Garrus Vakarian

"So how in the hell did you end up shooting mercs on Omega after all this time? I taught to better than that," laughed Shepard over her drink. Whatever she was nursing over there smelled like volatile fuel. She'd called it a vodka tonic. I'd known several human drinks, sayings and expressions from all my time in C-sec, and I'd never smelled a vodka tonic that was that much alcohol.

We had exchanged necessary words of friendship, and I told of her my concerns about her working with Cerberus. She told me that she needed me there walking into hell by her side. Even though I joked, there was no way I would say no to her. Hell couldn't take her from me. Not this time.

"You died, doesn't matter what you taught," I answered. I was surprised at the bitterness in my own voice. I had meant it as a joke, but I think I was serious. Shepard didn't seem to notice. Not much of a surprise, really, she was on her third glass by this time. "I wanted out of the Spectres, away from the citadel, and gone from everything that would try to under everything you did. Did you know they publicized that Sovereign was a Geth flagship? The edited out the entire existence of the reapers!" I said. Shepard's expression took on a more somber tone as she put her glass down. She nodded slowly, coiling a finger in her hair absently.

"I know. I talked to Councilor Anderson," she said, flourishing the title of her former commander with disdain. "He's the only one on the council who's not running away from the truth at this point. Who can blame them, though?" she asked, taking another sip, no, swig of her drink. "If I didn't know it were true, I'd want to stay under a rock too."

"But they're the interstellar council!" I growled. "They're responsible for protecting all the council races."

"First and foremost they're politicians, or else they wouldn't be where they are," she sneered into her nearly empty drink. I took a moment to look around the room.

I'd been in Shepard's quarters on the old Normandy a few times. Mostly to watch old vids, or talk when the mess hall was too crowded and noisy. Normally when we chatted, which we'd done quite often in the past, it was in the mess hall. Here on the Sr-2 with all the Cerberus personnel we decided to get away from prying ears instead.

Shepard's quarters on the Sr-1 had been tidy, meticulous even, with a small cabinet for her "Special Occasion" liquor All of the bottles in there had been full, and she barely opened them even after the battle of the citadel. This was different. There were a couple bottles on her bedside table, two or three on her desk, a cupboard full by the fish tank, and all of them were opened, most of them half drunk already. For only having been alive for a little under a week, she was going through alcohol at an astonishing rate.

She refilled her glass quietly, and sat back down on the couch opposite me. "Garrus, talk to me. I died, sure, but you've had other friends die, and you kept going strong."

"Glad someone has some faith in me," I laugh, trying to pass it off. From her expression, it hadn't worked. I shrug, and try my best to piece together the answer. "I was following in your footsteps. I was becoming a Spectre, I was going to protect the galaxy firmly, fairly, all that jazz," I said, and Shepard smirked absently at my use of the silly human saying. "But then your footsteps lead into an explosion, and I no idea where to go from there. The council downplayed you, and everywhere I went you were thought of as a heroic, if mentally unstable, figure. But never as who you were. I had to get away from all that "Play nice" barefaced behavior." Shepard was probably the only person in the world I would have said all this to. She listened intently, quietly, and waited for me to finish my tale of woe. She didn't try to fake sympathy for me, she simply listened, and that made what I had to say easier to tell. She said nothing, she didn't even look at me for most of the time. And even though she didn't say anything, I could tell she was upset. She was sweating, breathing hard, at a few points a look of fear passed through her face. I wondered if she was listening to my story at all, at some points, she was so quiet.

When I told her about Sidonis, she'd offered her help without hesitation. I knew she would. We'd walk through fire for each other, just like the old days. But I didn't know where he was. Since I wasn't tied down any more, I could look for him. It was only a matter of time until the last member of my team joined the rest.

By the time I finished my account of my activities on Omega, and we joked back and forth about everything we could think of, I could feel myself become physically more relaxed than I had in years. Shepard was back. The universe wasn't nearly as dark. I had my hero, my commander, back from the grave. When Shepard kicked me out so she could go to bed after her sixth drink, I even believed that I would see her again tomorrow.

…

I did see her again tomorrow. The first thing she'd done was take me with her in her squad. I mentioned something about my face hurting jokingly, and she just smiled at me and said, "You're gonna have to toughen up. I can't have these Cerberus bastards on my six." I grinned, and gladly obliged. I didn't want her to go out without me, that was for sure. It was heartening to see that she distrusted the rest of her crew as much as I did, but it was also sad. Shepard had done so well last time because every single member of the crew depended on everyone else, and trusted them implicitly. Hell, even Wrex, Williams and I were on good terms because of her.

I filed that thought away for later conversation. There was time again. I could wait, and say whatever I needed to say. And I sure as hell wasn't leaving her side again after what happened last time. The galaxy needed someone like her. She was important, and people like me fell apart without leaders like her.

Shepard, Massani and I suited up, and headed off to the quarantine zone. I remembered hearing about it before, but I hadn't yet looked into it very thoroughly. I smiled wryly when the door guard stopped us.

"A plagues that kills Turians," I said. "You take me to the nicest places, Shepard," I joked. I could see a frown knot her face for a moment, and I quickly added, "Hey, it's your call, Shepard. I'm with you whichever you decide." Still, I hoped she'd bring me. She was right, she couldn't have those Cerberus bastards on her six. Even if they'd wanted to resurrect her, no one knew what else they wanted from her. And I wasn't leaving her side again.

"Garrus, you're coming with me. Solus is gonna need a cure himself, since he's in there, and we need both of you. Let's go. I grinned, more out of relief than gratefulness. Thank the spirits she was taking me along instead of Jacob. I didn't know why, but I particularly disliked and distrusted him.

Entering the quarantine zone was not as big a leap as I thought it would be. It had been closed off for about a week, and yet it looked no different than the rest of Omega, other than it being a little quieter. Well, and the smell of burning bodies, but that wasn't as uncommon as it should be on Omega. The walls were still grimy, the streets still had trash everywhere, and there was still the feeling of hopelessness. There just weren't as many people there.

Well, except the Blue Suns mercs and the Vorcha. I'm pretty sure they thought they were a big threat, or a deterrent at least a little, but we cut through them like butter.

Even though Shepard seemed to be different. I don't know what it was, but I swear she was more frightened than I had ever seen her before. She moved and checked around corners more by route memorization than by really being there.

She was a million light years away, in some far off land.

What was wrong with her, and why didn't Massani notice anything?

We rounded a corner and took cover. I peeked out and saw a wounded Batarian over there. Shepard still hadn't looked, as she was staring at the ground. She looked like she was counting, not focusing on anything in the area.

"Shepard,I said quietly, but urgently. Her head snapped up to look at me, eyes blinking rapidly. I motioned for her to look over the rail, and she did. Her face creased with an expression I can't really name. Contempt, maybe.

She vaulted over the barricade and stepped up to the Batarian. We wasn't wounded, he was a plague victim, bleeding out from sores all over his body. Disgusting creature, but no one deserved to die the way he was. He spat as Shepard approached, and cursed her solely on the basis of being Human. But he was dying, that's for sure. He probably didn't have more than a few hours left. When he'd finished his tirade Shepard asked him where Mordin Solus was.

"Humans looking for the human sympathizer," he'd said. And he continued to curse her, and doctor Solus until he couldn't breathe. I saw Shepard reach for her omni-tool to apply medigel. We had enough, sure. And she was always helping people. Doing the right thing and all that.

But then I saw her draw back, and let the Batarian continue to cough, and bleed. His body crumpled, and he was soon dead.

"Poor bastard," I said before I could stop myself. "Never thought I'd say that about a Batarian." Shepard didn't look at me. I just stared at the plague victim. He might've been a lost cause, but the medigel would at least have eased his pain.

"Let's go," I heard Shepard say. Her voice was so level, so cool, it was as if she hadn't just let someone die. She just kept walking. That stuck with me. Something wasn't right, and it only got worse from there. Through the sights of her pistol there was nothing. She looked like she was a mech, just doing what she was programmed for. She took down Vorcha after Vorcha, merc after merc, but there wasn't so much as a reaction on her face. Just that hollow fear. How is Massani not seeing this? I'm good at recognizing human facial expressions, but I didn't think I was good enough that something so blindingly obvious would be invisible to other Humans.

When we finally made it to the clinic and talked to Mordin, he agreed to help much more easily than I'd dared to expect. He believed us instantly about the collectors, jumped to his own wild conclusion within seconds. I know that salarians run faster than most species, but Mordin was a unique specimen, running particularly frantically. Mordin gave us his synthesized cure, and asked us to look for his pupil. Shepard agreed, without hesitation. That's more like it. Helpful, helpful Shepard. Always going out of her way, even for strangers.

We moved through, plunged deeper into the quarantine zone until I started feeling light headed. I coughed a bit. "Is it hot in here?" No response from her at all. It was like she wasn't even there, just her gun. She didn't even use one biotic move through the whole event. Not that I blamed her, she looked too distracted to work that properly, anyway.

She was a million light years away, alone.

But I think the weirdest thing that happened was a little later. Even with all the robotic activity, the fear, the lack of biotics, I don't know what kind of pain she might be in from the Lazarus project, especially since it was interrupted in the final stages. I could forgive most of her behavior up to this point, but this was the final straw. Something was wrong.

We found the little brat of an assistant. He'd gone out on his own, even though he was told not to, and he'd tried to play hero. Now he was in the custody of a couple batarians, and on the verge of wetting himself. He burbled something incoherent about trying to help people. He pleased to be let go. The batarians never even saw Shepard with her gun trained on them until she was in the room.

"Stay back, or we kill your friend!"

"I know you're scared. Of the vorcha, of the plague, but this man isn't to blame,"she said calmly, even as the pistol in the other man's hand was right up against Daniel's head. "If he was spreading plague, why would he be this far into Vorcha territory? They're immune.

"She's right," said one of them. The man with the gun lowered it ever so slightly. "t doesn't make any sense." A sneer crossed his face. Or, at least, I think it was a sneer, I never knew with batarians.

"We let him live, we can go, right human?"

"You have my word on it." So calm, so reasonable, so level. I don't like batarians, and after being so ready to kill someone just for being human, I'm not sure I would let them off so easily, but Shepard was in charge, so I went along with it.

All of Daniel's captors holstered their weapons and eyed Shepard suspiciously.

"You got what you wanted, can we go?" asked the leader. Shepard's expression hardened.

"Shoot them," She said, firing the first bullet herself. I didn't actually fire a single round. I had believed her when she said that she'd let them go. She'd always been so honor bound before, never lying. Lying! I couldn't believe it. It was a huge offense to all turians, but coming from her, it was a huge offense, even if I hadn't been turian. Shepard, lying and killing in cold blood? Something was so wrong. What had Cerberus done to her?

Daniel appeared almost as surprised as I was, but when he demanded to know why, Shepard just told him to grow up.

"You should have learned by now, smiles and handshakes don't work with them," she said. This? This, coming from this woman who treated every race I'd ever seen her confront with equal respect. This, coming from the woman who had sacrificed the lives of her own species for the citadel council, a council she knew wasn't going to have her back if it was politically inconvenient. What in the hell had Cerberus done to her?

The thought haunted me all the way through the quarantine zone. All the way through the combat, through the reactivation of the live support, through EDI incessantly babbling about locations and objectives. I didn't know what to think.

That emptiness in her face was there again, it had gone when she'd talked to the professor. It had been gone when she talked to the Batarians, but when she wasn't talking, she was gone, replaced by this stone faced psychopath. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to be on her bad side, but I didn't know her any more.