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He checked his visor again. 18:14. Shepard was late.
“She’s probably just busy,” he chided himself. But Shepard was never late. Commander Shepard was many things and punctual was three of them. Especially when it involved food.
Her rounds with the crew began at 1600 sharp every day. Five, occasionally ten, minutes per crew member and then she would come waltzing into the Main Battery. The latest she had ever been was 17:45, and that had been because Grunt had really needed her for something.
She always entered the room like a woman on a mission. Her hand slapping closed whatever algorithm he was working on, a triumphant decree that it was ‘Food Time’ whether he was hungry or not.
He let her believe she was just so convincing. So undeniably charming that he just had to stop everything to oblige her every whim. In reality, the algorithms she closed everyday were old. He would pause work at 17:15 and wait for her to make her grand entrance, and then with mock protestation, he would let her drag him to the Mess Hall for a meal.
At first he had brushed her off, he really was busy, but then she had simply turned his room into a picnic spot. She’d used his console as a table. It was surprisingly difficult to use a touchscreen when someone left crumbs and fingerprints everywhere.
Shepard treated meal time like it was sacrament. A religious rite to be performed punctually and with consistency. But that had been before Alchera. Before he had seen the fire in her eyes gutter out, dog tags clutched in her hand. And now she was late for dinner.
He rolled his shoulders and looked over at the gently glowing orb in the corner of his room, “EDI?”
“Yes, Officer Vakarian?” The AI had taken some getting used to, but at least she could be occasionally useful. He tried not to think too much about when he had started referring to the AI as a she.
“Where is Commander Shepard?”
A momentary pause. “Commander Shepard is on the Normandy.”
“We’re in the middle of space, I would hope she is.”
“Given Commander Shepard’s past, that is not always a given.”
He had turned away, but now he slowly turned and blinked at the bobbing blue console. Did EDI just?
“That was a joke.”
Oh good. The shackled AI had jokes. Terrible, unfunny, morbid jokes. He sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose plates, “Where on the ship, EDI?”
“Around.”
How mad would Shepard be if he marched to the AI core and broke it? Joker would probably help him. Tali would too, she wasn’t thrilled about their disembodied overlord either. Through gritted teeth he half growled, “Where. On. The. Ship. EDI.”
“The Commander has turned her location off.”
“That’s not…” Was that an option? He should try it sometime. It also wasn’t a large ship, he could just go walk it. But what if she came to the Battery and found him gone? What if it made her sad? “EDI, I am leaving the Battery. If the Commander comes by here, please tell her where I am on the ship.”
He stalked out of the Battery and made a beeline for the Port Lounge, home to the nosiest human he had ever met. He knocked and the door slid open. Thank the Spirits, Kasumi was in her usual place, curled up on a couch overlooking the vast emptiness of space. Kasumi smiled at him in a way that felt like she knew things about him that he didn’t know about him. “Kasumi, good evening, have you seen the Commander?”
Kasumi’s sharp eyes narrowed and she tilted her head, assessing him, “Not since this morning. Why?”
“She missed dinner.”
“Oh,” a small frown played on the spy’s lips, “That’s odd. She didn’t come by for her evening rounds, either.”
So she was avoiding the whole ship, not him specifically. An odd knot relaxed in his chest.
Kasumi hummed and checked something on her omni-tool, “Have you asked EDI?”
“According to EDI, Shepard has her location turned off.”
“You can do that??” It was the strongest emotion he had seen out of Kasumi in all of her time aboard the Normandy. Her brows were furrowed and she swung her head towards the bobbing console in her room, “EDI! I want my location turned off permanently!”
“Request denied.” The console winked out of existence, going dark.
“Rude,” Kasumi growled at the AI console and flung herself backwards onto her couch, “I vote we overthrow the AI.”
He thanked her for her help and fired off a message to Tali. No luck there either, but Tali was as concerned as he was that Shepard had missed dinner. In the mess, he grabbed a few rations before heading towards the most logical next location.
The elevator opened up into the little hallway before her room and he paused, listening intently. He could hear nothing over the distant sounds of her fishtank burbling away. His knock on her door sounded far too loud in his ears.
Just when he was ready to admit defeat and walk away, her door opened with a rush and Shepard stumbled out of her room. Her door shut quickly behind her. He froze, blinking down at her. Her hair was pulled back into a clip and splayed out from the top of her head like plumage that bobbed as she cocked her head to the side. Her eyes were wild, bruised, bloodshot. Dumbly, he held out the ration bars he had grabbed. Her brows furrowed as she took them, “Garrus, it’s like 11am.”
Her voice sounded rusted with disuse, or perhaps overuse. He had never seen Shepard cry, but he had seen plenty of humans cry during his days in C-Sec. Her voice reminded him of theirs. He cleared his own throat around the tightness that pulled at it, “Commander, it’s 18:30.”
She blinked at him owlishly, her mouth pulling down in a frown. As she turned her head to check her omni-tool, his talons were on her chin before he could think. A massive streak of blood ran from her ear to the edge of her mouth. What on Alchera could have possibly hurt her? Shepard startled at the contact, pulling away. His hand followed her, never letting go. The blood didn’t budge when he swiped his thumb at it, “What happened?”
“Nothing?” Shepard stepped slightly farther away, eyeing him warily. “I lost track of time, that’s all. Thanks for the snack.”
“Jane, you’re hurt,” Bold of him to call her that. Maybe dumb.
Shepard frowned deeper and looked herself up and down. She even made a show of patting herself across the abdomen, “Nope. All good, totally whole.”
“You have blood covering half of your face.” He tried hard not to growl. His saving grace was she couldn’t outright hear the way his subvocals were kicking into ‘overprotective asshole’ territory. That had been her astute assessment of the way the main character on Fleet and Flotilla had acted when his bondmate had gotten hurt, and Garrus knew he would have sounded an awful lot like those enhanced subvocals had if she could hear them. Not that… Not that Shepard was his bondmate. That wasn’t… she was his Commander and she was hurt. And she had missed dinner.
Then Shepard did something that perplexed him to no end. She licked her hand and scrubbed it across her face. And then she licked the blood off of her hand. His mandibles fell entirely lax from his jaw. “Oh!” She scrubbed at her face again, most of the blood coming off. She laughed, “It’s just paint.”
“Paint?”
“Yeah, you know, pigmented substance, starts wet, dries. Makes pretty pictures?” Shepard pulled the side of her shirt up and scrubbed at her face with it. It was also covered in a hue of splotches. Red streak mostly handled, save for a hazy after glow, Shepard looked up at him with amusement on her face.
“I know what paint is,” Thick, honeyed nostalgia coated his throat and he coughed around it, “Do you… paint, Commander?”
Her expression grew distant, “Oh. I guess?” She shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, her mouth pursed, “Well, no. Yes? Sort of. Kelly suggested this thing called 'Art Therapy' for my... oh, just you know to relax.” She bit her lip, her brows furrowing “Don’t… don’t tell anyone else, yeah?”
“I won’t tell a soul.” Her head bobbed in a small nod, she still seemed to be cycling through a series of emotions, her hands tightening and loosening at her side. Like she was trying to make a decision. He wanted to reach up and smooth the worry line that cleaved through her brow, his hand twitched at his side. Instead he offered, “I paint, too. Or… I used to.”
Green eyes flashed in the low light and Shepard was staring at him with an intensity he only ever saw on the battlefield. It was like her breathing had stilled and she had taken on a predatory calm. Then she pivoted on her heel and slapped her door open. The door remained open behind her.
He followed with the same caution one would give to a varren den. Slowly and with one’s wits about them.
The lights were only half on, the glow of the fishtank taking up most of the space. Paint was… everywhere. Where Shepard had even gotten this much paint was beyond him. Maybe Illium? But it was the canvas in the center of her room on an easel that made him freeze. It was a splattering, swirling galaxy made of purples, blues, and greens. A streak of yellow, a speck of orange. A slash of red, bleeding down the canvas. It reminded him of a supernova. And the stars, carefully placed one by one, superimposed on top of the galaxy, were a perfect match for Alchera.
The streak of red looked more and more humanoid every time he looked at it. He had to look away. There were other painted canvases scattered around the space. All of them galaxy motifs, some more abstract than others. A few had the same slashing red figure in the center, but the bulk of the clearly newer paintings lacked the figure.
Shepard sat on her bed, ration bar torn into, her mouth full. She chewed slowly, watching him, her eyes flicking to the paintings occasionally, “Well?”
“Well?” He asked her back incredulously.
“What do you think?” She half shrugged, like his answer didn’t matter. Like she was just casually showing a friend a portrait of a flower in a vase.
“I think they’re incredible,” It came out nearly breathless, like a whisper. Impressionism wasn’t his style, but it worked for Shepard. There was an undercurrent of sadness in each and every one. A sense of loss in the vastness of space.
She did her little half-shrug again and got up from her bed. In a pile of canvases, she dug out a smaller canvas and shoved it at him. Then she nearly evaporated from his side, re-appearing on her bed as if she had never moved.
He flipped the painting over. A blue spiral galaxy, the edges fading away into an infinite blackness. The central red figure curled into a ball, whole within the confines of the galaxy. “Do you name your paintings?”
“Not usually,” Shepard’s leg bounced up and down, “Safety. That one’s called Safety.”
“And that one?” He motioned to the one on the easel.
“Asphyxiation.” She held his gaze, her expression completely neutral, “Supernova. Asphyxiation Supernova? Why did I get brought back to life when good people died? Probably too long.” She licked her teeth and clicked her tongue, “I… made one for each person that died on Alchera. I thought maybe I could send them to the families. It’s not… is that weird?”
He frowned, “No? I think that’s…” Was it weird? He had no idea what human funeral customs looked like. “I think it's something personal from you and shows the families you care.”
She nodded more to herself, “I’ll send them with the dog tags. I guess if they don’t like it they can throw them away.
“I doubt anyone is going to throw them away, Commander.”
She shrugged and bounced to her feet, some of the tension in her shoulders gone. She snatched up a blank canvas and replaced the one on the easel. Her eyes were pure flame as she turned to him, “Well, since you’re up here, paint me something.”