*CITADEL*
Garrus shifted nervously in his chair doing his best impression of someone enjoying a night of frivolity with reckless abandon. He was failing miserably. His eyes darted from one of his companions to the next trying to discern whether they were experiencing the same level of discomfort as he was. If he had the ability to sweat, he was sure his brow would be a moisture soaked mess as he did his best to fix his restless eyes on the bottom of his full glass. It didn't take long for his gaze to once again flick up to take stock of his surroundings.
To his irritation, although not at all unexpectedly, Wrex seemed perfectly at ease. Kaidan appeared to be moderately relaxed although his frame maintained a certain rigidity. Across the bar he could see both Ashley, and Liara pretending to lounge in a booth near the large viewing window. Ashley seemed as calm as he imagined she ever could be while Liara blatantly broadcasted her discomfort for anyone that cared to notice. Tali stood off by herself tucked against the corner of the room so as not to receive too many irritated glares.
The only person besides Wrex he could imagine being ok with what they were going to do was none other than the man whose hairbrained scheme they were about to enact. The same man that was, at this point, late to his own party. The same man that had barely had the strength to hobble in front of the council to request support for going after Saren. The same man that had been denied, and very nearly threw his crutches at the council. He'd spouted a string of obscenities, most of which didn't translate and would have likely made a Geth blush, for nearly three minutes before being escorted out. The same man who was still at least a month away from full recovery, but who was yet again ready to throw himself into harm's way.
"Remind me again how this is supposed to go down?" Garrus asked, knowing full well what was supposed to happen, but too nervous to think about anything else.
"Baha. Don't tell me you've never been in a bar fight before, Garrus." Wrex guffawed downing a shot of Varren flavored Ryncol.
Garrus snorted and swirled the greenish liquid around in his own glass. "Definitely not the first time cleaning up the aftermath, but I've never actually been in the thick of one. Much less started it."
"Likewise. If you'd told me a week ago the Council was going to impound the Normandy and this is how we decided to get it back, I would've laughed in your face." Kaidan chimed in, taking a large swig of his amber ale.
Wrex laughed again. "As if our Shepard would come up with anything better in the state he's in. I've seen Thresher Maws that weren't as angry as him. I swear he's gotta be part Krogan."
"Give him skull plates, and he would be." Garrus chuckled, allowing some of Wrex's devil-may-care attitude to calm his own nerves. "I thought he was going to rip off Udina's head and spit down his neck when they said they were taking the Normandy and his Prothean blade."
"I was pretty pissed, myself. After everything we'd gone through tracking down their rogue Spectre, it was a pretty big slap in the face to be sidelined. Especially with Udina shoving his nose so deep in their collective asses he can smell what they had for breakfast." Kaidan grumbled. Both the Krogan, and Turian turned a quizzical eye on their brooding Human counterpart for his uncharacteristically graphic reference. It took him several seconds to notice their pointed stares. "What?"
"You've been hanging out with Shepard too much." Wrex rumbled before raising his hand to order another shot. This one Earth-cow flavored.
Kaidan sat thoughtfully gazing into the frothy depths of his nearly empty glass for almost a minute before shrugging his shoulders and downing it to the dregs. He too raised his hand for another. "What can I say? His brand of 'zero fucks to give' is infectious."
"Hear, hear." Garrus agreed, holding his glass aloft for the others to clink before polishing it off. He shook his head in a vain attempt to mitigate the burning in his throat. "Still, it's a bit on the crazy side to start a bar fight to get our ship back, isn't it?"
Wrex nodded, depositing his empty shot glass on the bar upside down. "Of course it is, but Anderson won't get very far without some kind of distraction. Aside from shooting someone on the Presidium, I can't think of a better way to get C-Sec's attention."
"But why not some place that's not as… nice? We've already wrecked Chora's Den once, why not do it there?" Kaidan wondered.
"One, because I'm not allowed within a hundred yards of the place for killing its owner. Two is because Flux is fancier, so more likely to get a bigger response from the fuzz." Wrex explained.
Kaidan shrugged. "Guess I can't argue with that. When was he supposed to…" He trailed off as he saw the seething form of his friend, and boss, round the corner to clumsily stalk into the nightclub. It would have almost looked comical if not for how egregious he knew the Commander's wounds were, and how unabashedly furious the man looked.
"So how's this supposed to go down?" Garrus asked as all of his calm feelings instantly evaporated.
With zero preamble, or even a glance toward his team to confirm their readiness, Kraven limped up to the first man sitting at the bar, grabbed him by scruff and decked him square in the face. The entire room sucked in a shocked gasp as the innocent bystander fell unconscious to the floor. Within a few heartbeats, what had just transpired finally dawned on the involuntarily snoozing man's friends as they angrily jumped up from their seats or reached over the bar to grab glass bottles.
"Looks like that was the signal." Wrex chuckled to himself before throwing back one last shot, letting loose with an ear shattering roar, and stampeding off toward the mob forming around the Commander.
Bedlam erupted across the entire club in the same instant as belligerent bar flies suddenly turned on one another for no other reason than they could. Chaos reigned as glasses, bottles, and people flew in every direction spurred on by the effort's of the Normandy's crew to cause as much mayhem as they could. The club's portly, Volus owner attempted to make a grab for the shotgun he kept behind the counter to restore order, but was snatched by the wrist and sent sliding across the length of his own bar for his effort.
With nothing left to do but join in, the Normandy's crew waded in to do their part. Ashley threw practiced, bare knuckle jabs with somewhat unnerving precision. Kaidan utilized every available striking surface his body possessed in what looked familiar to an old Terran martial art called Krav Maga. Wrex simply lowered his skull plates and bulled through anyone crazy enough to try to get in his way. Liara, who was altogether out of place in such an altercation, was surprisingly effective in her use of open-palm strikes. Deftly delivering crippling blows to faces, throats, sternums, and in one case the back of a Salarian's head. Tali wisely kept to the sidelines per the Commander's instructions to act as a lookout should C-Sec show up too soon. Plus, a bar fight with broken glass, and more than a few concealed shivs, was a Quarian's suit rupture minefield.
After observing his cohorts and holding himself back for as long as he could, a bottle came crashing down onto Garrus' brow crest. His vision exploded with black stars for a few moments before overwhelming rage boiled up through his chest to chase the phantom spots away. He snarled as his clawed hand reached out to roughly snag the Human's collar that had dared assault a former C-Sec detective. Without thinking, he yanked the helpless drunk toward himself and reared back to slam his already abused forehead in the man's nose. Once again, fluttering darkness flitted about his vision as he groggily stumbled backward. His assailant ended up in a heap on the floor.
'How in Spirit's name does Shepard do that?' Garrus wondered to himself as he leaned against the bar. 'No wonder he's so crazy.'
Even with his natural armor, the force of impact was devastating. Especially when compounded by getting hit with a nearly full liquor bottle. For almost a minute, he braced himself against the counter just trying to stay conscious as the man made hurricane swirled around him. At last, to his great relief, the call to depart came through their private channel.
"We've got the green light, people. Time to get your asses, and alien equivalents, back to the ship or I go save the day without you." Garrus never dreamed he would ever be happy to hear Joker's voice.
At once, every member of the Normandy's ground team moved to disentangle themselves from the brawl, and make for the exit. Garrus was dimly aware of someone seizing him by the shoulder to pull him along. He made a point of digging his booted toe into his snoozing aggressor's ribcage before letting himself be escorted out. As they hastily made their way to the waiting taxis, which were to act as getaway vehicles, he found himself looking between his squad mates.
To his dismay, everyone seemed relatively intact save for a few visible bumps and scratches. He seemed to be the only one being helped along, by who he now saw was Kaidan. His stomach dropped as the thought that he was never going to live this down needled his ego. Especially after he'd made a point of talking up his prowess as his last unit's best hand to hand specialist. To think after all that bluster he'd be nearly KO'd by a drunk with a bottle. Just as he started blowing up balloons for his own pity party, he caught sight of Shepard.
The man was in so much pain he could barely even walk, and so was being helped along by Tali. His right leg looked sluggish and blood was weeping from a split lip, but he maintained the gritted-teeth snarl of determination mixed with blinding anger. He was being held together by little more than spit and a prayer, yet somehow held onto the fire that perpetually drove him onward. As he was helped into the Taxi behind the one Garrus, Kaidan, Liara, and Ashley piled into, a resolution solidified in the Turian's head. He would endeavor to be just as good a leader as Shepard was. If for no other reason than if the Commander died, which seemed to be a very real possibility, there would need to be someone like him to take his place in the galaxy.
*SSV NORMANDY, EN-ROUTE TO ILOS*
It had been nearly three weeks since the Normandy crew's whirlwind escape from the Citadel. Three weeks to prepare, and rest before the final push to confront Saren at Ilos. Kraven Shepard had been in a medically induced coma for almost two thirds of that time. He'd never imagined the Dr. could be so devious as to knock him out under the guise of a routine pain killer injection. Still, he had to grudgingly respect her tenacity for following through on such a thing. Even when he'd questioned her after waking up, she stubbornly insisted that her actions were warranted given his careless disregard for sound medical advice.
His anger was still fresh at being stonewalled by the Council, but he couldn't argue with her reasoning. Had he been awake, he would have ordered the ship immediately to Ilos to wait for Saren's arrival. He'd have led the charge to bring the rogue Spectre down despite his injuries, and most likely would have died in a blaze of glory. The prospect almost sounded poetic, but given the fact that he was now a rogue Spectre himself, it simply wouldn't do to let that black mark stay on Humanity. He had plenty of living left to do and bridges to reconstruct.
In the time he'd been asleep, he'd been pleasantly surprised to learn his team hadn't been idle. Dozens of small requests for aid from the Alliance that had been piling up in his inbox had been systematically addressed. He was especially glad his squad had seen fit to visit a bogus distress beacon without him since it turned out to be smack in the middle of a Thresher Maw nest. If he never saw one of those giant, dick-shaped nightmares again it would be too soon. Plus, they'd uncovered some of a shadow organization's inner workings in the process. They'd told him the organization's name, but for the life of him he couldn't retain what it was. Something about a dog.
He'd also relished the chance to get to speak to his team on much more personal terms upon waking as each one of them had come in their turn to check on him. He'd had a particularly intense, yet not unwelcome chat with Garrus about the young Turian's aspirations of Spectrehood going forward. He'd gladly promised to support Garrus in whatever path he chose to take once Saren was dealt with. Plus, he'd pointed out that the Turian Hierarchy would undoubtedly appreciate a paragon Spectre overshadowing the shame brought by Saren's deeds. The former C-Sec detective had seemed buoyed by the zero-hesitation show of confidence from his Commander and left visibly excited.
Liara had popped in on occasion from her office behind the med bay, but in one instance she'd seen fit to bring up a couple interesting tidbits to him that she'd uncovered about his sword. First had been the revelation that it was constructed from a material never before encountered in the Milky Way. Second was that she was finally able to vaguely translate what some of the glyphs meant that decorated its blade. The few words she could parse together were roughly equivalent to "berserker" "defiler" and curiously "revenant". Neither of them even tried to hazard a guess at how those terms would coincide, or what their collective meaning might be. Regardless, they both desired to have the artifact back in their possession. Albeit for somewhat different reasons.
Ashley and Kaidan had surprisingly come to see him together. He was about as dumb as a bag of hammers when it came to matters of the heart, yet even he could see from their interactions with each other that something was afoot. He was smart enough to know not to pry as most budding romances tended to be fragile in the beginning. Particularly aboard a small vessel like the Normandy. Even so, he couldn't help but be happy about the potential attraction between the two since it took Ashley's focus off of him without having to verbally address her attention. Their visit was somewhat bitter sweet as he learned that both intended to return to active service in the Alliance once their hunt for Saren was over. However, his own blood was Alliance blue as well so he understood their motivations for wishing to return.
Wrex had come to see him some time after that, and did his best to pretend like Kraven's condition was the last thing on his mind. He'd nonchalantly rifled through some of Dr. Chakwas' data pads that were still on her desk, and tried a swig of some antiseptic to see if it had any kick. The sour expression that crossed his grizzled features was enough to make both of them chuckle. After that he'd sat down in a chair that could barely hold his bulk to speak with the Commander in earnest. With very little coaxing, he started to lay out a plan for what he hoped to do in regards to his people back home. When asked what prompted his sudden interest he'd shrugged, and mentioned the cloning facility on Virmire. He'd been instilled with an indignant fire at watching his species be used and discarded like expendable pack animals. That day, he'd decided that if he survived long enough he would work to bring his people back from the brink to their former glory, and earn the respect their strength was due. Had any other Krogan said as much, Kraven would have started looking for his sidearm. With Wrex, his reaction was completely the opposite. He knew enough about his Krogan squadmate to understand the type of glory he sought, and agreed to help him realize that vision.
Almost as soon as the words of support for Wrex's ambitions left his lips, the door to the med bay whisked open admitting a painful looking pilot. Wrex had excused himself and, despite the temptation, noticeably refrained from clapping Joker on the shoulder as he left. With deliberate care, the pilot had pulled up the warped chair Wrex had been sitting in, and rested his forearms on the Commander's bedside. Their conversation started off with him making a snarky remark about Kraven's legs being as worthless as his own. It then degenerated into good-natured ribbing about the Commander's unfortunate penchant for using his own head as a weapon. To which Shepard joked that the pilot was too soft to understand how a man dealt with his problems. Literally head on. After refusing to bequeath his ship to the pilot should he expire, Shepard asked what he planned to do once Saren was dead. Without so much as a second's hesitation, Joker had adamantly stated that he would go wherever the ship went. For a while after they had chatted about the ship and his love for it before the Commander's eyes started to get heavy. Joker quipped about the Commander needing his Council-approved nap time before slowly seeing himself out.
Last had come Kraven's favorite. The timid Quarian Engineer. When she'd first entered, he'd been lightly dozing for about an hour. As the door slid shut, he'd stirred into semi-wakefulness but hadn't opened his eyes. He could feel her sit in the chair Joker had left beside his bed, but hadn't woken enough to move. Just as he started the arduous task of lifting his eyelids, he felt the velvety touch of her finger tips brush against the exposed skin of his arm. He was shocked by the contact, but tried his best to stay still lest his movement cause it to stop. He mentally fought to keep from shivering as goose bumps prickled over the entirety of his body at the delicate touch softly skimming back and forth. Then to his utter amazement he heard her whispered voice begin to sing. His translator failed miserably to decipher the majority of words she was using, yet he was completely captivated nonetheless. With gargantuan effort, he worked to keep himself still despite the cascade of pure euphoria washing through his senses. Not only because he didn't want it to stop, but because he knew she would be mortified beyond belief if she found out he was actually awake. To his dismay, the unfortunately brief song came to an end and she quietly left the room.
He allowed himself a tiny grin at the memory he alone would carry and treasure for as long as he lived. Even if that would only be for the couple days they had left before making planetfall on Ilos. He pushed those dark thoughts aside in favor of replaying the Quarian song in his mind as sleep once again claimed his healing body. For the first time in many months, his dreams were completely untroubled by Reapers.