Chapter Text
Garrus knew it wasn’t just disuse that made his armor feel cumbersome and heavy. Hell, he even knew Shepard had been right to insist he stay back; he hadn’t exactly been in top form before his brush with death-by-poison. But, weakness or no weakness, weariness or no weariness, he knew damned well she’d left her six wide open, and that he was the only thing standing between her and a metaphorical—and perhaps literal, when it came down to it—shot in the back.
Dr. Casta Kandros, standing her full height, fists planted on her hips, showed no sign of standing aside.
“This is suicide,” she said, a bullet of her own that he couldn’t pretend didn’t strike near the mark.
“Might be,” he agreed. Evidently not expecting this, Kandros blinked. He hated that he wanted to use that moment of confusion to take her out. The moment passed. Kandros didn’t move. Garrus wondered how many people Shepard had shot in the interim. “I don’t have time to argue with you, Kandros. This is about a hell of a lot more than any one turian.” He saw the beginning of her protest in the swift flick of her mandibles. “Yes. Even if that one turian sits on the Council.”
All those turians on the ship; each thought they were the turian whose duty was to fight and never retreat. Even when faced by … what they were facing. Who they were facing.
Spirits.
Garrus reached out, almost gently, and settled a hand on Kandros’ shoulder. Half apology, half necessity, Garrus stepped around her. Meeting her gaze, he saw the war between turian duty to a senior officer, medical concern, and a hint of genuine grief. Before he could pull away, she wrapped her fingers loosely around his armored wrist. “Send me, sir—Councilor—Garrus. I’ll go. I can hold my own.”
But Garrus only shook his head, wishing he could let her. “You can’t,” he said. “And she wouldn’t believe you even if you could.”
“If you—”
“No, Casta,” he said, feeling her shiver at the emotion in his subharmonics. The controls shimmered under his palm before the door slid open. “You don’t understand her. You don’t understand what’s happening. Right now? She’d shoot you first and feel all the weight of it after. It’s got to be me.”
“Even if it kills you?”
His mandibles flicked into the briefest of smiles. If he made it back in one piece, he’d put her up for a medal or three. Bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. “Don’t believe everything you see on the vids,” he said. “The fabric of intergalactic peace is stitched together by my wife’s charisma, her honor, and her integrity, whether she wants it that way or not. Things are tenuous. Things are so tenuous that the media spin on this could legitimately tear apart every good thing that’s been built since the end of the war. So yeah, I’ve got to do what I can to keep that from happening. Even if it kills me.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. He didn’t offer to let her join him; suiting up would take too much time. He stepped through the open airlock door, gave the doctor a gentle shove to encourage her to move out of the way, and brought the side of his loose fist to the glowing panel that shut the doors behind him.
“Joker?”
“Don’t say it.”
“If you don’t hear from me—from us—”
“What part of don’t say it don’t you understand?”
“Agree, and I won’t. You know the protocol.”
“Fuck you, Garrus.”
Garrus moved toward the far door. “Thanks, Jeff.”
#
Garrus moved as quickly as he could—and probably a lot more quickly than was strictly healthy—following the trail of corpses his wife had left in her wake. If anyone had survived Shepard’s wrath, he didn’t come across them. Just bodies in pools of coagulating blue blood gone nearly black. Most of them were headless; Shepard’s Widow didn’t play nice with mere mortal bone structure, helmets or no helmets.
When he tried to raise her over the comms, he met only silence. Even when he tried their private frequencies. Even when he cycled through the various mods they had, between them, developed to allow them to communicate under the direst of circumstances.
Nothing.
If he hadn’t already seen her on the vids, if he hadn’t come across the bodies so inadequately prepared to deal with a force like her, he’d have feared the worst. Instead, he wondered what kind of dampener had been employed. Something to figure out later. Definitely black market.
He hated being blind. And deaf. And mute.
He ignored the burning in his lungs that told him his limitations weren’t confined to his senses.
Mods had always been something of a game between them. They constantly one-upped each another, pushing their offenses and defenses higher and higher—certainly to levels most regulatory bodies would’ve taken issue with. Sure, necessity might’ve been the mother of invention—Shepard liked that saying—but good-natured competitiveness worked just as well.
Their competitiveness hadn’t ended with the war; if anything, they’d just gotten more creative. And sneakier about bringing in expert help. Tali had caught on and no longer offered either of them a damn thing except warnings. Solana, on the other hand—meddlesome troublemaker that she was—didn’t play favorites. Sometimes she’d throw Garrus something new to see what Shepard would come up with to counter it; other times she’d flip the tables. He was pretty sure his sister was just using them to test things she hadn’t yet gotten the go-ahead from her higher-ups to officially trial.
Garrus and Shepard had a rule, though. Outside the arena, neither used a mod that the other couldn’t counter. If Shepard had ammo that could incinerate a small city, Garrus had shields to match it. And vice versa.
Which was why, when an incendiary round came straight at his face before he could even think about ducking out of the way—turians don’t duck, Shepard—his shields caught and diverted the massive amount of power before stuttering to depleted darkness. Close. Too close. The resulting shock brought him to his knees. His head spun in a way that no amount of blinking seemed to clear, and he was pretty sure his nose was bleeding. A second later, the telltale blue shimmer of a biotic shield surrounded him, absorbing the second and third of the Widow’s store of rounds. He’d have to make sure Jack and Alenko got medals, too.
He flipped the clasps of his helmet and removed it in one smooth motion, letting it drop to the floor beside him. The room continued to spin. He knew exactly how long it took Shepard to reload her gun. When that time passed, and no further ammunition came hurtling his way, he rose unsteadily to his feet, hands raised in surrender. The biotic shield dissipated. Slowly, he tapped his armored finger against the side of his head, indicating that he needed her to remove her helmet if she wanted him to hear her.
Blood—not his, but disturbing because it could so very easily have been—pooled around his feet. He’d leave prints. It was probably already all over his helmet. His head still rang from the proximity of Shepard’s shot, and his visor informed him dolefully that his shields weren’t even pretending to recharge. By the time he’d swallowed past the knot in his throat, Shepard had torn her helmet from her head.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she snarled. He tried to remember what her flashing eyes looked like sleep-soft and smiling, but couldn’t.
Oddly, he found her anger reassuring. It was, after all, better than the cold precision he’d witnessed on the feeds. His hand flicked into one of the gestures she’d drilled into them before letting them step a single foot off the original Normandy and into combat as he dropped it back to his side. It was subtle enough, he hoped, that a watching camera wouldn’t notice it.
It meant we’re not alone of a very specific kind. Reporters. Media. Known spies.
It meant ambush.
“Spectre,” he said quietly, precisely, “the Council orders you to stand down.”
Garrus knew damned well how quickly Shepard could read a given tactical situation, so he didn’t insult her by spelling out how wrong she’d been, how horrific her mistake; he’d probably have made the same one in her place. Her gaze dropped to the headless turian at Garrus’ feet, and then back up to meet his; the understanding he saw reflected there carried nearly as much force as the bullet that had tanked his shields. It took an effort not to flinch.
Between one blink and the next, she holstered her weapon and clipped her helmet to her side. A moment later, Jack and Alenko followed her lead. She lifted her hands, mirroring Garrus’ gesture of surrender. The tilt of her chin remained defiant. “Where are my children? They were kidnapped. I was led here.”
If the puppeteer behind this little show hadn’t yet cut the feeds, at least the galaxy might start to understand the motive for Shepard’s actions. Garrus didn’t hold out much hope of that; he was pretty sure someone savvy enough to so completely pull the wool over their eyes had pulled the plug long before Shepard could start looking sympathetic. They wouldn’t dare take the risk; people always listened when Shepard talked. Even people who hated her.
He hoped Liara had already started damage control.
He hoped it would be enough.
“Are they even on this ship?” The defiance cracked, hairline fractures of grief spilling through. “Garrus? Where are they?”
The door to Shepard’s left slid open; he saw her thumb twitch toward activating her tactical cloak, but she stopped herself, leaving her hands up and plainly visible.
A female turian with blood running down her face—not hers, Garrus realized; she’d evidently given a krogan-worthy headbutt to someone unfortunate—entered, gun first, barrel aimed unswervingly at Shepard’s unprotected head. It didn’t tremble, though she moved like she’d been put through a trash compactor. One of her spurs was obviously and horrifically broken; the arm not holding the gun hung limp, dislocated and most likely broken.
“I’m Matta Casarus,” she said in a voice undeniably different from the one that had taunted them about their children. This was a wearier voice, deeper, with a different dialect hidden in the vowels. Garrus’ eyes narrowed. It wasn’t the same voice as the one pleading on the broadcasted video, either; he was sure of it. Please. We need more time. Close, but not quite. The whole damn thing was close. But not quite.
Matta swiped at her face with the back of her hand and grimaced at what she saw. Then she fixed unblinking, golden eyes on Garrus. “What the hell have you done?”