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A few hours after Shepard, Garrus, and Liara returned from the asteroid that had been heading straight for Terra Nova, Garrus approached Shepard in the mess. The mission had lasted well into Normandy’s simulated night cycle, so no one else was around, most of the on-duty personnel situated in the CIC. It was odd that Garrus sat down at the table in front of Shepard, but not unwelcome. Usually if they were in the mess at the same time, he’d grab something out of the fridge, say hello, then retreat down to his station. Despite the tense mission they’d completed earlier—or perhaps because of it—Garrus was in a chatty mood. “Hi, Commander,” he greeted.
“Vakarian,” she returned. She met his gaze, leisurely spinning the spoon in her cup of coffee. “Got something on your mind?”
“I do, actually,” he replied. Was this conversation going to be another instance where Shepard and Garrus discussed the moral of the mission? She had a lot of those talks with Garrus; she hoped that she was slowly showing him that he didn’t have to take the law into his own hands to do something right. His trigger-happy tendencies were nice in a firefight, but weren’t warranted when she was trying to talk someone down. “I wanted to discuss today’s mission.”
“Alright,” Shepard said, leaning back and crossing her ankle over her opposite knee. “Hit me.” When Garrus just blinked at her human idiom, she urged, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He was a bit uncomfortable, folding his hands on the table between them and looking down. “So… you let a slaver get away.”
Shepard knew where this was going, but she was going to make him spell it out. “Yes.”
“To save the hostages.”
“Yep.”
“Commander,” he said, sounding unsure, “I can’t help but see the similarities here to one of your older missions.”
“I see similarities to a lot of my older missions.” Shepard stopped stirring her coffee, letting the spoon come to a rest with a small plink on the ceramic mug. “I thought you’d been on enough of my squads to know that I don’t go in for the kill if there are innocent lives on the line.”
“Unless it’s Torfan,” Garrus said. When Shepard just stared at him, not replying immediately, he shifted his shoulders slightly. “Look, when I joined this mission, I did my research. I had certain notions about you that turned out to be false, but what happened on X57 just seemed so… out of character, for you.”
Shepard raised an eyebrow. “Did it?”
She enjoyed watching Garrus flounder for a moment, trying to find something else to say, but she didn’t let that dark amusement show on her face, even if it was better than the messier things she felt when people normally brought up Torfan. “I, uh,” Garrus mumbled. Clearing his throat, he said, “I apologize, Commander, I’ve overstepped.”
Before he could get up and flee the scene, Shepard held up a hand. “You’re not overstepping, Garrus.” She took a long sip of her coffee. “You know I’m willing to talk about mission logistics with my squad. Knowing you, I would think you’d admire what I did on Torfan.”
“I do,” he said hurriedly. “I think it was brilliant, and you got rid of a lot of slaver scum. People like that deserve what you gave them.” He shook his head slightly, trying to bring himself back to his current argument. “What I don’t get is when you were faced with another batarian slaver today, you let him get away.”
“Not forever,” Shepard said, trying to keep her tone even. “I’ll catch up to him.”
Garrus let out a small huff. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
Shepard’s lips stretched into a thin line. She could handle a tactical discussion with her crew, but she didn’t think his patronizing tone was appropriate between a Commander and her subordinate. “Speak plainly, Officer.”
“There were only a handful of hostages on X57,” Garrus said, dialing down his condescension. “It had to have been worth it to take down Balak, for all the people you’d save in the future. I read the file on your Torfan mission. A lot more people were killed by collateral there—”
“Seventy-two Alliance soldiers,” Shepard recited, “four hundred and twelve slaves, sixty-five batarian civilians, and two hundred and forty-three batarian slavers.” She leaned back, eyes narrowing. “You don’t need to remind me what I did there, Garrus. I know it better than you do.”
Garrus receded back into himself again, losing some of his bluster. “Commander, I didn’t mean—”
“Do you know why,” she cut him off again, “I did what I did at Torfan?”
Since she had so obviously thrown him for a loop, Garrus was unsure of what she wanted from him. “Because you were under orders?”
Shepard shook her head. “Do you know what I did at Torfan?” He seemed hesitant to answer, and Shepard told herself to fucking relax. It was only a matter of time before someone called her out on this, and deep down, she was glad it was Garrus, but the conversation was still a hard one to have. Torfan was more than just the deep scar that curled into the dip of her cheek: to many, it was the highlight of her Alliance career so far. Even now, five years later, people were still bringing it up when they met her, and it was ultimately what put her on the Council’s radar and had her declared a Spectre.
She clamped down on the shame before it could overwhelm her. Instead, she focused back on Garrus. How much did he really know about what happened? “Humor me, Vakarian.”
Garrus swallowed and tapped his fingers together. He had his gloves on; Shepard had never seen his hands without them. Were his talons as sharp as those belonging to the turian biotics she’d fought with during her N7 training? Turians in Cabal units were the only ones she’d ever seen without gloves, and they’d kept their nails deathly sharp. Garrus’s mandibles dipped up and down a few times before he answered, “You were given an order from Major Kyle to draw batarian forces out from underground, but soldiers in smaller teams kept getting picked off, so you had the idea to send barrages of soldiers in and while the batarians were busy with them, sneak into the strongholds individually and blow them up using minute biotic detonations at strategic points in the climate control system, only ordering Alliance retreats at the last second to keep suspicions low.”
Nodding, Shepard questioned, “And what about Major Kyle?”
Garrus was confused, his head tilting to one side. “He couldn’t handle how many Alliance soldiers you lost and went nuts.”
“No,” Shepard said. “What about Major Kyle’s surrender order?”
“I… I’m not following you, Commander.”
“Not everything goes into the packet the Alliance releases to other militaries and the press,” Shepard explained. “There are cover-ups, Garrus. You should know that.”
He visibly stopped himself from saying something he probably would’ve regretted, taking a moment to rethink the situation. “Then what happened?” he ventured.
“There were five strongholds on Torfan,” Shepard said. “After the first three blew, the other two surrendered. Major Kyle said to honor their surrender and take the slavers in, but at that point in the mission, I’d been leading the ground troops and the soldiers were loyal to me. So, we waltzed into the surrendered stronghold closest to the Alliance setup and they were too afraid to resist as we gathered the slavers out front. We tied them up, put them on their knees, gagged them. Then I walked in a line and shot them all.” Shepard steepled her fingers in front of her, leaning forward and taking in Garrus’s gaping expression. “I executed them, and then I did the same thing at the other surrendered stronghold. At the last one, the leftover civilians rioted; after all, I’d just murdered their husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, so we ended up having to blow that one to hell too. There was no way to sneak there, so I had an infiltrator rig a bomb with a hydrogen tank and sticky grenades. Took himself out with it. When the reports came in with how many slavers I’d killed, I’d never felt so good in my life. I felt vindicated, I felt alive. And then do you know what happened?”
Garrus inquired, “What?”
“I got the list of names of the dead Alliance soldiers. Major Kyle was being treated for PTSD and I’d been cleared, so as XO, I had to write seventy-two letters to families who’d never see their kid or partner or parent again.” Shepard folded her fingers together. Luke Green, Yolonda Crist, Frederick Brodsky, Derrick Reyes, Jasmine Goolsby, you will remember, you will remember every fucking name. “After writing one and a half letters, I chugged most of a bottle of vodka and spent the next three hours throwing up and lying on the floor in the bathroom. Then I took a month of administrative leave.” Shepard paused to swallow, keeping her eyes on Garrus’s face. He wasn’t returning the courtesy—he was thinking hard, his browplates drawn together and eyes downcast.
Shepard was used to being blunt with her people, but never raw. Maybe it was a lot for him to handle. “Do you understand why I’m telling you this, Vakarian?” When he didn’t reply right away, she explained, “Because you think that since you read a few paragraphs in my C-Sec file, you know what Torfan was like, and can make decisions on my character based on it. It drives me crazy, how many people mention Torfan to me. ‘Hi, Commander Shepard, great job on Torfan! You sure showed those batarians!’ The guilt ate me alive at first, but I’ve learned to smile and nod because the Alliance doesn’t like soldiers admitting mistakes in their victories.”
“But you killed so many slavers,” Garrus said. “Who cares if they surrendered? They were still slavers.”
“There’s no honor in executing someone who’s been made helpless. Hell, there’s no honor in killing someone that isn’t trying to kill someone else. I killed a lot of people on Torfan, Garrus, and I got a lot of people killed on Torfan. But do you know who ran that mission?”
“Major Kyle?” he guessed, sounding unsure.
“A scared little girl who never escaped from Mindoir,” Shepard answered. She remembered her well; she came back to visit when Shepard was talking Talitha down on the Citadel. The timbre of her voice, how she’d referred to herself as an animal, way she moved like she was one heartbeat away from a beating… Shepard used to spend a lot of time thinking about what would’ve happened to her if she hadn’t hid on Mindoir. Talitha brought that terrible time back to the forefront of her memories. Daddy’s—he’s melting! She doesn’t want to look!
If Shepard had been the same woman who had been on Torfan, she wouldn’t have been as sympathetic; she remembered watching her own father melt in the distance, but letting that memory consume her in that moment would’ve left her bitter instead of compassionate.
This mission was not Torfan. She would never complete another assignment like it. “Do you know who’s running this mission?” Garrus knew better than to answer this time. She paused before saying, “Commander Shepard.” She got up from her seat, her movement making Garrus’s gaze snap back to her. He appeared to be digesting this still, but she knew what respect looked like on his alien face, and she was glad to know she hadn’t scared him away. “Do you understand now, Officer Vakarian?”
He stood as well, his expression becoming guarded as he continued looking her in the eye. Before, he’d been open as a turian face could be, and it seemed like he was having a mental crisis. Maybe the person he thought she had been was completely gone. “I do.”
Shepard clapped him on the shoulder on her way to drop her coffee cup in the sink. It was a reach for her, since he was about two feet taller. “Good man.” When she turned back from the sink and found him still watching her, a little dumbfounded, she smiled at him. “Wasn’t this a good teachable moment?”
Garrus snorted. “I guess if that’s what you want to call it, sure.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “What would you call it, then?”
Wry, he replied, “Traumatizing the rookie.”
Rolling her eyes, Shepard pushed off the counter and headed toward the stairs. “You’re so delicate. Can’t even handle some critical thinking with your CO’s tragic backstory.” He was walking to the elevator when she popped her head back into the mess. “And Vakarian? Keep this conversation between us, alright?”
Garrus didn’t waver. “Of course, Commander.”
She nodded once sharply, then made her way back upstairs.