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Chapter Text

It was one of the first things Garrus noticed about her, when they first met. After the initial C-sec officer-on-duty check (human, alliance colours, N7 designation, heavily armed, tac armour, female) his eyes were drawn to the scar across her face. It traced the entire left side of her face, a thick ropey line from chin to ear, knotted and savage, but clearly an old wound. Her wry half-smile tugged at it, but it didn’t seem to cause her any pain. By the end of his first month on the ship, he had practically forgotten about it, it was as much a normal part of Shepard as her armour. Imagining her without it would have been like imagining Tali without her suit, or Williams without her bun; on some level he knew that this wasn’t how she had always looked, but it was part of his image of Commander Shepard.

                Seeing her without it now was more jarring than he had expected. It was some old pic she’d dug up, on her personal data-pad, reminiscing about an old drill sergeant with Williams. The gunnery-chief laughed, loud and wild across the cargo bay, clutching her side.

He could hear Wrex lumber over to join them, and his sharp bark of a laugh followed. “Hey Vakarian, Come see this!”

                He pulled himself out from under the Mako, (Ruptured hydraulic break line, kink in the fuel line, all six suspension shocks in need of maintenance) wiping his talons off on his rag as he made his way over to the other side of the bay. Wrex guffawed over the image on the data pad.

“Yeah, yeah” Shepard said. “Laugh it up. Like any of you looked any better coming out of basic.”

Wrex handed him the pad, and Garrus saw a very different Shepard than he had come to know. Not Commander Shepard, for one thing. Private Shepard, with a sharp fringe across her harline, and and deep-set eyes. Her uniform sat loose around her shoulders, and she lacked her characteristic commanding presence. Her arm was wrapped around someone Garrus assumed was her mother. They shared roughly the same face, round and flat nosed, with wide high cheekbones, and the same dark brown eyes peering out from under matching Alliance caps.

“Wow” Garrus said. “You look…”

“Young!” Wrex laughed “How many years ago was this?”

“Seven years, now.” Shepard replied. “Basic, and then the Blitz, and then Akuze and N7 training, before the Normandy. Long time ago”

Wrex chuckled. “Shepard, I’ve had transport missions longer than your entire military history.”

“Long time ago for a human, then.” Shepard amended. “Not all of us have centuries to mess around, you know.”

“God,” Ashley said, “I can’t believe your bangs. And your eyeliner. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in makeup.”

Shepard snatched the data-pad back, and pointed it mock-menacing at Ashley. “Don’t make me pull up colonial records, Williams. I’m sure I could find prom pictures if properly provoked.”

Ashley raised her hands placating, still laughing. “No need for that, skipper. No one needs to see me in a Tango dress.”

This was the wrong thing to say. Shepard’s eyes widened comically, and she started typing furiously on the data pad.

“Hey!” Ashley lunged for the data-pad, which Shepard tossed over her head to Wrex.

Even presented with a picture of their battering ram of a gunnery chief in what was evidently a human dancing dress, Garrus couldn’t rid his mind of the young, smiling Shepard he was saw, trying to reconcile her with the scarred commander he was used to.

***

He’d put it mostly out of his mind, by the next time she needed him for a ground party.

“Distress signal” She told him and Wrex as the Mako landed on the desert planet’s surface. “Hackett sent me the co-ordinates; small scouting party, probably ran into pirates, or crashed their ship. We’ll find em’ and then have Joker swing by to pick us all up.”

Wrex raised one bony brow plate in Garrus’ direction. “Ten credits says it’s another Geth trap.”

Garrus laughed. “Turians don’t gamble, Wrex. Besides, smart money’s on Cerberus.”

“You’ve got nothing to lose then!”

“Knock it of,” Shepard said, activating the propulsion jets to launch them nearly horizontally off a mountainside. “No betting on who’s trying to kill us today.”

Garrus seized upon this. “So you admit that there’s someone trying to kill us today!”

Shepard shrugged, or maybe she was just shaking from the rocky motion of the Mako. “Probably.”

“Commander” Wrex said “You know this is a trap. I know this is a trap. This Turian sorts his guns by registration number and even he knows it’s a trap. I think even Hackett knew this was a trap, when he sent it to ya. Not that I’m complaining about some action, but why are we down here?”

“I’m an optimist.” She said dryly “Maybe we’ll find someone in actual distress someday.”

Wrex grinned. “Care to make a bet on that?”

Shepard’s laugh trailed off as they rounded the last ridge, and the Mako cruised to a stop alongside a pair of standard-issue Alliance exploration vehicles. The frames were twisted and half-melted, and the marines were scattered around the wreckage.

Shepard’s hands tightened around the wheel, tense, and Garrus wondered when he’d gotten so good at reading human body language.

“Be ready.” She said. “I don’t like this at all.”

Wrex leaned out of his seat, peering out the windshield.

“Commander, do you see those tracks?” Garrus didn’t bother wondering when he’d gotten so good at reading the tension in Wrex’s shoulders. Being able to pick out a keyed-up Krogan was covered C-Sec training.

“Yeah, I see ‘em.” Shepard’s voice would have probably sounded steady to most humans, but Garrus could pick up the tremors underneath. If she was Turian, her subvocals would be in full distress-wobble.

“Hold on,” she continued, throwing the Mako into reverse without so much as a glance in the mirrors “We’re getting out of here.”

 Garrus was about to ask what was going on when the ground started to tremble underneath them. Shepard gunned the acceleration, sending them hurtling away from the remains of the Marine platoon as the ground erupted around them. Shepard hollered, nearly but not quite drowning out the shriek of the…-

“THRESHER MAW!”

The Mako rode the shockwave as the creature emerged, and Shepard’s right hand had moved from the gear shift to the gun controls. She swung the turret around as the Mako skidded up onto one tread, using the weight of the gun to take them around a much sharper pin-point turn than the vehicle specs said the Mako was capable of.

“Wrex, take the guns!” Shepard practically shoved the controls into Wrex’s hands, her own returning to the gear shift “Careful with the rockets! You gotta shove ‘em right down its throat; nothing else’ll so much as scratch the fucking paint!”

The maw surged out of the sand around them again, shaking the Mako nearly off its treads, and Shepard wrestled it back under her control without losing any of the momentum before hauling the wheel hand-over-hand to point its nose towards a gap between two mountains.

“Garrus! Keep an eye on the damn thing, I’m about to do some dodgy driving here, and if it’s coming up alongside I’ll need all the warning I can get!”

Even before Garrus’ ‘yes commander’ had left his mouth, the Mako was careening up the side of one of the two mountains, and he felt more than saw or heard the deep thunk of the heavy turret firing overhead. Garrus stumbled to the back of the Mako, and peered out the small slats where the exit ramp met the vehicle roof. The angle the Mako was driving at meant he had to brace himself against the downhill wall to keep his balance. The thresher maw reared in the valley behind them, casting a shadow the size of a terrestrial skyscraper.

“It’s getting ready to spit!” He called back at the front of the car

“Brace yourselves!” Shepard yelled back “Wrex, don’t miss this shot!”

Garrus watched the stringy mass of acid collect in the thresher maw’s jaws, even as it surged back and forth across the valley, seemingly undeterred by the landslides it was causing as it slammed into cliffs and rock faces along the way.

“Now!” Garrus yelled as it pulled back to spit

“HOLD!” Shepard called back, one solid mass of tension behind the wheel, eyes darting across the valley.

Garrus watched the creature rear back and crack like a whip, before it launched the gob of acid at the Mako. Shepard hauled on the wheel, pointing the Mako’s nose downhill and slamming the thrusters, launching it horizontally off the cliff face.

“Now Wrex!”

Three rockets left the main gun in quick succession, the recoil of each of them pushing the Mako further down the valley, away from the maw. From his position at the rear, Garrus saw two of them make direct contact with the exposed inner mandibles of the thresher maw, which let out an unholy shriek in reply. Wrex’s triumphant yell as it recoiled was only partially swallowed by the screeching of metal as the Mako landed precariously on the other side of the valley, before the treads bit into the dirt and sent them hurtling forwards again.

“How’re we doing?” Shepard yelled over her shoulder, manoeuvering the Mako at speed around a boulder filled slope. Through the slats, Garrus could see the massive silhouette of the thresher maw even through the smoke and dust of the impact.

“I think we’ve just pissed it off, commander!”

Wrex laughed, deep in his throat. “Damn right we have! Got its attention now!”

Shepard swore, and retuned her full attention to driving, activating the thrusters briefly to launch them over the remains of a rockslide, and grabbed the Mako’s radio even before the wheels hit the ground again.

“Joker, this is ground team, we need extraction five minutes ago, do you copy?”

There was a tense moment of radio silence and static. Wrex sent another pair of rockets slamming into the maw behind them, recoil rocking the Mako’s frame.

“This is Joker. Commander, what’s going on down there?”

“No time, Joker. You have our co-ordinates?”

“Got ‘em.” Came the voice from the radio. Shepard craned her neck back and forth through the pitted windshield, squinting up at the mountainous landscape around them. Still had her full weight on the accelerator.

“There’s a peak, about five clicks to our northeast?”

“I see it.”

“I need you to be there in five, bay door open, guns ready. Hostiles in pursuit” The thresher maw took that moment to screech again, and clearly Shepard didn’t let go of the transmit trigger on the radio quite fast enough.

“Commander, what the hell?” Came Joker’s voice again

“Joker!” she barked back through the radio “Can you be there, yes or no?”

Radio silence for two beats. “You bet commander. Ping me when you get close.”

“Roger that,” Shepard said. She slammed the transmitter back into its cradle and returned her right hand to its home on the gearshift.

“Don’t suppose we’ve lost it?” she called back.

“It’ll take more than that to lose a thresher maw, commander!” Wrex replied, and true to form, Garrus could see it in pursuit in the valley behind them.

“Keep it off our ass ‘till we get to that ridge, Wrex, we need every inch you can get us”

The guns rumbled in reply, and Garrus could see the plumes of dust and dirt they sent up as they tore streaks across the landscape, and saw the thresher maw barely hesitate as it tore through them.

“Covering fire’s only going to do so much against that, Commander” Garrus said

“We’re not trying to kill it Vakarian, just keep it off us long enough for the cavalry to arrive.”

Garrus thought he could forgive his translator for glitching out under these circumstances, because he could have sworn she had just said she was waiting for horseback troops to come to their rescue. The maw reared up again, and it seemed more important to warn Shepard about the incoming gob of acid than to ask for clarification. Shepard’s evasive veer brought them cresting the edge of the valley. The responsive volley seemed to have hit its mark, judging by both the tenor of Wrex’s yell and the pitch of the thresher maw shriek.

“There!” Shepard yelled, pointing out the front of the Mako, as the top of the Normandy rose into visibility from where it had been hidden on the other side of the mountain face. She reached down and pulled the radio back up to her mouth, other hand gripping the wheel so tightly Garrus thought he could hear her gauntlet creak over the whine of the engine.

“Joker, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear,” came the response “We’ve got visual on you, but you’re running outta room Commander.”

“Sheer cliff behind that drop-off?” Shepard asked. Garrus snuck a glance out the front window, and sure enough they were coming up to the end of the plateau Shepard had managed to wheel the Mako onto; in a little more than half a click it dropped right into valley again.

“Just about,” Joker said “Commander, what are you-“

“I’m going to jump the Mako through the bay doors” Garrus’s head forward.

 “I need you to keep pace and then cut in front just before we go over, can you do that?”

“What!?”

“Yes or no, Joker!” Shepard shot back. “I’m running out of road!”

“Yes commander!” The Normandy sank slightly beside them, before putting on a burst of speed that began edging it a full length ahead of the Mako. Shepard tossed the transmitter back in the general direction of the radio.

“Garrus!” Shepard called over her shoulder “I need you to swap places with me. Hold her steady as we get ready for the jump.”

“What?”

“Unless you grew biotics while I wasn’t looking, someone’s going to have to jump this thing, and I need Wrex on the guns, so get up here and take the wheel, Vakarian!”

Garrus stumbled to the front of the Mako and braced one hand against the dashboard as he took the wheel, holding it steady as Shepard extracted herself from the driver’s seat. He maneuvered his foot over hers on the gas pedal, and the Mako only lurched slightly as she gave control over to him completely.

“Careful!” Wrex barked, still glued to the turret. Shepard ignored him as she moved to the back of the Mako and braced herself against the exit hatch.

“What’s our ETA, Garrus?”

Garrus stared out the front window, where he could see the Normandy’s cargo bay doors opening midair.

“Fifteen seconds.” He said

“Count ‘em down,” Shepard said. “And wait ‘till the last possible moment with the thrusters.”

“Ten.” Garrus said. He hoped they’d cleared the cargo bay.

“Nine.” Wrex fired off another volley, and the maw shrieked somewhere behind them.

“Eight.” In the rear-view mirror, he could see the Commander taking her gauntlets off, flexing her fingers in the light slotting through the landing ramp.

“Seven.” The tremors that the Maw was making were growing closer now, nonstop rumbling underground.

“Six.” Wrex wove his left arm through one of the cargo straps attached to the roof, securing himself more firmly to his post.

“Five.” The Normandy was so close he could see the reflective tape in the docking bay.

“Four.” Wrex fired a rocket, and Garrus tried not to think about how close it meant the thresher maw was that he could see the flash of impact.

“Three.” Garrus braced his other leg against the dashboard of the Mako, folding himself into a less-fragile pretzel behind the wheel.

“Two.” Grim determination was etched into every line of Shepard’s face. She stood braced, ready.

“NOW!” he yelled. He slammed his fist onto the button that activated the thrusters. Wrex fired a volley for both deterrent and extra momentum. Shepard surged through a double-fisted pull, which Garrus realized with a jolt was creating a shockwave that was moving underneath and behind the Mako, giving it the momentum it needed to move through its jump. There were a few, terrifying moments of freefall before the Mako hit the floor of the cargo bay, slamming them all hard against the floor, which then the ceiling of the vehicle as it rolled. Garrus franticly wrestled with the wheel and he tried to slow the momentum of the car, and ended up spinning the whole Mako in two huge rubber-burning donuts before it eventually tipped to a halt, facing the open bay-door ramp.

“Doors closed, Commander, getting us out of here.”

“Joker,” Shepard said, back on local coms and sprawled half against the wall and half on top of Wrex. “I could kiss you. As soon as we’re clear, take us back to the relay.”

Wrex glanced down at where she sprawled on his legs surprised “After all that, we’re not even gonna fight it?”

“Hell no!” Shepard said. Blood was trickling gently out of one of her ears and out of both her nostrils. “There’s only half a dozen hot combat soldiers on this ship, no heavy artillery, and no back up. We’re going to call the Alliance and nuke that thing from orbit.”

 Garrus pried his face from the airbag that had emerged from dashboard and shook his head until his mandibles could move freely again. He really hoped he hadn’t cracked a faceplate. “That’s a bit of an overreaction, surely. A platoon of marines and some support should do the trick”

Shepard pushed herself up on one elbow so she could glare at him more effectively. “The last time the Alliance got into a fight with a thresher maw, it cost us three tanks, two state-of-the-art mech suits, enough heat sinks to fill a freighter and fifty goddamn marines.” She collapsed back against the side of the Mako, and closed her eyes. “And the damn thing still didn’t die until the evac showed up a day and a half later, and only then because the ship had just come from a combat zone, and the guns were still hot.”

“Evac, huh?” Wrex said “How many of you made it out?”

Shepard draped an elbow over her face, a sure sign of trying to hold off a biotic overexertion headache, but her voice was thick with more than one kind of pain as she replied “Just the one of me.”

Wrex dropped his hand on her shoulder sympathetically, where it spanned nearly half of her breastplate. “No shame in dying to the best.”

Shepard snorted, but bent her other arm up, until it rested on Wrex’s larger one, drawing from it what support she could, as the Normandy shook its way out of the planet’s atmosphere.

 ***

Despite the fact that they were sitting in plain sight, Garrus almost felt like he was intruding when he walked in on Kaidan and Shepard in the mess hall. Not that they were doing anything inappropriate, even by human standards. Kaidan had his chair tipped back on two legs, head tipped back as far as it would go, eyes shut pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. His other hand hung listlessly off the chair beside him.

Shepard was slumped forward in her chair, face down on the table. Her face was cushioned by her upper arms, hands cupping the base of her skull, and he would have thought she was asleep except for the way her fingers clenched in her hair.

"Uh," Garrus said.

Shepard raised one hand and waved at him slightly, before dropping it back to the base of her skull.

"They're not hungover, if that's what you're wondering" Ashley Williams emerged from under the counter with a pair of tetra packs. "Just a wetware update

"Chakwas," Shepard said, voice muffled by her arms. "Must be the only damn medical officer in alliance space who actually follows the semi-annual update recommendations."

Kaiden grunted his assent from across the table.

Ashley tutted, half sympathetic, half mocking as she placed a box in front of each of them.

"Are human biotic implants that bad?" Garrus asked, moving to prepare a freeze-dried levo meal.

"Next time you have someone poking around in your brian for a couple of hours you tell me how hot you feel." Kaiden said.

Garrus shrugged. "Fair enough."

"That said," Ashley said, watching Shepard blindly try to jam the straw through the foil covering of her juice box. "Alenko's implants are actually that bad. He has one of the prototype models, back from when we were still working out the bugs. Shepard just missed the L2s by a couple of years when she got hers."

Garrus dropped his foil packet in the pot of water and turned back to the three humans.

"Commander, aren't you older than Staff-Lieutenant Alenko?"

Shepard squinted at him through sweaty bangs. "Spacer. Didn't get put through biotic aptitude until after I joined up. Kaidan's hometown had an eezo spill he took biotic aptitude as a teenager." Her head clunked back down to the table. "Too much shielding in the Eezo in drive cores to measure every kid born on a spaceship. Got mine about six years after his."

"And be thankful you did," Kaiden grunted, pressing his finders into his brow, eyes clenched shut "Yours just overheat."

"And do they ever. I could practically cook eggs on em right now."

Garrus turned and rooted through the freezer for a plastic bag of ancient frozen peas, on which Joker had scrawled 'NOT FOOD' in thick black permanent marker. He picked it up carefully, mindful of his ungloved talons, and brought it over to the table where the three humans were sitting-

And dropped it in front of Shepard.

"Not exactly Alliance regulation,” he said, “but Joker uses this as an icepack all the time, so…” He trailed off as she groped for it on the table, raking her hair over her head with her other hand. He had a brief glimpse of the implants themselves- dull gunmetal barnacles, extending three prongs each under angry red skin- before she dragged Joker’s icepack over the back of her neck. Shepard groaned with relief.

“Garrus, you’re a saint.” Her voice was now twice muffled, once by her arms, once by the hair flipped over her face. “I can do that, right? I’m pretty sure sainting people is under Spectre authority.”

“Sorry skipper” Ashley’s voice was rich with amusement as she met Garrus’ eyes over Shepard’s head “I don’t think the Catholic Church is part of Council space yet.”

“Damn” Shepard said “Next time, Garrus”

“I’ll hold you to that”

 ***

“Hey Williams!” Shepard yelled across the remains of the mining outpost “Come take a look at this!”

The former battlefield now resembles nothing more than a giant sized version of a mechanic’s scrap pile; geth heaped in haphazard piles, in mine carts. One, improbably, was slumped against a chair looking like it fell asleep at its desk. Williams picked her way across the room to Shepard’s side, then let out a barking laugh.

“I didn’t think there were any of these left! This is a dinosaur!”

Garrus turned to see the two humans looking affectionately at a shotgun Shepard held in one hand. William’s took it from her arms and sighted along its barrel down the empty mineshaft.

“The old Mark II Eviscerator, this brings back memories. Kicked like a mule, remember?”

Shepard laughed.  “I remember having to lug it around training fields, mostly. What a brick.” She took it back from Williams and cracked the back of it open, bending it practically in half.

“What kind of shotgun still uses shells?” Garrus asked.

“Nah, it’s not that old,” Shepard said “That’s just where the cooling unit went. You had to shake them out once they were overclocked, like this-“ With one hand on the pump and the other resting against the trigger, she flicked a switch on the side and and spun it downwards in one quick motion

“I burnt holes in more than one pair of boots doing that, let me tell you,” she said, snapping the barrel back together.

“Old junker,” Williams said with the kind of affection usually reserved for misbehaving pets and hole-in-the-wall first apartments. “I used switch the steam vents on these a dozen times a week.”

“Switch how?” Garrus asked.

Shepard rolled the gun to show a small vent in the top of the stock. “They would vent steam out through this slot, to allow more shots per heatsink, right?” She nestled the shotgun against her right shoulder, nodded over her shoulder at him “Right out over the shoulder and away, theoretically.”

“Unless you’re left handed,” Ashley chimed in.

“Or you break your right collarbone in the middle of a firefight,” Shepard agreed, switching the shotgun to the other side to demonstrate “In which case you get a face full of superheated steam”

The discharge path perfectly traced the jagged scar across Shepard’s face, narrow at the jaw and slightly wider beside her ear, streamlined and violent.

“Can’t swap it without ten minutes and a toolbox, which are in short supply in hot combat zones,” Williams added, as Shepard laid the shotgun back down on the table. “’That’s why they all come equipped with the Akuze switch now.”

***

Akuze reared its ugly head one more time before they all parted ways. They were out in the ass end of the Newton system, tracing a lead the commander pulled from a terminal in Noveria nearly a week ago, and she’d been quiet ever since. She would still make her rounds, sure, but but briefly: ‘hello, anything to report, I should go’.

Before whatever data packet she had found on Noveria finished decrypting, she had made time to talk to all of them no matter what. She would come down to the main cargo bay and talk to Garrus about old C-Sec cases as he fixed the Mako, or buff skid marks out of her armour side by side with Williams at her bench and ask about her sisters, or perch next to Wrex and ask about battle scars and the Krogan race. She apparently spent the same amount of time with the Quarian down in the drive core and Alenko and T’Soni on the main floor.

The friendly pre-mission banter was entirely absent as she strapped herself into the Mako’s front seat. Tali gave an inquisitive tilt of her head across from him. Garrus gave her a don’t-look at-me shrug in reply. She tilted her faceplate back up, either in an I’ve-given-up gesture, or in a spirits-save-me-from-obstinate-Turians one. Without expressions, speaking through a synthesizer and overdramatic body language, she was hard to parse. She waited until the Mako made landfall though, before she raised her voice.

“Shepard, what exactly are we looking for down here?”

Shepard displayed an unusual display of adherence to recommended driving procedure by keeping her eyes on the road as she replied, “Probably nothing. One of the files I pulled on Noveria was a warning from one scientist to another that someone was picking off members of a project they both worked on, and to go to ground. The sender said he was coming here.”

“So we’re here on guard detail?” Garrus asked “Take him into protective custody?”

“Something like that” Shepard replied. Her hands were tense on the wheel, even as she drove the Mako along a straightaway at a relatively sedate 70 klicks an hour, without any of her regular acrobatics. Tali fiddled with her suit across from Garrus, bunching some of the tubes running along her bicep into one mass, and then separating them out one by one again.

“Shepard” Garrus said again. Follow the evidence, his father had told him. “What was the project they were working on?”

Silence in the Mako again as they rocketed over the planet’s surface. Garrus and Tali exchanged another ‘I don’t want to ask her, YOU ask her’ glance. Garrus lost.

“Shepard” Garrus said again.

“It’s probably just a coincidence. It’s probably someone pinning the blame on some totally innocuous ammo mod, or new and improved rations pack or-“

“Shepard, what was the project?”

She sighed and turned to face them in the back of the car, draping one arm over the back of her seat and steering blind with the other.

“The project,” she said, “was test run of something new and experimental on Akuze in 2177. Shut down immediately afterwards.” She turned her full attention back to the rapidly approaching lab in front of her. “Like I said; probably some innocuous project that someone’s pinning their loss on, in which case we protect the scientists.”

“And if it’s not?” Tali asked

“If it’s not, then someone knows something I don’t about the death of my squad, and I might have to help them finish the job.”

Tali nearly flinched. “Keelah, Shepard. You don’t mean that.”

“I sure do.” The Mako coasted to a stop in front of the base. “Fifty dead and I’ve never gotten any answers, Tali.” She sighed and turned around to face them. “I don’t know what to expect in there. Could be nothing but a handful of scared scientists. But on the off-chance that it’s not…”

“We’re right behind you Shepard,” Garrus said, even though Tali clearly still had misgivings about it. “Whatever’s in there, we’ll follow your lead.”

                She nodded and hopped out of the car, already drawing her shotgun. Garrus and Tali followed him her to the entrance of the facility. Not so much as a functional mech outside, or a living merc. The door to the building wasn’t even locked, and even as Tali checked it for traps and came up empty, Garrus couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had about the situation.

                A glance inside confirmed his fears. The interior of the building was a charnel house. Blood spattered up the prefab unit’s walls and pooled along the floor, bodies scattered here and there. It looked the way they usually left these units, and entering one that seemed like they had missed the battle was more than a little disconcerting.

                The sharp crack of a gunshot shook Garrus from his thoughts, and as one the three of them whipped around to face a door to their left. Shepard was already sprinting towards it by the time the echo faded. She skidded to a halt in front of it and flooded the circuitry with omnigel to force it open.

Garrus immediately whipped his gun up to point at the man standing in the centre of the room.  Old Alliance fatigues, grown-out crewcut, holding a shaking pistol to the temple of a scientist kneeling on the floor. His eyes didn’t leave his hostage as they entered, and he seemed unconcerned with the fact that his odds were now three-to-one instead of one-to-a-bunch-of-unarmed-scientists.

                “Stay back! I’ve got no grief with you.” His hand was shaking on the pistol. If any of them took a shot now, Garrus had no doubt he would pull the trigger. “All I want is this bastard.”

“Please!” Said the scientist “He’s a madman! Mister Toombs you’re insane you need help!”

                At his words Shepard jerked her shotgun down, and squinted at the man in disbelief.

“Shut up!” Toombs, continued “You don’t get to lie, you don’t get to-“He seemed aware of his audience for the first time. His eyes flicked over the three of them rapid fire, and froze when they came to rest on Shepard. “My god- Shepard, is that you?”

“Corporal Toombs?”  Her voice was barely more than an exhale.

 “It can’t be, you died. I saw you get pulled under on Akuze. How did you get here?”

                “They took me, Shepard. The scientists” His voice was wobbling all over the place, distressed and furious. “They studied those things, the thresher maws. They let those things hit us, just to watch and study.”

                Shepard’s face had gone still and cold as Toombs took a breath to collect himself.

                “I woke up in a holding cell,” he said. He was less frenetic now, just grieving. “They were delighted I’d survived. Now they had someone to run tests on.”

                “What’d they do to you, Toombs?” It was Shepard’s upset children and grieving friends voice.

                “You can’t believe him!” The scientist interjectedmore indignant than afraid. “He doesn’t have any proof! I demand a fair trial.”

                “This man deserves to die, Shepard,” Toombs said. “For you, for me, for everyone else on our squad!”

                Shepard hesitated. Then, Shepard, who had talked the Alliance into returning scientifically important bodies to their families, who had thought it was immoral to kill the last of the rachni, no matter the threat they posed to the galaxy, who had gone days and weeks out of her way whenever any member of the crew needed something, holstered her gun. Crossed her arms. Nodded at Toombs.

                “Do it,” she said. “For all of us.”

                Toombs took the shot, and Shepard didn’t as much as flinch at the blood spatter, or the thump of the body on the floor. She stared at the corpse of the Cerberus scientist as if she was considering kicking it, tension causing the scar along her jaw to jump slightly.

                Her attention to the body on the floor was probably why she didn’t notice Toombs pulling his weapon up again.

                “They always said you were the only survivor,” he said, and Shepard’s head jerked up. “I guess now they’ll be right.”

                “Toombs no-“she yelled, diving for the gun. Garrus could see that even as she moved that she was too late, and Toombs’ gun rang out again. His body hit the floor with a terrible quiet thump. Shepard simply stood there for a moment, staring at her old teammate. She tipped her head back towards the florescent lights in the ceiling and covered her eyes with one hand before sucking in one deep breath, and then another. She was, Garrus realized with a jolt, trying not to cry.

“Commander,” he said. She didn’t reply.

“Shepard,” Tali said.

“Yeah” Shepard dropped her hand as she turned back to face them, and she looked more tired than Garrus had ever seen her before. “I know. Call Joker for pickup.”

Tali’s fingers paused on her omnitool. “What do you want me to say happened here?”

“Tell him the truth.” Shepard said. “Tell him I was too late to save anyone.”

 ***

Garrus was already thinking of it as The Citadel, as the defining moment that took place there, the same way he heard members of his father’s generation talk about Relay 314, not as a place, but as an Event. I was at Relay 314. Garrus fought on The Citadel, at The Surprise Relay. He visited Shepard in the hospital, the moment he has the chance.

Less than a day bedridden, and she was already chafing under the attention. As he rounded the corner, he can hear her arguing about the fact that her ribs are just cracked, really. Garrus can’t help but grin.

“Don’t you ‘no really’ me,” came a voice in reply, and as Garrus turned into Shepard’s room he could see the voice’s owner starring down arms crossed at a bedridden Shepard. “I’ve been hearing your ‘no really’s since you were knee high, don’t think they’ll work on me now.” She looked up as Garrus entered the room and he realized that he was looking at his commander’s mother.

He can read it in the set of her jaw and glint in her eyes, the same deep brown as her daughter’s, older than the picture he saw on Williams’ datapad months ago, but undeniably another Shepard.

She turns her gaze on him. He swallows, and readjusts.

“Ma’am,” he tries.

“Turian.” She says

“Mother!” Shepard tries to push herself upright in her bed, and falls back against the sheets. She must have been more injured than he realised, if she would give up halfway through the effort. “This is Garrus Vakarian and he’s been a member of my crew for the past year and a half.”

She looked him up and down again. Garrus would rather face a dozen geth armatures. Mako optional. He shifted the stuffed animal he had bought at the gift shop downstairs to his left arm, and held out a hand.

“Garrus Vakarian.” He says “C-Sec officer.”

There’s a long moment where maybe she wouldn’t do anything but stare at him, before she seized his hand with one of her own. Along her right forearm stretched three jagged paths of scar tissue, twisting down the path to her wrist.

“Captain Hana Shepard,” she said, shaking his hand crisply once “Alliance Navy.” The tips of his fingers just touched the ends of her scars.

“Ah.”

“Mom, could you give us a minute?” said Shepard.

Captain Hana Shepard possessed the same iron spine as her daughter, and though the bun at the base of her skull is ship hull instead of deep-space black, it’s not hard to see the resemblance even as she turned away from the two of them.

“I’ll be back in five. Don’t do anything I’ll make you regret.” He wasn’t sure who that parting remark was aimed towards, but Shepard just sighed from her bed. Garrus turned around and was met with Shepard looking as embarrassed as he’d ever seen her.

“Sorry about her. My mom’s a little...” she made a non-committal gesture with one of her hands, trailing IV tubes as she went “Stuck in her ways.”

“She fought Turians.” It wasn’t a question.

“On Shanxi, yeah. She was part of the second wave.” She turned up to face him and grimaced. “I did say that I was part of a military family.” She gestured tiredly at the chair beside her bed, inviting him to make himself at home. He placed the small imitation bear on her bedside table, where he could see flowers from each Liara and Chawkwas, a lovely card from Tali, and a piece of rebar that had been bent in a loop around a tree branch, which had been shattered at one end and sawed carefully off at the other.

“The debris is from Wrex and Ashley. Ash found a piece where the rebar had been flung so hard it had done this around the trunks of one of the cherry trees in the presidium, and Wrex decided I should have it as a memento.” Garrus prodded it with one talon, and it tipped with a clunk to balance on its two other points.

“Charming.”

“I’m going to keep it in my cabin.”

He threw his head back and laughed, a calculated vulnerability that nobody from their parents’ generation would understand, but hell, he was a Turian visiting a human in the hospital, who had been on a mission with against the geth with a Quarian, freed a Rachni queen with a Krogan and talked to a Prothean with an Asari. If there was any chance at interspecies friendship in the galaxy, it would be Shepard and her crew. He wondered if this was how the first council had felt.

“I’ll have to come back to see it sometime.”

She grinned at him, soft human skin wrinkling at the corners of her eyes.

“I’m gonna hold you to that, Vakarian. Don’t be a stranger just because we’re living hundreds of light-years apart.”

“Never. Maybe the next time we see each other I’ll be a spectre too.”

“Sure” She stretched out in her bed, revealing the bindings wrapping her ribs armpit to hips. “You can recruit me for a mission no-one else believes in that has to be done. It’ll be your turn to save the damn galaxy for a change.”

“I’ll pick a hopeless cause and an unwinnable fight just for you.” He said

Sheppard grinned at him “I’m looking forward to it already.”

Chapter Text

He was so tired.

He was so tired he could feel his plates shift as he knelt in in what used to be a communal apartment, in what was once the captain’s quarters of a luxury liner ship, in what is now the location of Archangel’s Last Stand. He could feel his plates pulling against the muscle and sinew that bound him together, could feel his eyelids pulling closed, could feel the recoil in his shoulder and the trigger pressure in the tendons of his right hand. He’d been running on stims and righteous anger for the past two days, and he was running short on both.

He was tired, and he was going to die, alone and forgotten, in this miserable rotten corner of space. He wondered how long it would be until his father found out about his death.

He was cooked-through, well-done tired, but he’s not going to make it easy for the bastards. They’ were going to pay for every inch they advanced across that bridge, as long as he had heatsinks and a heartbeat, they weren’t going to-

That couldn’t be who he thinks it is.

She was dead and gone, had been for years (years! Plural!) but there she was, storming across the bridge, shotgun in her hands as though it never left. He isn’t sure it was her, at first; there’s more than one person with the N7 designation, after all, but he’s wasn’t sure how many humans of any rank would use their biotic charge or the butt of their shotgun as aggressively as the figure charging across the bridge. He plugged a concussive round into the center of her chest plate anyway, and, sure enough, as she pulled herself up from it, she rolled her right shoulder before gripping her shotgun again, the one that had given her trouble since Akuze. He feels a pulse of something that should probably be happiness, or giddiness, or enthusiasm but registered across the void of exhaustion only as relief.

She fought her way across the bridge and up the stairs, because of course she did, and the first time she tried to talk to him, his brain is still tick-tock tracking the movement of some Eclipse mercs on the other side. He picked off one more before turning to address her.

She called him Archangel.

He had to use his rifle to prop himself up, and he has to let go of that to take off his helmet. The three steps between his sniper perch and a crate to sit on seemed like the hardest mile he’s ever had to run, and he all but collapsed on the crate before speaking.

“Shepard,” he said. “I thought you were dead.” The hows and whys of her resurrection don’t register, at the moment.

She threw her arms wide in response, surprised and ecstatic, and yeah, that’s the reaction he should have had. “Garrus!” she hauls her helmet off, grinning, and oh, he missed her face. “What are you doing here?”

He said something in response, he’d never been able to remember what later, but at the moment he’s distracted by the changes in her face. It was her, undeniably so, but he’s cataloging the differences even as he’s answering her questions on autopilot. It was hard to do, when he can barely keep his head up or his eyes open. Her scar is gone. In its place is baby-smooth skin split by a pair horrifying cracks glowing heat-sink red; one beside beside her mouth, and another spanning from the corner of her eye to the edge of her ear. The sickly light bounced off his sniper rifle as he handed it off to her, so she could get a sense of the forces amassed on the other side of the bridge. As she pops another one off to drop a mech on the other side, he swore the cracks grew wider on her face, and he couldn’t help but think that whatever dragged her from the grave hasn’t let her go yet.

***

                A week after he caught a rocket with his face, he sent her a private message asking her to meet him in the battery. She perched on the railing on the main gun as though she belonged there. As if there weren’t more important things for her to do than talk to a washed out former C-sec officer and a vigilante who just had one of the more spectacular crash-and-burn failures in living memory.

                “Shepard. Thanks for coming.”

                “Anytime, Garrus. What’s this about?”

                “When you, ah-“ he stopped, and kicked himself. “This is stupid Shepard, forget I said anything.”

                “What, no, I’m always here for the crew.” She kicked herself off the railing. “Especially when that member of the crew seems to be secluding themselves in rarely visited areas of the ship and barely coming out for meals.”

                “Are we talking about me or Jack?” he joked

                She smiled, but the look underneath was pure Commander Shepard steel. He deflated under it a little bit.

                “It’s stupid, Shepard.”

                “I still want to hear it.”

                He sighed and shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. He was easing off the pain meds, and he knew it would be a very bad idea to pull his mandibles as tight around his mouth as he wanted to. He gestured vaguely at the space where her scar had been, two years and several billions credits of reconstructive surgery ago. “How long did it take to recognise yourself in the mirror again?”

                She pinned him with a long, tired. “After I got the scar, or after I lost my unit, you mean.”

                Garrus shrugged, and turned back to the readout of the main gun, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. “Either. Both. Take your pick.”

                She sighed, and leaned against the railing next to him, forwards this time.

                “Shit Garrus, after Akuze I spent a week and a half blackout drunk getting into fistfights before throwing myself wholesale into N7 training. I’m not sure I’m the best yardstick on that one. You’re already doing better than me there.”

                “Let’s settle for the first one then.”

                “Sure.” Her fingers beat a brief staccato rhythm on the railing in front of her before she stilled them again. “I dunno how long your bandage has to stay on, but mine was on about a month and a half. Didn’t see the damage properly for half a season, and by that time, it was nearly healed.” She scratched her blunt human nails over the path her scar once ran, where they now skittered over her exposed cybernetics. “There’s not a timeline on this, Garrus. You just wake up one and it’s just part of your face. For me it was when I realised I had been out all day and hadn’t thought about it once.”

                “What, that’s your advice?” Garrus said “Someday you’ll just stop noticing it?”

                “You asked for my advice,” Shepard said. “That’s my advice. I’m sure Jack’s would be somewhere along the lines of ‘get a tattoo over top’ and Zaeed’s would be ‘use it to stay mad’.”

                Garrus looked at her sidelong through his visor. Her cybernetics glowed in a haphazard web along her cheek, not tracing the path of her old scar at all.

                “Are you used to the new ones yet?” He asked her.

                “Oh, fuck no.” She said, hand dropping back to her side “I going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and glowing from the other side of the mirror. My eyes glow red in the dark, Garrus. I’m something out of a little kid’s nightmare now.”

His fingers twitched with the need to do something, anything, to reassure her that she was courage made flesh and blood, that she was the thing that scared away the things that lurked in the dark, that she would be the last thing he would ever be afraid of in the night. Instead, he dropped her gaze and stared at the softly whirring gun in front of him.

She leaned out over the railing in front of him.

                “Hey.” Her hair fell sideways out of her face “It’ll be fine. Not easy, not soon, but it will be. You can be damned sure of that.”

*** 

She let him take the shot when they track Sidonis down. There were a few heart-stopping seconds where he didn’t think she would, but she did. She tried to talk him out of it on the shuttle over, while they were gathering information and while she was standing in his literal sights, but she let him take the shot anyway.

She found him in the battery afterwards, after presumably filing a report for the Illusive Man.

“Hey Shepard, can it wait a bit? I’m-.”

“You say one word about calibrations right now, I’ll kick your ass.”

“-just finishing up.” He finished, as if that’s what he meant to say all along.  “What did you need?”

“What do I need? What do I need? Garrus-“She spun him around to face her. “Garrus, you just shot someone who used to be a member of your team, who betrayed you and left you to die. I came down to ask you what you needed.”

“What I needed?” Garrus parroted. “Hell Shepard, you don’t have to worry about what I need. You’ve already chased Sidonis halfway across the galaxy for me instead of spending your time stopping the Collectors. You don’t need to waste any more of your time worrying about what I need.”

“Garrus, you’re not a waste of time.”

“Flattering, Shepard, but you take care of your crew because you know how to lead a crew. Consider me taken care of.”

“Garrus.” She peered up at him over crossed arms. “If you believe that for a second, I’ve been doing something wrong. You’re part of the team, obviously, but you’re also my friend. One of a very few who knew me before I died that I can still rely on.”

 “Shepard, you have better things to do than run around cleaning up my messes.”

“I’d prefer to keep you out of them, sure,” she said “But that’s because I want to keep you at my six, Garrus. When you get into messes, I want to be right there with you.”

“Why Shepard, that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.” He tried for nonchalant and missed it by a star system and a half. “A guy might get ideas, if you keep saying things like that.” The attempted recovery was worse. At least she couldn’t pick up all the meaning in his subvocals. Probably.

Shepard looked as off balance as Garrus felt. “Garrus,” she said softly, “I was so relieved to find you on Omega, and you almost died on me. Never again, okay? I don’t think I could have handled loosing you, on top of working for Cerberus. You’ve been one of the few things keeping me sane, these past few months, I thought you knew that.”

“Shepard-“

“No, I’m still talking. Garrus, you are one of the only people on this ship I trust at the moment. Everyone else, I either don’t know well enough to trust, or working for Cerberus or both. I died, and Cerberus brought me back, and you’re following me on a suicide mission. That you’re here, right now, with me on this ship, means more to me than anything else. This is the least I can do to thank you.”

“Shepard, I’d follow you into hell and back. You know that.”

“At my six.”

“On your six. And don’t you forget it.”

***

“Is your shoulder troubling you, Commander?” Miranda’s voice is smooth as always. Even in combat, she sounds more collected that Garrus in his best job interview. They weren’t doing anything in particular, just browsing shops on the Citadel, in between life-threatening missions. Not even for any particular reason, just to get the ship into proper dry dock and refresh their supplies. Shepard had picked up a proper spice rack for Mess-Sergeant Gardner, as well as a pair of jellyfish for the aquarium that apparently came standard-issue in the commanders’ quarters on Cerberus ships. He had picked out some extra levo rations, since the crew now contained both him and Tali, and made especially sure to the red Palavian fruits they both favoured. He though her sterilization process probably ruined them, but she insisted they were simply better cooked. Shepard was carrying the spoils of their afternoon in a single bag, and had dropped it to roll her right shoulder.

It was nothing he hadn’t seen before: a full circle forward, half back, forward again. It was something he’d seen her do on countless elevator rides and transport drops, no stranger than Tali fussing with her tubes or Jack rolling a cigarette or Grunt picking his teeth.

Except that Shepard had been rebuilt from scratch. There was no reason for her to be rolling a shoulder that had never been popped out of its socket so hard it broke the collarbone on the way out. This body, or at least most of this body, had never launched itself out of a moving vehicle to avoid the jaws of a thresher maw, and even the parts that had had been upgraded to the moon and back.

Shepard was clearly thinking the same thing. She ran her left thumb over her now smooth right collar bone, no longer in possession of the gnarled bump that was common in endo-skeletal healing.

 “Habit” She said. “Whenever my shoulder felt this loose before, it meant a world of pain the next day.”

Miranda frowned.

“But you’ve had no problems with the replacement?”

Shepard shrugged with her other shoulder and picked up her bags. “Not that I’ve noticed. No pain, no stiffness, just as fast as the other one.”

Miranda nodded once in satisfaction, smiling without showing any of her teeth. “Glad to hear it Commander.” She spun on one heel and clacked away, leaving Garrus and Shepard in her wake. Shepard stared after her.

“I keep forgetting that she built me.” She massaged the shoulder that had nothing wrong with it.

“You built you.” Garrus said, bumping her side. “She just… did a little repair work. That’s all.”

She turned up to look at him, squinting slightly against the simulated sunlight in the commons. “She’s touched my spinal cord, Garrus.”

You took a bit of a space nap, you needed some help getting back on your feet. She didn’t build you. Cerberus certainly didn’t.”

“I didn’t say anything about Cerberus”

“You were thinking it.”

Shepard scrunched her nose up in a way that he had learned to interpret as ‘unhappy but not denying anything’.

“I know who I am,” she said. “I’m just worried about what else I’m hauling around with me, since coming back.”

He dropped one of his hands on her shoulder, and squeezed lightly. “You’re just you, Shepard. No more, no less. We wouldn’t follow anyone else.”

***

“You have a bedsheet taped to your ceiling.”

“Hmm?” Shepard said beside him. She pulled her arms out from under her pillow and rolled onto her back.

“Oh yeah” She frowned up at the offending patch of fabric. Her scars had healed almost entirely, but they glowed faintly sometimes in the dark parts of or under stress. They cast tiny shadows on her pillow. “I forgot about that.”

They both consider it for a few moments, the gentle blue light of Shepard’s fish tank the only illumination in the room.

“I kind of like it,” Garrus said.

Shepard snorted and pushed at his chest, nearly sending him out of the bed. “Rude, Vakarian. I bring you up to my cabin, out of the goodness of my heart”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“Out of the goodness of my heart-” she says again, thumping his chest for emphasis, and he doesn’t have to see her face to know she’s smiling. “-and you mock my choice of decor. You wound me.”

 “Is that the repair tape? I’ve seen Gardner fix pipes with that stuff.”

“If my mess sergeant is using duct tape to repair the plumbing on my ship, we have a bigger problem than why I’ve taped a sheet to my ceiling.” she wiggled closer to his side.

He raised his arm to assist her, and she tucked her head awkwardly into the joint between his head and scowl. He curled his arm around her torso. His arm was slightly too long and differently jointed to rest comfortably on her shoulder,

so he settled for the ribs beside her sternum instead. Her hand came up to sit in the divot below his keel, just above the dip of his waist. He brought his other hand up to hold it, resting them both on the thinner plates there. They simply laid there for a moment, taking in each other’s company.

“But really-”

“Not gonna let me get away with this, huh?”

“Not a chance.”

She sighed, and shifted slightly in his arms.

“So I get up here, my first day back on the ship, right after being brought back from the dead, trying to wrap my head around working for Cerberus of all people, surrounded by strangers and half convinced that the whole thing is a fever dream. So I get up here, lie down to go to bed, and I see…“ She waved her free hand at the ceiling.

“What, did someone leave a poster on the ceiling?”

Her hand dropped with a soft thump. “No. But someone thought it would be a great idea to give a great big fucking skylight to the person who just got spaced.”

“Ah.” Garrus said. He racked his brain for something more eloquent to say, and settled for patting her gently with the arm wrapped around her shoulders.

“Yeah. It took me three nights before I pulled a sheet over the thing and did my best to forget about it. ‘S not like anyone else is ever up here.”

He frowned as she finished. “That can’t be right. I’m sure I saw Tali come up here.”

He felt her shake her head.

“Lawson? Chambers? Kasumi?” Another shake.  “Really?”

“Really.” She tightened her grip on his talons slightly. “You’re the only one that’s ever been up here.”

“Well.” He coudn’t tell if he was honoured, intimidated or embarrassed. He clicked his mandibles together, and resolves to send other members of the crew up to her cabin if they survive the run on the collector base in the morning. “Tell you what. If we survive this, I’ll be up here whenever you want me.”

She was silent for a moment, running her opposable thumb over the ridges of his talon, and he thought he’d overstepped, that he’d crossed some line, that this was just a casual fling. “Only if you want me, of course. Otherwise I’ll-“

“You mean that?” Her voice cut through the dark like a rifle crack, and for the life of him, Garrus had no idea what emotions were hiding behind it.

He gambles, just this once. “Yeah. Won’t be able to keep me away, if we survive this. Turians and Pyjacks, you know. Once you let them onto a ship, you can never get rid of us.”

Shepard buried her head in his cowl, holding on tight.

“Thank you”

Chapter Text

He saw her again on Menae, and he wondered if they were ever going have a reunion without the fate of the galaxy on the line. She was in her element on the battlefield again, the fires of Palaven behind her like an extension of the glowing red latticework on her face. She looked like she has the whole world inside her.

“You’re alive,” she said. Half relieved, half disbelieving.

“I’m hard to kill.” He grabbed her hand two-handed to shake it, familiar as he dares in front of a platoon of Turians, who remember First Contact. “You should know that.”

“It’s good to see you again.” Her eyes traced the warped and twisted as the remains of his right mandible as she spoke. “I thought you’d be on Palaven.”

He briefed her quickly on how the hell he ended up on a moon playing military advisor. She introduced him to her new squad mate, James Vega, who was a boulder of a human who calls Garrus ‘scars’ with a disregard for formality he frankly admires, and then they’re off again. Sure, the galaxy was falling apart around them, and if Victus is Primarch, that made Garrus uncomfortably close to the seat of power on Palaven. There are still hundreds of better qualified candidates slated before him but… They’ve been through hundreds in the past week. It’s not implausible that a Vakarian might be in charge of Palaven when this was all over. There’s a thought to haunt his nightmares. For now, he had a rifle on his back, and armour on his shoulders, and Shepard at his side, and he’d have liked to see the galaxy try to fall, with her to keep it spinning.

***

He knew Earth was bad, but spirits. Shepard came out of the war room like she took a blow to the stomach. She braced herself against the railing of the holographic display, and stares at the model of the crucible floating there. “Are you okay” would be a ridiculous question.

“What was it like, when you left earth?”

“Bad enough.”

 He hesitated a moment, then she took a breath and he stepped forward to take her weight. Not gently this time, but like two gutted buildings braced each other to stay upright. He wrapped one arm around her, suddenly unsure of what to. He settled on patting her shoulder.

“I’ve never spent any time there, not really.” Her eyes were fixed on the model in front of them. “It was barely a real place to me, more like Rannoch to Tali than Palaven to you.” She shifted her head but didn’t look at him. “Every alliance soldier promised their sweetheart a little house on earth, you know? More like Rannoch to Tali than Palaven to you. My mom had this tiny apartment in a fishing village outside Vancouver, she planned to...” She shook her head. “I don’t think she’s seen the house in years, before…” She trailed off, and still didn’t turn around to look at him.

He squeezed her fingers.

“I grew up on Palaven. Old family home in the just outside the capital. I always liked seeing pictures of it from space, because you could tell where by all the light from the city.” He hesitated for a breath, and squeezed her fingers. “When I was on Manae, I watched more city lights turn to street fires every time the moon made an orbit.”

She turned around to face him.

“I haven’t heard a thing from my mother in weeks.”

“I haven’t heard from my sister my father since I left Manae,” he said. “They’re all military. Shepard, you’re mother’s going to be fine.”

She was silent in his arms, and he pulled her tighter to his chest.

“We’ll beat them,” he promised. “We’ve beat them back before, and this time we’ll be able to beat them for good.”

***

Nothing was ever simple where Shepard is concerned, but taking fire from a Quarian fleet while doing them a favour seemed a little extreme even for her. She came back in a Geth ship, with an old Geth friend and proceeded to sucker punch a Quarian admiral, which Garrus frankly thought was a reasonable reaction to the day’s events.

As soon as the briefing was finished, she practically bolted from the room, barely to let the scanner do its work before she was gone. By the time he got through the gate she was long gone. She wasn’t in her room, or in the cockpit, or in the shuttle bay. Cortez and Vega are, though, and Williams is with them. As he left the elevator, she looked up from the weapons bench they were using as a card table.

“If you’re looking for Shepard, she’s in the observation lounge,” she said, re-arranging the cards in her hand.

“You saw her go in?” Garrus asked.

Ashley nodded.

“She kicked me out, but it seemed like she needed some company. Came in like she was running from something.”

Garrus considered this, and then nodded once. “I’ll bring her some coffee.”

Ashley looked him in the eye as James groaned at Cortez’s hand. “No milk,” she warned

“But two sugars,” Garrus finished. “I know.”

She grinned at him before turning back to her game, laying out a hand that had even Cortez groaning. “Get in there, big guy. About time she found someone like you.”

Garrus tried to ignore the way James’ gaze flickered between him and Ashley. He turned back to the elevator, and just heard James’ ‘no wait, Scars and Lola?’ before the elevator doors slid shut.

After getting the coffee from the kitchen, he went to the observation lounge, trailing steam as he walked. The door’s access panel glowed a foreboding red.

“Hey EDI,” he said. “Any chance you could open this up?”

“Commander Shepard has asked not to be disturbed by any member of the crew.”

“EDI-“

“However,” EDI continued “You are not a member of the official Alliance crew manifest, and are clearly making a delivery, not disturbing the commander, so this will not be a problem.”

The panel turned green.

“Thanks, EDI.”

“Signing you out, Officer Vakarian,” she said as he hit the panel. “The door will seal behind you.”

The door slid open. The first thing he saw was the tense outline of Shepard’s head and shoulders, hunched over her knees on the couch, staring out the window, daring it to glare back. He walked around the end of the couch, and sat down beside her.

“Hey.” He said. “I brought you coffee.”

Without looking at him, she reached over and retrieved the mug, wrapping her hands around it so the steam streamed right into her face. She took a deep breath, and then blew on the coffee. She took a sip as Garrus made himself comfortable on the couch beside her.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Garrus said. They sat a moment longer in silence before Shepard sighed and sat up straight beside him, leaning on the back of the couch rather than her knees. Cybernetics glowed faintly under her skin, the long dormant and mostly healed additions reacting poorly to the stress of the day. She puffed out her cheeks as she blew out a long breath. It was a gesture that she had picked up from him, rounded cheeks taking the place of flexed mandibles.

“Talk to me, Shepard.”

She fiddled with the mug. “Did you know I remember dying?”

Garrus stayed silent.

“Because I do,” she continued. “I remember thinking how lucky I was that the shrapnel missed me before I noticed my O2 tube hissing. She gave a hollow chuckle. “My last thought was, ‘fuck, I hope I suffocate before I freeze to death’.”

Shepard took another sip of Coffee, and Garrus elected to keep listening rather than interject.

“And I had this handled, for the most part but then the only way to get to the damn Geth ship was to do a spacewalk along this docking tube. Crumbling, half detached. And I was keeping it together until my magboots hit a loose panel and all of a sudden I was weightless and Tali had to talk at me for a solid two minutes before I got myself back under control.” She took another sip of her coffee. She eyed it, then she eyed him.

“Ashley’s idea,” he said, mostly truthfully. “We thought you could use some company.”

She leaned over and sat her head gently on his shoulder, hair pooling over his cowl. He reached one arm over her other shoulder and pulled her tight, and careful not to upset the cup of coffee she had perched on one thigh.

“I can put the sheet back up, if you want” Garrus said. “Before you come back up to the cabin.”

Shepard turned her face into his cowl.

“Thank you.” Shepard said.

It wouldn’t end the war, but she’d accepted his help. That was victory enough for the day.

***

“Garrus!” The crackled more than it transmitted, but his father’s voice was recognisable through any amount of interference.

“Dad, come in!”

“--- Off world. Sola---roken her leg. She’ll live. The Krog----elping. Only a few----ation shuttles left. Not sure if -----ake it in time.”

“Dad?” Garrus was vaguely aware of the door opening behind him. “Dad! Come in!”

Nothing but static from the radio.

“Dammit!” He fiddled with the controls, tweaking the frequency and trying to bump the power. Nothing. The problem, whatever it was, was not on this end. He blew out a long, careful breath.

“Sprits,” he said “If you really do exist,” …There were other words that he was supposed to say, but he had forgotten them years ago. “Keep them safe. Please.”

There was a shuffling noise behind him, and he belatedly remembered the door opening. He tried to calm his voice before he said “What can I do for you?” He still wasn’t quite up to turning around.

“I’m sorry, Garrus.” Of course it was Shepard. He tried not to let anything show on his face as he turned around.

“We did everything we could, and it’s still not enough, Shepard. All I’ve done, I can’t even get my own family to safety.” He fidgeted with the seals on his armour, then let his arms fall back to his sides. He took a deep breath, forced himself to meet her eyes. “Shepard, what are we doing?”

“All we can.” She said, hugging him tight around the middle. “We’re doing all we can, Garrus, and it’s going to be enough. It has to be.”

*

He eventually asks Shepard what brought her to his room, while he was on the radion. She had come to celebrate the fact that Anderson had hailed her mother, that as of that morning, she was alive and co-ordinating the resistance on the West Coast of the Americas. By the time he thinks to ask about it, she was missing in action again, radio silent for three days.

***

Garrus walked into the club with a swagger in his step and a challenge in his eye, as though beautiful humans flirted with Archangel of Omega all the time, and Shepard smiled at him like flirting with a Turian was the most dangerous thing she’d ever done in her life. Their words were playful, dancing, pretending at a first date and actually- wasn’t this their first date?  

They also danced and Shepard was… what was the human phrase? All left feet? Two thumbs? And she protested the whole way through, but she also slid her thigh between his legs, so he figures he’s at least partially forgiven. When the music finished, she pulled him from the strip back to her new apartment. She’s wearing the cocktail dress Kasumi bought her for her a year ago, but she still moved like she was in battle armour; all wide elbows and pumping legs. He has to admit, that does it for him more than any of her play acting at the bar.

Shore leave, Garrus thought as Shepard braced herself on his breastplate to step out of her heels on their way back, looked good on her. It’s a shame they only get three more days of it, but at the moment, Shepard was tugging him down the hallway to her apartment and it had been five days since anybody’s tried to kill either of them.

She slammed the door close button on the elevator the moment they make it through the doors and immediately launched herself at him. She had a fierce grip on his cowl which she used to pull him down to her height, so she could press strange, wet human kisses along his mandible.

“So Archangel really does it for you, huh Shepard?”

She laughed and pulled back, allowing him to straighten up again.

“I’m a one-Turian woman, Vakarian,” she says, with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face “Archangel might work on Commander Shepard, First Human Spectre and Hero of the Citadel, but Garrus works just fine for me.”

“Oh?” Garrus asked, as he slid forward to wrap his hands around her waist “And who exactly have I come home with, if you’re not Commander Shepard, galaxy saving badass?”

“How about just Shepard, long-suffering older sister to the crew of the Normandy, occasional interstellar problem solver, and girlfriend to the most handsome Turian in Council space?”

“What, even Garrus doesn’t get your first name?”

She grinned at him. “Not unless Garrus wants to be my mother. No one else’s called me that since I was sixteen.”

“Alright, just-Shep” he said, “What do you say we take this back to your apartment, and we can finish what we started in the club?”

The truth is, her knows as she tugs him through her apartment, there’s nothing ‘just’ about either of them. He wondered how often Shep gets to shed Commander Fucking Shepard, First Human Spectre, Hero of the Citadel, Conqueror of Death and embodiment of the hope of a galaxy on the edge of extinction. He wonders if she’ll get to do it again, between the end of shore leave and the end of the war.

***

They never found her body. Whatever happened in the Crucible, they find Anderson’s body, and the remains of the Illusive Man (now positively identified as Jack Harper, former Alliance soldier) but all they found of Shepard was a trail of bloody footprints. She was limping quite badly but picked up the pace to take a running leap at whatever was off the main platform. The drop led two hundred metres to down to the bottom of the citadel, but whatever energy was running from down there to the top left no trace of her at the bottom.

They never find her body, but Commander Shepard is everywhere. She’s in the brokering of three impossible peaces. She’s in the wreckage of the great cities of every planet, and in their construction gangs and emergency shelters. She’s in the slow recovery of the galaxy and in the glittering green cybernetics pulsing beneath his own skin. The whole galaxy is shell-shocked, but already people are starting to whisper ‘Commander Shepard’ in reverent tones.

He wonders how many of them will remember that she’s a person, once the dust has settled. How many people will remember her as Shepard, or ‘just Shep’ rather than as Commander Fucking Shepard. How many people will remember that she danced badly every chance she got. That she took immaculate care of her hamster but couldn’t remember to feed her fish if her life depended on it. How many, outside the crew of the Normandy, would remember how fiercely loyal she was, how willing to do anything she was for the people she cared about.

Commander Shepard left her mark on the galaxy, ripples that he was sure they would all feel for centuries to come. Just Shep left her mark on her crew. She left her mark in Jack’s fierce protectiveness of her students, in the way both Wrex and Tali led their people in the aftermath of the war. She left it in EDI’s moral code, and in Ashley’s reputation as the Alliance officer with the most experience and highest success commanding teams of different species. And she left her mark in him.

He doesn’t think Garrus Vakarian, dissatisfied C-Sec Officer would recognise himself in Garrus Vakarian, Advisor to the Primarch. Shepard has left her mark on him. She lives on through the line of his spine, and in his willingness to run favours and interfere in the business of strangers that need help. She lives in his jokes, and his impatience with reporters, and in the fact that his visor is more highly calibrated to detect stress and injury in humans than it is in any other council species.

The galaxy dug its claws into Shepard, and in turn Shepard dug her claws into her crew, and they are scars he will wear with pride until the day he dies.