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naomifj97 · 1 year

Text

Hoping and wishing

"Garrus is a sniper. He knows about waiting."

Shepard makes a choice in the Crucible that should’ve cost her life. But also should have suffocating in the depths of her spacesuit and falling off from a planet’s atmosphere like a falling star.

Or: In which Commander “I don’t die easily cause I’m pretty much immortal at this point” Shepard refuses to leave and Garrus hopes that’s enough for them.

Hi! Haven't been posting here in a while, but life has been a bit difficult lately and my creativity is suffering consequences. However, last saturday my friends and I went to a thematic Mass Effect party (surpirse! I'm a Mass Effect fan, too) and I had the urge to post this very short oneshot that has been on my laptop for like...two years, I think? Nevermind. I'm Shakarian trash and still in denial about the ending of Mass Effect 3, so, enjoy!

"I'm falling

In all the good times I find myself

Longing for a change

And in the bad times I fear myself

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in

I’ll never meet the ground

Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us

We’re far from the shallow now

In the shallow, shallow”

She’d been told she would die. He said she’d die.

Death and she were old friends. Close enough to know how the other behaved, smelled, felt.

But she was Commander Shepard. Cheating death, escaping from its claws, was something she’d became pretty good at.

She had to admit that, for a second, she thought she would.

And then, collapse came. Her body’s, that just couldn’t support the burden of her devastated system; the platform’s, that was swallowed by the weight of her decision.

She felt everything. The burning in her skin, her cells ripping apart, the shocking wave. And the fire. The problem had been the fire. It licked the shattered pieces of her torn, ripped armour, burying her in an indistinguishable mass of ravished flesh, metal shards and broken pieces.

So no. Not this time.

While the rumbling started, the Citadel exploded and the Crucible fell apart around her, Shepard found herself remembering Garrus. His jokes and his warm voice, the purring of his subvocals, the ones he thought she couldn’t hear, the soft stroking of his talons in her back during late hours of the night, when sleep was too stubborn to arrive, or the feeling of his words whispered under breaths in her hair when he thought she was too asleep to notice.

She thought of everything she was going to miss.

Before everything went black, Shepard thought that maybe, this was really it.

It isn’t.

She’s pretty sure she’s dead.

She can’t see anything.

She can’t hear anything.

She can’t feel anything.

Until the pain hits, so sudden she can’t help but gasp.

She’s breathing.

—I’m sorry. We…we haven’t found her.

Admiral Hackett’s words feel deaf, hollow in his brain.

—She has to be somewhere!

Joker’s reply is a bit louder, like a voice suffocating under dark waters.

Garrus can’t force himself to worry. Or care.

Was that what she had felt? That first time, after the Collector’s attack, with her damaged suit, suffocating, trying to breath but not finding air, wandering around with nowhere to go. That second time, when the Crucible crumbled over her while the Reapers suddenly stopped in their trays and fell to the ground like lifeless puppets whose strings are suddenly cut.

—The ruins are still there.

—Doctor T’Soni…

—If the remains of the Crucible are there, that means Shepard may be, too. We’ll dig her out. Give me a shovel, I’ll do it myself.

Of course she would.

—Even if she’s…still there…there’s no way she could have survived.

That’s obvious.

Even if the explosion that had ended with the Reapers had not killed her, the fall of the Crucible should have.

But she’s Shepard.

She’s been dead before.

And not even Death has been able to stop her.

—She’s not dead.

His voice sounds strange to him. Hoarser. Fiercer.

—Vakarian. I understand-

No, he doesn’t. No one else does.

—She’s not dead.

Commander Shepard made him a promise. And she has never failed him.

So, Garrus hopes.

Why? He doesn’t know.

It’s only during the long scanning of the battlefield, over the battered ground covered in ashes, blood and broken dreams, searching for her in the place he saw her for the last time, that he realizes it’s because he knows that their first can’t be their last “I love you”.

EDI finds her first.

Her radar catches the soft, minimal thumbing of her heart, so mild that other sensors would have missed it.

She races towards the spot, transmitting her position to Tali, Liara and Garrus, falls to her knees, and starts digging. By the time she finds her arm, three more pair of hands, one with five fingers, two with three, have joined her.

Tali radios Joker, tells him to get Doctor Chawkas ready for them and set a course to the nearest medical centre. Liara stabilizes her vitals with such an amount of medi-gel she may had gotten high on it wasn’t she so outside her body, and EDI connects herself to the implants that have kept her alive despite death to make sure they don’t stop working.

And Garrus picks her up, prepares her for transport, keeping her torn and exhausted body (or what’s left of it) together.

Shepard breathes.

And Garrus breathes with her.

Miranda works with the doctors. She pushes them, screams at them, sometimes, when they don’t do as she commands, when they say that’s simply not possible.

Bullshit.

She brought Shepard back from the dead once.

They don’t get to tell her what’s possible from what’s not.

There’s nothing impossible to her.

Kaidan, Hackett and Vega are fighting with the Council for resources to keep Shepard alive.

They say she’s not going to make it.

But the Alliance is not giving in this time.

Because they did once, and Shepard paid the consequences. Because she’s in an operating room fighting for her life as they speak because they did not support her. Because she’s dying cause the Council refused to listen, refused to believe.

Because Shepard is a hero.

The discussion ends when Urdnot Bakara arrives to the Normandy’s communications room and menaces with unlashing a horde of angry krogan if they don’t pay. By her side, Urdnot Wrex growls in a signal of support.

And then, the Council decides to pay.

Grunt is a bit disappointed, but, well, he can handle it.

Because Shepard is going to survive.

They’ve done everything they could, they said to him.

Now, all that’s left is waiting.

Garrus is a sniper.

He knows about waiting.

He’s good at it.

So he sits down near her bed, counting her breathings and taking note of all her heartbeats, eyes fixed in the bandages that cover her body.

He’s made a mental list of her wounds. Knows is not healthy, but he just couldn’t help it. Burns, cuts, bruises, broken bones, destroyed tissue. A lot repaired, but also a lot permanently scarred.

She needs time.

He sits and listens, in the quietness, the fear that creeps in his chest, but also the blind hope. He asks the spirits for a chance, the last chance, because they’ve come too far to end this way.

Doctors says she’s a fighter. She refuses to leave.

And Garrus hopes. He just hopes. He chuckles a bit, too, because of course Shepard is a fighter.

Of course she’s stubborn. Of course she’s not leaving.

She promised.

So, the afternoon he feels her hand moving in his talon, her eyes fluttering lazily awake and the light smile she gives him in the haze of pain-killers, analgesics, skin grafts, needles and gauzes, he thinks he should’ve known better from the beginning.

Her voice is low, barely a whisper, but Garrus hears her as she had screamed in victory.

—So…a human-turian baby, was it?

He smiles.

Shepard and Garrus deserved better. Hope you liked it!

A/N: Team effort to save Shepard? Sign me the fuck in.

I kinda invented my own ending for this because I'll never get over the three ones we are given in the game. Also, are you really telling me that Cerberus tech could bring Shepard back to life in ME2 but not after ME3? Not buying it, Bioware.

#shakarian #garrus vakarian #femshep #commander shepard #female shepard #shepard x garrus #mass effect #mass effect fic

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