: I've recently (7-18-2011) posted a chronological ordering of the fragments in this fic. That posting is merely for convenience of reading. I will still be working haphazardly and posting to this fragment fic first and foremost...and that fic may occasionally be removed and reposted as chapter ordering changes. So, for those of you following this fic, please continue to do so. Thank you all so much!
Note: All standard disclaimers still apply. Although I don't own the characters or universe, I do work hard on my little stories. Please don't print or repost without my knowledge. Thanks. And thanks 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: Takes place immediately following Parts Answering Parts Chapter 18: A Ghost and a Lullaby. Some of the dialogue might be related to in-game dialogue, but I believe most of it to be the product of my own fevered little brain.
Chapter Title Inspiration and Related Quotes: What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you. ~Richard Wilbur; Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin; Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you. If they speak, you break down. ~Bede Jarrett
The words were gone...
his squad was gone...
and Shepard remained, looking up at him with something...a look?...in her eyes that softened her entire face in a way he hadn't been expecting. The surprise of it hit him like charging krogan.
He leaned back against the console, hoping the sudden shaking in his knees and ankles wasn't obvious.
"I'll let you get back to work," Shepard said, without making a move toward the door. She didn't want to leave.
She'd been anxious about him before, anxious about him since she'd...since just before the first Normandy had been lost.
And today, when she'd seen that damned plague...
It had been a savage satisfaction to put a bullet through the head of every vorcha in her line of sight. Even Miranda had seemed more-than-a-little impressed by her ruthless efficiency. But, satisfaction aside, she had barely been aware of who-or what-she shot. She was too preoccupied with the dead...and every corpse she saw wore Garrus Vakarian's face.
"I would like to get a better look at these guns," Garrus said awkwardly, clearing his throat.
"Of course," Shepard agreed as she took her first, reluctant, step. "Just..."
"Need something?" Garrus asked.
"The Professor should be joining us any time now," Shepard said.
"I figured as much," Garrus retorted, stepping forward and stretching out an arm as if to herd her toward the door. "Commander Shepard gets the job done."
"I want you to stop and see him as soon as he's been debriefed," she informed him.
"Is that really necessary?" Garrus asked a bit wearily. "I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to get acquainted while we're hunting down the...what was it again? The Collectors?"
The doors had begun to hiss open.
"Yes," she said, forcefully enough to draw him up short.
She stood just inside the open doors. Just within his reach. But she didn't move and she didn't look at him.
With every step she'd taken, all she had been able to think of was Garrus, Garrus by her side as they approached the quarantine zone...if the plague had managed to escape the barricade...Garrus dying...alone...again.
"You lost your squad...you need to grieve. I get it." She reached up and slapped one armored hand against her shoulder. "Oh, I get it. A hell of a lot better than I wish I did. I've lost people, too, Garrus. Jenkins...Ash...hell, I lost a whole damn unit on Akuze-50 men, Garrus, 50."
Shepard took a deep breath, rolled her shoulder, pressed her hand against it again, took another breath, shook it off.
Garrus felt like a heel...and he resented it. Just because Shepard had already had these feelings...was that supposed to make it easier for him to deal with? And then he felt ridiculously petty, because, she was sharing her experience, something he'd always welcomed...and how was she to know this time was any different? How was he? He didn't know why this time was different...he just felt that...it was.
It was different.
"Shepard-"
"I know-I know-it wasn't the same for you," she whispered, her voice tremulous. "I know this wasn't what happened, but when I came to in that damned medbay...alone...and the last thing I remembered was the end...the end of everything...it felt the same to me. It was like I'd lost you—all of you...and I just didn't know if I could go on...That kind of..."
failure, the word hovered there between them, unspoken, because to say would have felt like an accusation.
To think it was an accusation, too, but one they'd made against themselves and could never escape, an accusation they acknowledged to themselves, and—without words, without the need for words—to one another...
They had to acknowledge it in order to move on...but they didn't have to say it. They never had to say it. Some things should not be said...some things should not be made so...real, so final...
"thing...It can—"
Garrus laughed, the sound a bit desperate. "Yeah, I know."
break you if you. If you let it.
She'd said the words aloud before, to Miranda, to Jacob...to whom she hadn't been ready to give any part of herself.
But to him, to Garrus, to whom she'd give anything—anything he asked—she couldn't say them, because...
Cerberus, even if only in the form of Jacob and Miranda—who both seemed likeable enough—deserved to bear the burden of what it had done in bringing her back, no matter what the reasons, but she didn't want Garrus to have to carry her pain.
She wanted him to let her help him carry his.
Her death had nearly broken him.
From what she'd just said, it had nearly broken them.
But they were together and they were holding together...for now. Barely, maybe, but they were.
Slowly, hesitantly, Garrus reached out and put a hand on her back, the way he'd seen Alenko do from time-to-time. He thought it was a gesture of comfort.
Well, whether or not Shepard agreed, the contact was strangely comforting to him.
"Hells, Garrus, when I saw you step out in front of that gunship, I thought..." she swallowed, hard. She hadn't meant to dump this on him, hadn't meant to confess. "You were only touch-and-go for a couple of days, but...it felt like a couple of centuries. I don't think I'll ever be the same."
Shepard drew in a long, breath, turning it into an odd, snaky, shaky snicker. "It's a damn good thing you recovered, or I'd have had to kill you myself."
Garrus laughed. "And you wondered why I shot you."
Shepard's mouth twitched, "I assumed it was for cover."
Garrus snorted.
Shepard looked contrite. "I...I'm sorry Garrus, I never wanted to abandon you..." she turned slightly to the side, touching the armored fingers of her far hand to the armored fingers of his far hand.
"I know, Shepherd," he said, tightening both his hands, holding her just a bit tighter, reassuring...her, him, he scarcely knew. "I won't pretend I didn't miss you," he said slowly, searching for words. "I won't pretend your absence was anything other than a wound that wouldn't heal...but I always knew you'd be there if you could."
And you were there, after a fashion. I could see you if I closed my eyes...hear your voice in my head...
"And now here you are. I don't know how you're here-hell, I'm even a bit fuzzy on how I'm here-but the means matter less than the facts. You're here and you're alive. And so am I. The last thing I want is to waste the time we have crying over the time we've lost."
"Lost," Shepard repeated thoughtfully, tasting the word on her tongue. She sighed, her entire body catching, rising and dropping in his arms like the tide. "That's the word for it, all right. Lost. I-I've never felt more abandoned or alone or lost in my entire life-lives-than when I woke up in the empty medbay of a base filled with security mechs programmed to kill any organic that moved-" she chuckled at the expression on Garrus' face "-without-without any of you."
"I'm here, Shepard," Garrus murmured uncomfortably, stroking his talons along the lines of armor banding the back of her waist. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
Shepard twisted slightly in his grasp, just enough to look up into his face. "Oh, yes, you damn well are."
Garrus felt his gizzard twist. He'd forgotten how damned good she was at producing that reaction. It was something he could have lived without remembering.
"You are going to see Doctor Solus," Shepard said firmly.
"Oh," Garrus grunted, relieved. "If that's all you want-"
Shepard tilted her head. The gesture was oddly turian. Garrus had the strangest impulse to lean down, just a little bit, and press the fanning plates of his forehead against the strange, broad, flat curve of hers. "No," she said seriously. "I wouldn't say that's all I want-"
Garrus groaned.
"But it will do to be getting along with," she told him, and smirked.