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Zakera Ward had turian groceries every other block. As a C-Sec officer, Garrus had stopped by many of them and narrowed down to a few favorites. The one he led Shepard into now, creatively named 29th Level Dextro, had the best holiday displays.
Shepard stopped at his elbow, hands in the front pocket of her overlarge hooded shirt, and leaned back to take in the effect of the cabinet facing the door. It was lined in fake stone to mimic an old-style Palaveni home, and the shimmering lights brought to mind Palaven's aurora. Mostly it was stocked with vacuum-sealed packs of meat, but there were special fruits from the homeworld and major colonies too, boxes of sweets, some wine.
"Do you guys do, like…balloons? Streamers maybe?" Shepard asked.
"No," Garrus said.
"What about little party hats?"
Garrus had taken in more than one human for drunk and disorderly while wearing a small conical hat. "Turians don't wear hats," he said seriously.
"But you're a bad turian." Shepard's mouth twitched. It had taken Garrus a while to connect that expression to what he thought of as a real human smile. He saw plenty of humans in C-Sec but never gotten to know them well individually. Until Shepard—until Omega—most of the people he spent time with were other turians.
"Even bad turians want to avoid elastic around their mandibles," said Garrus.
Shepard's smile broaded into something more easily identifiable as such. "Work with me here, Vakarian. You eat meat all the time." Shepard well knew Garrus mainly ate processed dextro rations from a tube these days, but he didn't argue the point. "What do you do to make Threshold Day special?"
Threshold Day was an imprecise translation of the holiday; near as Garrus could tell, the name had been broken down into close-enough versions of its component parts and then run back into Garrus's native Palaveni dialect. The full name meant something closer to "spirits at the threshold," though it was an old word with no real modern equivalent. Alliance translation software wasn't perfect, but errors like this had been happening much more often with Shepard since she'd been brought back from the dead.
Still: it was close enough.
Shepard's fixation on non-human holidays had started a few weeks prior, when she barged in on Mordin on the comm, bowing out of holiday plans with some distant relative. Shepard had decided that in the interest of crew cohesion, the pro-human terrorist group crew members should all participate in a salarian celebration which mainly involved holding hands in a circle and humming. Then Grunt had mentioned a holiday festival in Tuchanka. That had been a fun one; Dr. Chakwas had reamed Shepard out so loud afterwards that Garrus heard it in the battery, even though only one of the Cerberus recruits had even broken anything, and that was his own fault.
Shepard had come round to Garrus next, asking if there were any turian holidays coming up. Garrus had to check his calendars; he had one for the Citadel—which Omega also followed, mostly—and one for Palaven. He hadn't been planning any sort of celebration for himself. But this was what Shepard wanted to do, and Garrus…appreciated watching her work, even when it was clearly motivated by spite. Maybe especially then.
Plus, turians didn't turn their meat into shoe leather before they ate it like most other council species. Garrus was looking forward to seeing Lawson's face when presented with a tray of bloody aulochs ribs.
"To be honest, Shepard, I don't do anything," Garrus admitted. "It's a little…old fashioned."
Shepard bumped her elbow against his. She'd been doing that more often since she came back, touching him. "You could've said!"
"And ruin your fun?" Garrus grinned and relented. "The traditional celebration is for everyone to leave their doors open for the evening. Neighbors—anyone, really—walk in and out of each other's homes, eat each other's food, and light a candle as they leave."
"Well yeah," Shephard grumbled. "I checked the extranet before we came out here, you know. I wanted to know how you do it."
Garrus shrugged. "Sorry to disappoint. These days it's a good way to get robbed. Or, ah, spaced. Or set the interior of your ship on fire."
"Too soon, Vakarian," said Shepard. "Some of us have been spaced."
"Well—I didn't mean—"
She flicked another half-smile his way. Joking. Right. Garrus cleared his throat. "Most years I just donate some credits to a good cause and eat a little nicer. Last year—"
Last year there had been a party. He'd picked up Sidonis, flicked on an electric votive candle as they'd left, and together they'd gone to Melenis's place. Sidonis had gotten piss drunk, tried out a terrible line from Fleet and Flotilla on Melenis's quarian neighbor, and had to be dragged home. They'd teased him about it for weeks. Garrus twitched his injured mandible out and felt the searing pain of the stretched healing tissue along his jaw, into his neck.
"—last year, you know, it was Omega," he said. "Aria's the only one who throws a decent party over there."
Shepard made a humming noise under her breath and watched him for a second like he was on the other end of her scope.
"What's with the meat," she said abruptly. "Is everything blue on Palaven?"
Garrus was absolutely sure she knew the answer to that, and took the out anyway. It was fun with her to take turns playing the dumb alien. "Is all meat pink on Earth?"
Shepard shrugged, conceding the point, and rested her hands on her hips. Garrus glanced at her waist on instinct but Shepard seemed not to notice—he wasn't sure if she'd mind, anyway, if she had. Something was different about him-and-Shepard this mission. Maybe it was only that last time he was on an Alliance ship, where Shepard was surrounded by her people, and this time he was one of the few she trusted to be on her side and not the Illusive Man's.
Probably not just that, though. At least for Garrus.
"This is all meant to be finger foods. Some people like to butcher their meat themselves," Garrus said, flicking his fingers at the bone-in, skin-on package. "Or you can buy it prepared already. It's meant to be easy for people to grab while they walk around and talk."
Shepard let out one of her barking laughs. Another patron—another human, their hand on a turian woman's elbow—turned to look at the sound. They caught Garrus's eye and he looked away. "Ah. Alien charcuterie."
"Who's the alien? You're the one in a dextro grocery store."
Shepard opened her mouth but before she could reply something caught his attention, a stuttered step at the corner of Garrus's eye. A human outside the glass storefront, doing a blatant double take at the sight of them. Military, likely female from the hair, though Garrus could never be sure; humans had such little reliable sexual dimorphism. They both straightened, ready for trouble.
But he recognized this human somehow, and—
"Janey?"
"Mom?"
—Shepard did too.
The only other time Garrus had seen Captain Hannah Shepard, it had been at Shepard's funeral.
Human funerals were closed-off affairs compared to what Garrus was used to, limited to the deceased's close friends and family; one of his C-Sec colleagues had to explain it to him after a junior officer Garrus only knew in passing was killed in the line of duty. Garrus hadn't been sure of his welcome when he first booked a ticket to Arcturus for Shepard's funeral but he shouldn't have worried. If you ignored the speeches, hers could have been a turian funeral. Hundreds of people had attended who had served with her, from an admiral to a handful of privates from the Normandy to—well, himself. And Tali, and a handful of turians and asari and a salarian Garrus had never met. The non-humans had all clumped together. He'd talked to them a little afterward; Shepard had saved their colony on some Alliance action before she'd ever been assigned to the Normandy. More people had watched virtually, their faces projected in tiny rectangles at the back of the room.
Then there had been Captain Shepard, sitting at the front, not quite alone but with a bubble of space around her. She had gotten up and said a few brief words about her daughter's service, eyes red but dry, blunt and unsentimental in a way that felt oddly comforting.
Afterward, Garrus had shaken hands with her. "Vakarian? Janey mentioned you," the captain had said. Garrus's eye for human facial features was decent—you need to tell various alien suspects apart at C-Sec—and he could tell there was little in the way of family resemblance between Shepard and her mother; only their coloring was the same, orange-red hair and pale brown-flecked skin. And the way they held themselves, all Alliance. "Have you signed up for Spectre candidacy again?"
Garrus had already quit his job at C-Sec. From Arcturus he was catching a flight to the edge of Council space; he'd take a few hops between planets and stations to confuse any trail he might leave on the way to Omega, where maybe, finally, he could do some good. He was ready for it. He couldn't do anything else. But he still felt obscurely like he was doing wrong when he admitted, "No."
"That's too bad," the captain had said with what seemed to be genuine feeling, as much as her flat human voice could show it.
But Shepard had been a Spectre and where had that gotten her? Spaced chasing geth on council errands instead of trying to track down what they both knew was the real problem.
Talking about reapers got you labelled a crank these days, though, and Garrus couldn't—wouldn't—make a scene here.
"I still hope…" Garrus hesitated, then bowed, hands behind his back, neck bared. The captain probably wouldn't recognize the gesture, but he needed to show his respect for the woman who had changed the course of his life. Pay his respects—that was the human phrase. "…Shepard did a lot of good in this galaxy. She changed a lot of lives, changed…me."
His voice had, embarassingly, spiked. Garrus got a hold of himself. "I want to…carry that spirit forward, as much as I can," he finished.
Who knew how the phrase translated into whatever human language the captain spoke. She had looked at him for what seemed like a long time. "Thank you," she had said. "See that you do."
Now the captain was more animated. She was in Alliance fatigues this time, not her dress uniform, and her hair had escaped into wisps around her face. She marched up to Shepard with snapping strides that made Garrus want, ridiculously, to reach for his gun. Shepard had gone into parade rest, and he had never seen her eyebrows so high on her face. "It's good to see you in person, Jane," the captain said in a very calm voice. "Why, just the other day I nearly came to blows with a store clerk here in this ward for using my dead daughter's likeness to promote his fish food."
"Oh," said Shepard weakly.
"Yes," said the captain. "Imagine my surprise when he told me you were alive and recorded it in person two years after I held your funeral."
Garrus couldn't help the hissing noise that he let out, but thankfully neither of the Shepard women seemed to remember he existed. He shifted a little closer to Shepard anyway; not quite close enough to touch, but enough to be on her side.
"It's not what it looks like, Ma," said Shepard.
The captain clicked her tongue. "I'm sure it's not and I'm sure you can't tell me what it actually is. But I would have liked to hear from my daughter who was declared KIA once she was allowed to start swanning around the galaxy under her real identity again."
"…Yeah," Shepard said. "Yeah, sorry."
They stared at each other for a second. Then the captain made a frustrated sound and wrapped her arms around Shepard in a sharp, unpracticed motion. As soon as Shepard returned the gesture the captain drew back. She took Shepard's chin between her thumb and forefinger and tilted her head back and forth, looking at her orange scars. They had faded since Garrus had joined the crew, but traces still limned her cheeks, the line of her jaw.
(He'd miss the scars once they healed; he liked that they matched in a way. Garrus would never tell Shepard that. He knew they didn't mean the same thing.)
"Cybernetics," the captain noted. "Does it still hurt?"
"…Sometimes," Shepard admitted. "I'm doing okay, though, Ma. Really."
"Good. You should be." She released Shepard's face and brought her hands behind her back, chin lifting. Garrus was reminded suddenly of his father and had to smother the absurd urge to laugh at the thought of his father knowing the comparison. "Vakarian."
Garrus twitched and nearly snapped into salute. "Yes, ma'am."
"It's good to see you're taking care of yourself. I heard you dropped off the radar once you left Arcturus."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Garrus.
"Have you been keeping tabs on my crew?" Shepard asked.
"When I can," said the captain. "Interesting how many of them joined a terrorist organization before you re-appeared, but I assume you'll explain that to me at some point."
Shepard winced. "I'm sorry for not messaging. There's been…it's been crazy, since I…came back. I didn't expect the news to reach you so fast, or how to explain it."
The captain nodded sharply at her daughter. "Well. Start small and explain why you're shopping for dextro groceries."
Shepard relaxed a little and leaned her shoulder back into Garrus's carapace. Garrus barely breathed. "We're throwing a party, back on the ship. Tomorrow is Threshold Day. Figured our resident turian could share some culture with the crew."
"Oh?" the captain turned to him with one eyebrow lifted. (Shepard could not do this; Garrus had heard her complaining to Chakwas about it, though the significance was lost on him.)
Shepard wasn't moving, and was in fact touching him on purpose. She wasn't going to startle when Garrus spoke. He cleared his throat. "It's a day to invite new spirits into your life," he said, "to celebrate the connections that you haven't made yet, but will one day soon. Traditionally we all leave our doors open, so theoretically anyone could walk in and change your whole life's course."
"Hmm," said the captain.
"Right? Isn't it sweet?" said Shepard.
"Sweet," Garrus repeated.
"I like it, anyway."
"You would," Garrus said, as the captain said, "Of course you do."
Startled laughter burst out of Shepard's chest; Garrus felt it, and then she straightened. "Well, never do that again," she said.
The captain smiled, her big human eyes crinkling, and finally Garrus saw the family resemblance. "I should go. I need to track down my XO from wherever she's sleeping off shore leave. But Janey…it's good to see you again."
"Yeah. You too," Shepard said, earnest in the way Garrus only ever saw when she was exhausted after a hard shootout.
They both tracked Captain Shepard's progress down the ward corridor.
"Garrus, get some of your blue meat," Shepard said abruptly.
"On it, Commander."
He went for a small pack of the bone-in ribs so that he could make the Cerberus crew squirm when he prepped it. Rupert had a nice set of knives. Shepard paid for that, along with a few fruits to make up the rest of the spread and a bottle of dextro wine, and Garrus didn't protest. It was all coming out of Cerberus's accounts anyway.
"You'd met my mom before," Shepard said as they left. "On Arcturus?"
"Yes," Garrus said. Shepard looked at him. "Your funeral."
"…I guess there must've been one, huh," said Shepard.
"Tali came too. Joker. Williams called in to watch." Ridiculous—she was alive next to him, breathing, Garrus had felt it—but talking about it still turned his voice low and rough with grief, enough that another turian in the wards corridor flinched as he walked by. He tucked his mandibles in tight and got a hold of himself.
This never used to happen to him. Garrus never thought he was sheltered at C-Sec, but it was impossible to think of his old self as anything else.
Shepard, at least, didn't—couldn't—notice the slip. She made a sharp hand gesture. "Don't…you don't have to tell me."
Among many humans it was polite to say you don't have to when they meant fucking stop. Garrus stopped.
It had never occurred to him to talk to Shepard about her funeral before but now he found himself wondering what she would think of it all. At the time, of course, she had been dead; funerals were for the living. But now he wondered if she would have liked the songs that had played—besides the Alliance anthem, there had been another they had listened to a human perform on keyboard, something from Earth that Garrus hadn't recognized.
He wondered what his crew on Omega would have liked for theirs. His squad hadn't gotten any real memorial service, not from Garrus anyway. He had positioned and covered the bodies with as much dignity as he could give them, and hoped they wouldn't start to smell before it all ended one way or another.
Shepared took in a deep breath and then let it out. "I looked up turian funerary rites," she said. "After we brought you back to the Normandy, while you were still in the medbay."
Garrus shot her a surprised glance. Shepard wasn't looking at him. "There are a lot of different ones," he said.
"Yeah, Mordin said so when he caught me looking. Then he started running through the history of funeral practices on Palaven in general and Cipritine in particular."
"Sounds pretty boring," Garrus said.
Shepard scoffed. "I nearly socked him, to be honest."
"You? Really?"
Shepard scoffed again and bumped her fist against Garrus's arm. Well, bumped—he could tell she wasn't putting any real force behind it, but it still hurt.
"It's funny," Garrus said. "I wouldn't have made it on Omega if you hadn't shown up. I'd come to terms, called my dad." Shepard made a sharp noise, just an indrawn breath, like she'd taken a blow. "But as soon as I recognized you—I knew I'd live through it all. Even when I was laying half-conscious with a gunship shooting over me. If, you know, my face hadn't been blown off, I would've told you not to worry about that funeral."
"Of course you knew." Shepard's voice had gotten lower, too. "Like I'd let you die. Come on."
Whether he deserved it or not.
They were quiet as they made their way back to the Normandy until, waiting for the decontamination to finish, Shepard said, "You and me back together again. It's good, right?"
Garrus didn't have to think. "Absolutely. Nowhere else I'd rather be."
"Good." Shepard cocked her hip. "Don't get shot in the face again."
Garrus laughed. He looked at her, this squishy short little alien who was somehow the toughest thing in the galaxy, and rested a hand on her shoulder. "As long as you don't die again. I'm getting tired of—of all that."
Shepard looked at him for a long second. "Okay, Vakarian. It's a deal."