Archive of Our Own ^beta

Part I - Death

Paperwork chained Garrus Vakarian to his desk for the thousandth time in the months since he’d returned to his position at Citadel Security: a digital mountain of processing forms, report write-ups, busywork. He should have been more focused on the tasks at hand, but all he could do was stare blankly at the terminal, his mind far away, thinking of the Normandy...thinking of Shepard.

It had been a small taste of freedom working with her, and spirits how much she had taught him. In a few short months aboard her ship he’d learned more about himself than three years running cases for C-sec. She was so diligent, so even-keeled; there was never a moment where he doubted how she’d earned her title. He didn’t just miss the freedom and adventure aboard the Normandy.

He missed her. And that was a hell of a shock.

But why shouldn’t he, after all? They had spent countless sleepless nights together in the mess hall. He grew close with everyone involved with the effort to bring down Saren, but none of those relationships compared to the friendship and trust he and Shepard had built. Until her, he had never put his faith in someone so completely; and she was a human , of all things. Late-night insomnia was considerably lonelier now, pacing the floors in his stuffy apartment on the Presidium.

Why had he come back?

Shepard extended an offer to stay—not just to him, to all of the crew. Liara had taken her up on it; it was easy to see how infatuated the doe-eyed young asari was with Shepard. Why hadn’t Garrus stayed too? Was it so important to placate his father’s wishes for him to return to the Citadel? He could have been off in the terminus tracking down geth, looking for signs of the Reapers, doing it all with Shepard. Instead he was stuck in his office filing paperwork and feeling miserable.

For a moment, he thought of messaging Shepard, but he closed the message as soon as he’d opened it. They had kept in touch since the crew parted ways, but her messages came further and further apart these days. Perhaps she had found a new closeness with Liara.

Maybe Garrus had read the signs and signals wrong. Humans were different than turians, but he had been sure there was something in the little jokes she made, the way her hands brushed his arm as they passed each other in the hallways of the ship.

“I want you to stay.” Those had been her actual words when she’d made the offer. “It’s hard to imagine the Normandy without you. Besides, who will fix the mako every time I flip it?”

Why hadn’t he stayed ?

Maybe it wasn’t too late. Ten minutes passed. He opened and closed a new message on his omni-tool twelve, maybe thirteen times, but he couldn’t find the words he wanted. He’d always been clumsy with words.

He spent more time staring at his terminal. What would his father think if he walked in and handed him his resignation right now?

Of course, it was just a pipe dream. He couldn’t shirk his responsibilities to play space hero with Shepard, as much as he wished that he could. They were from two different worlds—fate had brought them together to deal with Saren, but she would have to soldier on, dealing with horrors the Council refused to acknowledge. Maybe it was arrogant to think she would even need his help.

He couldn’t have said how much time passed when Chellick showed up in the doorway, knocking lightly, mandibles turned downward with an unmistakable look of pity on his face. What now?

“Garrus, I was sorry to hear the news...look if you want to take the rest of the day off…”

Garrus snorted. “I’m sad about the paperwork, Chellick, but it’s got to get done. Though if you’re just letting me leave, I won’t exactly say no. Anything beats another processing form…”

Chellick shook his head. “I meant about Shepard.”

“What about Shepard?” Garrus felt a sudden, unwelcome cold creeping down his spine.

“Oh, spirits.” Chellick let out a long sigh. “I thought for sure they would have told you...I didn’t...I hate to be the one to tell you this, Garrus, but it’s been all over the news all morning. Shepard was killed in a geth attack over Alchera.”

The words didn’t register as real, even as Garrus’ heart dropped into his stomach and his limbs seized. Dead? Geth? No. Absolutely not. Not Shepard, who had fought hundreds of geth, who had helped to bring down a Reaper. Killed by the geth?

It was impossible.

“Garrus?” Chellick’s voice sounded distant.

Garrus struggled to find his voice. “That can’t be right.”

“I thought...I thought after your time on the ship that the Alliance would have told you.”

“No. She can’t be dead.”

He felt paralyzed as it sunk in. Shepard was killed. Shepard was killed. Shepard was killed.

Shepard is dead.

A moment of clarity struck him and he swallowed a lump in his throat, his warbling subvocals betraying his emotions. “The whole ship?”

“There were survivors. The news said she died rescuing the pilot, some crippled kid.”

“Joker.” Garrus corrected.

“You should go home, Garrus. Call your friends, see who made it out.”

Why hadn’t anyone told him? Anderson knew he was a part of Shepard’s team. If not Anderson, why not Kaidan, Liara? How long had it been since the attack? Why had no one told him Shepard was dead?

He didn’t remember leaving C-Sec. The whole trip back to his apartment was spent in a daze—a sort of fugue state, unaware of his surroundings, the words playing over and over in his brain. He was vaguely aware, as he passed through the main causeway of the Presidium, that the news terminals were discussing the incident.

“Commander Jane Shepard, hero of the citadel, was killed yesterday in an apparent geth attack while scouting the terminus for signs of geth activity. The Alliance has issued a formal statement regarding the incident…”

How had others survived while Shepard died? Of course, he knew the answer. It was because Shepard was selfless, because she always put her crew above herself. He couldn’t recall a single mission on the hunt for Saren where she hadn’t taken the rear when retreat was necessary, to ensure that all of them made it out before she did. She had done the same for Joker, it seemed, and knowing Joker, he would have gone down with the ship if not for Shepard.

His somber trance was broken when he returned home and found Kaidan waiting outside his apartment, dark circles beneath puffy red eyes. All the anger seemed to rush out of him as he realized why Kaidan and Liara hadn’t told him yet. They were grieving too; not only that, but they had also just survived an incredibly traumatic ordeal.

For a moment, the two men stood in front of each other, neither of them quite sure what to say.

“Kaidan, I...it’s true?”

He nodded. “We saw it happen from the escape pod. A blast hit the ship as Joker got in...it tore a hole in her oxygen hose…”

An unexpected, mournful keening issued from Garrus’ subvocals and it took him a moment to compose himself. “I wish someone had told me. I had to find out from my boss. All morning, I had no clue.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to get to you before the news broke, but it’s been chaos since we got back and I’ve just…”

Garrus put his hand on Kaidan’s shoulder and squeezed gently, a gesture Shepard had used so many times to reassure her crew that things would be okay. “She meant a lot to both of us. I understand.”

Rather than stand in the hallway, both of them on the verge of sobbing, Garrus invited him in and they sat together at his table while Kaidan told him the tragic details of what had happened. Liara had taken it the hardest, and had barely said a word on the long trip home. Kaidan had let her be alone once they returned. Liara wasn’t official Alliance and didn’t have to deal with most of the aftermath; she wanted to grieve in private.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Kaidan said. “I mean, God, it feels like we just lost Ash and now Shepard...I keep telling myself I’m going to wake up from this nightmare, but I won’t. She was a damn good soldier...a-”

“A damn good friend,” Garrus finished for him.

He nodded. “How do we ever move on from this?”

Garrus only wished he knew.

---

The memorial was held in the Presidium gardens a week after Shepard was killed. It had taken every ounce of willpower Garrus had to muster up the strength to show up; the week between discovering she was dead and attending her memorial service had been the hardest week of his life.

Why was this so hard? He’d lost friends before and it had hurt, but never like this. Already, he had felt like a piece of him was missing just being away from Shepard and the Normandy. Now that Shepard was gone, he felt hollow.

It was difficult to listen to people like Udina—who’d barely tolerated Shepard when she was alive—give long-winded, self-indulgent speeches about how much she would be missed. The councilors even spoke, which was a testament to how many lives Shepard had touched, and how many barriers she had broken down for humans, but their words were just as empty as the rest. They only applauded her because she had spared their lives during Sovereign’s siege on the Citadel. They had just as soon tossed her aside when her theories on the Reapers were too inconvenient to address.

It should have been Kaidan up there speaking, and Liara, and Joker, and Chakwas. Those were people who knew Shepard, who cared about her.

Tali had been far away at the edge of geth space when the news came down, and Wrex was back on Tuchanka, but Garrus had spoken to them both at length the day before the service. Tali was as grief-stricken as Liara, and had spent most of the call sobbing, which only made Garrus cry too. He’d cried too much in the last week, mostly in dark moments alone in his room, or in the company of those who knew Shepard as well as he did.

Wrex had been uncharacteristically quiet during their conversation, a strong enough sign of how deeply Shepard’s death affected him.

Garrus had seen Liara once since he’d found out and she had wept for most of their talk, clung to him more tightly than he thought possible while he tried to soothe her even as his own heart shattered over and over. Death was hard on everyone, but this was another beast entirely.

In the days and weeks that would follow the service, Shepard would become little more than a symbol: a heroic cross-species icon, superhuman and immortal, but not the real woman. It became harder and harder for Garrus to stand following protocol, pushing papers, playing by the book while his father berated him each and every time he stepped out of line.

Shepard was never coming back, but the galaxy still needed protecting. What good was he serving on the Citadel? Couldn’t he make a bigger difference outside the bounds of C-sec’s authority? It was a confrontation with his father that pushed him to his limit. He had to leave the Citadel, but where could he go where he could make a difference? Where could he go to pick up Shepard’s mantle?

The answer, he soon found, was a miserable hunk of rock in the heart of the terminus.

Omega.

Part II - Destruction

Nothing taught a man how privileged his upbringing was like being dropped in the middle of a cesspool without support. Garrus liked to think he was worldly, that he knew how bad the galaxy could be. After all, he’d fought against batarian slavers and asari pirates during his military service. Depraved people like that were the worst of the worst in the galaxy and he knew it.

One week on Omega taught him how naive he truly was.

He’d arrived with a shipment of foodstuffs on a grimy cargo freighter, having read up on the station before he finally made the decision to leave the Citadel. It was the husk of an asteroid, stripped of its resources and so overpopulated and overrun with crime that it was effectively lawless. No one was brave enough to try and enforce law on Omega, and certainly not brave enough to face off against the powerful asari matriarch who acted as the de facto ruler.

Garrus was too lost in his own anger and grief to think of what Shepard’s advice in his situation would have been. She might have turned him away from the task to focus his efforts on a more realistic goal than overthrowing a space station that had been a hub for criminals since its inception. Acknowledge it or not, Shepard was his impulse control; she had taught him how to channel his frustrations into positive and productive outlets, but she was gone now and someone had to do something to improve the galaxy, didn’t they?

Day one on the station was meant to be simple: lay low, find somewhere to call home, and start mapping out the worst areas of the station to focus on. Unfortunately, “simple” was not an option on Omega; the lawlessness and poverty that ran rampant through the station meant everyone was a target for violence, but especially a newcomer unfamiliar with the districts or the people. Garrus thought he looked intimidating with an assault rifle and a sniper rifle strapped to his back, but his weapons were too nice, too new, his armor too shiny. He may as well have been walking around with a bright neon sign that said “mug me.”

It was during an exploration of the Gozu district, barely four hours into his stay on the filthy station, that Garrus found himself cornered by a group of turians in blue and white armor—a group he would later find out belonged to an infamous mercenary gang called the Blue Suns. As much as Garrus had read up on Omega, there were plenty of things only experience could teach him, and the beating he received from the Blue Suns was a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget. It left him bloodied and almost cost him his prized sniper rifle, but he managed to escape before they could kill him and strip him of his possessions.

Lesson one: the mercs rule the streets.

Unfortunately, Omega wasn’t rich in reputable medical establishments, so Garrus was left to find the medical supplies he needed and slink off to the safest place he could find while he licked his wounds, his pride suffering nearly as badly as his body.

Each day was better, each day was worse. Weeks passed with no headway. He had come to Omega a young, foolish idiot and day by day the station beat all of the idealism and youth from him. To really make a difference, he had to harden himself, an easy task whenever he was reminded of the painful sting of Shepard’s death.

She’s not coming to save you, Garrus.

He learned how to take care of himself well enough to stay alive, which streets were run by the Blue Suns, the Bloodpack, or Eclipse, who to avoid and who he could stand a scrap with. That was when he made his first trip to Afterlife: a club so full of debauchery it made Chora’s Den look like a daycare. It was here where the self-professed queen of Omega made her home in a heavily fortified nest overlooking the vast sprawling room of neon lights and half-naked asari.

But Garrus wasn’t interested in Aria T’Loak. Her rule, however chaotic, imposed some sort of twisted order on the station. He was more concerned with the mercs, who not only implemented the most violence and destruction upon the innocent civilians of the station, but also unleashed havoc across the galaxy through smuggling operations and slave trading. But even mercs took breaks, and Garrus figured he could sniff out information by hanging around Omega’s most popular club

At least, that’s what he told himself.

The truth was, living on the station was hell. He had not realized how truly miserable he would be when he left the Citadel, but even in his most realistic dreams of vigilante justice he hadn’t envisioned an existence where every day brought pain, both physical and emotional, and where every night sleep eluded him. He missed his small, crappy apartment on the Presidium, he missed his friends - he’d cut off ties with everyone and disappeared entirely, he missed his family.

He missed Shepard.

How many nights had he opened his messages with the thought, “I need Shepard’s advice” only to remember, like a knife through the heart, that she could not respond, could never respond.

Often, he would read over their last exchanges. The final message he received from her a week before her death read:

“No sign of anything out in the terminus: no geth, no Reapers, nothing. Pressly’s getting fussy that we haven’t found anything and everyone’s got cabin fever. You probably made the right choice staying with C-Sec. Not much going on out here. Some victory lap, huh? I do miss you though. Not the same without you and Wrex and Tali down in the cargo bay.”

I do miss you though.

Lesson two: alcohol, in the right quantity, could numb any pain.

It was easy for Garrus to fall into a pit of self-loathing. He spent his nights trying and failing to make any headway in his plan to bring change to Omega, and spent his days in Afterlife drinking his pain away.

Eventually, he gave in to baser desires. Drunken one-night stands were never as enjoyable as he hoped they would be, but he still went back for them because a momentary release was better than another night alone with his feelings. He thought about humans, he often watched them dancing at Afterlife, but something always prevented him from going after them, preferring to stick to turians and asari which was all he had ever known.

Of course, there was a small voice in the back of his mind that told him why he couldn’t bring himself to touch a human, but he wouldn’t address it; there was no point.

All that time spent moping around the nightclub pretending he was doing any meaningful recon did eventually lead him somewhere, though not really out of any foresight of his own.

He was three drinks into the evening when a batarian and a turian began accosting one of the dancers as she slid off her platform to take a break. A biotic might have stood a chance against the two brutes, but she was human, and lacked the necessary strength or power to bat away the turian’s persistent grip. The guards at Afterlife almost never stepped in in such situations—it was bad business to toss people out unless someone was bleeding out onto the dance floor.

Watching the ordeal unfold, something inside Garrus snapped. He had a low enough tolerance for people ignoring consent, but there was something else. Maybe it was the dancer’s red-hued hair; it looked fake, but from behind, in the dim neon lighting of the club, he could almost be forgiven for being reminded of Shepard. It was too much to watch these brutes manhandle a woman just trying to make a living. He couldn’t save Shepard, but he could at least save this poor dancer.

With liquid courage, he stumbled over to the turian and batarian and tore the dancer from their grip. She ran without so much as a thank you, leaving Garrus with the ire of the two brutes directed squarely at him.

Another turian, he could probably take, but a turian and batarian both? What had he been thinking?

“You got a fuckin’ death wish, buddy?” The batarian clenched his fists.

As drunk and miserable as Garrus might be, and as hesitant as he was about his own abilities to survive the fight, he wouldn’t allow himself to run away. He could almost hear his father’s voice echoing in his brain.

“ Do things right, Garrus, or don’t do them at all. ”

He reeled his fist back and punched the batarian square in the jaw. The batarian let out a low groan and stumbled backward as the turian leaped at him, dragging his talons across Garrus’ facial plating. It didn’t take long for the batarian to recover and then Garrus found himself assaulted on two sides; the room spun slightly in his inebriated state, doing nothing to help his chances against the two. The rest of the club simply looked on with interest, though plenty more patrons kept right on staring at the dancers, so used to fights breaking out anywhere and everywhere that it wasn’t even worth their time.

He was going to die, like an idiot, in a filthy club, drunk on drossix blue.

Another fighter suddenly joined the fray. Limbs were flying so quickly - and he was so tipsy - that it was difficult to make out much more than that this newcomer was a turian, and that he seemed to be on Garrus’ side. He socked the batarian so hard in the head that he crumpled to a heap on the ground and they were left, two against one, facing the remaining turian.

Aside from mercs and their grunt cannon fodder, most people on Omega had the good sense to know when cowardice would keep them alive. One look at the batarian lying unconscious on the floor was enough to cause the turian to turn tail and run, allowing Garrus to get a good look at the man who’d stepped in to save him.

He was older than Garrus, probably in his thirties, with smooth grey plating and sky-blue colony markings running vertically down his mandibles and chin. He flexed his fingers before offering a hand to Garrus.

“You looked like you needed help. Name’s Lantar Sidonis.”

“Garrus Vakarian.”

“Bit of a newcomer, aren’t you?” Sidonis laughed.

“How could you tell?” Garrus let out a dry laugh of his own.

“I’ve seen you around here recently. Saw you help that girl. I’ve never seen anyone go out of their way to help anyone on this miserable sack of shit space station. I figured you were worth helping.”

Garrus let Sidonis help him over to a booth where the two of them sat, Garrus sipping water and holding ice to his eye where the batarian had caught him with a punch. As a detective, he’d found that gut-feelings could go a long way in leading you in the right direction when evidence was lacking, and he had a good gut-feeling about Sidonis.

It didn’t take long into their conversation to realize Sidonis had similar views on the mercs running the station. He was easy to talk to, and - though not as idealistic as Garrus - he thought the goal of making the station safer was admirable.

“You clean yourself up, Garrus. Stay away from this place, or at least the drinks, they’ll get you every time. I know, I was in your shoes once.” Sidonis gave him an up and down. “Meet me tomorrow in the Gozu district. You and me, we might just be able to make this station worth living on.”

Garrus couldn’t help but smile, maybe for the the first time since arriving on Omega. “Even if it kills us?”

Sidonis laughed. “Even if.”

Part III - Rebirth

Almost ten months had passed since Garrus arrived on Omega and he had finally shed the skin of who he was and built up a new, rocky armor in its place. Together with Sidonis, his first - and for a while, only - friend on Omega, they had built up a team of ten skilled men and women who were as sick of the mercs running the station as he was. They came from all walks of life—ex-military, civilian, bounty hunter, bartender, even a batarian baker who knew how to wield a shotgun thanks to her father’s training.

Ten months on Omega had taught Garrus to trust sparingly, if at all, but he trusted his team as much as his heart would allow, and felt personally responsible for each and every one of them. Some of them had families and it scared the hell out of him. Sidonis shrugged off the responsibility; they had all signed up willingly and knew what was in store for them in the station’s underbelly. Garrus couldn’t dismiss so easily the thought of spouses and children at risk of becoming widows and orphans, so he protected his team as fiercely as he could, and doled out solo missions sparingly, often taking them for himself instead.

He could be replaced. His friends and family likely already thought him dead; there was no one else to miss him when he was gone.

Time had not healed the wound left from Shepard’s death, but he thought of her less and less the busier he kept himself. Dwelling on a ghost was pointless, but there were times where she came to him in half-formed, hazy dreams.

He dwelled on his other friends little, and found it easier to try and forget them; it was too painful to think of how quickly they might have scattered to the winds in the wake of Shepard’s death. He spared little thought for his father, who had always preferred his sister anyway, but he thought of his mother often. She was sick, dying—possibly already dead. His mother had been the only temptation to break his silence and reach out to his past life, but even that he steeled himself against. Better she think he was gone. His tumultuous relationship with his father had always been a source of stress for her, and she didn’t need the burden of his insolence and failure.

For better or for worse, Omega was his home now, and he spent every waking moment trying to protect it.

His apartment had become the team’s home base of sorts. It was built on the bones of a former warehouse, with hidden tunnels once used for cargo transport built beneath. It made for a safe and secure means of entering and exiting without being seen or giving away the location. The only other way into the building was across a narrow bridge, which could be hell trying to escape in the event of an ambush, but which tidily funneled any oncoming attackers into the crosshairs of Garrus’ rifle. It was a safe perch tucked into a corner where they would never be taken by surprise.

That kind of location was worth its weight in gold in a place as dangerous as Omega.

Garrus never intended for there to be a hierarchy to the team he and Sidonis had built, but by virtue of creating the team, he and Sidonis had become the unofficial leaders of the group. Sidonis did less of the hands-on work; he was good at going unnoticed and he used this skill to his advantage, picking up information on mercs, drug shipments, and problems civilians in each district were facing as a result. It was left to Garrus to send the necessary team members to handle each problem. Already, after only a few short months of working together, they were getting a reputation on the station.

That pain-in-the-ass turian and his asshole friends.

Words from the mouths of many a merc that Garrus wore like a badge of honor.

Staying out of Aria’s way proved to be useful. The mercs were like flies she was constantly swatting away, and if they hadn’t been so busy fighting amongst themselves, there was no doubting they would have been devoting time to removing Aria from power. Garrus’ focus on the mercs meant Aria largely ignored him—he was doing her a favor, in his own way. A team of ten could take on mercs in small groups, but Aria’s empire was a much tougher beast.

The Blue Suns were the most resilient of the three main factions on Omega, and therefore the biggest thorn in Garrus’ side. Often, he would run into them while out on a completely separate mission and find himself fighting a highly uneven fight for his life. Yet, he always escaped.

The mercs’ incompetence in the absence of their key leaders was stunning.

The name Archangel first arose from such a run-in with the Blue Suns. Garrus had been out on a solo run dealing with a couple of asari from Eclipse; they’d spent the better part of two weeks making death threats against a local vendor who’d ‘accidentally’ destroyed one of their supply crates containing a sizeable amount of red sand and they’d come to make good on the threats. He saw to it that they failed in their task, knowing even as he lined their skulls up in his crosshairs that it was a temporary fix to the problem. Each of the merc groups seemed to have an endless supply of cannon fodder at their disposable, all of them so eager and willing to die for such a stupid and vile cause.

His return to the Kima district was slow; he’d been cramped up in his sniper’s nest for some time awaiting the asari’s arrival and his joints felt stiff and sore as he made the walk back to his apartment. Still, when he heard a cry for help issuing from an alley at the district’s edge he couldn’t stop himself from hurrying to investigate. What good were planned attacks against the mercs if he wasn’t also helping civilians whenever the chance arose? Sidonis would argue he would wear himself too thin trying to save the entire station, but Garrus didn’t have the time or concern for self-care these days.

Hefting himself onto a fire escape, Garrus moved through the shadows above the alleyway to investigate the source of the screaming. A turian and batarian in Blue Suns armor had cornered an elderly human couple, demanding their money and any valuables they had on them.

Was this what ‘the mightiest mercenary group in the galaxy’ stooped to? Stealing from frail old humans? Even in their prime, there were few humans Garrus knew who could take on a fully-armored turian; only Shepard came to mind. Perhaps the pedestal he’d placed her on had room for others—Kaidan could have handled himself against a turian as well. But they were both marines with years of training. A man with a cane and his rheumy-eyed wife didn’t stand a chance. And on Omega, what wealth could they have that was worth the time of the Blue Suns? It was nothing more than brutish bullying in its basest form.

“Please, we gave you everything we have! We have nothing more to give you, I swear!” The woman was shaking, thick tears rolling down her cheeks. Garrus pulled his sniper rifle from his back and began lining up a shot.

“Kill them, then search the bodies,” the batarian demanded.

“I don’t take orders from you. You kill them,” the turian retorted.

“Fine. I’ll kill the man and you kill the woman.”

“No! Please!” The elderly man, barely able to walk even with the use of his cane, stepped in front of his wife. “Let her go. If you’re going to kill us, just take me.”

“Edward, no!”

Garrus steadied his grip, lined the batarian up in his sights, and pulled the trigger.

CRACK .

The shot hit him right in the brain, blood spattering across the wall to the side of him as he slumped sideways and fell to the ground with a dull thud. Garrus immediately reloaded, his hands moving with a speed and efficiency he could thank his father for—one of the only things he appreciated about their relationship. The turian merc whipped his head around in the direction of the shot and spotted Garrus a millisecond too late. He was in the process of raising his gun when Garrus pulled the trigger, landing the shot right between the merc’s eyes. An arc of blue blood sprayed from his skull onto the poor couple still cowering in the corner.

The humans were too terrified to move when Garrus dropped down from the fire escape, so he took advantage of their shock to sift through the merc’s pockets until he found the credit chits they had taken. Moving cautiously, hands held to show he meant no harm, he offered the reclaimed items forward to them.

“You...you saved us!” The man cried. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Garrus shook his head. “You should be careful walking alone. Even a stun gun might help if the mercs try to corner you again.”

“He’s an angel, Edward.” The woman glanced upwards as she spoke. From their spot on the ground, the fire escape was so shrouded in darkness that it was impossible to tell where Garrus had fallen from. She turned to him, eyes wide and watery. “You’re a real-life angel!”

Garrus wasn’t extremely familiar with the term, though he’d heard it at some point during his time at C-sec. They were some sort of mythical or religious creatures but he’d never really clarified it further than that. Whatever they were, he doubted he was worthy of the term.

“You should go, before any other Blue Suns show up,” he didn’t address their praise.

It came as a surprise when the elderly woman grabbed his hand and pressed her wrinkled old lips to his fingers. “Bless you, bless you! An angel!”

After that, they heeded his advice and left. Maybe it was a pointless endeavor, saving people who would likely perish elsewhere on the station under the same circumstances, unable to defend themselves properly. Hopeless as the effort seemed, the lingering touch of the woman’s weathered old hands, and the enduring warmth of her praise told Garrus it had been worthwhile.

Later, alone in his apartment, barricades in place and alarms readied for any intrusion, he found himself searching the extranet for information on ‘angels.’ His search led him down a rabbit hole, eventually landing on the archangels: a powerful rank of angels, translating to chieftain in Cipritini.

Garrus was never much for fanfare, always more concerned with getting the job done by any means necessary—but a moniker seemed useful in his situation. A name applied to an image of him, to his team, rather than who he really was. If he started calling himself Archangel, then the mercs wouldn’t know his real name, and if they didn’t know his real name, then they could never lay hands on the only remaining people who meant anything to him. As much as he sometimes hated his father, and as often as he butted heads with his sister, he could never forgive himself if harm came to them because of his antics on Omega.

And so, in the glow of his omni-tool, tucked away in one of the only safe corners of that horrible hunk of rock that was now his home, Archangel was born.

Interlude

She came to him, as she had so many times before, only half formed—translucent, glowing with a beauty he could scarcely recognize. Her back turned to him, she gazed out at the bridge leading into his safehouse, hands ghosting over the barricade.

Even in her barely tangible form he could see the strength and sinew of her muscles, her body bared to him completely, each pale scar a reminder of all she had faced both before him and in his company. His eyes roved over every inch of her, not sure where to linger, trying to drink it all in before she inevitably disappeared.

Each dream was like a dagger, driving into him to the bone, his subconscious telling him what he wouldn’t admit: his admiration for her had been more than that of a friend, more than that of an ally. But even his subconscious couldn’t whisper the word itself, too afraid of what it meant and knowing it was meaningless now that she was gone.

“The others worry about you.” When she spoke, her voice was so ethereal it sounded almost like a turian’s, harmonizing in ways it never could when she was alive.

Garrus hazarded a step forward; it felt as though his whole body vibrated.

“They’ll move on. It’s easier than losing you, I’m sure.”

Finally, she turned to face him, but it was hard to fully grasp her, as though her face were missing some necessary component he couldn’t name. Her eyebrows furrowed as she leaned back against the barricade.

“You think too little of yourself, Garrus.”

To hear his name on her lips was overwhelming. He found himself stumbling toward her.

“I miss you so much. Why is this so hard?” He held his trembling hands out, as if to touch her, but was too frightened of what might happen if he even dared. “I’ve made friends in the military only to watch them die a few months later in battle; it wasn’t nearly this hard to recover from those losses.” Why should she mean this much to him? Why should he miss her so badly? Why could he feel her loss in such a physical way?

Her face softened and she touched his cheek, her ghostly fingers cool and light against his plating. “You think too highly of me, Garrus.”

“I could never.”

“You’re much more than the lessons I taught you. You should try to remember that. Still, this place has changed you.”

Suddenly, her hand was plunging through him, past plating and skin, blood and muscle, until he felt it grip around his heart like an icy clamp. All of the breath rushed out of him.

“Don’t forget your motivation, Garrus.” As one hand held his heart, the other grazed his mandible. She leaned forward, pressing her cold lips against his forehead, and an unbidden keening issued from his throat.

“Why is it so hard?” He repeated.

“You’re trying so hard to do good. Don’t let it harden you to the point that you stop being good too.”

He broke down completely then, falling to his knees as her hand slipped away from his heart. He clutched at her only to find the absence of anything physical to hold, his hands passing through her like air.

“Please, please come back. I need you. I miss you. I…”

I love you.

And then he woke up.

Part IV - Splinter

Garrus hadn’t seen the Citadel, hadn’t talked to his family or friends, hadn’t exchanged a word with anyone outside of Omega in eighteen months. Eighteen months and he barely recognized himself anymore.

Nelson, one of the humans on the team, had once relayed to him a fable from Earth about a man doomed for all eternity to push an unbearable burden up an endless slope, only for it to roll back to the bottom where he would have to start all over again. At the time, Garrus hadn’t understood the purpose of Nelson’s story.

Several months later, he recognized it as an apt metaphor.

For every merc they brought down, two more seemed to pop up in their place. Purging Omega of evil was simply not possible.

And yet, there was nothing else Garrus could think to do. As often as he claimed to be a ‘bad turian’, his sense of duty would not allow him to abandon the task at hand—he would follow through until he achieved the impossible or died trying.

Every day it seemed more and more likely that an early grave was in Garrus’ future.

By this point, ‘Archangel’ was a name known across the station. Civilians whispered it whenever one of Garrus’ men appeared to help them and mercs cursed it in every seedy corner they congregated in. At least that meant they were making an impact, even if it was hard to see any tangible change.

Garrus worked the team hard, maybe too hard, but he justified it with the knowledge that he was harder on himself than on any of them. If he was too constant or too extreme in the assignments he doled out, they never said a word of it, though Sidonis was vocal enough for all of them.

Sidonis was a turian, and he understood the value of rank in establishing order, so Garrus’ decisions were never questioned in front of the team, but when they were alone, it often came up.

Sidonis’ home was less secure than Garrus’, so he spent most of his time in the little home base Garrus had made for the team, crashing on the couch more than half of the time. Garrus didn’t mind; it was the only company he had anymore, his interest in one-night stands subdued by his mistrust of anyone who didn’t belong to his team, and without the aid of alcohol. Was it perhaps also tamed by the constant recurring dreams of a woman he would never see or touch again?

He couldn’t dwell on it.

“You need to give them a break,” Sidonis’ said as he sat on the couch, cutting through a rough piece of vat-grown dextro meat—food on Omega wasn’t exactly high quality unless you had money or influence.

Garrus sat in his perch overlooking the bridge that led to the warehouse, his sniper rifle lying on the floor next to him. “We’ve had this discussion, Sidonis. If they want to quit, they can. We have to be diligent every day or we lose any chance of making headway in this hellhole.”

Behind him, Sidonis’ subvocals buzzed. “It’s been over a year, Garrus. Don’t you think maybe…” A sigh as he left his sentence unfinished.

Garrus turned to face him, “Don’t I think what?”

“Maybe Omega isn’t worth saving. Maybe we’d be doing more good by reaching out to your contacts and getting our team off this shit heap. Think of what we could do together somewhere more manageable. We could get a small ship, take on pirates on the edge of the traverse. We’d be good at it. The families could live on the Citadel…”

“And where would they live? What do you know about the Citadel, Sidonis? They wouldn’t be living cushy lives on the Presidium. They’d be stuck down in the wards, because that’s what you can afford on a vigilante’s salary. The wards aren’t any better or safer than Omega and we’d have to leave them so often to do any work...no. Better tenuous stability here than upheaval of whole families somewhere else.” He shook his head and returned his gaze to the bridge. “If you don’t want to be part of this anymore, you can leave. I’ll understand.”

“That’s not it at all,” Sidonis protested. “I love you like a brother, Garrus. You’re one of the only people I trust on this station. I’m saying this because I worry about you. I worry about all of us. What we’re doing...it’s not sustainable. Twelve men up against an endless stream of mercs? They won’t ever wear out. They’ll always find someone to replace their losses, but we can’t say the same. If we don’t rest, we don’t stand a chance.”

Garrus recalled a phrase Shepard often used when she was disturbed from her rare moments of peace on the Normandy.

No rest for the wicked.

Did he deserve to rest? He’d failed at being a competent C-Sec officer, unable to follow through cases without breaking the endless list of rules surrounding evidence gathering and arrests. He had failed at being anything his family could be proud of; he had failed everyone in his life so far, including Shepard.

He should have taken up her damn offer to join her on the Normandy after bringing down Sovereign. He knew he wouldn’t be alive today if he had; he would never have left her side when she stayed behind to save Joker. Maybe he could have saved her, maybe...

She’s dead, you idiot. Quit pining over a ghost. You can’t bring her back.

“Garrus?” Sidonis broke him from his thoughts.

“You know how I feel about it,” Garrus growled. “There’s no point in having this argument every other day. Take a break if you want to, but ask our team how they feel about it. I know what their answers will be. They’ve all given their lives to this cause. Maybe I should feel guilty for that, for taking so much of their time away from their families. But they do good work, they make Omega safer for families who don’t have the strength or gunpower to protect their children from these mercs. I won’t tell them to slow down until they ask me.”

“Fine. We won’t talk about it.” The angry note in Sidonis’ voice was new. Every other argument about this had come from a place of compassion, of worry, but this was something else.

As far as Garrus was concerned, he had no right to be angry. He could leave if he wanted, no one was holding him to this team, no one was forcing assignments on him. He owed Garrus nothing.

But he let it go. Garrus didn’t want to address the small, but growing wedge driving between them.

As the days and weeks passed, though, the wedge only grew larger. It came in small signs—Sidonis spent less and less downtime at Garrus’ apartment, he took fewer assignments, and even slowly removed himself from the day-to-day administrative needs of the team. The others saw him, it seemed, more frequently than Garrus did. But still, Garrus trusted him. Perhaps all his important relationships were doomed to end this way. It reminded him of his father; they disagreed on nearly everything, but at the end of the day, he loved him, trusted him with his life.

They were both too stubborn to sit down and address the issue though, so they made it work as communication between the two became more and more stilted.

There were bigger concerns than his strained relationship with Sidonis. The more time that passed and the more headway Garrus and his team made, the angrier the mercs became. Whispers had rippled through the station that the three largest merc groups were teaming up to deal with the ‘Archangel’ nuisance. It was, quite frankly, unheard of. The Blue Suns, Eclipse, and the Blood Pack were always at each other’s throats—it was part of what created the chaos on Omega, and what kept them from making any headway on overthrowing Aria’s rule. That Garrus and his team had caused enough of a stir to even create a rumor of the groups working together meant they were doing something right, but it also meant a storm was brewing. They would have to be more vigilant than ever if they wanted to avoid being cornered by the mercs.

The signs came slowly but surely that the rumors were true. Two of the team were ambushed by a group of turians and vorcha whose armor proudly declared their allegiance to different merc groups, yet they were working together in an attempt to kill Garrus’ men. They escaped with their lives, just barely, making straight for the safehouse to inform Garrus of what had happened. One incident was worth being suspicious over, but the problems only escalated with time. It became necessary to enter the safe house only through the underground tunnel system, to triple check that they weren’t being followed at every turn, and though Sidonis and Garrus weren’t getting along as they once had, the influence of the mercenary groups forced his presence, necessitated his help in keeping the team safe while still making headway on their original goal.

But it was just as Sidonis had said—kill one merc and two more take their place. They weren’t any smarter for working with the other groups now. If anything, their inability to get along well with each other made their attacks disjointed and gave Garrus and his team the upper hand. But there were more of them to contend with each time, and every member of the team was showing signs of fatigue from the constant pressure.

As stony as silence with Sidonis could sometimes be, the impending war with three vast and prolific merc groups forced conversation and confrontation—if they couldn’t communicate with each other they were doomed.

“What’s the end game, Garrus?” Sidonis asked, monitoring the vid screens that kept watch over the tunnels below the warehouse. “It’s only going to get worse. Sarise broke her wrist yesterday trying to outrun two krogan so we’re down another man. We have to make a decision about the future of this team.”

Garrus bristled, refusing to look at Sidonis as he responded. “There were several months where you barely involved yourself in this and you’ve only come back because it’s safer here for you than out in the open where the mercs can get to you. What am I supposed to say? We can take them on if we can get to their leaders. Cut off the head, and the body will fall.”

“You sound insane. Spirits, Garrus. Do you know how many bodies we’d have to mow through to have even a chance of getting near any of them? Jaroth is too smart to take any risks that we could exploit, so is Tarak. Even Garm, who’s a complete blood-thirsty idiot, has so many vorcha at his disposal we’d never stand a chance.”

“Espionage, then. I’ve worked with the salarian STG and a Spectre, I…”

“Yes, I’m well aware of your history, Garrus. This isn’t one of your escapades from your time on the Normandy. You don’t have the benefit of someone like Shepard who actually knows how to handle these situations. You aren’t a Spectre and we don’t have Shepard here to save your ass when you inevitably do the stupid thing and go after these merc leaders anyway!”

His voice was laced with such anger that the words felt like a punch to the gut. He was giving voice to all the nagging self-doubt that had hounded Garrus from the moment he stepped foot on Omega.

I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I can’t do this without help.

I can’t do this without Shepard.

He hoped—perhaps naively—that nearly two years of surviving on Omega would rid him of the self-doubt, that leading a competent team in an effective (if not endless) assault against the mercenary groups would assure him he was capable of being a leader. But in the back of his mind was that constant voice, sometimes his own, sometimes his father’s.

You’re not good enough, you’re not trying hard enough, you’ll fail at this like you’ve failed at everything else in your life .

For a moment he let Sidonis’ words eat through some of the rough armor he’d built up around his heart, but then it was Shepard’s voice he heard, penetrating a wall of anger and resentment; something she’d said to him during one of their restless nights in the mess hall.

“You’re always putting yourself down, Garrus. I don’t understand it. I’ve seen you in the field. You’re a phenomenal soldier, and anyone would be damn lucky to have you by their side. I know I am.”

Steeling himself, he turned to face Sidonis.

“I’m going after them. You can leave or you can stay, but it won’t change my mind.”

And, to Garrus’ surprise, Sidonis stayed.

Part V - Resurrection

Bad became worse, but not once did anyone on Garrus’ team complain or think about quitting. Even Sidonis, reluctant to remain involved as he was, hadn’t voiced dissent since they’d decided to find a way to get to the leaders of the mercs. Garrus realized it was very likely a suicide mission, that the logical end to their escapades was—at the very least—his own death, but if it meant he left a dent in the crime on Omega, it would have all been worth it.

Sidonis was involving himself in more field work than ever before, and it was one of his field missions that sparked the beginning of the end. He’d left to attempt a raid on a small stash of explosives belonging to the Blue Suns, but he’d been lost to contact for two days. Garrus began to fear the worst when he finally reached out in his typical fashion with a short, simple message.

“Dealt with the cache. Got some intel on the Blood Pack in the process. Meet me in the Kenzo district. Garm might be there.”

The message explained his prolonged absence. If he really had found good intel on the Blood Pack, and if they might be able to catch Garm in their sights, it was logical to lay low and make sure the intel was correct. Sidonis had, as of late, come through with several useful tips that had served the team well and stemmed some of the endless flow of cannon fodder that found them at every turn. If this intel was good and they could take down Garm, it would mean chaos for the Blood Pack and buy them a little time.

So he left the Kima district alone, leaving the team in the safety of the warehouse. He had doled out more dangerous assignments to his men in the past months, but he was still hesitant to give them something as risky as taking on the head of the Blood Pack; they were still his responsibility and as competent as they were, it wasn’t worth risking their lives.

Kenzo wasn’t far from Kima, and two years spent traversing every inch of the station had built up a musculature Garrus had never known, even during his time in the military. It made him faster, leaner, and stronger—all necessary improvements living somewhere as dangerous as Omega.

The coordinates Sidonis sent took half an hour to reach—a half-filled warehouse with busted in windows. He approached with caution, scoping the area and sticking to the shadows.

“Where are you?” A single message sent through his omni-tool.

[RECIPIENT UNREACHABLE]

It didn’t make sense for Sidonis to be outside the range of service, unless there was a signal blocker further on in the warehouse. Garrus’ gut told him something wasn’t right.

He always listened to his gut.

Still, he ventured on deeper into the warehouse, winding around boxes, moving as silently as his large frame would allow, listening for any sign of danger. Through a set of doors, he found himself in a room with no cover, just wide empty space with a single, flickering light hanging from the ceiling and a familiar krogan standing directly beneath it.

“Archangel. So glad you could make it.”

Garrus remained close to the doors; a retreat would be the only option without cover.

“Garm. I was hoping I might find you here.”

Where was Sidonis?

“I’m sure you were. I have to tell you, your friend didn’t want to give you up so easily, but he was very forthcoming with a little coercion. Told us all about your little hideout.”

Garrus felt his stomach seize into a knot as the realization of what had happened smacked him like a brick to his head. It was a trap, a ploy to get him away from his men. Sidonis had told the mercs about the hideout. For a moment, he felt like he might be sick.

“No...no it’s…”

“Go ahead and run, Archangel,” Garm laughed. “We’ll know where to find you. And you won’t have your team to back you up anymore...as long as the Blue Suns kept up their end of the bargain.”

Every fiber of Garrus’ being was screaming for him to run, but he felt glued to the spot, revulsion mingling with anger in his chest. It wasn’t until Garm lifted his gun that Garrus’ mind caught up with the present and he forced himself to flee, turning back through the doors, winding through the cluttered entrance to the warehouse, and running as fast as his legs would carry him back to the Kima District.

How could he have let this happen? Why had he let himself trust anyone? He and Sidonis may have had their disagreements, but he still trusted him, valued him, saw him as a brother. That trust had been for nothing—he’d sold them out at the merest threat of personal harm.

Deep down, Garrus knew he would never make it back in time to save his team. Panting into his omni-tool, he sent a single message to his men:

“Blue Suns coming. Run!”

There was no thought for his own safety as he wound back through the Kima District, through the tunnels he desperately hoped Sidonis hadn’t warned the mercs about, up into the warehouse he had called home for the past two years.

His gun was raised, but there was no need. The carnage within stopped him in his tracks. The Blue Suns had already come, and had left a grizzly note warning of their return, painted in a mix of blue and red and purple blood across the wall of the kitchen:

“You’re Next.”

The bodies lay strewn about the kitchen and the living room, across the stairs and slumped over the barrier overlooking the first floor. Each of them was riddled with gunshots; the mercs hadn’t just killed Garrus’ team.

They had massacred them.

Garrus was barely aware of his surroundings in the several minutes following his arrival back at the warehouse. He fell to his knees, his body cold and shaking, unwilling to grasp the full reality of what had happened. Ten good men and women, ten people he had trusted with his life, had sworn to protect, lay dead in pools of their own blood, weapons at their sides.

This was his fault.

He emptied the contents of his stomach three times. Too numb to cry, his rage quickly replaced every other emotion in his mind.

Get yourself together, Garrus.

If the mercs were going to come for him, he wasn’t going to make it easy.

The first order of business was to take care of his team. With tremendous effort, he forced himself to his feet and began the slow, emotionally and physically arduous process of lining the bodies up and drawing tarps and blankets to cover them. He stood for a quiet, contemplative moment in front of the row of bodies and said a silent prayer to the spirits; he wasn’t sure if he really believed in an afterlife, but if there was one, he knew his men were finally at peace.

Once that was taken care of, he turned to fortifying the warehouse. If they knew where he was, he stood the best chance of taking them on from the sniper’s perch upstairs, which overlooked the only access point to the front of the building. He depleted his entire supply of explosives rigging traps in the tunnels and along the bridge, he stockpiled ammo in the sniper’s nest, moved his entire stock of food and water there as well, barricaded himself in the room by overturning furniture and boxes, and waited.

This would be the end, that much he knew. If he left the warehouse, the mercs would find him and finish him—there was nowhere safer to hide on Omega. He had to stay, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight; it was a disservice to the lives his team had sacrificed to run now. He would hunker down in his sniper’s nest and fire off at every merc they sent until he had no ammo left to fire, until he drew his last breath.

And if he did survive, by some miracle, he promised himself then and there that he would find Sidonis, wherever he was, and make him pay for what he had done. It was a greater betrayal than Garrus had ever known or ever thought possible; only his desire to fight for the cause his team died for kept him from fleeing the station that moment to go after Sidonis. He was surely long gone by now if the Blood Pack hadn’t killed him already.

He expected the mercenary groups to come in a rush, but they came instead in a steady trickle, constant and annoying like a leaking faucet, but not unmanageable. None of them succeeded in reaching the warehouse itself, dropping like flies along the bridge. After the first day, the bodies littered the bridge and, by the second morning, the stench of death had permeated the entire complex; the mercs were too afraid of being shot to bother trying to retrieve the bodies. It was a sad sign that so much time on Omega had numbed Garrus to the odor.

Enough men had rushed the bridge that the mercs were actually banding together to come up with a better solution to the issue. He couldn’t glimpse much from his nest, but he knew that the Blue Suns had access to a gunship, and the other groups had mechs in their arsenal. Those would be the end of him, he was sure, but until they managed to bring out the heavy ammo, he would keep picking off their men.

Days passed and his supplies dwindled. He kept himself awake day and night with a constant, steady stream of stim injections. He knew that if he fell asleep, even for a few minutes, it would mean his death and, as inevitable as death was at that point, he had to prolong his life if only to kill a few more of the pathetic scum who had destroyed his life so quickly.

The extranet kept him informed on some of the comings and goings of the groups. They were recruiting anyone with a gun from a rented room in Afterlife, which explained the steady decline in quality of oncoming assaulters.

Half of them barely made it onto the bridge before Garrus caught them in his sights and ended them with a single shot.

Still, he knew the weak new recruits were just to wear him down, to tire him until he could stand it no longer, and he was quickly reaching that point. It was nearing a week stuck up in the sniper’s perch. His food was gone, and he was rationing his water in sips just enough to survive on, but not for long. Only the stims kept him up and running, and even then he felt slightly delirious from lack of sleep mingling with lack of food and a constant state of vigilance.

The mercs afforded him few breaks, but the fact that they were recruiting incompetent idiots out of dance clubs meant he’d actually made a dent in their troops, which in turn gave him a few rare, short moments of solitude. He would have preferred a relentless onslaught, because any time alone left him time to reflect on how all of his mistakes had culminated in this early grave.

Was his mother still alive? Did his family think him dead already? Why had he been so bull-headed with his father? All of his critique, all of his frustration—it had clearly come from a place of love.

He knew if he tried to reach his mother it would be his end, but the end was coming soon enough and if he could make right one of his many mistakes before he died, he was going to try.

For the first time in years, he called his father. The response was almost immediate.

“Garrus!? Garrus is that you?”

“It’s me, dad.”

“Spirits, Garrus, you’re alive!” He could hear his father’s subvocals warbling, choking back a sob. “Where are you? Where have you been? We thought you were dead, we…”

Gunshots ricocheted off the concrete barrier of the sniper’s nest and Garrus leaned up weakly, firing off a shot that downed two mercs at once. He retreated to cover with a sigh.

“Where are you, son? What’s going on? Are you in trouble?”

“Dad, I wanted to say...I’m sorry about how I was. I should have listened to you more. I’m sorry I’m such a failure, I…”

“You’re not a failure, Garrus. Children have butted heads with their parents since the dawn of time. Do you think I stopped loving you because we didn’t get along? What kind of father would that make me? I was hard on you because I love you. You’re my only son.”

Another round of fire, which Garrus ended as quickly as it began.

“Where are you?” His father demanded again.

“Target practice,” Garrus sighed. He wondered if he sounded as tired as he felt. “Mom and Solana, are they…?”

“Solana’s with your mother in the hospital right now.”

So at least his mother was still alive.

“You’re at target practice…” It was clear his father knew the situation was direr than that. Still, he played along. “You should keep your head clear. Remember what I taught you about a steady grip for moving targets. If your arms aren’t steady-”

“My shot won’t be either,” Garrus finished.

“Remember what I taught you, son. As long as you have one bullet left, you can still get the job done, no matter how bad it seems. You take care of this and you come home. Your family misses you...I miss you.”

Garrus was about to protest; this wasn’t a situation in which Castis Vakarian’s wealth of advice would help. He was closer than he would have liked to admit to reaching his last bullet, and there was no conceivable way of escaping this mess.

Gunfire interrupted his rebuttal. He lifted his gun, peered through his scope, and lined his crosshairs up with the oncoming merc’s chest, only to feel his breath catch in his throat at the sight of a gleaming white and red N7 logo.

It wouldn’t be her, of course, but what would any N7 be doing on Omega running hits for mercs?

It was stolen armor, that was all.

Still, he lifted his gun higher, only allowing himself a view of the oncoming figure through the lens of his scope. And there she was: a ghost in his sights, face framed by red hair. It was shorter than he remembered, and new scars marred her freckled skin.

Had he died? Or were these the final hallucinations of his starving, dehydrated body?

“Garrus?” His father’s voice jarred him back to the present.

“I love you, dad. I’ll remember your advice. I think my luck just changed for the better.”

With that, he ended the call. If these were the last desperate dreams of a dying man, then he would embrace her ghost without a struggle as a gift from the spirits in his final moments. If it wasn’t a dream, if she was really crossing the bridge, headed his way, then he knew he would make it out.

She would find a way.

He picked off the humans and vorcha streaming in behind her and two of her companions he didn’t recognize, then he slumped back against the barrier and allowed himself a moment of peace, though his heart was pounding in his ears.

How sweet it would be to find the peace of death in her embrace. He was so very tired, and what else was there to live for? His team was gone, his family had survived without him, and he had done all he could do for Omega in his short time there.

Thank you, spirits, for sending her to me.

Still, after two years of trying to forget, his heart reminded him of what he felt.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, rounded the corner until she was standing before him flanked by her two companions.

“Archangel?”

Her voice was just as he remembered, and he truly couldn’t tell if she was real; she seemed to be, he could feel her presence. Alive or a ghost, he felt safe regardless. He was at peace. With a sigh of relief, he removed his helmet and flicked his mandibles into a weak smile.

“Shepard.”