Thinking about Garrus again and how much I appreciate his character, his development, his search for perspective and how it shapes his relationship with Shepard.
He always wants to do the Right Thing, as in Achieve X Positive End Goal, but the way there is so murky to him. So tough to navigate, to visualize. He likes when it's clear and when it's simple, but it simply never fucking is, so he has to Think It Through. And he simply cannot trust anyone else to do the thinking for him. He can't trust them to value the Right Thing as much as he does. He can't trust them to want it as badly.
and then, ENTER SHEPARD STAGE LEFT, and finally he finds someone that he can trust. With all of it. He can Tell she wants it just as badly, but the difference is, she seems to also have an idea of how to get there.
I've seen people complain that he has no backbone and just agrees with whatever Shepard says, and it's like… they don't get it. He needs someone in his life who he can trust to think things through with him, to meet him where he's at and to engage in good faith. She is the Only person he would ever cede to, the only authority he'll accept, because she has proven herself to care just as much as he cares.
(As a side note, that's also how I view his infamous elevator talks. He's not approaching these conversations closed-mindedly even if his word choice is often lacking or people take offense to his straight-forwardness. As I said, the path is murky for him. He's asking because he genuinely wants to know. He's practically desperate for another point of view. He wants to understand.)
He's the only character who constantly asks Shepard for her opinion on things, on morality issues and approaches and how she'd navigate all the little pitfalls that line the road to Justice. And over the games he recognizes that even this lofty end goal is anything but simple, and it's shaped by how they get there. He doesn't talk these things through with her just to follow her direction like a soldier following orders. Him accepting her response, no matter what it is, is him respecting her so much and believing so much in her true desire for achieving Justice - it's not blanket agreeing with her.
This happens so often in ME3: he'll ask, and she'll respond, and he will accept her answer without judgement, but you never hear him say "you're so right, o my moral compass". He's just mapping the path that's ahead, and he takes her opinion as much into account as his own, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have his own or that it always aligns with hers. He wants the full picture, and at that point, he is humble enough to know that his opinion is subjective, so he needs more points of view and more intel, and there is none that he values more than Shepard's.
But it's not all for himself. They're both stuck in the same, horrible situation. He's asking her, and in turn she has to think about it and really consider all the pitfalls he's already identified but isn't sure how to approach. He's a safe sounding board for her. They think it through together, her as this unstoppable force towards the Right Thing, him as the one in the sniper's perch who sights the path ahead and calls out to her when there's a wall before she can run head-first into it. In the end, they're two people united in their striving for the same thing, two halves of a well-oiled machine. No Shepard without Vakarian.
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