To returning readers, I would like to apologize for the years-long hiatus, and introduce this edited, slightly re-written version of The Parting Shot. A similar update for Out of Tricks is in the works. I am not yet continuing this series, but these edits are being done as a way to lay the groundwork for a return. I would at least like to finish The Long, Long Walk(Destiny/Mass Effect) before I start writing for this series once more. Changes Include, but are not limited to:
*Spellcheck
*Grammar
*Trimming off unnecessary filler.
*Trimming off some more OOC moments or dialogue from characters.
*Trimming off moments or dialogue that veered too wildly from the fic's intended tone.
*Changed a couple of interactions between characters.
*Fleshed out moments or dialogue that I felt was lacking.
To new readers, welcome, and enjoy what I have so far.
There was a lot of blood.
As the current Avatar of Truth, Pirsis had seen plenty of messed up things. But the young captain whose mind, memories, and Echo Shard she'd just gone through... well, his appearance spoke for itself; covered head to toe in blood, mud, and dirt. Not an inch of him, skin, mind, or armor, was clean.
And yet he just... sat across from her the whole time, hands folded on the table in front of him, casually as if his wrists were not, in fact, bound, as she determined whether his report was true, or if he was the one who'd been indoctrinated.
She didn't know what was more disturbing; that he was capable of killing a twenty-one man crew without being injured, that he'd been captaining them for years... or the fact that a twenty-one man crew had all been indoctrinated while their captain had somehow managed to avoid that fate. The implications of that were disturbing, horrific, and troubling. Where and how had they been exposed? And where had their captain been during that time?
"Again; you are certain you can confirm you destroyed the objective successfully?" she asked.
"Yes." the young captain said quietly.
What a waste. That technology could have won us the war, or at least given the new Empire an advantage. If there was a new empire; there was still no telling whether the Avatar of Knowledge's insane cryostasis idea would work.
"Then... you are dismissed." she reached over, and deactivated his restraints. He stood. "Report to showers; the results of your mission will be told to command. In the meantime, get some sleep; you are wanted by Kavrok early tomorrow morning."
"What would another Avatar want with me?" although he was covered in blood, she still thought she saw him pale a shade or two. There were only a few reasons for the Avatar of Vengeance to get involved in missions gone sour... and punishing kin-slayers was one of them.
"You killed the enemy, not other protheans." she assured. "As for what he wants, I do not know. So let me repeat my order; go sleep, Javik."
There was... a lot of blood.
Oh, spirits above...
He was going to yap. It was everywhere, the blood. The floor, the walls(and it wasn't just blood on the walls, oh spirits...), the... the bodies...
Oh, spirits and stars...
"Come on, Nathan; don't you leave that kid!" As a turian, most attempts to resuscitate a human(who in this case was Nathan Butler) would be harried by the complication that the most effective human CPR technique required lips. Which turians didn't have.
And Butler had lost too much blood anyway, so why was he even trying?
"G-Garrus?" a shaky voice rasped from the stairway. Shocked into giving up his attempt to revive Butler, the turian looked up to see Sensat peeking downwards, the salarian pale and covered in his own blood, but looking relieved at the sight of his leader.
"Sensat!" he jumped to his feet and bolted up the stairs, fumbling for the medigel on his belt. Sensat tried to meet him, but nearly fell into his arms instead. Garrus helped him to one of the couches and started smearing medigel into his wounds, all the while his brain telling him it wouldn't be enough; the salarian was in too bad a shape.
But... he had to try. He had to try.
"They came out of.. nowhere." Sensat grunted as Garrus treated him. "Guerrilla-style attack, took out... Erash and Krul right away, Montegue soon after. They got... ripped apart."
"I saw." was all the turian managed to get out. "Don't talk, save your strength. I've got to get you out of here."
He spent the next ten minutes applying medigel and searching desperately for a safe way out.
He didn't find one.
A Super Long Time Ago(2186)
Sol System
Two Months After The Crucible Fired
Garrus woke with a scream, and charged out of bed. He tripped on the covers, and his vision went black for several seconds when his head slammed on the corner of the side table on his way down. His cot tipped over on top of him, and a glass of water shattered on the floor with a crash.
"Stars, Garrus!" Ashley exclaimed from the other side of the room.
"Yup, definitely seeing those..." he groaned, clutching his head.
"Keelah, are you alright?" he flinched at Tali's inquiry. He'd had trouble looking her in the eye recently. He rolled, pushed the cot off of him angrily, and tried to disentangle himself from the blankets, talons ripping fabric and a shard of glass pressing painfully into his shoulder.
"Whoa, Scars! Need some help there?" James asked, leaning down. Garrus jerked his arm out of the Human's grasp, finally freeing himself.
"I'm fine!" he snapped, fighting to his feet, ignoring the pain smarting through his new and minor injuries. Minor compared to what he'd suffered a clean year ago...
He shook his head, and stormed off through the halls of the ruined old tower they'd been relegated to. The entire city of London was still a ruin, and would be for a while. He and the rest of the crew, ground team included, had been bunking in two large rooms filled with cots. The walls were cracked, but it was the most structurally sound building in the city at this point, and it had served as the launch point for the final attack, so it was definitely reliable.
As for why they were stuck in a ruined building instead of their ship, the Normandy had barely made it back to earth in one piece, and only just a week ago. She was a mess and needed more repairs before anyone could go home.
Home. Not 'military ship' or 'tip of the spear for a galactic war' but 'home'. That was what the Normandy was, what it had almost always been, to him. Garrus Vakarian was a very bad turian. He'd directly disobeyed his father, chased after a Specter, nearly became one himself, left service before he was thirty, became a vigilante, lost everything-
Don't think about them. Not yet. Let's not forget helping to cure the genophage! Even during C-Sec, and his stint on a turian ship, he hadn't gotten along well with other members of his species. He was, to use a human term, a bit of a black sheep. The Normandy was the only place he'd ever felt like he belonged, perfectly and completely. Not the only place.
There was once a team, his team, and they were-
Dead. Stop.
He staggered out into the open early morning. Even now, there was concrete dust in the air, and he brought his shirt up to cover his mouth as he took several deep breaths to try to calm his rapidly-beating heart. The wind still smelled like death and rotting corpses, and one or two felled Reapers, filled with holes from ship fire, were laying among the ruins of London. Even though he hadn't looked at a calendar in a while, Garrus knew what day it was. He could feel it in his gizzard.
Today was one year to the hour Sensat died in his arms, and marked the single greatest failure of his entire life; the deaths of his crew on Omega. Sidnonis' betrayal, like a knife straight to the heart. He could feel it cutting anew, and that was how he could tell what day it was. That and the fact he'd dreamed of them again, only this time Shepard was among the dead.
Shepard. That wound was still fresh, and the thought of him made Garrus' gizzard twist and roil. Johnathan Shepard had been his best friend, the closest thing he ever had to a brother. And two months ago, he sacrificed himself to save them all, by replacing the Reaper master AI with his own mind, and sending the Reapers into a black hole.
He would never see Shepard again. Hearing what had happened... it had almost been as bad as when his mother died. Right now, Solana and his father were probably a galaxy away, if they were even alive at all. Tali kept trying to help, but by trying to be something he wasn't sure he wanted. Everyone he loved, everyone he cared about, kept ending up paying some kind of a price, and if he let himself love her as more than the friend she'd been for the past few years...
He was afraid of what would happen. The best thing to do would be to push them all away, so it wouldn't hurt as much. But he knew that wasn't what Shepard would want, and it was eating him apart, indecision waring with certainty inside of him. Stay or go? To be, or not to be? Love, or let go?
He brought up his omnitool. He hadn't shot Sidonis. Shepard wouldn't let him(to think he'd been so mad at that human for convincing him to let Lantar slither away). But the part of his dream, the part that had woken him, was the face not of his betrayer, but his intended murderer. The sight of the missile rushing towards him, the feeling of making a stim-hopped poor decision to roll out of cover at exactly the wrong moment. The blast of agony as the projectile made contact.
He hadn't been asleep long enough to hear or see Tarak go down in his dream. He looked at his messages. At the one with a reluctantly-attached file that a reluctant Liara had sent him. Very reluctantly.
But now... he knew that piece of slime had managed to crawl away alive. That Tarak had lived. And that he was planning something big, in the newly-accessible Exodus Cluster. A saying of Butler's came to mind.
"Like a batarian in a room full of humans." Or, a murdering, insane batarian in a system of Humans, some of them on still-helpless colonies, trying to rebuild the simplest of structures. People who were practically helpless; he couldn't let his mistake hurt them. He couldn't.
And maybe if he succeeded in saving them... it wouldn't be a lie to say he was fine.
It would be a lie to say Javik was fine.
Nothing was 'fine' when you were the last of your kind, surrounded by lesser-developed species, your purpose fulfilled, your head bursting with agonizing memories of the people you had lost, and, to top it off, the ability to read minds or the status of objects with a mere touch in an environment filled with fear, pain, and all kinds of general mental 'noise' that gave one a headache bordering on a severe migraine.
It wouldn't be a lie to say Javik was dangerously close to snapping the neck of the next primitive that gawked at him. If he wasn't about to take his own life, he'd have stooped to using one of those vile tactical cloaks long ago, just for some privacy. It was getting seriously annoying. And although T'Soni was now... more bearable than she had been, the rest of the crew were much the same, save for the turian(who had been in a foul and indecisive mood for months now). The Vega human was still easy to confuse, the machine was still horrible, the quarian was still smitten with Vakarian, and 'Specter Williams' was still making misguided attempts to befriend him(which were far less successful than the turian's; not to say the turian had had ANY measure of success, as a prothean did not befriend primitives).
"Do not make another attempt to persuade me, asari." he said, though not turning away from the window. Strangely enough, earth's sunsets looked quite similar to descriptions of the sunsets that his people's homeworld encountered. Not that it mattered. "I have already decided my fate."
It had been a mistake to tell her his plans. At least he'd convinced her not to blab to the other primitives. He'd leave without telling them, and hopefully his disappearance would remain a mystery to them.
"I wasn't planning on it." T'Soni said quietly. "I just wanted to tell you... you should just... Go. Go tonight before-"
He looked at her when she cut herself off. "Before what? Speak up."
"Garrus might be planning something. It's personal." she didn't offer any more details.
"Very well." he looked back out the window, and she walked away. It wasn't like he'd see this view again. Sunsets were a strange, fickle thing that brought sudden thoughts to mind. "T'Soni."
The retreating footsteps halted. "Yes?"
"My shard may be among the Commander's personal effects. Feel free to... study it." everything in him protested this idea. The shard was a sacred thing, and here he was giving it to a primitive. But it wasn't like he'd be needing it later. "And inform... Vakarian that he still favors his right in hand to hand combat. He should have his leg examined once more."
It had been broken when the Normandy crashed; the turian still had a faint limp.
"Okay. I'll tell him that." she said softly. She started walking again.
"And just where do you think you're going?" Thresher spit. Garrus froze. He turned around guiltily to look at Tali. She stood with her arms crossed and her hip cocked in that 'I have a shotgun' way.
"Uh..." he found his mouth was dry. Well, drier than usual; he was a turian, after all. "Out?"
"In winter gear?" she asked skeptically. "With a Cain?"
"There's something I have to take care of. It's... well, it's personal." he turned his back on her. She grabbed his elbow.
"I know what day it is, Garrus." she hissed. He stopped again. "Keelah, please tell me you're not about to do something stupid!"
"What I'm about to do is none of your business." he told her icily, prying her hand off his arm.
"It is if we-if it's dangerous." she corrected hastily. "Garrus, you wouldn't let any of us go off and fight alone, would you?"
"Liara knows, and that's enough. The Cain is just in case. This... personal." he looked away. "I don't want any of you getting caught in the middle."
"Garrus, if someone needs a Cain 'just in case', it's probably a bad idea for them to go alone." She crossed her arms. "Keelah, we just lost Shepard, we don't need to lose you too, not to vague 'personal business' that only Liara knows about!"
"Tali, I-"
"She's not a one-woman army!" the quarian cuts him off. She casts a quick look around to make sure nobody else is near. "Just because she's the Shadow Broker, doesn't mean she swoop in before anything bad happens."
"Tali, it's a problem that can be solved with a single bullet if I find the right spot." he insisted, growing impatient.
"And since when has anything ever gone according to plan for anyone aboard this ship?" she challenged.
"Look," he sighed, "this is just one of those times where every extra head on the mission is a risk. I want to be in and out, bringing people with me will just make it a risk. I need you to trust me. I'll be fine, I'll be back within a week; days, if I'm lucky."
"Can you promise that?" she accused. "Going alone, can you promise me without a shadow of a doubt that you'll be back?"
"I promise." he lied. He didn't really know what he would find. He tried to crack his cockiest smirk. "I'll be back. It's just a quick hop to the Exodus Cluster, and there are loads of Alliance going through there recently. What's the worst that could happen?"
It had been easy enough getting access to the only available shuttle. Well, the only one that was supposedly space-worthy. Actually, it was suspiciously easy, and he suspected the asari had a hand in it.
He was certain to leave under cover of night, and managed to avoid all of the spotlights without trouble. Normally he might have gone and berated whoever was in charge on the lax security measures of this cycle, but it wasn't as if it was his problem, nor would it ever be. So Javik merely continued on his way, until he got to the makeshift hangar that had been set up, and noticed the door had been forced open.
Priming a biotic attack in one hand, he entered, and made his way to the shuttle without incident. But when he tried to key in the access code, the strangest thing happened; he heard the door on the other side of the Kodiak open before he finished. He slunk around the back of the shuttle, and he heard footsteps making their own way around towards him. He pulled back his fist and-
Let it drop back to his side when Vakarian turned the corner, his own fist raised with omnitool sparking. The turian let out an annoyed huff and deactivated his weapon.
"Really?" it was less of a question and more of a statement.
"I require this shuttle." Javik told him.
"Yeah, well I need it, too."
"For what?"
"None of your business. What do you need it for?"
"None of your concern."
"Guess that makes us even. But I have a job to do."
"Would it involve the Exodus Cluster?" Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, because the primitive's ice-colored eyes hardened, the pupils pinning. The crest on his head spiked up slightly.
"Spirits, Liara! I told her it was nothing!" he exclaimed. He glared at Javik. "Look, you can go tell her I don't need help! I'm perfectly capable of doing this by myself, I don't need a babysitter! I just went over this with Tali."
"The asari did not send me." This is... interesting. He certainly wasn't going to reveal his own reasons for leaving.
"Then tell it to Tali; you're not coming with me." the turian turned away, and Javik followed, taking note in the change of armor. Rather than the heavy plating he was accustomed to seeing Vakarian in, this armor was light, with plating on the shoulders and sides and heavy padding everywhere else, along with a cloak-like attachment with a hood that was partially attached to the shoulder pads. Wherever he was going, the weather was cold; so cold he was favoring lighter but warmer armor over protection from bullets.
"I have my own... business to attend to in that region of space." Javik said. "I was not 'sent' by anyone. You could simply deliver me and leave me to my own devices."
"Yeah, and where are you going?" Vakarian demanded, hopping up into the shuttle.
"The Cronian Nebula, second largest red dw-"
"Yeah, you're not coming." The door slammed shut. Shocked, Javik pounded on the metal.
"I need to go! NOW!" he yelled, furious. How dare that turian! He'd done daring things to Javik before(like pushing him off a cliff and onto a shuttle), but slamming a door in his face? This was the final straw! He was through with this primitive! "I am going to make you suffer a fate worse than death if you do not let me enter!"
"Make me!" came the reply. Javik's hands twitched. The only thing keeping him from biotically ripping the shuttle apart right now was the fact he needed it in working condition.
"I will stay in the shuttle." he said through grit teeth. It was a lie, of course; he'd leave while the turian was busy and do the deed. "I will stay in the shuttle while you conduct your... mission, and then I will do my own."
He couldn't believe he was bargaining with a primitive. Oh, how the mighty had fallen!
The engines started up. He didn't want to have to wait for another shuttle, he was done now. He slammed his fist on the side of the Kodiak once more. It slid open and Vakarian glared at him.
"Get in; but you're waiting in orbit while I do this. No arguments. Are we clear?" he demanded. He'd become more volatile since the Commander died; more demanding.
"Fine." Javik agreed, jaw clenched. It looked like his final journey wouldn't be as quiet as he'd hoped it would be.
Garrus and Javik didn't speak to each other for the entire flight. He was almost certain that Liara had sent the prothean under guise of some sort of 'business', no matter how much Javik protested it to be untrue.
So, he turned on his visor, listened to his music, and for the most part let silence reign in the cabin. His thoughts drifted to Tali, and Shepard. They kept trying to drift to Butler's young son, left fatherless, or Erash, who's life had been cut incredibly short, so he did his best to focus on Tali.
He was a mess. And since she admitted to her feelings for him, he'd started to feel them back, but when you were a mess... well, messes didn't deserve to be loved by people like Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. He didn't deserve her. Didn't derserve whatever kind of a future she seemed to see for them if they stayed together. What did she see? A wedding? Kids? A house near the seas of Rannoch?
The way things were going, that seemed to be a bleak and distant future bound not to exist, because what was the point of having a wedding if you didn't have a best man? When there was a hole as big as that missing from your life... how could things between him and Tali ever work out when the crew seemed to be disintegrating all around them without Shepard? He'd been the glue that held them together, and now he was gone.
The ground team might still be together, for the most part. But Liara had her own ship; she'd found Feron, and the two of them mostly stayed up there. Chakwas had joined them. The general crew that helped operate the Normandy were scattered now; some were working on repairing the mighty frigate, others were trying to help with other things. Ashley spent most of her time doing Specter duties, just trying to keep people decent, trying to keep order in a sea that was still in chaos in the wake of the war.
The Kodiak's control console beeped at him, and he gave a start before realizing they were pulling into orbit of the planet known as Frigus. To the best of his knowledge, it was an old human word that had something to do with low temperatures. Fitting, too, since his business was in the mountains. Half the planet was icy mountains, and the other half was harsh jungles. It was a popular hideout for the unwanted crowd, since the Alliance hadn't wanted to contend with the unpredictable weather of the place.
He began to direct the Kodiak's descent, and he glanced over at Javik for the first time since they left. The last prothean sat with his arms crossed, and one set of eyes closed, his knife in one fist, but his posture too relaxed for someone who was expecting an attack. If he was attacked, he could adjust his grip, but his counter would be sloppy, and that wasn't very in character for him. Nor was the sentimentality of a blade; then again, it could be some weird prothean thing.
"You'll hear from me every hour. Don't leave the damn ship." he told his companion, standing and stretching his legs before retrieving his rifle from where he'd propped it up in the corner. He checked it. It wasn't his HMWSR, the one he'd had since the hunt for Saren. The one Shepard had gifted him. This was a Viper, not exactly the best thing on the market; but he'd take what he could get, so a Viper it was.
"And if you miss a check in?" Javik asked, looking even more irritated than usual.
"Then send a message to Liara. She'll know what's happening." he said gruffly. "Do not come after me, unless I call for backup."
"Very well. And when you return, I shall do what I came here to do." whatever that was. Probably more weird prothean stuff.
The Kodiak beeped at him, and he returned to the controls. They were coming in a little too hot.
"Grab onto something; it's about to get bumpy." he warned. He wasn't the best pilot in the galaxy, but he knew how to fly a Kodiak. Who didn't these days? Headwinds and turbulence still made the ride through the atmosphere less than pleasant, and in the corner of his vision, he saw Javik tense up as he usually did. He'd said something once about 'all these primitives flying' being very 'concerning'. To Garrus, it had sounded like a roundabout way of expressing newly obtained flight nerves.
He couldn't fault the prothean for it; he'd be nervous too, if he had to fly in the ships of strange species who had, last he checked, been in the early stages of civilization. For all he knew, the Kodiak looked like the space equivalent to a rickety old boat, as far as Javik was concerned.
Of course, rickety old boat or not, it still flew off course when you shot at it.
Which is exactly what someone hiding in the storm did as the shuttle cleared the worst of the cloud cover.
"Really? Oh, for the love of-hold on!" Garrus sent the Kodiak into a spin, but his attacker had an unshakable lock on the poor shuttle. Dammit, he should have been more careful! He hadn't expected them to have sensors; nobody had working sensors these days! Most people were still getting grids up and running again, after the mild EMP the Crucible had fired(frying a good deal of tech, Mass Relays included).
The Kodiak shook, Javik yelled, and Garrus sent the shuttle towards the ground. He could only try his best to land at this point, or at least make the crash less of a health risk.
"Brace yoursel-" something exploded, he lost control, and consciousness soon after as something violent happened.
Everything about what happened to Javik's crew was incredibly vague. Some of what's portrayed here might not line up with canon, simply because I wanted the circumstances of their deaths to have some higher steaks than just messing Javik up personally.
I combined Chapters one and two and cut off a flash forward from the original version of this. I also extended the conversation between Tali and Garrus, and removed the pressure for him to be back before she left for Rannoch, simply because I couldn't think of a way for the rest of the story to work within that time constraint(which, originally, was only a day or two). Those aren't the only changes made, but they're the ones that made the most impact.
Fare Thee Well!"