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There was someone in his house. How Garrus knew, he wasn’t even sure. One of those instincts crafted after years of fighting for his life. He cracked one eye open and then another, glancing around the dark bedroom. Desk, bookshelf, nightstand, lamp, nothing out of place here and no wayward intruders. Maybe he’d been mistaken. He heaved a sigh and sat up, there’d be no going back to sleep till he proved to himself that there was no one else here.
His leg twinged as he stood--it always did when he first got up. He shook it out and paused at the desk, pulling his rifle out from behind it and checking that the heat sink was still good. It was, of course. He hadn’t fired the gun in months now--or had it been a full year? He slowly opened the bedroom door and just stood there, listening for several minutes. Most all he heard was silence, a car passed by on the street outside, the climate control fan stopped blowing. He almost gave up and went back to bed when he heard it: soft footsteps on the floor below him.
One of his neighbors had a break in a few weeks ago, no one got hurt but some electronics and jewelry were stolen. It wasn’t hard to figure out how the thief had gotten in, especially not for a former C-Sec detective. Caius was never very good about making sure his doors and windows were locked. More than once Garrus had been gently teased about stubbornly clinging to his ‘big city ways’, but he’d always pushed back that his house hadn’t been broken into. Well, a whole lot of good that did him now.
Carefully avoiding the noisy steps, Garrus made his way downstairs. He flicked the thermal scope of his gun on and listened again. Footsteps were heading from the kitchen to the front room, Garrus stealthily followed after them. Looking through his scope, he got a read on the thief. No more than 1.8 meters tall, small frame, body temperature less than fifty degrees--human. There weren’t many humans at all on Digeris, being a dextro-based planet. But he’d seen a few over the years.
He watched with the tempered patience of a sniper as the thief wandered slowly around the room. They didn’t pay much attention to the datapads he’d left out, or the vidscreen attached to the wall. No, for some reason they were looking at the bookshelf, studying the pictures hung on the walls. He mostly intended to let the thief take what they wanted and then he’d lock the door behind them. He wasn’t much in the mood for drawing blood in his sitting room. But that plan went up in smoke as the thief paused and then headed directly for the pedestal in the corner.
Besides the gun in his hands, there was only one thing Garrus would miss in the entire house if it was stolen. And this intruder was daring not only to look at it, but to pick it up. Garrus turned the safety off on his gun and stepped silently into the front room, crosshairs on the back of the thief's head.
“Put. That. Down,” he growled. The thief’s head immediately snapped up and they stiffened. “And walk away, now .”
They did neither of those things, instead they turned around to face him. And they were still holding her helmet.
“I’ll give you to the count of one,” he warned, his patience rapidly depleting, finger ready on the trigger.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been in your crosshairs. Can’t say I missed the feeling.”
The growl in his subvocals immediately stopped and he froze. He couldn’t make out her face, but he knew that voice. He’d know that voice anywhere, as utterly impossible as it was to be hearing it again. Cautiously, he lowered his gun and stared into the darkness.
She stepped towards him, the moonlight casting her face in razor sharp relief. She gave him a tired smile. “Hey, Garrus.”
A few seconds ticked by in complete silence as he stared at her. The last time they were in this exact situation, he’d shot her with a concussive round to prove she was actually there. He was starting to think that that might not have been such a bad plan.
She shifted the helmet to one hand and rubbed uneasily at the back of her neck. “I’m guessing by your reaction that you… heard the report…”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, an unexpected tint of anger to the syllable.
She frowned and glanced away. “It was premature and obviously a bit of an exaggeration. Though… I’m told it came close to being true a few times.”
He nodded and finally lowered his gun away from the not-as-dead-as-previously-thought woman, clicking the safety back on. Oh, he’d dreamt of this moment a thousand times in a thousand different ways in the early days, as time passed he’d stopped thinking of this type of reunion and of other more inevitable ones. But in every instance, he’d never imagined feeling like this. He was… angry, he could feel it now as clearly as the rifle in his hands. Which way it was pointed however, he wasn’t sure. “Do you want a drink?” he offered, barely subduing a heated rumble in his subvocals.
“Uh, sure.” She nodded once and took a step. But then she realized she was still holding her old helmet, so she quickly turned and put it carefully back on the pedestal in the corner. “When I didn’t find it in my cabin, I’d wondered where it went… should have known you’d take care of it.”
Garrus grunted and turned for the kitchen, flipping on the bright light as he went.
“Everyone says hello, even Tali,” she continued, forcibly breezy. “Communications are still touch and go at times, but I finally heard from her before I left Earth. She made it back to Rannock, safe and sound. She wanted me to make sure you knew, said you were… concerned when she left you… here…”
He pulled down the levo scotch from the top shelf; he’d accidentally purchased it months ago. He hadn’t read the label close enough, and of course there were no returns at the local liquor store. He poured a glass of that and then a glass of his dextro bourbon before turning around to face her again.
Now that he could see her in the cold light of the kitchen, he was able to quickly catalogue every minute difference. She was smaller, her collarbones and jaw strongly pronounced, her shoulders boney under her shirt. A large faded burn scar covered the left side of her face and crawled down her neck. It probably went all the way down as he noticed her left hand was slightly different in color from her right. She looked a little lost, leaning against the counter furthest from him with her arms wrapped around her middle.
Garrus set her drink on the island between them and pushed it wordlessly towards her before taking a sip of his own.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, taking a sip herself. They were silent while they drank. Her eyes darted to him repeatedly before ricocheting away as every time she found him watching her, lining up his metaphorical shot. When he was ready, he finished his glass and crossed his arms.
“Why are you here?” he finally asked.
She met his gaze and held it now. “I thought that was obvious…” A cautious smile hovered in the corner of her mouth. “I’m here for you.”
“Are you?”
The smile disappeared. “Spit it out, Garrus.”
Now he dropped her gaze, looking down at his empty glass. “I don’t know what you mean--”
“Don’t lie to me.” He could feel the heat from her glare from across the room without even looking at her. “Look, I know that it’s been a while--”
“I don’t care about that,” he replied, his voice clipped and too precise.
She thought for a moment. “Liara and Kaidan told me why they had to leave you two here, I can’t imagine what… You know they wouldn’t have left you behind if there was any other--”
“I know.”
“So why are you angry?” Somehow the fact that she still could read him so clearly just made him more frustrated.
“I’m not,” he lied.
“Like hell you’re not.”
This kitchen was too bright. Ten feet away, she was too close. He couldn’t catch his breath. He stormed out of the kitchen into the quiet dark of the back living room. The moonlight shone softly through the glass patio doors.
“Garrus, please,” she pleaded. He could see her long shadow cast across the floor. “Just--just talk to me.”
His gut was boiling now but his thoughts were scattered, flying about and swooping in to viciously strike him. “Eight years.”
“If the relays had worked sooner, I would have come for you sooner. You know I would have.”
“Do I!?” He spun towards her, but couldn’t see her face. She was silhouetted by the bright light of the kitchen behind her. Good. All the easier to rage at the shape of her than her reality. “‘Cause it seemed pretty easy for you to leave me behind back in London! Or for the Normandy to leave me here!”
“What did you expect us to do? If we hadn’t sent you away, you would have starved--you would have died !” Her voice broke on the final syllable.
“And I thought you had!! For Eight. Years .” He clenched his fists, the ground seeming to pitch wildly beneath his feet. “You don’t understand--when I heard that report, it nearly killed me. Tali almost gave up her one chance to get off this back-water planet to stay with me. But I told her to go make you proud and I promised her that I would do the same.
“And I did! I have tried! For Eight. Years. I have fought bitterly for every ounce of sanity I still have. I didn’t become Archangel again, I didn’t let myself get swallowed in blind vengeance again because I didn’t want to disappoint you .
“And now you’re alive and you’re here and I don’t--I can’t--just how many times am I going to have to bury you, Shepard?!”
He lost his fight with gravity and fell to his knees, gulping in breath after breath. His subvocals were all over the place as he tried desperately to cling to his anger so he didn’t sink into despair.
“I can’t do it again. I can’t ,” he whispered in a strained voice. He’d thought he’d dealt with this, moved past it. But apparently, he’d just buried the sorrow and the rage and the bitterness with her. And now it had all been resurrected too.
Then he felt her warm hand touch the side of his face, the skin of her palm soft on his mandible. His anger evaporated instantaneously, leaving him alone in a petrifying freefall. She knelt in front of him and turned his face up to look at her, her eyes gentle and exactly like he remembered. And he landed in Shepard’s arms.
She held him close, a hand at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Garrus,” she whispered. Her voice was thick and raw. “I’m so sorry.”
His subvocals were wavering wildly as he clung to her for dear life. “I’m not--I’m not angry at you , I promise--”
“I know, I understand.” She took a shuddering breath. “I spent so much of the last eight years furious that I couldn’t get to you--couldn’t even send you a message. You’re certainly allowed to be angry now.”
He pulled her tightly against him, as if he could somehow envelop her and keep her safe under his carapace, between his lungs.
Her cheek was damp where it touched him. “Garrus, if… If too much time has passed--you’ve built a life here and I’m so proud… but if there’s… someone else now or you just don’t want me--”
He cut her off with a fervent kiss pressed to her lips, telling her without words that there was no one else. There could never be anyone else for him but her. Even despite the pain and the sorrow, he would find the strength to suffer it all again to spend his life with her.
There wasn’t space between them now for words, only the steady rhythm of her breathing, his pulse. So they held each other till moonlight turned to dawn. He felt empty, scrubbed raw, but whole for the first time in a long time, for the first time in eight years to be precise.
Garrus didn’t move till the sounds of cars on the street, of his neighbor doing yard work, of children walking to school drifted into their small shared world. He leaned back and met Shepard’s peaceful face, scarred but alive. Her eyes slowly opened, a hand drifting up caress his mandible.
He dipped his head to brush his forehead against hers. “Stay with me?”
She smiled up at him gently, tilting her head to catch him in another kiss. “Always.”