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When they arrived at the 800 blocks, Thane had little trouble spotting the turian. He wasn't exactly trying to hide—it was apparent he had no idea there was a hit out on him. He was accompanied by a krogan bodyguard, but that was no barrier to a skilled assassin. Thane devoutly hoped Kolyat wasn't skilled.

Shepard turned to him. "There he is. How do you want to play this?"

He glanced around and made some swift calculations. "Follow Talid on the maintenance catwalk. Tell me what he's doing. The krogan bodyguard will make him easy to follow."

"Where do you want me?" Garrus asked.

"Hang back, remain unobtrusive. Be available if we need backup."

"Can do." Garrus wandered over to look casually in a shop window.

"Where will you be?" Shepard asked. She was all business right now, and he appreciated that. His own nerves were in a state he hadn't experienced in quite some time. Ten years, really, since the last time the hunt was this important.

"In the darkest corner with the best view."

"Thane."

"Yes?"

Shepard shifted her weight uncomfortably. "You know skulking around, following people unnoticed, isn't really my usual modus operandi."

He smiled briefly, at her terminology and the sentiment, which was all too true. "I will be doing most of the skulking. You're just making sure you're where you need to be when we find Kolyat. Please, Shepard. I … need your help."

"I'm with you, Thane. I just wanted to make sure you know you're sending a hand cannon into a knife fight."

"I appreciate your help."

She nodded, and with a swift, worried backward glance at him, climbed up to the catwalks.

When he was alone, Thane bent his head. "Amonkira, Lord of Hunters. Grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet be swift, and should the worst come to pass grant me forgiveness." He hoped Amonkira was listening.

It had been years since he'd been so tense following someone. But the stakes had never been this high—the price was his son's soul. He had done enough to damage Kolyat already. Today he had to begin making up for it.

In truth, he needed Shepard up in the catwalks more than he had admitted to her. Keeping in contact with her, hearing her strong, confident voice through the comm link, knowing someone was here with him, for once not being alone, meant … a great deal. And two sets of eyes were better than one, although she was right—she had no skills at subtlety. Anyone who was worried someone was after him would have spotted her, fully armed and armored, in a moment. It was fortunate that Talid wasn't worried.

Stupid not to be, in Thane's experience, but his job today was to keep his son from killing Talid, not to keep Talid alive.

Talid was approaching his apartment now. A young man, a drell, was lounging, apparently casually, near the door. Thane's heart thudded painfully in his chest, his breath catching. Kolyat. His son. Irikah's son. He looked so like his mother. Thane remembered her so clearly—tinkling laugh, slender hands pressed against his chest, playfully pushing at him, his breath across her cheek. She reaches up on her toes, kisses his cheek, then his lips …

With an effort, he pulled himself out of the memory. She was gone, and he was here, and Kolyat—

Kolyat had stepped out of the shadows and drawn a gun.

Amonkira take him, he was too late. All this time, all this way, and he was too late.

But above him was Shepard, calling his son's name. Kolyat turned, startled, and looked up at her, and then desperately aimed and fired the gun, wounding the krogan bodyguard. Talid ran inside his apartment and Kolyat followed.

"Thane!" Shepard called, even as she was leaping easily from the catwalk to the floor.

"I saw," he said, running after her. Perhaps even now, it wasn't too late. Kolyat had wounded the bodyguard, but had not yet taken a life.

Shepard managed to catch the door just before it closed, forcing it open again, and she went in. Thane followed. Inside, Talid knelt on the floor, his hands above his head, and Thane's son stood behind him, holding a gun with both hands. The barrel of the gun shook.

Over the head of the turian, their eyes met for the first time in ten years.

Kolyat's widened in disbelief. "This—this has to be a joke. Now? Now you show up?"

The turian moaned. "Help me, drell. I'll do whatever you want."

"Shut up, you fool," Shepard snapped.

A door at the side of the room opened and Captain Bailey came through it, with Garrus and a couple of C-Sec officers. "C-Sec," Bailey barked. "Put the gun down, son."

Kolyat looked around at them all. Thane could see the rising panic in his son's eyes, the desperation to get himself out of the situation he was in. That kind of desperation could end up badly, in his experience, but he didn't know what to do that wouldn't make it worse. "Get out of my way!" Kolyat said, but his voice wavered. "I'm walking out, and he's coming with me."

"No!" Thane cried. "They'll have snipers outside," he added, but whether he was speaking to Kolyat, to Shepard, or to himself he wasn't certain.

"I don't need your help," his son sneered at him. "All of you back off, or I'll kill him."

At Thane's side, Shepard's leveled weapon barked once, and suddenly Kolyat's gun was on the other side of the room. He hadn't known she could shoot like that—but then, he ought to have. She was Commander Shepard, after all, and her reputation was well-deserved. Kolyat stood staring at his empty hands.

"Take the boy into custody."

At Bailey's order, the C-Sec officers moved forward and began handcuffing Thane's son.

Kolyat looked at him with smoldering eyes. "All this time you don't care about me and you show up now, just in time to send me to jail?"

Thane was struck dumb. What could he say? That he was too late, again? That he was sorry for all of it? How could he ever have hoped to fix anything this way?

Next to him, Shepard said softly, "Your father doesn't have much time left, Kolyat. He's trying to make up for his mistakes."

"What, you came to apologize to me so you can die in peace? Typical. It's still all about you, isn't it?"

"No! That's not why I am here." Thane tried to think, to put the pieces together. "I came … I came to grant you peace. You're angry because I wasn't there when your mother died—"

"When she died? You weren't there when she was alive, why should you be there when she died?"

Thane closed his eyes, fighting the memories that flooded his mind and tried to drag him into them. "Your mother," he said huskily. "They killed her to get to me. It was my fault."

"What?"

He looked at his son, unmindful of everyone else in the room. There was nothing there but the two of them. "After her body was given to the deep, I went to find them. The triggermen, the ringleaders. I hurt them. Eventually I killed them. When I had done that, finally, I went back to see you. You were … older. I— I didn't know what to do, but I know now I should have stayed with you."

"I guess it's too bad for me you waited so long, huh?" Kolyat said spitefully, but there was something in his eyes that said perhaps he was beginning to soften, beginning to make a place inside himself where he could try to understand.

"Kolyat … I have taken many bad things out of the world. You are the only good thing I've ever added to it."

They looked at one another, Thane pleading with his eyes for his son to hear him, if only for a moment.

Then the harsh voice of Captain Bailey broke in. "This isn't a conversation you should have in front of strangers. Take Kolyat and his father back to the precinct. Give them a room and as much time as they need," he said to the C-Sec officers.

Thane cast Bailey a glance of thanks, unable to speak.

As he left, he heard Shepard say, "That's a nice thing you're doing, thank you," and Bailey reply, in a voice that said he understood the pain of it, "You think he's the only man who ever screwed up raising a son?"

C-Sec left them alone in a room. Kolyat sank down into a seat, crossing his arms over his chest. Thane watched his son, tracing in his face everything that came from his mother, everything that had come from himself, remembering so vividly the little boy who had grown into the young man before him.

At last Kolyat said, sulkily, "Well, you came to talk. So talk."

"I …" But Thane didn't know what to say.

His son rolled his eyes and settled more firmly into his seat. Clearly he had no interest in helping the conversation along.

"I never meant for you to know who I am. What I've done."

"Not until you were dead, you mean. Well, you've been dead to me for ten years. Longer than that, really."

Thane nodded. "Yes. That is true. I was dead to myself for much of those ten years, disconnected. My body performed the work while my soul mourned."

"Good. Your soul deserved to mourn."

"If you feel this way about me, why would you want to follow in my footsteps?" Thane asked.

For the first time, Kolyat's attitude was shaken. He looked down at the table, unable to meet his father's eyes. "I … What else was I supposed to do?"

"Your aunts and uncles did not train you, provide you with skills?"

"I was an orphan. Everyone had their opinion; no one could decide. I got a little bit of training in a lot of things, but nothing that would lead me in any direction. So when I came of age, I went looking for what was missing."

"Me?"

"Answers," Kolyat snapped. "Where you'd been all this time, what the 'business' was that always took you away, why you never came back. And I found it. You're a killer."

"An assassin," Thane corrected. Not that it mattered, really, but he had been trained to a particular trade, an honorable trade in many ways, and he wanted his son to know he wasn't ashamed of what his body had done … at the same time as he didn't want his son to follow in his footsteps.

"Yeah. Whatever. That's what you did all this time." He looked up at Thane, his face softer. "You meant that, when you said Mother was killed because of you."

"Yes. I thought I had been careful, I thought I had kept the two of you out of this life of mine, but … it's impossible to be careful enough. When someone wants to get to you …" The memory washed over him. "Vid screen flashes. Message coming in. Frantic. Irikah. Oh, Irikah. I have failed you." The anger was still there, still as black as that day. "I will avenge you."

"And you did?"

Thane nodded. "Every last person involved in that conspiracy."

"Good."

He saw Kolyat squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away, pushing back a memory that threatened him.

"No room for a kid in the glamorous life of an assassin, I guess?"

"I … didn't know how to be what you needed. I didn't know how to be anything other than what I was trained to be." He spread his hands out in front of him. "These are adept at many different kinds of weapons, multiple forms of hand-to-hand combat. But they have never cooked a meal. Repaired a toy. Drawn a picture. What did I have to offer a child?"

"You!" Kolyat shouted. He got up abruptly, bracing his own hands on the table. "You had yourself. You were my father!"

"I know. And I am sorry."

"Yeah? Well that comes ten years too late." Kolyat folded his arms over his chest.

Thane had expected nothing less, but the words hurt anyway. He shook his head. "You said earlier that I had led a glamorous life as an assassin. No doubt you are picturing what is shown in vids, the beautiful women and fast ships and nightlife. But much of being an assassin is waiting. Watching your target to learn their tells and patterns, hiding in shadows or in garbage bins or behind doors as you tail them, waiting for hours for them to come out of a restaurant or club, unable to enter yourself because as a drell you are noticeable and don't dare to appear in the same place as your target. It is learning to disappear into the shadows and not be seen, to hold yourself very still despite your discomforts. It is cozying up to people who sicken you in order to learn what you need to know, sleeping in whatever place you can find that is least likely to draw attention to you, because you know that when the job is done you have to be able to disappear in such a way that no one knows you have gone—which means that no one can really know you were there."

Kolyat had listened to all of that with more attention than Thane had expected him to. As Thane finished speaking, he frowned. "But they pay you!"

"Yes, and for brief times you can enjoy the fruits of that labor. When your mother was alive, I took joy in bringing her gifts. Afterward, in sending them to you. I took little joy in spending the money myself. My body demanded certain things, and I gave them, but they never touched me."

"I threw it out," Kolyat muttered. "All the stuff you sent. When you didn't care enough to be there yourself, the expensive stuff was just an insult."

"I see how that would be. Now. I wish I had seen it then."

"You said that before."

"I will more than likely say it again. And again. My regrets are deep, Kolyat. My mistakes harmed you, and if I could go back and change any of it, I would."

"But you can't." The words were sorrowful and sullen in equal measure.

"No. I can't. But I can try to start anew."

"By sending me to jail? Great job, Father."

"By preventing you from taking a life. I pray to Arashu that you never know what it is like to do so."

Kolyat looked at him, frowning. "That why you're with Commander Shepard's team now? Because you feel so bad about killing?"

"I do not feel badly at all. I do the work I was trained for, and I do it well. It is because of my skill that I was chosen for Commander Shepard's team, and have a hope of doing something good with my last days to make up for some of what I have done that was not so good."

"Perks of being a killer."

Thane frowned in his turn, irritated for the first time. "I am quite likely to die in this mission, as are many of the others. That is not a perk. That is a responsibility we bear because we are uniquely qualified. Can you say the same? What responsibilities do you bear, Kolyat? What will you do to make the galaxy a better place?"

"I—" Kolyat stopped himself, and appeared to be really thinking about Thane's words. "I don't know."

"I suggest that the next time you pick up a weapon, you give some thought to your own legacy, your own skills, and your own burdens, in that case." Thane reined his temper in with some difficulty.

"It won't matter," Kolyat snapped back, "because I'll be in jail."

"Not forever. There will be time there for you to think, to decide who you want to be. Not to follow in the footsteps of a flawed man you barely know just because you share a name."

"A man I barely know because he placed his job ahead of me! Did you ever think of me while you were out there staring down the sights of your gun at someone else?"

"Yes. But … not often enough. I wish I had learned sooner what I understand now—that enemies and ego are not as important as loved ones."

If he had hoped to get through to his son, he had failed. Kolyat slammed his fists on the table. "You damned hypocrite! You think you can come in here and spout platitudes and make up for a lifetime of neglect, so you can cross 'apologized to my kid for abandoning him' off your list and die in some kind of fake peace? I don't know you." More softly, almost to himself, he added, "And you took away the only means I had to try."

"You would not have known me by killing a man, Kolyat. Nor would you have known yourself." Thane hesitated, but there was nothing more to say. Not now. He would keep in contact and hope that Kolyat used his time to think carefully about the life ahead of him. He turned away and knocked on the window to let C-Sec know they were done. "I will send you messages and come to see you as often as I can before …"

The door opened and Thane stepped through.

"Father!" Kolyat called, sounding so like the child Thane remembered that for a moment he wasn't certain if he had heard the word in memory or in the present.

He turned.

"Be careful."

Thane smiled. "I will be."

Outside Shepard joined him, looking worried. "You were in there a long time. How did it go?"

He shrugged. "Our problems— They aren't something I can fix with a few words. We will keep talking, I hope, and see how things go."

"I'm glad you're talking, at least."

"Yes. It is a start."

Captain Bailey and Garrus joined them. Bailey looked at Thane with regret. "Your boy shot some people. No one I feel sympathy for, but …" He spread his hands out helplessly.

"What kind of punishment is he facing?"

"I think my testimony will get it down to a couple of years of incarceration."

Thane looked at him in surprise. "You'd stand up for him? Why?"

Bailey weighed his response carefully. "End of the day, the people he shot deserved it. Between you, me, and the bulkhead, the wards'll be better for it."

"Thank you, Captain." The graciousness and generosity of the man in front of him, and the woman at his side, had Thane quite moved.

"Nah, no thanks needed." Casually, Bailey added, "I ran some searches in the C-Sec archive while you were … busy. Turns out about ten years back a bunch of real bad people were killed. Like someone was cleaning house."

"Ten years is a long time," Shepard said, her voice steely. "Whoever was responsible for that probably doesn't exist anymore."

Garrus added, "Bad people make a lot of enemies. It could have been anyone."

"Well, whoever he was, he had to be one hell of an assassin," Bailey said, carefully not looking at Thane. "The best, maybe. The kind of guy you'd like to have with you when you're saving a galaxy."

Shepard smiled. "That would be a useful companion to have."

"If only we knew where to find him," Garrus added. "Too bad."

As they said their goodbyes to the captain and moved off down the hallway toward the airlocks, returning to the Normandy, it occurred to Thane that this was the closest he had come to having a family since Irikah was killed—and they had given him back his son, or at least given him the chance to win his son back. It was a very different galaxy he faced today than he had lived in yesterday, and he was no longer alone in it.