Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Mindoir this morning is foggy. The farms are surrounded by marshes, and in the summer, it is a near daily occurrence for the fog to roll down from the surrounding mountains and blanket the lowlands for half the day or longer. By the time it recedes, the daylight has passed, and the next day’s bout of fog will be forming. The result is that there is virtually no part of the Mindoir settlement that isn’t at least a little damp, and while some parts are beautiful, a lot of it looks like a bog. The fog makes it difficult for shuttlecraft to land, too. Even the new models aren’t built to move clearly through such thick condensation as a forethought. Luckily, you'll miss most of it out on the beaches. Have fun, try not to sink. - Ryder."

"Is there even ground here?" Siena fretted, tugging at Castis' tunic. Castis dismissed Alec's message, wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed it.

"There's land," he chuckled, "you saw it from orbit. We don't get storms like this on Palaven is all. You'll get used to it the more colonies you visit."

"I'd rather be back on the Citadel, Cas." She leaned into him, watching the rain through the virtual windows, paranoid. "And what'd you drag me here for, to hang on your arm while you meet some human?"

Castis nuzzled the base of her fringe and ran his other hand up and down her arm. "She's an amazing woman, Si. I assure you that you'll like her. I wouldn't be here without her."

"Hmm. And are you trying to tell me something else with that?"

"Come on, Si! You of all people should know instinctively that it's not like that."

"Guess I'll have to meet her first to get in touch with that instinct."

"She's married too, you know. She has a son as well."

"So you're saying she's a lot like me." Her voice was thick with teasing that Castis failed to notice.

"Siena! That's ridiculous! You can't talk like this in front of her and Liam, they'll think I'm a-...you're having a laugh, aren't you." She giggled and tapped her nose against his right mandible. He sighed and turned away. "You're cruel, you know that?"

"Oh, now you're being the mean one."

They kept going back and forth as the shuttle pressed on through the rain. The view out the virtual windows briefly brightened, and then all at once it changed. Breaking through the stormfront, the shuttle climbed into a bright blue sky, lined with intermittent strips of white cloud that reached to the horizon. Bare grey mountains cast shadows over deciduous forests full of fast-running streams. Indigenous fauna ran between the trees, indistinct from so high up, but even their blurry presence down below enhanced the feeling of liveliness. It seemed clean, he thought. He thought of how Adrien had described seeing Earth for the first time and compared it to what the landscape brought out of him here. "It really is an amazing thing, isn't it?"

Siena nodded and joined him in the sightseeing. In the seat behind them, a tiny body under a blanket stirred.

The Mindoir colony spaceport was small but efficient. One dock for frigates and four for shuttles. Just what was necessary to service a population of just over seventy-five thousand and nothing more. Supplies were easy to send over vast distances with the relay network, and compared to the Council homeworlds or larger human-turian colonies, Mindoir was an easy operation. But it wouldn't remain that way forever. Hannah, he figured, wanted her family to get a taste of ideal colonial life while her son was still young and she and Liam were spry. Stepping out of the shuttle with his family in tow, Castis moved through the security checkpoints with expedience. The colony administrator knew he was coming and sent a few messages over a linked channel wishing for him and Siena to have a excellent stay.

Mindoir's population was majority human, being an Alliance-side operation, human money and resources being used to create a satellite outpost of the larger empire. Similar things had been done in centuries past with the volus, a success in the long-term goal of continuing expansion without stepping on the toes of the Terminus Systems or the other Council races. With the continued front against the Hegemony, these "reclaimed" worlds were becoming an increasingly vital aspect of the market, with everything from deferred military service in exchange for colony labor to new defense bonds to support the security armada now patrolling the perimeter of batarian space, and pressing in a little further each day to "reclaim" a few more "astronomical units." He figured that using a human system of measurement was another way to get the client race to invest more pride in having their blood and their ships be the ones to carry the burden. Though there had not been a return to loyalty inspections in years, he dare not say any of this aloud. For one thing, he didn't need to. It was all so blatant because the Primacy knew most who lived under the broader moniker of "turian" would cherish their perception of being an important part of the machine, each in their own bespoke manner. Even he, a man who frequently worried his broader social net with these "dissident" views, admitted that this all worked quite well. How long that would last was another thing, but for Castis, the Citadel was a satisfactory refuge from the excess of imperial influence. Democratic enough, and just that, for him to remain where he was.

The Vakarian family walked through downtown Alexandria; this was the presumptive name of the colony's capital. It was a fine name for a city to Castis, and he wondered about where it had come from, how common it was, comparing it to names like Cipritine and Apparitus. Not much had yet been installed in the vein of cultural iconography, statues, grand architecture that served as a symbol of the indomitable human spirit, and thus the inevitability of turian expansion. Still, the ghosts of these future projects haunted the streets of Alexandria. An open plot, left conspicuously untouched despite the long lines at the food and seed distribution agency across the road, was likely being saved for the new governor's office or yet another superfluous monument.

Once they boarded the passenger rail leading away from Alexandria to the outermost parts of the colony, however, that veneer of grandeur and interstellar supremacy melted and again that true wonder that planetary travel could inspire in even the most jaded heart returned in all its splendor. The overstory of the forest blotted out the sun, scattering its light through the windows as they raced beneath the leaves. The flecks of light dancing across them, the youngest member of the Vakarian family pressed his nose to the glass and remained there for the whole ride. Castis watched him, amused, not asking what his son was looking for out in the forest. Perhaps he was simply ensconced by the shades of green which he had only ever seen in the Presidium, in such a low volume at that. Given his odd little mind, though, Castis guessed that he might have been looking for some kind of threat between the trees, or good places to hide and keep a store of rocks for throwing at people and animals alike. His son was getting a head start on the mentality of an overeager commando, always scanning the world around him, rarely talking, perpetually paranoid. strange, even for turians, to see such behavior in a boy who was four years of age. These oddities were his duty to sand the rough edges off of, and ready the result to serve the cause, but the sheerness of such an attitude was unnecessary in Castis' mind, and he held confidence that his son would be a suitable soldier no matter where he ended up.

As long as he stayed clear of the Spectres.

The train stopped at an ocean-side station some thirty minutes from Alexandria. Castis nearly rolled his ankle as he stepped out onto the sand, the dunes much too loose and soft for his liking. Siena laughs as he swung his arms in a circle to keep his balance. Her laugh was not the only one that met his ears. Off to the right, down the dunes and along the water came a voice which he had missed for the last six years. There, with Liam at her side and a bundled fledgling resting in her arms, hazel eyes as piercing as ever, was Hannah Shepard. Mandibles flicked out in joy, he staggered across the sand to greet his old friend. Hannah gingerly moved the infant from her arms into Liam's who accepted the duty graciously, while Hannah wrapped her arms around the turian and said:

"Welcome back to human civilization, Vakarian."

Castis laughed dryly and returned the affectionate gesture. Such a display was not common or comfortable for most turians to do with those outside or their families, but human involvement in the empire has necessitated becoming accustomed to how liberal many were with such acts. Thankfully, it felt completely natural with Hannah, just as he knew it would.

Stepping back, he introduced Siena to the human couple. He then reached down to where he expected his son to be, only to find empty space. Liam looked up and off to something back up the dunes. Following his gaze, Castis caught the sight of a grey blur disappearing over the mounds of sand.
"Garrus!" he called after the wayward child. Sighing and shaking his head, he turned back to Hannah. "Always something more interesting going on, more than meeting one of Earth's finest soldiers, even. My apologies."
"Do you need to go get him?" Hannah asked.

"This is fairly normal," Siena said, "common practice is to let the wanderlust be explored in the developmental years so that, when the time comes for conscription, they'll be tired of it and eager to try the order of a disciplined military life to sate their want of something new."

"Grounds are always surveyed and given a rating for things like that," Castis added. "Mindoir's coastal region on the northwestern continent is devoid of dangerous fauna and plant life, and the terrain is very accommodating for young kids. But I guess I don't need to tell you that. Is your own boy off out there as well?"

"No, John's back at the house," Hannah replied, pointing to the two-floor prefab residence further down the beach. It sat atop a steel platform, fifty feet from the edge of a coastal bulkhead. The four started walking towards the structure, Siena stepping ahead to walk next to Liam, admiring the tiny human in his arms.

"Who might this be?" she asked, dangling a finger above the baby's head. Two pudgy hands reach up to seize it from the tip to the knuckle. Liam adjusted his arms to tilt the small head forwards to that she could face the inquisitive turian.

"This is Jane," Liam said, "Ten months next week. Quietest, cleanest baby there ever was."

"And the first wasn't, then?"

"Was yours? Are they ever?"

Castis and Hannah lagged behind while their spouses launched into a succession of conversation, flitting from one subject to another, too fast for either of them to keep track.

"Glad they like each other," said Castis, "Word of warning, she will be all over you about every detail about that fledgling's life thus far. She loves children."

"I can tell." Hannah replied, "She must be an excellent mother. And a patient one, letting you have your son run off with the great eye of the Primacy on him."

Castis sucked in his next breath. "Of course you checked in on that. I was sure you would, but..." He brought up his omni-tool and scrolled to an application for global positioning, auto-synced to Mindoir's extranet infrastructure, and in addition to providing an up-to-date mapping of his location and surroundings, he could press a digital pad and find a specific someone else. From here, he could see Garrus was stalking beyond the treeline up past the dunes, about twenty feet deep into the woods and pacing along the same fifty-foot stretch of ground. "Believe me, I prefer to keep him in my sights," he closed the application, "but if I tried to do that at all times I vary well may lose my mind. That child is a hellion."

Hannah smirked, placing her hands behind her head. "I like him already."

"Why," Castis sputtered, "because he gives me trouble?"

"Because I bet he keeps you on your toes, looking around, questioning things. I'll admit, Castis, I was a bit worried you would have become more like the other turians they keep on reserve here. Rigid, that's the word I use. But I can tell," she bopped him on the shoulder, "you haven't changed a bit."

Castis scoffed. "So glad your opinion of me rides on me being static in my own way." Hannah chortled and kept ribbing the former centurion. It made him feel at home. Another kind of home, but home nonetheless.