons in the armory and speak with Mordin. Once they had developed a plan of action, he briefly checked the COMM room to make sure she wasn't still there before heading straight up to deck 1. He knew Terra. He knew she'd put on a brace face for her crew then fall apart over what happened on Horizon. He knew she'd need him. So he headed up there immediately and walked right in.

He found her throwing things and growling in a way that would intimidate most turians. Seeing that, had she elected to show no restraint and throw actual weapons rather than pillows, she would have broken the fish tank and some of the furniture, he thought it was best not to put himself in the line of fire and to let her blow off some steam before he moved in. When she finally buried her face in a pillow to let off a sustained scream of rage before curling up and fighting the urge to cry, that was when he rushed to her side. "Terra?"

"Go away," she moaned, which was hard to pick up on given how her face was still buried in a pillow.

He sighed, ignoring her demand and getting settled beside her. "Terra, listen to me. There wouldn't be any people left on that colony if not for you. You saved as many as you could. And I'm sorry we weren't fast enough to save them all, but that doesn't mean it was your fault. And Ashley? We know her. She trusts you. She knows how you feel about Cerberus. What she said was wrong and she'll see that if we just give her time to."

She finally lifted the pillow enough to glare at him. "You're telling me the truth, not what I need to hear."

"What do you want me to say? That this whole mission was a disaster and there was nothing you could've done?"

That was when she set the pillow aside and sat up enough to look at him more earnestly. "Tell me who I am."

Of all the things he had been expecting her to say, that wasn't one of them. "I…what?"

She curled up, looking away from him sadly. "I don't know anymore. Terra Shepard died. Ever since I came back, I haven't felt like they actually restored me and didn't just piece me back together. With you, it's different, but I thought Ashley would make it real. But to her, I'm just a Cerberus puppet. To Cerberus, I'm a tool." She laid her head on her knees, fighting the urge to cry. "…and back on that field, watching the ship take off, I was another helpless girl watching monstrous aliens drag half a colony kicking and screaming to a nightmare in chains."

He really hadn't been expecting that. He felt stupid for not noticing the similarities between Horizon and Mindoir or how those might affect her. She hadn't let the memory of the raid get to her in a decade. She'd shrugged off painful reminders on virtually every mission they went on like that helpless girl in that hole was just a distant shadow. But on Horizon, she'd been helpless again. It was different in that she didn't have family that was taken, but it was also different in that she could've done something and simply hadn't had the chance. The one way it wasn't different, though, was that she still needed him to pull her out of it. "Terra. Listen to me. You're not that girl anymore."

She scoffed wryly. "Right. I'm just some DNA reconstruction with implanted memories. Is that it?"

"No! Don't you think I could tell if it was really you or not?"

"Which me? The little farm girl who carried her paints everywhere, the refugee who cried in the room next to yours for two years straight, the dutiful soldier that faced down Elysium and Eden Prime and Ilos, or the undead abomination that's trying to pick up where she left off?"

"Why can't it be all of the above?"

The way she looked at him was as firm as it was shaken. "Because it's not. You can't love someone that broken, Garrus."

He stood just as firm, taking her hand again. "Yes, I can. But I don't. Because you're not. You're just upset. If you get some rest and let the dominoes stop falling in your mind, we can make sense of it together—"

The look in her eyes cut him off before the words even came out. "I can't rest. …I can't."

…oh. He hadn't been thinking of that either. She always recovered so easily and so quickly from this particular issue that it hadn't occurred to him, but now he thought it might just make her fall apart if they weren't careful. "The nightmares are back?"

She looked down sadly and nodded.

"How bad?"

"That depends. Which ones are you talking about? Mindoir, the visions, Alchera, or you?"

He could've been surprised to hear that the first two were bothering her after she already conquered them. He would've latched onto Alchera. But the last one struck him. "Me?"

She hesitated to look at him. When she did, her eyes were downcast, her fingers drifting sorrowfully up to his newfound scars.

Realizing what she meant, he felt responsible for this particular pain. If he had been more careful, he wouldn't have had to take that shot and she wouldn't have had to worry about him. "Terra—"

"I keep dreaming that you wouldn't wake up. That you just died in my arms back there and there was nothing I could do. Do you have any idea what that would've done to me?" She did. It was bad enough hearing he was missing. If she actually lost him, it would tear her apart. In that way, it was just as bad as dying.

But he had a response to this one. He wished he didn't, but he did. "…probably the same thing losing you did to me."

She froze, her hand drifting down from his face. "Garrus…"

Suddenly, he couldn't look at her either. "I just left you behind, and the next thing I heard was that you'd been spaced. I had nightmares about you freezing and suffocating and drifting away…"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Garrus, by virtue of sheer willpower, had never had a nightmare in his life because it was "a waste of good sleep." But what happened to her had broken him. "Garrus—"

"Please…please tell me that's not what it was really like."

She sighed as she drew closer. "No. My oxygen was cut off, I blacked out before the worst of it happened."

Well, that wasn't much better, but it was still an improvement he wished he'd known about all this time. "…but you said that you were having them, too, now."

Hearing his dilemma, she wished she hadn't mentioned it. But she had. "Yeah. I still got spaced and died, that's not something you just shake off. I thought I could, but…I still have dreams of being lost and cold in empty darkness, stars I love laughing at me while I suffocate and fall…"

He wanted to comfort her, but the fact was that he couldn't do that when he was hurting the same. When he'd first heard about it, it was just an unfortunate end for her to suffer through. But it hadn't occurred to him when he discovered she was back what it must be like for her to remember that suffering. Or to experience it all over again every night. Suddenly, that one glaring issue he'd thought he'd made peace with was overwhelming him. "I…spirits, Terra, I'm so sorry."

She instantly grabbed hold of him, bringing him to face her. "You do not get to blame yourself for that. I was the one who stayed behind. If you'd stayed with me, you either would've gotten spaced, too, and not come back yourself or been stuck on the pod with Joker watching me fall. I couldn't do that to you."

It was unfortunate to consider the past two years the lesser of the two tragedies, but he saw her point. Always selfless. Even when it came to her own death. He sighed. "So what do we do now?"

She wished she had an answer. All she could do was shrug. "We're just gonna have to find a way to be there for each other."

"What are we supposed to do, sleep in the same bed for the foreseeable future?"

She wouldn't have minded that, but she had a better idea. She smiled at the thought of it. "I just need to hear your voice, and you just need a reminder I'm here to. We can COMM each other at lights out."

He took a second to think it over, coming to the conclusion that he wouldn't mind it. In fact, it wasn't that dissimilar to what they'd been doing for those 13 years apart. "That would work, yeah."

Simply at the prospect, she felt her sorrows lessening. He had a way of doing that to her, just by being there. And he was always there. "Thank you for listening. You're the only person I can talk to about this stuff."

He didn't mind being the one person she trusted most. He felt the same way. He wanted to do as much as he could for her. Proof enough that he did genuinely love her. That thought brought his smile back, prompting him to kiss her and say so.

She smiled much more brightly in response, doing the same for him. Her life was far better when Garrus Vakarian was in it.

They sat there for a while, clinging to each other to chase away the last of the pain. It was only when EDI came over the COMM to say Joker was asking for a heading that Terra thought to check the time and saw it was nearly lights out already. She quickly sent a message to Joker to get them through the first relay jump and then leave it on auto-pilot for the night so they could plot a course in the morning. Then she noticed Garrus turning to head back down to his bunk and thought of something.

She stopped him before he could even reach the stairs. "Uh…do you think, just for tonight, we could sleep in the same bed? Just in case?"

He smirked. He couldn't exactly turn her down—partly because it wouldn't be the first time and partly because he simply couldn't turn her down anymore. "Alright. 'Just this once.'" She didn't seem to catch the quote marks in that statement, though, which was probably because she didn't know what he knew. They were still just "boyfriend and girlfriend" by human standards, but by turian standards, he knew they were so much more.

In fact, maybe it was time he told her that.

So when they were in the bed together, his arms tight around her as she leaned into him and slowly drifted off, he did. "Terra?" Or, at least, he tried to. When he received no acknowledgement, he turned to see she was already asleep. It had been a long day, after all. So he sighed, shaking his head, and lied down to follow her. "It'll keep."