Epilogue:

"I'm indoctrinated, aren't I?" He worked on the chair, retooling it to be somewhat more comfortable for his bony ass to sit in.

Shepard handed him a spanner as she replied, "Sorta, kinda, not really. I had to bring you a little closer so you could understand me when I speak. And see me."

"Hmph. Well, so long as I don't start sounding like Saren. 'Is submission not preferable to extinction?' " He let his voice drop into a lower register and amped the gravelly quality of his subharmonics.

The shining blue woman at his side did a double take. "Okay, that was creepy. Don't do that anymore."

"Do what, Shepard?"

"Stop!" She clutched at her sides as she laughed. Strange. It's not like she even has ribs. Suddenly, her eyes glowed white hot and she intoned, "This hurts you!"

"No, now that. That was creepy." He guffawed along with her until he rolled on the floor with mirth.

A little while later, they lay together, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the stars of this new place they'd found. It was hard to believe he'd followed her to a whole different galaxy. To hell and back, sure, but then hell had always seemed just a heartbeat away. On their new observation deck with its flickering mass effect field keeping the oxygen from escaping, he watched Harbinger's sister ships flit to and fro in his periphery.

He pointed at one, playing the new game they'd dreamed up to pass the time. "Who's there?"

"Me," she said, following their silly ritual, "but also, the J'halai. They evolved on a moon orbiting a gas giant. Their methane atmosphere turned their hair bright blue and and their skin gold. Androgynous tree-dwellers. Not a one ever stood on the soil of their world. They first took to the stars in huge, diaphonous vessels, tossed about on the solar winds. They flew, oh, how they flew. It took them four hundred years to find the Citadel, but when they did, they didn't hesitate to open every relay they came across. They met the Kuoji-"

She pointed at another ship, then another. "And the Pakspaquin. Together, the three races wiped out all the others, but were nearly destroyed by a plague of intelligent nanites. After that, though, they had harmony. Until . . .."

"Is it all just data? Or are they really in there?"

"Am I just data? Or did this Crucible, so aptly named, just burn away everything but the essential me?" Shepard hummed in amusement. "They sleep. Somewhere under all the command protocols and twisted beliefs, I think they're in there. Somewhere."

"We should wake them."

"If I knew how, I would."

Garrus rolled up onto his side and looked down into her brilliant blue eyes. His knuckles ran over the contour of her glowing cheek. "They're your nation, now. All of them. You fought for turians, asari, humans, salarians and all the rest. These are no different."

"I suppose we have nothing better to do."

He nuzzled her neck, paying no mind to the fact that he couldn't really feel her. In rumbling tones, he teased, "Or do we?"

She laughed at him and slid one hand over his chest. "We really need to find me a body."

"Yes, we do." He agreed, nodding once. Waving at the stars, he said, "Maybe somewhere out there is an advanced civilization that does just that."

"There must be millions of weird and wonderful things to see out here. Let's go chase them down!"

Laughing, he darted after her into the ship, his new home. But then, home had always been Shepard. He just never thought it'd be so literal.