Chapter 16

Gaius
February 7th, 2191

Gaius sat at the dining table, furiously coloring in a picture of some old human superhero, who wore no shirt and ripped knee-length shorts. Looking over at his sister, he asked, "What do you think, Avi?" Holding up the page for her to see. The ripped figure was colored a light blue color, but Gaius colored outside the lines several times in his haste.

Octavia looked up from her page, where she was coloring a human woman in skintight clothes, her tongue still pinched between her lip plates in concentration. His sister made the woman's hair a dark, fiery red color, similar to their mother's. "You went over the line a lot," She commented, prompting Gaius to stick his tongue out at her, getting a giggle.

A few moments later, Bailey came down the steps, whining as she reached them, nudging their legs with her nose. "What's wrong, Baiwey?" The dog laid down on the floor, putting her front paws on her snout, and wined again. Gaius looked over at his sister, who just shrugged and started coloring again. Bailey stood and placed a paw on Gaius's leg, not getting what she wanted, looking from him to the stairs and back.

"Do you want me to follow you?" Gaius asked, and Bailey barked. "Come on, Avi, let's see what Baiwey wants."

The pair walked up the stairs, following Bailey, who kept looking back to make sure they were there. They made their way into their parent's bedroom and watched Bailey slip into the bathroom. Following again, they came in and saw their mother through the foggy glass, sitting on the shower floor, her knees pulled up to her face and her arms wrapped around her legs.

"Mada?" No response. Bailey had laid back down, putting her paws over her snout again, and wined.

"Mada!" Gaius smacked his small hand onto the glass but still got no response. Concern bloomed on his face as he looked at Octavia. "I'm gonna call Pada."

Garrus

Garrus sat back down at his desk, taking a sip from his mug. He had just left a meeting with a quarian and a geth representative about their allocation of resources to Bastion. It was a productive meeting, and dealing with the geth gave him a much-needed respite from his job's politics.

His arm started to vibrate with an incoming call on his personal omnitool. It was Amelia. He answered with a smile, "Hey, Ame, what's… Gaius?" His son's head was just visible on the lower portion of the screen, the boy holding the datapad too high for the camera to see his whole face. "Gaius… What's wrong?"

"Something is wrong with Mada," Gaius said, sounding very distressed.

"I'll be there in five minutes."

He rushed into the house, barely closing the door behind him, and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Gaius and Octavia were standing in the bedroom, looking worried and silent, and it looked as if they were crying. "Hey…, everything will be alright. Head downstairs, and we'll be down soon." Nodding, the children complied.

He made his way into the bathroom, seeing Amelia pulled in on herself, sitting on the shower floor. He slid the door open and got under the spray, not even remotely caring about his clothes. The water was warm for him, which meant it was scalding for her.

She made no reaction to him sitting next to her, but he could tell that she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her back hitched when she breathed in.

"Ame?" No response. He had seen this before, several times during the War, but this was the first in a long time. "Amelia?" Still nothing.

He rested his hand on her back, ignoring the tingling from her on-edge biotics, hoping the contact would break her from the spell.

"GET OFF OF ME!" Her arm flung out and his him across the cowl, bringing a wave of biotic force that sent him flying into the wall, cracking some of the tiles behind him.

He coughed and groaned but quickly got close to her again, this time taking a wrist in each of his hands. "Amelia! It's not real! Snap out of it, come back!"

She thrashed under his grip, sending out a buffeting wave of energy, but he held on. Just like it started, it ended. The power stopped, as did her struggling. "...Gar… Garrus? Where… Where am I?"

"At home. Everything's alright. I'm here," He pulled her in, resting his forehead on hers. "You got lost in a memory, but everything is fine now."

She looked around the bathroom, "Oh my God, Garrus. I'm so sorry…," She began to sob again.

"It's fine! All of this is material. All that matters is that you're alright. Are you?"

"I… I think so…," She sobbed.

"Okay," He turned off the shower, "I'm going to clean this up, but first, let's get you out of there." There was no protest when he lifted her and deposited her onto a fresh towel laid on the bed. He moved back into the bathroom and started cleaning up the shattered glass and bits of tile strewn about the room, closely listening to her hitched breaths and sobs.

"What did I do to deserve you?" She asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe you saved the galaxy from utter annihilation three times," He quipped back, confident that he heard a slight chuckle under the sobs.