Garrus glanced around his one room apartment and into the empty footlocker lying open on his bed. He'd already had his weapons, armor, and associated gear sent ahead to the Normandy armory but had yet to pack anything else. "Only one standard footlocker for any additional personal items and supplies" the yeoman had instructed him firmly. He gathered from her tone that she'd expected him to test the limit. Garrus rubbed the back of his neck and laughed. He could practically fit everything he owned in one footlocker. Despite having spent most of his life on the Citadel, his apartment looked spartan compared to those of his C-cec colleagues. Former C-sec colleagues. For someone who hated his job, Garrus' quarters had every appearance of a life focused wholly on work. A rarely used (and even more rarely cleaned) kitchen. A layer of dust on everything but the bed, the desk, and the shower. Crates of case files stacked here and there. A desk cluttered with reports. No sentimentality. No chairs for guests. The bed only big enough for one occupant. He'd never quite shaken the norms of life from his military days living in barracks with other soldiers. One footlocker was practically a luxury.
He opened the doors of his wardrobe. Even his three sets of civilian clothing seemed excessive to him, he wore them so rarely. He pulled one of the sets off the hanger and ripped off the price tag still affixed to the collar before tossing it and the other two sets into the footlocker. He added pajamas and undergarments to the heap before closing the now empty wardrobe.
His desk was cluttered with work datapads, mostly dealing with his investigations into Fist and Saren. He gathered them up, and those too went into the footlocker. He hesitated as his eyes fell on a couple pads with information on old cases that he'd been too stubborn to let go of. "Still too stubborn to let go of," he said out loud before tucking those pads under the clothes at the bottom of the footlocker.
I guess that's about it, he thought with a sigh. Not even a family picture or childhood memento. What little relics of his youth he'd kept were in storage at his parent's home on Palaven, where they'd relocated recently after his father's retirement from C-sec. He shook his head, thinking of his father. Garrus would have to tell him about his own career change. "That will go well," he grumbled. Better to get it over with than field an angry call in a few days when Castis would undoubtedly learn about it from Pallin or one of his other old C-sec contacts.
He sat at his desk and dialed up his parents' comm line on the console. The receiving line promptly beeped and Castis' face shone on the screen.
"Garrus! I wasn't expecting a call." His voice sounded bright. Happy. Garrus would have to ruin that.
"Hey, Dad. You busy?"
Castis' tensed at Garrus' tone. "Not at the moment," he said. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah. Just wanted to give you some news before you hear it from Pallin."
His father took a deep breath and exhaled in an exhausted sigh. "Alright, Garrus. Let's hear it."
Garrus took a deep breath of his own. "I'm taking an extended leave of absence from C-sec. Maybe permanent."
"Damn it, Garrus," Castis said, his voice charged with familiar anger. "What the hell did you do this time?"
"It's voluntary, Dad," Garrus said, already feeling drained by the conversation. "I have an opportunity I can't pass up."
"What kind of 'opportunity?'"
Where to begin? "Did you catch the news about the first human Spectre?"
Castis narrowed his eyes. "Yes... Commander Shepard. The Council is sending her after Saren Arturius."
"That's right. I was conducting an investigation of my own into Saren's dealings on the Citadel when my investigation and hers sort of dovetailed. I helped her expose him to the Council. And… well… she could use my help bringing him down. So I'm going with her."
"You're leaving your job with C-sec to work with a Spectre?" he snapped with the expected contempt.
"That's right," Garrus said flatly.
"A human Spectre?"
"Yeah."
"Garrus. Of all the impulsive, rash decisions you've made…"
"I need to do this, Dad." Garrus' voice was calm and firm.
Castis paused for several seconds before speaking again. "Why? Why the hell would you need to attach yourself to some reckless human Spectre?"
Garrus felt anger rise in himself at his father's criticism of the Commander. "Shepard isn't reckless. Look up her record."
"She's a Spectre. That tells me everything I need to know about her." He leaned back from the console, and Garrus imagined he'd probably crossed his arms, as he always did when he was determined to hold his ground in their verbal sparrings. "Humans in general tend to bully their way through problems. A human Spectre? That's a recipe for disaster.
He shook his head. "You sound like a bigot."
Castis scoffed. "You think she's an exception? That she won't jump at the opportunity to cut corners and knock over anything and anyone that gets in her way?"
"No. She's… not exactly what I'd expected." He thought of their first meeting in the Citadel Tower. Shepard was smaller than she'd looked in the footage of Elysium, and he might not have recognized her at all if not for the N7 insignia and stripes on her armor. But, despite her size, she moved with the easy confidence of someone who has total command of their body and any space they moved through. And there was an easy warmth in her body language and the way she spoke to him, a stranger. Is she like that with everyone? he'd wondered. But then he'd made her angry: shot one of Fist's men before the hostage was clear. What the hell were you thinking? He was used to being lectured for risky choices, but something about Shepard's fury, somehow no less warm than her congeniality, had nearly taken his knees out from under him. He'd fumbled for an apology, a course correction, as he'd thought to himself, Please, tell me I haven't ruined this.
Garrus redirected his attention back to his father. "Shepard is compassionate. Level-headed. And she accepted Spectre status for the right reasons."
"And what exactly are the 'right reasons?'" Castis asked.
Garrus clawed at his desk, hating his father's tone, and knowing nothing would satisfy him as an adequate defense of Shepard or his choice to join her. "Saren needs to be taken down, Dad. Shepard needs Spectre status to do that. And if some corners have to be cut along the way, so be it." His father would hate that answer, Garrus knew, but it didn't matter.
Castis shook his head, fuming. "I really thought you'd have outgrown this attitude by now."
"Well, I haven't," Garrus said. He looked away and sighed. "Look, I know you wanted C-sec to work out. And I gave it a try. I really did. But, it's just not a good fit. This Saren case is a perfect example of why. Every step of my investigation: red tape. Meanwhile he's amassing an army, wiping out colonies, and shooting people in the back."
"You're too damn impatient, Garrus. If you'd just stay in line, do things right instead of fast you'd-"
Garrus snapped at the familiar criticism. "This isn't about being impatient! It's about a system bogged down with regulations that are designed to keep people like Saren out of the reach of the authorities. I'm not tired of following rules. I'm tired of not being able to help anyone because those rules tie my damn hands! Why can't you understand that?"
The argument was a well-worn path they both knew well. "The rules are there to keep people from abusing their power," Castis said, and Garrus could hear the sound of his father's fist pounding on his desk to punctuate his point. "Saren is a perfect example of what happens when there are no checks to power."
Garrus shrugged. "Sure, maybe... if the rules were written in the spirit of justice and applied to everyone and everyone agreed to follow them, but that's not the way things are. Because of the way the rules are written, the only person who can touch Saren is another Spectre."
Castis was seething. "So you just double down on the very problem that created Saren? How is that in the 'spirit of justice?'"
"What's the alternative? We should just sit on our hands while Saren leads a galactic invasion of synthetic forces to wipe out organic life?"
Castis scoffed. "That's preposterous."
Garrus leaned forward, his hands pressed against his desk. "It's what we're up against, Dad! Tell me, what forms should I fill out to get authorized to arrest him for conspiracy to commit galactic genocide? Form 784B, right?... No wait, that's for smuggling class 7 citrus fruit."
Castis' temper cooled slightly as he considered his son. "Point taken, Garrus. C-sec isn't equipped to handle this," he granted. "But that's what the military is for."
"That's what Spectres are for."
"You're not a Spectre, Garrus. You're a hotheaded C-sec agent who doesn't know when to back down."
"Not anymore. I'm part of Shepard's crew now." Garrus could feel himself shutting down. Nothing either of them would say would make a difference except to dig a deeper grave for their relationship.
Castis shook his head. "You're abandoning your duty to chase some childish fantasy."
Garrus looked away. "Think what you want. You're not going to change my mind."
Castis laughed "When have I ever? Stubborn, rebellious-"
"Bye, Dad," Garrus interrupted and cut the signal transmission before his father could reply. The conversation had gone about as well as he'd expected, but at least it was done. And so was his packing. Garrus got up from his chair, closed the footlocker, and picked it up. He gave his small apartment and the life he'd had there one last glance before leaving it behind
