Chapter Text
The problem with learning a new ship is that he isn’t—the SR-2 carries the ghost of SR-1 with her, down to the light panels and rivets. He’s seen more of her than he ever did two years prior, where he spent most of his time holed up in the vehicle back with Wrex and Ashley, or maybe the mess, or passing through the CIC when he was called up for the ground team.
He spent a good majority of that time mulling over what they’d do when they caught up to Saren or how he could possibly go back to C-Sec after all of that. In between was spent trying to figure out what the hell Shepard did to the Mako every time it came rolling back in.
The problem too is that every part of the SR-2 feels just slightly off, like everything got moved a few centimeters to the right and he’s trying not to slam his spur on anything. The entire humans-first crew doesn’t help much.
The other problem with relearning a new ship is that he has to relearn its commander, too.
It’s the way Shepard trails around the ship like a ghost, sometimes just lingering in the corner of his vision until he turns his head and she vanishes. It’s like Omega all over again, right until he pinged her in the shoulder and she stomped her way across the bridge.
She tends to stop by just long enough to take in his new quarters, offering a few words and half-smiles, but sometimes she looks at him like she expects him to disappear. Which, not for nothing, that should be his thing, given... everything. She stands in front of him, arms folded and hip cocked and eyes the bandage on his face and his relief at her being alive tastes an awful lot like grief. She flits in and out of quarters and labs, down halls and around corners quick enough he almost thinks he’s imagining her all over again.
The nice thing about the SR-2 is that she has a giant gun and it’s been incredibly useful as a distraction. No one else seems to be able to calibrate the Thanix to his standards, and Shepard had taken one look at the main battery he’d laid claim to and told him to have at it.
His talons skitter against the console and he finally takes a peek at the time. His shift has technically been over for the last hour, and his nose plates twitch. Probably best to get to sleep while he can, but then his stomach twinges. Okay, so eat something first, and then sleep.
There are also no new messages from any of his contacts which doesn’t help his mood any. There are unread messages from Sol is his inbox. He isn’t ready to touch those either. The one from his father remains pinned at the top.
Garrus puts his terminal into sleep mode before running a hand down his face, mindful of the bandage. What parts of his face aren’t numb still sting and itch, but Chakwas had promised some decent mobility and he trusted her medical expertise, even if he wasn’t going to be seeking out any mirrors any time soon.
Jacob—he’d only met him briefly, somewhere between waking up high on painkillers and being officially signed on—had told him the Commander hardly left the corridor outside the med bay where she’d been waiting on him after he took a rocket to the face. He’d called him a “tough son of a bitch” and his face had hurt too much to say much of anything aside from “mhm.”
He nearly rams into Shepard at the base of the stairs coming out of the main battery and she’s surprised to see him, if the raised eyebrows are any indication. Her fingers linger on the zipper of her—what’s that, a hoo-dee?—like she got caught toying with it.
“Garrus. Isn’t your shift over?”
He almost asks if she’s been keeping tabs on him, but instead says, “Shepard. A bit late in the night cycle, isn’t it?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.” She rubs her palms together. They sound dry. “I was actually on my way to the mess.”
His good mandible twitches and he gestures broadly with one arm. “Looks like you found it.”
Shepard smiles but something about it feels off, like she’s tired but no amount of sleep will help. The scars crisscrossing her cheek betray that, and it makes his own sting. Turning his head too far either way still hurts, and he’s loath to see how much it will truly impact his aim if he can’t so much as breathe or raise his shoulder too high without pain shooting up into his eye. He’d have a better idea if he actually went groundside.
“Do you…” Garrus starts and then clears his throat. It’s Shepard. “Would you like some company?”
If anything, her face softens. Humans have too many micro expressions. But she also looks a little surprised at the offer and something about that hurts. It hurts too that they haven’t had a real conversation in days—it’s been stilted attempts at catch up or her asking for any upgrade ideas. Never mind that she hasn’t taken him on a mission in almost a week. Yes, he’s bitter about it. No, he didn’t join her rampage into hell again just to serve as a benchwarmer.
“That would be great, actually. If you don’t mind.” Her arms cross in a way that used to be friendly. Now it just makes her look like she’s cold.
“I’m sure I can squeeze a few minutes into my busy schedule.”
Shepard snorts. It’s not a pretty sound, but it’s one he hasn’t heard in years. He makes to follow only for her to linger, and his brow plate twitches at her as she steps around him, and then he can hear her footfalls behind him while he peruses his dinner options. Nutrient Paste A has some stiff competition with Nutrient Paste B.
This is what he gets for avoiding the awkward stares of a pro-humanity group by missing out on the dinner shift, he supposes. All of his efforts not to cause tension as the lone turian on the SR-1 and he’s just about back where he started.
At least Ashley had warmed up to him some, right around the time they swapped out mods for her assault rifle and she’d been thrilled at he and Wrex making loud jibes across the bay.
Garrus reaches up to grab a mug and then waves it in her direction.
“You remembered how I like my coffee?”
“How could I not? It’s all you drank,” he says. She used to find him down in the vehicle bay, sat on one of the crate with her legs impossibly folded to watch him tinker under the hood of the Mako. He used to hate the scent of it—too pungent and bitter, especially after she’d started bringing some for Ashley and a steaming mug of crap for Wrex. And then she’d plopped down a mug of kavas for him.
She’d once asked if him if he would have preferred some horosk instead, and then she’d given him a wide grin when he’d asked trying to get me drunk, Commander? Wrex’s loud laugh had overshadowed whatever she’d said, and he hadn’t asked her to repeat it.
His nose wrinkles at the scent of the instant powder that serves in lieu of ground up beans.
When he turns around she’s sitting at one of the tables, her fingers twisted together in a way that can’t be comfortable. He watches her stare down at them, bending them this way and that before she catches him watching her. Steam wafts up from the mug when he sets it down, and she eyes the packet in his hand. She sits like a varren that’s two seconds from bolting if he speaks too loudly.
“I’ll talk to Gardner about better dextro options. Having you and Tali live off paste and mystery meat is cruel.”
“Please, I lived off stims for a few days there; some paste feels like Cerberus showing me they do care.” He hasn’t seen Tali in little more than a year.
Her face shutters. She must have caught the slip. “Right.”
“Shepard.”
“Do they make you uneasy?”
“A turian on a very humanity-first ship? Hardly.” At the look on her face though, he acquiesces: “It isn’t exactly the most comfortable ship I’ve been on, but I think that’s to be expected with Cerberus.” No one’s been outright nasty so far, but that might have something to do with being tied to their Commander. “Honestly, Shepard, humans tend to fixate a lot on the fact that other species exist when you’re aliens too.”
Her mouth twists into a wry grin. “Don’t let the Illusive Man hear you say that.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s heard it already.” What a name, too. The disbelief at who they're working with still settles sickly under his carapace. He drums his talons on the table, and she glances down to watch them click. “Though I guess in your defense you didn’t realize other worlds existed until what, thirty years ago? You have a lot of catching up to do.”
Her grin falters.
“I have to say, you’re taking it pretty well,” she cuts in, her gaze flitting to his face for a split second before falling on her mug again. Both hands curl around it. Her laugh is weak. He didn’t mean it like that. “This might be is my first decent coffee in two years.”
“Shepard.”
“Ah, I—” her mouth opens and shuts, and he watches her jaw flex side to side. “Not that funny? Sorry.”
“For what, dying?” He sets the packet down. Damn, he’s not hungry anymore. “No one, ah, faults you for that.”
“But coming back, like this? You said it yourself, Garrus, Cerberus?” One of her hands raises to gesture vaguely around the room. Her mouth does that thing like she’s trying to physically hold back her words.
The most they’ve exchanged in the past week have been rudimentary talks of wow, back on the Normandy again, what upgrades the ship needs, how is the crew treating him, and sorry, he has some more to do so she about-faces and leaves him to it. Her expression always smooths back into the cool mask of the Commander then.
Part of him is waiting for her to grab her coffee and go. She probably has reports to read and missions to prep. Maybe she’ll take him on one. She rolls her shoulder.
Her eyebrows draw together and then she turns to stare at the half-wall. One of the holo screens above the other table projects an orange glow; he watches it flicker before she drags in a breath. Like it’s easier to talk to him if she doesn’t look at him.
“I didn’t ask for this, I need you to know that. But if I can stop the Collectors, maybe it’s a good thing. I don’t know, Garrus. Nothing feels right. This is the Normandy but it isn’t.” Her laughs sounds bitter, just like her coffee smells, even after two creams and one sugar. Her lips purse and she drops her gaze back down to her mug. “I keep expecting Ashley around the next corner or Pressly in the CIC. Everything about this ship just feels a little wrong. Like none of it’s real.”
A mournful keen ekes out of his subvocals unbidden.
He scratches at the edge of his bandage. “Hate to break it to you, but I think this is as real as it gets. Ignore the Cerberus logo painted on everything and it’s just like old times, except a few things are a little shinier and Joker has a new seat he won’t be giving up anytime soon.”
From where he sits, he glances from her to the steps leading to the main battery where he almost ran into her, to the door leading to Miranda’s office. He may not have spent years on it, but he knows the layout of the SR-1 by heart and the tell tale sign of embarrassment on a human.
Shepard drinks her coffee and her expression wavers—almost a smile and almost anything but. It’s like she’s looking at him but not seeing him. Like she expects him to vanish on her, and he hates that he knows the same feeling. How many times had he imagined her on Omega? Her voice in his ear and all of the things he’d wanted to tell her? Thought he saw a flicker of red hair in a crowd?
He hates it and spirits, he shouldn’t say it, but he asks: “What was it like?”
She lowers her mug. “Being dead? Peaceful, in a way—horrifying in the beginning, but quiet after. Woke up a few times after that and next thing I know I hear Miranda telling me to run.”
His stomach clenches. “What?”
She pulls her lips in between her teeth. It doesn’t look comfortable. “I don’t… Garrus, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”
He can see a wall slipping back up, the tension in her cheek as she clenches her jaw. “No, I want to hear it.” Her nod is slow.
“I don’t remember a lot of it, but I know I woke up a few times while they were… putting me back together. Apparently it was a good thing I died like I did.”
He’s going to be sick. But he presses: “How the hell was that a good thing?”
Her teeth dig into her lip. He’s seen the reports from the Normandy, redacted as they were; seen the way Joker looks after her when she walks away from the bridge. Remembers nursing a bottle of brandy while Joker’d plopped himself at his crappy table in his crappy apartment and said he’d been placed on leave.
(In his mind that news vid is playing on a reel: ALLIANCE MILITARY COMMANDER J. SHEPARD, HERO OF THE CITADEL, KILLED IN ACTION— and then they move on to the latest entertainment updates. Sad. Anyway, think about something else.)
Underneath his bandage, his neck burns.
“It’s like they took all the parts that were me and had to make them better, like they could use the dead but not dead Commander Shepard as their poster child. A dress up doll they armed to the teeth.”
Which is… a cruel, accurate way to put it.
When he looks up she’s staring down at her mug, tilting it from side to side to watch the coffee lap at the rim.
“My hair’s softer than it was before—honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t throw in a boob job too or changed the pitch of my voice while they were at it.”
“I always liked your voice,” he says. It feels like it’s crossing a line. She turns her head and she isn’t wrong—she looks the same but full of minute differences. Maybe it’s the exhaustion but her eyes aren’t as bright; her jaw is sharper and he finds his gaze tracing the cut of bone from chin to cheek. She holds herself differently, just barely enough to be perceptible.
It feels like the wrong thing to say but some of her edges soften again. Her hackles lower.
“They even,” she holds up her hand, curled into a loose fist and extends her middle finger, “I broke this when I was sixteen and they didn’t even leave a nick behind.”
Garrus braces his hands on the table and gives her what he hopes is a dry look. “Shepard, I may not be the most adept at human customs, but aren’t you insulting me right now?”
“Huh.” She blinks. “Yeah, guess so.” A glance down at his hand and she cants her head before her gaze lifts to his again. “Don’t suppose it works the same way for turians.”
He hums. “No, we’re much more subtle about it.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm, we normally just smack one another on the head.” She stares at him and then barks out a laugh. He’s missed it. “That or the subvocals are very useful, especially when a swift hit may not get the right message across. Humans have way too many nuances; I don’t know how you do it.”
“Sure, there a ton of different ways to interpret getting punched in the head.”
“I don’t know, is that why you were always swatting my arm?” He can still feel the ghost of the last one on his bicep, before they parted ways and she told him she wanted updates on how things went with his potential Spectre training.
Her sipping her coffee and the gentle atmospheric hum of the ship fill the silence. Shepard clears her throat and he looks up from his half-eaten paste.
“Y’know, there’s an old Earth book—probably four hundred years old at this point, if I had to wager—about this doctor who stitched together body parts he’d dug up to see if reanimating a corpse was possible.” That sounds disgusting and mildly like something Saleon would have done if given the time and resources rather than a bullet. Shepard drags her thumbnail down the handle of her mug. “After, when he did, he was so horrified by what he had done that he abandoned the creature and let it fend for itself rather than deal with the consequences of his own actions.”
His mandibles flick. He’s not sure if he likes where this particular thought is heading. “You see yourself as a creature, Shepard?”
Her exhale is a huff. “They pieced me back together, didn’t they? Might not have dug up different bodies but they desecrated the dead. They just gave this one a leash.”
“Your species has morbid fascinations,” Garrus says, because it’s true. And then: “How is it possible he managed limb cloning when humanity’s medical prowess had only modernized in the last hundred years or so?”
“It wasn’t… huh, guess four hundred years ago for humans looks a lot different than for turians.” Her jaw works, head tilted as she looks at him. “Wonder if a recon. unit ever went out, spotted humanity and then ignored us until Shanxi. Besides, that story was just science fiction. Took us a little longer to get up to speed with the rest of the galaxy.”
“Oh, right, the, hmm, digging parts up. Should have paid attention to that. Nasty imagination your species has.” He shakes his head. “To be fair, if a turian vessel made it all the way to Earth and found humans stitching body parts together, I don’t think Earth would exist anymore.” She laughs into her mug. It sounds more like her this time. His good mandible spreads into a grin. “Maybe it’s my own morbidity, but creature or not, I’m glad to have you back, Shepard.”
The look on her face is gentle, something reserved just for the low lighting of the late hours. A trill she can’t hear vibrates in his chest. It’s good to have her back, even if there’s still a dissonance lingering because he spent the last two years mourning her and coming to terms with that, only for her to come blasting back into his life, as is her style.
“I missed you, Garrus,” she says. “That's so weird to say; I feel like it’s only been a few weeks, but… It’s like I went to sleep for a while and when I woke up everything was different.”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Guess that’s taking some getting used to.”
“Right, pot meet kettle.”
He cocks his head.
“It’s drawing attention to hypocrisy; I probably didn’t use it right, sorry.”
“I don’t think it’s very hypocritical for you to say you’re trying to find your footing again, Shepard.” It feels like he’s talking around a rock lodged in his throat when he says, “You did die, after all."
“I don’t think anyone’s going to let me forget that for a long time.” Shepard folds her fingers together again, only this time she flexes them with a small crack.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
She wiggles her fingers at him. “Only a little. It’s like a good kind of pain.”
He stretches his neck and the satisfying pop is quickly overtaken by the pain that races up the side of it and he hisses through his teeth. Idiot.
“Garrus?” He opens his eyes and her hand hovers just shy of his cheek before she pulls it back. She’s leaning halfway across the table. His jaw twinges again, radiating into his chest.
“It’s fine. It was stupid and my own fault.” Damn, that hurts. He lets out a humorless laugh: “Guess I won’t be gracing any recruitment posters any time soon.”
“I don’t know, I think the scars will work in your favor,” she says as she sits back down. “Make you look a little more rugged.”
“Didn’t think you had a thing for scars.” His carapace feels warm. This feels normal.
“I thought you were just jealous,” she says, waving a hand at the angry red lines marring her cheek. They don’t look as bad as they did the first time. “Scared the hell out of me though.” She sits up and her throat works in a way he knows she’s about to ask something he doesn’t want to answer. The feeling in his chest quickly dissipates. “How did you end up on Omega?”
Ah, right. He gathers up the mostly eaten packet. Betrayal sits on the back of his tongue, poisonous and angry. Nutrient Paste A can be recycled into Nutrient Paste C. “Doesn’t really matter now.”
“Garrus…”
“Why are you avoiding the crew?” Why is she avoiding him? He can see it without her saying it—that there’s something just this side of uneasy; he plucks the empty mug from her hands and makes to stand. Her mouth falls open and she draws in a breath but no words come out. “No one’s here because they were forced to be, Shepard.”
He makes his way across the mess and deposits the mug into the washing unit. There are a few stray sugar granules he sweeps in along with it.
“Why are you here, Garrus?” There’s a note of curiosity under the layer of defensiveness.
He calls back, “Because you asked. Besides, I wouldn’t take a rocket to the face for just anyone.”
“Not even Wrex?”
“Well, don’t tell him. I have a reputation to uphold.”
He turns, arms folded and bracing his hip against the counter. There was also the fact he hadn't had much choice in the matter: it was either be dragged away or left to be picked over by the remaining gangs of Omega. The background hum of the ship is soothing in a way that’s almost unsettling. He never realized how much he missed it until it was gone. And then Shepard meets his gaze. He raises his head. Lets out a breath.
“The ship is throwing me off too. She’s too new—familiar but not at the same time. Think they added some new toys to try to make up for that.”
“Believe me, I get it.” She folds her arms across the top of the table. Her fingers grip her sleeves. “You know they gave me my own quarters this time? Complete with a skylight.” He notes the subtle way her voice hitches.
“You had quarters on the last ship,” he says. He squints. “A skylight?”
She deflects with, “Yeah, a fish tank too.”
“Damn, I knew Cerberus was holding out on me but I didn’t realize it was that bad. My quarters are right next to a giant gun.”
“Hey, you put yourself there.” She clicks her tongue.
He pushes himself off the counter, shaking his head. “Yeah, but no one told me there was a fish tank. Who am I supposed to talk to about that? Forget pillows, I want to requisition essential oils or whatever Chambers was telling me to get. I don’t even know what those are. If we’re indulging then I’m going all out.”
“You want to see it?” He pauses and turns, noting the way her face crumples on itself some. It toes the line of regulations, but he’s her friend—should be, again. Never really stopped, death or not. “Sorry, that was a little…”
“Why the hell not.”
Shepard’s scars flare when she grins, eyes crinkling in the corners. She gets up and he watches her turn in the direction of Miranda’s office before pausing and pivoting. He hums but doesn’t comment.
“You keep doing that,” he says when she rolls her shoulder again.
“I’m not sure if you knew,” she says, leveling him with a look while slamming her hand against the button for the elevator, “but someone pinged me in the shoulder the other day. Said they had to get me moving.”
He also hadn’t believed it was her and and then her fiery gaze had turned on him as her shields went down. “Yeah, well, you were taking your time and I was running short on it. I had a fish tank to see.”
The elevator ride up only has two hitches: Shepard hesitates for a nanosecond when selecting the right floor, and EDI catches them both at the door and says that Officer Vakarian doesn’t have access to the room. She quickly overrides the command, raising her hands in a way he knows is supposed to be placating and steps into the room and, as always, he follows.
“I think this is the same size as my apartment back on the Citadel.”
“Right? I lived out of kit bags and bunks for most of my life. Now I have drawers. I have no idea what to put in those.”
“Gun mods and socks?”
“Perfect,” she laughs. He wants her to do that again—to keep doing that; it’s a sound he’s missed and it makes this all real, even if it’s tired. “Different pair for every mission. First human Spectre and surprise, she’s wearing neon green socks under her armor. They’re sky blue the next.”
“The sky’s actually got a greenish tint to it on Palaven.”
“Yeah?” she says. “I’d like to see it sometime."
She continues further into the room, hunched over her desk and waving her terminal out of its sleep mode. He steps forward enough the sensors dim and the door closes behind him, and turns to—
“Shepard, there aren’t any fish in this tank.”
“Yeah, I know that,” she says, coming to stand beside him. Her eyes gleam in the low iridescent light filtering through the water, the red of her cheek contrasting against the blues.
“Did you forget to feed them already?”
“Shut up, I haven’t gotten any yet. Been a little busy try to assemble a crew. We’re hitting the Citadel tomorrow to follow through with this next dossier, so maybe I’ll try to find a few, if you want to join me.”
She glances at him sidelong, and his wounded mandible twitches.
“Ah, so it’s only a matter of time before you forget to feed them.”
“Why, you want to share custody of fish?”
“I might do better with keeping track of them, once you finally get a few.” A few bubbles drift to the top of the tank, greenery swaying in the water. What is he doing up here?
Shepard rolls her eyes, turning to follow the few short steps deeper into the room. “Uh-huh. Expert marksman, skilled battle strategist, turian badass, professional fish feeder. Your dossier never ceases to amaze.”
“I knew you missed me. Besides, I have to keep some surprises.” Garrus huffs, shaking his head and making to follow just to the stairs only to spot the skylight with an irritated click of his mandibles. “You weren’t kidding.”
There above her bed, the only thing separating them and the expanse of stars is the hull, what looks like reinforced glass and the glimmer of a kinetic barrier pulsing across it. Above them, cold and empty and right there when her head hits the pillow at night, the last thing she saw before her oxygen gave out, when she rolls over and the first thing she sees upon waking, no matter the hour—
“That’s cruel,” he says, voice flanging with venom. From the look of surprise on her face, that catches her more off guard than a view of her final resting place—or that’s somewhere else, somewhere on Alchera, cold and desolate and alone. “Whose brilliant idea was that?”
“The Normandy SR-2 is remarkably well reinforced,” EDI cuts in, synthetic voice cool and even. “In combat, a sheet of ablative armor covers any windows, and it would require a great deal of manpower to pierce the hull at any point. As such, the Commander’s cabin is as safe a place on the ship as any, although it would be recommended to defer to a more centralized location in the event of an attack.”
It doesn’t make him feel any better. He read the reports on the end of the SR-1.
Shepard frowns, attention on the blue orb in the far corner of her cabin. “That will be all, EDI.”
“Of course, Commander. Logging you off.”
Still annoyed, he takes proper stock of the room—defensible enough, if need be, even if it could use some work. He doesn’t let his gaze linger too long on her bed, nor her as she moves to sit at the foot of it, nor the skylight, but it travels to to the small stack of datapads on her desk, the model SR-2 poised above it, and the image of Kaidan looking back at him. Has she spoken to him? What about the rest of the old crew? She never tried—
“If you ever want to trade, let me know. I have a passable bunk that could be all yours.”
His good mandible twitches. Probably too forward, but she laughs. It’s quiet for a moment, save for the gentle gurgle of the tank and the faraway ambient sounds of the ship—in the entire time they’ve been in this room, she hasn’t once glanced in the direction of the ceiling.
Garrus clears his throat and stands up straighter, and she raises her head.
“I’ll, ah, leave you to it, Shepard.”
She blinks back up at him, fingers twisting into the bedsheet and she nods. He turns with one last glance at the fish tank and waves to set off the door sensor again. He should get some sleep—if he’s lucky, with all that he has to dwell on. He’ll tell her about Omega later, maybe after they peruse the wards for a few fish.
“Garrus,” she calls, and he looks back over his shoulder. She still looks tired, but also a little lighter. A little more like a Shepard he’s familiar with than the Commander’s ghost who’s been trailing around the main battery for the past week.
“If you need me you know where to find me—two floors down and the big door in the middle.”
She’s still smiling as the door closes behind him. It feels real enough.
<<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Found the story you mentioned. Digging up bodies was deemed a classic by human standards?>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Stop putting it like that, you’re making humans sound like the deviants of the galaxy.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<I wasn’t going to say anything, but… >><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<You really found a copy of Frankenstein?>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Not a terrible read. Good way to pass the time between waiting for the upgrades to finalize. And now I have “human grave robbing + stitching corpses together + old human story” in my extranet history. Cerberus is going to appreciate that.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Think I might have found a better horror story for you too.>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Okay, this I need to see. Turian ghost stories? Do they involve the cold and snow?>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Have you ever heard of the Mako Driving Instruction Manual?>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Ha! Smartass.>>
Zaeed’s doling out cards between he and Jacob, Kasumi happily watching from the corner and Jack probably prowling around the lower decks when Shepard pops into port observation.
“Am I interrupting something here?” she asks, lingering in the doorway. She wavers like she’s about to run off and Garrus sees her gaze pause on the window as it passes over each of them. He tilts his head up and she purses her lips just enough for his sharp eye to catch.
“Me about to ruin someone’s night is what,” Zaeed says at the same time Jacob tells her, “Not at all, Commander.”
“Team bonding moment,” Kasumi supplies, which immediately earns her a few grumbles. “Just in time for a round of Skyllian-Five.” Shepard’s laugh is short and lacks any real depth.
“Sounds brutal.”
“You fancy a round, Shepard?” Zaeed calls, voice gruff as ever. The first time he’d met him, grizzled and angry in the middle of his base, he’d almost asked Shepard where she’d found the knock off krogan. Each of them is still a card short and he thumps the deck on the table. He spots her visibly weighing her options and the corner of her mouth quirks. Her shoulders loosen.
“Why not, deal me in.”
“That’s the spirit,” he says, curling his fingers so the two of them toss their cards back in. As she rounds the table Garrus scoots his chair over, leaving room between her and Jacob so he can keep one eye on her and the other on the door. “Get ready to get your asses kicked.”
Jacob picks up his cards with a snort. “Big talk from the guy who lost the last two hands.”
“You got something smart to say?”
“Are you going to finish dealing or what?” Garrus says, looking through his cards. They’re not as promising as his last hand. In the corner of his eye, Kasumi kicks her feet from where she’s sitting on the bar near the shutter controls. Zaeed glowers at him before snagging the bottle at his side and one of the empty glasses. Shepard raises an eyebrow.
“Wasn’t aware this was a luxury cruiser.” Her gaze falls to his own half-drank Denorian beer.
He shifts his cards. “I’m off-shift.”
“Uh-huh.”
Zaeed waggles the glass between his thumb and forefinger, and Jacob lets out a firm “absolutely not” that earns him a curt chuckle. Garrus’ nose burns at the scent of the foul smelling liquor as he pops the cork. Shepard raises her chin and Zaeed pours her a drink before sliding the glass her way, and a warning to hey, wait, dies in his throat as she downs it in one go; her face morphs into one of terror, and then pain, and she lets out a strong gag as she slams the glass back on the table.
“What the hell was that? I feel like I just licked a thermal clip.” Her face screws up again and her grip tightens on the lip of the table. Kasumi’s laughing as she hops off the bar, bottle in hand as she moves to take up a new perch, her back against the window as she folds her legs under her.
“Unfortunately the batarians haven’t quite perfected their take on scotch,” she says. “Come to think of it, it makes Chakwas’ ice brandy taste like a wine cooler in comparison.”
“It’s a cross between rubbing alcohol and industrial strength lighter fluid, Commander,” Jacob tells her. At least his eyes have stopped watering.
Zaeed snorts at them both, topping off his own glass again; the two of them eye him warily before picking up their cards. Shepard’s face is still scrunched up and he almost offers her some of his beer to wash out the taste.
They go for a few rounds and tensions ease around the table. Jacob gets the upper hand on Zaeed, just like he did the first two games, and Shepard catches the bottle of water Kasumi tosses her way. For a moment it’s not so bad—it isn’t the SR-1 but there’s still a budding idea of camaraderie. He could almost be back in the vehicle bay as Ashley and Wrex compare their latest shots, or back at his base while Butler goes on about his kids and Vortash complains that Melenis is a cheat at cards with a firm swat on the back. It’s a heavy, hollow feeling that sits in his chest, but there’s almost something soothing about it.
Beside him, Shepard and Zaeed stare one another down, and he tracks her sliding a card from one side of her hand to the other. A smile tugs at her mouth and she’s settled back in her chair some. The night before she’d come to the main battery with a datapad tucked under her arm, not asking for anything more than to sit on one of the crates in the corner and check her emails.
They hadn’t pressed one another for conversation—hadn’t pried about Cerberus or Omega—and since she’s picked up Kasumi, since Jack snarled at him on the way to engineering, since Mordin asked him rapid-fire questions about how he’d fare with a plague (what the hell), and since Zaeed growled something to Gardner about making something not shit, that had been the second time they’d spent any real time together since he joined and they weren’t even talking.
She might have made a few thoughtful sounds in her scrolling and he’d idled away the last two hours of his shift trying to maximize output up from another two to three percent, and by the time the last hour was almost up he caught a soft whistle behind him. Garrus had turned to find Shepard dozing, head propped uncomfortably against the wall. The datapad dangled from her fingers and her scars didn’t look as bright.
Shepard nudges his leg with her foot beneath the table.
“You gonna play your hand or sit on your thumb, Vakarian?” Zaeed grouses. Garrus shoots him a glare.
Even though they’re mostly playing for bragging rights, he tosses a credit chit into the pot. He’s going to win it back anyway. Zaeed’s poker face is the same as his usual expression.
Jacob shakes his head. “He’s just busting your chops.”
“Busting my…?”
“Oh, it’s a human expression.” His frown looks sheepish. “Giving you a hard time? Kind of like giving you shit.”
Garrus stares at him, doing his best to look affronted. “Why would he give me that?”
Shepard snickers so he turns to her. Her eyebrows raise and his mandibles flare in a wide grin. She mirrors it and points at him. “I see you, Vakarian.”
Zaeed glances between the two of them, sitting back in his chair. His hand hits the table with a heavy thud. “You gotta be kidding me.”
Shepard laughs, tapping the toe of her boot against his own. Kasumi rests her chin on her hands.
“Commander Shepard. You have a call with the Illusive Man in the briefing room,” EDI intones, glimmering to life in the corner. And just like that the moment is gone—he watches the laughter and humor fizzle out in her gaze, the tension creeping back up her spine as she sits up, the mask cooly smoothing over her features. Her mouth twists into a fleeting grimace.
The door opens and they turn to find Miranda standing in the hallway, arms folded. She’s always been a more difficult human to get a read on, but Garrus decides she usually just looks annoyed—or maybe that’s when he’s around and he’s just special and very much not human. She was personable enough when they went to the Citadel to pick up Kasumi. Shepard bristles and kicks back her chair without so much as a grumble. His mandibles flick and he has to keep his subvocals from bursting from his chest.
“Commander,” she phrases it like the question it isn’t. She doesn’t drop her arms.
Once, back when he’d first signed on for C-Sec, he’d had to undergo rigorous cross-cultural sensitivity training. Each species went about things differently, of course, and in each were other different sub-sects and so on. You never asked a hanar their soul name, you never touched a turian’s fringe or crest without explicit permission (or need of dire medical attention), and you had to respect an elcor’s tone indicators.
When it came to humans, though, there was enough minutiae to make his head spin. Folded arms were a sign of defense, and where turians could take prolonged eye contact as a sign of challenge, humans either found it extremely polite or extremely rude. Shepard, however, had stridden right over that training with little regard, more often than not leaning against the Mako with her arms crossed and one leg over the other, watching him while he worked or rotating through a number of topics of interest. Each time he looked up it was to find her looking back at him, like she was studying each minute flick of a mandible or subtle tilt of his head, and she’d never once been afraid to look him in the eye.
That’s something he’d admired about Shepard—she’d always given it to him straight. Even if it felt like a bit of a chewing out at times in the vehicle bay of the old SR-1. As his Commander she’d come to feel less like someone just barking out orders, but someone who made him feel heard. Seen. And then they’d slipped into the beginnings of a friendship. And then she'd died.
Shepard pushes her chair back and he watches that tension coil right back in. He folds his hands over his cards.
“Better not to keep the Illusive Man waiting.”
“Careful of that leash, Shepard, lest it becomes a noose,” Zaeed says, pouring himself another drink.
“I fold,” she mutters, putting her cards facedown on the table. She passes him the briefest of glances and he watches the instant she slips back into the Commander again. The moment is gone and his beer curdles in his stomach. She follows Miranda out and the door whispers shut behind them.
Zaeed reaches to flip Shepard’s cards over and growls, “son of a bitch.”
<<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Gardner’s making more of an effort with his dextro meals lately. The dz’raut probably tastes 3% better than his last rendition and doesn’t look like a biohazard. Still, it’s a nice upgrade from dry ration packets.<<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Got it down to the percentage, I see. But good!>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<I just had to look that up. Why is it blue?>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<I had to listen to Hadley try to explain what a hot dog is so I don’t want to hear it.>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<I can’t wait to take you to Earth so you can try a chili dog.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Are you trying to kill me?>>
“If we could get any able bodied crew to the port cargo bay pronto, we have a situation with the Commander and the krogan tank she definitely shouldn’t have opened.”
Luckily Chakwas is in the middle of washing up after discarding the old bandages when Joker’s voice cuts in, and she straightens with a soft curse. He follows without any prompting, nearly overtaking her in their hurry for the elevator. The corner of his mouth still tastes a bit like antiseptic and the side of his neck pulls when he turns too far to ensure he doesn’t step on Karin.
The door slides open and Jacob sidesteps to let them both enter, slamming the button the second Garrus’ fringe clears the threshold. He hands over one of the pistols he’s carrying without a word, and Garrus nods before giving it a cursory once over. Not his usual style, but it’ll make do in a pinch—whether it will fend off a fully grown tank-bred krogan has yet to be decided.
“I told her it was a bad idea,” he offers, flicking off the safety of his own gun, and it’s one floor down and somehow the longest ride of his life. Both EDI and Joker have been remarkably quiet.
Yelling greets them when they finally reach the engineering deck, both Ken and Gabby peeking out of the drive core hub, and it sounds an awful lot like Zaeed swearing up a storm and Shepard telling him to calm down, followed by another voice he doesn’t recognize. Jack’s poised by the door, blue tinged field coiling around her fingers as her gaze snaps to them. He and Jacob have their guns raised when Chakwas reaches for the button and waits for their nod before hitting it and quickly stepping away. The door breezes open and Shepard turns with her eyebrows raised and hands up. Zaeed’s irritation rolls off him in waves and there’s a krogan glowering at them all.
“Stand down,” she says, but her voice is hoarse. Beside him, Chakwas tuts and beelines for her, placing Zaeed between the two of them and the krogan. Shepard lets her undo the top of her collar. There are already bruises forming. When she meets his eye, she tries to play it off like a joke: “He only slammed my head against the wall once.”
“Charming,” Chakwas mutters, motioning for her to turn her head. The motion stretches out the side of her neck, and Garrus finds himself staring at the patch of skin before directing his gaze back to the big, huffing alien that had just had her in a chokehold only a few short minutes ago.
“Shepard, this is your clan?”
“Huh, sure, part of it. Guys, this is Grunt; Grunt, this is part of the crew.”
“Grunt?”
“You named him Grunt?”
“Of course not—no one names me, I name myself.”
“Sure,” Jacob says, holstering his pistol. “Just uh, not what I expected.”
“You always did have an interesting way of making friends, Shepard,” Garrus intones.
Chakwas has her tilt her head, and Shepard watches from the corner of her eye as she wraps up her examination. “You should know from experience.”
“Truly, you have a propensity for a more… unique approach, Commander,” she says.
Joker clears his throat and a few gazes flicker to the ceiling. His remains on Shepard. “So uh, how’s the bulkhead holding up?”
The krogan—Grunt, right—has a voice like a low growl, just a shade deeper than Wrex’s. “Your ship will do for now, provided you keep it running properly.”
“Oh thank god, because I was hoping someone would weigh in and tell me how to fly my ship.”
“That’s enough,” Shepard says, effectively dismissing all of them. She nods when Chakwas tells her to follow her to med bay for a better look or at the very least a cold compress. Her voice still sounds a little rough. He eyes the krogan and gets a glare back. Great, this again. At least Wrex never physically threatened his commanding officer. Garrus shifts to his full height, mandible twitching in annoyance.
“I can’t tell if your girlfriend is ballsy or just stupid,” Zaeed mutters as he shoulders past him. (Zaeed got there first, not him. The sound in his throat tastes bitter.) He grunts and steps aside for Jacob to leave, then Chakwas, and he gives Grunt one last look before he follows Shepard and lets the door hiss closed behind him.
He turns to find her stopped in front of him, eyes trailing from his crest to his toes. He hears the elevator rise to the floor above. She’s looking at the new bandage on his throat, where it sneaks under his collar to patch a few spots on his shoulder. There’s another one on his chest.
While dressing it again Karin had given him a better summary of what had happened following the standoff at his base, filling in a few gaps of what he remembered. The giant hole in his armor had given him a pretty strong idea. He can hear Shepard yelling his name, the way it had shifted from relief when he’d first removed his helmet to horror. Her hands had been on his face, his shoulder, fluttering like she was afraid to touch but too afraid to let go.
Karin had dabbed at the wound and said he’d lost a lot of blood, that it had been touch and go for a while. She’d ended up using a few cybernetic implants to hold his face together and restore his mandible to the best of her ability, and to let her know how his hearing was faring. The right side of his face is still fairly numb; the parts that aren’t still ache.
She had not addressed Shepard’s concern outright, but he remembered the way she’d held herself in the briefing room. There had been a streak of blue on her jaw, some flaking away on the side of her neck.
Garrus looks at her and notices her outfit for the first time, properly—the more casual fatigues she's adopted with obscured Cerberus colors, though her collar remains open. There are red marks on her throat and a keen bubbles in his chest. His gaze drops to her waist.
“I’m fine,” she tells him again.
He sighs, shifting his weight as they wait for the elevator. “Yeah, me too.”
“What the fuck was that?” comes from Jack, leaning against the railing toward the lower levels of engineering.
“Thanks for the assist,” Shepard offers.
She straightens. Her smile is teeth and malice. “Oh sure, you definitely had it handled. Now, if you said your safe word I would have come running, no problem.” Her gaze slips to him. “Or maybe someone else would have.”
“Good night, Jack.”
“Uh-huh.”
They part ways after the elevator—her to appease Chakwas and him to the armory to return Jacob’s pistol. She glances back and he watches her until the door closes between them.
“You didn’t miss much,” Jacob tells him later. He was on the ground team with Shepard and Mordin, a mission Garrus was decidedly not part of. (The most he’s joined in on was a recon. mission and all they did was scan for metals. It felt a lot like being babysat.) “The dossier was for a warlord but turns out he was growing a bunch of krogans in tanks—pretty much breeding them to kill or die until he got the one he was looking for. Ran into a doctor who mentioned Virmire though? Shepard seemed pretty eager to get out.”
“Did she,” he says. The bandage itches.
<<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Did you know Mordin’s currently studying a scale itch outbreak on the ship?>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<He’s what?>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Wait, the varren disease?>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Yeah, that one.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<I’m never leaving the battery again.>>
Horizon, as Joker so eloquently puts it, is an absolute shit show.
It’s the first mission she’s taken him on and it nearly blows up in their faces, again.
For a split second, seeing Kaidan had been a bit refreshing in his familiarity, and then he’d opened his mouth. Part of him can’t blame him—at face value, Shepard tied with Cerberus goes against everything she stood for before she died. To have her come back so suddenly was a shock, sure, but Garrus also isn’t about to—what’s the human phrase—look at a gifted horse? Miranda, at least, with the logo emblazoned over her heart, had the sensibility to stay quiet, pissed as she was.
His mandibles clench in irritation all the same.
After a cursory once-over of the two of them, Shepard spends the shuttle ride staring out the window. An entire colony gone—he feels sick; the memory of being crouched over a colonist caught in a silent scream and her eyes tracking him will sit with him for a long time. Same with the Collectors, the disjointed echo of a voice assuming control, of wanting to preserve Shepard’s body. It’s a slimy feeling trailing down his spine. It’s tinged with failure, and with that he’s familiar.
He doesn’t realize his grumble sounds like a growl until he feels Miranda’s gaze on him. She’s more tolerant of him though. They’re friendly with one another, at least.
“I’ll go debrief the Illusive Man, Commander,” she says as they disembark in the cargo hold, every bit the XO. “Officer Vakarian.” They nod to one another, and he turns to find Shepard working her jaw.
Her motions are mechanical as he shepherds her back toward her locker. She holds her Avenger in her hands but he doesn’t think she sees it as she stares at the barrel. “Commander,” he says, and when she doesn’t answer he passes a glance at one of the operating maintenance crew members and mutters a trite, “Shepard.” When that earns him a glance he rests a hand on her forearm; the armor squeals gently in his grip. “Your gun’s going to jam next time if you don’t clean it.”
She hums, and he can see her turning over every minute, every step of the last mission as he slings his Mantis off his back. There’s a scorch mark on its barrel from one of the particle beams, and he’s just thankful for his shields.
They should head up to the armory rather than spill gun parts across the table. She passes him her assault rifle and lets a breath out through her nose and starts toying with the clasp to her glove. He loosens his gorget.
“You said it yourself: you wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for the right reasons.” The Cerberus agent—Holley, he thinks?—approaching to gather up their armor for cleaning catches his attention and his mandible twitches in what he hopes she interprets as a smile. Something placating, despite his mood.
“I did,” Shepard says before removing her gloves. Her shoulder guards follow with a hiss as she unlatches them. “There’s an entire colony of people that are gone though, just like that.”
It’s hard not to think about.
Deconstructing her gun is more muscle memory than wandering her ship is. Somehow that and helping her remove her armor is more intimate than it has any right to be. Holley doesn’t say much and they don’t either. He feels oddly exposed in his under-suit and she doesn’t catch herself staring until he glances her way and then tries to cover it up by clearing her throat as she collects the last of Shepard’s armor.
“Why aren’t you pissed at me?” she asks, which is a dangerous question when she’s holding the scope of the gun she’s disassembled. “Everyone else is. Hell, I am too.”
“Shepard?”
“No, I mean it. Our reunion was five minutes of going huh, you’re still around, let’s go shoot something, and then you almost got your head blown off.” That haunts her, he can see it in the flicker of her eyes—he may not be good at reading all humans, but he likes to think he’s gotten most of Shepard’s nuances.
She doesn’t look sad, she just looks… exhausted.
She’s like a sun gone supernova; gone and left whispers behind only to come roaring back into existence.
“I’m not mad at you,” he says. Maybe this isn’t a conversation best had around Cerberus agents, no matter the space they’re giving them. “Yes I’m mad, but that’s because you died—I’ll always be upset about that. I’m relieved to have you back too, but I’m pissed that someone else made that choice for you.”
“No, I know—it’s.” She drags her hand down her face, smearing gun oil across her cheekbone. He has the urge to wipe it away. “I’m tired of feeling like my choices are being made for me.” She drops her hands, slapping them against the lip of the bench. “God, I couldn’t even imagine being in your shoes—losing you and then getting you back…”
“You wouldn’t fit in my shoes. Too many toes.”
That startles a laugh out of her. “Shut up.”
“Good to know I’ve made an impression on you though.”
“Yeah.” By the time they’ve wrapped up maintenance he can tell there’s something else weighing on her, something she’s teetering on saying before she finally turns to him again. There's a sharp sheen in her eyes and her smile is brittle. “Hey, do you want to get shit-faced?”
He stares. That sounds… bad. “That didn’t translate. You want me to what?”
She seems to finally take full stock of the audience they have, small as it is, and lowers her voice. “Do you want a drink? I think the occasion calls for it and I have a bottle of whiskey in my cabin.”
Garrus drums his talons on the bench. “Whiskey I can’t drink? Sounds like a great time.”
“Okay, fine, I might have a bottle of what smells like acetone with a name I can’t pronounce, but it says it’s dextro.” She nudges his arm with her elbow. “I stashed them in my sock drawer.”
“Knew those drawers would come in handy. You hid a bottle just for me?”
Her smile is a slip of teeth, but her eyes crinkle a little. “Don’t tell anyone.”
They part ways so he can shower first—that slimy feeling doesn’t totally go away, but at least he can scrub away the dirt and acrid smell of smoke and maybe a touch of frustration. Sneaking off to his commanding officer’s cabin—which he isn’t, and maybe he had fantasy or two about it when he was younger but that’s irrelevant—isn’t a good look, but there are ten minutes until shift change which leaves very few crew wandering the decks.
EDI hesitates to let him into Shepard’s cabin, again, and her can hear her muffled voice on the other side of the wall.
“Garrus?” she pokes her head around the corner, scrubbing a towel over her head.
“Hey.”
She drops the towel on the edge of her desk. He watches damp hair curl against her neck and into her hood. He squints.
“Your own shower up here too? Damn!” His teeth click. “That offer to trade is still on the table.”
“Maybe next time,” she says, inclining her head and he follows her down the stairs this time. He gets a better look at this half of her cabin now, having never quite made it past her desk the first night. There’s a couch that she gestures toward, and he watches as she wanders to the other side of the room to yank open a drawer.
He glances toward the tank. One of the fish is floating upside down, but Shepard doesn’t notice and he doesn’t tell her. He smacks the button on his way over and she barely passes him a glance.
“You know there’s such a thing as overfeeding?”
“Someone has to feed your fish.”
“I thought they were our fish?”
He barely swallows back a I shouldn’t be coming up here so often, Shepard and says, “That’s right; I can’t let any of them die on my watch.”
There’s a perfectly good bar in port observation, but he gets why they’re up here. Not that he should be. Again. But here he is, sitting in his (dead, not dead) commanding officer’s quarters and rather than feel an ounce of shame or apprehension, there’s a comfortable relief that settles across him. He’s never been a very good turian.
She hands him what she says is a whiskey glass, but it’s a little too stout for him to drink out of if he doesn’t want to dump it all over himself. She tells him he could drink straight from the bottle if he wants—it’s not like he has anyone else to share it with.
“Really rub it in, huh, Shepard.” He holds the brandy up by the neck. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”
She grins, rolling her glass between her hands. It smells almost sweet.
“I’ll have you know I’m not that easy,” he drawls.
“Never would have taken you for someone who had to be wined and dined,” she shoots back, pulling her legs up onto the couch to fold them in a way that has never looked comfortable.
“Of course. I have standards.” His mandibles flutter as he leans to set the bottle back on the table. It wouldn’t be his first choice, but there’s a pleasant hum in his keel because the fact she has it at all means she was searching for him.
He tries the glass first, and feels it dribble down the corner of his mouth plate. His tongue darts out to swipe at it and looks over to find her staring. His foot bobs, something Pressly used to do. He clears his throat. “Sorry, that was, uh, rude.”
“No, you’re fine,” she says, voice tight.
When she finally looks away he hastily scrubs the back of his glove across his chin. She holds the rim of her glass against her lip but doesn’t drink, and then she lowers it again to hold it in her lap. His torso twists to better face her—spirits, turning his head too far still hurts.
“If you could go to any planet, where would you go?”
That catches him off guard. “Just for the hell of it?” When she nods, his gaze falls to his glass, watching the brandy swirl around. “Hmm. I’ve never had an inclination to go before, but I have to admit I’m curious and would like to see Earth.”
“I’m curious to see what Palaven is like,” she says, leaning back to rest her head against the top of the couch. “After this is all over, we’ll trade: you can show me around all of your old haunts. Didn’t you say Virmire reminded you of Palaven, just without the geth?”
“Where I grew up, yes.” Garrus stretches his legs out, joints popping and spur knocking against the short table. He remembers, after Virmire. He eyes her over his glass. “Are you going to guide me around Earth?”
“Wined, dined, and a tour guide.” She rolls her head against the cushion. “Does that fit your standards?”
He drops his glass to his knee.
“What are we really doing here, Shepard?”
He regrets it, but not enough to take it back. Shepard’s jaw clenches and she looks away to stare at the skylight, leaving him with the gentle background hum of the ship and bubbling of the fish tank. She’s quiet for long enough he thinks she’s going to kick him out; he’s about to knock back the rest of his glass and thank her for the drink before slinking back off to his cot.
“An entire colony of people is gone. I was brought back to stop it and didn’t,” she says. “And the reason I was brought back does in fact feel like a betrayal to everything I stood for, but they’re also the only ones doing anything about it. Stuck between a rock and a hard place and yeah, I’m kinda pissed with Kaidan, even if he was right.”
“Gotta say, dying and then coming back two years later is a hell of a way to break up with someone.”
She gives him a flat look. “Thanks, Garrus.” Her mouth curls. “What about you? Broken heart left in every port?”
He hums, eyeing his glass. The last of his brandy sloshes in the blue lights.
“Did you love him?”
“Does that matter?” She breaks his gaze, looking to her glass and then at the bottle on the table. She gives a soft shake of her head. “Maybe I could have, maybe I didn't. Maybe the old me would have, somewhere down the line.”
He remembers the look of betrayal on Kaidan’s face and the quickly masked one of devastation on Shepard’s before she’d radioed Joker.
He remembers that she hadn’t looked back. Kaidan had.
Shepard throw back the rest of her glass. Closes her eyes. Instead, asks, “How much of me is really me?”
“Unfortunately, I think all of it is,” he says, and at her look continues: “Maybe you’re a little softer around the edges since they added some polish, but you make a lot of the tough decisions in the same way you did before, even if you’re a little gruffer about it than you used to be. You still make your rounds, still check in with your crew members, still care more than anyone else I’ve met. You drink your coffee the same way, chew on your lip when you’re thinking about something. Sometimes your face,” he gestures to his crest with his free hand; her eyebrows scrunch, “yeah, that. Commander Shepard’s still there, just… putting some of the pieces back together.”
“Garrus, that was almost sweet.”
“Hm, well, might be the wined part kicking in.” The corner of her mouth quirks. “I’m used to black and white, and you’re tossing in a lot of gray there.”
She takes a drag from her glass and the swallow is audible. “All of it just—makes me so goddamn mad. And then it makes me feel crazy. Anderson knew and he didn’t even tell me! I thought—fuck, maybe I didn’t.”
He can’t help a wince. “Never going to say you aren’t a little crazy, Shepard. Think it’s worth being at least a bit upset over.”
“You think? Because—because I died, and I’m not supposed to talk about it. Because everyone looks at me like I’m a ghost or I’m not supposed to be here. And you know what? I know I’m not. I died and I…” Her eyes are wet, and he’s never seen them like that before. “The only things I had access to earlier were Cerberus terminals; there’s only so much you can find with a basic search and a lack of credentials. By the time I got into anything I heard from Joker that most of the remaining crew had dispersed… it didn’t feel right. I found vids of my own memorial. That my surviving crew had moved on.” She drags a hand through her damp hair; it’s shorter than the last time they saw one another, before they parted ways permanently, and then impermanently. “Then almost immediately the Illusive Man was launching into missing human colonies and I knew it was a diversion but—”
“It felt normal?”
“Yeah. Ever since I woke up in that lab I’ve felt like I was two steps behind. Getting to Freedom’s Progress felt like something had shifted back into place—I felt like me again. And then seeing Tali there felt like being punched in the gut. I asked her to come with me and she said no. At least… at least you were happy to see me. That means a lot, you know.”
Happy, sure; relieved, maybe. Probably about to die because of his screw up, definitely.
Garrus takes a breath. Holds it. She holds out a hand and he watches the tendons flex as she stretches out her fingers, curls them into a fist, and then flexes them again.
“I’ve thought about what I would have said to you,” he says. “If you’d been on Omega, if you hadn’t… well. It’s a bit strange to think about now, sitting here next to you. Spent a lot of time adjusting to you being gone.” Now she sits next to him and he could reach out and touch her but doesn’t. Yes, maybe it bothers him that he didn’t find out that she was back sooner than he did, but that’s not her fault, and she still came back. He will never forget looking out over that bridge to spot that N7 and shock of red hair. Just like when he shot her, she hums and he shatters that fragile peace between them with: “Why didn’t you…?”
“Would you have answered?” He remains silent, watching her still. Her eyes on him are bright but her expression looks drawn. “I tried,” she says, voice quiet but firm. “Yours bounced back.”
His trill sounds like grief, like agony, and, strangely, an awful lot like solace.
“Will you tell me about Omega?”
“What’s to tell? You’ve seen it for yourself; thought I could make a difference somewhere in the galaxy and it blew up in my face. There are ten men who are dead because I got soft and didn’t realize one of my own was betraying me until it was too late.” He knows she saw the bodies—the insult to Monteague, Weaver, and Ripper because the most he could do was cover them before the first wave of Blue Suns. The whole stint is a haze of stims, adrenaline, anger, and the crushing weight of relief compounded by grief. “I’m going to find Sidonis and put it right.”
“Whatever you need from me, you have it.” Garrus tilts his head back to look at her, as far as his fringe and bandage on his neck will allow. The way she looks at him feels like they’re sharing a secret. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He leans forward, into her space, and she stills as he reaches across her. He can see almost every freckle on her face, the way her gaze lingers on his mandible, maybe his chin, and he wonders if there’s still a smear of brandy on it, and he grabs her bottle to top off her glass.
“No place else I’d rather be,” he tells her, because it’s true.
“Walking back to the threshold of hell?”
“When you put it like that it almost sounds dangerous.” She prods his thigh with her foot, and Garrus grabs it before she can kick him again. “You weren’t kidding about the neon green socks. That color looks horrendous, Shepard. Invitation to Palaven is being revoked as we speak.”
Shepard laughs, and a heat that has nothing to do with the liquor washes through him. He’s never been a very good turian and she’s never been very good at staying dead.
She folds her legs back up and rests her glass against her cheek.
“You can call me Jane,” she whispers. That slimy feeling melts into something warm, and then her face falls when her gaze finally lands on the tank. “Oh, god dammit.”
<<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Can I ask you a favor?>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<How many fish died?>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Haha. Only if you’re not too busy.>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<Never mind, I can get it sorted.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<I think now you have to tell me.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Shepard?>><<J.SHEPARD>>
<<I grabbed some files from where I first woke up on the station but I can’t figure out the decryption so I haven’t gone through them yet.>><<G.VAKARIAN>>
<<Give me ten minutes.>>