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"You could always come with me." Shepard says enticingly over the top of her glass, and Garrus huffs out something close to a laugh.
"Don't tempt me, Commander," he replies, giving the brandy a look. A Palaven-brew; she was certainly sparing no expense for this going-away party. "I'm excited to catch up on my paperwork."
She scoffs. "Don't lie to me. You're just excited to get away from me and my driving."
He flares his mandibles in a grin, flashing his teeth. "That too."
"Keep me in mind when you're looking for a change of pace," she says seriously, leaning against the edge of the table. A lock of long, red hair slips over her shoulder to curl against her collarbone, and Garrus stares at it before she starts speaking again. "You're always welcome aboard the Normandy, Garrus."
His hand freezes around his glass. "I'll remember that, Shepard." The moment slips away as Kaidan sets a bottle of liquor on the table, but the conversation weighs on his mind for the rest of the night.
.:.
The Normandy falls from grace six months later.
It plummets, shedding feathers and shrapnel as it goes, and Garrus shoulders past an army of bystanders to watch the footage loop. He clings to everything from that damn reporter's mouth, and hates himself for it. Al-Jilani, the same person who tried to crucify her, is now sainting her with every word.
"Commander Shepard is not among the listed survivors, and reports from her ranking officer say that she went back into the burning cockpit for the ship's pilot."
He hates her in that moment, hates every act of heroism that led to this. Every act that led to him standing alone in a crowd of people, watching her die from solar systems away.
.:.
Kaidan contacts him within a week, an hour after his resignation from C-Sec goes through.
Garrus meets him in one of the few quiet bars in the Citadel, mandibles drawn so tightly to his face that they ache in-time with his pulse.
"You were her best friend." Kaidan says politely. Garrus tries to loosen his grip on his glass and nods. The LT -- newly a LCDR, according to the news -- slides a datapad across the polished tabletop. "Her comm unit was still on when she --" he stops, voice cracking over the unspoken word. "I just figured you had a right to hear it."
He doesn't want to hear it.
He wants to keep the memories he has. Her leaning across the table to offer him a place in her crew. Her hunched over that piece-of-shit Avenger rifle she loved so much. Her coming up over the wreckage of Sovereign, cradling her broken arm.
He doesn't want to hear it.
He takes the datapad anyway, and he and Kaidan don't speak again.
.:.
To the news channels, the Commander marched into death with a billowing flag of self-sacrifice. To the reports, she died from a torn oxygen tube and the de-pressurization of her suit. To the coroner-- well, they never recovered a body, but their best guess was suffocation.
To Garrus Vakarian and everyone who heard her last breaths, Jane Shepard went out with a few final, desperate sobs.
He listens to her die at his desk, surrounded by the half-filled boxes of everything he's ever owned. The datapad in his hand plays the audio with a disturbing clarity. He can even hear her oxygen supply as it counts down, moments in her life catalogued in neat beeps.
She's calm at first, smoothing her half-panicked breathing into something careful and practiced. "No, no no. Please, no." He hears her say, and the edge of despair in her voice makes his stomach twist. "Not like this, please."
It spirals from there. She hadn't been properly geared; the moment she'd gotten spaced her obituary had been written.
At least, that's what he tells himself, as she gasps for air into the emptiness of her helmet. There was nothing he could have done -- but where had he been? Filing paperwork while she died, adrift and lonely, over the icy surface of Alchera. It's dangerous to dream about the what-ifs, but he tries to think of a different outcome.
He can't see one.
Her breathing hitches on her final inhale. The silence after the audio cuts out is deafening.
.:.
He's asked to guard her casket at the funeral.
The irony is bitter, laden over his tongue like the tang of blood. There's something terribly dark about guarding an empty coffin. He accepts the honor -- the grim, agonizing honor-- and requests that his ceremonial armour be delivered from the Vakarian home on Palaven.
He puts it on piece-by-piece, hands working over the clasps as the blues and greys of his family come together. The last time he wore this was when he graduated from military service. He had promised to remain loyal to those who deserved his service, support the living, and honor the fallen.
How fitting. He'd failed the first two, the least he could do was fulfill the third.
He can almost hear his father's voice, rational and steel-sharp, in the back of his mind.
'Why wear our family's colors for this woman, Garrus? Why mourn her like she was one of us?'
Flexing his hand, he cinches the bracer tighter to his forearm and tries to stop thinking about it.
.:.
The ceremony is lavish and hollow, just like the casket he carries through the parted crowd. She would have preferred a private funeral, he thinks, but she's earned a Spectre's ceremony. Anderson leads the reception on behalf of her absent family, his voice breaking for the daughter he never got to raise.
All of the Council's gratitude falls flat on his ears. Empty praises, relieved goodbyes. She'd been a pain in their backs since the start, the buzzing reminder of a threat they didn't believe in. The speeches are worse. They talk about her like she was a deity, not the human woman who led them to victory through sheer force of will.
"She was beautiful." One attendee says at the sight of her picture, and Garrus feels his teeth clench. That was all that mattered, in the end. She was a nice face, an infallible leader, an exciting story, a raving lunatic. Always Commander Shepard, never Jane.
He doesn't give any words. He guards the coffin in silence, back ram-rod straight and his expression tight. It's for the best, really. He doubts he would have been able to keep his subvocals from wavering.
Joker stumbles up to the coffin after the procession has filed out, his face wet and his knuckles white on his cane. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He says to the engraved nameplate, and presses his forehead against the hardwood. "It's my fault. You're gone, and it's all my fault."
Tradition says he shouldn't speak or move until she -- her empty casket, he reminds himself -- was delivered to the next life, but he's never been a good turian. Garrus reaches out to lay a hand on the pilot's shoulder, guiding him away.
"She would have done it again. A dozen times, if she could have. You know that better than anyone."
Joker swallows back his grief enough to nod, and Garrus watches as he turns to leave.
They always knew what lengths Shepard was willing to go, but that didn't make the distances any easier to cross.