This will be the last chapter for about a couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who's followed, read, and especially, commented! Your interaction is part of the reason why I was able to update this so fast.

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5. The Trouble With Reality

The cool gray letters of Liara's message scroll across his datapad. She's culled it from C-Sec channels and routed it to him before they jumped to the Sowilo system, but he missed it the last salvo of preparations before the Shadow Broker base. Now that's concluded, he has ample time to go over all the messages he ignored on Omega, and it figures that news of Sidonis would be first.

It's only because she's stopped by the battery unannounced that Shepard gets a glimpse of his clenched posture, the irritated flex of his mandibles. He thought she'd still be with Liara, looking for data regarding her body, but here she is. Her scent precedes her, a vibrant oscillation at the edges of his olfactory perception that he knows is too faint for anyone but a turian to discern. He steals some calm by sifting through its layers before holding the tablet out to her.

"It's Sidonis, Shepard. He killed himself while in C-Sec custody." The sentence sounds odd and empty, and he is aware of dull, unfocused anger as he watches her read.

"I'm sorry," she says. She hands back the datapad, her face a mask. "I was being selfish, you know."

It takes him a moment to understand what she means, and he can't stop surprise from rippling through his sub-tones. "Sparing Sidonis?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean?"

Out of the corner of his eye he catches the flicker in her vital signs, but when she speaks, there is nothing to correlate the calm she displays with the numbers on his visor.

"You were always intense, and reckless." She lingers over her adjectives, her mouth almost curving at its left corner the way it does every time she nails a difficult shot. Her flat, human voice wavers, imbuing her speech with fleeting depth. "But you— never lacked compassion. Losing that wasn't an option. You're a good man, Garrus Vakarian."

For a moment, it looks like she might reach out to touch him. The fingers of her gun hand twitch, a faint tremor; only the numbers scrolling on his visor give away her elevated heart rate. A sharpness infuses her scent before she adds with uncharacteristic hesitation, "I should have told you before now. Or maybe, I should have said nothing at all."

"No, I'm glad you did." The motions. He's going through motions again. This is not what he expected.

"Are you all right, Garrus?"

"Yeah. Just— you know."

"Okay." Her expressions are too familiar by now to miss that she's biting back questions. "I wanted you to know in case I don't get a chance to say anything later."

"So this it it, then?"

"Well, this might not be the best time for my plans to take over Omega." Her smile is by turns wistful, ironic. "Anderson has already made contact with people he thinks can help, but the only way to mobilize the Alliance is if I'm there. As soon as I've reviewed and collated the data from Liara with what Miranda and EDI compiled, I'm making that call to Hackett. I'm telling the crew today, give them a chance to leave if they want. That's what I came here to tell you."

The Normandy's peculiar brand of hum-filled silence follows her departure. Would he be so surprised by her admission regarding Sidonis if he hadn't seen the wild spike in her numbers? His compassion is not hers to lose, and it's just like Shepard to nudge, prod, persist, interfere. Unsatisfactory synonyms, because—if he's honest—there's a troubling thrill of satisfaction in uncovering the extent of her possessiveness. He sets the datapad aside, aware he'd been clenching it since she gave it back. Time to let Omega go. Sidonis made his choices, just like he made his when he trusted her instincts.

He switches on his audio link, turns up the volume. It's disconcerting, the realization he no longer prefers Shepard remaining untouchable, a cipher.