The swarm swirls around her, twitching wings and a senseless droning in her ears. They are skittering up her legs and down her arms, bumbling against her face. A stinger plunges into her neck and then another jabs into her side.

Her body is paralyzed, only her eyes moving, lids held open as if by clamps. She watches the other colonists run in busy little circles trying to escape what is necessary, what is inevitable. She pities them. They do not understand that they have purpose, that they need not be so alone or so afraid. They will all be incorporated.

They sew her into the chrysalis. She used to fear being sealed up in that sacred darkness, embalmed, mummified, her organs weighed on black scales, her body racked by the impending transformation. But she has died once before and this is not much different.

The ascended Protheans place her inside the steel cage of the Reaper's body, now her own. She has impressed them enough to earn a separate destiny, a more intimate torture. She will sit at the center of the spider's web, hanging like a drop of black blood. The voice. The queen. Inside the ribs of the Reaper, her throne.

When they close the gates, they are gentle. They do not wish to cause her unnecessary pain, although transcendence always hurts. Every god must die on his cross.

The Reaper clasps her to its heart. They will never be parted.

"Jill, I'm right here. You're safe. Jill, wake up!"

Shepard's eyes shot open. Garrus' arms were locked around her in a tight embrace, trying to still her frantic, clutching hands. Her body trembled, electrified.

"What happened?"

"You had me worried there," he said. "You were dreaming something. Hopefully not about the Krogan Rebellions."

"A dream," she repeated.

She wanted to convince herself of that. Some part of her still doubted that she was in this comfortable room with someone she loved and trusted, tucked safe under her blankets. It seemed possible that she had constructed this safe haven in her mind and that, on an alternate plane, her body was still suspended inside the immortal cage, the gears grinding chaff around her for eternity, as she sowed and reaped. The place at the center of a Reaper. They thought it was an honour. She thought it was like wearing a crown in hell. Is that what they would've given Saren too? Better not to think about it.

"Must've been a real bad one. Fortunately, turians don't dream that often. I get more than enough excitement in my waking hours."

"Did I wake you?"

"Kind of, yeah. Not a big deal. I always feel like sleep is just wasting my time."

"I hope I wasn't screaming."

"No, nothing that dramatic," he said. "Just making these funny little human noises. It was actually sort of cute at first, but then you started thrashing around and well, hitting me..."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"Yeah, I know, Jill. When you mean to hit someone, you do it a hell of a lot harder than that."

"You're going to laugh at me, but I thought I was inside a Reaper."

"Inside a Reaper? Doing what exactly?"

"Being part of it. Moving it around. It was disturbing. I wasn't thinking the way I usually do. I was almost...indoctrinated. One of them."

"Sounds like one crazy dream."

She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "It's that device. The one I told you about. This is one of the side-effects."

"You sure we should be keeping this thing on the ship? It seems like a risky move."

"We only have to keep it around 'til the trial. The agents at the Bureau had it for weeks and they were only moderately insane."

"Yeah, but some members of our crew are moderately insane already. Some are, uh...immoderately insane. Let's just say that nobody around here needs any help in the crazy department."

She kissed his face. "Well, I happen to like your level of crazy."

He laughed. "Probably because it matches your own."

"Exactly."

She caught the competitive gleam in his eyes, one she knew well from the battlefield. Of course, since the Omega-4 Relay, some of that relentless energy had been expressing itself in other venues. His body pushed against hers, their legs grappling under the sheets. Her arms reached for his shoulders, but he managed to roll her onto her back, using his forearms to pin her against the mattress.

"I win."

"No, the score is 1 – 1 now, Vakarian. That means a tie-breaker."

She twisted her legs up, wrapping them around his hips and rolled him over, putting herself back on top. They tipped right off the bed and landed the thin bamboo mat on the floor.

He gave a wheezy laugh, the breath knocked out of him. "See...this is much...better...than sleep."

She ground her hips into his, enjoying the way his body writhed underneath her. "So, do I win?"

"I'll let you take this round, at least."


The following morning, Shepard needed more than her usual dose of painkillers. She sauntered around the ship groggy and a little bow-legged, not quite succeeding at keeping a shameless grin at bay. Nightmares aside, this Reaper indoctrination device had its fringe benefits.

Considering the peril of her situation, she thought she was getting along rather well. But, of course, she was used to having mysterious alien races broadcasting through her head so waking up in a cold sweat from a few bad dreams wasn't going to faze her. The first time she'd experienced the garbled vision transmitted by the Prothean beacon, her response had been different. The images had been so vague, seared away by a blast of merciless white light, but the suffering and the terror had been palpable, something that knotted inside her. There were times when she had doubted her sanity and in some cases, she knew she'd been right to worry. No one could absorb the deaths of billions, hear their agonized cries and come out of it unscathed, without a few extra voices chanting in one's ears. Maybe she was half-mad, as babbling sidewalk seers and indignant prophets of doom tended to be, even when they were right – the curse of the Cassandra. If she had to be crazy, she just hoped that she could be crazy like a fox, in order to rally the galaxy together to stop the Reapers.

Already she'd noticed some of the crew members reacting to the ill effects of the device. Tali was stressed-out and had already sent her three paranoid texts regarding Ken and Gabby's use of the FBA couplings. Kasumi had begun carrying her VI diary around everywhere, explaining that she planned to record all her memories and live forever via an extranet avatar. Mordin had declared that his life-span was too short to admit any more distractions from work and practically barricaded himself in the lab. If EDI hadn't mentioned the potential side-effects, Shepard might have simply written the behaviours off as quirks, a bad mood or a shift in habits, things to be monitored perhaps as signs of fatigue or psychological wear-and-tear.

She was conducting a general inspection of the crew deck when she heard a door hiss open.

"Oh, for Chrissakes! Damn it! Damn."

She peered around the corner and saw Kaidan outside his quarters in the Starboard Observatory, a few rumpled sheets of paper clutched in his hands. He'd just been released from a stay in the infirmary for chlorine poisoning and Chawkas was still making him carry a metal canister of oxygen around to assist his breathing. However, at the moment, his quick breathing seemed to be more a result of anger than his injuries.

"What's wrong?"

"It's that – that crazy woman!" Kaidan sputtered. "Jack. And her stupid pet."

Shepard braced herself for some bad news. If Miranda's office had started smelling like varren piss, then she would've known there was a problem with the new pet, but Jack had been relatively quiet, slipping into one of her anti-social phases, and Bing was much less rambunctious than she'd anticipated. Or at least, it had been, up 'til now.

"What'd they do?"

"She let the varren run all over my quarters! Look!" He held out a handful of papers and from the way they were tattered, it was evident they'd been chewed over and slobbered on by a certain fish-headed mongrel. "Look, what that thing did! These used to be part of books. They were...valuable."

Shepard stepped into the Starboard Observatory and surveyed the damage. A chair was knocked on its side and there were some scuff marks on the floor that appeared to be the approximate size and shape of varren claws. Most of Kaidan's possessions were still intact, but the creature overturned his box of books and mementoes, probably eager to munch on soft paper and cloth rather chipping away at the metal furniture.

"Do you think she did it on purpose?"

"I...I don't know. I've never done anything to make her angry. I barely look at the woman, although with all those tattoos, she makes it pretty darn difficult not to stare."

The fact that Jack wasn't too fond of wearing shirts probably wasn't helping there either.

"I'll give Jack a reprimand and we can dock her next pay to reimburse you for the damage to your stuff. My guess is that it was carelessness, not something malicious," Shepard said. "She probably just didn't tie up the varren at night. If Jack's pissed at you, you'd definitely know it. And anyway, if she was going to go after anyone, it would've been Miranda."

"A reimbursement just isn't going to cut it. This – this isn't my stuff, Shepard. It's Ash's."

Shepard's mouth dropped and she inhaled a deep breath, trying to keep her composure. She shouldn't have let a varren on the ship. She'd thought that it might be good for Jack, believing that having a pet would calm her, but she hadn't counted on something like this. Why in the hell did Kaidan have Ash's stuff anyway? It should've been back with her sisters, locked up somewhere safe, cherished.

She knelt down and picked up one of the pages on the floor, still clinging to a ripped book binding: A Children's Garden of Verse. She looked at another – Balm for the Soul: Inspirational Poetry from Romantic and Victorian Literature. These were definitely Ashley's books, ones she'd inherited from her dad. Shepard had glimpsed one or two of them in passing, usually just before Ash had tucked them away and resumed cleaning her rifles. The gunnery chief had known most of them by heart, but she said that she liked to read them over anyway, just for the feel of the old paper between her fingers, the way they smelled.

"How did you get these?"

"There was a memorial service on the anniversary of Ashley's passing. It happened...while you were gone. Her sister gave me these. She told me to take them out to the stars. To finish what Ash had been fighting for. I don't think anyone told her...there'd been a choice on Virmire. That it could've ended differently."

"It was an impossible choice, Kaidan. No matter what happened, a good soldier was going to die."

"I know. And I lived," Kaidan said. "I was supposed to keep this stuff safe."

Shepard collected another handful of pages. "This can be fixed. I'll talk to Liara. I'm sure she can recommend someone who does book restorations. I can arrange it as soon as we're back on the Citadel."

Kaidan sighed. "You think it's that easy? Just fix it, huh? Once something's broken, it's never the same again. Maybe you can put some tape on it or glue the pieces back together, but it won't be what it was."

"I get the feeling this isn't just about books," she said.

"It's about how everything that was good and honest on the old Normandy has just been ripped up apart or turned into some kind of horrible mockery. That's what really eats me up inside."

She didn't answer him. She was afraid of what she might say. She didn't know how to explain the moment when the Normandy ruptured, the blast propelling her backwards into the void. She could tell him that she'd grasped at her throat as the oxygen streamed from the back of her suit or that she'd kicked her legs in panic, but that wouldn't convey the terror. She could tell him, how, at last, she'd stopped struggling and turned her face from the wreckage, her body drifting across the abyss towards the chilly light of a planetary horizon. The light streaming into her stony eyes, the dark curve of the world's surface – those were the last things she'd seen before she'd blacked out. And then nothing. Not even the knowledge of nothingness. How to explain that? He thought he could tell her about loss, but he didn't know the first damn thing.

"It's all just a slap in the face. This ship, these people - even the old team has changed and not for the better. You, too," he said. "Ash wouldn't have liked it. She would never have joined with Cerberus. She would never have sat by while you let everything we stood turn into some...grotesque joke."

Maybe it was true, maybe that's how Ashley would have reacted, but she still couldn't believe he'd say it. She'd never known Kaidan to be so harsh, so intentionally hurtful.

"And what makes you the authority on what Ashley would've thought? Since when do you get the right to speak for her?"

"Since you turned into a turian," Kaiden shot back. "Do you think Ashley would have respected that?"

Shepard folded an arm over her chest, hugging herself tightly, mostly to restrain herself. She'd never been so angry at him, not even when he'd chewed her out on Virmire, right in front of Garrus and Tali, even when he'd walked out on her.

"Are you sure it's Ashley you're speaking for?"

"Look at who you work with, Jill. Terrorists and criminals and mad scientists. Those are your new friends. You spend enough time with them and you start thinking like they do," he said. "I shouldn't have brought her stuff onto this ship. I should've known that bringing it here would spoil everything."

"You know what really spoils things? When you try to use Ashley's memory to manipulate me, to make me feel like dirt just because I can't snap my fingers and make the galaxy a place that Staff-Commander Kaidan Alenko thinks is clean and noble enough to live in."

"For so long, I've been blaming myself, for Ash dying, for you...I used to lie up at night just making lists in my head of the things I could've done differently to keep you alive. Sometimes I wish -"

She glared at him. "You wish that I hadn't come back? So you could always keep me in that little box in your mind, loving my memory without ever really knowing a damned thing about me?"

"No," he said softly. "I wish that I'd have died, so I wouldn't have to walk around with the guilt. Maybe then you would've stayed a hero to humanity. You could've been my hero to the end, instead of...this."

Tears pricked at her eyes. She blinked them away, angry at him and angry at herself for letting him get to her. He always thought he had the moral high ground. Even when they'd been dating, he'd been passive-aggressive. "And what am I now, Kaidan?"

"Somebody who's struck up so many compromises she doesn't know who or what she is anymore."

"Maybe you never really knew me."

"Maybe not," he said. "Just tell me this: did you take him back?"

She shook her head. "You're really trying to pick a fight with me, aren't you? I thought we were going to try and get along."

"Vakarian left you. He left the Normandy. He did exactly the same thing I did on Horizon. He walked away. You reject me, practically cheat on me, but you forgive him like it's nothing at all. Explain that to me."

"It's different."

"How?"

"The situation is different. The people are different."

He frowned at her, setting his jaw in that quiet, defiant way that had often settled their disputes in his favour. "The reason it's different is because you never loved me."

"I cared about you. I still do."

"That isn't the same thing."

"Maybe not," she conceded. "But aren't you glad you know the difference?"

"I feel the difference. It tears me up," he said. "You know how I got assigned to this mission, Jill? I went back to Alliance command and told them that you needed me. I had to use up a lot of favours to get this posting. I thought I could bring you back. That I could rescue the woman I knew."

"Except that I don't need rescuing. Not even from myself."

He turned away from her, sighing, looking forlornly out the broad observatory window. It usually offered a spectacular view of the stars, but they were in the Quorum District docking bay now and all one could see were a few old freighters and some rusted cargo crates.

"I don't know how to talk to you," he murmured.

Shepard shuffled through the pages in her hand. "Ulysses", "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "A Birthday", poems she'd read as a teenager in schoolrooms, never quite understanding, mystified by the intricacy of the words, the stiff archaic phrases, the references to a planet she'd visited just twice. And then she saw a page titled "Invictus". It was a strange coincidence, the sort that she'd always considered lucky. She read a few lines from one of the central verses, mouthing them quietly to herself.

"'Beyond this place of wrath and tears/Looms but the Horror of the shade,/And yet the menace of the years/Finds and shall find me unafraid.'"

Kaidan glanced back at her. "'It matters not how strait the gate,/How charged with punishments the scroll,/I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul.' "Invictus". William Ernest Henley. Pg 137."

"Impress-" She caught herself just on time. Shacking up with Garrus was having a definite impact on her word choices. "Very good. I didn't know you liked poetry."

"I don't. I liked Ashley. Memorizing the poems gave me a way to remember her."

"Do you think Ash would really hate me for what I'm doing?"

"No. I don't think she'd hate you," he admitted. "I think she might disapprove. I shouldn't have used it against you. That was wrong."

"Do you hate me?"

"No. Although it would be simpler if I did. What I hate is the situation. What we've all become. What I become when I see you with him."

"Couldn't we all become something else? I'd like to be your friend. Someday."

"No, I don't think that's happening, Jill. One day, I'll be able to forgive you. I'll let you go, I'll find someone else and I won't think about us as anything but a memory. Maybe we'll even be able to have a civil conversation. But I don't think I'm ever going to trust you, not the way I did."

It hurt to hear him say it in that simple, matter-of-fact way, but it was true. All they could do was bind together what was broken and wait for time to do the rest. Like a cracked bone, maybe it wouldn't set properly. Maybe they'd always feel a twinge of pain and discomfort whenever they were in the same room together.

"Alright. I can handle that. At least I know where we stand."

"I think I'd like to be alone, Commander," he said. "If you don't mind."

"Okay. Of course. I can go."

His eyes met hers. "If you like the poem, take it. You should've had something of Ash's to take with you. Help you remember who and what we're fighting for."

She picked up the paper, leaving the rest of the pages stacked on the floor. She liked the poem, she decided, as she strode out of the Starboard Observatory and rounded the corner. It was one of the few that spoke clearly to her. She knew the "Horror of the shade," knew it more intimately than most. "The menace of the years", that seemed familiar to her too - the two years that had slipped by without her knowledge, altering everything irrevocably, changing the faces of old friends, of lovers, until she could barely recognize them. Yet as changed as things were and as bad as they could become, she felt a strange sort of buoyancy. It was horrible to die, but there'd also been a freedom in casting the old Normandy off like a shackle and turning her head to that new horizon, a line of light rising just above the verge.


Shepard waited in the office of the Primarch of Invictus, admiring the view from her window and looking at the holos spread across her desk. There was an image of the turian sitting beside a dark-blue asari with a stern, elegant face and then another of a young asari dressed to perform in a theatrical production. She wondered if the Primarch set them out when she was conducting interviews with other species and put them away when she was meeting with other turians.

The Primarch walked into the office, nodding her sleek, silver-streaked head in greeting. "Hello, Commander Shepard. It is custom with humans to shake hands, is it not? You are no doubt familiar with my title as I am familiar with your reputation, but we haven't been properly introduced. Lavinea Ossian."

She extended her hand and Shepard took it gratefully. Garrus had given her a tutorial on traditional turian greetings, but much of it depended on status and tier of citizenship and she'd been hesitant to use a gesture that implied she was from a client race or owed the turians any kind of tribute.

"Jillian Shepard."

They sat down and the Primarch folded her slender hands together on her desk, clicking her long painted talons together. "Have you anything to report from your visit to Auctoritas?"

"I do. My team found evidence of Reaper technology. We've also uncovered some of Saren's datafiles, with his correspondence, blue-prints, even some diaries that detail his relationship with Sovereign and his motivations for allying himself with the geth."

"And I presume that you can explain why the Arterius mansion burned down less than 36 hours ago..."

Shepard was glad that she'd prepared herself to meet this question with a straight-face. Somehow, she'd known that telling the turian authorities that her attempt at a break-in had failed and the estate had been burned down by a tank-bred krogan in the throes of a blood-rage wasn't going to cut it in the credibility department.

"News travels fast. My team and I were working on the grounds when a mutiny broke out amidst Captain Junius Severin's staff," she said. "His lieutenant took over with a faction of soldiers loyal to her, killing him and any agents still loyal to him. I don't understand the backroom politics, but I do understand a gun pointed at my head. We took her down for her treachery. The estate fire was unfortunate collateral damage."

Lavinea looked remarkably unfazed by this and even chuckled at little when Shepard invoked the term, 'collateral damage'. It was obvious the lady had been around the block a few times, maybe even burned down a few mansions herself.

"The estate doesn't concern me. It's under Palaven's jurisdiction. It will be accounted his failure. I simply want to make sure you have your story straight in case someone should ask questions."

"I think I can manage."

"I have no doubt. I wouldn't make any investment in you if I questioned your ability to get things done, Commander. You have an intriguing reputation."

Shepard laughed. "Not an entirely good one then."

"I don't trust people without a little scandal about them. It means they're too good at keeping secrets."

"Well, I appreciate the trust you've shown me. It was quite...unexpected."

"Yes, I suppose it would be," Lavinea replied. "Our species are still suspicious of one another. Old animosities linger. How much do you know of our politics?"

"Not as much as I should."

This provoked another laugh, one with a touch of condescension in it. Shepard didn't mind too much. After all, she was used to dealing with Udina, whose greatest joy in life seemed to be patronizing her, acting as if she was only just smart enough to know which way to point a gun.

"I won't bore you with a long history of the Unification Wars, but let me tell you this: turian politics have always hinged on the issue of empire and the empire has always leaned too heavily on the colonies," Lavinea said. "We're over-taxed and under-funded. Palaven and our Citadel Fleet have the best of everything while we're left fending off hordes of batarian raiders. Recently, however, the composition of the Primacy Council has changed. We've gained two more votes and that puts us in a much better position to represent ourselves."

Shepard wasn't sure she liked the sound of that. Garrus had told her enough stories about the history of the Unification Wars that she knew stirring up conflict between Palaven and the colonies could be a very bad thing.

"What are you planning?"

Lavinea's mandibles gave a slight twitch and then she returned to her usual imperturbability. "Not a coup, if that's what you're thinking. But it's time to take a stand on colonial defence. Your Reapers may present us with a prime opportunity."

"'My Reapers'?" Shepard was unable to hide her incredulity. "They don't belong to me. I didn't invent them. They're real and they're a threat to everyone."

The Primarch clicked her red-painted talons together again, an unsettling habit. "If they are real, then colonial defence is even more essential. If they aren't, well, we will be very well-fortified against the batarians."

Shepard offered her a bitter smile. "You've thought of everything, haven't you?"

"I've certainly considered this, yes. And when the famous Commander Shepard arrived in the Council session and I saw the expression on Velarn's face, I knew I had found a natural ally."

"You and Velarn are not the best of friends, I take it."

"He's fine if you like the old-school sort of turian politician: male, Palavani, rich as a volus, of ancient family, still takes personal umbrage at the Relay 314 Incident," Lavinea said. "If he doesn't like me, it's because he knows that I intend to replace him when he leaves the Council. It may also be because I have the good luck to be smarter than him and the audacity not to conceal it."

"I'm guessing that a lot of people have that problem."

The turian nodded. "As I said, natural allies, Commander. Aside from our disagreements with Velarn, you and I have quite a few things in common, I think. I can see us working together to great mutual benefit."

The lady was smooth and her answers were a bit too practised for Shepard's liking. Nevertheless, she could use friends in high places, even if they were ones she wouldn't trust standing behind her with a dagger.

"And what sort of benefits would those be?"

"You present your evidence successfully before the Primacy Council and perhaps we shall find a way to get you your military support and bring Velarn down a notch or two," Lavinea answered. "Council members are appointed rather than elected, of course, so anything we do here will be insufficient to remove him from office, but it may shake him a bit. Furthermore, I will have set myself in place as his opposition, a viable alternative. If the Reapers never come, I will have secured colonial defences for my constituents and Velarn will have some displeased generals banging down his door. If your stories of the Reapers pay off, Velarn will look a fool for ever having denied them and many influential people here will be demanding his resignation. I will be ready to step in and I'll want a Spectre endorsing my appointment."

Shepard knew that she shouldn't have been shocked. Politicians treated galactic events as a game of cunning to be lost or won, the way a card shark antes up at Skyllian Five. She would have liked to have taken them all on a guided tour of the Collectors' base before she'd blown it up, just to show them what was at stake. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Maybe they would have looked at the atrocities committed against human colonists as yet another opportunity in the making.

"With all due respect, the Reapers' coming isn't going to 'pay off' for anyone. It's going to be terrifying. People will die. And if we're not prepared to fight them with everything we've got, everyone will die. The Reapers aren't coming to further anyone's political ambitions."

Lavinea blinked her dark eyes, as if trying to conceive of a scenario that didn't have some impact on her obtaining a Council seat. "I'm not trying to diminish what the Reapers are or what they might do. But everything, everything is political. The clothes you wear. The food you eat. The markings on your face...or lack thereof. Even which sentient you take to bed, as I believe you recently have had occasion to learn. The Reapers may be real, they may be terrifying and they may cost many, many lives. But they will be political, whether you like or not."

"I can accept that," Shepard said. "What I can't accept is the idea that politics might be placed before people's lives."

"I understand. You needn't worry, Commander. After all, one cannot be much of a leader without people around to follow and support one's causes and I intend to be a very great leader. Even the Council are just four scared little people without the resources of the Citadel Fleet and the galactic community behind them."

"As long as that we agree on that, I think we can work together."

"I am glad of it," Lavinea said. "Now is there anything else I can assist you with or should I let you get back to preparing for the final Primacy Council session? Your time is winding down."

Shepard shifted uncomfortably in her chair. There was a certain subject that she'd wanted to address but wasn't quite sure how to go about it without making it sound painfully...personal.

"Actually, yes, there may be something you can help me with. One of my crewmembers...well, he's turian and he lost his citizenship in a civil intervention hearing. Is there anything that I can do through official channels to help him?"

"Your mate, is he not? The son of Cereus Vakarian, a noted veteran of C-Sec?"

Mate? She was pretty sure that she and Garrus weren't at that point yet, but she decided just to let it slide. At least it wasn't derogatory like the terms the turian courts and the Westerlund News had used to describe their relationship.

"Yes, that's right. I didn't know you were keeping track."

"I like to know my new friends, Commander," Lavinea replied. "Unfortunately, there's little I can do for the younger Vakarian. Considering the nature of the charges against him and his apparent lack of remorse, he is probably better off working outside of the Hierarchy."

"There's nothing that can be done?"

"No, not unless he complies with the court order," the turian said. "As for Cereus Vakarian and his renunciation of citizenship, that is an unusual situation, something that I've never seen in our courts. I don't even believe a renunciation can be considered legal unless the complaining party stands by it. All the old man has to do to go back to the magistrate and tell him that he's changed his mind. It is entirely at his discretion."

Shepard wondered if Cereus was aware of that loophole. Knowing the truth might at least put Garrus' mind at ease.

"Thank you. You've been very helpful."

"I try to be useful to my friends," Lavinea replied. "So I take it you will be ready for the final Primacy Council session? I know I will certainly be well-prepared, with all my defences rallied."

"I'll be ready. I'll see you then."

As Shepard left the office, she'd already started to ponder the Primarch's suggestions, which she'd considered quite reasonable - unusually reasonable for a turian official, but perhaps she'd just had really bad luck with the Hierarchy's bureaucracy. It was a relief to know that ridiculous sham of an intervention hearing didn't have to be the ruin of the Vakarians. There was still an opportunity for a decent resolution, perhaps even reconciliation between father and son, if she could convince Garrus to give it a shot.