Set after the Leviathan mission; in my game, this took place right before Thessia.


When the door to her quarters slid open, she said, "I'm really fine," without looking up from the terminal. She did feel fine, the headache completely gone, although Chakwas had given her every neural scan they could manage and instructed her to rest. As usual, she was defying medical orders by answering her mail.

There was a pause, the doors sliding shut, and she heard the faint scrape of footsteps. "Uh huh," said Garrus. "Seems like I've heard that before."

She swiveled her chair around, to see him regarding her recent acquisition warily. "I can't believe you actually brought that thing on board," he said.

She smiled and shrugged. "Consider it a souvenir."

"Hope it doesn't bite too hard."

She thought of Leviathan, and her smile fell away. "Yeah," she muttered. "Me too."

Garrus did not comment on her changed mood, but simply came close and put his hand on her shoulder. She was grateful; it was hard enough for her to stop second-guessing her own decisions without listening to someone else's doubts. She owed him for more than that, too. "Thank you," she said, looking up.

His face shifted into an expression of honest puzzlement. "What for?"

"You pulled me out of fire when I was in no condition to fight?" Truth was, she'd barely been able to walk. Her memory of everything after the Leviathan was a little hazy, actually. Afterward, she'd watched the action from the camera feeds that everyone, plus the Kodiak, carried.

"Oh." Garrus stepped back and rubbed the side of his neck. "I... always, Shepard. You don't need to thank me for that."

She tried to decide whether she was seeing a turian-duty thing or a protective-boyfriend thing, and gave up. She stood and closed the distance between them, looping her arms around him. "Are you all right?" They'd held out for hours, she knew, and she hadn't missed how shaky his cam was as he rushed to her prone form.

"Yeah, I'm..." He averted his eyes, looking somewhere over her shoulder, and the scarred mandible twitched. "All right, I was worried about you."

She nodded, remembering the look on his face as she'd climbed into the diving mech. "I have to admit I was a little worried myself. I didn't like leaving you and James and Steve behind. But if I didn't, we might have been stuck there forever."

"I know that. It was... all that water, Shepard." He fidgeted, tensing in her hold. "I can't..." His eyes finally returned to hers, and there was something stark there. "I hate not being able to follow you."

She hugged him tighter and he returned the embrace, a little harder than usual. She said, "I'm sorry. I know you told me never to do that again, but..."

His laugh was a little weak, but it ruffled her hair. "I know I can't really ask you to... well. You wouldn't be you if you didn't take impossible risks."

"I'll try to space them out. Wouldn't want to worry you too much."

Her reward was a more genuine laugh. She leaned into him, letting her fingers play along his neck. Part of her wanted to make promises, that she'd always come back, that she'd never go solo again. She stopped herself. They both knew what risks they lives held. She wasn't about to start lying to him now.