Morning on Palaven brought the heat along with it, Trebia's rays burning bright and raising the day's temperature one level above comfort. When Shepard woke, Garrus made good on that idea from the day before, and the two of them set out for the nearest stretch of coast, a sandy cove a few klicks away from where Solana had made her home. Shepard expected to find the place empty—after all, the Turians weren't exactly known for their laid back nature, even less so since the process of rebuilding had recently begun—but that wasn't the case. There were families mostly, single parents and small children spread out on the sand in a way that reminded Shepard more of humans than anything else. It was funny how entirely different species living at opposite ends of the galaxy could turn out exactly the same, sometimes.
"No one's swimming," she said, a questioning brow raised to Garrus before taking a leery gaze at the crystal blue depths, peaks of low white waves rolling in. "You're not going to tell me that while Palaven has beautiful water, you've also got your own version of Jaws that prowls along, picking people off, are you? You know, I could go back, get my gun… you and I could take care of him for everyone and accept lots of alcohol as payment for a job well done."
He smiled in amusement, the gears turning inside his head as if he was truly considering it. Suddenly, his face fell. "Wait. What's a Jaws?"
"It was an old popular Earth movie, way before my time. Way before Liara's time, come to think of it. It was about this huge shark—big cartilaginous fish with huge teeth that can bite your leg off without trying—that had a taste for human blood, spent its time eating the swimmers a few feet off shore. Some guys blew it up in the end."
"Ah," he said, and continued on, crossing a dune of sand until they reached the sprawling crescent of beach, "that explains why you liked it. Turians, though, we're not big swimmers. I mean, I think I can manage not to drown… we're just not as buoyant as some other species. Doesn't mean we can't appreciate it, though."
Shepard felt the eyes of the strangers on her, and though she'd never allowed stares to stop her before, it gave her pause, wondering if she was violating some unspoken rule about alien intruders. In places like Illium, Omega, what had once been the Citadel, and even some of the newer colonies, species mixed together freely. On the homeworlds, though, especially a place like Palaven that kept most longterm visitors away simply by way of the low radiation that emitted from the core of the planet, strangers like her were far more rare, especially outside a city center. For all intents and purposes, this was the countryside, a suburb, of all things. She truly was an interloper, and now there was no mission or Alliance heavy hand to mandate her presence, just a personal whim to intrude.
Garrus, however, didn't seem to mind, his three-pronged hand searching out hers in a sign that they were together and that she could be trusted, at least by proxy.
They settled down at the far end of the beach, away from most of the eyes and attention, laying down the blanket Garrus had smuggled out of his sister's house. There'd be an earful for it later, he was sure, but he paid the lingering thought no mind. Sitting, he looked out over the water, then back towards the rest of the expanse of sand, even some of the trees and foliage behind them and near some of the tall rocks that offered shade depending on the time of day.
"I know your head's not clear on that day, but do you remember what I said before you—"
She cut him off, toeing off her boots, pulling her socks free and tucking them in to her shoes. "—We'd retire, somewhere warm and tropical," Shepard said, pulling the words out of her memory. Their goodbye, all of it, that was one of the few things from that day she remembered like it was yesterday. "Palaven's not exactly as tropical as I'd go for, but it's a start."
He gave a satisfied sigh and hum of his voice in response, watching her. This wasn't what he imagined either, but it was close.
Shepard stripped her shirt off and began at the waist of her pants.
"Shepard—you're—you're not seriously going in there, are you?" Garrus said suddenly, concern on his features, his voice fraught with worry.
Stepping out of the last of her clothes, down to just the generous cuts of her briefs and a sports bra, she set her hands on her hips. "That's what you do at the damn beach, Garrus. Apparently no one told your people that." She began to back away from him slowly, only a few steps gone towards the shore when she spoke again. "Now the real question is, am I going to cause an intergalactic incident for exposing these young Turian eyes to so much skin?" And with that, Shepard turned and took off running towards the water, the fastest she'd moved in the last few years.
Garrus watched, wide eyed, as the only human on the beach reached the edge of the water, the wet sand behind her littered with a trail of impressions of the soles of her feet. She gave an excited yelp that was followed and overwhelmed by the sound of her laugh once the water caressed her skin, an auditory sign that the actual water temperature had finally hit her. She didn't stop though, didn't question her choice, but rather continued on, wading out farther and farther.
Shepard looked back, hand rising to wave and beckon him towards her, no matter how fruitless her efforts were. Only when she let her head dip down below the surface of the water, disappearing from view, was Garrus actually convinced to get up from where he sat, heart pounding in those few seconds she'd vanished before his eyes like nothing but a ghost. "Shepard!" he yelled, nearing the water, and though he knew she wouldn't have actually heard him, she reemerged from beneath the surface, hair sodden and plastered to her skin like she was fresh out of the shower. She was going to be the death of him.
"Come in!"
There was a lightness to her that Garrus wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. It was hard to resist. "Get out of there!"
"How about you get in here?" She replied, and to tease him further, she let her body float up onto her back, the gentle waves rocking her back and forth.
"Spirits," he grumbled, catching something in his peripheral vision. It was one of the Turian children now standing a few feet to his side, four or five years old and hesitantly approaching where the ocean water lapped at the shore. The wave would bring the water in a few inches closer and she'd scurry away, afraid, before it even touched her. The water would go out, and she'd approach with a new bravery, feeling the cold damp sand, but always chickening out when she got too close. Her mother, Garrus presumed, lingered a few feet away, protective but letting her daughter experience the water however she saw fit. When he looked back, Shepard was closer to the shore, only a few feet out, her legs submerged from the knees down.
"Hello," Shepard ventured, towards the other nearby Turian and child, that worry she'd had earlier gone out of her with the surge of adrenaline the ocean had brought to her. It had given her its calm.
The woman replied, terse and short, but the child, on the other hand, had gaped, mouth and mandibles spread wide in curiosity. "You're a human!"
Shepard smiled, a playful roll of her eyes. "Am I? Garrus, did you hear that? Why didn't you tell me I was a human!"
"Are you sure?" Garrus asked the child. "Maybe she's just a really ugly Turian."
The little girl laughed, loud and unrestrained, the way all children did before they worried about things like that. "No," she insisted, her head shaking as she looked back to her mother. "Mommy, it's a human!"
"Secret's out, Shepard," he said with a dramatic breath.
"Shepard?" The Turian woman responded, her attention suddenly piqued, more so than it had been at the mere fact that a human had been on Palaven, playing in the planet's waters. She took a few steps nearer, eyes squinting for half a second, taking in the stranger. "You're that Commander," she said, and there was a distinct relaxation of her form, as if knowing a name to the face no longer made her such a threat, at least enough to earn some semblance of trust. She looked to Garrus. "And you're Vakarian? Both of you, it's an honor."
This wasn't a new reaction for either of them, especially not over the last year when the Normandy had turned into more of a diplomatic vessel than anything else. Like it or not, after what they'd done, she was no longer just a nameless face. And Garrus, to his people, had experienced something of the same, regardless of how little either of them had wanted it. No matter, both Shepard and Garrus dipped their heads in a nod.
"Have you ever been in the ocean?" Shepard asked the girl, her focus shifting from mother to daughter.
She shook her head, backing up once again when the water came a little too close. "I'll get swept out!"
"Hmm," Shepard said, tapping a finger to her chin. "Then how come I'm still here?"
This puzzled the little girl, and she stuttered, mandibles clicking in frustration. "You're big? And human! I'll sink."
Shepard raised her eyes to the girl's mother, and with a nearly imperceptible nod from her, Shepard closed the distance between her and the tiny Turian. "What if I promise to hold you and not let you go, will you be brave enough to come in with me?"
Her eyes went big, in both a temporary sense of childhood fear and excitement. A war raged behind her light colored eyes as she looked back to her mother for some sense of approval or guidance. Whatever she found there was enough, because in the next instant she'd turned back towards Shepard, taking a wary few steps closer.
The Commander, like she'd done it a thousand times before—and holding a Turian child was vastly different from a human one, what with their sharp and rough edges growing in—picked the girl up, letting the awkward boney legs curl around her hip.
From where Garrus stood, he couldn't hear what Shepard said anymore as they moved deeper in, though still not far enough so the girl touched the water just yet. He couldn't take his eyes off them, not for a second, afraid he'd miss some little touch of affection between the two strangers: the human he loved and the child she'd befriended with not much more than a few words. He could almost hear Shepard talking in his head as he watched the way her lips moved. Counting down, he imagined. Three, two, and on one, bending at the knee below the surface so that the girl's lower half was submerged just for a quick second before Shepard returned to her full height. The girl squealed in delighted giggles.
"They say you're her mate," the Turian mother said, finally coming to stand beside him though keeping adequate personal space between them.
Garrus wasn't sure how to reply to such an opened ended sentence. From some, it was a loaded statement, looking to pick a fight with him for even considering letting his affections lie outside of his race. For others, they commended his bravery, the forward thinking attitudes he and Shepard would have to share to consider being with one another in the first place.
"She is." Nodding, he answered, prejudice be damned. Eyes on the water, he continued to watch Shepard as she held the girl under the arms, drawing her through the water slowly like she was mimicking the action of swimming for the child that probably would never be able to learn such a skill.
"You couldn't have chosen better."
That, however, did draw his attention away from Shepard, chancing a glance towards his fellow Turian.
"The galaxy owes her our thanks. And yours, as well."
"Garrus!" Shepard shouted from the water, breaking up the amicable silence between he and the girl's mother. She leaned in, whispering something to the child.
Soon enough with the secret passed on, the girl's higher pitched voice joined in on the shouting. "Get in the water!"
The temperature dropped in the hours before the sun began to set, though Shepard's cheeks, and especially her shoulders beneath her clothing, still wore the pink burns of far too much time spent under a cloudless sky. It had been unavoidable, however, since a quick stop at the corner store was just about as likely to yield sun block as it was a bathing suit fit for a human. Out on the back balcony, Shepard shared a bench with Garrus, his talons a constant presence as they pushed through her hair, the strands caught in waves from the dried seawater. They'd been there for some time since dinner, quiet and unmoving, her body tucked up against his. It was a position that had been foreign and awkward the first few times, but now she couldn't ever quite imagine fitting so perfectly with one of her own species. She'd miss that firmness, the press of his plates into her skin.
"Are you sure you can manage?" Solana stepped outside through the open doorway, her son cradled up against her short cowl and shoulder.
Garrus lifted his head from where it leaned against Shepard's. "You know, Sol, Shepard here raised a Krogan. One Turian for a few hours shouldn't be too much."
"I didn't raise him—" Shepard started, but stopped soon enough. Though Garrus had supported her decision on curing the genophage, she knew it was still a sore subject for many, Turians especially. How his sister felt on it, she didn't know, but it wasn't wise to push it too far. "We'll manage."
There was a reluctance in Solana's nod, but with a final touch of her forehead against the crown of Necalli's head, she passed the infant into Shepard's arms. He released a cry out of discomfort, no doubt an objection to losing the closeness he'd found against his mother. He turned his head side to side as his eyes blinked open.
"Shh." Shepard tried to draw in on any motherly instinct she had hidden beneath her layers of fictitious armor. It was something every woman had, they said, or at least they lied about it to comfort expectant mothers who felt overwhelmingly unprepared by the prospect of being responsible for another life. Whether it was something simple like a hormonal response to draw one to their own child, or something more, something less explainable and imaginable like a little piece of someone's soul could interwine with that of their child's… Shepard couldn't even begin to understand it. She wanted to, though. More than anything.
Necalli quieted down, though not by much, and Garrus left her side for a minute, returning with a seemingly obvious solution.
"Probably hungry," he offered, sitting back beside her with a spoon and small bowl containing a viscous brown paste of sorts.
Shepard eyed him. "I keep forgetting the man I'm seeing isn't even a mammal. What do you even feed your kids?"
"Hell if I know what was in that can, but it smells horrible, even after eating on the Normandy for years."
She corrected the baby's posture, or at least her hold on him, balancing him steady on her thigh, one hand splayed against his back, the other his chest and neck. Shepard wasn't exactly sure if Turian infants suffered from that complete lack of strength in their neck that newborn humans did, but she opted to err on the side of caution. Showing teamwork that rivaled their abilities on the battlefield, Garrus drew a spoon of the dextro-based muck to Necalli's mouth. He opened it on instinct alone.
A shred of pride for a child that wasn't even hers blossomed in her chest as she watched him eat, mandibles fluttering with each cherished swallow. "I'm assuming when Turians first evolved, they didn't have a store that sold infant slop, so what did they eat?"
Garrus raised a brow plate, and said nothing for a moment, instead taking the time to deliver another spoonful to his nephew's awaiting mouth. "They, uh, well, you know…"
Shepard rubbed her palm soothingly into the cloth covering the infant's back, finally glancing away from him to look to Garrus.
"I want to preface this by saying it was thousands of years ago. But you know, I guess the mother kind of just, uh, chewed food and fed it to the… ah, baby."
There was no holding back the laughter that overwhelmed her, and Necalli raised his head at the disturbance. "Birds," she choked out, "you really are birds."
"We're not birds."
"You may not have the feathers, Garrus, but regurgitating food for your young is definitely bird-like." She nudged his shoulder with hers. "I won't tell Joker."
It was a small mercy, but he flared his mandibles appreciatively as he scraped the sides of the bowl for one last mouthful. Necalli seemed less interested, his stomach growing full, but with some persuasion of a persistent spoon near his mouth, he gave in and accepted. Shepard drew the boy up against her shoulder in response, his tiny fingers digging in against the cloth of her shirt.
"You have no idea how messy a human baby is compared to this guy."
"Everything humans do is messy, so I can imagine."
"Right about now," she said, soothing her hand over Necalli's back and bottom, "a human baby would be spitting up half the milk it just drank all over my shoulder."
The idea both appalled and confused Garrus, and the twisting of his facial plates expressed it. "That's… inefficient. And disgusting."
"You're telling me. If there ever was an argument against any kind of Gods or Goddesses, or almighty creators, it's the human race. Messy, and inefficient."
"Mmm." He set the bowl aside, and resumed where he'd left off earlier, his fingers returning to the stroking of her hair. Every once and awhile, though, he'd let them drift a little lower to the newborn, tracing the ridges of fringe only barely beginning to start growing at all.
"You've got that look, Garrus," Shepard said, her voice hesitant. "Tell me what you're thinking. The truth."
He inclined his head sharply, looking to meet her eyes and finding that she didn't resist. "Do you remember what I said after retiring?"
Of course she did. Laying in that hospital bed in the weeks and months after she'd woken up, somehow still alive and the world a better place thanks to whatever the hell had happened inside the Citadel, Shepard had heard those words in her head. Day in, day out. Garrus, ever the loyal one, had been at her side through it all, but it was only now, three years after the fact, that either of them had found the strength to really bring those panicked words of goodbye back into the open.
Shepard nodded, letting her cheek gently rub against the side of Necalli's tiny head. The infant nudged back.
"Spirits know we've been trying to make a… a hurian? But biology doesn't seem to want to give us a chance."
Her eyes shut as he spoke, crinkles forming at the corners with how tightly she held them closed. Shepard had asked him a question, asked him to bare his feelings, and not a minute in, she felt the lurch to interrupt. "Do you regret being with me?"
"Shepard," was all he got out, his voice tight and strained from what she had the nerve to even suggest.
"You thought we were going to die when you agreed to this, thought it would just be for a night. Now it's almost four years later and I'm still here, we're still together, and getting older." Though Necalli had been on the receiving end of the affectionate brushes of his parents', uncle's, and even her forehead against his, Shepard opted for the more human comfort. She touched her lips to the side of his head. "There are things you're missing out on now. Like having one of these for yourself."
When Garrus had met Shepard, he would have never associated her with children. She'd been harsh and strong, committed to her mission above all else. He'd been different then too, the first one to admit that a family of his own wasn't entirely in his future. It would be the duty to uphold, the right thing to do as a Turian, no matter how committed he was to the C-sec or the military in general. For the good of Palaven, he would have been encouraged to bond to a mate, and at the very least do his part in population replacement. But like the other things in his life, it would have been duty that drew him to it, above all else.
Shepard, though, there was nothing about being with her that fit into how he'd been raised. It was part of the reason he loved her, but nowhere near the most important. Just as he'd changed in the last years, so had she. They'd changed from strangers with common interests to loyal friends, the most unlikely lovers to partners in as much life as they were sure to be in death. And now when he saw her, he didn't see harsh and strong and committed to her mission, any longer. He saw that strength, the type she wore even when she truly had none left, because the people around her needed it. There was dedication and devotion to preserving life and enabling it, in ways even less direct than what she'd done for the Krogan or for the Geth. She was like nothing else.
"We could have it," he said, and to solidify his meaning, he touched his palm to Necalli's back, a finger overlapping with hers. "You and me, Shepard. Finally settle down like we said we would."
Shepard swallowed hard and looked away from him, resting her cheek lightly back against the infant's head. He was taking slow, steady breaths now, his body limp against her in slumber. "I don't mean with me, Garrus. I'm…" She was at a loss for words and growing frustrated. "I'm not Turian. You know I can't, it's as much possible as us ever hoping for something that's both of us. It'll never happen."
"We'll adopt. That's what you said, wasn't it?"
"Garrus…" It felt vaguely like ants crawling under her skin, a restlessness in her legs and arms. While jarring the sleeping baby from her shoulder wasn't an option, she opted for the other, pulling away from her partner to stand, nervously pacing along the few feet of the dimly illuminated porch. "They'll never let us. I know what I thought years ago—that defeating the Reapers could bring the galaxy together—but you and I both know it hasn't worked out that way. The Citadel's gone, the council's floundering. Every race has returned to try to rebuild what they lost, to help their people first. If you think anyone in the Turian government, or any government, is going to let an inter-species couple adopt one of their own, you're wrong. Even for you and me, they'd never allow it because of the intergalactic bullshit it would bring about. Christ," her head shook, winded as the rebuttal poured out of her, "we could never even be properly bonded in the eyes of your people because I'm not one of you."
"It doesn't have to be Turian. Shepard, you could have our child."
It was what she knew was coming next, but even so, she remained caught off guard by him actually expressing the idea out loud. Her pacing faltered, and soon enough she'd come to a complete stop, turning away from him and out towards where, on Earth, a backyard most likely would have been. Here, there was just the lights of the next home a few meters away. "No, I can't."
There could have been a light year between them for all the distant he felt. Just as she knew all the ways to make him feel the kind of love and affection he'd never known, she knew how to take it all away. "What do you mean?" He asked, afraid of the answer.
"After everything…" Shepard breathed out a deep, body shuddering sigh. "Dying once, being as good as dead a second time. Bullet wounds and just fucking everything, do you really think the option is still there for me to be a mother? Do you really think Cerberus spent the money to make sure my reproductive system was as fully functional as everything else? Me getting pregnant was probably the last thing they wanted. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd gone out of their way not to fix those parts of me." Her head lowered, nuzzling into Necalli's tiny sleeping body. With one hand and arm still holding him to her shoulder, the other was drawn to her face, fingers spread over her eyes. Her body jerking with the first of many sobs.
She'd dealt with thoughts like these for years now, since she'd woken up and discovered the truth of what she'd done for two years while the rest of the galaxy kept on turning. At first, the idea that she'd lost the ability to reproduce hadn't been that hard of a burden to bear. She would die fighting the Collectors, she was sure of that. So what did it matter? But she hadn't died then, and hadn't, by some unfathomable chance, died defeating the Reapers. She was here, in a galaxy of relative peace, left to finally contemplate the magnitude of the things she'd personally endured. And this was the first time she'd ever voiced those thoughts aloud.
Garrus had seen her cry before, but never like this. There'd been the tears of some kind of untold joy when she'd regained consciousness weeks after she was found alive and had heard the news of just how much things had changed and just who of her crew had survived it. There'd been tears of physical pain, so extreme that Garrus would have taken a missile to the jaw a thousand times over to spare her from it. And then there'd been those quiet, aborted tears she'd never let out, at least not around him. When Mordin had died to cure the genophage, when Thane had been murdered at Kai-Leng's hands. He'd even seen the thick coating of them in her eyes when Lieutenant Victus had given his life to save an innumerable amount. These tears, though, they were something else, and he wasn't about to let her face them alone.
He joined her where she stood, and pulled her into him, arms around her and careful not to close in too tight because of his nephew that she still clutched to her. Shepard didn't fight, instead pulled her arm around him and dug her fingers into the carapace at his back, her face buried against his chest, neck, and cowl, her tears staining the fabric of his clothing.
"You don't know, Shepard," he tried, "you don't know. Chakwas, she would have said something if she was certain, wouldn't she? Miranda, too. After everything, she would've told you."
"It doesn't matter," her words were muffled against him, and after a moment she pulled away, wiping furiously at her eyes as she avoided his gaze. "I don't want someone else's child. I don't want to go to a fucking sperm bank and pick some man out of a book, God damn it." While before she'd been mindful over her volume and tone, at least for Necalli's sake, her anger and rage had other ideas now. "I don't want a child, Garrus. I want yours. And I can't have it." Shepard shook her head a little too forcefully, even as the tears still came, leaving wet streaks down her cheeks. "Like everything in my life, I can't have it."
Garrus felt guilt, a suffocating kind, for moving her to the kind of emotion she was showing. The pain that weaved through him was unbearable, and he couldn't imagine what she felt on her end. Maybe he'd been a fool for thinking, even for a second, that they could have the unspoken dream. But he had, anyway, had thought about it with increasing frequency over the last couple of years, but never letting his hopes and prayers be said aloud. One day, he told himself, one day they would have it. And now, he wasn't sure they ever would.
"I'd never see it like someone else's, Shepard. You know damn well that kid would be mine, no matter how he or she got here."
"Just stop," she said loudly, and Necalli immediately roused, his head lifting as the sharp sound of his somewhat human like cry called out in response to the disturbance. He didn't stop, and Shepard hightailed it back inside the house, shifting the infant to be cradled in the crook of her arm. "Garrus, I owe you my life. If you hadn't found me in that field hospital, they probably would've let me die. You fought for me. I heard about the things you did, the strings you got pulled to get me off world and make sure I was okay. I heard about every favor you called in to find Miranda, to make sure I got the implants and surgeries I needed even when there weren't credits to pay for it. I'd be half blind with a broken back, missing most of a leg, and probably fucking brain dead if you hadn't fought for me."
Garrus followed her in, listening to her speak over the whimpering of the newborn they were to be taking care of for the evening while his parents were otherwise engaged. This probably wasn't how Solana imagined it going.
"The fact that I'm here at all—I owe it to you. But Garrus," her face crinkled at the mention of his name, eyes red and watery, skin flushed, "you don't owe me yours. You wasted a year and a half trying to get me back together and I'm not even the same woman I was back then. I've taken enough from you already."
He felt blindsided by what she was saying. They were harsh truths—or at least they were to her, not to him—and it felt physically painful to think that she actually believed her words. How long had she felt this way? That he was there out of some Turian honor or promise, some dedication to his superior, and nothing else? "Do you really think that's why—Spirits, do you not realize how much I love you?"
"I won't—" her voice warbled, what little steadiness she had breaking. "You deserve to be a father. And I'm strong enough now to say that maybe you should move on from whatever this has been." To distract from how little her body language was actually conveying she truly felt those words, she turned her attention to Necalli. She kissed his forehead, stroked a mandible, anything she could imagine his mother doing in her place, anything to quiet him down. Looking at the newborn, Shepard directed her words to Garrus. "You should stay here and find a mate, find someone. I'll be okay. I'll be okay, Garrus."
His mandibles spread in the expression of pain he didn't know how to share, and even though everything in his instinct said to keep his distance, he couldn't. He laid a hand against her upper arm. "This isn't what I want. I'd choose you over anything, everything else, and you know that."
"And that's why I have to do this for you. The war's over, Garrus." Necalli wailed loudly, and Shepard gave in, forfeiting her hold on him as she forced the baby into Garrus' arms, desperate to get away.
In the end, Garrus was left standing alone again.
