In a total reversal of their usual, Sara went to bed alone and woke to Reyes at her side.

It had taken her a long time to fall asleep on her own, tossing and turning in such a quiet room, so he must have returned very late. With his eyes closed, Reyes looked peaceful and Sara forgot for a moment that she was supposed to feel angry or indifferent and instead let herself be lulled by the steady ins and outs of his breathing. She couldn't recall what possessed her to stretch a hand out to trace the planes of his resting face, only that he intercepted her with his own hand and lazily brought her knuckles to his lips before he fully roused and thought better of it. Reyes opened one eye, then the other and coughed.

Sara found her hand suspended in the air where he'd left it and she jerked it back to her side. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. You look tired."

"Because I am." He splayed his palm out across his bare chest and sighed. "She'd sent many of her loyal people away before coming to Draulir, but there was still a lot of work, a lot of planning to secure the port."

She. Reyes was trying to be polite, but Sara couldn't decide if him intentionally avoiding Sloane Kelly's name made it that much worse. "So you've finally gotten everything you want." It sounded colder aloud than it had in her head.

If he wasn't awake prior, he was now. Reyes regarded her flatly, any gold or green in his hazel eyes muted beneath the lamplight. "What I want is peace. We get that by working with the angarans and the Nexus. We get that with an activated vault."

"Yeah." Sara nestled back down on his pillow and stared at him on the edge of his own bed that she'd commandeered. "Your methods are very different than mine, but I think our goals are the same. I think I allied myself with the right man."

He smiled at her before sighing, again. "I never intended for you to be there when I dealt with h-"

"With Sloane."

"Yes. With... Sloane." He seemed to choke on the other woman's name and as soon as he said it, was quick to move on. "And it was more than not knowing how you'd react."

"I wasn't going to let her kill you," Sara said, although truthfully, she wasn't entirely sure she would have had the means to stop Sloane if Reyes hadn't thought to install a sniper.

He accepted her words graciously and didn't contest their accuracy. "I work best from the shadows," Reyes said. "I do a lot of unpleasant things that get results. That's not you and it can't be."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to tell me who I am, now? This I've got to hear."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Reyes's grin was gone almost as quickly as it appeared and he stuck to business. "But in a strictly political sense, as Pathfinder you are a symbol and a figurehead. People are already trying to question and challenge you because you're young, you're good looking-"

"I'm not my father, I get it," Sara drawled.

"That's what I said!" he laughed. "You're proving yourself smart, compassionate and every time someone underestimates you, you've used it to your full advantage-"

Sara popped her head up from the pillow and rested it on a fist. "Mr. Vidal, are you admitting you underestimated me?"

"I am talking about you right now, the focus is not on me-!"

"Uh huh. "

"Of course I underestimated you, Sara!" Reyes raked his hands across his face to stifle a frustrated chuckle. "We were just supposed to have some drinks and have some fun, you were supposed to activate the vault out of the goodness of your heart, you weren't supposed to still be here- Why do you have such bad taste in men?"

"Daddy issues, maybe?" she murmured.

"You do not have the luxury of being morally ambiguous," Reyes told her. "If people are going to question every single step you make, you cannot have them also question your integrity."

"Are you saying I shouldn't have slept with you?" Sara asked, burying her smile in her arms. "Because, I mean, look at you. Have you seen you?"

"I was too busy looking at you," he replied, grinning. "Have you seen you?"

"I'm familiar with what I look like, yes," it was too easy for the words to slip from her mouth, "but I am interested in hearing what you see, if for no other reason than to know whether or not you need your eyes examined."

Too easy. Rationally, Sara knew she needed time to mull over what she felt and thought about her current situation with Reyes. She knew she was still shocked and appalled by the events in Draulir, but there was a certain rhythm to their conversations that was just so comfortable. Maybe if she was able to hop a ship and put some distance between them, but even though Reyes had been respectful and they had their first chaste night of actual sleep, he was still half dressed and in bed with her. She wanted to rely on old, familiar patterns. She didn't want to think with her head.

"There is nothing wrong with my eyes," Reyes was saying, "20/20 vision is required for all pilots."

"Uh huh," Sara replied. "You ready to use that 20/20 vision to see the inside of a vault, or do you need to rest up first after playing King of Kadara?"

"Maybe let's start with breakfast?" He scratched his chest.

"Well, I thought breakfast was a given..."

"You must be special, guaranteed a breakfast."

"I mean, I am the Pathfinder."

Reyes caught himself mid laugh and cleared his throat. "Yeah. You are. Let's get something to eat."

Whatever people could say about her tenure as Pathfinder, vaults were Sara's thing. She'd become so accustomed to being told to activate them and then immediately activating them without much fuss, that she had to consciously remind herself that what she did was integral to everyone's survival. As they stood over the opening in the ground that led to the gravity well, she couldn't help but savor the uncertain and furtive glances from Reyes.

Peebee didn't wait for any signal and stepped into the hole, the asari dropping from sight without ceremony. Sara snorted and gave Reyes a shrug. "Ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be." He chuckled nervously.

"It'll be fine," Sara told him. "Promise."

Reyes made a sound in the back of his throat, but before he could say anything, she grabbed his hand and hopped into the chasm.

Whatever yelp she eked out of him transformed into laughter the further they plummeted. In a matter of seconds, Reyes recovered and gripped her forearm to forearm as he righted himself. He brought his feet down from where they'd initially kicked wildly to a standing position, the only sign of their falling was the strange buoyancy of their hair. Pilots. Who was she kidding, trying to startle him with breakneck speeds?

Peebee met them when they landed. "Hey, you made it," she drawled. "Ready for the tour?"

"Something like that," Reyes replied.

Sara set to work immediately at the center console. "All right, vault." As SAM linked up with the interface, the door to the initial chamber opened to the vault proper. "Let's get Kadara up and running."

Reyes seemed a little taken aback. Maybe he thought he was just going to stare at Sara while she did everything from this one console? She shook her head as he peered through the doorway onto the actual vault. "This place is enormous," he murmured.

"Well, yeah." Sara tried for smugger than she actually felt as she joined him by the door. "It terraforms the entire planet. Did you think it was a single console?"

"Suppose I did," he breathed. "Never really had a reason to think about it."

Perhaps it was an impressive sight. Islands of towers and spires, a hidden world the size of a city block deep beneath the planet's surface. Devoid of wind with the only light softly emanating from these windowless, doorless structures, there was an otherworldly feel of stepping onto long forgotten, hallowed ground.

"You know, I've wondered with the way these things shift and move if they function as artificial tectonic plates," Sara said, abruptly shattering the mood, "but that's not my area of expertise."

Reyes snorted. "If it's not your area of expertise, then it's no one's."

"I didn't mean that as humility. Obviously whatever Dad did on Habitat 7 and what I've continued to do is working, just there's nothing here. Consoles, bots and structures... If there was a clay pot shard, glass vial, outline of a hearth, anything that pointed to life, I might know what to say about it-"

"How many planets have you brought online so far?" he asked.

"Including Kadara?" Sara mentally did the math, naming each world as she thought of it, in spite of SAM immediately providing the number. "This will be number five."

"Oh? Just five planets?" Reyes was openly smirking.

"Almost five. Well. Soon to be five."

"Is this how it's going to be for the entire outing?" Peebee interrupted sharply. "Because I am clearly too sober if this is the case."

Sara snapped her head toward her friend. "I've seen you drunk," she said. "I don't think you'd be able to outrun the purification system in that state."

"Outrun?" Reyes coughed.

"Yeah." Sara grinned. "Didn't I tell you? As soon as I synch up all the consoles and bring the systems online, it automatically decontaminates the entire vault. With heat."

His eyebrows shot up. "It must have slipped your mind."

"Must have," she agreed.

"Come on you two," Peebee groaned. "Race you to the main hub." She squeezed in between both of them as she made her way through the door.

"It's pretty straightforward," Sara said, stepping into the vault. "We locate the consoles and keep track of which direction we came from so we know where we run back to. Also, try not to fall to your death off any small islands. Especially because new islands and paths may appear as consoles come online."

Reyes stared at her a moment before he started to laugh.

Sara frowned. "What?"

"Straightforward," he repeated.

"Yeah..?"

"Because outrunning a decontamination protocol is a simple matter?"

"It's only like three steps to remember, so..."

"It's okay, it's okay." He couldn't seem to chuckle away his amusement. "Who needs simple? I don't like simple. I like complicated things!"

"It's not that bad!" Sara protested. "I even told you beforehand- I could have waited until I started it all, like, 'guess what? Run!'"

"Very true." Reyes cleared his throat, again. "But, your friend. She's gone quite far ahead, has she not?"

"That's just Peebee." But he wasn't kidding. True to form, Peebee had dashed forward and was manically touching and scanning everything with a fervor that defied every protocol drilled into Sara's skull during her first year at school. "I envy her energy, but just throwing yourself into things without securing the site, much less any artifacts... my professors would be having apoplectic fits."

"And you were never one to misbehave?" Reyes asked.

"Not on a dig site!" Sara exclaimed. "Things degrade with exposure to the air and Protheans have been extinct for fifty thousand years- you can't just pick up a new beacon at the market when some asshole breaks it because they felt like touching it-!"

He was staring at her. Grinning ear to ear like a cat with cream.

Sara paused. "What?"

"The look you have on your face," Reyes said. "It's the first time I've seen it with just conversation."

In lieu of any respectable response, she found herself laughing. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

His eyes darted down as he shuffled through the door. "Don't worry about it."

"I think I might," she murmured before raising her voice, "is that a blush I see?"

"Don't worry about it!" Reyes laughed it off. "The vault, Sara! We're here for the vault!"

"Right." He had a point. Again. Sara went to work, gently waking each console after however many countless years they remained dormant. The light arching from one console to the next reflected in a shimmering brilliance off the numerous spires, and cast everything in a green glow. They continued, tiptoeing in the darkness, the light of a single console a lifeline that blossomed outward to its connected brethren until the entire underground was alight.

The master console was on the farthest reaches of the vault and unique only in that it was slightly larger than the others. By now, everything else was humming and alive and SAM was primed for action. Sara hovered her hand over the commands and glanced at Reyes from the corner of her eyes. "You keep track of the direction we came?"

"Of course," he replied.

"Thanks." She opened her radio frequency. "Hey, Peebee. Get ready to hustle."

"Got it," Peebee's voice chirped from Sara's omni tool. "Consider me hustling."

Sara locked eyes with Reyes and grinned. "Time to run..." she entered the necessary commands, "now!"

For as much as Reyes liked to saunter casually into things, the man could run. Fast. Reyes Vidal took off in a burst that would have left Sara gaping if she also hadn't needed to sprint. There was a groan from the walls of the vault that always preceded the hot, smoky puff of sterilizing death, so she spun around and huffed it after Reyes as fast as her feet would carry her.

Somewhere between springing away from the cloud of smoke that billowed from underneath the command console and using her jetpack to heavy handedly thrust herself across a smattering of islands the size of stepping stones, Sara was joined by Peebee. The asari grinned, but said nothing and conserved her breath for the last stretch of ground between them and the exit. Through the door, Reyes was already by the gravity well and Sara took solace in the fact that as impressive as the speed of his retreat was, it left him hunched over his knees and panting. She and Peebee hip-checked one another as they scrambled through the doorway, the last vestiges of the decontamination protocol hissing and evaporating into the air behind them.

"We're all here," Sara wheezed. "Good."

"Was going to tell you what a nice time I had." Reyes dropped to the ground and took in a few gulps of air. "Then we had to go running for our lives."

"True," she agreed with a snort. "But at least no one was shooting at us this time."

"Come on, Ryder." He smirked. "What else would we do if not for people shooting at us?"

For however clever the two of them may have felt in the moment, the implication was clear enough for Peebee to roll her eyes. Sara found her laughter choked in the back of her throat, so she glanced toward her omni tool. "Hey," she said. "According to SAM, Kadara's viability just jumped up by 40%. Sounds like a job well done."

"Not that I need an excuse, but I can certainly drink to that," Peebee said before hopping into the gravity well.

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Reyes agreed as he watched the last bit of the asari disappear upward. When Peebee was truly gone, he turned back to Sara. "Ryder. Thanks."

She shook her head. "I didn't do it just for you."

"Maybe a little bit for me?" He looked hopeful.

She bit down on the automatic groan. "Don't push it." Still, it didn't stop her from holding out her hand and helping to heft him back up to his feet.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Reyes promised.