Work Text:
2170, Mindoir
“I don’t want to do anything,” Marnie Shepard said, exasperated, leaning back against her chair and letting her head hang uncomfortably over the back of it, as if it might help her escape the breakfast table conversation. She had only very recently graduated from the affliction of being fifteen—some eight hours ago—and been promoted to the affliction of being sixteen. She was not, however, convinced that anything had meaningfully changed.
“Oh, come on, Marnie,” her mother chided, picking up her cereal bowl and bringing it to the sink. Normally, she wouldn’t do that, but today was Marnie’s birthday. “You don’t mean that. This is a big day! A big year! It’s your sweet sixteen.”
“I don’t see what’s so sweet about it,” Marnie groused. Even just a quick look out the window showed the slate gray of the sky, stifling humidity already seeping in through the walls of their pre-fab. It was one of those abnormally hot spring days, and it was going to rain. It was only a matter of time. “It’s just one more year.”
“And if you start treating every year like that, then why should any of them be special?” Her mom said, planting her hands on her hip.
Marnie shrugged. “I don’t know. Why should they be? They’re just numbers. They keep going up until you die. It’s not that exciting.”
Her mother sighed and pulled out the chair beside Marnie, sitting down heavily. “It’s about having fun,” she said long-sufferingly. “Celebrating your life, not counting down until your death. Most of all, it’s about celebrating you.” Gently, her mother reach out, brushing Marnie’s hair off her forehead, blue eyes gentle, worried. “Is it really so bad to be happy?” She said softly. “Even just for a day?”
“Torturing myself is avant-garde,” Marnie replied, tongue-and-cheek to avoid looking her mother’s concern directly in the face. “All the cool kids are doing it.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother crooned lovingly. “You don’t hang out with cool kids.”
Marnie’s mouth dropped open, affronted. “You don’t think Devin is cool?”
Her mother snorted. “No. Your boyfriend is a nerd—just like you. Now, come on,” she stood, shooing Marnie up out of her chair as she did. “We have things to do today, and we might even enjoy ourselves a little while we do them.”
Marnie groaned loudly, but let her mother usher her toward the front door, even let her put her hands, warm and strong, on her shoulders and say into her ear, “The big birthdays are worth celebrating, Marnie. The little ones, too. If you don’t, one day you’ll regret letting all those days pass you by.”
Because she loved her mom, Marnie stopped arguing.
*
2185, The Normandy
Shepard was halfway through a bottle of whiskey and no matter what she did or how much she drank, she couldn’t seem to make time move any faster.
2100 shipboard time. Three whole hours until the day would be over, four hours since she’d begun trying to forget about it entirely. Usually, there would be something she could distract herself with, but there was nothing dire happening right now except that they were traveling to a system so damn far away. She should have planned this better. Should have realized what day was coming and made sure she had boots on the ground and a weapon in her hand and someone to kill. Then she wouldn’t have been able to think of anything else.
Instead, she had whiskey. And it wasn’t doing very much, if she was being honest.
She had just raised the bottle to her lips, ready to see if one more ounce would tip her over into being drunk like she’d been hoping for hours now, when a soft knock came at her cabin door. People didn’t come visit her often—no one had ever accused her of being friendly or welcoming—so she wasn’t expecting it. But whatever it was, it had to be better than this.
A pity party? Her mother would have said. You’re better than that, Marnie.
Except she wasn’t. She hadn’t been for a long, long time.
She put the bottle down, went to the door. She’s not sure who she expected to see on the other side, but Garrus was something of a surprise. They had only spoken a handful of times since returning from the Citadel and she wasn’t sure which was the reason for the distance: the way everything had gone down with Sidonis, or the fact that she’d propositioned him not long after.
Not that he hadn’t been flirting, too. She’d just been more up front about the whole thing.
“Shepard,” Garrus started. His eyes were focused on something just over her shoulder, like looking at her directly might be dangerous. “Sorry to barge in, but I was wondering—” He paused, sniffing the air. “Did a bar cart tip over in there or something?”
She rolled her eyes and motioned him inside. “It’s not that bad,” she said, walking back to the couch. Turian sense of smell, she guessed. Maybe that still-open bottle of whiskey was stinking up the whole room for him, not to mention the alcohol on her breath.
He took a slow step inside, timid, like he’d never been in here before. Guess that’s what happened when you upend a relationship by offering casual sex. “What’s the occasion? If you don’t mind my asking.”
She did mind, actually, but that felt rude to say. She wasn’t usually shy about being rude, but she liked Garrus. Trusted him, even, and there were few enough people in the world she felt that way about. Even she knew when she needed to stop alienating friends.
Funnily enough, he was maybe the one person she could imagine not caring if she brushed the question off, said she didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t push, and she liked that about him. Or maybe the whiskey had gone to her head more than she’d like to admit, and that’s why she actually opened her mouth to answer.
“Promise not to tell anyone?” She asked, picking up the bottle, choking the neck like she was some sloppy party girl she’d never had the chance to be.
“What’s that saying you humans have?” Garrus said, confidence leaking back into his voice. It usually did, once they struggled past “hello.” “Cross my heart and hope to die?” He raised a talon to mark an x over his keel and paused. “That’s a little morbid, but I guess this is a suicide mission after all.”
She huffed quietly, as close to a laugh as she got these days. She brought the bottle to her lips, took one more pull before she spoke. “Today is my birthday.”
“You’d think the drinking would be more celebratory, then,” he said. It was a relief of sorts that he didn’t say happy birthday, put on that fake congratulatory voice people always did.
“This doesn’t seem like a celebration to you?” She asked.
“It seems like you’re trying to get drunk,” he said. He didn’t gentle his tone, not an ounce of pity in sight. She was grateful for that.
“And failing,” she said, saluting him with the bottle before placing it down—hard—on the coffee table. “That much liquor should have me feeling more than a little buzz, shouldn’t it?” She shook her head. “Just one more side effect from Cerberus’ improvements, I guess.”
“Do you have something against birthdays?” He asked cautiously.
“No,” she said, then amended, “Maybe.”
“Do you make a point of getting drunk every year?” He sat on the other end of the couch, the half-finished bottle between them.
“Nope,” she said. “Just this one. It’s a big year, after all.”
Thirty. It was her thirtieth birthday. Except it wasn’t, was it? She’d turned thirty some time ago, unconscious and naked on a slab in a Cerberus lab. Somehow, she doubted there’d been a party.
Now she was…what? Thirty-one? Thirty-two? She didn’t quite know how to parse it. If you’re twenty-nine when you die, she thought, like a school kid’s math problem, and you’re dead for two years, how old are you on the next birthday you’re alive for? A laugh—a real one—bubbled up in her chest. The whole thing was ridiculous.
“You know, I never asked Miranda when exactly my heart started beating again,” she said. “Maybe I should. Then I’d know how old I’m supposed to be today.”
“Ah,” he said, like he’d uncovered some insight she didn’t want him to have.
She scowled. “What do you mean, ‘ah’?”
He leaned back in his seat, getting comfortable, looking at her like he could see through the drink and the melancholy right to the core of her. He’d come a long way from the eager subordinate hanging on her coattails. She couldn’t decide if she was more proud or annoyed. “I’m just saying,” he started, “it doesn’t take a psychologist to guess why this year is harder than most.”
“Because I died?”
“Yeah, Shepard,” he said. “Because you died.”
He got quiet at that, and she let him keep whatever he was feeling to himself. If there was one thing they could offer each other, it was space. Comfort, yes, but from a distance. Nothing stifling, nothing demanding, just two people who trusted each other enough to be alone in a room together. That’s what their whole arrangement was supposed to be about, right?
“I should be thirty,” she said. Her heart cracked a little saying it, but she buried it just like she buried everything else. “That’s a big one, you know? That should be today.”
“But it’s not,” he said.
“But it’s not,” she agreed.
She sighed and sat forward, grabbing the cap for the whiskey and stoppering the bottle back up. Then she pushed to her feet. She’d had enough of her pity party tonight.
When she passed by Garrus to put the bottle away, he held his hand up, stopping her with a light touch on her thigh, long fingers just barely curling around her inner leg. She wasn’t sure if that was on purpose or not. Either way, it was maybe the most effective thing he could have done to stop her cold.
She didn’t remember the last time she’d been touched outside of combat. She was used to the violence of it, adrenaline, blood, the cool, clear focus of killing. But people didn’t touch her just because they could, alone in her quarters late at night. She was too difficult and far too lonely to allow that.
But he was one of the only friends she had left in the galaxy. If not him, then who?
“Don’t you still have ‘research’ to do?” She said. If she leaned into the warmth of his hand, she’d never admit it.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a little choked. Maybe this was the first time he’d touched someone in a while, too. “Yeah, I do. I just…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Wanted to cop a feel?”
If a turian could blush, he would have. He didn’t snatch his hand away, though. “Maybe,” he said, leaning forward, the palm of his hand pressing harder against her, his arm nearly cradling her to his side. “Maybe I just wanted to get a feel for what’s to come.”
“Ooh, slick,” she said, pretending she didn’t feel the rumble of his voice all the way down to her toes. “You think that up all by yourself?”
He barked a laugh and cleared his throat, like she’d surprised the composure right out of him. He let his arm fall away and stood, towering over her. She wasn’t used to being this close to him, and it was easy to forget how tall he really was. She practically had to crane her neck back to look him in the eyes. “I did,” he said. “But I, uh, promise I’ll come up with better lines next time.”
She couldn’t stop her lips from tipping up in a smile. She had been so determined to spend the night brooding, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. It was embarrassing, almost, to be caught enjoying herself, and she had the strangest urge to hide it. “I’ll hold you to that,” she said, biting her lip against the smile.
Slowly, like he was trying not to spook her, he leaned in, tilting his head to press his mouth plates against her cheek. They were dry and a little rough, and it wasn’t a kiss in the conventional sense, but the sentiment was there. “Happy birthday, Shepard,” he murmured in her ear, and it didn’t sound fake the way it always had before.
“Thanks, Garrus,” she said softly, and meant it.
He took a step back and hiked his thumb back toward the door. “I should probably, uh, head back to the battery.”
“Right,” she said, curling her hand into a fist so she wouldn’t reach up to touch her cheek. “You should.Thanks for stopping by, though. I…appreciate it.”
He paused once before he left, staring at her in a way she couldn’t quite interpret. “Always, Shepard.”
By the time the door closed behind him, she realized she’d forgotten to ask why he’d even come at all.
*
2186, Vancouver
Dear Garrus, Shepard started for the tenth time. She was trying to write him a letter, but all she’d managed so far was typing the same two words and then deleting them, rinse and repeat.
What was she even going to say to him? Things are fine? Don’t worry? I miss you? They weren’t, he should, and she did but she wasn’t about to put that into writing. But five months into house arrest had her feeling like she needed to say something, bridge the months-long gap with even a cursory greeting. Every day that passed where the Alliance did nothing, she worried more and more about when the Reapers would arrive, and it killed her a little to think she might never see Garrus again, have the chance to say that whatever they’d started up on the Normandy meant something to her. She knew she hadn’t made that clear before she left; now she wondered if she ever would.
She deleted the same ten letters one more time, and sat back in her chair, blowing out a long breath and rubbing her temples. There was real sunlight streaming into the room, the clouds puckering pink with the sunset, and even though she’d been on Earth for months, she still wasn’t used to it. She preferred being in space, where everything felt a little less real in the wash of artificial lights and recycled oxygen, preferred it when she felt a little less like her feet were immovably planted on the ground. Nothing ever seemed to go right for her when she was planetside.
Which this whole affair was proving true yet again. Maybe she had been stupid thinking the Alliance would listen to her—or Anderson—and pull themselves together quick enough to prepare for what was coming. Maybe there was still some foolish optimism in her that she thought she’d stamped out long ago. Well, it was gone now, after months of silence, even with Anderson fighting to have her claims taken seriously.
The door to her room opened and she didn’t even look up from the blank message she’d never send. There was only one person who huffed and stomped around quite like the man lingering in her doorway. “James,” she said monotonously. Dinner had come and gone, but it wasn’t unusual for him to arrive late, deliver a message from Anderson that would tell her everything he was trying and how little it was working. She couldn’t even complain, since that was most of the communication she got in a day.
“Commander,” James Vega said, halfway between formal respect and informal comfortability. He’d been stiff as a board the first couple months they’d known each other, only loosening up when he tripped over his own words trying to talk to her. Privately, Anderson had told her he was a “fan.” Shepard wasn’t sure she liked the idea of having fans, but better he be guarding her than anyone else. “I, uh. I brought you something.”
Slowly, she swiveled her chair around to look at him. He was built like a brick shithouse. Sometimes she wondered if he could raise his arms all the way up with the amount of muscle on him. She hadn’t decided yet if she thought he was anything more than a muscled-up jarhead, but at least he was usually a polite one.
He was also holding a cupcake. It looked absurdly small in his hand, more a crumb of a dessert than the whole thing. She raised her eyebrows. “Any particular reason for that, Lieutenant?”
“Uh, yeah,” he scratched the side of his head, dropping his gaze so they weren’t making direct eye contact. Shepard did find it a little amusing she could get to him like that. “It’s, you know. It’s your birthday.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised. The days had been blending together for weeks—she barely knew it was spring, let alone her birthday.
One year since that night on the Normandy with Garrus. Not quite two since Cerberus brought her back. It felt like a thousand since her birthday actually mattered, a day spent with her mom and her boyfriend, family dinners with her favorite foods.
“Didn’t notice, huh?” James asked. There was a sheepishness to him that Shepard, admittedly, found kind of endearing. Like he knew sneaking her this dessert was cheesy, but he’d still do it anyway.
“No, I didn’t,” she admitted. When he offered the cupcake out to her, she took it. It looked much more real in her hands than it did in his.
It was rare for her to not know what to say, but words were suddenly hard to come by.
“How old are you today?” He asked, just something to fill the silence she left for him.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Thirty-two, I think? Not a very exciting age.”
“Hey, it’s still your birthday,” James said, genial to the end.“Never get to be the same age twice. That’s something, isn’t it?”
It sounded like a ridiculous thing her mother would have said. Her throat hurt, some unwanted emotion trying to climb up out of her. She choked it down enough to speak. “Thank you, James.”
He nodded. “Commander,” he said, and saluted her on his way out. He always did.
She put the cupcake down on the desk, beside the empty message to Garrus. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She swiped frosting off the top and licked her finger clean, letting herself enjoy the sweetness, just for a little while.
Is it so bad to be happy? Her mother had asked her once. Even just for a day?
Very possibly. But maybe she’d allow herself a few moments, here and there. Maybe that’s where she could start.
“Happy birthday to me,” she said into the empty room, and tried to write her letter one more time, because she’d regret it if she didn’t.