This is part of a series of Original Trilogy Appreciation Weeks put together by @omegastation. You can find the masterpost here. Your host for this week is @keita52.
From February 19th-25th, this blog will be promoting and reblogging content related to Captain/Major Kirrahe, Special Tasks Group. All types of content are welcome -- fanfic, fanart, manips, videos, meta, anything you can come up with!
If you want to be featured on this blog, please be sure to use #kirraheweek2018 in the first five tags of your post. You can also directly submit content to have it featured.
Rules
Above all, be respectful and considerate of others. This week is meant to celebrate everyone’s favorite active member of the salarian Special Tasks Group, so let’s keep the focus on positive aspects.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia/transphobia or any similar content will be reblogged.
Please tag your content appropriately. This includes NSFW and anything that might be considered triggering.
All NSFW content should be consensual and go behind a “Read More” cut.
Themes
These themes are meant as a guideline only; any type of content related to Kirrahe is welcome at any point during the week. I will also post some prompts themed around each day to get the creative juices flowing.
February 19th: Early life and STG days
February 20th: Relationship with Mordin
February 21st: The mission on Virmire
February 22nd: Hanging with the Normandy crew
February 23rd: The Reaper War
February 24th: Post-War
February 25th: Wild Card
After that, the duty to hold the line will be passed to @minigiantspacehamster and @charomiami.
“Commander... Regardless of what the politicians decide, you can count on my support retaking Earth.”
“You’d do that?”
“Consider it my way of returning the favor. It would be an honor to fight alongside you again.”
SO! I wrote my first -fic?Thing? Mix of words and random stuff?- of my whole life to say goodbye to this @kirrahe-week. I’m totally aware my writing skills and english are not the best, but you know how they say, the thought is the most important thing? So, I thank anyone who will read this stuff below!
10.30 pm.
If Major Kirrahe had to name something he couldn’t stand about human culture, certainly he would go for their sleeping habit.
Flexibility for any salarian is a key word concerning such matter: one sleeps whenever there is the possibility, or better, in whatever time left from daily chores, day time or not, that single hour heavily recommended by any doctor from the Union even more than the usual ammonition against smoking.
But humans, as he had the displeasure to discover in these months of calm rebuilding after the devastation brought by the Reapers, surely seem to love their 8 hours.
Which means, for those few of his men left and for the Major himself, 7 hours at best of restless sitting on their own asses in the chill air of the night.
And so the same is expected tonight. Kirrahe serpentines through the military bungalows set not only for the alien soldiers stalling on the blue planet, but also for those precious survivors between the civil population. It is not a discouraging sight; they all wear their fatigue with lightness and relief, as if nothing more could weigh on them after the apocalypse itself came to knock at their door, not even the losses no family has the privilege to distantiate from.
When he finally reaches his own arrangements, the wound on his left upper arm stings when his hand touches the cold pad of the door. He hides a painful grimace and waves absentely to a couple of Alliance’s officers, a warm gratitude pervading their expression; he remembers them from the joint point of Leicester Square, glimpses of one of his infiltrators sinking his omnitool in the skull of a cannibal just about to break the shorter of the two humans’ neck.
That same infiltrator would have died 4 hours after, gunned down by a Marauder, the last words in his ears their cringing nonsense.
This memory, today presses on his temples more ferociously than before; for apparently, the reactivation of the Sol system Mass Relay is near, and with that the reports he surely will have to provide.
And it’s not about his superiors, or even the family of any of the men he lost. STG agents are prepared to die even before joining the ranks, and expected to be dead if not proved different at the end of any conflict; he saw enough of his own disappear to start considering life one overestimated value, specially compared to one’s actions.
And what’s having him staring at the wall is the thought of how the Salarian Union will remember those actions. What will be of them, and the aim behind them. What will be of his own motives to move into battle by Shepard’s side, in the eyes of the society he has served his whole life.
Kirrahe was never one for seeking recognition; he made peace long ago with the records being sealed. But he would prefer his fallen soldiers, or better, heroes, to be forgotten instead of having their image twisted and cut to better fit one young clan’s head political interest.
So he would rather not interrupt the distraction helping the survivors supplies. They keep his mind busy enough to not be flooded by expectations, images, and most of all, anger. But those 8 hours demand respect for the stressed population too, and the silent agreement between the foreign species on the planet is to not put pressure on anyone more than necessary . And he knows Rentola would want to discuss the matter, like any survivor of the 3rd regiment, but he never was one for starting a conversation he had no clear content for.
Right now, he couldn’t fulfill his duty better than just sitting, his hands clinging on the databook he’s been trying to start from weeks.
“First Contact War, reports from the front lines”. Now, one would expect a decorated agent to be unable to enjoy some novelized version of real events STG had dozen of dossier on, but the salarian had always a strange fascination with these overly bombastic recall of events, specially from such dramatic and romantic inspiration. Hackett had given him the datapad together with “the Alliance’s absolute gratitude for his support in such dire events”, and Kirrahe found himself quite pleased to find in it also something to read, relishing that much more than the Admiral’s firm hand shake.
He almost had ignored the glass of some sort of alcoholic human beverage pushed on him, so much was the trepidation of reading something different after months of pure boredom in the night hours of his daily routine; and everyone assured him it was a good book too, as much as it was not even remotely accurate.
And yet, the moment his eyes got on the glowing screen, he couldn’t manage to focus on a single word displayed.
Right now, it is the same all over again.
At least, he can’t picture any of those gowned dalatrasses debating either.
Like he can’t seem to worry about his own career, even if it should be at the center of his thoughts.
Instead, he can picture very well his own sister, her scoulding expression, her finger agitating the air, her twin set of red eyes denying his own. When they were kids he would have been sure to be covered; the dalatrass to be was the last one to grow her legs, and so her brothers carried her everywhere, following every order she gave with wagging tails and a point of rebellious pride in defying their mother’s pleas. Back to those days, Kirrahe was the most curious of the clutch; and didn’t she cover all of his little breakways from the tutors’ grip, no matter the price?
The memory steals a soft smile from the Major, soon suppressed by the realization that, indeed, what was indubitable once was no more today. After all, he didn’t tell her, nor any of his brothers and nephews, before jumping on that ship with Rentola. Keeping the secrecy high as if it was any assignment for STG; except that this time was more the product of an internal scism through the high ranks no one on the field wanted to talk about. And for him, of course, a matter of personal conviction.
He opens the databook again and again, his perception of time progressively slowing down after almost a hour of agony. When he finds himself staring at the jacket abandoned on the chair, an idea suddenly gets hold of his mind.
He had promised himself to not dwell on it, and if necessary to do so, to push the thought in the back of his mind whenever came as impediment to be useful around.
Not even finishing to think it through, the Major is out again, the datapad still in his hand, ruins of buildings framing the road to the most functional of the improvised hospitals established on the ashes of the old ones, pulverized by same Reapers now lying dead on its side.
The personnels – whatever is left of it – recognizes in him both a former patient and a devoted visitor. They are not asleep, white and red uniforms flashing in the sterile white light, the smell of extracted disinfectant burning in his nostrils. No one coming in months; the injuried inside are enough. Everyone ignores him, cheap coffee and dark bags under the eyes of the asari asking his level the moment he steps on the elevator.
A tip of his head, another hallway and there he is , Shepard in all his might, the bip of the machine monitoring his vital function introducing him like an anthem before the eyes can get a glimpse of his motionless body.
The doctors said that whatever happened on the Citadel, it was enough to keep him from waking up any time soon and telling his share of the story. The Major wonders briefly what he would have to say about all his inner turmoil too.He remembers how he used to come in and salute, the first days after he was found covered in debris; how he stopped when the silence as an answer became just too heavy. But for Kirrahe is enough to have that comfortable sofa to sit on, right next to the proof his Commander is still alive.
He takes the datapad again, the First Contact war reports suddenly appearing more interesting than ever; and he’s glad to have some hours just for themselves to come.
Captain Kirrahe 💚 You know, I never really noticed the difference between ME1 and ME3 Kirrahe before drawing him but he actually looks like a different Salarian they changed his design so much. Anyway, here’s the cloaca himself hehe
