So this is the first part/segment I've completed. I have quite a few more, but thought I'd put this up to see how peeps like it. I'll keep working on the other pieces and integrate them as I go along.

This segment starts in ME2. I will try not to go all over the place crazy with timeline, but this was the first thing that came to mind that I had wanted to depict. I hope you guys enjoy this small beginning :)

Emmalene's eyes widened with fear and shock as she watched Garrus get taken down by machine gun fire from the gunship. Everything seemed to go into slow motion as his body twisted and blue blood splattered across the floor and furniture in front of him. He thudded loud against the floor, more blood splattering near his face as his armor crumbled at the neck and chest. The echo of him hitting the ground rang in her ears as she froze in shock at the scene taking place before her. He didn't make to move after he'd hit the ground, and that's when the gunfire from the gunship snapped her back to reality.

She grit her teeth as she holstered her pistol and began massing dark energy between her palms. Her boots clanked loudly against the floor as she shouted and ran with a vengeance, flinging the warp blast at the hovering craft outside the balcony. The bright orange explosion sent out a shockwave strong enough to knock her back onto her side before crashing down to the ground below.

After a moment of refocusing her vision and hearing from the blast, she got to her knees and looked to see Garrus still lying face pressed into the ground.

"Garrus!" she stumbled to her feet and ran to his side. Falling to her knees in front of him, she placed a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder and leaned down close to his face, "Garrus can you hear me?" A few moments passed before his eyes shot open and he gasped and gurgled for air. He met her eyes as he coughed up blood onto her face and chest, trying to understand what was happening in his delirium.

"Mordin! I need you over here right now!" she wiped at the blue blood on her lips and cheek as she shouted at the salarian, leaning back down to Garrus' ear, "hang on Garrus. Stay with me!"

Zaeed hovered over her shoulder, a grim expression on his face. "He's not going to make it, Commander..."

"MORDIN!" she screamed once more to the doctor, fear and anxiety at the possibility of losing Garrus giving her voice a frightening command. She couldn't lose him; she'd just found him again.

Mordin made it over to them, gently moving Shepard aside as he went to examine the fallen turian. She stood up and out of the way, frantic on what to do. She realized they needed to get back to the Normandy and Dr. Chakwas. She pushed in the comm on her earpiece, "Joker I need you in here now! We need an emergency evac and Dr. Chakwas on board the shuttle!"

"Aye aye Commander," Joker was deadly curious as to what was going on, but knew he'd find out as soon as the shuttle returned with said injured party.

Mordin had managed to slow the bleeding just as the shuttle arrived. Shepard followed closely behind as Mordin and Zaeed carried Garrus up and into the shuttle. She'd removed her helmet, which was now clutched tightly in her fist as her eyes fell to the blood splattering all over the ground behind the three of them. Despite Mordin's success at stopping Garrus from bleeding to death on the spot, so much of it ran down Mordin and Zaeed's sides, down their legs and to the ground.

Dr. Chakwas was aboard and began working on Garrus immediately. She ordered Mordin to do this and that to assist her. Emmalene flinched at Zaeed's hand on her shoulder. He gave her a stern but empathetic look.

"I'm sure he'll be alright, Shepard," he assured her with a gruff effort at comfort, but they both knew he didn't logically think it very probable. Shepard appreciated it, nonetheless.

She nodded, her eyes returning to the operation going on in front of her. She took in the site of his injuries clearly now. It looked as if the lower right half of his face was completely missing. Her knuckles went white as she clenched her helmet and hoped to God, Goddess, to the Spirits, to whatever held imminent power in the universe to let her keep her friend.

"Commander, how's it going down there?" Joker's voice rang out in her comm. It shook her from her worry for a moment and she turned away to speak to him without the sight of Garrus possibly dying in front of her.

"Garrus was hit pretty bad. Dr. Chakwas and Mordin are working on him now."

"Garrus? Wait, what?" Joker stammered.

Emmalene realized no one on the Normandy knew that Archangel had actually been Garrus. No one on board knewGarrus, but they knew of him from the Battle of the Citadel. Joker knew him of course, and knew that Emmalene and Garrus had a past as close friends and as hero's of the galaxy. She shook herself from the current situation and put Commander Shepard of the Normandy into her voice. "Archangel is Garrus. He was with a vigilante squad, taking down the merc's and their operations here on Omega."

"Holy shit," Joker snuffed in amusement.

"We were trying to get out and back to the ship when a Blue Suns' gunship took him down. Dr. Chakwas and Mordin are working on him right now. We should be docking with you-" she was about to say any second just as she felt the shuttle thump it's landing in the shuttle bay, "we're here. I'll brief everyone once we get Garrus to Med Bay."

"Got it Commander," Joker replied dutifully.

The shuttle opened to crew members awaiting their arrival to help with the wounded. Emmalene watched as Garrus was carried out on a stretcher. Zaeed gave her one more reassuring glance as he passed her and exited the shuttle. She followed him, hurrying to catch up to the crew, Dr's and Garrus.

She stood off in the corner of the elevator and watched on. It was strange not being in control of what was happening. She was always the one in control: giving orders to her crew, dictating how an operation should be executed, getting people to safety. It was what she did. But now, there was nothing she could do but wait.

The elevator let out on the crew deck. The Dr's and crew piled out of the elevator with Garrus, but Shepard remained in the corner as the doors closed. She didn't move. She couldn't understand the worry that had so potently taken over her body. She'd seen friends fall in battle before. Why couldn't she follow, then? What was she so scared of?

"Commander? How's he doing?" Joker's voice in her earpiece startled her.

She pushed the reply button and quickly collected herself. "He's going into surgery."

"He'll pull through, Commander. It's Garrus."

Emmalene smiled a small smile at the confidence in Joker's voice. "Yeah."

Emmalene tried to go about her regular commander duties while Garrus was in surgery. She changed into her commander blues and started her report to the Illusive Man on Archangel. When she got to the part where she began explaining how Garrus was injured, she couldn't focus and decided to go down to the med bay to see how everything was going. No one had called her with an update in almost an hour. Her worry tightened her throat and all the muscles in her body.

"Commander," Jacob greeted her as she rounded the elevator. It looked like he was just leaving the med bay.

"Jacob?" she asked his name as they met one another halfway.

"I was just coming to update you. Garrus is stable. They're working on a skin graft for the injury to his face."

"Is he awake?" she asked with a mild urgency.

"Not yet. Mordin asked me to let you know how he was. Garrus Vakarian, right? He helped you fight Saren and the Geth?"

Emmalene nodded as her eyes wandered around the soldier to the med bay doors. "That would be him."

"It'll be an honor to meet him," Jacob's admiration was also an attempt at setting the commander at ease. He could see her concern ran deep for her friend.

"Thanks Jacob," she smiled a small smile.

"You up for a de-brief?"

She sighed. She wasn't, but it needed to happen sooner or later. After all, she wanted to let everyone know Archangel had turned out to be Garrus, her old partner in crime. She also wanted to lay down the law regarding her turian friend: If she heard anything at all about him being mistreated because he was a Turian, they would have her to contend with: without question. She would also reiterate that if it were the other way around, she would go about resolving the issue with the same fervor. No one was to discriminate against one's race on the Normandy. No one.

"Let's get this over with. Will you gather everyone in the conference room Jacob?"

"Of course, Commander," he saluted her before heading off to do as she asked.

Emmalene stood for a few moments longer, looking again at the med bay doors. It felt like torture turning away from where she knew Garrus was undergoing surgery without checking in to see how it was going. But she trusted Dr. Chakwas and Mordin to keep him alive, and turned to meet her crew for the de-brief down in the comm room.

"Commander, I know Garrus took a pretty good hit back on Omega. I just wanted-" Jacob was interrupted by the comm room door opening to reveal a certain turian sharp-shooter.

Emmalene couldn't hide her grin, "Garrus!"

"Heh, you're one tough SOB," Jacob chuckled.

Garrus walked into the room and gently touched at the patch that covered the injured side of his face. "No one would give me a mirror. How bad is it?" he looked to Emmalene.

She crossed her arms over her chest and smiled. "Hell, Garrus. You were always ugly. Just slap some face paint on there and you should be good to go." His laugh filled her heart with a joy she'd been hoping to feel since the moment she watched him gunned down by the gunship.

"Oh, damn it," he laughed but paused as the pain in his face seared. "Don't make me laugh, my face is barely hanging on as it is."

Jacob looked to the Commander, then Garrus, saluting them both and taking his leave of the comm room so they could catch up. Emmalene walked over to Garrus and looked him over. "Looks like you're going to live, yeah?" she asked as she looked up into his beady blue eyes.

"I guess so," he smiled down at the worry on her face. His smile faded as his concern for her floated to the surface of his thoughts. "I'm not so much worried about me, though. Cerberus, Shepard? Are you sure you can trust them? You remember all the sick experiments they were doing?"

"Yeah," she shrugged as she thought a moment on his question. "It's a long story. But I'm glad you're here. I need someone I can trust on this ship."

He thought on the rumors about how she had died. But she was here, so had she really died? Did Cerberus capture her and keep her captive these past two years? His questions spun dizzily in his mind, making him want to sit down with the gravity of it all; of her being there in front of him again.

"You okay?" she asked, reaching out and taking his arm gently, "you look a little woozy?"

"I'm fine," he assured her and composed himself. "And you can always trust me, Shepard."

Emmalene knew she could, but his reassurance of it made her feel good. "I know there's a lot of explaining to do," she offered to talk about it.

"I," he began, pausing as he thought about what exactly there was to explain. The look on her face, though, as she stood there, ready to tell him whatever he needed to know despite how hard that might actually be for her; he didn't want to push her. "Whenever you're ready, Shepard. I know you wouldn't be here if there wasn't a damn good reason to be."

Her smile was sweet and warmed his heart. "Thanks, Garrus." He nodded to her. "So, you okay with this? Joining up with Cerberus?"

"I'm okay with joining you," he emphasized that it was her he trusted.

Again, his words made her so happy inside. "These colonies that are being taken, it's all humans."

"Yeah, I got the jist of it from Dr. Solis when I woke up from surgery. Be it I had a hard time keeping up with what he was saying half of the time," the two chuckled. "I don't really know anything about the Collector's. Do you?"

She shook her head. "Not really. We know they're a nomadic race, or something like that. They're like, black market mad scientists. It's bizarre seeing them, out here in the Terminus Systems. And taking entirecolonies..."

"And Cerberus has leads as to why they're doing this?"

Emmalene turned on him to lay her palms flat on the conference table and lean forward on them. "Cerberus was able to get us onto Freedom's Progress before the Alliance showed up. They're definitely taking humans alive, in some kind of stasis. But we still don't know what for."

"If they're abducting humans in such mass quantities, it can't be for anything less than horrible, I'd assume," he said bleakly.

"Exactly," she agreed. They stood there for a moment before she turned to face him. "I'll send you all the files we have, so you can read up on what we know so far. I'd also like your take on things. I've kind of been in my own head about all of this," she admitted.

He could hear the loneliness and stress in her voice. He nodded. "You got it, Shepard. Well, I'll go try and make myself useful. You can find me down in the main battery if you need me later." He gave her one last friendly smile before turning and leaving the comm room.