Infinite Regress

Ashley has become as isolated from the rest of the crew as he and Shepard have. There but not there. Going day by day through the mission, but mind and soul occupied with events still beyond the horizon.

Garrus nearly jumps one day when she loudly drops her tray in front of his and takes a seat across from him. She straddles the bench, back against a wall and eyes on the crowd, as she pops open her drink and takes a swig. He's still staring at her, frozen with his dextro rations about to fall off his fork just trying to figure out what the hell Ashley Williams is doing at his table, when she finally turns to face him. "You left a lot of shit out, didn't you?"

"... What?"

Her voices becomes conspiratorial as she leans in. "C'mon, Vakarian, gimme the goods. You just gave me the mission briefing. Now I want the gossip."

While it's true he had given her... a very bullet pointed version of what was to come, he hadn't actually planned on fleshing out the details.

"Uh..." He looks around uneasily. No one seems to think anything of it to see the two of them chumming it up during lunch. He briefly catches Shepard's eye, notices the confused look she's giving him, and that's enough to make him lower his voice to match Ashley's. "It's almost four years of information. It might be easier if you... narrowed down what you wanted to know."

"The asari-" she manages between bites of something that's called 'meatloaf' (and it looks as truly unappetizing as it sounds). "She still as socially awkward as she is now?"

"Liara?" he drawls, leaning back and resuming his own meal. He gives her a quick glance, sitting at another table and chatting with the good doctor Chakwas. His mind flutters over a dozen memories of her - at the funeral, on Ilium, as the Shadow Broker, on the SR2 - and he shakes his head before answering, "Yeah, sometimes. Much better though."

"Huh." Another bite of what may have one time actually been meat. She points her fork towards the cockpit. "Joker still a perv?"

"The whole future laid out before you and that's the most creative you can get with your questions? I'm disappointed, Williams. You should at least be asking if he grew a third eye or made out with a rachni or something."

She grins. "Working up to it, geez. So I'm guessing that's a yes to the last one?"

"Well, he is dating what James lovingly referred to as a 'glorified sexbot.' Lucky for him he said it off ship or EDI might have taken offense and cut off life support to the cargo hold."

"Didn't know sexbots took offense."

"Sexbots, no. Unshackled AI, sometimes."

She shook her head, eyes slightly wide. "Shepard sure knows how to play fast and loose, doesn't she? Still can't believe it... Letting an AI around like that."

"That's the part you find difficult to believe? Not the giant space monsters trying to harvest all advanced life? Not the time traveling into a previous version of yourself? Because really, in comparison, EDI doesn't seem that strange."

"Touché," she grumbles. "Okay, Liara's still awkward. Joker finally managed to get a girlfriend, even if she IS a robot. Anything on the Wrex or Tali front?"

"I think I already mentioned the big stuff. Tali's an admiral, Wrex is pretty much king of Tuchanka. And yes, it is going to his head."

Mercifully, she didn't pry about the genophage at that moment. "Yeah, I can see how that would. Man, the world's a lot different than I would've thought. Only three years out from here and all that shit goes down?"

"The Reapers tend to... throw the usual progression of things out the window."

Ashley stared at her food, twirling the fork in her hand as she tried to dance around what she wanted to ask next. "What about the Commander and the LT?" The currently happy almost couple is laughing at some story Pressly's just told them. No cracks in the facade to show it wouldn't last. Not yet, anyway. "You uh... you get between them or something?"

When Garrus had told Ashley about things to come, he had never... explicitly said that he and Shepard were together. It might have been implied by the undertones of the story, and of course by what Ashley had already seen herself, but he felt uncomfortable voicing it here and now. Like saying it would somehow jinx the possibility of it coming to fruition again. It was an ache he kept close to his heart. But she knew. Of course she knew. Anyone with eyes and ears had figured it out on the SR2 long before the Omega 4 Relay.

"There wasn't much for me to come between by then."

"Whose ass should I be kicking about that?" She shot a quick glare at the aforementioned pair before backtracking and hastily adding, "Not that you two wouldn't be good together too, it's just... I figured they had a good thing going and once the mission blew over..." She coughed awkwardly before deciding that stuffing her face with another mouthful was probably the best way to avoid saying anything equally stupid.

"No apology necessary. I don't think anyone on this ship would have seen it coming. I sure as hell didn't. Didn't really see it coming on the other ship either, but I had the excuse of missing half my face." Ashley gave him a questioning look. Right. The rocket. He hadn't mentioned the rocket. His mandibles twitched slightly before moving on. "It's not really my place to say. It's really something you'd have to ask her about. She never really talked about it to anyone. I only know what I know because I was actually on Horizon. Made me pretty popular with Tali for a while since I'm the only one who would talk about it. Miranda's not really much of a gossip." He hadn't realized he'd been blabbering until he saw the blank expression Ashley was giving him. "Short answer, I have no idea."

They were quiet for a moment, each picking at what passed for food on a starship (though the levo equivalent was at least in recognizable shapes - Garrus had no idea what this stuff was supposed to be other than solidified paste). Ashley won the unspoken eating contest, most of her food forced down. She stood up to leave but hesitated. Apparently making a decision, she leaned over and put a hand over his. He jumped slightly at the unexpected contact, but looked up.

"Look. I don't like getting involved with this sort of thing, but it seems like you guys are just going to fuck it up on your own. You should fight for her. There's no reason you gotta let all three of you get hurt by this bullshit when you can fix it."

For a moment he was too startled to say anything. He swallows a lump in his throat before answering. "Shepard doesn't want to change the timeline yet..."

She shrugged. "So? Haven't you already by telling me? And whatever it was I saw in the hangar a few weeks ago was - and of course I'm just guessing - not part of the plan. What does it matter if you change this too? I don't think whether or not the Commander and LT get together is going to be pivotal in the salvation of the galaxy." She pointed a finger at Garrus' chest almost accusingly as she walked away, shouting, "Think about it!"

And damn her, now that's all he could think about.

It kept going like that. Shepard's time was usually occupied with... well, being Commander Shepard. And Garrus could only stand to repair the Mako so many times before wanting to shoot himself in the foot. Without any other way to occupy his time, he found himself drifting more and more to Ashley William's station. While a conversation might start out about the last mission, or the next FTL jump, or speculation about crew members, it always gravitated back to the future.

Ashley was relentless with her questions. And, no surprise to Garrus, she was quite vocal with her opinions on pretty much everything.

"Tali and Kal should've totally hooked up."

"I can totally see why Shepard punched that admiral. Ass."

"Udina that son of a ::two solid minutes of censored expletives::."

"Cerberus? Geth? AI? Rachni? You guys have the weirdest taste in allies."

"I'd 've torn Alenko a new one myself if I'd been on Horizon."

"A thresher maw? An honest to god thresher maw! Okay, that's just about the most awesome thing I've ever heard."

"God damn Alliance bullshit, keeping her locked up that long. I would've organized a prison break within the first week."

They were halfway through one of their talks - this one on what Garrus liked to think of as the "Quarian Return Home" but that Shepard would have probably called the "Tragedy of Legion" - when the sound of the elevator doors opening and the even step of Shepard approaching forced Ashley's lively comments to a quiet hush.

Garrus still hadn't quite figured out how to tell Shepard he'd decided to... set things in motion along a different path. He wasn't sure where this new timeline was headed, and honestly had no idea what other changes he planned to make, but telling Ashley now felt like the first rock falling that leads to an avalanche.

And yes, Garrus was a little afraid of how Shepard would react to this. After everything she'd done to try and keep things the same so far... He quite frankly didn't know how she'd react to this kind of insubordination.

Here he was, talking to Ashley about things that hadn't been/might never be, and the last thing he wanted to do right now was fess up to it. "Not a word," he hissed at the gunnery chief as he walked back to his own station.

He nodded dutifully to Shepard, mentally making the switch from lover to CO, and walked past. They bumped shoulders, whether on purpose or not he couldn't tell, but a spark of electricity shot through them at the contact. He tried not to let it show.

"Something wrong, Shepard?"

She blinked a couple times as she stared blankly at the asari in front of her. "What?" Shit, what were we talking about?

How beautiful Thessia is this time of year, that young part of herself whispered, as if cuing an actor who missed a line. This part of herself was getting smaller and smaller, weighed down by years of deeds and missions and worries that honestly would be more easily born by the two of them together. But they just weren't her burdens quite yet.

"I was asking if you had ever been to Thessia, Commander."

Unbidden, the image of Thessia burning comes to mind. And it does take both of them to squash that memory back down into the depths where it belongs. Or at least, where it belongs for another few years.

"No, can't say that I have."

The two go back to eating, Shepard's eyes continually drifting to a pair on the other side of the Mess. A pair talking a mile a minute in low voices. A pair that have been pulling away from her, whether they know it or not, and she can't bear how much she's missing them. A friend already lost once and a man whose loss she's ashamed to admit would break her.

Liara shifts slightly to follow her line of sight. "You seem awfully interested in Ashley and Garrus' conversation."

"Just surprised to see the two of them getting along so well," she says automatically.

There's a heavy silence for a moment as Liara stares at her hands. Finally, she apparently reaches a decision and sighs deeply. "Are you sure that's all?"

Shepard slowly chews the food in her mouth and swallows, carefully looking at Liara. "I'm not sure what else there would be."

She can almost feel Liara's gaze penetrating the wall she's tried to build between herself and this new/old crew. The two women stare at each other, trying to divine the other's intentions. It reminds Shepard of that dance that always precedes a spare as the two opponents prepare to square off. Too late she realizes Liara's already sized her up and figured out her out.

"I thought perhaps it had something to do with Garrus... investing so much time in another female."

The blow is well placed. All of the jealousy and self-doubt come to the surface before the comment even properly registers. "I... I..." she flounders for a moment before the younger self steps in. The part of herself with no invested interest in who Garrus Vakarian spends his free time with. She chuckles slightly, her body relaxing as a younger woman takes life, "Liara, I think you're overreaching here. Honestly, if those two want to hang out, that's a good thing. God knows Ashley needs to spend more time with the alien crew and it wouldn't hurt Garrus to spend time with someone or something other than the Mako."

Shepard's nonchalance obviously throws Liara. Any traces of the future Shadow Broker disappear and instead it's the young, unsure archaeologist who's there sitting in front of Shepard. It seems like that's that, but Liara continues, albeit with a little more hesitation, "Shepard... I know what I saw when I tried to find out about the beacon."

"... I'm not sure what you're talking about." A panic starts to well up in the pit of her stomach.

She reaches over and places a hand over Shepard's. She involuntarily tenses up but doesn't pull away, looking into Liara's concerned eyes. "I know that you and Garrus... were an item."

Oh god, what does she know. If she knows about Garrus what else does she know?

Liara gives a gentle squeeze. "If your feelings for him are still anywhere near as strong as they were in the memories I saw, then you should let him know."

All Shepard can do is stare as Liara pulls away and stands up, about to take her empty tray. "I didn't mean to pry, but little traces of you came with the Prothean visions. I'm sorry if I've overstepped my bounds."

Shepard feels dizzy and realizes she isn't breathing. A slow, raspy exhale doesn't help dispel the confusion racing through her and the pounding in her temples. She just sits there, feeling utterly alone as she tries to figure out what the hell she's supposed to do now.