Chapter Text
The first thing he feels is… pain.
Searing pain, shooting up his leg. He bites back a grunt with a clenched jaw; his mandibles flutter. It’s dark. Open your eyes, he thinks, and takes a few seconds to realize his eyes are already open. He blinks a few more times, adjusting to the lack of light, finally catching a blinking red dot out of the corner of his eye — the pressure gauge of the Thanix cannon.
He uses that information to situate himself. He’d been… making a run. Towards the beam, right? And then he’d gotten hurt—? Vega had dragged him onto the Normandy for an evac. Had tried to take him med bay, but he’d… well, he’d said no, hadn’t he? Gone to the Main Battery. He’d been— manning the cannon? Yes, that sounded right — had been firing at reapers as the Normandy hit the relay, and then… darkness.
Get up, he thinks, and tries to move. His legs won’t cooperate. He tries to lift his fringe up from metal grate of the battery flooring - it moves an inch off the ground before he collapses back down. He blinks a few more times, and realizes the weapons console is completely detached from battery floor and has collapsed on top of him.
He can get his right arm free. It’s slow work, shifting his shoulder out from under the console. Creaking metal pierces the silence. He’s finally able to press his elbow into the ground, catch the edge of the console in the heel of his hand, and push. It lifts… one inch, another…
The console slips out of his hand and crashes down onto his chest.
This time, he doesn’t hold back the groan of pain. “Argh!” The sound of his own voice surprises him. That cracked a rib, he thinks. Or was it already broken?
It takes a few more tries. He works more slowly. More carefully. Tries to slip out from under the console, instead of lifting it up and over. He becomes acquainted with a few more injuries. His left shoulder appears to be separated or injured at the joint. His sides are aching. Finally, the console thuds on the ground next to him. He tries again to lift himself up. Get up. Get up.
He props himself up on his right elbow. Distantly he realizes that parts of his left arm are exposed to the cool ventilated draft coming in from some unknown source. His armour is completely compromised. Great. He runs through a head to toe scan: Head… concussed, shoulder… dislocated, ribs… cracked, hip… fractured, leg…impaled?
Now that he’s up, he can see the source of the pain that woke him up to begin with. A large piece of the glass of the console had broken off and impaled itself into the upper part of his leg. Blue blood trickles down the inside of his calf. He can barely see the outline of his left foot, bent at an unnatural angle.
Get. Up.
He looks around in the darkness for something to use to prop himself up - he knows he won’t be able to put any weight on that left leg, not until he has a chance to splint the impaled glass and set his foot right. Now that he’s conscious, his head is throbbing, and the darkness is an almost merciful reprieve for his eyes,. He brings a hand up to his forehead where the pain feels particularly intense, and feels a wet slickness beneath his talon. More blood.
Focus. Scanning the ground carefully, he looks for something suitable, and upon discovery of the Black Widow tossed askew just within reach, lets out a short laugh. Unscathed and untouched. It takes a few seconds more for him to snag the strap closer and pull it towards him. Carefully, always carefully, with more tenderness than he had shown his own body, he checks it for any malfunctions, ejects the thermal clip, and props the barrel down as though it were a cane to push himself up.
You’re up. Now what?
The pain is intense. More intense than it had been a second ago. Think! It hurts to think. He drags himself to the entryway of the weapons battery. The door is sealed shut.
“EDI,” he calls out, and at his first words, immediately begins coughing. Blue blood splatters on the floor. “EDI, unlock the door.”
No response. It stands to reason whatever caused them to crash also put EDI offline. You’re on your own.
He leans his right shoulder against the closed door, and gently props the rifle against the wall next to him. A poor excuse for a crutch. With his right hand, he curls his talons around the panel covering at the door and rips it out. It clatters to the floor. The mess of wires beneath the panel might’ve confused a lesser turian, but he was well practiced at manually locking the battery door; had even made a game of it - how long could he delay the person on the other side of the door; what time would one tug of the red wire give him… give them.
Shepard.
“EDI.” He called out again, and the sinking feeling of knowing she wouldn’t answer settles over him. His talons are tangled in the wires. With no discernible light, there is no way of telling which wire was red, which wire was blue. He’d have feel his way out. “EDI, talk to me.” He was lightheaded. He feels something cool and wet trickling down the side of his face, and reaches up to brush it aside with the back of his hand, catching sight of the blood as he digs back into the wires. Some women find facial scars attractive, he’d once said. His left arm is totally numb. “EDI? Wake up.” He’s talking just to hear the sound of his own voice - gravelly, dry, flat. “Wake up EDI…Wake— yes!”
An immediate sense of relief is followed by immediate panic, as Garrus tumble out the main battery and onto the crew deck. Ow.
“Garrus?”
He uses his right hand to push himself up. “Karin?” he call back, hoping the familiar voice of the Normandy’s doctor isn’t a hallucination. The deck is strewn with stasis pods, cracked and crumpled collapsed onto one another like a krogan had gone somersaulting through them. It’s still dark. He can’t see down the end of the hall.
“Garrus, thank God.” The familiar, lilted voice of the doctor echoes around him. “Garrus is back there! James, Steve —”
Garrus allows himself to collapse down onto the ground. He drifts in and out of consciousness. Waits. He isn’t sure how much time has passed by the time Vega and Steve clear the debris. Feels himself get picked up, carried over the walkway. The sound of voices blending into white noise. Distantly, he hears Vega’s voice cut through the static— “Dios, how are you still breathing?”
“Didn’t you hear?” he says, already fading back into unconsciousness. “I’m hard to kill.”
+++
Pain wakes him the second time around, but it’s muted.
He tries to sit up, and immediately feels a hand on his shoulder press him back into the bed.
Bed. Sinking into the pillow - smooth, soft skin glowing in faint blue light, hands on his shoulders, soft lips along his neck, fingers curled around his fringe… Shepard? His eyes fly open.
The bright light immediately stings his eyes, and he winces.
“No,” the same voice from before says - he can’t get a read on the feeling of it. “Not Shepard.” Dr. Chakwas’ same clear voice rings in the room. Had he been speaking out loud? He strains to hear other voices in the distance. “Rest.”
He needs to help. Needs to get up. Needs to find her. Shepard.
He holds onto the thought for as long as he can before falling back to darkness.
+++
It’s pain that wakes him the third time, but a different kind of pain altogether… thirst.
He has faint memories from his last bout of consciousness, and goes more slowly this time. Blinks his eyes open. Hanging wires and scorch marks aside, he immediately recognizes the ceiling of the Normandy medbay. He opens and closes his mouth. His throat is dry. It still hurts to breathe.
“Water?” He croaks out, and immediately, a purple clad figure is at his side, holding a canteen to his lips.
“Better?” Tali asks. Tali. Tali is alive. Garrus nods, and sits up.
In the bed to his right, he sees Javik’s still, but breathing form. Another bed over- Donnelly; he can see the burn marks up and down the engineer’s arm. Two more figures he doesn’t recognize - too bandaged up for him to discern. One figure has a cover pulled over their face. He swallows the lump that suddenly forms in his throat.
“Where are we?” he asks.
“We don’t know exactly… somewhere in Alliance Space. Joker had been aiming for one system over, but something went haywire with the relays…
“How… how did we…?”
“Joker hit the relay to get us out of the blast radius before Shep— before the Crucible was fired.” He pretends not to hear the slip. “We don’t exactly know what happened next - the relay did something I’d never seen before. There was an explosion as we entered the system - fried the cannon, overheated the engine… EDI hasn’t been responding since.” There’s a look in her eye that Garrus can’t place. She swallows and pressed on. “Adams…” she trails off, lowering her voice as she looks over her shoulder at the sheet covered body. “He didn’t make it.” Garrus can hear the hitch in Tali’s voice, but says nothing as she presses on. “If Joker hadn’t nosedived us into the planet we would’ve lost half the ship.”
Garrus closes his eyes and lies back down. Relays don’t explode. The Normandy doesn’t crash. At least - not since the first time. He feels himself floating out into confusion, and tries to ground himself before floating too far.
“How long have I been out?”
“Four days.”
Not too long, he thinks. There’s still time. Time for what? “Reapers?”
His eyes are closed, so he can’t see Tali suddenly hold herself still, but he feels the shift. “None that we’ve seen.”
He’s a coward. He’ll ask every question except the question he wants to ask - needs to ask - most of all. “Is… do we know…?”
“Comms are still offline.”
Garrus truly doesn’t deserve Tali’zorah vas Normandy’s grace in this moment, but he finds a way to accept it. “Okay.” He whispers. He can feel his face heating up. Keep it together.
He sits up fully. He ignores Tali’s protest, ignores the searing pain in his sides, his lungs, his head. He sees Steve Cortez walk past the window of the medbay, sees Samantha Traynor sitting next to Adams’ covered body, tears streaming down her face, sees Chakwas fussing over Donnelly in the corner. Garrus can feel the sting of the medigel that was applied recently to his temple. Tali looks completely and utterly like Tali - curious, prodding, careful. There’s still hope. There’s still hope.
“Anything to eat?”
Tali laughs through her tears, shakes her head, says something about already having eaten the good dextro rations, and allows him this. Allows him this hope.
It’s another few days before Chakwas will let him leave the medbay. He’s seen her work bigger miracles in less time, but with the ship’s systems offline, the healing process had been slower than he was used too, and Chakwas wasn’t taking any chances without her ability to rely on EDI for diagnostics. He has a whole host of new scars, and a particularly formidable one that runs up along his left leg. His joints are stiff. It still hurts to breathe. But he can walk without falling over. He can talk without sounding like he’s near death. He can think about the Normandy’s firing algorithm without his brain feeling like it’s caving in on itself. Progress.
His first instinct is to go to Liara. If the Shadow Broker didn’t have a handle on their next move, no one would. But Tali says that Liara had only come out of her room once since the crash - talked to Joker for ten minutes, and had gone back inside. He thinks about going to find Joker — but he reconsiders once he reaches the ladder shaft, remembering Chakwas’ hushed conversation with Traynor - Jeff isn’t eating— do you think you could get him to—? If Tali’s word was anything to go by, the rest of the crew wasn’t much of an improvement— Vega, Cortez, Daniels, Mess Sergeant Joyce, Satine and Krueger from Deck 4… all frozen in time, lying in wait. A ship without a captain.
That only left one person.
He steels himself, stumbles past the elevator, and into the Starboard observatory. The chairs had been righted, but he can see some places where the shock of the crash had caused the room to shift - furniture not quite where it had been previously, scratch marks on the walls. He feels glass crunch beneath his boots - remnants of a broken drinking glass. There, leaning up against the shuttered metal where the windows used to be, is Kaidan, shoulders drawn up to his ears, completely still.
“Major.”
Kaidan doesn’t turn around. “Glad to see you’re alright Garrus.”
“I can brief you on the ship’s status,” he says, cutting right to the chase. “Weapons and comms are still offline, but life support is stable. EDI is unresponsive. All — all onboard personnel are accounted for.”
His subvocals flare with all the feeling he’s repressing. But he’s satisfied with the tenor of his voice - the lack of waver in his delivery. He stares at the back of Kaidan’s head. Waits a beat.
No answer.
Garrus presses on. “Daniels is a suitable choice for Chief Engineer. Adams prepared her well—” he thinks about the sheet covered body in the medbay, about his and Adams’ brief conversations in the mess hall, how apologetic he’d been to Garrus for not joining them on the Collector mission— You’ve done more for humans than most humans, Garrus, he’d said, and he supposes it’s true what they say — that death makes brothers of us all.
No answer still. “Major—”
“Don’t—” Kaidan’s voice cuts through suddenly, and sounds… pained. “Don’t do that.”
Garrus grits his teeth. “Do what?”
“Pretend like you’re— like this is normal.”
Garrus clenches his fist, digging his talons into his hand. “I’m not pretending anything, Major Alenko.”
“Would you stop?” Kaidan turns on him. His eyes are red. The man clearly hasn’t slept. Garrus doesn’t care.
“Is that an order?”
Kaidan shakes his head, looks down at his feet, can’t even meet Garrus’ eyes. “I can’t be what you want me to be right now. Just—space. Give some space. Please.” Garrus can hear the plea in his voice, the desperation.
“No.”
“Garrus, I’m not her, I can’t—”
“You are a Council Spectre. You are also Major in the Alliance navy. This ship is an Alliance ship.” His subvocals vibrate with an intensity of insubordination that harkens back to his C-Sec days. “We are crashed on an unknown planet in the middle of a war, which, as far as we know, is still going on.” He exhales a shaky breath. “She is not here. You are. You’re in charge, whether you like it or not. Now act like it.”
Kaidan doesn’t say anything, but eventually, looks up to meet Garrus’ gaze. Garrus, ever the vigilante, holds it for a second too long. Kaidan’s expression doesn’t change, but Garrus thinks he can see something shift in his eyes. There is a small part of him in that moment that wishes he were on a turian vessel. Turians wouldn’t stop and mourn, not until they were certain the job was done… but perhaps that would be even worse; continuing like nothing was wrong, when she was — is — everything.
He moves past Garrus, giving a wide berth. What they have has always been fragile - they had never fully recovered since their heated exchange on Horizon all those years ago. Garrus leans away as he walks past, and exhales slowly. He hears Kaidan signal for a full roll call on Deck 2 behind him.
“EDI?” He tries again. He knows it won’t work. He doesn’t even know why he’s calling for her, other than for exactly what Kaidan accused him of: to pretend that somehow, everything is exactly as it was.
Curious, how the broken glass had made its way into a room that was otherwise almost perfectly set. He thinks of way Kaidan holds himself, and though it’s hard to picture, Garrus finds himself wondering what he might’ve thrown across the room, if given the chance.
The quiet weighs heavy. He turns, follows the sound of the Major’s voice, and prays to Spirits he’d never believed in to begin with.
+++
It takes a while for him to be useful — he’s still only just able to put weight on his left leg. Kaidan assigns him to food inventory — a thankless but important task. It takes him the better part of two days to fully gather all the water, dextro and levo rations available, and divvy them off to ensure they last the better part of the next year, if needed. He shakes away the implications of having access to a year’s worth of rations before he can dwell on it too deeply.
Then there’s the matter of figuring out where they are. A crew trained to be reliant on navigational tech isn’t one to frequently opt for manual star charting, and it takes a couple days worth of effort, with help from Traynor, to use the galaxy maps on hand to chart their path, cross-referenced with the actual stars in the night sky — to identify their location. The jungle world they'd crashed into is nothing he remembers, so it’s almost laughable when Traynor finally plots enough data points to exclaim, “Oh.. of course, we’re in the Exodus Cluster - Utopia System, if I’m not mistaken, making this…Eden Prime?”
Of course it’s Eden Prime.
A little more geo-mapping, and it becomes clear that just because it’s Eden Prime, doesn’t mean it’s familiar territory - they’ve crashed approximately a month-long hike away from the colony, and without reliable juice to get the shuttle going, it would take more resources than it was worth to try and find whatever remained of the humans on this planet.
Still, there was something almost comforting about crashing onto Eden Prime - the place it had all started. Garrus couldn’t help but hope for more things to go back to what they once were.
It’s another few days after that that Kaidan starts sending scouting parties out - a little further each day, to ensure their position is secure. Garrus volunteers every time, and Kaidan seems almost grateful to let him go once he can walk, to minimize the amount of time they have to spend avoiding meeting each other’s eye.
A week’s worth of patrols turns up a week’s worth of plant samples, which might explain why he and Vega almost miss entirely the geth rocket trooper unit in the middle of the jungle.
Vega is the one that sees it first. He holds up a fist; the same practiced Alliance hold signal Garrus had seen time and time again, and nods ten paces ahead, into the thicket. Garrus sees it now - the chrome red plating, contrasting with the green vegetation. His mind is racing. Geth? On Eden Prime? Whose sick game of deja-vu is this?
Vega pulls out the heavy pistol, inhales, and exhales as he fires the warning shot. The sound reverberates through the brush. The body is unmoving, but the shape is unmistakable; the curve of its spine, the sling of the gun - Garrus had shot the lights out of enough flashlight heads to know a geth when he saw one. But here it was… unmoving.
“What do you think is wrong with it?” Vega asks, cocking his head back at Garrus.
Garrus shrugs. It’s either dead, and they have nothing to worry about, or it’s alive, and they’ll find out soon enough.
They approach slowly. Garrus, ever the sniper, focuses all his attention in his feet. Tread lightly, Bigfoot, he hears in the back of his mind, and a sudden pang fills his chest. What’s a Bigfoot? he’d asked, and even over the radio he’d heard her knowing smile, heard her soft, dry laugh, watched her lithe form step through sand and snow and storm, leaving no trace behind, as if she’d never even been there to begin with—
“It’s dead.” Vega cuts through the reverie.
Garrus follows. He uses the butt end of his sniper to turn the geth over, so it’s on its back. He kicks the rocket launcher away. James is right. The geth is unmoving, completely limp. But no shot marks, hardly any scuffs… completely and totally intact. But how did it get here? How did it die? Not to mention — where was the rest of its squad? Geth rarely travel alone…
“I’m gonna scout ahead— I’ll radio Normandy, make sure they’re on the lookout.”
Garrus nods absentmindedly, and bends down to get a closer look at the body. He felt a sudden pang in his chest, thinking of Legion. He can practically hear its voice now — This platform is available for further inquiry. He runs his tongue over his teeth. The photoreceptor is definitely non functional, and the outer shell is lightly scratched. For all the times he listened to Tali ramble on about geth this and geth that, he didn’t know the first thing about how these damn things operated. Where would a person even begin calibrating this thing?
“Uh, Scars? Better have a look at this.”
Garrus snaps his head up. James had already wandered a little ways away, into the thicket. He carefully steps over the body, and follows the Lieutenant’s footsteps, sniper at the ready. James’ silhouette stands in the open clearing, where the trees break away. Whatever he’d seen had brought him to a complete standstill.
“Spirits.” The word comes out in a breath.
Scattered across the open meadow, a hundred geth lay bare, lifeless under Eden Prime’s sun.
+++
“It’s more than, they just stopped working. I can’t explain it — pass me those pliers,” Tali tucks the screwdriver she’s using under her armpit, and wraps his fingers around the pliers as Garrus hands them off. “It’s not just that the unit is offline, it’s… Keelah, there we go, the panel was fused shut.” Garrus eyes Tali, elbow deep in one of the geth fighters he and Vega had brought back. Tools are splayed over the overgrown green landscape. The SR-II glistens behind her. If he tunes out the noise of the rest of the crew sticking the latter half of the ship back together, it’s almost like it’s just another day on the Normandy.
The cover panel on the back of the geth’s shoulder goes flying off to the side, and lands with a thud somewhere in the grass. “See - look here - even dead geth have a live wire connection to the network.”
Garrus peers over to see where Tali is pointing - a mess of wires runs parallel to the synthetic muscle tissue; transparent tubes that meet in a hub at the base of its neck, and then separate out and disappear into up into its head.
“When geth are killed, it short circuits their connection to protect the rest of the network, but it’s always able to be turned back on. You’d see it here,” she taps the hub, held together in a sealed grey cap. “It’s what allowed geth to repurpose injured units, and retain the memories of the programs running in each platform. Even when they’re inactive, they’re always collecting data. You flick the switch—” she follows one wire down to the base of the unit’s spine, digs her fingers into the grooves, and twists.
Nothing happens.
She looks up to meet Garrus’ eyes, “It’s supposed to re-establish the connection to upload the data. You’d see some sign of a connection - a pulse running through the unit. A light, a vibration… something.”
“Couldn’t it be that it’s just this one’s ability to connect that’s compromised?” Garrus asks, leaning back on his hands in the grass.
“Well, sure,” Tali says. “If you hit anything hard enough, it stops working. If you blow it up with a shotgun, or incinerate its armour, but… nothing’s technically wrong with it,” she nods over the length of the geth - this one a dark grey, a sniper. “It’s not compromised in any way.” Garrus cocks his head at her, surrounded by scattered geth parts and tools, and gives Tali a look. He can faintly see her rolling her eyes under her helmet. “You know what I mean. It wasn’t compromised before Vega handed me a bunch of dead geth and told me to start taking them apart.”
Another lifetime ago, Garrus might’ve smirked and pushed the joke further. Now, he just nods for her to continue.
“And even if it was just a malfunction in this individual unit - it doesn’t explain how the exact same malfunction was replicated six more times over.” She nods back to the five geth units laid to rest in the grass, face up, arms at their sides. Their positioning is intentional - careful, even delicate to Garrus. Again, he doesn’t vocalize it, instead turning back to face her. “Geth don’t… they don’t make mistakes like that. Not with their own design. Not in my lifetime.”
“Then what is it?”
Tali swallows. “I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong, but, I think it’s a problem with the network itself.”
“What, like it’s offline?”
“Like it’s… gone. Like there’s no connection because… because there’s nothing to connect to.”
Garrus is quiet. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth.
Tali fidgets with her hands for a moment, and then decidedly, gently, turns the geth over to lay it on its back. “Garrus, are we going to talk about—“
“Comms are back online!”
Traynor sticks her head out the airlock to call them back inside. Garrus stands up fast, Tali hot on his tail as they clamber up the side of the Normandy using the makeshift rope ladder they’d slung down the side, and back onto the bridge.
He can hear the static crackle over the ship’s intercom as soon as he passes through the threshold of the airlock. “All quantum entanglement tra—tra—-transmissions are being bypassed through Alliance Command, authorization code Delta, Echo, 6, 8, 3, 4—” the voice is completely unrecognizable, laden with static. A far more familiar voice cuts through, “Traynor, divert 22.46 percent of the weapons power to the communications relay.” Liara’s unmistakable voice, always measured, echoes overhead. It’s the first time he’s heard her voice since the crash. He can spot others on the crew deck, all falling silent - as silent as when he first woke - as Traynor rushes back into the War Room and disappears out of sight.
The static grows louder, louder still, then drops completely, and then—
“This is a recorded communication from Admiral Hackett of the Fifth Fleet, authorization code Bravo, 4, 6, 2, Alpha, 1, 7. The Reapers are destroyed, I repeat, the Reapers are—”
He can feel his blood pumping through his veins as the Normandy crew immediately reacts - shocks of disbelief, awe, excitement — Lieutenant Kreuger inexplicably falls to her knees, buries her face in her hands, and starts crying. Garrus strains to hear over the noise, and is deeply grateful when Joker, of all people, stumbles from the cockpit to snap “Quiet!” As quickly as the noise had risen, it falls. Hackett’s warbled voice makes it cuts into the silence.
“… by FTL through known flight routes. Mass relays are no longer a viable means of travel. We will continue to provide updates on this channel as they become available. I repeat, reports of damaged mass relays across Alliance Space have been confirmed. For any ships in flight, proceed only by FTL through known flight routes. Mass relays are no longer a…”
Mass relays no longer… what? Information was incoming at a faster rate than he could process. He’d known of nothing — well nothing, short of a rocket-powered asteroid — to take out a mass relay. For not just one, but several across an entire sector to be out of commission…
“…All impaired ships within FTL flight distance of Earth are to report to Lunar base for maintenance. All operational ships are to report to the following coordinates for further instructions— RA: 20h41..”
He holds his breath a few seconds longer, then exhales as the message repeats in full. He wonders distantly if there are turian communications being transmitted through Alliance space - hell, every race in the galaxy had been hovering over Earth not two weeks ago, surely if Liara could get Alliance communications up, the rest of the fleets would come in only a matter of time—
Tali’s hand on his shoulder brings him back to focus. It wasn’t damn near enough, but it was something.
A full moon cycle later, and they’re still on Eden Prime.
Garrus has bitten his tongue enough times to draw blood at Alenko’s daily debriefings. He is objectively aware that Alenko’s ability to convey calm where there is none is part of what makes him a good leader, and exactly the reason why Garrus is not currently in charge. He finds himself pulled momentarily into memories of being Archangel, his brief stint at leading, in all of its failures, and bites his tongue harder still.
Still, reasonable patience aside, Garrus wishes that the need for urgency could be vocalized. Daily updates from Alliance space are coming through at 0800 hours Galactic Standard Time.
It’s not that the daily Alliance updates aren’t useful; they at least indicate how Alliance resources are being delegated: some assigned to space traffic control, others to Mass Effect repairs, some to interfere in some of the plots of violence that had emerged in the immediate aftermath of the war — gangs and slavers looking to capitalize on the chaos. He tells himself that yes, it is helpful to know that geth units are down all over the galaxy. He wants to know that whatever - whoever - had wiped out the reapers had seemingly taken anything infused with reaper tech down along with it.
What did you do Shepard? He thinks, remembering their conversations in the battery from what seemed like a lifetime ago. Ten billion over here die so twenty billion over there can live. He remembered her insistence at wanting — needing — to see things differently; her almost annoying ability to respond to his grimness with something approximating nobility every damn time. Is that what it came down to, in the end, Shepard? he wonders. The ruthless calculus of war?
Still, there was nothing about how Earth was managing to feed the thousands of alien fleets stranded in Alliance Space. Nothing about the status of other planets across the galaxy. Nothing about survivors.
Why would there be, Garrus tells himself, always with the tinge of bitterness. She was just one soldier.
But she wasn’t, he would retort to himself in the same breath. Yes, everyone had lost someone. Yes, he was desperate to know if Solana had survived, to know about the losses suffered by the turian fleet, to know if anyone had survived on the Citadel… but Shepard… Shepard was the one who made it possible to wonder.
And so Joker, Traynor and Cortez go full steam ahead with the Normandy’s repairs. Javik - a surprisingly capable field medic - helps Chakwas tend to the lingering injuries of the rest of the crew. Tali and Daniels try their damnedest to make the engine sing again. Vega finally removes EDI’s mobile platform from the cockpit - limp and lifeless - and lays it to rest temporarily in the Normandy’s drive core. Garrus reluctantly allows all power to be diverted away from the cannon. Kaidan leads with infuriating calm.
But Garrus can feel the question thrumming beneath their skins; a collective buzz of static between them each time the Alliance communications are hailed — is she alive, is she alive, is she alive…
It takes everything he has not to wonder out loud. Garrus remembers learning that human saying — ignorance is bliss — but that isn’t quite right. It’s not a matter of bliss. It’s a matter of survival — and not just his. He can see it in each of their eyes - the way they throw themselves into the work of the Normandy, as if it were at her command. The way that each of them look over their shoulder, subconsciously, waiting for her to do her rounds. The way they shift when it’s Kaidan’s voice that utters commands over the comms, and not hers. For all the chaos and war and destruction that surrounded her, she was — for them — steady as clockwork. The thrumming heart of her crew. The reason they were all here to begin with.
So no, it’s not that ignorance is bliss. It’s that knowledge is pain. And haven’t they all had enough pain to last a hundred lifetimes over?
+++
They hold a service for Adams.
It was the right thing to do — to bring closure, or peace, or to help the crew process the billions dead across the galaxy, but in the end, the decision comes down to resources. And the resources that keep Adams’ body in cryo are resources that are needed elsewhere to get the Normandy flying and get the rest of them home.
Another byproduct of ruthless calculus.
Vega and Javik — both seemingly desperate for an opportunity to get their hands dirty, spend the better part of the morning scanning for a good patch of grass, and dig. Their shovels are not exactly standard issue - broken ship parts taped together to shift dirt around, but they do the trick just fine. By early afternoon, Greg Adams’ resting place is ready to receive him.
Kaidan doesn’t talk about the service like it’s mandatory — ever the conscientious leader, he gives people an out. But the only one who isn’t present is Liara. Even Joker - with help from Tali - stumbles his way to the makeshift grave, wincing and pale under a slowly setting sun.
Vega, Javik, Chakwas, and Cortez bring up the rear. There are no caskets on board, so instead, they’ve used one of the stasis pods to carry him. Garrus had heard how he’d died from Tali — she’d seen it first hand — knew that in his final moments, he’d been burned alive trying to prevent the engine core from flooding. According to Tali, whatever he’d done had likely saved everyone else’s life. A hero’s death. The expression on his face - Garrus observes- shows little sign of struggle or pain. He suspects Chakwas had done her best to clean up the scars and burns, to give him at least a semblance of peace in death.
Adams is lowered into the ground. The four soldiers step away, retreating into the line with the rest of the crew.
For a moment, no one speaks. All that can be heard is the faintest wisp of Eden Prime’s breeze.
Then, Chakwas clears her throat, and steps forward.
“Gregory Adams was the most loyal man I ever knew,” she says. “He was an Alliance man, through and through. He was brilliant, hardworking, dedicated to keeping his crew flying, and in turn, keeping them alive.” Garrus just barely catches the hitch in her breath because he’s listening for it. “We were his family. And I know he was grateful to be with his family in the end.”
She pauses, and then steps back into the line.
Garrus feels Tali shift beside him. After another moment, she steps forward in turn.
“When I first met Adams, I was just a child, trying to prove myself to my people. I was… hesitant, coming onto an Alliance vessel. I knew what people thought of me, of quarians.” She intertwines her fingers, and bows her head. “But Adams didn’t care where I came from. He showed me kindness, and trust. He made the Normandy feel like home.” The air takes a different shape around them. The breeze picks up, and the silence feels far less empty. “I will miss him deeply… Keelah Se’lai Adams.”
When Tali steps back, and Daniels steps forward, Garrus closes his eyes and leans into the breeze. He thinks back to his mother’s funeral, back on Palaven a month before the Reapers had hit; how part of him had been heartbroken to say goodbye, how a deeper part of him still was relieved she’d passed before the war had arrived at their doorstep.
So how is he supposed to feel now, with Adams’ death coming just as the war passes through? What does it mean, to die at the end of it all, when there’s nothing left to fight for?
The Alliance crew step forward in a soldier’s salute, and for exactly seventeen sleepless nights Garrus has held the thoughts at bay but now seeing her crew lined up in Alliance blues the floodgates in his mind’s eye open and all he can think feel hear is Shephard Shephard Shephard Shephard Shephard Shephard--
Kaidan’s voice cuts through the reverie — “It’s been an honour and privilege to serve with you, Adams,” he says, and Garrus knows now more than ever that he’s far from ready to say goodbye.
+++
That night after the service, the crew lingers a little too long in the mess hall remembering Adams. They swap memories as easily as cards, passed between familiar, careful, fragile hands. The crew deck had almost been repaired in full, and from certain angles, it almost looks like it had never been broken at all. As the night wanes, Garrus sits with the group, not actively participating in the remembrance himself, but is nevertheless grateful for a good reason to turn down the offer of sleep as, one-by-one, the crew departs, until finally he is left alone in the mess hall, surrounded by the silence of the Normandy.
He’s staring down at an empty glass when she finally emerges — and it had been so long that he’d almost forgotten she was on the ship to begin with. Liara, looking like nothing short of hell, exhaustion so deeply engrained in her face that her skin has taken on a quality more grey than blue, walks out — waits for Garrus to meet her eyes — then walks back into her quarters. Garrus waits to see if the door would close behind her — thinking maybe she hadn’t meant for him to see her — but when it’s still left open a minute later, he takes that as his queue to follow.
Liara, he knows second hand through Tali, had refused to emerge since the crash. Her voice over the intercom a week ago had been the first any other than Chakwas had heard of her— and the Doctor had only managed to work her way in for a physical only on the threat of powering down the entire deck. Garrus takes the opportunity of each step to work out what it means that she’s showing her face now, to figure out how different words feel in his mouth, to work out what it is he has to offer — sympathy? praise? camaraderie? He has very little to go on, and she has very little to choose from.
He’s ready to suggest that he go get Tali, or even Traynor - both of whom were likely better suited for whatever interaction was about to unfold - but as soon as he turns the corner to her quarters, Garrus feels a sudden lump in his throat. His heart beats loudly through his carapace. He has a momentary out-of-body experience, imagining what his vitals would look like through his visor, as he follows Liara’s silhouette deeper into the room. Some of the screens were still showing error messages - but most were online; video feeds of places that Garrus mostly didn’t recognize— though that hardly meant much; nothing was recognizable in the aftermath of war.
On her six, he watches her take a slow breath, before turning to face him, and immediately, Garrus knows. He knows, and he wants to run. Run before it’s real. Run back towards ignorance. But the connection between his body and mind are severed. He hears her door close behind him.
“I have to tell you first,” she says. Run. Run, damn it! “I— I promised…” she starts, then shakes her head, thinking better of it, instead turning to the screen, pressing a few keys on the console, and gesturing to the feed.
All the videos cut suddenly, and then, just as suddenly, the centre screens are filled with a single image… the feed is pixelated and unclear, and for a moment there’s no sound - just an unrecognizable human face— male — filling the entirety of all 9 screens like a disjointed puzzle. Suddenly it shifts, and the same male is visible again, from a different angle — he can see now - talking to an older man who Garrus also does not recognize, apart from the fact that they are both Alliance. The feed is pulling from a camera in the upper right corner of the room. He thinks about his time at C-Sec - about when and how cameras were placed, thinks about the ironic frivolity of Liara reconnecting to dormant security cameras after a galaxy-ending war.
The first man is younger and armoured - helmet tucked under his arm. Garrus would put him in his early 20s, dark haired, dark skinned, looking uncomfortable and out of place. The second is older, deep set lines in his face, balding, sitting at his desk, looking up at the young soldier.
There’s still no sound, and then Liara fiddles with the console, and the sound cuts in suddenly, slightly off-beat with the footage, like it’s being pulled from a different source. He doesn’t have enough time to wonder how she’s managed it, instead opting to strain and listen through the static.
“— take at least two more days to clear the sector, sir, but we should be able to keep to the directed schedule,” the younger man says.
“Good work Lieutenant,” the older one says, before leaning in and dropping his voice to a whisper - almost out of habit, even though no one else appears to be in the room. Lee leans in to follow suit. “And can we continue to count on your discretion?”
“Yes, absolutely sir. Only myself and Miller were there when we found her sir, and we— well, we followed protocol—”
The older man waves to cut the younger man off. “I’m relieved to hear that Lee. And I want to reassure you that the Board didn’t come by this decision easily, but given the state of things, and how… fragile things are right now, we thought it best to—” he cuts himself off, and shakes his head. “Regardless, I’m deeply saddened that she died shortly after you discovered her. Perhaps had we found her sooner—”
The younger man — Lee — nods, then hesitates. “Sir, if I may ask…”
The older man leans back in his chair - his grizzled face maintaining a neutral expression. “Speak freely, Lieutenant.”
The man hesitates a moment longer before proceeding. “It’s just that… well, Miller and I both, actually, think that it might help to be able to acknowledge the Commander’s… um, status— only, only to help the troops move on. It’s been hard to recover so many bodies, and for there to be no survivors, people are losing sight of what we accomplished, you know? And there’s so much death. I just, I mean, um, it just… might help. To bring closure.”
“I know where you’re coming from,” the man says, standing up to put a hand on the soldier’s shoulder. “But you need to understand — Shepard wasn’t just a war hero. She was just about the only thing holding this intergalactic alliance together. And as long as we have every alien under the sun parked a click away from Earth, we need the hope that their reason for being here is still out there. Do you understand what I’m saying son?”
In the feed, and the younger man nods, steps back, and salutes. A soldier’s response. Garrus can barely suppress the vibrating of his subharmonics, almost missing the last exchange—
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. Soon will come the time when we’ll need to rally around a martyr instead of a hero. And when that time comes, we’ll have Shepard—”
And before Garrus can begin to process those last words, the feed clicks off into black.
Shepard had told him once what dying was like, when they’d laid together, fingers entwined, looking up at the stars through the window in the roof of her cabin. Like taking in too much air, but still being unable to breathe, she’d said. Like feeling as though you’re swimming to the surface, and watching the surface get further away. Like lighting your lungs on fire, revelling in the burn - because feeling something was a sign you were still alive - and, quite suddenly, feeling nothing.
A lot like this, then.
You’ve got to get out of here!
“Garrus?” he hears. But Garrus is frozen in this moment. Tries to cling onto the fire in his lungs for a little bit longer.
No matter what happens here, know that I love you.
He desperately reaches out for anger — whatever anger he can muster, floating just out of arm’s reach — but all he finds is grief.
Just like old times.
“She… she wanted you to know. She asked me to make sure you knew, whatever happened…”
There’s no Shepard without Vakarian.
Garrus finally looks away from the screen down to Liara, tears springing out at the corners of her eyes. Garrus wonders, sometime between his heart shattering and him falling to his knees, what it would be like to cry.
You’ll never be alone.
Liara kneels in front of him, and reaches out for his hands.
He lets her.
Goodbye Garrus.
What comes next isn’t tears. But it’s close enough.
+++
Someone had been taking care of her cabin.
Garrus can tell immediately when he walks in. The chair at the desk had been righted. The data pads had been stacked - edges all aligned next to the computer monitor. The display case with the ship models was cracked open - but all the ships were in their proper place, all except for the Reaper model, which was resting on the desk; one of its legs had broken off and was hanging by a thread. The irony is unmistakable. He peers into the hamster cage, and finds it still squeaking.
Further in, Garrus eyes the empty tank — the fish hadn’t made it it seems, but someone had done the courtesy of removing them from their watery grave. The two inexplicable wine glasses that she had never used, resting on their coasters. Her old helmet, her framed dog tags, the husk head that shrieked when you got too close — all in their rightful place. He shakes his head at the sight of it, remembers echoes of the conversation they’d had when she’d showed it to him — Spirits, why the hell would you bring that thing on board? — It makes me laugh! Don't you care about my psychological well-being?
He closes the gap to the nightstand, to more closely inspect the newest addition to the room — the framed photo from their last night on the Citadel. He swallows the lump that forms in his throat, picking up the photo to bring it closer, brushing a talon against the glass cover, remembering how Miranda had insisted on multiple attempts to get them all facing at the camera, but still, inevitably, she and Garrus would orient towards each other. Each and every time.
Garrus sits on the bed, lets the mournful warble of his subharmonics ring out in the empty room. He thinks about their conversations — about family, fears, the future. Thinks about the way she moved in the battlefield, the blue flash of her biotics punctuated with the sound of a shotgun. Thinks about the feeling of her - not just the physicality of her, but the presence of her, the feeling of Shepard walking into a room.
He thinks, they’d never firmed up the protocol for goodbyes.
“All crew members, report to the bridge,” comes Traynor’s voice from the intercom. Garrus places the photo back on the nightstand, rises from the bed, and makes his way to the door.
At the door, he pauses, and suddenly turns on his heel to grab the Reaper ship model, and, in a sudden wave of fury, roars as he throws it down onto the ground, shattering it into tiny fragments across the floor.
She had insisted that every ship had its place in her collection, that every ship she’d ever interacted with had a soul; by self-admission, her take on ships was the closest she’d ever come to spirituality. Just because they shot at me once or twice, doesn’t mean I should discriminate, she’d insist, shielding her geth dreadnought model from Garrus’ skeptic glare. She would’ve been furious to see even one of them shattered in this way.
What does it matter, what she would’ve felt, Garrus thinks, stepping over the broken pieces towards the elevator. She’s dead.
+++
The night before they’re set to leave, Garrus is sitting out on the grass, under the looming silhouette of the Normandy’s shadow. He’d carried his weight with repairs and maintenance, and when Liara had shared the news of Shepard, the crew had been gracious enough to give him his space. Still, he felt at least somewhat admonished, taking up space on the ship, forcing the crew to navigate around his grief, when they had grief of their own to carry. After all, he struggles to remind himself, she isn’t just his to mourn.
So he’s taken to setting himself up outside when his shifts were done, to give his grief room to breathe. Still, he’d never explicitly said he never wanted company. He supposes that’s at least in part why Joker bothers to make his way over, out of the ship’s airlock, down the makeshift steps, and on the ground next to Garrus.
“Do turians dream?” Joker asks, after a moment, looking out ahead into the dimming forest before them.
Garrus had exchanged probably less than ten words with Joker since they’d crashed, knowing that Joker had plenty of mourning to do himself, with EDI gone, all efforts to bring her back online coming up futile. So he does his part now, and helps to carry the weight. Repairs and maintenance are not just a thing that ones does with ships; and after all, Shepard always said a ship is only as good as its pilot.
“Sometimes,” he says carefully. “We don’t sleep as much as humans. So, not as much opportunity, I guess.”
Joker nods. “It’s the sort of thing I could’ve asked her,” he says, after a long moment. “She had an answer for everything.” Garrus thinks of asking which ‘her’ he’s referring to, but then decides, it doesn’t matter. Both hold true. And neither are here.
The silence extends between them, a drawn out, comfortable silence.
“Where will you go?” Joker asks, finally, shifting carefully to tuck his knees to his chest.
Garrus hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess, to find my sister? My father? If they’re still out there.” The long shadow of the Normandy passes over Joker’s face. “What about you?”
Joker shrugs. “My family’s gone.” Garrus remembers, distantly, Shepard conveying as much to him, in one of their late night talks. “So I guess, wherever they send her,” he nods back to the ship behind him. “That’s where I’ll be.”
Garrus nods. He understands, and also, if he’s honest with himself, he’d admit — he’s a little envious. Jealous, that Joker could always follow a part of EDI. But also, he’s grateful, that Shepard had made sure, even in her final moments, that he’d be one of the first to know that she was gone. She’d known him, known that he’d follow her until he was certain. Of course, she’d done what she could to bring him peace.
“No one else stuck with Shepard, from the beginning to the end,” Joker says. “Not like us.”
Finally, Garrus turns to face him, and is surprised to find that Joker’s voice hadn’t betrayed the tears streaming down his cheeks.
His voice is thick in response. “Guess we have good instincts.”
Joker lets out a snort. “Yeah. Or terrible ones.”
The corner of Garrus’ mouth twitches.
“She’d want us to find a way to move on,” Joker says, finally. “Think we can find a way to do that?”
Garrus looks up. The sun had fully disappeared behind the tree line; streaked across the sky are hues of deep blue. “Maybe,” he says. And for Joker’s sake, he tries to mean it.
+++
It takes them the better part of three months to travel back to Earth by FTL.
They enter Alliance Space as heroes. Each crew member is honoured with the Star of Terra.
They make empty promises they know they won’t keep: that they’ll stay in touch. That they’ll be there for each other as they rebuild their home worlds. That there was more keeping them together than the indomitable will of Jane Shepard.
Tali rejoins with the the remnants of the quarian fleet. Javik charters a flight to deep space. Liara disappears in the shadows. The humans go where the Alliance sends them.
It takes them six months to rebuild the first mass relay, and another six months to make sure it works.
Garrus tries to remember what it means to be a good turian. Resolves to go where he’s needed. Tries to keep his half-promise to move on.
He tries. Spirits, he tries.