Captain's Personal Log: Hourglass Nebula, Ploitari System, Zanethu Orbit

I stepped into the elevator, heading up to my quarters for another exciting day of scanning for mineral deposits and attempting to plan an assault I had little to no intel on; I'd already made the rounds of my crew, but avoided the main battery, I still couldn't face him. A three fingered hand jammed itself in the way of the closing doors. Before I could tell him to get out, Garrus was in the elevator with me, leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, glaring at me. "How long are you going to avoid me, Shepard?"

I stared straight ahead, "I haven't been avoiding you, Vakarian." I tried to ignore the slight wince detailed by the narrowing of his blue eyes my use of his surname brought. This elevator was too damned slow.

"Shepard, you've left me behind for the last three missions. You've taken Tali and Jacob and even Miranda with you instead of me. Tali, I get. But Jacob? Miranda?" If a turian could look nauseous, he did. "Hell, you've gone out alone this time! Exactly how am I supposed to watch your six, if you leave me on the ship?" his mouth twitched in annoyance, his tone irritated. "Spirits, even Thane's beginning to take it personally."

"That was a tactical decision, Garrus, not a personal one. And Thane needs to bring his concerns to me himself, not make you run his errands." My tone was probably more irritated than he deserved, but I didn't apologize. I turned my head back to the doors which chose that moment to open on to the deck for my quarters. I'd been taking Garrus and Thane out almost exclusively since the drell joined us. The two of them complimented my skills the most and they sure as hell weren't Cerberus. Garrus, along with Kaidan, had been like one of my hands since I'd recruited him for the hunt for Saren. Was that really three years ago? Since my confession of my wicked childhood, Garrus had made me uncomfortable, though. I had shared too much.

Kaidan hadn't really taken the news of my criminal past all that well either, I remembered. Though he'd covered, the shock had been apparent in his eyes. And Kaidan hadn't even dealt with the scum of the universe on a regular basis like Garrus had. How would the ex-cop and vigilante take it? It had been hard enough to deal with Kaidan's anger and rejection on Horizon, what if Garrus felt the same after finding more out about my gang affiliation and my murder of my father? The possibility of rejection by the only other man in the galaxy I felt I could rely on was terrifying. The idea that my rock, my right hand, would weigh me and find me wanting scared the hell out of me. So of course, like all interpersonal conflicts, I ran from it. If I couldn't shoot it or negotiate with it, I didn't know how to deal with it.

I walked out, but before I could order him to leave he was standing in front of me, looming over me. I wasn't a small woman, but a looming turian was an intimidating sight. I told myself this was Garrus, with whom I'd been in more firefights than I could count and who'd saved my ass almost as many times, so I stood straight and met his eyes. "Really Garrus? This is how you want to handle this?"

He ducked his head, but didn't move from in front of me. "Not really, but you're not giving me much of a choice. Am I or am I not one of your officers?"

I leaned back on one leg and crossed my arms, glaring up at him. "Fine. Yes, you're one of my officers."

"Then I'm perfectly within my rights as such to bring the concerns of your team to you, aren't I?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, "Fine, whatever. You want to be the XO? I doubt Miranda would argue too much at this point." She'd been subdued since I'd yelled at her after the Collectors' ship. Though I wasn't sure if I'd had that effect on her, or if it was the Illusive Man's betrayal that had shattered some of her dearly held illusions.

"Spirits, no! I don't want the paperwork! But as one of your officers, it's also my job to tell you to stop avoiding me. And that others have noticed."

I just looked at him steadily. He was uncomfortable. I wasn't sure why. Maybe that whole turians-don't-question-authority stereotype? "All right. How much did you know before I developed diarrhea of the mouth down on Pragia?"

He stopped examining the tops of his boots and met my eyes, "Not much. Your pre-Alliance record was sealed. Probably because you were a minor. But everyone in Citadel space who was not buried in cryo at the time knew about Akuze." He crossed his arms, uncomfortable. "Tali told me about, about Hicks…"

My mouth twisted in anger, "About my fraternization, you mean."

"About your relationship," he finished. He looked at me. I'd never noticed how expressive his eyes were. Their silver blue-green hue bored into me as if he would will me to just talk to him. "I know neither of us are good at the emotional crap." I snorted at his understatement. "But would it kill you to lean on someone?"

I jabbed my finger into his armored breastplate, "I've borne this for God knows how long, Vakarian? It's not going to kill me to keep it bottled up longer."

He grabbed my hand, stopping me from poking a hole in his armor, "Really? Is that why you spilled everything to Jack, a complete stranger?" He snarled. "You're running around helping every one of your teammates tie up their loose ends before we go into hell and not bothering to tie up your own?"

I wrenched my hand from his grasp. Glaring at him, I walked over to my cabin door and waved him in. I gestured, and with a flare of his Omni-Tool, Garrus shorted out the bugs in my cabin. I walked down the short flight of steps to my "living room."

He followed me, standing in front of my fishtank, glaring at me with his arms crossed. I flopped down in the chair opposite the couch. I narrowed my eyes up at him, "Pot calling the kettle black, Garrus. Why are you up here shouting at me about my avoidance issues when you're using me to do the same for yourself?" He looked away. "Why the fuck were you on Omega?"

"I told you, I got tired of the red tape, and the Spectres didn't seem any better."

I made a noise in the back of my throat. "Do I look like I'm falling for that astonishing piece of garbage?"

"I don't care whether you fall for it or not. It's the truth!" I just stared at him, letting him know I still wasn't buying what he was trying to sell to me and, apparently, to himself. He uncrossed his arms and I saw his hands flex in exasperation at my stare. I brought my eyes back up to his face, waiting. "This isn't about Omega. This is about you cutting me out."

"Fine. You want to know about my loose ends?" I stood up and shook my head. I'm not sure why I was letting him deflect and not calling him on it. Did I want someone to lean on after all? Was he... offering? "The only loose end I have to wrap up is to destroy Cerberus. I can't really do that at the moment, Garrus. I was serious about what I said to Jack."

"So your hands are tied because the mission demands it?" the disbelief in his voice was palpable. He also ignored my cheap shot. I let him and nodded. "What is it humans say? Cowshit!" He exclaimed, getting the tone right, if not the word.

Jarred out of my anger, I covered my grin with my hand, "Bullshit, Garrus. The word you want is 'bullshit.'"

He blinked, "What's the difference?" He flung himself down on the couch, is armor creaking. He didn't seem to be quite so angry any more, just disappointed. Which was worse.

"Gender and about three thousand years of sexism, but nevermind." I moved over to sit next to him. Closer than I probably should have, my thigh against his, but it was too late to move away without implying something mean. I clasped my hands in my lap and stared at my interlaced fingers. He did deserve an explanation. He wasn't my subordinate, not really. I couldn't call either him or Tali that any longer; they were friends. "I stopped bringing you along, because I thought your opinion of me might have changed with what I'd told you."

He put his hand on my shoulder and turned me, gently, to look at him. "Shepard, unless you suddenly started slaughtering civilians by the planet-full, my opinion of you won't change." He looked at me steadily as I reluctantly met his eyes, "I don't care what you did to survive as a child. And frankly, any father that does that to their child… well, you were a lot easier on him than I would have been."

"I killed more than just him, Garrus." I swallowed, I don't think he knew the part of my history I really dreaded telling him. "I've even killed a cop in cold blood."

He froze. His predatory eyes focused on me. I'd only seen him this focused when he carefully and patiently lined up a headshot, breathing bated to improve his accuracy. The world narrowed down to just his gaze and mine, waiting, the only sound the quiet motor of the aquarium as it oxygenated the empty tank. Then the one healthy mandible twitched and he blinked and I resisted the urge to exhale loudly. "Did he deserve it?" His quiet voice was the only other sound in the room.

After his eerie stillness, I had no desire to wake Garrus' inner vigilante. I kept eye contact and told him. "At the time, yes. Now? In this case hindsight isn't 20/20. I can't see it as clearly as I once did."

"Why is that?" So still again, waiting.

"I hunted him down for killing a friend of mine. The bastard shot a 9 year old for lifting a candy bar from a convenience store. Diego was starving." I glared at the floor. Even now, my little friend's hungry brown eyes haunted me on occasion. I'd been 14 and he'd latched onto me as a protector. At first, I was annoyed. What the hell did I want with a kid following me around, asking questions, begging me to teach him to shoot? And then, after a few months, I got used to him. I looked for him. Hell, I looked out for him. Saving a portion of my own larger rations I got as an enforcer for the little guy. But for a growing boy, that wasn't enough. And since he wasn't a member of the Reds, they didn't include him in the food distribution. "He was mine to protect and I failed him." Lurking in an alley, I watched the far-too-skinny dark haired boy sprint from the store, his eyes lit up in an adrenaline rush, running for where I hid in the shadows. He'd begged me to wait while he "got me a surprise." Stupid kid.

When the cop yelled, "Freeze!" Diego didn't really know enough English that the word meant anything to him and he spun in the direction of the voice, a large candy bar in his hand. The pistol was deafening in its report in the narrow street and Diego dropped, the impact of the round shattering his tiny ribcage. I froze long enough for the cop to approach and check Diego's scrawny neck for a pulse. I got a good look at his face and his name badge as he looked around for any accomplices my friend might have had. When his cold, dark eyes met mine, I spun and ran. I ran until I couldn't breathe, I ran until the tears on my cheeks dried into an itchy mess, I ran until my legs gave out and I collapsed sobbing behind a refuse pile, mourning that little boy. "It didn't take me long to track him down. But while I did, I lived and breathed finding that bastard." I met the former cop's unreadable eyes. "It nearly got me killed."

He crossed his arms again, his cheekplates flicking against his jawline. "How?"

Remembering how stupid I'd been, how reckless, made the blood rush to my cheeks even now. I'd always acted before thinking, though I did that a lot less these days, my impulses tempered by experience and tactics rather than rage and adrenaline, I'd found the cop, Nguyen, on patrol. Stupidly alone in Reds territory, not that I had any back up. It had been a set up. "I jumped him. It didn't occur to me that there was a reason he was alone. He beat the shit out of me. I was only 14, an underweight little girl, and he pounded me into the pavement. I managed to grab his pistol and shot him at point blank range. The ring of cops that surrounded us in our fight hadn't expected that. They... reacted appropriately, I guess. I don't remember too much after that." Eyelids fluttering open, agony shooting through the back of my skull. "While they treated me for the beating, they'd discovered my biotics. I was implanted and sent to 'reform school' and then Grissom Academy so fast my head spun."

"What was he doing in your territory?" Garrus' eyebrow ridges were drawn down over his eyes, trying to puzzle out the intricacies of the relationship between the Reds and the cops on Earth.

"I assume they were trying to make a bust." I shrugged. "Nguyen had been posing as a dirty cop for a while, I found out. The only marks on his record was shooting Diego and then beating me. The Houston Police used the shooting to their advantage and used him to bait a trap to catch dirty cops. But, there were been other ways to subdue a teenaged girl than pounding her head into the pavement. The whole thing was a clusterfuck.

"I will always regret jumping him, then. From what I know now, he had no choice in shooting Diego. Not in that part of town. Not with a gang war going on. The convenience store had been in disputed territory between my Reds and the Skulls. Nguyen had no choice to react as he did. Not that I knew this when I was fourteen. All I saw was child shot dead by an asshole cop who had no idea what it was like to starve."

He closed his eyes and looked away. "So this is why you keep trying to make excuses for Sidonis?"

"No. No excuses. Just... I was headed down the same path that those mercs you took out on Omega were on. Hell, I might even have ended up like Jack." Before the shooting, before Anderson, I thought. Before the Alliance. Before Akuze. "People were good for two things in the Tenth Street Reds, Garrus. Whoring and fighting. They wanted me to be the first because of my damned hair and eye color. I refused and became the second. And then revenge ate me up from the inside out. And I don't want that to happen to you."

His expression didn't change, but I couldn't read him. It drove me nuts that I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Was he angry about Nguyen? Did he think me a hypocrite? I jumped to my feet and walked over to an open spot on the floor and began to pace. "There but for the grace of God go I," I quoted at him. I'd probably butchered the saying, but I doubt he cared.

"Wait, are you saying I should have spared them?" Incredulity infused his voice. "Or that I should forgive Sidonis?"

"What?" I halted mid-stride to look at his astonished expression (that I could read), and shook my head, "No, of course not. Even if I'd continued down that path, I'd have been gunning for Aria's spot, not taken up with the mercs. Ruling Omega would have been more my style. ''Tis far better to rule in Hell,'" I grinned sardonically, quoting Milton. Garrus chuckled, probably more at my hubris than my quoting one of Earth's great poets. "I never lacked for ego back then, either. I wasn't one of the good guys." I resumed pacing and I could tell he was waiting politely for me to continue. Problem was, it was hard to sort out the jumble of my feelings on the matter. Especially since I now realized, in my paranoia, I'd done my friend, possibly my best friend, a great disservice.

I stopped and tried to hold myself still, "Look, I'm sorry. Truth is, I was uncomfortable unloading all that history on you." But it didn't bother me that Tali now knew. My own illogic was driving me nuts. "But as far as Sidonis... just... don't let it consume you. Your squad deserves justice, not revenge. That includes him."

He stood up and crossed to me, looking down at me. He looked at me so intently, if it had been Kaidan, or any other human man, I'd be wondering if I was about to be kissed. But, this was Garrus. Did turians even do that? "Shepard …," out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand move as if to touch me but then dropped to his side again, "I don't care what you were, what you did. You are my friend. Maybe my only friend in this whole damned galaxy. Do you think I let just anyone handle my sniper rifle?"

My eyes widened and I barked a short laugh, unable to contain it. He kept saying things like that, was he seriously flirting?

"Wait, why was that funny?" I guess not.

"Nothing," I grinned up at him. "I just have a depraved mind."

He thought about what he'd said for a moment. It was hard to say what changed in his face, but I knew embarrassment when I saw it. He rubbed the back of his neck, coughed and studied the tops of his boots. "I can see where that sentence went wrong," he laughed, finally, looking at me.

I went up on my toes and threw my arms around his shoulders in a hug. It was awkward, his armor forcing my head to turn into his neck. I felt his arms encircle me in return. "Is this a hug?" he asked, his tone strangely polite.

I nodded against his neck and I felt his arms tighten around me, his talons all but digging into my ribs. His scent, the odd mix of gun oil, leather, metal and caramel filled my nose. His voice rumbled against my cheek, "Can I ask you something, Shepard?"

I pushed against his arms to get him to let me go enough to look at him. I sank back on my heels to meet his eyes, "What's up?"

His mandibles were tight against his cheeks in discomfort, but his hands were still resting on my hips. I didn't step away from him though, I didn't want to insult him. It was an intimate gesture for humans, after all, but I didn't know what it meant for turians. "What does hair feel like?"

I grinned up at him and for an answer, took out the pins that held my hair wound up in its bun and threw them behind him onto the table. I shook out my mane of hair and it fell down around my shoulders to the middle of my back. "Now keep in mind, hair is almost as individual among humans as fingerprints. None of the humans on this ship, for instance, will have hair like mine."

He took off his glove, throwing it on the table behind him, and tentatively, he reached up one of his three fingered hands and ran it lightly down the length of my hair. At least, I think that's what he did since I couldn't feel it. "You realize it's dead tissue, right? You can't hurt me unless you do something to my scalp." I felt the slight tug as he carded his fingers through it. I looked up at him to see his eyes half closed, "Well?"

Still playing with my hair, he said, "Turians tend to think human hair is disgusting, greasy and smelly. I'm actually not sure why. I mean, I've seen some who fit that, usually criminals, but you . . . . I've never seen yours look anything other than clean and it certainly doesn't smell bad. I'm not sure what it smells like, but it's not bad."

"Apples. It's my shampoo." I said. His fingers running through my hair was quite distracting, I could feel my heart speed up and my breath catch in my throat. But if I yanked my hair away from him, I was pretty sure most of it would yank out at the roots because he seemed to have it well wrapped around his fingers. He disentangled himself, but before I could pull away, he pulled his fingers through again, this time lightly scraping my scalp to the point where goosebumps erupted all over my body. Weakly, I leaned my forehead on his armored chest, my fingers clutching at his arms. "OK, you're going to have a puddle of melted Shepard at your feet if you keep this up, Garrus." I guess he really was a good friend; I'd gone from being violently angry with him to letting him pet my hair just because he made me laugh in the space of about ten minutes and he'd done the same. His other hand was also still on my hip. Wait, this was Garrus. It didn't mean anything, right?

His hand froze against the back of my skull and I looked up at him again, "Why would you melt?" He narrowed his eyes at me, puzzled.

"I like having my hair touched," I told him. We stood there for a moment, as my words suddenly sunk in for both of us. We both realized at the same time how we were standing would look to an outsider: we were inches apart, my hands were on his upper arms, one of his hands was on my hip, the other cradling the back of my head, tangled in my hair and we were staring into each other's eyes. He'd gone unreadable again, or at least, it was an expression I'd never seen on him before.

Wait a minute. This was Garrus.

I stepped back, out of his reach. The strange expression on his face didn't change as he kept his eyes on me and bent to pick up his glove. He ducked his head as he walked past me to the door and I grabbed his arm. "I won't leave you behind again."

His ungloved hand covered mine and he looked at me, "Good. You should wear your hair down more. And... Shepard? I'll think about what you said about Sidonis."