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Commander Iona Shepard’s lipstick is the same red as her N7 stripe. Garrus isn’t sure when he figures it out; it probably should have been obvious from the moment she ran into him on the Citadel. He knows it looks familiar when she comes down to the cargo bay to speak with him, the blue lights flickering off the glossy sheen of her lips. She puts it on every day, he has so many opportunities to see it. He doesn’t understand it; he knows it isn’t like his own tattoos, it doesn’t signify where she’s from or her kin or her status. But she paints her lips red without fail, and her eyelids, too, with a single black swipe, a line against her lashes, every morning.
Garrus wants to ask her about it, one day when they sit in the Mako, on yet another distant world, and she’s jumped some gully at a speed and reckless abandon that sets his stomach, as well as Wrex’s, churning. As the wheels slam down on the other side, she lets out a whoop and a peal of laughter from those bright red lips, and they shine against her white teeth as the small gold hoops of her earrings dance in the motion of the vehicle. But it feels like such a strange question, and he lets it go and they drive on.
He’s seen the lipstick smudged plenty of times; one time in particular he loves to remember and another he’d give anything to forget. After Noveria, the whole crew is on edge, tempers running high, and a simple disagreement turns into an argument turns into a disorderly scuffle. She runs in to stop it, and then and there she says she’ll spar with any who come to her down in the cargo hold, anything to let off a little steam. Garrus watches from his spot by the Mako, watches her take down three crewmembers with ease before he steps forward, more curious than anything. She’s sweating a touch, but not much at all, and her chest doesn’t heave with her exertion. Her lipstick is still glossy, lines perfect on her lips. She smiles at him as he approaches, and then drops into a low fighting stance. He throws himself at her, and he does his best, and he holds his own. Crewmembers are gathered about them; where they had laughed at the previous matches, now they’re silent, watching the two of them dance around each other. Garrus finally manages to get behind her, to loop an arm around her shoulders, and pin her against him—he thinks he’s beaten her, and then she laughs and wriggles, slips free, hooks a leg around his and sends him sprawling in a move so quick he can’t even register. When he looks up, dazed on the mat, he sees her smiling, foot resting on his throat, lipstick smudged across her face where it had rubbed off on his arm. There’s a swipe on his clothes, too, and she’s sweating now, chest rising and falling heavily, and she reaches out a hand and pulls him up, up to tower back over her.
He wants to forget the pain in her eyes after Virmire. The race back to the Normandy is horrifying, and all the way, they can hear Kaidan’s breath in their commlink. It’s a moment at most, but it feels like forever, and when they get clear and the bomb goes off and his breath goes silent, she tears her helmet from her head, wipes her hand roughly across her face as though she could tear it off, become someone new, and throws the helmet across the loading bay. As she turns to go, Garrus can see tears in her eyes and a dark red smear, like blood, but not quite the same shade. He isn’t sure why she lets him seek her out later, when she’s avoiding everyone, especially Ashley, but she sits there in her cabin, staring with eyes that barely see, her lipstick still smeared across her cheek, tears sliding down and across the waxy swipe without disturbing it at all.
She puts the lipstick on with shaking hands as they approach Ilos; she’s already in her armor and that’s the moment he fully realizes, seeing her readying to drop in the Mako, her rifle strapped to her back, pistol on her thigh, small tube of lipstick and pocket mirror in her grip. He sees now that it’s an armor, not quite the same that she wears on her chest, the engineered fabric and plastic and metal meant to repel blaster fire, shield capacitors built in and designed with easy segmentation in the case of wounding. But it’s armor, nevertheless. And it serves her well, giving strength to her smiles and confidence to her orders. It makes her, her.
He thinks about her lipstick, her smile, more than he knows what to do with it. The day he leaves the Normandy, she breaks decorum. They go with Joker and Ashley to a bar on the Citadel. She buys the rounds, smiles that bright N7 smile. Garrus doesn’t know if he wants to leave, really, but he knows he wants to make a difference at CSec, and besides, he’s not Alliance, he’s not a soldier. She’s taught him more than he thinks even she knows, taught him to be gentle, to be principled, to never go the easy road, to do what’s right, not because it’s orders, but because it’s morality. Dr. Saleon’s trial is coming up, and despite it being posthumous, half formality half joke, Garrus feels at peace. As they go their separate ways, she grabs his hand and pulls him into a hug, twisting his face to leave a bright red kiss on his jaw plate. She leans back, says nothing more, and turns, and then Commander Shepard is gone, but the mark of her lips is still there, and Garrus isn’t sure why he doesn’t want to wash it away.
The days blur together, and Garrus feels his hopes come to nothing. Citadel Security has always been a haven for corruption; why did he think he could change it? He thinks about packing it up, putting in his notice and sending a comm to Shepard, but the only thing stopping him is the thought that maybe she’d be disappointed, that giving up would earn him a bright red frown. He still can’t figure out what exactly, beyond her friendship, makes this possibility so painful. And then the day comes. The pictures scroll across the vidscreens. Garrus looks up at work, head already aching from the paperwork and the bureaucratic mess that is CSec. The sound is muted, but the images force him to turn the sound on. The Normandy, her crew. Her commander. By the time he’s managed to unmute the vidscreen on the other side of his office, he knows what he’s going to hear.
“…Commander Shepard, hero of the Citadel, was not among the survivors in this attack, whose perpetrators are, as of yet, unknown.” It’s as though he need not have bothered with the sound, it’s all silent again. The picture they use is an old one, shot by a reporter during the immediate aftermath of the Citadel attack, when the Commander was assisting the wounded, holding an asari child and looking by chance into the camera’s lens. Her dyed blonde hair sticks in whisps out of her bun, her bangs mussed, reaching just to swipe against her dark brown eyebrows and frame her brown eyes. Scorch marks dot her armor, her eyeliner has sweated off, an ear is torn and bloody where an earring’s been ripped out. Her lipstick is smudged, a single long sweep of crimson along her cheek.
Garrus doesn’t know why he can’t breathe. He doesn’t know why his world feels so empty now, so strangely cold. He can’t understand the strange ache under his chestplate, or the feeling in his stomach that he might be sick. All he knows is that Commander Iona Shepard’s lipstick was the same red as her N7 stripe, but there’s no Commander Iona Shepard anymore.