AN: When better to be seized by the desire to finally hammer out one's Destroy epilogue than while in the middle of posting a completely separate fic for a completely separate fandom? This fic has been percolating in my brain since I first finished ME in 2012, but it wasn't until my recent ME Legendary Edition stream that I finally got a major sticking point unstuck. Once that finally fell into place, the rest followed fairly easily; as always, I forget how much I love Shepard and Garrus until I'm in the middle of writing them.
I kneel in abject gratitude at the awesome feet of jadesabre301, eponymous_rose, and fistfulofgammarays for their beyond-generous time and effort looking over this for me. Jade & Rose's invaluable feedback regarding structure, voice, grammar, and theme are the only reason this thing is even close to readable. Rose, thank you for your gentle policing of my ellipses & my ellipse substitutes, as well as finally hammering into me the difference between "that" and "which." Jade, your eye for structure is unparalleled, and even though you already know it, it deserves to be said again: you're always right, even when I whine. Thank you so much for the constant polishing; even though I think we've generally moved to a finer grit than before, it's still beyond humbling that you're willing to spend so much time doing close, dedicated reads of long, rambling thinkpieces about ships you don't ship. (Also, thanks for doing all the headcanon work about quarians so I can mooch with minimal effort.) Finally, Gamma's willingness to share his technical expertise and his kindness in being my technobabble soundboard are so appreciated; any scientific or technological errors (or impossibilities) remaining are mine.
No particular warnings for this fic besides canon-typical violence. As always, the piece is completely finished & should cap at six chapters; I plan to update Tuesdays & will post concurrently with Iron Bound for those also reading that one. I very much hope you enjoy! :)
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
—The Truly Great, Stephen Spender
—
Shepard wakes up.
It's not at all like Garrus expects, momentous and unremarkable, like a crash of lightning followed only by a gentle breeze. The first time she lasts about sixty seconds, barely managing to whisper his name with a voice hoarse from weeks of forced ventilation. He's clumsy with shock and the juddering rush of relief; he nearly tips over an unused IV stand in his haste and clangs off the side of the cart holding her fleet of medicines. By the time he gets to her hospital bed she's already on her way out again, the dazed confusion in her eyes heightened by the powerful fatigue, and he's forced to swallow back everything still left unsaid.
The second time, only a few minutes later, she lasts a little longer; just long enough for Garrus to get hold of his racing heart, his trembling hands; just long enough for her to manage a faint, glorious smile as he leans over and very carefully kisses her, forehead to forehead, then mouth to mouth. Just long enough for her to get out a few questions through rough, swollen lips which he does his best to answer as simply as he can.
The Reapers are gone. Communications are in shambles, the relays damaged badly, but nearly every surviving Crucible team has been reassigned to their repairs, and what news Garrus has bothered to follow seems promising. The Normandy crew has come through alive and well, save EDI, who's been offline since the moment the red wave swept through the ship and sent them all careening planetside.
Three weeks, Garrus says, when she asks. Three weeks since the Reapers died, since the Citadel exploded. Three weeks since Shepard had been found in the rubble afterwards and Miranda had saved her life. (Three weeks since his world ended in strafing Reaper fire and a goodbye that ripped him right in half. He doesn't tell her that part.)
Shepard nods, breathing just a touch fast. He brings her a glass of water when she coughs feebly and holds it for her, not entirely sure she's allowed to have it and not really caring, and then she tells him again that she loves him, which is just about the best sound Garrus has ever heard. It's even better than the silent absence of Reaper beams, though it takes him a few minutes to respond in kind with his own throat suddenly gone dry.
She's alive. Alive and awake, which is even better, and with enough of her mind left to laugh at his slight stutter on the words, the way his mandibles twitch like a teenager's when she lifts her hand—even those few inches a serious struggle—and touches them. Enough of her left for her eyes to soften as he leans in to tell her he's missed her.
But all too soon her consonants begin to slur and her eyes go a little unfocused, and when she starts to repeat her questions, asking again about the crew, asking again about Earth, about the Reapers—when she asks Garrus himself if he made it out okay from the Hammer run—he grips her good hand and tells her to go back to sleep. She's out again in seconds.
He's hardly done anything but watch her sleep lately, but all at once it's become exhilarating. One slight change in context, one shift of gray rubble to let in a little sun—but even he can see the difference between this natural sleep and the artificial laxity of before. Well, as natural as it can get, anyway, with the left half of her body immobilized by mass effect fields and the rest of her beaten to hell and back, her exposed cybernetics glowing orange around the tidy white bandages. Her face is still swollen, so bruised it must be painful to talk, but when she'd smiled it had come easy, unforced, and even now she looks more peaceful than he's seen her in years. Of course, that could just as easily be the painkillers.
It doesn't matter. She's alive and she's resting, and the raw joy burning inside him is agony enough without staring at it directly, so for nearly an hour Garrus just sits there beside the bed, Shepard's too-many fingers in his hand, and watches his visor mark out her heartbeat and temperature and respiratory rate in a new baseline. Then when he can't stand that any longer—when even that HUD is too much distance between them—he takes off his visor and just watches her breathe instead: steady, deep, both lungs filling evenly now, her skin returned to its proper olive instead of the awful, bleached grey she'd been before.
They'd found her at the start of the Earth month of March. She'd been trapped in one of the thousand chunks of the Citadel come crashing down to Earth; Ashley had hauled her out from the sparking, failing mass effect field in a full dead-weight drag. She hadn't even looked human, more char and ash than skin and armor, the unholy red of cybernetics cracking throughout like seams of lava, her armor burned black as coal. Except her head had turned just a little at her name, and her hand had clenched into a fist, and his heart had seized like lightning in his chest—
His omnitool pings.
Garrus shakes his head, dismissing the line of thought, and replaces his visor. He'd muted nearly every automatic receiver frequency weeks ago, as soon as Shepard had come out of surgery, which means this is one of about seven people in the galaxy. The screen struggles to life. "Miranda."
"Garrus." Her voice is tinny and choked with static; her face flickers out every few seconds. Even so, she looks exhausted. "—you hear me?"
"Yeah. Connection's bad, though. Where are you?"
"Eastern Europe. Somew—near Poland, I th—can imagine the exact bord—hard to find. There was a rumor—Cerberus cell h—last days of the war." She waves a dismissive hand. "All my monitors for Shepard just lit u—firework. Is s—awake?"
"Yeah." Garrus scrapes a hand over his fringe, still not quite able to trust the hope. "Just now. It didn't last long, but we got to talk a little bit before she went out again."
"Is—lucid? Aware—roundings?"
"Yeah." He smiles. "She asked about you. Wanted to know if you were okay."
Miranda gives a sudden, startled smile. Just for an instant the exhaustion wipes away behind warm delight, and then, as if embarrassed at her own lapse, she smooths it all over again into polished professionalism. "I'm fine. I'll be back fir—tomorrow. Have—nurses come by?"
"No, not yet."
"I'm forwarding instr—Dr. Naidu. If they're not—en minutes call m—"
"Will do. You're breaking up pretty bad, Miranda."
She scowls, and as if on cue, the call drops. He waits a moment just to see if she'll try to call back, but when she doesn't, Garrus mutes the 'tool, sends a short message burst to everyone who matters, and leans back in his chair. Too small, too plastic, not at all meant for anyone with the slightest curve to their spine. He'd already cracked the back of one chair gripping it too hard. Even if Dr. Rothefort had waved off his apology, it had been a painful reminder of the almost ludicrous fragility of the human race.
Except—here are the humans anyway, running this hospital and the refugee camps and cleanup crews and making alarmingly quick inroads toward reconstruction. Alive, just like Shepard, despite the brutal beating their planet had taken at the hands of the Reapers. He hopes Palaven can say the same.
"Damn," he says aloud, and he scrubs the heels of his hands over his eyes.
"Tough day?"
"Shepard," he gasps, rocking forward in the chair so suddenly the spindly metal forelegs almost give way. Less than an hour since the last time, but his heart races just as fast at her voice. Her eyes are open again—at least the left one, anyway, with the right still blackened and swollen shut. More importantly, it's the most alert she's looked yet. "I thought you were asleep."
Her smile is so frail it hurts. Even her voice is thin and thready, like cobwebs dragged over concrete. "I'm busted up, Garrus, but I'm not deaf."
He snorts, but when her fingers twitch he takes her hand immediately. "Sorry I woke you up. You have enough morphine in those drips to knock out a krogan. Should've known it wouldn't be enough."
"Cerberus," she sighs, and her eyes fall shut. "Biotic metabolism. Resistant to everything now." She lets out a long, slow breath, then looks at him. "Death, too, I guess."
"I'm not complaining."
That earns another smile, just in time for a knock at the door to herald a team of four harried nurses in white and red. They displace him from the bedside with polite, implacable deference, though their one attempt to shoo him from the room altogether is met with equally civil, equally implacable refusal. He feels a little bad about it—the nurse's eyes have circles so dark they look bruised, and there's a brittleness to her request that tells him they've had to give too many families bad news lately—but he'll cut off his own spurs before he leaves Shepard alone in this room, and if nothing else, he has half a meter and a dozen talons on the tallest nurse.
Both sides exchange pointed looks—Garrus's much more literal—but eventually the head nurse decides he's not worth the fight. For his part Garrus withdraws to the wall without complaint, well out of the way, but where Shepard can see him during breaks in the bustle. Every now and then she looks for him, just a little too confused at the jargon and a little too concerned at the prodding. Every time she sees him still there, the relief in her eyes is just a little too strong.
As it is, they ask her a thousand questions about pain, sensation, mobility, vision—interminable interrogations that leave her looking more wiped out than the footrace against the thresher maw on Tuchanka. One of the nurses finally makes a handful of adjustments at a console, and a few moments later the tight pinch of pain at the corners of Shepard's mouth gives way. Her eyes take on that glassy, unfocused look once more, but it's worth it to keep her from hurting, and if it means she again needs things repeated a few times before they stick, Garrus doesn't mind. The nurses change a few more dressings, adjust Shepard's weight and position in the bed, then file out. Their smiles are easier on the departure, he thinks; one even cracks a joke to spark a decent laugh from the rest, and then the door closes, and they're alone.
He drags the plastic chair back next to the bed and sits. Already Shepard's face has gone a little lax, her eyes lidded and heavy. Some skycar good-naturedly honks outside, a short one-two-three signal to someone else, then takes off with a rippling whine. One of Shepard's monitors beeps just enough out of rhythm to grate, but it's not quite loud enough to be worth digging into the software to silence it. Besides, best to avoid any more reasons for the head nurse to oust him from the room.
Her shoulders shift suddenly, more the right than the left; it's a familiar motion, the resolute squaring against pain he's seen from her mostly during firefights. Then she looks directly at him, which is itself alarming given the sheer volume of mixed medications coursing through her right now. "Garrus?"
One mandible flicks out in a smile before he can stop it. Of course Shepard won't go down easy, even lying in a hospital bed. "I'm here. You okay?"
"Gotta tell you something. Before I drop off again. Just remembered."
"You decided to cancel your reservation at that bar."
"No. Garrus," she says again, a little unsteady, and he realizes to his abrupt horror that her eyes are wet. "Garrus, I shot Anderson."
His heart plummets into his feet. "On the Citadel? After the Hammer run?"
"Yeah," she says, and tries to cover her face, except her left arm is immobilized down to her fingertips and her right hand won't obey her. It lands near her throat instead, and she clenches her eyes shut. "There's a lot to tell you. I didn't want to. I couldn't stop it. There's so…it's so hard to think."
"That would be the krogan painkillers," he tries, but it comes out too strained, and he grimaces. "Shepard, I'm sorry. I know you two were close."
"Anderson's dead. Hackett should know. Confirmed dead." Her breath hitches. "Someone has to tell…I can't remember her name."
"Kahlee."
"Yeah. Kahlee Sanders." Her pulse jumps in her throat as if it would like to race, but the medications won't let it. "Shit."
He wants to understand, and he suspect Shepard needs to say the words, but he can see she's fighting the sedatives with everything she has. There's time. Impossibly, they have time, and for once in her life she doesn't have to force herself to push through the agony right here, right now. "Shepard," he says, and when he carefully puts his hand over hers, over her heart, a few tears roll down her cheeks. "It's okay. I'll make sure Hackett knows. Go back to sleep. You can tell me everything later."
Her lips press together hard, but she manages to get a finger linked with his. "Yeah. Okay. No rush, I guess."
"Add that to the column of things I've never heard you say. Maybe the world really did end, and the bar is just this wrecked hospital."
There, at last: a ghost of a smile. "Don't know where to rush without a war."
"Ouch. Well, I hope you meant that thing about seeing Palaven. I have plans for you once you get back on your feet." Not that there's much Palaven left to see, but he figures it's the principle of the thing.
"Mm." She leans into the touch as he wipes her cheeks with his knuckles. "Plans sound nice. As long as I don't have to make them."
"Not for a while, anyway. You know you love giving orders too much to give it up for good."
"People keep following them. Not sure what else to do."
"Maybe they're just good orders. Maybe you're just a good commander." Her pinched brows have finally relaxed; her fingers have gone still. Garrus leans a little closer, drops his voice. "Maybe I decide to give the orders for a little while. Maybe we go a few weeks without you throwing yourself at death like gravity's pulling you there. Come on, Shepard. Ease off the throttle for a minute and go to sleep."
She gives a short, sudden sigh. "You sound like Anderson. 'Fight'll still be there when you wake up.'"
She's smiling when she says it, but another tear slides down her face, and Garrus's subvocal control goes right to hell. "Damn, Shepard, I'm sorry about Anderson. I know it doesn't help."
"It does."
"You know he cared about you. All the way to the end, whatever happened up there."
"Yeah," she whispers, and then the sedatives take over at last, and there's no sound in the room but the beeping monitor and her slow, deep breaths. She doesn't even flinch when Garrus cleans off the fresh tears still falling in her sleep.
—
Hackett arrives near dawn the next day, two majors in tow and a passel of nervous nurses fretting at the edges. He doesn't stay long, though he does greet Garrus with a cordial handshake and a request to stay in touch. Stronger today, Shepard gives a sharp, if tired, salute; Hackett returns it gravely, then tells her about the arrangements for Anderson, about the dozens of medals she'll be awarded as soon as she can stand up, about the ceremonies that will come with them. He tells her briefly about Alliance losses and successes, of many ships lost and a handful more recovered; he rattles off a list of a dozen likely survivors, people unknown to Garrus but whose names have Shepard nodding in relief.
Then Hackett quietly asks her, when his attachés are speaking together at the window and the nurses busily peering at one of Shepard's monitors, if she can tell him what happened at the Citadel. Garrus, leaned against the foot of her bed, watches her mouth twist, her eyes go haunted. It's one of the worst looks he's ever seen on her, even worse than when she thinks about Virmire. He hates it.
At last, she says, "I made a choice, Admiral." Her good hand clenches so hard around her blanket the knuckles go white. "You sent me there to destroy the Reapers. So I did."
"I know, Commander." His shoulders are straight as steel, and Garrus suspects the admiral dislikes this just as much as he does. "I'm sorry I have to ask. Just give me your report when you can."
Shepard swallows hard. "I don't…there are some things I can't…"
"I know," the admiral says again, more gently than Garrus expects. "When you're ready, Commander. I'll take what you can give, and that's all. There's no hurry. Trust me, the Alliance has its hands full at the moment."
"Sir." Her lips thin. "Admiral Anderson. I—"
Hackett holds up a hand. "Save it for your report, Commander. No point tearing open a fresh wound. I know you did everything you could. He was exactly where he wanted to be, and neither you nor I could have talked him out of it."
"Sir…"
"Besides, David and I were friends a long time. He thought of you as his own, Shepard, ever since Arcturus. He wouldn't want you to get caught in the guilt, and you know that."
"Sir." Shepard's face is white as chalk. Garrus's visor tells him the same thing as the nearby screen, that her heart is pounding far too fast and her breathing's gone shallow, but her shoulders are set. "Thank you. When I can, I—when I can."
"Take your time," Hackett says, pushing to his feet. He moves like an old man, Garrus thinks suddenly, though he still stands straight in the dress blues. Then he's gone, along with his majors and almost all the nurses, and they're given nearly four whole minutes of respite before there's another knock at the door.
This time it's Miranda as promised, looking more disheveled than Garrus has ever seen her, but her smile is genuinely warm as she reaches down to embrace Shepard in her hospital bed. They chat only a few minutes, mostly about the rumored Cerberus cell Miranda's trying to flush out near Bialystok, until Shepard visibly begins to flag. Miranda makes a few notes on a datapad, adjusts a few settings on one of Shepard's monitors, then departs with a promise to speak to her care team about short-term prognoses. Her look to Garrus on the way out is significant, though he can't tell if it's supposed to mean keep an eye on her or don't be an idiot. Knowing Miranda, probably both.
She leaves him with a series of contact numbers and a medical recommendations list longer than some operations manuals he's read, including a detailed schedule regarding metrics and milestones Shepard has to hit before beginning physical therapy. Another list follows shortly after her departure, a dozen more markers and repeatable improvements required before discharge, and then a contact list of a dozen specialists for what looks like every major organ system in the human body. He shakes his head a bit at that—Shepard can't even sit up on her own yet—but Miranda is nothing if not prepared, and at least this way he's got something to fall back on when Shepard inevitably starts pushing herself sooner than she should.
She's asleep already, he realizes, glancing at her in the narrow, side-railed bed. The morning sunlight through the window beside her lingers on her cheeks, giving them the flush of health he's missed, just enough he can almost pretend she looks like herself again. He'd done the same thing on Palaven, in Cipritine, when his mother—
But that's too painful a comparison and a bad one besides, and Garrus shoves the thought away before it begins to bruise. Shepard will live. Shepard will walk again, if Miranda has anything to say about it, and he's not going to waste this time they've been given worrying about how close they've both come to disaster.
He checks his mail, then Shepard's, and shoves all but two messages into an archival folder. Then he kicks back on the slightly larger—but still dangerously plastic—turian-shaped chair they've scrounged up for him, crosses his arms, and drops off into a soldier's light doze.
When I can, I—when I can.
She'll have the time she needs. He'll make sure of it.