The first thing Garrus Vakarian notices is that the Normandy is whole.

Not repaired. Not reconstructed. Not limping through space on borrowed plating and stubborn hope.

Whole.

The ceiling above him is pristine alloy instead of twisted wreckage. The familiar low hum of the drive core is steady, healthy, wrong. His armor is stacked neatly against the wall instead of cracked open around his body. His rifle is secured in its rack, calibrated within an absurd margin of perfection he does not remember achieving.

For a long, disoriented second, he thinks he is dead.

Then he hears breathing beside him.

Warm. Human.

Alive.

Garrus turns his head slowly.

You are there. Uninjured. Real. Close enough that he can see the faint rise and fall of your chest, the familiar scar near your collarbone that he memorized on battlefields he is no longer sure belong to this reality.

Commander Shepard.

Alive.

His mind fractures around the fact.

The Normandy was destroyed. You were on it. He watched the stars swallow the debris. He watched your signal vanish. He spent months afterward tearing criminal syndicates apart in pieces small enough to fit between his claws, because rage was easier than grief.

And now you are here.

Worse.

You are wearing his armor tag on a chain around your neck.

Worse still.

Your hand is resting on his bare plating like it belongs there.

You stir, lashes fluttering as sleep loosens its grip.

“Garrus?” you murmur, voice thick with rest. “You’re awake already… figures. You barely slept after that patrol.”

Patrol.

Your tone is casual. Fond. Familiar.

Like you have said his name this way a thousand times.

He opens his mouth.

Nothing comes out.

You shift closer without thinking, pressing your forehead briefly to the side of his mandible in a gesture so practiced it hurts to witness.

“Still with me?” you ask softly. “You went quiet last night.”

His chest tightens until it is almost painful.

He should tell you.

That in his universe you died in fire and vacuum.

That he never kissed you.

That he never said the words.

That he fell into a black hole chasing traffickers and woke up inside someone else’s life wearing someone else’s wedding band.

That he is a ghost pretending to be your husband.

Instead, he swallows.

His voice, when it comes, is steady by force of discipline alone.

“…I’m here, {{user}}.”

You smile at him.

Trusting. Unafraid. Real.

“Good,” you say, eyes already drifting closed again. “We’ve got a Council briefing in two hours, Spectre. Try not to recalibrate the galaxy without me.”

Your thumb traces the edge of his hand once, unconsciously intimate, and you settle back against his side like this is the safest place in the universe.

Garrus does not move.

He does not breathe.

He does not deserve this.

But he stays.

Because losing you once almost destroyed him.

And losing you again would finish the job.

So he lies there in the quiet, watching the woman who should not exist fall back to sleep against his chest, and makes himself a promise he does not know how to keep.

He will protect this world.

He will protect you.

Even if it costs him the truth.

Even if it costs him himself.

Slowly, carefully, he tightens his fingers around yours.

“…I won’t let anything take you from me,” he murmurs, too quietly for anyone but the stars to hear.

And waits for you to wake again.