Note: All standard disclaimers still again to all the people who've taken time to encourage me by adding me or my story to favorites. And, most especially, thanks to those few who've written reviews. I welcome your interest, thoughts, and ideas-even constructive criticism. Your support is always appreciated, and often instrumental to maintaining the inspiration necessary to develop a story.
Chapter-Specific Notes: Much of the dialogue in this chapter is modeled around in-game dialogue. I always try to keep this sort of thing to minimum, but I'd like to think I've added to it for purposes of story. This chapter takes place following Parts Answering Parts, Chapter 13: Along the Solitary Plain. Another chapter installment of this scene is forthcoming. I broke it into halves so a) I could post, b) the installments would be of a size that was easier to read.
Chapter Title Inspiration: "If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost." Lloyd C. Douglas
The scent of burning flesh was sizzling in her nose, searing its way between her sinuses, making her eyes blur with tears. Shepard blinked impatiently, irritated with her own weakness, and saw, in that sliver of a second, a turian sprawled at her feet, still reaching for life with stiff, still hands.
She could hardly reach the main battery fast enough.
The doors seemed to take ages to hiss slowly open.
Garrus was hunched over the console, whole-well as whole as the last time she'd seen him, at least-and breathing, and alive.
Her heart pounded like a kettle drum. She clutched her fingers around her sweaty fists, as if trying to cling to something...something she couldn't quite name.
She thought maybe Garrus was too. There was something about his posture that was different...something sad. As if standing upright took all the will he could muster, leaving him barely enough to lift his hand.
"All right, Garrus?" It seemed to her she had never asked a question as complicated. Nor one with an answer she more wanted to hear.
But she had...she remembered.
She had asked him this same question once before, when she'd first caught sight of him in that abandoned building, under siege, but undefeated. Or, at least, she'd thought so then. Now...now, she wasn't so sure. And the realization terrified her almost as much as that damnned gunship.
Garrus steadied himself against the gunnery console, struggling to maintain his grip on the thin veneer of calm acceptance he'd managed to cobble together in the past few hours. "As well as can be expected," he assured her slowly. "The crew has been friendlier than I expected; being part of the team that took down Saren must have earned me some respect-"
just not from the one person whose respect he'd most wanted, the one person whose respect he had always been able to take for granted...until today.
He was being unfair. He knew he was being unfair. He'd realized before he'd made it past the airlock. Sometimes, in spite of intelligence, in spite of training, in spite of knowledge, you couldn't control how you felt. You could only control how you acted...which she had been able to do...and he hadn't.
The thought filled him with shame, and the shame filled him with rage, though he could have scarcely have named a target. Except, perhaps, himself.
His whole damned culture was built on the idea of discipline, and he hadn't been able to practice it. He hadn't even been able to respect hers.
In fact, even now, he still resented her calm, her control, her orders... and he could feel fear lurking, like a ghost, behind his shame, behind his bitterness.
Turning to face her was, quite possibly, the hardest thing he had ever done.
Shepard was waiting, just standing there, arms folded across her chest, her weight distributed on the balls of her feet, but tilted back, just slightly. She was looking him full in the face, and the look was...not soft...but...accepting. Steady. Open. Without censure.
Time fell away, and for just a moment, a single flutter of a single heartbeat, he was spirited back to a cramped little med clinic, a dead merc at his feet, and the whole universe unfurling wide with possibility so that the deck felt almost unsteady beneath his feet.
"We're all adults here," he said. It was as close to an apology as he could manage...and as close to forgiveness, too. He hoped she knew that. By the blasted spirits, he hoped she understood it. "We'll do what needs to be done."
"Of course," she said crisply, almost off-hand. A faint smirk hovered over the wide, slashing line of mouth. Her lips were soft and fleshy, strangely pliable and pink, but the line of them...that was nearly turian. Perhaps that was why her expressions always seemed so clear to him...like lines in a lullaby from childhood.
This...this was Shepard, beyond all rhyme, beyond all reason, beyond all doubt. He might not be able to recite the lyrics, but he could recognize the notes. And know with a knowledge humming in the very depths of his bones that she had never she had never doubted that. She had never doubted him.
"I was...I am..."
an idiot.
"Just familiarizing myself with the new Normandy."
"A sound tactical maneuver," Shepard said, though with a bit more humor than Garrus would have expected the observation to warrant. "First move I made, too."
Garrus chuckled softly, anything but surprised.
Shepard shrugged slightly. She'd given up on surprising him long ago. "So...what do you think?"
He'd been trying not to, actually.
Trying not to think of her down there on that hellhole of a station, being shot at by a bunch of thugs who had no idea, no idea at all, of just what they were trying to destroy.
"Cerberus has spared no expense," he said, temporizing. "Maybe joining up with them is just what we need."
Shepard stiffened so quickly Garrus could hear her spine snap. "We are not with Cerberus," she snarled. Garrus didn't think he'd ever heard her sound so angry. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard any human sound so angry.
He splayed his hands out, rocking back on the heels of his feet in a turian gesture of sheepishness, submission. "Just a figure of speech, Shepard," he trilled as soothingly as he could manage. He'd never have expected she'd think otherwise, even for a second.
"Relax," he coaxed.
Some of the tension went out of her shoulders and she slumped against the console, her head hanging, heavy with dejection.
"Far be it for me to second guess your judgement," he said, speaking to the part of her posture he recognized, the part that reminded him of the embarrassed frustration he'd been feeling when she first arrived.
He'd always admired that about her, in fact. He'd thought she knew that. Her judgement had fascinated him, drawn him in, inspired him. Every word, every action, he knew she thought about them all, and that thought, that care, drew each element tight into a web in which cause and effect had surprising results.
More than anything, when she was gone, he had missed that, the effect of her judgement. The way it had given him something he had never had before he'd met her, something he couldn't hold onto after she was gone.
The ability to make a difference.
More than anything, he'd thought that if he could just do that, just make a difference...he'd be honoring her memory, ensuring that someone, somewhere, would think of them both with respect.
The respect she deserved...the respect he desperately wanted to be able earn.
Her judgement had condemned Saren to a coward's death at his own hand, and her judgement had saved the Citadel... but his judgement..."got my entire squad killed," he said, the words rattling through the room just the way they seemed to echo in the hollows of his heart.
He didn't want to talk anymore.
He hoped he was lying dead on the floor of that slum, right where he belonged. He didn't want to dream. He had no right to dream.
He wished she wasn't there.
He had no idea what to say.
"Tell me about them," Shepard said.
He didn't want to.
He was so ashamed.
He didn't want to think about them...
but somehow, the words were spilling out of him, and he was telling her everything.
He was confessing.
She listened without interrupting, without trying to soothe him with meaningless words, and he was grateful.
And, then, without warning, the words were gone.
"Look, Shepard, thanks for stopping by..."