II. Perplexity
It was definitely her scent. Probably the dream was going to be better than he thought it would. She had once told him that humans dreamt a lot, but for turians it was a rare event. So now that it had arrived, why was it fading so quickly? It had been so real that he could still smell her, and even feel her soft hair against his face… He wanted to punch the intruder who had ripped him from these comforting sensations by activating the door controls. But something was not right.
With the swiftness only someone who had lifelong military training could manage, Garrus was fully awake. He inhaled the still lingering scent, so faint, that a human wouldn't have been able to notice it. Shepard had been here, but she left. Probably only seconds ago. Usually she didn't do such a secretive thing, but Garrus knew her to be a woman who sometimes had some crazy ideas. On the other hand… her behaviour had changed in the last few weeks, and he was getting more and more worried. Smiles that followed his jokes became rare or, if they occurred, didn't look entirely real.
Hell, here he was again, suddenly speculating about human mannerisms. Falling in love with a human was one thing, something that he was pretty sure he could have… defused over time. Turians were, after all, good at rationalizing things, thinking in tactical schemes… Then again, Garrus wasn't exactly a stereotype of his species. And the point was rendered moot when Shepard had gone and jumbled his military soberness up by looking beyond all of that, and reciprocating his feelings. Now he was stumbling through this awkward human-turian-lovestory mess like a drunk trying to avoid bumping into people in a crowd.
At the beginning, he had been too nervous to notice what he was doing (or saying) half of the time, and had spent the other half trying to read her reactions. Eventually, he was getting better. But obviously not observant enough to notice that something was very wrong with his… girlfriend. As Garrus put on his casual clothes, his visor told him that it was way past Normandy "bedtime", a few hours had passed since Shepard had practically ordered them to get some rest.
Was this the first time she had visited him without him noticing? They spent nights together every now and then, when the missions or different duties weren't interfering too much. Those nights were the rare occasions when her smiles still felt honest and real.
Reapers, utter destruction of the galaxy, rallying every race, resource and fleet that existed… An overwhelming responsibility that couldn't possibly be grasped by a mortal mind, and still she spread hope everywhere she went. When he left the main battery and stepped into the mess hall, Garrus had a creeping realization. It was exactly this responsibility, this burning wish to keep everyone believing, that was slowly draining the life from her. The biggest force in the galaxy has conspired to kill Shepard, but what really was going to end her was the need to live up to ridiculously high expectations. Even I enable this process by turning to her for guidance, he thought bitterly.
The sudden urge to talk to her about this feeling made his steps quicken and punch the elevator controls impatiently. A deserted bridge greeted him at the CIC. Not even Specialist Traynor was in her usual spot, and almost all of the displays were dimmed. The galaxy map flashed as he walked by the podium Shepard always stood on to navigate the Normandy.
Garrus' sensitive ears could make out a faint snoring sound coming from the cockpit area, Joker's sanctuary. So that guy actually slept in his pilot chair. Just like Shepard had less than an hour earlier, he approached the snoring pilot seat. When EDI didn't turn to address him, he noticed that she was leaned back with her eyes closed. Did AIs… sleep? No, that was nonsense; even an unshackled AI like EDI couldn't get this close to organic behaviour. Besides, they certainly didn't need to rest.
"EDI?" he said without making an effort to keep his voice low. He had a nagging idea that this deadly silence all over the ship wasn't just a coincidence. This wasn't the time to be considerate, so he placed a hand on Joker's shoulder and shook him – maybe a bit too fiercely.
"Joker, EDI.", he repeated even louder. That did the trick. Joker winced and let out a terrified groan at the look of a towering turian standing right above him, while EDI just opened her eyes in mild surprise.
"Shit, Garrus! You almost scared the living crap out of me!" He tore himself loose from Garrus' grip and took a deep breath. "Not to sound offensive, but an angry turian sure as hell isn't the first thing I want to see when I wake up."
"I'm not angry." Garrus noted. "…yet.", he added after a pause. Joker just snorted.
"You turians always look angry, just look at you! I wonder how the Commander can even tell whether you are smiling or preparing to take a bite out of her…" Before Garrus could give him a retort to that joke, EDI cut in.
"They smile by flaring their mandibles, Jeff." But Joker had already turned to the ship controls and was mumbling angrily about lost dreams of delicious sushi.
"Is there something you need, Officer Vakarian?", she continued, ignoring Joker.
"I figured that Shepard would be up here somewhere. Could you tell me where she is? I just wanted to talk to her." EDIs face went blank for a few seconds, a look that Garrus knew she got while searching for something specific that required her "other body" inside the ship. It took longer than he expected, and when she was finished, the AI looked… anxious.
"I'm not sure how to phrase this.", she said. Garrus had never seen her so unsettled, which worried him… a lot. "The Commander is not aboard."
"What?" Jokers and Garrus' voices mingled in surprise.
"What do you mean, she is not aboard?" He knew what it meant, of course – but that didn't make it easier to believe.
"It means that my sensors aren't picking up the Commander's life signs or body pattern from anywhere on this ship. She is not here."
"Call the crew. Wait – no, wake Tali and Liara. Let the rest of them sleep, until we figure out what… what happened." On the outside he was still calm and reacted with precision, but his mind was filled with shock, and even fear. She could have been abducted, or assassinated by some unknown betrayer on the ship, tossed out of an airlock… Get it together, Vakarian, a strict mental voice that sounded suspiciously like Shepards warned him. Don't assume the worst until you have assessed the situation. He turned to EDI.
"Was a shuttle launched recently?" He was glad his voice was at its usual silky and cool tone. Only the most veteran companions (and of course Shepard herself) could have been able to pick out the panicked ring in his sub-harmonics.
This is what love does, Shepard. It turns a guy like me into a nervous wreck with something to lose, and the aim to make sure he doesn't. She had smiled almost shyly when he had told her this after rescuing Ann Bryson from the Reaper forces. Most of what Shepard did was suicidal, and somehow she always managed to turn the tides in her favour. But he couldn't not be afraid of losing her, no matter how good she was at dodging bullets.
"It seems one of the Kodiaks was launched a few minutes ago. It's headed planetside." EDIs voice tore him from his deep thoughts. Damn it! If he hadn't wasted all that time to contemplate… he would have been able to catch up with her. Why would she come to the main battery, then leave unnoticed to take a shuttle – again in secret.
Liara and Tali arrived almost at the same time. While Liara radiated her typical asari wisdom and serenity – a trait that often unnerved Garrus (although it was understandable for a being that outlived most of the other races by centuries never to lose its temper) –, Tali looked ruffled… or even grumpy. Her movements seemed a bit sketchy, and she was constantly fidgeting with laces on her suit while walking up to him.
"Is there a specific reason why you had this annoying AI wake me up in the middle of… the night, Garrus? Maybe you would like me to introduce you to Chatika again – or my shotgun."
"I was told you can have a temper, Tali, but setting the drone on him? He wouldn't last a minute." Although Liara didn't smile, her voice sounded like she was trying to make a joke.
"Remind me to get back to you about that, Liara. But I didn't call you here for fun… When have you two last seen Shepard?" The two of them shared a look of surprise at the question.
"After the debrief, she visited me in engineering, but only to tell me that I should take her order to rest seriously. She even had this cosy bed set up for me in the room below the engine core… Shepard knows that I love the hum of a ship's drive core. It's like a lullaby… I slept like a dead person." She paused to glare at Garrus from behind her mask. "Until you woke me up."
"Something very similar happened to me. Shepard came to my cabin and warned me to set my work aside for a few hours. She said she would unmask me as the Shadow Broker if I touched another data slot today. Although I think it was a joke, it didn't seem wise to disobey her. And the piano music she brought me was soothing..."
"She had this all planned.", Garrus managed to say as the realization struck him. He didn't notice the puzzled looks of his companions, rather talking to himself than to them. It was Joker who cleared the misunderstanding.
"So the Commander… snuck away? That doesn't sound like her. Sounds more like something I would do."
"Shepard left?", Tali addressed Garrus, but the turian was lost in deep thought, now prowling around in a small circle like a caged animal.
"Yes. The Commander departed the Normandy in one of the Kodiak shuttles twenty earth-minutes ago. My readings tell me that the shuttle has by now landed on Alchera.", EDI answered instead. Garrus finally stopped prowling, and this time, nobody could have overheard the sarcasm in his flanging voice.
"Can anyone tell me, how it was possible for the Commanding Officer of the galaxy's most advanced starship to sneak off for a little joyride to an unhabitated planet, right under all of our noses?"
"I can understand why you would blame me for not noticing this, Officer Vakarian. But the Commander ordered me to do an extensive backup and set me to Standby shortly before she left.", EDI explained, and Garrus had to admit that she actually looked guilty.
"He's not blaming you, EDI. This is how he acts when he is upset, he gets sarcastic. He's actually blaming himself." Tali inclined her head toward Garrus' broad back, which he now had turned to them to look out of the Normandy's front windows.
"When it comes to Shepard, he can be pretty frightening… Worse than facing an angry krogan…", Liara whispered behind her hand.
"I see. So Jeff's stories about turian predatory behaviour concerning sexual conquests are true."
"You know I can hear you, right? I'm standing right here." Garrus said angrily. "You women make me want to join Shepard down there."
"Technically, I am not a woman, Garrus." Liara's voice dead serious, with only the slightest hint of a joke.
"Technically, me neither.", EDI added.
"I am." As Garrus' shoulders slumped and he let out a low, almost rumbling sigh, Tali coughed artificially. "Still… I'm worried about Shepard. It seems she deliberately organized for the whole ship to be asleep, so that she could escape without being detected."
"She has us all figured out, hasn't she? Telling EDI to do a backup, bringing me my favourite music, giving Tali a bed near the drive core… What did she tell you, Garrus?" Their old friend turned to face them with folded arms, mandibles pulled tightly against his face.
"Nothing. I didn't see her after the debrief. She was in the main battery while I was asleep, but… she clearly didn't want me to notice her." He was aware that the emphasis on the "I" gave his tone a jealous edge. Shepard had visited all of them separately, only not him. He felt a sting of hurt that she didn't even consider telling him what was wrong. He could have understood if she needed time to figure whatever it was out on her own. But leaving him completely out of the equation, just checking if he was asleep in secret and then sneaking off like a thief… after she had put such effort into reassuring the others… Yes, it was probably the oddest situation, but he was jealous.
"That makes sense.", Liara interrupted his brooding. Garrus raised his browplates questioningly. "How does it make sense… at all?" The asari seemed awkward and looked to Tali for help. Was there some weird reasoning that he was missing?
"You wouldn't have let her leave.", Tali stated a bit impatiently. "If she had visited you like she did with us, you… come on Garrus, don't make me say this. It's awkward."
"He would have made the Commander spend the night. And I'm sure there would have been no sleep. Though I always wondered, Garrus, how exactly…"
"Joker!", Liara cut across him. Her cheeks had turned a darker blue – probably the asari version of blushing.
"Right…" His mandibles twitched as he felt genuine relief. Worrying about Shepard's unusual behaviour had somehow lead him to doubt her feelings for him... Love didn't take the same paths as logic, fairly simple and easy to follow. It walked down dark alleys of doubt, and at the same time soared above the highest pillars of happiness. I could be a poet after I retire from this war, he mused. Though he was pretty sure that he had read those lines somewhere while studying human literature.
"Good to know that she simply tricked me like everybody else. I feel reassured." To the surprise of his companions, it sounded like he was only half joking. Leaning closer to Joker, he added, "Maybe I'll tell you over a drink sometime." After that, Garrus turned back to the surface of Alchera, thoughtful again.
"Crafty woman… You thought of everything. But why?"
"It seems like a lot of effort just to be alone for a few hours… She could do that in her personal cabin. Nobody would disturb her if she doesn't want them to.", Tali speculated, but Liara shook her head.
"It's not that easy. On the ship, there is a constant flow of messages from fleets all over the galaxy, duties that are too pressing to ignore. And of course EDI. I don't mean to insult you, EDI… I just think that, even in her cabin, Shepard is never truly alone. If for some reason she wanted to be… taking a shuttle to an abandoned planet sounds like a good choice."
"This may seem like a wild idea, but why not just contact her over commlink?", Joker questioned.
"She went through all of this to be alone, Joker. Do you honestly think she wants us to chime in through her comm half an hour after she left? That would be like kicking down a large "Do not enter" sign. I doubt she would even answer.", Tali said.
"What's down there, EDI? Why this planet?", Garrus asked calmly.
"Alchera is the planet where the SSV Normandy SR-1 crashed after the attack of the Collectors ship three years ago. The Commander was asked by Admiral Hackett to place a Memorial on the crash site not long after she… returned."
"I don't remember a mission assignment being posted about that…", Garrus contemplated.
"You couldn't possibly, because you never got one. The Commander placed the Memorial before going after Archangel – I mean, you. She went down there all alone. I still remember the spooked look on her face when she returned… Holding all those dog tags from fallen crew members in her hands…", Joker reflected, looking serious for once.
"I can only imagine how it must have felt like for her to be down there, by herself. She had always taken her vow to protect the crew more seriously than others. Then she literally dies together with her ship, and comes back to most of her crew gone. It must have felt like…" Liara's voice trailed off, her eyes now turned to the planet's surface too.
"Pure solitude.", Garrus finished her sentence. Both Liara and Tali were shocked by the sadness with which he uttered the words, for they have never heard this tone from him before.
"Why would she willingly go down there again? She used to say that we have to let the "ghosts of the past rest", in order to find peace.", Tali said.
Garrus turned around to find that everyone present was looking at him as if he had the answer to this question. He had been with Shepard the longest, and she trusted him enough to share most of her feelings with him. During the nights they spent together, they often whispered words of affection to each other, or shared stories about their lives before they had met. He remembered the day she had first told him that she loved him, on the top of the Presidium. The only thing that made leaving Earth bearable, was knowing you were out there.
If he was to be her strength, he would gladly work himself to complete exhaustion. But not even once had she actually said that she was afraid. That it was too much. It was always bearable. Something about that struck him as unnatural, and now it seemed that his instinct had been right. It slowly dawned on him, that Shepard had specifically avoided certain subjects even in their most intimate moments.
For example, he knew that Cerberus had "put her back together" after the attack on the Normandy, but whenever he asked her about the time between her resurrection and meeting up with him on Omega, she cleverly changed the subject. Of course he couldn't have known about Alchera, because it fell into that blank spot. And then there was that weird situation with Kaidan… He hadn't asked her about Kaidan, he knew better than that. She had said that she loved him, and he believed her without second thought. But for some reason, she looked ashamed every time Kaidan and Garrus were in a room together. She even miraculously vanished and turned up again later.
Finally, what happened with Thessia… Garrus had never seen Shepard downcast like that before. Or angry like that. For a brief moment, she had been on the verge of giving up. No fight in his whole life – and he had seen many – had scared him as much as the look in her eyes. Back on the Normandy, she had gathered herself again, but she wasn't the same as before.
This war was slowly killing her, stripping the incredible life-force from the woman he loved bit by bit, until there would be nothing left. There is only so much fight left in a person, before… He wanted so badly to cheer her up, but the only thing he was confident about was making her smile with his jokes. Was this his fault? Should he have pursued those issues further, instead of giving in to her seemingly endless resolve?
"Garrus.", Tali's voice intercepted, as if she was reading his mind. "You couldn't have known."
"She's right. I believe that Shepard didn't even intend for us to find out about her little trip. I'm assuming she would have come back before we even noticed she was gone.", Liara mused.
"The reason she went down there was not just to be alone for a few hours. She is deeply… unsettled. Disturbed about something. And she didn't want to make us worry, so she went to – how do humans call it? – fight her inner demons on her own." Garrus set his talons onto the navigation panel and leaned forward. With his head lowered, he reminded Liara of a proud warrior after admitting a grave defeat.
"Shepard has stood by our side in our darkest moments. How about we repay that favour to her now?" He straightened up and faced them with his piercing blue eyes, although he didn't need to ask in the first place.
"Help me find out what's wrong, and set it straight." All of them nodded at once.
"Now you're talking! Let's get us our Commander back!", Joker was already typing something on his console.
"Actually I meant the two veteran squadmates, not…", Garrus began, but Joker waved him off.
"Don't say anything you'll regret, Vakarian. I got EDI on my side, and she knows just about everything. Right, EDI?"
"As a matter of fact, I might be able to offer assistance. Although I don't have recordings from the timespan the Commander ordered me to go to Standby, I can provide extensive information about her activities before that, as long as they were on the ship or on missions.", EDI pointed out.
"Has there been anything unusual about Shepard in the past few weeks, like… something that may indicate emotional turmoil, or maybe important news about the war?", Liara inquired.
EDI contemplated the question for a long, silent moment.
"The Commander received hundreds of messages containing the developments of war. As for human emotional turmoil, I regret to say that my sensors would be insufficient to pick up such a progress. But there has been a request by the Commander that I found slightly odd."
"What was it?", Garrus asked, suddenly clairaudient.
"She had me record her brainwaves during sleep. I was to recreate the image material from her brainwave patterns, but she specifically limited the recording to nights she spent alone.", EDI explained.
"Shepard was recording her dreams." Liara turned to Garrus, who's brow was furrowed after hearing this relevation. He seemed to have some kind of suspicion.
"Tell me more about her sleep patterns, EDI.", he finally said.
"Since the beginning of my recordings, her usual sleep pattern was about four to five hours a night-cycle, but during critical mission timespans she only slept every two or three days. Throughout the last few weeks, the Commander's time spent sleeping diminished greatly and the brainwave patterns in these short periods deteriorated. The most extensive periods of undisturbed rest were encountered during your visits, Officer." Awkward silence followed EDI's last explanation, until Liara cleared her throat.
"So Shepard suffers from insomnia.", she concluded.
"Excuse me?", Tali and Garrus were both confused, so Liara moved to elaborate.
"A mental disease fairly common in humans, it means the inability to fall asleep, or stay asleep as long as desired. Turians are probably too practical to experience it, and asari… well let's say we have a different way of dealing with our issues. I don't know about quarians, there is little record about your sleep patterns." Tali shifted from one foot to the other.
"We lose sleep over problems too, but not enough to name a disease after it. This is serious, though. Shepard can't sleep, and she is obviously having nightmares."
"Can we see those records you made, EDI?" There was a worried tone in Garrus' sub-harmonics.
"The Commander had me delete the records from my database, but she downloaded and sealed them on a device in her personal quarters. If you wish to access them, you should visit there. Although I must warn you that entering her quarters uninvited and looking through her personal files may be seen as an invasion of privacy."
"She knew what she was getting into by choosing a turian known for disobeying rules as her boyfriend.", Garrus remarked with a slight flare of his mandibles. Together with Tali and Liara, he set off to the elevator. When they were out of earshot, Joker turned to EDI and folded his arms.
"That's not a smile, that's the grin of a predator."
"I never said they weren't the same thing.", the AI answered in a dead serious tone.
"A joke?", the pilot asked hopefully.
"Only 50%."