Helping Thane with his son cemented his unlikely friendship with the assassin. Moved by how vulnerable the man had been in the presence of his son and his son's accusations. Garrus hoped that some good had come of their private conversation, he really did. It reminded him how short all of their time was and he should contact his family soon, if he ever intended to. So, he wandered through Zakera Ward while Shepard talked to Bailey and Thane was handling Kolyat. He found a secure courier easily and sent an encoded message to his sister on Palaven with the Normandy's extranet IP so she could contact him back.

He wandered without purpose after that, relaxing into that patented policeman's stroll as he walked what used to be his beat way before any of this Shepard madness came into his life. Not that he'd have it any other way. Life would never have seemed as profound without her in his.

Thane's story about his wife haunted Garrus a bit. If Shepard had died in a similar way, he feared what he would have done to get revenge. No force in the traverse would have stopped him. Someone would have had to put him down as a rabid animal. As it was, her death had broken him. Garrus could only hope now that he was truly on the mend. A poison had been leeched out of him, leaving the raw edges of his psyche to regroup.

For once, he was feeling, well not good, but almost content and decided to drop into the Dark Star bar. He was about to send a message to the ship to see if anyone was interested when he spotted Miranda, Jacob and Zaeed already there. He sidled up to Miranda's blind side, she was turned to her right, speaking to Massani, who, playing along when Garrus put his finger on his mouth, pretended not to see him. Garrus delighted in her little shriek when she turned at a brush on her elbow and spun to face a tall, looming turian inches from her face. The other two men laughed as she huffed at him, "Vakarian, you almost gave me a heart attack."

"Honey, you need to have a heart first for that." He defused his statement with a grin, ducking under light blows from her fists.

"Don't think I won't biotically slam you into this bar." Her accent turned the word into 'bah', he smiled down into her eyes and sat next to them.

"How 'bout I make it up to you by letting you buy me a drink?" She spluttered in indignation, but still signalled the bartender to come over.

Zaeed eyed him as he sat back with his drink, "How'd the thing go?"

"It went." Garrus really didn't want to elaborate, wincing a bit as he took a sip. "Why don't we get a table?"

They staked out a corner of the bar that was semi-secluded with a low couch that ran all along the wall in a U-shape. The music was just low enough that they could converse freely. Massani plopped down near him and choked back a shot, grimacing at the taste. The human looked over at him askance, "Kasumi, Jack and Mordin are coming later. I told'em to leave Grunt, I don't want to have to babysit a full-grown krogan. Tried to sweet talk Chakwas into coming out but she said she had her own private reserves, eh? Ha."

Garrus nodded, taking a deeper swallow of his drink, "Chakwas has good taste."

"Gah, I hope not. No hope for me then, right? Been trying to get into her knickers since she sewed up my leg." The mercenary smiled wryly, "Got to get my jollies before we're all dead. Where's Skipper and the green one?"

"Wrapping up some business downstairs. I went for a walk, needed to clear my head." Garrus leaned back, letting the warmth of the liquor course lazily to his limbs.

"Clear your head...right." Zaeed leveled a frank gaze at him, "Nuffin's ever...easy when it comes to Shepard, is it? Especially when it comes to her brand of 'help'."

Garrus grunted non-commitally, looking around the bar. It lacked the sleaziness of Afterlife, he felt he could almost relax here. He ordered another drink and settled back, meeting the mercenary's eyes, "Nothing worth doing is ever easy."

"True, true, but I wanted to kill Vido, ever since he put a bullet in my face. Ruined my good looks. That's vandalism, that is." Massani barked a laugh. "I didn't ask for a cause, when I joined up. I'm a bloody mercenary, me. Been soaked in blood for too many years to believe that it can ever be washed clean. And she put her gun in my face. Right in my fuckin' face, tells me we have to save some sodding workers and I have to let that bastard go."

Garrus nodded again, it seemed the most appropriate response. This...event must have happened before she saved him on Omega. Saved him...she was always saving him. Then, it had been his life. Today, it had been his soul. He would never be able to pay that debt completely, but he wanted to try. So badly did he want to try.

Zaeed was waving his arm in aggravation, "And I do. And I cannot for the life of me even figure out why."

The merc slumped back in his chair. Garrus was facing the door when he saw the familiar shape of Shepard walk in, followed closely by Thane. She smiled when she saw their small group, moving to join them. Thane halted her with a hand on her wrist, leaning in to say something to her. Her brow crinkled and the pair moved to a small booth instead, Shepard's back to them. Garrus swallowed thickly, feeling anguish burn in his chest. He said to Massani without looking at him, "Because she's Shepard."

Massani looked at him in disbelief, which slowly shifted to chagrin, "Yeah...she's Shepard. You know, I'm kind of glad we didn't leave those workers to burn. I've got enough ghosts following me as it is. And I can always get Vido later."

"Remorse, Zaeed? From a hardened mercenary bastard like you? For shame." said Kasumi as she popped into existence in their midst, plopping into the lap of the bemused mercenary. "Buy me a drink, sailor."

"Fancy a little dandle on my knee, little girl? You're young enough to be my granddaughter." Massani laughed at his own joke, passing her his drink which she dropped back in one gulp. Another round was ordered when the rest of the crew showed up, dropping comfortably in places next to people they'd have hated in their former lives. Garrus stared in wonder as Miranda and Jack traded mostly good-natured gibes, their cattyness at an all time low. Even Samara showed up, with Grunt, Ken and Gabby in tow. It became a party in earnest, with laughs and jabs all around.

Garrus was starting to feel a bit fuzzy round the edges as the night wore on, the couple of months since his last serious drinking binge must have lowered his tolerance. He was having a good time, even if the celebration had a desperate edge to it. He was staring at Shepard's back, thinking how he'd love to touch her hair, that curious human hair held such a fascination for him. He watched her reach across the table and put her hand over Thane's, seeming intimately. Garrus wrenched his eyes away then, unable to watch any more without hurting, all of him just hurting.

Aware he was getting maudlin, he called for a toast, waving his arms and lifting his glass, "To me!"

After a moment to puzzle that one out, the crew broke out into laughs and called as one, "To me!"

"To you!" Garrus toasted again, shouting now.

"To you!" Came the echo, raucous now. They jostled and guffawed.

Garrus stood for the last one, saying reverently, "To the Normandy!"

"To the Normandy." They quaffed soberly. Zaeed shot him a wicked smile and shouted, "May she keep the wet side down!"

The group erupted into laughter again, calling for a new round. After a time, it died down to a more quiet gathering. They'd broken into smaller groups to speak softly of personal things. Garrus barely noticed when they all started drifting off, having quite a bit of a buzz by then.

He was staring blearily at the burnt cowl of his armor thinking about replacing it when someone lifted him up by an arm, "C'mon, big boy, let's get you home."

"The Normandy, the Normandy is home." He mumbled, trying to go where the...nice person was steering him. "Home is where the heart is, the humans say. That's where my heart is anyway."

"I'll tell EDI that you love her." A soft voice chuckled near him. He swung round to look and almost fell, the person guiding him cursed. Funny, he thought he heard it coming from below and behind him.

"Not EDI. Normandy has its own spirit, her spirit. All of us love her spirit. It makes us...better." He waved his hand vaguely, trying to draw what he meant in the air. "She flies and we fight to keep up."

"Garrus, our drunken poet." Stairs were really hard to navigate when you're falling down drunk, or they were really easy, depending on how you looked at it. He barely managed, leaning on the mobile support that seemed to be following him.

"She flies so high sometimes I think she'll get burned up in the sun." He made a swooping motion with his hand, "I don't want that. Never wanted that."

Corridors were easy, corridors were a fuckin' cake walk, and he said so to the voice following him, rewarded by a hearty chuckle. They reached the airlock and he leaned his cheek against the cool metal as the person with him fiddled with the access panel, "Mmmm. Home. More like home than Palaven, even."

"She's a good ship. Lots of new doodads that Cerberus put in. I'm thinking about keeping her." The voice laughed and he was getting steered again. Past CIC, which was thankfully deserted, no one there to see him completely shitfaced. Small mercies, he thought. "Jack says we should go pirate. Live on the margins, or as she so eloquently put it, 'Fuck Cerberus, Fuck the council, and Fuck all!'."

"That's like, amazingly articulate for her," The elevator hummed and he hummed back at it, amusing only himself he was sure. The doors opened on the crew deck, Garrus was steered to the gun battery, looking forward to pitching headfirst into bed. No such luck, there were insistent hands, too soft and too fingery, pulling his armor off. It was nice to be out of it, so he let them be.

In the safe darkness of the battery, he heaved a sad sigh, "Almost shot my heart today."

The hands froze, then continued to release seals on his chestpiece, "Oh?"

"Yup. Almost shot my heart dead. Bang!" He held his finger out like a gun, miming the action in the air. "But she saved me. She's always saving me."

At last, he lay down on his cot, his mysterious benefactor still at his side, tucking him in of all things. He chuckled at the ludicrousness of the situation. So strange, he thought he could smell Shepard in here with him, maybe he was finally saturated by her presence. The voice that followed him home from the bar whispered in his ear, "Maybe you saved her first."

"Hmmmm." He lay on his cot, barely conscious of a small body squeezing in next to his. He rolled onto his side to accommodate so the body could nestle comfortably in the hollow he'd made. He draped his free arm over his friend's waist, pulling her undeniably female shape tight to him and silently prepared for oblivion to take him. The last sight he saw was fire flickering in the wake of his breath.