Shepard had never been a woman with much desire for an emotional connection with her bed partners. Career had always come first, and as such, her partners had always had a similar line of thought. She had always respected and liked those she took to her bed, but the concept of actual committed love was a foreign one. In her more self analytical moments Shepard suspected it wasn't her career that held her personal life back, but her own fear of vulnerability, of opening herself up to what she viewed as potentially crippling dependance. But drowsing in the muted half light with Garrus a limp, warm weight against her side, Shepard realized that she simply couldn't imagine life without him.

In those frantic first days when Shepard had rescued Garrus from Purgatory, she had been committed to helping him in any way she could. Their friendship from the SR1 had been solid, and seeing the state the brutality of the mercenaries had brought Garrus to had been physically painful, but it had been the concern of a friend. Even looking back, Shepard wasn't sure when she realized that her feelings for the horrible damaged turian had progressed beyond her natural desire to repair the mental and physical trauma he had endured.

Garrus stirred and muttered something under his breath, one hand jerking in spastic response to some half-dreamed memory. 'Shh,' Shepard hushed him, her hand drowsily smoothing along the smooth cartilage of his crest; smiling when he sighed and relaxed against her again, his nasal ridges crinkling slightly as he nuzzled instinctively into the hollow of her shoulder. Shepard wasn't sure if he was asleep or not, but at least he was mostly relaxed.

Although he no longer bore much resemblance to the naive, bright eyed, idealistic young cop Shepard had first met on the Presidium only a few short years ago, there was something in his strength and counterpoint vulnerability that she found achingly appealing.

A datapad update chirped softly, and Shepard sleepily eased herself out of under Garrus' bulk and reached over to the nightstand to retrieve the offending object. As she scrolled through the engineering schematics, and attached parts requisitions, Shepard smirked as Garrus immediately hitched himself into the warm depression left by her body~stretching out in a languid way that reminded Shepard of a sunning housecat.

"That's almost cute you know." Shepard watched Garrus blink half slitted eyes up at her, "just think what a recording of this could do to your reputation?"

"I would have to retaliate!" Shepard gave a slightly embarrassing yelp of surprise as Garrus snagged her by the back of the shirt, hauling her backwards and rising up on his elbows to look her directly in the face. "Maybe that bitchy reporter would like to know you snore like a freight transport, and," he tapped a talon lightly on her chin, "that the great commander Shepard drools in her sleep."

"I don't!" Shepard's fingers were quick to scrub away the dried trail, aware that her skin was burning, and that her embarrassment was making the still healing reconstruction scars on her cheek itch. Garrus for his part gave a slight mandible quiver of amusement and flopped back down, burrowing back under the blankets, dragging Shepard with him.

"You do know I have to get up sometime right? Do some actual commander things?" Shepard grimaced as her stomach growled loudly, "and apparently get breakfast."

"Nnnnhnnn, maybe" Garrus managed, slinging one arm over her midriff.

"You're very lucky I kinda like you." Shepard relented with a sigh, tossing the datapad in the direction of the night stand and missing completely.

"Nhnnn."

The second time Shepard woke she was alone in bed and her quarters were redolent with the smell of hot coffee. Rolling over she could see Garrus was seated on her couch dressed in the light armor Liara had provided, scrolling through a bunch of what looked like video files on his omni tool.

"Oh god, Coffee!" Shepard gulped down a mouthful, sucking air over her tongue to soothe the burn.

"That liquid is deceptive." Garrus gave it a bitter sidelong glance, "it smells good...but the taste is...indescribable." Chewing idly on what looked like a protein ration, he skimmed over another cluster of vid files. "Is that food really what it says on the extranet?"

"Food?" Shepard retrieved a container from next to the steaming coffee mug, "its just yogurt...why?"

"So it really is...congealed bovine lactate flavored with plant matter?" Garrus gave the container a long look, mandibles flat to his jaw in what Shepard could only guess was disgust.

"Essentially yes, though its flavored with fruit not 'plant matter', and honestly I doubt this is authentic 'bovine lactate'." Padding over to the couch, Shepard leaned over Garrus' shoulder, "what is all this anyway?"

Several grainy feeds were scrolling past on the display of Garrus' omni tool, occasionally one would pause with a figure highlighted, and Garrus would look closely at it and skip forward again on the feed. "At one point I...we...had access to the various security feeds throughout Omega, private security, businesses...some of those hacks are still in place." He tapped past another highlighted figure, "I inputted what I can remember of Nalah Butler's physical characteristics, as well as the location she lived at...with luck these security feeds will help isolate her location."

Shepard watched Garrus out of the corner of her eye, it was hard to reconcile his almost fixated, nervous intensity with the playful, vulnerable turian she had slept beside. "These feeds must be at least hours old, how is it going to help even if you do find her?"

"It gives me something!" Garrus had finished whatever he had been eating, and was now chewing absently on the knuckles of his free hand.

"And what do you plan on doing once you find her?" Shepard felt a slight sense of dread as Garrus swung his head around to look at her, his mandibles splayed to bare his teeth in a grin that had nothing at all to do with humor. The last time she had seen an expression like that, Saren had been dangling her over the edge of a building on Virmire, and that same fanatical obsession had lit his synthetic eyes.

"She owes me for ten lives, and months of hell...and I plan to make sure she pays for every second." Garrus' voice was low and ugly, with a edge of glee that bled over into the usually soothing flanged harmonics of his tone.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Shepard couldn't help the censure that crept into her voice, and Garrus jerked back from her as if she had struck him.

"You know what she did!" The sudden outburst made Shepard jump, and she watched mutely as Garrus lunged to his feet to pace jerkily, "everything they suffered-she is responsible for! Her own mate! And you think she doesn't deserve to die?!"

"I never said that...but I'm not sure I want to watch you murder the pregnant wife of your dead friend!"

The bluntness of the statement brought Garrus up short, and he stared coldly across the small room at Shepard. "That's not your choice, she has to pay for this...there is no other way! This is no different that when you helped me take down Saleon~you never questioned me then!"

Shepard wanted to reach out and grab Garrus by the shoulders and simply shake him until he understood, but he was practically vibrating with tension and the rage in his pale eyes has blinded him to reason. "And you seriously can't see the difference between executing an insane, murdering doctor and a terrified pregnant woman?"

"No!" Garrus snarled back, "I see two people who's actions caused the deaths of innocent people!" He paced forward until he could lower his head and be eye to eye with Shepard, a low rumble in his chest a voiceless threat; "and I see a friend who taught me that the end justifies the means suddenly having fits of conscience over the fate of a murdering traitor! Or," Garrus' voice turned ugly with a shrill kind of forced jocularity, "is it because she's a human? Doesn't matter who she got killed, they were just omega scum after all! And everything that happened to me? Maybe mast...Warden Kuril was right, maybe I did enjoy it!"

Shepard couldn't help but feel her gut lurch at that last statement, but she forced herself to remain impassive; It wasn't that she didn't think Nahlah deserved a bullet...but she hated what even the mention of Omega turned Garrus into. The files that Shepard had access to through Liara's new position had included a list of more notable kills from Garrus' time as archangel, proving that even then before the brutality of the mercenaries had fractured his mind, Garrus had been capable of an uncomfortable level of cruelty and violence. Again there was no doubt that Garrus' targets had needed to be taken off the streets, the same way a mad dog needed to be put down...but one doesn't torture a mad dog, you put a bullet in it and move on.

It was Omega itself, Shepard rationalized. The entire station was like an infected wound, the deeper you dug, the more rot and pus you discovered. The only way anyone survived there, was to become tainted...infected, with it's moral corruption.

"This has nothing to do with her being human! Honestly, Garrus you know me better than that," Shepard scrubbed a hand over her face; the easy peace of the night and early morning was fading into a tension headache the size of a reaper. "This has to do with the fact that Saleon was an ongoing threat, and Nahlah is not!"

"So she shouldn't be punished?"

"I never said that!" Shepard could hear her own voice start to rise in anger, "but I happen to think your plan to smear her brains all over half of Omega is going to end in disaster; honestly what did you not learn from your first round of vigilante justice on that station?!" The flash of shock and hurt that flitted across Garrus' face wasn't lost on Shepard, but she was furious and frustrated; the peace of the day had already gone to shit and Garrus' stubborn refusal to see any kind of reason on the issue was infuriating. No matter his opinions back on the SR1 he had at least been willing to listen.

"I don't need your approval Shepard," Garrus' breath was a hot snarl across her face, and Shepard stared at him in surprise, he had never challenged her decisions before. "And I don't need your permission, you don't want to help? Fine! But you can't stop me from dealing with this!"

"But I can confine you to this ship until Chakwas clears you as fit for duty." Shepard ignored the outrage in Garrus' eyes and pressed a hand to the ridged chestplate of his armor, pushing him back out of her face, "now back off." To Shepard's frustration he simply refused to move back, and her anger boiled over. Shoving Garrus back with enough force to make him stumble backwards, her voice was shockingly loud in the small space: "I told you to fucking back off, that's an order!"

Within microseconds Shepard wished she could reach out and grab her own words and cram them back down her throat until she choked on them. Garrus struggled to recover his balance, and half dropped into a crouch, twisting his head to the side in that loathed show of submission that Shepard recognized from his first days on the rebuilt Normandy.

"Garrus, don't..I..." Shepard reached out a hand, in the hopes of repairing any damage her anger had done, but he flinched back from her, rising to his feet, arms limp at his sides and oddly passive.

"I apologize for my disrespect, Commander." Shepard flinched at the complete flat lack of subvocals in Garrus' voice, and the fact that he was calling her 'commander'...a heartbreaking counterpoint to their intimacy of a few hours ago. "May I please have your permission to look around the ship?"

"You don't have to ask my permission for that..." Shepard swallowed down the sick lump in her throat and the hot burn in her eyes. Garrus was staring placidly at nothing, obviously unwilling to move until Shepard finally choked out a weak, "yeah, you have my permission," then closed her eyes so she didn't have to see him nod a deferential thanks and pad out.

Long after the hum of the elevator was silent, Shepard leaned against the cool glass of the fishtank and wondered why, just once, her life couldn't be simple. Somehow she had thought that Garrus would just settle back into the routine of the Normandy, the new routine of...them. That the horrors of Omega and Purgatory might have finally loosened their all consuming hold on him. It was like walking uphill on Noveria Shepard mused to herself, two steps forward... one slide back.