Ghost of You, a mass effect fanfic

AN: Songfic for the Good Charlotte song "Ghost of You." I haven't actually listened to this song in like… many years. Let's say upwards of six? But I thought of it for some reason in connection to this particular idea, so I figured why not? Never mind that I'm not really a big reader of songfics… so we'll see how this goes. Feel free to skip the lyrics – I will not be offended.

Ghost of You

I will wait until the end
When the pendulum will swing back
to the darker side of our hearts bleeding
I will save this empty space
next to me like it's a grave
where I lay a place for us to sleep eternally together

Garrus Vakarian was working the night shift that week. It was a crappy shift – either full of crime or downright boring – and no one wanted it. Honestly, Garrus didn't care. He was still re-adjusting to being back at C-Sec, drowning in bureaucracy. At least during the night shift he didn't have to deal with as many of his fellow officers.

So it just happened that at 0800 hours when events that would forever shape the course of his life were unfolding half a galaxy away, Garrus was sound asleep on what passed for a bed in his cruddy little citadel apartment. He would spend the better part of the next two years wondering if there was anything special leading up to that day – something that would have warned him that this was in fact the day that Shepard would die. But years of analysis would tell him that the Savior of the Citadel had died on a day that was just like any other. Unremarkable in any way except for the lasting effect it would have on his life.

He wasn't a deep sleeper. The military had drilled that out of him. Anything unusual and he'd snap to attention with his senses instinctively honing in on whatever had woken him. But when he was forced awake on this particular day, hours earlier than he expected, he at first wasn't sure why.

For a while, people would ask him how he knew that she had died at exactly 0823. Hell, the people on the Normandy didn't know for sure. But he'd never explain it to anyone. He knew crazy when he heard it. Didn't mean he didn't believe it, just that he knew it was completely and utterly insane.

Out of habit, he'd turned to look at the clock to his left, hoping to get more sleep before he was supposed to be anywhere, when he heard a voice behind him.

"Garrus."

His head snapped towards the window. And in the horribly, painfully artificial light that was sneaking in through the blinds, he saw the outline of a human woman. The only human woman he'd ever be able to recognize while half asleep. The only human woman worth remembering when you were exhausted.

"Shepard?"

She didn't move didn't react didn't do anything but stand there and stare at him. He held his breath and watched, listened to the million questions buzzing through his head (Why was she here? How'd she get in his apartment? Why was she in her armor? Why was her helmet on? What's going on? Are we under attack again-), just waiting. And as he held his breath, he noticed hers was raspy and strained. Like it was harder than it should be.

"Shepard...?" he tried again, worry creeping into his voice. A shuttle moved past his window, the shadow swallowing Shepard whole. When the vehicle had passed, light flooding back over his apartment, she was gone.

"Good-bye."

Completely weirded out, he couldn't get back to sleep. An hour later, all the news vids were confirming the terrible feeling in his gut.

Commander Shepard had been KIA.

I have been
Searching for
Traces of
What we were
A ghost of you
is all that I have left
is all that I have left of you to hold
I wake in the night to find there's no one there but me
and nothing left of what we were at all

To say he missed her would be to diminish the breadth of the loss he felt. His Commander, his mentor, his ally, his friend, the unformed idea in the back of his head of what she could have, should have and might have been to him given time.

His memories of his time on the Normandy would replay in constant succession. Over and over and over, making him dizzy and near sick. Every moment on the ship, every word that she'd said, every bullet they'd fired. Her smile, the way she moved, how she'd look after a fight. All of it in a level of detail he didn't know his memory possessed. He wondered if this was how drell felt. If it was, he felt bad for them. He, for one, wished he could just stop it. Stop the memories. Move on from whatever it was that was killing him little by little, day by day.

But Commander Shepard had left her mark on him. It had been small and manageable when she was alive, deep but barely noticeable, but somehow in death she'd crawled inside his soul and was torturing him. With loss. With Guilt.

With regret.

So here I am pacing around this house again
With pictures of us living on these walls
I see my breath in the cold of the air that I breathe and I'm wondering
I'm wondering if it's you that I feel if it's you that I feel here haunting me forever

He quit C-Sec the day of the funeral. Gave up his apartment. Left the Citadel.

He couldn't stand it anymore. He'd see her. Literally see her. Everywhere. All the time. At Doctor Michel's clinic, at the Academy, on the Praesidium, at the Markets. Fuck, he couldn't even go to Chora's Den and properly drown/numb his grief without seeing her there. Just walking around, smiling at him sympathetically as if she knew what she was doing to him, knew she shouldn't be there but couldn't help it.

What the hell was wrong with him?

He had to get out of there. Of course she was following him. He'd seen her on the Citadel when she was alive. Her memory was everywhere here. But if he left, went some place her presence had never touched, he might be able to get over it. Eventually.

The ghost of Shepard followed him all the way to the dock. He could somehow feel her watching him board some shuttle to Spirits knew where. Somewhere that wasn't here. Somewhere he wouldn't have to be reminded that she was dead.

Turians don't dream the way humans do. When they sleep, ideas do sometimes float around inside their heads. But it's all abstract and transparent. Very rarely sounds. Even rarer still are images.

It had freaked Garrus out the first few times he'd heard her voice in his sleep. In his dreams. He'd never dreamed in sound before. The first night it made him wake up shaking. The second night too. The third, the fourth, the fifth… it'd still wake up him up, but instead of leaving confusion and panic in its wake, there was an empty longing in his chest that he couldn't have more than her voice.

Eventually he found himself eager to go to sleep. To hear her. To be lied to in the way only our subconscious can. Like a fucking addict he now sought rather than fled her. Needed her more than he cared to admit.

It probably should have freaked him out more when the dreams shifted from sound to sight.

The images were vague, not quite solid. He didn't really know what humans looked like under their armor and clothes. Maybe that's why she wasn't much more than blurred edges and the smooth angles of her face. But even his own talons weren't quite right. Maybe it was just a poor recreation because it was his mind's first time attempting something like this. Putting together a dream in the full human sense. Like the first time a child draws a picture. He didn't have the years of practice humans did.

But it was clear enough. Enough to drive him crazy. Her scent. Her laugh. Her breath along his neck. The feel of her on top of him, bare skin draped across his plates, straddling him…

and I'm not looking for
anything but us
anything but what we were
and I'm not asking for
painted memories
I only want to know you're here

His squad was out getting shitfaced, celebrating another successful mission. Although pleased that he'd foiled the Blue Suns' plans yet again, Garrus was in no mood to celebrate. Although he'd been very enthusiastic when he'd started, he couldn't help but admit he was getting tired of this whole Archangel business. There weren't enough bullets in the galaxy to stop the corruption and crime plaguing Omega. The whole thing was an exercise in futility, it was wearing him down.

He missed his days on the Normandy. When the missions really meant something.

"It's okay, Garrus."

No it's not. While he might acknowledge that she was talking to him, he wasn't ready to to it out loud. She didn't seem to mind the slight.

"It's okay Garrus. You're doing a great job here. You're going to be fine," she soothed. He could almost feel her hand on his shoulder. Almost.

How can it be alright when you're dead? How could there be anything right in the universe when she wasn't in it?

"I promise, it'll get better. It'll get easier."

When? Dreading that she's say it'd only get better when he let her go.

"I don't know. But it will."

He ignored her. It. Whatever it was that kept bringing his Commander back from the dead. Torturing him. It would kill him sooner or later. But as much as he knew, for the sake of his sanity if nothing else, that he needed to fend her off, shut her out, he knew he couldn't. As long as she was willing to come, even if she was just a ghost of what she had been, he knew he'd welcome her every time.

A ghost of you
is all that I have left
is all that I have left of you to hold
I wake in the night to find there's no one there but me
and nothing left of what we were at all
A ghost of you
is all that I have left
is all that I have left of you to hold
I wake in the night to find there's no one there but me
and nothing left of what we were at all.

A merc tried to cross the bridge. Emphasis on "tried." Poor bastard never stood a chance.

Another merc. Another. Another. Too many to count.

Bullet in the brain, every single one of them.

But Garrus was getting tired. It'd been too long. Stimulants can only keep you awake for so long, and even the infamous Archangel was only turian.

And she was gone.

A week or so ago, her ghost had stopped coming to him. No more hallucinations. No more dreams. Fuck, even her voice had escaped him. And it was weighing down on him. It was like she had finally died. Completely and totally, not even a shadow left to comfort him.

Strangely, the only thing that had been keeping his sanity together was the thing that had showed it had started to crack.

But it was probably better this way, right?

His whole squad had died because he'd tried to live up to her memory. Tried to make her proud. And quite frankly, he dreaded the possibility that their ghosts would replace hers. Maybe now, dying on this shithole of a station, he could at least be with her again.

Speak of the devil, he thought, mandibles twitching in amusement at the human phrase as he looked through the scope.

It appeared his ghost was back, ever a faithful companion, even as he neared death. There she was, crossing the bridge to collect his spirit, back in all her former glory. He must really be about to die, because he'd never seen her spirit so... substantial. So... there. Like they were finally in the same plane of existence again.

He chuckled, firing off a few rounds to clear the way for her, almost giddy. Euphoric even.

About damn time.

There had never been a more welcome sight.