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It’s beautiful, for a second. All that space around her. Shepard grew up on spaceships, she loves spaceships. She loves space.
But space is dangerous too. The sense of beauty turns to fear, to panic as the air hisses out of her suit and Shepard begins to suffocate. She struggles and gasps but nothing works. Everything goes black.
-
Cerberus revives her and soon she finds herself on Omega, her new and improved body still feeling foreign to her. To say she is uncomfortable, would be a vast understatement. There is really quite nothing about this situation she likes. She doesn’t feel like herself any more, doesn’t really know who she is any more. Is she really Commander Shepard? Or is she just some Cerberus creation. She doesn’t have anything to tether her to who she was before. If she was before.
But then Archangel takes off his helmet and she feels like a weight is being lifted off her chest. “Hello, Commander.”
“Vakarian”, she can’t hold back the big smile creeping onto her face. “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing. I heard you were dead.”
“Yeah, but I recovered from it.”
“Right”, Garrus chuckles “Try not to do that again, the dying part I mean.”
“Noted. Filed under suggestions.”, Shepard replies. “Now...I was about to save your life wasn’t I?”
They fall back into their old routine just like that and for the first time since she woke up in that lab Shepard feels like herself again.
Then the rocket hits Garrus’ face and while he is bleeding on the floor, while they are dragging him to the Normandy, while she has to wait if he is going to live Shepard is afraid, so afraid, of losing him. Of losing the little piece of herself she didn’t know was with him until she saw him again.
-
“Some women find facial scars attractive, mind you most of those women are Krogan.”
Now it’s on Shepard to chuckle. “Just try to not to collect any more.”
“Will do.”
-
Not dying and not collecting facial scars is a bit of a challenge in their line of work, but they manage it somehow.
At some point both of them realize, that there is a little more behind it. Behind how anxious Garrus gets when Shepard is in danger, behind how Shepard feels so much more like herself around him. They find comfort in each other, before they go through the relay, after their homeplanets are invaded and when Shepard wakes up from the nightmares where she suffocates again and again and again.
“I used to love space, you know.”, she whispers one night. “Now I fear it.” Garrus just pulls her in closer.
-
But even with Garrus by her side Shepard can’t quite shake the feeling that something is wrong. This isn’t her body. She isn’t supposed to be alive. She doesn’t really belong here any more.
When tells him she loves him in London, she is convinced that she will die, up there on the Citadel. She wont return. She isn’t meant for this world.
The catalyst tells her about her options and she considers Control. Ending herself to save everyone seems like such a clean end. A good ending to the story of Commander Shepard. The woman who came back from the dead only to die again.
But Garrus. No Shepard without Vakarian. She meant that when she said it. Cerberus may have fractured her sense of identity but she knows she loves Garrus. She knows that it’s real and that she wants nothing more than to return to him. To be home.
So she starts walking towards Destroy. The child asks her why. “Why do you refuse to die?”
“Because I am loved”, Shepard replies aiming her gun. “And I am in love. And I will not let you, or the Reapers or anyone, take that from me.”
-
“Don’t EVER do that again.”
Shepard blinks, the hospital slowly swims into view. Garrus is at her bedside, of course he is.
It takes her a few seconds before she figures out how to use her voice again.
“I’m going...to need you...to clarify.”
“Try to kill yourself again.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Running at that beam was suicide and you know it.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s right in a way, but then again…”I made a choice up there, Garrus. I chose to live, to come back to you.” She reaches for him, but her body isn’t quite there yet, thankfully Garrus takes her hand. “I love you. I will always come back to you. I promise.”
“Right, of course I’m sorry”, his voice cracks, revealing the pain and fear behind his anger. “I love you too.”
She sinks into unconsciousness again soon after, but she knows when she comes back he’ll be there. Because this is what she chose. She chose him.