Just wanted to note that Garrus has been dubbed My Bro Garrus in all of my playthroughs. Seriously, he's the best friend a Commander could have.
"Where is he?" Shepard asked, pacing tightly back and forth. With so many people on the shuttle at one time, she could only move three or four steps in either direction.
"Jeff is currently in the conference room. His exact words were freaking the hell out, if that is any help."
"And is he hurt?" Panic laced her words and she didn't give a damn if anyone else in the shuttle picked up on it.
"He has minor injuries. I have been unable to scan him to see if he sustained any stress fractures after his fall."
Fall? Shit! She knew Joker, he'd play down any injuries he might have had. If what EDI told them was true, they were minus one doctor if he did have anything serious. She took a breath and struggled to lock all her worry and fear away, so that no one would be able to see it from the outside. You're no good to him here, she thought, trying to get her racing heart to calm down. You can fall to pieces after you've seen him for yourself.
Garrus wasn't buying it. Out of everyone in the shuttle, he had been with her the longest and knew nearly all her tells, no matter how hard she tried to hide them from him. "We'll be there before you know it." Reaching out, he held onto her hand and gently dragged her back to her seat next to him. "Now quit pacing around like a caged varren. You're making me dizzy."
She sat, but her fingers began a tap-tap-tap rhythm against the side of her pistol and she couldn't stop her knee from jerking impatiently up and down. She needed to see Jeff, to confirm for herself that he hadn't been taken, that he was all right. Garrus, ever perceptive, slung an arm around the back of her seat. "He'll be fine," he told her quietly, leaning against her until their knees bumped together. Very casually, almost as a way to fill the silence that had settled in the shuttle, he started talking about his days on Omega as the Archangel. Of course, Zaeed saw it as an open invitation to add in his own stories and before everyone else knew it, both men were in a friendly competition of violent one-upmanship.
Juliana felt a sliver of tension leave her shoulders and she leaned against Garrus' side in quiet thanks for trying to get her mind off things she had no control over. Garrus let his arm, still stretched across the back of her seat, drape over her shoulder in understanding.
Once they had landed, Shepard didn't even wait until the shuttle had come to a complete stop inside the hangar bay before leaping out. Too impatient to wait for the elevator, she climbed the maintenance shaft ladder up to the CIC level, taking two rungs at a time. The only warning that Joker had before she was on him was the thundering sound of her boots down the hall as she ran at a full sprint towards the conference room.
"Ow! Boss Lady," he said, trying to laugh to lighten the mood when she threw her arms around him for a hug. "Watch the ribs, okay? I don't want to fill out paperwork on how Shepard-strength hugs cracked 'em." The painkillers had started to do their job, but it still hurt when she slung one arm around his neck and the other under his arm, her embrace extremely tight.
"Shut. Up." She eased up and stared at him and Joker was amazed to see that her lip was trembling. Hell, he was shocked to see that her entire body seemed to be shaking. "I know that joking is your usual coping mechanism, but just…"
"Hey," he said, his voice softer. Any anger that he might have had towards her for leaving him in charge while all hell broke loose dissolved into thin air. Hell, I was never mad at her in the first place. "I'm here." Impulse had him reaching out to cup the side of her face with his palm, the now-faint and barely noticeable ridges from the scars at her cheek and jaw catching under his fingers.
She turned her face into his hand. "You could have been taken. It's bad enough that we lost the entire crew, but…" She leaned against him and closed her eyes, their foreheads touching. "I don't know what I'd do if I ever lost you."
He threaded his fingers in the curls that had escaped her bun. Her declaration sounded so broken, so raw. Things that he'd bottled up unsaid welled in his throat, leaving him overwhelmed that the woman in front of him could evoke such emotions from him. Needing to say something before he spilled his guts about how he felt about her, he gave her shoulders a squeeze with his free arm and reluctantly stood back. "You'd be missing probably the only helmsman capable of flying through the Omega 4 relay without crashing, that's what." To try to bolster them both, he smirked at her, knowing that their time alone was growing short, if the footsteps down the hall were anything to go by. "It takes a little more than a few Collectors to drag me off my ship; let's go give them hell and get our crew back."
She nodded and took a deep breath, her shoulders straightening. "Damned straight," she said, returning his smirk with one of her own.
