(no subject)

[redfirelight]

For all its glitz, all its glamor, the bright colors and lights and swathes of wealth parading over the upper levels, some places on Illium were just as dark and dangerous as somewhere more remote, somewhere shadier. The streets got narrower, the bright lights of advertisements turned sparse. Gentle voice overs from paid asari actresses died out. Storefronts turned from single person kiosks to full on holes in walls, guarded and manned with at least one armed security drone. Lights flickered, only occasionally maintained, alleys twisted and disappeared into the depths of Nos Astra. The air got thick, heavy, everything from above dropping down below.

It was probably not as bad as say, Omega, but not places you really wanted to venture into in the later evening hours. Especially not alone.

Naturally, that was exactly where Ciran went after one of his day shifts.

Maran would have tanned his hide, stripped his scales, but they didn’t have to know. He had no intention of ending up mugged or dead, and even if someone did want to cause trouble, no one ever expected a turian to throw a singularity, or raise a barrier. Biotics were so uncommon among his people, they were practically a ghost story. A term he enjoyed once he’d found out about it - enjoyed for how appropriate it was for someone like him.

He still kept up a comfortable swagger as he walked. Despite wandering, he did his best to make his steps purposeful, like he had an appointment somewhere, someone waiting to meet up with him. Like he belonged here. That kind of attitude did a lot to dissuade anyone lurking around in the shadows - if his stature alone didn’t do it. He knew the tricks to get around down here.

Which was good, since he had business, rather than a party, on his mind.

After the thugs in the repair bay, the mechanic’s shop had, to its credit, tightened up security of its own. The cab was found out have been a hiding place for more red sand than Ciran had seen in his entire life put together. Normally, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but with none of the thugs having an actual permit for the stuff, they’d been carted off. Only to be followed up by another band, deterred by both security drones and the shop’s temporary bouncer - working pro bono for the time being.

Ciran had bounced them all right. All the way across the street. The owner of the shop figured that was it, message sent. But it bothered him. None of the guys had any kind of identification that marked them for a gang he knew about. Eclipse would never have been so sloppy about the whole thing, either, even their new recruits knew better than to try and move drugs illegally when even just faking a permit would have been so much simpler. Plus, no Eclipse enforcer would ever want to take on vorcha underlings.

He sidestepped a pair of strung-out humans, their eyes staring blankly upward into the smog. His mandible clicked idly against his jaw, unsaid disapproval. Granted, Ciran was no saint, but he drew the line at narcotics, at party drugs. Anything that could make someone lose control of themselves in any way. Alcohol was one thing - biotics burned it off at such a high rate, he usually got more hungover than blackout blitzed. Except one time last month, he’d been slamming back more and more exotic shots his date had wanted him to try, and he lost track of a whole stretch of hours until waking up in the guy’s bed the next day.

Just plain embarrassing, if you asked him. A waste of a perfectly good date if you couldn’t remember it.

Though, his reservations and habits weren’t the issue at hand. Figuring out where these idiots were coming from was. If it was just the shop and the vehicles at stake, Ciran doubted he’d have given much of a damn. But the thugs crossed a line when the first group attacked Maran. The thought of the expression on their face, the way their eyes went too wide, normally dark purple skin blanched a pale lavender... it made his blood boil. They were his roommate, sure, and technically, neither one of them owed the other more than casual respect. For some reason, they’d taken it on themselves to keep an eye out for their idiot turian roommate. It was more than anyone had done for Ciran in a long damn time.

They didn’t pry. They didn’t ask anything he wasn’t willing to give up, and he did the same. Maybe they just knew. Maybe they were just drawn together over their respective lack of fitting in boxes - being what their people expected. What their people decreed. He had to admit, part of him envied how Maran had options - how they were between both quarian and asari, they’d chosen the quarians, the vagabonds, the outcasts. Maybe that made sense. Hell, if Ciran had an option, he probably would have picked another species too.

Maybe if he’d been some other species, throwing people around with his brain wouldn’t have been such an overwhelming stigma. And he wouldn’t have been thrown into the most secretive and secluded part of the armed forces, isolated, confused and coming to term with a whole hell of a lot without anyone to lean on besides handlers more convened he didn’t launch a warp that leveled a building than they were a fledgling turian questioning everything about himself.

Ah - fuck it. That was the past. Helping Maran was the present. He needed to focus, not go sauntering down memory lane in the middle of the seediest part of lower Nos Astra. Spacing out was always a fast track to trouble.

He stopped, glancing around. Street markers were hit or miss in this area, but he could have sworn he’d been here before. That shop looked really familiar. Something nagged at him - should he know this place? It wasn’t like he came down here every day. Was he walking around in circles or something? He lifted a hand, passing it over the space in front of him as his omnitool activated, scanning the shop name through his saved data in case he’d made a note about it or -

Something pressed into his lower back. Cold against bare scale. Because of course he’d dressed casually, no body armor, just a loose shirt and pants, showing off his waist - look, he knew what he was about, if he had casual clothing that hid the goods, Ciran couldn’t remember where he’d put it. He went very still. If he threw up a barrier, the gun could fire faster than the field could raise. Bide his time, wait for an opportunity.

“Back up,” came a gravelly voice from behind. It matched the heavy, looming presence he could suddenly feel leaning in. “Slowly. There’s an alley behind you. Back up into it.”

Krogan - his brain informed him. Great. Even his best barriers weren’t always a match for their sheer brawn. Still, play along, chances were, this guy didn’t know he even had biotics. Probably just saw a turian and decided to be an ass about it.

“All right, I’m walking,” he said, and did his absolute damnedest to keep his secondary vocal chords from betraying unease. He couldn’t really control the rapid tap of mandible against his jaw though. “Don’t let me trip.”

There came a chuckle, far smoother than the krogan’s speaking voice had been. It lit that fire of memory in Ciran’s skull. He could swear he knew it. “Tripping is the least of your worries, turian,” the krogan answered, once again sounding like he’d been gargling rocks. Memory smoldered and died. “Move.”

So as casually as one could while backing into a dark alley with a gun at their back, Ciran moved. One step after another. All the time, the weapon never wavered. The krogan never lost step with him. Maybe he could catch the assailant mid-step, pull his feet out from under him and knock him on his tail. Just a little more and he’d give it a try. One step more... and...

And a hand closed around his throat. Just shy of choking. The krogan’s full weight pressed into his back now. He felt the barrel of the gun fall away, replaced by the krogan’s other hand roaming his waist. What the hell was this? Ciran’s plan went out the metaphorical window while the rest of his brain frantically tried to process this new development. Trying to press a square peg into a round hole. The krogan leaned up, and growled something against the side of Ciran’s head:

“You okay? Gimme the color.”

Just like that, everything snapped together. Why the store looked so familiar, why his expeditions brought him here, why the krogan’s laugh sounded like someone he knew... Out loud, Ciran groaned, both sets of vocals broadcasting utter embarrassment and apology. “Red. Red, Renik, I’m sorry - “

The hands dropped. Immediately. The krogan backed off, shuffling away to give him space. “No. No apology - too much? Did I hurt you?” The voice was smooth again. Only a trace fo the rumbling gravel from the voice the krogan had been putting on during the little fake kidnapping.

“Gonna have to do better than that to hurt me,” Ciran assured him, finally turning around, his hands spread. “I’m fine, I just - I forgot we planned this for this week.”

Across the alley, Thax Renik stared in mute disbelief. He was average size for a full grown krogan, his hide a dark green deepening to black along the ridges of his head and heavy scales over his neck. He had eyes so bright a yellow they almost glowed in the dim alley light. They looked like stars, bearing down on the forgetful turian in front of him. Unlike most krogan roaming the galaxy off their home world, Renik wore no armor, carried no apparent weapons. The “gun” was a piece of pipe, leaned against the wall of the alley.

Clan Thax was, after all, a rare sect of krogan who prided themselves on their skill in battling not traditional enemies, but the business sort. Mr. Thax, the apparent head of the clan, was considered more of a crime lord than a typical businessman, striking terror into his competitors’ hearts. For his part, Renik was just a face, more or less, collecting payment here and there, or making new deals where directed. He could throw his weight around, when necessary, but preferred not to. Once he’d joked he could talk his way onto Tuchanka, and then get thrown back off world the moment they put a gun in his hand.

He folded his heavy arms, stance shifting from concern to that of every slighted partner in the galaxy. “You forgot,” he repeated. “We worked this out to the smallest detail... and you forgot.”

Ciran ducked his head, dragging his talons along his spinal plates. “It’s uh. It’s been an eventful couple days. I’m sorry.”

“I’m listening.”

They ended up seated on a pair of discarded steel shipping containers for the explanation, with Renik offering out a container of water from a bag he’d tucked into the shadows. Ciran caught a glimpse of rope, some bottles of various creams and lotions, first aid kit, and a couple anti-histamine injectors all carefully stowed away under a folded tarp. He had to shift where he was sitting - because damn if all of that didn’t look enticing as hell. He remembered now, of course, setting up the details for a fake kidnapping scene, but hadn’t expected Renik to decide to bang him in an alley. The realization made his plates hot.

Maybe they could salvage this later...

“So you figured you’d dig around here?” Renik was saying as Ciran finished. He’d told him everything, from the start of the mess to the second group of thugs coming back. And all his attempts to identify them failing. “Does Maran know?”

Ciran scoffed, dragging his brain back from envisioning what they could have been up to by now if he hadn’t been an idiot. “If they knew, I wouldn’t be here.” A shrug. “They want to just carry on like it never happened. But I can’t let it go. What if this group’s decided there’s a target on their back?”

He couldn’t live with that. With someone else being targeted while he was around. While he could theoretically do something about it. Renik watched him in silence for a bit longer, letting that question hang, until his yellow eyes dimmed a fraction.

“I hate to break it to you,” he said, heavily. “Whoever they work for probably knows Maran didn’t have anything to do with what happened...”

“Then why come back?” Ciran protested. “Why keep bothering the shop if they’re not after Maran for... I don’t know, embarrassing the muscle?”

The metal container creaked as the krogan pushed himself to stand upright. He took a couple steps over to Ciran, and grasped his chin in one oversized hand. Shaking it gently. Heat bloomed up in Ciran’s stomach. He sat very still, looking upward as directed, suppressing a shudder. His eyes went half-lidded, a low buzz sparking up deep in the back of his throat. Concerns, thoughts, those went dormant for a blissful second as he let his head be directed upward, fully in the control of the krogan holding him.

Unfortunately, what Renik said next dragged all those lustful thoughts out behind the proverbial shed and shot them.

“Maran didn’t embarrass their enforcers. You did.”

“Oh.” A beat. “Shit.”

“Yeah. They’re probably looking for you...”

Whatever was said next, Ciran didn’t hear. He knew Renik was talking. He knew the krogan still held his jaw in the strong, careful grip. But the rest of the world started to slide sideways.

Looking for him.

They wouldn’t be the only ones, then. Would they? But they were the only ones looking for him, not a burned out, wasted cabal agent. They were looking for him - not someone else. It didn’t seem to matter much, that distinction. He could feel the cold claws start to stretch up out of memory, settling themselves into his spine. Pulling at his crest, dragging him into a half-shadowed mire he tried so hard to throw out. So hard to ignore.

It was like being back in the compound again, for a horrible second. Like that last desperate night. Hearing “they’ll be looking for you for the rest of your life” echoing in the back of his head - but knowing, deeply knowing, flight was the only option.

The alley, the walls, even his own shirt collar, suddenly felt cloying. Like he couldn’t breathe. Like he wanted, needed to run, without any real idea of where, or how. They were looking for him. They were all looking for him -

Ciran didn’t realize he’d been sick until there was a heavy hand on the back of his neck. Until there was pressure on each of his broad shoulders. Until the corona of biotic light around him came into focus. The wall at his back (was it a wall?) was vibrating. Slowly, words started to register. A voice started to register.

“... Easy. Come on down. You’re good. Nobody’s here. Easy. You’re good.”

Familiar words from a familiar throat. Sometime while he’d been caught up in his thoughts, in his head and the unwanted memories, Renik had shifted behind him. Gripping his shoulders, talking him down just like he would after one of their sessions. They were on the ground, Ciran realized, slowly, and the krogan hadn’t thought about that issue for a single second. Just fallen into the usual role.

“You back?”

“Yeah,” he said, finally, voice an unsteady rasp. Renik passed over the water from his bag. “Thanks. I... don’t know why that hit me.”

“The Cabals?”

Blue-purple light sparked back up again, flickering at the edges of his vision until he could bring himself back under control again. Breathing in time with the pressure of Renik’s hands. “Probably,” he said, lamely. “I... Don’t like thinking about them. About that - all of that.”

“No kidding.”

Somehow, that earned a laugh. Uneasy and choked, but still a laugh. They sat there a little longer in silence, with Ciran just leaning back in Renik’s grip, regaining his thoughts, realigning his brain back into position. People passed by the alley, unawares, talking - laughing, bickering. He exhaled, slowly, feeling his mandible tap and click against his jaw.

“Need a walk home?” Renik finally asked, once the turian’s breathing had fully steadied, once most of the water was gone. “Probably should eat something. You biotics and your metabolisms...”

Ciran was the furthest thing from hungry at the moment, but Renik was right. He hadn’t been doing much in the way of looking after himself lately. Any more and Maran was going to get on his case - no one wanted that. So, he nodded, and started to stand, albeit with a lot of leaning on Renik for support. When he tried to thank him, Renik just waved him off with a free hand.

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get you back to your place before you make another scene.”