AN: So I was reading something - I can't remember what, but it was great. I checked out their favourite stories and along came Garrus. Me, remembering ME fondly, began reading.
Thanks a lot, Garrus, I now have a new fandom obsession.
This is a one shot that came into my brain last night. It's (really) short, it's sweet, it's sad.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
This is completely un beta'd and fresh off my brain.
The first time Garrus Vakerian met Commander Jane Shepard, he thought, she is a predator, like me.
During his first mission with her, he thought, she is a warrior, like me. The addendum to that was she is not a 'soldier', like me when she threw herself between him and a bullet and took it in the shoulder with a grunt. She thought on her feet. Soldiers were trained to follow orders.
She is kind, he thought as he watched her approach each crew member, speak to them, get to know them.
Sometimes, she is too kind, he thought when their latest mission to help someone inevitably went pear-shaped. But he only thought that until the mission ended and they were back on the Normandy and she was safe and whole.
After their narrow escape on Therum, he thought, she is unstoppable. The heat of pride in his breastbone that he should serve under such a powerful commander kept him warm at night.
Noveria added the thought of she might be just a bit mad. The Rachni Queen had been freed, and he had a twisting feeling in his gut that they had not seen the last of her. But never once had she led them astray. Into trouble, yes, and plenty of it, but always in the right direction.
When she hauled her broken ass out from under the Reaper shrapnel, she's incredible. As she hobbled her way over to them, clutching her arm to her chest, a grin of relief on her face, she's inspiring. That little ball of warmth in his chest was no longer quite so little as she grinned at him.
She will be missed, when he departed to begin his training as a Spectre.
In the vacuum of space, Jane Shepard's last thought was sorry, Garrus, I'll need to take a rain check on your graduation drink before her oxygen ran out and her nerve endings lit up like the fourth of July celebrations.
It was a desolate roar, she's gone, when Joker told him.
She was too good to die, at her funeral, held for the War Hero Shepard. Not for Jane Shepard. Her heroic deeds were recounted, with no mention of who she was. How kind she was. How she made Normandy feel like home for a rag tag group of miscreants.
He let a single daisy drop on her casket. Empty. She'd burned up on re-entry to an alien planet's atmosphere.
That ball below his breastplate that warmed him so had turned to ice.
He never felt warm anymore.
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