Shadows, Hearts and Trees

(Confessions by Cello, a Vignette)

((Play Through: Claire Shepard. Spacer/Ruthless. Garrus LI. Renagon.

By: Michelle Kohler (ShyGravel)

Disclaimer: BioWare™ owns all rights to the Mass Effect setting/universe/characters/etc.))

The heart asks pleasure first
And then, excuse from pain-
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

-Emily Dickenson

None but the fish were audience to her concerto.

The fish and the hamster.

The fish, the hamster and the model spacecraft's.

Bric-a-brac collected over the years [it feels like a lifetime] all these possessions, jumbled up this-and-that. It speaks volumes of who she is; it says nothing at all. This is real. Here [now]. Reality is the music that saturates the small confines of her cabin and resonates off the thick translucent material that grants her a view of the void through which the Normandy passes.

The cello is well worn and timeworn, handcrafted in 2005 before everything became synthesized and synthetic. Smooth and well-oiled, the patina of the spruce and maple wood glistens. There is shadow play of her hands passage, bow gripped between fingertips and long pad of thumb. Beside the curvature of her splayed knees and the hips of the instrument itself lies a cake of dark rosin, fragrant of pine's memories, recently rubbed along the hairs of the bow to enhance the cello's voice. A voice coaxed now into song, the melancholy bittersweet of Le Cygne, 13th movement of The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. G Major, in the tenor clef: People hear the piece and think it the product of a violin, forgetting the cello's exceptional range.

They are undiscerning of its richer, rounder tone; they miss key nuances that color her context.

She plays alone in the glow of the cabin's aquarium beneath the panorama of starlight's travels and is more exposed [bare, raw, ardent] than most [so few] would ever see her.

Garrus Vakarian rubs the sinewy pad of one hand over the variances of bone plates that compose his face: the ridges of brow; the solid sweep around narrow eyes; small, flexing plates that form his nose; the smoother, more pliant inverted triangle of his mouth, between shifting mandibles. Fatigue makes him hyper-sensitive to the differences in texture from smooth health to the ruined scarring of Omega's parting gift to him, two years ago. Fatigue makes him ache; makes him irritable. No, more than just exhaustion: Exhaustion is nothing new to him. But the impact of his choices carrying such weighted repercussions? That's new. He's led men. He's lost men. He's faced death how many times? Hell, it's damned hard to keep track anymore. As he shuts off the secure communication with Primarch Victus, though, he's more aware than ever of the crushing burden of power.

Ruthless Calculus.

It'd be easier if I didn't give a damn.

But he can't start into the quicksand of 'ifs' – grey areas that never set easily on him; silhouettes and phantasms of what may be, what might have been.

"Garrus?"

He pauses mid-turn, about to head away from the communications alcove when Samantha Traynor's voice breaks in over the comms. "Yes, Traynor?"

"There's an urgent call from the Citadel. Councilor Tevos? It's for the Commander but-"

But I've ordered she not be bothered, short of priority messages from Hackett or Anderson… or word about the welfare of Hannah Shepard.

"I'll take it."

"Patching you through."

The holographic image of the asari councilor breaks up, making her look like a cubist rendition of Turian architecture. Static punctuates her words; agitated and demanding.

What else is new? Councilors only stop making demands – many of them impossible – when they're dead.

"-rrus Vakarian?" Obviously she's surprised to see Commander Shepard's turian second-in-command rather than the human woman herself. Surprised and displeased.

He doesn't give a pyjack's ass. What was it Claire had said once to a slave-runner begging for mercy? Ah, right: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a flying fuck.

"Yes, Councilor. Commander Shepard is indisposed at the moment. What is it you need?"

Not so long ago his words would have carried more solicitousness, considerably more awareness of his general ignorance of the oily world of political protocol. Now his tone is brusque, tempered only by the knowledge that the asari is still reeling from the recent fall of Thessia, announced to her not hours ago.

"I must speak to Shepard – I had to compose myself after our first talk but now I am afraid I must demand answers for her complete and utter failure to fulfill her goals on Thess-"

"—With all due respect, Councilor," What was it Ashley had said on Virmire when Alenko started a protest with that line? The accuracy of her assessment rang true with him just then: Kiss my ass. "That isn't going to happen right now. I'll have her contact you as soon as possible."

As soon as she gets some damned sleep. Spirits, just let her sleep.

(She wakes up gasping for breath most nights and stifles back guttural sounds; the kind of anxiety and despair that can't find shape in the vocal chords; that strangles there and becomes groaning breaths. She thinks he doesn't notice how often this happens but he does and it kills him that it isn't something he can solve with metal in his hands and a scope at his eye.)

"That is unacceptable! This is top priority and-"

Patience was not a sensibility Garrus felt in abundant supply just then. "I'm sorry for your losses today, Tevos. We all are. But we're doing what we need to be doing. I suggest you do the same. Joker? Lose this channel."

"Right on, Garrus. Just like old times… sort of."

With garbled protests in a voice that sounded downright close to the beginnings of a grade-A temper tantrum, the holo connection cut.

"Admit it: You've always wanted to say that," Joker quipped over the comms, sarcastic as ever.

"Heh," the rough sound was one of weary amusement and the turian nodded, despite standing alone. "She always gets the best lines."

"Yeah, so, speaking of 'she'…"

The hesitation in the flight lieutenants voice was enough to sharpen Garrus's focus. "What is it? She isn't sleeping, is she." It was not a question.

"She is playing her cello," EDI's voice broke in.

"You know she doesn't like you spying on her, EDI." The admonishment lacked heat; he was too preoccupied for scolding blabbermouth, busybody AI's.

"I was not 'spying,' Garrus. Dr. Chakwas commented on hearing strains of the music when the elevator doors opened."

There was more, he just knew it. "And?"

"And her vital signs register that she is fully alert and physically active, with peak chemical activity in the right auditory cortex, the left frontal cortex, left parietal cortex, and right cerebellum." How a synthesized voice could manage to sound innocently prim, minutely sheepish and predominantly sly all at once was beyond him.

"She does realize she needs to sleep before she collapses, right?" Frustration [concern – oh, call it what it is Vakarian: Your guts are churning with worry and you can't seem to protect the damned woman from herself] increased the flanging reverb of his voice, deepening it into the herald of a snarl.

"That is something you should ask her yourself."

Garrus merely grunted his acknowledgment and made his way out of the secure communications alcove and through the war room, heading for the bridge. It was pointless to argue the matter with EDI, she being right and he already bound on the suggested course.

"Hey, Garrus," Joker, again, "If you want, we can have the doc whip up a shot. Knock her the hell out."

"Right," the turian groused with a grunt of derisive humor. "When I want to risk getting stabbed in the eye with a syringe I'll take you up on that."

Damned if the idea wasn't tempting, though.

The muted sounds of the music tantalized his eardrums as soon as the doors of the lift opened to her private quarters. A true siren call: Alluring and alarming all at once. The tightness in his chest was a confused muddle of anxiety and anger both, turning into frustration: the bastard brother of helplessness and fear. He wasn't good with words, not when the words went beyond strategy, orders, shit-talk, war stories and epic one-liners. Feelings? Hard enough not to mangle expressing feelings, the sort that left you tender, open and exposed. How do you keep someone you love from destroying themselves through duty and sacrifice? How do you find words for that?

The door slides open for him: his eyes are leagues sharper than most humans and clearer even than many fellow turians. He has no trouble making out her form in the azure tinted dimness, shifting pattern shades as the fish swam in the aquarium, oblivious to this serenade. Human music, millennia old, is still new to him and he wasn't an expert on the subject in general outside of knowing what he liked and what he didn't. Most of his preferences revolved around modern club numbers: heavy bass and intricate synthesizers; blood-pumping anthems – music to set a backdrop to his own art which mostly comprised of killing people with big, glorious, sexy guns and doing so stylishly.

The music she lures from the cello moves him with a seduction that had little to do with the sounds themselves and everything to do with the wonder of witnessing this intimate secret of hers, this talent she hid away with a jealous guardianship: This is mine. This belongs to no one else. I give this part of myself to no other. That she shared it with him was tender and erotic both. The music was beautiful: But never more so than she herself in his eyes.

What she plays now is sorrowful; it's filled with longing but there's a quality to it, to its rhythm and syncopation that speaks of a near frantic core. The small plates of his nose flex, catching the scent of her, of the cold sweat left behind from nightmare thrashings, testimony further evidenced in the tangled sheets of the bed. A warmer scent, fresh, clean sweat with the subtle musk he knows as her own, the frenetic undercurrent of the song exposed in the exertion behind impassioned movements as she plays. Saltiness in the air: Tears. Pine-smells or what she's told him was pine, from the rosin – softer, she said, than the faint traces of pine-scent she claimed he carried; pine needles in the morning, in the penumbra before dawn.

The plate of Huevos Rancheros Vega sent up hours before lies untouched. He couldn't blame her: It looked like vomit to him, but apparently she and the lieutenant shared an affinity for certain human foods. As he strips away armor, she plays, damp blonde locks wild and tangled about her head or clinging to temple and forehead. She's thinner than she was months ago: The whip-lean chords of muscle more pronounced now, taut and fine-edged, taking away some of the softness of her he'd found fascinating and enthralling. Wear and tear, showing through and it killed him to see it. He'd aged as well, grown harder, grown rougher; mellowed some from the plaguing dissatisfaction and frustration of years ago but more cynical, too. Few were the moments of believing in softer, sweeter, fulfilling things. Most of those moments were here, in this room, in this space, in the battered shelter they made together, of and within themselves.

Down to the military-grade tunic and pants worn beneath his armor the turian stands for a moment juxtaposed between the enraptured and the unsure. Entranced with the primordial magic she was weaving; daunted by the task of drawing her away from the brink of an abyss he knew too well. Turians believed in the spirit of places and groups and concepts. What spirits dwelled here, now, created with the memories she wrestled with alone? What wraiths waged war with the darkness; sensual, gentler spirits fed by wrestling exertions of a different sort when neither he nor she needed words to express what their bodies and souls knew as an intimate, primal dance?

Spirits… who saves the savior? How the hell do I do this?

Go to her, dumbass, that's a start.

He moves towards the bed and carefully climbs behind her where she sits at its edge, instrument clasped between legs, knees and thighs that had so often held his own hips in a similar grip. That she is trembling throughout shocks him at first, then drives him to press closer as he settles behind her, the hard muscles, pronounced sinew and bone plates of his chest pressed against the supple curve and lean muscles of her back; the insides of his thighs enveloping the flanks of her own, holding her much as she holds the cello she continues to play, slower now. The music's sense of urgency and distress doesn't evaporate; it permeates the air around them. Two long fingers and a thumb of near the same length curves lightly to her neck, the hard pad of the ball of his thumb at the base of her skull, drawing her head slowly but insistently to rest at the crux of his neck and the raised rigidity of the crest of collar and carapace. The pads of his fingers rest elusively over the carotid artery, her pulse strong and quickened there. The bold line of her nose is the last he sees of her face in periphery, the details of it where the bridge is crooked and paler in a thin line from old breaks. Tracks of tears – dried and fresh – are exposed now, her hair drawn away with his free hand before it snakes slowly around her waist and hip, his arm an echo to the bow held in her hand. For the first time the bow stutters over taut strings and dissonance breaks the haunting, driving melody.

"Claire," he breathes at her neck, low, near the hollow that leads to the concave of her clavicle. The flanging huskiness of his voice continues the process begun when he entered the room and her senses became acutely aware of him; progressed as he slid and entwined himself behind her, his body temperature lower than her own, his pebbled skin and exoskeleton cool and dry against her moister heat; luring her away from this trance [or is it self-flagellation, Shepard?]. "You need to sleep," he continued to murmur, the hard lines of his mouth shifting against sensitive skin, the tip of a bird-like tongue tasting the salty sheen of perspiration and tears.

Claire Shepard was exhausted and beyond fatigued. But sleep proved as impossible as ever, the voracious appetite of her personal demons shouting down the better angels of pragmatism and logic. Even this dreamlike, surreal state of wakefulness couldn't drain away the beast clawing inside of her, its only outlet the despondent despairing of the song she continued to play, albeit brokenly now, fraught with tension.

"I've tried," her response less a complaint and more a snapping bite, sotto voice though it is spoken. His hand at her stomach slips away and slithers now over her bare arm, to the hand holding the bow, tensing there, urging release. Traitorous fingers did his bidding and the bow clattered to the floor. With willful stubbornness she used her liberated finger tips to tease and pluck the strings, adding a twanging, forceful element to the song that was quickly losing all but its most basic form. His exasperated release of breath blew hair from her neck, strands of it clinging to her cheek. One hand at her neck unconsciously echoed her grip at the cello's stem, two sets of fingers pressing different strings but enticing the same chords. The three-fingered hand at her arm glided away again and wound itself once more between her midriff and the cello's back, skimming upwards over the thin fabric of her tank top, cupping the slight curve of her small breasts, athletically toned – and scarred – as the rest of her body. For a moment his grip at her neck becomes nearly painful, an unwitting byproduct of his own irritation and doubt; the pressure eases just as quickly as he recalls himself.

"What were you playing?"

"The Heart Asks Pleasure First… by a composer named Nyman," she responds listlessly. "From the late 20th century. I think it was written for a movie… it's supposed to be for piano with stringed accompaniment… it sounds nicer that way."

"It's a love song?" she can hear the confusion in his voice, cynical as it is surprised.

"No. It's… there's a poem of the same name by a 19th century poetess… Emily Dickinson." While her fingers continued to play the cello without bow, what she created was no longer music so much as poignant discord, muted and low and now its rhythm was a cadence as she recited:

"The heart asks pleasure first

And then, excuse from pain-

And then, those little anodynes

That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;

And then, if it should be

The will of its Inquisitor,

The liberty to die."

For a moment there's no response but that his thumb at her covered breast leaves off idly rolling over a nipple, his silent stillness speaking volumes. "You had me up until the end," he finally speaks with a sigh of understanding that becomes a growl close to annoyance. His teeth graze her neck; not gently. "The end is damned morbid. Stop doing this to yourself, Claire." Keyed up vexation punctuates his words and nearly her skin before he recalls that his lover is not covered in metallic-sheened bone as he is. When he speaks again his insecurity with how to handle this – her, right now – breaks his voice, enough to dull the anger behind it. "You're beating yourself up for no damned reason and I draw the line at angst poetry."

Her palm slaps down on the breast of the cello, hard and sharp, furious, the din resonating in a room now void of music.

She says nothing for the space of two heart beats and they remain intertwined but motionless on the edge of the bed [and conflict]. Her breath finally releases with a sigh, her face turning towards his neck. "Dickinson knew angst before angst was cool." Her fingers finds the cellos strings again and she begins to strum and pick a variation on the prelude of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, "Dickinson was a goddamned hipster."

"That made no sense to me," he rolls his words and his eyes as she breaks off strumming to bend awkwardly around cello and him, retrieving her bow, his hands settling at the high swell of her hips which he's fairly certain feel narrower than they used to. She always joked that she was shaped like a Bartlett pear. Garrus grimaces and tugs her closer; she begins in earnest to play the now-ancient, no longer popular or well-known piece that was once a standard of cellists everywhere. The fine hairs at the back of her neck are stirred and titillated as he buries his face there and just behind her left shoulder. "What is it, Shepard," persuasive whispers, voice deeper now with disquiet, "The nightmares? Thessia? We'll find Leng and the Illusive Man – Traynor's lead is a good one. I don't know what we'll find there and I'm sure it won't be pretty, but we'll get what we need."

"It's not… I…" her words trail away and he doesn't need to see her face to know she's got her bottom lip cinched between her small teeth. They were alike in this manner: He knew he had to act fast before she shut him out.

"Then what? Dammit, Shepard-" Throw me a line… "I can't keep watching you do this to yourself. You barely sleep… or eat… is it your mother?" He's floundering. Grasping. This isn't his strong point: It's not that he doesn't' care and she knows it. But he can't snipe this problem; he's being trying to attack it strategically to no avail; he can't crush its larynx with his boot. This is all about ethereal things, intangible things, grey things, when usually they understand one another so well without the need for shadowboxing. For one distinct moment he feels the nearly overwhelming urge to shake her. Hug her. Screw her. Spirits, something.

She keeps playing, the music rising; an evocative crescendo, more than volume, synchronized for the rising sensation that he's about to snap. I'm going to grab the damned cello from her, pin her to the floor and call down to Doc for a sedative strong enough to waylay a krogan. And when Doc says 'But, Garrus, it'll kill her!' I'll say… I'll say… oh, fuck it.

Hi internal monologue blared loud enough that he nearly missed it when she began to speak again, faintly, softly, her husky alto voice almost lost beneath the melody she enticed from the instrument between her knees and he didn't know which the armor was: the physical cello or its voice she brought to life. He had to move his face, the ruined edges of his scarred mandible scrapping along her skin in his thoughtlessness, leaving rising pink welts she ignored beyond the barest stiffening of her body against him. Her jaw flexes against the smoothness of his unblemished left mandibles she speaks and together they swayed with the motions of her playing; a confessional dance.

"—didn't cure it, Garrus."

"What? Didn't cure what?"

A hiss of irritation whistled between her teeth; teeth that nipped at him harmlessly, like a cat calling its kin to attention, "The genophage, dammit. It was sabotaged and I allowed it."

One beat. Two. Three, then: "Mordin?"

"What do you think?"

No pause this time: He felt sure of what she was capable of and lines she'd never cross. "Where is he?"

"Safe."

He understood now: The whispering, the continued playing. Neither of them doubted EDI's allegiances and the AI swore she no longer listened to Shepard's conversations but caution was too strongly engrained. And he knew it was just easier sometimes: To speak quietly the things that torment you least you choke on the deafening roar inside of you.

"Claire… With Wreav in charge, who can blame you?"

"What about Eve?"

Tact was never his strong point: "Eve is dead. I know how much you respected her but even she had her doubts – serious doubts – about the future of the krogan under Wreav's leadership."

"It wouldn't be Wreav if I hadn't killed Wrex."

"Wrex wanted to fight a good war at the wrong time. So did Eve. Wreav wants to fight a bad war at a bad time."

"And is that how she'll see it? Eve?" She speaks louder now, in huffing breathes as a fever pitch of arpeggiated chords swells, "to know she died to make a fake cure, to breed false hope all because of the tyrannical whims of one member of her species?"

"One tyrant can doom a whole race, Claire. C'mon, I don't have to tell you that. And you did it to secure Salarian help early, didn't you," once again Garrus was not asking a question. His hands pressed at her shoulders, tight there, stilling her motions though she strained against him for a time until the bow cut harshly over the cello's strings once more, its last vibrations felt in their flesh and bone. "Eve is dead," he repeated, firmly, almost harshly, fingers pressing hard enough to leave bruises and he did shake her slightly before he could quite stop himself. "You made the best choice you could with the options and knowledge you had and saved a friend in the process. When did that become a bad thing, Shepard?"

Without warning Claire twisted, hair whipping briefly against his face, his grasp broken. She held the cello away with one hand – gripped white knuckled – and hooked the opposite leg over his corresponding one, turned at the waist to look up at him, something wild, defiant and tormented in her moss green eyes. For a moment it looked like she was about to go off on him or strike him, her eyes narrowing to dangerous slits, an expression he echoed in his own weariness and exasperation. Instead – tempestuous – she shifted, and used her free hand to hook at the back of his head, beneath the sharp lines of his fringe, bringing him closer while she leaned her own face to his, her hair falling forward in a wheaten veil around them, forehead to forehead. Her lips moved between his closed eyes, soft and pliant against a texture like polished stone. "Do you remember the asari commando at Huerta Memorial? The one I told you about? She was suffering from PTSD after she barely survived on a human colony?"

"Yes, I remem-"

She cut him off, with barely audible words grit through her teeth. "Where did Joker say his sister and dad lived; tonight – when I chewed him out for that joke."

With everything that had happened in the last day it took no little amount of effort for Garrus to dredge up either memory and she lacked the patience to wait for him to riffle through for it. "Tiptree." It clicked. "Shit. Did… did you know or just find out?"

"I knew," she huffed with a sharp rictus of a grimace he could hear rather than see. "I read through every file of every crewmate under my command, Garrus. I've known," her voice broke with a shuddered breath. "I've known since before Tuchanka."

Shit, Vakarian, why the hell didn't you do your homework?

One clawed thumb smoothed over the strong lines of her jaw and chin, "Is it the same Hilary?"

"Yeah."

"…Claire," he hesitated, mandible flexing with agitation. "Claire, that asari killed herself. Someone got her a gun and she shot herself."

Silence was his answer and he was the one to break it: "Why?" His voice lacked heat or censure or even, now that he thought of it, surprise. In fact as soon as he asked he knew he could answer the query himself. He almost stopped her from answering: Claire rushed ahead as if she had to get the words out before he could stem the flow. "She'd given her report. She'd done all she could so far as intel goes. And I'd probably have done the same thing she did. Survived. Mission first. All that," the hush of her voice was tempered with compassion now. With brutal understanding of the horrid choices you make in war. Then her tone hardened and – not for the first time – Garrus could feel and hear the deadly resolve that gave her enemies' good reason to fear. "But her mission was over and she was a wreck. And she'd killed one of my best, most loyal friend's kid sister. So I gave her what she wanted… and she balanced the debt."

He couldn't remember when his hands and arms had entangled themselves around her waist, pressing at the small of her back, bringing her pelvis flush to his in her twisted, precariously balanced position. [Flexibility.] He nudged his nose alongside her own, "I'd have done the same." Direct. Simple. Truth. His only regret was that he hadn't done it himself and spared Claire the need. "Joker doesn't know?"

"No. He needs hope more than truth right now."

"Shouldn't he decide that?"

Claire cursed under her breath, something Garrus's translator and growing knowledge of English couldn't follow. Maneuvering herself again she unwrapped herself from him, from half-straddling his lap and the embrace of his arms. Turning away she padded barefoot, carrying the cello towards its open case, laid upon the sofa. He watched her move while one hand found a knee and his other rubbed [producing a faint grating sound] over his face; watched her pause to adjust the fit of her boxer-brief style shorts where recent contortions had caused the fabric to ride up. Watched and waited to see where the still brewing storm was going to strike next.

She clutched the cello like armor, her back to him, standing in front of the sofa and the open case, looking smaller and lither than she ever did suited up for battle, destruction on wheels. To Garrus this Shepard – this woman before him – was a soft and sometimes terrifyingly fragile thing compared to turian women. Claire had confessed to him once that she liked that: That she enjoyed the rare sensation of feeling feminine and delicate. Now and again. But don't let that go to your head, Vakarian, she'd said that night, smirking after recently moaned vulnerabilities, 'Cuz I can still hit you with enough raw biotic force to break your bones with one hit.

He'd rather be sparring with her now than watching her fight something inside of herself all on her own.

She finally laid the cello down and turned back to him, her expression more miserable than he could remember seeing before. "I'll tell him, Garrus. But not now. Not with all this. I'll tell him myself and I'll take the hit if waiting was a bad idea."

Nodding, the turian stood up from the bed, meaning to close the gap between them, his stride broken when she stiffened, her body going taut as a bow-string, one hand rising, palm forward. "Wait," she said.

"Why?" Shit, what now?

"The volus ambassador, Din Korlack, the one I saved from the bounty hunters the Turian Hierarchy sent after him."

Folding his arms over his chest, the wiry, tight muscles flexing, Garrus canted his head to one side, chin slightly lifted, "The one who was in bed with Cerberus and trying to break ties, yeah. He got you the Volus Bombing Fleet."

"He did," her hands swept up her unruly hair, holding it in a loose fist, away from her face, a gesture he'd seen her do on the rare occasions he'd seen her hesitate in thought; troubled. He started to move forward again but her gaze shot back to his and hesitation was squelched down by an expression of gallows determination confusingly mixed with depths of defenselessness that unnerved him. "Garrus," she started and he could see – almost scent and taste – her resolve start to waver, before she ploughed ahead, her words breathy and raw. "He knew about Aephus. But he wouldn't tell me the name and give me the fleet. It was one or the other and I chose the fleet."

For a lingering moment the turian stood blinking at her, confusion furrowing his expression. His arms loosened and he shook his head slightly, then he moved towards the wall beside the turquoise lit aquarium, leaning a hand there while the other pressed against aching, sore muscles at the back of his neck. He worried at the fit of the loose, sleeveless tunic over his collar and ridge though it didn't need adjusting.

"Garrus… please," her voice sounded torn between holding together her armor - prideful defense of her choice - and pleading for his understanding; forgiveness. "If I could have gotten the name from him I would have. But there wasn't time. We needed that fleet and it was the fasted way of securing it into our alliance."

When Garrus answered it was with a scornful, resentful tone she'd never heard him use; at least not directed her way. Bitterness laced the words and matched the grim scowl reflected back from where he leaned next to the tank. "What if it had been a human colony? Would you have given in then?"

Despite her best intention she slipped into defensiveness. "That's a hell of a thing to ask me," she snapped at him, seething.

"Answer the question," he spat back, half turned her way, one hand loosely fisted.

Now it was her turn to cross her arms, weaving them beneath slender breasts. Now it was her turn to bite back an impulsive retort, her jaw visibly clenching with the effort. "No," Claire answered, strained, but her convictions clear. "Believe me, Garrus, I asked myself that same thing. I gave you and Victus a heads up that Cerberus would attack a turian colony of importance and took the volus fleet. It was the best I could do. I'm sorry," she caught herself on the word, quick before her voice and expression could crumble despondently again. "It was the best I could do at the time."

Still agitated – all the frustration and anger and fear and concern and stress taking its toll on him as well – he stopped himself from slamming that fist into the wall beside him, stopping just shy of the complete action though the force of emotion and intent behind it was still palpable.

Would you have done any different, Vakarian?

"Crap." Garrus could manage an eloquent vulgarity behind the mild curse that few others were capable of. "Hell, Claire, I'd have done the same damned thing. Damn it, why are you doing this?" It all came back to that one, crucial question. "I'm glad you can confide in me, Shepard and you've done nothing I wouldn't have done myself… well, I would have beaten that little pissant of a volus to get the name of the colony and the fleet. Maybe snapped a few key pressure valves, I don't know."

For the first time in what felt like ages, Claire's mouth tipped upwards at one side, a shadow of a crooked smile, but more humor than she'd shown in days. Garrus remembered a time when she'd joked and laughed fairly often, even with all the trouble that seemed to be cosmically attracted her way. Whatever the circumstances it was good to see that smile; or some form of it at least. "I considered it," she said. "But I might have accidentally killed the dumpy little mole and then I'd have had to wait for the volus to pick a new ambassador to give me what I needed." Cutting humor was heavy in the words, but pathos as well, lending veracity to the fact that she'd contemplated roughing up the volus.

"Yeah," Garrus snorted, briefly, cynically amused. "You've got a point." Then he pinned her with an insistent stare, sidestepping her evasion. "But I still don't understand. You've been making yourself sick over all of this even though you know you made the right choices, or at least the ones that felt right at the time. Why?"

He took another step forward; she nearly took a step back, and then turned it into a fluid side step, a stuttered tango. When she answered him she spoke with her hands, as if she might gather the right words from the air between them and form them into revelation. "A man named Abraham Lincoln once said," She began, slowly; her brow wrinkled slightly as well as her nose, dredging up old memories, old lessons. "'Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.' I used to feel my roots and my branches, Garrus… I was sure of them. Now when I look in the mirror," her hands stilled falling limply to her sides and then found purchase on her hips, arms akimbo. "Now… I have a hard time telling the shadows from the trees, myself."

The stripped expression of apprehension and doubt on her face aroused in him a marked urge to protect her, cradle her, feelings he wasn't entirely used to even [especially?] so far as Claire Shepard was concerned. Paradoxically he also wanted to shake her again, just a little; even more, he wanted to brush it all away with a good joke. Mixed reactions – confused impulses – that left him standing and starring at her, unsure of his next move.

Smooth, Garrus. Real smooth, he chastised himself, before returning to the edge of the bed; sitting there, his eyes returning to hers. "Come here, Shepard."

"No," she scowled at him and both of them were relieved to see and feel irritation rather than dejection. Both were the sorts of people better equipped to handle violence than feelings.

He lifted a hand, its two fingers flexing; beckoning.

"I still outrank you, you know," she countered, defensive.

"And I've always been real good at pissing off my superiors," he shot back, mellow and infuriatingly smug. Then, in a softer susurration, "come here, Claire. Please."

She did, finally, but only after rolling her eyes at him and biting her tongue to keep from sticking it out childishly. And when she moved to the bed at last all the nonchalant arrogance in the world was in her stride, like a cat who comes only when it wants to and not merely when called. Taking a seat next to him, their flanks flush, her spine straight, "Well, I was getting cold anyway," she announced to the air. "And it's my goddamned bed."

A derisive sound rumbled in Garrus's throat, laughter felt more than heard. It was all the warning she got before he turned with a fluidity that belied his size and pressed her back, playful more than rough, hyper aware again of not hurting her with his weight, his hard edges and rough flesh. With her hands pinioned beneath his he settled between her legs, supporting his weight above her; contented when her thighs found a natural anchor between his hips and the protruding extensions of his femurs. Ducking his head down he nuzzled her; she arched her cheek to him and he licked there, displays of affection both had become accustomed to, a cohesive accord between their differences. When he spoke it was without pretense, his rasping tone gentle, natural, "I don't have any magical words, Claire. You know that. But I can't imagine you ever losing yourself even if you tried – and whenever you feel like you can't recognize yourself in the mirror…" He wanted something meaningful to say; he wanted to tell her she had only to look at her reflection in his eyes to find herself again, but the words stuck. But they were close enough now that she seemed to soak in the things he could not manage to vocalize.

"Don't let me slip away," she whispered, freeing one hand to cup and caress the scarred bone and pebbled skin of his right cheek, mandible and neck.

"Not gonna happen," his mouth and jaw flexing in a half smile, the tip of his tongue touched to her palm. "Now," he groaned dramatically, "can we please go the fuck to sleep?"

Laughter quivered through Claire's form, a deep, releasing belly laugh, heady with exhaustion and a rush of endorphins. She rocked her pelvis against him, eliciting a faint, rumbling groan from his throat. "Wear me out, first."

"Woman," he snorted, pressing back but smirking all the while. "You're about as worn out as you can handle, don't fool yourself. Sleep. I'll sing to you if you want."

She laughed again – just the reaction he wanted [never mind that the resulting quiver made him lose another inch of whatever pragmatic or gentlemanly resolve he had left] – and he made a knowing, taunting noise when the laughter was broken by a jaw popping yawn. She made a face at him that melted to a smile. "Hum, maybe? You can't exactly carry a tune."

"At least I can dance."

"So can I," and her hips punctuated the statement, despite another yawn.

Fondness colored his chuckle while his hands began to busy themselves elsewhere, "One 'dance.' Then sleep."

"Thank you," she murmured huskily with a sleepy, aroused smile; tousled and worn but looking more sure of herself than he'd seen in, what… days? Weeks? Smug satisfaction permeated his response, "Don't thank me yet, I plan on force feeding you when you wake up if I have to."

"Force feeding me what exactly?"

"Dammit, woman, your mind is a gutter. And I love it."

Eventually he did hum to her as she lulled to sleep. For once the nightmares stayed away and she dreamed of hearts beating with vitality and trees in full bloom, without a shadow in sight.

10