Love and War

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"Maggie, you were attacked." Kandros replied firmly, though he still didn't open his eyes. "I never hated you, only what that bastard did to you."

"Brave? That woman?" Quinn snorted. "I hardly think so. She was a brainless idiot who only cared what would make her dear husband happy."

"You have to realize that I won't hurt you." Amus told her. "I've done everything I could to prove it. I'm not like that drell. What's so wrong with me?"

"What happened?" She finally managed to ask. "How are you?" She looked down at his perfectly smooth abdomen and then touched him with shaking fingers. "How are you okay?"

Connor gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek as he turned tobleabe, intent on checking in on his teacher.

"I don't think you understand." Quinn whispered, for once seeming truly vulnerable. "I'm the problem, not Tyros." No one but her drell had seen Quinn's cybernetic limbs up close, and now she held her arm out for his inspection, silently confessing how ugly they made her feel. "If my mother could do this to me, steal the man I loved... what do you think she will do to you?"

"Magic." Brutus replied with a grin, his hand pressing over Lori's. it was both to steady her shaking fingers, and keep her skin pressed to his own.

"He was here, you know." Amus said. Unlike Tyros he couldn't look at her arm. There was something about it that didn't sit well with him. "He brought me here while you slept and fixed the ship. I watched him. Then he sat with you. Even when I got up and tried to kill him. The bastard." 

"There's no magic, you silly turian." Lori muttered, still sniffing. "And all that stuff I said. I didn't mean it. I was totally drunk."

Quinn was quick to pick up on the fact that Amus couldn't even look at her inhuman arm. If he couldn't do that, how could he ever hope to touch her? He didn't even know one of her legs was also something crafted in a robotics lab. Hell, she was beginning to wonder if he had ever truly looked her in the eye either. "He let you live." She informed her second rather icily. "If Tyros wanted you dead, you wouldn't have even seen him coming."

"Oh? Well that sure is a shame..." Brutus replied with an almost dramatic sigh. "Because now I have this foolish idea that I need to marry you, and now... I'm going to have to kidnap you and force you." He added, rolling Lori beneath him and pinning her arms gently into the pillow by her head as he grinned.

"All that talk you did about hating him...its no wonder you won't pay any attention to me. You're still in love with him. Do you hear yourself? No one is that great. I mean this guy threw himself at your mother. How sick can you get?" Jealousy dripped off every word as the turian got up and began putting in his suit. "I mean all I did was shoot my own brother for you."

Lori gave a soft laugh. "That sounds like the book I read you while you were sleeping, The Merc's Bride. Your favorite part was the shot gun wedding. Well...that and the rocking chair." As she spoke of the chair, her cheeks went an interesting shade of pink.

"Don't you turn that on me, asshole!" Quinn snarled as she too rose to her feet, glaring up at the much taller alien. "I never asked that of you! And don't act like you know me, because you don't! If you knew the first thing, it would already have gotten you killed!" She shoved her human hand roughly against his chest, like she was avoiding touching him with the cybernetic one after the repulsion he had shown towards it.

Brutus smirked when he saw the pink blush to Lori's cheeks. "I like the sound of that..." He breathed, lowering his head to allow his lips to lightly brush the hollow of her slender threat.

"My brother already tried it once. That psycho kid went for it again. So if you're trying to push me away with that it's not going to work.." Amus said firmly. "I care about you Quinn."

Lori and Brutus would never realize that they had had an audience for their time together. Connor was trying to understand not only whay they were doing but why it seemed so important to them. 
"Told you you were joking about marriage." Lori said some time later, her leg drapped over her beloved's.

"Bullshit!" Quinn shot back, thumping a fist against his chest this time. "You care about he power I have." She added firmly. "I fucking disgust you, I saw it!"

"Ah, so opening your legs also opened your mind to the ability to read mine?" Brutus asked with an amused chuckle as a talon traced lightly alone Lori's smooth back before his kissed the top of her head.

Amus gave her a dark look. She'd hit the nail on head. "That's not true." He lied. "You're so defensive. How do you know what will happen between us if you don't give it a chance?"

"Is there actually anything up there but what happens in the dark, guns, and turian chocolate?" Lori teased, her eyes meeting his. "god Bull I really thought I'd lost you. You mean so much. I can't do that again. I...i love you."

Quinn's eyes were narrowed at Amus, all but able to taste the lie. "Right. All this hunger just suddenly came to you?" She snorted, rolling her eyes as she turned away.

"I thought you were smart?" Brutus teased gently. "Smart enough not to love an asshole like me." He added, kissing her head again. He didn't want to just parrot the words back to her in case she thought he confessed his love only because she had.

"Where are we going?" Amus asked her that. "Are you planning to go after your sister's son?"

Lori knew how he felt. He'd been the first to say it. That all seemed like a life time ago. "You know you confessed to a lot when I fed you wine to keep you pain free. There was a lot about me in there." She laughed softly. "You're crazy,  bull."

"We aren't going anywhere." Quinn replied thinly, the ship still far too warm for her to replace her own armour. "I'm stopping at the next station for repairs, and you are leaving."

"See, not that smart." Brutus confirmed. "I always knew I was crazy." He added with a chuckle. "Crazy, but far too lucky."

"What?!" Amus cried, am incredulous tone to his voice. "Why? What did I do?" 

"I wouldn't call you lucky. Not after the meeting me and the past week anyway." Lori said, making a face at him. "Besides, right now neither of us is lucky. We are on Betty's ship. And her healing you didn't come free or even cheap." She got up and began hunting out her clothes, frowning when she found new ones neatly folded in a chair beside the bed. "I need to talk to her. We have to get out of here before Reegar figures out we're here with Connor and comes calling."

"I have a score to settle, the last thing I need is some power thirsty dog sniffing at my heels." Quinn replied coldly. It was more than obvious that Amus had made a rather large mistake by finding the limbs that were forced upon her ugly.

"Maybe here is exactly where we need to be then?" Brutus suggested, turning on his side to watch Lori as she dressed. "We have no ship of our own, we have no weapons. What would we do if he found us?"

"Are you punishing me because I managed to kill my siblings and you couldn't?" Amus asked darkly. 

"What if we found a tiny ship, no weapons. We could go anywhere, bull. Be whoever we want. Screw them all." Lori said with a pleading smile.

"It isn't my sisters I want dead." Quinn replied thinly before she turned with surprising speed, her cybernetic fingers closing around Amus' threat and pinning him to the wall of their ship. "I should have left you to die. Last time I take in a stray." She sneered.

Brutus wasn't smiling. He couldn't. "You don't know Reegar like I do. He won't just let it go. He kills his own people for minor misdemeanours, what do you suppose who would do to us?" The large turban sat up and reached out, pulling Lori closer once more. "I don't care what he does to me, but he knows he can hurt me most by hurting you."

Amus was gasping for breath, slapping at her wrist. He was turning grey. 
"Quinn!" Tyros barked. He had appeared from nowhere, as he always did. "Don't. You'll regret it."

"And you think Betty is the lesser of two evils?" Lori asked, sighing softly as she settled herself in his lap. "She was once my mother but...the woman the general brought back...she's not the same. It scares me, bull. She asked me to bring her Quinn's head if I wanted to save you. What kind of mother does that to her children?"

Quinn didn't turn her head in Tyros' direction, she continued to scowl up at Amus instead. "Tell me, what exactly would I Regret?" She asked thinly. 

"From what I hear, Quinn is hardly innocent." Brutus told Lori gently. "Perhaps Betty sees too much of herself in the girl, and that's what scares her?"

"That you didn't use the little grease ball to take us straight to Betty's ship." Tyros told he. He was at her side, his rough fingers on her shoulders. "Use me as bait. She wont believe you if  youre alone." 

"I agree." Lori muttered,  loving the feel of his talons teasing her hair. 
"Or maybe she's afraid Quinn is going to steal that thing you guys call love from her. Though...i can't imagine grandmother in love." Connor finally chimed in. 
Lori jumed so hard her head bumped into Brutus chin.

Quinn still didn't release Amus, but neither did she push Tyros away. Yet. "Just because you've been inside her, don't think you know her." She told the drell crudely. "I know she sent you to kill me."

Brutus jumped so hard that Lori was tossed right out of his lap and onto the floor. "Kid! How long have you been there?!" He growled, worried that he hadn't noticed the boy. Was love making him weak?

"And you really think I would do that?" Tyros asked. Even though he knew he deserved them, her words still hurt. "It would seem you don't know me either.''

Connor said nothing, his ears turning bright red. 
Lori missed this exchange. She was busy rubbing at her hips and outer thighs.

"I think you would do anything for Betty." Quinn responded, though was wise enough not to look directly at Tyros. What she still believed to be a dream was still too vivid in her mind, meaning she would throw herself at her ex lover's feet just for one kind word from him. 

Brutus was glad that at least Lori had managed to dress before Connor made himself known, though the red ears made him think the boy had seen quite enough already. "Did you want something?" He asked wearily.

"I think you'll never truly know me." Tyros sighed. "Now let the kid go. Unless you plan to give him to your eldest sister so she can punish the wiry bastard for what he did to her lover." He snorted and shook his head. "Of course...I don't see you doing anything for anyone but yourself."

"I came to check on you." Connor answered as if it were something so simple. "But you seemed a little busy...and I didn't want to interrupt..." 
"Oh god..." Lori buried her face in her hands, her own ears a lovely shade of purple.

Quinn tossed Amus at Tyros' feet, then punched her fist into the wall where he had been pinned, leaving a rather large dent. "Why should I do anything for anyone?" She asked without turning around. It was beginning to feel like the universe simply wouldn't be happy until she truly sacrificed everything. Four body parts was clearly not enough pay,ent to warrant being left alone.

Brutus groaned slightly too. "Boy, that's not the sort of thing you should be watching." He growled. "You should be out there looking for a replacement for the quarian girl who was so smitten with you."

Tyros said nothing as he kicked Amus aside and moved toward his wife. "One day you'll forgive me for feeling alone. For turning to the arms of another just as I believed you had. It was hell trying to figure out why I was suddenly not good enough. Why the very man who'd broken your spirit from the beginning was the man you went to instead of me when my looks were no longer the same." 

"No thank you." Connor made a face. "I want nothing to do with love. It looks complicated and far too hot. There's lots of pushing and arguing. Neither one of you could decide who wanted to be on bottom. I don't think I'd entertained by that at all. It's a wonder you two didn't kill each other."

"This was never about looks!" Quinn practically screamed as she did finally turn to look at the man she had once planned to spend the rest of her life with. "You made this about looks! And I wasn't broken! I wasn't..." she was so angry she shook, the only warning before she struck Tyros as hard as her human fist would allow. "I wasn't broken until I had to watch you fuck my mother on top of a console! YOU broke me, no one else!" 

Brutus knew without looking that lori was no doubt about the pass out from all the blood currently rushing to her cheeks and ears upon hearing this. "Try telling me that when you're a bit older, kid." He mused. "But for now, wait outside. I'll be there in five minutes."

Tyros stood where he was for a moment. He certainly wasnt about to tell Quinn he could no longer see. He kept his breathing calm tried not to let the sudden agony of  his new headache  get the better of him. "Quinn...i Told you I was sorry...i can't give you  anything else." He whispered.

Connor nodded and left, missing a humiliated Lori diving beneath the covers and screaming into the pillows.

"You mean like the torture I suffered at your new lover's hands? Like that kind of nothing left to give?" Quinn shot back, still shaking from all the pent up rage she had. "Get out." She whispered, though hadn't noticed Tyros injury now that she could no longer look at him. "What I gave was not enough for you, and now no one else can bear the ugly freak I am! You win. You have someone who loves you, you have a child on the way... I have nothing. Get out of here before I decide I want to send your head back to Betty in a box!"

Brutus fell back into the bedsheets roaring with laughter. "I imagine the boy learned a few things!" He exclaimed, pulling Lori against him, fully clothed and wrapped up in the expensive sheets.

When Quinn turned around she was find herself alone in the room with nothing more than a puddle of greenish  blood on the wall nearby. 

"That is not funny, bull." Lori mumbled. The entire thing with Connor felt like a set up. Her mother never let anything happen without a reason. "She wants something..." Lori moaned wishing she were moaning for an entirely different reason.

Quinn simply slumped down where she sat, her knees pulled to her chest as she sobbed into them. She knew she was angry. Too angry to let any one in. All she wanted was for someone to understand how much had been taken from her.

"Yeah, but... sending a kid to watch us screwing around?" He asked with a snort, though his face was against buried in Lori's silken hair. "But much for even her, right?"