AN: I hate writing dream sequences. I can imagine them, could probably do a better job of drawing or filming them to get them across (except for drawing/film are not areas in which I possess any talent). Not much else to say for this update - Garrus and Shep really need to sit down and hash things out, which they will do next update.
When he wakes up he's groggy, not all there. Time has passed, or hasn't passed. Or he's somewhere else now, he's not sure. Something's different, but he's forgotten. Looking around only answers one of the questions and leaves an ache where the others still fester.
Palaven. The sky darkened, dusk. He's in a field peppered with rubble, everything dead and empty, but that makes no sense. He hasn't even been planet side since-
"Immediate Evac!"
"The training camp-"
"No... compromised... the Citadel-"
The thought disappears before it truly forms, a memory to examine at a later time.
He walks through the field and it's like walking through sand. It takes all of his focus to move one foot in front of the other. With all the effort he's exerting just to move, it's frustrating that he makes such little progress. The endless field of waste stretches before him, unchanging. No hills or buildings break the skyline. It just goes on and on, a vast barren nothingness.
A shudder passes through him. He's not sure why.
"- won't like it..."
"Too late to-"
"- just GO!"
He must trip on something, because he's falling. The ground doesn't catch him, he slips right through making him even more disoriented when he finally does land. His arms reach out reflexively to balance himself and only then does he realize he's on a catwalk. A brief look around tells him he's on Omega. He's not really sure how he can possibly know that, since whenever he tries to focus on the details, they shift. The world is only a fixed thing when he's not paying attention to it.
There's a name for that type of experience, but he can't quite grasp it. So instead he walks.
The catwalk stretches on forever and ever. Until he turns away for a moment. When he turns back, he nearly walks into a door. It looks familiar, his fingers automatically going to the console to key in a code. The movement is silent, everything's silent, and that's unsettling. He's numb all over, and a memory tickling the back of his mind suggests that's probably a good thing. Numbness is better than the alternatives, after all.
"- going into shock-"
"Dammit, keep pressure on it-"
"Not gonna matter if we don't-"
The door opens slowly and without a sound. As it opens, black water gushes out. Coldness overtakes him, weighing him down as much as the water. He kicks and thrashes wildly for what little good it does. Wave after wave pushes him over, a heavy weight on his chest. His armor pulls him down and he's blind, somehow losing track of which way's up. He never could swim very well and panic grips his chest.
Realization that he's drowning (dying, his mind corrects, not really accepting of the way it's happening, just that it is happening) spreads through his consciousness.
"Stabilized... transfusion... find a match somewhere-"
"- make it?"
"Fuck if I know-"
His body, useless, is nothing but a buoy. There's no air but that doesn't seem to matter. The current rocks him back and forth, though the water's not as demanding and choppy as it was before. He drifts, always with the threat that he could be pulled back under at any moment. His attempts to move his arms and legs are feeble at best, not strong enough to fight the pull on him, so eventually he just gives up.
"- I don't care! You let me the fuck through-"
"Please, you'll disturb the other patients-"
"Do you even know who the fuck I am?"
"Of course-"
"Then let me in before I-"
There are hands on him, pulling him up. They're strong and sure, both qualities he's sorely lacking at the moment. They pull him out of the water and hold him tight, whispering secrets in his ears and soothing his frayed nerves. It's still dark, but not the impenetrable gloom of the water. He can't see, can't speak, can't even hear the words being said to him. But he feels a calm presence (calm isn't quite right, either - it feels like there's untapped energy beneath the surface being held back but only just so) and soaks it in. Lets it heat him up from the inside out.
"You don't get to die on me, Vakarian."
When Garrus truly wakes up - actually opens his eyes and takes in the world around him, able to acknowledge that it's real and no longer a dream - it takes some time. Things come into focus slowly, images and thoughts alike. As each new piece of information makes itself known to him, he catalogs it carefully.
He is in a hospital. The smell of antiseptic is too strong for it to be an improvised med bay. The chatter from other patients and any nearby doctors is muted enough that he must be in a private room. That means resources, which means he's not on a ship either.
Everything hurts. His body is bruised and there's a numbness in his midsection that screams of meds keeping the true pain at bay. It'll no doubt hurt like a bitch when they wear off and he's forced to feel it. The mark on his right hand stings, a buzzing sort of irritation he can't quite identify. He'll worry about that later.
His thinking is muddled. The pain killers are obviously stronger than he's used to (probably because he generally refuses any). They're fucking with his head and he hates it. It only feels like he's been going through this process, this slow breakdown of what's around him, for a few minutes. But he knows it's taking longer than that.
He's not dying. No doctors have come to check on him, so he must be okay. And though he feels like shit, he's pretty sure he's felt more like shit in the past. Once he can tell them to stop pumping drugs into his system, he'll have a better idea of what shape he's in. Yet he's confident he's seen the worst of it.
(That does lead to a brief consideration of whether he was dying. It had felt like that in the dream hellscape he'd been in. Stuck between life and death until someone made the decision for him and forced him to stay alive. Maybe later he can unpack whether or not they made the right decision.)
All of this he does while staring at the ceiling. The stiffness in his neck feels suspiciously like whiplash, but at any rate it's keeping him from wanting to move too much. With a sigh, he gives in to the necessity of examining the rest of his surroundings.
The blandness of the walls and decor reinforce his conclusion that this is a hospital room. The window to his left has been dimmed so that barely any light comes through, but he can still parse out the hustle and bustle outside. The thought makes him think Citadel and some memory tickling the back of his mind makes him think that's correct.
He gives a cursory glance to the monitors hooked up to him. They're surprisingly quiet, which he assumes must be a good thing. His medical training is too limited for him to make sense of the numbers and equipment, so he chooses to ignore it. That's what doctors are for.
Bracing himself for discomfort, Garrus turns his head to now examine the right side of the room. There's a small table in the corner with some gaudy looking flower arrangement, a door muffling the sound of people passing busily in the hallway, and a figure draped over the side of his bed.
He squints and blinks a few times. There's no reason to - his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting long ago - but what he sees makes so little sense that he just can't believe it.
Because there is Jane Shepard, sitting in a chair next to his hospital bed, passed out. And try though he might to make the image disappear, she stubbornly remains. He wonders if it really even matters whether she's really there or she's just a figment of his imagination.
Accepting it, he reaches out to take her hand in his.
It's warm and soft, yet calloused. It flexes slightly in his grasp and she stirs but doesn't wake. It doesn't seem like a dream, but he's well aware that it's probably just wishful thinking.
With Shepard's hand carefully tucked under his own, he drifts back off to sleep.
The next time he comes to, it's not slow and gently eased by a groggy transition. It happens abruptly. Waking up earlier has acquainted him with this room well enough that he doesn't waste time trying to decipher what's happened. Instead he can focus on the finer points.
He sits up and stretches a bit to test the extent of his injuries. There's tenderness for sure, but nothing that should give him trouble. A gentle poke at his side tells him what he already suspected - the injury there is by far the worst, but there's a raw pain radiating out from it that means they've reduced his meds if not stopped them altogether. Good, he should be able to leave.
(And he does make note of the fact that he's alone. Whatever, whomever he thought he saw when he first woke up, well, that was just a dream like the rest of it.)
Bed rest is something he loathes, and he determines that he's feeling well enough to leave. He's sure there are some doctors out there who will argue, but if he's quick and gets dressed it'll help. Maybe if he's lucky he can walk right out of here and figure out what happened with the Maurion colony.
A quick search reveals his armor in the closet. Examining it makes him think that he wasn't shot so much as impaled in his abdomen. Must have happened during the fall, or maybe it was a piece of debris.
There are raised voices outside and there's almost something familiar about the cadence of it. He dismisses it and starts putting on the armor. His weapons aren't here, but he suspects those are with whatever turian transport brought him here. Or at least he hopes so - the last thing Garrus wants is to have to spend time trying to find them.
The arguing is now right outside his room. The door manages to block out the words, but one of the voices is definitely familiar. He cocks his head slightly as he tries to listen, but then gives up and moves to put on his boots.
Which is how Shepard finds him when she storms into the room. Awkwardly bent over, pulling on his left boot while trying to balance on his right foot.
Their eyes meet and they just stare. Shepard's fuming from whatever she's been yelling about (and now that he sees her, he has no doubt she was the main source of the disturbance in the hallway). He's frozen in place, wobbling on one foot and trying not to look like a child caught doing something he's not supposed to.
The standoff ends when Garrus nearly falls over. Stumbling a bit to regain his balance (hopefully without looking too ridiculous - he's sure there could be nothing worse than giving Shepard a reason to laugh at him right now), he crosses his arms and tries to look relaxed. It seems to snap them both out of it.
"So," she says carefully, playing with the syllable a bit. "You're up."
Fuck.
She gives him a once over, taking note of his armor. "You going somewhere, Vakarian?"
His mouth is dry and he's pretty sure he wants to throw up. This is the last thing he wants to deal with right now. But he straightens up to his full height. Not that it'll intimidate her. He just needs to do something. "That was the plan," he drawls out. Bit of bravado, dash of sarcasm. Perfect.
There's something in her eyes, cold and hard and furious if he has to try and name it. He's reasonably confident that it's not directed at him, just leftovers from whatever fight she'd been having in the hallway. But he braces to bear the brunt of it anyway.
"You don't look bad for someone who was on death's door a few days ago."
Her voice feels like ice running through his veins. He tries not to shudder. "I doubt it was that bad."
"Oh, it most definitely was."
He makes a point of rolling his eyes. "I'm fine." He spreads his arms out for her to inspect, show the truth behind his words. Okay, so maybe he's not at a hundred percent right now, but he's in no immediate danger. "You know how doctors always like to exaggerate, make it more miraculous when they save you."
Shepard's grinding her teeth. "Who said anything about any fucking doctors. I'm telling you, you were dying."
For lack of anything better to do, he blinks at her. Shepard's not prone to being over-dramatic, which leaves Garrus stuck taking her word for it. Still, she must sense a challenge in his silence.
"It felt like someone was drilling a hole straight into the back of my head. Do not fucking tell me how bad it was or wasn't."
Oh. Shit. He'd forgotten that the warning feeling his mark's given him over the past few years goes both ways. Whoops. No wonder she's here. If circumstances were different, he'd almost feel bad for the panic he clearly caused.
"Okay," he concedes slowly, arms up in a placating gesture. The full reality of his condition is as of yet unknown to him. He just knows how he felt versus how he currently feels. Best to just admit something. "It wasn't great-"
"Wasn't great, he says-"
"But I am fine now." Her eyes flash a little but she looks away. It surprises him how easily she gives up the point, making him think the doctors here have spent a great deal of time assuring her of that very same fact.
She mutters something under her breath. He's willing to ignore the childish gesture for now.
"Shepard." And maybe he should try a little harder to hide the exasperation in his voice, but he feels tired all of a sudden. Weary, more so than the injuries can account for. The two of them used to fit so well together, used to be each other's strength. Now it's just draining trying to dance around each other. "Sorry if you came all the way out here for nothing, but it is nothing."
"It is not friggin nothing!" she shouts. Not Jane Shepard, Alliance Commander, shouting. No, this is different and terrifying in its own right. "You were out there, somewhere," she waves a hand at the window, "getting shot at by Reapers with nothing but fucking recruits watching your six. You almost died out there. Did you even think about that before you went gallivanting around some no name system, huh? That you might never come back?"
He takes a moment to consider how to answer that. Shepard's upset, and usually this is where he backs off a bit and tries to calm her down. But since hiding things is what got them here in the first place, well, better just lay all the cards on the table.
"Yes. I did think about that." Her face darkens with accusation before he cuts her off and continues. "I didn't think I was going to die. But I wasn't sure if I was ever coming back to the Normandy."
It's kind of a shitty thing to say, but he's not pulling his punches right now. If she wants to do this here and now, then fine.
"So you were just going to leave, the hell to everything else?"
He almost laughs at that. "You left first, as I recall. Omega was a, what does Joker call it? A dick move? Just following your lead, Commander."
"I came back-"
"Congratulations on that, by the way."
If humans were capable of it, he suspects she would snarl in frustration. Instead, her fists clench and there's just the slight charge in the air like biotics about to light up. And it would work, no doubt, as an intimidation tactic against damn near anyone else. But this is him and Shepard. He knows her temper pretty well, and yeah she's probably pissed enough that she'd love to beat the shit out of something, but it's not going to manifest in a physical fight between them right now.
She must see that. Some of it, anyway. Sees his casual, disinterested stance and hear the bite in his voice and his words. The fight just drains right out of her and she looks more tired and fragile than he can remember ever seeing her.
"Can we just not do this right now?" There's not even any anger left in her tone. She sounds defeated more than anything else.
Part of him is annoyed that the display of weakness is pulling at his heart strings so much. Because she fucking started this, right? She wanted space, which he gave her, and now she's the one who's acting hurt? Why should he feel bad for her right now?
"Feeling a little guilty, are we?" Shepard winces and he allows himself to be petty enough to enjoy it. "Help sneak me out of here and we have a deal."
As far as olive branches go, it's not great, but she perks up instantly. With a smile that pulls him back to the SR-1, she says, "Sure. I think we can manage a jailbreak."