Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: This chapter is dedicated to FenZev for her courteous help in exchanging ideas to get me over my most recent writer's block for this chapter. Also, for those of you still following my slow updating ass, Marlene101, Emerald Flashes, and others equally as important. Thank you for your support guys. Please enjoy.
Sheparding Men
Chapter Ten: Release
"She wishes he was free. Free from this. Free even from her. And she knows what she must do." - A war-battered Shepard learns about love from the different men in her life. Memory. Passion. Constancy. These are the gifts they gave her.
Garrus is already waiting just outside her cabin door when Shepard returns to the Normandy. She exits the elevator to find him leaning against the wall across from her. He tries to smile at her presence but she knows him well enough to recognize the tight clench of his jaw, the minute flex of his mandibles that tells her the words are festering in him even now. He pushes off of the wall to greet her.
"Shepard, welcome back. How's Liar-"
"Don't," she says simply. She stops just outside the elevator, does not invite him, does not even move to enter the cabin herself. She simply stands before him, arms steady at her side as she sighs.
Garrus eyes her questioningly, though something inside him whispers of her knowing. "Shepard, I'm only-"
"Show me the courtesy of not delving into small talk when you want to brace me for something." She huffs, her arms crossing. "We know each other better than that."
Garrus falls silent. She knows. And he cannot be sure of what she will do with that knowledge. He had gone to her cabin in the hopeful expectance of her help. He swallows tightly and watches her now. Somehow, he begins to wonder if it will be so easy. His eyes search hers momentarily before he speaks, a resigned sigh that sags his shoulders with the breath. "I suppose we do."
Shepard purses her lips in thought, her fingers flexing against her arms as they lay crossed over her chest. "Why are you here, Garrus?" She takes a step closer, looks up into his face, her eyes impeaching and demanding all at once. Her voice is softer this time, yielding. "What do you need?"
Garrus looks at her when she says it. Need. The way she expresses in that one simple word her willingness to answer that need. Her offer of herself in silent, unexplainable ways that make the words tight in his throat. He swallows back that heavy slice of disquiet and tries to answer her. "I need your help."
Shepard sighs, her eyes never leaving his. "To kill Sidonis?" There is something sad in her voice that neither of them can recognize fully.
Garrus' eyes are hard and unflinching then. "Yes."
Shepard moves a hand up to rub at her face. "Unarmed? In cold blood?"
Garrus is suddenly flushed with remembrance, his words tight and hollow as he speaks next. "He deserves worse."
Shepard eyes him lowly. "What he deserves is not the question here. The question, is should you be the one to deal it?"
His chest rises with barely contained rage. "Who else has he so wronged? How can you even ask me that? How can you not want this bastard gutted?"
Shepard's eyes flash. "Do not presume to know what I want, Garrus. Of course I want him dead too, but not at the cost of your sanity, not at the cost of your integrity."
Garrus almost scoffs, and it is enough to light a flash of surprise and anger within her. She narrows her eyes as she watches him speak. "There can be no such integrity when it concerns Sidonis." He spits the turian's name like a curse, like poison along his tongue.
This is not the Garrus she remembers.
"If you cannot find the strength in you to do what is right by my men," he continues, "then I will do so alone. I'm requesting leave from the Normandy." He hates himself for saying it but even she cannot stop him from avenging those men. Those men who laughed and ached and bled with him. Those men who were the only solace in a world left without her. How can she not know? How can she not know what that means to him? His breath quakes in his chest.
Shepard snarls at his words, the resentment hot and spitting between them, a finger raised to jab him in the chest. "It has nothing to do with my wanting his blood and everything to do with my not wanting it on your hands."
His mandibles flex swiftly as his hands curl into fists at his side. "It is not your choice to make."
Shepard stops at that. She grinds her teeth in frustration but does not answer him. She wants to shake him, wants to scream her resistance in his face but she cannot deny him this. She cannot deny him this choice that is rightly his. She does not wish this on Garrus. But more importantly, she does not wish to control Garrus. She knows firsthand the rage that takes root when you are someone else's puppet. She knows firsthand the darkness that can anchor itself inside him if his life is no longer his to live.
But she is afraid he might be slipping.
Afraid she will not be able to reach him again should he do this, not be able to touch him again.
She growls lowly, running a hand roughly through her loose dark curls, and she snaps dangerously at him. "Then you will have me." She stares heavily at him.
Garrus finds the slow breath of relief light in his chest. But the way she looks at him, her eyes promise that this relief is only short-lived. This vengeful bloodlust will only sate him for so long. And when it wanes, if she is still watching him with those eyes, if she is still waiting in righteous anger for him, then he thinks he might not be able to bear it.
He needs her in this with him.
He needs her.
Shepard storms into Life Support where Thane is sitting at his usual spot, meditating, only to be blinking up in surprise at her huffing presence before him. He unfurls his fingers from their hold over the desk. "Siha," he breathes in greeting.
His voice alone is almost enough to calm her growing anger.
Almost.
"It's Garrus," she growls in answer to his unasked question, starting to pace before him.
Thane is quiet for long moments as he lets her reign in her breathing and her thoughts. Quiet as he watches her pace in righteous fury. There is something desperate and grieving to her movements, something she will not voice, something slowly being drowned by the rage. She has always been quick to anger, even when she hurts for it.
"He wants my help to kill Sidonis."
Thane only blinks at her, unsurprised.
"That stupid, stubborn turian." She stalks across the room heatedly. "I mean, God do I want Sidonis to suffer. I want to pull the trigger myself most days but Garrus…" She slows, wrings her hands before her and shakes her head. Her long tangled curls bunch around her shoulders and she violently pushes the strands back, beginning her pacing once more. "This is consuming him. Just festering inside until there's nothing left and it will kill him. It will kill him. This hate. It's not going to stop, even if he kills Sidonis. It's not ever going to stop and I don't know how to tell him. I don't know how to tell him that blood never makes it better."
She squeezes her eyes harshly shut. Remembers all the lives she has taken, all the calls she has made, all the triggers she's pulled that have ended one life or another. Halted someone's breath that cannot be brought back. And she knows what that does on the inside. She knows the harshness it breeds, the self-hate and regret. She has never taken a life in cold blood, it's true. Never taken aim at someone who wasn't already preparing to kill her themselves. But it doesn't make death any less bearable. It doesn't make her proud to kill. It doesn't do anything but make the nights long and the days empty. And the only way she does not drown in it is because of those she surrounds herself with. And because it means those around her will not have to live with it themselves. The hard choices. The irreversible calls.
Standing on the bridge of the Normandy and listening to Ash pull in terrified, blood-soaked cries.
Shepard shakes her head and stops to look past the glass of the Life Support window, watching the slow churning and humming vibrations of the Tantalus drive core. Her face is turned from Thane but her slowly curling and uncurling fists at her side tell him enough. She takes a long slow breath before turning back to him. Her brows are furrowed in aching indecision. She swallows tightly, moves to take a seat before him. "I'm sorry," she sighs. As she settles in her seat and looks at him, she is suddenly struck by a thought.
Irikah. And her killers. Thane's own search for blood and revenge. Something clenches harshly inside her. She clamps her jaw tight.
Thane only pulls his elbows up to rest on the table, his hands grasping each other. He cocks his head. "It is not wrong to want to keep him from that kind of darkness."
Shepard opens her mouth to speak but finds herself flooding with shame. She only watches him in unease. Such a stupid, careless thought. To berate such action to a man who has seen and done what he has. She feels so small and ignorant in this moment. It only makes the anger hotter.
There is the slight quirk to his lip that surprises Shepard with its ease. "I admit I am not proud of the man I was becoming when I faced the same choice myself."
She decides to remain quiet, not to embarrass herself further with her thoughtlessness.
He sighs, turning his gaze just past her shoulder, lost somewhere else. A short, stunted intake of breath and then he is speaking as though from another time. "Shallow, jagged cuts. Blood pooling in slow-drying streams. He cries. Voice broken between pain and fear. Eyes wide and unblinking. 'Is this how she cried?' He shakes his head, convulses. My blade is slick and warm with his blood. 'Is this how she begged you to stop?' He screams." Thane blinks and shakes his head, the recollection slipping back into a part of his mind he hates some days.
Shepard feels undeserving of the memory he has just lapsed into. She grips her hands tightly together on the desk, looks down to watch the slight quake of her fingers. Something unknowable moves within her.
"I am sorry," he offers softly.
Shepard's head whips up to watch him questioningly.
"That was not…how I wish for you to know me." He does not look at her when he says it.
"No," she begins quickly, one hand moving to grasp at his across from her. "I don't…I could never think any less of you, Thane." She surprises even herself with the admission, with her own eagerness to touch him, to reach him, to keep him constant and desperately by her side.
Thane moves his hand so that they are linking fingers between them, watches the slow twining of their touch with a heavy and fixed gaze. "You and I…we know how to carry such burdens. And it is not wrong to want others to be free of that."
Shepard sighs, rubs a thumb over the smooth green skin along the back of his hand. "I don't…it's not my place to tell him what to do, how to feel. How to…handle grief." She thinks back to the heavy, trembling embrace she shared with Kaidan the night of Ashley's death.
"You cannot tell me how to feel, Kaidan. It does not mean that I don't feel."
Thane's words bring her back to the present. "It is not grief he is handling. It is rage. Regret. Helplessness But not grief. You do not handle grief with violence. That is something you do in the privacy of your own heart. Something he has not had the chance to release yet."
Shepard watches him breathlessly. His touch is warm and soothing.
"Perhaps, without even realizing it himself, he needs you to stop him. To allow him to grieve. As he could not before."
She pulls a shaky breath in, releases a short and disbelieving chuckle. "How do you do it?"
He cocks his head in question.
She watches him with a steady, needful gaze, her mouth trembling slightly. "How do you settle me so easily? Make sense of this senseless world? How do you make everything seem alright when I know it can't be?" She turns her gaze from him, grips his hand tighter. Her breath quakes within her. "God, everything's just so fucked up. So – damn it, just –" She exhales sharply. "So unbelievably fucked up." She looks back up to him. "And then there's you. And I don't know how to reconcile this peace inside me when you're here, with this war that's tearing through our galaxy. Because it is a war, really. Because I know it's coming. It has to be. It's inevitable. And yet somehow…God, how can you be so strong?" She swallows tightly and stops, hating the hot tears lining her lids already, the subtle break in her voice.
Thane is rising from his seat and moving around the desk toward her. He pulls her to her feet with a gentle tug of their joined hands. She wipes a hand down her face, clearing her throat, as she feels herself being pressed to his chest. His arms snake loosely around her waist and his breath is warm and steady and right against her cheek. Her fingers curl shakily into his coat and she grips him tightly to her. Grips him with an intensity and fear that threatens to overtake her.
His voice is low and soothing as it vibrates through her cheek. "We are never long for this world, siha. The waves come, and they go, and in the end, the ocean will always take us. But while we are here, I choose to walk with you."
Shepard shakes against him, the breath ragged and heavy in her chest.
He sighs, slides a hand slowly up her back to thread softly through her hair. "The knowledge that you also choose to walk with me, that is my strength."
She feels her own smile, unconscious and hesitant, hidden against his shoulder.
"I know it will last me to the end of my days." His voice is suddenly low, shaky, laced with a painful, knowing ache. "Siha, the universe will remain. And life will go on." His grip on her tightens and she raises her eyes just enough to catch the quivering of his brow as he holds her. "It always does. But it is not wrong. Rather, it makes our time together that much more beautiful, that much more meaningful. I will not waste another moment of my life without the one I love."
Shepard's breath catches in her throat at his words. She pulls her head back just enough to meet his eyes. He loosens his hold on her to allow it, though he keeps one hand on her waist, the other in her hair. He does not let go of her. Does not move his gaze from her. Does not show anything but forthrightness and promise and heated determination. His dark eyes watch her unblinkingly and she knows. She knows what he offers her with this. She knows that he understands what he risks.
And he risks it still.
Shepard leans her forehead against his, closes her eyes to the tremble of vulnerability that lights along her skin. One of her hands moves to rest along his cheek, her fingers soft and caressing along the smooth stretch of skin. She feels him sigh at the touch, his breath warm against her own lips, and she breathes in a sweet release herself.
Everything is peaceful and quiet and steady within her. Everything is right in the world when he holds her to him. Everything is right. She never knew she had been so lost until he found her.
She presses her lips softly against his, revels in their warmth, the way they move intrinsically and naturally against her own, the way he pours everything of himself into their embrace.
The way he loves her with his touch. Quietly and fully. Tenderly and fiercely. Without reservation. Without demand.
She smiles against his lips and sighs softly against him. "I do not want to be without the one I love either."
Thane's hand tightens in her hair, his fingers flexing against the nape of her neck. "Siha…" he breathes raggedly.
She is lost to him. "I do not want to be without you."
Thane's breath rises heavy in his chest, his throat tight with words he does not know how to express. He settles for his lips, slick and needy, against her own. Settles for the simplest and truest way he can tell her. "Then I am yours."
She kisses him back with all her aching passion, all her fearful desire, all her heated longing. All her desperate need to show him the wonders he stirs in her. To show him that she welcomes him fully.
And that she is his. Entirely.
There is a ruthlessness to Garrus she has never seen before when they are fighting through mechs and Blue Sun mercenaries in one of the Citadel's docking ports.. Some indescribable, quiet rage in every shot he takes, every power he emits from his omni-tool. Every downed enemy brings a haunting and dangerous smirk to his lips that makes Shepard question everything she has known about Garrus. Thane fights stoically beside them.
When they are moments from closing in on Harkin, Shepard finds the bloodlust in Garrus' eyes intensified. She swallows down the sharp slice of unease and continues on.
But in her heart she is screaming. Because this is not the Garrus she knows. This is not the Garrus she fights for. This is not the Garrus who laughs with her and anchors her and shelters her.
Garrus punches Harkin with a fierce rage, knocking him to the ground, his boot coming up quick and forceful against the man's throat.
Shepard makes her decision.
"Sidonis?" Shepard asks lowly, her eyes narrowed.
The turian before her is all wide eyes and twitchy hands. "Shh," he intones, almost whispering. "Don't use that name." When he says it, his eyes are suddenly downcast, his exhaling breath laced with a quiet shame that shakes Shepard to the core.
She swallows tightly, moves herself to stand closer to him, where she knows Garrus cannot get a shot of Sidonis with her in the way. Her fists clench at her sides and she knows there is no going back. "Garrus Vakarian has a sniper rifle trained on you right now and I am the only thing standing between your head and a very gruesome, much-deserved death." She says the words evenly, unflinchingly.
Sidonis sputters for a moment, taking a slow step back. Shepard follows, even as she hears Garrus' loud curse in her comm. link.
"What?" the turian, breathes, hands rising in the air like a surrender. "You're – you're joking. What is this?" He moves to walk away, his whole body tense and jerky. His voice is a heated whimper.
Shepard has to bury down her hate for this man if she is to save Garrus. She grasps his arm tightly and halts him. "Don't move," she grounds out. "Unless you want to die."
He stills at her words, swallows in barely held fear, his mandibles flexng in quick, frightened twitches.
"Shepard," Garrus growls in her ear. "What the fuck are you doing?"
She ignores him. Instead, she keeps her gaze intense on Sidonis. "Now, I want nothing more than to see your brains splattered across this floor, and I know Garrus wants that even more-"
"Then move!" he nearly shouts in her earpiece.
She grinds her teeth and continues. "But I value Garrus' life more than I value your death. And it will not be his life anymore if I let him kill you."
"Shepard, so help me-"
"No, Garrus," she barks, and Sidonis' eyes are frantically searching the high walkways farther past them. "No," she repeats heatedly, not moving from her position in front of Sidonis. "Stand down, Garrus."
She can hear him snarling in her comm. link and she hates that she has nurtured this inside of him.
Before her, Sidonis' shoulders sag and he drops his gaze to the floor. His arms are limp at his sides. "Just let him," he barely gets out, a break in his voice that tells Shepard he knows the heavy, biting ache of regret. "I'm dead already."
"Let me take the shot, Shepard," Garrus breathes lowly and dangerously in her ear. She does not listen.
She steps closer to Sidonis, grasping at his shirt collar, her fury tight and venomous in her words. "This is not about you, Sidonis. I don't give a shit about you. But I won't let Garrus do something he'll regret. I won't let him walk around with this buried and festering in his heart for the rest of his life."
Sidonis does not fight her hold of him. His eyes search hers pleadingly. "I didn't…I didn't know what to do! They threatened me. Threatened to kill me and I – I panicked. I was a coward. I…I don't…there's nothing I can say that will change any of this. That will bring them back." His eyes are wet with a painful regret, his body slumped against her, all but given up. "Just let him kill me."
"Gladly," Garrus growls into their comm. link.
Shepard shakes her head. "You did it to save yourself, right? So what will dying now achieve?" She is grasping at anything to make Garrus see. To make it clear to him why she must do this. "If you throw away your life like this than you really did betray those men. Your comrades." She spits the word. "Then they died for nothing. Then you might as well have died alongside them. But you didn't. You're here now. And so help me, I am going to make sure you don't ruin any more lives. Especially not Garrus'." She pulls in a steadying breath, tries to quell the dangerous pit of dread slowly building in her gut.
She does not care if Garrus will hate her for it. Does not care if it means she is dead to him. Because in the end, he will not have to live with this blood on his hands. Not him. She wishes he was free. Free from this.
Free even from her.
And she knows what she must do.
She closes her eyes for a short, bracing moment, hears the trembling and frightened breath of Sidonis before her. She opens her eyes to lock gazes with him as she speaks. She will not let him take Garrus' life as well. "Your life for the other ten, huh? I hope you enjoyed your prize." Her voice is dark and promising when she reaches her hand to her waist where her pistol rests comfortingly. The barrel is pressed to his temple before he can finish drawing breath. "Was it worth it?"
"Shepard!" she hears Garrus cry into the comm. link.
A shot rings out in the courtyard of the Citadel ward and everywhere there is screaming. The heavy pounding of footsteps as the crowd panics and flees is echoing loudly in Shepard's ears. She stands still before the slumped body of Sidonis on the ground at her feet. Her face is warm with the splash of his blue blood along her cheeks. Her pistol lays heavy in her grip, barrel smoking. The screaming eventually dies down into stillness and Shepard turns to Thane as he stands several feet behind her.
He is watching her silently.
Her breath catches harshly in her throat and she is shaking uncontrollably. Her eyes are suddenly flooded with tears she will not allow herself to shed. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out. Nothing. Her chest feels tight and painful in ways she has never felt before. She looks up to the high rail past the empty courtyard and finds Garrus missing. She strains her ears to the sound of the comm. link, tries to listen to his curses or his shouts or even his angry, panting breathes.
There is nothing.
Shepard is standing with Thane by their hover car, his hand resting along the small of her back, her hand over her mouth as she watches the floor, when Garrus finally makes his way back to them. He storms onto the platform and they both look up to find him trembling in barely-contained rage. He stalks up to Shepard and points a finger into her face, his voice a dangerous warning she has never heard directed at her. "You had no right, Shepard," he grinds out between sharp, clenched teeth. "No fucking right."
Thane's hand slips from her back as she moves away from him and closer to Garrus. Her eyes are firm and unflinching on his. It is everything she feels she is not. "I could not let you do it, Garrus." Her voice is softer than she would like.
Garrus scoffs and throws his hands in the air, walking away from her. His back is to her. She hates the image. "It wasn't your choice!" he yells. His voice is a raging thunder unlike anything she's heard before. "They were my men. They were my responsibility. It should have been my kill." He whips back to her and his eyes are wild and focused on her. "Why? Why did you do it?"
Shepard swallows tightly and takes another step toward him. "I'm a Spectre. There won't be consequences like there would have been had you pulled the trigger."
Garrus scoffs again at her response. It's not untrue. But they both know it is deeper than that.
"And…" she begins, her voice steadying, "And because I could not bear the thought of you living with that regret."
Garrus stops before her, his fists clenched at his sides. "I would not have regretted it. Ever."
Shepard shakes her head. "That's not who you are."
"People change, Shepard. Two years will do a lot to change a man."
She is suddenly struck with the sting of those words, the silent, unknowing accusation laced behind them, the barely hidden sentiment that she had left him. She is flooded with anger at the thought. "And I would have been there with you, Garrus – you know that – if I was alive those two years."
His voice is low and hollow when he speaks. "But you weren't. And I had to move on."
She takes another desperate step closer to him so that she is only inches from him. "You didn't move on, Garrus!" she practically yells. "You went on a suicidal spring-cleaning of Omega. You buried yourself in vigilante justice and dressed it up as grieving but you definitely didn't move on."
Garrus' chest rises in heated anger. Something snaps inside him. "How do you expect someone to move on from that then? Huh, Shepard?" He grabs her by the arms and shakes her.
Thane stands tense and watchful behind them, his eyes flicking between them in hesitance, his body coiled in tight readiness.
Garrus growls into her face. "How do you expect someone to move on from you? From –" The words catch in his throat and he has to move his gaze to the floor or he will not be able to hold back any longer.
Thane's eyes flash in recognition, but he does not move to them. He knows that Shepard is what Garrus needs right now. And he knows that Shepard will be that for him. He also knows that Shepard is too angry and overwhelmed and frightened to take Garrus' words for what they truly mean. For what lies hidden in them.
Thane's eyes are almost sympathetic on the tortured turian.
Shepard shakes her head and grinds her teeth in desperate frustration, anchored with the harsh threat of loss in her heart. "I'm sorry, Garrus, I'm so, so sorry. I never…I never wanted to leave, you have to know that. But I am here now. And I hate that you've been living with this for so long and that I couldn't help you. But this…this is the only way I know how to help you."
Garrus releases his hold of her arms and turns from her. "By denying me my revenge?"
"By denying you the guilt of killing in cold-blood," she nearly shouts. She plants a hand against her armor's chestplate where she feels her heart beating furiously beneath her touch. "I would rather live with the blood and the guilt and the consequences than to see you dying every day because of it."
Garrus glances at her out of the corner of his eye, his mandibles flexing, his nostrils flaring.
Shepard continues. "Because the Garrus I know, the Garrus I need, could not live with it either." Her words end on a shaky expel of breath, her hand clenched into a fist against her chest.
Garrus shakes his head, his eyes on the floor. He sighs. And it is everything hopeless and lost and painful. "Why can't you just let me be? Why can't you just let me have my blood and my hate? I've already chosen this path, Shepard. Let me walk it." He says it with a resigned finality that tears at Shepard in ways she will never forget.
The tears have returned hot and unrelenting to her eyes. She shakes her head, teeth grinding painfully, her chest tight and quaking and filled with a brutal need. She moves to him with frantic hope, reaches for him without realizing. She pulls him around to face her and moves her hands to his cheeks. He blinks in surprise at her sudden touch, the feel of her warm palms against his rough skin. His breath catches in his throat.
She holds his face in her hands, her eyes meaningful and sure on his. There is something clawing its way through her heart. "If you do this, I will lose you," she breathes.
Garrus watches her in steady and awed silence, his brows furrowing, his words dying in his throat. Something breaks inside of him.
She does not move her gaze from his. Her eyes are hard suddenly, her chest rising in determined breathes. "I will not lose you again."
He watches her in silence for several long moments. She says it with such conviction, such infallible belief, that he cannot do anything but shake silently in her hold. He reaches a hand up and wraps his talons tenderly and awkwardly around one of her wrists. He nods his head, slowly at first, his resolve and fury shattering painfully inside him.
Shepard hears the first sob leave his lips as though it was the first breath he'd ever taken. And then there is a heavy and ragged exhale. He clenches his teeth tight, shuts his eyes to the onslaught, and leans his forehead against hers.
She closes her eyes, moves her hands from his face so that she can wrap her arms around him. He buries his face in her neck, his talons held tightly to her shoulders and she ignores the pain of it.
"You were gone and I…I…" he gasps in a pained whisper.
"I know," she breathes softly against his armored shoulder. It is all she can say. And it seems so callous, and so stupid, and so worthless. But it is all she can say. "I know." Her voice quakes with her tears.
Thane watches their embrace and remembers that everything dies.