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“Damn it,” Lina swore as the wrench slipped and clattered to the cargo bay’s floor. She shook out her hand and made a face against the soreness.“Ow.” Sighing, she blindly reached for the fallen tool when holding the bolt assembly in place. “Stupid Hammerhead.”
Yet another thing that wasn’t going quite right with today. Hell, with this year-- lifetime? She didn’t even know how to define it anymore. Not that it mattered with the end of the galaxy looming over her head like a dark cloud.
She closed her eyes for a moment and let out a long, slow breath. One beat. Two. She listened to the rhythmic sounds of her music echoing around her. It helped.
With the wrench back in hand, Shepard made another attempt at fixing the hovercraft. This time at least, the bolt went on without too much complaint. “Never thought I’d miss the Mako,” she mumbled to herself while wheeling herself to the next inspection port. “At least someone on this damn crew seems to know what they’re doing with this piece of shit.”
Okay. Maybe the breathing exercise wasn’t helping.
As far as evenings on the new Normandy went, this one was going well enough. Sleep was hard to come by what with the neverending waves of guilt and ‘should-haves.’ It had been a week since Horizon; she needed to get over William’s betrayed look and her accusations. If Lina managed to exhaust herself down here in the cargo bay, maybe she would be able to fall into bed. Missions helped, but they’d been aweigh for three days now.
The song changed; Styx this time. She could have laughed as the first few chords of Renegade started playing. Lina sure as hell felt like one right now.
Lawman has put an end to my running.
And I'm so far from my home.
Shaking her head, she tried to focus on the work. Working on the machine was better than thinking about everything else. At the very least, this was black and white. There was no grey when it came to mechanics. Just like dad taught her, follow the manual, and it’ll go back together just like it came apart.
Lawman said, get him dead or alive.
Now it's for su re he'll see me dead.
There was no moral ambiguity. No one Shepard could hurt, intentionally or otherwise. The metal warmed with her touch, and her nose filled with the smell of oil and grease. A singular task was in front of her, one that she could accomplish alone. Her hand tightened around the wrench as she attempted to loosen the wiring housing unit. It came apart with one good push. “Finally, fuck.”
A chuckle alerted her to someone else in the cargo bay. She froze for a moment, having missed the sound of the lift entirely with the music blaring in the background. There were no footfalls, either. That meant it had to be one of her ground team. None of the Cerberus crewmen were that quiet. Most of the civis sounded like damn elephants when they walked. It was a masculine noise, so that ruled out a few more.
The song drew to a close, and Garrus’ easy drawl filtered down to her.
“I was wondering who else had been working on the Hammerhead,” he said as Lina slid out from underneath the vehicle on her roller board. The turian was leaning a hip into the control console, still dressed in armour but looking as casual as ever with one leg crossed over the other. “I’m sort of relieved it wasn’t one of the Cerberus crewmen.”
“Oh?” Lina inquired as she grabbed a rag to wipe her hands from the toolkit as she stood up. “And why’s that?”
He half shrugged while flaring his undamaged mandible outward. “Rather not say.”
“Come on,” Lina gestured at him vaguely. “Out with it.”
“Just feels better that it was you,” he said after a moment’s silence. His gaze remained fixed on hers as he dropped his arms to his sides. “That’s all.”
Any retort Shepard had caught in her throat, and she could feel her cheeks flush. She couldn’t hold his eyes for long and used her omni-tool as an excuse to look away. Her playlist ended with Renegade, and she would need to choose another to keep the background noise on to cover the still strange hum of this new Normandy.
She cleared her throat as the guitar started up again. “I can--”
“Looks like--” he started at the same time. Lina motioned for Garrus to continue. “If you’re ready to hit the racks, I can take over.”
Lina rechecked her omni-tool, this time noting it was well past midnight ship-time. “I guess I overstayed.” She rubbed her face. It hadn’t felt like three hours, but it must have been. Hell, she wasn’t tired-- okay, maybe she was tired, but she wasn’t dead to the world yet. Maybe Garrus would come back later and calibrate or something while she stewed by her lonesome.
Her indecision brought with it another option.
“You don’t have to go,” Garrus offered, reaching out his hand into the space between them. She could see his fingers flex with nervous energy. “I could uh, use another set of hands for that wiring harness.”
A small smile broke the furrow in Lina’s brow. He always knew just what to say, even when riddled with uncertainty. “You know, I’m not sure if sleep is going to happen tonight anyway.”
He chuckled again, an easy, familiar noise, and went for the toolkit while shaking his head. And just like that, they slid back into the rhythm of the old SR-1 days. Music blaring in the background while they worked, side by side.
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human, and I need to be loved,
Just like everybody else does
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Working in relative silence, only broken by the occasional clang of metal or whispered request to pass a tool, Garrus and Lina fell into a routine. The turian’s larger hands were best suited to release the bolts’ tension, while Lina’s size made her better for crawling around under the vehicle. This evening wasn’t the first time they’d worked to their strengths and covered one another’s weaknesses.
And Shepard could admit she hoped this wouldn’t be the last. Lina needed his strong arm in battle, too. His sniper rifle at her back while she charged into the fray. Ever since the SR-1, Lina had learned to feel best on the battlefield with Garrus on her six. She missed him when he left for C-Sec and missed him all the more when she returned to find him in the wind.
“Pass me that screwdriver,” she mumbled with her hand open and fingers outstretched. A brief moment later, Lina felt the cool metal in her palm. “Thanks.”
Garrus hummed in answer. “May need some parts when we get to Illium.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “For a state-of-the-art warship, Cerberus has been a little lax on their supply runs. I finally managed to source a set of FBA couplings for the Engineers this week.”
“Seems like an odd oversight,” Garrus mused. Lina could hear his talons clicking against his omni-tool’s haptic interface over the music-- likely making a list of parts and tools he wanted to be delivered. Since he arrived, she’d turned the speaker volume down. “I guess that explains why the Engineers always look battle-ragged. Maintenance is rough without those couplings.”
“Mh-hm. What we need is a Chief Engineer.” Lina finished with the screwdriver and reached out her hand in anticipation of the next tool. Without asking, Garrus passed the spudger. “I miss Adams.”
She heard Garrus let out a long breath. “He wasn’t too sure about me at first, but once Tali came aboard, he warmed up quickly.”
Lina couldn’t help her nostalgic smile. “Pressly too. He was so mad at first. Hard to blame a man that had family in the First Contact War, I guess.” She finished removing the casing and put the spudger down. When she reached out, the wire strippers were waiting for her. “After Illium, we’ll have a Chief, I hope. You read the dossiers?”
“Yeah. Haestrom will be interesting, no doubt.”
Swallowing the trepidation in her throat, Lina tried to focus on the task at hand and not the lingering dread from her last encounter with Tali. The quarian refused to join the crew or fully trust her-- even when Shepard refused to allow Cerberus to take Veetor. It hurt, remembering the tightness in Tali’s shoulders and the distrust in her bright eyes.
“She’ll understand, Shepard,” Garrus said with a conviction that pulled the Commander out of her head. “It’s a lot. But you know Tali. She’ll join us this time.”
Lina didn’t realize how much she needed to hear that reassurance. She might’ve thanked him, but she could hear the turian stand up with a stiff groan and creak of armour. His footsteps told her he was heading toward the front of the Hammerhead. Looking up at the floor of the tank, Shepard smiled. He had her back in more ways than one.
The quiet set back in after that exchange. The rhythmic sounds of the guitar and sporadic vocals thrown-in soothed her soul. She even started to yawn as the hours passed.
It wasn’t until the music shifted once again that something changed. The first chords of one particular song filtered to her ears-- it made her immediately grin at the absurdity of it.
Her hands paused, making Garrus look over. They were both beneath the tank now, though Garrus only had his head under the tank, his cowl wouldn’t fit, and they only had the single roller board. His head tilted to the side, almost unconsciously, and made her start to laugh as the first words began to play.
All our times have come.
Here but now they're gone.
Seasons don't fear the Reaper.
Shepard couldn’t help herself. Who would’ve thought the Blue Oyster Cult, of all the bands, would be the one to get it right.
“The Reaper?” Garrus said, more rhetorically than anything, as he pushed himself out from under the tank to hear the music better.
Come on, baby, don't fear the Reaper.
By now, Lina was laughing in earnest. While she rarely giggled, there was no other word for it now. It only got worse when she slid out from under the Hammerhead enough to see the turian’s face. His mandibles pulled tight to his maxilla-- like a human quirking their mouth-- and his eyes narrowed slightly with confusion as the translated words filtered through his implant. Lina hoped the translation was good enough. She remembered how often human idioms and lyrics confused other species, the turians, more than most. It was terrible enough translating between English and Common, let alone an alien dialect.
When Garrus stopped staring off into space as he tried to parse the words, his frown loosened into a smile as he took in her amusement. “Did you put this one on, on purpose?”
Lina’s chuckles died down as she shook her head and fully pushed herself out from under the vehicle and shook her head. “Nope.” Locking the wheels of the roller board, she sat up and leaned back against the hovercraft with her legs straight out and crossed at the ankles. A smile remained firmly on her face as Garrus joined her. He sat flat-backed and with his knees bent and feet flat on the deck. He was near enough that, if he hadn’t been wearing heavy armour, she would have been able to feel his heat.
“I like this one,” she offered into the air between them.
Garrus hummed. “I can see why.” She made a questioning noise, so he continued. “You’re not afraid of the Reapers.”
Come on, baby, don't fear the Reaper.
She turned to face him and could see him watching her from the corner of his eye. His scared side was next to her, so while his expression wasn’t so easy to grasp with the bandage covering his mandible in the way, she could see his eye without the visor, and that gave her a window. His asymmetry should have made it difficult to understand him, but it only seemed to help Lina.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
Beside her, he shuffled slightly. Discomfort, perhaps. “You’ve already killed one. Hell, they killed you, and it only made you angry.”
“We all killed one together,” Lina corrected with a small shrug. She hated it when people said things like that as if she’d done it alone. “If anything, it was Joker. Not me.”
Come on, baby, and she had no fear.
And she ran to him. Then they started to fly.
Garrus shook his head and blew out a long breath. “Maybe he fired the shot, but it was you who rallied us. You who led the mission against Saren and brought all of us misfits together. Without you-- well, you know what happened.” He gestured to his scars and scratched at the edge of his bandage with one talon. “Don’t take that the wrong way. I did this to myself. It wasn’t your fault,” he stumbled over his words a little and sighed. “I’m bad at this. What I mean is, I’m glad you’re back.”
Lina turned to look at him as the song came to a close.
She had taken his hand. She had become like they are
Come on, baby, don't fear the Reaper.
She shut off the music before the outro could finish, rose on her knees and reached out a hand to tentatively place it on his knee. In front of him, she felt tiny despite the fact she wasn’t small for a human. The turian never made her feel lesser for it, but moments like this while she was in fatigues and he was in armour demonstrated the disparity between their sizes. Lina had no fear-- not of him. In fact, she wished she could feel his warmth, like in the old days when he’d take the armour off the crawl under the Mako with her. “Garrus--”
He turned his face away, staring off into space again.
Silence plagued the cargo bay. But Lina didn’t want to put on another song; the still-strange hum of the new Normandy spurred her on. Things were different this time. She was just as much as him-- they’d both changed.
That armour was his wall. It had been since he rejoined the Normandy’s crew. Lina wondered what he looked like beneath it now. Her eyes travelled across his frame. She remembered his wiry muscle and hard-plated body from before. Not only did the SR-1 have a single shower, but Lina had seen him in civis at least a handful of times. Since returning, she’d only seen him once, and there had been more pressing concerns like the fountain of blood and burns so bad even Chakwas couldn’t fix him.
“Garrus, look at me.”
Always unable to refuse her orders, either by conscious choice or ingrained turian fealty to their Commanders, he faced her. She reached out with her free hand, watching to see his expression and see if he flinched. He remained steadfast. Her hand touched down on his visor gently. Lina didn’t know how to remove it, but Garrus understood what she wanted without words, and his hand joined hers to move it into place. His large fingers dwarfed her own as he showed her where to depress the attachment points to release the device. The visor came off quickly, and his fingers fell away as Shepard carefully put it on the floor beside them. His piercing gaze sent pins and needles up her spine.
This close, she could see him swallow and feel the weight of every breath.
“I thought we’d been through this,” she said. Her voice barely above a whisper. They’d talked after dealing with Sidonis-- the traitorous turian given another chance at life.
He huffed, and she could see his eyes searching her face. They moved from her lips to cheekbones and nose before returning to her eyes. “It doesn’t go away, does it?”
“No,” Lina admitted. She remembered Mindoir. They’d spoken about that time in her life-- the horrors and the desire for revenge. The waves’ weight would always be present, but just as the tides fall, this too would recede. “It does get easier, though. Trust me?”
Without hesitation, he said: “To hell and back, again.”
A handful of beats passed before Garrus broke eye contact to remove his gloves. They made small thunks as he dropped them to the deck at his sides, and Lina’s brow furrowed as she tried to figure out why, but quickly understood as he reached for her. She moved toward him, so she was between his knees. It should have felt odd when his fingers finally touched her face, but there was something so familiar about him that it sent sparks across the back of her neck.
His hands were calloused by years of battle but oh so warm against her cool skin. His palm dwarfed her jaw, and his thumb caressed her cheek. She had no fear of the sharp talons. It was Garrus, and she trusted him with her life daily. Maybe, she could trust him with this too.
Her breath shook. And she could feel her heart rate speed up with Garrus’ proximity. Without his visor, he was at the same disadvantage as she was. And damn it, now she was searching his face as he had hers. Where she had soft lips, he had only rigid plates. How would they feel? Did turians even kiss? Could they? A thousand other questions flew through her mind, too.
Lina caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She knew turians did that-- head press thing? Should she do that?
A small smile spreading his mandibles broke her out of her head. “You’re overthinking it,” he whispered as he leaned in, and Shepard found herself with butterflies trying to crawl out of her throat as Garrus’ mouth came within just centimetres of hers. Where the hell did this confidence come from? She couldn’t help but wonder.
Lina could feel the warmth of his breath mixing with hers. Her hands rose to find purchase on his chest plate. Damn it. She wished he wasn’t in armour! The heat of his palms was driving her insane as his free hand fell to her hip.
Her eyes shut, and Lina started moving in to close the last gap.
A split second before she could finish moving into their first kiss, a loud clang broke them apart. Shepard jerked around as Garrus went for the pistol resting on the maglock at his hip. His arm reached across her chest, protecting her unarmoured body. The adrenalin-high from the almost-kiss shot through the roof at the potential danger lurking on the other side of the cargo bay.
“Sorry, Ma’am!” Gabby called out. Shepard let out a breath. The engineer’s hands raised in front of her chest; a box of tools was strewn across the floor. Behind the Commander, Garrus relaxed, and she felt his arms drop away.
The moment died as fast as it had come. Lina could hear Garrus grabbing his gloves and visor.
Lina cleared her throat and stood up, brushing off her pants as she did so. “It’s fine, Daniels.” Despite the embarrassed flush that bloomed across her cheeks now that the danger was gone, the Commander crossed the deck to help the other woman clean up. “What are you doing up so late?”
“Late, ma’am?” Gabby asked as she righted the toolbox. “It’s nearly 0600.”
The Commander’s hand stopped over a wrench. Had she stayed up all night? She blinked a few times to clear the fog from her eyes and shook her head. At least she could honestly say she was tired now. “Right.
Gabby went on, unbothered. “Ken and I were trying to finish up the FBA coupling install before Illium. Maybe catch some shore leave if we get it done. Suppose that’s okay, of course. Don’t mean to imply we get leave or anything.”
“Of course. Yes. That’s fine.” Shepard cleared her throat as they finished cleaning up the tool kit. “Well, good luck with the install then.”
The other woman’s eyes travelled between Lina and Garrus before blushing a bright pink and about-faced to head for the elevator. “I’ll see you later, Commander. Thanks.” Gabby couldn’t seem to get out of the cargo bay fast enough. Shepard didn’t blame her.
When she turned back to Garrus, he was working on putting the tools away. “I’ll finish up here, Shepard,” he told her without looking up from the toolkit. “You should get some rest before we hit the planet.”
“Yeah. I’ll uh, see you at 1300?”
He hummed and nodded. That was it. Lina’s shoulders fell-- they’d been so close. To what, she didn’t fully comprehend, but she did know that she wished it had happened. Instead of pushing, she headed for the elevator. EDI had it waiting by the time she finished crossing the deck.
With one final look at her friend, she stepped into the lift. Next time, she told herself. And at that moment, she decided she would ensure there was one.
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