Purgatory, 1300 Hours
Shepard didn't look at the person sitting next to her, instead swilling her drink around – nonalcoholic, damn regulations. It might be good for my brain, but honestly, some whisky burn might be a welcome thing right about now – speaking in her gruff "don't bother me" at the clearly male form to her left.
"Listen, bud, not interested. I'm sure you're a nice guy and all, but I've got a good thing going and I'm sure as hell willing to deck you if you keep pushing it."
The small speech had been given to every individual, male or female, who came to sit next to her, and the seats besides her were likewise empty. Progress had been made in the past 150 years, gender acceptance and equality had progressed greatly, but as if to explain why there were still strip clubs on the lower wards, it was still an accepted truth that being hit on in a bar was as unpleasant as ever. And at the moment, Shepard did not have the patience to deal with unpleasantness.
The individual sitting next to her stood, or rather sat, his ground, gesturing at the bartender who had been cowering in a back corner for a drink, a tall purple glass soon set down next to him. Shepard glared at him, though never turned her head, raising the glass up to take a swig of the non-alcoholic "whisky" (though Shepard cringed to even call it that), before setting it down and gruffly continuing.
"Look, pal, I appreciate determination. Goodness knows I understand. But now is not the time. I've had a long day, long couple of days. More than couple. And frankly, you keep sitting there, I'm liable to let some of those "long days" come out through my fists. Which will likely result in your ass becoming extremely well acquainted with the floor. So why don't you just stand up and mosey on out of here, before I treat your face like a piñata?"
The individual next to her laughed dryly, raising the glass to his mouth and taking a long pull from it before setting it down slightly aggressively on the table in front of him before speaking in a tone that fairly matched Shepard's, his gaze fixed on the bottles which were in view of the bar, or rather beyond them.
"That's unlikely, hun. I hate to tell you, but I'm on of the best hand-to-hand specialists you will ever see. So, for how much I'm sure you'd like to make the introductions, my ass will not be getting friendly with the floor. Not today."
As soon as the individual began to speak, Elizabeth's head snapped to look at him quickly, a small smirk coming to her face as she was greeted first by the all-too-familiar visor, then the blue stripe across his features. The one thing that was missing, that concerned Shepard arguably the most for its absence, was a trademark sarcastic grin.
Garrus continued, taking another sip from his certainly very alcoholic drink (if Elizabeth's sense of smell had anything to say about it) before continuing, still staring a thousand kilometers in front of him.
"Now, seeing as we've established that no faces will become… piñatas, whatever those are; how about we interact like decent goddamned sentient beings and talk? That too much to ask?"
Shepard frowned as she heard the almost palpable bitterness and injury in Garrus' voice, his sarcasm at the end cutting, malicious, a far cry from his typical good-natured self. She finished her drink, setting it down for the terrified bartender to tend, putting her right hand on Garrus' left which was clutching his drink, his right hand clenched in a tight fist. Her voice was soft, tender, caring, the tone which was reserved mostly for him, and him alone.
"Alright, I think I can play by those rules. Anything in particular you want to talk about?"
Garrus shook his head, his eyes never leaving their focal point in front of him, his mandibles wrapping tight around his jaw like a blanket around a terrified child. Beneath his voice, Elizabeth could hear his grief, the pining quality of his subharmonics hard to miss even for a human like her, a combination of terror, rage, and despair all echoing through his chest.
"No, Liz. And I'm not angry with you, please don't think that. I just…"
Elizabeth began to run her thumb up and down Garrus' talon, his hand turning to take hers, gripping her four fingers against his palm as she continued to stroke her thumb up and down across his hand. Her brow furrowed with concern, each line telling a possible story, trying to guess at what horror he had just endured.
"You were back in the waiting area again, weren't you?"
Garrus mutely nodded, raising his glass to take another deep pull from it. His subharmonics were now sounding even when his primary voice could not be heard, a high-pitched terrible pining call, a small outlet of the hopeless winds which were racing through his heart. True to his stoic culture, he pulled his mandibles tight against his face and remained silent instead of risk his emotion coming even more clearly through his primary voice, his eyes sinking further into his face as he tried to hold back any further expressions of emotion.
Elizabeth inhaled slowly through her nose, shutting her eyes gently and nodding as images of injured soldiers and crying friends, of bloodied cots and defeated surgeons and rows upon rows upon rows of blue bags, little soldier-sized lumps for little soldier-sized bodies that used to be little soldiers flashed in front of her eyes. Her voice was soft, hollow, devoid of passion for fear that it would consume her statement, commandeer her voice and mind.
"It was bad tonight?"
Garrus shut his eyes, the mild motion of his head resembling a nod though it seemed to minute to even be noticed by all but the most experienced observer. Elizabeth gripped his hand harder, Garrus returning the gesture as his voice sounded, lowly, softly, tentatively.
"There's just… nothing left, Liz. I told you how bad our casualties are, but that doesn't do it justice. It's bad enough how many we're losing in the field, but the ones that make it back here… Shepard, they don't stand a chance. Some of them are fine physically, sure. But the nightmares, the terrors, jumping at every loud noise? It's never going to stop for them. They're being decimated, inside and out."
As Garrus finished speaking a particularly drunk Alliance marine ran into the bar to Elizabeth's right, just barely catching the edge with hastily placed hands, turning himself over so that his back was against the bar. He turned to look at Shepard, raising a hand to render an apology before his inebriated eyes caught a sight of Shepard's uniform, the gold bars bringing him to an immediate, if not swaying salute. Shepard brought her hand up, touching her temple and snapping her hand a few centimeters forwards, the Marine taking the signal for what it was and cutting his salute, running to join his friends on the floor again. Both Garrus and Shepard watched the marine re-join his friends, the four joking as three Turian Marines came and introduced themselves, the group becoming the fast friends of war which were so common, arms thrown around backs as they walked away. Garrus took another drink before continuing.
"I mean, look at them Liz. They don't know what they're getting into. Even if they've seen some action, it's still just glory and metals, a chance to say they helped save the galaxy. There's a thousand more like them down in that waiting area, and millions more lying dead at the foot of some reaper. We're killing them, Shepard. They're all just… dying. Some physically. Some come home and they're just empty, hollowed out inside. I don't… how do you cope with that?"
Garrus pulled his glass up to take another drink but paused before the liquid touched his lips, his nose twitching slightly. Elizabeth watched with intense concern as Garrus' pupils dilated, his glass dropped onto the counter and spilling before he pushed himself away, jumping back a meter before bolting towards the door.
Elizabeth threw a small reassuring hand at the bartender before following Garrus, the Turians' body responding to stress by preparing for primordial combat, his strides longer and stronger, even Shepard's enhanced spring insufficient to catch up to him. By the time she left the door she found him leaning on the railing that over-looked the rest of the citadel, his eyes closed, taking deep breaths in through his nose of the filtered air. Shepard stopped running three meters away, approaching slowly and quietly, eventually coming to Garrus' right side, leaning against the railing next to him and looking out onto the wards beneath them. After a few moments, Garrus spoke, softly, his voice clearly embarrassed, though no less distressed.
"Alcohol in my drink, smelled too much like the antiseptic. I… I had to get out of there. Fresh air."
Elizabeth nodded as she listened, moving closer to Garrus. She placed her left arm around his hip, pulling him closer to her as he placed his right arm over her shoulder, gripping her tightly, almost desperately. Shepard breathed deeply, absorbing the Turian's unique scent while she collected her thoughts, eventually speaking slowly, methodically, each word and syllable carefully considered.
"Gar… I wish there were something I could do to help, something I could say to even just make it a little better. But you and I both know that the only way to help is to win this damned thing. Win it, and earn all the injured soldiers a chance to heal, make sure that our kids don't have to deal with, see, this. That the kids of those broken men and women in the holding docks only know war as a story. And we will. Dammit, if I have to kill every husk and cannibal with my bare hands we will. But until then…"
She grasped his waist tighter to reassure him, the gesture reciprocated by his arm as she felt his arm plate dig into her shoulder, though the mild pain was not unwelcome. Slowly, Shepard continued.
"When I was… when I was on Akuze, after the first day, after my squad was… well… the Alliance finally showed up with a little bit of back-up. Most of them were soldiers, sent to shore up the lines, but there was a medical team with them too. They set up a little field hospital, in the center of the colony, right where the shopping square had been. Eventually, one of the Marines came and took me" Shepard laughed dryly, ghosts dancing in her eyes as bloody hands and broken rifles flashed in front of them. "They had to literally tear me from the wall, I was so… scared, I guess. They finally got me to the medical camp, got me in to see a doctor for some of my wounds. While I was there, I heard, saw… all of them. All of the civilians who had survived were injured, and they had all been brought there. And… god, Gar, I can still hear some of them. I mean, just twelve hours before, their biggest concerns were what they were going to eat for dinner, but now they were… mangled. Destroyed."
Tears began to fall softly down Elizabeth's face as she spoke, her gaze still distant, seeing far past the immediate surroundings into horrors which plagued her almost every night, her hands shaking as adrenaline shot through her body, a tightened grip from Garrus just barely keeping her grounded as she told her story. She laughed, dryly, bitterly, as she brought a hand up to dry her face, the tears coming more steadily, her breaths coming further in gasps and her voice getting softer, lower.
"God, Garrus, I was so dead when they brought me in, it had been thirty hours since the first attack, I was… practically delirious. And then I see all those people, children, elderly, civilians who were never supposed to see that kind of… hell, lying around, injured, not enough pain killer to go around? It broke me. I just collapsed. Right there. They had to carry me over to my rack, I had… I shut down."
By now Elizabeth's breaths were coming in earnest gasps, her voice so soft that even Garrus' superior hearing was struggling to hear her over the ambient noise of the constantly busy station. Tears flowed unabashedly down her face, dripping onto the railing beneath her as she struggled to continue, Garrus rubbing her arm as she brought her left arm up across her body to hold his hand.
"When they finally got me to my rack, I looked to my left and saw this teenage kid. Couldn't have been older than 15, his left arm bandaged, acid by the smell of it. He was one of the more… intact, ones, so he didn't get painkillers, god he looked like he hurt. When I laid down, he looked over at me and just started talking. I'll never forget what he said: 'Don't let this break you. Fight in honor of this, not in spite of it.' I don't know where the hell a 15-year-old gets something like that, but he did. I nodded and he smiled… and then his machine went flat. Within minutes he was… gone."
Elizabeth turned, looking Garrus directly in the eye as she felt the strength return to her voice, the tears slow and passion return, the ghosts retreating before the will she brought to bear on the fight she was in. She took both of his hands in hers, the distance between them small enough for the electric current fo her formidable will and incredible determination to jump from her heart to his through her voice.
"So, Gar, just like he said to me: Don't let it break you. Fight in honor of them. Not in spite of."
Garrus nodded, turning away for a second before bringing his forehead forwards, touching it gently, lovingly to Elizabeth's as she regained control of her breathing. They stayed like that for moments, but it felt like eternities for both of them, the single point of contact so precious, so significant, an anchor in the storm they were weathering. Softly, Garrus began to speak.
"This isn't going to break me, Shepard. They'll be the names on our lips as we beat these bastards back into hell. And… thank-you. I don't say it often, because, well probably because we know how skilled I am at romantic gestures, but I love you Liz. Don't let anybody else know but I need you. So, just… Thank-you."
Elizabeth angled her head forwards her lips coming into soft and equally tender contact with Garrus' face plates, a soft smile playing over both of their faces as she did so, their faces breaking away after a few heartbeats for them to look into each-other's eyes.
"Don't worry, I won't tell."
Garrus laughed, turning to head back into the bar, his good humor returning quickly after Shepard's story. While they did not occur commonly, the occasional bout of depressive hopelessness tore through Garrus rabidly, but quickly. Turian physiology was not pre-disposed to sustained emotional stress: the response to such an unsustainable increase in physical ability to react to whatever ancient threat was inducing such a feeling, and thus the stress disappearing as quickly as the body began recovery from such a near-pyrrhic response. Thus, Garrus' good humor and sarcasm returned quickly, though the undertone of the previous moments remained.
"Hell, Liz, you can tell anybody you want. Just not Wrex. He'd never let me live it down."
"Don't want a Krogan warlord giving you crap for having a girlfriend, Vakarian?"
The two walked through the doors, making their way back to their seats in the upper bar, Shepard nodding slightly at Aria as she passed. The bartender had replaced both of their glasses and smiled delicately at them as they sat down, retreating back to his corner and becoming monumentally interested in the glass he was polishing.
"No, I just don't want to have to follow Turian Honor when he does make a comment."
"Don't tell me you'd have to cut his quad off and feed it to him for insulting my waist or hair or something?"
Garrus chuckled, taking a swig of his drink, his nose twitching slightly but not enough so to cause him to run to the fresh air as previously.
"Now there's an idea. I might just try that anyways."
Elizabeth's laugh chortled out of her throat lightly as she patted the side of Garrus' arm, her head resting softly and momentarily on his shoulder pad. The two took another drink before turning around to watch the Turian and Alliance Marines who were still dancing, Garrus beginning to take bets on who would pass out first. Shepard bet, and lost as usual, but to see the smile on Garrus' face that looked almost like unfiltered mirth, almost like earnest happiness, she would lose any bet she had to.
Author's Comments
Well, that got a little feels-y, so sorry for that. Arguably not the most feels I've yet written, but I really wanted to keep playing around with the idea of how Shepard and Garrus deal with the emotional drain of the war, and how they do so together. I'm still not certain how well I've nailed down Garrus' voice, especially during more earnest moments. His sarcasm is pretty easy, but his more emotional dialogue seems harder to master. So, if you think I'm doing poorly or well, let me know, I LOVE feedback, both positive and negative (comments especially are appreciated).
Again, this had to be done separate to her play-through, so there's not a whole lot of plot going on here. I think my game is working now, though, so that should change next chapter. And sorry for the wait, those of you who do not follow me on tumblr (which you should: ) haven't heard: I have been running a new student orientation for the past week until Saturday, and then moving into my new apartment from Saturday to today, so there has been little-no time for writing. But, I'm all settled in, and will hopefully be back on track.
Either way, enjoy, and let me know what you think!
SotS