A/N: This came out of an idea I had for a road trip . . . but suddenly, Mass Effect came into play and I started to see the possibilities. Also, I have a fondness for the older among us . . . and I love Garrus and Shepard as best friends, and maybe the last ones standing. This is the first chapter of what I hope will be many more. Now, if I could just figure out what happens next . . .

Garrus Vakarian was dying.

He knew it, no matter what the doctors said about hope and chances. He could feel it in each breath, like each inhale was part of a countdown. He could feel it all the way down to his bones.

And he was looking forward to it. At least it would be a way out of this sterile room. A way out of this damn bed. He wasn't actually strapped to it, but he might as well be.

This is the room I'm going to die in. All I'm doing is waiting for it to happen.

He wasn't afraid of death. He'd stared down the barrel of too many guns too many times . . . but this room scared the hell out of him. He'd never really expected to live this long. And now, he was disappointed that he had. Killed in the line of duty, blaze of glory, some kind of noble sacrifice, blah blah blah. Nearly all the people he'd fought with, and for, over the years were gone now. People he had – finally – been able to call friends. In a way, at least that was something. No witnesses to this frail shadow of who he'd once been.

They'd pumped him full of painkillers. To keep him comfortable, they said. But all he really felt was numb. And useless.

He wasn't even whole anymore. His left arm had been torn off battling the last vestiges of Cerberus two decades back. He'd had a robotic replacement provided by Legion, of all people, and it worked, more or less. But he ached for the loss of his flesh and blood.

His visor, almost a part of him for most of his life, had been replaced by a cybernetic implant.

Now, looking at the glaring white walls, hearing the hum and beep of various machines he was hooked into (I hate that, maybe the most), he thought that if he had to die, he should at least get to choose where it happened. Not here.

But what the hell else was he going to do? His muscles, once so strong, had atrophied. His body was tired. Hell, even his eye was going.

And here came another doctor into the room. Fantastic.

"Look," he said as she checked his chart on the terminal by the door. "Dr. Gripson has already checked on me today. Everything's stable. No news is good news, right?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. No news sounds awfully boring to me."

Garrus looked up at the doctor and found himself staring at the smirking face of Hera Shepard. Years had come and gone since he'd last seen her – and the lines in her face, the hair, once a deep red, now silver, showed their passing – but there was no mistaking her. His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped, and he almost smiled – but then he stopped, his face tightening up, and fell back against the pillow.

"Get out of here, Shepard. I don't need a pity visit. I don't need flowers."

"I didn't bring any." Time had made her voice almost as raspy as his. She turned and closed the door.

"Look, just . . . " He stopped and rolled away from her gaze, grunting with the effort. "I just don't want you to see me like this."

"I know," she said. "That's why I'm here."

Her hand grabbed his arm above the elbow and he felt the hot sting of a needle jabbed into his vein.

"Ouch!" He glared at her. "Goddamn it, Shepard! What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting you out of here."

"What the - ?"

"If I used an omni-tool, it would alert every nurse in the building, so I had to do this the old fashioned way. This," she indicated the syringe she was still pushing into his arm, "will make you well enough to travel. I should warn you, though – you won't have any painkillers."

"Let me get this straight. You're busting me out of the hospital?"

"Yep. You hate hospitals. Also, I need a favor."

The first real smile in years bloomed on the turian's face.

"Okay. What's the plan?" He tried to sit up straight, but immediately fell back to the pillow. "Ugh. I don't know how much help I'm going to be."

Shepard was busy clipping tiny devices to the machines in the room. "Give it a couple minutes," she said. "I've got to run interference, anyway."

Garrus watched as Shepard finished setting the loops on the machines that were supposed to be monitoring his . . . everything. They would feed recycled data back to the nurses' station. As long as no one actually looked in his room, it would look like he was here.

And then he noticed a dull ache in his bicep above where Shepard had given him the shot. The ache flared suddenly hot and bright, and Garrus gasped. Pain began spreading out from his muscle throughout his body. Every nerve felt like needles of ice. Each muscle felt stretched to the point of breaking. Even his bones felt like they might shatter at any moment.

Something between a growl and a scream was being pulled out of him. The sound filled the room before fading out.

"Wow. That was loud," commented Shepard. "Good thing I shut the door."

Garrus was doubled over, fighting for breath. Shepard walked to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

Garrus straightened up slowly. "Ah, it hurts. So. Much." He turned to look at her. "It feels fucking fantastic."

"Glad you think so, because the pain isn't going to stop, G."

"Good. What the hell did you shoot me up with? I know it's not a cure."

"It's a failed Alliance experiment. Supposed to boost physical prowess, or something."

"Where'd you get it?"

"There are advantages to being married to the Shadow Broker. Anyway, the Alliance wanted to use it in the field, but it had an unfortunate side effect."

"The pain?"

"Okay, side effects. The pain is part of it, but the main thing is that, eventually, it kills you."

Garrus just stared at her.

"Come on, Garrus. Don't be mad. You were dying anyway."

Still the stare.

"Look, Garrus – what? Paralysis isn't one of the –"

Garrus suddenly grabbed her and pulled her close to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight.

"Thank you," he whispered. "I didn't have the guts . . . "

"It's okay, Garrus. If it was me, I wouldn't either."

He released her. Looked at her for just a moment, and then cast his eyes towards the door.

"So what's the next step?"

She grinned, a real smile, which took about ten years off her face. "Okay, I have a cab waiting outside, and –"

The door opened. "Okay, Mr. Vakarian, we just have one more shot for the pain today," a salarian nurse was saying, then stopped short as looked up and saw the turian (on his feet? How is that even possible?) and the human, frozen, looking at him.

"Uh," the nurse began, enabling his omni-tool.

Quicker than would have been even imaginable five minutes before, Garrus reached out, grabbed the nurse, twisting his arm behind him, and deactivated the omni-tool.

"Wait," the salarian sputtered. "You need your rest! You're not well!"

"I got better."

An idea occurred to Garrus. He reactivated the nurse's omni-tool, changed the destination for the painkiller dose – and seconds later, the nurse was sleeping peacefully in Garrus's bed.

"Where's this cab?" He looked at Shepard.

Ten minutes and another unconscious salarian later, Shepard and Garrus were heading toward the spaceport in a ground cab.

"Hmm. Wheels. How quaint," said Garrus.

"Stow it, G. It's a good way to travel for something like this – air traffic is monitored way more closely."

"Fair enough," said Garrus. He looked sideways at her. "You mentioned a favor?"

"Yeah," she said, and he saw the old Shepard mask draw over her face. All business, when a mission was at hand. "There's a new information broker in town, not part of Liara's network, but he has been branching out. He's united all three merc gangs."

"Blue Suns, Blood Pack and Eclipse, all working together? Sounds . . . familiar."

"You see why I wanted you along. We think he's trying to push Liara out and become the new Shadow Broker. That pisses me off."

Garrus chuckled. "Yeah, I'll bet."

Her tone became sharp. "This is serious, Garrus."

"Right, sorry."

Shepard sighed. "It's okay. It's just . . . I'm not getting any younger, Garrus. I don't have a lot of time left, and I . . . I just want to keep her safe as long as I can. I want her to know I did all I could." Her voice broke. "For as long as I can."

Garrus put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Commander." He called her by her rank, to give her strength. "So what's the first step?"

She cleared her throat and straightened up a bit. "Okay, right. There's a smuggler in the Yangtze system. He's worked for all three gangs at one time or another, knows their systems, and they all trust him as much as they trust anyone – because he's beholden only to the bottom line."

"Right," said Garrus. "He can be trusted to go where the money is. His loyalties are consistent. Got it."

"Liara's tapped him as a potential source on this new broker. We need to talk to him."

"Just talk?"

"For starters."