He hated that turian. Executor Pallin and his blasted rules! Garrus had played by the rules for so long. At one point, he believed in them, believed that if you played by the right rules, that eventually you would win. One would think good would always prevail against evil as if provided by its divine and pristine nature. But a vat of clean water need only be poisoned by a drop to render it undrinkable. And time after time, failure after failure, criminals got away, and the innocent suffered. Eventually, he realized that he was wrong, and that all the people who deserved to live were dead, or would be soon enough, all because he had to play by the rules.
Now, there was a reason his file at c-sec was so lengthy. He broke the rules from time to time. He did some good work, saved lives, cleaned up some places… only to be criticized instead of commended, punished instead of rewarded. But what hurts the most was that when it counted, when he needed to break the most important rules, he couldn't: either of his own inability or by being stopped by others. It was the source of his unencumbered frustration.
But now, he had been given an offer, one that he wasn't sure he could refuse: to break all the rules in the name of justice, peace, and security. He could do what needed to be done, unrestrained by bureaucracy, and actually do something. So, he told the executor to go fuck himself. He was quitting.
His scales were itching for a fight. He didn't care for the politics, or who he was fighting. Running around the galaxy with a spectre, killing geth and fleshy things, as they hunted down the legendary Saren Arterius was a great honor. And he might even find some valuables along the way. The business had been slow on the citadel anyway.
She was scared. For starters, a lot of the geth data that she collected from the geth memory core had been corrupted, making the value of it as a gift moot. Moreover, all the geth data she had collected had been confiscated by c-sec anyway, so now she was back at square one. She had nothing, and she had lost her friends, all her credits, and her weapon. To top it all off, she was a quarian on the citadel, of all places. She would basically be condemned to trying to work her way off this station, which was daunting given the horror stories of other pilgrims she had heard about. Or, she could take the other offer she had on the table. For any quarian, it was a great honor to serve on a ship. Plus, she'd have a paid job and have the chance to maybe find a pilgrimage gift, given that they would be running to all the far and strange corners of the galaxy. It surely beat staying on the citadel.
However, she had to remember what she would be doing. She was basically signing up to be a soldier, a combat engineer. She was confident in her technical abilities; but to shoot a gun, to kill a person, she had only been given minimal training on the former and she wasn't sure she could stomach the latter. The danger she had experienced over the last couple of days would become her reality every, single, day; serving under a soulless and aggravated human commander whose temper and disregard for his own life often put him, and those around him, in dangerous situations. She simply didn't think she had what it took, in mental fortitude, will, or ability to do this.
But was it right to throw all this away because she was afraid? Things larger than her were at work, from rouge Spectres to the mysterious "reapers." Was it right for her to turn her back on the galaxy in its time of need? What would her mother think? That she was a coward who ran from her problems and refused to help others. It was against the values she had been instilled within her youth.
She would miss Eden Prime. It was a quiet and peaceful colony; the people were nice, the climate even nicer. It was basically like being on vacation. Maybe that's why they all got slaughtered, they forgot that they were soldiers who were supposed to stare death in the face. And now, so many people that she cared about were dead…
Serving under Shepard's command would be no walk in the park. She knew that the chances of dying were exceedingly high and the chances of succeeding in the mission exceedingly low. But she couldn't say no to this. She would serve on the Normandy and fight like hell until she found, captured, or more probably killed, those responsible for what happened on Eden Prime. She owed it to her friends and all those who died that day.
Anderson's words were clear: keep an eye on Shepard. But to be honest, he didn't even think he needed Anderson to tell him that. There was no telling the things Shepard could do if he went completely off the rails, to himself or to others. He didn't think Shepard was evil at heart, that would imply he even existed on such a spectrum or had a heart. Shepard simply wasn't human, and in this regard, he couldn't really blame him. His entire family was slaughtered; grew up as an orphan in criminal gangs; joined the military only to watch everyone die around him. Kaiden was surprised that Shepard had even gotten as far as he did; the man should have died long ago, either from his surroundings or of his own accord and actions. But he hadn't, and so Kaiden was now permanently under his command for the foreseeable future: he hated it. Shepard's actions, unlike his past, were not excusable. Did he think he was the only one who had it tough, who suffered or watched people die?
Kaiden took solace in the fact that eventually, everyone would have to face their demons, lest they get eaten alive by them. He'd faced his and regretted what he had done every day since. But even then, all that mattered is that he didn't take his anger or pain out on the world, they were his problems, not other peoples'.
Shepard starred into the mirror, looking into his bloodshot eyes. He hated his life. He didn't know why he existed or what he was supposed to do. Everything that had ever happened to him had been at somebody else's whims and not his own, or so he told himself. His next meaningless objective, to hunt down a rouge spectre. He didn't even care at this point. He walked back to the cabin, formerly Anderson's but now his, and opened the computer on the desk. Now, for the only thing that he thought gave him purpose. With his new status, he opened the restricted council database, looking into information on one specific event: the raid of Mindoir.