Approval

He's down at the docks, taking names. Lots of refugees, all different species, a stench of fear and sweat in the air that reminds him of Omega. He takes names so they can be posted so people have a shot at finding their families again, notes special needs, directs some to the medical clinic, some to spots at shelters outside the docking area (they're trying to keep small kids out of here).

Then he hears a voice behind him, one he hears in his dreams, one he had neither hoped nor expected to hear again in real life.

"Sidonis?"

He flinches, whirls, his eyes automatically looking for a way out, but the space is too crowded. His hand twitches toward the sidearm Bailey let him carry, but he forces himself not to touch it. If the time has finally come, he's not going to resist.

He has to make himself stand still, look into his former commander's cool blue eyes. One side of his face is ravaged with scars, and Lantar wonders to himself uneasily how that happened. The armor is new, heavy, still shining. The stance is familiar, radiating authority, and the expression...

He forces himself to say, mouth dry, "Hey, Garrus."

"What the hell are you doing here?" Garrus demands. He hasn't reached for a weapon yet. That's good. On the other hand, Lantar knows how fast he can be.

"I'm, uh... working with the refugees. Assisting C-Sec. Getting people some help, trying to help them keep order down here."

Something in Vakarian's face shifts. Doesn't soften, exactly, but changes. "There's a bay full of turian wounded over here. Anything you can do for them?"

"I, uh..." He checks. "Yeah, I can free up some medical supplies and send them over. If I get their names, I'll add them to the list. We're trying to make it easier for people to find each other."

"Good." Garrus crosses his arms. "Been down here long?"

"Since the batarians started pouring in. Before that, this and that. Favors for Bailey."

Garrus snorts. "Favors for Bailey. Of course."

He asks cautiously, "And you?" Garrus never said much about his past, but it wasn't hard to figure a few things out.

"Me?" He seems to think about whether or how to answer. "Been on Palaven, the last few months. With the war on, I suppose I'm on the move." He shrugs.

It is surreal, the two of them standing here chatting as if they're old friends and not... whatever it is that they are.

There's a commotion, somewhere to his left, a human and a batarian squabbling over something. Squatting space, or who knows what. "I gotta go take care of that," he says, edging in that direction.

"Yeah," says Garrus, sounding a little flat. Sidonis starts toward the tussle before it becomes an all-out brawl, but pauses when Garrus calls to him again, "Lantar."

He stops and looks back, meets the steady blue gaze. Garrus says, "It's good work. It's a start."

He nods and goes off to separate the combatants. For the rest of the day he stands a little straighter, and when he lies down, sleep comes a little easier. It means something, still, to get Archangel's approval.


This was a fill for a prompt on the ME kink meme, basically just asking for an encounter between Sidonis and Garrus in ME3, since it's never really established what happened to Sidonis if he turned himself in.