Chapter 64: Heart's Ease

The brightest lights can be hidden
Or sparked in places we do not expect

They had to divert to the Citadel to drop Grunt off at the hospital. While they were there, Terra checked in on Ashley, who was doing better and under consideration for elevation to Spectre status (pleasant surprise there), and Thane, who was doing worse but still happy to see her and wishing her all the best. She even borrowed an hour from her "shore leave" to help Kasumi and a salarian Spectre hunt down an indoctrinated hanar and save Kahje, convincing the thief to help out with the Crucible. She also took the time to help out a few issues some people were having with the war effort and with C-Sec's coordination and with the refugees already flooding a cordoned off docking bay.

That was where she wound up in the end, of course. Sadly looking over all those who had already lost their homes or even their families, wondering how many more would end up here before it was over, wishing she could do something to help them go on besides promise to win this for them and avenge their losses. And that was before she came to the end of the bay and saw that an entire section had been appropriated to the turians.

Garrus was there. Of course we was. He was still playing the expert advisor, organizing the efforts of those in charge to best help the ones who couldn't fight anymore. He was already growing weary when he saw Terra arrive. The sight of her was both an ease to his heartache and a source of concern at the same time. He wanted to say so much, but since they were hardly in private, he settled for a simple greeting. "Terra."

She didn't seem to notice or care, her attention locked entirely on her surroundings. "What's going on here?"

"We convinced the Council to accept our wounded. …nowhere else to go."

It hurt her to see the proud and mighty soldiers she had so long aspired to live up to brought so low. Nothing in war was fair and all turians knew that. But this… "How bad is it?"

He hesitated to say, but he knew better than to try sheltering her. "More dead than injured. 85% killed in action. A single Reaper can entirely wipe out eight or even ten whole platoons. In one attack."

She shook her head in disgust. "That isn't war. This is slaughter."

He nodded. "They're called Reapers for a reason."

She looked at him sadly. "Just do what you can for them."

"We'll do our best. A few might even get back on their feet, but the rest…" He sighed sadly. "Sympathy is about all we can offer." Speaking of which, though, his focus again fell to her. "Are you holding up OK?"

She scoffed. "How can I?" She still offered him a reassuring look, though. "I'm trying."

"Well, by all means, keep trying, but don't burn yourself out. These people need you." While no one was looking, he reached over, taking her hand again and letting her see the truth in his sapphire gaze before he even said it: "I need you."

She believed it. She silently told him so, promising she would never let him down, before turning to go, just slowly enough that his talons lingered on her hand as long as they could.

That subtle exchange was still dwelling on her mind when they finally mobilized to head for Grissom Academy. Garrus was straight back to the battery, but he passed her in the CIC on the way there and gave her a supportive smile that said more than words ever could.

"I'm here for you whenever you need me," it said, "Whatever it is, come to me."

She already knew it. It was still nice to know.

Traynor's suspicions were correct. By the time they arrived at the Academy, Cerberus had practically taken the station. They were still able to make contact with Kahlee Sanders, the director of the facility, and make a plan—Terra, Garrus, and Liara would come in by shuttle and extract the students.

"Joker," Terra asked, "can you give me a diversion?"

Joker beamed like she had asked him to eat a whole cake. "Boy, can I!"

She smirked before heading down to the shuttle. As they moved in, she saw the Normandy fly past every Cerberus ship around the station and then swing around in a series of maneuvers and jumps that no one but Joker could possibly keep up with. It was amusing to see the best pilot in the galaxy in mischievous, gleeful action. It certainly kept her hopes up when they got inside the station and headed in to meet Sanders at the security room. Three Cerberus soldiers at the door. All down in three seconds.

"Sanders, you're clear," Terra announced, the door opening for them immediately.

Sanders smiled. "Commander Shepard. Anderson always said you were one of the best."

Terra smiled to hear that. Apparently, Anderson and Sanders went way back and he tended to brag about his former XO. It was strangely gratifying. Still, they were on a mission. "How many students do you have?"

"A couple dozen," Sanders answered, "Most of them went home after we heard about Earth, but some of them wanted to stay. Either they didn't have anywhere to evacuate to or they wanted to help. Some of them are technical experts, prototyping tech for the Alliance. Others are biotics…training for artillery strikes."

"A few sessions knocking over practice dummies isn't going to prepare them for war."

"What were supposed to do, turn them away?" She seemed to realize this wasn't something to argue about and turned back to the systems. Just in time to hear one of the security officers inform them that Cerberus was closing in on Orion Hall.

Terra headed straight there. Ordinarily, she wouldn't stop for anything if she knew the enemy was closing in on their objective and civilians—children, at that—were in danger, but that was true of the entire station and she wouldn't forgive herself if they missed something. So she searched every hall they could access, finding a few students who'd been scattered during the assault and killing any Cerberus in the way to help them fall back to Sanders. With that assurance in hand, it was simple enough to clear the way to find the hall in question.

And find someone all too familiar protecting the students from Cerberus' onslaught. "Eat this!" she shouted, throwing them back with a biotic force few could manage.

As if Terra needed more proof who it was. "Jack?!"

The biotic in question turned to look at her in amazement. "Shepard?!"

Jack was forced to fall back to guard the students she was looking after, leaving Terra, Garrus, and Liara to actually clear the room of Cerberus. It was difficult, but no worse than Sur'Kesh. Five minutes later, it was over and Jack was leaving the students to recuperate so she could jump down to greet Terra…by punching her in the face. "How many times did I tell you not to trust Cerberus?!"

Terra resorted to glaring as she grabbed her nose. "I didn't! …and spirits, you hit hard!"

Jack scoffed. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I break your pretty face? I'm sure Cerberus could patch it back up if they're not busy killing everyone!"

"Charming as ever…" Garrus sneered as he took Terra's side and "discreetly" made sure she wasn't actually injured.

"Bite me, Garrus! Better yet, bite her. Probably how she likes it."

While Terra and Garrus were both fighting the urge to start snapping at her, Liara stepped in. "I believe we have a crisis to worry about."

"Really?" Jack scoffed, shaking her head and folding her arms, "What gave it away?"

"Your real name is Jennifer. I can give you a last name to go with it if you play nice."

That silenced the conversation. Terra started staring at Liara in shock that she distantly noted Jack and Garrus were clearly sharing in. How deep had Liara had to dig into the Shadow Broker files on Cerberus to figure out who Jack really was? They were definitely going to be hearing about this again. At least when the war wasn't the first thing on all their minds.

Jack sighed. "OK. Fine. Whatever. All I care about is getting my kids out of here."

That got as much of a shocked reaction out of Garrus as Liara's comment. "Your kids?"

Jack smiled wryly. "Yeah. I guess so."

Terra couldn't help but smile back. "I guess you finally found where you belong, huh?"

"Don't get too sappy about it. Alliance brass knew I'd helped you. They offered me this." She smirked as she raised her voice so the students could hear: "And apparently, the students responded well to my teaching style!"

"The psychotic biotic!" one of the students concurred.

"'I will destroy you!'" another remarked spiritedly.

"Drink your juice, Rodriguez!" Jack retorted, "You couldn't destroy wet tissue paper!"

Terra withheld her responding laughter. Jack had found her true self beneath all the anger and hatred and spite. It was nice to see her how she should've been and would've been without Cerberus' intervention. It was a far cry from the murderous crook they had taken from Purgatory, a change she was happy to see.

Unfortunately, now wasn't the best time to appreciate that. The students were still in danger. Cortez called to let them know that the time Joker had bought them was wearing down and the shuttle wouldn't be able to take them back to the ship. They had to change the plan, counting on Sanders to find them a path to a Cerberus shuttle that could carry them all out. Terra took point with Garrus and Liara, telling Jack and her students to stay on the upper levels and give them covering fire carefully. It worked well, biotic support from the students as well as from Liara exposing Cerberus to open fire at every turn where Garrus and Terra couldn't snipe them down. With Jack supervising the barriers, they made it through the atrium with only one injury to a student that recovered remarkably quickly. The students kept to the upper walkways, staying low on the way to the exit hall, while Terra led Garrus and Liara through the main halls, clearing out Cerberus whenever they saw them.

After taking care of two Cerberus troops in particular, they hit a snag. Two of the students were hiding behind a barrier, watching them suspiciously.

"We're not with Cerberus," Terra assured them, stepping over the bodies of the Cerberus troopers as if that wasn't proof enough, "We're here to help."

"I didn't buy it from the last guy," sneered the girl holding up the barrier, "and I've got no reason to buy it now."

Before Terra could come up with a means of persuading them, though, a third presence made itself known behind the barrier. "The square root of 906.01 is…"

A presence Terra would recognize anywhere. "…30.1."

David Archer looked up at her with a tentative smile. "Hello, commander."

The boy under the barrier looked at him. "David, you know her?"

"Yes. She rescued me from Cerberus. She made it quiet."

Having the proof she needed, the girl lowered the barrier.

"You did a good job protecting yourselves," Terra told them, "The biotic students are on the upper walkways. They can keep you safe on the way to the exits, out of the line of fire."

"Right. OK. Thanks." So the girl and the boy ran off.

Once they were gone, David stood up and turned to greet her properly.

"He looks better," Garrus observed, pleased to see it.

"I know you. Normandy crew. …sorry."

Garrus shook his head reassuringly. "It was never your fault."

Terra agreed wholeheartedly. "Are you doing OK, David?"

"Yes," he nodded, "I've been counting."

"Anything in particular?"

"The number of days you lengthened my life."

Terra smiled softly. "Good to hear."

David gestured behind him to a door. "The security room. I hacked the lock. My friend is hiding in there."

"I've got them. Get up to the others, stay safe."

"Yes. Goodbye." With that simple farewell, he made his way off after the others.

Once he had left, Terra followed his directions. Garrus went in to check on the lock, giving her a chance to listen in. She could just barely hear breathing on the other side with the cybernetics on her hearing, just barely tell that the breathing was clearly frightened. She signaled Garrus to wait before opening the door, instead knocking. The breathing silenced itself immediately. "Hello?" No answer. "We're not Cerberus, we're with the Alliance. We're here to help."

…still nothing.

Realizing she wasn't getting anywhere, Terra nodded to Garrus to open the door and then carefully stepped inside. Liara and Garrus seemed to pick up on her cautious intentions and stayed back while she moved in. The room appeared clear, but there was a corner that wasn't visible from the door thanks to a weapons bench. Some part of her got ready to go on the defensive in case this student had a weapon in hand and was ready to attack, but she mainly focused on her slow approach. "You can come out. We're not going to hurt you."

Whoever it was couldn't hold their breath any longer. They managed to stay quiet somehow, but Terra could hear the shaking and withheld tears. Not just frightened, then. Terrified.

She knelt down at the end of the bench, crawling the last few steps to the corner. "You're safe now. I promise." Still not responding. Cagier than any of the others. Caution wouldn't do any good. Forgetting that going straight in was probably even riskier and focusing on how they needed to keep moving as soon as possible for the sake of the other students, she finally peered around the bench to the corner.

The second she leaned into the student's range of view, they darted for the opposite corner. "No!" It was a girl. She moved so suddenly and fiercely that she managed to push Terra aside long enough to cross the room. "Can't see me, can't hear me—I'm not going back!"

Liara moved first, hurrying over to head her off. "Easy! We're trying to help!"

She backed herself into another corner just trying to get out of reach. "Stay back! Don't touch me!"

Seeing Garrus was staying back and Liara wasn't making any progress, Terra stood up to get involved again. On her way, she looked the girl over, just in case she could find something to help talk her down. What she found only confused her. This girl was clearly in her mid- to late-20s, so she couldn't be a student, but she was clearly being treated as one. She was curling up so much that it was hard to tell what her face looked like behind her wavy brown hair, but it was what she'd said that stuck with Terra. Back? Back where? Was she a Cerberus test subject like Jack had been?

Terra wasn't sure what to say beyond the simple and honest truth. "It's OK, we're going to get you out of here. David Archer led us in here, he told us…you…" She stopped when she noticed something.

The girl was curled up enough that her face was hidden, but Terra could see how her hands were moving. Fingers curled and twisting back and forth, as if around imaginary strings. Terra couldn't personally play any instruments, but she had grown up watching them enough to know what it looked like. There were even a few songs she had seen played so many times that she could recognize the movements involved enough to attempt replicating them herself or see them in motions made without the actual instrument. In this instance, she could see a violin. Playing a song she knew quite well indeed.

Liara instantly took notice of Terra's sudden silence, something that was definitely not like her. "Shepard?"

The girl's movements staggered and halted when she heard that. "'Shepard'?" She turned to look at them for the first time, confused.

That was all the proof Terra needed. Her own breathing was stilted as she fell to her knees with the certainty of what she had never dared to believe could be possible. "…Violet?"

She responded. Like it was her name. All her attention turned to the commander, looking past the armor to the features she knew. 16 years and she still knew… "…Terra?"

Terra had to struggle not to start crying from shock and joy. She tentatively drew closer, watching as Violet released her tense posture to expose her violet blue eyes shining with a hope they clearly hadn't carried for 16 years. "This is…how…?"

Violet was struggling with all the same emotional responses, not sure how to process any of them. "You…I thought you were dead."

"And I thought I was never gonna see you again." Terra stopped struggling, taking this chance to hug her sister. Violet hesitated to respond but finally hugged her back. It was enough to make her completely forget about Cerberus and the Reapers and everything else that was wrong with her life. This one thing had finally been made right.

While Liara was stepping back, frozen in shock as she watched the scene unfold, Garrus looked on in astonishment, his detective side piecing together what must have happened—the Alliance, after preventing war with the batarians, must have started organizing more black ops to extract human slaves before the Reapers could arrive and make it impossible. Since Violet was a math genius like David Archer, she must have been sent to the Academy as a technical consultant for her recovery instead of a psych ward like the one that had harbored that Talitha girl they met three years ago. He was amazed they hadn't seen she was a Shepard and called Terra immediately, considering the sisters looked almost exactly alike. Violet's eyes weren't the same sapphire blue and her facial structure wasn't quite the same and her hair was a lot shorter (whether because the slavers had been cutting it or because it had had to be cut to surgically remove the slavers' implants), but there was no mistaking a Shepard when you saw one.

At first, he figured it wasn't his place to intrude on the reunion. But when the two stood up, he couldn't help but draw closer.

The second Violet saw him, she started backing up again.

Terra quickly moved to calm her. "It's OK. It's OK, they're my friends."

Violet turned to give her sister a confused look. Her eyes fell on Terra's necklace, which had at some point in the scuffles fallen out from being tucked under her armor. Then her eyes drifted back over to Garrus and saw how the symbol matched his markings. She had a lot more questions now, but she knew and trusted her sister, so she calmed down.

He approached carefully, not sure what exactly he should do or say. "…hi. My name is Garrus."

She just looked at him, clearly not sure how to proceed either.

Terra was ready to mediate until her COMM sparked with Jack's voice. "Shepard! What's going on down there? We've gotta get moving!"

Right. They had to move. Terra started to turn to Violet to tell her to head up to Jack's position like David had. But the words dissipated when she actually looked at her sister again. Her sister… Suddenly, she could understand why Garrus had been clinging to her so tightly after her resurrection. When you unexpectedly have someone you thought you'd lost forever returned to you, it seems as if they'll disappear again the second they're out of sight. Terra wasn't letting that happen. "We have to get to the shuttle bay. Stay close to us."

Violet nodded, practically hanging onto her as they hurried out of the room and down the halls toward the exit.

Turns out, it's a lot harder to maneuver in a firefight when you're trying to keep a recently rescued slave both close at hand and out of danger. Terra finally told Liara to hold the perimeter while she and Garrus bunkered down behind a couch with Violet tucked behind them, once again curled up and fidgeting with her hands as if drowning out the sounds of gunfire with an imaginary violin. It would have made the entire confrontation a lot more difficult if they weren't both snipers. When the final wave of Cerberus troopers attempted to intercept the final group of evacuating students, Terra had to lean out of cover to take them down completely, not even noticing when a centurion snuck around to flank them.

But Garrus noticed. And he dealt with it harshly, overloading the enemy's shield and then letting off a few more rounds than was strictly necessary to actually dispatch him. It occurred to him that he shouldn't have reacted that strongly, but it also occurred to him why. For one thing, Terra had just gotten her sister back and wouldn't be able to handle anything happening to her again. For another, he had a new understanding of what it was to be mated that hadn't been made clear before—family crossed the boundary with them, meaning Violet was his sister as much as Solana was Terra's and he wasn't letting her get hurt when he was there to stop it.

When the last trooper fell to Liara's assault, Jack gave the signal they were clear and everyone ran at full speed for the shuttle. They were about to board and escape when Jack noticed Rodriguez had fallen behind and come under fire by the last Cerberus troops left standing. Terra was still holding onto Violet or she would've doubled back, but Garrus again stepped up, racing in after Jack threw the Cerberus troops off their feet and giving Rodriguez the support to keep moving. Once everyone was at the evac point, Garrus still looking back and at the ready to lay down covering fire, they got moving.

Sanders was, of course, quick to thank them for their assistance. "We would never have gotten out of there without you, commander."

Violet eyed Terra curiously at the title but stayed quiet.

"I was going to suggest the students stick to a support role, but maybe they're ready for the front lines after all."

Terra didn't even need to see the hesitance in Jack's eyes to know how to respond to that. "They're ready, alright, but the Alliance needs them to hang back."

"What?!" one of the students immediately demanded, "But we trained for artillery strikes!"

"We don't need more artillery. We need stronger barriers for our front line squads."

Jack gave her an appreciative nod before stepping in to support the decision—"If that's where they need us, that's where we go."

Terra simply sat down next to Violet, spending the entire trip back to the Normandy convincing herself that this was real.

She had her sister back.

"Joker," Terra called once they were back aboard, "take us to the Citadel. We've got some students to drop off."

While Joker was confirming the course and the students were finding a place to ride, though, Violet still clung to Terra. "The Citadel?"

Terra smiled. "Yeah. You'll love it. It's amazing."

"But…I…" She took a moment to breathe, working up the courage she had once exuded in spades. "…can I stay with you?"

Terra froze. She hadn't been thinking about where her sister would go now. Obviously, she hadn't been planning to let her out of her sight, but it was only now she realized that would mean keeping her aboard a warship.

Still, if a Spectre couldn't keep her civilian sister on the crew deck as a refugee, what good was her status?

So she smiled and nodded. "Yeah. You're with me, Vi."

Violet smiled. Like she hadn't been able to in a long time.

Terra kept an arm around her, appreciating the first good thing to come from this war.

Hopefully, it wouldn't prove to be the last.

What? Just because I didn't change the Arrival events doesn't mean I'm not still a sucker for happy endings. So sue me. ;D