Shepard had at one time drank herself silly at the Dark Star Lounge in Zakera's Wards on the Citadel. She had been in a foul mood that day and challenged the turian barkeep to hit her with the strongest stuff he had. The turian obliged, serving her a glass of strong, distinctively green liquor. She knocked back three glasses of it before expressing dissatisfaction with the effort made, so the barkeep suggested they mix it up and produced an illicit, genuine barbarian ale. It was uncut, he had told her, and no human in the eight years of his bartending had stayed on their feet after a pour. She had pounded it back, discovered that her capacity for further self-destruction knew no bounds, and hollered for another. The turian barkeep had been highly impressed by this point; not only was she still standing, but she could still string together semi-coherent sentences. He had something special just for her, he had told her, ryncol - krogan liquor, with a warning that she'd set off radiological alarms if she chose to imbibe. Ever the pioneer, she had demanded he pour her a quad… and this was the point at which her memory failed her. She later found herself staring at the floor of the lounge bathroom on all fours, sick as a dog. The disapproving look she had received from a random turian passerby who had been relieving himself had been a low point for her, to be sure.

The resulting hangover-induced headache she experienced after the incident was unparalleled in her life - until now, that was, and she hadn't even been drinking. While swimming away from the cliffs, the explosion had obliterated the rock shelf and everything on it, and she had been struck by a falling piece of debris. The cold waters and adrenaline had overshadowed the pain when it happened, but as she warmed again on the Normandy, the feeling of fatigue and headache revealed itself in full measure. She groaned as she held her bandaged head.

"Too soon, Shepard. You know I enjoy your company, but not by seeing you like this."

The Alliance soldier waved her hand. "I was just unlucky, is all."

"Did you also jump off a cliff by accident?" the doctor sarcastically quipped.

"No, that was on purpose. There was a bomb."

Dr. Chakwas shook her head exasperatedly. "Well, incredibly, nothing was broken, but your head and neck were ratted quite a bit; the muscles supporting them are strained. Those stitches should come out in a couple of days at most, so try not to tear them until then. Same with the bruises. Shepard, I know your upgrades make you hardier than most, but please, for my sanity, take it easy for the next couple of days."

"I'll try. How's Arius doing?"

"Very well. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was part krogan; Heals very quickly. I'd be surprised if he's not completely recovered by now."

"Good. Thanks for the patch, doc." Shepard lowered herself off the cot.

"Commander."

.

It was 'evening' on the Normandy, and Shepard was thankful that the lights in the hallways had dimmed and that things were quieter; she wasn't sure her head could handle any bustle and noise. When she reached the elevator and reached for the call button, she paused, deliberating where she should go. She should have gone up to her cabin; she needed the rest, but instead, she hit the button to go down to deck 4.

The doors to the starboard cargo hold opened in front of her. Unlike the reduced light intensity of the hallways, the lights in the cargo hold were at full luminosity, and she recoiled as the intense light caused a fresh bolt of pain to tear through her head. She cursed, shielding her eyes.

"Shepard! Sorry, let me dim the lights."

The lights in the room dimmed to a fraction of their previous intensity, just bright enough to faintly illuminate the objects in the room. The pain in her head subsided slightly, and she lowered her arm. Now able to see, she saw that Arius was alone and leaning back into his chair with a steaming hot mug in his hands.

"Better?" he asked her.

She nodded. Next to him, a second mug was on the desk, looking like it had been freshly poured.

"Who's the second mug for?" she asked him.

"It's for you, of course," he answered her.

"How… did you know I'd come here?"

"An educated guess. I assumed that you would either visit me here or go straight to your quarters to rest, but you have a bad habit of not following the good doctor's orders… and a good habit of checking in with your squad after a mission."

She huffed. "Now you're getting to know me a little too well."

"Perhaps," he said, taking a drink from his mug. "How's your head?"

"Could be better."

"Hmm. Here," he offered, passing her the second mug. "Traditional herbal remedy from Earth. I placed a tin of this blend in the mess, but no one's been brave enough to try it yet. I don't blame them; it tastes odd, but it does help."

Shepard brought it close to her face. The liquid was murky and smelled odd. She tasted it - It was awful, and she couldn't hide the face she made.

He grinned, seeing her aversion to it. "You'll have to trust me on this one."

Shepard was not entirely convinced but took another terrible gulp. The hot liquid trickled down her throat into her chest, warming her.

"Can I ask you something about earlier?" he posed.

She nodded.

"You recognized the bomb as being composed of mining explosives and knew how to diffuse them. Is that typical for someone of your background?"

Shepard set the cup down in front of her and cupped her hands around it for warmth. "An episode from my search and rescue days. Got a call once from a far-out mining facility once," she explained, "A crew had been stranded in a rig in the middle of a large plain, had to lift them out. Normally, I'd say this is pretty routine work, but what was unusual about all this was the situation in which the mining crews had been working. If I remember correctly, there was a geological shield that extended partway over this planet," she demonstrated with her hands, "rich in more than a few types of rare ores, eezo included, altogether worth a fortune. It had not been previously mined because the planet was also home to Thresher Maws. I'm sure you know how dangerous those bastards are; I'll be the first to admit that they spook the hell out of me. So, you're probably thinking, what the hell was a mining operation doing on a ball of rock infested with threshers? Get this: due to their burrowing, diet of minerals, and infrasound attacks, they had broken up the rocky shield and pushed the veins of ore to the surface over time. Some batshit-crazy but insanely savvy entrepreneurs realized they just needed to rake the sands on the surface to collect all the goodies. And, because threshers are basically immobile above ground, they built mining rigs that can hover over the surface when they show up, then drop back down when they leave."

"Wow, colour me impressed," Arius commented, "I've never heard of a tactic like that. Sounds risky, though."

"Clever, right? And, yes, it sounded risky because it was; They had lost a crew before. What ended up happening here was that the mechanism that boosted this rig up from the surface had failed. The crew was stuck on this stranded rig while encircled by maws. Threshers detect prey through vibrations in the ground; one tactic to distract them was to launch timed mining explosives to lead them away."

"Were you able to get the crew out?"

"It was a bit of a hairy ordeal, but yes, this time we did. However, the mining rig and all the ore they collected - different story; Got absolutely pulverized by the maw. Nothing salvageable. Except for maybe the story afterwards."

"Ha, that's an interesting tale."

Shepard nodded in agreement, then rubbed her throbbing skull to ease the pressure.

"Would you like me to help you with that?" he asked her.

"With what?"

He pointed to his head, then to hers.

"How, exactly?" she asked him, not understanding.

Arius turned his chair to face her, then stretched his hands over the desk between them. "Permission to touch you, Commander?"

She raised an eyebrow, narrowed her eyes at him slightly, wondering his angle, and then shrugged. She pitched herself forward so that she was within range of his hands. "Granted."

He rested his elbows on the desk and took her head in his hands, cupping the sides of her head with gentle pressure. Upon contact, that peculiar warmth of his travelled up his hands and filled her head. With each passing heartbeat, the pounding in her skull gradually subsided. She sighed with relief. "How…? Oh, never mind, this is amazing."

A small smile escaped him.

"Ever been a doctor?" she asked him.

"Healer. Yes. A few times. Here, let me adjust."

Arius adjusted his hands so that his thumbs rested on either side of her nose while his middle and fourth fingers rested on either side of her ears. The warmth filled her face. They were very close again, and could she could see that his eyes were not entirely human-like; his iris had a subtle pattern like they had been woven differently. She used her free hand to awkwardly lift the mug to her lips while avoiding his arms, taking a gulp. Her face betrayed the unpleasant taste, and her nose wrinkled under his hands.

"God, this tastes bad. Surely you can add something to it to make it easier to down? Sugar, maybe?"

He chuckled. "I'll keep it in mind. You get used to it after a while."

She set the mug down. "Got another question for you, if you don't mind. Your people… how did you deal with overpopulation? If everyone walked around unable to age, wouldn't space and resources deplete pretty quickly?"

He nodded. "You're correct, but not everyone had the same levels of anti-eezo in their bodies. Our gifts resulted from evolution accommodating this element found in our external environment, of which there was a finite amount. Many didn't have enough concentration to stave off death forever; some developed abnormalities from it, an imperfect union. Mothers were encouraged to consume foods containing it with the chances that their offspring's bodies would accept greater levels, and sufficiently gifted and elderly members of society relinquished their bodies after a time so that the element could be recycled back into the environment. The tipping point came when we began colonizing other worlds - free from the cycle, it diluted the anti-eezo concentration enough that few born off our home planet had the same gifts. By the time I was born, it was a rarity. I was fortunate."

"What was the oldest age achieved by a member of your kind?"

"Hmm. I don't know. The past records were unreliable; time tends to stretch history into myth, and the irregularity of that many revolutions was difficult to keep track of. I was born in the late era when such things rarely happened - but I can tell you that the oldest person I personally had ever met had been…" his brow furrowed as he recalled the number exactly: "five-thousand four-hundred twenty-three."

"That's very specific."

"It's a bit of a story, if you care for it," Arius warned. "As with the modern asari and sometimes krogan, long lifespans meant that people would pursue several careers throughout their lives. I started as an engineer, then decided to try the military, as many others did, to spice things up a bit. Our group was trained by this one man - they called him the Black Captain. He was truly terrifying. I still remember what he looked like - intense orange eyes, pitch-black hair streaked with silver. He was scarred across here," Arius passed two fingers across his left cheek down to the base of his neck in a diagonal slash. It was heavily faded with time; I suppose it had been a near-fatal injury at one point before his ability kicked in."

"Sorry to tangent, I meant to ask you earlier, how common was your eye colour?"

"No problem; Shades of green were common. Yellow had once been, but it had mostly diminished by the time I was born. Only the oldest families still had the gene for yellow eyes - it was a sign that you came from an earlier era. Orange existed too, elsewhere, but it wasn't as common." He nodded. "Erm, where was I previously?"

"Black Captain. You were describing him," Shepard reminded him.

"Right. Yes. Like me, he was fortunate to have enough anti-eezo in his body to extend his lifespan almost indefinitely. He never answered any questions about himself from anyone, but I think he secretly liked me, and once out of the blue, near the end, he told me: that he was five-thousand four-hundred twenty-three. I was flabbergasted," Arius admitted, laughing, "I realize how that sounds now, given everything that has happened since, but at the time, it was a big deal. He was also from an age before implants," he explained, removing one of his hands from Shepard's head to tap on his own, "he had none of the more modern solutions to help deal with memory. With that much time, the years… they did not treat him well. Not so much in the physical sense, but mentally. He was quick to temper, impatient, calloused, reserved to the point of being a recluse… and bitter. Despite being out of reach to everyone, I admired him, I think we all did, for many reasons. He was masterly at everything he did, intelligent, capable, ruthless - really a force to be reckoned with. But, there was always something… empty about him - tiredness of life, perhaps? I don't think he had much to live for. He routinely pushed himself into dangerous situations for no reason other than to see if he'd survive. Nowadays, I'd probably attribute part of it to compassion fatigue and depersonalization, but at the time, I didn't know much about those things."

Arius' eyes shifted away from hers as he stared into memory. "This always stayed with me because while I had hoped I'd one day be as capable as him, I feared I'd also adopt his bitter outlook. I was very young at the time; I wasn't sure if he was an inevitable product of his age or not, and I wondered now and again if I was naive in my judgments of him. I saw the self-imposed isolation, and I wondered for a long time what could have possibly happened to him for him to see the universe in such tired greys. I promised myself that If I ended up living as long as him, I would try everything in my power not to become him."

"Well, from what you've told me about yourself so far, Arius, you seem to have kept that promise to yourself."

He murmured something then and shrugged, possibly gratitude or agreement, but she missed the words, and he moved on before she could ask him to repeat himself. "I'm going to adjust my hands, Shepard. Sit back a bit and relax your head and neck. I'll support them."

He moved his hands further back so that the last two fingers of each rested on the back of her neck, and the rest of his hand supported the back of her skull. She relaxed, and the pressure she had been feeling in her neck slowly subsided. A silence descended in the relative dimness of the room, and with no words to fill the air, Shepard realized just how physically intimate the whole thing was. She was reminded of the charged moment at the party and had to break eye contact.

"May I ask you a personal question?" he asked her, interrupting the silence.

"I suppose that's only fair. Go ahead."

"Why did you join the military?"

"I… wanted to help people."

Arius raised an eyebrow, and he looked at the woman in his hands skeptically. It wasn't that he didn't believe her - he did, but the answer she gave was glossing over an entire catalogue of history and nuanced thought that had gone into that decision.

"Alright, I get it. I owe you a bit more detail." Shepard closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, readying herself. "After the attack on Mindoir… I was in a dark place for a while. Teenage me didn't know very much about anything, and all my plans for the future… well, you can imagine what happened - they got burned up with the colony."

He nodded.

"We who had been rescued had counselors assigned to us for psych treatment. Being the somewhat stubborn person I am," she told him, smirking slightly, "I clammed up and didn't speak to them on principle; I had convinced myself that none of them could possibly understand what I was going through, and therefore, any sympathy had to have been feigned. I didn't need anyone to tell me that I could get through it or that I should share my feelings about what had happened - I only wanted to figure out what I was supposed to do next. The counselor assigned to me figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't going to talk despite his best efforts, so he eventually stopped asking… but he did give me a piece of advice about what I should do: He asked me to imagine the hardest thing I could think of doing, and then told me to go do it. He said that if I did that, it was guaranteed that my life would work out better than I could have ever imagined. So, having nothing else, I did just that. The hardest thing I could think of was saving others from experiencing the same tragedy I had. Alliance soldiers had saved me, so the military fit the bill. I signed up as soon as I was able."

Arius nodded, understanding. "You didn't stop there, though, did you?"

"No. Once I reached my goal, I moved the goalpost to the next hardest thing I could think of. Once I was in the military, I started special forces. I did search and rescue for a while. Then after that, N designation. I started leading our squad. Then after that, N7. The Skyllian Blitz happened. Then, Spectre status. Then, Saren."

"And now, here you are, saving the galaxy from the Reapers."

Shepard nodded.

She had come a long way, Arius reflected, farther than almost anybody, all starting on a simple piece of advice she had once received when she needed it most. He had collected many stories over the years, and these ones had always been among his favourites.

"Satisfied?" she asked.

Arius smiled warmly at her. "Yes. Thank you for sharing. How does your head feel?"

"Much better."

"Good. I'm going to let go now." Arius withdrew his hands from her head, and the warmth retreated with him, leaving her feeling a bit cold from its absence. The tea, however, had steadily warmed her core. She stretched her neck in a few directions to test her mobility; The pain was barely a dull ache now.

"This is definitely the most unorthodox medical treatment I've ever received, but I'm not complaining in the slightest. Thanks."

Arius nodded appreciatively. "Oh, I failed to mention,.. the reason you're probably here. Dominic contacted me. They made it off the planet, after all. He personally apologized for the evening's unfortunate turn of events. The PR has been understandably terrible, but interestingly, not as bad as I thought it would be. A number have applauded Dominic's show of strength and commitment to Eclipse's new direction. Either way, the coup failed. The villa had already cleared ahead of the party and was expendable, so they absconded when they saw the bomb."

Shepard was somewhat relieved by the news but still thought pensively. "You got my notes I sent you earlier from the networking event?" she asked him. "What was Dominic like? Get anything useful out of him?"

Arius drained the last of his mug, leaned back into his chair and brought his fingers together while he thought. He was replaying the evening conversations, trying to get a complete picture of the Eclipse leader and picking up anything he may have missed earlier.

"He's found something," Arius finally stated, "of what I'm not sure, but it has unlocked a series of breakthroughs in the fields of neuroscience and genetics. It's not organic growth; the bounds they've made are unnaturally wide. I don't know for certain, but it seems to be that the behaviour we've seen of them so far: dried-up drug traffic on Omega, kidnappings, aggressive behaviour from their troops… it's all a result of this." He got up from his chair and began the pacing he commonly practiced while reciting his thoughts.

"The vial we recovered is part of the first set of treatments they've been developing; drugs that aid in experiential uptake and overriding the mind's limits on physical capability. Fine," Arius said, waving his hand, "that's useful to mercenary companies like Eclipse, but they're developing it in-house because the broader pharmaceutical market isn't there yet - which means they have found something no one else has. I would go so far as to suggest either previously undiscovered Prothean tech… or, more likely, that of Reaper origin. Troubling. The increased aggression we've been seeing - it's a result of the treatment. I got to see the effect firsthand during a demonstration Dominic gave me, and I was in the villa when the shooting started; one of Dominic's men shot first. I looked further into the 'kidnappings' on Omega and in the slums of Illium when we first met. Those missing were mostly previous heavy users of their recreational drug pipeline; those that got neglected in the underbelly. With that much development speed, Dominic needed bodies to test its effects before giving it to his people. The plan then was three-fold: remove the drugs to clean up their image, remove the users who were dependent on the drugs, and then use them as guinea pigs. Parts are missing here, but it'll require further investigation."

Still in thought, he sat back down, then tore himself away from the task and shook his head. "I think that's enough for today. So, Eden, be honest with me, worst date of all time?" he asked, cracking a smile.

"Honestly? Except for the unplanned swim and accidental stoning, I had a good time. Not exactly how I pictured the evening playing out, but at least it still ended with a bang," she grinned, getting up from the chair. "I'm going to head off now. Thanks for… an interesting evening."

"Any time."

Shepard walked back out to the elevator and selected her cabin. Now done for the day, the fatigue hit her like a ton of bricks; every part of her body suddenly craved rest.

En route, EDI's hologram sprung to life. "Shepard, Dr. T'soni has sent you an urgent message that she would like looked at as soon as you have the time."

"Okay, thanks, EDI," Shepard responded quietly, feeling barely functional. "Remind me first thing in the morning, please."

"Understood."

After prepping herself for the end of the day, Shepard launched herself onto her bed with a full embrace and immediately sunk into a deep sleep.