See, I promised it wouldn't be a long wait. As always, your reviews make me happy and I also get embarrassingly happy everytime I pull up the Stats page and see that so many people are actually reading this. Thank you, every single one of you.
Today, we have more drama and Shepard is coming back. Enjoy!
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After three weeks of suspension after the Saleon disaster, Frank and Garrus finally returned to work. They started with a security concept for the festival that Nihlus and Shepard had invented. Garrus was impressed, Anderson's staff and the turian teacher Atika Birdan had managed to set this small festival up in record time. It helped that they could use existing infrastructure by extending a concert with an asari singer that had already been planned at a market square down in Quedgin.
They opened the square earlier and set the concert up as the end of the "All Together" festival. Several schools had performances prepared and showed them on an open stage on one side of the market. All other sides of the market square had food stands with delicacies from all over the galaxy. In an adjacent warehouse, Garrus recognized it as the one where the metal concert had taken place, a martial arts tournament was to be held in the afternoon.
Garrus and Frank had worked out security shifts and drilled everybody in showing presence without intimidating the festival visitors. They set up mixed teams, combining two turians with someone from another species, to reflect the spirit of the festival. So far things had worked out nicely.
Garrus was in an exceptionally good mood today because this morning he had finally received a message from Shepard. It was just a short text, telling him that her training was finally over and she officially was an N7 now. She was on Elysium for a few days of celebration and then would come back to the Citadel. Her message ended with, 'I have been thinking about you all the time, looking forward to seeing you again.' Garrus finally felt hopeful again.
Frank, Garrus, and Tinlenus had just started their own shift as festival patrol again, after having taken a break to eat something. Garrus had tried something from a food stand that prepared dextro-versions of levo-meals. His meal had been called 'Spaghetti with tomato-sauce' and was pretty good, and according to Frank at least smelled sort of like the real thing. Frank had eaten a levo-version of Garlefka and announced that it was just like a burger with chilli. His eyes had watered a bit but he had assured them that he was fine.
They had started the day early by opening the location and overseeing the preparations. After the food stands had been set up and opened, the first school performance had started. An asari school had been dancing human ballet and afterwards a group of salarian singers performed human, asari, and even krogan songs. Later on a mixed school was supposed to show human, asari, and turian formal dances.
So far they had had almost no problems between the different species visiting the festival. People were talking to each other, trying different foods and applauding all performances. It almost made Garrus nervous how well everything went.
A group of turians, who Garrus thought he recognized as the ones that had attacked Lieutenant Shepard three weeks ago, had actually tried to provoke some conflict. But the rallying speech from the leader got loudly interrupted by Atika Birdan and other festival visitors, and after a short argument they left quietly. They had realized that they would not win any supporters here. Everybody from every species was friendly to each other.
Which was why they all were surprised when suddenly a loud commotion began in front of the warehouse where the martial arts tournament was held. A turian woman in an old fashioned tunic held her son with her hand who had a smug grin on his face. She was yelling at one of the human tournament organizers.
"How can you let children watch this? It's outrageous, a performance like that for everybody to see, highly inappropriate!" Her son grinned and was clearly of a different opinion. Garrus wandered over to the woman to see if he could help.
"Vakarian, C-Sec, what seems to be the problem?" He asked, letting his omni-tool display his badge. Tinlenus and Frank did the same behind him. The human turned towards him with a confused look on his face.
"Sir, I have no idea. This woman thinks we do something inappropriate here but I assure you we have only standard martial arts here, official guide lines, correct clothing, I honestly don't know what the problem is. I'm very sorry if we somehow offended her." The human man shrugged his shoulders and Garrus saw that he was truly apologetic.
The turian woman began to shriek again but Garrus stopped her with a trill and went inside the warehouse with Frank to take a look. In the middle of the room, a raised area with mats had been set up and right now two human women in sturdy white clothing were fighting. They were grabbing each other roughly, trying to push the other to the ground. The wall-display said something about 'Judo' and had a timer running down.
Garrus stared for a minute, he had an idea why the woman, who according to her clothing was probably rather traditional, had been outraged. Beside him Frank shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't get it, there's nothing wrong here. I thought we would see naked mud-fighting the way she was acting but this is just normal Judo."
Stretching his throat, Garrus looked at his friend. "You've never watched turian porn, right?"
Frank looked taken aback, "No, why would... holy shit! Are you telling me that two women fighting is basically porn for you guys?"
Garrus trilled quietly in embarrassment, "Well, usually they wear tighter clothing, but two women fighting over a man is a common scenario in turian porn." He sighed, the things you have to think about when it came to interspecies understanding.
For the first times in weeks Frank was truly laughing, bending over in laughter with tears in his eyes. He looked around, there were humans, asari, and quite a lot of turians in the audience. "Don't tell me all these guys are just here to get turned on."
Garrus shook his head, "It sure looks interesting but I think you have to be very old fashioned to confuse this with... well... porn."
Frank sniggered, "Man, I have to take you guys to mud-wrestling one day, your heads are going to explode." Garrus looked at his friend, relieved that he appeared like his old self again. Suddenly Frank looked at him with a mischievous grin. "You know who else has participated in martial arts tournaments who we could probably find vids from on the Extranet?" He grinned even more. "Lieutenant Shepard has fought in tournaments."
Garrus's mind was busily supplying him with imaginary pictures of Shepard fighting, maybe in a tighter white dress, and what was it what Frank had said about mud-wrestling? He got jolted out of his daydream by a hard punch on his neck from Frank who couldn't stop grinning.
"I wondered if I needed to reboot you or something, you were gone, birdy!" Frank said with a laugh. "What are we going to do now? You think this is really inappropriate for turians?"
Garrus shook his head and turned to go back outside, "No, there's nothing wrong here. Let me talk to her, she looks very traditional and I don't think every turian mother would see this as strict as she does. Let's put up a sign at the entrance that says that small children shouldn't watch it because of the violence or something."
Frank snorted, "Violence, sure..."
They went back outside. But the commotion had stopped and the whole market was eerily quiet.
Everybody looked to one of the news-displays. Grainy images from traffic cameras showed streets destroyed from bombardments, people running in panic, and batarian mercenaries shooting at them. The caption under the picture scrolled the same words over and over again: "Pirates attack Elysium, heavy losses, reinforcements days away."
Garrus felt his knees shake. Frank grabbed his arm and led him to a bench to sit down. She can't be dead, not now, she can't be dead. She. Can't. Be. Dead.
Garrus didn't remember how he got back to C-Sec headquarters. He vaguely recalled that they had canceled the rest of the festival but people had stayed in the market, watching the news together and supporting each other. Elysium was a human colony but many asari, turians, and salarians had settled there as well. Everybody was afraid for the people on the colony.
The cameras had begun showing some kind of resistance fighting against the pirates, but soon after that the communications satellite was apparently damaged and no pictures came from Elysium anymore.
Garrus spent the next days in a daze, watching the news for anything new from Elysium.
After three days the Alliance fleet finally arrived and repelled the attack. The human pirate leader Elanos Haliat fled when the Alliance arrived and the planet was soon freed from the mercenaries. Soon after that the news began to trickle back to the Citadel.
Humanity had a new hero: Lieutenant Shepard!
The first attack from the pirates had been an orbital strike to the Alliance barracks and the city's police building, somehow circumventing the orbital protection systems of the planet. After that, the pirates had landed, hardly meeting any resistance after having blown up most of the soldiers and police.
Lieutenant Shepard had managed to rally her N7-exam colleagues and a bunch of civilians to take up weapons and defend the main street. She set up a perimeter that the pirates couldn't cross without getting shot at from cover. Using this technique she held them off for three days without supplies until the Alliance arrived. When the marines finally found her, her team and the civilians they protected, they were almost delirious from their wounds and from hunger. A rumour said that Lieutenant Shepard had been awake for the whole three days, high on stims. When they found her and she saw that everybody was safe, she collapsed. She remained unconscious when they brought her back on the ship and flew her and her team to the Citadel.
Garrus stood anxiously at the dock where Shepard's transport was supposed to arrive, it had been six days since the attack and so far there had been no interviews with her. He was worried that maybe her condition was so bad that she couldn't even talk.
Finally the transport pulled into the dock and a mass of reporters ran towards the entrance to get a glimpse of the new hero. Cameras were zipping around when the door opened and showed a bunch of medical personnel, protecting gurneys from the pushing reporters. The gurneys were quickly loaded into cars and took off towards the hospital. Now people who were in good enough condition to walk exited the transport ship. Most of them had been patched up in some way and they were all very pale. The majority were human but a few asari and turians came out as well, looking just as bad as everybody else. The reporters were running around the survivors, catching statements, arranging interviews, but Garrus wasn't interested in them.
Frank appeared at his side, "I think she was on one of the gurneys. Let's go to the hospital, I know a nurse who works there and maybe she can tell us something." Garrus just nodded, his throat too dry to talk.
The hospital was extremely busy and the staff was quick to dismiss them in favour of real patients. Luckily, Frank managed to get the attention of one of the asari nurses who let them into the restricted area of the hospital. Under the promise of confidentiality, she let them into a lab that had a glass wall on one side. Behind the glass, two beds stood side by side, both with a human on them. One was a male, the other a female. Garrus's breath stopped. There she is!
He couldn't see much from her, there were IV-drips leading into her arms and a mask on her face, giving her oxygen-rich air to breath.
The nurse whispered to them, "As you can see, she is breathing on her own, that is a good sign. She wasn't badly injured, but she has pushed her body to it's absolute limits, not eating, hardly any fluids, no sleep for three days. We gave her a mild sedative and she is just sleeping off the exhaustion. The IV-drips are there to hydrate her again and to give her nutritions." She must have sensed Garrus's distress because she put a hand on his arm and tried to hum reassuringly, as much as an asari was capable of that. "The doctors are sure that she's going to be okay by tomorrow. The Alliance admirals can hardly wait for her to wake up, they want to have a big ceremony for her where she will be promoted..."
Garrus tuned out her talking and laid his forehead against the cool glass next to his hand. "Can I go in?" He asked and he knew without even looking that the asari was shaking her head. "I'm sorry but this is all I can do for you, the room entrance is protected, only Alliance higher-ups and family members are allowed to visit." Garrus nodded, he had expected that. Afterall, he was just some unknown turian, why should they let him in?
He looked at her once more and then indicated with his head towards Frank that they should go. Silently, they left and walked past the horde of people who stood in the waiting area, listening to a statement from a doctor. He said pretty much the same thing as the nurse had said and Garrus saw no point in staying. He couldn't do anything for her here.
Frank brought him back to his apartment and Garrus returned to staring at the news station. His friend handed him a beer and they sat silently together until they both fell asleep.
The next day he saw Shepard on the news. She was dressed in an Alliance uniform and gave a short interview about her situation and the attack on Elysium. Her answers were short, and it wasn't quite clear if she was annoyed or just exhausted. In the afternoon he saw another newscast about her, the hero of Elysium as they called her. They had a ceremony on the Presidium for her, where they announced her promotion and gave her a medal. She smiled at the cameras with her medal but Garrus knew a false smile when he saw one. Her face was like a mask.
He had messaged her as soon as he had heard that she was awake but he hadn't received an answer yet. Doubt was creeping up in him again. She had avoided him.
On the vid screen the ceremony had come to an end and Shepard had disappeared. He kept watching for the chance to see her somewhere but the only person coming up on camera was a human man named Svend Lee. Garrus recognized him as the one who had shared the hospital room with Shepard. The newly promoted Lieutenant Lee had held the perimeter alongside Shepard and was happy to tell everybody the story. Most information in the newscasts about the resistance on Elysium had come from him.
Garrus was only half-hearted listening when his door chimed. He thought that it would be Frank, who had wanted to get lunch, and got up to open the door for him. But when the door opened it revealed the hunched figure of the newly promoted Commander Shepard. She looked up at him and tried to smile, but the smile couldn't chase away the haunted look in her eyes.
He hesitated for a second, and then stepped forward and pulled her into a tight embrace. He felt her relax as she let her weight fall on him with a strange sound coming from the back of her throat. He pulled her up so that her feet left the ground and carried her over to the couch.
As he sat down she gripped his cowl even tighter, and some part of him wanted to rejoice loudly that she was finally here with him. My Shepard!
But he also felt her sadness and he knew that nothing was really okay.
They sat silently in this embrace, her legs dangling off his lap to one side, her face hidden in his cowl. After a while she began to whisper. "They promoted me and gave me a medal."
He whispered into her hair, "I know, I saw it on the news."
She stayed silent for a while and then whispered so quietly that he almost didn't hear her, "Nobody sees that I'm not a hero."
He carefully put his hand under her chin and pulled back so that he could look into her eyes. "You saved so many, without you they wouldn't have had a chance. That was heroic."
She sat up and turned around and slid down on the couch beside him. Her hands were fighting with each other, wringing, pinching. Looking at her hands, one twisting around the wrist of the other, she sighed and began talking.
"There was this girl, she reminded me of myself, as young as I was when the batarians attacked Mindoir. But she wasn't helpless like me, she knew how to shoot a gun, she could fight! And I thought... I thought - she could do what I couldn't back then. She could be strong, not hiding in the woods like a little coward. I should have sent her away with the others, but I didn't."
By now her hands were gripping each other so hard that the knuckles turned white. Garrus took her hands in his, stroking them, trying to get them to let go of each other. He put all his empathy in his subharmonics, humming at her.
Her voice was rough and bitter. "She died within the first hour. A batarian sneaked up on her. I was distracted, trying to get everybody in line, to stay in cover and not shoot around wildly. God, they were all running around like headless chickens, like they had never seen an alien pirate before. I saw him out of the corner of my eye and I yelled at her to shoot but she just stared. She was frozen in panic. Just because you know how to shoot rabbits on a field doesn't mean you can fight batarians."
Garrus noticed that her hands were full of cuts and some of them had started bleeding again from all the wringing she did. He got up to get a medical pad to clean her wounds and she got up as well. She stood in front of the window, a dark shadow against the bright Citadel sky.
"I should have seen that, I should have seen that she was just a little girl. How could I expect her to turn into a killer on my command, she was just a little girl... a little girl..."
He finally realized that she didn't need her wounds cleaned, her pain came from deep inside, not from the cuts on her hands. Carefully, he stepped closer to her and put his arm around her. "You couldn't have known, there was no time..." He tried to make his voice sound calm despite his emotions swirling in chaos inside of him.
She was shaking her head, turning away from his embrace. Her arms were wrapping around herself, her hands squeezing the skin on her arms.
"This batarian fucker grabbed her by her hair and slammed a device in the back of her neck. It must have been something like they use on the slave collars only this one was set to pain. She fell down shaking, screaming in pain, and the guy just laughed and raised his gun at me."
Garrus made a step closer to her but she turned away from him again. He put his hand on her shoulder to show her that he was still there.
"I lost it. I just rammed into him, started beating him. I beat that four-eyed fucker to death with my bare hands."
She was breathing hard. "I killed him, I kept beating him even when he wasn't moving anymore, and the whole time that poor girl was screaming in pain and I didn't help her, I just kept beating this guy like that would help me, like a monster... I should have helped her but I couldn't think... I kept beating him and beating him and I only stopped when she had stopped screaming. I looked up from the bloody mess that had been his face and saw that she had died, her body had given up."
He saw tears running down her cheek, terrifying tears and he put his arms around her again, hoping that she would allow him to hold her now. She stiffened and then suddenly it was like she lost all bones in her body and fell into his arms, sobbing, "I should have helped her, I should have helped her!" He hummed in grief for her.
She kept on crying and crying.
Terrifying tears.
After what seemed like hours she stopped crying, wiping her nose on a handkerchief and he led her back to the couch. He was surprised to see bags with food on the table, Frank must have come in at some point without them noticing. Apparently he just put the food on the table and left again.
Garrus had enough experience with humans to see that she was utterly exhausted and he picked her up and carried her to his bedroom. He carefully placed her on the bed and then took off her shoes. She took off her uniform jacket and shimmied out of her pants. His breath hitched on the sight of her in her plain white underwear. He quickly put a blanket over her.
He knelt beside the bed, holding her hand. She looked at him and his heart was beating faster. The circumstances may have been bad but he just couldn't stop this feeling of happiness that she was finally back again. She raised her head to whisper, "Lie with me. Hold me, please."
He swallowed, he didn't want to come across like a horny teenager but he couldn't stop the wave of desire that rushed through him. "I'm not sure that is such a good idea," he said with an embarrassed trill, "I missed you a lot and I... I can't stop my plates from moving when I'm so close to you I think"
"It's okay. I missed you too." She showed a little smile for the first time and Garrus felt like stumbling into it. "But my state is just not that obvious like yours."
He swallowed again and then shrugged out of his tunic, only leaving his underpants on. He crawled under the blanket behind Shepard and nuzzled her head. Something that felt like a knot in his chest sprang free with a snap and he allowed himself to feel happy to finally have her in his arms like this.
They stayed like that for a while and he wondered if she had fallen asleep, but suddenly he heard her talking quietly.
"I feel dead inside. Like I'm not really here."
He pulled her even closer, her butt molding against his hard penis. He couldn't stop a groan escaping. "You are definitely here. Certain parts of my anatomy are very aware of you."
He felt, more than heard her chuckle. "Maybe you turians have the right solution with your sex as stress relief." Her hips rubbed against him.
He held his breath for a second. "I don't want to have meaningless sex with you."
"Nothing is ever meaningless with us. But I don't want to feel dead anymore." She whispered and twisted her body to look at him. "Please, break through me. Find me again."
He raised himself on his elbow and she turned on her back, pulling his face down for a kiss. He groaned when her tongue touched his and he lost himself in the sensations. Her tongue so soft and strong at the same time, her lips so soft, suckling on his mouthplates, her moaning. She broke away and wrapped her tongue around his mandible, sucking on it. He purred and felt his erection throbbing in his pants. He fell on his side and pulled her towards him. Her body was molding against his and he had to bring up every little bit of control to not slam into her like a wild animal.
All his senses focused on her and her pleasure and he noticed right away when something suddenly changed. She stiffened and turned her face away and he instantly gave her space. He felt her shiver and she curled up like small child. His erection strained painfully against his pants but he ignored it and very softly put his arms around her from behind her back.
She whispered, "I'm sorry, I can't..." She curled up even more, her whole body tense.
"It's okay." He held her close again, it felt right.
"I'm not much of a turian I'm afraid."
He nuzzled her head. "I don't want you to be a turian." I love you, just you. "Let me just hold you."
She fidgeted as if to try to get up. "I can't.."
He nuzzled her neck, inhaling her scent. "Let me be here for you, let me hold you." He let his subharmonics hum soothingly.
She whispered, "Okay," and he felt her relax. After a little while her breathing became more even and he felt that she had fallen asleep. He kept humming and holding her until he was sure that she wouldn't wake up when he got up.
Carefully, he slipped out of the bed and for a little while he just stood there and watched her, thinking. How fragile she looked. How strong she was despite that. How much he had missed holding her. How very much something behind his cowl wanted to explode.
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Perfect boyfriend is perfect.
I know, there she goes and turns Garrus into a can-do-no-wrong-Mary-Sue (Garry-Sue, hehe) but you know what? Isn't it sad that the willingness to wait with sex until your girlfriend is mentally and physically ready makes a character an unrealistic Mary-Sue?
Just sayin'.
Sex in the next chapter, I promise.
And of course thanks again to Credete, who forgoes sleep and other healthy behaviours to edit these chapters.