Palaven.

The fires had been quelled long ago, their dying gasps choking the skies with suffocating smoke and plumes of unbreathable smog, blotting out the vicious light of Trebia that normally blazed down upon the planet. The once verdant world knew almost no inch untouched by ash and destruction in the weeks following the collapse of the Reapers. And yet, despite the extensive devastation to the turian homeworld, a situation that they had never before endured, nothing was amiss. Each of them fell into line, each of them knew their place, and no chaos, even on such a scale as the Reapers, would fracture their stalwart discipline. Their citadels of angular precipices and glinting supremacy were brought low and dragged into ruin. Their cities of rigid metal and gleaming nobility, blades of militaristic strength and pride jutting from their lush world, now lay scattered across the broken landscape, torn and seared by the ruthless struggle so abruptly ended by a lost commander. Yet the ever unshaken turians, truly forged of steel in the scorching radiation of their star, operated with unerring dedication to rebuild their world. Every individual knew and appreciated their duty. Every turian fulfilled their purpose to the whole of their civilization without grievance. It was their way, and any lesser informed eye would be scarcely capable of discerning the military from the citizens. If such a line even truly existed within their society, it was a blurred one with no meaning.

Odd though it was for him to once more set foot on his homeworld after years coasting through the cosmos on a current of worthy purpose, Garrus nonetheless could think of no better course to follow at the end of the war than to return, at long last, and avail himself to the reconstruction of his world. He hadn't really adjusted to the change yet either. In truth, he had long been considered something of a renegade, often deviating from the proper place he belonged in and favoring a certain brashness that evoked no respect among the avian, reptilian people. Turians fell in line, always, without question. The individual meant nothing in the shadow of the many, the whole far outweighing the parts comprising it, and Garrus hadn't found himself quite so eager to click into place as his kin. Now, though, there were concerns far too great to let some rebellious streak get in the way.

"Who are you?' inquired the turian leading the rebuilding efforts in one of the city districts as another approached. "Who sent you?" His mandibles squirmed with restrained irritation as he spoke.

"Garrus Vakarian, of the SSV Normandy," he answered, straightforward and to the point. The commanding turian's eyes widened slightly as he regarded the blue clad renegade, and Garrus had to stifle a bit of a grin.

"Vakarian? I know who you are." For a moment, the turian regarded Garrus with plain admiration and a sense of relief. "But, if you're here, that means that Shepard..." His words trailed off. Garrus' eyes dropped to a nearby pile of rubble, a solemn nod following.

"Presumed dead. We haven't heard anything to the contrary, so it's what we're running with." A humorless chuckle tried to mask just how bothered Garrus was by both the prospect of Shepard being dead, and having no damn answer at all. "Look, I'm here to help if I can, so point me toward something that needs fixing." Anything to occupy him would be welcome, at this point. The turian rounded a storage container that was serving as a makeshift table, sifting through a disheveled pile of datapads until he lifted one between his talons. Eyes flickered over the moving screen for a moment before he stepped again to Garrus, offering him the device.

"A nearby aqueduct was completely collapsed in the attacks. This has the coordinates and the damage report. Getting that pipe clear will be a big step in helping the population in this sector, then we can move on to bigger things." Business. Straightforward. Clinical, detached, and rigid. The turian way. At this point, the vigilante thought it for the best, happily surrendering the trouble in his thoughts for menial labor and dryly stoic communication.

"I'll head that way then. And you are...?"

"Tradius Maleg, Director of PR-895 operations." The turian threw Garrus a salute trained to mindless, habitual perfection. Garrus' curiosity played blatantly over his features, though he refrained from questioning too extensively. Garrus saluted in return, an awkward gesture of respect he had given up a long time ago. This, he had to remind himself, was not the time or place to cause a stir.

"I'll get to it, then." The renegade turned without another word and made for the aqueduct.

Days passed, blessedly empty of any great amount of thought demanded from him as he worked to clear the water system with a troop of about eighteen other turians and three haulers equipped with cranes to pry away the wreckage. He didn't say much, deliberately shooing away the questions with insistent dismissal, sticking to his job without a mind to play into the others' curiosity. He ate, he slept, he worked, and he kept quiet, leaving the rumors to jostle about with the others. The last thing he needed was more attention than he could wave off.

As certain as he was that the peace couldn't last, it was nonetheless a bit of a surprise when the inevitable visit came shortly after Trebia began to creep into the daybroken sky. A precursory knock at his door and the following hum of the mechanism opening the gateway between his chamber and the outside world had Garrus immediately on edge. The though grazed his mind only a moment before the dreaded words were spoken, enough to bring the feeling of defeat washing over him.

"Vakarian, I need to speak with you." The voice was familiar, but the whir of the door closing again and the blip of the locking mechanism activating informed him that this would be a private conversation, a fact that was doing little to put his nerves to rest. He turned to the unanticipated company, brow ridge cocking upward curiously.

"Chellick?" A face he hadn't seen and a voice he hadn't heard in years. Not a particularly unwelcome revelation, though the fact that his early morning visitor was a C-Sec officer had him concerned. What could they want with him?

"Executor Chellick."

No... Not after all this time...

"Charges have been filed against you for desertion, Garrus." The renegade's eyes widened a little, his heart thudding rapidly in his carapace now. "You abandoned your position with C-Sec when you were directly ordered to cease your investigation of Saren."

"I didn't desert anything, Chellick!" he barked, voice crecendoing. "I quit. There's a difference."

"You dropped a datapad on the Executor's desk and walked out. You ran off with the Normandy within the hour. That's not quitting, Garrus. That's desertion." Stern and harsh, cutting, brutal with finality. The Executor had obviously had time to consider his approach to the situation.

"I put in my resignation exactly as I was supposed to."

"You disappeared into the traverse on a quest for vengeance, then you fled to Omega to mow down crime lords." Chellick's eyes narrowed with vicious intensity. "You chose to become a vigilante because you couldn't do things your way with C-Sec."

Garrus couldn't argue. After all that had happened with Saren, he had found himself disgusted with Citadel Security, their unforgiving red tape, and their constricting boundaries. He couldn't accomplish anything with them crushing his work into a fine paste. Instead, he dove into the most crime-ridden station in the galaxy, a veritable pirate haven for all breed of lowlife with a taste for exploitation of the innocent. Never once had he considered that his choice had been detrimental; every shot he fired was aimed for some mercenary scumbag or criminal kingpin. How could that have been wrong?

"Then what happened to my resignation?" he implored. The Executor shook his head with something falling between disappointment and annoyance crossing his demeanor. Something in him hated what had brought him here.

"Mandatory two-week waiting period before approval, Garrus. You know that. Any time an officer resigns, we have to manage any pending cases, reclaim C-Sec property, and handle the paperwork, which the resigning officer must be present for." Chellick sighed with crestfallen loss. "You left before your resignation could be properly tended. You're a deserter, Garrus..." His words trailed off, reluctantly said and coldly removed.

Garrus turned away, eyes dropping to the metal flooring of his small personal chamber. Not once in the years since he left C-Sec had he even considered the possibility that something had gone wrong, and Chellick was right. He knew better. He damn well should have taken the regulations into consideration. But, true to his nature, he threw the rules out the window and dashed off into the galaxy to take down the bad guys. All of them. Somewhere in his mind, he had lodged the idea that no one would come after a hero for this sort of thing, that he was above reproach because he was part of the legendary Normandy crew. Now that it was coming back to bite him in the ass, he wished that, for once, he had followed the rules and stuck to the red tape.

"Why didn't you raise this issue sooner, Executor?" His voice was low with the weight of a beaten soldier.

"Because the galaxy needed you. I put off confronting you so you could stick with Shepard and see the war through to the end. I told C-Sec to stay out of your way and keep their mouths shut. It wasn't the time to throw the law in your face, and it wasn't the time to exile you from the Citadel." Closing the distance, Chellick assumed a stalwart posture, puffing himself up for a demand made of his position that he wasn't keen on following through on. "Now that the war's over, though, I can't put it off anymore." Garrus forced himself to smile over at Chellick, locking eyes with him, scoffing a little.

"How is there still Citadel Security if there's no Citadel?"

"The Citadel itself may be in ruins, and the population was devastated, but it still exists as an entity. The Council is intact, the governing bodies are still present, and our job still has to be done." The Executor huffed a bit of a chuckle himself, trying to dismiss a bit of the tension. "We don't need to be on the station to still be the Citadel."

Garrus hadn't remotely thought that argument would work. In truth, he brought it up more as a curiosity, a wonder at the state of things. For all intents and purposes, the Citadel was as much a political force as a space station, an existence of it's own volition despite the presence of the physical body. The Citadel itself could be dust coasting through Earth's atmosphere and it would still remain in power. With a deep breath of resignation to the consequences of his actions, the vigilante stood upright and met eyes with the Executor.

"I'll go quietly, Chellick."

"Good," the other turian chimed, nodding his approval and breathing out the sheer relief. "I honestly wasn't sure if you would or not."

"I don't blame you. But, I think I've been a fugitive long enough, don't you? Blown up my share of everything, probably a bit of yours, too."

"I'm only here for the desertion, Garrus. I won't ask about your run ins with explosives."

The door unlocked with a quick keystroke from the Executor, and Garrus followed him out to a throng of turian guards armed to the mandibles. He eyed Chellick sidelong, smirking as much as his chitinous face would allow.

"All of this for me? You shouldn't have, Decian, I'm flattered."

The Executor's eyes cut at the renegade with that, but he kept his words bound up in his throat.

"I knew there was a reason I wouldn't have made you Executor," Garrus mused as the company fell in line around him and Chellick, escorting the pair through the rubble strewn street toward a waiting vessel.

"Anyone else wouldn't have been so nice about this mess," Chellick quipped crassly.

"Or they would have let me go for good behavior. I mean, sure, Shepard was the real hero, but I was with him through it all."

"Even heroes have to answer to the law," Chellick chided with cryptic glibness.

"Apparently," grumbled Garrus as he hoisted himself into the ship. The hiss of the airlock closing behind him seethed a finality that he wasn't entirely prepared to face yet. Not that he had a choice. Despite all that he had offered of himself to save the galaxy, the damn book still decided to smack him in the face the first chance it got. Hopefully his father would have spared a moment to be proud of him for not fighting this one. Doubtful, but at the moment, it was all Garrus had going for him.