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Mass Effect fanfiction: Lonely Heart - Chapter 20

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Chapter 20 – Thoughts


Few hours after they had returned to the Normandy, Shepard appeared to the doorway of the main battery.

"Garrus," she said. "Do you have a minute?"

"Can it wait, Shepard?" Garrus asked, without turning around. "I'm in the middle of some calibrations."

"Oh, sure," she said, but Garrus could hear she was disappointed. "I'll talk to you later."

Garrus listened as Shepard's footsteps faded away down the hallway. He had just been thinking about calibrating the gun, yes, but hadn't actually started working on it yet. He had never lied to Shepard before but he didn't really feel like talking with her—or with anyone else—right now.

There were two topics of conversation he was afraid she would bring up, and he suspected they were—or at least one of them was—what she had wanted to talk about. She either had more questions about Sidonis and his team, or she wanted to talk about their visit to the Purgatory. He knew Sidonis' betrayal would come up with her again sooner or later, but right now Garrus wasn't ready to revisit those memories—the earlier conversation with Shepard had ripped open some deep mental wounds in him, which had not been fully healed in the first place. The Purgatory, and particularly warden Kuril, on the other hand, had forced him to face something unnerving about himself. He knew there were many turians—his own father included—who concidered him to be hot headed extremist, and he had shot his share of criminal scum without any remorse, but the way Kuril had claimed his actions were 'for the good of the galaxy' had shown Garrus a path he might have gone down, if Shepard had not stepped into his life.

"I could have been there, I could have easily been one of the guards on that ship," Garrus thought. "I could have been like Kuril. Greedy, double-crossing bastard."

He leaned his hands on the console and hung his head. It felt heavier than it had since he had buried his ten companions to that rubble under the base on Omega.

"What is happening to me?" Garrus wondered. "I thought being reunited with Shepard would get my life making sense again."

But even then, the short amount of time he spent on the Normandy had only turned his simple mercenary life upside down. At least on Omega, he had no need to question if the people he shot at really deserved their fate, but had all the prisoners of the Purgatory deserved such a cruel, miserable fate? He didn't have the answer to that, and he was sure neither did Shepard.

He didn't question Shepard's leadership, nor her ability and right to run this project any way she saw fit, but he started to suspect that maybe she had made a mistake taking him with her.

"I'm just a mess," he thought. "I would have deserved it, if she had just left me on Omega to die in a fight with those damn mercs. Why did she want to drag me back here anyway?"

But deep down, he knew why. He had been one of her firmest supporters when they had been fighting Saren, he had followed her lead with no questions asked through thick and thin. He had stood by her when she had been made a Spectre, he had been with her when she met Anderson to plan the highjacking of the original Normandy. He had fought Saren—or Saren's body, which had been controlled by Sovereign—on the Citadel, and he had been in her entourage when they had been celebrating the victory with all the dignitaries. She knew, that if he had known she was alive, he would have come looking for her, asking to join her team again. She knew that he would follow her to hell and back again, never faltering in his steps to keep up with her.

"That is why she wants me around," he concluded to himself. "She is surrounded by people she can't yet trust fully, but she knows me and knows that I stick by her no matter what."

But that conclusion carried its own set of problems, the biggest one being that he had just lied to her, hoping to avoid conversation he feared would turn uncomfortable. He was already regretting that, but he knew that going after Shepard and begging for her forgiveness was not an option. Telling her he had lied would be worse than anything, and only way for him to make it up was to make the lie a reality, and start calibrating the guns.

He flipped open the protective cover from the firing controls and allowed his fingers to fly over the keyboard, but it didn't matter how hard he tried, his mind was not fully on his work.

After the third failed attempt, he reset the whole system back to original settings and sunk down on the footlocker.

"Is something troubling you, officer Vakarian?" EDI asked as the white orb activated. "My surveillance systems have recorded no less than eleven different turian symptoms of distress."

"Shut up," Garrus growled, and the lighted sphere disappeared.

But the quiet of the main battery didn't offer any comfort for Garrus. He was angry and frustrated, but his anger was unfocused, or more accurately he was angry to himself for not being able to cope with everything that was going on.

Garrus activated his omni-tool and checked his message list to get his mind off other things. A message titled 'Talk to me, dammit' from his sister caught his eye, and he activated his private chat program to see if Solana was online.

"At least she can't ask me about things she doesn't know," he thought.

"Hi, Sol," he wrote when he saw tiny green symbol next to his sister's name.

"Garrus!" Even in writing, Garrus could imagine Solana's voice calling him with mixture of happiness and surprise. "Look, I'm in a bit of a rush now. Got to go and pick up mom from the clinic. You ok?"

"Yeah," he replied. "How's she?"

"Don't know really," Sol wrote. "Docs are working on her, but there is still so much we don't know about Corpalis. Where are you?"

"Can't tell," Garrus answered. "Working with Shepard again."

"I thought you said she's dead," Solana replied.

"Well, that's the miracle I mentioned in my message," Garrus wrote, and smiled for the first time since they had gotten back from the Purgatory. "But you said you're in a hurry, so I won't take your time."

"Talk to you more often now?"

"Maybe," Garrus replied, but wasn't so sure if that was going to happen. "Love you all. Tell mom to hang in there."

"I will," Solana promised. "Bye Garrus."

Before Garrus had time to reply, Solana signed off from the chat and was gone.

Sitting there, Garrus realised how detached from everyone and everything he really had become. During his time on Omega, he had talked to his team daily, sure, but he had not let anyone of them close. He had thought of them to be his brothers in arms, but he had not really considered them his friends—not in the same way he had thought Shepard, Tali or even Wrex to be his friends. The realationship between him and his father had always been distant, and when he had gone off with Shepard for the first time, his father had not hidden the fact that he disapproved. Later Garrus' wish to become a Spectre had made things between them even worse, and when he had left the C-Sec, his father had cut all communication with him. His mother's illness had robbed him another member of the family to talk to, because it was very hard to know when she was available for a call between all the medical examinations and treatments. Solana had to put up with both of their parents on her own, while Garrus was storming around the galaxy from one place to another with Shepard and only called her irregularly. What kind of brother was he anyway?

"Crap," Garrus thought, resting his head in his hands. "Not being in contact with Sol is my own damn fault, but I don't want to burden her with what we are doing."

Garrus felt that the only person he could really talk to anymore was Shepard. She never openly judged him—he had caught a couple of times when she disapproved his decicions, but she never said that out loud—but accepted him just the way he was. She was hard on her enemies and to those who managed to piss her off, but Garrus had never met one who was as caring and warm friend as she was. She never hesitated to put her life in line to help and protect those who had earned her trust, or those who she had sworn to protect as a soldier for the Human Alliance.

"I've never met a better commander, a better friend or a better person," Garrus thought. "I wish I could be like her, but the more I try more I get it all wrong."

Garrus stood up and reactivated the firing controls. He would try to get the calibrations right, just one more time. Even if he failed yet again, it was easier to actually work with something real than try and sort out his own entangled feelings and personal relationships. He didn't know where they were going next, but he truly hoped that there was some fighting to do there, and that Shepard would take him with her, because there was nothing that could top fighting as a way of distracting annoying feelings. If he had been on a turian vessel, he would have simply gone to challenge one of his crewmates to a hand to hand combat, but human ships didn't have the necessary training rooms and Garrus believed that none of the Cerberus crewmembers would want to fight with him anyway.

Sighing, he forced his concentration on the task at hand, and allowed his fingers to run over the firing controls for the fourth time.
Chapter 20 of my Mass Effect fan fiction. To be honest, I'm not particularly happy with this one, it's frigging depressing chapter, but I just need to get it off my hands to get back to the good stuff...

All characters belong to BioWare

And, as usual, thanks to :iconputress: for proofreading.

Links:
First chapter: [link]
Next chapter: [link]
Full size front cover: [link]
Full cover: [link]
© 2012 - 2024 DionneJinn
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xXxCalibrationsxXx's avatar
You'll figure it out Garrus :). You always do.