with you, regardless

Take Garrus’ Saleon case as an example. He was in favor of shooting down the getaway spacecraft not because he didn’t care at all about the hostages but because he knew they would be tortured for the rest of their lives and used to make more organs/profit for Saleon, and he considered ending Saleon’s operations permanently to have more moral weight in this situation, i.e. he considered the hostages casualties already and wanted to keep the number from rising further. Looking into the future at his end objective rather than getting bogged down by the complexities of the immediate, rather like the sniper that he is. One shot, one kill. (There’s other things at play here too, like pride, but that’s not what this is about right now.)

Shepard, by contrast, would not consider the hostages casualties until they’re already dead, and it would matter to her who the person was who pulled the trigger on them, herself or Saleon. She would share Garrus’ end objective, but she’d be more concerned with how she’s getting there, about the complexities that Garrus is choosing to look past. But she’s gotten her hands dirty before, and is capable of making that choice. It just takes her longer to make it because she has to muddle through it, and that makes her a little less effective in that moment because she is slower to decide, but her choice will be more evenly considered. (She would not shoot the spacecraft — 70% because of danger to other ships/civilians, 30% because of the hostages. But if Saleon had been a greater threat to the overall galaxy than he was, that might have shifted in his disfavor.)

But the most important thing in this scenario isn’t who would choose what, but rather that neither of them would dismiss the other’s assessment out of hand. That’s the core of their moral dynamic for me: they don’t always agree, but they always respect the other. You won’t have Shep Shep lecturing Garrus about what’s right and what’s wrong. At most, she’d ask him some questions to help him think things through from another perspective — and the thing is, he does the same thing for her. Canonically, all the time. Let her work through her moral conundrums with him as a sounding board. They don’t need to have the same approach. They just need to trust in the other’s integrity and competence, trust that they share the same end goal. 

Their compasses are pointing in the same direction, and depending on the situation, the best approach to a problem is not always the paragon one. They will guide each other through these difficulties, open up new perspectives for each other, grow as people alongside each other in a way that they couldn’t if they always agreed on everything.

Garrus is passionate, driven, an idealist at his core. Everything he does is in pursuit of his ideal of justice, but he tries to take the quickest route towards it, he’s impatient, and that’s not always going to end well or yield him the results he seeks. 

Shepard is also driven, but she’s somewhat less of an idealist, ironically. She is very concerned with responsibility, and she places great value in understanding the bigger picture before making a move, though her job doesn’t always grant her that. She is in the Alliance not because she’s burning for it but because she feels indebted to it as her ticket off Earth and out of her previous life, and she wants to do a good job and fulfill her obligation. It’s a contract to her, but one she doesn’t mind. 

The reapers bring their trajectories together.

Garrus, desperate to make a difference in the most radical way he can, will run aground through his attempts to fight The Concept Of Injustice only to find focus and purpose again helping Shepard take down a more tangible enemy.

Shepard will trade her simple sense of obligation to the Alliance for a sense of obligation to every living being in the galaxy, which is way less pragmatic and will bring her dangerously close to running aground herself — her ‘bigger picture’ ideal expands so much, she can barely see the outlines of it.