“Very good. Now where did your dad go, I’m not a babysitter.”
Shepard and Kaidan were, as Garrus understood it, on a date.
This, also as Garrus understood it, was good for them. Time alone, sharing the same food, eating off each other’s plates—and they thought it wasn’t as though they could leave Little Shepard alone in the house, when clearly she was capable of defending herself already.
Why, the word turian on her lips was a finely calibrated weapon, designed to make even the thickest-skinned turian badass experience…emotions of a protective nature.
‘We can’t leave her with Grunt, Garrus,’ Shepard had said. ‘I mean, we tried once, and Kaidan was skeptical, and I kept saying it would all be fine, only when we came home we didn’t have a living room anymore.’
‘Well,’ Garrus had replied, ‘at least you still had your two children.’
Shepard had thought the old joke about Grunt was funny. He always did, and he was terrible at pretending to be sincere when he wasn’t, especially about peculiar turian senses of humor.
‘Well,’ Garrus said again.
‘Turian,’ Little Shepard replied.
There had been a time when Garrus supposed he might not see Shepard again—not until one fateful day they finally got to share a promised drink together in a bar somewhere on high. It had been a moment, brief and ultimately unnecessary; Garrus never should have humored the possibility in the first place.
But it seemed everyone—at the end of life as they knew it—had reason to harbor their doubts. No man could do the impossible, although the same might not be true of that man’s little girl.
‘Turian,’ Little Shepard repeated, picking up one of the model cruisers off the floor.
‘Surprisingly, you’re right about that,’ Garrus said. ‘However, I think it’s time to teach you a new word.’
When Shepard and Kaidan returned—looking well-rested, and what else did the hero of humanity deserve?—Garrus left them alone with their very small human, whose first statement the next morning was calibrations.
“only when we came home we didn’t have a living room anymore”
(Source: liverquiver-moved, via p33p)
