Author: squigglysquidd

Jai Shepard is a question Garrus doesn’t even know how to begin to answer.

Meeting her, he knew she was different, a beacon of light in the darkness that stuck to his plates and hide like a second, diseased skin. Her white skin and hair seemed to defy the filth of Omega, a pureness that he marveled at the moment she stepped through the crowds to trade with him. He knew she was strong, walked with more than what being a mere doctor would give, and when she turned away from him only to falter from within, Garrus stepped behind her without hesitation.

Even with his strict adherence to self-imposed rules of separation and detachment, he stopped and sang to her with his harmonics as he had seen his father do so many times for his own mother, lifting her out of whatever her mental anguish must have been.

It was that same light that pulled him to her when he was dying, burning from within. He doesn’t remember everything that happened once he made it to the clinic, but he knows that she saved him, tending to his wounds and bringing him to the safety of her own home. She stayed by his side as the pain tore through his body, soon growing into an unimaginable agony as something unnatural happened to him.

When he looked to her with the eyes of a monster, she didn’t run.

Given time, Garrus would have believed the Spectre when he was told that there would be no cure for what has become of him but death. He acted in violence at first, protecting himself out of instinct, but he only continued protecting himself because of Jai. She and Nihlus knew each other, and the tension in the room was high, weighing them down with a heavy truth that the night would very well end in violence unless all three of them came to the same agreement. Garrus could have ripped Nihlus’ throat out, had no reason not to just out of spite for not warning him of what would happen, but Jai stepped forward.

She touched him, ignoring the filth of flesh and blood on his disgusting, monstrous body as she laid a hand on him, and asked him to put Nihlus down.