Thane and Shepard cited 'private business' as they took their shore leave on the Citadel together. A coy look from Kasumi was hushed by a sharp glance from the Commander — and also, no doubt, by Thane's own brooding tension.
The Zakera Ward docking bay was filled with tourists stumbling into one another in wide-eyed distraction, but Thane watched Shepard move smoothly through the atrium as though she shared his perfect memory of the place. The Citadel's changeless stability was familiar to them both, even the way that sameness contraposed a state of constant flux maintained by the silent custodianship of the Keepers. Structures shifted, and spaces opened and closed, according to the inscrutable judgments of those synthetic insectoids, but their efforts seemed to be solely towards maintaining a certain immutability, as they smoothed over and burnished away any major modifications by Citadel residents. The entire multi-armed structure of the Citadel was like an enormous dune of sand: fluid, composed of particulates that were constantly changing, but with an enduring mass that remained identical to the eye. And like the shadowy niches of such sand-hills, the Citadel was habitat to a variety of rare lifeforms, host to a network of relationships that could exist nowhere else in the galaxy. The darkened docking area was populated with a glossary of spacefaring races, all lit from about mid-level (depending on a species' stature); illumination issued from ship-lights and stardust through occasional broad windows, as well as the flickers of the ubiquitous glowing cylinders of advertisement towers, giving everyone an artificial fluorescence in a world without a sky.
The Citadel was the de facto capital of the Milky Way, and in the early years of Thane's career, just as it was starting to show its rapidly upward trajectory, the station began to serve more and more as a home base for his work. A certain type of politically-active elite would almost never leave the island of civilization that the Citadel represented, swathed in the purplish glow of the Serpent Nebula like a safety blanket. They constituted a large bourgeois bulge in his clientele, and he quickly found that the mid-to-high compensation they offered was not proportionate to difficulty. The unpredictable street fighting of an Omega mob hit could be far more hazardous than the repetitious sterility of cycling through the common Citadel private security firms. After a few years of infiltrating grandiose Presidium apartments, he began to challenge himself to use exclusively non-lethal force on private guards; a few years later, this challenge neutralized itself when he found that guards would readily turn a blind eye to his established modus operandi, finding his trust more worthy year-to-year than the flippant and finicky Citadel upper class. Thane had walked away from enough bodies on the station to know C-Sec regulations better than the average beat officer — although, granted, he was a very quick study.
Now, the intractable sameness of the Citadel frustrated him, burned a smouldering brazier of rage, low in his chest. Passing through the security checkpoint, he spotted no fewer than fourteen flaws he could exploit to enter the station proper untracked, if he so desired; eight of them were ones he regularly employed a decade ago. C-Sec's bluster and incompetence seared him from the inside. They were meant to be a force for justice here, but they were a sham when it came to the truly dangerous. No, he could not trust them to preserve the life of his son. They would only be there to incarcerate him once his soul was already rendered impure.
Shepard did not seem to share his cynicism. On the other side of security, she turned immediately to a desk manned by a certain Captain Bailey. A less disciplined assassin might have faltered — after all, officers of the law were his natural enemy, and it was not his practice to make his face known to them. But he stood by his commander with his well-enforced, customary coolness.
"My associate's trying to find his son. We think a local criminal may have hired him." She laid out the situation with a blunt honesty that could only come from having absolutely no fear of reprisal. Yes, she could speak for her companion while he stood anonymously by her side. Yes, she could expect answers of this Captain, because she was Commander fucking Shepard.
He observed her as she easily navigated conversation with Captain Bailey, and it struck him that a Spectre would be a natural ally in this phase of his life. She could operate outside the law, much as he did, only she was Council-sanctioned; her official role was a legitimation of his goals since retirement. She had a title where he had only a mantra.
The universe is a dark place. I'm trying to make it brighter before I die.
Her title seemed to be enough for Bailey, who readily supplied them with a solid lead. Mouse. He just gave her the information — no coercion, no questions. It was effortlessly non-manipulative.
Shepard was a hero of civilization who could crew her ship with thieves and mercs. She could trespass any world, lulling this just-met C-Sec officer into friendship as easily as she had a frantic Subject Zero. It was a wonder she ever needed to use her gun. Yes, bringing her, the facilitator, had certainly changed the parameters of this errand. Now, the imminent reality of facing his son loomed in his vision, choked him.
As they stalked through Level 27 together, Thane felt Shepard's eyes on him. She was quiet, concerned. He stared ahead, scanning the crowd for the person they were meant to intercept. He could not bear to look at Shepard; he feared he would fall to his knees, wrung by opposing twists of gratitude and despair. Like the blazing flames of Arashu, her presence and warmth sustained him, but he felt his eyes would burn if he looked directly upon her.
An advantage to working alone, he thought, is having no temptation to sob in despair on my partner's shoulder.
Amonkira be praised, the lead was true and the youth stood outside the Dark Star. It really was Mouse: the same skinny boy whose eyes used to shine expectantly, hoping for gifts of food, or simple toys. He is always underfoot. I feel him checking my pockets. Thane wrestled himself free of the memory, focused on the present moment. Mouse was a grown man now. Kolyat would be of a similar age and stature.
Rage bubbled unbidden to the surface of his mind. He wanted to lash out, grab Mouse and shake him, a litany of questions spitting from him.
What have you done with my boy?
Why has my precious son's life merged with your vagrancy?
How was I a better father to this orphan than to my own son? – And yet they still both grew up to be petty criminals on the Citadel wards?
How had it all gone so wrong?
But most urgently: Who is the target whose death will mark the end of my boy's innocence?
He would have threatened Mouse for the intel, directed all of that anger into an interrogation– but Shepard was there.
The kid nearly dropped his datapad when he turned and recognized the drell. "Oh shit, Krios! I thought you retired!" A pause, before his voice cracked in shock. "Commander Shepard? I thought you died!" His throat pulsed with the panic of cornered prey, his eyes flicking between them. "What do you want with me?"
Mouse had not lived an easy life, but this conversation was already not going well, even for him.
Thane grabbed him by the collar, barely damping down his own ferocity. "You gave another drell instructions for an assassination. Who's the target?"
Mouse began to stammer, his mouth working like a minnow cornered in a reef. Thane felt the blood thump in his fists. There was no time for this– he would make him talk. But Shepard rolled her shoulders back and asserted her presence: powerful, undeniable, full of contradictions.
"Kid, you know who we are. We're not just some thugs. You give us what we want, we can tie this all up, neatly. There won't be any loose ends to bite you in the ass later. I give you my word."
Her word, it seemed, existed somewhere between threats and promises, and lay at the altar of reason.
She was no taller than Mouse, but it only meant she could easily lock eyes with him. She cowed him with the overwhelming force of her will. Just a moment's worth of her full attention was enough. He relented and shared what he knew.
The ability to walk away with both a name and no ill will from Mouse was already a tremendous coup.
The name was Elias Kelham. Not the target, but the client. Maybe Thane would be able to sink his fists into this one.
The C-Sec interrogation chair was originally designed to accommodate biotic suspects. It wasn't enough to disarm a biotic: it was necessary to restrain them, to prevent them from activating the gestural mnemonics that triggered their attacks. So it was already excessive to put Kelham in one of those, a human with no biotic ability.
Thane's mind buzzed with a hundred painless ways to kill him, while he was clamped down in that position — and a hundred more that were not so painless.
He suddenly realized that he could not trust himself to extract the crucial information from this man.
"Shepard. We should question him together. Keep the pressure on. Thoughts on how we approach it?"
He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since they'd boarded the station. She returned his gaze with a smile, a flash of white teeth. "Convince him that we'll put a bullet in his head if he doesn't talk. Isn't that how interrogations work?" Her easy demeanour was a transparent attempt to add some levity to the situation.
"Very well. I'll pretend we're ready to kill him," he replied humourlessly.
She didn't correct him, one way or another.
Of course. N7s do things a little differently.
"We can't push too hard though. We need the information more than we need a corpse," Thane said, the words bitter in his mouth. It would be so easy to punish this defiler of his son, to tip Kelham over the familiar precipice of death. The fantasy shamed him; worse, he knew it promised gratification that it could never deliver. He had already walked that path for Irikah. But that time– Irikah was already dead. Kolyat could still be saved.
Still, the thought was potent.
Shepard didn't waver. She swung her helmet back on. The eye-slits glowed blue and angular on her face.
They entered the room together.
And there he was: small-time crime lord Elias Kelham, the wretch who had hired his son for an assassination. Thane folded his hands behind his back, his face impassive. Shepard looked at him, and he experienced a brief flash of worry that she could see through his façade to the roiling waters underneath.
She merely adopted his posture and circled the room to stand near Kelham's head.
Opposite Shepard, Kelham's prone body between them, Thane could almost hear the throbbing of the man's vital organs, and all the pressure points where he might coax an embolism to bloom with some precise finger-jabs. His mind occupied thus, Shepard had already started talking.
"My name's Shepard. I'm a Spectre."
It was a classroom introduction, with some very serious content.
"Prove it," Kelham said, maintaining his thug bravado after hearing a woman's voice issuing from the bug-faced helmet.
The Carnifex came out, and Shepard offered it to Kelham's nose for inspection. "I don't have to prove anything. Spectres are above the law. We clear?"
There was nothing more impassive than her Death Mask.
"Crystal," Kelham replied, and when Shepard asked what they needed to know, he provided all of the answers in one breath. The target was Joram Talid, a turian politician from the 800 blocks who built his platform on human-hating bigotry. Thane felt his anger bubble off and neutralize: this was the last lead they would need to chase. Kolyat would be there.
It was also, frankly, a pleasure to watch the woman work. Thane was a man who could appreciate efficiency.
"Thanks. You won't see us again. No offence, but you're a problem below my pay grade," Shepard said, already exiting the room.
"That may go down in history as the shortest interrogation ever," Thane said once outside the room, his heart already lightened.
"I don't fuck around," said Shepard.
Shepard could do a lot of things. She could shoot the head off a mech while hacking and remote-controlling its neighbour. The galaxy's top assassin just commended her on the shortest interrogation ever. Hell, she'd died and come back to life. But she was less than thrilled with this plan of having Thane depend on her lurking on maintenance catwalks to track Joram Talid.
It made some sort of tactical sense. He was the one who could go invisible in a crowd in a split second. In fact, she'd seen him do that immediately prior to her attempt to voice her concerns about this plan, to her great annoyance. As the goddamn reincarnated war hero celebrity, she'd take her jewel-toned blue armour and skulk around in the air above a shopping district, and hope nobody looked up.
She thought about deploying a drone to hover near Talid and ping her his location, but that would both be cheap and probably give them away. She had to face facts: she had no tools here except her own eyes.
"Fuck," she breathed to herself. She was accustomed to operations that were do-or-die with no second chances, but she was less accustomed to those which involved being stealthy amidst the Citadel's teeming civilian masses. Usually she could lean on her notoriety to get what she wanted, rather than relying on fading into the shadows. She could also usually count on large explosions as a backup plan.
Furthermore, her motivations were coming from a different place. Saving the galaxy was straightforward, as far as incentives go; this was much more personal. The kid was a faceless target to her, but the ache in Thane's heart was real. She couldn't allow herself to fail and become the cause of his unresolved pain. That worry accelerated the blood in her veins like the spinning rings of a mass relay.
Why were there so many goddamn unnecessary doors up here? Only the Reapers could have been the architects of such frustratingly evil design.
There were a few adrenaline-soaked moments as she stepped through yet another extraneous door and thought she'd lost the target. Steeling herself each time, her eyes would eventually fix upon that bigoted fuck and his big dumb bodyguard.
She tried to let some of her tension melt away as her objective stopped to chat up some voters outside a shop. She mused on whether the turian had an eerie sense of somebody watching him. She was barely blinking as her eyes bored down the back of his fringe.
The consolation prize for having this role in the stakeout was Thane's voice in her radio. At regular intervals, he would check in, make sure she still had Talid in her sights, and let her know where he was taking up position.
Shepard had always been a stickler for good audio, and the radio in her helmet was reproducing the subharmonics of Thane's voice very nicely. Hearing him in her ear built a nest of warm feelings in her belly.
"Do you have him?" Thane asked her.
"Mmm hmm," she replied, perhaps more langourously than was in any way appropriate.
Then the bodyguard finished his shakedown in the nearby shop, and the pair took off down the hallway.
"Oh fuck." Her boots clanged on the maintenance catwalks as she pursued them. She wished for and discarded a design for a noise-cancelling pulse. No time.
"I see them," came Thane's voice in her ear, and she exhaled in relief, slowing her pace just enough to mitigate some of the din from her footsteps. Looks like they were going into a bar anyway; no one would be able to hear her over the loud turian pop in there.
It was good and shadowy in the bar, and she felt less like a glimmering sapphire anomaly in the sky. She strolled along the catwalks to keep up with her targets. They should be on the other side of this door–
"Hey! Who are you? What are you doing back here?"
The upstairs room was actually being used by the bar. Shepard's talent for timing had brought her here exactly when some chump kid was taking inventory.
"Wh- what am I doing here?" I won't lose my quarry. "What are you doing here?"
The kid stared at her. "What?" The word came at the speed of his thoughts: rather slowly.
So she went with it. "Do you have any idea how dangerous it is here?"
"Dangerous?"
Excellent. "Get out of here!"
He looked at her.
"Now! Before it blows!" Yessss. With a flourish.
"Blows? What the–"
"Run!"
And the kid took off.
Shepard's laughter hissed out of her. Over the open channel, she heard a soft "hm!" of amusement.
She passed through the opposite set of doors, and Talid was there, keying in to an apartment. And so was a drell. Not Thane.
How had they missed him?
Kolyat pulled a weapon.
In that moment, Shepard was bare. She had no tools. She didn't know how to stop him without harming him.
But she had the tools she was born with. Or, at least, was reconstructed with.
"Kolyat!" she shouted, her voice ringing from above and resonating on the mysterious Reaper alloys of the Citadel walls. Her cry was enough to startle him into hesitation. It cost him a line of fire on Talid, and he settled for the krogan bodyguard, who went down a lot quicker than they usually did.
Hmm. Maybe the talent for killing was hereditary after all. Or maybe the kid just shouldn't press his luck a second time.
She negotiated over the railing and slid down to the pedestrian level, just as Thane's sprint caught up to her. They kept pace with one another in a dead run into Talid's apartment.
And that's how she found herself in a pistol stand-off, holding up Thane's son from executing a turian bigot.
Thane's heart turned to ice as he saw his son holding a gun to the back of Talid's head, the turian kneeling before him. And then Shepard, like an angel of justice, her own pistol levelled at Kolyat, unwavering. The lights of the C-Sec skycars brought Captain Bailey's men, with their own firearms. Kolyat, at the nexus of all of these weapons. Thane wanted nothing more than to step up and swaddle his son in his arms, and absorb all of the slugs into his body. He envisioned round after round emptying into him, until there were no more mistakes to be made, and Kolyat could walk away, reborn.
He could see no other way out of it. He took a step towards him, saying words, but it wouldn't matter what–
A shot rang out. Thane felt cold fear drain into his bloodstream. But what fell– a lampshade?
"What the hell–"
Kolyat's astonishment was interrupted by a swift elbow to the side of the head, while he was simultaneously disarmed. It wasn't elegant, but Shepard had moved fast enough to surprise Thane Krios. No mean feat.
Talid scrambled to safety, but no one cared enough to notice.
"Kolyat," Thane said softly, reaching out to his son.
"Is this some sort of joke? Now? Now you show up?" Kolyat said, seething with ten years of frustration, rage, abandonment, and now a sharp impact to the head. "You weren't there when my mother died! Or even when she was alive!" His pitch was climbing, unsteady, the hysteria of childhood pain wresting any semblance of self-control from him. Thane's heart ached.
"Your mother."
Irikah. Irikah, nursing their newborn son. Irikah, with the sunset-coloured eyes. Irikah, who trembled with righteousness. Irikah, sinking into the Deep, with the hanar's mournful song.
"They killed her to get to me. It was my fault."
The room went still and breathless, broken intermittently by the blinking of the squad car lights outside.
"After her body was given to the Deep, I went to find them. The trigger-men, the ringleaders. I hurt them. Eventually killed them."
Kolyat's face was contorted, agonized, as he began to understand where his father had gone while the rest of them had been mourning. He began to see his father's pain, and the wound reopened only so the purulence could drain. A sob wrenched from his body. Thane caught him before he collapsed.
From what seemed like a great distance, Thane heard Captain Bailey coordinate transport to the precinct, where they could speak in private. For now, all that mattered was his son, head bent to his shoulder, wracked with a lifetime of pain — but a lifetime that was thankfully not yet over.
"Wow. Heavy stuff." Garrus was sucking down some dextro nutrient paste, listening to Shepard summarize the events of their trip to the Citadel today. They had gone up to Shepard's quarters after she complained that there was nowhere to sit in the forward battery.
"You don't have to eat — drink? — that gunk, you know," she said of the unappetizing tetra-pack he was guzzling. "We're docked at the Citadel. You could probably find something really delicious for a change."
Garrus shrugged. "To be honest, I kind of like it. It's good to keep things simple sometimes."
Shepard laughed. She was sitting on her bed cross-legged, while Garrus sat on the couch and put his feet up on her coffee table. They hadn't hung out like this in private before. It was starting to feel a little awkward, and she couldn't quite pinpoint why.
"Damn. Cerberus definitely gave you an upgrade. The rest of us are taking shifts on those crappy little bunkbeds." Garrus gestured around them at the large cabin, the exorbitant fish tank. Shepard had taken the fish tank very seriously, and picked up at least a few specimens from every commercial port they docked at. She claimed that it was a conservation effort in case of a Reaper invasion, and only seemed to be half-joking.
Shepard sighed. "Yeah, the accommodations are nice, but I wouldn't say that they gave me an upgrade." She touched her fingers to her cheek where the ugly red scars had mostly healed. Her body was criss-crossed with faint lines that glowed in some kinds of light. "Alive, yes. Improved? Jury's out."
"Does your hair actually grow that colour now?" Garrus asked. He was teasing her. "I remember you used to re-dye it so diligently, you were almost as vain with it as a turian and his fringe."
Shepard winced. "You know, it actually does? It's completely weird." She pulled her hair free of her habitual chignon and fluffed it with her fingers. It fell about her face, wavy and wild, not going much past her shoulders.
"Oh. My bad." Garrus' voice had gone suddenly soft, and she became self-conscious under Garrus' gaze.
"Commander, I think I'm ready for my report," he said after a moment.
"Uh, what?"
"You wanted my opinion on Krios."
In fact, Shepard had never asked his opinion; but she had put him in that first squad together, and he had read between the lines. Not altogether inaccurately, either.
But why is he reporting now?
"Okay. Shoot," she said.
"In my… professional opinion, Krios is a damn fine shot with a sniper rifle, deadly as hell in hand-to-hand, knows how to follow orders, and puts off handling 'personal issues' until 'shore leave'." His emphatic air quotes made Shepard grin.
"But my formal recommendation is that you carefully consider whether or not he… can make you happy."
Shepard froze, her back stiffening like a pyjak caught in a krogan scope.
"Some of the personnel on this ship may be more qualified, based on a greater degree of experience from prior service, and who would be no less… passionate, about the job."
He took such heartbreaking care with his words.
"But that's just my formal recommendation. As your friend." The sadness was only visible in his eyes for a brief moment before he got up from the couch. "Anyway. The process I was waiting on is probably done. I've got to get back to my calibrations."
Shepard jumped up too, and followed him to the door. "Garrus, I–"
"It's okay, Shepard. Let's just get back to work. It'll all come out in the wash, as they say." He hit the elevator panel, and he was gone.
"How the fuck did this happen," Shepard muttered to herself, turning back to the lonesome quiet of her cabin.
"Sere Krios has returned to the Normandy," EDI's voice told Shepard, still in her cabin, sprawled on her bed and lost in thought.
She had requested notification from EDI because she had wanted to check in on him and see how things had gone with Kolyat. But now, she sat in the white noise of her cabin, contemplating Garrus and his… feelings?
There was no obvious lampshade to shoot in the three-way standoff she currently found herself in.
Spontaneously, she sprung to her feet again and headed down to Life Support.
As in all things: just carry on.
Shepard still hadn't figured out why an assassin would prefer to face away from the door at all times, but it didn't seem to matter because Thane always knew it was her when she came inside.
Today, his head was bent. He must have been exhausted. "Shepard."
"You okay?" she asked. She had the sudden urge to keep it casual. She pushed thoughts of Garrus out of her mind as she went to sit across from Thane.
"Yes. No. With Kolyat… it is difficult." He paused, lifted his eyes and smiled somewhat. "All things worth keeping are." He leaned back, straightening his posture. "Our problems… they aren't something I can fix with a few words. But we have agreed to keep talking. We'll see what happens."
"That's good news," Shepard said. "Something to fight for when we take on the Collectors. Keeps you focused." God, this is beyond 'casual' and into 'trite marine-isms'.
"Focused?" Thane said, sighing and shifting his weight back in his chair. He looked at her with a strange expression: his eyes were so black that she couldn't distinguish his irises at all. "I don't know about that. There has been something I've found particularly… distracting lately."
Again? Shepard's improbable career was about to gain a statistic about romantic confessions per species per day. "Is that so."
"You were… phenomenal today," he said, the compliment rushing from him like a last breath. "You saved my son, and you saved me from myself. I could not have done it without you." Thane stood up, paced a few steps in the small room.
Shepard regarded him quietly. His gratitude was earnest, and also so fundamentally different from the kinds of thanks she tended to receive. More often than not, her achievements were met with awe, which made her uncomfortable. Worse still was the entitlement she sometimes encountered: 'well you're a war hero, this is what you're supposed to do.' But Thane was thanking her as one equal to another, one warrior appreciating another for their assistance.
Thane came to stand behind her, like a shadow come intensely to life. "You helped mend a broken part of me today. It makes me only more eager to do my part in your mission, so that I might somehow repay you."
"It was my pleasure," Shepard murmured, her head half-turned to him.
"Was it?" Shepard could hear the smile in Thane's voice. He bent, slowly leaning close to her ear. "You've freed your hair today," he said softly, his breath on her cheek, fluttering one crimson lock that tumbled by her face.
Shepard's eyes half-closed at his feather-light touch, her lips parted in an inaudible sigh.
And then the door opened.
It was Garrus.
"Oh– sorry. Awkward. Just coming in here to do some quick calibrations. On the life support system. Things."
Of course, Garrus' calibrations were never quick. Nor was his timing arbitrary. He was a shrewd son of a bitch.
Garrus and Thane shared a glance that communicated a great deal.
Shepard slid free and hopped out the door. "I'll… talk to you both later," she said, and headed for the elevator.
Mordin. Mordin's lab would be safe. Salarians scorn all things romantic.
"Hey, Mordin," she said with a great exhalation. "How are things?"
"Excellent. Nearing breakthrough on analysis of Collector corpse. Interesting genetic structure!"
Shepard couldn't say she was always in the mood to listen to Mordin's rapid-fire dissertations, but today it sounded like exactly the right thing. She leaned against what looked like a safe length of lab table and settled in for some epic "mm hmm"-ing.
"But, also, glad you came. Wanted to discuss something. Sexual activity, normal as stress release, but: recommend caution with Thane. Drell-human liaisons… complex. Thane, complex as well."
Shepard gaped. A startled laugh escaped her open mouth.
"Understand, touchy subject matter, but, is my duty to share medical information with commanding officer."
Shepard collected herself with a cursory glance to make sure both doors to the lab were closed. Successive surprises always have less of a sting, and she'd been through a few today. Besides, she was curious as hell. "Okay. Spill."
"Prolonged human to drell skin contact can cause small rash, itching. Oral contact may cause mild hallucinations."
Shepard almost laughed again at the absurdity of this conversation, but Mordin was dead serious. Also… she had questions. "Uh... oral contact... or oral contact?" she asked.
Mordin looked at her placidly for a long moment, then replied, "Would have said oral-genital contact if was what I meant. Please, Commander. Verbal specificity, always good practice."
Shepard grinned. "Of course. Do go on." She was quietly a huge fan of the salarian, admiring his brilliant scientific mind and no-nonsense attitude. She took this for what it was: well-intentioned, looking-out for his friend and comrade.
Professor Mordin Solus, veteran of the STG genophage team, would know a thing or two about meddling in sexual success. Of her options, he seemed to put his chips on Thane.
And she should trust her science officer. Right?
"Have forwarded advice booklets to your terminal. Erogenous zones, positions comfortable for both species. Can supply oils or ointments to reduce discomfort, as well as salve to treat possible rash. Hope it helps."
"Aww, Mordin. That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. You're the best, most unexpected, wingman ever." She clasped the salarian on the shoulder, her mouth wrestling with a smirk.
He modestly inclined his head. "Always happy to help."
