Maybe tomorrow, Garrus wanted to reply, but his tongue refused to move. Trying to keep the conversation lighthearted was getting increasingly difficult with every passing moment.
Feeling the strength drain from his legs, Garrus sank back in the chair, still not letting go of Shepard's hand. His head begun to throb with pain. The memories flooded through the mental blocks he had so carefully installed during the last few years.
He had to install them. He had to be the strong one, because Shepard paid the price for them all and it nearly killed her. Still, she got the chance to come back and tell about it and for that he was immensely thankful to whatever higher power responsible for bringing them back together. The galaxy wasn't empty. He wasn't alone. There was still hope. Or so he thought.
"I was ordered to come back, remember?" Shepard's voice interrupted his thoughts and Garrus winced. Wasn't that, in fact, unbelievably selfish on his part? He didn't think it was back then. That was just him vocalizing his blind hope because she always came back, and chilling fear of what would happen if she doesn't come back. He didn't… didn't mean "sacrifice so many lives so I could hold your hand ag—"
No. That kind of thinking won't get him anywhere. Garrus closed his eyes, trying to shake off the thought, but found no relief. Instead, he saw a young quarian female in her suit… but without the familiar glowing eyes shining through her mask. She was dead.
Tali. That's how she looked like before they buried her on that damn jungle world.
Most of the time he was able to keep her out of her mind, but with his mental blocks down her face mask had returned, along with the taste of guilt.
Despite his best efforts, Garrus saw the fresh, simple grave in front of his eyes like it was happening right now. He remembered returning to the ship afterwards and wanting to grab something to eat. He also remembered that tingle of unholy satisfaction when he realized that the dextro supplies on the ship are going to last twice as long now. Still, when he munched on the ration in the mess hall, it didn't taste right. It tasted like guilt. He didn't know that guilt had a taste until that moment, but that's how it felt. He ate only half of what he intended to and almost succeeded to convince himself he did so to save food. Not because that bitter taste poisoned every bite he took.
Days went on and on. Weeks, months? EDI was gone. Joker was devastated. Adams couldn't get the ship up and running (maybe, if Tal—no). The comms were down. They were in the dark, low on hope, morale and food. Especially dextro food. He ate as little as possible, desperately trying to make the supplies last longer. His stomach's demands were too compelling to ignore, however, even with that bitter taste still lingering in his mouth.
Then, The Day finally came. They were out of dextro food. Adams had repaired EDI by then, but she had been reduced to an advanced VI. Still, with her help, the Normandy had been restored to nearly full functionality. Not that it did much with the relay system and the comms still down. Garrus didn't know what happened to Shepard and it was eating away at him more than the gnawing feeling in his stomach that soon settled in.
He thought he could cope with it. When the united merc bands of Omega had him cornered, he endured for nearly a week without food or sleep, just hopped up on stims. This was so much worse. The stims were losing effectiveness with every passing day, and he soon found himself barely strong enough to walk. And the cold… He couldn't stand being cold even more than before.
One day he fainted on the way to the battery. He was still trying to do his part on the Normandy, even though everyone tried to convince him that he should rest more. When he regained consciousness in the medbay, he was too weak to get up. Chakwas hooked him up to some machines, feeding him nutrients and sedatives through the IV. Oh yes, sedatives.
Most of the time his mind was blissfully foggy. When it wasn't, he kept thinking about Shepard and what happened to her. There was no hope, he was now convinced. If the blast damaged the relays and most of the Normandy's systems, if it killed EDI and Tali, then what happened to Shepard who stood right in the middle of it? She was gone. There was no point in keeping up with this torture.
One day, when he was able to think more clearly, he decided to ask Chakwas to overdose him on sedatives. He was just thinking about the best way to word it, to make it sound as convincing as possible, when Liara entered the medbay. Gently touching his face, she told him happily they've got the comms back and that Shepard was alive. It didn't register properly at first, and he ended up just staring blankly at her. "They found her under a pile of rubble in London," Liara chirped in his ear, "in a coma, but alive. Garrus, she's alive!" When it finally sunk in, Garrus felt the previous darker thoughts fading away. He had a reason to endure now.
So he did. The relay was fixed. The Normandy made the jump successfully. He was brought to Earth, where they got him back on his feet again. There was also real food there. Garrus felt guilty again as he ate it, thinking about all the turians who were stuck on Earth after the Battle of the Crucible and wondering just how many of them didn't get their meal because of him. Again, he ate barely enough to sustain himself.
All of that was nearly forgotten when he saw her for the first time. The Cerberus implants were busted, the doctors told him, so there was no way to tell how functional she will be if—when she wakes up. It showed on her face, too. It was cracked and scarred, reminding him of how she looked like when they were reunited on Omega. Only this time it looked much worse. At least there was no red glow. However, he didn't care how she looked. Most of the time he spent focusing on her chest, watching it rise and fall steadily. He refused to get out of her room and slept on a cot next to her bed, ignoring the calls from Palaven Command, his father and pretty much everyone else. Just to see her breathe.
And then, after what seemed like eternity, he was blessed by the spirits to see her hand move.
Garrus snapped out of it suddenly, feeling her real hands holding his. She had sat up while he was… not there and watched him with concern stamped across her face.
"Maybe tomorrow," Garrus forced himself to speak. "The doctors said you can go home tomorrow if today everything goes well."
"Garrus…" Shepard whispered and tugged on his hands gently, pulling him closer.
Before he knew what he's been doing, he fell into her arms and hid his face in her shoulder. It felt terribly selfish to seek shelter when she wasn't feeling well, but he couldn't help himself. In all the time ever since she woke up, he's been her shoulder, her rock to lean on. It couldn't be wrong to ask for a little comfort, could it?
As if in answer to his unspoken question, one of her hands went up and caressed the small spikes on the side of his face. It would always make him feel relaxed, and he gave in to the feeling. It just felt so good.
"I'm sorry," she whispered into his ear.
"Stop saying that," he murmured into her shoulder.
"How can I?" Her hand moved to the longer spikes in his fringe and gripped them a little too tight, but he didn't mind. "So many people are dead thanks to me. They put their faith in me, expecting me to save them and—"
Garrus lifted his head to look her deeply into the eyes and put a talon over her mouth. "You saved me," he said quickly. "Hoping to see you again was the only thing that kept me alive. Your cooking is the only reason I can eat food again without guilt. Thinking about you is the only way to keep me sane when I want to wring my secretary's neck for interrupting me. You're the only reason I'm standing here right now."
Shepard stared back wordlessly for several long moments, and he didn't like what he saw in her eyes. They got even darker as he spoke, and her lips trembled under his talon. She regained control in the next moment and removed it gently from her mouth.
"Neither of us should be standing here," she finally spoke.
"Maybe we shouldn't. But we are." His head sank back to her shoulder. "I'm grateful for that."
Shepard didn't say anything, just pulled him closer. He could feel the tension in her body. His arms wrapped tight around her, caressing her back. Even in his moment of weakness, he tried to comfort her, to be her support. That was what he decided to do when he saw her hand move back in the hospital on Earth, and he did it gladly.
Some of the tension finally melted away, and he heard her taking a deep breath. "Could… could you stay for the night?" Her voice was uncertain, even ashamed. "When you're around… the voices are quiet. Most of the time."
"Sure," he replied immediately. Something painful twisted in his chest as his earlier suspicions were confirmed. "I'll ask one of the nurses to bring me a cot in your room. Just like old times."
She chuckled lightly in reply. It was so nice to hear her chuckle.
When she woke up next morning, Shepard felt remarkably well. Whatever the doctors gave her worked wonders, and the sunburn on her skin was mostly healed. She even got a good night's sleep. Although she wanted to believe it was thanks to Garrus sleeping on the cot next to her, she had her suspicions they hopped her up on sedatives through the IV.
It was gone from her arm now, though. She was free to get out of this prison, as soon as the paperwork was done. She chuckled lightly to herself. Even when recovering from the greatest, most devastating war in the known history, the galaxy still insisted on its paperwork. Damn bureaucrats.
Speaking of bureaucrats, she wondered how Garrus was doing. She had sent him to work as soon as she was fully awake, asserting that she was perfectly fine, even threatening to have her boot up his skinny ass if he didn't comply. The expression on his face as he lingered in the door of her room on his way out was… nearly frightened if she wanted to be honest with herself. It wasn't only because he was worried to leave her alone, she knew. She was nearly convinced he hated his new job.
A throb of pain flashed through her temples. "Thinking about you is the only way to keep me sane when I want to wring my secretary's neck for interrupting me." He opened up to her yesterday, confirming her suspicions. It was thanks to her that he accepted his new position in the first place. If he felt that way about it, maybe it was a bad idea.
Shepard flopped back on the bed, covering her eyes. No. It was the reasonable thing to do. The Catalyst had told her that the peace won't hold. The galaxy needed someone reasonable in charge of its most powerful war fleet (or what was left of it). Someone who saw it first-hand what happens when everyone works together, and also what happens when they bicker. Someone who wouldn't want to go squash the krogan for wanting their voice heard, or wanting retaliation upon the quarians for creating the geth in the first place.
Shepard shuddered. Yes, those were some of the "suggestions" Garrus had to deal with in the first year of his service. Was that ghostly child right? Were they repeating the cycle again? Many people were downright paranoid of technology after the war, either because they were afraid it could blow up in their face again, or because they were afraid it would come to life and try to kill them. EDI, or what was left of her, was disassembled into parts. Even though she was reduced to a VI, it was too much for the anti-techs. Quarians were getting even more hate than before, if it was possible, but she was still surprised that someone wanted to retaliate on them. Haven't they suffered enough?
Her gut clenching, Shepard asked herself what Tali would say about her actions if she lived through the Normandy's ordeal. Would she still consider her as her savior? What did it matter that she pulled off the impossible and reunited the quarians with their children, when she destroyed it all in one move?
"It's all your fault," someone said. Shepard froze. It was impossible. He wasn't supposed to be here. And his voice shouldn't be accusing. She loved listening to it usually.
With great trepidation, Shepard sat up, removed her hand from her eyes and turned her head in the direction of the sound. Garrus sat on the cot, glaring at her with indignation.
It was impossible, she kept telling herself. It just wasn't possible. Her mind was playing tricks with her.
"You're not supposed to be here," she barely croaked. It didn't sound convincing even to her own ears.
He laughed, and it wasn't the good-hearted, healing laugh she usually heard from him. It was coated in bitterness and malice.
"What if I've decided to quit my job and come back to tell you how I really feel?"
"No… No!" she croaked even weaker than before and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the hallucination was still there, with the same anger on his face. "You're not real. Real Garrus loves me."
"You don't really believe that," Garrus said, smiling triumphantly. "You don't even love me. You're just using me, like you do to everyone. Anything to get to your goal."
Garrus' words pierced her soul, like dagger stabs. Her eyes filled with tears and she couldn't say a word.
"Good." Garrus drove the imaginary dagger deeper. "You deserve to cry. You deserve to suffer. You're a mass murderer. You've been that even before the Crucible. Remember Bahak?"
"Stop it. Please," she pleaded. Tears were streaming down her face at this point.
"Why should I? I loved you, gave you everything, followed you to hell and back several times and got nothing in return. Now that I realized who you really are, I want to hurt you."
"Stop it!" she growled through gritted teeth. "Stop it!"
The beloved dual-toned voice continued to accuse her. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. She closed her eyes and covered her ears, trying to block it out. Surprisingly, it worked and it frightened her. The voices she usually heard would continue whispering, no matter how hard she tried to ignore them. Was this real? Was this how he really felt?
No. No. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be. He was there, in that hospital in London, for God only knows how long before she woke up. He was still there when she blinked in confusion for the first time, and continued to be there as she made her first, weak steps. He was there to support her in any ways she could imagine.
They went to Palaven – and they made that decision together, she tried to convince herself – and he continued to be there for her, silently supporting her whenever she struggled with her inner demons. And her? Until yesterday, she didn't even have the decency to tell him that she's having flashbacks and hearing voices. Not to mention that she failed to notice that he had his own share of struggles, too. When he got lost in thought with that expression on his face she had never seen before, she was scared out of her mind at first, and then overwhelmed by guilt. He was suffering, too, and she barely even noticed.
Feeling her lips trembling, Shepard slowly lowered her hands and opened her eyes. Garrus—no, the hallucination of him was gone. It wasn't real. Still, it was bad. Even with all her flashback and voices, they never felt so integrated with reality. Was she losing it?
The small comfort was that she could still ask herself that question. Her mind wasn't gone. But what will happen in the future? One more burden for Garrus, who—no. He loved her. And she loved him. But that… that thing wasn't completely wrong. She has been using him all this time, no matter what he said about saving him.
Shepard managed to wipe the tears off her face and pull herself together enough to hide what just happened from the turian nurse who told her she's free to go. She was as healthy as she could be with her body still feeling effects of losing the Cerberus implants. Healthy enough to walk on her own. One thing off Garrus' back.
Stepping into the environmental suit, Shepard fitted the helmet over her face and sighed. She still didn't like this, but she wouldn't tempt fate again. As the skycar taxi took her home, she felt more and more uneasy. What if this continues and she was certain it will? Will she end up in a padded cell somewhere? That's why she hadn't told the nurse anything. What will be Garrus' reaction? Should she tell him anything at all?
"Whatever happens to you, you certainly deserved it," the dual-toned voice spoke again. Shepard jumped in the seat and looked around. There was nothing out of the ordinary around her. Still, hearing his voice like this was so much worse than anything she's ever experienced before. Every word was a blow, causing nearly physical pain. Suddenly, she had the urge to land the skycar, take off her suit and walk home without sunblock, without anything. Her skin should burn. Like that forest. Like the dead people in it. Like her soul.
The voice was mercifully quiet for the rest of the journey home. Garrus was still in his office when she entered their apartment. Taking only the helmet off her suit, Shepard sat on the couch and shivered. This couldn't go on. She'll have to tell him what happened today. No matter the consequences.
