Just a heads up to any readers that this chapter features a brief mature scene. I edited out the raciest parts, but felt it was too important to cut out entirely.
It had been a long winter and a cool spring, or at least that was what everyone had said. Space travel came with the side effect of having one's seasons suspended, transferring from one artificial atmosphere to the next, only getting to feel a non-ideal temperature when embarking on a planetside mission for however long. Mindoir had been an overall milder type of planet, with less extremes at both ends. It got cold and it got warm, but the days below freezing were rare. So Shepard relied on the people who were at least local to that specific hemisphere to guide her. They said it had been cold, and she didn't have reason to doubt them.
What she did know was that the sun that was sitting low in the sky felt blissful on her face. After a winter of blankets and fires and ill-fitting sweaters that had belonged to people no longer breathing, she had to admit there was a distinctive amount of peace in even feeling the need to push one's sleeves up without risking a chill. Her skin, as a result, was much pinker and darker than it had ever been, though that didn't mean Shepard spent much of her time as of late looking for herself in mirrors. The reflection was always never what she thought it should have been, always a little too much.
The back of her wrist swiped across her forehead, brushing away the short lengths of sweat-sodden hair in an attempt at keeping the dirt from her palms from her face. It was grown in now, short and usually in all states of disarray as the hair transitioned from shaved bald and into the cropped pixie cut that brushed over the tips of her ears and left the back of her neck exposed, but it was easy, and even Shepard had to sing the merits of such an effortless style, not that she had much of a choice. Hair only grew back so fast, though she doubted she'd ever let it grow long, having already trimmed the scraggly edges back and in accordance of some vague type of hairstyle she'd seen on a few women long ago.
Shepard turned back to her work, hands in the earth, ripping at the hearty weeds that threatened the newborn plants only just beginning to sprout through the soil. She looked down the row of seedlings, the line somewhat cockeyed from her vantage point, but her smile was that of pride at seeing the fruit of her hard work beginning to take root and show for her trouble. Without the proper machinery, farming was backbreaking work, the kind they'd only ever had to do on Mindoir when the tools needed were out for repair, but perhaps what Shepard liked most about it was the fact that it left her exhausted at the end of the day. When the sun set, she usually found sleep easily and that in itself was a relief, as it meant the details of the past had little solitary time to haunt her.
From further down the open field, a group of four approached, meandering exhaustedly up the incline of the hill. At the head of the pack was the youngest, a boy named Jamie that had celebrated his tenth birthday only the week before. Picking up the rear was his mother and father and uncle, looking just as dirt-covered as Shepard felt, though they wore smiles on their faces as they walked, laughing. It wasn't hard to find things to smile about these days, as the world was vastly different from how it was the year before. They were alive, and for that small fact, they were part of the luckier half of the galaxy.
Shepard raised a hand and waved, sitting back on her heels as she kneeled, relaxing the tired and strained muscles of her back in the process. "How'd earthing up the potatoes go?"
One of the men drew back the sleeve of his t-shirt and flexed an arm, a show of muscle, the manner that reminded her of Vega in the aftermath of a workout on the shuttle deck. "Annie's not going to be able to keep her hands off me when we get done," he joked, curling that same arm around his wife, kissing at the tangle of blonde, curly hair.
Annie let out a squeal of a giggle at her husband's hands traveling down to her sides, tickling her as they walked. She skipped a few feet ahead despite the heaviness that was evident in her at the end of a long day. They'd been doing this for months—hauling and planting, tending to what they could grow in the colder weeks while keeping their necessary supplies otherwise sufficient in a world that had little give as infrastructure was still being rebuilt from the ground up—but there was only so much endurance in a person after a hard day.
The little boy playfully hopped over the lines of plants Shepard had spent the day with, his wide grin spreading every time he passed Shepard by and she reached out to teasingly grab at his clothes, but always letting her hands fall a little short or slow on catching the ten year old.
"Careful Jamie!" His mother yelled. "Don't ruin all of Kate's work."
"I am," he insisted, and continued on by, his sneakers and edges of his pants coated in muddy soil.
"Sure you are, darling," Annie replied, but directed her attention away from her son and back towards Shepard as she pulled away from the group her husband and brother-in-law made while they continued their way back towards the main house. "I don't know how you do it," she said with a shake of her head, "don't have much time left and you're out here longer than anyone. When I was pregnant with Jamie…" Annie looked back towards where her son played, scampering off now in the shadow of his father. "I didn't move for the last two months."
Shepard laughed through her smile, and as though Annie's words reminded her of her own exhaustion and aches, Shepard wiped the dirt of her palm off on her thigh and then soothingly rubbed into the muscles at her lower back. That had been a constant as of late, something easy to ignore when she wasn't consciously thinking of it. "I like keeping busy, feels good to be reminded everything still works." She stretched her left arm out before her without even thinking, eyes glancing over the shiny scar tissue that shown where the sleeve was pushed up over. "Besides—I'd rather be out here than making dinner with the rest of you."
"After your infamous New Years feast, I think we'd all have to agree."
Past the silhouette of the main home on the property, a skycar whizzed by, engine loud enough to call attention to it. The first one they'd seen months ago had been alarming, but they were growing more common these days as things returned to some small amount of normality, a sign that life was pushing forward and moving on. Shepard furrowed her brow as the car dipped down and disappeared behind the tall trees and even the house, but turned her head back to Annie standing at her side.
"…I'll make sure you get the first hot bath if you come in before supper," the woman—and her friend—carried on. "So don't stay out too much longer, alright? You shouldn't be out here on your own anyway, not this close to the end."
"You're starting to sound like Emma," Shepard retorted, feeling a particularly satisfying tearing of roots from the ground as she ripped out a weed from where it had made its home.
Annie hummed, self-satisfied. "That's because, unlike you, we've been through childbirth. And we know if it hits you hard, the last thing you're going to be able to do is hike a mile on your own back to the house while you're having contractions."
Shepard much preferred not to think about the impending childbirth, the event that would take the baby in her stomach from abstract to reality, even if she'd already been feeling it move and kick and force the air from her lungs for months now. There was a disconnect somewhere inside her, perhaps denial was the best word, where if she simply didn't allow herself to think about the future, it wouldn't ever really come. Until then, she could simply exist in the in between, a type of limbo or purgatory where the consequences of actions always loomed and approached but simply never arrived. She sighed, and pressed a hand to her hard, rounded abdomen. Annie was a few steps off when she raised her head again, and the sun was beginning its slow crawl to setting.
"You've got thirty minutes before I send Jamie out as the search party," Annie harmlessly threatened, and like the others before her, headed for the home they all shared.
Her body was cumbersome, but Shepard managed to inch her way down the row, returning to her work at nurturing the tiny green leaves and stems. A sudden chill struck her out of nowhere, not through her entire body, but one that was isolated, the hair on the back of her neck pricking up. Shepard had to stop as the uneasy feeling settled over her, and on instinct she returned a hand to her stomach, testing for a tightness of muscle contractions where she feared them the most. She shut her eyes and waited, one minute, two minutes, five, even seven, but nothing came save the subtle movement of her son or daughter. She sighed in relief, and went back to the last meter of plants.
"Kate!" She heard a voice call and immediately whipped her head up towards the sound. "Kate!" Jogging in her approach was Emma's oldest daughter, all of seventeen, waving an arm to catch the attention of the woman she sought. Shepard quickly and hurriedly pulled at the remaining weeds and finally, carefully, stood, allowing the growling pain of muscles and ligaments to stretch back to their proper shape and extension.
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Someone here for you," she shouted from halfway, not bothering to finish the trip on out when the message had been delivered. "He's waiting in the den!"
Shepard had had a few visitors before, but not many. People from the distantly neighboring houses mostly, looking to trade their own crops or seeking advice, strangers that had become friends in the aftermath of the galaxy-wide war, leaning on each other in hardship and good times. In a way, they weren't very unlike the crew she'd had once before, people with their own skills that helped the tiny community to thrive. It wasn't saving the world, but as Shepard had grown to see, it was just as important in its own way.
The walk back was long and tough. As usual, Shepard underestimated just how much energy remained in her at the end of the day, and by time she pushed in through the backdoor of the old stone farmhouse, a building that was centuries old by the architecture of it, she was out of breath. The kitchen was crowded with bodies bustling about in the preparation of the evening meal and Shepard squeezed by, rinsing her hands in the sink just long enough to clean the worst off. Annie's husband caught her arm.
"You want someone to go in there with you?"
Shepard's face crinkled at the question. Since she'd followed Emma out here, they'd formed a protective, knit group. It was a change for her to suddenly be treated like someone that needed any amount of protecting, but she'd learned long ago not to take it as a slight,just a gesture of comfort. Still, it was an odd suggestion, and Shepard felt the tiny hairs on her body stand on end again. She looked through the doorway that led to the hall and into the small, enclosed den and entryway.
Her shake of the head was a dismissal of the backup they'd thought she needed, and Shepard precariously crept down the hall. Ahead, she heard Lily's muffled voice excusing her progress or lack thereof.
"She's a little slow these days," the girl said, but the other didn't respond, just shifted their weight, cleared their throat.
Shepard instantly knew that sound. She'd never be able to forget the particularly inhuman qualities of it all, from the menacing, but also delicate way a Turian was always poised on their toes, to the harmonic hum of his throat. She rounded the corner and stopped.
"Hi, Garrus," she said, calm and solemn.
He stared back, nearly through her, and said nothing. That visor of his—the item that had become just as synonymous with Garrus Vakarian as the blue paint across his nose and cheeks—was absent along with his armor.
Since she'd stepped through the front door of the house that had quickly become home, Shepard had dreamt of something like this. Someone would find her, wherever she was, and she'd be reunited with them in the end. She'd hoped for it deep down, and yet at the same time, she had feared it, never knowing what she would say if the time came. She blinked and took a breath as Lily left them alone, needing to be sure she was seeing the truth with her own two eyes. He was still there.
"Don't you recognize me?" She asked, almost self-conscious of the answer he could give. There were more differences to her than just the hair or the uneven patches of thick, fibrotic scar tissue that started below her left eye and crept down her neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. A movement in her stomach reminded her of the most glaring change, and though it was merely coincidence, Garrus eyes' dropped at that exact moment, glancing down to her swollen middle section for half a second before returning to meet her eyes straight on. Shepard's body shivered, feeling open and exposed despite the clothing covering her.
Though she'd heard of the Normandy's grand return, had even seen a video clip of the ship's crew being honored for their bravery while simultaneously mourning the loss of the Commander, their existence and safety hadn't felt real until right now. A breath she'd been holding for months was exhaled out of her, shaky and rough in her throat, a physical weight lifting from her burdened body. Her hand twitched, dying for the chance to reach out to him, to get the feel of her old friend beneath her fingertips, but Shepard held herself back, made no move at all.
Garrus' mandibles opened and closed, giving away his restlessness before he even spoke. "Can we talk somewhere private?"
It wasn't the reunion she'd dreamt of, but she supposed she'd earned that. Shepard nodded her head, biting over a scarred lip. "There's not much space here… outside, maybe?" She motioned back towards where she'd come from, and when he dipped his head in acknowledgement, Shepard led him on the return trip down the hall and through the kitchen. The people crowded there stopped, gawking as they offered quiet, reserved hellos. Shepard, despite what she knew about manners and introductions, simply whisked the two of them out the door.
Side by side, they walked down the low grade slope of the expansive field. Butterflies fluttered inside her stomach, the kind that was due to nerves and not the quickening of her child in those first few weeks of movement. He felt like a stranger, she privately bemoaned, but the fault of such a change, she knew, only laid with her. The sun had sunk down below the line of trees behind them and the once sunny landscape was now bathed in the grays of the oncoming night. They didn't stop walking until the taller growing crops shielded them from view.
Standing with his back to her, Shepard saw the shift of Garrus' arms as they crossed over the front of his chest and carapace.
"How'd you find me?" She regretted her tone the instant she spoke, words coming out too angry and menacing. "The Alliance… I heard they declared Shepard KIA a few months back."
His head shook, fringe moving with it. "Everyone else was looking for you dead. I was always looking for you alive."
Tears wet her eyes and Shepard wanted to contribute it more to her hormones than anything else—they had turned her far more sensitive than ever before—but tears hadn't been a rarity for her in the last two days of her life as Commander Shepard. These were true, these were earned.
Garrus turned back around when she least expected it, caught her wiping away the moisture from the corners of her eyes.
"I found you by accident, actually," he confessed. "Farming isn't exactly something the average civilian knows about these days. This thing you've set up… it's had people talking. They said a woman was leading it, helping to teach people to survive out here. And somehow I just… I knew it was you, Shepard. I just knew."
"It's Katherine now," she corrected. "They call me Kate."
Garrus eyed her. "Kate, then."
There was only a few feet between them, but for how it felt, it could've been half the galaxy, so far even a single relay jump wouldn't suffice. Shepard took a step closer, relieved when Garrus stood still. She reached across, and let her palm brush over the fullest part of his chest, feeling him breathing. Shepard lurched forward after the first inhalation, throwing her arms around him as best she could, as far as her stomach would allow. Garrus folded in on her as an automatic response.
"Why," he said into her ear while keeping her close. "Why did you do it?"
Shepard couldn't find an answer and clung tighter.
But Garrus, his demeanor changed like the flip of a coin, gently but firmly pushing them apart, his talons and fingers gripping into the shoulders of her shirt. He wasn't crying, but if his physiology allowed for it, Shepard knew he would've been. Instead, his expression was distraught, mandibles spread as wide as they would go, the plates of his face downshifted in response. "You knew what it did to me the first time," he growled, "why would you make me go through it again?"
Shepard had rarely seen Garrus angry in all the time she knew him. It happened, of course, like the incident with Sidonis, but his moments of overwhelming anger were rare and never before had she been on the receiving end. It wasn't that she feared him, she could never, but rather it made her see the pain he currently struggled with, the kind that had to be so severe and overwhelming it led him to lose a little bit of control. She placed her hands over his on his shoulders and Garrus tore away from her after that.
"After everything that happened before Earth—-Kaidan—-I—" her tongue stumbled over the words. It was all a piss poor excuse when face to face with Garrus, even if she still believed she'd done the right thing.
Garrus whirled back on her, keening cry in his throat. "Fuck Kaidan, Shepard! He wasn't the only one who loved you!"
The world stopped spinning for her. She had nothing to say, not that she'd been capable of coherently speaking before Garrus let the truth out. He turned his head away in shame, but Shepard was having none of it, and simply threw herself at him again, this time with more emphasis, more strength. She palmed either side of his head and tugged him down and forward, forcing his forehead up against hers. Shepard held him there and though his hands had remained lifeless, unsure of what to do at first, they eventually came to sit on her waist. Shepard nuzzled their foreheads and noses together in the typical Turian gesture, the one he'd wordlessly instructed her on during the one and only time they'd joined together as more than friends. Garrus relaxed under her touch.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, sliding a hand to the back of his neck as she dropped her cheek to brush over his own, further pressing their bodies against one another. Her lips dragged over his mandible, and though it was an action she hadn't done for well over a year and a half, the memory was fresh. "I'm sorry, Garrus."
He took no lead from her, rather just followed along, leaning into her touch as that sorrowful whimpering came out.
Despite the months between their last meeting in the flesh—for Shepard had spent her nights dreaming of him and all the others of her past—Garrus was just as she'd left him. Maybe a little thinner if she really looked, maybe his plates a little worn and rough, but on the whole, he was exactly as she recalled down to the feel of him under her hands, the scent of him that filled her nostrils. She'd always known she missed him, but until he was in her arms again, Shepard hadn't been able to admit just how much more that sense of longing trumped what she'd felt for everyone else.
"I missed you," she said, pulling her head back just enough so that they could regard one another. This time, she didn't try to hide the moisture in her eyes and Garrus, in the state he was in, wasn't capable of hiding what was apparent all over his face. He had missed her just as much.
They hung there like that for an indeterminate amount of time, and then Shepard acted just as recklessly as she always had. She closed the gap, and pressed her mouth to his. Garrus didn't miss a beat, hooking his arm around the small of her back, effectively pulling her closer and lifting her onto the toes of her shoes. One of her arms went around his neck, in the space between his cowl.
It was a mish-mash of Turian and Human behavior, some amalgam of mouths kissing as best as pliant lips could to hard plates, while their foreheads brushed and rubbed one another's when they separated for much needed gulps of air. That night before Omega-4 hadn't been like this, they'd been more careful then, more calculated until they'd both been left teetering on the edge, afraid of making a move for fear of hurting or annoying the other. Things had found a rhythm by the end of the night, a most pleasant and comfortable space for two different species to work together, but this was new. Rushed, eager, and desperate. For Garrus, it had been what he'd wanted again since he left her cabin that night. For Shepard, it had been at the back of her mind, close to the surface but never breaking free, blocked out by the memories of her other lover.
Her free hand moved up the side of his body, pulling at the hidden fastenings there, his tunic loosening over his trimmed waist and torso as she worked her way up. When they were all released, her hand headed upwards under the fabric, pushing and bunching the shirt at her wrist and forearm as she explored the once familiar plates and thick hide. Garrus purred at her touch.
She struggled free of his hold, setting back down on the soles of her feet as both of her hands made progress at the pushing and pulling of his tunic. Garrus helped, tossing the garment aside as he pulled it over head, but when Shepard started at waist of his slacks, he took her arm in his hand. Their eyes met.
"Are you… are you sure we should?" He didn't look away, but from the way his head dipped downward, she knew that he referred to her stomach, the elephant in the room they were yet to even outwardly acknowledge. It was that reason and so much more.
Shepard proceeded anyway, even with his hand firmly around her wrist. "I want this," she reassured. "It'll be okay."
It was all the permission he needed and he acted to make up for lost time, stripping himself down to bare before starting on her. Garrus knelt, prying off ill-fitting shoes and then her pants, the flickering of his mandible brushing her outer thigh as she stepped out of them and her underwear. His hands slipped between skin and her shirt, but Shepard distractedly dropped herself down, joining him on the bed of grass before he could get her anymore undressed.
Where they were quick before, they came to a snail's pace. Garrus dragged the back of his fingers over her right cheek first, the one that had made it out of the Reaper war unscathed, and then moved to the other, taking the time to feel over the unevenly healed skin. Shepard looked away, but he tipped her face back in his direction. He said nothing, that act of mercy was so very like the Garrus she'd always known, and then he lowered his head, meeting her mouth with his once more. This time it was gentle, just as careful he'd been with her scars.
She laid her hand across his naked chest and pushed him back, enough to get him to shift from kneeling to sitting, and when he was situated, Shepard swung a leg over his lap, straddling his bare thighs. While his plates and tongue affectionately became acquainted with the new skin of her throat, her hand fell between them, open palm rubbing at his already loosened plates.
Garrus pushed at her shirt again, getting it so far as halfway up her stomach's widest portion, when Shepard rebuffed him again, pushing his hand away.
"I want to see you," he complained breathily. "All of you."
Shepard sighed, the muscles of her cheeks twitching and forehead crinkling in the overwhelming fear of his rejection. "I've changed."
"Everything has," he soothed, and Shepard could fight no more at the tone of voice he used on her, instead allowing him to help her with the shirt. She finished by removing the bra, he'd never been able to get the hang of the human contraption.
It had turned deceptively dark around them, the light reflecting off Earth's moon the only light casting a glow around them. That hadn't been the case on most of Earth before the war, where light pollution had been the norm, unable to get a real view of the stars that hung overhead. But this far out, and furthermore, with so much destruction all over still, all those stars—the ones she and he had lived among—were as bright as they'd ever be.
That darkness meant he wouldn't get an honest view of her, and it was the only comfort that was afforded to her as Garrus took in just all the ways she'd changed. His hands roamed, a physical aid to his visual senses, mapping her out first at her shoulders and then down along the boundaries of her shape.
"Different," he confirmed for her, palming a fuller breast in his grasp. As pleasant as it was, it wasn't made to last, and Garrus then let his fingers trace along the edges of where her burns were the worst over her arm and shoulder, where the flames had licked her skin the longest. She wanted to look away but couldn't, not as he dragged his mandible over the new flesh, almost like a silent apology to her. For a moment, Shepard wondered what her recovery would have been like if he'd been there with her. He would have stayed at her side, she knew, wouldn't have left even if she'd made it an order.
Against her upper arm, she felt the vibration of his sniffling, the nearly inaudible mewling he made as he surveyed the damage.
"Don't cry," she said with a palm brushing along the back of his skull. "I'm okay. I'm here."
"But you weren't," Garrus argued, and that was true. For the months she'd been missing, she was as good as dead.
Shepard kissed his brow and moved her hand between them again as she shifted her weighty body, rising up on bruised knees over him. With careful direction, she could feel his tip press between her thighs, her moisture slicking him in preparation.
"I am now, Garrus. Now I'm with you." With her words out, she settled down, taking him inside with one stretching, fluid movement. Shepard couldn't help herself, she moaned like they were the only two people left on the planet, and Garrus did the same, his coming out against her breasts.
It took awhile to find any semblance of control and order, but Shepard eventually began rocking her hips over his, shallowly lifting and falling against him. There wasn't a tremendous amount of room for movement, not with her stomach cradled in the slight concavity of his own abdomen, but for what could be managed, she did her best.
From where she sat atop him, it gave her the rare opportunity to be the one looking down at him instead of the other way around. He was silver under the moonlight, the blue of his markings a darker navy. Shepard cupped his cheek, traced her thumb over the lines as they fell into the slow, easy pace.
It was heaven, the kind of bliss her life, albeit peaceful and calm, had been missing. Garrus moved forward suddenly, one powerful arm diagonal across her back to hold her to him as he laid her out on the mix of grass and clothing behind her. Their bodies never parted, and Shepard was glad for the relief he offered her at no longer having to play the dominant one of their pair. He braced himself above her for the final assault as he picked up the rhythm, spine arched sharply to give her midsection the space it needed, but keeping them near.
She was close and as Garrus buried his face into her neck, laving the skin there, Shepard's hands dug into the soil above her head, fingers threading through the plush grass that had been growing anew since spring had hit. It was like time had slowed down for her, each rapid thrust into her now moving at a quarter of the speed before. In and out, in and out her body moved in response to his, driving her closer and closer to that release that had been building, if she was honest, for months.
Her back rose off the cool grass and Shepard thought of that dream—that hallucination—that call from on high—she'd had before waking up in the temporary hospital. The other Shepard had sent her back, made her open her eyes and keep on breathing, and laying in that cot for the first few days of her return to the living, Shepard had wondered what it was all for. To suffer? To listen to the sounds of others in pain, dying? And after she'd found out the truth of the child she carried, she had thought that was the reason why. It was selfish of that other woman, she believed, to send her back for that, to be an incubator to the baby the first never got to have.
There had been weeks, months, of being bitter amidst the small amount of joy she'd let herself feel, and even with all the time that had passed, there still now existed mornings she woke and wondered if keeping it had been the right choice. But now… with Garrus above, with the stars blinking down at her, and on the precipice of orgasm, Shepard knew why she'd lived at all. For this. She'd come back for this. To find love where she hadn't let herself see it before, to know the feeling of being loved for who she was, not for who she'd once been.
Shepard cried out and came, the kind of climax that was felt from her scalp down to her curled toes and left tears down the sides of her face. Garrus noticed, nearly stopped, but Shepard smiled through them with encouragement and hitched her leg over his rear, bringing him in closer. He kept moving and not much later was he, too, finding that peace, pulling out of her and spilling himself on the grass under her thighs.
Garrus laid his body down next to her in the aftermath, rolling onto his side just as she did, the two of them very different mirror images of one another. They stayed silent until they each caught their breath.
"What happened to you?" Garrus asked, and stretched an arm across, running his fingers along her exposed and scarred arm.
"Between the Citadel and Earth… I'm not really sure how I survived at all." She'd tried to remember, tried to figure out a way for her to even be alive when the vast majority of the wreckage of the Citadel had remained floating out in space. Sure, some had fallen into Earth's atmosphere, charred and burned up on entry, but of those pieces found, there hadn't been survivors or even anything that resembled the remains of something that used to be living. Shepard… like everything else in her life, was an anomaly.
"Woke up in this field hospital. Broken leg, burned up my left side, one hell of a headache," she brushed away the short hair above her forehead, exposing the jagged scar through her scalp where hair no longer grew. "And…," she swallowed hard, throat bobbing, "pregnant, apparently. But I guess you expected that—Liara probably…"
"Liara what?"
"It's just—back in London when we were saying goodbye, I let her into my head, you know? And when it was over, I thought she saw what I knew—that I wasn't Shepard. But I've had a lot of time to think about it and I think she knew then, I think she knew I was pregnant but that there was no going back."
"She…" Garrus shut his eyes. "No, she never said anything. Probably thought she was doing us all a favor by not knowing since you were missing. Would it have stopped you, if you knew?"
The answer was simple. "No. My life's been forfeit for a long time. It was me or the rest of the galaxy, how could I stop?" There was no question about it, and Shepard ran an apologetic hand over the side of her distended belly as though it could make her anymore closer to what was already a part of her.
"I didn't think I was going to keep it when I found out," she said softly, like words too loud would bare all the thoughts she'd kept hidden out of guilt. "But try finding a field medic who knows how to perform an abortion."
"What changed your mind?"
"I don't know." She shook her head and rolled to her back, arm tucked up to pillow beneath her head. "At first I thought it would be merciful to get rid of it because of whatever I am. I didn't think anyone should have to be burdened with me for a mother. But eventually… I don't know. I thought it could be a chance for a new beginning, and maybe I could do it with him. Or her."
Garrus sat up, reaching for their clothes scattered around them. His first priority was her, and Shepard gave her thanks with a nod of her head as he helped fasten the bra at her back. The shirt went next, tugging it down over her stomach in the process. He stopped, and Shepard could see him thinking in the way his mandibles twitched.
"Spit it out, Garrus."
He gave a reluctant sigh. "You should tell Kaidan."
She couldn't tell if it was the movement of her previously still child or the rolling of her gut. "No, I really shouldn't."
"I don't know all the details of what happened with you two… but it's his child. I'm not saying he comes first, I'm not saying it makes him a parent, but I'm saying if it was mine—" His throat caught on the word and he had to take serious pause before continuing on. "If it was mine, I would always want to know. Especially if I thought the woman carrying it was dead."
Shepard felt around for her underwear, pulling them on as Garrus spoke. It was everything she'd been avoiding for months, all come back to hit her at once. Perhaps what was worse was that Shepard knew there was no ill intentions behind his words, and that maybe, even with everything that had transpired… maybe Garrus was right. Still, it didn't make it any easier to hear.
"We didn't end on a good note. I doubt he even cared when they declared me dead."
"You didn't see him, Shepard. While you were out here, pretending you didn't have a life before this one, we were looking for you. Kaidan—he's been looking for your body for months, needed to make sure you got the peace you deserved. I saw him after you died the first time, after she died, and this… he's worse off now than he ever was before."
Shepard had to turn away from him, heels of her hands pressed to her eyes to delve her into deeper darkness than they already were. It had been simple to exist here, being not yet a mother, being someone without a past. She thought of them all every single day, wondered how they were fairing, but she always hoped for the best. Garrus would find his family, meet a nice Turian girl and settle down. Kaidan, his parents would survive the war and he, too, would find someone to replace the woman he'd lost three years earlier. Tali would go back to Rannoch, build that house she dreamt of. James would become an N7, make her memory proud. She never wanted to think of the reality she'd seen on their faces in that vid of their honoring and her memorial, the sad truth that things wouldn't be as happy for them as she'd hoped.
"If he knows, Garrus…" Her arms curled around her stomach while she bent forward. "He'll hate himself more than he did just for being with me. I'm saving him from that. I'm saving him from having to live with the reality that he has a child and it's with me, not her. I'm making sure he doesn't have to hate himself for it, doesn't have to hate his child. He didn't think I was a whole person, why would he think something that came from me was?"
"You can't really believe that."
"And what do I tell my child when her father doesn't want anything to do with her? I'm all she's got, I'm not… I won't set her up for that kind of pain from the start."
"It's going to eat you alive, Shepard."
"Yeah," she helplessly shrugged. "But maybe it already has."
She didn't see him, but could hear him shifting, standing, pulling the rest of his clothes on as quietly as possible. When he rounded about her to offer his hands, he wasn't as neat as when he'd arrived, but it was passable. Shepard stood up with his help, and just as she'd let him undress her, she let him help finish getting her clothed.
Garrus palmed her cheek, ran his fingers slowly through her cropped hair, learning the different feel of it in his grasp. "I like your new fringe," he said. "I like it a lot, Kate."
She'd always been Shepard to him. The Commander. Even on their night together, he hadn't called her by the name that she'd believed to be hers at the time. Katherine belonged more to her than that old name had and hearing it from his lips… it meant more than he would ever know. Or maybe he did, and maybe that was why after all this time, he'd finally said it.
"Stay with me tonight," Shepard requested, fingers tangling at the hem of his tunic. She pulled him in back in the direction of the house.
As it turned out, she'd long since missed dinner and the windows of the home, only in the last few months having been restored with electricity instead of relying on oil and candlelight, were mostly dark. She'd never had the experience of sneaking a boy into her house in the middle of the night, but she imagined in some ways that this was how it would be. Save for the fact that she was 33 now—at least theoretically—and capable of making her own decisions. They passed through the hall wordlessly, but it was the first creak of the staircase that alerted someone from the den.
"Kate?" Emma called.
Shepard stopped, caught, redirecting herself towards the living room that was less for sitting and more for storage as of late, chopped logs and their emergency cases of rations stacked in the corners.
"Just heading up to bed," Shepard said.
"We saved you a plate if you're hungry."
"No, no, I'm fine." Lingering in the doorway, she waved her hand off towards Garrus where he stood, but rather than listen like he usually had on the battlefield, he followed behind her, peering in on the cluttered room. "This is…"
But before she could cover for herself, pull another Turian sounding name from the depths of her mind, Garrus was speaking for the both of them.
"Garrus," he supplied, and stepped into the room, congenially offering his hand to the woman that was but a stranger to him.
Emma, Spirits bless her, wasn't startled by the fact that the stranger remained, nor the fact that he was most decidedly alien in nature. True, other species were hardly rare on Earth after things had ended, but this far into the countryside meant they weren't often seen, especially not in the safety of everyone's homes. The older woman shook his hand, and introduced herself in reply.
"We were just—"
"No, no, my apologies. Have a good night," Emma said, motioning them off, but when Shepard turned to leave, she cleared her throat and spoke up again. "Kate—can I…?"
Shepard didn't know what to expect, didn't know how to explain why a Turian was at their door or furthermore the fact that he was now presumably going to be sharing her bed, or at the very least, taking a spot up on the floor of her tiny room. "First door at the top of the stairs," she told Garrus with a nod of her head, and this time he did listen. She waited until he made it up and disappeared inside the correct room before moving inward of the den. All she could do was hope there wasn't grass tangled in the back of her hair.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah," Shepard said with an unsure node. "What is it?"
Emma pursed her lips, an expression Shepard knew well from their days in the hospital together. Those hadn't exactly been the best of times, but they'd led her here, and things were different now. The older woman simply leaned back into her chair and looked up to her, making eye contact, holding it.
"I know that Turian's face from the news… and I have to ask. Are you that woman? Are you Commander Shepard?"
She stiffened immediately, and though she tried not to show for it, Shepard knew her body language had already given her away. She'd been out of the business for too long, lost that poker face, lost her nerves for being such a good liar, which made for problems when the life she'd constructed depended on her still having the stomach for it.
"No," she said, and headed back to the doorway. "Not anymore."
