Chapter 55: Without

Without strength
Without hope
Without a guiding light
You are never without me

Tellingly, the Normandy didn't actually leave Hagalaz for nearly two days. The entire crew learned why when Liara finally had enough time to set aside the data for a moment and come aboard. Terra had invited her and Tali was delighted to give her a tour of the ship. The tour ended on deck 1, where Liara found Terra waiting to spend some time with her. It wasn't the same as the SR-1, but it meant the world to Liara to come back to the ship that had so changed her life.

Terra was just happy to have another friend well and truly back in her life. It wasn't quite the same since Liara wasn't sticking around, but she promised to be more in contact from this point onward and she did actually seem a lot more like herself now that the Shadow Broker was gone, even if she had grown up from the events of the past two years. Terra knew better than to regret that, though. They all had.

"So how are you doing, Shepard?" Liara asked, "I mean really, not what you tell your squad to keep morale up."

Liara had always had a certain way of seeing through her, even if not as well as Garrus. The truth was that she was leaning on Garrus in her rare moments of weakness, so she could answer Liara honestly when she said "I'm hopeful. We crushed Sovereign, we beat the Collectors on their home turf…" She sighed. "But there's a lot of Reapers out there and no one's ready to believe we need to fight."

Liara nodded. "It's hard to believe. But you're right to have faith in your crew's abilities. Under your leadership, they've accomplished the impossible."

Terra smiled. "The robo-squids certainly can't call us young and primitive anymore."

"'Young'? You know I'm 108 now. 109 in a couple of months."

"Ah. I should get you something nice."

Liara smiled. "You're alive again. I have everything I want."

Terra was glad to hear that. It was nice to know she had friends she could rely on, who needed her as much as she needed them, who would never give up on her.

"So tell me what you want. What are you fighting for? For peace? For honor?" She gave the commander a knowing smirk. "For Garrus?"

Terra shook her head. "All of the above, actually. I want what's best for the galaxy…" Her hand reached up to finger her necklace. "…and I love him. I want to make up for the time we lost, to give him better."

"A worthy endeavor, I'd say." She rested a friendly hand on Terra's shoulder. "I hope you two find happiness."

Terra simply nodded. They had already found happiness simply from being together. It was a happy ending she was praying for now.

Liara finally sighed. "I should head back to my ship. But thanks for inviting me up, Terra."

Terra hugged her. "Come back soon."

Liara made her way back down to the airlock on deck 2. To her surprise, Garrus was waiting in the CIC, leaning against Terra's terminal. "You were waiting just to see me off?"

Garrus smirked as he followed her across the bridge. "Sort of. I needed to ask you something."

Liara gave him a curious look as they reached the relative privacy of the airlock. "About what?"

"…why didn't you tell me you were trying to bring her back?"

Oh. She should've seen this coming. If she didn't know him as well as she did, she would worry how he would take the answer. But she didn't. So she gave it: "When it was just a matter of reclaiming her body, I meant to, but you were still so upset that I didn't want to bother you until I had her trail. Then Cerberus got involved and talked of restoring her and…it was a long shot. I didn't want to give you false hope. …I was afraid you would think I was defiling her memory for trying."

Oh. He certainly couldn't fault her reasoning or blame her for having it. They all knew how much Terra had meant to him, how he had fallen apart after losing her over Alchera. But the real question was…how would he have reacted? "Liara, we're friends. You care about her almost as much as I do. I know you wouldn't do that." As if to drive his point home, the elevator across the deck sounded Terra's arrival in the CIC. He watched from a distance as she checked her terminal to start looking for their next mission. "There isn't a thing I wouldn't do for her. I would've taken on every Reaper in dark space for the chance to save her."

Liara didn't doubt it. When he said it like that, she almost wished she had included him, if only so he might have made the difference that saved Feron from all he suffered for his help. But even more so, one thought occurred to her that made her smile.

He noticed. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just…she deserves someone who loves her enough to try. She's very lucky to have you. And I hope she always will."

He looked over to where Terra was taking her position at the galaxy map, smiling at the sight of his human standing where she belonged. "She will. Always."

Liara smiled brighter to know it was true. "Good. Stay safe out there, Garrus."

He nodded. "You, too, Liara."

Once Liara was back at her new station, Joker started taking them back towards the nearest relay. The whole way there, Terra attempted to find them a new destination. She didn't have enough to go on to start hunting Cerberus outright. It certainly didn't help matters that, even though she had been there, Miranda didn't actually know where Cerberus' HQ, Chronos Station, was. Now that she was cut off from Cerberus' network, she barely know anything about their operations. The Cerberus intel was getting scant by now, too. However, after a few scans of her own, EDI was at least able to point them to a Cerberus facility that seemed to be offline even though it was running some secret project. An easy enough first target.

Right, because things were ever easy for them.

While the Normandy was on route to Aite, Terra took the time to check in on the crew again, trading a few brief but friendly conversations with her squad and one exact-opposite-of-brief "conversation" with Garrus. When Joker informed her they were entering the Typhon system, she headed to the armory with Garrus and Legion to gear up, cautioning them both that she had no idea what to expect.

She really didn't. Even after they landed and saw how bad it was, she couldn't have predicted how things were about to go down.

For starters, all the Cerberus staff but one doctor were dead. Admittedly, not a good sign. Then there was the geth everywhere that Legion informed them weren't acting normally and attacked even him on sight. Also not a good sign. And to top it all off, there was the fact that some strange computer function they could only assume was some sort of AI was taking over all the equipment and screaming at them down every hall. That was straight up just a bad sign. Terra did briefly consider entertaining the possibility of leaving this mess to sort itself out since most of the Cerberus personnel were already dead anyway, but the "AI" was planning to upload itself off-world and spread this chaos through the galaxy, so she figured the best thing they could do was shut the place down and then decide what to do about this Dr. Archer character leading them through the place. She knew the second she laid eyes on the guy that she didn't trust him, but since she couldn't tell if that was genuinely her instincts going off or just her general distrust of all things Cerberus and how stupid the plans for this place had originally been, she held back for now.

Within 20 minutes, she was kicking herself for that. This entire facility and all four of its stations were overrun with geth and mechs seemingly programmed solely to try tearing any intruders limb from limb. Thankfully, Garrus was able to overload most all of them to disable them for Terra to take down or Legion to hack. Not to mention all three of them were snipers and these synthetics were, in the end, no real match for them. It wasn't an easy task to shut down the two stations maintaining the lockdown on the third, but it was nothing they couldn't handle.

It was when they actually got to the third station that it became something to worry about. From the moment they stepped into the station, things started stacking up against them. Doors shuffling their locks to force them down a certain path. Elevators not accessing their floor, arriving full of geth, and then crashing on them. And, just to top it all off, the route forward was cut off in favor of a room with, you guessed it, a big red button.

Terra, for obvious reasons, had never trusted big red buttons. "Alright, everyone get ready. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if this button summoned a Reaper." Garrus and Legion got in position to watch her back, so she hesitantly pressed the button. What followed felt like an electric shock. She stumbled back, almost collapsing on the rail she was standing beside.

Garrus immediately took notice. "Terra? What's wrong?"

"Shepard-Commander," Legion spoke up, "we detect abnormal brain activity. Are you still fully functional?"

Terra barely heard what either of them were saying, struggling to get back on her feet and completely collapsing in the hall.

Garrus didn't bother asking questions this time. He just raced over to help her…and ran face-first into the door. As soon as he shook it off and realized what had happened, he started getting frantic, attempting to pry the door open. "Legion!"

Legion came over to hack the lock. "Cannot establish access. Path blocked. Attempting to locate alternate route."

"Hurry!" Garrus kept trying the door even when he knew it wasn't opening. Terra needed him and he wasn't letting anything keep him from her.

Terra, on the other hand, began to pull herself together on the other side of the door and saw just what that "shock" had done. Everywhere she looked, she saw wiring and solid light structures and things she didn't even have the technical knowledge to name. What had happened? Had that interface hacked into her cybernetics somehow? She finally took a deep breath to steady herself, drew her weapon, and made her way onwards. She was going to figure this out even if she had to do it alone.

As she made her way deeper, though, her new view of the complex revealed what had really happened here. Dr. Archer had a little brother, David, who suffered from autism but was also a math genius, a combination that made him the perfect brain to establish an interface to "communicate with" the geth (because, in this context, she fully expected that meant "enslave"—somehow, she had found a way to despise Cerberus even more). Just when she thought she was getting answers, the interface in question came alive in the central chamber…and, from the sound of it, was attempting to upload itself to her ship. That she wouldn't stand for. Tech might not be her specialty, but she understood shooting, so she started shooting down the conduits before they could establish any connection and gunning down the VI core whenever it was exposed as well as any hacked geth that attempted to get in her way. It was a long, arduous task that she nearly used up all her ammo to compete, but she managed it. And with a final burst of light, the entire system collapsed under her last volley of fire.

She fell back to rest against a pillar as the effect on her vision slowly disabled. As it faded, she realized that her hearing must have been affected as well because she only now realized that her COMM was active with the voice of a certain panicked turian. "Garrus?"

He calmed down when he heard her voice again. "Terra. Are you OK?"

She stowed her weapon and attempted to stand up straight. "I think so."

"I don't know what you just did, but Legion's got the doors open and it's locked in on your signal. We're catching up."

"Alright. I'll just…wait here." So she took a moment to finish recovering before turning to inspect the area and make sure it was really clear. What she saw made her freeze so sharply and so long that she didn't even notice when Garrus and Legion did finally come up behind her.

"Wait!" Dr. Archer himself ran in (how he got down there so fast, she didn't want to know), "Commander, don't do anything rash—"

That was all she needed to hear to whirl around and punch him in the nose with such force that he fell flat on the floor, prompting Garrus to doing the smart thing and remove himself and Legion from the radius of her ire. "'Rash'?! Like torturing your own brother in a test chamber?! I should hang you off the side of the station for this!"

"I know," the doctor tried to defend himself as he struggled back to his feet, "this looks bad—" Terra scoffed at him, rolling her eyes at the understatement. "—but I assure you I can explain."

"Doctor, you're even more deranged than I think you are if you actually believe I want to hear one word you have to say. Legion, get him out of there!"

"NO! Leave him!" Archer pulled a gun on her the second he saw the geth start to move in. "He's too valuable!"

Garrus was instantly prepared to charge in and tackle the guy for even daring to threaten his mate, but she removed the need for it by kicking the doctor in the shin and disarming him before she had even turned to face him. Based on the look in her eyes, Garrus was surprised she didn't shoot him in the other leg rather than unload the gun, yet she managed to show the same restraint she had asked of him on the hunt for Sidonis.

Archer seemed to realize he was defeated and there was no point in pretending otherwise, shrinking back before she could attempt to "subdue" him again. "…where are you taking him?"

Terra didn't want to even give him the satisfaction of an answer, but this was still his brother they were talking about. She knew she would've killed to know where Violet had gone. "Grissom Academy. They can help special cases like David…minus the exploitation." Without looking at the doctor and setting herself off again, she went over to help Legion and give Joker a call to explain what they were doing.

Garrus watched Archer forlornly exit the chamber. Then he watched Terra. He knew her well enough to know why this had hit her so hard. Her family had been the most important thing in the world to her before the raid, and the thought of someone doing to their own brother what Cerberus had done to her (or something similar, at least) was…what would even be the word for that? Appalling? Ghastly? She was the wordsmith of the two of them and he doubted even she would know how to describe it. He knew she was strong enough to take this once she was certain the poor, abused David was safe, but he still stayed close to her as they made their way back to the ship, waiting to be her source of light again if the weight of this whole incident grew too much for her.

It didn't even occur to them until David was in the med bay and they were on their way to the Petra Nebula that they still didn't have a real target where Cerberus was concerned. Amazingly, Terra didn't even care and just told them that, while clearing up the mess on Aite would be doing the Illusive Man a favor, he'd be hurting from the loss of the entire "Overlord" project and might even take it as a warning. It didn't seem like anyone actually believed that, but they all knew better than to argue with her and agreed that saving David alone had been worth the diversion.

Garrus stayed in the battery for the entire trip to the Academy, but he worked with the door open, casting his gaze back at the mess every few seconds. Terra was sitting there, watching the med bay through the viewing glass, not even sketching or eating. Everyone else seemed convinced she was making sure David wasn't still a threat, staying vigilant for the moment he broke down or freaked out, which she couldn't be blamed for considering what they'd gone through before pulling him out. But Garrus knew Terra well enough to know she was still hung up on what David had gone through, on the side of things she had glimpsed through his attempts to communicate with her, and he knew it had marked her. He'd known she was upset, but the way she was watching the med bay wasn't mortified or morose so much as protective.

Like an older sister.

When the thought suddenly struck him and he realized what was happening, he quickly set aside his work and moved in. He didn't care if she actually wanted to talk right now. If his suspicions were right, she needed to.

She didn't object when he came to sit beside her, but she didn't take her eyes off the med bay to face him. She also didn't say anything, even to acknowledge his presence.

He figured that meant he was safe to start the conversation straight to the point. "Terra, he's not your responsibility."

"I went in to disable the Cerberus facility he was trapped in. If I'd just had EDI scan the data for me to begin with, gone there first instead of going to help Liara—"

"He's not Violet."

She lost her voice the second he said her lost sister's name. Hearing it under these circumstances and realizing he was right nearly drove her to tears, but she held back. "I know…but he reminds me of her."

Garrus simply sat there and listened. That was all she needed so far.

Terra sighed, leaning back in her seat. "She was a math genius, too, you know. We didn't make such a big deal out of it because she was a musical prodigy first and brilliant at it. Notes can correspond to numbers, though, so sometimes she made her own fun 'solving' her favorite songs…or Mom's." Thinking back on it made her smile but also threatened her with tears again. "And she was also young, innocent, and taken away to suffer because I couldn't save her in time."

Garrus took action now, wrapping his arm around her to fight off the tears for her. "That's not your fault. There was nothing you could've done for Violet. This, you did everything you could possibly do for."

"And the colonists on Horizon?"

"We've been over that. You saved everyone you could, you avenged the ones you couldn't, the crew is safe…"

She sighed. He was right, but it didn't change that some small part of her felt like she'd failed on at least one of those occasions.

"You're a hero, Terra. That doesn't automatically mean everyone you lose is your fault."

She smirked. "What happened to me telling you that?"

He smirked back. "Someone pretty smart reminded me it doesn't always work that way."

She scoffed. "Smart or just intuitive?"

"No, you're right, I guess I'm the smart one."

She rolled her eyes, giving him a playful shove. "We've been hanging out with each other too long."

When they arrived at the Academy, David was carefully escorted from the ship to the station, following a brief period where he had to again thank Terra for "making it quiet." She merely gave him a supporting smile and said he was free to contact her if he ever needed help again. They would've gone from there and started searching for more Cerberus targets, but one of the Academy staff who came for the transfer told Terra that word had made it to the Alliance of the Normandy coming back into human space and one of the admirals wanted to talk to her. Confused at first, she went up to her cabin to take the call.

Even as Joker was pulling away from the Academy and keeping up the signal Terra was making use of, Garrus wondered what could be going on. The Alliance had barely spoken to her since her return, even after she contacted Anderson, and now admiralty was calling directly to the ship? He wasn't sure what to expect.

So it was no surprise when Terra turned up 15 minutes later to explain it to him. "It was Admiral Hackett." Strange, she didn't seem happy to have gotten a call from one of the superior officers she both liked and respected.

Garrus gave her a curious look. "What did he want?"

"A friend of his was arrested by batarians. He wants me to sneak in and get her out."

"…so we're headed to batarian space now. Great."

"Actually, that…that's kind of the problem."

"What do you mean?"

She sighed hesitantly but resignedly. "…he wants me to go alone."

Her turian didn't exactly take that news well. "What?! Terra, you can't!"

"It's not like it'd be the first time I went without you!"

"Yeah, when you had Samara or half the team behind you! Going in by yourself is—!"

"I can be stealthy, you know. And I stand a better chance of it solo. Besides, according to Hackett, if we are discovered, they might kill her, so I need to move fast."

He couldn't argue with the reasoning, but that didn't mean he liked it.

She took his hand. "I'll be careful. I'm coming back."

So she said. He trusted her to keep her promises, but this was out of her hands.

"Keep the ship safe for me?"

He smiled. "That I can do."

She nodded. "Good." She kissed him while she could. "I won't keep you waiting."

Those words stuck with him the whole way to the Viper Nebula. The truth was it didn't matter if she was gone an hour or a week. It would still feel like a year without her there.