Post-Destroy Shakarian Mini-Fic
Her body was found in the rubble a little more than thirty-six hours after the Citadel event and it was rushed to the nearest triage tent with little more than a pulse. It wasn’t more than a couple hours before she was ushered to a more capable facility outside of London proper and then it was all hands on deck.
That was six weeks ago now; six long weeks of awaiting communications channels to open, for any news, for hope. A vid call was the best the Alliance could offer the crew of the Normandy at this point and they all knew who to give those precious few minutes of airtime to.
The doors to the commanding officer’s quarters locked and Garrus quickly took a seat in the small task chair at Shepard’s computer. A deep breath, eyes closed, and he connected the call. It was a nurse, or an aide of some sort, who confirmed his identity and carried the mobile vid device over to the hospital bed.
And there she was. Garrus’s heart raced, his mandibles clenched and his eyes searched over all he could see of Shepard. She looked pathetic in her blue hospital gown, cannula under her nose and who knows how many connections all over her body to any number of telemetry devices. Maybe even life support, ported directly into her cybernetics. Black circles under her eyes, hair thin and greasy from lack of proper bathing, but there she was.
And her eyes, her bright green eyes, they were… Blank. Just, blank.
Not lifeless, but soulless, that’s how he would describe the blank stare that Jane Shepard gave him. He saw no relief, no joy, nothing, when her eyes focussed on the screen put in front of her.
“Are you another doctor?” That alto which could be music to his auriculars was so shallow.
“I--” Garrus was interrupted by the nurse, no doubt due to the time lag. The human woman corrected her patient, ‘No, dear, this is a connection to the SSV Normandy. This is one of your shipmates.’
Shipmates, Garrus huffed in his mind.
“The Normandy?” Jane brought a hand to her lips, drawing a finger tip over them in thought. An IV or some other connection hung from the back of her hand, taped in place. She seemed in good care, if done a bit archaically. It was likely the best they could do, all things considered. “Captain Anderson’s new ship. You must be the turian envoy. Nihlus, was it?” Shepard smiled weakly. Diplomatic, even at her lowest.
His heart sank. A low hum escaped Garrus’ throat, inaudible over the call, but it washed over his body. Shock, sadness. It was hard to process what he had just heard, what Shepard-- Jane, his Jane-- had just said.
“No, no, I’m Garrus,” he spoke up after a pause, voice deflated. “Garrus Vakarian, I’m…” He watched Shepard’s eyes struggle to focus on the video. She was obviously tired, and didn’t seem particularly interested if for no reason other than fatigue. “I’m, yeah, just checking on you. Wanted to make sure you were alright.”
The Commander looked toward the nurse, every third or fourth word slurring, “I’ve got such a damn headache. Everyone keeps telling me my injuries happened on the Citadel, something heroic. I’ve never even been to the damn Citadel.” Her attention went back to Garrus, “Last thing I remember I was boarding a shuttle to rendezvous with Anderson, and now...” She weakly gestured at the room.
The turian nodded solemnly, eyes diverting from the screen to nothing in particular on Shepard’s desk. He listened to her slow speech, and it was painful. So painful. This was … this was hardly Shepard. A severe brain injury was the obvious culprit of this behavior and it absolutely was not a surprise considering events. To witness memory loss like this was shocking. It was one thing to expect it somewhere in the back of his mind, but it knocked the wind out of Garrus’s sales to see it first hand. Was it a ‘physical’ erasure caused by the injury? Was it post-traumatically induced?
Did he really want to know, or care? It was reality, plain and simple.
All that mattered right then was that he couldn’t find his words. The silence likely lasted little more than a handful of seconds, the hospital machines beeping away to fill the voice, but finally Shepard spoke up once more. “I guess I should ask… if I was injured this bad, how is everyone else? Where is the Captain?”
“Shepard…” Garrus instinctively responded, voice hushed. His tone was on the cusp of an incredulous laugh; this was … unbearable.
“That bad, huh?” The Commander tried to smirk, but yawned.
“Yeah,” he nodded in response, “It’s a long story and I don’t have much time on the vid call to really tell it. Shepard, I should... go. Give the crew an update on you.” He felt like a coward.
“Tell them not to kick too much ass without me. Obviously the Normandy’s maiden flight went off without a hitch if she’s got a crew waiting for me, uh…” She raised an eyebrow, as if searching for the word. Name, more like. “Soldier.”
“Garrus.”
“Garrus. Right.”
He ended the call and stood within the same motion. His name echoed back to him so colorlessly… it hurt. He shuddered as he paced across the room, the quarters he had commandeered after the crash-landing. No one protested, of course. They were family. They understood.
Now their matriarch was… Well, Garrus didn’t even know how to describe the short conversation, how to tell the crew that they were nothing more than acquaintances in her mind. Hell, she had no recollection of him… there was no way she was going to remember any of the non-Alliance crew.
Garrus sat on the edge, on Jane’s side, of the squat human bed. He had brought in a few ergonomic cushions for himself, but they were splayed out across the far side, spilling onto the floor. Three fingers rubbed across his face and over his cranial blades, eyes distant and glassy. He looked around the room, trying to compose himself; the squat couch and chairs, the emptied fish tank, the stack of cups and saucers left over from the past few days.
She was alive, she was safe, but…
His whole body shuddered once more, blue eyes closing and a hand covering his face. Subharmonics rumbled low, from head to toe, a collection of sounds at pitches and in tones that melded together in a mournful song. His emotions spilled over, out of his control, and he sobbed. It would have been absolutely useless, probably more harm than good, to tell her who she really was to him. Damnit. He wanted to tell her he loved her, he wanted to remind her of … of everything. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
A jerking, choking sob; Garrus had never been wracked with such agonizing grief before. With his mother there was closure through longanimity. With his crew on Omega there was closure through revenge. With watching Palaven burn there was closure through Shepard.
This was a fate worse than her death.
