Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect. This fictional story is not making me any money (unless BioWare takes note and decides to pay me).
A Hundred Memories for the Journey Home
Day Nine
(Week 2, Day 2)
"Tell me what's new today, Glyph," Liara said, feeling uncharacteristically optimistic for some reason. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that Joker was no longer on her mind in such a worrisome sense. He'd found a new project, and with it, new purpose. Right now he had hope again, and Liara didn't want to take that from him. She dreaded what might happen if he ever saw the full report she had about Tiptree.
That caused her cheerful mood to dim significantly, but Liara pushed it away. That was what being the Shadow Broker meant—collecting all the information possible, despite it being good or bad. The longer she wore the mantle of the galaxy's most powerful informant, the more Liara was coming to realize that the intel she received only took on positive or negative connotations based on who she sold it to.
"Goddess," she said aloud, sitting down at one of the terminals in her quarters suddenly. Am I so calloused? Liara paused and reflected on that. Don't I have to be?
Glyph, however, didn't notice her moment of thought and hadn't wasted time in compiling the morning's report for her, based on the top issues she was tracking currently, as well as the recurring points of interest in all the networks she had access to. "You have received eighty-seven applications for the proposed agent positions within the new krogan government. I have filtered them and deem seven as worthy of your review. We have reestablished connections with Agents Garath, Nedra, Urnik, and Zarak. Garath and Zarak will need new placement due to the destruction of the colonies they were circled in."
Liara pulled their dossiers and transferred them to a datapad. Glyph had already prepared the applications for the krogan government infiltrators separately, and she stacked the pads together. "Go on," she encouraged the drone.
"I have updated each relay location on your display with its progress from yesterday, and transferred a copy to the War Room as you previously suggested," Glyph continued. "Thusfar we need not send help; but the Caleston Rift and Ninmah Cluster relays are being closely monitored. There have been reports of minor conflict between the repair forces."
Liara dismissed that as a lower-priority concern, what with learning about Kaidan's new orders yesterday. It appeared that they wouldn't be at the Caleston Rift relay as soon as she'd hoped, but there was nothing to be done about that. In the meantime, if the Shadow Broker needed to pull some strings and provide support or supplies, she could arrange that. As yet, however, the rest of the galaxy appeared to be doing its part to restore the relay network.
"Updated lists of casualties and survivors are also available," Glyph went on. "I can also provide them to the crew."
"Yes," Liara said with a nod. "Make that automatic unless any of the flagged names come up."
"Understood," Glyph said. "Parameters updated. You have also received status reports from Agents Angara, Drasnik..." Liara listened with half an ear, using a third datapad to download all the information Glyph mentioned for review.
"Any other galaxy news I should consider?" she asked Glyph when the drone appeared to wind down from its recitation of agents.
"There are general reports of pirate and merc activity beginning to resume in the Terminus Systems," the drone said. "There is a disturbance on the planet Reiao. Several known Cerberus facilities are reported to have increased activity. The krogan have begun to relocate fifteen percent of their technical population to the Serpent Nebula relay, to speed repairs."
In exchange for the assistance the krogan had rendered the turians, and also in part due to the unlikely respect Wrex and Primarch Victus had grudgingly afforded one another, the turian Hierarchy had conceded part of the Arrae system back to the krogan. Notably, the provision included Gellix and Antinax, which the krogan had originally lost to the turians after the Krogan Rebellions. Wrex has to be pretty pleased with himself, Liara thought with a small smile. Naturally, then, it was in the krogans' best interest to get to the Minos Wasteland to lay official claim to their new homeworld, despite whatever condition it was in after the Reapers had come through. Liara's reports suggested that casualties had been minimal, as the only population on Gellix had been penal colonies. Even then, the Reapers would have had a hard time taking the planet, thanks in part to all the leftover live ordinance lying around.
Wrex certainly isn't afraid of a challenge, she thought, getting up and going to the door with her fresh datapads in hand. I'm sure he accepted those planets as much for their symbology in krogan history as for their convenient placement. "Thank you, Glyph," Liara said over her shoulder. "Please compile a further, in-depth report on each of the Cerberus locations with increased activity. Those that have a threat assessment of fifty or higher forward anonymously to Specialist Traynor through the discreet channels."
"Yes, Dr. T'Soni," Glyph said, and hummed about his work.
She ventured out into the mess area; she still had a few packets of her favorite tea left in reserve, and Liara thought she'd brew herself a cup while picking up crew gossip. That was one of the small indulgences she still permitted herself; spending time among a group of people that accepted her despite being an asari and just listening. Perhaps that was what had piqued her interest about being an information broker in the first place.
She set some water to boil before looking around for a prospective seat. She saw Dr. Chakwas sitting alone, tapping her fingers on a mug of what was probably coffee as she pored over a datapad of her own, her normally smooth features drawn and pensive. Whatever she was reading, Liara didn't think it was good news.
At the next table, it appeared that the new pilot, Holloway, had fallen asleep halfway through what looked like the remains of her dinner. She was attracting looks from a couple of the crewman who had risen early to get a head start on breakfast. Eventually, one of them took pity on Holloway and shook her shoulder. Once roused, the pilot rapidly excused herself and disappeared, her wild black hair obscuring her face, which Liara was sure was red from embarrassment.
It's hard being an outsider, she reflected as she removed a cup from a cupboard nearby and placed her tea packet at the bottom. Steam momentarily clouded the air as she poured the water in, and then Liara chose a spot near Dr. Chakwas, in hopes that she might deduce what was troubling the physician.
"Oh, good morning Liara," Chakwas greeted, the furrows between her eyebrows lessening somewhat.
"Good morning," Liara said in return, setting her mug down with her datapads. "Is everything all right?"
The doctor's face went through a couple of different expressions; unhappy, frustrated, and finally Chakwas settled on stoic. "It's about the medical net; particularly the lack of resources able to get to Earth for the survivors." She shook her head. "It's fortunate that the forces remaining are able to still locate people alive there, but the amount of triage needed and the sheer medical supply inventory that would need to be maintained..." She went suddenly silent as she realized she was ranting a little bit.
"How long will the current supplies last?" Liara asked gently. "Are people in danger of not being treated at this moment?" Her mind was already hard at work on galaxy map calculations, her current resource network which was still seventy percent intact despite everything that had happened, and ships that could be diverted.
"The numbers the European MedNet gave suggest that if rescue efforts continue with no fluctuation in the survivors found, then even basic supplies like general antibiotics and medi-gel will be gone in two weeks," Chakwas said, unaware of Liara's thoughts. "The repair estimations on the Exodus Cluster relay are three weeks, minimum."
Liara blew on her hot tea for a moment, letting the yaminni leaves' delicate scent curl around her in a relaxing fog that took her back to late evenings spent holed up in her reading room with her best friend from childhood, Cheria. Those had been innocent days, so far removed from this reality that it might as well have been a dream.
Dr. Chakwas was still speaking, and Liara forcibly returned her attention to the present. "Also, we finally have a full report on the casualties from the other colonies in the Sol system. Mars, as expected, was hit the hardest. The Reapers destroyed most of the Alliance naval academy, as well as the original Prothean discovery site where humanity discovered the mass relay technology. Ninety percent of the cities were leveled..." Karin Chakwas passed a hand over her eyes, and Liara saw that it was to brush away tears. "I had many friends and former colleagues there."
Liara reached over the table and touched the doctor's arm in sympathy. "I am sorry," she said sincerely. She remembered vividly how Thessia had looked when they had first landed; at times the image seemed to burn as a raw scar in her mind's eye. "It is very hard to see people you love turned into nothing more than a name or statistic."
"War is about casualty statistics," Chakwas said with a calm poise that Liara hadn't expected. "I once told Commander Shepard that the soldiers I care for are all my children, and with this war, I lose a little bit more of my family. Only now it isn't a little. I learned a long time ago that grieving over the dead is to ignore the living family and friends left." She placed her hand over Liara's and patted it, much like a parent would have done. "I have all of you here to remind me of that," Karin said with a small smile.
She cleared her throat suddenly and straightened her uniform before standing and collecting her dishes and her datapad. "Well, I suppose it's back to those consult requests I received from the krogan. You would think that Mordin consulted with me on all of his research, the way they ask." Dr. Chakwas managed a slight laugh and shook her head. "Oh, and Wrex sent me a message along with them; apparently he went to visit the commander and her mother. He told the commander a particular story...and wanted to know if I knew about painting flowers on a suit of armor...?"
Liara felt her face turning several shades bluer. She glanced around conspiratorially before asking, "Didn't you tell him no?"
"Of course," Chakwas said, her usual mischief returning a bit. "However, my wonderful shooting star motif on Garrus' armor was unparalleled."
"Yes, it was," Liara said, unable to restrain a laugh along with a wry shake of her head. "It really was a shame about Ashley's allergy to the paint, though."
"Oh, one simple antihistamine injection and she was right as rain," Chakwas said calmly. "I felt more sorry for the crewman who saw you go out of Shepard's quarters for the medkit."
Liara had to put a hold on that particular memory as the main battery doors parted and Garrus came out, ostensibly in search of whatever turians had for coffee. Her forehead wrinkled slightly as Liara realized she had no idea what Garrus' preference was. Nevertheless, Liara cleared her throat a bit obviously and inclined her head so that Dr. Chakwas turned to see what she was looking at.
The human woman's eyebrows went up in silent acknowledgement, and she turned so that Garrus couldn't see her face. "We'll talk about it later," she whispered. "When Tali gets back." And then Chakwas took her dishes to the sink, greeted Garrus with a good morning, and headed back into the med bay.
Liara watched her go with a bemused expression, until the turian came over with a dextro protein bar and a cup of hot...something. He sat across from her, and Liara grouped her datapads closer to herself in order to give him some room.
"Morning, T'Soni," he said in a rougher tone than normal.
"Are you sleeping in the battery now?" she teased him as Garrus took his first sip. He cleared his throat, and his subtones evened out.
"I've been sleeping there for two months, Liara," he said with his version of a grin. "One of the perks of dating the captain is that if you request to install your own flexi-mesh bed due to recurring spinal issues...she'll let you."
"I've never seen a bed in there," Liara said in some surprise.
"Well...it's one of those collapsing hammock-like things. And actually, Dr. Michel suggested it," Garrus confessed. "Might have even had a hand in inventing it, but who knows. Makes it easy to pick up and move to a human ship on a moment's notice."
"Well, with Wrex gone you are a minority," Liara said, drinking her tea. "I think even Tali uses the human beds."
"T'Soni, don't you ever come out of your office?" Garrus asked with exaggerated exasperation. "Tali's used my hammock; did you know she once locked me out of the battery and told me to go sleep in Shepard's cabin? She finally bought her own a month ago when I threatened to calibrate her shotgun to make a particular noise when she fired it."
"What noise?" was the only thing Liara could come up with in response.
"There's a certain bird from Palaven; I've heard it compared to the Earth kookaburra or the Thessian brillin," Garrus started, but Liara started to snicker behind her hand before he finished.
"Garrus Vakarian, how does Shepard put up with you?" she asked.
"Sometimes I wonder if the better question is: how did such a band of tricksters and mischief-makers save the galaxy not once, but three times?" Garrus worked a piece off of his protein bar and ate it while waiting for Liara to finish sipping her tea.
"I have long since blamed any 'trickster' qualities I may have picked up entirely on Shepard," Liara said in excuse. "Although Doctor Chakwas has a similar propensity—" She stopped suddenly as Garrus cocked his head.
"Chakwas...?" he prompted. "She doesn't strike me as the type. How did you find out about that?"
"Um...well...that is..." She fumbled for a moment and Garrus continued with his breakfast. "She sent a message to Shepard about how she helped...arrange her parents' meeting."
"Liara, are you intercepting the tightbeam transmissions?" Garrus asked suspiciously.
She glanced around at the increasing number of occupants in the mess area and decided to simplify her answer. "Copying for historical records."
"Right," he replied after a lengthy pause, suggesting that he didn't quite believe her. "Well, for your 'historical records' information, I'm planning to send a message this morning and would appreciate it if it wasn't available for public record." Garrus finished his brief meal and tossed the rest of his drink back before standing.
"Would I do that?" Liara asked with a smile.
"You've been trained by the best, T'Soni," he answered with an amused flair of his mandibles. "Of course you would." Garrus washed his cup and put it away, but on his way to the starboard lounge, he paused and approached Liara again. "Have you sent anything to Shepard yet?" he asked. "I haven't seen your name on the sign-up roster."
Liara turned blue again. "I...no. I haven't...thought of anything."
Garrus made a grunt that sounded more like a hum thanks to his subvocals. "You've always been a private person, Liara. Maybe that's the problem. The only thing anyone knows about you is all that Prothean research you've done."
"Well, that's what I'll be remembered for," Liara said defensively. "I never want to be overshadowed by some of the things that happened in my personal life." She stopped herself, surprised at the amount of fervor in her words.
Garrus looked equally nonplussed, but he recovered faster. "You know better than anyone, Liara: if Javik can find something worth sharing, you can, too." It wasn't meant as a harsh reproach, but the asari glanced down at her datapads, her face suddenly warmer than she liked.
"You're right," she said softly after a moment, when she sensed Garrus hadn't moved. Liara raised her face to him, to show that he needn't be concerned. "I know what I'll send to Shepard...but I need Tali's help. And Dr. Chakwas, too."
The turian gave her a second perplexed look in as many minutes. Then he raised his hands in resignation. "You know, I don't need to know. It already sounds sketchy." Liara had the grace to smirk at him as smugly as she could manage before deliberately picking up one of her datapads and turning herself over to her work. There were a lot of her agents that were going to need new assignments, and soon...
. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .
This was it; the moment he'd been trying to plan for since yesterday. His assistance with Javik's message had bought him one more night to try and prepare, but in the end Garrus had found himself compiling resource reports from the Arrae system for Victus in order to better coordinate any sort of tactical withdrawal from the system so that when the krogan arrived to claim their new homeworld there wouldn't be anymore uncomfortable situations...like a bomb buried for centuries that nobody thought to mention.
Wrex would have a field day with me if he found out I actually knew about a bomb this time, Garrus thought, tapping into the camera drone. And by 'field day' I mean 'field training' with me as the target.
He took a deep breath and eyed the dark lens on the drone apprehensively. "Just do it," he muttered under his breath. Garrus engaged the recording circuits, blinking a little as the bright beam of light hit his face.
"Admiral Shepard, it's, uh, Garrus Vakarian. But you can call me Garrus," he began, and immediately knew he was rushing. Garrus forced himself to take a deep breath, and focus on smoothing out his subvocal flanging.
"I wanted to thank you for the story you shared with me; Shepard—uh, the commander—never told me much about her past...well, besides the birthday and Christmas traditions," Garrus confessed. "For awhile, we were playing a sort of game where we tested racial stereotypes out on each other...you remember I told the story about her hair."
He reminded himself to flash a smile, because the memory had indeed been humorous for him upon the retelling. "Well, she got me back for that. And it's harder to do; turians aren't known for many...weaknesses, being a militarized race and everything."
Garrus paused, weighing his next sentence. "If you've heard my version of a krogan battle song by now, then I can't possibly embarrass myself further. So...it was early one morning. Too early, and Shepard had just managed to break the coffee maker..."
. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .
"What in the—Shepard!"
The commander didn't take her eyes off of the smoking coffee maker, which she had already unplugged and upended into the sink. "This is not what it looks like," she said, her words muffled by the protein bar half-shoved in her mouth.
Garrus circled the scene of the crime, his senses on high alert. "It looks like you put the water in the wrong reservoir," he said with a sigh.
"And possibly left something made with rubber on the heating element," Shepard said, or at least, he thought she said. Garrus reached over and pulled the protein bar out of her mouth.
"That explains the smell," he replied, wrinkling his nose ridge. "You'd think after a few years of practice, you'd stop being a menace in the kitchen."
"What's that? I can't hear you, I think my brain is still offline from lack of coffee," Shepard shot back, attempting to scrub the burned rubber off of the hot plate at the bottom of the coffee maker.
"You sure it's that and not because your boyfriend discovered you Achilles hair? I mean, heel?"
Shepard set the machine upright and stuck the new dehydrated coffee pack Garrus fished out of a cupboard into the appropriate chamber. "We're not talking about that," she said, her cheeks pinking slightly.
"Oh?" Garrus inquired, teasing evident in his voice. He reached for her.
She swatted his hand away, looking around for stray crewmembers already up at that early hour. "Not before coffee, Vakarian," Shepard said, snatching her protein bar back and handing him the carafe. He filled it with water and poured it into the correct tank without comment. The commander watched him, as if to make sure that she could repeat the action when called upon.
He pulled a coffee mug down from a cupboard while the maker percolated away rapidly, a rich, nutty smell filling the mess hall. A few seconds of instant gratification later, Garrus poured himself the first cup of coffee, grabbed his own ration bar, and sat down at a table.
"Hey, did you hand me dextro coffee for the maker?" Shepard asked, watching him take a slow, luxurious sip. When Garrus didn't bother replying, she rolled her eyes. "Brain function is down sixty percent," she said under her breath, but just loud enough for him to hear. She left his line of vision and presumably went to put a new carafe in the coffee maker for levo coffee.
Garrus calmly unwrapped his breakfast and went about breaking it into pieces that he could dip in his coffee. He wasn't aware that Shepard was behind him until he felt a light impact on the underside of his fringe. Turians didn't have tactile sensation beneath those bony protrusions, but he could still sense when something hit one.
"Oh, no. Shepard, somebody will hear—!" Much like the night before, however, once the tips of her fingers found the soft, scaled skin where the spikes of his fringe met the top of his head...he suddenly found no reason to keep talking. She worked her fingers in tiny circles, rubbing slowly and deliberately. Head massages weren't uncommon to turians; they were the fastest way to dispel tension headaches. In addition, turian adolescents in particular usually had them often, as the skin around their growing fringe and cranial plates was always sore until they finished maturing.
But, what most people didn't know was that while humans receiving a head massage might fall into a comatose state, the effect was quite different from turians.
It was a pure, muscular reaction to the section of the brain being stimulated, causing turian subvocals to 'short out' as Garrus had once heard it put rather poetically. The narrower subvocal cords snapped together in rapid succession, producing an ongoing clicking noise. And for Garrus, it was no different.
The instant Shepard heard the noise, she jumped backward and nearly upset the carafe of fresh coffee. She looked at her hand, as if to make sure she still had all of her fingers. Garrus had to get his voice back under control, but before he could manage it, Shepard had closed the distance again. He pushed back from the table, turning so she couldn't get at him.
"So who has an Achilles heel now?" she teased, giving up on her efforts to embarrass him further. Garrus tried to answer, but his subvocals were still a little too quavery to manage it. Shepard watched him struggle for a moment before fetching her own cup of coffee and sitting across from him. "Does this round go to me?"
He nodded, and then tried a few words. "I...would say so." Shepard grinned cheekily at him before blowing on her drink to cool it. Her humor was short-lived, however, when Traynor came around the corner.
"Commander, Admiral Hackett needs to speak with you in the War Room."
Instantly, Shepard's face closed, and she was all business. "I'll be right up." She stood, scarfed down the last bite of her breakfast, and took her coffee with her. Garrus watched her go, and sighed. I guess we'll call it a tie.
. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .
Garrus shook his head somewhat ruefully at the camera. "We declared that the last round of cross-species relationship secrets, since we were coming up on the attack of the Collector Base and we had much bigger things to think about."
He sobered at that. "The commander and I...it seems like ever since I joined her, we've been a team. And I didn't follow her because she was a good leader or because she's one of the Alliance's best. I followed her because...well, when I looked at her, going up against Saren as a brand new Spectre, still with fears and doubts but determined to do it anyway...I saw myself. But your daughter, she has something I didn't always have: belief. She never once stopped believing that things were going to turn out right; that we were going to stop the Reapers and break the cycle."
There was more he could say; a lot more: how he had thought of her first as his mentor, then as his chance at retribution for his failure on Omega, then after what had happened with Sidonis as a true friend—one that wanted what was best for him even though he'd hated her for her actions at the time.
But what he had chosen to say was what Shepard had been to him most recently.
"I...trust Shepard. More than anyone else," Garrus said quietly. "A good soldier knows that as part of a squad, you're hoping everybody else has your back—that's our job. And it works both ways; we give our lives in trust to each other easily, with every mission. And...I guess...uh, what I'm trying to say is that I trusted Shepard with my life long before I trusted her with my heart."
He had done hours of study looking for the proper comparison between turian expressions of affection and how humans would have phrased it. And suddenly, with his thoughts wandering in that direction, his mouth abruptly followed.
"Humans have more words to...tell about love than turians do," Garrus said with a pause. "I guess that's because half of the matings—your concept of marriage is similar—are arranged. My parents, for example, were mated for life by arrangement. It was a year before they lived together, and six before I realized how...fiercely...they were working to build trust between them."
He thought it over for a second, and decided that the wording was appropriate. "Turians don't...assign emotion to a particular location in the body," he explained. "It's better to say that a turian will fight to show how deeply and intensely he trusts and needs his mate." Garrus had to pause at that point; he could hear his subtones thickening and he had to look away from the camera drone for a minute until he was sure he could speak understandably.
"Uh, I didn't mean to say all that...Admiral. Hannah." He clenched his mandibles for a moment and tried to get his words in order before opening his mouth again. "I've never even told Shepard some of that..." Garrus remembered abruptly that Hannah might play this message in Shepard's presence and immediately strove to lighten his tone. "I wanted there to be some mystery left in our relationship for her to look forward to."
He straightened and managed what humans took to be a smile, despite the tightness in his throat that hadn't quite gotten the idea to go away yet. "And Shepard, since I'm sure you're listening in...we're going to have to have a talk about your streak of mischief corrupting Liara. She practically confessed at breakfast to something she did with Tali and Chakwas." He raised a browplate at the camera. "Remember not to let the doctors get to you—either of you."
Garrus signed off and turned the camera off, feeling the tension in his shoulders and along the inner edge of his back plating ease. He stared out at the stars beyond the lounge's windows, hoping for some of the solace that Shepard had always told him the stars gave her. Sometime we'll get to that serious talk, Shepard, he thought. But not when you're like this. Not when the weight of a thought could hurt you.
Needing a distraction from himself, Garrus opened his omnitool and went through his latest messages. He welcomed the fact that work would shield him from his feelings awhile longer.