AN: I've had this piece in my head for a long time, but the Legendary Edition release finally gave me the impetus to do it. A thousand, thousand thanks to jadesabre301 and eponymous-rose for their wonderful and thorough betas, and for allowing me to continually throw things at them with very little notice and even less coherence.
Recommended listening: Earth (Instrumental) by Sleeping at Last, though honestly the whole Space album is wonderful (and thematically appropriate).
This is a rare piece that ended up actually shorter than I'd planned, but I'm still very happy with it. I hope you enjoy!
What We Live For
—
It's not Commander Shepard's courage they question. The tribunal is very clear about that, their smiles pinched and patronizing. Surely Commander Shepard understands they are only concerned about her judgement. Her shortsightedness, her inability to consider the long-term impact of her decisions.
Her decisions, Shepard scoffs later in the apartment's tiny bathroom, her reflection in the sink's mirror chipped and stained. If nothing else, she understands the impacts of her decisions.
She lives with the weight of each one, after all. Every damn day.
—
The Alliance keeps a tight rein on the media within the compound. Shepard's grateful for that at first. She's not allowed much outside news in lockdown, but what few extranet articles she can get her hands on only discuss the trial in the broadest terms: the implications for Earth's public galactic standing, the speculation on possible outcomes, the pall it all casts on her previous acts of heroism. They keep including her official—and terrible—N7 enrollment photo, which is irritating enough, but when the sparse facts fail to satisfy the public, they turn to opinion pieces worthy of al-Jilani.
The op-ed on the fallen protégé of the oft-disgraced Admiral Anderson is the one that puts her over the edge. She scrawls an incoherently furious rebuttal, rife with misspellings, to the news station, and doesn't send it. She writes a second message to Garrus, slightly more composed but just as angry, and doesn't send that one either. Even high-profile Alliance prisoners aren't allowed the luxury of casual correspondence; she's received exactly three messages in the two months since she turned herself in, and two had been from Kasumi, short updates on the crew that Shepard thinks the Alliance tech's firewalls just couldn't block.
You looked good in the dress blues. Keep your chin up, Shep.
At least they'd let her walk out of Normandy under her own power. Two six-foot-plus Marines on either side, walking so close their arms pressed against her ramrod back, but no handcuffs. No guns trained on her either, which she'd half-expected given Anderson's terse call the hour before, just the almost-worse camera from a reporting team on the other side of the asphalt. Neither Anderson nor Hackett had been there to watch her escorted to the armored sedan, windows tinted black. For the best, she'd thought. Better not to drag them down with her, not while the Reapers still came silently through the dark.
Two months, and—
Garrus had been the second-to-last one they'd dropped off. Only Miranda had stayed longer, mostly to ensure all traces of Cerberus tracking had been removed and the bugs destroyed before returning Normandy to the Alliance. Privately, Shepard thinks she'd just wanted to be sure her science project remained safe and whole to the last moment possible, and can't decide if the thought is unfair. Garrus hadn't been impressed with either of them.
It might have been yesterday: her cabin, dim with the ship's night cycle, Garrus sitting on her sofa while she flipped through reports on her desk she would never file. His two-toned voice had barely beaten out her softly pulsing synthpop. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."
"You said that before."
"Yeah." A shift as he'd leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at her repaired coffee table. "Meant it then, too."
"I have to go back."
"Shepard," he'd said, and then he'd pinched his mandibles tight to his face and looked away.
She'd left the datapads, come down the two steps to sit beside him. Hadn't touched him, though, just leaned forward in a mirror of his own posture and waited until he'd looked at her again. "The Reapers are coming, Garrus," she'd said, her voice quiet. He'd flinched even so. "We'll need every army in the galaxy to fight them. A united force. I can't be a—a rogue Spectre picking off husks one by one and hoping it'll matter. Garrus," she'd said, and he'd shaken his head. "I need to know you'll be picking up my slack during the trial. Whatever it takes to get the Hierarchy ready—whatever it takes."
He'd run a hand over his face, down the length of his fringe, and then he'd given her a look so piercing it hurt. "Yeah. Whatever it takes, Shepard."
The wild rush of affection had frightened her. Instead, she'd said, "If I'm still in jail when the Reapers come, I expect you to break me out."
He'd almost smiled. "Deal."
"Deal," Shepard says aloud, an empty echo for the rain-speckled window of her assigned apartment. The radio behind her continues to loop through the three short headlines she's been allowed for the day; there's nothing to be gleaned from the sanitized reports, but the silence is more maddening still, so she leaves it running and opens her omnitool instead.
Garrus, she writes.
Then she deletes the message, turns on the treadmill in the corner, and runs until she can't feel her legs.
—
The goal's not always to live without pain, her physical therapist tells her, working yet again on her shoulder that refuses to heal. Sometimes it's just about getting it down to a level that can be lived with.
Face-down on a hard rubber bed, the therapist's elbow a shining blare of agony digging in behind her right shoulder blade, Shepard thinks: living with the pain is the easy part. When it stops hurting—that's when she starts to be afraid.
—
"Lieutenant James Vega," says her usual corporal in introduction, with a salute just sloppy enough Shepard knows it's an insult. Not worth the fight, though. Not much is these days.
"Lieutenant," she says instead, looking up, and up, and up. Broad enough to make her living room even smaller, stubbly, a glint of humor behind military stiffness. Easily her type, were she ten years younger and significantly less concerned with a carapace and a crest. "Welcome to the most uninteresting post in Vancouver. Thanks, Jenner."
The corporal nods, face wooden, and turns on his heel to leave her with her new babysitter. Vega stays stiffly at attention, eyes trained on the middle distance. "Thank you, ma'am."
She grimaces, looking back down at her worktable. Four months in, they've finally decided to allow her a soldering iron and a few old circuit boards and light strips. Nothing she could do anything with, not without setting off every alarm in the building, but at least enough to keep her hands busy. "Take it easy, Lieutenant. I promise not to make your life too difficult."
"I'm disappointed to hear that, ma'am."
She glances up sharply, just in time to catch that teasing glimmer again before he pulls professionalism over himself again like armor. "Oh?"
"Sounds pretty boring, Commander. Just saying."
She cuts off the iron, allowing herself a faint smirk. "You're not supposed to call me that. James Vega, huh?"
"In the flesh. Ma'am."
"Is that so? And what's your claim to fame, Lieutenant Vega? Must have been a hell of a slip-up for you to land here."
"I requested the assignment, ma'am."
That gives her pause. There's a frank honesty in his face now, and no malice she can see, but she's been fooled before. "Why?"
"I fought the Collectors, ma'am. Not like you did," he adds, and at her gesture moves to at-ease. "But we were front line, my company and me. Saw what happened to some of the colonies. Anyone who takes the Collectors out of the picture is okay in my book."
A shadow passes over his face when he mentions the colonies, but Shepard doesn't push. "Yeah, well. If you requested this assignment, you must also know about my position on the Reapers. You may have heard it's not a popular one."
He shrugs one shoulder. "So far as I can tell, you haven't been wrong about 'em yet. If you say they're a threat, I'll keep an eye out."
As simple as that. She almost wants to laugh. "Keep talking like that and you'll find yourself on the fast track to nowhere, Lieutenant."
It comes out more bitterly than she intends, but Vega doesn't buckle. He just tips his head forward, takes a step back at her graceless dismissal, and settles into his post outside her door with one more respectful ma'am. Pleasant enough for all that he's her new prison guard. Better than Jenner, anyway. Nice to not have open disgust in the only face she sees most days.
Oh, hell, Shepard thinks, and goes back to the soldering iron with a vengeance.
—
Shepard doesn't quite slam the door after Vega leaves, but it's a close thing. Her skull rattles with the day's endless questions, the endless sniping at her typos rather than her testimony.
The apartment is dark. Considering they're in the heart of winter in Vancouver she's not surprised; the days had been short even before her tribunal testimony sessions had begun running six, seven, eight hours long. She doesn't know what else she can tell them. She doesn't know how they can look at her reports—misspelled as they are—how they can read for themselves I calculate the likelihood of another full galactic standard year without Reaper invasion to be near zero and still think they have time for this utter theatrical bullshit. Political concessions to the Citadel Council, squabbling among continental leaders as to who'll pay for the batarians' reparations, veiled threats of her own demotion—as if it matters.
Five months trapped in this tiny apartment, and not a single word she's said has done a damned thing. She's never felt so furiously impotent in her life.
"Shit!" she shouts aloud, and swings a fist at the back of the double sofa. It's an unsatisfying thump; she hits it again, then stalks over to the little window overlooking the city and yanks on the blinds' cord so hard it snaps. "Shit!" she snaps again, and shoves the blinds up with her hands instead.
Normally the sight of downtown soothes her, especially at night like this, when the neon smears into the headlights of skycars, when she can't tell distant traffic from the city-dim stars. But tonight—tonight it's just another reminder of how nothing she's done or said has changed a damn thing, and the Reapers will—
Shepard spins and stomps the whole five steps across the dark living room to the bedroom door. Barely enough room inside for her borrowed double, but somewhere in here are her running shoes, and if she can get some of this energy out she's at least less likely to blow a biotic gasket. If she can just—
A gentle orange light, pulsing rhythmically from her nightstand: her omnitool, hardly ever worn these days from how tight it's been locked down. With every flash, the white-painted wall above the nightstand glows a soft hypnotic gold.
The unread message chime sounds again, and Shepard jolts. Her rage has tumbled unexpectedly over a cliff of shock, and she throws one quick glance over her shoulder towards the front door before lurching towards the omnitool. It chimes again at her DNA key, then provides a helpful display of her messages, read and unread, almost completely unchanged from the last thousand times she's looked at it over the months.
Except for one new message, right at the top. An encryption key in the subject line she knows is Kasumi's, the only reason she thinks it's slipped through; a domain address from Palaven.
From—
Hey, Shepard. Can't say much or it won't get through. Thinking about you. Looks like it's rough going from the news. Don't worry about our little competition; I don't keep score with one player out of the game. You'll catch up soon. Hang in there. —Archangel
She reads it again. And again, and a fourth time, and then she sets the omnitool back on the nightstand and sinks to the side of the bed and buries her face in her hands. Her throat's closed so tight she has to swallow to breathe; her chest aches. Rough going. "Understatement of the year," she says into her palms, and her voice shakes.
She's not stupid enough to think she'll be able to reply. They'd made that quite clear in the first few weeks, when every message bounced back undelivered and a harried technician had told her if she kept trying, he'd be forced to confiscate her 'tool altogether. But that this one had slipped through their net, and that it's made it here, now, when she needs more than anything—
But he's always had the knack, hasn't he? Picking enemies off her blind side, covering every reckless charge. He's had her back in every fight they've ever shared. Why should this be any different?
He'd held her hands, that last day on Palaven. A death-grip, really, his bare turian fingers tangled with her human ones where they'd stood in the Normandy's airlock, and he'd dropped his forehead against hers. She'd shut her eyes, breathed in the metallic smell of him, and pretended it hadn't been a suckerpunch. Hang in there, Shepard, he'd said, before the airlock had hissed open to the brilliant orange twilight of the Cipritine skyline. She'd watched him for only a few steps, a tall turian silhouette turned away, and then she'd gone back into the comfortable grey coolness of Normandy's CIC and ordered Joker to take them home.
She can almost imagine it now: that metal tinge, the way her fingers had felt under the pressure of his blunted talons. She runs her thumbs over her palms. Almost.
Almost.
A knock at the front door jerks her to her feet. Vega's voice follows his own knock, and when she takes the one needed step to reach the doorway to the living room, she watches him sidle in, two enormous grease-stained paper bags in each hand. "Hey, Commander? I'm back. Got your burgers and your nasty fries. Why's it so dark in here?" he adds under his breath, elbowing one of the switches until white fluorescents fill the room. "Hey," he adds, catching sight of her in the doorway. "What gives?"
"Just tired," she says, relieving him of two of the sacks. Should have at least changed out of uniform; this is greasy enough to stain even the Alliance's resilient wool. Oh well. "Thanks."
"De nada," he tells her, then ducks to look into her face. "Hey, Commander. You okay?"
She almost laughs at the thought. Still—
Thinking about you. Hang in there, Shepard.
"Yeah," Shepard says, a little surprised, and smiles. It's the first real one in a long time, and Vega looks down, fiddling with one of the burger wrappers. "Yeah, I think I am."
—
The Reapers come, of course, and thousands die in a matter of minutes. She tells Anderson to stay alive and wonders, as they watch him dwindle into ash and fire, if she's asking for a promise or a curse.
—
Huerta Memorial is the only place on the Citadel that feels real, and Shepard hates it. Not because it's a hospital—well, not only that—but because it's the only place on the damn station that acknowledges the Reapers have returned. Passersby had stared openmouthed as the medical team had loaded Ashley onto a gurney and spirited her away; by the time she'd been able to follow, the moment of acknowledgment had passed, the crowds turning back to their restaurant tables with advertisements for Tupari sports drinks blaring cheerfully from the overhead speakers. It's all so small.
Huerta is different. No soft, chipper advertisements or radio talk show stings. Just medical personnel giving direct, clipped orders and an overall sense of controlled urgency. Better, that way. And worse.
Even after the door to Ashley's room shuts behind her, Shepard can hear muffled mechanical chimes and raised voices as the hospital bustles around their little island of stillness. A modern backdrop for the unconscious woman in the narrow hospital bed, fitting for the war no one else cares that they're waging. She doesn't know exactly what she tells her: platitudes, mostly, because she sucks at this and she doesn't really know how to talk to her when they're not arguing anyway, and then she grips her hand as firmly as she dares around the IV tubes.
"Wake up soon," she tells the side of Ash's face. Very still; very bruised. It doesn't even look like her. "A direct order, me to you. Need someone to call me on my shit, chief."
Ashley's eyelids don't even flicker. A monitor on the wall beeps, soft and steady, marking out the metrics of her life.
By the time Shepard leaves, the sun's high in the artificial sky, throwing glare across several of the wallscreens as she makes her way back to bay D24. She's so busy thinking of Ashley's broken nose that she almost misses it at first; it's only the newscaster's stammer over the word Palaven that jerks her out of her own head.
On a large monitor over one of the terminal's many waiting areas, a turian woman behind a desk speaks nervously over a ticker tape of news reports. Two asari have fallen asleep on each other's shoulders beneath the screen; on the other side of the waiting area a bored salarian flips through a research paper on his omnitool. "—gone dark. With no communication from the planet for twenty-four standard hours, many fear the worst. Emergency services have been sent to the Signis, but there is no word of the Primarch's safety." The newswoman swallows visibly. Shepard—doesn't want to hear this— "Reaper presence at the planet is suspected. It's unclear as of yet what the effect will be on the surrounding…"
All the sound in the world fades away for a minute, leaving nothing but the dull swish of blood in her ears. Shepard steps to the side out of the flow of traffic, then pulls up her omnitool. An odd focus to her vision, not unlike the fire-swell rush of a battlefield; she flips as quickly as she can through her messages, now overflowing with the restoration of her command. But—nothing, not from Palaven or Kasumi or anyone else. Not even a line from Anderson.
Garrus had been a low-simmering worry in the back of her head, shunted to the side while she dealt with Earth, with Mars, with Ash, with—all of it. An idle concern, not something she could do a thing about except turn over and over again in her hands, inspecting it from all angles as if it might make a difference. And now it's abruptly real, sledgehammering to the front of her attention, and she's just as impotent as ever.
She hates flying blind.
Then, as if on cue, Joker's voice pings through her comm. "Commander, you free?"
"Yeah. Go ahead."
"The maintenance cycle is done and Liara's back with everything she needed. We're ready to go when you are."
"Fire her up," she says, and squares her shoulders with a deep breath. "Set a course for the Trebia system. I'll be there in five."
"Aye-aye. See you soon."
They'd known it would only be a matter of time, though it's still sooner than she'd thought. She watches the news broadcast a moment more without really seeing it, thinking of Palaven, of roughened scars, of the way his eyes looked on the rare occasions when he set his visor aside and let the blue HUD flicker out.
The war is here. The luxury of worry is gone. But oh, God, she hopes—
—
"I'm on it, Shepard," Garrus says from her six, and it's like her skin explodes. A thousand things tangle on her tongue, mostly variations on of all the moons and all the worlds in this damn galaxy, why the hell are you here? but nothing comes out but his name. He sees it, too; one mandible clamps to his face to hide the smile. Cocky bastard.
"I thought you were dead," she tells him instead. He grips her hands hard—just like before, her knuckles clenched and the faint smell of metal and Cipritine's orange sky—and she grips back, just for a second, before she lets him go.
"I'm hard to kill," Garrus says, not smiling now. "Earth looks bad. Glad you made it out alive."
"You, too," says Shepard, all the lines of her heart pulled tight, and above them Palaven burns, and burns, and burns.
—
Garrus brings up the wine a few weeks later, after they've sorted out EDI's new body and picked up enough governmental leaders at once to make even Joker nervous. Wrex's hard-headedness doesn't surprise her, but the dalatrass pisses her right off, and even the daunting prospect of trying to cure a thousand-year-old plague can't dent her relief when the door to her cabin opens to Garrus's unmistakable silhouette.
"Hey," he says as he enters, moving comfortably through her space to collect a pair of her cheap, combat-friendly plastic wineglasses from a cabinet, to change the overhead technothump to something less loud. "I heard the summit didn't go so well. Need a drink?"
"The company's nice too," she says, and has all the gratification of watching him trip on the top step. "Easy there, big guy."
"Human stairs. Always the wrong height."
Shepard laughs, leaning her head back on the sofa. Garrus stacks enough datapads to one side to clear the cushion next to her, then plucks the last one from her hand to replace it with a wineglass. "Your new lieutenant saw me get off here with the bottle. Hope you don't mind."
"Vega? Did he say something?"
"No. He didn't realize the elevator was going up when he boarded. Just seemed confused." Garrus fills her glass, then his own. "It's dual-chirality, so it won't be the best you've had, but I know how much you care about wine."
"What can I say? I'm a cheap date." It tastes good enough to her anyway, deep and bitter and without the burn that sometimes came with the bottom-shelf stuff. "I'm sure he'll catch on soon enough. Cortez will tell him if he doesn't."
"Cortez knows?"
"I think so. He was still on the channel when Jack made that crack about biting on Grissom Academy. Hasn't said anything, though."
"Great." Garrus shakes his head, though there's enough teasing in his voice she knows he isn't offended. "My favorite turian stereotype."
"All teeth and talons," Shepard agrees, smiling. "As long as the missions stay professional, I don't care who knows."
"I can live with that." Garrus glances at her out of the corner of one blue eye, then rests a determinedly nonchalant hand just above her knee. "I'm known for my professionalism, after all. Ask anyone in C-Sec."
He means it as a joke, and for a second she wants to laugh, but the rest of her is transfixed by the sight of his hand against her leg. His turian fingers are carefully curled, longer and thicker than her own, dark brown skin a gentle contrast to black denim, and all at once she can't—
"Shepard? What's wrong?"
"I thought you were dead," she says, shocked. His hand tightens around her knee. "I heard from you once in six months, and then Palaven was burnt to the ground and I thought you'd died. And now you're here—alive—and it's not—oh, God."
"Shepard," he tries again, his voice low. Even without subharmonics of her own she can hear his distress.
She sets her empty wineglass on the table and twists on the couch, rising to her knees next to him, and before he can move or—or talk—she cups his face in both hands so she can see him properly. Him, his blue eyes and the lipless mouth and the visor no doubt silently reading off her elevated vitals. His mandibles flutter against her palms in open surprise. "Shepard…"
She kisses him. The turian way first, forehead to forehead, and then her mouth on his, her fingers curled around his jaw. He sets his own half-empty glass on the floor; then one of his hands slides to her back, strong and warm, and she leans in until she's pressed as close as she can get. His other hand cups her ass and pulls her in the rest of the way until she's straddling one thigh, then comes back up to grip her waist. "Garrus," she whispers against his mouth, and he shudders again and again.
Later, much later, she slides out from the sheets, wincing only a little. Garrus makes a noise of sleepy displeasure behind her, but doesn't follow; after a quick shower she pulls on a sweatshirt and loose sleeping pants, grabs a stack of datapads, and crawls back into bed beside him. Better than a heated blanket, he radiates warmth, and as she carefully lies back down he wraps one arm over her waist and pulls her back against him.
"What are you working on?" A tired mumble, mostly just air that tickles the back of her neck.
"Sur'Kesh," she whispers, unwilling to break the quiet. "And Miranda's sister. And a report from Liara about Cerberus encroaching on Noveria."
"Hm. Too much."
"We're at war."
He sighs. "I know."
"Just an hour. Maybe two. Then I'll get some rest."
"See, when you make promises like that, I expect you to keep them."
She snorts, gladdened despite herself. "Set a timer. It goes off, I stop. Scout's honor."
"I'll assume that's a legally binding oath," he tells her, but flicks at the side of his visor. "Sixty minutes and counting, Shepard."
"Yeah, yeah," she sighs, and within a matter of minutes he's gone back to sleep. She means to work a little longer, she does, but he's warm and strong and his deep, sleep-steady breathing pulls hers after it like a gravity well, and before she can stop herself her eyelids fall shut again. At some point she hears the faint buzz of his visor's alarm; at some point she senses him reaching over her to tug a datapad from her lax fingers and set it aside.
Oh, Garrus, she thinks, muzzily overwhelmed with fondness, and goes to sleep.
—
"At your eleven," comes Garrus's voice, curt and tinny through the helmet comm. "Three troopers, twenty yards and closing. Ready when you are."
Shepard sucks down a breath from her covered position, then digs her armored toes into the dirt and charges. Her target drops with ragdoll limbs, blown backwards by the burst of biotics, and at almost the same moment the second trooper's head explodes. The third gets a few shots off, assault rifle recoiling wildly, but they bounce harmlessly off her shields before Vega finishes him off at last.
"Took you long enough," Shepard says, breathing a little harder than she'd like thanks to six months of forced idleness.
James emerges from his cover at the nearest prefab's corner, waving away the dust they've kicked up during the battle. "I'm keeping up, aren't I? Not my fault I'm the new guy."
"Yeah, yeah. Garrus, how are we looking?"
"Clear for now," he says, and she looks up to his perch on the central square tower just in time to see the sun glint off his elongated helmet as he adjusts position along the open-air railing. "Better move quick."
"On it."
The beacon they're disabling is up a rickety metal ramp in full view of three more prefab alleys. This colony has long since been abandoned, but beacons scattered over the once-city have been calling ships down into a Cerberus trap for weeks. As far as EDI can tell, this is the last one, but it's also the most exposed. Shepard hefts her shotgun against her hip and shades her eyes, looking both ways down the sun-baked dirt paths. "Vega, you think you can get this one?"
"Uh—"
A tinge of real panic in his voice, and Shepard laughs. "I'll do it. Just cover me."
"I can do that."
Shepard goes to both knees in the dirt. The arid desert air has already sucked most of the sweat from her skin, and the back of her neck burns in the heat. Like James, she'd have preferred just to shoot the thing and be done with it, but when the first beacon had exploded into a sixty-foot fireball, Garrus had made her promise to try disabling it first. Liara would have had it done in a heartbeat—hell, even Garrus could have finished it faster than her, but she needs him on overwatch, and they both know it.
"Incoming, Shepard. Shuttle inbound, three kliks west and closing fast. I think the shuttle's been modded with ordnance too."
"A gun?"
"A big one. Looks nice."
"Take cover, James. Head on a swivel."
"Aye, Commander." He jogs into the nearest open-air prefab, about thirty feet away, and levels his rifle against the kitchen counter. "Scars, ETA?"
"Two minutes. Less, maybe."
The control circuit board is hidden deeper than the others. The wiring's messier too, uncapped leads curled into each other and crossed cabling pulling hard tension on sockets and joints. She has to dig past two blocks of undetonated thermite before she can get access to the board at last, except—
"Shit."
"Lola?"
"EDI, I need a deep scan of this entire area, ASAP. This thing's broadcasting local radio frequencies."
"Oh, great," says James, and she hears his rifle slide along ceramic. "I always wanted to die in an abandoned colony in the middle of some desert."
"Now you're getting the hang of it," Garrus says, laughter in his voice. "Thirty seconds to shuttle contact."
Her helmet pings a proximity alarm. And another, and another; then EDI's voice comes over the comm with an urgent edge. "The base has been wired to explode, Shepard. There are between thirty and forty receivers embedded in critical infrastructure throughout the entire area, each affixed to polonium and thermite blocks. If you damage the radio broadcast device and interrupt the signal, the bombs will detonate. I can disable the receivers, but you will have to manually disconnect the detonation circuit on the beacon."
"Oh, great," Shepard echoes dourly as the whine of shuttle sublight engines begins to rip through the desert air, but the familiar adrenaline is trickling lazily up her spine, and she can't stop the wild grin that comes after. "How many am I down by, Garrus?"
"Six."
Another wire pops free, and the circuit board chirps cheerfully. "I need two minutes on this bomb. Can you give it to me?"
Vega hesitates. "Uhh—"
Garrus does not. "Yes."
The first crack! of the Widow explodes through the sky, and that's all she needs. Shepard digs in her heels and feels her shields ripple into life around her. James curses, settles in behind the counter, and the repeating rattle of his rifle joins the Widow. A distorted scream cuts off abruptly above them; a second later, a hard thudding impact shakes the ground.
"Seven."
Shepard laughs.
Tali had told her once that this was what Shepard's terrible taste in music was trying to mimic. This, the hard heavy blast of sniper fire overhead, regular as a heartbeat aim exhale squeeze reload aim exhale squeeze, punctuated by the high tenor of James's assault rifle. The rhythm of it runs deep in her veins, almost cathartic as she rips out another pair of wires. Harrier fire peppers the metal sheeting of the beacon, scatters twice across her shields; she tenses in anticipation of pain and hears James's voice instead, shouting for the troopers' attention.
So close. She finally gets a capacitor shorted, then reaches—
"Shepard, cover! Now!"
She throws herself to the side just as an earth-shattering boom blasts the dirt where she'd been. The beacon rocks dangerously and she catches her breath, but it resettles on spindly legs, unexploded. "What's happening?"
"Shuttle guns—I can't get an angle."
"I got it!" James shouts, pin already in his teeth, and Shepard jerks back behind cover just in time to watch him lob the cooked grenade towards the low-hanging shuttle. She watches it bounce off one of the bay's open doors, sees the Cerberus gunner recoil; then it explodes in brilliant pluming fire, and the shuttle veers south in screaming retreat.
"Great throw, Vega!" she starts to call, and then the Cerberus trooper barrels into her at full speed, and there's no time to say anything at all.
Her biotics flare in automatic defense as he forces her backwards, three steps, four. She gets two solid punches across his face, her fist a brilliant blue, but he doesn't let go. She can't reach her shotgun mag-sealed to the small of her back and her pistol's pinned between their legs; she punches him again and his visor cracks. A pale blue eye stares at her from behind the gash, red-veined and sunken in the socket. She grits her teeth and he surges, driving them both forward until her back rams hard against the platform's metal railing, his arms wrapped around her waist.
EDI's voice in her head, urgent: "The receivers are disabled, Shepard!"
Shepard shouts. Biotic energy ripples out from her shoulders; she slams her forehead against his and the trooper recoils, stunned. "Vega!" she bellows. "Pull the red wire! Now, pull it now!"
His black armor glints as he vaults the counter into open space, and then the trooper still in her face charges again. This time she's ready; she jerks to the side just as his weight hits her, elbowing him hard in the back of the neck, and by the time he recovers from the unexpected stumble and spins to face her she's got the Carnifex in her hand and the muzzle aimed right between his eyes.
"Go to hell," she says, and fires.
She's gone before he hits the ground. Vega's wrist-deep in the beacon already and for a split-second she starts to slow—then, down the one lane on the other side of the prefab she can't cover, a sleek black-helmeted head emerges from a half-wall with one electronic eye a bright unblinking red. The barrel of a sniper rifle lowers inexorably into place, and she can't get an angle from here, can't see—
The Widow cracks across the sky, and the sniper drops like a bag of sand. Shepard looses a breath, looks up—
Five rounds left in her pistol. She empties all of them into the trooper standing over Garrus where he kneels atop the central tower, his assault rifle already pointed to the back of Garrus's head. Two shots miss, even the Carnifex stymied at this distance, but the impacts of other three are enough to stagger him, enough for Garrus to spin on one knee, kick the trooper's legs out from under him, and finish him off with a point-blank sniper shot to the chest.
Finally, silence. The dust settles over the dozen bodies scattered unmoving around them; the whine of the shuttle does not return. Even the beeping of the beacon has gone quiet, James standing beside it with a red wire clenched in one hand.
Shepard straightens and pulls her finger from the trigger. "Garrus?"
"All good." He stands up on the tower, lifting his rifle so it catches the light of the desert sun. "We can call that a half each."
"Ha. James?"
"Good here too." He shades his eyes as he looks up to the tower. "Not that I don't appreciate the rescue, but you cut that kind of close, huh? Didn't hear that guy coming?"
Garrus only snorts, turning to clamber down the ladder back to earth. Shepard shakes her head, kills the comm channel, and clears her visor so the lieutenant can see her face. "He knew he was there, Vega."
James shifts his weight to one side, reseating his assault rifle. There's a long pause before he answers. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Big risk, then."
"He had your back. Knew I had his."
He gives her a pensive look, then glances across the dirt path to where Garrus has finally touched down from the ladder, jogging back to meet them next to the disabled beacon. Not disbelieving, just—unexpected, as if something has just resettled itself into a new understanding. She knows that look too well after all these years.
"Hey," says Garrus, joining them at last. "Nine and a half, by the way."
The familiar hum of the Kodiak sounds overhead as Cortez brings the shuttle around for pickup. Shepard smirks and claps his shoulder. "Let's get out of here. Dinner's on James."
"Now wait a second," James says, outraged, but falls into easy step with them as they board the shuttle, arguing the entire way.
—
"You look disappointed," Shepard says, leaning against the desk, and all of the Shadow Broker's viewscreens tilt to follow her motion.
Liara sighs and toys idly with one of the many pillows on her bed. "I confess, I was expecting something a little different."
"A Prothean of your very own? I thought you'd be jumping for joy. Or trying to put him in every scanner we have."
"Javik is a formidable warrior among his people. I do think we can learn a great deal from him, when he's ready." She sets the pillow down and comes to lean on the desk beside Shepard. She crosses her arms; Glyph bobs patiently at her elbow. "I suppose…"
"Hm?"
"I just would have thought he'd be glad to be alive."
—
Mordin dies. Eve survives, and the krogan race with her. Thane saves Shepard's life and the life of the Council, and then he dies as well. Shepard sits beside him a long time, long after the nurse has disconnected the leads, long after Kolyat prays and cries and prays again, wondering when the tides will begin to ebb. There's a stone of cold rage in the pit of her stomach, an ice that burns, and not even the hours she spends that night on the treadmill can take the edge off.
It would be easier if she were numb. She sees it in Anderson, sometimes, a bone-deep weariness that dulls the cost of the lives he watches flicker out every day on Earth. Sees it in the faces of the soldiers at the Citadel, sometimes, in the turians with blank gazes and the krogan webbed in new, livid scars. The way, sometimes, a room on the Normandy will go suddenly quiet…
And then James will crack a joke, or start a poker game. Garrus will grip her shoulder, grounding, and go to needle Joker at the helm. Glyph will trail after Javik, a cheerful annoyance, and pester him with Liara's questions until Javik throws his hands in the air and threatens to pull every primitive circuit from Glyph's core he can reach.
And Ashley—Ashley is here, arguing with her just like before, stubborn and dangerous and no doubt in her eyes anymore, no fear. A fellow soldier now. A friend again, for the first time in a very long time.
She drinks with Chakwas. She plays chess with Traynor and loses over and over again. She reads one of Allers's stories and finds it better than she'd expected, finds even herself affected by the brash and open hopefulness at the end.
And day after day after day, she moves forward. They all do.
—
"Hi, Shepard."
"Tali."
Tali slides into the chair next to Shepard in the lounge, casting an openly judgmental look across the several empty glasses scattered in front of her. "Shepard," she says, drawing out the word. "Is there a reason you're sitting alone in the lounge, in the dark, drinking several questionably colored drinks?"
"Not questionable," Shepard points out. "This one is red. This one is blue. And if you mix them—" which she does, "—they become purple."
"I see."
"Want one?"
"No. Shepard, what's going on? You don't usually do this where the crew can see you."
"I waited until the late shift. No one's awake on this deck but you. And me. And I locked the door."
"The door was absolutely not locked," Tali replies. "You know, I heard you and Garrus had a date on the Citadel this afternoon. Did something happen?"
Shepard chokes, splutters. Tali leans away, the tilt of her head not quite disgusted but not far from it either, and gently pats her on the back. "No," she manages, chokes again. "Not like—not like that."
"Thank goodness. I was going to be very disappointed in both of you."
That is genuinely terrifying, and Shepard forces a swallow to clear her throat. "No, it's—uh. Well."
"Get it out, Shepard."
"I love him," Shepard blurts. Then she stares angrily at the empty glasses in front of her, because it is obviously their fault she can't leash her tongue. "I, uh. Told him. Didn't know it until I said it."
There's a long silence. Tali says, "…Yes? And?"
"And—I don't know what to do about it."
"What's there to do about it?"
"I don't know!" She slams backwards on the stool, twinging her shoulder painfully. "I've never—Tali, I'm going to fuck this up."
"You're not, I promise. But…" Another long pause, slowly dawning realization in the clasping of her suited hands. "Shepard, have you ever told a boyfriend you loved him?"
The purple mixture in the glass swirls at her gesture, the rim blurring. She'd picked at one thumbnail earlier; now the cuticle's gone red and tender. She sighs. "No."
"…Have you ever told someone you loved them?"
"Uh…no. I don't think so, anyway. Maybe my mom before she left, but I would have been pretty young."
"Oh." No pity, which would have hurt badly, and no laughter; just revelation. Tali looks down at her hands meditatively. "It's hard with the suits, you know, with my people. Sometimes you have to say things outright." Her voice is soft. "Now that I think about it, I hadn't said it in a long time, either."
"Your dad? Kal'Reegar?"
"My father and I…things were difficult for us for many years. And Kal—but this isn't about Kal. This is about you." Tali taps the side of Shepard's head gently, and the shelf of liquor bottles behind the bar dips crazily. "Didn't you tell me you had an older brother?"
"Adopted. Sort of. He took me in after my mom left. He was part of the Reds, so I became one too." She snorts a laugh, and her throat burns from the liquor. "We didn't have that kind of relationship either, even before he took off."
"I understand." Tali leans in, her head tilted, and rests one hand on Shepard's own. "For what it's worth, I think Garrus feels the same way about you."
"I know. I mean, I think so." Oh, hell, now she's slurring. She hasn't been this sloppily drunk in years. Then again, she's been wondering if the new weaves would even allow it. Chalk one up for scientific advancement. "Tali, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I see people in the Citadel—couples—they hold hands, sometimes. They kiss in public. What if he calls me 'honey' in front of a Reaper?" She almost misses the counter as she sets down the drink with a clatter, then scrapes her hands over her head and buries her face in her elbows, linking her fingers behind the back of her neck. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever said in my entire life. Oh, God. We're in the middle of a galactic war—what am I saying—"
"Keelah, Shepard," Tali says, and now she's definitely laughing at her. "I know you are very drunk and very tired, but you might be making this harder than it has to be."
"I know," she says into her elbows. "I know, I know. You think I should talk to Garrus about this."
"Well, considering he came in with me and has been sitting here the whole time, the hard part is already done."
Shepard jerks upright, regrets it, spins too quickly on the stool and regrets that, too. Her stomach churns as the world rocks left and right; at last it resolves into a blurry Garrus seated on the lounge sofa, one leg crossed over the other, one arm stretched along the sofa's back as he looks over towards her. His mandibles flick out in a very turian, very annoying smile, and he says, "Hey."
"Oh, God."
Tali puts a suited hand on Shepard's shoulder. "You know, if you want my opinion—"
"Not anymore I don't—"
"—then yes, I do think you should talk to him."
"Tali," Shepard grits out, "I—you—I am going to put you on warp core duty for a month."
"If you remember this conversation in the morning. Which, considering you're looking about six inches left of my face right now, I doubt."
"Where's a Reaper when you need one?" she groans, and then before she can think about it too hard, she struggles to her feet and lurches towards the sofa. She braces one hand on its back, glaring balefully at the self-satisfied turian looking up at her. "Hi."
Garrus wraps one hand around her wrist. The turian characters for Cipritine emblazoned down his sleeve swim into each other inconsiderately. "Hey."
"And goodbye," Tali proclaims, sliding off the stool and making her way to the door. It hisses shut behind her; a soft series of following beeps tells Shepard her drunken confessions will remain private, at least for the moment.
Except—she doesn't know what to say. She looks down at him; he looks back, eyes fixed on hers with dangerous focus, his visor glowing gently in the dim light of the lounge. Turian eyes, blue ringed in black. A turian face, mandibles held tightly to his cheeks to hide his smile, sharp turian teeth barely hidden by his fixed, plated mouth. The first face she sees in the morning now, more often than not.
The idea of not seeing it again—of never—
Shepard curves her palm to his scarred cheek. One mandible flicks reflexively against the pressure; then he reaches up and pulls her forehead down to his. She'd been startled by the gesture, once. Always surprised by the texture of his forehead against her skin. Not now, though. Not for a long time.
Garrus chuckles, soft and low. "Your breath is something else, Shepard."
"Cute."
"You're lucky I like you anyway."
She snorts. "Like I was worried."
"Uh huh." He pulls at her wrist, and she gracelessly slumps into his lap. His talons stroke gently up the back of her neck and down it again.
"I meant it," she murmurs, and can't meet his eyes. "What I said this afternoon. Then and now. I'm just…I'm not—good at this, Garrus."
"Yeah," he says, just as soft. "Me too. Didn't know you were so worried about it."
Thank God she's drunk, or this would be too much humiliation to handle. "Neither did I."
"Hmm." He curls his fingers around her jaw. "Maybe we should just take it one day at a time, then, and start worrying about nicknames in front of Reapers later."
"You, not worry? I'll believe it when I see it."
Garrus smiles, but there's a graveness in his eyes as he slides his hands up her arms. "Shepard," he says, and when he grips her shoulders it's like the grounding at the center of the earth. "We don't usually get a lot of time to second-guess ourselves. Just come up for air with me once in a while. Let's start there, okay? You can only run so far on fumes."
"Yeah," she breathes, and drops her head against his one last time. "Yeah, okay."
Yeah. A place to breathe; a place to start. Take the rest of it as it comes.
She can live with that.
—
"Oh, God," Shepard gasps. "Oh, God—no—"
She's falling free, just like Alchera. The grey-blue steel of the shattered docking tube—the faint and endless stars, revolving—the explosions in the toothy gaps between, brilliant red-orange plumes of fire and the silent shredding of metal. Hissing in her helmet—air escaping, air she needs and—not again, not like this, oh, Christ—she scrabbles for the tubing at the base of her neck, breathing too fast—
Still intact. Still there, and the hissing air her own breath through clenched teeth. Come on, come on. Come on. Get it together. No alarms on her helmet's HUD, all systems in full working order. Enough air for another eight hours. You're fine. You're fine.
Her left hand impacts metal. A large section of shattered plating, not unlike the piece she'd been standing on just a few seconds ago. It hangs loose in space, untethered, but it's enough resistance she can get momentum towards the docking corridor's walls again. She has to dodge a section of twisted iron rebar exposed from the recent impact, but within seconds her booted feet have clamped to the dented wall of the tube once more. The magnetic anchors in her boots vibrate once as they lock her in place; her fist closes blindly around a loose cable. Her knuckles scream at the pressure.
Her breath is ragged, unsteady; her lungs burn on every draw. She blinks and the world blackens at the edges, then returns. Come on. Come on.
"Hey."
Garrus's voice in her ear, a lazy drawl. She can't reply, too caught up in her throat closing up on her, a firm increasing pressure as impossible to stop as the Reapers. He doesn't wait for her answer. "So. Commander Shepard. Fancy meeting you in a place like this. How's it going?"
She huffs a laugh, manages to force out a few words. It's like tearing off a clinging husk. "Oh. You know. Fine."
"Yeah, looks like it. Have you considered taking a couple steps forward?"
She laughs again, grips the cable, and takes a step. Stilting at first, and slow as hell, but she's moving, and when she glances over her shoulder she can see both Garrus and Tali at the far end of the ruined tube, turned at a sixty-degree angle to her current center of gravity. Tali gives a cheerful wave. "Great," she says, easier now. "You know how I love an audience."
"At least you know it's a cheering section. Watch the wires there. Those are live."
"I see them." She's moving well now, strong steps, making up for lost time. The world is sharp again, her senses back in full force; she jogs the last dozen yards or so to the access bay doors, and when the tube breaks off altogether from the pressure of her final jump she reacts easily and without thinking, twisting here and there to dodge the last bits of flotsam until she lands safely on the door's lip.
Only a moment is needed to key open the bay door and anchor herself inside, and she turns to wave back at them. "See? Could have walked that in my sleep."
"I don't know about that. I've seen you sleep. Dead thresher maws are easier to wake up."
"Garrus!"
"Don't worry, private channel. Although, I suppose if Tali is standing right here…"
"I hate you."
"I know." Dual-toned smugness, audible even through comm distortion. "See you in a minute."
She curls a hand around her own throat, feels how the air moves, takes a deep, full, steadying breath. "Hey—Garrus. Thanks."
"Anytime, Shepard."
—
She dreams that night of stars, and forests, and whispers that won't end. He's gentler then, the heavy pressure of his arms and his sleep-raspy voice reminding her that the dead are dead and she is not.
For the first time in a long time, that matters.
For the first time in a long time, she thinks she has something left to live for.
—
"Hey, Shepard, can it wait? I'm in the middle of—"
"No, you're not, and no, it can't." Her skin is still buzzing, electric with adrenaline. Rannoch dust is still embedded in every crease and chink in her armor; it grits with every step, and a cloud plumes gently around her as the battery door closes at her back. She knows she's shedding it all over Garrus's precious guns. She doesn't care. "What's going on?"
"Nothing." He turns back to the screen and console, his armored shoulders hunched defensively.
Even this can't dull her giddy edge. Not an hour ago she'd been face-to-face with a Reaper on the break of a rocky cliff, its scarlet eye bearing down on her like Aralakh, like a black hole at the end of the world. She could dance with Harbinger right now if he asked. "Sure. Clearly. Which is why you came here alone instead of to the party in the mess with everyone else."
He scoffs bitterly. "Because you're in a great place right now yourself."
"Come on, Garrus! We just took down a Reaper on foot. On foot!" She spins in a tight circle, rakes her hands over her head. "We won Rannoch. The quarians have a home again. It's been blow after blow for months, but today we won. How can you not be relieved?"
"Because I know you, and I know you're gonna drop like a rock in about fifteen minutes."
"Not the first time, won't be the last." She shakes out her shoulders with a ceramic clack, trying to dispel a little of the hectic energy anyway. "Come on. Talk to me."
Garrus slaps both palms against the console in open frustration. Still turned away, still tense, impenetrable as his armor; then he bows his head so that his fringe spears upwards, a blue-lit silhouette of turian despair.
More quietly, she says, "Is this about Legion?"
"No. Well, not only him." Garrus reaches up and pulls off his visor. Rare enough in all the years she's known him; infinitely rarer outside her cabin. "You scared the hell out of me today, Shepard."
"Me?"
"Yeah. Spirits…" He turns at last, visor still clenched in one hand, and sits heavily against the console. Seven feet tall and counting, and she's never seen him look so small. "I don't know why it was today. You've done more dangerous things. We've done more dangerous things. But today that Reaper came down on you while I watched, and I thought…"
Shepard crosses the few steps between them, but doesn't reach for him. Not yet. "You thought?"
"I thought, 'if she dies, it's over.'"
"The war."
"Everything." His mandibles are pinched in pain, his subharmonics so distressed even she can pick it up. "All of it. The war, sure. But everything else, too. I could see the future, and it just…blinked out."
Oh, Garrus. "Have you heard from your family yet?"
"No. I'm sure that's not helping." He drops his face into one hand, and now she does reach forward, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, letting him lean into her chest. Hardly comfortable with both of them still armored, but she doesn't move. Neither does he. The screen behind him blinks quietly, red circles marking out the inexorable advance of the Reaper fronts.
"I'm not going anywhere," she says at last, so soft even she can hardly hear it. "Not if I can help it."
He shudders against her, then lifts his head. "I need you alive, Shepard," he says. His gaze bores into hers, tight with grief, painfully blue. "That's the truth. Whatever happens, I need you to stay alive. Not just for the war. For me."
"As long as I can." She shuts her eyes, lets out a long, slow breath, and looks back at him again. "That's a promise."
His chuckle is pained. "I guess that's all I can hope for."
"You too, big guy. Need you watching my back against these fist-fighting Reapers." The brief image of a world without Garrus flashes through her mind, but it's an agony she's not prepared to face, and she shoves it violently away. "We won't even need the Crucible if they keep trickling in one by one."
This laugh is more real. "I was the top-ranked hand-to-hand specialist. I guess these targets are just a little bigger."
"So I hear." She pulls him to his feet and he lets her, tall again, leaning down until she can kiss his flat turian mouth. "Come on," she says against his lips. "For now, we're both alive and kicking. Let's go watch Donnelly get drunk and pine after Daniels."
"Until you fall off your cliff, anyway."
"I'm sure you'll catch me when I do," she tells him, and he smiles. A real one, or real enough for where they are, anyway, and when she leaves the battery, he's at her back.
—
"Will someone tell me why the hell I brought two snipers on this mission?"
"Our good looks and charm," Garrus says drily, and the head of a Cerberus trooper high on the wall to Shepard's right explodes like a watermelon. Not his Widow, though, the shot of which plows a smoking scar into the white wall an instant later. "Really, Williams?"
"Too slow, bird-boy." Ash's voice is thick with laughter. "Besides, Shepard, we all know you love this. Getting the entire ground control to yourself? You're in heaven."
Shepard snorts as six more troopers pour out of a corridor on the far side of Sanctuary's enormous welcome center. Doesn't argue, though, since she's right. She could live for this alone—
Her biotic amp gives a familiar pulse of heat; she charges across the hall in a blast of blue light, toppling two in the first impact and taking out a third with a quick shotgun blast to the armored chest. Ash's Valiant two-taps one of the fallen troopers as he scrambles back to his feet; the other's neck has bent at an awful angle, and he doesn't move again.
Another races towards them in a frenzy of rifle fire. Shepard rolls to her knees and up again, inside his reach, and punches the living daylights out of him before he can bring his gun to bear. He doubles over, gasping, and she finishes him off with a shot to the back of his head before she ducks behind a shattered pillar, sucking down air, listening for—and there, the Widow's solid crack, and a pause, and the thud of a body falling lifelessly to the floor.
"One left."
"Dibs," Shepard says, grinning, and lets gravity take her away.
One dead Cerberus squad later, Ashley descends from her perch atop one of the atrium's advertising pillars. "Good shooting," she says, reloading her rifle. "A bit flashy for my taste, but it gets the job done."
"Talk shit, get hit," Shepard says automatically. "Garrus, what's the count?"
"I'm still up by four." She can see him now, striding along the walkway that runs near the atrium's ceiling towards an overlook for the next chamber. "Tough luck, Shepard."
"You guys are still doing this?" Ashley racks the sniper over her shoulder and pulls out her assault rifle. "After all these years, seriously?"
Shepard laughs. "You're just pissed because your count is low."
"I'm not pissed! I just wasn't there for all of it."
They break into a jog to keep up with Garrus's overhead position. Shepard shoves open a jammed sliding door; Ashley crawls through, then braces it herself until Shepard can get free beside her. "Yeah, because you chose to be mad on Horizon instead of coming with us."
"I didn't choose to be mad, you chose to be dead!"
Shepard laughs again. It's so easy. It's so easy it scares her a little, honestly. They move seamlessly as a unit, checking corners and signing advances with no hesitation, waiting without words for Garrus to reach covering position before advancing themselves. She doesn't have to look to know where either of them will be, or—when the next room reveals another dozen troopers and a gloriously empty Atlas practically begging her to board—which targets they'll take first, and which they'll leave to her.
There is no wasted effort. There is no missed shot, no lapse in communication. It's elegant and it's fucking beautiful, and by the end of the fight she's buzzing inside her skin, as piecemeal and glittering as the shattered glass spread across the once-pristine floor.
"Easy, Skipper," Ashley says, grinning as she checks the hall's corners. Clear for the moment. "Damn, I'm glad to see some things never change."
"Yeah, yeah," Shepard grumbles, and before she can second-guess herself she reaches out her hand. The air still reeks of ozone. "It's good to have you back, Ash. Really. Let's go kick some Cerberus ass."
Ashley blinks, wide-eyed; then she gives a real and blinding smile before clasping Shepard's hand in return. "It's great to be back, Commander. Just like old times."
"Squad of five with a Phantom coming from the east hall," Garrus drawls in their ears. "You know, if anyone cares."
"Be right there, big guy." Shepard looks up, squeezes Ashley's hand, and pulls the shotgun free. "You ready, Chief?"
"Always," Ashley says, her eyes bright and glad, and they go together to join Garrus.
God, Shepard thinks abruptly, but it's so good to be alive—
—
Thessia falls.
Palaven falls, and Sur'Kesh, and Tuchanka.
This is for Thane, you son of a bitch—
And then there's nothing left but Earth.
—
"This is gonna be hell, Garrus."
"Yeah," he murmurs, just as low, and sits beside her on the bed. "But I'm walking right into it with you."
"I didn't want to take you to hell. I wanted to take you to Tahiti."
He dips his mouth to her neck, to the curve of her shoulder. "We'll go later. After. Through all the hells the stars can hold."
And all the ones between, Shepard thinks, and shuts her eyes.
After…
—
Earth is ash, and blood, and fire. The air burns with Reaper cannon, long strafing sweeps of scarlet light scoring gashes into the London skyline, choking the sky with char and rubble. The streets are lined with the dead, civilians, soldiers, and husks alike. A chaplain in the battered Alliance compound is holding final services for twoscore servicemen when she arrives, all of them armed and armored, death in their faces and in the bend of their backs.
They watch her pass, watch her make the rounds and speak to her squad, one last time, one by one by one. She feels the weight of their eyes, feels the heaviness of the last thin rinds of hope they cling to, the hope that something she can do will matter, that something they can do will stop the breaking-apart of all they've ever known. I'll try, she wants to say, and doesn't. I will. For you, for Earth, if there's something I can do, something that can be done—
Anderson hugs her when he sees her, and it's like the world ends with it. A thousand meetings rattle through her mind; a thousand calls, stretching back to the very first time they'd met, when the Normandy had been his ship and she'd been nothing more than his angry XO. So very far away, now.
So many goodbyes. How many has she given? Too many.
There's no Shepard without Vakarian.
Come back alive.
In the grey wasteland left of London, Earth has never seemed so far away.
—
Her squad is long familiar with the horror of banshees, now, and to the way Shepard charges them for their attention, the way she screams back in the faces of brutes before they die. She doesn't know how long they fight, how many roads they clear and pass only to see the cannibals crawling through their wake again in minutes. Doesn't even know where they are in the city, aside from the constant litany in their ears of indefensible cover, three streets open east and south, chatter says marauders here and here and closing fast, and above it all the omnipresent roar of the Reapers.
The banshees die, screaming; a harvester comes and falls as well. A Reaper destroyer explodes in wrathful impotence, red eye dimming to a crimson pinpoint before going out. The city square empties once more as Anderson arrives, only a moment's respite, and some distant wall collapses in a cloud of grey dust.
—I can't be a rogue Spectre killing husks one by one, hoping it will matter—
All of it down to this, everything, to a footrace against Harbinger's impassive annihilation. Hammer, says Anderson. Above all else, Hammer must reach the Citadel. The Crucible is coming, and there is no other way.
It'll have to be someone who knows how to hold a hammer.
She's better with a gun.
She has to—try—
—
The rest of it is flashes, lightning-strikes of perfect clarity and smeared horror in between.
The Illusive Man comes, and rages, and dies. She shoots Anderson and he dies, too, his shoulder against hers, the brilliant blue-green sweep of Earth hanging silent before them, glorious in the spread of stars even as she burns. Reapers are torn apart against black space, clawed fingers curling inward in synthetic system failure. Turian cruisers explode in bright, sharp bursts, and Alliance warships with them, and an asari dreadnought in a white-ringed blast so close it shakes the Citadel around her.
Shepard?
Hackett. Hackett's voice. A war. It is not over.
Commander Shepard!
She opens her eyes.
What do you need me to do?
—
A child speaks. It speaks to her, gives her a choice. Her alone.
How can she choose? She's just one human among many. One woman stranded too long between life and death, blood in her eyes, her armor scorched black. Her pulse pounds in her ears, too fast, erratic. We do not question Shepard's courage, only her decisions.
She lives with the weight of them, every damn day.
The paths are open, but you have to choose.
Come back alive.
Samara's daughter, black-eyed and raving. The first brute on Menae, a turian face twisted and misshapen beyond recognition. The blasted cities of Thessia, and the soldiers who lifted their weapons and went to die.
Anderson's hand on her shoulder. Mordin, touching her through elevator glass, looking up into the fire and going anyway. Tali's helmet against her head as they watched some terrible quarian romance and laughed until they cried; James, wincing beneath the tattoo needle. I requested the assignment, ma'am.
And Garrus—
Garrus looking at her, smiling.
Storming heaven, she thinks, a little wistful, and then she straightens through the agony and steps forward. The pistol comes up, smooth and sure, and when the Citadel explodes, she steps into the fire.
She's always been better with a gun.
—
The thing about surviving certain death, it turns out, is that she has to keep on living afterwards.
—
After—
There is an after. She hadn't expected that.
After, she wakes up in a hospital bed in Tottenham. There are more leads hooked to her than tentacles on a hanar, but she can breathe and she can feel her legs. And she can see—
Garrus. He stands at the window, looking out with his brow-plates furrowed, too large even in civilian clothes for a human room in a human hospital. His shoulders are sloped with exhaustion, his visor a softer blue than she remembers. Alive, somehow, against all reason. But—then again, so is she.
She says his name. Croaks, really, and he turns so quickly he stumbles.
"Shepard," he breathes, and his eyes grow very bright. "Hey. Hi."
She smiles, her own eyes burning. He comes to sit beside her, and he takes her one hand not bound to the shoulder in cast and static mass effect field, and he presses his forehead carefully against hers. Her throat closes again, grief and horror and guilt and relief all caught tangled like a net to stop her speaking. Someday—so much to tell him—but not now, not yet. Someday. There is time. Somehow, she has the time…
"Garrus," she chokes out, and then she laughs. Joy has abruptly surged from among the rest, shredding the clouds apart like the Normandy spearing upwards to a glass-clear sky, and in the sheer giddiness of being alive she can't suppress it, doesn't even want to try.
He cups her face in his bare hand. His trembling palm is so warm. "Yeah?"
"Garrus, I think I win."
He stares. She loves this face, flat turian mouth and mandibles lax in confusion, turian eyes fixed to hers. She loves it more when he catches on, when he laughs, really laughs, his head thrown back, teeth sharp and gleaming, and when he leans down again over the narrow hospital bed so she can kiss him with all the strength she's got.
I love you, Garrus Vakarian.
"Yeah, Shepard," he murmurs against her mouth. "I guess I can live with that."
—
There will be more later, she knows. More tests, more meetings, recuperations, reunions. There will be good days, maybe; there will be bad days too. Somewhere the salarians will argue, the krogan will shout, and the asari will shake their heads in lofty disdain. Somewhere, they will all grip themselves together as one and bend to rebuild, maybe. Maybe there will be one more battle, one more treaty, one more flight among the silent stars. One more morning, somehow, and then another, and another, of waking up with a turian next to her. Better days ahead, maybe, Shepard thinks, than she might have ever dreamed. But the point is—
The point is that against all odds, against all hope—
—she lives to see them.
—
end.
Final notes: The word "technothump" came from Jade as she tried to remember the word I'd made up (synthpop). As it is clearly superior in every way, I'll be smattering it in religiously from now on. Thanks, Jade!