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The elevator ascended with a groan and a calming melody that somehow had the opposite effect on Garrus. He stood centered in the small elevator, silently hoping Shepard wouldn’t notice his absence. He wasn’t in the mood for C-Sec. He didn’t really have the patience for Citadel politics after seeing Palaven burn. Not that he liked hospitals any better. Hospitals were sights of ultimate failure. Where the brave were reduced to meat and the enemies he had broken were sent to be forgotten. But Garrus had to be here. Because of him.
He still remembered the first time he saw Thane. The assassin dropping down from the ceiling, quietly demacing Nassana’s bodyguards, and taking the asari’s life before she even realized what was happening. Garrus remembered his entire body tensing. He remembered stealing a glance from Shepard, who looked ridiculously calm watching the assassin pray.
You’d like me to protect humans I’ve never met, from aliens no one knows anything about, by going to a place no one’s ever returned from?
The words seemed so callous to Garrus back then.Until they had learned the truth. Thane was a man with nothing to lose. He had the eyes of a man who had already seen his own ghost before accepting the mission. And that made him more dangerous than any weapon and any training would ever bring out in a man.
Huerta Memorial Hospital. The melodic chime of the elevator brought Garrus out of his thoughts. The elevator doors hissed opened, revealing a scene Garrus was infuriatingly familiar with. Wars never stopped at the hospital gates. Stretchers rattled past. Wheels screamed against the linoleum. The air smelled of antiseptic and blood. Garrus hated everything about hospitals. But he still moved through the chaos purposefully. His uniform helped cut a path through the harried nurses. At the reception desk, a woman was shouting into a communicator while typing with one hand. Garrus waited, his hands clasped behind his back to hide the slight tremor in his talons.
The receptionist glared at him. ‘Visiting?’
Garrus nodded.
‘Name?’ she barked, eyes darting back to the screen.
‘Thane Krios,’ Garrus answered, his own voice sounding distant.
She tapped a key, her eyes scanning a list of patients and the dying. ‘Palliative care. Room 412.’
Garrus nodded again. A sharp, militaristic motion. ‘Thank you.’
He walked. Every step felt like wading through deep water. On his way to room 412, he passed by the sunroom. The glass-walled cage adjacent to the corridor. It stood out as a pocket of eerie quiet compared to the frantic hall. And through the doorway, a lone figure stood out. A lone figure seated on an impeccable chair with his back turned to the world. A lone figure staring out at the horizon of the sterile outline of the Citadel.
It was Thane. Garrus stopped. His heart hammered against his ribs worse than when he was out there with a rifle in his hands. It would be easier to turn and run. To go back to the frontlines where the lines between a good choice and a bad one were clear. But he had to force his feet forward. He didn’t call out. He just moved into the drell’s peripheral vision, stepping as softly as his heavy armour permitted him.
Thane jolted. A small, barely perceptible flinch of a man used to fear the shadows. But as his eyes landed on Garrus, the tension evaporated. A tired, yet polite smile touched Thane’s lips. The kind one keeps in a drawer for old acquaintances. Just acquaintances…
‘Garrus,’ Thane said, his voice as low and raspy as Garrus remembered it. ‘It’s a surprise seeing you here.’
Garrus looked down at him, and for a second, felt dizzy. His throat tightened and felt like he had swallowed a handful of glass. The sight of Thane in front of him… He wanted to scream. To weep. To hold that lithe figure that looked like it had lost some muscle mass. To tell Thane how much Garrus loved hearing his quiet prayers in the dark. To tell Thane how much… No. He couldn’t. Instead, he reached out, and offered a hand.
‘Good to see you again,’ Garrus greeted, his face a mask of picture perfect Turian discipline.
Thane stood and shook Garrus’ hand. The gesture felt impossibly light. Like holding an empty cartridge. Yet Garrus couldn’t help but hold onto Thane’s hand a second longer than it was deemed polite to do so. He sank into the chair beside Thane’s in the same moment the drell sat back down. The silence between them was different from the tactical quiet of a foxhole.
‘What are you doing here?’ Thane’s voice definitely had a whistling quality to it now. Like the way wind whistled through a ruined building.
‘I’m here with Shepard,’ Garrus answered, staring straight ahead at the window. ‘He brought another human here. You wouldn’t know him. Someone from the Alliance. I just didn’t want to pace the lobby.’
Thane let out a dry sound that might have been a chuckle. Garrus read all about drells during lonely nights on the Normandy. Their biology. Their culture. Their stereotypes. Their quirks. But he never spent enough time with Thane to reconcile the theory from the dossiers to the real deal. Not that he didn’t want to.
‘I’m glad we had a chance to meet in that case,’ Thane seemed courteous enough.
It was why Garrus finally risked a glance at him. He seemed way more fragile than Garrus remembered. Softer around the edges. ‘How do you feel?’ He knew the words were inadequate. Pointless, even. But he had to hear it.
‘It’s freeing to find no requirements placed on me,’ Thane replied, surprisingly serene. ‘No responsibilities. No fears. It is a good end to a life.’
Freeing. The word hit Garrus like a blow to the carapace. It sounded like a betrayal. Thane was ready to drift out to the sea, leaving Garrus behind to drown in a mess of a burning world and a broken heart. He couldn’t stop the selfish wave of grief that rose to his throat. A scream he had been suppressing for months now. Ever since they both returned from the Omega-4 relay. Ever since Garrus learned he wouldn’t die next to the man he admired too much for it to be appropriate.
The world was ending. The Reapers were a threat no civilization could contain. The rules of the mess hall and the barracks didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was hearing Thane’s whispered little prayers in the shadows of the Normandy.
And Garrus wanted to tell Thane that. He truly did. But the second his mouth opened, his heart jumped violently in his chest. Like it was being electrocuted out of existence. The weight of the brass on his shoulders wouldn’t let him leave that. Live his final moments in this galaxy next to someone who had made his peace. The terror of being vulnerable slammed that door shut. Garrus’ joints felt as though they had been melted down by an eezo core and fused back together. The confession died in his throat, replaced by the only language he knew.
‘We could use you,’ Garrus blurted out, fully aware of how ridiculous the proposal sounded. ‘Against the Reapers.’
This time he could tell Thane laughed. Not too loud. Not exactly amused. Just a rattling thing that broke Garrus’ heart into a thousand pieces.
‘I would not be as I was before,’ Thane’s tone was dignified. ‘I need daily medical attention. And if I know Shepard, he will want to fight the Reapers somehow. He will need the best at his side, and I am not at mine.’ A hint of bitterness slipped into his voice toward the end.
Shame flooded Garrus’ chest. Hot and acidic shame. How did he face down handguns and snipers but feared a dying man’s smile?
‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ Garrus asked, unable to contain a pathetic tremor.
‘At times. The oxygen transfer proteins don’t form correctly. As a result, my blood is low in oxygen,’ Thane was back to that same serene and calm demeanor. ‘No matter how much I breathe in, I get tingling, numbness… and that is the best of it. As for my brain, I cannot track the damage. I just experience dizziness from time to time.’
It was true honesty. Not that Garrus expected anything less from a man being stripped bare by death. But it made him feel naked. Weirdly exposed. And utterly incompetent. He stood up abruptly, the chair screeching back against the floor.
‘I have to go,’ Garrus announced, his hands jerky. ‘Shepard… might be looking for me.’
It was a lie. A retreat. A desertion. He looked down at Thane, desperately hoping for a reprieve. For some sign that maybe Garrus could do this. Find the right words for his feelings through some turian-to-drell instruction manual that didn’t exist.
‘Maybe we can meet again,’ Garrus said dryly.
Thane didn’t look up. He just watched a distant plume of smoke rise. A sad, knowing smile stretching his lips. ‘I truly hope we get the chance.’
Garrus turned and fled, his boots clicking a hollow beat against the floor. Each step too heavy as he was running away from the only thing that would have made this war tolerable.
A month later, Garrus was back at the Citadel. Kaidan was better and Shepard had to see the man for himself. Garrus tagged along, horrified to see how the hospital had descended from a state of chaos into one of pure attrition. Garrus followed Shepard through the doors, the air feeling saturated with the metallic tang of old blood and the smoke of overworked machinery. Every step was measured, so he could trail a split second too late behind Shepard. Enough for Shepard to gain ground. Slowly, the space between them began to yawn open, allowing Garrus to drift away to a room he shouldn’t even want to be in.
He found Thane in the hallway, not in his room.
His frills looked drier somehow. Like they had been scrubbed clean with a very harsh soap. His lips were parted, small rasps escaping them, as he was trying to help a hollow-eyed human nurse maneuver a body wrapped in a stained sheet out of a cramped room. Thane’s chest was heaving. The sight broke something inside Garrus’ heart. A protective urge swept over him. Not that of a soldier. Something more primal.
He didn’t speak. He simply stepped in, displacing Thane’s trembling hand with the quiet force of a landslide. He shouldered the weight of the gurney, his muscles barely registering the burden. The body had to have been something frail. Human, asari, or salarian. With an efficient shove, he guided the gurney toward the elevator the nurse pointed at. She offered a wordless, exhausted nod of thanks as the doors slid shut, taking the dead away.
Garrus turned to Thane, his voice slipping into a low growl that thankfully masked the spike of angry adrenaline. ‘Spirits! What are you doing? Why are you trying to move corpses when you can barely draw a full breath?’
Thane didn’t flinch. He leaned against the cold wall, his eyes bright with a serene and slightly haunted light. ‘I am near the end of my life. It is a good time to be generous,’ he answered, chest still heaving.
Garrus’ eyes darted to Thane’s hands. They were shaking. A fine tremor that signaled his body wasn’t getting all the oxygen it needed. Before he could even think… Before his brain could even catalog the inappropriateness of the gesture, Garrus reached out. He slid his arm around Thane’s waist, pulling the smaller man against his side to steady him. The contact sent a fiery shock through Garrus. He could feel the bumps of Thane’s ribcage. He could feel the heat radiating off the drell. He could feel the flutter of Thane’s heart against his chest. And Garrus’ world narrowed down to that very feeling. Something that intimate he knew he had no right to intrude upon. He waited for Thane to pull away. To recoil from the touch of a turian who should have been nothing more than a brother-in-arms.
But Thane leaned in. He let his head rest for a fleeting second against Garrus’ shoulder.
Garrus’ throat tightened with the weight of emotions he couldn't verbalize. He never expected Thane to be so light. To walk like he was fading into the air. He led Thane back to his room with a tenderness Garrus never knew he possessed. Something he never imparted on a weapon or an aircraft. Or even a woman.
Once inside, Garrus helped Thane toward the bed. He handled him with a softness that felt foreign to his talons. He eased Thane onto the sheets, lifting his legs carefully.
‘You handle me like we handle our young,’ Thane remarked as he settled onto the pillows. ‘It surprises me that you have no children of your own.’
Garrus froze, his hand still lingering near Thane’s ankle. ‘I… I’ve never had the time to think about it,’ he replied, avoiding Thane’s eyes. ‘With C-Sec, then my team on Omega… I’ve seen too much of what we do to each other. I don’t think I could look a child in the eye knowing the world I brought them into.’
Thane watched him for a long time. ‘Do you have a heavy conscience then?’
The question was a trap, and Garrus could already feel himself being decimated by it from the inside out. Yes, he had a heavy conscience. That the drell that made peace with death was slipping away from his talons. That Garrus held a love that felt like a sin and a miracle at the same time. That Garrus was terrified of a world in which Thane no longer breathed. That Garrus had no confidence in this war and would rather stay in this room until the world ended. Garrus could imagine the words: I love you. They were so fundamentally wrong. So against everything that made up Garrus’ life. And as much as he wanted to shatter the silence, his mind demanded he held the line. He never wanted to see disgust in the eyes that he would miss. The eyes he saw in his dreams every night. So, Garrus swallowed the truth.
‘Every soldier should have a heavy conscience,’ Garrus finally settled on an answer with a typically military cadence. ‘We carry what we do. That’s the price of a uniform.’
Thane nodded slowly, his eyes closing as exhaustion finally claimed him. ‘A fair answer,’ he murmured.
Garrus stood in the shadows of the room, hating himself for the safety of his own silence. He could survive a suicide mission, but he couldn’t survive his heart’s desire.
Garrus didn’t find the strength to care for Shepard curing the genophage. He knew it was a monumental effort. A historical event. A once-in-a-lifetime chance for Wrex. And utterly insignificant in light of the Reaper threat. Not after that fucking Cerberus asshole left a puncture wound in Garrus’ world. Thane was gone. Not taken away by the very disease he had resigned his life to. But brutally ripped away by an assassin Shepard was too late to stop. Thane had died shielding the dalatrass. He died a hero. He died atoning for his mistakes. But to Garrus, it was a failure of the universe.
The shower on the Normandy felt like a coffin that night. Garrus stood under the spray. Under the scalding water. But the stinging never punished his rigid muscles. His mind kept reeling. Shepard hadn’t been fast enough. C-Sec hadn’t been fast enough. Garrus hadn’t been fast enough. Garrus should have been there. And instead he let some fucking human bastard take Thane away from him.
A guttural sound tore its way out of Garrus’ throat. He swung. His fist connected with the wet tile with a sickening thud. Again. And again. And again. He didn’t stop until the white surface was marbled with blue, his talons split and weeping. But the physical pain was a mercy. A tiny flicker of a sensation that could distract him from the black hole expanding in his chest.
Then, he collapsed. He sank to the floor of the stall, his forehead pressed against the cold, bloody wall. He wailed. Real crying unphased by the years of military discipline. It wasn’t the dignified weeping appropriate for the funerals of his fallen comrades. It wasn’t the genuine sobbing he allowed himself for his team that crusaded against crime on Omega. This was messy. This was convulsive. This shook his entire frame. He gasped for air as if his own lungs were failing like Thane’s were. He was mourning the man, the hero, and the ghost of a future he had been too paralyzed to claim. Every confession he had swallowed now felt like lead, weighing him down into the drain.
Later, his room was dark save for the amber glint of a horosk bottle. Garrus sat on the edge of his bed, still in his damp undershirt, his hand bandaged with rough gauze he didn’t care if Shepard would notice tomorrow. He poured a glass and downed it in a single, burning gulp. He wanted the numbness. He needed the world to blur. He needed the memories of Thane to soften, because clarity was too much to bear.
He poured another. Then he abandoned the glass entirely, tilting the bottle back and drinking until his throat burned and his eyes watered. But the intoxication wouldn’t come. His grief couldn’t be dethroned by alcohol. He remained agonizingly sober. His mind remained cruelly sharp. He could see Thane’s face. The way his features relaxed when he prayed. The way he moved like a shadow with his sidearm. The way he never showed fear even during the most stupidest mission Shepard had put them through. The way he exhaled after a job well done. The way Garrus found him, bruised and bloody and so fucking serene after they managed to destroy the Reaper base. The pride in his eyes at having done good in the world that slowly robbed him of air. And that little smile he gave Garrus during their last goodbye.
Garrus had promised to return to Huerta Memorial, and he had failed. He had promised himself he would speak freely eventually, and he had failed. And worst of all, he had let Thane die without ever knowing he was the center of Garrus’ shattered world.
Garrus eventually fell into a fitful sleep, only to jerk away an hour later, his heart racing. The room was silent. The bottle was empty. The world was still broken.
Garrus stumbled to the small sink in the corner and splashed cold water over his face. He looked up, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t recognize the man in the mirror. As if his spirit had been hollowed out.
He had spent his life preparing for battle. For protection. For duty. Yet, when it mattered most, he had played it safe. He hid behind Shepard’s proverbial skirt and let himself be led. To the Reaper base. He hid in his father's shadow and let himself be drafted. On Palaven. He hid behind ranks, behind a uniform, behind a vigilante persona. And what he needed most was to be a coward. To stay in that fucking hospital room and keep Thane safe. He should have been the one to shield the dalatrass and let Thane live another day.
‘You let him go,’ he whimpered to his reflection.
The truth came crashing over him. He had survived the person he was supposed to save. And he had done so in a silence that would now last forever. He lost Thane, and with him, he lost the only version of himself that was capable of love. All that remained now was the Reapers, a pointless war, and a heart that had become its own cemetery.
The skeletal remains of whatever building this had been groaned as a bitter wind whistled through the large gaps. James had told him London used to be a beautiful, lively city. Garrus had a hard time believing it as he stood by a shattered window, looking at the ruins outside. When he heard boots crunching on glass and debris, he knew Shepard came. The human looked tired. This war had carved deep trenches into the thin skin of his face. He came to greet Garrus one last time. To look for a spark of the old fire.
‘Think we’re gonna lose?’ Shepard’s voice was heavy. He’d finally run out of reasons to be strong.
‘No, I think we’re about to kick the Reapers back into whatever black hole they crawled out of,’ Garrus sounded as confident as his father did. Just like the old man did when he inspired confidence in the hearts of many turians, Garrus now saw the faintest light brighten Shepard’s exhausted face. ‘Then we’re gonna retire somewhere warm and tropical and live off the royalties from the vids.’ But deep inside, he knew every steady word was a hollow echo. A line read from a script he had memorized a lifetime ago.
‘I’ll meet you there. I think my days of saving the galaxy are over when this is done,’ Shepard sighed with a genuine warmth and longing in his eyes.
‘Be sure to leave room for all the autographs.’ The small joke tasted like ash to Garrus. He watched Shepard’s eyes well up and felt only a cynical curiosity, devoid of any loyalty and respect the human normally evoked in him. Like his own heart had turned to cold, lifeless stone, no longer capable of emotion.
Shepard placed a hand on Garrus’ shoulder in a display of brotherly affection. He turned to leave, his steps weary but heartened. He had to. He had to check on the others.
Garrus turned his attention back to the ruins of human architecture. He couldn’t know if London had been beautiful once. If it had been filled with smiling children and busy crowds and a bustling atmosphere. He didn’t even know if the people here had been as rigid as Shepard or jokesters like James. He didn’t even know if humans here were religious. All he could think about was the words James had told him just before landing on Earth. May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead. And he thought of Thane. He thought of that first night he passed by life support and the way Thane spoke to a Goddess Garrus didn’t believe in.
Garrus tried to summon a prayer of his own, but his mouth felt too dry. The words of the faithful always felt like a foreign tongue to him. And after letting Thane die, he knew he hadn’t even earned the right to speak like the drell had. So instead of a prayer, he made a pact. He closed his eyes and reached out through the veil of his own grief. To a spirit? To a ghost? To a memory? It didn’t matter any longer. If turian heaven was the same as drell heaven, he was ready to join Thane. Without the uniform. Without the expectations of Garrus’ father. Without the rigid turian courtship. If Garrus got to meet Thane again, he wouldn’t hide. He would hold Thane’s hand and whisper those dreaded words until Thane would get sick of hearing them. Garrus would never let go again. Reapers, Cerberus, it didn’t matter. Garrus would never let go.
And he felt strangely serene. The weight that had been crushing his chest ever since Thane’s death now dissipated.
When the squad gathered for the final briefing, Garrus stood at the front. Shepard’s speech felt motivational. Felt desperate. Felt hopeful. Maybe not unlike how Garrus felt deep down. Not for glory or survival or even his homeland. Garrus wouldn't fight for the possibility of seeing the sunrise tomorrow. But for the possibility that he would see Thane again.
His world would end tonight.
The battle was a cacophony of screaming metal and thunderous lasers. Garrus moved through the smoke and debris and husks with precise movements. Beside him, Shepard was shouting orders and Liara was suppressing a line of fire from nearby banshees.
Garrus raised his rifle, aiming at a distant group of Marauders on the rooftop. His hand was steady. He was ready.
But a deafening thrum vibrated through the ground. Near them, a massive shell struck an abandoned armored transport. The explosion was a blinding bloom of orange and black. The shockwave knocked Liara to the ground, and the sheer force of the blast caught a human-grade tank, tossing the hunk of steel into the air like a child’s toy.
Garrus looked up. The sky was eclipsed by the shadow of the descending metal.
‘Garrus! Move!’ Shepard’s scream was laced with horror.
But Garrus didn’t move. He didn’t dive for the rubble. He let his rifle slip from his hands, the strap sliding off his shoulder. He stood in the center of the disaster, his face tilted upward. As the crushing weight of the tank rushed down to meet him, Garrus didn’t flinch. He closed his eyes.
He let out a final breath that tasted of peace. He wasn’t a soldier anymore. He was a turian hoping he could squeeze into drell heaven.