Chapter Text
Nowadays, when Shepard wakes up, Garrus isn’t always with her.
The disappointment is short-lived. His side of the bed will still be warm, and she'll smell breakfast cooking from the kitchen. On days when her eyelids are too heavy, without any pressing duties begging her for attention, she falls back asleep.
She isn’t retired—not yet, and probably not for a while—but Hackett insisted on some sort of leave after everything. Shepard had rolled her eyes then. What had she had, if not months of leave? But Garrus informed her that a coma didn’t count. And her email records after waking up showed anything but a “leave of absence.”
Instead she fills her days as expected: bored out of her mind, just as she was in the hospital. This time it has the added flair of physical therapy. And thankfully, plenty of alcohol.
Shepard still finds that she isn’t quite used to this leg. It itches where the nerves meet. Aches in the calf and the knee in some type of way that spreads and runs all the way up the length of her spine. No matter how many times she looks at it, no matter how many times she pushes her weight onto it, she can’t help the nagging feeling that something’s off.
Surely, more physical therapy will do her good—she still hasn’t gotten quite to the level of fitness she’s always been in—but it becomes difficult to see the finish line when it keeps getting dragged farther down the fairway.
She doesn’t like using the crutch very much either. After all, she’s always been one to stand on her own if she needs to. But every time she tries to ditch it, she swears she can feel Garrus glaring through the walls in disapproval. At least it gave her something to talk about with Joker, though; something to break the ice when the silence is too heavy. When the weight is too much to bear anymore.
“Hey, sacks like us gotta stick together,” he always jokes. “Those other guys just walk way too fast.” And for a moment, it’ll feel like they’re back to their old selves again.
For now, he’s surrounded; Tali and Cortez, having newly arrived from Palaven, flank either side of him. She can see a wide smile on Cortez’s face, and the happy bounce in Tali’s step, but Joker’s hat still sits low over his eyes. His chin tilts towards the floor. He’s smiling, too, but she’s known Jeff Moreau longer than most of the people in this room.
A lot of his light left during that war. When Joker was left with the choice to leave. When the Normandy’s systems were hit and EDI was made an unfortunate casualty.
Shepard swallows the lump that’s formed in her throat before she can think about it for too long. People smarter than she are working on restoring tech. Backups are still possible. Hope remains.
Like her leg, it’s a matter of one step at a time.
Maybe he heard her thoughts, or maybe the floor just got extra boring, because Joker looks up. He catches Shepard’s eye and slowly, ever so slowly, lifts his glass in a cheer. His face barely changes, a minute increase to the lift of his mouth.
For a moment, Shepard considers walking over, to see if the silence holds today or if he’ll joke. Like always. Her grip on the crutch tightens, the metal warmed by her heated skin. But she can’t seem to lift her leg, no matter how many signals she tries to send it.
Maybe not today.
“Lola!”
The clap on her shoulder pulls her back. The buzz of the party returns to her ears. She summons a sort-of-smile as she turns to the familiar face.
“James,” she greets, threading warmth into her voice as much as she can.
He seems surprisingly unchanged. If she looks closely, she can almost swear he’s somehow bulked up even more than he had over the course of the war. Either the gravity and enviro-suits on Palaven were good to him, or he’s been overdoing it since getting back to Earth.
Whichever it is, his smile is the same. Friendly.
He shifts his weight to the balls of his feet as he leans his shoulders back. “We haven’t really had much of a chance to get caught up yet.”
“We haven’t,” she agrees. “You know… I hear you stepped up quite a bit on Palaven.”
James waves a dismissive hand. “Aw, nah,” he says, “I didn’t do much of anything.”
“You led, James,” she replies, folding her arms across her chest (or rather, arm, she realizes when the crutch gets in the way). “How many times do I have to tell you you’re good at that?”
With a click of his tongue, he shakes his head. “I thought we were dead in the water,” James says with a shrug, “but you should have seen it— Garrus rubbing shoulders, getting things done.” He winks, gently nudges her shoulder. His hands spread out in a fan in front of him. “A man of action. I gotta say: I get it, Commander.”
Shepard raises her eyebrows. “You ‘get it,’ Vega?”
“Ah, I, well–” He nervously scrambles to attention, looking for a way out, and Shepard can’t help the amused scoff that slips from her lips. He finds his salvation in the form of Cortez, waving from his group across the room, and leaves her with a stiff salute. “Ma’am.”
She shakes her head as she watches him go. Some things really never change.
Left alone, Shepard scans the room around her, lips upticking in a soft smile at the profusion of reunions around her. Tali must have wandered away from Joker at some point, as she now wraps Liara in what’s probably their hundredth emotional embrace on the couch. She catches sight of Traynor for a moment, flowering against the wall behind them as she scrolls away at something on her omni-tool; Shepard thinks it might be a comm-link with her (thankfully, alive) parents.
Over the din of voices, she somehow hears the tap of a silver boot. A siren’s call. Her eyes draw towards it. Towards Garrus, leant against the back wall, one foot crossed over the other, hands folded together. His eyes carefully trained in her direction. Her feet start walking towards him automatically, as if drawn by the pull of a tether.
They don’t break eye contact as she moves her way across the room. Not even when Copeland brushes past her with a hurried greeting and whisks Traynor away to the bar. Not even as Adams and Chakwas call her name from their spot at the refreshments table, where they talk about the good old days, or the good old crew, or whatever else is good and old and memorable.
When she’s finally within range, Garrus gives a curt nod. “Shepard.”
Her smile warms. “Hey.”
Her shoulder bumps against his. She’s healed now, but sometimes she still feels the phantom pains of the old sprain, deep in the muscle tissue, and she has to subtly roll it away. As if she could hide it, she leans her body on him. Close enough to speak quietly into his space. “I heard I have you to thank for my crew back,” she begins. “Not that that surprises me. But someone failed to mention that.”
“I… may have pulled a few strings.” His head rolls side to side. “Ruffled a few feathers.”
“Mmhmm.”
Garrus looks at her from the corner of his eye, quietly, silently wrapping a hand around the crux of her shoulders and digging in with the heel of his palm. A covert sort of massage. She’s been caught, but maybe that isn’t so bad, she thinks as he locates a stubborn knot. He coaxes a grateful groan from her throat as he kneads it away.
The only thing keeping her from slumping into a relaxed lump against his side is the continued thrum of conversations around them. Daniels and Donnelly breeze past, briefly offering greetings to them both. The smiles on their faces are utterly knowing as they do. Shepard nods and grins equally at their entwined fingers. At least that’s something good out of this war.
Garrus just continues his gentle ministrations. Silent and steady by her side.
Shepard peeks up at his face, noting he still hasn’t fully turned to face her, his eyes fixed elsewhere. “What are you doing, hiding over here?” she asks after a moment passes. “Not in the mood to chat with the others?”
She follows his gaze to the room’s entrance. Miranda and Jack are shockingly in deep conversation, Miranda having just come back from yet another op scouting ex-Cerberus for the Alliance, somewhere out in the Sol cluster. Jack’s arms are calmly folded together as she leans against the wall. It’s only extraordinary in how ordinary it seems.
“Just keeping an eye on things,” Garrus supplies. “Making sure no damage comes to your rental.”
Her eyebrow raises. “Our rental,” corrects Shepard. “You live here too, remember?”
The air shifts. A laugh—loud, boisterous, and so distinctly James Vega—breaks out above the steady drone. Garrus at last turns his head, fixing his eyes on Shepard instead. His mandibles shift, a barely-there flash of the whites of his teeth. The hand pauses in its massage. It rests heavy and warm on her shoulder; a welcomed weight, this time.
“Hmm, I suppose I do,” he says, sounding somewhat amused. Even happy, if she dares to think it.
It's a life together. Despite everything. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a start.
Even so, “It’s just for now,” she assures him, as if she really needs to. As if there were any doubt in his mind that she could ever stay in one place.
As what feels like always, and as forever, the only guarantee in her life is Garrus: one step behind her every one step at a time. Her missing limb, returned.
His head dips in a single nod. “As long as you need.”
For a moment, Shepard finds herself slipping into another memory: the buzz of chatter running up her spine, fleeting eyes on the back of her neck, a blue glow—quiet and wondrous. Surrounded now by her crew, her partner, alive after a war that she shouldn’t have survived, it’s… not something she expected. How far she’s come, she thinks. More than a few light-years.
She can almost remember the other strong, steady presence at her side. Anderson, and his unwavering belief in her. His willingness to throw out his neck for her sake. What might he say now? In the wake of it all, a life surviving beyond that pile of rubble?
Her lip twitches, unsure which emotion it wants to curve into. But still, she hears his voice, somewhere in the back of her mind: “You did good child,” and this time, she thinks she might actually start to believe it.
Bittersweet.
Garrus’s hand on her shoulder gives her a single squeeze before letting go. There isn’t any time to miss it before his hand is instead in hers. He leans in closer towards her ear. “You okay?” he asks, just loud enough for her—and only her—to hear.
Shepard smiles as she turns to meet his eyes, attentive and warm. A cornflower blue sky, dotted by multi-colored shards. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she tells him. She gives his hand a squeeze. “You’re here,” she adds, a kiss to the side of his mouth.
His mandibles flicker in a small smile, before he turns back to watch the liveliness of the party. He tugs her hand once, and Shepard follows it, until she’s leaning back against his shoulder once more. His solid strength and warm support; something she didn’t know she wanted until Garrus gave it to her. She sighs, soft and content.
For the first time in a long time, her heart feels light again.