Chapter Text
Months had passed, months that simultaneously had the breathless speed of days and the awful weight of years.
They"d left Palaven and the beleaguered turian forces behind, and were cruising in deep space. It was the beginning of the Normandy"s night cycle. Garrus was flipping through the contents of Byron"s datapad; at one file he stopped, went back, and enquired "Shepard, why do you have this?"
Shepard raised his head sleepily and made out the black-and-white cover of Armoured in Skin on the screen the turian was holding up . "Birthday present."
"Some present." Garrus had opened the file and was browsing through it, evidently appreciatively. "From who?"
"Would you believe it was my mother?"
"Having met your mother," Garrus said after a moment"s consideration, "yes, I would, because her sense of humour is as bad as yours. I thought she usually sent you embarrassing novels?"
Shepard shrugged. “She thought I needed something cultural to read in jail.”
" "Read"," Garrus repeated, sceptically.
"Hey, I read it. Cover to cover. More than once, too."
"I"m sure you did," Garrus said, with harmonics that went all the way down Shepard"s spine.
*
Weeks later - maybe months, he was losing track of time; it all blurred together - Byron cursed, for the hundredth time, whichever genius had invented the omni-tool alarm setting that couldn"t be switched off until it detected wakefulness and verticality. It took him some minutes to achieve either. The bed was cold; Garrus was already up.
"Commander," EDI said over the intercom as he headed blearily for the shower, "It is your mother"s birthday. You asked me to remind you. I have determined the local time at her last known posting, and she should be free to take your call in approximately five hours."
"Thanks, EDI."
"Have you settled on a present?" EDI prompted.
"... Damn."
*
Shepard walked into Liara"s office ten minutes later, cleaner, and marginally more awake. Coffee had helped.
"Liara, do you know anything about poetry?"
"That"s a bizarre question from you." Liara minimised what she was working on and turned around, leaning on the edge of the console. "I mean, I"ve read some. Written some, though not for decades. I"m hardly an expert. Why?"
"My mother"s working on the Crucible," Byron explained. "It"s her birthday. She likes asari romantic poetry. I always used to send her really awful stuff as a joke. I think … she could probably use something better."
"Couldn"t we all," Liara said, and bit her lip, thinking. "I assume she"s read the classics, if she enjoys the genre."
"Probably. She reads a lot."
"What else does she like?"
Byron shrugged. "Detective novels? Engineering textbooks?"
"I"d forgotten she was an engineer. I think I may have something." Liara called up her omni-tool and scrolled through indexes until she found the file she wanted. "This is a collection from the time of the rachni wars, written by a married couple - she was a technician; her partner was on the front line. They wrote poems to one another, and to their children. It"s not very well known now because - well, they were both asari. There"s still prejudice." She hesitated, colouring faintly. "I … included a copy in my time capsule. To show the people of the next cycle the kind of art we made."
"Sounds perfect. Can you send a copy to my terminal?"
"Of course." Liara entered the commands to her omni-tool. "Is there anything else you wanted to talk about? I was partway through a file."
"No, that"ll be all. Thanks, Liara," said Byron, and left the room.
*
Several hours later, he leaned on the console in the comm room and watched the static as EDI attempted to make and hold a connection with the distant - and extremely classified - location where the Crucible was being constructed. It took almost a minute for the signal to coalesce; he uploaded the file with the poetry collection while he waited.
Finally the projector produced a coherent image, and Byron pulled himself to attention, and saluted. "Admiral Shepard."
She had an electronic cigarette with her this time, as well as the ever-present cup of coffee. She brewed it like rocket fuel; he"d gotten the taste from her. She looked exhausted, but was smiling. "You"re never going to stop doing that, are you?"
"No, ma"am," Byron said, grinning. "Happy birthday. For what it"s worth."
"Birthdays are a human thing. Don"t think Reapers have them." Admiral Shepard took a drag on the cigarette and stared contemplatively into the middle distance. "Hell, that"s enough of a reason to celebrate. Thanks, kid."
"How are things where you are?"
"Better than they could be. Worse than we"d like. We"re working in the dark here." She shrugged, tapping the cigarette absent-mindedly on the console in front of her. "And yet - the amount of new science coming out of this - it"s crazy. Breakthrough after breakthrough; I"m seeing the history of my goddamn discipline get rewritten and I can"t even stop to think about it because of all this … this. I guess it"s how the biologists feel about the genophage cure. Should"ve been a book. A hundred books. Instead it"s a footnote." She shook her head. "If we get through this, I"m retiring. Gonna get a cabin up a mountain somewhere and write about exotic materials stability in megastructures. See if you can deliver next year"s present by yak."
"Jean"d divorce you," Byron pointed out. "She hates the cold."
"Yeah. Didn"t much like it when she got here," Admiral Shepard said fondly. "Turns out one of the perks of being an admiral is you can order Maintenance to turn the damn heating up. Small mercies."
"She"s with you?"
Hannah Shepard nodded. "She"s here. I told Hackett I wouldn"t take the promotion unless she came with me. No idea how many regulations he had to ignore, but he made it happen." She shook her head. "I"m not proud of that." Her voice cracked. "But I wasn"t about to go without her, not now. So the hell with it."
"You do what you need to. I know I couldn"t do this alone."
She took another drag and eyed him worriedly. "I hadn"t thought of that. You heard from Garrus?"
All his life she"d made a point of remembering his boyfriends" names. Even when they came and went with bewildering frequency, or featured consonants humans found awkward.
"Ran into him in the turian defence on one of the moons of Palaven." And the thought still brought him out in a cold sweat sometimes; nightmares of arriving an hour earlier or later, and never crossing paths with Garrus at all, or finding him dead. In another life … "He came with me."
"A turian - abandoned - the fight - on Palaven - for you?" The Admiral"s voice held genuine surprise. "Damn, By. I don"t know much about turians but even I know that"s a hell of a thing. Hold onto him."
His omni-tool flashed; EDI was polite enough not to interrupt, but he was needed.
"Trust me, I will," Byron said. "I have to go. Tell Jean I said to look after you. And enjoy your present."
"Til next year," Admiral Shepard said, and cracked a smile. "Assuming we get one. I love you, kid."
"You too, mom."
She signed off.
*
Later that day, Byron sat on the observation deck, and opened a bottle he"d bought on the Citadel some time ago, and had been saving.
Garrus wandered in a few minutes later, undoubtedly prompted by EDI, carrying his own bottle. "What"s the occasion?"
"It"s my mother"s birthday. We never get to celebrate together, so we do it apart.” Byron poured a careful measure from the bottle before resealing it and setting it down. He swirled the glass absent-mindedly with one hand, and shook his omni-tool into life on the other. "EDI, which direction is the nearest relay?"
"On our current heading, almost directly behind."
"Thanks," said Shepard. "Joker?"
"Yes, Commander?"
"Bring us round … ninety degrees to starboard, will you?"
“Sure thing,” Joker said, after a moment’s pause. The comm went silent again with a blip of static, and a few seconds after that Normandy swept into a long, lazy turn. The starfield wheeled sideways outside the observation window.
Garrus looked from the window to Shepard, glass in hand, and said "Did you just divert I don"t know how many tons of top-of-the-line warship so you could wish your mother happy birthday?"
"Garrus. We"re in the middle of a war. We go where we"re needed, flight plan be damned. We"re on Palaven and it"s Oh, would you mind stopping by Tuchanka?" Shepard rolled his eyes. "We"ve done stupider things than turn the ship around for thirty seconds to wave at a relay."
He turned back to the window and looked out, at the still-again stars.
"Cheers," Garrus said, and reached out to clink his glass against Shepard"s.
Shepard looked at him, and down at the glass, and up again, and they drank in silence.
*
These Things
Margeire Versaeris B"Heyl (487 BCE - 289 CE)
These things are comforts: night, the engines" hum,
our corporal singing softly to herself,
the pull of gravity made by a sun
and not a field, your picture on the shelf,
your voice replayed.
These things are talismans:
three hanging moons, the rifle"s cooling weight,
the rings you gave me, henna on my hands,
the icon on the bridge, tomorrow"s date.
These things are reasons: homesteads burning, hurt,
the gravity of fear, too-recent past,
mothers and daughters, sires, absent friends,
familiar bones in unfamiliar dirt,
things asked but not yet done, things never asked,
a chance to rest, the promise of an end.