Disclaimer: Everything recognisable is Bioware's. Everything else is mine.

A/N: Greetings all and welcome to chapter 7. You must forgive the delay with which this chapter was posted. A lot of life happened to me in a very short space of time. I live by the sea now, and have a job! JOY! That having been said, here be the chapter! It's a heap shorter than the last one, as promised. I hope you like it :-P

As always, comments, thoughts, ideas and conjecture are cherished.

Yours faithfully,

L.G

The Talk

In which Scalia meets her heroine, and Kolyat shares a memory that, unbeknownst to him, breaks Shepard's heart

When finally she stepped out of the lift and entered Docking Bay D24, Shepard was in full-on getting the mission done so I can get home mode. She had her objective - getting to the Normandy for a quick refresher before making for Huerta and the home, the man, who awaited her there - and nothing was going to keep her from him. There would be no slowing up. No distractions.

Not now.

With the same focus and determination that got her through the most heated of scrapes in the field, she fixed her eyes forward and beelined for the glistening swathe of silver she could see calling to her through the Bay's distant windows. Because of her rank and level of clearance, she was shuttled through the security point with hardly a pause, and made her way onto the pedestrian concourse that would lead her past the Passengers' Lounge and on to the docking area proper.

The space bustled with activity; the milling crowds a muddled spread of pinks, silvers and blues. The air felt charged, her objective was in sight, and Shepard made her way towards it entirely heedless of the fact that she had both been spotted by watchful eyes, and was fast being approached by their owner. Indeed, so focused was she on her goal that the splash of teal coming at her from stage left didn't properly register until it spoke to her -

"Commander Shepard"

- and she turned mid-stride, her attention caught, to find the dappled complexion and meet the nervous eyes of the only person bar Thane that could give her pause from a mission. Taller and broader than her mate, his father, Kolyat Krios stood before her in his C-Sec blues; the most concerned expression she'd yet seen on a Drellish face on his. For a moment, she was stunned at the sight of him. Then, she found her voice.

"Kolyat-"

He seemed to wince when she spoke his name, holding a palm up to her in a skittish plea for quiet as he glanced around furtively. "Please ma'm" he said, lowering his hands to his sides to try and keep his posture as humanly non-threatening as possible. He knew he couldn't actually intimidate the woman, combat hardened as she was, and he had no intention to. However, coming across too strongly now - leaping down her throat and being overly forceful - could scupper his plan to have her see sense about taking his father to war before it began. Fighting himself into something like stillness, he gave his worries voice.

"I have to talk to you about my father."

At the mention of Thane, Shepard went rigid, a lead weight dropping down into her stomach. Words slipped out before she could stop them, "Is he all right?", her mind racing unbidden to the worst conclusions before the young man had half a chance to answer her. Luckily for her troubled mind – which whipped past Kolyat knows about us and is going to read me the Riot Act and was heading full-bore towards Thane's taken so bad a turn he can't travel let alone re-join the Normandy - the young man, rushed and on edge as he seemed, didn't keep her on tenterhooks for long.

"Yes, he's well. I just-" He glanced back over his shoulder quickly, missed by milliseconds the relief that crashed through the Commander's expression, before returning his full attention to her. When their eyes met again, her elation was hidden away behind a mask of calm, professionally detached curiosity. Kolyat fought the urge to fidget under the weight of her gaze. "Can we speak privately?" he asked, his words harried. "A colleague of mine is hovering around here, and I really don't-"

The entreaty died mid-flow, a soft touch on his back and a frankly effervescent trill signalling the dreaded arrival. He tensed at the contact, and managed to mutter an exasperated and somewhat panicked, 'Arashu' before Scalia piped up.

"You jerk Kolyat!" she scolded playfully; excitement having wiped away any hint of real indignation she felt at his running over to the Commander without her. "I didn't think you'd seen- I mean I thought you'd found N-"

"Scalia-" Kolyat cut in, fearing his motor-mouthed companion would drop that damnable name he'd plucked from nowhere to cover his tracks and thereby royally screw him over in front of Shepard.

Frustrated, she frowned as she looked up at him. "What?"

"You're babbling like an idiot. Say hello for Gods' sake."

For a moment she looked almost offended; even snipped an indignant, "Hey, I-", before she caught herself, muffled an embarrassed and nervy laugh as best she could behind her hands, and then gave the now slightly bemused Commander her best smile. "I'm sorry. Hello Ma'm" she beamed, practically vibrating with excitement as arguably the most famous human in the galaxy took her in.

She, like the other Drellish lady of Shepard's acquaintance, was a slight looking creature, but was not slender per se. Just like Kehksi, she had a wiry strength about her and an obviously feminine waist and hips that, unlike Kehksi's, were dressed neatly in her C-Sec blues. That femininity was made all the clearer, again, much as Kehksi's had been, by a telling delicacy in certain of her features - especially her frill, chin, wrists, and fingers - and by how comparatively little she looked standing next to tall and burly Kolyat.

Beside these things, her colours - rich dark blue scales set against markings and pleats that were almost black - also caught the Commander's eye, as did a pebbledash pattern of what she assumed was scarring that webbed out from the crest of her frill to cover her right eyelid. The eye itself was milky, as though it had been damaged somehow. Its state made Shepard wonder, but now was hardly the time to ask her about such things. She had a conversation to participate in after all.

"Hey Scalia. It's a pleasure to meet you" Shepard greeted, her tone as measured and professional as it ever was when dealing with members of the public. The woman's mottled face lit up at being addressed, and she edged around Kolyat before reaching to accept the hand the Commander offered her to shake. When she spoke, her words came quite quickly, the fluttering nerves in her belly coming out in her tone.

"Not as much of a pleasure as it is for me to meet you, Ma'm. Trust me. I didn't mean to interrupt if you were-"

Kolyat gave a disbelieving chuff, which she pointedly ignored, her focus on Shepard as she finished her thought.

"-Speaking with my friend here." Shuffling a step closer to the lady she'd been waiting to meet since forever Scalia tightened her grip on her hand gently to help impress the gravity of her message. "I just wanted to come and say 'Hi' and to thank you for saving our asses from the Geth."

Abashed, the Commander dipped her chin slightly and smiled. "I was just doing my job. But thank you. I had a lot of help" she said, releasing her hand and glancing between Scalia and Kolyat as she spoke. The former looked ebullient, her hands now clasped by her chest as she engaged her in slightly jittery friendly banter, while the latter seemed ready to crawl out of his skin. Somehow, she felt she was missing something about the situation - that thing, whatever it was, that was making her beau's son righteously uncomfortable - but for the life of her she couldn't pinpoint it.

Whatever it was though, looking at Scalia it certainly wasn't contagious. She seemed nothing less than right at home, her jaw beginning to tremble faintly on her every inhalation. The sight of that tremor confused the Commander somewhat, unsure as she was of what she was trying to convey, but taking her expression on aggregate she surmised that it must be the Drellish tell for either happiness or excitement.

She'd ask Thane about it later.

For now, she needed to find a way to politely excuse herself and Kolyat from his gleeful friend's company so he could talk to her about whatever it was that was troubling him. Doing this would be tricky however. Even now, the blue-black Drellish lady was having a fine time nattering for the three of them, and she didn't much seem like she had plans to stop any time soon.

Pondering her options for making a getaway possible, Shepard dropped back into the conversation proper - instead of, as she had when Scalia began her chattering bent, simply smiling, nodding and sending Kolyat reassuring glances - just in time to catch an interesting happening. It was a small thing - no more than the purposeful movement of an arm and the gentle repositioning of the happily gossiping woman so she stood between her glowering friend and the Commander, away from the flow of people-traffic that bustled around them - but it struck Shepard somewhere deep to see it done. To see Kolyat, gruff and obviously uneasy with the situation, move his little counterpart with what looked like practiced familiarity.

Like he'd done it before.

Quite why he did it then escaped her completely, tied up as she was with trying to field the now slightly closer woman's pleasant, well-meaning questions, but that lack of understanding did nothing to diminish its impact on her. The look Kolyat gave her when he realised her interest - a guarded almost-but-not-quite glare and a slight raise of the chin which let him flash, for a second, the ruddy pleats on his throat - only served to further intrigue her. She knew that gesture. Thane had explained it once. 'A pointed flash of colour' he'd said, gesturing to his throat, 'and you'll know it when you see it, is a polite warning. An extended flash of colour is a challenge.'

So, he was...warning her off perhaps?

Saying, 'Stop looking at me?'

Or, 'Listen to Scalia?'

Was that it?

She couldn't know, and before she could set her mind to trying to puzzle out his meaning, a pause in conversation came. She saw her chance and pounced. "Scalia" she said in her best affable though authoritative manner, "I'm sorry to butt in on you like this, but Kolyat and I have a couple of things to discuss." Before the obviously curious woman could ask the question that the Commander could see on the tip of her tongue, she sweetened the situation for her as best she could and added, "So how about you and I have a holo taken of us right here-" She gestured to Kolyat hopefully, giving him a smile when he managed a slightly fuddled but greatly relieved, 'Yeah…sure' and readied his Omni-tool's camera. "And then we'll part ways and get on with things. How's that sound?"

Intrigued as she was at the Commander's interest in Kolyat, Scalia couldn't have been more gleeful at her offer if she tried. A joyous octave's-worth of trilled delight escaped through her smile as she spoke, the sound almost like a backing track for her words, "Oh yes! Thank you Ma'm!" and she slid herself up beside Shepard with respectful care; an arm haltingly curling about the woman's back when she laid a companionable one around her shoulders. Once they were properly positioned, she raised her left hand, palm out, curled all but her fused fingers into a fist and beamed like she'd just won the lottery.

She couldn't have a holo taken with Commander Shepard without flashing the sign for Arashu's grace after all.

Kolyat, happy to oblige if it meant getting rid of Scalia sharpish, dutifully played the role of photographer, and took three holos in quick succession - just to make sure his picky compatriot couldn't prolong her time with the Commander all the more by badgering him for re-shoots. She was over to him like lightning when the brief session was over, scrutinising his efforts and finding two of the three to her liking.

The third had to go.

It caught her mid-blink.

Watching them from her spot a count of feet away, Shepard did her best not to show how amused she was by how Scalia fussed at Kolyat until he grudgingly sent her the holos she liked. She'd never comment on it, but she had a feeling, going on how the young man let her hassle him when he really didn't have to, that he enjoyed her company more than the sour face he kept giving her let on.

"Make sure they both save right" he griped, leaning a little so he could watch the activated and glowing Omni-tool interface now shimmering above Scalia's right forearm. "I'm not sending them twice."

"Fine, fine" she huffed, irritated at having him hovering over her as she opened both pictures to check their quality. After looking them over, her tone changed on a credit and she beamed at the Commander.

"These are perfect Ma'm, thank you so much!"

"Don't even think on it" Shepard replied, offering her newest acquaintance her hand once more for a parting shake. "You take care now."

"I will. You too," Scalia grinned, shaking the Commander's hand warmly before turning to Kolyat. She rapped her knuckles lightly on his chest as she said, "Kol, you should ask about Ni-" only to find herself cut off when her taciturn friend, his patience finally exhausted, grasped her wrist and, using her Omni-tool, killed their translators.

What he proceeded to say was, of course, lost on Shepard, but that mattered for nought. Her focus was riveted solely on the fact that she was hearing Drellish voices in their full resonant glory. Bassy, mildly flanging, and pervaded by glottal stops and riffs that began within and ended quite outside of her range of hearing, the sound was...odd to her...alien in a very real sense…but fascinating and palate-wetting at the same time. As the pair went back-and-forth, Scalia never once trying to yank her wrist from Kolyat's fingers, the Commander was glad to find that although they spoke too quickly for her to follow the echoing cacophony with ease, she caught two clusters of syllables that she assumed were words, and she could tell by the general tone of Kolyat's voice, and the look on Scalia's face, that whatever was being said was both important and had shocked her. When he released her wrist, she was all hands suddenly, touching her reluctant friend's arms, then his hands, and then his shoulder before turning to her, setting the very tips of her fingers to her right sleeve, and speaking words that sounded lovely but made not a lick of sense.

At the puzzled look on the Commander's face, Scalia stopped, reactivated both her and her counterpart's translators, and repeated what she'd said. "I'm so sorry Ma'm, I didn't realise." She turned back to Kolyat then, tapping a closed fist gently on his bicep. "I'll just go and-"

His response was quick, final, "I'll see you at work", and it paused her briefly. After giving him a concerned frown though she murmured, "Yeah..." and departed their company, making her halting way towards the security checkpoint and the lifts just beyond it.

And suddenly…Kolyat and Shepard were alone.

In the vacuum left by her departure, they eyed each other for a long moment, each shocked in their own way at finally being without their unknowing third wheel and unsure of what to do with themselves. It was the Commander who spoke first, attempting to break the ice she sensed slowly forming between herself and the young man standing across from her.

"So...she's nice."

He huffed at her effort. "She's a menace-"

Shepard scoffed, grinning. "Oh, come on."

"-and she's half blind, Commander."

"I-" Shepard blinked, wrong-footed by his abrupt change of topic. "Sorry, beg pardon?"

Kolyat gave a quiet sigh. "I saw your eyes when I moved her out of the way of the people walking along here-" He glanced down along the concourse. "-And don't want you to take away a wrong impression. She's been that way since the Battle of the Citadel. A wall-panel exploded and caught her across the face."

Shocked, Shepard simply nodded faintly, unsure of what she could rightly say that wouldn't sound trite.

"The sight problem is the reason she's so handsy" he went on, rubbing at his shoulder absently to try and sate his need to fidget. "So…touchy. Her depth-perception isn't what it could be, so she needs a contact point to gauge how close she is to people. That's why she touched me when she arrived and did the same with you when she turned to you before she left; why she can be clumsy when she moves at speed; and why I moved her away from the crowds. When she's focused on something - like she was on you - she hasn't got a spare eye to keep on the people coming towards her. So I-"

"So you're her spare eye" Shepard murmured, a bubble of pride that she was sure he wouldn't appreciate her feeling for him welling up in her chest.

Shifting his weight a little, Kolyat gave a short nod. "It's that or watching her run into things daily" he grumbled, unsettled by the little smile that had curled the very edges of the Commander's lips. He couldn't rightly read the expression, so picked the safest of the reactions to it available to him - mild churlishness with a side of irritation. "She's loud enough without having that to complain about too."

The Commander chuckled. "I'll bet" she said, unfazed by his seemingly dismissive, grumpy attitude. It wasn't all it seemed to be. She was sure of that. Curious then, she probed, "If you don't mind me asking, what did you say to her? She looked awful concerned."

Kolyat caught a hiss behind his teeth. "That's a…long story." He huffed then, shaking his head at quite how deeply he'd managed to land himself in the ever-living shit. "Let's just call it a stay of execution and leave it at that. Please."

Feeling her smile becoming a smirk, Shepard asked, "A stay for who? Her?"

"No" he griped, nictitating his inner lids quickly before rubbing the pads of his fingers over his brow. "Me. She'll poison my coffee when she finds out that I- Oh, it doesn't matter. Ma'm-" He paused, holding her gaze, his expression newly serious. "May we speak about my father now? He's well, I just…We must speak."

The levity that had begun to creep into the Commander's demeanour sank along with the lead weight that went clattering right back down into the pit of her belly at his anxious request. Though the nuances of Drellish expression would take her much longer than she'd yet had in their company to pin down, Shepard felt sure now – knowing that Thane was well – that she knew a Riot Act look when she saw one.

It seemed that the reprieve Scalia's appearance had given them was well and truly over.

Tempering her smile consciously, lest her expression drop with the weight in her gut, Shepard gave a slight nod. "We can" she said, looking around quickly to find them a quiet place to talk. Sighting one nearby, she glanced at Kolyat and gestured towards it. "Come on. I'm sure security won't mind if we use one of their waiting rooms."

The room they found to speak in was a sterile, cool place, that was blessedly empty when they entered it. Three of its four walls were metal, the fourth glass but soundproof. It housed four rows of chairs - two in the centre of the room back to back, and one against the fore and back walls – and there was a Tupari machine nestled in the far corner; its muted hum filling the area when silence fell and stretched uncomfortably.

Entering ahead of Kolyat, Shepard beelined for the machine; intent on distracting herself, however briefly, from the prospect of being brought down a peg or two by him over her relationship with his father. She didn't blame him for wanting a go at her over it. She empathised, in fact. When she was a good deal younger, she'd had no love for the gentleman-friend her mother found after her father died. Granted she'd been about ten at the time, but the feeling of her lovingly missed parent being somehow replaced in her mother's life by some unknown person had remained until she'd hit eighteen.

The man had weathered the war of attrition she'd waged against him admirably, but she knew herself too well to think that she could do as good a job of getting through Kolyat's version of her, 'You need to prove to me that you're worthy of my mother' campaign as Gareth, her mother's partner of some twenty-two years now, had done when she was young and distrustful. She was nothing like as patient, empathetic or forward-thinking as the man had long proved himself to be, and had been so tightly wound by thoughts of losing Thane that anything that might even half register as a threat to his calm was automatically red-lighted in her mind. Hellfire, the last time that'd happened – the last time she'd been questioned about being with him…She didn't need eidetic memory to recall the dull crack of fist to nose, nor the spray of purple blood that followed, and that thought, coming back to her in this moment, as she faced this very specific young man and potentially confronted the same topic that'd driven her to violence in times gone, brought a deep kind of discomfort to the Commander.

Knee-jerk quick she swore up and down to herself that there wasn't a power in the universe that'd make her react to Kolyat like that; no matter what he said, how he raged, or how he didn't. She swore that up and down once then, and once again as she made her selections from the vending machine. Two cans clattered down into the dispensary draw, and Shepard swore her private oath a third time as she collected them up and returned her attention to her counterpart. He sat with his back to the windowed wall, his elbows on his knees, head lowered in thought.

It was a position she knew well. She'd been right there herself, sitting someplace she both wanted and didn't want to be, facing something she didn't like at all. Frowning faintly, the Commander pocketed her Tupari for a moment and quickly activated the palm-held component of her Omni-tool. Upon it was the clock, timer and other small sundry features. The time now, as she glanced at it, was [13:15] which meant she was expected at Huerta in fifteen minutes or so.

Setting the timer to warn her when the clock struck [13:35], those extra five minutes regrettably all she could spare on top of the time she'd spend here now, she keyed off the display, retrieved her beverage from her pocket and approached the seated Drell; her booted steps too loud in her ears. "All right Kolyat" she began, settling across from him and passing over one of the cans. "You wanted to talk. What's on your mind?"

After accepting the can, Kolyat was quiet for a long moment, considering his answer. He needed to make sure that he made the most compelling case possible in favour of keeping his father out of the war, but knew that doing that would require revisiting memories and topics that would test both his patience and, much as he hated admitting it, his emotional strength. For all he'd tried to deny it, there was a certain bond between him and his no-account forebear. It confused him, annoyed him, and made thoughts of losing the man to the war effort so soon after he had re-entered his life…difficult.

Deliberately setting the Tupari aside, Kolyat met Shepard's gaze with resigned determination. "Commander" he said, the respect he had for her shown in how he used her title. "-Besides today we've never...really met."

As he spoke, a memory came unbidden..

-..blue eyes glare at me down the barrel of a loaded gun..-

..but he blinked it back, focusing on the woman across from him. If she noticed his slip, she made no mention of it. Intent, he concluded his thought. "So I don't know how well you're going to take hearing what I've got to say to you."

Shepard, her stomach in knots, channelled her mother's Gareth as best she could and spoke to reassure him. By some God's grace, her voice came out steady. "Believe me" she said, bracing herself for whatever was to come. "I've had both barrels from people of every race, colour, creed and social strata. From people I've known for years, and ones I've never met before." She chanced a tiny, self-deprecating smile before prompting, "Speak freely. I'm listening."

With a short nod, Kolyat went on, his voice becoming a hint firmer and surer for her implicit encouragement. "I don't like my father, Ma'm" he said, noting how her eyes widened fractionally at his bluntness. "I don't know that I ever will…but I'm-" Gods this was hard to say. "Worried about him. Before you visited him at the hospital, he'd never once spoken of joining the war effort, and yet now-" His stoically frosty exterior cracked just faintly, a confused frown marring his brow. "After one visit…he's going, and his mind's made up on the issue."

Somewhere behind the mask of attentiveness the Commander wore as she listened, confusion bloomed. This was the Riot Act she was being read, no question. But it wasn't the section she'd expected at all. This wasn't sounding like, You're with my dad and I don't want you to be. This was shaping up to be more of a, You're stealing my dad away from me and I don't like that even though I don't like him, and it seemed to be irking Kolyat as much as it shocked Shepard.

"I know why you want him to go with you" the young Drell pressed on. "I know what he is…and what he's done...and what he's good at...and why you need him to do those things for you again. The war with the Reapers is—It's everywhere. But knowing all that doesn't make...this-" He gestured between them, his frown deepening enough to make the soft skin at the inner corners of his eyes wrinkle. "Any easier."

"What's 'this'?" Shepard prompted, mimicking the gesture.

Kolyat drew in and huffed out a deep breath before he answered her. "Everything to do with my father" he said, looking at his hands when holding the woman's gaze became too tasking. A callus between his thumb and forefinger was distractedly rubbed at as he struggled to express his thoughts; the Commander's impatience for understanding – seen only in how her shoulders tightened and her lips thinned - passing him by in the moment. Happily, with his next offering-

"It's a mess. I shouldn't want to know him...but-"

-Shepard found her footing. This really was the You're stealing my pa section of the Riot Act she was being read. She could work with that; cover the emotional flank she had exposed and actually see to the young man's problem.

"You don't want to care for him-" she brooked; her best Gareth impression done in service of gentling Kolyat's discomfort. "-But you do. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here."

Taciturn, the young Drell barely glanced at her. "You're saying that like it's a good thing."

The Commander was unmoved. "Is it not? Isn't having the strength, after everything you've been through, to accept the man enough to form an attachment to him is a positive thing?"

Kolyat fenced. "Not when it's painful" he snapped, catching himself and doing his best to cool his heels before the spike of irritation her question sent through him could make him openly confrontational. Speaking himself out of the snit he could feel coming on, he said, "With him, all its been is one trial after another. First his occupation. Then finding out that my mother was killed as a reprisal for some gangbanger he'd assa-" He stumbled over the word 'assassinated', its taste like poison on his tongue. "Gotten rid of. Then his illness..." His words petering to a momentary stop, Kolyat glanced around uneasily before chancing a look at the Commander. "It hasn't even been a year" he said, the imploring edge to his tone just being held at bay. "When he first got here, I almost wrote him off as soon as I saw him. He was that ill."

Shepard, painful memories of just how ill 'that ill' was encroaching on her, gave a tight nod. "I know. When he left the Normandy-" She paused, forcing away the phrase she was going to say - 'I thought it was our last goodbye' - and replacing it with a much more approachable, much less painful, "Professor Solus, the Salarian doctor who made him well, told me things were looking grim."

Hearing the name, Kolyat perked up slightly. "I met him at the hospital" he said, answering the Commander's surprised, "Oh?" with a nod of his own. "Yeah. I'd come to visit father, and the Professor told me that he'd need blood transfusions before his surgery. Since Drellish blood isn't easy to find outside of Kahje, I...well-" His voice turned almost petulant then, walls that had lowered slightly as he spoke coming right back up. "I couldn't not volunteer, could I?"

Even though he was obviously fighting to turn a glowingly positive thing into something that sounded almost coerced, Shepard's heart turned over in her chest at what she was hearing. Strained as things obviously were, she'd been right. There was a caring between Kolyat and his father, whether the young man liked it or not. Tamping down on the new swell of pride that came on she brooked, "That was a wonderful thing you did."

The glare that snapped into place at her words couldn't have been more doubtful. It didn't stay for long however. After he muttered an indignant, "What else could I do?" the distance he had forced between them with his scowling began to lessen again. "He was dying right in front of me. I couldn't just-"

A memory came, unbidden, and struck him silent with its intensity - nurses swarming, his father, pale as death, gasping, reaching for him - 'K- K'lyht-'

Kolyat sucked in a sharp breath, averting his eyes as what he'd remembered let him loose. It took him a moment to compose himself properly. Then, set-jawed and with his father's struggling gasps on loop in his ears, he met Shepard's now concerned gaze once more. "I can't just sit by. I know that things are different now to how they were then. I know he's getting better - but that's not what's stuck with me through all this."

"What has?"

"…Fragility." The word was firm and final, despite the pause preceding it. "My father's. He-" Another quiet moment; this one bringing on a scowl. "Did he ever explain my people's memory to you, Commander?"

Shepard nodded. "He did" she said. "It's eidetic, isn't it. You can relive moments as if they're happening now."

"That's right. Memory- I don't know how much my father told you beyond that, but it's part of the day-to-day life of any Drell. Moment to moment, second to second, we're absorbing everything we go through and can recall it with perfect clarity decades later. Humans…" Kolyat paused again as he readjusted his posture; dipping his chin a fraction to convey reserve and deference. "-I mean no disrespect, but I don't think you can quite…grasp that; how important that recall is to Drell, and how wrong it feels to see a loved one – to see my father – lose their grip on it."

"Lose their-" A wisp of confusion mingled with the concern in Shepard's expression. "What happened? What did he forget?"

Kolyat's answer-

"That my mother is dead"

-almost knocked her sideways. Her jaw slack and brows near her hairline, Shepard gawped at the young Drell for a good ten seconds before the shock in her system eased off enough that she could think. As for speaking though, Kolyat got there first.

"It happened on an otherwise normal day" he said, shaking his head at the memory. "Father was sitting up in his bed at the hospital, pillows keeping his arms from resting down on his torso. This was shortly after his operation, so his muscles were still healing. His lips were moving - the occasional word escaping. He-" A thought then; a question for Shepard. "Has he ever shared a memory with you, Commander?"

"A few times, yes" Shepard mustered, seeing a flash of Thane in Kolyat when the young Drell tipped his head an acknowledging degree rightwards. "Quick-fire descriptions and-" Now a frown was coming on. Shepard allowed herself a grin. "-That's not the norm?"

"Not when a Drell is alone" Kolyat clarified. "He wasn't describing the scene when I saw him. He was speaking quietly to someone who wasn't there in life but who was in his memory. Just snatches of conversation that didn't make much sense, but that didn't matter. It wasn't odd or worrying. Just…Drellish, I suppose." A slight shrug made broad shoulders jolt.

"I left him to it at first. It's not...good...to jolt a Drell from a memory sharply, especially when they're ill. The shock can be stressful, so I made tea instead; tried to be as quiet as possible and left him alone." He frowned faintly as he recalled the moment, his father's vulnerability in it striking, even to his jaded eyes. "It took him about five minutes to come around; to realise I was there. He looked at me…and he said, "Where's my Siha?'..."

That word- Oh, it sounded wrong out of Kolyat's mouth and it took all Shepard's will power not to kneejerk; not to reach out in empathy and expose what it meant to her. They weren't talking about her in this moment.

"-Your mother" she proffered, managing the flicker of a smile at the shocked look Kolyat gave her. "He was talking with your mother."

That stopped Kolyat short. "…You know his word for her" he prompted guardedly.

Shepard nodded. "I do. I don't know much about her, but I know her name, and I know that Thane called her Siha…It means 'Angel', doesn't it."

Kolyat watched her lips as she spoke, his eyes focused and intent. That wasn't a question she'd asked him. She knew that word and what it meant to his family. "It sounds odd from human lips..." he said, "but yes. Something like, 'protective warrior angel' is the rough translation." He waved the topic away – neither wanting nor needing to dwell. "Anyway, he asked me that, and I winced. The drugs had skewed his mind just enough that he thought the memory was real...that my mother had just been there talking with him." He clenched and unclenched his fists slowly, working out a little of the unease recalling all this brought on. "And I had to tell him the truth of things. That she's gone...'She's with Kalahira, father...' I said. Kalahira is our Goddess of Oceans. She cares for the departed. 'She's with Kalahira' I told him, like I had done a few times prior when memories of her had caught him wrong like that.' A frown came on. "He'd always been fine…Just let it go, but- This time…Shepard, he changed so fast-"

"What happened?" Shepard asked, struck by how wrought her counterpart suddenly seemed. "What'd he do?"

"It-" His words dying away as an idea struck him, Kolyat sat forward again, gestured towards her, and took a chance. "I could show you, but-"

"Please."

Watching the Commander closely, her without-a-second-thought assent coming as a bit of a shock, Kolyat rested his elbows on his knees and held his hands out towards her. "Hold your arms like this-" he prompted, which she did, the palms up, fingers splayed. Five there instead of the normal Drellish four. Needing to make sure he didn't destroy the tentative rapport that seemed to have kindled between them during their talk, he spoke to make sure she understood his intentions.

"I mean you no violence, Commander. What my father did wasn't violent. He didn't hurt me, and I won't you."

It sounded...odd...saying it out loud - telling this woman, of all women, that she was safe from him when he knew damn well how proficient she was in all things violent - but still, it needed saying. If he took her entirely by surprise, he ran the risk of her reacting without thinking and defending herself, and he knew from experience that he could expect at least a bloody lip if that were to occur.

Touched by his thoughtfulness, Shepard allowed herself a full and proper smile. "It's all right, Kolyat" she said, flexing her fingers slightly in a muted display of readiness. "I'm with you on this. We'll do things your way." When he caught her eyes again, she gave a little nod, which he returned before slowly, tentatively, touching his hands to her forearms.

It was a light, timid touch; not the one his father had given him in the moment he planned to share with her, but one he needed nonetheless. A little moment spent on bridging the gap between himself on his chair and her, she with a reputation longer than he was tall, on that opposite him. Surer of himself after this little success, his touch became just a hint firmer. Now, his fingers actually found purchase on the leather sleeves of her jacket, and still, she made not a move. Not a jolt or waver. She didn't return the touch, as she could upon his forearms if she wished. She simply waited as he breathed for a moment; his eyes, raising from where they had been watching his fingers find black leather, becoming unfocused as the memory came to him.

Looking upon him then, she knew that face.

It was Thane's from this angle, she'd swear it blind.

Then, suddenly, the restfulness of the moment ceased to exist. He grew frenetically tense, recounting, "He jolts upright" as he sat up sharply himself. Not a half-breath later, he went on, "grasps my arms" as he grasped hers just below the elbows, "and pulls me close to him before I have time to pull away." Dragged towards him, as he had been by Thane, Shepard fought every ounce of training she had and didn't put up a whiff of resistance. She simply watched and listened, knowing that the anger in his expression was not his own. He went on swiftly, "I feel his breath on my face as he bellows", raising his voice as Thane had with him. "-'YOU LIE! YOU LIE TO ME! I saw her not four months ago!'..."

And then, as quickly as it had come the memory was banished, and it was Kolyat sitting before her again. As she gaped at him, he sat back from her quickly, releasing her arms and putting distance that they both needed between them as they absorbed what had passed.

After a near minute of silence but for their breathing, he spoke. "…Shepard" he tried, his voice tending on the hoarse side from all the shouting he'd done. "My mother died over a decade ago…and he knows that…and yet for the rest of the visit, he didn't speak to me. He barely even looked at me! He just kept looking over something on his Omni-tool and muttering to himself about dates. I think he must have scared himself or something but-" He sighed deeply, shaking his head and rubbing a hand over his face to try and enliven himself a little. "His head was...gone."

For her part the Commander, despite how she was listening to him intently and taking in what he was telling her on some subliminal level, barely heard what he was saying. She was too fixed on those last seven words he'd recalled. 'I saw her not four months ago.' Sitting forward again, her elbows on her knees, hands loose between them, she allowed herself one little moment of visible weakness. She lowered her head, closed her eyes, and let out a slow sigh. When she opened them, and looked at him, Kolyat was speaking again-

"That's what I remember of my father's stay at Huerta" he said. "That's what jumps out at me. Not the progress...or the time we spent looking at holos together...or the walks we took. I remember that moment most clearly. When his memory failed him and made him honestly think that something that couldn't have been real, was."

-and she knew just by listening to him that the young man was being earnest. She even empathised with his horror at the idea that his father was, in that fleeting moment, unable to recall something as important as the fact that Irikah was indeed with Kalahira. For a race who are born with perfect memory, the loss of that ability would be unthinkable; something worthy of confusion and fear. His worry though was unfounded, and beyond anything else she felt Shepard knew that. It wasn't a lapse of memory the young Drell had witnessed. He was wrong, and she, in all her earlier certainty about it being Kolyat's mother Thane had recalled, had been too. Thane, in that moment, had been thinking of her - who was very much alive and who, in the months prior to Kolyat visiting his father when he was in the hospital, had been at his bedside; just like he remembered her being when Kolyat, thinking that he was remembering his mother, had told him that his Siha had crossed the sea.

It was this realisation that made her lower her head. The thought that, when he was at his most needing of her presence, Thane had remembered her tenderly and had then been told, quite innocently and as the result of a misunderstanding, that she was dead. Thinking of the upset that must have caused him, especially since he'd been so obviously vulnerable when it had happened, tore at her heart in a way the battered thing had never been torn at before. No wonder he'd bellowed and become greatly upset. No wonder he hadn't spoken to him, and barely looked at him again that day. Had their positions been reversed, and she was the one getting news of his death…

Her heart clenched, and she had to cough into her hand to cover how unforgivably her lips quivered at the thought. Feigning a minor hacking fit and hurrying down three gulps of Tupari to hide the break in her composure, Shepard consoled herself with the fact that Kolyat, as far as she could tell, didn't know how close she and Thane were. If he had done - if he knew there was something there - he wouldn't have been confused by his father's talk of 'seeing her four months ago'. Even if he didn't know that he called her 'Siha', he would have put the pieces together and puzzled it out.

But he hadn't.

If nothing else, that made things simpler in the short term, and it was to the short term – the here and now - that Shepard now turned. "All right Kolyat-" she brooked but he was faster; urgency, this once, prompting him to interrupt her.

"It's not all right" he hissed, tensing sharply as he tried to mask an abortive attempt at flashing his throat at her in warning again. "I don't ever want him to be like that again, Commander. And going to war with you is just lining him up for it. He'll get hurt, or sick, or something and all this progress he's made will have been for nothing."

"I understand" she said, her voice made purposefully firm to both assert her authority and keep it from failing her. "And can see how that experience would make you worry. I'd have felt the exact same thing if I was in your position. But your father's health has improved by magnitudes since then. According to his doctors, he's well enough to travel with us."

Kolyat gave a disgruntled chuff. "He told me the exact same thing" he said, an accusatory edge creeping into his voice. "I've tried to talk him out of going, but he won't hear of it. I don't know what you said to him - what you promised him in return for signing on with you - but none of it is worth putting his life at risk over!"

"What I-?!"

Shepard had to stop mid-sentence; stop and sit back in her chair to keep herself from spitting all over that oath she'd sworn herself minutes back and leaping up in raging defence of her decision to allow Thane passage on the Normandy. Clearly, she reminded herself as she stared a hole through Kolyat, the young man didn't have the full picture. He needed her to give him that, to give, wholesale – let him snarl and rage and just take it for now. Swallowing thickly, indignation almost choking her, Shepard got her words working.

"To be clear" she said. "I didn't, wouldn't and couldn't promise your father anything in return for re-joining the Normandy."

"But you asked him to go with you" Kolyat clipped, frowning deeply.

Shepard shook her head. "No, I didn't."

The young Drell looked thunderstruck, shock making his voice soft. "You-What?"

"He asked if he could travel with us again. I told him yes, so long as his doctors and the Normandy's head physician cleared him. Which they have. I can't refuse him, Kolyat."

His cheeks and throat flushing with aggravation and disbelief that his father had chosen to leave without the Commander having asked him to, Kolyat barely stopped himself from standing up out of his chair. "Why not!?" he snarled, directing his anger at the only target he had at present - Shepard herself. "It's your ship!"

"And it's Thane's life!"

"Tha-!"

"NO." Shepard gestured for silence. "Kolyat, if you want to try and talk your father round, you'll have to talk to him. My mind's made up. His doctors say he's well enough to travel. He's told me he wants to. That's that. Final. I-" A puff of breath escaped, Shepard's shoulders sinking slightly for it. "You were good enough to share a memory with me" she said, hoping to bring them back onto calmer ground. "Let me tell you one I have now. Thane and I spoke a lot as he grew sicker, and he told me- He said, 'Death's veil is all I see now, Shepard. It blocks out the stars. Light fades into emptiness. There is nothing more to my future than the lid of a box'-" Remembered pain prickled through her. The Commander pushed it back. "The lid of that box is gone now. Thanks to his doctors, he's got a life to live again. And I can't stop him from doing that. Not if he's well enough to do it, which he is."

Kolyat, his composure so rocked and temper so frayed that the anecdote's content barely moved him, snapped, "So autonomy justifies taking a man who's just out of his hospital bed out in a warship?"

"After a careful risk assessment and medical checks made by nine physicians" Shepard said. "Yes. It does. There-"

"And what of his family?!" Kolyat snapped, gesturing to himself sharply. "Have I no say?! He'll die out there, Commander, advisory role or not, and you're allowing that!"

"Nothing's that cut and dry in war" she replied, masking the discomfort his words brought as best she could. Opening her arms, she gestured to the room they occupied and the Citadel beyond it. "Gods forbid, the Reapers could attack this place in ten minutes time, and then where would we be?"

Kolyat chuffed. " Don't try and make out that going with you and your crew is the safe option for him."

"Oh but it could be" she said, raising her brows. "If they come here, there's little anyone could do but run for their ships, and if the Normandy isn't here, your father doesn't have one to run to. But, if he comes with us, the threat he'll face from a Reaper invasion is almost zero."

Unmoved, he sneered a derisive, "Bullshit."

Ignoring his profanity, Shepard countered without missing a beat. "Not so. The Normandy's the quickest ship in the galaxy. She's outrun Reapers before, and will again. She's built for stealth, Kolyat. She keeps out of sight and out of mind in her little tech-made bubble of invisibility while we scout the deep black for supplies and allies. That's her job. If your father rode with us, he'd be right in the middle of that invisible little bubble floating somewhere safe out in space. He wouldn't be stuck in one place like a sitting duck-"

"A whating what?"

Shepard, her monologue derailed, blinked out of her train of thought and tried to enlighten him. "Er..like a fish in a barrel? Know that one?"

The blank look she got was telling.

Snuffling, she dropped the idioms, "He wouldn't be a stationary target" and got back on track. "And if the Reapers did find us, we'd just do what we always do. Break for the edge of the system and wait them out. The places we go, there're so few of the damn things that even a reading of one passing within a light-year of us is rare. Sightings don't happen unless we're actually in Reaper-controlled space looking for them."

"And when you are? Where will he be then?"

"On the ship, like I told him. You said it yourself, he's only advising us on this tour. I won't have him out in the field."

Kolyat gave her a calculating look. "He told me that when we spoke, and I didn't understand it then. Why do you need him at all? What good is he if he isn't in the field working?"

Shepard managed a tight smile. "You underestimate his abilities as a teacher. The man taught me to hit a target using an M-97 Viper at 100 yards. For all my talents" she snuffled, the dry note in her tone marking her words as sarcastic, "I couldn't snipe for shit, Kolyat. I'm still only barely proficient, but that's due to my lack of talent, not his. If he can teach me to shoot straight at range, he can teach my crew all manner of things. Add to that over thirty years of field experience and you've got an indispensable resource for the war effort."

At her words, Kolyat visibly bristled.

"He's not some war asset, Commander. He's my damn father."

"I know" she replied, the levity that had found her tone a moment back leaving it now. "And he's my damn-"

A bleep then, strident and clear, cut her off and made both she and Kolyat jump. Quickly, she turned to her Omni-tool, deactivated its timer and glanced at the clock. She knew what it would read.

[13:35]

Her time was up.

Gathering her professionalism around her, she rose to her feet; Kolyat rising to his along with her, a confused expression on his face.

"Listen here now" she said, straightening her jacket briskly. "I've got to go and see a man about a thing right this second, but we're not done here and I know that. I want to talk with you more, and I want you to talk to your father again."

Kolyat almost despaired. "He won't listen to me!" he said imploringly. "If you'd just recon-" he cut himself off as the Commander made for the exit, her eyes still on him as she began moving away. Foolishly, his body reacted before his mind could catch up.

"Shepard!" he snapped, stepping around her and grasping the crook of her right arm.

Although her instincts screamed, there was no violence in her response. There was no punch. No restraint. Just a hand around his wrist, and her eyes holding his. Slowly, with calculated precision, she stepped back from him, putting distance between them again. Only then did she release him and speak. "The Normandy is laid over for four days. She needs repairs and the crew needs some downtime. After that, we'll be hauling out, but until we do, you've got all the time you need to speak to Thane-"

"He won-"

"Listen to me!" she barked, the note of command in her voice unmistakeable. "I will speak with your father about this for you. I'll tell him that you're concerned for him, and that he needs to engage with you about all this." Speaking her next words clearly and firmly, she added, "It's not my place to tell Thane what to do with his life. That choice is his, and only his, and I'll stand by him no matter what he finally decides because I respect him. For your peace of mind, I almost hope he decides to stay here, but that choice is his. Not mine, and not yours."

She was quiet for a moment, watching Kolyat's face. It was difficult to rightly read him, but she knew by the way his jaw was working that he wasn't best pleased. Knowing that nothing but an accession to his wishes regarding expelling Thane from the Normandy's roster would soothe him, she gathered herself and cut her losses.

"I'll be in touch within a day or so. Thane has your details I assume..."

She paused, raising her brows in question. Although he didn't catch the facial queue, Kolyat nodded dejectedly.

"…so I'll get them from him and we'll take things from there. We'll get all this sorted, don't you worry."

She glanced down at her Omni-tool again, checking the time.

[13:38]

Shit I'm so damn late

Slipping through the door, she called a companionable, "Take care, Kolyat" over her shoulder, and she was out, back into the world. Back amongst people and noise and not pinioned by intensity and ire.

She'd made it through...and had to leave.

Thane would be waiting for her.

Turning to the elevators beyond the security point, she walked at an easy pace until the waiting room's windows were behind her, then took to her heels and triple-timed it towards the first opening lift.

Minutes after the Commander left, Kolyat remained where he stood. Still with impotent rage, he focused on bringing himself out of the memory-loop of her departure.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

Failed.

"Stop."

He actually spoke the word aloud. Taking a deep breath, as though waking from sleep, he blinked, and took in the room. The chairs, whiteish-silver. The walls, three metal, one glass. White, sterile, ugly light. An empty chair across from him and…beside the seat he had once occupied…the can of Tupari he'd set aside when she passed it to him. The memory of her departure came again as he picked it up, holding it in his left hand.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

Looking at it, his fingers tightened.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

Further, and further.

"Take care, Kolyat"

The door swishes closed.

I've failed.

Until it ruptured…and fizzing green painted his hand, forearm and the shined tip of his left boot.

In that instant, his temper snapped. Heedless of the people passing by outside the windows, he reared around on his axis and, with a roar of frustration so loud it made the glass vibrate, hurled the decimated can across the room.

It had all been for nothing.

He'd failed.

Again.

And now!

Coming in the next instalment.

Sweet.

Gor'ram.

Reunion.

That is all.