#haestrom

What if that’s because he is a marine in a Quarian suit?

Hear me out. Kal is older than Tali, or at least gives off those vibes, and so he would have been on his pilgrimage a while ago. Like maybe right after first contact. And here are these brand new people who came out of nowhere and had apparently enough fire power and attitude to give the Turians a very brief pause. The whole galaxy wants to know more. And humanity has no idea who is out there, but surely they can’t all be like the creepy bird people?

Cue one very curious Quarian in Shanxi, just as curious an out humanity as humanity is about everything. Meeting with early alliance brass, giving them information common palace to any kid with an extranet feed but wholly new to humanity. He explains that the Quarian don’t have ground forces because they don’t have a ground, and is honest about the geth, and is like ‘so how did you make the Turian Hierarchy freak out?’

And somehow ends up observing basic training, and falls in love with it. To the point where he actively asks to go through marine boot camp in Hanshan, and is just earnest and endearing enough to be allowed. So he goes through it, puts in the work and the blood and sweat and tears and makes the kinds of friends that you sort of have on the Flotilla, but everyone also knows you are all going to separate ships eventually and getting attached is hard.

But the humans will pack bond with a robot vacuum without issue, and when they meet a Quarian who wants to learn and thinks it’s amazing that they stood up to the biggest military in the galaxy running on old fashioned rocketry and spite? The marines adopt him as one of their own. They are brothers, something most single child Quarians have no experience with, and Kal gives it back in spades. He talks like them, fights like them, jokes and learns and is like them.

And when it is over and they graduate, it’s hard to turn down the offer to stay. But humanity respects the loyalty to his people that takes him back to the fleet, and it almost brings him to tears when his graduating class passes a cap for his passage back to the fleet in more comfort than sitting on a box in a volus cargo ship.

It actually brings him to tears when his drill instructor informs him that while it might not be in great shape, Arcturus has authorized them to gift Kal’Reegar with a battered but space worthy corsair and an official greeting from the Systems Alliance to the Migrant Fleet.

The SSV Jarhead is perhaps the best gift anyone is his age range can give to a future captain, though his practical military experience is a gift to the whole fleet. It catapults him through the Quarian military, from for soldier to instructor to commander, and somewhere he hopes that his brothers and sisters are as proud of them as he is of every transmission that makes it back to him.

On Haestrom, that training keeps him alive long enough to watch his squad die, and that cuts like nothing else. But he can’t stop, because the principle is still depending on him, and until his suit gives out he has to fight to her.

But then the voice cuts through the chatter of his own mind, and he *knows it*. Knows the cadence and the phrasing, knows how a human mouth forms the phrases that he has spent years trying to teach. Commander Shepard might not be a marine, but they are a human combat specialist and the fraternity is there.

Maybe it’s just three more people who are going to die for this fools errand, but somehow Kal doesn’t think so. There are two bone deep beliefs that he will carry it’s him to either the home world or the afterlife, and it has always felt appropriate to him that they rhyme. That they sound similar, when he breathes them into the air.

Pt11

[new messages as of 13:04]

13:04- SPEC. GOTO: @shepard-betting-pool

13:04- SPEC. MASSANI: what is it

13:04- SPEC. JACK: what’s the wager

13:04- SPEC. GOTO: 500 creds say that Shep will biotic charge the colossus

13:05- DR. SOLUS: Unlikely.

13:05- SPEC. JACK: likely as fuck

13:05- DR. SOLUS: Will participate.

13:05- SPEC. JACK: the cheerleaders gonna piss her pants, wish i was there to see it

13:05- GO. VAKARIAN: count me in for the positive

13:05- DR. SOLUS: Garrus, recommend focusing on geth and colossus. Not participating.

13:05- GO. VAKARIAN: text to speech, doc. just dropped a firestorm while betting on my neurotic CO.

13:06- SPEC. MASSANI: bullshit, you ain’t allowed to wager. Ground team has an advantage.

13:06- SPEC. GOTO: Place your wagers here———> bet/SHEPARDxCOLOSSUS

13:06- GO. VAKARIAN: you’re right, Zaeed. I can see it in her eyes. Make at a 1000.

13:06- SPEC. GRUNT: 1000 creds says the turian dies today

13:06- LT. TAYLOR: nahhh no way she’s doing that. Miranda JUST lectured her about unnecessary recklessness in the field.

13:07- LT. TAYLOR: just heard myself. she’s gonna charge it, no doubt

13:09- GO. VAKARIAN: Pay up, losers.

13:09- SPEC. JACK: FUCK YEAH SUCK IT DOCTOR

13:09- DR. SOLUS: ‘sucking’ was not part of bet. Maybe next time.

13:10- XO. LAWSON: Doctor, set up an appointment for LC. We need to have a word with her.

13:10- SPEC. GRUNT: battlemaster does not answer to you

13:10- GO. VAKARIAN: hahah you’re in trouble @LC

Far Rim, Dholen

CONFESSION: