"I am going to kill Nassana Dantius."
"So you keep saying."
"I'm a Spectre. I can do it."
"Shepard, don't you think you're - "
"No! Garrus, she set me up. We could've all gotten killed, and for what? To act as her personal hit-men so she didn't have to suffer the indignity of hiring a real assassin? I am going to kill her."
The rest of the crew had made themselves scarce a long time ago. It hadn't taken long for each of them, regardless of species, to recognize the unmistakable signs that Shepard's rage was not going to be short-lived. Garrus had remained as she stormed around the mess, though he was beginning to regret it. He wasn't used to this role-reversal, in which he was the one to talk Shepard around to seeing the sense of a less violent path.
The circular discussion continued a few more orbits around his patience before it eventually, mercifully began to lose momentum. After a few more "I'm going to kill her"s, Shepard allowed herself to be persuaded to go to her cabin, so that if she was going to keep fuming, at least the crew could get back to their lives.
There was something wrong with this whole mission, and it wasn't just that she'd been used. It wasn't even that she'd diverted precious time to airing the dirty laundry of a really messed up family. It was that even now, Shepard was certain that if she could go back in time, knowing everything she now knew, she would still meet with Nassana and go on this wild goose chase. The infuriating part of it all was that she didn't know why.
She didn't normally have fatalistic tendencies, so why did it feel like something was telling her that whether she liked it or not, Nassana Dantius was one of the most important people in her life? She knew, at the core of her being, that despite her declarations otherwise, she was going to let that spoiled, self-important asari live, and something was telling her that their lives had been linked for a reason.
"Joker, I want to know when we're 10 minutes from docking at the Citadel."
"Your sister's dead! I killed her myself! If you don't want to end up like her, start talking!"
The human woman's voice rang out across the embassy lounge. She'd gotten the attention of every patron present, including the assassin. While everyone else was straining for gossip or a sign that things were about to get messy, he just needed to make sure the human wasn't going to get in the way. The asari she was threatening was connected to his target - a slaver who had been straying too far into the territory of those who could afford his services - and he hoped to firm up his plans based on intelligence she would never be aware she'd left vulnerable to those who knew how to extract it.
As he watched, the human eventually became calmer, adopting a softer tone that was swallowed by the resuming conversations of those who had become bored with the situation. While everyone else was mollified by the return to normalcy, he became nervous, straining to pick out the human's words. Her back was to him, so there was no hope of even reading her lips or taking context clues from gestures. Her companions, a quarian and a turian, flanked her and faced the room, as if daring anyone to interfere. Unfortunately, neither of their faces were likely to present anything he could interpret.
Who was that human, and what was her business with the asari? She was conspicuously clad in Alliance-issue armor. Was she there in some official capacity? No. The human military might be sloppy and heavy-handed, but as far as he knew, they didn't openly threaten to murder alien civilians in public. He needed to end this senseless preoccupation before it became a true distraction. In the end, she wouldn't matter. Even in layers of armor, humans were delicate things. One sharp twist of her head and any menace she presented would be gone.
That thought should have pacified his mind, but he was shocked to discover that it repulsed him. He needed to leave. The asari could wait; it seemed as if she spent most of her time in that chair. Just as no one had noticed his entrance, no one was aware that he had gone. Stealth was his greatest asset at the moment. He boarded the first automated rapid transit and growled an order for it to deliver him to his lodging, grateful for the solitude. Even as he knew that he was nearing the end of his ability to continue without sleep, he was aware that no oblivion would come when he closed his eyes. Every time he did so, he was faced with an image of his own hands, reaching for a soft, pink face, desperate to make it turn to him and reveal its features.