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Garrus doesn't give much thought to waking until he wakes for what he believes could be the final time. What surprises him most on this occasion is how calm he feels.
In the cool dark of an unfamiliar cabin, he blinks steadily, clearing his head. His surroundings immediately snap into focus: side table shoved slightly out of place, with a uniform shirt hanging haphazardly off the side like a wayward flag. Fish tank emitting a low light, the inhabitants placidly unaware that they too might have woken on their final day. Human hand caught within his own, human arm wrapped around his carapace. Oh. Human hand attached to human woman, her body tangled up behind his, her face pressed into the center of his back. Human woman being Shepard, his closest friend in a galaxy that has rapidly circled the drain.
He shifts his body in micromovements, not wanting to disturb the least well-rested person he’s ever met. Checking his omni-tool, he finds the time to be about an hour before mission prep for the Omega 4 relay jump begins.
Garrus thinks about getting up, but the small flash of light his timetable emitted causes Shepard to murmur something unintelligible, and she nuzzles her face closer into his bared back, her cheek soft against his plates. Those tiny hairs on her eyelids feel different from the rest of her hair. More like a whisper than soft netting. What are they called again? he thinks. I should move her so she doesn’t accidentally scar herself. Her face just finished healing, he thinks. Spirits. This was never about blowing off steam, he thinks.
The last thought it the loudest, drowning out the rest. The thing that was obvious from the first moment he stepped off the elevator, rehearsing charming lines that would soon tumble out of him like the world’s clumsiest offering. He tried to ignore this blatant reality a dozen times over the course of their evening together, each attempt growing weaker, death by successive shots. Which had been the deathblow? The first, when she cupped the unscarred side of his face and her smirk melted into something soft and intangible? The fifth, when he pulled her shirt off and then froze, confusion and arousal warping his brain at the discovery of miles of soft skin but also more clothes? She laughed then, grabbing him and pulling him down on top of her, and he flung the shirt away at the last moment. Had it been the final blow that had done it, when she grazed her forehead against his, her breath coming in short gasps, his name a plea on her lips?
Right now, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know which blow took him out, only that he feels wrecked, as if someone rewired his nervous system and each synapse is firing a single signal. But it’s no use. Garrus prides himself on a select number of things, but one of them in particular is timing. He knows when to hold a position and when to take the shot. This is absolutely not the right moment. The Collector Base looms over them like a spectre of death, and he wants his mind to be clear, filled to the brim with strategies of attack, retrieval, survival. Not about how his friendship with Shepard slipped quietly between his fingers like so many grains of sand, leaving a gem of something more resting in his palm.
Eyelashes, he remembers suddenly. They are called eyelashes. He moves slightly, tugging her arm closer, and is rewarded with a leg hooked lazily around his spur. Maybe he’ll spend his final morning thinking about eyelashes, how soft they feel fluttering against your back. There are worse ways to spend one’s time.
⊱ ───── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ───── ⊰
One morning he wakes up, ensconced in soft bedsheets and softer arms, and wonders if this is the moment. Immediately upon thinking it, he snap-freezes time itself, committing everything to memory. His head is tucked beneath Shepard's chin, and even through the loose shirt she begrudgingly pulled over her head to protect her more fragile skin from him, he can hear her heart beating steadily in her chest. He makes a noise, low in his subvocals, matching the pitch.
This is a good morning. They are having more and more good mornings, more than he ever imagined receiving after he followed her into what should have been a suicide mission. But they came out, all of them, and after the shock wore off and his hands stopped shaking, he caught Shepard’s eye across the table in the crew hall and she smiled, just the corner of her mouth lifting, and tipped her head back towards the elevator.
So maybe this is the moment. But as he nuzzles closer, fully conscious but his muscles still heavy with dredges of sleep, he wonders if he actually needs a moment. If they need a moment. Does it need to be said? Defined? Stated and written and submitted for approval?
Garrus thinks it over, taking the situation to pieces with the efficiency typically granted to his rifles. What he wants is to be with her, and he is. It’s a fairly open secret, if Kasumi’s delighted wink when he entered the elevator the other week and Mordin’s horrifyingly detailed charts sent to his inbox through a private server are of any indication. Slotting the pieces into place, slipping his hand under her shirt and gently dragging a talon up her spine just to hear her sigh, he decides: he doesn’t need a moment. He just wants to remain by her side. He thinks, with their stolen Cerberus ship and their battle-scarred reputation, that they can keep doing this. Keep dropping onto far-distant planets and cleaning up everyone else’s messes. Hell, even Hackett has an assignment for Shepard, the Normandy slicing through cold space en route to the Barhak System for it now.
Garrus shuts his eyes, minimizing one sense to amplify another. He still wants to remember this morning. He wants to remember the scent of her, birchwood and ozone and underneath, the undeniably specific tang of Shepard. He thinks they can keep having mornings like this, that they’ll stretch on endlessly, a hazy sun rising over cool waters. Foolishly, he thinks things will never change. Foolishly, foolishly, he lets himself hope.
⊱ ───── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ───── ⊰
He is reaching for her before his mind fully processes what is happening. But his mind is quick, sharper than each point of a serrated blade; he feels the motion and his body reacts, the same hunter's instinct that has kept him alive this long, firing the shot before his mind realized he was in danger. This is the new danger: Shepard is trembling beside him, a choked moan rising in her throat. He pulls her close.
It is not morning, but he is awake. Based on the sluggish fog he is quickly dispelling from his mind, he had only been asleep for an hour or so.
"Shepard, Shepard, hey," he says quietly, gripping her upper arms firmly while still being mindful of the talons. Her face is twisted in some wordless pain, her eyes squeezed shut. She's sleeping, dreaming— trapped in a ceaseless nightmare. "Hey, Shepard, it's okay. I'm here with you. I'm here."
He has watched her back through a thousand different battles but he doesn't know how to protect her from this. She never had nightmares like this before the reapers crashed through the mass relays (despite the fact she once died, alone, in the cold vacuum of space and you weren't there his mind is even quicker to remind him). Each time she is worse in the waking, mortification and shame sending her deeper into herself.
He runs his hands down her arms to her wrists, gingerly moving over closed fists, and then retreats up her arms again, like a current lapping at the shore. Slowly, slowly, she uncoils, the tension and fear leaching from her clenched muscles like a poison. He shifts closer, resting his forehead against hers, watching her face carefully. "I'm with you. I'm here."
Her eyes crack open, eyelashes damp. Her mind is sharp, too. As soon as she processes what is happening she pushes away from him, hands already coming up to palm the moisture off her face. He knows what will come next, his stomach gone sour at the knowledge of it.
"I'm sorry," she mutters, and if he could cry as well he would, the defeated timbre in her voice breaking something open within him. "You shouldn't have to be here for this."
Despite the distance she's put between them, he's able to snake an arm out, curling it around her back. A thought goes up like a flare in his brain: I still have her on reach. It should be funny but it's not; nothing feels particularly funny lately, not with devastation encroaching even here, in the warm safety of her quarters.
He pulls her close again, his other hand slipping over the nape of her neck. "I want to be here," he says immediately, and is startled by the honesty. He freezes, recalibrates, recovers. Nowhere to go but forward. "I want to stay."
She moves her head back in order to see his face. Her eyes are dark pools in the lowlight, still shining with moisture. She is searching for something in his face, but he cannot decipher what she is looking for in hers.
Finally, she repeats his own words back to him. "I want you to stay." She pauses, always thoughtful before she lands the punch. "Here, with me. Every night."
After she found him on Manae and he returned to take up his rightful place in the main battery, he told himself that the highest honor he could expect would be permission to share her bed again. He did not let himself hope for more. But now, with her fingers curling into his carapace, her breath warm on his face, he aches with the knowledge that it's not enough. He doesn't want to share her bed; he wants to share her life.
How can you ask for a future when the world is falling apart? How can you ask for permanence from a woman the universe seems determined to rip away from you?
He doesn't know. But he knows she is here now, and he wants her here tomorrow, and he is determined to repeat this pattern as many times as he can for the rest of his days.
⊱ ───── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ───── ⊰
The first time Garrus wakes reaching for her and finds their bed empty, he thinks his fear, white-hot, will sear right through him.
His mind is still clattering with scenes from his dream— but it was more memory than dream, and that is what has set his teeth on edge. She went to Aratoht alone. She brushed a hand against his scarred face right before telling him of her decision to heed Hackett’s orders, that she was going to embark on the mission, solo. His protests were immediate, logical, and founded. He should follow her into that batarian outpost; a stealth mission could always use a sniper. And if not him, Kasumi— he didn’t want to give Shepard up, but Kasumi, their living phantom, would barely even count as breaking Hackett’s orders.
Shepard just shook her head, fingers moving deftly to secure the latches of her armor. She told him the mission would be short: in, grab Dr. Kenson, out.
She smiled up at him before loading into the kodiak, dropping him a sly wink. She told him she would be back before dinner, so don’t let Mess Sergeant Gardner cook up anything terrible while she was gone.
She was not back in time for dinner that night, or the next night. When she returned, that smile was gone. He shouldered his way past well-meaning crew members to enter the med bay, finding her hunched over on a bed. She’d taken an explosion at close-range, and what he could see of her left side through her smashed armor was peppered with shrapnel marks.
He knelt before her, taking her hands in his own, not caring that everyone could see them through the clear window panes. She lifted her head to meet his gaze; her eyes were hollow. Flat.
“Never again,” he told her, and if he’d been in better control of his faculties, he would have recognized the inappropriacy of him giving her an order. “You should never go alone.”
He wanted to say you should never go without me, but perhaps even then some part of his brain realized that certain things had been set in motion, things quickly spinning out of either of their control.
In response, she'd lowered her head, pressing a kiss against his fingers; a public declaration as a compromise to the promise she left unanswered.
This was as far as the dream had gone. He'd been blissfully spared from having to relive Hackett’s entrance, the knowledge that she was being forced to return to her homeworld, not as the hero of the galaxy, but to answer for a crime she never wanted to commit. He would not be permitted to follow.
Now, he sits up in bed and blessedly locks eyes with her— she is sitting on the couch across from him, pale legs tucked beneath her body, a datapad resting loosely in her hands.
“Honey?” Shepard asks, her voice echoing in the silence of the cabin. The very human term of endearment, he only hears it when he catches her off-guard. It’s almost enough to calm the tempest that is surging within him. Almost.
His head is pounding; his world has narrowed to a single point. She sees something in the sharp lines of his body and her face changes. She has perhaps just remembered that she sleeps beside a predator every night.
He is out of bed and rushing towards her, clothes flying off his body in record speeds. The datapad clatters to the floor as he pins her down on the couch.
Her eyes are wide, but not with fear. It’s concern he can see reflected here. Death has permeated every corner of their life but she's still worried about him. He is panting, but not from exertion. “Don’t ever leave me behind again,” he says in a tone so low it is mostly subvocals. “We're in this together. We're a team, Shepard."
Her brows draw together and her wrists twitch in his grasp. He knows she wants to touch him, likely run her fingers along his fringe to soothe him, and he is starved for it, but he isn't ready to let her go just yet. Always adept at finding alternative solutions, she raises herself up on her shoulders, pressing her forehead to his.
“You’re with me?” she asks, and the fact that it’s a question causes something feral to tear loose inside him. He relinquishes his grip on her for a single moment, long enough to snatch her shirt off over her head.
“Always,” he breathes, and she smiles, teeth flashing; the first real smile he’s seen in so long.
He consolidates his grip on her to one hand, sliding the other down towards her hip. He slips a talon into the elastic band of her underwear and falters. The one moment of distance he had allowed to remove her shirt had been his capacity; he cannot stand the thought of pulling back from her again.
“Do you need these?” he asks, and she laughs quietly.
“Not as much as you need this, I think.” She says it playfully, but the truth of it is like a bullet buried between his eyes.
The sound of her clothing ripping is viscerally satisfying, but better yet is the way she says his name when he nudges her knees apart. "Garrus," she breathes, and it's all soft around the edges, a question he can't answer. Then a moment later her breath catches, spine bending towards him. "Garrus," she gasps as she crashes back down, and he finally lets go, reaching down and digging his talons into her thigh, hooking her leg around his waist.
There is something roiling beneath the fear, and looking down at her, hair splayed behind her head like a sunburst, he identifies it: anger. It's a waste of time and energy, but he can't seem to help it. He does not believe in fairness— in balanced scales and even distribution. But he cannot seem to stop being angry at this: all the time with her that was stolen from him, nearly three years. When the final score is tallied, will he have lost more of her years than he'll share?
Fear and anger twinned together, that feeling hot in the back of your throat. This is what comprises desperation. He tries to push his desperation into her, into this, pulling her closer, needing to feel more of her on him. Her arms tight around his neck, her ankles interlocked behind him. It's not enough.
"It's you and me," he whispers into the shell of her ear, his face buried in the crook of her neck. "You and me, till the end of the line."
He can feel the barest traces of her smile against his skin. "Might be—" her voice breaks, fingernails pricking the sensitive skin at the back of his neck. "— A short line."
"We'll make it last. We always do."
He says it like a promise, but it feels like a prayer.
⊱ ───── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ───── ⊰
There is something worse than waking up to an empty bed, Garrus discovers. It is waking up with the taste of her embedded in his tongue, the ghost of her weight in his arms. It is the four seconds every morning before his damnably sharp mind catches up and the knowledge crashes around him like a meteor strike.
Despite everything, Shepard went alone.
In this temporary apartment, in what he feverishly hopes is a temporary life, everything is in shades of grey. Rain is splattering against the window, and he finds he is a little jealous of the outburst. He thinks sobbing would alleviate the terrible pressure building inside of him, the thing that is threatening to rupture his very being. Instead, he grips the thin bedsheets and screams, a deep, twisted noise like a wounded animal.
He feels better, if only marginally. A single finger pressed against a gaping wound.
He hears a soft tread, determined but unsteady. He is alone in the bed, but not alone in the apartment. No spark of hope alights within his chest; he knows where he is now, knows what has happened.
Liara appears in the doorway, harsh lines underscoring her soft eyes. She offers him the small mercy of not asking if he is okay. Instead, she glances down at her omni-tool, clearing her throat.
"I just sent you today's list of hospitals. We can get started whenever you're ready."
He nods, donning faked confidence with the same regularity he used to don armor. He looks down at his omni-tool to check the list. Thirteen names blink up at him. Isn't that a lucky number for humans? "Sounds good. I'll be out in a minute."
A prolonged silence. Then: "She's out there." Liara's voice is firm, insistent; clearly between the confidence and the armor, the latter fit him better.
He raises his eyes to catch her gaze, and she doesn't blink. He used to think she looked so young, her face soft like a child's. He doesn't think that anymore. "You're still sure?"
It's a game they play, this terrible call and response. Every morning for the past 47 mornings, he has asked this question. And every morning for the past 47 mornings, Liara has pursed her lips, then responded briskly with: "Yes. If someone found her body, I would know."
⊱ ───── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ───── ⊰
Experience exists upon a spectrum, worst to best. Those were his worst mornings. This is his best:
Garrus blinks awake slowly, and he later will blame exhaustion and disorientation for the fact his senses prioritized his surroundings out of order. But that is besides the point. He groans quietly, because what he notices first is the ache in his neck and legs, his body cramped from his poor positioning when he fell asleep against the hospital bed.
The second thing he notices is the feeling of five fingers trailing gently down his fringe.
He shoots up, throat burning with desperation, but this is the kind that can take flight.
A smile tugs at the corner of Shepard's mouth, the motion enough to crinkle the bandage wrapped around her skull. "Hey there," she says. Her voice is a hoarse rasp, but there is life in it. Spirits, there is life in it. "You look terrible. Who died?"
⊱ ───── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ───── ⊰
Garrus doesn't want to wake up. The sun is soaking into his exposed plates and he is so warm, so comfortable on the oversized blanket. But something has woken him, and now it is casting a long shadow over him.
He squints up, lifting a hand to block the glare. The shadow drops down and he closes his eyes again. Lips brush over his mouth plates. The sunlight returns.
"Come swim with me," Shepard says, her hair tickling his face.
"Mmm," he says sleepily. "Turians hate the water."
"That is patently untrue. You love baths."
"Very different kind of water," he rumbles, subvocals infused with fond memories, sneaking a hand up to her bare waist. He is 56% sure he can convince her to stay on this blanket with him. He relishes those odds, astronomically higher than he used to gamble with. "I think it was in our vows? In sickness and in health… and never taking your turian into moving waters."
She laughs lightly, and it sharpens as his hand moves lower. "Garrus!" she admonishes, snatching his hand off of her. But she keeps it in her grasp. "We are surrounded by children."
"I know. Those Urdnot younglings are going to chase me into my grave. If I open my eyes and they realize I'm still alive, the hunt will continue."
He feels her fingers trace a pattern in his palm, then she turns his hand over and pulls his blunted talons to her lips. "So brave. Didn't you once take on three merc groups at once?"
"That was some other guy."
"You think he would want to swim with me?"
Now it's his turn to laugh. His free hand travels down her thigh, finding the microscopic line that circles her knee joint.
"How's the leg?"
"Good," she says, and he feels the change in the atmosphere as she twists, likely to check on the prosthetic. "I'm glad we sprung for the waterproof model. I can now perform all kinds of water rescues. If, you know, a certain turian really struggles out there."
"You are relentless." And he is no match for it. "15 more minutes. Then you can drown me to your heart's content."
"Deal." A hand cups the side of his face and he leans instinctually into it, pressing his best semblance of a kiss into her palm. "Enjoy your rest. I'll see you soon."
Then she is gone, and he misses her. What a strange luxury, to be able to miss her at five meters.
"You should join your wife in the waters."
He didn't hear the person approach, didn't hear an inhale of breath before she began speaking. This would have identified her even if he didn't recognize the voice.
"Ah, Kasumi. I didn't know you had arrived."
"That's the point, silly boy," she says, but her tone is affectionate.
He stretches his shoulders and arms, but still doesn't rise. The sun is bright against his closed eyelids. "So tell me, why should I take advice on appropriate beach activities from someone who is likely wearing a full-body cloak?"
A beat of silence. You could never rush her in anything. Not then, and not now. "Because there was a time when this was the life you dreamt of, and thought would never arrive."
He opens his eyes. Kasumi has vanished. Typical, he thinks, but his mandibles are pulled into a grin.
Garrus scratches at the back of his neck, sitting up to survey the beach. Liara is sitting cross-legged a couple paces off, Tali's daughter in her lap. He can't distinguish her face through the tiny suit helmet, but based on the way she's holding herself absolutely still, she must be engrossed in whatever Liara is saying. Garrus knows if he concentrates he can likely catch some of Liara’s words on the breeze, but he also knows it's probably quantum mechanics or something else high above his pay grade.
Tali and Reegar are nowhere in sight, but forked footprints up the sand inform him that they've returned to the house. Faintly, he can smell something pungent and spicy drifting from the open windows. His stomach growls in return, and he almost laughs again. They must be cooking lunch. When did we all become so responsible?
He hears a sharp shriek from down the other side of the beach and knows Kasumi found Joker. Well, not entirely responsible. Garrus turns in that direction, and while he sees neither thief nor pilot, what he does see finally pulls the buried laughter out of him: Wrex is passed out face-down in the sand, the slow rise and fall of his back his only sign of life.
Bakara, always the less daunted of the pair, is awake and by the shore, keeping a watchful eye on her brood. Garrus follows her line of sight, and his chest constricts.
Shepard is standing in the lapping waves, four krogan younglings tumbling over each other around her feet, emitting tinny roars when the waves come too fast and douse them. Her torso, though still scarred, is now slightly less pale; at least, her shoulders are a shade lighter than the hair that now flows past them.
One of the younglings — the boy, Garrus thinks — takes a splash directly to the face and screams. Shepard is down on the sand with him in an instant, and even from this distance Garrus can see her mock-stern smile. He knows she is doing what she does best: asking someone to be brave, finding that strength somewhere deep within them.
Kasumi is right. Why is she always right? Garrus wakes most mornings and thinks he is still dreaming.
He slowly rises, stretching towards the sun. Then he goes to be with Shepard in the waters.