Chapter 73: To Stand at the Fall
There must be balance
There must be a challenger for every hero
Defeat will come eventually
Yet it will not ready the conquered to stand at the fall
Nothing can prepare them for the end
It wasn't long before the Normandy was needed again, but there was still a brief break in the action, something the entire crew was grateful for. Terra took that time to recuperate from the experience of almost drowning that she had immediately put on the list of things she would never do again as long as she lived (most people had a bucket list anyway, she just happened to have an anti-bucket list). This was a process that involved a lot of curling up with Garrus and only leaving the comfort of her bed to check in on the crew. By the time she could again look at her fish tank and enjoy the soothing sight of waters rather than shiver in darkened recollection, she had amassed a total of six different drawings in her sketchbook of moments she had shared with Garrus either in real life or in their fairytale timeline free of Reapers. She was in the process of composing poems to match each one when EDI contacted her. Adopted turian that she was, she was ready for action at a moment's notice, but she was still relieved to hear that she was needed not for a mission but for Solana's next stage of treatment.
No sooner had Terra, Garrus, and Castis arrived in the med bay than Chakwas finished removing Solana's bandages and testing her bone. Turian resilience and a military-grade application of medi-gel seemed to have done the job and helped her recover faster. She was on her feet, albeit shakily, within minutes.
Terra immediately rushed over to properly hug her like she hadn't been able to do in nearly eight months.
Solana smiled as she reciprocated, though she was still favoring the leg that hadn't just been broken. "This is one human thing I kind of like."
"You'll have to show me that list, then," Terra prodded as she leaned back to give her adopted sister a playful nudge.
"It's good to see you back on your feet," Castis nodded to his daughter.
"Yeah, yeah," Solana shook her head, "I know you worry, Dad."
"Not to mention me," Garrus said as he came over to give her the turian approximation of a hug.
"You're one to talk," she scoffed, cutting off his gesture by less-than-playfully shoving him, "Always got to play the conquering hero."
"Terra's the one who nearly drowned!"
"Oh, please, she already died once, it didn't slow her down."
Garrus smirked. "Fair enough."
Solana then turned to Terra. "Speaking of which, what do you need me for?"
Terra's smile turned uncertain. "What do you mean?"
"Terra, think it through. I'm as turian as anyone else in this room. I am not riding civilian on a military ship, Alliance or no."
Ah. Terra nodded. "Right. Don't worry, we'll find you something."
Solana nodded back. "Good. Let's show these rust buckets what the Vakarians can do."
Terra laughed to herself. She had been proud to call herself part of this family, something that would soon enough be made official. She would be ever prouder to follow through on Solana's words. With all three of them behind her, she knew she could do this. Without a doubt.
"Commander," EDI suddenly came over the PA, "the asari Councilor has contacted us."
Terra gave EDI's nearest console a confused look. "What did she want?"
"She said it was too sensitive and asked that you meet her on the Citadel."
"Then tell Joker to take us in as soon as he can."
"Really?" Solana scoffed as she started carefully checking her leg, "We're going to the Citadel again? I think at this point we'd see just as much of you had we stayed there as we're seeing now."
Terra smirked, rolling her eyes. She was used to Solana making jokes like that, especially since she found out Terra and Garrus were sharing a bedroom now. "Just make sure you're standing straight again when we get back."
Solana smirked back. "I'll do my best…sis."
The ship had been drifting back towards the Citadel over the past few days just in case they were needed or happened upon some random sign of trouble. It only took a couple hours to get there and dock. Terra headed straight for the embassies to meet the Councilor and hear of an artifact in an asari temple that might have information on the Catalyst. When she came back to the ship less than an hour later, she immediately set a course for Thessia. The asari home-world was only a relay or two away, a journey that ended before the day did.
They still weren't fast enough.
"Commander!" Joker reported the second they entered the Parnitha system, "Thessia is under heavy Reaper attack!"
Terra instantly went running for the bridge, peripherally noticing how Liara had just as quickly raced up from her office to the CIC to see if this was true. "Can you raise the scientists?" she asked Joker.
Naturally, the answer was no. "Reaper forces are surrounding the temple," Joker assessed, "No way you're getting in unnoticed."
"Then we're going in loud. Find us a drop-zone." She turned to head down to the armory, finding her path barred by her distraught asari friend.
"Terra, that's my home down there!" Liara said, "I'm coming with you!"
Terra wanted to say that it was probably best Liara stay behind. But then she thought of what she would want if it was Palaven, what she had wanted just from standing on Menae. Of Tali on Rannoch. She couldn't deny Liara that chance. "Grab your gear."
Terra, Liara, and Garrus were moving out in no time at all, the shuttle racing down to the surface. Liara watched the viewing screen as they came in range of the cities, her eyes filling with sorrow and horror as the image showed them the Reapers descending upon Thessia.
Terra knew this pain. She knew better than to try distracting Liara. "I'm sorry. I know what it's like."
Liara nodded sadly. "You do." She sighed. "This temple we're going to. My mother took me there once."
"You think she knew about this?"
"Maybe." She shook her head. "Terra, my people are dying down there…"
Garrus finally stepped up. "We're going to save everyone we can. Whoever we can't, we'll avenge."
Liara took a deep breath to steel herself. "Let's make sure of that."
They touched down in an outpost the asari military had set up. They'd been there all of ten seconds before a Reaper attack managed to destroy the barrier holding off the Husks. They quickly stepped up to clear the area so the asari could repair the wall, a task made monumentally easier by the asari's considerate inclusion of a turret in their defenses. Unfortunately, even after that, the asari were no more inclined to let them go through the barrier themselves.
"I'm sorry," their commanding officer said, "I'm calling my people back."
"No!" Liara immediately asserted, "Lieutenant, if we don't make it to that temple, this is the last you'll ever see of Thessia!"
That silenced any argument. No asari present—for that matter, not even Terra or Garrus—could bear to look out on that fractured skyline and know that the Reapers could never let it heal. This was the home of a beautiful, advanced race. If it fell, the hope of all asari fell with it. So the lieutenant knew she had to act. "You really think you can win this war?"
Terra nodded. "The last piece of the solution is in that temple. We get there and the Reapers are already dead."
"…I hope you're right." She signaled ahead to let the other outposts know they had a friendly Alliance squad coming through and then turned to open the barrier. "Let's make sure the galaxy knows the war was won on Thessia!" she told her troops as Terra, Garrus, and Liara walked onto the bridge. Then she turned to them. "Good luck, commander."
Terra couldn't help but think they would need some. The Reapers were either onto them or employing the same relentless assault tactic that had taken Palaven, because every single step they took was met by another husk. For a while, Liara was only fighting harder, getting angrier every time they saw asari soldiers falling or Banshees emerging from enemy lines. Every time there was a break in the action, however, no matter how small, she was shaking and her breathing shuddered, that sorrow and horror returning even stronger to think that her world was falling and her people were being harvested and turned against them. Terra and Garrus both took the time to tell her this would be over soon, that they were going to fix this, but she only seemed to take the words to heart when the shooting began again. They all fought with a vengeance to get through the war-torn path to the temple. Terra only let her anger reach a peak when they finally got there and received some air support only for the Reapers to shoot down both gunships with their own air support. She told Garrus and Liara to stay down and tore into the Harvesters viciously. She wasn't letting anything stop them now.
So when they came into the temple and found it empty, she didn't even know how to feel.
Garrus was the one who found the bodies. "Terra!" He called them over, showing them that two asari corpses were lying there in a pool of iridescent purple blood.
Terra groaned miserably. "I'm guessing that's the scientists. No wonder there was no answer."
But Garrus' detective side was out in an instant. He knelt down to inspect the bodies. "Wait. Take a look at their throats."
Liara looked. "They've been slit. The Reaper's didn't do this."
Terra looked around carefully. "No sign of anyone here who did do it. And the artifact we're looking for could be anything in the room." After glancing at each of the items in question, her eyes fell on the statue at the forefront of the temple. Now wasn't the best time for sating curiosity, considering they were on a time limit, but she felt like this question was important. "Who is this?"
"The goddess Athame," Liara answered, "We used to believe there were gods separate from our world looking down on us…"
But as Liara explained, Terra stepped closer. Every step seemed to drown out Liara's word with something else, something eerily familiar. She finally closed her eyes and listened carefully. Whispers in a language too foreign to recognize yet still understandable, a pull she knew…all too well. She gasped as she realized what was happening and pushed away the feeling, whirling around to proclaim to Garrus and Liara that "There's a Prothean beacon here!"
Liara's reaction went beyond shock. "What?! You're sure?!"
"It's not the kind of thing you forget."
"But…no, that's not possible! My people wouldn't just hide something like this!"
"Actually, they could've," Garrus put the pieces together, "A few sudden breakthroughs every couple centuries and the asari would leap ahead of the rest of us until they were running the galaxy…which you pretty much do."
"No! There has to be another explanation!"
"Liara," Terra stepped up, "even if you're right and they didn't know about this—which is unlikely considering this is clearly what the Councilor sent us here for—they still had to know there was something worth protecting here that was worth study, which means they had information that might have prevented all this if they'd just thought to dig deeper or let someone else in on it!"
Liara saw her point, which unfortunately only made the hurt grow worse. "…but we can still fix it." She hurried over to examine the statue for herself, connecting to the scientists' databanks to look for clues. "It talks about some kind of pattern for activating it, reconstructing matrices…none of which I see here."
Terra returned to glancing around, suddenly seeing the Prothean touch in every artifact present, and noticed something strange. It took a moment for her to catch it, but there was definitely a green glow coming from a carving off to the side, the same kind a beacon gave off. "Maybe that's the point." She stepped over to the carving, one hand against the glass causing that glow to light up and connect to the statue.
This much Liara could see. She stepped back to gaze at the beam in astonishment. "By the goddess…literally!"
Terra hurried to examine the rest of the artifacts in the room. "There must be more here. I think I can find them."
"This is incredible. The beacon seems to think you're Prothean. It must be the Cipher."
"I sure have gotten a lot of use out of that thing, huh?" she scoffed as she carefully examined a statue and activated the connection behind it. It only took a few seconds of poking around the Prothean artwork (even their art was military-based and imperialistic, which she was definitely going to give Javik a hard time about) to find the last two connections and start up the beacon.
They were all expecting it carried another message. They were not expecting a VI to come to life in the middle of the room and tell them they were past all hope.
Terra was not going to stand for that. "We can stop this. Our entire galaxy is uniting right now. The Reapers are only making us stronger by giving us a reason to, no matter how much they try to turn us against each other. They're not going to stop me and they can't stop all of us. If you give us the Catalyst, we'll make sure of it."
The VI seemed to realize just as quickly as an organic that it was best not to get in Commander Shepard's way. "Very well. I will sync with the Crucible to—" Suddenly, it froze. "Indoctrinated presence detected. Shutting down."
Terra didn't have a chance to ask what it meant before her answer made itself known. In the form of a certain Cerberus operative arriving at the entrance. "You." She had never said that word with quite so much hatred. It wasn't like her. Yet she meant it all the same, drawing her gun and taking aim on Kai Leng as Liara and Garrus followed suit. "You killed the scientists. What do you want?"
"Your attention," the swordsman sneered. He then proceeded to toss out a portable holo-COMM and activate it.
Letting the Illusive Man enter the conversation. "Shepard."
Terra eyed him with sheer disdain. "How did you find this place?"
"The Archives. Or did your Shadow Broker miss that one?"
Liara instantly reflected Terra's scorn. "Show yourself. I promise I won't miss."
"Stick to your talents, doctor," the Illusive Man scoffed, literally going through Terra to look covetously on the VI, "You've unlocked the key to subjugating the Reapers."
"Or destroying them," Terra retorted sharply.
He instantly turned to glare at her. "Shepard, destroying the Reapers gains us nothing!"
"Look outside! You're saying we have nothing to gain from stopping that?!"
"They just want to control us! Think about it! If they really wanted us dead, they could do it. There'd be nothing left."
"That didn't stop them from wiping out the Protheans. Or any of the cycles before them. Why should you think we're so special?"
"I know how they think. And they have it right. Why kill what you can dominate?"
In all her years, Terra had never thought she could despise someone so much. But that was sort of undermined when she saw the true meaning behind his words. "Do you even hear yourself? You're indoctrinated! You're doing exactly what they want!"
"No! I—"
"Stop trying to explain yourself! I never agreed with you, but there was always some part of you that knew what had to be done. That's why you went after the Collectors. But now? …Cerberus was supposed to be humanity's sword, not a dagger in our back."
He shook his head. "Poetic as always. But still not enough." He turned back to his operative. "Kai Leng, the commander has something I need. Please relieve her of it."
There wasn't even time after the holo-COMM disconnected for the swordsman to say "Understood" before Garrus opened fire. The shot was deflected all too easily, but that just made the turian sniper angrier. "Touch her and I'll relieve you of a lot more!"
Terra appreciated her mate's defensiveness of her, but that didn't change the fact that Kai Leng jumped right in to go for all three of them at once. It was a simple matter to sidestep his first lunges and overload his shields, but he immediately followed that by ducking back to the front of the temple and calling in backup. Terra, Garrus, and Liara all had to duck down as a gunship flew in and opened fire on them.
This actually happened three times. Terra was detecting a pattern and wondering how this guy beat Thane in the first place. Still, most of her focus was on attempting to pin Leng down and making sure Garrus didn't suffer the same gunship-related fate twice. The slippery ninja-wannabe jerk wasn't that easy to corner, which only served to make her angrier.
He seemed to notice she was aiming for a stalemate she would eventually find the upper hand in. So he decided to stop tilting the odds and outright cheat. When Liara attempted to go in close for a kill shot, she knocked her back with biotic force, sending her tumbling right into Garrus. Then, when Terra attempted to retaliate, he held off her fire with a shield and turned on his COMM. "Target the supports."
Terra realized two seconds two late what that meant. She just barely managed to dive out of the way when the gunship flew back in and sent rockets flying into the pillars around the room. The temple immediately lost its foundation and began to collapse. Within seconds, Terra was struggling to find a handhold as the floor gave way beneath her. She managed to grab onto a slab of flooring that was still connected but dangling precariously over the abyss, fighting her way back to the top. She had just barely found her way back to the floor when the slab she was climbing up came loose and fell. She was clinging to the edge by her fingertips, something even cybernetics struggled to keep hold of. She started scrambling to jump back up before she slid off, but without something to kick off of, she started slipping—
Just as she was about to lose her grip, familiar talons wrapped around her wrist. "Terra! Hang on!" Garrus grabbed hold of her arm and started struggling to pull her back up. Liara was right behind him, taking Terra's other hand until the two of them together could lift her.
Terra took all of two seconds back on solid ground to catch her breath before she noticed Kai Leng was nowhere to be found. The gunship was right outside, preparing to take off. She moved fast, diving to take her pistol back in hand and race after them. She only got in enough shots to take its shields down before it flew out of sight.
"This is Lieutenant Kurin!" her COMM sparked to life, "My squad is trapped! Is anyone on this frequency?"
Terra quickly stowed her pistol and answered. "This is Shepard. What's your location?"
"Repeat: is anyone on this frequency?"
"We read you! Give me your l—!"
"The lieutenant's down! Has anyone seen Shepard? Did they make it to the temple? Wait… I'VE GOT A REAPER INBOUND!"
Just like that, Terra was watching a world end. The Reaper came down, that dark, imposing howl resounding through the atmosphere around it. The COMMs descended into static and barely audible cries of anguish. The fractured skyline darkened. Or perhaps that was her.
Liara stepped up to attempt placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she withdrew, moving back into the temple to turn her back on the scenes in the distance. That wasn't enough to put it from her mind as the rage started to fill her. She turned to start kicking and screaming and throwing everything she could get her hands on. It probably wasn't the best thing to do with the remains of the temple barely holding together under their feet, it didn't even make her feel better, but what else could she do?
Garrus watched her carefully, letting her vent the worst of it on her own. He considered going over to comfort Liara in the meantime, only to find the asari still watching her world fall apart as she fell to her knees in despair. He sighed helplessly, turning to his COMM. "Cortez. Get us out of here." As the shuttle locked onto their signal and came around to pick them up, he turned to his human. She had finally stopped tearing the room apart and slumped down to the floor to curl up on herself. He'd never seen her cry out of anger as much as out of misery. He didn't like it. It wasn't like her. None of this was fair. He finally crawled over to take her side, silently supporting her as the weight of defeat thickened the air around them.
When the shuttle came around, they all forced themselves to get back on their feet. Garrus immediately doubled over, revealing that some of the debris from the collapse had struck him in a weakened area of his armor and cut through part of his carapace. Terra wordlessly wrapped his arm around her and supported him as they limped onto the shuttle. Not a word was said as the three of them waited to return to the Normandy. There was nothing any of them could say.
Solana met them in the cargo bay. Her uncannily lively demeanor in the face of her recent recovery seemed rather unprecedented after what they'd just seen, but she was none the wiser to that. "Good to see you back already. Any thoughts on—?"
Terra practically pushed her aside as she walked past to toss her armor aside. "Not now. Just get Garrus to the med bay."
Solana gave her adopted sister a wary glance. She knew something was wrong when Liara walked right past her, not looking her way for fear of revealing the tears in her eyes, and headed straight up to the war room. She devoted all her attention to Garrus when he stumbled out of the shuttle, helping him keep a stable footing as he clutched his wound on the way to the elevator. "What happened?"
Garrus sighed sadly. "…we lost Thessia."
Solana could count on one hand the times in her life she'd been rendered speechless (and that was one three-fingered hand). "Spirits…" The thought that another home-world had fallen, the one from which galactic culture had practically been born…it was unthinkable. As she helped her brother off to see Chakwas, she wondered how they were going to bounce back from this.
Terra was wondering that herself. After she had finished placing her gear back in her locker, EDI informed her the asari Councilor was attempting to contact them again. She made her way to the COMM room in a haze, every step haunted by the final moments of the disastrous mission they'd just come back from. Even when she made it to the COMM room, she hesitated to answer, leaning against the door frame in pensive, regretful silence until she finally realized the hesitation wasn't making the problem go away and stepped up to answer.
"Commander," the Councilor said, "we've lost contact with Thessia. Did you make it to the temple?"
Terra sighed. "I'm sorry, Councilor, we…we didn't get the information. Cerberus got there first. The Reapers, too."
The Councilor was plainly distraught by the news. "I…I don't know what to say. What was the situation on Thessia?"
"Deteriorating fast. The Reapers are there in strength."
"Then I need to go. There are measures to be taken, continuity of civilization to consider. I never dreamed this day would come."
"None of us did. I'm—"
The line disconnected.
"…sorry."
After that, though, and after seeing Liara still broken up over what had happened, Terra found her grief again giving way to anger. Cerberus was going down. She quickly gathered the squad (except Garrus, whose injuries were still being treated) and started planning how to track down Kai Leng. As it happened, Traynor had already done so, tracking Leng's transport through the relay network to the Iera system, where all communications were apparently being blocked. Terra, after giving Traynor due commendation for this, immediately had Joker set a course for the Shadow Sea cluster. Cerberus wasn't getting away this time.
The journey would take almost a whole day (how Kai Leng had gotten almost completely there so quickly, she did not want to know), so Terra took this chance to check in on Garrus. He was already recovering, with the assistance of medi-gel, when she came into the med bay. He didn't say anything. He simply moved over in his cot to make room for her, wrapping his arm around her when she slid into place beside him. They sat there, both attempting to slowly heal, as the events of the day faded into painful memories.
The war wasn't over yet, but they both wished it would be. …in a way, it felt like it already was.
