ram ranch really rocks etc etc

Ruta graveolens - Patience

ship: Roy Mustang/Edward Elric

Summary: Roy Mustang wishes God would stop laughing at him. He doesn’t get it. There are millions, billions of people he could have fallen for; people whose love wouldn’t be a parasite ready to consume Roy’s insides with its roots. He is thirty now, and being a tragicomic joke is exhausting.

He pulls his knees against his chest and coughs for a good half-hour.

Rating: Mature

Warnings/tags: Hanahaki disease, angst, multichapter (2/5)

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Roy dreamt with red flames and yellow petals. Sometimes, these two colors would blur and blend to a golden shade.

He smiles when he wakes up. It's a rare occurrence, especially for a soldier, but in slumber, he felt soft touches and heard easy laughs. Roy shoves his head against the pillow and pulls the blanket over his eyes; for the split of a second, he could swear the linens smell like him.

Routine kills the mood though. He has to get out of bed, to shower, to shave, to get dressed. His breathing is making this unsettling wheeze-like noise and he spits two small petals as he brushes his teeth. Roy looks in the mirror and, even if his appearance is as presentable as ever, it still feels like watching a man walking to his own death bed.

Roy checks his pocket watch to calculate exactly how long he has before Jean Havoc shows up. With thirty minutes left, he considers eating so as to not have to deal with headquarters coffee on an empty stomach. He grabs the small plant that rests on the windowsill and heads to the kitchen.

He sets the vase on the counter. Maybe he can actually use it as a spice. A soft laugh escapes his lips at the childish thought of serving food covered with spat leaves.

Midway through frying the eggs, the cough hits him.

Roy barely has time to reach the sink as the bitter taste of blood and rue fill his mouth. This is not normal, he’s never had a fit this early in the morning. And it's a wrecking one; makes him shake and shiver, the bile burns his palate and Roy is utterly repulsed.

He wants to turn the stove off. He wants to sit down and eat his toast and then get to work. He wants to go back to normal, to the same body he had four years ago.

The doorbell rings and a male voice calls:

”Sir?”

Roy turns the tap on, a vain attempt to.hide the signs of the sickness. He drinks water directly from it, cupping his hands and taking them to his lips. After a few gulps, he’s calm enough to stay up without having to lean his whole body against the counter.

The steps to the door feel like a walk through the desert: his throat is dry and he's covered in sweat. As so as he unlocks it, Jean Havoc is on him:

”Chief? You alright? I heard all this—”

Roy takes a shaky breath.

”I’m good, Major.” He steps aside and gestures for the man to follow him inside. ”I was just making breakfast.”

Jean Havoc accompanies him to the kitchen and Roy promptly insists for him to take a seat. There’s rue sticking to his teeth.

The urge comes before he is able to turn the stove off. His throat contracts and he is running for the bathroom. His knees hurt when he falls in front of the toilet and a whole stack of small yellow flowers burn its way through his trachea. Roy just stays there, stuck between coughing and retching, and it feels like dying. And Roy knows a lot about dying.

Jean Havoc then makes his – very unwanted – appearance. The Major doesn't utter a single word and Roy is so, so grateful for it. Instead, he kneels by his commanding officer's side; one hand on his shoulder, the other gently supporting the man’s forehead.

And it feels like fucking dying.

”Since when...?”

”It’s a recent thing.”

”Are you sure? It didn't seem like it.”

”Yes, I am, very.”

”...”

”...”

”Sir, I know a guy who—”

”That’s good for you, Major.”

On the ride to headquarters, Roy makes Havoc promise not to tell Riza. An hour after lunch, he finds out he has no trustworthy subordinates.

Hawkeye is preying on him. He knows she is and she probably knows that he knows and that’s why she makes no effort in hiding her intentions: putting Roy on edge so she can strike when he’s most vulnerable. Roy leaves the door to the inner office open so he can keep an eye on her, for the time being. He expects it, and it makes the whole thing feel like a waiting line to death penalty. As his fellow soldiers leave for their respective homes, Roy’s mental countdown gets lower and lower.

She is the last one beside Roy and she barely gives him time to come up with proper excuses. As soon as he stands up, she’s already on the door, holding the keys and reaching for their coats. They leave the grey building and Roy tugs at his lapels to adjust them. It’s too cold for autumn, and his lips feel so dry they might crack. His throat is still irritated from the morning’s coughing fit, and itch only makes him want to cough more.

“Should I drive today, sir?”

Being enclosed in a metal box with the only one in the world who scares him enough to not fight back and even give her the full control over speed and direction?

“Sure.”

They get inside and she locks the doors. There is no sound of an engine being turned on.

“We need to talk, Roy.”

Riza says that in her this-is-final tone, he one that does not allow protests. She rarely calls him by his first name, and for some reason, it seems much more solemn than sir. He nods.

“It’s getting worse.” Roy opens his mouth but she doesn’t miss a beat. “Don’t try and make it less worrying, you know it is.”

“It was time already, all things considered.”

“Roy, this is serious.” She looks him dead in the eyes, lips curled slightly downwards and brows furrowed. “You know the numbers and it’s been four years. I’m really sorry, but you need to make a move.”

Roy is reminded of golden eyes and a body that dances whilst fighting. His breath comes out in a short puff, as if he’d been punched. He can’t do this. He can’t rip this feeling out, he would never dare to. It would feel like giving up the last scraps of humanity left on his soul, like burning a hole through his chest, and brain, and heart. Roy belongs to love, just like fish belong to water and birds belong to the sky.

“You want me to get surgery.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“...”

��...”

“I can’t do that either.”

She doesn’t protest; just turns the car on and drives. Roy wants her to though, he really does. He wishes she would look at him with that you-are-being-so-stupid look, or scold him into obedience. She wants her to tell him that he would understand, and he would do his best to help Roy. But they’ve had this conversation before, and Roy had been very emphatic with his objections. It wasn’t that he was afraid of judgement. Hewould never do such thing to Roy, would never laugh at the man’s face or call him degenerated names. No, he was a good, decent person – and Roy is genuinely afraid he is too good and too decentto just reject him like it ought happen.

Riza keeps giving him sympathetic sideway glances and it would be annoying if it wasn’t so unnerving.

“If all you wanted to do was to feel sorry about me, Riza, I could have walked home alone and felt a lot of it for myself.”

Roy can tell that she would be rolling her eyes if she wasn’t so keen on keeping her composure.

“I’m not feeling sorry for you.”

The lack of complacency in her speech almost makes Roy believe her.

“Yes, you are, that’s just how everyone feels towards people with terminal illn—“

“It is not terminal.”

“In my case, it is.”

“That’s where you are mistaken.”

Roy stares at her, cautious and bordering anxiety.

“What do you mean with that?”

There’s a period of silence, and Roy starts to believe she won’t answer at all. It takes long enough for him to come up with the most unsettling possibilities, but too short for him to get prepared for the worst:

“I called him.”

A shiver goes down Roy’s spine and he tastes a startling mix of anger and fear. He wants to puke, he wants to puke, he is going to puke—

“Stop the car.”

“Roy, listen—“

“Stop the fucking car, Riza, or I swear to God...”

The machine comes to halt and Roy jumps out of it as a cat jumps out of the water. He wants to go home, he just wants to go home, he wants to go home. There are warm covers to shelter him. There is a green book to entertain him. There is a Ruta graveolens he can admire. There is a bathtub he can drown in or something. He stomps to Riza’s side and knocks hard on the window his fingers feel numb.

“Who gave you the right?!”The wrath is setting in his insides, boiling and corroding everything that resembles self-control. “I trusted you not to tell anyone, and that includes him, you... you...”

“Yes?!” She’s not screaming like him, but her face is acquiring this reddish shade that announces that she wants to. “Go on, tell me, what do you think I am!”

“I trusted you, Riza! Why would you do this? What made you think you even could, this is my choice to—“

“It’s his choice too, you idiot!”

A couple of people passes by and Roy takes a long, deep breath.

“Did you really make yourself believe he wouldn’t find out? Because, I’ll tell you, he will and he won’t carry on as if nothing had ever happened.” It’s not only anger she’s feeling, Roy can tell. He wants to give a name to the emotion and he can’t and that annoys him more than it should. “I know you would never want to destroy his life like this, Roy, I know, but if you keep this up you will.”

He wants to puke, oh god, oh god...

“I know it’s your choice, and I respect that. What I wish you would understand is that he’s got a say in this too and you need to listen. Hanahaki is not an individual disease, Roy, it affects two people at the same time.”

There are tears welling up in his eyes and the tight knot on his throat hurts so bad, so bad.

“Come on, get back inside. You can’t walk home like this.”

He hates that she’s right.

The rest of the drive is under an uncomfortable silence. Roy veins are still pumping anger all over his being, but the there’s an edge of fear that won’t stop growing. Riza’s right, Riza’s right and he wants to scream like a bratty child because it’s so unfair.

She stops by his house. The look he’s given dares him to fix his damn mess like the good adult he’s supposed to be. The world won’t stop moving even if he uses his best rhetoric to try to convince it to stop. Roy walks to the doorway and wonders how much exactly she told him.

He hears the car leaving and there’s a figure sitting on the front steps, legs stretched forward and shoulders slumped. He stands up when Roy approaches. The lack of tight leather jeans is the first thing Roy notices. The young man has grown a bit, though he still can’t be considered tall or stand face to face to Roy. Golden hair is great under the streetlights.

Edward Elric looks him in the eyes and he’s got the most vacant expression Roy has ever seen him wear.

“We need to talk.”

A lot of people have been saying that to him recently, he should probably start to worry.

anthem (2/3)

There’s a crack in everything. Olivia’s never asked Zaeed what he means by that, but she wants there to be a hopeful second half to the phrase. Eight months is a long time without Garrus. 

(they’re stuck, all of them; it’s hard to move forward when you can do nothing)

Previously on: Part 1

PG, this part ~7k; Olivia/Garrus, Hannah/Zaeed, Olivia+Liara friendship, Liara+Garrus friendship, Olivia+Zaeed friendship. Vague references to PTSD.

Garrus sits down in the mess opposite Ashley, datapad in hand.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she grumbles. She looks at him, deep hollows under her eyes, and sips at her coffee. After a moment, she sighs, pushes her hair out of her face, and gestures for him to go ahead.

“Long-range communication, FTL drive, stealth drive, and the main guns are all offline. They’re not…” he grasps for the colorful phrase James used, and comes up empty, “completely destroyed, but they took significant damage.”

Ashley frowns. “And we have negative repair supplies.” She sighs heavily. “What else?”

Garrus scrolls through his list. “Daniels and Donnelly have been working nonstop on EDI, but they said it’s like her program is just gone. There are also multiple severe hull breaches.” At her raised eyebrow, he explains, “From crashing into a pile of rocks.”

Ashley nods and covers a yawn. “Oh, right.”

“Slightly less destroyed:” he continues onto the next section. “Sublight engines are offline, but Tali and Adams think they’re salvageable with enough time and effort. Liara thinks navigation would probably work if we could figure out where we are,” and we sure could use Shepard for that, he adds silently. “Short-range communication is twitchy at best, and Traynor’s exact words were ‘my toothbrush has more reliable reception.’ She had a similar opinion about our long- and short-range scanners.”

She stares at him over her coffee cup. “What is working?”

“Life support.” That’s it. Ten days of diagnostics and emergency triage repairs, and the only thing they’ve managed to get working is life support. And they crashed on a planet with breathable air and drinkable water.

“Well, at least there’s that.” She takes another sip of coffee.

“And other minor systems with varying degrees of functionality.” He may not be a very good turian, and he may technically be nowhere near her chain of command, but Garrus knows how to give a complete report to his ship’s CO.

Ashley exhales slowly and closes her eyes for a moment. “How are you?” she asks quietly.

Garrus stills. They’re all feeling Shepard’s absence, and he doesn’t want to claim more grief than anyone else. But since he kept her name off the memorial board, refusing to consider her another casualty, he’s noticed most of the crew going to great lengths to avoid speaking even her name around him. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate it.

He suspects Ashley put him in charge of overseeing repairs for more than just his ability to give a report. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate that, too. For most of the day, he can throw his focus and efforts into other problems, tangible problems. Problems that are largely - ah, shattered to shit, that’s the phrase, but problems that can be solved.

It’s only the few hours before sleep, when he’s alone in their quarters with nothing to distract him, that despair tugs at the edges of his mind. He tried simply going to bed earlier, but that was worse - lying awake in their bed alone, as her scent on her pillow disappears a little more each day.

He’s taken to working his way through her extensive media library. And sleeping on the couch.

“The fish didn’t survive the impact,” Garrus says, instead of voicing just how much it hurts to not have her here. “But her hamster’s still alive.” The little guy has even started coming out of his box to sniff at his fingers when he feeds him.

Ashley nods, and takes his words as a valid answer. She reaches over the table and plucks the datapad from his hand, and scrolls through it for herself. “Let’s talk repair schedule.”

***

Thunder booms overhead and Hannah freezes. She hasn’t heard real thunder in, god, twenty years. She’s been rained on since, sure, but never with thunder and -

Lightning. She closes her eyes.

Good air in, bad air out. You’re in London. Gripping the edge of the sink until her hands hurt and her knuckles are stark white, she takes slow, even breaths to bring herself back from a cornfield twenty years ago.

Zaeed rests his hand on her hip and she opens her eyes. She stares at their reflection in the kitchen window and tries not to see ships and slavers in the clouds outside. She leans back against him as thunder crashes again, loud enough that she feels it in her chest.

“You alright?”

Her reflected self nods, but her real self answers, “No.” It’s a good answer, an honest answer. They’re both too old and been through too much crap to lie when memories creep up from where they’ve buried them deep.

He shifts, settling his arms around her waist, and brushes a kiss to her cheek. “Anything I can do?”

Find my daughter, she wants to say. Go outside in the storm and dig and dig and don’t stop until you find her. But Zaeed’s spent every day digging, alongside Wrex and Grunt and the others. She shakes her head, and links her fingers with Zaeed’s. “No,” she says again.

Zaeed gently tugs her away from the window and the storm, and toward the living room. She curls into the corner of the couch, hugging a throw pillow to her chest, as Zaeed messes with the entertainment system. They at least have power tonight, and the former residents of the apartment they’re squatting in have no shortage of television and vids they can watch.

He picks something innocuous, an old Earth black and white comedy that hasn’t aged particularly well but is decent background noise, and joins her on the couch. Hannah leans into him as the storm rages on outside and a 1950s nuclear family with sparkling wide smiles appears on the screen. Zaeed is warm and solid, and she’s felt unstable for nearly three weeks - like a sheet of paper in the storm outside, tossed around and battered, blown from one feeling to the next.

She’s alive and Zaeed’s alive and the reapers are dead. Dead and gone, save for the hulking, looming shells of their destroyers and capital ships casting long dark shadows when the sun chooses to come out.

But Olivia is missing. Hannah knows the Alliance has listed missing in action; presumed dead in her daughter’s record. And though she isn’t quite so quick to believe the worst, Hannah finds herself unwillingly moving just a little bit closer to the same conclusion with each passing day.

Zaeed presses a kiss to her temple, and Hannah sighs, trying to focus on the show. She can’t, the storm is too loud and her daughter is too missing, and so instead she curls into Zaeed and rests her head on his chest. She lets her eyes drift shut as he gently strokes his fingers across her back.

Five days later, in a rare rain-less day, Zaeed and Wrex lift a broken piece of wall in the Citadel cleanup site. They heave it into the omnigel conversion unit beside them, and bend down to lift the next piece.

Both men freeze when they see a piece of armor, with a bright purple stripe smudged with dirt and blood and oil. Zaeed kneels and wipes away a smear of mud with his thumb.

N7.

Zaeed’s stomach drops.

He looks up at Wrex, and sees his worry reflected back in the krogan’s beady red eyes. “Dig,” Zaeed orders, and radios for more krogan and a biotic assist squad.

Hannah makes three wrong turns in the hospital before finally finding the correct ward. Zaeed’s sitting on the floor halfway down the hall, opposite Wrex, who’s leaning against the wall beside Jack and Grunt. Zaeed stands as Hannah stills, unable to walk any further for what the news might be.

Nodding, Zaeed walks toward her. Hannah wraps her arms around herself and bites the inside of her cheek as Zaeed and the others blur through sudden tears.

Everything stops, except for Hannah’s loud, pounding heartbeat, and Zaeed in front of her in his muddy armor. It probably only takes him three seconds to reach her, but it feels like an excruciating eternity.

“She’s alive, Hannah,” he says.

The universe crashes into motion again so fast that Hannah loses her balance. Zaeed wraps his arms around her, holding her up as Miranda sprints past them.

***

Liara opens the battery door to a bang and a clatter, and an audible growl from somewhere deep in the gun’s inner workings. Filed under: things that don’t bode well, she hears in Olivia’s voice. She wishes Olivia would stop that. They’re all going a bit mad stuck on this planet, and she’d prefer that her insanity look a little more like Sam’s, working forty-eight straight hours on a quirky subroutine, or Ashley’s, trying to glare a hull breach into submission.

Instead, Liara has her best friend in her head. At least she hasn’t started seeing her. Or having conversations. Could be worse! Liara rolls her eyes.

Sighing, Liara takes a tentative step into the battery. “Garrus?” The doors close behind her.

Another angry growl, this time accompanied by the distinctive sound of someone punching the uncooperative technology and putting their whole weight behind it.

“Did you lose the coin toss?” he says tersely, subharmonics still growling.

Technically, she volunteered because the others were too scared to toss a coin in case they lost, but Liara suspects he knows that. Garrus has always been fairly self-aware; he can’t be oblivious to the way he’s retreated into the battery (and himself) and stopped talking to everyone over the past two weeks. He also can’t be oblivious to how unhealthy that is.

Then again, Liara surmises, he responded to Olivia dying by quitting his job, leaving his life and friends behind without so much as an email, and running off to Omega to become a vigilante for two years. And that was before he fell in love with her.

Not like you’re one to talk, Miss Spent Her Life Savings Excavating My Dead Body From A Glacier.

Liara huffs. “Something like that,” she says. “You missed dinner.” She steps around a column and finds him tucked uncomfortably into a corner, arm threaded through an access panel as he blindly tries to fix something out of sight.

“I’m not hungry,” he says. There’s a shower of sparks, a low rising hum of something trying to activate, and then a falling hum as it fails. “Damn.” He pulls his arm back and shakes out his hand.

Liara huffs. “I don’t care,” she snaps. “Eat something.”

Garrus swings his attention around, and locks his piercing stare onto her. “Interesting pep talk,” he says, though he takes the offered ration bar.

Crossing her arms, Liara leans against the bulkhead. “I’m not here to give you a pep talk,” she says. “I am trying to make sure my best friend’s boyfriend doesn’t die out of sheer stupidity.”

I appreciate that.

Her words seem to deflate him a little bit, and he slowly nibbles at his dinner. He finishes the bar in silence while Liara fidgets nervously. She didn’t come here to yell at him about eating - she actually came in to bring him dinner and tell him the good news about navigation. The whole crew is on edge, growing slightly more restless and irritable with each day they spend trapped on this planet. She thought she’d been doing a good job of not joining them.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly as he crumples up the wrapper and tosses it into a bin beside scrap metal and wire. “I did not mean to yell.”

Garrus nods and rubs the back of his neck. “Thanks for the food,” he says, in a gentler tone than Liara’s heard from him in a week.

“I discovered where we are,” she says. A terrible pop song from ten years ago provided the key, oddly enough; Olivia listened to it nearly nonstop the semester she wrote a paper on the nearby supernova, and it triggered something in Liara’s memory. “As soon as the FTL drive is back online, we can start back to Earth.” They don’t have a navigator on board - yet another reason to miss Olivia - and by her estimations, it will take five months. Provided they don’t run into trouble.

Always expect trouble.

Six months, then.

“Good,” he says tightly, and turns back to his panel.

Liara takes a deep breath, and reminds herself that he’s grieving, just like she is. Their grief just looks different. She nods. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Fiancée,” he says quietly as she turns away.

Liara pauses and turns back. She tilts her head, curious.

Garrus sighs and looks down for a moment. “I asked her to marry me. We, uh, we weren’t going to tell anyone until…after.”

“Garrus!” Liara gasps quietly, part in surprise, but mostly in excitement. Genuine joy rises in her for the first time in months. It feels a little strange, unfamiliar, like a friend she hasn’t spoken to in a long time.

His mandibles flutter in an approximation of a smile. “I’m surprised you didn’t know.”

Whether that’s a reference to being the Shadow Broker, or her friendship with Olivia, Liara isn’t sure. She presses her lips together. “I do sometimes keep my nose to myself.” When she doesn’t see quite the same joy in his face she would expect, she sighs. “You know she will fight like hell to get back to you.”

He takes a slightly shaky breath, and his mandibles tighten. “Yeah.”

Liara knows that they’re both remembering Olivia’s voice at the Crucible, and how broken and hurt she sounded. Whether Olivia is able to fight or not - Liara slams down that thought. “She will, Garrus.”

***

The Normandy lifts off the day Olivia gets discharged from the hospital.

***

The skycar pulls up in front of their newly-built prefab, one of many slowly starting to replace the refugee camps, and Hannah peers out the window. They were tailed by a newscar almost the whole way here, but they lost them two turns ago. Their street has been surprisingly - and thankfully - empty. Either the media has more respect than she thought, or Wrex and his krogan set up a perimeter. She’d bet not an insignificant amount of money on the latter, especially when she sees Jack and Kasumi sitting outside the prefab next door, trying to look like they’re lounging casually on the porch.

Hannah doesn’t think Domestic Casual suits either one of them, but she appreciates their presence, and not just because she’s sure Jack’s hiding a shotgun somewhere. Miranda moved in with the two women once Olivia was stable enough to not need her immediately nearby. A Major Kirrahe lives across the street; Hannah doesn’t know what role he played in her daughter’s life, but he seems quiet and nice, if also about as likely to kill you as he is to feed you. Their whole block is filled with Olivia’s friends and crew, the ones who were stranded here, and Hannah thinks it’s kind of nice. Insular. Let Olivia start to navigate her life again amongst friends.

That Olivia has hardly spoken at all since she woke up is a problem for tomorrow.

“You ready?”

Olivia nods, but she doesn’t look sure of herself at all. Three weeks under a pile of rubble, kept alive only by the remains of her hardsuit, and then a month and a half in the hospital - the hollows under her eyes haven’t gotten any lighter. Hannah sets her hand on Olivia’s shoulder and offers her a soft smile, then tilts her head in the direction of the prefab. They’ve put a piece of metal over the front stair to make it easier for her.

Gathering up Olivia’s bag, Hannah opens the door. She stands up, and then takes Olivia’s crutches, holding them out for her.

Olivia slides to the edge of the seat. Grimacing, she takes the crutches and braces them under her arms. With a deep breath, she checks that her balance is right, and stands. Hannah shuts the door and follows Olivia down the small path to the prefab.

Keeping her stare forward, Olivia walks uncertainly on crutches and one leg. Her jaw clenches as Kasumi calls after her - hey Shep! - and she pauses, offering her friend a forced, tight smile and a wave of her fingers.

The skycar powers up with a loud whine, and Olivia flinches as it drives away. It’s only a tightening of her eyes, but to Hannah the flinch shines like a beacon on her normally-unflappable daughter. Olivia’s breath grows shallower and speeds up. She closes her eyes, and visibly forces herself to count to ten. Her arms, and the crutches, start to shake.

“Let’s get you inside,” Hannah says softly.

Nodding, Olivia opens her eyes and continues on, making her way up the impromptu ramp.

Zaeed’s leaning nonchalantly against the open door, but Hannah knows better - he has at least three guns on him, and could draw and shoot to kill before his target even blinked. He smiles warmly at Olivia as she passes, and Olivia manages a weak, but genuine, smile in return.

“How is she?” he asks quietly, shutting the door behind them.

Hannah exhales and watches Olivia make her slow way to the couch, and carefully, awkwardly, sit down. “I have no idea,” she says, just as quiet.

***

She sits in therapy, silent.

Her therapist is nice enough, and comes with a stack of degrees and the highest Alliance security clearance.

But she seems intent on making Olivia talk. And in lieu of her volunteering anything, the therapist spends their sessions reaching for topics.

Mostly, she asks about the leg.

The prosthetic has been fitted and connected and attached now, but it’s still adjusting. Olivia refuses to call it “calibrating,” though that’s really what it is; too many memories about that word. She still needs the crutches.

Olivia isn’t defiant toward the idea of therapy - she knows she needs a heavy dose of it, and probably for at least the next three years. But speaking is too much, too loud. There’s too much to say, and it’s all too big to let out in little pieces. And while her therapist is nice enough and qualified enough and has enough security clearance, Olivia isn’t about to open the dam and let everything flood out to a relative stranger.

So she sits silently in her therapist’s office with its fake-cheery paintings and fake potted plants not doing much at all to disguise that the office itself is a sectioned-off corner of a bombed-out parking garage. Olivia lets her ask about her missing leg, and gives one-word answers, sometimes two if she’s feeling charitable.

At least I got to say goodbye, she thinks, as the calendar changes from August to September to October, with still no word from the Normandy. She likes to think of herself as an optimist, but optimism is in short supply when she can’t sleep, can barely walk, is missing her fiancée and best friend so much it physically hurts some days, and has nothing to do except think about all of it.

She gives up on therapy entirely in November. November is also when Miranda gives her the okay to stop using crutches full-time. There’s no metaphor in that, Olivia says from the door as she tells her therapist she’s quitting for now. Just coincidence.

It’s the most words she’s said in a single session.

Two nights later, Zaeed gets up for a glass of water and finds her on the couch, head buried in her hands. He silently sits beside her, and she tells him everything.

From the Illusive Man and Anderson, to her mom and Garrus and Liara, to that stupid hologram and its choices, to destroying the reapers (to laughing around a collapsed lung and broken ribs at the thought that she would choose any other solution), to knowing it meant the geth and EDI and the mass relays too, to accepting the idea that she was going to die.

To waking up and finding that she hadn’t, but that she was missing a few parts. Literally and figuratively.

Olivia tells him everything in a hushed whisper by cloudy moonlight, and lets him pull her in for a hug.

I think I’m going to cry, she warns him after a while.

He rubs a hand across her back. You’ve earned it, he says, and holds her as she quietly cries herself to sleep.

***

Garrus finds Tali in the tiny corner of engineering she claimed as her own, the same corner Jack slept in. She’s packing. She doesn’t have much to pack, but it’s clear she’s taking as long as she can with the bag.

“You sure about leaving?” he asks, leaning against the wall. They rendezvous with the quarian ship in twelve hours. It’s a miracle they even found each other, passing through a nebula with malfunctioning scanners on both ships.

Tali sits back on her heels. “Yes, I should be with the Fleet. Besides, the engines are stable now. All I’m doing is eating your food, Garrus.”

He sighs and sits down on the stripped bedframe. The quarians have an extra box of rations they’re willing to part with in exchange for some spare power coils, and Tali leaving doubles the length his food will last. But she’s the only other person who’s been here for it all - for Saren, for the Collectors, for the reapers. Tali’s who he went to for advice when he realized he had feelings for Olivia, the one who smartly told him to either tell her how he felt, or stop sleeping with her.

She’s also the only one who can successfully yell at him into leaving his quarters these days. Not even Liara can drag him out, but Tali has a tone.

The gun’s been online for a month, he doesn’t know anything about the Normandy’s long-range communication systems (and he suspects Traynor would kick him out within five minutes of trying to help anyway), and everything else is working. Garrus has nothing to do. It’s hard not to isolate himself and succumb to grief. The quarians aren’t the first ship they’ve come across, and no one has any news from Earth.

“I don’t mind sharing,” he offers lightly.

Tali turns to him and tilts her head. He still can’t see through her mask, but he knows that tilt. It’s the you’re being an idiot tilt. He’s seen it a lot over the past five years.

“Yeah,” he sighs and looks up at the crossbeams and wire grating above them.

She closes her bag and then sits beside him.

For one horrible moment, he thinks she’s going to say something comforting. That she’s going to tell him not to worry, that Shepard’s alive, that if anyone could beat death a second time, it’s Shepard.

“I’m transferring my Monopoly property to you,” Tali says instead. “If you let Vega beat you, I will take it as a personal insult.”

Garrus laughs. It sounds a little desperate, a little unhinged, but still - it’s a laugh. That game has continued for three weeks, and showed no signs of coming to an end when he last checked. “You got it,” he promises.

***

“I’m worried about her,” Hannah says, a few days after Christmas. She rolls over onto her back and stares up at the ceiling in the dark. She’s been worried about Olivia for months now, but she thought it would subside, thought  Olivia would get better, like she always does. Mindoir, her N4 mission, even dying - Olivia’s always gotten better.

But she’s just been silent for six months. She hasn’t been rude or cold. She’s still been Olivia, only a quiet, reserved version of herself. Almost like she’ll break if she speaks too loudly.

Haunted.

Zaeed turns onto his side and trails his fingers down her arm. He looks across the room. Hannah looks over her shoulder and follows his gaze to the window and the snow falling softly outside. She smiles - been a long time since she’s had snow. Her smile is short-lived, however, and she sighs, turning back to him.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admits softly.

“Give her time,” he says. “She’s been through a lot.”

“I know,” Hannah huffs out a breath of air. She doesn’t know what that a lot entails, though she has a suspicion Zaeed does. She’s trying not to let that upset her, and remind herself that Zaeed’s a soldier who’s been through his own share of shit and is the better person for Olivia to talk to. But it hurts a little anyway; Olivia’s always told her everything. “I’m her mother,” she says. “I ought to be able to do something.”

It hasn’t been for lack of trying. From silent support to warm hugs, to promising an ear if she wants to talk, to chocolate chip cookies, she’s done everything she can think of. It hardly seems to have any effect. Hannah exhales sharply. She doesn’t know what else she can do for Olivia. Though it may be her only option, time is a frustrating outlook.

Zaeed reaches out and gently tugs her toward him. She comes willingly and tucks herself up against him, digging a little deeper under the warm covers as she rests her forehead against his shoulder. Zaeed presses a kiss to the top of her head and lightly brushes a hand down her spine.

“Thanks for taking care of her,” she says after a while. Zaeed’s spent the past few nights up with Olivia, calming her after paralyzing nightmares. Hannah tried to help, but Olivia wouldn’t let her. That had hurt, and it took a midnight walk around the block to calm herself down, and remind herself that this is about Olivia, not her.

“Of course,” he says, holding her a little tighter.

Hannah buries her head in the crook of his shoulder. Zaeed’s rough as sandpaper around the edges, but there’s a warmth inside of him, a kindness, though he tries so hard to hide it from the world. She counts herself lucky he’s chosen her to show that warmth to. She counts Olivia lucky, too.

“There’s a crack in everything,” he whispers, long after she thinks he’s fallen asleep.

She makes a small, curious noise in the back of her throat.

“That’s how the light gets in.”

Hannah blinks. It’s a strangely-optimistic phrase coming from Zaeed, even poetic. Then again, a man who was shot point blank in the eye would know a few things about hope, not just revenge.

December ends, and the new year rings in with fireworks that start soon after dark. Olivia puts in earplugs, takes a sleeping pill, and quietly goes to bed early.

But the next morning, Hannah wakes to the smell of coffee and baking bread. She slides out of bed, whispering for Zaeed to go back to sleep when he protests her leaving, and gets dressed by the dull grey dawnlight.

She stands in the kitchen doorway for a few minutes, silently watching Olivia knead another loaf as the sun brightens in the window. Olivia actually looks calm as she works the dough, lifting up on her toes to really put her strength into it. Hannah walks in, careful to make enough noise that she doesn’t surprise her.

“Morning,” she says, stepping up beside her.

“Morning,” Olivia responds quietly, scattering some flour over the counter. Her voice sounds stronger than it has recently, even for just one simple word.

Hannah sets her palm between Olivia’s shoulders, gently rubbing her back. Her daughter’s ghosts aren’t banished forever, just blissfully absent for now. “I love you,” she whispers, and presses a kiss to Olivia’s cheek.

Olivia pauses in her work and leans into Hannah’s embrace. Her breath shakes a little, but she manages a smile. “I love you, too.”

***

Liara grimaces as Dr. Chakwas rotates her arm. “There,” she says, as the rotation hits just the right spot, and something inside of her shoulder twinges painfully.

Chakwas sighs and lowers Liara’s arm back to her side. “Is there a reason you waited five months to tell me about this?” She steps over to her cabinet, and prepares an injection spray.

The charging brute seems half a lifetime ago, not just five months. The pain of missing Olivia, though it isn’t a physical one, eclipses everything else. She feels her best friend’s absence when she’s working, when she’s eating, when she’s watching the Monopoly game spiral out of control as Ashley raises the rent on all of her properties and James acquires the last railroad. The Olivia-shaped hole in her life has become such a constant dull ache that she sometimes doesn’t even notice it. It’s part of her now.

But her shoulder has started hurting in her sleep. Sleep is rare enough without waking in the middle of the night unable to move for the burning pain. The doctor’s question is a rhetorical one, and so Liara doesn’t answer, merely removes the Serrice University sweatshirt of Olivia’s she stole during the hunt for Saren; she sits in a tank top, offering her shoulder. The needle goes in sharp but smooth.

“This will help with the pain for now,” Chakwas says, “and hopefully relax your tendons. Give it three days, and if it doesn’t improve, tell me.” The disapproval in her voice in the last two words is nearly palpable.

Liara nods and pulls the sweatshirt back on. “Thank you,” she says, and hops off the exam table.

She holds her breath as she passes the crowded mess - Risk tonight, and a showdown between Traynor and Daniels that’s bound to win someone a lot of money - but no one calls to her. As much as she scolds Garrus for isolating himself, she knows she’s doing the same thing. It’s hard to be excited, even for a few hours about a board game.

There was at least something to do last time. She had a goal, a singular focus, a way to fix it. Now she’s just stuck waiting out the journey.

Not sure going on a crusade to find my dead body really counts as a healthy reaction.

“I never claimed it was healthy,” Liara says out loud, once the doors are shut behind her and the chatter from the game blissfully silences. “And she who considers ‘more coffee’ to be a valid solution to every problem should not judge.”

Name one time that has failed.

Liara thinks back on the fifteen years of their friendship and tries to remember even a single scenario where that plan has not succeeded. She finds none. “Fine,” she grumbles. “You win.” She sits on the edge of her bed and rests her elbows on her knees, burying her head in her hands. The silence and solitude are overwhelming, but so is the idea of leaving her quarters to watch Traynor and Daniels roll dice in battle over long-redrawn territory.

Super healthy, T’Soni.

“What do you want me to do, Olivia?”

I’m not really here, you know. You’re holding both sides of this conversation. With yourself.

With a heavy sigh, she flops backward onto the bed. “I know.” She closes her eyes and throws an arm over her face. “I miss you,” she says quietly.

Is this where I get to give you the “get up off the floor” speech? Out of bed. Whatever.

Liara drops her arm and opens her eyes. She’s being yelled at by herself in her best friend’s voice. This must be what going properly insane feels like. “Fine,” she grumbles again. She sits up carefully, accustomed to her shoulder twitching painfully, but this time it doesn’t.

Should’ve gone to the doctor a while ago.

Liara simply stares directly into the empty space in front of her, as if Olivia were standing there. “I am not even going to acknowledge that,” she says, and stands up.

Long-range communications are still down, and even if they weren’t, there is no chance the Normandy is within range of an Alliance comm buoy yet. Opening their private channel seems prematurely optimistic, but Liara does it anyway. Even if she can’t broadcast, and even if no one is there to receive, it’s open and ready.

“No comment on that?” she asks the empty room.

Liara doesn’t expect a response, but she’s a little disappointed anyway when one doesn’t come.  

***

January passes with a promotion. It’s ceremonial: her active days are over.

There are plenty of active soldiers with prosthetics, but she’s done. She’s paid back her degree, the galaxy is saved a couple times over, and she’s done.

Hackett knows this, but he puts captain’s bars on her shoulders in front of a crowd anyway. She isn’t even too upset that he’s using her for one last media stunt, though she officially resigns three days later.

“We could still use you, Shepard,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “There’s a government to rebuild.”

She lets out a harsh breath; in another life, it might have been a laugh. “If you’re thinking about naming me Ambassador or Councilor,” she shakes her head. “Admiral -”

She’s ready to tell him, point blank, that she’s done. Out. Finished. Wants to live out the rest of her life so far away from the spotlight she’s sitting in the dark. Doesn’t want anything to do with the rebuilding - she wants a break. To be left alone.

But she doesn’t.

Seven months, and there’s still no word from the Normandy. She’s tired of standing still. Of doing nothing. Of lying awake at night, staring at the wall, trying to make a pile of pillows feel remotely like Garrus. Of pretending the next morning that she hadn’t heard through paper-thin walls her mother whispering to Zaeed about how worried she is. Of muffling her cries in a pillow, so those same paper-thin walls don’t give her away.

She wasn’t made to stand still. She wasn’t built for doing nothing.

“Why don’t you get some use out of that degree you paid for?” Olivia says instead.

Hackett tilts his head.

“Someone needs to get those relays back online,” she says. “The galaxy’s going to stay a mess until we get transport moving again.”

“There’s a team on it,” he says, though his tone is factual, rather than dismissive. “Though they haven’t been able to make heads or tails of the relay wreckage, or the schematics we found in the Archives.”

A smile tugs at her lips. “I suddenly seem to find myself with an abundance of free time,” she says. “And I do have a doctorate in astrophysics and stellar cartography you people haven’t let me use yet.”

“And a remarkable ability for making things happen.”

“That too.” The smile grows. It feels weird. She’s out of practice.

Hackett sighs and stares out his window at the grey sky. “Are you sure I can’t offer you a political position?”

Olivia snorts. “Not on your life.”

Her first act doesn’t have anything to do with relays. Instead, she wrangles a small fleet of FTL shuttles, and begs every ration officer for every extra box they can spare. She orders all the motley N7 teams she can find - humans joined by asari and volus and krogan, turian and quarian and drell, even a few batarians - to pack up the shuttles and fly out.

“We have a lot of stranded people trying to find their way back home,” she says. Home to Palaven, Earth, Thessia, just home. “Let’s make sure they don’t starve on the journey.”

Her second act doesn’t have anything to do with relays, either. She records a message - Liara, it’s Liv. If you can hear this, please respond - codes it for their private frequency, and sends it out through the few intact Alliance subspace comm relays.

***

Garrus rubs a hand over his forehead. “Yeah,” he murmurs to himself. It was a long shot. “Thank you,” he tells the turian commander. “Safe journey.”

The turian nods. “You as well, sir,” she says, and salutes him before signing off.

He sighs heavily and leans on the railing, closing his eyes. He didn’t expect a turian ship way out here, halfway across the galaxy, to have news from Palaven at all, and certainly not news of his family.

But still. Garrus would like some word about someone.

***

“Breathe,” Zaeed tells her as she struggles to do just that.

Olivia rests her elbows on her bent knees and presses the heels of her palms into her forehead. She’s not sure which is worse - the splitting headache, or the nightmare.

Or that she evidently woke Zaeed up across the hall and through two closed doors. Again.

“I’m trying,” she whispers.  

***

He’s starving.

He’s starving and he’s angry and he’s sad and their bed has long stopped smelling like her. There’s nothing he can do about any of it, and he’s furious. Too much pent up energy and nowhere for it to go, no way to get it out. He’s too weak to spar with Vega, too jittery to tinker with anything, too irritable to even think about joining a game. Staying up here alone isn’t doing him any favors, he knows, but being around others sets his teeth on edge.

Writing to her hasn’t helped. Garrus has watched his handwriting get steadily worse over the past weeks as constant hunger set in and his hands started to shake. But he keeps writing letters, every day. He’s not sure it kept him quite sane last time, but it certainly kept him from catapulting over the edge.

He feeds Hipparchus - at least the little guy will make it back to Earth alive, at least he can manage to keep one promise to her - and sits down to enjoy the last quarter of his ration bar. He even licks the wrapper. There are two left. Eight days, and he’s completely out of food. Even with Tali gone, even with cutting down so much it hardly seems worth eating at all, he’s still running out. He adores Tali, but he’s glad she left - he can’t imagine how bad it would be if they were still sharing. At least this way, they’ll be a few thousand light years closer to Earth before he’s running completely on empty.

Olivia, he writes, after eating that quarter of a bar as slowly as he possibly could.

Garrus stares at the blank rest of the page. Though the human pen is weird in his hand, he’s long learned how to write with it. But his hand won’t stop shaking long enough to write anything more than her name.

He snaps.

With an angry roar, he flips the table, expending energy he knows he doesn’t have. He hurls the chair into the wall and watches as it splinters.

He blinks at it, and the destruction suddenly feels devastating. They bought the little table and chairs so they could eat dinner and feel like normal people for a few hours, even if dinner was a just-add-water microwaved tasteless ration packet. They had to collapse everything afterward and stick it in the closet so they’d have enough room to move, but for those few hours they were just Olivia and Garrus, girlfriend and boyfriend sharing a meal.

Gingerly, he rights the table. One of the legs is bent now, and the table wobbles. He sighs, blinking away his rising emotions, and picks up the pieces of the chair, placing them out of the way under the desk. He’ll recycle them into omnigel later, maybe someone can turn them into a power coil or plasma conduit.

He bends over and picks up the notebook, but the pen is nowhere to be found. Garrus crawls on his hands and knees, searching the floor for the pen - her pen. It’s probably only two minutes, but it feels like he searches for an hour. He can’t find it, it’s like it disappeared into thin air, and he’s nearly about to just give in and let himself finally fall apart completely, all over a missing pen.

But he catches sight of something underneath the couch.

Garrus lies as flat as he can and blindly reaches under the couch. His hand clasps around the pen, but his fingers also catch on something soft, something fuzzy. Frowning, his triumph over finding the pen is short-lived and replaced by confusion; he grabs the soft thing along with the pen and sits up.

It’s Olivia’s teddy bear. Saved from Mindoir, kept safe in her bedroom at Hannah’s for most of her military career, brought to the Normandy only after the reapers attacked Earth. The teddy bear mostly stayed on the couch, but there were nights when she slid out of bed to retrieve it, and crawled back into bed beside him, holding it nearly as tight as he was holding her.

Garrus carefully brushes some dust off of its nose; he moves to set it back on the couch, when he takes a breath and gasps. The bear still somehow smells like her; it smells like the warm, fruity lotion she ran out of just before they assaulted Cronos Station. He crushes the bear to his chest, mindful of its soft fabric and his sharp edges, buries his nose between its ears and just breathes.

Several minutes pass, and he slowly feels himself step back from the edge and calm down. He stands up off the floor, fighting a wave of starvation-induced vertigo that is only going to get worse, collects the pen and notebook, and sits down on the bed. He sets the bear beside him, right in the middle against one of her pillows, and opens back up to his letter.

I didn’t stand in front of a reaper just to die of starvation on the way back to you, he writes.

***

Olivia stares out the window of her office - a repurposed single-occupancy room on the first floor of the hotel the Alliance took over for headquarters. The February rain and fog obscure her view, transforming everything into grey and blue smears, occasionally broken by a moving accent of bright color as someone with a cheery umbrella walks down the street.

Her team has mostly moved past their starstruck initial reaction at being led by Captain Shepard, and moved into vague resentment: she’s forcing them to actually do things instead of sit around and talk about the science all day. Talking about the science and the theory is all well and good, when you don’t have a whole galaxy depending upon you to get everyone home.

Funny how they got the Charon Relay up and running within four weeks of that meeting. Unfortunately, one active relay doesn’t do anyone any good - it needs a connection point.

Palaven was the logical choice, though for a while she had a revolving door of asari and salarians arguing that their relays were more important. But communication with Palaven has been unreliable at best; short of sending a scout shuttle, decent intelligence on the Trebia relay is nigh impossible to find. She’s about to give up and switch her efforts to the Aralakh relay. The only reason she hasn’t already is that same revolving door of asari and salarians - though Victus has said he’d support her decision, she’s sure she can add turians to the metaphorical line outside her office.

So much for not taking a political position.

February also marks a return to therapy.  

“I hear reapers,” Olivia says abruptly in the middle of a paragraph-long tirade about politicians, during their third session.

Her therapist tilts her head, and takes a moment to catch up. “How often?”

She holds the woman’s gaze long enough and hard enough that it becomes a stare. “Always.” Inhaling sharply, she continues. “Also geth. And sometimes Cerberus.” She shudders; the Collectors have their moments as well, though usually because there’s a fly in the house.

The woman nods. “That’s normal in veterans,” she says, “to hear your enemies even though you’re safe.”

Olivia blinks at her. “You’re telling me it’s normal for me to think every heavy truck that passes my house is a brute. That my mother’s omnitool beep is a cloaked geth hunter, that my own growling stomach is a husk. It’s normal for me to hear a bunch of kids playing and hear a banshee instead. It’s totally normal that in utter dead silence before I fall asleep I hear get to cover and drone deployed. That’s normal.” It certainly doesn’t sound normal.

“Yes. It’s very common in individuals with combat PTSD.”

Olivia quirks an eyebrow.

She smiles kindly. “I read your file. I diagnosed you in our first session, in August.”

Olivia returns the smile, but just a little bit fake. “I diagnosed myself during the war,” she says. “You have some catching up to do.” It comes out harsher than she intended, and Olivia holds an apology at the tip of her tongue.

“I imagine I do,” she says. “Do you want to talk about hearing reapers, or do you want to talk about Garrus?”

Olivia goes still. She wants to lash out and scream at the woman for even bringing him up - Olivia well knows the implication behind her words: it’s probably time to face that he may not be coming back. But some rational part deep inside of her takes over, and convinces her to take a deep breath, and to focus on the real problem. Hearing reapers and missing Garrus are real problems, but she can tolerate the former and can’t do a damn thing about the latter.

“The night terrors have started breaking through my sleeping pills,” she whispers. Zaeed’s okay enough at walking her back from them, and she’s getting an enormous amount of work done in the hours before sunrise. But it’s the same one she had during the war; only this time, she isn’t chasing a child.

She’s chasing Liara. And when she finally catches up with her, Liara isn’t Liara anymore. She’s twisted and stretched and torn, emaciated. Her mouth curls over sharp teeth and she turns, stalking Olivia like prey.

And Liara screams.

Small wonder she’s been able to sleep at all.

When Olivia gets home that night, exhausted and raw from reliving that particular nightmare for the better part of two hours, she makes polite conversation over dinner and then retreats into her bedroom. She kicks off her shoes and changes into comfy pajama pants and a t-shirt, turns off all the lights save for the strands of fairy lights Kasumi found for her, and sits in the middle of her bed.

Her omnitool glows faint orange as she pulls up her active comm channels. Her message to Liara is still going strong, still repeating. It’s even managed to travel a little further over the past month, as teams slowly repair the comm buoys.

“Please be out there,” she whispers. “Both of you.”

***

[link to part 3]

Everyone Gets Sick Sometimes

@puccafangirl I wrote this little story for you inspired by your sick Tamatoa picture 😊I hope you like it! Chapter 1: "Come on, babe! Let's get going!" Tamatoa called, "That treasure won't collect itself!" He stood in the entrance to his cave, snapping his claws impatiently. Mollie, who's back was currently to him, looked up from her sketchbook when she heard the sound of his voice. Instead of being deep and mysterious and as utterly sexy as usual, it sounded a bit tired and raspy. She turned around, "Tama? Are you alr-" she stopped when she caught sight of him. Tamatoa looked tired and flushed, maybe even a bit dizzy. A look of surprise and concern came onto her face. "Look, babe, I know I'm dazzling, but you can gaze at me all you want later," he smiled in his usual cocky manner, but it looked like he was trying to hide physical discomfort behind it. Mollie wasn't buying that, "Are you sure you're feeling up to treasure hunting?" "O-of course!" Tamatoa stuttered defiantly, even though he felt awful. His head hurt, he felt hot and cold at the same time, his throats felt like it had a tiny monster scratching at the back of it, and all he wanted to do was sleep for the rest of the day. However, he loved treasure-hunting almost as much as he loved free food, and...okay, he didn't want to look weak in front of Mollie. She was the best thing to happen to him since finding that genie lamp. But would he admit any of this? No! The great Tamatoa was NOT going to have anyone thinking he'd gone soft! He shook his head as though trying to clear it, "I'm the picture of health, Mollie! Don't be ridiculous!" He stood up straight with his head held high. This didn't last for long, though. A wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him as his eyes widened briefly before displaying a look of exhaustion. Mollie folded her arms and looked at him with a loving "I-don't-think-so" sort of expression. She said nothing. She didn't have to. Seeing her sweet face looking at him so knowingly, Tamatoa melted inside and knew he couldn't fight it. He hung his head and walked over to the place in his cave where he slept. Flopping down dramatically with classic Tamatoa flair, he moaned, "Good gods, babe, I think I'm dying!" Mollie smiled and shook her head. He could be such a diva sometimes! She walked over to him and compassionately put her hand on his face, "You'll be alright, love. I'll take care of you," she kissed his cheek, "Now how can I help you feel better?" "Get me something shiny?" He asked weakly with a bit of a sheepish smile. Hey, it was worth a shot! "Tama, come on now..." "I don't knooowwwww..." he groaned, "I can't remember the last time I got sick. Probably because Tamatoa doesn't get sick!" He banged his claw on the ground, "Why's this happening to me?" Tamatoa looked over at Mollie, "Why's this happening to me, babe? What did I do to deserve this?" He squeezed his eyelids shut, trying to hold back tears. Mollie, her hand still on his face, rested her head on Tamatoa's cheek and started stroking his face with her other hand, "Shhh, it's okay. You're going to be fine," Mollie spoke softly and tenderly to her crustacean companion, "Why don't you take a little nap? I'm sure I can come up with something! You just relax. Your body needs it." Tamatoa whimpered and put his head down. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Mollie took this as her cue to leave. As she got up, Tamatoa lightly grabbed at her ankle, "Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?" He asked, almost in a whisper. Mollie smiled, "Of course," she sat down by the crab and watched him rest. Chapter 2: Normally, a human walking around Lalotai by themselves would not last even two minutes. However, nearly everyone in the realm of monsters knew who Mollie was and how special she was to Lalotai's most powerful resident, so the other monsters did her no harm. She could walk about the realm in peace. Her walk didn't feel very peaceful, though; her brain hard at work trying to come up with something for a sick crab. "Do I have ANY idea what to do? No!" Mollie muttered to herself as she wandered through the plants and rocks. She chuckled dryly, "I guess this is more evidence that school really doesn't prepare you for the real world!" THUMP! Something hit the ground loudly behind her. Mollie turned around, eyes filled with fear. Thankfully, that feeling went away as she identified the source of that noise. It was none other than Tamatoa's old friend, Maui, the shape-shifting demigod. Mollie sighed with relief, and smiled, "Hi Maui!" "Hey there, Mollie!" He grinned. Then, with a curious look, asked, "Why're you out here all by yourself? Where's old crab cakes at?" Mollie's face fell, "He's sick, and I have no idea what to do or what to get him or-ahhh!!!" Mollie nearly pulled her hair out in frustration. "Hey, no need to panic, kiddo!" Maui put a friendly hand on her shoulder, "You could probably find something to help the big guy at Kim & Kinoki's." Mollie raised an eyebrow, "Who now?" "Kim & Kinoki's. It's a shop for medicinal herbs and tinctures and such. I get my seaweed from there! Come on, I'll show you where it's at!" He motioned with his arm for Mollie to follow. Catching up with Maui, she eyed him suspiciously, "Seaweed?" Mollie was surprised to hear such a thing from the demigod. "Hey, being Maui, shapeshifter, demigod of the wind and sea, hero of man, gets stressful." He shrugged it off, then nervously added, "Don't tell Moana!" Mollie chuckled and shook her head as the two continued walking. About 10 minutes later, they were standing in front of a sunken ship with a massive hole in it, which appeared to be the doorway. Above said doorway was a sign that with the name Maui mentioned on it. "Well, here we are! Kim & Kinoki's!" Maui said, and Mollie followed him into the strange shop. Upon entering, Mollie was greeted with what can only be described as an assault to her olfactory sense. The herb and fish smell was overwhelming! Aside from that, though, the little shop was very interesting. Shelves lined with vials and jars of different colored spices, liquids, and powders. They even sold preserved monster body parts, such as tentacles, fangs, and what Mollie sincerely hoped were two eyeballs suspended in a jar of liquid. "We'll be right with you!" Called a female voice. It came from a little room behind the cash register, as Mollie noticed. The two continued casually browsing for about a minute or so when a two-headed water nymph came out of the little room. The creature was light blue and traditionally feminine with delicate-looking wings. One head had a short, dark blue a-line haircut and calm grey eyes, while the other head had tousled yellow hair, sharp teeth and eyes that were completely white. Mollie gasped upon seeing her. The two heads gasped as well. "What's a human doing in Lalotai?" The yellow-haired one asked loudly to no one in particular. Her blue haired sister gave her a stern look, "Don't be rude, Kinoki! She's probably terrified enough as it is!" She turned to Mollie and Maui smiling, "Forgive her. She doesn't always think before she speaks. Anyway, welcome to Kim & Kinoki's! I'm Kim, and this idiot," she poked the yellow haired head, who growled and snapped at her finger, "is Kinoki. Can we help you find anything? And nice to see you, Maui. You want your usual?" "Not today, thanks. I'm just helping Miss Mollie here find some medicine for her sick crab boyfriend. Got anything that might help the big guy?" Both Kim and Kinoki's eyes widened. "Ohhhh my gods it all makes sense now," Kinoki's said, staring at Mollie in awe. Mollie blushed, "What do you mean?" She asked shyly. "You're Tamatoa's human girl?" Kim asked, still in awe. Mollie's blushed deepened at the mention of her sweetheart's name. She nodded shyly. "HolyshrimpIamsosorryforbeinganasspleasedontbeangrypleasedont-" Kim clamped her hand over Kinoki's mouth and stopped her fearful rambling, "I'm sorry if we've made you uncomfortable Mollie." Kim said, blushing a bit. She took her hand off of her sister's mouth, "Anyway, what's ailing Tamatoa?" "Well," Mollie stammered, "It kinda seems like he has the flu, but I don't know if crabs can get the flu, because that's a human virus, and," Mollie got flustered, "I just, I hate seeing him like this and not knowing what to do and-" Mollie was cut off as the sisters approached. Kim put her hand on Mollie's cheek in a motherly sort of way, "Darling, I know exactly what he needs. Wait here," The sisters disappeared into their little room. After several minutes of shuffling, sizzling, and popping sounds, the pair came back out, "All done!" Kinoki grinned, showing her pointy teeth. Kim held a large jar of thick gold liquid, "This mixture of gold and Venus Death Trap leaves should have him feeling much better! Though I need to warn you," she said as she set the jar on the counter, "Most crabs have trouble taking it. The idea of ingesting gold is often troubling for their kind." "Yeah, like remember that one red crab that owns the burger joint a few hours from here?" Kinoki asked Kim, "He just about had an aneurysm at the thought of that!" Kim smiled and shook her head at that memory, "Poor guy...anyway, I hope this helps!" She handed Mollie the jar, "And don't hesitate to return for any other needs you might have!" "Wait, don't I owe you some money?" Mollie asked. "This one's on us," Kim smiled warmly. "Mostly because we have a healthy fear of Tamatoa!" Kinoki grinned awkwardly. Mollie laughed, "Well, thank you! This means a lot!" "No problem!" Kim said, "You guy's have a great day!" Chapter 3 "Alright, so how're we gonna do this?" Maui asked on the way back to Tamatoa's cave. Mollie blinked in surprise. She looked up at Maui, "We?" "Trust me, Mollie," Maui chuckled, "This is gonna be a job that requires a demigod! Tamatoa is pretty stubborn!" Mollie laughed, "You don't have to tell me twice about that!" The two of them were deep in thought for the next few minutes of their walk, trying to come up with a way to get Tamatoa to take his medicine. "You know," Maui said finally, " We could always try to put it in some sort of capsule or funnel and when he's not looking, shove it up his-" "MAUI!" Mollie shouted at him, blushing furiously, "TOO FAR!" Maui put his hands up, "Okay, okay, we won't do that! But honestly, do you have a better idea?" "Bat our eyelashes and hope for the best?" "Come on, Mollie." "Alright, alright," she sighed, "What else can we do?" Maui's face lit up, "What if we used berry juice to dye it purple?" Mollie smiled, "Sounds like a good plan! Now, where can we find some berries?" Soon enough, the two arrived at Tamatoa's lair with their newly-colored medication. "This is definitely going to work," Maui said with determination, "Now let's go fix that crab!" Tamatoa was still sleeping when Mollie and Maui entered. Mollie gave the jar to Maui, "Let me wake him up." She knelt down in front of Tamatoa's face and began rubbing his cheek, "Tama, wake up," she said softly, "I'm back with some medicine." Tamatoa let out a whimpering moan and opened his eyes, "Alright then, babe," he said weakly, "Let's have it," he pushed himself up a bit. Maui walked over now, holding the jar of purple liquid, "Here you go, buddy! Drink up!" Tamatoa looked over at Maui with surprise, "What are you doing here? And what is that mess?" "It's your medicine, silly!" Mollie kissed Tamatoa's cheek. "I know that much already," Tamatoa rolled his eyes, "But what's in it? It looks-" he paused, eyeballing the viscous liquid. Then his eyes widened, "I'm not drinking that! There's gold in it! That would be just...just blasphemous!" Maui stared at Tamatoa in awe and frustration, "How the hell did you figure that out?" "If there's anything I know about, you little semi-Demi-mini-god, it's gold." Maui cursed under his breath. "Language, babe," Tamatoa said cheekily. Maui gave him the finger. "Tama," Mollie piped up, "It'll make you feel better. Then we can go collect all the gold you want! So will you please take it?" "No." "Tama-" "I'm not drinking gold! What a waste!" "It's not a waste if it cures your sickness!" "If I can't wear it or collect it, it's a waste!" "Okay, that's it!" Maui stood up, "No more Mr. Nicegod! Listen, crab cakes, if you don't drink this, it's going up your-" "Can we not go there?" Mollie put her hand up. She looked at her sweetheart, who was beginning to look worn out even by his own stubbornness, "Will you take it for me?" She batted her eyelashes and smiled up at him. Tamatoa's mask of determination began to fade. He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, "Bring it here," he said as though awaiting a shot. Maui gave him the jar, and Tamatoa reluctantly drank its contents. What, you thought there was gonna be some sort of chase and fight? This is fluff, not action! When he had finished the medicine, Tamatoa looked over at Mollie in annoyance, "The things I do for you." Mollie laughed. She gave her drama queen a hug on his face. "Well, I'll let you two love birds do...whatever it is you do. Get well soon, you big lug!" He turned around and headed out. "Thank you, Maui!" Mollie called after him. Maui turned around, "You're welcome," he said with a wink. Then he was off. Tamatoa sighed and closed his eyes. "Getting sleepy again?" Mollie asked. He nodded. "Want me to stay here with you?" Tamatoa opened one eye, "Could you?" He asked hopefully. Then he blushed, "And would you, erm, would you lie on my neck? It...feels nice when you...do that..." Mollie giggled, "Of course!" Tamatoa smiled weakly and picked her up, gently placing her on the back of his neck. Mollie curled up and closed her eyes. Soon, the two were sound asleep.

New Post has been published on http://manicdak.com/?p=2341

TO ATHENS BY WAY OF PANDORA'S COVE

Let’s Get A Party Started!

How Do I Recruit Bears?

Sure, I’ll go to Athens, but I’m going to take the round about way doing it, so I can clear some more areas! A quiet shipwreck, bandit camp, cool. Nothing exciting or too challenging. Hah! I do come upon a fishing village, which I think is going to be a chill place, but it is filled with huntresses that attack me as soon as I step foot on their beach. Like, serious, I wasn’t intending on fighting you guys, but here we go I guess. I want to make peace with the huntresses, they are bad ass and are one with the bears! There is literally nothing to be gained aside from XPs by fighting them, but alas, they are attacking me anyway.  Later on there are more huntresses that I don’t want to fight, but I have treasure chest to raid and ancient tablets to find, so I can unlock the secrets of this damn spear for my future relative? Is that even necessary for the memory machine to work these days? I mean, it’s portable now. I don’t know. TBH I barely pay attention to the current times portion of the game. The Pirate one was the first version of Assassin’s Creed I ever played, so you can imagine my great confusion with having to deal with the hacking computers and the reading boring emails portion of the game.

Anyway, I find another gruesome scene at some different cult’s HQ on top of a mountain. The God of War worshipers. I free a dude, and learn nothing about the cult that wants to kill me. I’m getting bored with grinding now, so I guess I will do a quest. I pick one about the Daughter’s of Artemis, head towards it, and discover it is the one where I have to kill legendary animals. Apparently I did initiate that quest, but I still haven’t killed the pig so Daphnae hasn’t given me further instructions to hunt for the rest of the creatures yet even though I already snagged the stag.

Loving the idea of bacon more and more every passing moment

Several levels later and I still can’t kill the thing, but I do get to the part where it summons five regular sized boars to attack me at the same time. There are boars flying, and I’m dying, so it’s time to run away again.

Seriously, forget it, I’m going to Athens. Let’s go to the ship, back to Herotodus, who is my guide on this journey. Apparently we are not docking in Athens, we’re going in the back way because my ship is directed to this cove where there is no dock. 

Welcome to Athens, home of the fighting Llama Birds

Actually, there seems to be no purpose to avoiding the docks, because we just walk right up to the leadership who are out and about orating to the masses. Perikles is giving a speech and some dude named Kleon is rousing the people against Sparta. Oh, Ok, they’re word fighting now. Perikles is the sensible one, or at least the one that doesn’t want to fight everybody?? I know he’s an historical figure and possibly terrible though, so I’m going to proceed with caution. He might help me by giving me an invite to his Symposium pretending to be a servant. First, he gives me side quests to prove myself, as you do. I am reminded that my entire goal in this Odyssey is to find my mom and learn about my dubious ancestry. I must admit, I was so intent on raiding camps and collecting shark bounties that I forgot what I was even looking for. 

Oh, well. To the quests!

First Metiochos is late for a very important date. Obvious, he is dead or in a cage somewhere.

Second, Phidias the famous sculptor awaiting trial for impiety. I’m fairly sure I saw this guy is on my culty list though.

And a vote on Ostracism. I’m supposed to help decide who stays and who goes apparently? But I’m too much of an outsider to just go to the symposium, yet this I can decide?  Sure thing, Pickles. 

Oh, No!

OK, To Metiochos. His quest is called a venomous encounter, so he’s dead by snakes, cornered by snakes, or caged by a group of bandits called the serpents. Onward! 

Well, two out of three; he is corned by snakes and tied up by thugs! I save him from the vipers, but obviously, I will have to go on a quest for the thugs now. They are apparently poor fishermen and followers of Kleon. I inspect their house and find more snakes and a note. Metiochos is a corrupt politician who is oppressing the poor and they are working on the plans of a higher up. I let them go and give an inspiring speech about improving their neighborhood and ignoring politicians as if it’s that easy, but whatever. I’m off to see what the snake dealer has to say. Is there another higher up baddie? Is it Kleon? Are the politicians the real bad guys after all? Maybe, Maybe, and Yes. Let’s go!

The Snake Dealer has no option for diplomacy, so I guess we’re just going to end him right here, and as it turns out he is the top guy. Huh. I was fulling expecting this to lead back to the big K himself.

Now for the sculptor. Perikles want’s me to help him escape. He’s not a culty guy that I have to kill after all.  He’s just the key to finding them! They are trying to kill him too. I mean…hopefully he’s not lying. I get to ask about his specific relationship with Perikles, and he says they are the bestest of friends. Okay. Also, Kleon is trying to set him up for theft along with the impiety he’s already on trial for. We are heading to another island to meet sculptor’s friend who I 100% do not trust. When we get there, it turns out that indeed, he is trustworthy as advertised and he gives me some deets on the cultist who wants sculptor dude dead. Alright! Sculptor man wasn’t the bad guy after all. Nice. I didn’t want to kill him.

~Pause for sleep!~

Okay, now we get to decide who’s getting exiled. I have to go to another island to do this. WHY??? Oh, wait, no, it is not on another island. I am on another island. I forgot I was dropping that dude off to hide out from those culty douches. I’m back in Athens now, and it turns out Perikles wants me to rig the ostracism. I’m not deciding anything, I’m just stuffing the ballot box. That makes a whole lot more sense. Let’s hear it for the cradle of democracy!  We’ll see if I get a choice in this.

I don’t. Let’s see who I’ve doomed.

Dust in the wind, Dude.

I’m not quite sure what happened, but the guy I meet back at the ostracism isn’t the same guy that instructed me to rig the vote? Or is it?? I don’t even remember. In any case, the guy I meet is none other than So-Crates himself, best known for helping Bill and Ted on their Excellent Adventure.

Well, the vote’s are in, and we get reassured that they have all been counted despite evidence of vote tampering. Now, this close personal friend of Sokrates and Perikles has to go. Wait, wait…so, the vote was or wasn’t fixed? I’m so confused. Sokrates is giving me a guilt trip though. Ugh. Go philosophize somewhere else, my dude. I’m going back to Pickles to see what the deal is.

But first I help a townsfolk deliver a flower to a doctor, who is not nearly as cute as my country doctor. At least I get some easy drachmae, and Whooosh. Level Up! Good detour, self. Should I head to Perikles, or should I see what mayhem Kleon is up to? 

Kleon it is!

OK, he’s just trying to overthrow the government.

…or not.

He wants me to hassle some Spartans to bump up morale. I guess I can take him up on it since I’m probably going to be doing that anyway. I mean, on the one hand, I don’t trust his squinty ass, but on the other he’s not hiring me to straight up murder Pickles, sooo…

Ok, manual save. Let’s put hassling the Spartans on the menu.

But first, I have a symposium to attend to!

Whaaaat?

OMG, PHOIBE is there???? What? Not dead of the plague? Yes, it is Phoibe, and not a case of reusing the same model for all children in the game. Turns out she saved her money, stowed away, and came to Athens before she could perish. Alexios can’t believe she’s here either. She’s working for someone named Aspasia, who I feel like I should know, but I don’t.

Phoibe is clearly done with me.

Anyways, Pheoibe is here to make sure I’m in the proper fancy robes and check my weapons at the door. I have options here to not change, but I’ll do it. Even though such things are always suspicious. I will probably need a dagger at some point. Alexios is 100% echoing my feelings about this as soon as I’m typing them! I feel vindicated.

Anyway, Herodotus is here and giving me the deets about this schmooze fest. I guess this new squishy non-armor was a good choice for rubbing elbows. He tells me about all the dudes here. I won’t tell you all about these argumentative playwrights now though. I learn that Alexios doesn’t like Sokrates at all, and Perikles isn’t even at his own shin-dig. UGH.

Before I can get any more introductions, I am accosted by a shirtless drunk dude, who is kind of shameless and amazing. Like, everybody else is chatting and drinking and this fella just rolls on up in his undies like it’s nothing. Haha, what is happening? He’s reciting some love poem or something at me before he wanders away.

Now Herodotus goes to find Pickles, and I’m left alone to my own devices. My first side quest is to find and talk to shirtless drunk guy. I’m not sure how much information I’m going to get out of him. 

Oh, great. Turns out he’s behind a closed door. With moaning and goat noises. This guy’s name is Alkibiades, I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what it sounds like and he is not attempting to lift heavy furniture for comedic effect back there, but I pound on the door and demand to be let in anyway. Yep. Indeed, this is some kind of orgy situation happening (the goat likes to watch???) He asks if I’m here to join them. He’s also super into Sokrates for some reason. (Sokrates is not there for the record)

Stop Flirting with me, Ace, I’m Trying to Find my Mom!

Well, I have agreed to get him some oil in exchange for info, but in the kitchen I’ve bumped into this playwright guy who was arguing with some other playwright named Euripides earlier and I’m supposed to care about this? No. I am just getting oil for the horny dude. Time is of the essence! I think this guy’s drunk too. Sophokles is his name. He want’s me to get Eurpides drunk, so he too can become a public embarrassment. Everybody at this party is drunk! Except for me. Alas.  What has Pickles gotten me into?   Symposium does sound far more elegant than this drunken frat party I am at.

Okay, well, now that Alkibiades has his oil and is pumped up about his orgy (that he still is trying to convince Alexios to join. I do have the option to say yes, but I’m going to stick with the find mom plan. I mean, not gonna lie, I like his style. He seems way more fun that those bickering playwrights, but I am on a quest!) Anyway, Alkibiades, does seem less drunk somehow and thinks my mom might be on Korinth with the hetarae. He is surprisingly helpful even though Alexios isn’t particularly pleased by this info.

Now we’re off to get some playwrights drunk and see if they’re as helpful as shirtless guy. I have already fucked up this quest and got the wrong wine from the kitchen staff. Let’s see how it goes. 

I propose a drinking competition. I really don’t like these dudes. They’re kind of A-holes, treating me like a nameless servant here to pour them wine. I am pouring them wine and possibly posing a servant, though not much has been made of that since I first met Perikles.  I realize this special robe may in fact be servants attire.  That’s not the point. Eurpides gives me some info to track down. I wasn’t paying attention, so I will check it out in the quest menu later. I wonder what would have happened if I’d picked the right wine? Perhaps Sophokles would have given me the info instead?

Ok, back to Sokrates for some philosophical discussions.

We’re discussing the art of war. Lol, Alexios is not getting it. We should have stuck with the orgy dude. Just in time to save me from this conversation, the mythical Aspasia who I feel like I should know makes her appearance. Turns out, I don’t know her after all. She gives me some contacts to talk to in the places the other guys told me to go, and also another contact—a woman called Xenia!

Now let’s see what Perikles has to say.

He’s just up on the second floor moping and doesn’t want to join his own party for a speech. Like, he’s very sober. I’m not sure anybody down there is going to remember anything he has to say anyway. While we’re up here, we’re going to find out what the heck was up with all those errands:

I saved the sculptor because he’s a bro. That’s it. Perikles thinks he was delusional, but a good pal that deserved a hand.

And the Ostracized guy? He got sent away because Perikles wanted to protect him.

And Metiochos just got snaked through no machinations of Perikles. That was all on some rando dudes who were into Kleon.

Well, Perikles himself was less than helpful, but at least I have some leads.

On the way out Pheoibe tells me some rumors about the plague back home, so now I have a quest to go check that out. I tell her it’s not our fault that we’ve doomed our whole island, but yeah. Totally my fault!

I tell her I’m going off to Korinth. Since Alkibiades is the first person I talked to, that shall be the first place I’ll go!  I’m going to put off handling this plague situation for as long as possible, that’s for sure!

A Horse Sculpture

Phobos Takes A Dip

Fight, Fight, Fight!

Why is this merchant in a cave?

Bull Man

Cows!

This Little Piggy went to Market

Enjoys Long Rides on the Beach

Ship Graveyard

In Athens, Eagle Bears You

Look At This Guy’s Snake

Crane

Sailing

Billowing

Sea Goat

Even the Statues have Had Enough

Studious Children