#tyrra shepard-vakarian

[tarysande]

Any Four Walls outtake

I've been going through my Mass Effect Scrivener file, and I found this little bit. I think I cut it when I remembered that Shepard and Rose were going to have to wear envirosuits on Palaven. BUT STILL. IT'S CUTE.

# “Mama, mama, can I have a bow in my hair?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Shepard said, retrieving a fistful of ribbons from Rose’s luggage.

“Can I have five bows?”

“At the same time?”

“Can I have eighteen bows?”

Shepard laughed, pressing a kiss to the top of Rose’s curly head. “How about you can have as many bows as I have ribbons?”

Shepard worked quickly, twisting curls into little ponytails and securing each with one of Rose’s ribbons. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tyrra edging closer, and her fingers slowed.

[Shepard feels bad because she doesn't have something equivalent for Tyrra.]

A knock at the door rescued her, and she tried not to show her relief as it slid open and Garrus entered. “Nice bows,” he said to Rose. In his hands, he held a small box, and several lengths of intricately patterned fabric hung over his arm.

#

(In the bit at the end, Garrus was bringing in some cool turian garment and accessory that was going to make Tyrra as excited as Rose. I think.)

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Pantomime

Also on AO3

#

Pantomime

When she installed herself on the flight deck, Joker only nodded and offered a brief grunt of greeting. If she hadn’t already known how distraught he was, that grunt would’ve been a dead giveaway. His hands flew over the haptic interface, adjusting their approach vector just enough—she hoped—to give them a moment of surprise. Kaidan sat at the station to Joker’s right, manning communications. For a moment, she saw the slightly-different cockpit of a different Normandy and half-expected the voice of a dead man to summon her over the comms.

Instead, Joker hissed an expletive that would have shocked even Jack and said, “We’ve got a situation.”

She leaned over his shoulder, scanning the stars. There. The ship was small against the vastness of space, looking like a toy discarded by a child when something newer and shinier came along.

No.

She couldn’t think about children.

“Kaidan?”

“Sorry, Shepard.” His hands were moving now, too. “No—there. It’s sending out an SOS. Turian frequency. Pretty weak.”

“Is it the Enixus?”

She already knew, though. Kaidan’s nod only confirmed what her gut was screaming.

They drew near enough to see the atmosphere venting into the dark from a gash in the ship’s starboard side.

“Life signs?”

“Too much interference.”

She remained locked in parade rest because what she really wanted to do was punch something. A wall. The piece of equipment whose news was always bad. “Of course.” When she had the urge for violence under control, she said, “Bring us in quiet, Joker. I’m going over.”

Kaidan turned in the seat, fixing her with his dark, too-perceptive gaze. “We are.”

“Everyone likes to forget my background. N7 Infiltrator, remember? In and out, no biotic explosions necessary.”

But Kaidan was already rising, expression as close to mutinous as she’d ever seen it. “Garrus said you’d try and pull something like this, you know. I thought you’d consider how long you’ve been off active duty and go with common sense.”

“If you’re suggesting I stay—”

He held up a hand to stop her. She added his face to her list of things she’d consider punching, though his words went some little way to redeeming him. “I wouldn’t dare, Shepard. I mean that. But we have no idea what’s going on over there. Don’t go in alone.”

Joker hunched in his seat as if pretending a Spectre showdown wasn’t happening above his head. Shepard sighed. “You gonna question every decision I make, Alenko?”

“Only the stupid ones. Ma’am.”

A very, very faint smile pulled at one corner of her mouth. “Fair enough. Suit up, Alenko. And find Jack.”

“And Garrus?”

She shook her head. Kaidan winced. “I’ll talk to him.”

#

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You almost died a few—”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

Shepard crossed her armored arms over her chest, meeting her husband glare for glare even though she had to crane her neck a bit to do it.

“Do you honestly want me to pull rank here, Shepard? Is that it?”

“No,” she said. “I want you to run the op from the ship.”

“You want me to sit on the sidelines. They’re my kids.” The way his voice broke nearly broke her resolve; she had to look away.

“Garrus,” she said, softly.

“Don’t Garrus me. Not about this.”

“Fine.” She brought the heels of her hands up to her eyes and pressed hard enough to momentarily see stars. “I need you on my six.”

“That’s more like it.”

Lowering her hands, she said, “That’s here. On the ship. Running the op. Waiting for Liara’s intel. And manning the Thanix as only you can if the bastards try and pull something that needs the big guns. Which they probably will.”

“Because this is obviously a trap.”

“Obviously.”

He shook his head, but not in disagreement. That fight had gone out of him the second she said on my six. He took a step toward her. She took two, wrapping her arms tight around him. One of his hands cupped the back of her head gently. “I hate it when you’re right.”

Shepard snorted. “Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual.”

“You told Alenko you were going in alone?”

She said nothing. Didn’t have to.

He brought the side of his face to the top of her head and nuzzled it. “Bring our kids home, Shepard. I’ll watch your back.”

#

Shepard wasn’t sure what it said about her that all her nerves and anger and panic settled the second her boots hit the floor. The weight of her gun grounded her. Despite Kaidan’s—and even Garrus’—fears, having a mission with a clear objective focused her. Get in, get out. Rescue mission. Keep a low profile.

She’d done dozens of these over the years.

And Aratoht didn’t count.

They’d entered through the gash in the side of the ship instead of aiming for the airlock; no use announcing themselves before they had to. She gestured silently and Kaidan arced out to her left, omni already up and scanning, in case proximity could provide better readings. Behind his mask, his brows furrowed. She didn’t need the shake of his head to know he’d had no luck.

She clipped her pistol to her side and peered through the scope of her rifle. The thermal scope picked up Kaidan and Jack’s signatures, but couldn’t see through the walls.

Good walls, then. She frowned. Traders usually dropped their credits protecting the exterior of their ships; having the kind of interior walls that could defy an even more top-of-the-line thermal scope than one could currently find even on the blackest of markets—unless they, too, were personal friends of Solana Vakarian—smacked of paranoia. At the very least.

She brought up her own omni, then, and ran the scanning program that had gone not only through Solana, but through Tali and Garrus and herself, as well. Like the scope, it read the current room clearly—the surveillance camera over the door was obvious; the three different bugs running on completely different frequencies, less so—but everything outside was dampened.

Using signals instead of words, even on their private frequencies, Shepard directed Kaidan to one side of the door and Jack to the other.

Shepard knew damn well that her omni-tool was fitted with the best tech money (and connections) could buy, and then some.

It still took her decryption program an agonizingly long time to crack the door’s code.

Definitely a trap.

Definitely not just traders.

Shepard activated her cloak the moment the door began to slide open, waiting for the immediate attack that never came. After a slow count of five, she ducked into the corridor. Lights flickered above, casting half the hallway into stark shadows, but no one waited for them. No shots pinged off her shields. Kaidan and Jack followed as soon as her tactical cloak shimmered and vanished. Once again, scanning revealed nothing. An empty hallway; walls that kept their secrets close.

No cover.

No debris at all.

Her frown deepened. Any attack that could leave damage like the destruction of the room behind them should’ve had more of an effect elsewhere. Even with impenetrable walls. She began flicking through frequencies until she found the one the ship was using to send out its weak cry for help. After listening to the generic SOS three times, her earpiece crackled. Music, loud enough to cause pain, blasted. Fighting the instinct to shut it off completely, she turned it down as much as she could.

The melody was familiar. Human, definitely. Something full of pomp and military bravado.

She went cold when she recognized it.

A very particular anthem. One rarely heard. One she’d heard twice. Once after Elysium. Once after—after everything that had happened later.

One she’d tried to avoid hearing both times.

They played it when they bestowed the Star of Terra. Only then.

Jack touched her arm; Shepard shook her head, tapping the side of her helmet and signaling them to wait. She didn’t miss the look Jack and Kaidan exchanged.

When the last triumphant note roared and faded, the desperate, wailing cry of a child replaced it.

Her child.

“Rose? Rose?”

But Rose wasn’t the child who answered. With the screaming still raw in the background, Tyrra, breathless, subharmonics practically screaming her terror, said, “Sh-shepard? Shepard? Is that—you have to—they’re going to—she promised she’d give Rose back—I don’t know—I don’t know what they’re doing to her!”

“Shh, honey,” Shepard said. She didn’t brush off Jack’s hand this time, though she did signal for Kaidan to keep his eyes on the scanner. “Where are you? I’m here. I’m coming to get you.”

Tyrra began to speak again, but was replaced Matta Casarus’ harsh whisper. “Admiral Shepard? Thank the Spirits. They’ve got us pinned—”

“Cut the shit,” Shepard snapped. “I’m here. Just like you wanted. Walked into your elaborate little pantomime, just like you wanted. If you don’t release my daughters immediately, I will kill you. Do you understand me? I will put a bullet in every body that stands between me and them. Without mercy.”

Casarus’ voice changed at once. Cold, smooth. Too smooth. “This is how Earth breeds heroes, then? I prefer turian ones. They understand honor.”

Shepard inhaled sharply. “Is that what this is? You’re torturing my kid to prove some kind of point? I don’t know what the fuck I ever did to you, lady, but if—”

“You killed someone important to me. As important to me as these foundlings are to you. More important.”

Her stomach twisted. She ignored it. “Then take it up with me. They’re innocent. They are innocent. Let them go and you can have me. No contest. No fight.”

Even the woman’s laugh was cold. Bitter as the wind on Noveria. “So noble. No wonder they love you.” Casarus sighed. As if she was bored. With Rose screaming. “You said it yourself, Shepard. It’s pantomime. It’s theatre. Time to give the audience what they want.”

Before she could do more than open her mouth to reply, the line went dead. Rose’s cries stopped so abruptly, Shepard clapped her hand to the side of her head, as if this would bring her closer, tell her where to go.

“What the fuck, Shepard,” Jack breathed.

“Can we get a message back to the Normandy?”

Kaidan shook his head.

Shepard swallowed, shuffling plans in her head and rejecting them before they could finish forming. “Then we move. She’s already proven she’ll hurt the children. We have to hit them harder and faster than they expect.” Shepard lifted her Widow. “Jack. Point. Don’t hold back. Make them show their faces so I can remove them.”

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: FUBAR

Also on AO3

#

FUBAR

As soon as the bad turian lady came and collected Tyrra—without acknowledging Rose in her little hidey-hole of blankets under the desk—Rose started the game of hide-and-seek she’d been itching for. She was really good at hide-and-seek. This time, she wasn’t looking for a hidden person, but a hidden panel or vent or something. She knew that, in a spaceship, all the air had to come from somewhere. Air came through vents.

When Joker explained it to her back on the Normandy, he had her hold out her arm. With the flat of his hand, he brushed his palm down her skin. “This is like the outside of the ship. Nothing gets in, right?” She nodded. Then, with a fingertip, he traced the blue-green lines underneath, running all the way from her wrist to her elbow. “Inside every ship, you’ve got the guts. Life support, circuitry, electronics, all kinds of important stuff. That’s what keeps things running. They’re all connected, and most of the time, you don’t pay attention to them. Only when something goes FUBAR, uh, wrong, do you have to worry about what the veins and arteries are doing.” Then he’d showed her all kinds of cool maps and pictures that showed not just the room with all the bunkbeds that she slept in, or the big room that was her mom and dad’s, or the one with the star map in it, but all the squiggly lines that meant power and air and even toilet waste, since apparently peeing into space wasn’t a good thing.

Tyrra’s room definitely had air, it definitely had power, and it definitely had a bathroom. Rose started there first, because it was small and because she’d have a good excuse if the bad lady came back right away for some reason, like when Mom always forgot something in the mornings when she was taking them to school. Usually her coffee cup. She always went back for the coffee cup. It was one Rose and Tyrra painted themselves, with their handprints and hearts and some kind of weird turian butterfly things and Earth butterflies, too.

Rose kind of wished they’d never left home at all, now. At least back then she knew where all the windows and doors were, and Tyrra was still her sister, and no mean turians kept saying her real parents were dead, which she knew obviously ‘cause she wasn’t dumb, but she didn’t need to be reminded of it all the time.

The bathroom looked like the whole stupid place was made of one big piece of metal, just shaped differently, like putting tinfoil over the dinner leftovers. The toilet shape connected to the wall shape, which connected to a small sink shape, and then just more flat stupid wall. The shower was just holes in the ceiling she couldn’t even reach. Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t even have fit her arm into the bottom of the toilet. She kicked the wall hard, which hurt her foot so bad she couldn’t help the tears that welled up in her eyes, and that was stupid too.

Peering out into the main room, she saw she was still alone. With her foot throbbing and no one to kiss it better, she thought about just breaking things. The vidscreen, maybe, or pulling all the curtains off of Tyrra’s bed. Instead, she crept around the whole room on her hands and knees, looking behind the furniture—most of it was bolted to the wall—and digging her little fingertips into any cracks she could find. She pushed aside carpets and ran her palms over the floor panels. She knocked on them, wishing she understood what the dull echoes meant.

The more she searched; the more her fingers ached and bruised and even started to bleed a bit when her nails tore; the more her foot began to throb and swell inside her environmental suit; the more she found nothing, nothing, and more nothing, the angrier Rose got. She couldn’t even be sad anymore. She was done crying like a baby expecting to be picked up and rocked to sleep. She was mad about the floor and the walls and the ceilings and all the stupid fabric and Tyrra and the turians who were too dumb to realize they were picking a fight with the biggest heroes in the whole universe.

And she still couldn’t find a stupid vent.

Rose grabbed two handfuls of the fabric hanging around Tyrra’s bed and pulled as hard as she could. She heard it tear and it should have made her feel better, but like kicking the wall, it didn’t. She pulled harder, but she wasn’t strong enough to pull it down completely and she wasn’t tall enough and she wasn’t big enough and—

The bowl on the table holding the turian fruit that she couldn’t eat but that smelled so good… shattered. Even though she didn’t touch it. And even though it was made of some kind of hard plastic that shouldn’t have been able to break at all. Shock dulled her anger. Slowly, like she was approaching a dog she didn’t know, Rose edged toward the remains of the bowl. The fruit was all smashed up on the wall and the floor and even, a little bit, on the ceiling she couldn’t reach even when she stood on the tallest chair.

Somehow, she knew she really, really, really didn’t want the bad turian lady to see what had happened.

She cleaned up the pieces of the bowl, first. She could always tell them she’d been throwing the fruit because she was mad, but she wouldn’t be able to explain the rest. Tyrra’s bed went all the way to the floor, so she couldn’t just push the pieces underneath the way she would have done at home. Instead, she grabbed one of the blankets and balled all the pieces up inside it, and then pushed it under her own little desk bed like it was just a pillow or something.

The pieces were sharp. Like the knives she was only allowed to use if Mom or Dad was watching her carefully. At the last minute, she rescued the biggest, sharpest piece and pushed it into the big outer pocket on the side of her envirosuit’s right leg, where she usually kept snacks. Her stomach growled, as if to remind her how stingy the stupid turians were with their human-safe rations.

Just as she was starting to get angry all over again, the door swished open. Rose tried not to look as guilty as she felt. Tyrra walked in first, her eyes immediately going to the fruit smears on the wall. She looked away, but not quickly enough.

“Had a temper tantrum, I see,” said the turian lady. “Not that I would expect better behavior from a savage little klixen.”

Rose jammed her teeth together and thought about bunnies and kittens and the songs they sang at school because she was afraid if she didn’t, someone would mention the missing bowl.

The turian laughed when Rose didn’t reply and turned her back, dismissing her. It would have made Rose mad before, but now she was just relieved.

“You did well, Tyrsta. It won’t be long now.”

Tyrra nodded obediently.

“I’ll come for you again when you’re needed.”

Again, Tyrra’s weird, blank nod. Rose made a face the turian lady couldn’t see.

Without looking back at Rose again, the bad lady left. Tyrra went to her bed and got another sheet, which she used to cover the table and the worst of the fruit smears, hiding them. Hiding that the bowl was missing, too. The room smelled bad now, sticky and unpleasant, like something that was dying. Or already dead. Rose wished she didn’t remember that smell. The piece of bowl in her pocket felt heavy as a hundred bricks.

“Why do you let her talk to you like that?” Rose asked, even though she’d made herself a thousand promises she was never going to talk to Tyrra again. “Like you’re her pet or something.”

Rose didn’t expect an answer, so she was surprised when Tyrra lifted her chin, mandibles tight to her cheeks, and said, “I’m not like you, Rose. You know that.”

“Did she tell you that, too? ‘Cause Mom and Dad have never said anything like that to you, I’d know, and they wouldn’t anyway. They love you just the same as they love me and they never talk to us the way that stupid turian lady does.”

Tyrra sighed. “She’s not stupid. You shouldn’t make that mistake.”

“She’s not smarter than Mom and Dad.”

Rose almost thought Tyrra was going to say something else, but she didn’t. She just turned away. Again. And crawled into bed. Again.

#

The stink of too-sweet, rotting fruit was still thick when they came for her. Tyrra was halfway out of bed when Jannus and Elida—or maybe it was Redana, the room was still dark—strode through the open door, but instead of waiting for her, they headed straight for Rose. Jannus grabbed Rose’s blanket-wrapped legs and pulled her out from under the desk hard enough that Tyrra heard Rose’s head smack the floor. Rose squirmed and tried to kick, but the blankets stopped her.

Tyrra should never have given them to her.

It was all going wrong.

A moment later, Rose hung between them like a—like a klixen. About to be roasted for dinner. Jannus slapped a piece of electrical tape over Rose’s mouth, cutting off her cries and some curses that would have made Aunti—that would have made Jack proud.

“What are you doing?” Tyrra asked, almost forgetting to sound bored, almost forgetting to sound like she didn’t care.

“Boss’ orders.”

Jannus’ mandible was bandaged. It made his words sound strange. Tyrra wondered what had happened to it. Sleepiness made her thoughts sluggish and shaking her head only made it hurt more. She thought maybe they were putting something in her food. Or piping it in through the air ducts.

Or maybe she really was just giving up.

“I want to talk to my aunt.”

The word stuck in her craw, but Tyrra managed to say it without flinching. Without her stomach turning upside down and dumping her dinner all over the carpeted floor.

“If she wanted to talk to you, she’d be here, wouldn’t she?” Jannus showed too many teeth when he smiled.

Elida—it was Elida, not Redana—grimaced. “We’ll tell her, but we have to take the human now.”

“Why?”

Jannus’ eyes narrowed. “What’s it matter to you?”

Bored. Indifferent. “It doesn’t. I just want to know why you had to wake me up in the middle of the night to do it. I’m tired.”

Even in the dim light, it hurt Tyrra to meet Rose’s wide, terrified gaze over the stark black of the tape across her mouth.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

She’s not stupid.

Crossing her arms over her chest like a petulant kid, Tyrra shifted off the carpet so the talons on her feet scraped audibly on the bare metal floor. Long, short, long, she tapped, in a makeshift approximation of the secret knock she and Rose always used to ask permission to come into each other’s rooms. Short, short, short, long.

And again, as they dragged Rose toward the door.

Again, before the door closed behind them.

You shouldn’t make that mistake.

[tarysande]

FIC UPDATE: Any Four Walls: Not Like This

Also on AO3

#

Not Like This

Garrus woke with a start as sudden and overwhelming as a stim-shot, sitting upright even as he clawed at the smothering blankets, haunted by the lingering images left by his nightmare. His father, grim-faced. Shepard in a doorway. It’s—it’s Solana, Shepard. And the children.

A nightmare. Far worse than the ones featuring screaming Banshees and Reaper turians whose faces he couldn’t help examining, looking for familiar angles, familiar curves.

Just a nightmare.

And yet.

And yet, the bed was not his bed, the sheets not his sheets. His side ached, almost as if someone truly had jabbed a needle into the soft hide of his waist and emptied a vial full of poison into him. Instead of flowers, or candles, or the faint scent of Shepard’s perfume, the only smell was the universally unsettling antiseptic stench unique to hospitals.

Even with his heart slamming like a fist desperate to punch through the wall of his chest, bone and blood and plates be damned, it took real effort to force his eyes open. He sucked in a breath; too shallow. Another. Another. The blankets were a white blur. Blinking did not sharpen his vision. No telltale halo of red hair sat at his bedside.

It’s—it’s Solana, Shepard. And the children.

“Garrus. Hey. In and out. One breath at a time, G. One cardiac arrest per day is more than enough.”

He swung his head toward the sound, recognizing his sister’s voice even before her indistinct edges took shape. The sun behind her was too bright, even dimmed by the darkened panes of glass. Like his eyes, his voice wasn’t working yet, either. His talons clenched and unclenched in sheets nothing like the soft ones Shepard always splurged on.

Tell me, he wanted to say. Tell me.

Instead of words, only faint keening escaped on his released breath.

Solana said, “I’m sorry, G. I don’t know where they are.”

Not a nightmare, then. He squeezed his eyes shut wishing he’d never opened them at all, and curled around a roiling sickness in his gut that had nothing to do with whatever poison he’d been dosed with. It took three breaths and half a dozen attempts before he managed the word, “Baby?”

“A little early, but healthy. Garrus, they’ll be here any minute and—”

Whatever his sister meant to say was interrupted by the arrival of a squad of doctors. Garrus could tell by the swish of their medical robes, the sound of too many talons tapping against too many datapads. They chirped and squawked and chattered, using words like cardiac arrest and lucky and Councilor Vakarian Councilor Vakarian Councilor Vakarian. One slid gloved hands under his chin, forcing him to look up.

“Still having trouble with your vision? That’s to be expected with—”

“Casta, his vision is the least of his—”

“This heart rate is still unacceptable. I need a dose of—”

“Councilor Vakarian, do you remember what—”

Garrus shook his head. Faces he could only tell apart by the watercolor smudges of their different-colored markings bobbed in and out of his field of view. From her side of the room, Solana snarled something about giving him space, about backing off, about having a little decency. If anyone heard her, they didn’t listen; he decided this meant she, at least, was no longer at medical risk. Small mercies, Shepard would say.

Where are my children?

He couldn’t breathe. Every time he tried to take a full inhale, new markings pressed into his personal space, grabbed at his limbs, flashed scanners and datapads and lights at him. White Brow Swirls injected something into him that spread relief through his veins like a cool hand on a fevered head, and reminded him of his mother. Purple Parallel Lines muttered under his breath and pulsed more light into Garrus’ eyes. Orange Cheek Plates leaned in to squint at him.

“Actually, I think that helped, Casta.”

“I did tell you I thought the poison’s base was—”

“You’re in my way. I don’t want to have to explain that the turian councilor lost the use of his left arm because two idiots wouldn’t let me properly assess—”

White Brow Swirl’s relief gave Garrus his voice back. He even thought the contents of her hypospray were sharpening the edges of his vision, just a little. He blinked. He said, “Space. Now.”

“Councilor Vakarian, sir, with all due respect—”

“You heard him,” said the voice he’d been missing since he woke up from his nightmare-not-nightmare. “Step back.”

The cluster of doctors turned, their heads moving in eerily bizarre unison, like a herd of kriksa hearing a sound they perceived as a threat. Even in his current state, Garrus thought they were right to turn, and right to be nervous.

“You can’t be in here, human,” said Purple Parallel Lines. “Especially not—”

“Oh, please finish that thought,” Solana said. “Please.”

Shepard ignored them both.

White Brow Swirls stepped aside as Shepard approached. Garrus blinked again, his vision clear enough now to make out the charcoal and black and deep red armor with its white and red N7 on the breast. She had a pistol at her hip, and the familiar bulk of a Black Widow strapped to her back.  

Her hair, grown long since she first woke in a Cerberus lab, was pulled tightly back from her face into a hard knot, the way she’d worn it when they first met. He’d forgotten how large that hairstyle made her eyes look. How fragile her neck was beneath it. His inability to find his voice had nothing to do with the poison.

He’d never seen her look so hard. Not with the Council. Not even during the darkest parts of the war. Not when she’d nearly lost everything that mattered to her afterward. He didn’t need to see clearly to know her expression remained remote beneath the warpaint of her makeup. For a moment, just a moment, he thought she’d reach out and touch his face, his shoulder, his hand, but she only folded her own hands behind her back in a posture stolen from Steven Hackett.

He certainly didn’t need clear eyes to know it was all armor, every bit of it, protecting a tender heart too used to losing everything it ever cared about. He didn’t need clear eyes to know the difference between a hard that would bend and one that would break.

Garrus had thought he wanted nothing more than to see Shepard take up her armor again, her identity, her rightful place and rightful role. N7. Spectre. Hero.

Not like this.

That Garrus, he decided now, with his heart sinking, was a damned idiot. Now that she was gone, he wanted the Shepard with her hair cascading loose down her back to her waist, dancing in the kitchen with a child on either hip, and singing out of tune. He wanted the Shepard who only lost hide-and-seek—“And without using my cloak, you amateurs!”—when she wanted to. He wanted the Shepard who only held a gun when she was busy teaching new recruits not to shoot their own feet off. He wished the Garrus he’d been had believed her when she insisted she didn’t miss it.

“I’ll get them back,” she said, and even her voice sounded different. Harder. Every syllable clipped, as if she was giving him a report, as if she was talking about the number of hostiles on her HUD and not their stolen children. He’d forgotten she could sound like that; it had been so long.

“Shepard—”

But she ignored him, too. She spoke to the space just over his left shoulder. The way she’d always spoken to Hackett. To Sparatus. “There’s reason to believe they’ve been taken off-planet. No ransom requests, yet; your father will monitor that situation and report back to you as necessary. Naxus has one team combing through all communications they can tap into and another looking into flight logs. If there’s something to find, he’ll find it.”  

“Shepard, please. Don’t—”

Not like this.

“The Normandy is already standing by.” Her voice cracked on the final syllable. She inhaled audibly. When she spoke again, it was as if the break had never happened at all. “I assume Alenko and I have Spectre authority on this matter, Councilor?”

The sting of her voice speaking that word was far worse than the jab of Ranix’s syringe.

“If I said no?” he managed with difficulty.

“Then I suppose Alenko would stay groundside,” she replied. “And I’d be forced to steal his ship.”

“You,” Garrus said. “White markings. Casta?”

The doctor cleared her throat. “Y-yes, sir? Dr. Casta Kandros, sir. Can I—is there something you need, sir?”

“He needs you to stop calling him ‘sir’,” Shepard said. “He hates it.” Garrus swallowed because he didn’t trust his voice not to keen if he spoke. Shepard paused. As if realizing he needed more time, she added, “Was Nyreen Kandros a relative of yours?”

“Oh,” said Casta, obviously startled. “I—yes. A cousin. I only met her a few times. She seemed nice.”

“She was a good woman. I liked her.”

Having recovered enough to speak, Garrus said, “Relocate me.”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Garrus,” said Shepard in the low, warning tone that told him she knew exactly what he was planning.

“To the Normandy.”

“That is not happening, Councilor,” blustered Purple Parallel Lines. “As the senior physician in charge of your treatment—”

“You’re fired,” said Garrus. “Kandros?”

“Councilor Vakarian, sir, you cannot fire me. I am the head of this—”

Shepard said, “That’s going to be a ‘were’ in less than a minute.”

“You have absolutely no right—”

This time, he didn’t get to the end of his protestation because Shepard put a hand to the edge of his cowl before he could even think to stop her, jerked his purple parallel lines close to her face so hard his datapad clattered to the floor, and said, “You. Need. To. Leave. Now.”

She didn’t push him. She didn’t use any force at all. She simply released her grip on the edge of his cowl. He was the one to stumble away from her so quickly he tripped over the hem of his medical robes, falling to the ground in a clatter of limbs. No one laughed. No one helped him up. He shuffled away in disgrace.

When the door closed behind him, Kandros said, “You—you were saying?”

Solana replied for him. “My idiot brother refuses to be left behind to heal while his wife goes to, quite rightfully, beat in the brains of the assholes who took their children. My idiot brother would like you to transfer him to the medbay of the Normandy immediately if not sooner, and he’s chosen you to be his Dr. Karin Chakwas stand-in, which is both a compliment and a task so daunting you should probably be shaking in your boots.”

“I…am,” admitted Kandros. “If I’m honest.”

Solana snorted. “Good. Stick with honesty. Much less likely one or the other of them will rip your head off that way. Shepard doesn’t particularly like this plan, but her unwillingness to have Garrus too far away from check-in-on distance means she’ll let my idiot brother have his way.” Solana glanced at Shepard and then turned to him. He could make out the features of her face now. Her expression was amused. Her subharmonics, however, thrummed worry. And fear. And so much guilt. “That about sum it up?”

Even though she’d referred to him as her ‘idiot brother’ more times than he thought strictly necessary, Garrus would’ve crushed his sister in a hug if they weren’t both bound to hospital beds. A very faint smile pulled at one corner of Shepard’s mouth, a hairline fracture in the unsettling mask she’d walked in wearing. A little of his own terror ebbed at the sight. He could work with a hairline fracture. He’d done it before.

“Yes,” he said. “You can bring Orange Cheek Plates. And more of whatever you gave me just now.”

Here, finally, Shepard’s hand reached out. He’d almost forgotten the feel of her hands in her armored gloves, when once it was more familiar to him than the feel of her bare skin. She brushed her fingertips along his brow. “I’m sure neither of you have done anything to deserve this,” she said. “He’s a terrible patient.” She sighed. Her hand dropped away again. “I’ll see to the arrangements on the Normandy. We leave in an hour.”

Garrus watched her head for the door, determined and implacable in her armor. He saw her pause. She turned and went to Solana’s side, crouched, and spoke words too soft for him to hear. Solana bent her head, nodding, then shaking it side to side, then nodding again. Slowly, tenderly, so very carefully, Shepard brought her brow to Solana’s. Solana raised a hand with a bandaged wrist to cup Shepard’s cheek.

Garrus’ throat tightened and he turned his attention back to Kandros because it felt very much like a moment too private for witnesses.

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Bad Dream

Also on AO3

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Bad Dream

The first thing Rose noticed when the turian lady led her out of the dark and into the hallway was that this spaceship was nothing like the Normandy. The lights were too bright and warm, for one thing, and instead of metal walls and metal floors, everything was fancier. Way fancier. It was even fancier than some of the ships they sometimes sent her dad on when he was working. She kept her hands at her sides because what she wanted to do was reach out and see if the panels on the walls were really wood. It wasn’t too hard to break wood. Or burn it. She could feel the turian lady’s eyes on her, and she didn’t want to give her any clues about what she was thinking.

Mom was real good at not telling too much on her face. Sometimes Rose tried to be like her, but mostly she wasn’t very good at it. Tyrra was better. Dad thought he was great, but Mom always saw through it, which made him laugh and say things like it’s always a competition with you, Shepard in the exact same voice he used when he said I love you.

“You’re awfully quiet now, little klixen. I hope you’re not plotting a foolish escape. Amusing as it was to see poor Jannus humiliated, it won’t happen again.”

Rose said nothing, not even to argue about using her name. She was too busy counting. She started with steps, but the numbers were too big to remember. Instead, she tried to keep track of turns. That was hard, too. It felt like they were going around and around in circles, and it made her feel funny, the way spinning and spinning with a blindfold on made her feel funny when she took it off after and the world was topsy-turvy. All the wood panels looked the same. All the doors looked like they could lead back into the dark room.

Besides, klixens could breathe fire like dragons or something. On a ship with this much wood, maybe being a klixen was a good thing.

Rose didn’t see any other turians, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think this lady and the turian she’d hurt in the dark room were the only people on board. Lots of times the Normandy looked quiet, too, but there were always a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs. It was probly the middle of the night or something, when almost everyone was sleeping.

Rose wished she knew how to climb into this ship’s secret passages and ducts and maintenance tunnels the way she’d learned to do on the Normandy. Then she could disappear and knock the secret knock against the ceilings or floors or walls until she heard Tyrra knock back, and then they could just hide until Mom and Dad came to get them.

Rose had counted six turns—though she was almost certain the last two were repeats—when the turian lady laughed. “Oh, you’re counting. Aren’t you a funny little thing?”

Even though lots of people told Rose she was funny, this time the words didn’t sound very nice at all. “I’d rather be funny than mean.”

“And you think I’m mean?” Rose hated the turian’s laugh pretty much more than she’d ever hated the sound of anything except Reapers and babies crying to death. “I could have had you killed, you know. You understand that, don’t you? I could have left your frail little body for them to find. That would have been mean. I’m not mean.”

“Okay,” said Rose, rolling her eyes and forgetting, just for a second, how much the turian scared her. “You’re right. You’re so nice. I’m so sorry. Nice people always threaten to kill kids.”

“Sarcasm,” the turian replied. “Charming. Well?” She gestured vaguely at the door. “Here we are.”

“If this is a trick—”

Rose was pretty sure that particular flick of mandibles meant the woman was either disgusted or annoyed. “Yes, I took you halfway across the ship to trick you because I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time. See? I can do sarcasm, too.”

Rose thought she was about to get smacked on the head when the turian leaned forward, but she only reached past and settled her palm against the door’s lock. It flashed red once, then went green and opened silently.

Inside the room was even fancier than the hallways, and it was a lot nicer than the dark room. Rose tried to take everything in at once, and mostly just managed to see that one wall had a big window looking out into space with the pretty shimmers that Joker said meant they were traveling faster than light. The walls in here were wood, too, and draped with heavy, beautiful cloth. Turians liked cloth; she’d learned that pretty quick. There was a desk and a vidscreen and food on a low table that made Rose’s stomach growl even though she knew it was dextro and she couldn’t eat it. In one corner, even more curtains and stuff hung around a big turian bed, much bigger than the one Tyrra had at home.

Tyrra.

“You said—” Rose began.

The curtains around the bed shifted. Tyrra’s head came out through a couple of panels, blinking and sleepy. Rose was so happy to see her, she thought her heart would explode. She took a step forward, but the lady’s hand curled around her shoulder to make her stay. Her talons were filed real sharp, and painted shiny gold. They made Rose shiver and hold very, very still.

“What is she doing here?” Tyrra asked.

“Um,” said Rose, “she’s the one who kidnapped us. I made her let me out of the dark room. You’re not in the Bad Place, anymore, Tyr. That’s good; I was so—”

But Tyrra did not meet Rose’s eyes. She did not smile or stumble out of bed to wrap her in the big hug Rose wanted so badly. Her blue gaze didn’t even seem to see Rose at all. She looked directly at the tall turian lady.

“You said I wouldn’t have to take care of her. You said it was all over now.”

Again the stupid turian lady laughed her stupid mean laugh, only this time it felt like a hundred thousand knives against the inside of Rose’s head. “She said she wanted her sister.”

Tyrra pushed back the heavy curtains. Tyrra didn’t have any dirt on her face or her hands. She wore clean clothes that looked as expensive as everything else on the ship. She looked like a turian princess, and Rose was almost jealous, except everything was all wrong, and she didn’t know why. Rose’s bottom lip began to tremble the longer Tyrra ignored her. Everything felt weird, like she was coming down with a fever, or like this was a bad, bad dream. She wanted to make her voice work again, but she couldn’t. Not as long as Tyrra wouldn’t look at her.

She crossed her arms and pinched the soft skin of her upper arm as hard as she could. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t scream. When she didn’t wake up, she pinched herself again and twisted hard. This time, she couldn’t hold in her whimper.

Tyrra crossed the room, close enough for Rose to smell the clean, sleepy smell of her, and helped herself to some of the food on the table.

Rose swallowed, not feeling hungry at all anymore, not when everything else in her stomach was sick and twisting. “But Tyr,” she said, in a voice so tiny she barely even recognized it. Her arm ached, and her blood pounded in her ears, louder than her own voice; not as loud as the turian lady’s laugh. Rose didn’t know what was supposed to come after but Tyr. Something. But everything felt wrong and messed up and but Tyr didn’t feel like enough.

Tyrra swallowed her food and turned to face them again, mandibles pulled tight to her face, arms crossed in the kind of irritation she only showed when Rose really messed around with her stuff. “Fine,” she said. “I don’t care. There’s lots of room.”

“It’s only for a little while, Tyrsta.”

“Her name’s Tyrra,” Rose protested even though the talons were still holding onto her. “You don’t know anything.”

Of course the turian lady laughed. Of course she did. Rose didn’t want to cry in front of her, but big stupid tears welled up and fell out anyway. The lady ran her too-sharp talons through Rose’s dirty hair and then flicked her hand, like she’d touched something yucky. “Now that you have some time alone, perhaps Tyrsta will tell you some of the things you don’t know, little klixen.”

Because this was the worst bad dream Rose had ever dreamed, when the turian lady crossed to Tyrra, Tyrra turned her face up, accepting the press of brow to brow. Rose looked at the floor because she didn’t want to see it. She stared at her feet until she heard the door close and lock with a soft beep.

“Okay,” Rose said, lifting her eyes and finding herself staring at the back of her sister’s head. “Okay, she’s gone now, Tyr, you can stop now. You can be yourself again now, okay?”

“I’m going back to sleep,” Tyrra said, almost like they were strangers, almost like they hadn’t spent so many nights curled up together waiting for the war to end, waiting for a home, waiting. “You can have the bed if you want.”

“It’s a turian bed.”

“It’s a turian ship. What do you expect?”

“Why are you being like this, Tyr? Did they make you? Did they hurt you? Why did you let that lady—”

“If you don’t want the bed, you can have the couch.”

“Why can’t we both—”

“Enough, Rose!” Tyrra snapped, finally looking at her, but not the way Rose wanted her to. She was really, really angry. Not pretend angry. Rose shrank away, almost afraid Tyrra was going to hit her. “This is where I belong.”

“But why?” Rose started to cry then, for really. Big, ugly, snotty tears. In between sobs, she pleaded, “Why’d she call you a different name? Why’d you let her kiss you goodnight? Why’d you let them put me in the dark room all by myself? Why’d she say there were things I don’t know that you could tell me?”

Through the mess of her tears, Rose saw Tyrra shake her head. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re just a little kid. Just—take my bed, okay?”

“No! I won’t! I’ll sleep on the stupid floor. I don’t want anything from you or that turian or this stupid ship. I want Mom and Dad!”

“Your parents are dead, Rose,” Tyrra said, almost gently, except the words were wrong like everything else. “Just like mine. It’s time to stop pretending.”

This was worse than if Tyrra had just pushed her. It was worse than anything. Rose wrapped her arms around herself tight tight tight because she felt like she was going to break into a hundred million pieces if she didn’t hold herself together. She felt like fire or lightning was just gonna burst out of her skin and blow the whole ship up. She almost wished it would. Tyrra just stood there, looking at her, not moving. Tears still dripped from Rose’s chin, and her hair hurt and everything hurt and nothing was okay. “I hate you!” she screamed, because she wanted to so bad and she didn’t. “I hate you I hate you I hate you!”

Tyrra nodded. Just nodded.

Then she turned around and went back to bed, disappearing behind all the dumb turian curtains. Rose ignored the couch and marched over to the farthest corner, curling up under the desk and pulling the chair across like a wall she could hide behind. A few minutes later, Tyrra turned out the lights.

The room went as black as the dark room. Rose wrapped her arms around her knees and let her tears fall without trying to stop them. She counted turns in her head and tried to make a picture in her brain of how all the hallways fit together. Finally, the tears stopped. The dry, heaving, hiccuping pain in her chest eased. She remembered the way old Tyrra used to stroke her hair and her back to make her fall asleep, humming the way only turians, with their subvocals, could.

It was so real she almost thought she felt a hand on her head, a brow swiftly pressed to her brow, the softness of a blanket tucked around her.

Finally, she thought, a good dream, and slept.

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Shell Game (19/?)

Yes, you read that right. It’s a two update week! 

Also on AO3

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Shell Game

Stepping into her old life felt like pulling a dress out of the back of the closet expecting the hips to be too tight or the zipper to stick, and finding instead that it still fit perfectly. Even though she’d once loved the dress, once thought about nothing except wearing the dress, now Shepard wasn’t sure she liked it much. Her taste was different. She wanted colors instead of black, white, and red. She wanted something comfortable enough for chasing her kids in, for piggy-back rides, for crawling around in the dirt.

Maybe her old life, her old armor, wasn’t like a dress at all. Maybe that was too innocent a metaphor. Maybe it was more like someone almost three years sober picking up a drink and pounding it back in one pull, already reaching for another. Maybe the drink tasted good. Maybe the drink tasted too good. The weight of the pistol at her hip was good; the weight of the rifle on her back even better.

Far more dangerous than a dress.

More dangerous even than a drink.

She shook her head. Her hair was too tightly bound; it gave her a headache, but the headache was necessary. The pain kept her focused. The pain kept her looking forward, thinking forward, instead of letting her imagination run wild in directions that would only leave her sobbing in the shower, pounding a helpless fist into a tile wall that only broke first because Cerberus had done too good a job rebuilding her bones.

She still bled, though. Still hurt. They’d never been able to pull that out of her.

She put on her armor, her guns. She interrogated suspects who flinched away from her and spoke too quickly. Her husband did not die.

It took no time at all to mobilize the Normandy. With concerned eyes, Alenko deferred to her as he’d always done, and when she tried—only nominally—to protest, he insisted on the grounds she was both senior Spectre and Alliance admiral, outranking him twice over.

She didn’t point out that Spectres didn’t have rank. She didn’t remind him that admirals sat behind desks and didn’t run ground-team Marine missions.

No one said, “Hey, Shepard, you think maybe you’re a little too close to this? You think maybe you should let someone else take point?”

She almost wished someone would, but she wasn’t going to make them. She sure as hell wasn’t going to say it for them, not with so much at stake.

Joker almost said it. She could see it in his frown, the uneasy set of his shoulders, the way he met her eyes and held them too long. Then, though, instead of the words she expected, he only said, “We’ll get them back,” in a tone that reminded her of every damn thing Joker had ever lost.

Including, that one time, her.

Somewhere in the back of her head, away from the planning and the focus and the step-by-step precision necessary for the mission, a mother screamed and beat more than her hands bloody.

She nodded, dropping a hand lightly onto his shoulder. A little of the tension eased. A little of hers did, too. He still hadn’t replaced the hat he’d given Rose; the silver in his hair seemed even more pronounced than it had only a week ago.

“We have a course yet?” he asked.

“Between Naxus’ intelligence and the information I was able to extricate from the survivors of the attack on Garrus, we have a best guess. They say they’re part of a revived faction of Facinus, out of Taetrus.”

“They say?” asked Kaidan, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Shepard stamped down the unkind thought that said Kaidan stood in what should have been Garrus’ position, borrowing one of Garrus’ gestures. “That sounds like you don’t believe them.”

Shepard dismissed this with a cutting gesture. “Taetrus was in rough shape before the Reapers hit and used the destruction as a galaxy-wide press release. What few survivors remain are still shifting rubble and rebuilding from the ground up. People working that hard that constantly don’t have time to foment political unrest.” She grimaced. “It doesn’t matter where they’re really from, not right now. It’s a shell game. Taking the kids was them putting the ball under the shell and betting me—us—double or nothing. We have to look like we’re falling for the hustle.”

Joker frowned. “The Mactare system then?”

“I suspect we’ll hear from the kidnappers before they let us get that far, but yeah.” She lifted a hand as if to push it through loose hair before remembering she couldn’t. The hand fell heavily back to her side. “I’ll be in the medbay. Let me know when the inevitable call comes in.”

#

Shepard had a countdown clock running in her head. First, it had been hours since the girls were taken; now it was up into days. Four. And thirteen hours. She’d slept a dozen hours altogether, no more. She ate only because Kaidan threw a meal replacement bar at her every time he saw her; Garrus’ doing, no doubt. Jack showed up with caffeine at regular intervals, looking like she wanted to blow a hole in a wall. Or a head. Shepard appreciated both the coffee and the anger; she couldn’t vent hers, but she could damn well live vicariously through Jack.

While the four days and thirteen hours had done Garrus a world of good—once the initial nightmarish period was done with, and she couldn’t think about that, either—Shepard had to shut down the part of her brain that couldn’t stop wondering how much damage could’ve been done to her kids in those hundred and nine hours, or more than the tiles of a bathroom wall were going to end up broken.

She was off about the timing of the expected call; it came after they’d reached the Mactare system, but before they’d hit Taetrus’ orbit. Four days, fifteen hours.

She didn’t run to the QEC, though she wanted to. Garrus, in a wheelchair pushed by Dr. Kandros, beat her there, but he didn’t enter. He sat just outside the doorway, close enough to hear without being seen.

When you were trying to out-hustle a hustler, it was better to look weaker than you were. His hand reached for hers as she moved past him; she paused long enough to kiss his brow and give his fingers a gentle squeeze.

Four days, fifteen hours, thirty-two minutes. Best guess.

Falling into parade rest felt like coming home. She was centered by the time the unfamiliar turian visage crystallized in front of her. “Thank the Spirits,” said the turian woman, immediately putting Shepard’s teeth on edge. Too much. “I’m Matta Casarus, of the trading ship Enixus. We’ve been trying to find your frequency for hours.”

A lie, of course. Shuffle the shells. Follow the ball.

“This is about my daughters?”

The eyes were wide and guileless, projecting innocence. Too much, too much. “As soon as they told us who they were, we turned around and started back to Palaven, but there’s been so much hostile activity in this sector. Raiders, you know. Of course you know. I’m sorry.” The flicker of mandible said don’t look here. A good con-artist. Not good enough.

Shepard had to hand it to her, the woman spun an interesting story. So many details. Too many. A routine trading run from Palaven to Aephus; a distressed ship; rescuing the girls from raiders or slavers—always a market for young children, of course, and the chaos and power vacuum left by the war had only emboldened the bastards—and trying desperately to return them to their parents.

The woman’s subharmonics caught on the word parents, and Shepard didn’t think it was intentional. It told her more than all the rest of the details of the fabricated story combined.

She forced herself to nod and smile as if she believed each and every one.

“I’d like to speak with them, please,” replied Shepard. Chin up, shoulders back, hands clasped behind her back. What do you need me to do? “I’m sure you can understand. I need to see them. I need to know they’re okay.”

Tyrra appeared a moment later, her chin up and shoulders back, too. Brave. Shepard noted the way Matta Casarus—whoever she really was—left one hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and the shoulder stayed frozen beneath it. Scared.

It was a one-two punch, where overwhelming relief hit first, but worry went for the kidneys after. “You okay, sweetheart? Where’s your sister?”

“Sleeping,” Tyrra replied, a little too quickly. “She gets tired.”

A lie, small and undetectable to anyone unfamiliar with Rose’s boundless energy. Rose didn’t do tired. She did full-tilt right until she hit passed out.

Shuffle the shells. Follow the ball. Don’t look away.

“I’ll be there soon. I will always come for you, no matter what. You know that. Matta seems nice. I’m sure she’ll take good care of you.”

Shepard watched the hand on Tyrra’s shoulder, but the blue static of the QEC made subtlety hard to see. Perhaps the fingers tightened a little, perhaps they didn’t. Tyrra said, “We didn’t know what happened after the car crash. We were in a dark room for a while, and then Matta came. She’s been very nice. I have a big turian bed and they gave me new clothes.”

“That’s enough, dear one,” said Matta’s voice in the instant before Tyrra’s image was replaced. “They’ve both been left so exhausted by the ordeal. We’re doing the best we can.”

Shepard nodded, not at the words, but at the way Matta’s subharmonics hadn’t been lying when she said dear one.

“Please, forward us your coordinates and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Matta inclined her head. “Certainly. We wouldn’t say no to an escort back to Palaven, if you’re so inclined. We’ve already taken so many risks. We’re hardly a warship, and with raiders about…”

“Of course,” said Shepard. “It’s the least we can do.”

Left suddenly alone in the QEC, her careful posture collapsed and she leaned forward onto the console, head bowed between arms she had to lock straight to keep her whole body from trembling. It took several deep breaths for her to calm her terror, her rage. When she lifted her head, Garrus had already wheeled himself into the room and was watching her carefully, face lit by the golden glow of his omni-tool.

His Council-grade omni-tool.

Amazing what perks a Councilor got, when tech was handed out.

“Liara. You get all that?”

“I did,” came Liara’s voice through Garrus’ omni-tool, just a little tinny.

“I want to know who she really is. I want to know what she had for breakfast. I want to know what perfume she wears. I want to know the names of everyone she’s ever spoken to when she thought no one was listening. Most of all, I want to know why she’s got the kind of grudge against me that made her take my kids.”

“All that and more, Shepard, I promise,” Liara said, with gentleness so close to pity Shepard wanted to scream. Or cry.

She could afford neither.

“It’s a trap,” said Garrus, once Liara had signed off. “There were no pirates.”

“I know.”

“But you’re going to walk into it anyway?”

The slight curve of her lips didn’t feel much like a smile, and Garrus was obviously not placated by it. “I’m going to spring it.”

“Semantics, Shepard.”

“We both know it’s the best way to neutralize the threat.”

He sighed. “You’re going to make me play you in this little scene, aren’t you? Complete with warnings about going off half-cocked, underestimating an unknown enemy, and not considering all angles before jumping into a situation with guns blazing? Sound about right? Please don’t make me bring up Aratoht.”

Shepard crossed to him and knelt beside the chair, cupping his face gently between her palms. His tone might have been wry, but the worry in his expression was palpable, and she honestly wasn’t sure if she was taking comfort from him or giving it. His mandibles trembled. “This isn’t Aratoht,” she said, though even the word still tasted bitter on her tongue. “I have no reason to trust a single word out of this woman’s mouth. Let her believe I’ve been taken in. Let her believe she has the upper hand. I’ll use it against her. We will.”

“Unless that’s what she wants you to think. Wants you to do.” Garrus sighed again, more deeply, and scrubbed his palms against his thighs. “I don’t like it, Shepard. There’s something here we’re not seeing.”

“Liara’s intel—”

“Will come too late, and you know it.” His mandibles flicked, distraught. “We’re too close to this. You know we are.”

“I know we are. But we’re who they’ve got, Garrus. This Matta Casarus has put her cards on the table. If we don’t go all in, she’s got the girls. She could—you know what she could do. We don’t have the luxury of time. We don’t have the luxury of waiting.”

“I know,” he said. Shuffle the shells. Follow the ball. Follow the ball. “I know. But she knows that, too. Don’t let yourself think, even for a minute, she doesn’t.”

Don’t look away.

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: In the Dark

Also on AO3

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In the Dark

Rose woke up feeling weird. Like sick, but not quite sick. Her brain felt all fuzzy and she was about to call for her mom to say she couldn’t go to school when she remembered she wasn’t home on Earth. They were on Palaven.

They’d been out with Auntie Sol.

The skycar. The crash. Tyrra in the bad place and shouting and legs outside the windows, lots of legs, so many people and Rose didn’t know any of them, even though she was real good at telling different turians apart. Auntie Sol, slumping over the controls, limp against the straps holding her into her seat, hands still curled into fighting fists even though she was sleeping.

Rose was sure she’d just been sleeping.

Rose remembered kicking and screaming as they pulled her from the car, kicking and screaming and reaching for mandibles to pull. Dad told them that was a good way to make a turian let you go. Mandibles or unarmored spurs. Just like Mom said noses and privates and tops of feet for humans.

Rose had gone for the mandibles. Managed to tug one or two before they did whatever they did to make her go to sleep.

When she opened her eyes, it was still so dark Rose couldn’t tell where she was. She couldn’t see what was pressing her down, but it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Her cheek was squashed flat against a cold, metal surface. She blinked and blinked, waiting for her eyes to go back to normal like they always did if she woke up scared in the middle of the night. They didn’t. Not really. The black was just more black.

“Tyrra?” she whispered into the darkness. “Tyr? You there? You gotta wake up, Tyr, you gotta come back from the bad place.”

Rose waited and waited for an answer. When none came, she held her breath, trying to listen for Tyrra’s breathing. Sometimes her sister made little noises if she was sleeping. Not big snores, like Dad. Tiny ones. At first, Rose only heard her own heart, thump-thump-thump, way too loud. Under that, though, a hum that was familiar after spending so long on the Normandy. Spaceship. She didn’t think anyone here was going to jump out and yell a nice surprise. All the surprises so far were bad.

No Tyrra.

She squeezed her eyes shut again until they hurt, until she didn’t feel like crying or screaming. This was all just a big problem. Crying didn’t help solve problems. Ideas solved problems. Like when she and Tyrra always won Spectre Wars. Like all the ways they stayed safe at the end of the war. This wasn’t as bad as that. No husks were trying to get them. No one was shooting.

Slowly, slowly, the panic began to go away again. “Okay,” Rose said, her voice comforting in the dark, like the way Mom talked to her when she woke up from bad dreams. “Okay, Rosie, you can do this.”

With her eyes still closed, she tried to turn over on her back. Whatever was holding her down wouldn’t let her move that much, but she found she could still wriggle. It was like being held in a way too tight hug by someone who wouldn’t let go, but who didn’t have mandibles to pull or privates to kick. Biting her lip in concentration, she pushed out every single bit of breath she could, like Auntie Liara showed her when they were playing yoga. Even though it made her chest hurt, Rose didn’t breathe in again right away. She squirmed and pushed with her heels against the metal. By the time she had to take another breath, she’d definitely moved a little bit.

She breathed some big breaths before trying again. She moved a bit more. Then a bit more. She squeezed her shoulders together as much as she could, trying to make herself even smaller. Finally, finally, her shoulders slid out, and she was able to free her hands enough to pull herself completely out from under the weight. Feeling with her fingers in the dark, she could tell they were some kind of metal straps, like in the medbay on the Normandy.

Careful not to fall off, she pulled herself to the edge of the cold metal. It, too, was like a bed, but without any nice sheets or pillows on it. It seemed like a hundred thousand million years since Auntie Jack had helped them fly off the comfy beds in the Normandy’s crew quarters. Just thinking about it made Rose’s breath catch, and not because she was trying to hold it this time. She wanted her stuffed hanar named Snuggles With the Sleeper. She wanted Tyrra. She wanted a grown-up.

A big fat stupid tear fell out of her eye and ran down her face. Then another one. She could feel the tracks on her face, wet like the snail trails on the path up to their door on Earth. She sniffled before her face could get all snotty. The room was still black. She had to bring her hand right up to her face to even see it was a hand.

Afraid of running into something in the dark, she got down on her hands and knees, and started crawling slowly, looking for a wall. If she could just find a wall, she could find all the edges of the room. Maybe a door to bang on. Instead, she shuffled directly into something that fell over with a horrible crash, like the sound of Odie’s hamster cage breaking. Rose froze, palms pressed to the floor, heart pounding so hard she thought someone could prob’ly hear it back on Earth.

She did find a door, though, but only because it slid open. She recoiled at the sudden burning brightness of the lights.

“Thought I heard something moving around in here.”

Rose squinted. She couldn’t see any details, but the vague shape was definitely turian. So was the voice. She couldn’t read subharmonics as well as her mom, but his tone said he wasn’t there to rescue her.

“I’m not something. I’m someone. Where’s my sister?”

The big turian didn’t even look at her. “How did you get out of that thing?”

Lifting her chin, eyes streaming from the light, Rose said nothing.

“Get up.”

Rose didn’t move. She clenched her jaw to keep from feeling scared.

“We can do this the hard way or the easy way, kid. Either way, you’re going back in restraints.”

With her eyes finally getting used to the brightness, she could make out an unfamiliar face with dark hide and coppery plates. The turian was barefaced and wore unremarkable armor that even Rose knew wasn’t all from one complete set. He had a pistol at his hip but no big guns strapped on his back.

“Where’s my sister? I want to see my sister.”

The turian’s head-tilt was exactly like a human rolling their eyes. “She’s not your sister. She’s a turian. You’re a human. Get it? Different species.” He said the last two words slowly, like he was talking to a baby.

Rose got to her feet and crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re sisters. I want my sister. I want my sister right now.”

“And I want a million credits and a date with Sha’ira, but we don’t all get what we want, do we?” When Rose still didn’t move, he grimaced, mandibles flexing. “Spirits save me from little humans who think they’re tough.”

“I am tough,” Rose said. “And I think you’re pretty stupid. Our mom and dad—”

“They’re not your parents any more than the turian kid’s your sister, you dumb pyjak. You’re political pawns. You know that word, right? Pawns?”

Rose narrowed her eyes. “I know my mom’s gonna kill you dead, but only if Dad doesn’t get you first.”

Whatever word he called her, her translator didn’t know it. Prob’ly something real bad, then. She didn’t care. She’d been called all kinda bad things before. Mom always said people who used insults were just sad on the inside, and jealous, and prob’ly weren’t loved enough when they were kids. Dad said they weren’t worth her time.

The turian came at her with his arms out to grab, which was super dumb, because everyone knew you couldn’t fight like that with someone smaller and faster than you. Like she’d done a hundred times with her dad, she pretended to move forward, but instead ducked under the turian’s legs, jumping up on his back by grabbing the edge of his armored cowl. She’d surprised the turian just like she’d hoped, and he was still staring at the space where she’d been when she reached around, grabbed one mandible, and used her momentum to pull it back-back-back until it made a bad sound. The turian dropped to his knees, keening.

Still clinging to his blind spot on his back, Rose closed her hand around the other mandible and said, “I’m not dumb and I’m not stupid and I’m not a pyjak. We’re on a spaceship and I know I prob’ly can’t get off and I know you prob’ly wanna use us but you prob’ly don’t wanna kill us.” His hand shook as he reached up to try and pull hers away, but she only tugged harder on the mandible until he stopped. “I want my sister. I want her right now. She’s prob’ly scared and she’s prob’ly in the bad place and you’re bad people if you leave her alone. So take me to her right now or I’ll pull this right off and talk to someone else.”

“Now, now, little klixen,” said a new voice, a gentler voice, a scarier voice, at the door, “leave the poor man alone. You’ve done quite enough damage for one day.”

Rose only tightened her grip. The new turian was also barefaced, but she had delicate mandibles currently stretched in the fakest fakey smile. Turians probably thought she was pretty. Rose didn’t. Her fakey fake smile made her the ugliest turian in the whole galaxy.

“I’m not a klixen. I’m not a pyjak. I’m Rose Catherine Marshal Shepard-Vakarian. And I want my sister.”

“Then you shall have her. Indeed, I see it was unwise of us to attempt to keep you apart. Can I make amends?”

“Does that mean say you’re sorry?”

The turian lady nodded, but her eyes were still cold over the fakey smile. “It does.”

“No more blackness and no more being tied up.”

“As you wish. You and your sister will be treated as honored guests.”

Rose almost told the woman not to lie to her, but stopped herself. She prob’ly didn’t even think Rose knew about subharmonics. Rose released the mandible and jumped away from the turian on the floor in case he wanted to think about revenge. He didn’t. He only curled over his hurting face and kept on keening weakly. It was almost enough to make her feel bad. Almost.

“Okay,” Rose agreed, smiling her own fakey fake smile, looking all around her now that she could see properly again. “Guests sounds nice. Can I talk to my mom soon?”

The turian woman put a hand on Rose’s head, but it wasn’t nice at all. For a second, she thought the turian might just break her neck. Rose couldn’t help cringing. The woman laughed, softly. “Let’s see about your sister first, shall we?”

And Rose knew, all the way down to her belly and her bones, this woman was never going to let her talk to Mom and Dad ever again, and that she was so, so, so much scarier than the turian crying on the floor.

“Okay,” Rose repeated, and was glad when she didn’t immediately start crying herself.

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Get the Job Done

On AO3

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Get the Job Done

Though Garrus didn’t recognize the aide who came to fetch Shepard, he did, of course, immediately see the message in the seemingly insignificant flutter of Shepard’s fingers as she vanished through the door behind him: On it. Garrus didn’t need the additional admonition to keep eyes on the hostiles; that went without saying. Always.

The current target wasn’t carrying a gun or toting a grenade launcher, but that didn’t make him any less of a threat. Tavus Ranix had a big mouth and had been doing nothing but using it to spread his strong opinions for weeks. Months, probably. Long enough for rumbles to make it into Garrus’ intelligence briefs halfway across the galaxy. Long enough to put the wheels in motion for the overdue visit to Palaven. Shepard called it killing two birds with one stone. Garrus preferred to think he was taking a minor detour on the way to truly enjoying their family vacation; Ranix and his borderline sedition weren’t worth more time than that.

As soon as the door closed behind Shepard, Ranix said, “And why is she even at this meeting? Answer that, Vakarian. She’s no diplomat, no—”

“Councilor,” Garrus interrupted smoothly, casually, as if Ranix hadn’t just leveled a very real insult—by anyone’s standards, not just the Hierarchy’s—in omitting the honorific. Ranix’s mandibles flicked, betraying his irritation. Garrus fixed Ranix with an unwavering gaze until the man dropped his eyes and shifted in his seat.

Still, defiance colored Ranix’s subharmonics when he spoke again. “She’s human. She has no place in the politics of the Hierarchy.”

“And the politics of the Hierarchy do not outweigh the greater galactic concerns of the Council.”

“Sparatus—”

“Is dead. And wouldn’t have given a Hierarchy-first political agenda the weight of his support, either.”

Ranix began to sputter, hurriedly outlining all the ways in which Garrus was wrong—about politics, about Sparatus, about Shepard. Garrus tuned him out, while carefully monitoring the faces of those gathered around them to gauge how much support Ranix truly had. A couple of younger turians who’d risen far during the war did not bother hiding their disgust at Ranix’s words; others, equally mixed in age and rank, wore open expressions of support and even hostility.

The ones whose expressions remained neutral were those Garrus made special note of. Two to his left. One at Ranix’s right hand. The turian at the door who’d admitted the aide that whisked Shepard away.

Garrus rose, halting Ranix mid-rant. Something about tradition. Something about honor. The same old quicksand of turian rhetoric that had been sucking at Garrus’ heels since the day his temporary promotion to turian Councilor became formalized.

Another vitriolic barb about Shepard.

Shepard, who’d fought and fought and fought; who’d faced every threat—even those whose defeat should have been impossible—head-on; who’d been, in every way save physiology, far more turian than many of those now complaining about her.  

“Tell me, Tavus, as you’re so concerned about Shepard’s involvement, would you have presumed to tell Nihlus Kryik where he could and could not go? Avitus Rix? Saren Arterius?”

Ranix snorted, so openly dismissive Garrus had to count backward from ten to keep from ripping his mandibles off. “She’s not here as a Spectre. You insult us both if that’s the story you mean to hide behind. If she was a warrior once—”

“My wife goes where she wishes,” Garrus said. The pair of neutral-expressioned turians at his left exchanged a swift glance. “With the Council’s blessing.”

“She’s a klixen without fire. A mere figurehead. You speak of the Council, but we all know what a ruse that is. Humanity will not rest until all the galaxy bows to them, defers to them—”

Whatever Ranix was expecting, the stunned expression on his face was more than enough to tell Garrus it wasn’t laughter at his expense. Garrus shook his head, the mirth undercut by the very dangerous thrum of his subharmonics. “And yet I notice you felt it necessary to wait until your people pulled her from the room before airing your grievances, Tavus.” When Ranix said nothing, Garrus added, “I’m sorry, was that meant to be secret?”

When one of the turians to his left began to stand, Garrus flung out an arm and snapped in a voice of command stolen from Shepard, “Sit!”

To his surprise, and evidently the surprise of the man himself, the turian sat.

“I’m not finished,” Garrus continued, while monitoring the feed of statistics and numbers his visor fed him. “You’ve had time—Spirits, it feels like eternity—to complain. I think I’d like a few minutes before I’m forced to deal with this nonsense.”

The turian who’d sat so abruptly now shifted in his seat, decidedly not looking anywhere but at the floor between his feet. Garrus saw the fight go out of him, and knew he could adjust his plan of attack to exclude him. “See, Tavus, maybe I’m a little slow—you certainly seem to think so—but you’re mixing your metaphors. I’m curious. Is Shepard the klixen without her fire? Or the puppetmaster pulling my strings? Do you know that one? It’s human. Pretty apt. It’s a little like the one of ours about the turian coward who directs from safely behind the lines of battle and runs when the shooting grows too near.”

Ranix’s mandibles flared, catching the implied insult just as Garrus had intended.

Garrus held up a more obviously insulting hand to forestall the inevitable bombast. It had been a long time since anyone looked at him with the pure, murderous hate Ranix now turned his way. Garrus did not rise to the bait. “Let me tell you what’s happening here. You’re going to do something irreversibly stupid any minute. You’ve already done something stupid by summoning Shepard out of the room. You think you’re doing it for the right reasons. I get that. I disagree with you entirely, but I get it. Here’s the deal: If you don’t do the stupid thing, this goes no further. No hard feelings. You don’t particularly want my hard feelings, Tavus, believe me.” Garrus crossed his arms over his chest. “If you do the stupid thing, you’ll be stopped, tried, and persecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Garrus tilted his head. Another insult. A challenge. A little dare, if he was quite honest. Had she been in the room, Shepard would have given him one of her don’t poke the thresher maw looks. “You know, this isn’t my first coup. It certainly isn’t the most effective. I’m giving you the chance to pretend this never happened. Just stay in your seat and let me walk unaccosted out that door. Rise, and I’ll consider it an act of disobedience tantamount to a declaration of war against the Council. Understood?”

The turian standing guard beside that door rocked from side to side, sending an anxious glance in the direction Shepard had disappeared. Garrus’ visor told him she’d been gone longer than expected. He wasn’t particularly worried, of course, but her absence did necessitate another hasty revision to his plans.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been trapped alone in a room full of potential hostiles, either. At least this hadn’t come on the heels of ten body bags and betrayal that cut to the quick.

Ranix lifted his head. He put his hands on the table, preparatory to using it to push himself upright. Even without the stats fed through Garrus’ visor, the bunch of shoulders, the twitch of mandibles, even the subtle change in pupil dilation—all these telegraphed Ranix’s intention to defy.

Garrus knew stubbornness when he saw it. He’d seen it in himself often enough. Ranix was stubborn. Worse, he was entirely convinced he was right. Enemies like him didn’t back down. Despite his earlier insult, Garrus knew Ranix was the type to keep on clawing, tooth and bloody talon, until he had to be put down like a rabid varren.

Ranix began to rise.

“Stupid it is,” Garrus said on a sigh.

None of them had guns, of course; turian security hadn’t slipped so badly, or been infiltrated so completely. He supposed he had that to be thankful for. Most would, however, have omni-tools, and he doubted they’d all been completely scrubbed of offensive programs.

No one ever touched Garrus’ omni-tool. No one ever asked him to remove it. Diplomatic immunity had its perks. As soon as Ranix began his insubordination, Garrus triggered the series of routines he’d programmed the night before. Before Ranix’s ass had completely left its chair, a combination of damping field, overload, and sabotage neutralized the tech threats in the room, while leaving his own intact. He kicked the edge of the table, flipping it onto its side, and ducking behind the cover it provided.

A fist—one of the neutral-faced turians, unsurprising—connected with empty air where his head had been. Garrus retaliated by driving an elbow into the man’s unprotected waist and chopping downward to deliver an incapacitating blow to the spur. Anything but neutral now, the man went down with a choked scream.

Garrus hated battles without clear sides. At least when the Blue Suns and Blood Pack and Eclipse had come at him, they’d been conveniently color-coded.

Unlike that battle on Omega, to remain sniper-still here was almost certainly a recipe for disaster. As soon as he’d felled the first attacker, he pushed hard against the table to unsettle anyone attempting to draw too near. He spared a half-moment’s wish for Shepard at his six. Keeping the wall at his back, he darted to one side, launched an incredibly illegal (and effective) concussive round based on the same tech Shepard used for her incineration ability. Instead of setting the room on fire with him still in it, the round hit Ranix and detonated, knocking him and everyone around him—friends and enemies alike—flat. Even Garrus rocked back at the force, but only for a moment.

A breath brought him to Ranix’s side; another brought forth an omni-blade small enough to slide against his throat. In the eerie orange glow, Ranix’s defiance remained absolute. Though the pressure of speaking cut his own hide enough to draw blood, he spat, “I’ll gladly martyr myself for this cause, Vakarian, when it means the very survival of the turian Spirit.”

“You talk too much,” Garrus replied. “And you’re under arrest.”

The door crashed inward, revealing nothing but empty hallway beyond for anyone unaccustomed to the barely-there shimmer of Shepard’s tactical cloak. He tried to imagine the look on her face as she scanned the aftermath. His guess was equal parts pride, exasperation, and relief. She didn’t have the chance to give voice to her feelings, though, because as her cloak vanished, the sound of heavy footfalls rang in the corridor beyond. She dropped into a crouch, doubtless counting the seconds before she could activate her cloak again.

Garrus didn’t realize he’d been hurt until he felt the strange hot-cold sensation of pain spreading out from his side. Ranix, defiant until the end, pushed forward, slicing his own throat against Garrus’ omni-blade before he could release it. Hot blood spilled over Garrus’ hand, the color sickly in the omni-tool’s glow. Under the final gurgling shudder of the man’s death, Garrus heard the tinkle of glass hitting the floor. Such a small sound.

A syringe.

Emptied.

“Kaius,” said Shepard at the door, her voice sounding far away, as if she were on a different planet and not just across the room. “We’ve lost Ranix, but everything else appears to be under cont—”

No, thought Garrus, as the hot-cold agony spread up his side and down his arm, as it curled beneath his plates, as it reached for his heart.

“No,” echoed his father, aloud. Terror fought the poison gripping Garrus’ heart. Something in his father’s subharmonics. You can still get the job done. “It’s not. I’ve just heard from Naxus. It’s—it’s Solana, Shepard. And the children.”

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Active Duty

On AO3

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Active Duty

Time off active duty hadn’t dulled Shepard’s sense of impending danger. Now, of course, that instinct mostly came in handy when Rose was about to attempt something doomed to end in blood and a trip to the hospital. Still, as she sat off to the side around a crowded table watching her husband attempt to both smooth ruffled feathers and remain firm about the political stances the still-new Council deemed important, the prickle of the skin at the back of her neck went from mildly irritating to downright distracting. Had she been in the field, it would have been enough to make her draw her weapon. She simply couldn’t put her finger on why. Splitting political hairs was nothing new, after all, no matter how heated the opposition.

Her lips twisted in a self-deprecating smile and dragged her hands through her hair in an attempt to soothe herself. Doubtless it was something ridiculous. Probably some deep-seated fear for the children, though Shepard had ample proof Solana was capable of rising to any occasion—even if that occasion was two bundles of giggles, pranks and inexhaustible energy. She glanced at the time. Half an hour until the next scheduled break; she’d call then, even if it meant enduring Solana’s inevitable ribbing about people who worried too much.

The prickle did not subside.

When a turian aide entered quietly and began scanning the room, the feeling of not right, not right, be on alert only intensified. His gaze lingered for a moment on Garrus, then shifted until it landed on her. This was followed by a brief, beckoning gesture. She rose at once, moving along the outside of the room as stealthily as she was able to without actually resorting to using her tactical cloak.

Nothing good ever came of aides interrupting meetings to whisper in ears. Especially when they wore expressions as serious as this one wore.

Garrus, speaking calmly at the front of the room while another politician shouted at him about impossible demands, ridiculous concessions, never paused, but she felt his eyes follow her out. If she knew him—and she did—he’d find a way to wrap things up without anyone realizing he’d maneuvered the end of the meeting far too early.

He was getting good at that. Diplomacy. It might have made her smile, if the abrupt appearance of the turian aide hadn’t struck such a discordant, sour note in her.

What do you need me to do?

But no, it wasn’t that, not anymore. Now it was, what’s happened to the children?

The turian didn’t quite meet her eyes. He hunched a little into his cowl, mandibles pulled tight to his face. “Comman—sorry, Admiral. Admiral Shepard. I’m sorry to interrupt—”

“I’m sure you’ve got a good reason, Lieutenant…?”

He blinked at her. His eyes were very green. His markings were the same color. Though it was never particularly easy to place a turian’s age—not for her, anyway—she had the distinct impression this one was still very new to his commission. “Vatix, ma’am. And yes, ma’am. Uh, General Fedorian sent me.”

A mantle of cold clarity settled over her. She saw every anxious twitch in the turian standing before her. She heard the faint metallic whirr of the environmental systems, and over that the faintest hum of Garrus’ voice. If she’d been wearing a hardsuit, she’d have already pulled up her HUD, she’d have already been planning.

The aide looked very much as though he anticipated being the messenger doomed to get shot after delivering his message. With every nerve singing, every instinct she’d thought dormant pulled taut, she could not actually bring herself to disabuse him of this possibility.

“Go on. Is there a reason Naxus didn’t come himself?”

“Comms are dampened in here. As you know. To prevent interruptions?”

“I am aware, Lieutenant Vatix. Could we skip to the message, please? Is it Solana? The children?”

Whatever he saw on her face made the aide cough and continue quickly, “Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry, ma’am. No, he didn’t mention his wife or your children. He asked me to escort you to his office.”

“To what purpose?”

“He didn’t elaborate. Only said it was urgent.”

She closed her eyes for the moment it took to inhale a sharp, annoyed breath. “You could have opened with that, Lieutenant. Let me get Garrus—”

“He asked for you, ma’am. He said it wasn’t something, uh, requiring Councilor Vakarian’s presence.” Vatix shifted from one foot to the other. “He did have a human visitor with him.” His mandibles flicked once before drawing tight to his face once again. “Sorry, ma’am. I—should have mentioned that. He did tell me to.”

“Yes,” she agreed, narrowing her eyes and gesturing for him to precede her. “Lead on, Lieutenant.”

After two or three attempts at conversation were met with yet more nervousness and single-syllable, stammered replies, Shepard fell into silence at Vatix’s side. Her skin did not stop its incessant prickling. Her fingers itched to close around the grip of a pistol, and it took some effort to keep the bland smile on her face and her hands still at her sides. Vatix, she noted, did not have her self-control; his long digits tapped a random, nervous pattern against his thigh.

“So, is it hero worship or hate?” Shepard asked, after turning down two different hallways—each emptier than the last—and enduring another agonizing minute of total silence. “No judgement. Just curious.”

“Sorry?” Vatix asked, and though she was not nearly as expert at reading other turian subharmonics as she was Garrus and Tyrra, the young lieutenant’s discomfort was palpable even to her.

“Effortlessly being able to start conversations is something of a point of personal pride,” Shepard returned, carefully modulating her own voice. Friendly. Even. Interested. “I can’t figure out why you won’t oblige me.” She smiled mildly. “I’m not used to being thwarted. I figure you’re nervous because you’ve heard one too many exaggerated stories, or you hate my guts. Either’s fair.”

Vatix didn’t laugh. His fingers stopped tapping and immediately headed for the flap of the pocket they’d been dancing over during the entire length of their walk. Her skin burned. Before she could second-guess herself—or let the words galactic incident—override her instinct and the relatively unsubstantiated evidence she’d collected, she wrapped her fingers around his reaching wrist, spun to catch his arm behind his back, and brought one foot down on the back of his left spur with just enough pressure to ensure he froze. His audible breath wheezed with barely controlled pain. Wrex would’ve said Vatix had a quad; Shepard knew how damned sensitive—and vulnerable—an unarmored spur was. She had, of course, been counting on it.

“You want to tell me what’s really going on here, Vatix?”

“General Fedorian—”

“Wouldn’t have sent you. He’d have sent someone who knows damned well I can find his office without help.” He tried to rise up to give himself leverage to ease her pressure on his arm, but this only brought more weight down on his spur. His breath came in swift and shallow gasps. “Not my first rodeo. And I’m good with maps.”

Vatix said nothing. She put a little more of her weight on his spur, feeling the give. She didn’t think the high-pitched whine he emitted was intentional. “You want to try again?”

“It’s too late, anyway,” Vatix gasped.

Much as she wanted to finish the work she’d started on his spur, she wanted answers more. She twisted his arm further, pulling it nearly from its socket. Plates weren’t much use at the joints. Part of the reason for the bulkiness of turian armor was protection at those weakest junctures. Vatix wasn’t wearing armor any more than she was, and whatever advantage his height might have given him in hand to hand was lost to her strength and better positioning.

What do you need me to do?

“For what?” she snarled, applying just enough pressure to make him yelp. With her free hand, she reached into the pocket he’d been toying with and retrieved a syringe prepped full of a liquid she couldn’t identify. Her guts twisted and she swallowed down the bile and bitter panic that always threatened to overwhelm her when she saw needles. Of all the goddamned ridiculous things. “You’ve got about thirty seconds before I use one of the half-dozen ways I know how to kill your species without needing a weapon.” Her fingers tightened reflexively around the syringe. “Or maybe I’ll just give you a taste of your own medicine, here. Whatever the hell it is.”

“You think I’m afraid to die? I just needed to get you out of the way. And I did. I did. Your time is done.” Vatix’s subharmonics steadied; even through the pain, Shepard heard the confidence. The zealotry. She wished she didn’t have quite so much experience with zealotry; the tenor of it was unmistakable. And terrifying. “You think we’re blind? No. We see your fingerprints on everything Vakarian does. We know his face is the mask you wear to control the weak turians who wish only for new overlords to appease. We’ve had enough. We will have turian sovereignty again, free from humanity’s pestilent influence. We carried your people through the war and—”

Shepard didn’t let him finish. “So it was hate then. Good to know.”

The steps of this dance were familiar, for all she’d been avoiding practicing. Like a waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three; nothing so complicated as a tango. On one, she finished dislocating his shoulder. On two, she shattered his left spur beneath her foot. On three, she crushed the other, effectively hamstringing him. Another turn around the floor would’ve seen him cooling in a pool of his own blue blood, but she paused, thinking of his words, his warning. Thinking about time.

By the time he hit the floor, screaming, Shepard was already running.

[tarysande]

Fic Update: Any Four Walls: Cool Aunt

Heyyy, why not update a story I haven’t updated in more than a year while everyone is off playing new game? *finger guns*

(In all seriousness, sorry for the long delay. I don’t anticipate one NEARLY as long again. This chapter sets up an arc I’ve had in my head for years!)

On AO3

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Cool Aunt

After three hours spent as sole caregiver to her brother’s daughters, Solana was beginning to have serious doubts about her own suitability as a parent, which made her current state of impending motherhood all the more terrifying. No going back now. Not even if she was having sudden visions of just how woefully underprepared she was. And she was. In vivid color.

Taking the girls off their parents’ hands for a day had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Step one to reaching coveted cool aunt status. Girls day out. Or in. Something. Fun. Definitely fun.

To be honest, she hadn’t actually thought that far ahead when she made the offer.

Garrus had an itinerary of political obligations as long as his arm, which only made Solana shudder and wonder how she could ensure her own position in the Hierarchy rose no further than it was already. Though Shepard had been perfectly willing to stay and entertain the children, Garrus did not disguise how much he wanted her with him. More than that, Solana knew they were far more effective a team when working together, especially when it came to fighting for things they believed in. Solana wasn’t privy to the details, but whatever it was they were dealing with now left a grim expression on her brother’s face whenever he thought no one was looking. Shepard’s wasn’t much better.

While arguing with one or the other of them was possible, when they presented a unified front, Sol wasn’t sure they’d ever actually failed. Being on kid-duty for a day seemed a small price to pay, if it helped relieve some of the tension lurking beneath her brother’s plates or in the furrowed cant of Shepard’s human brows.

Off they’d gone, and with them Naxus and her father to their respective work, leaving Solana in possession of two sleepy girls and many hours to fill. The sleepiness had worn off after breakfast, replaced by the kind of frenetic activity Solana usually associated with a firefight. Or stims. Or stims during a firefight.

And that was only hour one.

On hour four, tired to her bones and having exhausted all avenues of entertainment via vid-watching or reading or playing in the garden with nothing resembling nap time in sight, Solana bundled the girls into her skycar and took the scenic route into town. This served the dual purpose of helping pass time and avoiding some of the worst areas of Reaper destruction still in the process of being cleaned up. She didn’t need to ask to know Tyrra was uneasy; the girl sat in the back seat with her hands folded, looking anywhere but out the windows. Beside her sister, hip pressed to hip and shoulder to shoulder, Rose kept up a steady stream of conversation requiring no responses. Most of it seemed to be about some vid series Solana had never heard of.

With sinking certainty, Solana realized she was going to have to know these things at some point. Hot vids, and the names of the characters in them. The right toys. Lingo.

How to change a dirty baby. How to feed one. How to stop one from crying.

“Spirits,” she muttered under her breath.

“Are you okay, Auntie Sol?”

“Of course,” she lied, wondering about the stats on new parents who somehow broke their offspring in the first week. Or day. Or hour. She wondered if there was a record. She wondered if she was going to break it.

Machines she could do. Code? Without a doubt. Even the trickiest, most finicky wiring? Not a problem.

Real living creatures were a whole other matter.

There was, after all, a reason why she’d never kept pets.

“It’s just you have a real funny look, like the one Dad gets when he’s gotta go on the vids.”

“He hates the vids,” Tyrra added. Solana didn’t miss the way the girl’s subharmonics seemed to ask if Solana hated them the way Garrus hated public appearances.

With a touch more honesty than she was entirely comfortable with—and how honest were you supposed to be with children about things like this, anyway?—Solana replied, “I wasn’t busy hating anything, I promise.” One hand waved in the general vicinity of the alien lifeform now growing within her. “I’m only a little nervous about this whole having a kid of my own thing.”

“Why?” Rose asked, so guileless Solana could’ve hugged her. “You’ve been doing real good with us, except for when you almost mixed up the breakfast foods and when you almost locked us out of the house and when—”

Tyrra cleared her throat loudly.

“Oh,” said Rose. “Sorry. Yeah. You’re doing good. Definitely.”

She said definitely exactly the way Garrus would have said it. Only Garrus would have smirked. And then Sol would have had to kill him.

“I think you get used to it, anyway,” offered Tyrra, finally looking up from the hands folded in her lap. “Taking care of babies. They don’t do very much. Just eat and sleep and need their diapers changed. Mostly they like it when you hold them and sing to them, and they don’t like loud noises. They like to feel safe.”

Solana’s breath caught when she realized Tyrra was speaking from experience, and that the experience hid the kind of grief no nine-year-old kid should ever have known. Sol was forced to correct for an unintentional swerve. The weave and drop made Rose giggle.

“Well,” Sol said, too brightly, her subharmonics hiding nothing, “I have to admit I don’t have any experience at all. Garrus is the older brother; I think he did all the baby stuff when I was small. That’s what my mom always said when he pissed me off later, anyway: ‘Be nice to your brother, dear heart, he used to change your diapers.’”

“Dad’s pretty good with babies,” Rose agreed, kicking her feet back and forth. Solana noticed she was wearing different colored socks pulled up overtop of her envirosuit, one pink and one bright blue with sparkly stars. “Mom’s soooo bad.”

Tyrra’s mandibles fluttered in amusement. “She really is.”

Solana laughed. “If Shepard—of all people—can set such a low bar, maybe there’s hope I’ll be able to step over it.”

Tyrra glanced out the window and didn’t immediately look away; the smile remained on her face. Solana couldn’t help feeling it was a victory. “I think she doesn’t do well when she can’t talk to them.”

“Sounds about right.” Solana held up a finger. “She’s good with words.” She’s held up the other. “She’s good with guns.” Opening her palm, she shrugged one shoulder. “Something she can neither talk to or shoot at probably causes no end of discomfort. I should remember that.”

Tyrra laughed. Rose leaned forward against her restraints and said, “One time she almost dropped a baby someone wanted her to hold, like, for a picture? It was screaming and wriggling and the mom was all ‘Please, Commander Shepard’ even though Mom’s not a commander anymore but I guess that’s how everyone knows her and the baby was just like, ‘Wahh’ and Mom was getting all flustered until Dad kinda saved her and made a joke about always having her six even against, um, the most hostile hostiles? It was pretty funny. Then the baby puked right in her face. Like, a lot. I think it was on the vids. You should look it up.”

“Oh, I will,” said Solana, grinning. “I absolutely will. Now, girls, I was thinking we might do a little shopping, but we could also—”

When the crash sounded and the skycar began plummeting to the ground, Solana’s first thought was that there’d been some kind of rockfall—her route had taken them close to the mountains to avoid the worst of the valley’s Reaper destruction—but the screech of metal on metal whispered an even more alarming truth. They were under attack. Her fingers danced over the haptic interface, trying to wrestle back control and even out the car’s trajectory. Beneath her talons, her instruments recorded a flash of energy before flickering and dying.

She swallowed her panic because she had to. She had to.

In the shadow of the mountain, the interior of the vehicle was dark without its glowing lights and reassuring screens and readouts.

Rose screamed once, high and terrified. Tyrra remained silent, talons digging hard into the seat.

“It’s okay,” Solana said, breathless. The side of the car bounced hard off the rock face, potently punctuating her lie. She reached for the weapon at her hip, while scrambling for the other in its secret compartment under her interface panel. The first she attempted to hand to Tyrra, but the older girl only stared straight ahead, mandibles pulled tight to her face and eyes so wide Solana knew she was seeing something very different from the inside of a falling car.

—beasts wearing turian faces krogan bodies turian teeth tearing turian eyes and her leg her leg her leg leave me dad leave me just go on without me save yourself they’re turians oh spirits they were turians once—

Rose took the weapon before Solana could stop her. Her face was wet with tears beneath the envirosuit’s mask. With a weary sadness so at odds with her usual ebullience, Rose closed her hands around a grip far too big for her little hands and said, “I know what to do, Auntie Sol. Aim for the eyes. Always point at the eyes and pull and pull and pull and pull and don’t stop.”

Some of the pressure from above eased. The backup generator stuttered to life, providing enough power for Sol to get the safety landing gear mostly extended, though she had to release her restraints and reach for the manual controls to do so, and the damned things still stuck half-in, half-out. When the second crash came, her head hit the side window hard enough to make her see stars.

—turian faces krogan bodies turian keening from a monster’s throat—

The roar in her ears refused to diminish. Clutching at her weapon, she tried to see into the back seat, but her vision remained alternately blurred and dark. Pain arcing down her spine and across her belly stole a low keening note from her throat.

—i won’t leave you you know i won’t leave you—

Metal crunched. A third attack from above was enough to finally push the car into the dirt, and though the landing gear cushioned them somewhat, the lack of power and maneuverability sent Solana against the window again, curling so her back and cowl took most of the damage. She blinked, swiping at the blood in her eyes, gasping around the pain. She’d had worse. She’d lived through worse.

—turian teeth tearing—

“Rose? You okay, dear heart? Tyrra? Tyrra?”

“Yes,” replied Rose promptly. “Is…is it Reapers?”

“The Reapers are gone. I promise.” Solana swallowed hard, tasting yet more blood. Her bad leg felt strange, hollow. Like the phantom limb tingling she’d suffered before her surgery to replace it. Another screaming ripple of pain twisted her gut. “Is Tyrra—”

“She’s in the bad place.”

The driver’s side window imploded in a shower of glass that skittered across Solana’s plates without enough force to cause damage. She wasted neither time nor words, turning her gun in the direction of the sound and shooting. No satisfying sound of injury met her shots.

“Rose, tell me what you see.”

In a whisper, Rose said, “There’s a lot of legs, Auntie Sol. I can’t see their faces. It’s not Reapers. I think it’s—”

Unconsciousness found Solana before Rose finished. She fought it, clawing at the light with everything she had. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.

—they’re turians oh spirits they were turians once—

[tarysande]

Grace Shepard, please!!

B A S I C S

full name: Grace Celeste Shepard

gender: female

sexuality: demiromantic demisexual

pronouns: she/her

O T H E R S

family: Gray Edward Jonathan Shepard (father, deceased), Rose Siobhan O’Riordan Shepard (mother, deceased), not the fucking Callahans, Garrus Vakarian (husband), Rose Shepard-Vakarian (daughter, adopted), Tyrra (daughter, adopted). The Normandy crew.

birthplace: (I can’t remember if she was born on Mindoir or if they moved there when she was little).

job: N7 infiltrator, Commander, Admiral (circa AFW) 

phobias: suffocation, drowning, not being in control of her own mind, being manipulated

guilty pleasures: model ships, beautiful clothes, shoes, actually beating Garrus in shooting competitions, good food

M O R A L S

morality alignment?: lawful good, mostly; sometimes neutral good

sins - lust/greed/gluttony/sloth/pride/envy/wrath

virtues - chastity/charity/diligence/humility/kindness/patience/justice

T H I S - O R - T H A T

introvert/extrovert: introvert

organized/disorganized: organized, for the most part, with tiny pockets of disorganization (once she has a space of her own, her junk-drawer is actually a junk-closet. Do not enter.)

close minded/open-minded: open-minded, except (for a long time) about batarians

calm/anxious: mostly calm, occasionally anxious (see above, re: phobias)

disagreeable/agreeable: mostly agreeable

cautious/reckless: mostly cautious; her bouts of recklessness are few, far between, and often explosive

patient/impatient: patient

outspoken/reserved: reserved, until someone pushes the Wrong Buttons

leader/follower: leader; she’s the worst follower

empathetic/unempathetic: empathetic, except when she’s not

optimistic/pessimistic: realistic, flavored by optimism 

traditional/modern: traditional

hard-working/lazy: hard-working. just try and get her to stop.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

otp: Shepard/Garrus

ot3: In an alternate universe, Shepard/Victus/Garrus

brotp: Shepard & Wrex, Shepard & Jack, Shepard & Legion, Shepard & Samara (In a universe where Ash lives instead of Kaidan SHEPARD & ASHLEY). Shepard’s pretty close with all her crew; I could pretty much think of brotp moments for all of them. 

notp: Seeing her with anyone other than Garrus would skeeve me out.

[tarysande]

Feel free to ignore this if Harry Potter isn't your thing, but what Hogwarts houses do you think your OCs would be in?? Also you're doing a great job and I hope you're having a lovely day~~

Harry Potter is always my thing

Okay.

Grace Shepard is a Gryffindor. For sure. Oh, she occasionally has Slytherin tendencies and she’s smart enough to have been considered for Ravenclaw, but her primary motivator is bravery and protecting others--even if it means throwing herself into danger to do it. Even before Mindoir set her on a path, she was probably never going to be content until she was living an adventurous life.

Rose Vakarian-Shepard is a little fearless baby Gryffindor who will FIGHT EVERYONE if it means protecting the weak and innocent. Tyrra Vakarian-Shepard would’ve stymied the Hat until she expressed a preference for Hufflepuff please and thank you.

Rose Trevelyan is a Hufflepuff. She is all about loyalty and kindness and caring for the people around her. Oh, she’ll go at a dragon head-on if she needs to, and she enjoys few things as much as she loves absorbing knowledge, but her primary motivators are all Hufflepuff. (Also: screw with her or her people and man, badger ferociousness is going to be ALL OVER THE PLACE).

Kiara Hawke is also Gryffindor. I think the Hat might’ve seen a lot of Hufflepuff in her, but her own determination to be in Gryffindor tips the decision. She wants to be able to protect everyone; she’s lost too many people. She can be brave and determined and courageous for the ones she has left, even when it’s not easy. Even when it hurts. 

Gwen Hawke is a Slytherin who mostly uses her powers for good. The thing is, she’s got ambition and pride in spades and she’s not ashamed about that in the least. She’s die-hard loyal to those loyal to her, but she’s not as quick to throw herself in the line of fire purely because it’s the “right” thing to do. 

Cal Ryder is the quintessential Ravenclaw. She eats, sleeps, and drinks knowledge; loves cleverness; and hasn’t met a problem she won’t research the heck out of before trying to solve it any other way. Part of the reason Pathfinding is a challenge for her is because being the point-person with a gun means she doesn’t get enough time to think things through before she acts. (Good way to end up shot.) Her brother, Percy (Perseus), is the Gryffindor; she really feels like he’d have made the better heir for Alec’s legacy.

Thank you for the question!! I hope YOU are having a lovely day

[tarysande]

I was rereading Any Four Walls the other day and I thought of a question (if this is something to be covered in a future chapter or something feel free to disregard). Assuming Rose and Tyrra met on Earth, how did Tyrra get there? She mentioned watching her family die on Palaven so it just made me curious.

(First: thank you! Because of this ask, I went and reread all of AFW

Okay, so, full disclosure: when I wrote the original prompt, I had no idea the story was going to take on a life of its own and continue. I remember thinking that the idea of a turian girl and a human girl thrown together during wartime was something of a plot hole, and was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well it’s a one-shot, not like it’s really my characters’ canon.

Ha, ha. Silly Tara.

In my mind, the war doesn’t end until about March 2187, and then the events of AHOD essentially happen throughout the rest(?) of that year. So, for the purposes of AFW, Rose and Tyrra aren’t actually adopted until early 2188. Shepard and Garrus are a bit established in the roles they inhabit post-AHOD by the time Rose and Tyrra come along.

Tyrra’s on Palaven with her family at the outset of the war. She loses her father and little sister early in the attack. She and her mother manage to stay together and (relatively) safe for a few months. Tyrra sees a lot of Bad Stuff, and learns to survive.

Tyrra’s mom’s plan was to somehow get them (or just Tyrra, if that was the only option) onto a refugee vessel headed toward the Citadel. Tyrra, in her traumatized, dedicated, devoted way, focuses entirely on this plan once her mother’s dead. A lot of survival happens in this time period. Eventually she finds (is found by?) a medical evac team. They’re planning on taking her back to the Citadel with them, but then the call to mobilize at Earth happens. It’s chaos when they land, half the crew dies just trying to reach the safe zone. There are Reaper forces everywhere. She’s following the medics and the building in front of them just... vanishes. Laser fire.

She hides. Tyrra’s learned to be good at hiding, after all these months. When there’s a break in the battle, the team that brought her is dead. A couple of the other injured (mostly children) are still alive; some stay with her, a couple are too scared. (The hardest decision of her young life is leaving those people behind, but she knows enough to recognize that they’re not safe where they are, and no one knows to look for them, and she’s not willing to die with them because they refuse to leave.)

She raids the transport for dextro food, she searches every turian corpse or ship she finds for their rations, she survives. (I think she’s hungry all the time.) She finds Rose maybe two or three days after the first bewildering landing on Earth. Battles are still raging; the Reapers are in full force; the sky is full of explosions. 

Rose survives as long as she does because her mom had done time with the Alliance to put herself through college, and never forgot how to shoot a weapon.

Even after the Reapers die, it’s not like the whole of Earth is just safe. There are still a lot of dangers to navigate. I think Rose and Tyrra survive for quite some time on their own before they’re rescued and taken to the orphanage/care facility (sometimes they’re alone, sometimes with other kids). And then they’re there for some time before, in her desperation, their caseworker Callie reaches out to the most visible turian/human couple she can think of to get help.

So, as backstories go it’s a little rocky, a little bit like applying bandaids to a gunshot wound, but hey, it makes a kind of sense. And besides, Mass Effect doesn’t get its own timeline right most of the time, right? I can take liberties!