We can do a quick scout. Take what we can. Maybe come back with a bigger team to cover more ground o
Who: Shepard and Vakarian What: A life changing field trip to the Citadel When: 1/28, late afternoon/evening OC time Where: Space, the final frontier Status: complete Rating: PG-13
Jane hadn’t believed it at first. The Normandy’s computers had suddenly gone crazy. They’d registered huge amount of eezo, and then told her it was a Mass Relay. She’d had the system run a check three times before she’d taken the Normandy out towards Pluto. And there, floating serenely in space was something that was simultaneously the best thing Shepard had ever seen, and the worse.
Back to Earth, she’d texted Garrus excitedly and sent a shuttle down to pick up him, and now waited anxiously for it to return. Her message had simply said she’d needed him on board - and to bring his weapons. And that they were about to go on a life changing field trip.
If by anxious, one meant pacing the cargo bay, at any rate.
Maybe Shepard was drunk. Which was an entirely possible scenario, he wouldn’t put it past her - part of him suspected she had a form of post-traumatic stress disorder from everything they had dreamt. It was war, she’d been the leading force throughout it all and carried the burden of decisions that tore alliances apart and caused an entire race to be extinct. It was hard to not worry about something of theirs transcending worlds, too, just like everyone else. And it was hard to not miss certain sights, certain people. The Normandy had been their little piece of heaven, another home that often remained bone bare. It filled the hole, and maybe that was the most things would transfer.
Garrus tried not to contemplate it too much. It was easy to lose yourself in another life you couldn’t control. He wanted to live this life, with all the time he had left - Cindy literally dying in his arms shifted the perception drastically. He’d keep his focus on this Earth, his marriage, becoming a godfather, and then -
Shepard texts him.
With that.
Spirits. Fuck.
He came armed and armored, his Turian gear modified to fit a more human shape. Visor equipped, his best sniper and assault rifle strapped to his back. “Garrus Vakarian, reporting for duty, I guess,” he announced, out of the shuttle. “But you’ve got to be shitting me.”
Drunk? Shepard? Naaaaah. Though okay she occasionally indulged but usually when she felt somewhat morose, but she'd been in a generally good mood lately. It didn't always mean that the dream PTSD was okay but Shepard was Shepard and she refused to see anyone about that. Ever. Or about how she could see the ghosts of her crew on her ship sometimes. Not that they were dead, but she could feel their absence keenly.
She was already armored up herself, everything but her helmet. She jumped right into it. "I found the Mass Relay, Garrus. It showed up. Just past Pluto. I've already keyed in a jump to the Citadel. Best case we don't find anything."
Garrus had hoped nothing massive would pop up. The Normandy, one thing. The goddamn Mako, another. A Mass Relay? Maybe it was the cynic in him, but his stomach sunk. Sunk so far down he could almost shit it out. “Worst case is that we do,” he echoed, paralleling the response with one that they were both clearly thinking.
He suppressed a sigh. Well, good thing he’d been working with the gun battery, and some other things for regular maintenance - he wasn’t a genius engineer like their Quarian squadmate but he did his best. They did their best to keep this vessel in the best shape it could be; it was too important to them otherwise. “Any chances of NASA detecting it? Or any other country? Last thing we need is human intelligence opening Pandora’s Box.”
“No. It’s hidden by Charon, and out of view of that probe last year too. No one is going to see it until someone sends another robot.” The ride up to the CIC took an eternity and Jane nearly burst out before the doors had fully opened. She was better at flying than she was driving, but she wasn’t Joker. She needed Joker. Joker beat the hell out of help from automated systems, but at least they could get them to Pluto easy enough.
The worse case scenario weighed on her mind, but there was also a sense of excitement. Being cooped up on Earth or the Normandy had been bothering her. “Ready for a great adventure?”
“A great adventure that can lead us to a potential disaster?” A soft snort, behind her all the way - like old times in a far away timeline. Garrus wasn’t all that excited, not really. Right when you think life finally calmed down for a moment of peace, something else sprung up to disturb it. A typical Orange County hiccup. Waking up with tits, maybe. Or in someone else’s body.
This? He didn’t know. “Ready as I’ll ever be for one,” he said, narrowing glacial eyes to the outside. The vastness of space, its mysteries and every possible synthetic-organic starship hidden in the deepest crevices. He could hear them. Those sirens. In his sleep, even when he wasn’t dreaming about everything that happened - from Saren to the Collectors, to the final waged war with the Crucible. “And glad as fucking ever to know the world is still too technologically behind to detect all this any time soon.”
An OC hiccup would probably be a damn sight better than what they could potentially find at the end of this particular rainbow. Jane rubbed her jaw, the Mass Relay coming into view as they slowed to below light speed.
Every night mare she had. Every vision of the city destroyed as she walked through it. It all hung inside her heart. "I'll have to inform the agency. But I need to know if there's a threat to worry about first. Or if this is just..." She gestured. "The dreams giving us a chance to jumpstart the species. Without the downside." But she wasn't an optimist.
Garrus had to let out a low whistle at the sight of it - something a part of him almost didn’t believe until he saw it, and he saw it. Hell, he never thought he’d lay eyes on something of that massive proportion. It didn’t bode well with the other things that could potentially become reality, and all it did was fill him with dread. Anvils and anvils of dread.
He was visibly tense, the muscles of his jaw tightening. He wasn’t an optimist either. Not after all they’ve dreamt. All the destruction, the death. Who would be? “Hope for the best, expect the worst,” he advised, the back of his hand passing against his brow. “I’m going to go on a Negative Nancy spew and say I don’t like this, Shepard.”
Spirits only know what else would follow. Hostile geth was his preference. Anything beyond that, they were far from prepared.
It was huge. Too huge. Bigger than anything humans had ever put into orbit. Shepard crossed her arms, all but feeling the dread pouring off of her friend. She glanced at Garrus, then nodded her head. "You know, we probably have enough firepower in Orange County to hold off the Collectors or Geth. Or one Reaper. Maybe even two."
But if there was an invasion. A full scale Reaper invasion, she didn't know what they'd do. Not without the Crucible. But there were other threats, now that Garrus had mentioned it. Batarians. Vorcha. Krogans. The Galaxy was a dangerous place, and something told her there was no Council to keep everything under control.
"I can send you back in a shuttle, if you want."
One hotspot of massive firepower on a microscopic spot of the entire Earth wasn’t enough to fight off an invasion, not even close. It knotted his stomach. The very potential reality of what if, now that the Mass Relay was in sight. Concentrated bursts of clusterfucks that was specific to just their area was one thing - Reapers were a different story, they’d always be a different story.
“Nah,” Garrus chuckled mirthlessly, the corner of his mouth tugged into a smirk. “Nothing we haven’t handled before, right? It’ll come. Muscle memory.” Her biotics, his impeccable aim. On foot they were a damn good team. But this was theirs, something only they shared. He’d have her six, hell or high water. He was staying put until they found out just what the hell they were dealing with.
Shepard cracked her knuckles, then leaned over to start the jump. She murmured, mostly to herself, “Joker, take us in” and wished that she could push the dreams away as well as Garrus did. Make a family. God she wanted to make a family, she just didn’t think she deserved one.
For the first time in this reality, the Normandy jumped through a Mass Relay. Shepard had never had the words to describe how it felt, but it was familiar in a way that was terrifying.
They popped back into real space, the ship soaring through a nebula. And there, growing in the distance, was the Citadel.
It got closer and closer, and Shepard sighed. “Fuck…”
But there was no response on the radio, no chatter, no other ships to look at. The Citadel was lifeless and abandoned, though the arms still clearly held the city that had been built on it.
Terrifying familiarity - it sounded like an accurate description when it came to finding the words on how the fuck to explain what it felt like to get sucked through some kind of intergalactic portal. It left as quick as it arrived, and Garrus almost wasn’t sure if all his bones were in place.
Not that it mattered. It all could be picked apart later by bittersweet reminiscence when his feet touched Earth again, but now his attention had been caught by the colossal deep-space station. He remembered all the ships docking in, leaving, the lights - how alive it felt, with its melting pot of different alien races (and the racism). Now it looked dark. Dank, empty, dead, especially with the lack of signal.
“Going to assume we’ll be checking out what we can, Shepard?”
"I want to see the Presidium. And the Spectre office. We should check out C-sec too." She was thinking ahead. Weapons. Armor. Materials. Fuel. Anything she could get her hands on and take back on the Normandy in case they couldn't return to the Citadel. Maybe later she'd visit Anderson's home. Her home. But she'd do that part alone.
"If there are Keepers, than I'm going to be worried." Was there a way to tell if the Mass Relay inside the Citadel was live?
His own thoughts echoed hers when it came to the conclusion of resources. Just an abandoned apartment had bits and bobs that could be useful at home; the Citadel was advanced, beyond its time, once thought to be a construction of Prothean brilliance. If all things functioned right and well, a potential home for civilization that wanted to live outside of Earth. Which, in this day and age, would literally be an astronomical discovery.
But that was exactly how you opened Pandora’s Box. All these things - the Citadel, the Keepers - were all to facilitate galactic genocide every couple billions of years.
“Depends on who they respond to,” Garrus sighed, a rumble in his throat, and leaned in to punch a couple things into the ship’s system - time to prepare for an official land and dock. “An entire home for a civilization can’t be searched by two people on foot in a sol day. We can still scan this place as a whole, can’t we? Without EDI. For anything. Considering how much of a ghost town this all is, the smallest peep would be a loud alarm on the radars.”
That astronomical discovery, the technology and the jump in human society might be the only thing giving them half a chance against the Reapers.
It was true though. They could spend weeks and still not cover a quarter of the Citadel. Hit a few places of interest in a day, but that was it. She nodded at Garrus. "Run the scan. Focus on life signs and eezo. We need to know if we’re alone here and the more eezo we have the better off well be. I want to salvage any weapons but we can probably find the good stuff at Spectre and C-Sec." And probably some of the criminal hide-outs.
They’d scan entire planets and launched probes to collect resources, they could sure as hell see what the Citadel had in store. Maybe with a little more resistance; most celestial bodies they scavenged didn’t have massive city-like structures built all over, but Garrus was confident they’d get at least some information to go off by. Check the gravity levels, make sure air wasn’t contaminated. Best to know all they could before they set foot with just their guns and skills strapped to their back.
“I know you Spectres had your own weapons acquisitions,” he smirked, another set of holographic buttons mashed beneath his fingers to set off the scan - all they had to do was wait for the results. “Get enough futuristic weaponry, we can probably supply the entire Agency with the good shit.” And, yes, he’d calibrate them all too to make sure they were at top functioning efficiency, it’s what he did.
If there even was air. A massive structure with no one to breath it’s atmosphere, it was incredibly creepy. Shepard folded her arms, studying the readout. “We can probably fill the cargo bay with enough tech and weapons to outfit three Agencies. Good idea.”
The scans confirmed what she already suspected. No life signs, nothing unsurprisingly. There were fuel depots and eezo supplies, and more tech than could fit into a hundred Normandys. A lot of little things that added up and could help against most threats they might face from peoples’ dreams, if not a Reaper invasion.
“It looks like it’s safe to board.” Even so, her feet felt rooted in place. As though boarding the Citadel would make it real.
Garrus was attuned enough to her that the hesitance was rather…apparent. And he understood it, too. Spirits, did he fucking understand. Something of this massive scale should almost be unreal, but they were staring at it point-blank and about to dock the ship, and there wasn’t anymore denying this: mass relays existed here, and so did the Citadel, in its lifeless and haunting sight. It brought memories, both good and bad - and he tried, tried to keep a steady grip on the good.
Sad thing was, there weren’t a lot.
He took her elbow gently. “Come on,” he said, motioning towards the airlock. “We can do a quick scout. Take what we can. Maybe come back with a bigger team to cover more ground on foot?”
There was some good. She’d met Garrus on the Citadel. Wrex. There were good memories of Anderson and Kaiden and Ashley and Liara and all the people who weren’t present. Bad memories too, but that was the only time the good outweighed the bad. When it came to people.
“Won’t that be a fun field trip for the kids?” Shepard headed towards the airlock, shouldering a shotgun. The airlock cycled, and she got her first breath of alien air. It smelled hauntingly familiar.
What waited for them on the other side was the sound of machine silence. The kind of sound where there was no life but machines and equipment. She headed down the ramp and looked around. “I guess we don’t need to worry about security.”
Odd, to think that the first vibrant memory of the Citadel had been when they were on shore leave. Anderson’s direct orders, they all needed some ‘down time’ with what was going on. For mental sanity and clarity, otherwise he was sure the stress of everything would have eaten them all alive. It’d been nice, to pretend that nothing was going on outside Shepard’s extravagent apartment - where all of them were, drinking, eating, their last official ‘hurrah’ together before it all came to a bittersweet end.
Garrus could almost see the ghost of people - humans, krogans, turians, salarians, quarians, even the floating hanar and a waddling volus. Violet neon lights, the C-Sec uniforms, Avina’s hologram. “Post Reaper War?” he asked out loud, tapping the side of his visor. A reassurance of any possible lingering heat signals, which had only been theirs for now. “Where do you want to head first? C-Sec and the Spectre office are almost guaranteed goldmines for weaponry.”
“I suppose we’re not going to find the council sitting with their asses up their thumbs,” Jane said, after a long moment’s thoughts. “Weapons first.”
Maybe it was post reaper war, but everything was in too good a shape for that. There was no rubble. She wondered if she could access the catalyst without the crucible attached. And what that would do. God, she hoped the creepy space boy wasn’t there. Shepard didn’t think her sanity could survive meeting him again.
Vakarian was okay not running into any council members. Politics were messy, galactic politics even worse - guess that was a thin silver lining, though at the moment it was generally irrelevant.
Everything, however, was in working order. Habitable order at that. Moving a colony kickstart a civilization would be seamless. A worrisome deduction, but he tried to focus on keeping his eyes peeled for the unexpected on their trek to C-Sec headquarters. He half expected to be greeted by Cerberus expendables, maybe see Bailey against the doors with a bullet wound and cursing up a storm - but like everything else in this space station, it was empty.
“Maybe before we go,” he began, accessing the terminal to gain them access inside. These lines of codes, he remembered. Tali had taught him a couple tricks throughout their relationship. “We can go up high, to my favorite spot of the Citadel.” A grin was flashed her way. “Friendly competition, if you’re up to it.”
Those ghosts of Vakarian’s seemed to flow around them as they walked. There, Shepard remembered a Hanar spreading the word of the enkindlers. Or there, other people she’d helped. She could almost hear the vehicles over head. The bustle of thousands. The din of a dozen languages.
His suggestion brought dust to her eyes, and she smiled back. “I’m always up for it. I’m sure we’ll have time.”
Doors lit green, they hissed opened, and with a rifle readied he took the first step in. Still cautious, even though at this point it all seemed unnecessary - but old habits died hard, he supposed. “Coast’s clear, though not like we can expect otherwise,” he mumbled. “Weapons first, shooting trash second, then I guess we...process all this, on the way back.”
Garrus would likely bring Cindy along for the next trip. An extra set of feet and hands to scout and take more tech, and to just show her what was out here - because the Citadel was beautiful, even when it seemed dead.
“You know what’s like old times?” Shepard said. “Slow elevators.”
Navigating the citadel was surreal, and part of her was glad to be in a more confined space again. While C-Sec was almost kind of home to Garrus, the spectre office was almost kind of sort of home to Shepard. She’d never spent much time here, even after being reinstated. Just enough to pick up information, and check out new weapons.
And the weapons, well there were quite a few ready for the taking. She picked up a rifle and tested its weight.
And that’s when she saw the light on the communications terminal. Then her omnitool notified her there was a message for her.