Chapter 2: Shepard and the Angel of Death
Lilitu Shepard rolled over in bed, eyeing the blinking comm panel with dislike. Every third blink, it emitted a slight humming sound—just enough to awaken someone who was still asleep. She had not, in fact, been sleeping.
Garrus, in no better mood to be interrupted than she was, threw a pillow at the comm panel to muffle its intermittent squawking, and went back to what he'd been doing—lightly biting her shoulder before pulling her body firmly back under his once more. "I thought you put a 'Do not disturb' sign on that damn thing."
"I . . . oh. . . I did. Beginning to think we might need to get a room . . . at one of the Citadel transit lodges . . . to get some peace while we wait on repairs." She nipped at the side of his throat herself, her small, blunt teeth making him groan softly. Her hands explored lower, and she smiled slightly, remembering how awkward they'd both been their first time, right before going through the Omega IV relay. Almost like virgins, but not quite, she'd thought at the time. Experience definitely made things better.
"So . . . if it's something really important," he growled in her ear, "EDI will let us know. Anything less than a Reaper invasion fleet can wait."
The chiming of the comm panel grew louder and more insistent, but other things had grown slightly louder and more insistent as well. Her low, feral sounds of enjoyment drowned out the increasingly insistent chimes, until, right when Lilitu went quiet and limp, and Garrus growled in release, EDI's voice broke through the room, tones tinged faintly with reproach, "Commander Shepard, there is a representative of the Alliance Fleet who's come aboard to see you. Staff Commander Alenko, to be specific."
Garrus sighed, and rolled over, cowl and spurs catching on the sheets, leading to a flurry of kicking and rearranging on both their parts. "Of course it is. Are you sure this cabin's been swept for surveillance equipment?" he asked, a bit mournfully. "People sure do have a habit of breaking in at the most inopportune moments."
"I had it checked three times," Shepard told him, sitting up in bed, feeling the sweet relaxation fade away, replaced by the singing tension that seemed to ride in her shoulders perpetually these days, leaving her taut as a strung bow. "And after I took a look at the video feeds that. . . our friend with all the eyes. . . has at her disposal," (Shepard never referred to Liara by name anymore, and did not mention the words Shadow Broker at all, even in private) "I had the entire ship swept again. Tali found more Cerberus tech than even she knew what to do with, but I can't guarantee we caught it all."
Garrus' mandibles twitched into a semblance of a smile. "Ah, so that's why you have this tendency to hang blankets over the aquariums. And here I thought it was because you were afraid the fish might judge."
Lilitu threw the remaining pillow on the bed at his head. He ducked, continuing to grin. "Come on," she said, tiredly, "Let's get dressed and face the music. I'm sure the Alliance must want something important."
Garrus caught her wrist and pulled her back down to the bed. "Nah. If he's so all-fired impatient that he has to see you at . . . " Garrus checked the clock, and shook his head, "Oh six-thirty Zulu time, before you'd even go on-shift . . . let him wait." He snorted. "And let our friend with all the eyes have a show, while we're at it. It's not like we're doing anything wrong, or illegal."
She frowned slightly as Garrus lifted his pistol from the nightstand, and, making sure it was loaded and that the safety was in place, hostlered it and started to get dressed, pulling on padded underclothes and reaching for the greaves of his armor. "Do you really think that's necessary? It's Alenko, not a boarding party." She saw the emptiness come into his eyes. Sometimes he kept enough of himself in combat to joke, to treat it as a game or a challenge. But these were his sniper eyes, his Archangel eyes, his killing eyes. She loved those eyes in combat. They had saved her life more than once. She did not, however, like seeing them in her quarters.
Not the least because when Garrus' eyes went blank and empty, her body started getting ready for combat. She could feel the first flush of an adrenal reaction starting to creep up on her, and knew that her own face was becoming blank and set. She didn't know if her eyes were equally empty when it was time to kill . . . but when she went into battle mode, closing off all of herself except the part that found the next target, the next firing solution, the next optimal place of cover . . . how could they be anything else? Her hands itched for the grip of her own pistol, which was holstered and slung over the edge of the bed's headboard, but she flattened her hands on her robe, and refused to let herself reach for it.
The door chimed, once. She ignored it. "You really hate him, don't you?"
"I hate what he did to you," Garrus rasped. "I was standing right there on Horizon, remember? Oh, don't get me wrong—I also hate the people who attacked Mindoir and left you without a family, and I'm also none too fond of the thresher maw that wiped out your squad on Akuze, or the Cerberus team that set you up for that attack. Alenko's just the most accessible person in your past who's hurt you."
And you'd love a chance to hurt him back, she finished silently. "Don't worry about it." She smiled at him, sitting down on the bed and touching his scarred face. "I've got something better now," she said, simply. "Someone I know I can always trust. Someone who'll always be at my back or by my side. Someone who'll never leave me. Someone who won't . . . "
"Die on you?" One of his taloned hands caught hers, and both of their fingers clamped down hard. Her mind flashed to the intolerable moment when the gunship's rocket had thrown Garrus across the room, and the hail of bullets had punched into his armor as he crawled feebly to shelter. She might not be an expert on reading turian expressions and body language, but she was becoming an expert on his, and she could see anguish in his pale blue predator eyes, and knew without a doubt, that he was picturing her own death, her body sliding out of sight, out of the star Amada's light and into the darkness of the planet's shadow.
They were a matched pair now, in every way. Both pieced together with cybernetics, both scarred. Though she had opted to have the worst of hers repaired in the advanced medical module, they still showed up as a maze of fine lines whenever she blushed.
The door chimed again, twice. Impatiently.
She managed a smile for him, squeezing his hand, letting him know that she was here, alive. "I have felt, most of my life, as if the angel of death has been taunting me. You'd probably say the spirit of death, I guess. Mor'tae? Is that how you say it?"
He nodded, looking a bit amused. She had asked EDI for a few lessons in Garrus' regional turian dialect, but only a few words were sticking here and there at the moment. At least it occupied the downtime while the Normandy was stuck in drydock, undergoing repairs. She took a deep breath, and continued, "Taking the people I love, while leaving me untouched. I got to a point where I tried very hard not to care about anyone around me, because if I did, they'd die."
"And yet," Garrus whispered, "For all of that, you had me lead the fire teams on the Collector base."
"You were the only one I could trust to keep everyone else alive. I knew you'd get everyone else out." Lilitu smiled at him, though her vision had started to waver a little around the edges. "You want to know how I knew?"
"Sure."
"Because the Angel of Death . . . is an Archangel. And when I call for him, he comes to me." She met his gaze steadily. "If I ever call for him by name, though, you'll know it's only for a damn good reason, right?"
He leaned forward then, touching his forehead to hers, a very turian embrace, stopping a millimeter from her lips, as he'd learned to do. For while his lips weren't designed for kissing, he was more than willing to allow her to bridge that gap.
The door chimed, again and again and again.
Shepard turned her head slightly, sighed, and said, "EDI? I assume that Commander Alenko is the person currently trying to wear out my door?"
"Yes, Commander," EDI responded, blinking into blue life in her usual cubby. "He would not wait in the briefing room as Operative Lawson requested of him."
"Of course he wouldn't," Garrus said, tiredly. "I'll escort him to the briefing room."
"You shouldn't have to." Shepard got to her feet, and glanced through her limited wardrobe. She grimaced at all the outfits on the rack that still had Cerberus markings on them, and decided that they would be less than diplomatic choices. She grabbed the brown, shoulder-baring shirt and trousers that she tended to think of as colonial dirtfarmer casualwear, and pulled them on.
Garrus began buckling his chest piece into place, making sure that he could move his arms smoothly, without any stray plates of armor catching him. "Well, Grunt isn't here to carry him there by the scruff of his neck, and Jacob and Miranda are both former Cerberus. Alenko won't respect them—" Garrus paused, tugging on a strap, and Shepard realized that his eyes were focused on her once more. "Have I mentioned how much I like that particular outfit?"
"You have." She smiled, tilting her head to offer her neck. Turians, both male and female, tended to be territorial about their mates; biting was one method of marking that territory. This particular outfit allowed his marks to show. It was not one that she often wore around the rest of the crew, because in human terms, displaying marks of passion was inappropriate and discomfiting; however, she reckoned that Garrus would be calmer on a psychological level if his marks were visible. Certainly, he'd be less apt to throw Alenko down the elevator shaft.
Taking her invitation for what it was, he closed the gap between them, gave her a quick, hard nip on the neck, and headed for the door. Alenko would take it poorly, of course, if he saw it, of course, but since her other option was clothing with Cereberus markings emblazoned all over it, there was little she could wear that wouldn't offend his sensibilities in some fashion or another. And there was a small, mean place in her that frankly enjoyed the thought of his discomfiture.
But, because she was, in the end, the ship's CO, she did pull on a jacket as the door closed behind Garrus. There was professionalism at stake, after all.
