The cargo bay was quiet as they tied down the Mako's tires after loading it back in. She felt the slight shift in gravity as Joker shifted them into FTL.

"Food." Wrex explained as he left the two of them and started the elevator up to the crew decks.

"Glad he waited for us." Shepard grumbled, setting the last tie-down into place.

"Yeah, well, this way we get the whole cargo bay to ourselves for what… twenty minutes… while we wait for the elevator to come back down." He glanced at her from over the hood of the Mako, giving the machine a fond pat.

"Oh Vakarian, you always know how to look on the bright side, don't you?"

"I do what I can." He had stowed his helmet in his locker, but kept his hardsuit on, as usual. She could count on one hand the times she'd seen him without it on. She had thought maybe it was a C-Sec thing, since even the new armor she had gotten for him on the Citadel a few weeks back barely made its way onto his back outside of combat situations. Maybe he just liked the color blue, she mused with a smile.

"So, you said we needed to talk."

"I did." She responded. "We do."

"Well… about that thing you told me when I first came on the ship…" He began after he shut the locker. The silence in the cargo bay suddenly became uncomfortable and loaded. She didn't want to admit to feeling trapped in a room with him, but as conflicted as she was about this topic before—didn't know how to talk about it—she wanted to face this conversation with him even less now.

"You mean what you sleuthed?" She asked, trying to place a grin on her face to cover how uncomfortable she was. He had come to the conclusion that she had slept with Nihlus entirely too easily before.

"Yeah, that." He responded. She was more than a little surprised to note that sheepish duck of his head. Vakarian... was he about to... apologize? "Ah.. yeah. I just wanted to apologize about some of the things I said that night. You're obviously not what I was trying to imply. I just… I really wanted to figure you out. Really wanted to prove myself, too."

"It's okay." Shepard responded. "I think you've proved plenty, big guy. And I think we've pretty well moved past that night." She stayed as far away from him as possible. She kept herself parked against the Mako, and he stayed leaned up against the equipment lockers. "I said some things too… that I'm pretty sure I said because I didn't trust you, and I wanted to make sure that you kept your distance from me. But you've made it pretty clear that… well. We make a good pair, you and I. You've got a place on my squad and on my team as long as I've got one... I do trust you."

He was standing leaning against the lockers, his arms crossed and his head tilted at this expectant angle.

"Still wish I could say why, though." She admitted finally, when his stare started to make her uncomfortable.

"So talk about it."

That wasn't what she expected. She felt her hackles raise as she automatically assumed this was another interrogation tactic—but then quickly realized it wasn't. He didn't do that. He was always right behind her, he seemed so calm and collected, even when he admitted things to her about why he had hated his job, why he didn't think he was a very good turian. The only thing she didn't quite understand at this point was what was in it for him.

He had earned her trust, and he was showing her now that he was a better person than she ever gave him credit for; better than she ever realized.

"Well... Nihlus… fucked me up." She admitted. "Not him—not like that—just, I had been living my life one way and he came along and made it seem like maybe I had been doing things wrong from the start."

"What do you mean?

"Growing up, did you have a lot of... girlfriends? Dates? However turians do it?" She asked.

"Ah, well, I was... not the most popular, but I did have my..." He laughed a little to himself. "Yeah," he finally answered, "A few."

"Well I didn't. I don't." She started. Where did she begin with trying to explain why this was scary? Why the thing that terrified her was not rogue Spectres, or even getting killed; it was having someone know her. "I mean, I slept with people—kids, but..." She sighed. Best to start at the beginning.

"I was a Navy brat growing up. Military family. It wasn't a life built for kids; we moved from station to station, a lot, and when there were other kids around, I was the outsider, and I hated that. And I never quite learned to be part of a group, so instead I would… be interesting. I would talk about all of the amazing missions my parents had been on. I would lead games and pretend rescues, I became the leader, and pretend I was 'Captain Shepard,' like mom. I couldn't stand for being made fun of—so I took control. But, I never had any friends either. Not much changed through school and training, the last couple years, even. Only had one... One relationship? And that was a mistake from the start. But he… Nihlus was just supposed to be a one-night stand." She looked up, and Garrus was still standing silently at the lockers, his turian face in an expression she couldn't read.

"That was all I was looking for. That's all I ever go for—shore leave and that's it. But then all of a sudden he knows me—he is excited about me. Not about fucking me, not about getting laid—but about me. He kept saying… he kept saying that he couldn't believe that I walked up to him. He kept saying that like there was some higher purpose to it or something. And in the morning when I tried to leave, I even tried to let him off the hook—let it just be that was only going to happen once, he wouldn't accept that as an answer. And he was so positive about it. He seemed to think that since it had happened the way it had, we should keep it quiet—people would have assumed exactly what you did about me—but then later…" Hush-hush for now. "Later… I don't even know. I don't know when, I don't know what he was planning." She shrugged.

"But I realized I wanted it. Whatever it was. He just seemed so happy. And I realized that I needed some of that. Something for myself."

"You'll find it." His voice was quiet, tingling and deep.

"Where?" Hers came out too small, too high. She sounded like a child. Those tears from that conversation nearly a month ago now had stayed away until that word. "Don't answer that." She said quickly.

"Okay."

"And why are you so interested in this?"

He shrugged.

"I was worr... Well, you're my friend." She was glad that he didn't actually say that he was worried about her.

"Okay, friend." She smiled. "Wanna go get cleaned up and get a beer?" She caught a slight hint of a sigh from him, but he quickly shrugged.

"Sounds good."