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like a ghost

Newly arisen and suddenly under the thumb of a terrorist organization, Shepard isn't handling being undead very well—and nearly losing one of her favorite people in the galaxy sends her spiraling all over again (not that she'd stopped.) In the wake of going after Archangel, Sun and Garrus have a quiet conversation in the medbay about where she's been and what happened 2 years ago. Mass Effect 2, Shakarian, 4100+ words Also on AO3!

Finding Garrus feels like she’s taken her first real breath of air since Cerberus breathed life back into her mangled corpse.

Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but she can’t think of any other way to describe it. When he’d taken that helmet off and said her name—Shepard, voice dripping with affection like honey—it had been all she could do to avoid throwing herself at him. If they’d been alone, and he hadn’t looked like a strong breeze might knock him over, she might have done it anyway. The permanent knot of anxiety in her stomach had eased, and the sheer relief that not only had Cerberus accidentally picked out one of her favorite people in the universe, but that she’d gotten to him just in time to keep him safe—it felt too good to be true.

And then he’d gotten shot in the face with a rocket, and all of her hopes and dreams had seeped out of her in a dark blue puddle all over the floor.

Dr. Chakwas had taken one look at him when they’d carried him in, all three of them including Jacob and Zaeed slick with the blood pouring out of his head wound, and simply said, “I’ve got him.” Sun helped them lay him out on one of the medbay beds—helped drag another one over so that his feet weren’t dangling off the end—but after that has to be nearly dragged out of the room bodily by Zaeed. She’d felt like if she blinked he’d disappear and had desperately fought to stay by his side, despite her better judgment being well aware of how stupid she was being. It’s not until Chakwas grabs her by the shoulders and says “Shepard, look at me. I’ve got him now. I need you out of the way so I can do my job,” that Sun manages to tear her wild eyed gaze away from his bloody face.

“Don’t—don’t let him go, Doc. I need—we need—“

Chakwas had just nodded and squeezed her shoulders again. “It’ll be alright, Shepard. You go get changed and get some rest. EDI will let you know when I’m done.”

And then she’d been gone, the doors sliding closed behind her with a quiet whoosh. The blinds on the medbay windows had followed, and that had been that.

3 hours, 46 minutes.

Sun had managed to get herself into the shower, armor and all. She’d stood under the faucet until the blood stopped seeping off of the unmarked black armor, and then she’d stripped to wash the rest of her body. It’s the first time since the Cerberus base that she’s had a proper shower, that she’s been able to see her body in private, and it nearly sends her into another spiral. Though the water is warm, her hands shake as she runs her fingers across her skin, pulling lightly at some of the glowing gaps on her stomach. They pull apart even more at her touch, though they don’t hurt, she thinks she might be able to see some of the bloody meat beneath if she looks closely enough. The gaps in her skin are all over her body and, as if in a trance, she continues to pull at the skin just to see what’s under there—

—and promptly finds herself doubling over, dry heaving over the shower drain.

Water runs down her face, the shower water hiding the tears that burn and sting at her eyes and surely overflow, dripping onto the tile. Black bursts begin to pop in front of her vision, creeping tendrils at the sides like smoke alerting her to her imminent demise if she doesn’t sit down. She falls heavily onto the tile floor, leaning back against the wall as she pulls her knees to her chest and drops her head between to try and bring everything back together. To try to avoid passing out. Her ears are filled with cotton, and her chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. She—

“Commander Shepard, your heart rate is 203 beats per minute. Do you need medical assistance?”

Fuck. Of course, the AI is tuned into her vitals.

There’s something invasive about the thought of that that makes her feel like she’s going to throw up again, but she just swallows and squeezes her eyes tighter together. This whole thing with Cerberus has her on edge, and the fact that they have a live feed of her vitals just cements the feeling she has in the pit of her gut—they aren’t asking her to help them: this is a hostage situation. There’s no saying no to them. Not after everything they’ve done, to her and to others. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.

“Commander Shepard?”

She laughs a little, though it’s a forced sound at best.

“No, EDI,” she says, voice thick with the tears still slipping from her eyes. She presses the heels of her palms against them with a shaky sigh. “I’m just having a panic attack. It’ll pass.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m—I’ll be fine.”

She expects more pushback, but the AI just gives an affirmative bloop and the room falls silent again, leaving Sun sitting on the floor in silence, nothing but the ragged sound of her breathing and the running water to keep her company. There’s something extra humiliating about her position all of the sudden, and she struggles back up onto her feet, shutting the water off and reaching for a towel.

After drying herself as best she can, she shoves herself back into the cloth under-armor garments, ignoring the dampness from the way she’d stood under the shower with her armor on as she heads out the door and straight for the elevator. EDI hadn’t said anything about Garrus, so she assumes that Chakwas is still working on him. She doesn’t want to wait around with the rest of these strangers, so she heads straight for the Captain’s Quarters.

She really only makes it about two steps into the room before all the energy gets sucked out of her. Her armor is dumped in pieces by the door as her eyes fill with tears again, and she stumbles over to her dresser, digging through to find something dry to wear. She pulls shirt after shirt from the drawers, getting more and more upset the more she finds that they’ve all been emblazoned with the Cerberus logo—until she finally pulls out a grey t-shirt without anything on it. It pulls a noise from her throat, but she can’t figure out whether it’s a laugh, a sob, or a cough. Can’t be bothered to think about it any more than she is now, pulling the under-armor shirt off and letting it fall unceremoniously to the ground as she pulls the soft cotton t-shirt over her head. Luckily, Cerberus seems to be above emblazoning their logo on the ass of their sweatpants, so she thankfully can pull the first pair she grabs on after shucking off the under-armor tights.

Once she’s in dry clothes, she walks over to the bed and collapses with a sigh, wet hair and all. The mattress is soft, the sheets expensive and smelling faintly of a very pleasant detergent—she almost wants to fall asleep right there, until she opens her eyes and remembers why she hasn’t been sleeping in the bed.

The skylight above the bed opens out into the great yawning maw of the empty void, and immediately her heart rate spikes all over again. She sits upright in a hurry, staring straight ahead and just repeating No, no, no, no, we are not going to do this right now, over and over in her head until the urge to scream subsides again, like a wave going back out to sea. She slumps as the fear fades, rubbing roughly at her face, scrubbing at the tears on her cheeks. This whole fucking situation is bullshit, and she just wants to rest so badly that it almost hurts—and so she sighs, grabbing a pillow off the bed and the fluffy comforter, dragging them over to the sectional sofa across from the fish tanks. Tossing the pillow into the corner of the sofa, she settles, stretching out lengthwise facing the fish tanks. She tucks herself in with the comforter, slipping her arm under her head under the pillow, hugging a bundle of the blanket to her chest as if she’s holding a teddy bear.

Her chest aches with the echoes of the panic that had gripped her on Omega, and then again in the showers, and again just now when she’d caught a glimpse of the skylight. Her eyes sting again, the world blurs as she hugs the comforter even tighter to her chest, tears leaking out and dripping onto the pillow beneath her head. There’s pressure behind her eyes, and before she can manage to stop herself, she finds a sob clawing its way up her throat and past her lips. It’s been well over a decade, but nights like this…

…nights like this, she really misses her mom and dad.

“Commander Shepard.”

Sun jerks awake at the sound of the synthetic voice. For a terrifying few moments, she doesn’t remember where she is or how she got here. It takes her another minute of staring at the empty fish tanks to realize where she is, and she groans, burying her face in the pillow again. The AI makes another noise, and she sighs, tilting her head just enough that she can speak clearly.

“Mm. ‘s going on, EDI?”

“Doctor Chakwas would like to speak to you at the med bay.”

Chakwas.

Garrus.

Sun doesn’t need any more encouragement, pushing herself upright with a quiet grunt of effort. Her body aches from the overuse of her muscles—going from lying dead on a table to running around shooting at mercs so quickly had done a number on her—and she takes a moment to stretch out some of the kinks.

“How long did I sleep?” she asks, stretching her arms over her head until her spine pops several times.

“2 hours 13 minutes. It is currently 3:36 AM, Alliance Standard Time.”

That means Garrus was in surgery for 6 hours, give or take. It must have been even worse than she’d thought it was—and she’d thought it was pretty bad when she had to carry him back to the ship. She doesn’t waste any other time thinking too hard about it, kicking her blanket off and moving to put her combat boots on (all the while making a mental note to get herself something more comfortable to wear during off hours).

The ride down in the elevator feels too long, the elevator itself too cold for her own comfort. She crosses her arms across her chest as goosebumps prickle across her bare arms, leaning back against the wall as exhaustion still threatens to pull her under. It’s nice when the doors finally slide open again with a quiet whoosh of air, and she sighs in harmony with it, stepping out into the bright fluorescent lights of the mess hall.

The mess hall has been vacated for the night, she discovers as she turns the corner. As she walks over to the medbay, Sun pauses to turn the lights down in the hall. It probably doesn’t waste any real energy, but it’s too bright and it hurts her already aching head a little too much for comfort.

When the door to the medbay slides open, she’s pleased to find that the overhead lights have been turned down, only the orange emergency lights along the floor left on. The only other light comes from Chakwas’ computer on her desk where she’s sitting, working on something or other. She turns at the sound of the door, smiling when she sees that Sun has come to visit.

“Shepard,” she says simply.

Sun starts to smile, but it falls away when she hears another voice chime in—or attempt to.

“Shhhep… ow…”

Garrus is lying on a different cot now, clean white sheets below him. His head is turned towards the door, both to accommodate his fringe and so that he’s not laying on the injury.

Dr. Chakwas laughs lightly, rising from her seat to walk over to him, waving Shepard closer with a hand. “I told you to be careful talking, Vakarian. I just finished resculpting your face.”

As Sun gets closer, she catches him rolling his eyes, though all he does is wave one hand weakly.

“Yeah, I heard you, Doc. I just—ow—”

Dr. Chakwas laughs again, shaking her head and sighing as she turns her attention to Sun. She looks tired in the dim lighting, the bags under her eyes heavy, though she seems pleased with the outcome of her work with Garrus. “He was asking for you, Commander. Though, he should be asleep, I thought it best to give you two some time to catch up without all of the Cerberus crew lurking about.”

Sun snorts, avoiding Garrus’s gaze even though she can feel it burning a hole in her shirt. “I appreciate that, Doc. Anything I should know about him before you head to bed?”

Chakwas sighs, looking over at Garrus again. “No, not really. I did my best to reconstruct, and I believe he’ll make a full recovery with full functionality of his face, though it will leave a nasty scar. I’ve instructed him to remain in bed until at least 6:00 AM—I’d appreciate it if you saw to it that he did not, in fact, start wandering around the ship before the sedation wears off. He needs to rest,” she pauses, leaning forward toward him in emphasis. He gives a heavy sigh of annoyance that makes the doctor laugh, and she straightens up again with a shrug. “Other than that, I would suggest that he keep the talking to a minimum. He’ll be quite sore when the medication wears off, and he could cause more bleeding if he moves the mandible on that side too much.”

Sun nods, finally looking over at Garrus and finding him already staring at her face, gazes locking in an instant. She smiles a little, feeling the strange orange lines in her face pull at the movement.

“I’ll make sure he rests. You should get some rest as well, Doc.”

Chakwas nods, sighing heavily. “And I plan to. Goodnight Shepard; Vakarian.”

The two of them chime a quiet ''Night after her retreating form as Sun turns to watch her go. The door slides shut behind her and, for a moment, all she can do is stare at the closed door. It’s not that she’s scared of Garrus, but she’s off-kilter and everything about this situation has her wary. She doesn’t know how to move forward without putting anyone else in danger—though, considering where she just found Garrus, that probably doesn’t matter much to him.

She becomes aware of Garrus’s breathing in the quiet room after a moment. It’s deep and slow—as slow as a human when asleep, though from what she knows of turians from all of her experience with her godmothers and with Garrus himself, that’s just what turians sound like when they’re breathing normally. She finally manages to make herself move again, turning to look at him where he’s still laying on the bed.

His left mandible shifts against the pillow.

He’s still trying to smile, even after getting his head nearly blown off with a rocket.

That breaks whatever hesitation had been sitting in her throat, and she laughs a little, smiling as she moves to grab Chakwas’ chair, dragging it over to the side of his cot. She settles, crossing her legs and leaning her elbow on the little table that had been dragged over by his bedside.

“Hey.”

He snorts. “Hi.”

She tilts her chin, gesturing to his face as she asks, “How’re you feeling?”

Garrus just rolls his eyes at her, which makes her laugh. At least his personality is still in tact, if nothing else.

“Gotta say, I’ve felt better. Be honest, Shepard—how bad is it?” he asks as he gestures weakly to the side of his face with one of his hands.

Sun considers what she can see of the wound, which isn’t much. Most of his face is still covered with a bandage, soaked in the dark blue of his blood, but she can see the jagged edges of it peeking out from underneath the gauze.

“I don’t think it’ll be too bad,” she says, tilting her head so that she can see his face straight on. “Plus, some women find facial scars attractive.”

He laughs, and then groans, settling a little further into his pillows. “Believe it or not, Shepard, I’m not really looking to attract Krogan women.”

She snorts, lifting her leg to nudge his knee with her foot. “Hey, it’s not just Krogan women. I think they’re pretty attractive, too.”

He laughs again, followed by another groan. “Oh, don’t make me laugh, Shepard. My face is barely holding together as it is.”

“I’m being serious, Vakarian,” she insists, though she’s not sure where she’s going with this, ears burning. “It’s not my fault you think that’s funny.”

They both laugh at that, and there’s something in the familiarity between them that has a warmth settling in her chest, a lightness she hasn’t felt since she woke up. It’s like she can finally breathe again, like she has something to hold onto to keep her head above water. She’s so grateful for the happy coincidence that led her to decide to go help Archangel before tracking down Mordin Solus, deciding that his situation sounded a bit more dire than Mordin’s. She doesn’t often believe in divine intervention, but sometimes…

“How are you, Shepard?” Garrus asks, distracting her from her thoughts. “It’s been a long time, but you seem… off.”

Sun laughs, reaching up to rub at her face, exhaustion momentarily overriding the fear of the gaps in her skin. “Ohh, don’t let them hear you say that,” she groans, leaning forward, bracing her elbows on the table. “Who knows what other fucked up procedures they’ll want to do if they think something came out wrong.”

“Cerberus?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“So, you’re not—you really—”

“Died?” she finishes for him, voice flat. She drops her hands to the table, looking up at him again. He nods, and she nods as well. “Yeah. I—god, Garrus, it was—I don’t remember much, but… I remember floating… the air was leaking out of my suit—and—and then I was falling—”

Sun stops abruptly when her voice cracks, eyes stinging once more, and she wonders how much more crying she has left in her tonight. She reaches up to swipe at the tears before they have the chance to fall properly, pausing with the heels of her palms pressed against her eyes. She sniffles miserably, breath hitching as the panic once again rises up in her chest.

“I’m so fucking happy to see you, Garrus,” she breathes, laughing weakly. She drops her hands back to her lap, looking over at him. He’s just watching her, eyes darting back and forth across her face like he can’t quite believe he’s seeing her either. “The past week or so has been—bizarre. Unreal. I don’t…”

“You’ve only been with Cerberus for a week and a half?”

It surprises her, though she’s not sure why it does, that he figures that out so quickly. She’d have expected him to believe that she just lied to him all these past few years, but he’s so quick to believe her that it takes her breath away a little, the amount of trust he still has in her.

She nods in answer to his question, sighing softly. “I’ve been—I’ve spent the past two years on an operating table in some lab. I woke up maybe a week ago, half naked with no memory of where I was or how I got there. I don’t—I don’t even know if that’s where I’ve actually even been these past two years. They could have told me anything and how would I know the difference? They could have been using me the whole time, and just… just wiped the memories. How would I know, you know?”

Sun is openly crying by the time she finishes, tears streaming down her cheeks. She avoids his gaze, instead opting to examine her hands, examining the strange glowing orange cracks that she can see there as well.

So focused on her hands and trying to control her breathing is she that she doesn’t even see Garrus reaching for her until she feels his hand on her cheek, brushing the tears away with the back of his knuckles. She looks over at him curiously, though she’s sure she must be making quite the face as more tears leak out.

He doesn’t seem to be all there, still soaring on the pain medication the doctor had given him, watching his hand rather than looking at her face. His touch lingers, sending warmth cascading over her skin as if he’d just dumped warm water over her head, before he lets his hand drop back to the mattress beside him.

“If it makes you feel any better, Shepard,” he begins, voice low and gravelly in the dim light of the medbay, “I’ve had my ear to the seedy underbelly of the galaxy for a while now. I would have noticed if you were out there doing Cerberus’ dirty work before now.”

Sun laughs, sniffling again as she reaches up to wipe her tears away again. “You think?”

“I don’t think,” he replies, and his eyes finally dart back up to hers. “I know. I would have known if you were out there. I would have… well. I don’t know what I would have done. But I know I would have noticed.”

I would have come for you—she can nearly hear him say it, even though he cuts himself off before he can. It makes her want to cry even more, but she’s already crying more than she should be in front of him, or in front of anyone while they’re in this precarious position. She needs to stop spiraling, and focus on what to do from here. Needs to focus on moving forward, one step at a time.

She’s so happy to have him watching her back again. If anyone could get her out of this mess with Cerberus, she believes that he could do it.

“Well,” she says, taking a deep breath and straightening up, wiping at her face. “That’s enough of that for now. Ahem—um, you should—you should get some rest. Chakwas says you need to stay in bed until at least 6:00 this morning and it is… 4:15.”

Garrus hums, watching her stand. There’s something in his eyes that says he knows that she’s trying to run away, but she’s pretty sure that if they talk anymore, they’ll probably both be more than a little embarrassed come the light of day. She takes another deep breath, steadying herself, feeling her mask slip back into place finally.

She must have needed to say that out loud.

Riding the impulse, she reaches out and grabs his hand, squeezing it gently before she leaves, smiling down at him. “Get some rest, Vakarian. We’ll go out again tomorrow.”

His left mandible flares again as he smiles at her, nodding a little as he squeezes her hand back at the last second. “Just like old times, Shepard.”

She laughs as she pulls away, reaching up to run her hand through her hair as she grins down at him.

“Just like old times.”

When she returns to the Captain’s Quarters, the weight that had been settled over her chest since she woke up on that metal table has finally lifted just a bit. The relief and comfort that just knowing that Garrus is down in the medbay—knowing that he’s here with her—brings is the first time she’s started to feel real since she first came on the new Normandy. She can still feel the pleasant coolness of his skin against her feverish cheek, brushing the tears away as she settles back onto the pillow she’d placed on the couch. Her body sinks into the cushions, heavy with exhaustion, muscles loose and relaxed.

She’s asleep before she can even form another coherent thought, pulled under and into the realm of dreams by the steady sound of the air conditioning, dreams filled with the memory of cool fingers and a familiar voice that feels like home.

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