Lina had been flipping through the articles on the Alliance News Network extranet site, trying to pass the free time she had between procrastinating doing paperwork and sleep. She was sitting cross-legged on the lounge chair in her quarters, engrossed in one particularly fascinating piece of gossip:
Asari matriarch Goneril Medea of Sanves is claiming that the father of her oldest daughter is the famous Earth playwright William Shakespeare. Medea released a statement saying that she spent time on Earth in her late maiden years, acting as a muse to the bard and inspiring his language and writing style.
"William was a wonderful, honest, open-minded man," Medea told the Citadel News Network earlier this week. "I met him in 1588, after visiting Earth on a dare, and spent nearly five years returning in secret to visit him."
William Shakespeare had a great influence on the Common language (then known as English.) Of all the words within the Common language, roughly 2300 of them appeared for the first time in Shakespeare's works, and roughly 800 of those are still in use today.
Medea's only daughter, matron Sycorax Medea, is a director in Thessia's famous travelling play company Voice of the Blue. When asked to verify her mothers claims, the matron had no comment.
As she read, Shepard ran her tongue over her teeth and blanched slightly at the feeling of them. She set down the datapad and hopped over the steps, determined to rid her mouth of the unclean feeling lingering in it.
She watched herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth with a frivolousness she had yet to experience in any other form of personal hygiene. The teeth Cerberus had set into her jaw felt… wrong. They were too white, too straight, as she suspected that none of them were original. It felt wrong to have even the least bit of residue stuck to them. She spat.
Curious, she pulled back one side of her mouth with her toothbrush and checked the flat top of her bottom left molar, a tooth she knew for a fact had a metallic filling from the shoddy dentistry she'd received from a free clinic in her teen years.
It was a pearly off-white.
Yup. All of them new.
She spat again and went through her mouth once more before finishing off with a dash of mouthwash.
It had been a long-ass day, running around Illium for what felt like weeks, and they still had a 16 hour flight to the Citadel. She felt like she was in some sort of life-sized game of scavenger hunt- let's see who can run across the galaxy and collect more mismatched crew members. Really, she wanted nothing more than to watch a mindless vid and sleep. She filled a glass with water from the tap and walked back into the living area, set to search for something to watch until she got tired.
The door buzzed.
"EDI, who is it?" she called, instinctively glancing up to the console by the door. She still wasn't entirely used to speaking directly to her ship.
It's a computer, she reminded herself, you don't need to look at it when you speak.
"Officer Vakarian is outside," the AI responded.
Christ that was a convincing voice, Shepard shuddered.
"Let him in," she called again, setting her water down on the coffee table.
/-/
There was dirt on the floor in the loft, just before the door to the Commander's private quarters, and Garrus spent a few minutes kicking at it softly before he finally pressed the call button. He did it quickly, with an almost involuntary speed, not giving himself the chance to change his mind partway through.
This was not a talk he was looking forward to having.
Damn your eyes, Vakarian! He chided himself. You're thirty-fou… over… almost… about… thirty-something years old, you are past the point in your life where you avoid the uncomfortable conversations!
Shepard had asked him to come up days ago, if he wasn't too tired. Of course he had been, post-shift, he shuffled himself back to bed and slept for the next twelve hours until shift started again, barely giving himself time for proper hygiene and nutrition. And since then, well, when she'd come into the main battery he'd been pretty busy, partly with calibrating the weapons, partly with trying to find the right words to tell her exactly what he needed to say.
And now it was too late to leave. The door controls changed from red to green and, with further involuntary quickness, he opened them and stepped inside.
And damn, was this room huge.
He almost didn't notice Shepard curled on a swivel chair with a glass of water and the day's news. She turned and waved him over with the hand holding a datapad.
"Hey there," she called as he approached. "Aren't you supposed to be on duty?"
"I believe approaching my commanding officer about professional matters is considered to be an appropriate on-duty activity," he replied with an informal air, then jerked his thumb back toward the door. "I'm running some diagnostic scans and had a few minutes. Is it all right?"
She nodded and motioned for him to sit. He did.
"Nice room," he said, pushing on the couch cushions with his fist. "I've barely got space to stand in my quarters."
"It's good to be king," she replied with a smirk and tossed the datapad on the coffee table. "So, what did you want to see me about?"
He opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted.
"Other than to tell me why you've been avoiding me."
He frowned, furrowing an eye ridge.
"I haven't really been avoiding you," he reasoned.
"You haven't spoken to me outside of shift hours," she said. "Or inside of shift hours, you keep talking about those weapons-"
"Those systems are a mess," he argued. "For all the money they've pumped into this ship, someone clearly overlooked proper weapons calibrating-"
"Calibrate my ass, Garrus, I want to talk," she cut him off.
"You want to talk? All right, let's talk," he started again. "I heard you were dead. I spent the next two years thinking you were dead, talking to everyone I knew about how you were dead, and next thing I know you're pulling me off of that bridge on Omega, clearly alive."
Shepard gave him a shrug that said, 'My timing is perfect.'
"You don't-" he sighed. "I'm having a hard time dealing with this, all right? You were completely gone, and now you're not. And Cerberus is involved and from what I remember they were some of the bad guys, Shepard. How many of their bases did we take down on the SR-1? And this is making me think that it's all some elaborate ruse or maybe I'm losing my mind or-" a frustrated groan came from him. "I don't really know what to believe-"
Shepard gave an exaggerated eye roll and held up a hand.
"Okay, you need to shut your goddamn mouth right now," she interjected.
He glanced over, perturbed.
"You need to shut up and listen to me: this is exactly what I don't need right now. I got enough of the distrust and suspicion from Tali and Kaidan and even Anderson for Christ's sake, and I do not need it from you. I know full well that I died. I know full well that we fought Cerberus in the past, I lost men to them, and I know exactly how evil they are, so believe me when I say that no one is having more trouble dealing with this than me.
"What I do need is for you to be Garrus fucking Vakarian. I need you to say 'all right, we'll have some drinks and figure this out when we're sober.' I need you to realize that I need my best friend."
Shepard stopped suddenly and fiddled with the lampshade over her head.
"This isn't us," she said. "If you're going to tell me that you can't get past this, I'm going to ask you to leave, because the Garrus I remember wouldn't question me. But if you can understand that I can't give you all of the answers right away, I'd appreciate it if you'd just stand with me for a bit."
Garrus paused, watching her for a bit. Then his shoulders fell a bit and he nodded.
"All right," he said, suddenly unable to conjure the proper words. "All right," he repeated.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed. She squeezed back.
And there was a shift. The uncertainty that had shrouded their reunion suddenly lifted, revealing the person he remembered from years before: the stubborn, ruthless commanding officer he respected mixed with the brash, hostile girl he loved, despite her misgivings. Revealing that part inside him that he forgot existed, the part that let him feel this way about a person.
"So, would you like a beer?" he asked, callously referring to her argument.
"No, I just brushed my teeth," she responded.
"Good," he grabbed her glass of water. "I don't think it would do much for my stomach."
"Painkillers?" she asked.
"Yeah," he replied, taking a sip of her water. He paused. He felt a kind of hardness in his stomach unrelated to the powerful painkillers. He swallowed. "I'm sorry."
"Me too," she leaned her chin on her hand, no hesitation in her voice. "I kind of snapped on you."
"I wasn't thinking-"
"No it's-" she stopped herself and laughed. She felt that they could go on like that for hours. "Hey, before you came in I was going to watch a bad action movie, want to join me?"
He scratched his neck beneath his armor.
"Sorry, but, I'm still technically on duty, and ah," he chuckled. "My boss is a bit of a hardass, so…"
"I get it," she waved her hand at him. "Go. Calibrate! Make me proud."
Despite her exhaustion she followed him to the door, leaning in the frame as he turned to bid her a good night. She pushed her hair back, more of an unintentional act than to get it out of her face, and smiled at him.
The look on her face made him do a double take. He shook his head and chuckled, stepping a bit closer.
"I recognize that look."
"What?" she asked innocently.
"Don't try to think you can manipulate me!"
"I'm not-" she began, then rolled her eyes. "You know that I don't-"
"Trying to use your feminine wiles on me…" he grumbled, resulting in several punches to the arm and shoulder from Lina.
"Shut up, just shut your mouth," she laughed out between punches. "I'm not twenty-two anymore, just shut up. Go back to work. Asshole."
Garrus slapped her hands away and chuckled as he entered the elevator. Shepard, shaking her head, leaned against the door frame to watch him leave.
"Throw you out the airlock," she mumbled with a smirk on her face. When the elevator door shut she breathed a sigh of relief, turning her back to EDI's station, and punched in the commands on the door panel, setting it to 'do not disturb.'
With that nonsense out of the way, the time had come, truly, to focus on her mission.