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This little human had been yelling at Shepard for the entire fight, and now that the Collector ship had taken off, he was the sole focus of her attention. She hadn't done enough, she and the rest of the Alliance had left Horizon to die, she should have been taken instead. Garrus knew Shepard could crush this man if she wanted, under her gloves or boots without even drawing a weapon. The breath would leave his body, maybe his eyes would bulge out from the pressure, before she finished him with a snap. His corpse would be join the many others that she had left in her wake today. The thought comforted Garrus as he watched her try to console the little man instead.
"Careful. You're in the presence of a god, Delan." Everyone turned to look at the new, familiar voice. "Back from the dead."
Ashley Williams had sauntered toward the congregation but stopped dead in her tracks when she caught sight of Shepard. In the past, Williams had stood eye level to the commander. Now she had to tilt her head up to meet her gaze. Garrus wondered if she could see the hollow space behind her eyes, too.
"Ash." Shepard's speech was halted, as though she had to force her name past other words in her mouth. "It's been too long."
The little man spat curses in the background. Garrus kept an eye on him as he stormed away, careful to ensure that he didn't threaten this tenuous reunion. But nothing the man could possibly say would be more interesting than the tenuous reunion unfolding beside him. Once Garrus was certain the man was gone, he swiveled back to the conversation at hand.
"That's it?" Garrus watched Williams move her eyes up and down Shepard's body. Not a leer, but still with the general sense that she was looking at meat instead of a person. "You show up after two years like nothing's happened?"
Shepard let her lip drop, but she said nothing. Williams stepped forward. "I would have followed you anywhere. You were more than our commander."
Garrus watched as the two women began to argue. He'd been a passive eavesdropper to so many of their conversations in the cargo bay; they had never sounded like this. It nearly felt too personal for him to be standing there, and he wanted to give them privacy, but-
"So you are with Cerberus now. Garrus, too. I can't believe the reports were true."
"Reports? You mean, you knew?" It was an interruption he couldn't stop himself from making. The warm filter of reunion fell off the scene and all of a sudden, the sunlight felt like the cold flourescents of an interrogation room. Garrus
Shepard crossed her arms against the chestplate of her armor."Cerberus wants to stop these attacks. That doesn't mean I'm working for them." One step forward.
"Do you really believe that? Or is that what Cerberus wants you to think?" One step forward.
"You know I wouldn't do this if I didn't have a good reason." Step. They were just inches away from each other now.
"I don't trust Cerberus, and it worries me that you do." Almost a step, but then Williams stopped in her tracks. Her expression moved in several ways, most of them too human for Garrus to understand. But he knew the last one well - Williams was afraid. "What did they do to you?"
Shepard didn't speak. Garrus jumped in instead. "Damn it, Williams, you're so focused on Cerberus that you're ignoring the real threat."
Williams turned her eyes to him. Her words moved his way, but they were clearly focused on Shepard. "At least I know where I stand. I'm an Alliance soldier. It's in my blood."
Williams hadn't needed to put so much venom in her tone. Garrus couldn't have come up with such a hurtful statement if he'd tried. Shepard stood in place, her scars nearly sparking with heat as she stared down at her fellow soldier. She leaned forward, hands reaching up toward Ash, and Garrus was certain she was going to wrap her hand around her neck the same way that Saren had. Instead, she halted, turned on the heel of her boot, and stormed back toward the ship. Miranda followed her, but Garrus kept his eyes on Williams. She'd crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself in nearly a hug. It was strange, seeing her trying to comfort herself. But if she needed comfort, he was glad to see she knew it wouldn't be coming from him.
"That was out of line." It was the least aggressive thing he could think to say.
Ash flipped her eyes up to his. "You're a detective, Garrus. Look at yourself - look at her!" Williams gestured toward the Commander's hulking shadow on the horizon. "She's practically rotting on her feet. You tell me what I'm supposed to think."
Hot metal breath. The smell of flesh. Flashing eyes. Rotting was a harsh word, but he'd be lying if he hadn't thought it back when she found him on Omega.
Still, the evidence was right around them - Shepard's righteous fight littered the ground with dead Collectors. An entire colony of humans were gone. And if Shepard's cause was right, where did that leave Ash? "I think you're finally getting promoted in the Alliance, and you're betraying yourself for the privilege."
Ash stepped back on her heel, like the words he'd said had collided with her armor. She gritted her teeth, but she didn't leave. "I'll be reporting all of this to the Alliance. You can come with me, Garrus. You can make your case to them, get real help with all of this."
Garrus rolled his tongue against the backs of sharp teeth. He could go warn the Alliance. Make a formal report, maybe pound his fist against a table and scream about the civilians that their leadership had apparently written off as disposable.
I could leave.
Blood coated his tongue.
He let his rifle click against the magnets on his back and rolled his shoulders back. "I think that someday, you're going to regret what you said here," he said. "I think she'll forgive you for this, but I wouldn't count on her to forget it."
With that, he turned and followed Shepard back to the Normandy. If Williams had anything else to say, he didn't bother listening for it.
He found Shepard in the portside viewing room. A nice spot - the kind that a different sort of crew might use for social events. This crew - not a terribly social group. She was staring at the stars as they passed, arms folded across her chest. Her armor was stored away, cleaned by his own careful hands. Now she stood clad in black, save for the N7 stripes that ran down her arm.
"Hey." Her voice was passive, nearly peaceful. She didn't turn to look at him.
He walked up until he was nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with her. Orange lines criss-crossed her reflection in the window; a textured plane of blue-white bandage obscured most of his. "She was wrong."
"Not as wrong as I'd have liked her to be." He felt the sleeve of her jacket drag upward against his shoulder as she shrugged. "Did I ever tell you about Eden Prime?"
Turning his head was still painful. It tugged at the scabbed-over wounds on his neck. He still tilted his head to look at her, and tried to hide his wince as he his scabs pulled open. "I read the report you wrote. It was part of my investigation."
"I'm not surprised."
He clicked a mandible. "It was pretty formal."
"Well, I thought a cop might read it." She rolled her neck; the scars on her neck flared and sparked. "We touched down and almost immediately lost one of our ground party. Richard Jenkins. Born there, you know?"
He didn't know. He'd been investigating the death of a turian Spectre, not a human Marine.
"Said he wanted to see the stars, meet new people, then he dies in his backyard." She let out a single laugh in a humorless note. "So it's just me and Kaidan, because Nihlus ran off ahead of us. And it's not looking good. But then we find Ash. She'd been holding down the fort for a few hours at that point. The rest of the the 212 was, well… I only heard about one body being recovered."
That bit he did know. The pieces clicked in place. "Like Akuze."
"Yeah." Shepard's hand was pulling at a string at the frayed edge of her sleeve. There was already a long string of undone loops that hung off her wrist. "We didn't really talk about it like that, but we didn't really need to. She was the first person I met who got it."
Garrus felt his keel tighten. Blood and brains coated the walls, he needed to get out - talons pressing into his palms brought him back to the Normandy. "Hope you don't mind another member in the club."
Now she turned to look at him. "Shit, Garrus."
It was his turn to shrug, although he suspected his wasn't nearly so composed as hers had been. "I didn't mean to interrupt."
She looked at him. "Do you want to-"
"I do not." He saw her face tighten and he took a breath. "Not yet. Someday soon. You were telling a story."
She nodded, although her expression was still narrow, her eyes still fixed on his. "I guess what's a little trauma between soldiers, right?"
"Right."
"Well, anyway." The cuff of her sleeve was nearly gone by now. "She took point on some of the investigation we did for Kohaku. She knew it wasn't always something I could think about. And she was there when we found out Cerberus had been - " Her voice hitched, the same way it had when she'd been pleading with Toombs back on Ontarom. Garrus had been there, too. He'd seen the way Ash had pressed her foot against Shepard's as she tried to save Toombs' life. He'd watched Shepard rest her head against Ash's shoulder as they waited for retrieval. And that night, he had heard Ash's voice low and soft from across the cargo hold as he politely pretended to ignore the sobbing her words were trying to soothe. It wasn't that those interactions had been small back then, but the events of today had given them new depth. For the first time, Garrus really considered about the whispers that had followed Shepard and Ash on the SR-1.
Shepard continued. "So if she says that I'm . . . I don't know, being manipulated by them-"
"You're not working for Cerberus. You're using them to do work that needs to be done."
"They did something to me."
The words hung in the air. What was he supposed to say to that? He didn't say anything at all.
She continued at her deliberate pace. "I don't know what it was, but I was dead for months. That's not a medi-gel fix. That's not cloned parts. I was dead and now I'm not. And I don't know how they did that." She paused, eyes still fixed forward. "I know what I look like. I know what other people see when they look at me, what they think. I think they might be right. I think I might not be … the same."
Garrus felt her eyes search his for an answer. Her face was nearly grey, save for the deep purple bags underneath her eyes and the bright slashes of orange light that burned under her skin. For all his time on the Citadel, the Normandy, even Omega, he had never seen a human that looked like her. To be fair, there was no human like her. Even before they'd met, Garrus had heard of the Alliance poster child, the woman who faced a nest of thresher maws and lived to fight another day. He'd seen her face glimmering across holos around the Presidium, standing tall and proud and fearless. And on the SR-1 he saw just how she earned that reputation. She had always been the epitome of a soldier; the best humanity had to offer.
Now, she was something else altogether. It was like she was indestructable, undefeatable. She moved faster than anyone he'd ever seen. She was ready to block punches before they were thrown. He watched her storm through crowds of husks, ignore hails of bullets, and drink a lethal dose of poison like a shot of water. Each time she should have been injured, she shrugged the damage off like it was nothing. If she had been the best of her species before, she was now the best of them all. She was terrifying. She was fantastic. She was right that Cerberus had done something to her. But Garrus wasn't certain that was bad.
Her cuff was gone now, trailing in chaotic scribbles of thread down to the floor, and she reached to tug at the white and red stripes that ran up her arm. He grabbed her hand before she could start pulling that apart as well. She looked at him with reflective eyes and he let her fingers go just as quickly as he'd taken them. "Spirits. I'm sorry, that was inappropriate."
"It's fine."
It took a second for the embarrassment of his insubordination to clear. "Look. Maybe you don't trust yourself right now. But I do."
Her lip quirked upward. Blood pooled at the corner of her lips, and he worked to keep his eyes off the bright red beads. "Thank you, Garrus. I hope you don't regret that."
He hoped so, too.