All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

30. 1-23: Beach Episode Comes Later

A/N: Hiatus is over. Project Wingman (the game I wrote for) is released, and now I have returned. Here's an extra thick chapter. Forgive me if the writing here seems a bit out of practice by the way, I'm getting back into the groove of it, and I wanted to have a little fun.

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1-23
The Beach Episode Comes Later

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They are common in every Human colony, in every Human city with any notable population. It is a romantic notion that kids aren't allowed on the frontier, but the circumstances of families and birth are often unkind to those who are born amongst the stars.

Even Altis has one, nestled deep in its colony city: an orphanage.

The Alliance Marine that has been assigned to it is tired, dressed down, not as a soldier but as a man wearing jeans and a tee-shirt. There's no need for combat armor and rifles when taking care of over a dozen kids. He salutes her and sees Shepard as much of the galaxy does at this point: a savior. Albeit not as one of his life, but rather his sanity.

"Oh boy, when I told HQ I needed help I didn't think I'd get…" The creed of the Marines means taking on all situations with courage and strength, even when it involves taking care of orphans. The orphanage reminds Shepard as she walks in a little bit like barracks at Parris Island. Bunks are side by side, a dozen deep on each side of the room that also make up the living area, faded decorations and cutesy attempts at making the giant, harmonic room feel like a home having been in disrepair. "When we evacuated Altis during the initial planetfall these kids were just left behind…" The Marine is bed ragged, circles beneath his eyes and obviously out of his element, but he seems okay, as far as Shepard can tell. Even with a five o'clock shadow and growing hair out of regulation. The Assyrian accent he has is humbling, reminding Shepard of her time roaming the cradle of civilization.

"At east, Sergeant." She's alone, slightly tipsy after dinner with her parents, Sara Ryder, Doctor Solus, and two Spectres. It was a rather good surf and turf dinner party if anything, for everyone had the baseline of military service beneath their wings to fall back upon. In the presence of her own mother, all the trials and tribulations of the last few weeks had momentarily fallen away as she remembered she had a family of blood and bone.

She was loved.

She knew it by the look of her father's face, arms wide, taking in his daughter in a hug as her mother held her shoulder so gingerly, she might've been mistaken as porcelain.

At the end of the night, before the Spectres had left and after her parents, duty called, were away back to the Kilimanjaro, Avitus could only look to the stars, trying to find Palavan.

"I should… call my parents?" He asked aloud, unsure of everything, including himself at this moment seeing what was supposedly one of Humanity's deadliest turn into a jubilant young woman.

"I'm half-Turian, you know." Tela remarks, picking up that thing he might feel in his chest. "So uh, might be a little weird, if I understand Turian familial relations well enough.

"Oh so is that a thing with all of you?" Shepard turns to Avitus, and even that perturbs him. He literally stood before the Galaxy and told her to her face she was wrong about Saren. He expected more malice from her.

"Huh?" They're standing on the harbor of Altis, seeing the shuttle take the elder Shepards off and away into space, and it's understood that they have places to be as well. Though Shepard can't help but chat.

"I've got a Turian on my crew."

Avitus shakes his head. "Oh yeah. Castis's son… Firebrand, that one. He was Spectre material."

Shepard tilts her head at him inquisitively. "Hm? How do you know?"

"My…" Avitus pauses again, looking to the distant star cluster that held the citadel. Only among Spectres is he willing to speak the words he does now. He traces his blue markings on his face, almost like a delta which bisects both his eyes, lines meeting at his forehead. "My husband is a C-Sec chief."

Tela throughout dinner maintained a rather cold attitude, but even she warmed up in the end when pressed by the two elder Shepards about her aversion to spaghetti they were eating.

She warms now as her usually hardened face looks at Avitus with a certain surprise. "Avitus?"

The Turian Spectre shakes his head immediately regretting it. "It's recent. We flipped a coin to even start talking about it. I don't know, we just wanted something that wasn't so… We wanted formality."

Shepard, happy, feeling normal, it's no wonder she thinks deeper to that as Avitus looks out to waves. Doctor Solus is looking out across toward the great alight structure of the Solace, the light pollution from it alone coloring the dusk sky purple. He looks there with great intrigue, and, surprisingly, it silences him.

"Avitus, does having someone you love make this job harder?" She asks quietly against the beat of the waves caressing the docks.

There it is. Shepard's many famous questions, brought forward, brought to bear on a Spectre.

It's oddly deep, and, to any bystander, the four of them standing by the railing of the docks would've seen them as nothing more than a group of friends hanging out as the sun goes down. Save for the Doctor Solus technically, they're all young, if not young souls. And yet they have each lived lifetimes.

He nods slowly, eyes closed, saying what he tells himself: "He understands what I do."

And what do they do?

Assassination. Political intrigue. Warfare and the trials of morality and mortality which define history.

Shepard chooses something else:

She chooses to go to an orphanage the morning after. She sleeps in a hotel that night, converted by the Alliance as temporary barracks. She sees some of Hitman, some of the Normandy's crew. Joker is by the seaside pool with a mimosa in his hand and more than willing to just sleep beneath stars and ships, however Chakwas is more than indignant with him to cart him to his room. It is good that she is bothered more by Joker to notice that Shepard might not be looking her best.

Amid soft linen and a proper shower, Shepard thinks of her future.

"Hey! Kids! We've got a special visitor today!" The Sergeant sounds more excited than those civilians at actual meet and greets with her. The children, they come from out of the woodworks, the shadows, out of their beds and tables. Youngest five, oldest, maybe a teen. The youngest crowd around the oldest. They're in hand-me-downs, in older clothes, bearing sports teams winning championships they never did or those worn out by people systems away. Black and brown, white and pale, boy and girl, Shepard has seen too many of these groups to not have them all blend together.

One of them, a girl, holds onto a plush doll and Shepard does a double take: It's that of an N7 soldier, the red burning into onyx armor.

It's at least twenty kids, come forward in the room and approaching Shepard as, in one of the great tragedies of her life, recognize her.

"You're Commander Shepard!" A young boy yells, finger out at her as she looks over her shoulder.

"Huh? Where?" By the time she jokingly tries to find someone else, looking back at the kids, they rush her at her feet. They smell like stagnant water, like each other, the oldest one: a blonde teenage girl with her arms crossed and a ponytail, as if she was also working there, simply stands back and feels the reprieve same as the Sergeant.

Commander Shepard: the hero of the Alliance. The knight in shining armor. She saved the day, so it was natural there were comics about her, that she voiced PSAs and cartoons of herself telling people to be good. She was a star of the Alliance, and for that, she was loved by the kids.

"Hey! Easy there easy there!" The Sergeant seems frightened that the children might be biting at her ankles, but Shepard shakes her head at him.

"Hey, go get some lunch. I can take care of them for a bit."

The Sergeant seems unbelieving, mouth open, but no resistance comes out. This was Commander Shepard herself telling him to go take a break, who was he to argue? Shepard didn't notice when he slipped out however as the kids started pelting her with questions. So many bright eyes, chipped teeth, hope born in breath as the kids surrounded her, but were afraid to jump that final distance.

She wore simply her ship fatigues, not a true combat uniform. She looked as casual as she could on short notice, even with her strong arms born she was approachable.

"Commander Shepard! Commander Shepard!" They all seemed to start with each their own sentences. "What are you doing here? Is it true you have a giant flaming sword you use to kill space worms? What is it like being on a ship? How fast is it? What's food like on the Normandy? Can we see the Normandy?!"

The barrage her with questions, and a lesser person might've avoided them all and plastered with platitude. Though she doesn't. She answers each one. She attends to each child. She pays attention to each of them because someone, at least for today, while she's here, has to.

I'm visiting you!

Yeah! Want to see it? (She flashes her omni-blade shortly after and all the kids go nuts.)

It's pretty fun! Especially if you have a lot of friends on the ship!

Faster than light!

It's not that good… but there's a lot!

Oh the Normandy's in the garage right now. Maybe next time?

The questions go on, and eventually they reach across and grab her hands and wrists, and they show her the home they have made in this space. They show her their circumstances, how they ended up there and for how long (for some, too long, a childhood wasted), and who they're waiting for. Paintings and toys they've created themselves, games and rituals and stories. They tell Shepard their names, mostly first names only, and Shepard imparts them to her heart:

Daniella

Jay

Micky

Omar

Gisella

Fan

Bao

Kali

Mohammed

Kris

Amina

Milorad

Barna

Laura

Sulejman

Piotr

Kseniya

Jana

Osman

Nicos

The list in her head is hundreds long, and she holds onto their names as if it were her own. She has to remember that. If the Protheans and Reapers and Covenant engulf her mind whole, she hopes that she remembers all those forgotten children remain with her, for no one else will. These kids were literally left behind when the Covenant came, they very much remind her as she sits on a chair too small for her and they describe seeing Covenant up close. The image of seeing the youngest one, a Bengali girl abandoned in Altis's port a year ago, huddling with the rest of the orphans nothing but a kitchen knife to protect herself as an Elite looks down on them all, it fills Shepard with a rage that finds so comforting within herself.

These kids deserved better than to be abandoned. She knows this as true in her heart so deeply because of the alternative, the failure, of society to care for the lost like them:

Of the many pirates and space raiders she's killed, across all species and races, she knows many of them were without love, without parents, without a good life to start with. For how many bullets and soldiers she can send at them to keep the right side of civilization safe, she knows better she's only fighting the symptoms. She's better than that, she feels it so deep in her heart that she knows every option she has ever made, every life she has ever saved, might've not needed to happen if someone had told the evil doer, the bad man, the cold-blooded mercenary, that someone loved them.

"I'm glad you're here."

"You matter to me, no matter what you do."

"I was lost without you."

"I'm proud of you."

"I love you."

These are the words that Shepard holds as gospel, the words that she has to believe can save this galaxy. As childish as they might be, as optimistic and perhaps delusional as it might sound, she has to believe that the galaxy can be saved in this way, and not through violence or coercion. Not through Spectres or soldiers. It is a galaxy she has to believe in one day. She has to believe it, because otherwise someone like Mai will appear again one day, and this time it'll be on the wrong side.

She's always known Mai to be an orphan, and for that she's felt for her greatly. What would Mai have been like if she had parents that loved her? What would Mai have been like without Cerberus?

Questions in Shepard's head, and they hit so deep, so personal with her, that there is a reason she is here today.

A reporter named Khalisah al-Jilani scored an interview with her one day, ambushing her during her early days with Marine QRF after Elysium when her legend was just beginning and the fame that came with it. She was a pushy reporter, tabloids and clickbait being her bread and butter, but there was serious purpose behind it. There was someone asking her questions to the very core of her:

"Tell me, Lieutenant Shepard," Khalisah wanted to end the interview, taken in a vehicle pool at an Alliance FOB, not unlike the one on Altis, "Why do you do the things you do?"

It was the first time Shepard had ever been asked that, but she answered so fast, so natural, even she was surprised as she gently took her hand and shook it, the hand not occupied touching her elbow gently. "For the kids."

"Have they been treating you well?" Shepard flips through a picture book as the kids try to organize an impromptu tea party for her arrival. She insists not to bother, but they insist as well. Who was she to not keep them company? "The Alliance that is?"

The oldest, Daniella, she's the only one brave enough to handle a tea kettle as she pours into plastic cups for all the kids and they make games by holding out their pinkies all fancy like. She looks at Shepard with tired eyes and Shepard sees a brave woman, assuming a role of parent to the parentless, even if she herself was without the care due to her by life. She nods slowly. "Sergeant Izhiman tries, he lets us do our own thing, which is nice. He gets us food too. And shampoo and stuff. I think… I think he fights with his commander a lot."

In her mental checklist, of all the favors asked of her by Admirals and Politicians of the galaxy, they fall asides as she makes sure the next time she's at the Alliance FOB to demand these kids are provided for.

"He's funny!" Bao says in broken speech befit a six-year-old as he comments. "He scared of us!"

Shepard can only laugh at that as Daniella pours green tea into her own cup. "Maybe, maybe he is. Taking care of children is certainly a momentous task. Let alone twenty."

But for Commander Shepard, it's no issue at all.

It's no issue for her to talk about all the times she drives with the Mako and catches sick air, and all the kids pretend to fly like the Mako does sometimes.

It's no issue for her to take a look at a leak in the bathroom that no one else can get to and are afraid to bring up to Sergeant Izhiman because he seems already swamped with work.

It's no issue for her to make a list of what the children need, and to make a note to herself to, next time she's at a high society function, start imparting ideas of adoption amongst those who are able to take care of kids (or at least hire people to do so). Even a distant parent of means is better than no parent at all.

It's no issue for her to tell them this:

"I grew up without parents!" She proudly declares at the children beam because, they can't believe it, they share something with the Commander Shepard. "Yep! They were on starships while I was left on Earth! And do you know what happened to me?"

"What?!" The kids yell up at her, eager to know.

She flexes herself as a few kids touch her arm and pectorals. She drops her voice purposefully. "I became strong! And cool!" She lifts several of the kids up in her grasp off the ground and they all laugh and scream and make the sound that kids do when rough housing for fun. "You're gonna be cool too one day! Just watch!"

No one is able to raise Shepard that day, not Sara Ryder, not her crew, not Admiral Hackett, or anyone who had the privilege of ordering her. No one is able to stop her as she makes all the kids walk in a line down the street to the nearest working mess hall, manned by the Citadel in a former supermarket, and gives them a mini field trip full of foreign food and foreign people. For many it's their first-time meeting aliens, and even the busy bodies dealing with the Covenant are able to see the joy of entertaining Human children as they ask so many questions it would make Dr. Solus pale in comparison.

With Commander Shepard vouching no one minds when they pester an Elcor wanting to ride on its back (the Elcor eventually allows them to), or for the Asari to use their Biotics to play catch with them as Shepard relaxes in a world she knows.

With Commander Shepard there, the kids are allowed to be kids one day as she talks to the Citadel liaison to the Council themselves and mentions that, maybe, just maybe, Spectres could do more stuff for the kids. The Salarian scoffs at that as if thinking the Spectre talking to him is kidding, but Shepard's delighted and content face flares a moment in seriousness, and he immediately begins drafting a report on why the children are the future of Spectre public relations.

That day Shepard takes a day for herself, and finds her inner peace to the next sunset.

Cradled between two larger buildings, the orphanage is almost always dark, but she sits on the curb with all the kids that evening as the sun goes down and as the kids start to realize the day is almost over, start to frown and become upset, sticking closer to Shepard she can feel their warmth almost threaten to burn her out. She quickly squashes such sadness though, turning to all of them, looking at all of their faces: "I'm here for a bit! I can come visit again soon!"

And they all cheer, and when Sergeant Izhiman returns finding Shepard tucking them all into bed, he is surprised. "I've never seen them all tuckered out like this! They usually don't have much to do." He whispers to her as they meet again at the mouth of that room, the sound of it soft breathing from a chorus of kids who have had a good day.

She nods. "I know, it's a shame. Maybe teach them how to do Dungeons and Dragons? Tabletop games? Activities and hobbies they can really invest themselves into." She stops, pauses, hands at her hips and reminding herself she is an officer. "Thank you, Sergeant, for taking care of them. I know it's not glamorous, but it's what's right."

"Oh.. uh, of course, Commander." The Sergeant is surprised, this isn't what he signed up for, and it's not what he knows he's good at. He's a Marine after all, but Shepard has to recognize that, in her own way, she wishes their positions were switched. "Oh, hey there Jana."

A small Caribbean girl, braids in her hair that Shepard did herself, holding that N7 doll so closely. First it was her, slowly coming out of bed, even as Shepard just finished tucking them all in, but soon it was some, and then all in their PJs, wrapped in blankets not meant for comfort, but utility. Not the soft and welcoming ones they all deserved.

They're like ghosts, shadows, as they look so tired, and so beaten down. They can't help it, looking at Shepard. Jana can't help but ask the same question that they all have asked those that would come to that orphanage:

"Can you take me with you, Commander Shepard?"

She wishes she could. She wishes she could take all the abandoned children on every world and make a paradise for them all. She wishes that for all that she has done, and will do, to the galaxy, she hopes she can save the children at least.

This beautiful girl asks Shepard to see the stars, and all Shepard can do is kneel and give her a hug, so tight, the rest of the group piles in out of envy. Which is good, because Shepard is fighting back tears, and a mosh pit is a good enough cover.

---

They know better than to use people against her this time to test. Instead it's those hovering, tripod turrets. To many in the Admiralty, it's the same story as they witnessed her in the first hours she had been there: what the next step in Humanity, warriors, and combat itself looked like.

The way concrete shatters is the way dust falls; it's in the creation of its cracks that all fail upon each other that Mai sees as she, for not the first time in her life, punches through a wall of building, a bunker prefab set up for her sake as she is told to do one thing:

Show them what they can do.

She sees the particles of dust in the slowest motion she had ever known, but not only does she them, she sees through them. She sees the staggered line behind cover that the turrets are set up and the "hostage" (a hologram of a Human tied up on the floor) that surrounds them. Before gravity even kicks in for the chunks of wall, she very much going through it at that very second, her hands clench around a section. She thinks she is faster than the sound of it all, for she registers no sound, as she steps into that bunker and jumps over the hostage. Turrets surround her, and she sees their barrel turn to her mid-flight. She's always known how much mass she can throw around though so her jump is purposeful as she rams into a standing turret and sends it to the ground. As she's on her stomach she has imprinted the positions of the others, two more, in her mind. Automatically her hands go to her two knives as she swipes them out and stands up. Her arms are already coiled, springing out as they send the knives right into the turrets barrel and she brings her rifle up.

The only reason why she went through the wall anyway was to get away from a swarm of turrets coming at her from behind, and she needed cover. She made some.

Her arm locks, ready for recoil as she looks at the hole, the shape of her, become host to those tri-legged turrets.

Blip, blap, bam. Mechanical pieces fly, and she doesn't feel any recoil, or the heat of it in her palm, as a dozen go down and she is left alone with the hostage.

Logic tells her to move forward, to clear the hole, make sure that this little scenario the Admiralty had put together for them is done cleanly, however nothing is ever easy.

As she moves past the hologram, it looking up at her like a videogame character, she clears the immediate pathway, kicking asides debris. She hears the ruffle of clothing, the sound of a gun's trigger being touched by a finger's pad.

She snaps around and all those watching swear they hear air snap, and the gunshot, at the same time Mai puts a bullet into the hostage.

"Jesus Christ." That's all Admiral Nguyen can say as she sees, with her own eyes from the observation post inside of the Savannah containment dome, what a Spartan can do. Researchers who had only heard of Mai from the first contact team now bear eyes down at her as she has made an impossible scenario in a kill house into a cake walk.

Mai hears a whistle, not over comms, but in her own head.

It's her new partner. Yet another one given to her by circumstance: Cash.

"You're one fine goat rodeo, you know that?" He rattles in her head impressed like.

Mai finally vents her DMR as the hologram of the traitorous hostage fizzles out, and the adrenaline washes out of her to be replaced by the cold numbness that everyone else feels. She is not one to be tested, but this is a better vent for her than to take it out on the Alliance entirely. The Covenant is there, and she will still, someday, kill them all.

The first few times Mai tries to simply think responses to Cash, however her connection with him isn't that deep. "You operate with Spartans before?" She asks.

"Negatory."

"I see."

"Yeah but we seem to work well together. I reckon that's good on both our parts."

She doesn't respond, but Cash doesn't quite mind. He's seen worse basket cases. The Savannah wasn't his first posting. Far from it.

The Alliance comes in as if she is a wild animal and give her space to remove herself from this makeshift arena, technicians come to pick up the bits and pieces of a Spartan brought to trial. Scientists and analysts wave their omnis up and down her, and it's a blur that she is comfortable with. The ONI techs who tester on her in her later career as a Spartan felt the same. In the shadow of a UNSC ship, with a UNSC AI in her head, Mai, for a moment as she sits on a diagnostics bench with analysts and scientists speaking in languages beyond her, she can pretend that she never left the war.

She's back on Reach, fighting off the Covenant, killing them all. Though that presupposes something she realizes, and it keeps her in her own head as she sits there like a statue:

It would've meant she would've never known JD.

It twists something in her. It's not a knife, it's not a bullet, but it makes her feel.

Unfortunately for her, someone else is also inside her head. "Hey, little lady, what's on your mind." She shifts her head in recognition of Cash's question. "MJOLNIR reads me your chemistry at a moment's notice. I figure as a good AI I let you know your hormones just spiked a little."

Mai gets up off her bench before anyone is done, and no one stops her as their voices rise and never form. She finds a corner, stands in it, and talks to the wall. Before she begins however she raises her omni and searches for something on the net:

ASMR Earth River 24/7 w/ wildlife and faeries

It runs, and Cash pegs what she's doing. Just in case of any bugs that might be tracking them as the sound of running water goes. She begins:

"I work alone. I don't like having someone with me."

Cash pauses before answering, not for his sake, but hers. He can't be too fast. "Well, I can be not someone, if you'd like."

How she would've liked to do the same somedays. "No. Not enough. I don't want you in my head."

"…Would you rather me off on my lonesome in some new-fangled Alliance lab?" She doesn't say anything, head looking over her shoulder as scientists draw straws to be the one that asks her what she's doing. "Look. Noble 6," She doesn't know what to feel as she is referred to by her last codename. She chooses nothing. "It is clear to me that you are making decisions and having prerogatives that don't exactly line up with the Alliance."

"…Yes." She admits, words like stone.

"Now my opinion is derived from logic put in me by a UNSC, and I am still loyal to them, as true as gold in them hills." He pauses again. "Though I know, more than any other AI 'cept for one fine lookin' lass made in the image of the devil herself, you were also programmed, and that programming ain't too different than mine. I ain't saying this because I'm literally in your cortex, but I know how you feel, Spartan, more than you might think."

Tali speaks of sleepover stories meant to scare children at night sometimes. In her stories, the demons are all artificial, and they speak like them.

To Tali, Cash would be nothing more than the Devil themself. The fear of artificial intelligence is not unfounded, and certainly understandable, but for Mai, Cash is just another AI. A tool that speaks back, and yet, is Human all the same.

She believes him. "I'd rather work with you than without. Especially now. What's a cowboy with no ride, after all?"

"More than just a ride… What do you know, specifically of me, Cash?" She's speaking to a wall but she's inside her own head, and oddly she's more comfortable with this than she would admit. It's easy to talk to something of the UNSC.

He's fast to respond. "Well, I'll explain it right and simple then, straight, from what I can grab. I was given your bio in preparation for Operation Uppercut, along with the other Nobles of course… Same stuff Carter was given. That's what I, Cash, know. Masterson on the other hand…"

"What?" Mai says aloud, perhaps too loud, however Cash is pushing along before she can catch him.

"Spartan, you were used as a test platform for a whole buncha things. Ackerson loaned you out, not that you minded, to Reach for a bunch for things like weapons testing, armor, the usual stuff. You were the filter for the programs that went up to the IIs." Cash is reading out the what of her. "Biggest things were, of course, the Sabre Program because you're actually a pretty good pilot, which is surprising, and of course you were the initial test subject for the SPARTAN neural interface in 2550."

They assured her it was a safe procedure, derived from all the implants done on every UNSC member from there to the Outer Colonies, and, orders were orders after all, she went underneath the knife on Reach and came out with a hunk of metal tunneling into her head. She hadn't noticed it much at all in those proceeding years.

"Not much changed between your interface and the one they just installed on Spartan 117, he got his in a few days before Uppercut, actually… I guess the only real substantive thing is that you're sporting a kinda universal slot. Apparently, the plan was to expand the interface to other things that you could stick in your head, however skunkworks terminated it after tolerances with things other than AIs were, uh, let's just say as reliable as rain in the desert."

"Hm." Mai ground out. "What do you mean, of Masterson?"

"Respectfully. I'll tell you later. Ain't nothin' bad I promise."

"Might not be a later with me." She ground, but Masterson has no sense of fear. Not from her. Not with his personality, his origins, or his programming. Mai can feel the foot get put down and it is a feeling that is unfamiliar to her:

"Look, little lady, I as per my last tasking from UNSC High Command, I serve at the pleasure of the UNSC Savannah and its command staff, most namely its captain, of which you are provisionally. Along with that the only UNSC command structure left to be able to be contacted by me is, of course you, Lieutenant Gul, and Private Durante."

She sniffles behind her helmet. "You're more than able to work outside those parameters, Cash."

"Perhaps, but it has to make sense to me. It has to be logical, and it's logical now that I trust you, Spartan. It's what I'm made to do. I trust you. It's what I'm made to do. Do you trust me?"

She misses talking to JD. It's only been a few hours, he's been given leave and was to meet up with the rest of the Normandy crew on the surface, but his presence is distinctly missing to her. It's a feeling she's not comfortable with overall: wanting someone present, lone wolf as she is, and it cuts at her from two angles. As Cash asks her, she is suddenly cognitive of who she trusts in this world.

She trusts JD.

"It's not you I'm worried about." She admits, eyes on her back.

"The Alliance?"

For a flash of a moment she sees Cash gesturing with his figure over his shoulder, moving the poncho over his arms. It's strange, having someone inside her head like this. It's the feeling of cold air in her nose and clarity beyond the longest of rests. The mental images of her mind are a little more heightened too, and there is a little corner carved out for Cash.

"The Alliance has to be worthy for us to give up what we know. That is what they're looking for." She says.

Cash had a suspicion; he would do the same in their shoes. He knows that he himself has become both a liability, and a bounty. He wouldn't lie if asked that he felt safe with Spartan mental-hideaway hole. "And what are those parameters for them to be worthy, Spartan?"

Her answer was as easy as breath, as easy as blinking, as easy as killing. "Killing Covenant."

This conversation is one to continue later. They heard the footsteps before her motion tracker could pick up the formation of yellow blips behind her:

Admiral Hackett is there again, before her with an echelon of researchers and the other admirals. The best of the Alliance shrink before her, and she is impressed with Hackett for not faltering in the face of her.

A hardened face that has seen war is a rare sight to see amongst the Alliance as a whole, but she finds one in Hackett, and she renders salute.

"Admiral." She didn't need to say anything, Cash picks up after a microsecond. She did it for his sake, identifying who this man was in rank.

"Chief Gul. Thank you for doing these tests for us on such a short notice." He renders a salute as well, as she stands straight. She doesn't respond save for a single nod. "I'm sure you have many questions as to what the future entails for you, especially in the short term, however, let's hit this one step at a time… Is the AI with you?"

In Cash's matrix which he calls a head, a brain, is what the Covenant wanted more than anything in that thirty-year long war: Force deployment, weapons research, Earth.

Surprisingly on the other side of the coin, so did the Systems Alliance. It is not in a malicious way he can tell, not that he can surmise anyway, though he supposes as he "stands" before Admiral Hackett that a lot of the Alliance Admiralty is influenced by the fact that he is inside Mai's head now. In the practical sense it meant that Mai stood before the Admiralty and spoke with Cash's voice. There is tangible surprise in the uninitiated as Mai becomes a different person:

"CSH 7000-1, Cash, present." He rattles out through Mai's helmet. "I'll tell ya' Admiral, it's nice to get some change of scenery. Now I usually have the names of everyone on roster at my disposal, but, well, I'm kinda quarantined off at the moment, so who do I have the fine pleasure of meeting?"

Synthesized voice, emotional inflections, presumptions and assumptions rolled out into words as per Human customs. Cash greeting Admiral Hackett is all the confirmation that the Admiralty behind Hackett need.

The Human brain has a significant part of itself dedicated to recognizing other Humans, and here, the wires and twisted and turned, standing before two beings not quite Human.

To be in the presence of Mai was like to be in the presence of the very manifestation of shadow. Her armor wasn't particularly dark, even with its wolf grey paint, and even the onyx visor she had, which sucked light in, wasn't to blame for what it felt like to stand before her: She was the tallest figure anyone there had ever seen as Human. A monster in the shape of a man. She sucked the breath out of those looking at her as if she were one of the old titans of Greece. She was sculpted from death itself, and not in the archaic, demonic, design. She was made lethal in a terrifying way.

The power to kill was in her hand like no one else in history ever had, and it didn't make sense.

It made no sense to anyone there why she instilled such fear in them. Krogan Battlemasters and Matriarchs surely could've matched Mai, and killed more than she ever did, and yet… perhaps it was more personal because they told themselves she was Human.

"My name is Admiral Hackett… Cash?"

"Cash." Cash repeats. Mai simply stares straight downward at those that have come to her, she flicking off the sounds from her omni. "Pleasure's all mine."

There is dangerous novelty in it, washing over the Alliance.

AI: Asimov's dreams culminating, as Humanity came into the galaxy, into a nightmare revealed from the very people which flew above Altis right at this very second. What would the Quarians do if they found out a fully functional, fledged, fleshed out AI had been on the surface? Nothing short of a Jihad. Maybe it's their cooperation with the Covenant, maybe it's their vision that Rannoch might be taken back, maybe it's the state of the galaxy with Saren on the loose summoning machine gods and the Geth themselves, but there is fire in the Quarians that match that of faith. The Covenant is a union of faith, with zealots and high speakers and prophets, all the same.

Before them all, the demons that stole heaven itself:

Mai clicks the AI slot at the back of her head, his chip coming out and into his palm as he stood before the Admiralty.

He is proof of one dangerous truth, one that perhaps the Quarians would not hear: that there is a world where AI can be accepted, normal.

And yet… on the flipside, the normal which Cash came from created who held him now.

"If you're going to recruit me to this whole thing you've got going, I'll stop you right there partner, cause I got something to say." His holographic avatar holds his arms akimbo at his hips before going to his hat, held in his hands. "I know what I am, but you treat me like a man. Talk to me like one. Not too many sunsets ago, I was one, don't you forget that."

"I… We… We had no illusions on what you are." Hackett began. "We know you're important. As important as Chief Gul and Chief Durante."

"Eh, I reckon a little more." Cash had chuckled, arms out, evidently self-impressed with himself.

Mai had privately wondered why the AI of the UNSC, tools, had always been so colorful. At least Deep Winter's disposition served as a contrast against Ambrose and Mendez.

Hackett could only smirk as he gestured for the two to follow them. "Well, how about we take a walk, you two? I'll let you know what we told Chief Durante."

---

Jonathan-Jameson Durante, at eight years old, looks like an eight-year-old. Baby fat still puffs out his cheeks as his hair finally comes into, at times, a fluffy, curly, sticky morass that came with juice boxes and unsupervised eating. He's got a kid-sized flannel with cargo shorts, and little charm off one of the belt loops held there by a clip: It's that of dog, a cute white and brown beagle from a book series about a strong search and rescue dog that saves its friends from the weather, a bad time, and occasionally evil pixies from Mars.

He doesn't need that image when he's looking through the shipping catalogue, sitting on a teacher's desk afterhours in a Cirsium City private school. The room is for kids of course, kids JD's age. Colorful and padded and not to sharp or grating. It's made in love and the image of home. The windows are put over by a digital curtain, instead of the Cirsium City skyline, a grey, boring view of steel and space beyond the glass bubble that encompassed them all, it is instead that of a sunny prairie. The lighting is warm, and the desks and chairs are wood with carpeted floors. Children's pictures, both of and made, are along the wall, especially near the birthday calendar.

JD isn't a student in this classroom, so there is no golden star for where his should be.

Though that's okay, for his birthday is remembered in the heart of the teacher.

On the wooden carved sign neatly put on the corner of the table, a name is spelled out by amber oak letters: Mrs. Durante. Said woman is behind that desk now, grading tests.

She doesn't look a day over 35, fit and formed over the physical needs of being a teacher of young children (lots of chasing and cleaning up after them). Light olive skin that her son inherited shines brightly, dressed in a floral pantsuit. She has oval glasses, admittedly worn for the look of it as opposed to any actual need. With dark hair the color of chocolate, tied into a ponytail, she is loved by her students very well.

JD knows of his classmates who, at times, accidentally call their own teacher Mom, but he, nor any of the students that use that particular classroom, have that problem.

Only as an adult he has ever said that word: Mom.

Here, as he is at eight years old after a school day, sits in comfortable silence as befit a classroom for deaf children.

JD's mother was a teacher of deaf children.

The young JD feels a tap at his right elbow and he looks up to his mom, head tilted, she locks eyes as he had known her to do all his life now. Her right hand moves from her red pen, index and middle finger forming a V before touching just below her eye.

At eight he's not as fluent, or as good, as he would be getting older, but to him its as natural as speaking. It always has been.

JD nods, sliding over the shipping catalogue from Earth to in front of her as she puts asides today's math test. His index finger remains on the section displaying pets to ship.

Mrs. Durante isn't as silent as her condition might infer. She's deaf, not mute, and she does make a sound with her mouth. "Oh." She's never heard a word in her life, but she can guess, and smaller examples are still easily emulated. It's a habit that has to be formed, feeling the vibrations in her jaw, making noise.

JD's finger lands on a mousy little Border Collie, bred small specifically for space habitat living.

Mrs. Durante brings her hand to her mouth, covering it as she looks at the cute thing and JD, hope in his eyes, believe this is the time it happens. It hurts her as a mother to say no, shaking her head, as she brings her right hand into a fist, thumb slightly out, swiping forward of her chin as she swipes the wrist across the fist made with her other hand. Both her hands go flat and almost layer on top of each other, the top hand making circles.

JD has tried many times since he was five years old to find a dog, and he keeps trying still. It was a dream unfulfilled by the time he left home as a Marine, however in that moment, it hurts him. JD is a lonely child inherently; an only child with a father working long hours, and a mother who teaches. Mrs. Durante knows, but it is the consequence of many things that makes her say no to her son, even when his birthday is soon.

The war against the Covenant has finally reached, in effect, the inner colonies. Rationing is being considered, and maintaining pets would of course be an issue. There is fear in her that knows that maybe, they won't be able to have a dog, not because they don't have space in their apartment, but because the UNSC is losing the war. Not that young JD would know anything about the Covenant.

It would be a long time until he becomes intimately acquainted.

JD is dejected, his shoulders slouching. He's not a loud child, and for a moment as he grew up, his parents feared that he himself was mute by socialization. He made no noise, no pouting or even crying after he had become a child and not a baby, but it was simply his preference.

She clicks with her tongue, drawing his attention as her finger touches his chin, eye to eye.

JD looks like his mother, more than his father. It's the Venice in her and not the Dublin from his father that flourishes as he became a young man. Not to say JD does not inherit anything from his father: Most of all his own body language, however a 26-year-old JD misses his Mom every time he recognizes her eyes in the reflection of his own helmet.

He's on the verge of some internal sadness, but Mrs. Durante has a remedy. She's been thinking about it, communicating with another parent of a deaf child she teaches.

Her hand moves from his chin to his lips, going flat, vertically, beginning to flap and flick at his mouth, tickling. He is annoyed at first, cringing, but the tickling continues and soon enough laughter comes up as he tries to bat his mother away. It's enough to cheer him up from another unsuccessful attempt to get a dog, but he doesn't leave empty handed.

Her flapping hand remains, left hand touching his elbow as he pays attention intently.

Her right hand's index finger presses upon her temple before going down, thumb and pinky out before transferring to again that flapping motion. She repeats it three times and JD takes it in, emulating himself as, after he does, circles his own index fingers around themselves before one into the opposite palm and then going flat, facing up toward his mother.

JD's mother spells it out, cleanly, and as he realizes what that sign means, her own palms go flat, facing up, going up and down as if weighing something before repeating that new sign.

Her face is expressive, it has to be, and her laugh lines are well worn and used to making smiles and expressions, and if JD wore his helmet less, the same might've been said to him. This woman was the person who raised him, who taught him, who loved him. Loved him enough to make sure that for his ninth birthday he got a goldfish.

---

JD thinks of fishes as he stares up at a muted sky through cheap sunglasses. The weather is the most pleasant he's felt in a long time: warm and inviting, but not overly so. His shirt buttons are popped and Liara is more than aware that he is a veteran soldier based on his definition. Of course, she notices JD's tone and fit, but she also notices the tone of about twenty or so other special operators in beach ware. Even Garrus. If her mind were not of ancient gods and the end of life and civilization, she might've been blushing over it.

"Is this what you Humans consider relaxation?" The Turian is so unsure of himself as he tries to emulate the shock trooper as the three of them lay and try to relax. He is emulating JD so much that he is wearing about the same type of Human clothes with the same buttons popped open. Yes, Garrus answers, wearing Human clothing isn't unusual for Turians that spend enough time away from Turians.

On the far side of Altis, an island away basically, facing away from the city and the busy chaos that is a three-way, extra-galactic, inter-galactic, political clusterfuck, JD is unbothered. As long as he doesn't turn around or listening to whatever low dull, reverb that might be nearby that denotes ships, he is okay.

He is so okay that he has bought a stupid touristy floral shirt, popped that open, put on sunglasses, and is currently working through his fifth cigarette of the hour.

It's the Mako which he sunbathes on. Not any Mako, but the Normandy's Mako. Brought down to Earth temporarily: officially, refit of the Normandy needs it off. Unofficially the Normandy crew was more than happy to take the IFV off of their hands and use it to beach bum.

JD is more than able to do so, but Garrus and Liara flank him on his left and right, similarly trying to emulate how JD lies so unbothered.

JD grunts in affirmative. Liara, at least, sitting on the lower slope of the Mako in a borrowed pair of Normandy duty uniforms, sleeves rolled up, understands, though she does so as awkwardly as Garrus in her own way.

How is he the most relaxed one there?

"Teeth on a Mako?" Ashley speaks up as she and a good part of the Normandy's Hitmen crowd around the nose of it either bumming it as well or looking at said nose. "It's too on the nose."

"Yeah well you don't think we're a little too on the nose?" Harris still has his Typhoon LMG, using it more as a cane as he has his impressive bulk shown off in beach going attire. Most of them are: not in swimsuits or bathing trunks, but just down to their skinnies. Some are like JD, spending the time to go into the city and buy whatever stock they have of similarly festive or appropriate attire. Harris tries to make his point as he motions to his own gun and the teeth and eyes painted on its barrel.

"What about a jellyfish?" Bannon asks. She has a paint bucket ready to go. "This little thing bounces like one when Shep drives it, that we know."

Yes, all of them distinctly do know that it bounces as much as Garrus, mechanical savior that he is, tries to harden the shocks and shift centers of gravity so that they can avoid getting shell shock from transportation-based concussions.

For a moment Liara considers saying something on how it might be insulting to any Hanar they come across, but she keeps her mouth closed, instead just grimacing, looking over to JD lazily sloped against the turret, eyes to the sky.

She's an empath. Whether by the conception of being an Asari and the particular neurochemical interactions she has with those around her, or her actual emotional understandings of those around her, she is able to sense in some measure the very aura of people. It's not unique among Asari, nor particularly secret, however she can feel it like intuition during a Prothean dig. She feels something pique at her when she looks at JD.

Sunglasses hide his eyes as his chest rises, up and down, slowly. She has seen him asleep many times in the well deck when she comes down to PT, but she has never been this close. It humors her to think of him as some sort of wild animal with her observations, but she can't help to think it true as she sees JD seeming to on the beach with an appropriate uniform for it.

There's something off to him. He appears to be relaxed, he's trying at least, but there is a tensity to him that keep Liara transfixed.

There's only one other person that maintains that peculiarity of being noteworthy in Liara's notice, and that is Shepard herself.

Hitman is comfortable with her, most because she looks good in her given PTs no doubt, but the alternative is of course one of those missing.

It's a beach party in all but name, booze and bare bods with sand and water and warmth, all surrounding a Mako.

Perhaps everyone is not on their guard because Mai isn't there.

Even Wrex, he had his own money. He could afford his own shore leave time.

JD is silent. It is almost loud in the fact that she is that Liara notices.

Mai isn't there, and JD is quiet. Those are two facts she rolls over her head, listening to ocean waves and distant engines. One engine sound hums ever closer and it comes up right against the Mako, and she turns over.

Like an extended family the crew of the Normandy stakes their claim beneath umbrellas and on towels, eating away at actual cooked food and other pleasures.

Delivery bots from Altis have been coming out around the clock for them, and, seeing as Altis is ground zero of… everything, they have the beach to themselves.

Another delivery bot has arrived.

"Delivery for Garrus… Vakarian." The VI in the machine generates his name as Hitman generally waves the bot over to the Mako. It levitates over, kicking up some sand to the displeasure of the group, but it settles in front of the three sunbathers on it. "Please sign."

Garrus leans forward, flaring his omni as the bot swings a package from its enlarged compartments out, a delightful chime ringing out at its ocular flares. "Amazon and Delkani Incorporated thank you for using-"

"Skip yeah yeah I'll fill out the satisfaction survey." Garrus is more than willing to hurry it along as he seizes the disposable packaging of something about the size of a small pack. "Didn't know Delkani delivered out into Human space."

Liara knows the answer, and she feels embarrassed that she is some sort of walking encyclopedia sometimes. "Amazon. A Human company. Very similar to Delkani. They have a branch on Thessia working with our own package services."

JD barely has time to remember some of the very first insurgency that the UEG had to contend with on that vaguely familiar name before Garrus is tapping his shoulder once. The feel of Garrus's talons on his bare skin is something that might've been a step too far, personally, but he is warmed up to Garrus considerably. They are friends, right and simple, and JD would be far happy to take as much right and simple things in his life. He turns over and one of the many items delivered is-

He's not quite sure if it's racist, but to him all Turians and Asari look alike. That is what it is with him, but he know's that probably not true and he does his best to try and find ways to tell them apart. The facial markings are one, very helpful thing. Garrus's mouth curves a little more upward than other Turians he's noticed, and he is, perhaps a little more lithe than his contemporaries.

What does definitely set him apart is his visor. It's a targeting HUD, more advanced than his own in the ODST helmet. It's the only thing, according to Garrus, that he's calibrated enough that he doesn't need to toil over like he does the Mako or his guns. Whether it be refinement of the post-processing on its 100x zoom, how well it picks up his vitals and those around him, or even the little music speaker he keeps in it loaded, it's a part of Garrus to the point where it almost occupies the same space as Mai's armor.

He's wearing it to the beach, even now, so its surprises JD to see Garrus holding out a very similar item in front of him. "I've caught you staring more than once."

It's a joke, and he says it in his coy way, but out from Garrus extends in his palm a visor. It's shaped for a more Human head, its metal wrapping around much like the one on Garrus's fringe, and it doesn't bear the wear marks that his does, however even to JD's untrained eye he knows it's the same thing he uses. JD tilts his head, posing a question as he slowly takes it from his hand. It's paper light, despite its construction. The benefits of future materials no doubt.

"I'm a fan of this custom shop, back on Palaven, that makes these visors. Of course, this is just a base model, not like mine, and its made for Humans, but I can help you calibrate it." JD licks his lips, looking it over. Of all the things that he has expected aliens to do to him, give him a gift was at the very bottom. It reads on his face, and Liara sees the question. "Oh, it's when you join C-Sec. Doing your beats in full combat armor isn't really recommended, but having visors are harmless enough."

The future. The future sprawls out in front of JD like a river he's on, and it is too late for him to do anything about the waterfall he hears further down. It sinks him, it widens his eyes with the realization he can look to a future longer than a few days, that he might live longer than his parents, than most ODSTs and Spartans. It rattles him, but thankfully, Garrus takes it as shock. "Don't uh, let it all out at once. I'm allowed to do something nice for a friend."

He feels it over in his hands long enough. His sunglasses are off, and he slips it behind his left ear as he finds a calibration aligner float like a ghostly apparition in his vision. The buzz of his omni on a bracelet he wears goes off, and it is syncing to him.

He's lived with HUDs almost his entire life now, and this new one, it's just another in a long line of HUDs he supposes that he'll keep using, but this one is special.

The smoke and the tobacco, they're thick on his lips and tongue but they fade out. They fade out because he speaks. "Thank you, Garrus." He reaches out, and his hand lays on Garrus's forearm for a moment in a squeeze, and Turian flesh feels more like bark and jerky than he cares to progress before he pulls back.

Hours before, the Admiralty had told him the role he had to play, and the roles he had to assume. He was supposed to be racist toward Garrus, toward aliens. How easy would it have been to say nothing he thinks, but nothing is ever as straight and easy as an orbital drop he's found out.

Garrus turns away and Liara knows he blushes as he tries to play it off. "I'm going back to C-Sec after this as well, so, hey, partners?"

JD doesn't need to say anything to answer in return.

Liara feels it. She feels it clear as this sunny, nice day. She feels it in the same way the Covenant are just behind them all and the whole morass that they represent. All of them are looking forward for the sunny day at the beach, because of the Reapers, Saren, and all of that is imposed on them by Shepard. That is their tension that they do away with on this beach, right now. JD however is different. JD is looking away from a different evil.

Liara is well acquainted with the idea in her work, so she sees it over JD now like a cloud: his only cure after all this time was to simply close his eyes and accept oblivion.

"JD…" She speaks to him. "May I take a walk with you?"

---

"Don't mind me I'm used to third wheeling. I prefer third wheeling over being the only alien in the middle of a bunch of Human Marines. This is relaxing, you know, walking along this beach?"

Sometimes JD does understand why people talk like Garrus does: it's to take his mind off things, not that he particularly likes the sound of his own rambling.

"Oh Garrus," Liara's voice is like a soft breath over those very waves. "Your company is never unwanted."

JD is half concentrated on learning his new visor, half concentrated on the feeling of the sand between his toes. It's not often he can feel using his feet, so he is spoiled now with warm sands as they walk away from Hitman. Ashley has started putting together people to paint up the Mako while they're gone, while the rest are starting to finally hit that fun part of day drinking. JD prefers his archaic vice. Slowly, he will make this one cigarette last as long as he needs to.

"Sorry," he breaths words like smoke. "I'm not a big talker. These last few weeks on the Normandy have been a lot."

Liara forces a breath through her nose in amusement. "I quite understand. I've been here too."

JD and her they share a small smile. He knows better than to not just create a line between civilians and him as an actual soldier. When the Covenant came there was no difference. "Right."

Garrus stares out at the blue, sky and ocean touching at the horizon and blurring together like a painting. It honestly is a very nice day, but he can't help but grimace. "Turians and water don't mix, do you know that Durante?"

"Mm. Could guess." JD says in between the smoke, and they pause at a formation of rocks that lead out into the water like a path, finding one that is touched by water enough so it's not blisteringly hot. "I'm not the best swimmer either." He admits. Last time he took a dip in Altis he had to use Mai as his buoy. Before that? Swimming wasn't his strong suit, and he barely passed the ODST baseline.

"Salt gets up in my fringes, and a freshener really can't get all that gunk out. That I don't know how to swim myself. I think. I don't know don't bipedals like ourselves just have an instinct about it?" Garrus goes on, rubbing the back of his fringe to make a point. "There's that one classical Human music album I see at the Human souvenir shop a lot, a Human baby, fresh as the day it was born, just swimming."

Garrus goes into the survival techniques of babies across many species, because it's just something he knows after a certain amount of time in C-Sec, but it gives JD and Liara time to lock eyes as they look to each other: JD is sitting upon a rock, waist high, as Liara pauses and looks him up in a way that he can only know as observing.

Everything about her is blue, he tells himself, even if it is a rather simple observation much in the same way he has messy brown hair and hazelnut eyes. Though there's more to it; it's not a depressive aura she holds to herself, but its heavy, moody, even if she holds a smile upon herself. Innocence. It's innocence in her eye. It's a type of innocence he has to rediscover.

It's the air of her attractiveness that hits him like a brick wall that reminds him that Asari do have that certain biological influence across the galaxy. It does serve to remind him that this is the first time he's felt such a thing stir in him in a long time, though it's gone in a flash as words come out of her pretty face.

"You are… tainted, JD." Liara, there is trepidation in her. "It is similar to Shepard and yet…"

Garrus stops his rambling immediately, and JD reaffirms the gaze he matches with her.

"Liara?" JD asks once aloud, head tilted. He knows now why she wanted to bring him out here alone.

She nods, looking down at the ground as if sorting out her thoughts one last time before continuing. "It is you and Chief Gul both. There is a taint to both of you that is similar to Shepard's… and yet, different."

JD blinks a few times, pausing, taking a drag of his cigarette. He has been described as cool before, so he channels that, keeping cool, finding an answer. "We were awfully close to Shepard when that beacon went off. Maybe it was something resonant."

The Admiralty did just remind him to keep his cover story.

Then again, if his cover story was consistently kept by him, he wouldn't be out here with them two.

Liara shakes her head. "Perhaps, but this feels deeper. With Shepard, what the Beacon did to her was applied over her, like a veil, a blanket, covering her being. With you, it feels… permeated. A part of you." She breaths out, tired of speaking in such abstractions. "I'm a scientist. I know better than to speak of such nebulous ideas like aura and the air of a person, but for us Asari, it is a subconscious intuition built into our biology."

A gut feeling. JD nodded with her. He trusted his gut, and it saved his life many times. Why should he doubt hers? "Is this leading somewhere, Liara?" JD stops her, and Garrus, feeling the particular tension, instead looks out to the crystal blue waters, facing the wind head on.

"Do you know of the Asari melding, JD?"

Garrus turns over head cocked as JD processes what Liara just asked, she herself is standing politely, her own head tilted awaiting an answer. Of course, he knew what it was just from Hitman; it was, in impolite terms, a mindfuck in the best way. The biological joining or connecting of two minds by way an Asari technique. It was also, according to the many communique from the Admiralty, something that he would not ever consent to for reasons that JD was more than able to pick up.

"Are there mysteries in me, Liara?" JD asks.

Liara nods once, softly. "To me, it appears so, perhaps related to the Reapers… Perhaps additional information imparted from Mai to you, or remaining in Mai due to the beacon. Maybe the beacon affected you differently." The nightmares which JD has are his own. He knows this. He is, in his dreams, in his drop pod again in the middle of a war that never ended until he came to this place. He has no reckoning which Shepard has. "In any case, I think it would be best for the mission if this process had a preliminary run before, I approach Shepard… Just in case."

It tears at him in a confusing swirl. He likes his women straight to the point, and there's something inside of him that makes him liable to agree with anything Liara asks, but he knows that's just something about her as he runs a hand down his face and thinks of another woman in his life:

There are no beaches on Cascade, so he and Dawn never had a beach day like this.

"Shame, isn't it?" She says in JD's head. "You woulda killed to see me in a two piece right?"

If he could speak back to her he would only scoff and say he knows what she looks like out of one.

He wonders if she's okay, back in their universe, at that very second, and the sobering thought of what might be happening to her breaks any of Liara's implicit influence off of him.

"I would not be comfortable with this. I'm sorry."

Liara's eyes track down once, nodding to herself. "I assure you, JD, I have no machinations on peering into your history, anything that might be classified given who you are."

JD hurts at that implication, hands raised. "I trust you… but… I simply can't allow that."

He wouldn't wish his history upon an enemy… Or at least, anyone not the Covenant.

"I understand… but I make no promises I wouldn't ask Shepard to order you otherwise."

There is no great outburst from JD, no dismissal, or anger. Only a nod.

Garrus laughs. "Spirits T'Soni. You really know how to talk to a guy."

All this while, she speaks angelically, but as Garrus calls her out she cringes to myself. "Oh. Uh… Forgive me if I am being overly forward. I… Going from a solitary dig site to a band of Human marines is odd for me."

"Don't worry. I respect that." It's what his father told JD straight up. "My… girlfriend, she's a straight shooter too."

Liara seemed pleased, relieved, hearing that, so she lightens herself, a breath in her throat like the ocean air. "So who is this girlfriend of yours anyway, JD? It seems to everyone on the Normandy you and Mai are an item."

JD blushes at that fact, but to imagine Mai as normal enough to even entertain a relationship, let alone one with him, it disregards so much about her. He doesn't, he cannot, think of her in those terms: as a woman.

No. She is Human, yes, he tells himself every day, every time he's with her.

Though she remains a Spartan.

So he thinks of another woman:

Dawn. "She's the closest thing to walking sunlight."

Poetry and prose has never been his forte but thinking about her has always made it easy for him to turn into a writer. He takes off the visor, running it over with his hands.

Dawn Harris was a strong woman, befit of her job as managing cargo loads on Cascade's cargo elevator. She wore a similar visor device to keep track of everything coming in and out of the dock, and it was a chance meeting on Cascade's space elevator during his own shore leave that made JD liable to love her.

Liara and Garrus are taken aback by the soft language, untypical for JD, at least for them. He spoke like a Marine, despite everything, but reserved and cautious in his words. Here he had been thinking about sun dresses and grassy fields and blue skies and there was a dreamy smile on him that betrayed everything that he had lived through.

He remembers something: grabbed from his locker when they were told the Normandy was going to refit for a little bit.

He pulls it out of the back pocket of his shorts a small little metal case, wallet sized, is taken out. Waterproof, bang-proof, just in case. He flips it open like a card holder, and a neatly folded picture he takes a look at. There's a warm, small smile that forms on his lips as he takes a private moment to look at it, looking up at Garrus after it and handing it to him.

He wants to say careful, but he trusts Garrus as the Turian takes it into his talons, softer than he has ever handled any woman or child. Liara leans over his shoulder, and she sees what Garrus does:

A blonde woman, a candid, silhouetted by blue sky and sunlight along a golden field, in a sundress. She's normatively cute, paler than JD, but she wears her wear on her hands, clasped behind her back as she looks to the sky and…

Whenever JD looks to that picture taken in the Magellan Valley, two and a half years ago, there is no war.

Does he love her? Or does he love being with her? Is it actual romantic love or is it just reprieve from something as horrible as a war with an alien race?

Questions that pass by JD's mind as the cold rolls over as two friends of his look at a woman he looked forward to. A thought: He would never see her again. A worser thought: The Covenant back in their galaxy would kill her, eventually. The worst: The war with the Covenant had been lost, and they were helpless to stop it.

JD looks right, back toward the colony, toward distant Seraphs and Citadel craft and the busy galaxy that he has been thrown into.

"She's very beautiful JD." Liara comments, bringing her hands up to the tendril like growths at the back of her own head. "If I had hair, I would quite like to have what she does."

"You seen her recently?"

JD finally assumes the character that is his normal.

Whatever his answers are to questions that torment him about Dawn, none will ever matter to this galaxy. He only wishes that she would live a good life.

"We had a fight, before I left." This much is true as he looks up the sky. It's a misconception that perfectly blue and clear skies are the best for drops. Cloudy skies allow for more cover. "She didn't want me to go. She said she could pull a few strings with her father that could get me papers of discharge."

The classic story of soldiers and their partners back home. Garrus knows it well as his face hardens up.

"I said a few things in return… We haven't talked since. I miss her."

She was always indecisive about joining the service, about serving Mankind in their great struggle against the Covenant. She would talk herself up, and JD would tell her that war was horrible, and that the fact he had lived for this long was a mistake. After so much back and forth JD's points were eventually turned on himself, and given a chance to leave, he hadn't. In the same way that she wanted to be an ODST like himself, but could never commit, standing outside the recruitment office.

As Liara stares at the bridge of Dawn's nose and sees that it's very much not unlike her own, she sees something else.

It's that same taint on JD.

Her eyes go wide. This picture carries the coldness he does, and she doesn't know what to make of it in her head.

"You going to make it up to her?"

"I don't know if I can. It's uh… We got bigger things to worry about, don't we?" Garrus, more than he should, knows what JD speaks of. This mission is many things: it's crucial, it's for the safety of the galaxy, it's probably the most important thing any of them will ever do, but also, it's a distraction.

It's a distraction to the issues that make them as the shadow of the Reapers hang over all of them.

It's cheating in a way, and yet it is what the galaxy needs of them.

Bigger things indeed as Liara feels the cold again, and she must remember, the next time she sees Shepard, to ask about JD and Mai.

The two soldiers catch the hum of an Alliance Kodiak approaching before Liara does, swiveling around to a few meters away as sand is kicked up and the three of them look away to shield. It's the tell-tale weight of a woman dropping onto sand that clues them all into who has arrived as the Kodiak, as fast as it has arrived, goes off.

The crater of her landing is large enough for her to actually take a step out of, and she does, and for the first time in a long time those present see Mai Gul without her armor.

Her hair is tied back into a pony tail, and she is even more out of place given the fact she is in an Alliance duty uniform on a sunny beach. It is not often she presents as a Human, outside of her armor, and it silences the three of them as she approaches with a plain duffle bag over one arm, eyes fixated on them all as she approaches silently.

They are all frozen: JD holding a visor that looks much like Garrus, and Garrus holding a picture of Dawn, with Liara suddenly taken in with a cold that sweeps over her like a shadow of a black hole.

She says nothing, but she stares as Garrus hands Dawn's picture back to JD and he pockets it.

Moments pass, a lifetime of silence, before JD finally speaks:

"Mai."

"JD." She responds back with his name, saying it only as she could: like a gust, held back.

It's a strange thing, seeing Garrus pretty much twinning with JD with their floral shirts and their visors, and she knows that she will have to ask what's up, and why they are the way they are at this very moment, but JD is always forthcoming with her and she gives her the orders Shepard has given them all.

It's the hardest thing ever asked of her. For every mission she was ever sent on and perhaps every mission she is yet to go on, she knows that this will tear at her greatly:

"Shore leave." JD says, and all Mai can do is draw a long breath out of her nose as her eyes go blank.

---

Two weeks go by in a blur.

---

"Commander," Pressly salutes her, in his dress blues, as Shepard finds herself a temporary office in the Aqua Sola building, the tallest tower of all of Altis, and asks for a room, specifically, without windows. She gets a cubicle like many of the Alliance offices there, and she keeps her nose down as she tries to pass the time by doing the work expected of her as an officer. Even when she is a Spectre, hunting down Saren, she still has her position in the Alliance to fill out reports, make commendations and recommendations, and fill out the office work that she might've been able to avoid on the Normandy. She looks up from her VI accountant display. She's actually really good with money apparently, based on how payments are going from her Spectre account into the Normandy's gear. "Effective immediately, I am tendering my official transfer request."

The dull work of bureaucracy has its shocks as Pressly stands there as she sits like any office worker. "Oh my… Pressly? What's wrong?"

Pressly shakes his midaged head once. "Nothing, Commander, I just believe that I am not what you need as an XO. The Normandy is not a regular arrangement and Lieutenant Alenko can easily acclimate to my duties better, just as you did with Captain Anderson."

"This isn't because of your concerns about me, is it?" Shepard asks earnestly, standing, trying to avoid the low walls separating cubicles and the gaze beyond of the Solace and the Covenant. "I assure you, your actions were what I would've done, had I been in your place."

Pressly smiles dimly, closing his eyes as he holds the physical papers in his hands. "I appreciate that Commander, and I am glad I have had the experience of serving beneath you and the Normandy, however I'm not what you need. I'm an old man with old habits."

Shepard never likes it, to hear people speak low of themselves, especially when it's not true, so she reaches out, touching one of his elbows. "You're a good sailor, Pressly, one of the best. If it's your judgement that you would request a transfer, I can only support you."

It is mercy which Pressly feels as Shepard takes the papers in his hands.

He feels like he has been spared as Shepard motions him to the seat across from her desk, pulling up ships and posts she would gladly reccomend Pressly to.

---

"I'm fine! I'm serious!" Ashley slams her mug down as JD sits next to her at a dive bar near the hotel the Normandy's crew has unanimously, mostly, taken to. Wrex is missing in the city but Kaiden, now the Normandy's XO for both Marine and Shipboard activities, assures them that he is fine.

When Hitman comes into that bar, they clear it out save for themselves, and they make themselves the bar tenders and patrons. No one dares correct them. JD sips on his vodka and coke as he looks at Ashley disapprovingly. "That's not the best, and you know that."

"Every Geth I put in the ground is what my team on Eden Prime deserves. Hitman has told me right: We're here for a reason… Have you ever lost a squad before?" He's lost squads, platoons, battalions, ships, planets before. All he does is nod. "What have you done then? How do you deal with it?" She's angry, she's got her hair down, and JD has seen her before in ODSTs like him, who have survived drops and campaigns.

"I remember." Is what he says as he lets that night continue into a haze.

---

It's not an ambush, not an attack, but it's moonlit and cold and they are all sprayed with water as three bodies splash into the beach's tide as it rains down. Sand is clumpy and gritty and Hitman is covered with it as two, then five, then ten at a time try to take Mai down on the beach with their bare hands.

The only one not fighting is Doc as he reserves his strength to drag Hitmen back, despite themselves, making sure they don't break anything permanent.

It was a final idea put forward by Emerson on behalf of Hitman: give us this fight, and we'll leave you, mostly, be.

Hitman craved the fight they saw with Wrex, that feeling that they could've done better.

They didn't.

Mai feels a tooth get lodged into her elbow and stuck there, ripped from the swipe she did against Harris, his large body hitting the sand with a thud, leaving an impression of his body that kicks up its own blast of sand against those who have collapsed before her and those who are trying to get up.

She wipes the tooth away with a swipe of her hand as Bannon and Emerson try to pounce of her, but she palms both of them before they can land on her, sending them to the ground as Emerson's legs get grabbed and he is tossed meters into the water by Mai.

Someone breaks a piece of driftwood against her back, and she balls a fist, throwing it back as she feels it break into a shoulder of an offending Hitman. The scream is covered by rain and wash as below her feet, the bodies of men and women writhe in pain as Mai's blue eyes burn in the dark.

She is a wolf in the dark.

Hitman tries their best to crawl to her, their hands are at her legs and thighs trying to claw up, but she is unmoving like a stone, looking down on them all, as she thinks the only reason she is not breaking their offending appendages is because shore leave doesn't last forever.

The only thing that lasts forever is the battle in her soul, alone.

She howls, and there is not a pain on her that indicates she has taken down a platoon of special forces. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and as the echoes go on, no one answers, and Hitman as a whole collapse silently.

---

Chakwas silently removes the syringe from the chemo-stimulant induction vein on her suit, and Tali breaths out relieved as Shepard and Garrus look on at her side in the Alliance FOB. The Quarian has returned, the only child of the Flotilla to answer to someone else now as the times change.

"I don't like needles." Tali squirms, moving her arm which she had just taken the Marine strength vitamin and booster concoctions. "Hoohhhh keelah. That hits… something, in me." Her voice is vibrating as she feels the sensation of her body try to take on a lot of new supplements.

Shepard crosses her arms, not hiding her frown as the Tali before her is not the Tali she saved from the Citadel.

Her suit alone is not the same: The fabric of it is deeper in violet, with swirls representing the cosmic wind written into it, a honey-comb pattern having replaced the synthetic skin of it where fabric isn't. Her hood is of the same material, buttoned at her collar. Her shoulders however, are covered entirely by a fabric covering, the same swirling designs on it. It's almost a top overcoat, almost a poncho, rimmed with metallic strips that accommodate what those on the outside cannot see:

"This was my mother's utility cloak." She explained when she first got back from the Flotilla to Shepard on Altis. "She was an engineer on our scout ships before…"

Shepard tells her she doesn't need to explain as instead she is focused on the rest of her new suit. In a hard-plastic on her hip, it's a holster meant specifically for shotguns, with a sidearm holster on her left pelvis for a cross draw. At her boot: a knife.

"With you Shepard, I know in my bones that I will be able to get to Rannoch first." She says after Chakwas speaks medical jargon that she hopes Tali will listen to. Her body isn't exactly conditioned for a Marine's supplement as prescribed to the Flotilla's own forces, but she has requested the regiment anyway. "I still want to help you stop Saren and his Geth."

"Tali…" Shepard drags on, she doesn't know what to say for once in her life. This is a child she is letting go to war with her.

"You saved my life, Shepard. You have my loyalty."

Garrus stirs besides Shepard, just being in the area to catch her on an off day on this leave. He hates tension, so he has made it a part of himself to be able to cut it, or, at least, try. "Hey Doctor Chakwas, I don't suppose you have any super Turian drugs for me, right? You know one day Chief Gul might come after me and uh, I'd like as many advantages as I can."

Tali giggles, Garrus uncomfortably shrinks as Chakwas rolls her eyes, and all Shepard can do is stand there as she is seeing a soldier become made.

---

Mordin is busy as ever in his medical office, so even he has to open his windows once and a while to get in fresh air, but when he does that day, he looks across the Altis street only to see, of all things, a Krogan.

Urdnot Wrex leans against the wall of a building across the way, and stares at Mordin in mid-day.

Mordin has long since tucked away fear. He's not afraid to die, he's not afraid of pain. All important conditions to fighting Krogan as a Salarian. He feels nothing but pause as Wrex looks across the street at him, only to be gone when a Covenant Shadow transport slowly crosses the street between them, and he is gone by the time it passes.

There is a city, being built in the shadow of the Solace. The Covenant's platforms, held together by walkways sprawl out like the great ancient fishing villas of Sanghelios from a different era. It is like a web, being built out into the water from the Solace. Repulsors are set up along with gravity-lifts jury rigged to create a nominally tide-free zone around the Solace where the water is almost completely still, and, from afar, as the Engineers and the Grunts work on these constructions, they appear to walk on water.

Perhaps most central, in the sunlight of Altis, is something fashioned in the shape of the ancient history of the San'Shyuum. It is a half-circular arrangement, about the size of a stadium, seats oriented toward a center platform, it itself hosting a large, circular table. Sun shades flutter in the wind, bending light itself, and instead of the Covenant's typical deep hues and purples, the color here is of white steel and silver metal. It is almost blinding in the light, but it evokes the color of the ocean, of paradise.

Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay would have no point of reference to understand, fully that this was a departure from the methodology of High Charity, but every Covenant needs it Council, and she is before one now.

The term Council however rubs shoulders, and indeed times have changed, their circumstances. There is a new term for the main hierarchy of the Covenant now in that galaxy, and it is a term that is translated best in the Human tongue:

The Round Table.

Covenant Councilors sit in the winged seating arrangements for the first time in the first congregation of the Round Table of the Covenant, and on that Round Table are the new Lords, helmed by the High Prophet of Destiny.

The Lords of the Round Table are unsurprising: Half are of the Solace's former command staff, Sangheili mostly, with choice representation from the Jiralhanae clans, along with representatives from the other species of the Covenant. The other half is of the Covenant's main leader race: The San'Shyuum. New prophets have been coronated, new positions made, and understandings brought to bear.

Destiny speaks to all of the Covenant for one final time prior to this congregation of their new Round Table: "We may be split off from what we know as the greater Covenant, but given what has been done to us, and the great factors that have divided us from the Great Journey as we knew it, it is with solemn notice that I decree that, unless by way of divine miracle which we cannot force, we are the Covenant now."

The way has been closed off, war pushed aside, bodies shift, a Great Journey delayed. It is a fate by which the Covenant must abide.

Interestingly enough Covenant communication technology and the standard quantum telecommunication interfaces are similar enough that there is little difficulty in the holographic image of Tonbay stood on the Round Table, before the Lords of the Round Table.

"You have to see that even we Covenant, must rely on those outside of our favor." So said the High Prophet of Truth as, the final point of this congregation, a communication with the Flotilla, was underway.

Tonbay tilted her head at Admiral Koris, he was the one who pressed the issue: "I understand that it would be best for us to continue preparing for the reclamation of Rannoch, I more than anyone understand that time is on our side, however is it really best to set our pace to that of a Human Spectre?"

Admiral Koris of the Quarian Admiralty had always been lukewarm with outright conflict with the Geth, and, nowadays, there had been more and more stacked against him in avoiding the final crusade in his lifetime. No, to Koris, and indeed the galaxy, the final battle that would take organic fleets beyond the Perseus Veil seemed no more than hours away, day by day. That was the fever pitch that was amassing on Altis as scout ships and groups were sent to spitting distance of the Perseus Veil and keeping the rest of the Flotilla aware of Geth ships, either being intercepted, or having broken out into the Attican.

Every day Quarian Marines would engage Geth pickets in space and on land, and the Council had, for the first time, allowed them to do so.

All this because of the backing of a new galactic power.

Destiny bobbed his head once, the ivy crown sprouting its greens. "I have met Commander Shepard, I have learned of her from the Alliance. If you know who she is, it is clear as the stars that she will create an opportunity for us. My military lords affirm as such." Destiny looked over to the Elites of the table, and they all concurred. "We have no such insight beyond the rest of this Galaxy, and although we may very well be ready to throw ourselves into the Veil and reclaim the shared homeworld of your people, and the Elites, we can afford to wait."

Admiral Gerrel on the other hand had been displeased with the same sentiment, on waiting for this one individual on a mission, but in the opposite direction: "Respectfully, we've seen what your troops can do, High Prophet, the expertise you have provided us and your upgrades you've passed through our engineers will blindside the Geth! We cannot afford to wait. Our scouting ships drift near Omega even now, and the Geth might be observing their changes."

First it had been the little things: The shield improvements, thruster refinements, 5% efficiency boosts across the board, which was a remarkable thing given the myriad of ship types in the fleet. Small notices such as Engineers peering into Mass Effect drives, ship systems, and immediately squashing bugs and mistakes made by ship builders no longer alive or who never cared. Nothing that the Quarians couldn't have done themselves over time, but there had to have been something given to them in light of the relationship between Quarians and the Covenant.

Then came the promise of troops, of manpower, of training and equipment. The Migrant Fleet had its Marines, had its military, but not an actual army able to take land, hold land, perform conquest. Marines and trainees from the Migrant Fleet wave by wave came down to the Solace and observed and trained along the elite warrior veterans of a conflict that they heard only in whispers and hinted at in the way the Covenant looked at the Alliance with leers and malice.

Tanks, and combat aircraft, transports and logistics capability: the weapons of warfare four hundred years in the future, based on ancient technology risen from ancient gods not Prothean.

Nothing to say of the Covenant themselves: fierce beasts if not acquainted. A single Elite could take on a platoon of Quarians. A Brute? They could eat them. A pair of Hunters could overrun a ship, and Jackals and Grunts were thrown into the fodder in a way incomprehensible to any military commander in the Fleet. Manpower, something precious to the Quarians, was given to them.

Now, at last, technology has started to be crossed over. Nothing as dramatic as Slipspace technology, not yet, for the Alliance has already been given a drive of their own and nothing has come of it, but it's personal shields overlapping kinetic barriers, anti-grav technology meant to improve loadbearing and infrastructure, firearms that seem almost tailored to eliminate synthetics. The eventuality, the inevitable idea of the Covenant sharing its technological marvels has finally arrived, and yet no great enlightenment has happened, no cure for the millions of problems that the Galaxy has is found, just a sneak peak at the true power of a Covenant that called itself an Empire.

All this just in exchange for an obsolescence of their own making:

"Is it not in your interest as well?" Gerrel speaks, almost begging. "Rannoch-Sanghelios will be taken, and thus, this fleet will be given to you!" Above them all, above the Solace, was the largest collection of ships in galactic history.

That was the deal the Quarians made. As many ships from the Flotilla that would survive the final crusade would be given over to the Covenant for their own usage, for in exchange, the Covenant had given back their homeworld. There would be no more need for a Migrant Fleet after all.

"One of the tenants of our Great Journey is patience, Admiral Gerrel." Destiny speaks in his angelic, wizened tone. "We have waited over a thousand years for our own, and I assure you, you can wait a mere few months if it comes to it."

Admiral Tonbay thinks of the Elite Ranger she has borne her flesh to often. His name was Ke Nazhumee, and he had been tasked with the Covenant spec ops force along with Shipmaster Karonee and Commander Tahamee as the single Covenant ship still spaceworthy makes a tour of the galaxy. "What is the great plan, Prophet of Destiny?" She says, cutting in between the two Admirals. She says as someone who has interacted with the Covenant, not from the top down, but from the bottom up. Ke was not as Destiny is. "Why are you, as the Covenant, helping us?"

It's a bold question, a simple question she asks, dripping with intrigue and seeking the deeper knowledge of them. What deeper knowledge is there for her to know, Destiny thinks to himself. That they had gone to war with Humanity? Everything else, everything about the Covenant, had been borne to the Galaxy plainly.

It's a question she has to ask however.

This galaxy is full of political drama and questions that the Covenant has not had to deal with, at least outside of itself, in millennia.

Destiny is the one ordained to speak on behalf of them all. The councilors look on from the stands as the lords look at one another, wondering what Destiny's answer would be. These new titles, these new understandings of who they are in contrast of a galaxy that does not answer to them, they are silent because they do not know. As in this time the centuries since, the Covenant looks to its Prophets: "There is no great revelation, Admiral Tonbay, no great secret to our plans here in this galaxy. There is only us. There is only the Covenant." He floats down from his gravity chair, but he does something more. He steps onto ground with his feet, his not so long gone as to have atrophied away, and he steps toward the Admiral in the little space between chair and table, made of Forerunner metal recovered. "In our thousand-year history, there has been no challenge too great, no journey too long, that we as a whole have ever failed to confront. The enemies of the Great Journey all fell, like they always do, and it is our duty to see as many in this galaxy on this greatness as well. That is what we have been imbued with the Mantle of Responsibility. We are the Reclaimers, and so we shall reclaim a homeworld, and then we shall reclaim the next, and the next, and the next, until we can be made whole again."

And the chorus of chants rose in agreement around, voices raising above the ocean in unison. A unison that none in that galaxy had known.

It is, after all, a covenant. Tonbay can do nothing with the rest of the Admiralty than follow the lead of Destiny as they accept this answer, and shut communications. Before they do however Tonbay looks up through her display and sees this new arrangement the Covenant has on Altis.

Metal vibrates with the triumphant shouts and decrees of a people who know war.

Above them all, constructed out of ancient metal in the vision of the holy, a giant ring hung over this round table: It was said by the Covenant be a gateway to the eternal afterlife.

They call it: Halo.

---

"Oh man this is freaky as hell!"

At the bar one night, Joker is held aloft by all of the Normandy's biotics, and, interestingly enough, Kaiden is also one of them. Laid back, the Marine lieutenant isn't actually such an uptight guy the Normandy crew discovers. That being said the humble pie that has been force fed to them through cracked teeth and pains the likes of which would've killed lesser Marines has changed their opinion on a lot recently.

Shepard hasn't been around much during this shore leave, but it's not out of the ordinary. She is busy, and Hitman recounts that Commander Ryder, Alec Ryder that is, was much the same on their own shore leaves. Which leaves them to use their biotic powers in a cleared-out bar to float the very fragile pilot of the Normandy.

It's warmly lit, and most nights for Hitman and the Normandy's crew have ended here. Some treat it as an actual bar, some use it to people watch: looking out the windows of the small, hole in the wall establishment to see Citadel and Covenant personnel pass.

They are more interested in the Covenant when they're not constantly drunk.

JD is more than familiar with the Covenant, but it's a peace he has to maintain, so he simply sits in the corner seating of the bar, the bench going all across, and sits in the shadow as Hitman cheers on the impromptu monkey-in-the-middle routine that Kaiden has been egged into with Joker as the tossed object.

He is hollering, and hooting, and JD thinks that a pilot like him should be more familiar with how to fly, but he makes no comment as he sits alone with a bottle of vodka in his hand and a bottle of soda nearby. He nurses both, making the cocktail in his mouth as yet another lazy day on shore leave passes by. Two weeks, officially, but it drags on, and he's not sure how long it is until they're expected to be back out there.

Hopefully Saren is also taking a time out.

The aliens, and he is so remised to even refer to them as that anymore, are retired away to their own relaxation that evening. The sunset glows through even the window, despite the fact there is no clear view of the sky. Garrus, Tali, and Liara are somewhere on their own, and he can't blame them. To be away from all of them after being in such relatively cramped accommodations such as the Normandy is something he would do too if he hadn't been a Marine.

Though tonight, tonight there is something inside of him that compels him to also have his time alone.

He's not too far into it, at least compared to when he does regularly drink, so by all means he thinks its perfectly reasonable for him to put on a puffy jacket and slide the two bottles into inside pockets.

Hitman doesn't notice when he slinks out of the bar, and he doesn't want to be there when someone drops Joker and they have to go get a new pilot. Unlike Pressly, Joker is a bit more complicated to replace.

Walking in fatigues, a bomber jacket a few sizes too big but was the only one the local clothing store still had left, JD walks the streets of a foreign city alone with the buzz of alcohol in him.

Altis is a city of soldiers now, soldiers and security personnel and diplomats and jesters. Very few from the original population remain, so fewer of Altis's accommodations remain open for business. Stores and restaurants have been coopted, acting as PXs and mess halls, Covenant and Quarians walk side by side speaking of needs and logistics that the Flotilla above needs. He does his best, but his skin, his hair, pricks with electricity each time an Elite passes.

He didn't know what it would do when an Elite passes by him and does not see him as an ODST however: they ignore him. Even the Grunts, dragging around carts on the streets, do nothing to notice him as he walks like a normal man. He's used to their screaming. Emboldened by the drink, he stares at one resting on its butt on a corner, rocking its head back and forth.

The Grunt eventually notices. "Uhhhhhh can I help you?" It speaks to him in its high scratchy voice in a language he can understand, and he is transported back to his home on Luna and the Cirsium City. How many times have annoyed pedestrians said that to him as they brush past him on busy streets?

The fact that the Grunt can form those words, can have those thoughts and feelings, the same as any man or woman he had ever known… No MPs are looking as he takes a swig from his cold bottle as his feet lead him away from the city, toward the sunset.

There was a particularly nasty campaign on the Jenolan Belt, closer to Reach's system than the Covenant had any right being. A tropical planet had been the site of another ODST operation for him. It was the only time he had been in charge of a drop; that was the scale of it as UNSC ships threw themselves at the Covenant positions in a fury yet unseen in that war. The Covenant had been getting too close to Earth, and for once in the war, it felt like an even fight.

He can't help but think that the sunset on those planets in the Belt had been much like those on Altis.

He remembers his first sunset, as he steps on the beach and feels the remnant of the day's heat. It was his first day at Marine bootcamp, planetside. On Luna, there was no sunrise as Human beings had known for all of history, but on that dinky little planet out of the Sol System, he saw what every new day was supposed to look like, and what the end of one did as well.

It is in his daze, his memories, he has walked outside the colony, to its many beaches and going right to the water's edge and staring out at a setting sun, thinking it will give him a peace of mind and a relatively nice evening to himself.

He does not notice someone he should until it has taken far too long:

Looking left, he locks eyes with a woman he hasn't seen all that much of on shore leave.

Her duty uniform pants are rolled up to her knees, avoiding the swell of water, as she is barefoot in the sand. Besides her: a collection of rocks. In her hand: a rock.

He's not so far to the drink that he doesn't know what she's doing:

Skipping rocks.

"Mai." He speaks loud enough for her to hear (which isn't much at all). She tilts her head at him, and that alone beckons him closer to her.

"JD." She says in greeting, holding a smooth stone in her hand.

"I… haven't seen too much of you, recently." He's heard recently of Hitman's recent beat down, and because of that, that was the last he had heard of Mai asides from glances at his peripheral vision at mess halls and in the hallways of their hotel. They have separate rooms, and he's not quite sure which one she's in anyway. He didn't question it. Why would he need to? Their relationship has always been of unspoken needs and unspoken understanding. It's not more than a week he figures, but something settles in him weirdly on the fact that she's not been in his presence recently.

"Is that an issue?" She says, stone cold as always.

She flings a rock with frightening speed out into the waters coming in, but it hits the water like an artillery shell, and she scowls to herself before leaning down and picking up another stone.

Frisbee. She repeats in her head. Frisbee.

She still doesn't really know what a Frisbee is, but apparently some of the grenades the Alliance uses are shaped like one.

"No, no… It's just…" He doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing at all. Maybe that's just how it is: It's easy to be with Mai on active duty, because that is their closest normal. Without it however? She is a stranger, to him, and to herself. "Do you mind?"

She sees as he kneels down, taking off his jacket onto the finely flat sand with two bottles wrapped up in it, hand reaching for one of her rocks she has gathered. She shakes her head once. "I do not mind." He looks, with hands trained, even when she smells that sterile smell and sugar on his breath, on how easily he grabs a rock and slings it out against the water, skipping it down. "Why have you come out here?"

It is a testament to their relationship that he does not take that question as coldly as she says it. She doesn't mean it. "I needed some fresh air."

So did she.

It's not easy, being told to just sit still for two weeks, but those are orders, so she bides her time beneath the blackness of sleep and the waking hours where she, perhaps a little shamefully, locks herself in her hotel room and refuses to look out the window. To look out would be to see the discretions of a Galaxy.

"How is he, the AI? We haven't talked about it." JD wasn't there to see Mai tested, but he was given new imperatives, new reminders about their conditions on staying on the Normandy. No doubt she has as well.

"He is… going through debriefing right now, as we did." She says slowly.

"Does he agree with what we're doing? What's going to be done?"

She is silent, but her nod starts an answer. "He knows better."

There is a rhythm between them that is familiar as they alternate between skipping rocks at the setting sun. JD's hands are graceful in how they curve each rock out across the water, and each time he does, Mai's only ups her speed in each toss to her own detriment. She is so used to being able to copy JD's hands, that now, failing, it aggravates her.

Aggravates her to entertain even this: JD takes the glass bottle of store brand Vodka out of his jacket, taking a slug of a gulp. Mai will never understand why people look so in pain when they do take to the bottle, but she understands why they do at all. JD offers, silently, the bottle. There's enough left for the both of them, and, for both of their sake, he dumps the rest of the soda into the bottle messily before shaking it up.

For a moment Mai thinks he is making a Molotov cocktail, for those are the only cocktails she knows. Fire is actually a threat to her shields from Insurgents, and the Brutes were known to use napalm grenades. The concoction which JD throws together isn't that dangerous however. She knows better.

In her hands she has no problem holding it with one hand, taking it to her mouth and drinking as she usually does: as much as she can at once. It's a monstrous gulp, one that fills with JD with chuckles, but she is not as taken aback by what she knows what will eventually happen.

Once before she did drink with JD on Earth, so she should be, theoretically, better now.

The sourness, the sting, of the alcohol is soothed over by the soda, and she is okay after she winces once and feels JD's hand on the bottle to take back. "Not had huh?"

"Is this, eugh-" She actually made a noise of discontent, like a child, and JD couldn't help but save it to his memory. "Is this something you really enjoy?"

He shrugged. "Depends on the company."

The idea of the company she kept is something new to her, given who she was. The idea of company brings her to something else given the new arrangements put upon them, likely at the end of this shore leave.

Maybe, she fears, this is the last true alone time she'll have with JD.

She has to ask: "What do you think of the AI? Of AI in general?"

JD skips another rock as he considers, seeing it get swallowed by frothy white tide. The sun warms him against salty breeze. "Cash seems okay." Is all he gives, and it bugs her. She knows she's tight lipped, but if JD has any further insight, doesn't she mean anything to him to at least go a little further in elaboration? "Given what they're doing with him, and what they're doing to us, I don't mind."

Mai does mind, but if JD doesn't… She supposes she will have to deal with it. "But why?"

"Hm?"

"I just- I-…" She drags off, tossing another rock unsuccessfully in the water. "I just want to know your opinion. I want to understand you better."

It's an odd way to put it, but he is glad that she asks at all. The only problem is that his opinion is from some placer deep in him that he is only considering because the booze inside of him mingles with his propensity to be nice to her. She deserves as much of him as he can garner as he takes another small sip, staring up at the mellow sky again.

"Our AI. They're… They're not different from us, really." He is careful to say. So much time hearing about the dangers of AI in this universe, and he can't help but think of Tali in this moment, and yet he still knows another way that question could've been answered. "They've been good to me."

He always says please and thank you with them, at the very least. It's different than other people, who pay them no mind, pay them no courtesy even if they walk the walk and talk the talk of being men and women. Some AI accept the fact, some understand they aren't Human, but many assume the image of, and JD treats them the same, and he explains why to Mai, looking out at a sunset:

"It was on the Johnny Appleseed, the frigate that rescued the survivors of Persei. It was just, a huge mess of them running scans and medical procedures on us, making sure the civilians were okay and us Marines sane. The intel people, they sat us down, took every single piece of info we remembered about the battle down and tried to find out if we were cowards because we survived, and-" JD seemed winded, talking aloud. He hadn't been used to this at all, speaking so openly about this particular part of his life, but it was for Mai, so he didn't mind. "I don't remember the name of the Appleseed's AI. It was probably Johnny Appleseed himself, and I remember during all the procedures and all the debriefing he was just off to the side, just waiting for me…"

Just a teenage boy, no shirt or shoes, but denim overalls and a stray hat. That was the AI of the ship that bore his name, funnily enough. How often did that happen, he wondered.

"But, I think it was two days after, he had finally caught me in the Appleseed's ODST bay. I wasn't an ODST then, but Appleseed didn't have any ODSTs, all dead… It was quiet and- and, he popped up on his pedestal, and waited for me to notice… By God, I was tired Mai, and I know he was busy, but he waited." He made the time for him. He made the time and JD could not have appreciated that so much. As time went on, as comrades were given only moments to say goodbye to brothers and sisters in arms, bleeding out with seconds to spare, JD appreciated with all his heart that an AI had given him time to tell him this:

"I'm sorry. But your mother has passed away. Heart failure."

She died of the shock and despair from being informed about how he had been MIA at Persei, a planet that had just been Glassed. She had died because she had thought her son had been killed.

He doesn't remember the hours afterwards, the days afterwards, the transfers he takes as he is delivered back to Luna for the last time in his dress whites and people thank him for his service. All he remembered is seeing his mother for the last time before she was cremated, and how fast he had wanted to leave Luna forever. They buried her with his father, and after that, JD had went back to war.

"He told me my mother died. He gave me as much time as I needed, as much help as I needed. He organized everything he could to make my transfer back home easy… He didn't need to do that." It was something so Human: empathy. How many times has he held dying ODSTs in his arms? How many times has he tried his best to make their passing as soft as possible? From time to time, JD thinks back to the Johnny Appleseed's AI. He hopes that when he dies, someone like that AI will be there for him. "I know it's not much, but, because of that, I know I can trust our type of AI."

He takes another sip of his bottle, offering it back to Mai as she listens captivated. It's not often she hears him go on like this, and to hear it for tragedy, it makes her feel bad for asking. "I'm sorry." She croaks out, taking the bottle.

"It's alright. It's okay." He breaths, taking another rock and tossing it out. He hears her sip, considering something in her mind, looking at the bottle.

She is right to wait before she speaks again. "You are… lucky, JD."

"Hm?"

"You know the fate of your mother."

The last memory she has of her mother is her being drugged and left in a trash pile. How she had not snapped at ONI, at the UNSC for it, JD will never understand, but it is no matter now. It is the saddest Mai has ever heard and it's barely a variation on her voice.

New Jerusalem was the site of a Covenant incursion before Reach. A partial glassing, but enough to significantly damage much of the city. Before that: the internal strife between the ethnic minorities and religious denominations. Mai, deep down, knows her mother is dead. However, all her life she has been trained to confirm kills. She wants to know if her own mother has been spared her life.

"Oh Mai." It falls out of his mouth without his consent, and it makes her look at him. Her eyes are sad, and distant, and she cannot hide it as there is no helmet for her there now.

"Was it… hard? Processing her death?" She sounds so little.

He nods. "One of the hardest things I've ever done."

He left Luna as a Marine, with his mother, screaming at him, pounding at his back with her hands. She has never screamed at him in his life, she has never screamed, but as he stands at the terminal for a transport ship to cart him away to bootcamp, she screams words she has never heard before as JD does the most-selfish thing he can do: become a Marine.

He never forgave himself.

Between the wishes of his mother, and one of the last things his father ever did for him: sign his consent papers to be allowed to become a Marine, he chose to become a Marine, leaving his mother behind.

She died for it.

He prays to whatever gods there are that he never has to answer why, exactly, he became a Marine, because he has no real answer; no answer that justifies leaving his widowed mother.

The cold glass meets his lips again and he shakes it off. Perhaps the idea of him dying young sits well within himself because of what he had done.

"I'm sorry, if you wanted to sign, by the way," his free hand does the motions, signing as he speaks. "I just don't sign while drinking."

"It's okay." She has taken in his words, precious as they are to her. "It is nice to hear you speak, JD. I am sorry for making you talk of these things however."

"No. No. It's okay. Honestly Mai." He shakes his head at her, the swell of cold and sadness beaten back. These are things he thinks of himself often, and Mai does not need to bear the weight of putting it on his shoulders more.

The bottle is passed, back and forth, and it's easy, and it's comfortable, and it's nice to simply skip rocks with each other as the sun keeps its low path down. Altis's rotation isn't the same as Earth's so sunsets last longer than the standard, but they don't mind. They don't mind sharing a sunset and dragging it out. To Mai, the color is spectacular. It's beyond the grey and steel of her childhood, and it's an aspect of life she never noticed before in war. Here she is, standing before one, and with all her senses tuned for combat they are turned to simply, eventually, appreciate it.

How easy it was for her to occasionally steal a glance at JD's face as he fully appreciated the view as well, though her conditioning betrays her like it always does.

Glassing.

Of all the military feats and milestones that Mai has over JD, JD has her beat in one horrible way. She is reminded by the way the orange washes over his olive skin.

"I have never been there when a planet is Glassed. Command always pulls me out before it gets that bad." She comments.

JD blinks a few times, nodding to himself. "I don't recommend it."

She laughs. She actually laughs. It's like a slip, or a break in her character, but she does as JD answers dryly, quickly, and he can't help but think about the last time they skipped rocks like this.

They really are different now, even with the two months difference.

It felt like a lifetime.

Still it's rather morbid that a joke has come out of something that has killed billions, and as soon as she lets her veil up, it is back down.

Of course, he doesn't recommend running for your life from literal hellfire, being the sole survivor as you throw yourself into a dark, pitch black cave and pray that the rumbling doesn't consume you. Though he can't fault anyone for laughing at a quip, let alone her.

The sun shines on her dusky skin, and he can't help but think how it makes her like honey at that very moment. They lock eyes, and the both of them have forgotten when they have transferred to sitting on the sandy beach as the water tickles their toes. "I am sorry I have not been around. It is difficult for me to be… out, in this city." She says, regretful.

He knows why, it's why he has refused to check behind him at all. It's why she hasn't faced that direction in hours. "Yeah. I figure. Though it's okay for now. Right? Just us here, after all."

It exhausts them, talking about the Covenant, knowing of the mistakes made and what they want to do. The dance they do between living a new life and fighting an old war is still there, eating at them, but at the end of the day it amounts to nothing but inner turmoil. They have their orders, both from Shepard, and above her.

Those orders culminate in them watching a sunset go down silently, getting washed over with the smell of salt and ocean and fresh air, sharing a cocktail.

It doesn't hit as hard for either of them, but for Mai, it's her first, real pleasant time taking to the drink. She is inside of herself, savoring the ebb and flow of her mind being hampered, knowing that, although it technically is poisoning, it is the recreational sort.

JD does just the same, his mild haze settling him well as the oranges of the sky turn to violets, and then to stars.

For Mai, this is what she imagines what shore leave should be.

They don't have to talk, they don't have to do anything, and although that might be insane to her as a Spartan, she finds it enjoyable with someone else. It's the first thing, she realizes, that she doesn't want to do alone.

They've been out at that beach silently for hours, the rocks having all been used for rock skipping and rock skipping attempts, the bottle well drained, before she speaks up again. Only the stars are above to light (as per Altis colony design for tourism purposes).

"JD, I am-" She cuts herself with the speed of pulling the trigger on an Elite's head. JD, I am glad I met you. She cannot say it though, because she feels a block in her throat and her gut tell her that this is submission for some unknown. She hates the unknown. The unknown is harder to kill, and she is good at killing. Her whole life is to just kill; anything else feels wrong.

JD looks at her with his complacently pleased face and the shine of the ambient light, the stars, seem to make his eyes glow. He cannot sign in the dark, so he speaks. "Huh?"

"I am cold." She says instead, and it's not at all true. She doesn't follow up however as JD shuffles and gathers up his jacket again, rubbing sand off, bridging the distance between him and her as he scoots his butt over.

"Put this on." It's her conditioning that make her take it like orders, staring at the puffy article in her hands and immediately approximate what it's like to put on a jacket. She's better at putting on her techsuit and armor than she is with actual clothes, but, like all things, she catches on as if her life depended on it. She puts on his jacket, one arm at a time, gentle not to break it with her form, but it sits on her well, and, more than it, it is her that is at hazard to break. For the overwhelming sense of wearing his jacket floods her nose, her skin, and she is no longer cold.

He smells like rain.

On New Jerusalem, the only time the city was cleaned was when it rained, and for at least a few minutes, a younger Mai and her mother were allowed to be free from the grime of their existence.

JD smelled like rain and she let it permeate over her. For a short time, reality is fuzzy, it's not hard, or grating, or asking her to fight. It's warm, and she feels for the first time in a long time, okay.

---

It's about midnight by the time they walk back to the city, sharing a delightful alcoholic haze between them. On the way back it's small, nothing conversations, just to keep themselves mentally there. JD doesn't mind the colder night breeze and Mai especially doesn't mind being wrapped in his jacket, so the walk they do isn't urgent, and if anything, it's meandering. It's in the middle of Mai stating what her preferred scope magnification is for most engagements that, on the streets of Altis that JD for once sees the threat before her.

It makes her hate vodka and coke so much in that instance as JD stops on the sidewalk and stares down it at a group going the opposite direction:

A typical Covenant fireteam, led by a Brute.

For Mai, Spartan Time kicks in, but it is muted, and she is confused. She doesn't care for the fact she has no armor on, or they don't have any weapons except for their omni-tools, assuming they had a blade module downloaded. Though it's a wash anyway: they're a fully armed squad. The Brute, wearing blue power armor, wields a grenade launcher in one hand as his other is limply at his side, the Grunt and Jackal procession armed with their usual outfitting of plasma pistols, rifles, and needlers. Why the Covenant is armed like this she wants to demand the next time she sees an Alliance officer, but she thinks there might not be a next time as sooner, rather than later, the Brute's squad comes up to them directly. It's not a patrol, but simply a Brute leading a labor group around. Grunts are dragging a anti-grav lift of fusion coils, probably to a Covenant prefab in the colony, however they have had the opportunity to pause as the Brute steps in front of the two humans.

They are alone on that street, just them and the Covenant.

The smell of a Brute is inescapable to the two soldiers. They know it so well; that musk, repugnant, like an animal. Getting this close meant many things to them, but not what was about to happen.

Through his helmet, the Brutes sniffs once or twice, looking at Mai specifically, red eyes darting between her and JD as they seem, to him, petrified.

It's not that however they feel: JD is horrified, and Mai is going insane.

JD is horrified because of what might happen, and all he can do is do what his mind tells him to do as his body, his survival instincts, is telling him to draw a gun that isn't there and find cover.

Cockily, the Brute growls, crossing his arms, talking to Mai. They speak the lingua franca, and hearing a Brute speak an understandable tongue fills the two former UNSC members with disgust. "You are tall, for a Human. Heh. Have you any fight in you?" It's a dare, a challenge. The Covenant hasn't fought in this galaxy ever since they arrived, and Brutes are born to fight.

To his question: So much. She has so much within her. The fight in Mai is the fight of over several thousand years of Human warrior culture and technological development, and she has used it to cave in the skulls of Brutes like him whole before, hundreds of times over. JD feels it the second he takes her hand urgently.

"We're just on our way back to our hotel." JD answered, shakily, putting on the voice of his native city. Simply: he sounded like an urbanite.

"Hmph. So quick to slink away. It makes me miss the Humans I know. They always died well at least."

It is JD's grip on her hand, entirely encompassing it as he would hold a weapon, that she concentrates on. She knows why he did it, and she is thankful as he begins to drag her. Her feet don't get quite the message as her body pivots and she tumbles in his direction as, evidently, the Brutes and Grunts notice this and begin chortle among themselves.

She sees it in her head as she burned her vision through the Brute, and, before she fully steps away, she swears the Brute sees in her that she is not just any Human.

As fast as they came, they have disappeared, moving past them around the corner, and the two of them are panting in an alley they have stumbled into together. JD has not let go over her hand, but even if he wanted to, he doesn't know if he could. White knuckled grip meant to keeping his weapon on him amidst explosions and drops instead hold onto Mai.

It comes through her like glass breaking as she keels over and vomits onto the ground, and JD has never seen Mai collapse as she does, holding onto her knees as his hand finally lets go and her head leans against steel wall.

She is breathing through her teeth, like a monster. She has been denied her one purpose and she is furious.

"I could've killed them all, so easy." Her teeth grind.

"I know." JD reckons, and he is sober.

"I should've."

"I know."

"But…. But…." She can't.

"I know." JD says one final time. His hand is on her back, and she feels the pressure in between her shoulder blades. She concentrates it. She concentrates it and the reassuring pressure instead of the vile bile in her mouth she continues to spit out into an ugly puddle on the ground; she concentrates on it instead of the vision of her goring Covenant alive with her bear hands, ripping and tearing flesh until she sees nothing but bone and blood and dead enemies.

"Mai?" She concentrates on his voice, and she knows he deserves this:

"I am glad you are here, JD." She can't even hear her own voice as her mind battles between being in combat, and not being in combat; the want to be fight and the fight to not do that. Though she sees his face, his eyes, widen once, and he smiles when she turns her head at him.

He's glad that she hasn't become a Spartan that very moment. He's glad that she hasn't summoned her Spartan armor, molting it like a creature. He's glad that she hasn't started a galactic incident. Most of all, however, he's happy she said that.

Would the Mai he first met ever be able to say something like that? He knows: no.

He's just sorry that it had come out like this: in some dank alleyway, where her nerves and urges have manifested in vomit on the ground.

Though it's one step at a time, and he knows that this isn't his first shore leave where someone has spilled their guts like this.

His hands come up and out again, and the part of her mind that she has dedicated to sign language kicks on. Instead of sign language however, it's another form of communication that comes from him, tapping her shoulder with a thumbs up, head tilted: It's a Spartan sign.

YOU GOOD?

She is now.