Author Note: Thanks to the people who reviewed/followed/favorited this story. And thank you to anyone reading!
I do not own Mass Effect.
Archangel's name changes from a whisper to a murmur. He recruits more to his cause: ex-Mercs, ex-C-SEC, ex-military (ex-STG, according to some rumors.) Some say he's got a band of seven, others swear it's twenty. Shepard knows the exact number but she keeps her mouth shut.
With his notoriety growing, she runs into him less. He is smart enough to go on his missions helmeted but Mercs are still wary of any unaffiliated Turian. When he does pop up, it's on her walks home when she's passing through the quieter areas. It happens two or three times a week, enough to make her wary. She asks if he's watching her.
"I am right now," he says, turning his blue eyes on her.
Shepard gives him a shove. He stumbles close to a trash can, catching his balance at the last second. "Be serious," she tells him. "Look, I don't need a savior or anything."
He's quiet. Garrus likes those long pauses to think over his responses. "I want to help you, Shepard."
"Help me from what?" She stops, crossing her arms. "Tell me."
"I would but…I think it will piss you off."
"Then I'll say it." Shepard tilts her chin up to face him. "I'm a whore so obviously I need your help."
"You're injured all the time." He touches her arm, his claw curling by the crook of her elbow.
"That's my job. My shtick. You want to fuck a human but think they'll break? Call Shepard." She pushes his hand off. He takes a very wise step away from her. "I've got enough medical connections to do this for a long time."
"Do you want to though?"
He looks so concerned that she could regret being angry. Could, but won't. This isn't the type of bull she'll put up with from would-be friends. "No one's forcing me. No one sold me into this job. I'm just a professional who's damn good at her job."
Garrus is quiet again. He sighs. "Okay. Look, I've seen a lot of girls pushed into this so I assumed-…but I shouldn't have assumed. I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." Shepard lets the anger fall away. He looks properly contrite. She reaches over and pats his arm. "Look, if you want to help you'll just be my friend. Those are…nice to have."
"I can do that." He covers her hand with his. "You know, you're good at a lot of things."
She snorts. "Well, two things. Sex and putting a hole through a Vorcha."
"Both are talents. And I've seen you punch. Felt it too." He keeps her hand trapped between his claw and arm. The gesture is intimate enough that Shepard's fighting a blush. "You ever want to join my team, there's a spot open."
Oh hell. "I'll pass for now." She's not a trained fighter. She'd be dead pretty quick in his gang.
He lets go. "Alright. Thought I'd ask."
"I'm flattered you think I'd last with the kind of shit you guys get into." She won't lie to herself; the prospect's appealing. Hell, if she'd followed Zaeed's advice all those years ago and became a Merc (and survived), maybe she'd be saying yes. When Garrus isn't being an idiot she likes him and what he stands for. Fatal as it will be for him.
"You could," he says with a shrug. "They say not to fuck with Aria? Well they should say 'Don't fuck with Shepard.'"
Shepard pushes back the guffaw in her throat. "You don't want to fuck with me?"
"No way. I've seen you take a Vorcha down. And blow him up as you do it."
She presses a hand to her fist, smothering her laughter. Garrus groans as recognition comes, pressing a hand to his face. "That just went somewhere awful."
Shepard pats his shoulder. "You're lucky you make me laugh. Or I'd be offended."
"I'm not even going to talk the rest of the night. Just so I don't say anything else stupid." He peeks at her between his fingers. "It will be hard not to."
"That…that was terrible."
"That's why you keep me around," he laughs.
Garrus—or rather, Archangel—has a secret base. But he's not secretive enough about it because one night, he offers to bring her to it.
"That's a bad idea," she says. "I have Merc clients. I could betray you just for a big payout or to save my life if they figured out we were friends."
His gaze is steady as he looks at her. Omega's done a number on the Turian but with her, his body posture is still open. Vulnerable. "I trust you, Shepard."
She'd like to punch him for making her insides twist around at that. For still being so goddamned naïve. Shepard knows she will never betray this Turian willingly but there are plenty on Omega who don't care about consent.
He insists until she relents, worn down by curiosity and flattery. Besides, her other off-hour options are going to a bar or going home to sleep. A secret base is a lot more appealing.
They pass close to Blue Suns territory. So close that she gives him a whack on the shoulder for recklessness. Though it's sort of brilliant; his team has a Batarian, Turians and Humans. Excepting the Salarian member, they could pass as Suns.
He brings her to a block of apartments. Pretty indistinguishable from the blocks and blocks of apartments that make up most of Omega. His three fingers cup her elbow and he gestures to a wall. She squints at it, making out the vague outline of a door.
Next comes a series of narrow passages and doors tucked away into corners and inside smaller rooms. It's dizzying, the roundabout way of getting to the location. They come to a final tiny corridor and a final door, guarded by two of Garrus' Human squadmates. Both greet Garrus, casting suspicious looks at Shepard. They pass on by without stopping to talk.
The space is huge. It must be the entire floor of one of the apartment buildings. She's too disoriented to know which one or how high up they are. There are small windows high up on the walls with a little nook for someone to look out of. Erash the Batarian is there now.
Crates and boxes of all kinds are stacked up high to partition the space into rooms. Probably for bedrooms. There's one big common space that they're walking into that contains five squad members who stare at them.
"I had a feeling guests weren't encouraged." Shepard mutters and Garrus laughs in response. The five men continue watching her. She ignores them, shoving hands into her pockets.
They settle a little when Garrus goes over to them. Shepard's curious about their conversation but stays put, feigning indifference. These kind of situations, it's best not to eavesdrop in plain sight. Especially when you can't hear your targets much anyway.
Garrus goes into one of the partitioned spaces and comes back with a case. At her cocked eyebrow he motions to a set of stairs in the far right corner. She follows, waving to the men as they pass. One of the Turians waves back and she recognizes him as Sidonis.
The floor above is bare except for a makeshift shooting range. That part surprises a laugh out of her. Shepard goes over to the sloppily painted targets, examining the set-up.
"Garrus, are you challenging me to a shooting contest?"
"Please." He opens the case and retrieves a pistol. "We both know I'm the better shot. I just thought you'd like to learn a thing or two from the master."
"Yeah?" Shepard folds her arms and smirks. "We'll just see about that."
Garrus hands her the pistol. It's seen better days and plenty of use but it has a nice heft in her hand. She remembers holding a similar gun while Zaeed drilled her in disassembling and reassembling a pistol. That had been a condition of his agreeing to be her business associate. He'd insisted she learn her way around a gun in case an appointment went bad. "It's got paint clips inside. I save the ammo for the real thing."
"About that," she says as she checks the chamber. "You know I had a cancellation yesterday? Someone blew my client's head off with one perfect shot."
He tries not to look pleased and fails. So she fires a round at his heart. The neon pink paint splatters across his chestplate as he staggers back.
"Damnit Shepard," he rubs at the mess. "I didn't know he was one of yours. Wendell was a dangerous smuggler."
"Smuggling?" She frowns. "That's the kind of 'evil' you're going after? Where does prostitution fall on your scale then?"
"It doesn't unless its some bastard forcing people into it." Garrus frowns. "Wendell wasn't a good guy alright? He was bringing in shoddy weapons to sell them to brash kids ready to join in the fighting. Targeting them. And that's only a sample of his bad deeds."
She knows the kind of brash kids he's talking about. A decade ago, she was one of them. Maybe he'd been right to kill Wendell. Hell, she doesn't know. It's easier to think of him bringing justice in the abstract or when it targets known slavers and drug brokers.
She wants to believe in Garrus' judgment. That he'd only take down the ones that deserved it. After grumbling over the Turians naïveté…maybe she's the gullible one.
Instead of thinking about it more or saying something to him, Shepard turns to the targets and starts firing. He plays along, taking his turn when she has to reload. His aim is precise. Perfect, really. She's got a lot of catching up to if she decides she wants to match his skills.
What she really wants to do is try out that beautiful sniper rifle. Zaeed's got one like it but he's only let her try it once. Shepard doesn't dare ask Garrus. It's clearly his baby. And she doesn't feel like talking till they take a break rounds later. When she does talk, it's to ask why he left C-SEC.
Maybe she can get a better understanding of him. Reassure herself.
"It started when I was investigating a rogue Spectre. Saren." Shepard recognizes the name, nods for him to continue. "I found an opportunity to take him down. With the first Human Spectre, Commander Williams."
That's another name she recognizes. A name every Human, even the ones apathetic to politics like her, knows. "Ho shit," she whispers.
She gets invested in the story as he relates how they beat Sovereign and saved Citadel at the cost of the Council. There's a keen sense of shock when the story ends weeks after that victory, when Williams was spaced on a routine patrol.
She'd forgotten that part as Garrus wove the events for her. It comes back then, the odd sense of sorrow at the news of Williams' death. Shepard is self-centered in the Omega way, where the best means of survival is minding your own damned business. Yet the death of Humanity's hero had affected her and other Humans on Omega, like some part of their collective soul had died.
Shepard tells her story in return. How she'd been an orphan on Omega, running around with a group of other street urchins. Surviving together until they'd run into a meaner pocket of the Blood Pack. Shepard had been the sole survivor.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"It's an old story here," she replies.
Not wanting to be a Merc after watching the Blood Pack massacre her only family and having no talents but a smart mouth, a mean right hook and a knack for enduring; she'd decided to live off her body.
She tells him about her first clients. With a twisted notion of justice she had let two Vorcha hire her. The plan had been to lure them into complacency and then kill them. For closure before she became a real professional.
Zaeed Massani had extracted the sixteen year-old before she died, killing the two Vorcha as they mauled her. She still doesn't know why. The former Merc lives his days taking on the odd mission and plotting his eventual revenge against Blue Suns leader Vido Santiago. He doesn't give a shit about anything else. Shepard has reasons to believe that he'd once had a kid her age but no concrete proof and no motive to confront him about it.
Once she recovered, he'd offered to get her a job as a Merc. Even offered to teach her the ins and outs of shooting a gun. Shepard had accepted the weapon tutorials but refused the job offers: she had decided on this profession and was going to be damned good at it. He didn't kick her out of his apartment and as time went on he became more involved in her career.
"Ten years later, here I am." She sighs and looks down at her gun. "Want to go a few more rounds for the tiebreaker?"
"What tiebreaker?" Garrus asks. He's good at accepting these subject changes. "I'm winning."
"For now." The pistol feels good in her hands. Each clip eases the feelings conjured from dredging up memories. Especially when she pictures the targets as Vorcha.