Movie fix-it, mostly Garcy, some Flynn&Jessica bonding, minor Wyatt/Jessica and Rufus/Jiya. See Ao3 for notes and warnings.

Chapter 1: All my love.

“To scout the mill,” Wyatt repeats, for what must be the millionth time. He’s pacing around like a caged animal, shooting annoyed looks at the horizon every two seconds, as if hoping that Flynn will just appear faster if he keeps looking.

“Maybe something happened,” Jiya suggests, her fingers drumming against the Lifeboat, her tone conciliatory. “He wouldn’t just bail on us to move permanently to 1848, and the sleeper is already taken care of—”

“Oh, I sure hope something happened,” Wyatt mutters, exhaling loudly in annoyance, his arms crossed tightly as he checks once again if anyone is coming.

Lucy is beginning to get annoyed by him: she agrees with Jiya, if Flynn still hasn’t come back something must have happened, and who is it that let him ride ahead in the first place? Right, Wyatt.

And his complaints are giving her an headache.

And he has been uncomfortably staring at her the whole trip. It’s suffocating.

(He told her he loves her, and she hates him for giving her something that should make her so happy only after weeks and weeks of heartache, only after Jessica hung him out to dry.)

She hides her hands in her pockets with a small sigh, and it’s then that her fingers touch a piece of paper that definitely wasn’t there before.

Frowning, she gets it out, and her stomach twists on itself as soon as she recognizes Flynn’s handwriting. A mysterious message in her pocket, Flynn nowhere to be seen— she doesn’t like this already.

My dear Lucy, if you're reading this, I guess I didn't make it back—

One often forgot how thin Garrus was until he took off the armor. What was left was a lithe Turian, somewhat sharply dressed for the occasion, an arm in Tali’s as they took their places at the Darkstar Lounge. 

There was still some armor on him, anyway; Turians tended to be paranoid, Garrus Vakarian moreso than most. It didn’t stop him from ordering them a round of drinks-- a virtual spread of rainbow-colored shots ranging down the table between them. A brow plate raised as Garrus leaned in towards her.

[Read from the beginning here]

Chapter 2: Chinatown, 1888.

This probably isn’t the smartest plan he’s ever come up with.

In his defence, though, this trip was a little time sensitive: 1888 isn’t going anywhere, but who knows when he’ll have another chance to steal the Lifeboat like that, and there’s a good chance that if he hadn’t done this now the others would have had the time to enact some stupidly risky plan involving four idiots travelling back on their own timeline for no other reason other than wanting to be noble.

The most logical thing to do is sending just one idiot, really.

He did think about bringing Wyatt along, because an extra gun never hurts, especially when his right shoulder is still all messed up, but he didn’t like the idea of potentially leaving Lucy and Jiya alone in 1848, and if Wyatt has a kid on the way, Garcia isn’t going to be the son of a bitch responsible for orphaning them.

Which is why he didn’t have much of a choice.

He manages to sneak up on Emma, just in time to notice that she’s taking aim at what she can only assume is Rufus.

Without much time to think, he fires, only his head chooses that exact moment to send a sudden flash of pain cutting through his skull: he still manages to take decent aim, he believes, but it’s no headshot.

Still, when he manages to focus his eyes on Emma he sees her on the ground, and although the urge to fire again and again until she’s stopped moving is awfully strong, he decides to turn right on his heels to optimize his chances at getting back to the Lifeboat: if he doesn’t get it back, the others will have to get creative to find a way out of 1848, and he’d rather avoid them attempting to steal the Mothership just because he wanted to do a thorough job with Emma. What matters is that he stopped her from killing Rufus, that was the goal.

He was kind of hoping that Jessica would stay behind to try and save Emma’s life, or that she’d be out of the picture for whatever reason – because sometimes he allows himself to be naïve enough to hope that the universe won’t make things particularly hard for himfor a change –, but a shot and a burning pain in his leg makes him lose his footing, putting a stop to his escape.

He’s quick to pull himself back on his feet, trying to relegate the pain to the back of his mind, using a wall for support while his other hand rises the gun, and upon turning around he finds Jessica with her weapon pointed right at his head and a stone-cold expression on her face.

“Put it down,” she orders, slowly.

[Read from the beginning here] 

Chapter 3: End of the tunnel.

“He’s why I ended up coming to you guys,” Jessica explains, everyone else pretty much surrounding her.

“Is he?” Denise echoes, with blatant scepticism. “That’s weird, because you didn’t mention him when you told me what you swore up and down was the truth.”

“That’s because it would have made no sense to you back then,” Jessica replies, crossing her arms tightly and offering a little shrug. Wyatt is hovering around her, staring at her like she’s some kind of miracle, and Lucy is stupid enough that she manages to feel a little disappointed. Not surprised, not really, just—just disappointed.

“Was any of what you said true?” Denise insists, her face a mask of cold, controlled anger that makes Lucy shudder.

“Everything was true,” Jessica stresses. “I just left out how Flynn was involved, that’s all.”

“What happened to him, then?” Lucy intervenes, her voice surprisingly steady. She couldn’t care less about what Jessica said or didn’t say to justify yet another change of loyalties, she only wants to know how the hell they can fix this mess and bring things back to the way they should be.

Right now, she’s surrounded by family, yet she’s feeling impossibly alone.

Jessica turns to her, her expression irritatingly benevolent. She’s always been friendly with her, back when she still lived in the bunker. Lucy now supposes that it was a manipulation, because being manipulative as hell seems to be a requirement to be admitted into Rittenhouse, but back then a part of her pettily wished to be given a reason to dislike her.

“He shot Emma,” Jessica explains, gently. “She sent me after him, and he explained— he explained that he was traveling on his own timeline to save Rufus, and that he had to get back to the Lifeboat or Wyatt and the rest of you would be stuck in 1848.”

“So?” Lucy prompts, because none of this explains anything yet.

It had maybe taken too long for Garrus to finally go unconscious from his injuries, but he certainly seemed hell-bent on resting once he was out. Perhaps this was his body’s way of finally forcing him to catch up on all the sleep he’d lost over the last few months. Maybe his body was finally giving out.

It looked like it, from how utterly frail the Turian seemed, stripped of his armor and still battered from the last bout in the Collector’s base. Eventually Doctor Chakwas was able to look him over, patching the last few injuries Tali had missed. But still, Garrus wasn’t waking up.

He didn’t seem to want to wake until well after he was transferred somewhere with better tech; which happened to be on the Citadel, thankfully where Shepard was reporting in with the rest of the Normandy.

@migrantmechanic

Garrus wasn’t entirely expecting his testimony to weigh anything, and unfortunately enough neither was Tali. They were just thankful that they got back to the Citadel in enough time to get anything done.

It was all uncomfortably short; they finished their prepared written words, were asked a few questions, and then were asked to leave. The recordings were sent off, and would hopefully mean something.

And after waiting in the presidium for a few hours... they had an answer.

House arrest, back on Earth, for Commander Shepard. She was grounded now, her wings clipped... but she was alive, and not in prison. Garrus couldn’t have expected any better than that, and in fact had anticipated far worse. 

@vakarianblues

Garrus had hoped that meeting his father again would go well, but he knew deep in his heart that it wouldn’t. Things hadn’t gone well with Castis since he left C-Sec, and even before then it had been uncomfortably tense when he nearly joined the Spectres. Resentment was part of the game, as was Castis’ need to be controlling. 

What in the hell were you doing with Cerberus? Saving humans? And before that, why were you on Omega? What happened to your face?

To his credit, Garrus had remained calm during the exchange, keeping his sentences short and his posture upright as his father always requested. He didn’t lose his cool once... not until it became about Shepard. Not until the accusations flew about why Garrus had thrown his lot in with Cerberus, and why Shepard was now on house arrest back on Earth.

That was when Garrus had excused himself to head out back.

@blissfcl

Garrus Vakarian was no longer working for C-Sec, and hadn’t been for years now. He’d figured after a dishonorable and swift exit, they wouldn’t exactly like when he visited.

And yet here he was, temporarily signed on as a “consultant,” which was a glorified way of saying ‘local hero who knows how to handle things better than the average officer.’ It’s about time somebody thought so.

And honestly, Garrus was just finding something to do while he waited for Palaven command to give him something worth more than petty crimes like drunken, disorderly conduct at Afterlife-- which was, coincidentally, exactly what he was called for.

Better than nothing, anyway. 

The thrumming music was pleasantly familiar, for all that it elicited some bittersweet memories.