A/N: And here is chapter 15! I hope the shorter format for this and the chapters preceding it is pleasing to you all. Do tell me either way. Just a little note on pronunciation for later in the chapter; the Turian's surname is pronounced, 'Ss-vah-tha'. You'll know who I mean when she's mentioned :-)

Enjoy.

Yours faithfully,

L.G.

Reconnection

Kolyat receives his father's message and Scalia sneaks..but not really

Sprawled out and working beneath one of the gargantuan server-bays in the basement level of Zakera Ward's C-Sec precinct, Scalia, dressed up warmly in an extra vest, gloves and the thickest overcoat she had in her wardrobe to ward off the room's biting chill, was remembering. Voices and a deep Drellish hiss of warning came back to her with perfect clarity; the admin wing's main office flickering into her field of vision along with a retreating back that was ever so familiar.

- 'Kolyat!' I plead, following him as I have since he got back to work after his meeting with Commander Shepard. 'You're freaking me out here. What did she want? Is it the war? Is she taking you?! Tell me!'

'No!' he snaps, the word coming to me and the people milling around us in the office in its Drellish incarnation, 'Ts'au!', because he killed his translator the moment I started asking him questions.

My reply, a snapped, 'Yes!', is likewise heard as 'Veh!'; my translator as inactive as his.

'Ts'au!' he repeats.

'Veh!' I repeat.

'Ts'au!'

'Veh!'

'Ts'au!'

'Veh!'

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth until our patience for each other breaks; the 'Rehin'ksah!' he barks at my back as I storm away from him gladly unintelligible to those around us. The raised brows and odd looks he gets for the outburst now are nothing to what he'd have earned for its Basic translation, and nothing again to what I'd have earned for my response.

'Ksah vetti!'

No one favours variations of the phrase, 'Fuck off you dumb cunt' being hollered in a crowded space after all. -

As the memory faded, lingering traces of adrenaline wisping through her system with its passing, Scalia drew in a short breath and drummed her heels on the floor irritably, glaring up into the partially eviscerated carcass of the server she was working on. She and Kolyat hadn't spoken since that argument, and had only seen each other for a brief moment at the beginning of their shifts today because, joy of joys, the mardy sod was working in the same room she was. She could see him now in fact, as she peeked out from her current working place, and as she watched him..taking in how his long body was settled by the terminal he was doing Goddess knew what with, and making note of his tense shoulders and the occasional deep and echoy glottal thuds that clattered from his chest through the low hums and whirs that were the room's background noise..she had to swallow a sigh.

If he was trying to telegraph I'm righteously fucked off, stay back he was doing a damn good job.

And for whose benefit is he doing that? she griped, glancing about.

Mine, obviously, since there's no one else here.

..

..

This is getting ridiculous.

Grumbling quietly to herself, Scalia scooted back beneath her nemesis - so named for she was convinced, going on how often the sodding thing broke down, that it had some kind of vendetta against her - and got back to work. Its innards weren't about to evacuate themselves, and she refused to spend any more of her time thinking on the resident Drellish grump. She'd spent most of yesterday evening and the sum of the morning thus far trying to find an excuse to get close enough to him to try and patch things up, and so far hadn't had even the faintest bit of lu-

A strident BLIP echoed off the walls, cutting off her mental grousing.

This wasn't an ordinary blip though; not one made by any of the multifarious machines, servers or terminals that filled the place. This was the blip of a message coming in on an Omni-tool..Kolyat's Omni-tool to be precise since hers was quiet and they were otherwise alone..and it earned from Scalia what a struggling fish does from a hunting shark.

Instant.

Dogged.

Attention.

It took every ounce of self-control she had not to loose an excited octave's-worth of trilled glee.

This was it!

A chance to try and smooth things over between she and her vocally mortal sometimes-friend in a way that didn't begin with her being horrified about the possibility of him going to war and end with him waving her off with a snarled, 'Fuck off Scalia!'

Granted, knowing him, any attempt at interaction would likely get the same response..but she couldn't not try. Leaving things as they were just wasn't an option, and it was with this and disarming the volatile air that'd come between them in mind that she settled on the best way to begin her attempt at making things right again. She'd do what she had every other time she'd taken the initiative and tried to get past a disagreement with him; sneak into his space a bit, just a playful, careful bit, and see if he'd play along. If he'd follow the script they'd seemed to have developed for such moments.

If he did..if he 'caught' her..then she'd try asking something benign about his message.

If not, all she could do was back off as quickly as possible and leave the olive-branchery to him.

Wriggling free from her spot beneath the server, Scalia rolled to her feet, took a moment to quiet her chest and then beelined in her sneakiest, quietest manner for the source of the noise. She didn't want to get the jump on Kolyat.

Not really.

The silence was her tell.

No Drell is an entirely soundless being outside of instances of necessity, great shock or sickness, and she knew from experience that the sudden disappearance of her usual background rumblings would be as obvious to Kolyat in the room's relative quiet as his message received blip had been to her.

Here I come Kol, it said to him, I'm making with the contrites back here. The rest is up to you.

Slinking forth on near-silent feet, her gaze as fixed on his back and the slight movements his shoulders made as he fiddled with his Omni-tool as his seemed to be on its screen, she made her breaths soft to keep the anticipation she felt from showing in her voice as she neared him.

It wasn't always this way between them.

Wasn't always her approaching him all sneakily in the hope of being caught and thereby accepted back into his good..well, ok neutralgraces after a fight.

He too, despite his grumbling, had ways of seeking her out after a falling out when he felt they'd been at loggerheads too long; most of which involved copious amounts of Tupari and an attempt, flailing and oblique most often, at an apology. This time though..seeing as how she'd in-your-faced him the moment he'd got back and hadn't let things rest until he'd cursed at her and disappeared..it was on her to make the first move.

To bridge the uncomfortable gulf that had come between them because of her panicked questions and his absolute refusal to answer them.

..

Watching him closely, she took a cautious step closer..

..

Then another..careful..careful..

..

And another..softly now..

..

And then a fourth..

..

And then she was within five feet of him, flittering there all silent and curious, and while he didn't look around at her, the glottal vocalisations he'd been making at intervals all morning because of his foul mood petered out at her proximity.

He was listening for her.

Acknowledging her without acknowledging her.

Counting this as a victory for olive-branch-extenders everywhere, Scalia gathered herself and tried for the moment; the reveal; the 'being caught' by him that always came if he shared her want to smooth things over. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she stepped up within a foot and a half of his right shoulder, peeping around and noting the fact that his Omni-tool was now inactive before..

"OHFF!"

..Yes..

There it was.

His elbow poked against her sternum with just enough force that she felt it. No more. It wasn't a violent thing. Wasn't angry or spiteful.

It was just him.

Just how they worked.

She cuffed him on the shoulder for it with a lightly closed fist, laughing, "Oi! Watch it!", with more relief than she'd comfortably admit to feeling. He grumbled at the contact, but the sound, much like the nudge he'd given her, conveyed neither anger nor disdain. It was an accepted part of their smoothing things over back-and-forth in much the same way that her sneaking in order to be caught and the nudge that he caught her with were. The next part too, her huffed..

"I can never get you, can I"

..was also on-script, as was his response; the retrieval, seemingly out of nowhere but really out of his lunch pack, of a can of Tupari and its placement upon the desk for her to take. And take it she did, stepping up at his side and opening it for a sip before offering him one. He took it, sipped, set it on the table as he batted away her..

"So..was that message spam?"

..with a bored-sounding, "Yep", and from there, had their disagreement been about anything but what it had been, she would have tottled off and left him to it.

All done.

Wounds patched.

Back to normal people, nothing to see here.

This time though she paused, concern replacing the levity that'd crept up on her. Her voice was soft and questioning when she spoke..

"Kolyat?"

..and he tensed visibly for it, clipping, "What?" with a glance at her.

"It's just.."

"What?" he repeated, glaring at her now with confusion and impatience.

She had to take two short breaths before she answered, swallowing back as much as she could the low trill that so wanted to rise up in her chest along with the question she was about to pose. It was hard enough to get out..anxious as she was about the answer..without tonal worry coming up with it. "You going to war?"

Kolyat spluttered, his eyes going wide at how close to the mark she was. It wasn't him that was going of course, but still..she was too close. "No!" he snapped, hoping to get her off the topic quickly. Luckily for him and his frayed nerves, he got no further than another firm rebuttal, "Gods no" before she cut in..

"Good"

..a Drellish smile, tonal and familiar to him, echoing up around the word. It was soft, that tone, and edged with a slightly breathy rasp that made him think her throat was dry despite her Tupari habit. Handing the can to her, he glanced back towards the bank of servers he knew she'd been engaged with all morning and raised his brows in question.

Knowing that look, she took the hint, saying, "I'll just..get back to things then", before giving his shoulder a gentle tap with her knuckles and turning, heading back from whence she came secure in the knowledge that he wasn't going anywhere warlike.

Kolyat watched her depart in silence, glad that his seeming acceptance of her attempt at friendliness..and it was only a seeming acceptance, only surface and base, for she had riled him powerfully..had pacified her enough to send her packing with a minimum of fuss. Then, once he was sure that she'd stay gone, he turned back to his Omni-tool and opened first his newest message - that was, despite what he'd told his nosy compatriot, decidedly not spam - and then the [Reply] screen. He'd managed to read the thing, short as it was, before Scalia had come over to him, and had had the forethought to close it when he knew, thanks to her silence and how obviously she lingered at his back, she was within sight of it.

Small mercies he mused, setting his mind to pulling together as bland a reply to his father's surprise invitation as possible. At the bare minimum..which was all he planned to do..he'd need a time and a meeting place. The first was straightforward. He knew he had a block of free time tomorrow afternoon, and so picked a time at which he knew he'd have already had his lunch and thereby wouldn't have to have it with his father.

/14:00/

Selecting the place they'd meet though..that gave him problems.

It would need to be somewhere that would both allow them to talk, and provide enough distractions so that if things started getting heated - which wasn't a slim possibility, really speaking - they'd have ways of diluting the moment and keeping civil through the exchange. Much as Kolyat didn't like the man, he was still his father, and he knew him well enough to know that blowing up at him wouldn't do any good.

From what he'd seen, he was borderline unflappable. Immovable.

It was fucking maddening..

..

And he was getting off track.

Unwilling as he was to risk any of his colleagues bumping into them, they couldn't meet in a place he frequented. That ruled out Zakera Ward off the bat as he'd walked its streets since he'd been assigned to patrol them by the then Captain Bailey, and was a semi-familiar face at many of its various eateries and watering-holes. He hadn't really become familiar with the other Wards yet, modest as his excursions had been since he'd landed his job and begun slowly sorting his life into order, and that left..where exactly?

Frowning thoughtfully, he minimised the window and opened an extranet search engine with a couple of practised taps. He didn't enter anything for a long moment, pausing instead to wrack his memory for any mention his acquaintances may have made of agreeable places that might suit his purposes, but soon took to the keys - a café in the Presidium Commons that his boss-come-partner Ollie had once raved about springing to mind. Apollo's the name was, and since the man had taken his bondmate there he guessed it must be at least passable.

Only the best would do for the great Sahlyihree Tsvalla after all.

Rolling his eyes at how Ollie doted on the woman (even when she was half a galaxy away envoying for the Turian Hierarchy), Kolyat entered the name quickly and clicked [Enter], committing the directions that popped up to memory before reopening his message and copying them in. Once he was done, he added as succinct a closing phrase as possible and read the whole thing through three times..

/14:00.

Apollo's Café, in the Presidium Commons.

Take the elevator up from the dock.

K/

..to check that the adrenaline humming through his system hadn't come across in his words. Only once he was happy that it hadn't did he draw in a deep breath and click [Send].

And with that..it was done.

Now all he could do was wait.

..

..

Well..wait and begin to work himself up for the moment when he'd give his father the ultimatum he'd had coming since he decided to return to the Normandy. It was a simple thing, really. A simple..indelible..final thing that, for reasons he would NOT examine with anything like closeness, made his stomach knot and his throat pinch. If, he would tell him, he excised himself from his life completely when he left, like he had when he'd run off to Goddess knows where to hunt the people who'd killed his mother, he wouldn't find anyone waiting for him ever he tried to let himself back in.

And now!

Coming in the next chapter

Thane and Kolyat meet and discuss matters

And Kolyat catches a whispering glimpse of the man his father was.