Promises are a hard thing to keep when you have to summon all your will just to rise in the mornings. When everyone you meet is filled with hope and dreams of the future but your heart feels as if it never resumed beating, even eating becomes a chore. As your friends say their goodbyes with hesitant voices and give you worried glances over their shoulders, you wonder if they know that you'd been hoping they'd leave ever since they first arrived. The sunsets that you once thought to be the most beautiful sight in the world become jagged knives that tear into your heart when you remember who shared with you your first one. Even the simple act of breathing fresh air leaves a tightness in your chest as you recall the scent of the only man you've ever loved. The only one you'll ever love.

But you can bear it. At least as long as it takes you to keep your promise.. as best you can. After all, you promised you'd build it... not that you'd live in it without him. Not when you realized it would be a house, but never a home. Not when every day would be a reminder that he would have built it himself, bearing the arid heat and the ache of his muscles while he smiled at you with love in his eyes. You know he swore to himself that he'd build you a home. It had been obvious when he studied the landscape carefully with searching eyes while you walked hand in hand after the battle. But did he qualify it with 'if I survive'? Or was he as determined as he'd always been, giving demands to the universe itself that he be allowed to live so he could keep his promise? The first time he died, you learned to smile again at the memories of his stubborn nature, even if tears filled your eyes while you thought of him. Your heart was broken, but anything that's broken can be repaired, or so one of the basic tenets of your people goes. And it was. But how do you fix something that's shattered into dust and blew away into the cosmos?

You don't. You can't. Even six months later, when you're sitting outside your house after you finally completed it, you can't smile. You've been sleeping in a secluded grotto a kilometer away for half a year; there hasn't been a single night that you fell asleep inside walls that should have been a comfort instead of a prison for your wounded soul. His mother couldn't sleep inside, either. When she spent two weeks with you, silent work was only broken by the exchange of stories about the lost man you both cherished, spoken practically in whispers while you stared off over the sea at the horizon. She'd lost her own love sixteen years ago, along with her daughter, and shared the loss of her son with you three years ago. Neither of you imagined that you would both had to endure it a second time. You understood how the other felt, and comfort was never offered. She knew there was none to be given, and so did you. You haven't heard from her since she left. Perhaps she returned to her old home and ended her mortal journey beside the graves of her family. Perhaps she's keeping her own promises, drifting through the stars to fulfill her oaths of service. Either way, you have a decision of your own to make.

And you do, finally, as the sun sets, where an unlikely friend made the ultimate sacrifice for his people, so like the people that created his own. Before, you might have felt shame as you stared down at the waves that crash against the rocks below. But now, shame seems a pointless thing when there's no heart left to feel it. You kept your promise. That was all you could do.

You begged him to come back to you while you desperately reached for him, but the sorrow in his eyes revealed the truth: he couldn't make that promise. Somehow, he knew. And so he left you to weep bitter tears on the bed you'd shared together before that fateful day, when he'd made a promise that he could keep: that he would always love you. So you gaze at the long drop and clutch his dog tags to your breast while you remember. You remember how they felt beneath your suit, pressed over your heart, a tangible reminder of his promise. You wonder whether or not you'll feel anything when you hit the rocks after such a long drop. You wonder if he'll be waiting for you.

You finally smile, then. Of course he'll be waiting. You kept your promise. He'll keep his.

Garrus let the hand holding Tali's journal fall to his side while he stared down at the waves below, whispering his prayer to the spirits into the mournful wind.

Author's note:

Just something that flowed out months ago, much like Victory Beard but with a very different theme. Considering how difficult it is for me to feel satisfied with anything under twenty thousand words, I probably shouldn't post it, but I feel like trying out something new.