The base thrummed and morphed through techno synthesised beats, low and animalistic, designed to melt through the senses of those high on less-than-designer drugs. The lights were a low red, adding to the haze in which the group danced and drank. It was here, in Afterlife's lower level, that Jax found himself, sitting at the bar, nursing an ale. His eyes flickered over Fist, a disgruntled dock worker who had supposedly fallen from a crime lord on the Citadel to barely affording the whores he kept company with during his off hours, and to the door across from them. Patriarch's old private room was now locked and unused, but its entrance wasn't discrete, and it was the only way in or out. Jax looked back to the bar, watching the Asari bartenders flit back and forth between pouring drinks and dancing themselves. One of the Asari, one noticeably more matron than maiden, moved over to where he was. "You asked for me?" She asked pointedly.

"Are you Serra?" Jax asked.

"Yeah, I manage this floor" Serra replied irritably.

"You managed it back when Aria was still in charge too."

"I was" Serra confirmed, "and you are?"

"Angry" Jax replied, taking another sip. "And looking for answers. Who visited Patriarch the most before all this shit? Someone other than the regular losers listening to stories?"

"Get lost kid" Serra rebuffed, "now that Patriarch has shut down the top floor, I've got the premier all-access bar on the station."

"So you do know someone then" Jax understood.

"Even if I did, give me one reason why I would tell you" Serra challenged.

Jax slipped the grenade out of his belt and put it on the bar. "You know what this is?" He asked.

The bar manager snorted. "Kid, I'm six hundred and eighty years old and I've spent most of it working this bar. I've seen every weapon you could imagine. That's a low power flashbang, don't try and bluff me."

"You're right, it is" Jax agreed, rueing that this was the grenade he had managed to steal from earlier before but maintaining his intensity. "And that krogan behind me is seven ryncols deep from just the thirty six minutes since I arrived in this bar, and for the last four he hasn't taken his eyes off that turian over there." Serra's eyes flickered over to the obnoxiously loud turian in obviously new Blue Suns armour, a likely new promoted recruit for the Blue Suns' new position of power. "He is that close from goading the krogan into a full on blood rage," Jax told her. "And believe me when I say I've had a horrifically awful day. I don't care about how good you think your shitty dive bar is, you really want to try my hand?"

"You wouldn't dare" the Asari growled.

Jax sighed as he put in his ear plugs. "Suit yourself" he remarked with a shrug, slinging the grenade off the counter behind him without looking. Serra and the bartenders ducked as the room was filled with an explosion of light, followed by a frenzied roar and the sound of a table flipping and glasses smashing. Jax remained sitting as the bar erupted into a full on brawl, taking another swig as a bottle went whizzing past his head and a human was slammed into the bar beside him. Jax looked at the Batarians who had the human. "Carry on" he told him, taking his bottle off the bar as they pushed him along it through all the broken glass. Jax watched as the krogan kept stomping, a growing blue puddle of bloody pieces sticking from his foot to the ground. A vorcha from somewhere across the bar locked eyes with him and screamed. Jax rolled his eyes as he downed the beer, ducking the vorcha before smashing the bottle over its head, stabbing the neck into the human beside him who swung at the back of his head. The human staggered away as blood leaked out. Jax turned back to the bar. "You going to tell me now?" He asked Serra.

"Go to hell!" She yelled in reply.

Jax looked at the bartenders who were cowering rather than breaking the fights up. "This is what happens when you hire strippers rather than bartenders" he told her, reaching over the bar for another bottle. "I can stop this fight if you want, otherwise…" Jax looked around as the krogan ripped a table of its mountings and threw it. One of the people it hit was a human whose skull was instantly smashed under the weight, the other was a turian whose leg got caught under it falling and bent the wrong way with a snap and a scream. "You think Patriarch's going to be tolerable of the manager who let this happen under her watch while she cowered?"

"Only an idiot would fight a krogan in a blood rage" Serra cursed back, "biotics or not."

"I'll stop him" Jax promised, "just tell me who was visiting Patriarch too many times to be coincidences."

Serra looked beyond sour now but choice was long removed from her. "No one special" she insisted. "Just the regular losers encouraging him to speak and Aria's old bodyguards telling him to shut the hell up, that Grizz and Anto Korragan."

"Who else?" Jax thundered, losing his composure, himself not far away from a full blown blood rage.

"They're all I swear!" Serra yelled. "Anto would drop by all the time and Grizz would come less but took longer to get his point across."

Jax shook his head. "Fucking hell" he muttered, reaching and grabbing another bottle, this time of ryncol. He marched straight at the krogan, discarding the cork in the top. The krogan's back was turned to him as Jax grabbed the krogan's neck with one hand and forced the bottle into his throat with the other. The krogan's roar came out as gargles as he swallowed the ryncol in surprise before relaxing a little. Jax released the krogan and watched as he swayed for a moment before collapsing with a crash his he hit the floor, fast asleep. Jax looked around the bar's patrons, those trying to avoid the fight seemed to have been very successful, albeit undignified cowering behind a few of the tables. Those who had used it as an excuse to settle old grudges were both unconscious and dead, by Omega's standards a bar fight without at least three deaths was considered a very tame affair. Jax walked past Fist who had been knocked out within the first five seconds and exited the bar.

"Did you find out what you needed?" Shepard asked, waiting for him.

Jax shook his head. "I don't think so. Nothing sticking out just yet but I'll keep working on it." He took a moment, trying to quell his heart. "Thank you for letting me handle that."

Shepard nodded. "I'm with you all the way Jax, you're part of my crew." It would have been her preference to instantly bench Jax, it did no one any good to have him continue but with Joker unable to dock the Normandy with Aria on board and the hammerhead not worth risking another run in vacuum, she had to make do with what she had. Jax had tried to hide the pain but it was a poor attempt. He had surprised her though, asking if they could make a detour for his own assignment. Ordinarily Shepard was against violence as a means when there were other avenues but she and Jax had been clashing for so long, she had decided showing faith in him and extending an olive branch might be the best way to heal the rifts between them. So she had waited, and stood by while Jax had acquired his intel, and expended some rage. As long as it was against the ill of Omega, Shepard could tolerate it, and seeing the appreciation in Jax's eyes, it may not have been the worst idea. "We'll get Patriarch back for this."

Jax nodded wordlessly, he had placed his mother's corpse in her bed while they carried on. Nef being murdered sometime earlier meant her remains had probably already been seen to, there was no space for a graveyard on Omega, it was near impossible to even have a death registry with the sheer amount of murder and violence that occurred daily on the station. He wondered what sort of ceremony they had after he had been assumed dead. "I have to link up with Bray and Anto" he told Shepard, "get them into position for Aria's assault when she delivers the plan. Do you need me?"

Shepard shook her head, she and Samara were best suited to infiltrate Afterlife's VIP lounge to lure out Morinth alone. "I'll find you once we've made our next move with Morinth."

"I assure you we shall exact vengeance for what she had done" Samara promised, "all my daughter's victims shall be avenged soon enough."

Jax nodded and left, there was work to be done.

"Report" Aria ordered.

"All squads are positioned as close to Section One as we can be without risking detection" Bray told her. "We're waiting on your orders to assault."

"What are our chances?" Aria asked.

Bray shook his head. "Patriarch's entrenched deep. We'd need to get rid of the mercenaries first, with the guilds acting as Patriarch's vanguard, they have both the numbers and the position. If we could face Patriarch's men alone though, we could have a shot of breaking through."

"Understood" Aria replied, "any word from Grizz?"

Anto shook his head. "No word, no signal, no body. He's either dead or gone into deep hiding with Patriarch ruling the roost."

"Keep searching" Aria told him. "If Patriarch has him, then there's a lot of intel at stake to lose. Wait for further instructions."

The holograms of Bray and Anto nodded before exiting the channel.

Aria looked at Jax's hologram. "What have you got?"

"Serra says the only visitors Patriarch received outside his normal followers were Grizz and Anto whilst working for you" Jax replied.

"Do you believe her?" Aria asked.

Jax nodded. "I do, which begs the question; how much do you trust your right and left hand men?"

Aria considered it for a moment. "Anto has always been able to be swayed by outside opportunities but that's usually limited to information trading, and then only the information I choose to let him find out. Grizz is by the books."

"Grizz also has failed to report in" Jax replied.

"But he hasn't come up on Patriarch's side either" Aria pointed out. "We're not making any decisions until we know anything for certain."

"So what do you want me to do in the interim?" Jax asked.

"Link up again with Serra" Aria told him. "Patriarch will be too wary to allow you to join and infiltrate his own troops but Serra now has the controlling interest on Afterlife, have her keep you on as security. We'll use my men to distract Patriarch from the front door while we sneak in the back, and then we kill the bastard."

"You think your men can hold on long enough against the combined forces of the merc guilds and Patriarch's men?" Jax asked.

Aria turned away slightly as an alert rang across the Normandy, a ship was inbound to the frigate. "They won't have to" she said.

"Meaning?" Jax asked.

"Link up with Serra, find Grizz" Aria ordered, "I'll take care of the rest."

"Roger that" Jax acknowledged, fading out as well.

At that moment Garrus entered. "Normandy's shuttle has just remade contact", he said, "I thought you reported you cannibalised it for scrap?"

"I did" Aria explained. "It suited my purpose then, as it does now to purchase back those pieces and have it remade."

"Patriarch will be expecting you to be on a shuttle with our ID tag" Garrus said. "Wherever you dock will have a welcoming party ready."

"Except it's not Normandy's shuttle anymore" Aria said. "Space traffic back into Omega is already beginning to flow, despite the increased piracy risk with Patriarch in charge. That shuttle is going to fit right in with them."

"And if there's still a welcoming party?" Garrus asked, unconvinced.

"Then your crew is going to come in handy."

The shuttle deftly wove through the traffic to find itself a spot on the public transit pad, one its size lent itself nicely to fitting into. Half of the golden diamond of the Cerberus logo was visible, the rest of the shuttle was a maze of patchwork and welding marks, clearly fashioned from at least two ships joined together, at least one salvager would have made a nice profit on it. The doors to the shuttle opened and Garrus stepped out, right into a gun.

"Identify yourself" the krogan snarled.

"Garrus Vakarian" the turian replied carefully. His visor sized up the dozen krogan all pointing weapons his way, they had surrounded the shuttle. "I'm part of Shepard's crew, here to provide her with tactical assistance and operational support."

"Support with what? What operation?" The krogan interrogated.

Garrus shrugged. "That you'd have to ask her, I just follow orders."

The krogan seemed placated but movement from behind Garrus caught his eye and he quickly re-aimed the shotgun. "Who is she!" He demanded.

"Tali Zorah vas Normandy" Garrus replied. "She's our engineer."

"I can speak for myself Garrus" the quarian replied. "Cute shotgun" she told the krogan. "I've got one too. Want to test it?"

The krogan paused for a moment, remembering Patriarch's warning about antagonising Shepard before he relaxed. Following his lead, Patriarch's kraant also lowered their weapons. "Your friend has a cheeky mouth" the head of the kraant warned. "Be careful it doesn't land you into trouble while you're here."

"We'll be sure to do that" Garrus replied. "Wait here" he ordered the shuttle pilot before moving past the krogan with Tali and heading towards the rendezvous point where Shepard had agreed to meet them. He had been to Jax's old family home once, in secret, to assure Diana with Sensat that he would allow no harm to come to them for their squad's actions. Another broken promise he had made to Omega's people. They deserved better. They entered the elevator when Tali reached up to the clasps on her mask.

"Goddess it's hot in this" Aria complained as she pulled off the mask, revealing her face.

"Be glad I had a spare" Tali told her through the suit's radios.

"We're in" Garrus radioed Shepard. "Be with you shortly."

"Standing by" Shepard returned. Morinth was dead. Jax was set inside Afterlife. Aria had come up with a plan. They were ready.

There was no such concept as 'night' on Omega. The red lighting was always active as the station made its slow orbit around the sun but between Omega's constricting nature and mass effect fields, very few denizens ever really saw the concept of 'daylight'. Nevertheless though, the world around him seemed darker to Jax as he swept around the edges of Afterlife again. Vorcha often dug through the trash along this corridor and with it now servicing as the main entrance to Afterlife with Patriarch having taken over the upper level, it needed to be checked constantly. He had barely entered back inside when the message came through on his omnitool. It was time. "Serra" Jax called out, "I'm heading out on break, let one of the batarians know to check the hallway in ten minutes."

Serra nodded her acknowledgment as Jax exited, already booking a taxi for two blocks away from the rendezvous. It didn't take long before Jax entered a room with Aria, Shepard, Garrus, Samara, Bray and Anto all present.

"Good, we're all here" Aria said, "let's get started." She brought up a visual display of the front door of Afterlife, complete with scans of the defences and plenty of red blips denoting the troops. "Our first objective is to weaken Patriarch's forces" she said. "The mercenaries first."

"We could hit their chapter houses here" Anto proposed, gesturing to a secondary map of the entire station, in particular highlighting points far removed from Afterlife. "Get them reeling and consolidating their own defences."

"As well intentioned as that may be, it won't work" Aria countered. "No chapter house is worth what the Patriarch offers them; power and funds."

"So what do we have worth more to them than basically everything a mercenary guild runs on?" Garrus asked sarcastically.

Aria looked at him with a wolfish glint. "Their reputation. The revelation that Archangel still lives will be a blight against their pride they cannot allow to stand. You killed Jarroth and his brother, their sister will come to you even easier. The rest will simply not be able to tolerate your existence, they will come to you and you'll cut them down, hole up exactly as you did before."

"You needed me to escape that" Shepard said in a tone that betrayed a slight hint of her care and worry for him. "You'll have me again."

Aria's lip betrayed a twitch of displeasure. "I was hoping to have you for the fight against Patriarch, but not relying on it." She looked to her lieutenants. "Bray, Anto, once the mercenary guilds have left, you will then begin your siege of Afterlife."

Anto folded his arms, sceptical. "Even with the numbers advantage, those defences will still cut our troops to shreds."

"I'm not counting on you to take Afterlife, just distract them" Aria explained. "Keep all the attention at the front."

"They will still incur the wrath of considerable firepower in a densely populated district" Samara spoke, her voice a serene interjection amongst Aria's harsh words. "With your permission, I would support them."

Aria nodded her acceptance, then turned to Jax. "You will get me through Afterlife and if necessary, take care of Patriarch's kraant." Her eyes glittered with the thought in her mind. "I will take care of killing Patriarch."

"Simple, but not easy" Jax said, summing it all up. "Seems to be a theme with you. When do we begin the assault?"

"It'll take time for everyone to get to their assigned positions" Shepard said. "Garrus and I will need to find a suitable location we can defend, your troops will need to mobilise without raising suspicion, it could take a while."

"Then you had better get to it" Aria said, dispersing the meeting with a wave.

Shepard approached Aria discreetly. "I know Anto, and I've met Grizz but Bray? Can we trust him?" She asked.

"Bray is Anto's number two, and Anto is mine. If Anto trusts him, then we call all trust him."

"Anto's made bad decisions before" Shepard reminded Aria.

"I'm well aware, but Anto trusting his older brother is not one of them" Aria replied, effectively silencing Shepard with a wave.

Shepard looked around as Aria walked away, communicating with Ahz. Jax was making for the exit. "Jax" She called with a wave, calling him over. "About your family…"

Jax looked away. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I know" Shepard said. "You weren't ready to deal with it and do what was required of you. And I respected that by letting you take control of the mission in Afterlife, was I wrong?"

Jax shook his head. "No."

"But this next part is different" Shepard said. "This is the next step, if anyone screws up here, we all die. Without you and Aria taking down Patriarch, his men won't stand down and that means Aria's men won't be able to support us against the mercenaries."

"I understand the stakes" Jax growled. "But I told you, I don't want to discuss it with you."

"I never said you had to discuss it with me" Shepard said, stepping aside to reveal another person.

"Kelly?" Jax asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I flew the shuttle in" Kelly explained. "Well, I mostly sat in the pilot's seat, EDI did the majority of the flying."

"We'll leave you to it," Shepard excused, "make sure you stay in radio contact." She and Garrus exited the room, leaving them alone. Jax felt awkward, he had never felt any regret for his actions during the mutiny given the sakes but given what had happened, Aria being usurped, his family gone, it had seemed to be so much all for nought now.

"I don't really know what to say" Jax said plainly, looking down at her feet.

"I'm sorry" Kelly told him, stepping forward.

Jax looked up. It hadn't been a suggestion; she had apologised to him.

"I'm sorry" Kelly repeated, drawing in closer. "For everything you've had to do alone."

"I…" Jax started before even knowing what he was going to say. "I didn't even get to say goodbye." His eyes looked up to her, full of hurt as he realised an even worse truth. "She didn't even get to know I was still alive."

Every emotional wall, every facade Jax had in that moment crumbled as Kelly pulled him into a fierce hug. He didn't know what it had been, whether it was his family, Aria's demands, Shepard's expectations or trying to live up to Garrus' example but Kelly, after everything he had done to her, against her, to just forgive him and hold him now, it was too much. Jax shut his eyes tightly as he buried his face into her shoulder and neck, trying to deny the feelings but it was too late, the dam had cracked. After being expected to remain this loyal duty-driven soldier for so long, to come when commanded by Shepard and Aria, only trying to get by and wanting nothing more, Jax's body began to shake as each breath came closer to fully breaking him down until he unashamedly wept in her embrace. Kelly remained steady through it all, holding him, not demanding more, somehow her not even whispering him that everything was going to be okay was a comfort in the shadow of all the shit he had been denying for so long. It was just letting him let it out for simple fact that he realised he wasn't alone anymore. Sure, he knew that Shepard would carve through armies for him and Garrus had risked everything but at the same time, they were such indomitable titans they barely seemed real, such figures of strength that somehow made him feel completely unable to reveal weakness to. If Jax broke down to Shepard or Garrus, he would lose this mission, lose this purpose, he would let them down but not Kelly. Kelly wasn't like them, she was normal, like him, and felt good to just let himself be normal again. He was a person to her, not a war asset for his demolitions expert and he hadn't realised how alienating that had been until now. "All I ever wanted to do was the right thing by those I cared about most" Jax finally said, still clutching deep into Kelly's embrace. "And all I've done so far is lose and hurt those people." He pulled back long enough to look her in the eyes, her green caring eyes he somehow felt inside himself. "I have given everything I have to the fight, and it still isn't enough. How I do I not lose anymore?"

Kelly took his hands in hers. "Jax," she said, "when you give everything to the fight, even in victory, sometimes you don't get it back. You can't fight and act like you have nothing to lose, or else you will lose it. There are still many fights left before these wars against Patriarch, against the Collectors, against the Reapers are over and infinite amounts of people are counting on you to fight them. Fight for them, fight for what it is you want to save." She cupped his cheek. "Don't fight like you have nothing to lose. Fight like you have something to live for."

Her words made sense to Jax's head but he still felt lost in his heart. He had never really stopped consider what being an orphan felt like but without Sensat, his mother, Nef, he supposed it felt like this. He was alone.

"You're never alone" Kelly whispered and seeing the lost expression in his gaze, pulled his face back to hers and kissed him. It was impulsive, but it still felt right. Jack may have been right when she told Kelly that Jax wasn't who she hoped he would be but that didn't make them the brutish animal the tattooed convict was, she had been wrong about that and Kelly knew it in her head and her heart. Kelly looped her arms over his shoulders as she savoured the kiss, his lips were surprisingly soft, somehow she'd just assumed all of him was a hard exterior. She could feel the wetness of the tears still hot his cheek against hers and only pushed more meaning into their contact. Jax's hands were on her hips, keeping her close, she could feel his commanding grasp through the thin fabric of her uniform. They started to shift, roaming over her body and exploring her curves. Kelly's breath hitched in her throat as he ran a hand up her front, leaving a trail of goose bumps under her shirt in its wake as he kissed her harder. Kelly's hand gripped Jax's in her own, then she pulled it away. "Jax, wait" she said, breaking the kiss. "This isn't right."

"What do you mean?" Jax asked, hesitant.

"It's not that I don't like you" Kelly reassured quickly, "I do, a lot, but that's the problem. I don't want our first to be here, now, not like this. You've experienced a trauma that would devastate anyone with more than triple your experience, sex shouldn't be about repressing pain with a distraction." Kelly didn't like how she sounded shifting from a lover to a psychiatrist giving him a diagnosis but she couldn't help it, this was what she was trained to do, and she wanted to use that knowledge to help her get things right. She kept his hand in hers. "I care for you, deeply, and I want to explore this further. But I don't want to be used as a distraction from something else, certainly not when we haven't gone that far at all yet."

Jax nodded, clearly disappointed but he saw the logic in her words. "It seems like ever since the attack on my team I've been looking for distractions" he said. "Vengeance, a mission, alcohol, sex, anything to keep me from having to sit still too long and think about what my life really is without all that."

"It's okay to be lost" Kelly told him, "when you don't know which way is forward, a step any direction in the dark can be progress."

"That's just the problem" Jax said, "what if I don't have a destination? Everything I signed on for is lost."

"There is more to this galaxy than you will ever know" Kelly told him, "following Shepard is a purpose in itself, she is doing great things but none of it has been or ever will be without her team."

Jax nodded, looking out the shuttered window. It had a rare vantage point where one could see through the red haze of light and out to space. A small flash of light flickered out there. "A shooting star?" Kelly asked, seeing it too.

Jax shook his head. "There's no atmosphere for it to burn up in, Omega's mass effect fields only repel objects rather than disintegrating them. Probably a ship making an FTL jump. Off to somewhere new."

"What do you think you'll do when this mission is over?" Kelly asked.

Jax shrugged. "I don't know" he said, "maybe find out what a dandelion is?"

"What?" Kelly asked, confused.

"It's something Shepard said…" Jax said trailing off, waving a hand. "Never mind. Just figure I'll find out what else is out there."

"Finding a reason to keep going is a reason in itself" Kelly told him with a smile. "Come on," she said, taking his hand. "I restocked the shuttle with good rations before we left, and Omega's food market is… questionable."

"You learn to know who the most trustworthy vendors are" Jax told her, but still following her lead. "But yeah, guaranteed food hygiene is a luxury, not an expectation in this place. You get used to boiling most of your food."

Jax and Kelly went back to the shuttle and it honestly felt like their own beautiful world, separate from all the mayhem outside and beyond. In addition to the rations courtesy of Mess Sergeant Gardner, they also opened the survival blankets meant for cold environment worlds. Wrapped snugly with the heating coils activated, they ate, told stories, played cards and shared secrets for nearly hours on end. Jax couldn't remember laughing so much as Kelly told him how she had to politely reject her psychotherapy professor's advances when he had misinterpreted her kindness as flirting, not because he wasn't attractive but because she was already top of the class with the highest marks and didn't need the added scrutiny. He told her of his life too, how he met Sensat making sparkler wheels for the kids on their block, how the first bomb Sensat taught him to make he'd used blowing one of Nef's sculptures to smithereens and how his mother had grounded him for weeks for it. He told her of the fights he had and his sister had and how they had come together to get one of them out at night past their mother without her knowledge. They sat at opposite ends of the shuttle throwing nuts from the ration packs to see who could catch better with their mouths, Kelly subjected him to an explanation of his many tells she could pick up on playing Quasar against him. It wasn't just the blankets warming him inside, it was her. Kelly had been right, sex would not have an adequate replacement for this, not in a million years. That's not to say it would have been bad, but that this was, in a word, perfect. Jax hadn't had many moments over the last series of weeks that he could recall having to truly savour but this? This was definitely one. He looked at Kelly's laughing smile as she tried catching an almond with her mouth that instead connected solidly with her forehead and tried to take a picture in his memory of this moment, hoping that when everything else would be dark, this would remain a beacon of light. Here, in this moment, Jax could have happily stayed forever.

"You ready for this?" Shepard asked as Garrus laid out his thermal clips, the scope lying detached from the gun for cleaning as he set up his vantage point.

Garrus nodded. "Setting up ammunition caches, preparing kill zones and waiting for hapless mercenaries to walk right into them? It's old hat to me now."

"'Old hat'?" Shepard asked ruefully.

Garrus grinned. "Been spending a bit of free time looking up human phrases, how did I do?"

Shepard chuckled to herself as she looked back to Garrus with a smile. "A little archaic but I'll give you it."

Garrus wiped the scope lens clean with a cloth before peering through it, testing the clarity. He exhaled annoyedly as the view through the scope showed him two vorcha sitting amongst trash, a quarian carefully rummaging through it trying not to disturb them. "This place makes me sick" he mentioned to Shepard. "People still dying, the strong still exploiting the weak; nothing I did here even made a dent in this."

"There's another human saying" Shepard told Garrus, "'shit rolls downhill.'"

"Meaning?" Garrus asked.

"You tried to make Omega a better place by cleaning everything up at the bottom" Shepard said. "The scum exploiting the powerless. That only works while you're still around to keep things clean but as soon as you're gone…" She trailed off, gesturing to the Omega around them. "If you want to make a change, you need to start at the top and work your way down, treating causes of Omega's problems rather than its symptoms."

"I went after the heads of Omega's mercenary guilds" Garrus replied, "I don't see how much higher I could go."

"There's at least one person who was above them all" Shepard said.

"Aria?" Garrus asked. "Are you saying I should have gone after Aria?"

"No" Shepard replied, "you're smart and I like you not being suicidal. But it may have been naive to avoid her entirely. Aria is the greatest force of change on this station, you may have been able to do more lasting change with her on your side."

"Favours with Aria are something I have actively tried to avoid" Garrus muttered, "but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try."

"If we get through this of course" Shepard said, applying an incendiary ammo modification.

Her radio buzzed. "We're in position" Anto's voice said.

Shepard donned her helmet, the breathing apparatus was gone, leaving her mouth clear under the visor. "Any other human sayings you know?" She asked Garrus.

"There's one I heard from a human back in my C-Sec days" Garrus said, "'home is where the heart is.' For the longest time I wondered why his home was in his chest cavity as opposed to his planet before our translators realised the secondary emotional meaning you attribute to an organ that has no emotional or conscious capabilities whatsoever. But now, I quite like it, home was never Palaven or the Citadel, despite my birth or my years being raised. I'd never felt more in place than my days on the Normandy blowing away geth. Home is where you feel you belong" Garrus told her, "so I guess home for me is anywhere with my sniper rifle in front of me… and you to my left."

Shepard didn't have the words to express what that meant to her, so instead she linked her hands in his. "You're only one person in this entire galaxy" she told him. "and yet it wouldn't feel even half as full without you." And because in that moment she was so flushed with happiness, she raised herself up on her tip toes and kissed him. His skin was rough to her touch, turians of course didn't have lips. His mandibles scratched against her cheeks as they fluttered in surprise at her contact. The contact was made slightly more awkward by her wearing her helmet, she could feel her visor pressing against the skin between his nose and upper lip but they both seemed to be beyond caring.

Garrus had no idea how to react, every vid he had watched in vain hope had told him this was the ideal result but now in this moment, his commander who he would go to hell for and back kissing him, every other memory and thought fell away in this moment, leaving him to only close his eyes and savour it, not moving for fear of ruining it.

Shepard finally let the kiss break as she lowered herself back to the ground.

"That was… nice" Garrus remarked.

"Yeah" Shepard smiled, "yeah it was."

"Shepard?" Aria's voice came through on her omnitool. "Status?"

Shepard hoisted her assault rifle as Garrus set himself into a comfortable position in his sniper's nest, pulling back the slider on the sniper and loading the first thermal clip. "Green light here" she radioed back. "We're in position."

"Jax will be arriving at Afterlife in ten minutes" Aria said, "then comes the fireworks. I've got Ahz working on hacking Omega's emergency channels, ready for a few theatrics Garrus?"

"I was born ready" Garrus replied.

"Jax?" Aria asked, keying him into the frequency. The next three words of her voice bore an epic tone. "Shall we begin?"