By the time Shepard had stepped out of the shower the water had long since progressed from delightfully hot, through lukewarm to utterly frigid. It was her somewhat desperate hope that once she was out of the shower, Garrus would have come back... that somehow they would find a way to work out this new hitch in their fledgling relationship; but the room remained achingly silent and empty.

"EDI?" Shepard queried into the empty air, waiting for the AI's holographic presence to flicker into being, "where's Garrus now?"

"Officer Vakarian is currently in the Normandy's main weapons battery."

"What.." Shepard dragged a clean shirt over her head, grimacing at the rampant Cerberus insignia on the shoulder, "..is he doing in there?"

"He is currently running diagnostic algorithms on the Normandy's defensive and weapons suites." EDI's soothing synthetic voice sounded almost meek as she added: "all manual and electronic locks to the battery have been engaged, do you wish to authorize an override?"

"No," Shepard replied, voice heavy with regret. "No, leave him be for now...but EDI, keep an eye on him for me."

"I do not posses eyes Shepard, but I will make the monitoring of all bio-signs in the battery a priority."

Rolling her eyes at the AI's innate ability to take everything literally Shepard tipped the tepid remains of her morning's coffee down the sink, pensively watching the liquid sluggishly eddy down the drain. Somehow it seemed the perfect analogy for the day so far.

Breakfast was a 'serve yourself' affair in the Normandy's mess. Gardner left several hot plates of warm cereal, egg simulate and hash browns ready for shift-changeover, with individual dairy servings and ration meals available in the fridge, and of course his signature over-strong coffee. The food didn't tempt Shepard, the morning had left her with a sour churning in her stomach which the smell of the congealing 'eggs' did little to alleviate. Refilling her mug with steaming coffee, she added several spoonfuls of sweetener in the hopes of taking the bitter edge off the brew.

The main breakfast rush must have not started yet, as Shepard slumped into a seat there was nobody else at the mess hall table. Blowing across the top of her coffee to cool it her gaze went involuntarily to the door to the main battery, the lock icon winking as red as the synthetic components in her reconstructed corneas. Torn between wanting to stay well clear, or hack the door and shake Garrus until he saw reason, Shepard sipped contemplatively at her drink until an unexpected voice broke her out of her reverie.

"Commander? Are you alright?" Shepard jerked involuntarily, slopping coffee across the tabletop as Kelly Chamber's bright voice pulled her from her silent contemplation.

"I'm fine, thank you Yeoman," Shepard mopped ineffectually at the coffee spill.

Looking back at the locked battery door that Shepard had been staring at, Kelly opted to ignore the slightly dismissive tone in Shepard's voice, instead she set her tray down on the table across from her. "And your turian friend, how is he settling in?"

Shepard gave the young Yeoman a skeptical glance, she still couldn't get over her mistrust of the assigned Cerberus crew. Somehow she always figured that everything she said probably wound up in a report to the Illusive Man; and a sharp reprimand blossomed on her tongue, but was never voiced. Maybe it was the stress of the morning's conflicts, or her own doubts about how to deal with Garrus, or perhaps it was simply the headache that twisted tendrils of hot ache through her skull...but whatever the reason her instinctive reprimand came out as a slightly tentative "not as well as I would like."

Kelly blinked in unconcealed surprise, clearly she had been expecting a dismissal as well. Recovering with commendable grace she slipped into the seat across from Shepard, pleasure brightening her eyes as she said simply "tell me."

And to Shepard's surprise she does. Frustrations and fears falling unfettered from her lips like blood from a wound, and Kelly lets her simply listens until Shepard runs out of words, and she realizes her coffee is cold and her throat is tight and aching.

"I just have no idea how to deal with him when he gets like this," Shepard waved a tired hand in the direction of the ship's battery. "He's infatuated beyond reason with fucking Omega, I try and talk to him and he just gets in my face about it."

"I honestly think you are dealing with two separate problems there Commander." Kelly dimpled a tentative smile at Shepard, "firstly my guess is that he's instinctively challenging you out of confusion over his place on this ship, and how he should be relating to you."

"What?" Shepard muttered flatly, already starting to regret opening the conversation. "Garrus and I have never had issues like this before."

"That's probably because your relationship was fairly clearly defined as commander/subordinate," raising a hand to forestall Shepard's automatic denial of that definition, Kelly continued: "I know you were friends, but there was a clear hierarchy there. Now you're dealing with someone who became a leader in their own right then faced a complete and absolute loss of control over his own life...I don't imagine he fully knows how to react anymore. To put it simply Commander, if you want him to follow your orders implicitly then you need to make that clear. He will obey without question~that's both a societal turian imperative, and part of the conditioning imposed on him on Omega and Purgatory."

"That's...that's disgusting!" Shepard shook her head violently, "I cannot believe you would suggest I use what those scum beat into his head!"

"I didn't suggest it," Kelly placated.

"I don't want a good little soldier, doing exactly what he's told..."

"And yet half of what was making you angry was that he wont follow your lead with the Omega situation."

Shepard felt the scars on her face heat up and knew they must be flaring with an angry heat. "So that's your advice?" she hissed bitterly, "use months of physical and sexual abuse against him, or send him off to murder a terrified civilian. What wonderful options Yeoman, thank you."

Kelly flinched at the obvious reprimand, hands twisting together anxiously on the tabletop. "It's not my advice Commander, but it is one option~one I was fairly certain you would find repellant."

"Then what," Shepard ground out, "was the point of even bringing it up."

"To make the point that if you expect Garrus to simply follow your lead like he used to, then you are probably going to have to force the issue. "Kelly's voice was gentle, but her suggestions grated on Shepard's already raw nerves, psychological advice had never sat well with her-she preferred problems that could be solved with a gun. "Now, if you are wanting an equal, a friend and partner...then expect him to follow directions in combat, but allow him the freedom to make his own choices in life."

"You are aware that his choice in this case is to find the terrified, pregnant wife of his dead friend and put a bullet in her skull?"

"No...I, I wasn't aware of that," Shepard's blunt appraisal had obviously surprised Kelly, but the young Yeoman maintained an admirable level of composure. "I don't know the particulars, but I will ask...this target he has chosen, does she deserve it?"

Shepard can't help the image that flickers through her mind with sickening clarity. That fucking revolting video feed that Nahlah had sent her. The lost, half sane look on Garrus' face as Garm had hauled him up on display for the screams of the onlookers...his friend's blood still streaking his face as the krogan smeared it over his colony markings, digging his hands cruelly into the ruins of his jaw~using the pain to keep his victim conscious. "Yeah, " Shepard conceded grimly, "yeah, she deserves it...I don't like it, and I don't like what it turns Garrus into...but yeah, she has it coming."

"And if you were in Garrus' place, would you hesitate?"

"I honestly don't know," Shepard hopes her voice doesn't sound as exhausted as she feels. "It may sound cruel, but if this woman wasn't pregnant I probably would have put her down myself. The amount of damage her...stupid, naive cowardice has caused is staggering, but at the same time I just wish Garrus would understand that he's not just killing her~he's killing the son or daughter of a close friend as well."

"Have you actually said that to him?" A small smile curled Kelly's mouth.

"Not in so many words," Shepard admitted sheepishly. "I'm honestly not sure how to deal with him sometimes. The Garrus I remember was curious, enthusiastic...occasionally horrendously racist, the things he would say to Tali..." Shepard couldn't help but smirk at the memories of endless conversations in the entrapment of the Citadel elevators. "Now he's so..."

"Angry?" Kelly interjected, "paranoid, frustrated, aggressive, moody?"

"Not...all the time, but mostly yes."

"I would be more worried if he wasn't," Kelly reassured. "He's dealing with what I can only assume is PTSD in a very typically turian fashion." At Shepard's raised eyebrow she continued, "turians don't deal with trauma the same way humans do~they don't do very well with emotions or talking things through. Garrus is looking to regain control of his life by directly confronting anything he views as a challenge to that, including you."

"And I should do what, let him get in my face about anything he doesn't like?" Shepard spun her mostly empty mug between her fingers, remembering Lanastia's strikingly similar advice about turians, and wishing that she had paid more attention at the time.

"No, not at all. Support him, but challenge him...both mentally and physically if possible. Apparently your sparring sessions were fairly legendary on the original Normandy, I imagine it would be beneficial to both of you if they made a recurrence. Essentially, tire him out as much as possible." Kelly's smile broadened and Shepard flushed uncomfortably, hoping that piece of advice wasn't as innuendo laden as it seemed.

"And this mess with Omega?"

"I honestly think that decision is one Garrus is going to have to make on his own, Commander," Kelly stood, retrieving her tray as she went, "it's just up to you if you want to stand by him, or step back."

Shepard hardly paid attention as Kelly left her tray in the kitchen and headed to the elevator, presumably to her duties in the CIC. The conversation had left her with no clear answers, only a myriad of half thought out problems.

Pushing herself up from the table Shepard headed slowly down the catwalk to the doors of the maim battery, each footfall echoing sullenly in the silence. The door lock still glowed a foreboding red, and torn between either doing an about face and not doing this at all, Shepard swallowed her pride and thumped her fist a few times against the cool metal of the blockade. It took a few minutes for the crimson light to flicker over to green and the door hissed open.

Shepard's first astounded realization was that the main weapons system, including most of the gunnery components and firing mechanisms were in pieces all over the floor. Neat, orderly, precisely stacked pieces...but pieces none the less. Garrus was sitting in the middle of the chaos, completely filthy and liberally streaked with oil and grease; and deliberately looking anywhere but at Shepard.

Resisting the urge to point and rant, Shepard managed a slightly raspy "hey."

"Hey," Garrus replied hesitantly, ducking his head, "look, Shepard I'm sorry...I had no right..."

"Neither of us did," Shepard interrupted firmly, levering herself down to sit cross legged on the floor, effectively denying Garrus the ability to use her height as a way to be subservient. "Honestly Garrus, I'm completely shit at this..."

"I'm not much better." Garrus paused to cut some wiring that Shepard deeply hoped wasn't crucial, his three fingered hands surprising dexterous as he spliced in conduit lines. "It's just...I need to be better than this Shepard! I need to be who you need...and I can't, and I hate it!"

The vehemence of the statement surprised Shepard, and her shock must have shown on her face, and Garrus looked over at her, mandibles tight to his jaw in misery. "You don't know what I mean...do you?" Garrus' voice was disturbingly small, and the discordance of his tone made Shepard wince~she was getting somewhat better at reading turian expressions, but the nuances of their layered voices remained difficult to understand.

Shepard shook her head mutely, wishing again that she wasn't constantly missing the social cues that would make communication so much easier. Garrus had set down whatever component he had been working on and was rhythmically clenching and unclenching his talons into his forearms; reaching across Shepard caught his hands in her own, wincing at the dark spots on the sleeves of his shirt where he had drawn blood.

"I hated you." Garrus wouldn't even look at her, and Shepard felt her mouth drop open at the blunt admission. "When you took me from Purgatory, I hated you for that."

"...But...why?" Whatever Shepard had been expecting it wasn't that.

"Because I wanted to die. I wouldn't have lived much longer in that place...a few more days, a week at most and it would have been over." Remembering the horrific condition he had been in, Shepard couldn't help but silently agree with that assessment, and the thought made her ill. "But there you were...determined to fix everything, whether I wanted it or not."

Shepard started to open her mouth, to defend actions she never thought she would have too, but Garrus keept talking, his hands quivering with anxious energy. "Then you said you needed me," he finally looked up at Shepard then, pale eyes bright with a kind of baffled wonder. "I couldn't understand how you thought I would be useful, but I would live if you needed me...I would follow you anywhere, Commander Jane Shepard."

Shepard feels the unexpected sting of hot tears in her eyes and blinks them sharply away, gulping down the lump in her throat. "Garrus, I..."

"I still don't understand why you need me," the honest confusion in Garrus' voice is almost painful. "I'm trying to be what you need...I'm just not strong enough, I thought maybe if I went back to Omega..."

"Bullshit!" Shepard interjects, "that's complete bullshit Garrus!" Freeing one of her hands Shepard cups a hand under Garrus' chin, gently raising his head so she can look him in the eyes. "You are the strongest person I've ever met, and the last thing you need is to worry about proving that to me! I do need you," Shepard smooths her fingers over his familiar navy colonial paint, "however I can get you...as a friend, as something more...at my back in a firefight, or just disassembling my ship's weapons systems. And about Omega..."

"I'm sorry about that!" There's an almost desperate edge in Garrus' reply, "I wont go if you don't want me to!"

It would be so easy, Shepard thought, to simply agree...to enforce her own will and morality on Garrus, he seemed almost eager for it, bright eyes tracking across her face~searching almost frantically for her approval. "No," Shepard watched Garrus blink in surprise, "that decision isn't mine to make...it never was." The shock and confusion stamped on Garrus' face enforces that Shepard had made the right call far more emphatically than she had expected. "I want you to promise me you are going to think this through, but whatever decision you make~I will back you up, no questions asked."

Garrus looked utterly lost for a moment, then he hesitantly glanced at Shepard, quirking a questioning browplate as if looking for further confirmation that yes, Shepard really had meant that. There was something almost unreadable in his eyes, a flash of confidence and clarity that Shepard hadn't seen in him in far too long.

There didn't seem to be much else to say at that point, and Shepard covered her own embarrassing well of emotion by leaning forward to press her lips to Garrus' brow, smiling when he reciprocated by preening through her hair with careful talons and nuzzling affectionately at her neck.

"Ahh...sorry," Garrus pointed at her head when he pulled back, "you have gun lubricant...in your hair."

The viscous gel immediately coated her questing fingertips, and Garrus' mortified expression turned to indignation as Shepard reached forward to swipe the offending liquid across his nasal ridges. Laughing as Garrus scrubbed his face on his sleeve, making the mess worse not better, Shepard gestured at the careful rows of disassembled artillery components spread across the floor. "So what are you doing to my ship, and can you put it back together again?"

"Of course I can!" Garrus looked somewhat offended at the suggestion, "and it was horribly inefficient, realigning the conduit relays alone will reduce firing time, power draw and command lag. The firing algorithms need to be completely re-written and the system calibrated...honestly, a turian ship wouldn't be allowed out of port with its weapons systems in this kind of shape."

"Officer Vakarian is correct" EDI chimed in unexpectedly, "power draw on critical systems has already been reduced by 3.147 percent."

"Alright, alright, I know when I'm beaten," Shepard levered herself to her feet and stretched until her spine popped satisfactorily. "Just...have it back together before Harbinger comes knocking will you, no need for us to be caught with our proverbial pants down." Garrus gave a snort of amusement at that, already fixated on his rewiring before the main battery doors had even closed, leaving him alone with the soothing resonant hum of the ship.