A small fic centered on regret and quiet, internal guilt.
Garrus and Shepard had slipped upstairs during the party to steal a moment away from prying eyes. Below them, laughter and music carried on, softened by distance, reduced to a low murmur that felt as though it belonged to another world.
They sat together on the sofa, close enough to forget everything else. Shepard was nearly in his lap, her legs draped over his, while Garrus’s arm rested securely around her waist, holding her against him with an ease that had long since become instinctive.
Their faces were close. Too close for simple conversation.
They spoke in low voices, trading quiet confidences punctuated by amused murmurs and gentle teasing. Garrus’s mandibles shifted subtly, a clear sign of his amusement, and his voice softened whenever he spoke to her like this, away from everyone else. Shepard answered with soft, rare breaths of laughter, almost shy, her fingers absently tracing along his arm.
They teased each other, whispered softly, drifting back together whenever even the smallest space formed between them.
They were simply at ease together.
Kaidan climbed the stairs without any real destination, seeking a moment of quiet away from the crowd as the beginnings of a migraine pulsed behind his temples. But as he reached the landing, voices caught his attention.
He stopped abruptly behind the wall. He didn’t need to see them to understand.
Shepard’s voice was instantly recognizable and yet different. Softer. Warmer. Stripped of the sharp hardness she usually wore like armor.
A tight ache settled in his chest.
They sounded deeply in love. Intimate in a calm, effortless way, as though this closeness had always existed between them. Far more than anything he had ever truly shared with her.
Jealousy rose despite himself.
Kaidan had always loved Shepard. Yet he had never managed to move beyond this stolen moment. Never broken through the defenses she kept wrapped tightly around herself, never reached the closeness he could now hear in the faintest shifts of her voice.
Even when they flirted, an invisible distance had remained between them, a gap he had never learned how to cross, one that had slowly worn him down.
Horizon came rushing back at once. His doubts. His accusations. The moment he had turned away from her instead of following.
While Garrus had stayed. He had stood at her side throughout the mission, supporting her without hesitation.
Even during Udina’s coup, when everything had fallen apart, when doubt had frozen him, when he had hesitated to believe Shepard, raising his weapon against her. Kaidan could still see it with painful clarity: his finger tense on the trigger… and Garrus already moving, stepping between them, ready to defend her without a moment’s hesitation.
Where he had doubted, Garrus had chosen.
Kaidan clenched his jaw.
He envied him, and the thought filled him immediately with guilt. Because he knew all of this was his own doing. Garrus had taken nothing from him. He had simply succeeded where Kaidan had failed.
He tried to show none of it, to behave as though their relationship didn’t affect him. He had no right to jealousy. Not after breaking the trust Shepard had once placed in him.
And yet…
Kaidan remained there despite himself, hidden behind the wall, listening to their whispers. He knew it wasn’t right, but he found himself unable to leave.
Shepard’s voice reached him clearly now, softer, warmer than he had ever heard it before. She, usually brutal and sharp-edged, cynical and overwhelming in her intensity, sounded different. Gentle, playful, almost vulnerable.
I love my OCs. I really do. So I started playing V Shepard, right? Planned on going with the Tower ending so she'd end up with Viktor (in my headcanon)
And then I started looking up mods for clothes. And tried to play dress up. And V Shepard promptly informed me that she wears flannel and flannel only and if I make her end with anyone other than Judy she's gonna be pissed. Like super pissed
So... back to the drawing board. I'm not gonna fight V Shepard!
Back to V Trevelyan. I wish there was a way to change your appearance in the game (other than the mirror) cause then I wouldn't have to start over. But I can't find a way
So I will get all my new shiny clothes and hair mods ready to go and create a new version of V Trevelyan. Though the more I think about it, I might throw out V Trevelyan and go with a completely new V instead. Maybe V Hindemith. I have time to ponder while I get things set up!
Shepard has been in a coma for months now, leaving Garrus alone with his thoughts.
Shepard had been in a coma for several months already.
The injuries she had sustained when the rescue teams found her beneath the rubble were such that anyone else would have succumbed to them. The fact that she had survived was nothing short of a miracle.
So Garrus couldn't afford to complain. At least, she was still breathing. That was what he kept telling himself over and over, like a mantra.
She's alive.
Yet the months went by and her condition remained unchanged. Seeing her like this, trapped in this leaden sleep, her eyes closed, her face motionless, her body still... it was truly heartbreaking.
Chakwas had assured him that humans were sometimes capable of hearing what was said to them even while in a coma. So he kept talking to her. Even if she remained silent. Even if she no longer reacted. Even if she no longer laughed at his sarcasm.
"The repairs are progressing quickly," he said softly. "It seems the horror of these past months is pushing everyone to look toward the future... now that the Reapers are gone."
No reaction. Her face remained the same, distant, unreachable.
Maybe Chakwas had only said that to lift his spirits. To keep him from losing hope. So he ventured into more intimate subjects. Things he usually kept buried deep inside.
Shepard had always known how to listen. And yet, even to her, he had never dared confide the heaviest burdens he carried.
"I received a message from my father. It must have taken weeks to get here. There aren't many communication relays still functioning."
He paused, his gaze lost on the blurred silhouette of Shepard lying on the bed in this makeshift hospital.
"My mother didn't survive."
The words scraped at his throat.
"Her condition was already... complicated before the Reapers arrived. She never had any chance of escaping them."
Silence fell once more.
Garrus remained still, his eyes fixed on her.
His mind involuntarily conjured an imaginary version of Shepard sitting across from him. He imagined her solemn gaze, the way she would say his name. She probably wouldn't say anything else. Because there was nothing to say. But her presence would have been enough. Her attention. The simple fact that she was there with him.
His eyes drifted toward the starry sky beyond the window.
Up there, his mother had joined the spirits of her ancestors.
And he couldn't help imagining her final hours: alone amidst the chaos of the invasion. No one to reassure her. No one to say goodbye.
She belonged to the stars now.
As sleep began to claim him as well, his thoughts drifted.
Memories rose to the surface, mingling with the images of this silent room. The way his mother had died… It was like when Shepard had disappeared years ago. When the Normandy had been destroyed.
Garrus relived the scene with painful clarity.
The rescue shuttle had just been recovered by an Alliance frigate. Admiral Hackett had come in person. Other shuttles were arriving as well. Many crew members had survived.
A relief.
Then a final shuttle had emerged from the darkness. The only one still transmitting a signal.
Joker stepped out of it. Alone.
All eyes turned toward him.
"And Shepard?"
Joker hadn't dared meet Hackett's gaze. He said nothing. He simply shook his head. His face conveyed everything else: anger, anguish, disbelief.
Garrus had refused to believe it. It was impossible. He had convinced himself that he was misreading human expressions. That he was mistaken. The illusion hadn't lasted long.
Hackett immediately ordered a search. Just in case she was still out there somewhere. Lost in the cold vastness of space.
They found nothing.
The days passed. Then the media stopped talking about a disappearance. They started talking about a death.
He remembered perfectly the moment they heard it for the first time. They were gathered around a table in a bar on the Citadel. In silence. And the little hope they had left shattered in just a few words.
Kaidan was the first to stand up. He muttered an excuse before walking away, his shoulders slumped.
Wrex drained his glass. “To the most formidable human I've ever met.” Then he left as well.
Tali and Liara stayed. Frozen. As if moving might make the news real.
Eventually, Tali spoke.
She talked about the fear that had followed her when she left the Migrant Fleet. The stories she had heard about how quarians were treated throughout the rest of the galaxy.
She told them how Shepard had taken her in with high expectations. She was ruthless, unforgiving. But also with respect. She treated her as an equal. As a full-fledged member of her crew. And that said more about Shepard than any medal ever could.
Garrus and Liara listened. Everything felt unreal. Just a few hours earlier, they had still been fighting at her side. Now they were speaking about her in the past tense.
Tali left to rejoin her people.
Then Liara let out a long sigh. A sigh laden with everything she couldn't bring herself to say. She seemed just as lost as he was.
Liara asked him to take care of himself. To stay in touch.
He nodded. Without believing it for a single second.
Then he found himself alone with the empty bottles and abandoned glasses. And a special broadcast dedicated to the first human Spectre playing on the screen above the bar.
He should have left. Yet he stayed.
They talked about her achievements. Her troubled past on Earth among the gangs. Her elevation to Spectre status. Saren. The Battle of the Citadel.
But nothing about the real Shepard. Nothing about her relentless determination. The way she pursued a goal with the stubbornness of a varren on a trail. The enjoyment she took in driving the Mako at full speed. The music she liked to listen to while sniping Thorian creepers and competing with him. Or the meals and nights of sleep she often skipped.
Everything that made her real... Human.
None of it was there.
Nothing of the woman he had followed. Nothing of the woman who had given him the opportunity of a lifetime: to get out of that bureaucratic hell and finally act, make a difference.
How many people in this galaxy had truly known her?
The thought imposed itself despite him. She had left the way she had lived. Alone.
Garrus immediately felt disgusted with himself for thinking it. But the question remained.
He knew her file. Like many others did. The childhood in the poor districts. The violence. The Alliance as the only way out. Yet one day, Shepard had told him another truth. A truth that appeared in no report.
“I tried to kill Anderson when I was a kid.” She had spoken the words with unsettling calm. “He was on a mission in my streets. I still don't know why he spared me, even to this day.”
Garrus had never claimed to fully understand humans. But he had seen something in her eyes that day. An immense weariness. An ancient loneliness. Like a light that had gone out long before he met her.
Then the image returned. Shepard drifting alone through space. Vanishing into the darkness. As if the galaxy had swallowed her whole.
Garrus woke with a start in the chair beside the hospital bed. The oppressive silence of the room was still there. And so was Shepard.
Every time I replay Mass Effect, I can’t help but think that Garrus has just found the woman of his life, but he doesn’t know it yet; and my Shepard has found her lifelong partner, but she doesn’t know it yet either.
I find it so beautiful because in the first game they’re complete strangers to each other. Garrus respects her, and my Shepard is wary of him, but at the same time she appreciates him (even more than the men of her own species).
They get to know each other, share their first adventures, without realizing that not even death will be able to separate them in the future.
Tags: SFW; Shepard x Garrus; angst; serious discussion
Haunted by another nightmare, Shepard finds comfort in the one person who has always been there: Garrus.
Another nightmare. Again.
Shepard jolted awake, drenched in sweat. It was becoming routine.
She had always been a light sleeper, but never this restless. Not even during the darkest periods of her life.
Back then, her nights had been nothing but darkness, empty of dreams and visions alike. She would close her eyes and open them again hours later, never truly aware of the time that had passed.
But ever since the war began, ever since she'd been forced to leave Earth behind, she hadn't had a single peaceful night's sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, images, voices, and memories came back to haunt her.
And if she was honest with herself, she missed those dreamless nights.
She wandered through the Normandy's corridors.
There was no real day-night cycle aboard the ship, but the crew did their best to maintain an artificial schedule, preserving at least the illusion of a normal circadian rhythm. A skeleton crew was always on duty to keep the vessel running, but at this hour the decks felt almost deserted.
Without even thinking about it, Shepard headed for the maintenance bay. Her feet carried her there of their own accord.
Or perhaps she knew exactly where she was going.
Maybe she simply needed to see the person who mattered most to her. The one who listened without expecting her to be a symbol, a hero, or a savior. The one who still saw her as a person.
The door slid open with a soft hiss.
Just as she'd expected, Garrus was still awake.
Shepard wondered what could possibly be left to calibrate on that cannon. Unless he simply couldn't sleep either.
He looked up as she stepped inside.
"Shepard. Can't sleep?"
A faint, tired smile tugged at her lips. "Looks like I'm not the only one."
"It's easier to keep your head clear when you're busy. When the silence sets in..." He glanced away briefly. "Well..."
"Yeah. I know what you mean."
Garrus studied her face for a few seconds.
"Bad dream again?"
Shepard immediately lowered her gaze, as though an immense weight had suddenly settled on her shoulders.
"I feel more on edge when I'm alone with my thoughts than I do out in the field."
His mandibles twitched slightly. "I know the feeling. In the middle of a fight, everything's simpler. You know what needs to be done, and you do it. No time to think. No time to second-guess yourself."
"Exactly."
A silence settled between them.
"If talking about it would help, I'm here, Shepard."
She smiled. She already knew that. But hearing him say it made all the difference. He had always been there. Always.
He had understood her when no one else did. Stood by her when others walked away. Even when she'd made the hardest decisions.
There was nothing more constant in her life than Garrus Vakarian.
"Ever since Eden Prime... ever since that beacon put those visions in my head, I was never really afraid."
She spoke slowly, as though every word cost her something.
"I knew what I'd seen. I knew what was coming. I knew what I had to do." Her gaze drifted into the distance. "And deep down... dying in battle never really frightened me."
She fell silent.
What came next suddenly felt far harder to admit. Especially to him.
She let out a long sigh.
Garrus waited in silence. Patient. Never trying to fill the void.
"But now... now that it's all real..." Her voice wavered slightly. "I think I'm scared."
Another pause.
"Now that I have something to lose."
This time, she couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes. Her chest tightened painfully.
"I shouldn't have said that. Not to you."
And yet she wanted him to know. It was selfish. And what made it even more selfish was knowing he would accept it anyway.
"Shepard..." His deep voice gently broke the silence. "You really think I don't feel exactly the same way?"
She looked up sharply. Of all the responses she had expected, that wasn't one of them. The sincerity in Garrus's eyes was disarming.
"Spirits... I didn't hesitate for a second to go to Omega and make enemies of the worst criminals in the galaxy when you were..."
The word refused to leave his lips.
Dead.
"I try not to show it. Because I already know how much you're carrying. Because this war matters more than my feelings."
He paused.
"But every time we hit the ground and I watch you charge straight at a Reaper army..."
His mandibles tightened and his gaze darkened.
"Believe me, I can't afford to miss a single shot. Because I'd never forgive myself."
An impossibly gentle smile appeared on Shepard's lips. A rare smile. A smile only Garrus had the privilege of seeing.
"You've always had my back, Garrus."
"And I don't intend to stop now." His voice softened. "Whatever you're facing, my rifle will be right there behind you."
"Yeah..." She held his gaze. "I know."
For a moment, everything felt lighter.
Then the memory of her nightmare resurfaced. Her smile gradually faded. Tears shimmered in her eyes, though she stubbornly refused to let them fall.
One hand rested against the edge of the monitor, clenched tightly. Without a word, Garrus placed his own over it. Her hand disappeared completely beneath his fingers.
"What if it was me?"
"What?"
"What if I became the one I had to fight?"
Concern flashed across his face.
"Shepard..."
"If the Reapers took control of my mind. My will."
"I don't want to think about that."
"But it could happen."
"No."
"You know it could."
Silence fell once more. Garrus's mandibles shifted uneasily.
"Then I suppose we'd all be doomed. And the Reapers would only have to finish what they started."
"That's not what I meant, Garrus."
This time, he was the one who looked away. His hand slowly slipped from hers.
"I don't want to end up like Saren."
"That won't happen."
"But if it did..."
She drew a shaky breath.
"I want you to put a bullet between my eyes."
A low sound escaped him, somewhere between a growl and a snarl. The very thought made him want to tear something apart.
But he swallowed his anger. For her. Always for her.
"You won't end up like Saren."
His voice was firm. Unshakable. He met her gaze without the slightest hesitation.
