Chapter Text
He’d barely turned twenty-three when the Reaper War began.
“War” was a funny way of describing it, though. Whole colonies vaporized into fine dust adrift in the vacuum, planets and governments collapsing under the weight of complete population eradication, a galaxy suddenly constructed of refugees and orphans, the very idea of the nuclear family unit incinerated by red light.
This wasn’t war. It was an extinction event.
When the Reapers swept through the Trebia Relay, the regiment on Ena Mar retreated from the Traverse back to the home system to protect Palaven. Lieutenant Tarqos and the platoon ended up on Menae to defend the moon’s military base from the shambling husks, the skittering ravagers, and the onslaught of the occasional brute. When an actual Reaper, its enormity overwhelming their eyes and minds, the very core of their understanding, lands with its great sweeps of inexorable red death– there was nothing ground infantry like them can do but take cover and keep shooting at the targets on their level.
The Hierarchy does not retreat. Die for the cause.
Phrixus watched, then, as his friend Ruq ran before a solid wall of the Reaper’s glare, tripped, and dissipated into so much fine particulate in the air.
Half the platoon disappeared, just like that, in a blink of the eye. Like someone had edited a vid, removing too many frames and left this visual gap where once were all his squadmates. Lieutenant Tarqos, too.
Well. He’d gotten his promotion.
As the scorched wind of live rounds shrilled around him, he received an order from some captain he’d never seen before, young like him and probably promoted moments ago just like him: he was to move to a transmitted location to cover the retreat of some bigshot back to base camp. No name of this person or reason why a single troop should receive all this coverage. It didn’t matter. He had orders and that was all the reason Phrixus needed.
Phrixus screamed at the ragged handful left in his command. They reacted immediately and changed course, staggered pairings pulling back and covering for each other.
They all ran, doing their best not lose anyone else and failing. The primeval thunder of the Reaper smashed against them bodily in a steady, terrible rhythm, and what was left of the platoon pounded over slippery scree and through gorey mud. Over bodies, both reaper and turian.
And despite his training, despite his knowing it could get him killed, Phrixus let his mind cling to faraway places. The Citadel. Communications had been battered and spotty. He hadn’t spoken to his moms in weeks. He hadn’t heard from Aela in months, didn’t even know where she’d been when the invasion began.
Naea. She’d retired and taken a position for a Citadel-based company, programming security systems. A few months ago they had agreed to take the relationship seriously.
What fucking timing, huh?
He wanted to call her. To tell her he was sorry for stringing her along for years. For being a coward. He wanted to tell her what she really meant to him. That he hoped she’ll give him a chance to do better when this is over, when things are–
He really was going to get himself killed with hopes like that. He was blinding himself to the death all around him.
He thought of the Ryders. Mira.
It was funny.
At the time he thought she was sending herself into a gentle, icy death out in the depths of empty space. And even if that was the case, it would be a far better fate than what all of them left behind would suffer.
But maybe while he was risking his neck with hoping, he could hope too that she reached a new and happier world. And maybe he could hope some part of himself, some small bit of his memory, would survive with her.
He could go on then, maybe, in some paradise two point five three seven million light years from here.