So this is the first part/segment I've completed. I have quite a few more, but thought I'd put this up to see how peeps like it. I'll keep working on the other pieces and integrate them as I go along.
This segment starts in ME2. I will try not to go all over the place crazy with timeline, but this was the first thing that came to mind that I had wanted to depict. I hope you guys enjoy this small beginning :)
"EDI?" Garrus entered his lock code on the main battery log, "could you patch me through to the Commander?"
"She is currently unavailable, Garrus."
"Ah. And I assume you would rather not tell me exactly where she is, right?" Garrus smiled to himself. He knew EDI respected Emmalene's privacy, never listening in on her conversations or giving away her current status to the crew unless it was an emergency.
"Unfortunately not, Garrus."
"A clue, perhaps?" he exited the main battery and tested EDI for at least an idea of where to start.
It was quiet for a moment before EDI replied. "Perhaps a visit down to the engineering level would be of interest to you."
"Heh. Thanks EDI. I just want to check in on her before we hit the Citadel."
"Of course."
He took the elevator down to engineering. He walked to the window over-looking the shuttle bay to see a few crew members mulling about their usual duties. Looking to his right, then left, he decided to check the cargo bay first for the elusive commander. He entered the unlock code and smiled.
"I found you," the cargo bay doors whooshed open to reveal her sitting on the floor, leaned up against a crate of thermal clips. She was gazing out of the cargo bay window. He wondered whose idea it was to put a window down in the cargo bay as he walked in, the doors sliding closed behind him.
Emma smiled up at him, "looking for me?"
"It's rare for the Commander of her own ship to go MIA. Especially when we're 45 minutes from the Citadel and probably has a billion reports to write," he took a seat next to her, lacing his talons together in his lap, "everything alright, Shepard?"
"I... I just needed the quiet before the storm, you know?" she looked back out of the window, "I'm not looking forward to flying all the way to the Council just to have them throw everything back in my face. Again," she scratched her cheek at the agitation she felt.
Garrus nodded. "The stuffy bastards might as well glue giant "Reapers Welcome" signs to the ends of each ward."
Emma snuffed a laugh. She rest her head back against the crate and closed her eyes, "politics."
"Anything I can do to help?" he offered. He could see and feel her stress and was concerned how well she was really handling it all.
"Hm. You want to go and defeat the entire Reaper army for me?" she gave him a mischievous smirk.
He chortled, "ha, I think I'll leave that one up to you. Sorry Shepard."
"Thank you, very much," she rolled her head to the side with a smile and sigh, "well you're still invited to come, regardless."
"Yeah thanks," he smirked. The tired look in her eyes took the smile from his face. "Really, though. How are you doing?" Her head lolled over to meet his gaze. She could see he was truly concerned and felt a pang of guilt at the compassion on his face. She was indeed very worried about what they were going to do to stop the Reapers, but she felt she was at least going in the right direction, solution-wise.
"I'm sorry Garrus. I don't mean to let things get to me so much." His laugh surprised her. "What's funny?"
He crossed his arms under his chest, "I've never met anyone like you, that could handle the pressure and intensity of missions and assignments like the ones we've had. You have a full crew of people of all walks of life following you just because you asked them to. It's pretty remarkable.
"But you are human, as the saying goes. You're still a person. It's okay for you to feel," he iterated to her. "You're not alone, Shepard." His words hit harder than expected. She felt herself begin to grin as she looked back at him sitting next to her on the floor of the cargo hold. "What?" he asked at the look.
"Thank you for looking for me down here. I, really trust you, you know? I'm really glad that it was you I found there on Omega. I'm really glad that you're... you."
Garrus almost flubbed words aloud at his surprise. He sighed with relief to be able to say, "I feel the same. When I finally caught you in my scope after you'd reached the bridge," he looked away as he recalled Omega, his arms laying lax in his lap, "it was like waking up from a nightmare I'd been trapped in for two years."
"Two years," she said quietly. "I still can't believe it sometimes."
"Neither can I," he confessed. His words were inflicted with more sadness than he'd meant them to be, but he couldn't deny how lost and alone he'd felt. "It wasn't right without you."
They sat there, side by side. Quiet. Contemplating. Neither could bring themselves to speak, or even move from where they sat.
She could feel the nervous tension growing around them. Garrus' voice rang out in her head, "it was like waking up from a nightmare I'd been trapped in for 2 years..." She could see Joker perfectly in her mind as she lowered him into the evac pod. A blast from the Collector ship shook her grip and sent her flying back and away from Joker, from the evac pod. She couldn't hear him, but the look on his face as the pod doors closed expressed that he would have traded places with her if he could. Relief washed over her when she'd hit the 'eject' button. He would be safe. Most of the crew had made it out safely. One final blast from the Collector's sent her hard into the corner of a wall, and then everything went quiet. She opened her eyes to see the fiery pieces of the Normandy, her ship, her home for the past year of her life, aimlessly floating amidst space. Just as she was, ejected from the reality she had known only moments before.
That was when she began to choke. That was when the heat of Alchera's atmosphere began melting the material and metal of her spacesuit... and then suddenly there was Miranda, fretting over the dose of sedative to put her back to sleep. The weight of realizing that what had felt like seconds to her turning out to be two years of time was suddenly insurmountably heavy in her chest. It was unbelievable to her.
"Shepard?" Garrus' voice startled her from her thoughts. He reached up just in time to catch a tear that rolled down her cheek.
"I dunno," she began. "I just remember Joker's face and the Collector ship," her voice quivered, "and all I could feel was the heat and the pain-"
"Hey," he turned her face up to his. Garrus didn't really know what to do. Her grief was so sudden. He wanted to comfort her but didn't know what he could do besides stop her from re-living the memory of dying. She hadn't talked about what had happened to her after the Normandy went down; about how she had died. From the look of her, it seemed as if she hadn't told anyone about it. He tried to comfort her by placing a hand on her shoulder.
She reached up and wiped away the tears on her cheeks, "I haven't really processed it all, you know?" the frustration in her grew as she continued, "I just, woke up to find out everyone I knew was gone, and that human colonies were being abducted. Then I had Miranda explaining my new implants and cybernetics and Jacob telling me about the Alliance and how they were doing nothing about the Reapers," Garrus listened on, Emma pausing briefly as she was over-taken by her thoughts.
"There were 20 men and women that didn't make it off of the Normandy. 20 people whose families depended on me to keep them alive, and I didn't. How am I supposed to just show up again? Why didn't Cerberus collect the remains of those fallen soldiers and give them another chance? Why was it just me?" Her voice broke as she looked away from Garrus and held the back of her hand to her mouth, "what right do I have to still be alive Garrus?"
"Shepard," he turned to face her and took her arm firmly in his talons, "it's not your fault those soldiers died. Blame the Collectors. Those soldiers knew what the mission was, Shepard. No one blames you."
"It doesn't matter if they do or don't. There are so many lives on the line, Garrus. The entire universe could be lost to the Reapers, and no one is doing anything about it. Except for us. Cerberus is my boss, and as much as I want to take a thanix cannon to this ship and the Illusive Man's intelligence and all of his bullshit I don't, because he is the only one willing to recognize what's really at stake; what's going to happen to all of us if we don't do something now."
He didn't know what to say as she sobbed a few times before pulling herself together. It was heartbreaking to hear what she was saying to him; her confession of guilt felt heavy in his gut. He couldn't imagine how it must have felt to her.
"God. I'm a fucking mess," the words came with a sad smile and laugh.
"You came down here because you knew this was eating away at you, Shepard. This is your time to process what's happened to you, what's happening to you."
"I suppose," she unpurposely side-swept his efforts at comfort as she sniffled and tried to collect herself. "I'm not like this, I don't just lose it out of nowhere."
"I take it you also don't die on a regular basis either?" he tried once more to put her ordeal in front of her to see. The sad look in her eyes told him she was listening. "You died, Shepard. I can't say I know what that's like. But I can imagine that it must have been pretty fucked up. Enough to make someone break down a bit, in the least."
She sighed, letting her heavy heart finally take in his comforts. "It's not how I would have liked to have spent the last two years."
"Heh," Garrus smiled.
He watched her as she wiped her face and cleared her throat. She seemed to drift into thought a moment before looking to him and asking, "have you heard from anyone? Liara? Kaiden, or Wrex?"
"No," he shook his head. "I could assume Kaiden is still with the Alliance? Liara left for Thessia, or somewhere. I can't recall exactly. I haven't heard from Wrex."
"Kaiden is still with the Alliance," she confirmed it, as that was one thing she was certain of. "I don't know about anyone else besides Tali. I saw her on Freedom's Progress. I've sent messages to the addresses the Illusive Man gave me, despite the dossier's he's forced upon me with the ultimatum that the crew I had is 'unavailable'. I haven't gotten any replies."
"I'm sure if they knew that Cerberus had brought you back they'd be the ones trying to get in contact with you."
"Maybe. I'm sure as hell thankful I found you. I sent you a few messages, too. But, obviously, you were busy," she smiled, teasing him.
Garrus shrugged, "you've always been there for me right when I've needed you, with or without me knowing about it. It's cute how fate lets you sort of, stalk me, I suppose."
"Ha!" she elbowed him in his armored side as she took one last deep breath of clarity, "watch it Vakarian."
He chuckled as he watched her stand up and shake herself out. It really was amazing that she was there, in the same room with him. He could still see fresh scarring on the side of her neck and near the bottom of her ear and jaw line. His eyes moved to the implant on the back of her neck. In the reports he was allowed access to he'd read about some of the upgrades she'd received upon being reconstructed.
"Is that an L5?" he pointed up at it as he asked.
Her hand went instinctively to it, "yeah. They 'upgraded' me from the L3's. Miranda told me the re-wire was very precise, since, well," Shepard shrugged as she looked down at Garrus, "my spinal column and brain stem were exposed when they got my gear off." She held out a hand to help him up.
"Holy hell Shepard," he took it and let her pull him up. She was noticeably stronger, he barely used any of his own strength to get to his feet.
"Right?" she snuffed, a small smile on her face but Garrus could see it upset her to imagine what that must have looked like. "Well at least my biotics can crush a small car. Or transport shuttle."
"Wouldn't your mind explode from massing up that much energy?" he followed her with his eyes before actually following her out of the cargo bay.
"You'd think?" she agreed, "but on Freedom's Progress, the first human colony mission," she waved her hand as she went on to explain, "the security mech, the YMIR, it just... collapsed with a warp blast. Just," she folded her hands inward towards one another to signify something folding in on itself. "It was insane."
"Well I'll make sure not to piss you off. Not that I was willing to ever to test you anyways," he jested.
Emmalene chuckled at him as they both walked to the elevator. She paused in front of it, Garrus stopping in front of her. "Thank you, Garrus. For coming to find me. You're the best person I know," she scratched her cheek as her smiled went sheepish.
He tilted his head and smiled down at her. "I know, Commander."