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[saintjimmy43]

Today was the five year anniversary of her son's death. Five years, she thought, as the cab descended down the maintenance tube towards her destination. Already five years? As she shifted in the seat, the hole in her gut keened painfully, and the more figurative one in her heart throbbed like it had been made just yesterday. Already five years...

Every year on this day, Mrs. Annette Reynolds left her upscale, view-of-the-Presidium highrise, and went down to one of the wards, where a cab and an escort would be waiting, having been arranged ahead of time (Mrs. Reynolds didn't like to go alone down on the wards - even if Cerberus was long gone, anything could happen, and she didn't need another stomach wound to remind her of how vulnerable she truly was). Mrs. Reynolds would have been comforted by the presence of a krogan ally, but precious few had been spotted even remotely near the Widow relay ever since the end of the war; today she would make do with an asari.

Municipal Port C. A fancy name for a garbage chute, but not many people care what you call a garbage chute, do they? Mrs. Reynolds came down here once a year, and no matter how busy the new Citadel had been, no matter how many festivals, protests, or busking performances had been thrown, no matter how much political upheaval, political backsliding, xenosocial reconstructing, or tax code modifying had taken place, no matter how chaotic or dull a year had gone by, the machinery at Municipal Port C never ceased in its function: the trash was sent down, compacted, and incinerated.
Party hats, fliers, priceless lost heirlooms...everything that came to Municipal Port C was burned away, into nothing. While she watched the garbage burn, Mrs. Reynolds tried not to imagine how quickly her son had lasted in the furnace's fires.

Twenty-six years. Mrs. Reynolds had only been investing for five years before she had recieved the news that she was pregnant, and even then she knew how large of a commitment a child was. The numbers alone were boggling - how many credits had she poured down that hole, believing the return would be everything she had ever wanted? Forget the credits - how much love had she poured into her son, how much time? There was no loyal customer bonus for this purchase: twenty-six years, some easier than others, and the product had been recalled.
To make matters worse, the return on this one had actually been very promising. She did all her accounting herself, but offhand she'd never have been able to calculate the amount of pride she'd felt when Thomas had been initiated into C-SEC after the geth attack, the youngest human ever to be accepted into the ranks. Such promise, such potential!

And it had all been for nothing. Thomas, for some reason, had buttered his bread on the other side. His loyalties had lain not with the turians he called his comrades, but with the zealots in Cerberus. And what had the return on his investment been, when he lowered the security grid and betrayed his fellow officers for the men in yellow and black? They had opened a hole in his head, and she had caught some shrapnel in her gut during their rampage as well. 
She ran her hands over the scar - why couldn't it have been her heart? The bullet that took Thomas' life had taken her spirit, too. What use did she have for a life this empty? If only humans could be recycled, she might be living as someone else's mother now, rather than the lone mourner of the man known only as 'a Cerberus defector.'

Defector. She disliked that label. Defect, defective. She'd come across the word all the time as an investor, when the product didn't meet original expectations. A defective product meant a default on a loan, and she had to play the bad guy and extract her hard-earned credits from debtors who had gambled them on defection, on trash. But now she was the debtor, the gambler who'd lost, the producer of trash.

Whop. Crunch. Screech. Hiss.
Municipal Port C was hard at work, grinding up trash and burning it away into nothing.
Thomas had been chucked down Municipal Port C, she had found, after the attack was over and the bureaucratic nightmare had been navigated; after sleepless nights and countless auditing of lists of casualties, she had found that Thomas had been unceremoniously discarded down Municipal Port C by two vindictive C-SEC officers who had survived. No burials for a defective C-SEC officer. No raising or lowering of flags, no presenting of posthumous medals. And why should there be? Why celebrate defection? Why honor a defector? Her inability to accept the logic of this still bothered her.

The thing that bothered her the most, though, was when it had happened. Not how it had happened, and not why, but when it had happened.
Had Thomas been carrying around the seed of defection in his head? Had it been a time bomb, destined to go off at the worst possible moment for her? Or had this been a corruption of an otherwise pure mind, an....indoctrination, of sorts. Had her good little boy gone bad, or had he always been? Had she been investing in a defective product, or a defective line? These were the questions that kept her up, when the wound wasn't. These were the things she couldn't parse.

"Ma'am," said the asari - Elnora, was her name. "Someone's coming." Mrs. Reynolds broke out of her meditation long enough to confirm it: there was definitely someone with a non-human gait, judging by the clanking, approaching around the corner. She brushed the ghost of wetness from her eye before she faced in that direction.

It was a turian, battle-worn by the look of him. Half of his face had been badly burned, or maybe been run over by a tank - the other half sported a crescent-shaped targeting visor for the rifle folded up on his back. The gun, and his armor as well, had enough nicks on them to make it apparent that they had seen nearly as much action as he had.

He slowed once he saw them.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, his voice pleasantly gravelly, with a good depth to it. For a moment she imagined he might be quite attractive, despite the scar, to any lady turians who might frequent this part of the Citadel, but the hypotheticals here were too many for a legitimate commitment to be made to that thought - if a lady turian had even been spotted on the Citadel, what reason would she have to come here? Come to think of it, what reason would any body have to come down here? She doubted his reason was as emotional as hers. "I didn't think anyone would come down here." His face looked familiar - maybe she had seen him in a vid of the Reaper War?

"No funny business, right?" asserted Elnora, her hands glowing conspicuously blue. The turian's good eye narrowed.

"You look familiar," is all he said, which in itself was enough to make the asari blanche.

"I'm...s-sorry?" she asked, all traces of machismo destroyed, like a cube of trash in the furnace at Municipal Port C. "I d-don't...k-know..."

His eyes hadnarrowed to the point of slits now, in fine counterpoint to her ever-widening ones. "I think you're going to remember soon enough. Do it far, far away from here."

Panicking, the asari backed away, looking desperately at Mrs. Reynolds for assistance. There was none to be had, though, so, with one last look at the rifle peeking up over the turian's shoulder, Elnora fled like the room was on fire.

"I'm sorry," apologized the turian. "That woman....it's not fair that she's still alive, after all this, and others aren't. I hope I haven't inconvenienced you."

"Asari are mono-gendered," pointed out Mrs. Reynolds blandly, as a matter of course - many of her clients were asari, and the asari in her echelon of society made a point of differentiating themselves from those that might grace the cover of Azure, playing the feminine object of desire for slavering males - anything to pay the bills, she supposed. She was no better, before venture capital had spilled its secrets to her. "She was acting as my escort. I suppose you could replace her."

What remained of the turian's face curled up into a smile. "I suppose I could, ma'am."

"Good. I don't like to walk around the wards alone. Not since my son d-" For five years she had not been able to say it. Today was no exception.

"I see. And this is your vigil? But...I'm sure a woman of your stature could've had him added to the memorial on the Presidium?" He leaned against the guardrail and joined her in watching the chute do its work. "Or did you come down here to avoid all that, like me? I had my own spot on the Presidium, but C-SEC revoked my access when they heard I was breaking regs. Down here is the most solitary I can find." Yes, he was definitely familiar, probably from a vid somewhere...

"You're C-SEC?"

"I used to be." That thought alone made him smile again. "I used to be a lot of things. C-SEC, Spectre, freelance, the Primacy...I even worked for Cerberus, before they turned on us." Yes, this man was definitely familiar.

"You're Garrus Vakarian." It was not a question so much as a statement.

He did not deny it, but he was not in the mood to discuss it, it seemed. "Your son, how did he die? If you don't mind me asking."

"Cerberus' coup attempt. He was C-SEC. He-"

"He died bravely, then. Fighting for what he thought was right? I suppose that's better than simply being caught in the crossfire," he mused. Her wound throbbed angrily.

"No. It was worse. He....he..." for five years, she had not told a living soul. No real records of it existed, save for a transcript of a brief interview she had been allowed with the two men who had dumped her son to be incinerated in Municipal Port C, and even then the names had been censored. Her family, as far as anyone knew, had been innocent victims of Cerberus' insanity. "He...was the defector. He lowered C-SEC's defenses for Cerbus. He-" her voice choked out there, but it was enough: the good eye he regarded her with was inscrutable.

"Fighting for what he thought was right," insisted the turian. When she didn't respond, he continued. "When I was working for Cerberus, I knew the Illusive Man had his plan, and I knew the Commander had his as well. But when I supported my commander, I supported Cerberus, and when I fought for one, I fought for the other. When the Citadel was attacked..." he broke off, blinking angrily, but then continued in earnest. "When the Citadel was attacked, I couldn't help but think that I had helped the Illusive Man reach that point, somehow. That in giving him that Collector base, we had made Cerberus strong enough to rampage across our space."

"But...that wasn't your fault, what he did," protested Mrs. Reynolds. 

Garrus' glare was not cruel, but insistent. "I could say the same for you, ma'am."

She had no response - there was no response to give. It had not been a question, but a statement. It's truth could not be doubted. Investing in it could only result in high yields.

He sighed and dipped his head over the pit, watching some of the larger, non-compactable waste collect by the airlock doors for secure ejection later. The defective trash, so defective it couldn't even be disposed of properly...the notion was amusing, even in Mrs. Reynold's battered state. When Garrus spoke again, she barely heard him.

"I wondered when it happened," he remarked absently, to nobody but himself. "I wondered if he was indoctrinated at a specific point, or if he had always had their seed inside him. If he was just waiting, playing off of our trust, incubating his disaster. I wondered..." This time, when he broke off, he broke off for good, and he turned to her with renewed vigor. 
"Let's go get a drink," he said congenially. "I might have a friend waiting at the bar."

[saintjimmy43]

oh, yeah:
so I suppose you could figure this out on your own, but the playthrough this would have been set up for would be a slightly renegade shepard, who killed Dr. Heart with Garrus, sabotaged wrex's genophage cure, let Elnora go and didn't turn in the evidence, and gave the collector base to TIM. and also a high-EMS control ending to preserve the original Citadel. thanks for reading!

Modifié par saintjimmy43, 28 novembre 2012 - 05:06 .

[fluffywalrus]

Very well done Interesting tale, doing this from the mom of a Cerberus sleeper agent. I really liked her way of thinking, it seemed very consistent and valid to her profession...even more so after she probably used her work as a means to hide her grief over it all, judging by how she words many of her thoughts.
Liked that Elnora was there too, and Garrus

Anywho, great work!

[saintjimmy43]

fluffywalrus wrote...

Very well done Interesting tale, doing this from the mom of a Cerberus sleeper agent. I really liked her way of thinking, it seemed very consistent and valid to her profession...even more so after she probably used her work as a means to hide her grief over it all, judging by how she words many of her thoughts.
Liked that Elnora was there too, and Garrus

Anywho, great work!

thanks, that's nice =)