Written by MizDirected with Garrus's parts thanks to MosaicCreme
Torin - Male turian over the age of majority. (15)
Puer - Child
Thunder roared, lightning dancing along the horizon, the storm threatening to send her calm seas back into chaos. She wriggled deeper into the soft warmth of the straw, allowing the goats' shuffling and Radis's timid sounds of surprise and delight to tie her to the base.
She knew she was safe, despite the roar of searing white cracking open the dark horizon. Safe. Garrus kept her safe. Being alive kept her safe. Safe meant sane, and she needed to stay sane for Radis. She jumped, lightning licking down her spine, every centimetre of her screaming as the thunder locked her muscles tight.
Stay sane. You need to stay sane. Daddy, help me. Please, please help me.
She reached into her belt pouch, searching. The lightning blasted through her nervous system again. She counted ... shuddering. One … two …. Thunder. Damn, the storm closed in, looming so close … so damned close. She needed to get to shelter, but …. No, she needed to get Radis to shelter. She couldn't let him watch her freak out. Life scared him enough … he'd been traumatized enough.
Her fingertips found their prize and its thin, onion-skin pages. Taking a deep breath, she caressed the unique paper that reminded her so very much of her father.
She loved her father's bible. Before the batarians blew her childhood apart, she spent hours just touching the pages, savouring their texture: thin and magical, crisp and crackling. Nothing else felt like that paper, as if someone crafted it just for bibles in order to set them apart, make them sacred in a very tactile way.
She found a tiny version of the New Testament in the belt pouch of one of the first mercs she killed on Omega. After opening it to the page marked by the ribbon sewn into the leather binding, she ran her fingers over the paper, a lifetime's worth of memories roaring to life in her head at the gentle crinkle of the thin pages. Slapping it shut, she'd stuffed it into her belt pouch, where it remained.
Despite closing the bible, the marked page glared up at her from behind her eyes. First John, verse 3:12 pointed damning lightning bolts at her. 'Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.' And then, of course, Matthew just had to chime in with 26:52: '"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."'
She hadn't just died by the sword and been consumed in fire, she'd considered her time in purgatory an excuse to throw away the sheath and beat the shit out of the galaxy with her sword. She'd incinerated, degraded, and displayed her monstrosity for everyone to see.
One hand moved to undo her belt pouch, fingertips climbing inside to rub that sweet texture. She needed to borrow … to draw some salvation from the pages. Taking it out, she pressed the red leather against her head.
Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. She pressed harder, twisting the tiny Bible, its leather cover burning her forehead. No, no, she hadn't died, and she'd spent her entire life trying to make up for the lives she stole on Torfan.
Isn't that worse? You didn't die in the void or the fire and ice, so these past months you've turned into a murderer so much worse than The Butcher … even on her worst day.
She ground the cover in harder. Thump. "No," she whispered, barely more than a hiss as they broke through her lips. "No, I saved a lot of people. I saved all those kids." Twist. Thump. Her teeth clacked together on the side of her tongue. She wasn't Cain. She killed only those who threatened others with harm. Those bastards who used and tortured Radis and the other children wouldn't have given up without a fight, killing several kids in the process.
The spot on her forehead turned from burning to cool. And even if the pricks gave up, there was no law on Omega, they'd just run and set up somewhere else, or Aria would find a way to use them.
Right. But even if I give you that one, did you need to make art brut de spectacle out of their bodies? It's twisted, and you loved it … turning all your pain against something outside yourself. You are sick right down to the core, your heart rotted and empty.
Thump. Twist. "No. Garrus sees me. He loves me. He's real." Thump. Twist. "He wants me to be with him … to live with him." Why? After improving for so long ... why this? Again.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Darkness flooded in, riding the tsunami of the monster's roar. Evil flame licked from every seam and hollow. No. No, no, no, no. Thump. Twist. The monster hadn't appeared in days. Garrus drove it off with his light and warmth. No. Thump. Twist. It couldn't come back. He and Radis banished it. A scream roared up from her belly, fighting its way through the spasming muscles of her throat to ball behind her teeth.
Something soft and cool stopped the book just short of her head, then gently peeled the book from her hand. She opened her eyes as a thumb pad wiped at the angry spot on her brow. The monster remained seared into her vision. She threw herself back, scrambling across the straw-covered polycrete.
"No, the monster isn't real. The flames aren't real." She slammed the heel of her hand into her brow, trying to drive the horror back even while it roared, deafening her. "Garrus is real. Garrus is real." A bladed scream, raw and bleeding, clambered up her throat, fighting its way out, but she walled it up behind her teeth. No, she was alive. She was alive and needed to be sane for Garrus and Radis. She needed to forget about the fear and pain. She needed to forget about purgatory and murdering her way into heaven.
Footsteps shuffling through the straw pushed the monster back enough that its image began to fade, replaced by copper eyes, their watery depths awash with fear and compassion. "L'oeuf?" The turian child crouched before her. "I'm real."
The words tugged a soft whimper from between her lips, the scream buried in sorrow. A trembling hand reached out to caress the child's cheek. His hide brushed the backs of her fingers, his plates still soft, his skin not yet tough and textured. Holding his stare, she opened her mouth, trying to speak, trying to form words to reassure him. Instead, she pulled her hand from his.
Thump.
She reached into her belt pouch, but no sacred pages met her fingertips. Heart racing, she tore the pouch open, searching the lint and scraps at the bottom. Where?
Thump. Twist.
Where? Had she lost it? No. No, no, no. She couldn't lose it. Not after she so carefully cleaned off the thick layer of vorcha bile—they spewed it in their death throes to drive their attackers back long enough to regenerate.
Tiny, trembling talons touched her face then spirited away.
Radis.
Damn her insanity! She sucked in a loud breath that rattled through her head and down into her chest. Why? Why had she thought she could care for Radis? She was so stupid. Thump. All she could do was traumatize a soul already past its capacity for suffering.
She touched his hand then scrambled into a crouch, backing away from him even as the fear and uncertainty in his eyes begged her to close the distance, comfort him. No. Not yet. Not until she wrestled herself back under control.
"Jane?" A maelstrom of Garrus's sound and scent rushed towards the goat pen. His booted talons screeched a little when she flinched away, and he brought the turian landslide to a halt. He pulled in a long breath, then closed the remaining distance to half with measured steps. When he spoke, his dual tones rumbled soft and low, trading fear and concern for comfort in his tone. "Jane, what's wrong?"
She pushed herself further into the corner, hands raising to fend off the sudden tempest of motion and noise. Too much. Too much around her. Too much above. So much noise from the base: voices and laughter, footsteps and thumping. So much life. Too much. The monster roared, its flames licking … mocking laughter scalding her touch. What was she thinking, it asked. Was she really trying to join the living?
Thump, twist. The heel of her hand startled her as it impacted her brow. Thump, twist.
Get control! You're scaring the shit out of both Radis and Garrus now. Get. Control.
Using the equivalent force of bending a length of rebar, she forced her hands down, not all the way to her thighs, but far enough she'd have to think before striking out. The muscles complained, crying out as her brain exerted control over them. Spurred on by her success, she opened her eyes and smoothed the silent scream off her lips.
Fake it 'til you make it. How many times had someone told her that over the course of her life? Hell, the number climbed over fifty inside her first week of bootcamp.
Garrus kept his distance, although she felt a soft, soothing thrum rumbling through him, the sound resonating through the air. Worry filled the soft blue of his gaze. He reached out, but for Radis, waving the child over and tucking him in beneath an arm. Her lips stopped fighting to return to their terrified rigor. Thank God. Garrus would keep her from hurting the little guy.
A sigh drifted from between slack lips as the storm drew back enough for her hands to settle to her lap. The image of Radis staring at her from behind armour registered, his eyes huge and nervous. Damn it. Damn, damn, damn. She needed to beat the crazy down before she damaged the kid worse than those fucking criminals had.
The maelstrom calmed further as the wall of armour—finally registering the unique blue of Garrus's set—stepped back, Radis still tucked in against the turian's leg. His words drifted through the haze of ancient fear, helping her push away the thunder. "It's all right, Radis. She just needs a moment to collect herself." He took another step back before crouching. "Jane, I'm here. Radis is here. You're safe."
"She's afraid?" Radis asked, stepping out from behind Garrus to press against the torin's side. He crouched alongside Garrus's thigh, his unintentional mimicry so adorable it drew a soft moan from deep in her throat.
Archangel's mandibles fluttered as he looked down at the perir. "Yeah, she's scared, but she'll be alright. Then, she'll be so happy to see you, but right now, she just needs a little space."
And just like that, Garrus's words drove off the clouds, the storm evaporating into clear, star-lit skies, and she could breathe. She stood, taking a single step forward, testing the sudden clarity, but not trusting it. After another, she gave Radis a watered down smile. "I'm fine, baby, just a little shaky."
Encouraged by the child's return smile, she met Garrus's gaze. "Can you and maybe Butler help Radis get settled in for a bit?" she asked, skirting the pair of them just inside an arm's length.
Garrus hummed, giving her a short jerk of his head in a nod, mandibles fluttering. "Of course, anything you need." He lifted a hand as she passed then seemed to think better of it. Before it fell back to his side, she grasped it and gave it a gentle squeeze before letting go.
"I'll give you a call in a little while." She ducked past them, keeping to a walk until she made it out the door and into the tunnel across the room.
Once she felt the lack of eyes on her, she broke into a run, something deep in her gut pulling her along a path she didn't register until she stood outside the door to one of Mordin's back rooms. As she stared at the metal portal, her plan came together, the reason she'd homed in on that office appearing in full.
She pressed her palm to the control, her eyes fixing on Miranda Lawson the moment the door opened. After a couple of moments spent staring at one another, she took a deep breath and stepped far enough into the room that the door shut behind her.
"I need you to fix me." A couple of follow up conditions and constraints appeared but she let them wash away without letting them out. It came down to just those five words. For her. For Radis. For Garrus. Just those five, no ifs, ands, or buts. She clenched her fists at her sides and shoved her shoulders down out of a depreciative shrug. Commander Shepard didn't flinch or cower. She stated her intent with clarity and then moved forward, for better or for worse. She acted.
"I need you to fix me." That time the words came out formed and shaped as intent rather than a plea. Not quite Shepard, but that seemed fitting. Only about seventy-five percent of Shepard existed physically, why should her mind and spirit be any different?
Lawson shifted in her chair, straightening, but her face remained neutral, none of her usual arrogant distance setting it in stone. The woman nodded, her stare flicking to the floor before latching back on Shepard's. "I'll do everything I can to help." Another deflective flicker touched the floor and then the far wall before genuine remorse locked onto the ghost of Commander Shepard. "If I'd known you suffered during the Lazarus Project, I would have mitigated the pain. I won't allow that to happen again."
The ghost nodded. "I trust Mordin and Daniel to see to my well being. I trust Garrus to see to my safety. You, I trust to complete the repairs you began. I need sanity." She swallowed and turned just far enough to stride to the desk, leaning against her fists, the edge cutting into her knuckles. "I need for my brain to stop shorting out and sending me spiralling into psychosis every time something scares me or upsets me. I need to find Commander Shepard inside this pile of compost and rot. So … " She gulped. "... so if there's pain, I'll deal with it."
Lawson shifted, her shoulders squaring as she affected a posture professional enough to convince Shepard's ghost. The real Shepard … she might not have been convinced, but since the commander remained on the other side of the collector attack, she'd have to rely on her own, spotty, judgement. She straightened and turned to face Lawson.
Fake it 'til you make it.
"Tomorrow we'll run a complete set of scans." Lawson opened her omnitool and began entering notes. "While your poor physical health concerns me, we'll prioritize balancing your mental and emotional wellbeing." She looked up, meeting the ghost's eyes with what almost managed to tip over the line into heartfelt caring. "I still retain access to all my data and Dr. Solus is a talented surgeon. Between us, we'll get Commander Shepard back to one hundred percent."
The ghost backed up a step, startled. Did Lawson also retain access to her thoughts? How did she know how much of Shepard remained? How did she know? The ghost retreated behind L'oeuf, her hand reaching behind her to claw along the metal for the control. If Lawson could read her mind …. No, she just needed to get away and calm down, prepare for the following day. Lawson just meant the percentage in a general sense. Of course she did. No cause to have a breakdown and start slapping herself in the head. Of course she did. Of course. No need to worry.
The door control activated, dumping her out into the hallway. She stumbled, hand slapping along the wall until it contacted a bank of seats, saving her from an awkward fall. Straightening, she glanced around, grateful that the clinic was empty. Of course it was; it must be getting late. She should go back to Archangel base, be social for a little before she and Garrus sorted the awkward who sleeps where issue.
She started moving, her legs carrying her out of the clinic and into the familiar, claustrophobic stench of Omega's tunnels. She'd go back to the base as soon as she'd worked off some of the crazy. As much as she knew Garrus would never turn his back on her, crazy or no, she wanted to realize the picture she'd held in her head pretty much from the moment she met him. No batnuts whacko drooling on his shoulder. She shuddered.
No. Partners. Equal … taking care of one another, not Garrus acting as nursemaid to his pathetic lover.
God, no, she'd rather shoot herself in the head. Leaving a pretty corpse amounted to a washout anyway; she didn't have a pretty patch of skin on her. Nope, she needed to make it quick, but most importantly, make it so they couldn't bring her back. Ever. One massive round to the brainpan. Squish. Splat. No head to bother propping up with a VI driver.
She recognized the relative cleanliness of the air before she recognized the walls of the near-black cavern. Sniffing the air, she activated the light on her armour. Hell, other than the faint holdover of goat and wood shavings, Eau D'Toilette Avec Eezo Mine had reclaimed the space.
Why did she head straight for the mines? Garrus and the base were home. She activated her omnitool to check the time. 2218 EST. Earth Standard. As if that meant anything on Omega. Hell, the station didn't really conform to any standard measure of time. Maybe its denizens considered themselves above or outside the bounds of such petty concerns. Omega ran full throttle at all hours. Still, for her, the time grew late … past her bedtime even. And someone enticing awaited her.
Garrus … or Archangel, aka Post-Shepard's-Death Garrus. Huh, she hadn't thought about it like that before. Archangel lived in her purgatory, a figment of her tortured mind, while Garrus belonged to the living, the torin's true self. Due to her rapid acceptance of her alive status, that rendered both Garrusi—an acceptable plural form of Garrus—real. Since she saw differences between pre and post Alchera Garrus, something happened to change him. That just amounted to logic. Did he owe his differences to her death?
God, a person could go for-real-raving-starkers thinking about that sort of shit.
She headed toward her garden, stepping around the gate. The metal and wire frame leaned back against the cavern wall, discarded in Ripper's rush to crate the juvenile thresher. It felt odd to enter the gate without a chunk of meat in one hand and a bucket in the other. Without Harold, she might actually enjoy the vegetables and flowers for the first time. She'd been surprised how far a baby thresher maw could spit, and how virulent its acid was. An entire pile of hole-riddled buckets sat at the bottom of the drop off. Perhaps she should have been prepared for the complications of fostering a baby maw; most predators had good reason for not going after a juvenile maw once it reached the two metre mark.
Do the reapers avoid them? After all, millions of years of reaper harvests and yet the threshers remain despite the threat. I need to discuss this with Garrus and Wrex.
The ghost walked between a row of carrots and a row of peas, a smile greeting the pristine lines of undamaged plants. Despite the frustrated roars and cussing going on while Ripper chased Harold around the large cavern, the krogan had taken an insane amount of care to avoid trampling her vegetables. Her smile widened when she noticed the bare tomato vines. Apparently, maw chasing made for hungry work. Who would have guessed at a krogan love of cherry tomatoes?
Stepping carefully in the low light—the gold halide lamps functioned on timers to trick her garden into believing itself attached to a planet rather than hanging, rootless, in space—she weaved her way through the rows to the flowers. Snapdragons and three varieties of lilies feeding her soul as much as the vegetables fed her body. She sat in their midst and peeled off her gloves, gentle palms caressing the velvety leaves and closed buds, savouring the muted pulse and whisper of the life trickling through their veins.
Dear spirits. A crooked grin tweaked the corner of her mouth. She'd started using that expletive near the end of the chase ….
Dear spirits, life poured through everything, tumbling and crashing over the rocks, wearing away the stone. Everything. Perhaps …? Naked fingertips pressed into the hollow beneath her jaw, greeted by the same uneven pulse that she felt beneath her breastbone every moment: five to ten weak, rapid beats followed by a pause then one huge, heavy beat before her heart settled back into its duty for another handful of thumps. If that didn't speak volumes, she didn't know what did. Even her heart didn't know whether to settle into life or surrender to death.
Except around Garrus. And Radis. Funny that the saying for falling in love or being struck by love was having one's heart skip a beat. Only love kept hers beating steady and true.
Nothing else possessed the power to stand her in place, surrendering to the hands and knives of what the rachni queen called the needlemen in the dark terror of Feros.
She needed to get back. Although she felt sure Garrus knew she'd return, she'd been gone long enough to set off his worry-o-meter. Maybe in the next couple of days, some of Archangel's people would return with her to salvage her garden. The space at the bottom of the stairs from the common room would provide a lovely place for Garrus's warriors to rest and recoup.
And if she found some extra sanity there, more the better.
The bastion of the Archangel base rose above her, silent despite the suspicious eyes witnessing her approach. She nodded to the asari perched on the second floor balcony, but it felt wrong to break the peace with words. Omega did not abide peace for long. It spoke volumes about Garrus's good work that he'd wrestled a measure of it from the chaos.
Lights burned low, providing just enough illumination to make her way through the common room and up the stairs. She hesitated at the door to Garrus's room, her hand warm and tingling as it hovered above the control. It glowed red, but she knew it would open to her touch. Garrus remained far too vigilant about such things to accidentally lock her out.
Still, she hesitated, her feet growing roots down into the station floor. Why? They slept side by side in Mordin's clinic, Garrus's head on her pillow, his breath warming her cheek. Not to mention all the nights she spent on the Normandy, staring at the ceiling in the captain's quarters, the bed like stone against her tailbone and shoulder blades? Those nights she'd wished for the courage to tell the torin how she felt, to encourage him to make his way to her door after gamma shift settled in for the night.
And now, Garrus waited for her inside that room, waited in a bed that had to be softer than either the one on the Normandy or her cot in the mines, and she stood outside the door, waffling like a coward.
"It won't bite." The whisper spirited through the air too softly to startle her. When she turned, the young human, Weaver, smiled and shrugged. "Just on my way to relieve Melenis. Thought I'd check on the two cuties downstairs before I do. Never knew goats were so frickin' adorable. I can't wait to see their babies." She trotted down the stairs, but then stopped at the bottom and looked back. "He's the very best of torins," the youngster said, her usual pluck subdued behind a layer of sincerity. "And he loves you." A smile teased the corners of her mouth, fleeting.
The ghost nodded. She knew. She knew she never needed to fear Garrus, and it wasn't lack of surety in him that kept her standing outside the door. No, never him.
"Goodnight."
The ghost nodded in response to Weaver's farewell and palmed the door. On the other side, the base's darkness and quiet deepened, the air still but for a soft duet of harmonizing snores. She stepped over the threshold far enough for the door to close behind her, then waited for her eyes to adjust to the weak light creeping in around the blinds.
Mussed blankets covered the couch, but she didn't find Radis within. Instead, when she stepped to the side of the bed, she discovered a significant lump growing in the curve of Garrus's spine. Even Radis trusted the Archangel without question. She crouched beside the bed and reached out to caress the puer's crest, earning a soft purring snore of contentment in return. Standing, she leaned down to kiss the little fellow. She'd rarely seen anything to rival his beauty … their beauty.
One half of the duet fell silent for a half second before, "Your duffel is in the closet off the bathroom."
She looked up, meeting Garrus's gaze. His eyes glinted like ice chips in the near-dark, so much staring at her from within the crystal blue that her heart thundered. Surely he heard it in the otherwise silent night. Her feet tugged her toward the door while her arms longed to wrap around Garrus and cling tight. For a moment, the tug of war froze her in place, but then Garrus folded back the blanket and began to rise.
"I can show you where everything is. The shower can be tricky."
The ghost held out a hand. "No. Stay there. You'll wake Radis." She nodded, her feet deciding that the washroom provided a sufficient retreat, while her arms accepted it as a destination moving her closer to their goal. A shower sounded good. "I'll find everything and be right back." She slipped through the door, leaning back against it once it closed, her lungs heaving. God, she sounded like a post race half-miler as she gasped. "Lights, low."
Once faint light washed the toilet, sink, and shower in Omega's proprietary yellow-brown, the ghost let out a long breath, her muscles melting toward the surprisingly clean tile floor. A quick lurch onto the toilet stopped her from complete collapse, the buckles on her armour ringing against the metal. Damn. Way to send up an alarm within the first five minutes. No wonder she spent so much time feeling like a spaz: three quarters crazy with a solid twenty-five percent clumsy oaf.
"You all right in there?"
She nodded, then grumbled at the ridiculousness of the gesture. Yup, complete spaz. "Fine." Other words, soothing and encouraging words followed, reaching the end of her tongue before she bit them off. She needed to get out of her armour, shower, and then just get on with it. Garrus's warmth had pulled her far enough from death to become a ghost. Surely, enveloping herself in even more of that warmth could complete her transformation from ghost to living being. The lightning for her Frankenstein's monster.
Right, time to get focused on being alive.
Fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, clean and sweet-scented, sweats brushing softly against her battered skin. Even before the door closed behind her, the blankets folded back again, inviting her under their warmth. Holding every other breath, she accepted fighting off a bad case of wooden limbs and numb fingers. She slipped beneath the thick layer of comfort, the depth of Garrus's mattress pulling her down against his body.
She sorted herself so she faced him. His eyes sparkled when she glanced up from beneath shy, heavy eyelids, his stare as intense as the last candle left burning in the depths of a mid-winter storm.
"Did you tell the mattress to do that?" she asked, a soft chuckle following the words through her lips, deflecting the weight of the moment and his stare. She tucked her hand under her cheek, her arm providing the tiniest bulwark against the press of his bare plates and hide.
Garrus hummed, the sound resonating through the space between them as he reached up, brushing a talon along the line of her jaw. "I've got it rigged to do all sorts of things. Hmmm, but that might be my favourite." He leaned in to touch his brow to hers, slowly enough for her to make an escape.
She closed the remaining distance, never having wanted to escape less. "So, this was all some diabolical plan?" Chortling low in her throat, she closed her eyes and relaxed into Garrus's embrace. "And the invasion of the small turian going on behind you?"
He chuckled, the sound as low and comforting as his whisper. "I gave him the option to start in the bed, but he assured me that he'd be fine on the couch." Garrus wrapped his arms around her, tucking her in against his chest. "Next thing I knew, the mattress moved, and he was wrapped up in one of his blankets, curling up behind me."
She grinned as she tucked her face in against his neck, breathing him in. Dear lord, if ever God had created a reason for a 'dear spirits' it was that bed, saturated with that spice and earth scent she didn't know she'd missed so very badly.
Dear spirits.
A-N: Dear spirits indeed. It's a chapter! From Kim! OMG! It's been a hard winter, but I feel things turning around, so we can probably expect more chapters of this and maybe even other stories. And MC … can't wait to see what is going on inside Garrus's head. :D