42 for malena & garry? you didn’t ask but i’m asking <3
ty beloved this did something lethal to my psyche and I’m swan-diving into the goofypool now !!
42. savior | mass effect. malena shepard & garrus vakarian. 551 words. [prompts]
It takes approximately two seconds for Garrus to realize the mission has gone from a simple in-and-out deal to downright messy as a stray shot lands far too close to his feet. He ducks into cover beside Malena and the Cerberus officer, Lawson, waiting only a breath or two before surveying the situation with his rifle.
Too many enemies still on the ground. An unknown somewhere up high with sights on their position. Yeah, real messy.
“Commander, we need to find a way to take out their sniper,” Lawson says.
Malena doesn’t answer. Garrus risks a glance away from his rifle to his right, finding her braced with gauntlets on the barricade next to him as she gazes at the haphazard formation in the distance, her piercing eyes narrowed. Beside her, Lawson stares at the side of her head with her brow pinched in what he’s quickly come to recognize on humans as a cross between incredulity and impatience.
“Shepard?” Lawson presses.
“I heard you.” Malena watches for a moment longer before she dips below cover again, checking her omnitool for what looks like the status of her shields, and nods. And then she turns to him. “Garrus, get ready.”
Lawson frowns, clearly not happy with the runaround for whatever she has planned, but she doesn’t have a chance to argue before Malena vaults over the top of the barricade. Garrus peers through his sights again as the blue flare of her charges ahead in a biotic impact, her shotgun igniting while she weaves. Above her, he spots the bright flash of the sniper taking the obvious shot.
It hits Malena square in her chest. She curses over the comm as she’s flung clear off her feet, slamming to the ground and skidding a few feet back, and her shields go down. Garrus ignores the all too familiar rush of unadulterated fear flooding his system to hold steady on the source of the flash.
He draws in a breath, talon curling around the trigger on exhale.
The other sniper tumbles out of his perch at the same time as Lawson explodes over the barricade with a blast that knocks the remaining enemies away from the commander, and he picks those stragglers off as well, clearing the field so she can haul a groaning Malena upright and check her for injury. He picks up his rifle and moves out once he sees her standing and breathing, if a little ragged for wear.
“I have to say, Mal, that was crazy, even by your standards,” Garrus teases as he sidles up to her, briefly eyeing the way Lawson fusses over his old friend despite the attempts to wave her off. “You’re as lucky as you are stubborn.”
Malena grins up at him, knocking her fist against his armored shoulder. “I don’t need luck, Garrus. You had my back.”
A scratchy laugh huffs out of him, but the absolute certainty in the way she says it nails him in place. As if the last two years were nothing and they fit back together as a team as seamlessly as always. As if he hadn’t lost her because no one could save her back then, too. But after everything, he refuses to take her faith in him lightly.
“Heh. Just like old times.”
