Day 1/7 of the Mass Effect Trilogy Week : Characters. 1.1k words; gen; timeskip post-ME3; Shepard died at the end of the Reaper War; past Shepard/Thane; no content warnings.
“Nice place.”
Garrus glances round the apartment, taking in the details with a veteran's trained eye. Windows are on the larger side, but the blinds are better than nothing. Furniture is cheap, artlessly distributed, but functional and in good condition: dining table that doubles as a desk, sofa with fading but unscathed leather, everything aged but well-kept, more than he'd expect of a young man living alone in the Wards.
Kolyat emits a small chuckle. “Not as fancy as your place uptown,” he points out. “We probably can fit the whole unit in your living room.”
“Yeah, but that place's practically handed to me,” Garrus says quickly. “You got yours on a C-Sec rookie's bankroll. I'd say that counts for something.”
“Point taken.” Kolyat shrugs. He walks ahead of Garrus, heading towards the cramped kitchen in the corner. “Drinks?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
He follows Kolyat until his eyes catch sight of the disembowelled gun on the table. A Carnifex, with a scratched finish that's probably seen more action than the kid himself has, carefully disassembled for cleaning. Like the rest of the apartment, it's old, but someone's been taking painstaking care of it. Not a single spare part seems to have been replaced. All of it original. And all of it so very familiar, he realises. Every scratch, every scraped bit of paint, every nock—
“Oh. Sorry for the mess.” Kolyat springs forward, placing two bottles on the corner of the table, and starts clearing out the parts, but Garrus catches his hand in mid-air.
“No, don't leave it half-done like that.”
Kolyat blinks. “You don't mind if I do?”
“Of course not.” Spirits, how long has it been since he last saw that Carnifex? And to think he used to see it—almost every other day, or at least that's what it felt like. “Just make sure you take good care of it. That thing's been through hell and back.”
“I know. I will.”
There's a pause in the conversation. Garrus pulls a chair to watch Kolyat reassemble the pistol. He handles the parts with deft fingers, sliding the pieces together with quiet, almost rhythmical clicks. Then, after what feels like an eternity:
“I ran into Doctor T’Soni the other day.”
“Liara?” Gears shift inside Garrus’ head. “Right. She said she was going to be on the Citadel for… a book release, wasn’t it? About her Prothean research?”
Kolyat nods. “I was on patrol at the time. When she saw me carrying this pistol, she abruptly stopped talking for a moment. At first I thought she was just surprised to see me packing heat.”
Garrus sniffs. Of course. Of course, he wouldn’t be the only one to recognise it. “Yeah, well, don’t hold it against us. We used to see it every day. And Liara’s got an amazing memory. I wouldn’t be surprised if she can rattle off its serial number off the top of her head.”
Now is Kolyat’s turn to chuckle. “I imagine she–Shepard, I mean–must have had it for a long time. Did she?”
“Not… exactly. It was a gift, I think in 2185? War just has a funny way of breaking things.” Look what it did to us, he muses wryly. We're not very different from that gun, you and I: battered and scratched and yet so, so stubbornly refusing to fall apart and give up.
Another silence. Kolyat resumes reassembling the pistol, nimble fingers—his father's fingers, quick and precise and wilting at the tips, but bluer and less worn, less callused—going through the motions with well-practiced smoothness.
Garrus watches him work, but his mind drifts elsewhere, floating into the inexorable maëlstrom of memory. He remembers the first time he saw that Carnifex on Omega. The dread stench of burning bodies in the distance, a racking cough always waiting at the back of his throat whenever he tried to speak, the dizzying heat in the slumside clinic… that battered old pistol, handed to Shepard with a smile “in good faith”.
Then he remembers the heat on Tuchanka, drier but no less oppressive than the plague-struck slums of Omega. The whitish particles gently drifting in the breeze, spraying from the Shroud like a slow-motion fountain. And Shepard, kneeling in the ruined lab with a blank look on her face, staring at the bloodied, limp corpse in her hands. Shepard, walking with Wrex and Eve, nodding at their hopes and dreams for the future, uncharacteristically silent. Shepard, standing by the conference room window, eyes shut tight and humming under her breath.
“It's Mordin, by the way,” he blurts out. “He gave it to her.”
One last click, and the fully-assembled Carnifex sits on the tabletop, as close to peak condition as it will ever be. Kolyat's dark eyes are round, taken aback; perhaps even vaguely awed. “Mordin Solus? The salarian doctor who cured the genophage?”
“The one and only.” He draws a long breath, and it comes back out in choppy, subdued chuckles. “Slippery old bastard. Brilliant, but unusual; sometimes ruthlessly practical. But he never backed down from the difficult choices, and he owned up to his actions, good or bad.”
Kolyat smiles. “Sounds like Shepard to me.”
“Hah! That's fair.” His eyes flicker back to the scarred Carnifex, as if drawn by some unseen magnetism. “She really liked that gun, you know. Just her kind of sidearm, she used to say. Powerful, accurate over long distances, rate of fire tends slower but it doesn't matter if you aimed it correctly anyway—”
“Like a secondary sniper rifle.”
“Exactly. Spirits, she used to take it everywhere. I almost think she slept with it under her pillow.” Kolyat grins, and he resumes: “So now that it's yours, you're not gonna relegate it to boring patrols, right? That gun deserves more than that.”
“I… may also use it for the Armax Arena.”
“You play the Armax Arena? Without me?” Garrus puts a scandalised hand to his chest. “You betray me, Krios. It's right across the street from where I live!”
Kolyat laughs, shaking his head. “I thought you'd be too busy. With, you know, whatever it is Spectres do these days.”
“Listen, kid, I'm never too busy to play a few rounds with you and your family heirloom. As long as I'm on the Citadel, ring me up, and we'll show them how it's done.”
“All right, Garrus,” Kolyat grasps his bottle and raises it, and Garrus does likewise. “Here's to old friends and old guns, then.”
“May we do them proud.”
Clinks of glass, and the smooth burn of alcohol in his throat. Garrus wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Kolyat sets his bottle down with a low plink. The Carnifex gleams softly in the fluorescent light, reflecting silvery-blue into their eyes.
Day 3/7 of the Mass Effect Trilogy Week: Plot. 2k words; canon divergence (Priority: Tuchanka because I just want catharsis, blast it); Shepard+Mordin; no content warnings.
No. No, not like this. Her teeth grind together, bile rising in her throat. If you go up there—and you will, I know you and I know there's no stopping you once you've set your mind on something—
He bows his head. “No. No other option. Not coming back. Suggest you get clear. Explosions likely to be problematic.”
He starts walking to the elevator.
“Mordin, no!” She darts forward. “Wait!”
This, at least, got him to face her. “Shepard, please. Need to do this.” He meets her gaze, black eyes glossy, glimmering back at her, and shakes his head fractionally. “My project, my work. My cure, my responsibility.”
“No.”
He startles at her answer, short and decisive and immediate. She marches forward, never looking away, never breaking eye contact. Something falls to the floor behind her, but she no longer cares.
She keeps her voice low and steady; a voice she only uses for the most serious of situations. “If you're going up there, then so am I.”
His shoulders drop, ever so slightly. “Shepard—”
“I helped you track down Maelon,” she presses on. “I told you to save his data. I introduced you to Wrex, brought you to Tuchanka, helped you gather your tissue samples! I even convinced Victus to greenlight the cure! So this may be your project, but the way I see it I'm at least your damned lab tech here, and I'm coming with you.”
“Shepard,” his tone is urgent, almost pleading, “might not make it out in time.”
“So both of us come back, or neither of us do. Either way, we're wasting time out here. Come on!”
She runs ahead of him towards the elevator. Mordin catches up merely a second later, immediately closing the cracked glass doors behind them. The cramped space hums with tension thick enough to carve like a turkey dinner. The fact that he'd recognised her unwillingness to back down doesn't clear the air at all; if anything, it seems to only make him more nervous. She hears him singing to himself under his breath, fast and quiet, his verbal equivalent of a bouncing knee.
She decides to turn her attention elsewhere. “Normandy, this is Shepard, do you copy?”
A crackle, followed by Joker's voice in her earpiece. “This is Normandy, come in.”
“Mordin and I are going up the Shroud tower. Fifty-second floor. I need a shuttle on standby for evac, ASAP.”
“The Shroud tower? What the—aye aye, Commander.”
If EDI's synthesised voice is capable of sounding alarmed, this is what it sounds like. “Shepard, the tower you are ascending has endured significant damage from the Reaper attack. Structural integrity is estimated at sixty-four percent, and there are live fires on the floor you and Dr Solus are headed to.”
“Thanks, EDI, good to know. You and Garrus made it out in time?”
“Yes. Radio chatter also suggests Eve has regrouped with a handful of krogan warriors. She is being escorted back to Urdnot territory.”
Joker has the Normandy. Eve is as safe as can be given the circumstances. She'd filed the official request to make Garrus her XO. Thane's awaiting his lung transplant, with Kolyat keeping him company. All that's left to do is make sure the cure is properly dispersed, then the krogan and turians will fully provide aid for Earth, along with Kirrahe and however many STGs he convinced to go backdoor for them, and with Liara giving extra intel they should be able to keep going without—
“Would have liked to run tests on seashells,” Mordin says suddenly.
She looks at him, a faint smile on his weary face, and makes a paltry half-laugh. “Plenty of good beaches on Earth. We should go after all this is done.”
Assuming Earth is still around by then.
Assuming you and I will still be around.
“Heard of Earth species capable of shooting venomous darts at prey. Fascinating.”
Beat. She blinks. “We still talking about shells here? Or—”
But then the doors reopen, revealing a lab-slash-control-room covered in debris and flames. Without a moment's hesitation, Mordin darts ahead, making a beeline for the farthest console. A bursting pipe temporarily derails him, but she catches his elbow, and together they cross the room.
She realises, now, how foreign the equipment—and their interfaces—are. Whatever her bluster about being his lab tech earlier, she's clearly way out of her depth, even with her visor scrambling to translate the salarian glyphs on the screens. An automated voice is echoing in the chamber, repeating something about the temperature, but that doesn't tell her how to help.
A thought comes to mind. “Mordin, tell me if you need something, all right?” He nods wordlessly—not silently, however, he's humming again and she knows that song like the back of her hand by now—while she runs to the nearest pile of debris and starts analysing the damage.
If she can't make this go any faster, then at least she'll buy him some time.
Fallen column broke unidentified equipment #1, some flammable—or inflammable?—liquid under it catching fire, runs all the way to unidentified equipment #2 on the far right. Left console is dead, roof cave-in opened a pipe. Doesn't seem to be water. Coolant? Electrical short by the corner—it's awfully close to those pressurised canisters. That can't be good.
She runs to the canisters first, grabbing one in each hand and hefting them to the nearest wall, away from the short. Then it's to the unidentified equipment and the burning liquid. Where's the fire extinguisher? A lab like this has to have several.
“—studied species turian, asari, and batarian—”
There, beneath a pile of rubble. She skids across the room again, narrowly maintaining her footing as a piece of flooring crunches under her weight, and starts digging into the debris. The tank is dented, but its nozzle seems undamaged. She grabs it and starts spraying its contents onto the fire. Kalahira, please let this work.
“—xenoscience studies range from urban to agrarian, I am—”
“The very model of a scientist salarian!” she drops the extinguisher on the floor. It caps off the song with a hollow clang. “How much longer?”
And Mordin throws up his hands, taking a step back from the console. “Done!”
“Then what are we waiting for? Go! Go!”
She beckons him to run into the elevator, determined not to budge until he does. But apparently she'd made her point earlier, as he doesn't waste another moment. They scramble for the only exit, jumping in and slamming onto the controls like starved varren seeing fresh meat.
When the elevator judders back to life, taking them down the vertiginously high tower again, she finally lets out a sharp, bright laugh. “You stubborn old man,” she manages between shaky breaths. “I knew you could do it.”
She looks at Mordin's smile, relieved and open, and it strikes her how much younger he suddenly looks, like he'd just shed off ten years' worth of weight from his brow. “Had to be me,” he half-whispers.
“Someone else might've gotten it wrong,” she nods, still grinning.
He bows his head for a second. Then he looks back at her, straightening himself again. “Thank you, Shepard.”
“For what? All I did was—”
A deafening boom.
The elevator staggers, throwing them back. She loses her footing and sprawls on the floor. Mordin, lighter and less sturdy, is knocked against the external doors.
There's a sickening sound of glass breaking, and then he falls backward, plunging into the emptiness without.
“Mordin!”
How she manages to dart forward and grab his arm on that very second, she doesn't even know. But now she's on her stomach, her grip on his wrist the only thing keeping him from plunging down to the concrete floor far below. His mouth is moving, but her ears are still buzzing and she can't make out a word he says. The only thing she hears is a rushing, swirling sound, like waves crashing on the shore.
The elevator's still moving, she realises. The explosion dislodged them and broke both the inward- and outward-facing doors completely, but the mechanism is still intact. They're still going down, and if she can't pull him up in time then momentum will still get him one way or another.
“Mordin! Take my hand!” She reaches down with her other hand, the one on his wrist gripping with more force than she'd normally consider using.
He swings, sways, and finally manages it, fingers just barely brushing hers. She latches onto them anyway and pulls, hard. It's not enough to get him fully back on the elevator, but he manages to get a knee up and pushes back, glass shards crackling under his weight as he climbs back on.
“You okay?” she sits up, kicking aside a few broken shards in an attempt to provide some clear space.
“…bruises, strains. No serious injuries,” his breathless reply is barely audible over the rushing sea in her ears.
“Good.” Her throat suddenly feels very dry. She leans back against the metallic wall, her head thudding against the surface, and wipes the sweat running down her brow. Except something about it is oddly sticky, and her hairline unaccountably damp. She looks at the back of her gauntlet. Oh. She lets her hand drop again to her side.
“Saved my life, Shepard,” Mordin covers her hand with his, causing her to look up at him. “Twice in an hour.”
“And you just saved countless more,” she shoots back.
They stay low until the elevator nearly reaches the ground floor, and then she jumps back to her feet, pulling Mordin up with her. They spill out onto the lab, walking fast and wary of any further surprise explosions.
She hears Mordin emit a soft gasp, just at the edge of hearing, and turns to look at him.
And then, she sees it.
Pale, yellowish particles, falling gently like snowflakes on the harsh Tuchanka desert, carried by the lazy breeze. She looks up and sees many, many more, drifting in every possible direction. And at the centre of it all, the Shroud tower, shooting the flakes into the sky like a steady, benevolent volcano.
She feels shivers climb her spine. “Mordin, is that—?”
“Shroud mechanism operating to specifications. Cure dispersing evenly. Weather should carry particles to—” he pauses, inhales sharply; blinks once, then twice, then releases a shaky breath, “—completion.”
Completion.
That's what this feels like, she realises. The culmination of a lifetime's work, a crescendo built upon sleepless nights and grinding regrets. Whatever else happens, whether or not they survive the war, this is their legacy now.
A shuttle homes in, cutting a straight line atop what was very recently the site of a Reaper bloodbath. Then its door swings open, and out jumps Garrus, rifle in hand in a true example of turian military readiness. She spots EDI and Liara already inside the shuttle, which likely means Javik is as well.
“You should be halfway to the Normandy by now,” she chides as soon as they seem close enough. “I asked for one shuttle, not all of you.”
“Oh, I'm just here because Wrex'll kill me if he finds out I left you behind,” Garrus replies glibly. He looks at Mordin and his expression sobers. “So it's done then? You've cured the genophage for good?”
She turns, too, to face Mordin. She sees the faint tremor of his lip; the way his cheeks twitch and tug and finally break into a small, genuine smile. “Yes.”
A simple, blunt reply. Garrus flexes his mandibles, momentarily silenced. After what feels like a breathless eternity, he nods. “Then let's get out of here. Bet the krogan are itching to throw their new hero a celebration.”
Day 2/7 of the Mass Effect Trilogy Week: Relationships; 950 words; i dunno mate, fluff maybe?; post-ME2 but pre-ME3; Shepard/Thane; no content warnings.
“You must see a lot of fish on Kahje.”
Mikaela Shepard draws herself higher on the bed. A quick glance at the bedside clock tells her she still has an hour before they're due to reach Illium. The half of her brain labelled Commander knows she should be getting up and dressed already; the other half, labelled Shepard, would very much rather laze around some more, preferably indefinitely.
Thane turns away from the aquarium. “Like constellations in the night sky.” He smiles wistfully. “Have you ever seen a school of dartfish? They can turn entire sections of river into gliding patches of silver, so massive are their numbers.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
He nods, and she recognises the faintly nostalgic look on his face: that softening around his eyes, that faraway glance, even the tightening of his lips. (She can read him now, as easily as she reads the skies back on Earth. How absurd is that? To fall into an intimacy like this so quickly, so dizzyingly and thoroughly, until you feel like you've known each other for lifetimes?)
“It is. Mindfish, even more so. The hanar harvest them for their oils, but often also keep them for decorative purposes. They are brightly coloured, like these skald fish, albeit with larger fins and tails.”
She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. The captain's cabin is snugly warm—it always is, when they're both there—but she still dresses herself quickly out of sheer habit. She throws the closet door open and grabs the first clean uniform in sight. “You know my aquarium better than I do,” she grins, briefly glancing over her shoulder at him. “I can't remember what species they are, and I bought 'em myself.”
Footfalls, soft and close beside her. Thane's fingers brush against her upper arm, tracing the inked lines on her skin. “There's one fish I'd like to learn about,” he murmurs, close by her ear. “Do you mind?”
“What, this?” She hadn't thought about her tattoo in ages—it's just another part of her now, and much a less shocking part compared to her Cerberus-given augmentations at that—but she supposes she can see why it intrigues him. “It's an Earth species. Koi fish.”
“And these?”
“That's just water. Waves.”
“I see.” A pause, delicate as gossamer. “Are they clan markings?”
She blinks, taken off-guard by the hesitant question, and breathes out a laugh. “No. Kind of, but not really.” How does she explain it? How much does she explain? She shrugs. “It's from before I enlisted. I was a gang member. Everyone's tattoos were different, but almost everyone had them. Mine just happened to be koi.”
Eyes shut, breath controlled, core clenched tight. The old man's serrated, one-pack-a-day voice behind her. “Usually I give this to the boys, but I'll make an exception for you.” Pain flares white on her shoulder, sharp as jagged coral. “You don't swim with the current, eh, Mika? Some of these idiots, they're just going along for the ride, but not you. You fight it to your last breath.” A chuckle, dry as gin. She bites her lip.
“What about you?” she raises her head, looking up from her half-buttoned trousers to meet Thane's gaze. “Do drell have tattoos?”
He shakes his head. “Our scales do not lend to artificial pigmentation easily.”
“Mm. You don't need them, anyway.”
She steps forward, closing the gap between them. He returns her smile, soft and pensive and damn it, when did she ever get this sappy? She'd never been particularly good at sorting through her feelings, but Thane, Thane just has that effect on people. It's in the way he looks at her, calm and patient and quietly reassuring; in the way he, himself, is honest and kind, always willing to share a moment or a conversation. There's something almost magnetic about him, and she, like a rogue asteroid, found herself inexorably pulled into his orbit.
“Siha?”
Something flutters inside her chest. Something always does, when he calls her that. She imagines minnows swimming inside her, flitting between her heart and her lungs. “Yeah?”
He pauses again, as if weighing his words. Then, gently: “Our pasts may shape us, but they do not define us. You are more than the sum of your memories.”
She opens her mouth, only to shut it again wordlessly. After a few seconds, she emits a small, resigned laugh. “Was it really that obvious?”
His lips quirk, and she lives for this, for his fond smiles and warm glances and the sparkle in his dark eyes. “Not to an outsider, perhaps. But you always bite your cheek when you're reminiscing.”
And she thought he was getting easy to read. Apparently it's a two-way street. Although, she realises with some surprise, she doesn't really mind it. There's something oddly comforting about having someone who knows her that well. Vulnerable, yes, and sometimes more than a little frightening, but also balmy and heartening. She's got his six, and he has hers, in more ways than one.
She leans forward, and so does he. The kiss they share is short and sweet, light as her hand on his shoulder, and melts into a smile.
“All right then,” she whispers. “Enough about old memories. Let's go make some new ones.”
He runs a finger along her jawline. “Agreed. I should go and prepare myself. I'll see you later, Siha.”
“Shuttle bay, an hour from now,” she tells his retreating back. “I'll fetch Miranda, and then I'll meet you there.”
“Of course.” Beat. Then, over his shoulder: “Commander.”
She laughs, and so does he. The door buzzes open just as she shrugs into her coat, and then he is gone.
Sure, Singularity and Biotic Charge are cool and all, but nothing beats the feeling of seeing an ATLAS mech drop onto the field, only to put a single bullet into its operator's head, rendering what shoulda been a mecha battle into a full stop in one second.
(Also, props to Nyreen for taking over Garrus' spot as "the turian squadmate I trust to Overload stuff so I can sic Incinerate at 'em next". Niche, but hey, if the shoe fits...)
