Passover: A Jewish festival celebrating the exit of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. Literally refers to the night God "passed over" and killed the firstborn of Egypt, both humans and animals, and left his chosen people alive, provided they had marked the doorposts of their dwellings with a sacrifice.
I
Passover
No way out. Then again, why should there be? None of the others got out. Not Butler. Not Weaver. Not Krul or Mierin or Erash. Not Luc, Vortash, Ripper, Melenis, or Sensat. He didn't need to look at them in their bags all around the apartment. Didn't matter that he could see them out of the corner of his eye; he saw them when his eyes were shut. No one got out. Except Sidonis, because he'd known. How could I have missed it?
Across the bridge, the mercs were moving again, getting ready for another push. A Suns gunman poked his head over one of the barricades they'd put in sometime yesterday. Garrus got the idiot's head in the scope, and his brains spattered over his friends who'd had the sense to stay down.
149.
They were all so stupid, throwing the scum of the galaxy over that bridge at him. Wave after wave after wave of them. So far, every attempt had ended the same way. But the bastards had the time to waste. They had men. They had ammo. Meanwhile, Garrus had gone so far past the recommended stim dosage his body didn't even remember what that was. The lower doors were sealed. The mercs couldn't flank him, but he was sealed in, too. The bridge that was saving him was also his death sentence.
No way out.
This is it.
In this kind of situation in the vids, the hero usually shoots off some quip about having no regrets. Not me. Garrus had so many regrets he could write a book. And not a cute little novella, either. There was nothing he could do about them. Nothing but make as many of the bastards pay as he could before they took him too. They would, sooner or later. Probably sooner. I've just about cashed in all my 'later.' He had heat sinks for maybe three more hours, but the stim crash was almost certainly coming before then. He had more, but at this point he figured one more pill would kill him just as dead as the mercs outside the door. Boil his brain within his skull. His life expectancy had ticked down from hours to minutes.
That was fine. You always knew you'd get yourself killed one day. He'd never expected it would be like this, though. Maybe you should have.
I'm sorry.
The drilling fire of an assault rifle echoed out through the streets, and Garrus dodged behind a stone pillar. The bullets buried themselves in the already pockmarked column, sending up clouds of rock dust. His visor counted up the shots—thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty—and when the guy dropped to his knee to switch out the heat sinks, he swung back out. The guy was slow.
150.
Another perfect headshot, but Garrus got no satisfaction in another dropped target. He was just the screen, providing cover for whatever the others are doing back there. Can only handle so many bullets at once. For more than a day the targets had been getting progressively younger and stupider. A while ago he'd realized that Tarak and the others didn't even have the guts to send their own men anymore. Instead, they were throwing anyone with a gun at him, distractions while they worked out something big.
The next wave was coming soon. He could see them organizing on the other side of the bridge—no clear shots, but they were there. Something was different this time. Someone over there was making the cannon fodder stand up straight. Not in the hungry, greedy way they do when Tarak or one of the others walks by, either. I wonder . . . could be real trouble.
Garrus brought his scope to his eye and searched for the cause of the disturbance.
Impossible . . .
Garrus took a deep breath, and brought his hand up to his visor. He restarted it, because the readout he was getting on the mercs' newest player couldn't be right. There was no way. But as the system rebooted and her face came into focus once again at twenty times magnification—looking up where he sat—he didn't need the tech over the crosshairs between her eyes telling him the same thing it had a moment ago. It had been two years, but those features were still burned into his brain.
CDR SHEPARD, HUMAN, Affil. Alliance, Council SPECTREs
-Construct targeting solution?
-Search?
Garrus dismissed the options with a flick of his eye, and slowly, he lowered his rifle. Damn it, my hands are actually shaking. Not good for a sniper.
It couldn't be her. It couldn't be. Over a dozen witnesses from the Normandy had seen Shepard spaced when the ship had been destroyed over Alchera. Joker. Dr. Chakwas. Kaidan. Shepard had been blasted away from the wreckage and fallen into Alchera's gravity, oxygen line severed. Burned up in the atmosphere. There hadn't even been anything left of her to recover for the memorial service.
Or so we thought.
But she couldn't have survived. If she hadn't died in the explosion, she'd suffocated. Died of exposure. Been torn apart by the heat and pressure of falling out of orbit. No one could survive all of that, not even Commander Shepard.
It's not a trick, Garrus reasoned. Not after the last time we upgraded identity encryption. No way they knew seeing someone with her face would throw me off. Coincidence then.
Funny how a coincidence will bite you in the ass every time.
She couldn't be Shepard, and she wasn't a trick. Probability dictated, then, that some psycho had found one of Omega's many black market plastic surgeons that specialized in giving new faces to people that wanted to disappear. When a regular old fake ID just isn't good enough to keep the demons off your scent. But since this one bought Shepard's face—probably not trying to disappear. That's a merc that wants to stand out. Got to love the egomaniacs.
It probably means something, that the woman leading the people who want to kill you looks like Shepard. Or maybe that's the drugs.
. . . Shut up.
Garrus had thought he was beyond hatred and anger, lost in a stim-dulled haze of exhaustion and regret, but this—this was the ultimate insult, for someone who stood opposed to everything Shepard was to wear her face—as what? An advertisement, a boast? Some sort of sick, twisted homage? Fury coiled in Garrus's belly, sending new energy like molten metal coursing out through his arteries, and it burned away the shock he'd felt upon seeing Shepard's face again.
She needs to die.
Over the bridge someone yelled, "Bravo Team! Go! Go! Go!"
Garrus raised his rifle.
On they came, one more time, and there she was, vaulting over the last barricade with the rest of the scum. Garrus tracked her. His finger hovered over the trigger, waiting for her to come into scope.
Then incendiary tech from her omni-tool enveloped the head of the kid directly in front of her.
What?!
The merc kid's hair caught on fire. The skin melted off his face, and he staggered back screaming, arms flailing, until he fell off the edge of the bridge to Omega's depths below.
If Garrus had thought hell had broken loose before, it was nothing to what happened now. The merc attack dissolved into confusion and chaos as two people with Shepard's lookalike joined her in firing on Garrus's attackers. A black-haired woman in a jumpsuit that couldn't be comfortable lit up blue, and an emaciated addict howled as biotic fields tore him apart from the inside out. A weathered, scarred man, much older than the woman, in battered yellow armor, fired an M-8 Avenger into the crowd. His spray of bullets sent most of them running for nonexistent cover, but one man in patched-up armor, slightly older than the rest, or maybe more sober, pointed an accusatory finger at Shepard's lookalike.
"She's with Archangel!" he cried.
And Garrus watched the woman that looked like Shepard roll her eyes at this brilliant grasp of the obvious, and raise a wicked, streamlined Mantis to her shoulder, moving with a fluidity so familiar it ached. The crack of her rifle rang out. At such close range, the bullet blew out his shields at once. Garrus saw the blue burst. Then the merc's skull caved in, and the gray matter flew out of the back of his head to paint a bridge already covered in similar stains.
Another human, younger, snarled. He turned his pistol on Shepard, and before Garrus could think, he'd retargeted and shot the man dead.
It was a moment straight out of the old days. Hope, confusion, adrenaline all raced through Garrus, almost as effective as another pill. He looked for Shepard again, just in time to see her fade completely from view.
Spirits.
Combat cloaking tech. Garrus had heard about it, but he'd never seen it in action before. With tech like that, a soldier could cross a battlefield to set up an ambush or flank the enemy right in the middle of combat. It was a stealth fighter's best friend, a sniper's dream. It was also incredibly expensive. Top of the line, just out of Alliance research-dev, they said. He didn't even want to think about how many credits that one program cost. But Shepard . . . the real Shepard . . . she would have loved it.
While Garrus's other mysterious allies pressed the enemy on one side, the woman that looked like Shepard materialized behind them, now bearing a submachine gun instead of a rifle. Its high-pitched burr reverberated off the walls, shredding the shields of the remaining mercs, leaving them defenseless before the man's assault rifle and the woman's heavy pistol and biotic attacks.
Damn! I could swear—it is! That's a Kassa Locust!
Full frontal surprise attack, followed by a flawless flanking maneuver and disabling tactics at range to leave the enemy completely defenseless, ready to be demolished by her allies. It was classic Shepard, if classic Shepard had had access to the kind of tech and guns available to only the best-funded private mercenary groups. Even the salarian STG and the Council Spectres didn't have access to the grade of weaponry she was using down there.
She even moves like Shepard. The visor picked her up, so I'm fairly sure this is actually happening and not some hallucinogenic daydream—even if it is the kind of thing only you could dream up. Shepard, against all odds, back from the dead with weapons and tech straight out of an edition of Guns and Ammo, to save your scaly ass from the grave you dug yourself.
. . .
Then again, never have gone quite this far before.
Garrus's fingers fumbled with the controls on his gun. He fired off one concussive shot—but no, her shields fizzled out in one blue blink, and she fell on her hands and knees to the concrete. The black-haired woman was at her side in a moment, covering her as she rose to her feet. The two women exchanged a few brief words, and with one exasperated glare up at where he stood at the balcony, Shepard shook her head and pressed on over the bridge and into the base.
His shot had hit her. She'd fallen.
She's no hallucination. So here's the million-credit question: what is she? More importantly, what does she want? No way she's shot her way into this foxhole just for laughs. Though I am comedy gold: the turian vigilante.
Even if somehow, some way, the woman running around downstairs actually was Shepard, how could she possibly have known?
The gunfire stopped seconds later as she and her companions finally cleared the path to him. Behind him, Garrus heard the door to the upstairs slide open, but he was watching the room downstairs. A shadow behind a pillar had caught his eye. Shepard back wouldn't mean a thing if someone shot him seconds after she got to him.
"Archangel?"
Another pause. Another ache. There was no mistaking that dry, commanding contralto.
Not an imposter, then. That's Shepard's voice. I'd know it anywhere. Hold it, Garrus. Easy. She could still be a clone. A VI. An AI. You see some weird things on Omega.
He knew he shouldn't have been surprised she wasn't here for Garrus Vakarian. He wasn't. Still, there was no denying the sinking in his chest as the hope he hadn't even known he'd been harboring for the last thirty seconds withered and died. Ah, hope. Another one of those never-know-what-you've-got-till-it's-gone things.
Garrus held up a finger. One, lone merc had escaped the slaughter downstairs. He cradled his assault rifle and peered from behind a support pillar. Garrus squeezed the trigger. Across the silence, he heard the wet sound of his bullet ripping through another throat. 152. The space behind the barricade was empty now, the freelancers demolished. For the moment.
Garrus lowered his rifle and took off his helmet. For the first time in days he felt the sweet breeze of recycled air across his carapace, but the metallic smell of blood mingled with the sweet, rotting smell of decaying corpses assaulted his nose with new force. He sat his helmet down and turned slowly, feeling the exhaustion in every muscle. He sat on the balcony's edge, bracing his feet against a nearby table.
"Shepard. I thought you were dead."
Her eyes widened, and then she broke out beaming. She bounded forward, arms outstretched. "Garrus! What are you doing here?" she cried happily.
Garrus regarded her. Woman looks at a man like that, and he could get the impression she likes having him around. Now you're a handsome devil, Garrus, but that's the biggest, happiest smile you've ever seen on a human woman, looking at you. Got to get to know one really well before she gets past the Relay 314 and evolutionary associations enough to see a friend, and you may have lived on the Citadel for years, but Shepard's the only human woman in the galaxy you knew that well.
This is Shepard. Or she thinks she is, anyway, which for the moment, equates to the same Good Thing for you.
"Just keeping my skills sharp. A little target practice."
Her smile fell into a thoughtful frown. "You okay?"
Damn it, but she looked like Shepard. Up close, he could see she was thinner, and with strange, half-healed scars across her cheeks and forehead that glowed vaguely orange. Cybernetic implants, he guessed, but the force of all the little differences was to make her look more like Shepard than ever, because if Shepard was somehow back after Alchera, of course she couldn't be back without scars.
"Been better," he answered, "But it's good to see a friendly face. Killing mercs is hard work. Especially on my own."
Shepard rolled her neck, audibly popping the joints. "I don't know," she drawled. "You got me good out on the bridge."
"Concussive rounds only. No harm done. Didn't want the mercs getting suspicious," Garrus lied.
Shepard folded her arms and looked at him, as if she knew exactly what had really been going through his head at the time. "Is that right?"
"If I'd wanted to do more than take your shields down, I'd've done it."
Shepard lifted her chin. An odd expression flitted over her face—her eyes dilated and one corner of her mouth twitched up. Just for a second, his visor registered a fluctuation in her heart rate and breathing.
Strange . . . "Besides, you were taking your sweet time. I needed to get you moving."
Shepard came to stand beside him at the balcony. She looked down over the bridge. "How'd you end up here on Omega?"
Garrus looked down. Stupidity. "I got fed up with all the bureaucratic crap on the Citadel. Figured I could do more good on my own. At least it's not hard to find criminals here. All I have to do is point my gun and shoot."
He could feel her eyes on the back of his neck, the mix of concern and disappointment just rolling off of her. And if she wasn't Shepard, she was a better fake than he could ever have imagined, because he could hear the lecture in the silence:
You're better than this, Garrus. What right do you have to play judge, jury, and executioner? Taking bad guys out of the galaxy isn't the same thing as putting something good back in. If all you leave behind you is a trail of bodies, you aren't working hard enough. It isn't worth it.
It was the voice he'd had in his head from day one. If you kill a killer, are you righting a wrong or just doubling it? If everything I've done here has led to this, what was the point? He'd carried her ghost with him every step of the way, but the way she had of reflecting all his doubts and self-condemnation back at him packed a hell of a lot more punch in person. He'd forgotten.
"Since when do you call yourself Archangel?"
Garrus shifted. He didn't like the way she said it—he knew the kinds of arrogant bastards that hid their identities behind ideas and legends. He killed those kinds of arrogant bastards. "It's just a name the locals gave me. For all my good deeds," he explained, desperate to tell her it hadn't been his idea, that he hadn't chosen the name. You adopted it, though, the snide voice in the back of his head reminded him. Don't even pretend a little thrill didn't run through you every time you heard it. How is that any better? "I don't mind it, but please . . . it's just 'Garrus' to you."
"Just Garrus," Shepard repeated, deadpan. She shook her head. "You've pissed off every major merc organization in the Terminus Systems." He heard the faintest trace of admiration in her voice. For all her disapproval, Shepard was impressed, too.
Garrus gave her a small, weary smile. "It wasn't easy. I really had to work at it. I am amazed that they teamed up to fight me," he admitted. "They must really hate me."
Shepard grimaced, and turned her attention back toward the barricade. "Well, we got here, but I don't think getting out will be as easy."
Garrus stood up. "No, it won't. That bridge has saved my life . . . funneling all those witless idiots into scope. But it works both ways. They'll slaughter us if we try to get out that way."
For the first time, the woman with Shepard spoke up. "So we just sit here and wait for them to take us out?" she demanded in a voice with some sort of regional Earth accent. Garrus glanced at her, and the man, too. Who are these guys? I'd bet every credit I have they're not Alliance. Granted, that's not saying much. Knew I should've picked a gig that paid better than vigilantism.
"It's not that bad," Garrus shrugged. "That bridge has held them off so far. And with the three of you . . ." Garrus examined his unlikely saviors. Shepard or an imitation so good it raised frightening questions about scientific capabilities today, and two humans equally well equipped, experienced fighters and a hell of a lot fresher than he was. "I suggest we hold this location, wait for a crack in their defenses, and take our chances. It's not a perfect plan. But it's a plan."
Shepard frowned, obviously tallying up in her head with him all the ways this was a terrible plan. "How'd you let yourself get into this position?" she asked.
Garrus remembered crashing the car into the bridge, slipping through the blood all over it as he ran, the last grenades exploding as he approached—it's okay, just breathe, I'll get medi-gel. He closed his eyes. "My feelings got in the way of my better judgment. It's a long story. I'll make you a deal: you get me out of here alive, and I'll tell you the whole damn thing."
Five minutes ago, Garrus hadn't been planning on living through the next three hours. Now, though . . . If Shepard was back, if she needed him, he didn't have the luxury of dying just yet.
Shepard regarded him, but she didn't comment. Instead she only said, "If we fight as a team, we'll hold them off."
"You're right. Their numbers won't help them in here, anyway." If he'd only done one thing right these past two years, it was choosing this apartment as Archangel's base. The only possible way to take it was with the element of surprise, and the mercs had lost that long ago. "Let's see what they're up to." Garrus raised his rifle again and looked through the scope at the barricade. Things were stirring there again, and they weren't just freelancers this time, either. "Hmm . . . looks like they know their infiltration team failed." He handed Shepard his gun. "Take a look. Scouts. Eclipse, I think."
Shepard raised his gun to her shoulder and peered through the scope. "Yes," she answered. "Jaroth was set to command the next wave when the infiltration team failed. There are more than scouts out there." Her finger tightened on the trigger, and a LOKI mech's head exploded in a shower of sparks. "One less now, though. Nice gun." She handed it back over.
Garrus almost cracked a smile as he took it back. His gun was bigger than most humans could usually handle without discomfort or inaccuracy, but Shepard had taken in the mods he had on it in a second and fired without flinching, rolling with the recoil, and making a headshot to boot. So much for showing off. "I try. We better get ready," he said. "I'll stay up here. I can do a lot of damage from this vantage point. You . . ." Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You do what you do best. Just like old times, Shepard. Let's give these bastards everything we've got!"
Shepard tapped her head. "I'll patch you into our radio," she said. She turned to her colleagues. "Zaeed, you take point," she ordered the man. "Shake them up and draw their fire. Miranda? Bring down their defenses. I'll flank them and break the line. Let's go welcome our guests."
Garrus saw the glow of her omni-tool for just a second before she faded from sight, flat, white teeth bared in a predatory grin that reminded Garrus that despite their appearance and diet, humans were still top of the food chain back on Earth.
He took up his position again, but this time, things were different. This time, he wasn't just fighting until they killed him. This time, he'd kill every sorry son of a bitch that was stupid enough to take him on, with Shepard at his side.
When Eclipse finally came, they came like a flood, and they came in formation. They vaulted over the barricade together. Unfortunately, doing so required them to use both hands. The staccato retort of Shepard's man—Zaeed—started up at once, but it didn't do much more than begin to wear on the mercs' shields. Garrus's first shot did better—a salarian fell right back over the barricade and slid, leaving a green smear behind him, but in the time it took Garrus to change his thermal clip, two more had taken the salarian's place, and the first guys had drawn their weapons and were firing.
Shepard's people were already in cover, waiting for them. The flicker of three shields failing was Miranda, employing her tech. The men dissolved in a mist of red and green, cut to a pulp with Zaeed's rifle fire. Garrus sighted a LOKI mech beginning to fan out toward the entrance, only to see its optics flash red right before it exploded, killing a salarian and seriously injuring a human woman that weren't far enough away.
"Thanks, Shepard," he said, focusing instead on the woman reaching for her weapon and struggling to stand. 154.
"You got it," she said over the radio, speaking quietly so as not to give away her position, but he saw her, clutching her Locust in both hands, around the corner from the main force. More of them were coming now, mechs and humans and salarians, mostly. They'd heard about the freelance infiltration team, and they were focusing most of their fire on Zaeed and Miranda, trying to wear down the fresh soldiers to break through to Archangel. They knew he was tired, but shifting their focus away from him was their mistake.
Miranda threw one of the outliers into the soldiers behind him with her biotics, and Garrus and Shepard both seized the opportunity. While the Eclipse soldiers were looking to dodge Miranda's living missile, Shepard's SMG fire joined Zaeed's assault rifle in cutting up the body of the attack. While the mercs knew Zaeed's position, Shepard's fire took them completely by surprise, and while they were looking around to find her, Garrus shot three.
"Scoped and dropped!" he cried.
But the mercs were still coming, and now they'd found Shepard. A cruel-faced man that had just vaulted the barricade signaled two of his buddies, and they started toward Shepard's location.
She was already retreating. She somersaulted away and came up running, her omni-tool glowing around her forearm. She vaulted over the sofa, and as she did, the fireball she'd manufactured with her 'tool generators ignited the stuffing, spilling out from many bullet holes. The shotgun-toting man in the lead behind Shepard cursed as the flames roared up right into his face, forcing him back. Then he screamed, caught up in one of Miranda's biotic fields.
"One less!"
Garrus had already taken out one of the other two guys after Shepard, and as Shepard made it back to Zaeed and cover, she turned and took out the other one. His eyes boiled to nothing in his skull as he fell to his knees, and Shepard was already disappearing again, set for another surprise attack.
Meanwhile, Zaeed was still assaulting the main body of the Eclipse force. He was laughing and yelling abuse at them, killing three and four at a time. Shepard probably hates him, Garrus thought, But I'll just bet Weaver and Erash would have loved this guy. Garrus took out his next target with a particularly vicious shot, a messy bullet to the chin that sent his lower jaw spinning away from his throat and right into a LOKI's plate armor. Miranda's next shot took the LOKI down.
"Perfect!" she cried.
Garrus heard Shepard's disgusted snort over the radio, as she came into view on the other side of the base from where she'd been last and her next spray of bullets hit the line closing in on Zaeed. "Less crowing, more shooting!" To Garrus, she added, "To think I'd ever miss your god-awful dance pop!"
Garrus blinked, and took his next target in the shoulder instead of the head. Now why would any programmer take the time to teach a fake that? How would they even know?
Later, Garrus. Focus.
He took the merc down with a second shot, and said to Shepard, "I can patch you in again if you like."
He pulled up his playlist. He hadn't even been listening to it before, though "Die for the Cause" was probably more appropriate than it had ever been, now he thought about it. Shepard scoffed. "Don't do me any favors."
The flood of Eclipse over the barricade had slowed to a stream. The bridge and the entryway to the base was a sticky mess of brown—the less dramatic result of mixing vivid green salarian blood with the humans' dark red. The black silhouettes against the inferno of the couch Shepard had ignited were decreasing as they gunned down the mercs already in the base.
That was when Jaroth himself vaulted over the barricade. Garrus fired a shot at him, but it glanced off his powerful shields. He sneered in hatred. He completely ignored Shepard and her colleagues, glaring up at the balcony where Garrus stood. He muttered something and brought up his omnitool, then shouted up, "All right. Let's see how you handle this, Archangel. Go!"
He dodged back into cover, as Garrus watched a mechanical arm swinging over the barricade, carrying the white, hulking form of an YMIR mech.
Garrus threw himself down behind the balcony. "Damn. They're sending out the heavy mechs," he warned.
To his surprise, Shepard laughed, a low, throaty, anticipatory sound that warmed his heart even as he knew it would probably freeze the blood of their enemies. "Good," she said. "Don't worry: I took care of it."
The claw released the YMIR mech. Its sensors came on. Its cannons flared. Then it turned, sighted the mercs in Eclipse yellow, and started firing, the racket of its artillery ricocheting off the walls.
Through his visor, Garrus saw Jaroth's red outline behind the crate he was using for cover. His eyes widened, and his mouth opened just before the crate shattered into splinters and he was evaporated into a fine green mist. A hard, bitter satisfaction clenched in Garrus's stomach.
"It's gonna run out of mercs," Zaeed warned. "We'll have a problem again when it does."
"On it," Shepard said. "Garrus, Miranda? Help me with its shields?"
Three omni-tools flashed. Garrus's visor registered the YMIR shields die, and then he saw Shepard step out from cover, raising a grenade launcher she was pointing at the mech. "Miranda, Zaeed, get down!" she yelled, as she fired.
Metal shrapnel burst out from the blooming orange center of the explosion as the YMIR mech went up, and then there was silence in the base again, apart from the crackle of the fire still consuming the sofa on the ground floor.
Garrus waited for eight seconds, watching the barricade, but no one else came over. "I think they've stopped," he said. "Come find me before they regroup."
Shepard and her colleagues climbed the stairs. The door whooshed as they entered again. "I hope you weren't too attached to that couch," Shepard said as she rejoined him by the balcony. "I figured it was mostly beyond redemption."
Garrus hummed. "I'm thinking it's about time for a change of address, anyway."
"That's what I like to hear," Shepard said.
"You're kicking ass, Shepard," Garrus told her. "They didn't even touch me. And we got Jaroth in the process. I've been hunting that little bastard for months." He looked down, past the flames, at the pool of gore and fractured bones that had been behind him coming to Omega in the first place.
Shepard folded her arms. "Why?"
"He's been shipping tainted eezo all over Citadel space," Garrus explained. "Half the goods I seized back at C-Sec came from his team here on Omega. I took out a big shipment a while back and killed his top lieutenant in the process. Not surprised he decided to work with the other mercs after that."
He glanced at Shepard. She was gazing back at him, decidedly unimpressed, and he realized she hadn't meant 'why Jaroth?' at all. He dropped his eyes, but Shepard let it go, at least for now.
"We've still got Blood Pack and Blue Suns left," she said. "Think we can make a break for it?"
Garrus considered it. In less than ten minutes, Shepard and her colleagues had helped him take out all the remaining merc freelancers and all of Eclipse participating in the attack, to say nothing of their leadership. The trouble was, he had no idea of the numbers they still had on the other side of the bridge. "Maybe. Let's see what they're up to." He brought his gun up and looked across the bridge, only to realize that while he and Shepard had been fighting Eclipse, the others had been very busy. Krogan and vorcha were lining up, just in cover. Time for Garm's attack, I see. But something nagged at him.
"They've reinforced the other side . . . heavily," he reported. "But they're not coming over the bridge yet. What are they waiting for?"
Just then, the ground shook. Garrus's alarms started blaring all over the base, and he knew that they were in big trouble.
"What the hell was that?" Miranda demanded.
"Damn it," he and Shepard cursed at the same time. He glanced at her, then hastened to explain. "They've breached the lower level. Well, they had to use their brains eventually. You'd better get down there, Shepard. I'll keep the bridge clear."
Shepard looked him up and down, frowning. "Let's split up two and two—keep one of my team here," she suggested.
Garrus hesitated. Truth told, in his condition, he didn't like his chances of stopping a krogan and vorcha charge alone, but he knew from experience just how many men Garm had under his command. How many had he brought with him? I hate when everything depends on calculating exactly how much I've pissed someone off. "You sure? Who knows what you'll find down there."
Shepard sized up her two companions, and finally said, "Miranda, stay with Garrus. Keep him alive."
Garrus glanced over Shepard's compatriots, too. He knew why Shepard had made the choice she had. Of the two of them, Zaeed was the better killer. He looked like a seasoned merc—that was a Blue Suns tattoo on his neck, though he obviously wasn't with them anymore—but Shepard's Miranda was the higher-caliber operative, or he'd eat his boots. She was the one that could be trusted to complete any directive, say, like keeping a strung-out, exhausted turian from being trampled by a horde of angry krogan. Trouble was, that left Shepard with the killer merc who was used to only looking after his own hide.
The alarms kept shrilling, and Garrus reflected if they stood up here debating tactics much longer, Garm's forces would crush them from all sides and there wouldn't be any debate left to have. "Thanks, Shepard. You better get going."
"How do I get to the basement?" Shepard asked over the radio, already moving with Zaeed down the stairs.
"Keep going," Garrus instructed. "The basement door is on the west side of the main room, behind the stairs. I'll radio directions if you need help, but you've got to shut down those tunnels quick. Good luck."
Shepard chuckled softly. "I've got a belt full of heat sinks and a grenade launcher. What do I need luck for?"
Left alone with Garrus, Miranda didn't go downstairs this time. The Blood Pack was comprised mostly of krogan and vorcha. She was smart. She knew they'd need all the range they could get. Instead, she positioned herself behind a pillar at the top of the stairs. Anyone coming for Garrus would have to go through her first.
Garrus directed communications to her alone, so as not to distract Shepard downstairs. "So you're Miranda, are you?" he asked, using the time before the Blood Pack came over the bridge to fully restock his heat sinks. He eyed his assault rifle by the wall. He had a feeling he'd need it before the end.
Miranda responded, tense and irritated. "Miranda Lawson."
The first vorcha started vaulting over the bridge. Garrus's visor told him their shields were crap, but their armor was good, and they were armed with flamethrowers. He smiled, took aim at the gas tank on one poor bastard's back, and fired. Viscera spattered everywhere as the tank exploded. Better yet, the next guy's flamethrower tank ignited as well. The barricade splintered and shivered at the force of this second detonation, finally too battered to hold. At least five more vorcha went down in the blast. On the downside, the barricade had been stopping the Blood Pack from rushing the base all at once. Garrus reached down for his assault rifle.
His omni-tool buzzed, and he looked at his map to see a blinking dot that indicated Shepard had made it to the basement and was facing what had been their first tunnel out. "Get to that door and close the shutter before they can get through," he instructed her.
"On it," Shepard replied tersely. Below, Garrus heard the siren that indicated the blast doors were coming down again. One of the ululating alarms stopped.
"There's two more shutters," Garrus told Shepard. "Get them closed fast!"
Miranda's biotics were shredding the armor of one of the krogan charging. She fired off five shots with her heavy pistol that blew his crest right off his head. Orange blood sprayed, and his friends roared and howled with rage. Garrus focused his fire on the vorcha, on stemming the tide pouring through the breach in the barricade.
"A pleasure," Garrus told Miranda, getting back to their conversation.
"I would hope so," Miranda said through grit teeth, as another krogan went floating off the bridge in a nimbus of blue biotics. The energy she'd used in the last twenty minutes—Garrus wondered where she found the endurance. "Seeing as if we weren't here, these mercs would probably be plugging you full of holes right about now."
Garrus remembered Garm glaring at him, blood leaking from the scabs in his skull and mouth, pus from the ruins of the eye Garrus had taken from him for all of a day. He remembered the horde of slavering vorcha, shrieking and hollering as they chased him through Omega's filthy, darkened alleys. Or worse. "Yes, well, it turns out 'vigilante' isn't a career niche here on Omega after all," he said, forcing levity. "I'm Garrus—"
"—Vakarian, I know," Miranda interrupted. She threw another ball of biotic energy, then shot it on its way to a krogan soldier, igniting it—and him—in a howling mass of blue fire capable of both burning him to a crisp and ripping the particles that made him up apart.
Garrus popped in a new thermal sink and kept gunning down vorcha. Some of the newcomers were slipping in the pools of gore now. He focused his fire on them first. "You've heard of me?" he asked over the din.
"I made it a point to acquaint myself with all Shepard's old associates," Miranda responded. She fired at another krogan, but this one was shielded. Garrus flicked his forearm, and the krogan's shields went down in a burst of tech. Miranda shot out both his eyes and kept firing until he went down.
"Can't say I've had the same opportunity," Garrus said casually. "Who are you and the other guy? You're not Alliance."
"Zaeed's nothing," Miranda replied coolly. "Just a merc, a little better than these bastards." She grunted, and another krogan floated over the bridge to fall into the abyss. Between them, they'd killed dozens already, but despite that, and despite Miranda's bravado, Garrus noticed that the front line was getting progressively closer.
"Well, that's comforting," he said.
He heard the familiar chirp of the Locust start up, and knew Miranda had switched her weapon. She was worried, too, more concerned with the number of bullets she could fire at the enemy than the power of her shots. "If you're worried about Shepard, don't," she told him. "He'll do his job. We're paying him very well to keep her safe, among other things. Damn it, they're sending another wave!"
No, they weren't. There weren't many of them, but the new vorcha were coming up from the basement, not the bridge. He broadened the radio signal to reach Shepard again. "How's it coming sealing the shutters?"
Shepard's radio crackled, and in the background he heard snarling barks as well as the roars and shrieking of krogan and vorcha. Varren. "Coming," Shepard growled.
"There's not too many up here yet," he told her, "But don't feel like you can take your time."
"Got it." She meant it in both senses. The shutter siren went off again as she sealed another shutter. Only one more. Garrus let her go. It sounded like she had a real fight on her hands down there, and he and Miranda had more than enough to do upstairs.
"Who's 'we'?" he asked Miranda, gunning down the vorcha down by the wall. The bastards regenerated almost as fast as the krogan. Headshots were the only surefire way to kill them, but they were positioned so he had to lean out to shoot at them, exposing him to fire from the bridge. In less than two seconds, no less than three shots had hit his shields, and his HUD flashed a red 62% at him. Garrus dropped back behind the wall. "Who do you work for?"
Miranda's submachine gun chattered away, but the Blood Pack kept coming. She threw another krogan into the mercs flooding over the bridge. She didn't fight like Monteague, Mierin, or Ripper, he'd noticed. No. Miranda Lawson used her biotics like Kaidan, supplementing with tech. Didn't pack quite as much punch as he had, but she seemed to have a hell of a lot more endurance. Her amp cooled off faster too. L3. Probably refitted. She seems older than Kaidan. This isn't a woman that backs off from danger—that's a risky procedure.
"Shepard will brief you on everything after we get out of here," Miranda told him. "For now, let's just focus on that, Archangel. Damn," she cursed, as the first Blood Pack soldiers made it across the bridge, fanning out to find cover and fire at them from all sides. A krogan's shields went down to her tech. Garrus saw the opening and stood up to focus his fire on the man she'd picked. The krogan roared as bullets bit through his armor and tore his face to shreds. Garrus sent more bullets through his red, raging mouth, and the krogan went down at last.
That was when his blinking HUD registered. 5%.
Miranda fired frantically at the vorcha shooting up at him, trying to draw their fire. "Garrus, keep your head down!" she yelled. "How many chemicals are you on right now? Damn it! I did not follow Shepard into this hellhole you made just to lose you now!" She activated her own radio, "Commander, I hope you're almost finished playing with the mercs. We could use you back here."
"I'm working on it, Miranda!" Shepard snapped.
Garrus crouched behind the wall, waiting for his shields to recharge. Either it's really hot down there, or Shepard doesn't like Miranda much better than Zaeed. Takes a lot to get her to lose her cool. Though it could be both.
91%, Garrus's HUD read. He stood back up, just in time to see the warlord himself charging through the breach with the horde. At the same time, the last siren went off, and the alarms in the base went silent as Shepard secured the last shutter. It didn't matter now, though. He and Miranda had lost the advantage of the bridge. The Blood Pack was all over the ground floor, and in less than a minute, they'd have both of them pinned down up here.
"Get back here, Shepard," he told her. "They're coming in through the doors."
"Already on my way," Shepard panted. "Over and out."
A surge of biotic energy burst out from Miranda. Two vorcha were suspended and shredded with her mass effect fields, but then she gasped, and Garrus knew she was done. "Fall back," he ordered her. "You'll kill yourself!"
"Shepard told me to keep you alive, and I'm damn well going to do it," Miranda growled. Her voice was hoarse and ragged.
"Not if you burn out your brain you're not. Fall back! There are levo energy bars in the footlockers up here. Get some calories in you."
He heard rather than saw Miranda following his instructions as the distinctive sound of her Locust got closer and closer as she neared, firing over the balcony as she went. Garrus provided her with cover fire. One more flamethrower-carrying vorcha became the instrument of his friends' demise. This place looks worse than it did after the fight with the Shadows. Not that the property values here were that impressive to begin with.
Through the smoke from the vorcha's smoldering carcass, Garm, two more krogan, and three vorcha stepped into the base. Garm looked up with hateful yellow eyes and roared. "Rip them to shreds!" he howled.
Garrus brought up his rifle and fired. The vorcha right next to Garm went down, his face blown apart. Garm looked at the body, and grunted at the vorcha on his other side. "Watch my back."
Then another bullet ripped through that vorcha's skull from behind. It wasn't Miranda. Miranda was behind Garrus, inhaling Monteague's energy bars so fast that Garrus wondered if she'd choke, trying to get her energy reserves back up so she could use her biotics again.
It was Shepard. With Zaeed at her flank, she entered the main room again. Her face was flushed. She was sweating, but she looked like she was more or less in one piece. The problem was that Garm and his krogan were already charging up the stairs.
"There they go!" shouted Zaeed.
"Get ready for close combat!" Garrus yelled at Miranda. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod wearily, pale and wan. She brought up her SMG and took up position behind Monteague's bunk.
He heard gunfire downstairs as Zaeed opened up on the rest of the vorcha, but all Garrus could see were the three krogan closing in, Garm in the lead, blazing blue with biotics, his monster shotgun clutched in his fist.
"Hey, jackass!" Shepard's shout was a harsh, strangled gasp, completely winded. The fireball that burst from her tech generators and exploded over Garm's crest was far louder. It hardly made a dent in his barriers. That hadn't been the intention. Garrus could feel the heat sizzling from half the room away. Garm howled, momentarily blinded, and Shepard ran right past him and his friends and vaulted over the splintered, exploded remnants of the sofa upstairs, so she stood between them and Garrus.
She faced off with all three krogan, defiant. "Why don't you try me on for size?"
Garm's eyes narrowed, and his fists clenched. "You," he snarled.
Shepard raised her chin and raised her SMG. "Me," she taunted him. Garm's yellow eyes went red with the blood rage.
"Ahhh!" he screamed, and he and his friends charged right at her. Shepard opened fire, point blank.
Garrus and Miranda moved as one, and Garm's barriers stuttered and died in their combined tech attacks. Garrus blasted the krogan on the right as Shepard ducked under Garm's first swipe, never ceasing fire for a second. Miranda switched her Locust for her pistol and fired again and again at the krogan on the left. He staggered, tripped, and one last shot from Garrus put him down. His gun clicked and hissed. Out of clips, it steamed.
Garm had forgotten all about his gun in a blind frenzy. He hurtled at Shepard again, trying to pin her against the wall with that charge like a biotic freight train. Not her! Not now! Garrus scrambled frantically for a new heat sink, and Shepard? She dodged the crushing blow and slammed her elbow up behind Garm's, sending reverberations up his arm that made him drop his shotgun. It clattered away, as Shepard thrust her armored knee into Garm's leg, hard enough to throw him off balance at the same time she dug her finger into his eye—the same eye Garrus had shot out once. Garm roared, and moved his arms in to crush her, but with one step up on his off-balance leg and another step up on the edge of the balcony, Shepard launched herself right over his hump, jackknifing as she flew to fire an unbroken stream of bullets into the base of his neck.
Garrus had once fired four shots into Garm's head, and he had lived, but where Garrus's heavy pistol had failed, Shepard's Locust succeeded. One, two, three, twelve shots buried themselves in the krogan's brain. He was already dead as his momentum carried him off the balcony. His corpse slammed into the floor below.
Garrus peered down to see the warlord's bullet-ridden corpse, blood leaking from over twenty holes in his body. His skull was smashed beyond recognition, and most of his limbs had splintered at nasty angles in the fall. Zaeed looked up at him from the ground floor.
"Nice," he remarked.
"Wasn't me," Garrus said. His awe colored his tone.
Zaeed snorted. "Didn't say that it was. I heard her up there. Guess he was pissed his freelancers sold him out for you. We're all clear down here. Headed your way."
Garrus nodded vaguely and turned to Shepard, who was picking herself up off the floor where she'd fallen. He stared at her. The past half hour he'd been struggling to accept the impossible. Now he was absolutely certain.
This was Shepard, the real Shepard, back from the dead.
You can duplicate someone's face, drill them in N7 techniques until they're perfect, train them in the tactics she'd use, research and construct a memory complex to replicate her history and synthesize a personality, but you can't synthesize that—the essence of who she was in a crisis. She was an engineer, a sniper. Smarter than me—we killed dozens of krogan, and not once did I ever see her close with one. Never. With good reason—she's a quarter their size and a fraction of their weight. She knew better. But she did this time, because I needed her to. It's her.
Shepard raised her eyebrows at him and spread her arms. What?
Garrus shook himself. "Thanks," he managed at last, as Zaeed ambled over to join them at last. "They hardly got through to me. And we took out Garm and his Blood Pack. This day just gets better and better. He was one tough son of a bitch."
Shepard looked down over the balcony. "He mentioned you fought once," she commented.
"Yeah, we tangled once," Garrus confirmed. "Caught him alone. None of his gang to help him. I still couldn't take him out. I've never seen a krogan regen that fast. He's a freak of nature. He just kept at it until his vorcha showed up. It was close, but I had to let him go. Not this time."
Shepard shrugged. "Only the Blue Suns are left," she said. "If you're good to go, I say we take our chances and fight our way out." She glanced at Miranda.
Miranda was finishing another energy bar. She crumpled the paper and burned it to ashes in a biotic fist. "Ready for action, Commander."
"Good to hear," Garrus said. To Shepard he said, "Tarak's got the toughest group, but nothing we haven't faced before. I think you're right. Besides, he won't be expecting us to meet him head-on—"
All at once, the window behind them shattered, and a deafening drill of artillery bounced off the walls and reverberated through the base. All four of them dived for cover, and out the window, Garrus saw Tarak's gunship hovering in the streets.
"Get your head down!" Zaeed shouted.
"Damn it! I thought I took that thing out already!"
Shepard yelled across the din, "They fixed it, but not completely. I made sure of that."
There was more shattering glass. A group of Blue Suns mercs leaped through the back window. Rockets flew through the air, exploding against the opposite wall. The sheetrock cracked menacingly, and Garrus knew Tarak had been using all the time they'd been annihilating Eclipse and The Blood Pack to set up this attack. Shepard disappeared again, getting out of the gunship's sights, but it was flying away. Tarak probably had more men aboard, ready for an attack somewhere else. Zaeed took advantage of its retreat to start firing at the soldiers across the room. Miranda pushed one out the window.
A burst of fire signaled Shepard's reappearance. She had her sniper rifle to her shoulder again and fired off a headshot through a woman screaming abuse at her in the back before the man engulfed in flames had fully gone down. Garrus took out a man with a missile cannon himself, wondering just how friendly Shepard had gotten with the mercs before she'd found him. They seemed to want her dead almost as badly as they did him. Of course, no one likes the fly in the ointment that spoils an entire master plan. Such as it was.
Tarak's men were better trained and equipped than all the rest. A lot of them were ex-military, from the Hegemony and the Hierarchy and the Alliance all three, and they maintained a quasi-military structure. Their organization made them the heaviest hitters in the Terminus, but now, their rage made them sloppy.
Anger. Like fear, it's a double-edged weapon. It can make you deadlier, but it while fear's a paralytic, anger makes you reckless. These guys are good. They should know better than to charge in like this, but because they're mad, we can just mow them down.
Miranda's SMG hummed. Zaeed's assault rifle cracked out its staccato beat, and Garrus and Shepard fell into the old pattern. She worked out, disrupting the center of the line, destroying their attacks and sending the ranks into chaos with bullets and fire. He worked in, making sure none of the enemy ever had backup, that there was never anywhere to run, watching the perimeter.
Garrus kept an eye on the open window, but after dropping off the troops, the gunship didn't resurface. Instead, the next attack came from the complete opposite direction.
"They're rappelling down the side wall! Ground floor!" Garrus warned.
"On it!" Shepard replied. "These are the last line of attack. We'll go and bust our way out of here! Cover our tails, and watch for that gunship! Be ready to move when I say the word!"
"You got it, Shepard!"
Shepard jerked her head, and Miranda and Zaeed moved into formation after her and started heading for the stairs. Garrus targeted the last merc in the room with him. He got the batarian's head in the crosshairs, and fired. The man went down in a spatter of gore, and Garrus turned to cover Shepard's six.
The Suns were charging across the ground floor, pistols blazing, faces contorted in grief and hatred. Garrus heard Shepard open fire at the top of the staircase, Zaeed shouting a challenge. There were maybe seven of them left. Seven men and women between them and freedom.
Miranda's biotics blazed, and the burning couch downstairs exploded in an inferno of splinters and stuffing. A turian was blown into a wall. Zaeed perforated the corpse before it hit the floor. Another two went down with Shepard's bullets in their brains. That was when one of their engineers hit her shields with a tech burst, and Garrus saw them go out in a flash of blue, saw the engineer grin with bloody teeth and aim her pistol. Garrus took the shot.
She had good shields. His bullet didn't do much more than take them out and knock her back on her ass. Garrus changed his heat sink and aimed again.
That was when the unmistakable cacophony of heavy artillery filled the air again, and Garrus went flying. Tarak's amplified fury pounded over the gunship's speakers as bullet after bullet after bullet hit Garrus dead on. "Archangel! You think you can screw with the Blue Suns! This ends now!"
53 . . . 47 . . . 32 . . . 16!
Garrus hit the ground and rolled behind the decimated sofa, only barely clutching his rifle.
1%, his HUD screamed at him in angry red characters. Worse was the impact from the bullets—slowed by his shields and armor. He wasn't wounded, but he was injured. Every bone rattled, every nerve buzzed. He'd jarred his leg falling down. The stims had finally burned out of his brain, and Garrus felt the exhaustion of over forty-eight hours of nonstop fighting crash down on him full force. His eyes burned. His muscles ached, and Tarak's bullets tore into the sofa. It would be a cloud of stuffing and fabric shreds in moments. He was pinned down.
If I time it just right—maybe I can hit it again. At any rate, can't stay here.
Garrus adjusted his grip, and peered around the corner of the vanishing sofa—and his head exploded with pain.
Someone screamed his name.
It was worse than the crash into the Citadel after passing through the Conduit. Worse than landing on the hull of Sensat's ship. Worse than anything Garrus could have ever imagined. He tasted blood in his mouth, but couldn't spit. Venomous blue and purple spots danced before his vision. Pain blocked out the world.
Everything was a blur, and his ears echoed with the ring from the blast. He felt his hardsuit working to dispense medi-gel.
WARNING! CRITICAL INJURY!
The characters on his visor danced in his field of sight. They made no sense.
Somewhere, something exploded. Then it was silent.
Garrus blacked out.
"Garrus!"
When he came to, he realized it must have been only a moment. He gargled blood, trying to breathe. There was an insistent clicking—the systems of his hardsuit, trying to dispense medi-gel that had run out. He smelled burning—right, that's me.
Someone was looking at him. It took a while for the faces to come into focus. Shepard, and her two partners. I must look almost as bad as I feel—never seen Shepard that worried.
"We're getting you out of here, Garrus. Just hold on. Radio Joker," she ordered Miranda, beside her. "Make sure they're ready for us!"
"He's not gonna make it," Zaeed observed.
The pain was fading. Somewhere, Garrus realized this was a Very Bad Thing. He was going into shock; if the rocket didn't kill him, that definitely would. It was hard to keep his focus. His eyes slid past Shepard to a body bag on the other side of the room. He tried to remember who was in it. Weaver? Mierin?
Looks like they got me after all. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Spirits, who'll tell Sol? And Mom? If she's even . . .
Shepard was yelling something at Zaeed. Her voice was breaking. With difficulty, Garrus focused on her face again, and he saw tears running down her face. Shepard—crying for him. She was sweaty, her hair escaping that complicated knot she kept it in that he'd never thought was quite Alliance regulation. Her face was going all red and blotchy, but he would swear she was still the best damn sight he'd ever seen.
They call me Archangel, but it's really her. It was always her, right down to the miracle resurrection. Shepard—don't—it's not your fault. Mine . . . always mine. It's not your fault you were too late . . . I was stupid. Too slow . . .
She saw him looking, and he vaguely noticed a pressure on the side of his head increase—her hands, trying to stem the blood loss. "Garrus, don't—no, please. Stay with me, Garrus, damn it! Shit! Shit! Miranda, where's the fucking shuttle? Garrus, please—"
It was so wrong to see Shepard like this, so afraid, so panicked. Garrus tried to raise his hand. Shepard, don't—
The world went black.
A/N: Welcome! I'm glad you chose to check this out today. Leave a review if you have something to say. I reply to all my reviews, which are always very much appreciated but never required.
Updates are on Saturdays unless life or a bad case of writer's block intervenes. Right now I have about half the game dialogue recorded the way I want it, but I'm only a few completed chapters ahead of my posting schedule.
Shepard is an Earthborn Sole Survivor, an Infiltrator named Beth. She's mostly Paragon, but if you're familiar with the Renegade options on this particular mission, you already know that she has her moments of pragmatism. You might know her from The Disaster Zone, the series I'm writing about her thoughts and character development from childhood on. If you don't, you might want to check it out. You can find the stories on my profile. This story is concurrent with the fifth story in the series, "Resurrection," and will occasionally overlap, but as a novelization, there will be much, much more content here. And, of course, while Beth Shepard is obviously the deuteragonist and the catalyst for the story's events, the POV character here is Garrus. His relationship with Shepard (friendship, disagreements, and more-than-platonic bits) will be incredibly important in the story, but the aftermath of Archangel, his emerging leadership role, and the situation with his family (revealed in the Lair of the Shadow Broker files in canon) will all be just as important.
Regarding the more-than-platonic bits of the Shepard relationship: This is rated M, but it's rated M for turian-war-nerd descriptions of violence and concentrated exposure to Jack's potty mouth. Look elsewhere for your graphic alien sex fix. Or proceed with confidence as a regular reader of mine: this is an LMSharp fic. Through the angst and ugliness, there's always a positive underlying theme in my work, and relationships in the end are always healing and affirming and never gratuitous, and when it comes down to it, I like to give the characters a little bit of privacy when they get it on.
A note of acknowledgement to the greats that came before: I did take quite a bit of inspiration on Garrus's voice and how Archangel might have played out from The Naked Pen's incomparable Mass Effect: Interregnum. Like many people who have read that particular fic, which documents Garrus's time on Omega, I couldn't help but adopt most of the events into my personal headcanon. Naked Pen's Shepard is not my Shepard, and I think Garrus is a few years younger than he's written in Interregnum, and I've written him here as such. But if the style ever seems to blend, or the events Garrus remembers seem to tally with something you've read before, it's just because Interregnum had such a huge influence on me. Not trying to steal anything, and in fact I urge you all to go read the fic if you haven't already; I'm good, but I aspire to be that good someday.
Anyway, enjoy,
LMSharp