Grains of Sand
Amber Penglass
Chapter Six
It took less than an hour for her to get a response, but it wasn't Archangel who knocked on Shepard's door. A turian she'd never seen before stood just outside when the doors cycled open, looking relaxed and curious in a well cut turian suit of bright green. It was edged with a pale lavender that matched his colony markings. She could see the faint outline of bullet-proof plates built into his clothing in key locations, and the tell-tale bulge of a sidearm beneath his tunic.
"Lantar Sidonis," he said, introducing himself before she'd had time to do more than quirk an eyebrow. "Word is you're looking to annoy some unwanted guests? Perhaps enough to make them leave?"
Shepard gifted Sidonis with a wry grin. "Something along those lines," she told him, and stepped aside, silently making room for him to enter.
He shook his head. "Not that I don't trust you implicitly, of course, but perhaps we could talk somewhere a little less likely to give us both a serious and incurable case of death? I hear this place is a bit of a fire-fight magnet."
She gave him an amused and knowing look as she reached down and to the side to where her rucksack had been packed as soon as she'd sent her message. She hadn't intended on coming back once she left.
"Lead the way," she told him.
They didn't talk while Sidonis led her to a small dive joint in one of the more sparsely populated districts. The vibe of the area was just as dangerous as everywhere else, but showed signs of being distinctly less hostile. More, 'leave me alone, I'll leave you alone.' She could get on board with that.
Inside, the place was better lit than Afterlife had been, but not by much. It smelled of grease and spilled beer and other, alien things she thought might be the turian and quarian equivalent. By the writing on the wall and the labels on the bottles behind the bar, she was in a primarily dextro establishment. The turian proprietor inside greeted them with a jerk of his head towards a door in the back of the main dining area. Shepard followed Sidonis, keeping an eye out even when all her senses told her everything was as above-the-line as could be expected. She'd been wrong before.
The room Sidonis led her into was just big enough to fit a game table, a set of chairs, and a couch that had seen better days pushed against the far wall.
And one turian vigilante, blue armor and visor and all, seated on the opposite side of the table.
"Red," Garrus greeted her.
"Archangel," she replied, letting a small smile show. She'd been hoping he'd be the one to meet her, but hadn't counted on it.
"I'll grab some beers," Sidonis said, and closed the door behind him when he left. Shepard had a suspicion those beers would be very slow in arriving. She let her sack fall to the floor, out of the way, and took a seat across from Garrus.
"Erash was impressed," Garrus told her. "He's never seen anyone get that far through his encryptions. One layer less, he says, and he'd have ignored your message as junk data."
"And one more further than I'd gone, and it would have flagged all his securities as an attack and been deleted," she replied. "One might think a hacker as good as he's got you convinced he is wouldn't leave that one vulnerable layer."
"It worked out for you,."
"Not arguing that," she said, leaning back in the chair and letting her head loll to the side, rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt able to take a breath and let her guard down enough that she could close her eyes and not be...afraid. Here, with only the hum of the lights overhead and the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears, she could admit it. The last time she'd been this isolated for days on end, she'd had connections, known the lay of the land, and had had the invincibility of youth to bolster her bravado. Now? Now she had reality, and she wasn't too puffed up to admit to herself that sometimes reality scared her shitless.
"I heard about Forvan," Garrus said after a moment, breaking the silence. She cracked open one eye and grinned at him, a mirthless expression.
"News travels fast," she said, neutrally.
"No news to speak of," he corrected. "I've just got a few good eyes and ears."
Shepard thought back to the people she'd seen in his compound.
"The kid," she guessed, and the subtle shift of his mandibles told her she'd guessed right. "He's your mole, your streetrunner. Didn't get his name. Can't be more than, what, twelve? Thirteen? And you lectured me about putting people in danger." Her tone was light, almost casual, but there was an edge to it he picked up on.
"Weaver's sixteen, if you believe his word," Garrus said lightly, not taking the bait she had put out about lectures. "And if I don't use his talents, someone else will. Someone who wouldn't care that he stayed away from the dangerous jobs, got enough to eat, had a safe place to sleep."
"Someone," she said quietly, harshly. Not at him. "Who wouldn't care if he overdosed on stims during a job and died of a heart attack?"
She looked up from where she'd been examining the hatch marks scratched into the metal table, her eyes the only thing that moved when she caught his gaze with hers. He'd been following her fingers as they'd traced the scratches, the grooves that had been made by turian hands.
"Exactly," he said, just as quiet, just as harsh. Still holding her stare, unflinching.
What the hell has happened to you? She wondered in the privacy of her own mind.
Garrus broke their impromptu staring contest, looking sharply away. She let out a shallow breath, and looked away, herself.
"Ethics aside," she went on, forcing levity into her tone she didn't feel. "I meant what I said about Cerberus. If you're still interested."
"I'm listening," he prompted, and the tense moment was broken. Back to business.
Shepard leaned forward in her seat, abandoning her pose of faux relaxation to brace her elbows on the table. The metal pressed against her bare forearms, her pushed-up sleeves exposing her flesh to the chill. She ignored it.
"I was approached by another one of their agents earlier," she said. "I was...reminded that they aren't known for giving up easily. Right now they're under the impression they have time on their side because I have nowhere to go. I'll either eventually come to them out of curiosity or desperation, or when they run out of patience they can corner me whenever they like. They're not wrong."
Garrus was nodding. "We have some discretionary funds put aside for situations like this," he told her. "We've vetted a few pilots who come here regularly. I can get you passage off Omega to pretty much anywhere you need to go."
He fired up his omnitool, ostensibly to reach out to said pilots, but she reached across the table and put her hand over the interface, blocking its harsh light. He looked up at her, brow plate raised in inquiry. She withdrew her hand, and his eyes followed the limb when she retracted it. He frowned.
"While it's appreciated, that's not what I'm asking," she said. "Pretty sure that wouldn't help, anyway. If Cerberus couldn't bribe your pilots, they'd just hijack whatever transport I was on and people would get hurt."
He nodded, acknowledging the possibility, but his gaze was still fixed on her arm. She looked down, and saw that in the dim light of the room her cybernetics were glowing more noticeably than normal. She pushed her sleeves back down, and his attention returned to her face. When she was sure he'd put the odd sight of her mangled limb from his mind, she continued.
"Besides which, that wouldn't hurt them much, even if it worked. I'm not just looking to scurry away."
"You have a plan, then?"
Shepard grinned, the expression bordering on feral. "I always have a plan."
He barked an unexpected laugh, a vibration that rumbled deep in his chest, and said, "Funny. I used to know someone who claimed the same. Can't tell you how often those plans became scrambles for our lives."
"You obviously made it out all right," she said, somewhat coolly. She didn't know he was referring to her. He'd had other commanding officers in his lifetime, after all.
She watched his grin widen as he reminisced, and she knew she was full of bullshit.
He was absolutely talking about her.
Well. About Commander Shepard, at any rate.
With that sobering reminder of her lack of confidence in her own identity, she shifted in her turian-style chair and laid out her plan.
"You've got the contacts to pull this off," she told him, when she'd finished outlining the key points. He was nodding. "I'm good, but if I tried to fake transport records I'd put up red flags all over the place. Between your Erash and a few favors I'm sure you're owed, you can convince Cerberus that I'm doing exactly what they half expect; trying to buy my own way off the station and take my chances. Except instead of finding whatever transport we make it look like I'm on, they find a crybaby."
"A what?" He blinked at her. "Sorry, human colloquialisms still trip me up now and again."
"Not as much as most turians I meet," she told him. "Remind me to tell you about Ogrinn. At any rate, a crybaby is-"
"You've run into Ogrinn?"
"Unfortunately," she nodded, grimacing. Garrus chuckled, a sound that went deeper than his earlier laughter. She'd forgotten it, somehow.
"Knew he'd bite off more than he could chew again, eventually. Did he feed you the 'have ship, have mate, only brought one' line?"
She laughed. A real laugh, head thrown back and all, and nodded. "Oh yeah. How'd you know?"
"It's how I met Monty, actually. He tried it on her."
Shepard couldn't have held back the laughter if she'd tried. She pictured Monteague at the bar, with Ogrinn sidling up, delivering his -apparently infamous- line, and her reaction, and… The image fed the laughter until her sides ached.
Garrus was laughing, too, if with somewhat more self control than she. He tapped his communicator, and into it he chuckled, "Hey, Lantar, go ahead and actually bring those beers. One levo."
When Shepard had wiped the moisture from her eyes and regained control of herself, Garrus was looking at her and he looked...well, more like himself. Some of the guardedness, the suspicion, the wariness had fallen away. The sight eased something inside her, even more than the laughter had. This was the Garrus she remembered. Closer to, anyway.
"I can guess what a crybaby is," he said. "A decoy? Something that looks like a ship on censors but isn't? Yeah, I think I see where you're going with this. When Lantar gets in here, we'll hash out the details."
"I'd like your thoughts. If you think this is a good idea." She spread your hands on the table. "This is your turf, after all."
He flared his mandibles in a wide, almost excited grin. "Force Cerberus off my station, get them to stop hunting you, and maybe take some -or all- of them out at the same time?" His voice lowered an octave, those sub harmonics doing things to his inflections no human voice could emulate.
"Yeah," he said. "Definitely."
Sidonis returned with three beers, one levo, and a tray bearing three plates, also one levo. Shepard nodded her thanks for the free meal, and the trio of them got down to business over their drinks and servings of something mysteriously meaty and fried that Shepard didn't question too closely. It was fresh -ish- and hadn't come out of a brown Alliance package, so as far as she was concerned it was fine cuisine.
"I like it," Sidonis said when the plan had been explained to him. He looked to Shepard and asked, mildly, "What did you have in mind for the, ah, 'crybaby?'"
"Any shuttle chassis should do," she said. "Or even any broken down hovercar wreck. We just need something that can hold the components to send out the right signals-"
"No, I meant," Sidonis gave a decidedly un-turian cough. "What do you want it to do? Once Cerberus finds it?"
She blinked at him, absorbing his meaning.
"What would our options be?" She asked, her expression going carefully blank. Her empty plate had been pushed away, and she spun the beer in her hand, fingers tracing the label that was laser etched into the bottle. Paper labels were a thing of eons past, unless you were on Earth and had a penchant for old fashioned things.
"We could rig it to send out an EM pulse to disable their ships, then broadcast a message on all Council-race frequencies. Alliance, too, I suppose. Let them pick up the trash." Sidonis downed the last of his own drink. "Of course, there's always the risk that they repair their ships before the Alliance or the Hierarchy or anyone else can show up, and they escape to come right back here with decidedly less friendly methods in mind. Or."
"Or?" She had a feeling she wasn't going to like this one. Judging by Garrus' frown, he didn't think he would either. But they were both listening.
"Or, we could rig the crybaby to explode, take them out and rid us of the problem." He shrugged. "Up to you two. I'm just the supply man."
Shepard drummed a finger on the table, thinking. That second option had significantly less risk for failure, and -more importantly- eliminated the possibility of even more trouble falling back on the people helping her. On a friend. The was also the fact that it also promised death of the trapped and fiery variety to persons who had utilized some of the most ruthless, inhumane -and there was some dark irony- methods she'd ever encountered in their pursuit of superiority.
On the other hand… Consigning people she'd never met, whose individual motives she was unaware of, to the sort of end she herself still had nightmares about… That wasn't her, not when there were other options. Hadn't been for a long time.
She took a deep breath, and raised her eyes to meet Garrus' expectant ones.
"I'd like to avoid that second option. However… This," she said slowly, and not without some pangs. "Is not my call. The risk would be to your people, Garrus, if the crybaby were to fail in any way. Cerberus is not an organization that easily forgets being made a fool of."
Garrus nodded, and she realized he'd been waiting for her to say so, or to not. Either way, he had come to that same conclusions she had at the same time she had, and he'd never had any intention of letting a stranger -to his awareness- take such a big risk with his crew. He'd just wanted to see if she'd acknowledge that it wasn't her game. In his boots? She'd have felt the the same damn way. A bloom of pride swelled in her chest, of all things.
"I think it's best you stay with us, for the time being," Garrus told her. "People with more local resources, more time, and hell of a lot more motive than Cerberus haven't ever been able to find our stronghold. You'll be safe there."
The feeling of pride shifted into something else, something equally warm but infinitely more alien. Someone else, telling her she was going to be safe. How many times in her life, in her career, had she been the one delivering that message? She knew she'd have no problem keeping her head down while things were prepared, but the offer -the promise- of safety was… Well, it was nice. Really nice. She felt a subtle smile pull at one corner of her mouth, and she nodded.
"Yeah," she said. "That'd be appreciated. Thanks."
"Don't mention it," was all he said.
Sidonis begged off joining them on their trek back to the compound, saying something about a prior engagement. When Garrus pressed, clearly curious, the turian had ducked his head slightly in an expression of sheepishness.
"Personal," he said. Were he human, Shepard swore he would have been blushing.
Garrus' mandibles spread in a wide, predatory grin full of teeth and mirth.
"Just be back before curfew," he said, and his tone was so over the top fatherly it was clearly meant to be mocking. Sidonis scowled, shoved at Garrus' shoulder, and stalked off.
"And don't forget to use protection!" Garrus shouted after him. Sidonis' hand flew up, fingers curled into an unmistakable gesture, without him so much as breaking stride or looking back. Shepard choked back a laugh. The last time she'd seen Garrus goad anyone, the person on the receiving end of the jibes had been a seven-hundred pound krogan warlord stuffed into the back of the Mako. Wrex hadn't responded much better.
"Anything you need to grab before we head back?" Garrus asked her when their amusement faded.
She patted the strap of her rucksack over her shoulder. "Got what I need right here."
"Good. I've got a prior engagement of my own to get to," he told her. "Feel like playing good cop, bad cop?"
She shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye as she fell into step beside him. She saw him unconsciously shorten his longer steps so that her shorter human legs could keep up easier.
"I'm not opposed," she said. "What's the situation?"
"Just a kid, thinks their ticket to the big life lies in joining a small merc gang."
"And you're going to scare them straight?"
Garrus gave her a wide, toothy grin. "That's the idea. Do you think I should be the good cop…" Here he straightened his gait, folding his hands behind his back, his expression going as serene and controlled as could be hoped for, the vision of the perfect civil warrior. "Or bad cop?" He resumed his more predatory walk, flaring his mandibles at her while lowering his brow plates until blue eyes gleamed menacingly from their shadowed depths. He added a little growl for effect.
Shepard patted his shoulder consolingly. "Good cop, definitely."
He gave a slight start, clearly having expected a different answer, then he let out an amused snort. "Ha."
"Honestly, it depends on the kid," Shepard went on. "What species?"
"Turian. I owe the aunt a favor."
Ah, that answered why he was choosing to help this specific moron.
"Then you take bad cop, big guy. I've yet to meet a turian who finds a human to be scary on sight," she said, wincing at the admission. That particular bit of truth had always grated her to no end. No matter how logical it was, the lack of instinctive wariness in a predatory species for a race of squishy pink tree-climbers had been something that had annoyed her from day one. Fear was a powerful tool in and of itself, and having it put firmly out of her reach by something as intractable as evolution had never sat well with her.
"Good answer," he said.
Anticipation built as she followed him through the sidestreets of Omega, watching him watch everything while keeping an eye out, herself. He'd always been highly observant, and that hadn't changed. He shifted directions at a moment's intuition, without looking like he was actively avoiding blooming confrontations, suspiciously empty alleys, or a gathering crowd of batarians with anti-human slogans. He kept an eye on her, too, she noted. Never let her get too far behind him, never letting her get ahead, either. She found herself falling into a sort of formation with him, an echo of how she had once been flanked. Usually by him, no less.
The comparison made her smile.
They arrived at a tenement building, a grey thing with narrow windows and evidence of old graffiti that had been painted over, time and time again, only to be tagged anew. This building's biggest tag was a jagged red glyph that was distinctly turian. She rapped a knuckle against it as they passed.
"This the symbol of the gang in question?" She asked. "I don't recognize it."
"You wouldn't," he said. "They only operate on Omega, for now, and haven't been around long. They'll probably never get as big as the Blue Suns or Blood Pack, since they recruit turians pretty damn exclusively. Call themselves the Talons."
"Creative," she drawled, and he shot her a grin.
She followed up up a narrow set of internal steps coated with she-didn't-want-to-know-what, greenish lights flickering weakly overhead. Plain doors lined the bare hall, some marked with numbers, some not. It reminded her unnervingly of some of the places she'd spent her youth escaping, and she didn't need to see Garrus loosen his sidearm in its holster to know doing the same herself was a good idea. Many doorways were full of turians casually filing their talons, watching a vid on their omnitool with deceptive dedication, or flat out glowering at them as they passed.
They came to a door that had no numbers, but a better lock than most. Garrus knocked on it with a single knuckle, and they waited. And waited.
He knocked again.
Then he sighed, and said, "If you don't let me in, Lyrix, I'll have to message your aunt, and then she'll come out here, all the way from Palaven, and I don't think you'll-"
The door flew open.
"Don't you dare," snarled the female youth. Even by turian standards, she was whipcord thin, with pale silver plates and brilliant blue markings that nearly matched Garrus' own. Pretty, Shepard thought, no matter what species was looking at her; biology appreciated symmetry and proportion, and the girl had both in spades. She shoved the door open wide enough for her to lean against the doorframe, arms crossed human-style, glaring at Garrus and ignoring Shepard.
"Give me the script she gave you, old man, then get out of my building."
Garrus didn't bother responding with words. Instead, he used a rebuttal far more eloquent. He simply stepped forward, used the fact she had hampered her own arms with her posture, and got one of his own hands in under her chin to grasp at one protruding mandible. He exerted just enough force that the girl yelped and went up on her toes to alleviate the pressure, clearly very aware that one wrong move, one hair more exertion on Garrus' part, and she'd dislocate her own jaw.
It was, Shepard realized, the turian equivalent of an adult grasping the ear of a child in a vicious pinch. She recalled her supposed role of 'good cop' just in time to keep from snickering, and following the two turians into the apartment, Lyrix hopping gingerly ahead of Garrus.
The room was about what Shepard expected. Dingy, bare, poorly lit and with most horizontal surfaces littered with remnants of take-out meals and bottles of cheap alcohol. A few small dishes of red powder sat next to empty pill containers. Turians didn't see the biotic-boost red sand was known for -unless they were one of those rare turian biotics- but it did other things for the avian species. She'd once seen an old turian fall from a rooftop, convinced he could fly, while on the stuff.
"Now," Garrus told the girl. There was a growl to his voice not unlike the one she'd heard him use when dealing with Agent Simmons. "I'm going to let you go and pretend you're not eyeing the tempest shoved under that pillow. You're going to sit, be still, and listen while I list the reasons why joining the Talons -or any merc group- is a very, very bad idea."
"Fuck you, you imperialist asshole-" The insults were cut off when Garrus raised his hand a fraction. Lyrix was forced higher on her toes, and she gave a shrill cry as her mandible was torqued painfully. He wasn't doing any damage, and wouldn't unless the girl herself did something stupid, but Shepard imagined the position hurt like a sonovabitch.
"Or we can stand," he amended. "Standing works for me. Now, reason number one…"
"You're hurting her," Shepard cut in, like clockwork. Not too friendly or sympathetic, simply stating an observation for the benefit of someone who might be too engrossed to notice. Garrus shot her a look, and she caught the glimmer of satisfied approval. She'd known she wouldn't have an issue picking up on his ques, they'd done this before after all. Except, he didn't know that.
Slowly, letting the girl know he was doing it grudgingly, Garrus released Lyrix's mandible. The turian girl stepped away hastily, though wisely not towards the ratty pillow failing to conceal the tempest that hid there. She rubbed at the side of her face, glaring.
"Don't know why Aunt bothered," she muttered. "Nothing you can say she hasn't. She's sorry, she still loves me, I'm worth more, b-"
Garrus crossed his arms, shifted his weight, and fixed the girl with a look. Lyrix went silent.
"Reason number one," he said, and his subvocals had sunk to a new registrar Shepard hadn't ever heard from him before. Were she anyone else, it would have sent something small and feral in the back of her brain scurrying for cover.
"You're trying to become a merc. I kill mercs." He stepped into Lyrix's space, until she was backed against the couch. "And I'm very good at it. The favor I'm doing your aunt? This meeting covers it. I don't owe her anything else after this discussion is over. Think about what that means for you the next time we run into each other."
Lyrix stared up at Garrus, visibly trying to work up the nerve to reply, or to shift away, to think of a snarky rebuttal, something fittingly badass in her still-narrow view of the universe. She was clearly coming up short.
"I think she's smart enough to only need reason number one," Shepard said, again in that observational tone. Casual, quiet, but with a note of caution. As if she was worried for the girl. Shepard didn't have the equipment to employ sub harmonics, but Garrus himself had once told her she had a way of putting more into her voice that was uncommon in her species. She saw Lyrix pick up on the subtle inflections, and look at her for the first time. Shepard hadn't been expecting Lyrix to behold her with any particular emotion other than resentment, perhaps, of the presence of an authority figure. So the seething, unbridled hatred that came boiling out of the girl's grey eyes was enough to make Shepard blink in surprise.
Garrus stepped away, took a deep -staged- breath, and brought up his omnitool.
"I've bought you passage to Taetrus. Your aunt will meet you there. I suggest you don't miss your departure time, Lyrix. It's in an hour."
Lyrix shifted away from him, curling in on herself, a bitter scowl on her face.
"It's all her fault," the girl muttered. She glared up at Garrus, even as she moved towards the door. "You and your stupid human commander! All her fault!"
The girl fled, bolting from the room at a run. Whether or not she was heading for the docks, Shepard could only guess, and hope.
"That went well," Shepard offered into the silence. Garrus snorted.
"Could have gone worse, certainly," he replied. He rolled his shoulder a bit, visibly attempting to shed some tension before he led them out of the room and away from the tenement building.
"Who was she blaming?" Shepard asked as they navigated the dim streets. She'd heard the bit about Garrus's 'commander,' and something bitter twisted in her gut. "When she ran off, she was saying it was all someone's fault."
Garrus exhaled and looked away. He had angled his gaze towards a pair of vorcha digging through a mound of trash- yet she couldn't help but think not having to look at anyone when he answered was part of why he'd turned from her.
"Her parents were on the Citadel when it was attacked, two years," he said. He hadn't hesitated, and his tone was measured. Solemn. "They didn't survive."
"And...you were there?" She ventured. She wouldn't outright lie. She refused. She was skirting up to that line, though, by leading him like this.
He grinned, a lopsided thing she'd learned to recognize as an expression that encompassed amusement. Or irony. Or both.
"You could say that."
"She wasn't blaming you, though," she pressed. She was determined to hear this.
"No. She was blaming Commander Shepard." Now his tone was tense, and he did look away from her.
Shepard felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. Hearing her name from someone other than Cerberus for the first time since waking… She reacted. She didn't show it, didn't slow or stumble or choke, but she felt it. Her name. She inhaled slowly, deeply, as quietly as she could, then let it out.
It was just a name. Her reaction to hearing it didn't prove anything. It certainly wasn't empirical evidence against her potential to be no more than a very expensive clone that just thought it was Commander Shepard. She had never heard of a way of transferring memories, but for all she knew her memories were false. All but the big ones, at any rate, the ones that were public knowledge. The slums of on earth, Elysium, Eden Prime... She remembered the Citadel. Sovereign. Garrus and Wrex beside her, dodging Saren's attacks, the smell of smoke-
"Will Nalah be at the compound?" She asked, cutting off her own thoughts.
Garrus, seemingly grateful for the abrupt change in topic, looked at her again and nodded. "Why?"
"She wanted to figure out why that dose of tranquilizer didn't kill me," she said. "I want to know, too."
I promised Garrus, I giveth Garrus. I had originally planned on him remaining more or less clueless until close to the end, but the further I get with this the more it's becoming glaringly obvious that just would not happen, so some rewriting will be in order.
Also, I was trying to keep my Shepard ambiguous for easier reading, but that also was not working. Even without me actually saying so, I feel her Earthborn background was coming through pretty strong, as well as her renegade tendencies. So for those of you that like to know a Shepard's given parameters, there you go. Default Jane, Earthborn, War Hero, Renegade.
Personal Note; I know it's popular to view the markings on a turian as 'clan markings' and the idea certainly makes for some nummy kinkmeme prompts, however, canon holds that they're actually colony markings. Theoretically, any turian born on Palaven will have the same markings as Garrus. Whether or not mated pairs take their new spouse's markings, I have not found any evidence for either way, so that I leave that open. Hopefully this doesn't make too big of a difference to most of you, but either way, just a note.
Adore you all!