Mass Effect To Live Through

Garrus felt like he was intruding on something.

He tried not to shift awkwardly on his feet, but he was torn between wanting to get out of this room and wishing he could do something to help. Liara's ragged breathing was all he could hear. Benezia's… body was still beneath Shepard's hands, he was still breathing heavily, too. Liara's mother had indeed been a formidable opponent. Liara seemed like she was about to panic though. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was parted, she seemed like she was about to fall into a panic attack.

Garrus stepped towards the asari with a hand out, but hesitated. This… really wasn't his thing. Luckily, Shepard noticed too. She flicked her eyes between him and Liara, and then stood up.

"Garrus," she was speaking too softly, "Make sure we're alone, okay?"

"Aye aye, Commander." Thankful for the excuse to move, to get away from this heartbroken air of panic, he turned and made a quick circuit of the room, certain it was clear, he stepped back up to the platform where Benezia had… died. Where the three of them had been forced to kill her.

That feeling of being an intruder came back.

The Vakarian's had never been a family of touches, of encouraging words, or even any words. When tragedy hit their family home, the expected course of action was to buck up, bear the burden, carry on. There was never an acknowledgement of pain, of sorrow. His grandfather's death had found him in denial so strong he shouted at his father to take it back. The idea that the universe could deal such a hard blow to his eight-year old self was unbelievable. It was a joke. It was a cruel, lie his father had thrown at him to keep him away from his grandfather—his favorite person on the world. His kind, laughing grandfather who taught him tricks with tools and lines of code that seemed to turn simple pieces of scrap electronics into magic, his wise old grandfather who helped him learn how to turn an old cast-off omni-tool into his window to the world.

Of course, when he began shouting this to his father, he had received a beating the like of which he had never again experienced. Two of the plates on his backside were cracked so bad he couldn't sit for two months and was forced to imitate his father and stand at attention everywhere he went .Garrus had considered it the ultimate betrayal, although he never understood why his father was keening in sorrow as he was punished until many years later.

Their small family went to his grandfather's funeral and he stood stiffly at his father's side and received a swat to his fringe every time he began to hum with sorrow.

"Don't." His father had commanded with a furious flare of his mandibles. Garrus had fumed, kept silent, and obeyed.

So what he saw when he came back from his circuit of the control room gave him a quiet urge to run, make another sweep.

Shepard had her arms curled tightly around Liara's shoulders and the asari had what he could only describe as a death grip on the Commander's shoulders. Liara was still breathing heavily—sobbing—he realized, and Shepard was speaking quietly into the side of her head.

"Just take deep breaths. I know it hurts. I know."

"Shepard—Jane—I" Liara stuttered, her back heaving, "I _shot_ her!"

"You couldn't have done anything else, Liara. You had to save yourself. You had to be bigger than that. You are better than that, Liara."

"She was my mother! I… oh, Goddess! I killed my mother."

Garrus made a move to step away and circle the room again, but his booted feet made a heavy clunk against the floor, and Shepard's eyes flashed to him. He froze, expecting rage, but his stomach twisted when he saw how wide her eyes were. She was terrified, he realized.

He holstered his rifle back into its spot on his shoulder and moved closer to the two women. If this feeling was as terrifying to Shepard as it was to him, then he would do what he could to share Liara's pain in this moment.

He realized he had no idea what to do, though. He realized that Shepard's hands were smoothing a circle on the back of Liara's neck, and he reached out towards her shoulder. He met Shepard's eyes, and knew there was something he should understand from the look she was giving him, something bright and positive, but she was too human for him to entirely trust what he thought he saw.

So instead of think any harder about what steady, strong thing her eyes were trying to tell him, he grasped Liara's shoulders and tried to think what he would want to hear if he were in her situation.

"You have to survive, Liara. And that's what you did." She stiffened, her breath caught, but he got the impression that he had gotten her attention somehow. Shepard smiled slightly, the faintest of upward twists to her lips, she nodded at him, those strange white-rimmed eyes still glued to his. She ran her two many-fingered hands over Liara's head, brought her blue face up to stare into her own.

"Surviving is hard. Every day it is hard." Liara's blue head nodded slightly at Shepard's words.

"Every day." She echoed. Garrus tightened his hands on the asari's narrow shoulders. He could feel her breath even out beneath his hands. Could feel each inhale and exhale come slower and smoother now.

"But you're not alone, okay?" Liara nodded. "We're a team. I'm here. I'm right here" Her eyes locked back onto his over the top of Liara's head. "Garrus is here. We're all here for each other now." And as Shepard pressed those strange fleshy lips of hers against Liara's head, the plates on the back of his neck tingled with a feeling he knew he should be able to place. "And your mother will stay with you exactly as you want to remember her."

Liara nodded. Garrus felt the room…lighten, somehow. The sorrow was still there, but he no longer felt the need to set up a keening cry to sympathize with the pain he sensed. There was a hope, a tangible hope that together they could do the impossible. He was no longer an intruder, he realized. With this odd, ramshackle group of individuals from across the galaxy, he was finally part of something that needed him.

As Liara turned to him and a cool blue hand took one of his own, he pulled his mandibles in tight in the most encouraging grin he could muster. 

"Thank you." Her eyes still had tears in them, and her voice didn't sound like it usually did, but Liara was smiling at him, and Shepard was too, and as unsure as he was that he had done anything, as they stepped out of the room and slowly made their way back to the tram and out of the base, Shepard's hand leaving Liara's and finding its way into his was a victory he never realized he would need.


End file.

Mass Effect, Friendship, Hurt-Comfort