Bioware Owns All.

Chapter 20

He Said

This breakfast was possibly the best breakfast I'd had in my life. The only thing I'd change was the synthesized food. I was almost jealous when Shepard told me about her cook. Almost, because he apparently also cleaned the toilets. She sat as close to me as she could, forcing me to eat with my off hand because she'd grabbed mine under the table and was holding it tightly, our fingers intertwined. Members of her team and my crew slowly joined us, but I let her keep my hand, her slender, strong fingers warm in mine. Quite simply, I didn't care. However, it was mostly her team surrounding us, so I doubt my crew added two and two together.

It was tough separating and I resisted the urge to give her a quick kiss. We weren't fraternizing, technically, but it would still have been unprofessional. She smiled as if she understood as I left. We were leaving Illium later that day, and I had a lot of things to do to get us ready to ship out. Shepard had mentioned at breakfast some sort of appointment with Liara and a volus broker.

As I stood and worked on the course my navigator had handed me to look over, her cat-suited second in command, Miranda Lawson, entered the CIC with the statuesque asari from Shepard's team. Lawson seemed to be tense and all but tapping her foot. I went back to going over my work until I heard the click of heels on the metal deck and looked up. My mouth went dry and I was very glad there was a console in front of me.

Shepard emerged from below decks, her chestnut hair pinned back and up in something complicated and professional-looking. She carried a jacket over her arm, but wore a sleeveless white lace shell that was barely opaque and clung to her torso, highlighting her breasts and every fluid muscle under her skin. The skirt she wore wasn't much better, a black pinstriped, skin-tight, calf-length pencil skirt slit up her thigh and stockings with the seams up the back and sky-high black stiletto pumps on her small feet. I caught a hint of lace at the apex of the slit in her skirt and realized she was wearing thigh highs. I suddenly didn't really care what course we plotted to get out of here. I wanted to grab her and take her back to my cabin. Maybe she'd put my dress shirt back on over those thigh highs?

She said something to Lawson and caught me staring at her. Her smile was slow and knowing. I felt an answering one tug at the corners of my mouth. Shepard walked over and I turned to face her as she climbed the dias to where I stood in front of the galaxy map. She quickly changed her expression to one of professional intent, but still had that twinkle in her eye that meant she was up to something, "I'll need to meet with you later, Commander, when I've returned from my meeting." She slipped on her jacket and my eyes dropped involuntarily to the movement of her breasts under the thin fabric. Was she even wearing a bra under that? I wrenched my eyes back up to her face and nodded, not trusting my voice. I wouldn't do to be seen undressing a Spectre with my eyes. "I'll see you at 1900 hours, then, Commander." That was an hour after we were scheduled to leave Nos Astra.

She winked at me and left my ship, swaying her hips the whole way to the airlock. I wanted to pound my head on my console. The assassin Thane Krios, Tali'Zorah and Jacob Taylor left shortly after she did, all three armed to the teeth. I could feel Taylor's and Krios' own biotic resonance in the back of my teeth. I wanted so much to be out there, at her back.

But meeting her later was still in the forefront of my thoughts and I wrenched them away from it. There was no way in hell I was going to be concentrating the rest of the day if I thought about it further. I realized every male eye, and a few of the female, had followed the path of those swaying hips to the airlock. I was briefly torn between jealousy and a primitive surge of possessive pride. My LT turned bright red realizing I'd caught him looking at her and he spun to immediately pretend he was working. I grinned and went back to work, myself.

I'd finished everything I could do to prepare for departure. The rest was up to my crew. I'd talked to Joker this morning and I thought we were square, or at least I wasn't still angry at him. It was time for another conversation I'd been dreading.

Garrus Vakarian had been with Shepard and me on almost every mission during the hunt for Saren. He'd barely spoken more than two words to me since I'd been assigned to help her find their ship. It was time to rectify that.

I found him in a quiet corner of my cargo hold, stripping and cleaning his sniper rifle. Of course, what else would he be doing? "Vakarian, you have a minute?"

He glanced up at me, his cheekplates widened in a smirk. I realized I'd unconsciously mimicked Shepard's usual conversation opener and grinned back. He set the sight down that he'd been polishing and looked at me, "What do you need, Commander?"

Formality, that should make this go easier. "I, uh, wanted to ask you about . . ." I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly.

"Spit it out, Alenko."

I took a deep breath, "Why did you join Cerberus?"

He looked at me, his eyes harder than I remembered. "I didn't join Cerberus. I joined Shepard."

"You were there when we found all those experiments. How did you . . . get around that?" He was still looking at me as if I were deficient.

"I didn't. But no one else would back her up. No one. You were there, Alenko. You saw what they did to her after she died! And I thought humans had respect for the dead! Don't you have a saying about that?" He stood up, angry, now. His brow ridges drawn low over his eyes, his cheekplates held tightly to his face.

"'Don't speak ill of the dead.' I know the saying, Vakarian. I thought you'd gone back to C-Sec." I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose.

He stared to pace in the small area he'd claimed to clean his weapons. We were surrounded by equipment crates and supply crates, with only the gap we'd both entered through as a break. He was using another pair of short crates as a table and chair to maintain his weapon. "Heh, C-Sec. How the hell could I stay on there when, at every turn, the Alliance and the Council were saying how she was crazy, gullible or stupid." He turned to glare at me, "How the hell did you tolerate it?"

"I didn't. Why the hell do you think I got myself reassigned to Anderson and let him put me to work out in the colonies?"

He nodded at me in something like approval, then frowned, his cheekplates flaring slightly and his brow ridges drawing together. "You should have fought for her, Alenko."

I shook my head, "I'm an L-2, Garrus. Suspect at the best of times. If they weren't desperate at the time, I wouldn't have been given command of this ship. You know this, Vakarian. Turians don't like biotics any more than humans do. If I'd spoken up, I'd have been dismissed and possibly institutionalized, if not court martialed."

"I'm not a very good turian, Alenko." He turned back away from me and continued, "I left C-Sec. I don't know if it was the bottle I crawled into after she died, or just plain stupidity on my part, but I got it into my head that I needed to right a few wrongs in the galaxy to honor her. I ended up on Omega, built a team and was making life difficult for some mercs before I was betrayed."

He turned back and crossed his arms, staring at me. "I was holed up in a shithole apartment with my team in body bags and surrounded by three of the biggest merc outfits on the station after me. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw her come over that bridge."

"Wait, she found you?" A surge of jealousy I wasn't very proud of ran through me. For a brief moment I wanted to punch the turian in front of me.

"She didn't know it was me. When I'd left C-Sec, I erased myself. I didn't want to be found." He looked away, "She pointed out to me later that I'd gone there to die. And I think she was right. I don't remember being that coherent, however, I just didn't want to be found." He cleared his throat, "The Illusive Man had given her the dossier of someone who was a 'tactical genius,' and a sniper. She had no name and no clue it was me."

I felt mollified, but not by much, "So then what happened?" Vakarian a tactical genius?

He shrugged, "She came in and kicked their asses. It was almost like we'd planned the thing with me as bait instead of just taking our opportunities where they lay." He looked at me, steadily, "It was Shepard, Alenko. She was pretty badly scarred up, but it was her."

"Speaking of scars," I asked and gestured along my jawline, "What happened there?"

The turian barked a short laugh, and touched the side of his face that seemed to be held together by bandages and cybernetics, "The Blue Suns almost won. I did something stupid and tried to catch a rocket in my teeth."

I winced, "I guess Dr. Chakwas hasn't lost her touch?"

He laughed again, "She's had more than enough practice patching this crew together since we joined Shepard to get a license to treat every species in the galaxy. I don't know how she keeps it all straight." He nodded, then, "But yes, Dr. Chakwas put me back together."

"So, you joined Shepard, not Cerberus," I repeated for him, going back on topic.

"Yes, though I was so glad to have her around again, if she'd joined Cerberus wholeheartedly, I probably would have, too. I'm glad she didn't. They were very unhappy about her decision to leave, though." He grinned.

I returned it, "I can't believe she stole their ship."

"I can. She's still Shepard, but death changed something for her, Alenko. She's more ruthless than she used to be. More cold. She's driven to stop the Reapers at all costs. If it costs us all our lives, she'd do it and consider the price more than fair."

I frowned, that didn't sound like the Shepard I remembered, though I could see how her recent mission could have changed her. "What are you getting at, Vakarian?"

He looked away as if trying to find the words, "She confessed to Tali and to me, once, that the Prothean nightmares were getting worse, especially now that she had her own death to add to them. She compared herself to someone named, 'Cassandra,' once. But wouldn't clarify."

My stomach knotted in sympathy for her; I could definitely see the parallel. "Cassandra was a prophet, a seeress, in an ancient civilization back on Earth. She was the beloved of a god, but spurned his attentions. As punishment, he made her the most accurate prophetess ever, but cursed her so that no one would believe her. She foresaw the destruction of her home, Troy, by an enemy force and couldn't get anyone to listen to her to evacuate or prevent it."

"How was Troy destroyed?"

I rubbed my chin, "Strangely, it was very similar to how the Citadel nearly got destroyed by Saren and Sovereign. The opposing army gave the citizens of Troy a gift after a siege of several months to signify their withdrawal. The citizens brought the large wooden horse into the city. Unbeknownst to them, several of the enemy soldiers were hidden inside and when night fell and the celebration was over, they opened the gates to the enemy. Troy was burnt to the ground." Shepared had told me once that the protheans had visited Earth when we were still living in caves. If it weren't for the fact that they'd found the remains of Troy a century ago, I'd be wondering if the story wasn't an allegory planted by prothean refugees to warn us. But then, the Illiad had started as a bet between gods. Were the protheans those gods?

"What happened to Cassandra?"

"No one knows. She was either taken as a spoil of war, or killed." We looked at each other, grimly.

Several hours later, we were nearly complete with our departure preparations and essentially just waiting for Shepard and her team to return. The VI announced Shepard's arrival at the airlock and I stepped down from the dias to greet her and her team. Krios Tali and Taylor entered first and I felt my stomach drop into my boots. Tali looked untouched, but Taylor and Krios were both bleeding from multiple wounds and leaning heavily on each other. Tali held Shepard's jacket to Taylor's stomach. Samara followed, her usual grace hampered by a vicious wound in her calf and her stomach, but she seemed to be walking, at least. If it was possible, my stomach dropped farther. "Shepard?"

Tali's mask turned in my direction, "She's coming." Her voice was irritated and very unhappy. My alarm must've shown on my face because she continued, "She's fine." Tali returned to helping Taylor make it to the elevator. Krios stumbled in on his own and they held it for Samara to catch up. As the elevator closed on the injured commandoes, I turned at the sound of my airlock opening. Shepard stalked in on her skyscraper heels, her hair a mess, her white lace shirt ripped and filthy. Her skirt was ripped a few more inches higher, what wasn't singed shorter. I thanked whatever deity was listening she didn't seem to have any wounds. She had her hand to her ear and was shouting commands into her comm.

"What the hell happened?" I demanded.

She ignored me and snapped into her comm., "Garrus! Get your ass ready to go planetside. Cerberus fucking struck again!"

The turian's voice came through the unit, "I just saw the ground team. I'll be ready and meet you at the airlock in fifteen."

"Shepard!" I nearly shouted. She finally turned to look at me. Her face was the mask of command I remembered so well from the hunt for Saren. Her blue eyes blazed and her whole body was rigid. Her lips were set in a thin line and I felt a small surge of sympathy for whoever got on her bad side. "What. Happened?"

Her eyes were hard and cold as space, "Get suited up and meet me at the airlock in fifteen and I'll tell you." She continued in her path to the elevator, my crew scrambling to get out of the angry Spectre's way.

"Shepard! We are slated to leave in three hours!" I told her.

"Not without Miranda, we aren't." The elevator closed.