VI
Contact: Changes
Garrus was in the battery, putting off going to dinner as long as he could. When they'd got back from Korlus, Mess Sergeant Gardener had found him and told him about a Taetrus steak recipe he was excited to try out. The man was determined to get down dextro cuisine, but Garrus thought it would be better if he focused on getting just two or three dextro recipes right. He really was going to start cooking for himself. He made a note on his visor about it, and then saw three waiting messages from the same address in an account he hadn't used in weeks.
The air hissed between his teeth as Garrus took in a sharp breath. One by one, he opened the messages.
So are you dead yet, or what?
Dad just came home, and he said you called him a few weeks ago. Sounded bad. Like you weren't sure you'd make it out.
And I don't want to be pushy or anything, but you called Dad.
The first edge of panic died off, replaced by an overwhelming wave of guilt. There really was nothing like a message from home to remind you what a terrible turian you were. Garrus brought up his omni-tool and typed. His fingers shook. I'm not dead.
The response was immediate.
Incoming Call, his visor reported.
Accept?
Reject?
With a sour taste in his mouth, Garrus rejected the call. He typed another message. I can't link up for video chat. Trust me: neither one of us can afford the bill. Probably shouldn't talk over an unsecured channel even if we could.
Shepard probably wouldn't mind. Williams had called home fairly often on the SR-1. And part of EDI's purpose was to deter hacking attempts on the Normandy. But you know getting Shepard to sign off on the expense and the security concerns aren't really what you're worried about here. Garrus sat down on his bunk with a sigh.
You're spacing again? As ever, Solana kept things brief and to the point. If they couldn't afford a call, it was because his position wasn't consistent. Ergo, he must have left his job again. He'd never told her what he had been doing on Omega, or even exactly where he'd been, but for all Solana had never gone into C-Sec, she had every bit of their dad's detective instinct. And a better temperament for it.
Garrus was careful with his answer. More or less. Honestly, he had no idea how much leash he had to talk about their mission, and while stopping the Collectors would be more acceptable to his family than vigilantism—if it worked—collaborating with Cerberus definitely wouldn't. And Solana would worry. She had enough to worry about. It didn't help that this mission seemed like as much of a death sentence as trying to enforce order on Omega.
Solana stopped trying to be subtle. She never had been one for beating around the bush. What happened?
Garrus stared at the blinking cursor, seeing and smelling the body bags on Omega. –I thought something was off when Sidonis called. Why couldn't I have stopped? Asked a few more questions? If I'd taken just a couple of them with me when I left when I had that feeling, would it had been different when we'd gone back to the base?—Finally, he typed, Don't worry about it. How's Mom?
Solana was angry. The frustration practically steamed off of her response. Still well enough to miss you. Bad enough Dad's come home. Do them both good to see you.
Me too, she admitted. What the hell are you doing that's so mysterious anyway? More "contract" work?
Garrus was pretty sure all his family had guessed at what he'd been doing the past two years. The careful way they hadn't talked about it said as much. That Solana was breaking their unwritten rules and openly asking now said that, too, and that all of it seemed pointless and stupid to her. Well, wasn't it?
No.
I don't know.
Solana's questions said something else, too. Something Garrus didn't want to think or talk about.
More like consulting now, he told her.
Fine, don't tell me. The swiftness of her response was an accusation in its own right.
I'm sorry, he said.
For a long time, there was nothing. Then her reply showed up. Sorry's worth shit unless it changes something. Just, are you okay?
She was right. His guilt changed nothing. At home, he was useless. Since he'd left C-Sec before service was over—not once but twice, he'd be lucky to get a job as a dock worker or a fry cook on Palaven, and that wouldn't do anyone any good. All he could do at home was stand around waiting while his mother . . . Garrus took off his visor and massaged his crest against his sudden headache. Psychosomatic physiological symptom of an emotional crisis, I know—or real symptom of the insomnia—but spirits if it doesn't still hurt like hell.
With Shepard, though, he fit. The Collectors were kidnapping entire human colonies, and he knew he could help her stop it. Especially if Cerberus was right and the Collectors were working with the Reapers, it was an unambiguously good thing to do with his life—whatever was left of it. No tough moral questions, no shame.
Just a suicide run through a relay no one else has ever come out the other side of. And when Sol loses you, on top of Mom . . .
She and Dad are model turians. They know how to cope with loss.
Don't worry about me, Sol, he simply said again.
But Solana wasn't having it. That's what families do, moron.
Garrus sighed. I guess you're right. Tell Mom I said hi.
He hesitated, then added, Dad too. Tell him I've got more unfinished business before I come home. And tell him I'm sorry.
Solana's response was cold and furious. Tell him yourself.
Connection terminated, his visor blinked. In effect, she'd hung up on him, and Garrus knew he deserved it. He sat on his bunk for another minute and a half before he decided Gardener's slop was actually better than being alone with his thoughts. He put on his visor, stood up, and left the battery.
Dinner hour was starting to wind down. Rolston tipped him a wave from the table. He was in an animated conversation with Donnelly and Daniels from Engineering. That was a pair of new recruits Garrus liked far better than the yeoman in the CIC whose too-personal questions he had to dodge every time he went up for a briefing. He nodded back, accepted his dinner from the enthusiastic Gardner, and sat down by himself.
He was eyeing his meal skeptically when the elevator dinged, Shepard walked around the corner, and Garrus forgot all about the rations. Her uniform top was unzipped partway, but it was immediately obvious she hadn't pulled it down the way many human women and asari did to accentuate the chests both species apparently found so attractive. From the right corner of her jaw to the top of her collarbone, instead of its normal tan shade, her skin was a purple-black that might have looked right on an asari but definitely looked wrong and painful on a human. She'd unzipped the tight collar of her uniform to accommodate the swelling. Turians didn't visibly bruise like humans, asari, and drell, but after ten years on the Citadel and two in Archangel, Garrus sure as hell knew what a bad bruise looked like. But Shepard had come off Korlus without a scratch.
She walked right past him up to Gardner, but Garrus could tell by the tension in her back and the way she pretended she hadn't seen him that she knew he'd noticed.
"Sergeant, turns out we're going to need those krogan rations after all," she told Gardner. Her voice sounded just a little forced, like she was pushing it too hard through a throat that didn't feel like carrying it just now. "You don't mind whipping up a monster bowl of noodles and meatballs, do you?"
Gardner made the obvious assumption. "Woke up that warlord's experiment, did you?" He nodded at Shepard's war wounds. "Don't look like he appreciated it much."
Shepard laughed. "He was a little disoriented at first, but he's a hell of a fighter. He's agreed to sign on, and he'll be a good addition to the team. His name's Grunt. Figure it's best if he takes some downtime for now, but I'll show him around and introduce him to everyone later."
"Heaping pile of noodles to go coming right up," Gardner said cheerfully. "Never had much of a chance to talk to a krogan before. Should be interesting." He bent over, opened a cabinet, and hefted out an enormous bag of pasta with a groan. "You want me to prep your supper to go too?" he asked.
"I'd appreciate that, Rupert," Shepard agreed. "Gotta file the paperwork upstairs."
"It never ends," Rupert said sympathetically, filling an enormous pot with water at the sink.
Garrus sat quietly, eating his dinner and staring at the table. He didn't say a word, but when he finished, he put his dirty tray on the shelf beneath the counter for the crew on scrub duty tonight and typed another message on his omni-tool.
Can we talk, Commander?
He walked back to the battery without looking at her once. A minute later, he received a reply.
2030. My cabin. Code's 9701.
The first question Garrus had when he stepped off the elevator and into Shepard's cabin was how many of the credits Cerberus had spent to rebuild the Normandy had gone straight into the captain's quarters. Half the left wall was a fishtank. Exotic fish purchaseable at certain souvenir shops on the Citadel swam behind the glass in the water.
There was a set of steps down off the platform he stood on that led into Shepard's bedroom proper, and he caught a glimpse of a bed made with a soldier's precision, the grim, scratched helmet from Shepard's old armor that she'd picked up on Alchera sitting beside the bed like a medieval deaths-head. It looked like some idiot had thought it would be a good idea to put an observation window over the bed. As far as security went, it was a terrible plan. Windows were structural weaknesses, and one of the last places you wanted something like that was in the cabin of the commanding officer, even aside from the expense. Didn't look like Shepard approved of it either—she'd closed the shutter.
Shepard wasn't down the steps in her bedroom, though. She was sitting with her back to him at her desk in the space that had to serve as her office, filling out reports like she'd said. Her tray was beside her, the food only half eaten and long since cold. Garrus frowned and checked his 'tool. She'd changed out of her uniform.
"You did say 2030?" he asked. "If I'm late—"
Shepard turned around. "Garrus," she said. She checked her own omni-tool. "I guess it is 2030." She stood and stretched. The loose, short-sleeved, blue shirt she wore untucked rode up a little over her hips. There was an Alliance logo printed on it in gold. Nothing official—like the fish, the shirt looked like some sort of souvenir, but they didn't sell shirts or pants like Shepard's on the Citadel. Humans on the more popular hub worlds—both men and women—tended to imitate Council styles, but Garrus had only seen clothes like Shepard's in vids about humans on Earth.
It wasn't that the outfit was inappropriate for a human—especially not when some of them dressed like Jack. Garrus had gone through the xenostudies courses back in Basic like everyone and the mandatory cultural sensitivity modules every year in C-Sec. The Alliance was much more formal than the turian military in some respects—and much more relaxed in others, like appearance before subordinates. But the clothes sent a message, like everything else in the room. Shepard had opened the door here in more ways than one.
She had to special order that shirt from Earth. She's homesick—for Earth or for the Alliance. Or for the way things used to be. Enough to consciously seek out things to remind her. That shuttered window could be more than disapproval for an expense or structural weakness. The books and half-finished model ship on the other side of the bed? She's got insomnia too. Of course she does. And that helmet—I don't want to think about the helmet.
His scan of her quarters didn't go unnoticed. "You know you can get a better look down the stairs," Shepard suggested. Her face was wry. She jerked her head for him to follow her. His neck warmed, and he dropped his gaze and went after her into a small reception area on the right. She sat on a couch around a small table and indicated he should sit opposite her. "This work, or you want to check the model of the ship and the titles of the books?"
Garrus chuckled, nervous. "I think I'm good for now."
She regarded him, folded her legs in a way that still made Garrus's own legs hurt to look at no matter how often he saw humans and asari do it, then smiled, letting him off the hook. "The thing is to evaluate your surroundings without letting the mark know what you're doing, Garrus."
"I'm having an off day."
Shepard gestured to the florid bruise across her throat, even more obvious in her loose-collared shirt. "Apparently so am I. This the part where you kick my ass for taking stupid risks?"
"I don't know," Garrus returned. "Do you have a reason why waking up Okeer's experiment on your own without backup wasn't a stupid risk?"
Shepard held his gaze a moment. She raised an eyebrow, arms folded. "Because those other krogan down on Korlus went crazy. They heard Jedore and saw those armed mercs, and their instincts told them to fight, meet the challenge, and take out the threat. I didn't want to have the same problem with Grunt. I figured if he saw me and a couple heavily armed friends right out of the tank, the first thing he'd do was attack. Especially if one of them was a turian."
"The first thing he did was attack anyway," Garrus pointed out.
"He slowed down long enough to talk, which gave me enough time to convince him I had better enemies for him to fight. And even though he didn't see it at first, I was armed. I had my gun, and I was ready to use it."
Everything sounded so reasonable the way she laid it out, but nothing she said could rationalize away that bruise. "Hmm. Not ready enough. Did anyone know you were in there? Even if you didn't want backup in the room with you, someone on the radio or in the hallway could've made a difference if he'd disarmed or injured you worse than that in the first rush."
"EDI was online and monitoring the situation."
"I was," the AI confirmed, breaking into the conversation unasked with yet another reminder that there was no escape from Cerberus anywhere onboard this ship. The ache in Garrus's temples throbbed out with new insistence. "But I remind you that I could not have intervened if your initial encounter had taken a turn for the worse. By the time I could have raised the alarm, he would have likely already killed you."
"Or I would have killed him," Shepard retorted, eyes narrowing in annoyance. "EDI, sign off and enact Privacy Protocol."
Garrus wondered if he was imagining the note of displeasure in the AI's voice when she answered, "Very well. Logging you out, Commander."
"You can do that?" Garrus asked, momentarily distracted. "What are the parameters of the program?"
"Limited," Shepard sighed. "I'm the only one that can enact the protocol, and while it keeps her from saving the audio files to the drive or being able to share them, it can't keep her sensors from picking up everything that's said or making a note that I've had a private conversation."
"So even if Miranda and her boss don't know exactly what you've been plotting, there's nothing to stop EDI from telling them that you've been plotting in the first place."
"No, and I'm pretty sure she's programmed to tell them whenever I use the protocol."
Garrus filed this away. He didn't know if he could find a workaround for Shepard or even if he wanted to just yet, but it was useful information all the same. "So. Grunt."
Shepard's lips quirked. "He thought it was a good name." She dropped her gaze finally. "I should've had Jack, Miranda, or Jacob on call outside the door and on the radio," she admitted. She rolled her shoulders. "He slammed me so hard into the bulkhead, I saw stars, and I've seen some of the readouts on the things Miranda did to me. Probably would've snapped an unaltered human's spine."
"But he's stable now, and we can completely count on his commitment to the mission," Garrus deadpanned.
Shepard winced. "There might've been something about killing me if I'm weak and choose weak enemies."
Garrus rolled his eyes. "So we're safe so long as we get the krogan into a firefight ASAP, convince him we've got enough trouble on our hands he won't be bored. That about sum it up?"
"Just about," Shepard agreed.
"Any ideas?"
Shepard shrugged. "Cerberus is putting together a few more dossiers on people we might be able to use on our mission. If recruiting them is half as interesting as getting the rest of you has been, Grunt'll get his fight." She paused. "He'll get it sooner or later, regardless."
The odds of their success hung over their heads like a noose or the shadow of the firing squad. Garrus's thoughts drifted to Palaven, to the chain of messages now sitting in that account he never used anymore—and farther, to wherever a traitor still walked around breathing. Garrus shifted and an awkward silence fell.
"That it?" Shepard asked after a moment. "Have to say, I was expecting a bit more yelling about waking him up."
Garrus shook his head. "We've both done some stupid things in our time. A nasty bruise for a new ally we'll need to do a little more work to get on our side completely is a better exchange than some of the ones I've made." He remembered hundreds of vorcha chasing him over Omega the night he thought he'd had Garm cornered. And that wasn't even the worst of it. "Whatever Collector tech is in him—are you going to let Cerberus study it? Or Mordin?"
Shepard's eyes were distant. "I'm going to let Mordin have the tank. See what he can get from its computer and the remains of the solution in it. But Grunt? No. He's off limits. Part of the reason I woke him up. He's a hell of a lot harder for them to get at awake."
"Someone mentioned something?" Garrus guessed.
"Miranda," Shepard confirmed. "I stopped Saren. I stopped Jedore and Okeer. I didn't stop them just to let Cerberus pick up the old experiments on how to turn living creatures into weapons and tools."
"You can't stop them," Garrus said. "Once tech is out there, it can always be reengineered."
Shepard looked at the fading scars on her hands and arms. "I know," she murmured. "But I can sure as hell slow them down. I stopped them today." She stood, brushed her hands off on her pants and held out her hand. "Garrus."
He knew his cue. He stood and shook her hand, but couldn't help adding as he left. "Shepard? Next time—"
"Be more careful?" Shepard finished.
Garrus's mandibles twitched. "I was going to say 'tranq the bastard first,'" he said. "But yeah. That works, too."
Shepard chuckled. "I'll keep that in mind."
Garrus opened the door, then stopped. Jack's observation echoed in his head, You waded out into this shit the second she called you, gonna get it all over your face again for sure—only turian on a boat full of Cerberus—but you sure as hell didn't do it just to take her orders. It occurred to him just how many times his commanding officer had explained herself in a conversation that had lasted less than ten minutes, that he'd come here expecting her to. He turned around. "Commander," he said. "On the field, up here—you'll tell me if I'm ever out of line?"
She was back at her desk, already looking down at reports again. Her chair swiveled around, and she looked up. "I'll tell you," she said. The corner of her mouth turned up, and she tilted her head. "Hard to adjust back, isn't it, once you've been in command?"
"I don't mean to—"
"Of course not. You just do. It's who you are, and believe it or not, we need that. I need that. A lieutenant capable of offering solid tactical direction in the moment if something changes or I need to complete a different objective, and someone I know I'll have to answer to the minute I do something stupid. Keep your critiques, if you have them, up here. Out there, keep doing what you're doing until I tell you to stop. Just be you, and we won't have a problem, Garrus." Shepard shrugged and turned back around.
Garrus took the elevator down to the battery. There it is then. Not like old times. Verbal dispensation, almost an order, to push the envelope until she said when. So why don't I feel better?
A/N: Ugh, for me, it's sometimes hard to strike the balance between implication and explication, leaving enough to the readers' imaginations to keep things interesting and saying enough for them to pick up what I'm laying down. There's so much nuance in a character like Garrus.
Explicit: Solana is worried about Garrus because their father has heard from him in the last few weeks.
Implicit: Garrus would only talk to their father if he was in a really, really bad situation.
Explicit: Garrus sees Shepard's room and casual dress and is thrown a little off balance.
Implicit: A LOT, most of it actually completely unrelated to Garrus's explicit crush on Shepard (Ch. 4).
You see what I mean? There's three or four filters to EVERYTHING, and it's EXHAUSTING. Also very frustrating not to interpret everything for you so you can draw your own conclusions.
Ah, well.
That's writing.
LMS
