Interstitium

by AssaultSloth

Flashbacks, interstitial scenes, and backdoor dealings. A companion to ME2 focusing on characters and worlds, big and small.

27. Chapter 27, Avatar, John Shepard

Avatar - John Shepard

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–

Fish flitted in the glassy water around Shepard's feet. They were a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, starscapes of tiny, shimmering fry clouding around schools of sleek, graceful fish with feathered tailfins that stretched a half meter behind them. Aeia's sunlight reflected off of their scales as they picked at Shepard's skin with gentle teeth.

Shepard ignored them. He had promised Tali and Kelly he would try to relax, and nobody could claim he didn't look the part – he was knee-deep in surf with the sun shining down on him and the sound of his crew's laughter ringing in his ears.

And yet Shepard's mind was elsewhere.

The Gernsback had been their last ground mission. Their backlog was empty.

The Omega-4 relay awaited them, and the sun and the beach looked dim and bleak in its shadow.

It wasn't that 2175 Aeia wasn't beautiful – even a spacer like Shepard could see that it was. The beach EDI had recommended they land on was half a thousand clicks south of the Gernsback wreckage, big enough for the whole crew to find some privacy and pleasantly devoid of feral hunters. It looked like something straight out of a travel holo, with white, glittering sands, gentle surf, and a stark green jungle that hummed with insect life. Months – years – aboard ships and stations made the open blue sky seem impossibly big to Shepard. That the planet had never been colonized spoke volumes about the dangers it possessed, but dementia-causing plant life notwithstanding it was a sight to behold, and as soon as Ronald Taylor had been transferred into Alliance custody Shepard had been bombarded with requests for a day's rest on the planet.

And despite the feeling creeping up his neck that every hour they wasted put the collectors another hour closer to whatever it was they had in mind for their human abductees, Shepard had relented. Everyone was exhausted after weeks of repairing the damage the collector ship had done to their electrical systems, along with the pell-mell pace of preparing for missions on Bekenstein, Illium, Zorya, and Aeia in such rapid succession. It was easy to get wrapped up in the exploits of the ground team, but every hour the squad spent planetside meant ten to twenty hours of logistics before and after – the support staff had earned their keep and then some the past few weeks. They'd done good work, and without a solid plan on how to get through the Omega-4 relay without disintegrating some beachtime seemed like a minor enough sacrifice. They could put off preparations a few more hours. Shepard had gotten Jacob's blessing, and a few cramped Kodiak rides later they were all feeling the sand between their toes.

Shepard himself had intended to remain on the Normandy with Garrus – the two of them had planned to begin charting out their next moves, and he didn't like the idea of leaving Jacob or Zaeed alone on the ship after the events of the past few days – but that was before Tali and Kelly had intercepted him and guilted him into joining the revelry.

So now here he was, water lapping at his knees as he tried to focus his thoughts on Thane's fishing lesson.

"It is not a test of force or swiftness," Thane was saying, standing next to him in the surf. To Shepard's surprise, the drell had raised no complaint at the planet's humidity and indeed had brightened considerably to see the ocean. Now he was stripped to his pants, the scales on his boldly-striped torso gleaming as if cheered by the sunlight. He looked at home in the water.

His student, on the other hand, did not. Donnelly had no beachwear aboard the Normandy (only Kelly had packed any, a fact about which she'd been positively smug for hours) and like most of the crew was making due with his uniform's undersuit. He was soaked head to toe, his skin reddened and his face drawn in a grimace of determination as he took aim at one of the fish yet again. "The faster I go," Donnelly was saying, ignoring Thane as he dropped into what he must have considered his ambush pose, "the less time they have to... SWIM AWAY!" He lunged awkwardly for the school, which scattered in every direction in a swirl of color as he faceplanted in the water for the umpteenth time. From the beach, Daniels and Kasumi howled with laughter. Donnelly surfaced, sputtering, and cast a feigned scowl their way.

Even Thane looked amused. "It is not about outrunning them, but understanding them," he said, crouching down to demonstrate again. He calmly dipped a hand into the water, his fingers trailing along the surface so slowly they barely made a ripple. It didn't look like any sort of fishing Shepard had ever seen, but all the same it was only seconds later that Thane was cradling a fat purple fish in his hands. Donnelly watched with unconcealed jealousy as Thane lifted his catch a few centimeters out of the water. "Some drell believe that on death our souls depart to inhabit the creatures of the ocean," he said, gently dribbling water over the fish's gills.

"What, because of your lips?"

Thane blinked at Donnelly. "No," he said, releasing his catch with a gentle push. "Because they live in a world that is alien to us. Because they bring life and take it away. Because they respond to the souls around them. They are aware in dimensions that we are not."

Shepard grinned. "They are aware you are never, ever going to catch them, Donnelly."

"Their life is constant motion," Thane said, standing, "and so long as you move like a predator they will always evade you."

"But I am a predator, Scalyman," Donnelly complained, lurching back to his feet. The fish had already returned, and pulsed around him as if to taunt his feeble efforts. He rubbed his hands together, undeterred, and crouched for another pounce. "A man's got to catch his own food once in a while. I'm gonna fry me up some dinner." He dove again.

Given what had happened to the Gernsback crew – not to mention how Thane might feel about Donnelly eating his ancestors' souls – Shepard considered ordering the engineer off his quest, but both of those consequences depended on him actually catching a fish. That possibility seemed vanishingly small enough, and so Shepard traded a quiet smile with Thane and returned his gaze to the ocean.

He wondered how Garrus was doing on the Normandy. The turian had promised to whip up a proposed next move (and to keep an eye out for any potential mutiny from Zaeed), and was no doubt hard at work at the terminal looking into their contacts for a likely lead on who might know something about getting past locked relays. The two of them had talked about their endgame strategy at a hundred third-shift meetings in his quarters, but they'd always assumed the Illusive Man would have supplied the answer to the relay problem by then. With their Cerberus partnership severed, it left everything wide open. How would they even begin to go about looking for answers on hyper-advanced technology built eons before their time? It seemed insurmountable.

But they had no choice.

For the hundredth time, Shepard pondered sneaking off to the Normandy to get some work done. He glanced up the beach to where the Kodiak was parked on a shallow cliff. Most of the crew had opted to go swimming, swimwear or not, but many others had simply found the first sunny spot they could and plopped down to rest. Kelly herself was sunbathing not three meters away from the shuttle. From across the beach Shepard couldn't make out much more than the neon orange glow of her swimsuit, but he had a sinking feeling she was staring right back at him. He'd never get past without her mustering a militia of concerned crewmembers to shove him back in the water to relax.

Bah.

As if on cue, a voice interrupted Shepard's reverie. "Commander, may I have a word?"

The erstwhile fishermen turned to see Miranda Lawson standing expectantly on the sand. She was in full uniform (no doubt to many crewmembers' great disappointment), a datapad clutched under one arm and the omni-tool bloomed around her wrist barely visible in the bright sunlight.

Shepard stared at Miranda's datapad for a moment, then met her eyes. As little as he liked frittering away time on the beach himself, he'd been pleasantly surprised when Miranda had agreed to join them – after what had happened on Illium she deserved a vacation – but the look on his former XO's face was all business. He felt a pang of frustration. "You're not seriously thinking about work here, are you?" he asked, smiling.

Miranda did not return the smile. "I am," she said. "I've been reviewing potential combat upgrades for the Normandy. I'd like to go over them with you, if possible."

Shepard let his gaze linger on her, standing at attention awaiting his answer like they were at an Alliance hearing and not on an alien beach. As much as he wanted to head back to the ship, at least Shepard had had the presence of mind to take off his shoes – the opportunity to put one's toes in the sand was not to be squandered. But Miranda hadn't even gone that far – her feet were still booted, just out of the lapping waves' reach.

Leave it to her to show him what all business really meant.

He almost went with her. Even if they were trapped here, maybe they could still accomplish something productive.

But something in Miranda's face stopped him. She still had that hollow look she'd carried days earlier when they'd picked her up on Bekenstein, when she'd feared for her sister's life. It was plain that Miranda didn't spend a lot of time worrying about anything so pedestrian as feelings, but when Oriana got involved she turned into a different person entirely. Shepard had taken it for a good thing at the time – helping her with Oriana, seeing her actually care about something… it had felt like he'd finally made an ally out of her, like he'd finally broken through to who she really was behind all of Cerberus' bullshit.

But days had gone by since and Miranda's color hadn't returned. His fiery former XO had gone from questioning his every move to quiet obsequiousness. It worried him. Miranda didn't need more work. Miranda needed rest, perhaps more than any of them.

And if he couldn't work, neither could she.

And so he found himself squashing hypocrisy behind a big, fake grin. "There'll be time for that later, Miranda," he said, palming the water next to him invitingly. "You need to relax."

Miranda's eyes narrowed. "I don't," she said, with a twinge of her old arrogance.

Shepard ignored her. "Get in," he said, slapping the water again. "Thane is teaching us how the drell catch fish."

"It is not precisely a fishing technique," Thane corrected from behind him. "More an exercise in self-control."

"Whatever," Shepard agreed, shrugging. "Come watch Donnelly fail at it for a while."

"Hey!"

Miranda stared suspiciously at Shepard for a long moment, searching his face for any sign he might be kidding. He wasn't, of course, and her mouth creased in a resigned frown. "Is this an order, Commander?" she asked, plainly dreading his answer.

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. Ever since her return, Miranda had followed his orders to the letter, and as uneasy as that made Shepard he didn't hesitate to use it now. "It is," he said. "Get in."

Miranda gave a short, irritated exhalation, but all the same placed her datapad on a smooth stone out of the water's reach and waded into the surf until she was soaked up to the waist. She tossed Shepard a quick 'are-you-satisfied?' look, her arms crossed across her chest.

"Now we're talking," Shepard said, grinning at her. He gestured to Thane. "Show her the fish thing."

Donnelly had practically frozen in Miranda's presence, but the drell seemed nonplussed, and inclined his head in agreement. "Of course." He knelt, as before, and ran his hands through the water. "It is a trick I learned on Kahje," he explained as he selected a big blue specimen the size of his forearm. "Fish are sensitive to motion. They are buffeted by currents, by schoolmates, by winds and waves, and if you are gentle, careful, and patient…" He lifted the fish from the water. "You can convince them that your grasp is but another shift in the water." He smiled at Miranda.

Miranda nodded. "Impressive," she said, nodding perfunctorily as Thane released his catch. She turned back to Shepard. "Now may I have a moment of your time, Commander?"

"Try it first."

Miranda scowled. "I'd really rather not."

Shepard crossed his arms over his chest and playfully waggled his eyebrows. "Come on…"

Her scowl deepened.

"It's not so hard, Miranda," Donnelly supplied helpfully, water dripping from his beard. He dropped down to bounce on his haunches, as if to demonstrate, but ended up overbalancing on a short wave and tumbling into the silt in a splash of scattering fish.

"So I see," she deadpanned.

"Just try it." Shepard needled her again.

Miranda sighed, defeated. "Fine," she spat, and with a last, withering glare at Shepard, turned to scan the schools of fish at her feet. She only paused a second before she picked a likely target and thrust a hand under the water. There was a quick flash of blue and a snapping sound as the water seemed to explode around her and, before anyone could blink, she was holding the decapitated remains of a meter-long fish. "There," she announced, holding the twitching body up. "Satisfied?"

The whole thing had taken less than a second. Shepard, Donnelly, and Thane looked at her with equal expressions of surprise. Shepard had never expected Miranda to actually catch anything – he had planned to let her halfass a few attempts before showing mercy on her and letting her go. He blinked, at a loss for words, as Miranda pushed her catch into Thane's hands.

Miranda fixed Shepard with a triumphant grin as if to remind him that she never halfassed anything, but Shepard was watching Thane. Behind her, the drell stared, face blank, at the headless fish in his hands. Its scales – iridescent blue under the water – looked black and slimy in the sunlight as it gave a last few spasms and went still.

Miranda followed Shepard's gaze. Her face fell as realization dawned. "Thane… I apologize."

"It is… alright," Thane said.

Shepard could see the muscles in Miranda's jaw tighten as she turned to face him again. "It can wait, Commander," she said, voice tense, and turned to march out of the water. She grabbed her datapad and excused herself as quickly as she could.

The three of them lapsed into an awkward silence.

Shepard groaned. Well that hadbackfired. "Shit… Sorry, Thane."

The drell lifted his gaze from the fish. "It is nothing," he said, smiling thinly. "The drell do not hesitate to eat what they can catch on Kahje." Still, he looked a little pale.

"Can I eat it then?" Donnelly asked, voice hopeful as he jabbed a finger at Miranda's catch. Shepard almost chided him for his lack of tact, but Thane only nodded and handed him the fish.

"Clear it with Mordin first," Shepard said absently, staring off in the direction Miranda had gone.

"Pfft. No thanks. Every time I talk to him I end up paralyzed."

"Chakwas, then."

"Can do."

Shepard's gaze followed Miranda until she disappeared behind a sandbar at the far end of the beach. "Damnit," he swore again. He met Thane's eyes. "I was just trying to get her to relax." Since Miranda's return to the ship, the two of them had come to an unspoken agreement to try and mend their past animosity as best they could. He wouldn't call them friends, exactly, at least not yet, but recently they'd had a few talks in his cabin about precisely how the Illusive Man kept tabs on them, Cerberus organization, the Alliance, and a thousand other topics Shepard never thought he'd hear Miranda open up about. It had felt like progress. And now he'd pissed her off again.

He chewed his lip. "I'd better go talk to her."

"That would be wisdom, I think," Thane agreed, turning to look at the ocean.

–

"You shouldn't have forced me to do that."

Miranda had set herself up on a rocky embankment beneath a snarl of spindly trees. Her softsuit was still dripping as she tapped away at a portable console she'd supplemented with a half dozen datapads in neat stacks to either side. She pretended to be too absorbed in his work to acknowledge his approach, but Shepard could see the angry tightness around her eyes.

"Don't worry about it, Miranda," he said as he climbed the last few steps to stand in front of her makeshift desk. "Thane is fine. You know he is." Miranda's machines looked out of place – a man-sized pile of tangled seaweed fermented in the sun not two meters away – but somehow she looked as authoritative sitting on a crate as she would have behind her desk on the Normandy.

She didn't look up from the console.

Shepard sighed. "You're right, I'm sorry," he said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I was just trying to get you to relax."

Now Miranda met his eyes, irritation plain on her face. "You told me once that after our mission concluded, you would move to a backwater planet and grow the galaxy's filthiest beard."

Shepard nodded. He remembered. "Yeah."

Miranda's eyes bored into his, heavy with accusation. "That was a lie." It wasn't a question.

"Well, obviously. My beard would never be able to compete with Joker's." Shepard forced a smile. Miranda didn't return it, and Shepard's face fell. "Yes," he admitted, seeing what she was getting at. She was right. Even if he did somehow neutralize the Reaper threat, he'd been a soldier his entire life – he doubted he would make it if he didn't have a mission to occupy himself.

"And the fishing?" Miranda asked, waving her hand loosely about the area. "This carefree, leisurely pace you've suddenly taken to advocating?"

"It's not for me."

"You despise this waiting around as much as I do."

"I'm trying to keep the crew's spirits up," Shepard admitted.

"Well I don't need that," Miranda snapped. "And I don't need you forcing me to relax. I need to get the Normandy into a state where it can realistically oppose a collector vessel. So can we perhaps sidestep all the inane morale boosting and work on the mission, please?"

Shepard sighed, defeated. "Sure, Miranda. Go ahead."

There was a long silence, filled only by the audible gritting of Miranda's teeth. She stared at him, as if hoping he would argue the point, but Shepard said nothing. "Thank you for your concern, Shepard," she said finally, as if every word hurt her. "But I don't need it."

Shepard nodded. "Okay."

"I'm a grown woman, and your patronization only serves to anger me."

"Message received," Shepard said. "I get it."

But Miranda wasn't done. "I think you are an impractical and naïve commander," she continued, "but I will do all I can to see you succeed."

Shepard couldn't keep himself from smiling a little at that. So the old Miranda was still in there. Maybe he wasn't so sorry he'd angered her now. Angry Miranda was smart Miranda. Of course, it didn't do to point that out to her. "And right now, that involves discussing combat upgrades to the Normandy," Shepard finished for her. He must have still been smiling because Miranda's eyes narrowed dangerously, daring him to press her further. Shepard had to grimace to avoid laughing. "I'll back off, I promise."

It was several seconds before Miranda returned her attention to one of her datapads. With a few quick gestures, she called up a schematic of the Normandy and handed it to Shepard. The glare reflecting off the ocean made it hard to see, but Shepard could pick out enough to see it was a diagnostic summary, each subsystem color-coded and annotated. "Repairs of the damage we incurred against the collector ship are nearly complete," Miranda explained, "but the Normandy will still need external refitting at a drydock before we can safely take it into a combat situation. This would be an ideal opportunity to replace the ship's dorsal armor." She tapped at the datapad again, highlighting the armor plates. They were top of the line, as far as human engineering went, alloy multi-composites with turian-styled lateral honeycombing. They were thicker than the original Normandy's too, owing to the ship's larger size, but likely not enough to protect it from the original's fate.

Shepard nodded. "You're thinking Silaris armor."

"It would offer a significant advantage over the Normandy's current defenses via improved heat and kinetic ablation. Calculations suggest that it could withstand fire from the collector vessel's main weapon." She looked back to the screen, frowning. "Though of course we cannot predict the collectors' capabilities without more information. It might be that they are capable of projecting higher energy yields than were measured during the attack on the SR1."

That was a chilling thought.

Shepard shook the idea away. "Asari don't tend to share their toys," he pointed out. Asari didn't even tend to talk about their toys, but all the same most spacers with even a passing interest in shipwright technologies had heard about the famously-durable Silaris armor. Condensed diamonds on a nanotube scaffold, supercompressed into near invulnerability by mass effect generators the size of skyscrapers. It was claimed that the plates were so valuable that every one the asari manufactured was imbedded with a tracking chip, so that even in the rare cases when a ship sporting it was destroyed, the armor could be reclaimed and used again – the Silaris company claimed that plates had even been successfully retrieved from the mantle of red supergiant stars. The secret to the material's construction was a jealously-guarded secret – for all the asaris' vaunted generosity, Silaris armor was the only technological edge they held over the salarians and they were loath to part with it except in the rarest circumstances.

"That's the only reason the SR2 doesn't have it already," Miranda said. "Cerberus has the funds, but our reputation..." She frowned, choosing her words. "Precludes us from acquiring it. The asari simply don't deal with us. Normally we would have tried to get our agents in the Alliance to intercede, but we judged it not worth the risk of revealing our work on the SR2 prematurely."

Shepard shook his head, skeptical. "I can ask, Miranda, but I don't think the asari will listen to me either. If it was the turians, sure. Krogan even, maybe. But I don't have all that much clout among the asari."

"No human does," Miranda agreed, face full of unhidden contempt for the notion. "Not even you. They don't trust us. But a Justicar..." She trailed off, letting Shepard fill in the blanks.

Shepard rubbed at his chin. She was right. Samara tended to be too humble to admit it – Justicars, she was quick to explain, ceded their official place in society when they made their oaths – but she was a Matriarch in age if not in title, and for all intents and purposes she was royalty among the asari. A good word from her might carry a very great deal of weight, especially on top of the no-doubt considerable price the armor's construction would demand.

But of course for all he knew her damned code would view that as abusing her power. "Samara won't like it."

Miranda shrugged. "So force her."

Shepard didn't like the idea of pressing Samara any harder than they had already, but he knew she wouldn't refuse him. Besides, she'd already announced her intentions to kill him when the mission concluded, so it was probably a moot point. Shepard nodded. "I'll talk to her," he promised. "It's not like she can kill me twice." If Silaris armor could save even one crewmember from the last Normandy's fate, he would count it well worth the risk.

But of course even that was too easy.

Shepard shook his head. There was a catch, of course. "And where exactly do we get the money to pay for this?" he asked. Samara's word – assuming she could be made to help – would go a long way, but the asari hadn't become the dominant galactic economy by giving things away for free. Shepard grit his teeth.

Miranda sighed. "Cerberus will fund it."

It was the only answer, but it was the one he'd been dreading. Shepard pinched at the headache that had begun to bloom between his eyes. After all he'd done to cut ties with Cerberus, after the fight with Jacob, after Miranda's banishment and return, after two weeks of not so much as a peep from the terrorists' shadowy leader, they were going to have to go back? "You sure about that?"

Miranda looked away uncomfortably at Shepard's gaze, feigning great interest in her datapad, but she nodded all the same. "The Illusive Man approved the funds through one of our front companies already. We can send the specifications with Samara to Aiisa. Assuming negotiations go favorably, they can have the plates delivered to a drydock facility inside of three days."

"A Cerberus drydock facility," Shepard corrected.

Miranda nodded again. "That's right. Minuteman Station is being prepped for Normandy's arrival." She didn't meet his eyes, staring nonchalantly off the other way as if she hadn't just proposed putting their ship and crew at the mercy of a known terrorist mastermind's home territory.

Shepard stared at Miranda, surprised. She'd been so upset she'd had to struggle to maintain her composure when she'd told him of the Illusive Man's involvement in Oriana's abduction. The Illusive Man had made a terrible enemy that day, Shepard was sure of it. But to find out she was still communicating with him after all that had happened? After he'd manipulated her, she was still talking to him? Shepard found his eyes drawn to the Cerberus logo still gleaming on Miranda's breast, and a terrible thought occurred.

What if the Illusive Man hadn't manipulated her at all? What if the two of them had planned the whole thing, a con within a con, with Shepard as the fool in the middle?

Miranda seemed to intuit his suspicions. "If there were any other way, I'd do it, Shepard." She finally met his eyes. "Please believe me."

Shepard swallowed heavily. She looked sincere enough, but she was a trained Cerberus operative. What had she just called him? Impractical and naïve? It wasn't the first time he'd heard it (though most of his crew would probably phrase it more gently than that), but maybe it meant something more out of her.

If there was any pleading in Miranda's eyes, though, it quickly disappeared. She frowned, eyes narrowing into defiant anger. "There's no other way," she repeated, voice iron. "And you'd better get used to it, Shepard, because it isn't the only thing we need from him. Need I remind you that we still don't have a way past the Omega-4 relay?"

Shepard grimaced. "No. No need to remind me of that."

Shepard hated to admit it, but she was right. For all the months they'd been assembling their team, they were still no closer to knowing how to start their suicide mission without, well… committing suicide. They knew almost nothing. They still had no way to predict where the collectors would go next, nothing to explain why the collectors were abducting humans, nothing to explain what all this had to do with the Reapers… And no way past the Omega-4 relay. Once they left 2175 Aeia, what would they do then? How could they hope to defeat the collectors if they couldn't even reach them?

"The Illusive Man has been pursuing a safe means across for months," Miranda said. "Even if we had another benefactor with the resources and the know-how – and we don't – they'd have to start from scratch. That takes time, Shepard, time the collectors will use to continue to hit human colonies."

Shepard's stomach was in knots. "I don't trust him," he said. "For all we know, the Illusive Man already knows how to get across. He's just waiting to tell us until his trap is ready."

Miranda frowned. "I think that's unlikely," she admitted, voice quiet. "If he knew, he would have told us. The Illusive Man wants to see our mission succeed."

Shepard shook his head. "What if he doesn't anymore? What if he's just itching for a chance to pay me back for taking the Normandy? Even if it means we have to delay our attack on the collectors, it isn't worth walking into another trap." Shepard was ready to die for the mission, but not to Cerberus.

Not to him.

"Who else, then?"

"The Alliance," Shepard replied instantly.

He heard Miranda's rebuttal before she said it. "They think you're a terrorist."

Shepard wanted to protest that. He wanted to believe he still had the right kinds of friends in the Alliance. Anderson and Hackett and the rest of the human crew of the SR1. Even Udina should have been on his side. But Kaidan hadn't been. And if his own crewman felt that way, what chance did he have to convince anyone else?

The Alliance was out.

Miranda sat wordlessly as Shepard tried to work through it in his head. He didn't bother bringing up the Council – they'd already made it clear how far their feelings of personal gratitude went towards him, and they had even less cause to like Cerberus than the Alliance did. They could go back to Ilos, maybe, though he doubted anything remained there after the looters had gotten done with it. Or to Illium to pick Liara's brain – she might have been going through an information broker phase, but she was still one of the galaxy's foremost experts on protheans. Maybe she'd know something useful. Of course, she still hadn't even heard what Mordin had discovered about the connection between the collectors and protheans.

There had to be someone else out there who could help them.

"Maybe Mordin had a few ideas," Shepard said, but it sounded like a reach even to him. As brilliant as the doctor was, they'd been keeping him busy with half a thousand other projects. Given time, Shepard had little doubt the salarian's considerable genius could get them across, but time was something they didn't have.

Miranda said nothing.

Shepard tried to imagine what Garrus would suggest, and as soon as that thought occurred, Shepard knew what his friend would say. Garrus would say the same thing Miranda was saying, what Miranda was waiting for him to say. It was a risk, but it was the only way.

"Or maybe we just have to bite the bullet and go crawling back to the Illusive Man…" Shepard relented, finally. That thought cast a storm over his thoughts that even Aeia's bright sunlight couldn't penetrate. His legs felt drained and he dropped to sit on the sand, shaking his head.

"I don't like it either," Miranda said, taking a seat beside him. The two of them stared out at the waves for a moment. "So, shall I proceed with the Silaris armor?"

"Yeah, do it," Shepard said, hoping he wasn't signing his own death warrant.

Miranda nodded and tapped something into her datapad.

So it would be Minuteman next. Cerberus frickin' central. How easy it would be for the Illusive Man to have an ambush waiting for them there. A wetworks team, loaded up and ready to pounce as soon as they opened their airlock. Ready to take the Normandy back, to repay Shepard's mutiny in kind. It would be a bloody battle, but Shepard knew that as soon as they landed on a Cerberus station, the Illusive Man would have them.

But they had no choice. And Miranda said the Illusive Man was still on their side. Shepard cast a sidelong glance at her. Maybe he was naïve, but he was going to trust her.

Shepard sat and stared at the ocean while Miranda returned to her console to begin navigating the mountain of bureaucracy that the asari Republics demanded from aliens that wished to do business with them. The requirements were many – even if Samara went alone, permits had to be acquired to enter asari space, to land on an asari planet, and to dock in an asari spaceport. An asari concierge and an escort of guards had to be arranged to observe the Silaris company's rigorous security demands. A shuttle with a longer range and a less militant design than the Kodiak would have to be chartered, non-disclosure agreements prepared, shipment arranged. No doubt the whole process had been designed to offput the notoriously detail-oriented salarians, but Miranda was a natural, and switched from datapad to datapad as she navigated the web of red tab the asari had spun.

Shepard had never taken to paperwork. He appreciated the value of making plans, but not of writing them down, and so he was perfectly happy to delegate it to someone else.

The thought of red tape had him remembering the old days with the Alliance on the SR1 again, back when Ash had first transferred to his command. One would think an order from someone like then-Captain Anderson would have a way to cutting through the mess, but it had been months before Alliance bureaucrats had stopped pestering Ash with new requirements to formalize her transfer. She'd shown up at the door to Shepard's quarters with coffee and a new form to sign so many times it had become a running joke between them, and it had only stopped when Shepard had finally decided to play the Spectre card and intimidate some poor lieutenant into dealing with the mess for them. Of course, then Ash had just started making up her own smartassed forms to secure his permission for everything from going to the bathroom to pranking Kaidan.

Shepard smiled bitterly at the chief's memory. He missed her.

He found himself looking at his new crew, spread out across the beach like they were on vacation. There was Samara at her meditations, seated in the water just deep enough that the waves swept back and forth across her lap to froth and distort in the wake of the biotic field balanced between her fingers. Chakwas and Gardner were chatting further up the beach, seated on a pad scavenged from the Normandy's inducing pods and sipping on pink, fruity drinks Shepard would never have expected Gardner to know how to prepare (or Chakwas to drink). Twenty meters offshore, Grunt sent great, frothy waves in every direction, apparently occupying himself trying to rip out a line of boulders that formed a long natural jetty. Closer to land, Tali was amusing herself bobbing up and down in the surf. Shed of her veil, her suit made a more-than-passable SCUBA tank and her mirth as she splashed about was obvious even from a distance. Shepard wanted to smile at that, but he could not dismiss the cold feeling of dread that had taken residence in his chest.

Virmire had been a simple scouting job, and he'd ended up leaving one of his team behind to die. Now they were going on a bona fide suicide mission.

"I am thankful for your help, you know," Miranda said, interrupting Shepard's thoughts. "With Oriana. I don't think I ever told you that."

Shepard turned to face her and she met his gaze, the ghost of a smile on her lips. He forced a smile of his own, willing his dark thoughts away. "You're welcome. You're part of my crew, Miranda."

"I was part of Cerberus' crew too," she reminded him, her smile disappearing.

"You're better off without them."

Miranda shrugged, unconvinced. "It is what it is," she said. "I'd prefer you not concern yourself with me, Shepard. My business with Cerberus will wait. For now, I will complete the task at hand, and leave personal reckonings for later."

"Will the Illusive Man let you leave?"

Miranda scowled. "He doesn't take betrayal lightly, but neither do I. He won't have a choice in the matter." She had steel in her eyes, and for a minute she was the same old terrifying Miranda. Shepard almost felt bad for the Illusive Man.

Almost.

"He doesn't take betrayal lightly and yet you still think we should put our lives in his hands."

Miranda's face was stony, but Shepard could see the uncertainty in her eyes. "We don't have a choice in the matter either."

---

1 day later…

–

"Commander?"

Shepard ignored him. Safe behind the hermetic comfort of his hardsuit, Shepard couldn't feel the pressure equalizing, but he could hear the slow crescendo of the atmospheric pumps as the air pushed the silence away. At the far end of the airlock, articulated stabilizing arms embraced the Normandy's engines with a muted clatter.

"Commander?"

Shepard turned. He, Grunt, and Garrus had been armed and ready for anything when the Normandy's forward airlock had slid open onto Minuteman Station, but only a single operative – clad in a breathing mask and the same gray-and-black uniform that most of his crew wore – awaited them. He looked unthreatening enough with frizzy red hair that stuck out from between the straps of his mask and unarmed but for a datapad. Still, if the man had been at all afraid to be greeted at gunpoint by a Spectre, a turian, and a krogan in full armor, he hadn't shown it. He'd introduced himself as Operative Reidel and literally welcomed them with open arms – he'd looked halfway ready to hug Shepard if there hadn't been an assault rifle between them.

"Commander," he said again, not impatiently. "If you'll follow me, the Illusive Man would like to speak with you." He smiled behind his mask and gestured to a nearby door.

Shepard frowned and turned away again. "He can wait," he said. The Illusive Man may not have had an ambush waiting for them, but that didn't mean much. Shepard had half a mind to get back on the ship and go find someone else – anyone else – to help.

But there wasn't anyone else. They needed Cerberus.

That didn't mean they would drop their guard. Behind Reidel, Garrus was sweeping the hangar decks for anything nefarious. A trio of nervous cargo specialist had lowered a pressurized boarding ramp onto the Normandy's airlock under Grunt's watchful gaze, and Miranda had gone into the station's living areas first to do her own sweep before leading the rest of the crew aboard. "I want the entire crew to await me at the end of the corridor," Shepard said. "No leading them off until my lieutenants give the go-ahead." It felt weird calling Garrus and Miranda his 'lieutenants', but it sounded more official that way. Shepard had no idea what the Illusive Man might have told his servants. A little intimidation might be critical.

"Of course, Commander," Reidel said, bowing his head. "We have prepared personal accommodations for your crewmembers as well-"

"We'll check them too, then," Shepard interrupted, not giving him the chance to make the offer. "Until then my crew will bunk aboard the ship."

"As you say, Commander."

"You have repair crews standing by?"

"Of course, Commander."

"Good. Keep them there. They are not to step foot in this hangar without Tali'Zorah's explicit permission. She will be overseeing the refit operations." He stared hard at the operative. "Further, under no circumstances will any Cerberus personnel set foot on my ship, nor interface with its computers, including EDI." He had no idea how he was going to enforce this last one, but Cerberus didn't need to know that. "Are we understood?"

Reidel hesitated, and for a moment Shepard thought he saw the ghost of a frown flicker across his face, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come and he smiled. "Of course, Commander, but I cannot help but wonder if there has been some miscommunication. We were ordered to facilitate your mission in any way we can. There is no danger here."

Shepard didn't bother hiding the incredulity on his face. "Sure," he said. He turned back to follow Garrus' progress. All the way at the far end of the hangar, the glow of the turian's omni-tool was just a blip as he scanned the engine access catwalks being set against the ship's sides. The glow receded and Shepard's helmet communicator crackled.

"All clear so far."

Shepard nodded. "Roger that, Garrus. Keep me posted."

"Will do."

"Miranda?"

There was a hiss and Miranda's voice joined them. "No immediate threats detected, but these men are Anubis Cell, Shepard. Wetworks and security. Don't underestimate them."

"Duly noted."

Shepard felt a little of the tightness in his stomach release, but not much. It did not do to let their guards down, not yet. Shepard and the crew had spent most of the morning going over how they would approach the unfortunate necessity of a lengthy stay on Minuteman. Tasks had been delegated and rules established – no talking to Cerberus personnel beyond necessity, daily activity reports to Shepard or Garrus, no extranet communication without permission, and above all rigorous screening to prevent Cerberus personnel or equipment from getting onto the Normandy without their knowledge. Grunt and Zaeed would guard the forward airlock and the main elevator, respectively, until Samara returned from asari space to assist them, all incoming equipment would be scanned by Kasumi and Mordin, and the extensive refit operations would be performed by Normandy crewmembers only unless outside help was absolutely necessary.

There wouldn't be any more bugs smuggled aboard. If the Illusive Man cared so much about the fate of the mission, it was time he proved it without all the strings attached.

Shepard and Reidel waited in awkward silence until Garrus and Miranda had finished their sweeps. By then the hangar had been equalized, but Shepard left his helmet on, and only once Grunt had rounded up all of the dock workers at gunpoint did they head into the station.

Shepard paused at the periphery, stopping Grunt with a hand on his pauldron. "Stay here, Grunt," he said, loud enough that the Cerberus workers were sure to hear him. "If anyone enters this hangar, kill them."

Grunt cast a threatening stare at Reidel, a hungry gleam in his eye. He gave a long, menacing laugh. "Looking forward to it."

Shepard nodded and followed Garrus and the operative inside. Reidel led them through a pair of small cargo airlocks and a long corridor where the dock workers excused themselves down a stairwell (clearly anxious to put some walls between them and Garrus' sniper rifle) before they arrived at a steel door that opened into an all-too familiar mess hall.

Shepard's breath involuntarily hitched up in his throat as he passed the threshold. With the Normandy crew and a half dozen Cerberus workers milling about the room looked smaller than before, and the laboratory behind the windows at the far end of the room was empty now, but all the same Shepard could not miss it. It was where they'd first taken him after fleeing Lazarus Station, months ago. His surgical scars started to prickle at the memory.

He swallowed his unease and stepped inside like it was nothing. His crew looked anxious – he had to be the one in charge. Miranda's omni-tool was still glowing around her wrist as he entered – she traded a firm nod with Shepard but said nothing.

"Welcome, crew of the Normandy!" Reidel was saying, clapping his hands together. He was grinning broadly, unaware or uninterested in the wary glances the crew was shooting his way. "I hope your travels have been pleasant. If you'll-"

"Normandy!" Shepard shouted, cutting him off. His crew snapped to attention in an instant, and Shepard couldn't quite suppress a smug grin at Reidel's look of irritation as he pointed back to the boarding corridor they'd come from. "You know your assignments. Let's get it done!" The stillness in the room shattered in an instant as the crew bustled to complete their assigned tasks. Half of them marched right back down the loading corridor, Garrus at their head, to get started on the electronics refits. Shepard could hear Tali shouting over the din, rallying those crewmembers assigned to strip the Normandy's existing armor in preparation for the Silaris plates. Miranda was already pressganging a trio of hapless Cerberus stooges, while Jacob led Mordin off into the station to get started on the requisitions they needed.

"Nice speech. I'd heard you were known for them." Shepard turned to see Operative Reidel, datapad in hand. He was smiling, but the frustration in his eyes was impossible to miss. His friendly act was slipping.

Shepard smiled. Good. "Thanks, he said. "Gotto keep them wanting more."

Reidel nodded and gestured with his datapad. "The QEC room is just over here," he said, and headed off towards a door at the far side of the room.

"I'm well aware," Shepard said. "And as I said, the Illusive Man can wait."

Reidel looked as uncomfortable as Shepard felt, but he nodded his reluctant agreement. "…As you say, Commander."

Shepard wasn't done. He took a step forward. In full armor he dwarfed Reidel, but even if he hadn't, he was Commander Shepard. The Hero of the Citadel. It was time Cerberus remembered that. "In case we were at all unclear on this point," he said, voice quiet. "The Illusive Man is no longer in command of the Normandy or its crew."

Reidel seemed to shrink a little. He nodded, swallowing heavily.

"Good," Shepard said. He pointed to the room's rear wall, back towards the hangar. "Does this station have any other hangars like that one?"

Reidel nodded again. "There are three more cargo hangars on the lower decks, but they haven't been equipped to dock the Nor-"

"Show me."

–

Shepard was out of breath, but he did not stop.

The thud thud thud of his armored footsteps left hollow echoes that boomed across the empty hangar bay, blending and warping until they became a continuous, dull roar. Shepard ran as fast as he could down the steel paneling that ran the bay's length until his free hand touched the far wall and he turned to run the distance back. Then again.

He ran harder, back and forth and back and forth, assault rifle in his hand as he tried to exert the unease in his stomach away. The hangar was cold, the fluorescent utility lights inlaid into its cavernous ceiling doing little to push the chill of space away, and yet Shepard was pouring sweat. He ran harder.

Reidel had offered to give him a tour of the whole station, but one look at the hangar had been enough for Shepard and he'd excused the operative to complete his assessment alone. The bay was a little smaller than the hangar in which they'd docked Normandy, perhaps two hundred meters long and fifty wide. Normally it would hold a small freighter while cargo was unloaded, but for now it was empty, and featureless aside from a pair of retractable floor elevators and the loading cranes resting inert on their rails like giant steel bats. Shepard had walked the perimeter, checking for any hidden surprises, though it was hard to imagine what the Illusive Man could hide in such an open space.

It would do for their purposes. Back on the Normandy, Shepard had emphasized to the crew that they would make their stay on Minuteman as brief as possible. They would stay until the refits were done and they had a new heading, and no longer. But it was anybody's guess how long that would be – it might be weeks or even months before they found another lead on the collectors – and in the meantime Shepard and his ground team would be sitting around getting rusty.

And so they would train. They weren't ready yet. They were prodigies, a dozen of what might be the galaxy's most dangerous individuals, but they weren't a team yet. They came from so many cultures, so many backgrounds, so many combat traditions. They were soldiers and scouts, squad fighters and solo operatives, vanguards and snipers, tech specialists and biotics. Some of them were practically enemies – the same diversity that made them so potent made true teamwork difficult, and teamwork was what they would need if they were to survive this.

They weren't ready.

But they would be. Even as he ran through the hangar's vast emptiness, Shepard was imagining the training yard he would set up to fill it. They'd get shipping crates to make cover, maybe lower the hangar's cargo elevators. Build a few mock battlements, as close to the sprawling, rocky honeycombs that they'd fought through on the collector vessel as they could manage. They still couldn't predict the collectors' movements well enough to face them, but the security mechs the station no doubt had in abundance would make a suitable palliative until they could – and if the Illusive Man could spare a battalion of mechs to shoot at him back at Lazarus Station when he was barely alive and armed only with a medical gown, he could damn well spare some now.

The thought of Lazarus Station gave Shepard a queasy feeling and he put on a quick burst of speed, willing it out of his mind. In the months he'd commanded the SR2 he had done his best to forget the details of his resurrection – it hadn't been difficult, given all that had happened to distract him – but now it came crashing back like a rush. Those first few disorienting hours, the way the drugs that were keeping him afloat had prickled at his skin, the desperate, strangling urge to claw at his throat and gasp for air, as if any moment he might find himself back in the vacuum of space.

The five months since his resurrection had healed many of his wounds. He'd regained much of his old strength, and if his cybernetics were counted, in some ways he was a better soldier than he'd ever been. His memories had trickled back too. Black spots still existed, holes in his memory, but their edges had been fading to gray and it was getting harder and harder to remember what he no longer remembered. Many details, he was sure, were gone forever, but he knew now that he was still Shepard, for better or worse. He was not the same man he'd been – how could he be? – but he was still John Shepard.

He was wheezing now – he could hear his own lungs rattling in the heavy quiet – but he did not stop running. The burn in his muscles felt good. Clarifying. Helped him think.

He was a zombie. A man living on time he did not deserve. He had met death and reemerged on the other side.

And now he was leading a team to meet it a second time. He was asking them to follow him to where only a man who owed the galaxy a death should ever go. He was asking them because there was no other way, but the thought of any of them being hurt on his account made Shepard's stomach turn to lead.

He would not let his crew go through what he had. He would protect them. Whatever the collectors threw at them, whatever the Illusive Man threw at them, he would be ready for it. He had to be ready for it.

He would die again if he had to, but they had to live.

He ran and ran and ran. His body was sore, his vision was blurry, and nothing seemed to exist but the next lap and the sinking feeling that he had not done enough.

–

Shepard very nearly ran Tali over.

How he'd missed the sound of the quarian coming through the airlock he did not know, but he'd been lost in the comforting burn of his exercise and by the time he'd recognized the blur of purple in his path he was practically on top of her.

He stumbled with a shout, feet skidding for a few suspenseful strides before he overbalanced and fell, his assault rifle slipping from his grip to skate across the floor.

Shepard found himself staring at polished steel. It was hard to breathe, and for an undeterminable pause, he found his focus spent doing only that. He stared down at his hands without comprehension. A steady patter of sweat dripped from his face, speckling the floor beneath him.

"Shepard?"

Shepard swallowed heavily. "Hhh-" he stuttered, swallowing again. "Hey Tali."

"Shepard, what are you doing?"

Shepard craned his neck back enough to see the quarian staring down at him, eyes glimmering in the dim light. "R...running," he admitted, then shook his head. "Training," he corrected. He turned away until he found his gun, resting against the wall a few meters away.

Even behind her helmet, Tali looked dubious, but all the same she stooped to retrieve the fallen weapon. "Training alone?" she asked, handing it to him.

He accepted it gratefully, staggering back to his feet and peeling his helmet off. He let it drop to the floor with a crash. His breath still came in great, ragged gasps, but the room's spinning had slowed to a manageable pace. He felt steady enough, but as his senses returned he became dimly aware that it was only because he was leaning drunkenly on Tali's shoulder.

"Take a break," Tali commanded, wrapping a long arm around his back. For someone so small, the quarian was surprisingly strong, and Shepard did not protest as she helped him slide to a seat at the base of the wall.

Shepard sat. The cold metal against his neck felt good, and Shepard found himself staring up at Tali again. His face burned. "I was checking out the cargo bays," he said, panting. "We're going to b-be here for a few days. I wanna to do some drills."

Tali's eyespots narrowed as she stooped next to him. Her arms quested down his chestpiece, undoing hidden buckles until the entire piece split open and fell away, baring his sweat-soaked underclothes to the cold air of the bay. Shepard did not struggle as she lifted his pauldrons off and tossed them aside. "I know," she said. "We talked about this."

Shepard nodded. Right, of course. Back on the ship.

Tali sighed as she pulled Shepard's gauntlets off and tossed them in the pile with the rest. Satisfied, she turned and slid down to sit next to Shepard, back propped up on the wall and long legs stretching out on the floor in front of them.

It was quiet.

The two of them sat like that for minutes, just listening to the sound of Shepard breathing and the gentle hum of the station's mass effect generators. Bit by bit Shepard's heart slowed back to normal, and the anxious feeling in his stomach ebbed, calmed by the quiet.

Shepard found himself smiling at nothing. Somehow, the worries that had plagued him since Aeia had made themselves scarce, and for the first time in days he felt a glimmer of hope. "I'm going to let the crew have their sleep tonight," he said eventually, "but tomorrow I'll have 'em all down here. We'll see what supplies we can find, set up a few drills. Practice squad tactics. Comm protocol, crossfire, that kind of thing." He gestured out to the empty space of the bay. "Maybe we can get some cargo containers from the Normandy," he suggested, picturing it in his head. "Make some mock terrain. A door to breach. Something."

Tali shrugged and shifted to lay her shoulders against his side, absently stretching the toes on her left foot. "It'll take some time to get the Normandy's armor plates changed out," she said, "I imagine I could find a free moment to rig a door for us to practice breaches on."

"Good," Shepard said, and without thinking about it, wrapped an arm around the quarian, pulling her helmet down to press on his cheek in a hug. Tali did not resist the embrace, and shifted to return it, her long arms settling around his waist.

"Hey Tali?"

"Yeah?"

"Whoever said this was a suicide mission anyway?"

"I don't know. Miranda, maybe? The Illusive Man?"

"Well it's bullshit." Shepard shook his head, disgusted. "Pfft. Suicide mission. We'll kick its ass. We're awesome." He stared at Tali. "We are," he said, as if she'd argued. "Have you seen Grunt fight? Or Samara? Jesus, Tali." He clicked his tongue. "Those collectors don't have a chance. We'll stomp them. And if Illusive Man gets in our way, we'll stomp him too."

Tali's eyes seemed to brighten a little at that. "I know we will, Shepard." Her voice dropped to an amused whisper. "But I think it might not matter either way." She looked at him, and he thought he could just see the outline of a wicked grin on her face. "We're on his station and he hasn't tried a thing. I think he's finally scared of you."

Shepard chuckled. "About time he got the goddamn memo. Everybody loves me. I'm Commander Shepard. Slayer of Reapers, Hero of the Citadel, and not half bad to look at either."

"And so humble."

"That too." He grinned at Tali.

She was looking at him. "We do love you, you know," she said after a moment. Her voice was quiet, and Shepard found his smart aleck response dying on his tongue. She looked down at the floor. "I do, anyway."

Suddenly the vast hangar felt very crowded indeed.

Shepard swallowed awkwardly, his tongue feeling twice as big as normal. He felt his pulse climb. "I know that, Tali..." he said, squeezing her shoulder again. "And you know I care for you too." The words sounded lame, but he did not know what else to say.

Tali was silent, and Shepard winced.

Shepard wasn't as naïve as his crew liked to think. He knew how Tali felt about him. Well, not exactly, but it wasn't like she'd been subtle, and he'd seen the signs before. Ever since the Blitz – before, even – his reputation had had a way to draw the occasional obsessed onlooker. As a younger man he'd enjoyed the attention, but when he'd found out Tali was one of them? They'd been in the Normandy's engine deck and she'd said something – he didn't even remember what, now – and looked away and realization had struck him and he'd been so damn surprised he'd said something stupid to defer the issue until later. They'd been acting like it hadn't happened ever since – some part of him had hoped nothing would come of it.

But once the idea had been planted he saw evidence for the quarian's feelings everywhere he looked. How long had she stared at him like that? How long had he not noticed?

"I... uhh..." Shepard stammered. "Do you want to... talk about it... some more?"

Tali pretended to be transfixed adjusting the caps on her fingertips. "I didn't come down here to talk about Cerberus..." she admitted.

Shepard stared at the back of her veil, fighting for the right words. He sighed. "Tali... I..." He hesitated, but the words waited on his tongue fully formed, and they did not change. The Omega-4 relay loomed in his thoughts yet again. He knew what he had to say, and he said it. "It's not a good idea."

He almost closed his eyes to avoid having to see Tali wilt. Whatever he said, he did love her. If some other man had hurt her, he would have been first in line to beat some sense into him. But now he had to do it.

But Tali did not wilt. She turned to meet his gaze, and her eyes narrowed to two white-hot slits. "I don't believe you," she said.

Shepard blinked in confusion. "What?"

Tali whirled to her feet. Hands on hips, she stared down at Shepard. "I don't believe you," she repeated, voice tight. "Why? Don't tell me you don't feel anything."

Shepard looked helplessly up at her. Some part of him wanted to tell her no, tell her that he had never looked at her as anything else but a little alien sister, but that would have been a lie. He felt something. When he'd first met her, Tali had been a strange tangle of knees and elbows and awkward breathing equipment, but two years had changed her until her alienness had pushed her out of the uncanny valley and into just the right amount of exotic to be alluring. She'd grown curves for her suit to cling to in all the right places, and if she had a few too few fingers and toes, well, that just added to the mystery.

But more importantly, Tali had been there for him. On the original Normandy he'd visited her often. For whatever reason, she'd taken to his friendship more easily than she had with the engineers', and even though Shepard had not understood half of what she said to him, he'd been proud to listen, to show her that not all humans were like Fist. It was only much later, after Shepard had listened to uncountable soliloquies on the backstories of every nondescript bolt and spanner in the engine deck, that he had realized he'd been going to for his sake as much as hers. She'd been there for him after Virmire, and when they'd stolen the Normandy, and when he'd been in bed recovering from the injuries Saren's armature had given him. After his return she'd joined his team, even with its Cerberus crew, even though it meant leaving her home. She'd defended him, she'd supported him, she'd even helped cut out his eyes.

He wouldn't lie. Not to her. "I... feel something," he admitted.

Tali's hard eyes seemed to soften. "Then what? Is it because I'm a quarian?"

"No!" Shepard insisted. Shepard liked aliens, oftentimes more than humans, and in fact he was so well-known for it the Alliance had used him as a delegate, including him on dozens of missions that required the goodwill of non-human governments. He wouldn't have been made XO on the SR1 if he hadn't had such a good reputation among the turians – hell, Nihlus might never even have nominated him for the Spectres.

He'd never actually taken the next step, though, no matter what the rumors back at Arcturus liked to say. Sure, he'd gone through the asari fascination phase that every teenager did (Shepard would never forget the look on his father's face when he'd caught him looking at Fornax – back then every parent dreaded their children running off with some asari or drell or heaven-forbid a turian, and Shepard had been grounded from the trade decks for a month) but in time, the allure of wooing colorful alien women had faded behind the very real impracticalities. The fact remained that no matter how romanticized they were, cross-species romances were difficult. It didn't take many lovebites from a turian to convince a human to seek a mate with duller teeth, and arguments with a lover who could read your thoughts in your sleep had a tendency to get nasty.

And quarians could die from a little skin contact.

That thought made Shepard's stomach turn. He'd done the research, back on the first Normandy, and it was not encouraging. Quarians were uncommonly clean next to the other races of the galaxy, and though most pathogens couldn't cross-contaminate, those that could could kill a quarian in a matter of hours. He couldn't let that happen. "That's not it at all," he insisted, averting his eyes. "It's not that I don't want it, Tali, it's just... I don't think it'd be good for you."

"So it is because I'm a quarian."

Shepard winced. "Fine, I guess," he allowed, trailing off. "It's a factor… But it's not just that. Quarian or not, you're young, Tali. Someday you're going to want children and a place on your Flotilla and a normal life that doesn't involve all this damn danger, and I don't want you to give that up because you think you want me. I don't want you to take that risk." He stared at Tali, willing himself to ignore the scenarios his mind conjured up, the devil on his shoulder encouraging him to throw caution to the wind and do what felt right.

No. This was right. He knew it. He was Tali's Captain, to say nothing of being her friend, and her well-being was his responsibility. Sometimes that meant setting personal feelings aside. That was what had to happen. Still, that didn't do much to calm the panic fluttering in Shepard's stomach.

He crossed his arms, defiant. This was right.

For a long moment, Tali said nothing, but then she took a step towards him and Shepard braced himself for whatever was coming. He expected her to yell, or cry, to walk silently out of the room, maybe, or even hit him. When she raised a hand between them, he felt sure it would be the latter.

So he was shocked when she started undoing the strap around her elbow. Shepard took a step back, confused. "Tali... What are you doing?"

Tali ignored him, undoing her wrist strap. Her glove loosened, and she yanked off each of her finger caps, tucking them into one of her multitude of hidden pockets. Her omni-tool and shield capacitors came next, these she hung from the straps around her waist.

Shepard's eyes widened as he realized what she was doing. "Tali... don't..."

The glove came off last, peeling away like a layer of skin, and Tali's hand was free. She held it up before him.

Shepard backed away like it might bite, staring at Tali's mask in alarm. He halfway expected her to shrivel up and die right there, maybe start convulsing, or coughing, or something, but of course she did not. She simply stood there, skin exposed to the open air like it was nothing. All the same, his heart threatened to explode in his chest. "Put your glove back on, Tali," he said.

She ignored him. "Do you really think I'm so fragile?" she asked, slowly flexing her fingers in the air. Her skin was pale, not as purple as Shepard expected but more a bluish gray, with black spots that wound up from the hard nail on each finger to the rear of the hand. Thin rifts traced out the silhouettes of cartilage plates beneath her skin, climbing up her arm to disappear under the sleeve at her elbow. Even in the low light, her skin shone like marble. There was something unearthly about it, and Shepard couldn't help but stare. "Do you really think I'm going to die so easily?" Tali asked, now staring at her own hand like she'd never seen it before. "After all we've been through, do you really still think so little of me?"

"I-" Shepard's breath caught in his throat as Tali closed the distance between them and placed her hand into his. Her skin was cool to the touch and firm, the plates more pliable than a turian's, and much smoother. For a moment he'd forgotten everything, as he ran the pad of his thumb gently down the back of her hand. He blinked hard. "You have proven yourself, Tali," he said. "I just...I worry about you. I can't help it." It was another moment before he finally looked away from her hand to peer into her helmet. "I can't let you risk it. Now seriously," he said, releasing her hand, "put your glove back on."

Tali did not. "I don't believe you," She said again. "I don't think that's it. You let me take risks all the time. Being on the Normandy is a risk. Being with Cerberus is a risk. Going through the Omega relay is a risk. And you asked me to do it."

Shepard pinched at the bridge of his nose, exasperated. "That's different, Tali, and you-"

"I think you just don't want to be happy," Tali interrupted, eyes defiant behind her mask, daring him to disagree.

He did. "What?" He shook his head, bewildered. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"You don't want children or a normal life without danger," Tali accused, gaining momentum.

Shepard shook his head again. "That makes no sense at all, Tali."

"Bullshit," Tali snapped, the human word sounding strange on her lips. She took a step forward, waving her ungloved hand at him. "You refuse to live your life. Your quarters back on the Normandy?" she asked, pointing vaguely behind her towards the hangar where the ship was awaiting its repairs, "Do you know what a quarian – what any quarian – would give to have that much space to themselves? But you don't use it. No fish in the aquarium, nothing on the shelves. Nothing. That drink Zaeed gave you? Practically everyone on the ship has had some but you. And have you even called your mother yet?"

Shepard shrank a little. She had him there. "No…" he admitted, sheepish. "It might be dangerous. She's an Alliance captain, the last thing she needs is someone with Cerberus connections contacting her." He felt his frown deepen. Why was he defending himself from her? "And in case you hadn't noticed, Tali, we're about to go on a suicide mission. What's the point of telling her I'm alive if I'm going to die again next week? It'd just hurt her."

For a moment, all of Tali's rage seemed to evaporate. She stepped back like he'd hit her, her eyes wide with belated realization. "You… you think you're going to die," she accused.

Shepard said nothing.

Now she did slap him. The crack of her ungloved hand against his cheek echoed down the hangar. "I can't believe you," she snarled, eyes gleaming with anger again. "You… you…" She shook her head in disbelief. "You're selfish."

It stung more than the slap, and Shepard felt a flash of anger. "Selfish?" he asked. It was ridiculous. It was unfair. Him, selfish? There were a lot of things you could call John Shepard, a lot of flaws he would admit to, but selfish? All his sympathy, all his hesitance seemed to bleed away as he rounded on Tali. "Listen to me," he said, and his voice was dangerously low – the voice of a commander, not a friend – "They did not bring me back to life so I could get drunk and buy pretty fish."

"Who cares what they wanted!?" Tali demanded, unaware or uninterested in Shepard's anger. "You got to come back!"

Shepard's voice strained. "I got a second chance," he said. "I'm devoting it to making the galaxy a safer place. I'm ready to die for that. Why do you talk about that like it's a bad thing?"

"It is a bad thing if you're just sacrificing yourself for no reason!" Tali snapped. "What's the point of saving the galaxy if you don't actually want to live in it?"

Shepard felt the cracks forming in the facade of calm authority he was trying to project. His fists clenched unbidden. "It shouldn't matter," he said, turning away under the pretense of fetching his armor. "I'm saving it."

"It does matter," Tali insisted. "Otherwise you're just a machine." She practically spat the last word.

Something inside of Shepard snapped.

"Enough!" he snarled, whirling on her so quickly she jumped. "I have no business being alive, Tali. I didn't ask to be brought back, I didn't ask to fight the collectors! But everyone keeps telling me I'm the only one who can do it!" He took another step forward, driving Tali back as he stared down into her helmet with fury in his eyes. "And so if it's all the same to you, I think I'm going to focus on that for a while, alright!?"

The sound of his outburst echoed across the bay. Shepard towered over Tali, eyes boring into hers.

Tali's voice was barely a whisper. "Alright, Shepard," she said. All the bite was gone from her tone. Now she just sounded tired. She shook her head and turned away.

Shepard felt his anger drain away under a wave of sudden shame. He tried to find something to say as he watched Tali quietly replace her glove with as much dignity as she could muster, turn on her heel, and head for the door.

Goddamnit he was stupid sometimes. "Tali..." he said, "wait."

She turned to regard him, but he found did not know what to say.

She saved him the trouble. "It doesn't have to be me," she said. "But find a reason to care, or you'll just die again, and a lot of people will be upset."

Shepard said nothing.

"And it isn't because you're the only one who can do it," she said, turning to leave. "It's because you're our friend."

---

–

The thunder of the drum rounds was so loud Shepard nearly missed his omni-tool blatting. Bullets flickered off of his kinetic barriers as he dove behind the nearest cover – a steel container emblazoned with a faded Sirta Foundation logo – and called up his haptic interface.

-/- Received message 17:52:01, 05/23/2186, sender (restricted). -/-

Shepard scowled and dismissed the message.

He popped his head up over the edge of his vantage point and was rewarded with a blistering hail of fire. The drum rounds the mechs were firing flew too slowly to kill, but they could still hurt, and Shepard felt the shudders as his shields deflected them. Three LOKI's.

"Three hostiles at my position. Squad two, advance!" he shouted over the clicking sound of the approaching mechs' knees. "Go, go, go!" He pointed a few meters ahead to another, larger shipping crate. The way was clear.

"Squad two advancing," Garrus called. He peeled away from his hiding place and bolted for the new cover, Jacob and Kasumi following close behind. Garrus and Jacob were professionals and moved with the smooth economy of motion of soldiers who'd fought in squads before, maintaining control as they covered one another to the next objective. Kasumi skirted after them with all the stealth you'd expect from a master thief – she'd taken to making most combat movements cloaked, sliding close after her squadmates. One of the LOKI's came stumbling into view and right into Jacob's shotgun. Its droning voice died as the blast took its head and it fell to the floor with a clatter of cheap engineering.

"Reloading!" Jacob cried, dropping into position behind Garrus, Kasumi hot on his tail. Behind them, squad three – Thane and Tali, this time – had advanced to fill the spots vacated by squad two, weapons leveled at the egress points to the left and right.

"A little too close to Jacob there, Kasumi," Shepard called. "Hang back a meter or so, keep him under cover."

"Sorry Shep."

Shepard didn't answer. "Squad two, suppressing fire on the mechs. Squad one, advance!" He did not stop to check if his partner had heard, but the thundering footsteps made it clear enough as he and Grunt vaulted from cover and bolted for their next vantage while squad two occupied the advancing mechs. The whirring of two more LOKI's greeted their arrival. "Enemy contact, three o'clock. Neutralize!" Like clockwork, squads one and two circled their cover and opened fire on the mechs, shredding them in an instant.

"Cleared," Garrus said.

"Alright, support team, adv-"

"Incoming!" Mordin's voice rang in their earpieces, just as a steel container the size of a hovercar came crashing down upon them like a comet, not two meters away from Shepard's hiding place. The impact shook the whole hangar, and sent pieces of rent metal scattering in every direction. The shipping container balanced on its narrow end for a few excruciating seconds before falling with another shuddering boom, and squad two was forced to leap out of cover to avoid being crushed. The LOKI's were on them immediately, peppering them with drum rounds as they scrambled to safety.

"Think that was close enough, Jack?" Garrus complained, as soon as he'd ducked back into cover.

From across the room, Jack laughed. "It's Harbinger, bitch!" Even over the clanking footsteps of a few dozen LOKI's advancing on them, they all heard her corona snap as she lifted another projectile and tossed it across the hangar.

"Incoming!" Mordin shouted again.

The shipping container dropped in their midst, landing so hard Shepard's teeth shook. He ignored it. "Keep going!" he shouted, leaning out of cover long enough to disable another mech. "Can anyone see Harbinger?"

There was no response.

"Support team, advance to covering positions!"

Tali, Thane, and Mordin dove out of their cover, diving behind squads one and two, Zaeed taking their place behind them. Shepard felt the brief tingle of interference as Tali and Thane's shields intersected with his. He did not meet Tali's eye – though with how she'd been avoiding him it would have hardly mattered.

"Six more LOKI's comin' from the rear," Zaeed called. As far as Shepard's relationship with Tali had fallen, at least the old mercenary had come around. Shepard had bet on the idea that the merc was a better man than he let on, and it had paid off – Zaeed had apparently decided to stick with them, and he'd been nothing but helpful since arriving at Minuteman, helping Jacob refurbish their armory and guarding the technicians working the Normandy. It was a huge relief – Zaeed was a brutal old bastard, but apparently he wasn't so brutal he'd sabotage a mission like this. "Five now."

"Rearguard, take cover and drop them," Shepard called again. "Support team, advance. Squad two and three, advance. Squad one, suppressing fire." He popped up from his crate again, just high enough to brace his assault rifle and fire a stream of bullets across another pair of approaching mechs.

"THIS HURTS YOU, MOTHERFUCKERS!"

Another impact set the battlefield trembling as the front-line squadmates pushed forward. Jack's biotics – while not exactly like the collector biotics they'd seen on Horizon – were a compelling enough distraction. She had taken to the role with gusto, laughing and mocking Harbinger's basso tones as she pelted the rest of the squad with biotic energy. Shepard had been hesitant to separate her at first – she needed at least as much practice fighting in a team as anyone else – but he had to admit she elevated the whole exercise to another level. With their rudimentary AI and tendency to blindly advance on whoever they spotted last the LOKI's made a poor stand-in for collectors, but Jack made Harbinger look positively friendly. Shipping containers shattered under her warps, or were sent sliding out of position with a hard biotic push, and the team had to be ready to react at a moment's notice. And there would always be time to fold Jack back into the exercises when Samara returned from asari space to share the Harbinger responsibilities.

"Harbinger sighted!" Mordin called out. "Twenty-two thirty-eight!"

"Just say ten o'clock, Mordin," Miranda drawled from her position at the rear of the squad with Zaeed.

Behind them, Thane stepped out of cover, raised his sniper rifle to eye level and fired with an impotent click, the gun's mass driver having been disabled for the exercise. "Biotic threat neutralized," he said, calmly dropping back into position.

"Oh bullshit," Jack complained. "You so missed."

"I kinda doubt it after what he did to Wasea," Jacob said from up ahead, his amusement plain even through the headset.

"Oh fine," Jack said, dropping down from her vantage point to find a new position. "Assuming direct control, then."

"Cut the chatter," Shepard commanded. "Support team, advance. Security, advance."

"I see the biotic again, Shepard," Grunt snorted from his own position a few meters to Shepard's right. "Can I kill her?"

"No. Squad one maintains suppressing fire until squad three is clear, Grunt. Keep her occupied. The rest of you, keep moving." They were nearing the door that was their mock final objective. Though she'd pointedly not spoken to Shepard since their argument, Tali had nonetheless built the prop door he'd asked for, with big, sliding steel panels half a meter thick and too heavy for anyone but Grunt to force open without help. All of the doors on the collector vessel they'd invaded had been oh-so-conveniently unlocked, but Shepard had no doubt the next time they'd be cutting their way through every one. It was slow, dangerous work, for whether by explosives or fusion torches, whoever breached the door was vulnerable to enemy fire for several minutes, and needed the entire team's defense lest a stray shot find them.

They were less than ten meters from the door when there was another boom and one of the containers up ahead upended itself in a blue haze, flipping end over end across the hangar under another one of Jack's assaults. Shepard heard metal twist as it crashed into another island of makeshift cover, sending a whole miniature mountain of steel scattering out of position.

And opening up a whole new pathway for the enemy. Gunfire roared.

Their cover gone, the mechs were on them. "Move move move!" Shepard shouted, sprinting for a new piece of cover as the newly-vulnerable team was pelted by drum rounds. A shot whizzed over his shoulder, draining his shields with a punch that nearly knocked the wind from him. The mechs advanced, droning emptily as those squad members who had something to hide behind began to pick them off.

There was a roar and Grunt came thundering out of cover and barreled into the enemy with the force of a runaway magtrain, making a beeline for Jack's hidey hole on the far end of the hangar. A dozen mechs turned their guns onto him, their fire shorting the heavy shield generator Jacob had outfitted the krogan with with an audible thwump, but it was too late. Spindly metal limbs were sent flying across the room as he barreled them over, ignoring the ping of gunfire against his armor in his mad dash to take out Jack.

"Grunt, no!" Shepard shouted. "Back into-" Then the ground seemed to wheel underneath him and he found himself falling across the room.

–

Shepard grimaced as Thane helped him extricate himself from the stack of containers in which he'd landed. Around him, the rest of the squad was doing no better, groaning as they emerged from the wreckage that was still sliding across the hangar, trailing blue. Shepard sighed. "Mechs off."

The mechs fell silent, holstering their weapons and standing in place.

Shepard stretched the stiffness out of his neck and dismissed yet another ping on his omni-tool as Jack came running up to join them, a wide smile on her face. "Holy shit, you guys. Did you see that? I just wiped the fuckin' floor with you… literally!" The squad gave a chorus of unenthusiastic agreement. They'd been at their exercises for hours, and so far the only one who seemed to be enjoying herself was Jack.

Shepard grimaced, ignoring her. "Grunt," he said, turning to the krogan instead. "What was that?"

Grunt chuckled. "A good time," he said, grinning widely as he pulled a stray LOKI leg out from where it had wedged between two of his armored plates. He bent the limb in his hands like it was a cheap drinking straw and tossed it aside, obviously pleased with himself.

Shepard sighed. "You abandoned your position, Grunt, and you gave Jack an opening on us." He gestured to the battered team, who glared at the krogan with equally unamused expressions. "Look what happened."

Grunt stared at the wreckage of the team as if only just noticing them. For a moment, Shepard could see a flicker of regret in his eyes – the krogan had been trying to be better – but in an instant it had vanished behind a stubborn scowl. Grunt growled in frustration. "This is boring," he rumbled, and pointed a thick arm at Jack. "I want to be on her team." As if by demonstration that he too could rearrange the room, he gave a roar and punched into the nearest shipping container. The metal squealed and buckled under his fist, sliding a good two meters from the force of the impact. Grunt yanked his fist out of the twisted metal and held it up proudly.

Shepard sighed. It was tempting to yell at the krogan – not least of which because if he didn't, someone else would, and risk another 'Garr the Battlemaster' incident – but he knew the time for yelling was past. It was easy to forget that Grunt did not have the millennium of experience his last krogan squadmember had brought to the table. Grunt had grown since the trouble on Horizon, but he was still rash and selfish. Their trip to Tuchanka had done wonders for the krogan's attitude – he had been nothing but vigilant in his support for Shepard ever since – but it had never been intended to transform him into something he was not. Grunt wasn't being reckless out of any malice or insubordination. He was simply a krogan, and a very young one at that.

It would take patience. Working with other species always did – Shepard's months training on Palaven had been one continuous zoo of misunderstandings and frustrations. But it was always worth it, in the end.

And so Shepard bit back his frustration. "It is very important that we organize ourselves, Grunt," he explained again. "We don't know what we'll find when we pass through the Omega relay. We don't know who's on the other side, or what weapons they have, or where we will fight them. We will need this training to fall back on." He stared up at the krogan, who still looked dubious. "Today you are on the front lines with me. We are the first ones into battle. Our job is to gain a foothold."

Grunt grinned at that prospect, nodding excitedly. He liked being paired with his battlemaster. "We bring our might to bear on the enemies," he finished, beaming.

"We gain a foothold," Shepard repeated, "and make it safe for the rest of our krannt to follow. When we see a high-value target," he gestured to Jack, who looked smug, "we can't just go running after her. We keep her occupied until squads two and three are in position and she can be neutralized without compromising our formation. We clear out immediate threats so our team can bring their might to bear."

Grunt's face fell. He looked dubiously at the rest of the squad for a moment, then back to Shepard, his blue eyes narrowed in disgust. To his credit, he looked hesitant to disagree, but all the same he gave a dismissive snort. "If they were stronger they wouldn't need that," he muttered at his feet, voice quiet.

"They are strong," Grunt. He gestured to the smashed shipping container that the krogan had punched. "None of them can do that, maybe, but that doesn't make them weak."

Grunt snorted again, disbelief plain on his face.

"This isn't what you're used to," Shepard admitted. He turned to the team. "Any of you. We all come from different places, we have different skill sets. Some of us have fought in squads our whole lives. Others work alone." He looked at his team, at the assassin, the vigilante, the bounty hunter, the engineer, the corsair, the transhuman, the thief, the professor, and the super biotic, and knew it was true. Hell, this wasn't what anyone was used to – not even Shepard, who was expected to make it work.

Shepard had spent his military career fasttracked through the N7 program as a special operations squad leader. He'd been trained under a philosophy that squads should be small and perfectly-honed teams, with thousands of hours of training together before they saw combat. He'd been trained to cherish every soldier as a brother and a costly tool, and to rely on the time-tested techniques they'd had drilled into their heads to save them from any situation. Maintaining momentum, moving in buddied pairs, pie-ing off threats, and constant communication, taking every motion slow and steady, bit by bit, always by the book.

Of course, many of those were old-fashioned ideas by now, and Shepard had grown to prefer a little less rigidity in his squad. Call it a consequence of fighting alongside so many diverse warriors. He did not believe in improvisation, but he did believe in trusting his squad to do their jobs without oversight. A motley squad of aliens and savants and criminals and geniuses would never be the precision instruments he'd been used to as a younger man.

Still, the fundamentals were critical. Working as a squad, communicating, covering one another from threats. Caring about each other. Those ideas saved lives, whether human or alien.

"I do not expect us to be like an N7 squad," Shepard said. "That would be a waste of our talents." He stared from face to face, lingering at each to try to bore the importance of what he was saying into them. "But if we don't learn how to be a team… we will die. None of us can do this alone."

Shepard turned back to look at Grunt last of all. "None of them would be here," he said, jabbing a finger up at the krogan, "if they weren't the best at what they do."

Grunt remained unconvinced. "None of them smashed the mechs," he pointed out. "They ended up on the floor." He stomped his feet on the ground as if to brace himself. "I stayed on my feet."

Shepard nodded. It was time for a demonstration, then. The idea came to him quickly. "Grunt," he said, turning to point across the bay, to the main cargo hatch through which they'd wheeled in all of the shipping crates. "Do you see the door over there?"

Grunt squinted at it. "Yes."

"The warning sign next to it. What does it say?"

Grunt frowned and shrugged. "Can't read it from here."

"Could you hit it?"

Grunt hefted his shotgun, and for a minute looked like he might try. "No," he admitted.

"Garrus?"

"It says 'Caution: this bay is an O-level hazard. Life support systems may not be active. Enter at risk," Garrus supplied.

Shepard nodded. "Shoot the O, will you?"

Garrus shrugged and, taking aim with his sniper rifle, fired. The drum round gave a resounding boom. Nobody bothered to walk across the hangar to verify Garrus had hit the target dead-center – they'd all seen him in action before, and even Thane did not match him for sheer accuracy.

The echoes died down and Shepard stared at Grunt, satisfied. The krogan said nothing.

"Grunt," Shepard continued. "Now imagine we cross the relay and are forced to fight our enemies in utter blackness. No light whatsoever but the utility lights on our weapons and omni-tools. We want to ambush the collectors. How close to them can we get before we turn off our lights? How well do they see?"

Grunt frowned, clearly scanning his implanted memories and coming up wanting. He stared helplessly at Shepard. "I do not know, Battlemaster," he admitted.

"Collectors possess simple, single-lens eyes analogous to invertebrates from many biospheres," Mordin said, not waiting to be called on. "Fixed in socket, incapable of rotation. Geometry and low density of cell receptors on optical surfaces suggest poor visual acuity, poor night vision. Likely can approach illuminated within two hundred meters or less without attracting attention. However, cell receptors also suggest wide spectrum vision – possible collectors can see infrared radiation emitted from weapons and body heat from endothermic squadmembers. Combined with elaborate electrosensory senses may render night vision capabilities irrelevant."

Shepard held out a hand, but he wasn't done.

"Tali and Kasumi can run circles around you and turn shields into slag," he said, counting on his fingers. "Thane can put a bullet into five targets in two seconds. Zaeed has seen more shit than the rest of us combined. Jack can smash a man's skull like a grape from twenty meters away. We all have our skills, and we will only succeed when we can make those skills work together." He set a hand on Grunt's armored pauldron. "You are the biggest, strongest, most invulnerable son of a bitch on the whole team," he said. "You let your team get away with things they could never do without you. You can hold the line, be first into battle and last to leave. You can shrug off anything they throw at you." He smiled. "You, Grunt, are mobile cover."

"Mobile implies I get to move," Grunt protested, though his smile belied him.

"Cover implies you don't outrun the people you're supposed to protect," Shepard shot back. His omni-tool gave yet another beep as he received yet another summons, but yet again he dismissed it without a thought.

He stared at the team. "Let's get these boxes back in place and start again."

---

Two days later…

–

Shepard was alone on the Normandy, as exhausted as he'd ever been. He'd barely slept in half a week. What few meals he'd had he'd forced down between running combat drills in the cargo bay and overseeing the ship's refitting operations.

Without a way through the Omega-4 relay, there was little to do but prepare, and without knowing what was beyond the relay, there was little to do but prepare for everything. He and the crew had been running themselves ragged running drills for every combat situation they could conceive. He'd shadowed Miranda and Garrus while they took their turns commanding the squad, and did one-on-one training with some of the ground team's less experienced members. There were other preparations to be made as well. Shepard talked combat loadouts and squad tactics with Garrus and Jacob for hours in between attending the lectures on collector physiology and behavior he'd asked Mordin to prepare. He'd signed off on repair jobs on the Normandy's external systems and recalibration of its weapons, helped Joker, Jacob, and Mordin decide on requisition orders, and ran interference between Operator Reidel and Sergeant Gardner. Even when he did find a few free hours to sleep it was slow in coming, and so he'd spent most of it taking guard shifts from Samara or Grunt, protecting the ship's interior from the small army of unfamiliar Cerberus techs whose help had been necessary to unload the new Silaris plates from their containers.

This last job had put him in closer contact with Tali – who was coordinating the work on the ship's shields and sensors – than he might have preferred. Ever since their confrontation things between them had been awkward, and they had spent long hours in silence working not ten meters apart while Shepard tried to think of something to say to ease the tension. The one time he'd tried to strike up a conversation Tali had quickly pawned him off on engineer Daniels, who'd clearly intuited that something was amiss and had wasted no time in finding an urgent matter of her own to attend to on the opposite end of the ship. Shepard had sighed and let it go.

He must have looked as tired as he felt when Garrus had caught him guarding the airlock after one particularly grueling training session, because the turian had insisted on taking over and practically thrown him into the Normandy to rest. Shepard had been too tired to protest the notion and had gone without complaint, especially when Garrus had threatened to get Mordin to sedate him.

So now he was on the Normandy, in the first real quiet he'd heard in days.

It was third shift and the ship's interior was empty but for a handful of crewmembers replacing some of the non-critical power infrastructure – the rest of the crew was quartered on the station. Even from here Shepard could smell the kitchens preparing their evening meal. He had rebuffed all of Reidel's offers of help with the Normandy refits, but nonetheless Cerberus had made a valiant effort to keep his crew well fed. Not two hours after they'd arrived, Reidel's underlings had filled the station's humble cafeteria with a vast spread of food, and they'd kept it coming. It was hardly gourmet, but all the same the station had a real kitchen and dedicated chefs and the food they'd prepared had put the rations the crew had been surviving on for months to shame. There was fresh bread and vegetables, stews and pastas, even synthetic-meat steaks that looked and tasted for all the galaxy like the real thing. There were dishes that showcased the cultural history of half a dozen human planets and dishes prepared for the alien crew. Thane had assured them that the saltfish and Rakhanan peppers were as good as any in his memory, and even Tali had begrudgingly admitted that the liquid quarian foodstuffs Cerberus had imported made her usual fare chalky and bland by comparison. They'd even prepared for Grunt's insatiable appetite with a small mountain of meat patties and a basin of thick stew that could probably have fed the entire crew with leftovers.

Shepard had warned the crew that the hospitality might have been the first part of some larger plan, a trick to get them to lower their guard and make them forget about the ambush the Illusive Man had sent them into and the one he might yet be preparing, but if any of them still harbored any ill will towards Cerberus once their bellies were full, it seemed to be erased when they were shown to their accommodations. Few had been able to refuse the allure of a freshly-made bed and a private shower.

And so Shepard had nearly the whole ship to himself as he wandered around the CIC, listening to the sounds of mass welders working on the ship's outer layers. He checked his personal terminal for the umpteenth time (Kelly was busy helping Chakwas coordinate final crew health evaluations), then stayed to watch the galaxy map swirl silently overtop of unmanned computers.

"Mr. Vakarian was very specific in his request that you sleep, Commander," EDI reminded him, voice parting the quiet that hung over the ship.

"Soon," Shepard promised. He found his eye lingering on one of the Cerberus logos that still covered the walls, and could not help but grimace. Maybe it was because he was tired of waiting on the cusp of danger, or maybe he was just delirious with exhaustion, but he decided it was finally time to answer the messages that had been piling up on his omni-tool.

It was time to see the Illusive Man.

He frowned and headed for the QEC room.

–

For once, the Illusive Man was not waiting on him when he stepped onto the platform that activated their QEC link. The holography stitched the Man's ghostly image into form – he stood with his back turned to Shepard, contemplating a floating menu of screens with his usual imperiousness. For a moment it looked as though he hadn't noticed Shepard's arrival, but then he turned, dismissing his work with a wave.

"Shepard," he said, and his face betrayed no emotion. "I was beginning to think you were ignoring me." He grew a faint smile. "To what do I owe your change of heart?"

Shepard ignored him, crossing his arms. "You've messaged me twenty-seven times this week. What do you want?"

"A moment of your time," The Illusive Man said. He paused, staring past Shepard to the incubators that still shared the room. "Though I admit, I had hoped you would contact me from the station."

Shepard shook his head. "Tough. I prefer the Normandy." He stared defiantly at the Illusive Man's projection, daring him to push the matter. "Sorry to disrupt your plans," he lied.

If the Illusive Man took offense at Shepard's tone, he gave no indication. He smiled. "On the contrary," he said, turning to one of his haptic consoles. "I'm gladyou consider the Normandy your home. I will have it sent over." He tapped a few commands into the console screen, though what 'it' was, he did not say. "We have much to discuss."

"On the contrary," Shepard shot back, "unless you've figured out how to get through the Omega-4 relay, we have nothing to discuss. I'm done taking orders from you."

"We're working on a solution, Shepard," the Illusive Man said, unruffled. He took his customary seat and produced a cigarette from some hidden pocket. "The Omega-4 relay is unique," he said, lighting it. He took a slow draw. "Very little of what we know about its brothers seems to hold true – and we know little enough about them as it is. The probes we've sent through drop contact immediately. Wherever the relay leads, it's outside of the comm buoy network."

"So put a QEC on one."

The Man took another decadent draw on his cigarette, so infuriatingly slowly that Shepard almost walked away then and there. "In progress, Shepard," he said finally. "Entanglement connections aren't cheap."

"Well figure it out," Shepard snarled. He turned to go, wondering why he'd even bothered at all. He was done playing the Illusive Man's games. "We're done here."

He made it hardly two steps before he ran smack into Crewmember Patel, hovering at the threshold of the door with a wrapped package clutched in her hands. She shrunk at his muttered apology, as if he might explode on her then and there. The woman looked next to paralyzed, though whether by Shepard's dour expression or by the holographic head of Cerberus standing behind him it was impossible to say.

EDI spoke for her. "Crewmember Patel has arrived with your package, Illusive Man."

"Thank you, EDI." The Illusive Man inclined his head in a magnanimous nod. "Crewmember Patel."

Shepard cast a confused look back at the Illusive Man, but the Man's face was inscrutable. Patel practically thrust the package into his hands before scurrying off without a word, and Shepard and the Illusive Man were alone again. Shepard turned the box about in his hands. It was heavy and very fine, made of polished wood and secured closed with a neat ribbon. Unmarked by any clue as to what it contained. He held it up, narrowing his eyes at the Illusive Man. "What's this?"

The Illusive Man looked pleased with himself. "A gift," he said. "Consider it a peace offering."

Shepard tugged off the ribbons and opened the box, revealing a blue velvet-lined interior cradling a long-necked bottle of liquor. He set the box at his feet and pulled the bottle up into the light of the Illusive Man's hologram to examine it.

"Marhide Rare Collection Blue Earth One Seventy One Elite single-malt whiskey," he read, "Exclusively brewed on Earth since twenty twenty-five." Shepard eyed the Man skeptically.

"I wanted to share a drink," Illusive Man explained, pouring himself a glass from a matching bottle as if it were the most natural thing in the galaxy. He held his glass up. "Figuratively speaking."

Shepard stared at him, thoroughly confused. He didn't claim to know what to expect when dealing with the Illusive Man but an offer of a drink? After what they'd been through? It had to be a trap. Shepard smirked as a thought occurred. "Poison," he said, feeling clever. Illusive Man said nothing, and took a sip from his own glass. Shepard held the bottle up. "EDI, is it poisoned?"

"I cannot preclude that possibility," EDI allowed. "However, to the best of my observational capacity it appears to be intact as prepared by the Marhide Corporation's packaging facilities. I see no evidence to suggest that it has been tampered with. Further, Marhide Corporation depends upon the business of a small number of wealthy customers for its revenues – it would be unwise to adopt a policy of poisoning them."

"As would I," the Illusive Man pointed out. "Why would I spend a fortune bringing you back only to poison you now?"

Shepard bit back a retort about the collector ship trap incident. "Then what do you want?" he demanded.

The Illusive Man gave him nothing. "As I said," he said, holding up his glass.

Shepard set the bottle back in its case. "You know I don't drink anymore," he said, frowning.

"I had hoped the right drink would convince you," the Man admitted, swirling his own glass with an aristocratic air. "Blue Earth is a vintage of rare quality. But I am sure someone can fetch you something more to your taste. Water, if nothing else."

Shepard watched the Illusive Man's face for explanation. There was none there, and his stomach twisted into knots. He knew he should turn around and leave. Get some sleep, or go check on Garrus. Just get somewhere, anywhere else. Nothing good would come of humoring the Illusive Man's whims. Even if the bottle wasn't poisoned (and now that he thought about it Shepard had to admit that that seemed too unsubtle a vengeance for him), surely the Man's cheerful attitude was a trap of some kind or another.

And yet he stayed put. For all his claims to protect it, the Illusive Man had never shown a glimmer of humanity as long as Shepard had known him. It had never seemed weird before – somehow Shepard had just accepted that the Illusive Man wasn't human in the strictest sense. But the gesture of a shared drink – even if it was only part of some mind game – brought the mystery back to the forefront of Shepard's mind. After all this time, he still didn't know the first thing about the Illusive Man. Who was he? What did he want, really?

Shepard found himself dragging a piece of lab equipment – a waist-high metal box with a function he could only guess at – into the center of the projection pad. He took a seat on top, praying it didn't contain anything fragile or contagious, and met the Man's eyes again.

"I'll pass," Shepard said, but he stayed in his seat. He couldn't say why, now, but he wanted to hear what the Illusive Man had to say.

"Unfortunate," The Illusive Man said, his piercing eyes for once not staring at Shepard but into the golden-yellow glint of his drink. "You will have to take my word for it, then, when I say it is without compare." He gestured to the bottle sitting on the console next to him. "These were bottled in twenty-one twenty-one, the first batch after they began using a transgenetic strain of barley" He smiled ruefully. "It was a... controversial decision. The fashion at the time was all natural. Straight from nature, no technological intervention. So-called connoisseurs swore they'd never buy another bottle, claimed the new batches had lost their soul." He took another slow drink, savoring it. "There are still those who think that."

"What's your point?"

"The purists refused it, but in the end, the new batches were every bit the match of the old, but faster-growing, higher-yield, and hardier. They were better, and the purists were forced to follow or be left behind. Tradition gave way to progress, as it always does." He smiled. "The inevitability of that is inspiring to me."

Shepard frowned. The Illusive Man was talking about more than just the drink. He was talking about Cerberus. Shepard felt the bile rising in his throat at the thought. "I suspect improving crop yields didn't involve leading teams into traps, or selling out an innocent girl to a dangerous sociopath."

The Man was unmoved by Shepard's vitriol. "You might be surprised," he said. "There is no progress without sacrifice. And Miranda believes that, even if she is not in a mind to admit it just now. She will remember in time."

Shepard almost laughed. "I think Miranda is done with you," he said, remembering how she'd looked that first time she'd visited his cabin to confess everything, to explain how the Illusive Man had orchestrated her sister's capture.

"I am sorry to hear that," the Illusive Man said, and he looked like he meant it. "But she will not abandon the ideals I represent."

"Miranda's a good person who had a bad teacher," Shepard said. It felt good to be vindicated. "She wouldn't sacrifice her friends so casually if it came down to it."

The Illusive Man finally looked at him, and for the first time a spark of his usual frightening scowl appeared on his face. "I know her better than that," he said. "Miranda would sacrifice anything for the ideas she holds dear. It makes her great, more than any engineered perfection ever could. It is a trait she shares with me." The Illusive Man paused, and his face relaxed again. He swirled his drink. "And with you, Shepard."

Shepard did laugh now. He couldn't deny that Miranda had a great deal in common with the Illusive Man – her quiet imperviousness to the people around her, her intelligence, her ruthlessness, even her way of speaking smacked of his influence. But him? "Right," he said, grinning despite himself. "Sure."

The Illusive Man was nonplussed. "It's why I chose you, Shepard," he insisted, shrugging as if to say he did not care if Shepard believed him or not. "It's why I brought you back. Finding a soldier to replace you would have been easy. It would have saved me a great deal of time and money. But a man who truly devotes himself to an idea – a man who can follow an idea even above his own wishes, his own fears – is a thing of spectacular rarity."

Shepard frowned. Suddenly it wasn't so funny. "I don't sacrifice my friends. I don't kill people to get what I want. I don't think progress justifies cruelty. I don't think the end justifies the means."

"I never said you were devoted to a good idea," the Illusive Man said. "Or even that you knew for which idea you stood. But the fact remains that you are selfless, egoless before your beliefs. You give everything and save nothing for yourself, and in that regard you and I have a great deal in common. We sacrifice for our greater causes with no thought for personal ambition or preservation. You even died for yours, and yet two hours after I brought you back you were on Freedom's Progress, ready to sacrifice even more. Do you think an ordinary man would do as much? Do you think an ordinary man would be willing to give his life in battle not once, but twice?"

Shepard balked. "I am an ordinary man," he insisted. He had not claimed to be anything else in a long time. Ironically it had been becoming a war hero at the Blitz that had convinced him he was nothing special. "I... I was-"

"A spoiled, bottle-fed, selfish fool who thought of little besides himself," the Illusive Man supplied, nodding sagely. "There was a time when you were everything that disgusted me about my fellow man. But that boy you were is dead, and he left behind only ideas. Purity, of a sort."

Shepard swallowed heavily. "I'm not like you."

"We have different philosophies," The Illusive Man admitted, "but a similar devotion to them. A similar drive. A similar willingness to sacrifice. We want to save the galaxy, but not to live in it." He paused. "Even your alien friends can see it."

Realization dawned on Shepard in a heartbeat and he leapt from his seat. "You leave Tali out of this," he snarled. "You have no right to interfere with what's between us." Of course that was what happened. The Illusive Man had seen his argument with Tali, where she'd accused him of being a machine, and now he was hitting him with his version, to make him feel even worse. To throw him off his game. Or to threaten him, maybe. He stared at the Illusive Man's holographic face with hate in his eyes. "I want those cameras outof the bay. Tonight."

The Illusive Man did not look cowed so much as amused, and Shepard felt his rage roar in his chest. "There are none," he said. "Have your people check."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't need cameras, Shepard. I understand you." He looked smug. "Incidentally another commonality of ours. We both believe it is worth taking the time to understand people."

Shepard ground his teeth together but said nothing. His fists clenched in anger and it took all of his willpower not to make a fool of himself and take a swing at the Man's avatar. The Illusive Man's thoroughly self-satisfied expression did not help, and part of Shepard wanted to re-break ties with Cerberus then and there, call his crew back aboard the ship, and get the hell out of there before something truly bad happened. But another part of him knew the Illusive Man could not be dismissed so easily.

For a long moment he simply stared into the Man's bizarre cobalt eyes. There was nothing there. No joy or sorrow or fear or doubt. No humanity. Just… purity. Shepard found himself remembering Tali's words, back in the empty hangar. The Illusive Man blinked, and the shutters in his eyelids gave an almost imperceptible whirr that made Shepard shiver. Did his own eyes ever look so dead?

Was he really just a machine?

The Illusive Man seemed to sense his doubts. "Understanding rarely brings happiness," he said, in a tone that was no doubt meant to be consoling but sounded more victorious than anything. "That's why most people are so steadfastly committed to avoiding it. And it is why men like us are so important."

Shepard's exhaustion seemed to press down on him all at once, and he slumped back into his seat, winded. "I don't want to be a man like you."

The Illusive Man nodded his sympathies but was silent, still staring somewhere past Shepard with his glittering eyes, full of nothing.

And then Shepard saw something in them, and he understood.

The Illusive Man truly was a machine, a man with no life, no identity outside of his ideals. It was what made him so terribly dangerous, so impossible to understand, and it was what made him so very, very alone. The Illusive Man wanted to believe he and Shepard were the same. He needed it.

Shepard blinked, wrapping his head around it. It was almost too ridiculous to believe, and yet once he'd seen it he could not help but see it in every crease of the Illusive Man's all his fears of Cerberus turning on them seemed so ridiculous. All the traps and the help, all the deceit and the truth, all the good and the evil the Illusive Man had done…The Illusive Man was on their team, at least for now. He couldn't turn on them anymore than he could crack a convincing smile.

The Illusive Man was Cerberus. He was an idea. In his own twisted way, he was incorruptible.

Shepard met the Illusive Man's gaze with new eyes. The Illusive Man glared back like he was looking at Shepard under a dissecting scope, but for once Shepard didn't mind – for once it felt like some mutual understanding had passed between them.

"You think you and I are the same," Shepard repeated, testing the idea on his tongue.

"I'm certain of it," the Illusive Man said. "And we are on the same side."

And there it was again. The Illusive Man's face was stone, as empty as his eyes, and yet there it was.

The Man finally drained his glass of whiskey and, setting the cup aside, he rose from his chair. "Let me give you some advice, Shepard," he said, absently tugging his collar into place and ignoring the way Shepard's eyes followed him. He tapped his empty glass. "Perhaps someday the galaxy will understand the sacrifices we have made. Perhaps they will join us, in time. But even if they do, you and I are the only thing standing between the Reapers and our galaxy. We are the only ones who can."

He nodded gravely, machine eyes flickering. "Don't let that destroy you. Take from it what satisfaction you can, for there is little enough to be found for men like us."

With that, he walked out of view.

–

Shepard was exhausted, but sleep would not come. Two hours after he'd come storming out of the QEC room and up to his quarters, hell-bent on forgetting everything the Illusive Man had said to him, he was still lying awake staring at the bottle of whiskey on his coffee table wondering if he'd ever truly tried to be normal. He remembered a time when he'd been different. When he'd cared about girls and money and fame and glory. If the pirates hadn't attacked Elysium he'd probably have ended up court-marshalled. He'd grown since then. Turned over a new leaf. Become a man his parents could be proud of. Given up all the shallow things he'd once worshipped. That was a good thing.

Wasn't it?

The thoughts grew louder and louder with every passing minute, and when three hours had passed and sleep still had not taken him, Shepard could endure them no longer. He didn't like it, but the Illusive Man had a point. And while he was dangerous – he wasn't devoted to a good idea, but he was devoted – Shepard knew, now, that for the time being, at least, they were on the same team.

But that didn't mean he had to be like the Illusive Man. That didn't mean he had to be a machine.

He got out of bed, grabbing the Illusive Man's fancy whiskey and heading for the door until a thought stopped him and he went back to the refrigeration unit under his desk and grabbed the half-empty bottle of bourbon he'd gotten from Zaeed as well. Both drinks in hand, he stepped into the elevator and palmed the button for the engine deck, ignoring EDI's reminder that he was supposed to be sleeping.

Zaeed's room was empty – he'd been one of the first in line at the cafeteria, piling his plate high with synthetic-meat, and was no doubt hard at work fouling up the room Cerberus had given him with the smell of cigar smoke right now. The trash compacter did not have the same effect when the ship was docked in a pressurized hangar, but nonetheless Shepard couldn't help but grin at the sound the Illusive Man's whiskey made as the big magnetic drivers shattered it down into a compressed brick of wet, sticky powder. He left the brick where it sat – it'd get blown out into the vacuum the next time they lifted off – and was about to throw Zaeed's bourbon in there too when a new thought stayed his hand.

He turned, mind full of possibilities.

Hell, why not?

A quick check with EDI confirmed his destination and he left the room smelling like whiskey (he doubted Zaeed would mind, at least so long as he didn't find out Shepard had wasted perfectly serviceable booze). He did not return to the elevator, instead turning left into the engineering deck.

He found Tali tapping over a console, wreathed in the angled light cast by the eezo core. They were alone, Ken and Gabby having moved to the station with the rest of the crew. For a moment, Shepard just looked at her. And then he had tossed his hesitation to the wind and he was talking. "Tali," he said, and all the fear he'd felt the last few days made no appearance.

She jumped, surprised. "Shepard? Wha-"

"I'm sorry," Shepard interrupted, not waiting for her to get her bearings enough to snap at him. He held out the bottle in front of him. "You were right about some things. I was wondering if you wanted to come to my quarters and share a drink."

Tali looked at him, glowing eyes blinking in confusion as she read the label and recognized the bottle. She met his gaze.

Shepard smiled. "Figuratively speaking," he added.

–

---

Codex Entry: Status updates posted to SpaceFace Profile #30485673 "PUREKROGAN" on April 16, 2186. (Profile created 05-13-2186. 0 "friends")

13:54:01
found spaceface program on omnitool for recording thots.
shepard said it was a good idea.
oker said a good warrior must train mind just like body. old krogan were smarter.
i hate oker but kredak was smart.
garr the battlemaster is smart.
smarter than mordin i bet.
hahahahaha.

14:01:31
on stupid beach planet now. boring.
pretty hungry.
killed feral human earlier but shepard wouldnt let me eat it.
said it would make jacob mad.
i think jacob is just hungry but shepards the battlemaster.

14:26:28
still hungry. chambers says dont eat the plants or ill go crazy.
i am pure krogan. i can eat what i want.
ate a leaf just to show chambers.
she is not impressed. she brot her own lunch.
ate chambers lunch.

14:45:12
beach is to open. not much cover if enemy attacks.
if ranged enemy go to forest for cover.
if melee enemy fight in the water. waves will knock enemy over and slow him down. krogan too strong for waves.
shiagur fought in ocean against asari killed fifteen of them and fed there heads to her sisters.
good memory.
wonder what asari heads taste like.
will ask samara.

15:30:12
this place is stupid. nothing to shoot. everyone just smiling. sand getting into gun.
keep thinking about collectors.
oker memories. bad ones.
i hate oker so much.
wrex is better.
digging a hole now.
gun makes a good shovel.

16:11:49
hole finished.
big hole. very impressive.
need something to throw in it.
vakarian is back on the ship.

16:25:28
good smell from up the beach. food.
engineer man is cooking fish.
ate fish.
engineer man is angry.
threw engineer man in the hole.

16:26:48
need more fish.
swimming now. water feels good.
going to catch a thousand fish.
still at zero. fish are very fast.

16:41:06
drell smells like hes bleeding. says he isnt.
liar. nose doesnt lie. bleeding inside.
but he is good at catching fish. he helped me catch two. tasty.
nine hundred ninety eight to go.

16:48:18
thief girl says a thousand fish is to many.
she says catch ten fish and dont eat them.
put them in sheperds fish home to breed instead.
then you will have infinity fish.
sounds stupid but infinity fish would be nice.
will ask shepard what breeding means.

17:06:20
caught ten fish now
going to trust thief girl on this
will not eat. hide fish in armor for now.
put them in shepards fish home when we get back to Normandy.
infinity fish.
better work.

18:13:13
back on shuttle. its to cramped.
everyone is complaining about fish smell.
miranda is watching me.
still doesnt like me.
don't blame her
tuchanka. hahaha.
still cant let her take fish.
act casual.
pretend to play with garr the battlemaster.

18:26:01
back on the normandy.
put fish in shepards fish home.
waiting for them to breed.
edi says they are dead.
should have put water in my armor.
will wait here for now just in case there in healing comas.

18:30:14
ate fish.

–

---

A/N: I bet you thought this story was dead, didn't you?

Well HA! It isn't! Not that I blame you for thinking that. Christ, it's been the better part of a year since I've updated. I'll spare you the excuses as to why that is, but in short, I find Shepard by far harder to write than any other character in Mass Effect. I try to make him into a workable character while staying true to the things he says and does in the game, but it always feels like pulling teeth and I end up writing and rewriting and never getting anywhere with him at all. I think Shepard has some fundamental problems that I am just too anal to ignore or forget, and it saps my ability to make him work for me like some of his squaddies do. Mix that in with some romance and I ended up so frustrated by this chapter that I left it unfinished and moved on, and only recently came back to finish it up and make it behave.

But that's enough whining. I have some good news for the hand-full of you still watching this story. Though I haven't been posting this past year, I have been writing, and the rest of Interstitium (five more chapters and an epilogue) is basically written. I have some editing left to do on the last chapter (another gigantic one, naturally), and a few odds and ends to take care of, but I am very, very close to done.

I hope to have everything posted in the coming weeks. So if it seems like I'm slacking off again, please do send me a PM kick in the ass to help me cross the finish line.

TLDR this story is not dead. The rest is coming. Chapter 28 features a returning POV from a whole bunch of chapters back. I hope to post it in the next week. (And again, if I don't, please do harass me over it).

And thanks, as always, to my very patient readers, reviewers, cheerleaders, and betas (this time Vocarin) alike! You all make it worthwhile.