The roar of the thresher maw paralyzed her from head to toe. Instinctively, she ducked behind the ruined pillar, her body curling into a ball. She could hear gunfire and yelling, the terrible sound of men screaming. Smell death and acid, feel the wind ripping her skin and the sand blasting against her armor.

Her instincts kicked in. Run. Hide. Survive. She sprinted blindly for another pillar just as a tremendous jet of acid engulfed the ground where she'd been standing. More yelling. More gunfire. She ducked behind some protruding metal, her mind lost halfway between now and a decade ago.

Where were the Alliance reinforcements? She saw faces, bodies, consumed whole by the maws without even the time to scream.

The terrible roar came again, closer, rattling her teeth. Felt her hands go slack, her muscles spasm. Her brain struggled for control, felt it slipping. What was she doing in the middle of this arena? She had to run. Only way to survive.

Then something was shaking her violently-her limbs flared with blue energy and she hurled her attacker away, expecting a mouthful of teeth and scorching spit.

"...Shepard?"

A gun was forced into her hands, arms hauling her to stand. "Shepard, stay with me!"

She latched onto the voice like a drowning person, and the fog slowly cleared. There were no screams here. No horrible stench of death. Just the bellows of the thresher maw, and the wind.

Suddenly, it all came rushing back in a heady wave of clarity. And this time, when the maw erupted from the earth, her hands were steady, her aim true. This time she felt not fear, but cold anger.

"Burn, you son of a bitch," whispered Kaliya Shepard as she pulled the trigger of the Cain. She watched as though in slow motion as the projectile crawled toward the thresher's cavern of teeth, and the world exploded with heat and light.

It wasn't until her ears stopped ringing that she realized her hands were shaking so badly she was rattling the weapon. She stowed the Cain and collapsed against the pillar, watching her fingers tremble like leaves.

A drop of blue blood landed on her open palm. She looked up into the face of Garrus Vakarian. One side of his neck was scraped up, but he looked like he hadn't even noticed. Grunt's broad face appeared over Garrus's shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.

"You took down a maw, Shepard!" he said excitedly, banging his fists together. Garrus glared at him, but Grunt paid no attention. "A maw! On foot! I knew you weren't as squishy as you looked."

Shepard closed her eyes briefly and took a few deep breaths, forcing herself to relax. She could feel something akin to shock setting in, and that was the last thing she wanted here on Tuchanka. "Thanks, Grunt," she said quietly.

She felt a gauntleted turian hand touch her neck and flinched. "Easy, Shepard," said Garrus. She could hear the beeping of his visor as it scanned for heart rate and breathing. "Are you all right?"

Eyes still closed, she managed a smile. "I should be asking you that," she said, feeling the sticky turian blood congealing on her fingers. "I threw you, didn't I? I'm so sorry."

Garrus frowned at the forced calm in her voice, watching like a hawk as her heart rate slowly but steadily dropped out of the danger zone. "Don't apologize," he said, his voice ragged. "I knew what I was doing. It was stupid of me, but it worked."

Shepard's bright blue eyes opened. Her pupils were still a little dilated, but she seemed considerably less shocky. She pulled herself to a standing position, refusing Garrus's offered help.

"Come on," she said curtly. "Let's get out of here before they throw more at us." Garrus watched as she walked toward the shuttle, Grunt bounding in her wake. Her gait was steady, but he couldn't help kicking himself for not realizing what was wrong sooner. He tried to catch her gaze, but she assiduously avoided his eyes.

He'd have to corner her on the Normandy later.


Somewhere amid the slack-jawed admiration of the other krogan and the congratulations from some of the other Normandy crew (Jacob was particularly keen on buying Grunt a round of drinks, even if it was ryncol), Garrus found time to worry about Kaliya Shepard.

She seemed like her usual self, calm and professional, and clearly very proud of Grunt's new status in his clan. Her vitals were normal, but she was still as pale as snow, and her eyes often wandered off to the horizon, in the direction of the arena. Whenever she did this, he could see her fingers inching toward her pistol holster. But she was nothing if not slippery. Every time he tried to talk to her, she'd suddenly be in conversation with Wrex, or Grunt, or some other krogan ambassador.

He couldn't corner her until the sun had started to set, and Wrex insisted they take their celebrations back up to the Normandy. Shepard hopped into the shuttle's pilot seat, and he slid into the co-pilot chair right beside her before she had a chance to react.

"You sure you're ok to fly?" he asked pointedly. She gave him an odd look, then nodded.

"Of course. I'm your designated driver, as it were." She gestured back toward Grunt, who was still enthusiastically reliving the fight in the back seats with Zaeed and Jacob, complete with hand gestures and sound effects.

Garrus decided to throw caution to the winds. "Why don't you let me pilot?" When she didn't move except to start the engine, he continued, "You can't tell me you didn't get a shock today."

She bit her lip, but held back the instinctive retort. Instead, she just gunned the engine and the shuttle lifted off with a little more force than usual. She could feel Garrus's eyes boring into the side of her skull, but she didn't reply.

At least not until they were well clear of the Tuchanka winds and she heard his exasperated sigh during a lull in Grunt's epic retelling. "Don't stonewall me, Shepard," he said with more than an edge in his voice. "You're not the only one who's watched their unit die around them."

Shepard let out her breath in a rush, mentally kicking herself for her insensitivity. She waited until Grunt started up again. "...I'm sorry," she said quietly, her eyes fixed straight ahead. "I didn't think..." She trailed off, hoping Garrus would let her get away with the feeble apology.

He didn't. He never did. "Are you at least going to talk to me?" he asked, and she felt her stomach clench. Something about the way he said it-the frustration, concern-she always had trouble saying no to him.

"Fine," she said shortly. "But not now. Let me take care of some things first...like a shower."

She looked at him for the first time all night and gave him a smile. Garrus didn't smile back-he could tell, after two years, when she was wearing a mask. But he did place his hand on her shoulder, felt her stiffen before very slowly relaxing.


Shepard took her sweet time in the shower, letting the cool water run down her face and body, eyes closed. She knew Garrus wanted to talk. The trouble was that she didn't know what to say.

She had...won. Not just survived, but won. She'd expected relief, maybe, or closure. Instead, she'd felt dazed since the end of the gauntlet, almost as though she was waking suddenly in another person's life. Everything felt surreal, disconnected. Even the water on her skin and the faint scent of soap in the air didn't seem quite real.

Dragging her feet, she got out of the shower and dressed in a clean set of clothes before glancing at the pile of work behind her console. She wanted to hide behind it, but Garrus deserved better than that. And she'd already made enough of an ass of herself in the shuttle.

When she got down to the forward battery, she went to open the door as usual, then thought better of it and knocked twice. "Garrus?"

The door opened a little too quickly to be nonchalant. Garrus was leaning against the panel, sharp and predatory eyes fixed on her face. "You never knock," he said. He closed the door behind her and crossed his arms. "Shepard, what's going on with you?"

Despite herself, Shepard's mouth quirked in a smile. Garrus was rarely subtle. "Thanks," she said. "For snapping me out of it back there."

"I...didn't really know what to expect," he admitted. "You never had problems with the thresher maws we encountered while looking for Saren."

"We were in the Mako, and Wrex was driving. That thing was like a metal rhino. But this was-" She stopped short again, unsure of what exactly to say. There weren't words to describe the primal, crippling, dominating terror that had gripped her mind and body.

"You feel dazed, don't you? Like you're walking through some kind of fog."

She looked up at him sharply. "How did you know?"

"How do you thinking I felt with you in my crosshairs between me and Sidonis?"

For the second time that day, she felt a pang of guilt. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Garrus cut her off. "Don't," he repeated.

"Somehow I thought killing that damnable beast would just fix everything," she said bitterly. "Probably the same way you thought about shooting Sidonis." She shook her head. "I'm not very good at taking my own advice, it seems."

Her hands were shaking again. Instinctively, Garrus caught them in his, and for the first time, he noticed very faint scar tissue along her palms. They looked old, older than the scars from the Lazarus project. They looked like burn scars.

She noticed his gaze. "Thresher acid eats through human flesh at an alarmingly quick rate," she said, as though reciting from a textbook. "The effects on living tissue vary from person to person, but-"

"Shepard, shut up."

She realized her voice was becoming slightly hysterical and complied. Garrus was still holding her hands in his, absently running his gloved fingers along her palm. She could feel the heat of his skin even through the gloves. His free hand came up to push her chin up so her eyes met his.

"I had nightmares," he said quietly. "Terrible ones. They happened whenever it was too quiet-I guess that's why I'm bunking down here."

"You see their faces."

"Hear their voices." Garrus swallowed hard. "I think I've stopped expecting it to ever really go away. But you'll feel normal enough soon."

"That's good to know," she said. She suddenly realized Garrus's hand was still holding her face and started to back away. He let her go instantly, mindful of his own recommendation to wait on any...intimacy to avoid disrupting the crew.

There was an awkward pause as they looked at each other. Garrus longed to reach out to her, but he knew he had to take this slowly for both their sakes. She was skittish about these things, easily spooked, and she had that wary, almost calculating look in her eyes as she left the main battery.

Once back in the captain's quarters, Kaliya set to her backlogged work with a fury. But in the back of her mind, she could hear Garrus's voice, and the unspoken plea for her to stay.


She couldn't sleep that night. Unsurprising, given the mental strain of the day, even though her muscles cried out for rest. At least it gave her time to work her way through the backlog of mission reports and intel. Even with Miranda handling most of the red tape, some of it still made its way to her desk. She glanced at the clock: 0143. She could go for a few hours less sleep than that without being too suboptimal tomorrow morning.

A sudden knock on her door made her start. When she opened the door to a sleepy-looking Garrus with two mugs in his hands, she smiled a little.

He handed one of the mugs to her-it smelled like tea. She took a cautious sip and gestured for him to sit on the couch.

"I figured you couldn't sleep either," said Garrus. "EDI confirmed that you'd been up and active for several hours."

"Thoughtful of her," said Kaliya dryly. She took a sip of tea. "Don't worry about me. Tea and work will put me to sleep, eventually."

Garrus stared at her intently for a few seconds, wrestling with his courage. Finally, he said, "Shepard, could I try something?"

She looked up, eyebrow quirked. "Try what?"

"Just sit down and close your eyes," he said, the words spilling in a rush. She gave him a deeply skeptical look, and he was about to take the crazy idea back when she slowly closed her eyes and sat next to him. He placed his hands on her shoulders, feeling her muscles instinctively tense.

Very gently and carefully, he began to knead her shoulders and back. She let out a surprised sound halfway between a gasp and a sigh, and leaned backward.

"Hey, you're good," she said, eyes still closed. His hands were large and strong, almost spanning the width of her shoulders.

"I've heard this is a good way to help humans relax," he said as he worked his way down to her upper back. "It's easier than I thought it'd be."

She chuckled a little. "What, afraid you were going to punch through my skin?"

"Something like that," he admitted. In reality, he was trying to control the urge to explore more of her body with his hands. Even through her clothes, she felt soft and cool to the touch, if somewhat tense. He could smell her faint floral soap, feel her thick black hair tickling his skin. "Hang on a moment."

He stopped massaging her back long enough to strip off his gloves. Slowly, he worked his fingers under the bottom hem of her shirt, heated scales kneading sensitive human skin.

The effect was electric. She gave a gasping shudder and whipped her head around to look at him. But when he started hastily backpedaling, she shook her head. "No," she said, her voice slightly shaky. "It feels...nice. You just startled me is all."

"Startled" was probably a kind way of putting it-Garrus's visor read a sudden jump in her heart rate and breathing, usually the kind of spike that accompanied a firefight. For her part, Kaliya felt almost light-headed. Garrus's touch had suddenly-and rather violently-dispersed the daze she'd been in all day.

He started to massage her lower back, then with greater confidence, work his hands up to her waist. She was sensitive along her spine-he could feel her breath hitch every time he ran his talons along that ridge.

"Garrus," she said in a low, almost matter-of-fact tone, "if you're trying to make me sleepy, I think you're having the opposite effect."

He didn't register what she meant at first. He was so used to hearing that same voice talk to him about sniping positions and hostiles that her actual words passed him by. It wasn't until he looked down and realized he'd half-peeled her shirt off that he stopped cold.

"Garrus," she repeated. "You heard me, right?"

"Crystal clear," he managed to choke out. But something kept him from letting go of her. Right then, he needed to feel her skin against his hands, her lips on his mouth like that first spontaneous kiss. But for the moment, he settled just for continuing to touch her, relishing the feeling of her muscles relaxing under his minstrations.

Shepard closed her eyes, heart thumping. If they were going to be responsible, he really needed to stop, and soon. But she felt like her voice had frozen in her throat when she tried to speak again-all that came out was a startled sigh as Garrus ran all six of his talons lightly down her spine.

"You like that," he murmured, his voice low and rough. Shepard clenched her teeth, fighting for self-control.

"I do," she said once she could get herself to sound passably calm. Garrus leaned forward, his hot breath beating against her neck. His mouth touched her hair in a semblence of a kiss, and shivers ran down her back. Her mind yelled things at her about being responsible, but she suddenly didn't care. The occasional madness that possessed her, the incurable need to have Garrus near flooded her senses.

He didn't say anything when she shot to her feet and started tugging him insistently toward the bed. Her hands were suddenly everywhere, exploring his fringe, his scales, brushing against his scars. They tumbled onto the bed, Garrus's hands still firmly clasped around her waist.

This was...different. Not just lust, but simple contact. Touch. He continued the smooth, rhythmic pressure of his hands up her back, finally cupping her face in both hands as he pressed his scarred cheek against hers.

Their hearts pounded as one when he folded her into his arms, absently running his fingers through her thick hair. He was determined not to let his desire get the best of him. This, just holding her for a few precious moments, this was enough for now.

So he kept quiet and just held her in his arms, the rhythmic heat of his palms moving up and down her back eventually soothing her to sleep. She'd conquered some of her demons today. The least he could give her was a few hours of peaceful oblivion.