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Another explosion, another pile of ruins utterly destroyed. The end result of taking Jack back to the place where she'd been raised had been like Virmire all over again. Except this time, Kate hadn't had to leave anyone behind. Jack had made sure of that when she shot the other "survivor" before she set the bomb. Not that he had wanted to leave the damn place anyway.

The longer Kate was on this mission and the more she delved into the past lives of her crew, she realized one thing. She had not had a very conventional childhood, and her teen years had been royally fucked up, but compared to a lot of her crew, she'd let a pretty sweet life, even after joining the marines. She could have had it much worse. She'd met a survivor of Akuze two and half years ago. As Cpl. Toombs had said to her, she really did have it good; she'd made it off of Elysium with a few scars, a couple of medals and a scary reputation. He'd watched his entire unit die and then had been tortured by Cerberus for years afterward. This coupled with what she'd seen happen to Admiral Kahoku's men and ultimately to the Admiral himself at the hands of Cerberus, and was it any wonder Kate hated the organization? She knew why Kaidan had reacted the way he had when they'd met on Horizon. He'd been there with her through all of that, as had Garrus. It hadn't been his reaction, it had been his refusal to give her a chance to explain.

"Kate, you'd better double-time it to Miranda's office," Joker said over the comm, pulling Kate back to the present. "She and Jack are having an all-out war in there. I don't want them tearing my ship apart."

"Thanks, Joker," Kate said as she ran across the loading bay to catch the elevator.

She could hear crashes and loud yelling before the elevator even reached the crew deck. Gardner had disappeared, as had the rest of the crew. They all appeared to have fled in terror, leaving their dinner behind.

The door slid open to her XO's office and Kate immediately ducked as Miranda's office chair went sailing over her head.

"What the fuck? Alright, that's it!" she growled as she walked into the room. "I get it, you can't stand each other, you hate each other even. But you have to work together, because I said so. Got it? If you can't figure out how to co-exist peacefully on this ship until this mission is over, so help me God, I will put both of you in cryo until we go through the Omega-4 relay."

"But-" Miranda started to protest.

Kate held up a hand and turned to Jack. "Jack, you have extremely legit reasons for hating Cerberus," she continued. "But taking it out on Miranda won't help anything. She wasn't involved in that project." Jack glared at her but the Commander ignored her and turned back to Miranda. "You think Jack's a loose cannon. And maybe she is-" Kate reached out without looking back and grabbed the fist that Jack had aimed at her head. "But she's also a strong team member. She's also extremely loyal. Maybe not to you, and certainly not to Cerberus as a whole, but neither am I. But, when it comes down to it, she's not going to leave her squad-mates to die in a firefight."

Miranda and Jack just stood and gawked at Kate for a moment. Then Jack stormed out of Miranda's office, muttering a litany of curses as she went.

"Thank you, Shepard," Miranda said as she began straightening her office. It almost looked worse than the Loft had after Horizon.

"I wasn't kidding, Miranda," Kate said quietly, retrieving the chair from the hallway. "I don't expect you two to be friends, just as I don't expect the two of us to be friends. But I do expect everyone on this ship to work as a team when it counts. If they can't do that, I don't want them on my ship. Got it?"

"Understood, Commander. Am I special or will the tattooed psycho be getting the same speech?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'll be talking to Jack as well, though I think I'll let her cool off a bit first. I think I'll take her when Grunt and I go down to Tuchanka."

Miranda smirked. "Oh yeah. She'll fit right in with the krogan."

Kate, Jack and Grunt weren't the only ones to disembark when the Normandy landed on the krogan homeworld. Joker, Garrus and Zaeed tagged along as well, wanting to catch up with Wrex. After the second trip to Omega, Kate had seemed like her old self and Zaeed had stopped worrying so much. He didn't worry at all when Kate and Mordin went off with no backup to rescue the doc's former student. They came back looking none-too-pleased but neither wanted to talk about it, so he left it alone.

After Kate and Jack went off with Grunt and the shaman to complete the tank-bred's Rite of Passage, Wrex grilled Zaeed, Garrus and Joker about what had been happening in the last few months.

"Was there some reason we never just went up to Harkin and snapped him in half back then?" he asked an hour later. He glanced at Garrus. The turian shook his head and shrugged.

"I was wondering the same thing myself," Zaeed growled.

"It was because Kate didn't want you guys to get arrested," Joker said. "I'm pretty sure grievous bodily injury on a C-Sec officer, no matter how much of an ass he is, is grounds for jail time. And she didn't have friends in C-Sec back then, hence the problems."

"So? She was a Spectre. She could have gotten them out of jail on the grounds of galactic security or something," Zaeed countered, though he knew the pilot was right.

Wrex suddenly looked up and started laughing. The others turned to see what was so amusing.

Grunt was coming back from the arena, carrying Kate under one arm, Jack under the other. Both women were cheering and laughing despite the numerous acid burns they were both sporting (Grunt had his share as well) and the fact that both were missing approximately half of their armor. Grunt reached the dais and Kate and Jack dropped to the ground.

"What the hell happened to you three?" Zaeed asked.

"Varren, klixen and... a thresher maw," Jack said with a grin.

"I've taken out my share of maws in my time," Kate said, "but never on foot without the option of the Mako. Well, except that one time."

"Yeah, but that was because you crashed the damn thing before we got to the nest, so we couldn't use the Mako's guns," Wrex countered with a wink.

"We also made it back to the Normandy in our armor," Garrus said. "I'm pretty certain this is what's going to push Dr. Chakwas over the edge. She's going to end up locking you in the med-bay for the rest of the mission."

Kate scoffed. "Whatever. I'm not scared of her."

Zaeed and Garrus grinned. Kate was back.