Chapter Text
Their train arrives outside an old white building covered in scaffolding. “It was damaged during the war,” Anna tells them. “But since the building is still usable, it isn’t as high a priority. We got the tracks repaired three months after the end of the war, to help our supply chain, though shortages are a constant problem.”
It’s a small town, reasonably far from a turian embassy. If he can’t get food…
Mara Weber, noticing the expression on his face, quickly adds, “We have enough dextro food supplies. Several villagers grow plants inside their homes, and a family outside town has a greenhouse full of produce that they sell to the Hierarchy. There is a regular delivery of meat from London so I’m sure you could get whatever you like added onto that order. Spices are difficult to come by, and Anna has trouble importing silk to use to make the scarves she sells. In general, what we need to remain alive is available to us.”
He hasn’t had fresh food since before evacuating the Citadel. Jessica has a few times, but in general they’ve been living off nutrient paste and ration bars.
“There’s a family with an entire greenhouse full of dextro crops?” He can hardly believe it.
“They’re a human-turian family,” Anna says.
“This town is pretty,” Jessica says, looking around as they walk.
The buildings are unlike any he’s ever seen in his life. Surely they can’t be safe in the event of another war - could they? That makes him uncomfortable.
“So Chicago is bad?” Anna asks them.
“No functioning government to speak of, which means no proper police, or other emergency services. If you get shot - which is real damn likely because it’s full of mercs, pirates and smugglers, nobody will come and help you. So, you actually have a government here?”
“The European Union government fell,” Mara says. “Our government is municipal, and our mayor has taken on responsibilities that are normally the responsibility of other levels of government. That has prevented us from falling into anarchy. Several additional elected representatives were added to act as voices for the town’s residents.”
“Whatever works,” he says, grateful that at least Jessica won’t end up getting kidnapped or shot here. Generally he tends to prefer the way the Hierarchy handles matters - he’s seen a few idiot politicians on the Citadel end up elected. But, then again, the Hierarchy has promoted a few idiots too, so no system is perfect.
They arrive at the town hall and step inside and they’re asked to surrender their weapons. A reasonable request - though not one he would have agreed to had this been Chicago. “Are we safe?” Jessica whispers to him.
“Remember your lessons, just in case,” he whispers back to her.
He didn’t just teach her how to shoot; he taught her hand-to-hand combat, and she’s now good enough to toss him on his ass at least half the time they practice.
Anna speaks with someone at the front desk, who wanders away, returning several minutes later with Castis Vakarian. He stands tall, trying to look as professional as possible, wishing he could have changed and showered before this meeting. It’s probably in his head, but he’s always felt so filthy after shuttle trips. “Sir, it’s good to see you.”
“Tiberius Beatrix. You’re late,” he says and he nods at Jessica. He introduces the two of them and they walk to his office - a small room at the end of a carpeted hallway. One of the chairs is made for turians, which pleases him, and the desk was built with turian ergonomics in mind.
“My daughter-in-law is excellent at carpentry,” Vakarian says when he notices him staring. “It is a recent addition to the office; for the last few years I was making do with human-sized furniture.”
It’s so odd to hear him casually reference Commander Shepard as his daughter-in-law. Even weirder to know she’s apparently into carpentry, of all things.
“So…I’m late, sir?”
“Primarch Victus got in contact with me and indicated he’d recommended you come here, hoping you’d figure out why. When you never showed up, I assumed you thought him mad and disregarded his advice.”
He hasn’t expected that from Victus. He didn’t even know that him and Vakarian know one another.
“It was pretty strange advice, sir. But we needed to come up with the credits to pay for the trip. Eezo shortages mean shuttle travel is… well. Why such veiled advice, by the way? He could have been forthright.”
“There are cameras everywhere, and he did not want to risk word getting out about my family’s location. They value their privacy, so I’d ask for your discretion. Primarch Victus told me you were trustworthy; a conclusion I’d come to myself in our time working together at C-Sec,” Vakarian says.
“Nobody knows they’re here?” Commander Shepard is possibly the most famous person in the galaxy. How can no one truly know she lives here?
“The odd person has figured it out, but our neighbours have shown themselves to be respectful of their privacy. They are civilians now and not soldiers and expect to be treated as such.”
He’s only ever spoken to Commander Shepard a couple of times, and even then, only about matters pertaining to the turian refugees her and Garrus were helping. All he really knows about her is what was reported in the news so he’s always imagined her as this larger-than-life figure. Definitely not a civilian.
“So, uh… do you still need an assistant or something? I can file paperwork or process residency permits or whatever else I’m needed to do. Hell, give me a broom and I’ll clean the place. Just want to live in a place where Jessica has a future.”
“I do not need an assistant or janitor.”
“Oh.”
Well, perhaps he can get a job elsewhere in town. With all of the damaged buildings, he can probably try to get work in construction.
“I need another officer. The threats the village face primarily come from outside our borders. Shortly before Primarch Victus emailed me, a group of roaming mercs thought to threaten several business owners here in town. While they were arrested successfully, it occurred to me that I need more staff than I currently have. My son got in touch with Primarch Victus on the off chance he knew of someone, and evidently he did.”
C-Sec refused to make him an officer because of his medical condition - it’s only fair he disclose it here. “I’m - honoured, sir. Truly. But did Primarch Victus not mention my health condition? C-Sec stuck me in a desk job because of it.”
“I’m not C-Sec any longer,” Vakarian says bluntly. “You still know how to hold a gun, I assume?”
“I’ve had more practice than I’d like these last couple of years,” he says grimly.
“The job is yours if you want it. Primarch Victus was most complimentary of your skills. While I hope not to ever need an explosives expert, it is prudent to have one on staff.”
An actual officer job. He can hardly believe it - though he does briefly wonder if there would be the same indifference towards his health condition if they weren’t a just a few years past the war. Lots of people died - many of them good and talented people.
Still, all that matters is that Jessica will be someplace safe. That he has a decent job is just a bonus.
“Yeah… I‘ll take the job. Didn’t think I’d just show up and well… I appreciate it.”
“Give a list of any prescription medications you and Jessica need to Yvonne at the front desk. She’ll ensure they’re ordered for you.”
“I won’t be able to pay for them for several weeks - I’ll need to find us somewhere to live and come up with rent, and…”
They don’t have much in the way of credits between them. Maybe enough for a hotel room for a few nights while they wait for his first paycheque.
He doesn’t ask about salary because so long as it’s enough to eat and live on, he’s happy. Vakarian never struck him as the sort of man who would take advantage of another’s labour. Not like his boss in Chicago, who knew he was benefiting from his very specialized set of skills and still only paid him just enough for food, his meds and a shitty room in a house that would have been condemned and torn down before the war.
That he had to get a second job and leave Jessica alone and unprotected in the evenings in that awful house makes him very angry. Having to hide while two of their roommates were murdered has caused her a great deal of harm. Once they’re settled he’ll ask Vakarian about therapists in the area for her.
“You don’t pay for your medications here,” Vakarian says, giving him a funny look. “Mayor Winther collects taxes, which are used to fund the healthcare needs of those not covered by their employers or former employers - among other things. Normally a responsibility of a higher level of government, I’m told, but since that government has not yet been re-formed, Mayor Winther is handling it on a local level. This is not the case where you were living?”
“Chicago was a hellhole, sir,” he says quietly. “I’d do any job if it means Jessica has somewhere safe to live.”
Jessica nods next to him; she hasn’t said a word during their meeting but there’s a smile on her face. Over the years he’s learned to read her facial expressions but he’s never seen her smile like this before. It’s not the wide sort of grin he’s seen on humans in vids. It’s more complex than that.
She’s relieved, he realizes. This smile is relief.
“If you give me a few minutes alone, I may be able to have the two of you stay in the guest room of my house until you’ve found somewhere else to live. Since I live on my family’s land, I must check with them first before I bring strangers around.”
“Thank you,” he says, not quite believing their luck.
They wait in the reception area after he gives Yvonne a list of his medications. “This place sounds nice,” Jessica says. “And you’ve got a good job. You said once there was nowhere that we would not need to know how to shoot but I think this is as close as it gets.”
“Yeah. I think you’re right,” he says. “Do they speak the human language you speak here?”
Jessica shakes her head. “The language is different. But I think they’re sort of alike so it won’t be as hard for me to learn as it would be for me to learn Japanese or something.”
He’s learned a little of her language over the years and she’s learned some of his. From what Jessica has told him, there’s a far wider variety of languages amongst humans than turians. Having grown up on Digeris, he speaks a different dialect than Vakarian does, but it’s similar enough that his translator only rarely kicked in while they were speaking.
“You can probably get by with your translator, anyway.”
“I can, but it’d be cool to learn too, I think.”
Vakarian leaves his office several minutes later. “My home is small, but there is a spare bedroom. Both my son and daughter-in-law remember you and provided permission immediately.”
They walk out of the town hall and Vakarian leads them out of town and up a hill on an old cobblestone path. The stones are chipped, and missing entirely in several spots; something that would have been unacceptable back on Palaven.
“There aren’t many families that look like both of ours,” Vakarian says. “Once my daughter-in-law said that she hoped to see more human-turian relationships following the war. Their adopted daughters were placed with them specifically because they needed to be raised in such an environment, and Lady Victus and Primarch Victus had no luck finding an appropriate couple that was not the two of them. My son-in-law is a human as well, but their relationship was quite new at the time, and their occupations would not allow for raising children presently.”
He thinks with shame at how he would have reacted to the news that Lia was involved with a human. How ignorant and prejudiced he once was.
“Dad saved me during the war. I was a refugee and he looked out for me - my parents had been supposed to be on the next shuttle but never made it, and when we had to evacuate, he brought me to Earth.”
Jessica looks around at their surroundings with wide eyes. It’s far greener here than anywhere else he’s seen on Earth, and below in the valley, the river is a deep blue. He didn’t know places like this still existed.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Vakarian says. “I am sure your parents would be happy that you found a home with someone who protects and cares for you.”
“Yeah, they would have,” Jessica says softly. “Life was really hard in Chicago. Maybe here we’ll have a future.”
“The property is secure; my son has installed cameras at all entry points, and the doors on my house and theirs are unhackable. Garrus and Lora have several friends who are tech experts and Garrus had all of them try to hack their way into their house and none were successful. We’ve lived here for several years now without a single security breach,” Vakarian says, all of which fills Tiberius with deep relief. He can secure their own home in a similar manner once they’re settled, and he won’t have to worry about it being robbed.
“Is there a university here?” Jessica asks.
“Not in the town itself but there are universities in the region. Lora would have more information if you ask her.”
Vakarian opens an iron gate situated in front of a home with a beautifully maintained series of flowerbeds around it. Catching him staring, Vakarian says, “Lora is a farmer - they produce wine here, as well as several varieties of dextro fruits and vegetables. I helped her plant these flowers.”
“I hadn’t realized you were a gardener,” he says.
“My late bondmate was. I decided to learn to honour her and have come to enjoy it. Lora is teaching their daughters now - though they are still young and what they can do is limited. They enjoy helping by digging the holes for the flowers.”
Commander Shepard as both a farmer and a parent is… not what he expected. Vakarian walks the two of them past the house towards a field of plants (what kind, he has no idea). In the distance is a turian - Garrus, he assumes, and a tall human woman wearing a button-up shirt with that square print humans seem to like. It’s hanging off her shoulders, and the first few buttons remain unbuttoned, revealing a white top underneath. She calls out, “Ro! Lettie! Come meet our guests!” Two little girls come running - a human with a curly red fringe, and a turian with dark plates.
Her fringe is now black, not red, and shorter than it was on the Citadel. They approach, and the girls run over to their grandfather and embrace him.
“Tiberius, right?” Garrus says, extending his hand. “Good to see you; my dad has been looking for another officer for some time.”
“That’s right,” he says and he gestures to Jessica. “My daughter, Jessica. I’m surprised you aren’t an officer here in town.”
“My bondmate and I decided saving the galaxy entitled us to retirement. I’ve dealt with enough bad guys, explosions and bullets for one lifetime,” Garrus says - with lightness, but there’s something else lingering there that he doesn’t quite understand.
“We’re glad to have you here - call me Shepard,” Shepard says, extending her own hand. “Our daughters are Scarlett and Rowena. We can give you the tour if you like - and if you have any questions, we’d be happy to answer them.”
Jessica asks her about universities, and Shepard names off several schools in the area, explaining which ones are easily accessible by train.
“I don’t want to live anywhere else,” Jessica says. “I’m staying here with my dad.”
“An understandable thing,” Shepard says. “With all the danger in the galaxy, leaving a safe haven is difficult. While we take a trip every year as a family, this will be our home for the rest of our lives.”
“So, did you buy a plot of land after the war and decide to give farming a try?”
He wonders how common such a thing is around the galaxy, as so many cities were completely destroyed by the Reapers.
Shepard laughs. “Not at all; this land has been in my family for centuries. I inherited it after my opa died when I was a teenager. My parents were farmers and made wine back on Mindoir, so I’ve been a farmer longer than I was a soldier, if you can believe it. I’d rather that not get spread around though; we have our privacy here and nobody actually knows that Commander Shepard and Advisor Vakarian make wine.”
“Can I try some?” Jessica asks.
“Sure,” Shepard says. “It’s dual-chirality so anyone can drink it; that was important to us, given the make-up of our family. We may have to prepare two sets of meals, but Garrus, Castis, Solana, James and I can all drink from the same bottle of wine.”
Shepard and Garrus invite them to dinner, and for the first time, Jessica drinks something that isn’t their roommate’s shitty cellar moonshine. “I didn’t even know alcohol could taste good!” she says, grinning broadly.
Garrus and Shepard stare blankly at her so he provides an explanation. “Good alcohol wasn’t readily available in Chicago, and she hasn’t been old enough to drink for that long anyway.”
He’s drinking a glass of fruit juice made from a tree in Vakarian’s yard - something him and Shepard planted together in the first months after they settled here, apparently. “I’m working on making a dual-chirality fruit juice, but I’m not quite there yet. I think I’m close, though,” Shepard explains.
They don’t speak much of the war, but Shepard does ask about the state of Chicago. “It worries me to hear this,” she says after he explained what life was like for them there. “We’re lucky here - we’ve had a few issues with roving gangs, but Castis and the other officers in town have dealt with them. A lot of the larger cities lost all of their political leaders, which means some have devolved into anarchy. I’ve heard that Athens is in a similar state.”
“I’ve heard anecdotes from friends back on Palaven that it is the same in many places on the planet. Cipritine has been returned to order, but as the largest city on the planet, and the core of our government, it was essential to rebuild without delay,” Vakarian says.
“Must not be easy for Primarch Victus to lead a planet he can’t even step foot on at the moment - on top of leading all the turians stuck here,” he says.
“We mostly try to stay out of politics, but Primarch Victus is a good friend of ours, and - I’m biased, but I’d say he’s doing a pretty damn good job of managing things,” Garrus says.
“He was my commanding officer during the… uh… war,” he stammers, regretting that he brought up a potentially sore subject.
Luckily Shepard doesn’t seem offended by it. He supposes any animosity that may have once existed surrounding that conflict must be gone, given that she’s friends with Victus, who is credited with obtaining General Williams’ surrender on Shanxi.
“Adrien is a good man. I lost my family as a teenager and in the years before and during the war I cobbled together a bit of a family out of my crew. Him and his family became part of our family. They joined us at Christmas last year; it was their first time celebrating but they said they’d come this year too,” Shepard says.
“I’m excited to have something to celebrate again on Christmas,” Jessica says. “Dad tried to find food for a nice meal for me but it was hard to do in Chicago.”
“The two of you have seats at our table this year if you’d like.”
“Though ‘table’ is metaphorical,” Garrus says, chuckling. “It’s become such a big event that people just grab a plate and sit wherever they can in the house.”
***
For as long as he’s been on Earth, he’s been unable to relax. Every night he sleeps lightly, listening for potential threats and ready to strike at anyone who would hurt Jessica. They’ve slept in the same space for the last few years - both out of necessity because they did not have room in their dwelling to have their own rooms, and to keep her safe.
“I am sorry I do not have another bedroom. One of you could remain in the living room…” Vakarian says apologetically.
They’d been given a blow up mattress by Shepard, who told them they had several; a direct result of their annual Christmas celebration. Many people end up sleeping on mattresses wherever there’s room in their house over the holidays, apparently.
“I can take the living room,” Jessica says immediately. He suspects she’s looking forward to having some more privacy - he certainly is, but he’s also aware that it might not be an easy adjustment after all they’ve survived.
Sleep comes easier than he thought, and for the first time in years, he sleeps through the night, knowing that he’ll wake up in a safe place; his daughter unharmed.
***
Primarch Victus,
Garrus and Shepard promised they would forward this note on to you. I finally took Jessica on the vacation you suggested when we spoke last year. We’ve decided to stick around. I’m sure you’re shocked by this news.
We’ve been here two months now, and I just moved into a little house with Jessica. There’s a garden in the front and Shepard has offered to teach Jessica and I how to grow food. I’ve never had a yard or a garden before now. It’s very green here.
Chief Vakarian let us stay with him for two months, which was very kind of him. He even knows how to cook levo food and insisted on making meals for Jessica, as well as him and I. Though he isn’t very good at baking cakes yet - when I asked him about it, he sent me to Shepard who promised to help me bake a cake for Jessica.
I finally know what ‘sprinkles’ are. I don’t really understand them, but Jessica once asked me for a cake with sprinkles and edible glitter so she’s going to get one on her birthday three months from now.
It’s nice, being able to keep little promises like that. I kept her safe as best I could during our years in Chicago, but I couldn’t make her happy. She smiles more now, and is seeing a therapist to help deal with everything that’s happened to her. Right now she says she doesn’t want to ever live anywhere but our little house, but maybe in time she will feel safe enough to want to move out and find her own place. But if not, that’s fine too. She’s my kid; she can live with me for the rest of my life as far as I’m concerned. You’re a dad; I’m sure you feel the same way about your kids.
This is the longest I’ve gone on Earth without hearing the sound of gunfire or coming across a corpse. Jessica is working at a bakery in town and is applying to universities in the area. I’m an officer now - properly this time. For now I’m patrolling the town but eventually I’ll help keep watch for threats outside town too. People here are really nice to me. I’m not used to it yet.
For the first time I’m happy things happened as they have. That I volunteered for that damned mission that stole my career from me. I thought you had gone mad, but I should have known better. You’ve never done anything conventionally in your life, after all.
It sounds like I’ll see you and your family at Christmas. I’m looking forward to giving Jessica a proper Christmas; I am going to buy her a bike.
Thanks for helping me save her. I was an ass and I’m sorry, but I hope you understand that I had to get her out of Chicago.
Take care,
Tiberius