The comforting thrum of guitar strings soothed Letter's weary soul as the typewriter keys clacked in quick succession, the harsh ratchet and tiny ding of the mechanism as he brought the typeface back to the beginning of the new line, intermingled with the sound of Latchkey and Follows-Chalk slowly familiarising themselves with the instruments of the other.

"You have missed the last note in line," Follows-Chalk noted with detached politeness.

"And you keep pausing," Latchkey returned the constructive criticism, not one to be singled out lightly.

Follows-Chalk held Latchkey's five-string banjo, brow furrowed as he yet-again gave into muscle memory and attempted to pluck a sixth string that wasn't there. Latchkey's almost inaudible cursing as he missed a note in the practise sheet he had propped up against his footlocker was the direct counterpoint.

He had the opposite issue. He kept on ignoring the extra sixth string and accidentally plucking the fifth. Or plucking the sixth when he meant to be strumming the fifth.

The two of them were getting better, however, as far as Letters could tell. And their attempts at music couldn't always be as engaging as the musical duel they had engaged in initially, where they both stood across from one-another, improvising solos which the opponent needed to continue on acceptably well or be cautioned a point. The battle of the pickers had lasted for two hours and ended when Latchkey's fingers, slick with sweat, has slipped on the string.

Follows-Chalk, stripped to the waist and glistening with the effort, had collapsed in relief at his victory, while Latchkey Kenny wiped a similar sheen of sweat from his forehead, where it had been stinging his eyes and collecting in his beard for the last hour.

It wasn't often pointed out, but strenuous mental activity could sometimes be just as sweat inducing as strenuous physical activity. It all depended on how hard you were concentrating and for how long. Latchkey had even considered heading down to the Workshop on the Engineering deck and asking Murphy to whip him up some Mentats to make the process easier.

But mindful of the presence of both Silver and Letters in their spacious billet, both recovered addicts, he decided to tough it out. Neither of them liked it when the others did Chems around them, even for practical purposes. With their mental link, vicarious highs were a real hazard.

A consideration for which Letters was grateful. He didn't want to have to slog through their squad's requisite paperwork whilst struggling with a sudden craving for Chems. The memory of the feeling never wholly went away, but it faded with time. Feeling the effects through his mental link would be an added level of torture he didn't think he could bear.

His fingers continued tapping the typewriter keys.

His desk was a nest of stacked books and loose papers, several spare mugs filled with pencils and other required stationary. Other belongings, most still packed in his travel bags, littered the room.

They were packed into the living space like sardines in a can. Just how the Patched liked it. The squad messed together, slept in the same barracks room together, fought together. Until recently, he had even thought that Sticky and Bryan fucked together too, but Bryan's recent insistence upon meeting with that blond squeeze of his alone put a hole in that notion.

He must really like the girl. Tunnel Snakes didn't like being away from one another.

The mental link made them very communal. Moving away from the rest of the group induced a feeling of isolation that was distinctly unpleasant.

Sarge reclined in a nearby armchair they'd brought up from Storage, moth-eaten and surely mouldy on the inside. Dusty too. The first time he sat down in it, the old chair had release such a puff of dust that they'd brought their gas mask out of storage until they'd beaten the dust out of the fabric.

The old former-Talon Company NCO scribbled another bullet-point on his request form for Engineering while Rook sat nearby with a disassembled Eyebot and offered educated advice from the side-lines.

"So, the new rifles are probably going to be gauss guns?" Sarge clarified the point in a questioning tone, eyeing Rook over the top of his sheet, pencil-nib tapping the rhythm of the nearby guitar on his armrest.

In his hands the questionnaire forwarded to him by Chris Haversam, the new Head of Engineering, displayed a number of generalised queries regarding the needs of the Tunnel Snake's unit in regard to their standard equipment and hardware, as well as a number of questions aimed at determining the nature of the fights they usually found themselves in. All carefully formulated to give R&D some inkling of just what they should be designing and making while they travelled through space in search of this 'Thessia' that Lantaya was so hung up on getting back to.

"That's what R&D is telling us," Rook confirmed contentedly, "They've been consulting with Lani and she's told them that most Asari military units had adopted Mass Effect accelerators as the dominant form of firearms technology by the time she left her planet."

"Three-thousand years ago," Silver noted in her acerbic voice, knowing that such intel wasn't really actionable after so long.

"Which means there's no telling what kind of weapons systems they might have now," Sarge concluded without much inflection. In was a statement of fact. An acknowledgement of the truth. He didn't raise his voice or betray any alarm at the prospect.

"If they had railguns three-thousand years ago, that means whoever or whatever we run into now is bound to have some wild shit waiting for us," Latchkey piped up in his southern drawl as he and Follows-Chalk continued to practise.

"So, we've got to up-arm and up-armour," Sarge concluded.

"Hell boss," Latchkey grinned, "That's always the plan, isn't it?"

Follows-Chalk regarded the rest of the room as he stopped playing the banjo momentarily, in favour of adjusting the instrument on his knee. His calm, soothing voice directed itself to the room in general as he voice her thoughts.

"The Matriarch tells us her people are peaceful. That they wish no war to befall them. It may be that we shall have no need of greater weapons."

Letters smiled as Latchkey snorted and plucked the wrong string once more, sounding a discordant note.

Even Sarge grinned. "Son," the old NCO said seriously, "the fastest way to get yourself into a fight is to show up unarmed."

Follows-Chalk frowned, his hair simmering in the glow from the artificial lights as his brow knotted, "Must this always be the way?"

"Say you walk into a back alley, kid. You don't have a gun, or a knife, or a grenade in plain view. Any two-bit thug with a switchblade is going to think you're an easy target and come looking to kill you and strip you of everything you own. Maybe they get killed too. Maybe you both do. That's not good, is it?"

Follows-Chalk nodded his agreement, "This is indeed, not good."

"Exactly. Someone could get hurt, get killed. It's better to go in armed. Better that everyone knows that your packing heat. That way they think twice. By making sure everyone knows you can fight back, you've potentially saved two lives."

"A wise man in times of peace, prepares for war," Letters quoted from memory as his finger continued to tap the typewriter busily.

"I understand," Follows-Chalk solemnly accepted this, his expression serious. "Whose words do you speak? Are they your own, or another's?"

"Horace. Sun Tzu said something similar," Letters replied.

Follows-Chalk nodded significantly and with great feeling, before opening his mouth to ask who the hell Horace was. He was cut off before he could ask.

There was a knocking on their barrack room door, which none of them rose to answer immediately.

"Not it," Latchkey and Silver said in unison.

"I'm writing reports," Letters gave his excuse without a hint of shame. Aside from himself, the only one there doing actual work was Sarge. You could make a case for Rook as well, but she was disassembling that old Enclave robot as a personal project, not because it was on her list of official duties.

Rook and Sarge exchanged a look as the only ones left. The radio operator looked from her superior to the disassembled robot in front of her and attempted to look piteously busy and harried. Her NCO looked back at her, unimpressed.

"Don't look at me, Rookie," Sarge returned her look placidly and with a raised eyebrow encroaching upon the wide expanse of shaved scalp, "I'm Sergeant here and I say answer the damn door."

Sighing, she got up and navigated the cramped living space, filled with gearboxes, duffle-bags, crates and the numerous other pieces of kit a squad of wasteland operators needed to function away from home for extended periods.

Letters ignored the disturbance, continuing to type out a projected ration and expendable munitions intake report, explaining and justifying the requisition of a set amount of resources ahead of time. Basically an over-complicated budget. He reached to the side and took a sip of his mug.

Not coffee, unfortunately. Coffee had to be shipped from further down the coast in warmer climates. It wasn't common even in a hub of trade like D.C. or New Vegas.

He had to make do with an herbal drink composed of a variety of dried leaves and barks. Something he'd picked up from the Treeminders. Harold was keeping him well supplied.

The sound of the door opening drifted in one ear and out the other as he typed, his eyes and mind focused on only one thing: The absence of 5.56x45mm rounds on the projection report. They didn't know much about the new standardised rifle that R&D were supposedly working on, but one thing they did know was that it required energy cells and blocks of solid metal as expendable munitions rather than centrefire ammunition.

It made this report tricky to outline.

That would change with time and experience with the new hardware, he hoped. In the meantime, the report needed to be as clear and concise as possible. He wasn't handing it into Tunnel Snake armourers as he was used to, but to Paulson in the Armoury aboard the Zeta.

He needed to start as he meant to go on, at least until Paulson and he were familiar enough with one another that they would forgive minor discrepancies in the monthly projection report.

"Letters?"

He looked up from his work, his fingers pausing on the keys to look past the messy contents of the room towards Rook, who returned his gaze over her shoulder. Her face told him she was surprised by something. He couldn't garner much more than that. Rook didn't have the same mental link as the rest of them. Jil's inner thoughts and emotions were as alien to him as his were to her.

"What's up?"

"It's for you," she stated in a wooden voice.

Past her shoulder, he glimpsed a flash of blue flesh and a polite smile.

The good Matriarch, he realised. He grimaced inwardly, drawing the attention of all the other Tunnel Snakes in the room to his discomfort.

"No good deed," Sarge muttered in commiseration.

"Indeed," Letters grumbled as he rose to his feet and stumped across the room towards the door.

"Want me to come with, Second?" Latchkey asked, already sliding the guitar off his knee and reaching for his chest rig with its holstered N99 sidearm and trench knife.

"You'd need a fucking bazooka to put a dent in her purple magic shit. Don't even try," Silver answered him.

Letters nodded in agreement as he passed, throwing a two-fingered salute to the rest of the people in the room. Time to take his lumps like the gentleman he wasn't. He slid past Rook and motioned her back with a wave of his hand as he shuffled out into the hallway and engaged the hatchway lock. It slid closed in Rook's worried face.

Matriarch Lantaya T'Rali regarded him from behind an unreadable expression. It looked like a polite smile, but Letters didn't feel convinced by it. He had verbally assaulted her not long ago and had been expecting this visit for some time.

In his experience, you didn't dress down anyone above your station in life without them coming back into the picture like a bad smell and making you regret it. And Lantaya, with her freaky 'biotics', blue skin, good looks and formidable connections was most assuredly above his station in life.

And certainly not above holding a grudge. He felt the faint echo of the rest of the squad through the door and took comfort in it.

No good deed went unpunished.

"What can I do for you, Matriarch?"

"I have been meaning to speak with you for some time now."

'I bet you have,' Letters thought inwardly before stating the obvious.

"About Jericho."

"Tangentially, yes. About our… disagreement in the tunnels below Washington."

Letters nodded along with a stiff jaw and a graven face, already waiting for the conversation to turn ugly. When his reply didn't appear forthcoming and it appeared to her as if Letters was listening politely for her to continue her line of questioning, Lantaya did so.

"I wanted to make sure that there were no hard feelings between us," the Matriarch continued, "In light of our current state of affairs, it seems likely that we will be working together for a not inconsiderable amount of time. And I do not wish there to be… what is the human expression, 'Bad blood?' This is the correct phrase, is it not?"

"It is the correct phrase, yes," Letters agreed, still keeping his face a mask of polite attention to mirror her own polite smile. He considered the request momentarily, before shrugging and deciding to approach this with as much honesty as he felt politic to employ.

"I would rather there wasn't bad blood, either."

Entirely true. He liked his face the way it was, not rearranged by those mass effect fields she could generate on a whim. Lantaya nodded thoughtfully, cocking her head to the side and regarding him with piercing blue eyes.

He observed her in return.

And was struck by how small and fragile she appeared. At least, for someone who he was concerned was about to beat the tar out of him.

She was in good shape to be sure. Quite trim and muscular. But it wasn't the stature of a wastelander. She had the body of a pre-war civilian who put in a lot of effort to meet a set of arbitrary standards. A set of statistics written down an a gymnasium blackboard.

The Snakes, and him, by contrast had bodies formed from necessity. There was a rugged quality with them that Lantaya lacked. Unconcerned with appearances.

She was also dressed in a faded white tank top tucked at the hem into olive green army pants. It looked all too human. Change her fringe to a shock of hair and her skin to peach or brown, and she would be no different from him.

'Was this what people looked like before the war?' he wondered idly. She looked how he imagined such people to look. Albeit a bit bluer.

He shook his head, internally.

Probably not.

The Matriarch wasn't as soft as most pre-war civilians would have been. Far from it.

Lantaya wasn't one he could afford to underestimate. She had already proven that her 'biotics' were an equaliser that, maybe, put her on-par with even the Lone Wanderer. And all her race had those abilities naturally.

That was a frightening thought. An army of soldiers with her powers would be a terrifying prospect.

"I am glad," Lantaya continued on their conversation as he kept his thoughts hidden behind a blank face, "I would hate our working relationship going forwards to be coloured by that one incident."

Letters nodded, letting some of the gratefulness he felt to not be in imminent danger of an ass-kicking seep into his expression.

"Although…"

He imagined he heard the other boot drop with a shattering bang.

"… I admit some of the things you said still rankle me. Once the excitement was past and I had time to reflect, I feel I must protest."

Her eyes seemed markedly less kind. In fact, they seemed distinctly narrowed and cutting.

He waited for her to continue. Letters might very well have him bent over a barrel, but he'd be damned if he gave her the satisfaction of hearing him squeak.

"Some of the things you said were not entirely fair," Lantaya stated, arms crossed over her chest.

"They weren't meant to be. Words are tools. I said what I knew would achieve what I needed. They didn't have to be entirely true. Just true enough that it would shake you was all I needed," Letters admitted. He kept his reply measured, so it wouldn't reveal his inner trepidation.

"So you lied."

"No," Letters countered swiftly, "I related an interpretation of events that I knew would support my position. You can take the exact same facts and interpret them a number of different ways. Nothing I said was a lie. Just another facet of the truth."

"I am not naïve," Lantaya stated in a hard voice. It would have seemed like a non-sequitur if he didn't perfectly recall her argument with Jericho. And the steps he had taken to head off its bloody conclusion.

"Never said you were."

"You implied it during our argument. Heavily so, in fact."

"Sure," Letters admitted after a moments pause, during which he gauged how angry she was and how far he could take things before she really did decide to smear him across several walls.

"But you shouldn't be so sensitive about it. Plenty of people rise above their respective backgrounds. Just because you're born in a certain place doesn't mean you stay there."

Lantaya bridled at his phrasing, "I am not sensitive!"

"Sure, I believe you," Letters said, in a tone that implied the exact opposite.

She seemed ready to argue, but he cut her off with an outstretch arm and a raised palm.

"Okay, okay, I know. I admit that I took some things I knew you were probably overly-aware of and turned them back on you. I needed to shake your confidence enough that you'd question yourself and your judgement; be ready to hear Jericho's story and actually listen to it closely enough to know what it meant. It wasn't what a right-guy would have done. I'm sorry about that."

The Asari Matriarch considered his words for a time, mulling them over. Then, more than aware that he didn't need to concede even this much to her, she accepted the apology and nodded. "I thank you. And for what it is worth, I am also sorry that I threatened you and your squad."

"But not Jericho."

"No," Lantaya said with feeling, "Never Jericho. His crimes are owed to a higher authority than mine. I doubt anyone can forgive him; or will."

He felt a brief impulse to argue that point. He knew for a fact that Jericho had come into contact with a few of the women he had 'known', in the biblical sense, over the years. It wasn't often that they did, but some of them had forgiven the old Raider. In a sense.

One remarkable example had been a middle-aged women, an ex-Raider herself, who had been a member of a raider gang Jericho had attacked and some years previously. She credited Jericho raping her as the moment when she realised all the wrong she had done in her own life, and had, perversely, credited the grizzled raider for turning her life around.

It was a bit difficult to reconcile the feeling of vulnerability and destress you felt after being the one raped, with the knowledge that you had a one point inflicted that same feeling upon another.

But he admitted that such a moral revelation was the remarkable exception, not the rule.

"That and he's an asshole."

Lani nodded with a slight grin, "That, also."

"He may be an asshole, but he's also fifty other things," Letters stated, looking at Lantaya and realising that she wasn't as unreasonable as he had assumed her to be. She was, perhaps, more reasonable than she should be.

"It's very seldom in life that things can be categorised as 'is or isn't'. More often than not we have to make do with 'is and isn't'."

"But there must be somewhere where the line must be drawn."

Her voice was harsh. Almost angry. But Letters was sharp enough to realise that her anger wasn't directed at him.

"Does there? I'm not a moral absolutist, Matriarch. And maybe that's only because if I chose to be one, I'd have to take a pretty dim view of myself and all my friends, but even so… I don't think our moral codes have to be anything other than what we say they are."

"A moral code that can be changed at will is no code at all," Lantaya challenged.

"And a moral code that forces you to do things you know are wrong just because you can't adapt it when needed, is not truly moral."

His reply, so exactly inverse to her own, ushered in a long silence. They both leant back against opposite walls, facing one another across the hallway. Letters sighed heavily.

Just two petty moralists, shooting the shit. He should offer to do this again with her, sometime.

Finally, "How do you stand it?"

"Stand what?"

"The uncertainty. In this, I suppose your earlier diatribe aimed at me hit home. I have been forced to make a lot of choices recently that I never once considered. Outcomes and circumstances ran away from me. I am not used to the uncertainty. You, on the other hand, must have grown up with it."

"Yeah, I did. Can't say I handled it that well, myself."

"How so?" The Matriarch questioned him, curiously.

"I was a junkie. Addicted to Chems. Jet, mostly."

Sensing that this was a sensitive subject for him, she stilled her tongue and offered an understanding ear.

"I got bad enough that I stole shit. A lot of shit, to fund my habit."

"I certainly understand how drugs might prove an attractive option in light of your situation. Anything that might dull the anxiety," she said softly.

"Yeah."

"I take it you eventually managed to kick the habit? I don't recall ever seeing you indulge."

"Yeah," Letters repeated. He seemed somewhat reticent to continue.

"What happened, if you don't mind my prying?"

Letters smiled, genuine emotion playing across his face. Warmth.

"Old Man Lopez happened. He was this old geezer that prayed at the Church in Rivet City. Quiet guy. His family had been killed by raiders a long time ago. A wife and a child."

There was a silence as she absorbed this. Another small tragedy, lost in the flood.

"I don't know why he did… but one day he came up to me and said I was wasting my life. Said I could be so much more than I was, and that the world was too cruel a place for a young man like me to destroy himself with Chems. Then he…"

Lantaya waited expectantly as he marshalled himself and took a deep breath.

"He offered to teach me how to read."

She blinked. Teach him how to read? Such a small thing. All Asari learned how to read before they were barely even ten years old. Letters seemed to notice her confusion. He seemed to search for some other way to say what needed to be said. But, in the end, he just repeated it. Only with more feeling behind the words.

"He taught me how to read."

His voice conveyed more than words could carry.

His ability to read was his most prized possession. And Mister Lopez had been the man to give it to him. Ted Strayer wouldn't be the Lettersman, wouldn't be who he was today, if it hadn't have been for Mr. Lopez.

"A journey of ten-thousand words began with one old, suicidally depressed man looking outside his own misery for long enough to teach a stupid, worthless junkie how to make something of himself," Letters said, hiding his emotion behind a blank face and a monotone voice.

"You're not worthless," she said. She felt it needed to be said, even if she didn't consider herself the best person to say it.

"Everything good about myself, I got from other people. Don't try and sugar-coat my life and feed it back to me. It'll only make it bittersweet."

He clasped his hands together and buried his face in-between the two. He stayed this was for a long moment, before groaning loudly into them. A sound of frustration and embarrassment at having divulged too much. She could relate.

"I don't usually talk about this stuff. Sorry if it's a bit too personal," he said when he finally extricated himself.

"But here's my point: I was a thief and a junkie," he continued, making his face as deadly serious as he could make it.

"Silver was a whore, a junkie and a thief. Sarge was a killer, a raider, and a Talon Company Merc. Sticky Hand Jack can cut throats with the best of them, and he's a thief too. Bryan can put a bullet through a man's eye from a mile away and sleep like a baby the next day. And get Latchkey talking and he'll regurgitate the southern justifications for slavery likes he's trying to absolve the Confederacy, single-handed."

Lantaya didn't comment on this last one, despite feeling a need to clarify that she didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

"And god only knows what kind of shit Jil was into before she fell in with us. We're all fucked up people. Bad people, even. But one of the advantages of this is that we can do things that other people can't. And instead of doing those things to only benefit ourselves, we're doing them to benefit others. That's gotta be worth something, right?"

"It is," she agreed.

"And Jericho is also trying. He doesn't have to do what he does. For example: How much did he quote Butch for? To do this job? Do you know?"

"If I recall correctly: Five thousand caps."

Letters grinned and shook his head, "That's not even half what the jobs worth, if we're charging by time spent. Trust me, as bad as Jericho is, the world is better off with him in it. Not least because when the bad guys see someone like Jericho coming for them, they're a hell of a lot more scared of him than they are of any of us."

Lantaya had to concede his point on that front. Jericho definitely wasn't the kind of person you wanted coming after you. Then she considered something.

"And what about Butch? What is his great past shame?"

Letters smirked and chuckled to himself, "Butch is too hard on himself. We keep telling him not to be, but he's got a cross on his back that he won't let go of. Not really my place to say more than that. It was fine talking about the rest of the guys. They don't mind talking about who they used to be. But Butch is a special case."

The Matriarch nodded her understanding before changing the subject, "Cross on his back? That is a Christian metaphor, correct?"

Letters agreed, his smirk widening at her pleased expression, that conveyed that she was happy at having understood a local cultural reference.

"He is an admirable man," Lantaya said.

"He is. He's that special kind of admirable. The kind who you can look up to, without it feeling like he's looking down at you. The kind of person you aren't resentful of for being the better man. It helps that he's a bit of a blockhead, but still."

Lantaya laughed, and he grinned. "I actually thought you'd come here to work me over for what I said."

Her eyes widened, "Work you over? You mean, assault you?"

"Yeah."

"I would never!"

Letters sniggered and shook his head ruefully, "I wouldn't blame you if you did, you know? I threw some pretty heavy shit around. It was all I could think to do at short notice but throwing shade like that is a quick way to get yourself killed."

"Regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, I am not going to physically assault you for daring to speak your mind. You even asked for my permission before you said anything."

"Ohh great. I was worried. Jericho's already been around. Silver would be pissed if I needed another round of Stimpacks."

"He attacked you?!"

"Sure," Letters confirmed through his grin.

"It wasn't great while it was happening, but you can say this for Jericho. Once he's taken his pound of flesh, he has the ability to let the rest slide. And I'd rather take a beating and be done with it than drag it out. He's simple like that; and I appreciate the simple things in life."

He pushed himself back into the standing position from the wall and gave her a respectful nod. "I'm glad we got to talk this over and put it to rest."

Reading his desire to get back to his work, she returned the nod and stood up straight also. This wasn't how she had though her conversation would go. But she was glad it had.

"Catch you later, Matriarch."

"And the same to you, Lettersman."

And in separate directions, they parted ways.