Chapter Text
He doesn’t start thinking of Shepard as his friend until she pulls through for him the way only a real friend would: she saves his life.
She even comes back from the dead to do it.
If that isn’t friendship, he doesn’t know what is.
“I thought you were dead,” he tells her. He’s still half-certain this is some near-death hallucination.
“I got better,” she says.
He looks at her. She seems . . . very odd, for a hallucination. She moves stiffly, like she’s still getting used to living in her skin; there are lines on her face aside from her strange new scars that just make her look . . . tired. Vulnerable. She’s a far cry from the Commander who danced on the battlefield – though not on an actual dance floor, certainly – the stalwart leader, the invincible Spectre.
She just looks . . . human, for lack of a better word.
He thinks, later, that that’s how he recognizes her – this half-cybernetic Shepard that Cerberus pulled back from the claws of death itself. The Shepard he’d known would never have come through that unscathed, would never have worked with people in the stark black-and-yellow of Cerberus without the crushing guilt evidently weighing on her shoulders.
When she snipes a Loki mech across the bridge, the ghost of a familiar challenging grin on her mouth, Garrus decides: he’ll pull through for her. He won’t leave her in the clutches of a shady terrorist organization without any backup.
It’s what keeps him breathing, sometime later, when it feels like half his face got taken off by that damn rocket. Shepard’s face looms over him as she shouts something he can’t quite make out. Everything’s a little blurry. He thinks he might be crying a little bit.
He thinks Shepard might be crying a little bit, and that’s—wow. That’s new. And incredibly touching, to be honest.
So he repeats it in his head, over and over, like a chant, or a prayer.
He’ll pull through for her. He’ll pull through for her.
It’s the least he can do for a friend.
And he does – a little banged up, maybe, but he pulls through mostly intact.
“You’re one tough son-of-a-bitch, Garrus, I’ll give you that,” she tells him later, as they sit in the starboard lounge and watch the endless expanse of space drift by them.
“Not as tough as you, or so I’ve heard.” He looks over at Shepard – her arms awkwardly crossed in front of her, almost as if she’s trying to shrink into her seat. “I don’t think I’d survive dying.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it anyhow,” she says, eyes fixed firmly on the shutter controls.
“Noted,” he says, just a fraction hesitant. “I wouldn’t recommend getting a rocket in the face, either.”
“Noted,” she says, a little too strained, but she’s trying. They’re trying.
“So,” he says, trying for light-hearted. “Heat sinks, right?”
“I know,” she says, playing up the exasperation for drama. “When did that happen?”
He chuckles, a gravelly sound stuck in his throat. Laughing still hurts. “A year, maybe a year and a half ago?” He tries to remember, for her sake, but he can’t deny that it’s a little fun, reintroducing her into the galaxy. “They phased out all the old cooldown models about eight months ago.”
“Did you know,” she says, laughing, “when Miranda woke me up and started bossing me around, telling me to get my gear and my gun, the very first thing I said to her was, ‘What the fuck is a thermal clip?’” She cuts herself off with a laugh. “I can’t believe it,” she says. “Shooting those old cooldown models without getting burned was an art form, you know? Can’t believe they got rid of it for fucking heat sinks.”
He gives her a half-grin, remembering. “You almost get crushed under bits of burning Reaper and come out fine, but I remember when you took off your gloves in the medbay afterwards your hands looked like you’d stuck them in a pot to boil.”
“It was one time,” she says defensively. “And we were both working our guns overtime that day.”
“Yeah,” he says, slouching lower into his seat. “We were. Guess Saren was one tough son-of-a-bitch too, huh?”
“Please, no,” she says. “If I find out Saren survived death too, I’m quitting and moving to Andromeda.”
“Set up a nice little house on a beach?” he says, grinning.
“And drink as many fruity drinks with little umbrellas that I want,” she says, mirroring his smile. They lapse into a comfortable silence, Garrus watching the stars and Shepard seemingly counting the panels on the ceiling.
“So,” she says into the stillness. “A suicide mission, huh?”
He snorts. “You say that like fighting Saren was a walk in the park.”
“I guess,” she says, shrugging. “But don’t you think—Garrus, don’t you think this is a little bigger than both of us?”
“Well,” he muses, drawing out the word. “You came back from the dead and I survived a rocket to the face. And we also took down a Reaper. I’d say we have a pretty good track record at dealing with things bigger than both of us.”
She laughs, the orange scars on her cheeks stretching as she grins.
“Whatever happens,” he assures her, “we’ll go through it together.”
It feels right, somehow, saying it out loud.
She smiles – softer than he’s seen since they’ve found each other again; for a second she’s almost like she’d been on the old Normandy; like the easy, confident Shepard he’d come to know and respect – and says: “Just like old times?”
He grins. “Exactly.”