XXVII

Light-Bringer: The Sage

The second the shaman and Grunt had moved around the bend to the camp, Shepard collapsed against the wheel of the tomkah. Her hand came up to cover her face, then her face went slack. She jolted up and staggered, away from the truck, away from the path.

She fell to her hands and knees and vomited. The sour, acidic smell was immediate, mixed with the iron scent of human blood. Garrus took two steps toward her, afraid she'd sustained some internal injury, before he saw the blood was coming from her mouth, from sores in her tongue and cheek she must have torn with her teeth, staving off her panic attack until the krogan had gone.

You do what you have to to keep the confidence of the men up, but ShepardHer arms shuddered. She was too weak to keep holding herself up. She was going to fall.

Garrus caught her around her waist before he thought about it, pulling her away. "Hey, hey!"

She hadn't been ready, and she stumbled again. Garrus tightened his hold and her hands came up to brace against his shoulders. His visor registered her heart pounding, in full fight-or-flight panic mode as she let the force of everything that had just happened crash down on her. The temperature gauge said she was also running too hot, probably from the radiation burn. But as he watched, her readout spiked .25 more degrees. Shepard's lips were parted. The sick smell was heavy on her breath, and her eyes were wide with confusion as she looked at him. Her gloved fingers curled on his shoulders.

And he was holding her waist.

Garrus inhaled sharply, raised his hands, and took three steps back away from her. When it looked like she wasn't going to fall again or punch him out, he let himself relax, a little. He forced a laugh. "Well. I knew it was going to be bad, but I can't say I was expecting that—"

Awkward moment past, Shepard proceeded to lose her mind.

"Probably a mixture of the concussion and the fact that we just fought a fucking thresher maw on foot!" she snapped, wiping her mouth furiously with her gauntlet. Her intermittent tremors had become violent shaking now. She was breathing far too quickly. "I hate those things! I hate them!"

Thinking rapidly, Garrus handed her his canteen. Cool water wouldn't work as well as a blanket, but it still might serve to ground her in the present, and it would help with the taste in Shepard's mouth. She took the canteen blindly, drank, swished some more water around in her mouth, and spat it out on the ground. She handed the canteen back to him and walked away, pacing back and forth.

Garrus kept his voice light and level. "Teenage krogan just can't go out to the bar and get drunk with the rest of the galaxy when they come of age. The party's no good at all unless a thresher maw's spewing acid at you."

It was no good. Shepard's hands came up to cover her ears, but she wasn't blocking him out. Her fingers knotted in her hair, her eyes screwed shut, and she doubled over at the waist. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

Garrus was in front of her again in a second. He grabbed her wrists, pressing harder than he wanted to. "Hey! Stay with me!" he ordered her. Her eyes flew open, and once again, she wasn't seeing him. He knew what she was seeing.

Akuze. Most people would hope they never had to face down a thresher maw on foot once, but Shepard had done it before. Her unit had gone to investigate the disappearance of a human colony and had been completely taken out by a nest that contained not one, not two, but three or more of those monsters. Cerberus had been experimenting with them. The experiment had gone wrong. Shepard hadn't been the only survivor, but she'd thought so for years, and the only other guy that had made it out was arguably insane after what they'd gone through and what he'd endured afterward. It was a miracle Shepard wasn't. Reading in between the lines of her file, it was clear she'd been grounded, relegated to a desk job as a burnout, a walking casualty, before Anderson had recruited her for spec ops a few months later. Garrus had seen evidence before that she hadn't gotten out without a few mental scars: when they'd run into one of the Cerberus scientists that had engineered the attack and her fellow survivor, and vestiges whenever they'd encountered thresher maws in the Mako. But never like this.

But as she looked at him, her eyes refocused, and almost immediately his visor tracked her heart rate slowing. He didn't fit into the picture in her head. He hadn't been there that day, so just by looking at her, just by talking to her, he was pulling her back to the present. Probably the touch, too, he thought, as her hands clenched around his and he realized that, hardly thinking about it, he had been massaging the flexible underlay over her palms with his thumbs. "We're fine now. It's over," he murmured. "Damn, Shepard. Was it because we were on the ground this time?"

She didn't answer. Garrus waited, watching her breathing deepen and her heart rate fall through his visor. Finally, she nodded. "I think so," she told him. "All the times we ran into one of those things before, we were in the Mako. Big fucking gun and tank armor aside, I had a map with topography and life sign readings that told me we might run into a thresher maw. I mean, the shaman told us to be prepared for anything. And Tuchanka—maybe I should have expected it." She sighed and shook her head. "But I didn't. And when that thing just erupted from the ground like that—it was just like I was back there, all over again."

Garrus released her hands and stepped back again. "Well. Not quite. There was just one this time."

This time Shepard laughed, and if there was an edge of hysteria to the laughter, at least it was a laugh. "Just one! As if that's not enough!"

"I don't think you had an M-920 Cain on Akuze, either. Unless I've been wildly misinformed."

Shepard wiped some sweat off her brow with a gauntlet. "Did you see it go up?"

"The Normandy probably saw it go up from orbit, Shepard," Garrus promised.

Shepard's face fell, and she shuddered one more time. "And yet I'm still not sure it's dead enough. They never feel dead enough."

"Trust me: Miranda and all her scientists couldn't resurrect that monster. Not even if Mordin helped. It's over."

Shepard nodded, straightened. "Okay. You're right. I'm sorry."

Garrus shook his head at her. He was probably going to have nightmares for a week as it was. He tried to imagine three of them—more—descending on a sleeping, unprepared camp. He couldn't manage that, but Wrex had been disgusted enough about the trap Cerberus had laid for Admiral Kohoku's squad that he could imagine that—the overturned tank, the outstretched bodies—broken and dismembered on a hill. "You don't have to apologize, Shepard."

Shepard made a face. "And you didn't have to stay behind when Grunt and the shaman left for the celebration. I appreciate it, Garrus."

Garrus caught her eye. "Because a turian alone in a krogan camp is going to go over so well."

Shepard chuckled again. "Mordin was smart to hitch the shuttle back to the Normandy when he did," she said. "Might've been better to keep you off the ground team altogether for the last couple days, now you mention it. Tuchanka's not much safer than a quarantine zone for a plague that kills aliens."

She started walking toward the Urdnot camp, and Garrus fell in step with her. "I wanted to go in there with you."

"When there were four other humans on the team?" she demanded. She reached out and shoved him lightly. "Idiot. We didn't know Mordin had developed a cure. You know what your problem is, Vakarian? You're spoiled."

"Admit it, Shepard," Garrus laughed. "Part of you has just loved dragging a turian and a salarian around on Tuchanka and making the krogan like it."

Shepard tried to keep her expression stern, but her eyes danced, and the corner of her mouth twitched. Garrus waved his talon under her nose. "Aha!"

She laughed again. "A big part. The krogan need to broaden their minds. It's good for them!" She glanced at Garrus and smiled wider. "Or maybe you're right, and I'm just an obnoxious asshole."

Garrus pretended to think about it. "I'd say about 30 percent social reformer, 70 percent obnoxious asshole."

Shepard threw up her hands. "Aww, come on! You're not going to give me any more credit than that?"

Garrus grinned. "You headbutted Uvenk. Tell me you didn't do it just to see the look on his face. I dare you."

Shepard grimaced and rolled her head from side to side. "Not my smartest move. Cerberus upgrades or not, humans aren't designed to headbutt krogan."

Garrus checked his thermal overlay again. There was more heat around her face in general than usual, looking yellow now instead of orange-red, but he also saw heat concentrations at the base of her skull and behind her forehead. It couldn't be blood in her brain; she'd be a lot worse off if that was it, but it still looked like she'd shaken herself up pretty good. "No kidding. Concussion, you said?"

"Pretty sure," Shepard answered, massaging her neck. "Might've wrenched my spine too." She didn't sound too worried about it, but if she was mentioning it at all, Garrus knew she had to be feeling it.

"Hmm. You were moving pretty well in the fight back there, but I've seen you do that with two knife wounds and a bullet in you, when you need to lead the team." Garrus remembered Feros. Shepard had deliberately held back to avoid injuring the colonists affected by the thorian spores. They hadn't been as generous with her. He remembered the medi-gel shining over the blood, her drawn face and tight jaw. After the fight with the thorian, too, he and Kaidan hadn't been in great shape, either, and Doc Chakwas had chewed them all out that day. "We should hail the Normandy. Get you back to Doctor Chakwas." At least I don't have to deal with her today. Doc Chakwas's lectures were legendary.

Shepard jostled him with her shoulder. "C'mon, Garrus. How many times are we going to get the chance to attend a real krogan party?"

"Do we want to?" Garrus wondered.

Shepard tilted her head, conceding the point. "Probably not, but Grunt will want his krannt there. And I have a few words to say to Wrex, too."

Of course, Wrex would have known about the thresher maw. Garrus almost laughed. "I'll bet you do."


Grunt caught sight of them when they entered the camp. "Battlemaster!" he called. "Garrus!" A cheer rose up from the rowdy group already clustered around the juvenile. Two krogan had stripped down to their bodysuits for a wrestling match that looked much friendlier than any krogan fight Garrus had ever seen. He spotted a few jugs of ryncol, too.

Still, across the camp, on-duty scouts kept watch. When Garrus asked Grunt's new clanmates about it, they explained that Wrex wasn't about to have his clan caught off guard by attacking rivals. The shockwave from the exploding thresher maw had been felt for kilometers around. If their rivals didn't try and take advantage, Urdnot would be insulted. The implication would be they weren't worth fighting. They were expecting a couple of feints at their borders before the end of the rotation.

Grunt's new friends urged him to stay, help them shove the interlopers back in line, show them what he could do. Grunt grinned and chugged his ryncol like a pro—he'd gotten over howling about the taste before they got there, Urdnot Serc informed Garrus. "Soon," Grunt promised. "Shepard's got bigger battles for us to fight. Enemies abducting entire colonies without a trace, until we found it. We're going to hunt the Collectors through the Omega-4 relay—go where no one has ever gone before, destroy the Collectors, and get all the humans back."

"Sure you want this squirt along for that, Shepard?" one of the older ones asked. "Sounds like you might need a more experienced warrior. I'd be willing to help you out, even if it meant looking at your ugly faces every day. For the right price, anyway."

Grunt smirked. "You want to go thresher maw hunting with her to prove your worth, old man?"

The krogan looked annoyed. "If I hadn't felt the shockwave myself, kid . . ." Grunt had another drink. Some ryncol slopped down his chin. The krogan growled, then punched Grunt in a friendly sort of way. Grunt punched him back. Krogan culture wasn't complicated.

There was some good-natured ribbing about Shepard being pretty tough for a lily-skinned alien about as big as a pyjak, some less good-natured cracks about Garrus helping Grunt get in good with the females instead of strapping him to a table and sterilizing him. But no one made a move to hurt or challenge them. Wrex's people now seemed to find them more funny than anything.

Shepard played around with the shopkeeper's varren, told Grunt's friends about some of the scarier fauna back on Earth—while Grunt was most interested in their marine life, Garrus thought the number of venomous reptiles sounded terrifying. Eventually, Shepard laughed and headed up the camp toward Wrex's fire. Garrus didn't mind staying behind. One of the off-duty scouts, Serc, was talking about how they'd calibrated artillery, at least fifty years out of date, to pinpoint pyjaks on the fly. It only took Grunt showing the old scout one of the mods Garrus had set his Claymore up with to get them to let him take a look at the works and algorithms.

Serc walked back from the shards of three exploded, empty ryncol jugs. He hefted Grunt's Claymore in his arms and handed it back to the kid. "This isn't bad work, turian," he conceded. "Usually you have to give up a lot accuracy for sheer power to explode whatever idiot's in your face, but this little piece can kill better at a longer range than you'd expect."

"Little piece," Grunt muttered, with a fond look at the monster shotgun that could break Massani's arm to fire. "Like to see what you have that's better."

"So, you're the gun man. Guess that's a reason to keep you around." Urdnot Kradok was only a couple of decades older than Grunt's apparent age, and you could tell. Older krogan want to kill everything because they're bored, or angry. Younger krogan want to kill everything because they're curious or eager to prove themselves. They're all destructive bastards, but the flavor's different.

"I know how to shoot a gun straight," Garrus agreed, examining the mounted gun. "I know people better at the technical aspects. This targeting matrix—were the parts scavenged from other manufacturers or did you alter them yourselves to improve the lag?"

The shopkeeper, Ratch, grinned. "Maybe you've got the tech on your fancy alien ship to alter parts whenever you feel like it, but on Tuchanka, we have to work with what we can find." He shrugged. "Or loot of someone's body, anyway. But the real question is: can you shoot it?"

"A contest!" Grunt roared. Garrus buckled as a fully armored krogan tricep fell down like a hammer across his shoulders. Unfortunately, the armor hadn't contained the smell of varren guts, Cain explosion, and krogan sweat. It made for an interesting combination. "I bet I can hit more of those pyjak things with this Claymore than he can with that gun!"

Garrus eyed the mounted gun with some regret. "As fun as that sounds, that doesn't sound like the best idea, Grunt. Not right now, anyway." Grunt's eyes were unfocused, and he was swaying a bit, and from the smell of his breath, if another horde of klixen invaded Urdnot right now, Grunt would be as likely to go up in flames as they'd be. He glanced at Serc, who seemed to have some clout here. "You'll want to save your ammo for when the other clans come to visit."

"Aaagh, you're no fun," Grunt complained, shoving him away.

Garrus did his best not to faceplant in front of the nice warriors that didn't want to kill him anymore.

"If the Normandy docks here again sometime we're all sober and Urdnot isn't expecting a border trespass, I'll take you up on that contest then. Or, next time Shepard takes us out for team bonding, we can keep a headshot tally."

Grunt guffawed and flexed his hands, each about the size of a shovel. "Yeah. You want to wrestle sometime?" Sarcasm. Something else he picked up from the humans. Or, maybe it was me. He nodded at the mounted gun. "Think I'll wait until you're using that piece of junk."

Kradok beat his hand over Grunt's shoulder. "Come on! You can take him!"

Grunt hoisted his shotgun up. "This is a great gun," he said. "Good upgrades." He waved his hand at Garrus's rifle. "But you haven't seen him shoot that thingy. Rifle. Whatever."

Serc eyed the Mantis thoughtfully. "The mounted gun may be a scavenged piece of crap, but that peashooter's got nothing on our guns."

"What have you got?" Grunt asked with interest.

Garrus sighed and clapped Grunt on the back. "Later, Grunt." He'd seen krogan guns, and he'd bet every credit he had that his rifles could blow holes just as satisfying into an enemy with better accuracy and at a much greater range than whatever they had in stock.

"Yeah, yeah, later," Grunt agreed, heading off with his friends. Probably to shoot more empty ryncol jugs. Maybe some interlopers from other clans. With any luck, he wouldn't shoot his eye out. Even if he does, it'll grow back in a few days. Call it another rite of passage.

Garrus walked up the hill toward Wrex and Shepard. Wrex and Shepard were sitting around the krogan's bonfire talking. "Doesn't that mean he should be taking care of me?" Shepard was asking in a light, joking tone.

Wrex broke out laughing, slapping his knee in appreciation. "Well said, Shepard!" He saw Garrus then, and his eyes glinted in the firelight. "Then again, you've got the turian for that, don't you?"

He'd been behind Shepard. He swung around her now to perch on a boulder near Wrex. "Got the turian for what now?" he asked, pretending he hadn't heard. He unscrewed the lid of his canteen and took a drink.

Shepard sprang up with a cry. "Garrus! Have you been drinking from that all this time?"

Garrus looked at her. "Well, I thought it might be a bad idea to drink the ryncol, given what happened to you the last time you tried it."

Wrex chuckled. "Shepard tried ryncol? And she's still standing?"

Garrus grinned at the Urdnot chief, keeping Shepard in his periphery. "She wasn't after she tried it. Passed out on the floor of a bathroom in the Citadel. Kasumi told me—that's another of the crew, Wrex. Apparently, they drew on her face. Wish I'd been there. This was before I'd joined up."

His visor picked up Shepard's blush, but she was still upset for some reason. "The canteen, Garrus!" she pressed him. "You aren't sick?"

This didn't make sense, Garrus thought. She seemed genuinely alarmed. "What? Why would I get sick?"

"I was talking to a groundskeeper on the Citadel," Shepard explained. "Asking about fish on the Presidium for a krogan in the wards," she waved her hand, like she was running out of time. "Long story. Anyway, he told me how important it was to purify the drinking water on the Citadel—how if a turian or quarian gets contaminated with levo bacteria, they can die! And I didn't think! I'm so sorry! We should get you back to the Normandy."

Suddenly, Garrus got it, and he started to smile. "What? Because you borrowed my canteen earlier? Shepard, that kind of reaction to levo contamination only happens when someone has a severe allergy and goes into anaphylactic shock—it'd be like a human allergy to . . ." he searched for an appropriate analogy and remembered a sign he'd seen at a fast-food kiosk on the Citadel once. "Peanuts. That's a thing, right?"

Shepard's panic had begun to dissipate, and Garrus lost the struggle not to laugh as she stumbled over her words. "Uh . . . yeah. You mean—"

The funniest thing was, it hadn't even been the first time he'd shared a drinking vessel with Shepard, Garrus thought. She'd been a little drunk at the time and from the sound of it hadn't heard how severe chirality allergies could be yet, but it was still a little late for her to freak out now. "I'm not allergic, Shepard," he told her. "I thought you knew. Remember back on the SR-1? The last night before you left?"

She sat down again. "Oh. You gave me your canteen that time, too, didn't you?" she recalled. "Um. Okay." She was blushing harder than ever, visible on more than just his visor now, even under her radiation burn. Even if it was just for the logical lapse, it was funny.

"Okay," Garrus teased her. Funny, too, how a stupid, unnecessary, minor freakout could make him want to smile and keep smiling until he looked stupider than she felt right now.

Wrex had been cooking dinner in the coals of his bonfire. He plucked the bone—probably varren—out of the flames, ripped a bite off with his teeth, chewed, and swallowed. "Well. Aren't you two cute? You couldn't do much better, Garrus," he said with a nod, "but Shepard might consider settling down with a nice krogan instead. Like that asari that just moved in—Ereba. Smart girl."

Garrus froze, but Shepard scoffed. "Settle down? Me? Have we met? 'Hi, I'm Commander Shepard,'" she said, taking on another voice that Garrus guessed was supposed to be her 'speed-dating' voice. "'Badass N7, first human Spectre, currently employed by a bunch of racist terrorists on a suicide mission to save the human colonies in the Terminus. How do you feel about zombies? Let me tell you about the time a bunch of mad scientists brought me back from the dead! I enjoy long walks in the galaxy's brightest centers of culture. Hope you don't mind if I bring along my rifle! Or the mercs that will be shooting at me. Let's talk about marriage and kids.'"

Unsure if he felt relieved or disappointed Shepard had sidestepped Wrex's insinuations entirely, Garrus still couldn't hold back a laugh. "Um, Shepard? You realize that long shootouts through city centers are exactly what krogan look for in a relationship, right?"

And quite a lot of turians. You take 'Spectre,' 'suicide mission,' and that last bit from her little profile and put it with a picture of any turian or asari on an extranet dating site, and she'd be beating them away with a stick. Probably get more than a few hits as is, even with the Relay-314 resentment.

But Wrex's shit-eating grin could've cracked his face wide open. Shepard groaned, bringing her hands up to cover her face. "Krogan. You're all insane."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Wrex drawled. "Of course, once you go krogan, you never go back."

Shepard rubbed her eyes. They really needed to get her back to the Normandy, Garrus thought, celebration or not. She was tired, burned, and mildly concussed. She'd faced her worst nightmares today and come out on top, but it couldn't have been easy. She needed Dr. Chakwas and a good night's sleep. Or five. But she'd run herself into the ground before she complained. "As fun as that sounds, I think I'll still pass," she told Wrex. "It's not just krogan. I don't fraternize, Wrex."

Her eyes drifted away from the krogan chief and met Garrus's for a moment before they fell again. "I mean, a fling every now and then, a one-night stand? Sure. Everybody has needs. But never when things might get serious. Things always get messy when feelings are involved, and sooner or later, someone's bound to get hurt. Given the way my life works? Probably sooner."

Shepard wasn't joking anymore. And she isn't just talking to Wrex, either. But there were shades of meaning in her flat, human voice he couldn't work out—Explanation? Justification? Apology? Warning?

He had a gut feeling she was talking to herself as much as to him or Wrex, and telling each of them something different. To Wrex, she was saying—nicely— 'Butt out. Don't push.' That was obvious enough. But the use of fraternize, given the rest of the speech, was interesting.

To say the least. Has she ever broken Alliance regs concerning fraternization? It almost sounded like she had. And like fraternization didn't mean the same thing to her as he'd always thought it meant to the rest of the Alliance. There was a definite boundary there—he got that much. But if he wasn't translating tone and nonverbals wrong, and she was talking to all three of them, what was she telling herself? What was she telling Garrus? And what did she want him to hear?

He wondered exactly what Shepard's boundaries were.

Wrex was watching her carefully. "Hard way to live, Shepard."

Garrus picked up a stick and poked the fire, just to see the sparks fly. "Hmm. She does have a point. Relationships in the military are hard work, especially when you're on a suicide mission. Well. It's just another thing you can lose, isn't it? On the other hand, sometimes on a suicide mission, it helps to have a reason to fight, something more than 'we need to beat the bad guys.'"

He kept his eyes on the fire. Keep it casual, Vakarian. Hypothetical. This isn't the right time, and it's not the right place. Of course, Shepard was pretty much the reason he was still going already. Sometimes, late at night, caught in one of the masochistic, depressive spirals that came along with general insomnia, Garrus couldn't help thinking about where he'd be if he'd somehow made it out of Sidonis's death trap without her, without that reason to stay sane and alive, for even just a little while longer.

But Shepard laughed. Usually, Shepard's laugh was one of the best sounds in the galaxy. Except at times like this, when it was turned inside out into one of the worst. "Honestly? I just think I'm lucky my bad guys really do need to be beat, Garrus," she said. "I didn't get a lot of choice about whether or not I was going to fight them this time around. Never signed up with Cerberus. But then, there's not a lot left outside them for me, either, anymore. If there ever was." She was silent for a long time.

Garrus thought of what T'Soni had said on Illium. You might think after everything you've lost, there's nothing else you can lose. It wasn't true when you went to Omega, and it's even less true now. She hadn't been wrong. He didn't have a lot, but off the Normandy, he had a life and an identity. Not much of either, true, but something. Shepard, though—now she was what Cerberus had made her, what they expected her to be, and neither of those things were things she had chosen. Off the Normandy, he wasn't sure there was anywhere she'd feel she could go.

Looking at her now, Garrus felt the same anger he'd felt at her memorial service two years ago when he'd realized almost everyone there was mourning a hero: a uniform instead of a person, that even the shipmates that had called themselves her friends had only the slightest sketch of who she was—a hometown, a hairstyle, a preferred weapon, and the bullet points on the public record. She had deserved better than that. She still did.

"Well, you're always welcome on Tuchanka," Wrex told her. "It's a pile of rubble, but it's our pile."

It wasn't an offer the krogan made to a lot of people, and Shepard seemed to know it. "Thanks, Wrex."

"Sure you won't stick around a few days?" Wrex asked. "Baby pyjak could have some fun as the first krogan in a generation to kill a thresher maw at his Rite. As his krannt, you'd receive honors, too. Even you, Garrus."

Garrus looked at Shepard, willing her to refuse. She probably needed a few days' rest, but he'd just as soon they took it on the Citadel. Grunt was solid, and there was nothing standing in the way of his pursuit of Sidonis. Not anymore. Shepard spoke slowly: "Wrex, I'd love to. I really would. I can't tell you how much fun it'd be if the worst things I had to deal with for a few days were thieving pyjaks and krogan encroaching on Urdnot's borders. But I have to take care of my team. They're going into a suicide mission. The least I can do for them all is make sure all their loose ends are tied up." Her hands flexed, gripping her knees. She wouldn't look at him.

The edge of doubt gnawing at Garrus's gut was becoming familiar. He thought of Shepard's hand on Lawson's arm in the airport in Nos Astra, how she'd spoken up before Solus could shoot Maelon in Weyrloc's hospital, and again he wondered just how far he could push her.

On the edge of the fire, Garrus heard a call, two or three voices complaining. Eventually everybody got tired of being worshipped and wanted their real friends around, and Grunt had come back to find them. He staggered up Wrex's mound, grinning. "Shepard! Garrus!" he slurred. "What are you doing here? The party's down there!"

Shepard stood and dusted herself off. "Not anymore, it's not, big guy. It's time to go."

Wrex scowled. "Is it really?"

Garrus stood too, and clapped their little krogan protégé on the shoulder. "Trust me, you'll want to get there before the hangover hits." He shot a glance at Shepard. "Though—we won't want you there when the hangover hits. Maybe we should leave him."

Grunt shook him off and raised his fists over his head. "I am krogan! Hangovers have no power over me!"

Wrex stood to see them off. "Can see you don't let him out much, Shepard," he laughed. "How much have you had, whelp?"

Shepard was signaling Niels for the pickup. "Too much." She swung her arm around Grunt's back. She couldn't take his weight, but she was a good height to serve as a crutch for the kid and more than capable of steering him in the right direction. Fortunately, he didn't fight her. "Let's go, buddy. Come on."

"Today was great," Grunt sighed happily. "Do you remember when you shot that thresher maw? And when we tore Uvenk in half?"

"I remember," Shepard answered, pushing Grunt by Wrex. As they passed, she clasped the old warlord's arm.

Garrus started to follow them back toward the landing area to wait for the shuttle, but Wrex called him back. "Garrus."

Garrus paused and turned to face the old warlord. "We've probably got a few minutes before the shuttle gets here. Need something?"

Wrex jerked his head toward the exit to the shuttle port, where Shepard was walking Grunt away, talking softly with the inebriated juvenile. "That twiggy little human's done more for the krogan in two years than anyone else has in a thousand," he stated. His voice was a low rumble. "She's more family to me than my blood ever was. She killed a thresher maw on foot today. You taking care of her?"

It was the question everyone seemed to be asking him these days, whether they framed it as a question or not. Are you taking care of Shepard? If that ended up being his place in the galaxy, it was better than he deserved, Garrus thought. The guy who looks out for Commander Shepard. Not the legend. Not the hero. But the person who made sure she could be.

He met Wrex's eyes square on. "As long as she lets me, and maybe when she doesn't."

"Good," Wrex said emphatically. "Everybody needs a krannt. Shepard's krannt for everybody on the Normandy. A few people off it. She doesn't let anybody be that for her. Except you." He looked back at Garrus, his expression unreadable. "Started to see it toward the end of the hunt for Saren. Now you're back with her. Even on Tuchanka." His eyes narrowed. "All that crap she said before. Don't let it get to you."

Did Shepard say something, maybe before I got here? Garrus just managed to squash the impulse to ask aloud, and instead, folding his arms and injecting as much humor into his voice as he could, he asked, "Wrex, are you actually trying to give me relationship advice?"

Wrex scowled at him. "Don't make me regret it."

Garrus shook his head and forced a laugh. "I thought you were kidding earlier. Shepard and I—it's not like that."

Wrex held his eye, looking smarter and more cynical than any krogan had a right to. "Mmm. Maybe not. Yet. Maybe you want it to be." His nostrils flared. "Maybe you both do. There's not a warrior or warlord alive like her, Garrus. Not on Tuchanka or anywhere else. If she figures stuff out and decides she wants you, don't screw it up. If not, stick with her anyway." He nodded decisively, like he'd done his familial duty for the day.

"I'll probably follow Shepard until we both die or she tells me to leave," Garrus admitted. Never mind the former is probably happening in a few weeks, tops. "Whatever she wants, and whatever happens." He tilted his head at Wrex. "Can you give the 'don't screw it up' speech to someone who isn't dating your friend?" he wondered aloud.

"Garrus? You staying on Tuchanka after all?" Shepard called from across the camp. "Get your butt over here, and help me with Grunt!"

Wrex grinned. "When it's you two, I can," he said. "Get out of here. Your commander's calling you."

Garrus rolled his eyes and waved, unsure if he was waving Wrex off or waving goodbye. He jogged down from the fire. There was a drunken juvenile krogan to get aboard a shuttle and to his bunk on the Normandy. Shepard had a concussion. There was no telling how she'd react when he finally tracked down Sidonis and meted out justice for ten friends betrayed. No way to know what was really going on in her head in regard to the two of them—whatever Wrex thought he had seen the past two days, the only times Garrus had observed anything, Shepard had been worked up about thresher maws or the return of the Reapers.

But impending suicide mission, drunken krogan, uncertain future and all, jogging up to Shepard felt like going home, so Wrex's little speech was right on the mark, Garrus admitted. He took a look at Shepard's weary, pained expression, at the smile she forced for him, and took Grunt's mumbling, half-asleep mass from her shoulders as the engines of the Hammerhead roared overhead. Whatever this is, whatever it turns into, don't screw it up.


A/N: Ugh. End-of-year crunch. I've had like 90 percent of this chapter written for weeks. But I finished it today. Hope to get Chapter 28 to you soon as well. For those of you reading along with or going back to Disaster Zone: Resurrection, this chapter is more or less concurrent with Chapter 5 in that story: "Of Maws and Men."

Best Always,

LMS