Chapter Text
Garrus couldn't shake what Shepard had said to Saracino. When he was back aboard the Normandy, he began furiously researching human history on the extranet. What he learned was disturbing: slavery, lynching, race wars, genocide, even nuclear wars that started because of religion... Human history was filled with death and violence in the name of ideology. While the turians weren't free of such missteps, racism didn't exist for his people. Classism, sure, but they had never succumbed to such atrocities as slavery.
As for the human governments mandating who you could and couldn't love, that was certainly something Garrus could not wrap his head around. Just about everything turians did was for military advancement, including marriage. But it was not illegal, on Palaven or anywhere else, for a turian to marry someone outside of their species. Asari and quarians were common mates for turians.
“Do you ever get tired of running diagnostics on the Mako?” Shepard startled him from his thoughts. He turned to find her leaning against one of the wheels, arms hanging loosely at her sides. If he didn’t know any better, he’d almost call her relaxed.
He closed his Omni-tool interface before responding. “With the way you drive this thing, I’m surprised there’s even a vehicle left to calibrate.”
She feigned ignorance with a shrug as she stood up straight. “If I didn’t put her through her paces, you’d have nothing to do aboard this ship,” she teased. She smiled at Garrus and turned away, presumably to keep making her rounds.
“Commander,” he called after her. She stopped and made her way back toward him. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, Garrus. What’s up?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Before you came over, I was doing some research,” he said as he motioned to his wrist. “I’d been thinking about what that Terra Firma guy said earlier. And what you mentioned about human history.” He paused, suddenly hyper aware that he was stepping into unfamiliar territory. “I’ve had a lot of interaction with humans because of my position in C-Sec, but,” again his nerves got the better of him. Abandoning his original train of thought, instead, he blurted, “…Have any of those things happened to you? What you mentioned to Saracino, I mean.”
She looked down for long enough that Garrus was convinced he’d offended her. “Commander, I’m sorry, it’s none of…”
“No,” she interrupted him with a wave of her hand, finally meeting his gaze again. “I was born on Earth, sure, but I grew up on Mindoir, an outer colony. That far away from the rest of humanity, we had no choice but to do right by each other because we were all we had.”
“Never would have pegged you for a colony kid, Commander.” He knew about her military service record, but nothing about her personal life. He chided himself for never thinking to check.
She moved toward the Mako and kicked a tire with a heavy sigh before continuing, “Sometimes I feel disconnected from humanity because of where I grew up.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, concerned that he’d opened an old wound.
“Before the batarians razed my home, I’d never known anything other than cooperation. We didn’t have to ask each other for help because everyone knew what needed to be done and knew it couldn’t be done alone. It wasn’t until I lost everything – my family, my home, my dignity – that I realized what a terrible place the galaxy could be. I guess that’s the downside to being a naïve colony kid,” she added, looking everywhere else in the cargo hold but at him.
She pushed herself off the Mako and turned to face Garrus. “In the short amount of time I spent on Earth before enlisting,” she continued, “I felt like the Universe tried to teach me all the lessons I missed out on living on the edge of Alliance space. But instead of letting it swallow me whole, I began to embrace the ugly. The more people told me I couldn’t do something, the deeper I delved into it. It was completely stupid, looking back, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
She finally paused and looked at Garrus with a smirk. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that her cheeks were flushed. “I experimented with drugs, violence, and,” she paused as if trying to find the right words, “…other things,” she finally settled on. “The galaxy can be a terrible place, but it is also beautiful if you open yourself to it. But assholes like Saracino, and other close-minded fools in the Terra Firma party, will never see such wonders. They’ve built a wall around their ideals and believe that racist, separatists notions will save them from the perceived blight of other species. It’s an archaic notion that, if it picks up too much steam, would set humanity on the wrong course – costing us on a much larger scale.”
“Other things?” Garrus asked, unable to hear anything else Shepard had said afterward.
“Really? Of all the things I’ve just said, that’s all you heard?” she crossed her arms over her chest.
He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she was right. He’d stopped listening after that and was embarrassed that she’d called him on it. “Sorry, Commander. Figured you for one of those by-the-book Alliance types.”
“One of these days, Vakarian, I’ll tell you about my time training with a Turian squad on Invictus. You know,” she added as she began to walk away, “since you think I’m so vanilla.”
Garrus waited until she’d crossed the cargo bay before he pulled up his Omni-tool to find the meaning of “vanilla.” Food flavoring or sweet scent? He’d never associated any particular scent to Shepard, but he was pretty sure she smelled more like gun oil and tungsten than she did anything resembling something soft and sweet. He kept scrolling and came to another definition – “ordinary, having no special attributes.”
He looked up to find the Commander gesturing wildly as she and Wrex were having a vibrant conversation. Had she gotten the old Krogan to crack a smile? How could he ever think of her as ordinary?