Shepard isn't sure how long she cries, using Garrus as both an emotional and physical support. She just cries and cries as she hasn't for a long time, the tears spilling from her eyes and leaving freezing tracks as they run down her cheeks and on Garrus' equally freezing armour. Her breath is coming in desperate, raspy gulps in between ragged sobs but she doesn't care. Doesn't give a damn. He doesn't seem bothered either, just keeps his alien but strangely inviting arms around her and rests his head on top of hers, mandibles brushing her hair as they quiver against her scalp.

Finally, her tears slow and she regains control of her breathing again. Shepard composes herself and tries to gather her wits together. "I-I'm sorry you had to see that, Garrus," she says, her voice still somewhat shaky. "I really shouldn't have – "she made to pull out of his embrace.

He didn't relent his grip however, bowing his head to meet her gaze when she looks up at his questioningly – confused and cautious. He tightens his hold assuringly in response, just enough to tug her a little closer but lax enough for her to break out of his embrace if she wanted to. She doesn't, instead settling back against him and resting her cheek against his ice-cold armour. She found that she didn't quite want to leave either.

"I'm sorry."

"Shepard, you have nothing to be sorry for." Garrus responds. Shepard shakes her head.

"No, that was unprofessional." she says harshly, clenching her fists so her nails bite into the flesh of her palm. "I should have more control of myself. I shouldn't give in to emotion so easily – "

"Emotions are proof that we are alive, Shepard."

She almost scoffs at the irony of him being the one to tell her that. "But I'm your commanding officer, there are certain things I must and must not do – "

"Shepard – listen to me." the words are earnest, almost pleading. They make her pause mid-sentence and look back up to meet his piercing gaze. "I came here not to speak as a subordinate to his commanding officer, but as someone to a dear friend. Remember that you aren't alone Shepard, ever."

"I – " Shepard tries, not really knowing what to say. It felt… strange. To have someone trying to scale the wall she had built up around herself from the day she had joined the Alliance. When she had left the streets and enlisted to get offworld with the Alliance Navy, she thought she was starting anew – burying that stray, orphaned girl under weeks of training and years of hardening herself. And no one could deny she had come far; N7 soldier for the Alliance, commanding officer of her own ship, an elite Spectre for the Citadel's Council – Shepard belatedly realised that all this while, that stray, orphaned girl with all of her sadness and hatred at the unjustness of the world still resided within her.

"Thank you, Garrus. I can't tell you enough how… how much that means to me." Shepard finally manages, choking a little over the words as she fights to keep it together. "It's just, it – it happened so long ago and I didn't think it would – Oh hell," she curses, thumping her head lightly against Garrus' chest plate. "I'm hopeless."

The armour vibrates slightly against her forehead when chuckles rumble through his chest and out past flayed mandibles. "Hardly. If you really were, I doubted we would have made it out of Therum alive."

Shepard allowed herself a smirk, a bit of her old swagger returning. "Heh. It was a pretty close one, though. T'Soni wasn't much of a runner."

They share a moment of vague amusement at the expense of the asari researcher. Then Shepard pulls away and takes a step back. Garrus lets her and his arms fall to his sides. Now with a respectable distance between them, they maintain eye contact. The silence is not awkward but strangely comforting, companionable. Though Shepard did feel colder now with the absence of his arms around her.

"Say, I did come looking for you with a question in mind…"

Shepard quirks an eyebrow at him, the corner of her mouth tilting upward slightly as he wrings his hands together – or the turian equivalent of the action anyway, with talons clicking against each other. She was definitely feeling better now – watching him squirm was just too fun. "All right, shoot."

"Isn't there… anything you want to do? To ease tension, I mean." Shepard's jaw was half a second away from dropping to the ground and the blood just beginning to rush to her cheeks when he adds, "Joker did tell me that you humans have certain customs around snow. Turians… we don't like the cold. So we don't know much about stuff like that. I was thinking you might… enjoy observing whatever these 'customs' of yours are while we have time. And show me a few things while you're at it. Are you okay, Shepard? Your face, it's red all of a sudden."

"O-Oh – it's nothing! Just a natural reaction to the cold, it making my cheeks flushed. But yeah. Yeah, that sounds great." stammered Shepard, inwardly berating herself and feeling like a teenage girl. 'Stop thinking inappropriate things! That's not what he meant!'

"Oh. Okay. That's interesting." Garrus obliviously replies with the light of genuine curiosity in his startlingly blue eyes. He does have really nice eyes, Shepard realises, as she tries to look into their crystalline blue without giving herself away.

"So, what sort of snow customs do humans practice?"

"Oh, well…" Shepard trails off, "what did Joker tell you?"

His brow-plates, which Shepard took for eyebrows, lift and mandibles move outward and away from his face. She learnt this was turian facial expression for baffled amusement. "That you humans throw fistfuls of snow at each other and try not to get hit – which sounds like a fire fight but without the guns and blood. And that you lie down on your backs and swing your arms and legs to create an image of a celestial being on the ground. And some… other stuff. It was all beyond me."

Shepard stifles a laugh – she never realised how weird outdoor winter activities must seem to someone who belonged to race that had never seen snow on their home planet. Then an idea came to her, slowly at first but seeming to have more and more potential the longer she turned it over in her mind, considering it.

"Say Garrus, have you ever heard of sledding?"

"Have I – what? Sledding?"

"Thought not." said Shepard, a wicked smirk splitting her face as she grabbed his hand, turned around and made towards the trees; deeper into the winter wood, half-dragging him behind her when he stumbled from the unexpected motion.

"Shepard, what – "

"Hang on a minute and I'll show you. Give me a hand and keep an eye out, okay?"

"Keep an eye out for what?"

"A wooden log or thick bark or something like that."

"But why would you want those things?"

"Oh, you'll see." she replied. He could hear the smirk in her voice.

He just shakes his head behind her back, bemused. Humans were such strange creatures sometimes. Well, at least she looks better now, thought Garrus, as he fixes his gaze on her back while she chugs determinedly along, through the shin-deep snow and climbing up an inclined slope. That old, haunted look is gone from her face and the dark aura from before had dissipated. She's smiling now, and she's still holding on to his hand.

Strangely, ironically, it didn't feel weird; her hand in his. Her many, willowy fingers locked with his three stout ones, talons curled so the inside curves rested on the back of her hand and the tips didn't pierce her skin. Skin that felt like soft down against the thick, scaly hide of his palms. The physical differences between them were so vast, they encompassed an entire ocean filled with the misunderstandings between their species. But their interlocked hands felt… natural. Like coming home to a familiar couch and welcoming halls. Her hand fit with his like a missing piece of jigsaw puzzle. And Garrus didn't think the feeling was unpleasant at all.

They continue on, with Shepard yanking him impatiently behind her. The hill they were climbing sloped steeper and soon they were both breathing heavily and stumbling in the knee-deep snow. Still, she keeps pulling him forward. He wonders why they had to travel up a hill looking for bits of wood, why they needed any in the first place and when Shepard was going to sto –

"Ah!"

Garrus snaps up his head at her triumphant yell, nearly tangling his fringe with a snow-capped clump of low-hanging branches. Her strides suddenly grow more purposeful, more excited. If he didn't have a heavier body mass, she probably would have dragged him under the snow from the abrupt change in direction and increase in speed. He almost ploughs right into her when she comes to a sudden stop, just managing to catch himself in time.

"Looks like we've managed to find a good one, good."

Garrus follows her gaze to find… a log of wood. Highly unremarkable, a dozen others probably lay around a one mile radius. What was once the trunk of a grand old pine tree was now a cylindrical block of wood, its branches long dead or broken off by wild animals. It had broken off near the top, suggesting that the tree had been felled then left there – though he couldn't tell if that was by the forces of nature or some other unnatural interference. The broken-off portion was roughly three metres long and two feet wide. The inside and a vertical cross-section had rotted away, the remains resembling a long wooden trough for holding water. Gnarled, chipped bark was peeling off at places and powdered snow was packed into its crevices. It was this particular log of wood that Shepard was appraising.

"So, what do you think?"

"… It's a dead tree trunk, Shepard. What am I supposed to think? Th- What are you doing?"

Shepard bent over the log, breaking off any remaining branches and brushing off excess snow. "Making it more comfortable to sit on. Help me out here."

"Why – "

"Are you helping me or not?"

Garrus lets out a dramatic sigh that whistles past his teeth and pitches his mandibles forward. There was no getting an answer out of her while she was so preoccupied with something. Striding over to the other side of the broken tree trunk, he aids her efforts in stripping it bare.

Soon enough, the job is done and a mostly-smooth, hollow, half-rotted tree trunk lay before them. Next, she got him to drag it out of the cover of the trees. Now, Garrus finds himself puffing a little after her, with one end of the hollow tree trunk hoisted on his shoulder and the other dragging along the ground as Shepard ploughs through the snow in front of him, travelling along the side of the hill.

"Shepard," he wheezes, his shoulder was starting to burn now. "Just where- "

"All right, this looks like a good spot."

A/N: I'm so sorry for the delay! D:

Well, here's the second chapter and nope - it's not over yet, there's still one more part to go. It's all written out but in need of serious editing so it really will be out soon this time. Yeah, I did say this would be the last chapter but it was getting a bit lengthy and so it made more sense to split it again. xD And to think this was supposed to be a one-shot at first...

Question: how do you prefer your fics? One long post or broken into multiple parts?

Hope to see you soon!

-Kasumi