When Sara and Scott Ryder were five years old they would try to play "house." Try, because usually, they would spend more time arguing over who got to be the dad than actually playing. Why would either of them want to be the mom or baby when whoever was dad got to run away, explore and invent fantastical adventures? Be a superhero.

Sara sat on the edge of her bed until she adjusted to the artificial environment of the Tempest. When she had warmed to the point where her shivering stopped, she removed her boots and peeled off her armor. She'd have to go back out there again- there were monoliths to activate, there always were- but for now she could pretend that nothing was important and that Sara Ryder didn't exist.

While Sara had cold feet (literally and figuratively) over murdering sleeping angara, SAM had hailed an SOS. Kallo and the Tempest came swooping in for an extraction and rescued Sara's team along with the Moshae. That left room for more angarans in Heckt's shuttle. A whole whopping three. There was talk of stealing some of the kett transports on the landing pad, not that they had any pilots to fly them, as she left. Maybe they were able to radio the outpost for more assistance.

Moshae Sjefa was right. Sara should have blown the place to hell.

Still, even knowing what she did now, Sara was unsure if she would have done anything differently. The thought of making the call to kill so many made her guts churn with frozen blocks of ice.

Jaal hadn't left the Moshae's side since her rescue. The rest of the crew ambled back to the ship in staggered bursts, whether it was Liam and his excited bluster, or Vetra and her frost kissed cheeks. Cora had taken up residence in the Meeting Room and was busily relaying messages with an enviable efficiency. All Sara could think about was dinner.

She had promised Jaal a meal, hadn't she? Would he even still be interested with the chaos that was swirling around them?

"Wow, was that cold!" Peebee exclaimed as she let herself into the Pathfinder's cabin. Not a knock on the door, no hesitation and the asari was sprawled across Sara's bed like she owned it.

"What's the chance of the vault transforming Voeld into a tropical paradise?" Sara muttered.

SAM answered honestly, that a more realistic prediction was that the overall temperature would only raise slightly, but Peebee recognized it for the joke it was meant to be. "Sorry, Ryder. The only margaritas I foresee on this planet are frozen."

"You found that ship, I take?" Sara asked. "The Periphona?"

"What was left of it." Peebee shrugged a single blue shoulder. "Logs confirmed a kett attack and our illustrious 'huntress' is busy trying to use it to track the ark's path."

"You don't seem too bothered by the ark being missing," Sara realized. She leaned back on the bed and let her head bump against Peebee's elbow.

"Eh." Peebee shifted and began to finger comb Sara's hair. "I'm not automatically loyal to someone because we're the same species and everyone important to me was on the Nexus."

"You have family on the Nexus?"

"Family, no. People important to me, yes." Peebee tugged at Sara's hair. "I've never braided hair, before. Is it like rope? Or is this some completely rude faux pas that I know nothing about?"

Sara shook her head. "Rope is easier, because it's all one length."

That was all the permission Peebee needed and she immediately began to separate out strands of hair. "Looks like your mission was a success."

Sara scoffed, "kind of."

"Just kind of?"

"We rescued the Moshae," Sara told her. "But we also found out that kett are angara, I guess."

"You guess?" Peebee repeated. "Do you mean they're angara like humans are apes or like I'm an elcor on account of my father?"

"No, I mean they're angara like they inject angara with tubes of shit and they turn into kett." Sara blinked and sat up. "Your father was an elcor? Really?"

"Sincere reply: Really," Peebee droned before she fell into a fit of giggles. "We're asari, Ryder. We only use the father species for gene variation, it's not a fifty-fifty split. That's wild! Did the angara know about it?"

"Nope," Sara said.

"Wow," Peebee let the word trail off. "How's Jaal handling it?"

Sara shrugged. "I figured he'd want to grieve in private with the Moshae."

"You know, there aren't always the right words for a situation," Peebee said. "If you don't know what to say, maybe don't say anything? Just be there, maybe braid his hair?"

"Yeah, I'll just braid Jaal's nonexistent... oh."

Peebee loosened the plait with the tips of her fingers. "It does look cute, if that's any consolation."

"You think?" Sara shook her head and felt the elaborate braid whip across her ear.

"Not bad for a rural brat from Hyetiana," Peebee declared.

"You grew up on Hyetiana?" Sara asked.

Peebee wagged a finger in the air. "Yeah, but that's a whole lot of blah, blah, blah, that even I'm not interested in."

"Uh huh." Sara crossed her arms. "So disinterested that you casually drop it into a conversation out of nowhere."

"Clever! I like that." Peebee grinned at her. "Almost as clever as grilling me about my past to put off checking on Jaal."

"Okay, okay, fine." Sara pushed herself off her bed and paused to admire her hair in the mirror on her nightstand. "Not sure if it suits me, but you're right. It is cute."

Peebee answered that by whiffing a pillow toward her head.

"I'm going!"

In the med bay, Jaal was still at the Moshae's side. She was purple, like Jaal, but with a duskier complexion. Dr. T'Perro idly peered at IVs and charts and put on a poor performance of not blatantly eavesdropping on their whispers.

"I'm sorry we fought. What we saw will set our cause on fire."

"Yes. My broken heart can't even process it."

Still at the door, Sara cleared her throat. "Lexi, can you give us a minute?"

Ever the consummate professional, Dr. T'Perro nodded. "Sure thing, but go gentle. She's in a fragile state." She lingered by the doorway, and Sara just glared silent and unmoving, until the doctor finally vanished down a corridor.

"Did she just call me frail?" the Moshae asked.

Sara shook her head. "Fragile."

When she didn't elaborate, Moshae Sjefa pushed herself up to a sitting position on the medical bed. "Jaal says you're a Pathfinder from the Milky Way."

Maybe Sara should have legitimately answered, maybe it was just a pleasantry. "Do you feel up for a talk?"

"Ah." Sjefa let her head fall back against the headboard as her tone cooled. "So now you value what I have to say?"

Oh, what the fuck. As Sara stood there gaping, she was pretty sure she could hear SAM's processors going into overdrive. Jaal's hand still firmly gripped the Moshae's, but he politely averted his eyes from either woman. Great.

"It was a rescue mission," Sara said, hoping the disbelief was evident in her voice. "If our intent was to kill you all, it would have been easier to leave you to the kett."

"You had an opportunity to end it," Sjefa told her. "Instead, you saved a few at the cost of potentially many. As a leader, it was a hard, but necessary choice."

"Guess I'm not much of a leader, then."

"Oh?" The Moshae's anger seemed to dissipate. She pulled her hand away from Jaal so it could rest in her lap. "I would praise you for that insight, if the consequences weren't so dire. If you don't wish to lead, Pathfinder, should I direct my conversation elsewhere?"

That would be nice, but the only suitable replacement was dead. Sara Ryder: humanity's best shot. Now wasn't that frightening?

"Until we can locate another Pathfinder, I'm afraid I'll have to do," Sara sighed. "So, the facility. What's the purpose of all that?"

The Moshae exchanged a look with Jaal. Just a look- SAM knew to document any instance of strange electrostatic energy- before she continued. "They call it Exaltation," she said. "They believe that those they exalt are given a great gift."

"Gift?" Finally, something from Jaal. "They snatch us. Defile and shatter us! The ones we love! I... I can't..."

She silenced him with a hand to his arm. "It's a complex genetic construct," Sjefa explained, "an interchange of traits that the kett use to advance their species."

"So they steal genes..." SAM had his conclusions and Sara her own, but it seemed rude to immediately jump to them. Sara paused and when she was answered with dead air, she added, "but why?"

"Reproduction."

Maybe Peebee was closer to the truth by comparing her elcor father, after all.

"Domination," Jaal hissed. "Tyranny. Annihilation!" His voice grew, arching louder with every word. Still angry, still raw, but Sara was just relieved he wasn't crying while waving his rifle around, anymore.

"Yes," Sjefa agreed in a way that made it sound like Jaal's outbursts were commonplace. "And yet, the Archon didn't take me to his ship to transform me."

She chatted away as easily as if they were sipping tea and discussing the weather. "I hung immobile, tormented, never sleeping, brought to him on a whim. He showed me Remnant tech and beat me when I wouldn't speak."

"The Archon wants Rem tech," Sara realized. "Of course."

Sjefa chuckled softly. "He's obsessed. Like you are." Apparently, annoyance could transcend whatever species barrier, because she spoke quickly over Sara's open mouth so she couldn't interrupt. "Yes, Jaal told me. You rescued me, hoping to get into Aya's vault."

"Obsessed?" Sara spluttered. She was really beginning to resent how people kept talking down to and thinking they had some kind of intellectual edge on her. Was it better that they mistook her apathy for agreement? Her lack of words meant that she was already done and past the conversation, not that she'd been outsmarted.

She asked SAM to comb his databases for a polite and diplomatic phrase that could be used in lieu of, "shut the fuck up."

While he obliged her, Sara laughed back at the Moshae. "I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with oxygen, but I know I'll die without it. I've been doing hard reboots of these vaults and getting them back online. It's making worlds habitable, again. It's mutually beneficial."

"I feel for your people, in a way that you clearly do not for mine." Sjefa could hold a grudge, it seemed. The angara laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. "But you're right. Emotion must never get in the way of science. I'll take you."

"Thank you."

Sara reached out a hand, but stopped short of Jaal's shoulder. Funny, how irritated she'd get with Cora or Liam for such a condescending gesture only to find herself moving to instinctively give Jaal the same comforting pat she loathed. She dropped her hand, and grinned sheepishly as she ended with a shrug, instead.

The exchange wasn't too awful. Peebee felt the need to check in on her, and Sara in turn, checked in on Jaal. Perhaps the responsible thing to do was check in on the entire crew. Easy enough and good for morale.

Her plans of goodwill immediately changed when she heard Liam grunting and straining in the storage room, however. With the door intentionally left wide open, his shirtless physique was on display as he completed push up after push up. Liam's wiry muscles glistened with a sheen of perspiration and she could practically taste a frenetic, crackling energy in the air as he counted aloud.

Nope. Not today. Today, she lacked the fortitude for that emotional sinkhole.

Sara took one step, then another backwards and away and quietly veered out of sight. It wasn't a complete dereliction of duty, not exactly. There were other crew members to check in on besides Liam. Maybe Vetra and Drack were having a fantastical adventure in the kitchen. They'd have beer, too.