Author's note: Mild mentioning of sexual abuse and drug use. Please proceed with caution if the topic is triggering.
As Thane and his son disappeared, Shepard settled herself against one of the bulkheads in the cockpit. She intended to stay close to the entrance of the ship until C-Sec's inevitable visit. It was an added bonus that she could keep an eye out for Thane and Kolyat's return.
The Commander proceeded to answer her pilot's questions about the mission, filling him in on the dirt she had managed to find regarding Tallied's more sinister crimes. The man's corruption went far deeper than just extorting human shop owners.
Somewhere early in her story, Garrus and Kelly Chambers had decided to join them. As Shepard neared the end, the group laughed good naturedly at Kolyat's expense when they heard about his unfortunate car ride with Selene.
"I was wondering why he looked so beat up," Kelly commented.
"Well, that's what happens when Shepard decides to use you as a crash-test-dummy," the pilot teased, inciting another round of laughs.
"As amusing as it was, I'm pretty sure I might have just made an enemy for life." Shepard commented worriedly.
Selene's eyes slid to the closed doors that led to the conference room, and she wondered how things were going for the two drell for the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes.
Garrus placed a gloved hand on her shoulder, cutting off her musing. "Come on, Shepard. I'm sure the kid has bigger things to think about than one bad car ride with you. You did save him from prison after all."
Garrus had apparently reached the same conclusion as Shepard regarding Kolyat's first contract as a rookie assassin. Shepard had been mulling over her suspicions ever since interrogating Elias Kelham, the man who had hired Kolyat to assassinate Tallied.
She had reached only one conclusion: Kelham had not intended for Kolyat to succeed with his objective.
After digging further into Tallied's history, Shepard had come across a connection between Kelham and Tallied regarding the processing and redistribution of hallex. Supposedly, the two had created a lucrative business for themselves selling the drug in Citadel space.
However, when Tallied began to distribute their supply into the Terminus systems, Kelham decided to cut ties with his business partner. The reason for their falling out seemed directed towards Tallied's goal of supplying specific slave traders targeting humans for sex trafficking in and out of the system. The slaver's victims were forcibly fed hallex to the point of addiction to make them more compliant.
The revelation that Tallied was significantly more sinister than a corrupt politician had led to her decision to kill him herself. She fully intended to pass the information she had found forward to Bailey. Hopefully, the man could put an end to some of the dead turian's activities.
Selene's theory that Kelham had not intended for Kolyat to succeed, or possibly escape detection, came from a message she had stolen as she and Thane left their interrogation of him. Kelham's lawyer had been fiercely typing away at his omini tool as he demanded to see his client. One subtle scan from Shepard's own omini tool revealed that the lawyer was not sending a message but deleting several. The one she had managed to grab before its deletion was a correspondence between Kelham and the lawyer.
The message spoke about Kolyat's acceptance of the contract through a young man named Mouse; Thane's old associate on the Citadel who they had already questioned in order to gain Kelham's name. Kelham's advocate had warned against using the drell, informing his client that he was the wrong Krios. Kelham had not been concerned, stating that Kolyat only needed to cause a scene.
If he did manage to kill Tallied, well, then that was just a bonus.
Kelham had intended to use Kolyat as a propaganda scheme to highlight Tallied's clear incompetence and lack of support in his political campaign against humans. Kelham had just needed a nonhuman to perform the deed.
All the evidence pointed in Kelham's belief from the start that the job would go horribly wrong. It did not concern him which side Kolyat would have ended up on as the younger man had no information beyond accepting the contract.
Selene was grateful that she and Thane had managed to get there before Kolyat did something he would seriously regret. She just hoped that Kolyat could accept that his father was genuinely concerned for him after all these years. Whether he would ever believe that Thane was truly regretful of his past actions was unknown. However, Selene respected her friend for the atonement of his sins.
In an attempt to bring the conversation back to a lighter topic, Kelly turned a teasing smile towards their Commander. "So, Commander Shepard, Kolyat is certainly easy on the eyes. Not unlike his father. Wouldn't you agree?"
Shepard snorted in amusement and rolled her eyes at her yeomen. Kelly, and several of the other bolder crew members, had grown creative with their speculation about the nature of her and Thane's relationship. Each rumor she heard was more ridiculous than the last.
They also were not limited to the drell himself. She was pretty sure there were bets circulating around the ship regarding her and Garrus as well.
Selene's stony silence on the matter had done nothing to quell their curiosity either.
After nearly ten years in a military career, she knew that her answer would have no bearing on the gossip mill. The crew needed something to talk about, and commanding officers were always particularly interesting targets among lower ranked staff.
Usually, crewmembers had the good sense to at least try and hide it from their superiors. However, because this was no longer a military ship, Selene believed that people did not feel the pressure to try as hard with her. Luckily for them, the speculations amused her more than anything.
On several occasions, she had a private laugh with Thane and Garrus over the crew's lack of subtlety. While she was certainly close to Thane and Garrus on a deeper level, their individual relationships were strictly platonic.
Garrus had been by Shepard's side since the beginning of their fight with the reapers, even before they knew it was the reapers who were the enemy. He was like the brother she had never had, becoming one of the closest friends she had ever made. Someone she could always count on.
Somewhere along their time together, Thane had been trusting enough to let her past the walls he had built around himself over his twelve years of self-isolation.
In that time, he had revealed some of his past to her. They had spoken about how the Illuminated Primacy had taken him from his family by the age of six so he could become an assassin. Shepard had struggled to accept that removing a child at such a young age from his family was considered an honor in drell society. However, Thane had become defensive when she attempted to suggest otherwise. Selene had respectfully chosen to let the matter drop, recognizing that the bond between hanar and drelll service was deeply personal. Therefore, she would not condemn the act, for Thane's sake.
They had talked about his two siblings still living on Kahje. His brother, a pilot for the Illuminated Primacy Defense Force, and his sister who was a mother and a school teacher.
And then there was Kolyat. Thane had confessed that his son had been partially raised by Thane's family, with the remainder of Irikah's family supporting them through his upbringing. Drell were a community-based people, relying heavily on extended family to play a role in children's lives.
His wife, Irikah's, death had destroyed the small grasp he had maintained on domestic life, leading him to exact vengeance for her murder before he had returned home. He had returned to find the boy he remembered several years older, he had felt like the best decision he could make for his son was to leave him in the care of his aunts and uncles.
Shepard had a hard time believing he was the terrible father he loathed himself to be. Especially since her own father had been an abusive bastard who had destroyed her own life.
Over time aboard her ship, Thane had integrated himself well among the crew, becoming a vital part of their odd little group.
During her time as his Commander, she had come to rely on Thane significantly. She sought his council on matters regarding various missions, the training of the crew, and eventually she began to share glimpses into her own troubled past.
Thane had become a reliable confidant, a friend, and a mentor figure to Selene.
That never stopped Kelly from speculating though. The closest Kelly had ever come to any insight into Shepard's love life is when she had made a comment about whether Thane's cold confidence made him scary or sexy.
Selene had just given the yeomen a small smile, making a casual remark that most people tended to be drawn to bad boys.
Kelly was sure she had trapped Commander Shepard, asking if she was one of those people. Selene had just shrugged noncommittally, saying that she lived a dangerous life. Therefore, dangerous people fit right in.
Obviously, Kelly had not given up her crusade.
"I noticed that Kolyat looks different from Thane. It's the darker scales. I wonder if he got them from his mother, or if no two drell look the same." Selene commented, a neutral expression on her face.
Kelly looked mildly annoyed, but her prodding was interrupted by Garrus, subtly interfering on Selene's behalf.
"I remember seeing a few drell in my time with C-Sec. Children do appear to get their coloring from their parents. It was strange to see them side by side. The boy though, he looks like a more emotional version of his father. It's hard to believe that he's Thane's son," Garrus commented in his gruff voice, looking contemplative.
"That's what I thought," Selene agreed with a nod. "I was starting to think being stoic was a drell thing. Turns out it's a Thane thing."
"What is a Thane thing?" Thane himself asked from directly behind her, the vibrations of his deep voice making her start.
"Dammit Thane! Why?" Selene asked, annoyed by the stealth act. She had been eyeing the conference room doors for forty-five minutes, yet she had managed to miss him in the thirty seconds her attention had been diverted.
Thane's lips quirked into a smug smirk as he moved to stand beside her. Shepard immediately took notice of a fresh cut on his right cheek bone, the tell-tale signs of a developing bruise darkening his scales. Kolyat had not held back, it appeared.
Shepard chuckled as she ran a finger along the outline of the wound. "Looks like your precious little gift from above throws a mean hook."
"A moment of anger was let out," Thane huffed a laugh at Selene's teasing before his expression sobered. "I cannot say it was not deserved for all that I have put him through."
The small smile returned to his face, whether it was meant to be reassuring, she did not know.
"The outburst was not as bad as it could have been. Kolyat even apologized when I left him in the medical bay."
"I am assuming you didn't add on to the damage I already inflicted on him?" she raised a questioning brow, crossing her arms over her chest.
Thane clasped his hands behind his back as he shook his head at the Commander, "No. He still needed to receive treatment for the bullet wound he received."
Judging by his even stare and silence, she decided that Thane was letting her earlier offenses towards his son slide.
"How did it go?" she asked softly.
Thane glanced around at his team members, all looking at him with a mixture of hopefulness and worry. There was also a look of concern on their faces that took Thane by surprise. In some ways, the comradery they had formed with each other had become the closest thing to a family he had had in many years.
"Better than expected, but our problems . . ." Thane paused, wanting to put their minds at ease but faltering. "They will take more than just one conversation to fix them. We will continue speaking and trying to work on our relationship."
Thane's eyes shifted uneasily as he recalled the question that Kolyat had asked him at the end of their conversation.
The answer to which he had no right in giving without consulting Shepard.
In an unspoken display of Selene's understanding of his inner turmoil, the woman turned and met Thane's uneasy gaze, silently encouraging him to speak, "Shepard, there is another matter we must discuss. Kolyat has made a request of you."
Selene's brows shot up in surprise, wondering what Kolyat could possibly want from her.
Shepard took a step closer to Thane, setting a hand on his shoulder. She struggled to hide her concern and sound reassuring, "Thane, what is it?"
"Kolyat has asked . . ."
Thane was cut off by EDI's voice coming from the holo next to Joker: "I am sorry for the interruption. Shepard, Captain Bailey and two other C-Sec officers are here to see you. They are requesting entrance to the ship."
Selene stared at Thane for a half a second longer, her look promised that they would continue their discussion after they dealt with Bailey. Selene then turned to EDI, ordering her to tell the C-Sec captain that she would meet him outside in a moment. As she moved towards the exit, she could feel Thane and Garrus fall into step behind her.
"Hello again, Commander," Bailey greeted her, sounding exhausted.
It was likely that the man had spent a significant amount of time searching through multiple shoddy testimonies regarding Tallied's murder. It had taken C-Sec over an hour to decide to come searching for answers with Shepard. Longer than Selene though it would take them. Maybe she should have sent them her information earlier and saved the Captain a headache.
Bailey's rough voice brought Shepard out of her thoughts as he continued, "I am sure the reason for my visit is not lost on you?"
"Yes, Captain," Selene smiled pleasantly at Bailey. "I do know why you're here."
"Then you know I need to speak with the boy."
Bailey appeared regretful, apprehensive about what he came here to do.
Thane's eyes burned a hole in the back of her head, his worry palpable to her. It was obvious that he was scared for his son, and she knew with grim understanding that he would do what he had to keep the officers from taking Kolyat.
However, without looking at him, she knew he resembled the perfect embodiment of calm and stoicism.
"Let me ask you something, Bailey," Shepard began calmly. "Do you have any evidence of Kolyat shooting Tallied? Any video footage? Witnesses? Could anyone even find a gun?"
Bailey rubbed his eyes tiredly, Shepard imagined it was not the first time that day.
"No, I do not. All we know is that he was the only one who was hired to kill the man."
It was inevitable really, but she was still irritated at having her own evidence used against her. Bailey had allowed Thane and herself to conduct the interrogation in his holding cells, the man would have been truly foolish to not file the information away.
Selene decided to draw this out a bit longer. Call it petty payback for the Captain's use of Kelham's confession.
"So," she drew out the single syllable, smiling as if she were the only one in the space who knew something incredibly useful and important. "Your only lead is the testimony that I discovered for you?"
Bailey had the good grace to look uncomfortable.
"You know I can't just let that go, Shepard. The boy intended to commit murder and now my officers are left with two dead bodies and no other leads. What would you do in my position?"
She understood that the man could not overlook the only lead he had in a murder case. He was doing his job, after all. She could not fault the man for that.
Switching tactics, she decided to give a hint of what he really wanted to know.
"What if I could give you the name of the person who killed Tallied?" Selene offered.
The captain narrowed his eyes suspiciously, "Would it be the right name?"
"Yes, Captain, it will be," she smiled pleasantly.
"Alright," Bailey released a breath. He did not look entirely comfortable with trusting her. "But I make no promises of not having to question the boy."
Selene uncrossed her arms, nodding to the man.
"Who is the killer?"
Selene's unpredictability had Thane on the verge of a panic attack. He knew she would do what she could to keep Kolyat from being taken. She would not let Kolyat take the blame, but he could not be sure of the game she was playing on her own. He felt useless to her whims, but he knew that his son would come first and foremost. That did not mean he wasn't incredibly nervous about the outcome of this encounter.
Could she afford to take the blame of the murder of a public figure on the Citadel? The Council had specifically restricted her to the Terminus systems.
"Me." Simple, clear, and calm, the single syllable rang out above all other noises on the dock.
Apparently, she could.