Author's note: As far as I'm concerned Sara Ryder and Suvi Anwar are totally the OTP of ME: Andromeda (have you SEEN how Sara looks at her?), but their romance really doesn't get the development or airtime that it deserves. I wanted a bit more Suvi time, so I decided to make some myself.

May eventually head into M-rated territory (maybe). And yes, Suvi is eventually in this story ;)


Be the Pathfinder, they said. It's soooo glamorous and everyone will look up to you, they said. Your life will be filled with adventure and the future of the world will be in your hands.

Uh huh.

Sure, the adventure and exploration were amazing. Sure, you got to settle colonists in new worlds and give them a future. And sure, occasionally you got googly heart-eyes from some random life form on some random planet because, y'know, Pathfinder and shit.

But what nobody thought to tell Sara Ryder was that for every outpost you settled there would be some random request to go and find a missing food cache (spoiler: bugs ate it).

For every vault you brought back online to make a planet habitable there would be some idiot who wanted you to pass a note to his Asari "girlfriend" because he was in jail (spoiler: he was a massive idiot).

"Oh, Pathfinder, mind waiting a moment with that 'saving the Moshae from exultation' thing? I can't find my one shoe."

For every massive fight and massive win there was a small finicky little battle that apparently only the Pathfinder could take care of, and for the sake of diplomacy the Pathfinder had to suck it up and get it done.

This, all of this, was why Sara Ryder, human Pathfinder and general all-round gopher, was currently in New Tuchanka standing between Varka and Gren, waiting to complete a Krogan challenge that had little to nothing to do with her. Kill a Fiend with the two Krogans while making sure that Varka didn't "accidentally" kill Gren too. Settle their dispute and calm some of the rising tension in the Krogan colony. Get some (almost certainly unacknowledged, but rather necessary) respect from warlord Morda, who didn't give a shit about diplomacy but would have grudging appreciation for a squishy fighting a Fiend.

It was a harder task than finding a bug-infested cache with a tracking signal, for sure, but Ryder had killed some of just about every life form in existence. Not a boast, just a fact. She'd faced down Fiends before, and they were a horrible adversary, but it could be done, and it had to be done.

Of course, she couldn't quite figure out afterwards why she would have thought this task would come without caveats, when almost every single other thing she'd been asked to do had been complicated by something. Wishful thinking? Stupid optimism? In this case, when the cage opened and not one Fiend came out, but three, and she looked around the confined space they were in, all she really had time to think was:

Oh crap.

It was no surprise that the fight was ugly as all hell. The Krogans were pumped up on blood rage, practically war machines, and still she had to put herself between Varka and a charging Fiend when the Krogan dropped to a knee, exhausted and battered. Varka was annoying as anything, but Ryder couldn't let her get hurt. She took one Fiend down by herself, got thrown into walls so many times that she had to pry off her ruined helmet to stop it from killing her (that would have been plain embarrassing), ran and jump-jetted and charged and ducked, and heard things crunch more than once as she got tossed around the cavern. When Gren dropped to his knees, shaking his head and trying to catch his breath, she had to surreptitiously get between him and Varka, keeping an eye on both of them as well as the remaining Fiend, and the blood running into her eyes didn't help. She systematically shot up her entire supply of medigel to keep her upright, knowing full well that it was way too much in too short a period of time, and that once it all wore off her system would pay for it in spades. And then Dr Lexi T'Perro would kill her.

Finally, when all three Fiends were dead and the two Krogans were bellowing out their battle cries and pushing each other around in a celebratory way rather than an "I want you dead" way, Ryder was so elated to still be alive that she howled her celebration with them. And then wondered whether she was, in fact, actually still alive. And if so, whether it might not be better to be dead. Everything hurt so much, she could barely breathe, her vision was flickering in a very annoying way, and she could feel blood pooling in her boots from heaven knows where.

Still, it wouldn't have done to get all the way through that mess and then faceplant in front of all of them. Morda would find it ridiculous, and Ryder would lose ground in her attempts to reunite the Krogan with the Nexus. Drack was watching from somewhere (she heard his infectious whooping laughter more than once while she was fighting) and she wanted to save face for him, for joining her team. It was this, and only this, that kept her upright while Shaman Kortik spoke (she had no idea what he said), that kept her walking, kept her on her feet (more or less) as boisterous and impressed Krogans smacked her on the back as she passed, and that kept her voice neutral as she joined Cora Harper and Drack and said, ever so casually, "let's get back to the Tempest".

The walk back to the Nomad was agonising, and the longest walk she'd ever had. When the vehicle's doors hissed open she looked up at the high doorway with a suppressed sigh, and then jump-jetted up as well as she could. Her control was off and she half-landed, half sprawled in the back next to Drack, who steadied her with a hand to her shoulder. Cora was in the front passenger's seat, looking back at her with a little bit of amusement but rather more badly hidden concern, and she shrugged.

"Harper, this is your moment. You're driving."

Cora looked at her for a moment, perhaps considering whether to say anything, and then shifted over to the driver's seat. "I knew there wasn't a rule about Pathfinders and the Nomad," she deadpanned as she drove them a short distance away from New Tuchanka's gates. "Tempest, extraction requested".

"Extraction in progress," Kallo's tinny voice responded.

"Kallo, medbay prepped and Dr T'Perro on standby," Cora added.

"Acknowledged."

Glancing over her shoulder, Cora lifted her eyebrows at Ryder, concern crinkling her forehead. "If you make it Lexi's going to kill you. And then Suvi's going to kill Drack."

"And you, Harper," Drack drily supplied, his hand casually propping up Ryder's shoulder.

"Mm." And then, safely away from anything that needed ceremony or fake fortitude or Pathfinderyness, Sara Ryder tilted over and decided consciousness was overrated.