Chapter Text
The apartment was dark.
He preferred it that way.
Beyond the wall of glass that stretched across his living room, the Citadel burned with light. Towers and walkways curved away into the distance, their countless lights glowing against the vast structure of the station. Far below, the enormous reservoir caught fragments of it dancing across it's still surface.
It was a view that would have stopped most people, but Laiel paid it no mind. He had seen it too many times for it to be anything more than background noise. Instead, his attention was on the bottle in his hand.
The bottle was a rare import from Palaven, difficult enough to acquire on the Citadel that he reserved it for evenings when he had no intention of going anywhere afterward. The formal upper portion of his attire had already been discarded somewhere between here and the door, leaving him standing at the kitchen counter in the relative comfort of being off duty.
At least, as off duty as a Councilor could ever truly be.
He tilted the bottle over his glass, watching as a thin stream of amber liquid caught the distant Citadel lights and glowed briefly as it fell. Then his hand shifted, and a small amount missed the glass, running across the counter. Laiel went still for half a second before exhaling sharply once with a soft curse.
The curse was quiet, more tired than angry.
He set the bottle down and turned, reaching for a dish towel nearby, catching it just barely by the talon, The fabric was rough beneath his fingers as he brought it back to the counter and wiped away the spill.
It was only as he moved that the light caught his forearm, and he paused with the towel still clutched in his grasp, simply looking at the mark for a moment.
Three angular bands interlocked across the skin of his inner forearm, each seeming to pass over and beneath the others in a pattern that made no immediate sense to the eye. A thin circular boundary surrounded them, though even that was broken in places where the bands cut through it.
A quiet scoff escaped him, not at the mark itself, but at the certainty with which his younger self had once accepted the idea.
"Again."
Anoli did not look up from her datapad.
Laiel stood in front of her, staring expectantly.
"Again," he insisted.
That earned him a glance.
His mother sat on the bench outside their home, one leg crossed over the other as the late light of Cipritine settled across the street. She had only recently returned from duty and still looked tired, though there was a softness in her expression that never seemed to disappear when she looked at him. "You've heard this story before."
A young Laiel nodded eagerly. "But I want to hear it again."
For a moment, Anoli simply looked at him. Then her mandibles fluttered with quiet amusement. "Of course you do."
She set her datapad aside and placed one hand gently on top of his head and he leaned into the touch without thinking. Her subvocals hummed softly as she began, warm with the kind of affection that only existed for him and his father. "I had just gotten off duty," she started. "It had been a long shift. I was working late trying to catch someone who had decided that running from a detective was a good idea."
Laiel grinned. "Did you catch him?"
Anoli gave him a look. "Eventually."
He seemed satisfied with that answer.
"I was exhausted," she continued. "Barely awake by the time I reached the transit station. I remember standing there waiting for a ride and wishing the shuttle would arrive before I fell asleep on my feet."
Laiel's eyes widened as the story reached the part he already knew was coming. "And then?"
"And then my mark began to warm."
His gaze immediately dropped toward her arm. Anoli noticed, her amusement deepened. "I was so tired I barely realized what was happening. I thought perhaps I was imagining it."
"But you weren't."
"No." She smiled. "I wasn't."
He leaned closer as Anoli's eyes drifted toward the street as though she could still see it. "There was someone working on one of the shuttles nearby. A mechanic. He had one of the panels open and was trying to repair something."
"Dad."
"Yes. Your father."
Laiel's mandibles shifted excitedly.
She continued, "I heard something hit the ground. Loud enough that even I noticed."
"What was it?"
"His tool."
Laiel's eyes widened. "He dropped it?"
"He did."
"Why?"
Anoli looked back at him. "Because his mark had started to warm too."
Laiel pressed a hand to her leg "When I turned around, he was standing there staring at his hand." Her subvocals softened. "And there it was." She tapped lightly against her leg. "My pattern."
"And that's when you fell in love." The words burst from Laiel before she could continue.
His mother laughed. It was a quiet sound, but genuine. "Oh?"
Laiel nodded emphatically. "That's what happened."
"Is that what happened?"
"Yes."
Her mandibles fluttered again before she leaned forward, and Laiel barely had time to smile before she pressed her forehead gently against his. The contact lasted only a moment, after which she pulled back and settled once more against the bench. "Well, of course, my little one." Her voice was soft. "He was the one the spirits chose for me. How could I not love him?"
He considered that with all the seriousness only a child could possess before stepping back and shifting his attention to his own arm. He pushed his sleeve up as far as he could, then held it out toward her. "Does that mean..." He looked up at her. "Does that mean the spirits really put this mark on someone else too?"
Anoli looked down at the pattern, then back at him. "Yes."
The answer came without hesitation and Laiel stared down at his arm, his eyes relaxed into a pure happiness.
Laiel blinked and the memory vanished leaving the apartment to settle around him once more in darkness and silence. For several seconds, he remained where he stood, the dish towel still clutched in one hand.
Then he scoffed quietly. His younger self had possessed a remarkable amount of confidence in things he knew absolutely nothing about.
He had learned early that believing something and knowing it were not the same thing.
He finished wiping the counter and set the towel aside before reaching for his glass. The liquid caught the pale light as he lifted it and for a brief moment his gaze fell again to his forearm. The mark remained, cold as it always was. He raised the glass to his mouth and took a long drink.
When he had been a child, it had seemed simple. Somewhere, somehow, another person carried the same pattern and eventually he would find them. That was how the story was supposed to go.
Then he grew older and learned that life rarely cared for the stories people imagined for themselves.
There had still been curiosity, of course.
He had been young then, with a future that still seemed impossibly large and he had more than enough time to fill it.
His first years of service had been filled with more immediate concerns. Training demanded his attention. So did the expectations placed upon him, the endless routines, the lessons, and the constant pressure to prove that he could serve as more than simply another body standing in formation.
Still, curiosity had a way of finding its place in the quieter moments.
The subject of the marks came up more often than anyone would have admitted. Usually when the officers weren't around and there was nothing more important demanding their attention. Someone would notice another studying their mark or someone would catch a glimpse of someone's mark and the conversation would begin from there.
Someone always knew someone who had found theirs. A cousin, a sibling, a friend of a friend stationed three systems away. There had even been a fellow recruit whose older sibling had found her soulmate in an asari.
The revelation earned little more than a moment of surprise before the conversation moved on. The mark did not care about species, and everyone knew that.
Somewhere in the galaxy, two people could carry the same pattern regardless of what they were, where they had been born, or how impossible their paths might seem to cross.
Laiel remembered listening more than he spoke. That had always come naturally to him. He remembered sitting among the others, his attention appearing fixed elsewhere while the conversation carried on around him. Every so often he found himself looking down at his own arm. There was nothing unusual about the mark, nothing new, nothing warm.
Yet the question remained, the quiet, foolish, and persistent.
Who are you?
He had never said it aloud, but he wondered whether they would be turian, someone he might meet during his service or perhaps someone stationed aboard the same ship one day, or whether they would be somewhere else entirely.
At the time, the possibilities had seemed endless, and perhaps that had been the appeal of it. The mark was a question without an answer, a promise without a date attached to it.
He had told himself there was no reason to think about it too much. If the spirits had truly placed his pattern on someone else then perhaps their paths would cross eventually.
Perhaps.
At that age, it had been so easy to mistake possibly for certainty.
Laiel took another drink as the Citadel continued to glow beyond the window, indifferent.
For a while, he had believed it was only a matter of time.
But time had a habit of filling itself.
The years of training gave way to the routines of service, and those routines eventually became something more familiar than the quiet stretches of his childhood had ever been.
There was always something that required his attention, a duty to complete, a superior to answer to, or a problem aboard ship that needed resolving before it became something larger. Laiel found that he was good at listening, at hearing what people said when they believed no one important was paying attention, and better yet at getting them talking about things they weren't meant to say.
It was a skill that followed him from one stage of his life into the next. From boot to training to service aboard the Gythium to the responsibilities that came after, he learned quickly that people were often willing to reveal far more than they intended if someone simply gave them the space to speak.
And Laiel listened.
His career advanced.
With it came new expectations, new responsibilities, and eventually, responsibilities that no longer ended when his assigned shift did.
The question on his forearm began to occupy less and less of his thoughts, not because he had found an answer, but because there were always other things that needed answering first.
At first he still noticed. A new face, a crowded transit terminal, a gathering where he found himself surrounded by strangers. For the briefest of moments, that old question would return. Then nothing would happen, and life continued.
Eventually, even those moments disappeared.
He could not have said when it happened.
There had been no decision. No particular morning where he had looked at his forearm and declared that he was finished wondering. Life had simply demanded other things of him until somewhere along the way it all just stopped.
He finished the last of his drink and looked down at the empty glass in his hand for a moment before reaching for the bottle and pouring himself another. Then he picked it up and turned away from the counter.
The kitchen opened into the living space, the apartment arranged so that the massive window remained visible from nearly anywhere within it. Laiel crossed the short distance to the couch and lowered himself onto it. Only then did he allow himself to settle, his shoulders easing by degrees beneath the weight of the day. There was no one here to see it. No aides, no diplomats, no cameras, and no expectation that he stand perfectly still or choose every word with care.
Just silence.
He lifted the glass and took another long drink. He sat in the darkness, the glass resting loosely in his hand as he stared out through the window.
Somewhere beyond those lights were billions living lives of their own. Some had found their soulmate, others never would.
For him the spirits had decided something different.
His entire life had led him elsewhere. One duty giving way to the next. He had accepted each responsibility as it came. Done what was expected of him, and eventually he found himself here.
His life was no longer entirely his own.
Whether he was ever intended him to find someone or not, it no longer mattered. He would serve his people. He would serve the Galaxy.
Laiel raised the glass once more feeling the alcohol burn pleasantly as it passed his throat. He lowered the glass back down and leaning back against the couch, closing his eyes.
He had made peace with it.