"They told me you died," Garrus raised his head again at Shepard's voice, shattered visor spinning from his clumsy, maimed talons to clatter to the street. "W..when the reaper beam hit, they told me you died…that's why I didn't look for you. How did this happen, Garrus? How could this have happened?!" Shepard realizes her voice has risen sharply, tense with a rising hysteria that chokes in her throat. Its all she can do to gag down the tide of grief that threatens to swamp her; its as effective as flapping her hands at a hurricane, and unshed tears blur her vision.
Garrus simply stares back at her with unblinking cybernetic eyes, one hand frozen in mid grab for his visor. Shepard tries to reach out with the cold threads of reaper tech in her mind, bumping clumsily against the nodes implanted in the turian's skull that left him open to reaper control. Memories flood past her like motes of dust in a sunbeam, twisting in a patternless chaos, mixed in with the unshakable indoctrination of the reaper nanites that twist through his brain.
"Show me" Shepard whispers, daring to brush an outstretched hand against the ragged colony paint below the glowing optics that have replaced the eyes she loved. "Please, show me what happened" she pushes again at the indoctrination nodes in his mind, feeling a flash of shame when he immediately capitulates, unable to deny the reaper part of her.
Memories well up into her mind like blood welling from a cut, it soaks into her brain, weaving through the reaper synapses with a speed that leaves her breathless. She can see flashes of that hellish night, fleets burning in the sky like macabre shooting stars, soldiers twisting in the red light of reaper fire~their bodies highlighted by fire, flickering briefly before scattering to ash. She feels the anguish of watching Tali fall, and the sick-hot pain as the same explosion that took her flings Garrus against a downed tank with a spine shattering snap. She sees herself as he saw her, through blood dimmed eyes and smoke, running for that arching pillar of blue light…..never looking back. He had cried out for his family at first, curled and panting in the burning shadow of the Alliance Mako as the medical biometrics in his visor screeched a warning and the medigel ran to empty. As the first marauder scrambled over the wreckage its her name he howls in panic and despair.
Shepard can see herself, a silhouette framed by the shimmering light of the conduit. She hadn't heard him then~ hadn't heard him cry out for her, desperate and agonized, until steel talons ended his voice with a sharp jerk. Her form faded into the flare of conduit light of his mind at the same second the first reaper node wormed through the ruins of his eyes, cutting new neural pathways as he weakly gasped a wet protest.
Shepard pulled back then, her human mind shying away from the horror of those brutal final moments. She curls forward, arms clasped around her stomach, wailing a wordless cry of protest as bile burns in her mouth with searing heat. 'You realize this plan has me walking into hell too' he had once said, and Shepard realizes with a sick horror that he has done exactly that; he had followed her into hell, and she had left him there to face its horrors alone. She is just starting to straighten up when she feels the cold scrape of metal against her scalp.
Shepard remembered all the quiet evenings spent with Garrus in the solitude of her cabin aboard the Normandy. She would slide her fingers across the smooth cartilage of his fringe and the soft hide beneath it, smiling at the way he would press his head into her hand with a sigh of sleepy contentment. He would always try to reciprocate, carding careful talons through the auburn strands as he pressed his forehead into the crook of her neck.
The jerky movement of the cold metal against her scalp is familiar, and Shepard looks up slowly. Garrus is still watching her with mindlessly blank reaper eyes. One misshapen claw still clutches at the ruins of his visor, but the other scrapes clumsily through the disarray of her hair. Even though half of her wants to back away Shepard reacts the only way she can, she slides a careful hand along the remnants of his cheek, avoiding the raw looking entry points of the glowing cybernetic implants. She tries not to flinch as her hand tracks along the broken edges of bone, where metal grafts replace the natural curve of cartilage, she wonders if he can even feel her hand anymore, but he gives a soft metallic sigh and presses the ruins of his head against her hand.
" I'm so sorry" Shepard whispers, as her fingers slide over the twist of wires at the back of his skull, "so sorry I left you to face this alone." She gently cups a hand under what remains of his jaw, raising his glowing eyes to meet her own, "please Garrus, please... forgive me." As ever he does not hesitate, rasping out a dissonant "yeh-esss" he leans forward to press the cold metal of his browplate against Shepard's forehead.
After a while Garrus slowly inches closer, curling against Shepard in a heartbreaking mockery of the intimacy they used to share. They stay like that for what feels like hours, long enough for Shepard's legs to protest with cold induced cramps where the chill from the asphalt penetrates her fatigues.
Closing her eyes, Shepard can almost imagine that the sternal keel that presses against her is warm and rough-not cold, ash speckled metal. She presses her face to a patch of intact hide on the side of his neck, wishing she could smell his sharp, earthy scent instead of the dark mix of burned metal, old blood, and charred flesh.
"I can fix this," Shepard whispers, ignoring the way Garrus jerkily shakes his head. "Come back with me, we'll find a way to fix this, we always do! Chakwas is working at a hospital here~she's used to patching you up remember! " Hope floods her mind for the first time in weeks, blocking out the way Garrus clumsily pulls back from her touch. Her hands, insistent now, skate over the augmented joints of his shoulders, "we can go away, somewhere warm like you wanted, just the two of us! Shepard and Vakarian!" A desperate, bright laugh bursts from her, borne of sickly desperate hope.
Garrus shakes his head violently, dislodging her hands as his mind broadcasts a static crackle of exhausted pain and anger through the reaper nodes in her brain. Its like being drenched with scalding water, and Shepard whimpers as that heated sending dashes the embryo of her dream with abrupt cruelty.
"N…n..nno Seh-aarrd, nno mmmo-rre!" Even though Garrus no longer needs oxygen,he breaths in irregular gasping pants, trying to force slurred speech out past the destruction of invasive wiring in his throat. "Puh-rrreeesse, nno mmo-rre" his voice trails off into a grating wail of muttered feedback. He scrapes hard at his face with a heavy steel talon, keening a low moan as his unnatural shielding stalls the movement with a flicker of kinetic energy.
Shepard lets her hands fall limply to her knees, the coil of hope in her stomach dying into a cold knot of dread. It had been a selfish hope she realized, a desperate grab for a 'what should have been' rather than the horror of what actually was. Numbly she watched Garrus paw with frantic, desperate repetition at the exposed nodes in his skull, each movement defeated by the defences the reapers had forced into his body.
"We were supposed to meet at the bar," Shepard chokes out, "we were supposed to meet at the damned bar. It wasn't supposed to be like this, we did everything right, how can it be like this?!"
Garrus cocks his head at her, all the torments of hell in those bright soulless eyes, and Shepard knows she will never get past this. All the men lost, family, friends, the millions that burned while the crucible was built, she carries them like a lodestone;…but this, she realizes, this is what is going to end her. She digs the heels of her hands into the cybernetics of her eyes, pressing until the pain twists through her head, dulling the sounds of distant reapers. She wishes she could stay blind, curl up in the darkness of her mind and just….not be here.
"Reee-sssa? " Garrus rasps softly, making Shepard flinch again at that garbled, shattered voice. He hitches himself closer to her, the shattered bones and metal of his damaged leg sliding across the pavement with a dull screech. Somethings bumps heavily against her knees, and the moment she lowers her hands from her eyes Garrus fumbles something heavy and cold into them.
For a moment Shepard cannot move, only instinctive muscle memory telling her numb mind what Garrus is awkwardly folding her uncooperative hands around. She stares straight ahead, nerveless fingers cradling the carnifex pistol as Garrus buries his head in her shoulder, one talon forcing her fingers around the trigger while he gasps "Reee-ssssa, puh-rreeessse" in a low groan against her neck.