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Jane’s first scar appears when she is eight years old. One moment she is running through the shuttle bay, the next a sudden pain in her leg sends her falling to the ground. She makes her mother inspect it, a long red line reaching from her ankle to her knee.
“You were just walking?”, Hannah asks.
“Yeah”, Jane didn’t cry when she fell and she is pretty proud of that. “It just hurt and I fell down, but the line was there after it.”
“Hmmm”, Hannah smiles “You know what I think it is, Jane?”
“What?”
“A soulmate scar. They are very rare. But it means that someone out there is connected to you.”
“Who?”, Jane asks.
“I don’t know.”, Hannah shrugs. “But you will find them eventually and the scars will help you protect each other.”
“I don’t need protection”, Jane protests and her mother can’t help but laugh at that.
-
During basic training Jane, who is getting very used to just being called Shepard, burns herself with one of her own biotics. It leaves a scar on her forearm and Shepard mentally apologizes to her soulmate, whoever they might be.
She finds herself looking at people’s forearms more closely after that.
-
After Akuze she becomes a bit more bitter about the whole concept.
If her soulmate is supposed to protect her then why aren’t they here?
She came close to stopping from even believing in the whole concept, but soulmates do exist, they have just become increasingly rare. And every few years she will feel a little sting and find a scar that wasn’t there before.
She kind of wishes her soulmate could stop getting themselves hurt, but it also feels like a promise. “I’m here. You just haven’t found me yet.”
-
The Turian C-Sec Officer is an “end justify means” kind of guy and Shepard can sympathise with that, up to a point. She readily lets him join the crew, even with Ashley frowning disapprovingly. Something just feels right about it.
-
The crew is getting along better than Shepard had dared to hope. After only a few weeks she finds herself slumped in the Lounge, trading stories with Kaidan and Wrex.
Kaidan, having just finished telling tales of his malfunctioning biotics, points at her arm. “I must say Commander, that looks awfully like a biotic burn.”
She sighs. “It is and I don’t even have a good story to go with it. I just burned myself in basic training.”
“Show me that.”, Wrex demands, grabbing her arm and yanking her across the table.
“Hey!” Shepard tries to protest but the Krogan is already studying her scar. After a few seconds he lets her arm go and Shepard cradles it to her chest. Wrex has a pretty strong grip.
“What the fuck was that about, Wrex?”
“Nothing”, he replies, but his grin and amused tone betray him.
The next time Shepard gets down to the cargo bay Wrex is staring at her. Shepard could swear she hears him chuckle when she starts talking to Garrus.
-
The next time they’re on the ground Garrus catches a bullet. With his arm.
He keeps insisting that he is fine and doesn’t need to go to the Medbay, once they are back on the ship. Shepard keeps refusing to believe him, until he pulls up his sleeve.
“My armour got it. See, not even a bruise. Not that you could identify a bruise on a Turian, but I’m telling you there isn’t one. Oh, ignore that one. I know it looks nasty but it’s just an old biotic burn. I don’t even remember getting it…”
Shepard just stares at him.
Garrus notices she isn’t talking back any more but staring at his face instead. “What?”
She just silently raises her arm, showing him her identical scar.
-
Things just...go after that.
They decide to take it slow and figure it out at first and then they don’t. Something just clicks into place. If anyone is wondering why Garrus keeps disappearing into the Commander’s office they’re smart enough not to ask.
One evening Shepard remembers. She holds up her bare leg. “One question Garrus”, she points at the red line, still visible after all these years “What the hell did you do?”
He makes the noise she has learned to interpret as laughter. “I got scratched by a Varren.”
“You what?!”
“So my parents took me to a Zoo...”
“You have Zoo Varrens on Palaven?”
Garrus shrugs “You don’t have them on earth?”
She has to think about that. “Honestly? We probably do.”
“See. So my parents took me to the Zoo and I might have gotten a bit excited and might have fallen into the Varren pit and gotten scratched. Maybe.”
“Wow”, Shepard absent-mindedly traces the burn on his forearm. “That’s even worse than burning yourself with your own biotics.”
“Hey”, he pretends to punch her arm. “I was a child. And it terrified my parents.”
“Not you?”
“I was too busy being passed out. Hit my head on the way down.”
She can’t help but laugh at that and Garrus decides to shut her up with a kiss.
-
After Saren Shepard goes back into space and Garrus stays on the Citadel.
They figure she will come by often enough for them to continue their relationship and they are right. For the first few months.
Shepard is floating through space. Gasping for air, clawing at her spacesuit.
The last thought she has before she drifts out is that this way of dying doesn’t leave scars.
Garrus won’t feel this.
He can’t protect her.
-
After she dies he feels numb.
He finds himself tracing the biotic burn.
When the little glowing cracks appear on his body he doesn’t know what to think.
But by then everything has gone to shit and he is too busy staying alive to think about these new scars and what they could mean. That is, until she walks out onto the bridge and shoots one of the merchs coming for him in the back of the head.
-
Archangel takes off his helmet and Shepard has to restrain herself from just running up to him and kissing him. She is still wary around Jacob and Miranda.
Then again, the small glowing cracks are on Garrus’ face too. She gives him the biggest smile her stinging face can manage.
They fall back into their old fighting style immediately, her running around wreaking havoc and him watching her back, making sure nothing sneaks up on her.
She is running back up to him, when the rocket hits his face and she goes down next to him screaming.
-
There really isn’t a point in hiding it from anyone now. Not when they have identical scars on their faces.
Tali gasps when she sees Shepard first and then squeals with glee when she sees Garrus.
Liara gives a grin and admits she always had her suspicions.
And Wrex cheers and declares “I knew it.”
Shepard unconsciously rubs her arm at the memory of being yanked over a table. “Right. How?”
The Krogan shrugs. “He worked on the Mako with his sleeves rolled up.”
-
They manage not to get any all too dramatic scars after the rocket to the face incident.
The night before they go through the relay Shepard is lying next to Garrus, tracing the biotic burn on his forearm. He hums in a frequency that makes her whole body vibrate. “I missed that.”
Her hand wanders up to his face where the faint glowing scars have long since faded away. “Make me a promise.”
“Anything”
“If you get hurt, do it in a way I can feel.”
His mandibles flare in the way that signifies confusion. “I don’t think you need the extra pain..”
“No it’s...”, she has to search for the right words for a second. “When I died…”
He winces.
“I suffocated. You couldn’t tell. You couldn’t know. You couldn’t have helped me even if you had been there.”
“Yeah”, he pulls her closer. He doesn’t like her talking about it. “I somehow still knew, but it was too late by then.”
Shepard can’t let it ever become too late.
-
She convinces him to return to Palaven before she turns herself in.
“They need you there. Besides…”, she touches her facial scar, then his. “It’s not like I’ll forget you.”
He sighs, Shepard’s pretty sure he picked that up from her. “You know that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“I know, but I think this time it’s on me to be the one worried about physical safety.”
Garrus can’t help but agree. “I’ll try not to fall into any Varren pits.”
-
James audibly gasps when a Turian with the exact same facial scar as the Commader walks up to them on Menae. Shepard is pretty pleased that the Alliance hasn’t turned the fact that she has a Turian soulmate into propaganda. Yet.
“Ok, I wasn’t going to ask”, Vega starts “But which one of you managed that?” He gesticulates at their faces.
“Garrus ran into a rocket.”, Shepard grins.
“Heroically”, Garrus interjects. “Just wait till you see the one where she burned herself with her own Biotics.”
Vega pretends to be offended. “You told me that happened in the fight against Saren.”
Shepard shrugs. “Gotta add to the legend.”
-
“I...am fi...ne”, he tries to tell her when she calls the Normandy to pull him out.
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Garrus. I felt that.”, Shepard snaps. She turns to Tali. “Take care of him for me.”
Tali nods. “Yes, Shepard.”
Shepard puts a hand around his neck. “I will always love you”
And then she is gone. Running at the beam. He screams in pain when Harbinger’s attack hits. They try to sedate him, but he struggles against it. If he can feel her pain he will at least know she is still alive.
Liara knocks him out without mercy.
-
Shepard wakes up in a hospital bed.
She is pretty sure she’s high on painkillers.
Garrus is sitting next to her.
“Hey”, she croaks.
“Hey”
“Any...new...scars…?”
“Oh, loads. I don’t really know who caused which ones, though.”
“We’ll...figure it out…later.”
“We will. We have all the time in the world for it.”
Shepard drifts off again, but she knows he will be there when she wakes up. Because he is Garrus. Her someone. Her protector. Her soulmate.