It was quiet.
The alarming kind.
How long had he been unable to hear Shepard pattering about in their kitchen? A shiver descended unbidden through his carapace and down his spine, but he stilled to concentrate.
Nothing. He'd been right.
Garrus pushed his chair back from the desk and tapped carefully over to the bedroom door, all the while fighting old instincts.
They weren't at war anymore. Hadn't been in nearly 15 years. He mentally chastised himself for imagining the worst beyond the doorway, but still couldn't help a sniper's trained eyes flicking back and forth across the living room and kitchen.
She was there, despite his glass half empty tendencies.
Shepard.
Well, in his defense he'd lost her exactly twice. Twice he'd watched her walk or run from him, twice he'd been at her memorial.
Someday he'd get used to civilian life, someday he'd get used to the fact that she existed, that she was here, against all odds.
But she wasn't standing at the sink washing dishes like she'd been when he left her a mere ten minutes ago. (Why she so enjoyed cleaning them manually despite the fully kitted kitchen was something he'd long since stopped questioning her about.)
She was curled on the couch, her arms wrapped around the knees pulled up to her chest.
Not good.
A flash change in demeanor from their dinner together, where she'd animatedly regaled him with her usual stories about Wrex's children. She enjoyed babysitting day, and she and Wrex both enjoyed pretending that she didn't and that he didn't bring a clutch of them to the Citadel with him just for her benefit.
Garrus sucked in a breath.
It had been a long time since he'd last seen her switch like this. During her recovery from the final push, dealing with her broken body and the understandably complicated feelings of ending a life of war had made episodes like this hourly. As the years passed though, they went to weekly, then monthly, and eventually faded into rarity.
"Shepard?"
Eyes attuned to darkness saw her flinch, but otherwise she neither moved nor responded.
He quietly crossed the room to her side, an act simple in it's execution, but blooming a feeling of warmth and love tightly in his chest. Familiar.
Because it was the place he belonged. How many times had he moved to her side in their long years together? He'd walked, run, strutted, slid, crawled, limped, and fallen to her so many times.
He'd have to wait to express that later, once she was past her forlorn state. Afterall, he was finally past being a fledgling that blurted his feelings at her at the least convenient times.
Mostly.
Gently he laid a warm palm on the cool skin of her back. She tightened even further into a ball in reaction.
That she would still shrink from kindness when she felt fragile, stung. But it was simply how she was - though someday… perhaps someday…
He leaned over her small form and pulled her bodily backwards into his chest, laying his chin on top of her head.
She didn't resist, but she didn't uncurl. Still, it counted as a success.
He let a soothing sub-harminc build softly in his chest. His not-so-secret weapon.
Early in their relationship his ability to calm her like this used to piss her off, but even now he found he could do nothing but thank Lawson for giving her the hearing necessary to benefit from him.
It always worked - that's why it pissed her off. Made her soft, she'd said. He smiled unintentionally at the memory, but when she stiffened he played it off by nuzzling into her fringe. It wouldn't do to have her think he was laughing at her misery.
An unknown amount of time passed in the stillness, his humming the only noise in the apartment.
Eventually a stifled sob escaped the battle hardened Admiral.
A sound he'd never get used to, a sound that pulled at his keel and drug an answering keen from his chest. He rubbed his palms over her arms and calves as she cried.
Nearly two decades together and he could count on two hands and have a finger left over how many times he'd been witness to this.
What had happened?
He waited patiently despite a growing feeling of uselessness and unease. He soothed and hummed, burying his face in her soft fringe to nose at her neck.
In time her shaking subsided, morphing into sniffling, and he felt it might be safe to wonder.
"Shepard?"
She unfolded in the circle of his embrace to drape her knees over his thigh and turned to bury her tear stained visage into his neck.
"I'm sorry Garrus, I didn't mean to worry you," she whispered.
He tried for levity. "Shepard, I've been watching you disappear via blue blaze into swells of enemies for years. You'll have to do better than water works to worry me."
It was a lie, and they both knew it. Afterall, they could both hear the tinge in his sub-vocals. Still, he felt her smile into his hide.
"Bullshit, I know turians are scared of water - and here I am like a witch, able to create it at will."
He snorted, but chose to leave his answer at that as he carefully dragged talon tips through her hair and over her scalp.
Finally, she pulled back to look up at him. "I'm just feeling sorry for myself, Garrus, nothing especially alarming happened."
He tilted his head. "Sorry for yourself?"
Shepard heaved a large sigh. "It wasn't one big thing, but a bunch of little niggling things. Before I went to meet with Wrex, I was checking again to see if Grunt had messaged me back, I mean, it's been weeks… but I started cleaning up old files on my omni-tool and I nearly deleted a folder full of messages Mordin had left for me."
Oh. Damn. He could see where this was going. He made a mental note to send a strongly worded voice memo to the whelp that refused to message his surrogate mother.
"I'd forgotten some of the things he'd left behind… he was so funny, so charming with that wrinkly grin. I could picture it as he spoke in the recordings. In the last one he sang Amazing Grace…." Here she paused looking at something over his shoulder, her face scrunched as fresh tears slid over her cheeks.
He quickly wiped them away with his thumbs.
"I miss him," she murmured into his hands.
Garrus bent to touch his foreplates to her crown. "I know."
"And then, I was sitting on the floor with some of Wrex's fresh little ones crawling over my legs, growling at each other and fighting. Just… so full of life, so perfect with their little fingers and their little tails." She sucked in a shaky breath. "He never even got to see what he sacrificed himself for, Garrus. He would have loved them so, so much."
She laughed weakly. "The latest batch has just started headbutting each other. One of them looks exactly like their old man, too. Bright red."
She'd always had a soft spot for Wrex's little krogan disasters. Well, Mordin had given his life to fixing his mistakes, and because of that the krogan had finally won their children back after struggling for a thousand years. It wasn't hard to understand how she felt. They were a living, breathing reminder of all she'd sacrificed for, of what Mordin had sacrificed for.
Ultimately it had been her and Mordin who'd ended the genocide against organics, and ultimately that war stole one of her closest friends from her.
It had almost stolen her from him. He tightened his arms around her. It was a thought he was loath to dwell on. Even just being able to comfort her like this was a privilege, thank the Spirits.
"And thi… and this…" she stumbled over the words. "This fucking useless body of mine… I couldn't give you one even if genetics would fucking let me."
The words stabbed through him. What? This was something they'd talked about exactly once, when she was still bedridden, and she'd been absolutely clear that children had never been something she'd wanted for herself - and never brought it up again.
His shock was such that it clipped his sub vocals, leaving them in a perplexing silence as he blinked stupidly at her. "What?"
She turned her face from his, trying to hide the redness now creeping up her neck. "I know, I know. I just… I never wanted kids but the fact that I can't now, that it's not even an option… Sometimes I feel upset about it. It's completely daft—"
He bent to gingerly lick a remaining tear, cupping her face in his hands. "Shepard, you are allowed to change your mind, you aren't daft. If you want 5 of Wrex's little abominations, we can do it. Solana is due in a month, we can go annoy her everyday to let you hold the fluff ball - trust me she's had that coming since we were kids. Hell, we can go tomorrow and sign papers to adopt a little fluff ball army of our own, or if you prefer blue we could go to the asari embassy—"
"Garrus," she smiled, her face still wet. "I didn't realize you were so keen to be a dad."
He considered for a moment. "Shepard, everything I've ever needed to feel complete is sitting right here with me on this couch." She crushed her eyes closed, the redness now full force on her face. She always poorly handled his declarations. "And if what you need to feel complete are scaly little monstrosities, then I will get you scaly little monstrosities."
She laughed. "Well, that isn't quite what I mean, though I appreciate the enthusiasm." She paused for a beat, opening and closing her mouth while searching for the right words. "It's less that and more like, even after this many years, my back still aches, and my leg still isn't quite right, and everytime I have phantom limb pain in the presence of Sparatus I still want to throttle him. I just… wish I was still whole... Well, as whole as Cerberus could make me anyway."
Now that he could understand. His own injuries from the final push could still double him over, his back in particular could lay him up for weeks and had betrayed him numerous times over the years. "I still want to strangle Sidonis when I wake up from sleeping on my right side with a stiff mandible."
She gently cradled his scarred up mandible, running slim fingers over the still somewhat gruesome flesh of his neck.
"I still wake up in a rage, having seen their dead bodies all night," he muttered.
Shepard fixed him with her piercing verdant gaze. "Do you still regret letting him live?"
"No. In fact, I hope he survived the reapers. I need him to be alive and well and dwelling on what he did for the rest of his days," he hummed.
She nodded slowly. "Seems time can only fix so much."
Garrus pulled her in closer, tucking her head under his chin. "Well, we can conquer the pains with a long, hot, soak and a skillful massage from yours truly. The rest we'll face together and see how it goes. Afterall, we won a war doing that."
"Yeah? That's true. I like the sound of that."
"We still haven't seen what that turian/human baby looks like either."
Shepard chuckled, the sound traveling through his chest where she'd curled. "Genetics Garrus—"
"Fuck genetics, it's still fun trying."