#ferocious replies

I know it’s taken a bit to put this together, but I finally have something for you :D Thank you for the prompt, and I hope you like it!

Also on AO3!

Daffodil: A new beginning

The two years that passed between the first call and the second had felt more like twenty. It had been like a pocket dimension, not apart from but beside her main reality. While Hannah had noticed some grays starting to glisten in her hair after the Battle of the Citadel, a shock of white now streaked her hair, a constant reminder of what Alchera had taken from her.

Not that she hadn’t known at least some of what happened after the attack. Right when she’d started to put her life back together, her eyes and ears on the inside of Cerberus had broadsided her with the news: Alli was alive. That archeologist had helped those terrorists to recover her daughter’s burned and broken body, and they proceeded to do unspeakable abominations to her.

“Han, I can hear you grinding your teeth from here, and I’m several mass relays away,” Dess’s voice called Hannah back to the present.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Sorry, sweetheart. I was just . . . Alli’s remanded herself to the Alliance. She’s under house arrest while a tribunal figures out whether to indict her for treason.”

“So when do you plan to go see her?” Dess’s voice was carefully even, but Hannah heard the question all the same. Are you going to see her?

“I . . . don’t know.” Hannah untwisted her hair and let it fall over her shoulder so she could run her fingers through it. “What if . . . what if it’s not really her? What if she’s a clone? Or worse, what if she’s not all there anymore? What if Cerberus did something to her to make her easier to control, emptied her out? What if she’s . . . not Alli, anymore?”

Dess hummed as she considered. “But what if it is her?” she said at last.

Hannah nodded. “You’re right. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

Oh, that fic is both one I’m very much looking forward to finishing and also one I rather dread picking up again. Not because it’s a bad or boring story, mind you! Just emotionally taxing. It deals largely with the aftermath of Shepard’s (Alchera) death and how it affects Hannah (the idea behind the title being there’s no word, in English, for someone whose child is dead), but that’s really just the beginning. The meat of the story is Hannah’s knowledge of and involvement in Shepard’s resurrection—which is to say, late, limited, and adamantly against but incapable of stopping. I can’t get too much further into the details without spoiling some late chapters of Family Resemblance, but here’s a snippet:

The image of Alli lying still and breathless flashed through her mind unbidden, and Hannah’s inside turned cold and hollow. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, inhaling and exhaling one slow breath at a time.

Keep it together, Hannah. Just get home.

How many times had she watched Alli breathing in her sleep as a baby? She could still feel her quick heartbeat against her chest. It had seemed miraculous that something so small and fragile could ever exist—and so frightening to think Hannah might one day fail in protecting her. Alli had grown strong and quick and even ruthless—a soldier in every sense—but that day had come all the same.

Hannah glanced up to see she was nearly to her door, and put a hand over her mouth. Just a little farther.

She jumped out of the sky car almost before it stopped and took long, quick strides toward the door. Through sheer force of will, she made it all the way to the kitchen sink before her stomach turned itself inside out. When there was nothing left inside her, she let the water run and scooped it into her mouth to rinse out the foulness.

Memories of sitting up late at night when Alli was sick came to mind, and her hand tingled with the feel of Alli’s fevered, clammy forehead beneath it. She’d been so afraid, she couldn’t have slept if she wanted to. When the fever broke the next morning, Hannah nearly cried. Part of her thought that if Alli would’ve had any siblings, Hannah would’ve handled those common emergencies more fluidly. But that had been pointless speculation. Alli was all she ever had. And now she was . . . somewhere. Nowhere.

Was she floating, frozen through space? Had she burned up in the atmosphere over that strange planet? Was she battered, burnt, broken—

“Han!” Dess broke through Hannah’s increasingly worse thoughts as she rushed past the kitchen, saw her, and hurried back. “Drescher called me and said—” she stopped short as Hannah turned off the water and didn’t look at her. “No.”

Hannah barked a bitter laugh. “You got it a hell of a lot faster than I did.”

Thank you for the ask <3

Ah! I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about this headcanon before but here we go :D

So in ME3, Grissom Academy. It’s near the end of the mission when you come across a group of students holding off two Cerberus dicks with a homemade barrier that the lead student designed herself. There’s a lot of emphasis on her name, Octavia, and she’s also young black girl, so I like to think that was BioWare’s way of nodding to Octavia Butler—truly a giant in the SFF field. And where have we heard the name Butler before?? That’s right! Garrus had someone on his team named Butler. With as much as the Shadow Broker dossiers uncover how much Garrus does quietly in the background, I like to think Octavia is the daughter of the teammate who died on Garrus’s watch, and he arranged for her to get as far away from Omega as possible, to Grissom Academy. I feel like Garrus would feel at some kind of guilt or duty to take care of the kid of someone who was in his command and got killed for it.

Now, the title is a pretty well-known reference to Nietzsche: “He who fights monsters should take care he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” (Or something like that, I’m going from memory here.) I think that’s what happens to Garrus on Omega, which you can see pretty clearly with the way his kill list goes from clean and efficient to sadistic and darkly poetic. There has to be some kind of light, from my perspective, that keeps him from succumbing to a darkness so complete there’s no road back. And that’s where Octavia and her family come in, along with the rest of his team.

Unfortunately, this is my least developed story :( I knew it would be a fic that would take up all my attention once I started it, and I had other fics I needed to finish first. This is the only thing I have written for it (beyond outlines, that is):

The Butler girl was like—what was it Shepard used to say?—a bad penny, and her timing for turning up couldn’t have been worse.

Thank you for the ask :D

Ah yes. Illium Holiday. Tbh, I was hoping this one would kind of get lost in the mix, but rules are rules :P

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s my first attempt at smut :D In fact, it’s not technically a WIP because it’s finished (heh), but I can’t post it yet because of other plotty things. Though, I suppose it doesn’t really spoil anything I haven’t spoiled here? I dunno, I’ll have to take a look at it again to reconsider :P

The gist: Dess goes to Illium for a much needed vacation and meets someone very interesting. Things progress from there. Here’s a snippet:

At the moment, she stood behind another guest with an exceptional waist—for a human, at least. And the way her dark red hair was pulled into a tight rope of a braid that swayed down her back afforded Odessus a view of her long and slender neck and strong shoulders. Not that she was into humans or anything. But she could appreciate the way her waist twisted and moved as she leaned and shifted her weight, right?

“Lines are the worst part of traveling don’t you think?”

Odessus snapped her eyes back up to the human’s face, which was now turned enough that she could talk to her over her shoulder. Odessus felt her neck warm and she fumbled for a response.

“That and lost luggage,” she offered, chiding herself internally for having leered so openly.

The human’s mouth turned up, and the corners around her sea-green eyes wrinkled. It was a nice smile. Friendly but in an easy, intimate way, like she’d known Odessus all her life. The human turned the rest of her body so that they could talk more easily.

“I’ve been lucky enough not to have that happen to me,” she said. “What about you? Are you lucky too?”

Odessus flicked her mandibles out. “I usually get lucky, yeah,” she said, and the human’s smile grew.

She put out her hand, “I’m Hannah. Hannah Shepard.”

Odessus took her hand and shook it, surprised by her firm grip. “What brings you here, Hannah?”

She shrugged one shoulder and said, “I had some shore leave to use or lose, and I thought I’d explore the galaxy a little bit. I took the names of a few places I’ve been curious to see and put them through a randomizing program. The first one to pop up was Illium, so here I am. What about you?”

“Something like that,” she said and flicked her mandibles in a grin. “You’re military?”

Hannah nodded and gave a little salute. “Yes, ma’am. Alliance Navy. I’m currently stationed at the Citadel, so it’ll be nice to get my feet on some solid ground for a bit.” Odessus thought for a moment the human’s eyes looked her up and down, but she was probably mistaken. “Where are you coming from?”

Odessus felt a small thrill go through her. “The Citadel. I work for C-Sec.”

Hannah cocked her head to the side, and Odessus carefully kept from looking at what the gesture did to the length and curve of her neck. “What a coincidence. We might’ve passed each other a hundred times before and never known it.”

“Oh, I’d remember you,” Odessus said without thinking and felt her neck warm again.

THANK YOU, LOVELY <3

19: What power(s) do you use most frequently?

When I’m a Sentinel, I’m pretty much always wearing Tech Armor, but besides that one, I wear out the Throw and Overload powers. Usually, I set up a Warp from a biotic teammate before I use a Throw. I like the explosion :D And I’ll use an Overload then have Garrus use a Concussive Shot for an equally satisfying murder :P

21: Favorite non-Normandy character?

It’s probably cheating if I say Hannah Shepard :P So besides her, I think my heart goes out most to Charr. He’s just so sweet and romantic and HE DESERVED BETTER.

28: What’s the most hilarious thing that’s happened to you while playing (a glitch, a mission that went haywire, etc)?