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When Shepard wakes, it’s quietly. Quiet, but shaky; the aftershocks of dreams still vibrate through her temples and threaten to pull sick up her throat.
Her gaze casts to the armchair, empty opposing the bed. The sick she pushed back down settles low in her belly, thick like disappointment. Funny, how quickly she got used to it.
She sits up to sigh into her hands, knees on her thighs, back bowed. Exhaustion is less a feeling these days and more of a uniform, heavy with too many medals. With pressure. The smallest part of her wishes she could just take it off, but she knows she can’t. Not when there’s still so much to be done.
The clock flashes at her bedside. It’s the middle of the night cycle: too early to expect coffee and too late to just take a pill. Her temple throbs. She needs to be sleeping.
Despite that little fact, she pushes herself up, makes her way to the bathroom. She needs to wet her throat, rid it of the rot that seems to coat her mouth. She’s so tired, so uniform-heavy. She cups her hands and brings water from the sink to her face until it soaks the collar of her shirt.
The faucet squeaks like nails on a chalkboard as Shepard looks up into the mirror. She’s pale. Her chin’s purple with bruises, dotted red by a scabbing follicle from which she picked a budding black hair until the skin tore and bled.
Another squeak, and another splash of freezing water finds its way to her face.
The bed still doesn’t look very inviting as she emerges from the bathroom. She thinks of how her feet will chill beneath the cold sheets. The memory of ash and smoke is still thick on her tongue. The bile rises.
Shepard soon finds herself in the elevator, punching in the request for deck three.
With EDI able to run most processes, third shift on a ship that’s already down to a skeleton crew feels abandoned. She’s glad for it; her crew getting more rest in times like these is valuable. But it doesn’t make it any less strange to hear the sound of her own breaths in what's typically a bustling crew mess.
Still, she takes a pause to listen for movement, voices, anything coming from the crew quarters or adjacent decks. Hearing none, she darts around the partition into the crew mess proper.
Med-bay’s lights are dimmed—thankfully. Karin Chakwas has always been dedicated to her work; it wouldn’t have surprised Shepard at all if she were still sitting, working hard at her desk. Especially considering the patient she’d have been locking down.
Special ops’ precision guiding her way, Shepard crosses to the bay doors. The lock flares orange at first—sealed for privacy, of course—but quickly recognizes captain’s clearance and shifts green. Whisper-quiet, the doors swish open.
One bed’s occupied.
Garrus turns his head to meet her gaze, his face lit up in soft blue from both his visor and the datapad in his hand. Of course, he isn’t resting. Of course not.
“Ah,” he says, one mandible flickering in a pocket of darkness, “I was just about to—”
“Promises, promises,” she cuts him off. Fond, her head shakes as she crosses to the back of the room and the bed he lays in. “But I didn’t come down here to catch you running up overtime hours,” she says, plucking the datapad from his hand. He lets it go in a show of attrition.
“No?”
With another shake of her head, she balances the datapad on the edge of the neighboring bed. Her free hand slides to the back of her neck, digging into the knots that seem to have permanently seared into the muscles there.
Garrus answers the unspoken question hanging in the air with yet another question: “Can’t sleep?”
The side of her lip tugs up in an almost-but-not-really sort of smile. Barely a twitch. It’s her signature these days. She knows he’ll be able to read it.
Wordlessly, he reaches for her. His hand is warm in hers as he pulls her into him, and she goes pliantly. It’s tight—Garrus inches to the edge as far as he can on his side, and still takes up a good two-thirds—but Shepard doesn’t mind curling up against him, tucking her legs between his and grabbing a fistful of his shirt. She sidles closer until she can share his pillow, slides up until she can look in his eyes.
The same eyes rove her face. “Bad dreams?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer; doesn’t need to. He’s been sharing her cabin for months now. Instead, Shepard stares down the length of his body, at the bandage wrapped around the hock and tarsus of one of his legs.
He hadn’t told her when he’d gotten his injury, but he’d been honest when she noticed him limping through the shuttle bay. He hadn’t fought her either, surprisingly, when she told him to report to medical.
Must’ve really hurt.
Realizing he’d followed her gaze, she inclines her head. She asks, “How’d that happen anyway?” She’s surprised that she hadn’t asked before.
“Ooh,” he sighs, turning his head to her temple so his breath becomes a zephyr through her hair. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Even better. Tell me all about it.”
Garrus sighs again, half a laugh and this time knocking his crest against the side of her head. She likes being this close to him, likes hearing every exasperated breath and sigh against her ear. In and out. Warm on her skin. Alive.
“So,” he begins, “you sent me off to help the captain’s team.”
“Uh-huh. I remember.”
“It was more of the same over with them: husks, marauders.” His hand curls against the space between her shoulder blades. The hard press of his thumb seeks out a knot and Shepard almost groans in relief. “There was one ugly beast of a brute going for Riley. Kept charging at her, over and over, wouldn't quit. Finally,”—pause for effect—“she’s out heatsinks. Hits the trigger so hard you can hear the empty clip echoing.”
“Let me guess,” Shepard interjects: “The heroic turian appears just in the nick of time to push the poor captain out of the way?”
“You kidding? No, I was in perfect position. Good cover. Great line of sight. I wasn’t moving unless I was on fire.” He shifts against her to switch his arms: one crawls under her waist and up her shoulders to resume massaging her neck, while the other lifts in the air above them to hold up a single digit. “What I did do,” he says, wagging the finger, “is hit her with a perfectly timed concussive round. Bam! Just enough force to knock her out of the way and the brute swipes the empty air.”
Shepard hums, leaning back into the support of his hand as warmth spreads through her chest. “Clever.”
“I thought so,” he says, proudly, nearly preening so Shepard bites the inside of her lip. “And wouldn’t you know it? Brute was clever too—enough to follow my sight-line. Not enough to get out of it though. Turned and got a bullet right between the eyes.”
“And that was it?”
“And that was it. Fell down dead. Incredible shot. One for the history books. You should’ve seen it.”
And then he stops, as if the story ends there. She waits for the action-packed sequel, surely just as exciting as its antecedent, but it never comes. Garrus remains silent.
“Okay,” says Shepard, “so you were fine. No heroic sacrifice. And you got hurt, how?”
“Hmm.” His tongue clicks. “Didn’t manage to distract you with my daring feats, then? Damn.”
“I believe I was promised ‘embarrassing.’”
Garrus punches out an abashed laugh, just a single hurried breath. “I suppose you were. So,” he continues with a nod, “depot’s clear and comms are out, but we can hear the reactors starting up so we pretty much figure it’s all good on your side as well. So we start climbing towards the entrance, hoping to meet you there. Captain Riley on point, I’m taking up the rear.
“Nyrek—the corporal, you remember—he gets to the top of the last ladder and his pistol drops clear out of his holster. Hadn’t secured it right. We’re lucky the safety was even on. He was pretty shaken up by everything—that brute actually was only on Riley because she was wresting its attention from Nyrek.”
“He was okay, though?” Shepard asks.
Solemn, he nods. “He’ll be fine; he’s got a good captain,” he says. “Goes a long way.”
At that, Shepard does let a smile slip through. Garrus notices, and takes a moment to cover her hand, still twisted in his shirt, with his own.
The story continues: “So I, last up, decided to go grab the pistol for him,” says Garrus.
“How noble.”
“Yeah, well.” He pauses again, dragging in a heavy sigh. “I’ve already started climbing up, but not too high, so I take a calculated risk: I let go of the damn ladder thinking my feet are clear and I’m off by one rung. Twisted myself up landing wrong.”
The burst of laughter pushes from her chest before she has time to stop it.
“Really? Bested by a ladder,” she goads, unable to stop her grin. “That’s a first. Aren’t snipers supposed to get along well with those? They sure get you up nice and high.”
“Alright, alright.”
“Though I suppose you were going low.”
“Yeah, okay, see if I feel like climbing up the next one to keep an eye on your sorry ass.”
“Like you’d miss the chance to watch my ass.”
Garrus stares back at her—not a true glower, but close: his eyes are half-lidded and his mandibles twitch against the sides of his face. He holds the stare for a moment. Then he’s ducking down and pressing his face into hers, blowing hot air into her ears and hair.
Shepard tries to squirm away with a laugh but his arms have her trapped, tight against his chest.
“Feeling better?” he asks, so low and quiet that it’s almost swallowed up by the hum of idle medical equipment and the computers of the neighboring AI core.
Her hand slips from his hold to slide into his cowl, around the back of his neck. A gentle press and his crest meets her forehead; eye to eye, so he can see she means it when she says, “I am.”
“Good.”
Garrus holds her gaze, blue eyes round and familiar in a way that just makes everything in her settle, like detritus to the riverbed. A puzzle slotted into place.
“The day shift will be getting up in…” He pauses to lift his wrist. While he checks the time on his omnitool—an unnecessary buffering; she knows the time is displayed always, in the top right of his visor interface that he’s still wearing—Shepard considers the question he didn’t ask.
“I’ve got time,” she says.
“Yeah?”
His hand starts massaging her neck again, small rhythmic circles in patterns he must have memorized. It makes her shoulders drop, her eyelids hoping to follow right after. The last lingering dregs of tension recede.
“Yeah,” she repeats. Her head lolls closer to the crook between neck and shoulder. He smells warm. “A couple hours.”
“Alarm?”
“Whatever you think,” she tells him. “You know my schedule.”
When Shepard slips into steady sleep, she feels light.