Codex: :The Terminus War: Early Skirmishes
"As the last person who remembers and knows the true history behind the Terminus War, I've decided that, in the twilight of my life, there is no longer a need for secrets. So much of what I'm about to carve into history was a secret back then; secrets ranging from widely-known, to absolutely classified. But eight centuries is a long time, and I think I owe it to certain memories to tell the tale."
"It started in earnest around early 2190, or late 2189; I can't remember which, time gets so blurred that far back. But it had been over three years since the end of the Reaper War, and just under that time since Garrus Vakarian's first encounter with the Horizon Syndicate(events which will be detailed in a later entry). After years of waiting for the galaxy to settle more after the war, and having seen an increase in sightings of the group, he decided it was time to hunt down the Syndicate for answers as to their purpose."
"He proceeded to do so with a small team of trusted individuals, using Spectre authority and resources much like the late commander Shepard did.."
"Garrus said he wanted to make the galaxy a safer place for his son. For every son. For every child."
"My name is Liara T'Soni, and I'm sorry to say that his missions weren't as successful as he'd hoped they would be."
"Don't forget, I'll be around at one, be outside by then." Tali rattled off. "And be nice. To everyone. And if someone tries to bully you, you-"
"Tell them a thresher maw'll eat them if they hurt me?" Thracius guessed, beaming up at her hopefully. From upstairs, he heard Garrus bark a laugh. Tali buried her face in one hand, but Thracius could see her smiling.
"Keelah, please have mercy on your teachers, Thracius! They might not be able to handle all your ideas!" his adoptive mother shook her head. She gave a sudden start. "Oh, who fed Ragmore?"
About a month after his aunt and grandfather had visited, he'd been surprised with the delight-and responsibility-of naming a rou'tan cub. His new parents seemed convinced that having a pet would complete their little family, and so far, the past two months of training the christened Ragmore was proving to be both fun...
There was a loud crash and a series of yips from the kitchen.
And exhausting.
"I got the yipper covered." Garrus strode down the stairs, intimidating in a way Thracius had never seen him before. He was wearing full heavy armor, for today was the day he had to go back to work. Or, what his father liked to call it, 'gatecrashing criminals'. "I'll put him in his box and top off his bowls before I leave."
"Got your lunch?" his mother asked.
"Oh, you made me lunch?" his father's mandibles gave a flick of pleasure.
"No, stupid, I was talking to Thracius!"
"Awww."
"Why doesn't he get lunch?"
"Because he's probably got a hoard of snacks on his ship already. The last thing he needs is more food." The quarian poked her husband in the stomach.
"Are you calling me fat!?" he gasped.
"That just means there's more of the legend to love." she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Thracius made a face.
"Ew, gross!" he turned and ran for the door. "I'm too young for all this romance thingys!"
"Aw, well, are you too young for this!?" Thracius squealed as his adoptive father ran and scooped him up from behind. Armored talons ticked his stomach, and he laughed and yelled.
"Ah, gerroff!"
"You too old for tickling?"
"Yes, ye-es! Stop!"
"You think you're too old for tickling?"
"I'm gon-na laugh my laugh bo-x out, you dri-py gi-zzard! MOM!"
"Keelah, we're going to be late!" right on que, his mother scooped up his jacket and backpack off the table. "Garrus, car! I am not going down in history as the only late family on the first day of school in centuries on this planet!"
"By Rags, love you!" he called over his father's shoulder, still feeling the ache in his gizzard from all that laughing, and the fact he didn't know when he would see his father again. He could only take consolation in that his dad was a hero, who fought all the bad guys out there in the galaxy.
"Got your bandanna?" his father demanded as he helped him into the skycar.
"Yup!" he chirruped. His parents had an odd rule; always carry a bandanna when you go out in public. You didn't have to wear it, you just had to have one on you. There was a whole bag of bandannas in the bathroom ready for usage. "You got yours?"
His father raised his hand, showing off the patterned black fabric tied around his wrist. "Always. You do good, I'll see you in a few weeks."
They did one last hug. His parents did their gross kissy thing again, and then all too soon the skycar was off. He watched as his father turned into a tiny dot on the ground, and then lost sight of him completely. He knew it was a bit too childish; he'd known the day would come when Garrus would have to go back to doing Specter work, but he spent a few quiet minutes resisting the urge to cry.
Then the sheer terror of facing his first day of school kicked in, and he had to start trying to make himself brave again. First day of school. Dad is leaving. What could possibly go wrong?
"Mom, how many other turians go to the school?" he asked. He didn't want to be the only one there. Surely, he couldn't be the only one who went there, right?
"I don't know the numbers, but there might be a few." she shrugged. "I highly doubt you'll be the only one; Rannoch was one of the only safe havens towards the end of the war, I know that plenty of people from other species decided to stay afterwards. There'll be other turians; you'll see."
Thracius nodded worriedly, tapping his talons on his lap. He really hoped she was right. He knew Tali was really smart, but this time he really hoped she wasn't wrong.
It was a rule of Commander Shepard's mother. Consequently, he had passed it to a good portion of the crew, even the ones who thought it was ridiculous. Oh, it had been hilarious watching him getting people like Jack, Zaeed, and Wrex trying to follow the rule. When anyone new was introduced to the rule, Shepard having dropped the colored fabric into their hand, responses were usually in the realm of 'what's this rubbish?'
But eventually, even the most reluctant, most stubborn of people would begin to do as they were told... even if the got hot pink. Nobody wanted to wind up carrying hot pink. Hot pink was not only classified as 'not classy', hot pink was taboo.
If Shepard stuck you with hot pink, it meant you were gonna get shot, and it was going to hurt like hell.
That being so, by the end of the war they'll all been inducted into a reluctant habit that became tantamount to instinct. If you were leaving the ship, you took your designated bandanna, or snagged one from the bucket in the armory. It was one of those military habits, one of those odd quirks that a soldier could develop and, in some cases, spread to his fellows.
Such was the nature of what had become known to the Normandy crew as 'the bandanna rule'. It was one of those soldier habits that stuck with you, even past the war, hence why Garrus still carried a bandanna. Human fashion crazes were weird, it was generally agreed, but he secretly admitted he'd come to like the bandanna thingy. For one thing, it drew attention away from his face; he was by no means vain, but if he was sporting a weird accessory, there was more likelihood they would pay more attention to his wrist than his scars.
The basis of the bandanna rule, was that bandannas were very, very useful. They could be applied as a field tourniquet if medigel ran low, they could be used to tie things together, they could be pulled over your mouth to keep out contaminants if you were stuck without a helmet or your filters stopped working, and-for the human females-they were more durable then headbands or hair ties for keeping your hair back. Garrus usually wore his over his combat omni-tool, as a layer of discretion.
To Shepard, bandannas had been a mainstay. Garrus would never forget the moment before they dropped in the Mako for his first ground mission with the Normandy crew, when Commander Shepard, the first human Specter, walked up to him with a green bandanna tied around his bicep, and shoved a bright cobalt scrap of fabric into his talons.
"Alright, Detective Vakarian; first rule about working with me, is always carry your damn bandanna. I don't care if it makes you look girly. Carry the bandanna, or don't come ground side. Those things are lifesavers."
They had managed to somehow pass this habit on to Thracius.
As he sat in the boy's room, contemplating on passing another thing on, he couldn't help but think about how much his life had changed in the last half year. Tali had wanted to try 'an experiment in setting down'. In laying down roots. Oh, it had been successful, alright. Maybe a little too successful. He felt like something in his chest might break.
He'd only just gotten comfortable enough with them to start calling them 'mom' and 'dad', and every time he heard it, he swore, he felt more proud and fulfilled than he had when the call came in that the Crucible had worked, that the war was over.
Before Thracius... well, he'd just tell Tali he'd be back in time to give her a break from yammering on with politicians, and trying to explain metaphors to a machine race that took everything literally. The geth still had trouble with that.
Now? Now... dammit, half a year with the boy, and he was already attached. Now his head was filled with what-ifs. Like... what if he didn't come back from the next mission? What if Thracius got adopted, only for one parent to die in bullet fire? What if he didn't live long enough to see what he looked like all grown up? What if he never got to introduce Thracius to Liara, or Kasumi, or any of the Normandy crew? What if Tali was left alone, his best friend and the love of his life at the same time, to raise this little kid who loved ships and named his rou'tan Ragmore? What if six months of happy living were the only memories Thracius would ever have of him?
Garrus took a deep breath and buried his face in his talons. Damn; fatherhood's turned me into a deep thinker. For a few moments, he let himself look at all the what-ifs, and he let himself feel then, and he let himself feel afraid to die. Then, he cast aside the feelings with cold logic; if he truly loved this child, he would be stronger, not more afraid. There were threats in this galaxy, true evil, men as soulless as Reapers who would tear the boy apart and laugh if they got their claws on him, and it was he, Garrus, who had sworn an oath to protect the galaxy, and by extension Thracius, from these threats.
He would fight like an animal to make sure they never got close. But meanwhile, he was reluctant to leave his son-yes, he now had a son, oh how strange it was-to go traipsing around the galaxy with his friends, scouring for threats, combing for answers about Aria's plans, and taking everything that wasn't bolted along the way(because Kasumi tagged along frequently, and she was a complete kleptomaniac, it was easy to see why she'd gone into thievery).
Yet as reluctant as he was... he couldn't help the stupid grin that rose on his face as he heard the sound of a shuttle approaching outside. As much as he didn't want to leave, deep down, he really missed the crew. He turned the OSD around in his talons. His mother used to leave him music when she went on assignment, back before she had Solana and decided to focus on raising them both.
He set the OSD on the side table, and got to his feet, heaving a sigh as he prepared to get made fun of; there was no way the others would be able to resist, not after 'accidentally' adopting a kid. He froze as a flurry of high-pitched baying came from downstairs, and he muttered a swear; he'd forgotten to put Ragmore in his box.
"Would it kill you to shut up, Rags?" he shouted as he stomped down the stairs.
"What the hell kind of animal are you wrestling in there, Garrus!?" Ashley's muffled voice came from outside.
"The kind that I'll have to live with for the next ten years, at least!" he called back. The banter came so easily, oh how he'd missed it! He picked up Ragmore, tucked him under one arm, and hissed at him to shut up before opening the door. Ashley opened her mouth to say something, but stopped short. James just stared, as did Kasumi.
"What?" he asked.
"That." James pointed at Rags, who would look like, to most, like some tiny little beast straight out of hell... which he acted like sometimes.
"What about him?" Garrus looked down at Ragmore. He was a perfectly normal rou'tan, he didn't see anything wrong with him.
"It's a gross dog thing, Garrus. What are you doing with a gross dog thing in your house?" Ashley demanded, crossing her arms.
"Gross! He's adorable! Garrus!" Kasumi squealed, pushing her way to the front and practically snatching Ragmore out of his arms. "You were right Ashley; he is going domestic!"
"What!? Domestic!?" he was not!
"You got the kid, you got the dog," the human counted off on her fingers,"And you got your little house in the middle of the woods. face it; you're going domestic."
"We got a bad on some pirates?" he asked.
"Yup, in the traverse."
"Okay, Ash; let's go find some pirates, and I'll show you exactly how domestic I am."
Thracius took a deep breath. He tapped his talons on his desk. He shifted in his seat. The teacher, a haggard-looking quarian woman, was ignoring him until class started. He was ten minutes early; he knew it would be more... normal, if he went out and played with the other kids until the time passed, but he was too afraid of being late.
And too afraid of all the crowds of children, chattering, calling for his attention, and goodness forbid if one of them asked 'can I be your friend'! He didn't think he would know what to say! Back at the orphanage, he'd had few, if any, friends. Most of the kids there had been nasty to one another, too.
It hadn't been a happy place, and it had been so crowded, and he hated being around so many people, even people his own age. There was just something.. daunting, suffocating about crowds. And right now, the hallways were definitely crowded, and he had no desire to get trampled on.
It'd be a HORRIBLE thing to get squished my first day of school... then came the mental image of Tali driving a pancake-d Thracius home, and everything was terrible from then on out, because if he was a pancake, he couldn't eat any more dextro pancakes, because it would be cannibalism!
The door to the room opened, and a nervous-looking quarian boy stepped in, herded by what seemed to be his mother; a cranky-looking lady who looked like she'd eaten something sour, and her eyes seemed to glow just the tiniest bit red, like a monster. He could easily imagine her living in his bedroom closet...
"Ki'Rah?"she inquired sourly. The teacher looked up at her and nodded. The woman looked back at her son, and gave him a bit of a forceful shove into the room. He was skinny, paler than any quarian Thracius had ever seen, and looked just as cranky as his mother.
"Do remember to behave yourself!" the woman warned before backing out of the room. The new boy stuck his tongue out at where she'd disappeared, and, to Thracius' horror, stomped over, and took the seat next to him.
"'Do remember to behave yourself!'" he mocked in a nasal voice, quiet enough that the teacher couldn't overhear. "Bosh'tet."
Thracius looked at him, mortified. Who talks that way about their own mother!? And he used the 'B' word! His parents had a swear jar. They said at the end of the year, he could use the money himself, to buy something of his very own, unless he started to repeat what he heard.
Right now, the swear jar was kind of full.
"So, your mom put you in here, too?" the kid asked, and it took Thracius a moment to realized he was being adressed.
"Um, y-n-no. I, um, I came in here myself." he wanted to sink into the floor. "My mom dropped me off."
"Lucky. Mine thinks I'll make a friend by accident and suddenly be happy." the quarian child adopted a sneer that didn't look right on a face his age. "Ancestors forbid that ever happening."
"Oh." was all he could say. His mother doesn't sound very nice.
"Wh-what's your dad like?" he asked, trying to steer the topic away from mothers.
"Suuuuper dead. During the Reaper war." he waved his hands as if to indicate exactly how dead his father was, and Thracius felt a little sick. "Yours?"
"I'm adopted." he blurted. "I don't remember my old dad. My new one's cool, though. He's funny."
"Hmm. 'Funny'." the other child pondered. "Kal."
"Huh?"
"Name's Kal. Kal'Torin."
"I-I'm Thracius. Thracius Vakarian."
"NO WAY! Like, Garrus Vakarian? THAT Vakarian!?" the young turian flinched under the outburst as Kal practically jumped onto his desk. "You got adopted by Garrus-flipping-Vakarian!? HOW!?"
This was a problem he hadn't thought of. He'd known his parents were war heroes... but he never realized they were those kinds of heroes, the ones whose names were known by everyone.
"I-I just g-got lucky, I guess..." he didn't know what else to say, and settled for sinking into his seat. Kal sat down with a huff.
"Talk about privileged..." And that was when Thracius knew, it was going to be a very long first day of school.
And boy, was he right. When the teacher called his name for roll call, Thracius wanted nothing more than for a black hole to come and eat him, as every single eye in the room turned his way.
By lunch, every single kid in Kindergarten knew whose son he was. They were like, literally crushing each other to try and get close to him, and he couldn't eat his lunch.
During the first recess, he felt like crying. One kid called him out on this, and though he remembered his conversation with his parents earlier that morning, he had the feeling that telling them a thresher maw would eat them would only make things worse. So, he went over to the swings... where several kids promptly followed him. He'd never felt so frustrated and so desperate for privacy in his entire life.
"You think you're too good for us?" it was another kid his age. Also the son of an admiral, in the same classroom as Thracius. Rin-something. His face was long, handsome, and demanding, and it had the angriest look Thracius had ever seen on a fellow child.
"Wh-what?" he stuttered.
"You think you're too good for the rest of us, don't you? Just 'cuz you got adopted by Garrus!" Rin accused. Upset and confused, Thracius told him to drink thresher maw spit, and ran away.
During the second recess, he ran back behind the building to hide, his toy Xerias clutched close to his chest as he tried not to cry. I hate school!
"I wanna go home..." he whimpered, stroking the smooth lines of the tiny ship.
"Why? It's great here!" he jumped slightly at the sound of Kal's voice. He hadn't noticed the other kid following him.
"No, it's not!" Thracius shouted. "I hate it, nobody will leave me alone, a-and I hate crowds, and they all think I'm 'privletege-ed' or something like that, and Rin'Gerrel is a jerk, and I couldn't eat 'cuz everyone was crowding me, and they're making fun of me 'cuz I'm adopted, and-and... THE TEACHER SMELLS LIKE ARMPITS!"
Kal burst into howling laughter. "ARMPITS!"
"It's true! She came to my desk, and she smelled like armpits!" Thracius insisted, still sniffling.
"You gots it bad? While she was leaning down talk'n to you, she stuck her butt in my face!" Kal's eyes widened dramatically. "It smelled like farts!"
"What were you expecting? It's a butt." They laughed a little more, until Kal asked about his toy ship.
"It's a Xerias X10-25, the most advanced fighter in the turian military!" he told him, eyes shining.
"Looking kinda smallish." Kal scratched his head a little.
"Duh, it's just a toy! The real one's way bigger." Thracius rolled his eyes. "My Auntie Sol gave me this. She's awesome."
"You have an aunt?" the quarian's eyes widened again. "Whoa. I don't have any aunts. You got an uncle, too?"
"No. Not really. But... kinda, I guess?" Thracius drew his mandibles in a thoughtful look. "My parents have got all these pictures hung up around the house of all their friends. None of them are turians, or quarians, but mom says they're family anyway... sooo... I guess they're adopted, too, or something? Like, adopted to be brothers and sisters and whatnot, 'cuz then how else can a krogan be my uncle?"
"Your uncle's a krogan!?" Kal's eyes widened again. "Dude! You've got it made!"
"Huh?"
"That just means you got it all! I'd kill to have a krogan for an uncle!"
"Really?"
"Well, yeah, duh! They breed super fast, so I would never run out of cousins! I'd have some my age, and always some younger than me, so I could teach the younger ones how to play video games and throw rocks at pyjaks, and the older ones would teach me how to shoot stuff and hunt Thresher Maws!"
"I hope my cousins don't do that; I don't wanna meet a Thresher Maw!"
They spent the rest of recess playing pirates and corsairs and seeing who could make the best ship gun noise.
When they went back in, they spent the rest of Free Time drawing ships and talking about Ms. Smelly Butt-To-The-Face, and debating whether or not perfume might make a difference.
And at the end of the day, Thracius had chosen the sometimes-unpleasant Kal'Torin as his friend, and nobody else.
"Well, how was it?" Tali asked as he got into the skycar after waving 'bye' to Kal.
"Super horrible at first." he spread his arms to exaggerate, and she pulled him into a hug. "But Kal's my friend now. Our teacher, she's super smelly, like armpits."
His mother giggled at that, and he felt it through her chest as she let go of him, and he settled back into the seat. "Armpits, huh? Better not let her hear you say that!"
"I didn't. I won't. I know, it's kinda mean. But it's true!" he insisted.
"Just because it's true, doesn't always mean you need to say it out loud." she told him wisely as he buckled up. "Sometimes, you just have to let things be."
"So... I can't borrow some of your perfume? Kal and I were going to try spraying her, to see if it helped."
This resulted in a 'no' and a burst of laughter, and despite the originally rough day, Thracius couldn't help but feel the same way he'd felt when his adoptive mother had first touched him; like it was right, like he belonged, right here, like it was his freaking destiny to be with her and Garrus.
Like this was what 'happily ever after' felt like. And as far as 'happily ever afters' went...
He really liked this one. And there was nothing, nothing in the galaxy that could ever ruin it.
Not even His Smugness Rin'Gerrel.
I'm going to be honest, I didn't save the original version of this fic, and at this point I've started forgetting some of the things I've changed.
Spiritstrike: I'm glad an old reader actually noticed this fic was back, lol. There's not a lot of attention for it, at least compared to the other thing I'm posting for. I'm glad you're liking the changes so far!
Only maybe two chapters left for this overhaul, then I'm going to be wholly focused on my ME/Destiny thing, which despite starting as a throw away exercise for my atrophied writing muscles actually became popular, and now I'm obligated to at least finish the second installment.
Fare Thee Well!