2.
At the end of a particularly rough day at C-Sec—not the least of which the Normandy is out in space while he has to sit here and do what amounts to nothing, waiting for his Spectre application to come through—his omnitool beeps. He waves it open to find a frantic wave from Tali that Shepard is dead.
He just sits there and thinks back to the galaxy model he had on his omnitool when he was a child—one press of the button and a whole universe bloomed on his ceiling—how he would lay there, playing with the stars, fast forwarding time until the stars went supernova and rewinding time until they reformed again.
Shepard's star is massive enough to form a black hole.
The Council denies Reaper involvement, blames it on the geth, even after everything they'd done. He quits C-Sec, fed up with it all. He gives them copies of the file he found but nothing comes of it. The Council takes his local copy of Vigil's data and thanks him for his contribution, but still claims there's not enough proof pointing to the Reapers and the cycle of extinction. If the universe is joking, it's a very cruel one.
Garrus goes to her empty casket funeral with the rest of the crew, cold and stoic and stone, and when Wrex asks him to go on a job with him, he readily agrees before hearing the location. When they arrive at Omega, it's after a flash of blue and he laughs loud and long and Wrex looks at him like he's crazy. Nothing unusual. Only, Wrex is alive instead of dead on the sands of Virmire, the planet Garrus has come to think of as a tomb, and that makes him laugh harder, in hysteria, in desperation, he doesn't know.
But Wrex understands, in his way. They get as close as a turian and a krogan who've saved the galaxy can be. He wouldn't call them friends exactly. Wrex is old and wise and shrewd, and he's been around. Wrex leaves when the job is done, but Garrus doesn't. He never truly left Omega, just as Omega never truly left him.
And while he finds a team he dreams of trees and exploding stars and reaching out into the darkness. It's the only dream he ever has anymore.
What's real? He asks himself at the end of the beginning. He can't tell; the future he remembers, or the present in the past. He flickers back and forth, and he's not sure if it's the stims or what, but that damn blue code runs across his eyes constantly.
What use is this, is he if he can't even save his team? He closes his eyes, and his vision fills with the newly dead. His people deserved so much more. He opens his eyes and picks several of them off. Even so, it's not enough. They keep coming, inexorable.
He's dreaming. He must be. It all blurs, and only instinct keeps him alive. Why give him a second chance if this is what comes of it?
A song plays in his head. It curls around his mind and burrows in his skull and vibrates with intensity. It sounds majestic, like the space between the stars, the arms of the galaxy reaching out to cradle him.
Shepard's N7 emblem shining through his scope gives him hope. She's moving too slowly—he hears a tech expert at the door, so he fires a concussive round at her that knocks her shoulder back a step. She takes that as a signal to gun down the freelancers ruthlessly.
As she approaches, the song grows louder.
Huh. He doesn't recognize her squad members. A cloaked human woman and a grizzled old man in yellow-orange. He's stopped noting the differences, but this is another big one. No Miranda or Jacob. He wonders what caused the change. A quick jerk of his trigger, and a merc's head explodes behind the barrier.
She's tentative when she approaches him, but he takes off his helmet and her loud, "Garrus!" surprises him. Her arms go out and she almost looks like she's going to hug him. Not Vakarian. Garrus. Huh.
The song dulls to a low hum.
"Hey Shepard," he says, exhaustion lacing his voice. Her wide smile falters a bit and she looks at him, really looks at him for the first time since coming back. Concern isn't a look he's used to seeing on her, especially when it's geared towards him. It softens her face too much.
Her words wash together, and later he can't remember what was said. Too many stims and too much grief. He remembers her leaving the old merc to cover him.
And then he still gets hit by the damn gunship.
He slips into unconsciousness with a comforting pulse of blue.
Hours later, he's out of surgery and walking to the briefing room. He doesn't pay attention to the lost time, the blurred memories that make no sense. Shepard's here, looking more worn than he's ever seen her. He can't stand to see her looking like this. Especially not over him. "How bad is it? No one would tell me," he jokes, trying to lighten the mood.
He doesn't think of his team. Of the bodies he'd laid out carefully behind him. Of the hiss of medigel applied far too late and the mix of multi-colored blood. Of holding the last pieces of someone together, the pressure of his hand the only thing staunching the blood. He blinks hard against his memories, forcing them away.
"Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face paint on there and no one will notice."
"Really," the line leaves his mouth before he can catch it. "I heard women like scars. Mind you, most of those women were krogan." He laughs, hurting his face. "You remember those sick experiments, right?"
"How could I forget? Garrus, I don't trust Cerberus," she says tiredly, running her fingers through her messy black hair, wet with sweat and blood. "If I'm walking into hell, it's good to have someone I trust at my side."
"You realize this plan has me walking into hell, too." Her scars on her face match his wounds, an eerie orange glow. "Just like old times." He doesn't say it, but her casual use of the word trust shocks him to his very core. He wobbles on his feet but manages to stay standing by focusing on the pain.
It beats a rhythm in his skull.
"I didn't want to say it before, but I'm sorry."
"The Commander Shepard? Apologizing? Now I know the world has ended," he deflects.
She punches him in the arm, doing more damage to her hand than his armor. "I mean it, you ass. You were right."
He wants to tease her further, maybe joke about recording it for posterity, but the look in her face makes him stop, and he sobers quickly. "About what?"
"Turians. Or at least you. I saw Tali, and she hardly spoke to me, but you, you didn't even doubt I was who I said I was."
"Well, it takes a certain kind of person to go against these kind of odds," he says, doing an imitation of a shrug.
She doesn't buy his nonchalance. "Even when you thought I hated you, and I was pretty damn close, you still trusted me, even when I made questionable decisions."
"You're Shepard," he says, as if that explains everything.
Maybe it does.
"I very nearly let a man go, who'd poisoned a medical shipment bound for a turian colony."
He gazes into her eyes, face impassive. "But you didn't," he says. The air is thick and heavy, and whatever's weighing it, he can't stand. He leaves her standing there watching him, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed.
They stop by Purgatory and Korlus before heading back to Omega to pick up the Professor. Oddly enough, she takes Grunt with them into the plague zone. Code cascades around his visor. Shepard left him behind last time. Garrus volunteers again and Grunt won't let himself be outdone by a turian.
Both of them are coughing after the first few firefights, and he feels his fever build, the stagnant air of the station doing little to cool him off. He powers through the ache, but he senses more than sees Shepard's constant gaze on him. He glances back once, at the deep lines across her forehead. Fevered thoughts pulse through his mind and sometimes he's here, sometimes he's back on that run to the beam, the Mako pulverizing his shields and burning his armor. He blinks, and they're at Mordin's clinic and he can breathe again, with only the vaguest notion of how he got there. Bits and pieces flashes through his mind, but nothing solid.
Horizon approaches with a bang and the sound of swarms and the scream of husks. Soon, they're at the end. Kaidan embraces Shepard too long to be friendly, and Garrus finally has some idea of what a few aside comments from the crew meant. Kaidan's no better than Ashley was at believing Shepard, and Garrus has had enough. "You're so focused on Cerberus you're ignoring the real threat!"
Kaidan blusters and Jack rolls her eyes, crosses her arms against her chest and Shepard can't get him to listen no matter how hard she pleads. A hot feeling starts in his chest and spreads throughout his body. Shepard shouldn't have to beg. Kaidan is too smart to believe Soverign's geth technology, and they'd all lost Shepard. Hell, he'd lost Shepard twice, and Cerberus did not give him a guarantee that she'd awaken this time. This time? he catches himself thinking. What's that supposed to mean?
Time blurs; they pick up Thane and Samara and Tali and get the data from the Collector ship.
Haestrom's something else. Thane's not Wrex. He's effortless precision, but he lacks force. Each shot counts. They're running and gunning against the geth, and it's just like old times. The sun burns as Shepard maintains her barrier and charges headlong into the geth with her shotgun.
Oddly, he misses Ashley and her ruthless proficiency with an assault rifle even Grunt can't top, sees her running alongside him in blue armor (when did she wear that again?) instead of her pink Phoenix—
They do everyone's unfinished business. Miranda's and Mordin's are rough, but it's after Jacob's that Shepard comes back to the ship with shadows in her eyes and a black mood that lasts for weeks. She stranded Jacob's father with nothing but the anger of those he hurt, and it shows in the way she avoids everyone, even him.
Jack's is much the same, though her anger builds enough for them to spar together at his suggestion, hard and furious and painful. She's soft but not fragile, and she gives as good as she gets.
The night after, they sit and talk about it. "That could have been me," she confides in him, using her biotics to lift and rotate a set of rubber balls with precision uncharacteristic of a Vanguard. "I was a no name street kid that got eezo in the womb and secondary exposure on the last smuggling run I ever did for the Reds. No one would have missed me."
Garrus isn't so sure. Protostars acquired mass from everything around them. Shepard would have always been the nebula that formed a supergiant. Even death hadn't dimmed her luminosity. Someone would have missed her. Shepard has a way of pulling everyone she meets to her, and he can't imagine it being any different when she was younger.
Grunt's is nothing unusual. He can't remember how many thresher maws they've killed on foot, though the time limit imposed by the maw hammer is something new. But a turian being part of a krogan's krantt—now that's something.
Sometimes it feels a little unreal to him, having major connections with nearly every homeworld in the galaxy, especially since Wrex has become leader of the Urdnot clan.
When they get to his, Garrus fights with himself every step of the hunt for Fade and Sidonis. Shepard makes her concern known, and she argues with him. His anger is tightly controlled, but she still sees a side of him he's shown to few. He's angry—angry about his squad and the deaths of ten good people. Angry that people like Harkin can abuse others and get away with it. Get away with helping people like Sidonis.
In the skycar, Shepard finally turns to him. "Garrus, this isn't like you."
"He owes me ten lives, Shepard. What you do if someone betrayed you?"
"I wouldn't let it change me. Because if I did, I wouldn't do it from a distance. I'd hunt him down, get in close. I'd tie him up, make it slow. Small cuts at first. Acid. Electricity. Broken bones. Block all the exits and burn the house down during the funeral with his friends and family inside. Watch until it's all ash."
He looks at her. She's staring ahead, eyes unblinking. "Shepard?" he asks, uneasy.
"Don't let it change you, Garrus. Don't spend the rest of your life wondering which one of you's the bigger monster."
When Shepard blocks his shot, for a moment, he contemplates pressing the trigger anyway in a surge of hot anger. They're so close together it would get them both. Then he catches the thought, shoves it down, sick. Horror, guilt, and shame pour down him like cold water.
He falls into darkness. His mind howls. Blue static drowns out everything, makes it seem unreal, and at the end, he doesn't take the shot. It's crueler to leave Sidonis alive. He's punishing himself enough.
"It's so much easier to see the world in black and white. I don't know what to do with grey."
"You paint it, Garrus. Until the world's filled with vibrant color."
But blue bleeds out into black and white and grey no matter what he does.
"Garrus, I swear I'll make it up to you," Sidonis says.
::Is that it?::
Too little, too late
Ten cold graves.
He spends a few days thinking about Sidonis and Shepard and choices and differences. Shepard's kept her distance. He's not angry at her, not anymore. Instead, he's a little concerned. She's been withdrawn and hasn't gone on her usual rounds. She doesn't talk much about her past, and after what little she's told him he can see why.
It takes a sufficient inward force of gravity to exceed the outward pressure of space to form a star.
Little by little, it returns to normal. Mostly. The blackouts still happen. Garrus wonders sometimes if he's going crazy. Sometimes he has thoughts and dreams that he swears aren't his. Omega and the Reapers and firefight after firefight start to show their wear on him. Hell, at this point, he doesn't know how he's functioning as a competent soldier at all, but he grits his teeth, and makes it through one day at a time, one mission at a time. He manages to survive somehow.
He doesn't have much down time to contemplate it; Shepard takes him on almost every mission.
And the ones she doesn't take him on—A low chirrup escapes him as Shepard walks out of the Observation Deck in an outfit unlike any he's ever seen her in before while he's eating in the mess. He didn't know a human's waist could look that tapered. He's not the only one looking either. Plenty of the men look, and Yeoman Chambers definitely does not hide her appreciative gaze. His visor pinpoints a slight temperature anomaly in the air next to Shepard, and he laughs. Kasumi. Still hiding from Burt Davis.
Then they're through Thane and Samara's and Tali's personal business. Fathers and daughters and sons. He closes his eyes and tries not to think of his own; his ailing mother, his distant father, and the sister he can't bear to burden.
While his calculations are running, he stares at the dim light of the back wall and tries not to think. Forget desperate battles to the death; it's the down time he fears.
Tali makes it easier. She's a friendly ear and conversation in the mess and something of the old Normandy letting him know this isn't a dream. After they pick her up, she's someone who spends a lot of time with him and Shepard out in the field.
Thane, too, has a cool head on his shoulders, and wisdom earned through hard experience. They talk about sniping, and rifle mods, and it's camaraderie he wouldn't have expected.
They help, a little.
In Zaeed's, he sees what he could have been in twenty years, and it's a sobering thought. He feels something like satisfaction as Shepard lectures the old merc while they save the refinery. It's not just Garrus's motivations Shepard has issues with. His parallels, her parallels—it's eerie. Both a past and a present marked by fire. How much will the future be? And he lets go of the last bit of resentment he has towards her.
Not too long after that, they're sitting and laughing in the main battery. And just for a moment, he forgets and slips into nostalgia and waxes poetic about the scout. High-risk missions don't change, after all, and it has been a long time since he's blown off steam. And Shepard is his best friend, probably his only friend left after everything. He doesn't think about implications or who he's saying it to. They'd had a rough beginning, but she'd listened, and she's still listening, and he's never had that before.
He's never had someone that just listened.
And then the conversation veers in a completely unexpected direction. "We could test your reach," Shepard says, voice low and heart rate elevated through his visor, "And my flexibility."
Surely she's not implying what he thinks she's implying. "I didn't know you wanted to spar, Commander," he says after a short pause.
She saunters up to him, invading his personal space, putting her hand on her hip and leaning all of her weight to one foot, which does funny things to her waist, even in Cerberus regulation. He swallows. "I was thinking more of skipping right to the tiebreaker." The moment hangs between them awkwardly. Long. Perhaps too long.
He's thrown. Floored, actually. He struggles to gather his thoughts and make sense of them. It's Shepard. Things have changed, she's changed, but she's still the same Shepard he always knew. Still vibrant and bright and the guiding star in his life.
Part of him is confused. She hated turians. But people change. Ever since she woke up, ever since Cerberus brought her back to life, he's been her confidante and her friend. She's opened up to him in ways no one else ever has.
And hadn't he thought nearly the same things about krogan? Just because they'd fought with the turians? If he were human, he might think the same. But she's risen above it.
He's taken too long. He sees her face fall, and she begins to turn, but before she can leave, he blurts out before he can catch it, "If we can find a way to make it work, then why the hell not?"
And why the hell not? A human wouldn't be his go-to choice for a partner, but it's Shepard. He reaches out to her and pulls her close to him, running his talons down her back, marveling at the flat shape. She melts and folds into him, and he puts his chin on her hair. He hears her take a shuddering breath, and she tucks her arms around his waist, and she can't know what that means to turians.
So he asks, "You sure you don't want something closer to home?" as she buries her head in his shoulder.
She pulls away to look up to him. "I want someone I can trust. I want you. But if it makes you uncomfortable, if I came on too strong—" She looks away. That word again. Trust. Garrus runs a curled talon down the side of her jaw and returns her gaze to his.
"You make me nervous sometimes." Garrus admits. "But never uncomfortable." And they sit like that for a while, enjoying the silence between them, the hum of the ship. When he goes to move his shoulder because it's stiff, he finds her eyes closed, her head leaned over in a position that looks uncomfortable even for humans.
She's running herself to exhaustion. He lays her down on his cot and goes back to calibrating, but not before covering her with his thin blanket.
They help Liara become the Shadow Broker, retrieve the IFF, help Legion while the crew's abducted by the collectors. Soon, it's nearly time for the mission. It's do or die, and if he's going to die, he'd rather do it knowing where he stands with Shepard.
He's shaking as he presses the button on the elevator and runs a talon around the too-tight collar of his cheap suit as he enters her cabin.
She's waiting for him in a blue dress he's never seen before, the color of so many skies. It complements her umber skin perfectly, showing off her neck and the hard lines of her shoulders.
He stutters, fumbles through words he's spent hours trying to put together, lost. She doesn't let him, turns off the music and pulls off his gloves, tracing the palm of his hand with her fingers before moving to the sensitive skin where talons meet flesh.
She puts her other hand on his face, careful of the bandages, and pulls him down for a human kiss. Her full soft lips press against his skin, against the edges of his mouth. He responds as best as he can.
He doesn't like it when she pulls away, chewing on her lip and eyes wide, but it tells him this is more than stress relief and something in him gives way. Past or present, Shepard's been the most important friend he's ever had. "I want something to go right. Just this once," he murmurs.
To forget the galaxy is falling to pieces around him. To forget the Reapers and the collectors and his failure as a brother and a son. To forget that even though his mother might have a chance, his conversations with Solana and his father show the massive distance that's grown between him and his family. To forget just for a little while.
"Garrus," she breathes.
He doesn't know if she knows what it means, but he places his forehead against hers. She holds it for a long moment. Then she smiles at him, and it's the surface of the sun. He's burning, taking in her heat wherever they touch. He rubs the undamaged side of his face against her skin, flaring his mandible against hers.
She takes his hand and guides him to the bed. And it's awkward, but less awkward than he fears. Mostly a lot of "not there's" and "oh, that's good" and "am I doing this right?" Fact is, they're a team. Always have been. And it works.
And they're laying together, her soft human skin oddly cool against his plates. She's snuggled up to his side in her human way, and his talons rub circles on her shoulder. He looks down on her, smiling while she sleeps. He can see the slightest shade of orange from the cybernetics shining under her dark skin. And he slips in to something like sleep.
This. If Garrus closes his eyes, he can recall the scattered moment with perfect clarity. It's an infinitely precious gift, this second chance, what he has of it, and he's not going to waste a moment of his time with Shepard.
His omnitool beeps a fifteen-minute warning and he wakes with a groan. Shepard shifts beside him. "Garrus?" she opens her eyes, blinking slowly.
"Time to go rid the galaxy of some collectors."
"No rest for the wicked," she sighs, getting up. "Or peace for the weary." And for the third time in this new life, he sees her façade start to crack. "I don't know if we can do this."
"We can," he says with certainty. Of course they can do this. So he presses his mouth to hers and places his forehead on hers, and they suit up.
The entire team's tense in the briefing room. Shepard herself stalks back and forth. He taps her on the shoulder and sends her a pointed look before casting a glance at the other people in the room. She nods.
She forces herself to take a deep breath, rolling back her shoulders. She shakes off the tension. When she speaks, it's with confidence. She gives them their roles, makes him a leader of one of the fire teams.
After everything, after her words of trust and keeping him at her six and the time they'd spent in her cabin earlier, this is what finally gets him. She's confident enough in him to let him lead. She trusts him enough with her team. He's not sure he'd trust himself that much, not after Omega.
But if she believes he can do this, then so can he. It's the first time in a long time he fights without her at his side, but they work beautifully. Moving in synchronized orbit, his visor highlighting entrances and exits and enemies on the HUD.
And then they're through the doors.
Even as he takes a shot to the waist, it barely clips him and he survives. The thing at the end is monstrous, but they take it down and blow the base with heavy ordinance. Fighting the whole of the collectors at their base, against impossible numbers and long odds, she brings them all home. A suicide mission—but one they survive thanks to Shepard.
And then she gets the call. The one from Hackett about a missing doctor, phrased just so that he knows she'll go. Long days waiting in the belly of the Normandy as her infiltration and extraction mission goes days past parameters. He knows she can take care of herself, but it's the unknown.
And then she appears on the Crew Deck in scuffed armor, blood matting her thick, coiled hair that has long since escaped her tight bun. "They're coming. Garrus. No time left," her voice hoarse, pained.
All he can do is hold her as she staggers against him. He places his head against hers, mindful of her head injury, and he murmurs soft nonsense to her as he guides her to Doc Chakwas, making sure to note the bullet hole in her leg.
As he watches the Doc fix her up, he hears a voice in his ear, so quiet it hardly registers.
::Ashes to ashes—we all fall down::