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Garrus was checking the Mako for damage from the hot-and-fast ride into the STG base camp when he heard the elevator.
Confused, he turned to see Shepard stepping through the doors, almost more quickly than they could whisper open. She strode past, so focused on her destination he doubted she'd even seen him or even realized she wasn't alone in the hold.
Strode up to the armory station, the station Williams had occupied every day-shift since Garrus had joined the squad.
He watched, all-but-seeing Williams standing there eyeing Shepard with a wry smirk, as Shepard fiddled with several tools on the workstation.
Shepard paused, her hand hovering over the computer interface Garrus had seen playing messages from Willliams' family, and sighed heavily, her shoulders beginning to slump. Her hand dropped, clutching something on the table so tightly Garrus thought he could see the strain in her bare knuckles.
"Garrus." Shepard spoke without turning around, her voice weary. "Care to join me for a drink?
Garrus had no idea what to say.
So he moved without speaking, a few long strides bringing him to her side.
Shepard stayed as she was, clutching the bottle.
Garrus waited silently, until the silence began to take on a weight he could feel pressing down into his shoulders.
Slowly, wondering if he was stepping out of line, he reached over and gently tugged the bottle from her grasp.
Shepard made a faint sound. Protest? Grief? Gratitude? All of the above? None of them?
Garrus just didn't know.
Shepard didn't move, so he looked around for glasses, mostly so he wasn't looking at her instead. Locating them behind the a box of various components, he relocated them to the front of the table with a faint clink that made Shepard wince, and splashed liquid into them.
She'd picked up her glass before he'd set the bottle down, so Garrus picked up his glass, too, still watching, still uncertain.
Shepard raised her glass in a gesture Garrus had begun to recognize after a few group outings to Flux. She was proposing a toast.
He raised his glass too. "To...Ashley?" He suggested, hesitant, trying to scope the situation that had already enmeshed him.
Shepard's eyes sparked. "To borrowed time," she said softly, and clinked the rim of her glass to the rim of his.
She kicked the drink back in one smooth shot. Garrus met the motion and matched it. The glasses thunked back onto the solid surface of the workstation.
Shepard rolled her shoulder, rubbed the back of her neck. Waved a hand at the bottle.
Garrus splayed his arms slightly, arched his spine in a subtle turian shrug, and poured.
Shepard picked up the glass, swirled the contents, set it down with a sigh. "So, Vakarian, have I ever told you where I picked up my dead-eye?"
It was in N7 training that she'd really learned to snipe.
She'd taken to the sniper rifle like a duck to water, with all the wonder and relief of a captive but wild animal returning to its natural environment. The rifle was heavy, it was awkward, it was slow... but it was powerful, and it both granted and required absolutely iron control. Power and control... two things she'd felt absolutely bereft of from the moment she set foot on Akuze. Two things she'd thought by the end she'd never reclaim again. Important things. Things she never took for granted now, but greeted each time she looked through her scope with a sense of immeasurable relief. A gratitude for survival, for choice. The ability not to be a helpless victim, but to act. To protect oneself, and even others. To survive.
Shepard was damn good at it. She took pride in it.
All soldiers had some basic training with a sniper rifle. It was part of their basic training. But most of them never progressed past the most basic competency, the barest understanding of the weapon. Most of them preferred quick and ugly. And why shouldn't they? It was how they were trained to think, what they were trained to be.
Sometimes, even before Akuze, Shepard desperately wished she could give in to that training, let it wash over her. She didn't want to think.
After Akuze, well...
Then she really didn't want to think.
She'd grown up in space. She was used to feeling small, insignificant. Or so she'd believed. It was Akuze that had shown her just how mistaken she she was.
After Akuze, she felt powerless.
She'd been bound to learn her limitations sometime, though she wished her unit hadn't been the price she'd paid for the lesson.
But their lives made it valuable.
She knew it was an accident, an odd quirk of fate, that she had walked away. Not unscathed, not unmarked, but alive. Barely.
Anderson had been the one to pull her off that rock, and he claimed it wasn't luck. At least, not exclusively. It was adaptability. And perseverance. And...well...
Whatever it was, they were agreed on one thing. It set her apart from her fellows. She wasn't just rank-and-file. Not anymore. Not after that.
She never knew for sure if she'd gotten into elite training on her own merits, or if Anderson had pulled some strings.
But she did know that the challenge of earning her stripes saved her sanity just as surely as Anderson's timely arrival had saved her skin.
She never forgot it.
He probably knew it, too, but he never gave any indication.
She never forgot that, either.
Borrowed time. In a way, Ash had been living on it since Eden Prime...and Shepherd had been living on it since Akuze.
After Akuze, she'd promised herself-never again. Never again.
For while, she thought she'd succeeded.
And then she and her team had gone groundside on Virmire.