Thena's eyes burned and her neck ached, but between herself, Garrus, and EDI, they'd managed to eliminate just under half of the names from their suspect list, simply by virtue of handprint alone. Doctor Sarik had agreed a drell handprint would have left a different pattern on the victims, and that they were most certainly looking for a batarian, an asari or a human killer. That alone eliminated nine names from the list: two krogran, four turians, one salarian, a volus, and, even more surprisingly than that, a hanar.
"I'd expected more krogan, fewer hanar," she said, frowning at the datapad. Garrus rolled his shoulders and neck.
"The krogan take care of their own business," explained Garrus. "It's not that they don't have psychopaths, it's that they tend to deal with them themselves. Think about it — the genophage was a factor for thousands of years; the krogan wouldn't want anyone contaminating a shrinking gene pool. If there were krogan on the Purgatory at all, they were probably outcasts or exiles. Probably didn't call Tuchanka home."
Thena thought a moment, then shook her head. "And I can't see Wrex paying Kuril off to keep undesirables away from Tuchanka, either."
"Hell no. I could see undesirables paying Kuril to keep them off Tuchanka if they weren't welcome there, though. Spirits know I would if I was trying to avoid a pissed-off Wrex."
"All right," she said, looking back down to the datapad. "So that leaves us an asari, four humans, three batarians." She frowned, but before her thoughts could complete the dark turn they seemed intent on making, Garrus' hand was on her knee.
"Hey. You don't know that this has anything to do with Aratoht."
"I don't know that it doesn't. It'd make sense if he was batarian."
"Except that he was threatening you before anyone else was."
Her smile was a grim one. "All that means is that he was ahead of the curve."
Garrus tipped his head at her, exasperation more than evident in his eyes, in the way his mandibles were pressed in tight against his face. "No," he said firmly, "what it means is we've got more names to strike off this list."
Thena looked at the eight names for a long moment. The fish tank bubbled softly, filling the silence. "We need more information," she finally said.
"I think I know where you're going with this."
"Can you blame me?"
"Hell no," Garrus said. "I was going to suggest it if you didn't."
###
"Your… name was carved into their bodies?" Liara looked up sharply from Bailey's report, fixing wide blue eyes on Thena before looking down at the pad again.
"Misspelled at first, but… yeah."
Liara cycled rapidly through the documents on the display. When she reached the list of suspect names Thena and Garrus had put together, she gave a slow shake of her head. "You can remove the asari name from the list."
"Someone you know?" asked Garrus.
Liara looked up, her expression caught between a frown and a scowl, though it wasn't directed at either of them. "She was a rogue operative of the previous Shadow Broker. He was paying Kuril to keep her locked up."
"Why not just have her killed?"
"Incarcerating her on the Purgatory was more of a punishment for her, I suppose. Death might have been too merciful." She looked down at the datapad again. "Tell me what you need me to do, Shepard," Liara asked, eyes still scanning the file.
That was it. "Tell me what you need." No conditions, no strings, no negotiations, no demands. It was such a welcome change from how things had been going lately that it took Thena by surprise. A rush of guilt followed that surprise; how bad were things getting if she expected one of her oldest friends to demand a favor in return for catching a murderer?
"We need an information broker," she answered.
"Rumor has it you're the best," Garrus added, dryly.
"That's not rumor; it's fact. I should know," Liara added, a gleam in her eye. "I started the rumor." She looked down again at a holo taken of the latest crime scene, of Billy's latest victim, and flinched, all traces of humor fleeing her expression. With a quick motion, she changed the topmost document back to the list of names.
"We need to narrow that list down as much as possible."
Liara frowned harder. "I'll see what else I can come up with. Maybe personal histories more useful than what you got off the Purgatory. I… may even be able to pinpoint their last known whereabouts, which we can compare with worlds and colonies taken by the Reapers. But…"
"But since our guy is here and he's preying on refugees, chances are good he came from an invaded world."
"Exactly."
"See what you can find out anyway?"
"Of course, Shepard."
As they left Liara's quarters, Thena's omni-tool chimed again - and again with an incoming message. She saw who it was from and barely stifled her groan.
"Problems?" Garrus asked. "Wait," he sighed, "don't answer that."
"It's Allers," she said in a low tone. "It's about that damned biography."
He stopped and looked down at her, and damned it if didn't look like he was arching a browplate at the news. "So you went through with it?"
Making a face, she nodded. "She… she told me she wants people to 'know the person behind the hero,' and what's that even supposed to mean?" Without waiting for an answer, Shepard went on. "She seems to think it'll help with morale. But I don't… Garrus, I don't see how."
"Well, you are a little larger than life, Shepard."
"Don't you start," she muttered, sending him a dark look before opening Allers' message.
"All right, I won't start. But mostly because you look like you'd shoot me if I did. Anyway, I should probably get back to the battery. All appearances to the contrary, I don't just hang around this ship being good-looking."
"…Hell," Thena muttered, leaning hard against the wall. "Hell."
"Or, you know, the giant guns can probably calibrate themselves. We are docked, after all." Smoothly, he took her by the elbow and guided her into the battery. "Okay, what's the problem?" he asked, the door closing behind them. "'Cause I can see there's a problem here."
Thena rubbed her forehead, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she'd massage the right words out of her brain. She didn't know how to tell him. She didn't even really know how to start. This was the problem with talking about things you didn't talk about: they were damned hard to talk about.
"Shepard?"
Thena stopped rubbing at her forehead. "It's nothing. It's stupid."
He frowned and shook his head, saying, "If it's stupid it can't be nothing, and if it's not nothing, it's not stupid."
"Nice logic," she muttered, shooting a halfhearted glare his way. "And it is nothing. Or if it's something, it's done already." Garrus didn't say anything, he only watched her, waiting for her to explain. "I… gave Allers the interview she wanted."
"Yeah, I figured as much. So… what'd she ask about?" he asked, the words coming out slowly, as if he were afraid of the answer she'd give.
She let out a deep, long breath, then started walking — walking, and certainly not pacing — the length of the battery. "The two years after I died wasn't the only time I've… been off the grid. She asked about it. The other time."
Garrus leaned against a wall of consoles and crossed his arms, eyes following her as she moved. "And when was the other time?"
"When I was a kid. After the raid."
Garrus nodded once. "All right, so what'd Allers ask?"
Thena's steps slowed to a stop and she ran a hand over her face, keeping her eyes closed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "She asked about the two years after Mindoir."
"And I'm guessing you didn't want to tell her."
Her hand fell away and she met Garrus' eyes, trying not to feel as if doing so was an act of defiance. But talking about the old days made old habits resurface with a vengeance. Oh, they'd faded and twisted into new ones, but none of them never really left her. "Didn't want to, but…"
"You told her anyway."
Thena let her grimace answer for her. Garrus nodded once, as if her expression was all the answer he'd needed. Maybe it was. "You want to talk about it to someone who doesn't have a camera?"
Thena let out a deep breath and sunk down to sit on the short set of steps that led into the heart of the battery. After a few heartbeats of time, Garrus sat next to her. Not too close; he never sat too close, as if he could sense just how much distance she needed at any given time. Hell of a skill-set, especially now.
"I ran away," she said, finally.
"…You ran away?" he echoed.
She took a breath, held it, and rubbed her hand over her face before letting the air in her lungs out in a rush. When she spoke, the words were directed to her clasped hands, because it was just easier that way. Her own hands wouldn't judge her, wouldn't ask uncomfortable questions, wouldn't pity her. "I was sixteen, Garrus. Sixteen, and my family was dead and my— everything I knew, gone. Everything. Alliance forces picked me and a few other survivors up, brought us to the Citadel. I remember sitting in some embassy office with this… this scratchy blanket they'd given me, wrapped around my shoulders. There was blood under my nails and all I could smell was smoke. And then I overheard some diplomat's assistant's assistant explain to an Alliance rep that I didn't have any living kin on Earth or any of the colonies. I heard them say the words orphan and foster care and I…" She raised her gaze again, felt defiant again, and said, "I got the hell out."
Garrus digested this information silently, then gave a slow shake of his head. "How the hell didn't anyone find you?"
She let out a sharp but quiet breath of laughter. "I went into the ducts. You remember Mouse, right?" At Garrus' silent nod, she shrugged. "That was me. Maybe a little shorter, a little skinnier, but… Me." Her gaze went back down to her hands. "You know how you said once you were pretty sure your father would hate me?"
"Yeah."
"Well." Thena tried — tried — to keep her tone light. "I can tell you with near certainty I think he did." She looked askance at him. "I… might've run afoul of C-Sec a few times. Nothing serious. Vagrancy, usually. Petty theft if it had been long enough since our last decent meal."
"Our?"
"I wasn't the only kid living in the ducts. Most of them were younger than I was. I guess they sort of… gravitated to me."
"You watched over them."
She shook her head. Leave it to Garrus to make it sound like she'd done something noble. "Kept them out of trouble."
"And getting into it yourself instead." His soft exhale of a chuckle echoed pleasantly with subharmonics. "Some things never change." He didn't say anything else, and it wasn't until the silence stretched out around them that she realized he was waiting for her to continue.
"There were always about four or five kids, not counting me. We stuck together, scouted out the safest places to sleep. Sometimes one would go missing and turn up a couple weeks later, mangled by an exhaust fan. Sometimes they never turned up at all, and I thought — liked to think, anyway — they went home. I tried a few times to get an actual job so we'd at least have money to eat, but there wasn't a hell of a lot for me. Usually I wound up running errands for… well, for people like Thane. Some of the kids did odd jobs for the Shadow Broker — I tried to discourage that, since most of the ones who worked for him wound up vanishing altogether."
"How'd you discourage them?"
A faint not-quite-smile touched her lips. "… Told them the Shadow Broker ate little kids."
Garrus didn't laugh, but it was a very near thing, Thena thought. The noise that did escape him was somewhere between a snort and a cough. "Did that work?"
She sent him a sidelong glance, almost smiling at the memories being stirred up. She'd pushed them back, held them down for so long, it was… strange to talk about it now. And yet, maybe not that strange that she was talking about it with Garrus. "Alarmingly well," she admitted. "But… by the time I turned eighteen, it… was made clear to me that if I really wanted to help them, I had to leave."
"And that's when you joined the military."
"It was… what I wanted to do," she replied, nodding. "And it meant I could send them money — but more importantly… I wanted to… to do something to make sure what had happened to me didn't happen to anyone else. I wanted to help by giving those kids a… a safer galaxy to grow up in." Her laugh was bitter this time. "Of course, I was all of eighteen at the time. I think I can be forgiven for being naïve and idealistic. So…I set up a mailbox for them. There was a boy — Nevvar, he was the next oldest. I gave him the mailbox passkey. I… figured if I sent them credits they'd at least eat regularly."
"Then what happened?"
"First bit of leave I got, I went to the Citadel. Nevvar was gone. No one even knew who he was; all the kids were different — I didn't recognize a single one of them — and no one had collected any of the money I sent. There was probably about two thousand credits in there, untouched." She released her hands and flexed her fingers before clasping them again hands tightly, until her knuckles turned white. "That's the bitch of it, Garrus. Sometimes you can't make a difference, no matter how hard you try, no matter how badly you want to."
"You keep trying."
With a snort, Thena rolled her eyes. "There's something about the definition of insanity in there."
"Well. We all know you're a little crazy, Shepard. Some of us wouldn't have it any other way." His arm went around her shoulders, and despite the weight of his armor, she moved closer, tucking herself against him. "So, let me guess what happened next. You didn't want to tell Allers any of that, so you cut the interview short, and now she's asking when you want to finish it?"
Leave it to Garrus, she thought, shaking her head. "Yeah," she admitted, and even to Thena's own ears, the word sounded as if it was being pulled from her. "It's… it's just so damn personal, for one. For another — Garrus, I abandoned those kids."
"What the hell else were you supposed to do? You were trying to do what was best for them."
"I still— I failed them. I left and… I don't have the first damned idea what happened to any of them."
"Shepard…"
"And then there's…" Here she stopped, swallowed hard, let out a long breath. Here was the more uncomfortable truth of the matter, the part of the equation that was even harder to admit, even to Garrus. Pride. "The great Commander Shepard used to be a vagrant petty criminal duct rat. I don't see how that'll help the war effort. I don't see how it'd help anything but Allers' ratings," she added bitterly. "You know how many people in this galaxy would love to see me taken down a few pegs? I want to be what I am, Garrus. Not what I was."
"That's funny," he said slowly, his expression maddeningly inscrutable, "because from where I'm sitting, what you were was a kid who got dealt a crap hand and overcame adversity in spite of it."
She stared at him then, realizing with the uncomfortable warmth of radiating shame that one of the reasons she hadn't told Garrus about this was in part because she'd crossed his father's path more than once. Enough times for him to learn her name, and it had been her impression even at the time that the senior Vakarian was not the type to forget details easily — or quickly.
"Unless," he drawled, turning his head and narrowing his eyes at her shrewdly, "you thought your, ah, criminal past and consequential run-ins with my dad might have put me off a little."
That uncomfortable warmth doubled, maybe tripled, until her cheeks burned with it. "You know what I said about you being a hell of a cop?" she muttered.
"Yeah?"
"I take it all back."
"Come on, Shepard," said Garrus, tightening his arm around her shoulders, giving them a squeeze. "I thought you'd know me better than that by now. Finding out you'd ever managed to piss off my dad before becoming a Spectre only managed to make you even more attractive."
Her reaction, so at odds with the discomfiture and shame swamping her moments before, took even Thena by surprise. But still, she couldn't quite help the helpless laugh that passed her lips as she shook her head at him, leaning into the subtle pressure as he kept his arm around her. "Guess I didn't realize being a former juvenile delinquent could've ever been considered a turn-on."
"Trust me, Shepard," he rumbled into her ear. "There's a whole lot more to it than that. But being a thorn in the great Narius Vakarian's side? Kind of a plus."
Now that the truth was out, secrets she'd kept so long dragged into the harsh light of day, all of Thena's worries, all of the lingering fears she'd shoved so far beneath the surface that she could pretend they didn't exist at all seemed… almost foolish now. She still wasn't keen on telling Allers everything, but… maybe, maybe Thena would give her a little more than she had.
Gradually, companionable silence settled over them, broken only when Thena asked, "So… what do we do now?"
"For starters, you have to figure out what and just how much you want Allers to include in that biography — no damn reason why you shouldn't get a say in that. Beyond that, we wait for Liara to narrow down our suspects if she can. In the meantime, we can take a walk through the refugee area, see what we can find, learn if anyone saw anything strange. C-Sec's already been through asking questions, but C-Sec's also stretched thin and the whole damn Citadel's a mess, so they could've missed something. No matter what, you want to hold on to the element of surprise as long as you can, Shepard; if he's looking for you, and finds out you know that, he may step things up."
"He could hurt more people, you mean."
"I mean he could decide he wants to hurt you."
###
Garrus hadn't exactly wondered why Shepard didn't talk about her past. He didn't know everything, but he knew enough to know there had to be excellent reasons why it was a topic she never raised — it wasn't a secret she'd grown up on Mindoir, but the finer details of her life were something he'd never asked about. Mainly because he didn't think it was any of his damned business. Shepard had reasons, he believed in her reasons, and figured that, one day, if she ever wanted to tell him, she would. Particularly when it came to those two years between Mindoir and her enlistment in the military.
She'd told him about her family, once, about happier times, about her parents, her brothers, life on a quiet farming colony. But even that night she'd told him — armed with sniper rifles and targets, both of them trying to outdo each other — he'd known there was more to it, more she was holding back. And now that he knew, so many things about Shepard, so many of her quirks, her idiosyncrasies, made sense, all the way down to her willingness to take risks, unorthodox risks, if it meant getting the outcome she was aiming for.
He understood her reticence when it came to discussing those years with anyone else — namely, Allers — but Garrus couldn't help but feel Shepard's fear of being reviled or shamed or somehow rejected for her past was just that: fear. He knew better than most that Thena Shepard was a harsh judge of herself, and far and away her own worst critic. He also knew he wasn't going to be the one changing her mind anytime soon; he wondered — hoped, really — laying her past out on the table would be enough to override the shame that had been building up for years.
The real mystery, the part that had taken him completely unawares, was his father's role in Shepard's past. He knew he bore a strong resemblance to the senior Vakarian — appearance-wise, at least — and it was unlikely she'd have forgotten any run-ins she might have had with his father. Especially if she'd been on the wrong end of his dad's wrath.
And she still let my ass on her ship. Not sure I'll ever understand that.
###
Being a Spectre meant a great many things throughout the galaxy, and most of the time, what it meant depended on who you asked. To some, Spectres were something to fear, figures standing above the law who could abuse it if they saw fit. For better or worse, Saren Arterius had done a great deal to perpetuate this perception. There were times the mystique worked in Thena's favor; upon learning who — and what — she was, witnesses or other people of interest snapped to attention, eager to help — eager to help out of fear, but still: helpful. At the other end of the spectrum were those in whom fear invoked terrified silence. Fear they might say the wrong thing — or worse, the right thing. Some were impressed, who viewed Spectres as galactic heroes, and still others who thought the position was empty, that Spectres were nothing more than puppets the Council controlled.
As it happened, there was a perfect cross-section of the galactic community in the refugee camp. It was a cross-section that provided very little useful information about what had happened to the dead girl. Oh, very sad, the poor young woman, some said. Her name was Melinda — or was it Belinda? I can't remember, I'm sorry. So many people, you know. Too many names to remember. She was supposed to be getting married next month, but the Reapers, they got her fiancé, the poor lamb. Others were angry rather than sympathetic: Goddamn C-Sec doesn't give a damn about us down here; I bet they're glad to see our numbers go down, even by one. And what the hell are you doing about it? What're you doing down here questioning us? Shouldn't you be fighting the damned things? Isn't that what you do? And still others didn't talk at all; they watched her and Garrus with wide, suspicious eyes, casually easing out of the way at the earliest opportunity.
"Well, that told us absolutely nothing," muttered Thena, under her breath.
But Garrus didn't seem to agree. "It told us why he's targeting the refugees — they're easy, and they'd probably be easy to manipulate, too."
"How do you figure?"
He jerked a thumb behind them, indicating the refugees as he answered, "Overly emotional people — doesn't matter the emotion, either — are always going to be easier to screw with than calm ones."
"Easy pickins."
That was certainly the truth — there were too many stories about too many people who'd lost everything. On one hand, it was hard to fully comprehend. On the other, Thena knew — and she knew it better than most — the destruction the Reapers had caused, and how fast they were causing it. She knew that hundreds of thousands — millions by this point — of lives had been changed. The shockwave resounded through the entire galaxyShe knew that there were people who'd lost everything — and she still remembered how that felt; shock and denial warring with too-vivid memories of events far too recent to be called memories, replaying themselves behind closed eyelids, knowledge corroborated by blood and bruises and the scent of smoke clinging to hair and clothes. She knew how her mind had struggled to process one simple fact: "Everything's gone."
But for all Thena could understand what so many of them had been through, even she had difficulty grasping how many had lived through so many separate tragedies.
As they made their way through the holding area, back to the elevators, a snatch of conversation made Thena freeze and turn around.
A deep voice, heavy with turian subharmonics, said, "Your parents get here yet?"
A young woman — a girl, really; she couldn't have been any older than sixteen — was standing at a C-Sec kiosk, talking to the turian officer manning it. Her parents had put her on a shuttle, likely knowing they'd never be able to follow (or, perhaps more tragically, not knowing), leaving their daughter with nothing but her life and the faith that her parents — and at that age it was still easy to believe parents were infallible and indestructible — would find her.
"Nope," the girl replied, then shrugged. "It's okay, I mean — they'll get here. They always keep their promises. They… next shuttle was probably just late or something. That's all."
The more Thena heard, the more she had her doubts.
When the girl wandered away, she approached the kiosk — Garrus seemed to know where Thena was headed before she did, and matched her stride for stride.
"Hell of a story," she said to the officer. "Poor kid."
"You heard that?" he asked. "Yeah. I don't… have the heart to tell her what's probably the truth. Not my place, anyway. And who knows? Maybe the kid's parents are still alive."
"You talk with her a lot?" Garrus asked. The officer shrugged.
"At least once a day. Usually more. She stops by here sometimes when I get on duty to see if a shuttle arrived during the overnight shift."
As if she might have simply dozed through her parents' arrival.
"Listen, Agent," Garrus began, pitching his voice low and leaning on the kiosk counter, "you know what's been going on around here."
He did not, she noticed, phrase it as a question. The officer's mandibles pressed close against his cheeks as his eyes went steely. "Yeah. I have. You don't have to say anything. I'm keeping an eye on her. Already told her to let me know if anyone bothers her."
"Good idea."
"Get an ID on the bastard yet?"
Thena exchanged a look with Garrus before saying, "And how did you know we might have that information?"
The officer gave a short laugh. "News traveled quickly through C-Sec before. We're at half strength now, so news just travels half as fast. Still moves, though."
"So what're they saying?"
The agent lowered his voice. "Starting to feel like we might actually catch the scumbag now." Before he could say anything more, a batarian refugee appeared at his elbow, effectively ending the conversation. With a parting nod, Thena pushed away from the kiosk and they started for the elevator.
Once the doors closed, Garrus let out a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his fringe and down to the back of his neck. "No pressure. No pressure at all."
They rode in contemplative silence to the docking bay, and continued slowly side by side to D24, and then onto the Normandy. Both were lost in their own respective reveries, though the weight of Thena's thoughts felt heavier than usual.
"Have you ever had to work anything like this before?" she asked as they reached her quarters, crossing to the couch and dropping down onto it before pulling off her boots. Datapads still littered the nearby table and she picked one of them up, frowning at it without actually reading it, and setting it down again.
"By 'like this,'" Garrus said, leaning against the fishtank and crossing his arms, "do you mean a serial killer in general, or cases as obnoxiously clue-free as this one?"
"Either. And you look like you're dead on your feet. Take off the armor and stay awhile." When he hesitated, she lifted both eyebrows at him. "It's not like I've never seen you out of your armor." She gave him an exhausted smile. "And if I know you, your spurs have got to be killing you by now."
"This was… not how I'd planned an evening in your quarters, Shepard," he replied, but began unfastening his armor anyway, pulling it free piece by piece and setting it neatly on the low table in her sitting area. Once he was free of the armor, clad in a dark blue base-layer, he sat next to her on the corner of the couch. "And to answer your question, no to the first, yes to the second. Well… there was that elcor, but I wasn't the lead investigator on that case."
"Did you solve them?"
"Of course I did." He shot her a sidelong glance. "Hell of a time to start checking my resume."
"It's nothing like that. I'm just…"
"Frustrated. I know." He ran a hand up her back, stopping to rub at some of the tighter, more persistent knots. "Listen, Shepard. It's been a long day — but it's only been one day. Let's see if we can get some sleep."
She turned her head, though it took effort to look at him. "I'm used to things moving slowly when it means having to talk to politicians or follow diplomatic protocol."
"Or convincing a whole damn galaxy that the Reapers weren't as imaginary as everyone wanted to believe?"
She nodded. "But this… is different. This is finding one guy who should not be having as easy a time as he seems to be, kidnapping, torturing, and murdering people. It's a damn needle in a haystack, Garrus."
"Turians aren't without idioms either, Shepard. They might not be as… vivid as human idioms, but we've got them."
"Is there one that might apply here?"
"You'll always know a klixen by its breath." At her expression — which she was certain was puzzled — Garrus went on to explain, "In the early days of the war against the krogan, the krogan used Tuchanka's… natural wonders against turian troops. Whole platoons got wiped out because they'd unwittingly stepped into — been led into — a klixen nest."
"Garrus. Klixen breathe fire."
"Right. Didn't take long for turian soldiers to figure out that the klixen-infested caves were usually the ones all blackened up. Long story short: even the deadliest foe can't hide forever, Shepard."
She couldn't disagree with that logic; in fact, most turian logic was pretty sound — militarily speaking, anyway. Feet free from her boots, she stood up and stretched. This wasn't how she'd expected spending the evening in her quarters, either, but there was something relaxing, comforting about being here with him like this, even if events had put the kibosh on anything more developing tonight. Socks made her footfalls silent as she crossed to her personal terminal. She peered through the display case, watching Garrus a moment; he looked relaxed, almost serene. The top of the Presidium felt miles away just then, and for a moment their… well, yes, she supposed it had been a date, felt very far away indeed.
"Do you want to stay here tonight?" Thena asked, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, heat flooded her cheeks. "I, uh. I mean — I didn't… I know today's been…" Difficult? Rocky? "…Unpredictable. But…" She cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter, eyes meeting his steadily across the room, before saying, "If I'm going to be a one-turian woman, I'd like the turian in question to be hanging around." He cocked his head at her and exhaled that short laugh she knew by heart. "And I wouldn't say no to the company," she said with a shrug.
"I'm kind of relieved you're admitting to wanting any, Shepard." His mandibles flexed in an approximation of a grin. "Yeah. I'll stay, if that's what you want."
So maybe picking up where they left off — more or less — wouldn't be too difficult after all. She felt herself smiling as she looked at the messages lining up on her terminal. One in particular caught her attention immediately.
"Huh. I'll be damned."
Garrus stood up and stretched, hands linked his above his head as he arched back and yawned. "What's up?"
She glanced up at him, then back to the terminal screen. "Jack's on leave — she's on the Citadel. Wants to meet up for drinks."
"I'm guessing you're gonna want to bring her in on this."
"I don't really see how I can't."
