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The first time she feels her soulmate’s pain Shepard is startled awake late at night by a sharp sting in her arm. She clutches the limb to her chest whimpering until it becomes a dull ache.
She tells her mother about it on the morning and Hannah nods sympathetically. “It’s for safety”, she explains “You can feel your soulmate’s pain if it’s tied to a strong emotion and they can feel yours.” Shepard scoffs rubbing her arm.
“I don’t like it.”
Her mother shrugs “No one does at first.”
Shepard gets her first hint at her soulmate’s identity at the age of eighteen, when a stinging pain slowly moves across her face. The skin feels like it’s being burned. A tattoo across the nose, jaw and cheek bones. Her soulmate is a Turian.
-
It’s not like Shepard is actively looking for her soulmate. As far as she’s concerned she’s Alliance Military and a Turian soulmate doesn’t really go with that. Her perspective shifts a bit when she becomes a Spectre but still not enough to be actively looking, she’s got much more pressing matters on her hand anyway.
Virmire is hell. Ashley dies and on the shuttle back Shepard is trying her best to keep it together. Her fingernails dig into her palms so hard they start bleeding, a coping mechanism she’s had since Akuze. She doesn’t notice Garrus’ flinch.
-
Garrus has had his suspicions even before he first met her. For the longest time he thought he didn’t have a soulmate, since he never felt the pain of them getting their tattoos. But one day, shortly after he started working at C-Sec he suddenly felt like all the air left his lungs and his back hurt like he had been thrown onto the ground. His head was ringing with pain. It took some time for the sensation to fade and it was replaced by a stinging pain in his talons. Like someone was pushing something into them.
He looked up fights and attacks that happened that day and didn’t find a lot, just an alliance squad being decimated by a thrasher maw. One survivor. A young adept named Shepard. He wonders if she is his soulmate and when she shows up on the Citadel looking for Saren years later he joins her crew. He’s not sure enough she actually is his soulmate to do anything about it but after Virmire he feels the pain in his Talons again.
He gets to know for sure a few months later. When his lungs feel like they are on fire and he actually passes out from the pain. A few hours after it’s over he gets a call from Liara.
“Shepard’s dead”
A pit opens in his stomach and the whole universe collapses into it. “What happened?”
“The Normandy was attacked and she...she was trying to get everyone to evacuate and got sucked out into space, her suit was damaged and she...”
Lungs on fire. “She suffocated.”
“Yeah, how did you...”, Liara stops and he can see the realization dawning on the grainy picture of her that his omnitool is projecting. “Oh Goddess, Garrus. I’m so sorry.”
He feels numb. “I wasn’t sure.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
He hangs up on her.
-
Shepard gives Garrus a big smile when she sees him on Omega. Finally someone she can trust. He smiles right back. “Shepard, I gotta tell you…”
They are interrupted by the sounds of bullets hitting the walls of the apartment. More merchs coming for them. They keep fighting and fighting and fighting until the gunships shows up. The rocket hits Garrus and Shepard’s face erupts in pain. She barely has time to realize what this means before she collapses next to him.
-
Garrus wakes up with Shepard sitting next to him, her arms crossed. “Hey”
“Hey”
“Did you…”
“Yeah, I felt that rocket”, she rubs her cheek. “Really unpleasant”
“Almost as bad as suffocating.”
“Oh yeah”, Shepard gives a weak smile “Of course you felt that too.”
He tries to smile back at her but his cheeks do not cooperate. “So…”
“So we’re soulmates”, Shepard shifts in her chair. “I mean...it doesn’t have to mean anything If we don’t want it to but…”
“I want it to”, Garrus interrupts quickly and Shepard laughs in relief.
“Good. Yeah. Me too.”
He reaches for her hand and she takes his Talons. Garrus knows it will take them some time to figure out the particulars but right now he is just so glad to have found her. He squeezes her hand, she squeezes back and Garrus decides to never let go.