Inching closer to the inevitable. Thanks for reading and thanks very much for commenting. I like those. Especially the ones that point out glaring plot holes. Enjoy.

Ch. 22

"You took forever because you stopped to get beer?"

Garrus and Sidonis sat on the edge of the bridge into the base, looking wordlessly into the old mining crevasse below with bottles in hand and feet dangling over the edge. They looked up when Butler spoke, and Sidonis grabbed a bottle of human draft, a local concoction brewed on Omega, and held it out to him. "It was on the way."

Butler shook his head and took the bottle, sitting beside the turians. "Fucking asshole. Can't believe he got away."

Garrus scowled and twitched his mandibles.

Sidonis shook his head and picked up a datapad they'd lifted from Tarak's home, "He's slave running. He won't last much longer when Aria finds out."

"We're depending on her now?" Garrus turned to look at him.

It was true that slavers stopped on Omega all the time. It was a hub for shady dealings, after all. The slavers on Omega would trade, buy and sell, exchange merchandise. But it was Aria's Law that no slave was to ever set foot on Omega. Her reasons for this were unknown, and a point of contention for any batarian owned organization visiting the asteroid.

Archangel and his crew had disrupted many slaver dealings over the past year. They usually hired someone trying to get off Omega to drive the ship full of people out of the Terminus Systems and to safety.

Weaver was a few steps behind Butler, helping himself to a bottle. "Melanis and Monty are the worst of the in-njured," he murmured, twisting off the cap. "Sensat and Erash took a few b-bullets. So did Krul, b-but you can't really tell with him." He leaned against a support beam, tossing the bottle cap into the pit.

"Took the girls to a friend, he's gonna help get them into Alliance space. The body count ended up being twenty-four," Butler said, but Garrus shook his head.

"I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Sidonis sighed, leaning back on his elbows, taking a sip from his bottle. He glanced over at Garrus and the two humans, then chuckled softly.

"What?" Butler asked.

"The originals," Sidonis motioned at them with his beer. "How the hell did we get to twelve so fast?"

Weaver lowered his chin and lifted his bottle in salute. "To Rinata."

There were five of them when Garrus first got the name Archangel. The two turians, the two humans, and an asari named Rinata. She was a former C-Sec officer who got into drugs and the wrong crowd. Her fall from grace eventually landed her on Omega, where Garrus helped her up. "To Rinata," he echoed.

The first was Sidonis. Garrus met him in a barfight. They weren't fighting each other, not then. A drunken Sidonis picked a fight with a pair of batarians, and Garrus helped even the odds a little. After the bruised and beaten batarians ran off, Garrus bought Sidonis shitty ganiae and asked him his story. Sidonis was almost drunk enough to tell it all. But he didn't, not all of it. Not that night.

Lantar Sidonis was a former military man who was recently fired from a private security firm for brutality. He was on board with Garrus' plan of taking Omega back. Back then he was mostly itching for a fight. The past year and Garrus' influence had helped calm him.

Butler and Weaver were already buddies. The human sector where they lived quickly became Blue Suns territory, and they weren't giving it up without a fight. It wasn't long before the two humans and the two turians found one another and teamed up.

They came across Rinata accidentally. The four of them were doing what had become routine; quietly roaming the streets, each of them looking for a group of mercs that they could take on. The ex-C-Sec was walking home alone, slightly high, when she was picked to be the victim for four freelance punks. She didn't go down as easily as they'd hoped. By the time Garrus radioed for his men to join him at her location, she already had the four mercs laid out on the street.

She'd sarcastically called him a guardian angel.

Rinata had a lazy, gravelly laugh and a twisted sense of humor. Garrus never had a thing for asari, but he could have had a thing for her. Shame she never got the chance to get her head on straight. She struggled. All of them did, to be honest. She with her addictions, Garrus with his guilt and feelings of helplessness, Weaver with his impending death, Butler with fatherhood, and Sidonis with his losses.

She was killed by a sniper during a routine drug raid five months later. He was Archangel by then, getting lots of attention and even more enemies. After Rinata's death, Garrus knew it was time to expand. It was what Shepard would have done. When Garrus voiced his concerns about recruiting the daughter of Benezia, Shepard said, "After we lost Jenkins, I picked up Ash. Then you, Wrex, Tali. The fight keeps getting bigger, so we have to keep getting bigger and stronger. And yes, I trust her."

People knew that Sidonis worked with Archangel, and had been asking him to sign up. They wanted to help. They wanted to fight. Next came Krul, Ripper, Mierin, the batarian brothers, Sensat, and finally Melanis and Monteague. All races and all walks of life with one common goal.

Of course, tonight's goal had been fucked up the cloaca.

Garrus sighed, drained his beer, and pitched the empty into the abyss. "Son of a bitch." So much for not talking about it.

Weaver shrugged, turning the beer bottle on his palm, curling and uncurling his fingers. "I thought we did all right. Wasn't a total failure. We d-didn't kill him, b-but we destroyed him. Like y-you said. He'll b-be slow to recover. He's gotta come up with credits, set up all his ac-counts again, g-get rid of that virus, fix his g-gunship..."

"Clean the shit out of his pants," Garrus smirked a little.

"That t-too."

Butler arched a brow, "So now what?"

"I don't know." Garrus dropped onto his back, rubbing his face with both hands. "We got him scared, I'm sure. He might go into hiding, but he's probably going to strike back."

"We should change bases," Sidonis suggested. "You and Sensat could start following him, wait for a clear shot. We could take some of his datapads to Aria. There's lots we could do."

"We're not going to Aria."

"I'm just saying, we can use her-"

"She isn't our ally, Sidonis. Drop it."

"She could be."

"Drop it, I said."

Sidonis growled, and flung his own bottle into the pit, hopping to his feet. "I'm going to bed."

"Go see Monteague!" Garrus called after his retreating form, and Sidonis responded with the bird.

Weaver watched Sidonis disappear back into the base and shook his head a little. "He really hates when you d-don't listen to him, doesn't he?"

"When he stops having dumbass ideas, I'll start listening."

"I don't di-disagree with you," Weaver rubbed at his scarred ear with his thumb. "Dealing with her is d-dealing with the devil."

"Wife wants me home," Butler said, rolling to his feet. "You need anything else?"

Garrus shook his head, plucking up another bottle, "Go on home. You did good. Everyone's going to rest tonight. I'll make sure Vortash wires you some of the haul."

"You get some rest, too, Batman." Butler punched his shoulder lightly with a grin, gave Weaver a salute, then turned and walked away from the base.

"How 'bout you, old man?"

Weaver arched his brows and looked back down at his hands, shaking his head. "It's catching up," he murmured in a low voice, opening and closing his hands again.

"You're not going to tell me when you need to bow out, are you?" Garrus crossed his arms over his knees, looking up at the human.

Weaver paused. "You've seen dogs, right? The p-pets?" Garrus nodded, and Weaver went on, "When they get sick, they d-don't show it. I had this d-dog, she got old, she g-got sick, b-but we never knew it. My s-sister and me. The d-dog, Sheba, she still tried to be a good girl. Tried to play fetch, ran with us, pl-played with us. P-put on the show. Never showed weakness. One day, she cr-crawled under the porch and died, all alone. D-didn't want anybody around."

"Please don't tell me you're going to do that."

"I'd like t-to go out in a blaze of glory," Weaver tilted his head with a sad smile. "Don't think I'm going to get t-too many more chances for that."

Garrus watched him a long moment, thinking about the fact that he should call home. Check in on Mom. He shook his head, "Next week, you and me are going to go down and visit that new doctor. See if he can do anything for you."

Weaver shook his head, lifting the beer bottle to his lips, "Nah. P-people have been saying there's a p-plague down there."

"You can't be serious."

"It's what I heard. They're t-talking quarantine, c-cutting the whole section off."

"I bet you Aria's trying to hide something, that's all. I'll call. Make an appointment."

Weaver hung his head and let out a resigned sigh, "If it'll make you feel b-better." He tipped his head back, draining the last of the beer, and then pitched the bottle into the pit, listening for the satisfying shatter of glass. "Gonna hit the hay."

"'Night, Weaver." Garrus watched the old man make his way back into the base and disappear, leaving him alone on the bridge.

Two days later, Garrus got a call from Sidonis.