Sol,

I wish I could have explained better yesterday what happened. Maybe I could have. I don't know. I know you think my plan to leave C-Sec is compulsive and reckless—all the usual words Dad uses to describe my choices, I know. But it's not. I don't expect—or care about—any understanding from Dad. But I think if you could be here, if you could spend even five minutes in a room with Shepard, you'd get it. Or, at least, I'd like to think that you would.

Dr. Saleon is gone, but nothing worked out the way I expected it to.

I had a sleep shift while we were travelling to the system with his transponder, but I didn't sleep much. I tried folding myself into one of the human-sized sleep pods, but every time I closed my eyes, the faces of Saleon's victims flickered across my vision. A dream-version of my memories of the interviews we conducted as part of the C-Sec investigation into Saleon. Except all those images were spliced together in that unsettling way that only dreams can do. Like how one of the female humans we interviewed (we found her dead in a maintenance shaft about a week after we interviewed her, covered in gashes our coroner guessed might have held extra livers) wore Shepard's face in my dream. And, instead of Pallin, it was Wrex or Tali or even Liara tapping in warning on the glass of the one-way window when I slammed my fist into the wall next to Dr. Saleon's assistant's head.

So I gave up on sleep. I decided to get a start on replacing a power coupling on the Mako that was only running at 87% capacity. I opened the sleep pod, stretching my cramped muscles as a I stepped out. At the end of the sleep pod rows, a figure was hunched over the monitors, running diagnostics. She turned around at the sound of me moving out of the pod, and I did a doubletake: it was the Commander. Except she wasn't wearing her usual Alliance uniform, but instead some utilitarian-looking pants and a sleeveless tunic that revealed the muscles in her arms. As she started and turned around, I caught a brief glimpse of a web of scars that must have stretched across her upper back and shoulder blades: the edges of the puckered, discoloured skin were just visible along the edges of her shirt.

When she saw it was me, the corners of her lips quirked into her typical half-smile.

"Couldn't sleep," she said, shrugging. "You too?"

I gave a shrug of my own and an affirmative "hmm." Her eyes narrowed, as if she wanted to ask me something more probing, but she seemed to change her mind. I suddenly noticed that her hair was unknotted. It was longer than I would have guessed—longer than I'd seen on a human before—and she had it pulled forward, over the front of one of her shoulders. It made her seem more alien. Maybe that's not the right way to put it, but, once I noticed it, it was hard not to stare at the dark tumble of the hair. It was so unlike anything I'd seen on a turian – or any other species, for that matter.

She glanced down at the deck, then smirked.

"Yeah, sorry. I don't make a habit of wandering the ship like this. I just…" She rubbed her hand on the back of her neck. "Sometimes, the nightmares are rough. This one was about the Normandy. I rushed out here half-asleep to make sure the systems were all in the green…didn't even think about it. Super unprofessional, I know."

I barked out a laugh.

"I'm not exactly in the position to judge on unprofessionalism, Commander. You should see the number of write-ups in my C-Sec file."

Because she wasn't wearing armor, I could actually see the tension ebb from her shoulders. It made me wonder how many other subtle cues of hers I was missing because of the armor. Then, she broke out into a full smile, resting a hand on one hip.

"Spectre-level clearances, remember? Trust me. I've seen your file. I know how many warnings are in there."

"Really?" I said, with feigned surprise. "But you still let me on board?"

"I know. Crazy right?"

She was still smiling as she spoke. But the words hit me differently than she had intended. Because it was true: she had taken a chance on me, letting me join her team. And it wasn't a small risk, either. The galaxy was watching her, the first human spectre, and if I had screwed something up for her…there would have been consequences. Politically for all of humanity, of course, but also for her, personally.

Why the hell had she let me on board?

She must have noticed some change in my expression, because her smile faded.

"I should go," she said, pointing behind me, to the way back to her quarters.

I nodded, stepped aside to let her pass. I glanced back at my opened pod, but decided to head for the cargo bay instead. The power coupling proved to be a welcome distraction.

A few hours later, the Commander, Liara, and I had Dr. Saleon cornered in the back of his ship. He had no way to escape – not this time. The test subjects that had attacked us were beyond disturbing. They were an escalation of his earlier experiments – exactly what I had feared would happen when I was overruled by the Citadel authorities. And I hated that I had been right.

It didn't matter anymore though, because we had him: the three of us accomplishing what the entire investigative division of C-Sec couldn't.

And then Shepard stopped me from putting him down.

At first, I couldn't understand it. With the Council, she had been subjected to even more politics than I had been. Surely, she understood that we couldn't take the risk?

What astonishes me about it, even now, is that it was so easy for her to see what we needed to do. She made doing the right thing seem effortless.

I looked at her, bewildered, but she was perfectly calm. There was no doubt in her eyes that I would follow her lead. That I would do the right thing, now that she had shown me what it was.

And, as usual, she was right.

So I didn't shoot him.

In the end, Shepard did.

Only because the idiot tried to make a break for it. She fired a shotgun round into his chest before Liara or I could even raise our weapons. I felt a surge of anger then – asked her what the point at had been.

"You can't predict how people will act, Garrus. But you can control how you'll respond. In the end, that's what really matters."

And I couldn't help but wonder if she was talking about me as much as Dr. Saleon.

She'd given him chance to live. He hadn't taken it – and I don't think she was particularly surprised. Her reaction time with that shotgun blast seemed to speak to that. She'd already had her finger on the trigger.

And, by letting me join her team in the first place, she'd given me a chance. A chance to become something more than I was.

I think – or at least, I hope – the difference with me was that trust I saw in her eyes. Calculated risks. That's what she does. Her calculations told her that Saleon was going to run. She still gave him a chance, but she was ready for him to disappoint her.

I like to think—or I hope, at least—that her calculations about me say something different.

And I sure as hell can't betray that trust. I really haven't met anyone like her before.

I tried to thank her, afterwards, when we were back on the Normandy and she was making her usual rounds to check in with the crew. I don't think I articulated my gratitude to her any better than I did later, to you, Sol.

I guess all I can do is hope she understands.

- G.