#waffles writes

Shepard watched as Jarl Anderson lowered his torch, setting the brittle branches at the base of the pyre aflame. The scent of pitch and smoke filled her nostrils, the loud crack of timber breaking the stillness of the gathered group of watchers. They stood near enough to feel the heat of the fire on their faces as it consumed the wooden structure, red tongued flames licking at the platform and the shrouded form that lay atop it. 

“He’s in Valhalla, now,” she heard Kaidan murmur. “We should all be so lucky to die in glorious battle.”

Shepard frowned. Jenkins had only been raised to the berserkers the year prior. He had never voyaged to the havens. This was to be his first raid along the Widow Sea’s frontier. He had known the risks, as did all who ventured here. Still, his death sat like a heavy stone in the pit of Shepard’s stomach.

At least he didn’t have a soulmate tethered to his spirit. There’s no one feeling hollowed out with inconsolable grief back home. The reasoning did little to staunch her guilt; if anything it only made it worse since it caused her to feel grateful she didn’t have a soulmate, either. 

Shepard sighed. She was the berserker commander. Jenkins was her responsibility. She wasn’t a wet nurse, but she ought to have kept an eye on him; at least admonished him to stay out of the trees. The silver-barked forests in this region were deadly. Old enemies with eagle eyes and rapier-like claws favored the cover the thick woods offered. 

She turned away from the funerary pyre and the low, solemn chanting that had begun as fire swallowed Jenkins mortal body. Nobody stopped her as she strode away from the conflagration, back toward the longboats. She needed a moment alone with her thoughts without guilt crowding in on her.

 The turians know we’re here—they must have spied us well before we made landfall though bleed me if I know how. Shepard found herself walking past where the dragon-headed longships had been pulled up onto the beach, lost in consideration. We outnumber them, though they have the advantage of knowing the terrain. They also have at least one skilled archer among them, even though that’s not who sent Jenkins off to Odin. 

No, a turian swordsman had done Jenkins in, and Shepard had returned the favor with her axe. It was small comfort. Humans and turians had battled for the land and wealth along the Citadel’s coast for time immemorial. There was talk of an asari negotiated peace treaty, but so far that’s all it was. Talk. Shepard wagered that nothing would come from those talks in her lifetime. And who knows how long that’ll be if we stay here?

Gravel crunched under her boots in the lengthening shadows of twilight. Shepard rounded a gentle curve in the land and came to stand on a dead tree, facing the North. The wind that whipped her fiery red hair about her face was warmer than back home. Then again, they were a long way from home, now.

She watched the dying light upon the waves, the ocean glittering like crushed diamonds. It would be dark soon. They’d need to make camp and plot their next course. Did they take the river deeper inland, as was the original plan? Or did they double back, take their chances in krogan territory where turians didn’t dare venture.

Against the crash of the breakers, Shepard missed the sound of a bowstring drawing taut. It was something else, some inexplicable tug at her heart, a susurration of unheard whispers in her ear, that caused her to suddenly duck and roll, the hidden knives she kept about her person flying into her hands. 

There was a loud thawk, as a barbed arrow embedded itself into the driftwood where she’d been standing. 

She flung a knife, gratified to hear the sound of a large body diving to the sand. She charged before the archer could restring his bow, tackling him to the ground with a savage roar. 

Eyes bluer than the center of a flame stared up at her from within a silver plated face, painted with the bold cobalt markings of Clan Vakarian. The turian’s crest of horns was cushioned by a clump of dried seaweed, tiny insects furiously buzzing about his head at the invasion. 

He flared his mandibles, exposing long, sharp, silver teeth. His jaw dropped as he took in his soon-to-be killer. Shepard sat astride his narrow waist, holding her second knife above his ridged nose, poised to strike. 

Something in those burning eyes softened. “You’re beautiful.” The rumbling subharmoinics seemed to embrace her, a vocal hug to reinforce the sincerity of his words. 

Shepard sucked in a deep breath. For the first time in years, ridiculously, tears pricked the corners of her eyes. “Shut up!” She shook her head as if to dislodge his words. “I hate you!”

Her hand holding the knife quivered. In the crystalline depths of his alien eyes, she saw herself reflected back, lips pulled back in a vicious snarl, red hair framing her face. The embodiment of a valkyrie and harbinger of death. Except, I don’t want to kill him, she realized. 

“I wasn’t trying to hit you,” the turian murmured. “If I had been, you’d already be dead. I hadn’t realized you were . . . you.” He suffused the word with a mix of awe and wonder that left Shepard’s chest feeling tight. 

With a cry born as much from confusion as frustration, Shepard rolled off him. She leaped to her feet, kicking a clump of sand. “Leave,” she commanded, wiping at her treacherous eyes. 

The turian slowly rose to his degi-grade feet. Sharp claws extended from the open toes of his boots. “What if I want to stay?”

Shepard glared at him. “Why should you stay? After what your clan did to our landing party this morning and us to you, shouldn’t you be regrouping?”

Why in the frozen hells was she crying? What was it about this turian of all people that had her feeling vulnerable as a new babe? She should kill him—he’d be back tonight with more men and slit her throat in her sleep. A small voice she couldn’t name told her that he wouldn’t do that. Not him. Not ever. 

“My name is Garrus,” the turian replied instead. “There are those who call me Archangel, but . . . it’s just Garrus, for you.” 

Shepard forced herself to look at him. Really look at him. He was tall and lean, as most turians were, and covered in metallic looking plates. He wore a deep blue tabard with the Vakarian family crest stitched out in thread-of-gold across his chest. A brown leather belt with well-made leggings and fine boots completed his attire. Not some common foot soldier or hunter turned mercenary, Shepard mused. Her eyes settled on the longbow laying at Garrus’ feet. It was nearly as tall as he was and looked like it was made of black yew wood. An expensive weapon. One only someone with a high tier could afford. 

Shepard’s eyes went wide as she realized who Garrus must be. “You’re the Primarch’s son.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement, a hand moving to rub the back of his neck. Shepard was no expert on turian expressions but she’d swear Garrus looked embarrassed. 

Bright blue eyes met hers. “You seem to know me and my lineage, yet I confess, I have yet to learn your name.”

Shepard hesitated a moment before discarding any notion of subterfuge. What was the point? He could have killed her and hadn’t. She could have killed him and didn’t. Besides all that, she wanted to know him. “Commander Jane Shepard,” she said. “You can call me Shepard.”

Garrus extended his hand in a human gesture of greeting. “A pleasure to meet you, Shepard.” 

Shepard slipped her smaller hand into his. It was like being struck by lightning. There was a jolt, a suffusion of warmth flooding her veins, an invisible push in his direction. They collided at the same time, Garrus likewise shoved by an unseen force. 

She grasped onto his cowl, feeling like she were trapped in an undertow, liable to be swept away in the exultant rush of emotions, apt to drown in the depths of a feeling humanity blithely called ‘soulmates.’ Her skin tingled and she was hyper aware of Garrus’ proximity; the rough calluses of his three-fingered hands and prick of talons through her tunic where he held her waist. His pupils dilating and eclipsing the blue of his irises while his subvocals stuttered and a deep, percussive purr sundered in his chest. 

Shepard exhaled. “Oh.” 

Garrus lifted a shaky hand to gently brush away an errant lock of hair. “It is you,” he whispered, reverent. “You feel it too?”

She gazed up at him, feeling more a maiden than seasoned berserker. Her mouth parted to answer—

“Commander!”

Shepard pulled herself free from the whirlpool of Garrus’ presence to peer into the murky distance. “The others are looking for me,” she muttered. How long had she been gone? Sudden fear squeezed her heart as she considered what would happen if Garrus were discovered. She gave him a forceful shove. “They mustn’t see you. Go! Hurry!”

Garrus moved as though in a daze, stooping to retrieve his bow and taking a few tentative steps backward. “I’ll find you,” he swore. “I’ll come back for you, my dea.” 

Before Shepard could respond he was sprinting; a glimmer of lancing starlight through the gloam, a shape half-seen on the edge of the forest. We’ll find each other, she promised herself, even as Kaidan and Ashley came into view, helmets donned and axes at hand. What joke of the gods is it that my other half should be an ancestral foe, on ground my kin intend to soak in blue blood?

She turned towards her comrades, trying to shake off the chill that had settled over her like heavy snow with Garrus’ departure. The others would want to know what she’d been doing out here, alone in the dark. “Searching for answers,” she’d tell them. “Considering what to do next.”