It was wild to think back on how intimidating monoliths were four planets and however many months ago. With each additional monolith Sara encountered, SAM was one step closer to cracking the ancient Remnant language. Now, she could identify familiar symbols from the scrolling interface of green text and even hazard guesses at which commands would be effective even before SAM began to guide her.
By now, the Remnant bots identified her as friendly. She was one of them, or as close to one of their own as an organic lifeform could be, she supposed. That meant that aside from keeping a lookout for any other type of ambush, her companions existed entirely for emotional support. Well. Until they needed Reyes to pilot their shuttle back to the gates of the slums, of course.
"This is it," Sara announced as she pulled her arm back from the console and watched it sink into stone. The tip of the monolith opened wide and a beam of yellow light shot upward into the sky.
It was all so rote to her by now that it was refreshing to see it through new eyes. Reyes watched the entire spectacle with an open mouthed grin, any thought to his responsibility as lookout abandoned with every indignant chuckle of disbelief. In the time it took for Sara to step away, the light of this monolith joined with the first two and she saw his awe turn into uncertainty as he scrambled back away from the path of light the monoliths leveled through the Badlands with laser-like precision. If it was any other planet, this was typically the point where they'd radio the Tempest to get an aerial view of the vault and supply them with a navpoint. Sometimes, if it was near enough, they'd just hop into the nomad and plow ahead.
Instead, Sara dusted off her hands. "Perfect," she said and began to walk toward the shuttle.
She allowed Reyes to treat her and Peebee to a celebratory drink and dinner, despite it being less of a mission accomplished and feeling more akin to entering limbo. Sara behaved and accepted it with good cheer and made no mention of how he was finally repaying her for all the drinks owed.
Peebee spent most of the meal mulling over a single glass of spirits. When even Reyes's attempts at conversation petered out, they sat in an awkward lull until out of nowhere, Peebee snapped back to reality and lurched forward, hastily cramming grain rations into her mouth. She stood, excusing herself with grunts before she'd even swallowed. Sara only blinked lazily as her friend ducked back into the crowd at Tartarus to do whatever it was that Peebee did on Kadara.
"She's not normally like that," Sara offered as she sipped her drink.
"She has seemed a little on edge," Reyes said, his eyes lingering on the crowd.
She shrugged. "Girlfriend troubles."
"Really?" He laughed suddenly. "With how free spirited she looked, I never would have guessed. Someone managed to tie her down?"
"I didn't ask for the specifics." Sara smirked. "But she was seeing someone, yes."
Reyes nodded, but Peebee's earlier restlessness was apparently contagious. He was all polite smiles and intermittent drumming of his fingers along the side of the bar table. The loud music blaring from the bar's speakers coupled with the lights flashing at the dancers in cages made it difficult to get a read on him. Sara choked down her drink. "I'm not keeping you here, am I?" she asked.
"No, it's not that." In the blink of an eye, she had his full attention, again. That slow, indulgent smile made it easy to overlook the poor posture or any in the spiraling list of seemingly insignificant discrepancies. "Just if we're done with dinner, there is something I want to do."
Sara squinted at him, but the previous expression he had while staring out beyond their table had already disappeared from his face. "You're up to something," she hazarded as she set her glass aside. "Again."
"Yes." Taking her hand, Reyes tugged her to her feet and nodded up to his reserved room at the back of the bar. "But I promise you'll enjoy it."
She let him pull her along, her hip bumping into the back of a turian's chair as they went. "And with the promises, again!"
"What?" Reyes stopped abruptly, the mock offense in his voice betrayed by his wide grin. "Do I not deliver on my promises?"
Sara raised a brow. "I don't know, should I have SAM replay every 'promise' you've given me since we've met?"
The grin wavered. "Wait. How much of our time together has that AI of yours documented?"
"Too much." Her laugh dipped sharply from conversational to awkward. "A little more than I'm comfortable sharing with you, honestly."
Reyes chose to answer that with a genial chuckle. He continued to lead her up the steps and when he reached the door, he stepped aside to allow her to enter first.
Was it sensible or just a sign of how damaged she'd become that Sara had SAM scan the room for any heat signatures and other signs of an ambush before she went ahead?
The meeting room looked much the same as it had the first time she'd visited it. Just a single, large table surrounded by chairs in a windowless room. The crass music from Tartarus fell muffled as Reyes shut the door behind him.
"So what?" Sara snorted. "You were bored with the decor in your room? You needed a change of scenery?"
With a few taps to his omni tool, music began to play softly. It sounded old- older than what even her father listened to. Slow and plodding with a male vocalist singing in one of Earth's languages. English? Spanish? SAM said it was Spanish. "I neglected you on our first date," Reyes said. He held a hand out to her. "How about we fix that?"
"I didn't know you had a romantic streak." She took his hand, allowing him to pull her against him, his free arm circling her waist.
"There's a lot you don't know about me," Reyes said, his hips swaying with the music. There were no elaborate moves, no frenzied intensity like the dancers in cages just a stairwell away, but his breath caught in his throat and he swallowed as he appeared to be struggling with what words he would say. "Since leaving the Nexus, my survival has depended on secrets. I don't want any more of those between us, Ryder."
It was a lot. Warbling music aside, in that moment forehead to forehead, close enough to feel his uncertain breath on the hairs of her cheek, Reyes seemed to have genuinely meant it. But just because it was something he wanted, it didn't mean it was something he could feasibly do. Sara rested a hand on his shoulder, her thumb playing with the collar of his jacket until she worked up the courage to speak.
She stopped dancing and looked up to meet his eyes. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Reyes," she said. "You will have secrets- that's who you are. Just..."
"Just what?"
"Just..." Don't stab her in the back? Don't hurt her feelings? Secrets were okay, but not bold faced lies? It was hard to verbalize what she wanted or needed when there was such a mutable gray area that evolved as often as the situation called for it. She hadn't even clarified if they were exclusive yet and he was waiting patiently for her to pour out however many pieces of her heart that she saw fit. "Just remember why you're doing it," Sara said finally. "Don't lose sight of who you really are."
"Who I am?" As her words were slowly overtaken by the sound of the music, Reyes's shoulders slackened. He bent forward and pressed his lips against her brow. "Thank you."
Sara frowned. "For what?"
"For accepting me." With his cheek nestled against her temple, they finished their dance.
The following morning they were beginning to navigate the awkwardness of Sara's potentially permanent stay on Kadara. Reyes, understandably, had a life beyond upsetting the neighbors with the volume of their nightly antics, so once he disentangled himself from their shared bed, he politely vanished. Gratitude for the borrowed shirt aside (her legs were both simultaneously too short and thin for his trousers, but the real issue being a waist too narrow and rear too large that resulted in said trousers dropping to the floor more frequently than even they had grown accustomed to,) it was good that he disappeared. It gave Sara time to think beyond the immediate concerns of where she could procure breakfast and/or clean undergarments on Kadara.
An extended presence on Kadara could be beneficial... so long as the Initiative viewed it as her neutralizing any enmity between them and the exiles and not just her abandoning her post. Likewise, how the angarans saw it would entirely depend upon how much good will she'd maintained or lost with the Resistance. A lot of maybes and what ifs, but also not much choice presently either way.
At any rate, Sara decided there was a wisdom in securing lodging outside of Reyes's bed. As fun as that was, they'd both have to come up for air eventually, and have more conversations like the one in the back room at Tartarus. She'd like to think they could entertain one another with more than just flesh, but in the event their ambitions or personalities didn't align, it would be better to realize that without being reliant on him for a roof over her head.
Sara finger combed the tousled mess of hair on her head and was about to perform an embarrassing rendition of the Blasto III cab scene for the mirror (and SAM,) when her omni tool lit up.
"Hey-"
"Pathfinder, get your ass over here now." Of all the people to comm her, she had to admit, she wouldn't have guessed Sloane Kelly.
Sara frowned, exponentially relieved over the lack of a visual. "Not even a 'please'?"
"If you're not here in the next fifteen minutes, I will come and fetch you myself."
"All right." Sara instinctively raised her hands, despite knowing Sloane couldn't see her. "Let me put some pants on and I'll be over."
"Thank you."
"See? Manners cost nothing!" But she was crowing over dead air as Sloane had already disconnected.
Well. It didn't take a genius to realize something was amiss, so Sara hastily twisted her hair into a knot atop her head and hurried toward the lift out of the slums.
No one was there. The typical arsenal of bodyguards was nowhere. Sloane sat fidgeting, dangerously restless on her throne as Sara tiptoed in. No hello. No small talk. Not a gripe about Sara's lack of punctuality- even Kaetus was missing. She was used to the seething anger in Sloane, but something was very different about the Outcast leader. Fear, maybe? The room was empty enough for Sara to hear an insect buzzing about. "Hey..." she began. "You wanted to see me?"
"The Charlatan used my own people to beat up Kaetus." Sloane talked quickly, to keep the necessary information ahead of any emotions. "He's alive. Barely."
"I know you and Kaetus are close, I-"
"You don't know shit." And there was that characteristic anger raging to the fore. Sloane stopped herself with a sigh. "I didn't call you here for a pity party."
"Why did you call me?" Sara asked. "I'm not exactly your favorite person."
Sloane dropped her head back and blinked until she'd regained her stony expression. "The Charlatan left a note on Kaetus's body. He wants to 'settle things' between us. Meeting spot is in Draulir."
"Sounds like a trap." Somebody had to state the obvious.
"You think?" It sounded genuine and not in the flavor of Sloane's typical biting sarcasm. "I can't trust my own people, but you- you're an outsider."
"The Charlatan's had plenty of time to act." Sara began to nervously pace. "Why make a move now?"
Sloane shrugged. "I ignored the Collective for too long. Thought they were just another ragtag group of upstarts. Now they're bold. And dangerous." She paused and when she spoke again, her voice was softer. "What happened to Kaetus is on me. I've got to end this before it gets worse. You with me?"
"Yeah." Sara nodded. "I can tag along."
"Kadara's fate will be decided at this meeting." Sloane nodded back and sighed. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but hey- shit happens, right? Come on, let's get this over with."
If Sara were to hand Sloane Kelly anything, it was that once the woman set her sights on something, she didn't entertain anything else until it was resolved. The all-terrain vehicle Sloane had was smaller than the nomad, but it was more than comfortable for just the two of them. It was a strange disconnect for Sara to realize that Kelly was far more competent behind the wheel than Drack, but something about the glint in the woman's eyes made Sara feel exponentially less safe. They flew through the barren rock of the Badlands, zipping past sulfur pools with the head-spinning efficiency of a woman on a mission.
The vehicle screeched to a halt and Sloane was on the ground outside of a massive cave before Sara had unlatched her seatbelt. Maybe Sara should have taken the lead, but Sloane marched into the caves at Draulir fueled entirely by rage. If it truly was the ambush they suspected, it would seem that Sloane Kelly was determined to stick to her role in this sudden tragedy. At any rate, it certainly wasn't in Sara's best interest to go ahead of the other woman and make herself the first available target.
Collective hideout or no, Draulir was a cave. The entrance was unlit and it had no obvious markers. Despite its presentation, Sara couldn't help but imagine that deeper inside, it would open up to some kind of sophisticated compound, and perhaps it did, but they didn't get that far in.
"You look like you're waiting for someone." That accent. That drawl. SAM assured Sara that her heart did not in fact stop despite all evidence to the contrary.
"Reyes?" As her confusion announced him, Reyes Vidal stepped out from the shadows that cloaked him.
How long had he been waiting in Draulir? Indignance warred with denial as Reyes hopped from the crevice he'd been perched in high up on the rock face while SAM continued to supply Sara with the facts her brain had been avoiding, making their intimate dance last night all the more dubious. Unimportant as it was, she wanted to know if he'd used her shuttle to get there.
Oblivious to her escort's conflict of interest, Sloane bared her teeth. "I'm here for the Charlatan, not some third rate smuggler."
"They're one in the same." Sara had resigned herself to stating the obvious.
"Surprise." Reyes didn't smile.
"The angaran spy, your interest in the Roekaar murders..." Even though Sara already knew it, something about laying it all bare and itemizing it gave the illusion of cold rationality and dulled any immediate urge for tears. "Everything you've done has been to undermine Sloane's power."
He didn't deny it. "Death by a thousand cuts."
"This whole time-" There it was. She should have known she wouldn't be able to get through this without her voice cracking at least once. "How much was just to get at Sloane?"
"Not everything!" Was that supposed to be an apology? "You know who I really am."
Thankfully, Sloane interrupted. "You said you wanted to settle things," she snapped. "How?"
"A duel," Reyes said. "You and me. Right now. Winner takes Kadara Port."
That was stupid enough for Sara to overcome her shock. "You want to avoid war by shooting at each other?" she demanded.
Reyes's shrug was careless, but his eyes never left Sloane. "Two people shooting each other is better than a lot of people shooting each other."
There was no way. Sloane would want a sure thing. She'd want an entire army's worth of Outcasts to take Reyes apart piece by piece. She wouldn't just-
"I'll take those terms." Sloane Kelly nodded her head.
Sara stumbled back against the side of the dank cave as Sloane and Reyes circled one another. What in the fuck had her life turned into that this was happening? The two of them took slow, deliberate steps, Reyes smirking at Sloane's snarl, his fingers dancing agitated over his pistol still in its holster.
Sara knew Reyes enough to know it was a facade. There was no way he'd mosey lightly into a life or death shootout. The posturing had to be to throw Sloane off guard. For her part, Sloane ambled heavy-footed like a seasoned brawler and ignored his theatrics. Either way (and it could easily go either,) there was going to be a corpse and Sara was just sitting there, numbed and frozen with disbelief when she should have been doing something about it.
Just when she decided it couldn't get any worse, SAM came through the static of her mind, screaming like a bullet and disrupting her panic. They weren't alone. Someone else was tucked away in the shadows of that rock face, someone with a sniper rifle. The red bead of the crosshair was fixed on Sloane, but she was too focused on Reyes to notice.
No. There was no way. Reyes wouldn't! It had to have been a fail safe to make sure no one got hurt- because no one would otherwise get hurt in a duel to the death? Nothing was making sense! From her now customary spot flush against the wall, Sara's mouth fell open as she lost track of her breathing, drowned out by the sound of blood throbbing in her ears. More time. What she needed was more time to think. She knew Reyes. He said she knew him and he should know her enough to know that she'd never voluntarily be part of something like this, right or wrong.
...But Reyes hadn't involved her. Sloane was the one that dragged Sara into this. Reyes had said nothing. SAM was being way too logical about all of this and Sara couldn't think over the AI's helpful data when what she really needed was just a single moment to clarify that there was no way possible for someone who danced so woodenly, but kissed so sincerely to-
In the end, Reyes never touched his pistol. He didn't have to. Sara was roused from her own head long enough to flinch as the sniper did exactly what snipers were trained to do. In the acoustics of the cave, the shot sounded like it came from everywhere and it took a good minute for Sara to realize she was gripping her own ears.
Wide-eyed, Sloane's hands made it to her weapon, but lacked any strength to utilize it. She crumpled forward and collapsed at Reyes's feet. Her mouth flapped like a fish out of water and Reyes grinned as he stepped back to avoid touching her. He crouched down and pointed a finger directly at her face. "Bang."