Well I've got half of it posted at least. Also I'm amused by the fact that my spell check tries to correct "quarian" to "antiquarian". My spell check is mad racist, yo.

With Shepard gone, Garrus was unofficially in charge until he got back. He very well couldn't stay isolated with the Thanix cannon for three days with that responsibility looming over his head, so he made sure to make rounds to make sure no one was killing each other. He was sure EDI would let him know if something was serious, but people seemed to like it when Shepard took time out of his day to check in on them. Might as well take over duties for him.

EDI and Legion were discussing the best way to take over the Turian Empire when he checked on them. He was fairly certain they were joking since the fact that he was standing right there didn't change or halt their conversation at all. He wondered if this was what Shepard had to go through all the time. Kasumi was missing and he guessed she was watching Jacob from a closet somewhere or something while Jack was having lunch with Grunt in his room. Garrus was a little surprised to see her out of her hiding place and wondered when she and Grunt became friends. This probably wouldn't have been much of a shock to Shepard, who always seemed to know what was going on. Maybe he was spending too much time calibrating after all...

"Oh hey, so you can leave that room!" Ken said when Garrus stopped to check on them. "All this time I thought there was a curse on you that prevented you from leaving."

"He leaves all the time, Ken," Gabby pointed out. "Haven't you ever seen him in the mess hall?"

"Well apparently not," he shrugged.

Garrus had checked on just about everybody. That just left Mordin. He hadn't been in his lab when he stopped to see if he needed anything. Garrus instead found him going through a shipment of crates out in the cargo dock. He briefly took notice to Garrus before losing interest in favor of his previous task.

Mordin opened the latch on a crate and checked the contents to make sure they were all there. "Wow, Mordin...is Grunt having trouble sleeping or something?" Garrus asked.

"No," Mordin replied. "Necessity of inquiry?"

"Because you've got enough sedatives in there to knock out a krogan."

Mordin handled a vial of glowing purple liquid and then entered something into his omnitool. "Necessary to keep Maynard from escaping until Shepard's return. Should keep him docile for three days."

"And this Maynard is a pet?" Garrus asked.

Mordin silently debated for a moment. It was rare that he actually stopped to think before responding to a question and Garrus wondered if he should be worried about that sudden break in character or not. "Yes. Let's go with that suggestion," he nodded.

Garrus looked from the cargo crate to a shoebox sized crate that was belted to a nearby table that he assumed contained Maynard. "You sure that isn't a bit much?"

"Hmm...more concerned might not be enough. Will have to hope for the best." Mordin's reassuring smile didn't feel all that reassuring to Garrus when a pair of spider-like legs slowly emerged like fingers from an air hole in the side of the tinier crate and something from within started hissing.

"I'm uh...gonna go feed Shepard's fish..." Garrus said before quickly hightailing it out of there.

Tali did her best to calm her nerves and hoped she didn't start babbling like an idiot again. She'd never actually thought about meeting Shepard's parents. Well, parent. He never once mentioned his father.

Vids and secondhand stories always strove to inform her that meeting your partner's mother was like Hell, second only to meeting their father if you happened to be dating his daughter. They were always shown to be judgmental and shrewish. She was particularly reminded of that scene from Fleet and Flotilla where the turian's disapproving family found out he was secretly seeing a quarian. It was the same with her people too, though that was mostly because they were expected to keep the population up and seeing an incompatible species wasn't exactly helping keep their numbers stable. She wondered if humans had a similar taboo against it?

"Remember to breathe, Tali," Shepard interrupted her thoughts. She realized that she was holding her breath and took a huge gulp of air, which made him smile slightly in amusement.

"Jonathan!" Shepard barely had a chance to turn around before his mother was smothering him with hugs and kisses. If Tali's research was correct, this was the part where she was supposed to insult his haircut before telling him he didn't eat enough and demanding she fed him.

Shepard ended up dropping his overnight bag on the floor. It made a loud thud as the pistol hidden in the very bottom collided with the hard surface. Thankfully it was disarmed and unloaded as a precaution for this very scenario.

"Mom!" Shepard replied.

"Why do you only ever show up on holidays and anniversaries? Why can't you just drop what you're doing and come visit me any other day of the year?" she asked. She was teasing of course. She was in the Alliance herself and knew exactly why he couldn't just come see her whenever he wanted.

Shepard finally managed to escape from his mother's grasp. "Mom, there's someone I'd like you to meet." He motioned for Tali to come closer. She inched over with jerky movements that she was totally sure didn't at all make her look like a robot. "This is Tali'Zorah."

"This is the girl you've been seeing?" Hannah asked.

Tali looked a little surprised. He must not have told her that he mentioned her to his mother. He did mention that he was seeing a girl in his emails, but he never said she was a quarian. Hannah wondered if that omission of detail was intentional.

Tali waited for the disparaging comments to come, some kind of negative stereotype about quarians or an admonishment for settling with an alien instead of a nice human girl, but she was surprised once more when instead of hurtful comments or passive-aggressive insults, Hannah smiled.

"It's nice to meet you, Tali," she said.

Tali quickly analyzed her tone, looking for any inflection of sarcasm or masked displeasure, but found none. She looked at Shepard, who nodded for her to say something back. "It's nice to meet you too, Mrs. Shepard," Tali replied. "But please excuse me. I think I'm going to throw up." Five seconds later, she was making retching noises over a nearby garbage can.

"She isn't sick, is she?" Hannah asked with concern.

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Shepard replied with an awkward smile.

Shepard's space hamster was busy tearing away at his cardboard tube and making a fort out of it in one corner of his terrarium. He poked his head out of the growing heap when he heard Garrus enter the room and squeaked at him before he disappeared once more. Garrus peered in at the hamster and realized that the glass was really smudged and cloudy looking.

"Maybe I should wash the glass..." he thought out loud.

He doubted Shepard had much time to do it himself these days. It certainly looked like the upkeep in there was the bare minimal. The fish tank at least had a self-cleaning feature and stayed clear and pure even if you regularly threw garbage inside of it, but the hamster required manual labor to keep his surroundings clean.

He quickly found a small box to put Sniffles in while he cleaned out his enclosure. Sniffles madly ran in circles within its confines, trying to escape and looking sad that he couldn't hide in his cardboard fortress anymore. Garrus glanced over at him every once in a while to make sure he was okay while he tried to scrub the caked on residue off the sides of the glass. One area had it on so thick that he almost decided to scrape it off with a razor blade. Perhaps Shepard should hire someone just to come in here and maintain the hamster every once in a while.

Finally his labor was complete and the terrarium was clean and had fresh bedding. Garrus threw out the shredded cardboard and replaced it with another tube. He reached into the box to retrieve Sniffles and realized with horror that the hamster was gone and there was a hamster-sized hole gnawed through the side where a hole hadn't been gnawed before.

"Sniffles?" Garrus called out with worry. What would Shepard say when he came back and found his hamster missing? "Sniffles!" he called out again. He noticed a trail of cardboard on the floor and started to follow it, hoping for a clue. "Sniffles, no!" he shouted in a panic when he saw that the trail led him to the air vent. He suddenly heard a familiar squeak behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Sniffles poking his head out from under one of Shepard's pillows. Sniffles squeaked again before scurrying out into the open and getting immediately snatched up. "Oh thank the spirits. You scared me, rodent!" he sighed with relief. He placed him back inside his terrarium and dropped the replacement cardboard inside. Sniffles immediately waddled over to it and started gnawing on it.

His task complete, Garrus returned the terrarium to the shelf. He turned to leave when he caught sight of the fish tank. "Oh no...I knew I forgot something..." he groaned when he saw every single one of the fish floating belly up. Timmy/Lou looked like his corpse was staring at Garrus and judging his every move. What was he going to do now? He'd promised Shepard he could handle this and now he ended up killing them all! "I know!" Garrus said suddenly as an idea occurred to him. He quickly hopped up from his seat and ran to the elevator.

"Then my dad shot her. It was weird," Joker said to EDI just as Garrus burst into the cockpit.

"Joker!"

He jumped after being startled and very nearly broke something from the sudden movement. "Don't do that!" he screamed at Garrus.

"Joker, quick! Plot a course for the Citadel!" Garrus ordered with disinterest in his potential injuries.

"Why?" Joker asked.

"I'll explain later! It's important! Go!"

"Okay! We're going! Hold on!" Joker quickly plotted their course for the Citadel and took off. "Are you going to hover over my chair like that until we get there?"

"Yes..." Garrus replied.

As she always was when she accompanied Shepard anywhere, Tali was surprised that no one commented on the quarian present. Oh sure, she got a few looks here and there and once she heard someone whispering about her, but they didn't say anything to her face. Maybe it was the company she kept. When she was alone on Pilgrimage before she met Shepard, she heard everything from snide remarks to a death threat from a turian for standing too close to him, but that all seemed to stop when she decided to tag along. She noticed the same thing happen with Legion recently. Odd how that worked.

"You can eat turian food, right dear? I'm afraid we don't have any quarian options," Hannah asked when she noticed a nearby turian restaurant.

"Oh, it's fine, Mrs. Shepard. I can just eat my nutrient paste," she replied.

"Not while I'm cooking," she shook her head.

Tali glanced at Shepard and guessed his mother would be really insistent on cooking for her. "Um. Okay then. I can eat turian food, but it has to be triple sterilized first."

"Good. I'm glad that's settled then."

When his mother was out of earshot, Tali whispered to Shepard, "Your mom really likes to cook, doesn't she?"

"Of course. Where do you think I get it from?" he asked.

She cocked her head to indicate her incredulous stare. "You like to cook?"

"Well yeah. Who do you think made everyone dinner that day Gardner was sick?"

"I thought Garrus did that," she pointed out.

"Garrus?" Shepard laughed. "Garrus can burn water. He mostly just stood around and got in the way."

"I hope you're not talking about me back there," Hannah interrupted them.

"We're not, Mom!" he shouted back. To Tali he added, "Speaking of Garrus, I wonder how he's handling things on his own?"

"I've never actually seen a raloi in person before, but I saw a picture of one on an extranet news site. They wear exosuits like quarians and volus, so it kind of looked like a robot chicken," Joker said while he and EDI continued their conversation. He noticed Garrus approaching the cockpit after returning to the ship. "So what did you need to do? Meet with someone important? Late for a date?" Joker asked.

Garrus responded by holding up two large plastic bags full of water and fish. "I needed to get new fish for Shepard's tank."

Joker stared at the bag. "Fish? You nearly made me break something and rushed me all the way over here...for fish?"

"Yep. Glad you're so understanding. I should probably put these guys in the tank now. They told me they weren't supposed to stay in the bag for longer than an hour." He turned around and started his trek back to the elevator and from there, to Shepard's room. Joker just watched him go in stunned silence.

"He just..."

"Let it go, Jeff," EDI replied.

"Not even a thank you?"

"Let it go, Jeff," she repeated.

Garrus quickly cleaned out the dead fish and greenish water and replaced them with the ones he'd just bought. He made sure to hit the button and feed them before he repeated the mistake he'd made last time. "If anyone asks, your names are Timmy and Lou," he said to two identical looking fish. "Now, I think that's everything I have to do, right?" He turned around and saw a rock sitting next to Shepard's personal terminal. He picked it up and examined it a moment. That was an odd cabin decoration, one that he didn't remember seeing before. Since when did Shepard collect rocks? "Where did this rock come fr-"

He cut himself off, spinning around to look at the terrarium. There were the food pellets. There was the little hut. There was the fort made of wood chips and shredded cardboard. But where was the hamster?

He brought the terrarium down from the shelf and poked through the mound, hoping that Sniffles was just asleep in there. There was nothing to be found. "Oh great...first the fish, now Sniffles. Shepard's going to kill me for sure!"

To be fair to Garrus, who hasn't murdered hundreds of fishy lives by now?