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Shepard Finds Her Soul Mate	By : KTT2123 Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 5865 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect nor its characters. I am making no money from this.

Chapter List
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“Mr. Moreau, I am worried about Shepard.”
“What? Why?”
Her usual matter-a-fact voice sounding more human tinged with concern, EDI explains, “Shepard has been in the shower for over an hour, without moving. I believe someone should check on her.”
Joker contemplates, saying “Well, Miranda is definitely not the one to ask. Shepard sure in hell doesn’t trust her. Allowing Miranda to see her vulnerable is the last thing Shepard would want. Yet…Miranda and Shepard…together in a shower…hm…”
“Jeff, focus!” chides EDI.
Pulling his mind away from his fantasies, Joker continues, “Right, later. Jacob appears a bit more trustworthy than Miranda but he’s still Cerberus. Kelly, she’d probably just try to sleep with Shepard. Jack, hm…nearly naked Jack meeting completely naked Shepard…ah, the photo op! But I am pretty sure that will end with someone dying, who will then probably kill me... Mordin would probably just chatter incessantly about Shepard’s reactions in medical terms. Although it would be funny to see Shepard punch Mordin while she’s buck naked. Doctor Chakwas is a possibility…oh! Garrus! Ask him. Shepard probably trusts him more than anyone else.” Joker remembers how close the pair had been on the Normandy SR-1. He also recalls how happy the Commander had been when she discovered that Archangel and Garrus are one in the same.
LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV
“Garrus?”
“Yes, EDI? You need something?”
“Could you check on Shepard? I am worried by her behavior since re-boarding the Normandy. Perhaps she is having difficulty dealing with what occurred on Horizon. Jeff suggested it is best that you are the one to speak to her, as she trusts you above all others.”
“Uh…I suppose I could check on her,” Garrus responds awkwardly. He’s not sure if he’s the best person to go to Shepard but she is his friend and if she needs him, he wants to be there for her.
LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV
Garrus stands uncomfortably in front of Shepard’s door, waiting for her to give him permission to enter. After waiting several minutes with no response, Garrus hacks the lock and cautiously enters. “Shepard? Are you in here?” The first thing he sees is the Commander’s armor strewn haphazardly around the room. The armor is still covered in grime, sweat, and blood. That is careless; it is very unlike her to neglect repairing and cleaning it. He knows that Shepard must be truly shaken to be so irresponsible with her equipment. Garrus hears the shower running. Knocking on the bathroom door, he hears no response from behind the door. “Shepard? I’m coming in, okay?”
LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV
The first thing Garrus sees is Shepard with her back to him, head resting on her knees and arms tightly wrapped around her legs. She is huddling on the floor of the shower, naked and shivering. Vakarian steadily approaches Lily, gently touching her shoulder to get her attention. Shepard slowly raises her head to look at the turian. Her eyes red and swollen from crying, she looks in his direction without any recognition, as if she doesn’t even see him. Garrus has never seen Shepard like this, looking completely despondent…so alone and vulnerable. She has always seemed invulnerable, invincible even, to him. She never shows weakness. Her aura of invincibility, strength and power has always made it easy to picture her being from another world, one not found in this universe. Shepard is simply that extraordinary.
Garrus is shaken down to his core at seeing her look so utterly broken. Kneeling beside her, he can see the stark pain in her unseeing eyes. The mist from the shower is freezing and Shepard is shivering violently as the icy water continues to hit her body. Garrus stands up and turns off the water. Doing his best to ignore her nakedness, the turian carefully lifts the human up off the floor before gently setting her on her feet. Vakarian can’t help but marvel at how light she is. For the first time, his eyes notice how very small she is, the vulnerability surrounding her makes it impossible not to. In her bare feet, the top of Shepard’s head does not even reach his shoulder. Never before has he noticed just how tiny she really is. Even for her species she is short. Her presence is normally so powerful and strong that one never truly notices her diminutive size. Her biotic power always seems to vibrate the air around her that a person can’t help but feel it. But shivering and naked, with the aura of her biotic power noticeably absent, Lily appears almost powerless. She looks fragile. It is so unlike her that it is shocking. The turian feels as if he is seeing her for the first time, seeing the woman, the human, behind the legend.
Grabbing a towel, Garrus quickly dries Shepard, wrapping her securely in the towel. He briefly leaves the bathroom, coming back with a t-shirt and sweatpants. Garrus quickly dresses her. Then, again picking the shockingly passive Lily up into his arms, he carries her to the bed before carefully setting her down.
Shepard has not uttered a single word, completely lost in her pain and grief, tears still running down her cheeks. Vakarian quickly removes his armor, leaving on only his thin under-armor pants. The turian crawls onto the bed and takes Lily in his arms. Lily stiffens but soon relaxes when Garrus’ heat begins to penetrate her ice cold skin and his familiar scent comforts her. She seems to recognize his scent even lost in her grief. Her shivering begins to lessen and soon no more tears leak out. Exhausted, Shepard quickly falls asleep lying against Garrus.
Never having been this close to Shepard, he takes advantage of the opportunity and drinks her in. Her glossy ink black hair is free flowing across her shoulders. The bold violet streaks in her hair are just as vivid and beautiful as before her death. Shepard has radiant coffee colored skin. He once saw a photograph of her parents on her desk; her skin is a perfect blend of her mother’s dark chocolate skin and her father’s glowing pale skin. It is so rich in comparison to Garrus’ and looks incredibly smooth. Cerberus had somehow re-grown her skin, while it was the same color; all her battle scars are missing, as if they had never existed. The most visible ones: across her lips, her ear, her neck, all gone. Garrus notices the other ones are gone as well: the stab wound on her stomach, the scar that ran across her knuckles, her multiple bullet wounds. The less visible ones the turian had seen during their sparring sessions while going after Saren.
Her skin is no longer marred by the glowing red scars that had once bared her cybernetics. Unlike his, her scars healed quickly and are no longer visible. The turian wonders if it’s a result of her paragon nature…and his tendency toward being a renegade especially after his squad had been slaughtered. Lily has always cared more for saving innocent lives than she does for vengeance, revenge, or punishment. Her help with going after Dr. Saleon had made him think about his own perceptions. Her influence had made him less hard, less renegade in his thinking. Which might be why her death had hit him so hard, Shepard had made him a better person, a better soldier, a better man. She had just made him want to be better, simply because she believed he could be.
Although, her brilliant purple eyes are closed, Garrus can picture them aglow with their usual fire. He’s never seen anyone else with eyes as strikingly violet. Unable to help himself, the turian strokes his talons up and down the soft skin of Shepard’s bare arm. It is just as smooth and soft as it looks. He is overwhelmed by feelings of protectiveness. Never before has a woman inspired such feelings in him, much less a human one. This woman, who has sacrificed so much for the universe, even her own life, has never given up even when she is ignored, dismissed, or labeled crazy. He wonders if she has ever had a single easy moment in her entire life. *Maybe before Mindoir…but not after she saw everyone she knew killed. Life certainly has tried to break her. Until tonight, I’ve never seen even a crack in her defenses. Until tonight, I didn’t know she could be defeated. Damn you, Kaidan. Look what you’ve done to her!*
Garrus yearns to protect this unbelievably strong woman from everything fate would throw at her. Chuckling a little, he imagines Shepard’s reaction if he told her he wants to protect her. Garrus may not have a lot of experience with human women but he knows Shepard well enough to know she would not react well to any overt attempts to protect her. She would take it as an implication that he thinks she cannot take care of herself, which would probably lead to Garrus being slammed against a wall a few times by her biotics as a very painful reminder she can damn well take care of herself. He winces a little just thinking about it. Shepard’s past has made her strong and extremely independent. To survive all she has, she had to be.
Yet, being this close to her, he cannot deny, even to himself, that he still cares more for her than he should…much more than a soldier should feel for his commander. The feelings that first arose on the Normandy SR-1 have not disappeared, not that he is truly surprised at that.
Shepard is and always has been…incredible, one of a kind. She is like no one else he’s ever met and makes him feel things he never has before. With Lily sleeping against him, the intensity of his feelings cannot be ignored or denied. Garrus has no idea what to do about them. Should he risk his heart or hide them as he did while going after Saren? What about Kaidan? After what happened on Horizon, how does Shepard feel about her once lover? These questions have no easy answers and his uncertainty makes him shift uneasily. Lily gives an irritated snort in her sleep at his movement before hugging herself closer to the turian. Vakarian can feel her breathing in the scent of his skin almost as if she is reassuring herself that it is him she’s lying against. Shepard sighs contently once she gets comfortable. Her head is pillowed on his shoulder, her arms wrapped snugly around him, and her body pressed tightly against his side. Garrus looks down at her. He is so in awe of the trust Shepard has in him. He can’t imagine her acting this way with anyone else, even if she had been freezing, exhausted, and completely out of it. Trust is not something she gives easily anymore.
When he had joined the Normandy’s crew he had been warned never to touch Shepard while she was sleeping. The stories of how she often slept with a knife and tended to use it against anyone who touched her were enough for him to heed that warning. For Lily to not react violently to his touch but to burrow into his warm embrace is nothing short of earth shattering. He knows this mean something, something significant but he is not sure just what that is.
They have a special bond, the turian and the human, one that was not easily defined by either person but just…is. It has always been something Garrus simply could not explain. Regardless of whether Lily feels something for him or not, he knows she recognizes that there is something special to their friendship. After she died Garrus had tried without success to make his father understand why he had been so affected by Shepard’s death. There is one thing Vakarian knows, one thing he is certain of. There is not a single person, alive or dead, that he trusts more than Shepard, not even his own family. He wonders if she feels the same. With her trust issues, it would be an honor if she did.
He knows that Kaidan Alenko had never spent the night with Lily, even when they were together. Yet, here she is sleeping against him without protest. Yes, Lily is not truly herself but Garrus believes that fact is even more telling. She is vulnerable now, her guard is down and he knows if he was in her situation, he would have lashed out at someone he didn’t trust completely. Garrus certainly wouldn’t have slept against someone he didn’t have complete trust in. Not when he felt off kilter, vulnerable. He would have dealt with it alone. He has to wonder what that says about him and how Shepard sees him, feels about him. If nothing else, it says she trusts him enough to allow herself to be vulnerable around him. As far as Garrus knows, she trusts no one else that much, at least not on this ship.
During Alenko’s and Shepard’s relationship, Joker had believed it was his personal mission to fluster Kaidan into revealing details. And Joker had been very good at it. The crew had known absolutely everything about their relationship due to his skill and Kaidan’s naiveté, not that Shepard had known that. It was one of the few things that the crew had been able to successfully hide from her. Everyone knew that after the couple was intimate, he left almost immediately. She didn’t seem to trust Alenko enough to willingly share her space. The relationship had been on Shepard’s terms alone. And Kaidan had been so in love with her that he was puppy dog eager to take anything she was willing to give him. Garrus remembered thinking that it appeared more akin to how turians used sex to relieve tension than a relationship, at least on her side. But that could have been wishful thinking on his part…considering that he had been half in love with her himself. Maybe he had just wanted to believe that it was nothing more than sex.
The turian begins to feel his eyelids becoming heavy, the emotions of the evening catching up with him: between Horizon, Kaidan’s reaction, Lily’s breakdown, and Garrus’ own acknowledgement that he still has feelings for her despite the hopelessness of it. He closes his eyes and falls asleep with his arms wrapped tightly around Lily.
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Shepard Finds Her Soul Mate