CROSSROADS

written for MizDirected as a totally-not-five-days-late Secret Santa fic

(i'm sorry!)

Garrus has never really been the loner type, but he likes the quiet. Especially the alone kind of quiet, where he can sit and sort through his thoughts without any interruptions or distractions.

Yet even as he sits under the soft lights of Normandy's mess hall while most of the crew are asleep, there is still tension hunched underneath his plates. He lets the datapad he has been half-heartedly perusing drop onto the table and rubs at his brow, letting his eyes fall shut for a moment. Saleon's face, etched with the fear that claws at a person's spine when they are faced with the barrel of a gun, has crept under his eyelids. It stares with the unseeing eyes of the dead into the centre of Garrus' brain.

Do things right, or don't do them at all. The thought leaves him with a bitter taste on his tongue.

The chuff-like sound of an alien throat being cleared makes him start and he looks up to see Shepard standing at the end of the table, dressed in a simple grey shirt and loose trousers for sleeping, her fingers curled around an empty coffee cup. He has seen her without her armour before, but for some reason now she looks smaller than normal. Not fragile, but diminished somehow, with weariness slumping the proud line of her shoulders and bringing a certain staleness to her eyes. Not for the first time, Garrus wonders at the crap she's been through in just the last few weeks. She's taken enough slugs to fell a krogan and then some, not to mention the mystery visions, giant sentient plants, and what appears to be some form of… well, apocalypse.

"Commander," he says by way of greeting, an uneasy waver in his subvocals that he hopes she doesn't pick up on. Looking at her now, he suddenly feels utterly out of his depth, like the floor has dropped out from under his feet. "I, er, I wasn't expecting you."

He has spent enough time around humans—around Shepard—to read the exhaustion in the small smile she gives him. "Few people do," she says. One hand comes up to rub at her furrowed brow. "Mind if I join you?"

"Of course, Commander." Garrus sits back in his chair a little. The mess suddenly feels a bit small. "It's, uh, it's your ship."

Shepard huffs out a weak laugh and sets the cup on the table. "Yeah, I'm still getting used to that. And Garrus, please, drop the titles and call me 'Shepard'. God knows I'm not calling you Detective Vakarian."

"Fair enough," says Garrus. "Are you, er, doing the rounds?"

She purses her lips, causing little dimples to appear in the soft flesh by the corners of her mouth. Garrus knows humans are much hardier than they look, but when he first started working with C-Sec it had taken him weeks to get used to how their pliant, naked-looking skin made his own crawl under his plates. "Just having a little trouble sleeping," she says, her tone light despite the gravity in her eyes. True to her words, she yawns. "Haven't had a decent night's rest since that damned beacon on Eden Prime. Nothing a cup of liquid happiness won't fix." Her lips quirk in a wry half-smile as she picks up the empty cup, a smile that reaches her eyes as she looks at him. "Fancy a dextro hot chocolate?"

"I'll pass." Tali lives on the stuff, but it tends to give him indigestion.

"Suit yourself." Shepard pads over to the water heater and turns it on, then dumps a few spoonfuls of chocolate powder into her cup. "What about you?" she asks. She turns to face him, leaning her hip against the counter. "Trouble sleeping?"

Garrus' stomach twists. The ascending hiss of boiling water worms into his aural canals. "Er, no, I've had my thirty blinks. I'm just looking over some old files."

Shepard's gaze on his does not waver, though Garrus does under its intensity. "Saleon?" The heater clicks off, but she doesn't move.

He fights the urge to look away from her face. "Yeah."

Garrus feels a wash of relief when she finally turns away to pour the water, but he keeps studying her—the curve of her back, the tightness in her shoulders. "Do you regret taking him down?" she asks over the clink of metal against porcelain as she stirs milk into her drink.

"No, I just…" he pauses, wonders whether he should continue. He tears his eyes from her and looks at his hands. "I just don't know if I did the right thing." With Saleon's still-warm corpse at his feet, his own pulse thundering through him, he'd felt electric. Justice served, innocents saved. Execution complete.

Do things right.

Garrus hears the soft pad of her feet on the floor as she wanders back towards him and sits in the chair opposite his, but he doesn't look up. His hands ball into fists on the desk before relaxing.

"There's no right or wrong in situations like that," she says. "There's just cause and effect. Decision and consequence."

"I guess so," Garrus says, but the words feel thick on his tongue. He glances at Shepard and is startled when he finds her looking right back at him, her expression inscrutable. Not for the first time, he wonders what she sees when she looks at him, and for a moment he is childishly jealous of her experience; her heroism. Mindoir, Elysium… she is a warrior, a survivor. Her gaze sharp and quick, her bones hard with mettle. He has seen the spark of her on the field, untarnished by the dust and blood that surrounds her—that becomes her.

But then, the softness of her face lit by the glow of the overhead lights, she sips her hot chocolate and her brow furrows minutely and he sees that she is imperfect. Not a concept or an icon, but a person. Just another soldier. Bruised by her past and her future. She will be tested by this mission, he realises. And so will he.

"How do you cope with the weight of those kinds of decisions?" he asks before he can stop himself. His own voice sounds like a stranger's.

"I don't know, Garrus." Shepard leans her chin in her hand and closes her eyes for a moment, inhaling the rich scent of her drink. "You just learn to carry it. Own your actions. That's all you can do. That's all any of us can do."

Garrus sighs and flicks a talon at the datapad. He feels like he should say more, but he doesn't. Neither does she, but when she catches his eye, her gaze is warm and understanding on his and her mouth curves into a small smile.

Garrus likes the quiet.

edit: changed "damned bacon on Eden Prime" to "damned beacon on Eden Prime." and laughed my head off whilst doing so