Roarkshop here: Welcome to the new and improved Sense and Flexibility. Big long authors notes are a thing of the past as I will post them on my blog from now on so those who do not with to read them, do not have to. Your comments, reviews, faves, and feedback are always read, appreciated, and loved. Thank you all for the tremendous support, you all are what keep me writing. Thank you so, SO much.

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This is a fan fiction, all themes and character belong to Bioware. No copy-write infringement intended.

(Updated 1/1/12)

He moved back to the chair and they chatted for a few hours after that, not really about anything specific. They laughed, like they always did together. She sat up against the wall to talk to him, and they talked like there was nothing out of the usual. It made her feel better, like what was in her past didn't matter to him. When an awkward silence finally came around, she folded her hands over each other, took a deep breath, and spoke.

"It was my shortcut," she said.

"Hmmm? What shortcut?"

"The alleyway, the night Dee died."

He sat up in the reclining chair he had been leaning back in.

"I had taken it probably a thousand times before that, coming back from the shelter," she sighed. "The one time I bring Deelia with me, I get her killed."

"Shepard," he saw how sad it made her, he had no idea she had been blaming herself for it, rather than the men, all this time. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"I tried to fight them off, I really did. But then they started hurting her to make me sit still so they could... well." She cleared her throat. "I did what they wanted but she ended up dead anyway. Shows what I knew."

Garrus stayed quiet. If she wanted to talk he was going to let her, but he didn't really know what to say in situations like this. Besides vowing to murder any and everyone involved with it, which he had planned on doing anyway, he didn't really think he had anything to say that would make her feel better.

"The days back at the orphanage were just different after that. Anytime someone would touch me, even by accident, I would freak out. I couldn't sleep and when I did I just had nightmares, disturbing the other kids. Potential parents would see me freak out and ask what was wrong with me, then after hearing would be sad, but decide they didn't want to adopt a little girl with that much baggage. After a few weeks of that, I left... Kept to the quiet libraries, read books about all the things I thought life should have been made up of; dragons, princesses, love, friendship, victory."

"But you always touch me now, and I see you touch everyone else," he said. "How did you get over that?"

"Yeah. I started that when I joined the military. Went out of my way to touch people while I talked to them, to try and get over the freak outs. It got me into trouble from time to time, actually. I had been in the military for two years before people started sneaking up on me without getting punched in the throat. It just sort of became habit after that. Now I don't even think about it."

"You seem rather stable, considering."

"I'm really okay with it now, I mean you and I have become so close that I probably would have told you anyway, had you asked. But... I mean that was definitely not the way I wanted it to come to the surface."

"Yeah I can imagine. I could strangle that reporter who released the video."

"You can't blame them," she said. "She didn't run the story back when it happened, it was too gruesome. But now I'm famous, so that vid is probably worth a lot of money. Westerlund news just payed the highest price. They were probably just trying to feed children, or themselves. You can't blame them."

"Well tell me who to blame so I can kill them when next I see them."

"Well," she laughed. "The men who are responsible are probably dead by now just from starvation or getting killed in the streets. But even they were probably mentally unstable, just surviving like we were, albeit at the expense of others... I don't know. It's over you know? I buried Deelia and the trauma it all produced a long time ago. I still have some... ehhh... let's call them 'intimacy issues', according to Chakwas, but dwelling on it does nothing but make me and those around me feel bad. So what's the point? Move on, right?"

"I suppose."

"Besides. Without that I would probably have been adopted sooner or later, by two people who would have loved and nurtured me, then I would have never been angry enough to join the military, and then I never would have met you, and we never would have saved the galaxy."

"How dare you," he said, faking offense. "I could have saved the galaxy without you."

"Oh? From your desk at C-Sec?"

"I... have my ways..."

They laughed again. He was stunned when she talked about her attackers as if they were just pour souls who didn't know any better. She had dealt with the pain of it, and made herself stronger with it. She never ceased to amaze him.

They talked for a few more hours before they both fell asleep. Shepard in her bed, Garrus in the reclining chair he had been sitting in. When he woke the next morning he was sweating and she was gone. Not realizing how hot he already ran, she had put a blanket over him. Obviously a human blanket since his feet stuck out of the bottom. He laughed to himself and pulled the blanket off. He sat up and looked around the room for her but she wasn't there. He stretched his arms over his head as she came through the door, dressed in her black leather casuals, her fringe was wet and flowing down her shoulders in careless curls. She was running some sort of toothed instrument through it.

"How are you feeling?" he asked as he stood, observing the weird ritual.

"Great. Not like a wimp like you could do any real damage." She noticed the confusion on his face. "What?"

"Your fringe is darker. And longer. And weird looking."

"My what?"

"Ah... your hair."

"It's wet," she flicked it over her shoulder and it made a moist "thwap" sound "I just showered."

"What are you doing to it?"

"I'm brushing it. If I don't brush it out it gets all tangled and I can't put it up. You know how I put it up? Like it's usually..." She laughed and let her hands fall to her sides. "It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't have hair."

He approached her and took a handful of it in his talon, rubbing it between his fingers, obviously intrigued. Her scent was overpowering. She had washed away all the other scents that masked her natural smells and just smelled purely... like her.

"That's... the weirdest thing I've ever seen," he said. "So it absorbs the water?"

"Yeah. It's malleable like... like..."

"Like bread?"

"Yeah like...what? No. Not like bread." She laughed. "I manipulate it into different shapes, and put it up in a knot when he have a mission. So I guess it's more like clay? We're the opposite of your people. Our skin is resistant to water, but the stuff on our heads absorbs it."

She was right, there were a few droplets on her shoulder that stood there defiantly before rolling down her arm.

Her doors whooshed open again.

"Commander, I just wanted to-" Kaidan froze in his tracks. The scene was very easily misunderstood. It was early in the morning, Garrus had obviously been there all night, his head was coming up from her shoulder, and his hand was going through her hair. The Lieutenant's face flushed with either anger or embarrassment. Probably both. "Oh, I'm sorry I-"

"Do you need something, Lieutenant?" She didn't try to defuse the situation or back away. She stood her ground in front of him and didn't even attempt to make it look less incriminating. Garrus smiled as he realized that she was enjoying his awkwardness.

"I, uh..." he cleared his throat. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Not if you need me for something."

"No, I was just going to see if you were alright, Commander."

"I'm feeling wonderful, Alenko, thank you. Garrus watched over me all night."

Garrus laughed a little, and let her hair slowly slip out of his hand before turning to pick up his boots off the floor. Boots in one hand, he turned back to her and with a talon combed a stray curl from her face to behind her ear.

"Thanks, Shepard," he said to her. "I needed that." When he turned to leave, she swatted him on the butt in a friendly manner as he walked away.

"Me too, big guy," she said. Obviously enjoying the embarrassment in the Lieutenant's face. Garrus, pointed a thumb back at the Commander, looking at Kaidan.

Garrus was pretty sure he could feel the heat coming from the tiny man's face as he fumed.

Their days went by almost normally after that. The crew was obviously a little upset by the vid but Shepard just acted like nothing was wrong, so eventually they all followed in step, like they always did. Garrus eventually explained to Alenko what had actually happened between them one day while fixing the Mako together, and he was entertained by the fact that the human had felt so threatened by him. He was honestly worried that the woman he had been trying so hard to impress and court was already taken by him, the turian.

"Honestly, Kaidan," Garrus said from under the Mako, reaching for a wrench. "This is the first time the idea has even crossed my mind, and that's only because you brought it up."

"But she didn't explain anything or even try make it look like nothing was going on. Why does she do that?" Kaidan asked while handing the wrench to him.

"She just likes to get under your skin. She does it to me all the time."

"She does?"

"Definitely. Not in the same way, but makes fun of my shots or calls me ugly, whatever. I just know her well enough to know she's trying to get the best of me. So instead of letting it get to me, I just fire back at her."

"She does seem to prefer your company over anyone else. That's why it was so easy to believe that you two were... you know."

"We're completely different species, Kaidan. She says I look like a science fiction monster from your planet. I looked it up on the extranet. That doesn't seem to elude to a secret attraction," he said laughing.

"Then what am I doing wrong? All the other women on the ship find me attractive enough. But with her it's like wind hitting the side of a mountain."

"That's a perfect analogy."

"Yeah...wait why?"

"Well Shepard is like a mountain. Your advances are like wind trying to make it move. Most women are like fire. Easily fueled by air, but also easily extinguished by it. But Shepard is strong, powerful, immovable. She's not like the others, which is, I'm assuming, what makes her so appealing. The same old tricks aren't going to work on her."

"Seems like you've thought about this a lot."

"Not really. Remember, you brought it up? But Shepard and I have a lot in common, despite our obvious differences. She likes spending time with me because our friendship is so unassuming."

"What do you mean, unassuming?"

Garrus slid out from under the Mako and propped himself up on his elbows. "Well, uh... like whenever we talk it's never 'Yes, Commander, Whatever you say, Commander, how can I help you, Commander?', and I'm not in love with her or in complete awe. It's more playful jabs and casual jokes, like we've been friends for years. She doesn't talk to me like a subordinate, so I don't talk to her like a superior. The only time I really do is when we're on the actual missions. Same goes for Tali, I think. She seems to get tired of the humans and how they seem to..." he weighed his words carefully. "Revere her."

"I think she's pretty obviously worthy of reverence."

"I absolutely agree," he said, pulling his legs out from under the machine. "But my reverence is always silent. Internal. I don't express it to her every chance I get. I don't have to. She just knows it. In fact, she probably doesn't even realize how I looked up to her in the beginning. But it's a friendship now. It doesn't need to be defined all the time."

"So I need to change, then?"

"I'm not going to say that, because I believe if you have to change to be with someone, you're not supposed to be with them. My dad always says that. But, the only thing that can move a mountain is another mountain..." He thought for a bit. "Or a mining laser I suppose, but I can't think of an analogy for that."

"What about water?" Kaidan offered.

"Are mountains made out of sand on Earth? Maybe that's why Shepard's always trying to drive over them."

Kaidan laughed.

"No, but after time erosion happens, right? Slowly wearing down the stone."

"That's a good point," Garrus said with a laugh. "And I wish you the best of luck with it. But I don't want to get you're hopes of. A woman like Shepard, she needs someone like her."

"Someone like you," he offered. Not angrily, just trying to understand.

That made him pause. The truth in it resounded in him. "Sure," he said after a beat. "But, like I said, if you have to change, it's not right. And I may not have to change my personality at all, but I would have to change one very tiny detail: My entire species." he laughed. "I mean if she was a turian I probably would have given it a go by now. Gods know I respect her enough. She would be... what is it you humans say... prime real estate... in the turian world. Strong, beautiful, vicious. Hell much more worthy men than I would be clamoring for her attentions if that were the case. But it's not like that with us. We are genetically tailored to find our own species attractive, that's how we survive as a species... So I don't like soft and squishy, and she doesn't like dangerous and incredibly sexy."

They both had a good laugh after that.

They did a few test missions in the interim so Shepard could make sure she was fit for battle before storming Saren's front porch with a gun and a smile. They stopped to do a favor for Wrex, recovering his ancestors battle armor, which was heavily guarded. They managed to kill everything, get the armor, and no one coughed up blood.

Shepard counted that as a win.

Chakwas still said she needed a few more days of rest, but they were at Virmire and they didn't have any more time to waste. She was healthy enough and Saren wasn't getting any more evil, so the time to act was at hand.

This was it. And a stomach ache wasn't going to keep her out of it.

Garrus drove the Mako through the waters of Virmire, Wrex manned the guns and cheered every time he blew something up, and Shepard pouted every time Garrus went around a mountain. He laughed, telling her it was just as fast as going over it.

"That's not the point. It's like if I gave you a sniper rifle that shot grenades and said 'okay now you can only shoot bullets out of this grenade launching sniper rifle'"

"It's nothing like that."

"It's exactly like that."

Finally they met up with the salarians who had sent the garbled distress call. Disappointed that they were the only help that was coming, they started working on a plan. Wrex was furious that they planned on destroying the cure to the genophage Saren had invented, but after being talked off the cliff, he realized that the cure only came at the cost of being mindless slaves to Saren and his sentient machine gods. Then they finally devised a plan, the Lieutenant was to join the salarians, since Shepard still didn't really trust Ashley to properly lead a force of aliens, and she sent the rest of her team to assemble the nuke, while she, Garrus, and Tali infiltrated the base.

The three of them worked like gears in a well oiled machine. Tali would hack a geth, it would keep the most powerful in the group busy while Shepard and Garrus picked off the weaker ones, and once the big one killed Tali's, the three of them unleashed hell on it.

They made their way into the heart of the compound, taking every opportunity to make the salarian's jobs easier. There was another beacon, almost identical to the one from Eden Prime, that gave Shepard an identical garbled vision and an identical splitting headache.

"Cheese and crackers," she cursed, swaying on her feet.

"I'm starting to think you like it, the way you never learn," Garrus protested.

"Shepard," Tali called from the control panel up the stairs. "Take a look at this."

The ominous glowing panel wasn't exactly friendly.

"I... don't think this is a V.I." Garrus pointed out after hearing the glowing, red hologram speak.

"Well now that we have a firm grasp on the obvious," Shepard teased, trying to not panic.

"There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it," it bellowed in monotone. "I am beyond your comprehension. I. Am Sovereign."

"It's not just some Reaper ship Saren found. It's an actual Reaper."

"Reaper. A label created by the protheans to give voice to their destruction."

The conversation went on like that until Shepard spewed a string of curses, most of which Garrus had never heard before. When she was done she looked between her comrades.

"We need to move. Fast."

"So let me get this straight," Tali said while they ran. "Sovereign is a Reaper, who indoctrinated Saren, has an army of geth, and belongs to a species of sentient star ships who lets organic life progress to its apex before harvesting all of it?"

"That's about the gist, yeah," Shepard replied, shooting a geth in the face while running.

"Oh, Keelah,"

"This is going to be so much fun, assuming we don't all die," Garrus said.

"See Tali?" Shepard said. "Garrus is staying positive."

They charged into the compound and helped unload the nuke from the Normandy.

"Commander, can you read me?" crackled Kaidan's voice over the comm.

"Nuke is almost in place, get to the rendezvous point, Alenko."

"Negative, Commander, the geth have us pinned down at the AA tower."

"Go," Williams said. "I still need more time to set up the nuke."

Then it all went to hell.

"I'm activating the bomb."

"Chief, what are you doing?"

"Making sure this bomb goes off, no matter what," Williams said. There was a moment of silence before she came back. "It's done Commander, get Alenko and get the hell out of here."

"Negative," Kaidan protested. "We can handle ourselves, go back and get the Chief."

Shepard was gripping the railing so hard it creaked under the force. Her head hung low and her eyes darted around the ground, like she would find the answer that saved both of them. She knew she was damning whoever she didn't aid, and that she was quickly running out of time. Tali put her hand on the back of Shepard's shoulder, and Garrus stood next to her, putting his hand over her fist on the railing. Neither of them envied her.

"Orders, Commander," Garrus said, trying to urge her on. She turned her head to look at him, her eyes were red and threatening tears, but Garrus saw that she had already made the choice.

"Kaidan," she commanded, her voice revealing no sign of the sadness she was feeling. "Radio Joker and tell him to meet us at the AA tower.

"Y-Yes Commander."

"You know it's the right choice, LT," Williams said.

"I'm sorry, Ash," Shepard said as they ran. "I had to make a choice."

"It's okay, Commander. I don't regret a thing."

A chill settled in her gut as she watched Virmire go up in flames.