This drabble was written for a challenge, but I love the AU so much I'll definitely be expanding on it. Which makes three series with Henley Shepard as a major player. Go me :D

Virmire. Of all the places Wrex had been, of all the combat he'd seen, there was nowhere he wanted to forget more. He'd tried to make himself feel better by visiting with the quarian infiltration team they'd rescued on the way out, but the team's leader Kal'Reegar had only made him feel worse by bringing up his loss. Seeing Bakara had done much the same, when she'd asked him why he'd saved her instead of the clearly more qualified and capable Uvenk. He sighed. If he was going to feel miserable, perhaps he'd best seek out the one person his actions had perhaps hurt most.

"Shepard?" he said.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her alarmingly powerful shotgun partially disassembled before her. At his call, she looked up, her cold, green eyes boring into him with their usual intensity. He'd never liked her eyes, could never decide if she was planning to tear him apart or quietly listen to what he had to say.

"Wrex." Hah, eloquent as usual.

"I wanted to get your opinion," he said, "of Virmire."

She sneered. "Which part? Where you denied me the genophage cure, when you chose your girlfriend and a bunch of spies over your best marine, or how you let that psycho asari bitch throw you off a building?"

Wrex sighed. He really shouldn't have expected more. "We talked about this. The genoph-"

With an impatient wave of her hand, she cut him off, "Yeah, yeah, you made your point the first time. Virmire was just a shitstorm, that's all. Reminded me a bit of the final asari strikes against my people, just after the genophage was released, but before the turians intervened."

Wrex nodded. "I just can't get it out of my head that there may have been something I could've done better."

She laughed. "Coming to the human for battle tactics? Nice to know we're still good for something." Sobering a little, she returned her attention to her shotgun. "You've done more for me than my own people ever did, you know that. You're not bad for a krogan, really. So listen, and listen good. Virmire feels like a setback. Benezia got away, your enemy's bigger and badder than you thought, and you lost Uvenk."

She shook her head. "But this is a turning point. Benezia doesn't have her stronghold anymore. She's on the run. Much harder to put up a fight if you've got nothing to stand on. Keep pushing, push hard. She won't escape again. Next time we see her, she's dead."

"And what about Sovereign?" he wondered. "What hope have we against that?"

"Alone? Not a sliver," she answered. "If the Council makes good on this promise of assistance, maybe." She shook her head. "I don't know. We still haven't really witnessed Sovereign's firepower. I bet its size alone would be a good argument toward the Council letting us humans build warships again. But hey, maybe the blues and their wacky biotic cannons will be enough."

"And there's always the krogan fleet too," Wrex said. He smiled a little. Who knew talking to the resident killing machine could actually make him feel better? "Thanks, Shepard. That actually helps."

She scoffed. "Surprise! Can I get back to this now?" she gestured to her gun, grinning almost ear to ear, an expression that usually looked to Wrex like she was about to eat someone. "It took some damage on Virmire. I wanna be sure it can turn Benezia's head into a streak on the floor next time we see her."

Wrex hoped he'd soon forget that mental image. "Carry on, Shepard."

"Wrex."