I am so sorry for the long time since the last update. I got distracted by another story & somehow forgot I was supposed to be posting chapters here. Thank you all for your continued encouragement, and I'll try not to get to distracted again! :)
Everything had narrowed down to this. Shepard couldn't see the ruined walls anymore, or the gory body of the dead krogan; every sense had narrowed down to the rapid throb of a heartbeat against her fingers, and the still slightly labored huff of air against the skin of her wrist. It was like her own life balanced on the scales of each desperate breath, as if, if that failed, so would she.
Stepping from the sterile confines of the Normandy, onto the teeming docks of Omega had been a culture shock; and it had been quickly apparent that tracking down one wandering turian in the throng would be more difficult than Shepard had hoped. Samara had asked for assistance in tracking her errant daughter, so Shepard had swallowed her pride and asked Omega's self-proclaimed queen for information.
It wasn't Aria's power that rubbed Shepard the wrong way. Her confidence and strength were to be respected; it was her obvious amusement at the situation that rankled, not her cooly confident sexuality. As it always had, a mixture of flattery, humility, and promises had managed to coax the needed information out of Omega's secretive regent... but her parting comment of 'do tell Archangel to keep his head down this time' had made Shepard's blood run cold. The dread must have shown on her face, no matter how much she tried to school her expression into one of complacency, and the supercilious smirk on Aria's face showed clearly that she had caught Shepard's momentary lapse.
"Leave him alone." Shepard's voice was ice cold, her hand closing on the grip of her holstered weapon in a gesture of clear threat. "You want him, you'll have to go through me," the statement was pure bravado, and Shepard could hear the sharp clicks of guns arming as Aria's guards moved in to protect their queen. She wouldn't survive a firefight in Omega's pulsing heart, but some things were worth dying to protect.
Sure her empty threat was going to cause bloodshed, Shepard hoped desperately that she could at the very least do enough damage to stall the inevitable mercenary deployment; but to her surprise Aria's face almost seemed to soften, a flicker of regret sliding across her eyes for a heartbeat, before they hardened again.
"Go get your turian Shepard," the statuesque asari called off her protection with a toss of her head, turning to gaze out over the churning haze of Afterlife. "Then get him off my station." Aria's face was unreadable as she looked back to add, "for both your sakes, this place will rip you apart otherwise."
One of Aria's guards had handed Shepard a datapad as she left, Tali dogging her heels. Her anger had surged as she followed the documented security chatter as it showed the clear path Garrus had taken back to the exact last place he should ever have gone alone. Self recrimination warred with fury at his decision; deep down Shepard knew she had caused this by leaving Garrus on Illium, at the same time the fact that he hadn't even tried to contact her~instead asking Liara for help~rankled. Her anger translated into pounding footsteps and what must have been a truly intimidating expression, because when Tali finally stopped her with a tentative hand to ask if Shepard was alright, she realized that even the hardened denizens of Omega were giving her a wide berth.
Shepard had forced herself to exude a calm that did not match her inner turmoil. But even that enforced serenity had shattered when the dull echoes of gunfire had broken the eerie silence of the abandoned apartment complex. Shepard was running before the last echo had faded, pushing her rebuilt body, with all its enhancements, for every extra inch of ground covered, every second gained. Vaulting over a pile of debris in the courtyard, Shepard could hear Tali struggling to keep up even as she stumbled, hands flailing for balance, over the fresh corpse of a vorcha at the bottom of the stairs.
Bursting into the upper room, redolent with the rank tang of fresh blood was like flailing for air over Alchera all over again. That sudden tightness in her chest, that all to familiar feeling of everything solid falling away. A krogan, its face a shattered ruin, lay spread-eagled in the middle of the room. Sprawled out a few feet away was Garrus, his face and chest soaked in blood.
He was too limp as Shepard grabbed him by the shoulders and rolled him over. His head flopping back as she pressed a hand to the side of his face, desperately calling his name~begging for any kind of response.
Garrus' pale eyes were dazed and shocky as they tried to focus, and Shepard could see his jaw working, as he heaved another shuddering gasp, trying to gasp out her name. Whatever strength he had seemed to be fading as he fought to breath, body slackening beneath her hands as his desperate gasps for air began to falter. Shepard's hands fumbled desperately, trying to find the injury that was causing this, but her questing fingers could find no wounds in the trails of blood on his face and throat, no bubbling bullet hole in the gore that slicked the front of his armor.
In the end it was Tali who knew enough to take control of the situation. "Hold his head back Shepard," she instructed, guiding Shepard's hands to rest just behind the hinge of Garrus' mandibles, tilting his head as far back as she could. Shepard envied Tali's calm, as her dexterous triadic hands recovered a small silver cylinder from one of the pouches on her exosuit, rapping it sharply on the ground until Shepard heard two distinct pops and a light on the side flickered from yellow to green. Pressing one end to the thin skin on the underneath of Garrus' jaw, Tali depressed the other end until Shepard could hear the sharp hiss of a pneumatic injector.
"What?" Shepard managed, all to aware of the too-rapid throb of Garrus' pulse beneath her fingers.
"This blood isn't all his." Tali touched a gloved finger to the liquid in question, "a lot of this is krogan, I imagine he got a mouthful of it, probably breathed some in too." Tali shrugged, "fairly typical anaphylactic reaction.
"He'll be alright though?" Shepard hoped for reassurance as she followed Tali's helmeted gaze toward the dead krogan, with its mangled forearm that looked like someone had shoved it through a meat grinder. Sometimes it was hard to remember that turians were the apex predators of their world. While they chose to use modern weapons of war, they were, as Garrus had clearly proved, well able to defend themselves with natural weapons.
"He should be fine, turians have strong immune systems...he might have a sore throat for a few days though." Tali shook her head, "at the very least he ought to remember not to put anything krogan related in his mouth."
Garrus chose that moment to announce his return to consciousness with a deep rasping breath that segued into a violent coughing fit. Shepard rubbed a hand over his back as he sat up and hunched over, spitting up a few gobbets of half-inhaled krogan. "I heard something about immune systems," Garrus rasped, "so Tali must be here. And I'll try to keep krogans out of my mouth from now on, thank you," he added dryly, obviously amused by Tali's discomfited, and slightly horrified reaction to how her last statement could have been taken.
Resting her hands on either side of his face, Shepard turned Garrus to face her. Half of her wanted to throttle him, both for his inanely stupid plan of coming back here alone, and partly for scaring her half to death. "Do you know," she began, giving him a light shake for emphasis, "that people considered you to be a tactical genius for your work here?!" Trying to ignore Garrus' wide-eyed look of confusion, Shepard gave him another shake, "Tactical. Fucking. Genius! Honestly, this..." Shepard waved a hand at the dilapidated, rubble and gore strewn room, "this is not tactical genius. This was so incredibly goddamn stupid...I honestly cannot believe you thought this was a good idea! This was..." Shepard trailed off as Garrus leaned forward, pushing against her hands to rest his forehead against hers in an odd, spontaneous gesture Shepard didn't fully understand. Whatever was going on it made Tali's luminescent eyes go wide in the haze of her helmet, and she did an abrupt about-face, finding something apparently fascinating on the opposite wall.
"Ummm?" Shepard let her palm rest against Garrus' undamaged cheek, relishing the regular double beat of his pulse against her fingers, and the still raspy-but regular huff of his breath against her wrist. Unsure of what she was supposed to be doing Shepard pressed her forehead firmly against Garrus', feeling the slight hitch in his breathing as she did so. Listening to the odd rasping croon that was rumbling in Garrus' chest, Shepard closed her eyes, and for the first time since waking to the sterile chill of the Cerberus lab, she was content.