Chapter 29: The Eye and The Storm

Bzzzt. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Shepard's eyes, cemented shut with dried tears, slowly opened in the middle of the night. Feeling the rise and fall of the hard chest beneath her cheek, she nestled closer to her lover, refusing to get up. Her mind - calmed for the first moments in nearly a decade, rejected a reality that did not involve the hot sear of the skin just beneath her lips, or the ache still ringing between her thighs, too sore to be ignored. Yet the sound persisted over and over, until at last the barely conscious woman breathed an impatient exhale and swung her bare arm out to hit the alarm, only in her delirium to find there was none, as her fist collided with Garrus Vakarian's glowing blue visor.

Crunch.

She nearly had a heart attack.

She snapped up, her eyes widening in terror. She tore them over to the the sleeping alien – thankfully, he continued to lay in halcyon peace. Seized by the sight of him, she watched him for a moment. The blades of his fringe glistened on the pillow as he lay in the dreamless sleep of the exhausted. She paused as her mind fell upon a familiar and yet still moving realization. He was beautiful. The lines of him; the way the edges that armored him as he lay naked beneath the night's silver light gleamed, spread out before her. His every forbidden angle, his every plate was a taboo of the very fabric of the society in which she had been raised only to escape. If those nuns could only see her now; draped in languor besides a six foot Turian with nothing between them but starlight, his scent in her every pore.

She remembered the days she thought she was doomed to live forever in the world in which she was born. But now, amidst sliver of metal effulgent beside her, with his searing skin and hard plates, lay the affirmation to her wanderlust. She was finally free through him, her savior - she had given in to the desire she had been skirting since her first and miserable brushes with sex many years ago, at an age far younger than she should have been. No, she didn't want something closer to home. And yes, it was as she had always suspected, and never told a soul. Her own kind did nothing for her. She simply had seen too much ugliness to find any beauty in the touch of her own kin. And further, as her eyes traveled once again over his long talons on his strange fingers laying so still, up to the bladed crest that crowned his head, the natural cut of the muscles that swam just beneath the steel of skin - it was hard for her not to feel jealous of the gifts of his body; designed so perfectly to kill.

To touch him was the embodiement of her desire, but in practice, to lay with him was a careful play of pleasure and pain. There were parts of him that were smooth, like a river's stone, but if the hand strayed too far there were ridges like glass. Even his face, dark with the scar that drew her obsessed fingers and her eager lips, drew her in curiosity ever nearer. Her eyes closed as her lips touched the ceramic slip of his brow to kiss him while he slept. She gazed at him as she lay over his relaxed body, mesmerized by the scent of of her most trusted confidant, the fiercest warrior she had ever known, and now her lover. The gauche of starlight lit the long blades of his frill, spilled over the curve of his pillow, his face affectionately turned to her in sleep. She had never seen his eyes closed.

The buzzing came again, interrupting her private moment as she softly watched him, and she started; reaching for the cherished thing he had worn since before the day she had first met him and checked it again to ensure it was unharmed. She was sure she had seen it deform beneath her fist, but unbeknownst to her it was made of flexible metallic-plastic polymers that made the tool virtually unbreakable to even the most intense of forces. She poked the cryptic device for a moment, trying to shut it up, before she did something that made it flicker as a holo projection came up, flashing painfully bright in the darkened room.

Tired, his eyes forced open. The Turian, more than willing to remain asleep, blinked slowly at her with a confused and still sleepy expression as he peered blinded through the light.

"…What are you doing…?"

Her eyes narrowed, her fingers working without an answer to their movements. The artificial blue of the plastic refracted in the mirrors of her eyes.

"There's something up with your visor."

"…What?..." He asked, sitting up.

"Here."

She placed it in his hands, his fingers still sore from his use of them. He sat up in the flashing blue glow, expertly flicking through menus and dials at first just to humor her until without warning his face completely changed, as text flashed before their eyes, in Galactic Standard English.

And the Human and Turian, still entwined, stared as something strange woke them from the first peace they had found, wrapped within each other's arms.

Wake up, Archangel.

If you want to find Sidonis, you might want to get out of bed. Find the man named Fade, and cut through his lies to pluck out the eye that's owed to you. Go to the shipping warehouse on the 26th level of Zakera ward. You will find a Volus running a shipping business. It's not legit, and he's not Fade. Keep him alive long enough to find out who is. Your 'old friend' booked passage off the Citadel in a shipping container full of platinum bound for a Blue Suns outpost in the Skyllian Verge. Catch him now, or you may never find him once he goes underground with the mercs. Use Fade to lure him out; but you've probably already thought of that, haven't you?

Try not to slip on the blood on the way out.

From,

An Admirer

P.S. Tell Shepard I said hello.

The letters disappeared, deleted automatically, as his eyes slid into hers. They stared cold and speechless at the visor, glowing innocently in the dark.

They dared not move.

The time was before three in the morning, and they were wide awake. Too early to be late, and too late to be early, the evening sky was still black, interrupted by the soundless streaks of neon red and orange taillights as cars glided in floating grids past the windowed wall. The absence of the sun lamp let the ghost of falling starlight slip down like snow onto the lovers still entwined.

He spooned her, protecting her. He did not know if they were being watched, and he did not know what to do. So many thoughts. Fears. The faces he had lost swept by in a hurricane in his mind; before his eyes were images so clear they cut. He held her, just a touch too close, just a touch too hard. She breathed shallowly, her eyes closed as her mind raced beside his, her head tucked beneath the sharp angle of his mandible and chin, her face to the warm flesh of his neck with its tensed pulse. He held her, the thing he had lost and by some miracle found, the only thing he had left; deep in his arms, pressed hard to his heart. His arms circled her waist, his fingers tangled in the rivulets of her hair running down the bare slopes of her shoulders.

Someone knew he was Archangel.

Someone knew about Sidonis.

Someone knew he had been sleeping.

And someone knew he was with Shepard.

In the dark of the gutted apartment, he had nothing but his armor still in pieces on the floor, and his M-15 Vindicator, exactly three and a half meters away from his trigger finger.

There was next to nothing in the Universe that could scare Garrus Vakarian, but in that moment, he was terrified. For the first time in his life, he froze. He simply froze. Until at last, she couldn't take it anymore.

She slid slightly away from him; he was holding her so tight he was actually hurting her. Shepard slipped painfully from the whisper of his breath across the nape of her neck to face him, setting her eyes to his, past the broken plates which held her heart.

His eyes opened; the alien lenses so close she could see the folds within his retinas, staring with something she had never seen before, ever, within them. Her heart seared the deepest pain as the realization of what he was feeling crashed on her in a monolithic tide.

Her eyes witnessed in agony the shaking of his body. He was scared. Fixed in terror on the thought that haunted the dark corners of his mind. That he would lose her again.

She threw her hands around his neck, and kissed her lips to his. Desperately, in terror, their arms encircled as he pulled close and pressed her to this shaking chest, to the screaming of his heart. The stillness broken, the stillness destroyed; their first morning together cut down before its time like so much else between their cursed lives; a cruel price paid in cold sweat for a night stolen from time.

The lovers lay coiled to each other in the strained sheets, defenseless.

She put her lips to his plated mouth as they lay so close, their heart beats synchronized one right over the other, as she caressed her fingers around the hard edges of his plated face, pulling him to her, and kissed him until his mouth opened in surrender.

Her hips, wide and giving, were pressed firm against his pelvis. The curve of her spine nested as if tailored into the hollow of his abdomen; his arms lay warm and encircled tightly around the steep curve of her waist, his hands cupped around her breasts, his face pressed into her hair. She lay curled up against him, her fingers lain over his hands, her legs entwined in his, enveloped in the alien warmth of his body shielding hers as he lay pressed against her, so much larger in comparison.

Their eyes met, hands searching, feeling; gripping for the last moment of love in the shadows as the unknown slipped swiftly over the horizon; time bleeding pitilessly on. Her arms around his neck, his forehead touched to hers with her tongue so warm within his mouth, they kissed each other goodbye to the dark sweet world where they had finally found each other, the dream of light dissolved to nothing. The feeling of safety, of peace were now but ashes from their fire, which the visor had put out.

His eyes glazed over, he whispered in the dark,

"How did they know...Who could know...they're all dead...all except for him..."

He removed his mouth from where it lay entangled willingly in hers, his eyes pouring into her as he nudged her again and again with his forehead, unwilling to let go as he slipped his hand down through her hair, terrified it would be the last.

"Listen to me," She whispered, her eyes closed against the shaking of him as he just kept pushing, kissing his forehead to hers, her heart breaking in his arms.

She couldn't see the nightmares just behind his eyelids. He never spoke of them, to anyone.

But he saw them just the same. And this she knew, that there the dark things he had seen lived, in secret, just behind his eyes, even if he never said a word. She spoke to him, her voice soft and calm as she found his frill and stroked it.

"…Listen to me. Listen. It's going to be ok…it's going to…"

"It's a trap. It's a trap. No one knows, no one could –"

"- It doesn't matter. Look at me. Look. Here. In my eyes. Garrus. Garrus."

His eyes opened just millimeters from hers, her nose pushed against the small ridge of his own, her whispers kissing him as her lips moved against his mandible, her eyes like fire in his own.

"I can't tell you no to this. This is your battle. Your fight. You have to make this choice."

He looked at her, dazed; hearing her as if down a long tunnel into which he couldn't see.

Sidonis. Alive. And right within arm's reach. Even if it was a lie, it was a risk worth taking.

"I know...I...I know...But…Shepard…I can't take you ... I have to go alone."

His eyes met hers. He wouldn't lose her again.

"... I have to."

Her fingers set around the small of his neck, slipped beneath his crest, as she looked at him, knowing she couldn't stop him, and not even for a moment having the desire to. She didn't trust it, but there was not a drop of doubt in her soul that was going to come between the only thing she loved and the justice he deserved.

The revenge.

Thane may have shed tears for the sinners, and prayers for the damned, but Jane Shepard never did.

She burned them. Until there was nothing left to pray for, and even less to bury. In that moment that was exactly what he needed, and at precisely the right time.

"Yes I am."

"…What?"

"Yes, I am coming with you."

His eyes flashed against the stone wall of hers, impenetrable. He saw the flames behind them, and he pushed her to the pillow, his face right over hers, pinning her back with his weight.

"No. I have to go alone."

The grey slits narrowed, the eyelashes gleamed; the full lips spoke. Crimson burning on his arm in a bolt of déjà vu.

Chills on his flesh with the sound of her voice.

"Then you will have to kill me. And I would like to see you try."

The bones of his jutting hips burned against her own.

"No. You don't even have armor."

"I don't need it."

His eyes narrowed, his head tilting to the side as they burned into each other, staring each other down. The Turian ran a finger through her hair as he hissed an honest threat.

"No. I will tie you to this bed."

He could almost see her smile. He never knew human nails could be so sharp, as she viced her fist around the tip of his penis with the full force of her strength, piercing through five daggers without mercy.

The pain was blinding, and her voice was ice.

"As I recall, Officer, you never asked to board my ship. You demanded. And let you not forget, I am still your CO and while your protective nature is quite touching, I don't take orders from anyone anymore, including you."

The Vangaurd's strength was impossible to judge from her body alone; a twisted irony of appearance versus truth – she clamped her other fist around his jugular and ripped him down besides her on the bed, where he slammed, eyes bitter against the sudden surge of his arousal as she climbed on top of him, spreading her legs over his lap as she never once removed her fingers from his throat.

She put her lips to the hard plates of his, strangling him enough to pin him to the bed, just barely enough to let him breath.

She kissed him, with a whisper.

"…You said you would never leave me. Well, Garrus…that road runs both ways…"

The startled, furious, undeniably incited turian watched with smoldering lenses as his mate slipped his visor on his eye, putting her low, velvet whisper to his ear.

"So there isn't a chance in hell I'm letting you do this on your own. You and I are together. Sorry, but we are. You can make your own choices; you can pick your own battles. But this bastard didn't just slaughter your team. He took Mierin. He took your dream. And he almost took you as well...from me. So, as far as I'm concerned, your unfinished business is my unfinished business. Nothing is going to stop me from trailing you, including, most of all, you. You want to follow the advice of your secret admirer - fine. But I'm not letting you walk into an obvious trap. We do this together, and we do it now. No other alternatives. And I'm not asking for your permission."

Her grip released from the pulsing knot upon his throat, as he looked up to her.

She was the only person he had ever met who hated being told what to do as much as him, but when she got that tone with him, her voice in all its inky timbre injected like an opiate to the eager bloodstream of his veins.

He lusted for the fight in her - the fact that she was still his superior, and knew it, and owned it - even with her legs spread open on his abdomen as she threatened him with orders. He had taken her, he had had her; made love to her and fucked her within a breath's width of the other – the difference like night and day and spoken in the way he touched her, of which she let him - asked him, to take her any way he wanted. The look in her eyes only a few hours before saying, that while they lay together, there were no rules between them. He had kissed her navel and pulled her hair until she screamed, he had set her free and forced her face into his pillow; made her moan with desire as she softly glided his talons through the folds of her clitoris or made tears fall from her eyes as he sank them into her hips as he pulled her onto him when he decided he wanted her on her knees. She gave herself to him, to anything he wanted, whatever whim he had.

In his bed, she made him her lord and master, but the moment they were over, he knew she owned him, for he gave himself to her long ago, and he never wanted to leave. Their power play, her command of him, the soft smile that spread across her lips divulged that she knew this and threw it in his face in knowing disregard. This seduced a nerve buried deep inside that made him want nothing but to push those teasing thighs back until her knees touched against her breasts, and to fuck her until she screamed 'Archangel' long after her voice ran ragged with tears.

He looked at her, breathing, as she watched him from above, softly stroking the scar upon his face. He watched her face, her human features so fluid, so expressive, change before his eyes in a way his could never. Her eyes grew deep, as she looked at him lying beneath her. His hands, addicted, magnetized, falling to their place around her waist, nested into her hips which he caressed, enamored. Calmed.

"Where are your guns?" She asked evenly, stroking the long blades of his frill as he ran his thumb down the bone of her hip.

"Omega. Gone."

"All of them?"

"All my rifles are on the ship, and there's an M-15 V indicator here on the floor."

She nodded, her fingers still making love to the steely flays soaring from his skull.

"I've got an M-5 Phalanx clipped to the inside of my jacket."

A brow plate lifted.

"I didn't realize."

"You were too busy staring at my waist."

The smallest smile flashed across his lenses, and she shook her head in sarcasm as she laid down again against his chest, wanting to rest against him for just a moment longer. His voice vibrated through his sternum as she felt his fingers once again playing through her hair.

"So, just to get this straight, we've got two pistols and my broken armor between us, and no idea of whether or not this is going to lead to us getting ambushed by a bunch of pissed off mercs."

Shepard's brow raised as she nodded her head against the Turian's chest, her head resting on his cowl.

"Yes. That sounds about accurate."

Garrus exhaled and shook his head slightly, staring up at his ceiling with his blue eyes glazed over in the dark, feeling her hair slip like cold silk between his fingers. But her voice came to him, in strangely calm tones.

"But I won't need it."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"No. I won't need it. I've been busy. Training. I've got a gun and an omnitool. They'll never see me coming."

She turned to look at him, her eyes burning into his.

"I won't need my armor if we play our cards right."

He stared her down, incredulous.

"Then you propose that we simply walk in the front door, guns blazing, and start asking questions."

"No. I propose, we slip through the warehouses, as quiet as lambs, and break into the main office. Either the Volus is there, or he isn't. In the first case, we kill anyone else in the room and interrogate. If he's not in yet, we wait in ambush."

"Too exposed. That place will be loaded with mercs."

"I am assuming not - you are still thinking along Omega's lines. This is the Citadel; this Fade has to at least keep up the appearance of a legitimate business. Even if he has an in with C-Sec, as I would imagine he would have to in order to move bodies in shipments past customs, there can't be too many of them, at least out in the open. If we move fast and quiet, and use the early morning hours to our advantage, we may be able to take them by stealth."

"I don't know, Shepard. I would prefer to gather information; to watch them for weaknesses. There's too much we don't know."

"As would I, but we don't have the time. But it can work if we move together, swiftly. They shouldn't even know we're there. We kill close. Quiet. Save the guns for once we're inside."

He stared at her, and at the smile on her lips as she looked back at him. Stealth and Shepard, those words for him never quite meshed. But in the weeks he had been quiet, for the few missions he had called in for, he had seen the definite and noticeable change in her tactical maneuvers. She still loved to fight up close, to melee right against her enemies, he knew this - but there was something more refined now. Less anger and more confidence; less brawling, more fluidity. It had become almost artful, the way she cut down her enemies. Garrus had deduced by the reflection of her movements against the grace of the Assassin that she had been learning from him, and in a sense, this incited him. His tank-like Vanguard had been sharpening her skills; pushing herself, getting tempered to pain, becoming elegant in her maneuvers and lethal in her strike - more direct and precise than he had ever seen her - while he had been wasting away getting soft besides his canons. He had witnessed the full front of her elegant cover-based maneuvers in their frantic rush to acquire the Justicar, as she stalked so efficiently besides Thane. He had been forced back by the distance required by his rifle to watch them though his scope, seamlessly bleeding through the rushing waves together, side by side, slicing through the bodies down the long lens of his scope as he watched from a distance, the odd man out. He shook his head. He had suspected it, and now it was confirmed. She had been spending far too much time with the Drell.

And it was every bit his fault.

The prickle of challenge heated his core. He looked to her, steely.

"...Why is everything a suicide mission with you?"

Shepard only smiled.

"And why do you still complain, even though we both know you're addicted to the danger?"

Garrus watched as she looked up into his eyes. His arm circled warmly around her shoulders.

"You know me so well."

"I know what you like…"

Her eyes danced seductively in the dark with the soft smile of her lips.

"...Archangel."

His glance sweltered into her, as the name on her lips lit his blood on fire.

"You call me that just to play with me...You love to stroke my ego." He said, with desire once again burning through his eyes as his voice phlanged deeply as he spoke to her, extremely conscious of her breast pressed against his skin.

"I do…and how could I not? You're a hero, you know. I wonder if the locals knew that name. If they hoped, perhaps, on a dark night, that you were somewhere out there."

"I…I don't know about all that…I'm...no hero...That's not the reason I did it…any of it."

"I know, and that's what fascinates me. You never did any of it for gain. Not even fame."

"…Shepard…"

"Stop. You know…"

She spread her legs once again over him, her hair and all the scent of her falling over his face as her breasts brushed against his cowl as she touched her lips across his scar, the touch of her skin igniting a wildfire across his body.

"…Archangel…"

She kissed him, his eyes fell shut as her hand slipped through his frill.

"When I was young…I used to wish that there was someone like you, watching from the rooftops."

Garrus gazed at her as she lifted away from his mouth for just a moment to look into his eyes. He ran his hand down the sharp curve of her spine, replying in low, thoughtful tones,

"Do I hear the great Commander Shepard just wants to be saved?"

Something almost sad flashed across her eyes, as she kissed him once again, and whispered against his mouth with her eyes closed as the mere touch of him.

"Don't we all?"

Her eyes opened, and fell deeply into his.

"Now. I had heard you were a tactical genius."

His stomach gave a tiny leap.

"Of sorts."

"Well, let's put those vigilante mastermind skills to the test. You have until I put my clothes back on to figure out how we're going to infiltrate this hideout to get our 'Fade', and the car ride over to explain it to me. And you'd better make it quick, I haven't had my coffee yet, and I usually don't make bloodshed a priority before I've had my coffee, but for you I can make an exception."

"Good. I don't want anybody on the Normandy to know about this. Better to leave it in the dark."

"Precisely."

Her eye met his, gleaming in the dark. Her voice was low,

"What Cerberus doesn't know won't hurt them. Things like this are better kept quiet."

A chill inched down his spine as he nodded silently in agreement. There was something cold in her eyes that he glimpsed for just a moment before she turned them away to stare out the darkened window. There, at the edge of his bed, sitting completely unclothed, he looked at her for a moment. His eyes traveled over the long curves of her silhouette seated stark against the concrete sky and he wondered how she would have turned out if she had never joined the military, and had never put her life together.

In that single moment, he had the strangest memory of Aria, sitting across the bar. Archangel had always kept an eye on her; the most dangerous game, the pirate queen. He had always planned to one day take her out as the logical next step in his long term strategy to clean Omega of its demons, but this was only ever a half-dream. He never trully anticipated surviving long enough to face her, and thus he kept his distance; saving that mission for his inevitable suicide, or so he thought. And now, as he watched Shepard's unclothed silhouette leaning towards the dark window, the red traces of cars slipping in trails quietly past the black shadow of her body, he realized with a sharp pang that she sometimes reminded him profoundly of the Asari, and this sent a trickle down his spine.

He sat up as she slipped suddenly off his bed, stretching herself briefly before picking up her thong, which she discovered to be utterly destroyed. She sighed and threw it towards the trash, before going to work putting herself back into her bra. He watched the muscles in her abdomen tensing just beneath her skin as she paced about the room, deftly hooking the latch without looking after moving her breasts into the cups.

She was completely serious. She trusted him so completely that it shook him to his core. So strong was her belief in him that she didn't even need an explanation or a breakdown.

"No shower?" He teased, watching her intently as she began to wiggle into her leggings.

"No time."

He gazed at her, watching. She blithely pulled her hair into a chignon at the nape of her head, paying him zero regard.

"Shepard. You smell like sex... And Turian."

The redhead silkily cast her eye on him.

"I like that I can smell you on me, and I don't give a damn if anyone else can as well… So what is your point?"

He could stared at her; utterly, viscerally, in love.

"Nothing. Just…nothing."

"Good," she said quietly, walking topless into the next room, her boots already on, leaving him to stare at her, still laying on the bed.

"We're going to have an early morning. That may work to our advantage. Now, I would get up if I were you. I need to return that car by 0800, and it should probably not have any blood in it by the time we do so."

He would have gotten up, stalked straight into the next room, taken her by the hip and pushed her to the floor to have his way with her again, right there; if had another hour and not a care in the world.

He didn't. And someone was going to pay for that.

Twenty minutes later the woman and the Turian slipped soundlessly out of the door to the apartment, as the strangest sense of déjà vu once again slipped across his mind. He paused. He had been there, done this before, years ago; only then he was alone. She looked back at him, and he went again into movement. He thought for a moment as he watched her already sliding the car keys in her hand as she walked in unison beside him, that perhaps his old place was blessed, or cursed, or somewhere in between. It was the second and last time Archangel would leave those empty rooms, the premonition of blood already on his tongue.

For the second time in his once orderly life, he had entered that apartment what he thought he was, and left the person he wished he was. The person he was meant to be, the bearer of his soul name. Walking there, in his long stride amidst the streaks of starlight from the windows down the hall stalked that dark figure from Omega, beside the woman made of fire.

He slipped his weapon through his fingers, barely feeling it, his eyes falling to her hands.

"And what do you think you're doing with those?" Asked the Turian, looking down his jagged shoulder at the keys within her fingers. She cocked her brow at him, daring him to speak.

She was always his key, wasn't she?

"Exactly what it looks like."

Archangel smiled darkly with his eyes, and without asking, plucked the them from her hand.

The elevator door opened.

She continued to stare at him smokily, as he stepped in the open door.

Their eyes met.

She entered, saying nothing. Staring at him, out of the corner of her eye, the entire way down.

He had found his mate, and she was standing at his side. And as the doors to the lobby opened, and they evanesced without a word or sound, he felt the greatest sense of completion. Familiar was the feeling; power and control. And somewhere in the vast arms of the city in the void, within another shaded evening in a place without a sun, was a grave that needed filling.

That night two monsters escaped into the night to find the third, hiding still in his place within the dark.