A/N: This wasn't supposed to be so late.
It's been a rough few months.
I lost my cousin to sudden brain cancer, two of my friends committed suicide, I had some nasty medical problems of my own, and school hit me with seventy pages of essays. Yes, seventy.
It's been hard to write for fun at all, let alone writing about cold-hearted monsters.
Nonetheless, things are starting to look up, and with a new semester comes new things!
Time to get back on the wagon. My apologies for any loss of quality here. I hope to do better in the future.
"Commander? You know him?"
Her mind raced. Of course she knew Finch. He'd been the de facto leader of the Reds for as long as she could remember, and it was at his command that she'd taken up her sawed-off shotgun for the Reds, under his tutelage that she'd learned the art of navigating the underworld, and under his hungry gaze that she'd practiced her abnormally strong un-amplified biotics.
The problem was, he was supposed to be dead.
She'd taken care of that herself. Distributed the gasoline, sabotaged the gas line, locked and barred the doors, and thrown the molotov that started it all. Of all the people living in that house, he was the person she had least wanted to get away.
But that didn't matter any more. Obviously, he had survived, and now she needed to deal with him.
Again.
"Yeah," she answered Garrus, almost absently, "he used to lead the street gang I grew up in, back on Earth."
"Aw, now that hurts," he said with an exaggerated sniff. "Thinking the Reds would go so easily! No, we're bigger than ever! Heck, we're even branching out!"
Shit.
Finch, at least when she knew him, had always possessed a combination of traits that made him both an excellent gang leader and a terrible one. He could be charming, outgoing, and gregarious. He was a great deal-maker for precisely that reason. On the flip side, he had a mercurial temper, and was known to blow from hot to cold in the blink of an eye, and his wrath was often brutal. He used people, lavished praised upon them, but if they failed him... well. It wasn't wise to fail him.
He had also possessed an ego roughly three times the size of the city he'd grown up in. He could never resist gloating, especially when he thought he held the cards. If he said he'd rebuilt the Reds, she didn't think he was lying.
Which means he's either completely gone off the deep end... or he actually did rebuild the Reds after I torched them.
"What, the sex slavery, extortion, drug running, and plain old theft weren't enough for you?" she said, a slight sneer gracing her features.
He laughed. "Yer hardly one 't throw stones, little Elle," he said. "Or have you forgotten all the work you did for us?"
Shit, shit, shit.
She needed him gone. Hell, she'd needed him gone years ago, and thought she had managed it before trudging out into the freezing Vancouver winter. Him turning up now threw a large wrench in the delicate machine she'd set up, and the potential damage he could cause with a careless – or careful – word was quite frankly astounding.
Oh, as a Spectre, she was immune to prosecution for her prior actions, but immunity to prosecution and immunity to public opinion were two very different beasts. She doubted that she'd actually suffer any official consequences for her actions, but Spectres relied on their name and reputation as much as they did their official powers. While being known as somebody willing and able to set a house full of children on fire would open a few doors, it would close far more than it opened. People willing to offer her assistance beyond the requirements of the law wouldn't be likely to do so if they knew what she'd done.
Worse, the story would be a huge black eye for the Alliance. It would lend all kinds of weight to the stories she'd tried to stomp out about Torfan, and it would draw all kinds of undue attention to the activities of the Spectres. If the outcry grew large enough, she might even get pulled from the current case... and unlike the authorities she reported to, she knew what Saren was trying to dig up. Getting pulled from the case might very well mean the extinction of everything that didn't fit with Saren's world view.
Which included her.
The only question remaining, then, was how to get rid of him.
She could just shoot him, she supposed. Or crush him. The details were irrelevant; the point would be that – legally speaking – she absolutely could just kill the man without any official consequences beyond having to fill out some paperwork when she got the spare time. She had no doubt that she'd be able to convince Garrus and Liara that he was a scumbag, and even if they suspected that she'd killed him to silence him, there wasn't a lot they could do without the proof that he had.
If he had an ounce of sense, though, he'd have set up a dead man's switch of some kind with the evidence to go live in case he didn't report back. That would be an even bigger disaster: Not only would the story go out anyway, but she wouldn't be able to convince people that he was full of shit, because if it wasn't true she'd have seen no need to silence him.
But if he didn't set it up...
She sat on the urge to just murder him, here and now. "I get the hint. What do you want, Finch?" she demanded.
He raised his hands. "Nuthin' much, nuthin' much... I just hear you've got some pretty major pull these days, thought you could do a small favor for your old friends."
"Spit it out, Finch, I don't have all day," she sighed.
"Fine, fine. One of our boys, Curt Weisman, got picked up by the turians. We'd like you to head over to the bar-" he jerked his head over his should toward Chora's Den, "-an' convince them all friendly like t' drop th' charges."
The hell? Picked up by the turians? "How the hell did one of 'your boys' get picked up by the turians?"
"Ah, y' know," he demurred, glancing at Garrus. "Those turians, they make a huge deal out of something like a little red sand. It's nuthin', really."
Beside her Garrus tensed visibly.
"Eugh," she swore. "Fine, I'll talk to him. I never want to see you on this station afterward, do you hear?"
"Like we never even knew ya," he said easily. She knew it was a lie, of course – if he had any sense, he'd be recording the conversation and her acquiescence to serve as extra blackmail material. "See you around... Shepard."
"Garrus," she hissed under her breath as soon as they were remotely out of earshot.
"Commander," he said, "I may not be on the force any more, but I know blackmail when I see it."
"Forget that," she snapped. "I need you to do something for me?"
The turian was silent for a moment. "What do you need?" he asked finally.
Thank goodness for turian obedience, she thought. "I'm going to look very slowly and very ineptly for the guard he mentioned. I need you to discretely get lost and figure out if he has a comm or remote camera active, and if so, I need you to jam it. Comm me when you know."
Garrus perked up almost immediately. "So you're not going to do what wants," he said with more than a hint of satisfaction.
She rolled her eyes. "Of course not," she said. "But I really don't need him digging up ancient history and splashing it all over the news, especially right now."
Liara frowned slightly. "Then... you helped him do all those things he mentioned?" she asked, concern plain in her voice.
Shepard sighed. "I promise I'll give you both the whole sob story later. For now..."
"We're right behind you, Shepard," Garrus reassured her quickly. "Ready when you are."
"Good man."
She'd spotted the cluster of armed-and-armored off-duty turians the instant she'd walked into the bar. Luckily, Chora's Den was busy enough that afternoon to make missing them for a few minutes plausible, and she made a big show of slowly working her way around to their table from the opposite side of the circular bar.
She didn't spend the time idly. A thousand things were running through her mind, from how to deal with the any dead man's switches Finch had set up to what story to feed to her shipmates about her past. In the end, she settled on the simplest story: She'd come from a gang, grew up on the streets, and left after they asked her to do something she wasn't willing to do. It was simple, didn't give away too much, and had the added benefit of being true – strictly speaking, of course. She didn't need to mention that the reason she'd left was because she thought they'd get caught, and the crimes she'd been guilty of had nothing to do with her activities as a gang member at all.
That's fine, she thought as she moved through the crowd toward the turians. Let them think what they will.
Her commlink implant crackled in her ear just before she reached them. "He's clean, Shepard. Nothing more than a commlink, and it's been idle for the last hour and a half."
That certainly makes life easier, Shepard thought with more than a little relief. "Excuse me," she said to the sitting turian with an easy smile.
The turian guard regarded her warily. That in itself wasn't surprising – she was the newest Spectre, as the patch sewn above her breast indicated, and it wasn't exactly typical for a glorified off-duty prison guard to be approached by one regardless of how new she was.
"Can I help you?" he asked slowly.
She dropped her smile and leaned forward, glancing around for exaggerated effect as she did. "A human named Finch wants me to use my authority as a Spectre to free Curt Weisland," she said in an intentionally loud whisper.
"The xenophobe?" the turian asked, surprised. "I should have known he'd have friends. Thanks for the information; we'll increase the guard on his cell."
He nodded quickly to one of the other guards sitting down, who began tapping a message into his omni-tool, and Shepard stepped back.
"You bitch!" Finch's voice called from the door, twisted near into incomprehensibility with anger as he stalked toward her. "I should have known you'd rat us out! Now it's payback time!"
Shepard shook her head. "You always were an idiot, Finch," she said, almost sadly.
"Shut up! When we're done telling our story, everyone in the galaxy will know exactly what you-"
Whatever his next threat might have been, it was cut off by the nimbus of blue that flared around his body. The invisible force crushed the air from his lungs, drove his pointed finger down to his side, and replaced the twisted visage of rage on his face with a rictus of agony. He'd have screamed, she was sure, if he'd been able.
She didn't give him the option.
A swift jerk of her fist slammed his crumpling form into the steel decking with bone-shattering force, eliciting pops and cracks that sounded clearly through the now-silent bar. She bounced him off the floor once, twice, and a third time for good measure before casually tossing his broken corpse into the disposal shaft leading to the Citadel's recycling system.
One of the turian guards stepped up behind her, eyeing the couple of bloodstains on the floor that were all that was left of Finch. "Impressive," he remarked with a glint in his eye. "Perhaps the first human Spectre will not be a disappointment after all."
The guard clapped her on the shoulder before returning to his drinks. Around her the hushed silence gave way to murmured conversation, the strippers resumed their dances, and the bartender discreetly dispatched a cleaning bot to deal with the stains her execution had left behind.
Well, I suppose I picked a good place to commit blatant murder, she thought with a resigned sigh.
"Sorry you had to see that," she said to the stone-faced Garrus and oddly inent Liara. "Old business. Let's get out of here, I could use some air."
"P-please," Liara stammered, and Garrus nodded slowly.
"Right. The presidium, wasn't it, Garrus? A change of scenery will do us all some good."
Garrus Vakarian was troubled.
Back in C-Sec, he'd fought. Fought for hours, days, years even against the seemingly insurmountable fortress of bureaucracy that was always in his way, always preventing him from doing what needed to be done to catch the people that did evil to others.
And while he certainly enjoyed the righteous condemnation of those that sank to a life of crime, it wasn't out of a desire to be cruel. He wanted – honestly, truly, and with all his heart – to protect people. To stop evildoers from ruining lives. To make sure people never committed those kinds of acts, so that he'd never have to comfort another widow or watch someone plow through the reams of paperwork required after reporting a theft.
He wanted to help people.
His boss, the esteemed executor, had tried to show him. Tried to explain to him why he couldn't just "trust his gut," why he had to follow rules, why he had to toe the line with everybody else. He'd been forced to consider more "hypothetical scenarios" at his boss' behest than he cared to think about. He knew why you couldn't let people run around doing whatever they wanted with authority behind them. Spirits, he'd even helped take people like that down!
But for all the times he'd been shown, he'd never believed. Never truly believed that those rules were necessary, and believed even less that he'd appreciate their existence.
Not until he met Commander Shepard.
It really hadn't been a dramatic affair, all things considered. There were no wailing sirens, no tense standoff with hostages in a warehouse, no last chance barked over a megaphone while sharpshooters set up on a roof.
There was just a would-be blackmailer with some unsavory ties to the Commander's past.
She hadn't even hesitated. He'd stood with growing anger as she listened to the man's "request," and had been so close to refusing to help her when she'd walked toward the off-duty prison guard to speak (he'd thought) on the scum's behalf.
He remembered feeling bad about assuming the worst of her when she'd told him she needed her help to make sure the man didn't succeed, and recalled being proud to have been a genuine asset to the Spectre. It was the sort of moment he'd dreamed of, using his skills to make sure one of those agents could do their jobs. Hell, he'd still been patting himself on the back for making the choice to leave C-Sec when she'd killed him.
There had been no warning. None at all. He'd just walked up behind her after snooping on her conversation with the guard, vowing (somewhat shrilly, he recalled) to reveal "her secret" to the world. He had still been seething at the man when she'd raised her fist, crushed the air from his lungs, and slammed him into the ground until his bones shattered and broke through his skin, until his eyes popped out of his skull and his tongue lolled out, until his body looked like he'd been run over by a bus.
Many buses.
He then watched her casually fling the tattered corpse into the recycling shaft with no more thought than he might give to disposing of a piece of old paperwork on his desk.
Someone – a civilian, albeit a slimy one – had died, and the corpse disposed of, in no more time than it would take him to stretch after standing up from a long day in the office. If he hadn't been watching her every step since she spoke with the man, he doubted he'd have noticed her do it at all.
And worst of all, there was no trauma. No regret. No appropriate gravitas in the wake of the cold-blooded murder of another sentient being. She hadn't even needed to draw her gun. Just a quick gesture, a surge of power, a corpse, and a shrug.
The turian guardsman had been pleased.
Garrus had barely managed to keep the horror off of his face.
For the first time in years... perhaps ever... he thought back to the Executor's lectures, to the repeated warnings about restraint.
I think I understand what you wanted to prevent us from becoming, Sir, he thought desperately as they boarded the cab for the presidium. Spirits, what have I gotten myself into...
Liara sat in the passenger seat of the aircar and tried to figure out why she wasn't terrified.
Terrified would have made sense. Confused would have also been a logical state of mind, given the amazing rapidity with which things had gone downhill. One moment, it had seemed, the Commander was exchanging words with a rather unsavory looking gentleman, then the next she was murdering him in broad daylight!
She bit her lip. That wasn't entirely accurate, if she was being honest with herself. She knew precisely what had happened, and what it meant. The speed at which events had unfolded had left her a bit disoriented, it was true, and the more primitive parts of her were just now beginning to play catch-up after the rush of combat.
The fact still remained that somebody had attempted to blackmail the Commander, and that she had responded with a vehemence that all but confirmed the veracity of his claims. What those claims were she didn't know, but from her (admittedly limited) knowledge of human history, it was likely unpleasant. Humanity was not unique in the horrors it wrought upon itself, but it was the newest addition to the galactic list of atrocities.
But knowing why – at least in part – Shepard had responded as she had did little to explain her reaction to events. She expected to be horrified, or shocked, or scared. She wasn't. If anything, she felt excited.
Possessed of the same nervous energy a child has when making a getaway from the kitchen with a forbidden treat, Liara thought as she shivered.
It wasn't a metaphor that she found particularly comforting, to say the least. The idea that she could treat the, the cold-blooded murder of another sentient being with all the dignity of a child scampering off with sweets was appalling to her.
Go figure, Liara. You're only appalled that you're reacting badly to a death and what it means for you, not that somebody died so that the Commander can keep her secrets. You're disgusting.
She quickly forced her mind off that particular train of thought. Recursion was rarely a good thing, and that kind of self-aware meta analysis was best left to professional psychologists and psychiatrists, not archeologists. Besides, you're not thinking clearly. Focus on the task at hand. Worry about the Commander later.
She closed her eyes and shook her head to clear it. There was still much left to do for the day, and she couldn't afford to end up distracted.
Especially given how excitement seemed to follow them around.
Shepard kept an unobtrusive eye on her two companions while they browsed the various shops on the presidium.
Garrus, at least, had seemed troubled by what she'd done, which surprised her a little. She thought he'd handle her actions more handily, especially given the gusto with which he took to the hostage crisis in the medical clinic and his fairly forceful commentary on the uselessness of bureaucracy and the value of getting things done.
Of course, it may just be that he has qualms about precisely what it is he's getting done, she though ruefully. Gunning down blackmailers to keep them silent did not make for particularly heroic stories, after all.
Still, he was a cop, and even if he found her deeds shocking she had no doubt he'd get over it soon enough. You couldn't be brittle and survive on a police force, even one as tame as the Citadel. The rigors and stresses of the job would shatter you if you couldn't bend with them a bit.
No, it was Liara's reaction that surprised her more. She'd expected the asari to pull away – Shepard had no doubt that she wasn't as naïve as she let on, and she had to have figured out that there was some truth to Finch's claims or she wouldn't have silenced him – but she hadn't. Shepard was no expert at reading asari, despite their marked similarity to humans, but she didn't think the asari was worried or afraid of her. She seemed almost lost in thought, which struck Shepard as an odd response to what had happened.
She didn't know what to make of it, so she filed it away for later. Not, perhaps, the best approach, but without anything else to go on and no tactful way to broach the topic, she didn't see any good way to address the issue. It wasn't like she was about to walk up to the asari and ask her what she thought of the murder she had just committed.
No, even I know that's not a terribly politic way of going about it, she thought with a wry smile.
"Ah, Shepard?" Liara asked, sticking her head up from a rack of acid-resistant liners for armored hardsuits. "I think I'm set for most things, but... is there any special environment gear I should be looking at?"
Shepard glanced around for eavesdroppers before answering. It was well known in the military that loading up on a selection of specific hazardous environment gear was an excellent way to tip off people trying to predict your movements, and Shepard didn't want to give any of Saren's spies any leads if she could help it.
"Mmm..." she hummed, pursing her lips as she ran through the list of targets of interest that had been set before her. Noveria was freezing, so something to handle the cold was definitely in order. Asari were surprisingly well-suited to the cold despite the warmth of their home planet. Something to do with a recent aquatic stage of their evolution, a squadmate had told her, that left them surprisingly well-insulated despite their svelte forms.
Turians, on the other hand, didn't deal with freezing weather well at all. While their dry skin kept evaporation from cooling them, they had almost no insulating body fat and their plates conducted heat too well to leave them comfortable in anything below what a human would consider room temperature.
"Make sure you pick out something to handle cold weather," she said finally. "That goes for you, too, Garrus – I know turians hate the cold."
Garrus smiled at her. "Already set, Commander. Part of our standard kit these days."
That does make sense. "Alright. Liara, find something warm. Oh, do they have anything for penetrating toxins?" She didn't think any of the priority target worlds she'd been given had toxins that could seep through standard suit seals, but a list of "at your convenience" requests from various agencies and independent parties had started piling up in her inbox and some of them had made note of worlds or environments that might be hazardous to her crew.
Surviving Saren's assassins to die from a bug that made it through a suit filter is low on the priority list.
Liara ducked her head back behind the rack, scowling. "I don't think this place sells equipment like that, but... I believe I saw a place across the water on the map that offers those goods. Perhaps they might have something?"
"Worth a shot," Shepard said with a shrug. "Garrus? Do you know of anything?"
The turian shook his head. "I've never needed any," he admitted. "I've only ever really gbeen on Palavan and the Citadel. Not much need for hazardous material suits on either place."
She nodded. "Fair enough. Let's pay for these and go take a look at what- hold on, what's all this?"
The two of them glanced in the direction of her pointed nod at an apparent argument between a hanar and an obviously exasperated C-Sec officer.
Garrus moved a talon to his temples and rubbed at them. "Oh, Spirits," he sighed, "not this again..."
Shepard quirked an eyebrow at him while absently paying the clerk for their bags of gear. "A recurring problem, I take it?"
"You might say that," Garrus said. "The hanar is a... well, a religious zealot. A preacher, or something. My buddies have horror stories."
"A hanar... preacher?" Shepard asked.
Liara nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, that's right! The hanar believe they were uplifted by the protheans, who taught them language, and refer to them as the 'enkindlers' of language among their people. It's really quite fascinating, and there's actually a fairly large body of evidence that supports-"
Garrus buried his head in his hands. "Spirits, not you too..." he said, but Shepard could see the smile he was hiding.
"I- I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" Liara stammered.
"It's alright, Liara, he's just teasing," Shepard said with a chuckle. "I'm actually interested in that, if you have some free time later. How do they know for sure? Do they track the rate of linguistic drift across isolated colonies and compare that to early writing samples, or is there actual direct evidence?"
Liara brightened. "Both, although most non-hanar scholars are skeptical of the evidence the hanar have presented for the latter. I've reviewed some of it in my studies of the protheans and it is... circumstantial... at best."
Shepard eyed the arguing pair again. "Huh. Good to know. Alright, Garrus, let's go talk to these fellows before your co-worker loses it."
Garrus sighed. "It's your headache."
"-creating a public disturbance! It's against Citadel regulations!"
Well, he certainly seems grumpy, Shepard thought as the trio approached the arguing pair.
Shepard supposed that 'arguing pair' wasn't quite the right term. The hanar would, at most, politely disagree. That didn't mean they couldn't drive people up the wall sometimes, but they'd never really get angry and argue. At least, not in public.
"Greetings," the hanar's ephemeral voice sounded when they approached. "Do you desire to learn of the Enkindlers? Or has the honorable C-Sec officer enlisted assistance?"
Shepard glanced back at Garrus, still wearing his C-Sec blue armor. "Neither, actually. We were shopping and heard your argument, and I wondered what the issue was."
The hanar bobbed up and down in midair. "This one apologizes for disturbing your afternoon," it said.
Shepard waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. What's going on?"
The hanar extended a tentacle in the direction of the obviously frustrated C-Sec officer. "This C-Sec officer requests that this one purchase an evangelical permit to spread the word of the Enkindlers."
Shepard shrugged. "If that's all he wants, why not just purchase the permit? Is the price unreasonable?" she asked, shooting a glance at the turian officer.
She'd read about things like that happening in the past back on Earth. A government wouldn't want to ban an activity or substance outright due to how popular it was, so they'd regulate it in such a way to require the purchase of a permit. Then they'd either refuse to sell the permit or make it inordinately expensive to effectively ban whatever it was they wanted to remove. It was underhanded, devious, and completely against the spirit of regulation.
Shepard thought it was clever, all things considered.
"The truth of the Enkindlers is universal. This one humbly believes that the truth should not be suppressed."
"Which means he's either too poor to afford one, doesn't want to follow the rules for one, or he's a fanatic," Garrus grumbled under his breath before Liara shushed him.
Shepard suppressed a smile. "I see. So you believe that you do not qualify as preaching, because it isn't a religious belief if it's true?"
The hanar bobbed again. "That is precisely correct."
"See?" The officer said, tossing his hands in the air. "Impossible!"
Shepard waved him down before addressing the hanar again. "Is it?"
The hanar bobbed left and right. "I am afraid that this one does not understand your question," it said after a moment.
"Is it true?" she pressed. "Your logic is sound; if something is objectively true, then it isn't preaching because no belief is involved. You might still need a public performance permit, but not a preaching one."
"The existence of the Enkindlers cannot be denied!"
"Be that as it may," Shepard said, "can it be proven?"
"That is precisely what this one intends to do," the hanar said enthusiastically. "Teach the truth to the uninformed! Explain to them what they are missing! Only then will they see."
Shepard shook her head. "You're missing the point. If you tell the... truth... of the Enkindlers to people here, you will convince very few people. If you wish to convince masses of people, you must prove that you are correct. Luckily for you, that is an achievable goal."
"Wait, it is?" Garrus asked, and Liara began hopping from foot to foot, tapping her hands together in excitement.
"Of course it is," she said over her shoulder to Garrus. "He's not claiming that everlasting glory awaits us in the afterlife, he's saying that the same people that built the Citadel also uplifted the hanar. That's a much more disprovable claim."
"Oooh," Liara said, "Shepard, you mentioned linguistic drift? Maybe if you did an analysis of the drift rates in isolated hanar colonies and compared it to those in similarly-sized historical settlements... yes, that could work! The rate of change should be faster in a modern society, so if the study shows that it isn't..."
The hanar beamed. "Then if this one began such a study, it could prove to the galaxy the truth of the Enkindler's touch! This one is profoundly grateful for your assistance and respectfully takes its leave."
"You know what?" the exasperated officer said as the hanar abruptly drifted away, "I don't care why it's gone. I'm just glad it's gone. At least it won't be giving me a headache any more."
The turian officer stomped off in the opposite direction.
"Okay," Garrus said, shaking his head at the now-empty plaza, "did you seriously just convince a hanar preacher to become a scientist? Did that really just happen?"
Shepard flashed him a smile.
Garrus punched the button on the elevator to take them up to the Alliance docking bay with more than a little relief.
The shopping hadn't been a problem. Between Doctor T'Soni's obvious guilt over the Commander's footing the bill for the entire trip and the Commander's desire to do other things with her time, they got in and out of the various shops in what Garrus was certain was record time.
No, rather, it had been all the things that they had run into on the way to the stores that had taken the time and worn him out. The meeting with the hanar had only been the first event of many.
There was the human couple who apparently couldn't grasp basic probability when it came to medical treatments. Shepard had pointed out to them that one in fifty was more likely than one in one hundred and sent them on their way. There was also a woman who Garrus was fairly certain was involved in organized crime asking Shepard for a personal favor, a worried elcor diplomat, and a request for a private meeting from the consort, of all people!
Garrus wasn't quite sure what to think.
On one hand, there was the side of the Commander that he'd seen in the morning: Ruthless, mercenary, and perfectly willing to gun down somebody in cold blood. On the other, he'd watched her spend the entire rest of the day bending over backward to help random people – oftentimes with matters that didn't even relate to her official duties. The few turian spectres he'd met wouldn't deign to do that. They were far more... aloof... than the young human was.
Or, at least, than she appears to be, the cynical corner of his mind whispered.
It was that possibility that worried him most. It took an exceptional mind – or an exceptionally damaged one – to kill somebody and then casually go shopping while offering career advice to misguided hanar. While he fervently hoped that he'd been lucky enough to find such a gifted individual, the cynical voice in his head was very clear in telling him what that more likely story was.
Now that's not fair, he thought, pointedly ignoring the cynical voice. After all, she was selected as the first human Spectre, and that's not a title the Council just hands out... or a position the Alliance would pick anyone to be nominated for. Besides, at least she's getting stuff done! Sure, talking to civvies on the presidium isn't like taking down a kingpin, but it's necessary work.
"Well," he said, leaning up against the elevator wall, "that was an eventful day."
"I concur," Liara nodded. "I must admit, I did not expect a simple shopping trip to be quite so... exciting. Ah, thank you again for-"
Shepard waved a dismissive hand. "I said don't worry about it, Liara, and I meant it."
"Still, to-"
The human rolled her eyes. "Still nothing. Liara, it's money. It's a tool. Sometimes that tool is available to you, and you should consider using it, and other times it is not, and you must do without. In my life I have been both penniless and wealthy, and while I have to say I prefer the latter, the former isn't the end of the world."
She sighed and leaned against the elevator wall, closing her eyes. "To far too many people, money is a way of keeping score in a game I'm not interested in playing."
The elevator was quiet for a while after that.
"Penniless?" Liara hesitantly asked.
"Huh?" Shepard hummed, half-raising an eye.
"I don't think that word is translating. Penniless."
"Oh," Shepard chuckled. "I guess it got dropped out of the standard translation dictionary. It's a reference to an kind of coin common in old Earth currencies called a penny. It was usually the smallest denomination minted – think of them like a centicred. If you didn't even have a single penny, you were well and truly poor. Hence, penniless."
She shrugged. "Honestly, I'm not surprised the word's fallen out of use. We haven't used pennies for, what, nearly a century now? They were outmoded long before first contact."
Liara nodded, soaking up the brief history lesson like a sponge. "How did you come to use it, then, if it's so archaic? Did you have an interest in history, or maybe an educated background?"
"Hah!" Shepard laughed sharply, smacking her hand on the elevator wall. "Oh, that's rich. No, Liara, I grew up on the streets. An orphaned gang kid. The only schooling I've had was what the Alliance military made me sit through."
Garrus' eyes widened. No way. Garrus knew plenty of folks that were down on their luck on the citadel. Some were homeless, and some were even kids. He didn't like it, but it was the nature of a place as big as the citadel for some folks to fall through the cracks.
Some of them had been cunning, certainly, but none of them had ever spoken like she had. Hell, he was fairly certain the human was smarter than he was, and that was only given the limited experience he'd had so far!
"Look," she said, the smile fading slightly from her tired face. "I promised you I'd give the whole sob story, but let's wait until we're back on board. The walls here have ears."
Garrus nodded slowly. He was fairly certain this elevator wasn't bugged – or at least, if it was, it wasn't by his department, but he let the issue go. If she wanted to wait until they were back on the Normandy, they would wait until they were back on the Normandy.
"Right," Shepard said, turning briskly around in the conference room. "I promised you an explanation, didn't I."
"If you don't want to-" Liara began before Shepard waved her off.
"No, no, if you're going to help murder people for me you at least deserved to know why. I know Garrus is keen on finding out, at the very least," she said with a wry smile.
Isn't that the truth, he mused to himself.
"Let's see. I grew up in Vancouver. It's a spaceport city now, although it wasn't always. Lots of people coming and going. I never knew my parents; the gang kids who raised me said they found me in a dumpster. Well, an old recycling plant's storage hopper, but dumpster sounds better."
Garrus' mandibles flared. A dumpster? They found a child in a refuse container?
He glanced over at Liara, who had her hands folded across her mouth.
"It was a pretty rough life. I helped out the gang as best I could – they were my family, after all – and in turn they kept me safe, clothed, and at least partially fed."
She sighed. "When I was a teenager, the gang leader, Finch, decided he was tired of making do with scraps. I don't know how he did it, but he made contact with a group of Red Sand smugglers looking for folks to help them set up their operation. They were probably interested in us because we were mostly kids and kept a low profile."
Garrus nodded slowly. He knew now that taking kids – especially gang kids – at face value was a bad idea, but it hadn't been a natural thing when he'd first joined the force.
"I wasn't interesting in getting involved in that kind of thing, so I left. Joined the military, which after the medical scan revealed biotic potential was willing to bend over backwards to get me to join... and that included not asking too many questions about where I had come from."
"I'm assuming they didn't just let you walk away from a gang," Garrus said, folding his arms across his chestplate.
Shepard sighed. "No, they didn't," she said after a moment. "I'd rather not go into details, but you're right, they didn't want me to go."
And the story begins to snap into place, the cold part of Garrus' head said. You saw what she did to the human. You know the stories the batarians tell about her. You even saw her face when she killed him. How many do you think she murdered to get away clean? One or two? A few? Maybe all of them? What about what she did while she was a member? So many of those gangs have brutal 'initiation rites.' I wonder what hers was?
He tried not to grimace. Fine. She grew up in a gang, and made some bad choices. But, really, if they were getting into Red Sand smuggling, then they deserved everything they got. Plus, she left, and when they tried to track her down and get her back, she refused to help them. That was worth a lot in his book, especially when it meant another Sand smuggler bit it.
It would be enough.
Please, spirits, let it be enough.
They had returned to their quarters after that.
Shepard let out a long, slow sigh and rand her fingers through her hair. It hadn't been her best work, but she thought that she'd assuaged some of their concerns, at least for the time being. Liara seemed convinced, at least. Garrus, she was less certain of.
It is what it is. You can't go back and fix it now, and drawing attention to it will just make it stand out more. Let it rest, move on, and deal with the task at hand.
Speaking of which...
She tapped her computer's display on and checked her mail. Both the planetary leadership of Noveria and ExoGeni corporation had been giving her the runabout regarding the rumors she'd asked them about. It wasn't unexpected, but it was certainly irritating.
For all my supposed vast legal authority, there certainly are a lot of ways for people to refuse to comply, she thought grumpily. Oh, well. Time to start pissing some folks off.
She tapped the communicator to the bridge. "Joker!"
The response was immediate. She was beginning to suspect that the man never left the cockpit. "Yes, Commander?"
"Punch in a course for Feros. If I'm going to piss off a big corporation no matter where I poke my nose, I might as well get a pat on the back from the Alliance for it."
She heard a chuckle and a couple of button taps. "Course laid in, Commander. Shall I tell the crew to get their muck-raking boots on?"
"Save those for later, I get the feeling we'll need them on Noveria," she said. "But do let folks know where we're headed; we're going in blind and I want everyone ready."
"Copy that, Commander," Joker replied, some of the levity gone from his voice. "I'll make sure they know."
"Much obliged, Joker. Shepard out."
A/N: Lots more stuff to come. I plan on touching on Liara's view of things as we go – the way I figure, asari are a long-lived race, and just like Salarians do their emotional processing quickly, it might take them a little while. Expect BIG changes when Feros is done!
For now, we're jumping off to Feros – because like Shepard said, if you're going to piss off somebody big and powerful no matter where you go, you might as well make another person happy while you do it.