Author's Note: So those last four years really were somethin', huh?
It turns out that having a full-time job is … demanding. In the intervening years I have gotten married, written two (2) completed drafts of a novel, tried to shop it around to agents, realized there were fundamental problems with it, felt kinda bummed, and then started writing other projects.
And yet….
And yet. I've always had this story in the back of my mind. I do have an ending planned. And now that the remaster is coming and we're all horny for Mass Effect again I figured I might as well get back in the saddle.
I make no promises about an update schedule as I have at long last learned not to overpromise. Finally. Suffice to say I hope I will be able to update this little old project of mine more frequently than once per presidential term in the future.
So, as always, thanks for reading.
xXx
He found her drinking alone in a dimly lit, exclusive section of Afterlife. He'd only been granted entry when the barefaced turian standing guard had received word that the Archangel was now a Shadow Broker operative and friend of the Red Dragon. She glanced in his direction as he entered, and not for the first time Garrus was struck by the impression that if he did not personally know Nicole Shepard, she would be an absolutely terrifying human being.
She still kind of is.
No less than fourteen empty glasses were on the table, not counting the vial of some violently orange asari drink that Shepard was considering. As Garrus approached, she downed it in one long gulp and paused, as though waiting for something.
"Nothing. I suppose I'll have to try ryncol one day," Shepard muttered. Garrus got the feeling that wasn't really for him. Or perhaps it was. He supposed there was some reason she'd said it out loud.
"We were starting to worry a bit. I spoke to, uh," Garrus cleared his throat and tried to pick the code name of the week, "The Caretaker. She said you'd been in touch. That you were just taking care of some stuff. This what you meant?"
"Sort of. When you work with and for a mob boss, it behooves oneself to accept their invitations to stay for a few drinks," Shepard said wryly. She flipped over the glass she'd drained when Garrus entered and placed it with the others. "If you're worried about me drinking myself into a stupor, don't. Apparently the asari don't brew anything strong enough for my metabolism. Not sure if I have Miranda or Gabreau to thank for that one."
"Uh, you sure you're all right Shepard?" Garrus asked, as some deep turian part of him warned against probing into a superior officer's personal life.
"No. But I'll manage. Take a seat."
Garrus took a seat opposite her in the booth and leaned forward. To his surprise, Shepard tossed a holographic object over to him; Garrus took it, and realized it was a data packet for his omnitool.
"That's Sidonis." Garrus's heart skipped a beat. He added the file to his omnitool's queue and immediately started opening it, aware of Shepard's eyes on him. "You seem excited."
"That's not the word I would choose," Garrus rasped. He was here. On Omega. After all this time, he still had the nerve to stay….
"Look at me, Garrus." He looked up, and saw that Shepard had taken off her eyepatch. Her left eye was blazing a burning, angry red, but her face almost looked sad. She leaned forward. "What do you want? To be like me? To hunt this guy down and kill him?"
"You're damn right," Garrus snapped. "You can't say that's some kind of moral weakness, or, or—whatever it is you're thinking. It's because of him that all my squad are dead! It's because of that barefaced traitor that there's not a single one of them alive! You remember Saleon, right?" At some point, he had gotten to his feet. He was shouting. Shepard surveyed him coolly, her one eye still glowing red. "He thanked me, Shepard. We saved his life!"
"Yeah, I bet he did. Saleon was a real piece of work. You're going to let someone like that dictate how you live your life? How you determine what's right and wrong?" Shepard cocked her left eyebrow, drawing more attention to her eye. As if she had anticipated what Garrus was going to say, she added, "And I know my eye's stuck on crimson, you don't have to tell me."
"How long has it been that way?" Garrus asked, half-afraid of the answer. Shepard shrugged.
"Since I killed Samara's kid, probably. That's the funny thing about killing, Garrus. It doesn't matter how justified you are doing it. Taking a life, the actual taking …." Nicole shook her head. "It always feels the same. It always feels like killing a part of myself. You decide what to do about Sidonis. We'll be docked a while longer. I still need to speak with Aria."
Garrus didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know why Shepard kept expecting him to be better, somehow—to be less like a turian, or a human, or an asari, or any of them. Every race in the Milky Way understood vengeance. The thirst for it. The need for it.
"You want my opinion? Fuck Sidonis. Let him rot. Go back to the Normandy and talk to Tali; you haven't seen each other in years." Shepard got up from her seat. "The file's there. It's up to you what you do with it."
"Shepard, I—"
Shepard turned to leave.
"Do you know that one of the only things that helped keep me human, back in Shadowhill, was a few lines of turian poetry?"
Garrus stared after her.
"I—no, I had no idea. You never mentioned it."
"That's because I don't usually mention shit like that, Garrus." She paused, and began to recite:
"What is born of Fire rises
What fades is not destroyed
What glimmers hope despises
What shudders faith restores
What death begets becomes
The last of us are still."
Garrus didn't say anything. Somehow, to do so would have felt like a betrayal of her trust. He still wasn't convinced not to kill Sidonis, but he was beginning to understand how much it must have meant to Shepard to try. He just wished she didn't want so much from him. He didn't want to let her down-but he couldn't be the person she needed him to be. He was certain of that.
"As turian poetry goes, that wasn't half bad," Garrus said, trying, very lamely, to joke.
"It was the one that stuck in my memory anyway," Shepard shrugged. "When you get back to the Normandy, send everyone my regards. Aria might want my company for a while."
"Yeah," Garrus said, unable to escape the feeling that he'd missed something. Shepard put her eyepatch back on, the glimmer of red in her eye blinking out of view beneath the black. She began to leave.
"That poem," Shepard said, "It's what I recite to myself every time I kill someone."
xXx
She met Aria in the apartment Morinth had been hiding in. Several of her men were in, collecting samples, and moving furniture. Aria smiled warmly as Nicole entered.
"Nicole." The use of her first name immediately registered as a subtle, willful level of acceptance. If Nicole had her guess, Aria probably used the first names of maybe a half a dozen people who were still alive. "I'm glad to see you before you go. Excuse my men here. We're going to be converting this place to a new operation headquarters in Brundskin. Just a little office for one of my more trusted lieutenants. We'll have to clean the scum away first, of course."
"Of course." Nicole got the feeling that the headquarters of Aria's predecessor had undergone a similar transformation when she'd first taken over Omega. In fact, if Nicole's gut was right, Aria's parlour was probably the lair of Omega's previous warlord. "Wanted to know if there was anything more I could do."
"No, no, my friend." Aria smiled and waved her hand, as though to dismiss the idea. She arched her hand, guiding Nicole out of the room and into the alleyway outside. "You've done more than enough. My daughter, she … she's still gone. But now, there won't be any more stories like hers. Not from that Ardat-Yakshi, anyway."
"And you have your revenge," Nicole said carefully. Aria sighed.
"I suppose I do. Between you and me," Aria said, despite the fact that they were walking in public, "That was half the reason I asked you to kill that girl. But, standing over her … I didn't feel anything. And then I thought, maybe I should have asked you to make her suffer. But that's foolish. My Tavenia didn't suffer … at least, I like to tell myself that. You said Morinth genuinely loved her victims?"
"From what I could tell, yes," Nicole said. Aria nodded slowly.
"Good. Good. I like to imagine them living like scoundrels, two young asari kids in love. Tavenia had it in her, you know. She was so quick, with her wit." A slow, fond smile had crept its way onto Aria's face, and her eyes were looking far away, into memory. "A little too quick, sometimes. That girl could cut pretty close, if you know what I mean." Aria chuckled. "You ever think of having kids?"
Nicole snorted. She wasn't yet able to take her shirt off around Liara without feeling like a thousand eyes were probing her skin. And never mind the sheer … physical concerns, Nicole had enough complexes to mess up a dozen generations. But she didn't think she should share that with Aria.
"I would be a phenomenally shit parent."
"I certainly was. But you never know. You, you're a fraction the age I was when I had Tavenia, and you're already wiser than I was by centuries. Upshot of being human, I guess. You folks tend to value your time. Not like asari. Too many of us piss the centuries away." The word "centuries" made Nicole's stomach twist as she remembered Mordin's offhand comment that her Cerberus revitalization might have extended her lifespan by an order of magnitude. She preferred not to think about that.
"You still have a few centuries left," Nicole said. She grimaced. What made her say that? Some clumsy attempt to relate to a woman who'd lived several of her lifetimes. Aria chuckled.
"Yes. A few centuries to waste away … running a more efficient gambling operation. Keeping drug supply lines as clean as I can. Let me tell you something, Nicole." Aria looked directly at her, and placed a hand on the back of Nicole's neck. Nicole knew it was a sign of respect and mentorship among Asari, but she still had to suppress the urge to do something very painful to Aria's wrist. "I'll regret nothing like the fact that I don't have anyone to take all this from me. Tavenia was my first daughter … and my last, Nicole. I'm self-aware enough to admit I'm too old and bitter to find another lover." Aria wore that grin that wasn't a grin. "And too proud to adopt. Or any of the alternatives. Listen to me. You find someone. You love them, you have a bunch of kids, and you spoil those kids rotten."
"Not sure how likely that is," Nicole admitted. Aria scoffed, and tugged bracingly on Nicole's neck. Again Nicole had to clamp down on a number of intrusive, violent impulses.
"Take my advice, Nicole. You don't want to turn out like me."
xXx
The face of Taraxus, one of the Shadow Broker's most skilled turian troops, appeared on Liara's personal vidscreen. One of his flanges had been torn off, years ago, so half his teeth were bared. Despite his frightening appearance, he was one of the Brokerage's more capable agents. And he was honorable, which was rarer for mercenaries. Even the turian ones.
"We've finished eliminating Nilan Tarsak's gang. Among the worst offenders in our organization," Taraxus said, inclining his head politely. Liara responded, her voice coming out as the heavily modified tones of the Shadow Broker.
"Good. That should eliminate the most violent opposition to the restructuring."
"Yes." Taraxus paused, and stood up just a hair straighter. Liara hadn't thought that would have been possible. "However, with each passing day, more of our agents are expressing … dissatisfaction with the restructuring. There are plenty of Broker contacts who regularly engage in secondary activities which have been forbidden by our new code of conduct."
"What is your opinion on the matter?" Liara asked, surprising herself. She supposed she valued the opinion of someone who, for years, had been content to work alongside those people.
"Eventually, there'll be a conflict. Some figurehead will emerge …" Taraxus shrugged. He didn't seem particularly bothered, or surprised. Just patient, with the old calm of a lifelong soldier. "And the scum will rally around them. Most of the agents of the Brokerage viewed the less savoury members of our organization as a necessary evil … nuisance at best, cancer at worst. Many of us are happy to see them excised. They were bad for business. But not everyone agrees. Some would say murder, espionage, the drug trade … some would say that these things are business." Liara hadn't exactly outlawed any of these things, but she knew that Nicole's announcement had left quite the impression. And she had to admit that she had imposed heavy restrictions on the Brokers who she knew peddled in certain dangerous drugs. The information business and certain types of criminal activity were inextricable-she knew that. There was a lot that she had excused in the name of the greater good. But even she would lose sleep if she did nothing to stop her agents from actively getting kids addicted to brain-melting narcotics.
"I take your meaning. Thank you, Taraxus. I appreciate the update."
"I'll limit future correspondence to text update, unless there is something of unusual importance to relay to you."
"Thank you," Liara said; it was fortunate that the voice modulator she used on her communication lines would mask just how grateful she was. She was constantly inundated by vid messages, vid links, and all manner of update from every end of the galaxy. To call it tiring would be to call the ocean a puddle.
Almost as soon as Taraxus disappeared, her omnitool barked impatiently as another message came onto her urgent line. Liara let out a low growl of frustration before she sighed, relaxing as a smile crossed her face; it was Nicole.
R-DRGN: On my way back. Samara's not coming.
Liara's heart thrummed with worry, but she was sure if anything had happened, Nicole would have led with that. At least she knew Nicole was okay. She hadn't realized how long she'd been holding that metaphorical breath.
Caretaker: What happened?
R-DRGN: Tell you in the Nest. We didn't fight one another. She just left.
There was a brief pause; before Liara could fully compose herself, her fingers hovering over the holographic keyboard at her personal station, Nicole sent another message.
R-DRGN: I killed her daughter.
Another pause. And then:
R-DRGN: Aria seems pleased.
Liara wanted to ask if Nicole was okay. Wanted to reach out to her, to let her know she wasn't alone. But as secure as their communications were, she couldn't take the risk of someone finding a way to steal the "Caretaker's" conversation logs and begin to guess at her real identity. If the galaxy at large knew how closely the Red Dragon lived with the "Caretaker" aboard the Normandy-well, it wouldn't take a genius to draw a connection between those two figures and Nicole Shepard and Liara T'soni, no matter how well they had staged her death.
As she waited for Nicole, Liara reclined in her chair, letting her eyes seal shut for just a moment. Even as she did, she was aware of dozens of pending messages. Even with Glyph's assistance in cataloguing the requests, the Shadow Broker's voice was always sought after. She knew now why the Yahg had made such an excellent Broker. Yahg famously had no empathic regard, no need for social development or co-operation. That was part of why, intelligent and formidable as they were, they had never produced meaningful technology on their home planet. But it would have been an easy way to live. How much more effective could she be, if only she didn't hear the screams of a thousand victims of the Brokerage when she closed her eyes, if her heart didn't break every time Nicole returned from a mission, convinced a little more that she was a monster?
Her eyes snapped open as she realized some sick part of herself almost wanted to be that person. The sting of that realization slapped at her senses like ocean spray, and she felt a horrible, shuddering self-loathing that penetrated down to her bones.
You wanted this, she told herself. Another ping from her omnitool, a silent vibration, just enough to remind her that she'd passed her self-imposed threshold of more than thirty messages pending. She thrust the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to force the thoughts away, trying to just will the messages and the pressure and the expectation that everyone needed her to go away. You wanted this power. These people nipping at your heels. You pursued it with the same obsession as you pursued everything else.
And you won. Liara scoffed when she realized her own self-recriminations were starting to take on the arrogance of her station. She wondered if this was how it started. A few more years of this and she'd find herself issuing sinister proclamations to the next heartbroken young asari who wanted to take her place.
She shook her head, trying to send the thoughts away. What would Nicole call them? "Unproductive." Just focus on the task at hand. Liara sighed, and summoned her keypad. She wanted to at least get ahead on her messages before Nicole came back. If she had failed at every other aspect of being a decent person, at least she could still be there for Nicole. Maybe that would be enough.
Keep telling yourself that, Shadow Broker. She opened the oldest message. An agent spying on a genetics corporation had discovered a top-secret program to attempt to replicate asari cellular repair for salarian clients. Her instinct was to encourage him to discontinue the surveillance, report the company to the authorities, get them shut down. Promising salarians longer lives was a small cottage industry for scammers, and they took advantage of vulnerable people-particularly the partners of asari.
She was halfway to forming the response when she had to admit that there would be no profit in simply reporting the corporation to the local governing board. She sighed. Deleted the message and started over.
She'd still get the agent to shut them down. But they'd do it with blackmail and corporate espionage instead. Bleed their profits dry into the Brokerage. Not the right thing to do. But the smart thing. She wondered what the Liara T'soni trapped in a Prothean barrier engine would say if she could see her now. She flinched, and wondered what the Nicole Shepard who had come to save her would say.
But she couldn't turn back.
xXx
He thought he knew Sidonis's face. He thought he would have never forgotten it. But as he looked at the man now, studying every line of his face, he realized that in his memories, Sidonis had become warped, a twisted imitation of the real thing. The Sidonis of his memory had a cocky sneer, and the unnaturally sharp teeth of a cheap vid villain. Seeing the man himself, he looked disappointingly turian. He was sitting on a bench, staring into his own lap. It was hard to project the greed and cowardice that had come to define Sidonis in his mind onto the real one, who couldn't help but look pathetic.
It would just take the squeeze of the trigger. Something he'd done a thousand times before.
"I'm not asking you to forgive him, Garrus. I'm asking you to think hard before you take that leap. You can't unleap it." Shepard's voice whispered in his mind. He knew she understood vengeance. Knew she understood what it would mean to him.
And she knows what it costs. This time the voice in his head was his. The tiny, gentle doubt.
I've killed dozens of people. More than I can count, he thought, wrestling with his own damn subconscious. Sidonis sighed, staring hopelessly into his lap.
Not like this.
As he was contemplating the trigger, his omnitool vibrated gently against his wrist, notifying him of a direct message from a close contact. He hadn't bothered to turn haptic alerts off-after all, barely anyone knew him anymore who wasn't on the Normandy. And they wouldn't message unless it was important.
Nothing's more important than this. Sidonis craned his head, listening for some announcement. He was about to board a transport ship off Omega. To try and start a new life.
A life you don't deserve.
His omnitool buzzed again. Snarling, Garrus took his hand off the trigger and tapped the omnitool's quick menu, just in case it was urgent.
It was Tali. Her first message was only four words long.
Tali: My father is dead.
The second was only five.
Tali: They want to exile me.
There was no question who "they" were. Garrus's mouth went slack, and he jammed the scope back against his eye. The tracker found Sidonis's face easily, zoomed in on the head. Helpfully informed him via a notification in the scope's HUD that he needed to adjust three degrees for a perfect shot. There was still time. It wouldn't take more than a second. Just a pull of the trigger, and a puff of blood and gore and bone. He'd modified his Viper for higher yield rounds-there'd be no walking away from this one.
His omnitool buzzed again. He didn't look at it this time. Just closed his eyes, and sighed. He felt the hole in his chest, that hollowness that had followed him since he'd watched his people die. Felt the emptiness there, the craving for something to fill it. It was just there. Barely out of reach.
He collapsed his rifle. It wouldn't take him long to get back to the Normandy if he hurried. Tali needed him. His ghosts didn't.
xXx
He'd expected to find her in engineering-old habit, he supposed. Some small part of him still expected to walk onto the Normandy SR-1, to nod politely at the Alliance soldiers manning the stations on the bridge, and to cut towards the elevator that would connect him to the parts of the ship that had begun to feel like home.
Instead, the Shadow Broker's burning caltrops emblem was emblazoned on the airlock doors, and as soon as they parted, Tali was waiting for him. She was nervously pacing in the airlock, hugging her arms to her chest.
"Tali." He didn't know what to say. His own experiences with grief had been so different, so-raw. He felt useless, like he didn't know where to put his limbs in space. To his surprise, Tali walked towards him. She didn't run, didn't sob, but rather moved with slow, deliberate purpose. She wrapped her arms around him, burying her head in his chest. Truth be told, it was an uncomfortable gesture for turians-they didn't really hug with their arms. But Garrus thought he knew what to do. He held Tali, careful to keep his talons away from her suit. "I'm sorry."
"Me too," Tali said, with a sort of punctured, sad laugh.
"Your father. He-"
"They say he's dead. That they have proof. But they won't show me." The grief in Tali's voice was turning to panic, to the rapid disgorgement of facts that she could barely abide. "They won't even-they won't even release his kuhluk-sulah. They're saying that's why-that's why they've decided to exile me. There won't even be a trial, just-"
"Tali, slow down. The translator skipped-something I don't think I can pronounce. Your father's what?" Garrus approached her slowly, his hands at his side, his fingers curled backwards. It was the way that a turian might try to approach someone in a moment of tension, as though to say, "I promise I won't disembowel you."
Tali finally stopped, and stepped back to look at him. The fog in her helmet-a part of the quarian's internal habitat, or so he was told-obscured her expression, as always. But it wasn't hard to tell that she was frightened. As drastically different as their species were, he'd gotten fairly good at reading aliens. And Tali had never been just another alien.
"It's-what my father bequeathed to me. What he left me. Did that come through okay?"
"Yeah," Garrus said. That explained why the translator had glitched; the only things that turians left to their families were their words. Their belongings would go back to the state, to be redistributed to the colleagues who might honour them best. "What did he leave you? A ship? Nice beachfront property?" Garrus said, trying for a joke. Turians didn't own property, beachfront or otherwise, but according to all the aliens he'd known, beachfront was ideal. For some reason.
Tali laughed. It was a wet, hollow kind of laugh, but at least it was a laugh. That was something.
"No. At least, I don't think so. Apparently, it was just a visual recording. But whatever it was, it was so bad that they're convinced he was a traitor. A sympathizer."
"Sympathizer to who?" Garrus asked, confusion writ plainly on his face. At least, he thought it was plain. He didn't know how if Tali could read his facial expressions as easily as he could read her body language. She turned, and looked at him, her shoulders slumped.
"Who else, Garrus? To the geth."
"Wasn't your father studying the geth? Trying to figure out how to decrypt their information packages?" Tali had mentioned her father's work to him once; it hadn't sounded much like what a turian admiral would be caught doing, but Garrus supposed that the turian and quarian navies had very different objectives. Tali tilted her head in that expression that Garrus had learned meant she was mildly impressed.
"You remembered. Yes. But apparently, six months ago, he resigned his post with the Admiralty. To work on his research full time. Without military oversight."
"Is … is that common?"
"No. He didn't even tell me. I had been sending him my own research for months, thinking it was going to the Admiralty Board. And now-" Tali looked away and started pacing again, running her fingers along her suit and smoothing it down.
"Now they suspect you, as well," Garrus surmised. Tali jerked her head in a nod-an expression she'd picked up from the humans.
"It doesn't make any sense Garrus-no one hates the geth more than my father, no one wants to get home more than him! He would never betray the Admiralty, not even if he had resigned. I'm sure of that."
"Tali." Garrus laid the back of his hand against Tali's shoulder, if only to stop her pacing. "Have you talked to Shepard about this?"
Tali hesitated.
"No. I mean-not yet. Garrus, are you sure? She and-you know. I'm just not sure if … I'm not sure if she's still the Shepard I knew." From the way Tali said this, Garrus thought he had an idea why she was waiting to meet him out in the airlock rather than on the ship itself. Garrus closed the distance between them, and let himself smile. A turian smile. Which was an expression that most aliens found patently terrifying. In the way that some part of him still believed he might walk on the Normandy SR-1 one day, he found himself hoping that Tali would know what that expression meant.
"Tali, Shepard spent the better part of today trying to convince me not to kill someone. She's still the same Shepard. She's still a good person."
Tali met him in the eyes. Sometimes, when she was looking directly at him, he thought he could see the fog clearing just long enough that he could make out the silhouette of her face. He'd often wondered why the quarians made such mysteries of their appearance-after all, it was not like no one had ever seen a quarian without their mask. When he'd looked into it, he'd discovered it had become a deeply personal thing among quarians to show their faces, a kind of point of pride. One of the first pieces of culture claimed by a people eternally adrift among the stars. A quarian would only show their face to their family. To the closest people in their lives. At the request of the Migrant Fleet, entire databases had been purged of any images of quarians, and now there was only the fog.
Not for the first time, Garrus found he wished he knew what Tali looked like behind that fog.
"I suppose," Tali said, at last. "I suppose your word is good enough for me."
xXx
Shepard brooded in silence, tenting her fingers as she listened to Tali's story. Liara was hovering over all of them, still working at her command station, while Tali, Shepard, and Garrus were in the den. They were sitting around the table, which was projecting a still quarrian face, the last image of the message Tali had received from the Admiralty board. Tali had explained what she could, and Shepard had listened. She wasn't wearing the eyepatch, and her eye had stopped glowing, which Garrus had to assume was a good thing. Finally, Shepard released a long breath and drove her palms into her knees.
"Well. They can't do that. I mean, they are doing it," Shepard grunted, nodding her head towards the still image of the hologram, "But it breaks at least half a dozen Fleet statutes and at least two homeworld laws I can think of off the top of my head. Why would they-"
"The trial," Tali said, her voice quiet. Shepard hissed and nodded, apparently understanding something that Garrus didn't. Shepard must have noticed Garrus's confusion; as she got up she rapped her knuckles impatiently against the table still displaying the still image of a Fleet admiral's head, and started talking aloud.
"They'd have to show your father's message if you requested it, to prove that it is what they say it is. In front of your counsel and the assemblage. And they mustn't want that."
"They certainly mustn't," came Liara's voice, from her workstation above them. Garrus looked up, but she still seemed as immersed in a dozen holoscreens as she had when he'd entered. "They must want it to stay very secret, because I haven't been able to get a copy of that video."
"Well," Garrus said, trying not to sound like an idiot, "That's not good."
Tried and failed, Vakarian.
"No," Tali said. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard her sound so defeated. "No, it's not. And if they're willing to violate homeworld law, I don't know that there's anything we can do about it."
"Oh, I don't know," Shepard said. She walked over to Tali and laid her hand on the quarian's shoulder, meeting her in the eye. Or where her eye would be. And then, in a display that Garrus had always found terrifying, Shepard smiled. It was that dry, halfway lopsided grin that almost always meant someone was about to get very seriously hurt. "I think they might hear you out when we show up in person."
