Page 44 of Claimed By the War Brute
SYD
Istand on the threshold of the panoramic foyer that marks the Providentia’s bridge, silence pressing in like the calm before a supernova. The recycled air smells faintly of burnt-plasma, cold as my resolve. Garrus is by my side, watching, ready. My father kneels at the foot of the console, wrists reddened from the restraints and eyes rimmed crimson. His suit is crumpled, his posture brittle—destroyed more than just physically. I take a breath. This is what I wanted. This is the end of a long war.
He looks up. “Sydney,” he begins softly—but his voice cracks. A whisper shames the man who once commanded fleets.
I enter. Each step I take towards him reverberates like a verdict. “Don’t call me that.”
His heart flutters in his throat. “Please. Sydney… daughter.”
I stop, less than a meter away. “You haven’t earned the right to call me that, either.”
He bows his head. “I know.” The confession is halting, unfamiliar in the sterile acoustics. “I wasn’t a father. Not to you. I… I treated you like collateral, a bargaining chip. I thought making weapons would make me powerful enough to matter. I thought?—”
“Save it,” I say, my voice brittle but steady. “You doubled me as a trophy and a silence. You sent me to war launches, diplomatic scenes, even put me on record as your loyal heir. But you never… you never once asked if I wanted that.”
He flinches. “I thought I was doing right by you. Legacy, power?—”
“Legacy,” I cut in, swallowing bile, “isn’t inherited, Dad. It’s earned. And all I ever felt was obligation.” I scan his defeated shape in the gantry lights, every corner of his guilt laid bare. “A father would have asked how my day was. Would have let me play my holokeytar or just—listen.”
He closes his eyes. “You deserved that. More than I deserved to call you my daughter.”
“Then stop calling me that.” I take the last step to stand before him. “I have one final thing to say.”
He forces air in, steadying himself.
I hold up the command tablet, still streaming the summit footage. “This destroys everything you built. But it also saves people you never would’ve cared to protect. You made arms, not choices. You paid people to kill, and you didn’t bat an eye.” I clear my throat. “I hope these voices haunt you.”
He stares at me, tears glinting like spatter in the glow of ruined holograms. “I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head. “No. You’re not. Not anymore.” My voice cracks. “Sorry isn’t enough. I have no father. No family. Not with you. You lost that. Years ago.”
He bows again, deeper this time. The breath leaves him. He’s broken—not by force, but by truth. “I… accept that. I’ll live the rest of my life atoning. You have no forgiveness left to offer me. And I don’t expect it.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Then don’t.”
A heartbeat passes. I hold my ground.
He looks up one last time. “You were… everything I never gave you. You are not my legacy, Sydney Malmount. You’re yours.”
I exhale, some fraction of the weight lifting. “Then you stay here. And I walk.”
He nods. He won’t follow. He knows he can’t walk with me.
I look at Garrus. His golden eyes are steady—unchanged—but hopeful. A contrast to the desolation around us. He nods once.
“I’m done,” I whisper.
We turn away together.
The corridors are cold when we leave, shadows lengthening behind us like echoes of the past. Garrus’s hand finds mine—warm and steady. I let him pull me into the ship’s vestibule.
He watches me, quiet but unflinching.
“Do you regret it?” he asks softly.
“I regret having wasted all the years,” I admit. “But not this.” I swipe the data drive free of my jacket. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
He inclines his head. “You’re something else. I’ve always known that.”
