"No! You're not allowed to know!"
"Shepard, come on, put the gun down. See, my hands are out in the open. No threat."
"I'm not crazy!"
"I know, Shepard, I know."
"Keep your hands up! … I… Don't make me tell you… please…"
"Shepard, all I asked was how you were doing."
"Not… not well… Dammit, no… you can't know…"
"You can put down the gun, it's okay. If you don't want me to know, I won't ask. I can leave right now. This would never have happened."
"… No…"
All the tension and stress that racked her body began to drain out of her, almost forming a puddle beneath her feet. The gun found itself dropped on the floor and promptly kicked towards the coffee table. With the mass effect field no longer wrapped around her, Garrus noticed the heavy bags under the commander's blurred eyes.
"Shepard-"
"I feel insane."
"You look like hell."
"… I feel like hell. Like I'm not a part of this reality. Maybe this isn't real. Maybe none of us are real. We're just a blip, not even a little blip… and and… Uh, this headache…"
Her slump never hit the ground, but was eased there by a firm, guiding grip. He tried to move her to a more comfortable place, the couch, the bed, but she would not be moved. As he sat down next to the broken woman, she instinctively leaned in beside him.
"Garrus, you're… you're not supposed to see me like this."
"You're going to be alright Shepard, everything is going to be alright."
"No, it's not alright, I'm supposed to be dead. A cold stiff. Rotting on some distant planet… far from home…"
"Shepard, come on."
"I… can't just…"
She felt a warm hand hold her face, alive, caring. Maybe reality wasn't so bad, if this could exist.
"… What's it like…" Life was beginning to run through her veins again.
" What's it like…?"
"What's it feel like being you?"
Garrus stretched out his legs as Shepard rolled her head onto his lap. While moving the hair out of her eyes, he mulled over the question. He had never seen anything remotely close to this before, but then again he didn't know anyone else like her. The notion was always there that Shepard wasn't perfect, that she had faults just like everyone else. It was no longer a thought though, but a woman, lying on his lap. Fear welled up inside him, the thought of becoming vulnerable. But then he looked at her sad, tired eyes and conceded to giving his fair share.
"… Failure, I guess. That would be the closest word. Almost every accomplishment I've achieved came at a cost, in either blood or tears. The worst part is that they're usually not mine, I have to witness them. If I'm the one paying for it, the price doesn't matter, when other people are affected…"
"Garrus, you're not a failure."
Those words pierced his heart like a pin needle. She meant every word of it too, which made it even worse.
"Damn it, Shepard. How do you do this? Every time… It gets harder and harder to…"
"Keep you out…"
"Heh, yeah. Is it that obvious?"
"No, I just… feel the same way."
She had gathered herself up by this point, and was on her knees facing him, their foreheads slowly leaning on one another. This wasn't supposed to be happening, this openness, this vulnerability. It tore down all the barriers they had put up. The ones they had spent years on, time and energy, slowly building it up to be a grand castle of loneliness. Small price to pay for security, at least it had been, until this one had came along and ruined it.
"What do we do now?" Garrus asked as he brought his knees near his chest, laying an elbow on each of them. He began to stroke the hair again, it was an odd sensation, little strands connected to a scalp.
"We have two options," Shepard brought up her head and looked him dead in the eyes, "either we pretend this never happened and go back to screwing around… or…"
"Or we lay everything out on the table."
"Yes, exactly."
"… I don't want to do either…"
"Neither do I…"
"You know what screw it. Alright, let's do it. Here we go…"
"Okay."
"You first."
"No way, you first. You came into my room."
"You invited me up here."
"I'm your commanding officer."
"And I'm one of the five people in the universe you know who won't stab you in the back."
"… Damn it, alright. You win. Okay… What do you want to know?"
Garrus leaned back against the wall, his legs back against the floor. He was looking at an open book, wondering which page to turn to first.
"How do you pronounce your first name?"
"…Wait, what? That's your first question?"
"Your first name, the letters, they don't go well together in my dialect."
"They don't go well together in any dialect."
"Is that a pout I hear?"
"Look, I always hated my first name, okay? It's sounds ugly and all the kids at school would make fun of me and call me 'Old Lady.' That's one of the reasons everyone calls me by my last name. I like it better… it's what they used to call my Dad.
"Agnes. Okay, that's my name. Agnes."
"Ogus?"
"What, no, Agnes."
"Ognees?"
"Ah! No! Agnes! Agnes! Are you trying to make fun of me?"
"Sorry, sorry, it's just a hard name to pronounce."
"You better not be holding back a laugh or anything!"
"Ognus?"
"Grr… Okay, say 'Ag.'"
"Ag."
"Ness."
"Ness."
"Agnes."
"Ahgness."
"Yes, thank you. Finally. That was like pulling teeth."
"Ahgness… Ahgness…"
"You ever call me that in public and so help me I will smear you against a wall."
"Does it have a meaning?"
"Pure, holy. Doesn't describe me much anymore, but hey, what can you do. My parents named me after a Saint, which is alright I guess. Hard to live up to the standard though, can't really one-up a virgin-martyr."
"Ha ha, true."
"Reiner is my middle name by the way, it's my mother's maiden name."
"Wait… You were given two surnames?"
"Yeah, Mom was an only child and she wanted to carry on the family flame, I guess."
"That's considered bad luck by old turian standards, divides your loyalty. A good number of ancient tragedies star a general or a ruler with two family names. The stigmatism still lingers among the old timers."
"Damn, that explains a lot."
A heavy smile crossed her face with something between a laugh and a sigh. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned that last bit.
"What are… Are your… parents still alive?" Shepard's composure regained slightly, if only to adjust her heavy shoulders.
"Yes…"
"Both of them?"
"… For the time being."
"Wha… What happened?"
"My mom is, uh, has… Corpalis Syndrome. Rare, degenerative brain disease. Solana is taking care of her on Palaven, my sister, by the way. Don't give me that look. Dad has been working a lot, making whatever money he can. They, um, they don't know I'm here. They didn't know I was on Omega for two years. They hardly know about me working with you to bring down Saren."
"… Do you need anything? I could raid a…"
"No, No. I've pulled some strings, maybe get a weaver or two signed for an off world treatment. Salarians make amazing doctors, like Mordin, but most don't have his generosity. Thank you though…"
"… I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Death has many faces."
"What's she like?"
"My Mom? She's stubborn, idealistic, hard to control. I take more after her, probably explains why my Father and I are always at odds. He and my Sister were always more traditional."
"What's your sister like?"
"Usually humans aren't so interested in family backgrounds."
"… just want to know what I've been missing."
"… Sorry." Why do I bother opening my mouth, he wondered.
"What would you do for fun… when you were kids."
"We don't get much time to have fun."
"You never, never played games or went swimming?"
"We were taught to do things right or to never do them at all. Acquiring that level of perfection is… time consuming."
"That sounds boring…"
"It wasn't all bad though, sometimes the training sims would 'malfunction' and we would have more time to play. We'd join in with the rest of the kids, play toe long, or war games. There was a brook near our house, with low hanging trees, and flowers, and bugs, and all kinds of places to explore. Those few extra hours we had made up for all the time we spent training. No one… no one had fun like we did…"
"…"
"Things changed though after we went into military training. Solana and the others learned to take orders, I learned to put up with them. She started to sound more like Dad every time we spoke. Still love her and everything, but, we don't have that same connection anymore. Maybe she just grew up better than I did."
"Do you ever miss your childhood?"
"No, I enjoy the opportunities that have been given to me. Many of them have blown up in my face, literally at some points, but I always wanted to make a difference in the universe around me. That chance is not often given to children. It was nice though, while it lasted…"
"It sounds wonderful… A family, a sibling. Someone to call when something terrible happens…"
"Can… can I ask you what happened on Akuze?"
"…"
"I understand if it's too much too soon-"
"I watched them all die, Garrus… in the movies, the hero always gets trapped underneath rubble or gets knocked out, waking up with all their friends dead around them. Not me. I watched every one of them get torn apart, plastered with acid, drug under ground… I can still hear Walker's body being smeared across the bunker… God, God in Heaven…I told them to get everyone back into APCs and get the hell out of there, I would hold that monster off. But… but then up came a second… and then a third… It was almost as if they worked together, one would trash, one would spit, one would dive. There was screaming, horrendous screaming. But the worst part was the silence afterwards… That deathly silence.
"I could feel my brain being over come by a fog. Blacked out for a while… When I came to, all the Thresher Maws were dead, I was covered in blood with a knife in my hand, and the survey crew was dragging out charred pieces of flesh from burning trucks… I don't even know where that blood came from. All the Maws had shotgun blasts to the eyes and most of the wreckage was the work of biotic charges… My biotic charges. I never…
"The Alliance awarded me for my heroic efforts, medals, ceremony, a Vanguard status in the N7 training program, the latest biotic implants… but not one day to pay my respects on Akuze. Not even a real psych test to see how far gone I was. They needed me, I remember Admiral Neibo saying, humanity needed me. So much so… that they had to neglect mine."
"Shepard…"
"No, no don't… Come on Garrus, don't give me those eyes…"
Honesty had done a crazy thing for them. Instead of being seen as a fool, or a freak, or a victim, or a basket case, they saw each other as themselves. Cracks and all they saw, meaning everything and nothing at the same time.
"When… When you asked how I was doing early, when I went crazy, um… I was in the middle of one of those fogs, it happens sometimes. Brain activity overrides the L5n, effects could range from seizures, unconsciousness, migraines… The pain can get… unbearable, at times. Depending on how long it takes for the medication to kick in. If it does. This helps though, helps a lot… "
"…Thank you."
"For what."
"Not turning my head into a blue mist for asking."
Their eyes met for the first time in what felt like ages. His eyes were always clear, she noted, always pristine. Even when tears filled them, the blue would not merge with the black, or blur into the brown. Each color stayed within its limits, its set parameters. What would shake him?
"I have always wondered… I guess this sounds pretty stupid but we've talked about so many heavy things…What, um, what's your track record, you know, with the ladies?"
"Are you kidding me? Are we teenagers or something?"
"Hey! We agreed we were laying it all out."
"Alright, a bit of a jump though, but okay. I've had some luck, you know, but nothing serious. Prospects were not that great on the Citadel, was too young to be interested when I was on Palaven, and you don't want to touch anything you find on Omega. How about you?"
"You pretty much summed it up actually. The whole stock of men is trash on Earth, at least from what I've seen. Dated whatever wasn't creepy but, whatever I didn't have is what they wanted, you know?"
"I do know…"
"You're not that way."
"Yeah, neither are you."
There was a bit of a giddy smile, something similar to a blush. Today was a weird day, everything was out in the open. Felt nice though, like the first breeze felt after walking out of a stuffy house. Maybe it was for the best, they both thought. They had always been friends, comrades, blood brothers. The skeletons in their closets were eerily the same, in shape and feeling. It was so odd to think, but maybe the idea of being together wasn't so crazy after all, it may even be a good one. Didn't seem that way at the start though, especially when Garrus first walked in only to find a biotically charged Shepard sitting on the edge of a chair at a disheveled desk, tapping a M-5 Phalanx against her temple.
"I'm sorry, by the way… for pointing a gun at you."
"It's okay Shepard, you're a soldier, you point guns at people all day."
"Yes I know, but, I… look, do you want to get dinner or something when we dock?"
As she stood up to get her blood moving again; he was recollecting everything that had happened before their unloading of emotional baggage. The whole reason he had an option to meet her was due to the down time FTL afforded them before landing in one of the Citadel ports. A meeting with Anderson took precedence, not to mention all the parts and supplies that needed to be installed and restocked. The Normandy SR-2 maybe be one of the most advanced ships in space, but that only means replacement parts are that much more expensive. All this ran through his mind, but it was the stomach that made the final decision.
"I just thought you probably haven't had a decent turian meal in a while and my meeting isn't until 1800 and I'm just tired of this scene so do you want to go get some take away or something when we land?"
He rose to meet her at eye level.
"Yes."
"Good, then it's a date."