To put it mildly Nat was pouting in the mess hall with a steaming cup of sugary goodness mixed with about a tablespoon of coffee (she smiled at the memory of Garrus teasing her, asking if was allergic to coffee) and data pad reading one of her favorite novels from the nineteenth century. After the "Horizon incident", as Shepard called it, she was grounded for the next three missions. She huffed, knitting her brows in anger.

She looked up as a figure sat across from her, dropping into a seat with a grunt and slamming their bowl of Gardener's gumbo on the table. She glared at Jack for interrupting her quiet time, but the tattooed woman ignored her and shoved a spoonful of the gumbo into her mouth. Deciding that Jack wasn't going to bother her, she focused her attention back on Darcy and Elizabeth and settled back in her seat, twisting her ankle to pop it.

"Whatcha readin', N7?" Jack questioned after a few minutes, craning her neck to see the data pad while pushing her empty bowl to the side. Nat sighed and put it down on the table, brushing her long, thick waves over her shoulder.

"A very good book and you're interrupting the best part."

"Reading is for pussies. We should blow somethin' up instead." Nat laughed and smiled, shaking her head at the biotic.

"Reading is enlightening. Is betters your speech, your vocabulary and it's been proven to make you smarter. Reading Shakespeare has the same effect on your brain as when you do algebra or chemistry." Jack sighed, calling her lame and toyed with her spoon, while taking in Nat's casual appearance and bare feet. How did she walk around the cold ship with no socks? Jack's feet were always the first part of her body to get cold which is why she preferred combat boots.

"Aren't you cold?" Nat shrugged, adjusting the strap of her N7 tank top that was falling off her shoulder, missing the look off desire that flitted over Jack's face.

"I like the cold. I can always put more on but there is only so much you can take off if you're hot before you're indecent. More's the pity too, it's fun to sit around buck-ass naked and read," she laughed. Jack quirked a brow at her.

"Have you seen the shit I wear? Indecent is my middle name." They fell back into silence before Jack nudged her with the toe of her boot. "I hear ya got yourself grounded. What the fuck did'ya do?" Once again, anger bubbled up inside of her and she shifted her position.

"I got into a fight with that uppity, racist bitch Ashley. First she tells him that she loved him and had missed him, totally understandable; I've been there, I get that," she said breathlessly, casting her green eyes at the gun battery door. Her gaze flittered back to Jack's to find the biotic watching her with an intense look. "But then after she hugs him she steps away and she calls him a traitor, to his face and you know what he does? Nothing! He just stood there and took her verbal abuse. Granted he tried to tell her that he was dead, dead as a doornail, dead as dead can be, but she interrupted him saying how she couldn't believe he didn't contact her. Again he tried to tell her that he wasn't able to but she cut him off saying something about knowing where her loyalties lie and she'd never betray her own people." She stopped and sucked in an angry breath, uncurling her fingers and laid her palms flat against the cool table, taking a moment to calm down. Even now, the thought of that woman made her furious. She wanted to spar, maybe Jack would be willing.

"Did you fucking beat her ass?" To someone who didn't know Jack like Nat did, it might have sounded like she wasn't being serious but Nat knew that she was serious. Jack appeared to a be a cold-hearted bitch, and maybe she was, but Nat loved people, love to talk to people and she had earned Jack's respect on Purgatory.

"No, not that I didn't want too, but I just got in her. I was a Major in the Alliance and I would never, ever turn traitor to humanity. I swore to protect them with my life and I did, still do. Maybe when all this is over I'll go back, see what I can do about the Reapers. Either way, I lost it. I put my Major act on, told her what was what and who I was. I told her she was a nobody. I brought up her family; I know about her history, I told her she was a lapdog. I knew Shepard was angry with me since he was silent on the whole shuttle ride back, but I don't care. She's a bitch and she deserved it. If anyone needed to be put back in their place, it was her. If she loved him, actually loved him, she would never have said those things," she finished quietly, her voice breaking.

She ducked her head to blink back the tears, thankful for her long hair that hid her face like a silken curtain, that were threatening splash onto her cheeks. It was stupid to cry, Garrus hadn't ever said there was a commitment or that he was attached to her in that way. She had felt he was and even now, he would act jealous if he saw her laughing with one of CIC boys, saw the spark in his eyes if Shepard touched her hand or arm when they talked. But she didn't know what it meant and it confused her.

When she tried to talk to him, to tell him that she'd missed him desperately, he had just stood there, his hip against his console in the gun battery. He didn't say anything, not even a, "it's not you, it's me" or "I found someone else"; all she had received was his silence. The woman part of her wanted to storm in there and demand an explanation, but her rational, soldier part held her back.

Jack watched Nat in silence. She was never good with feelings and it seemed that she woman in front of her was having a lot of them at the moment. Normally she would have told someone to go cry away from her, but Nat had gone out of her way, more than anyone she had ever known, to get to know her. At first she was weary, she didn't want to get close to anyone; it only led to her getting fucked over.

Now though, after having been on the Normandy for almost three months, she admitted that she considered Nat her friend, her only friend. Nat had let her bitch and moan about Cerberus, listened to her about her fucked up childhood and laughed when she told her about some of her adventures, but she had never shared much about herself except to say that she was a soldier who survived on Elysium and made it through the rigorous N7 training.

Jack was by no means stupid, she'd seen a lot of shit, been on both sides of getting fucked over and being the one to fuck over the other. She knew there was history between Natalie and Garrus, she saw the looks Nat gave him when she thought no one was looking, and the sad look in her eyes when he passed her without saying anything. She also, however, saw the looks that Garrus tossed her way. Like the other day when Nat had been making herself something to eat, much to Gardener's dismay, and Garrus had leaned against the wall to just watch her a distant look in his eyes like he was having a memory of something, his mandibles twitching like he wanted to do or say something. When he had noticed that Jack had caught him, he had hurried off to the gun battery.

It pissed her off actually. If he wasn't going to make a move or stop acting like he didn't give a shit about her, then Jack would gladly step in and take her from him. She cared about her a lot, much more than she wanted to admit, but she wouldn't wait forever for him to pull his head from his ass. She drummed her fingers on the table, trying to figure out a way to get Natalie to understand the depths of her feelings for her when Garrus' voice pulled them both out of their quiet musings.

"Natalie? Can I talk to you? It's important."

She mentioned woman looked up, her brows knitting together. He only used that tone when he wanted to talk about work or a case they'd been working on. She nodded, sliding out of her seat and she squeezed Jack's shoulder as she walked by, "We should spar. I'll only be a moment."

The door to the gun battery hissed closed behind them and she turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest, tilting her head. "What's up?"

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over the good side of his face. "Do you still have your contacts at C-Sec or the Citadel?" She eyed him for a moment before nodding.

"Yeah, it's how I got my information about the slavers," she answered, ignoring his curious look. "Why? What do you need them for?"

He paused, unsure of how he should word his next sentence. He didn't want to tell her about Omega and maybe asking her to help him was a bad idea. If she found out about what he had been doing in the year that he hadn't spoken to her he wasn't sure how she'd take it. "I'm looking for someone and I have a lead, but I just want to double check. Your contacts were good."

"You're looking for Lantar Sidonis aren't you?"

His eyes snapped to hers and it frustrated him that'd slipped into "Major mode", keeping her features smooth and devoid of any emotion or inclination to his shock. She would do that whenever they had arguments or if he said something that she didn't like to hear about. "How do you know about that?" Her left eyebrow raised and a small smile played at the corners of her mouth.

"Garrus, you worked with me for a year. You were there when I told Shepard I already knew about the Collectors. I'm good at my job, though I don't do my job anymore; officially. When you weren't very forthcoming about where you were or what you had done, I got in touch with my people; I asked around for any information. Then I heard Shepard call you Archangel and I knew. It was easy since I knew you were going to Omega, but then I got my fingers on the mercs records and I found out how they managed to kill your squad."

He stared at her trying to decide if he should be angry at her or not. That was one thing she had never talked about, what she actually had done in the Alliance. In the entire time he knew her she had glossed over it, but now he had inkling, a hunch. At his silence, she continued. "There is a guy on the Citadel, his name is Fade. He helps people disappear, set a meeting with him."

She turned to leave but on instinct he reached out, like he used to when she'd been upset with him, and wrapped his hand around her wrist. She looked at him with inscrutable eyes, framed by her dark lashes and he had the overwhelming urge to brush his forehead against hers. Spirits, he'd missed her eyes; they were the brightest green and he'd never seen a more beautiful color. "Come with me," he asked. She bit her lip, something she did when she was thinking something over.

"I'm grounded and you need to take this up with Shepard. He runs this ship and he decides the missions. I have no say and we're not partners anymore," she whispered, unable to speak in normal tones at the look he was giving her, the way his eyes burned into her soul with their blue the color of sky. She pulled her wrist out of his grasp and quickly left the battery, her words echoing in his head.

Her words held two meanings and only one of them broke his heart, especially when she smiled "that smile" at Jack who returned it eagerly.

We're not partners… anymore.

He only blamed himself.