Garrus grunted slightly at the pain in his side as he disembarked from the mako onto the Normandy deck. Shepard jumped down behind him and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Not bad out there, Vakarian," she said brightly, and Garrus warmed at the compliment. "Wrex owes you a drink for saving his hump."

Wrex stomped past them grumbling. "Yeah, yeah. We'll see how well he does if I'm not there taking all the heat."

Garrus laughed and instantly regretted it, as the pain in his side flared. He gasped.

Shepard's brow furrowed. "Not all the heat, apparently," she said, looking critically at the bullet hole in his armor.

"Just a minor flesh wound. It doesn't go deep. A little medigel for me, some omnigel for my armor, and I'll be good to go."

Shepard shook her head. "Have Doctor Chakwas take a look."

"It's nothing, Shepard. Barely more than a scratch. Not worth troubling your medic over."

"That's exactly what she's here for. Get it checked out, Garrus," she said firmly. "That's an order."

He shrank a little. "Yes, Commander. Sorry, Commander."

Shepard nodded, clapped him on the shoulder again, and headed for the armory. Garrus quickly offloaded his weapons and made his way up to the medbay. He hadn't yet met the ship's doctor, but he couldn't imagine she knew much about Turian anatomy. He honestly felt more comfortable with a tube of medigel. But the last thing he wanted was to give Shepard pause about his respect for her authority.

He stepped into the medbay and a grey haired human who was sitting at the desk turned to look at him expectantly. "Doctor Chakwas?" he asked.

She stood and smiled. "That's right. And you must be Agent Vakarian."

"Yeah. Just "Garrus" is fine."

She nodded. "What can I do for you, Garrus?"

He lifted his arm to reveal the bullet hole in his right side. "Commander Shepard told me I should get this wound looked at."

Doctor Chakwas gestured for him to lie down on the bio-bed. He obeyed, and she lowered the armature of the scanner over him.

Garrus felt a little embarrassed over the fuss. "It's really not that bad, but Shepard was insistent."

Doctor Chakwas focused her gaze on the scanner readout. "We humans have a saying: better safe than sorry. The Commander doesn't like to gamble with her crew's lives when she can avoid it."

"Just her own," Garrus mumbled, thinking of her tendency to push her barriers past their limit. He tensed slightly; only a few days into working with Shepard and he'd already seen the Commander a bullet away from death on multiple occasions.

Doctor Chakwas smiled and lifted the scanner out of the way. "I don't think she much likes to gamble with her own life, either. But she does tend to take on the lion's share of the risk… as well as the responsibility for the lives of her crew and completing the mission."

Garrus nodded. Shepard had a lot on her shoulders: the lives of her crew and possibly the lives of all organic life forms in the galaxy. She had to be a remarkable person to manage the pressure. A person he wanted to know. "Have you served with her long?" he asked.

"We've done a couple tours together. First aboard the Shenandoah back when she was fresh out of the Academy. Then again aboard the Farragut. And now the Normandy."

"You must know her well, then."

Doctor Chakwas shrugged. "I've known her for around eight years, but I'm not sure anyone knows her well. She isn't one to open up, in my experience of her."

"That's a human thing, right? Officers maintaining a professional distance from the crew?"

Doctor Chakwas gently removed the plate of his armor that covered the injury and began treating the wound. "It's true, we do have regulations against fraternization, especially between officers and their subordinates. But I don't think it's that. Shepard makes a point of getting to know the crew quite well, cares about the details of everyone's lives, the names of their spouses and children, where they grew up, their hobbies, what brings them joy, what scares them…. However, when people try to reciprocate, she doesn't reveal much beyond what's in her service record. She's been that way as long as I've known her." She frowned. "Understandable, really, when you consider what she's been through."

"What do you mean?"

Doctor Chakwas met his eyes, her brow furrowed. "I suppose it's common enough knowledge, lower deck gossip being what it is. And it is public record." She sighed and resumed treating his injury. "Shepard grew up on a colony out in the Terminus systems that was attacked by Batarians about fifteen years ago. She would have been a teenager at the time. A brutal attack. One of the worst in human colonial history. There were only a handful of people who weren't either killed or abducted." Her voice tensed against building emotion. "I think Shepard lost her whole family in the attack. Her parents, at least."

"Damn." Garrus shook his head and tensed his jaw. He was well acquainted with the brutal tactics of Batarian slavers from his Turian military days. "Was she away from the colony when the attack happened?" he asked, certain she must have been, with as few apparent scars as she had.

"No. She was there," Doctor Chakwas said darkly while replacing his armor plate. "I'm not sure of the details, or how exactly she survived, but I know it's how she met Captain Anderson. He was part of the rescue mission." Her voice cracked. "I remember reading the reports and news about the attack. It was horrific. Many people who were involved in the rescue and recovery efforts had to be treated for PTSD in the years that followed. I shudder to think of the impact it must have had on the actual survivors."

Garrus closed his eyes, shaken by his own memories of similar attacks, imagining a young Shepard in the place of the survivors he'd recovered from slaver vessels. She should be broken. "Yeah, Batarian slavers…. They like to make abductions as traumatizing as possible. It puts their surviving victims in a… pliable state of mind. Makes it easier to condition them to submission and subservience."

Doctor Chakwas shuddered. "So I've heard."

"And you think that's why Shepard doesn't let people get close to her?"

She nodded. "I think the standard 'getting to know you' conversation topics are probably a minefield of trauma and vulnerability for the Commander. I doubt she wants her crew to see that side of her." She stepped back and gestured for Garrus to stand. "You're all stitched up, Garrus. Let me know if it opens back up or causes you any trouble."

He looked down blankly at the bullet hole in his armor. He'd almost forgotten why he'd come to the medbay in the first place. "Thank you, Doctor. I didn't feel a thing."