(Leave a sentence thing) Like so many important things in his life, it started with the Outsider.
Like so many important things in his life, it started with the Outsider.
It’s fairly inconspicuous at first, and Daud will give him that: the Outsider is very, very good at leaving things laying out in plain sight, hidden only by the un-truths in his words. More the fool would he be to not see them after so many years—and yet.
"He is perceptive," the Outsider says around a placid smile. Daud’s hand clutches a whalebone trinket, and he pauses. "Your second has been watching for the clues in your footsteps ever since his feet brought him to you. Give him credit: he sees out from your shadow, and sees more than you know."
It’s hardly the most puzzling thing the Outsider has ever said to him, but it’s not about him. He tucks the charm into his pocket.
When he opens his eyes, Thomas is waiting patiently at his side.
—
"You forget the breadth of mourning, Daud."
This time he’s taken aback, and it must show on his face. The Outsider frowns at him like a slow child. “One of your closest betrayed your trust, but it wasn’t just you she betrayed.”
This, he understands clearly. “She didn’t,” he says too soon, thinking of Delilah and an entire mansion of painted faces.
The Outsider tilts his head, almost—maybe—conceding it. He eyes Daud curiously.
"Billie Lurk has gone across the sea and left a flock at home. For all they would know, you have gone across the sea with her."
—
This isn’t like him, giving—life advice, but he’s forced to take it. Daud has rebuilt a small fold and given honest work where he can; around them, Dunwall rebuilds itself, too, and the tides of power shift and sway. The Outsider is quiet for nearly an entire moon before they speak again. In the interim, his Whalers begin to walk barefaced in the streets; some of them rove far and don’t come back, but most do.
Almost all do.
Daud wakes to it in his dreams, this time. He’s growing impatient and restless and doesn’t know what in all the world to expect. The Outsider spreads his hands.
"You chased Delilah to learn the truth and now your conscience rests clear. Why, then, does it call the Void closer?"
Across the sea, he thinks, and then understands.
—
He corners Thomas not long after that. It feels like a nearly impossible task; Thomas was one of the few with whom he shared most, if not all of Delilah’s story, but had never asked for a story in return.
"I was the last person she saw," Thomas tells him, carefully impassive. (Somehow they’d all learned it in the end; they don’t need masks to hide their eyes from him. Still, something shows through.) "I was—I couldn’t believe, and—I don’t know what I was thinking, sir. I went to find her. After… after."
He seems shaken up. Daud frowns. “What happened?”
"Do you know how many of ours I hid when they came for us?” Thomas exclaims, and then stops himself. He rubs a hand over his face. “She—expected I’d follow, I think. She told me where she was going, but made me promise not to tell you unless the situation was… dire.” He looks sad.
"If I ever needed to find her?" Daud asks.
"If you ever wanted her home."
—
Clever Thomas, they’d always said, quicker to learn than most. He’d earned his way to second-in-command with skill and steadfast calm; his blade was steady, but sheathed more often than not.
He could learn anything by watching. Evidently, this was how he learned people.
These are the most neutral words Daud has heard from his mouth:
"I cared about her, and you."
Thomas holds himself very still, but his posture owns up to it. He looks to Daud without flinching. “…and you cared for her, and she for you. And I cared all the more once I realized what had happened.”
Daud can barely detect the shallow breathing that might mean his second-hand is either about to throw up or faint.
"Please tell me this isn’t news to you," Thomas implores.
"No," he says, finally. He can feel his shoulders sag with the weight of it. "Only a slight blow to the head, is all."
He bids Thomas leave, and he does.
—
He’s gone for about a day, and nobody asks. His Whalers can survive on their own.
He can feel the black-eyed bastard watching him with disappointment.
More’s the fucking pity.
—
He transverses back to his offices later. His weapons belt is thrown over a chair, and he discards the plain brown surveyor’s coat he’d been using to move around quietly. Finding Thomas is almost questionably easy.
"Come on," he says as he takes his second by the forearm and leads him back. Thomas is informally-attired; it’s late and he’s not scheduled for any shifts until the next morning, but the presence of his boots suggests he might have had half a mind to go out scouting for his own reasons. Disappearing acts aren’t uncommon; they don’t talk about it.
He doesn’t break contact with Thomas until they’re both up the stairs to his horribly inhospitable loft, and then turns on him. “I’m going to take your coat off.”
Thomas freezes like a deer. Daud pins him with a look. “And then I’m going to take off your boots, and we’re going to lay the fuck down, Thomas. And if you want to talk more, we will. You can leave whenever you want.”
With that all out, Thomas seems to exhale a very large breath. He’s nodding, saying “okay, yes, yes.”
Daud cups the side of his neck with one hand, lets him breathe before getting to work unfastening his coat. Pliant, Thomas shrugs out of its sleeves and then lets himself be guided to sit down on the meager bed, sitting down on it gently. Daud is focused enough that he’s already knelt down, pulling off Thomas’ first boot before he looks up and notices the flush creeping up his second’s neck. He chuckles; Thomas goes undeniably red.
Okay. This is okay, then.
Soon after he’s similarly disrobed himself, and they’ve laid down. There’s not much space to be had, but Daud gives Thomas as much of it as possible, making sure he doesn’t feel crowded or pressured without feeling like Daud is making an effort not to touch him. Their legs bump against each other, and after several moments of calm breathing on Thomas’ part, he carefully loops an arm over his second’s waist. “‘right?”
Thomas settles into it immediately, stretching and closing the space between them.
"Alright. This is good."
Daud bumps his nose against Thomas’ neck. “Good. Stay here and try not to think yourself into a hole.”
Thomas lets out an unexpected chuckle. His spine has relaxed against Daud’s chest, and he mumbles something affirmative.
out into the black.
mass effect, nihlus & saren but largely just nihlus.
1994 words.
warnings for this fic: torture in the present tense, including drug torture and psychological torture; blood and mild gore; suicidal ideation. (everything-works-out ending.)
As they turn to leave, Saren's mandibles flicker. In his head, Nihlus calls it pride.
When Nihlus is approved for solo missions—months and moons and one too many incidents of near-decapitation on Saren's watch later—he pretends like he doesn't know what it means.
He survives pretty well on his own. Once the job is done, the Council pulls him back, tapes him up, and sends him back out into the black with little more than a week's turnaround. There's no ceremony to it; he is not the first or the last turian to be appointed this position, and spirits know it's not a job with a retirement package.
But Saren is there. His mentor stands behind him a way's back as the mandate is read: Spectre Kryik. No other designation matters anymore. Protected innocents at great personal cost, they say, and he can nearly feel Saren's eyes boring holes in the back of his skull for that one. Upholds standards of integrity for all galactic life.
An invaluable asset to the Spectres.
As they turn to leave, Saren's mandibles flicker. In his head, Nihlus calls it pride.
–
It's too soon.
–
There's a storm inside his head. It's been raining for three days.
There's a storm inside his head. He is drowning. The static tastes like ozone and he keeps clutching at empty space near his hip, every hour forgetting anew that there is no pistol, every hour remembering that they have dislocated his arm at the elbow and he could not hold the gun if it did exist.
There's a storm inside his head. Every time they pull a tooth, it gets louder.
–
When the storm passes, his veins feel like they are on fire. Something in his head tells him to rip them out. He isn't properly restrained, but he can't tell why he didn't notice that before. Didn't he—wasn't he holding his gun?
He is lying on a table. Every nerve in his body feels like it's misfiring. He looks down the table at his body, at what feels like a great distance, and sees his hands clutching weakly at nothing.
There are no restraints, only bandages and IVs.
–
He's bleary when he finally regains his sense of self, takes stock of the environment around him.
It's a dilapidated old lab, and he hadn't imagined the rain. There are no windows through which to see it but the air around him is humid and he can hear it pattering against a metal roof, somewhere outside of his room. His instinctive sense of position tells him he's on the ground level and the building—wherever it is, whatever this is—is so far above sea level that the rain is almost not rain, but clouds.
All of his senses feel pumped full of stims and he's nauseous, swimming through each moment of awareness coming back online. The smell of the place is flora and copper, rich green so thick it's almost choking, blood on the tiles. He retches. Nothing comes up.
There are still no restraints.
His legs are numb, he realizes as he attempts to take stock of where his body hurts and realizes he simply—can't with anything below the knee joint. He looks down his body once again, struggles to prop himself up on his one good arm, but his head swims and refuses, and he concentrates, tries.
He watches his own feet twitch as if they're separate from his body, completely outside his control, to a growing sense of horror.
There is some dried blood on the table just behind his knees.
Eventually, his screaming brings someone from another room. They don't drug him when they knock him out again.
–
When he sleeps, he remembers that it was Saren who taught him how to resist torture. There's always somewhere to go, Saren had told him. They cannot hold you here, and nobody can harm you inside your own head.
That was before Saren had slipped him the drug. He slept for 18 consecutive hours and woke up weak, nauseous, and immediately submerged in freezing water.
His record was reported by Saren himself to the Council at ninety-two hours. He can resist interrogation at the hands of another Spectre for nearly four days. Among Spectres, this period of time is referred to as valet service; if he is to disappear, the Council will attempt to recover him for exactly ninety-two hours after his last point of contact. A courtesy pick-up.
After ninety-two hours, he will be declared shoot-on-sight.
He has no reference of time in this state, but he thinks it's been long enough.
–
And so it goes, the period between waking and sleeping more a living nightmare than anything his mind has conjured up in restless imaginings. Sometimes he's drugged, sometimes he's not. They have put water in his veins, waited until it was so thin that his heart beat like a frightened animal in his chest and he could not see. They have filled the room with tiny airborne proteins, levo, until his lungs spasmed and his eyes burned and he vomited nothing.
He cannot identify voices or even species; they wear padded white suits that reduce them to little more than bipedal creatures with two slender arms and round heads. Their hands, he finds, are well-defined for dexterity but always gloved, and he cannot tell the difference between an asari's hands or a human's; a quarian's or a salarian's.
What do you want, he asks one day, mouth so dry he can barely force the words out.
Nothing, they say.
Do you know who I am?, he asks later.
We don't care.
–
He hallucinates vividly.
At first, he thinks he's found a way back inside his head; the hallucinations are comforting, quiet, simplistic. He sees himself sleeping next to a small human girl, both of them lying facing each other, her clutching his hands as she sleeps. She is so young, but he can feel the grip of her small fingers around his wrists; he doesn't know who she is but her presence is calming, and he drifts in and out of sleep.
Sometimes it's Saren. He's still hooked up to IVs but they're fluid drips now, and the room is the quiet of a Citadel hospital. His mentor stands next to his bed, brushes a hand down his forehead.
"Go back into your head, Nihlus. Stay there for now."
He leans up, barely, into the touch, and even in fever-wrought hallucinations Saren's eyes are impossible to read.
"Come find me," he finds himself saying, asking, pleading.
Saren's fingers graze over his eyelids, closing them like a corpse.
–
When his system jolts itself back into present tense, someone is checking his pupil dilation with a pen light.
For all the equipment they've donned, something feels false about the rigorous testing of the white-clad figures around him. It seems nonsensical; he's tried and failed to pick up any thread of continuity, and the things they murmur between each other are curt and monosyllabic, too quiet for him to catch.
He is a corpse and they are rearranging his bones as they see fit, because they feel like it.
–
It feels like he has been inside the same room for weeks before anything changes. He's resigned himself to the fact that he has lost his legs, and the majority of his limbs are likely to follow if they keep being dislocated and relocated in such haphazard ways, leaving him immobile and barely capable of rolling to one side on a good day. He hasn't moved except for seizure-like spasms; has choked on his own vomit more than once. They have taken to injecting liquefied nutrients directly into his stomach, and he systematically forced to drink more water than he thinks his body can handle when they notice he coughs up blood.
Between sleeping and waking, he tries to form a semblance of days, but the hallucinations come to him without sleep and leave him with hours of lost time.
One day, a white-clad figure walks into the room and goes for his left leg, jabbing a finger into the smooth flesh behind his knee. He jolts and kicks weakly when he realizes he can feel it. Then he panics.
"Candidate Nihlus Kryik," the figure says, and he tosses his head, near hysterical with how improbable the words are. No, I'm not, he thinks, you're too late, they sent me too soon, I was a fluke.
The figure is carefully sliding IVs out of his arms, removing breathing tubes, pinching the tips of his fingers one by one. He lays quietly; the hallucination will pass.
"You won't want to hear this right now, but welcome to the Spectres. I'm going to give you a few injections; they are adrenaline and painkillers."
This is absurd.
"Please don't try to move too quickly. Now, I'm going to check your extremities for damage; tell me if you feel any tingling."
–
He's in rehabilitation for three weeks, and spends the first twenty-four hours under heavy sedation after trying to assault anything within arm's reach and, when that failed, turning makeshift weapons on himself. After that, they let him move around but restrict him to a single room. The doctors do not wear masks.
It was six days, they tell him later; they artificially tampered with his circadian rhythm, making hours stretch into entire weeks. They anaesthetized his lower legs to keep him immobile. He will suffer no permanent damage; they are, after all, very careful and have done this before.
He offered no secrets, and they tell him this is very good.
There was no mission. Just this.
–
He's in de-traumatization therapy for longer than it takes his body to physically heal. They tell him he's progressing normally; they project a full return to active duty within the month.
When he can stand without shaking, Sparatus visits him. The doctors seem to appreciate that he has to be standing before anyone can enter the room.
"Spectre Kryik," he greets. Councilor Sparatus' compassion is a thin line drawn in the sand. He stares at the councilor, disbelieving.
Eventually, Sparatus shifts his stance. "We very rarely stage successful recoveries, Nihlus. Spectres carry a great burden of knowledge; we can train you to resist telling secrets when secrets will mean the end, but not when there are no secrets your captor truly wants."
He can't fully process what's being told to him until much, much later. He cannot even form the words.
Sparatus calls him 'Spectre' again before he leaves. The word is a thin coat of praise, painted over years upon years of horror.
–
He wakes up screaming again and again; Saren in his mind's eye, telling him go back into your head.
Come find me, he shrieks back, come find me and wake me up.
–
And eventually Saren does.
He doesn't have to question whether or not Saren knew what would happen when Nihlus was sent out. He sees it; his mentor's jaw is a firm line, his eyes deadened blue.
Instead, he asks, "Were you there?"
"Yes," Saren responds without hesitating. "Twice."
"Why?" His own voice is foreign and choked-off.
Saren's gaze flickers downwards, but when their eyes meet, he holds it. "The hallucinogenics conjure—somewhat less frightening imagery when a familiar face is actually present in the subject's reality. If you knew it was a hallucination, the illusion wouldn't be ruined."
"And the second time?"
"You asked me to come find you."
It breaks Nihlus, then. Not a moment later, Saren cups the back of his neck and pulls him against his chest, holding him just tight enough as Nihlus' fingers leave bruises on his arms.
–
He goes out into the black again, months later, as a Spectre with the power to overthrow regimes, deliver any untimely death he sees fit, and save lives.
He goes out into the black, and the storms are quiet.
He goes out into the black with Saren, and he is never alone.
The sky is so, so bright here in the Isles. It is the most marvelous shade of blue; the horizon goes on forever, broken only by the land's strange, floating islands. When the clouds come, the rain is cool and sweet and he finds himself out in it, shivering, mouth wide open to catch the downpour, laughing as he spreads his wings and flutters in a dizzying attempt to fly.
Later, beneath the trees and safe from the rain, he's fussed over. He has not yet mastered the art of preening his own feathers, uncomfortable though they may lay against his back. Fortunately, he is not the only feathered being in the clan.
"I know what they say about creatures like us," Stratus murmurs fondly to him as she strokes the droplets of water from his wings. There is something sad in her voice, but Alcinder is not yet old enough to identify these nuances. The coatl is pitch-coloured with a pale stomach. She is beautiful and strange, and he has never seen one like her-- except for her mates.
"It's no misfortune that you are alive today, little Cin-der. You have flames in your chest, so bright and strong they would consume you if the Hearth were allowed to stroke them."
She is wise, but Alcinder doesn't always feel like they are flames.
--
Ties is always kind, but cannot always be there; he has so many to care for, and so many ills to heal, this Alcinder understands. Nevertheless, he is more present in the first weeks of Alcinder's life than any other dragon. When Ties takes Alcinder on his back and flies him to the highest floating-peak for miles, they stay for hours, and Ties tells stories. Sometimes they're stories about the Arcanist, but more often, they're stories about the clan.
(It will be many years before Alcinder realizes that the bumbling, lovestruck Pearlcatcher in Ties' stories, so captured by the brave Guardian whose servant he'd sought out to be, was Ties himself. Now, though, Alcinder just thinks these are fae-tails.)
"There's someone you haven't met yet," Ties says, one day, "but I wanted to make sure you were ready."
Alcinder wants to say yes, I am ready for anything, but his voice still hasn't quite come. It feels like it's there, perching just at the back of his throat, and up here in the clouds in feels closer than ever; up here, breathing feels like nothing. But he will be patient for it.
--
The Guardian is massive.
Alcinder is not intimidated by much-- and was less intimidated by the clan's numerous Imperials, towering so high above him he could barely see their faces-- but there is something anxious in the Guardian's energy, something aggressive and frightfully unsure. It feels like a heart beating too quickly. Alcinder takes a deep breath and lets Ties lead him.
They are wearing the same style of headdress, this Guardian and Ties, but where Ties' is pale and blue like the night sky, the Guardian's are flame-charred bone. His wings ripple and fold, and golden eyes peer out at Alcinder from behind the mask. Alcinder stops a respectful distance away.
"Alcinder, this is Sparro." Ties gestures amicably between them, but for all Alcinder tries, he can't quite move.
Finally, the Guardian-- this Sparro-- reaches up, and slips the mask off his face with one taloned hand. His eyes burn, and his eyes are home, Alcinder realizes at once-- the only other Hearth-born dragon he's met in the clan.
"Ties," Sparro starts, and his voice is heavy with something-- something like sadness, but not. His tone is deep and gravelly. He seems to have trouble finding his words. "Thank you-- for letting me wait here."
Alcinder has never seen Ties smile with quite so much joy. Quietly, he says, "I am glad for you, my friend."
Sparro's gaze settles on Alcinder, and he takes a tentative step forward; Alcinder can't help but feel rooted in place. The Guardian crouches, ducking his head, and the motion is so foreign to Alcinder that it takes him a moment to recognize it as a bow.
"Alcinder," he starts. "You don't know me, but I have been waiting here for many, many years. When I was young, I Searched, but no Charge was there for me. I traveled continents and drifted between lairs, and when I found this clan, my heart-of-hearts told me to stay, and Search no more; my Charge would come to me."
Here he pauses, and looks Alcinder in the eye. "When we were sent news of your arrival from the Hearth, I could not bear to hope, but my heart knew your name before I could speak it. My soul knows you are my Charge, and I am indebted to Ties for bringing you to me before you could be sent to our Maker's home. I see you here and know that my Search is over."
Alcinder feels warm, and a bit tingly, like he's been standing out in the rain but the shivers have not yet come. His eyes are wet. There are sounds perched at the back of his throat-- songs and laughter and the breathless joy of being alive to feel this moment-- and he cannot say them all at once. In fact, he can barely say anything at all.
When he finally opens his mouth, he is sure of this word, and sure that it is all he needs to say. The smile splitting his face is as big as Ties'. "Yes."
A year and a half into his Spectre evaluation, Nihlus is taken on a brief and routine visit to the Citadel.
He has been with his mentor for more days than he'd care to think about at this point. The visit is, as promised, brief: they enter the Citadel Tower, and Saren shares words with the Council-- years later, Nihlus won't remember what they talked about besides that it involved a human man, whether it was even important or not. Privately, he suspects Saren takes these infrequent visits simply because he knows the Council likes to check up on their most favored pet.
Had the visit played out differently, Nihlus might have been formally introduced to the Council members for the first time. However, what actually ends up happening is that he calls Saren a bigoted, myopic bastard in front of the Council and the many assorted politicians and military figures nearby.
It happens two weeks before Saren is supposed to confirm his evaluation as complete. He doesn't know that, though.
--
Little more than seven minutes later, Nihlus gets what's coming for him.
The first thing he becomes acutely conscious of is that he's being backed up against the nearest wall-- well, backed maybe isn't the best word. More shoved. Saren is big, bigger than him by a head, and he's crowded in until his back hits metal. "Saren-- stop it, you fucking prick--"
He doesn't expect it will have any effect: his head feels like something's been pushed between his ears, and it's a weak effort on his part. The chilled glare that meets him seems liable to pin him back all on its own. "Why in the world should I, Nihlus?"
They're barely out of the Tower: Nihlus recalls being all but dragged out of the Council Chambers after the meeting adjourned, the elevator ride down to the Presidium a blur of twisted wrists and his head hitting the wall, talons against his jaw, digging into his fringe. When they exit, the bigger turian gripped his arm yet again and dragged him roughly off to the nearest location that was safe enough-- or as close as one could get in the Presidium-- from prying eyes.
Saren takes Nihlus' wrists in his hands, bringing them up and pinning them back against the wall. Nihlus is too dumbfounded to protest or so much as twitch in his grip. "It's-- unprofessional, spirits Saren, get off me, I will not fucking take it back--" Through what may or may not be a concussion, his ability to bullshit is wearing pretty goddamned thin and he tenses, working his jaw. He's grasping at straws: he knows there's absolutely nothing he can do at this point to make Saren stop, knew that as soon as the Spectre punched him in the face on a blasted Citadel elevator. Saren wants to prove a point, and prove a point he will, even if Nihlus bleeds for it.
"Yes." His mentor's eyes are fucking deadly right now. "Yes. It must look incredibly unprofessional on your part, getting pinned to the wall by your superior. What you did in front of the Council was unprofessional, and here you are, swearing at me like a green little cadet." Suddenly Nihlus feels a thigh pushing his knees open, pressing up, and he inhales sharply. "Yes, you're being unprofessional. I'm sure this is all very embarrassing for you."
"Saren." His voice cracks. He wants to say it: what the fuck are you doing? What the fuck am I doing? But his throat feels constricted under the heavy weight of those dark, maddening eyes, and all he can do is stare back, shivering, pushing, angry, spooked. He doesn't even remember why he did it now: all he can think about is the static pulse building inside his head.
Saren's leg moves between his, all firm unyielding pressure. Involuntarily, Nihlus' hips rock against it, and he lets out a slow breath.
He feels his arms being shifted. Disoriented, his vision wavers like a faulty signal, and he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to dispel the feeling as Saren takes both his wrists in one hand: the other, now free, wraps and presses against the soft flesh of his throat.
He feels like a gutted fish. Almost all his weight is on his arms, except for the pressure between his legs, the pressure that's making him go up as high onto his toes as his feet will support. A curse starts on his tongue, but the hand at his throat squeezes tight and quick and he gags.
"Your manners are... lacking." Saren's voice. His eyes snap open, and he weakly twists against the older turian. His insides feel warm, too warm: every movement that presses him down against Saren's thigh sends a jolt of swollen ache through his groin. The Presidium is large and wide-open, even in its most secluded corners, and he knows it's likely someone has seen them by now. He shouldn't be turned on by this-- isn't, the least muddled parts of his brain reason, but the beating in his chest that's neither fear nor adrenaline says otherwise.
"We'll work on that. You will not embarrass me again."
And Saren drops him. Nihlus' legs support him for maybe a nanosecond before they give out and he crumples to the floor, jarring his knees, steadying himself with a hand on the floor as he simply breathes, ragged and humiliated and uncomfortably hot all over.
Clipped footsteps sound against the floor, and he watches as Saren walks off. Through the ringing in his ears and the blood at the back of his throat, Nihlus finds himself standing on shaky legs, cursing and swearing, steadying himself against the wall until he's convince he'd neither throw up nor pass out. Years later, he still won't understand why he does it: why the animal instinct in his brain is so quick to make him roll over onto his back and beg like a dog for Saren, why he'll always fucking come back for more.
I'M JUST GONNA DO IT, I'M JUST GONNA PUT THIS OUT THERE.
(A developing AU: post-ME2, a general goes looking for his brother.)
--
Feron's seen enough military in his life. Enough spec-ops, too. He knows the proud set of the shoulders, the tight jaw, and he's pretty sure he's had just about enough of army boys. Tired of picking them apart with his own cut teeth. Behind the scenes-- and more frequently, out in front of them, these days-- the mercenary blood rules.
They all come from backwater planets and they all have stories and Feron could go the rest of his life without hearing another one of them. He always says that.
But then the Broker gets a call. One of Palaven's wayward sons has lost something very dear to him.
--
It's over before the bastard can blink. The last body hits the ground with a wet thud; there are five of them surrounding the turian standing in the middle of the alleyway, five little broken piles of shattered skulls and brain tissue.
The turian barely had time to reach for his gun; he's got it at his side now, both hands steadying it, like an officer. Like a soldier. He's got that expression all turians seem to get when they're startled-- like someone ruffled their feathers backwards-- but his eyes are trained and they find what they're looking for quickly. About two storeys up and to the left, as it happens.
Feron holds the gun steady, cradling the rifle heavy against his chest for a minute before lowering it just enough to show he's made his point. It's raining-- the sort of grimey dirt-slicked downpour that only shows up in major colonial cities, the sort you don't open your mouth for-- and the turian is wearing a half-hood, a strong fringe emerging out the back. He glares up and Feron could hazard, inter-species miscommunications aside, that his expression is rather peeved.
Feron grins amicably, resting the gun against his knee and letting go of it with one hand to push back his own hood. The rain is a dull roar in the back of his mind. "They always go like that, don't they? One panics and the others just fall like dominoes." This alcove he's settled himself into is mostly keeping him dry. The turian is disinclined to speak for a moment.
Then, "What are you, drell? Compact?"
Deep voice-- low reverberation, sub-vocals that aren't from Palaven. Feron knows too many turians from the homeworld and this one isn't; he smooths it over well with a politician's inflection and his calling card might be blue all over, but he's not of Palaven blood. The pale paint Feron can see on his chin suggests it, too. Tactician, his mind corrects, noting the gun.
"A compact drell would not be well-suited for the type of work I do, I don't think." His voice carries a biting laugh. "What I am is your new boss."
The turian relaxes his hold on the gun, his rigidly military stance ebbing into fluidity. "If you're the agent I'm looking for, I believe you have our roles reversed." He's not holstering it though-- smart boy.
"Nah. You don't employ the Broker, you know that, right? Broker don't take well to that. We supply. And if you're looking for more than the usual stock of supplies, creds don't normally cut it." He waves one gloved hand. "Don't have to call me boss, though-- just keep that thing pointed where it is."
The turian looks at him appraisingly. There's a moment of pause that's only rainwater and the wet sounds of footfalls from the street, miles away in the space of Feron's mind. Eventually he says, "Why the warm welcome?"
"Why'd you bring them in the first place?" Feron's voice goes hard and annoyed. "We heard you might be kind of a pain in the ass. It's standard procedure-- you all big and impressive, showing up to a meeting with the Broker trying to look like you're outnumbering us. It's embarrassing."
"Hn." The turian regards him flatly. "With a mouth like that, no doubt the Broker would think you worth five men, little drell."
Sun and sky, Feron wishes he could see the bastard's face. Turians tend to be smarter than that, though-- they know their faces give too much away, marked or bare. The rain glistens on his fringe.
"In any case, I've paid well for this meeting. You're to procure someone for me."
"Is that so? Well, I suppose that's a service we sometimes provide." He laughs. He's not fucking entertained. "To whom do I owe the pleasure?"
A soft hum of approval. Finally, the turian sheaths his weapon; the sound echoes, patterning itself against the rain. He pulls his hood back, and the dim alley light is just enough to illuminate a face that Feron hasn't seen since the war vids. Since he was old enough to know what the Hierarchy was, and the last time they even fought a war.
There were very few turians, save the Primarch, who spoke for those vids.
