fI was much more comfortable now.

The chair I sat in was much the same as the one I had sat in during the debriefing, but now there were no eyes studying me. No eyes searching me for any suspicious actions.

Dr. Chakwas had been very kind to me; not only had she set me up at a terminal behind the medical labs, but she had soon brought me a sizable tray of food, which now lay empty beside the terminal.

My exhaustion in the com-room turned out to be mostly from lack of food, as I had suspected. I had been taking naps during the days I had been trapped. Short, fitful, and terrifying naps, but naps none the less.

I could hear the door to my little room open… funny, how I'd been here for maybe an hour and I still considered it my room.

I turned to assure the doctor that I would take the tray in to be cleaned, and I froze.

In walked the Commander.

After the several seconds it took to process this information I started to stand. Only to be waved back down into my seat.

His arm twitched and a folding chair flew into his open hand from its place on top of the crates, he snapped in open, spun it behind him, and… flopped was the only word for it, flopped into the chair.

He eased back, exhaustion seeming to radiate off of him as he leaned back and closed his eyes, his hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

We spent several moments like that, with me staring at him like a fool and trying to think of something to say as he almost lay in the chair in the room with me, I was finally working up something to say when he spoke, his voice coming out almost as a groan, "Paperwork is a bitch."

Once again, I froze; I could feel my brow crease as I tried to puzzle out what he was talking about, "Commander…?"

He cracked open one of those striking green eyes of his, from this angle, it almost appeared as if his eye was a pool of molten jade… I started to wonder how people worked while he looked at them when I realized I had been staring at his eye for almost a minute now.

I jerked a bit at this realization and flushed just a little, apparently Shepard took this as a sign I would actually hear him when he spoke, "After every mission or assignment I complete, I have to submit a report to the Alliance military, the Council, and stand by for a debriefing from the council personally due to my Spectre status… and to top it all off, I have to account for the destruction of those ruins in the paperwork…" he winced at that, "Which accounts for almost twelve more full pages each in of itself…"

"Commander… I…" 'How do you reply to that!?' "I'm sorry that you had to go through so much trouble for my sake…" I trailed off when he closed his eye again and waved his hand some, almost brushing off my concerns.

"It's nothing. I got you and my team out safe and almost completely unharmed, that's what matters. The paperwork is just a necessary evil…" as he talked, his voice deep but soft, his one hand remained at his nose, attempting to massage away his apparent headache, his other was moving in the air… 'talking with his hands' I believe it was called, "… doesn't mean I have to like it…"

He sighed, and it was almost as if he deflated, he suddenly seemed smaller… weaker… more vulnerable… it took me a second to realize that he had just let all of the tension flow out of his body, that he had stopped holding himself so tall and strong… then he took a deep breath and ran both his hands through his hair, and suddenly he was my savior again, strong, confident, and unstoppable.

"Anyways, I just needed to be somewhere quiet for a while… and you don't really seem to be one to shout and yell much… if at all."

I considered speaking but decided against it, and we slipped into a comfortable silence. He said he needed to be somewhere quiet for a while… but we both knew that my new room wasn't the only quiet place on the ship.

So we sat there, in the storage room behind the med labs. I relaxed back into my chair and took the time to actually look at my savior for the first time, to analyze this man touched by working Prothean technology.

With his eyes closed, the first thing I noticed was his hair, it was a dark brown color, the light making some points almost shine a deep red, almost the color of human blood. I assumed it was long for a human, it was the longest of all the humans on the ship that I had seen aside from the Doctors'. It was shorter in the back than it was in the front, almost as iff he had pulled it back when it was longer and cut it.

I shook off my temorary fascination with his hair, it was only because I was just unused to dealing with humans, and they were the only known sentient race with hair.

With that thought, I looked at his face, actually looked at it. I'd seen it in the comm room, I knew that, but it had not actually registered what he looked like past those eyes.

I looked, and bit my lip.

He was handsome-

Well, at least by human standards...

...for a white male...

...I guess...

Oh by the Goddess! Why was I so hesitant to admit that I found him attractive?!

Because he's a different species. Because as far as I know we have absolutely nothing in common. Because I don't have any idea what he's really like. Because I know almost nothing about him!

At that moment I could almost hear my mother's voice in my head, 'Then learn more about him!'

I shook off those thoughts, they weren't helping anyone, and returned my eyes to him.

His skin was pale, easily paler than any of the other humans I had seen on the ship, it was not white... but he certainly did not see much sunlight. My first good memory of him flashed across my mind,of him in his fully sealed enviromental suit, even thought the planet was survivable... how often had he done that?

I noticed something else; suprised, and a little ashamed that I did not see it earlier...

Across his right eye there was a scar, it stretched from his upper forehead, over his eyelid, and curved into the center of his cheek, it was dark, the edges of the scar ragged and almost tattered. It stood out against the almost whiteness of his skin.

My fingers twitched some before I stilled them and supressed the urge to take off one of my gloves and run my fingers along his scar, to see whether it was rough or smooth, whether I could feel the current of his nervous system beneath his skin or if the nerves had been killed by whatever had marked his face...

For scientific curiosity of course! I just... wanted to know.

My eyes trailed across his lips idly as I wondered what could have given him such a horrific scar-

There, trailing from the left corner of his mouth, was another scar.

This one was a thin indentation in his skin, reaching back along his cheek before curving down, dipping into the end of his jaw. Unlike its twin on the other side of his face, this one was well defined, obvious, with smaller lines of scars that bisected it along its length.

It almost seemed as if his someone had tried to widen his smile, cut his cheek completely open, and had messed up... Those little scars made it look like the doctors had to stitch a slit in his face closed like a tear in clothes.

What had done this to him? What had been able to hurt my savior like this?

Now I looked over his face again, looking for signs of old damage. And I saw what I was looking for.

Across the bridge of his nose was a small diagonal scar, his nose itself looked like it had never been broken... but the small, pale yellow scar said something had happened.

There, his right ear, though mostly hidden by his dark hair, had a number of notches along the edge. With my limited medical knowledge I could guess that a glancing round had blown out the side of his helmet, and the shrapnel had taken chunks out of his ear. And even though the ear had healed...

There was another, this one a small, thin triangle of paler flesh on his lip.

And there, probably the worst one aside from the two major ones, a slightly skewed streak of knotted flesh that stretched across his neck, as if someone had tried to slit his throat with a bad knife and missed.

How much had this one man been through? What all could one person do to have so much damage inflicted upon them? I simply could not believe that all of the damage to be seen was on his face.

Should I ask?

Was it right?

What do I say?

As his hands moved up cover his face for just a moment, I noted that there were several small scars on the back of his hands as well.

"Commander...?"

A.N.): Wow... that came out easier than I thought it would... Anyways, the next chapter is probably a couple days away. On this chapter though, I don't know whether I should take a different approach to it or not. I know I'm usually pretty good at dailogue, but I also know that when it comes to description I sometimes go overboard. I don't know whether or not I did that here... so any comments would be helpful

seezemaru: Thank you, and I see what you're talking about with Tali. But no, she's not feeling insecure, she just doesn't trust Liara at that point, so her body language isn't very 'open' either.

SORTA IMPORTANT: I'm running a bit of a poll. SHould I make my chapters for this longer and take longer to review, or should I just keep up the 2,000 word chapters? Please say what you want in your review.