Thank you for the reviews and the support, and big thanks to my wonderful beta, Suilven, for her help.

Every day, Shepard's eyesight gets a little better. She can differentiate between light and dark shapes, and slowly, muted hues begin to bleed into the gray image her brain receives from her implants. It's not until the fifth day after her appointment with Dr. Karol, though, that her vision fully clears up.

It happens in the morning, when she first wakes up, and for minutes after, she can do nothing but slide her gaze around the room, taking in everything she's missed until now.

The house seems older than she imagined. The walls are covered in rose-patterned paper, and all the furniture is made of actual, real, white-painted wood. It looks quaint and romantic, something she's only seen in travel brochures until now, urging the wealthy to take a trip back in time to a bed and breakfast on Good Old Earth.

And the colors! After all the time she's spent in total darkness, the colors seem amazing. Everything is fresher, livelier, more vivid than before, and she wonders if she's just forgotten how beautiful the world can be or if it's the implants and the new cells in her eyes that she can thank for it all.

Eating breakfast in the garden, surrounded by an orgy of hues, is an entirely new experience. It's calming, and beautiful, and stunning, but the thing her gaze keeps returning to is the incredibly gorgeous shade of Garrus's irises. She's always been a sucker for blue eyes, and she's always appreciated the ones belonging to a certain Garrus Vakarian, but somehow, they seem… prettier than before. They look more intense, more piercing, now.

"Is something wrong?" Garrus finally asks when, for probably the tenth time, she's staring at him again.

Shepard shakes her head, hiding her embarrassment at being caught behind a smirk. "Vakarian, have your eyes always been this blue?" she asks, and hopes her jest doesn't sound too fake.

For a moment, he appears to be taken aback, but he finds his voice soon enough. "No, Shepard," he says, "I've borrowed them just for the occasion."

Feeling a blush coming on, she chuckles, and forces herself to look away. "Well. Good job."

##

Reading books from the library has become a nightly entertainment, but this evening, now that Shepard's vision is back, they decide to turn on the old projector in the living room and raid the house's collection of holo films. There are quite a few, including several Blasto installments, romantic comedies, and adventure flicks. They pick one about an Alliance mission on a rogue colony that has gone horribly wrong, resulting in a series of desperate rescue efforts to save the last remaining soldiers holding out in a hidden camp, and they settle down, Garrus on the couch and Shepard in her wheelchair, each holding a snack and a drink in their hands.

The film was obviously not written by someone with any real experience with the military, but it's entertaining enough, despite Garrus's ribbing about all the mistakes the Alliance soldiers have made that got them into their shitty situation to begin with. Shepard tries to argue, point out the thinking behind their decisions, but in the end, she has to concede that yes, things could have been handled a bit better.

"A turian war movie would've been more realistic," Garrus says smugly as the credits come on and he turns off the machine.

Shepard's eyes roll up at the ceiling. "Sure."

"I'll get one tomorrow from the camp and you'll see."

"Uh-huh."

Garrus makes a frustrated sound in his throat and he stomps into the kitchen to wash their glasses, and Shepard shakes her head and rolls her eyes again. Knowing turians, Garrus's movie is all about duty and rules and regulations, and it's going to be an absolute bore.

##

Despite Shepard's low expectations, the turian film turns out to be quite enjoyable. Yes, there's a little too much emphasis on protocol and expectations of personal responsibility towards the Hierarchy, but there are also some useful insights into the tactics turians use to achieve the best possible outcome from every encounter, and the narrative explores some promising relationships among the crew that Shepard becomes deeply invested in.

One of the scenes reminds her of the story Garrus told her once during their hunt for the Collectors. In the vid, tensions are running high before an important mission, and Salina, one of Shepard's favorites, gets into a vicious hand-to-hand sparring session with the ship's intelligence officer, an insufferable, pompous asshole called Gladius, whom she's been butting heads with for weeks. The combat is impressive, but Shepard can't help being disappointed at what she suspects is coming, and she's readying a frustrated groan when the fight ends in a tie. Her disapproving scowl turns into an astonished gape when Salina, instead of inviting Gladius to her cabin for a different kind of stress relief as per Garrus's little story about his own conquest, makes a gesture at Jorran, a quiet, dependable soldier that Salina has barely spoken to until now, and the two of them disappear into her quarters while Gladius goes off on his merry way.

"Umm... what just happened?" Shepard asks, brows crinkled in confusion as she turns her head to look at Garrus.

"What do you think?" He smirks, his mandibles flapping in a way that would probably be eyebrow waggling if he were a human. "Remember that scout I told you about?"

"Well, yeah. That's exactly why I don't get it. I thought Salina would take that asshole Gladius into her bed."

"Why? She hates him."

"But…" Shepard shakes her head, and blows out a frustrated huff of air. Turians. More complicated than you'd think. "But how about you and that scout? You didn't hate her? And why would Salina pick Jorran? They haven't had any connection this whole time."

Now, it's Garrus's turn to stare at her. "Seriously? You didn't pick up on any of the signals between them?"

Shepard frowns, and Garrus sighs. With a 'this is going to take long' expression, he picks up the remote and pauses the film, then turns his body on the couch so he can more comfortably face his clueless friend.

"First of all," he says, "no, I did not hate Aidene. We disagreed about a lot of things, but I actually quite liked her. And she liked me. How did I know? Because of those same signals you missed between Jorran and Salina. I don't know how it is with humans, but we don't need verbal communication to show affection and interest."

Shepard scratches the back of her neck. She feels like an idiot, but she can't help it. She has to find out. "What kind of non-verbal communication are we talking about?"

"Certain sounds, hums, thrums, mandible positions, a tilt of the head, a flash of the eyes, hand gestures—you know, signals."

"Huh." She chews on her lips, wondering why her N7 training never explained any of this to her. "I had no idea. I mean, sure, I knew there were some sound registers we humans can't hear, but… this seems to go deeper than that."

Garrus's mandibles spread out in what Shepard thinks is a grin, but now, who knows if that's what it really is? "No wonder you never reacted to Lorik Qui'in's advances."

Shepard's jaw drops. "Say what, now? Lorik Qui'in was hitting on me?"

Well, now Garrus laughs, so she knows he finds this whole thing hilarious.

"Yeah. He gave you quite a performance."

She frowns, and thinks back to all the turians she's encountered in the last few years. "Anybody else? Any other turian propositioning me?"

"A few. Like…" He thinks for a while, then holds up a finger. "Remember Captain Gavorn on Omega? Or the bartender in Dark Star Lounge on the Citadel? General Oraka?"

"Damn. I had no idea." She chews on her lower lip, pondering, remembering. After all the working hours they spent together, she's not sure she really wants to hear the reply if it's affirmative, but she asks anyway. "How about Primarch Victus?"

"No, he was too busy with the war to think of anything else. And then, he was grieving for his son. Councilor Sparatus, on the other hand… Well, not initially, but later, yeah."

"Sparatus? Finger Quotes Sparatus?" It's hard to wrap her head around the possibility that the councilor would want to do anything other than strangle her, given all the fights and disagreements they had—at least until the Reapers actually showed up and they developed a much better working relationship—but… at the same time, the mere thought of a powerful, impressive man like him pounding her into the mattress sends an unexpected rush of thrill down Shepard's spine and brings on a throbbing pressure between her thighs.

"Fuck." She shakes her head. "If I had known… All those missed opportunities…"

Garrus's jaw drops, eyes suddenly big as he gapes at her, and it takes him a moment to say something. "Uh, what?"

"It would've been nice to have some stress release once in a while, is all I'm saying."

He studies her, as if it was the first time he really saw her, and tilts his head as he asks, "You would, ah, sleep with a turian?"

"Why not? I've never really thought about it before, but if Mordin can try human, I can try turian. So, yeah."

"Wait. Back up. What was that about Mordin trying human?"

She laughs, and blinks away a tiny tear forming in her eyes as she remembers the old salarian.

"I used to bug the hell out of him, back when we were with Cerberus. Not that I meant to, but you were always busy with your damned calibrations, and I liked talking to him. He made me laugh, and we had some very enlightening conversations. One day, when I went to chat with him, he told me that he appreciated my interest in him, but he had to turn me down. 'Very little sex drive,'" she adds, trying to sound like Mordin. "He thought I'd been coming on to him. Apparently, I'd been fluttering my lower eyelids a little too much." She laughs again, and shakes her head as she goes on. "But anyway, he said that if he wanted to try human, he would pick me."

Garrus snorts and spreads his mandibles in a smile. "Good old Mordin. Always so tactful." He picks up the remote again, and aims it at the projector. "So, ready to go on with the film?"

"Yeah. Sure."

They turn back to the screen, and watch the rest of the movie without any more interruptions from her.

##

The story has a bittersweet ending. The turians win (naturally), but at a price. Jorran sacrifices his life to accomplish the final mission and save his team, and Salina is left alone, pregnant with their child. She leaves the military to give birth, names the baby after her dead lover, and vows to raise him to be the best damn soldier in the entire Hierarchy—a son Jorran would be proud of. The end.

"So, what did you think?" Garrus asks as he turns off the projector.

"It was good. Too bad about Jorran, though."

"He did what was expected of him."

His tone is matter of fact, with a small undercurrent of bitterness. Shepard thinks about the stories he's told her about his father, his sister, his upbringing and his self-perceived failings at being a good turian, and she wonders if him being here, with her, instead of busying himself with Hierarchy business and trying to rise through the ranks is just another aspect of his rebellion against those stiff ropes he's been so desperate to break free of.

Or maybe it's her who's holding him back. According to that Shadow Broker dossier she, of course, just had to stick her nose into, he'll never live up to his true potential as long as he's in her shadow. At the time, she thought it was bullshit; despite what happened to his team on Omega, he'd been doing just fine until Sidonis betrayed him. Yet, here he is, still by her side, instead of living his own life with his own kind.

Maybe it is selfish of her to accept this; maybe she should tell him to go, join his people, get married, have kids, have a normal life. If that's what he wants.

Is that what he wants?

"What's on your mind?" Garrus asks, his voice warm, concerned.

She turns her head to look at him, and smiles. "Just thinking." She's quiet for a moment, wondering if she should really get into this, and then, because she can almost never keep her mouth shut, she does. "Do you want to get married? Have kids, a house, family, the whole nine yards?"

He seems to mull over her question for a short while, as though he'd never considered this issue before. "Yeah," he finally says, "I do. It would be nice. Eventually. If I find the right person. How about you?"

Lips pursed, she tilts her head as she thinks about it, her reply coming just as slow as Garrus's did.

"For a long time, I never really thought I'd live to be old enough to even entertain the possibility of having a family. After I joined the military, my sole purpose was to kill every evil motherfucker in the galaxy. I figured that kind of life wasn't going to keep me breathing for too long, but I wanted to do it anyway. Then, of course, came the Reapers, which cut my life expectancy significantly shorter." She waves a hand, the corner of her mouth quirking up in a sarcastic smirk. "If not for Miranda, I'd actually be dead now. Twice over. But anyway," she goes on with a shrug, "even if I happen to be alive, who would want a cripple like me with all these scars all over her body?"

Garrus shakes his head. "You're Commander Shepard. Savior of the Galaxy. Anybody should be proud to call you their mate. Besides, you're not a cripple. In a couple of months, you'll be walking again. And as for the scars, who cares?"

"You'd be surprised how many humans do."

"Well, they're all idiots."

She snorts out a chuckle, grateful for his unbridled support. "Yeah, well, maybe I'll have to expand my horizons. Didn't you say that krogan love scars?"

Garrus nods. "They do. And if you're lucky, that breeding request on Tuchanka is still valid."

Shepard bursts out laughing, her glee pulling Garrus along with her, and they spend the rest of the evening talking about those days on Tuchanka and Omega and Illium and countless other planets, and the friends they've lost along the way.