The single stupidest thing she had ever done.

Garrus slammed a fist down on the Thanix console in a rage. The computer squaked at the abuse, but he paid it no mind.

Lana had been missing for forty-seven hours.

A tendril of panic curled slick and cold in his stomach. She had left, in the middle of the night cycle, without even a note. No explanation, no, "I'll be back later". Half dressed, Garrus had taken to the bridge in an uncharacteristic display of anger - and judging by the look on Joker's face, the pilot was just as irritated with the Commander.

"A message came through from Hackett, and she took the shuttle and just left!" Joker shouted, throwing his arms up in fealty. "She didn't say anything to me, either, Garrus. Hell, the message was so covert even EDI can't find it."

"The Admiral had it purged from our databanks before it was even an object of interest," EDI's holo flickered. "I am currently attempting to back track the comm buoy from where it originated from - but to borrow a human phrase - it is like finding a needle in a haystack."

And so he paced. Back and forth in the forward battery, uttering an occasional expletive, pausing only to check his omnitool. Fear crept up his back, and the dread that had been chased away with her return loomed on the edge of his conscience. They were supposed to be open and honest with each other. They were supposed to face these threats head on, together. He growled in frustration. Something must have been incredibly important for Lana to to leave without notice at Hackett's beck and call. For months she had been quietly letting her annoyance and discontent with the admiral stew. Every correspondence with him was met with a wrinkled brow, the line of her mouth tight and unhappy. She passed Cerberus intelligence to him after every mission without qualm, omitting nothing except their exact movements and their next plans. But as the months wore on, so did her trust for the Alliance. He could only guess that her discontent came with the blooming realization that she was technically no longer Alliance, and that realization came with the weight of learning, gradually, the Alliance had covered up the cause of her death. After years of service, dedication, being the face of their propaganda, the weapon they hurled at the most difficult problems, they had dismissed her mortality with a lie. Garrus didn't know who had told her, or how she had come about the information, but he could tell in the crease of her brow and the darkness that settled over her eyes whenever the Alliance was mentioned that she knew.

And so the mystery of why she would leave, unannounced and alone in the middle of the night on Admiral Hackett's orders was the black cloud hanging over the entire ship.

"Garrus."

Joker's voice crackled over the intercom. "EDI found the comm signal. We're just a relay jump away from where we think she went"

"I'll be right up."

The bridge was bathed in the light from a dim star, one that Garrus was not familiar with. Hundreds of asteroids floated out in front of the ship, peacefully, and the Normandy drifted on its own residual inertia. Garrus clenched his jaw at the sight.

"In the middle of an asteroid belt, of course," Joker growled, fingers flying over the controls. "Well, this is where the signal from the Kodiak was traced to. From here? Who knows."

Garrus grunted. "What do you mean, 'who knows?'"

Joker swiveled his chair to face the turian. "The last ping was from some thirty hours ago. We haven't found a signal since. So there's a chance she's entered an area where communications are being blocked -"

"Or the Kodiak has been destroyed," Garrus finished quietly.

"I mean, it would have to be one hell of an explosion to render the distress signal worthless," Joker said, forcing the corners of his mouth up. "We're talking utter inhalation of -"

"I know," Garrus snapped, placing a palm on the bulkhead near him. "I know," he repeated, quieter. "Have we received anything from Hackett?"

"Not a damn thing." The pilot scrubbed a shaky hand through his beard and Garrus knelt next to Joker's chair. "This is so stupid. So...unbelievably stupid. I didn't even think twice when she asked me to take the Normandy to the Viper Nebula. We've spent how many months tooling around the Terminus? She points, I drive, no questions asked. Unless it's...a volcano or something but I can't land this ship in atmo and -"

"Joker," Garrus said, giving the pilot a meaningful look. "Nobody is blaming you. This is all on her - it was her decision. As stupid as it was."

"I know." He slumped back in his chair with a soft sigh. "I just...shit. Shit. I don't want to get all sappy. But shit Garrus, I don't want to deal with her dying all over again. I don't - shit. I don't think I could do it."

Garrus stared at the dim orange light of the haptic interface. The memory of an inebriated Joker, confined to a wheelchair, arm in a sling over the rumpled fabric of his Alliance dress blues, quietly sobbing at Lana's pseudo funeral. Besides being the top Alliance soldier, the commander was a friend to her entire crew. She was the driving force behind a suicide mission, gathering a haphazard crew of individuals who would never have worked together of their own accord.

"You are not the only one, Joker."

Lantar Sidonis wiped a weary, gloved hand over his face and grimaced. The condensation from his bottle of alcohol had soaked through the fabric, leaving a damp line across his forehead.

Though he was off-duty, the turian was still in armor, and kept to the shadows of the bar where his C-Sec blue was not so vibrant in the dim lighting. It had been a long forty hours on, and he was looking forward to his forty hours off, but the last case of his shift had left him a bit spirit-sick.

Turians were, as a whole, a race that was linearly driven - duty, family, honor. The Hierarchy did a phenomenal job of instilling purpose into its candidates, along with stoppering whatever individuality a young candidate would have. The doctorate of honor ran so deep that the turian legal system was built almost entirely upon the backs of those who came forward and confessed their own crimes, often within hours of committing them. A male, in the heat of an argument and deep in a bottle of alcohol takes hands to his mate, and with the very next breath is calling the authorities to report himself for domestic violence.

But, with every sentient being, there were always outliers. The individuals that did not fit the mold. Lantar winced as he recalled the crime scene - a human woman lying prone on the floor of a penthouse apartment, entrails strewn around her like a halo of blood and gore, the end is nigh scrawled in a hasty hand on the wall behind her. The display itself was not what perturbed Lantar the most, but rather, the fact that it had clearly been done by a turian some days prior. DNA, footprints and video surveillance all pointed to it. But it had been days, and the culprit had not turned themselves in. In fact, the neighbors had reported a strange smell coming from the apartment to C-Sec. The woman had no next of kin, but acquaintances said she had been casually dating a human male for a few months.

Forensics would be taking care of finding a DNA match, but even with VI assistance, the results could take an entire day to find, so Lantar had left at the end of his forty hour shift with a heavy heart and a cold feeling in his gut. The honorable part of him hoped the culprit was apprehended and charged accordingly. The darker, harder part of him wanted to find them and kill them with his own two hands. He started a bit at the thought, and wondered why, of all the cases he had worked in the past six months, this one was sticking in his throat the most. Perhaps it was because the victim was human, and the culprit turian, and it had been less than a generation since the Relay 314 incident. Or perhaps it had to do with the victim's dark hair, spread in a sticky halo, floating in her own blood. Perhaps it was the darker tone of her skin against the pale white floor and the vibrant scarlet blood. Perhaps it was her striking resemblance to Shepard, the human woman who had stepped in front of the crosshairs for him not once, but twice.

Lantar tapped the bar for another beer and sat back, stretching. The thought of Shepard dead was something he was acutely used to, in a roundabout manner. He had known Garrus the entirety of the woman's stretch of...death, for lack of a better term. She had become an almost ethereal mascot of sorts, that spirit on Garrus' shoulder guiding him with a gentle hand. So when the rumors of her return had reached Omega, the rumors that she had materialized like a spirits be damned pentrale on their old base and rescued a hopeless Garrus, he had almost laughed. It was serendipitous, in a way that he knew the spirits themselves had intervened. And while Vakarian had kept a tight grip on his anger and grief, Lantar had seen the knife, had heard the other male in his sleep, and knew the truth.

Even on the shithole that was Omega, there was extranet access and often a lot of downtime. Lantar had accessed the records and he knew Garrus' history and his standing in the damned line of succession. High up enough that had he been any other turian, being in love with a human would have been considered almost treasonous.

And yet, their relationship held that little bit of spirit-touched intrigue to it as well. The kind that made Lantar fiercely protective of the idea of Shepard and Vakarian together, instead of reeling away from it in disgust. As if it was as essential as the breath he took to sustain his life. The success of their mission was of the utmost importance, as was their success together. Lantar knew that his old commander toed the line between being fully entrenched in life, but also one of the spiritless walking dead, those who were nothing but a body and rudimentary functions, moving through life as if there was no meaning. He had seen the darkness of it lurking behind Garrus' eyes on Omega, only to be beat down when he took command of his team. Shepard not only held the fate of the galaxy in her hands, but also the fate of Lantar's closest friend.

Yes, friend was the word he would use now, dare to use, in the context of Garrus Vakarian. Six months of sporadic communications back and forth...oh some had been shaky, curt and clipped and professional at first. But some had been hastily scrawled notes in the margins of reports that contained an inside joke, an anecdote, or a "really good catch on that, Lantar. I might have missed it myself". And Lantar himself had been brazen enough to write back, using words that he never would have had the stomach to before, putting forth his most honest answers, not being afraid to argue a point. He had enough political intrigue to be able to keep up what the reports he pilfered from top-secret transmissions contained, and he had long ago stopped doubting that Garrus was just being friendly to appease Shepard. There was a real touch of the old Garrus in those messages that just could not be faked.

Lantar pulled at the cowl of his armor and let his eyes flicker to the vid screen hung above the bar - a vid screen that was bright with wide, important-looking text. Often, it was the usual sort of news - scrolling snippets in multiple languages of stock prices and currency rates. Lantar leaned forward, resting armored elbows on the bar, and pushed his drink aside in rapt attention.

"We have just learned that the Batarian-held system of Bahak has been, for lack of a better phrase, obliterated. Reports coming out of the Terminus are currently pointing to the explosion of the system's local mass relay. The Alliance Navy is reporting that one of their scientific research bases was a casualty. While they cannot report on classified data, a source close to Admiral Hackett has told me that there is a chance that the Cerberus vessel Normandy was last spotted in the vicinity of the Viper Nebula. Whether this was the result of a catastrophic collision with an asteroid or space debris, or if this was an act of terrorism, we here at Westerlund news mourn for the approximately 300,000 inhabitants of the Bahak System."

The news anchor continued to speak, but Lantar's ears were ringing too loudly for him to hear any more. With shaking fingers he opened up his omnitool to send the news link to Garrus, swallowed hard, and closed it. A bead of condensation dripped off the bottle of his drink and he put his head in his hands.

yes, I am back. I promise this story is NOT dead. I have graduated university, and am working full time, but I am currently taking an 8-week accelerated class which eats up a lot of my free time. HOWEVER, I am making an attempt to wrap up this fic and move on with updating the sequel on a much more regular basis.

THANK YOU to everyone who has stuck around for...over two freaking years. Y'all are amazing and I love each and every one of you.

If you would like to pester me, you can find me on tumblr. I am truck-shepard.