FILL: At Face Value (6/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 20:39:44 UTC
He knew he needed to decide whether he still trusted Shepard. His new, nagging doubts confused everything. He thought he knew her. He made damn sure she knew him. He even realized he’d felt something for her too, feelings he’d never conceived to bestow on a human being.
Garrus had to admit that the worst of his anger was the lingering sting of betrayal. He couldn’t reconcile how she kept a directive from the Alliance under wraps like that. It’s not like she was even one of their own. She had no professional responsibility to uphold, and even if she was reticent to tell Cerberus anything... why didn’t she tell him? Didn’t she trust him?
Aggravated, he tore off his visor, letting his head fall forward to rub roughly at the plates bordering his fringe. The turian gave his head a fierce shake, as if the simple motion could eject his disquiet. It did nothing, and he fell into a disturbed silence, feeling way too sensitized to every sharp, unhampered sound that echoed through the level of the Normandy. It was going to be a long night.
Sitting up, he stared down at the Kuwashii visor in his hands, turning over the small device until he determinedly activated the uplink. Maybe he’d have some new messages enough to distract him until he could fall asleep.
Sorting through the visor’s read-out, the message folder came up empty. Not even a return letter from his sister, which was already two weeks overdue from the last time he’d written her. Mood darkening, he disinterestedly scanned the updated galactic news headlines. Maybe the media would be running some preliminary stories on what happened out in the Bahak system--
That's when a new headline shot up, catching his eyes amidst the rest:
PREVIOUSLY RECORDED - WESTERLUND NEWS: CITADEL INTERVIEW WITH COMMANDER JANE SHEPARD
Head tilting, Garrus surreptitiously checked the news date. It was today. It was only a matter of hours ago. She was talking to the media already? Was it about what had happened?
He paused, part of him not even sure he wanted to watch this, wanted to hear Shepard explain herself. But the thought was quickly dispelled. His curiousity winning out with a sigh, Garrus fixed the visor back to his head and activated the old broadcast.
The recording started promptly, and Garrus immediately recognized the face of the reporter on camera. Even before his work with Shepard, he knew this woman was a borderline public nuisance inside the halls of the Citadel--
FILL: At Face Value (7/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 20:45:08 UTC
# # #
"This is Khalisah al-Jilani with Westerlund News. And I have with me the famous reinstated Spectre, Commander Jane Shepard."
Commander Jane Shepard, infamous Council Spectre with her unmatched skills in perception, appeared to be caught unawares, dressed down in her civvies and attention stolen from a market console. She also appeared to be completely alone. Al-Jilani, by all purposes, must have recognized and cornered the woman while doing something as innocuous as shopping. And now Shepard looked trapped.
The camera split close-ups between the surprised, almost nervous-looking Shepard and her abrupt interviewer, while panning shots of the Citadel backdrop behind them. People had stopped, drawn by the familiar name, casting surprised and interested glances on the exchange.
"Batarian reports are circulating your involvement with the total decimation of the Bahak system. The Earth judiciary confirms them. The estimated casualties are over three hundred four thousand batarians, many of them civilian colonists and miners. Some batarian diplomats are labelling this an act of terrorism and even a failed attempt at genocide. Reports are coming in from the Alliance labelling you as the key suspect in this atrocity. Commander Shepard, allow me to simply ask the one question on everyone's mind: Why did you do this?
Garrus could see the public rousing in the background of the report, judgment casting different shapes on the faces of humans, turians, volus, and asari milling about. The solitary krogan in attendance just appeared to look amused. Unconsciously, he recognized a couple C-Sec uniforms within the crowd. They weren't doing their jobs and dispersing it. They were part of the captive audience. Waiting for Shepard to explain herself. Explain for the Alliance. The Council. The Spectres. Waiting for her to explain, in one sentence, decades of human mistakes, generations of political bitterness, and centuries of Council inaction.
The camera turned on her face, Shepard's same, unmistakable face, the one that was trying to smile at Garrus just a few hours ago. Trying to convince him that she was the same person and that everything was all right. Trying to convince herself.
She wasn't smiling now.
Lit by the camera like an interrogation, her recording seemed to be staring straight at him, her grey eyes silently begging Garrus for help miles and miles away.
Within the image, Garrus’s sharp gaze could notice the offence and hostility already brewing within the recorded crowd, and his fingers tightened into his palms. C-Sec wasn't doing their job. Shepard wasn't paying attention either. She seemed unable to look away from the camera. Why wasn't she watching her six? She was going to get herself attacked. Why wasn't anyone there to--?
Al-Jilani's sharp voice cut into Garrus’s thoughts. The reporter was biting back the smile that shone transparently through her vicious eyes. This was a revenge for Shepard humiliating her on-camera in prior occasions. This was a deliberate attack. "Don't you think all those innocent and now dead batarians deserve an explanation, Commander Shepard?"
Jane just stared into the camera, paralyzed on the spot. Silent. Helpless.
And Garrus saw in her eyes what he was too angry, too offended, and too blind to notice before. Even his self-professed expert readout of human expression missed what should have been obvious. Shepard’s live image looked helplessly back at him, her face pale with guilt and devastation, and her pale eyes raw and much too bright. She was affected. She was affected and hiding it. She was trying to stay strong, but she was in pain. And now she was blind-sided and cornered, left unprotected and alone... and believed herself to be a cold-hearted murderer with the entire galaxy as her witness.
Shouts began to arise from the recorded crowd. Leave it to the turians to start shouting something about humans showing their true colours. A volus seethed something about Council race favouritism. The uniformed C-Sec operatives began to remember their duties, bracing against the brewing audience, and when something was thrown at Shepard’s face, she flinched, turned her head, and the camera cut out.
FILL: At Face Value (8/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:25:57 UTC
# # #
He had to speak to her. He needed to find her.
In a matter of seconds, Garrus had exploded out of his quarters, locking his visor in place around his head as he moved purposefully down the ship’s darkened halls. Shouldering through tight corridors designed better for shorter, stockier human beings, his armoured, digitigrade feet knocked heavy echoes against the claustrophobic, concussive halls. The dim, amber lights reflected off his battered armour and the razored points of his fringe, casting his hard, plated face in ominous shadow. With that agitated scowl moving his mandibles, the turian bee-lined straight for EDI’s closest console.
“Officer Vakarian,” the AI’s mild, toneless voice greeted him, “how may I assist you?”
“Can you tell me where Shepard is on deck?”
“She is not on board the Normandy at this time,” EDI gracefully replied. “One hundred seventy-three minutes ago, Commander Shepard left instructions that she will be remaining on the Citadel overnight. She will rejoin the Normandy at oh-six hundred.”
That gave Garrus pause, his entire plan falling straight on its ass. He flinched with surprise and a creeping sense of disquiet. “She’s still there? Who’s with her?”
“She left unaccompanied.”
Shit. Gritting his teeth, Garrus tried to ignore the memory of Shepard’s gentle, hopeful urgings to join her off-ship. She’d so badly tried to coax him with friendly pokes and teases, gestures he thought only assured her total and unforgivable callousness. But it wasn’t what she meant at all. Was she secretly pleading with him? Why didn’t he pick up on it? He turned her down on the spot.
Still, the nearly-emptied third level of the Normandy added to his confusion. Most of the crew had left to go unwind on the Citadel; why wasn’t she with them? Why didn’t she take anyone else as escort? Were the rest of the crew as hesitant to be alone with her? Did she just resign to go on her own? “EDI, I need you to reopen the docking bay and prepare the necessary I.D rep. I’m going off ship.”
The artificial intelligence remained quiet for under two milliseconds, a time that still felt seamless to organic beings but meant a substantial pause when it came to computational sentience. “Commander Shepard did not provide coordinates as to where she is staying.”
Garrus’s head spun, thoughts taking him in several directions. He’ll need his gun. He’ll need to make a trip to C-Sec, call a few owned favours, hack a few more systems, and start his path on tracking her down. He’ll also need to figure out what the hell he’s going to say when he does find her. Part of him was worried that he may not even find her safe and unharmed. The fact she reported in was optimistic, unless she was persistent to hide something from all of them. Would she do that? Of course she would. He already gave her reason to believe she’s all alone. “That’s fine. I’ll figure it out.”
“Is this action within any positive correlation to the Westerlund report, Officer Vakarian?”
Stolen from his thoughts, the turian gave the console a look.
EDI continued, matter-of-factly, “Should I locate any viable information within the Citadel extranet, I will be sure to forward it to you.”
Garrus’s mouth twitched. He swore the AI almost sounded smug. “...Thanks.”
FILL: At Face Value (9/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:31:43 UTC
# # #
Jane collapsed at the foot of her Citadel hotel bed, all of the accustomed military tension bleeding out of her body. What was left was a human being, a flawed one, a tired one, complete with a flask of alcohol at her side. Bending her long legs up at the knees, she leaned back against the bed, her head slung back against the mattress. Dark hair winged across her brow, and Shepard’s hollowed grey eyes gazed up through their tresses and watched the ceiling. It was too damn white and ornamental. The expansive chandelier was off-putting. Detachedly, it made her realize how she’d gotten so used to the sterile, cagey enclosures of ship quarters, where touching anything would leave behind smears of fingerprints on steel. Down on the Citadel, the hotel room felt too big, too bright, and too unprotected.
But retreat to the Normandy was out of the question, no matter how safe the vessel made her feel. She was a commander, one who was on the verge of leading her crew into the belly of the beast. They were on the cusp of a suicide mission, and she couldn't promise them their lives even if they managed the impossible and took the Collector ship down. So she could at least be the strong leader they deserved.
They didn't need some scared, doubtful little girl tearing up over a couple bad decisions.
She'd stay on the Citadel overnight and leave after a good sleep. She'd be better in the morning. She'd feel more like herself again.
Or so Jane kept telling herself.
Somewhere between trying to unscrew the lid off her alcohol and stealing her first greedy drink, the tears started rolling out of her eyes, and she ignored them to streak silently down her cheeks. Jane was always a stoic crier, and whenever it had to happen, she did it quietly and without a fuss.
The alcohol bit her palate and went down like a fistful of nails, but Jane heaved a grateful sigh despite it. She just needed to get a bit drunk. That would fix it all. Then she could forget Khalisah's questions, the looks on all the faces of the people around her, and her worse thoughts, the ones that kept telling her again and again: if you had fought just a little harder, been just a bit stronger, you would've had the time to warn the colonists. You fucked up, and now they're dead.
And now she was taking dozens of people to run the Omega-Four Relay, forcing them on a death march out to God knows where, and they're going to die just the same. More lives to add to the tally. How the hell was she going to protect them? How the hell was she ever going to pull this off?
Shepard couldn't even deny the way Garrus looked at her back on the Normandy. He was the only person she had left to call a friend, the only comrade who hadn't walked out or laughed off her suicidal mission, and so badly she wanted to assure herself by him that everything was OK, unchanged, just as she left it. But he didn't want to look at her. Her only friend was disgusted. She'd lost his trust, turned into the very scum he was trying to cull in Omega, but there was no other way. She had to do what she did. If she had more time... why couldn't she have had more time?
The bottle of alcohol slipped from her fingers, as all ten of Jane's fingers crawled up to clutch wringing handfuls of her dark hair. Maybe there was another way and she didn't know it. There had to have been. She’d thought that she could do this. There was once a time when she could navigate an entire life-or-death scenario gone to hell, when she found herself trapped God knows where and shit out of luck, and she managed the impossible without a single innocent life lost. She used to know what to do. Before she died, she had all the right answers.
FILL: At Face Value (10/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:33:34 UTC
# # #
"Shepard, I need to talk to you."
Her hands loosening out of her hair, Jane just gazed askance at the closed door. She stared at it with the same numb hesitation she did the lens of al-Jilani's mobile camera. Even for a woman of action, she was momentarily unsure as what to do. She recognized the voice, even without the translation beckoned off of her omnitool. But that did nothing to alleviate her indecision; on the contrary, it was making it worse. Maybe she was just imagining it--
"Please. Open the door."
No imagining that. Through the haze of her mild buzz, through the bleary film of her tears, Jane wondered why Garrus Vakarian was here. She pulled up recent memories through her mental fog. He didn’t want to be near her. Why would he be here? Did something happen on the Normandy? She turned off her live communication uplink except to EDI in the case of an emergency. But something could have transpired despite it. Did Garrus come to collect her? Did he come to hand her his formal resignation?
Shepard remembered her own voice, only to immediately regret using it. It sounded hollow and little as she called, "Garrus?" But she still went straight to auto-pilot, pressing one hand against the bed to stumble up to her feet. "What happened? Is it an emergency?"
"No emergency," his faceless voice confirmed from the other side of the door. "Let me in."
Shepard felt her insides twist and go cold, the revolting combination of relief and dread mixing as peacefully as acids and bases. Her stomach turned. It meant his strange visit didn’t bode well. Stopping from her mechanical flight path toward the door, she pressed a hand to her temple. "Garrus... it... it's not a good time."
The door creaked against its motors, sounding as though he’d pressed his hand up against it. The weight meant he was still wearing his armour. He was silent on the other side, and for so long that Shepard began to wonder if Vakarian had just heeded her warning, picked up on the scratchy sound of her voice, and got the hell out of there. But then he spoke up, his two-toned voice still surprisingly close as it asked, "Do you trust me?"
FILL: At Face Value (11/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:34:58 UTC
The question made Shepard’s weight fall to her heels, her eyes unable to look away. There was only one answer to that. Wordlessly, she stepped forward and hit the panel to the door. It slid open to reveal her gunnery officer, Garrus Vakarian, looking just as she’d imagined him. The hallway lights reflected dully off the metal of his armour, his plated hide, his fringe, everywhere but those two dark, shadowed points of his eyes, which were staring straight at her, fixing her with the intensity that made him such a feared sniper.
A silence fell between them, as commander and officer appeared to wait for the other to speak. Averting her eyes, Shepard caught a glimpse of herself off a band of Vakarian’s armour, and her face looked way too gaunt, her eyes way too red, for this to be an effective conversation. Exhaling, she opened her mouth to break the peace, to try to stop this--
And Garrus appeared to catch on fast, too fast, as he curled one three-fingered hand around a panel of the door, effectively barring any attempt for her to wall him out before stepping inside. In a punctuated motion, he hit the panel behind him, shutting and locking the door after his own sizeable mass. His next movement was quick and entirely involuntary, those avian eyes of his surveying the room and checking all the windows and exits, taking count of them as though that huge fucking rifle strapped to his back couldn’t dissuade any attack that’d dared their way. Then he glanced back at Shepard, checking her over, appraising every curve, limb, rib, and strand of hair with the concentration of a full-body scan. Did he think she was injured?
But she wasn’t, and assuaged by that fact, her gunnery officer appeared to let down his guard. His gauging inspection of her body stopped at her eyes, and his expression mollified imperceptibly but seemed unable to look away. Shepard felt the same way, finding it damn near impossible to glance away from Garrus’s wordless staring. A silence befell them a second time, but not because she was waiting for him to speak.
She just wanted to look at him. Even though this could potentially be the last time she’d ever see him, when he’d confirm her suspicions and ask to free himself from her mission and the Cerberus ship, and she’d allow him his freedom because he deserved it -- he’d already given her too many years of his life. Jane just wanted to look at that face what never left her thoughts when she was trapped and eye-deep in enemy guards on Project Base... that alien, turian face who would surpass all to become her one last friend left, her only confidant, and her hopeful lover.
There was no warning.
Not even Jane knew exactly when it happened, when something snapped inside her and everything she’d been holding in, days of exhaustion and desperation and grief, came pouring out. She’s not sure when it started, and how long it was going on for, but the next thing she knew, she was half-slumped on some Citadel hotel room at her gunnery officer’s armoured feet, crying her guts out.
FILL: At Face Value (12/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:36:26 UTC
# # #
Jane Shepard couldn’t have stopped if she tried. Some part of her knew she’d regret this, regret doing something as unprofessional, as inconceivable as breaking down in front of a subordinate officer, but for the time she couldn’t care. There was nothing left in her, no more strength, no more excuses, no more pithy justification, just her exhaustion, her failure, and her hands caked in the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead batarians. Wavering on the spot, she sank her face into her palms and just wailed, the grief so thick and heavy and nauseous in her throat that she could have puked it up. The rest of the world narrowed into nothing. Part of her swore she heard Garrus speak her name, but she couldn’t know for sure.
Then it happened so fast. Her knees buckled, and then something moved in with blinding speed to catch her. Two armoured arms seized around her with a quick desperation, and her sternum hit a little jarringly hard against a flat, cold metal plate. Her breath caught, but Shepard just fiercely grabbed on, not wanting this enveloping presence to leave her. She turned her head, and it was Garrus holding her, keeping her in place as she hooked her arms around his alien neck, her blunted fingernails scratching at the hide under his sharpened fringe. He grunted once in response to the contact, like being similarly shocked out of his own breathing, but said nothing. Instead, he deliberately bent and one of his long arms snuck under her knees, whisking the galaxy’s saviour off her feet as though she weighed no more than a pillow.
His bulky armour felt freezing and slightly painful, pressed too roughly against her lungs and bones, but Shepard wouldn’t have it any other way. It meant he was there. He wasn’t leaving her. He was holding her. Sobbing in relief and still refusing to let him go, she buried her teary face against the side of his neck, not so selfless that she wouldn’t try to steal whatever warmth or comfort she could get from her best friend. She knew she had to tell him before it happened, while she still had the chance, and Jane fought her sobs as she felt his strange, almost sinewy turian gait carry her body across the room.
When she found her voice, or its gutted, tattered remnants, Jane forced out her confession against his throat. Her words sounded so stringy and brittle. "I'm sorry," she pleaded airily, hoping Garrus would realize she meant for everything. For ever subjecting him to her risks, for dying, for resurrecting to be less than the woman she was, for failing, for disappointing him, for becoming what he so hated. "I’m sorry," she confessed endlessly. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry..."
But Garrus said nothing. He carried her to the room’s solitary bed, the mattress bowing when he determinedly sat down their combined weights. He had no words for her, but did not seem inclined to relinquish her from his arms. He just let her cry.
And she did. Jane wept wet smears into her best friend’s armour until there was simply nothing left, no more energy left in her spent body to do little more than sag against him. As quickly as it had started, her grief appeared to break, leaving the woman feeling not so much relieved as strangely, almost chillingly hollow. She savoured one last moment of security in Garrus's arms, until her senses ultimately had to return, and with them that strict sense of decorum that did not let commanding officers weep upon their subordinates.
Averting her eyes, her usual confidence shattered by her doubts and encroaching embarrassment, Shepard finally pushed back at the turian's arms. He seemed reluctant for an instant, but then let go, and as soon as his arms loosened, she was escaping his lap, retreating to merely sit aside him on the bed. Garrus watched her closely, but still had yet to say anything. He watched her almost passively as she slowly reclaimed her lost composure.
Shepard didn’t rub at her eyes, wanting to draw as little attention to the fact she’d been crying. Instead she asked, her voice dry and raspy, "How did you find me? I mean... I know how you found me. I have an idea. But how did you know I was here?"
FILL: At Face Value (13/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:38:23 UTC
Vakarian's armour creaked as he shifted. One gauntleted, three-finger hand flexed absently at his knee. It took a moment of silence, and then he bowed his avian head forward and sighed. "I saw the news report."
The world spun. Jane sure rubbed her eyes then, letting her face fall into her opened palm. "Oh, God," summed up her entire feelings pretty eloquently.
She could taste Garrus’s awkwardness as he sat uneasily through her humiliation. But, soon enough, he continued, "It looked dangerous. I needed to see if you were all right."
Her hand dropping back down to her lap, Jane rubbed a little uneasily at her neck. “It was getting heavy,” she admitted. “Anderson must have gotten the tip off; his men came in and broke up the crowd. I got my way out.” Then her voice hitched with a humourless laugh, her face heavy with self-deprecation. “Yeah, even the mighty Commander Shepard flees with her tail between her legs.”
His head tilted. “It's not your fault,” Garrus argued, matter-of-factly. “I should've been with you. I should've been watching your back.” It seemed two could play the deprecation game.
“Don't go all bruised turian honour on me, Garrus,” Jane rasped, swallowing against the residual rawness in her throat. Her lips pursed, and she finally built the courage to slip her officer a look. He was still there, seated next to her on the bed, looking massive in his turian armour. Its normally polished shoulder was streaked with her drying tears. With his eyes averted, he didn’t notice Jane’s glance. She looked away again, forcing herself to remember how he faced her in the Normandy’s main battery, and what he said...
“I can understand you not wanting much to do with me,” she continued. “I don't want much to do with me right now. I decided to hold up here and return to ship tomorrow. I can't have my crew seeing me like this. I'm supposed to be leading them. They're giving me their lives.”
“Shepard --” Garrus countered uneasily.
“No, Garrus,” she quickly cut him off, building the courage to look over once more, this time meeting her best friend’s alien eyes. Light never reflected off turian eyes, Jane had realized long ago. It took only the littlest bit of shadow to make them look empty, black, and pitted like a hungry predator. He watched her a little reproachfully; perhaps uncertain of what she planned to say, uncertain if he’d like it. “Even you admitted once that we're not getting out of this easy. I'm scared to death. I think I've hit a point... I used to be able to rationalize it, justify it as part of the mission or as that oath we all swear as soldiers, but I don't think I can lose another man. I don't know how to deal with it anymore.”
That admission drew another long length of brooding silence from the turian -- long enough that Jane considered regretting even saying it at all. There are some lines commanding officers never cross, and there are pains they are not disposed to share; those are the burdens of leadership. It was as she was opening her mouth to continue, to try to clumsily fix her mistake, when Garrus finally spoke.
“I lost ten good men who had lives and families,” he said, recalling those two years on Omega he spent as the vigilante Archangel. “They weren't like me. They weren't ghosts. They had futures, and they gave those futures to me to protect.” Garrus’s darkened eyes narrowed. “I let them down.”
Shepard was struck by something at that moment, something she’d always failed to acknowledge. Two years ago, she’d been the turian’s mentor, pleased to teach him the ethics of a crusader, and had known from first fighting at his side that his talents craved guidance -- he was destined for big things. It was the reason why she convinced him so hard to go for Spectre training. But then she died, and inside two years, he changed. It was easy for her to fall back into funny habits, and treat him as the subordinate soldier he once was, but that was no longer the case. Friendship began to blur those lines, and what now broke it entirely was her realization that he, too, was a leader. It was a risk in sedition he was taking, if just to his disciplined turian nature, but he was prepared to give her advice as an equal.
FILL: At Face Value (14/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 21:42:30 UTC
So Jane took it. “How do you get through it?”
Garrus gave her a strange look, and she could read the flicker of surprise disguised in his hard turian features. She was sure he wasn’t expecting that out of her, not the woman who’d always been prepared to get indignant when someone questioned her orders. But he duly answered, grim, “For the longest time... it was the rage that sustained me.”
The self-deprecation returned in a nauseating wave, enough that Shepard couldn’t stop her eyes from briefly closing. “And I took that away from you.” She rubbed wearily at her opposite shoulder. “Maybe you deserved your vengeance. I think I did wrong by you --”
“You did nothing of the sort,” Garrus snapped, his voice like a door slamming. Something appeared to galvanize him out of his brief ennui, and armour rattling, he turned on her.
“Look at me, Shepard,” he ordered, and when Jane didn’t respond fast enough, one gloved hand reached out to capture her face with its long, three fingers. The sensation locked their eyes. He leaned close, so close, that she could feel the heat of his breath on her face, see the tips of his teeth past his flaring mandibles.
“You were right,” Garrus told her firmly. “Killing Sidonis would have put me down a path I never really wanted. I'll be honest with you; this is still taking some getting-over for me. I can't compartmentalize two years of anger. I had myself convinced that I deserved that kill. My entire universe was rebuilt around that belief.” His hand gentled against her cheek. “But I know you did the right thing. I know your reasons for it. You were fighting for me.”
Then he let her go, sincerity hardening his features, Garrus straightening his back and clenching his hands as he bowed his head and faced her.
“Now I get through it by obligating myself to your directive,” he confessed. “I need you, Shepard. I need your fight. I've made it mine. I fight for the memory of my ten men, for their surviving families, for their children, and I'll protect you, your mission, so that it may live on. That's what they'd want.”
His blue eyes creased slightly. “But it's not just that. There's... there's also what I want.”
And then, before her eyes, Jane watched as Garrus moved, doing something she’d only ever heard about in her codex of turian culture. He’d conceded to her authority, yielded to her command more times than she can remember, but never once had he ever done this.
He stood up from the bed, and in a single, graceful motion, dropped to one knee and bowed in supplication. His solid armour resounded when it hit the floor. Kneeling there, Garrus begged her in a purely turian gesture of regret. His voice was rough and thick. “I fight for you because I know you're the only one who can save us. Because even though you’ve already died once for us, I know you’re prepared to do it again. Because even with your own past and loss, you’re still willing to cry for fallen batarians. You did the right thing, and yet, I... doubted you, Commander, and I apologize for it. It's my job to protect you, and I've let you down again.”
Jane’s eyebrows knotted. Again?
Garrus’s hands tightened against the floor, and his eyes drew shut. Turians rarely, if ever, closed their eyes when awake or conscious. It was their purest gesture of surrender.
“I'll be prepared to do anything to be returned to your confidence, Commander,” he pleaded. “You can assign me to vanguard. You can throw me in the brig. You --“
Re: FILL: At Face Value (14/??)
anonymous
June 20 2011, 23:50:07 UTC
*Dies from awesomeness*
I can only be revived by more. I can't wait to read more! This tugs at my heart-strings so fully, the gambit of emotions. I'll be blubbering over here. It's so wonderful!
FILL: At Face Value (15/??)
anonymous
June 21 2011, 00:14:22 UTC
Jane just yanked him up by two handfuls of his collar, forcing Garrus out of his act of supplication and into her fierce kiss. He froze, his eyes flaring wide. He'd never been kissed before, and since turians do not commonly kiss, it was not so much the sensation but the ramifications that jarred him. He froze for a moment. That meant...
The turian surged forward, his weight pushing insistently down until Jane's smaller body conceded, falling tiredly back to the bed. She broke the kiss as his hands found her waist, bidden to explore the firm lines of musculature through her clothing. They watched each other, his sharp blue eyes fixed on her wide grey ones. She was breathing harshly; her lips were swollen from where she'd crushed them against Garrus’s unyielding mouth plates, and even in this impassioned moment, Shepard found reason to pause, her doubts trying to resurrect like some old ghost.
This isn't right, not now, not after everything--
"Garrus, we don’t have--" Jane began to apologize.
Then, without warning, her gunnery officer cut her off with a very distinct growl, curved two armoured fingers over her mouth, and leaned in to pull his hot, rasping tongue up the side of her throat. It was long and rough, every turian taste bud scraping a merciless path up her jugular and behind her ear, and the action shot an arrow of heat straight to her groin. Shepard's breath caught in her throat.
"Don’t finish that thought," he told the fragile arteries in her neck, grazing his needly teeth over the fragile flesh that shielded them. Garrus’s hot breath puffed against her skin, smelling vaguely alkaline, like motor oil and gunmetal. "Didn't we already agree to this?"
Jane reached up long-sufferingly to pull his hand from her lips. "We also agreed to wait--"
Garrus’s teeth reprimanded her shoulder, shredding the fabric there and catching the muscle beneath. He rumbled warningly, “I almost lost you on that fucking asteroid. You almost died and it would’ve been too late. I'm a smart man, Shepard. I don't make the same mistakes twice. And neither do you."
Eyes half-lidded, Shepard swallowed against the pulling sensation of turian teeth in her skin, the pain strangely inciting her but not to want to escape it. Her hands wearily closed down on the armour shielding his upper arms. Doggedly, she still persisted on argument. “But weren't you worried -- about us researching this right -- about it getting awkward --?”
“It won't,” Garrus interjected stubbornly, taking his teeth out of his commander’s shoulder to survey the flesh around her collarbone. His too-warm breath clouded over her as he indulgently processed her scent. “I'm too pissed off.” His fingers searched Shepard’s form-fitting civvies for the most obvious openings. “And you know when I get pissed off, I make things happen.”
Jane sighed away the rest of her fight, her breath steeped with patient amusement. “One of the things I love best about you.”
Hands stopped, Garrus froze at that admission, seeing through its empty tease to the disguised meaning beneath. He searched her eyes, part of him waiting Shepard to realize her own statement, and give her time to retract it, regret it--
But Jane Shepard, her grey eyes still lingeringly red-rimmed, simply smiled back up, confirming the question in his stare. Comrades like her and Garrus, who had learned each other’s faces in those glorious moments of living or dying, needed no extraneous words between them.
Exhaling thickly, Garrus leaned down to push his forehead against hers, pressing intimate, insistent weight. It took Shepard a moment, but it hit her that this must be a turian kiss, second base for a race who had no lips and too many teeth for prolonged kissing. She copied the movement, craning her neck to return the pressure, and was rewarded by the luxurious sensation of his throttling purr as it soaked into her vertebrae, the sound burying into her so deep that she felt it inside her molars. “Shepard,” he spoke against the skin of her forehead almost worshipfully, “you don’t know what you do to me. I was worried whether I’d be able to respond to a human. Now I can’t imagine this not happening tonight. It has to. I’ll make you feel good.”
FILL: At Face Value (16/??)
anonymous
June 21 2011, 00:15:56 UTC
Despite the nervous heat fluttering through her belly, Shepard intoned wryly, “Is that one of those infamous turian honour promises?”
Garrus pulled back to stare Shepard down, his sharp eyes aimed like a pair of gun barrels. She was mocking him, and he knew it. “Yes, though I don’t think you understand their full ramifications. You’ll have to allow me to demonstrate.”
# # #
In two quick, deliberate movements, the heavy gauntlets unlocked from Garrus’s wrists, and he dismissively let them drop. His hands were exposed up his elbows, revealing his lean, sinewy muscles and thick skin. He flexed his six fingers, each one of them studded with a long, curved killing talon. A turian’s natural weapons. Shepard had seen them used before in battle, and they had more strength and sharpness than any trench knife she’d ever kept in her possession. She’d seen those claws rend enemies into hamburger.
Now he’d turned them on her, and it came down to a matter of trust, to stay still and silent as those weapons drew against her body. It was up to both of them to be careful; even one wrong shift or unprepared jolt could leave her with some messy puncture wounds. But he appeared more than intent on his end, rapt and delighted to explore her body with an infinite patience. His hands followed the way her civilian clothes clung to her body, then, he appeared to grow immediately tired of touching fabric, and his fingers searched for an opening on her clothes. But human clothing was foreign and alien to turian designs, whose civilian wear was never meant to be pulled harmlessly overhead or arranged around soft shoulders. There would be too many rips and tears.
But his exploring hands couldn’t seem to find a buckling system in her clothing. Agitated, he bent down and tilted his head to squint under her arms and down her sides, searching and finding nothing. Well, nothing save Jane’s half-hidden, and very amused smile.
So that’s how it’s going to be. His gaze flattened, and Garrus replied with a flick of his hunting knife claws. Fabric tore noisily, and before Jane even had time to express the surprised indignation that was colouring her face, he’d torn her shirt free. He reached to similarly snap the carriage-harness she wore underneath, rumbling with curiousity to steal his first glimpse of her breasts. They looked small and firm, streamline to her athletic body, and he wasn’t too sure what to make of them.
That is, until he touched one, capturing it in one clawed hand, and Garrus paused at the utter sensation of softness. It was hard to believe that a creature as strong, durable, and enduring as Shepard could feel so vulnerable. She’d proved her prowess endlessly, but to touch her like this aggravated every one of his protective instincts. He had no idea human flesh was that delicate. The thought, again, of her trapped alone on that asteroid station, and surrounded--
Her gentle sigh broke his dark thoughts, Garrus sobering to the sight of Jane relaxing, responding to the whispers of his claws against her nipples.
He vowed privately on his own honour that he’d never repeat that mistake. He’d protect her, more than she’d ever realize, and probably far more than she’d ever like. He wouldn’t let anything come so close to learn that she was this soft. The dichotomy of their bodies at this moment didn’t escape him, all of her exposed, soft, and prone curves contrasted with his plated hide and heavy, cumbersome armour. She looked so small against him. It was very diverting.
Soon enough, his hands released her breasts for the much more engaging length of her waist, a turian’s natural erogenous zone. A human’s waist was shorter and thicker than a turian’s, but he definitely liked hers, and his arousal shot up at the sight of her hip bones creasing out from the curves of her body. Needing to see and touch more, his claws curled into the waist of Jane’s pants, the seams already tearing at the edges.
“Garrus, I need some clothes left to walk out of here--” Shepard groused, trying to untangle his fingers.
FILL: At Face Value (17/??)
anonymous
June 21 2011, 00:18:49 UTC
“Then I suppose you’ll never leave,” Garrus confirmed with a playful edge, opening her pants down to her knees. Fabric split noisily under his claws. She gave him a dirty look, but he soon earned her forgiveness by reaching in and letting his claws tease along her inner thighs. Then, the turian went to the patient pains of pulling the unravelling fabric free of her long legs.
Shepard’s smooth skin was already chill bumped in that strange, human way. “What about you?” she pointedly turned on him from where she sprawled across the mattress.
“In due course,” Garrus just replied. He craned his head at that strange undergarment she wore next to her groin, daring to muffle the strange, sweet smell he could scent arriving from between her legs. To appease her, he slipped in his talons with total delicacy and worked it down her legs without a single catch in the fabric.
“Now let me see.”
# # #
He was rumbling, almost purring like some big cat, as all six of his talons hooked under Shepard’s thighs and jarringly pulled her hips up into the air. She gasped with mild shock, her arousal not helping the way her world was dazedly spinning, and a moment later, Shepard found herself heaped across the mattress, her shoulders pinioned back into the pillows as her left ankle hooked against Garrus’s armoured carapace. He was perched above her, almost mantled like a hawk, with that intent, predatory face of his hovering between her legs. She felt one of his mandibles scrape her inner thigh and realized what he was aiming to do.
Numbly, detachedly, Shepard wouldn’t have ever figured this as a universal form of foreplay. And didn’t Mordin once warn her--
Her leg tensing where it draped over his sizeable shoulder, Shepard tried to turn her hips inside Vakarian’s hands for purchase. He only seemed to fight her harder, holding her half-slung form up from the bed. Jane huffed with agitation. “Garrus, you can't. Proteins -- you'll go into shock --”
His steely eyes glanced up from her groin. “Then try not to get too wet.”
He’s been watching the vids, Jane realized with a groan, before the first hot stroke of his tongue effectively short-circuited any chance of cognition. She cried out, still trying to remember her argument, her logical reasoning that this shouldn’t be happening, that it’s not safe, but then Garrus’s steamy, too-hot turian breath exhaled over her folds. “Is that how you taste, Shepard?” his dark, flanging voice inquired silkily of her. “If the spirits didn’t want me to do this, they wouldn’t have made you taste so fucking good.”
His claws tightened against her ass, barring any escape, and with no further preamble, her gunnery officer went to town. Human tongues had nothing on their turian counterparts, which were longer, stronger, and endlessly rough, complete with sandpapery taste buds scraping against her tortured flesh, almost promising to lick her raw and senseless. He feasted greedily on her, with long and heavy licks that physically rocked Shepard back against the bed, Garrus nearly turning desperate to sample that taste he’d complimented her on. The sensation was nothing she ever imagined, but then only few humans would ever know the sensation of turian battle ferocity turned into an insatiable need to force pleasure from their lovers. He’d already made it known he had no intention of letting her go.
“Goddamnit, Garrus,” Jane cursed helplessly as he ate her, her words lost into a cry when the lashing tip of his clever tongue snuck through her folds and hit her clitoris. Head thrown back against her pillows, her voice broke with her keening. Then the smart son of a bitch seemed to realize what he did, and capitalized on that little nub of nerves, opening her shivering legs wider as he descended upon it. The world tilted dangerously, pleasure blearing her eyes as Garrus laved the spot fiercely, his pace slow and entirely without mercy. Her wetness flooded his mouth, and it only seemed to encourage the turian, who was deliberately set on feasting on her as though she were some rare alien delicacy. Did she really taste that good to him?
FILL: At Face Value (18/??)
anonymous
June 21 2011, 00:20:50 UTC
# # #
She did.
If he’d only realized this sooner, Garrus thought. If he only knew what he was missing, everything would have been different. He would have acted on his feelings much sooner, far before Shepard even mustered the nerve to ask him to her bed: it would’ve been before Cerberus, before that fucking Alenko, before her dying so he could have at least been there to prevent it. And he would have. His fury was like a fire moving beneath his plates, railing against nearly losing that woman a second time, and her taste on his tongue was his only catharsis. He needed to prove this to her. Prove how much she meant to him. Prove how much he needed her. Prove how insane she made him.
Every turian instinct felt like ignition fluid in his blood, aggravating him to act, to fight, to conquer; this was a demonstration of his hunger, of his devotion for her, but turian devotion was as much an exercise in war as anything else. And she would know it.
Garrus pushed cruelly with his tongue, and felt his mate orgasm, her spine tightening as her fingers twisted into the bed sheets. He drew it out with a long, savouring taste, caring not for her recent fears that drinking her would be potentially fatal. He’d like to see it try. If a rocket to the face couldn’t end him, what could? His anger made him feel invincible. What mattered is that she was alive, here with him, and he would take from her all time would allow.
# # #
With a windy sound, Jane relaxed, weak and dreamy from her pleasure. Garrus rumbled, leaving behind points of blood as he unhooked one clawed hand from the flesh of her ass, his palm gliding up the smooth length of Shepard’s leg as he stretched it to rest up against his shoulder. Her skin felt clammy, and there were wet pockets of sweat trapped in the insides of her knees. Dully, he noted his own arousal, aching something fierce and poisonous in his groin, trapped inside the heavy plates of his armour. He still needed to remove the damn thing. But he wasn’t finished.
Shepard had just finished sighing away the best orgasm of her life when his tongue started anew. It woke her up faster than a slap to the face, already too painfully over-sensitized to suffer this.
“Garrus,” she croaked, trying to retreat, but his right hand curled around her ankle while the left dug more painfully into her hip. He chose to say nothing, happy to let his tongue speak for him in this more tactile language. And it did, lapping her firmly and unforgiving, burying into her folds to worry her swollen flesh. The pain was sharp, and every punctuated flick of her clitoris seared. Her eyes watered, but he didn’t let up, pushing Jane forward through the agony until pleasure began to build under the burn. Just when she thought she couldn’t bear any more, warmth returned to radiate up her back.
Her pride mattered so much to her, but at this point she was just sobbing, her face flushed and tears rolling out of her closed eyes. “Oh, God,” Jane kept bleating, “Garrus, you son of a -- oh, God!” Then he began to purr, the sound humming deliciously up between her legs, and Jane was lost again, mindless and insensate, reaching one trembling hand to pull his head closer. Her fingers found the skin under her officer’s fringe, and her nails angrily dug in. The action reflected inside his shocked eyes, and Garrus surged forward with a growl, pushing a talon carefully into her as his tongue curled around that battered nub and sucked.
It was all she needed. Jane’s second orgasm shook her, arriving with a breathless sob, hitting her so sharp and scorchingly hot that she saw stars. She locked up in agonized ecstasy, riding the last emphatic drag of his tongue, and then collapsed, her ribcage fluttering as her body fought to keep her breath. Dimly, she felt Garrus’s hand stroke down her leg once more, returning it gently to sling across the mattress. When she found the strength, or at least the discretion, to crack open her eyes, she saw him looming over her, his exposed hands unlatching the initial bands of armour from his body. His face wore the turian equivalent of a shit-eating grin, which looked just as universally irritating. “And that’s a turian promise.”
FILL: At Face Value (19/??)
anonymous
June 21 2011, 00:23:40 UTC
Jane pushed a tress of dark hair from her sweat-smeared brow, her mouth twitching. “Duly noted, you bastard.” Then, frowning absently, she aimed a squint up on her undressing lover. “Where the hell did you learn that?”
Garrus dropped a heavy layer of steel from his arm that looked -- and sounded -- to weigh a good twenty pounds. Turians definitely were stronger than they looked. “I do my research, Commander.”
Jane’s lips curved with a half-hearted smirk at his quip, but she wasn’t really listening. Instead, she was enrapt by Garrus’s body, as he revealed himself inch by inch from his restricting armour. He looked so alien, but also so beautiful, beautiful in that dangerous, tempting way a weapon is. The serrated edges and hard angles of his body reminded her of a living blade, and he looked so contrary to everything she knew about human men, with their heavy muscles and soft lines. Garrus was narrow and lean, with a hundred razored edges that seemed designed to rip and tear. She wasn’t too sure how she found it all so arousing. Maybe it was just a side-effect of her natural masochism.
She determined that he wouldn’t be the one having all the fun. Sitting up, Jane obligated herself to helping Garrus strip, her nimble, five-fingered hands tangling with his as she reached for the endless clasps and locks of his turian armour. He watched her with obvious affection, those predatory, unblinking eyes of his enrapt to watch her human face. As she opened one latch and let the chest pieces fall from his torso plates, he reached out wordlessly and let the point of one talon push a lock of hair from her eyes. The action made Jane smile.
Then, with a rasp of the bed sheets, the bed creaked as her lean, naked body lifted from the pillows, her weight settling on her shaky legs. Her knees were buckling, and her genitals burned with an aching, painful rawness that still felt sweet. A strange emotion compelled her to sink down, opening Garrus’s knees to kneel between them as he sat on the edge of the bed. The sight of her, vulnerable and flushed between his legs, her exposed flesh encircled by his long limbs and armour, seemed to make the turian tense painfully on the spot. Jane ventured that he was reacting to the submissive implications of her gesture, and the unspoken invitation of dominance appealed to his turian nature. With a culture of social ranks and fierce hierarchy, their civilization was built on control and supplication. He’d done the same as she did now, when he bent and guiltily appealed to her mercy, confessing his doubts, and must not have expected her to return it. He inhaled slowly and deliberately, staring her down with a predatory intensity.
So Jane just made it worse, by leaning in and feeling along Garrus’s legs until she found the telltale notches in his greaves, letting each piece open as she patiently pulled them away. Each movement revealed fabric, which opened rather easily to expose his warmed, plated hide. It was nothing like human skin, neither soft nor porous, instead matching the evolutionary step after scales, his flesh taking the form of expansive, grafted plates that rose up in countless little edges. Mordin wasn’t kidding when he warned her about chafing.
One leg freed, she ghosted a kiss against the hard, textured flesh of his thigh. Turian skin was thick, but it certainly wasn’t insensitive, because that littlest touch incited a growl straight from the back of Garrus’s throat. He stared holes down at her, unspeaking, unmoving, and if she could read turian faces as well as she thought, Jane swore he looked a little nervous. Hiding a smile, she stripped his other leg, then, pushing up to her knees, leaned into her officer’s torso to find the opening on his pelvic plackart, the reinforced, alien alloy unhitching from his body and lowered to the floor with a heavy, muted clang of steel. Now he was as naked as she, his tall, long-limbed, and sharpened body almost runic with his pebbled plating. Jane’s eyes followed the way they wove and interlocked in a long and almost artful path down his chest, terminating to the engorged opening that slotted the reinforced natural armour between his legs.
Garrus had to admit that the worst of his anger was the lingering sting of betrayal. He couldn’t reconcile how she kept a directive from the Alliance under wraps like that. It’s not like she was even one of their own. She had no professional responsibility to uphold, and even if she was reticent to tell Cerberus anything... why didn’t she tell him? Didn’t she trust him?
Aggravated, he tore off his visor, letting his head fall forward to rub roughly at the plates bordering his fringe. The turian gave his head a fierce shake, as if the simple motion could eject his disquiet. It did nothing, and he fell into a disturbed silence, feeling way too sensitized to every sharp, unhampered sound that echoed through the level of the Normandy. It was going to be a long night.
Sitting up, he stared down at the Kuwashii visor in his hands, turning over the small device until he determinedly activated the uplink. Maybe he’d have some new messages enough to distract him until he could fall asleep.
Sorting through the visor’s read-out, the message folder came up empty. Not even a return letter from his sister, which was already two weeks overdue from the last time he’d written her. Mood darkening, he disinterestedly scanned the updated galactic news headlines. Maybe the media would be running some preliminary stories on what happened out in the Bahak system--
That's when a new headline shot up, catching his eyes amidst the rest:
PREVIOUSLY RECORDED - WESTERLUND NEWS: CITADEL INTERVIEW WITH COMMANDER JANE SHEPARD
Head tilting, Garrus surreptitiously checked the news date. It was today. It was only a matter of hours ago. She was talking to the media already? Was it about what had happened?
He paused, part of him not even sure he wanted to watch this, wanted to hear Shepard explain herself. But the thought was quickly dispelled. His curiousity winning out with a sigh, Garrus fixed the visor back to his head and activated the old broadcast.
The recording started promptly, and Garrus immediately recognized the face of the reporter on camera. Even before his work with Shepard, he knew this woman was a borderline public nuisance inside the halls of the Citadel--
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"This is Khalisah al-Jilani with Westerlund News. And I have with me the famous reinstated Spectre, Commander Jane Shepard."
Commander Jane Shepard, infamous Council Spectre with her unmatched skills in perception, appeared to be caught unawares, dressed down in her civvies and attention stolen from a market console. She also appeared to be completely alone. Al-Jilani, by all purposes, must have recognized and cornered the woman while doing something as innocuous as shopping. And now Shepard looked trapped.
The camera split close-ups between the surprised, almost nervous-looking Shepard and her abrupt interviewer, while panning shots of the Citadel backdrop behind them. People had stopped, drawn by the familiar name, casting surprised and interested glances on the exchange.
"Batarian reports are circulating your involvement with the total decimation of the Bahak system. The Earth judiciary confirms them. The estimated casualties are over three hundred four thousand batarians, many of them civilian colonists and miners. Some batarian diplomats are labelling this an act of terrorism and even a failed attempt at genocide. Reports are coming in from the Alliance labelling you as the key suspect in this atrocity. Commander Shepard, allow me to simply ask the one question on everyone's mind: Why did you do this?
Garrus could see the public rousing in the background of the report, judgment casting different shapes on the faces of humans, turians, volus, and asari milling about. The solitary krogan in attendance just appeared to look amused. Unconsciously, he recognized a couple C-Sec uniforms within the crowd. They weren't doing their jobs and dispersing it. They were part of the captive audience. Waiting for Shepard to explain herself. Explain for the Alliance. The Council. The Spectres. Waiting for her to explain, in one sentence, decades of human mistakes, generations of political bitterness, and centuries of Council inaction.
The camera turned on her face, Shepard's same, unmistakable face, the one that was trying to smile at Garrus just a few hours ago. Trying to convince him that she was the same person and that everything was all right. Trying to convince herself.
She wasn't smiling now.
Lit by the camera like an interrogation, her recording seemed to be staring straight at him, her grey eyes silently begging Garrus for help miles and miles away.
Within the image, Garrus’s sharp gaze could notice the offence and hostility already brewing within the recorded crowd, and his fingers tightened into his palms. C-Sec wasn't doing their job. Shepard wasn't paying attention either. She seemed unable to look away from the camera. Why wasn't she watching her six? She was going to get herself attacked. Why wasn't anyone there to--?
Al-Jilani's sharp voice cut into Garrus’s thoughts. The reporter was biting back the smile that shone transparently through her vicious eyes. This was a revenge for Shepard humiliating her on-camera in prior occasions. This was a deliberate attack. "Don't you think all those innocent and now dead batarians deserve an explanation, Commander Shepard?"
Jane just stared into the camera, paralyzed on the spot. Silent. Helpless.
And Garrus saw in her eyes what he was too angry, too offended, and too blind to notice before. Even his self-professed expert readout of human expression missed what should have been obvious. Shepard’s live image looked helplessly back at him, her face pale with guilt and devastation, and her pale eyes raw and much too bright. She was affected. She was affected and hiding it. She was trying to stay strong, but she was in pain. And now she was blind-sided and cornered, left unprotected and alone... and believed herself to be a cold-hearted murderer with the entire galaxy as her witness.
Shouts began to arise from the recorded crowd. Leave it to the turians to start shouting something about humans showing their true colours. A volus seethed something about Council race favouritism. The uniformed C-Sec operatives began to remember their duties, bracing against the brewing audience, and when something was thrown at Shepard’s face, she flinched, turned her head, and the camera cut out.
Garrus stared helplessly at his darkened visor.
He was such an asshole.
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He had to speak to her. He needed to find her.
In a matter of seconds, Garrus had exploded out of his quarters, locking his visor in place around his head as he moved purposefully down the ship’s darkened halls. Shouldering through tight corridors designed better for shorter, stockier human beings, his armoured, digitigrade feet knocked heavy echoes against the claustrophobic, concussive halls. The dim, amber lights reflected off his battered armour and the razored points of his fringe, casting his hard, plated face in ominous shadow. With that agitated scowl moving his mandibles, the turian bee-lined straight for EDI’s closest console.
“Officer Vakarian,” the AI’s mild, toneless voice greeted him, “how may I assist you?”
“Can you tell me where Shepard is on deck?”
“She is not on board the Normandy at this time,” EDI gracefully replied. “One hundred seventy-three minutes ago, Commander Shepard left instructions that she will be remaining on the Citadel overnight. She will rejoin the Normandy at oh-six hundred.”
That gave Garrus pause, his entire plan falling straight on its ass. He flinched with surprise and a creeping sense of disquiet. “She’s still there? Who’s with her?”
“She left unaccompanied.”
Shit. Gritting his teeth, Garrus tried to ignore the memory of Shepard’s gentle, hopeful urgings to join her off-ship. She’d so badly tried to coax him with friendly pokes and teases, gestures he thought only assured her total and unforgivable callousness. But it wasn’t what she meant at all. Was she secretly pleading with him? Why didn’t he pick up on it? He turned her down on the spot.
Still, the nearly-emptied third level of the Normandy added to his confusion. Most of the crew had left to go unwind on the Citadel; why wasn’t she with them? Why didn’t she take anyone else as escort? Were the rest of the crew as hesitant to be alone with her? Did she just resign to go on her own? “EDI, I need you to reopen the docking bay and prepare the necessary I.D rep. I’m going off ship.”
The artificial intelligence remained quiet for under two milliseconds, a time that still felt seamless to organic beings but meant a substantial pause when it came to computational sentience. “Commander Shepard did not provide coordinates as to where she is staying.”
Garrus’s head spun, thoughts taking him in several directions. He’ll need his gun. He’ll need to make a trip to C-Sec, call a few owned favours, hack a few more systems, and start his path on tracking her down. He’ll also need to figure out what the hell he’s going to say when he does find her. Part of him was worried that he may not even find her safe and unharmed. The fact she reported in was optimistic, unless she was persistent to hide something from all of them. Would she do that? Of course she would. He already gave her reason to believe she’s all alone. “That’s fine. I’ll figure it out.”
“Is this action within any positive correlation to the Westerlund report, Officer Vakarian?”
Stolen from his thoughts, the turian gave the console a look.
EDI continued, matter-of-factly, “Should I locate any viable information within the Citadel extranet, I will be sure to forward it to you.”
Garrus’s mouth twitched. He swore the AI almost sounded smug. “...Thanks.”
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Jane collapsed at the foot of her Citadel hotel bed, all of the accustomed military tension bleeding out of her body. What was left was a human being, a flawed one, a tired one, complete with a flask of alcohol at her side. Bending her long legs up at the knees, she leaned back against the bed, her head slung back against the mattress. Dark hair winged across her brow, and Shepard’s hollowed grey eyes gazed up through their tresses and watched the ceiling. It was too damn white and ornamental. The expansive chandelier was off-putting. Detachedly, it made her realize how she’d gotten so used to the sterile, cagey enclosures of ship quarters, where touching anything would leave behind smears of fingerprints on steel. Down on the Citadel, the hotel room felt too big, too bright, and too unprotected.
But retreat to the Normandy was out of the question, no matter how safe the vessel made her feel. She was a commander, one who was on the verge of leading her crew into the belly of the beast. They were on the cusp of a suicide mission, and she couldn't promise them their lives even if they managed the impossible and took the Collector ship down. So she could at least be the strong leader they deserved.
They didn't need some scared, doubtful little girl tearing up over a couple bad decisions.
She'd stay on the Citadel overnight and leave after a good sleep. She'd be better in the morning. She'd feel more like herself again.
Or so Jane kept telling herself.
Somewhere between trying to unscrew the lid off her alcohol and stealing her first greedy drink, the tears started rolling out of her eyes, and she ignored them to streak silently down her cheeks. Jane was always a stoic crier, and whenever it had to happen, she did it quietly and without a fuss.
The alcohol bit her palate and went down like a fistful of nails, but Jane heaved a grateful sigh despite it. She just needed to get a bit drunk. That would fix it all. Then she could forget Khalisah's questions, the looks on all the faces of the people around her, and her worse thoughts, the ones that kept telling her again and again: if you had fought just a little harder, been just a bit stronger, you would've had the time to warn the colonists. You fucked up, and now they're dead.
And now she was taking dozens of people to run the Omega-Four Relay, forcing them on a death march out to God knows where, and they're going to die just the same. More lives to add to the tally. How the hell was she going to protect them? How the hell was she ever going to pull this off?
Shepard couldn't even deny the way Garrus looked at her back on the Normandy. He was the only person she had left to call a friend, the only comrade who hadn't walked out or laughed off her suicidal mission, and so badly she wanted to assure herself by him that everything was OK, unchanged, just as she left it. But he didn't want to look at her. Her only friend was disgusted. She'd lost his trust, turned into the very scum he was trying to cull in Omega, but there was no other way. She had to do what she did. If she had more time... why couldn't she have had more time?
The bottle of alcohol slipped from her fingers, as all ten of Jane's fingers crawled up to clutch wringing handfuls of her dark hair. Maybe there was another way and she didn't know it. There had to have been. She’d thought that she could do this. There was once a time when she could navigate an entire life-or-death scenario gone to hell, when she found herself trapped God knows where and shit out of luck, and she managed the impossible without a single innocent life lost. She used to know what to do. Before she died, she had all the right answers.
And now... now, she just didn't--
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"Shepard, I need to talk to you."
Her hands loosening out of her hair, Jane just gazed askance at the closed door. She stared at it with the same numb hesitation she did the lens of al-Jilani's mobile camera. Even for a woman of action, she was momentarily unsure as what to do. She recognized the voice, even without the translation beckoned off of her omnitool. But that did nothing to alleviate her indecision; on the contrary, it was making it worse. Maybe she was just imagining it--
"Please. Open the door."
No imagining that. Through the haze of her mild buzz, through the bleary film of her tears, Jane wondered why Garrus Vakarian was here. She pulled up recent memories through her mental fog. He didn’t want to be near her. Why would he be here? Did something happen on the Normandy? She turned off her live communication uplink except to EDI in the case of an emergency. But something could have transpired despite it. Did Garrus come to collect her? Did he come to hand her his formal resignation?
Shepard remembered her own voice, only to immediately regret using it. It sounded hollow and little as she called, "Garrus?" But she still went straight to auto-pilot, pressing one hand against the bed to stumble up to her feet. "What happened? Is it an emergency?"
"No emergency," his faceless voice confirmed from the other side of the door. "Let me in."
Shepard felt her insides twist and go cold, the revolting combination of relief and dread mixing as peacefully as acids and bases. Her stomach turned. It meant his strange visit didn’t bode well. Stopping from her mechanical flight path toward the door, she pressed a hand to her temple. "Garrus... it... it's not a good time."
The door creaked against its motors, sounding as though he’d pressed his hand up against it. The weight meant he was still wearing his armour. He was silent on the other side, and for so long that Shepard began to wonder if Vakarian had just heeded her warning, picked up on the scratchy sound of her voice, and got the hell out of there. But then he spoke up, his two-toned voice still surprisingly close as it asked, "Do you trust me?"
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A silence fell between them, as commander and officer appeared to wait for the other to speak. Averting her eyes, Shepard caught a glimpse of herself off a band of Vakarian’s armour, and her face looked way too gaunt, her eyes way too red, for this to be an effective conversation. Exhaling, she opened her mouth to break the peace, to try to stop this--
And Garrus appeared to catch on fast, too fast, as he curled one three-fingered hand around a panel of the door, effectively barring any attempt for her to wall him out before stepping inside. In a punctuated motion, he hit the panel behind him, shutting and locking the door after his own sizeable mass. His next movement was quick and entirely involuntary, those avian eyes of his surveying the room and checking all the windows and exits, taking count of them as though that huge fucking rifle strapped to his back couldn’t dissuade any attack that’d dared their way. Then he glanced back at Shepard, checking her over, appraising every curve, limb, rib, and strand of hair with the concentration of a full-body scan. Did he think she was injured?
But she wasn’t, and assuaged by that fact, her gunnery officer appeared to let down his guard. His gauging inspection of her body stopped at her eyes, and his expression mollified imperceptibly but seemed unable to look away. Shepard felt the same way, finding it damn near impossible to glance away from Garrus’s wordless staring. A silence befell them a second time, but not because she was waiting for him to speak.
She just wanted to look at him. Even though this could potentially be the last time she’d ever see him, when he’d confirm her suspicions and ask to free himself from her mission and the Cerberus ship, and she’d allow him his freedom because he deserved it -- he’d already given her too many years of his life. Jane just wanted to look at that face what never left her thoughts when she was trapped and eye-deep in enemy guards on Project Base... that alien, turian face who would surpass all to become her one last friend left, her only confidant, and her hopeful lover.
There was no warning.
Not even Jane knew exactly when it happened, when something snapped inside her and everything she’d been holding in, days of exhaustion and desperation and grief, came pouring out. She’s not sure when it started, and how long it was going on for, but the next thing she knew, she was half-slumped on some Citadel hotel room at her gunnery officer’s armoured feet, crying her guts out.
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Jane Shepard couldn’t have stopped if she tried. Some part of her knew she’d regret this, regret doing something as unprofessional, as inconceivable as breaking down in front of a subordinate officer, but for the time she couldn’t care. There was nothing left in her, no more strength, no more excuses, no more pithy justification, just her exhaustion, her failure, and her hands caked in the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead batarians. Wavering on the spot, she sank her face into her palms and just wailed, the grief so thick and heavy and nauseous in her throat that she could have puked it up. The rest of the world narrowed into nothing. Part of her swore she heard Garrus speak her name, but she couldn’t know for sure.
Then it happened so fast. Her knees buckled, and then something moved in with blinding speed to catch her. Two armoured arms seized around her with a quick desperation, and her sternum hit a little jarringly hard against a flat, cold metal plate. Her breath caught, but Shepard just fiercely grabbed on, not wanting this enveloping presence to leave her. She turned her head, and it was Garrus holding her, keeping her in place as she hooked her arms around his alien neck, her blunted fingernails scratching at the hide under his sharpened fringe. He grunted once in response to the contact, like being similarly shocked out of his own breathing, but said nothing. Instead, he deliberately bent and one of his long arms snuck under her knees, whisking the galaxy’s saviour off her feet as though she weighed no more than a pillow.
His bulky armour felt freezing and slightly painful, pressed too roughly against her lungs and bones, but Shepard wouldn’t have it any other way. It meant he was there. He wasn’t leaving her. He was holding her. Sobbing in relief and still refusing to let him go, she buried her teary face against the side of his neck, not so selfless that she wouldn’t try to steal whatever warmth or comfort she could get from her best friend. She knew she had to tell him before it happened, while she still had the chance, and Jane fought her sobs as she felt his strange, almost sinewy turian gait carry her body across the room.
When she found her voice, or its gutted, tattered remnants, Jane forced out her confession against his throat. Her words sounded so stringy and brittle. "I'm sorry," she pleaded airily, hoping Garrus would realize she meant for everything. For ever subjecting him to her risks, for dying, for resurrecting to be less than the woman she was, for failing, for disappointing him, for becoming what he so hated. "I’m sorry," she confessed endlessly. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry..."
But Garrus said nothing. He carried her to the room’s solitary bed, the mattress bowing when he determinedly sat down their combined weights. He had no words for her, but did not seem inclined to relinquish her from his arms. He just let her cry.
And she did. Jane wept wet smears into her best friend’s armour until there was simply nothing left, no more energy left in her spent body to do little more than sag against him. As quickly as it had started, her grief appeared to break, leaving the woman feeling not so much relieved as strangely, almost chillingly hollow. She savoured one last moment of security in Garrus's arms, until her senses ultimately had to return, and with them that strict sense of decorum that did not let commanding officers weep upon their subordinates.
Averting her eyes, her usual confidence shattered by her doubts and encroaching embarrassment, Shepard finally pushed back at the turian's arms. He seemed reluctant for an instant, but then let go, and as soon as his arms loosened, she was escaping his lap, retreating to merely sit aside him on the bed. Garrus watched her closely, but still had yet to say anything. He watched her almost passively as she slowly reclaimed her lost composure.
Shepard didn’t rub at her eyes, wanting to draw as little attention to the fact she’d been crying. Instead she asked, her voice dry and raspy, "How did you find me? I mean... I know how you found me. I have an idea. But how did you know I was here?"
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The world spun. Jane sure rubbed her eyes then, letting her face fall into her opened palm. "Oh, God," summed up her entire feelings pretty eloquently.
She could taste Garrus’s awkwardness as he sat uneasily through her humiliation. But, soon enough, he continued, "It looked dangerous. I needed to see if you were all right."
Her hand dropping back down to her lap, Jane rubbed a little uneasily at her neck. “It was getting heavy,” she admitted. “Anderson must have gotten the tip off; his men came in and broke up the crowd. I got my way out.” Then her voice hitched with a humourless laugh, her face heavy with self-deprecation. “Yeah, even the mighty Commander Shepard flees with her tail between her legs.”
His head tilted. “It's not your fault,” Garrus argued, matter-of-factly. “I should've been with you. I should've been watching your back.” It seemed two could play the deprecation game.
“Don't go all bruised turian honour on me, Garrus,” Jane rasped, swallowing against the residual rawness in her throat. Her lips pursed, and she finally built the courage to slip her officer a look. He was still there, seated next to her on the bed, looking massive in his turian armour. Its normally polished shoulder was streaked with her drying tears. With his eyes averted, he didn’t notice Jane’s glance. She looked away again, forcing herself to remember how he faced her in the Normandy’s main battery, and what he said...
“I can understand you not wanting much to do with me,” she continued. “I don't want much to do with me right now. I decided to hold up here and return to ship tomorrow. I can't have my crew seeing me like this. I'm supposed to be leading them. They're giving me their lives.”
“Shepard --” Garrus countered uneasily.
“No, Garrus,” she quickly cut him off, building the courage to look over once more, this time meeting her best friend’s alien eyes. Light never reflected off turian eyes, Jane had realized long ago. It took only the littlest bit of shadow to make them look empty, black, and pitted like a hungry predator. He watched her a little reproachfully; perhaps uncertain of what she planned to say, uncertain if he’d like it. “Even you admitted once that we're not getting out of this easy. I'm scared to death. I think I've hit a point... I used to be able to rationalize it, justify it as part of the mission or as that oath we all swear as soldiers, but I don't think I can lose another man. I don't know how to deal with it anymore.”
That admission drew another long length of brooding silence from the turian -- long enough that Jane considered regretting even saying it at all. There are some lines commanding officers never cross, and there are pains they are not disposed to share; those are the burdens of leadership. It was as she was opening her mouth to continue, to try to clumsily fix her mistake, when Garrus finally spoke.
“I lost ten good men who had lives and families,” he said, recalling those two years on Omega he spent as the vigilante Archangel. “They weren't like me. They weren't ghosts. They had futures, and they gave those futures to me to protect.” Garrus’s darkened eyes narrowed. “I let them down.”
Shepard was struck by something at that moment, something she’d always failed to acknowledge. Two years ago, she’d been the turian’s mentor, pleased to teach him the ethics of a crusader, and had known from first fighting at his side that his talents craved guidance -- he was destined for big things. It was the reason why she convinced him so hard to go for Spectre training. But then she died, and inside two years, he changed. It was easy for her to fall back into funny habits, and treat him as the subordinate soldier he once was, but that was no longer the case. Friendship began to blur those lines, and what now broke it entirely was her realization that he, too, was a leader. It was a risk in sedition he was taking, if just to his disciplined turian nature, but he was prepared to give her advice as an equal.
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Garrus gave her a strange look, and she could read the flicker of surprise disguised in his hard turian features. She was sure he wasn’t expecting that out of her, not the woman who’d always been prepared to get indignant when someone questioned her orders. But he duly answered, grim, “For the longest time... it was the rage that sustained me.”
The self-deprecation returned in a nauseating wave, enough that Shepard couldn’t stop her eyes from briefly closing. “And I took that away from you.” She rubbed wearily at her opposite shoulder. “Maybe you deserved your vengeance. I think I did wrong by you --”
“You did nothing of the sort,” Garrus snapped, his voice like a door slamming. Something appeared to galvanize him out of his brief ennui, and armour rattling, he turned on her.
“Look at me, Shepard,” he ordered, and when Jane didn’t respond fast enough, one gloved hand reached out to capture her face with its long, three fingers. The sensation locked their eyes. He leaned close, so close, that she could feel the heat of his breath on her face, see the tips of his teeth past his flaring mandibles.
“You were right,” Garrus told her firmly. “Killing Sidonis would have put me down a path I never really wanted. I'll be honest with you; this is still taking some getting-over for me. I can't compartmentalize two years of anger. I had myself convinced that I deserved that kill. My entire universe was rebuilt around that belief.” His hand gentled against her cheek. “But I know you did the right thing. I know your reasons for it. You were fighting for me.”
Then he let her go, sincerity hardening his features, Garrus straightening his back and clenching his hands as he bowed his head and faced her.
“Now I get through it by obligating myself to your directive,” he confessed. “I need you, Shepard. I need your fight. I've made it mine. I fight for the memory of my ten men, for their surviving families, for their children, and I'll protect you, your mission, so that it may live on. That's what they'd want.”
His blue eyes creased slightly. “But it's not just that. There's... there's also what I want.”
And then, before her eyes, Jane watched as Garrus moved, doing something she’d only ever heard about in her codex of turian culture. He’d conceded to her authority, yielded to her command more times than she can remember, but never once had he ever done this.
He stood up from the bed, and in a single, graceful motion, dropped to one knee and bowed in supplication. His solid armour resounded when it hit the floor. Kneeling there, Garrus begged her in a purely turian gesture of regret. His voice was rough and thick. “I fight for you because I know you're the only one who can save us. Because even though you’ve already died once for us, I know you’re prepared to do it again. Because even with your own past and loss, you’re still willing to cry for fallen batarians. You did the right thing, and yet, I... doubted you, Commander, and I apologize for it. It's my job to protect you, and I've let you down again.”
Jane’s eyebrows knotted. Again?
Garrus’s hands tightened against the floor, and his eyes drew shut. Turians rarely, if ever, closed their eyes when awake or conscious. It was their purest gesture of surrender.
“I'll be prepared to do anything to be returned to your confidence, Commander,” he pleaded. “You can assign me to vanguard. You can throw me in the brig. You --“
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Can't wait to see how it ends.
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I can only be revived by more. I can't wait to read more! This tugs at my heart-strings so fully, the gambit of emotions. I'll be blubbering over here. It's so wonderful!
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The turian surged forward, his weight pushing insistently down until Jane's smaller body conceded, falling tiredly back to the bed. She broke the kiss as his hands found her waist, bidden to explore the firm lines of musculature through her clothing. They watched each other, his sharp blue eyes fixed on her wide grey ones. She was breathing harshly; her lips were swollen from where she'd crushed them against Garrus’s unyielding mouth plates, and even in this impassioned moment, Shepard found reason to pause, her doubts trying to resurrect like some old ghost.
This isn't right, not now, not after everything--
"Garrus, we don’t have--" Jane began to apologize.
Then, without warning, her gunnery officer cut her off with a very distinct growl, curved two armoured fingers over her mouth, and leaned in to pull his hot, rasping tongue up the side of her throat. It was long and rough, every turian taste bud scraping a merciless path up her jugular and behind her ear, and the action shot an arrow of heat straight to her groin. Shepard's breath caught in her throat.
"Don’t finish that thought," he told the fragile arteries in her neck, grazing his needly teeth over the fragile flesh that shielded them. Garrus’s hot breath puffed against her skin, smelling vaguely alkaline, like motor oil and gunmetal. "Didn't we already agree to this?"
Jane reached up long-sufferingly to pull his hand from her lips. "We also agreed to wait--"
Garrus’s teeth reprimanded her shoulder, shredding the fabric there and catching the muscle beneath. He rumbled warningly, “I almost lost you on that fucking asteroid. You almost died and it would’ve been too late. I'm a smart man, Shepard. I don't make the same mistakes twice. And neither do you."
Eyes half-lidded, Shepard swallowed against the pulling sensation of turian teeth in her skin, the pain strangely inciting her but not to want to escape it. Her hands wearily closed down on the armour shielding his upper arms. Doggedly, she still persisted on argument. “But weren't you worried -- about us researching this right -- about it getting awkward --?”
“It won't,” Garrus interjected stubbornly, taking his teeth out of his commander’s shoulder to survey the flesh around her collarbone. His too-warm breath clouded over her as he indulgently processed her scent. “I'm too pissed off.” His fingers searched Shepard’s form-fitting civvies for the most obvious openings. “And you know when I get pissed off, I make things happen.”
Jane sighed away the rest of her fight, her breath steeped with patient amusement. “One of the things I love best about you.”
Hands stopped, Garrus froze at that admission, seeing through its empty tease to the disguised meaning beneath. He searched her eyes, part of him waiting Shepard to realize her own statement, and give her time to retract it, regret it--
But Jane Shepard, her grey eyes still lingeringly red-rimmed, simply smiled back up, confirming the question in his stare. Comrades like her and Garrus, who had learned each other’s faces in those glorious moments of living or dying, needed no extraneous words between them.
Exhaling thickly, Garrus leaned down to push his forehead against hers, pressing intimate, insistent weight. It took Shepard a moment, but it hit her that this must be a turian kiss, second base for a race who had no lips and too many teeth for prolonged kissing. She copied the movement, craning her neck to return the pressure, and was rewarded by the luxurious sensation of his throttling purr as it soaked into her vertebrae, the sound burying into her so deep that she felt it inside her molars. “Shepard,” he spoke against the skin of her forehead almost worshipfully, “you don’t know what you do to me. I was worried whether I’d be able to respond to a human. Now I can’t imagine this not happening tonight. It has to. I’ll make you feel good.”
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Garrus pulled back to stare Shepard down, his sharp eyes aimed like a pair of gun barrels. She was mocking him, and he knew it. “Yes, though I don’t think you understand their full ramifications. You’ll have to allow me to demonstrate.”
# # #
In two quick, deliberate movements, the heavy gauntlets unlocked from Garrus’s wrists, and he dismissively let them drop. His hands were exposed up his elbows, revealing his lean, sinewy muscles and thick skin. He flexed his six fingers, each one of them studded with a long, curved killing talon. A turian’s natural weapons. Shepard had seen them used before in battle, and they had more strength and sharpness than any trench knife she’d ever kept in her possession. She’d seen those claws rend enemies into hamburger.
Now he’d turned them on her, and it came down to a matter of trust, to stay still and silent as those weapons drew against her body. It was up to both of them to be careful; even one wrong shift or unprepared jolt could leave her with some messy puncture wounds. But he appeared more than intent on his end, rapt and delighted to explore her body with an infinite patience. His hands followed the way her civilian clothes clung to her body, then, he appeared to grow immediately tired of touching fabric, and his fingers searched for an opening on her clothes. But human clothing was foreign and alien to turian designs, whose civilian wear was never meant to be pulled harmlessly overhead or arranged around soft shoulders. There would be too many rips and tears.
But his exploring hands couldn’t seem to find a buckling system in her clothing. Agitated, he bent down and tilted his head to squint under her arms and down her sides, searching and finding nothing. Well, nothing save Jane’s half-hidden, and very amused smile.
So that’s how it’s going to be. His gaze flattened, and Garrus replied with a flick of his hunting knife claws. Fabric tore noisily, and before Jane even had time to express the surprised indignation that was colouring her face, he’d torn her shirt free. He reached to similarly snap the carriage-harness she wore underneath, rumbling with curiousity to steal his first glimpse of her breasts. They looked small and firm, streamline to her athletic body, and he wasn’t too sure what to make of them.
That is, until he touched one, capturing it in one clawed hand, and Garrus paused at the utter sensation of softness. It was hard to believe that a creature as strong, durable, and enduring as Shepard could feel so vulnerable. She’d proved her prowess endlessly, but to touch her like this aggravated every one of his protective instincts. He had no idea human flesh was that delicate. The thought, again, of her trapped alone on that asteroid station, and surrounded--
Her gentle sigh broke his dark thoughts, Garrus sobering to the sight of Jane relaxing, responding to the whispers of his claws against her nipples.
He vowed privately on his own honour that he’d never repeat that mistake. He’d protect her, more than she’d ever realize, and probably far more than she’d ever like. He wouldn’t let anything come so close to learn that she was this soft. The dichotomy of their bodies at this moment didn’t escape him, all of her exposed, soft, and prone curves contrasted with his plated hide and heavy, cumbersome armour. She looked so small against him. It was very diverting.
Soon enough, his hands released her breasts for the much more engaging length of her waist, a turian’s natural erogenous zone. A human’s waist was shorter and thicker than a turian’s, but he definitely liked hers, and his arousal shot up at the sight of her hip bones creasing out from the curves of her body. Needing to see and touch more, his claws curled into the waist of Jane’s pants, the seams already tearing at the edges.
“Garrus, I need some clothes left to walk out of here--” Shepard groused, trying to untangle his fingers.
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Shepard’s smooth skin was already chill bumped in that strange, human way. “What about you?” she pointedly turned on him from where she sprawled across the mattress.
“In due course,” Garrus just replied. He craned his head at that strange undergarment she wore next to her groin, daring to muffle the strange, sweet smell he could scent arriving from between her legs. To appease her, he slipped in his talons with total delicacy and worked it down her legs without a single catch in the fabric.
“Now let me see.”
# # #
He was rumbling, almost purring like some big cat, as all six of his talons hooked under Shepard’s thighs and jarringly pulled her hips up into the air. She gasped with mild shock, her arousal not helping the way her world was dazedly spinning, and a moment later, Shepard found herself heaped across the mattress, her shoulders pinioned back into the pillows as her left ankle hooked against Garrus’s armoured carapace. He was perched above her, almost mantled like a hawk, with that intent, predatory face of his hovering between her legs. She felt one of his mandibles scrape her inner thigh and realized what he was aiming to do.
Numbly, detachedly, Shepard wouldn’t have ever figured this as a universal form of foreplay. And didn’t Mordin once warn her--
Her leg tensing where it draped over his sizeable shoulder, Shepard tried to turn her hips inside Vakarian’s hands for purchase. He only seemed to fight her harder, holding her half-slung form up from the bed. Jane huffed with agitation. “Garrus, you can't. Proteins -- you'll go into shock --”
His steely eyes glanced up from her groin. “Then try not to get too wet.”
He’s been watching the vids, Jane realized with a groan, before the first hot stroke of his tongue effectively short-circuited any chance of cognition. She cried out, still trying to remember her argument, her logical reasoning that this shouldn’t be happening, that it’s not safe, but then Garrus’s steamy, too-hot turian breath exhaled over her folds. “Is that how you taste, Shepard?” his dark, flanging voice inquired silkily of her. “If the spirits didn’t want me to do this, they wouldn’t have made you taste so fucking good.”
His claws tightened against her ass, barring any escape, and with no further preamble, her gunnery officer went to town. Human tongues had nothing on their turian counterparts, which were longer, stronger, and endlessly rough, complete with sandpapery taste buds scraping against her tortured flesh, almost promising to lick her raw and senseless. He feasted greedily on her, with long and heavy licks that physically rocked Shepard back against the bed, Garrus nearly turning desperate to sample that taste he’d complimented her on. The sensation was nothing she ever imagined, but then only few humans would ever know the sensation of turian battle ferocity turned into an insatiable need to force pleasure from their lovers. He’d already made it known he had no intention of letting her go.
“Goddamnit, Garrus,” Jane cursed helplessly as he ate her, her words lost into a cry when the lashing tip of his clever tongue snuck through her folds and hit her clitoris. Head thrown back against her pillows, her voice broke with her keening. Then the smart son of a bitch seemed to realize what he did, and capitalized on that little nub of nerves, opening her shivering legs wider as he descended upon it. The world tilted dangerously, pleasure blearing her eyes as Garrus laved the spot fiercely, his pace slow and entirely without mercy. Her wetness flooded his mouth, and it only seemed to encourage the turian, who was deliberately set on feasting on her as though she were some rare alien delicacy. Did she really taste that good to him?
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She did.
If he’d only realized this sooner, Garrus thought. If he only knew what he was missing, everything would have been different. He would have acted on his feelings much sooner, far before Shepard even mustered the nerve to ask him to her bed: it would’ve been before Cerberus, before that fucking Alenko, before her dying so he could have at least been there to prevent it. And he would have. His fury was like a fire moving beneath his plates, railing against nearly losing that woman a second time, and her taste on his tongue was his only catharsis. He needed to prove this to her. Prove how much she meant to him. Prove how much he needed her. Prove how insane she made him.
Every turian instinct felt like ignition fluid in his blood, aggravating him to act, to fight, to conquer; this was a demonstration of his hunger, of his devotion for her, but turian devotion was as much an exercise in war as anything else. And she would know it.
Garrus pushed cruelly with his tongue, and felt his mate orgasm, her spine tightening as her fingers twisted into the bed sheets. He drew it out with a long, savouring taste, caring not for her recent fears that drinking her would be potentially fatal. He’d like to see it try. If a rocket to the face couldn’t end him, what could? His anger made him feel invincible. What mattered is that she was alive, here with him, and he would take from her all time would allow.
# # #
With a windy sound, Jane relaxed, weak and dreamy from her pleasure. Garrus rumbled, leaving behind points of blood as he unhooked one clawed hand from the flesh of her ass, his palm gliding up the smooth length of Shepard’s leg as he stretched it to rest up against his shoulder. Her skin felt clammy, and there were wet pockets of sweat trapped in the insides of her knees. Dully, he noted his own arousal, aching something fierce and poisonous in his groin, trapped inside the heavy plates of his armour. He still needed to remove the damn thing. But he wasn’t finished.
Shepard had just finished sighing away the best orgasm of her life when his tongue started anew. It woke her up faster than a slap to the face, already too painfully over-sensitized to suffer this.
“Garrus,” she croaked, trying to retreat, but his right hand curled around her ankle while the left dug more painfully into her hip. He chose to say nothing, happy to let his tongue speak for him in this more tactile language. And it did, lapping her firmly and unforgiving, burying into her folds to worry her swollen flesh. The pain was sharp, and every punctuated flick of her clitoris seared. Her eyes watered, but he didn’t let up, pushing Jane forward through the agony until pleasure began to build under the burn. Just when she thought she couldn’t bear any more, warmth returned to radiate up her back.
Her pride mattered so much to her, but at this point she was just sobbing, her face flushed and tears rolling out of her closed eyes. “Oh, God,” Jane kept bleating, “Garrus, you son of a -- oh, God!” Then he began to purr, the sound humming deliciously up between her legs, and Jane was lost again, mindless and insensate, reaching one trembling hand to pull his head closer. Her fingers found the skin under her officer’s fringe, and her nails angrily dug in. The action reflected inside his shocked eyes, and Garrus surged forward with a growl, pushing a talon carefully into her as his tongue curled around that battered nub and sucked.
It was all she needed. Jane’s second orgasm shook her, arriving with a breathless sob, hitting her so sharp and scorchingly hot that she saw stars. She locked up in agonized ecstasy, riding the last emphatic drag of his tongue, and then collapsed, her ribcage fluttering as her body fought to keep her breath. Dimly, she felt Garrus’s hand stroke down her leg once more, returning it gently to sling across the mattress. When she found the strength, or at least the discretion, to crack open her eyes, she saw him looming over her, his exposed hands unlatching the initial bands of armour from his body. His face wore the turian equivalent of a shit-eating grin, which looked just as universally irritating. “And that’s a turian promise.”
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Garrus dropped a heavy layer of steel from his arm that looked -- and sounded -- to weigh a good twenty pounds. Turians definitely were stronger than they looked. “I do my research, Commander.”
Jane’s lips curved with a half-hearted smirk at his quip, but she wasn’t really listening. Instead, she was enrapt by Garrus’s body, as he revealed himself inch by inch from his restricting armour. He looked so alien, but also so beautiful, beautiful in that dangerous, tempting way a weapon is. The serrated edges and hard angles of his body reminded her of a living blade, and he looked so contrary to everything she knew about human men, with their heavy muscles and soft lines. Garrus was narrow and lean, with a hundred razored edges that seemed designed to rip and tear. She wasn’t too sure how she found it all so arousing. Maybe it was just a side-effect of her natural masochism.
She determined that he wouldn’t be the one having all the fun. Sitting up, Jane obligated herself to helping Garrus strip, her nimble, five-fingered hands tangling with his as she reached for the endless clasps and locks of his turian armour. He watched her with obvious affection, those predatory, unblinking eyes of his enrapt to watch her human face. As she opened one latch and let the chest pieces fall from his torso plates, he reached out wordlessly and let the point of one talon push a lock of hair from her eyes. The action made Jane smile.
Then, with a rasp of the bed sheets, the bed creaked as her lean, naked body lifted from the pillows, her weight settling on her shaky legs. Her knees were buckling, and her genitals burned with an aching, painful rawness that still felt sweet. A strange emotion compelled her to sink down, opening Garrus’s knees to kneel between them as he sat on the edge of the bed. The sight of her, vulnerable and flushed between his legs, her exposed flesh encircled by his long limbs and armour, seemed to make the turian tense painfully on the spot. Jane ventured that he was reacting to the submissive implications of her gesture, and the unspoken invitation of dominance appealed to his turian nature. With a culture of social ranks and fierce hierarchy, their civilization was built on control and supplication. He’d done the same as she did now, when he bent and guiltily appealed to her mercy, confessing his doubts, and must not have expected her to return it. He inhaled slowly and deliberately, staring her down with a predatory intensity.
So Jane just made it worse, by leaning in and feeling along Garrus’s legs until she found the telltale notches in his greaves, letting each piece open as she patiently pulled them away. Each movement revealed fabric, which opened rather easily to expose his warmed, plated hide. It was nothing like human skin, neither soft nor porous, instead matching the evolutionary step after scales, his flesh taking the form of expansive, grafted plates that rose up in countless little edges. Mordin wasn’t kidding when he warned her about chafing.
One leg freed, she ghosted a kiss against the hard, textured flesh of his thigh. Turian skin was thick, but it certainly wasn’t insensitive, because that littlest touch incited a growl straight from the back of Garrus’s throat. He stared holes down at her, unspeaking, unmoving, and if she could read turian faces as well as she thought, Jane swore he looked a little nervous. Hiding a smile, she stripped his other leg, then, pushing up to her knees, leaned into her officer’s torso to find the opening on his pelvic plackart, the reinforced, alien alloy unhitching from his body and lowered to the floor with a heavy, muted clang of steel. Now he was as naked as she, his tall, long-limbed, and sharpened body almost runic with his pebbled plating. Jane’s eyes followed the way they wove and interlocked in a long and almost artful path down his chest, terminating to the engorged opening that slotted the reinforced natural armour between his legs.
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