Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a hole in Garrus's heart.

Garrus sits on the edge of Shepard's bed. He figures that if he waits long enough, the door to the Captain's cabin will open. She will stroll right into the cabin with her head stuck in a data pad, her beautiful face lit up by the glow of the fish tank she loves so much. When her kind eyes meet his across the room, everything will settle again. Garrus's world will start moving again. As soon as he sees that fiery red hair and radiant smile. Garrus tells himself this same mantra over and over again as he turns her dog tags around in his hand. The metal is cold against his fingers. The door opens and for a moment Garrus lets himself believe that his world hasn't ended. It is not a head of red hair that enters.

"Garrus..." Tali says and Garrus feels his heart shatter all over again. Cloaking himself in denial never works but it never stops him from trying. Garrus does not move from his spot when Tali gently says his name a second time. 

"There's, uh, food." Tali clears her throat. "Dextro-amino. You should come down to the mess hall and get some," she tries, hoping to coax her friend out of the cabin he has made his prison cell. Garrus says nothing. Tali enters the room but stops at the fish tank that runs along the wall, knowing there is no sense in venturing further. 

"Garrus-"

"Tali," Garrus cuts in without adding anything further. Tali sighs.

"She would not want this for you. She wouldn't want you wasting away up here-"

"Don't do that, Tali." Garrus closes his hand around the dog tags. "Don't tell me what she would want."

"Garrus-"

"I'm not coming down. They all just talk about her like she's gone. I'm not wasting away I'm-" his voice wavers. "I'm waiting." 

The two friends let a silence hang between them until Garrus is the one to break it.

"Someone has to look after the fish until she comes back."

Tali wrings her hands out in front of her and looks at the floor. "Garrus I...I don't know if she is this time." 

Garrus does not answer right away, instead he looks up at the stars above. 

"We put her name up on the wall too soon." 

"Garrus-"

"I'm not coming down, Tali."

The thrum of the ship continues.

"I'm sorry," he says in a gentler tone. None of this is Tali's fault.

"I'm fine, Tali."

The lie floats between them and Tali knows when a battle is lost. She heads back towards the door with a heavy heart. As it swooshes open, she lingers.

"I miss her too," she says quietly. 

Garrus is left alone in Shepard's cabin when the doors close behind Tali. Alone, just as he has been ever since the memorial service. 

Not sure if Turian heaven is the same as yours, but if this thing goes sideways and we both end up there...meet me at the bar. 

Garrus eventually moves. He heads from the cabin to the ship bar, making sure to avoid the mess hall entirely on his route. He stares at Shepard's dog tags in his open palm. She had thrust them into his hands before stepping back from the Normandy and into the unknown. He had known at the time it might be the last time he would ever see her again but it was another to live it. He runs a finger across the engraving. 

There is no Shepard without Vakarian. 

Garrus feels like he is drowning. There is no Vakarian without Shepard. Garrus pours a drink and slides it to the empty stool beside him. He takes a swig of his own drink. 

"Shepard," he whispers into the air. "I thought we were to meet here." His only answer is the whir of the ship's engines. Garrus feels the lump in his throat reform. 

"I don't..." He glances away from the drink beside him. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do without you. It..." His hand clenches around her dog tags. "It was supposed to be me or both of us, not you." He places her chain around the glass before gently clinking his drink against it. A toast the two of them were meant to share somewhere warm and tropical.

"I miss you, Shepard." His voice wavers and he blinks back tears. "I miss you so much." The first time Garrus lost Shepard after she went down with the SR1, he focused all of his grief into becoming Archangel but now...now he didn't know where to put all his pain. It was bubbling out of any container he tried to hold it in. He imagined her in the corner, her arms folded as she leaned against the wall. Garrus hears footsteps behind him. He know it isn't her without turning. Tali and Joker enter the room. Garrus does not turn around. With some more coaxing, the pair manage to get him to agree to stop by the mess hall. As the two go on ahead, Garrus lingers at the bar a moment longer. 

"I'll be back in a moment, Shepard." He puts her dog tags back on but leaves the drink. He takes a deep breath and shudders on the exhale. 

"I love you." 

He wishes more than anything he had told her that more when she was here.

"I always will," he adds before the door closes behind him.

Garrus manages to get dinner much to the relief of the Normandy crew. What Garrus is not there to witness, however, is the way the glass he left out moves ever so slightly to the left.

Chapter Text

Garrus hasn’t been sleeping much and when he does, the nightmares claim him. The good dreams are far more cruel. They melt away when he wakes and Garrus feels all the more hollow for it.

Tonight, Garrus dreams. He is standing by the ocean. A dark, tumultuous sea stretches out before him beneath a stormy grey sky. The rain is heavy. Something is wrong. He hears the scream of a Banshee and whirls around to see one approaching through the sea haze. Bullets fly as enemy foot soldiers begin pouring in. Two more Brutes enter the area. Cortez is on the shuttle, Tali is in the fray along with James. Where is Shepard? Choppy waters. Cold air. Garrus feels a sinking sensation. The scene changes and the crew seem to fade away. Large waves crash against the shuttle and Garrus catches sight of two colossal, white orbs through the water – it takes Garrus a moment to realise that they are eyes - eyes that peer straight into his soul.

Leviathan. It must be.

“Garrus?”

It’s Shepard’s voice.

“Shepard? Shepard!” Garrus runs towards the water, something is pulling him there. He sees a small pool that is glowing silver amongst the rocky waves. Turians cannot swim and yet he cannot ignore the way that something is guiding him into the waters like an anchor tugging him

                                                                                                                  down.

down.

Garrus dives in – this is a dream, he knows it as he hits the water and doesn’t immediately sink as all Turians ought to. He spies a silver form below. She is glowing amongst the dark waters. 

Shepard.

Garrus swims towards her, stretching his hand out. He can pull her out of these treacherous waters. If he can just reach her. He stretches out his hand as far as he can, before he is cruelly wrenched from the dream.

He awakes, gasping. He looks around the room and takes in Shepard’s cabin. The fish are swimming in their neon tank and the stars are glistening overhead as normal. He fell asleep on the couch. No underwater mission, no teammates under heavy fire, and no Shepard. Garrus presses his palms to his eyes. That was new. He has never had a nightmare quite like that – nothing so visceral. Garrus can almost smell the sea breeze. He gets up and heads to the bathroom. He runs the tap and lets the water fill up in the sink. He gathers it in his hands and splashes it on his face.

Garrus

He stops. Garrus turns off the running water. He could’ve sworn he heard someone whisper his name. He doesn’t move for a few moments in the hopes he hears it again.

Garrus

“Is someone there?” he calls. A beat passes. “Is that you, Tali?”

No response. Maybe the others were right, Shepard wouldn’t want him wasting away up here, his mind unravelling. She saved the galaxy, but as they established on Earth – it is an empty one without her in it. Garrus splashes more water on his face and when he looks back in the mirror, there is a figure standing behind him. He whirls around. There is nobody there. His heart beats frantically in his chest. He looks back to the mirror but only his own reflection stares back. He stands there for a moment, gripping the sides of the sink. Condensation has built up on the window. He takes great gulps of air and breathes out until he feels more present.

“Shepard?” he says quietly. He lets out a shuddery breath. “I wish I could talk to you. Even one last time.” The only response Garrus receives is the repeated drip drip drip of the tap. Garrus sighs. Steeling himself, he moves to the door but something catches his eye. A single line begins to appear across the condensation on the mirror. There is a faint ripple of green and blue across the mirror. Garrus stumbles back into the room. He hasn’t imagined it for the line curves, as if spelling something. The letter B slowly appears – as if someone is writing it backwards.

B…A…

The writing is slowing down as if whoever is doing it, is losing the strength.

“I see it,” Garrus says. “B, A, then what? Shepard, is that really you?” His voice catches at the end of his words. His grief could be playing tricks on him.

The mirror is beginning to fade as is the last of Garrus’ hopes when another line appears next to the A.

B…A…R

Nothing more is written. Garrus stays there just to be sure. He wipes the mirror down, hoping to catch a glimpse of the figure but it does not reappear.

“Bar?” he whispers into the room as the bathroom door swooshes shut behind him. Was there supposed to be more and she got caught off? He knows this is dangerous - he can’t get his hopes up. This could be a number of things: a demon they’d picked up from another planet for one thing. It hits him then as he looks at the framed picture of Shepard on the desk. The words he’d exchanged to her on earth flooding through his mind.

Not sure if Turian heaven is the same as yours, but if this thing goes sideways and we both end up there, meet me at the bar. I’m buying.

Garrus reaches for the photo and looks around the cabin.

“Are you still there, Shepard?” No response. He looks back down at the photo of Shepard. It was taken back at the apartment on the citadel, the night of the party. She is smiling and her eyes are glittering. It is Garrus' favourite picture. He remembers her response back on Earth. 

Goodbye, Garrus. And if I'm up there in that bar, and you're not... I'll be looking down. You'll never be alone.

That must be it. Her way of telling him that she is somehow gone but not gone. It would hardly be the first time that Commander Shepard had cheated death. Garrus places the photo back on the desk.

"Shepard if you can hear me, know that I have never loved anything more than I have loved you." 

Garrus lingers in the room but that sensation he felt in the bathroom and in the dream is gone.

"If I can help you, Shepard, I will. You saved everyone. I have to save you." 

Garrus leaves the captain's cabin with a newfound purpose in his step. He runs his fingers across the dog tags he wears over his heart. 

Chapter Text

How long do you follow a theory before you move on? How long do you chase ghosts in mirrors before you blame your own war-torn mind? Garrus has been in the bar of the Normandy twirling a drink for…well he has lost track of how long. Time doesn’t mean much to him these days. He takes a swig and looks at the assortment of rainbow coloured glass bottles on the shelves. The glass he left out specifically for Shepard had moved. He is sure of it. When Garrus walked into the bar, he noticed that it was at the other side of the table. Why would someone move it? He knows he is clutching at straws as the humans say. He wishes someone else had been there to confirm the writing in the mirror. 

Bar is what the mirror spelled out but maybe just maybe if it was his Shepard, she was only reaching out to tell him that she was okay – that she was somewhere up there in that human heaven at the bar he hoped it had. And that was it. Nothing more than an extra goodbye on top of the one they already shared on Earth.

And yet…Garrus’ grip tightens on the glass. The dreams, the mirror, it had all been so vivid. Garrus sighs. He considers telling someone - Tali probably - but thinks how devastated she will be at having to lose her all over again. The doors open but Garrus know it is not her. 

“Mind if I join you?” Joker gestures to the stool. He nods and Joker sits on the stool beside him.

"You've, uh, been in here a while. Are you okay?" Joker catches himself. "I mean I know you're not okay, hell, none of us are, I don't think. But...you know. We're all here."

Garrus looks down at the glass. He knows how this is going to sound.

"I keep seeing her, Joker. I think - I think she's on the Normandy, somehow."

Joker's mouth becomes a thin line. His eyes are heavy with sadness. He takes a deep breath. "when the Normandy went down - the first one. Shepard stayed with me a long time. Her last words were to me, you know?" He takes his cap off and looks at the SR2 logo. "Even now I feel guilty."

Garrus only has to look at him and Joker puts his hat back on.

"You don't have to say she wouldn't want that because I know." He gives a small, broken laugh, "and I came in here to check on you as well."

Garrus thinks of those strange sea creature eyes from his dream. It is hard to explain that there is something mixed in with his grief. Something otherworldly that Garrus can't push away. He knows Joker could be right, too. Garrus looks over at the glass teetering on the edge of the table. “Joker, what if I told you something impossible.”

‘I'd tell you I've encountered my fair share of impossible things on this ship." 

‘That glass, Joker it has moved from last night.” Garrus reaches across the bar and holds it up to him. He knows how this looks: desperate, grief stricken and delusional.

‘And Joker there are things happening I just can’t explain. A few hours ago, I saw words appear in the mirror in her room.”

Garrus could see that Joker wants to believe him. 

"Shepard cheated death once already," he says gently. "so I wouldn't put it past her." Joker's eyes grow glassy. "but I think she might be gone for real this time.”

~~~~~~~

They are joined at the bar by more crewmates and Garrus attempts small talk with those who approach him but Joker can see he is drained. Joker takes the conversational burden off his shoulders and Garrus manages to slip away. 

Staying at the bar has yielded Garrus no results but he takes the glass with him. The magical moving glass. The worst thing about all of this is the person he wants to confide in the most is gone. Garrus is passing the fish tank when he catches it - a dark mass in the water. He stops in his tracks before moving closer to the tank. The fish swim and the automatic feeder does its thing. No figure in sight but Garrus does not move. He fears if he looks away, whatever it is won’t come back. A shimmer of silver appears in the water. 

The glass Garrus holds slips from his grasp.

Chapter Text

When Shepard awakes, she is staring up at a swirling, grey sky. She feels sand against her fingertips. She sits up. Sure enough, the blood is gone from her hands, along with the gaping wound in her side. A grey ocean lies not far before her. It leaves no mark against the bow of sand and the clouds above are swirling in the same spot. The beach appears frozen in time. She is not left alone for long before someone stands beside her in the sand. She catches the end of a long, white lab coat. Shepard laughs incredulously. So, it is a beach setting now that haunts her. Her dreams of the dark, endless forest and the ghost boy she was never able to catch now replaced for a grey beach with Mordin as her new guide.

“Have you been running tests on the seashells?” she asks her friend.  

Mordin smiles. He looks so real. 

“If you are, tell me how I can help,” she continues, running her finger through the sand and making a doodle. “I guess I have a pretty clear schedule now.” She squints back at him. “Is there a calendar in the afterlife?”

“Depends on definition," says her old friend. The Salarian holds his hand out to her. ‘But you are not staying to find out, Shepard.”

“I’m not?”

Shepard’s mind shifts and she remembers everything: the reapers, the catalyst, the war. Bleeding through the Citadel and all over that shiny ship. One minute she was walking towards the machine, gun in hand and the next everything went black. She looks down at her hands, runs her fingers along her palms. This is not a dream. If not a dream then...

“I’m pretty sure I’m dead, Mordin.”

Mordin makes a noise – one that signals he is trying to give a response that sums up five academic essays and three counterarguments all at once.

“Probability high. Fact remains. You are not staying.”

Shepard lies back down in the sand. She breathes deeply.

"I don’t know, Mordin. This is nice.”

The ocean - albeit strange - is serene, and she feels the grey sand around her pulling her in. It is slightly cold to the touch. It is not the tropical beach Garrus had envisioned. Her heart crumbles at the thought but Mordin's voice cuts through. 

“Leviathan’s doing, Shepard.”

Shepard sits up on her elbows.

“What did you say?”

This Mordin was proving to be a rather realistic figment of her imagination. Moreso than a VI. 

‘Your deal with Leviathan. One more life," Mordin gestures with his hand. “One more chance."

Shepard thinks of the cryptic conversation she had on Despoina at the bottom of the ocean with the entity. Leviathan had wanted her to stay in the depths while the Reapers completed their harvest. She had convinced it otherwise and engaged the Triton mech's emergency boosters to shoot back up to the surface. Truth be told, it had been a close call. 

"It didn’t feel like I was making a deal."

It felt more like a brush with death. Shepard gathers sand in her fist while she thinks. 

"Mordin you were gone by the time I made it to Leviathan,” she says carefully.

He shrugs. ‘Could not run tests on seashells all day.”

“Ah,” Shepard says, mind whirring. ‘So there is a calendar in the afterlife.”

Mordin’s eyes light up. "In a way."

Shepard looks up at him. She has so many questions and so much to tell him, too, about everything after the Shroud. What his sacrifice meant.

"How much time do we have?"

"Not enough. Enough to convince you. Do not stay, Shepard.”

She pats the spot beside her on the sand, anyway. Mordin sits after hesitating. Shepard wastes no time in hugging her friend. She never thought she'd get another chance to. The salarian goes rigid for a second before he pats her on the back.

"You’re a hero, Mordin."

“Takes one to know one, Shepard. Is that correct human expression?”

"Yeah, Mordin. It is." There are tears in her eyes. She looks across the empty beach. "Is everyone here, then? Is there a bar around? Garrus said he’d meet me there if there was."

"Not here. Somewhere. You are here because of the ones you know as Leviathan.”

Mordin reaches forward and holds her arm. As he does so a strange insignia begins to glow a bright blue on her arm. It looks eerily like one of the Leviathan artefacts.

"Garrus not here. Waiting for you on other side."

A horrible thought occurs to Shepard as she stares at the insignia. Leviathan had been able to use people as puppets to unnerving ends. What if this wasn’t Mordin?

"How do I know this is really you? It’s not them controlling you?"

"Ah yes, good enquiry. Expected nothing less from you, Shepard. Hm. No way of proving hypothesis other than stepping into the water." He points out at the dark ocean. "Leviathan will reunite you with other side."

She looks at her glowing arm and then at the dark waters.

"Or drown me," she mumbles.

Shepard is still slightly unconvinced but she has seen the unsettling way Leviathan takes over another’s body. Their speech distorted and eerie. This sounds every bit like her Mordin.

"Can you come with me?’

Mordin shakes his head. "One way trip. One person. Your deal."

"But I can change the deal, surely. Add some footnotes? Leviathan can surely do that. Mordin, the world needs someone like you to help rebuild it. If I’m going back I want you to come with me."

Mordin puts his hand on her shoulder.

"This does not happen, Shepard. Will likely never happen again. An anomaly."

“If I’d known,” Shepard all but whispers. “I would have asked for you all to come back with me."

Mordin smiles. “You did save me, Shepard.”

Shepard pulls her friend in for one last hug. "Thank you for being here."

Mordin returns the hug this time.

"It worked, Mordin. The Shroud. You fixed it." 

Mordin smiles. "Of course. Never in doubt." 

"And everyone came together to work on the Crucible," Shepard tells him. "I wish you’d have been there to see more of it." 

"I was there to see it. On the Normandy."

"And you will always be part of the Normandy, Mordin Solus." 

He pulls her to her feet. "Now step into the ocean. Small probability will not work first time. May take some testing. Trial and error."

Shepard wades into the water but pauses. Mordin motions for her to keep going. She heads further out into the sea; leviathan insignia glowing on her arm. She looks back at Mordin on the shore one last time and he waves.

"Has to be you, Shepard!" he calls. 

She steels herself  Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath then submerges herself into the water.

 ~

When Shepard resurfaces, she finds herself on the Normandy.  Although it feels like she is looking at everything through a thin, shimmery veil. She walks forward until she is standing in front of the Normandy’s memorial wall. Her hand is transparent when she places it on the names. Mordin, Thane…

"Oh, Anderson."

She had hoped that somehow he’d made it back. Against all odds she had hoped. Why did she get a second shot and not Anderson? Brilliant, paragon Anderson. Doors slide open and the Normandy crew begin to assemble. She gasps. And there they all are. Her family. She feels her heart stutter when she sees Garrus standing in the middle.

"Garrus!"

She stumbles and tries to wrap her arms around him. Unlike with Mordin, Shepard passes right through him. Garrus steps forward, holding something in his hands. To her horror, Garrus does not look at her or acknowledge her presence in any way. He hesitates at the wall - runs his hand across her name that he has been tasked with hanging up. The moment stretches on an eternity before he finally places her name up on the board.

"Garrus..." She tries to place her ghostly hand on his shoulder but to no avail. The memorial wall now reads Commander Shepard right next to Anderson. Oh god. She tries Tali, Joker, Liara, Javik, James, Cortez. Nobody can see her. She watches as they try console Garrus, but he turns on his heel, his head cast down and leaves around the corner. Shepard hurries after him.

"I'm right here! Garrus!"

Shepard is stopped in her tracks when she feels a jolt. Something is pulling her back as if she is being dragged by an invisible current. She is yanked back through that shimmery veil. She tries to dig her fingers into the floor of the ship but can't get purchase.

Shepard resurfaces in the same mysterious water as before. Immediately, she makes her way back to the dreamscape sandy beach. Mordin is nowhere to be found. The only evidence he was ever there, is a single ivory seashell she finds in the sand where he stood. 

"Trial and error," she says to the empty beach.

Shepard pulls herself together. She goes again.

This time she finds herself in her cabin on the Normandy. She sees Garrus on the edge of her couch, asleep. It looks incredibly uncomfortable. Shepard wants to hold him more than anything. When she gets closer she sees that he is holding a picture of her – she hates that picture but, of course, he framed it.

I look goofy, she remembers saying.

I like seeing you smile, he had replied earnestly, 

"Garrus," she says quietly. She touches his shoulder. He flinches and she pulls away, terrified she has hurt him. Garrus seems to be in the clutches of a nightmare.

"Shepard," he murmurs in his sleep.

"I’m here, Garrus." She tries to gently shake him but her hand once again passes through. He wakes with a start.

"Garrus-!"

She feels that strong current sweeping her form away again.

"No, no no, not now," Shepard says looking down at her ghostly palms. 

Garrus is looking around now. He stands up and crosses to the other side of the room.

"Shepard?" 

The scene melts away. She is back on the beach.

"Goddamn it." She punches the sand beside her. Leviathan couldn't have left some fucking instructions? Was that too much to ask of an otherworldly being. With a newfound rage ignited, Shepard pulls herself to her feet and this time she runs at the waves. She dives in.

Garrus is alone at the Normandy bar. His head in his arms. Shepard’s heart breaks. They were supposed to be sitting there together. When he wraps her dog tags around the glass, she focuses all her energy on trying to touch it. Maybe she’d have better luck with objects than people. She places all her attention on the glass. Her biotics are nonexistent in this form, but maybe if she just focused. The scene becomes hazy, the surroundings begin to melt away. Everything shifts apart from that one glass which begins to glow a faint silver beneath her touch. She can sense the liquid in the glass. Eventually, she feels it move. It slides to the edge of the table.

‘Yes!’ Shepard cries. When the scene fills itself back in, Garrus is gone. The dog tags, however, are still wrapped around the glass she had managed to move.

Shepard is disappointed, heartbroken and hopeful all at once.

The water. She was having more luck when water was involved. 

~

Garrus is in the thralls of another nightmare. When he steps into the bathroom and begins filling up the sink, Shepard puts her newfound theory to the test. She moves into the bathroom hoping that the water theory holds weight. She never intends for Garrus to leap back in fear. She’ll have to apologise for that later, but all she cares about is he noticed her. Somehow through this strange veil he had finally seen her. 

"Garrus, it's me," she calls but her voice does not carry to him. She can feel the connection waning. Quickly she tries to focus on the water droplets on the mirror the way she did with the glass. She can feel the current pulling her back to the empty beach again.

"No." She wills herself to stay put in this world but she knows she only has a few seconds to write something anything. She wants to tell him that if she can't see him again, she wants him to continue living for her. She wants to tell him that she never imagined she would be so lucky to fall in love with her best friend. She wants to tell him to let the others in, that they are all grieving too. 

But bar. Is all she manages hoping he will catch the meaning, as vague as it is. Once more, she opens her eyes to a sky of swirling grey. Immediately she regrets what she wrote. A sharp pain shoots through her head. A voice cuts in and bounces around her skull.

"Since you breached the darkness of our domain, you have now destroyed our enemy. The one that sought our extermination.’

“Nice of you to stop by, Leviathan."

Her head rattles again and Shepard holds the side of her head. The pain increases, she drops to her knees in the sand. Shepard coughs and when she looks up Garrus is there. 

"Garrus?"

The eyes are wrong – they aren’t filled with any humour or warmth. His stance is wrong too. This isn’t her Garrus.

"Your memories give voice to our words," says the Leviathan-Controlled-Garrus. 

"Yeah, yeah I remember." Shepard gets to her feet. "You did this before with Ann Bryson." 

"We turned you into one of our fragments,” it continues as if she hasn’t spoken. “while we remain in the shadows. Do not squander this chance."

Shepard scoffed. "You couldn't have left me with instructions? A tutorial level maybe?"  

"We have never granted this to your species."

"Ah, so that's your way of saying you have no clue how this works?"

"You have a choice. Do not grow distracted by this turian. He clouds your judgement, makes you weak." 

Leviathan-Garrus walks behind her. 

"That's rich coming from you," scoffs Shepard. "Remind me who was hiding in the depths while we fought their war." 

Leviathan-Garrus stops. He tilts his head as if studying her. 

"We are hiding no more." 

Shepard's head seers and the scene fades around her. When she comes to, she is not on the beach. Her fish on the Normandy are swimming in front of her; that thin veil flickers between them and her.

Have they projected me onto my fish tank? Those sons of bitches, if they hurt my fish doing this whole mess...She catches sight of Garrus and the worry fades because he

can see her. 

“It’s me!” she taps the glass. Shepard quickly realises that while he cannot hear her, he can definitely see her when he brings his hand up to the glass. Shepard does the same. What Shepard cannot see is the mark her hand mysteriously leaves there. Garrus gasps on the other side.

“Shepard, if this is you," he says quickly. "know that I have never stopping loving you. I know I never said it enough.”

His eyes meet hers through the water. “Come back.” He places his forehead against the cold glass. “Please.”

Shepard places her head there too. 

"I'm trying to."

Shepard’s hand begins to glow brighter against the glass before she is pulled back through the current.

Chapter Text

"Shepard," Garrus breathes, his hand still pressed up to the glass. A glowing handprint remains on the other side of the fish tank. The cabin hums around Garrus and he remains still. He is almost terrified to breathe in case the handprint disappears. He knows what he saw. Without warning, the edges of Garrus' vision blurs and he gasps as his entire being is tugged forward. The world around Garrus melts away. 

When everything comes back into focus, Garrus is no longer on the Normandy. 

Garrus finds himself standing in a dark ocean up to his knees. There are no hills in the distance, only a long beach with a bow of pristine sand and hazy, grey mists swirling all around. There is someone standing on the beach right at the shore. A bright red head of hair. She immediately waves her arms, and Garrus is already pushing his way through the water. 

"Garrus!" she calls. 

"Shepard!" Garrus feels tears in his eyes. "Shepard!" He opens his arms wide as soon as his feet hits the sand and Shepard collides with his chest. They hold onto each other. Garrus cups her face gently. Shepard's eyes are blown wide, as if she can’t quite bring herself to believe it.

"I thought I'd never see you again."

"Is this real?" Garrus asks quietly. 

Shepard laughs, half delirious. "If I hadn't ran into Mordin I'd have said no." 

"Mordin!?" 

Shepard takes his hand and guides him over to a spot on the sand where they sit together.

“I tried to reach out to you, Gare, but I couldn't grab onto things. My hands just pass through everything. Look." She waves her hand through Garrus’ shoulder and Garrus feels a cold sensation there. Her hand does not look entirely unlike a VI but there is a wispy like quality to it.

"How...Shepard how is this possible?"

Shepard holds him close and gently bumps their heads together. She tells him of the catalyst, the citadel, waking up on the beach, how she could see him at the memorial wall that day. Garrus holds her ghostly hand through it all. Garrus brings his hand up to her face.

"Does it hurt?”

Shepard thinks about it. "No. I just feel...” she gestures with her hands. “…empty. I don't know how else to explain it." 

"We need to get you out of here," says Garrus, he glances around. The beach seems eerily endless and simultaneously safe and inviting "Do you know how?"

Shepard points back at the sea. "I can get as far as the Normandy and then I get dragged back here." 

"They didn't leave you instructions?" 

Shepard gives a weak smile. "That's what I said." Garrus takes her shoulders and locks his gaze with hers. He doesn't like the defeated tone that has creeped into her voice.

"Come on, Shepard. Pretend this is someone else you're trying to save. What would you do, then?" 

Shepard looks out at the silvery sky. 

"I would contact Ann Bryson." 

“Okay, okay we can do that.” Garrus squeezes her hand. “And maybe I can drag you back now I’ve made it here.”

Shepard’s heart sinks as she remembers the Leviathan’s words. “There was something else. Leviathan said I wasn’t to be distracted by you and that…” Shepard presses her hand to her head. Her thoughts are in disarray as if her memories are filled with thick tar.

“That I had a... a choice.”

“Okay, well there you go. Your choice is to stay here on this lovely, depressing beach," Garrus waves his hand in the air, "or come back to us.” Garrus clasps her hand. “Come back to all of us.”

Shepard nods and pulls Garrus to his feet.

"Let's try get out of this shit hole, then." 

Garrus hugs her tight. Hand in hand, they wade into the water. Garrus looks at her, memorizing every detail in her beautiful face as the world around them melts away once more. 

~~

When Garrus opens his eyes, Tali is picking up the shattered glass from the drink that slipped his grasp.  Joker is peering over him. Garrus is back in the captain’s cabin. He sits up with a jolt and looks frantically around the room. 

"Is Shepard here?" Garrus asks, not caring how it sounds. Tali and Joker share a look before Joker reaches out to him.

"No, listen to me, Joker I-"

"I know. I believe you, Garrus." 

Garrus stops: feels his chest constrict. Joker sighs heavily. 

"Look man, I thought about what you said. I checked the cameras in the bar. You were right. You’re gonna wanna see this.”

Garrus gets to his feet. He staggers, but they both steady him.

"I don't need to see it." He thinks of Shepard standing on the beach, how cold she felt in his arms. Joker shows him the footage anyway. In the clip on the data pad, the glass of ice in the bar inches across the table while the faintest of wispy blue shapes hovers behind it. There is nobody else in the room. Garrus feels it finally – a glimmer of hope for the blue and green colours of the figure are not unlike the Leviathan artefacts. Maybe Shepard was right. 

"I need to contact the Leviathan Enthrallment Team,’ Garrus says firmly. "And Dr Ann Bryson."

“Are you sure those artefacts are safe?” Tali asks. “What if...what if it brings Shepard back as something else?”

Garrus has already considered this. The special operation soldiers placed the artefacts behind enemy lines to turn the Reaper minions into thralls of the Leviathan during the war. It would be playing with fire. Just behind Tali's head, Garrus catches a faint, shimmery outline.

“It’s a lead and we have to try it," he says. Garrus remembers Shepard climbing into that mecha on Despoina. She never hesitated and he wouldn't either. 

~~

Garrus reads the data pad through five more times. Then some more until he loses count. There are no Leviathan artefacts to spare. Not one. There was already a limited amount, and many were now lost or damaged in the front lines. Garrus knows there is likely one locked away somewhere for research purposes. But how long did Shepard have? How long would she be able to hold on in that form while they traipsed around trying to find a lead? Not to mention navigating the state of the world after the Reapers. Garrus throws the data pad at the bed and lets his head fall into his hands. 

“Best case scenario," Shepard says from the corner of the room and Garrus looks up at the sound of her voice. 

"...is that I haunt the Normandy like an unshackled AI," Shepard tells him. Shepard is admiring her model ships. She tries to pick one up, but it passes right through her hand. 

"We don't know that for sure, Shepard." 

Garrus stands up and joins her. "The others can't even see you." 

"They know I'm here, though," Shepard says and she reaches for the Normandy model ship. She runs a ghostly finger along it. "Maybe that's enough. At least we have this time, Garrus." Shepard adds softly. "I never got to say goodbye after the citadel and the goodbye at the beam wasn't enough."

Garrus feels his heart tear into two. "Neither is this." He sighs and goes back to the data pad. He sends another message. When he looks back over at Shepard, she is sitting on the couch. She pats the spot beside her and Garrus sits beside her. She rests her head above his shoulder. 

"I love you," she says, her hand hovering by the side of his face. Her form shimmers like moonlight on the ocean. Her eyes, still as enchanting as ever, hold the sadness of a woman who has saved the galaxy but cannot save herself.

“The Leviathans have given me this chance to say goodbye.”

Shepard looks off to a spot on the wall, and at first, he assumes she is looking at the stars before she focuses in on something Garrus cannot see. 

“I think I'm running out of time,” she whispers, her voice barely there. Garrus' heart sinks to his toes.

"What about haunting the Normandy," he says, his pain bleeding through the banter. 

Shepard reaches for Garrus' hand, but her fingers pass through his, cold as the space between stars.

"Maybe there's an expiry on that," says Shepard. There is something else in her eyes - something she is not telling him. Garrus knows her too damn well. Garrus catches the faintest of shimmer around her as if she is about to dissolve into the air. Her hand hovers over where her heart ought to be. 

"I love you, Shepard," Garrus says. "I'm here because of you." 

He hopes she knows what he means. That she brought light into his life. That she saved him in every way that someone can be saved. 

"You, Garrus Vakarian, are my soulmate. I'll always be looking out for you." Shepard slips from Garrus' grasp, her form flickering again. 

“I’ll love you, always,” Shepard whispers, “but I can’t stay.” And then she is gone, and Garrus is left hanging on to the ghosts of her words. 

~

Garrus remains on the sofa long after Shepard disappears. He knows she will be back soon as she has managed it the past few weeks... or was it months now? Garrus is losing track of time. He is growing increasingly aware that Shepard's is running out. The Leviathans have given Shepard back to Garrus, but not completely.

Every so often, Garrus' hand glows that mysterious green. Garrus had tried going back to that strange astral plane but each time he came back alone, and Shepard would join later, in her shimmery, ghostly, form. He holds his hand up to the light, watches as the green and blue intertwine. Perhaps there was no need for an artefact after all.

Garrus fills the sink and plunges his hand into the water. Garrus looks at the mirror and closes his eyes. He wants to speak to Leviathan. He has had more nightmares but none as visceral and detailed as the ones he knows were planted by those entities. He opens his mind and lets the creatures find him.

The water at Garrus’ feet grows colder, the vastness of the sea stretches before him. The ocean trembles as a Leviathan stirs beneath its surface, ancient and vast, their power woven into the fabric of the stars. The Leviathan’s form - a mass of writhing, coiling shadows and scales, too vast to comprehend - hovers before him. Its large eyes, glowing like distant stars, peers into the very marrow of Garrus’ bones. A tendril of the creature breaks the surface.

"The turian has found us," the voice rumbles, and Garrus feels each syllable like a tremor through the imagined depths. Garrus blinks and the Leviathan has taken the form of Shepard.

“They saved the galaxy,” the Leviathan-Shepard says, its voice carrying the weight of millennia. “But their soul remains adrift between worlds. Forgotten by time. For now.” Drifting in the mist that clings to the waves like forgotten dreams, is a figure. The shape of Shepard, translucent and shimmering, tethered to this realm by the faintest thread. The Leviathan winds its way toward Garrus, curling around his hand, icier than the deepest reaches of space.

“There is a way,” the Leviathan continues. “A choice. You may restore them. Bring them back to the world of the living.” The Leviathan-Shepard gazes at Garrus, their form flickering, fading. He can almost feel Shepard’s hand in his, hear her laughter, distant and distorted like a half-remembered dream.

“Shepard was meant to drag you to the depths, so that she could rise to the surface,” the Leviathan tells him. The Leviathan watches, patient and eternal. "That choice is now yours. Their light, for your shadow."

Garrus's heart shattered, but not for himself. The Leviathans, those terrible, creatures lurking in the ocean’s depths, whisper the price into Garrus' mind.

There is a way for Shepard to return: one cruel condition. He looks down at his glowing green hand. 

If he wants to bring Shepard back - truly back, flesh and blood - Garrus must take her place. A life for a life.