Shepard stared at the door, a part of her wanting to run away. Run away from this city, flee the planet, set the Normandy to some unknown destination and escape all this. The simple plastic name plate on the door read ' ' followed by the emblem of the turian Hierarchy, and a sequence of three colored cards, one yellow and marked with the sobering warning 'suicide watch'.
The door swung inwards on hidden hinges, rather than sliding aside, and Shepard stepped into the bright silence of the room. A large window looked out on a courtyard, the evening sun slanting through the glass to bathe the room in golden light. Garrus was curled on his side on the room's only bed, the haze of sun slanting across his body. For a moment, Shepard half expected him to sit up, to give her that almost-smile she had begun to treasure, but even as she stepped closer, gently calling his name, there was no response. He had been dressed in a soft, creme colored sleeveless tunic and pants, but they did little to hide the fact that he was still painfully thin, spinal ridges pressing sharply against the material.
Kneeling next to the bed, Shepard couldn't help that her gaze went to the new, partially healed, curving scar along his throat, and the light splints on his limp fingers. In the back of her mind all she could think of was the blood on the floor of her quarters, the spattered marks on the door where he had battered and clawed at the metal. It was his eyes that made hot tears flood Shepard's vision, his gaze was utterly empty, fixed on something only he could see.
"Garrus?" Shepard pressed her palm to his slack, unscarred mandible, "Garrus, please..." Only the slight warmth of his plates under her palm, and the soft huff of breath against her wrist, gave any indication that he was even alive.
Garrus' wrists were wrapped in soft, padded restraints, clipped to a strut that followed the mattress the length of the bed. Remembering Lanastia's mention of his aggression, Shepard supposed it was a fair precaution; but even so, her hands were almost frantic as she unbuckled them, flinging them across the room in a desperate kind of grief. Garrus offered absolutely no reaction to this, muscles slack under Shepard's fingers, no so much as a hint or flicker of recognition in his flat, dead eyes.
"Come on, Garrus," Shepard rose from the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed, cupping Garrus' cheek with one hand, rubbing her thumb over the familiar colonial markings; wishing desperately for the familiar pressure of him pressing into her touch. "I'm fine now,just a few new scars... so please, come back to me..." A lump burned heavy in the back of Shepard's throat, and she had to pause, gulping in gasps of air until it subsided, only just managing to get herself under control when the door clicked softly open.
"Commander?" Matriarch Lanastia stepped into view, "are you alright?"
"No." Shepard surprised herself with her honesty, "No, I'm really not. You said I could help...but I don't know how I can possibly do anything useful here."
"I don't know how much Dr.T'Soni told you about the treatments here," Lanastia settled herself on the opposite side of the bed, smoothing the wrinkles in the bedding with a delicate, age spotted hand. "I assume you know that asari can...access the minds of other people, it is often associated with sex, but in truth can be used for anything related to the mind."
Remembering the scrambled beacon visions, and the subsequent bonding with both Liara, and the former thorian-slave, Shiala, Shepard nodded in agreement.
"In the case of mental trauma," the matriarch continued, "a well trained asari is capable of targeting specific sections of the psyche, memories, reactions...and either bring latent memories forward, or subdue ones that cause harm."
"That sounds uncomfortably like brainwashing," Shepard didn't even try to censor the steel from her tone.
"Not at all, although I can understand why you would make the connection," Lanastia replied. "To use the ocean metaphor again, brainwashing would be if the water was simply removed; what I do is...calm the waves a bit, teach my patients to swim, so that when the tides rise, they can move with it, rather than fighting."
Shepard shook her head, "I'm not sure I understand what you would be doing with Garrus."
"To put it simply, I would be able to move through his memories and subdue the immediate fear/pain reactions, and teach him how to cope with the trauma he has experienced. I cannot take those memories away... Much like medigel will aid the healing of a wound, but always leaves a scar, I can help Garrus' mind heal, but I cannot change what he has experienced."
"Then I'm not sure what I can do?" Shepard carefully interlaced her fingers with Garrus' unresponsive digits, "can't you just...fix this."
Lanastia shook her head, a self deprecating smile playing on her lips, "I'm good Shepard, but not that good. This process is a slow one, and will most likely take weeks, probably months; the problem now is making the necessary connection. And that," the slight asari gestured at Shepard, "is where you come in. If you are willing I would like to bond the two of you together, in the hopes that your mental presence will pull him back to a point that I can begin working with him."
"You want me...to go in his head?" Shepard looked dubiously at the matriarch, thinking the entire situation was starting to sound like some sort of bad, straight to download vid.
"In a way yes, I have some hope that Garrus will respond to you, that is," Lanastia gave Shepard a look that bordered on pleading, "if you are willing."
Shepard looked down at Garrus' face, at the slack mandibles and empty eyes, the cruelly clipped fringe and the extensive scarring on his jaw. "Yeah, if there is any chance at all, then I'm willing."
"Thank you, commander," the genuine gratitude in Lanestia's voice was surprisingly obvious, as she reached over to rest a hand against Garrus' forehead, "if you are ready, I would like to do this now, " she offered her free hand to Shepard.
Taking a deep breath, trying to calm her roiling doubt and nervousness, Shepard reached out to clasp the matriarch's hand, her pale, scarred skin contrasting sharply with the asari's natural blue hue. She could feel her pulse hammering in her temples, her palm sweat slick where she still grasped Garrus' limp hand. Shepard was about to open her mouth to question the matriarch, when Lanastia looked up at her with slick, black eyes, and the world fell away.
The room spun away and Shepard was assaulted by a confusing montage of images and thoughts, a sharp reminder of the mental cacophony she had experienced with the prothean beacon. Somewhere, she was aware of another mind brushing her own consciousness, and the distant, unfamiliar echo of another body that wasn't her own; reaching tentatively out toward that other sense of self, she felt herself dragged sharply under. The body wasn't hers, its configuration unfamiliar as she stared hazily up at an unfamiliar ceiling through blurred eyes. Everything hurt, and even as a passenger Shepard cringed. There was fresh blood in her mouth, blood and something acrid and viscous, she tried to spit, but it triggered a sharp surge of agony through her face, and someone nearby laughed. There was a sick kind of internal hurt that Shepard didn't want to think about, and the cold slick of blood on her thighs.
"Garrus?" Shepard tried to call mentally, reaching for the spark that was him, "Garrus, please don't do this!" Shepard could hear a grating Krogan laugh, and through her borrowed eyes she recognized Garm, heavy paw lifting a glowing length of metal from a barrel fire. Cursing her own cowardice, Shepard pulled away, trying to ignore the echoing cry of mental anguish, the wave of pain, shame, guilt and fear that flooded through her. "Oh god Garrus, its Shepard, please...you need to stop this!"
Re-lived memories flashed through Shepard in a sickening montage. She could feel the dull agony as Kurril forced her to her knees, talons hooking into her shattered jaw to drag her mouth closer. The nerve stripping agony of a hand blade against the sensitive cartilage of her fringe, the fear of trying to breath in an ice cold, airless darkness. The feeling of Garm's hand forcing her hand around the pistol grip, watching Butler and Sidonis die, again, and again, and again. Dimly Shepard was aware of her own body, of the growing ache in her temples, overlayed as it was by the horror of the shared memories. With a kind of desperation, Shepard latched onto what she could barely recognize as Garrus, and pulled with all her mental strength, dimly aware of the sharp stab of pain in her head, and the wetness of blood in her nostrils. For a moment there was only an odd kind of echoing silence, and then Shepard found herself in a familiar purgatory cell.
Garrus sat against the far wall, knees hugged to his chest, staring fixedly at a wash of blood on the floor. Struck by how strangely real the room felt, Shepard let her shocked mind wander the cell, taking in the ravaged bodies sprawled in the shadows. Some she recognized, Butler, Sidonis, the asari who had been flung to the crowd; others, like the batarian, his chest a shattered ruin, and the salarian, who stared up at her with one remaining eye, were strangers. In the middle of the carnage Shepard found herself, stripped to the waist, blood smeared and pale, the wounds in her chest gaping open like hungry mouths, exposing red meat and white bone.
"No! No, Garrus, I'm here!" kneeling next to him, Shepard gave him a strong shake, "I'm here!"
Shepard could feel a slight flicker of confusion against her mind, a tiny response, and she flung all the memories of her recovery towards it, from waking in the med bay, to examining her new scars, even the trip to the clinic with Liara. A surge of recognition and gratitude pressed against her mind, and the cell slowly started to fade. The stained, filth streaked walls fell away, leaving only a cold blackness in which Shepard floundered, weightless and suffocating, until with a flash it was gone.
Coming back into her own body was not unlike hitting a safety rope after a long fall, a sudden, almost sickening lurch. Blinking dry eyes, Shepard stared in confusion at the ceiling, it took a few moments for her to realize she must have slipped from her place on the bed, and that the tiled floor was very hard and cold against her back. Levering herself slowly to her knees, Shepard groaned at the sharp pain in her head, raising a slightly shaky arm to blot away the blood on her upper lip with her sleeve. Matriarch Lanastia was leaning back against the head of the bed, face drawn and pale, her spattering of freckles showing clearly against the pallor of her skin.
"Garrus?" Shepard pressed her hand to his face again, looking for any kind of reaction in his lost gaze. Her stomach was beginning to clench almost painfully, when she felt the slight twitch of his mandible against her palm, and he blinked slowly, struggling to focus on her face; his sky-blue gaze marred with a kind of hunted pain. He coughed slightly, and his voice was a harsh whisper when he spoke.
"Sh...Shepard?"