He met her in her hotel's lobby. She was sitting in her radiation suit, her helmet by her side. She was alert, of course, watching the people passing by. Her gaze settled on him unwaveringly.

"Garrus! Right on time!" she moved to get up.

"Hi, Shepard."

"Did your family thing go okay?"

"Yeah, it did."

"Good. So, where are we headed?"

Spirits, Vakarian, say more than five words at a time to the woman, can't you?

He didn't know what to think about how she was just... normal as can be at that moment. Looking up at him, readying her helmet, not making any flirtatious signals at all. That, or she was and he was not picking up on her broadcast, and wouldn't that be rich, arrrgh... stop it.

"I figure you've had enough of Monuments and Very Important Buildings."

"Yep."

"Right, then. I, ah, thought I'd show you the Tiferi river."

Shepard nodded, before putting her helmet on.

"Definitely wasn't on the tour. Lead on, big guy."

They took a taxi away from the central administration district and the buildings became friendlier in scale; shops and apartments, with the newer buildings built to honor the traditional style, the markets and retail areas on the ground floors given shade with awnings or set back into arcades with arched openings.

He lead her to the Tiferi.

Cipritine as a settlement began near its banks. Over the centuries, the Tiferi was channeled into fields for farming, the first serious feats of engineering in turian history were concerned with building check dams, overflow catch basins, aqueducts, cistern systems and extensive underground piping to safely disperse the river's annual flooding. They needed the water and necessarily feared it too.

He pointed out these aspects of the engineering to her as they walked. He was hesitant at first, but Shepard was asking interested questions of the history of it all and he settled into his explanations.

Garrus took her to a park he'd played in as a child, where some of the river's flow had been diverted and kept shallow, to meander as a stream. Even now there were children, standing on foot bridges over the little span, observed by their parents, as they dropped sticks and leaves on the water and ran alongside on the banks, laughing and cheering as one leaf or a stick won a race to the next the foot bridge.

They stopped on a bridge just before this diverted stream rejoined the rest of the Tiferi.

"It's beautiful, Garrus," she said, leaning on the railing of the bridge.

"I'm glad you like it."

"I bet there's a nice breeze to go with it. Is there?"

He could faintly see her blinking behind the visor of her helmet.

"Yeah, there is."

"Figures. I don't know how Tali could stand it, stuck behind a helmet the way she is all the time. Can't even feel a breeze."

Garrus didn't have anything to say about that.

"You know, in a city like this, on Earth? There would be all sorts of boats out on the water on a sunny day like this, people out on the water."

"Ah, you know that's not going to happen on this planet. Not that we don't appreciate the Tiferi our own way."

It was true. There were all sorts of people on bridges, watching the water also, or sitting in the park, catching that same breeze.

"You're right. Just thinking on the differences. Plus the fact that people used to get executed by getting thrown in. Must be on everybody's mind, huh?" her tone was amused.

Garrus coughed, suddenly embarrassed. He got a little too enthusiastic with listing off the historical uses of the Tiferi.

Shepard chuckled.

"Where next?"

He took her to what used to be a private garden of an ancient primarch, now a public place for visitors. That primarch was of eccentric tastes and this garden was the best of their legacy in that art. People came for the beauty of aged trees and beds full of old-fashioned blooms, the walks were all pebble mosaics in beautiful patterns, and there were statuary from significant artists of that era. But the showcase was water.

Fountains, all gravity fed (not a one pumped, this was well before turians harnessed electricity) shot plumes of spray high into the air, as tall as two modern building stories, a show to impress. Shepard's walk slowed and she lingered to listen to the sounds of falling water, pausing to take in the views of alles of trees reflected in the broad pools, watching as water was collected in basins, overflowing, branching out into various pools, made to dance in fanning sprays, made to form waterfalls that were miniatures of real waterfalls in the wilderness of ancient Palaven.

"Nobody ever said one word," Shepard sighed, tilting her helmet at Garrus. "about this place. And you said this is hundreds and hundreds of years old? All of this?"

"Yes. It was almost torn down after that primarch passed. It was seen as a folly. Indulgent."

"But the ENGINEERING," Shepard spread her arms wide. "All the work that went into this!"

She made an audible gust of breath in her helmet.

"... Yes," Garrus grinned. "The engineering was impressive."

"And all for beauty. I like it."

They walked on after that. He was sure that he wasn't going to able to top Quentius' Water Garden, not within walking distance, anyway. So he took her to the closest market street because he well knew her penchant for window shopping. Or, rather, shopping in general.

She crowed and pounced on a number of turian ship models. She agonized over one or the other, and then finally gave up, buying them all.

"So. You hungry, or is that a varren in your midsection?" Garrus asked after they'd walked a few more blocks.

Shepard punched Garrus on the arm.

"You know it. Do we need to head back to the hotel?"

Garrus had his omnitool activated.

"There's a place close by that offers some asari styled dishes. Is that okay? Or is salarian stuff more your speed?"

"Have I ever looked like I had a craving for worms and other creepy crawly critters? Asari cuisine. Definitely."

Pretty much only Commander Shepard could make Garrus feel like his appetite was delicate; she was packing away three different plates of food. He'd once idly pondered about how many calories she burned flinging herself around the battlefield and how he hadn't observed her going any faster the longer a battle lasted, though she must be burning off units of weight. Wouldn't applying the same amount of force to reduced mass result in her shoving her shotgun into her target's face sooner? It seemed like it ought to be. There was something off about his understanding of physics when it came to biotics, he concluded.

Shepard hummed happily before putting her hand to her mouth for a moment.

"...Okay. I'm good," she concluded.

"Finished eating?"

"Nope. Burp suppression."

"Thanks."

Shepard laughed. Garrus blinked before realizing that perhaps it didn't make sense to her for him to thank her for not demonstrating one of the more alien aspects of humans (and krogans) by forcing air back up from her stomach. She once got a good number of the crew to participate against Wrex in a burping contest. It was, to put it mildly, one of the most disgusting displays Garrus had ever witnessed, let alone smelled.

Shepard asked for the menu again to peruse the desserts.

"... This looks like it's made out of ice. Is it?" she asked the server hopefully.

When the server confirmed that yes, it was, Shepard crowed and made an order.

"Asari came up with popsicles on their own! It's just what I needed."

"... What's a popiscle?"

tbc