With Peebee apprehended and dropped off in the crew's cabin to recuperate, Sara locked herself in her room.

An actual shower. Clean clothes. A quiet pocket of zero responsibility. It was a blissful twenty minutes of procrastination while all of her obligations patiently waited in the horizon for the opportunity to crush her.

She refused to talk to Liam. He was outside the door of her cabin the moment she opened it, like if he reached her first he could rationalize, apologize, demand or beg in a way that would satisfy her and not unlock furies that Sara hadn't even previously known she'd possessed. She chose to smile through him like a crazed specter and ducked beneath the arm he'd draped across the doorway.

On the bridge, Cora jumped out of the captain's chair at the sight of her and Sara did her best to ignore it. Instead, she walked directly to the pilot. "Chart a course to Prodromos," she said. "We need to drop off some unnecessary baggage."

Kallo shot a look to Cora who nodded slowly. Sara caught the other woman's eyes and added, "I'm going to the meeting room to reach out to Evfra and see about getting Jaal back. I don't want to entertain any conversation from Kosta."

"Yeah," Cora agreed.

Maybe she should have made the rounds, said her hellos and reconnected with all of the crew, but it all seemed insincere somehow. Besides, with what Cora had said and how much time had been wasted on Kadara, Sara felt like she needed to hit the ground running. So, Evfra.

"Pathfinder." It was amazing how he could remind Sara what a pain in the ass he could be with a single word. Still, he answered when she called, so that had to count for something.

"Evfra." Sara nodded her head to the image before her. "I just heard about Jaal."

The Resistance leader scoffed. "Jaal's dealings with the Roekaar are personal and if he didn't see fit to share them with you, then it's not my place." Okay, so maybe she hadn't heard everything about Jaal. Evfra continued on. "Besides, what good to me is a fish in a tree? Are you a deposed leader or someone who can actually be of use?"

"I'm always useful," Sara said. "Are you telling me you don't want me to go to Havarl and round up your best operative?"

"'Best' is a gross overstatement."

"I mean, besides me, of course."

Evfra just glowered at her in silence. Sara gave him a moment to break, and he did, sighing into his hands. "Don't push your luck, vehshaanan."

"Luck is all I've got to push," she replied. "But it helped stabilize Kadara and got me my ship and crew back. I also recall it helping you out on occasion, too."

"Fine," he groused. "But I didn't send you. It's not my place to interrupt Jaal's family matter."

There were a few delayed seconds before her omni tool pinged with the coordinates for one of Havarl's landing pads. Sara grinned. "Thanks, Evfra. I'll try to get Jaal back as tactfully as possible."

Did the Resistance leader just roll his eyes at her?

"Hey," she said. "What does 'vehshaanan' mean, anyway? My translator's coming up blank."

Evfra just laughed and cut the feed.

It was actually pretty easy to lock herself into her cabin until Kallo announced they'd reached the Pytheas System over the intercom. On Kadara with their communications severed, SAM had been willfully cut off from the ship's SAM node and now the AI was playing catch up. So Sara spent the time stretched out on her much larger, cleaner bed, while SAM did whatever it was that SAM did when it (he?) wasn't directly commenting in the back of her head.

She dozed and she might have dreamed, though it felt less like imaginings and more like unfamiliar memories. She opted not to think about it in favor of more pressing concerns. Concerns such as Jaal, certainly, and what the stretching scope of "family matters" could include, but more immediately, Liam. SAM had returned long enough to inform her that Kosta had seemingly taken note of her evasive tactics and had also locked himself in his storage closet as a final stand.

"So we're not going to handle this gracefully, I see," Sara commented as she joined Cora outside the door.

Her second didn't dignify that with a response and just rigidly crossed her arms. "I can tear the door down, but Kallo will have a fit."

"Yeah no, that's just the kind of theatrics Kosta is aiming for," Sara muttered. She okayed SAM's request to turn on the ship-wide intercom as she raised her voice for Liam's benefit. "Come on, Liam. You're making this harder on yourself."

"No! This isn't happening! This is all wrong- it's bullshit!"

Sara glanced to Cora who only shrugged and stared back at her expectantly. The door didn't move and over the echo of the intercom she could hear what sounded like labored gasps of air as Liam muttered another set of reps to himself.

"SAM," Sara sighed, sadly unsurprised. "Disengage the locks to the storage room."

With a hiss, the door slid open and sure enough, Kosta was on the ground, the back of his shirt soaked with sweat as he completed push up after push up until his face flushed pink and his arms began to shake. Cora rushed into the room to prevent being locked out again, but Sara didn't bother. "You're embarrassing yourself," she said.

"From you?" grunted Liam as the speed of his push ups increased in spite of his wobbling arms. "Take that as a compliment. You're the expert at embarrassing. Proper, professionally embarrassed even."

"Sure," Sara agreed, glancing at her omni tool. Heat signatures indicated two bodies en route to the storage room, likely hoping for front row seats to this shit show. "Since we don't have all night, I assume you've prepared an abridged version of my finer moments."

"You wish." But he stopped with the push ups. "Because it doesn't matter what I say, does it? You don't want to hear, just want to be right."

"What I want, is for you to leave with some dignity intact."

Liam hopped to his feet and swiped the sweat from his brow back into his hair. "Pretty story. Bet it will hold up fantastic when you're surrounded by nothing but users. You can't have people seeing eye to eye with you all the time, Sara, and you know it."

Sara looked to Cora. "Bradley knows about the drop off, right?"

"Yeah." Cora nodded. "It's known Initiative wide since all security and clearance codes had to be wiped due to Liam's security breach."

"Perfect," Sara replied. "He can keep his couch if he wants." As she turned around, she caught sight of Drack and Vetra- the two previously unidentified heat signatures- hovering just around the corner.

"You can't do this!" Liam protested. "I have to stay. I need to make it right- Sara!"

Sara paused and grinned at her new audience. "I don't have to do anything," she said. "Drack, you'll help Kosta off my ship, won't you?"

The krogan chuckled. "Thought you'd never ask!"

Sara continued to stroll away toward the bridge as Drack descended upon the storage room. As she walked, Vetra fell into stride beside her.

"I'm impressed you're actually dumping him," the turian murmured.

"We were never dating," Sara replied, not slowing her step. "Or did you just mean leaving him on Eos?"

Vetra snorted. "Take your pick. You're okay with Cora ordering everyone around?"

"Someone's got to and she's good at it." Sara entered the bridge and hopped into the Pathfinder's seat. Her seat. It smelled faintly of floral soap. Sara vowed to stink it up with her own scent soon enough. "You wouldn't want me overseeing supplies. How many boxes of protein bars do we need in a month? Five?"

"Not even close, but it will be substantially less with Liam gone," Vetra said. "He was the biggest eater onboard, second to Drack."

"Yeah?"

"If you're not counting Suvi, yeah." Vetra shot the science officer a smirk. "But she never touches the protein bars."

The auburn haired woman flushed. "I've never been one for nuts and you always get the ones with almonds." Statement made, she returned to her screen as if nothing had happened.

"Huh. I'll see what I can scrounge up," Vetra told her.

"You will?" Suvi took a moment to beam at the turian. "That's very kind of you."

The pilot just shook his head. "I've been telling her to just ask for weeks." He glanced at Sara. "Havarl, right?"

That snapped Sara back to attention. "Yeah." She nodded. "Yes. I'll send you the navpoints for the landing pad."

"That would be helpful," Kallo deadpanned.

"Right."

"Ryder." Vetra smirked. "Welcome back."

Finally, Sara allowed herself to relax into the seat. "Thanks."

Harvarl. Beautiful, deadly Havarl. Admittedly, it had to be slightly less volatile than before Sara activated its vault, but it would still be prudent to guard the landing pad.

She wondered how the angara would respond to humans eating glass stars.

Idle musings were preferable to any deeper considerations, especially with the inflow of data from SAM node. How long had Ark Paarchero been missing in space? How did that bode for the survivability of salarians? What did that mean for everyone else? Every single ark that didn't immediately rendezvous with the Nexus met with tragedy. They all had casualties.

How much more time could they afford elsewhere? How much reserve power did a single ark possess before it was nothing more than a floating mausoleum? SAM crunched the numbers and couldn't understand Sara's hesitance to look at them.

It was all hypothetical yammering without more information. They were on Havarl and an angaran alliance had to take priority. The big question was whether to contact the local authorities or radio Jaal directly. Sara ultimately decided on her oft traveled path of awkward over being tangled in red tape. She opened up the radio frequency on her omni tool and waited for it to connect.

"Jaal Ama Darav," Sara announced, trying not to preemptively cringe. "Did you miss me?"