"Stunning."
Thane's calm, throaty voice never seemed out of place, Shepard suddenly realized as she pressed a thermal clip into her assault rifle. No matter what he said or how emphatically he said it, the sound always seemed to emanate from the very environment, never jarring or unpleasant the way her own sometimes felt to her. In the middle of a rainforest, he spoke and not a single animal rushed away in fear. Must have been some kind of hunting evolution, she reasoned, and pulled her helmet down tighter.
"Let's go." She forgot to cast a glance around to see the beauty he mentioned, and by the time they made the next clearing there would never be another chance. Gun shots popped all around her, and she dove into the deep pool of empty consciousness that consumed her during battle. She was perfectly collected, and deadly effective. She felt nothing, and she could admit she found a definite release in it.
"Never a warm welcome," she quipped as the last Blue Sun fell.
"We never come in peace," Thane pointed out, dropping from the pier he had climbed to break a sniper's neck.
She pretended to pout as she considered his point. "It'd be nice to pretend." Thane laughed once through his nose.
Zaeed's radio sprang to life. She didn't recognize the voice on the radio, but he seemed to, and she surmised that it must be the Santiago person they were after. He sounded like a nasty bastard, threatening to kill his own men if they so much as hesitated. That was hardly fair. They were, after all, a really scary bunch. She shook her head.
"Sounds like he needs to get shot," she stated seriously, lifting a red eyebrow higher.
"Glad you and I agree," he replied.
She couldn't say she was incredibly surprised by the knowledge he dropped on her next, though judging by the quick turn of his head Thane expected her to be. She wasn't angry. In fact, if she was going to be angry at anyone it would be the Illusive Man – again. When she was done with all this, if she survived all this, she wouldn't mind putting a bullet in his head either. Smug bastard. Zaeed, on the other hand, she could understand. If she wanted to win someone's trust, she doubted her own gang history would be the first thing she'd mention.
"Why didn't anyone tell me you founded the Blue Suns?" she asked, her tone one of annoyance.
"Because it isn't common knowledge," Zaeed replied, in equal annoyance. He explained his story, that Vido had turned on him, teamed up with Batarian slavers, and eventually shot him. Her eyes jumped briefly to Thane at the mention of the Batarians, but he seemed as cool and collected as always. In fact, he was still watching her. She returned her gaze to Massani, shaking her head.
"You survived a gunshot to the head?" she asked, disbelief coloring her voice.
"Yeah, and you survived your ship getting disintegrated," he pointed out. She lifted her chin. "A stubborn enough person can survive just about anything. Rage is a hell of an anesthetic."
She looked at him a long time, sizing him up. She hadn't realized until that moment how much they had in common, surviving impossible odds, betrayal, gangs, stubborn refusal to accept anything but victory. There may have even been something to the whole rage thing, though how much she wouldn't admit. Before, he had been just another merc to her. Now, she looked in his eyes and saw something of herself in them. She nodded at him, then turned to extend the bridge she had stopped to get his explanation.
"They know we're coming," he warned as another transmission came across his radio.
"Bring it on," she replied, cocking her weapon. "I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around."
They ran into the gatehouse, and found just the man they were looking for. Shepard had met plenty of smug assholes in her day, but she had to say, Santiago competed with the best of them. He obviously felt no remorse whatsoever for having turned on his old friend, for valuing money over his partner's life. She felt her blood beginning to boil the longer the conversation went on, and had Zaeed not stepped up to fire shots at the scumbag she might have done so herself. Massani took it off her hands. The explosion of the gas line was a smart move – she'd have to remember that.
What he did after, though, caught her offguard. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked when he started beating senselessly on a valve. She ducked behind cover, Thane behind her dodging bullets, while the vet continued without caring one bit what she said. She fell back against the drell when the pipe he had opened caused a series of explosions across the entire room, but Thane politely set her right and she was free to glare at Massani without embarrassment.
"Opening the gate," he finally answered, before the men and debris had even stopped falling down around them. She exited cover, annoyed but not quite furious. She didn't like him moving without her orders, sure, but she understood his rage. So she cut him some slack. She got in his face, without punching him the hell out.
"Next time you're gonna blow something up," she told him, her voice a warning, "I wanna know about it first." She stared him down, but he stared right back defiantly.
"Vido was confident," he replied, "He had a lot of men. Now he's lost the home field advantage. If we keep up the pressure, no way he's getting out of here alive."
She begrudgingly admitted to herself that it was an effective plan. All the same, "You don't make a move unless I know about it first," she told him. She didn't care what gang he used to lead, right now he was under her command and she didn't like the rebellious blaze she saw in his off-colored eyes.
Zaeed's expression was cold as he gazed back at her. "This is my mission," he told her. "Remember that. I came here to kill Vido Santiago. If you want my help on your mission, you better make damn sure that happens today."
She quickly corrected him, lest he get the wrong idea. "I'm not saying I won't," she replied sharply. "I've only met him once and I already want to kill the bastard. But to get there, you need our help." She thumbed between herself and Thane. "So follow my orders, and we'll take down Vido. Deal?"
He looked between her and Thane, before waving her off. "I don't care what else happens, as long as Vido swallows a bullet."
She nodded, taking that as a sign he would follow her command, and then she moved out. Behind her, Thane raised an eye ridge high on his forehead, but said nothing.
The facility was crumbling down around them as they moved through the gate. Apparently whatever Zaeed had done had caused explosions all over the place, not just in the room they had been in. She didn't even stop to wonder if he knew the consequences of his actions when he blew the valve; for now, that didn't really matter. Blue Suns, the ones that had survived the blast, were doing their best to stop their forward progress, and between their bullets, falling beams, and fire blasting out of grates and pipes at every turn, she had her hands full. She was never so glad to get to the walkway on the other side of the small building, where the air didn't smell like gasoline and feel like it was roasting her alive. She inhaled deeply.
A frantic voice pulled her out of her brief relief. She narrowed her eyes, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at a man running out onto a catwalk overhead. He was unarmed, so she didn't pull her weapon, and because he wasn't wearing the tradition blue and white armor of the Suns she surmised that he must be a worker in the facility. Maybe he had information as to Vido's location, she thought, but that was before the man started shouting frantically for help. Zaeed's explosions had trapped them inside with no way out. Her eyebrows knit together.
"No time," Zaeed announced, "Vido's probably halfway to the shuttle docks by now."
The crease between her eyebrows deepened. "You'd let them die to get even with Vido?" she asked.
"They're not my concern," he replied callously. "Vido is."
She studied him. "I get why you want Vido dead, but is killing him really worth watching innocent people burn to death?"
Zaeed's impatience was increasing, and his voice rose. "I'm not sticking around to watch! We stop to help these people, and Vido gets away! And if he gets away, I'm blaming you."
She stared at him a long time, too long. She could understand his anger like it was her own. She hadn't hesitated to kill an entire colony of innocents to save the military establishment on the same planet. She had let fellow Marines die to win the battle at Torfan. She sacrificed Ashley to save herself. Was this any different? It seemed somehow wrong to deny him what he wanted, after everything she had done over the years. It was like denying herself.
But she never got the chance to make that call. As her indecision dragged on, she heard the scrape of a leather boot on metal grating, and turned to see Thane had already vaulted over the railing towards the building with the miners. Her mouth fell open, and she stared after him in shock. What the hell was he thinking? He was going to take on the entire building by himself? There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell he would get out of there alive, and she suddenly found her decision made for her.
It was easy to risk the lives of nameless people she had never met; Thane was different. He shouldn't have been. He was just another member of her crew, and if he insisted on deliberately making decisions for her he was probably more trouble than he was worth. But something tugged at her gut. She couldn't imagine taking on the Collectors without him. She needed him. She ground her teeth. She had no choice.
"We're not letting those people die so you can get a twenty year old debt off your chest," she said to Zaeed, ignoring the warmth in her cheeks that told her she was blushing at Thane's intervention. She had never been second guessed during battle the way he had just done, and she felt more than a little idiotic that he had done it in front of someone like Zaeed, a fellow leader just like herself. "Let's go," she ordered, climbing over the railing herself to follow – ugh, follow – after Thane.
"I knew this was a mistake," Zaeed mumbled after her, and her flush flared deeply. She felt more humiliated than she had since she was in boot camp. If they survived this, she was giving that damn drell a piece of her mind!
The facility was even worse than the last building had been. Flames crept up the walls, and even the grating they walked on fell through or exploded upwards as they ran by. They hadn't been in the place ten seconds before her suit was saturated, and her breath became painful. She literally felt like she was baking inside her own suit.
"Here!" Thane called, at the far end of the room, and she ran to his side.
"The doors won't open until the fires are out!" the miners yelled through the safety glass that separated them, and she turned her eyes to the ceiling.
"Sprinkler system," she said succinctly, pointing to the lines. "If we can turn off the fuel lines, we can put the fires out. There must be control panels. Split up. Find them." Despite his hesitation before, Zaeed did as he was told, and they all went in different directions at a jog. A metal panel blew off to her right as she came upon a narrow walkway. She dropped to the floor instinctively and the fatal missile careened over her, nearly taking her head with it. It skittered to a stop on the other side of the room, and she took a moment to steady her nerves. One obligatory near-death experience, check.
"Shepard?" Thane's voice echoed anxiously nearby.
"Fine," she replied, standing again. She rushed to the console she had been after before, setting her rifle down next to her. A few clicks and she quickly figured out how to reroute the fuel, and did so. "This one's done."
To her left, Thane hopped easily over a nearby barrier. "This one, as well," he announced. They turned their eyes to Zaeed, who pushed a button on his console. Without a word, he nodded. Thane's black eyes spotted a nearby room first, and he pointed. "There." They both rushed inside.
Together, they bent over what looked like a master safety systems control panel. They finally found the fire prevention measures and jointly set about starting them up. At last, the pipes overhead creaked to life and she looked up into the falling water gratefully. The air immediately began to cool against her burning cheeks. She was never so glad for any rain she had ever felt as this synthetic shower.
The fires slowly began to die down, finally faltering into steam memories of the former blazes, and at long last the safety doors opened. She felt her heart slow gratefully. "Good work," Thane said. Inside, she agreed with him. It was good work, but they still had a job to do.
"Let's go," she ordered.
Vido had ordered a last stitch effort against them, and they were well prepared. It was only through Zaeed's quick thinking and Thane's sharp aim that they even survived the brutal onslaught he had left in his wake. Together they dislodged fuel tanks from the ceiling, taking out the Blue Suns henchmen en masse. Worse for wear, but alive, they rushed out onto the shuttle docks outside. Much to her own dismay, Vido Santiago was already boarded, and laughed as he began to fly away.
She watched Zaeed with a restrained expression as he blew an entire thermal clip trying to shoot the shuttle down with an assault rifle. To say she felt responsible for his ineffective attack would have been an understatement. She wasn't surprised in the least when he rounded on her, furious as she would have been. She was only glad he was out of clips; if it had been her, she would have already been shooting.
"You just cost me twenty years of my life!"
She felt like her stomach had been packed with ice as she watched the fury change his face. Truthfully, she couldn't blame the man one tiny little bit. She knew exactly what he was going through. He was trapped in his own head with his pain and his rage. No matter what else he did, no matter what was really around him, in his mind a clock ticktocked a singsong reminder of what had been done to him. He betrayed you. He shot you. He left you for dead. Every touch would feel like the hands that held him down. Every loud pop sounded like the gunshot that had tore through his brain. Every pair of black eyes were his, staring unfeelingly as he said things that would never leave him.
She knew his pain, and she clenched her jaw as she saw it consume him. In that moment, she felt as responsible as Vido.
And in turn, she stubbornly refused to look at Thane.
She was, in a word, furious. She had remained silent during the long flight to the Normandy, with Zaeed staring stubbornly out the window and Thane resting his head against the wall, eyes closed, as if meditating. The longer the silence went on, the more angry she got, and by the time they got to the ship she was practically bursting at the seams.
She marched down to Life Support still in her hardsuit. She hadn't yet changed out of it because she and Zaeed had been conducting the shouting match of the century down in the lower decks before she came here. When there was no changing the mercenary's mind, she had turned her attentions to the cause of it all, and it didn't matter that the entire crew along the way saw her stalking through the ship with the expression of a mama bear on the prowl.
She moved into Life Support without invitation, her footsteps heavy and menacing on the metal floors. She pulled even with Thane at his table and stared at him for a moment, drawing in a long breath. And then, the upbraiding began.
"Where the hell do you get off?" she asked, her volume several notches above polite. "You could have endangered the entire team with your bullshit. Since when do you think you can get away with crap like that?"
She paced angrily back and forth like a lion in a cage as she raged, gesturing emphatically. "This is my ship, and we play by my rules. The chain of authority is in place for a reason, and it's a damn good one, so if you can't handle that you can get off at the next stop." She paused, shaking her head.
"I don't need people around me who think my orders only apply when they like what I have to say, and this mission is too critical to put up with insubordination. In the line of fire!" She stopped in her pacing long enough to look at him intensely, her eyes widening as she threw her hands up to either side of her.
"That miner could have been armed, a ploy from the Blue Suns, anything! The entire place was a ticking time bomb! We didn't have time for you to decide you're the one in charge!"
He hadn't even looked up from his meditation, but she continued unphased. "I thought you were smarter than that, Thane. I thought you got it. You always fit so seamlessly into the team, and you never questioned my orders. And now this? What were you thinking?"
She rounded on him, finally ready for his input, but he gave none. He had barely moved during her speech, except to place his hands down onto the table. The longer he sat there without answering for himself, the more pissed she got, and at last she walked around to the other side of the table where he was staring, blocking his view. She slapped her hands angrily down on either side of his and met his gaze, demanding his attention. "Well?"
"I am not sure my actions on Zorya count as rebellion," he admitted, gesturing lightly with his webbed fingers. "The Shepard I have come to know would never let the revenge of one take precedent over the lives of many, particularly when she is working so hard to save them by defeating the Collectors." He paused, considering, before continuing. "In principle, I may have acted without your direct orders, but I did not act without your influence."
She felt the sting of his words without allowing it to show on her features, except for a rapid blinking of her eyelids. The tattle-tale voice in the back of her mind reminded her she had almost done just that. None of those miners could help her fight the Collectors. Zaeed could. She had at the very least considered chocking them all up to a casualty of war, and now they would never know which path she would have finally settled on. He seemed confident she would have chosen to spare the miners. She wasn't so sure, but she didn't say so aloud. What was the point of fighting the Collectors if she traded lives so casually? She was almost ashamed of herself. Almost.
"Is this your idea of an apology?" she asked, waving a hand at him. "Because it's not a very good one."
"No," he responded. "My intentions were pure. I have no reason to apologize."
She glared at him for his audacity. "You're not going to apologize because your heart was in the right place?" Before waiting to hear his response, she cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand. "Your drell beliefs don't hold water on my ship, Krios. When I order you to do something, I expect you to do it – body, soul, whatever!"
"If you had ordered me to leave the miners, I would have done so," he replied succinctly. "I would have felt no guilt for their deaths. The decision was yours, and so the guilt would have been." He looked at her, and for a moment she dithered in complete confusion. What was the problem then?
"But they would not have been your orders," he explained, gesturing with perfect calm, a calm that annoyed her to no end in the face of her anger. "They would have been Massani's."
She stood slowly, letting his words sink in. She looked at him a long time, before crossing her arms defensively. She didn't want to admit it but part of her already knew he had a point. She still didn't like his methods.
"So what, you were saving me from myself?" she asked, her sarcasm thick.
"No," he immediately disagreed. "I was saving you from apathy." He suddenly stood, pacing slowly towards the door to Life Support, as if the motion would help him gather his thoughts. Behind him, she watched, an old gut feeling telling her something really bad was about to happen. It was the feeling she got before a heavy mech unloaded a round of bullets on her, or a horde of husks appeared out of nowhere. It had no place in this conversation, but she felt it all the same.
He turned back to her when he reached the other end of the room, and returned her gaze for a long moment, blinking both eyelids. At last, he spoke. "You have been different since the Citadel." He looked down at the ground. "You have not asked about Kolyat. You have not taken your meals in the mess hall. You turned Doctor Chakwas away when she came to speak with you." He paused before concluding, "You have changed."
A crease appeared between her eyebrows, and she quickly jumped to deflect his accusations. "Are you saying you did this because you missed me?"
"I..." He blinked, caught off guard by the question. His eye ridges pulled together, and he looked away. "I did 'miss you,'" he finally continued, using her words, "but my actions on Zorya were not about me." He lifted his gaze back to her, his confidence shaken but returning.
She shrugged one shoulder, shifting all her weight onto one foot. "Still managed to have the desired effect. I'm here. We're talking. Isn't that what you wanted?"
He again looked away. "Yes," he admitted. "Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I acted more selfishly than I realized."
She seemed to have ignited something in him, because he began to pace again in earnest, his hands held tightly behind his back and his footsteps quick. The feeling of dread rose up in her again at his anxiety, stronger than before, but she beat it down again. The battlefield was an appropriate place for that kind of nervousness. A conversation with her crewmate was not the proper place.
He stopped suddenly in his pacing, facing the door and away from her. He turned his head slightly, so that his voice could carry over his shoulder. "Commander Alenko wished to follow after you, on the Citadel. But I stopped him."
Her head reeled like she had been punched in the face herself. What the hell? Kaidan had tried to follow her? And Thane had stopped him? Why? She blinked rapidly, not even realizing that Thane had turned to watch her as the reactions played across her face like actors on center stage. Her feelings were such a jumble, though, that it was hard to determine one from the other. And oddly enough, she had more questions about why Thane had interfered than she had about what Kaidan was doing following after her. Perhaps it was just because by now Kaidan's betrayal was an old one. Thane's, though, felt brand new and doubly scary.
"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked, the only question that made it to her mouth out of the dozens that formed in her head.
He tilted his chin slightly, humbly. "I would wish to be always honest with you."
She felt her brow darkening even though she couldn't see it, and her next question formed again without her conscious effort. "Why?" she asked – not about his honesty, but about Kaidan. He seemed to understand that.
He lowered his eyes again, his face thoughtful as if he didn't know the answer himself. "I had thought I was protecting you from his influence," he replied, standing upright once more. "When Irikah died, I lost myself to her memories. I hunted, I prayed, and I remembered, but the world passed me by. My son grew up without me. I was effective, but I was not alive. I... feared that you would have done the same with whatever remained of your feelings for Alenko."
He lowered his head, his expression humble. "I hoped to save you from your battle-sleep," he admitted, "but I have failed."
She felt her teeth gritting at more of his drell bullshit. "I'm not you, Thane," she told him, her voice icy.
"No," he agreed, unerringly civil, "but we are more alike than you realize."
She shook her head. "I'm not holed up on my own, the way you were. I'm going after the Collectors," she pointed out. "I'm saving the galaxy."
"And I returned to my contracts," he replied, as if her point was not against him but for him. "You once told me you had a hard time leaving behind the life you lost, though you had another waiting for you. I had, as well. I could have been a father to my son, but I didn't. I returned to the way I existed before I met Irikah. You have done the same."
She uncrossed her arms to point at him angrily. "You weren't around then. Don't pretend you know me."
"I don't have to," he easily responded. "I know myself."
She shook her head quickly. "I'm not in any battle-sleep!" she argued.
He looked at her for a moment, before his eyes zoned out. She realized he was escaping into a memory a moment before he began to speak, and then his words flowed over her like a river, unstoppable.
"Widow heavy in my hands. Breath short, painful. The smell of gunfire thick on the air. Red armor flashes, foosteps quick and heavy. The sound of flesh bruising as she slams her hands into the other woman. Green eyes flash angrily against a brown pair. 'What the Hell is your problem?' she asks. She is angry, frightened."
He turned his head, and she knew he was shifting to another memory. "Brown eyes sad, distant. Tattooed skin shifts as she looks down at the shield module. Her shoulders slump. She looks up, and her look hardens. 'What the fuck are you looking at?' she asks."
Her eyebrows lifted. Jack had looked sad? She never knew she had any effect all on the younger woman. She had been a bit less of a brat, perhaps, but she just assumed she had put the fear of God into her. She figured she was just too scared to piss her leader off again. Her expression turned uncertain as she realized it had been ages since she visited Jack – or anyone. Not since she had left the Citadel, and returned to her 'old self.'
Thane didn't pause before he shifted into another memory. This time, his tone was different, colored somehow by an emotion she didn't identify. "Fire rages all around. His two-tone eyes shift coldly in his face. Explosions shake the floor. She moves, her emerald eyes calculating. 'Next time you're gonna blow something up, I wanna know about it first,' she says. Her voice is restrained, careful – methodical. She doesn't yell. She waits."
She winced, looking away from him. The juxtaposition between the two scenes was obvious and didn't paint her in a very kind light. Suddenly, her own memories of both events caught up with her and overwhelmed her. She remembered exactly what she felt when Jack went crazy on the mercs. He had described it right. She had been incredibly angry, because she had been so afraid – for Jack and for Thane. She was furious, but not because the other woman hadn't followed orders. She was furious because Jack had put herself – and the rest of the team – in danger. The difference was obvious when she examined her feelings about Zaeed's rebellion.
Then, she had been annoyed because he had acted without warning. He had put the team in just as much, if not more danger than Jack had, but she had allowed it. She had even admired it's efficiency. She considered dully whether she would have been upset if Thane or Zaeed had been killed during the mission, and she realized with no undue amount of shame that she would have only been upset because her fight with the Collectors would have been all the harder – not because she had lost friends. She wouldn't have felt what she did when Ashley died, but the way she felt when Jenkins died.
You wanted Commander Shepard? She heard her words to Miranda, echoing inside her own head. You got her.
But was she still that woman? She had been when she started to chase Saren. The Alliance and eventually the Council picked her because of her singular dedication to the mission, her ability to make the difficult choices that can't go down on record. She could do those things, make those choices, because she had always been forced to anyway. She never had anyone looking out for her on the surface of Earth. To survive, she made the tough calls. Her mother's abandonment defined her.
After Saren, she didn't know who that woman was anymore. She had other things to define her. Anderson's faith, Garrus's respect, Liara's steady friendship, and yes, Kaidan's love. She had always been defined by the things she was missing, but after Saren she was defined by the things she had.
Until she lost them. Not all of them, not really. If she looked at it honestly, Anderson still believed in her. Garrus still looked up to her, though he was a leader of his own right. Liara had stopped at nothing to bring her back from the dead. The only thing she had lost, the only pillar of her strength that had crumbled, was Kaidan's love.
But it reopened an old sore. She had loved two people in her life, and both of them had just decided of their own accord not to love her anymore. She could ask why and torture herself for years, or she could just accept it, come to terms with it, and ignore it. It was easier to put up the old walls and retreat back into her cold soldiering. It was not easy to look into Thane's eyes and see herself reflected back, a weaker creature than he believed her to be. She shook her head.
"How?" she asked simply as she looked at Thane. It was a rare occasion when she asked for guidance, even more rarely that she did so with the complete humility that now etched her sharp features. "How did you pull yourself out of it?"
He hesitated, watching her carefully. "You woke me up."
One corner of her mouth pulled back bitterly. "If only I could do the same for myself."
He straightened as he looked at her, his chest lifting and his gaze serious. He considered her. "Not everyone leaves, Shepard."
She blinked. Man, he really knew how to cut to the root of the problem. She clenched her jaw as she felt the old insecurity begin to bubble up again, shutting it down before it got too far. "No," she agreed, her voice tight. "They just leave me."
His response was instantaneous. "They're idiots."
She stared at him, before a laugh jumped unbidden to her lips. It just sounded so ridiculous. She had never heard Thane say anything more insulting than 'hello' the entire time he had been on the Normandy. The perfect disdain in his voice, the quickness of the response, and the simple message it conveyed all culminated in one pathetic reaction: laughter. She couldn't stop herself, and before long what had been a bitter expression at the start became genuinely amused. She shook her head at herself as her mirth finally died down. Was that what it felt like to be hysterical?
"I'm sorry," she apologized, and then she gestured, encompassing the room. "For everything. I..." She struggled to find the words to properly thank him for knowing her better than she knew herself. She finally settled on, "I appreciate you looking out for me."
He bowed from the waist, and she almost started laughing again at his... Thane-ness, but she controlled herself this time. For a long while she struggled with an emotion she wasn't sure how to convey, or if there were even words in the English language that would. She at last spoke. "Please don't judge me too harshly, for letting apathy get the better of me." She waited. It had been a long time since she cared this much what another person thought of her, but she knew she couldn't leave Life Support until Thane forgave her.
"You needn't worry," he replied. "I... have come to admire you. There is little chance of my judging you very harshly for anything."
She didn't think she deserved it, but she nodded gratefully anyway. "So you don't blame me for my stupidity? Is that some kind of drell thing?" she asked. It was a lame attempt to lighten the mood, and atone for her remarks earlier which now seemed almost xenophobic.
He smirked lightly, his expression amused. "No," he replied, copying her tone, "It's a 'Shepard thing,'"
Her smile was wide and genuine as she replied. "I don't know if I'd trust me with a blank check, but thanks."
"I trust you implicitly," he replied without hesitation.
Her eyebrows rose. "Brave man," she commended.
"Hardly," he waved the compliment away with a shake of his head. "Only certain."
She looked at him for a moment before lowering her eyes to the ground. She had been about to respond to his unfailing trust, something she was sure she didn't deserve, when it occurred to her that she quite simply didn't have the energy. "I should go," she said, pushing off from the wall behind her.
He nodded. "I'll be here if you need me."
She returned the nod. "I believe it."