ᴀᴜɢᴍᴇɴᴛᴇᴅ ɪᴄᴀʀᴜs

“Pride isn’t something I showboat around people I don’t know.”

“I find it can give the wrong impression.”

He felt stupid for asking a kid. Really, he did. But when he saw her dart past him he held up his hand, as if to flag her down. 

[ Basic Angst Starters ] 

Doubt was a persons worst enemy, self doubt was often crippling to a point where it prevented action. That much was certain. 

Garrus could tell that his words had a bigger impact on Adam that he initially anticipated; he wasn’t going to pry and invade his privacy, some things were better left untold, and something just told him that the newly met man carried countless buggage with him. Not that he wasn’t used to that, he respected his silence.

“It was. But you learn to live with it. With the hellish missions that I agreed to take, I lost people, but also saved countless others. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m proud of what I accomplished, the life I lead was so much better that the ones my kind would have picked for me”, Garrus continued as he observed Adam, picking one of the boxes with rice and bringing it up to meet his eyes. “So you drench everything in sauce?”

“Allowing others to dictate your life isn’t living, it’s following.” Adam spoke from experience, and with empathy directed at his alien companion. He too had strayed from the path he was meant to walk, but he was resentful for his choices - he wasn’t as glad and as proud as Garrus was, unfortunately. 

Tony considered what Adam told him for a moment; sure, he hated to think that there was a breach at his security, and he would hate it even more if he had to ask for someone else’s advise.

“You said that you worked at security before, right? Fine, I’ll hear what your suggestions on upping the security of this place.”

Adam simply returned to the chair he was sat in before, just by the work bench with his arm resting on the steel desk, fingers tapping in a soft rhythm one after the other. 

Tony clearly got the bait, leaning closer and reading over Adam’s shoulder, eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration. He hated to be proven wrong, all his friends knew that, and he wasn’t going to let the first guy that walked inside his lab with his cool augmentations better him in anything, let alone his own systems. 

“I personally programmed and bug tested everything in this Mansion. Are you saying that there’s a problem with what exactly?”

“I’m saying that it’s easily hacked... You should bulk up security.” He repeated, turning over to Tony and shrugging nonchalantly. 

“I never claimed to be full of them.”

“You strike me as the type that seems proud of them, regardless.” 

“So we have that in common then”, he nodded, acknowledging his equal when he was facing one. He didn’t know much about Adam, if anything at all, but he was sure that he came from a world that had seen Hell for sure. He didn’t want to ask too many questions, and of course, it would hard to explain how the Reapers came to be and what they did to his home and so many other planets, but he felt a connection there. He understood him, and it could have been due to the nature the past occupation’s of them both. Garrus certainly didn’t want to dwell on that, even though it was so interesting to him to find out more about that world that Adam came from.

There it was. Of course Adam was interested, he was sure that, by that point, he had lost so many people in his life, in most likely the most painful ways.

“I don’t know”, he replied, disappointed that he didn’t have a proper explanation. “All I know is that… people that I thought that were gone forever, that I saw being left for dead with my own eyes, are back here. And that alternative realities are a thing. You could meet someone from your world, but not being exactly who they are.”

He waved at the woman behind the counter, following Adam outside and looking forward to trying the new, exotic food.

Adam fell deep into thought. His mind circled the prospect of those he loved and cared for being alive, along with those he hated and feared. It was something that shook his core, but also filled it with hope. Hope was a surreal and distant notion, one he hadn’t embraced for years. It felt foreign.