#i stole elliot for the pov bc i like having him pick up on things about zofia that she would not realize herself

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

9 for the mass effect children. *chin hands*

9. “It doesn’t matter, I’m not leaving you.”

a third of the way through writing this I thought of an alternative idea for this prompt: the prompt being repeated twice, first between Zofia and Elliot as they go together through the burning Normandy to rescue Joker and then end up both dying together, and then between Garrus and Solo either when Solo follows when Garrus runs off to Omega, or after Garrus’ squad is all killed and he tries to tell Solo to leave before Garrus can get him killed too.

and I like those ideas so I’m putting it out there for everyone’s consideration and suffering, but I’m pretty fond of what I came up with first.

"I almost wish that the Illusive Man hadn't tried to rebuild the Normandy's exact specs," Zofia says. It's the most irrelevant comment that Elliot has heard her make since they were revived, and Garrus and Solo as well stop and turn to listen to her. "Because I know that ship was destroyed, I watched it burn up before I died, and then I'm walking around a bridge set up exactly the same and I feel like some sort of fucking ghost."

"I mean, to the two of us, you look like ghosts, too," Solo says. 

"The glowing probably doesn't help," Elliot says. He doesn't know if he's been imagining it, looking in the mirror, but he thinks the shape of his scars might be changing, shrinking. He should ask Zofia if she's noticed that as well.

"Not particularly, no," Garrus says. 

"And you know what's worst?" Zofia asks as she taps in the code to open the door to the captains' quarters. It's the one part of the ship that Elliot really notices the change, because the original Normandy obviously wasn't designed for two captains. Now they have a small shared sitting room, with a fishtank, before it branches into each of their own quarters. "The fucking AI."

"Hello, EDI," Elliot says to the glowing orb that marks one of EDI's terminals. Neither Zofia nor Joker has been open to the idea of an AI wired through the ship, so Elliot has tried to at least be polite to her, to make up for it.

"Illusive Man, if you're listening, go fuck yourself," Zofia calls. She collapses onto the couch like she has melted. "I feel like there's nowhere on this ship that we can talk. Fucking Cerberus." She sits up a little more, leaning on the arm, squishing herself over so that Elliot can sit next to her, and Solo next to him.

"For whatever it's worth," Solo says, "Cerberus did some good. They brought you back." His shoulder is leaning against Elliot's and the familiar weight is comforting. 

"So they can kill us again," Zofia says. She looks at Solo and then over to Garrus. "Or throw us through the Omega 4 Relay. Same difference."

No one has ever come back through the Omega 4 Relay, and the Illusive Man holds their leashes like a noose, but for however long they have until then, to have a second lease on life - to be here, with Solo, with Zofia, with Garrus - this one moment here with the four of them again -

And then Elliot thinks of the crushing weight of the memory of being sucked into space, no more breath in his lungs and his chest tight and the cold and the worst was seeing Zofia falling after him, trying to reach for her like he could push her back. He didn't want to die alone but he thinks watching his cousin die with him was worse. And he thinks of the moment the missile made impact and Garrus fell like a corpse, he remembers the moment his own heart stopped. He pictures Zofia with blue turian blood on her armor and her face as the medbay door slid shut with Garrus inside and her out, her eyes gone empty and if there was ever a moment when Elliot thought that she looked like a ghost, it was then.

He died with Zofia at his side once; he can do it again. But to bring Garrus into it - to bring Solo, next to him now like the way they always were, into the abyss - into Hell, Zofia said, when she had explained her thoughts to him, planned the conversation that now she seems to be leading into.

"We're dead walking on borrowed time and Cerberus has us by the throat but you don't have to," Zofia says. She looks at Elliot like she's waiting for him to speak and he wonders what his face looks like, then, striken by memories of dying and the thought of it again. "Damn whatever the Illusive Man said about needing Archangel for this mission - Solo, you aren't even a soldier, you didn't have to stay with us, you don't have to come with us, either of you, on a goddamned suicide run."

Garrus laughs, a dark sound, and then he winces and moves a hand toward the injured side of his face. "I'm offended that you say you don't need me," he says.

"I need you to not die at the Illusive fucking Man's word, is what I need," Zofia snaps. Her fingers are curled tight and digging into her leg. "Fucker thinks he's got the Shepards on puppet strings and maybe he's right but he sure as hell doesn't have to get you."

Her complaints about the ship, about a Cerberus AI always listening, seem suddenly relevant now, telling one of the dossiers that the Illusive Man so carefully selected to run, run away, get out of here while you can.

"I would have died if you two hadn't showed up," Garrus says, nodding at Elliot, but his eyes are still fixed only on Zofia. "What was it you said? 'Dead walking on borrowed time'? So am I."

Zofia is quiet. Elliot thinks of the moment the missile made impact and Garrus fell like a corpse, and Zofia screamed and Elliot's heart stopped but he thinks that was the sound of Zofia's breaking.

"Solo," Elliot says, and he doesn't know what to say that Zofia didn't, how to say that it's the most comfortable thing at the world to have Solo at his side and that he doesn't want him to leave but more than that he doesn't want him to die. How does he apologize for dying and leaving Solo, only to now tell him to leave so that Elliot can die again? 

"No," Solo says. "Don't bother. It doesn't matter, I'm not leaving you."

And Elliot can't explain how the words can make his heart leap but constrict with terror at the same time.

"You stubborn bastards," Zofia says.