Entropy
Another tedious request gets his approval and he finds himself wishing for the good old days when his only responsibility was shooting his rifle. Spirits, did he miss shooting things.
All the bureaucratic nonsense he thought he had abandoned with his C-Sec career was actually something he found himself starting to miss. Compared to running a ship, during wartime no less, C-Sec seemed like an exercise in anarchy.
The CIC is buzzing with activity. Deciphering this message, relaying that one. Orders from the Alliance, requests from the Asari, always somebody needing something. An ensign tries to give him a datapad, but he waves her away. He's had enough for one day cycle. Garrus is relatively confident the galaxy will fall to pieces with or without him seeing the new duty rosters.
It's engineering he heads to. He might be exhausted, but the bowels of the ship offer a certain peace.
Plus he's left Shepard with Tali.
Their voices echo over to him as soon as he's in engineering. At first the words take no shape, just the familiar sounds and cadence that was so unique to each of them, but the conversation takes shape as he rounds the corner into Tali's little nook.
"You plan on building a home on Rannoch when all this is said and done?"
"Yes," Tali says firmly, hopefully. Naively, but he would never tell her that. Some dreams are too beautiful to crush.
Shepard catches his eye and smiles at him, Tali's hope echoed in her eyes. She's about to say something, probably something as simple as "Hello" when her pupils dilate. There's a look of pain on her face, or at least it seems that way to him before he sharply turns away. He hates seeing this moment, the moment when she forgets or resets or whatever it is that happens to her.
He's about to hazard a look back, a forced smile twitching at the corner of his mandibles, when she staggers heavily forward and collapses against the nearest console. She's nearly doubled over in pain, knuckles white as she clutches the machinery.
Tali finds her voice first. "Shepard, are you okay?"
Her eyes don't quite focus as she looks at the quarian. There's a manic look to her, frightening really. It makes Tali take a step back and keeps him frozen to the spot. This is new.
"I..." Beads of sweat are starting to form on her forehead. With great effort she manages to force out the name, "Miranda."
"Uh... She's probably in the lab... We could go check-"
"She's alive?"
He and Tali share a look. She follows Tali's gaze and only then does she seem to realize he's there.
"Garrus!" He didn't know she could move so fast, but she's clinging to him the way a drowning man clung to every choked gasp of air. He'd never seen her like this. Not with him, not with anyone. "Garrus! We can change it now! We have to!" She shakes him now. "I won't see them kill you again!"
He still hasn't said a thing - what do you say in a time like this - but Tali steps forward. "It'll be alright, Shepard," she coos, gently trying to guide her off of his armor. "Whatever's bothering you, soon it won't even be a memory-"
She pulls hard out of Tali's grasp, nearly throwing them all off balance. "You don't understand - I'm the last Shepard. I have to do this... I can't to go back, the lab... I'm pretty sure Miranda blew it up..."
It means nothing, just nonsense, and it worries him. She's gotten like this before, this urgency to do things that she already did, but none of what she's saying is even remotely familiar.
She pulls away from him, clutching her head in what looks like an effort to physically hold it together. She grunts in pain, falling to her knees. "The base... Too much energy... they found us... Stop them..."
Words fail her, her look grows distant. They both see clearly as the light leaves her eyes. She collapses in a heap, boneless, in front of them. The silence is deafening, but the truth still rings out between them.
Commander Shepard is dead.
Her body is always thrumming with electricity. She can feel the energy Miranda pumped into her following in her wake. Maybe that's what kills all the Shepards she leaves behind.
The first stop had been rough. She can still vividly see the look of horror in Tali and Garrus' eyes. It'd been like a dream, even as it happened. Her own thoughts disorganized, her body not quite moving in its normal rhythm. Fear and desperation had robbed her of her senses.
She keeps falling backwards, like a stone skipping across water, but she senses with each jump that the way behind her was blocked. Every time she lands somewhere new, another door to the future-that-was closed forever.
Shepard had, after two other similar encounters with members of the crew, learned control. She knew to stay very still as her vision came back, as the energy still buzzing along her skin settled in her gut. Then she'd try to warn them.
Not that they listened. Not that she had the time to explain. Not that she had the credibility, given her condition, to make them heed her.
She sighed, the chair under her swiveling slightly. The scene before her came into focus slowly, but that gave her time to collect herself. Collect the pieces of Jane Shepard that weren't completely broken or lost yet.
Her ears were still ringing, but the blueprints on the conference table seemed familiar. The shape, the scale of it...
"I... I remember that ship."
Everyone freezes and all eyes are on her. You could hear a pin drop, she's sure of it. She leans over to better examine the blueprints, pulling the nearest one to her. "The Crucible," she whispers, repeating the memory of a memory. Yes. This might be a good place to warn them. Fix this much at least, even if she's doomed herself.
Joker's the first to say anything. "You remember it?" His voice is full of barely stifled hope.
Hope. It makes her feel guilty that she hasn't been able to follow through yet. She wants to - needs to - turn all their hope into something real.
She nods, the memory clearer the longer she looks at the picture. "I saw it blow up." She says it with such certainty as she puts the blueprints back on the conference table. "Looked like it was near Jupiter."
There's an unease in the room as she looks around. Now no one will meet her eyes.
The tingling in her limbs is back, the world's closing in and she knows she's wasted her chance here.
"Don't worry," she tells them calmly. "I'll try to stop that."
Adrenaline. The smell of guns. And the sound of a firefight, but one beyond the ship she's in.
"I still don't know if it was a good idea to bring you-"
"Both you and Shepard would be dead if I hadn't come. Without my knowledge of Cerberus protocols-"
"I know," he sighs. "But you know how she is when she sees you. She took a shot at you on Utukku because she thought you were that Eva woman."
She ignores them. Looks at this place and sits in the chair she's seen a dozen times, but never up close. Never the real thing.
There's a sort of triumph in knowing she's sitting in the Illusive Man's base. The details of this assault might escape her, but she can sense a victory and she allows herself a moment to enjoy it.
The tickle of a distant memory, of a scar she'd found but didn't remember earning, makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She feels him behind her before she ever hears him. The rest is just instinct.
"This is for Thane and Liara you son of a bitch!" Her omni-blade is deep in his torso, she thinks she can fell the last beats of his heart reverberate through it. It's a satisfying thought. She pulls him close and whispers, "God help you if I fix all this, because there will be no end to how much I make you suffer for what you did to them."
Garrus and EDI are by her side then, guns ready but the threat is dead at her feet.
They hesitate. "Thane and Liara..." She knows what he's really asking.
"Thane on the Citadel. Liara on Thessia. I know." She doesn't know how she knows. If she read it in a report somewhere, if someone had said it in front of her, or if it's her - just her - who knows. She turns to him, enjoying the bewildered look, and flashes a smile (one that she hopes shows only her bravado and none of her doubts). "I'll fix it."
Strangely, she realizes she believes it. Maybe not here, not now, but she'll make it right.
She hopes the Garrus she leaves behind in that moment isn't haunted by her, the confident Commander Shepard back for a moment before dying at his feet.