Shepard's heart skipped a beat, maybe two, as Archangel removed his mask. The visor he seemed to never take off, that particular shade of blue war paint and the way his mandibles flared subtly. There was no mistaking it.
"Garrus! What are you doing here?" was all Shepard could think of to say. What else could she say? She was gone for two years, presumed dead. Hell, she actually was dead. The last conversation they had was back on the Citadel, after the celebrations had ended and Shepard was about to be sent back out into the Terminus Systems. Garrus had insisted that he join her, but she was adamant that there was more that he could do in other parts of space. Shepard was not happy about hunting geth; they weren't the real threat.
Hell, she was nervous. Garrus looked different. What if he was angry at her, or even worse, what if he pitied her? What if the last two years had broken him? What if the Vakarian she knew was gone? What if, what if, what if…
"That's my line, Shepard," Garrus replied, shrugging after giving a weak laugh. He looked tired and worn out, wearing an expression she had never seen him with in the past. She was getting better at reading turian expressions, but she could not tell what he was feeling. Something distant and abstract, yet also raw and unforgiving. "Hell, I thought you were dead."
"I was dead," feeling strange saying those words, Shepard swallowed the uneasy feeling of uncertainty. Not knowing whether she truly was brought back from the dead and if Cerberus had not 'tinkered' with her in any way. Now was neither the time nor place for thoughts like those. More mercs were fast approaching towards the base; these ones were more heavily armed than before.
Behind the fast moving flow of mercs, a Heavy Mech was deployed, its multiple parts whirring and moving during the activation process, finishing with two full arms of firepower, pointed at the mercs.
"Nice going," Garrus said as he saw the Heavy Mech rip through the mercs from behind, while he simultaneously landed a headshot on an unsuspecting merc.
"Wasn't me. I thought of reprograming it myself, but someone beat me to it," Shepard replied, opening fire upon the mercs herself.
Garrus paused for a moment, visibly concerned, before resuming fire, "Same kind of thing on this side too."
Jacob and Miranda, both at Shepard's left, unleashed a biotic combination attack at the mercs below, making them fly high and fast into the air and off the edge of the bridge.
Nice, Garrus thought, but he did not utter the words out loud. He noticed the logos on their uniforms. Cerberus. "So, you run with a new crowd now?" he said almost nonchalantly, picking off another merc with a well-placed shot.
"We'll talk about it later, Garrus. For now, you need to trust me," Shepard said, her voice husky yet steady, as she grimaced, "Keep your head in the fight.
"Right," he said, silently reprimanding himself for letting his emotions get in the way of the primary objective, staying alive. This was uncharacteristic of him, highly irregular, as Admiral Hackett might put it, but it was Shepard. She did that to people. He could not deny to himself that her appearance was filling him with more happiness and relief than he had ever felt in the last couple of years, despite his complete distrust for Cerberus and his lingering suspicion that the woman in front of him was merely an apparition he could see as a side effect of overloading on stims. The latter suspicion made him give a small chuckle; she was a Spectre after all.
"These bastards just keep running down the bridge like a bunch of idiots," Miranda muttered, as she unloaded three shots from her handgun, all of them hitting a merc square in the face. It was impressive shooting, managing to maintain such accuracy with a pistol at that range, Shepard acknowledged in her head.
"They'd be swarming us through that door," Garrus pointed his turian equivalent of a thumb behind him while keeping his eyes to the sniper scope, "But someone closed the shutters that lead to this area."
"Divine intervention?" Shepard jokingly suggested, to which he gave a weak chuckle.
"I don't think archangels have guardian angels, Shepard. At least, in turian mythology –," but Garrus cut his sentence short as the squad noticed a barrage of rockets flying towards them from the barricade. Too fast.
The squad rolled away from the edge of the balcony quickly, but the combined explosive force of the projectiles was wide and strong, flinging all of them back across the room.
Shepard was blinded by the brightness of the explosion as she rolled across the floor until she hit the opposite wall with a loud thud. Her amour protected her from the scorching heat, preventing any significant damage. Quickly regaining her composure and picking up her Avenger, she visually scanned across the room. Jacob was getting up slowly, wiping the blood flowing from a light gash on his head, but his life wasn't in danger and he could still fight. Miranda, who was crouching and analysing the status of her squad mates just as Shepard was, showed no visible signs of damage.
What she saw next made her insides extremely uncomfortable. It almost made her feel physically sick, not from disgust, but from near panic.
"Garrus!" she shouted over the gunfire coming from outside the balcony, running towards the downed turian, who was seemingly unconscious, losing track of her surroundings. The bright fires caused by the explosions blurred and the loud footsteps of rushing mercs became soft and dull. Panicked thoughts raced through her mind as she turned Garrus over, revealing his severely burned face and nearly completely broken armour. What if he wouldn't wake up again?
That 'what if' almost froze her, locking up her body but leaving her mind to work at a lightning fast pace to go through all of the possible worst case scenarios. She momentarily returned to the frightened girl, too young to go through what she went through or to completely repair the damage that had been inflicted upon her innocence and that had robbed her of her life. She had thought Mindoir had taught her the lesson that no one deserved to learn; that people could be taken away in the cruellest and most unbefitting ways and that all she could do as a survivor was to deal with the aftermath, until it was her time to leave this world. She'd thought wrong. She wasn't allowed to leave this world yet. There was more to do, more orders to follow, more people to protect, the same galaxy to save. Hadn't she earned her damned rest? She didn't know if she could stand losing another; losing her best friend.
A soft voice could be heard, indistinctive from her trance like state. Shepard, it kept calling, becoming sharper each time.
"Shepard!" Miranda was shouting into the Commander's ear, shaking her shoulder back and forth.
Clarity returned to her thoughts, a strange calm washing over her in a necessary wave and adrenaline, combined with battered yet unrelenting resolve, giving her the boost she needed to get past the situation and complete the mission, because that's just what she did.
The frightened little girl was gone again, just as quickly as she had taken over her. She was Commander Shepard and she was going to get the damned job done.