Good Days

Shepard has probably used more than her share of good luck, and after coming back from the dead, she doesn't really have the right to complain about the fairness of the universe. Still, she thinks it's very unfair that after all these years, no one's found a cure for Corpalis Syndrome. After all they've been through—after saving the galaxy repeatedly, and narrowly avoiding death more times than she can count—it seems hopelessly unjust that Garrus has to go through this, and that the best she can do is go through it with him.

She knows she doesn't have to. Sometimes the shadow of the thought that she could leave crosses her mind. She banishes it, crushes it down into nothing, grinds it under her boot; after everything, she'll be damned if she betrays him and lets him down.

She'd never actually met his mother, and she didn't think too much about the disease that had killed her until years later, when he was uncharacteristically absent-minded one day. She saw that momentary vagueness in his eyes, usually so sharp and focused, and felt a sudden chill. She didn't say anything, but she called Solana at her first opportunity.

"They still don't know what causes it, but it does run in families sometimes," Solana told her. "I told him to get tested for risk factors a while ago."

Shepard said, "If he did, he didn't tell me." Neither of them is surprised. This is the man who didn't tell his nearest kin about his near-fatal encounter with a gunship because he "didn't want them to worry."

"I haven't kept up with the latest research since mother died," said Solana, "but I'll send you what I know. Symptoms to look out for. There might be better treatments now."

Shepard got the files and read about what to expect. Occasional lapses of memory, becoming more severe and more sustained over time. Loss of fine motor control. Muscle spasms. She still didn't say anything, until the day weeks later when he missed a shot, badly. Garrus, of the steady hands and laser-like focus. It was only target practice, at least, not a real firefight, nobody's life on the line. But that was the day she knew she had to say something.

"You're supposed to tell me when you have a problem," she said, trying to keep the note of accusation out of her voice, and handed him the data Solana had sent her.

He took one look at the datapad and sighed. "I didn't think waiting for something to happen would do you much good."

"So you decided you'd rather wait for it alone?" She took his hands in hers. "You didn't have to do that. We're partners, remember?"

Shepard called some contacts, tracked down a salarian doctor who was on top of the latest research (who turned out to be a nephew of a nephew of Mordin Solus), quietly kicked some funding into the most promising angles (she had plenty of personal resources, after all), and dragged Garrus in for a consult and a treatment plan. They found some medications that could alleviate the symptoms and slow their progression, so he was able to continue in the field, for a while. She figures that probably bought them another decade before things started getting markedly worse. He knew it was coming; she didn't have to tell him to step back from field work before someone got hurt. He made that call himself. He turned to operational strategy and tactics and tech work. They could have both retired at that point (surely they've earned it), but neither of them has ever done well, being idle, and the galaxy still needed their skills. He kept up with that kind of work for a lot longer than anyone thought was possible. EDI has helped a lot. The infinitely patient AI doesn't mind refreshing his memory as many times as necessary and doesn't get distressed by his forgetfulness the way organic minds do, the way Shepard sometimes does.

But eventually that became too much for him, too.

There are good days and bad days.

On bad days, there are great gaping holes in his memory, and he thinks he's on Omega, or working for C-Sec, or has been abducted. On those days, he doesn't recognize their house and freaks out when he can't find his rifle. (Shepard had to remove all the weapons from the house when this started happening. She doesn't like it, but she simply can't cope with the possibility that he'll hurt himself or someone else. At least she's still got biotics.) On bad days, he's paranoid and treats visitors or assistants as enemies.

But even on bad days, he always recognizes her. Depending on when he is in his personal memory confusion, he calls her by her first name, or Shepard, or Commander, but he always sounds relieved when she appears, relaxes in her presence, trusts her when she says everything's all right, even if he still doesn't know where he is or why her hair has turned silver.

It's like he imprinted on her, at some point. She doesn't know when. Was it that day on the top of the Presidium? On Menae? Or was it when they fled from the Collector Base, when she wasn't sure she'd make that jump to the Normandy, until he leaned perilously far out of the airlock to catch her and pull her in? Was it the night before? Was it when she ran across that bridge on Omega, not knowing who was waiting for her? Or was it that very first time, when she was in the Citadel Tower gawking like the backwater hayseed kid she was, and found her eyes drawn to the spectacle of two turians arguing at the top of the steps?

On the bad days, she spends a lot of time reassuring him and it takes a while to get him settled down and convince him that it's okay to go to sleep. That she'll stay alert and wake him for the next watch. Once she's done that, she has a lot of nervous energy to burn off. It helps to talk to someone, preferably someone who's known them both for a while.

Wrex is completely useless, though. The old krogan doesn't deal well with infirmity. He's seen comrades die before, but quickly and violently, not this slow decline. It makes him gruffer and meaner than usual, which is not what she needs after spending hours reminding a confused turian that no one has kidnapped them.

Sometimes she talks to Liara, but the shadow of their former relationship still lies between them. Besides, Liara looks almost exactly as she did fifty years ago, while the face in Shepard's mirror is clearly marked by age, and that makes Shepard uncomfortable.

Joker is a welcome guest, when she can track him down; he hears her out and makes her laugh, without showering her with sympathy that makes her want to cry.

Tali is her favorite call, though. She's never quite gotten used to seeing Tali's face over the vidlink, instead of her tinted mask, but the voice is the same as always. She's got plenty of experience dealing with illness, and she's supportive and practical and funny all at once.

On good days, Garrus usually wakes up first and makes some wisecrack so she knows where he's at. They lounge in the sun, and he dabbles with paints, and she putters in the garden. It's nice to make things grow instead of shooting them full of holes. It's an existence that would have seemed intolerably boring when she was young, but now it feels like a well-earned reward.

On good days, they call the kids up on the vidlink, so they can have more time with him, too. They're scattered around the galaxy now, and travel takes longer than it used to, so they don't get to visit very often. Zelyna's on Palaven, rocketing through a career as a detective that would have made her turian grandfather proud. Emily's a surgeon specializing in xenomedicine. The girls both know their dad's condition is worse than Shepard lets on and call every few days to check in, too. Shepard still thinks of them as girls, their adopted daughters, turian and human, even though now they're confident women in their full strength, who have come a long way from the terrified refugees they once were. Then there's the dozen or so krogan fosterlings. Grunt was really the first of them, Shepard supposes, but then Wrex and Bakara kept sending more. The smart ones, he told them, the ones he had high hopes for, and they are builders, not just fighters: engineers and architects and so much more.

Today is a good day, after several bad ones in a row. He notices that she looks tired and drawn, but she laughs it off. They go for a walk and make their calls. She does a bit of work in the house and then finds him outside, gazing out over the garden. When she sits down beside him, he gives her a look that's shaded with discomfort.

"You don't have to do this," he says. "I know taking care of me has to be hard on you. You don't owe me anything."

When he says things like that, she kind of wants to punch him. After all these years, after getting every accolade the galactic community can think of, sometimes he still acts like he doesn't matter. I owe you everything, she thinks. How many times have you pulled me out of the fire? You kept me sane when everybody treated me like a lunatic, and Cerberus wanted to control me and surround me with hand-picked psychotics. She doesn't say it. Instead, she says, "Don't think I'm being all noble and self-sacrificing here. I'm doing this purely for selfish reasons."

"Really," he says, dry and skeptical.

"Yeah." She reaches for him and locks their fingers together, three against five. "I just want to spend more time with you."

"Fifty years, and you haven't gotten enough yet, hm?"

"It's never enough," she says, leaning against his shoulder. It's true. She's not here because she owes him anything, but because she has no concept of enough that has Garrus attached to it.

He sighs and tilts his head against hers. "Okay, then."

Today, like on most good days, they make love, slow and easy, not with the excitement of being young and healthy and figuring each other out, but with the comfort and familiarity of experience, of knowing exactly how to please each other. She still comes, gasping, as she has thousands of times before, and he still shudders in her arms. They may be alien to each other, but they've always fit each other. They curl up together. She's not sure she could even go to sleep any more without the warmth of his body against hers. They whisper good night to each other, and she wonders whether tomorrow will be a good day or a bad one, and still breathes a prayer to whoever's let them live this long that it won't be their last.

Author's Note: I started writing this well before ME3 came out, so this story mostly ignores the game ending. I just couldn't quite shake the idea of the two of them growing old together and dealing with a problem that couldn't simply be shot. Thanks to Smehur for beta-reading and suggesting the title; I made a few more revisions after getting the file back, so any problems are mine.