It wasn't the first time Alenko had questioned her judgement.
He'd questioned her after Virmire, too.
Questioned, hell, Garrus had seen varren attacks that looked less aggressive.
Garrus wasn't cursed with eiditic memory, but he'd known even then—after Virmire—that the look on Shepard's face would never leave him...and it never had.
It visited him in the cold lonely moments when he'd realized and forgotten and realized again that she was dead and gone...her memory and her accomplishments forgotten and disrespected, all-but-erased...visited him with a sudden, cold clarity that cut him deeply, so deeply it had never ceased to bleed-just what she must have been feeling to put that look on her face in the first place...
The memory, that memory that never left him, imposed itself over the here and now...over her now...memory and expression mingled until Garrus had no hope of knowing where one ended and the other began...It was vivid, so damn vivid he wondered how Alenko could possibly miss seeing it.
But if anything had triggered the memory of Virmire—or anything else—for Alenko, he was doing a good job of controlling his reaction.
The face then. In the Briefing Room. Pale, weary, drawn. Sunken grey eyes shadowed under hot, puffy lids...hollow as if gutted by a great, burning regret, but, still, somehow, lit with something pained...something pleading. The jaw tense, teeth all-but-clenched. The forehead angled slightly down, as if her neck could no longer bear the effort it took to keep her chip up.
Garrus had hardly been able to bear those eyes...or even the memory of those eyes...and they hadn't even been looking at him.
If they had...
But they hadn't...he'd always felt a guilty relief over that.
And then she'd spoken...and with the memory of her words came the memory of her voice, and Garrus realized why he'd suddenly conjured that expression...that damned expression. Because while Shepherd wasn't wearing that look on her face, not now, that tone was in her voice...just a touch. Just a trace...just enough...
The tone was low, even, a little too calm with the faintest flat note of defeat. It was that note that had scared him then, after Virmire, that note that scared him now, on Horizon, that note that visited him in his worst dreams.
Her voice was husky, soft...almost pleading...vulnerable...and that was what unsettled him, what made him remember the tone, the words, the moment, the expression with a combination of horror, tenderness and awe.
She'd underscored her own vulnerability then, there in the Briefing Room after Virmire, admitting in front of the whole damn squad that she couldn't have left Kaidan behind. She'd admitted it calmly, regretfully, but unapologetically. It was what it was, and it was a fact.
That was really one of the things that made her so remarkable—perhaps the most surprising, the most enduring, the most potent. She never refused to see things as they were. She called a spade a spade, and didn't waste time trying to call it anything else. She accepted what was, assessed what she had, and set about putting the spades in her hand to the best possible use. A spade allowed to perform its function without needless interference...well, the results spoke for themselves.
Oh, she'd told the truth as only she could tell it. She could never have left Kaidan behind...at least not without sacrificing a piece of herself, leaving a hole that would hurt...but...she'd lied, too, because that wasn't why she'd saved him.
And everyone in the room had known it. Or Garrus had thought they had anyway. Maybe he'd been wrong...whoever in the room had known, Alenko apparently hadn't.
Being who she was, Shepard had even essentially called her lie a lie, telling the truth with another simple statement of fact. "Ash was a damned good marine. The best."
As such, Ash knew as well as anyone that—as good as her skills were—they weren't as rare—nor as valuable—as Alenko's. Ash had made the choice herself when she'd armed that warhead, Alenko hadn't. Ash knew that would weigh with Shepherd, Garrus knew it, and Alenko had to know it, too.
That mattered.
Ash had been willing—maybe even a little eager—to die...to prove herself, to prove her family. Alenko, the crew, and the rest of the squad might or might not have known, but Shepard had...and so had Garrus...and that mattered, too.
Most of all, though, Shepard had lied in allowing Alenko to make it about himself...about Ash...about them...at all...because it wasn't about him, or Ash...It wasn't even about Shepard. It was about the salarians. If the ground team had fought back to Ash and the bomb, they might have saved one life. Fighting forward, they had saved a dozen. That wasn't a weakness, and it wasn't a mistake. Not to the salarians. Not to Shepard. And not to Garrus.
When he'd had time for the pain and shock to subside, Alenko might appreciate that, but in the midst of his grief, he wasn't ready to hear it.
And so Shepard had lied.
She offered up half the truth, sacrificed her dignity and pride on an altar of publicity, of rules broken and regs bent, to spare Alenko as much guilt as she could.
Garrus had seen that knowledge and the respect it engendered reflected in every single face around that room. And, at the time, he'd merely thought Kaidan Alenko was damned lucky...and he had better appreciate it...but now...now...he realized Alenko was a damned fool who'd never seen what was right in front of him, let alone deserved it.
Garrus couldn't understand it at all.
And something, some faint fissure flickering between her eyes, some unfamiliar line in the way she stood, made him think Shepard was having some trouble processing things herself.
She'd allowed her vulnerability to show, then, on Virimire, even underscored it. Now, here on Horizon, things were different. She did her best to camouflage her pain, armor it in determination and pride.
Her spine stiffened. Her chin came up. Her shoulders squared.
"You think the Council or the Alliance will even consider what I have to say?," she asked, the coolness in her voice offset with the faint trace of a nervous, humorless laugh. "Fat chance." She folded her arms across her chest, leaning back on the balls of her feet. She usually did that when she was relaxed, but now she looked anything but. "They never have before. You know that."
Alenko might have had the grace to look a bit taken aback. Something in his expression had shifted, but it was difficult to see beneath the hard, brittle shell of anger and outrage he wore like a mask. He turned sharply on his heel, the picture of military precision, and began to walk away.
"You didn't," Shepard added so quietly Garrus might have thought he'd imagined it, if he hadn't seen Alenko's step catch for the merest measure of a moment. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but the air around them felt bitter as the wind on Noveria.
Alenko took another step and another.
Shepard stood, still in that slightly-off version of her usual at-ease stance. Looking at her made Garrus uncomfortable. It made him want to... Well, he didn't know exactly. He just knew he wanted to do something. And he hated Alenko a little bit more because he suspected the marine not only could have told him what to do, but could have...should have...been the one to do it...and Garrus wasn't the only one who knew it.
Alenko stopped again, turned just enough to look over his shoulder. "Just...be careful, Shepard. Cerberus...can't be trusted."
Garrus doubted Alenko heard the mangled snort that erupted from Shepard's lips like a particularly virulent curse. It was rather gratifying to hear such a compact sound in which his own complicated feelings were so perfectly expressed. After all, Alenko had just demonstrated that TIM wasn't the only person Shepard couldn't trust...and Alenko was the only one who didn't seem to realize it.
Garrus wasn't sure if that was a pity or, really, for the best.