Author's Note: When I say slow, I MEAN slow. You guys are going to have to deal with my backstory for a little longer because it's going to make sense, damn it. I SWEARS.

For those of you who bothered to review, you have a special place in my heart. For those of you who needed some Garrus like, RIGHT NOW… well, he's there.

I am totally getting sick and it's been making creative thoughts hard. They do battle with the gunk in my brain.

This one is also riddled with errors. You've been warned. Avast. Yes. Bioware owns them. I just obsess over them. Review plz!

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"Ten minutes until drop, Commander. Hope you like it hot," Joker's voice buzzed through the intercom, drawing a disgruntled Shepard from her reverie. She opened her mouth to reproach him, but found nothing appropriate in her tiny inventory of witty remarks.

Sleep would have been ideal, but she rarely achieved such peace, even during long bouts of downtime. She had spent the last few hours staring straight ahead in the dimness, arms folded across her chest. It had been a time for thought. She mulled over their objective, mixing and matching squad possibilities in her head with varying degrees of interest. There was little need to deliberate. She knew her comfort levels well enough by now with the crew below her. The others had forged another kind of understanding with her, though tentative at times. There was a mutual trust between the alien comrades that gave the rest of the Alliance crew reason enough to wonder the how and why.

Irrelevant to her, though. Tali had proven to be committed to a higher cause, which included protecting the SR1 Normandy that now housed her. Her dedication to the migrant fleet was unshakable and Shepard was certain the girl would not do anything to endanger them or the outcome of her pilgrimage. Their krogan ally certainly rubbed most the wrong way and Wrex knew it well. She could see the antagonistic side of him loved it and even searched for that spark of fear, hoping to start something with some of the more jittery engineers. Lately, however, he was keeping to himself down in the loading bay. Shepard took it as a sign that he'd gotten his kicks and now meant business. Or so she assumed. She was just as learned in the ways of krogan psychology as any other average Joe. Considering her experience with the race, she figured she was making heads or tales of them alright. Wrex and she had found their understanding in a common goal back on the Citadel and Shepard hadn't questioned it since. He was crass at times and prone to outbursts of violence. Over time, these explosions of force seemed more calculated and precise than Shepard had originally thought. His actions never endangered their ground team. They had simply unnerved them, as did most things on these foreign planets.

Garrus, however, had not assimilated so smoothly. It didn't help that the other officers were wary of the turian, C-Sec or not. Remnants of the First Contact War were hard to shake.

Shepard had never fraternized much with others of her own rank and never participated in any act of discrimination. She'd have been stupid not to harbor some kind of hesitation. The history was there, regardless. She simply didn't find the racial slurs or blatant acts of hatred as the proper outlets for this fear. In conversation with them, she was guarded at most and unwilling to bend to demands. This led to a neutral reputation between her and the species, but little more.

These past few months, however, had made maintaining this cold indifference difficult. By the time Nihlus had come aboard, she was ready to let bygones be and make whatever sacrifice necessary to get the job done. However, in the presence of the Captain, she feared to lose herself. It simply wasn't proper to be cordial to turians, especially as a high ranking officer in the Alliance Navy.

These days, she wished she had thrown caution to the wind. They were far beyond racial taboo now and Nihlus' death made it all seem so petty. She would never verbalize it, but Shepard couldn't shake this wrench of sadness that struck her every time she thought back to the mission on Eden Prime. Seeing his body sprawled below her, she couldn't regard him as a turian, but a fellow soldier shamefully betrayed by a monster he once considered a friend. At one point, she thought to go to Garrus about it and ask if he had ever known Nihlus on any level, but that scenario seemed absurd in her head. The C-Sec officer wasn't huge on conversation. Shepard had that much in common with him. When they did speak to one another, their words seemed to get lost in translation. It was simply one of those racial differences that drove wedges between them all. As a marine, she could relate to his code of honor and discipline. Shepard had been bothered by this grief more than she liked to let on, but hid the discomfort well, or so she believed.

The door slid open as she took her leave, heading for her locker before descending into the loading bay. Once properly outfitted, she made her way towards the elevator and prepared herself for an unnecessarily long ride down a single floor. At least it offered some precious alone time.

Except this time around, the lift opened to reveal their turian ally standing alert in the corner. "Wrong way, Garrus," she remarked flatly.

But the C-Sec agent stood at attention, if not a little antsy from where she was standing, and replied quickly, "I'm aware, Commander. I was actually hoping to catch you before the briefing."

Shepard couldn't fathom how Garrus thought this an appropriate time for some one on one, but she entered the elevator and stood center anyway, braced for whatever issues he had come to vent. "You have until these doors open, Vakarian. What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to be apart of this shore team, ma'am. That's all," came his quick answer. She had to hand it to him, for someone so stuck in regulations and protocols, he knew how to keep things brief and to the point. She was starting to understand his insistence on leaving the Citadel. There was more of a warrior about him than cop.

"What makes you think I ought to give you priority over the rest of my squad, Vakarian?" It came out harsh and unreasonable, much to her displeasure. No, she hadn't meant to sound like that. Call it reflex, call it habit, but she often spoke these days before truly considering consequence. She had begun to rely too much on gut, she realized. It hadn't failed her in the past. In fact, it had saved her countless times, but in combat. Not in casual conversation. In that department, she was sorely untrained.

"I thought I had proven myself apt in the Citadel, Commander. Excuse me if I'm mistaken, but… Well, I believe want to see these for myself. The geth, I mean," Garrus continued as the elevator inched down the shaft at a painfully slow pace.

Shepard wondered what exactly caused such advanced technology to fail so miserably in such a blatant way. "Don't understand what your rush, is. We're going to be dealing with a lot more geth if things keep up. You'll get your shot."

Garrus wasn't having any. He picked immediately after her, "But I'm already behind as it is. There's no training for anything like this on the Citadel and I've got a long ways to go if I'm to stand a fighting chance. Shepard, you've exposed the rest of your crew to these synthetics and they have their tactics dialed in-"

"Fine. You're onboard. But don't make a habit of demanding favors from me, alright? You get your way, then everybody else has to get there way," Shepard relinquished with an edge of warning. This was a battle that simply didn't seem worth fighting. Garrus had done his part on the Citadel and his hatred toward Saren gave him an effective passion for their plight. Typically, fervor or excessive emotions spelled disaster for a squad, especially when these feelings exploded into rash decisions leading to casualties. There was a sense of control about Garrus' motivation that made Shepard atypically confident in his reliability, though he had given her plenty of reasons to make her retract the trust.

This righteousness could easily transcend into fanaticism, given the right catalyst. Yes, the race as a whole exercised great restraint, but there was a spark of raw need in his words when he spoke of investigations gone awry or a failure to apprehend a suspect.

He was also itching to lodge a bullet in Saren's brain, which Shepard figured balanced both sides out. For now.

She didn't share her logic with Garrus, though, and left him slightly taken aback, but he recovered, pleased. "Understood, Commander. My thanks."

The door hissed open, and not a moment too soon.

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"Turians are bad news, Gomez. I mean, bad news. They'll snap you in half if you so much as look at'm wrong. Like being trapped naked in a ditch with an angry lion. Nothing good can come of it. You're lucky if you escape with your dick attached," the ensign proclaimed loudly over the din of the mess hall, between bites of Alliance-regulation rations.

Low profile outfits like theirs rarely received much in the way of gourmet cooking. It was all standard, amino, protein-heavy mashes of some viscous substance. It tasted like chicken, or so they were told. Few had ever had the stuff and couldn't rely refute it on account of false advertising. Still, it was palatable after a few weeks. Shepard preferred straight up nutrient bars when she could scavange them.

"So you meet a turian and one of two things could happen, yeah? You stop movin' forever, or say bye- bye to your junk? Tough choice, Stevens," the dark-skinned man laughed, finding ample amounts of humor in the prospect of becoming limp and sterile.

"I'm serious, man. You ever seen one before? I mean, face to face? It's no wonder we tried to take'm out way back when. I would have shot anything that ugly comin' towards me in deep space. What about you, Lieutenant? Ever fought one of those things?" Stevens pointed with his spoon to the woman sitting across from him.

Shepard balked, already bogged down trying to get the image of dismembered genitalia out of her head. "No. I don't really know anyone who has these days. War's over, remember? I saw one. Once," she said mildly, helping herself to a large glass of water.

Gomez and Stevens weren't the most eloquent of men, but they never ceased to include Shepard in their conversation, which she couldn't fault them for. Some still avoided her like a plague, but the general attitude towards her had changed for the better. Word of her improvements spread quickly, but not all believed everything that passed through gossip-hungry mouths. The truth was that Shepard had become one of the more capable soldiers in the garrison with a brand new record, reflecting numerous successes on some of the simpler scouting missions. Once she was assigned to a more active squad, she proved herself quickly by saving three marines during a surprise raid out past the third ridge, several kilometers away from any civilization. Gomez was one of those three who witnessed Shepard take out four krogan mercenaries with a wounded right leg. Once she had neutralized the immediate threat, she managed to disable the homing beacon and overrode their dropship computer, setting a new course for the party still outside the atmosphere. Mere hours later, the mothership followed the new coordinates directly into an Alliance fleet stationed in the Gagarin system. Word was relayed back to the 130th that the mercenary vessel had been successfully intercepted by the 3rd fleet and had been effectively silenced.

The other two figured the counter attack had been a hallucination, the result of some shock, but Gomez attested to the same feats and believed everything he claimed he saw. Harris had a hard time swallowing the news, but once all three witnesses attested to her skill, there were no grounds for denial. Afterward, Shepard was promoted to Junior Lieutenant and Lieutenant a few weeks later. Since then, she had been leading higher risk scouting parties deeper into the mountains, surveying the terrain for possible building sites. The navy had taken a decided interest in expanding its colonial efforts and had deemed their system appropriate for expansion. Few could understand why. It was a desolate land with little flora and even less fauna. The first research team to survey the planet could only find two or three kinds of omnivorous mammal life, none of which grew larger than a Labrador. There was a lanky, scaled creature that frequented the outskirts of the camp. Scientists, in their typical creative manner, had dubbed them "rooters", on account of their constant digging and nosing of the rough terrain with their pointed muzzles. They were cloven-hoofed things that occasionally wandered through camp at night, but never did anyone harm. Some idle soldiers had taken up target shooting with them, but the creatures learned fast. Few meandered anywhere in sight during the daylight. To do so meant certain death.

These harmless creatures were hardly worthy of tableside conversation. Gomez and Stevens weren't very creative when it came to discussion topics, so there were usually repeats like tonight's turian debate, if it could be called that. Most of the time, comments were ignorant and ridiculously absurd, but Shepard could usually get by with the occasional noncommittal remark to satisfy them.

Stevens seemed to be hoping for more, but she knew he liked the sound of his own voice too much for him to wait for her to expand the point. He returned his attention to Stevens, who took the bait all too well, "I believe what they're saying out there. These things are ruthless and fight like they were made for nothing else."

Gomez nodded in concurrence, "Doesn't it rub you the wrong way? The idea of a whole species like that bent totally towards war?"

Shepard snorted, earning surprised attention from her comrades. She cleared her throat in a futile attempt to cover up her burst of humor, "Turians? Seriously? You sure we're not talking about krogans?"

Stevens wasn't having any of it. He retorted, "I'd be pissed all the time too if my race was being systematically exterminated, but the turians? That's just their nature."

Shepard had a few counter points of her own and would have said them aloud if she figured they'd not fall on deaf ears. There was the issue with krogan hostility tracing back long before the genophage… but humanity always seemed to have this pet fondness for the underdog, especially when rebellion was concerned. Freedom, liberty; the words held just as much value to her own species as she figured honor and discipline meant to any other turian. She considered these valid points, but kept them to herself. The last thing she wanted was to start a squabble with one of the three people on this forsaken system that she could call "friend". Besides, most of her arguments usually ended with her spouting hotheaded character attacks with expletives she had begun to pick up throughout the camp. Some combinations had struck a few ensigns speechless from their crudeness. This sometimes led to bleeding that never wound up on official records.

"Whatever you say, Gomez. Can't argue with our resident xenobiologist," she sighed, letting the sarcasm leak through her words as she stood up, thoroughly convinced that dinner really couldn't get any better.

Stevens helped himself to the meal Shepard left untouched, resisting the reflex to rise in the presence of a commanding officer. Shepard hadn't made an effort to distinguish herself differently from the other two. Gomez had resisted this lack of formality for a while, but had enough respect for the Lieutenant to grant her the request. Stevens was still working on it, having long-since assimilated into the military life. Processing this breach of protocol had taken a while, but Shepard has put his fears to rest when she had made it perfectly clear that she knew the respect was there. It wasn't necessary to demonstrate it all the time. At least as a low-ranking officer.

It may have been partially due to the fact that she didn't really believe any respect was due and thus didn't call for it, despite what she had told the others.

"You off already, Lieutenant?" Stevens asked, quickly finishing her plate. In return for receiving her most of her meals, Stevens supplied Shepard with whatever spare tools he could barter from the passing miners. Stevens was good at feigning interest in the surveyors that came through during some of their escort runs through the ridge. He always managed to come back with some spare panels or electrical units that Shepard sorely needed. The exchange involved no questions, but there was nothing illegal in the practice. Shepard simply hoarded the odds and ends, tinkering with them into the night as she struggled to expand her knowledge of the technical aspect of things.

"Rounds are over, I've stomached as much of this slop as possible and I've enjoyed some enlightening conversation… so yes, I believe I'm done for the day. Carry on," she offered her customary nod of farewell and left the mess, making a beeline for her quarters to collect her gear.

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She secured the last two grenades within her bandolier, shouting over the noise of the fierce winds buffeting the hull.

"As soon as we're deployed, we head straight through this pass here," Shepard pointed to the narrow land bridge on her digital ground scan. "It's a narrow bit of land, but we've got to stay as far away from these lava flows as possible. Once we breach this first line of defense, we should be clear up until we reach the excavation site. After that, it's all guess work. We don't know how long Saren's had to prepare for us, but mark my words; he sure as hell knows we're coming."

The dig site flashed yellow before being encircled on the map. She closed the program, committing the data to her own suit's navigational system as well as the Mako's onboard panel. With their target set and the rest of the crew standing at attention before her, they strained to catch whatever words of warning or encouragement she had to offer.

"Therum is riddled with subterranean volcanoes and caverns, so pay close attention to any shifts or tremors. You speak up about even the slightest thing and it might just save our asses from a very painful end. Understood?"

She waited for the nods, understanding the futility of a verbal affirmation so close to the drop zone, "Good. Williams and Vakarian, you're coming ashore. The rest of you will keep to your stations in case we need an airlift out of there."

Alenko looked taken aback for a moment and Shepard had no doubts as to why. She'd kept him handy on the last four or five distress calls and he seemed to resent change. However, Kaiden was more of a marine than he liked to let on. It didn't take long for Shepard to see the cracks in the stoic exterior and find the conflicted man inside. Still, he hid his displeasure, much to Shepard's relief.

Garrus, however, appeared utterly indifferent, taking up his rifle immediately as he filed into the Mako behind Williams. Shepard hadn't expected an elaborate thank you or pat on the back, but there was a nagging voice chirping in the back of her mind that wouldn't go away. She stifled it as best she could and continued over the communication link, "Sixty seconds, Joker."

She was the last inside the cramped tank, last to seal the door, last to give commands as the rest of the squad filed out of the hold, none too eager to experience the atmosphere.

"Approaching drop zone, Commander. You're good to go," Joker buzzed back as the bay doors roared open.

And down they went.