Chapter Ten

It was dark when he woke, which was good. It let Garrus examine the face of the human sitting across the room. Shepard's face. Turian night vision was better than human vision, though, and he took full advantage now. She was looking out the window, her unreadable expression shrouded in shadow, at the grey and damp Omega underground.

Just as he was letting his eyes take in the network of faintly orange-glowing lines spreading up the side of Shepard's neck, he saw her eyes meet his in the dark. Well, most turians had better night vision that most humans. He'd known she'd been given significant mods by the Alliance. Apparently, improved night sight had been among them.

"Glad to see you back among the living," Shepard said to him.

From his bed, Garrus gave an uncomfortable snort as he considered the obvious responses.

"Too easy," he said finally, waving a hand. "I'm gonna let that one go."

Shepard smirked, but there was a tightness around her eyes, a strain that had not been there the past week, that 'Red' had not displayed. Garrus recognized it nonetheless. Something about being known for who she was had added an invisible burden, one that a nondescript Omega waif had been able to put down. It was as if being known for who she really was had reinstalled that weight, that strain, and Garrus was startled to realize that her lack of it had been part of what had hindered his recognition of his old Commander.

For a painful moment, Garrus wished, for her sake, he had never figured it out. Had never put the pieces together. As glad -so sharply, sweetly glad- as he was to find that she was somehow alive, he thought he could willingly to back to not knowing if it meant she got a bit more time to be herself, whoever that was, without the mantle of the Commander draped heavily across her shoulders.

Then, she smiled.

He blinked at her, and the smile widened, deep crinkles forming at the corners of her eyes. Some of that mantle fell away, and Garrus felt that sweet gladness inside him twist.

"Really glad to see you, big guy," she said across the dimness. There was a strange catch to her voice.

"Been here all week," he replied, voice gruff. "Right in front of you. I might have been blind as a newborn pyjak, but you can't tell me you didn't recognize me." Then, hesitatingly, he added, "Or...did you? Not recognize me, I mean. 'Garrus' isn't exactly the most unique turian name in the galaxy and-"

"I'd know you blinded and deafened," she cut in. A heartbeat of silence spread between them, then she cleared her throat and added, "Though I admit I'd be more upset about the deafened part."

Garrus couldn't help it. He raised one brow plate in imitation of that human gesture he'd picked up, and deliberately deepened his voice when he said, "Oh, really?"

She flashed him another smile, and let loose a short laugh. "Ass."

"Missed you too, Shepard," he said. He had meant it to come out more cheerfully, but her laughter cut off abruptly enough that he knew he'd failed.

Shepard rose up from her seat across the room and crossed to him. She sank down onto the bed beside him as he sat up with a grunt.

"What happened?" He asked her. She had pushed up her sleeves at some point, and the same spiderweb of glowing orange lines that were on her neck spread up and down her forearms. She held out those arms, examining them, frowning at them.

"Honestly, Garrus, I'm still not sure," she said with a sigh. He felt a stab of nostalgia- she'd used the same voice, the same tone of a sigh, as she once had during another quiet conversation in another dark room, aboard the Normandy, when he'd asked her, 'how do you do it, Commander?'

"Start at the beginning," he prompted. It had always been his dad's advice to someone who seemed unable to begin a testimony. It was as good a piece of advice as any.

Shepard seemed to agree, since she nodded, took a deep breath, and started at the beginning.

In the dark, he listened as she told him of the Normandy coming under attack, of even Joker's hands at the helm not being able to save them. His blind determination to save his ship, the feel of his humerus snapping in her grasp as she'd hauled him from the pilot's seat. The glare of the light, the vacuum of space, the surreal lack of sound as things exploded and the Normandy died around them.

"The records say Joker left the Alliance," Shepard said. "I can guess why. He blamed himself, didn't he?

Garrus sighed and looked away. "We all did, in way. Except Wrex. He blamed Udina."

Shepard snorted, shook her head, then went on. Garrus resisted the urge to reach out to her when she began to speak of the darkness, the nothingness, the complete absence of anything at all- followed by sharp, abrupt, painful something. The harsh lights, the sight of her own raised, skinless arm, panicked voices, beeping. Then nothing again, but a different sort- the nothing of mere unconsciousness.

"I think knowing the difference is one of the worst parts," Shepard confessed. "People think they know oblivion, from the catnaps grabbed between firefights, from the deep sleep that comes after the first day at the mercy of a drill sergeant. That's not oblivion. It's not."

He didn't stop himself in time- he reached for her. He managed to translate the motion into something else at the last moment. He grasped his sheets instead, pushed them aside. Shepard watched him as he moved to stand, and he put extra effort into withholding his grunts. He hadn't been hurt that bad, but he was stiff, and still groggy from whatever Nala had given him.

"How did you get away from Cerberus?" He asked as he pushed himself to his feet. "Scratch that. How did Cerberus get ahold of your-" Shit, he'd been about to say 'body,' but the word caught in his throat. "-ah, how did they even get their hands on you in the first place?"

"I was a little on the wrong side of conscious for that part," Shepard said dryly. She didn't move or offer to help him as he made his way stiffly across the room, but she watched him carefully.

"Well, you came back from the dead, Shepard, so I'm not writing off any super powers just yet," Garrus replied in an only partly sarcastic drawl. He reached his target; the plain cabinets in the far corner.

"Did I?"

The question was quiet. Almost too quiet to cross the room. Garrus paused in the act of pulling out out a bottle and a pair of glasses.

"If you're asking if I think you were actually, truly, dead and gone and came back from some afterlife that may or may not exist, my answer is, I don't give a fuck." He said the words with deceptive softness while staring at the bottle in his hand.

Garrus's earlier thoughts of weights and mantles and comparing 'Red' to 'Shepard resurfaced. He took a deep breath, and carried the bottle and glasses back to the bed. He wasn't sure if turian brandy would affect humans the same way, but he figured they'd find out together.

"I care more about whether or not you want to be back," he said as he sat back down.

He heard her inhale, sharply, as he worked the cap off the bottle and poured.

"I'm not suic-"

"Never thought you were," he cut in. He wasn't going there and he'd be damned if he let Shepard. "I meant, does Commander Shepard want to be back?"

Shepard gave him a sardonic grin, took a sip of the brandy, then said, "That choice has already been taken from me, Garrus. I am back. Nothing to be done now but to deal with it. I've heard enough from Miranda to know that whatever reason they had for bringing me back, it's not good. For anyone."

She leaned forward in a familiar pose, elbows on knees, drink dangling from her fingers, staring at an unmarked spot ahead of her. "From what they told me, there's nothing to stop me from contacting the Alliance, after all. They just wanted to talk to me first." She gave a low chuckle. "I wouldn't want to be the poor idiot that gets to deal with the 'back from KIA' paperwork."

Shepard took another sip, then said, "You know, I don't think I can get drunk anymore." She frowned at the glass, as if that fact were its fault. "Drank a whole bottle of rotgut the other day. Not even tipsy."

"Well that's just too horrible for words," Garrus said after a moment of stunned silence. He felt a keening of genuine grief well up in his throat, and swallowed it. He reached for her glass. "No reason to waste it on someone who can't appreciate it though."

Shepard smacked his hand away- hard. "It still tastes good," she told him, pulling her glass out of reach.

"Really?" He asked dubiously. He frowned at the bottle. "Must taste different to humans."

"Mhm. Someday I'll have to introduce you to Tennessee whiskey, see how it tastes to you," she told him.

They were silent for a moment, a comfortable quiet that had shifted from the fragility of earlier to something more stable. More familiar. How many nights had they spent in similar silence in a similarly dark cargo bay? More than he could recall individually, and not nearly enough at the same time.

"I can't just abandon my duties, Garrus," Shepard said, eventually. "Word will get around that I'm back."

"Word will get around that there's a capable badass on Omega who doesn't like mercs," Garrus replied, words clipped.

"And when someone realizes that this merc-hater looks an awful lot like the dead Commander Shepard?" She asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Not to burst your bubble, Shepard, but while you were gone? There were more than a few lookalikes who tried to claim they were you. Brain damaged and so of course unable to answer basic questions you'd know in your sleep, and conveniently unable to return to dangerous military service, but perfectly able to claim retirement benefits and news interviews."

Shepard blinked. "Really?"

"Well, when I say more than one, I mean just two, both put up to it by the same con man, but yes." Garrus reached over and topped off her glass.

"Well. Shit." She shipped, looking pensive. Then, she sighed, and shook her head. "As nice as it would be, Garrus, I couldn't hide forever. That's not me."

"So don't hide," Garrus said. "Let them know you're back. Just, spare that poor fool the 'back from KIA' mess. Talk to Anderson. Tell them to leave you dead. I happen to have a salarian downstairs who'd be happy to set you up with a foolproof new identity. Then...just… I don't know, go wherever you want."

Shepard swirled the blue liquid in her glass. Sipped it. Exhaled slowly through her nose. All while staring at that unmarked place both somewhere and nowhere that only she could see. Thinking. Calculating.

"At the very least," he pressed. "Take a spirits' damn vacation, Shepard. Be Red for a bit longer while you figure shit out."

Shepard shut her eyes for a brief moment. When she opened them, there was a wry twist to her lips. She raised her drink and finished it, then set it down on the floor.

"I'll think about it," she said, then rose up from the bed. "Thanks, big guy. You know I'm not much for spilling feelings and shit, but… I needed this."

"Anytime," he replied, trying not to let the defeat color his voice. What had he expected? If she'd been the kind of person to jump at the chance to ditch what she felt was her responsibility, she wouldn't have been the woman she was. The woman he'd been willing to follow across the galaxy.

At the door, she paused. It cycled open, and the light from the hall spilled into the room and illuminated her form in sharp detail. Light to her front, shadow to her back. He heard her sigh.

"Aw, hell," she said. She turned her face from the light and back to the darkness, and him. "Think you got room on your squad for another bruiser, Archangel?"

He spread his mandibles far as they would go. "Definitely."

Biiig apology for the long wait. So sorry! And don't worry, this isn't the end, despite the 10/10 thing. I plan on either doing a part two, or a sequel.

Check out the link below (minus the dash and spaces) to see what I've been working on that's pulled me away from fic writing. I plan on doing something special for my fandom followers when I publish, so sign up for the newsletter or follow me on facebook for updates.

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