Archive of Our Own ^beta

Garrus set his program to compiling and stepped away from his workstation in the battery, stretching out his back and neck. He’d been standing there much too long, and all his muscles let him know it. His stomach let its needs be known, too. He checked the time; it was late in the Normandy’s night shift, but that suited Garrus fine. He had the run of the galley anyway, as the only dextro eater on the ship, and the late hour meant there should be few humans around.

There was, however, someone sitting at the counter in the galley when he emerged from the battery. It took him a moment to realize it was Shepard, out of uniform and with her hair down. Her eyebrows were bunched together as she looked down at a datapad. “You’re working late,” she said without looking up.

“You’re up late,” Garrus pointed out. He retrieved a turian boxed meal from cold storage without looking at what flavor it was, and stuck it in the oven.

Shepard’s shoulders rose and fell. “Just catching up on my reading,” she said.

“Your reading?” Garrus folded his arms and propped a hip against the counter, hoping this looked appropriately casual.

“Turns out there’s been a lot of stuff published since I died,” she said, tapping something on the datapad. “And I missed the last Blasto movie, and somebody made another Jupiter Ascending remake while I wasn’t looking, and one of my favorite bands broke up.”

Garrus wondered if he should go back to the fact that apparently she wasn’t sleeping. Then again, he wasn’t in much of a position to judge. “Neither of those movies was very good. I heard.”

“What about this one? Race Against Time, the astounding true story of the hunt for the traitor Spectre Saren Arterius.” She shot him a glance. Her eyebrows were lifted and her mouth pulled together tightly.

“Oh,” said Garrus. “That was...”

The oven chimed to signal the meal was ready. Garrus turned around to retrieve it, vainly hoping Shepard might get distracted while he fussed with the meal and found utensils.

No luck. When he turned back to the counter, she was still looking at him expectantly. He sighed. “It’s not a good vid, Shepard.”

“No shit,” she said. “True stories rushed into production never are. Have you seen it?”

“Yes,” Garrus said shortly. He’d locked himself into his private room with a bottle of horosk to watch the damned thing. He’d needed less of the drink than he would have supposed, but it had been painful enough. He deliberately dropped his eyes and busied himself with his meal.

There was a silence of a minute or two, while he determinedly refused to look up, and then Shepard said, “What was it like?”

Garrus chewed and swallowed. “Well, they left out the Reapers entirely.”

“Of course they did,” she muttered.

“So the plot was just all about Saren being an evil traitor. The action scenes were choppy and poorly choreographed, and their prop weapons were appalling. The guy playing Wrex overacted wildly, and they made me into a twenty-year-old newbie. As if Pallin would have handed the Saren investigation to someone who hadn’t even made detective. Tali was barely in it at all. I guess they didn’t think a quarian would play well to their audience.”

“Huh.” Shepard’s eyes narrowed, apparently digesting this. “I don’t know anything about this actress they had playing me.” She poked at the datapad, bringing up a picture of the woman.

Garrus put more food in his mouth, trying to figure out how to respond to that.

“What was she like?”

He chewed. Considered. “She was all right,” he conceded. That was the awful part of the vid, really. He’d expected some dramatic license. He’d even expected the shitty action scenes, and the fact that the actors didn’t handle their weapons like trained soldiers. But the lead—

She was almost right, that was the trouble. She didn’t look very much like Shepard; her face was a little too regular. Prettier, by human standards, or so Butler had said. Blandly pretty, Nalah had said, with a sniff. But she’d had some charisma, even Garrus could tell that, and she’d carried off her inspiring speeches well enough, and she’d handled the action remarkably well.

She was almost, almost good enough.

He looked at Shepard, hunched over in a black shirt and pants that she probably slept in. There were loose bits of hair drifting around her face, and the strange reddish scars from her resurrection still crawled across her cheeks. He thought of Shepard blazing her way through the mercs on Omega, lips spread into a wide, set grin, or facing down Warden Kuril on Purgatory, a sneer on her face and a gun in her hand.

No. He’d been wrong. That actress wasn’t good enough at all. She was only a poor imitation. She’d seemed like more, only because he hadn’t seen the real version in too long.

He swallowed and cleared his throat. Shepard looked up at him. “Not bad as actresses go,” he said. “But nothing compared to the original.”

Shepard smiled, though her shoulders hunched, and she shook her head. “You’re just saying that.”

“Nope,” he said. “Who else would have invented a whole new biotic move just to—”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing.

“—I was going to say, just to help a friend.”

She stopped laughing and looked up at him, and he wasn’t sure how to read her expression. Her eyes shone in the harsh lights of the galley. Then the corners of her mouth turned up again. “Yeah, well. I had to think of something to keep them off you.” She blinked, as if she’d surprised herself, and her eyes narrowed. “Can’t let anyone pound the delicate sniper, after all.”

“I can hold my own,” Garrus protested.

She rolled her eyes. “So you claim.”

“I held off Garm,” he pointed out, crossing his arms.

“I heard that story, but I’m still not sure I believe it.”

“Shepard. Would I lie to you?”

“Lie? No. Exaggerate for the sake of a good story? Oh, yeah.”

“I’m wounded, Shepard.”

She broke down into giggles, covering her mouth with her hand. A warm, fond glow washed over Garrus as he watched her. He’d done that: made her laugh, when she’d clearly been in no mood to do so in the first place. He smirked back at her and dug into his belated dinner before it got colder.