Purgatory: In Dante's Divine Comedy, Purgatory is represented as a mountain that penitent sinners must climb, enduring temporary suffering that, with prayer and contemplation, purifies them for Heaven.


IV

Purgatory: The Climb

Electrical fires were raging all over the ship, but the temperature was still going down. The decks of Purgatory shuddered and bucked as the vacuum of space tore at the breaches in its hull. This place has minutes, and that's if we're generous, Garrus thought, as they raced toward the Normandy. The corridors, once full of gunfire and shouting, were now only filled with the alarms that echoed in the silence of the dead. Inmates and guards were almost all down—either killed in the riots they'd started when they'd released the prisoners, or casualties of the hull breaches Jack had made and the damage she'd done to the life support systems after they'd let her loose.

Shepard ran ahead of the party, face grim. There was something in the set of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders that went beyond the weight of the responsibility for what they'd done here. She should've been turian, but this is more than guilt. Garrus looked around, and then he saw it. Damn. It's the Normandy. The SR-1. "Okay?" he asked in a low voice.

Massani ignored it, but Taylor looked over, curious. Shepard's jaw twitched. "No," she panted. "Leave it."

Garrus nodded, and they kept running.

"Stop!" someone yelled from down the hall. Garrus looked for the threat, but the guard wasn't yelling at them. He heard the sound of biotics tearing through flesh, boots on the ground. Then they stopped.

"Cerberus!" A human female, furious, feral. She howled in rage, like some wild creature, straining on a chain. They'd caught up to Jack. And there's more to this story than that dossier told us.

They rounded the corner and saw Jack, alight with biotics, staring out the observation window at the Normandy in dock, fists clenched. She kicked the bulkhead, pounded the glass, so lost in her anger she missed the guard at the other end of the corridor, taking aim.

Garrus raised his rifle, but Shepard had already fired. The guard's visor busted in, and he fell with a single cry. His body hit the ground and was still, and Jack rounded on them, fists glowing.

All of them kept their weapons on her, waiting, but she didn't attack. Score one for saving her life, at least. Her eyes blazed. "What the hell do you want?" she demanded.

Shepard jerked her gun a couple centimeters to the right, gesturing at the ship, indicating the alarms, the fires, the creaking bulkheads. "Look around. This ship's coming apart. I can help you," she said.

Jack scoffed, and her upper lip curled in contempt. "Shit, you sound like a pussy." Her biotics died down, but she jabbed a finger in Shepard's direction. "I'm not going anywhere with you," she declared. "You're Cerberus."

"Why does it matter if I'm with Cerberus?" Shepard asked sharply. She sees this girl has a history with them, too, and she's not happy about it. They should've told us.

Jack waved a hand in the air. "They've been on my ass for years. Anytime I get free, they put a huge bounty on me. That's why Warden Kuril figured he'd struck gold when he caught me." She looked around and smirked in satisfaction. "It isn't working out too well for him."

Shepard's lips thinned and her eyes hardened. That pride in this destruction? Even though she knows we did as much or more than Jack to bring this place down, Jack couldn't have struck a worse first note here, but I don't know what else Shepard expected. But Shepard pushed past it, and said, "Forget what Cerberus wants with you. I'm Commander Shepard, and I want your help."

Jack gestured at the logo on the Normandy. "You show up in a Cerberus frigate to take me away somewhere? You think I'm stupid?"

Shepard gave a single, angry bark of a laugh, but she holstered her gun. Garrus, Massani, and Taylor kept theirs out. "I don't know," Shepard said. "You're turning down your one chance off this wreck. That seem smart to you? You have my word: I don't want to hurt you. I'm asking for your help."

"Could just knock her out, Commander," Jacob suggested.

"I'd like to see you try!" Jack cried. Her biotics flared, and Garrus cocked his gun. Jack's gaze swung over to him, and their eyes met. You're good, but how long have you been going? How much do you have left? Whatever it is, there's no way you take me out before this bullet's in your skull.

Shepard raised her hand. "We're not going to attack her," she said. She phrased it like a statement, but it was an order.

"Good move," Jack sneered, but Garrus didn't lower his rifle until she let her biotics die down again, and even as she addressed Shepard again, he saw her watching him. "Look, you want me to come with you? Make it worth my while," she said.

Shepard shrugged. "Join my team, and I'll do what I can for you," she said.

Watch it, Shepard. You don't know what she wants.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Jack snarled. Shepard gazed back at her, arms folded. Garrus could almost hear her say it. Well?

And when Jack spoke, she surprised him with her conditions. "I bet your ship's got lots of Cerberus databases," she said. "I want to look at those files, see what Cerberus has got on me. You want me on your team? Let me go through those databases."

Garrus could swear he saw the corner of Shepard's mouth twitch. "Done. You'll have full access," she said.

"You better be straight up with me," Jack warned.

Shepard simply raised an eyebrow. Jack regarded her for a moment, then nodded. "So why the hell are we standing here?" she demanded, waving at the ship.

Shepard jerked her head. "Move out," she said.

They made for the ship. As they passed through the airlock, Shepard said, "Welcome to the Normandy, Jack. This is Garrus Vakarian, Zaeed Massani, and Jacob Taylor—also part of the team. If you'll come with me, I'll get you briefed. Jeff?"

Joker's voice came over the com. "What took so long? I give it two minutes before this place breaks completely apart!"

"So why don't you get us out of here?"

"I'm on it. D'you at least get our new crewmate, or did that go as well as most of our missions?"

Garrus felt the engines fire as the Normandy detached from the wreckage of the Purgatory and began to move away. Beside him, Jack laughed unpleasantly. "This how things usually go for you, Shepard? This ought to be fun."

"Uh . . . who's that?" Joker asked.

"Jeff? Jack. Jack? Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau. Everyone usually calls him Joker. Jeff, you can meet our new friend later."

"Or he and everyone else could leave me the hell alone," Jack suggested. "I'm not here to be buddies." She jerked her arm out at the CIC. "So? Tell me who I'm killing and get me my files."

"Nice," Joker muttered. The speaker clicked as he signed off.

Shepard grimaced. "Taylor, Massani, Vakarian? You're dismissed. Good work today. Hit the showers, and get some food. I'll catch up with you later. With me, Jack."

She and Jack took off toward the briefing room. Taylor studied Shepard's back for several seconds. Massani, watching him, gave a single guffaw. "If Shepard catches you staring like that, Taylor, she's liable to knock your eyeballs right out of your head. You know that, right?"

"What?" Taylor tore his gaze away. "No—it's just, she didn't de-equip. She's still got her guns."

Massani laughed again. "Right." Garrus fought off a surge of completely irrational annoyance. Great. Another one. First Alenko and T'Soni, now him. You'd think the half-naked human female would be more distracting, but no. Maybe the tattoos turn off humans. I mean, the number she's got makes even me dizzy, but still—I guess it's Shepard, every time. I guess I don't blame the guy. If Shepard were turian—well. Best not to go there.

"It's probably just as well the Commander is still armed," he said instead. "We'll have to watch that one."

"Agreed," Taylor said. "Well, you guys can come with me, anyway. Clean your weapons and store 'em before hitting the showers."

"Lead the way," Garrus gestured.


Sleep didn't come easy these days. Cerberus just didn't design their barracks with turians in mind. The bunks and sleeper pods in the crew quarters were all too short, and shaped wrong besides. The situation was a little better than it had been on the original Normandy, where he'd bedded down in the hold in an Alliance away-mission sleeping bag. This go-around, they'd managed to requisition him an extra-long military cot that he kept in the corner of the battery, and a few extra pillows that were supposed to compensate for the human mattress. Of course they didn't. Garrus still woke up with lumps every morning. If I ever rejoin the turian military, they're sure to wonder about my chiropractic bills.

Garrus could deal with an uncomfortable bed. In basic, and early on back on Omega, he'd slept on worse. But late at night, when there was nothing to do but sleep—that's when his healing scars bothered him most. That's when everything bothered him most. When the lights were out and it was silent in the battery except for the hum of the Normandy's engines or the low, gentle rhythm of the main gun's calibration routines his mind wandered to Palaven, or worse, to Omega, in those last, horrible hours, and the stench of blood and all the things he could've done, should've seen. That's when he could feel Sidonis still out there, still breathing because the rest of them weren't, and the injustice of it itched far worse than his scars. It got under his skin and sat heavy on his lungs, blocking his air passages worse than all Omega's smog and smoke until he couldn't breathe.

A couple of times in the past week, he'd tried to power through it, staring at the ceiling for hours, praying for the peace to close his eyes.

But then, why would the spirits answer you? If they even exist.

Eventually, he always got up. Maybe he'd run through exercises in the battery, letting his muscles sink into the mindless routine of the combinations, redirecting all that nervous energy into physical activity until he was so fatigued there was nothing left of him to think with, and he collapsed on his cot until shift change in the morning.

Other times, he'd worked with his guns instead, both his own and the Normandy's. He'd build mods from scratch, disassemble his weapons again and again, rebuilding them in a dozen different ways.

Distracting himself in the battery was easier now that Shepard had approved the installation of the Thanix cannon. There was plenty to keep him busy until he was too tired to worry. Streamlining targeting. Reducing the power draw without affecting the punch. Increasing accuracy. There were a thousand calibrations he could run and programs he could write when sleep eluded him.

But the night after the Purgatory mission, even the calibrations failed him. That night, he'd been working on the Thanix, but he was writing programs faster than the console could run them. Finally, the little red light that meant the computer was thinking stopped blinking at him, and Garrus could swear it stared at him with an almost baleful expression. A message popped up on the console.

TASKED TO CAPACITY.

"Oh, stop whining," Garrus muttered. He waited, but after two minutes, the Thanix was still running a task he'd written three hours ago, so he gave up and left the battery.

It was the graveyard shift on the Normandy, when most of the humans onboard actually were sleeping. The lights were throughout the ship to conserve power. Up on the second deck Mordin would still be working in the lab. A couple navigators and Esabe, the relief pilot, would be holding down the deck and monitoring sensors and ladar, but down here it was silent.

Garrus walked over to the kitchen. He opened the cabinets where Gardiner kept the dextro rations, and pulled out the ariita beans. Humans said the hot, spicy stimulant made from the beans was the turian equivalent of coffee, though Kaidan had told him coffee was a more bitter drink. At any rate, ariita and coffee were brewed so similarly that Garrus had learned back then that he could basically just put the ariita through a human coffee maker. Garrus fished the green-handled pot from the dish bay and put the beans in the left side of the coffee maker. After a moment of thought, Garrus did the same in the right side with human coffee beans. Whether it was the graveyard shift heading off to the crew quarters or the earliest risers of the early morning shift, there were bound to be a few humans looking for a cup of coffee in the next couple hours or so.

The mingled smells of brewing ariita and coffee soon filled the air. The combination wasn't a bad scent, but it was a very strong one. That'll wake a person up, guaranteed. And I guess that's half the point.

A sound in the corridor caught Garrus's attention. He tilted his head. For all he'd put on the extra pot of coffee, he hadn't really expected anyone else would be on deck for at least ninety minutes. Garrus crossed the deck, circled around the elevator, and saw his fellow nighttime prowler.

Garrus folded his arms. It was Jack, and one look at the situation told him she'd been waiting for this all day. She was up here, now, during the graveyard shift when almost everyone else on the ship was down. She hadn't taken the elevator, but had just come up the maintenance ladder from Engineering, thus avoiding the soft chime the elevator gave off every time it hit a new floor. Her face was illuminated by the orange light of her omni-tool, and it was displaying the map portion of the Normandy's emergency protocols file that Miranda forwarded to all new crewmembers.

Jack tiptoed away from him toward life support. She peered at the locked door.

"Good morning," Garrus said.

Jack lit up in an instant, whirling on him without even deactivating her omni-tool. Her eyes were wide and wild, like those of a hunted animal. She pulled her arm back, then identified him. "What the fuck are you doing here?" she snarled, lowering her fist, though dark energy still crackled and blazed around her.

"Funny. I was going to ask you the same question."

"What does it look like I'm doing, moron?" she snapped back at once. "If I'm gonna live here for the next who the hell knows how long, I want to know the layout of the place. Figure out where everything is."

"You could've done that earlier. I'm sure Shepard offered to give you the tour."

Jack's lip curled. "Sure. Your girl said she'd show me around. So did that bitch, the Cerberus cheerleader. I'm not crazy about crowds. Figured I'd wait 'til later. Better for me, more comfortable for all the assholes on this boat."

Garrus folded his arms. "Uh-huh," he said blandly. He jerked his head at the life support door. "You could do some damage with a biotic fist through the systems in there. Kick up some chaos. But it wouldn't work the way it did back on Purgatory."

The energy around Jack flared. Garrus smiled pleasantly at her. Her eyes narrowed.

He pointed at the ceiling. "I'm pretty sure the AI backs up most systems on the Normandy. She'd get backups going long before you could get off this deck." He smiled again. "As I'm sure you've already noticed, there's only the one ladder and the one elevator off. Now, I'm sure you could probably carve up most of the crew without too much trouble, but Kasumi, Miranda, and I are posted on this deck, too."

Jack sneered. "Please. You'd all be dead before you knew what'd hit you." But Garrus noticed that while she met his eyes defiantly, her biotics had died down, and her weight was on her back foot, leaning away. She's not half as confident as she wants to sound.

Garrus let her see him noticing her body language, let her know that he knew she wasn't sure of herself here. Then he deliberately took a step back and turned away. "Want some coffee?"

She blinked, confused. Then she scoffed. "The fuck would a dinosaur know about making coffee? Probably poison the entire crew."

Garrus shrugged. "Suit yourself." He started walking back toward the mess, but before he'd rounded the corner he heard her heavy boots behind him.

"Ugh. At least I can see just how toxic you made that shit," she grumbled. "See if I should add some stuff to finish killing these Cerberus assholes."

She followed him into the mess, and he gestured at the med bay. "Now, if you really wanted to disable this ship, you'd want to head there," he told her. "Straight through the med bay to the AI core. Screw up the servers in there and all EDI's backups go, too. Of course, you'd still have to bypass the lock to get in, just like in life support." He made a show of regarding her. "You don't strike me as much of a hacker, and these doors aren't like the ones in Purgatory. They did their best, but that ship wasn't built to be a military vessel. This one was. You couldn't just carve up the walls like you did there." He paused at the kitchen counter. "AI core's farther from the exits, too," he added, as if he'd just thought of it.

He got down a coffee cup and poured Jack a cup of the human coffee. "How do you take it?" he asked her.

Jack snatched the cup from Garrus. "Just give it here."

Garrus nodded and reached up for another cup for his asiita. Jack threw back her coffee like a shot, quicker to prove herself tough than to protect herself. Watching her from the corner of his eye, Garrus could tell she regretted it—her face turned red and her muscles tensed with pain as the liquid burned her mouth. Garrus sipped his asiita more slowly and didn't comment.

Jack thrust out her chin and held his gaze boldly, but when she brought up the mug again she didn't take so much. She held the coffee in her mouth a moment, swallowed, and grunted, "The fuck a dinosaur learn to make coffee?"

The wording had changed just enough to make it clear that this time, Jack was giving him a compliment, albeit in her very gruff, hostile manner. Garrus raised his mug in a mockery of a toast. "Think the crew will survive?" he said drily.

Jack glowered. "You'd be lucky if your stupid coffee did poison them all, scales. Cerberus. You think anyone on this boat gives a damn about a turian? They're using you. Just like they're using me. Only difference is, in the end they won't care if you live or die. Me? They want me alive. You? You'd be better off if I was looking to trash this ship and run." She bared her teeth and her eyes glinted. "They can put you through hells like you've never seen."

"Thanks for your concern," Garrus said. "Bu—"

"The fuck said anything about concern?" Jack snapped venomously. "I'd kill you myself if it got me anything. Maybe just if I felt like it," she added callously.

"I'll take that under advisement." Garrus told her.

Jack's brown eyes flickered with blue. "You really don't know when to shut the hell up, do you?" she growled quietly.

"I spent ten years in Citadel Security and two on Omega," Garrus said plainly. "I know when someone's talking out their ass."

"A cop," Jack scoffed. "I knew there was something I didn't like about you."

Garrus gestured at her omni-tool. "And if you haven't done an extranet search on every one of the crew you've seen personally along with those emergency protocols, I never learned to read a perp."

Jack actually flinched. Garrus took another sip of his asiita. Then Jack slowly raised her mug to him, in the same ironic toast he'd given her earlier. "Fine. Yeah. Not that I could find much. Just on that salarian who walked out of the lab after the briefing—the one who never shuts up, your girl Shepard, and you."

"Find anything interesting?" Garrus asked politely.

Jack raised an eyebrow, but she played along. "You'd think that salarian was some kind of entertainer—was in a fucking Gilbert and Sullivan production and guest-starred on a kid's show a while back—except for all those awards he's got from the salarian government for fuck-what." She tilted her head at him, beginning to enjoy revealing just how much she'd learned, showing him just how much she wasn't taken in. Garrus knew the type. "Your girl Shepard's just the opposite of the salarian—her name's plastered all over the extranet as the definition of badass. First human Spectre. Fucking Savior of the Citadel and general Girl Scout Extraordinaire." Jack snorted. "Can't say I've seen it." Her eyes glittered as she looked at him over her coffee mug, baiting him. "Except the Girl Scout part."

"Take my word for it, then," Garrus said. "Doctor Chakwas and Jeff Moreau were with her, too, but I'm the only one on this ship that fought beside her when she brought down Saren Arterius and saved the Citadel from Sovereign and the geth."

"Yeah, I read about you, too," Jack sneered. "The C-Sec detective that wanted to play Spectre. Couldn't let shit alone—before or after Saren—were you surprised when it ended up all over your face?"

"Not really," Garrus smiled tightly.

Jack regarded him. Then, unexpectedly, she chuckled. "And here you are again right in the middle of it. Just because she asked you to come. Don't guess you've been picking daisies wherever you disappeared to for the last two years, either." She jerked her head at his scar. "What the hell happened? You piss someone off enough they blew half your face off?"

"Something like that." Garrus answered. He turned around and started washing his mug out, but Jack sidled up next to him.

"Uh-uh. You don't get to stick your ugly, flat nose all up in my business then back off the second I return the favor, jackass," she said, amused now. She thrust her empty mug under his nose. "Since you're already doing the dishes."

Garrus took it from her. As he did, her fist suddenly ignited blue, centimeters from his face. Garrus didn't flinch. "Stop screwing around, would you? I need to see the bottom of the mug."

Jack's biotics died down immediately. She withdrew her arm and cackled. "You've got some guts, Garrus," she acknowledged, turning around and swinging up onto the counter to sit beside him. "I like it." She tilted her head and scrutinized him, her nose wrinkling as she did. "And you know what? The scars are kind of badass. I'd fuck you," she pronounced.

"Thanks, but no thanks," Garrus replied. He was almost certain this was another game, and secure in that confidence. "I make it a point not to liaise with psychotic convicts."

Jack snorted. "Shit, you're a dork. 'Liaise.' Where'd you dig that one up, the Hierarchy Academy? I guess when you go human, Girl Scout former Alliance is more your speed, huh? Or is it that she's blonde? Typical."

Garrus hadn't frozen with her biotic fist in his face. Now he paused. He turned off the water slowly and placed both mugs on the drying rack deliberately. "You're trying to find a weakness," he said. "Like life support, or the AI core. Not because you've decided to leave, because if you left, there's no way you could go through the files you want. You're smart enough to know that this isn't Purgatory. This isn't some gang or civilian settlement in the Terminus. You know you can't waste this place and everyone in it. Maybe you could get out with the files. Maybe. But you know there'd be survivors. And you know the first thing we'd do before we went after you—and we would—would be to cut off your access to those files. And you want that access. You need it. So you're staying, and you'll work with us, at least for now, however much you hate it. But you need a back door out, and if you can't find a literal one, you're going to go for any kind of back door you can get."

He turned to face her. She was tense again, watching him intently. "Don't. Shepard and I are old friends, true. She's the commanding officer of this ship. But even if that weren't the extent of our relationship, we're the two best allies you've got here. I don't know what your history with Cerberus is, though I can promise you we'll find out, but Shepard's not Cerberus. I'm not Cerberus. This mission isn't Cerberus. They're just funding us. We're out to stop the Collectors from abducting every human in the Terminus, and to find out and publish any connection they have to the Reapers. That's it. You've started to get an idea of just who you're dealing with. Shepard can help you. I can help you. But if you screw with us, or in any way try to jeopardize Shepard's standing with the crew. . ." he trailed off, and shrugged.

Jack held his gaze a moment. Then she chuckled darkly. "Guess I struck a nerve, huh?" She raised her chin. "Commanding officer. Hah. Back on Purgatory. She lowered her gun. She raised her hand. The other ones—Taylor and Massani. They lowered their weapons, too. You didn't. You waded out into this shit the second she called you, gonna get it all over your face again for sure—only turian on a boat full of Cerberus—but you sure as hell didn't do it just to take her orders." She slid off the counter and tipped him an obscene salute with her middle finger. "You think you're so smart, but I'll tell you what: the rest of the crew? They may be Cerberus assholes, but they're not stupid. Massani? He's been around. No way you'll fool the salarian for long. And Miranda's not just any Cerberus bitch. She's the Illusive Man's lapdog, and he only lets trained dogs sit there. I won't say a thing. But I won't have to."

Just then, the elevator chimed softly to signify someone coming down from the graveyard shift. Jack tilted her head. She smirked at Garrus. "You hear that? They're playing my song. Later, Garrus. Thanks for the coffee." She strolled away from the mess.

Garrus watched her go, more restless and disturbed than he'd been half an hour ago. He felt hot and itchy, embarrassed and angry. As a matter of fact, he felt almost precisely the way he'd felt as a first-year recruit to C-Sec, the first couple of times a suspect had gotten the better of him in interrogation, and Garrus found himself suddenly very conscious that no one—not him, not Shepard, not Kasumi—had swept the mess for bugs.

Rule One of Interrogation: Never give the suspect more than you get.

Garrus swore under his breath. He returned to the battery. One or two of his programs had finished running, but as Garrus looked down at the Thanix's readout, the numbers just looked like gibberish to him. A headache was building behind his temples. He slammed his hands down on the console and stalked across the room, sitting heavily on his cot.

The taunts about him and Shepard were crap, of course, and Garrus bet everything he had that Jack knew it, too. She was too observant, not like those antihuman bastards at C-Sec, after Saren, who hadn't been able to imagine anyone feeling legitimate respect for the soft little primates from Earth but had definitely noted their women's resemblance to the asari. She'd just been digging for any reaction she could get.

And you just gave it to her wrapped up like a Unification Day gift.

Why had he reacted? Back in C-Sec, he'd been annoyed when his coworkers had made similar insinuations about him and Shepard, sure, but he'd known enough to laugh it off anyway. This time, he'd known he and Jack were testing one another, but he'd still fallen right into her trap. Waded right into the shit, she'd say. Got it all over my face.

Why? Because when it comes to Shepard, you don't think in terms of smart and stupid anymore, C-Sec rules or the chain of command. The second she died it all stopped mattering. And since, you've compromised so much, fallen so far, you've got nothing left to lose. Just Shepard.

That's not going to happen. Not again.

Now Shepard was back and he knew what it was to lose her, now that he'd lost everything he'd been and everything he'd had before and there was nothing that could possibly hold him back, everything was different. And maybe Jack didn't get that, get all of it, but she'd understood the essence of it instinctively, almost immediately, that he was ready to screw the rules, screw the chain of command, do anything, anything to keep Shepard safe. And not for some noble reason, because she was such a gifted commander—although she was—or because she might be the only one in the galaxy that could stop the Reapers. For the simple and selfish reason that he needed her safe.

The taunts about him and Shepard were crap, but they were a lot nearer the mark than they'd used to be, Garrus realized, and that was why he hadn't been able to laugh this time. How much nearer? Before he knew it, he was thinking of Shepard's dangerous grin in the med bay, flashing back on his annoyance at Taylor when Massani had caught the armory officer staring at Shepard's ass by the airlock.

Garrus let himself fall hard on his side, glaring at the floor, as if that would make a difference to the fact he had to be up in another four hours and sleep looked farther away than ever.

Damn.

It would go away, Garrus knew. He was still working to catch up, to wrap his exhausted, grieving, screwed-up mind around everything that had happened. Back from the dead, if Shepard seemed like the angel they'd only ever called him, saving his ass, giving him a grace he'd never asked for or wanted and had certainly never deserved—well, it was just a matter of time before he came to grips with the crazy and got over whatever trauma-inspired, sad, little attachment he was feeling just now.

She was human, after all. It had to go away.


A/N:

This story is set in the same universe as my Disaster Zone series, and progresses concurrently with Part Five of that series, Resurrection. This chapter and the five after it take place between Chapter Two of Resurrection, "Trust," and Chapter Three, "On Horizon."

Also, I guess I am showing off a little with my titles and references, but as surprising as it is, my master's in English with an emphasis on literature only does me limited good out here in the real world. Gotta use it somewhere, right? Not all my chapter titles are laden with symbolic meaning, but some of them are. But here? I'm not going to tell you who the penitent sinner ascending the mountain of Purgatory is. You decide.

I really like this chapter. There's a lot to say about it, but I'm going to let you decide for yourselves what you think.

Questions, comments? Raging criticism or gushing praise? Leave a review! I'll get back to you,

LMS