Chapter Text
It was 02:12:14 hours past the point of no return.
Smoke boiled over Kima District. Ash lay heavy on the ruin of a dead-end city block. Some five hundred yards out, a merc dragged his buddy to cover in a fatal act of altruism.
Terminated. The ejecting sink burned afterimages on his FOV. Another pint of blood seeped into the ground.
"How are your thermal clips?"
Garrus banged his eye. He'd forgotten he wasn't alone again. Dad was moving through the house, or resettling, or adjusting his aural piece. Something mundane and impossible, a million lightyears away.
"You know how it is." He tried to swallow. Throat was too parched. "Could always use a couple more."
The approach was a warzone. Heavy ordnance had rolled in hours ago, gouged out the terrain till he'd forced them back for repairs. Blasted corpses strewed the sidewalks. He couldn't remember if he'd killed them or someone else had. The dead on his ledger lay in rows behind him, tombed in a white snow of plaster dust. They never should have signed on. He never should have let them. If he'd let Sidonis walk away after that first night, instead of—well—
Garrus picked another mark.
Combatants fell. More combatants fell. He took cover. Loaded sinks to the fizz of shields reupped, and smeared blood on his faceplate trying to scour off the grit. The field had repopulated by the time he set up. Resistance was pointless. And yet.
He fired, and fired again. He just wanted a half minute. Time to patch wounds, flatten fingers clawed into the shape of the receiver, kill the dregs of his canteen. Survive had dematerialized from the mission objective hours ago. But Dad was on the line, a shield against the admission of weakness. A reminder of what mattered. No quarter. No retreat. Discipline and service; honor and virtue. He was a soldier, a man of the Hierarchy, and a Vakarian. He had a mandate to finish what he started, and no, he damn well couldn't lie down.
A gloved finger lay flat against a blue-caked trigger pull. The finger bent; the mechanism slid back. It happened like it had happened to someone else, like some other guy took aim behind a plex screen. Depersonalization. He watched muscle memory pilot him and the bullets grind down his cover, the laser dot arcing from one toon to the next, scrubbing them methodically out.
He'd expected to think back to the good days with Sidonis, maybe, or life before C-Sec, at the end. Sol. Dad. Mom. Before everything had gone sideways. But as his body adjusted the windage knob and a sink went bouncing away, his old CO stepped from the smoke instead. Damn good officer. Never forgotten even two years gone. The sound of her boots as she pulled up to set him straight. Saleon down the barrel of a gun, a sharp voice talking him down. She'd been like Dad, in a way. Unflinching. Principled to a fault. Rejecting the possibility of a no-win scenario.
She'd have reamed him for letting it all go to hell like this.
A hot line knifed through his rerebrace and abruptly he was back in. Shields were down, his fucking shields were down and he was still on the rail like a kid fresh out of basic. He ducked down to check damage. More than cosmetic. No gel to seal the wound.
A calm came then at the sight of that sluggish blue drip down his firing arm, while bullets licked paint off the walls, while a vase that Weaver had left on the table finally bought it in a spew of plasteel and ripped-up plant flesh. Not long now. It didn't matter what had gone wrong. Only that he went out on his terms.
Words were filtering through the skein of exhaustion. Garrus. Son. Right.
"Listen to me, soldier. No matter how bad things are falling apart around you, as long as you have at least one bullet left, you can still get the job done. If you think you're tired, you're not. If you think you're hungry, you're not. Understand?"
He couldn't ask if Dad had reconciled himself to the imminent. But it was only right he'd be on comms. There at the beginning, there at the end. Willing him accountable for all his mistakes.
"Yes, sir." Garrus returned to the rail.
A fresh platoon was scrambling over the breastwork. Outsourced labor, their sole function to waste munitions and wear him down. It was a hamfisted strategy certain to prevail, and it rankled like hell. He slew them on the barricade, one less, two less, three, till the access point was dammed and they stopped to clear the bodies.
He was floating out the tip of his crest again. He honed in on the real, on the dull throb in his arm and Dad's voice in his ear. "Didn't catch that. Repeat?"
"How many targets are there on the field?"
"Not many. For now."
"Reload."
He obeyed without thought. Reached down to the ordnance pack on his waist, unbuckled, unzipped, and touched seams. And that wasn't right, so he did it again and touched seams again, which meant it was time for the belt. Empty. Bandolier—empty. The box at his feet, the other box at his feet, every box at his feet upended and scoured clean.
He found himself back on the guardrail. His rifle grip was filthy. Needed a long cleaning it wouldn't get.
And so he dies anyway. What was the point of that?
You can't predict how people will react. But you can control how you respond.
Garrus pressed his eye to the scope. "Can't. This is it."
Castis Vakarian had been talking for the better part of two days. His voice had layered into the vents' drone, filled the vacuum between each barrage. Now: silence.
The barricade was clear again. Figures scurried around the laser dot, shouting words without form or meaning. One of them had a circular decal on their helm. Pulling the trigger turned it into a star. "Thanks, Dad. For everything."
There were five sinks in the chamber. Five sinks, five shots. Five kills, and then he could rest.
"Listen to me, son." Dad's voice was even. Same as it'd always been; and Garrus's throat burned with gratitude. "You finish what you have to do there, and then you come on home to Palaven. We have a lot to sort out."
He nodded against his lens. "I have to go now, sir. Don't worry about me. The—" Subtones were slipping. Unacceptable. He clamped his mandibles to his jaw. "The odds just got a lot better."
Five became four. And three. And two. Shifting on the rail, he registered that Dad was still on the line. His heart thudded too hard, too loud. He'd nearly died in combat dozens of times, but death, when it'd come knocking, had always hit and run. This was different. The knowledge was worse.
Almost there. After that—the sidearm on his hip. one clip reserved for him. A bandolier of concussives, useless without a large caliber bullet to finish the job. He should have saved a grenade. Formulated an exit befitting a marine and a Vakarian. Typical.
"Last sink." His voice was a rasp.
Dad didn't say anything. Garrus knew anyway: make it count, son.
Biotic blue flared. Piled bodies slid off the breastwork he'd just stopped up. The sea of bobbing helms behind it became a flood.
A unit of combatants brought up the rear. Human, and kitted out in military-grade ceramic with firearms to match. Point guard had an M-15 AR.
Their laser dots swung in purposeful sweeps as they advanced. Disciplined. Quick. Problem. The M-15's arm describing System Alliance hand-and-arm sigs: double time, radio silence, hold fire.
The Alliance didn't disallow side gigs. Shepard would've found them traitorous anyway. And tactics were pointless, but the threat assessment was clear, so Garrus turned his reticle on the M-15.
Driving down the field, ignoring cover to port and starboard. Odd. Any ex-mil would've moved their people to safety unless they thought he was out of tricks.
He'd disabuse them of that assumption one last time.
They slowed fractionally, free and clear in his sights: a faceless target in a helm. He exhaled. The world narrowed to the stillness of their body, the symmetry of the crosshairs, the steadiness of his finger on the trigger.
Then they looked up. And their arm signed out allied forces, and he saw the N7 service number.
5923-AC-2826.
His elbow slipped. His helm banged the rail. He was in cover, second floor of Citadel Tower, looking down at the Council rostrum. Saren sprawled, blood pumping from the hole in his head. Shepard put a hand to her comm, calm, as if she hadn't just talked a bullet into someone's brain.
"Make sure he's dead."
"Garrus. Status report. Are you still in action?"
He snapped back. Omega Station 2185 gunfire Dad's voice spent sinks plasteel shards dead hand scorched on rubble-strewn tile—
His breath was coming in harsh pants. Psychotic break. Had to be. He'd seen her because he'd thought of her earlier, because he hadn't eaten, slept, or left this perch in sixty hours and never would.
He hauled himself back into position. Took an unsteady, steadying breath. "Still here."
The freelancers had bunkered down within earshot and pistol range. Too cowardly to try his aim—except her. Them. Their unit was two-thirds down the avenue, ducking into cover at the rear of the pack. He knew what he'd do in their position: herd mercs into the scope, breach the entrance while they kept him busy. Brutal, but tactical. He had to stop letting them manuever on his field.
Garrus's finger straightened for the second time. It wasn't Shepard. Some kid had duped her armor, pulled her service number from the casualities list. Happened all the time with heroes.
But he didn't fire when their helm rose out of cover. Or when their eyes met again. Or when their hand lifted: allied forces, SA sigs, and then friendlies, Hierarchy.
Maybe he hadn't hallucinated that hand-and-arm sign with his dead CO's face.
His fingers shook, loading a concussive round. Test of intention. Of his own sanity. He waited till they'd left cover, and squeezed the trigger.
The shockwave blew them off their feet. They tucked and rolled, up in seconds, shields down. A barrier sprang up around them, not their making; the slighter squadmate's hand was crooked in a mnemonic.
"Be careful, Shepard. He's not getting the message—"
Garrus lost the rest. He fell from his perch and staggered for the exit with ears roaring, on legs that hadn't unbent for two and a half days.
"I have to go, Dad," he croaked. "Cavalry's here."
The silicon-carbide blade seared afterimages on his retinas when it assembled from his tool. Hissed through soldering—molten orange—bubbling gray. The ten-yard trip to quarters nearly did him in. He hacked the door shut, a half-assed nod to precaution, and hauled a decommissioned rifle onto the rail.
The stock fitted strangely against his shoulder, contoured for a version of him that'd worn thinner ceramic. The receiver felt like an old friend. He fired. Pull weight, lower. Muzzle climb, higher. Antique but operational.
Shepard's commando was bent over the body of his ex-forward scout. Her other squadmate was scanning his base, fingers flicking over their tool.
His helm-to-helm receiver chirped. "Archangel, this is Miranda Lawson, Executive Officer of the Normandy SR-2. We are friendlies, repeat, friendlies. Please grant permission to advance."
Garrus pumped the HMW. Shepard's nod was terse, unmistakable now he'd clocked her. She cocked up her assault. Unhooked a grenade, and flicked out the pin.
"On my mark, unleash hell," she said.
A YMIR mech had powered down fifty yards from his base. It exploded like a star when the grenade hit. Shepard was a comet burning down the field, freelancers screaming ahead of her. They swarmed forward, motion sensors blared—
Every charge his demo specialist had set around the entrance blew. His sound dampener tripped, tripped again. Garrus blinked hard, gritted his teeth, and panned to the barricade.
He pulled the trigger and counted, pulled, settling into the remembered rhythm of old weapons tech, trying to ignore the battle encroaching on his position, failing. The paranoia sizzled in him like hot oil, check your six check your damn six, and when the lock failed he snatched a visual on reflex.
Her.
He didn't know how she was here. He didn't know who'd sent her or why, what the hell she was doing in the ass-end of space on Omega, pulling him out of the fire. But she was back among the living, moving with the same brutal efficiency as ever, dropping into cover beside him, and as the last mark rabbited and the body thudded down and he looked out on a burnt-out block clear of breathers for the first time in days, he said:
"Shepard. I thought you were dead."