*Author's notes- Again, thanks for reading guys. If you have any ideas you want to be incorporated I would love to hear them. I want to make it up to you, the reader for reading my work. As always, any reviews are appreciated. Good or bad, I want to know what you think.
Chapter 2
Back Amongst the Living
" There's no Shepard without Vakarian," Shepard softly mutters as she reaches up on her toes to reach Garrus's face, caressing his mandible. She swayed back down on her heels and massaged his neck, under his fringe. She stopped, and turned around to start walking away. Garrus stared as he tried to figure out why she would just leave like that. He watched the sway of her hips in the new armor he had gotten her as a gift right before the final fight to end the Reapers.
' Where the hell are you going?' he thinks as he reaches out with his talons and tries to claw her back into his arms.
" Laura, no. Come back. I need you," he begs as his harmonics hummed in a franticly worrying state. Harbinger suddenly lands with a loud crash in the background of his view of Laura. As Laura walks toward the Reaper it makes the loud screech associated with a Reaper charging up it's main weapon, ready to obliterate anything in it's path.
Garrus screamed over the fact that she kept walking towards the Reaper.
' What the hell are you thinking!' ran through his head as he tried to make up the large distance with his arm. He couldn't move his feet and was only able to try to stretch his arms to close the large gap. At that point, Harbinger released its beam and hit Shepard head on. " No!" the Turian yelled as Shepard disappeared in the laser. He shut his eyes tight as he was stuck in his pose with his outstretched arm.
Garrus opened his eyes to find himself sitting up with his arm outstretched looking for Shepard to come running to him. He looked around to find the room looked drastically different from the medical suite of the Normandy. He began to look around and saw that the room was empty. With the amount of noise I made, it probably won't stay that way, he grumbled to himself. On cue, both Tali and Liara came in, no doubt to check on the noise being made in the room. " By the Goddess, Garrus you're up. This will be a relief, especially to Shepard when she wakes from her coma," said Liara.
" So it's true that Shepard is alive?" Garrus muttered staring Liara right in the face trying to see if she ways playing a cruel joke on him even though he knew she wouldn't dare try such a thing.
" Yes, you both were flown from the Normandy to San Diego as the Normandy doesn't have the proper facilities to help either of you." said Liara as she stared out the glass of the room towards another room across the hall.
" She's there?" he asked motioning to the room Liara looked at. At this point Garrus let his mandibles spread out as he has been clenching them together in anticipation for his worst fear to become a reality.
" Yes, but you are in no way ready to see her," Liara replied.
Before Liara finished, he strained himself to get out of the hard bed. " Try me," he responded as he got up.
Garrus completely forgot that Tali was even in the room. Probably still uncomfortable when she wanted to hook up at the party on the Citadel, Garrus thought as he attempted to get out of the bed. It took every ounce of his strength to get up and would've fallen over if Liara hadn't held him up.
" Look, you can see her, but you need to come back here for treatment shortly," Liara stated.
" No, I'm fine. I'll move into her room, I don't care what the doctors think," Garrus groaned as he slowly walked across the hallway with Liara's help.
He opened the door but wasn't prepared for what he saw. Laura had what were assumed to be burns covered by sterile white bandages all over her body and was breathing from a tube down her throat.
" She's had all of her surgeries, so it's a question of when she'll wake up and her recovery," Liara said as she saw the shock on Garrus' face. His mandibles clenched closer together and his plates became tight against his chest. He felt as he was about to faint himself.
" Can they get a Turian-style cot?" he asked, then turned and walked up to Shepard's bed. " I'm not leaving her."
" I'll see what I can do," Liara replied as she left the room.
As the metallic ping of the door sounded to signal Liara was gone, Garrus had taken the stiff chair obviously designed for a human next to her bed and sat down. He took his hand and ran it through Shepard's dark hair, releasing the knots that have accrued from laying in the bed for Spirits knows how long.
He lifted his head to hers and joined them at the forehead like they always did in her quarters. The Turian equivalent of a human kiss.
She was surprised when she first was taught about it from Garrus, but was quick to do it as she said that she could see how without malleable lips it could be intimate.
He shut his eyes when he connected his forehead to her's and whispered what she had told her before the final push for the beam on Earth. " There's no Shepard without Vakarian."
Garrus then set his head on Shepard's thighs trying to make it as comfortable for her with his oddly shaped head and mandibles as he tried to get some sleep while making contact with the mate he has chosen, even if she knew it or not.
He shut his eyes and started to dream again as he let out a soft purr that vibrated through Shepard's body as if they were one.
Garrus had gained back most, if not all mobility that he had lost over the last 3 weeks in the hospital. As he stretched out to get used to the soreness of moving around in ways he couldn't have sitting in a bed or chair, he felt the slight chirp of his omni-tool go off from an incoming vid-call.
He looked at it as his mandibles fluttered at the caller. It was his father. He last heard from him when he said that Solana and himself had made it off Palaven. He promptly pressed the accept button, thrilled that his father had made it through the war.
" Garrus? Son, you there?" said the Turian that was glowing on the screen. If you had put them next to each other you could barely tell the difference besides the plethora of scars Garrus had collected.
" Yea, Dad I'm here. Are you and Sol safe?"
"We're fine son, the Turian Fleet is staging camps on Earth. I finally got it out of one of the humans that we're in a place called Nevada. It was the only place that would have been good for us, climate-wise that is. From what I gather it's not all that far from you." The elder disappeared off screen as Garrus could hear him ordering around others.
" Camps? Why? You can't leave the Sol System?" Garrus questioned.
His father refocused again on the call. " No, the mass relays have been damaged from the blast of the Crucible. So we're just biding our time waiting for them to be repaired, and hopefully it's soon. The ships were outfitted with rations for crews only, not the entire civilian population of Palaven."
" Spirits…" Garrus replied putting a clawed hand to his forehead, running his talons over his fringe. As he looked up to see Shepard moving as she looked like she had come out of comatose. Garrus promptly spoke " Hey Dad, I gotta go. Tell Sol to call and I'll talk to you later tonight."
" But, son…"
Garrus didn't let his father finish by closing the omni-tool call as he hadn't told him about Shepard and his relationship, and he didn't want him to find out through him sitting with her while she woke from a coma.
" Hey, take it easy. You've been out a long time, ohhhh…." he grunted as Shepard quickly sat up and hugged him.
" I thought I lost you," she started to sob.
" You can never lose me, ask Sidonis and Dr. Saleon," he chuckled. " Owww, what was that for."
Shepard retracted her fist from where she punched him in his shoulder. " We almost died and you're over here cracking jokes," she angrily lauded.
" Ughh sorry, just trying to lighten the mood. Are you hungry?" Garrus asked as a doctor came in to check her to make sure all of her vitals were in a normal range.
" Yea, a hospital has gotta have a cafeteria. I don't care what you get me."
Garrus walked down the hall with the small sandwich on a flimsy paper plate. He had asked for any levo food as he wasn't entirely sure what Shepard ate. He was promptly handed the plate and this small thing that his talons could easily fit around. Well there's always when we get her out of here, I'll take her to anywhere she wants, he thinks as he walks done the white hallways.
He walked through the door and saw that she was highly excited for the flimsy pieces of bread.
" Peanut butter and jelly! My favorite!" she yelped as he set the plate down on the table.
" I did good, huh?"
" You did great," she replies as she finished the first bite giving him a slight nod.
