Better late then never, right?

-jt-

Shepard was waiting when the door of the skycar opened, just as Aria knew she would be. Burning red eyes scanned the interior and the driver's seat before she slid inside. As always, Shepard tensed when she saw Jerra, but quickly played it off. They had eased into something of a truce since their first encounter at Purgatory. Grizz seemed to like her too, and the two bodyguards' affection towards Shepard annoyed the shit out of Aria.

"Still letting her boss you around, Jerra?" Shepard said with a grin.

"Eh." Jerra shrugged. "It's hard to find good vision plans these days."

"Or decent help," Aria snarled, throwing a data pad into Shepard's lap. Jerra cleared his throat and hunkered down in the driver's seat.

Shepard's eyes widened as she scanned the pad. "Holy shit, you're doing it." She looked up at Aria and the smirk widened into something resembling an actual smile. It was an expression Aria had seen but a handful of times-usually between the second and third drink, with Shepard's hand slowly working down the front of Aria's pants.

Aria pushed the thought away. "Cerberus holding Omega seriously bolsters its mobility. They've spread all over the galaxy. Surely the Alliance has noticed."

"And?"

"You help me, I'll help you."

Shepard cocked her head. Aria saw the snide remark form on Shepard's lips, and was surprised when it remained unsaid. Genuine curiosity flashed across her face. Aria watched as she thumbed through the display, Petrovsky's dossier flashing across the screen. Shepard's fingers were trembling. Aria pretended not to notice.

It had been another month had since they'd last seen each other.

Shepard had stayed the following night as well, but only after Aria had made another offer. Though, it wasn't so much an offer as a lack of outright rejection-Aria had merely rolled over and didn't object when Shepard did the same. Aria was surprised to discover that sharing a bed with Shepard wasn't at all unpleasant; the human was actually decent company after a full night's rest and there was nothing like a satisfying bout of morning sex to make a day stuck in Purgatory slightly more palatable.

But the second morning Aria had been woken by Shepard's blaring omnitool, followed by the smashing of said omnitool against her nightstand. Aria had nearly warped Shepard's ass across the room for fucking up her furniture, but the look on Shepard's face made her pause. The scars that criss-crossed her entire body were pulsating, the ocular implants a molten, livid red. While snatching up her clothes, Shepard explained that apparently the quarians had decided that this fucking moment was the right time to retake Rannoch. Aria almost laughed out loud. She had seen a lot of dumb ideas over the years, but that one struck her as especially foolish. And ill-fucking-advised. And short-sighted. And the last thing Shepard needed to deal with.

Aria didn't tell Shepard any of that, though. All she did was offer a dry "good luck" as Shepard stormed out of the apartment with her broken omnitool.

After that, Aria had gone back to work. And tried very hard not to think of Shepard.

Everything was falling into place, just as she planned. Her manpower and resources had doubled, just as Shepard and the Alliance were chipping away at Cerberus. She couldn't afford to underestimate Petrovsky, but there was only so much he could do to hold Omega while Cerberus's power was gradually waning. Intelligence reports showed that more and more ships were being peeled away from the blockade to report back to Council space, and with that information it was relatively easy to order a quick strike. A single cruiser would be enough to penetrate the blockade and launch her assault. Of course, once back on the station, it would devolve into a bloody, grinding ground advance. For that, she needed the best.

It had actually been Bray's idea. Once he had captured the Cerberus cruiser and Aria had decided to finally make her move, he had suggested reaching out to Shepard. Usually the implication that she needed assistance of any kind was met with a slap of a singularity, but Bray had a point. He was also annoyingly perceptive. Aria wondered how much Grizz had told him.

The worst part was how pleased she had been when Shepard answered her message.

"So, what's the plan?" Shepard chucked the datapad back at Aria, still smiling.

For the first time since Shepard got in the aircar, Aria allowed herself to really look at her. She didn't think it was possible for the scars to appear worse, and yet somehow Shepard surprised her again. Jagged edges of flesh hung from sallow cheekbones, the implants below her skin strikingly visible, making her seem more machine than human. But above all else, Shepard was utterly drained; beyond all measures of exhaustion, to the point where Aria thought she was looking at a walking corpse. Yet she was game. Always game.

"I was thinking you and I would employ violence. Lots of it," Aria said.

"I'm in."

Aria smiled back, trying very hard not to feel guilty.

Nyreen. Another surprise.

Aria had suspected that she had never left Omega but could never prove it. If she were being truthful, she probably hadn't really wanted to know-a final parting gift to them both. The breakup had been messier than Aria anticipated, especially since they both had seen it coming the moment they started sleeping together. Whatever Nyreen had chosen to do with herself afterwards was none of Aria's concern; if she wanted to play hero to the hopeless and downtrodden that was her business. So long as she didn't get in Aria's way.

And now she was here, very much in Aria's way. Although, she supposed that Nyreen assuming leadership of the Talons and directing the resistance effort in her absence held a fair amount of irony. To her credit, Nyreen had always known exactly who she was.

"These civilians don't have the training to stand up to Cerberus," Nyreen said. "They'll be wiped out."

Aria hissed through clenched teeth. They were so close she could practically feel her hands around Petrovsky's throat. "Casualties can't be avoided. You'll have to accept this."

"I won't allow senseless deaths. These are innocent-"

A dry, gravelly laugh came from the other side of the lift. Shepard was leaning against the wall in the corner, rifle held lazily in her arms. Flecks of blood were splattered across her cheek. That same damn smirk was plastered across her face, but there was no amusement in her voice.

"I used to be like you," Shepard said. "I used to think I could save everyone. That there was some cosmic scale that balanced everything out. Do good be rewarded, do evil and be punished. Turns out none of that shit matters, and the quicker you realize that, the better off you'll be."

She pushed herself off the wall and stepped towards Nyreen, flipping her rifle over to check the heat sink. "You want to help those civilians? We'll split up. Take your crew and lead the frontal assault, Aria and I will circle around and meet you at the markets before Cerberus can reach Afterlife. And once we're done here, you're more than welcome to join me in Council space. Plenty of innocents getting killed over there."

Shepard slammed her fist into the control panel, stopping the lift, then jerked her head at the door. Aria sidled up beside her. Nyreen just shook her head and sighed.

"You two deserve each other."

Aria glanced over and met Shepard's gaze. Red eyes stared back, burning yet lifeless at the same time.

Petrovsky was smaller than she remembered, which probably had something to do with the way he squirmed underneath her hands.

Aria grit her teeth as she tightened her grip around his throat. Biotic energy swirled around them both, pinning Petrovsky against the control panel. Of all the people she'd killed, he had argued the most eloquently for his life. His final error, though, had been directing his speech towards Shepard, as if he expected her to intervene. Shepard had walked away before he even finished speaking. Aria had taken it from there.

Fear had its own unique smell, and Petrovsky was rank with it. His panicked eyes bulged from their sockets, red blooming in the white as tiny blood vessels burst. Shiny boots scraped helplessly against the ground. Petrovsky's hands clamped around hers, futilely trying to push her away. Usually, Aria preferred these things to be quick and clean. But in this case, she wanted to revel in it, make Petrovsky suffer for all that he had done to her, to Nyreen, to Omega.

Aria loosened her hands, teasing Petrovsky with a breath of air, then clamped back down again. Petrovsky let out a weak whine in protest. Her grimace turned into a wide, toothy smile as her eyes slowly turned black.

Oh, yes. She would enjoy this.

When it was all over, Aria found Shepard just outside the converted VIP section that had, until very recently, served as Petrovsky's office. The human was standing so she was partially concealed in a dark corner. When Aria approached, she saw that Shepard was unsteady on her feet. In her shaking hand was a medigel pack, which she was trying to weakly jab into her side. Just above her left hip was a gaping, smoking hole in her armor. A deep grimace twisted across Shepard's face.

"The first aid protocols are fried," she explained, voice hitching. "Must have been that last adjutant. Fucker."

Aria took the medigel and bent down to peer at the wound. Blood dribbled from the jagged pieces of her armor, running down Shepard's leg. Aria shook her head. She carefully maneuvered the pack into the hole and pressed it against the wound. Shepard hissed.

Aria gestured with her unoccupied hand without looking up. "Another one."

She shoved that pack in as well, perhaps harder than necessary. Shepard hissed again and staggered forward, hand shooting out to grab Aria's shoulder. Aria let it rest there, her own palm lingering gently over Shepard's wound.

"I actually thought you might interfere. Thank you," Aria said.

"Petrovsky deserved everything coming to him. And more." The hitch was gone from Shepard's voice and she seemed to relax as the dosages of medigel hit her system. Even her eyes softened, and for a second Aria could almost guess what their original color were. "I'm sorry about Nyreen."

Aria tried to brush it off, but the sincerity in the statement still made her chest tighten. "She went out the way she wanted to. Not all of us are lucky to get a choice."

Shepard just shrugged, a blithe acknowledgment of the truth in what was said. She didn't move away.

The kiss that followed could have almost been described as tender. Deep and unhurried, Aria allowed herself to be drawn in, blaming the underlying exhaustion she still felt from taxing her biotics earlier. She held back a shudder as Shepard's hand trailed across her shoulder and up the back of her crest. Aria almost shoved her away at such a bold gesture, but then realized what was happening. Shepard wasn't making a move. She was saying goodbye.

When they pulled away, the look on Shepard's face confirmed Aria's suspicions. The human grabbed her helmet and tucked it under arm, then gave Aria a jaunty salute, as if she hadn't been about to bleed out all over the VIP section.

"I'll see you around, Aria."

And with one final, irritating smirk she was gone.

Aria kept her word. Troops, supplies, weapons, ammo, eezo-she had sent it all, and then some. She didn't move from Omega, though, and remained engrossed in rebuilding her kingdom, even as the war raged. There was no doubt the Reapers would reach the Terminus, and when they did, Aria would give those fuckers a fight they had never seen before. At least, that's what she said publicly. And loudly. As often as possible.

Privately, she devoured every news and intel update she could, tracking Shepard's progress. Each time the Reapers advanced, Shepard would be there, leading the counterattack and striking back as hard as she could. Even after Thessia fell, the combined military forces of the galaxy still rallied under Shepard's banner. The Crucible was nearly complete. There was still a chance. And Aria allowed herself a spark of hope.

She followed the assault on Earth in her VIP suite, sitting on her newly upholstered couch, heavy beats from the dancefloor thrumming in the background. Eventually, Shepard reached the Citadel.

Then the Sahrabarik relay went dark.

It took months to receive word that Shepard had done it. The reports filtered in slowly, just small chunks of messages caught by barely functioning comm buoys, but eventually Aria was able to piece everything together. The Crucible had worked. Shepard had personally fired the thing from inside the Citadel, and the subsequent blast had not only disabled each and every Reaper, but sent a massive shock wave through the entire relay network, rendering them inoperable. Interstellar travel was no longer an option. The Citadel had been blown in half and was now trapped in a decaying orbit around Earth. Shepard's body had never been recovered.

Yet, life would go on. It always did. Omega had existed as a haven for criminals, terrorists, and malcontents for thousands of years and if Aria had her way, would continue for thousands more. And so she carried on like she always: making Omega a home for anyone who wanted to be free. So long as they stayed out of her way.

Aria immediately set on rebuilding. First priority were the comm buoys; she grabbed every engineer she could find, threw them onto the nearest ship, and told them to fix every buoy they could reach or to not bother coming back again. After a moment's thought, she tossed some extra credits their way and asked (as opposed to ordered, after Grizz gave her a look) them to examine the relay while they were at it. A few weeks later, the group returned and reported positively that the relay didn't appear to be structurally damaged at all. They posited that the massive shock wave generated by the Crucible dissipated the farther it expanded from its epicenter, and as such the relays in the deepest reaches of the galaxy could potentially still be operational. Aria rewarded the news with more credits and a handful of Batarian cigars, from last box in the sector.

Cleaning up the gangs was next. A few had grown too emboldened by the chaos in the wake of the Cerberus occupation and needed to be reminded of the order of things in Omega. Most she dispatched herself. Those gang leaders that Aria deemed still valuable were handed over to the Talons. After some deliberation, she had decreed that the remnants of Nyreen's organization would still be allowed to operate within the confines of the territory they had sliced away from Cerberus. Aria even tacitly approved its dedication towards helping the most downtrodden of Omega's inhabitants. Although, if you asked her, the cigars were a more generous offering.

It wasn't until a full year after the war ended that Aria heard the first rumor.

Through a series of engineering marvels Aria was hard-pressed to explain, the relay network was gradually repaired, and equal parts criminals and refugees began appearing at Omega once more. They brought the stories with them, too; tales of heroism and sacrifice, each from a different point of view, starring whatever species they were a part of. And of course, that of Shepard, who was just as inescapable in death as she was in life-if you believed she was even dead.

Aria took the rumor with a healthy skepticism. Yet, she couldn't help but be curious and tracked down the source. He was a human, just arrived all the way from Earth, claiming to have once been a colonel in the Alliance military. Now he was a deserter, leaving behind death and ruin, determined to live his final days drowning in whiskey with a dedication Aria couldn't help but admire. His claim was the Shepard was alive, her body recovered from the wreckage of the Citadel nearly broken beyond repair. That he had seen the commander himself, quarentinued in the back of a field hospital in Johannesburg. And that once the doctors had determined that Shepard would live, was part of the committee that decided no one would ever know about it. Granted, he was a drunk, but a very compelling drunk.

The small ship appeared about six months later, eighteen months after the defeat of the Reapers. Aria had been appraised of its arrival by an adolescent turian, swaggering into Afterlife with the unearned confidence of youth. He couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen, probably orphaned by the war, but claimed he carried a message from the Shadow Broker. Aria had booted him out the door. Literally.

Then Shepard walked in.

It was like Aria had been slapped with a singularity, as if time were both passing and standing still. Shepard sauntered up the stairs to the VIP section like nothing had ever changed. Red hair still cropped short, same aggravating smirk. Same scars, although they had faded and seemed to have actually healed. The smoldering implants were gone. Instead, Aria looked into a pair of brown eyes, so dark they could almost be black. Shepard walked with a hitch in her step and a wince flashed across her face when she sat down. But she was soon smiling again.

"Nice job on the upholstery." Shepard ran her hand across the couch, now a deep, rich purple.

Aria scoffed and looked away. Shepard didn't need to know how much of a pain in the ass it really had been to get the damn thing refurbished. She waved at the server hovering nearby. Two drinks were deposited in front of them-brandy, of course, a far cry from the swill endured on the Citadel. Another wave and the server left, locking the door behind her.

"What the hell do you want, Shepard?"

Shepard took her time answering, swirling the brandy in her glass before taking a long swallow. "I had a krogan on my crew once, years ago. He told me a story about an old friend he had, an asari commando that he ended up being contracted to kill. They agreed to fight it out on an old salarian space station. It took him three days to track her down, but just when he did the station core was going critical. He barely made it off in time and was certain there was no way she could have escaped. Yet, days later he received a message from her, telling him, 'better luck next time.'"

Aria shifted. "Cute. What does that have to do with me?"

"I had a lot of time to think this past year-it's pretty much all you can do when your entire body is in traction, actually. And I kept on going back to that commando. I thought about how good it must have felt, to blow everything up and leave it all behind. To become someone else."

"And what makes you think she wanted to leave it all behind? What if she was really fucking pissed about how it all went down?" Aria kept her face neutral and gave her own brandy a swirl, mimicking Shepard's earlier movements.

"Because I think if she didn't want to start over, that krogan never would have ended up on my crew. He would have been dead long before that."

Aria sighed, almost wistfully, then allowed herself a wry smile. She didn't know how Shepard had put the pieces together, but she wasn't surprised. "I always wondered what happened to that old bastard."

Shepard cleared her throat roughly, then drained her liquor. Aria cocked her head at the reaction. Usually Shepard was more guarded than that. She wondered what else Shepard wanted to leave behind, what else could never be undone, well before the Reapers had even invaded.

"Is that what you want, Shepard?" Aria asked. "To become someone else?"

"I thought I might see someone who knew a few things about starting over." Shepard shrugged, then gestured with both hands, displaying empty palms.

And so at the end of it all, the hero that had risked everything found herself exiled. Sent away to the corner of the galaxy reserved for pirates and smugglers and other unsavory types, who lived forgotten, lawless existences. Aria knocked back the remainder of her drink, letting the harsh burn of the brandy wash away the bitterness rising in her throat. Shepard deserved better.

But maybe now she could be free. Maybe now she could have a choice.

Aria made the decision quickly. She slung a leg over Shepard's waist, straddling her lap and pushing her back into the couch. Shepard swallowed a grunt, but still fixed her with that cocky look. With a flick of her wrist Aria's biotics flared, wrapping around Shepard's hands and pinning them to the couch. Aria caught Shepard's chin and tilted her head back, looking into brown eyes so dark it was almost like the human was capable of initiating a meld.

"Don't get comfortable," Aria said in a low growl.

Shepard turned serious for a moment, grin faltering. "I know what this is, Aria. All I'm asking for is some time."

"Then what?"

"There has to be some part of the galaxy I haven't pissed off yet."

Her biotics faded away. Shepard's hands slowly slid up the outside of her thighs to grip her waist, pulling her closer. Aria trailed a finger down Shepard's jaw. "You'll need a name."

The grin was back. "Any suggestions?"