Sorry, I had to take a break. I'm getting married in two weeks, and things are crazy! This will probably be the last update until June, when things calm down. Don't hate me! This is when it finally starts getting good. Expect Garrus and Shepard fluff in the next couple chapters. Maybe.
There always comes a point after saying something so many times that it begins to sound more like noise than anything else.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'mfine
Imfine
Garrus wondered if he should start keeping tally of how many times she said it. He'd given her plenty of opportunities to talk to him on the shuttle ride, to let him help shoulder the burden she insisted on carrying, but she hadn't taken him up on his offers. I'm fine, she kept saying. I'm fine. It got a little less convincing every time; her voice almost didn't sound like the Commander Shepard he knew, but then again, he couldn't blame her.
As Garrus lowered the shuttle and engaged the landing sequence of the Kodiak, he glanced at the woman in question. Since their conversation two hours prior, she had not moved from her seat. Instead, she had turned her body away from his and activated one of the external cameras to watch the scenery as they flew over the countryside. The only time she spoke was to give him directions.
Go thirty kilometers north of the river, she told him.
Avoid flying over the small town.
Don't scare those cows.
She was backseat driving, but he didn't mind. At least she was saying something.
The entire time, he wondered what she was thinking about. As much as she tried to convince him otherwise, Garrus knew she wasn't okay—not really, anyway. She was obviously still reeling from the events of the last twenty-four hours, but he knew she'd sooner fight a Reaper with her bare fists than admit that to anyone. Commander Shepard was fine. She was always fine, even when she wasn't. Still, it was hard for Garrus to dismiss the lines of strain around her eyes and the taut line of her mouth that bespoke her concern for her brother.
Her eyes were scanning the information that rolled across her copiloting interface, brow set low in concentration. "Steady," she warned him.
Shakily, Garrus set the shuttle down in the clearing to which Shepard had directed him. It was a small, empty patch of soft grass smack-dab in the middle of a large field full of tall plants he didn't recognize. (No surprise there.) The overgrown glade didn't seem to serve any kind of purpose as far as he could tell, but the Kodiak's sensors told him that there was a small gravel road that led directly north from the clearing; Shepard certainly seemed to know where she was going and had a plan in mind, not that she shared this information with him or Tali. Since he valued his life, he didn't dare voice his questions.
He heard her take a deep breath and exhale slowly through her nose as the engines cooled with a muffled hiss. Garrus heard Tali shuffling around in the back of the Kodiak as she gathered their things and laid out their weapons so they could disembark, but at his side, Shepard made no move to get up. The engines whined quietly as the shuttle powered down.
Just as he was about to say something—though what, he wasn't sure—Shepard quietly interrupted him.
"Have you ever jumped off of something really tall?" she asked, her words heavy with something akin to wistfulness. "And I mean super tall, like a building or out of a drop shuttle."
He blinked at her uncomprehendingly. Of all the things he expected Shepard to say, this wasn't anywhere on that list. "Yeah, I guess so. We did training exercises like that back when I was in the military. Why?"
"Have you ever done it without a jump-jet to break your fall?"
"I'm alive right now, so no. What are you getting at, Shepard?"
She gave him a mirthless smile; he tried to remember the last time he had seen her smile—really smile, all bright teeth and crinkled eyes—but he couldn't recall. "I feel like I'm on top of a building and I forgot to pack my jump-jet, but I'm going to jump off anyway."
Oh.
He knew that feeling: your stomach flips and your chest feels like it's about to burst wide open, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It was the feeling they'd both had when they flew through the Omega-4 relay into the unknown, and afterwards when they limped back into dry dock, the crew completely at the Council's mercy. He'd also experienced something similar when he found himself standing outside of Shepard's door with a terrible bottle of wine, wearing civvies that were heinously out of fashion and didn't fit him quite right.
She was nervous.
Garrus hummed in sympathy, his mandibles clicking. Activating the coolant system for the Kodiak's engines, he swiveled his chair toward her and stood up and shrugged. "I don't see why you're nervous, Shepard. You're a biotic."
Her face soured even more as she gave him an incredulous look. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"You are a jump-jet."
She paused, considering this. Garrus held back a victorious flare of his mandibles as one corner of her mouth turned up in legitimate amusement. Finally. "And endure the migraine afterwards? No thank you."
"You'd rather fall to your death than have a headache?"
"A migraine is not just a headache."
"Sure it isn't."
"Have you ever had one?"
He stopped to think for a moment. "Uh… well, no. Not exactly."
"Then you have no room to comment."
He heard her words, but he knew what she truly meant.
I'm fine.
Rolling his eyes good-naturedly, Garrus held out a hand to help Shepard to her feet. She looked at his outstretched hand skeptically for a moment and, for one horrifying second, he thought she would scoff and stand up on her own. So when she finally placed her smaller, softer hand in his, he let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He yanked her to her feet and reached around her slight frame to grab her duffel bag from behind her seat, which he slung over his shoulder.
He gestured widely toward the back of the Kodiak, where Tali was waiting for them both. "Ladies first."
She turned to leave, but paused in the threshold of the cockpit as his words sank in. He knew she would turn around before she even did it. "Okay," Shepard drawled skeptically, one eyebrow raised, "I know Joker didn't teach you that one."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said innocently. For the millionth time, he was thankful that humans didn't understand turian subvocals. Solana always said he was a terrible liar.
Shepard jabbed a finger in his face. "Turians don't hold doors open for women because you guys had your feminist revolution-thing a thousand years ago, and I know Joker's been tutoring you after dinner in the starboard lounge every couple of nights. Don't lie to me, Vakarian," she said, but the small smile tugging at her lips betrayed her serious tone.
Damn. "How'd you figure it out?"
"It's my ship," she said simply, "and Joker has a big mouth. Side note, he would never be that polite to any woman. Ever. Now tell me who it was."
"Miranda."
"I don't think I've ever seen you two talk to each other outside of the conference room. Try again."
"Jack."
"That's not even remotely believable."
"Grunt?" he tried.
"What, are you going to go through the entire ship's roster or something?"
"Well, I can."
She threw up her hands exasperatedly. "Garrus, come on—"
He held up a hand to stop her mid-sentence, flaring his mandibles in a small smile. As amusing as it was to watch Shepard get worked up about something, he knew they couldn't stay in the Kodiak all day, try as she might to stall the inevitable. "All right, all right," he relented. "It was Kasumi, if you really must know. She yelled at me for not holding the door open for her when we were on the Citadel a few weeks back. I'd rather not repeat the experience, if it's all the same to you."
Shepard pondered this for a few moments. She still looked skeptical, but a flash of begrudging acceptance flashed through her eyes. "I… suppose that makes sense."
She pursed her lips, and Garrus knew she wanted to say more but had decided against it for some reason. Tilting his head to the side, Garrus asked, "What it to you, anyway?"
"I don't know." Shepard shrugged. She raked a hand through her hair. "I've just never heard you say that before. It was chivalrous. And very human, I might add."
"Just being polite."
"Polite. Sure."
She smiled at him then—a real smile, not one of the strained grimaces she'd been handing out over the last several hours—and suddenly, Garrus forgot what he was going to say next. As silence filled the space between them, Garrus was brought to the realization of how cramped the cockpit truly was. She was so close. He could see each individual freckle on the bridge of Shepard's nose, scattered across her olive skin like constellations, and he could make out the smattering of tiny silver scars near her temple; she never told him where she'd gotten those, but after everything Shepard told him earlier that morning, maybe he didn't want to know.
…or maybe he did.
It was a strange feeling, that. The yearning—no, the need—to know everything about Shepard's past, present, and future, but that unrelenting urge was always accompanied by overwhelming uncertainty. In a way, she reminded him of the salarian puzzle box his mother had given him for his ninth birthday. He remembered spending weeks agonizing over that box, staying up late under the covers with nothing but the light of an extremely out-of-date omnitool to spur him on. It seemed that no matter how many different ways he turned the box over in his hands, there was always a new clasp or hidden lever to be found. Some of them were decoys, meant to distract him from the real solution, and others were levers that would reset the entire thing and he would be forced to start all over.
Shepard, with her myriad of secrets and the pile of skeletons that no doubt hid in her closet, was like that puzzle box. One wrong move, an ill-timed wry comment, or a question that was too direct risked resetting the entire mechanism. Her jokes were the decoy switches and the buttons that distracted Garrus from the real prize she kept locked away, hidden behind years of ambiguity and impenetrable layers of armor she spent her whole life forging. But Garrus couldn't open Shepard by smashing her with a hammer, like he had done to the puzzle box all those years ago. Nothing was ever that easy with her.
One wrong move.
He couldn't risk resetting the puzzle box. He'd come so far.
Pull back.
…but she was so close.
Wait for reinforcements.
There was a crease between her delicately arched brows. It was the same face she always wore whenever she was faced with a potentially explosive situation—literally or figuratively, though it was more often the former of the two. She didn't know what to expect and didn't want to assume anything, because assumptions got you killed, both on the battlefield and off of it. Shepard was careful like that. He could practically hear her mind working, scanning his face the same way she would check the corners of a room for threats before entering. Sweep right, sweep left, and keep your finger off the trigger until hostile presence was confirmed. Instinct.
He really didn't like having that expression turned on him.
Before he could help himself, Garrus reached out and touched the small indentation between her eyebrows, smoothing it out with a dulled talon to relieve the tension and uncertainty that lined her face. His hand lingered near her face, barely brushing one of her sharp cheekbones, and he couldn't help but drop his gaze to her lips. Spirits, how he loved her mouth. It was so—
Full retreat.
The distance between them seemed to widen, although neither of them moved from their spots. The cockpit was no longer cramped and stifling, but cold. Hollow. Subdued, like a candle had been abruptly blown out and all that remained was the faint smell of hot wax and smoke that lingered in the air around them, a subtle reminder of what could have been. Garrus dropped his hand back to his side, clenching his hand into a fist to keep in control. A strange expression crossed Shepard's face as she sensed the change, too, though Garrus couldn't say for sure what the expression was. If he didn't know better, he'd say she was disappointed—confused?—but the expression was gone too quickly for him to know for sure.
He wanted to say something. He knew he should say something. Dammit, what was he supposed to say? He watched as Shepard's lips parted, poised to make a sarcastic quip and pull his ass from the fire yet again, when another voice miraculously saved them both.
"Uh, guys?" Tali called out from the back, startling them. The quarian was glancing between them and the door, which was still sealed shut. "You know you have to unlock the door before we can leave, right?"
And just like that, the spell was broken.
"Right. The door." Shepard breathed. She looked up at Garrus and raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's your job, pilot."
And with that, she turned and swept out of the cockpit as if he hadn't just been about to lean in and press his forehead against hers. The electricity that seemed to follow her everywhere she went dissipated as soon as she was gone. Garrus watched as she stepped over next to Tali and they began to murmur inaudibly to each other. Spirits, how could she act so damn casual?
Once the door locks were overridden, Garrus joined them in the back of the shuttle. He noticed that Shepard was busy readjusting the ever-present pistol strapped to her hip, carefully avoiding his eyes, which made Garrus' mouth sour imperceptibly. Tali handed him his rifle, which he gratefully accepted and attached to his back. He probably wouldn't need it for meeting her uncle, but he'd been wrong before.
Finally, the shuttle door began to slide open, the pneumatic seals hissing and popping loudly. Shepard and Tali both winced as the pale morning sunlight spilled into the hold and they all shielded their eyes from the unusually bright sun. Nobody spoke.
Garrus wasn't sure what he expected. He'd seen pictures of Earth before and watched a few vids about the human homeworld back when he was in school, but he didn't consider himself to be an expert by any means; he knew about a famous city called London and a terrifying place Shepard called Australia that was full of animals that wanted to kill you, but Kansas was a complete unknown to him. He knew that Earth had numerous ecosystems with vastly different climate zones, and that over half the world was covered with salt water. He always thought it would be nice to live on a planet like that—Palaven was hot and humid pretty much everywhere, the poles notwithstanding, and the seasons hardly changed at all. Had he the opportunity to travel the galaxy for mere shits and giggles, he probably would have made the human homeworld his first pit stop.
Nothing Shepard told him about the area prepared him for what he saw.
As their eyes adjusted to the sudden onslaught of sunlight, Garrus heard Tali whisper, "Keelah, Shepard. It's… beautiful."
It was. The grassy clearing they had landed in was lush and vibrant with assorted flowers and a few trees here and there, but beyond the edge of the clearing lay an ocean of tall plants with narrow, flat leaves that we planted in precise rows. The plants stretched for miles in every visible direction, undulating in the gentle, warm breeze that smelled strangely sweet in a way that Garrus had never known before. The entire area was flatter than any land he'd ever seen before—it had to be terraformed, right? There was no way that land this flat could occur naturally.
Sporadically placed throughout the enormous field were large metal harvester VIs that towered hundreds of feet up into the air above the tall plants; some were half-rusted, others looked as sleek as though they had been purchased yesterday. They shifted and groaned from exertion as their thick mechanical limbs stretched above the field to water the plants around them, and Garrus could see the occasional drone float by the gargantuan harvesters to dust the crops with what he assumed was either fertilizer or pesticides. From where he stood, they looked as tiny as flies next to the harvester machines.
Garrus could hear Tali mumbling to herself and taking pictures with her omnitool like a damned tourist ("If the Flotilla could eat levo, this would be a goldmine for the agriculture ships!"), but next to him, Shepard said absolutely nothing. Instead, she looked across the seemingly-endless sea of greenery with a weary look in her eyes, her lips drawn into a thin line. He heard her swallow thickly, and she dropped her gaze to the grassy ground below them both. She should have looked happy to be on her homeworld, but Garrus thought she looked anything but happy. In fact, she looked like she'd unknowingly stumbled into a nest of rachni that she didn't have time to deal with. She was frustrated, but why?
"I can see for miles," Tali murmured, awestruck. She turned to Shepard with wide eyes. "I'm probably biased since I don't actually have a planet to live on, but this place is gorgeous, Shepard. It's like the view from the top of a mountain without actually having to climb it. And the machinery…" she trailed dreamily. "I've never seen original human machinery before. Everything in Council space always has influences from the other races."
"What, the harvesters?" Shepard asked incredulously. "Those things are annoying as hell. They break down all the time—at least, they used to break down all the time when I lived here. Nate and I were always the ones who had to fix them when their programming went sour."
"Harvesters," Garrus said flatly. "That's awfully smiliar to—"
"Reapers. Yeah, I know. The irony is not lost on me, Garrus."
"At least these look considerably friendlier."
"You're right about that. They don't go one and on about being the vanguard of our destruction and all that garbage. No lasers, either."
"That certainly makes me feel better," Tali quipped, chuckling. "Still, I can't believe you got to live here. I can't believe how beautiful it is."
Garrus hummed in amusement. "I don't know, Tali. Tuchanka is still at the top of my list for most beautiful planets. The rubble and thresher maws really give it a… homey touch."
Next to him, Shepard snorted softly. "I'll make sure Wrex knows that. Maybe he'll send you some real estate brochures, though I don't think any of the other krogan will take nicely to having a turian around."
"You're probably right. I guess this place will have to be my second choice."
"I feel like I should be insulted by that."
"You're not?"
"Not really, since this place is frozen over half of the year. You might want to stick to Palaven for the heat, lizard boy," she mused, scanning the distant horizon. She was staring out across the field with a peculiar expression on her face. Her eyes were clouded and distant as she surveyed the open field as if she was looking for something specific, although Garrus got the feeling she wasn't really seeing anything at all.
As soon as she noticed him watching her, the look on her face disappeared and was replaced with a determined set of her jaw. Shepard squared her shoulders and hopped lightly out of the Kodiak. "We'd better get going. We've got about two kilometers to walk and we're burning daylight."
Tali blinked. "Two kilometers? Why can't we just fly there?"
"My uncle was a paranoid old bastard when I left, and I don't imagine he's gotten any better in the past twelve years. If he saw a Cerberus shuttle approaching his house, I guarantee we wouldn't get a friendly welcome." Garrus stepped down next to Shepard and handed over her duffel bag when she reached for it. She beckoned them forward. "Let's move, people."
If Shepard was being completely honest with herself, she had no idea what she was doing.
For thirty minutes she led them down the worn, gravel path that Shepard knew led straight to her uncle's house—her house, she had to remind herself. The property was still under her name, technically, but she didn't know how being dead for two years affected things like that. For all she knew, Nate was the legal owner now. She hoped he had taken care of the place like mom and dad wanted.
The duffel bag full of her armor, weapons, and other provisions bounced uncomfortably against her hip as the three of them walked the seemingly-endless path that split the giant cornfield; it would be a good harvest this year, she noticed. The sound of crunching gravel beneath her feet provided a soothing backdrop against the softly rustling stalks of corn and the birdsongs that floated on the wind. The sun was warm against her skin just the way it used to be.
It was different. It was the same. She couldn't really explain it, even if she wanted to.
The gravity was heavier than it was on the Normandy. That much was for sure. The air smelled like wildflowers and freshly-laid fertilizer; not an unpleasant smell, but a far cry from the sharp smell of recycled air on her ship. She recognized the small white house on the far side of the cornfield—the Larsons probably still lived there—and silently congratulated the family on the bountiful harvest they were most likely going to have a few months from now. Shepard even recognized a few of the harvester mechs; the older, more rusted machines all had been given names once upon a time, though she couldn't recall them at that moment. The newer models were unfamiliar.
Tali and Garrus had fallen into their normal positions behind Shepard. She could hear them murmuring to each other as they marveled at the spectacular vista that surrounded them. Occasionally, she would answer a question about the cornfield, the native plant life, or the mechs that were placed every half kilometer throughout the fields. They seemed impressed by how flat the land was and it took her several minutes to convince that that no, it had not been terraformed or augmented in any way. But the closer they got to Tib's house, the quieter they became until the only noise between them was the sound of their footsteps.
As the sun crept higher in the pale sky of the early morning, Shepard became more and more nervous. She had no idea what to expect from Tib—he might not have a lead on Nate at all. Maybe they were wasting their time out here. They should have gone to the city instead of making this pit stop. Thousands of what ifs raced through her head with every single step, and by the time the gravel road forked and Shepard directed the trio to the left toward her old house, she was wound up tighter than a spring.
"How much farther is this place?" Tali asked suddenly, breaking the uneasy quiet.
Shepard glanced back over her shoulder. "Not far."
"How far is 'not far?'"
"See the little blue house near that rusty harvester?" she asked, pointing at the horizon. "No, not that one. The one behind it. That's where we're going."
The house in question was tiny next to the behemoth that stood next to it, but the pale blue siding and the large patch of flat grass it stood in made the house obvious to everyone. There was nothing around it for miles, save the half-grown cornfield—out in the bald open, her mother used to say to her father. If someone had a telescope on the bluff six miles away, they would be able to look in the windows and see what kind of material her shirt was made out of. The visibility of the house used to bother Shepard when she was a scrappy teenager devoted to hiding from the Reds, but the obvious speck of blue in the sea of fluttering green plants gave present-day Shepard more comfort than she thought it would.
Garrus raised a browplate as he squinted at the house. "It's not exactly well-hidden."
She looked over her shoulder at him, rolling her eyes. "It's a house, not a military bunker," she told him flatly. "What were you expecting?"
"I don't know. I guess I just expected your childhood home to have more guns and mayhem in the immediate vicinity."
"You're unbelievable."
"Well, I'm just saying—"
"The house is old," she interrupted. "It's out in the open like that because it used to be in the middle of a decently-sized patch of trees about two hundred years ago, or so my dad told me. The Larsons," she explained, pointing to the house at the opposite end of the field, "bought the surrounding land and turned it into a commercial biofuel cornfield about eighty years back. My family gets a cut of their profits every harvest as part of their contract with them."
"How long has your family lived here?" Tali asked.
Shepard's footsteps faltered briefly at her question. "My dad's side of the family has lived here since the 1800s, give or take a couple decades. Nate and I… we, uh—well, we broke that tradition."
"Sore subject?" Garrus ventured.
"It's not something I'm proud of."
She knew they wanted to ask more. Shepard could feel their curiosity brimming as they continued to walk, but she couldn't bring herself to strike up friendly conversation to keep them all distracted. Even blasting her way through the Collector base hadn't been this nerve-wracking. Still, her nerves didn't stop her from smiling when Tali reached out and plucked leaves off the corn stalks that lined the road and analyzed them with her omnitool, muttering about research and plant fibers.
When they finally arrived at the end of the gravel road, they stopped at the fence that separated the grassy lawn from the edge of the massive cornfield. Shepard had to remind herself to breathe as she rested her hands on the top of the fence, leaning heavily against it. Her eyes drifted over the scene before her.
Sweet Jesus, what am I doing?
The house itself was in good shape, as far as Shepard could tell. The light blue paint that coated the weathered siding was a little faded, but not peeling or cracked like she expected it to be, and the white wraparound porch had recently been swept clean; the old porch swing rocked back and forth in the soft breeze with a gentle creaking noise that sounded oh-so familiar to Shepard's ears, reminding her of long afternoons spent on the swing with Nathan as they shucked corn for dinner. There were clothes hung on the line in the side yard, flapping lazily in the breeze—she spied a few simple white shirts and a pair of well-worn jeans covered in oil stains—and she could see the corner of the prefab building attached to the old garage at the back of the house.
It was all so painfully familiar. Aside from the larger lilac bushes and the new landscaping around the house—Nate's doing, probably—it all looked exactly the same as it did when she left to join the Alliance. Not a shingle was out of place. Shepard half-expected to look up and find Nate sprawled out on the porch swing with a hand-written research journal from their mother's lab, poring over her old botany notes with the end of a pen in his mouth and a furrow between his brows that matched Shepard's. She could practically hear Uncle Tib calling from the kitchen for him to put the damned book away and do some chores for once, but Nate always pretended he couldn't hear him.
The short, white picket fence that separated the lawn from the dense cornfield was the only thing keeping Shepard from stepping onto her family's property. She could have stepped over it if she wanted to, it was so short, but she felt like she'd taken a shotgun blast of cryo ammo to the chest and couldn't move an inch. The small gate taunted her with each shift of the winds, creaking louder and louder the longer she stood there, frozen in place.
This was supposed to feel like coming home, right? It was supposed to feel good.
Shepard didn't feel that way at all. Rather, she felt like she was about to have a heart attack and die right there on the spot. Sadly, between keeling over and speaking to her uncle, the heart attack seemed like the more appealing option.
She felt Garrus step closer to her, falling into his usual place at her right shoulder. "Orders, Shepard?"
She almost didn't hear him. He floated in her peripherals; his mandibles were fluttering nervously as he glanced back and forth between the house and her face, and his subharmonics were tinged with some kind of emotion she couldn't quite place, but sounded shamefully close to worrisome. Garrus was better than most turians when it came to human facial expressions, so Shepard knew there was no way he missed the panicked set of her jaw, and his visor was probably telling him how fast her heart was beating.
Shepard curled a thumb around her index finger and squeezed, popping her knuckle. Orders. She could do that. "All right, you two wait here for a minute," she told them, reaching for the gate's latch. "I'll scout ahead and see if the old man's inside."
"We'll be here, Shepard," Tali told her, nodding resolutely.
The gate swung wide, arcing outward toward the house, and Shepard took a deep breath before stepping across the property line for the first time in twelve years. She expected something to blow up. When it didn't, the tension eased out of her chest like a shard of melting ice.
The front walkway had been repaved. Her boots landed heavily against the cement, sounding louder then she expected and loud enough to make her uncomfortable; a noisy approach was an easy way to get yourself killed. Shepard tried to remind herself that this wasn't a battlefield.
Go in, get the information, get out. Go in, get the information, get out.
It was supposed to be easy, but she knew it was only a matter of time before something went horribly, horribly wrong. She expected nothing less from one of her ground missions.
Thankfully, Uncle Tiberius didn't make her wait.
She saw the bullet slice through the air before she fully processed the deafening sound of the gunshot. It felt wrong not to shout for her team, charge, and wreak havoc like usual, but she managed to rein in her instincts just in time. Shepard merely froze in place and kept her feet planted as she watched the bullet bury itself in the ground directly in front of her toes, missing her by millimeters. It didn't take long for Shepard to assess the situation and react accordingly. In an instant, she let the strap of her bag slide off her shoulder and fall to the ground, the plates of her hardsuit clattering noisily within the canvas lining. She took a deep breath through her nose. Slowly, she stretched her hands out to either side of her body, inching them up and away from the pistol that was clearly strapped to her hip.
"Shepard!" Garrus shouted, his subvocals flanging with restrained alarm. Two sets of footsteps approached her from behind.
"Nobody move!" she barked, not taking her eyes off the windows of the house and forming one hand into a fist to tell them to hold their ground. The footsteps ceased, but she heard the telltale sound of Garrus' rifle extending to its full length. "Back up to where you were. Slowly. Stay behind the gate until I say otherwise. That's an order, both of you."
The sound of retreating footfalls told her they were back in their places, though they obviously weren't happy about it. Her eyes darted between the windows of the house—one of the second-story windows was cracked open, but she couldn't see the barrel of a gun sticking out of it, so Tib had to be positioned somewhere else. Where the hell was he aiming from? There were only so many vantage points on the house, and nobody knew where they were better than Shepard.
Taking a deep breath, Shepard shifted her right foot forward through the grass; it wasn't a full step, but it was enough to earn another bullet in the ground at her toes to keep her from moving any further. She grit her teeth. Typical.
"All right, Tib," she called out, her voice carrying across the clearing. For the millionth time, she wished she'd tied up her hair before leaving the Normandy—the wavy strands kept blowing into her eyes. She held her hands up high and squinted as she scanned the house and the front lawn. "Enough of your games. I'm here to talk to you about Nathan."
She waited, straining to hear her uncle's gruff voice, but heard nothing more than the songbirds and the rustling of the surrounding cornfield.
"Shepard," Tali called out, sounding tense. "I'm not picking up any heat signatures from inside the house. It might be a motion-sensitive turret set to guard the house."
"No, he's here. Keep scanning," she told them. Clearing her throat, Shepard raised her voice again. "Drop the tinfoil hat act, Chatham. Come out and talk to me. We can be adults about this."
No response.
"I don't like this," she heard Garrus mumble.
She didn't like it either. Shepard had expected her uncle to shoot first and ask questions later, but she figured she would at least have the option of talking him down first. This… this was strange. She had to draw him out and work from there.
She laced her fingers behind her head, bracing her arms there as she looked for him. "Last I checked, Tiberius, this property is under my name. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have every right to legally kick your ass from here to next Tuesday without a second thought. Be smart about this, sir."
Shepard waited. Her eyes darted from window to window, looking for any kind of movement, but saw nothing more than drapes fluttering in the wind behind the open glass panes.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are…" she taunted.
One.
Two.
Three.
"Name and rank, soldier."
Shepard's chest deflated and the exhaled a small, quiet laugh. She couldn't help the small smile that split her face at the sound of his familiar voice, but she still couldn't see where Tib was. She stood at attention, saluting. "Commander Jane M. Shepard, sir. At your service."
"Try again."
Shepard's smile faltered, and a frown creased her brow. Her hand dropped. "Sorry, what?"
"I said try again," Tib said, his voice bouncing around the lawn. The breeze carried his voice from fifty different directions, disorienting Shepard. What the hell was he trying to do?
"Tib," she said flatly. "It's me. I just need to ask you a few questions about Nathan, then I'll be out of your hair."
"Commander Jane Shepard was killed in action two and a half years ago," the man ground out, his voice tinged with bitterness and thinly-veiled anger. Somewhere to her left, she heard the telltale pop of a heat sink and the metallic scrape of a new one being pushed into place, but when she glanced over to where he should have been, Tib was not there.
"Now I am going to ask you one more time," he told her, his voice dangerously low. "Who are you and why are you wearing Commander Shepard's face? Are you a clone or somethin'? 'Cause I saw that Cerberus shuttle you rode in on, so you'd better be straight with me. If you tell the truth, I'll kill you quickly."
Shepard couldn't help it. Old habits die hard, she always said.
Rebelliousness rose in her chest at his condescending tone of voice, which was a far cry from the gruff, harsh warmth of the voice he usually reserved for her. She rolled her eyes and sighed exasperatedly. "For fuck's sake, Tib, it's me. Enough with this goddamn paranoid threatrical production and help me find my brother because we've only got six days before he gets killed, and I don't want that any more than you do."
"Five and a half," Tali called out from behind Shepard. Her voice was hard. Shepard didn't have to look over her shoulder to know that Tali was prepared to sic her drone on Tib without a second thought, wherever he was hiding.
"All right, five and a half days," Shepard amended.
There was a pause. Finally, Tib called out, sounding further away and off to her right somewhere, "You're a clever clone, I'll give you that. You sound exactly like her."
"Maybe because I am her? Jesus," she cursed, losing her patience. "Do you want me to prove it to you?"
"You can try."
Shepard's jaw set and her eyes sharpened into steel. She took a deep breath through her nose to compose herself. They didn't have time for this kind of garbage—no, Nate didn't have time. She had to end this and end it fast.
Shepard shrugged. "Uh, well… you gave me a live grenade for my fifteenth birthday and I blew up your car on accident. You made me run laps around the Larson's cornfield until I passed out."
"There would be records of that. Too easy. Two more tries, princess, and then I'll blow your fuckin' head off."
Shepard muttered angrily and breathed deeply, counting to ten in an attempt to control her temper. She remembered everything Samara had taught her about control back on the Normandy.
Your temper is your greatest weapon and your worst enemy. Do not use it unless you have to.
If only it was really that easy.
Shepard wracked her brain, trying to come up with something that would convince her uncle she wasn't a clone. "You were the best man at my parents' wedding and my mom wanted to murder you because you slept with the maid of honor in a closet. Sophie, I think her name was."
"Even if that were true," Tib ground out, his voice sounding significantly tenser than it had a minute ago, "Jane wasn't born when that happened. I want fact, not hearsay. One more chance before I shoot you, girl, or you can take the easy way out and turn around and never come back here. Save me the trouble of hiding your bodies."
She tried to hold it in—really, she did—but her temper finally got the best of her, blue sparks skittering across her skin as pure rage blossomed in her chest. She did not have time for this.
"Listen here, you paranoid motherfucking hillbilly," she snapped, dropping her hands to her sides. She clenched her fists and glared furiously at the house as if she was directing her anger at the front door. "You're Major Tiberius Chatham and you served with my parents in the First Contact War until they died on Shanxi, and I know you blame yourself for their deaths even though it wasn't your fault. You enjoy shooting Amazon delivery drones and drinking shitty whisky on the front porch and you taught me how to be a good soldier that my father would be proud of. You hate pasta because it feels like glue in your mouth, you have three tattoos on your leg of the names of the women you've loved, and you keep your condoms in a pair of blue argyle socks in your nightstand." Shepard stopped, taking a breath to calm her emotions. "Now, if we're all done playing the guessing game, I'd appreciate it if you would let me in my own goddamn house so we can talk."
There was no sound for the longest time. Shepard heard Garrus and Tali shuffle nervously, clearly wanting to move up but inclined to obey their orders. Shepard ignored them both and listened intently, trying to pick out her uncle's exact location.
She hoped it would work. She had no idea if it would—Tib could reason his way out of anything, even if his reasoning made no sense whatsoever—but she hoped her outburst wouldn't earn her a hole in the chest, at the very least.
Shepard held her breath and waited.
Her ears perked when she heard the sound of electricity fizzling out, and she couldn't help but smile. She did not flinch as her uncle materialized in front of her, dropping the tactical cloak she knew he had been using the entire time. Sneaky bastard must've upgraded it over the years. She was surprised the thing still worked.
He was just as big as she remembered—towering above her with a bandana wrapped around his forehead, his shoulders broader than a doorway and his chest like a barrel—but she didn't feel intimidated like she used to. Instead, she looked up into his tan, weathered face and dropped her hands to her sides, finally relaxing.
The wild-looking man reached out, touching Shepard's cheek with more gentleness than she thought possible. His voice was hardly above a whisper. "Lou? Is it really…"
"Hey, Uncle Tib," she greeted wryly, giving him a sad smile. "I'm home."
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