Note: Can you wait for ME3? I can't! I'm going crazy!I'm keeping away from spoilers and keeping my fingers crossed for lots of gooey Garrus goodness! Needless to say updates will continue to be slow, but that enthusiasm and inspiration will be high. I hope my readers will stick with me for the ride.
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Chapter-Specific Notes: Contains about 3 lines of dialogue directly from the game. Takes place after Parts Answering Parts 24: Doubts.
Chapter Title Quotes: "Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty." -Francoise de le Rouchefoucauld
"Instead of playing to win, I was only playing not to lose..." -Sean Covey
""For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can't possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have."- Dorothy Sayers
"Closer to home?" Shepard sounded startled, nearly as startled as Garrus had felt when she'd first flippantly offered him a skip to the tie-breaker. "Garrus...I don't want closer to home, I want someone I can trust." I want you. It amazed her that Garrus, so much more skilled at hearing and translating human subtext-her subtext-than anyone-human, quarian, krogan, asari, or otherwise-she'd ever met couldn't hear that, but...
It scared her a little bit to think that maybe he could.
Maybe he just didn't like what he heard.
Garrus tipped his head, pulling at the armor plating around his cowl as if trying to loosen up some breathing space or ease a crick in his neck like one she was constantly rubbing at in hers. Maybe a bit of both. "It's just...well...I was recently reminded...you have more than one friend you can trust."
Shepard stared at him blankly for a few seconds, then snorted. "Well, this can't be about Alenko and Tali's been on board since before-wait-Liara?"
Garrus looked down at his console at an angle that granted him a full view of her face. He couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye, but he couldn't deny the need to see her emotions play across that smooth canvas as surely and as clearly as he could hear them playing through the thin silver thread of her voice. At some point, long, long, so long-a lifetime-ago, he'd grown attached to reading those complex variations -just like the constant live feed of information that scrolled through his visor. He rarely took it off anymore. He scarcely knew how to function without it.
Shepard sighed, shaking her head and reaching up to rub the back of her neck, out along the line of her shoulder, rolling it under her hand as if testing the movement, feeling it out, letting her thoughts follow the motion like a guide. "What the hell is it with asari?" she murmured to herself, shaking her head again in response to her own question. "The whole damn galaxy is so in thrall to them it expects everyone else to be, too, and damn well won't take no for an answer."
Garrus coughed, caught himself shuffling his feet, and stopped. "Excuse me?"
Shepard snorted again. "You heard me. I am not, nor have I ever been, nor do I ever expect to be in love with Liara T'Soni. Even if it appears she and I are the only two people who will ever believe that."
"That's just it, Shepard. You two seem to have...an understanding." Garrus huffed a turian sigh.
Shepard paused, hand on her shoulder. "We do," she said simply.
Garrus nearly snarled with a rage that left him feeling...hollow. And more than a bit unnerved.
"Garrus..." Shepard's brows drew together slightly, then separated as the clouds gathering in her eyes cleared. They narrowed, almost imperceptibly, sharpening the way they did when she was lining a shot up in her sights. "Are you jealous?"
"Jealous?" Garrus repeated, feeling both genuinely confused and a bit guilty. "I...that is...I mean...that's not the point. It's not about that, Shepard."
"I see," Shepard said neutrally. Garrus had the strangest impression she was disappointed, though he couldn't have put a talon to the reason why. "Then what is it about, exactly?"
"All I'm trying to say, Shepard," he said, pleased that so little of his inner turmoil bled into his voice she probably couldn't hear a hint; human ears weren't tuned to nuances to the extent that turians understood them. "Is that you should be with someone who can make you...comfortable."
"Ah, but in that case, Garrus, I'm afraid you're still on the hook," Shepard said, sounding wry.
"Because no one, absolutely no one, makes me feel more at ease than you-you're my port in every storm-or hadn't you noticed? You don't honestly think I'd tell anyone who asked my doubts and fears, do you?"
"Just anyone?" Garrus repeated, surprised. "No, definitely not. I know you haven't told any of the new squad or crew. But Chakwas, or Joker, or Tali...or Liara? Yeah, I think you'd tell them. Especially her."
Shepard shrugged slightly. "I did tell her more than I would have told anyone else-"
Light gleamed in her eyes like sun breaking through storm-clouds, a brilliance so bright he could feel its warmth on his plates.
Which only made lump of grief lodged in his throat seem that much colder and more bitter by comparison. Garrus gulped, trying to force it down to free the words he knew he had to say, however little he could stand to say them.
"Of course," Garrus said, still struggling for calm, "I understand, Shepard, it's only natur-"
"Except you, Garrus." Shepard said a bit sharply, but with the same warmth in her voice that gleamed in her eyes. The abrupt tone was more like a love-tap than a cut or even a slap. It was, in fact, damned inviting...or it would have been if only he'd felt like it was more personally directed at him...he hadn't realized before just how much he'd grown to expect and rely on it being something...exclusive. Intimate. He hated doubting that, and he hated himself for needing to believe it.
"And I told Liara because she asked," Shepard continued. "I tell you because... I can't help myself. Somehow, when I'm around you, I just can't imagine holding anything-any part of myself-back. I thought..." you knew that...that you felt the same...
"Liara and I... it just isn't like that, Garrus," she said firmly, looking him straight in the eye, unwavering. For a long moment, she didn't do or say anything else, but simply stood there, taking him in. Then, just when Garrus thought he might spontaneously explode, she gave a slight, breathy chuckle, lifting her shoulder and dropping it ever-so-slightly in the ghost of a shrug. "Well...maybe it isn't unlike that, either. At least...not entirely." That gleam in her eyes and the quirk at the corners of her lips appeared to have intensified.
Garrus hadn't realized his mandibles could twitch quite that rapidly. Nor that the asynchronicity between them and the faint flicker that seemed to have developed in the plates on his forehead would be so maddening. It was going to drive him insane, if it wasn't simply a testament to the fact he was there already.
"Liara understands me better than anyone else in this universe could ever hope to," Shepard elaborated, and the red haze tinging the edges of his vision thickened exponentially. It had the oddest effect, making Shepard look strangely as if she were smirking. "Linking minds...sharing memories...it is incredibly intimate."
Garrus was growling, the sound rolling through the battery, making the deckplates vibrate beneath her feet in a way that was strangely erotic.
"Liara doesn't just accept or even understand my fear of the Reapers, she shares it with me, the same way I share it with the Protheans. We experienced it. In a strange way, we lived it. We survived it. Not the way the Protheans would have, but in our own way, together. That experience is...a link, a bond that can't be broken or dissolved, not by anything, not even dea-"
"I understand the camaraderie of battle, Shepard," Garrus snarled. Strange how a snarl could sound both desperate and resigned.
"I know." Shepard tipped her chin in acknowledgement, and to hide a smile. Garrus was jealous, and she couldn't help being girlishly delighted by this proof of his affection, however little she might really wish to see him suffer. "And I know you also understand that while it can be...both extraordinarily intense and undeniably real, it usually isn't...strange as it sounds, I suppose the word is personal."
That was true. The linking of their minds had created a certain level of attraction between them, something she had never denied. Not to herself, and not to Liara. But she had also never doubted that as strong, as real, as enduring as that bond was, it wasn't love. Well, maybe it was love. But not of the romantic sort.
And once Liara had had a little time to process the unexpected ardor of it, Shepard thought she had slowly begun to agree.
Garrus went suddenly and completely still, so still it made her nervous. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and cut all the power in his nervous system. Or it would have been like that if his eyes hadn't been so immediate and so alert, searing into the vulnerable planes of her face like a brand.
"Then what are we doing here, exactly, Shepard?" Garrus grated, sounding more confused than ever.
Shepard thought she understood. After all, if anyone had asked her to describe her relationship with Garrus before she'd stepped foot into the battery this afternoon, she probably would have said: Brothers-in-arms. Comrades. Partners. Maybe it was that last word that was important, that made the difference.
It was a word that had been there, underscoring her feelings for him, without being noticed, for a long time. A very long time. But its meaning, what it implied or expressed, that the other two didn't...that was something she couldn't begin to explain. Not yet. Maybe not ever. It just...was, and she didn't feel the need to question it.
More than that, she didn't want to question it... and it worried her that Garrus did.
"I don't know...I thought I did... but...I'm beginning to think..." Shepard sighed, feeling a little dazed and disconcerted herself.
"Listen, Garrus, I don't want to make you uncomfortable." If the cost of his comfort was for her to hold her tongue and keep her silence regarding feelings she was just beginning to realize were as much a part of her as her arms or her legs or the nose on her face, so be it. She was a marine. She was trained to survive, and she was the best of the best of the best at it, sir, and thank you very much, with no apologies. She had survived Akuze. She had survived Virmire. She had survived Ilos and the Citadel. She had survived-well, after a fashion-Alchera, and she would damn well survive this. Even if each and every gesture of affection she couldn't express would be like dying a little death, she would rather die a thousand times over than lose Garrus so much as once. She could and would survive anything with him in her life, standing by her side. She'd take what she could get from him with gratitude and with no regrets.
"Uncomfortable?" The word was a joke. When he first looked into her eyes in that med-clinic, he'd felt a sense of...something akin to recognition. He'd felt-for the first time in ages, maybe for the first time ever-as though someone had seen him, really seen all of him there was to offer, without judgement. He'd felt...accepted and approved. Welcome. Over time, that feeling had grown. On the Normandy...with her...he'd felt...
When he'd seen her on that bridge, walking toward him...it was like going home. The one place, the only place, he'd ever felt at ease was here...with her. He'd thought she'd known that. "You could never make me uncomfortable, Shepard."
Hell, that was the problem. The whole damned point. she wasn't just important...she wasn't just his commander...his mentor...his best and dearest friend...she was all of those things. She was...everything. Already. And if he gave into that...if he let himself fall...there was no net, no net at all. Something always went wrong...If something went wrong...
if it didn't work...if they didn't work...all he stood to lose was everything.