Warning: Gore, Child Loss Seriously - there are a few elements here that are very dark. Please read carefully and if you need to skip this chapter, there will be mentions later in the story that hints at this chapter without the gory details. I just wanted to warn you all - because, well I did this to him.

"I never had parents," his voice was low, a whisper, Garrus had to strain to hear it, but in the ruins of his house with only the dead lying in the shadows – it was easier. Easier than it should be because Krul – spirits he was just a boy – was nearly mouthing the words instead of saying them out loud.

Krul had sunk lower against the wall beside him and his short, sharp, pained breathes were barely moving his chest now. Garrus moved to him, his hands coming to grab Krul's shoulders, and he slowly moved him from his position as Garrus shifted to sit beside him. He helped him relax down onto his back and then pulled him halfway into his lap, letting his shoulder blades rest just below his carapace. It was an intimate hold, not entirely comfortable so he lifted one knee to aide in securing the younger man in his arms.

Krul didn't fight it. He had always shied away from being touched – Garrus had never known why, but the man's childhood had not been easy. He wanted to know everything about him now, in this moment, he realized he should have asked. He should have done a better job to figure him out and not given him so much fucking time to 'be young' and, Garrus sighed, he didn't know.

"I thought," Krul said, gasping in pain but no noise followed his lips, "Maybe they died, you know? Didn't…choose…"

"Krul," Garrus felt himself panic at the pain on the boy's face. It was beyond the physical ailments of his broken body. It was more than large split that had severed the boy's back and had his lower half damn near into a separate piece…it was fear. Fear and knowing. Knowing that this was it. This was the moment, "I chose you," he said, looking into the young turian's glazed gaze.

"Dumb," was the reply and just a sliver of the cocky ass that Krul played at being surfaced, he blinked and narrowed his gaze focusing up at Garrus, "I…want Christmas…"

"We…we can have Christmas again," he assured him and found his hand coming up to grip Krul's cheek, hard, too hard probably – but he needed him to feel him. He to focus, "I am proud of you, proud you were here with us. Thankful to have you."

Softness and youth spread out along the sharp features Krul had. It was only then in the orange embers glittering their hue on the remnants of this home that Garrus noticed how tightly he had held himself. How protected as if he was never truly at peace, one foot out the door ready to run. But he looked so soft now. He never thought he would think of any part of a turian as soft or delicate, but Krul seemed so little all of a sudden. "Gar…"

His name never came to completion as the whisper slid off into the soft gasps that separated the living and the dead.

His body tried in vain to keep him anchored, to right itself, but after a single moment that Garrus feared would never end – Krul stilled and sagged heavy against his chest as he met death.

Garrus stared in his eyes, unfocused and lifeless, he looked over his face – unmarked, how many times had he thought the unmarked to be devils of nature? How many times did he see the unmarked and immediately believed them evil or criminals? The unmarked were still turian and he was still turian and they were all the same and fuck – why had he ever assumed, assumed that they were…what? Bad? He slammed his head back against the wall. Pain followed the movement as his fringe bounced off the hardness of it. He closed his eyes, but it didn't help.

He had felt pain once. In another life. Losing her. Losing his home. He had thought that was pain. He had thought that he would never recover from it. But that wasn't pain. Not really. That was loss. That was a planned future being snuffed away. That was fear and survival sickness. Loss. Grief. Yes. But it wasn't pain.

This. He opened his eyes and looked down to the boy in his arms. This….this was pain. This was choking on your own insides pain. Garrus sucked in a sharp breath, and he felt like his throat was full of glass. Like his eyes were being pressed from the inside out and upward into his skull. He felt this loss down to his bones and plates and further still into his blood.

It slithered and sliced and destroyed something inside of him that couldn't be healed and would never be okay.

His hand fell from Krul's cheek, and he wrapped his arms around him, pulling him up and to cling to him desperately. A flutter of a moment caught him where he was glad that Krul couldn't feel the pain that may have been associated with his hold, and then guilt slamming the thought away because physical pain was better than death, pain was better. Krul could deal with pain – he should be alive to do so. Garrus could find a way to fix pain. He could shoulder it for him and then he could be there to help him through it. He could be steady in the storm while the young man healed and became whole and even if never fully whole, he would be there to tell him that that he was enough. Fuck. Fuck pain was better.

A gut wrenching mewl fell from him acidic and searing in his throat.

And for the first time he realized that though he had no tears, he had body shaking sobs. They slammed against his muscles as he shook violently, his mandibles flared as his subvocal rattled. Again and again, it came. Sweeping through the room, outward and onward and brushed against the bodies that laid where they had been standing. Or sitting.

He had seen Melenis' body in the kitchen, the scattered broken pieces of ceramic around him suggesting he had been putting dishes away. The careful placement important to the volus because each of them had a unique dish he liked to prepare, and he didn't want to serve it on the wrong plate. Whose day was it? It didn't matter now, Garrus thought. None of it did.

It was obvious by the state of the room that it had been a rocket that destroyed the lower floor.

Butler who was splayed on the couch like he was sleeping. Because he had been sleeping, hadn't he? Book resting under his hand, thumb still keeping his place. Half his body was burned now – his biotic implant had been affected by the blast; he would have died not knowing anything had happened at least. Blinding pain? No – he hoped not. Just gone.

Where were the others? He shook as he tried to see more. Where were Ripper and Sensat? Dead. That's right – outside. They had gone down fighting at least. One in armor the other in what looked like lounge pants – wet hair. Sensat had been in the shower before they came. Grabbed nothing bet his pistol. Foolish man. He wasn't the stronger fighter. Ripper was. He had seen them go down. He had watched Ripper turn just in time to watch the bullets tear into Sensat – Garrus hadn't been able to move faster to help. But he recognized the determination in Ripper's eyes as he turned and started firing. He knew it before he died. He had lost his husband and he was going to take as many as he could to hell with him as he followed.

"I have to let you go for a moment," Garrus said to Krul. Looking down at him, "I need to see if…I need to check on the others, okay?" He let his leg fall gently back down, cradling the boy to his chest as he slowly shifted out from under him. He placed him as carefully as he could on the floor, "I'll be back, I …I …I'll be right back." He promised him.

When he pulled himself up to the second floor, using the broken stairs carefully so he didn't break anything or jostle the railing – he straightened and moved past the small foyer towards the bedrooms. Erash had been here. He was never here. The salarian rarely used the base as a place to crash, but he had been injured already and they had needed to treat him before he went back to his assignment.

Garrus opened the first door and cringed inward when he saw the salarian on the bed. Wounds still wrapped and blanket still laying over his legs, but his top half was angled oddly – he had not been asleep. The three dead mercs in the room had various burns and bullet holes in them was the glaring proof that even though wounded and caught unaware – the former STG died as a solider would have wanted. Would have wanted. The platitudes he was telling himself. He stepped over one of the bodies and walked to Erash, fixing his top half to lay back down against the bed.

The next room had no door anymore and the wall separating it to the hallway looked bowed outward, when he walked into it, he looked around to see the walls were half scorched almost from knee down, memories of flames danced against the furniture that was shifted outward and thrown against the perimeter. He looked further and recoiled, stumbling back and into the hallway before turning to the side and retching. No. No. No. No. He couldn't go back in there. He wouldn't. He couldn't. Garrus straightened and his body shook and then he felt his entire body freeze when he heard the small, tiny voice that came from within the room.

Garrus strained to hear it again and snapped even straighter when he did, "…Weaver, I'm coming, please don't leave me."

He moved back through the doorway and forced himself to look into the room again. The body, if that's what one could call it, was laying with its back to the ceiling. No legs, no arms all burned skin and leaking insides. From what Garrus could figure – it was a grenade that did this. Weaver had jumped on it to save…he swept his eyes away looking for the asari. And there she was. He hadn't seen her before because of the…he swallowed the nausea and stepped to her, she had one hand clasped low on her abdomen and the other she was clawing at the ground as if she were trying to get to the krogan.

"Mierin," he said gently as he came to her. She looked up at him with desperate amber eyes. "I got you; I got you," Garrus tried to turn her off of her side and onto her back and she resisted with a jerk of her shoulder.

"No," she hissed at him, "I need to get to him, please, please Garrus," tears soaked her eyes, but they did not fall. Her face set in indignation as if daring him to not help.

He had never had true meaningful conversation with her since they had recruited the two of them. They spoke little other than tactics and pleasantries. He realized he had done himself a disservice. Again, he felt the pang of regret. He could have and should have been better. Been more. More for her. More for her dead lover. More for Krul, for all of them. "I can do that."

Garrus truly wasn't sure if he was telling himself this or her, but he knew what she wanted. What she truly wanted. Too easily he pulled her into his arms, cradling her to his chest – her blood now mixing with Erash's and Krul's. His subvocals rumbled outward to her, soothing her, promising her that he would take her to him, give her to him.

Promising rest and reprieve and redemption and anything else she needed because he wanted her to have it.

When he stopped beside the krogan, he looked down at him and then out to the gory mess that surrounded the once-upon-a-time body. He looked at her and she smiled wistfully, nodding, gently telling him wordlessly to give her to Weaver. "I'm sorry," he told her, and she brought her hand up that had been covering her midsection to lay it on his upper cheek. He could feel the warmth of her blood there as he set her down against the krogan.

"I will die here." She told him, no resentment, no fear, just peaceful acceptance.

Garrus released his hold on her body and watched as she shifted even closer to Weaver's dead form. She was dying too, he knew this. He looked at her and then to her wound and somehow – somehow – he knew that this grief was more than just for Weaver. He reached down and laid his three fingered hand gently over the large gunshot wound on her body. A small shrill fluttering up his throat, vibrating its way against clipping mandibles. Her little hand came to rest on top of his and he looked to her.

What he found there would forever change him.

Her eyes, as bright as ever, the same color as the reflection of sun from a pond of blue shifted with absolute confidence in the pleading that she was giving. Asking. Garrus mewled down at her, softly, gently, because this was too much wasn't it? This was all too much. It was too much. Fuck. What can he do? What should he do?

"Please," she is crying now. Tears slipping down her temples as she tears her gaze away from him, turning to look at Weaver and sobs at the sight of him. She lifts her hand off of his and begins to reach for the krogan, but Garrus doesn't want her to see more than the profile, no! He grabs her hand, and she looks to him.

"Okay, okay..." He tells her finally, finding the words utterly tasteless and foreign in his mouth. But the sigh of relief that flows through her mouth tucks his hesitancy away and bolsters his resolve. He reaches behind him and grabs his pistol, bringing it to rest at his thigh.

Mierin's hand falls back down onto his that still was resting on her womb. Because that's what it was right? A womb. And he knew that whoever had shot her here had known she was carrying a child. This had been some sadistic twist to death. Whoever did this. He knew, with the lack of dead assailants in the room that they had done this to her after Weaver had jumped on the grenade. Desperate to save his wife and their child. She would have been blown back due to the force. On the ground…and they would have walked up to her – pointed their shotgun and pulled the trigger.

Sometimes he hated his detective side and its inability to stop accessing the world around him. He sometimes wished for ignorance.

Inside of her was another life lost. Another life taken. One that would have been a combination of two of the finest people this damned galaxy had to offer. Another child lost to what? Garrus shakes his head and takes a quick breath, raising the pistol to her temple, making sure to keep it low to the ground so she doesn't have to see it, doesn't have to feel it. He looks at her, "I wish I could have known you better," he tells her.

"I know enough of you," she told him gently, "This is not on you," her hand tightens on his knuckles. He looked into her eyes, and she speaks further, quickly because she knows – she knows – its right there even if she can't feel it. "This is not your fault, we don't blame you, you are a go.."

The trigger is pulled. The bullet is lodged. The amber is dim now. The lies of her lips silenced.

He sways and catches himself, his pistol slipping some under his hand and he fumbles almost falling on top of her, but he reaches out with his other hand and steadies himself, his grip slipping in the blood below it.

Garrus doesn't know how long he stands there.

Starring down at the yellow and purple swirls of their blood. The splatter of her purple against his form. Dark and light mixing to form a gentle pink and he imagined it was their daughter there too. Creating the beautiful yet tragic nebula with them. He never would have thought blood to be pretty, but the two below him created a masterpiece. Beautiful and he wished, he wished he were a painter, or he had some perfect memory like the drell so he could always remember the swirl that they created.

His knees are weak, his body is seizing, and he feels a haze in his head that clouds his eyes. Perhaps he needed air? There was too much debris in here and soot in his nose. He looks to the pool of blood, but the color is gone now. The swirl fading into just a drying lake of stolen life.

Garrus found Vortash on the stairs that led to the batarian's room. He laid unceremoniously at the bottom step, back to ground, as if he had been pushed and he had fallen down the stairs cleanly. Garrus steps around him, squatting down beside him to look at him better and he notices the bullet hole right between the eyes. They had simply opened the door from the landing above and shot him as he was coming to investigate. He frowned; he had been shot by one of his own. He reaches up to gently caress the wound. This was similar to the shots that Vortash had given. Same placement. Same mark. Same death. Someone from the Hegemony was in the merc's sector. The sweep through his base may have been an order, a plan to get rid of them – but this bullet had been personal. An eye for an eye perhaps? Garrus growled softly to himself and understood Vortash in a way he never thought he would before.

There would never be enough.

Garrus finally makes his way back to Krul. He promised him, didn't he? When he relaxes down next to him and tries to pull him back to him, he notices he is stiff and unyielding. No – the body is. The boy is gone.

He looks at him for a long moment, "They're all dead, I guess it's okay though," he brought his arm up and clicked on his omni-tool. "You aren't alone, I know you don't like being alone. I…heard you once tell Butler that. I knew you had nightmares, so do I – you know? It's not weak or anything, remember we are all a little fucked up? Its normal for people like us," his eyes lifted to land on the dead man on the couch. "I'm going to have to tell Nalah - I don't know how to do that."

He clicks a few buttons and waits for the call to connect. He wasn't calling Butler's wife. He would tell her in person – but he …he needed help. Less than a minute later a familiar voice fills the space, and he brings his arm up to look at Okuda. "Keiji, they're dead."

"Garrus, how – no – wait repeat that…"

"They're all dead."

He heard a feminine voice from somewhere behind Okuda, "Archy, you talkin' about your people?"

Garrus looks around the room, letting his eyes downcast away from the omni-tool to rest on Krul. "Yeah, I need help with – I need to move them. I mean bury them or…. send 'em home."

"Fuck," he heard Okuda say and then, "Kasumi call the clinic. Garrus – Garrus look at me."

He followed the order and tears his eyes off the body to look at the orange holo in front of him, "Hm?"

"I will be there in four hours," he told him gently. "Can you leave? Are you safe?"

Garrus shrugs, "What's safe?"

He could see the worry on the other man's face and hear them talk faintly to each other before Okuda tells him, "Get out of there – go to the clinic, you know the one. Solus already knows you're coming. He is going to send a team to recover your friends."

"Solus?" He repeats.

"Yes, Garrus, please get out of there – the building looks like it's about to collapse."

"I promised Krul I wouldn't leave him," he told him and reached out to put his fingertips against the young turian's brow. "Can I take him with me? I don't know where Teag is."

"Just don't move then," Okuda ignored the question. "Help is coming – they'll be there in ten minutes." He paused and added, "You haven't found Monteague?"

"No, he was supposed to be here."

"I'm sorry, Garrus."

"Me too."

He wouldn't know until months later, that Keiji stayed on the comm link even after Garrus stopped talking. He hadn't known the line had been open for the man and his girlfriend to hear him greet the Doctor and his assistant when they showed up. Or Bray. The batarian who worked for the Omega's queen. The three of them had made their way into the building and found him holding onto the Krul's body.

That they heard Bray tell Doctor Solus that there were four bodies upstairs of Garrus' crew needing to be checked over and bagged a half an hour later. The news left him gasping at the implication. Four bodies? Erash, Weaver, Mierin…no….no that meant that Teag was here. Why didn't he find him? How did he miss him?

Garrus' room. Spirits.
He had been in bed when Garrus left earlier that day.
Asleep, peaceful.

No. Please spirits please.

The turian rounded on the man in horror, wide eyes barely able to focus, "Where is he?"

At the demand Bray eyed him with four eyes full of understanding as he guided him to the room and opened the door. The room was full of dead bodies. At least fifteen littered between the two men and the outside door that led to the balcony. From what he could see from his spot at the door, the balcony had at least two more dead sprawled out.

Monteague had fought tooth and nail. Like he knew he would have.

The drell, his drell, was perched on the balcony outside of Garrus' bedroom. Garrus has specifically picked this house because of this balcony and the long stretch of the ward he was able to see. It was a perfect perch. A sniper's dream.

Monteague had approved. Even commented that he wouldn't have expected less of him in his choice. It had been a bonding moment between the two snipers that had left a warm appreciation within the turian.

Monteague had Garrus' M-98 in his arms and was slumped over the railing at an odd angle. He must have been trying to cover Ripper and Sensat after he took care of the ones who had tried to kill him. Teag had saved his life once, not so very long ago when he had been pinned down by Garm and his band of miscreants. The drell always seemed to show up just in time to get their people out of a scrap.

But the bullet to the back of his head would have been a death sentence.

Who had gotten the drop on him? He had to have been wounded already – Teag wasn't easily caught off guard. But if he had been trying to help his crewmates, he wouldn't have had anyone watching his six.

Disgust filled him at that thought.

He didn't know that Keiji and Kasumi were still listening when he spoke to him. When he pulled him off the railing and gently closed his unseeing onyx eyes before he picked him up in a cradle. Sweet words of nothing falling easy from his plated mouth. Promising him that everything was going to be okay. Telling him he had done well. Telling him how proud he was of him and how lucky he was. That he whispered to him how he would meet him across the sea and that maybe Shepard would help him up there and that he would like her if she were there.

The two humans still connected to his omni-tool had heard the mournful mewl unbeknownst to Garrus. Kasumi gripped Okuda tight and laid her forehead against his shoulder as tears fell for Garrus and for Monteague. He hadn't known any of that, though, because the two thieves would never speak about it again. They stole the moments with him in silence and had Garrus known any of that – he would have finally truly admitted that Teag had been right all along about Okuda. He was a good man.


A/N
This piece of the story has been written since before I even started writing this fanfic. It was the reason I began writing the entire thing. I am utterly raw by this chapter and I don't know how I feel about it because I did it to myself.

Shepard is coming back soon. I promise.

*sniff*