As always, a huge thank-you to everyone who's keeping up with this story. Bioware owns nearly everything.
Chapter Twenty-Nine – Partings
The sound of the door sliding open jarred Shepard from her thoughts. She dragged her gaze from the grey walls and found herself looking at Anderson as he hovered, not quite inside the small room.
"Social visit?"
"Something like that," he answered. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm always mild-mannered and happy, you know that."
Anderson snorted. "And you really think?"
"That they've fucking grounded me because they don't know what the hell to decide."
"I'm not disagreeing."
"Christ, Anderson. I think I hate everything right now." She sank down onto the bunk. "No offence."
"None taken," he answered drily. "Here."
"What?"
"This," he said, and pressed a small datapad into her hands. "Read it."
She scowled and looked down at the screen. Short words and three lines and suddenly her stomach was all full of lurching, painful exhilaration. "Garrus," she said, almost silently. "You talked to Garrus?"
"Yeah," Anderson said pointedly. "Seems he was as pissed off about you being in here as you are to be here."
"Yeah, well. We knew we'd be back here at some point. The part I'm still stuck on is the locked door. And that bit where they took my rank off me."
He must have heard the sudden, raw uncertainty in her voice. His face softened, and wordlessly, he made his way to the narrow window that broke the severe grey lines of the far wall.
"Sorry," Shepard muttered. "Been a long day."
"It's alright. Take your time."
She dug her fingertips against the datapad and stared at the screen again.
Tell them what they need to know. Keep telling them until they damn well start listening.
We'll get through this.
"So, Anderson," she said, a little hesitantly. "Can I ask a favour?"
"A message back to Officer Vakarian?"
"That transparent, huh?"
"You have no idea."
"Thanks," she said wryly. She tapped out a reply, and her gaze stayed on the livid shape of the words too long. "Okay."
"Shepard." The bunk shifted under his weight as he sat. "This isn't forever."
"I know. I'm just not convinced the Reapers care how long I get made to sit here."
"I hear that," Anderson said. "I'll be keeping you updated of anything I notice."
"Anything?"
"Anything strange."
"The lives we lead," she remarked drily. "Take care of yourself."
"You too, Shepard."
He clipped her shoulder lightly, and she pressed the datapad into his hands, and seven steps later, he was out of the room – the cell, she thought, it was a fucking cell – and she was staring at the wall again.
She quartered the floor twice, three times, counting her paces to the door and back to the window and across to the bunk. She snapped around on her heel again and found herself at the window, her hands flat against the sill. She could see the inoffensive green square of a garden, fringed with trees and rippling with the wind.
Shepard waited, her thoughts swirling, until the sun sank away and the room turned grey and stifling. Methodically, she kicked off her boots and swapped her fatigues for the shorts and vest she found in the single locker. As brusquely, she rolled herself beneath the sheets and waited for nothing, staring at the obdurate darkness until some of the impatience ebbed.
She slept badly, absurdly aware of the unmoving earth beneath the floor.
She surfaced from fragmented, uneven dreams and instinctively reached for Garrus. Her fingers skimmed over bunched sheets and bumped the wall. She twisted halfway to her knees before she remembered.
He wasn't here.
She supposed she was turning soft and fucking sappy in her old age, but then she thought of how he'd looked at her, how he'd looked at her with such yearning in his face, and she knew it was nothing of the sort.
Not when the absence of him made her ache.
She considered the rumpled warmth of the sheets, gave up, and swung her feet onto the floor. Slowly and steadily and with all the steely patience she'd been taught, she settled her thoughts.
She could wait it out, she knew, if she had to, if she kept coming up against the same deliberate blank-wall ignorance she'd been handed so far. She could let them walk her through their bullshit until they listened, until they had to listen, and she was damned if she was going to let it happen quietly.
She pushed herself upright and almost idly wondered if the food was going to be as blandly suspicious as the Normandy's late-watch fare. A few steps took her to the window and she stood there, her elbows braced on the sill, watching as the sky lightened.
Garrus woke to the unfamiliar spill of sunlight through the narrow windows. He squinted past one raised arm and realised that he was half-dressed and tangled in pristine sheets and still in the visiting personnel quarters.
Visiting, he thought, only slightly venomously. Visiting and utterly out of place and no, they wouldn't be letting him see Shepard any time soon.
He shouldn't've been in the least bit surprised, he knew. He understood how it worked, how it had always worked, whether it was humans down here or up on the Citadel, but still, it had rankled enough that he'd seethed through the past two days. Anderson had taken off for the Council and his own labyrinth of paperwork, Joker had been called out to follow the Normandy for the first stages of its retrofit and Garrus had bullied himself into waiting out another night.
He wasn't even sure why.
He knew she understood. But even so, he was sitting here uselessly, staring at the empty clasp of his own hands. Wrestling with himself as if he actually had another choice. As if he'd never had her message back, the words slicing into his thoughts, relieving and unsettling at the same time.
Head out when you need to and we'll catch up later. I understand.
Later, Garrus thought, and decided. He kicked the sheets away and reached for the rest of his clothes. He dressed quickly, his finger darting over the last of the buckles and fastenings.
A few brisk minutes took him back through the grey sprawl of the building and to the entrance hall. He loitered long enough for the kid on desk duty to sign off on his gear, and then loitered again while everything was fetched. The familiar, missed weight of the sniper rifle settled into its shoulder harness, and the pistol followed, clipped at his waist.
Outside, the early sunlight mantled the white paths. Garrus paused, his fingers flicking over his omni-tool. He tapped out a brief message to Tali, part question and part explanation, and when her reply flashed onto the screen – Give me fifteen minutes – he found himself almost smiling. He waited, perched on a stone bench and breathing in the shifting brine-scent of the morning.
"I think you read my mind," Tali said, from somewhere behind him.
Garrus turned, standing in the same motion. "I figure if we're going to get anything useful done, it might as well be now."
"Like it's that easy?" she asked, pointedly.
"No," he admitted. "Course not. But it was that or start climbing the walls."
"Probably not a good thing."
"Probably not." He tilted his head on one side. "No Jack?"
"No." Tali shrugged. "She took off yesterday. I caught her on her way out. She says good luck and hope you don't get yourself killed too quickly."
Garrus laughed. "Very sweet. I don't suppose she promised to stay out of trouble?"
"Of course not."
"I'm disappointed."
"No, you're not," she told him drily. "Do you have a plan?"
"I guess I'm going home," he said, and grimaced.
"That bad?"
"Very funny." He sighed, and added, "I don't know. Maybe it is. You?"
"The Flotilla," she answered, quietly.
"Hey," Garrus said. "It's okay."
"Yes, I know."
"You know," he said. "I'll even come with you as far as the spaceport. Maybe even to the Citadel."
"Thank you so much." Her head lifted, and he could see the faint lines of her face, softening into something like a smile. "And it's got nothing to do with you not knowing your way around here either?"
"Nothing at all."
He tried to ignore the strange, fluttering uncertainty – because he wasn't walking away, not really, he was doing what they knew had to be done. Because he was useless, sitting here on Earth and staring up into the sky and wondering what the hell was happening elsewhere. Because he needed to be doing something and because he knew and Shepard knew that there was no way he could sit here under the lancing fall of the sun and just wait.
"Come on," Tali said, her voice breaking into his thoughts. "Let's get ourselves out of here."
The spaceport was a cluster of silver towers, spanning the wide, glittering length of the river. Half an hour of wandering and Garrus found them both passage to the Citadel. By the time he'd handed payment over, his mind was already lurching ahead.
He needed to find himself a shuttle to Palaven, and he needed to see Tali onto whatever ship was going the Flotilla's way, mainly because he knew Shepard and his own conscience would flay him alive if he didn't.
He trailed Tali up the ramp and onto the lumbering, ungainly grey transport they'd booked. He settled himself into a seat next to her, half aware of the bland, chattering sounds of the other passengers as they filed down the walkway. Somewhere below, the engines rumbled into life.
"So," Garrus said, to distract himself. "Feel like you're being stared at?"
"I'm a quarian. I'm always being stared at."
"Funny."
He gritted his teeth through the swaying shudder as the transport lifted into the air. He remembered how he'd seen the landing zone from the Normandy's cockpit, leaning over Joker's shoulder as he glided the ship in between the arching spires of the city. Shining and orderly and split by surging patches of green. He'd muttered something sarcastic to Shepard, and grinned at her response.
"Yeah, well. Not all of my home planet is a shoddy hellhole. Just most of it."
Garrus straightened up and looked at her. She was staring over the top of Joker's head, her face unreadable.
"Hey," Garrus said, and reached for her hand. Her fingers wreathed around his, slack for an instant before she squeezed back hard.
"You know," Joker remarked. "Whatever it is you're both doing, I want no part of it."
"Just fly the ship," Shepard said mildly.
"Yes, Commander."
The transport's narrow windows were dark now, blurred with the streak of the stars. His thoughts were twisting again, viciously, and he wondered how differently he might have felt, if he'd walked away from her before he'd learned that she tended to sprawl gracelessly all over the sheets at night. Before he'd woken with her burrowed under his arm and wrapped around his chest as if she never wanted to move.
Before he'd had himself buried in her to the hilt, with nothing but the startling, wonderful proximity of bare skin and muscle and breath between them.
Easier, he thought, and almost hated the biting truth of it. Easier but easier isn't better.
"Garrus," Tali said, and stirred in her seat. "Are you alright?"
"Day-dreaming."
"She'll be fine."
"I never said," he protested, and stopped. "Yeah. I hope so."
"You know what I was thinking?"
"What?"
"I don't know whether it used to be simpler," Tali said. "Or I just want to think that it was. Because perhaps back then, we weren't sure what was going to happen."
"That last part I agree with." Garrus bared his teeth in a tired grin. "Easy to shoot geth when you don't know what's around the next corner."
"Do you remember Therum?"
Garrus laughed. "Never forget it. I think that's where I knew things were going to be interesting, at least."
"Was that before or after you were whining about the heat?"
"I was commenting. I like the heat."
"Right," Tali said, and he heard the teasing amusement in her voice. "I forgot."
He lurched behind the smooth curve of the rock, fast enough that it drove the breath from his chest. He jammed his rifle under his shoulder and waited, his attention on his visor and the numbers it was spilling out.
His comm unit crackled, and Shepard snapped, "Got something big up ahead."
"Big?" Alenko replied. "What do we mean, big?"
"Like that thing we ran over," Shepard answered, and Garrus could've sworn she was half-laughing.
"Great."
"Vakarian, you read me?"
"I hear you, Commander. All clear here."
"Good. Move up with Alenko. Flank me and shoot if you see anything you think is ugly or dangerous."
"Got it."
He waited, poised and terse, until he heard Alenko move out first. Measured, careful steps, and his visor recorded the man's movements as he edged forward. Garrus lingered a heartbeat longer before he was following, too aware of the rising tangle of metal up ahead, and the way the strange jagged scaffold blocked out the light. He kept his shoulders back against the rocks and moved slowly, his fingers a little too tight against his trigger.
Under his feet, the soil gave way too easily. It was hot and rough and the air above it shimmered. He could taste the heat, metallic and heavy and clinging.
"Movement," Alenko said.
Something shifted, and the half-light splintered across curving metal limbs.
"Yeah," Garrus responded, almost breathless. "I see it. Part of it."
"Okay." Shepard's voice hardened. "Give me a distraction."
"Shepard?" Alenko asked.
"Distraction. Now. This shiny bastard is ours."
Garrus heard the shivering surge of Alenko's biotics, and the silvery, clawed thing – it was a geth, some kind of geth, and it was fucking huge – swung around. Another swirling blue sphere crashed over it, and it sparked. Garrus rolled up onto his knees and fired, repeating shots that bit into the geth monstrosity's head – or whatever the hell it was, the heavy glowing thing that was where its head should've been – until it swiveled to fix on him.
Stupidly stubborn, he fired again, and the round caught in the flaring light above one of its gun ports. It smashed and guttered and then the thing was staggering, two of its hooked legs swaying and tangled in another flare of biotic energy.
He heard Shepard shouting at him to keep down, and he obeyed, throwing himself back behind the slant of the rock. He heard the shattering clamour of gunfire at close range, bullets whining into metal. Silence followed, and the sound of feet against the dragging, hot earth.
"Okay," Shepard said raggedly. "It's down."
Garrus straightened up, planting one hand on the rock. The geth was still huge, even crumpled across the ground, its head a fractured, sputtering mess.
"Vakarian, you okay?"
"Yeah, Commander. Still breathing. You?"
"Fine," she answered, and he thought he saw her smile behind the plates of her helmet. "Alenko?"
"All good here."
"Good. Tali, Williams," Shepard said, lifting her omni-tool. "Get yourselves up here so we can go find ourselves an archaeologist."
Garrus surfaced from indistinct, uneven thoughts that were halfway to sleep. Beside him, Tali shifted in her seat and nudged him.
"Sorry," Garrus mumbled. "More tired than I thought."
"It's alright. We're nearly there."
"Good."
He made himself sit silently through the last stretches of the descent between the Citadel's wide, glittering ward-arms. Something very like impatience had lodged in his chest, and he wanted to be moving and away. With Tali keeping pace beside him, he fought his way through the late afternoon crowds and across another seething plaza to Outgoing Transportation.
He checked the times for Palaven, swallowed, and almost signed himself onto a later shuttle-run out. No, he thought. Stupid to loiter around and why should he be at all worried about going home?
Because it's been so long, some treacherous, needling thought supplied. Because you never explained why. Because you never explained anything.
"Garrus," Tali said, and he turned. "I'm ready."
"You found something already?"
"Nearest I can get," she answered. "Raan's been keeping me updated on their co-ordinates."
"That's good?"
She shrugged. "I suppose it's good. I want to see her again. I want to see them all again, it just…I'm not sure."
"Things change?"
"And things that don't," Tali admitted, quieter.
"Yeah," Garrus said, heavily. "That part I hear."
"Yes."
"Look," he said. Awkwardly, he twisted his hands together. "I'm really bad at this kind of thing. You will be taking care of yourself out there?"
"Garrus," Tali said, and he was sure she was smirking at him. "Is that the sound of you being nice?"
"Funny."
"And besides, I got myself through my Pilgrimage. And Ilos."
"Yeah," Garrus said, and grinned. "But you got shot."
"I was ambushed," she protested. "I'll be fine."
"Let me know how things go."
"Of course." Her voice softened, and she added, "And you have to let me know about Shepard."
"Yeah," he said, and the word fell off his tongue rough and painful. He walked with her to the far end of the plaza, stopping just ahead of the landing ramp. "Any idea what you'll do when you catch up with them again?"
"Hopefully nothing complicated."
"And when has that ever been an option?"
Tali laughed. "Yes, I'm sure my plan to just fix things quietly in a corner won't last long."
"It's still a good plan."
"What's yours?"
He wanted to say something half-serious about having no damn clue, not yet, and how it'd be likely he'd get halfway to Palaven before quitting and running. "I have some talking to do," Garrus said. "And I'm really hoping Dad's in a listening kind of mood for once."
"Good luck," Tali said, and leaned up to squeeze his shoulder.
He watched her go, striding up the ramp and through the last door. He waited an instant longer before turning away, his gut knotted with impatience again. He had an hour, and he spent most of it fretting his way through his thoughts. He forced himself to eat, and afterwards, he could barely remember what he'd ordered. He wasted the last of his hour dawdling back to the shuttle loading ramp, trying to think of anything but Palaven and failing wretchedly.
It had been years, he thought. Years and too many mistakes and now he thought he was going to dance in and hope like hell that it might work.
On board, he settled himself into the narrow seat and simmered. He wanted the damn ship to lift into the air so he could start getting this over with – this stupid decision he'd made, the only one he could make – and start figuring out what he was meant to do next.
He thought of the still, uncomplicated warmth of Shepard's quarters, and the two of them tangled in the sheets there.
"So," Garrus said, between uneven breaths. "That was what, Liara's apartment, the whole damn trade centre, any poor bastard you ran into with the cab, and a hotel."
"I didn't run into anyone," Shepard retorted.
"Sure you didn't."
She stretched against him, languid and naked and laughing. "You really want to make this an argument?"
"Well," Garrus said, and rubbed his face against the soft junction of her neck and shoulder. "What do I get if I win?"
The airlock slid open, and the heat washed over him first. Stifling and closing around him and Garrus breathed it in, slowly, the heavy warmth of it. He stepped out into the punishing glare of the sunlight and paused. The weight of it hit his shoulders and his head and then his eyes when he looked up. The clear blue bowl of the sky above was fierce already, mirror-bright and cloudless.
By the time he crossed the wide, open avenues of the spaceport, the heat was seeping under his armour. Another few minutes took him through the slanting shadows of high grey pillars and under the towering rise of a bridge. All ordered, knife-edged lines and he wondered at how it didn't feel quite right.
Because he'd wasted so much time on the Citadel, he supposed. Because he'd been shipped off to bootcamp and then he'd settled in with his platoon and finally he'd found himself walking into C-Sec and he'd spent too many of the intervening years avoiding reasons to be here.
He found an empty bench and sat. For a long, uncertain moment he listened to the ordinary, unremarkable sounds of the morning. Footsteps snapping out against the ground and the idle rumble of voices and he knew he was floundering.
Just get on with it, Garrus thought viciously, and keyed his omni-tool into life. He stared at the screen as if it might write the damn message for him.
Dear Dad, he thought, and scowled.
Hey, Dad. I'm back planetside.
Dad. I'm back planetside.
Hey. I'm back planetside.
He cleared the screen, tried again, and typed out a message stating where he was, when he'd arrived, and asking if his father had time to see him. He wasn't sure if it was formal enough or too damn formal, but he made himself send it before he lost the rest of the day tinkering with the words.
The reply hit the screen twenty-three minutes later, bland and to the point and would it suit him to find himself a cab right now?
Garrus exhaled sharply. He wrote out a quick affirmation, flicked his omni-tool off and pushed up to his feet.
The cab ride seemed to take far too long, the vehicle dragging its way through the deadlocked tangle of late morning traffic. Glass-fronted towers speared up in even, measured rows along both sides of the transport lanes. Garrus waited, his hands cupped tight over his knees, while the cab snaked slowly on and his thoughts turned over on themselves.
When he finally hauled himself out of the cab and into the wide, square space of the lobby, he realised his breathing was too shallow. Silently, he cursed himself for being an idiot, and walked through the last security scanner.
At the apartment door, he squared his shoulders and pressed the comm button. "Hey," he said. "Dad? It's me."
An instant later the door was sliding open and he was staring into his father's face, all severe angles and level blue eyes. He suppressed the urge to shuffle his feet slightly, noticed that his father was looking tired, and asked, "You okay?"
"Fine," his father answered, clipped. His eyes darted, rapid and scrutinizing. "Garrus. What happened to you?"
The scars, Garrus realised, the damn scars that still webbed across one side of his face and ruined the lines of his markings. Suddenly, painfully, he wondered if he should've said something. "Long story."
"I'm sure." His father studied him a moment longer. "Come in, Garrus."
"Thanks." He trailed his father into the hallway and further in, under the first archway and into the wide, airy room that looked out over the silvery spread of the city below. The apartment was as clinically tidy as he remembered, the ivory walls broken by paintings and the long, wrap-around windows.
"Sit down," his father said, and gestured him to one of the couches.
He obeyed, letting his hands rest loosely in his lap. "I'm sorry about the short notice."
"No, it's fine," his father said in the same unreadable tone.
The silence clamped down, and Garrus wondered what the hell he was supposed to say next. He wanted to ask what his father was thinking, and why he was looking so damn old, with too many lines quarried around his eyes.
"Okay," Garrus said. He met his father's querying gaze and added, "I'm here because I really need your help."
"Go on."
"I didn't know who else to go to right now," he said, and the words cut between them, searing and honest. "I really need you to listen to me."
"That's it?" his father asked, his voice softening slightly.
"Hah. Maybe. We'll have to see what you think afterwards."
"That sounds promising," his father said drily.
Garrus grinned. "Don't bet on it. Okay. You remember a couple of years ago? When I ended up serving on the Normandy?"
"Yes."
"I was digging into Saren and his movements. Every time I got near something useful, I hit a wall."
"I remember."
"Well, the Normandy had just come in from Eden Prime. They'd had their own run-in with Saren. Or at least with Saren's allies." He was speaking too fast, he knew, the words tripping over themselves and the details all out of order already. He needed to slow down and work through it steadily and sensibly and with as much clarity as he could muster.
"Go on," his father said, and the unhurried, patient rasp of his voice eased the last of the tension in Garrus' shoulders. "I've nowhere to go right now."
"Good," Garrus said. "Because this is where it starts getting interesting."
