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She was watching him sleep.
Shepard didn’t do this every night. Really. It was just that Garrus rarely looked relaxed. In fact, most times he looked like he might burst a blood vessel at the smallest inconvenience. It wasn’t that he was overly worried or cautious – he just knew too much about what could and would happen.
She knew Garrus to be someone of solutions, of solving the problem. It’s why, in the days of fighting Saren, they’d always been on the same level, the same wavelength even when they disagreed. She liked to think she knew him better than a lot of people, maybe better than anyone. That’s why she knew when he was bursting at the seams. The war was over, finally and truly over, but the repercussions were there and they’d taken a toll on everyone.
She watched him take slow, methodical breaths. He tossed and turned quite a lot, she noticed, but so did she. She understood.
Occasionally, a dissatisfied rumble would come from deep in his chest and his breathing would become more rapid. She thought of waking him up in case it was sleep paralysis or something similar, but he never slept as it is and he would never lie back down. Soon enough, he would go back to normal sleep patterns and she would stare at her fish tank, rubbing the itchy scar on her neck that hadn’t healed yet.
The Reapers were destroyed and her job was done, for the most part. Why did she feel so restless? She was so used to the feeling that she might die, that her comrades might die, that humanity might die. The stakes were lower, much lower, and it felt odd.
She took a glance over her shoulder and smiled. He was hers. Broken and scarred, certainly, but he was her equal in that way and in every other.
She tried getting into the bed as delicately as she physically could, going for one limb at a time. This was someone who most likely slept with one eye open back on Omega, she had to remind herself. She was on the bed, stiffly looking to see if he was still asleep. He was.
She tipped over to his side of the bed and pressed her lips to the edge of his mandible in a quick peck. She was leaning to her edge of the bed when she took a glance at his face and saw his eyes staring at her, almost solemnly.
“Damn. Sorry,” she said gingerly, cringing away from him.
“It’s fine. Not a bad way to wake up, actually,” he said lightly. “I was half awake already.”
She stood up and went to the fish tank again. “Trouble sleeping?”
He slumped against the bed frame and stared at the ceiling. “I’m pretty sure you know that. The downside of trying to sleep is that every sound seems to rouse you.”
Fuck.
She turned to face him. She wasn’t one to be shame faced about a damn thing, no matter how much she might feel the need to be. “Yeah. I guess there’s not much to do anymore. If you’re not doing anything, all you can do is think. That’s dangerous for someone like me,” she said.
He looked a little surprised. He searched her face, his hawk-like gaze making her worry a bit. It meant he was thinking too much.
“Shepard, I don’t mind. You don’t have to explain anything to me,” he replied. His voice was powder soft.
She remembered something he’d said once, in a different time.
“That’s the thing about getting old, Garrus. The platitudes get just as old,” she said, and promptly smirked at him.
He laughed and said, “Fair enough. But I wouldn’t lie to you.”
The strange thing is, she knows that’s the truth. Anyone else, and it would be nothing more than something to make her feel better, something idle to keep her worry at bay. Always something spoken thoughtlessly. Garrus had a distinct lack of ability to be dishonest, at least with her.
“I used to have dreams about you,” he said randomly. His voice was distant and his sentence seemed to trail off strangely.
“See, I knew you liked me back then, Vakarian,” Shepard said, a teasing tone in her voice and a grin set squarely on her face. “Just too afraid of your Commander to admit it.”
She expected to see a smile or hear a laugh, but he wasn’t in that sort of mood. His eyes looked haunted now and his face had a grim look.
“Not... exactly those sort of dreams,” he muttered, and he shifted uncomfortably. “I meant when I was on Omega.”
After you died.
That’s what he wanted to say, what he needed to say. They were on the tip of his tongue, but it would burn him to say it. She thought it was better not to speak.
Instead, for a reason she couldn’t fathom, she thought of the day she wanted to forget.
There weren’t many things Shepard knew after the fall.
She knew that the rubble was weighing down on her like a freight train, that her lungs burned as if a comet was ready to burst through, and worst of all – she knew that there was a distinct lack of sound. The weak and suffering noise of her breathing was deafening, but that was all. Everything else fell silent.
She knew she was close to death. That was all she had to know.
She should have been thinking about a conundrum of things. If her team made it out okay, if the Reapers would truly stay dead, if she had really made the right decision.
But she didn’t want to think about any of it. She wanted to rest.
She didn’t dare move a muscle. It seemed out of the question, too dangerous to even consider. Pain was inevitable, pain was common. It was something she felt on a daily basis from the sting of a bullet graze to the relentless charge of a brute, but she wasn’t quite suicidal.
Deep in the recesses of her psyche, she registered that it was her pride more than her strength of character that she wasn’t. She would never confess it, but she still wanted silly, pointless things – a hero’s death, the noble savior that went out in a blaze of great glory, saving the world and being remembered fondly.
Her eyes wandered upwards, and the sky was darkening over a baby blue. She questioned, as her eyes began to blur and her body lightened, how something so beautiful could remain even as the chaos seeped through.
It had to have been hours upon hours, or at least that’s what it felt like. She was fading into dreams or death, either one welcome at this point, when she heard something different. There was a rustle nearby – and she heard a voice, of all things. They must have been a good distance away, because it was barely audible. She managed to strain and hear it all, and she thanked whatever made her that she was blessed with particularly good hearing.
“Goddess knows I want to find her, but what are the chances we’d have any idea of where? Or if she’d even be-“ the soft voice of who she knew to be Liara cut herself off. “We have to be practical. I don’t want to put that plaque on the wall, either, but we may be left with no choice.”
“We’re going to be practical over finding the one person who’s saved all of us? I took you and only you because I thought you’d be the only one who could handle finding her – in any way, in any form. Either we find her together, or I find her alone,” came the reply.
Garrus. She felt like she could hear his voice so clearly. That humming, smooth voice buzzed around her and she sucked in a painful breath. It hurt to hear him, because he wouldn’t stop until he found her, lying with her broken bones and mangled body and he would break. He would break because she was all he had and he was all she had, but he would be the one left behind with a ghost in his heart and nothing to lose. She didn’t want that for him. She stayed quiet, didn’t utter a word and hoped against all hope that they wouldn’t find her.
“Together, then,” Liara said firmly. Her voice sounded closer.
So much for that, she thought faintly, then fell into what passed as sleep lately.
The next thing she knew, there was a flurry of movement all around her, and she would have been worried if she’d been in the right state of mind. She felt like she’d just woken up from a dream. Or was this a dream? She wasn’t sure.
She continued to be unsure until Liara screamed, “Garrus! She’s here!” and then the dream theory became a little improbable. Shepard forced herself to open her eyes.
She blinked against the brightness of the sun and tried to take in her surroundings. Same ruins as before with a few more people. Liara looked panicky and Garrus seemed to be glued in place. His face looked as stoic as usual until his eyes ran the length of her body, and his eyes widened in fear.
Somehow, he remained relatively composed. She recognized that he was doing it for her.
“Jane? Can you hear me?” he asked carefully. She was shocked to hear him say her given name, he’d never done that before. He crept closer to her.
Even trying to speak took effort. “Y-yes,” she finally answered, and if her breathing sounded bad, her voice sounded worse. Hoarse would be a compliment.
He kneeled next to her and searched her eyes. For what, she didn’t know. His mandibles were twitching too much, and that meant he was reaching his breaking point. She didn’t know of any way to stop it.
“Please hold on a little longer. I’ve already told Joker and he’ll get here as fast as he possibly can, but... do this for me. Just hold on to see this through, because I will do everything to make sure you’re alright,” he said urgently, and his voice was shaky. She had never heard his voice shaky in the three years she’d known him.
She summoned up all her strength and spoke again, slowly. “Okay. But promise me something.”
He tilted his head and asked, “What is it?”
“Always aim like you have something to lose,” she said, and that was it.
That was the last thing she remembered for five days.
She shook her head to clear her mind. Five days later she woke up in the most agony she would ever experience, and it was explained that she would live. Her injuries would heal over time, but she would live with many scars and she would never have the health she once did. Her lungs didn’t have the capacity they should anymore, and she had a slight limp.
But it was a miracle that she survived, and she had never expected to breathe a clean breath out of the rubble. In truth, she had no idea how many doctors worked on her. She stayed in the med bay for months until she was able to walk freely. She didn’t know what kind of favors Garrus pulled, or if Miranda managed to snag any of her old Cerberus colleagues into action, but she didn’t ask either. She had to be thankful.
They all visited her. Every single one. Her team members, old and new, came to her to talk and listen. That was when she realized more than ever that she loved them. They weren’t just her comrades, they were her friends, and they were good ones. She grew to know them all, and they were loyal to the end. As ridiculous as it sounded, she wanted to keep in touch. They lead different lives, busy lives, but she wanted to keep them close. They had certainly kept her close.
She kept her promise. A year later, she was still making round trips to their respective locations (or their multiple locations – it was pretty hard to keep up with Jack and Liara), and she tried to spend as much time as she could with each of them. Granted, Javik wasn’t easy to spend “quality” time with, but he cared about the primitives in his own little way.
“You alright over there?” Garrus asked quietly.
“I’m fine,” she replied, and moved towards him. “Just strolling down memory lane.”
“Ah. Dangerous thing. I definitely think you should stay in the present with me.”
She bounced onto the bed and propped an elbow on her pillow. “You’re right, big guy,” she said. “I think it’s time for sleep, don’t you?”
“Mm,” he uttered quietly as his eyes closed. He pulled her to him and tangled his talons in her hair. She couldn’t resist smiling as she leaned into his neck.
“Sweet dreams, Garrus,” she said softly, and closed her own eyes. He only gripped her tighter.