Epilogue: Embraced

Tiersa slapped another round of medi-gel onto her shoulder as the ship lifted off from the Earth. Her parents…all three of them…had spent half their lives on spaceships, but she had never been on one until now. Adrienna stared out the window as the ship blasted upwards, breaching the atmosphere and leaping into the black canvas.

Soon, the engines died down to a steady hum. Adrienna watched Tiersa apply the medi-gel to the bullet wound on her shoulder. She frowned at the crusted scab of purple blood on Tiersa's shoulder.

"Do you need any more?" Tiersa asked, but Adrienna shook her head, turning away to look outside the small window as Earth drifted away behind them, becoming smaller and smaller. Tiersa knew exactly what Adrienna had to be thinking.

That's where he was. Where they had left him. What was left of him.

Tiersa had known that they wouldn't be able to bring him: a ten-year-old human and an adolescent asari dragging a six-foot-tall turian back into the skycar while a flood of mercs rained bullets upon them. Adrienna wouldn't leave him, though—even after they both saw his eyes go cold and glazed. Adrienna blew the head off the merc with the missile launcher and raced to his side. The other mercs held back for a moment.

And Adrienna started tugging on Garrus, screaming at him to wake up, to get up. Then falling back into a whimper, telling him it was safe—even as Tiersa could see the mercs regrouping in the building. That it was all going to be okay. The child parenting the father. Tiersa knew that he was already gone. The street was slick with his blue blood. She knew he had to be dead, but she still reached forward with Adrienna, shaking his shoulder, pulling his scarred face towards her and screaming into it that he couldn't be dead. Because they still needed him.

Then, another wave of mercs had rushed from the buildings. Tiersa threw a shockwave down and toppled the first line. And then she watched as Adrienna pulled the Mantis from Garrus's talons. She stood over him, firing the Mantis over and over again—wincing as the kickback punched back into her small shoulder without her usual stand to support it. Tiersa had pulled up a barrier, had grabbed Adrienna's shoulder and told her that they needed to leave. That if they both died now, his death would have been for nothing.

Adrienna had fired off another shot at an oncoming merc before sprinting behind Tiersa's barrier and throwing herself into the skycar. Only when she was in, Tiersa dropped her barrier, pulled the hatch on the skycar closed, and gunned the engine, taking them away from there.

Bullets still rang against the back of the skycar as they raced away.

Tiersa hated that the mercs had won. They'd wanted him dead. And now he was.

There was no returning to the house, not after this. Tiersa had already gathered all of her mother's Broker files into a few disks that she'd stowed carefully under the seat. As the skycar sped away through the streets of Vancouver, she set the skycar to cruising speed and then started to pull Archangel's armor off, piece by piece. It had been so heavy: throwing out even those barriers had been difficult. She and Garrus knew that it would hamper her abilities, of course, but it had never been the plan for her to do much more than provide a stunning biotic distraction while Garrus took out the majority of the mercs. It had been her responsibility to get Adrienna out of there; his responsibility to deal with the mercs. Her stunt with the commando…well, that hadn't really been part of the plan. But Tiersa didn't regret it, either. She felt like Miss Nought would have been proud of her for that one.

After she had pulled off the armor and slapped some medi-gel on her shoulder wound, Tiersa placed her hands back on the wheel. Then, as she steered the skycar out onto a main skyway, she keyed Tali's coordinates into the console.

"What are you doing?" Adrienna asked.

"We're going to those coordinates that Garrus got from Tali. The ones he said to use if we were ever in trouble."

"What?"

"We can't stay here, on Earth," Tiersa said slowly, calmly: convincing herself even as she tried to convince Adrienna. "We need to get off-world. Rannoch will be safe for us. And Tali…she'll need to know that he's…" Tiersa couldn't bring herself to say aloud that he was dead.

Tiersa pulled Adrienna against her. The small human buried her swollen face in the asari's shoulders and wept in shuddering gasps so violent that they seemed too large for her small lungs. Tiersa felt too stunned to cry. Garrus Vakarian was dead. And they had left his body behind—probably to be found by Alliance MP and thrown into some incinerator with a "John Turian" toetag tied his feet…It was a horrible thought. And it was yet another loved ones' body that she wouldn't get to bury. Keeping one hand on the wheel, Tiersa stroked the back of Adrienna's head with the other, letting her weep for both of them.

When Adrienna had exhausted herself, she dozed fitfully against Tiersa's shoulder. The skycar took them out of Vancouver: north along the coast and then east into the mountains. The skycar turned off the main skyways and into the dark, only the occasional guidance light illuminating the way through the cedars and rocks.

Finally, after several hours, they descended into what seemed to be a valley. Here, again, there were lights: pale blue lights that shone into the sky. They could see a docking platform with a spaceship settled comfortably beside it. White figures moved silently around the platform, like ghosts in the twilight: the single lights in each of their faces floating eerily across the ground.

Tiersa had never seen a geth before, except in the vids, but she pulled Adrienna from the skycar and tried to stand as straight as she could as one of them approached. The flaps above its light—was it an eye?—flicked at her. The motion made it look almost surprised. Could geth be surprised?

"What is your purpose here?" it asked them.

"My name is Tiersa T'Soni. This is Adrienna—"

"—Vakarian," Adrienna burst in, before Tiersa could say anything different. "My name is Adrienna Vakarian."

Tiersa shot her a look.

"Or Arterius. She has been known as Adrienna Arterius as well. We're…we're with Garrus Vakarian. We need to get to Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch. She said you could help us."

The geth flicked its eye flaps at her for a moment. She had no idea what to make of the expression on its face. It occurred to her that it could kill them right there and no one would know what had happened. They were alone, out here in the wilderness. They were completely at its mercy.

"Please," she begged to the unit's impassive face. "Please, help us."

"Where is Garrus Vakarian?" the geth asked.

Tiersa didn't know what to say. She opened her mouth, then closed it. The geth tilted its head at her, shining its eye from her face and then onto Adrienna's. When it spoke next, its tone had shifted slightly…Tiersa may have imagined it, but she was sure that she heard sympathy braided into its digital tones.

"Is Garrus Vakarian's mobile platform no longer functioning?" it said to Adrienna.

The human only blinked in response. Tiersa bent down.

"I think… I think it's trying to ask you if he's dead."

"I know that," Adrienna said, turning away. "I just…I don't want that to be true. This is some nightmare. We'll wake up and everything will be okay again, just like it was before. That's what's going to happen." She dropped her voice to a whisper, no longer speaking to the geth or to Tiersa. "I've had nightmares like this before. I'll just wake up and everything will be okay. Like it always is."

Tiersa didn't know what to say, but Adrienna didn't seem to expect an answer. She just turned back to the geth beside them.

"Yes," she said to it, "he's dead."

The geth had apparently heard what it needed to hear. Several other units broke off from their activities on the platform, marching towards them. One of the taller units reached into the skycar and pulled out the armor that Tiersa had disgarded. Carrying the armor in its arms as if it were nothing more than empty rags, it started to walk down the slope, towards the platform.

"Stop!" screamed Adrienna, rushing forward. "Don't take it away! Please!"

The geth they had been speaking to whirred at her, seemingly confused by her reaction. The unit carrying the armor simply kept going, without stopping.

"We are taking it to the ship. You will be going there too. It will leave for Rannoch shortly. This unit was to depart in approximately seven-point-seven-one Earth days. But your arrival means that we will prepare for an emergency departure as per the instructions of Creator Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch." It whirred at them, still watching Adrienna's tear-streaked face with an expression that could have been fascination or concern. Tiersa couldn't tell which. "Please follow me."

They walked with the geth down to the ship. Tiersa realized that they had nothing more than her pistol, Adrienna's rifle, Garrus's armor, and the precious Broker datapads she clutched tightly to her chest. She glanced behind them and saw the geth swarm over the skycar. Even before Tiersa and Adrienna reached the platform, the geth had dismantled the skycar, reducing it to a pile of parts. Then, Tiersa watched over her shoulder as the geth walked away in perfect synchronicity just before a charge exploded, reducing the skycar to dust. She and Adrienna now had no way back out of the mountains: they had to wholly place their trust in these geth.

The ship was unlike anything Tiersa had seen before, not even in the history vids. It was smooth and white from a distance. Yet, as they approached, she realized that it wasn't made of metal at all, but of some almost chitinuous substance that almost resembled a polished version of turian plates. And now, looking closer, she realized that the geth themselves were composed of the same substance. It reminded her of a trip to the seashore with her mother, when she had been very young. She could remember discovering the beauty that could be found in the underside of a shell: the geth and the ship almost had the same sheen to their exoskeletons. She wondered if they'd always looked like that, but she thought that it was probably the work of The Synthesis.

The geth placed one of its hands up against the ship. As it stared at them with its one eye, tilting its head towards the ship, Tiersa realized it wanted them to do the same. She reached up and Adrienna followed suit. The familiar prick of a network being established crawled through Tiersa's fingers and up her arm. Suddenly, she could sense the ship's personality, but it was vast and fractured, as if there was more than one mind at work within it.

Whatever the ship needed, it must have gotten, because the door slid open. The geth unit accompanying them entered, then gestured with spidery fingers that they should follow it. The interior of the ship was dim, stuffed with wires and tubes: more like the innards of a living thing than the polished, comfortable interior of a vehicle.

"Wait…how long will it take to get to Rannoch?" Tiersa asked, her foot poised over the threshold.

The unit's flaps flipped up at her.

"Approximately one-point-eight Earth Years, Tiersa T'Soni."

Adrienna stopped and stared at Tiersa with her brown eyes. Tiersa felt her stomach drop. Almost two years inside this ship until they reached Rannoch. She knew that, out of her own lifespan, that was a trivial amount of time, but for Adrienna…and she was human and only a child at that. Two years might as well have been forever.

"We don't have a choice," Tiersa said, more decisively than she felt.

But she waited a moment before stepping into the ship. She looked around. They were deep into the mountains now: only the top edges glittered with the faintest dusting of the dawn's coming light. In Vancouver, though, she could imagine that the sun was already beginning to lighten the fogginess of the night. She thought about how they had just left him there, lying the street. She wondered if the sunlight would find him too.

Then, breathing Earth's air out of her lungs for the last time, she stepped into the ship.

Tiersa watched the geth outside the ship busy around it and, in what seemed an astonishingly short amount of time, she felt a low rumble under her feet. The geth who had spoken to them was seated across from them. Tiersa wondered who was piloting the ship. Although the answer, she supposed, should have been obvious: it was piloting itself.

She felt the ship leap away from the surface of the Earth, shooting upwards through the atmosphere and then shrugging off the last of Earth's gravitational pull.

Tiersa asked the geth if there was any medi-gel. Her shoulder was starting to sting again. The geth had nodded, gotten up from its seat, and then disappeared around a corner that Tiersa hadn't realized actually led to more of the ship. It was all so close and packed with shadows and wires. And she and Adrienna were stuck on it for two years. The geth returned with the medi-gel and she spread it gratefully onto her shoulder.

Tiersa followed Adrienna's gaze as she stared out the window as the vastness of space swallowed up Earth: the only home either of them had ever known. And where he still was, lying in the street.

The blue tattoos across Adrienna's still-swollen face made Tiersa's stomach churn. The mercenaries…it was disgusting to do that to a little girl. She wished they had managed to kill more of them. But she didn't tell Adrienna that. Instead, she leaned forward and placed her blue hand on Adrienna's shoulder.

"We'll find someone…a doctor or something…who can get that tattoo off your face, okay? It will be easy. They've got loads of different surgeries for fixing stuff like that."

Adrienna pulled away, her eyes wide and staring.

"It's okay," Tiersa continued. "We'll take the markings off. It'll be like it never happened."

"No!" Adrienna burst out suddenly, her voice sharp and raw.

Tiersa drew back, shocked at the ferocity in her voice. The geth sat up suddenly, whirring in alarm.

"Don't you dare try to get rid of them!" Adrienna screamed. "I'm keeping them! I—"

She'd never heard Adrienna yell like this before. It was unnerving.

"Adrienna, please," Tiersa said, shaking her head. "What they did…it's appalling. You don't need to be reminded of that every time you look in a mirror. Goddess, I don't want to be reminded of it every time I look at you. We'll get rid of them."

"I don't…" Tears started streaming down Adrienna's face, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "…I don't want to get rid of them. I earned these."

Tiersa stared at her, confused.

"They…they kept asking me questions," Adrienna said, looking away. "About Dad. About me. Even about you, Tiersa. Where you had come from. What you were doing here. Who your parents were. I didn't tell them anything. And…and it hurt so much. Every time I wouldn't say anything they stuck another needle of blue ink into my face and—"

Tiersa grabbed her and pulled her close.

"Adrienna…I'm so sorry…"

But Adrienna looked up into Tiersa's face, her brown eyes shining.

"But I still didn't say anything. If I had, maybe the pain would have stopped, but then…then I wouldn't be this."

"Be what?"

Adrienna pulled herself up in her seat and reached for the folded Mantis beside her, drawing it close.

"I wouldn't be Vakarian."

Tiersa watched her for a moment, but Adrienna stared back, her gaze cold and determined. Tiersa knew that this was a stupid idea. The tattoos would make Adrienna instantly recognizable. If there were any turians on Rannoch, Tiersa was fairly certain that a non-turian wearing facial markings would be considered the worst kind of insult. And it wasn't exactly psychologically healthy for a ten-year-old to wear the trama she had suffered so clearly on her face. Tiersa knew that she needed to convince Adrienna that the tattoos needed to go. But, as she looked back into the young humans' dark gaze, she knew that simply wasn't going to be possible.

Besides, Tiersa knew that Adrienna was right.

"Okay," she sighed. "Okay. I promise I won't make you get them removed."

Adrienna nodded. Then, she smiled.

"It's not like you could make me even if you tried," she said softly.

Tiersa smiled sadly as Adrienna leaned against her. The ship's FTL drive rumbled to life beneath their feet. They both watched out the window as Earth disappeared in a blur of motion and as the stars were suddenly smeared into sparkling streaks. Tiersa had never been in space before, but she was surprised to find there was a cold comfort in the emptiness of it all: out here, there was no one who could hurt the people she cared about. A list which had now been whittled away to one. Tiersa looked down at Adrienna again.

"I promise," she said quietly, "that I'll keep you safe."

Adrienna didn't say anything, but continued to stare out the window as Earth disappeared and the stars welcomed them into their sparkling embrace.