A/N: In Norse mythology, when Odin the Allfather asked Mimir, guardian of the Well of Urd (or the Well of Destiny), to drink of its waters and thus be granted the wisdom it could impart, Mimir demanded Odin sacrifice one eye for the honor. Without hesitation, Odin plucked his eye out and cast it into the well, and thus is Odin Allfather, wisest of all the gods, ever represented as one-eyed.
XXXVI
The Well of Urd: Odin's Answer
Jack's cell was large, but it was as damp and depressing as the rest of the facility. The two-way mirror—here a window out to the commons—was dirty and mildewed. It was impossible to ignore the restraint cuffs hanging on chains on the small bed in the corner.
Their bad guy had hidden in the only hiding spot in the room, under a desk in another corner, on the left near the door. All three of them had their guns on it in a second.
Shepard spoke, voice cold and steady. "Come out. We know you're here."
Two hands appeared over the edge of the desk—human. Unarmed. A small man unfolded himself from behind the desk and stepped out slowly. From the way he moved and from his thick crop of still-natural-looking dark hair—which, without cosmetic solutions, grew thinner and grayer as human males aged—Garrus guessed he was young, maybe midtwenties. Only a couple years older than Jack. But there were fine wrinkles over his forehead and around his mouth, and his sunken eyes made him look older. He looked thin and underfed, and under his rolled-up sleeves, Garrus spotted the track marks of the addict. And older, surgical scars—similar to Jack's.
Jack's jaw tightened at the sight of him. "Who are you?"
The man's hollow, glassy dark eyes raked over Jack's face. "My name is Aresh, and you're breaking into my home." His voice was flat and expressionless. He had just ordered thugs to kill them, he was unarmed in front of three professionals, but he didn't look afraid. Garrus's spine tingled. The only reason an unarmed man like this wouldn't be afraid of three armed intruders was if he wasn't in his right mind—or if he himself didn't have to rely on arms. He looked like he was on something—the bloodshot eyes and contracted pupils, the slow response time and slightly slurred voice, but behind the man's ear, Garrus saw scarring from a biotic implant too. As the man regarded Jack, a flicker of recognition lit in his face. "I know you, Subject Zero," he said slowly. Jack stiffened all over. "So many years have passed, and I thought I was the only survivor."
Jack's hands trembled on her pistol. "My name is Jack. How the hell do you know me?"
The first trace of an expression crossed the man's face—something like disgust. He turned away. "We all knew your face, Jack. They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you." He looked out over the dead facility beyond the two-way mirror. "You were the question, and I'm still looking for the answer."
Shepard lowered her gun, and Garrus followed suit. Not all the way, but some. This guy wasn't aggressive. Crazy, maybe. Strung out, probably. But now he knew who they were, he wasn't going to attack. "Looks like you're not the only one pulled back here, Jack," Shepard said.
Aresh shrugged. "I tried to forget this," he told Shepard, "but a place like this—it doesn't forget you. It follows you. I hired these mercs and came back almost a solar year ago. We're rebuilding it piece by piece. I'm gonna find out what they knew—how to unlock true biotic potential in humans. I'm restarting the Teltin facility. It will be beautiful."
Biotics rippled over Jack's skin. She turned to Shepard, furious. "I wanted a hole in the ground! He's trying to justify what happened by using it?" she demanded.
It was hard to believe, Garrus thought. The trafficking, the torture, the forced surgeries and child-fighting. This guy had made it out of a nightmare and wanted to bring it right back to life? "You'd do the same thing to new kids?" Shepard asked Aresh. "Wasn't this forced on you?"
Aresh shrugged again. "Some were bought from poor families on Earth or kidnapped from colonies. Most ended up here the way I did: batarian pirates." His eyes were vacant, unseeing. "They did such horrible things to us. They must have had good reasons."
Jack stepped closer, commanding his attention again. "There's no reason good enough!" she yelled. "Are you nuts? You lived it!"
Shepard stepped closer too, focusing on Aresh. "This place was like a prison. How did you get out?"
Aresh faced her again. "We all attacked at once as they were taking us to the lab," he answered. "They would have put us all down, but then Jack got loose." He turned to Jack. He didn't look angry, but he didn't excuse her either. "When I came to, it was over. The guards, the scientists, and the kids were all dead. And you were gone."
Jack moved a new clip into position, readying a shot. Aresh didn't so much as blink. He was out of it, a shell of a man. This is insanity. That dead, sluggish apathy when someone points a gun at your head. This guy doesn't care if he lives or dies. Maybe he even wanted to die that day.
"I stopped it, all of it!" Jack told him. "Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed!"
That got him. Something in his eyes snapped, and his fists clenched. A crackle of biotics ran over his skin too. Garrus raised his gun again. "Everything we went through must have been worth something!" Aresh insisted.
Jack's arms were taut. She hesitated. Shepard stepped in. "We've got your bomb," she said. "We can blow this place, but that still leaves him. What are you going to do, Jack?"
"That's easy," Jack snarled.
But Aresh had checked out again. "Just leave me here," he said. "This is where I belong."
Jack made a wordless sound of scorn. Her biotics flared. "Fuck that!" Aresh was thrown back a meter and a half, down to his knees. He blinked, and looked up at Jack, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, but he didn't fight back. Just stared.
Jack was shaking. But Shepard stepped up.
Of course.
"Dead or alive, Jack, he's always going to be here," she said. "That going to be you too?"
There was a sour taste in Garrus's mouth. This idiot junkie didn't deserve a bullet. He knew that. But you just can't leave it there, can you, Shepard? The arrogance of her, just assuming she knew how everyone else should think and act, hit him again. Garrus swallowed hard and looked away.
Jack was listening. Just like we all do. "He wants to restart this place. He needs to die!" She was arguing, but she was also hesitating. Every line of her body said she wasn't sure about this.
Shepard had already won. She had to see that as clearly as he did, but she kept going. "And how the hell is he going to do that, huh? We killed his mercs, and they weren't satisfied anymore anyway. He's obviously insane. He's never going to restart this facility. You don't have to kill him."
Jack's gun started to lower.
"You listen to me," Shepard said. "Everyone has their own shit to sort through. You more than most. Fine. That's not fair, and it sucks. I get it. But in the end, you've got to make the same choice everyone else in the galaxy makes, Jack: will you take charge, or will you continue to let your past own you? You keep looking for all the assholes that experimented on you, used you, that's all you're ever going to find, and you won't ever see what's really in front of you." Her hand swung out at Aresh, drawing the parallel again just in case Jack had been stupid enough to miss it the first time.
Garrus shook his head. "You keep reacting to the past," Shepard said, "and blowing this place to hell won't do shit: you will always be here, just like this bastard. You've got a chance for something better, to screw them all over and be your own person, be the one you wish you'd known then."
Jack flared again. "I never saw—"she snapped.
Shepard cut her off. "Don't tell me you never! You know what's right. It doesn't matter that you've never seen it; you're so damn angry because you know how you should've been treated, how the galaxy shouldwork. So you weren't. Fuck that! Be what you wanted to see! You're strong, smart, so much better than you've been. Choose now: who are you going to be? Do you have the balls to let go, or not?"
She stepped back from Jack, breathing hard, and folded her arms, waiting. Garrus watched her. Damn you, Shepard. Save Aresh, but what Jack takes away from it is none of your business.
Jack hesitated one more second, but Shepard had her. "Fuck!" she exploded finally. She glared at Aresh. "Get out of here. Go!"
For a second, Aresh just kept looking at Jack, then he nodded once and bolted. Garrus heard him trip over his feet, stumble, and keep running without missing a beat.
Jack looked down at the pistol in her hand, turning it over and over. Her face was tight and thoughtful.
Shepard turned to signal him to start prepping the bomb. When she saw his face, her eyes narrowed. Garrus stiffened and matched her stare for stare. Shepard pressed her lips together. She arched an eyebrow.
Garrus slung the bomber bag down off his shoulder and began bringing out the ordnance. As Jack walked Shepard around the cell, telling her about the bed, the desk, an old bloodstain on the wall just outside, he connected the wires and started activating the ignition sequence.
Garrus tried to focus on the bomb, on how the wires fit together and the switches and dials to press to program detonation. You're not in charge anymore, and that's for the best. Just do your job. Next time you're doing this there might be Collectors shooting at you.
But as he programmed the bomb to respond to remote detonation, stood, and handed the detonator off to Jack, Garrus couldn't pretend anger wasn't coiling in his gut, and the question he'd tried to stuff down for days wasn't burning like acid in his brain.
Why can't you just leave it, Shepard?
Garrus watched Pragia fall away on the display. Across the shuttle, he could feel Jack changing, the mental reconfiguration happening inside her skull as she reevaluated everything she'd thought she'd known about her past and who she was. Over the months they'd been working together, Jack had gone from the most feral, antisocial convict he'd known to something like a soldier.
On a good day. When she feels like it. Sometimes she even wears a shirt.
He'd seen her fall into a gradual, reluctant enjoyment of life on the Normandy, working on a team—first of the violence of it, then, increasingly, of having people she could count on, and, maybe more importantly, people that were counting on her. She'd even developed a sort of camaraderie—albeit a cautious and extremely abrasive one—with certain members of the team. Tali. Grunt. Joker. Me.
If she survived the relay run, Garrus could see Jack's life taking a pretty different path from what he would have predicted when she'd joined the team.
I should be happy about that.
Instead, as illogical as it was, Garrus felt so angry he was literally sick—fighting waves of nausea and a headache. He didn't try to speak as they waited for the Normandy to come around and pick them up out of orbit. The force of everything he wanted to say but couldn't—not here—choked him.
Jack broke the silence first. She'd been staring at the wall of the shuttle. She jerked her head at Shepard without looking at her to open the conversation. "So what's your shit?"
Garrus glanced up at Jack. Good luck. Jack hadn't been the first to ask, and she wouldn't be the last. But he could count on one of his hands the number of times he'd heard Shepard talk about her past.
She didn't break her pattern here. "Doesn't matter," she said. "I had to move past it, same as anyone."
Jack looked at Shepard. After a moment, she nodded. "Did you mean all that stuff you said back there?" she asked then. "That I can—"she broke off. "Shit. I'm no good at this—"
Shepard cut her off. "Yes. I meant it. You can be whatever you want to be."
So long as it's Shepard-approved. Garrus didn't realize he'd snorted aloud until he saw Shepard tense. She didn't look at him.
"You proved it back there," she told Jack. "I never thought I'd see you show mercy."
Jack shrugged. "He was trapped in the past. Reliving it every day. You showed how that could be me. I'm not getting stuck like that. I'm better than him, and I'm sure as hell not carrying that crater around with me." She tossed her head.
For better or worse, Shepard has her. He might have been looking in a mirror—a warped, tarnished one, anyway—two years ago after hitting the Herschel system.
It's probably better.
I still don't like it.
"Good," Shepard said to Jack. "Don't. Leave it there. Moments like that can change you, but only if you let them and keep moving forward. Do you feel different now?"
Garrus scoffed. Because she wasn't fine how she was before.
. . .
Well she wasn't.
Shut up.
Jack glanced at him this time. Her eyes narrowed before she looked back at Shepard. "I know that place is gone. But I still kind of want to kill every person I see. No offense."
Garrus tipped his head ironically at her. She smirked. The shuttle beeped as it came into proximity with the Normandy, slowed and adjusted as Niels brought them into line with the frigate's relative speed and then set down on the cargo bay floor.
The shuttle door opened. Jack swung up out of her seat and left. Garrus left after Shepard. "I'll take what I can get, Jack," Shepard was saying. "It's not like things are going to get easier for you overnight. You know that."
Jack was standing by the side of the shuttle, hands in her pockets. "Yeah. But still," she muttered, eyes on Garrus's boots. "You did a lot. I . . . I owe you one, Shepard. Let's just—leave it at that. Get back to work. If it doesn't kill us all."
"We can't go pirate queen if it does." Shepard said.
It sounded like an inside joke between them, and Jack grinned. "Shit, do you know how we could tear it up?" She raised a hand and turned to leave. "Later, Shepard."
Garrus started after her. They were done here. But Shepard's boots sounded at time-and-a-half behind him, then she was standing in front of him, arms crossed over her chest and chin raised. "Problem?" she asked. Her voice was low.
Niels had exited the cockpit of the shuttle. He started to say something and saw the two of them squared off. He raised his eyebrows.
Garrus waved his hand at Shepard. "You handle things the way you want, Shepard. You always do."
Shepard made a sharp gesture of dismissal at Niels. The shuttle pilot nodded and hurried away. "If you've got a problem, say so, Garrus," Shepard said. She paused. "You finally ready to talk about it?"
He wasn't angry at Shepard for what had gone down on Pragia. He knew it. She knew it. This wasn't about that, or about how Shepard was developing Jack.
Garrus flexed his hands. "What's to talk about?" he asked. "You did the same thing with Sidonis you always do, and you just did it again down on Pragia. It doesn't matter what anyone else wants, you butt in and you make sure they handle it the way you think it should be handled."
Shepard's eyes flashed. "Damn right I do. If I see someone about to make a bad decision and I can stop it, you bet your ass I'm going to stop it. Jack didn't need to kill Aresh on Pragia; you didn't need to kill Sidonis on the Citadel."
"You think he deserved to live?" Garrus demanded. He may have accepted that he needed to focus on the Collectors, on the Reapers now, but every unresolved question he'd had turning over in his head for three days were screaming at him. Sidonis still breathing somewhere was a violation of everything he'd ever believed. He had to know if Shepard thought that was justice. But more than that, he had to know why she had stopped him.
She turned her back on him and stalked away. Garrus went after her.
She doesn't get to walk away from this. Not when she asked to talk.
When she stopped at the table in the bay where she kept her exercise materials, he realized she had no intention of walking away. She stripped off both her gauntlets.
Everything about her came into laser focus. She grabbed a tight roll of cloth for hand wraps and started working. "No, I don't," she said.
Garrus blinked. She thought he deserved to die too? A fresh wave of rage swept over him. Before he could protest, Shepard cut him off. "All I knew was it'd be wrong for you to kill him."
She finished wrapping her hands and tossed the wrap at him. Garrus snatched it out of the air. He didn't know how the hell she'd understood a challenge he hadn't even realized he was making, but he wasn't about to complain. He stripped off his gauntlets and started wrapping his hands.
Shepard started unbuckling her plate armor and stacking it under the table. It was both too protective for hand-to-hand sparring and an unfair offensive advantage if they didn't actually want to kill one another.
Right now he wasn't too sure about that, but when Garrus finished with the hand wrap, he followed her example. "Who else, Shepard?" he asked her, lifting his breastplate off and sliding it beside hers on the floor. "If not me, then who?" It could have been her, he thought. But spirits forbid Shepard ever get her hands dirty shooting someone in the head off the battlefield. "Ten good men died because of him, and because you stuck your nose in, he walked!"
He stepped out of his boots and kicked them aside and met her in the center of the cargo bay. Her tight-woven, black underarmor wasn't too different from the bodysuits she'd worn on the SR-1, before Cerberus had fitted her out with better tech. Outside of plate armor, she was so small. But he knew better than to sell her short. Human N7s were the equals of any special operative in the galaxy. Even before the Cerberus upgrades, Shepard had had some of the best reflexes he'd ever seen. He'd watched her take on krogan warlords and asari commandos and win. He'd never fought her before. He'd never wanted to before. But part of him had always wanted to know how he'd do.
Shepard cocked an eyebrow at him, like she knew. Then she was at him, moving fast. "And so did you," she told him. "You walked out of the markets that day, and you don't have to live with the knowledge that you killed the guy that was your friend once!"
As she came toward him, Garrus didn't know what made him angrier—that Shepard thought she had the right to decide what he could and couldn't deal with or the fact that she was just playing with him. Obvious, basic punches to body and face. Prebasic stuff; he hardly had to move to block her. Her technique was perfect, of course, but he could feel her holding back, reining her power in.
She was fighting him like some twelve-year-old kid she was training! He blocked her latest joke of a punch—a body shot at his ribs—and sent her arm flying. As her momentum brought her in close, before she could recover, he'd countered with a hard, fast uppercut toward her unprotected jaw. Her eyes widened, and she pivoted on her left foot, swiveling away before the blow landed.
"It wasn't your call to make!" Garrus growled at her, following up with a low strike at her liver. That did it. Using all the speed she brought to bear in battle, her hand shot forward to seize his wrist midstrike in a grip like iron.
Rotating his wrist free was reflex. Garrus seized the inside of her forearm, grabbing her elbow with his other hand to force her arm behind her back. The lock was C-Sec to the core, but a good one, and Shepard hissed in pain.
Still, Shepard was no petty perp. Her legs and other arm were still free, and she made use of it. She kicked back hard with her right. Her kick landed squarely at the intersection of his spur and shin. Garrus staggered as sharp pain shot up his leg. Then he saw her left elbow coming up under his ribs.
He released her immediately, leaping back out of range. He stared at Shepard. He could almost hear the alarm any turian ref would've pulled. If that elbow strike had landed hard enough, at just the right trajectory, she could've killed him. Strikes up under the rib cage were banned in ordinary sparring, though they were taught in all the self-defense classes. Abruptly it occurred to him how alone they were. No ref in sight, probably nobody on the whole ship even qualified to supervise a fight between the two of them.
The silence of the shuttle bay seemed to echo and expand. In the corner of his visor, Garrus saw Shepard's heart rate pulsing—133 beats per minute—too high, considering they'd been fighting two minutes and she wasn't even sweating. Her eyes were shining. She spread her arms wide, a clear come on. "You asked for my help," she challenged him. "It's not like you needed it. You're the fucking Archangel. You could've tracked Sidonis down all on your own. I would've given you leave. But no—you asked me to be there. You sent me to talk to him. How well do you know me? What the hell did you expect?"
Garrus shook his head at her, and she charged, thrusting her palm forward toward his nose. Garrus pivoted as she had done earlier. It was a ploy, conditioning her to expect another wrist grab, and when she fell for it, he struck in the second she left her torso unguarded. She gasped, choked, but she was already rebounding, leaning back on her heels.
Her gelled and pinned head hit him full in the face when she jumped. Venomous pain snapped through his nose. Garrus's teeth sliced into his tongue, and white spots danced through his field of vision. Garrus spat blood, only to see Shepard reeling back, too, clutching her head. "Shit!" she yelled.
Always with the headbutts, Shepard. Recovering, Garrus tackled her. Her back hit the floor. But then her arms were locked around his left arm, forcing it up and in. She hooked her leg over his and thrust her hips up hard, and before he could blink, she'd flipped him over on his back hard enough to force him to breathe out. The tip of his fringe hit, too, and the jolt as they bent back made him wince.
Shepard was straddling him, glaring down at him with eyes like a storm, panting, lips parted. "What did you want?" she demanded. "Your Spectre buddy to clean up the murder you were planning to commit on the Citadel?"
He could feel her thighs taut and hard on either side of him. Her forearm roved over his chest, searching for a hold. A growl ripped through Garrus's throat. A hot knot tightened in the pit of his stomach. His blood burned, racing south fast. It just made him angrier. He didn't have time for this!
Shepard tried to punch him, but her left hand fumbled on his chest, unable to find a good hold. Garrus caught her right fist, elbowed her in the side with his other arm. She grunted. Her limbs loosened reflexively, and he rolled her back over, catching both her hands this time.
It had crossed his mind—that she could use her Spectre status to uphold justice where the law just wasn't good enough. Of her own volition. If C-Sec had somehow gotten good enough to catch him—which was never very likely. But the insinuation that it'd be an act of corruption on her part, that he'd ever expect to use their connection to avoid his due was unbelievable.
How well does she know me? He'd get what he deserved. That had always been the plan. Doesn't she know that? "You know I'd never take advantage of your Spectre status," he spat. "I said I'd accept the consequences of my actions, and I meant it. I wanted my friend to be there and support my decision!"
She struggled against him uselessly for a moment. An insistent throb pulsed through him. Garrus ignored it, glaring at her, waiting for her answer. Then she bit her lip and jerked under him. Her hard, bony knee hit him in the inner thigh, and his entire leg went limp. She spun her wrist in the same movement he had made earlier and seized his arm in turn.
Garrus couldn't hold himself up. He started to fall toward her. Her body twisted violently. She hooked her leg behind his knees and rolled, taking his arm with her.
Pain lanced through his arm and shoulder. He saw her stepping up—planting one foot on the ground. The other stomped down toward his exposed left spur. Garrus jerked his leg away and rotated his wrist again to escape her hold.
She was up, and Garrus jackknifed to leap to his own feet, bringing his arms up to guard.
If Shepard had started off easy, the gloves were off now. First a move that could've killed him, then one that could've broken his leg. This wasn't like any turian military grudge match he'd ever fought; she was fighting him combat specialist to combat specialist now, expecting him to defend himself or die.
And damn, was it a turn-on.
If she respected my decisions half so much . . .
Garrus rotated his wrist. It twinged, protesting—wrenched good, if she hadn't actually sprained it. He could feel his thigh swelling where her knee had hit.
Shepard's face was flushed, strands of hair escaping the gel she put in it before combat missions to curl around her ears and forehead. She thrust her chin up and forward. "I couldn't support my friend becoming a murderer, Garrus!" she shouted. "That's what it would've been there: murder, whether or not it was justified. I couldn't sit by and watch you do that to yourself. You're too important to me! I won't support you ruining your life!"
Garrus couldn't help but laugh. And what the hell do you see when you look at me if it's not a ruined life, Shepard? My own damn fault. If she was trying to stop him crossing from killer to murderer, she was at least a year too late. There was no going back for him. No saving him.
You can turn a disillusioned krogan merc into his people's savior. A socially anxious archaeologist into a ruthless shadow operative. A scared, hunted kid into a future admiral and a psychopathic convict into an almost stable sort-of soldier. But sometimes, Shepard, there is no redemption. And this is sure as hell the wrong mission to try and force it anyway.
"What life?" Garrus demanded. "We're on a suicide mission, remember?"
He charged at her, hit hard, pushing her out of the middle of the floor, past the table and the punching bag hanging beside it. She hit the bulkhead and his body hit hers, full contact.
Shepard gasped, wide eyes flying up to meet his in shock. She froze underneath him. Garrus swallowed. Then, deliberately, he loosened his grip on her wrists, pinned on either side of her head. But he didn't back away, even a millimeter.
He refused to be embarrassed. He refused to apologize. At least until the adrenaline wears off.
And since we're being honest anyway . . .
Shepard stared at him. Her heart rate blinked in the corner of Garrus's visor. He couldn't just see it, though, he could feel it—pulsing in her wrists, through her chest. Lower down. Blood flooded Shepard's face, but she didn't move away, even though he would have let her. And she didn't look away.
The air between them hummed, as if the storm behind her eyes could carry a charge. She lifted her chin. Then she shifted, just a slight movement, maybe even involuntary, starting at her heels—up into him instead of away. "No," she told him. "We're not. Maybe I thought we were. Maybe I even wanted to be. But screw it." Another slight press up—emphatic, instinctive? Garrus breathed in sharply, hands tightening on her wrists in reflex.
"I am not going through the Omega-4 relay to die again," she declared. "We have a life ahead of us, Garrus, and you need to make something of yours."
And what do you see ahead for us, Shepard? He had no idea. But looking at her now, he could almost believe her.
Her face hardened then, and her eyes narrowed. "That's only going to happen if you let go and move on—unless you want to end up like Massani."
She couldn't have hurt him worse if she'd shot him. Garrus dropped her like a red-hot fire iron, could still see the spittle flying from Massani's lips, smell the gas, and see the flames. Massani had been ready to damn an entire building of helpless near-slaves to die, just so long as Vido Santiago went down. "That was completely different!" Garrus yelled. "Zaeed was willing to kill innocents to get to the man that had hurt him. I was after Sidonis for what he did to my team, and I would never—I would never—"
Words failed him. But Shepard just took a step away from the wall and folded her arms. "No?" she murmured. "Then tell me this, Garrus: Back there in the market, just how close were you to shooting through me to get to Sidonis?"
It was like she'd drenched him in cold water. Garrus's mandibles tightened. I wouldn't have hurt Shepard, he'd told Miranda. He believed it. But it wasn't good enough. Shepard knew it, and he did too.
Defeated, he nodded. "There was a moment," he whispered. "Just a moment, where I thought about shooting you in the leg. Just to get you down and out of the way." He bowed his head. "I'm sorry."
That wasn't good enough either. It never would be. Maybe he wasn't any Massani yet, but what was Shepard to him? More than a random civilian—his best friend in the galaxy. Arrogant, blunt, aggressive, awkward, and secretive. Stubbornly optimistic enough to fundamentally change people anyone else would call lost causes, the bravest person he'd ever met or heard of, and the best and maybe only hope against the Reapers. The woman he—
And he'd considered shooting her. There was no safe place to hit someone with a high-powered rifle. He knew that.
Shepard turned again and headed back to the workout table. "I kind of figured."
Garrus stood in the middle of the cargo bay, exhausted. Beaten. Any turian referee probably would have awarded him the sparring match, but Garrus hadn't won this fight. She'd had him before it started. "Thinking that—I couldn't believe it," he admitted. "It made me stop. Really listen to what you were saying."
See Sidonis. Realize nothing would ever make it right.
"Yeah." Shepard set the cloth wrap back down on the table and picked up a jar of liniment. She began rubbing it into her wrists. "I kind of counted on that when I stayed in the shot."
He'd suspected as much, but it didn't make him feel better to hear it. It did make him feel a little better to see her avoiding his gaze now, obviously guilty over the manipulation. "I hated that I had to make you feel that way, but you weren't giving me a lot of options. Still—I'm sorry I put you in that position." She paused, then looked back over her shoulder. "I'm not sorry I did what I did," she said, quietly but firmly. "I'd do it again."
Garrus breathed out. "I don't know, Shepard," he confessed. "I keep thinking about it, how I felt when you were in the scope, but also what you said. How Sidonis sold his soul to save his skin, and now he has to pay the devil. And what he said. Whatever good is still in that bastard is going to torture him the rest of his miserable life. It still isn't justice, but whatever it is, it's better than a quick and easy death." He paused. "It wasn't your call," he reiterated. Shepard's mouth quirked sideways into something that was half acknowledgment of the point. "But . . . it's better than the one I would have made."
Shepard regarded him a moment, then jerked her head for him to come over. She handed him the liniment—smart medicine like medi-gel that would adapt to his different biology. He looked down at it. It would have been cheaper and easier for her to outfit her exercise area with purely human medication. She planned for me to be here. Maybe not today, maybe not like this. But sometime. "Use it on your wrist too," she ordered him.
He thanked her, and she started refitting her armor to return to her duties.
Garrus finished drawing the cloth wrap tight around itself and placed it on the table. He started applying the medicine. It had a sharp, antiseptic smell and tingled pleasantly where it came into contact with his hide. "No, really," he pressed. "For everything. This stuff, the fight, getting me off Omega." He paused. "And for what you did with Sidonis. Maybe sometimes I need that, like with Saleon. Someone to remind me where the line is."
We have a life ahead of us, she said. He couldn't see it. He had no idea what it would look like. He couldn't go back to C-Sec, wouldn't be a Spectre. Archangel was over and done with. But if Shepard saw some way for them to move forward without going back, on the other side of the Omega-4 relay or beyond—well. He'd promised her, hadn't he? Wrex too. Straight through hell, until we both die or she kicks me to the curb. And she hadn't yet.
Shepard shrugged. "Once I needed it too. You helped me do the right thing." She meant Ontarom, Garrus knew, the one place Shepard had been most tempted to let her ideals burn and enact vigilante justice herself. She could've shot one of the men responsible for the deaths of almost everyone in her squad on Akuze, the years-long torture of the only other survivor. No one would've blamed her. But she'd held back—to be consistent with the standards she'd upheld for Garrus.
She finished buckling her greaves on and turned to face him. "You're always there for me, Garrus," she said. "One day I might not like the way you do it, and then I might get pissed."
Garrus finished rubbing the liniment into his sore wrist. "Well, I promise when that day comes, we can beat up on each other some more. If you want." Remembering her thighs on either side of his torso, her body up against his, he grinned. He gestured at her torso. "Think I got you pretty good once or twice." He extended the liniment tube toward her.
Shepard hadn't fastened her breastplate yet, and she went still as she caught his suggestion. To treat the side where he'd punched her, she'd have to take it off again. Her undershirt too. Her eyes found his. Garrus grinned wider.
Shepard's fingers twitched by her side, moving toward the place he'd hit her. Her gaze dropped to the liniment, then back up to him. Color washed back over her face, rising from her neck to her cheeks.
She probably would feel better if she treated her side, but that hadn't exactly been why he'd suggested it. He wasn't quite sure why he'd done it. To lighten the mood? Test for a reaction?
Anyway, I'm glad I did. That was a definite reaction on Shepard's face there. He'd seen her blush before—and spent way too much time speculating about it. Most of the life signs he could pick up on his visor, the rare blush he'd seen, could have many interpretations. Physical exertion, fear, embarrassment, discomfort, awkwardness.
This time, though, he felt he didn't have to speculate. There was a new awareness in Shepard's eyes, and Garrus wondered if maybe all this time, she'd been missing he was interested.
Well, not anymore.
Good.
The length of her pause was telling. Finally, she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and fastened her breastplate over her underarmor. "I got in a few hits myself," she said. There was a forced quality to the otherwise normal-sounding rejoinder. "If you hit the showers and I hit my cabin, it should take care of both of us. Get the explosives stink and krogan guts off too."
She bent down and scooped her gauntlets up. Garrus didn't turn away from the view, but screwed the top back onto the liniment and put it back onto the table. He shook his own head.
Oddly, he was more encouraged than otherwise that Shepard had refused to treat her side here in the cargo bay. In Garrus's experience, soldiers didn't usually bother with modesty until sex came into it. Too many bodies in a barracks, injuries on the battlefield.
But maybe a little more?
"You sure you're alright, Shepard? You're a little . . . pink." Garrus tapped his visor. "Heart rate's a bit fast, too."
Shepard's blush deepened to near-crimson. Her eyes flashed in annoyance. "Just the exercise, Vakarian," she told him.
Garrus laughed. "You didn't even break a sweat," he told her.
She made a noise of disgust. "I'm fine! I can tell you one thing, though: if I'm late for rounds because of you, I won't be alright. I will be very annoyed. Dismissed!" She shook her gauntlets under his nose, pivoted, and stomped away toward the elevator.
Garrus watched her go, still laughing. It was the most flustered he'd ever seen Shepard. Over him. There was no guarantee she'd be interested in acting on it. Honestly, from what he'd seen, chances were probably slim.
For now, though, she'd given him plenty more to think about. You're important to me. Lean, hard, muscled thighs gripping his waist as she scrambled for a hold on his chest. Reviewing the fight in his mind, he wondered if the Alliance had ever trained her to fight a turian in close combat. If not, she'd done well enough that he wouldn't bet on his chances of winning a second or third round. The length of her body against his, pressed up against the bulkhead.
Shepard had recommended a shower. As usual, she was right. Garrus finished buckling into his own hardsuit and headed up to the crew deck for a cold one.
A/N: For those of you who have read or are reading The Disaster Zone along with this story, this chapter is concurrent with the events of Chapter Six of Resurrection, "Letting Go."
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