November 15th

18:29 OST

I was undeniably an introvert. Between my social inability, odd behavior and fondness for intellectual pursuits, I had spent the vast majority of my free time alone my whole life, and I was perfectly content with that. If I wanted to socialize I sought out my family or visited an online forum. Otherwise, I lived in my own little world.

Recently, this had changed. Now, every moment that wasn't spent on training, stealing or getting one or two hour naps I was around other people. I was practically living in Gozu District's only club, the Lagrange Point.

Lagrange Point was small, especially in comparison to Omega's more famous Afterlife, but it was clean, well-kept and had loud music. It was owned by a turian couple, the wife acting as a bartender while the husband was a bouncer. They shared management duties and considered the club a jointly-owned establishment. And it only showed how much time I'd already spent there that that not only did I know all this but the husband, an almost brownish turian with green face tattoos, didn't even look at me as I walked in, he just yelled, "Have fun and buy something this time!" as I passed.

…well, I suppose I have been circumventing their main income source this whole time. Maybe they have juice.

There were a good twenty or so people in the club, over half of which was on the dance floor. The lighting was a nice, soft violet and the music was some sort of techno-dubstep hybrid with an alien singing so fast my translator couldn't keep up. A large number of the patrons were batarians, with most of the other common 'Omega' races represented in smaller numbers.

The loudness and crowds of people would have driven me crazy once. Now, I just let myself get lost in the rush for a moment, finally deaf to the memories.

I made my way to the bar and took a seat. The wife, a woman with silvery-grey skin and black colony-markings, was currently serving a purple asari one of those strange, glowy pink drinks. The asari made a gesture of thanks and walked off with her alcohol. The female turian turned to me.

"Hey, I think I've see you around here. You finally getting something to drink? You look like you could use some loosening up."

"Ah, actually, do you serve non-alcoholic drinks? I'm not fond of being intoxicated."

"Yeah, we've got some levo-amino juice, if you're sure you don't want something stronger…?"

"No thanks. Just juice, please." She reached under the bar for one of those liquid-tube-containers and a glass. Something occurred to me. "You serve a lot of people, how did you recognize me?"

"Well, I've only seen a couple humans in here and you've been coming by a lot in the past week. You stand out." The turian poured my juice and passed it to me. It was an off-putting lime green color but smelled pleasant, so I tried a sip. It reminded me of mango juice but it had an unexpected bitter tang to it. I nodded to her and muttered a 'thank you'. The bartender left to serve some other patrons and left me to my drink.

The lack of back on the stool I was sitting on prevented me from leaning back so I leant forward on my elbows and watched the people around me, occasionally taking a sip. There were two others nursing drinks at the bar two seats down from me, an older-looking turian and a krogan. The turian was wearing green and brown dappled armor and the krogan was wearing black armor with red highlights. They seemed vaguely familiar; I might have stolen from them at some point. The turian had face markings that reminded me of Garrus. Is he from Palaven, then? I wasn't about to go ask, but it was interesting to think about.

That was, until the turian turned to look at me and shouted over the noise at me. "What're you looking at, human?"

I tensed up, but not from the hostility in his tone. I recognized that voice. That turian was the one who gave me the scar on my shoulder. I froze, wanting to start running, but stuck in place by remembered fear. They killed a salarian in cold blood- they're not the only ones- and if they recognized me they might do the same to me. I looked away, but by then I'd already caught their attention.

The turian got up and walked over to me, the krogan looking on. He put a hand on the bar and leaned in just outside of my personal bubble. "Hey, I asked you a question. What are you looking at?"

I figured an honest response wouldn't hurt. "I-I was looking at your colony markings, they mean you're from Palaven, right? I met another turian with those markings, he said he was from Palaven." I didn't look directly at him, hoping that he wouldn't remember me. He probably wouldn't, but I didn't want to risk it.

This seemed to make him calm down a bit. "Yeah, they do. And how did you know what our markings mean?"

"I knew the guy for a while, he told me about it." I did in fact know Garrus for a while, he just didn't know me.

The turian tilted his head and made an odd noise, his mandibles twitching. "I wouldn't have expected a monkey to pay attention to turian customs. Maybe you aren't all idiots."

I didn't react to the racial slur; I'd already been called worse things on a regular basis. "No, we're not. I apologize for disturbing you." I turned away and took a gulp of my drink, the bitterness lingering on my tongue.

He didn't leave, however. He was looking at me closely. "You know, you seem familiar…"

Fear raced down my spine. "Y-You probably have me confused with some other human, I know I, ah, sometimes confuse people of, uh, other races." Actually, I didn't often confuse people. My brain was good at remembering the differences in someone's face and voice. If I saw or heard someone at least two times I wouldn't be forgetting them anytime soon.

He didn't seem convinced, because he only leant in closer. "No, I think I've seen that color of head fur before…" I leaned away and looked at him. He stared at me for a moment before his eyes widened and his mandibles lowered slightly. "You. You're that one-"

I got up and tried to leave, but the krogan had gotten up and was in my way. I edged away from them. My hands were shaking. I curled them into fists to try and hide it.

The turian still seemed surprised. "You're that human from a couple months ago."

The krogan looked at his partner. "You sure?"

He nodded. "Pretty sure."

"The owners would be pissed if you tried to start a fight in here," I reminded them in a barely even voice, looking from one to the other.

They shot a look at each other and then looked back at me. We just stood there for a bit, until the krogan went back to his seat. The turian slid into the seat next to me. I gradually sat back down and, still looking sideways at the turian, grabbed my juice. The bartender made another round by us, and she gave us a hard glance.

"No one's starting any trouble over here?"

The turian shook his head. "No ma'am." She nodded and went back to the busier half of the bar.

After a few tense moments, the turian turned his head towards me. "So, I'm kinda curious, how did you get away? We were chasing you and it was like you just… disappeared." His two-toned voice was light. I relaxed slightly.

"I jumped in a dumpster," I replied with a deadpan voice. "You passed by me twice."

The turian's mandibles fully lowered this time. "You jumped in a- Spirits, I feel stupid now."

"If it makes you feel better, you managed to shoot me. The wound got infected and it hurt like a bitch."

"That does make me feel better." He waved at the bartender and asked for a drink I didn't recognize the name of. It was brought over to him quickly.

I finished off my drink and turned to the turian. "I suppose I should thank you."

He took a chug of the bright blue liquid he had ordered. "And why's that?"

"Now I have a nice big scar to remind me what happens when I get curious."

He laughed, and I almost smiled.

November 18th

10:36 OST

"Today's your birthday?!" My eyes were wide with shock. "Why didn't you tell me? I don't have a gift for you!"

Lera shifted her weight back and waved away my protests. "Quarians don't give gifts on birthdays like humans do. Besides, you don't have any credits to spare."

"You still could have told me!" I propped myself up against my doorframe. "What do quarians do for birthdays?"

She shrugged. "Not much, actually." Lera began gesturing vigorously, something I suspected was a quarian quirk developed due to the lack of face-to-face contact. "It is acknowledged, but the Migrant Fleet doesn't have much in the way of party supplies and gifts are generally unheard of. The only points in a quarian's lifetime that are celebrated are their birth, their first suit, their Pilgrimage and marriage."

"Hm. Most human cultures celebrate the birthday with some sort of party or gift-giving. We also have our own rites of passage, but they're not as easily defined as the quarian Pilgrimage and come at different times for each individual." I thought of how in the time I lived, in America the commonly accepted 'rites of passage' were often graduation from high school, moving out of their parent's home or going to college. A brief memory of my own high school graduation flitted across my mind, it had been abnormally rainy and utterly miserable, but I swiftly pushed it aside. "Anyways, how old are you now?"

"Twenty-two."

I cocked my head to one side when I remembered Tali had been around that age in the first game. "Do quarians start their Pilgrimage at twenty-one, then?"

"Around the twenty-first birthday, yes. Though, it can be sooner or later depending on unique circumstances."

"You've been here for an entire year?" Even though I was likely going to live here for years, the thought of a whole year still disturbed me.

One of her three-fingered hands went up to her head cloth and adjusted it. "Nearly. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get off this rock. I'm saving up credits, but it's just not enough. I need thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of credits to buy an acceptable gift, I only have two thousand after one year!"

I almost suggested stealing from the Eclipse, it was risky but highly profitable, but the thought was ludicrous. I'd already gotten a target painted on me with the shit I pulled earlier and she was just the type to agree to something like that. Instead I hummed sympathetically and looked away.

"I just hate that I'm stuck here!" Lera was pacing now. "I could buy a ticket off of here and get to the Citadel, but then I'd be down several hundred credits and there I would be breaking laws just by standing somewhere. At least here people don't bother me as long as I don't bother them. It's just, agh, I want out of here!"

I could empathize. If I saved for a while I might be able to afford a spot on a ship out of here, but there was an uncomfortable probability of being stolen from, murdered or sold into slavery when getting onto the ships that docked here. And on more 'civilized' worlds, my method of revenue would land me in jail very quickly. But this place was slowly eroding my soul. Every random gunshot, every passed mugging, every degrading comment on my race and threat on my life was numbing me on the inside. I wanted out.

"I understand. Trust me, I do. But there's not much that can be done. Maybe you'll find someone who'll hire you full time and you can get enough to get out of here."

She sighed. "Yeah, that'd be nice. Maybe while I'm at it I can find a way of destroying the geth and taking back the homeworld."

I frowned. "There's no need to be sarcastic. It's within the realm of possibility that you'll get a good job. You at least have work experience and quarians are mostly accepted here."

She snorted. "Mostly, she says. I still get called 'suit rat' often enough."

"I get called a 'damn son-of-a-pyjak-fucker'. And no one will even hire me. Stop being so negative."

Lera looked at me with what I knew was a skeptical look. "You're calling me negative? You still-"

"Lera." I was suddenly tense. I did not want to have this discussion again.

"Don't 'Lera' me! You barely sleep anymore, Taren tells me you're never in your room for more than a few hours at a time! You're always out shooting at that wall or hiding in a club! You talk to me about my problems but when I try to talk about you it's suddenly 'oh, I don't have a problem, I need to handle this myself, I don't need my friends!' It's not good for you, all this avoiding-"

"I'm not avoiding anything!" I knew that was a lie, but I just wanted her to stop. "I just- I need to work this out on my own. You can't help me."

"I can't help you because you won't let me!" Her voice was getting louder. "You keep pushing me away whenever I try to get close!"

The anger was building up in me again, and my nerves were all tied up in knots. "Because you do nothing but smother me! I need some space, Lera!"

"I'm smothering you?! By trying to be a good friend?!" Lera' tone was disbelieving. She had moved so close to me I could almost make out her irises behind her mask.

"Yes," I practically hissed at her, "you are!"

She said nothing. She just glared at me for a while, then turned on her heel and started to leave.

The second she left my sightline, I regretted it. I raced after her and caught her as she was leaving the complex. "Lera, wait, I'm-"

"Shut up. I'm done. I might talk to you later." Her voice was so cold it froze me in place and I watched helplessly as she walked away.

I stood there for a while and cussed myself out, feeling so utterly lost and guilty for pushing her away I could barely move. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to chase her, to apologize over and over until she called me an idiot like she usually does and forgives me, but I didn't think that would work this time.

God, I fucked up. I fucked up real bad.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn't hear the footsteps behind me. A hand touched my shoulder, and my heart rate went through the roof. I twisted around and was about to punch whatever it was that was attacking me before I saw that it was Taren. All four of his eyes were wide and he jerked back from me. I backed off and lowered my fist.

"Ugh, God, I am so sorry, Taren, I just- sorry. I really didn't mean-"

He spoke reassuringly. "It's okay. I'm sorry for startling you."

I grimaced and wrapped my arms around myself, looking away. "Goddamnit, what is wrong with me? I just drove Lera away and now I'm trying to punch you?"

"I think Lera'll come back. She bugs me about you far too often to just give up on you like that."

"Maybe." He had a point, but a pit of nervousness and regret was forming in my stomach.

Taren was quiet, seemingly thinking something over. "It'll be okay, she'll come around. How about you and I go hang out somewhere? Reyik should be here soon to watch the front and we can go to Lagrange Point and get a drink."

I just nodded.

We waited for a while until Taren's turian friend, apparently named Reyik, showed up to take Taren's place at the desk. We headed to the club in silence. When we got there, the bouncer wasn't the male turian but a krogan with big black armor and a deep red crest. I'd seen him only twice and each time he gave me a hard time before letting me in. He took one look at Taren, however, and just nodded.

The club was a bit quieter around this time, no one was on the dance floor and only a handful were at the bar. Taren and I took two seats and waited for the bartender to come by. It was a batarian this time, who seemed happy to see Taren.

"Taren, hey! How've you been?" He was grinning, revealing sharp, needle-like teeth.

"I've been good, Ayat, how about you?"

"Oh, you know, the usual. Old Vertius pays pretty well; I got a new apartment recently."

I gathered that these two were good friends, but that wasn't surprising. Taren had a lot of friends, he was just a nice guy like that. He looked genuinely happy for Ayat. "That's great! I bet Uki's happy."

"Oh, she's ecstatic. She's been looking for new plants and furniture for the past three days." Ayat suddenly noticed me sitting there watching the whole exchange. He turned back to Taren, head tipped slightly sidewise. "Speaking of which… who's this? You hang out with humans now?" There was an odd lilt to his tone I couldn't place.

Taren shook his head slightly. "No, well, yeah, but she's a tenant. We're sort of friends." His bottom eyes narrowed at the word 'friends'.

I was quite confused at what all that meant, but decided to just move past it. "Hi, I'm Shawna." I hadn't seen any batarian shake hands before, so I didn't offer my hand. I just nodded to him, hoping that would be polite enough.

Ayat's two left eyes were wider than his right, but he nodded back at me. "I'm Ayat. Nice to meet you. Can I get you two something to drink?"

Taren ordered some sort of batarian wine while I asked for the green juice I'd been having whenever I came here. Taren looked over at me oddly. "You do know there's no age restriction on drinking here?"

"I don't like alcohol, or any mind-altering substance actually. I hate feeling fuzzy or out of control. It's just personal preference." Ayat came back with my bright lime green drink and another that was an opaque white for Taren. I thanked him and drank a little, enjoying the sweet-bitter combination I was becoming fond of.

"So, you like the music here?" Taren asked, watching an asari and a salarian entering.

I shrugged. The singing was still too fast and erratic for my translator to pick up, but the instrumental was nice. "Eh, it's alright. I might like it more if I could understand the lyrics."

He threw me a surprised glance. "Wow, your translator must be faulty. Where'd you get it?"

My mind went back to the body in the alley that first day. "You don't want to know." I took a big gulp of my juice.

There was an awkward moment of silence, then I remembered something I had wanted to ask for a while. "So, how did you end up here anyways? You seem too nice to be a mercenary or slaver."

Taren swirled his wine, not looking at me. "My brother was a merc. We grew up on Anhur. We were some of the few batarians on the abolitionist side of the Rebellion."

At first I was horrible confused, but then I remembered vaguely reading about Anhur on the Mass Effect wiki. It was a mainly human and batarian colony and there had been some big war over slavery there. A big mercenary company, the Eclipse if I remembered right, got involved and the abolitionists won. "Oh. Is your brother with the Eclipse then?" That made me very worried. Taren hadn't said anything about this before.

"Was." His tone left no doubt as to his meaning.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't-"

"It's alright. It was a while ago. Anyways, after the Rebellion was over he decided to join the Eclipse. I didn't hear from him for a month, and then he calls me up and says that he had a stable posting here on Omega and he wanted me to come over. We didn't always agree on things, but the one thing we did agree on was that we hated the Hegemony. That's partly why we joined the Abolitionists and why I jumped at the chance to get off of Anhur. I got a job here and settled in, but six months later my brother died in some skirmish with the Blood Pack. I've been on Omega for almost two years now."

I was truly sad for him, and tried to make it clear in my voice. "I'm sorry."

"Like I said, it was a while ago." He had been gradually emptying his glass of wine throughout his tale, and with that he finished it off. He called Ayat over to get him another one. "How about you? How'd you end up here?"

I was a bit taken aback, but I had thought about this beforehand and was able to collect myself quickly. "Ah, well. I had been born on a civilian cargo ship. My mom was a communications officer, the rest of my family worked in different parts of the ship. I got to see lots of places and different species growing up. When I got old enough I decided I wanted to try and get accepted into a college so I could get a nice, high paying job on solid ground. I went Illium to see if they'd accept me there, but they turned me down. When the transport my family had hired showed up to the rendezvous with my home-ship, we found them in pieces." Though the story was a fabrication, it was close enough to the truth to make a crushing sadness come over me. "It looked like pirates or slavers hit them. No life signs. The crew of the transport took nearly everything I owned as payment, and then they dropped me off here with nothing but my clothes. That was almost five months ago."

Taren appeared shocked. By this time we were finishing off our second glasses. "Wow. That's… I'm really sorry, Shawna."

I looked down at the bottom of my empty cup. I almost regretted that it hadn't been alcohol. "Yeah, well. I've come to realize that's just how things are out here. No point in lingering on it." I just really wanted to stop thinking about it. I had been getting by this whole time by keeping my family out of my mind, but this just brought it all to the surface. I felt my eyes start to water, but I shut them and forced the sadness and the memories away. It was getting harder and harder each time. I took a deep breath.

"So, what kind of music do you like?" I redirected.

November 28th

19:34 OST

Hearing someone being threatened from an alley I was passing was not a new thing. This time it sounded like a batarian holding an asari at gunpoint. I felt the usual regret at not stopping, but my hand went up to touch my left shoulder. Don't get curious. I kept walking, still very tense.

However, after a few seconds someone came running out of the alley, into the mostly-empty street and right into me. I made a quick one-eighty and shoved the assailant away. The dusky blue asari let out a soft gasp and fell to the ground. The batarian mugger ran out of the alley and stopped a short ways away, bringing up his gun to point it at me.

A thrill of adrenalin shot thought me and I instinctively activated my omni-tool, intending on sabotaging his pistol, but a sudden bout of nausea stopped me. All I could think of was hacking those mechs and the bullets and the green everywhere-

Two gunshots rang out and there was a familiar pain in my right side. I dropped to one knee and pressed my hands against the bullet hole. The batarian was walking closer. I reached into my coat pocket for my gun, but he was on me before I could get it out. He pressed his pistol to my head.

He was obviously pissed "Don't move! Why are you here?"

I was shaking. I couldn't breathe. I didn't know if it was from the pain or the fear.

"Damnit, I said why are you here!?"

The asari tried to scramble off the ground, but he quickly aimed at her, making her freeze. "You stay right there!" his gun came back to me. He was yelling now. "Why the hell are you here?!"

"S-She ran i-into me! I had nothing to do with this!" I shouted.

He didn't respond or move away. I started to panic when the asari reached out and with a rush of blue energy the batarian went flying to the other side of the street.

Biotics. Huh.

She took off running. I got up from the ground, but I was still in a lot of pain. I staggered away from the scene as fast as I could, eager to be gone by the time the gun-wielding batarian got up. I cast a few looks behind me, but I didn't see him the whole way to the clinic.

I stumbled into the clinic, blood running down my leg and hands clamped around my wound. The employees took one look at me and rushed me into the ER, no questions asked. I was injected with something and in a minute everything was just an incoherent blur of color and noise.

I came to much later on a hospital bed, my side aching like mad. My coat and shirt had been removed, though thankfully my bra had been left alone. My midsection was covered in bandages and I could see spots of red seeping though where the bullet had hit me. I carefully sat up. A dark green salarian with a white coat walked in.

"You're up. Good. The sedative, removal of the bullet chip, sealing of your wound, and antibiotic treatment altogether cost three hundred and fifty credits. Unfortunately you didn't possess the full payment, so we simply took all of your available credits." His voice was dull, like he'd said this many times before.

I was still a bit groggy, but that had definitely gotten my attention. "What?! When, how-"

"You were quite amendable to it while under the affects of the sedative. You willingly payed. Now, your clothes are there." He pointed to a hook on the wall with my shirt and coat on it. "Please remove yourself from the premises." Having finished his very rehearsed-sounding speech, he left.

I stared after him for a while.

Is everyone on this rock a pirate? I'm fairly certain I just got robbed.

I got up from the bed, put on my clothes and hobbled out of the clinic. As I made my way back to the apartments to sleep off the grogginess lingering in my brain, I realized that I had absolutely no credits. Again. It wasn't that bad this time, rent wasn't due for a while I could probably scrounge up enough to make due.

My prospects seemed much dimmer, however, when I brought up my omni-tool to check the time and realized what the first gunshot had hit. There was a small dent in the device's metal casing, and the display froze the moment I turned it on.

Oh fuck.

AN: I'm sorry for the lack of recent updates. As an apology, here's a 4.7k word chapter! Also, my story is now over 30k! Woot!

You guys are seriously awesome. This story has 4,000 hits and 60 followers! That just makes me so damn happy…

Please review! The thought that people out there actually want to read this spurs me on to write when I get tired or have a hard time thinking up stuff.