Shepard stormed out of the comms room leaving confused and scared soldiers in her wake. The look on her face was anything but pleasant and her mood was even worse. Garrus tactfully didn't say anything and everyone...well, everyone just ran the opposite direction as she fumed her way towards the elevator.

"Let me guess." James took one look at Shepard's face as she stalked towards the punching bags set up in the corner of the shuttle bay and threw a good hard punch that seemed to be meant for a turian, salarian, asari, and a human named Udina,"The council." he dropped everything he was doing and sat down on some cargo boxes far enough away from her but close enough to talk.

"Isn't it always." she muttered darkly under her breath trying to bring her anger back under control and let her fists go wild,"The evidence is undeniable, the proof is concrete, the refugees are increasing and so are the casualties." she kicked the swinging bag with a solid thunk,"But they can't seem to think that cooperating with each other will work!" she turned to James silently asking if he wanted to spar with her.

He shook his head,"Sorry Lola. I'm not crazy enough to get my ass beaten to a pulp by you when you're pissed."

She frowned but turned back to her punching bag giving it a good thwack. The pain and strain felt good but she was just getting started, "They're all crying over spilled milk while a galaxy is about to be wiped out." she grunted as she swung her leg around and gave the bag a solid kick.

"Just forget them." James leaned back eyeing her, whatever went down in the comms room was beyond him but it was obvious that she had been holding in her anger for a while,"You did fine by yourself so far."

Cortez wasn't there, rather, he was in the mess hall with everyone else and so it was just James and Shepard alone in the shuttle bay.

Suddenly Shepard stopped punching the bag and turned to face the startled lieutenant as if snapping back to the present and realizing who she was talking and complaining to,"Yeah." she said absently rubbing her knuckles,"Of course. Sorry you had to see that lieutenant." she flashed him a weary grin but her eyes were still dark and distracted.

"No worries commander." James held up both hands as if in surrender,"You can talk to me if you like." in truth he was a little relieved that she was talking so much to him but then again that was just how Shepard was. Open and honest about everything, even to her subordinates, "So what'd they do this time?" he asked as he fiddled with his weights trying to set them up to his liking.

"Oh you know, the usual." Shepard whacked the old punching bag a couple more times before giving it another solid kick. She was starting to work up a good sweat, "We've got the old, 'you help me and I'll help you' kind of deal going on with everyone now." her face was sardonic as she steadied the punching bag and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

James didn't point out the fact that she was avoiding the details. There were just some things that Shepard had to keep to herself...but sometimes, it would be nice to be in the loop in certain situations...would it?

Human curiosity...James let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. He could feel a headache coming on already just with those two words, he wasn't used to stretching his brain for philosophical thinking. Sure, battle tactics, critical thinking, and on the spot decision making, but venture into the meta and philosophy and it's a whole new world for him.

"Something wrong there lieutenant?" Shepard looked at him curiously from where she stood. There was an amused spark in her eyes that rarely made an appearance these days.

"What?" James looked at his commander a bit startled, "Nah, I was just thinking about some stuff Lola, nothing big." he shrugged his shoulders and stood up to stretch.

"If you say so lieutenant." Shepard shot him a little grin and then started to head back to the elevator, "Well, I'm going to head back up. Someone has to be in control up there." she said with a fondness as she thought about her crew.

"Later Lola." James replied as he turned back to his table. Time to put together my SMG he thought to himself as he picked up a screwdriver and a scope.

As he worked, his mind began to wander back to the day when he had just been recruited onto the Normandy after earth had been attacked. Their first major ground mission was rescuing the Turian Primarch on Palaven and although it had been weeks or months since then, he could still recall it with a surreal clarity, almost like a vid from the extranet.

...Palaven

"It's nothing major, she said." James muttered to himself darkly as he ducked for cover behind a barrier that had been set up just outside of the Turian moon base, "We're just going to rescue a Turian Primarch, no big deal." his voice was saturated in sarcasm as he copped a little peek over the barrier. He made sure none of those creepy bastards called husks would find their way to him. He might not be known for using his head, but he was pretty sure that he was smart enough to figure out that this was a big deal. He should have known better than to trust Shepard's word...I mean, who was he kidding...the woman who took down Saren, blew up the collector home world to pieces and stopped the reaper invasion from happening three years ago saying ,'it's no big deal.'...he should have known better than to trust her word for it.

Clearly whatever Shepard thought was 'no big deal' was on a completely different level.

"Did you say something lieutenant?" Shepard's voice was barely heard over the din of fighting but it came clear as crystal through the comm system linked in the earpieces they wore. Anyone could hear the hint of the smile in her voice that she wore in such situations.

"Nothing Lola." he replied immediately as he peeked out from his position and open fired upon a crowd of husks groaning and rasping their way towards them. They reminded him of zombies...which didn't seem too far off the more he thought about it. The dust on the moon he was on, the landscape of grey rubble, the smell of smoke and burning corpses, it was like the apocalypse had come and hit the whole galaxy...not that it was far off from the impending truth anyway.

Liara let loose a singularity dragging two husks into the air and Shepard managed to take out a few marauders that had rolled their way towards them.

"Thought so." Shepard grinned at him when they cleared the last wave and reached over to her omni-tool to reach the general.

When the comm tower was fully operational and after they beat a giant ass brute which was a pain in the ass to kill by the way, they finally managed to get back to the general to talk about the next primarch when Garrus showed up, offering to take Lola to the politician.

It would have been a less awkward meeting for everyone if James had been the one to go back to the Normandy instead of Liara. He didn't know the details of Lola and Garrus' history but he wasn't dumb enough to not know that there had been something there before.

But that wasn't any of his business, he was a soldier, here to do work and help save the galaxy and despite how he always seemed to be fooling around, he was serious about this business and he put all of his dedication to his military career. There was no time for fraternization especially for the complications that a commanding officer/subordinate situation would offer...not that he ever thought about doing anything with Lola.

"Hell of a mission." Shepard had come back down to the shuttle bay after retrieving the new primarch and was lounging on one of the cargo boxes as James tried to clean the grime and gore from his guns. It was a nasty business sometimes.

"Right." James muttered,"Like you didn't know." he grabbed a cleaning rag and tried to get rid of some of the excess grease from his hands. Not like the mission bothered him or anything,"So I take it Garrus helped you take down Saren and blow the collector homeworld sky high." he removed something from his gun that looked suspiciously like a fingernail from a husk. No wonder it smelled everytime he shot something, a finger had made its way somehow into the heat sink reloader. His face wrinkled in disgust, were husks amorphous or something, how come everytime he finished a ground mission crawling with them he found their body parts stuck or mashed in random places like his guns or inbetween his hardsuit?

"Didn't think it would phase you liutenant." Shepard raised an eyebrow with a slight smile,"And yes." she answered his semi-question,"The one and only Garrus Vakarian." she nodded happily,"One of the best I've seen in a fight." she seemed to be pleased with herself as she thought about him.

James grabbed a screwdriver, maybe this'll help with getting it out, he thought to himself as he stuck it in and tried to dig out the bits of finger,"I heard you two were a thing back in the day." he shook out his gun and a little bone rattled out.

"What in God's name are you doing?" Shepard looked at him with her head tilted ignoring his absentminded comment.

"Husk finger." James replied as he dug around with the screwdriver hoping to peel off the flesh pressed to the walls of the gun. No wonder why it seemed harder to reload his gun back on the mission.

Shepard pulled a face but then laughed, she knew what a pain in the ass that could be,"Let them get too close did you?" she leaned back against a cargo box.

"So what's the deal with you and Vakarian?" James tried again, he had to admit that he was more curious than he should be, meaning that he shouldn't be at all. James frowned as he shook out the rest of the husk flesh and looked at the screwdriver. It was coated with nasty shit now. He felt like such an amateur doing this in front of Shepard.

Shepard blinked innocently at him,"We're good friends." she looked at James with a funny look and then her lips curled into a wicked grin,"Any other details you want to know?" she asked.

James cleared his throat,"I'm good Lola." he replied in slight embarrassment as he wiped his screwdriver clean. He shouldn't have asked.

...Present day.

He could still remember his embarrassment from asking if Lola had had a thing with Scars. He didn't know what had possessed him to ask that question and he didn't want to dig too deep into it either.

It's better to let it go, James thought to himself as he set his screwdriver and scope down and wiped his hands on a blackened grease rag, no use thinking about this when there was so much more going on.

James set up a bar for his pull up routine and jumped up so that he was grasping the bar and hanging from it. One, two, three...forty-five, forty-six...James paused for a second in his repetition and suddenly the words came back to him...human curiosity.

What a fucking joke. James frowned and began his repetitions all over again. Life was good right now...well...except for the reaper invasion and the impending doom of all life all over the galaxy...but you know, life was good. He was serving under Shepard, going places, doing things. Being out in the galaxy rather than having his feet planted on earth.

There was no other place that he'd rather be than on the Normandy. There was no other person he'd rather serve under than Shepard.

For the first time in a long while, he felt like he belonged somewhere.