Page 45 of Claimed By the War Brute
We board the Vigil’s End. The hum of systems power. My heart echoes in sync. I stand at the viewport, watching the Providentia drift behind us—ghosting off to collect its dead.
“How do we rebuild?” I ask.
Garrus kneels beside me. “One bridge at a time. One person worth it.”
I let my head rest gently on his shoulder. The stars pass calm and clear outside—no more burdened resonance.
He brushes a stray lock from my face. “You okay to fly?”
I lean away and grin—soft and real. “With you? Anywhere.”
He scoffs playfully, low. “Next stop: amusement park. You don’t even know the half of men I’ll punch out so we don’t wait in line.”
I laugh—a release rattling free. “I’ve never been,” I confess.
He reaches up, brushes a scar near my temple. “Then that’s where we start. The first day of the rest.”
I close my eyes and exhale like water released. Garrus’s lips press softly against my forehead as we boot the engines and chart a course toward sunrise.
Because this? This is freedom. And I finally feel like I belong.
CHAPTER 34
GARRUS
I’m perched at the console, one massive arm draped over cold alloy, watching Malmount’s wrecked cruiser drift like tombstone in the void. The Vigil’s End is unnervingly silent—its engines off, life support whispering in the background, systems humming just so. Space presses on every panel. I should feel victory, but all I feel is the aftershock of violence and truth echoing in the stale air.
Seconds stretch into an eternity before the comm blips back to life. Dowron’s face cuts through the dim blue glow, grizzled and immovable—like an old war monument come to life. “You pulled it off,” he says, voice flat. “You cut the head off the dragon. Alliance owes you both more than a commendation.”
I don’t move. No thanks. No cheers needed. Just business.
He leans in, voice clipped: “I want you back—not as a soldier. As a ghost. Off-the-books. Permanent assignment.”
The words hit me like artillery. I snort disdainfully, fists clenching against the panel. “I don’t work for the Alliance,” I say. My gaze drifts rearward, to reality. Syd is seated at the nav console, her silhouette calm, serene, recalibrating their course. She’s something solid in this maelstrom.
Really, I’m talking for me. “I work with it. When it suits me. When it’s sensible. I choose missions, I choose targets. And no one—no one—pins me down.”
Dowron tilts his head, eyes steady behind worn lines. “You’re right,” he admits, and it burns like truth.
I step forward, seizing the moment. “You—and every other general—sent millions of warriors to die on Horus IV for your political chess games. You fucked fresh recruits into the trenches because stability mattered more than human lives!” I jab a clawed finger at the screen. My scales flare red-hot beneath my anger.
Dowron doesn’t flinch. Just looks like I shot through his rib cage. “You’re right,” he says, voice low. “I’d do it again.”
Time stops. I fling my fist through the monitor—flesh on flesh—and my gauntleted punch connects squarely with his jaw. A tooth shatters and clatters across the comm unit. I step back, breathing heavy.
Dowron’s face hardens, but he’s smiling. Of all things. “I’ll let you have that one, Garrus,” he says, pausing to spit a spot of blood. “But next time, I’ll show you I’m not as old as I look.”
My scales itch in shame and rage. I ended a war by stabbing a tooth out of my former commanding officer? That’s… hell.
He cuts the comm.
Immediately, calm floods me. Syd looks up at me from the nav console, concern clear. It makes my chest hollow to see her sweat-soft eyes for what echoes inside me. “Are we… busted?” she asks, voice raspy.
I close my eyes, breathe in the stale air. “Not yet.”
The silence stretches long enough that even the hum of the reactor sounds distant. But there’s a new tension now—between duty and rage, self and other, mission and meaning.
She closes the nav program and rolls her chair forward. “So, before we go ghost again… you okay?”
