The admiral was dead.

She cussed for not being fast enough, but from what they found in that final building told her that nothing she could have done would have saved him. It looked like he'd been dead long before that message even reached the Normandy. And Garrus and Wrex had agreed. Joker had cussed too when they radioed the ship.

Still, it frustrated her. No, more than that. This felt like a personal failure. This man had wanted her help and how he was dead.

And she couldn't escape her own annoyance at how she couldn't stop staring at Binthu's lovely sunset. The hazy atmosphere blended bright colors across the horizon. And someone had died here, and she could only blame herself.

The Normandy would be pulling them off planet in about thirty minutes. When they had cleared out the Cerberus camps, the ship had been midway through an orbit and Joker was on the way back around. They were parked at the bizarre prothean pyramid they'd discovered.

"Cheer up." Garrus nudged her shoulder with his elbow. He looked funny in his full armor with his helmet and no weapons nestled in his arm. She missed his tall fringe, the expressive depths of his eyes.

"I'll try. It's just frustrating." She replied through the comms.

"Sometimes you only get a partial victory." He responded.

"Really? You're the last person I expected to be so diplomatic about failure."

"I've seen a lot of it. A lot of my time at C-Sec was spent telling myself 'Even if they end up letting one guy go, at least we've got leads on twenty other people because he talked.'"

"Yeah, but how many of those leads go anywhere?"

"Well, yeah, but like I said, partial victory." She couldn't see his face, but from the slow drawl he used, she could tell he was trying to joke with her.

"Oh thanks, Garrus." She couldn't help but laugh.

She shoved him back.

He laughed a little through the coms, and the game was on.

He grabbed the top of her helmet and shoved her away from her spot against the Mako. She turned and barreled her shoulders into his waist and shoved him against the vehicle. He grabbed her fists and shoved her back, she jumped up and brought her right arm across the side of his helmet. He didn't avoid it, but managed to throw a punch into her side. It was light enough that it didn't hurt, and she laughed back, circling him a little bit.

They got turned around and as she brought a knee up to peg him in the side, he pinned her back against the Mako by the arm. And the bruising Chakwas had promised would appear the day before suddenly screamed at her. She couldn't stop the bark of pain that escaped her throat. Garrus froze and Wrex's voice came over the comms.

"If we're killing each other, my money's on the human."

"Shit. Are you okay?" He said.

"Yeah, it's just from yesterday." She tipped her head against the side of the Mako and sighed.

"I thought Chakwas got you fixed up." His hands were resting on her shoulders.

"Yeah, yeah it's just gonna take a day or two." She shrugged. "It wasn't just the gunshot. It hit my implant and shattered it."

"Implant? What kind of implant? You're not a biotic."

"No, it was my birth control implant." His hands left her shoulders, and she really wished she could have seen his face under the dark glass of his helmet. She didn't realize that the whole 'lady things' awkwardness spread across different species.

"Oh. I didn't know you… needed one." She couldn't help but laugh. Oh, she was too surprised to be confident in naming that emotion jealousy, but she also couldn't help but notice her heart bumping against her ribcage. She really shouldn't enjoy this that much.

"It's standard for Alliance personnel. Keeps things simpler." She gave him that at least. And he nodded, rubbed his hand over the top of his helmet. She recognized that gesture as his embarassment, even with his dark helmet on, and the dark black plasglass of his faceplate.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to hurt you." He held his hand open in a gesture of apology.

"I started it." She cuffed him lightly on the shoulder.

"Yeah. You did." He shoved back on her opposite shoulder.

"Would you two just fuck already so we can move on?" Wrex's voice came over the comms again.

"Turn your fucking comms off if you don't like it." Shepard cut back at him. The krogan grumbled and then there was the soft beep of his comm channel closing.

"How do you get him to listen to you?" Garrus asked, bafflement coming through clear in his voice. She laughed at the shake of his head.

"I expect him to?"

"Huh."

"I got my first command when I was still pretty young." She said, thinking back to those six marines who at first chafed under her command. "There's a lot to be said about expecting your people to be their best."

Garrus nodded, but didn't respond, and with the hugeness of comm silence with no combat came the calm of a feeling that she hadn't thought about in a while. As they leaned side by side against the side panel of the Mako—which she left in pretty great shape, she had to say—and the two of them suddenly on a private comm channel, all she could think about was the memory of standing pressed against a window, another set of turian claws pressed against her bare ribs.

Shit. It seemed like it had been so long since she had thought of him. But here she was, taking the lessons she had learned, and trying to let someone in.

Slowly.

She signed and let her head fall to the side against Garrus' arm.

"Shit."

"Shepard, you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. We've got to talk sometime."

"I think that'd be good." His helmeted head ducked down towards hers in that gesture she recognized, but it stopped, and he straightened. "So tonight, then?" His drawl was back, and she couldn't stop the small giggle that bubbled out of her mouth.

"I don't like your helmet. I can't read your face with it on." She tapped her fingers on the brow of his helmet and rested her hand on the neck of his armor.

"Well, I like breathing, so it's staying on until we're back in ship's atmo… Although, I'd sure like to see your face right now…" He glanced up over her head at something, then grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the back of the Mako. "Come here."

"Are we hiding from Wrex now?" She asked.

"Oh yeah, don't want him to see this." That cocky tone to his voice was only getting more prominent, and as much as it set her on edge… with him it wasn't a bad thing. God help her, but she trusted him as he sprang up the access ladder to the roof of the Mako and turned around and offered his hand to pull her up next.

From this considerably higher vantage point, all she could look at was the ever deepening sunset. And as she turned away from the bright scarlets and golden yellows streaked with navy clouds to see the twilight punctured with bright stars, she realized that was his intention. She could tell, because even with helmets on and dark glass between their faces, he was watching her carefully. He wanted to show her the sunset from both sides—the dark and the light, and each a little of both.

She took his hand, and turned away from the sun, facing the night side of the planet and the few stars that blinked out, as unfamiliar as on every other terminus planet she'd dropped onto before, and yet seeming to shine more brightly all because no one had ever named those constellations before. Unfamiliar. The appeal of new ground.

"I don't know what's going on." She began. "I'm not a very open person. I don't tend to let people get close... But do I know I don't mind how much time I'm spending holding your hand."

He nodded and tipped his head down to hers—all the way this time—until their helmets gently clacked together. With the fiberglass and plasglass carrying vibrations directly from his suit to hers, she could feel the low hum coming from the base of his turian throat. Apparently his lower subharmonics didn't activate the comm channels, and she suddenly decided this was a shame, because there was so much that he could say without words.