Thank you to everyone that has reviewed! I appreciate and read each and every one of them and they help to keep me going.

A huge thanks to icyfreezerpop for beta-ing for me! I appreciate and love her like no other.

"Stryder! Watch your flank!" Oya's order came over the comm link. The mercs that they were fighting were trying to flank them and Oya's main focus was the atlas in front of them.

As soon as the words left her mouth, Stryder was pivoting to take out the enemies behind them and cleaning up any rampart mechs that were still jotting around the battlefield.

Before Stryder could refocus on the atlas the explosion announcing its' demise resounded through the chamber. He looked back to his partner in time to see her doing a little victory dance. Moon-walking was what the move was called and he had to admit that it was hilarious to watch Oya, normally so serious, have a little fun.

Together they walked to the small room at the end of the warehouse they were in and grabbed the data chip that was their target. As they did, the simulation stopped and the walls fell away revealing the large empty room that was the combat simulator.

"Five minutes, twenty seconds. I do believe that is a new record, team three." The announcer bellowed over the loudspeaker. Stryder and Oya shared a quick high five as they made their way out of the simulation room, talking amongst themselves.

Stryder had to admit that his earlier worries about them working well seemed rather unfounded. Yes, they were both reckless and had a penchant for unnecessary violence, but each complimented the other.

When she ducked left, he watched the right and vice versa. Only once did he question her battle logic and that was when she bolted right up to the damned thing. He tried to call her away but was cut off by a barrage of fire in his direction.

His concern was, again, unfounded because she got too close for any of the atlas' weapons to be efficient and the operator was forced to simply try and hit her with the arms. She danced around each strike until he was forced to focus fire on his flank, as she had pointed out. She was literally dancing with an atlas and still had the situational awareness to call out to him when he was about to get shot in the ass.

He wanted to praise her, and the compliments were right on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't force them to come out. Sure, they had gotten closer after the night he had held her while she cried, but he was still hesitant.

When she had woken up the next morning she hadn't tried to go back to her ice queen persona, but she hadn't exactly opened up her world to him either. Not that he wanted her to; he just wanted to be her friend.

Ok, maybe he wanted to be more than her damned friend, but Stryder wasn't ready to admit that out loud yet. They were still feeling each other out and she had a lot of baggage. Instead he focused on keeping the friendship light. She was still in a funk and he wasted no time breaking her out of it with gentle humor and the occasional lewd comment.

It seemed to work because by the time they were en route to the training facility they were back to their friendly banter.

After they left the training facility they were sent back to the apartments and were directed up to a private gym for all of the guards. This room, much like the private apartments, had significantly restricted access and was regularly swept for bugs, so they were able to remove their armor.

Stryder tried as hard as he could not to notice the skin-tight pants and strappy top Oya wore for her work out. It wasn't revealing, her core and legs were covered, but it was tight against her skin. It left little to his already rampant imagination… and he would be hard pressed not to notice the way her muscles bunched and stretched under the fabric as she stretched preparing for her work out.

Instead of staring after her like a freshly matured kid, Stryder busied himself in the separate weight room, facing the wall… That was a giant mirror. The weight room may have been separate from the gymnastic and cardio pavilion, but the wall was made of glass. He could still see her.

He figured if he wasn't directly looking at her that maybe it made it less obvious.

Oya, on the other hand, paid no attention to Stryder as she salivated over the workout room in front of her. Normally she mixed weight training in with her regime, but the gymnastic field with parallel bars, a tight-rope walk, and various ropes at different levels to train on scaling things made this her new heaven.

She quickly programed the loudspeakers to play her playlist and she wasted no further time pulling herself up on the parallel bars.

The entire room was set up so that you could jump from bar to bar to get to the tight-rope beam and she was more than enthusiastic about trying her hand at getting up there.

She started with a few pull ups, switching her grips and rotating to one handed for some to get her muscles warmed up before she let go and added some conveniently offered talc powder to her hands. She then mounted the bars again and moved to start her momentum in order to start flipping over the bar.

She did a few rotations before trying anything even remotely fancy; getting her rhythm started with the music she had playing. Dance music, she wondered if Stryder would pitch too much of a fit. She liked all kinds of music, but dance hall music got her blood pumping – a part of her childhood she couldn't quite let go of.

Once she was confident that she was ready she started twisting mid-air and changing her grip on the bar. Eventually she workout out a back flip to the next level bar and continued to work each level enough time that she wasn't rushing, but wasn't taking her sweet time either. She knew she could easily psyche herself out if she waited too long just as much as she could make an error by going too quickly.

After a few minutes and a few levels she finally managed to make her way up to the tight-rope walk. She was about 30 meters above the ground. She was impressed with the height; it was enough that you could get seriously injured if you fell… Good thing she had no intention of falling.

She started to move across the bar with her arms out, taking each step carefully. It was too easy, so she added in a little dip of her foot to each step, then a bounce, eventually she was dancing across the bar.

She got to one end and immediately started to move her way back. She stopped mid-way and eyed the parallel bars below, quickly calculating if she could make the leap to the second level down. It was a good enough distance that it would be tricky, but she had made similar leaps before – just without any finesse.

She shrugged and prepped for the leap, she needed to be prepared for any situation and she rationalized it with the notion that one never knew when they would need to leap from rafter to rafter.

She didn't let herself think on it for too long before she launched herself off of beam towards the bar. Her connection with the bar was harder than she would have liked, but she eased it out with a quick spin around the bar and launched herself at the next level down.

Going down was a much quicker and wholly different experience. She felt like she was launching herself at the bars below her instead of gracefully leaping. When she finally reached the bottom, she hit her landing too hard and ended up on her ass.

Going from 30 meters up to unhurt and on your ass on the ground was a win in her book, especially for a first try. Next time she'd just need to find a way to slow her descent. She popped back up onto her feet and started to eye the rest of the gym, her breath coming in soft but exhilarated pants. It was then that she noticed that Stryder had halfway emerged from the weight room and was staring at her with mandibles slack.

She fidgeted under his gaze and tried to diffuse the situation with humor, "Not bad for an old soldier, eh?" She felt herself absently checking her hair to make sure it was still bundled in the bun she had placed earlier in the morning.

She internally reprimanded herself for being so damned girly about it, but she wasn't used to this much scrutiny. On the Normandy she hadn't really practiced her gymnastics all that much, just a few parallel bar maneuvers in the shuttle bay when she was able and even then people didn't say much about it.

"Old?" Stryder asked confused, "You're what, thirty? If that? I'm thirty-five. " He offered up, trying to regain his wits. She was fidgeting which boosted his confidence a bit. He had been taken by surprise by her flexibility and agility as she worked up the bars at varying levels going up the walls. Hell, she had spun and leapt to a beam near the ceiling and then danced across it, of all things.

His stomach had worked its way up to his throat on more than one occasion as she jumped from one level to another but it about choked him when she launched herself from the beam to the bars again.

Spirits, this woman is going to be the death of me. He thought to himself as she safely landed on her ass on the ground again.

He felt his body heat up as she blushed when she made eye contact. She did respond to him… And he didn't know what to do with that just yet. A part of him screamed in victory as he realized there was a possibility of being more than just her work partner, but another part of him knew that it would be better to stay aloof for now.

Casual flirting was fine, but there was a line they couldn't cross. He didn't want to cross it, not yet at least. He didn't want to ruin their budding partnership and he didn't want to jeopardize what he had achieved with his appointment into the guard.

He resolved himself to just look at her as a friend and Oya, to her credit, did the same. She knew she wasn't in a good frame of mind to start another relationship and she was fine with the playful flirting they engaged in.

Silently and as if on some unwritten cue, both moved to continue their own exercises – away from one another.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, a mournful Shadow Broker poured over report after report trying to pin down who had assaulted the ship that Commander Shepard had been aboard. She couldn't bring her back this time, but she could avenge her.

She dutifully watched every vid feed, contacted every crew member of the ship and person on the rescue teams.

No one knew anything. The pilot apparently hadn't made it off and the cameras suspiciously held little footage of Shepard being moved within the ship even after the attack had started. She ship was left completely decimated and there were no remains to pick through.

It wasn't that unusual for there to be no remains, but the fact that no one could identify the ship that attacked, it was unmarked and there were no registration signatures picked up, was unusual. Even if the ship had been stolen, there would be a registration signature broadcast – unless it was purposely wiped, which was hard to do and usually required some highly regulated equipment.

Liara grew more and more suspicious the more she looked into the attack. Not only was the ship unregistered, but the relay was activated only minutes before and the corresponding activation was in the Hong System; a rarely travelled system with no active mercenary group postings that anyone knew of.

She sent one of her agents in to check it out, see if there was anything that anyone missed, but it was unlikely.

Liara also looked in to the fact that the only two people to visit Shepard once she had woken was Admiral Hackett – not surprising, and the turian Councilor Sparatus – surprising. According to Liara's records, Shepard had reached out to the councilor before he embarked and he had arranged for her to be placed in a different facility for physical therapy.

Liara didn't like that her research was pointing towards the Councilor, but he was the only reason she was in that area to begin with. Everyone knew that Shepard and the Councilor didn't get along and were downright rude to each other on occasion. But, Liara had to admit that their animosity seemed to cool during the reaper invasion.

Liara debated contacting Garrus about her suspicions… They hadn't really been on talking terms since he'd decided to date Quinela. Liara didn't agree with leaving Shepard just yet, she had always kept the faith that Shepard would wake up and Liara didn't want to see Shepard hurt like that.

Liara should have left to see Shepard the moment she found out she was awake… But she thought she'd have time. She knew Kaidan and James were both busy in the field and Tali was working with the geth over city layouts on Rannoch. Bakara and Wrex were planning a trip once some inter-clan conflict was resolved.

The rest were relatively unaware until Shepard's death was announced. Liara had been inundated with calls asking for details, much of which she didn't have at the time.

It was all so strange and Liara couldn't stop the nagging connection to the other spectre deaths the months leading up to Shepard's – or the way the deaths stopped after Shepard. It was like someone was collecting all of the best and brightest of the spectres. They were all known for their own talents, all respected and all given only the most difficult missions.

Eight spectres in all and Liara didn't like it one bit. Liara would have thought the spectres had become the council's new guards… But Shepard wasn't in any shape, and would probably never be, to do something like that.

No, it was connected, but not in that way. The fact that only seven of the spectres were able bodied ruined her idea that they were the Elite Guard.

The Elite Guard was another puzzle she was trying to solve. Their identities were unusually well-protected. She had tried numerous ways to infiltrate their ranks, even to bug their rooms… but she was thwarted at every turn.

Even for the Council this was unusually high security and piqued her interests. She had sent several agents in already and was getting nowhere. All she was able to discern was that access required DNA confirmation… That was hard to manufacture. Sure, they could synthesize a lot, but manufactured DNA had yet to fool the sensor brand the Council was using.

Liara, however, was relentless when it came to mysteries she wanted to solve and she vowed to herself that she would solve both of these. She would avenge her friend and figure out the identities of the Council's guards. At the very least, knowing the identities would help her decide whether the information deserved to be kept a secret, or if she should sell it.

While Liara poured over her reports, Stryder and Oya were engaging in actual combat. Another assassination had been attempted on the asari Councilor. The Council had agreed to spare a guard from the salarian Councilor's staff for Sparatus while Stryder and Oya were sent to track down the group responsible.

The Council was switching whose guards would go after the perpetrators in order to see the Guard in action outside of being, well, the Guard. Eventually each team's talents would be discerned and they would be sent based on what kind of enemy they were going to face, but for now it was simply a ring-around-the-rosy game to determine who went and who stayed.

This time it was Stryder and Oya, and they were pinned down for the moment on some backwater planet in the Traverse. The group they were attacking was well armed – but not very disciplined. They were throwing a lot of ammo right at the beginning and Oya had suggested that they wait it out a bit instead of wasting their own ammo.

The plan seemed to be working if their opponents more frantic screams for "ammo" were any indication.

Once the shooting stopped Oya nodded to Stryder and they erupted from cover in sync. They unloaded on their opponents, one throwing up a barrier when the other needed to reload.

It turned out they made a dangerously effective team in combat and within forty-five minutes they had the base neutralized. Unfortunately it was just an outpost and didn't seem to have any real information on the leader of the organization.

They still went through all of the cached files and sent everything to the Council for them to sift through. They weren't the ones who actually sifted through the data, there were separate teams for that.

Once the mission was complete the two looked at one another for a long minute. Their first real combat test and they found they were a resounding success. They moved like water and air over the terrain, responding to the other's actions without words.

The Councilor certainly had done his homework – they were compatible. Stryder couldn't help thinking that they were compatible in more than one way…

Oya tried miserably to keep from thinking about anything other than how they were in combat. She'd never worked with someone who complimented her fighting style so absolutely. They thought the same on the battlefield and he knew what she was going to try to do before she had even made the decision.

And she knew the same about him.

They walked back to their ship in silence, neither willing to break their invisible talisman against the pure primal urges that were running through their bodies and minds.

Thankfully, their ship had two separate sleeping chambers and they instantly set the VI on a coarse for the Citadel before retreating to their own rooms.

Within minutes, Stryder exited his room devoid of armor and ready to shower the smells and grit of the battlefield off only to find the bathroom was occupied and the door was locked.

He couldn't resist the urge to place his palm against the door, thinking of the woman inside, naked and bathing. He felt his lower plates shift as his chest ached against the need threatening to overcome his reason.

Little did he know, and probably best that he didn't, the very same woman he was thinking of was thinking of him. Her own hand braced on the door, her mind warring with the emotions thrumming through her bloodstream. She felt like she was on fire and the cold shower she was taking wasn't helping.

She wanted what she shouldn't, couldn't have. Fraternization was never discussed, but she assumed it would be frowned upon given the circumstances. Their love lives were secondary to the mission.

Shit, it isn't like I can ask about it now without drawing suspicion. She thought to herself as she went over the situation in her head. No, she'd just have to deal with it. It's not like he felt the same, he seemed perfectly able to just flirt it away. Besides, he had said he'd had lots of girlfriends. He didn't feel the same.

Instead of addressing the issues they both faced, both parties kept their distance. She finished her shower and went back to her room, at which point he took his own and then returned to his room. Both unaware that the other was lying in bed – just as they were – thinking about the same things. Neither slept on the return trip to the Citadel.

Sparatus noticed the tension between the two and smirked to himself. He had brought them together for more than their fighting prowess and the combat team they would make – He had the sinking suspicion that they would heal each other along the way.

It seemed that, while his guards were stubborn, his plan was working.