Inspired by an elevator conversation in me1. Oh Garrus, with that stick up his ass…
Wrex: So who'd win in a fight between you and Shepard?
Garrus: That question smacks of impertinence. Commander Shepard is a Spectre with a distinguished service record.
Disclaimer: This fic touches on some very dark subject matter including rape and child abuse. It is never portrayed in a positive light, and I will have a warning at the top of the appropriate chapters. But it is present, as is the emotional and physical fall out.
takes places in the aftermath of me1
To most, Commander Shepard was a man to be feared. If the Alliance deployed him, you knew trouble was on the horizon. They only dispatched their best, most reliable soldier if the situation was dire and failure was not an option.
The man was well known for his victories, certainly. But he was infamous for the cost it took to achieve them. He pursued his goals with a ruthless determination that left even his fellow soldiers wary. Known as the Butcher of Torfan, Commander Shepard knew how to bring an enemy to heel. But more importantly, he understood what humanity faced as a fledgling species in a vast and dangerous galaxy.
That is why the Alliance put his name forward as the first human spectre. It is also why Garrus Vakarian decided to leave his career at C-Sec and join the man's crew. Shepard knew what it took to get the job done and wasn't squeamish about following through with it.
Few understood the demands of war. It rarely gave you the easy way out and in order to truly protect the innocent, someone had to make the tough calls. A bullet to the head ensured an end to the sadistic plots of rapists and murderers. And despite what the Executor may say, a war is exactly what Garrus felt like he was fighting, and losing, day in and day out on the citadel. Criminals smuggled red sand and illegal weapons tech right under their noses, and C-Sec was so hobbled by their own rules and regulations that suspects, of even the most heinous crimes, frequently escaped out into the galaxy. Finding out Saren had recruited an army of geth and butchered a colony while his investigation was stuck behind a wall of red tape was a bad day. That's what stalling and paper pushing got you in the end, war. Better to eliminate the threat before it blossomed into arma-fucking-geddon.
Shepard understood that on Torfan. And the flak the marine received from the press over the matter irritated Garrus like nothing else. Not to mention the fact that Shepard's malevolent reputation wasn't entirely deserved. On Feros, he went out of his way to aid the colony. And as a result, they survived a particularly vicious attack by the geth. Yet if there had been no other option when the thorian turned the colonists against them, Garrus knew Shepard wouldn't hesitate to put them down. Thankfully it didn't come to that, but that was an exception not the rule.
Some just couldn't accept that you needed people like that in the galaxy. People to do the dirty jobs.
That's why Garrus followed Shepard. To protect the galaxy. And if he were being perfectly honest, to piss his dad off.
A/N: "Arma-fucking-geddon" sounds like something Zaeed would say. But I figure Garrus picked up a few things after all that time among humans hunting Saren. And I always felt like he really looked up to Shepard in the first game and wanted to touch on that.
