Friendly Fire
Garrus Vakarian has killed a total of ninety two mercs today.
Maybe.
He doesn't remember most of the kills (although he'll never forget how he managed to get two headshots with one bullet earlier; those were rare and precious, even for a marksman as good as himself. Was that back when the count was still in the twenties? He can't recall) and it has been a very long day. He can confirm the body count at any time, but the kill-timer linked to his visor is still now and he has not glanced at the readout for hours. He's been trying to keep tallies in his head to keep himself awake, fighting against temptation to match the figure in his mind to the number on the screen.
It's worked thus far, though he knows that he'll have to find something else to occupy his mind if this siege keeps up much longer.
The turian imperial theme blares, a violent crescendo that vibrates through his armor and into his bones. It's another little trick he picked up, from those long C-Sec patrol nights, to keep himself awake. He scans the field again through his trusty Mantis, humming along to the chorus. Nothing moves and it's a mess out there, maybe one of the worst he's seen yet.
Death is a funny thing sometimes, and the physics of a kill could be unpredictable. The best kills are simply those that are slumped in place, headless, gore splaying out of their neck as pure chaos. At that point they are simply bodies, nothing more. The helmeted corpses are also easy to digest, because there is nothing in their eyes to give away what they might have been feeling in their final moments. Failing that, there are a few that are resting their bodies against a wall, having long since bled life out. Those too, were acceptable.
But within his vision he can see certain bodies twisted and misshapen: evidence of a slow death and a bad shot on his part. The impact of a bullet can punch off packages of flesh and meat only to leave ghoulish, indecipherable shapes if not done precisely. He berates himself for his sloppiness.
The headshot is not simply a demonstration of skill. It is a demonstration of mercy.
Movement. He brings the Mantis to bear, silently ordering the music in his armor to mute.
He can not afford to have his tired senses unfocused now. While it had been mindless killing earlier, the idiot mercenaries seemed to have finally come to their senses and were trying something resembling tactics instead of bull-charging like bloodthirsty krogans.
A single merc is within view and in the next second his gun recoils, leaping in his hands like an uproarious beast. But it's a beast that bends to his will, tamed but not defanged, and the bloodied proof of this lies across the lower floor.
Ninety-three. A clean kill.
He waits patiently for more enemies, his frazzled nerves on edge, but everything is still now. He had been expecting an infiltration group to follow now that the distraction was KIA, but the body below must have just been a young and obscenely foolish merc that had slipped into his range of fire. Unfortunate.
Garrus reloads, never taking his eye away from his scope, and takes a deep, shaky breath.
With the music off it is the silence of death that greets him and for a moment, he feels lonely. So terribly lonely. Solo missions, he was used to. One-sided slaughter, he was not. During war and firefights there was always activity, blurry half-formed shapes that crawled across the battlefield in his scope. Even on the longest nights, when he was forced to huddle in his hide site alone and cold, waiting for his target, he didn't have to be reminded of all the blood he had shed every time he peeked through his scope. Now he is forced to constantly witness all his handiwork as he surveys the killing floors below him, corpses piled upon corpses. No one had dared to recover anything down there, after all. They would be greeted with a bullet for their troubles.
He does all he can to steel his resolve. It's not the time to feel lonely. Justice is what must surge through him, now. He is the only one left to exact it.
The title of the next song on his playlist scrolls past his visor. "Fire in the Courtyard." Awfully appropriate. He decides not to turn the volume back on.
Movement again. Instinct overtakes him and he swings his Mantis back up, the outside world disappearing and funneling into the sniper scope.
A small team of three this time. Maybe the infiltration team had given up and decided for a blitzkrieg? Foolish. Too foolish.
He carefully considers his targets. Three humans, led by a female. Her movements are practiced, precise. Familiar.
That's strange.
It almost reminds him of…
His next shot is wild, the resounding impact of bullet to wall not even registering with him. It is one of the rare instances of him completely missing a target, and an even rarer instance of him not being able to care.
He falls behind cover and reloads by muscle memory alone. He doesn't see that his talons are shivering the entire while. After sucking in a few gasping breaths to steady himself, he takes a quick peek over the railing he now hides behind.
It's not a mistake. It's not a hallucination, born of his fatigue.
Shepard.
His commander. His friend.
Alive.
Garrus can count between his two hands the very few times when he's been rattled during battle. Turian military training is brutal enough to grind out anything that would have even the potential of jeopardizing other members of the platoon. And already he can feel his heart slowing, his focus returning.
But he is alone. There's no one to endanger, except himself. So he takes a few more moments than necessary to recover and leans back against the railing, his eyes closing in what he thinks is relief. It's as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
Alive.
New strength surges through his body, hot and burning, almost painful. Like he has awoken from a long slumber and life has started, anew.
He had mourned Shepard's death, fumbled through the last two years only to come back to doing what he believed she would have done in his situation. Trying to make things right in the galaxy, the only way that he knew how. But he could have never imagined that seeing her again would have such an effect on him.
He scrabbles back to his feet, a bit off balance, limbs drunk on hope.
Alive.
But the cold, calculating logic is taking over again now. Seeping into his talons, stabilizing his being.
Shepard was dead. Of this he is sure. All his intelligence networks, legal and otherwise, had never told him differently. Garrus is not a superstitious sort, and though he had seen a great many fantastical things while traveling with Shepard, any event that brought back the dead generally never had good conclusions.
And those capable of such a thing never had good intentions.
He hefts his Mantis up and searches for Shepard and her group again. They're hiding behind cover, having made far slower progress than Garrus would have expected in the time he had allotted them.
Of course. They must know Archangel is up here. That he had not fired on them immediately must have raised suspicions. Now he is certain that it's Shepard, or at least someone more capable than a brainless, greedy merc.
Her movements earlier play again in his mind. Graceful, powerful. If only she had been born turian, maybe…
He increases the magnification on his scope, trying to identify Shepard's companions. And when he spots the insignias on their uniforms, Garrus can feel all emotions deaden.
Cerberus.
Shepard. And Cerberus.
His mind begins racing, fumbling with the implications of this development. He fires a few warning rounds here and there, partly to keep them pinned, partly to keep himself focused. Nothing brings him more focus than the familiar crack of his Mantis.
He reaches the crux of the issue far more quickly than he expects, given his exhausted condition. But identifying his choices does not bring him any cheer. Only discord.
There are two reasons for why Shepard was associating with Cerberus. The optimistic reason would be that she was only using them, planning to turncoat if she ever got the opportunity. The pessimistic, and more likely reason, was that Cerberus had done something to her. Convinced her to ally with them. Brainwashed her.
At least there is a beautiful, elegant solution to all this, Garrus thinks.
He simply needs to kill the Cerberus companions.
If Shepard is still Shepard, once the Cerberus operatives are out of the way, Garrus only has to identify himself. Reunited, there is no amount of mercs that could be sent that the duo couldn't blast their way through. At least, that's what Garrus hopes.
But if Shepard isn't Shepard…
Garrus blocks that alternative from his mind. If it came down to whether or not he could pull the trigger at that time, he would make the decision then. Not before.
Or perhaps he could knock out Shepard now. Kill the companions after. Go down and drag the unconscious—
No. Too dangerous. If he gives up his cover, he's as good as dead.
He would have to let them get as close as possible. Kill one of the operatives now, so it wouldn't be as hard a fight later on. If Shepard is on his side, it will be a two-on-one. Even if he doesn't successfully kill one of them, it would be a two-on-two, or at least an opportunity to hear Shepard out.
If Shepard is on his side.
If she isn't…
Don't think, now. Let the training take over. He must take one out now, to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Concussive rounds later.
And hope the spirits will not put him to the decision he fears most.
He stares down the scope. Hardens his resolve.
The Cerberus insignia is in his sights.
It's time to make it ninety four.
She asks him why, but he never hears it.
The firefight is over far too quickly. He battles well, even better than she remembers, but in open space he can't keep all three of them off. It's not even her that sends the killing bullet into him—it's Miranda that delivers the shot with pinpoint accuracy, right through his helmet.
Even before she takes that shattered mess of twisted armor off his head she knows that it's him. It was so obvious—the three digits, the switch to concussive rounds when the three had gotten into close quarters. How could she have not seen? They had been together through so much, given so much, experienced so much. All a lifetime ago, but that was not so long that she could have forgotten him.
She can only hate herself. Hate herself for having let this happen, to one of the few that could understand her. She had betrayed that trust.
She's at his side now. She takes his hand in hers, doing what she can to comfort him. His hand is still burning with blood and life, hot.
She will never forget his remaining eye watching her, filled with regret. For what? She didn't know. She can only watch back, unable to ask anything more.
She watches as his hard talons squeezes her soft hands, trying to hang onto this world. She watches him in his final throes and thinks of promises never kept and friendships gone too early.
She watches him through it all because she owes him that much, and when it's all over and he lies still she can't help but blindly fire a round into the nearby cabinet and almost another one into Jacob when he asks her why she's crying for a turian.
-End-