Chapter Text
The shuttle doesn’t have windows. Garrus Vakarian feels a prickle of unease along his plates at going somewhere blind, and more than a little thanks that they’re in a military-grade vehicle. But then again, this is Palaven. He would’ve been more surprised if it wasn’t military grade. A sturdy culture, theirs. He couldn’t believe how quickly his people had gotten back to Palaven and begun rebuilding. Rebuilding they were, piece by piece and day by day. Centuries of civilization and it was still somehow standing. Military-grade was a turian constant.
There’s a bump when the shuttle hits an air pocket - “Turbulence ahead” warns the pilot - and a clatter as Shepard’s cane slips away from her leg. She reaches out and snags it with the ease of someone well-practiced to the motion, and the disinterested air of someone who didn’t want to be well-practiced with the motion. Better a cane than the alternative, he thinks. A bare handful of people actually expected Senna Shepard to return from the final battle, and he’s proud to have been among them.
The shuttle rattles again and the cane thwacks him hard in the leg. It hits his shin, thankfully, and not his spur. No matter how casually he plays it off, it always hurts worse on the spur. Shepard winces in sympathy, but her eyes are far away. She gets like that, sometimes - it was bad after her return to Alchera, worse still after Bahak. It happens less now that the reapers are gone and worlds are getting back on their proverbial feet, but often enough. “Sorry,” she says absently. She must be thinking heavy thoughts if she’s distracted enough to apologize to him over something like that; one of their first real fights as a married couple had been about her insatiable urge to apologize to everyone for her handicap.
There had been some raised voices involved - raised voices, Garrus thinks with a snort.
They’d yelled loud enough and angrily enough that they’d gotten the attention of every pre-fab dweller in a block’s radius. She’d stormed out, agile for someone still getting used to a new (fake) leg, but then again Shepard had always been graceful under the worst circumstances. She’d stormed out, in the rain- still yelling- and he’d followed- still yelling. He’d grabbed her arm. She’d yanked back away from him and that damnable prosthetic had slipped in the mud and she’d toppled. Garrus had caught her - furious or not, frustrated as hell or not, he always had her six - and for a moment they’d just glared at each other; her in the circle of his arms, both of them barefoot and wet. Finally, Shepard licked her lips and suddenly the anger in her amber eyes was gone, transmuted, something heavier and truer taking shape in her gaze. “You know,” she’d said slowly, wryly, “on the pain of death if Tali were to ever hear about this, I’m pretty sure this is almost word for word what happens in act three of Fleet and Flotilla Five.” His anger vanished, too, leaving a feeling in his chest that ran hotter and stronger than anger ever could. Love, his mind supplied. You love this impossible woman.
“Hey,” Shepard murmurs, and her hand is warm over his. “Credit for your thoughts?”
He glances down at their interlocked fingers, at the ring glittering on her finger. She’s looking at him now, actually looking - no far-off gaze or distraction. There’s just the quiet intense focus that is singularly Shepard. He’d thought the human custom of a ring was quaint, when Kasumi had mentioned it to him. Seeing that familiar blue constantly on Shepard’s finger now, where everyone else in the damn galaxy could see that he claimed her and she claimed him, still sometimes made him feel like he was a fresh-off-the-beat C-Sec agent meeting Shepard in a clinic in the wards. Nervous, stuttering, flailing at chance. Lucky enough that she’d let him tag along. “Still not sure how I convinced you to marry me,” he says, which isn’t necessarily the answer she’s looking for, but it’s not a lie.
She raises one eyebrow pointedly until he looks up and catches her expression. That look of mild disbelief that seems to say that’s obvious, Vakarian; better check those detective skills of yours. Her grin, however, is all cocky confidence. He drops his own mandibles wide and loose in a grin back. “Trying to figure out how you got so damn lucky?” she teases. Hell, she knows she’s a catch. He loves how comfortable she is with her own accomplishments; a woman strong and settled in her own skin. He loves it more with no pressure on them, no war looming in the distance, no mask firmly clamped down over feelings of panic and fear and duty. Her fingers squeeze his, and she responds so that he doesn’t have to. “Me too, Vakarian.” She shifts just enough to press her lips to his scarred face before settling back in her seat, shoulder pressed to his arm solidly. The shuttle settles, turbulence passed, and Garrus closes his eyes.
“Wake up,” Shepard murmurs. Garrus opens his eyes and reaches for a gun that isn’t strapped to his back before his mind can even catch up with his body. He glances down at her and drops his hand almost sheepishly, but he doesn’t try to explain. Shepard’s as much of a soldier as he is. Technically, she’d been serving longer than he had even with her two years out of commission and her six months’ house arrest. They were both retired, now - after saving the whole damn galaxy, both their respective militaries had agreed that they deserved nothing more than a rest - but as Shepard herself liked to say…
“You can take the soldier out of the force…” Garrus looked up from where he’d made the bed, military-neat. Shepard leaned in the doorway, crutches lazily tucked under one arm. She hated the damn things, but she used them dutifully per Doctor Chakwas’ orders.
He didn’t comment on them any more than he didn’t comment on her cheeks being pale with pain and exertion. “What’s that?” he asked, carefully standing up. Both of them had taken a beating in that final fight, but by then Garrus mostly only had to deal with achy plates when it rained.
Shepard tilted her head at him, eyes bright with some familiar memory. “Sort of an old human saying,” she explained. She pushed off the doorframe and settled a crutch under each arm, turning with some difficulty before making her way to the kitchen. Garrus followed. Out the window, he could see the Earth pre-dawn light making its way across the landscape. It was a green planet, Earth, but at the first rays of its star it was as golden as Palaven. There was already coffee brewing for Shepard in the pre-fab’s tiny coffeepot- and a kettle waited, still nearly-boiling, for his own cup of sinensis. He hadn’t expected her to forget about his needs, but it still made him feel just a little sentimental when she remembered the little things. She leaned the crutches against the table, and it was a mark of how well the morning was going that she didn’t fuss when he pulled the chair out for her. She sat with a sigh and waited until he’d fixed his ‘weird dextro tea’ and sat down with her before she spoke again. “Here we are, two busted-up veterans, with all the leave time in the galaxy.”
“You make us sound old,” he’d interrupted.
She laughed, low and lazy. “I feel old, Vakarian.” There was a pause as she propped her chin in her palm, elbow braced on the table. “Here we are, on what is essentially a fucking well-deserved vacation, and we’re both up before the sun and ready to tackle the day.” Even her wry grin was sedate, unhurried, lazy. Garrus sipped his drink and let the silence stretch on. For a bit, the only sounds were the chirping of birds outside and the soft burbling of the coffee. Shepard watched him and Garrus let her, content with the silence and the company. Finally, Shepard stretched, and though her cracking joints and shifting injuries had to hurt, she didn’t even wince. “You can take the soldier out of the force,” she repeated, “but you can’t take the force out of the soldier.”
Force was an apt description for Shepard. She’d blown through his life like a tornado and swept him along like a landslide. Compared to how she’d taken the galaxy by storm, it shouldn’t have made such an impact. Shepard blinks at him, poking his mandible with her free hand. Her left grips the head of her cane firmly. She’s standing. The shuttle’s landed. … he’d fallen asleep. He blinks at the implications, and never mind that Shepard’s giving him a stern glare that could rival his father’s. “Come on,” she says, sounding almost impatient. “There’s only a few minutes left before dusk.” Only a few minutes before- Shepard shifts her tactics from poking him to tugging at his hand. “I want to see Palaven before Trebia sets.”
Chakwas had said- in no uncertain terms- that even with anti-radiation pills, even with her cybernetics (because of her cybernetics), Shepard should only venture out on Palaven for any real length of time during the day in an enviro-suit. Most of their visit was scheduled around the night cycle. But Shepard was stubborn. A few minutes before sunset probably wouldn’t hurt her. It certainly wouldn’t kill her. “Alright, alright,” he grumbles. The way her face lights up is worth any risk, he thinks, and after all she’s done he’s certainly not going to begrudge her the risk of a little radiation.
The doors swing open for them and Garrus gives the pilot a nod of thanks. He’s good. The pilot has Palaven colony markings, same as Garrus, though the swoop over his mandibles suggests a coastal city rather than the capital. He’d picked a cliff to touch down on, one known for its sightseeing strengths to young turian couples everywhere. Garrus had never taken a date there personally but the place is almost a legend in of itself.
Shepard gasps, and the soft genuine sound of awe is the sweetest thing he’s ever heard. With one hand tight around Garrus’ own and the other almost white-knuckled around the head of her cane, she sets foot on Palaven soil for the first time. “Garrus,” she breathes, taking a few more steps forward. There’s no railing, no protection from falling, but Shepard will do what she wants to do and to hell with the danger. He follows, trusting her to know her limits, and she nears the edge of the cliff. A respectable and almost safe distance from the edge, she stops, and looks out over the plains surrounding the capital. Everything is bathed gold in the light of the sinking sun.
There’s a dry, arid wind whipping around them, but Shepard doesn’t seem to care. She’s transfixed, amazed, by what she’s seeing; Garrus can read it all in her stance even if her face is turned toward his home. The wind is tugging at her hair, teasing strands from the less-than-military bun she’d started wearing. She looks like a living silhouette - black hair and dark skin standing apart from the brightness of everything around her. Her skirt billows around her, and even the muted green looks brilliant because it’s on her. “It’s beautiful,” she says, voice still soft and reverent. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. She’d argued long and hard with Chakwas about her first time seeing Palaven being during the daylight, and now he’s so glad that she had.
When he doesn’t answer she turns to look at him, that infuriatingly smug eyebrow-raise of hers in full force. She peers up at his face and her amber eyes catch the rays of the dying sunlight, turning golden for him. “Yeah,” he says, heart in his throat. His subvocals are thick with what he can’t voice - all the love and surprise he can’t get into words. All his embarrassment at the cheesy line, laid bare for her even if she can’t fully understand it. “It is.”
She doesn’t laugh, though her shoulders shake with contained mirth; he’s quite thankful that she doesn’t laugh. Honestly, his pride is only stronger for the pride she has in him. Shepard lets her cane clatter to the dusty ground and steps toward him, drawing the only support she needs from his hand around hers. He holds his other arm out for her dutifully and she steps into his embrace like a woman coming home. She looks like she wants to say something. He’s as good at reading her as she’s gotten at reading him and this is definitely a Something face. Something with a capital ‘s’, Something like saying “I love you, Garrus Vakarian” on top of the Presidium.
Considering they’re already married, he can’t imagine what could be as big as that.
She lets go of his hand but only so that she can reach up and cup his scarred mandible. She always does that, reminds herself how close she got to losing him - though she argues that she’s reminding herself that he’s still there, he knows Shepard thinks about how close they’ve gotten to not having this as much as he does. Her eyes are on him, gold and shining, even as Trebia’s last rays start to fade. Garrus settles his hand over hers, tilts his face into the contact and just breathes for a moment. Finally, he asks “Credit for your thoughts?”
She huffs out a little laugh. “I love you,” she says. It thrills him to hear it. It still thrills him to hear it. He doubts it’ll ever stop. Shepard pulls her hand away, about as reluctant as he is about losing the contact, and uses his arm for support as she retrieves her cane from the dust. “Let’s go see your family.”