An announcement came over the ship's intercom: Commander Shepard was ashore. Garrus tried to focus on weapon calibrations, but he couldn't push away the memory of Shepard gently talking down that girl on the docks. He and Tali had waited by the elevator, while Shepard had handled the situation. But she'd neglected to cut the away-party comm link, so they'd heard it all. "Keelah…" Tali had uttered repeatedly, as she'd discovered for the first time a shadow of what their Commander had endured in her childhood. Garrus had just watched and listened, transfixed by the strength and tenderness of this person who, more and more, had him gripped in a state of wonder and admiration. When it was over, she'd looked pale, shaken, but had not said a word about it. She'd carried on her Citadel business, and when she was done, they'd returned to the Normandy. Now she was on the station again. This time alone.
Garrus shook his head. There was no way she was okay. How could she be? Not only had she been forced to dig up traumatizing memories, she'd exposed that trauma to two members of her crew. He doubted she'd meant for them to hear her conversation. The urgency of the situation had no doubt made her overlook the option to mute her comm or she'd forgotten that they were there at all as she focused her attention on the young woman, armed and hurting. Now they knew far more than the official record revealed about Shepard's history, far more than she'd wanted any of her crew to know. And no doubt she wondered what they made of her now.
He checked the time on his omnitool. It was late. Very late. Where had she gone to? Perhaps to a friend on the Citadel. Someone whose loyalty she knew didn't hinge on maintaining an idealized and invulnerable version of herself. Or maybe to a dark corner in a bar to numb those vulnerabilities with as much alcohol as it took. He didn't know her well enough to guess which was more likely, but he'd check the bars. If I find her, I'll just... buy her a drink? A cup of coffee? Walk her back to the ship? Say... something? He rubbed the back of his neck at the tension and exhaustion gathering there. Or maybe he should just stay out of it.
He made his way to the docking port. Just check in on her, he told himself. I don't have to say a thing. I'll wave, and if she waves me over, I'll join her. Simple. Just a friendly face to keep her company if she wants. It was unlikely he'd even find her. The Citadel had many bars, assuming she even was at a bar. He'd just check the one's close to the docks. If she wasn't there, he'd go back to the ship and try to get some sleep himself. An hour looking at the most.
He found her as soon as he exited the ship. Shepard was alone on the docks, standing maybe ten feet from where she'd spoken to the Mindoir survivor a few hours before. She leaned forward against the catwalk railing, looking out over the Citadel metropolis that stretched out below. Her shoulders and back shook slightly. Crying, he thought. This war hero, biotic powerhouse, pistol slinging bad ass was crying. The first human Spectre was crying.
Garrus watched, paralyzed for a moment by the equal pull of an impulse to leave her be and another to be there with her. But something unnameable in him pushed him forward, and before he could mount a defense against it, he was leaning against the railing a couple feet from her. "Hey, Shepard," he said, with a calm he didn't feel.
She quickly wiped her eyes and sniffed. "Hey, Garrus," she said in a voice raspy from crying and lack of sleep.
She didn't look at him, and Garrus silently damned himself for bothering her in this vulnerable moment. "Am I intruding?" he asked.
She sniffed again "No, just getting a little air…. What can I do for you?"
She must have thought he was there on ship's business not as a friend there to be supportive. Who could blame her; they were practically strangers. It was presumptuous of him to expect her to be possibly comforted by his presence. "Nothing. I just…. nevermind." He took his forearms off the railing and stepped back. "I'll see you back on the ship."
"Wait," she said, still staring out over the Citadel. "Stay. Enjoy the view."
His buzzing nerves quieted at the invitation. This wasn't the wrong thing to do. She wanted him to stay. He watched Shepard watching ships come and go. There was something compelling about her face: softness, curves, angles. Here and there a scar, light freckling, faint creases at the corners of her eyes and mouth, short brown curls framing her endlessly expressive face. Not beautiful exactly (too alien for that), but intriguing. He wasn't sure how long he'd been lost in the details of that intriguing face, when her bright eyes caught his own in a critical glare. He quickly snapped his gaze to the horizon.
Shepard leaned sideways against the railing, facing him, taking her turn absorbing his features while he squirmed and tried to find the words that would get to the heart of why he'd come out here looking for her. He stole another awkward glance her way, and she smirked at him. The tiny scar on her lip shone white in the artificial light.
"You look like you have something to say, Garrus," she said, her tone both warm and teasing. "Speak freely."
"I don't want to overstep." Or say the wrong thing and end up making things worse.
She rolled her eyes and the smirk spread to a sad smile. "Speak freely, Garrus. I don't bite."
He pivoted to face her. "Earlier," he began cautiously. "The young woman you helped."
Shepard looked back out over the view and frowned. "Talitha," she said, heavily.
"Yeah," he continued. "I didn't think you'd be able to talk her down."
She nodded "It was pretty tense. She was really hurting."
Shepard was really hurting. "You were incredible, Commander. You said all the things she needed to hear," Garrus continued. "I don't think anyone else could have saved her."
Shepard's expression relaxed a little. "Well," she said, "I knew a little bit about what she was going through. I'm just glad I was there at the right time to help her.
"Yeah," Garrus said breathily. "What are the odds? Only a handful of survivors from Mindoir in the galaxy, and there you were, right when she needed you."
She considered him for several seconds. "I don't suppose you'd ever heard about Mindoir before coming aboard the Normandy."
He shook his head. "Not specifically. I remember my dad ranting about humans being taken by Batarians in the Terminus systems because the Alliance wasn't strong enough to protect their colonies."
Shepard raised her eyebrows.
Garrus winced. "Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that."
She turned back toward him and crossed her arms. "No, he was right," she said, her voice tired. "Humans spread out too far, too fast. The Alliance didn't have the ships or people to protect the Terminus colonies so soon after the First Contact Wars. And the response to Mindoir came too late because of it." She shook her head and looked away. "After Eden Prime, I guess I can't say we've improved our track record much."
"Eden Prime was… an exceptional case. I may not have heard about Mindoir, but even Turians are familiar with the Blitz and your defense of Elysium. Your colonies have fared much better since then."
She shrugged. "Wiping out platoons of slave-traders will do that, I guess."
"You won justice for Mindoir that day, Shepard."
She tense and turned from him, bracing herself against the railing again. "No, I didn't," she said, anger or exhaustion sharpening the edge of her words. "Elysium didn't change a damn thing for Talitha; it didn't bring peace or freedom to the dozens of kids taken from Mindoir, sold into slavery, never to be seen again; and Batarian blood didn't raise our dead."
Garrus watched her intensely, unsure of what to make of her words.
She sighed and some of the tension left her. "But," she continued. "I'd like to think it might have saved some lives, and maybe saved others from going through what Talitha has… or what I have." She said the words liked she'd rehearsed them, perhaps a script she'd repeated to herself whenever the guilt of surviving became overwhelming.
"It did," he said. "You did. The Batarian slave trade never recovered after the Skyllian Blitz. Neither has their hold in the Terminus systems."
"That's something, at least."
"It's a lot, Shepard."
"Yeah." She blinked her eyes and a tear escaped. She let it fall.
Garrus cocked his head. "Talking to Talitha today…. it can't have been easy."
Shepard took a deep breath. "Mindoir is an old wound, Garrus. I've buried my dead. Accepted my survival, for the most part. These days I can even look at Batarians without wanting to rip them apart, usually. I've put in a hell of a lot of work to get this far." She winced. "But the memories are… difficult. Talitha unsettled a few things that I prefer to not dredge up."
Garrus turned to look back out at the view. He'd edged closer to her without noticing it, and now his arm brushed her shoulder briefly. "I get it," he said, noticing that Shepard didn't shift away from their contact. "We tangled with Batarian slavers now and then when I was in the Turian military." He shook his head. "Those were always the hardest missions. The pirates were at least quick and clean, but the slavers….," he trailed off. There was no need to elaborate to her of all people what Batarian slavers did. "I can't imagine the strength it must have taken for you to move past it."
She shrugged and shook her head. "I'm not sure that I'll ever move past it. Not completely. Those scars run deep. Days like today remind me of that."
He nudged her slightly with his elbow. "But you're still here, Shepard. Still fighting. Everything you've been through… it didn't break you. That in itself is pretty damn remarkable."
They stood there in a comfortable silence for a while, watching the air traffic and the changing lights of the station emulating a Thesian sunrise. He'd seen hundreds of sunrises on the Citadel, usually on his way to or from work. They were all identical light shows. A single program that ran every day. Beautiful, but boring in the repetition of it. But not this one; something was different. He wondered if they'd changed the program slightly after all these years. Garrus was jostled from his thoughts by the feeling of Shepard's hand closing around his. He looked to her face, exhausted but smiling. "Thanks for being here, Garrus," she said. "I should probably go get a nap in before takeoff."
"Any time, Shepard. I think I'll stay and watch the rest of the sunrise."
She nodded and walked away. Garrus looked over his shoulder to watch her board the Normandy. Then his gaze fell to his hand. Still warm.
