He floated in the dark space between waking and sleeping, not quite at peace but as close as he'd been to it in a very long time. There was no magic pill or elixir to cure him of this disease of doubt, but he could continue to chisel away at the mountain of it that still resided in him. It felt like a fever had broken, a rock found at last at the heart of the tempest that had been his life for two years. He was a little stiff from sleeping on the floor, half reclined.
He groaned as he sat up straighter, the pressure of her arms sliding off his shoulders. He stretched, arms wide, popping joints as he tried to limber up. He turned to look at Shepard. She was watching him from half-lidded eyes, a crooked smile on her face, "I'm here. I'm alive."
He stood up stiffly, reaching down a hand. She placed her hand in his and he lifted her up on her feet. Garrus rubbed his shoulders, saying with reproach, "You know, for being so soft and squishy, you make a terrible pillow."
"Well, you know, for being a big spiky pile of metal plates, you make a pretty good blanket." She laughed, light and full. He couldn't help but laugh, too.
She put her hand back in his, squeezing slightly, "I'm sorry, Garrus. So very sorry for so many things."
He waved her apology away, it was ridiculous, "I'm the one who's sorry, for manhandling you. Turianhandling, whatever."
She blushed and looked away for a moment. He rubbed his neck, unsure of what to say. She caught his eye, "Are we good?"
So much meaning packed into such a small phrase. It spoke of the expanse between them still, a wall of shame that wouldn't be brought down in a single day, may never completely be gone. But there were cracks, maybe even some daylight poking through. Or maybe that was just light radiating from her, where she sat in her side of the cell. He felt relieved to have come this far, he would keep fighting to go farther, "Yeah, we're good."
She let out a breath neither one of them realized she was holding. At the door, she squared her shoulders before touching the lock, her red hair a curtain down her back. Huh, he didn't even notice her hair was down for once. It looked...nice.
Horizon. A jumble of prefab building that were eerily empty, most of its inhabitants taken by the Collectors. At the moment they were crouched behind various bits of cover while EDI was trying to get the colony's AA guns working. Waves and waves of enemies rushed their positions. It was getting harder to repel the hordes, but he allowed himself a moment to just enjoy the battle. He felt invigorated, for the first time since joining Shepard again, this wasn't a chore. It kind of felt like he'd rediscovered a long lost hobby, delighting again in the simple joy of it. He traded quips with the other squaddie, a mercenary named Massani who'd joined them the other day.
At first he'd been leery of the man, knowing something of his past with the Blue Suns, but quickly came to admire the skill inherent in untold experience that Zaeed possessed. His stories weren't half bad either. Though honestly, sometimes they were exaggerated to the point of being unbelievable. How can one man be the sole survivor in nearly every mission he'd taken part of? It boded ill for their little excursion if that was truly the case.
As far as Shepard and he went, the old magic was back. He was responding even faster to her silent commands, his own recent experiences showing him exactly what she was about to do. Her leadership style was no longer a mystery and he took pleasure in the surprise that flitted over her face when he was able to anticipate her next order, often being exactly where she needed him to be before she even looked at him. Her plans had never seemed so beautiful to him, they glittered in his mind like a fascinating web, not static but always ready to shift if conditions changed on the battlefield. As skilled as Massani was, he couldn't keep up with the everchanging strategies, so he waited for her to order him into position. She unerringly placed him exactly where he needed to be to do the most damage. Garrus realized with awe that she must know every strength and weakness in every single team mate.
Logic took him a step further to surmise that his own faults and flaws must have been crippling her plans only because she didn't know what they were. He'd shut her out. Shame, or at least the ghost of it, ran up his spine, when it became obvious just how much she must have been overcompensating just to bring him on missions with her in his previous dangerously unstable state.
Garrus looked up when Shepard dropped next to him into cover, she had an odd sort of rifle in her hands. Not like anything he'd ever seen before. She turned it over in her hands as she said, "Look what I found."
He took out three husks as he said to her, "Really, Shepard. We're in the middle of a firefight and you went shopping? Females."
"They're just husks. Massani's got it."
"Not just." Garrus heard a shouted oath on the field out there somewhere, and the erratic bursts of fire that indicated the man was in trouble. Garrus moved to his left a bit and dropped the couple of collectors that had him pinned behind some boxes. He shouted, "You're welcome!"
His gravelly voice punctured the air, "Are you takin' the piss, junior? I'll bet my mate, Jessie, would like to have word with you."
Garrus laughed, "Zaeed, I do my best not to piss anywhere near you. It's not my fault you like to stand downwind."
A barked laugh in response made Garrus smile, Oh yes, this is real. How could I have ever thought otherwise? He looked down at Shepard, who was still messing with that gun, "Does he really mate with his rifle?"
"I wouldn't put it past him. But, no. It's slang. Mate means friend where he's from."
"Oh." He laughed, calling to her flippantly as he shot some more husks. "Hey Shepard, want to be my mate?"
The double meaning of the word washed over him, his mouth suddenly dry, and he backpedaled as he watched a flush creep up her neck, "I mean, uh, like what you just said-"
"Relax, smooth talker." She stood fluidly, watching the first few volleys from the AA guns fly towards the collector ship, "EDI's got the guns on line, says there's big trouble on the way."
"I am the Harbinger of your ascension." What looked like a large floating bug with tiny legs trailing under it dropped into the area they were defending. Shepard picked the strange rifle back up, her face thoughtful. A delicious shiver rolled up Garrus' spine as he saw a savage gleam come into her eye as she took aim.
"Riiiight. We're keeping this." In the shuttle, Shepard had that beam cannon resting on her knees, "I'll get Mordin to adapt it to take heavy ammo."
Zaeed grunted as he rubbed some medi-gel on bite marks that covered his arm from elbow to wrist, "Bloody zombies, tried to take a chunk out of me. Think I'll turn into a husk now?"
"Naw. First they have to impale you on these long spikes." Garrus gestured as he elucidated, "Then the nanites they inject you with convert all your squishy human organs into rubber tubes and blinky lights while you're just hanging there. And I'm guessing from their facial expressions and those 'hrrnnnghghghgh' noises they make that you're not exactly unconscious while they do it."
"...Graphic. Thank you so much for that. If I have nightmares, I'm gonna want a cuddle, Vakarian." Smoke curled around the air as Zaeed lit up one of his roll-ups. Garrus was surprised when Massani handed the lit one to Shepard, who took a long drag and sighed.
"Didn't know you smoked, Shepard." He watched her cheeks hollow as she inhaled, her lips puckering slightly to create a seal. Watched as her eyelids dropped almost all the way down and her pupils roll back into her head in pleasure. It was almost sinful, he felt like a voyeur. It was sending little shocks of heat shooting under his plates. He cleared his throat, settling back against the wall, keeping his eyes firmly on her right shoulder.
"Not since basic. My unit always passed around smokes after a fight. It was...cathartic." She squirmed a little in her seat.
"You mean, the fighting was better than sex." Massani crowed from where he was enjoying his own smoke. Shepard shot him a little warning glare and he held his hands up in surrender, "Naw, I get it. I think anyone who fights for a living does. Sometimes...it's like you're dancing on the razor's edge, your bloods hot, your heart pounding and you're so close to dying with every shot and the fact that you don't, that you keep defying death moment after moment-"
The merc sighed, closing his eyes, "S'brilliant."
Garrus leveled a stare at the scarred man, cajoling, "Why, Massani, I had no idea you could be so...poetic."
Zaeed grunted out a laugh, chanting softly, "In Flanders fields the poppies blow. Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky, the larks, still bravely singing, fly. Scarce heard amid the guns below."
Not able to help himself, Garrus sniffed, "That was beautiful."
"Gyah, Vakarian, you know how to ruin a moment." The two men laughed for a bit as their Commander looked on, amused. Massani affixed a baleful eye on Shepard, "So, who was that...idiot down there?"
"Staff Commander Kaiden Alenko. He served with us on the SR-1. He helped evacuate her when she went down." Shepard sighed tiredly. Garrus watched the ghosts flitting around her eyes as she looked at him, a little twist of pain in her features. How he wished that he'd been there.
"Huh, seemed like more than just re-acquaintance to me, sure you weren't flirting wif breaking the ol' non-fraternization rule?" Massani eyed her narrowly, a smirk on his face. "He's a nice enough lookin' bloke."
"I'll be sure to let him know you think he's cute, Zaeed." She deflected masterfully, smirking back at him when he started to splutter.
He tried to resist butting in but again he couldn't help himself. He told himself it was for the laughs, not because he really really wanted to know how she felt about the biotic, "Oh, c'mon, Shepard. I remember you two spent quite alot of time together. The looks he threw you, the...long nights poring over the galaxy map."
Her look told him she knew exactly what he was doing and she was not pleased. The conversation she'd had with the erstwhile Staff Commander had indeed left her shaken. Her loyalties questioned. "He had game, if that's what you're asking. Only his games usually involved moving bits of colored plastic around a board, while I was looking for more the...chess variety."
"Oh, ho, ho! That's bloody hilarious, Shepard." Massani was almost crying, he was laughing so hard. Garrus didn't really follow the specific words, being without context but seeing the general outline of what she meant. He was right then, that Alenko was no match for her fearsome intellect. "I assume then that a pity fuck was out of the question."
Disquieted, Garrus shoved a pang of anguish down when Shepard didn't answer, shrugging elegantly, sending Massani off on another bout of howling laughter.
