Disclaimer: Chapter 1.
Took me longer than I expected to get this one out. I'm going to go ahead and blame video games (hey, it's video games that got me here, anyway). I'm very, very flattered by all the readers and reviewers! It makes me feel a lot more pride than is probably healthy for someone like me to see so many people praise and enjoy my writing. You all are awesome.
Garrus came down from his set-up feeling out of sorts. His armor and sniper rifle seemed lighter, but instead of this applying to him as a measure of relief, he felt disoriented. He was afraid to move his arms too far, to sweep his rifle too much as he returned it to sling against his back. His limbs felt too free, and every motion seemed exaggerated to him as a result.
But, this weight being gone... it's a good thing, right? Lantar Sidonis is dead. Paid for his crimes of killing the ten good men who trusted him. Garrus hadn't seen it coming, but like a true turian, he fixed his mistake. It was behind him.
And he had no clue what to do next.
He walked to Shepard, who had earlier blindsided him with a baffling question. Her, of all people, who easily encouraged him to take the shot on Dr. Saleon, who did what she had to do in every mission, even if it meant casualties, actually turned to him and asked, "Are you sure?" It shocked him, but she easily dropped whatever it was she was unsure about and agreed. Just like he knew Shepard would, because she always gets the job done.
Or... Maybe, somehow, he expected her to do something else. She paused a long moment in front of his scope. No, thinking like this will just run his brain into circles. He needs to get back to the Normandy. Wash his facial plates with some cold water and menthol astringent paste, then have a good, long sleep.
Shepard had agreed to returning, and they were walking towards a taxi, but something seemed to take her interest and she stopped in her tracks. "Commander?" Thane called to her, and she glanced to him, back to whatever she was looking at, then turned to her team again.
"You two return to the Normandy without me. I'm going to go check up on something while I'm here."
"Of course," Thane had answered. Garrus merely gave a nod.
"Dismissed." With that, she pulled out her omni-tool display and marched off the way Shepard always seems to when she's in her armor. He watched after her until Thane croaked up again.
"Garrus? Are you coming?"
"You go on without me. I'll catch up."
"Very well."
Garrus wasn't entirely sure where the sudden curiosity came from, but he was glad that Thane didn't question it and went along with his own business. It left Garrus to investigate where Shepard was so interested in going without someone hanging over his shoulder, something a number of the other crewmembers would have done. He first traced down to where Shepard had her eyes drawn and distracted. He wasn't terribly surprised to see a holo-advertisement in direct line.
But he was a little surprised to see the advertisement was for Citadel, the film.
Spirits, he had heard about this movie being made, and it was joked on more than once that if the Great Culture War lasted until this vid's release, he would be forced to endure it. And by "joked" he meant "threatened". But actually seeing clips of it in a random trailer showcased as a holographic tube... that was different. And more than a little scary. The acting didn't exactly look stellar. He wouldn't possibly be in it, thankfully; even if they casted for parts for those who hadn't died, there was no way his name would make it in there without a lot of hell being raised by his family.
All that considered, it sure looked like Shepard went off alone to go see the flick. Garrus groaned and even felt his shoulders slump in exasperation as he pulled up his own omni-tool to find the nearest showing. He really didn't want to see that stupid movie.
The asari casted for specific parts were the most accurate to their portrayal, not uncommon since most film productions have an asari bias. But Saren's part was... eh, then again, it might be better that Screen Saren was different from the real thing. Ashley Williams, being dead, was portrayed with her own name, but the resemblance ended there. Really, it was bizarre watching another Williams on screen praise progressiveness towards alien cooperation and claim to be the same stubborn Alliance woman who didn't seem sure if she should glower at her alien teammates or not.
The woman who was casted for Shepard was someone he recognized in another film one of his men brought in. In that, she played a sassy-but-sensitive independent woman who just needed a little buff and polish. Her portrayal of Shepard's only difference from was a gravelly voice and N7 armor. And the movements during combat scenes... they were just all wrong. This woman obviously had no military training before, completely lacking in fluidity and holding her Predator like a little Raikou (which is a damn fine way to fracture your wrist). And those things weren't even what he hated the most about this Shepard.
This Shepard did almost everything alone, and that included most battles. This might have been fine for making more suspenseful scenes, but, even with a different Shepard, it grated on Garrus. Shepard always needed someone fighting with her, damnit. Her tactical style demanded it. Hell, he had enough of an issue accepting this new crew of teammates as people to guard her back when he wasn't on team. But... the thought of her fighting without back-up?
Spirits, this movie was terrible. Why should he even bother watching it?
"Hey, Garrus... They just announced who they were casting as Commander Shepard for the Citadel movie."
"Uh huh."
"She was in that film that... Are you listening?"
"I'm trying to clean up this rifle."
"That doesn't require your ears."
"And how I regret that right now."
"Aww, what? You don't want to talk about the movie? But I'll be taking the whole team to see it. My treat."
"What the hell, Sidonis? Fine, my former commander's death bothers me. What did I ever do to you that you have to be such an ass about this?"
"It's just funny to see our very own Archangel get choked up on something. That you're just a mere mortal like the rest of us. And the one thing that seems to do it every time is—"
"Garrus?"
He blinked and looked up at her from where he was focused on the rolling credits. She was smiling one of those mysterious smiles that she normally didn't sport around crew and teammates, and that made him look that much more exposed than he already did. He shivered with a weird feeling inside his armor. Unable to find better words at the moment, he gave a nod and stood. "Shepard."
"Did you follow me into here?"
"Sort of. I figured out where you were going and went after you."
A brow raised, and the smile didn't so much disappear as fade into the movements of her lips. "I was just curious about what kind of movie this would make. Not... exactly accurate, was it?"
"I'd say you're famous, now, but the event they based this film on was what made your name in the galaxy." He felt himself ease and they started to walk out.
"You're lucky you weren't in it. Unless you were one of those five or six turians in the crew." She shook her head. "I think their writer didn't know what they meant about the Normandy being a joint project for the Alliance and the Hierarchy. Hell, remember how the brass tried to jump down my throat for having any aliens on board, especially 'turians'?"
"What can I say? Our races have too much in common to ever get along."
He saw her nod as the doors to the theater slid to let them pass. The bright artificial light of the Citadel rained down on them, making him squint as they made their way towards a transit station again.
Her hand press into the softer joint of the elbow in his armor, though it wasn't the hard yank he associated with pulling one another into cover or to get attention. "So, why did you follow me in here?"
He looked down at it, seeing her still just as armored as he, and up to her face. She had one of those more blank expressions he associated with her during her inquiries, as if she was reserving judgement to react until she heard the facts she needed. "Well, I, ah..." What should he say? It's not like she was going to get into any fights, and he didn't want anything to do with seeing this stupid film, which turned out to be every bit as bad as he knew it was going to be.
Sidonis was going to bring out the whole team to see it. That was impossible now, but Garrus still watched it. Without Sidonis, without his men, as was the plan all too short a time ago, and even if that much could have happened, Shepard was alive. The intended impact was gone, right? Except, somehow, it still gnawed on him. Shepard was dead, when the movie was made. She died alone, her back unguarded from the Collectors and, literally, from the vacuum of space itself. He placed his gauntleted hand over hers, trying to chase away images of the real Shepard his head easily superimposed in those lonely battle scenes. "I told you I'd always have your back, Shepard."
"Hmm." There was a different smile he saw a flash of, but he didn't get much more than a glance of it before she bowed her head, then pulled her hand away to give him a good-hearted slap on the back. "Let's get back to the ship. You're probably tired after a day like this."
He nodded. "You're right." And not another word needed to be said.
The next day cycle started with Garrus feeling refreshed and with a clear enough head to find some redundancies in the Thanix's targeting systems, effectively cutting out hours from his daily calibrations made necessary by the instability of the iron-unranium-tungsten alloy suspended by the zero core's electromagnetic field. It turns out that the previous weapon he upgraded upon already had very fine program of its own for drawing a proper amount of energy from the zero core, and it could easily have different functions plugged in the calculations, which meant the auxiliary program he slaved over in addition to the base systems was largely superfluous. Now, his biggest concern would be optimizing firing algorithms, which was still something of busy work, but it cleared his head easy enough.
Unfortunately, that had a downside; now that being left behind while Shepard took two other teammates with her ground-side was no longer a change to get ahead of his work, that meant half of his day was spent on trying to find something to do with himself if he wasn't brought along. So, when he heard the announcement that they were going back towards Omega, he'd already decided to insist on Shepard to bring him with her the next chance he got to talk to her. The last thing he wanted was to fidget around on a human ship with fidgeting humans. At least on the first Normandy he could avoid the humans by repairing the Mako.
He never got to, because, although Shepard did come by the Main Battery herself to talk, their conversation veered way off from where he expected it to... a completely different reason to be nervous than their suicide mission. When she left, wearing a sly simper, he returned to his console with all thoughts of what he'd originally intended to talk about with her blanked from his mind. Shepard wanted him, or at the very least wanted to have a little fun with him. He stared without direction at the holographic display before him and tried not to think of how she purposefully chased him in his own space away from this very console leaned herself against the cool metal surface now below his gloved fingers.
Shepard and him.
A human and a turian.
The first thing coming to his mind as a course of action was to look up how much porn was on the extranet for such a pairing, which was supposed to be an easy out in how common it was before he realized what he just typed out and nearly smacked himself for what he was catching himself doing. His self-reprimand didn't last long before the results came up, which, ah, were a lot.
Like, a lot a lot.
Just to make sure he was interpreting it right, he plugged in a couple different alien pairings, and it actually was one of the more popular ones (that didn't include the asari). Especially for male turians and female humans, which was pretty baffling how damn convenient that was. Wait, no, that's not convenient at all. Porn is just porn; there's no realism in it and it usually caters to one audience, which is usually male. So these were either produced for turian males who like the idea of dominating human women, or human males who had a kink for seeing their women being dominated by aliens. It was going to disregard any chiralty issues, any comfortable or pleasurable positions for either race, and showed "techniques" that would normally injure someone of either race.
Knowing all that didn't stop him from clicking a link or two.
Ah, well. Okay, so he certainly isn't interested in cross-species intercourse for the sake of cross-species intercourse, and he gained that much from the first couple of vids. But, from the look of things, the act itself was pretty straight forward. And, hmm, maybe this vid isn't so bad. Can't help but wonder if Shepard would back into his thrusts like that...
Okay, so the act itself doesn't seem to have much variation between the races, so there's that. But he'll still have to do some research. And do some preparation. Like condoms. He might need special ones; the kind he tended to use had spermicide meant for turians, so a normal one could do as much damage to Shepard as going bare. There had to be at least one pharmacy in the Citadel that carries them.
Garrus started typing in the search engine, though two misfortunes happened: first, he hadn't cleared his previous search inquiry, and second, his search settings had the results coming up for the inquiry before it was finished being typed. The result was a query for "turian human porn citadel" with the top hitting return a thumbnail for another porno-vid showcasing a human woman that looked very much like the actress in the film he saw not long ago with three turian men flanking her, not a one wearing a stitch of clothing. "Slutadel—Scene 12 of 23—Crew Gangbang".
He slammed his hand down onto the console to close the offending window, using such force that the smooth surface below the display gained hairline cracks. He quickly cleared the history and shut everything except what was purely work-related off.. Spirits, he'd never hated the nature of the Extranet as much as he did right at this moment.