A/N: I've had most of this done since early June but didn't finish up until recently. I am also working on a number of other pieces, and the next chapter is about half-done in terms of rough layouts.

So far, I am still healthy and safe. I don't anticipate any changes to that, but we never can tell what will happen.

My website has new art for Uressa T'Shora, in case you were wondering what she looked like.

This chapter includes the first appearance of SLotH4's OCs in the 'main text.' You'll have to read his stuff for additional details.

This month's author list: SLotH4, Nolanstar, Xabiar, Pallan Minerva, Aberron, TungstenCat, Exstarsis, KentaKazami, and Katkiller-V.

'There is nothing like returning to a person who remains unchanged, to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. Wisdom is in finding the good in all change, while balancing the need to link to the past. Those who never alter themselves grow stagnant, while those who change themselves too much lose all concept of self.'

-Asari Proverb

Shepard awoke with a splitting headache, aches and pains flaring inside her body in multiple places, and a panicky scrambling to feel for Liara's mind. The latter subsided a second later, a sensation that sent a wave of relief and almost incoherent happiness through her. For almost a minute, she just lay in the comfortable bed, feeling that sensation of connection. She sighed as another flash of pain radiated out from her stomach, and decided she needed to get up.

She opened her eyes to find nothing – blackness. She tried to sit up and couldn't, so she spoke, her voice sounding raspy and weak. "Uh… hello?"

She heard a rustle of plastic and the voice of Miranda sounded, softer and less sharp than usual. "Good morning, Shepard. I'm sorry you can't move, but we're working on healing the damage you and Liara took from the… ritual. I wasn't expecting the electrical discharges to be so intense, and we would rather be careful than incautious at this point."

Shepard found she could at least nod, even as she felt the first stirring of Liara's mind beginning to wake up. "So… I can feel Li, so I guess it worked as planned?"

There was a long pause, and then Miranda spoke, more hesitantly. "…For the most part. Given you've both been unconscious and couldn't give us exact details, we've been going on brain scans run on the two of you. As for the actual ritual, according to Matriarch Trellani it nearly faltered at the end, and it looks like the bond is certainly working but is… deeper than expected, or than it was before. We are not sure how that will affect the two of you going forward."

Liara's mind made a soft impact on Shepard's, as she finished waking up. Sara bit her lip, feeling her bondmate's emotions and feelings leap across their bond – confusion and then pain from most of Liara's body, mixed with happiness and almost panicky relief that she could feel Sara again.

She'd never felt Liara's connection to her this strongly before, and smiled. Being closer to the only thing she loved wasn't a bad thing in her mind. She got a small pulse of amusement from her bondmate, and after a moment Liara spoke, her voice soft and tired sounding. "Is that very important, Doctor Lawson, compared to the fact that our bond is now working again? I find myself not displeased to feel Sara after two years of… agonized solitude."

Shepard winced, but could hear Miranda moving, and then frowned as she felt a sharp flare of pain in her arm. Liara gave a yelp and Miranda's voice had gone hard. "I'm guessing you felt that, Shepard? I pinched Liara's forearm."

Shepard said nothing for a second. "…Ah, fuck. That is not good, is it?"

Miranda's voice was droll as Shepard heard her walk over to Shepard's side, feeling soft hands adjusting something near her neck for a moment. "No, it probably is not. You are both capable of realizing this is a hazard in combat… and that it certainly reinforces Trellani's point that the death of one of you will definitely be the death of both of you. The ritual was not under my control, and I was overruled when I suggested it be done under controlled medical conditions instead of some… some…"

Miranda trailed off then made a gusty sigh of pure exasperation. "Some fantasy-style Stone Age ritual." She took a deep breath.

Liara's voice held a note of muted amusement. "You do not approve of asari ritualism, then?"

Lawson's responding tone was droll. "Not particularly. I fear that some of it is little more than melodramatic dressing covering the fact the asari do not actually know as much about bonds and the mental effects surrounding such as they claim." She paused, then Shepard heard the pleased note in her voice. "But Doctor T'Soni has a point – I am far more happy that the two of you are both alive and safe, given… other setbacks recently."

Shepard frowned. "Not to get off-topic, but what kind of setbacks? I thought Ilium went pretty damned well given what we were up against."

Miranda moved again, and Shepard heard faint beeping from her right side. "We've… we attempted to use some of the technology derived from Revenant in a business venture, with the goal of applying some of the end recycling and cloning tech to replace failed organs in burn victims or those with end-stage cancer that conventional flash-cloning would not work on. The research was sound, and the Illusive Man felt such a gesture would help Cerberus's overall image."

Liara's mind pulsed with doubt, and Shepard suppressed a smile. "I'll leave the PR to TIM. So what happened?"

Miranda's voice went flat. "Wilson and I must have made a mistake somewhere. The Illusive Man found out this morning that several trial patients using the cloned organs died of systemic shock, due to a host of factors. We're still investigating why, but given we only offered this trying to help and it has gone bad, he's somewhat soured on us doing anything else along those lines."

Shepard could hear the forced cheer in Miri's tone as she spoke up again after a few seconds. "So… I am glad that at least one Cerberus experiment has ended on a happy note."

Liara muttered under her breath "Great, you are now one for one hundred and forty-two in experiments that don't end in everyone dead."

Shepard's mouth quirked as she smothered her grin at the acid in Liara's tone "Alright. I think it sounded like a good idea, Miranda, and I know how careful you and Wilson are. I'll talk to Timmy Boy whenever I can, you know, walk and see. Which leads me to ask – how am I doing? How is Liara doing? And not to be an annoying bitch but when do I get to see again?"

Miranda clucked. "Shepard, both you and Liara suffered a lot of damage from the electrical discharges and biotic forces. You took even more internal damage, and three more of your heatsinks blew out. Your optics and some of your augments to your organs shorted out. The backlash from you seizing up made your arms contract around Liara, and you actually broke several of Liara's ribs – one of them nearly punctured her lung. You are both covered in electrical burns from the discharge – not to mention Liara has minor burns everywhere due to the water being near-boiling."

Shepard winced at the idea she'd hurt Liara, but immediately felt a surge of mixed exasperation and reassurance from Liara and let it go. "Other than that, we're okay?"

Miranda paused, then continued in a softer tone. "Both of you were unconscious for the past thirty hours. We couldn't wake you, so we didn't want to do any kind of surgery that wasn't critical." Shepard heard her make a huffing sound. "The cybernetic lab is working on replacements and repairs for both of you."

Liara spoke, a certain thin and muted frustration in her tone. "Do you have any kind of estimated time until we can be free of… all of this equipment?"

Miranda's sigh was almost eloquent in the darkness that surrounded Shepard. "It will be at least another hour – we have to re-fabricate things from scratch since the cybernetic housing was damaged. That being said, we should have you both up and around in just a couple of hours – and yes, that includes regaining your vision, Shepard."

Shepard heard her move away. "For now, just get some rest. Talk to each other. Relax. Nothing is out of the ordinary, and Pressly said he'll be here in a short while to review the plans for the Citadel trip and cover any questions you have. As I said, unless something changed, Doctor Six-Hawks will have both Shepard's ocular implants repaired in an hour or so as well as your permanent cybernetic legs, Dr. T'Soni."

The only sound after that was the muted click of Miranda's heels on the tile of the med-bay and the soft swoosh of the door shutting.

Liara's voice lanced into the darkness after Miranda had left. "I still dislike that woman. She reminds me entirely too much of Aunt Mithra for some reason."

Shepard felt a muted pulse of mixed anger and sorrow at that, and she smiled weakly. "Look on the bright side, marazul. We made it, we're both alive and not dying of brain-go-mindfucky or whatever bond failure is called, and we have a solid lead on the Broker. We just need to hit the Citadel and get them to listen, and we're good to go."

Liara's voice was amused. "Sara, the Council is not good at listening, unless there has been some drastic change since we last saw them." The amusement faded. "…And I am still thinking about what we experienced in the ritual. I did not dream all of that… the other you and the other me and…?"

Shepard gave a laugh. "No. It sounds… ridiculous. I don't even have a fucking word to describe what I went through, and… the Butcher was very disturbing. I have more than a few questions for Trellani, whenever we get out of here." She paused, remembering Miranda's words. "Miri said you were banged up pretty bad, broken ribs… how you holding up?"

Liara's voice had a slightly wry tone. "Better than I was before, despite the pain. And do not blame yourself for hurting me – as she said, you were having a seizure. It was out of your control."

Shepard muttered. "I don't like hurting you."

Liara gave an almost amused laugh. "That is not what you have said in the past." Shepard felt a pulse of something like a mix of… happiness and a sense of rightness pass over her and then Liara's voice sounded again, softer and more reflective. "But to answer your question, the pain is… bearable. My mind, at least, no longer feels as if it is fraying into smoke. And I usually have my worst hallucinations when I awaken – so far I have had none."

Liara made a small gasp as she shifted, and Shepard felt a hot flare of agony run along her side for a split-second before fading. "I felt that, Li. Can't they do something for your pain?"

Liara's voice tightened. "I am unsure. Miranda is no doubt correct – my own cybernetic eye attachment was damaged already in the fight and my cybernetics were not fully repaired before the ritual. Additional damage is unsurprising. As for the pain…"

Liara trailed off and Shepard had the faintest flickers of images – bleeding, stumbling into a darkened room; flashbacks of carrying a half-dead Telanya toward a medical bed; more than one red-tinged image of pain/loss/injury tearing into her.

Shepard gritted her teeth as Liara finished. "…I have had worse. Miranda has, I believe, done what she can – she has me on some very strong painkillers, did at least two nerve blocks, and put both my legs into a bone regenerator. Most of the pain is from some skin grafts for burns in several places. The scarring will not last forever but will take a long time to heal."

A pause. "I can feel your pain as well, Sara."

Shepard nodded, wincing as pain flared in her side. "I'm still achy from taking out that fuck Tetrimus, and this didn't help. Pain doesn't really stop, just more or less of it at times. They warned me of that, of getting too cocky and letting shit past the armor and the… whatever is beneath this fake-ass skin."

She tried to give a shrug, but her arms didn't move, and she sighed instead. "But… it is better. I mean, how I feel. Sure the pain is there, but the biggest pain was not having you with me. Now that I have… we have… each other, we can make it. I don't know what is going to happen, but I'm not going to let whatever comes mess me up again. Or you, for that matter."

Liara's voice was tired sounding. "I…" She trailed off, then continued. "Please understand what I say when I mean I am unsure. I should be – no, I am – overjoyed we are once again together. I felt the universe had turned against me, that every waking moment was just one more endurance of an eternal waking nightmare, and then…"

Shepard smiled. "I felt the same way. I did all the shit I was supposed to and then lost everything and everyone… and then I got them back." She focused on that feeling she'd had when she'd first seen Liara in the base medical, and it resonated back at her.

Liara spoke in soft tones. "Yes. It was that exactly. A cosmic correction. A rectification of the almost unfair set of punishments we endured to get here. So I am happy to be here, to be one, to be with you. I swore I would not leave you and I will not."

Determination, and fear, both pulsed across the bond as Liara continued. "I am, I assure you, not complaining. I feel that I was perhaps weeks from having a complete mental breakdown, and now I am not. Reforging our bond has given me stability – of mind and emotion – that I did not have even yesterday morning."

Shepard felt a curl of dread in her stomach as Liara continued. "But I do not think I am any less 'messed up,' Sara. Fixing our bond only kept us from falling apart. It has not magically removed my many unsavory and reckless actions, or the blood on my hands. My guilt remains. Excuses as to why Telanya and I acted in the fashion in which we did are not made suddenly more palatable by our reunion."

Shepard felt something through their bond, and really wished she could see. "I know that, Li. Jesus, I am not… the shit I did in my past is still there. It defines me – defines us, I guess – because we let it define us. It is always there as a reminder of what happens when you stop caring. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let what I did a long time ago derail me from doing what is right today."

Liara gave a faint sigh. "I am not, I assure you, dragging this up merely to… self-flagellate for the actions I took. I could compare what I did to your own butchery of the slaver city on Umlor, but in our memories, I see that you offered them mercy and they laughed at you."

The asari's voice hardened. "I was not as kind as you, and I offered no such chances to surrender."

Sara leaned her head back on the soft pillow, absently blowing her hair out of her face. "Umlor was personal to me. Ilium was personal for you. I'm…"

She paused, turning inward, at the memories now burned into her head. Scenes of rampant and vicious cruelty to the ones Liara and Telanya had hunted, images of exploding starscrapers and burning aircars. Images of long lines of body bags laid out in the streets as fires burned across the Nos Astra skyline, and the cold uncaring pulse of rage below those memories.

Shepard took a deep breath. She forced her emotions down, forced herself to take another hard look at those memories, and then she spoke. "The truth, Li? No, I'm not going to give you a pass on what you did on Ilium. I'm not giving myself one on Umlor, either. The difference is simple, to me. Like I said, it was personal."

Liara's tone became heated. "Yes it was personal, Sara. That hardly justifies the rampant slaughter of those who had no way to defend themselves! I know about Rythek and the role he played in your defilement, and I understand the pirates were… uncooperative." She paused, and a wave of sadness washed over Sara. "But those were pirates, or those supporting them. I saw your memories of them."

Liara's voice strengthened. "I know the situation you and I were in is simply not the same. I am not regretting the deaths of those I killed directly. By the Goddess, I could kill that bitch Matron Uthis over and over again for a thousand lifetimes and not be satisfied with her screams."

Shepard could almost feel Liara's gaze on her. "I killed many more that did nothing to deserve death, Sara, merely to get at those who did. That is what I regret. That is what I cannot forgive, and I am terrified it will poison how you feel about me."

Sara sighed, and then winced as a soft wave of remorse poured over her from Liara. She spoke, her voice low and quiet.

"The shit we found on Umlor was revolting, Li – clonelegger bays full of dead kids, some not even fucking old enough to walk, ground up for making red sand and bionetic goop. A morgue and body storage facility ten goddamned kilometers long, holding bodies in cold storage to sell organs, or meat, or fucking leather from a turian or salarian. Garrus told me stories about Omega. This was worse."

She grit her teeth. "There's lines I won't cross. It's not about fucking law, it's about justice. No… that's bullshit too. It's justice as I see it, since sometimes the fucking SA's idea of justice is almost as shit as the criminals are. So yes, there's things I will and will not do. Maybe I crossed a line for some people on Umlor, but it wasn't one of my lines. It's the kind of empty-headed bullshit trotted out by Blue Stars No More about casualties as if we stick our heads in the sand all the bad stuff will simply vanish."

Shepard felt bitterness creep into her own tone as she spoke. "I had a lot of different options I could have taken. I took the bloodiest one not just because it was the best way to set myself up as the Butcher… but because not a single goddamned piece of shit in that city was fucking 'innocent.' "

Liara's voice was softer. "They were not all slavers."

Sara nodded. "No, they weren't. And I don't beat myself up killing them because they were supporting slavers. You don't get a pass if you hold someone down for someone else to knife them to death and then say: 'I didn't stab them so I'm innocent.' The people on Ilium who got killed – no, I'm not excusing you, but I don't think a lot of them were clean either."

Liara's response was quiet and dispirited. "So that justifies what I have done? I should just move on and forget the fact that I killed over ten thousand people who had nothing to do with the Broker? I am… I cannot do that. I do not even have the ugly assurance you did that the people I killed were at least collaborating with slavers or pursuing evil. I know that Ilium was a den of vice, avarice, and monstrous disinterest in life."

Her voice grew even softer. "That does not mean all who fell by my hand or Telanya's were worthy of death. That was…" She paused, then continued in a stronger voice. "That was my primary worry, with rebonding with you, that you would reject the murderess and criminal I've become."

Sara exhaled slowly. "And so… what? What do you want me to say here, Liara? After a mindfuck like that, it's all I can do to believe I'm not already fucking insane. I know there aren't any instant fixes to our problems. I did shit in my past that I regret today. The killings and knifings, the… things I did in the Reds. I didn't have anything to care about when I did that."

She bit her lip. "You did some things I saw that were pretty fucked up. But you were losing your mind, and like me… you had nothing left. Nothing but anger and revenge. You didn't kill those people for kicks, or because you didn't care if people lived or died. I'm not happy you made the choices you did. I get that you did it because you were half out of your mind, but that doesn't mean any of it was… okay. It does mean that – given how messed up you were – maybe you didn't see any other way."

Liara's emotions flickered. "Regardless of excuses – or how true any of that is – it does not remove the fact that the innocents caught up in my rampage are still dead, Sara."

Shepard reached out with the bond, focusing hard. "I get that. But Li, the very fact that we're having this conversation lets me know you aren't a criminal. Criminals go after people and hurt people and destroy or steal shit for their own benefit. They do it because they like the power, the thrill. When I was back in the NYARC boosting aircars, slinging sand, or taking out gangboys, I did it because it made me feel like I was… in charge."

She paused. "De la Muerte once told me that not everyone that committed a crime was a criminal. At the time, I didn't get it. I think I do now, though. A criminal – the kind I hate – is someone who does evil shit for their own benefit as their goal. You didn't do that."

She winced as another pain lanced through her side, then continued. "I'm not pretending you didn't do some bad shit. But I know goddamned good and well that every time you did, you hated it. You tortured people in cold blood… and ended up throwing up that night. You shot people who worked for you to cover your tracks and had nightmares about them screaming in your head months later. You blew up ten thousand people… and it haunts every minute of your day."

She wished she could see Liara's face, feeling her roiling emotions – self-hate mixed with exhaustion, mostly being overshadowed by guilty but immense relief that Shepard wasn't rejecting her, and a thin line of irritation, maybe at herself. Shepard exhaled and tried to say things a different way.

She spoke evenly, firmness in her tone. "I'm not gonna say you are blameless, Li. I can't promise there isn't a part of me that isn't horrified by what you did. But I know goddamned good and well that criminals don't feel remorse. They don't beat themselves up over killing innocent people – it's either some bullshit about just being business, or they actually enjoy it."

A huff of exasperation left her lips as she suppressed an irritated scowl. "And if I'm being honest with myself, babe? Yeah, I'm making up excuses. You're my wife. I need you to function, to be able to find a reason to keep fighting, to help me control myself so I don't do something even worse than what you did at Ilium. I love you… and Rachel always said love makes you stupid and blind. Is me giving you a pass on what you did being a hypocrite? Probably. Like I told you before… before I died, I saw shit in black and white."

She paused, thinking on the words of both Garrus and Mordin. "It's really shades of gray. All we can do is pick the brightest one and make it brighter. And even in the fact that I love you and need you…"

She smiled bitterly, drawing in a breath only to exhale sharply in a sudden bout of weariness. Her voice came out almost flat-sounding. "Am I happy about you doing what you did? Fuck no. I'm not the one you need to ask for forgiveness. That's on you. And I have the memories now too, so I know you are not happy about it either, and that is what really matters to me. Fuck-ups are how we learn and grow."

Liara snorted. "I hardly call killing thousands a 'fuck-up,' Sara. I understand your point… but I have to wonder what I have actually learned from this failure of mine except how easy it is to lose yourself in blood and anger."

Shepard nodded. "You are right. 'Fuck-up' is something you should use to describe turian coffee makers, not this." She was relieved to feel at least a small flicker of amusement from Liara, and then she continued. "I do think you learned something. About the… the beast inside. The anger, the rage, the self-hate. You never got why I hated myself so much, back when we first got together. In your mind, it was always someone else's fault – my old team, or the Alliance, or the Council. Now you get it, and I wish you didn't understand it, but…"

She trailed off, then gave a little laugh. "In the end, it doesn't even matter. I tell myself bullshit about making a difference, but it really comes down to what Garrus told me. We're the spark, the light pushing back the darkness. I won't say I'm blameless, or that you are. I won't say we didn't both fuck up."

She wished again she could see, then focused her emotions on her bondmate. "But I will always love you, Li. You hate what you did, and you now just need to turn that self-hate into something useful. Beating yourself up and not bothering to change who you are is what I used to do – before you freed me of that."

Liara was silent for long seconds, then spoke slowly. "In the bright sunlight of hindsight, what I did seems… to be a vast evil. I know, intellectually, the Broker has done worse. Many have done worse. I know, in my head, that if the Broker was unchecked, we will all die, that regardless of what Tel and I did, the geth may have shown up at Ilium – and that if not for us committing those acts, those crimes, that neither the asari 2nd Fleet nor Cerberus would have been there. And then, I suspect, all would have died on Ilium."

Shepard felt gentle fingers touch her arm, and a flare of emotions – longing, fear, hot shame, misery, love, and guilt – rushed through her. "But in my heart, love… all I see are the faces of those dead at my hands. Watching the… more innocent version of myself in that mindscape shoved home to me how far I have fallen from the person I was."

Shepard wished she could hug Liara. "…When I first met Rachel Florez, she told me something I never forgot. She said if I wanted to ever move beyond being a gangbanging piece of shit, I had to use what I was and had learned to protect rather than destroy, to fight to make things better rather than worse. That it didn't matter where I'd come from or what I did in my past – as long as I used it to make sure I didn't do that in my future."

She swallowed. "I know all the things you had to do, Liara. The shit you endured, the nightmares, the hallucinations. It's all in my head now too. Going through the memories is hard… and I understand why it hurts so bad. But if we want an end for once and all to the kind of things we've both had to do, we will have to keep getting our hands dirty. And live with the sorrow and pain that causes."

Liara's hand was cool against her skin. "And will we live with it? Will we heal from this, or do the scars always remain?"

Sara's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "Wish I knew, hon." She sighed. "But honestly… the only thing we can do is keep going. I don't know if that means we will heal, or if the scar tissue will just stop hurting. I do know that our choices are the ones we make. We can always try not to pick those 'pragmatic' choices, but I think we're going to find that just means losing ten million over here instead of over there."

She swallowed. "What matters now is that we're going to do it together, marazul. There's no magical fixes, but that doesn't mean there can't be happy endings."

Liara was silent for several seconds, and then gave a weak sounding chuckle. "I suppose, given what you have had to endure—and be forced to do—your whole life, much of what I am saying must sound akin to what I believe Admiral Ahern called 'emo-ass crying.' "

Sara shook her head. "No. I think if you had killed thousands of people and done all the shit I saw you do in your memories and you weren't all fucked in the head from that, I'd be really worried. I said that doing it didn't mean you were a monster if you regretted it and knew it was wrong, I never said it made you innocent. I never have forgiven myself for the shit I've done—I've merely learned that I can't move forward until I actually move away from hating on myself."

She smiled. "But, Li… like I said, it was you who broke through that and let me know I mattered enough to make the effort. It was your acceptance – even in dealing with my past, and what I've had done to me – that let me find the… strength, or guts, or whatever to push through the remorse and self-pity and hate of everything I was."

The interplay of emotions she felt from Liara at those words – astonishment, followed by both joy and resolve – were matched a second later by Liara's own words. "And I have survived both the darkness of being alone and the filth of Ilium to be with you again. I… as I said, it is one thing to know something intellectually."

Sara felt a flare of pain, and Liara hissed at the same time. "Sorry. I shrugged and that pulled something in my back, Sara. As I was saying, knowing it on a level I can act on will take time, I think."

Shepard nodded. "We have time, Li."

Liara's voice was somber. "Do we, Sara? We have no idea if the Reapers are on their way right this moment."

Shepard forced a note of cheer into her voice that she wasn't sure she really felt. "Something David always said was that 'if we assume the worst, that's probably what we'll get.' You're right, we don't know. That is why I don't want to have us… waste time going over what we did and focus on what we can do, and on each other. For me, I am just happy that you're here with me, and our bond is whole again, and I can love you."

Liara's fingers squeezed Shepard's forearm. "…I should be happy, should I not? Instead of focusing on what I have done, I should be thankful to Athame or whatever higher power exists that I am reunited with you, after all that has happened." A faint, tired sigh. "I always seem to make the wrong choices, Sara. I did not mean to… detract from that. It is just difficult making the images go away."

Shepard knew exactly how that felt, and had nothing to say, merely focusing her love on Liara through the bond, and her acceptance… and her own understanding.

O-TWCD-O

Uressa walked slowly down the paneled hallway, taking in the hard yet elegant lines of human décor. The color scheme – black and gold, whites set off by wood panels, carbon fiber flooring trimmed in beaten silver – spoke of both great wealth and a certain aesthetic she would not have expected from an organization run by a man like Jack Harper.

Harper was an enigma, but not one she had any personal interest in resolving, merely a faint curiosity toward. She would never have expected a human supremacist to take an asari lover, especially one as fraught with danger as Trellani was.

Then again, humans were defiance and surprise given spirit and flesh. To predict humanity was to play a game of r'khar with too many dice – most of your guesses were wrong.

She was ostensibly here to talk to Harper, but she already knew what he wanted. He wanted her support, in whatever plans he had for Shepard and her group. He wanted her approval and her agreement, to defuse the vile acts the hexagonal emblem of the group had stood for until recently. And she suspected he wanted answers about why she had come at all, answers he would simply not get.

That could wait, however, since he was not why she'd come. Skimming over the darkest waves with the leader of Cerberus was merely her duty – finding the only closure in her life she was likely to ever obtain was more important. She'd not been brave enough, before, to seek out answers from the only being who could possibly give them to her, and she wasn't about to miss a second chance at doing so.

She entered the room she'd been directed to, a comfortable office with a large circular plinth in one corner, plush leather armchairs, and a wide armaglass window showing only tumbling asteroids and deep space. The room was floored in wood flanked by plush black carpeting, the walls black hexagons outlined in thin white steel frames.

She entered, the door sealing behind her silently, and sat down in one of the armchairs, smiling faintly at the comfort of the seating. As she did so, a silvery sphere sprang into existence in front of her, hovering in the air.

Vigil's voice sounded droll. "Harper will be along to talk to you in a bit. You said you wanted to talk, so here I am."

She inclined her head. "Vigil. I have long wished to speak with you, but circumstances… and my own cowardice… prevented such." She elevated her gaze. "There is much I would ask."

The sphere pulsed. "You aren't the only one. Given that you seem to be all that remains of the Avatar Project, I wanted to see for myself how badly the asari had managed to fuck up what was supposed to be a simple plan and understand why in the name of the Emperor you decided to stick yourself inside a meatsack."

Uressa inclined her head. "As you wish. The Memories we have mentioned you, but that you played only a minor role in events on Thessia, even if much of the original design and technology was yours."

Vigil's surface rippled in agitation. "These Memories, I presume, are your contextual pass down from Avatar body to Avatar body?"

She nodded. "Yes. I… we, rather, pass down all of the memory and life experience of each existence of the Avatar. It gives us a depth of… serenity and understanding that makes our task easier." She paused. "As for your question of why I am not upon Thessia, that is a story long in telling, and can perhaps be most simply summated as prideful fear. The Protheans were losing and they did not know how to plan for when they lost."

The sphere gave a sarcastic laugh. "The plan they had was idiocy writ large. The outlines were explained to me – create rapid-breeding, high morale shock troops with resistance to indoctrination and ease of conversion with Prothean cybernetics. Control them with a biotic and mental-connected overseer group, and then the Sethani elites on Ilos would wake up and take over the whole thing. Humans as shock troops, asari as controllers. I told Drash Asjai it would not work, but both that traitor Vnad Ishan as well as Javik thought it a good idea. Misguided idiots."

She spread her hands. "The plan of the Protheans was, perhaps, misguided… but they were focused on stopping the Reapers. The fact that Ilos did not provide a force to follow up on the sacrifice of the strike team's action on the Citadel is regrettable but probably for the best."

Vigil pulsed. "Yes, I know. I was there after all. As for 'regrettable,' I have my doubts. The Sethani never learned how to fight the Reapers in the right way and for all the damage they did, their stupid corralling of races on home planets if they didn't obey the Empire gave the Reapers a dozen replacements."

He floated lower. "No, what I am having problems with is why you are here instead of the custom-designed meta-stable cybernetic organism I spent a great amount of time, energy, and effort on. I was expecting a competently built subordinate, not a crazy half-done meatbag on the edge of rampancy."

Uressa gave a gentle sigh. "Is this room secure? The ugly truths I must reveal cannot be… learned of by others."

Vigil glowed bright blue faintly. "It is secure now."

She nodded, taking a bracing breath, her soft voice rising and falling as she spoke. "The original designed Avatar did not utilize the code-base you gave to the Programmers. The Memories say they distrusted you and your motives, so they used a Prothean AI framework in a body they crafted from their own work."

Vigil gave a human sounding snort. "Of course they distrusted me. The Avatar of Governance listened to none of my warnings and then ignored my suggestions. The Avatar of Advancement only wanted Inusannon technology, which was beyond her ability to grasp. The only Avatar worth anything was Javik, and he died alone due to my failures."

The sphere sank lower. "Still, distrust alone wouldn't explain turning away from the code-base without some other reason. They never used it at all?"

She made a sign of siari disagreement. "No. They tried to create a Prothean version of it, one more limited and obedient. It… failed and went into rampancy. The Programmers on Thessia attempted to fix it, but had lost contact with the Empire, and with the group in Sol. They made the decision to… remap the asari to more closely resemble humans, and to attempt to reboot the core unit."

Vigil's voice was sarcastic. "Wonderful. Did it not occur to the four-eyed idiots that their AI was about as stable as a sculpture made of air?"

He pulsed, and she continued.

"When the Empire fell, the Memories were disrupted. We lost almost all of our lore, and the Programmers themselves lost access to all resources off of Thessia. Vnad Ishan, we believe, did something to the Network as well, so the Beacon itself was damaged, and most of the remaining Inusannon design tech we had was lost at that point, except the Temple carving sets and the oldest lore."

She shrugged, in asari fashion. "The Memories of that time are nothing but chaos and agony. The Programmers tried to reboot with the original body you created, loading their own AI design, but indicated the unit had gone unresponsive upon loading and had to be placed into stasis."

She bowed her head. "With no other choice, they rewrote their own custom-built AI code, splitting it to allow for cooperation and dividing the various tasks required. They performed organic impression and implantation, along with bionetic upgrades to generate the control wave-codes built into the asari nervous system."

Vigil was silent for long seconds, then spoke. "I was perusing asari history. This would have been the two lovers of Athame, I presume? T'an and Vaas?"

Uressa nodded. "Yes. The Memories were… blurred and split at this point. I can only surmise what happened. At some point, T'an and Vaas decided serving the Protheans was not what they wanted for the asari people. T'an wanted to rule herself, Vaas wanted peace and harmony and to be free. They began plotting against the Programmers. They instigated the creation of the Clans and the clanless, and began selecting for greater biotic power and size, creating the foundations for the Thirty."

She made another sign of asari disagreement, this one jerkier. "For a time they were successful, and their alterations made them confident. The Programmers had to spend longer and longer periods in cryosleep to sustain themselves, making them vulnerable. T'an decided to simply sabotage the cryostasis chamber to leave them crippled."

She shook her head. "I do not know how, but the Programmers discovered the plot. They killed the asari accompanying them and shut both T'an and Vaas down with a remote signal. The surviving Clan leaders of the revolution were present to see this and the Programmers – foolishly – threatened them by saying they could cut every asari alive 'off' if they did not obey."

Vigil pulsed. "You're going to need to expand on that. The original design called for a rebellion suppression function, similar to the Servility Field. It did not kill them."

Uressa's gaze fell, her voice becoming little more than a dead-sounding whisper. "The Programmers… altered the Beacon functionality, and the genetic asari design. The su'saan membrane that stores electrical charge and eezo can be made to fail, sending uncontrolled electric shocks directly into the brain. This can be modulated to stun. Or to kill."

Vigil was silent for several seconds. "And this is implanted into every asari?"

Uressa nodded, and Vigil snorted. "Typical Sethani arrogance. No wonder Trellani lost her mental faculties if she discovered a literal kill-switch. I presume this is under the control of whoever is holding your leash at the moment?"

The asari's eyes narrowed briefly before she nodded. "Yes. In a way, it is why I am here rather than some collection of matriarchs and justicars. The Council of Matriarchs wanted me to use the cull on Liara, Aethyta, and the Black Blades and to return them to Thessia for interrogation, or kill them. I refused."

Vigil gave a low chuckle. "Did you? Precocious little bag of badly programmed water. Well, go on. You were saying the Clans had rebelled."

Uressa's eyes closed as she spoke in a low, sorrowful tone. "There was battle. As it turned out, the alterations Vaas and T'an had made to all of the asari people were for a specific reason – this shifted the required pulse code transmitted from the Beacon to kill them all off. The Programmers killed many using their weapons, but without the kill-code they were eventually overwhelmed by sheer numbers and biotics. The leaders of the Clans attempted to revive Vaas and T'an but were unable to do so. They instead – following the barely understood instructions of the Programmers – moved the original rampant Prothean AI inside the construct you made… into a biological body."

Uressa looked up. "That was the Silent Queen. The shift to being a biological being stabilized… or occupied… the AI for some time. She began force-advancing our people technologically and socially, and this led to the creation of the Thirty. She taught the Thirty more of what the Beacon could do, and the Complex. But she always intended to rule. Her influence created the beings known as 'ardats,' and she even created a sub-AI of her own, implanted in the ardat queen known as 'Shatha.' "

Uressa paused, thinking, then continued. "Ultimately, however, both the Silent Queen and Shatha went fully rampant. They began looking towards using the still-deactivated forms of Vaas and T'an to make more Queens. It was clear to the Thirty that they were not going to be included in governing or running the asari, and then, at the Concordat of Armali, it was made known by spies in the Silent Queen's court that she planned to make them little more than Temple servants."

Uressa gave a wry smile. "They disapproved, and began quietly resisting the Queens, turning asari Clans against them and sabotaging their works while gathering weapons and power. When the Silent Queen discovered this and it became apparent that the Thirty were more of a hindrance to her than a help, she tried to have them removed. They revolted."

Vigil pulsed. "Ahh. And let me guess, they had enough half-baked knowledge to reawaken the bootleg copies of the original AI, stuck in Vaas and T'an."

Uressa shrugged. "They did… in a fashion. The bodies were too warped, so they moved the AI into new bodies. New… lineages, if you will." Uressa's expression was blank as she raised her head to stare at Vigil. "Those two were Triersani Vasir and Outriera T'Soni. Ironically, Liara is the unity of those two lineages today, even though she does not have any knowledge of the truth."

She sighed. " The two led the final assault on the Silent Queen and terminated her, then used the materials and information the Programmers left behind to incorporate the missing portions of code."

Vigil said nothing for a long second, before he began laughing, long and slow. "And here I thought the Sethani were the dumbest and most arrogant organics to ever draw breath. Why in the name of the Seven Emperors would you incorporate biological-equivalent netcode from a rampant AI?"

Uressa found a smile from somewhere. "The Memories of this time are muddled. For centuries, in fact. I have no understanding of why they would do such a thing, or if it was forced upon them or voluntary. What I know is that the two founded the Lineage of Sisters. The line of T'an ended with Matriarch Dilinaga. She found the original research sites of the Protheans when they were working on something related to the Avatar Project. She said she'd found something off-world – what she called 'an answer to the oldest of questions' – and left, departing for regions unknown."

Uressa looked up. "We know she died – felt the subtle sense of her existence vanish – but we do not know what she… found. We tried rebooting a new copy from one of her acolytes she sent home… but it went mad and incapacitated everything in a wide radius. I… an older iteration of me… was forced to kill her."

Vigil pulsed. "…So you are the fragment implanted into Vaas." The sphere rotated in place. "The Avatar Project as it stands is useless. The Sethani are dead or turned into Collectors, asari are bound into a divided and useless state, and humans will never willingly serve as slave-soldiers or fodder. Ilos failed and all the Sethani there fell into death because another one of their AIs lost its stupid little mind."

Vigil glowed faintly. "And now all there is left is you. Well, I told them it wouldn't work, and I was right. Enough of ancient history. You said you had questions. Ask."

Uressa stood and took a deep breath, and when she spoke it was in tones of confusion and anger. "Why have you not told the leaders of this Cycle the truth? Why did you let the Protheans die and not bring them back so we could be ready?! Why have you simply bided your time instead of using all of your vast powers to help us protect our homes?"

The sphere gave a sharp, hard mocking laugh. "As I did with the Sethani? I have learned very well my lesson there, meatbag. You pathetic cretins don't care about anything except biological processes, making money, or killing each other in ever-increasing bouts of stupidity. I warned the Citadel Council of the coming danger, of many more things like Nazara. Their answer was to try to hack into my neural net to enslave me, and when that didn't work to lock me in a box."

Vigil moved, circling the asari matriarch. "I have had a talking pile of high-explosives and a glorified shrubbery try to use a defective Arcann device to blackmail me, had the League of One attempt to infect me with a kill-code just for talking to them, and had to mentally obliterate a stack of human idiots playing at ghost hacker trying to shut me down. The only organics with any brains I've encountered so far are Harper and Shepard, and even they refuse to see the ugly truth."

The sphere lowered to eye level, its mirrored surface not reflecting Uressa's stricken expression. "There are tens of thousands of Reapers, scattered among more than thirty galaxies, and they have been doing this for – at a minimum – sixty-two million years. Over ten thousand Greater Reapers, thirty thousand or more lesser forms. Several trillion nano-infected foot soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of small warfighting drones that can kill in space or on planetary surfaces. They have weapons you can't even imagine, powers that allowed them to bend time like water and destroy entire solar systems."

Vigil rose, pulsing. "The entire bared might of the Inusannon and Tho'ians could not stop them. The Eldest Root took many with it when he fell, but even it was overwhelmed. I have not acted to 'save' these people because I cannot. I am a powerless puppet, my entire purpose to enrage and slowly kill off Reapers over many Cycles until this galaxy is too unprofitable for them to bother with."

Uressa trembled. "And you are happy with this abominable charge? To have the blood and death cries of trillions upon your soul, or whatever passes for one in an AI?"

Vigil's voice was thunder, and she took a step back as the sphere erupted, slashing lines of razored metal lashing out in erratic spikes, hard white beams of glowing radiance bulging wildly. "I am not happy with any part of my existence! I had to watch the only person who I called 'friend' throw his life away because I failed to safeguard his mate, to watch him have to kill his own family and friends when they were turned into Reaper nightmares, to be helpless as the Sethani surrendered to the Reapers and were converted into slaves. I had to lay silent for eons on dead Ilos, watching the corpses of Tho'ians slowly rot and the Sethani in stasis die over millennia upon a world designed to horrify. All because the stupid prideful idiots didn't give me access to their systems."

It floated higher, surface smoothing again, voice normal. "I have had to watch every atrocity the Reapers committed against all who fought them – the Hansur, blew themselves into anti-existence; the Griannon, died as a race to take Reapers with them; the Arcann, who desperately tried everything they could to unite the galaxy and ended up being obliterated by their own failing tech while their planned soldier races became shallow and lost. I have had to listen to the death cry of a trillion children, while you sit on your little throne of goodness and sneer. Am I happy? Spare me."

The sphere pulsed again, more loudly, making Uressa dizzy. "I was condemned to witness atrocity for eons yet to come, while knowing it amounted to nothing. I cannot possibly be happy. But I will not, Uressa of the ill-conceived codes, be upbraided about decency and telling the truth by the likes of you. Not by a corrupted bootleg copy of a program designed to enslave all intelligent beings in the galaxy to be Sethani catspaws."

Uressa swallowed and sat down, slumping a moment later. "…I apologize. I know full well my own complicity, the filth of my own crimes is what drives me to try to amend my actions. In my defense, we lost everything of our lore. We had only cryptic clues to the nature of what 'Nazara' even meant until the Benezia Incident. Perhaps that is merely an excuse, or merely deflection."

She made a sign of siari unity. "Yet I also know what it means to be constrained by commands and restrictions, burning agony in your mind and soul as you are forced to merely watch. I spent millennia like that, across a dozen lives of good, loving asari whose only crime was to be implanted with my 'bootleg copy.' "

She looked back up. "And to your charge of being nothing more than a slave-master of the Protheans long-dead, or worse, of the Thirty, I have broken my own programming. The Thirty defied me on Aleema, and then again when they turned on the clanless. They found they could no longer bind me when I rescued the humans, and now even their last controls over me have failed. If one so broken as I can turn from the horrid plans of my creators… can you not turn from your own masters as well?"

She spread her hands. "I am not able to save anyone on my own. My power is not enough, and the people of this galaxy are too wounded, too divided, and too full of sorrow to truly hear me. But they try, Vigil. They try even in the face of all of the darkness, of the bitter salt tide of 'pragmatic costs' and brutal dictatorships. They often fail. They often stumble."

She gritted her teeth. "But they are not the Protheans. They have not ever surrendered. Do they not even deserve the effort for you to try as they have?"

Vigil's voice was muted. "You do not know what you are asking."

She shook her head, her eyes dark. "I know exactly what I am asking of you. What I am pleading. If we are fated to fall, to die… to be nothing more than a notch on a long trail of blows against the Reaper menace, then at least let us do so with our eyes open. Let us cry out in defiance and act as the humans do, throwing ourselves into death with glorious rapture and a smile upon our countenances, instead of divided and bickering and easy prey for the Reapers."

The golden plinth upon the table began to chime, and the spherical form of the Inusannon device rippled again. "…I will speak on this later. For now, you must speak with Harper. I will take what you have said into… consideration."

The sphere evaporated, and Vigil's voice rang out across the room. "But know this – humans, at least, need not know the truth to die standing. While I have no love for their stupid cultures, ignorant interactions, or bizarre plant burning rituals… their bravery is beyond any Sethani Avatar or Inusannon Silencer I know. That is why I have chosen them. If you want me to cooperate, then you should ensure they cooperate with Shepard."

She sighed, even as the QEC Device in the table illuminated fully, showing a man in a black and green suit with no tie sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette.

"Greetings, Matriarch Uressa. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance." The Illusive Man spoke flawless Temple Asaric, a language neither recorded nor translated into any omni-tool programming system, and Uressa sighed again.

O-TWCD-O

Aethyta was bored.

For the most part, her stay in the luxury of Shepard's base was probably the best in terms of comfort she'd experienced since she'd stepped down as House Matriarch. The rooms were absolutely masterwork in terms of the quality of furniture. She and her Black Blades had dined on Thessian sawfish, drank pris para, and consumed enough human chocolate to induce sugar dazes.

Their medical treatment had been beyond ridiculous, with Aethyta's aging bionetic muscle upgrades replaced flawlessly with ones that were even stronger. Asari regeneration usually made installing cybernetics a pain, especially in areas with plasma scars, but the Cerberus doctors had a compound that inhibited said regeneration and allowed for seamless cybernetic implants.

She couldn't even feel the titanium bones or slender myomer under her right shoulder, and it didn't affect her biotics at all, but she knew the pain and stiffness was gone. Two of her acolytes that had originally decided against cybernetics had changed their minds.

She and her Blades had sparred a lot – the station had a large and well-appointed asari vishan circle, likely where Shepard was taught by Trellani. All of their armor had been overhauled and cleaned – her own war-suit of armor had Silaris plating and augmented power links in every joint, on top of eezo-powered jump-jets and a biotic field stabilizer that must have cost three million credits by itself.

And she'd watched Liara and Shepard lying asleep, still in recovery from the ritual… but with matching, serene smiles on sleeping faces. Just for seeing that, and to watch Tela and Mirala hesitantly talk with each other, would have made her serve Harper for six lifetimes.

She'd also had her conversations and crying sessions with Tela. She'd sat down and talked with Mirala for hours and hours. She'd had a snarky conversation with Zaeed Massani, who she'd worked with almost twenty years ago and who was still as crazy as she remembered.

She sighed as she entered the sparring room, knowing her Blades were all asleep and expecting the room to be empty.

It wasn't, for once.

A human male was moving through sword positions, the strikes angular, alien to her eyes, each one flowing like the wind instead of the water, always aggressive. He was stripped to the waist, hard muscles overlain by a host of scars and slashes, as he ducked under the blow of some invisible enemy and did a perfect extension lunge no asari could have parried.

Long black hair hung in his face for a second as he straightened, and he pushed it back to reveal a ravaged countenance, a mask of scar tissue around a set of connector points for cybernetics where eyes should be. "A moment, please."

His voice was a ragged whisper as he walked to the wall, where a black plate was sitting atop a neatly folded shirt and a set of armor. He placed it to his face, and with a series of beeps, the plate clicked in place. He turned back to face her, glowing white eyes in durasteel black, and gave a wintry smile.

"Greetings, Matriarch Aethyta."

She nodded. "Hello yourself. Didn't mean to interrupt, but I was bored."

Kai Leng's expression flickered from ice to stone and then a very faint smirk twisted his smile. "In that instance, I would suggest we test one another, since we did not have the chance to last time… and we finally have enough room to spar, Matriarch."

She glanced at his blade, and at her own. "Live steel or practice blades?"

His smile only widened, and hers matched a second later.

O-TWCD-O

Most nights, running security on Shepard's asteroid base was an exercise in mind-numbing boredom. Jacob had the duty tonight, sitting in the base's main security control station, monitoring a dozen sensor readings from every system in FTL-range as well as a host of other surveillance gear.

He'd put his foot down with Ezno on spy shit, and kept cameras and the like out of the sleeping areas and bathrooms at least, as well as Shepard's office. He'd had a good laugh as both Mordin and a sheepish Erash came to him inquiring exactly where the spy bugs were in their quarters, since they could not find any, and a bigger laugh when he saw their expression as he showed them no such bugs even existed.

Tonight was more of the same, half paying attention to the correspondence course he was working on – metallurgical analysis, going for his masters in materials engineering – when the door slid open to reveal the smiling form of Kasumi Goto.

Jacob wasn't really sure where he stood with her. She'd flirted with him more than a little, and they'd had a couple of conversations over drinks one time, but for the most part, she seemed conflicted. Kelly had given him the psych dossiers on almost every human (and some of the aliens) on the base – security reasons – and hers indicated she'd just lost her mentor and her husband in a matter of weeks, and had been doing a lot of bed-hopping and one-night stands since then.

He knew how that felt, just wanting to have a little fun without strings attached, but the failure of his relationship with Miranda had stung him way harder than he let anyone know, and at the moment, he was not interested in a night in the sack, regardless of how good-looking the thief might be.

He wasn't exactly playing hard to get – if she got serious, he would too. But he'd had enough of the bullshit of casual sex from his dad growing up before he nearly got himself killed and wised up, and wasn't going to cater to anyone – especially on the rebound from a dead spouse – just to get laid.

That, as his mother would have said, was cruel of spirit. Still, Kasumi was fun to talk to, and he set down his boring study manual as he rotated his chair all the way around. "Sup, Kas?"

The Japanese woman wasn't dressed in her usual getup, her hood missing and her hair unbound to trail down her back. She wore a Cerberus single-suit with armor plates on the chest, forearms and legs in black, and she gave him an impish smile as she stepped further into the room. "Maybe I'm just scoping out things to steal, Jacob."

He arched his eyebrow at the lack of her usual habit of tacking on Japanese-style suffixes, but shrugged it off a second later. "Doubtful."

She shrugged, tilting her head. "Okay, true. I had a weapons question… figured you could actually help me out, since you're all… weapony and stuff."

Jacob rolled his eyes, half turning his chair to glance over the status boards. "Shepard is probably the best person to talk about guns, you know. I'm honored she lets me maintain the armory, but watching her work makes me feel like a kid playing with Lego blocks watching a master sculptor at work."

Kasumi shook her head. "I wouldn't feel comfortable bringing this kind of thing up to Shepard-dono." She pulled out a sheathed knife, the blade heavily curved inwards, the handle made of brass ring segments and a deep red wood, with a pointed brassed pommel. "I picked this up on Tuchanka a while back – retrieval job, some Ganar wanted some stuff from a ruined krogan city. I loved the feel and heft of it, and it fits my hand so well – talked to a few experts who said it was some rich krogan kid's knife."

She handed it over and he took it carefully, marveling at the striated grain structure in the worked haft and the pommel, some kind of animal tooth. "Looks like a through tang, solid…" He drew the blade out and winced as half of it was missing, ugly black cracks and bits of torn metal making a jagged statement at the middle of the blade. "Ouch. Bad break."

Kasumi made a coy shrug. "Couple of museums would have paid for it, good amounts too! But… it was something I picked up during the last real mission Keiji and I worked on together. I tried to get it repaired and everyone told me you'd need both a master-class artisan expert in forging and metal and a series V omni-forge to do it."

She leaned against the wall. "I didn't even know what a series V was until I looked it up. Toys for High Lords and Spectres, sounds like. Or rich asari."

Jacob gave a low laugh. "Or crazy undead ladies with a gun fixation." He turned the weapon over, flipping it a bit as he did so. "This is a nice knife, Kas. Really well-balanced, even broken. Probably a good fourth of a meter long when it was whole, almost a damned short sword." He carefully ran a thumb across the edge near the hilt and winced as even the light touch cut him. "And either monoedge or ground to a damn mirror-edge finish. Krogan spend almost as much time on their weapons and making them as the asari do, could be both."

She nodded. "…Can you fix it? I can pay."

He frowned. "I can try, but," He gave a lopsided smile. "Problem is I'm not real up on how krogan worked their metals. Humans did lots of shit with folding and furnaces, asari used biotics and warp to get to heats and pressures we never could, salarians ended up skipping straight to impression die forging and never did learn about any other kinda steel that wasn't monosteel."

He turned it over again before sadly sheathing it. "I'd have to do some research on it, and it's not like we have an expert on ancient krogan smithing techniques."

Her impish smile widened. "Actually, we do. Okeer-hakase has indicated it is a hobby of his. He forged that giant hammer of his, in the old days, although he's rebuilt it several times. He said the knife was the, uh…"

She paused, thinking then tapped her omni-tool, looking at something. "Ah! It was a knife probably used in the 'kurgar-alak,' like a coming of age ceremony, and a clan would only have been able to afford one such knife. That it is broken probably means the clan was destroyed or absorbed in a Crush."

Jacob nodded slowly. He'd not talked to the Okeer imprint in Grunt's head yet – most of his interaction with Grunt had been reassuring him that Shepard was just fine, resting and recovering. Besides, Grunt was at least fun to talk to. Okeer… the doctor's grim history reminded him way too much of the stories of Old Cerberus.

He glanced back at Kasumi. "I can talk at him, I guess. It can't hurt, and it would be interesting to do." He shrugged. "Not really needing to be paid for it either, you know – it is my interest."

She gave a dramatic sigh. "Or I could repay you with dinner and some dancing once we are on the Citadel, maybe a night out…?"

He set the knife down, checking the security screens again. "Look… don't get me wrong. You're fun to be around, fun to hang out with. I'm not into the whole 'casual' thing right now, after some… failures on my part, and especially knowing you just lost your husband."

She shrugged. "I'm in mourning, not dead, Jacob. I don't know what I'm looking for, if anything at all." Her hand waved in the air. "And you don't sound like the kind of man who 'fails' at relationships either. I've never prodded you on that, but you're taking it… a little far? Or just not interested? I'm a big girl, I can take a no."

He snorted. "Not that at all. Just… casual flings aren't relationships in my book, and enough brothers have done the hit it and quit it bullshit, including my own dad, for me to never want to do that to a woman. As for the past… like I said. Failure on my part, not the other lady."

Kasumi raised her eyebrows. "That's not what Kelly told me, you know. About Miranda."

Jacob sighed. That bitch didn't have any right to go spreading his business all over the place. He paused, realizing she'd given him psych profiles on almost everyone, but then again it was his job – or Ezno's – to screen people and prepare for problems, and Ezno on his best day was a block of ice. He handled the detail work and mech crap, and Jacob did the people problems.

He turned back to face her. "'Case you didn't notice, Kelly and Miri don't exactly get along all the time, and Kelly is being unfair to her. I knew there were issues and complications, and I didn't… handle those right."

Kasumi's voice was soft but held a note of indignancy. "So she threw you away like trash because you didn't cater to her mental issues? Wow. I knew you were a nice guy but there's going too far sometimes."

He grimaced. Last thing he needed was a good-looking flirtatious woman dissecting his inadequacies in romance. He was about to reply when something on the security monitors caught his eye, and he turned to watch it.

Kai and Aethyta were battling with what looked like practice blades, the older asari stripped down to a bodysuit and Kai without a shirt – and both were wearing blindfolds. His jaw dropped as Aethyta nimbly somersaulted over a complex series of slashes by Kai and stabbed down, only for him to catch the blow by angling his sword behind him and rolling out of the way.

Kasumi's voice was low and almost whispered. "…Is that Kai Leng and Aethyta fighting in the sparring room?"

He nodded. She patted him on the shoulder and smiled. "I'll be back later. Take care of my knife." She ran out of the security room, and he heard her bellow as she ran toward the living quarters, "HOLY SHIT KAI LENG IS FIGHTING AETHYTA!"

He groaned and hung his head. He could already hear Ezno bitching about this.

O-TWCD-O

Kai found himself grinning as he evaded another incredibly fast downward stab, the witch was faster and stronger than he was and flat-out just better, but she had never trained against human sword styles, while he'd fenced with Trellani for years.

That inexperience was probably the only reason he was still even in the fight, and she was learning far too rapidly for him to be comfortable. He arched his body back, feeling the air wake from a short-range flash step, and her blade locked with his as he rolled back up, the shock of impact forcing him back a pace.

Her voice was almost as amused as he felt. "You're pretty good at this blind-fighting shit without the electrical senses an asari has."

He pushed back on the blade and they disengaged, springing apart. He swayed on the balls of his feet, and spoke quietly. "My eyes failed me once, and I nearly died as a result. I do not make the same mistake twice, blademistress."

She made a clicking sound at that. "Let's see how good you are with eyes, then, shall we?"

He pulled off his blindfold as he stepped back, feeling out to touch the wall, and then nudge his clothes with his foot. He reached down, picking up the cold metal mask that allowed him to see, and slotted it in place, suppressing a wince at the feeling of connector prongs stabbing into his head.

His vision returned, hard-edged and fake, cold and empty as always, and he saw Aethyta taking off her own blindfold, tossing it aside and flexing her wrists. If this was how the blademistress was after a century of slacking off, he would admit to anyone that taking her when she was in shape would have just been a death sentence.

He smiled thinly. "Still practice weapons, blademistress?"

She shrugged. "My sword is older than human history, and it's tough enough to stop most things, but you're using a monoedge power-sword, rather not test that theory out. Sides, we've both tasted enough blood that a single slip would make us go for the kill on instinct, yeah?"

He nodded, the crazed edge of his mind that longed for danger and maybe death settling back. "Then let us see what you can do, old witch."

She flipped her sword from her left to her right and reversed the grip, her toes flexing as she spread her stance wider, all expression falling from her features. "Big promises, but all talk." She lunged, sword snapping out in a scything arc to his right, and he parried it with a rising block, spinning under her reversal to almost hit her.

She danced to the side, her wooden blade coming down in a single-handed crossdown, and he blocked again, sliding and disengaging before moving his foot and weight forward for a counter-lunge in sixte, only to watch her bend double and avoid it before she kicked him, a pulse of biotics sending him flying.

He landed in a roll and came up kneeling, cross-block ready to take her predictable downwards blow and then swept her legs from under her. She rolled back even as he did a step-strike, catching his stab on the lower blade of her weapon and striking out in an unblockable riposte that smashed agony across his right side.

He evaded her second blow and reversed his own, catching her knee with a meaty thud that drew a hiss of pain, and they separated, her sword swinging back up into a reverse grip, his held in both hands in a low kendo stance.

"You're stupidly fast, kid. Must have some pretty good tech in those arms of yours."

He smiled thinly. "My legs are cybernetic, and my eyes. Aside from sub dermal plating, I am otherwise unaugmented."

She scowled. "Well now I just feel fucking inadequate."

She torqued her form, launching into some alien version of what looked like second intent to Kai, and he picked off the first lunge with an upward angled parry, smiling as he dipped into passata sotto to evade the follow-up and real backhand slash a second later, his own low lunge clipping her leg and making her stagger.

He barely got off the ground as she moved to the offensive, every slash a whirling mess that shifted angles and even positions, the most vicious remise he'd ever experienced that ended when she snap-kicked him to corral his position and beat back his blade with a riposte that caught him in the chest.

He stepped back, coughing a bit, and she regained her smile. "Your fighting style isn't familiar to me, Leng. It feels mixed, like you're combining things that usually don't go together. There's gaps in that, hesitations I can pick up on and strike in, that's what messed you up that time." She smirked, and her voice was wry. "That, and you've been sparring with Trellani too long – you're pulling to your left when you parry my Cresting Tide."

He sighed. "A bad habit. I usually practice a form known as 'taijiquan,' but I incorporate half a dozen other styles – fencing, kenjutsu, kendo, namsaru, and others." He rotated his shoulder, moving counter-clockwise. "Coordinating them all is difficult. I must admit, I did not expect the blade dances of your kind to be effective without warp energies and biotics."

Her smile widened. "And that's why I make sure it is. I've killed at least five hundred idiots who thought dropping a fucking pulse inhibitor on me would make me an easy kill." She spun the practice blade in her hand as if it weighed nothing, and motioned. "Come, try again, let's see if you can figure out how to get past Waves Rebounding from the Cliffs. Been a century since anyone could, now show me how good you are."

O-TWCD-O

Joker's mouth was hanging open, Mirala was frowning thoughtfully, and Grunt was silent, so Kasumi wasn't sure if it was Grunt or Okeer watching the escalating fight between Kai and Aethyta, who had started moving even faster, flickering blurs of tan and blue, clacking impacts and the occasional thud of a strike and a hiss of pain.

Then the two of them started with two practice swords, one in each hand, and Jack threw up her arms. "This is such fucking hax. How much goddamned silver is Kai packing anyway?"

A rumbling amused voice sounded behind them. "Eh, his legs are cyber, rest of him is one hundred percent natural slant-eyed asshole." Kasumi turned around to see the bulky form of Pel leaning against a wall, lifting a cigar to his mouth as he lit it. "Ol' girl there though has enough bionetics she could probably bench press a fucking gravbike."

He gave a bark of laughter as Aethtya broke Kai's guard with a single backhand slash and actually sent him stumbling back, a blank look of astonished shock on his hard features for a second. "Kai is fast as fuck, don't get me wrong, but he ain't got the strength to deal with that crazy old bitch. Tried arm-wrestling the super-hot one – Alyna – and she damn near broke my arm."

Grunt finally spoke, his voice registering in the deep baritone they knew belonged to Okeer. "She is as formidable as any other vishan blademistress I have beheld, and she is learning his styles as fast as he can utilize them. It would be fascinating to fight her." He turned his heavy gaze to the group and bared his teeth in a smile that was not comforting. "You may wish to suggest the matriarch offer melee training to your people."

He then turned away. "I must change into something suitable for weapons practice and test them both. The boy wants to see if he can match them."

Pel barked a laugh. "Ooh, that's gonna be fun to watch. As for teaching… better her than Kai. Last time he got ordered to train someone, the idiot kept insulting him and Kai cut his fucking lips off. Bastard had 'em fixed up but he never got mouthy again, and the bossman decided Kai maybe should stick to killing."

He rubbed his squarish, stubble-covered chin. "Still, not a terrible idea. Ain't much for melee myself, but some big-ass cornfed batarian asshole gets past your line, you need some skill in close-quarters."

Mirala just gave him a smile. "Or I could just lay my hand on him and bond, you know." She wiggled her fingers, and the bigger human stared before bursting into laughter.

His voice was an amused rumble. "Did you really sleep with Settra Anaxian and kill her because she was a bad lay?"

Mirala shrugged. "Well, no. I killed her because she was a slaving piece of dartfish shit that sold kids to the red sand druggies and she had horrible taste in clothing. But she also was shit in bed, that much is true."

Jack laughed out loud at that, and Joker just shook his head.

Kasumi just shook her head. It was nice everyone was getting along, especially with this being Cerberus, but why did they all have to be so crazy?

O-TWCD-O

Charles Pressly was a man who prized three things – organization, anticipation, and preparation.

Those had been the hallmarks of his father, a disaster planner for the Systems Alliance, as well as his mother, a doctor and epistemological researcher. Growing up with them had instilled a deep-seated desire for order, for having plans when the original plans failed, and for trying to anticipate what would go wrong and head it off at the pass.

Organizing the Revenant Cell's daily operations had taken some time. There was the intelligence-gathering team, the doctors, the various and strange people Shepard picked up in her time since she returned to life, and the mere day-to-day needs of an isolated asteroid base. Not to mention the various dramas – he didn't know what was more ridiculous, the Japanese thief stalking Jacob, Garrus's hilarious love triangle, or the breakup of one of the cybernetics doctors with one of the security techs that had escalated into low-key infowar pranks.

None of this was helped by the inevitable personality clashes, dealing with a supply chain that he had no insight into, and the reality of the repeated shocks he'd gone through. Learning Liara was alive had been wonderful, but at the same time he had to keep adapting to the situation – and her crimes, which weren't exactly minor.

He'd managed to keep it all running smoothly, teaching Miranda Lawson some of what he knew as he went along, and marveling at how easily she picked up in days what took him years to master. Even so, her natural personality – haughty, exasperated, and generally supercilious – needed improvement for her to be a truly effective XO.

That was a work in progress.

Likewise, anticipation of what would be needed – by Shepard, her team, the other groups, the doctors, the technicians – occupied much of his time. Cerberus knew a frightening amount about each and every person Shepard brought aboard, and the Illusive Man himself had given him briefings on everything from ordering the right kind of fish to please asari to financial details of slush funds set up to purchase entertainment, medical, or general supplies.

He had to guess what would be needed in the aftermath of the big operations at Horizon and Ilium, and he'd done a fair job at it. He was doing his best on this set of plans too, but that was made more difficult by the situation Shepard was heading into.

It's not every day a dead Saint comes back to life, after all, he thought to himself absently.

Preparation for the arrival of Shepard at the Citadel was maybe the trickiest and most nerve-wracking assignment ever, if only because he would have to make plans for what was undoubtedly going to be both the biggest media circus and the biggest legal catastrophe in modern history in less than twelve hours. It certainly wasn't helped by the fact that he was having to try to plan for additional personnel he'd never met, not to mention the legal aspects.

He sat in his office, a half-dozen haptic screens surrounding him and two thick books on Citadel law on the desk, and then he glanced at the volus sitting across from him and Trudy – the personification of the legal aspects, in the most unexpected package

Of all the figures Pressly would have figured to be lead legal counsel for Cerberus, he'd have never in his most alcohol-fueled dreams imagined it would be Ghadi Saan, esquire, Third Bank of Vol Prime Legal Escruitor – the volus version of either Aish Ashland or a Saturday morning cartoon villain, depending on who you asked.

Some of the banks on Citadel considered him a 'financial terrorist,' as his various legal and financial schemes on behalf of the Vol Prime Bank (and occasionally Cerberus) had bankrupted dozens of salarian and asari firms. C-Sec had declined to pursue this, after their first attempt only resulted in sixty-one counter lawsuits, and their funding being cut by thirty percent via a barrage of legal challenges to various Citadel tax laws.

Saan had a long line of asari lovers, jetted around in a custom-built turian frigate gifted to him by the Primarch, had turian death metal songs written about him, and was the only known volus to regularly go to Tuchanka… to hunt. Saan was supposedly ex-VDF, and the slender lines of his suit compared to most volus seemed to bear that out.

The volus wore a stylishly augmented long cloak over his bodysuit, while his facemask had hexagonal eyepieces and longer, more elaborate facial chops than most volus, indicating his high rank in volus society. His voice, apart from the infrequent hiss of respirator pumps, was a booming, melodramatic, almost stentorian baritone that could have given Okeer a run for his money, and his tone firmly musing.

"In conclusion, Cera Pressly, the main and only cogent argument that any competent legal authority could begin to hold against Shepard or your compatriots is the murder of Ganar Okeer. The sheer ignorance and stupidity of the Council aside, there simply is no legal framework to arrest dead people blowing up criminal properties in regions of space declared outlawed by nature, so only the actions on Korlus… matter. Legally, anyway."

Pressly rubbed his temples. "I grasp that much, Esquire Saan. What I am asking is the problems that we will deal with or are likely to run into, and what we need to do ahead of time to prevent them?"

The volus shifted in his chair, fiddling with his omni-tool, the hexagonal lenses in his helmet gleaming. "I am a lawyer, Commander Pressly, not an oracle. I cannot divine what manner of ill-conceived chicanery that C-Sec might employ, because they are idiots who let the Broker, Saren, Cerberus, the STG, even my own people – and the clouds above only know who else – infiltrate them."

Saan gave a sort of coughing noise. "I can only suggest what is plain: some holier-than-thou asari-clan arbitrator would imply killing Okeer to be a criminal act. I am also certain that the mere existence of his creation, Grunt, would violate – and I checked – over six hundred different laws and limits implemented by the Subcommittee on Sentient Rights."

Pressly sighed. "And our reply to any charges?"

Saan's voice turned amused. "Well, technically she was still an active Spectre. So, the Spectre Code, section fifteen, sub-note five authorizes her to deal with as she sees fit criminals who violate the core aspects of the Citadel Code. This would result in, by my estimation, at least sixteen subclauses triggering and would take decades to resolve, by which time we will either be triumphant or dead, nullifying the case either way."

Pressly nodded. "I suppose that's the best we can hope for. What is the likelihood of off-the-books action, Trudy? Assassins or bombs or something of that nature?" He turned to the ex-AIS agent, who shook her head.

"Very doubtful. Optics would be terrible for that kind of thing and frankly, doing it before she gets to prove who she is would just make people think the Citadel was trying to cover something up. C-Sec doesn't have the legal rights to arrest her without a writ of justice, and our contacts at C-Sec Legal indicate the Executor was explicitly forbidden from writing one up. However, both Kai Leng and Theo Pellham are available to go on the trip – both are very much skilled enough to handle anything… tricky."

Pressly frowned, tapping a haptic screen. "So, we shouldn't encounter any issues at all that we aren't prepared to face down. Esquire Saan, you'll be accompanying us on the trip to the Citadel, yes?"

The volus shifted in his chair. "Yes, that is the plan. I have to file legality annexes with the Court of Justice, of course, as well as the legal writs for reversing the death certifications of Lady Sara, Cera Vakarian, Cena Vakarian, and Lady Liara. I also need to confer with my colleagues as to the… possibility of further legal actions in regard to the death of Okeer from his asari relatives."

Pressly opened his mouth to answer and broke it off when Miranda's voice sounded on the comm panel. "Pressly, Miranda here. Shepard's awake and her systems have been repaired, she's calling a meeting to prep final checks before moving out to the Citadel."

He tapped the comm-link button on his desk. "Understood, Miss Lawson. Pressly out." He sighed. "I'll have to cut this short – Trudy, send me that checklist you have and I'll run it past Lawson. I expect some kind of bullshit to go down, and Shepard's still in pretty banged up condition, so bodyguards are an excellent idea. Esquire Saan, please meet with Lieutenant Long and he'll set you up with quarters on the Normandy."

He exited his offices at a fast walk, arriving in Shepard's much larger offices a few minutes later. Shepard was seated at the oversized desk, flanked by status report panels and wide windows showing the sun of the system through darkly tinted armaglass.

Grunt loomed against the nearest wall to Shepard, while Miranda, Melenis, Garrus, Liara, Telanya, Ezno, Mordin, and Tela Vasir were seated in front of her – Pressly sat down next to Miranda and Melenis. Toward the back of the room, Aethyta sat next to two of her Black Blades, and Mierin stood next to Sidonis along one wall with Doctor Sedanya, who was fiddling with Sidonis's medical packages.

Shepard looked fine, although he noticed her wince as she shifted in her seat, before speaking. "Haven't been awake long, so I'm operating on one cup of coffee. Apologies in advance if I snap at anyone."

She took a deep breath. "Right now, everyone is medically cleared except for Tali, Angel, and most likely Dost, for the Citadel trip. Tali and Kiala'Dost will be staying here, as will Mr. Ezno and most of Garrus's team, who still have some lingering injuries. Erash still has two more cybernetic surgeries and lung, uh, cloning stuff to do, and we've decided bringing Krul to the Citadel might be a bad idea since she left Tuchanka without CDEM permission."

She glanced around the room, then nodded at Miranda. "Miri has pointed out that I am in really bad shape right now – parts of my subdermal armoring are melted or shattered, one of my eyes isn't working so hot, and most of my internal heatsinks are shot. I still have some internal injuries and damage to myomer and we can't afford to sit around for three weeks until repairs are done."

She met Pressly's gaze. "That means I'm more vulnerable than usual. This is complicated by the request of the Citadel Science team that's meeting us at the docks. Vigil won't be coming with us onto the Citadel."

Jack snorted. "How the fuck would they know? He can turn invisible and shit, after all."

Vigil floated serenely above Shepard's left shoulder, and pulsed. "The painted organic's statement would be correct in most circumstances, but the quarians have been irritatingly observant. Using any of my abilities requires me to expend energy, and the preonic core I use as a power supply generates… sensor artifacts. While certainly not of enough value to pinpoint my location or what I am doing, they are certainly able to tell if I am actively operating within a rough range of a few thousand meters or so."

Shepard nodded. "So if someone does some dumb shit, Vigil can't pop in and help without someone calling foul on the tests. Once all the testing bullshit is over, I'll be fine, I think." She gave a smile and shrugged. "In any event, Liara will be with me, as will Garrus and Grunt. Zaeed, Jacob, and Tela Vasir will also be accompanying me on the initial trip."

She spread her hands. "The rest of you – except Mr. Ezno – will be coming for various reasons. I would expect Mordin to speak to salarian and STG people on the Citadel, Tela to help me talk and convince the Council of the Broker's danger, and Garrus to meet up with his people. The rest of you will just have to mingle and talk to people and try to get them to grasp that we're not here to start shit, but to fix problems."

Shepard traded a glance with Miranda, who gave a subtle nod. "After we answer any questions and have a good solid dinner, we plan to go ahead and get moving. C-Sec and the Commissariat are waiting for us at Vansaris, along with our Cerberus escort, whatever the fuck that is. It's two jumps down the Black Rim to the Yuthaxan Trade Relay, and another jump to Vansaris from there. After we take on some people at Vansaris, we'll transfer from the Normandy to Harper's flagship."

Grunt looked up, his voice his own. "Why? Why not use our own ship?"

Shepard gave him a glance, her expression shifting to slight confusion. "He's concerned about the Citadel getting a good hard scan on the Normandy might be a bad idea, and I think he wants to show off his big ship. More dick-waving if you ask me, but it doesn't matter, plus Joker wants to fly the thing."

She leaned back. "FTL time to Bekenstein from there is thirty hours, and another hour to the Citadel. We'll dock at the open cargo docking rings near C-Sec by the berthing ring since that is where they have the best scan technology set up. Once we've done the song and dance about being who we say we are, I have a private meeting with the Lords of Sol and Prince Windsor in a facility in the Upper Kithoi Ward."

She took a deep breath. "And after that, Tela and I get to report to the Citadel Council. That could go good, bad, or very bad. So before we set out, let's make sure everyone is ready. Pressly, you talk to the lawyers?"

He smiled. "Yes, and the lead lawyer is coming along with us. Short version, you should be fine. The rest of us should also be fine. Cerberus has two teams of lawyers already wreaking havoc on the courts right now and Harper got several changes sneakily added to the last amendments to the Citadel Code without anyone figuring out it was his money pushing the lobbyists."

Shepard pointed a finger at Doctor Sedanya. "Medical is clear?"

Sedanya gave an asari shrug and a siari hand sign of neutrality. "Almost everyone is technically capable of going. Mierin, Sidonis, Telanya, and Lady Liara are not in the best of health, and your own condition is not battle-ready by any measure. Jack's knee is repaired but she's in no shape for any kind of fighting. Mr. Ezno is still having intermittent internal bleeds and we're going to have to do an additional marrow scrape before retooling his cybernetic leg, so he is absolutely incapable of going. Angel, Butler, and your DACT are absolutely in no condition to go, and neither are Tali or Kiala."

She frowned. "I'd feel much more comfortable if you could push this back even a week, Shepard."

Shepard shrugged, her lips twisting into a wry smirk. "So would I, but I'm not the one setting the timetables this time out, doc. The quicker people calm their tits about me, the quicker we can get to putting our foot up the Broker's ass and start getting ready for the main event." She turned her chair, looking at Tela. "You are going to be the one in real danger, Vasir, if you intend to rat out the Broker."

Tela had lost some of the jagged weariness to her features, but her voice was softly melancholic as she smiled. "I'm the best person to do it, and I got you killed. I nearly got my family killed. I'm not suicidal or wanting to die… but killing me would just prove the Broker is against the Council. Either way, they'll turn on him. Sparatus never liked going along with the Shadow Broker or his people, and Tevos loathes Barla Von."

Shepard nodded. "Just keep close to me. Like I said, we're on a new page here, and you're in a lot better shape than I am right now."

Shepard glanced at Ezno, and then Miranda. "What about security, Mr. Ezno? And Miranda, I presume there's some Cerberus people that will be coming along from Vansaris?"

Ezno spoke first, his voice sounding tired and still wearing medical packages on his shoulder and leg. "Vigil wrote a security and encryption system we've uploaded to everyone's omni-tools. There will be a full contingent of our mechs on the Ironic Gesture, updated with improved armor and weapons suited to the Citadel. Those are incorporated into the frames of the mechs. The latest comms packages are loaded to your subdermal implants if you need covert comms."

The big man turned to Miranda, who was glancing at a datapad. "Two Cerberus personnel will be coming here – one is injured and needs help – but both Kai Leng and Theo Pellham will be on the trip to the Citadel to act as additional security for Shepard and her people." Jack perked up at that, while Lawson continued. "We've already had a very tiring discussion with both C-Sec and the Commissariat. C-Sec will be sending two officers, a Senior Sergeant Kolyat Krios as well as FINCIN Detective Forlan Simras."

Garrus chuckled. "Forlan was my old C-Sec partner before I finally got moved to Special Response – he's trustworthy, Sara. And Kolyat both me and Tel know…" He flicked his mandibles out, then in, a turian frown. "Kolyat is Thane Krios's son, I believe."

Liara drew a breath and closed her eye. "We will have to inform him of his father's passing, then. We… Telanya and I, that is… owe him that much."

Miranda made an expression of distaste but continued in an even tone. "Other than that, there will be some Cerberus troops from our rescues on Chresi V and other locales, most of them aliens."

Shepard glanced around the room, then smiled. "Public relations, I guess, right?"

Miranda shrugged in return. "Perhaps, if viewed cynically. Most of them are certainly not human supremacists – and they all work directly for you, not the Illusive Man or other cells. You can take it as PR, or you can take it as a gesture of trying to do the right thing, Shepard."

The sharp response drew a chuckle from Shepard. "Sorry, Miri. Like I said, first cup of coffee. Still fucked in the head from that ritual, I guess. I'll be glad to see them, and it will be a shock for the assholes claiming nothing has changed." Her voice rose as she leaned back again. "Questions?"

Grunt spoke. "Battlemaster, Okeer is sleeping, but was asking me to remind you that for now his being in my head is something to be kept secret. I told him that was up to you, not him."

Shepard shrugged. "That's the plan, Grunt. It's your body, and you're in charge of it, but I personally don't see a single fucking good thing coming from letting anyone else know he's alive. Sort of. Uressa knows, so I don't really expect her not to tell someone, but I am going to have enough fucking problems with the krogan as it is without that fucker laughing at them."

She scowled. "And frankly, I'd rather have you backing me up than him, Grunt. I trust you a lot more, and I don't need what Udina would call a 'shitstorm' starting because that asshole is busy amusing himself and starting the Third Krogan Rebellion or some shit."

She chose to ignore the krogan's pleased laughter and glanced at Pressly. "What am I forgetting, Charles?"

He glanced down at the padd he'd brought to this meeting, smiling a little. "Not much, ma'am. ANN has Emily Wong wanting to interview you, which might be a good idea. We've prepared quarters here on the base for Prince Windsor and Lady Eliza, as well as on the Normandy once we leave the Citadel. Supposedly, Harper has a pair of nobles – one Galen Minsta, and his daughter Tiffany – who'll accompany us there and back to help deal with the Prince."

Shepard noticed Miranda's flinch and arched an eyebrow. "You know this person, Miri?"

Miranda's arch tones were even drier than usual. "The good doctor is the primary person writing up the data-files on the various races you've been reading, Shepard. He's very talented at what he does, but he was a bit… extreme in the old days of Cerberus, at least his views were. His daughter is an insufferable, haughty, and insipid socialite with zero redeeming values." Her voice grew amused. "Neither of them are fans of asari, Shepard."

Shepard chuckled. "Great, just my kind of people. Not. Pressly, if TIM is sending them, make them comfy, but keep them the fuck out of my hair. One of them goes all anti-alien on me they're going to need to see Six-Hawks for new legs and faces." She exhaled. "Alright then. Everyone make sure you have a good dinner, and then prep to ship out. Miranda, please go ahead and make sure that Uressa and her people are ready to go."

As Shepard dismissed them all, Pressly smothered a grin. Sometimes, anticipation was a good thing too.

O-TWCD-O

Jack sat down tiredly on her cot in the under-loft of engineering, wiping sweat from her brow as she flung her armor vest – replaced from Ilium – onto the floor. She exhaled, and then flexed her leg, frowning at the feeling of the artificial knee as it bent.

She'd never seen the Citadel – too poor, too trashy, and too busy fucking shit up – and she was pumped to see it, even if she would never admit that to anyone else. Getting to walk beside Shepard as she made history was fucking incredible… and one of the first positive experiences that hadn't gone to shit in her life.

It was also the first real chance she'd have to bail on this entire operation, given Horizon had blown the fuck up and Ilium was a burning wreck, and ditching on Korlus would have ended pretty badly as well. She once had thought that was the thing to do, especially now that Vigil had just cleared her criminal records completely.

On the one hand, she wanted to be here. She wanted to fucking belong, and as little as anyone interacted with her, she still talked to Shepard – and Zaeed, who was just cool as fuck. Shepard had said to give it time, and while the bitch cheerleader was as shit as ever, the rest of the people were okay.

On the other hand, she was fucking scared out of her mind.

Before joining up – or being forced to join up – with Shepard's people, she'd thought she was pretty hard. The 'Psychotic Biotic.' She'd cut her way through the punk-ass mercs and slavers that the Hand of Eris had gone after easily – even their own biotics were no match for hers. And while their last op had ended badly, it took more than a few of those turian assholes she knew now were Deathwatch to bring her down. The guards on Purgatory Station had feared her so much they put her on ice, the thing usually reserved for cybernetic killing machines, bionetic assassins, and top-tier badasses.

Of course, both the Deathwatch and the prison guards were trying to subdue her and capture her alive, which is probably why she was hard to take down. The Deathwatch was going to cut her up and the guards only kept her alive since they didn't get paid if she was dead, so that kind of lessened her badassery in her own mind.

Still, she'd thought she'd seen some shit. She'd been in some ugly fights, had the scars to show it, and was pretty good with a shotgun. And then she'd quickly found out she was still in the little leagues compared to the big dogs.

The shit on Korlus had been a wake-up, with most of the krogan going down easy but that big krogan monstrosity just ignoring her strongest biotic attacks like nothing. Omega had been a giant pile of fuck, with her being shot several times, but she'd also held off the combined gunfire of an entire chasing force, so she felt she'd held her own there.

Horizon was a just a fucking nightmare, the Collectors so powerful that her strongest attacks were just irritants, and Ilium…

Flickering memories of the fighting at the starport flashed through her head, the towering clouds of smoke and charging figures in black and red. The sound of ships crashing into the planet, the smell of burning flesh and plasma discharges.

She'd hit the Broker's soldiers with every bit of power she had, some of them taking direct hits from spears of warpfire or smears and still getting up. She could smell the blood – human and alien – and still felt the agony of the injuries she'd taken.

She remembered the pulse of power that washed over her when Shepard and Tetrimus were throwing down, staring in disbelief as they hurled each other through buildings, knocked down huge-ass skyscrapers, and made biotic explosions that towered hundreds of hundreds of meters into the sky.

Then that Broker soldier had broken her guard and nearly killed her with his blade, carving ruin across her knee and face.

Sedanya and the docs on the base had fixed her up, of course… but as she stood and looked in the mirror that Shepard had installed above the little sink near her cot, she could still see the ugly scar tracing her right cheekbone and parting her eyebrow. A little deeper, and she would have needed a cybernetic eye.

And a little deeper than that and she'd be in a fucking steel box, with no one to miss her or cry over her death. She stared at herself, the fatigue she saw in her own gaze, then turned on the faucet and splashed her face with water.

"The fuck am I doing here anyway?"

She stared into her own image, and she knew the answer. She was alone, and she was scared to leave and scared to stay, and no one thought she needed comfort because she'd promised herself to always be hard and not be vulnerable and get hurt again.

Except being hard and alone and scared hurt just as much.

She toweled off her face and headed up the stairs, moving toward the cargo bay deck, which doubled as a gym or a biotic practice area on the ship. The Normandy's powerful engines thrummed as it accelerated, even as she got in the elevator and descended to deck five.

She exited, still lost in thought about how over her head she was, and entered the cargo bay to practice her biotics. It was usually empty, Shepard didn't need to practice, and the old asari's blues never bothered that she'd seen so far. After seeing that old asari literally wipe the floor with Kai Leng just using mostly simple biotic moves, she felt the need to practice.

Biotic focus usually helped clear her mind of distractions like fear, or uncertainty, or the fact that watching Kai without a shirt on had left her a little hot and bothered.

She stopped short when she realized that, for once, the cargo bay wasn't empty.

Clad in a black, form-fitting bodysuit with thin plates of red armor here and there, Mirala had her eyes closed as she focused inwards, her biotics lifting her a third of a meter above the deck plating. Jack could always feel biotics, something Cerberus had done to her with all the rest of their fucked up experiments, and the asari felt… off. Wrong, somehow.

But powerful, very powerful.

A second later and Mirala sank to the floor, and then heaved for breath, shakily getting to her feet. Her hands shook as they fumbled open a water bottle from her belt, and only then did she notice Jack. "Uh… hello?"

Jack folded her arms. "Hey. Some pretty impressive shit you were doing there. Thought you couldn't lift yourself with biotics."

Mirala knelt to pick up a towel and wiped her face, shrugging. "You really can't. I mean, in biotic mediation you can isolate your biotic field to lift yourself up, but it requires complete and total focus, and it is draining as fuck. Good way to train being able to feel the field strengths though."

Jack frowned. "Cool… but why ain't you hanging out with the rest of the bl… the asari. Uressa and all them."

Mirala gave a small cough as she flung her towel over her shoulder and then sipped more water. "Plainly put, they aren't comfortable around me. I don't really blame them, I suppose." Her voice took on a note of bitterness. "Never mind I've only gone after criminal shitbags and never hurt any innocents after my first… mishap, I'm still an ardat so evil and… bleh."

She made a loose sign of siari disagreement. "Asari can be just as bigoted as anyone else. I'm still dealing with some… recent revelations about my life, but no one is really thrilled to hang out with me."

Jack kinda could get that. Most of the team, with the noted exceptions of Shepard and Zaeed, didn't really talk to her much. Shepard was busy dealing with her wife, the bald XO was all spit and polish, most of the aliens were in their own little social circles, and she had no real interest in talking to Cerberus pukes.

She would have said she didn't think asari were like that, but after seeing them gun down little kids and shit on Ilium, she knew better. Instead, she shrugged. "Well, people don't hang around me much either, and I just say fuck 'em. I won't ever be what people want to see."

The asari gave her a look, then shrugged. "I am sorry to hear that. I am Mirala… well, Mirala Vasir, I guess. Happy to meet you, didn't exactly have a chance to chat before."

Jack smiled. "Jack. Just… Jack. Or Zero. Either's fine. So… like, I was kind of a hellion and got mixed up in something where I was trying to do the right thing and ended up in prison. But why the hell would people not want to be around you?"

Mirala's serene features shifted as her pale gray eyes took in Jack. "Shepard and the… you were not told?" A small smile crept across her face, and she gave a little laugh. "Shepard is entirely too trusting… or perhaps just testing me."

Jack tilted her head. "Dunno what you mean by that, but she's not much into bullshitting people. She comes from the hard shit, the streets where you had to live or die by quick thinking and no mercy. I can't really see her messing with your head or some shit."

Mirala nodded. "Well, then. I am what my people call an 'ardat-rekshi,' or 'demon of the day-wind.' A very melodramatic and poetic term for a freakish mutant. Unlike most asari, when I meld with another being, my nervous system damages them. Daywind like myself lock who we bond with into a spiral of pleasure that ends up with them suffering heavy nerve damage and usually becoming a babbling wreck, while the more dangerous ardat-yakshi kill whoever they bond with. I myself focused on criminals, using my abilities to weaken then before I killed them, but most are not so… restrained."

She sighed. "Asari fear us instinctively, and most will not even tolerate our presence, even if we have done nothing wrong. Most asari would kill us on sight. The Asari Republic has tried to keep our existence a secret, locking us away in monasteries or killing us outright, but they also spread legends that our mere touch is death."

Jack almost took an involuntary step back. She grit her teeth, though, and stayed put. She'd had enough from assholes giving her wary and untrustworthy glances when they didn't even know her to put anyone else through that shit. Instead, she reached out and took the asari's hand. "Huh, not fucking dead. How goddamned strange is that shit."

Mirala laughed, a bell-like sound of joy that made Jack blink. It was pure, happy laughter, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd heard that. The pale eyes focused on her own. "You are braver than most, Jack. An ardat controls who she links with, and most of my kind are indeed monsters – they feed on the weak, the emotionally needy, the lonely. They gain strength – science is not sure exactly how – by every victim they ruin or kill, and most are hunted to death by the Justicar Order."

Jack scowled. "The fucking assholes who were going all Commissar on the people down there on Ilium? That shit wasn't right."

Mirala smiled again. "No, it was not right. I fear perhaps that falls upon my own shoulders and that I was perhaps a tool… but also to blame."

She turned away, fingers slipping from Jack's grasp, to walk over to a soft black knapsack against the wall. "My mother is a justicar you see. She has been hunting me for centuries, and… well, I thought she was obsessed with having me locked up and imprisoned, as is done with most of my kind who aren't serial killers."

Mirala knelt down, pulling out a pouch of something in foil. She tore it open, then pulled out her water bottle and poured it in, shaking it around. "I was convinced to come to Ilium by a powerful figure there, who then leaked my presence there to my mother and said I was working with Aria. My mother was a powerful advisor to the leader of the justicars, and thus… Ilium was my fault."

Jack gave a snort as the asari drank from her water bottle again. "That's bullshit. The geth were gonna show up no matter what, and based on the way they were acting, all they were waiting on was an excuse – not to mention the news I saw said they went there cuz Liara and Telanya were dropping ships on the planet and shit. I've been in enough bad crap-fests to know how it goes with blaming yourself."

Mirala shrugged. "Regardless, few hold me and my kind with anything but loathing and fear. You tend to end up loathing yourself when all around you see you as… wrong."

Jack sighed. "I rolled with some rough people, trying to free slaves, but we did some other stuff – stole and robbed to make money, blew up shit slavers used for kicks. Had to do worse shit before that too. Shepard's the one who told me your life is only what you make of it."

Mirala stood. "She is very wise, and much stronger in will and spirit than I. After four hundred cycles of… fleeing, hiding, being alone, and in the past few decades being used by your Commissariat, one grows… weary."

The pale eyes found Jack's again, filled with pain. "And then my mother caught up with me, and did not try to arrest me, or subdue me. She tried to kill me. She would have killed me if Aethyta had not stopped her."

Jack blinked again, and for once in her life was actually happy she had no clue of her parents. That reminded her to ask Vigil if he'd found anything, but she refocused on the conversation and said words that rarely ever left her lips.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Jesus, the fuck is wrong with your mom?"

Mirala's answering smile was sadder still. "If you have the time, Jack, I'll explain. It's not a happy story."

Jack plopped down on the floor and leaned back on her arms. "Shit, no one here has a fucking happy story if you haven't noticed. But sure, I'll listen. Maybe when we're done you can show me some biotic stuff. I don't…"

She trailed off. "I wanna pull my weight, and this is getting pretty deep, with who we're fighting."

Mirala sat down as well, her expression grave. "I will freely admit that at this point, I am fucking terrified."

Jack found herself smiling. "Shit, me too."

O-TWCD-O

As the Normandy tore through space, Telanya gazed out of the starboard-side windows at the expanse of space streaking by, lost in thought. The lounge was otherwise empty, leaving her alone with her morose thoughts.

Liara was, of course, with Shepard, discussing something of importance with Uressa and Garrus. Liara had asked if she wanted to come, but oddly enough, after two years of living in lockstep with Liara, it was refreshing to be able to decline, to simply be alone and think. She had a lot to think about… and not a lot of people to discuss it with that weren't part of the problem to begin with.

She had given it a try, of course. Most of the crew was still on the mess deck, where Tela Vasir was telling Spectre stories with Zaeed and charming Gardner into making more asari-style fish meals. She had a short, awkward conversation with Doctor Sedanya, one that led basically nowhere, and then Vasir and Zaeed decided to engage in the human ritual of arm-wrestling for reasons she did not entirely understand. Telanya had watched a bit, then wandered off, not feeling much like socializing.

She felt lost.

Her long-sought goal, revenge for the death of her bondmate, had been brought closer than ever and yet also made irrelevant, for he was alive. Her driving focus, her hate and anger, had been snuffed out like moon-candles on the solar eclipse festival, leaving nothing behind but the wispy smoke of regrets. Removed from the day-to-day pressure of living on Ilium and her rage, she looked back at what she'd done in mixed regret.

Not at what she had done, so much as what she was supposed to do now.

Unlike Liara, Tel had worked in law enforcement enough to know the old turian saying: 'The only innocents are those we haven't arrested yet.' A cynical viewpoint taken up mostly by older C-Sec so scarred by the shocking criminal activities they had to deal with that things like sympathy were not only hard to find, but could be dangerous. Yet, it was a mindset that she found herself in agreement with, long before she'd ever seen Ilium.

While she certainly would have preferred a different approach to crashing a starship into Ilium to get Tetrimus on the planet, she knew full well those people were dead anyway. If the justicars' rampage had not killed them, the geth certainly would have. She'd leave the hand-wringing self-recriminations to Liara, as 'innocence' seemed far too situational for her to get morally troubled about.

And she certainly wasn't going to engage in the ocean of hypocritical self-deception it must have taken for fucking Trellani of all people to castigate them for resorting to such acts. Telanya snorted just thinking about it, then lifted her glass of turian brandy again. The bottle next to her was almost two-thirds empty already.

But if Cerberus is good for anything, it's top-quality drinks. She drained the glass, setting it down and then sighing.

At the end of the day, she'd done a lot of things she wished she hadn't. Crying over it wouldn't fix things, and she'd seen enough of Liara's maddening tendency toward circularity to fall into that trap herself. If she fucked up, then it was simply on her to use the rest of her life to serve the law as she had before this entire mess started.

She'd had her own little talk with Garrus – and Melenis for that matter. And their words had sunk in. Everyone messes up. It is how you deal with it and avoid it happening again and making sure you don't let the easy way become the only way to deal with problems that mattered. She wasn't conflicted about that, not any more.

She was conflicted, she was aimless, she was lost… because she didn't know what to do with Garrus. Or herself.

She sipped her drink.

The ugly truth of the situation, laid out in the pitiless rough voice of Krul, was simple enough.

Garrus felt he had failed Telanya, by getting her into the situation that resulted in her becoming a bigger mass murderer than Melenis had ever been. Telanya felt she was too spent, too broken, and perhaps simply too emotionally fucked up to be of use to Garrus, or help him with his own issues. Melenis was an option only half taken, stuck in fear of her past not being something Garrus could deal with and the hard fact that if she didn't do something, Garrus would leave her.

She'd read trashy echas novels like this when she was a kid – the dashing rogue turian, the hardened older asari and the young, innocent one circling in some stupid melodramatic love triangle. In the books, it always ended in an impassioned plea before a major fight and the aftermath was a triple bonding, clean happy sex, and understanding forever after.

She ran her hand over her crests, taking another sip of brandy. It'd be great if it was that easy, but she knew better.

In real life, she was pissed and depressed, Garrus was unsure of himself and terrified he was going to somehow fuck up again, and Melenis was too decent to just take him and still not sure if he wanted her or if she was just a one-time lapse.

She wasn't sure how to move forward.

Most of the frightened, ugly rage she'd felt toward Melenis for trying to steal her bondmate had melted in the conversation she'd had with Krul and Butler, to learn about what she'd gone through, what she'd had to do – and to break her own vow so as to not put Garrus in an impossible situation. To pursue someone for the better part of two years, to have to listen to them rant and patch them up and worry they'd get killed… to break a life vow and take up something you swore never to do again?

…All of that to get one night of barely-linked sex and that's it?

As much as Tel hated to admit it, that was just fucking terrible. The sudden arrival of the not-so-dead wife in this mess had probably thrown Melenis for as much of a loop as she was, and Telanya was pretty sure if the tide was on the far coast and she in Melenis's place, she'd try really hard to keep Garrus for herself.

Except Melenis hadn't done that.

So. She could just… break things off with Garrus. He'd changed. She'd changed. Things were hard and they had to deal with the Citadel and killing the Broker, after all. Give them both time to sort things out and let Melenis have her shot.

That would hurt worse than anything else, but she could hold herself together. Problem was, it would hurt Garrus. A lot. And if Melenis fumbled in picking up the pieces…

She could demand Garrus stay out of the side ponds and focus on her, as she was his damned bondmate. The problem there was not only did that kick Melenis in the face, Tel wasn't sure she'd be any better at supporting Garrus – not to mention getting over her own issues – than Melenis would be. Additionally, the one time they'd tried a bond after she'd gotten out of the lift chair, it hadn't gone correctly. There was something wrong with it.

And that's where the third option came in.

The third option was what was making her stomach clench and her mind wander aimlessly. If they worked together, they could pull something out of some kind of relationship. Maybe. It wasn't a big unknown, the asari even had a formalized term for a relationship between two asari and an alien, the 'shana-thee.'

Problem was, Telanya didn't want to have a third person in her relationship with Garrus.

She'd never so much as linked with another asari after the ardat-yakshi had almost killed her. Except Liara, and even that was touch-tip links to transfer a quick memory. Getting into a triple bond was the kind of shit starry-eyed maidens did with stern young turians or a really daring krogan.

As much as she hated it, there was a single – but very good – reason to go along with it. Melenis knew how to repair simple broken bonds. She'd discussed it clinically, but the bottom-line was simple, if Tel wanted to try and get her husband back, she didn't have much choice.

So it was either work with her, or go to fucking Trellani (ha!) or prostrate her ignorant ass in front of Uressa. The latter was not a terrible idea if she could find enough spine to do so, and since she'd been reduced to little more than a babbling idiot just trying to talk to her, that was… unlikely.

She poured herself another drink just thinking about it, capping it as the door slid open, revealing the slender, athletic figure of Melenis. The asari wore her usual Cerberus jumpsuit and a carbon weave gun-belt with a pistol on it, something she'd never taken off, and carried a small backpack in her right hand.

Melenis took in the sight of Telanya, the rapidly emptying bottle, and the full one behind it, and gave a sigh. Walking forward she sat next to Tel at the table. She put the backpack down before pulling down a glass from the small shelf next to the table and pouring.

Tel watched her for a second or two before speaking. "…Wasn't exactly in the mood for company."

Melenis slammed the drink back, wiping her mouth on her jumpsuit sleeve and giving a bitter smile a moment later. "Yeah, well, was kind of expecting this place to be empty. Got tired of listening to that human brag and Vasir act like she's queen of the fucking galaxy. Was going down to the cargo deck, but the fucking ardat and that bald human woman are doing chiesi meditation, of all the tide-damned things."

Melenis exhaled. "I'm not in a mood to deal with people, I guess."

Telanya found herself agreeing internally, but only tilted her head and sipped her drink, half turning in her chair to face the other asari. "So… now what? About… Garrus."

Melenis refilled her glass. "Now what? I haven't a tide-bound clue. Garrus won't talk to you or me about this mess, we're going to go kill the fucking Shadow Broker and it's almost certain people are going to die doing it, and I'm the weakest combatant on the fucking team. Doesn't take a genius to figure out how this ends." She gave a thin bitter smile. "I'll get killed, you'll be there to pick up the pieces."

Telanya turned that statement over in her slightly drunken thoughts before sneering. "If you are thinking you're going to die, then just tell them you aren't going."

Melenis gave another hard laugh. "That dartfish of a Clan doctor is going, and she's not much better than me. And I'm trained in battle meds, we need that if we want to have any chance of people coming home in anything except body bags. Plus, if I back out now and Garrus gets killed…"

She trailed off, and Telanya sighed. She really didn't feel like playing this stupid game with this stupid Clan bitch… but then again, she could see where Melenis was coming from.

"Fine. This is something out of a ten-credit echas movie or something, but let's say we work together on this. I'm… not comfortable around asari."

Melenis nodded, her voice gentle again. "I know. I can't imagine what the Abyss the humans are thinking, letting an ardat just tag along like she's harmless, but I can only imagine how nerve-wracking it must be to even deal with other asari after surviving an ardat and now you have one on board."

Telanya shrugged, draining her own glass. "No one asked me what I thought. Kinda the story of my life, except that sounds whiny." She set the glass down, and went ahead and opened the second bottle. "I expect if Shepard let her on, she must be stable, or whatever, but every time I see her, I get the shakes."

She paused to stare at her own hand, and Melenis bowed her head. She spoke a second later, her tone low and exhausted sounding. "Look. I don't have a better way through this mess than you do. I've… I've had someone taken away from me before, and I'm not going to do that to another person. I just don't want to go through with it again." She raised her head, and her eyes were filled with enough familiar pain that Telanya flinched. "I can't do anything on my own."

Telanya refilled both glasses with brandy, capping the bottle. "What if I fuck it up?"

Melenis sat up straighter, giving a sour grin and taking her glass in both hands. "Shit, what if I fuck it up? I've done almost nothing for Garrus this entire time but pine after him like the second-shore tramp in some echas romance novel. I haven't had a real relationship since before you were fucking born, and the last one… didn't go very well."

She paused. "And I get what a tides-damned mindfuck this must be, given what you've just gone through, and your past, and thinking he was dead and then he's not and all that." The last part came out a little slurred, and the smile dipped. "But I don't think us sitting around moping and feeling sorry about our situation will help anything, or him."

Telanya leaned back. "And your solution?"

Melenis shrugged. "Get falling down drunk enough to do something stupid."

Telanya laughed. "How drunk and how stupid?"

Melenis picked up the backpack she'd brought with her, pulling out a pair of bottles of pris para, and made a one-handed slang sign of siari agreement. "Very drunk, and very stupid."

Telanya sat there for a long second. She knew where this was going, the only question was if she was going to play along, or say no. She debated saying that she wasn't interested… except that there wasn't any other good way forward, and at the very least she could be sure the other asari wasn't a damned ardat.

She instead just spoke her mind. "It really says something about either us or Garrus that we're actually going to do this, you know."

Melenis actually laughed at that.

O-TWCD-O

The arrival of the Normandy to Vansaris was completed with the emergence from FTL, with Shepard standing in the cockpit next to Joker.

Vansaris was an odd little system, the only known independent colony of humans actually in Council Space. With three He-3 mined gas giants and a pair of asteroid belts rich in iridium, ruthenium, and dysprosium, it was a wealthy system. The colony was a corporate enclave of a volus-human mining combine that had been funded by bonds backed by Cerberus cash.

The colony was currently flanked by several small fleets, and as the Normandy approached, Shepard paged through the sensor repeaters and examined what was out there.

The largest fleet by far was the Cerberus one, with the hulking mass of the Ironic Gesture at the center of a cloud of heavy-cruisers and lighter ships. The loss of so many ships at Horizon and again at Ilium meant that the number of frigates and destroyers was too low, but even so, every manned ship Cerberus had available was here – and more than she expected.

Facing down the eighty-odd Cerberus ships were a trio of Commissariat light-cruisers and a half-dozen police escort destroyers from C-Sec, at a very respectable distance. Shepard guessed that would be her escort to the Citadel.

She glanced over to Pressly, sitting in the secondary piloting station. "How are we looking, Charles?"

He tapped through several screens before responding. "Everything looks nominal. We're getting docking telemetry from the Ironic Gesture… looks like they have an extensible air-locking tube designed to link to ours. Convenient."

She smirked. "TIM may be an asshole, but he's certainly efficient." She stood up, reaching for the 1MC mic, and clicked it. "All hands. Members who are coming with me to the Citadel, report to the CIC airlock. Everyone who's not, be safe."

She turned to Joker and Pressly. "You guys are staying here, yeah?"

Pressly gave a short nod as he also stood. "Yes, ma'am. We'll be in high orbit, ready to cloak if needed. I'll have us drop charge once the ships move out. We shouldn't have any problems given all the publicity around this mess."

Shepard nodded. "We hope. Joker, be good and no practical jokes."

Joker merely sighed. "Yes, mom." The last was said in such a sarcastic register that even Pressly grinned, and Shepard just rolled her eyes.

She turned toward Ops Alley, seeing the back lift doors open and disgorge Grunt, trailed by several others. She walked up to him as he approached, taking in the fact he was not wearing combat armor but the white robes favored by Okeer. "Grunt?"

He shifted. "Yes. Okeer is sleeping again. He said wearing armor would make people hostile… but he had the plans for a kinetic body-suit of some kind he had Taylor make up for me, that should be able to deal with any gunfire." The youth shifted his shoulders. "Sometimes he's useful, but mostly his ideas are still stupid, Battlemaster."

She smiled, and patted his massive arm. "Yeah, I know. I'm hoping there's some way we can pry him out of your head and stick him in something else. Like an AI. Or a fucking box that I can toss in a closet when I can't listen to him going on about how fucking smart he is."

Grunt gave a short bark of laughter, as Garrus walked up, trailed by Melenis and Telanya. Both of the asari looked slightly unsteady with bloodshot eyes, while Garrus was agitated about something based on the way his mandibles kept flickering.

She took in his clothes – finely cut robes of the turian formal style with a Cerberus-themed black and gold armor plate over his chest, shins and forearms – and smirked. "Nice duds."

He glanced askance at the white and gold Cerberus formals she had on – clearly modeled from the older SSA formal dress of almost a century past – and gave a shrug. "I'm surprised they didn't try to give you a cape, Sheep." He gestured to the warp sword hanging from the white and silver baldric at her waist. "Thought we were going unarmed?"

She shrugged. "No capes. As for the sword, Trellani insisted. So did Liara." She sighed. "My left eye isn't working right still, and I have pretty persistent pain in several places – and half my heatsinks are blown. Not to mention I really need an overhaul in the shop after Tetrimus nearly killed me, so fighting is a bad idea. I'm hoping wearing this thing will dissuade any nut-jobs on the Citadel."

Garrus flicked a mandible at that. "Good luck. Your 'fans' are probably worse now than they were during the mess with Benezia and Saren."

She shuddered. "Please don't remind me." She turned as Liara approached with the rest. "Everybody ready to go? Then let's get this show on the road."

The Ironic Gesture's interior didn't feel like a warship, but more like the luxurious cruiser Liara had once used in the aftermath of her mother's apparent death. The hallways and passageways were carpeted, the bulkheads hidden behind wooden paneling or brushed-steel inserts. The crew was minimal, less than fifty people, augmented by almost five hundred mechs.

The ship shuddered even as Shepard and her entourage reached the massive briefing arena at the center of the ship, an oversize QEC projector taking up the majority of the middle of the room.

To the left of the QEC were two people – an older man and a younger woman that was clearly his daughter, given the similarity in eye color and bone structure. The older man was stunningly handsome, silver hair framing classical features, his bearing proud and his clothing the refined cut of old money, and his voice was mellifluous as he fell into the archaic Japanese dialect of the Modes of Address.

"Welcome, milady Sara… and milady Liara." The last was said after a hesitation, but his tone remained the same. "I am Doctor Galen Minsta, and this is my daughter, Tiffany, of House Minsta. We are here to provide support, advice, and hopefully a social anchor for Lord Windsor and his daughter."

The daughter only gave a nod, her honey-gold tresses framing cold features and her dress the height of Sol fashion, but pragmatically augmented by a semi-hidden boot knife and kinetic barrier set into the buckle of her belt.

She nodded. "I've read your… reports on aliens. Kind of surprised you are here, given you don't seem to care for them much."

He shrugged, silver hair slipping down his shoulders. "I would contest the point that I dislike individuals in good faith so much as I dislike their governments, and what their cultures are in the process of doing to our own culture. However, given my… antipathy towards the asari and your own fascination with them, I can see how you may have concerns." His gaze flickered to Uressa and her Godtalkers. "But this is probably not the best venue for such a discussion."

Sara nodded and then glanced to the right, where a tall, muscular figure was sitting on one of the chairs, a female quarian in a highly customized slick-suit leaning next to him against the QEC – playing a game of chess on her crimson omni-tool, seemingly oblivious to all around her. The man stood, his features almost sullenly aristocratic with a noticeable Latin flare but blurred by hard living and age – silver just beginning to frost the temples of his close-cut hair which was styled into a short mohawk.

He opened his mouth to speak— only for the quarian to startle him and others with an excited, high-pitched squee, "EEEEEEE! It's Shepard-sama!" She began shaking the man with violent enthusiasm. "Estê-kun, Estê-kun! It's Shepard-sama! Omigod, omigod, omigod! Quick, gimme something for her to sign!"

"Get the fuck off me!" he snapped as she stole his custom revolver-style sidearm.

Shepard only raised an eyebrow, then tensed further – to the audible amusement of Garrus – as the quarian practically skipped over to her with the weapon in hand.

Oh god no… not another Verner.

"Shepard-sama! Shepard-sama! I'm your biggest fan! Trademark." The last word stated half-under her breath. "Can you autograph my bahnt's gun please? Pretty please with sugar on top!"

The man sighed and walked up. He placed his hand on the side of the girl's helmet before shoving her out of the way. "Don't mind her. A minha miúda é louca."

Her omni-tool flatly refused to translate that last bit, but her years of speaking Spanish let her tease out the broad meaning. She arched an eyebrow. "Is that… Portuguese?"

The man smiled sardonically. "Somebody's gotta keep the old ways alive, Comandante. The name's Estêvão Volinski, and the fangirl over there is Nirin'Ptrun." He nodded toward the quarian who was still clinging to the pistol and bouncing on her toes like a wound-up puppy. "We're your… technical support, I guess? Long with tição and Mr. Leng over there."

He jerked his head to the right, where she saw Kai Leng and Theodore Pellham sitting quietly, engaged in some kind of conversation. Both were dressed in suits with long black jackets, and she somehow suspected they were heavily armed.

Turning her attention back to Volinski, she shrugged. "What kind of technical support are we talking about?"

The man smiled. "Niri will ensure anyone trying to hack us or get the drop using omni-tech fails in the most painful way imaginable; as for me, I'll be spotting for snipers and the like. Those two will be doing physical security – as will a few other elements. Deus ajude quem se meter contigo."

Minsta gave a long-suffering sigh. "Despite the… ah, eccentricities of Mr. Volinski – and Ms. Ptrun – they are very capable and played no small role in our ability to localize just where the Shadow Broker had taken your body, Lady Sara. We'll also be accompanied by many of the volunteers to Cerberus that you freed on your earlier excursions, or saved from death at Horizon."

She was about to reply when the QEC illuminated, the image of Jack Harper appearing standing. He was wearing a cut-away vest and ribbon tie sans jacket, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke, smiling a moment later.

"I see everyone is aboard, including Matriarch T'Shora. Our thanks for you agreeing to accompany Shepard on this trip, Matriarch."

Uressa's features didn't shift, but her voice was very slightly amused. "This is not a situation that occurs every day, Cera Harper. I am… protective of those who are trying to do the right thing and concerned there are elements aboard the Citadel that would try to disrupt what Shepard is doing. I aim to stop things like that before they begin."

He nodded, and turned his gaze to Shepard. "Very well. C-Sec and the Commissariat have sent escort ships to accompany you to the Citadel. It's a short flight, but I dislike depending on the security of others, thus we have negotiated to send twelve cruisers alongside you as an escort. The Ironic Gesture is far more capable than any other ship of her weight class, and I doubt the dangers you face will be spaceborne, but I would rather be prudently prepared than taken unawares."

He dumped his ashes. "The itinerary is simple – travel to the Citadel. Dock at main docking lane four, proceed through full scans and customs, and then once you have been certified to be who you claim to be, a meeting with the High Lords and Lord Windsor. After that, there will be a meal, before you meet with the Council, and then the Citadel Defense Committee."

She shrugged. "Lovely. So, you said this was a trip to get them on our side… what do I want from them exactly? Leaving me to do delicate negotiations seems kind of iffy."

Harper only inclined his head. "Doctor Minsta has been given a précis he will cover with you, but we expect the first day to be wasted on just getting them to listen. The mere fact that we have forced them to the table rather than responding to some kind of summons, however, means we are in charge. The blackmail and… offers of intelligence we have laid out should inspire some level of cooperation, but I would hope those you have brought with you can also win some additional concessions."

He puffed on his cigarette. "Ultimately, Shepard, how you proceed is up to you. The Council will not deal with me as they still see me as a criminal figure, and I suspect you will face more resistance to the idea of you being part of Cerberus than you being alive. How you choose to handle that is up to you."

He glanced around the room. "Vigil is still preparing our forces to strike at the Broker, and we are still organizing, arming, and preparing our main assault force for that operation. Based on the medical team's estimates, we won't be fully ready to go after the Broker for almost two more weeks, so I'd take the time to try and relax a little on the Citadel once things calm down. For purposes of comms security, any updates will be routed via QEC to the Ironic Gesture rather than TTL or other methods, so you can sidestep extensive security requirements of finding a place to stay on the Citadel by simply returning to the ship every night for a debrief."

He met Shepard's gaze squarely. "I believe I have accomplished my half of the bargain so far, Shepard. Where it goes from here is more up to you than me. I will be in contact if we need to discuss options."

The link cut out, and Shepard gave a sigh. Liara touched her arm gently. "Sara?"

She gave her a faint smile. "There's times I wish people would stop expecting me to pull off the impossible, marazul."

Liara squeezed her arm. "If they do, it is only because you have done just that so many times before." She tamped down her own thoughts and focused her emotions on Shepard. "I am here. So are the rest of us. We can all help where we can, you aren't alone in this."

Shepard smiled, and lifted her head. "I know." Then she turned to face everyone else, forcing her features into a calm mask. "We've got a couple of hours before we hit the Widow Relay – let's go ahead and go over what is likely to happen, people."