#anyway ily wrex

[lilmissnatcat24]

📓

m'love, thank you so much for this.

so basically it's a heist fic, post me1. (slight canon divergence because i know technically garrus and wrex weren't on the normandy when the collector ship attacked) but it flips back and forth between the moments before and during the collector attack and the past 2 weeks, where shepard and her crew have no memory.

they have no memory because!!! they were contacted by a woman named jack of diamonds (super cool and super eyepatch and super hot, in that order... also she's named jack of diamonds after my favorite campfire song from red dead 2 and this is like a little bit of a crossover inspiration fic) to steal this prothean device from a space station that could be used as a super weapon because it uses the same technology that sovereign used to turn humans into husks. this woman works for cerberus but shep is like?? ok with that?? (tbf she doesn't really know what cerberus is just yet so she's just like huh okay i guess i'll do it, also she has no reason to believe that cerberus would make a husk army becasue THAT lil chestnut doesnt happen for like 3 years) but the only way she'll let shep do it is if she and her crew implant a memory chip to their omnitools that will wipe their memory completely afterwards (this is the one thing i don't have worked out yet like maybe she has something on shep like she's blackmailing her for something??? yeah this is shaky tbd)

so shep and co have to steal this device. fullblown heist at some swanky party a la the capitol scene from catching fire. WREX IS HEISTING. GARRUS IS HEISTING. LIARA IS HEISTING. ashley and tali are like bffs (and maybe b plot they fuck? tbd) and of COURSE shakarian because how can i not. but sheppy is still a lil upset cuz kaidan is dead and she's had feelings for garrus but is afraid to do anything becasue she doesn't want to see another person she cares about killed but garrus is like huh i literally don't care if i live or die i want to tap that so desperately and also i love you. but of course he's a nerd so he can never just say that. cue hilarity and pining and fluff.

so they klep the device for jack of diamonds and drop it off and shes like hey thanks!!!! ily shep!!!!! except shep is super suspicious and is like hmmm this is weird. this jack lady is weird. we need to STEAL IT BACK because apparently she was going to target a colony with it and turn a bunch of innocent people into husks so that cerberus could study them (again this is a detail that has not been ironed out yet sorry if it sounds a lil sus just now)

and of course before this suicide run there's the steamiest and fluffiest sex scene known to man. you know what im like. they get into this big fight and shes like garry youre a COWARD you only tell me you have a thing for me when we know this memory chip is going to wipe our memories??? garrus tries to kiss shep and shes like NO PLEASE I CANT CARE ABOUT YOU and then exactly 2 seconds later shes like actually? lets fuck

so they steal the device back. they know their memories are going to be erased so they just kindve? dont care if they do something atrocious? because they wont remember? and i get so wet thinking about morally ambiguous shepard who is like super renegade (or at least paragade)??? anyways jack of diamonds is like hey you shouldnt trust cerberus this was their plan all along and shep is like literally i do not care bang bang bang ur dead xoxo

so yeah the plot is still a lil iffy. BUT I HAVE THE END ALL PLANNED OUT AND IM SUPER PROUD OF IT. that it's NOT some prothean device, it was tim doing his lil illusive thing. it was his plan to get shepard killed so that he could test out the tech used to revive her, and the device is actually a honing beacon for the collectors (because i literally never understood how the collectors found the normandy in the first place they had their stealth cores up and its never explained how theyre found and it's a plothole that PISSES ME OFF so this fic is literally made out of spite to explain it)

so yeah shep and co wake up after not knowing what happened, that lil love confession between shep and garrus doesnt happen, and shepard dies. so its sad? but not because then me2 happens and everyone is reunited and shakarian still happens yayayayya

so yeah typing it out like this also tells me i need to steam out the details a little bit more but i want to write this so badly and turn left is taking all of my energy so i think im going to try to double fist these two fics and see if i pop our sane.

anyways thank you!!!!!

#mass effect fanfiction #shakarian #shepard x garrus #ao3 fanfic

[misseffect]

3, 12, and 14 for the end of the year asks!

thank youuuuuu!! 💕

12. favorite character to write about this year

Honestly? Wrex.

I have a lot of feelings about his development across the trilogy, and it's been really fun finding ways to splice him and his arc into an actual uncle role in The Normandy Detective Agency. He's basically the only thing keeping me going with the baby Shep fic rn :))))))))

I could go on but wordcount so here's a visual aid:

sorry wrex ily you'll get there in the end

14. a fic you didn’t expect to write

Dress Blues! It was kinktober, I needed to write something stupid and horny - can I make it any more obvious?

I didn't expect it to turn out the way it did AT ALL, and by the time it was finished I couldn't stand the sight of it, but now I've had a few weeks to calm down I'm actually really proud of how it came out lmao

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year

Published edition! (under the cut)

I am not a planning person. Most of the time it's chaos and a lot of stuff doesn't make the final cut, and when I started writing Flux I didn't know much about what I wanted from it beyond getting SOMETHING about these two fucking war-trauma-riddled detectives out of my brain.

But I remember writing this last section pretty much in one go and thinking ah, so that's what this story is going to be about.

"You didn't try to stop me."

They're at least two songs deep now, maybe three - Shepard isn't really listening. There's a loose thread poking out from the back of Garrus's tie.

"They were your people," she says, "It wasn't my call."

In truth, short of turning herself into a human shield, Shepard doesn't think she could've stopped him if she'd tried.

"When we found Saleon you put a gun in my hand."

"That was a long time ago. And it was different." They were different too. Garrus; fresh out of the LAPD and desperate for purpose. Shepard; judge, jury and executioner. Uncompromising and invulnerable. "Turning Saleon in was too much of a risk. If he'd gotten away without jail time, he would've gone on hurting people."

"Maybe Sidonis would too." Garrus says, though without much real conviction. Shepard says nothing.

Like so many of them, Sidonis became what he was half a world away, in guts and shrapnel, barely old enough to drink when he left home. Shepard understands wanting somebody - anybody - to pay for what they all endured, tooth for tooth, but in the end it's too awful, too unknowable, too god-damned big to figure out where the buck stops. You'll chew yourself up trying.

So Garrus made a strawman out of Sidonis and now they're here, folded into one another, and there's a body face-down in a shipyard warehouse.

"I think he knew it was you, somehow," she says. "I think he knew when I called him. But he came anyway."

She remembers Sidonis's tired, even voice on the telephone. How he'd agreed to a meeting - with a stranger, before dawn, in a deserted part of town - without question.

Long before she met Garrus, Shepard got ahold of the Archangel dossier - or whatever scraps of it her clearance allowed at the time. Archangel's reputation preceded them across Europe until their abrupt disappearance in '44, she'd known that much already. Officially they were an elite sniper unit but some of their confirmed kills - especially the later ones - had not made for pretty reading.

[REDACTED]: Gunshot wounds (all limbs and primary organs). 80% third-degree burns.

[REDACTED]: Chemical overdose, [REDACTED] acid (direct, prolonged contact with eyes).

She trusts Garrus, completely and unflinchingly, but last week - when he handed her a grainy photograph of Sidonis in a Long Beach bar, his face blazing - all she could think of was the dossier. She agreed to help him partly because he asked - because of engagement rings and lemon muffins - and partly because she knows just how much pain he has the capacity to inflict.

She remembers Sidonis and his sunken face in the dusty orange sunrise. He didn't flinch when Garrus yelled his name from the gangway in the rafters; he saw the scope over the railing and he didn't move a hair. There are worse ways to go than a bullet between the eyes.

"Maybe it was a relief for him, in the end."

"I hope not," Garrus says, quietly.

#instagram really came through for me on the wrex sticker. i thought i'd have to just write his name in the middle like some kind of MUG #ask #fic #mass effect fic #tNDA