Hey all! New story, this one is going to be updated irregularly (just as the rest are). This is something that's been stuck in my head since my most recent playthrough. A nice little sibling shep story with the standard romance and drama! I hope you enjoy and please review (either positive or negative, I'll never know what's working and what isn't without the critiques!).

Btw, anyone looking to become a beta?

Her breath was mixing with his as her lips and tongue teased his mandible creating an intoxicating flavor and scent mixture. He was out of his head with need for her, a need that he knew she would soon sate. Her dexterous fingers were simultaneously playing over the base of his fringe and the indent of his waist.

Her skillful legs had him pinned on the sides as she positioned herself just right. She smiled while making eye contact with him, "I love you…".

The returning words wouldn't come out, they never came out. He struggled to shout his love for her, his future bondmate, his world. As she began to descend over him he reached for her in desperation…

Garrus woke choking back a sob and a shout. It was an all too familiar custom when he would dream of her.

Looking over at the sleeping quarian next to him, Garrus expertly made sure she was still asleep and had not been woken by his startled behavior. She was, thank the Spirits. He hated having to see that small look of betrayal and hurt when she realized he still dreamed of Aeryn.

Garrus and Tali had an understanding in regards to their relationship. An understanding that Garrus felt was shifting and cementing the more they saw each other… Well, it wasn't really anything he could deny he wasn't aware of since Tali had practically moved in to his cabin.

Thankfully John, Commander Shepard of the Normandy SR2, never mentioned the fact that Garrus and Tali had entered into a sexual relationship shortly after Aeryn had died. Garrus had been inconsolable for weeks. Inconsolable by anything except for the liquor. Tali had taken a drunken opportunity which ended with them in the same bed.

No, that wasn't fair to Tali. Garrus had willingly accepted the comfort Tali was offering. Garrus knew that, but whenever he thought of Aeryn and her suspicion that Tali had harbored feelings for Garrus that he would think of the evening in any sort of negative light.

Garrus removed himself from the bed and made his way from the XO cabin into the lounge. He needed a drink, as he always did whenever he dreamt of Aeryn.

Spirits he missed her. No amount of sex, relationships and booze were going to remove the hole from his chest – at least not any time soon.

It had been a year since the end and he had been trying to move on for almost as long. Grief did funny things to someone when they feel their world just ended.

He still remembered the first day he saw her, she had walked onto the bridge as if she owned the place. Walking wasn't even a proper term for how she moved. She sauntered, lazily, everywhere. She was an expert at blending in and making sure that no one thought anything of her presence.

It hadn't worked on him. Garrus had been painfully aware of every move she made and every look she gave. The first time he had met the little sister of his best friend and Commander he would have sworn he had a human fetish. His world centered on the average height Alliance Officer who was busy trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as Joker railed on and on about her exploits and the rumors surrounding her.

"She's an N7 Corsair! They're the black ops of the black ops! I've even heard that she's some sort of assassin for the Alliance. They drop her off, alone, in dangerous territories and expect her to get whatever it is that they want without being detected. She's a Shepard all right! Just like the Commander, she is given the bullshit of the bullshit assignments and expected – and succeeds – to get the mission done. Oh, and she's also supposed to be something of a hottie."

Garrus was staring right at the woman in question as he questioned the pilot, "Hottie?" He quirked his mandible in a smirk and he hoped she knew how to read turians so that he gesture wouldn't have the opposite effect on her than he intended.

Hell, he was intending to be suave and… what was the human word? Debonair?

"Yeah, Garrus, a hottie! H-O-T-T-I-E! Sexy, fit, trim, someone who you would want to chain to your bed for hours… and then unchain just to feel the sweet, sweet punishment."

Her face had gone from intrigued to a mixture of embarrassed and amused. She was smiling but her face had taken on a red tone. The red, he remembered, meant that she was embarrassed. She decided at that moment to end their fun and cleared her throat.

"What sort of sweet punishment would you expect a chained women to dish out, Flight Lieutenant?"

Garrus had never witnessed the pilot move as fast as he did at that moment. Practically throwing himself out of his chair and in to attention as his eyes looked in horror to the object of his earlier musings.

"I meant no offense ma'am, I'm sorry ma'am." He looked like he was going to say more but stopped himself. He was probably too busy cursing himself.

Garrus was having trouble controlling his laughter. She was definitely related to the Commander, she had this half smirk on her lips that John had always had when he was "fucking" with someone. He would bet a year of his paycheck to say that she didn't give a pyjack's ass that Joker had been talking about her.

"At ease, Joker isn't it? No harm, no foul. Besides, it's nice to see that all of my hard work on my reputation isn't going to waste. You might want to be aware of your surroundings in the future however…"

Joker instantly deflated and delicately threw himself back in to his chair. He nodded his acceptance of her advice while he tried to lower his blood pressure and his heart rate back down to normal ranges.

Garrus watched as the younger Shepard winked at him and then made her way further into the ship. She had not announced her presence and John was obviously unaware that his sister had boarded ahead of schedule. This was probably her plan.

Garrus found his eyes cementing on her supportive waist and then down to her supple rump. He'd known asari that would kill for a figure like hers. He could tell, even through her uniform, that she was well toned. All the time spent around humans was starting to show if he were able to deduce something like that at this stage.

He merely chuckled and shook his head as he turned away from her and back to Joker. This mission just got a whole lot more interesting.

And interesting it had certainly made it. If someone had told him even a year before the Reaper invasion had started that he would be betrothed to John Shepard's younger sister he would have laughed them right out of the room. But within a weeks they were sharing a bed regularly and by the time they were heading back to Earth, they had agreed to spend the rest of their lives together.

They had fit so perfectly in so many ways. She was his other half, he had known it the first time he took her out on a date. He had never felt such a connection with anyone else before and he certainly hadn't expected that connection to be with a human. He wouldn't have changed a moment of it… Except at the end.

He would have kept her with him, told her she shouldn't fly the fighter that was going to keep the reaper drones away from the Normandy. She had been providing air cover for the ground team. She had been watching his and John's backs.

After their failed attempt to join John at the beam, and after a vehicle had almost taken his head off, Garrus and Javik had returned to the Normandy while John continued on his own. Garrus had been wounded to the point of requiring immediate medical attention and had been ushered off to the med bay.

He remembered asking EDI to relay the com traffic to the med bay so he could keep tabs on his best friend. He hadn't expected to hear the last moments of his lover.

Hearing her state that she was hit, hearing her cry as something knocked her escape pod off of trajectory and plummeting uncontrolled towards the planet below. Then the static, the nothing.

He remembered the cold and desperate feeling as he felt himself move off of the exam table. He had to save her, he had to get to her. They had just been half-joking about adopting krogan babies. She couldn't be gone!

Chakwas had injected him with a sedative the moment he began to struggle for footing and he was so distracted that he didn't even register the prick of the needle. His world went off kilter in more than one way as the shadows closed in around him. A strangled, broken keen left his subvocals as he finally succumbed to the drugs.

Garrus downed the harsh liquor he had poured himself… And then moved on to the bottle. Getting lost in memory never bode well for the rest of Garrus' day. He would need to avoid Tali in order for her to not suspect and therefore get upset… and he would have to avoid John out of shame for how doted he still was on the man's dead sister.

He and John had never talked of Aeryn after her death. John had known that they planned to wed, he knew that they were serious… But after her initial death and the finding of John's bruised and broken body. John's recovery and the rebuilding of the galactic economy and community… And then Garrus and Tali's budding… thing… Garrus just felt that he had secluded himself from John's advice and help out of necessity and possibly some guilt for moving on, or trying to.

Garrus downed another guzzle before mustering himself up. He needed to shower the booze off and get ready for another mission and another day.

**** 11 Months Earlier ****

The team had found it. The escape pod had been in pristine condition. All of the preservation protocols had taken affect and according to the on board computer, the pilot was alive.

Injured, but alive and in stasis.

Dr. Tolorin smirked to himself as they lifted the pod out of the rain forest muck and on to the transport.

His own Shepard. His own chance to make the perfect soldier and assassin. She had all the same genes, all the same ability to be genetically manipulated as her brother.

The illusive man may not have wanted to change the original Shepard too much, but he had plans. He had plans for the younger sibling.