He drifted in limbo, for once his dreams were blissfully absent of her presence. He was in Afterlife, sharing a drink with his team. They'd all come out to congratulate him, but he couldn't quite remember what for. They were making jokes at Butler's expense, the man didn't have a head anymore and he was trying to tell a story with just his hands. Garrus draped his arm companionably across Sensat's shoulders as the salarian tried to put his eye back in. He laughed with them easily, like his worries and fears had dissipated, well, maybe they had. Maybe he was dead, maybe this is the afterlife. Ha, he laughed at his own joke. Some kind of causal nexus, a waystation for souls that just happened to share the name of a bar on the mortal side of the great divide. Garrus looked around, And the same interior designer.
Hey, guys, sorry I got you all killed. He thought at them, knowing that in this place that it would be heard. They turned to him, beaming smiles from all corners, S'alright, Garrus. Shit happens. It wasn't you.
He watched Meirin pull a fresh beer from Grundan Kul's open body cavity, the two men locked in a heated debate over guns. Looked on as Weaver helped sew Ripper's arm back on. This would be morbid if it wasn't so very surreal.
Wait, if he was dead, then where was Shepard? He looked for her at the bar, watching for that telltale flash of red hair. He had to find her, he had stories to tell her, so many stories and maybe beg for her forgiveness for all the things he'd done to her, real and imaginary. He excused himself from the party and strolled around the bar looking for her, getting worried when he had no luck in his search. No, she had to be here, somewhere. The powers that ran the joint wouldn't be so cruel as to keep her from him even in death, would they?
Of course they would, when have they ever granted you peace or happiness, his inner cynic prodded him. For the first time in this place, Garrus felt pain. In his chest. Where a beating heart used to be.
He denied that voice, When they gave me Shepard.
And don't you just hate them for giving you such a wonder and then so callously ripping it away. He tried to shut the words out, but they were inside his head, how do you silence your thoughts? There was no sound to block with hands over ears, no tongue to rip out. The words harangued him as he was filled with panic, he started running through the jumbled shadows of the bar, calling her name.
"-Shepard-" He woke with a start, vision blurry. Nothing new, but this didn't feel like a hangover. He was remarkably lucid. Hands pushed him back down onto some kind of narrow bed, he reached up to feel his visor, its familiar pressure absent. Almost panicked when his hands met nothing. Something was pressed into his palm, ah, his visor. He relaxed instantly, thumb rubbing over the etched names lovingly, content now that he knew he hadn't lost it.
Slowly, memories started to intrude on his waking mind. Last thing he recalled was a rocket zipping almost lazily toward his head in a dingy apartment with ten corpses in it. Then brightness, heat, a much loved voice calling his name, and a remarkable lack of agony. That is, until someone tried to move him, then the torment made him black out.
Something was wrong with his face, a stiffness accompanied by an echo of the pain in his memory. He couldn't bring himself to touch it, convinced that half his head was missing. He felt a touch of chagrin that his team didn't tell him that he was missing parts of his face, the type of chagrin that usually followed an observation that his fly was down.
He heard voices chatting quietly nearby.
"No, no. Full functionality. Must keep bandages on for a time. Shouldn't interfere with...mission." That was a salarian if he ever heard one. Words seemed to crowd out of that mouth like a bunched up queue of panicked people leaving a burning building.
"Well, his life signs are stable, for now. The Commander will be most pleased." He must have made some noise, because he didn't realize his eyes had shot open until two faces swam into view.
"Ah, awake. Aware. Pupils dilating, normal. Cybernetics functioning...Success." He focused on the small white clothed figure. It was grinning almost hideously at him in self satisfaction. It, no he, held a hand out magnanimously, "Mordin Solus."
The...plague doctor. On Omega...was he still on Omega? Didn't have the ground in smell of piss and shit like the station. Garrus sat up suddenly, much to the two doctors' dismay. He waved away their protests while he took a good look around. It was a medbay, the hum in the decks seemed to indicate that they were on a ship, in motion. He rasped out, "I've...heard of you."
"And I you. Always pleased to meet a fellow philanthropist." The salarian turned away then, repeating under his breath, amusedly, "Hmmm, fellow philanthropist." He abruptly left, the door sliding closed behind him.
Garrus peered around, there was something eerily familiar about this place. He looked out of the windows of the medbay into a large galley. He couldn't quite make his mind put two and two together until a tap on his shoulder made him turn around and stare into a face that suddenly seemed to belong here and only here. "Chakwas."
"Officer Vakarian." Her voice pulled at his memories and he clenched his mandibles, or mandible anyway since the right one didn't seem to want to cooperate, to stem the flow of unwanted images. Her face smiled kindly at him, "Need a drink?"
Oh Spirits, yes. He dropped his head into the palm of his left hand and she put a glass of amber liquid in his right. He threw back the turian brandy in one go and she silently refilled his glass. He sighed, feeling a little more grounded as the alcohol burned a path into his stomach. He waited until he could feel the warmth spreading through his guts before looking at the human doctor again. "This is the...Normandy."
"Yes." She looked at him, archly, over the rim of her glass, just like she had so very long ago.
"It's different...but the...same." He was struggling to find words for what he meant, looking for answers in the bottom of the glass like a fortune teller divining tea leaves. "You...finally bought the good stuff."
"Hmmm. Good to see you haven't lost your sense of humor, Garrus." She was wrong, he'd lost it all, why else would he be on this ghost ship with the noble dead. It smacked of that ghost story the humans tell, about some ship called the Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail the ocean of stars forever. He wondered if he had somehow jumped ship out of his personal afterlife into Shepard's. It made an appalling sort of sense that this would be where her higher powers would send her.
He suddenly felt the overwhelming need to see her, the bottom dropped out of his hard won rationality. Shepard was here, Shepard was always here, the Normandy was part of her. He lunged to his feet, then looked down at his nakedness. "Uh-where's my armor?"
Chakwas gestured to the pile of his hardsuit on one of the other beds. She watched him with kind and pitying eyes as he slapped on his armor. He shut it out, knowing that he didn't deserver either. He paused when he got to his chestpiece, ran his hands over the hole in the collar of it, char coming away on his fingertips. "It's looking a little worse for wear."
He ignored this as he strapped it on, breathing a sigh of relief when the last seal was in place. More than physically, it was a barrier between him and this inexplicable happenstance. He looked at her askance, "The Commander-?"
Chakwas swiveled her chair so she was facing her monitors, saying offhandedly, "Take the lift up to CIC. She's in the conference room directly aft of the galaxy map."
He scrambled out with unseemly haste, but slowed quickly as each step became an agony of indecision. Thoughts roiled around in his head as he stared dazedly around at this place that seemed so...damned familiar, yet was changed in almost every regard. For one it seemed larger, or maybe he was smaller. Like poor Alice when confronted with a bottle labeled, 'drink me'. That made him think of Ashley, was she around here, too? He grimaced, both hoping and fearing that it was so.
He squinted on the insignia on the uniform of a passing crewmember. Cerberus? Was this Shepard's version of hell? Surely, she didn't deserve to be cast into the inferno, no god could be so cruel.
Gods are cruel, whispered his mind.
He was still contemplating what he could possiblly say to her when he came upon the door to the conference room Chakwas asserted was indeed where a dead woman could be found. Words drifted to him from behind that door, hers and one other. He palmed the lock and waited in terror.
"-full functionality. But-" Both humans looked up at him. But he only had eyes for one, and he couldn't drag them away from her.
Garrus heard himself say, "Shepard."
The dark skinned male made a sort of throaty chortle, "Tough son of a bitch...didn't think he'd be up yet."
His gaze was full of her face, watching the tentative hope there flickering like a candle in the rain. Felt more shame when it died, unanswered. He rubbed his neck, deflecting any questions with a quip, "Nobody would give a mirror. How bad is it?"
She rolled her weight back onto one heel, hip cocked in a way that was poignantly familiar, "Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Just slap some face paint on there and no one'll even notice."
A hysterical little laugh bubbled out of him, "Ugh, don't make me laugh. My face is barely holding together as it is. Some women find facial scars attractive. Mind you, most of those women are krogan."
He watched the man in the Cerberus uniform snap Shepard an Alliance salute, and walk by him to the exit. Listened for the door to close, suddenly aware that he was now alone in this room with a ghost. He didn't know if he was glad or horrified. He forced himself not to bolt as she walked closer to him, staying just out of reach. Always just out of reach. His memories were starting to jumble again as he tried to reconcile the Shepard before him and the Shepard in his mind's eye.
Her hair was much longer, but it was the same color it always was, the brilliant color of flame. He wondered if it still smelled the same. Her eyes were the same pools of green flecked with gold that they were, only with worrisome orange lights at the back that reminded him of the way predator's eyes caught the light in the dark. Most troubling were the scars across her cheeks, no, not scars because they were open, not weeping blood but showing circuitry and those selfsame lights under the skin. He felt her grow troubled under his regard and phantom or no, he just stopped himself from touching her, "Frankly, I'm more worried about you. Cerberus?"
"That's why I'm glad you're here, Garrus." She was so close, his control was slipping, he was really quite terrified that she'd see the lie he was making of himself. Pretending to stand strong in her presence, when all he wanted to do was fall at her feet and grovel, begging forgiveness. She looked at him, her voice dropping just a little, "If I'm walking into hell, I want someone I trust at my side."
He looked at her for a time, willing himself to be what she needed him to be, trying to hold it together long enough, to keep the pathetic hope out of his voice, "You do realize that this has me walking into hell, too...Just like old times."
He couldn't quite hide the naked longing in his tone and she shot him a pained smile.
He shook his head free of disquieting thoughts for now. If he was cursed to spend eternity in Shepard's private hell, he would do so gladly if it meant being near her again, "I'm fit for duty whenever you...need me, Shepard. I'll settle in and see what I can do with the forward batteries."
Garrus all but fled through the doors, unable to look at her any more without collapsing.