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Chapter Title: "The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now." -Bill Cosby
"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
Chapter-Specific Notes: This chapter takes place during the events of ME, following the mission UNC: Dead Scientists. I have vague plans of a future chapter to precede this as well as a future chapter to follow it.
Shepard had lost track of how long she'd been sitting on the rough, rocky ridge, staring into the skies of Ontarom. She longed to feel humbled by beauty, by power...by sheer open space. Staring into those fathomless blue depths surging and crackling with tempestuous amber sparks, she felt she ought to find her problems dwarfed and dazzled into insignificance. Just like the silvery exhaust trails of the Alliance pick-up shuttle she knew were there but couldn't see. But, if anything, her problems simply felt bigger, closer, more overwhelming than ever. Like an inexorable tide, pulling her back into the maelstrom of the past.
The soft, skittering sound of a pebble bouncing down the rock face brought her head whipping around, her hand automatically reaching for her pistol. Garrus froze in mid-step, talons extended slightly out and away from his body in a conciliatory gesture, and rolled his shoulders, looking sheepish. Shepard's motion stopped and faded away before it had even fully emerged into existence. She turned and looked back at the sky, allowing him to regain some measure of dignity as he stepped up beside her.
Garrus was eyeing her the way a gunnery sergeant eyed a raw recruit about to make a terrible mistake.
Shepard sighed and reached up to rub her temples, her fingers dipping down as if to confirm the thin, smooth line bisecting her eyebrow still remained.
"I get the distinct impression you have something you want to ask me."
"Well, uh, yeah..." Garrus paused, staring past her, possibly looking for the same marks of passage she'd tried and failed to detect. "That...uh...doctor...he's no better than Saleon, and you let me shoot him."
"That's not exactly a question," she observed wryly, feeling the corners of her mouth quirk. "But you're right. On both counts. He's not. And I did."
Garrus huffed softly, a sound of frustration or amusement. Probably both. They brought that out in each other.
"As personal as that situation felt, what Saleon did wasn't as personal as what that guy-" Garrus waved an expansive talon in the direction of the horizon, "did to...your...friend. To you."
She grunted vaguely. More or less in agreement, which Garrus seemed to catch, though he may or may not also have noticed her reluctance to think about the subject. Let alone discuss it.
Garrus folded himself stiffly down onto the rock beside her. "So why not let-"
"Toombs" she supplied absently. Helpfully, but absently.
"Toombs." Garrus repeated as if making a note of the name for future reference. The plates on his forehead flared slightly. "Huh. Tombs. Isn't that what you humans call those holes in the ground where you cache the spirits of your dead?"
"The spelling is different," she said, more to ward off the sudden chill ghosting along her skin than to educate her companion in the arcana of the human language. "But, yeah, that is kinda the meaning of a word that sounds exactly the same." And he is the repository of something-maybe everything-that's haunted me for years, if that's what you're asking.
"Uh," Garrus said eloquently. And shook himself. "Right. So...uh...why not let...this guy who sounds like the spirits of your dead...rid the galaxy of one more twisted criminal? That guy deserved punishment just as much as Saleon."
"Is that what you think?" she asked, surprised. "Was that what taking Saleon out was about, Garrus? Punishment?"
"Isn't that what it was about, Commander? He committed a crime-crimes-and we made sure he paid the price."
"Well," she said, and stopped, at a loss. She shook her head and laughed just a bit, ruefully. "Yes."
"Well," Garrus repeated, sounding smug. But something more. He sounded relieved; she thought she understood. Punishment was simple, something concrete, something he had to question only when it was missing, undeserved, or incomplete. She understood all too well. "Then?"
"You-we-made sure Saleon paid for what he had done, because we could, Garrus. We-you-knew what he had done."
"That's my point!" Garrus said impatiently. "You-and this, this...Toombs-knew what that guy," he waved at the horizon again, more violently than before, "had done, too!"
Shepard laughed again. Shortly. The sound hurt her ears. It hurt her heart. "Toombs may have known what Dr. Wayne had done, Garrus, but he also knew he didn't do those things alone-"
"What difference does that make? He still did them!"
"And if he died, he couldn't do them anymore," she agreed wearily. Oh, how I wish all wars were so easy to win. Or even most wars. I'd settle for most wars. I would. She sighed. "But, Garrus, all those other people he was working with-they could." And they would. And they most likely will.
"So...you're saying...you spared one criminal now...so you-well, someone...probably not you, actually-could stop other criminals later?"
Strange, how hearing that one hesitant question somehow left her feeling more awed and amazed than all the wonders of this world.
"Isn't that the point?" she asked softly. "Isn't that why Saleon haunted you? Not because of what he had done to all the victims you knew about, but because of what he could do to all those victims you would never know about? Isn't that what killing him was about, Garrus?"
"Well," he said slowly, considering. Then, sounding surprised, "yes?"
"Well, then," she said, and smiled.
And Garrus smiled back.
For a few moments, they looked out at the sky together.