A/N - Sorry this has taken so long, study and exams get in the way of life for both me and my lovely beta, Hatteress. If anyone is keen to volunteer as alternate beta, please let me know :) My next chapter will be a re-write of the prelude chapter. Since this story has taken on a life of its own, I owe it a proper introduction, rather than something I bashed out in ten minutes to see if I liked writing in this 'verse. Story will continue unimpeded after that! Hope you're all still enjoying, reviews make me smile!
"Joker!"
The pilot slouched deeper into the comfy leather seat and eyed the door controls to the cockpit longingly. As epically satisfying as it would be to slam the door on that Cerberus lapdog... With a grimace, Joker pushed against the edge of his console and let the chair spin around so he was facing Jacob Taylor.
"You hollered?" Joker asked innocently.
Jacob paused at the entrance to the cockpit, his dark face set in a frown. "Where's Commander Shepard? She's not answering the comm. and I can't track her down."
"Easy question, easy answer. She's not onboard, soldier boy."
It was kind of fun watching the Cerberus operative's eyes almost bug out of his head. "What the hell do you mean, not on board? We haven't..." Jacob stopped suddenly, his gaze sliding slowly towards the stationery star field displayed through the viewport. Then back to Joker. "Shit. She's... outside? With the crews?"
Joker smirked at him. "Got it in one."
Shepard had always enjoyed zero-g. Her origins as a dirtball colonist meant that she'd copped all kinds of crap about it from the spacer brats during earlier Alliance training. But this was the first time she'd been Outside since... well, since she'd died. Died grasping and wrenching at her burst air tube, choking on hard vacuum.
To say she'd been a bit anxious about going out again was an understatement. Which only made it even more imperative that she do so. Shepard wasn't the kind of person to turn her back on the things that scared her. She looked them in the eye and, wherever possible, shot them right in the face. So here she was, hanging in space, and despite a slightly more obsessive than normal attention to her breathing apparatus, she was surprisingly okay with it.
It wasn't the emptiness of space that prompted that initial frisson of fear down her spine, it was the pit-of-the-stomach anxiety that her breathing hoses would spontaneously fall to pieces and she'd suffocate. But having a job to do out here meant she had to focus on the immediate task, which buried any anxiety fairly quickly. The lack of a looming planet ready to suck her into its atmosphere and burn her to a crisp again was also a bonus.
Shepard had drifted a bit too far away from her position, and the cables clipping her into place tugged insistently at her waist. She grunted in irritation, flipping away from the ship's hull to try to access the secondary panel she needed out here. There was always a bit of acrobatics involved, pushing the limits of the cables rather than going to the effort of unclipping them, manoeuvring down to the next access point and starting over. And since hanging feet-first in space to reach her objective wasn't a bother for her, she did it happily enough.
She was even humming softly to herself.
The crews had been working around the clock to get the hull upgrades completed, simultaneous to the installation of the Thanix cannon. It had been a logistics nightmare, and Shepard had to admit that EDI had proven an invaluable asset in scheduling the upgrade process. They had more money than god, thanks to Cerberus funding, and she'd damned well made sure they got the best of everything. Shepard knew in her bones that the Normandy SR-2 would have to finish the battle that had killed her older sister, and this time, the Commander intended that they win.
The bulk of the crew currently working an EVA shift were on the starboard side of the Normandy, finishing up the last of the hull plating. The diamond-composited Silaris armor had to be attached to the superstructure of the Normandy, so they'd had two options: sandwich it over the original hull, by fitting a series of 'ribs' on which to mount the Silaris armor and filling the space between with a metal polymer; or they could take the more expensive option of fusing the new hull plating directly onto the old, bonding the two substances together. It took longer, cost more, and ultimately added greater strength to the hull. No prizes for guessing which option she'd picked.
So while the rest of the crew were finalising the last section of Silaris armor installation, Shepard was out here, completing the last of the finicky little upgrades on the Thanix cannons. They were a battery of cannons mounted beneath the vessel's main hull, meaning she wasn't even in sight of the rest of the workers. The entire battery was designed to retract when not in combat mode, but at this stage, it was fully extended, giving her the best access to the connections she needed to fine tune.
The Commander was feeling... content. It was the first time in a long time she could say that, and the hell that was the Horizon mission certainly hadn't helped. She was enjoying the work, and the intense focus it required. She was enjoying the isolation, the silence of EVA. A silence that she filled contentedly with her own off-tune humming, right up until the moment her suit radio crackled demandingly and Jacob's voice thrummed irritably in her ear.
"Commander Shepard, please confirm your position."
Shepard heard her own sigh disrupt the steady breathing that had become quite soothing. "Hanging upside down somewhere underneath engineering, on the wrong side of the hull. Relax, Jacob. I'm fine."
She could almost picture him gritting his teeth. "Commander, we don't have anyone scheduled on the Thanix right now. Everyone's starboard side."
Shepard opened her mouth to reply, when another voice slid smoothly over the comm. line. "She said relax, Jacob. She's not solo."
The flanging quality of the voice identified it immediately as turian. Garrus was the only person on the Normandy who never needed to identify himself over the radio, Shepard realized. Though he had a distinctive enough voice, even for a turian. There was a moment's silence, then Jacob asked with much less concern, "you're outside too, Vakarian? Anything wrong with the Thanix?"
"Just a little targeting issue with the hardware, the scope's pushing everything slightly to the left. We've almost got it sorted out here. Give us another two hours and we'll be back inside." The serene confidence of the turian's reply was enough for Jacob to let the issue go.
"Understood. I'll check back in two hours, Commander. Jacob out."
The little click in her right ear indicated the channel to the Normandy had closed. Nobody went outside solo, and all spacewalks required at least two suits to link their radios. Those links remained open at all times, for safety reasons. So the link between Shepard and Garrus' suits didn't close down when Jacob logged off, and she heard his low-pitched chuckle clearly.
"You could have told someone where we were going," he chastised.
She didn't bother to look for him; he was on the far side of the Thanix and its bulk blocked her view of him. Besides, she didn't need to see him to read his amusement with the situation.
"I did, Garrus. I told Joker," Shepard answered him truthfully, smirking to herself. He chuckled again, a low, sardonic sound.
"Of course, Shepard. How are you going over there?"
She pushed back from the control unit she was fiddling with, to get a wider perspective on it, and sighed heavily. "Honestly? Not great. This isn't my field of expertise. I think I've narrowed the problem down, though, so whenever you can drag yourself over to my side of the gun and check me on this..." She trailed off suggestively, and heard him snort.
"Give me a minute," Garrus answered easily. "You've done fine so far, Shepard. I'm glad you volunteered to help me with this... even if it does mean I have to put up with that awful sound you make."
"Huh?" Shepard blinked in surprise. "What sound I make?"
The Commander heard something over the radio, a peculiarly flat and oddly flanging sound that she realized... after a moment of confused listening... was Garrus attempting to hum. Tunelessly, the same way she did. She felt herself grin and then laughed outright. "Damn Garrus, don't ever do that again. I'll stop humming, I promise. Didn't even realize I was doing it."
"You have my eternal gratitude. I'll even name my firstborn after you," the turian replied. From the absent note of his voice, Shepard guessed he was pretty involved in finishing up whatever he was doing over there. But he'd make jokes even on his deathbed, it was second nature to him.
"Assuming you ever have one," Shepard retorted idly, clipping the tool she'd been using back onto her belt and pushing off from the ship's hull. She hovered weightlessly in space, floating a meter away from the hull, as she waited for him to finish up and make his way over. Damn, it was peaceful out here.
Garrus snorted softly over the radio. "Good point. But I'm sure one day some charming lady will happily lure me into her nest to lay my offspring."
Shepard spun lazily around, the Normandy appearing to cartwheel across her vision, until she was floating with her back towards the ship. She faced the endless depths of space calmly, serenely, until she absently took in his remark and her eyes widened. "Garrus... turians don't really lay eggs, do they?"
His laughter was warm and familiar, resonating through her suit radio. "Of course we do, Shepard. Why do you think your scientists like to compare us to those dinosaurs of yours?"
She was fairly sure he was just messing with her now. On firmer ground – metaphorically, at least – Shepard grinned out at the void. "There's nothing reptilian about you, Vakarian. Hawkish, maybe, with those damned bird bones of yours, but you're nothing like a lizard."
The appearance of new lights to her right made the Commander turn her head carefully, and there he was. The EVA suit he wore was turian-designed of course, and as blue as his armor. The strips of safety lights along his torso, arms and legs, as well as the bright lights above his faceplate, were what had caught her attention. In space, he was even more graceful than in gravity, clambering hand over hand towards her with the lithe efficiency of a deep space predator.
When he got close enough, she could see the smirking angle of his mandibles, the flash of amusement in his expression. "Happy to hear it, Commander. Show me your problem."
She spun back towards the hull, and gestured carefully with one gloved finger towards the connection she was having trouble with. "It looks like it isn't making full linkage with the targeting computers, but like I said... not my specialty."
Garrus' lanky blue form settled down beside her, his feet floating out in empty space as easily as her own were, their bodies drifting alongside one another within the limited stretch of the safety cables. Garrus tilted his head so that the lights of his helmet illuminated the gear she was pointing to. "Hmmm," he said softly. "You could be right. It's not an easy fix, but what I'm working on over there is all a hardware issue." He tilted his head towards her, so their helmets were almost touching. "Swap?"
She gave a quick grin, because nodding in space was a bad idea unless you wanted to deal with the third law of motion. "Deal. What's your O2 count?" Shepard asked, running her gaze quickly over the HUD of her helmet to check her own.
"Hmmm. 163 minutes left. Two hours should do it. I don't want to have to come back out here," he added grumpily.
"Not a fan of EVA?" she asked, pushing up and away from him. It was a bit of social conditioning that had to be trained out of you when you first started EVA work. It wasn't actually bad manners to turn your back on someone, mid-conversation, when you had a radio link-up.
"Not particularly," was all he said, but the way he bit off the two words in distaste made her smirk. Nice to know there was something in the universe that unsettled the unflappable Garrus Vakarian. Even if it was only because he couldn't snipe the bad guys as easily in zero-g.
Shepard found herself grinning as she made her way carefully across the huge bulk of the newly-installed Thanix cannon to deal with the hardware issue. Two hours to get this baby up and running, and then they could get to the testing.
That was really going to make her day. Firing off a Reaper-inspired weapon, tamed to her own damned control, would be the ultimate 'fuck you' to Harbinger. Maybe it would even help stave off the damned nightmares for a night or two.
Yeah. If she was lucky.
Shepard got busy with the task at hand, which was –as Garrus had promised – a fairly straight forward hardware issue; some connections weren't being made where they should be. The onboard assembly process of fairly delicate components hadn't been as painstaking as it should have been... or things had shifted during the installation process... Not an uncommon issue, and nothing she'd have to berate her crew about, even if she could confirm someone had been at fault. It was a straight forward fix, but tedious and time-consuming all the same. The faulty installation could belong to one of quite a number of parts, and as there was no way to identify which was the problem, she'd just have to check them all.
All Shepard could hear was the sound of her own breathing, and the faint echo of Garrus' carrying over the radio link.
After a while, she noticed that he kept hitching his breath, and then exhaling sharply. She heard it a few times before realizing what she was hearing; the sound of a hesitant turian catching himself before he spoke.
Shepard smirked to herself. "Out with it, big guy," she said smugly over the radio. There was a startled pause and her smirk widened. "Come on, Garrus. You've got something on your mind, right? Spill it."
She managed to remove, check and re-install a part before he was able to reply.
"Alright, Shepard. When are you going to wake up the krogan?"
Shepard blinked. Not the question I expected. Garrus' recent sidelong glances and surreptitious observation were his version of pussyfooting around her, and the issue of Kaidan and Horizon. Jack had let the entire matter drop with a scornful "the guy is an asshole. You should have let me kick his ass." Garrus hadn't said a word about it, and she'd been steeling herself for him to broach the topic eventually. Hell, maybe turians don't do the touchy-feely crap with their commanders.
"You know Garrus," she replied conversationally, returning her attention to the task at hand. "Everyone else on this ship has asked me if, not when. If I'm going to wake the nuked-up superkrogan tanked out in our cargo hold."
Garrus' uniquely flanged laughter resonated over the radio. "I know you better than that. You're not going to keep a potential ally in stasis on the off chance you can't win it over."
"Off chance? You're uncharacteristically optimistic today."
A snort was her answer. "Shepard, you can sweet talk your way around anyone. And if that doesn't work, hell, you can probably just head butt him into submission."
She couldn't help but grin to herself at that, out here in the void with nobody to see. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, big guy. I'll save the head butting as a last resort." Shepard carefully, deliberately withdrew a component from its cradle, tilted her head to shine her helmet light over it, and then just as purposefully, replaced it. The successful union was signalled by a vibration as it clicked into place.
"I bet you could take him out with a head butt," Garrus remarked with that familiar, dry humour that still managed to catch her by surprise.
It was all she could do to choke back her laughter. "Oh yeah? What's the wager?"
"You prove me right, and you owe me a new set of armor."
Smoothly adjusting yet another component, Shepard chuckled softly. It would almost be worth it, to see him out of the cracked blue armor he still wore. Every damn time she looked at that missing chunk under the scarred right side of his face, she remembered that gunship. "Alright, you're on. And if I end up in med bay with a skull fracture?"
He 'hmmmm'd' softly in apparent thought. "I'll get you a new rifle. A good one. You cling to that Shuriken like it's going to propose to you one day."
Shepard laughed outright at that, even as the bank of lights at the far side of her panel started blinking in cheerful acknowledgement of restored functionality. "You're on. And I've fixed the problem over here. I'm going to go check the rest before we head back in. Don't want to have to drag you back out here."
"And the krogan?" Garrus asked. Something in his voice, a serious tone that stood out sharply against his previous teasing, caught Shepard's attention immediately.
"I'd planned on waking him up as soon as we're done with these upgrades." Shepard found herself frowning in bemusement as she drifted smoothly across the hull of the Normandy to the next blinking panel. "What's the problem?"
She could hear the hesitation, the long pause of silence unbroken even by breathing. Shepard remembered his uncertainty about broaching this topic and knew it was going to go somewhere he was nervous about walking into.
"It's not the krogan," Garrus finally said quietly. "But I think we should do something with him before we take on any new crew."
Ahhh. And there it was.
It wasn't the krogan, he was right on that score. After Horizon, the Illusive Man had deposited a new series of dossiers for potential recruits... an even more ragtag, disreputable bunch than his first lot. Assassins, mercenaries, thieves.
And one very old friend who'd already turned her back on Shepard once.
"This is about Tali," Shepard concluded calmly. Maybe turians did do touchy-feely crap with their commanders. They just did it badly. With a lot of circuitous lead up and distracting humour. "Make you a deal, Garrus. We'll finish up here, head back in and test out these sexy new guns you've got for me, and then we'll talk about Tali. Ok?"
Inside. Where the testing would need to take place in the main battery, already scoured free of Cerberus monitoring devices. Devices which were embedded on their suits, recording every word they said. She head Garrus sigh quickly in relief.
"Deal, Commander," the turian drawled back at her.
The main battery was always a little warmer than the rest of the ship. Shepard hadn't been able to work out yet whether that was because of its proximity to the engine core, or because Garrus had coerced EDI into turning the heat up slightly. As he'd once told her, turians 'don't like the cold.'
They'd gotten back inside in under the two hour limit, and headed directly here. Shepard had delayed the next shift to finish the hull upgrades. She wanted a successful test of the Thanix canon first, before she sent more people out to crawl over the hull. Garrus had seemed pleased with the improved results from the targeting computer, but had insisted on making some final adjustments before they initiated the test run.
That had been almost an hour ago. Shepard had seated herself on the tool box against the far wall and waited patiently. At least, to start with. Heavy sighs and pointed throat-clearing had earned her a distracted, vaguely apologetic glance from Garrus, and the latest in a series of them had even prompted a "just a few more minutes, Commander." Shepard was willing to be patient. This was his baby, after all. His idea, and he'd been the one out there, supervising the installation. Garrus had gotten as obsessive over the Thanix cannon as he usually was with his own damn rifle. She was starting to get the feeling that his finicky calibrations were the equivalent of his compulsive cleaning of his firearm. When she wandered close enough to see just how pedantic he was being with the firing algorithms, she knew she was right.
Shepard snorted and shoved him hard in the shoulder, enough to knock him off-balance slightly and make him stare down at her in surprise. "Enough, Vakarian. You can sweet-talk the targeting computer on your own time. I want to make sure this thing will actually shoot, before we worry too much about its precision. Is there some reason we can't do that right now?"
Garrus stilled his hands on the controls, grumbling something under his breath which she couldn't quite make out. It may have even been in turian. "Fine, fine. Yes, it will shoot. It will even hit your target." He looked disgruntled by the interruption, and she waited a moment until she could see his brain dragging itself out of the intense focus of careful calibration, and back onto the task at hand. When he grimaced at her, mandibles splaying against his face, she grinned back.
"Excellent. Set us up, big guy."
EDI had found them a nice isolated system with a convenient asteroid belt, and no occupants other than a few very uncommunicative mining settlements on the fourth planet. It had granted them the privacy and safety to shut the ship down long enough for the upgrades, and the asteroid belt provided the perfect target range.
Shepard pressed her index finger to the radio control at her ear. "Joker, we're prepping for fire test now. Five minute countdown."
"Roger that, Commander," Joker answered eagerly. She found herself grinning a bit. Joker was as impatient as her to test a Reaper-based weapon, knowing what it would mean to their likelihood of survival. Knowing what it would mean to the memory of the old Normandy. It was like getting their own back.
Garrus was busy at the controls, setting the over-tuned targeting computer to select a reasonably sized asteroid for the test. There were enough in the belt, that he had one in under two minutes. She had to peer around his shoulder to watch as he called up the firing controls. The Thanix cannon was still extended from their final work, so it was ready and raring to go immediately.
Shepard was mildly surprised when Garrus slid to the left to grant her better viewing... but downright startled when he hesitated, then stepped away completely.
"Controls are yours, Commander," the turian said quietly.
Shepard blinked. "Are you sure, Garrus? This is your project..."
She saw the humour in his expression as he shook his head. "No, Shepard. It's... Consider it a gift," he remarked slyly, crossing his arms and smirking at her. Daring her to refuse, when he damned well knew how badly she was itching to do this.
The Commander didn't refuse. She stepped up to the controls willingly, even eagerly, and nodded once as he explained what she'd need to do. Shepard kept her eyes on the targeting display, waiting for confirmation that the Thanix cannon was fully powered up and ready for the test. Just before they hit the five-minute mark she'd given Joker, it flashed green in readiness. The controls were basically the same as those for the ship's main guns, and it only took a few commands to initiate the test.
Shepard had never before felt such visceral satisfaction in pressing buttons.
Her finger slid over the last command key and instantly her hands both curled into fists, pressing hard against the edge of the panel. She could sense Garrus' eager attention just over her left shoulder, saw him step forward sharply as they both fixed their gazes intently on the display.
The vibration of the cannon firing ripped through the belly of the Normandy, shuddering the deck plating beneath their feet, and trembling the panel under Shepard's clenched hands. And on the display, she watched it... burning golden fire erupting from the Normandy, she could damn well feel it raging through the void towards its target. Reaper technology. The same weapon that had ripped her first Normandy to shreds, leashed under her hands. The thing that ripped her world – her life – apart, tamed to her control.
The asteroid wasn't blown up. It didn't explode, or splinter, or break apart under the assault.
It was obliterated. Utterly. The savage fire erupted from the Thanix cannon and a second later the asteroid was gone. In fact, a chunk of the asteroid belt around it was also gone. Chaos reigned amongst the cosmos, as the impact shattered the sedate tumbling of the occupants of the belt, crashing them one into another, rolling outward from the target zone.
Shepard realized she was breathing hard, short, sharp breaths; her lips were pulled back from her teeth in an expression that just missed pleasure to become a predatory snarl. Over the radio, she could hear Joker's exultant howling.
They had a weapon that could fucking hurt the Reapers.
She looked up at Garrus, and for the first time in a long time, she couldn't read his expression. She suspected it was the turian equivalent of her own, all sharp angles and savage flash of teeth. He looked momentarily terrifying, the blue of his clan markings highlighting the alien quality.
They stared at one another like that, that truly vicious satisfaction running headily between them. Shepard didn't know what to say, but Garrus did.
"The Normandy has teeth." His voice was almost a purr, low-pitched and flanging and the sound jolted down her spine in a sharp, unexpected line. Shepard pressed her fists harder against the panel and felt her grin stretch wider.
"Damn straight, she does. And we'll use it to rip their fucking spines out." Shepard was glad they were alone down here, glad the Cerberus devices had been removed. She might later come to regret indulging in this savage triumph, wallowing in her baser instincts. And she damned sure wouldn't want anyone but Garrus to see her like this. Anyone else would misunderstand, but Garrus knew this wasn't really her. Knew that it was only that after everything they had done to her... she damned well needed this. Needed to get her own back. It was why he'd let her fire the damn canon, after all.
Her expression relaxed, becoming less savage and more human. The moment of triumph passed, but her ebullience didn't. Garrus looked more like himself again, as well. "Good work, Vakarian," she praised honestly. Garrus had put a lot of work into getting the Thanix prepared and installed. Shepard knew it would prove the difference between survival and obliteration in the end.
The turian inclined his head in acknowledgement of her comment. His eyes slid past her to the still-active firing controls, and a three-fingered hand smoothly reached out and de-activated them. Locked them down again. There was a vague thrum under her feet, or was Shepard only imagining she could feel the Thanix retract back into the main hull?
"It can still use a little fine tuning, but I'll get it operating at optimum capacity for you by the time you need it, Commander," Garrus promised her, the glint of determination in his visage. She wanted to laugh, but there wasn't anything amusing about it, because she suddenly got it.
Shepard had been wrong before. Garrus wasn't fussing with the guns because he was an obsessive compulsive perfectionist who'd finally found something bigger to play with than his rifle. His fixation on the Normandy's weapons was a symptom of the same drive that saw her staying up late, night after night, planning countless mission scenarios. It was more than just dedication to the mission, it was... a drive, a compulsion, a ferocious need to kill them all. It hadn't been like this the last time. It hadn't been like this... before she died.
Shepard realized she'd been staring at him for a moment, and blinked sharply. "I have every confidence in you, Garrus. You've already delivered the goods, as far as I'm concerned," Shepard assured him. She glanced towards the doors leading back out into the corridor, but didn't turn away. She'd made a promise, and Shepard never went back on a promise. "So you want to get the band back together then?" the Commander asked thoughtfully.
Garrus gave her a puzzled expression. The kind that usually meant 'this is a human thing and I don't get it.' Shepard shook her head in dismissal and clarified. "You want us to try to recruit Tali?"
His face cleared to comprehension and he nodded once. "I think she'll say yes," the turian replied, crossing his arms as he leaned back against the wall. He watched her in silence as she considered that.
"She already said no."
"Since when does Commander Shepard give up?" Garrus retaliated instantly.
Shepard narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to be pissed, but he was baiting her too obviously for her to take him up on it. "There are plenty of other solid talents in the dossiers the Illusive Man sent us. We wouldn't be doing her any favours by dragging her into this fight."
Garrus gave her a look, the kind that told her he knew she was full of crap. Shepard had the grace to glance away in acknowledgement of that silent rebuke. He was right, she was full of crap. Tali could take care of herself, and Shepard wasn't exactly known for wrapping people in cotton wool.
"Assassins and mercenaries and thieves, Shepard? That's who you want us to rely on? Really?" His voice was faintly mocking, lightly disparaging, and she grimaced back at him.
"I can't force anyone into joining up with us, Garrus. If I could..." Shepard shrugged uncomfortably. The memory of Horizon and Kaidan's appearance, was too raw. Garrus was watching her with an expression that was far too knowing.
"You taught us the mission comes first, Shepard. Tali had a job to do when you saw her on Freedom's Progress, she had... a team." Garrus hesitated over the last word awkwardly and the memory of Omega hung briefly between them. He paused and looked her straight in the eye, his expression unalterably determined. "Try again."
For a long time, she didn't look away. Shepard struggled to understand why this mattered so much to him. He wasn't suggesting they run out chasing down Liara, or Wrex. Not yet, anyway, she added silently, and wondered if that was where this was going. Garrus had always had an overdeveloped sense of group dynamics.
"You're sure about this?" Shepard asked finally.
The briefly puzzled look on his face said he still didn't get how much she valued his opinion. It would take time. Shepard honestly felt entirely neutral about the entire Tali matter. She valued Tali, respected her, cared for her. But she didn't especially want to go chase the girl down and ask her – again – to join up. She saw no reason why the answer would have changed, and it seemed like wasted time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere. The quarian had other commitments; Shepard got that.
But it was strangely important to Garrus...
"I'm sure, Commander," Garrus answered levelly.
Hell, maybe this time around, Tali would agree to join them. In the wake of the successful Thanix test, she could spare a little optimism.
Shepard nodded once, sharply. "Okay then. We'll go ask. Again." Her chin lifted and she stared down his rather precious expression of surprise. "But only – only – because I owe you for the gun," Shepard added sternly, pointing a finger at him in emphasis.
The Commander turned on her heel towards the doors, and had taken the two steps to reach them before he spoke again.
"Shepard."
She turned back. Garrus was watching her in confusion, but he had on his serious face.
"You don't owe me anything," the turian informed her stubbornly. The silence stretched briefly, as Shepard studied him in momentary bemusement. Garrus' gaze slid away awkwardly, hesitated, then shot back to her quickly. "And I will never suggest you ask Alenko again."
The Commander tensed at the name, her chin lifting sharply, eyes narrowing at him. Trying to understand what he was saying, because was this one of those odd turian honor things, or was her friend trying to tell her something that was being lost in translation? The steady pulse of his attention told her there was more to his comment, but...
Shepard nodded once, slowly. "I appreciate that, Garrus."
Her eyes still clouded with confusion, Shepard turned and left. She heard the doors close softly behind her as Garrus locked himself away in his sanctuary.
Why did she have the feeling that Kaidan just got kicked out of the band?