Chapter 157: They Grow Up So Fast

Towards the end of their therapy session, Garrus asks Shepard why she didn’t tell him that she thought she might be pregnant and apologizes to her for accusing her of cheating. Shepard accepts his apology and tells him that she’d wanted to wait for more data at first, and when she found out for sure that she wasn’t pregnant, he’d nearly been killed by the Marquis. Garrus is grateful she went to Bakara for support, but laments that he should have been with her instead of hunting the Marquis and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Under some gentle probing, Shepard admits that she would like to get pregnant with Garrus again, despite not knowing how Vi was conceived.

The next day, Wrex and Shepard talk while keeping an eye on Din, Mor, and Vi (whom the two of them agree is a clan-sister to the krogan twins). They go over wanting children, how Shepard is trying to metally recover from being poisoned, and that she feels not in control of her mind and body. When Wrex asks what Shepard is going to do about it and her response about not being in control causes Wrex to attack her learned helplessness with a krogan pep-talk to draw her out of her own head and back into taking ownership of herself and making a game plan.

Flashback to the previous day, Shepard tells Garrus that she feels like he had stopped communicating with her. He admits that he’d kept her out of the loop regarding the Marquis at first because he didn’t want her to think or stress about him, and then because he knew that she wouldn’t approve of how he was going about it. He goes on to confess that Hackett had allowed him access to her file, including the classified parts so he could at least be able to take care of one thing that had hurt Shepard- but it wasn’t long before righteous justice turned into vegnace. And in the end, he put Shepard in the exact position he wanted to keep her from- in charge of killing the Marquis and giving her an opportunity to get carried away. One that she took.

The two of them return to their apartment, and over the sharing of domestic chores, Garrus recommends Shepard use the safehouse he’d been staying at to take some time for herself. The next day, after her visit with Wrex, Shepard gets on the whole “self-care” thing with takeout and a hot tub and allows herself to think.

Refreshed, Garrus and Shepard come to the conclusion that the current arrangement of them being apart so often isn’t working. They decide they are going to try to arrange things so they can both acquit all their civic duties, and their responsibilities to each other and their daughter.

### Title Meaning

Urdnot twins Din and Mor are already ambulatory and talking- a fact that surprises Shepard, while Wrex points out that infant krogan cannot afford to be helpless for long on Tuchanka. Garrus also expresses in this chapter how much he hates being away from his daughter while she grows up. The idiom is true when it comes to children: The days are long, and the years are short.

### Easter Eggs

#### Discord Highlights

The sheer number of Easter eggs hiding in EOTA, The Fridge™ (no, this one's really not what you think), and weird spacetime shit.