He sat out the next few missions as she rotated out her crew randomly. If Garrus were to guess, he would say that Shepard was trying to find a group as solid as the ones she had on the SR-1. He would feel a tiny bit of pride at her difficulty replacing him if he weren't so sorrowful at her needing to. She recruited the convict, Jack, a violent woman who reminded him of Weaver, if Weaver had been a biotic powerhouse. Just as much baggage, too.
A message lit up his omnitool and he almost broke into a grin until he saw that the message was not from Shepard, but from one of his most trusted contacts on Omega. A response to a message he'd sent the week prior. 'S. is alive. Left Omega. Emptied stores and bank account. Somewhere in Citadel space. Be safe. -M.'
He ground his teeth, clenching his eyes shut at the sudden wave of fury that rolled through his body. Sidonis, the name meant betrayal in his soul. Ten men dead. TEN of his men dead, because of that damned traitor. His earlier misgivings now justified, Garrus felt remorse at not trusting his instincts. Oh, when he found Sidonis, the things he would show him, what dark wonders he would work on that pathetic turian. His breath hissed out from between his teeth. Painfully slowly he typed out a response, instructing the word to spread out through his information network, to keep him updated. He was no shadow broker but he knew how to get results. Oh yes he did.
He spent some time dreaming up inventive ways to kill Sidonis while he tackled the calibrations on the Normandy's guns. It was tedious work and he was able to put it on the back burner of his mind, freeing the majority of his cognitive processes for thoughts of revenge.
In fact, revenge was the only thing on his mind in the days that followed. It had even suspended his Shepard obsession for the time being. He spent even less time in the common areas of the ship, returning to the routine he'd perfected on Omega. Wake, shower, eat, check his weapon, put on his armor, do a bit of work vis a vis the cannon, then get royally pissed until he could silence his brain with blessed drunken oblivion. Rinse, repeat.
Crewmembers stopped talking to him during his occasional forays out into the bright world outside of the battery, he ate his increasingly fewer meals alone, even EDI let him be. He felt like a cancer rotting away the heart of the ship and so, subconsciously, he starting cutting himself off from everything around him, trying to spare them the taint he was sure he was spreading.
He ran up the stairs, past the fallen bodies, tried not to see that some of them weren't whole any more, ripped apart by ordinance. He got to the top flight just as Sensat breathed his last shuddering breath, heard a moan to his right. A heartbeat and he was at the side of the last surviving member of his troupe. Only it wasn't Ripper looking up at him kindly, but Shepard. He pulled her into a tight embrace.
"Nonononono..."He breathed, he ran his hands through her long hair, pushing it gently out of her face, "I can't bear it-this isn't how it happened. Please don't let this be how it happened."
"You always were too hard on yourself," her voice was weak, Garrus keened when her pulse started to falter.
Over her cold body, he crouched, not angry or happy as he'd been in the true memory, but bereft, "Why did you leave me? You promised, you promised.."
Hot and cold shivers ran through his body as he slowly awoke. That was by far the unkindest nightmare to date, he trembled at the power she still had over him. He looked at the chronometer on his omnitool. He'd only slept for two hours. Groggily, he sat up. The drink was wearing off faster and faster, he must be building a tolerance. Maybe it was time to switch to something harder, Chakwas was sure to have some sedatives in the medbay. No, he might have fallen far but not far enough to resort to thievery, not yet anyway.
There was nothing for it, he decided, getting up to start his routine. Soon enough he was back in the battery, pecking at the console of the main guns. He left his armor off because it was early and there was little to no chance of any of the crew walking in on him. The black underarmor was comfortable enough. He found himself lapsing for long periods of time just standing there, staring into space. He didn't even hear the doors of the battery slide open. Finally, the pressure of another presence in his personal space made him look around. Wincing, he dragged his eyes back up front, "Shepard. Need me for something?"
He heard the rustle of fabric as she settled herself against a wall, "Have you got a minute?"
"...Sure. Just checking the weapon systems. Never can be too careful." He focused a steady gaze on her, trying to figure out what she was doing here. She'd kicked him off her team, hadn't she? He watched her narrowly as she took a seat on a crate adjacent to him, "I thought I'd seen every weapon system in the galaxy in our fight against Saren. Mercenary work showed me otherwise.
"And now Cerberus-" He stressed the organization's name, almost enjoying watching her wince. Spirits, what was wrong with me, I'm trying to hurt her, "rebuilds the Normandy with a few upgrades to boot. I wish we'd joined up with them sooner."
She looks anywhere but at him, "We haven't joined Cerberus. They're funding our mission. That's all."
He blinked at her slowly, saying almost sarcastically, his tone oily, "Relax, Shepard. Just a figure of speech."
He turned back to the monitors, hoping that she'd leave, dreading that she'd leave. He wasn't prepared for the soft arms that wrapped around his waist or the cheek that pressed against his shoulderblades. He started shaking, self loathing tore through him. This isn't right, she doesn't know how badly he'd dishonored her memory. "Garrus, I-"
Bitterness welled up in him as he spun and thrust her against the wall, pinning her there with his body. He searched her face for any sign, any hint of the calculating manipulation he knew only so well that she was capable of, "Were you about to say you missed me? Because from where I'm standing, the whole damn galaxy missed you."
She bit her lip, "I didn't plan on dying-"
"Oh, the great Commander Shepard that planned everything to the minutest detail, who was always leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us, didn't plan on the one thing, the only statistically likely thing that might happen?" His voice was low, menacing. She tried to push him away with her hands, he trapped them in a vice like grip above her head. "We were so unprepared, Jane. How could you do that to us? You didn't miss us. You were dead.
"So what do you want from me now, Jane?," He said her name viciously, feeling a tremor run through her body. Cruelly, he thrust his thigh between hers, pressing on the molten core of her, lifted one of her leg high up onto his hip. He was sickened by the desire coiling low in his gut, "Is this what you wanted?"
She turned her burning face from him, tears falling onto her shoulder. His eyes unfocused and saw the splash of blue blood on the wall behind her, the deep scratches from his own talons marring the smooth metal surface. Images from his nightmare came back to haunt him, the cage, the shadows, the fingers. Spirits take me, I am a monster.
He sagged to his knees then, a whimper falling like a sigh from his throat. Yep. Rock bottom, he'd found it. Should have known that Shepard would find the way. He kneeled before her, like a penitent at mass. But the last thing he wanted was reprieve. The airlock was sounding really good right now. No muss, no fuss. Cleanup would be a snap. His few possessions could follow him into the void. No one would miss a failure like him. What could he say to her now? Now that he's shown her that he was capable of inflicting horrors on her.
Her hands on his shoulders, but he daren't look up. Couldn't even if he wanted to, his body felt like it was made of stone. She dropped to her knees in front of him, he quailed at the wrongness of it, "Garrus...talk to me. Just talk to me. Please."
Her tone of desperate pleading made him look at her finally, her face was aglow with emotion. As bare as he'd ever seen it. There was fear and hurt and relief swimming around in there, in those eyes he'd dreamt of on so many lonely nights. The words came out haltingly at first, then as deluge of self recrimination. She stayed silent, not pushing him at all, not using her talent for kind interrogation, or Short-range Ballistic Listening, as he'd jokingly called it in happier times.
He told her about those days on the Citadel after she'd left, then the terrible crimes committed against her memory after she'd died. How everyone had drifted apart. How, alone, he'd wandered to Omega. Found purpose of a sort, that quickly turned to bitterness when he'd been shown how ineffective he was. The people he'd gathered around him, their stories, and how he hadn't loved them enough, and then they were dead and it was too late. The madness of those last few hours before she'd shown up, the madness after.
They'd shifted around while he'd been talking so that she was sitting against a wall and he was sitting between her legs, his back to her front, his fringe resting on one of her strong shoulders. Her arms were draped across his chest, one slim hand clasping the other wrist. He leaned on her limply, emotionally spent. She gently removed his visor and ran a finger along the names of those dead men and women. "Monteague, Meirin, Sensat, Weaver, Grundan Krul, Butler, Erash, Vortash,-"
"-Melanis, Ripper." He finished the litany, those names as familiar and close to him now as his own. He knew from her silence that she was contemplating the scratched out name, it's features viciously removed with deep gouges.
"And this one?" She finally asked, holding her fingertip under it.
"Sidonis. A turian. He drew me away before the mercs attacked my squad, then he disappeared." Garrus took a deep breath, too mentally exhausted to even get angry at the traitorous bastard. "Everyone in my crew is dead, except me. And it's because I didn't see it coming."
Shepard replaced the visor over his eye, adjusting it perfectly. He shouldn't feel surprised that she knew to do this, but he is and he experienced a grateful flush under his plates. "What happened, exactly?"
He idly rested his arm on her knee while he gestured with his other hand, "Sidonis asked me to meet a contact of his, made it sound too good to pass up. When I got to the meeting point, no one was there. Then I got pinged, told me to meet the squad at the hideout, but when I got there, all but two of my team were dead. And they didn't last long."
He left it at that, better to leave off descriptions of the gore he'd witnessed. Let the dead rest.
"I'm guessing that Sidonis didn't show up dead later as the first casualty."
"I put out feelers with some old contacts of mine. He booked transport off Omega just before the attack. He also cleared out his private accounts before he left. Just sold us out and ran."
"Do you know where Sidonis is now?" This woman knew him too well. Of course he was on the trail, and getting closer with every passing minute.
"I lost my whole team. Except for Sidonis. Someday, I'll find him and...correct that." He couldn't keep his eyes open any more. The sleep that eluded him earlier seemed to want to shanghai him now. Something occurred to him then, something important, he shook off the spell of sleep, "Shepard-"
"Mmmm?" She sounded as tired as he, and equally unwilling to move.
"I...need to ask you something. It's important...and if you say it, then I can believe it. If it's you saying it."
"Yes, Garrus?" There was a smile in her tone.
"Are you...really here? Really alive?" He waited breathlessly, tense.
"Yes, Garrus. I'm here, I'm alive." It came out a little sad, and her arms tightened around his chest momentarily, before going slack as she drifted into sleep.
"Good...cuz I wasn't so sure...before." He mumbled before following her, always following her. Only this time she led him to a place that was as dreamless as it was deep.