"Commander? ... Commander? Shepard!"
Shepard snapped out of her comatose state, staring into the side of the shuttle. She'd been thinking a little too intensely. She looked a little confused for a moment, then turned to blink at Garrus a few times. "...Garrus?" She replied, raising an eyebrow at his prior aggressive tone.
Garrus chuckled lightly, his mandibles flaring just a little. "Thought you'd dozed off for a second there." The joke aside, the turian looked uncomfortable about what was on his mind. Miranda shifted in her seated position next to him.
"Commander... Erm. Are you- Well I mean... How are you- Ah..." Garrus trailed off feebly, apparently failing to ask whatever was on his mind. Now he had two human women looking at him like he was nuts. "I just wanted to know if you were okay." He blurted out quickly; he could have sworn he'd caught Miranda roll her eyes from the corner of his before he continued babbling.
"I mean back there Alenko wasn't exactly overjoyed... Not to mention we didn't manage to stop the Collectors getting those colonist and I know you – you wanted to be able to miraculously get there in time and save them - last man out, no-one gets left behind. And well. I, um, just wanted to ask how you were holding up."
It was nice to know that after this time and Garrus still couldn't ask the Commander a remotely meaningful question without rambling. The Commander laughed a little, and sat up straight in the shuttle's seat, taking the weight of the guns and armour off of her back. She hadn't realised they'd been digging into her that much... "Yeah, Garrus. I'm holding up just fine."
"Well, uh, you know. If you ever need to talk, I'll-"
"ETA, 2 minutes." The shuttle's synthesized voice interrupted helpfully.
"Yeah, I know Garrus. Thanks." The Commander smiled at Garrus, just like she usually smiled. He didn't buy it.
"You betrayed me."
Shepard sighed and shook her head, shrugging off the armour wearing her down. The thin underclothing beneath were damp with perspiration and Shepard idly wondered why she couldn't have met Kaidan first, and then killed a shitload of Collectors. She'd have felt so much better and they would be so much dead...err.
She made a beeline for her quarter's bathroom for a shower, but stopped short to look at the picture on her desk. Against her better judgement, she realized she wasn't looking - rather glaring at it.
"I loved you."
Bullshit. If he loved her he would have understood. With a little more force than necessary she ripped her tank top off and threw it carelessly, leaving it to hit the fish tank and scare her new fish half to death.
Under the shower's water her anger loosened and faded like the tightness in her shoulders. She wasn't being rational here – this was Kaidan she was talking about. Of course she loved him, it had been two years for everyone else but she loved him just as much as if she was spaced a week ago...
Which was a fairly good point. She understands that everyone was under the impression she was dead. That it'd been two years – but how come everyone was conveniently ignoring that she had just lost two years and had all the same feelings she had two years ago, like time had never progressed?
Now out of the shower Sheppard simultaneously towel dried and dressed. She came to stand in front of the picture again, an uncharacteristic frown on her lips. It was all well and good to smile and nod and understand Kaidan. To smile and understand. So why the hell didn't he? The stubborn fool – she got it. She'd been dead. (She half wished the galaxy would get over it.) So why couldn't he get it too? She'd been dead. She never fell out of love with him and he broke her heart.
The Commander didn't cry tears of sadness or anguish, she was too strong and on too much of an important mission to be worrying about alliance soldiers she loved. Leaning forward she tipped the picture frame downward. She really needed some company to get her mind off things.
Shepard could still hear Harkin whining like a bitch behind them.
"Hey, Shepard..." Garrus started as they walked back, apparently not having a headache. "Thanks for doing this and everything but why didn't you let me- ... Commander? Are you laughing?"
Shepard glanced at Garrus through the corner of her eye and burst into a fit of laughter, apparently startling Grunt. She put a hand to her mouth and continued to laugh and snort simultaneously. It was very unfeminine.
"Oh god-" She gasped for breath. "I did not expect you to head butt him! Like a krogan! It..." She stopped, still fighting off the remainder of her fit. "I haven't laughed like that in a while."
"Nice to see you laughing again, Commander..." The turian admitted, rubbing the scarred side of his face awkwardly.
"It was a damned good head butt, I agree!" Grunt added helpfully.
Shepard smiled at grunt then nodded at Garrus. "Why'd I stop you from shooting him? Conservation of heat sinks." She replied smoothly.
"Liar." Grunt and Garrus said almost instantly and in unison.
Sighing, Shepard admitted defeat. "Garrus, when I found you – or Archangel – or whoever, you'd gone down a far darker path than when I last saw you two years ago. It was a bit of a radical change for me." She remembered what Joker had said: he'd pulled the stick from his arse and started beating people to death with it. Actually, maybe he'd shoved it up Kaidan's... "I just don't want you to get too far in. Revenge and angst does bad things to people. Like Jack."
"I am not like Jack!" Garrus defended immediately.
"What's wrong with Jack? I like Jack." Grunt announced, bumping his fists together. "She's got a quad and a half!"
"How would you say that?" The commander joked. "She's got half a dozen?" Garrus laughed at her horrible play of words – Grunt didn't get it.
"What I meant was, I don't want you turning into some blood thirsty, unforgiving pool of dark.. dingy.. dark.. stuff." Her face scrunched in confusion of how to explain herself; she shrugged. "I want you to play nice."
Garrus started at her for a few seconds, his expression obviously unbelieving of the words that came from her mouth. "Okay, sure. I'll play nice. After I kill Sidonis."
"Of course." Shepard sighed dramatically. "Let's go."
Garrus seemed anxious and angry, squirming in the shuttle's seat next to her.
"Harkin's a bloody menace." The turian started suddenly as they stopped, turning to face the Commander. "We shouldn't have just let him go." Never mind how funny the head butt had been, Garrus regretted not shrugging Shepard off and just shooting the fool. The turian was confused. Any other time, anyone else he would have just ignored their protest and shot him anyway. Why not that time?
"He deserved to be punished." Garrus concluded, firmly believing what he had said. Criminals were scum. They deserved to be hurt just like they hurt others. Suddenly a memory came back to him. When they were recruiting Jack. The prison guards beating that cell mate into a bloody pulp. The Commander had stopped them.
He remembered what he had said. You didn't get good answers that way – he really meant it was uncalled for. Maybe he'd been getting a bit too emotionally involved with Sidonis. Still, he had seen his entire men die because of that damn turian. His resolve faltered – whether it was the resolve to kill Sidonis or regretting letting Shepard stop those prison guards. He wasn't sure.
"I'm getting a little worried about you Garrus," Shepard looked at him so intensely the turian swore she was reading his mind. "You were pretty hard on Harkin." Images of Garrus popping up behind Harkin and slamming him into the wall ruthlessly, then stepping on his throat flashed in the front of her mind.
"You don't think he deserved it?" Garrus said almost immediately, like that inmate at Purgatory. Did he deserve the beating?
"It's just not like you." The commander said dismissively, looking in front again. 'Not like the you I knew two years ago,' she altered silently. Things were getting harder the more she realised how much time she'd lost.
Garrus didn't have an immediate retort. The look on her face... it...made him feel guilty. Like he was the one in the wrong, but that wasn't right. Sidonis had so much blood on his hands he had to pay for.
"What do you want from me Shepard?" Garrus demanded, turning away, no longer able to look at her face – the guilty made him feel sick. "What would you do if someone betrayed you?"
"You betrayed me."
Her voice caught in her throat. "...I'm not sure." Shepard answered truthfully, thinking back to Kaidan. Maybe she was hard on him. Maybe he deserved to react that way... No, but, still. "But I wouldn't let it change me." That wasn't the Kaidan she knew two years ago.
"I would have said the same thing before it happened to me." Garrus insisted strongly.
Oh god. The thought of Garrus changing so radically, like the Kaidan on Horizon... So foreign to her. "It's not too late." The Commander insisted just as strongly. "You don't have to go through with this." You don't have to change...
"Who's going to bring Sidonis to justice if I don't?" Some pencil pushers at C-Sec letting him off with some community service? Hell no – Garrus knew death was the only justice Sidonis deserved. "Nobody else knows what he's done. Nobody else cares." He looked away from her, refusing to feel guilty for doing the right thing. "I don't see any other options." It was true; he saw no other road to go down.
The Commander's heart ached for her friend. Soon she'd lose everything that was once familiar to her. "Let me talk to him." There was always another option.
"Talk all you want but it won't change my mind." Garrus said, completely ignoring the possibility of a solution where Sidonis wasn't dead. "I don't care what his reasons were, he screwed us... he deserves to die."
"I understand what you're going through-" The commander continued to insists, her words chipping away at the turian's frame of mind. "-but do you really want to kill him?" Have his blood on your hands?
"I appreciate your concern..." Garrus said politely, "but I'm not you." He wasn't as strong; he couldn't dismiss something like this so easily and feel better of it.
"This isn't you, either." She continued to insist, completely believing Garrus was the same man he was two years ago.
"Really?" He sounded amused. She felt a little pissed off. "I've always hated injustice. The thought that Sidonis could get away with this..." The thought made his throat go dry. "Why should he go on living while ten good men lie in unmarked graves?" His voice was passionate; the Commander knew this situation was too close to Garrus's heart for him to think logically of it.
"I'm sorry, Shepard." The Commander didn't hear the apology. She was too busy scheming ways to try and get Garrus to see the light. "Words aren't going to solve this problem. I need to set up."
Now Commander Shepard was pretty certain that if she stood in this position, Garrus wouldn't shoot. She was almost sure he wasn't down the crazy route enough so that he'd kill her for revenge. Almost.
Garrus watched her walk through his scope, ignoring her words whirling around in his head. He pretended he didn't have an effect on her, because she didn't. So why was he pretending?
So now she was sure he wouldn't shoot her brains out... "Listen Sidonis..." Garrus's heart jumped into his throat. She wouldn't – "I'm here to help you." Damn it! He ignored what she said, trying to get a shot clear of the Commander's damn head!
"Damn it, Shepard!" Garrus growled. She knew him and he knew what she was doing. "If he moved I'm taking the shot!" Garrus hoped he remembered Sidonis well enough. He wouldn't listen, no matter how persuasive Shepard could be... He was right, Sidonis moved to leave.
Shepard reached and grabbed him. Garrus's shot was still blocked. Sometimes he really hated his Commander. Sidonis babbled at the Commander, probably sensing her strong sense of good will.
"Everyone has a choice. Let me take the shot Shepard," Garrus urged, "He's a damn coward." She moved with him, refusing Garrus his justice.
Sidonis babbled some more... and then Garrus could hear him talking about what had happened. Garrus listened. The man was dead already, but that didn't mean Garrus felt any better about it. It was the Commander who swayed him.
"You've got to let it go, Garrus..." Shepard said, in that tone – the tone she used that made even Saren top himself. Garrus knew then that he wouldn't shoot. "He's already paying for his crime." Damn her. Damn that tone.
"He hasn't paid enough." Garrus answered weakly, maybe she would step aside... "He still has his life..."
She spoke in that tone again. "...There's nothing left to kill." And then Sidonis spoke and Garrus knew the Commander had got to him, because when the bastard spoke Garrus heard what he said and it made him feel like justice had been paid.
The turian surrendered. "Just...go. Tell him to go." Damn it. What happened? Why couldn't he refuse her? Why couldn't he just lie and then wait until nobody suspected it and shoot the damn betraying bastard? Why couldn't he betray her?