Disclaimer: I am not in any way related to Bioware or the Mass Effect series. I am making no profit from writing this and am doing so purely for pleasure.

Pairings: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian

Summary: [What would it have been like if Shepard and Garrus had met as equals?] Spectre Vakarian decides to tag along on Shepard's mission to take down Saren. Their partnership develops in ways neither of them expected, with lots of banter and fluff. This story arc follows ME1 canon, with some liberties taken.

Air and Lightning

04. In which Shepard has a close encounter or two

"This looks like Palavan, but the colours are all wrong."

"It looks more like Eden Prime, or pre-industrialisation Earth."

"This place looks nothing like Tuchanka. In any way. At all."

Shepard turned in her seat to raise an eyebrow at Wrex, who was taking up a third of the Mako's seating area.

"You're always bugging me to talk more. I felt like I should contribute my views."

"Thank you. That was very enlightening," Shepard said gravely. "Well, no sense standing around." She floor the accelerator pedal, and the Mako shot forward into a hill. She heard a couple of thuds, a krogan growl, and a few choice turian swear words. She grinned.

"Turian!"

"What?"

"Can you drive this thing?"

"No, it's of human design."

"Can you learn?"

"I've already gotten hold of the manual, it's only a matter of time!"

"Good. The sooner the better."

Shepard flipped them off over her shoulder, earning a little grunt of laughter from Wrex. "What, is the big bad krogan feeling defeated by a little motion sickness?"

"Your driving would make a thresher maw sick, Shepard."

"And you'd trust a turian to drive you around instead?"

"That tells you something about your driving skills, doesn't it?"

"We've been visiting a lot of rocky planets lately!"

"And your approach seems to be to drive head-first into every rock you see!" Garrus interjected.

Wrex grunted. "Headbutting rocks is a very krogan approach, though."

"Please don't encourage her. Spirits!"

That last word was hissed out accompanied by particularly painful-sounding thuds as Shepard jammed the brakes. The Mako screeched to a shuddering halt, leaving crazy zig-zag trails in the ground as it bumped to a stop.

"You'd better have a good reason for this, Shepard!" Wrex bellowed from the backseat.

"Space cows!"

"...what?"

Shepard threw open the door of the Mako and scrambled out, not taking her eyes off the strange creatures she'd just spotted on one of the grassy slopes. "Freaking space cows!" she crowed, making a beeline for the nearest one. "Halfway across the damn galaxy and life still manages to find a way to make cows!"

"What?"

"Beef is universal! I just knew it!"

"She's your fellow Spectre," she heard Wrex say pointedly to Garrus.

"You're the one who just compared her to a krogan." There was a sigh, and then she heard light footsteps. Garrus caught up to her easily with his longer legs, and paced her until she stopped a few arm's lengths away from the nearest cow, which was staring at them warily. "Shepard, you realise this is more insane than even your usual?"

She beamed up at him. "I know, and I'm sorry, but... space cows!"

"Will you stop saying that?"

"Sorry, sorry. Cows are a type of animal back on earth. They're delicious. These just look so similar that I got excited... it's really rare to see one."

"Space cows or Earth cows?"

"Both. Earth's been over-populated for ages, so there's little open grasslands left for animals to roam like this." She took a step closer to the cow; it moved several steps back, still eyeing them. stubby hands waved sporadically. "I always wanted a pet."

"You wanted a... cow pet?"

"No, no. A dog, maybe. There were a few strays around back on Earth, but they got taken away pretty quickly. Ironic, isn't it, that there were stricter laws regarding street animals, but not street kids?"

She could sense Garrus' hesitation, and with an effort, she drew herself out of her memories and smiled at him. "Anyway, it's just pretty amazing to me to see animals roaming free."

Garrus paused, and then gave her a tentative smile. "Even such shifty-looking, uh, cows?"

Shepard blinked, and then looked at the space cow again. She snorted. "It is a pretty shifty-looking cow, isn't it?" she said, grinning. "I have to say, those little hands are creepy, and they remind me of something, I just can't pin it down..."

Garrus looked thoughtfully at it, and then made a little choking noise. His mandibles fluttered.

"What?"

He indicated Wrex, standing by the Mako with his arms crossed, glaring at them from a distance. "It rather looks like..."

She blinked. She turned to squint at Wrex, at his leathery hide, his hump, and his short arms. Then she turned back to the cow. Laughter bubbled up inside her chest, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle it. "Oh god, you're right," she managed to say.

"What are you two doing?" Wrex called, annoyed, eyes narrowed at them. The cow chose this moment to make an odd grouchy noise, beady eyes shifting back and forth.

Shepard and Garrus looked from one to the other, and then burst out laughing uncontrollably.

"What?" Wrex demanded.

"The resemblance... is... uncanny!" Shepard gasped, waving her hand in the general direction of the cow.

"Did you just compare me to that... that animal?"

Shepard was laughing too hard to answer. Out of breath, she dropped to the ground and let herself fall onto the soft, strange grass, laughing into the sky. Weeks of tension, of trying to balance tempers and broker peace amongst her team, of flying into strange star system after star system, finding no trace of Saren but instead a whole damn laundry list of Fifth Fleet's little tasks... Feros and Noveria, dead ends both, had only been the start of a whole chain of disappointments. Right here, though, right now, in this moment, Shepard put all thoughts of mercenaries, pirates, geth, husks, and corpses out of her mind, and just laughed.

Garrus' face appeared above her, blocking out the sky. "Wrex is sulking in the Mako," he said. "Also, you've got space grass in your hair."

She grabbed a handful of grass and before she could think better of it, tossed it at Garrus. He jerked back and let out an odd turian sneeze. She broke into laughter again at his almost comical look of surprise, flopping back down on the grass again.

As the mirth slowly faded, leaving her more relaxed than she had been in weeks, she became aware that Garrus was watching her, but not in his usual slightly calculating way. They'd become good friends, and worked incredibly well together, but she'd always felt like he was evaluating her in some form. Now, though, his look was more... thoughtful.

"How do you do that?" he said finally.

"Do what?" she asked, closing her eyes to breathe the air. It was different, but fresh, all the same, and she missed fresh air.

"After everything you've been through... how can you still let go like that? How can you still laugh like... like you're a child again, and know nothing of the world?"

"That was pretty poetic, Garrus."

"Shepard. I'm serious."

"I know." He sounded so lost, genuinely confused and a little upset, a little disappointed. Shepard realised that she really didn't want to see him ever disappointed in her, and chose her words carefully. "If I let all the horrible things and horrible people in the world get to me... if I let them drag me down... then I've lost, no matter how many of them I take down. They've won, even if they die at my hand."

"That's a nice sentiment, but reality –"

"Reality is overwhelming, that's true," Shepard interrupted. "If you let yourself think about all the atrocities out there, you'd be overcome with despair. You'd think, what's the point? Why are we even trying? How can we do anything when faced with such odds? The trick is to focus on what's around you. One step at a time."

"Really."

"When the end goal is too daunting, I think of my immediate tasks. What's my next step? If I can just plod along, I'll get to the end sooner or later. When I start thinking in terms of numbers and not individual lives lost, that's a sign that I'm straying too far from my path, and so I make myself think of what's around me. I think of the immediate people I want to protect, to make the fight real to me again. Like I said. Step by step."

"And that works for you?"

"Yeah." She sighed. "It's hard. You do get overwhelmed, when the death and suffering hits you in the face. At those times I take heart from those who surround me. It's only natural that people reach out to each other. We all keep one another grounded."

"Hmm." Shepard opened her eyes to see Garrus staring out unseeingly over the hills. "There... may be something in what you say. Spectres mostly work alone; I've mostly worked alone these last few years. I'd forgotten what it was like to be in a unit."

She reached over to pat his leg. "You've got one again now," she said. "You've got me."

"Yes." He looked down at her, and there was something new in his gaze... like he was finally seeing her as a person: not another Spectre, not a soldier, not a human, but just... Shepard. Something more personal than the camaraderie and respect that had been there before. "I'll fight to protect your right to lie in the dirt and laugh at space cows," he said solemnly.

"Damn right."

"Come on," he said, unfolding himself and standing up. He offered a hand to her. "We've got a mysterious scientist to save."

Shepard sighed. "Oh, fine," she said, taking his hand and letting him pull her to her feet. "I guess we should go before the shifty-looking space cow steals my credits or something."

"I don't even want to know how you come up with these ideas."

He was looking at her in that new, slightly surprised, very thoughtful, strangely intimate way again. Shepard felt herself blushing slightly, and looked away, patting her hair down to remove any stray blades of grass.

"Are you done insulting my species?" Wrex rumbled as she approached the Mako, with a threatening scowl on his face.

Next to her, she sensed Garrus stiffen, but she had a good grasp of Wrex's personality by then, and she merely grinned at him. "Yup," she said cheerfully. "I'm one up on the insult tally, so you'd better catch up soon."

Wrex broke into a toothy grin. "Not content to just lose to me on the kill count tally, eh?" He thumped the vehicle with a fist, causing the entire car to shake and Garrus to wince in vehicular pain. "Let's get this death trap going, already. Got some kills to rack up."

Shepard managed to find her way to the scientist's hideout with only five death threats between the two aliens in the back of the Mako. They practically threw themselves out of the vehicle in relief even before it fully rolled to a stop, jumping immediately into action – Wrex blasting two of the surprised mercs dead with barely a pause, charging into them with his shotgun, while Garrus sniped two more from where he had partial cover behind the Mako. He hadn't even bothered to set up properly, but had just propped the rifle up on his shoulder.

Shepard was rather envious at the way he casually hoisted the massive gun, and the way he made even on-the-move headshots look so easy. While the sniper rifle was her second go-to weapon as an infiltrator, she was still nowhere near as skilled as Garrus was with it. She absently put two well-placed pistol shots into the last mercenary guarding the base as she watched Garrus. There was something absolutely beautiful about the way he handled himself and his weapons, all deadly and unexpected grace.

"That was my kill," Wrex was grumbling as she caught up with them at the door, Garrus in the midst of bypassing the lock with ease. "You sniped him over my shoulder!"

"You should have shot him earlier," Garrus retorted as they moved inside, approaching the inner set of doors.

"Children," Shepard began, "I'm sure – huh." They all dived out of the way as the doors opened to massive gunfire. "At least a couple krogan in there!" she yelled over the noise. "Sniper's yours, Garrus!"

"Too easy! Give me a challenge for once!"

"How about we just sit back here and make snarky comments while you clear the base by yourself, then?"

"Do I get double kill points? Because I'll do it, I've cleared bigger bases than this."

"Double kill points for krogan!" Wrex yelled, barrelling past them into the room.

"Wrex! Oh, damn it!" Shepard swapped her assault rifle ammo out for incendiary. "You can't just change the rules!"

"I think he just did. Scoped and dropped!" Garrus lifted his head from the scope. "Can that sniper count for one and a half? Snipers are hard to get, after all."

"You kidding me? They should count for half a point for you! Way too easy." She hoisted her rifle, took a deep breath, and threw herself into the room after Wrex.

"Shepard!"

"I'm not letting him get all the double points!"

"Spirits save me from rock-headed fools –" The human merc she was aiming at dropped to the floor, head suddenly missing, and she spared a brief second to glare back at Garrus. He smirked at her as he left cover and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat. "If we share a krogan kill, does that mean we get double points each or split it one for one?"

"If you need to share a kill, you don't deserve points!" Wrex yelled, the joyful bloodlust obvious even through the comms and over the defeaning sounds of battle.

"Hey, you've got to consider that we help you soften your target for the final bullet!"

"Yeah, we call that kill-stealing! It's a terrible thing and should be outlawed," Shepard said, ducking out of cover to aim at a salarian merc – only to see him drop, body riddled with bullets. "What – Garrus! What did I just say?"

"You were too slow. Shoot faster."

"This coming from Mr Don't-Rush-My-Perfect-Shot Sniper?"

"I am KROGAN! AHAHAHA! Two points!"

"Four and a half."

"I told you, snipers are not one and a half points!"

"Oh, so Wrex gets to decide on a whim that krogan count as two, but I can't? That's favouritism!"

There was a roar, and the thunder of a krogan charge towards her. Shepard grinned ferally. "Snipers don't do this!" she yelled, and swung out of cover to meet the charge head on, incendiary bullets flaming. The krogan merc roared, and at the last minute she dived out of his way, putting a few more bullets into his back. He shrugged it off like flies.

"Snipers do kill you in one bullet," Garrus pointed out, voice slightly strained as he played tag with the krogan, not being able to get proper hits in, but not taking any bad hits either.

"Only you do that. The ones we've met can barely aim!"

"The potential is there!"

"Well the potential for a krogan to regenerate and rip my head off is even more there!"

"That doesn't make sense!"

"We're dodging krogans now, not snipers. That speaks for itself."

"That's just because I do my job properly! If I stopped taking out the snipers for you, you'd appreciate them more."

"It takes you all of three seconds to kill a sniper. You couldn't kill a krogan in three even if you wanted to!"

"Hey, it takes more than – Shepard!"

The blow felt like it came from a tree, folding her up and smashing her hard into the floor. She fought for breath, gasping sickly, as she swung her rifle up, staring into the battle-crazed leer of the krogan merc above her –

Whose chest exploded, incendiary ammo charring the edges of the wound as bits of blood and bone and flesh rained down onto her armour.

"Eurgh."

Wrex peered down at her through the hole, and grinned when he saw her unharmed. "Less talk, more killing," he said, still high from the battle. He shoved the teetering body aside, and they both watched it crash onto the floor. "You two talk too much. I have six points to your zero, Shepard."

"We haven't agreed that krogan count for two yet," she said grumpily. "And you may have gotten the last shot in, but we weakened him!"

"Yet I still had to kill him for you. Two points, Shepard."

Garrus strode over, shaking his head ruefully. "That was the most stupid thing I've seen you do in a while," he told her, the worry in his eyes fading as he looked her over. "You lost track of your target."

"You were distracting me!"

"Excuses."

"Two points," Wrex repeated insistently.

She groaned, letting Garrus pull her to her feet again. "Fine," she said, and lost the fight against her grin. "Two points, and I owe you one."

"Crate of ryncol," Wrex said immediately. "Then we're square."

"I'll keep an eye out next port." She looked down at her gore-streaked armour, and made a face. "May have to burn this suit," she said, half-joking. "Come on, let's go find this scientist and see why he's surrounded by mercs."

The scene that met them when the final door slid open was ugly. Shepard listened to Corporal Toombs' story with growing fury, a dark, bitter bile at the back of her throat. Experiments, treating people as worth less than even objects – that was one of the things she hated most. She snapped a few questions at the scientist, and was less than satisfied with his answers. More than that, she could read him, could see it in his eyes – even now, he didn't really think that he'd been wrong. Even now he didn't regret.

The muscles in her hand twitched, and the pistol she was training on the two men wavered slightly to the man on the left. The scientist's eyes widened, and his babble increased. Toombs screamed back at him, accusations coming one after another, each story more horrific than the last.

"Shepard."

She flicked her gaze slightly towards Garrus at the quiet sound of her name.

"This is your Saleon."

She blinked. Remembered accompanying Garrus to the ship where Dr Saleon had been hiding, remembered the urge to kill the bastard on the spot, remembered stopping Garrus from doing just that. That mission had been one of the turning points in Garrus' opinion of her; he had really opened up after that, becoming much more receptive to her overtures of friendship and her words.

It had been hard to do the right thing, back on that ship. It was much harder now, with Toombs' haunted eyes right in front of her, the history of his pain etched into every trembling line of his body, hearing him lay out all the horrors they had inflicted on him. It was so much harder seeing the living, feeling product of all that torture, a fellow soldier, staring at her and begging for salvation. For vengeance.

But to what end?

"Toombs."

Both men fell silent, gazes latching onto her.

"I couldn't save you then," she said quietly. "If I were there, I would have stopped at nothing to help you. Let me help you now."

It took a few more moments to talk him down. At one point the scientist interrupted, but she cut him off with a look so venomous that he qualied, shrinking in on himself. That seemed to decide something for Toombs, and after a few more seconds, he lowered his gun.

"Take him, then," he said, eyes and voice bleak. "Get him to talk. Maybe find out more about Cerberus. Maybe then... maybe then the screaming will stop."

Wrex stomped forward, eyes darker than usual, to clamp a heavy hand down on the scientist's shoulder. He half-shoved, half-dragged the man out into the corridor. Toombs trailed after them like a lost shadow.

Shepard took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. She turned to meet Garrus' solemn gaze. "Thanks," she said.

"You wouldn't have shot him."

"How can you be so sure?" She winced, thinking of how close it had been. "I get really... I don't think straight when faced with personal pain like that. Listening to Toombs... I was so close."

"You wouldn't have, even so. But I would have stopped you. We keep each other grounded, remember?"

She smiled faintly. "Using my words again."

"You have quite a few good ones, surprisingly." He tilted his head at her. "I still remember your words to me, when you stopped me from killing Saleon outright. You did me a favour. I'm only returning it."

"You're going to give me more of an ego."

"Shepard, that would be like a grain of sand in a dessert. Your ego's big enough that it won't matter."

"Oh, hey, we've got a similar saying. Drop of water in an ocean."

"Interesting. I suppose it evolved that way because your world is mostly ocean, while Palaven is largely plants and rocks and sand. Funny how such sayings still pretty much translate across species, though."

"Yeah." She realised that she was still fiddling with her pistol, and made herself holster it. "Some things are universal, I guess."

"Like... what was it called... beef?"

That made her laugh involuntarily, the tension in her easing. "Yes," she said, smiling up at Garrus. "You got it."

"Come on, partner," he said, nudging her. "Let's get out of here."

"Partner, hmm?"

"Uh. That is... I thought..."

She grinned at him. "Partners sounds good."

End Chapter 04

Author's Note: as you may have noticed, in this chapter I explain why Shepard has the time to go explore all the other non-plot systems. That always bugged me in-game in terms of story - time is of the essence, but I'm going to take a detour or fifty into these other random star systems, no problem. So my take on this is that Shepard did visit Feros and Noveria, but things hadn't escalated yet. No signs of geth or the Matriarch. So she's forced to go look in each and every other system in hopes of finding something some other clue. Like I said, I'm taking some liberties with canon times and plot.

Thanks to all as usual for reviews! A few names are worth mentioning. Mordinette, I realise that I've read a few of your stories before and loved them; looking forward to seeing more stories from you to fuel my own ME fandom thirst! Thank you for commenting each chapter as well. JaliceAZ, your PM raised an interesting point and so I've added a few lines into the next chapter about that scent issue, just for you. I appreciate your reviewing each time too.

Hope you all enjoyed.

Ashen Skies
"Beef is universal!"