*/ I wanted to write a fic, but lacked direction. My husband suggested this prompt - what was Garrus up to between ME1 and ME2? We know he went to Omega, but there's about a year and a half unaccounted for. Will also explore squad activities on Omega with as much info as the game provided. Rated M to be safe, mainly for language. Some suggestive material. /*
Garrus panted, his breath ragged and gaspy as he half kneeled on the citadel floors. He had finally found a solitary place to run only to discover that this particular maintenance corridor had apparently been intended to be used for activities that required much less oxygen than a sprinting turian. Like observing, he thought to himself. His breathing slowly returned to a steady pace as he stripped off his service coat, folding it down over his hips, and stood to gaze out the cold viewports, bony and plated blue-gray torso glistening in the starlight. This part of the citadel wasn't lit this time of day, obviously part of some ancient hard coding that dictated day and night cycles on the non-residential sections of the massive space station. He wondered absently why the makers would have bothered with day-night cycles in an area like this, but that question was way beyond his pay grade.
This corridor was at least three klicks long, completely unbroken; a straight path with no other rooms or halls off of it. Half of the corridor was, floor to ceiling, quarter meter thick silicon glass polymer, offering a stunningly clear view of the nebula the Citadel was nestled in. At this rotation Garrus could just make out the distant blue pulse of the citadel mass relay as untold hundreds of personal transport, freight, and military ships were hurled into the black expanse by the primal forces harnessed in the ancient construct.
This would be the perfect place to run IF I COULD BREATH.
Garrus may have grown up on Palaven, the hot, arid Turian homeworld, but he'd been serving on cold starships and space stations for the past 14 years. The outer hull corridors of the citadel, like this one, were less than a meter from the icy vacuum of space, and were the few places in the Palavenian ward a space-blooded turian could exercise comfortably. Sure, he could go to a gym or private training center, but Garrus had always preferred to hone his body and skills in private – a tradition among ancient turian monks that had lost favor centuries ago. Vakarians were one of the few families that still passed this ancient tradition down through its warrior lines.
When Garrus had worked with C-Sec he had been primarily stationed in the very mixed race Lower Ward that housed most of the blue collar workers associated with the dozen or so embassies at the outskirts of the Presidium. The temperature had always been kept at Citadel standards, a full fifteen degrees lower than that preferred by the residents of the Palavenian ward. He savored the cold emanating off of the viewports as he sank to the floor, his limbs folding into the traditional meditative stance. Lower the heart rate, reduce body temperature, increase oxygenation, finish the run. He sat there for several long minutes, eyes half closed, gazing into the cosmos.
Exhausted as he may be, Garrus was over half way through the run, and like it or not he had to reach the other side – quickly. Body finally returned to a state of rest, Garrus rose back to his feet and stretched his aching muscles. He checked his chrono anxiously, scowling in annoyance as it told him he would almost certainly be late. He started padding down the corridor, his gate picking up speed as he accelerated to a full run. He didn't sprint anymore – couldn't expend the oxygen. It wouldn't do for him to show up to training the color of an Asari.
Garrus was on his third of four segments of Spectre Training, a formal school that spent more time teaching diplomacy these days than actual combat skills. Garrus scowled, oh how things have changed. After the near galaxy ending crisis with Saren the council was no longer granting Spectre status to anyone that hadn't been through the training school – not even Commander Shepard's right hand. They all had to endure what he could only describe as the most thorough and excruciating interracial sensitivity training ever devised by sentient beings. Fucking Asari, he thought to himself. He chuckled lightly at the thought – 13 weeks of trying to obliterate decades of stereotyping and all that had managed to sink in was a firm belief that Asari lived far too long for their own good. Anyone who had that much time to analyze the social implications of Batarian gas glands in a cruiser class starship couldn't possibly have anything important enough to say that it would interest him. Add to that, the schooling didn't guarantee an offer for Spectre status. Fewer than three of every 60-being graduating class was interviewed by the council, and then no more than one was ever granted Spectre status. Most returned to their old assignments or were tapped as diplomats.
The thought sent shudders down Garrus' spine. He hadn't help Humanity's sweetheart save the galaxy just to end up brown nosing some minor Hanar dignitary by day and laying loose Asari consorts by night, like every other stuck up sod in the Presidium. Not that the Asari consorts weren't beautiful – and sexy – but Garrus had always believed that if he was going to mate with a female he should at least be man enough to get her to bed of his own accord, not that of his credit account.
No, Garrus was a hunter. A predator. Millions of years of evolution had distilled the turian race into the perfect model of an organic killing machine – rows of razor sharp teeth, three inch talons, natural armor plating, and impressive strength. Opposable thumbs and high intelligence didn't offer enough civility to shake his predatory nature. His happiest moment in life was hearing the heat sink pop and steam after he'd squeezed off his last sniper shot. Or when his claws were three inches deep in a foe's throat. Or when he slammed plates with an equally predatory and visceral turian female. Or saving the galaxy with a fiery, fierce, yellow haired human by his side.
His mandibles flared slightly, the turian equivalent to a human smile, at the thought of Shepard. Her drive and passion had awakened in him an overwhelming need to… do something. After 7 years in Citadel Security a ten minute conversation with her had convinced him to abandon his caseload, his job, his life, to chase down one bad guy. It had been the right choice, in the end, but he could just has easily sat on his backplates and let some younger, bright eyed gun chase after her in his place. But, there was something about her. She had filled him with such certainty, and confidence, and a sense of duty he'd never before felt. As long as she was there, they all had hope. They couldn't fail. He'd never felt more alive.
Garrus' body was screaming from the low oxygen in this corridor, but his heart made a grateful leap at the sight of exit door drawing ever closer. Even as the hope of oxygen spurred him onwards, the sinking dread of walking into the so-called Spectre training ten minutes late, doubled over and gasping for breath made him want to drag his feet.
Garrus finally reached the end of the corridor and palmed the door to go through it. As he made his way through the snaking back passages of the Citadel's rarely travelled maintenance passages, he gratefully sucked down air, the richer oxygen as he approached Palavenian Ward proper rewarding his screaming lungs and muscles. He wanted to sit and pant for an hour, but he was due in class by now. Hate it as he might, if he had any hope of ever becoming a Spectre himself he'd have to bite the bullet and get through it.
Garrus burst through the doors of his STC Field Command 3C course a full ten minutes after it began. 59 pairs of eyes, plus the instructor trained on him, and more than a few human jaws dropped and turian eyebrows arched as Garrus realized, along with the rest of them, that he was still half nude. The tinge of his grey pallor changing from a healthy blue to a sickly green in the span of a heartbeat, Garrus grabbed the top half of his service uniform and scrambled to put it on, his sharp claws ripping a gash in the shoulder as he fumbled with the foreign material. So mortified by his public humiliation, Garrus didn't even look to the front of the class where the guest speaker stood, silent, grinning ear to ear.