What do you think of her?

The Normandy SR-2 had been floating around for about a week, retrofitting, gathering other resources, etc. No mission was partaken for about a week, allowing the crew time to install the new multicore shielding that will help their fight against the collectors. Besides some basic oversight duties of the project and with the reports being handled by XO Lawson to his delight, Shepard was finding time handling the maintenance of his personal weaponry over in the armory. For a time, he did it alone, allowing Jacob in his presence to silently work, exchanging occasional chatter that didn't go beyond talk of their service record. But Shepard liked him, though; possibly because of his mannerisms coming from his time in the Alliance Navy made him more familiar, though he was concerned why he jumped ship from Nav-SOC to a terrorist group, but he kept it to himself.

Jacob wasn't here this time, however. Though lately Shepard had been planning his schedule to meet with Garrus in the armory so that way they could chat, Human-to-Turian, friend-to-friend, while they work away. It was a solution they came up with to work around Garrus' duties in the main battery, always needing to calibrate the main gun daily. Another benefit to having a Yeoman handling his agenda.

They had just laughed off a good joke that Garrus had told, but then allowed an easy silence to fall over them during the last few minutes. Shepard had taken a seat on an armor crate, expertly reassembling a medium sized Vindicator, then checking its reticle for alignment, adopting a pseudo firing form as he aimed it off to the side away from any potential slip up; just simple safety and etiquette. Garrus was still in the middle of wiping down the internal cartridge of his favored Mantis sniper rifle, with his back to the commander.

As Shepard dropped the stock of the rifle to rest on his thigh, his finished work on the 3 round-burst AR had freed his thoughts for a second as he blankly stared at it. They drifted away toward a matter that had been poking in the back of his mind for the last month now.

It's fun watching you shout.

He allowed this memory to come back to him, a hint of a sly smile edging the corner of his mouth. Shepard blinked at the pleasant thought of what a certain energetic little Quarian had said to him after resolving some personal fiasco with her supposed 'family' as Tali described them. For some 'family', they were quite abusive and one sided. The whole procedure made Shepard question if the whole 'good for the fleet' that Tali talked about was really for the fleet or just the Admiralty board's idea of what was good, especially since they were willing to use one of their greatest contributors in the form of Tali'Zorah as a scapegoat to cover up their own security failures.

His lips, however, parted with the rather confused sentiment he had with the next thought.

I've got better, Shepard. I've got you.

It warmed his manly heart to hear those words from such a loyal friend, but he felt something more than warmth. In the moment, he remembered a soft tender gaze they had shared with one another, and a warm smile of appreciation came over them the next few moments before he softly beckoned her back to their ship with her new nickname "vas Normandy". It was then he realized that she was no longer just the energetic little alien girl with an inspiring love of engineering, tech and Quarian dance; she was his most inspired confidant, and more importantly…a young woman.

A realization that was both pleasing to Shepard, but also rather troubling, and had hoped his Turian brother in arms would be willing to hear him. There's so much that he could be getting wrong; maybe this new perspective of her was misplaced. After all, he had been on the other end of it before; maybe it's just the other way around for once. He inhaled through his nostrils and exhaled out in the same manner.

"Garrus…" Shepard called, his eyes staring blankly toward the area off in his friend's direction. He had noticed through his blurred vision that Garrus cocked his head to the side in acknowledgement.

"Shepard?" Garrus responded, the faint ticks of him still meddling with the Mantis.

"How do you…? I mean…" Shepard lost his words, not knowing what he should ask. Garrus didn't pester, but patiently waited as he divided his focus, his eyes on his work, and his ears on his friend. "What do you think of…Tali?" A brief pause in which the ticking of the tools in Garrus' claws filled.

"Hm," he let out. "I still annoy her, deliberately I admit. Ask her about her immune system and she is all too willing to let her shotgun answer that question. But we can eat the same food, being dextros and such, so…she can't be all bad." Garrus placed the tools down to pick up the stock of his rifle and obtain a closer look at the open thermal clip insertion point. "Honestly, Shepard, you should know how we are. After all, we follow you on nearly every mission; you can't tell me you don't notice the extra chaos going on behind you."

"You don't…like her?" Shepard said, bringing the rifle down flat on his lap. Garrus' fiddling with his Mantis' inner works had abruptly paused. The way Shepard had phrased 'like', made Garrus catch on quick.

"No," Garrus replied with a chuckle. "With how I was to her when we first met all those years ago, I figured later on we weren't going to be anything beyond friends even with the dumbest luck."

"But if you hadn't?"

"No-no, I still wouldn't. The way we are, she reminds me too much of my sister," he said. "And she has told me on record that I'm like the annoying older brother she never had."

"Huh…" Shepard let out in response and set his rifle upright against the crate so that way he could move on to his carnifex.

"Besides, I think the scars caught the Yeoman's attention," Garrus said, upbeat. "Aaannnd Dr. Michel still keeps in touch."

"Uh-oh," Shepard lightly laughed, a sense of relief rolling through him. I guess Garrus has a thing for human girls. I wonder what would've happened if he and Jane ever met?

"You don't have to dance around me, Shepard," Garrus went, while simultaneously popping the thermal chamber with a click, leaving it empty as he moved to adjust the alignment of his scope reticle. "…and I HAVE seen you dance." Shepard barely suppressed a chuckle, remembering the time Garrus referenced 2 years ago after defeating Saren where Shepard had approved shore leave from J-SOC. The whole team went to Flux. Tali, still the energetic little Quarian, had practically dragged both he and Garrus onto the dance floor. There he got his first taste of how a Quarian dances, and they got a taste of how Shepard danced.

"I know what you're really asking…" Garrus said. "What do I think of YOU and Tali?" Shepard paused his work on his Carnifex, silently taken aback.

"That easy to read, huh?" Shepard sighed.

"Seriously, Shepard," Garrus said. "I think I knew even before you did. You're not exactly discreet; but luckily for you, neither is she."

"You really think so?"

"Oh yeah, 'I got you, Shepard.'" Garrus said in a mock high-pitch impression of Tali, the best he could muster up with his low raspy voice. Shepard shook his head in amusement, noting that he is technically misremembering the quote.

"Forgot you were there with us," he said. He was almost joking, but he had actually… maybe to an embarrassing degree, been so caught up in the moment that he had forgotten Garrus tagged along as their rear guard. Honestly, he could barely care to perceive anyone else besides her in a moment of genuine emotion. Garrus faced him for the first time since this conversation.

"So why the doubt?" Garrus laid on. "You're usually so confident with everything else."

"I'm an N7," Shepard said, fiddling with his Carnifex's assembly. "We're experts in killing people, not in wooing women."

"Remember when I said all the women were always ignoring you and hitting on me? I was only joking, it was the other way around, and still is."

"My point exactly," Shepard said. "Ever remember me actually ending up with anyone?"

"You mean like Liara?"

"Garrus…" Shepard responded annoyedly, brows furrowing.

"Joking," Garrus said.

"Of course you are," Shepard smirked off the joke. Garrus had been aware of the rumor of Shepard and Liara getting together two years ago, but that was just a rumor built on people's expectations that got way overblown by some nosy human tabloids with an agenda to push. Garrus every now and then teased him for it.

"Seriously though," Garrus said, leaning himself against the work bench. "Coming along with you on every grocery trip, I can only speak from observation, but most women, human and asari I've seen turn an eye in your direction."

"Human and Asari, yes," Shepard said. "Not a Quarian, though." He wasn't stupid, or dense. He knew when women liked him; he listened and is more perceptive than people thought.

There was the Gunnery Sargeant Williams, but she was Alliance MARSOC and it was during a time when he religiously followed fraternization policy no matter how obvious she made her liking for her CO; of course, her death quite literally hammered the final nail in that coffin. On top of her being a Marine SFO, while he was a Naval SFO; Marines and Naval Infantry were mortal enemies…in a joking sense of the term.

Then there was Liara who technically didn't fall in Alliance fraternization policy, but he was so put off by how prematurely forward she was with him that he couldn't help but think for someone who was 106, she was quite immature and creepy; no disrespect to her of course, she seemed to really mature in the past two years. Though he still couldn't, for the life of him, understand why she decided to abandon archaeology for…information brokering, of all things.

Since he came back from the dead, there was Miranda Lawson who brushed her hand up his side when he showed her empathy over her personal problems. That was a few weeks ago, and they hadn't talked one-on-one since then, as he had been avoiding her. Maybe I should just be straight up with her, Shepard thought, I'm being unfair to my XO.

There was Jack, which after several visits to her anti-social lair and winning some verbal tennis match, she had expressed suspicion of him wanting to sleep with her, to which he assured her wasn't the case.

Then there was Yeoman Chambers…or, um…Kelly; he still struggled with calling her by her first name, maybe it was just because she insisted on it the moment they met. There was that incident in the elevator where she was being touchy feely. Tali, by sheer chance came to his rescue that day, and the Yeoman hadn't been so obvious since then, just remained her friendly outgoing self for as long as he pretended it never happened. If Garrus is serious about the Yeoman, then did she catch him in the elevator too?

Now that he thought about it, there were a lot of women that tried to get his attention. But a relationship was always the last thing on his mind, probably because he didn't have any interest in them, or he forced himself into a path of misery that left little room for personal pleasures as some form of guilt. He wasn't even sure what they saw in him. For crying out loud I talk like a wooden board trying to emote. But then there was her, and he suddenly starts second guessing whether he was truly wise to allow said misery to rule his life.

"Respectfully, I disagree," Garrus said. "Your favorite engineer probably looks at you more than anyone else. I would know, I'm always there to awkwardly witness it."

"That's because you two are always there with me, so…that's just natural." Shepard said, having fully disassembled his carnifex.

"Hmm," Garrus went. "Okay, how about this? Remember that one Asari we met on Feros, then ran into again on Ilium?"

"Shiala? Yeah, why?"

"Remember how she was…appreciating you, for lack of a better term?" Garrus' mind drifted off.

"Yeah, I remember, what about her?"

"You should've seen Tali," Garrus chuckled. "She was tensing up looking at you two. She was about ready to deploy her drone."

"Oh…" Shepard went in astonishment. Was Garrus making another joke? Just teasing him again? What an asshole if he was, but also to be expected. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah," Garrus said. "To tell you the truth, every time I see someone looking your way, Tali gives them this deathly glare. Spirits, she makes it so obvious that she's jealous. Stands a little too close for comfort as well. I'm surprised you never noticed." Shepard remained silent, letting Garrus' revelations sink in. "So what's the matter Shepard? She clearly likes you; there's no need to be uncertain about yourself."

"I don't know…" Shepard hummed.

"You can run headlong into a firefight without any fear but when it comes to women you're second guessing yourself? Come on, Shepard, where's your survival instincts?"

"Well, maybe it died when I got spaced…" Shepard said. A little dark humor never hurt. "It's just…she's not just any woman. This is Tali we're talking about."

"For you that's exactly the point," Garrus stepped toward him. "Sounds perfect even. Why would you want any other woman? Just leave those to me." This grabbed a tension easing laugh out of Shepard.

"Well…sure, but…"

"But?"

The humor of Garrus' last joke wore off as worry came back to Shepard. "She's…you know…technically a subordinate."

"So?"

"Sooo… it's kind've a problem."

"Why is it a problem?"

"Because it's…inappropriate!"

"Why is it inappropriate?"

"Garrus, the Socratic method isn't helping."

"Not even sure what that's supposed to be but I'm still curious why you think it's a problem. Is that some kind've hangup humans have?"

"I guess it is. I mean relations between a higher up and a subordinate that go beyond that is often frowned upon."

"And why is it frowned upon?"

"Because the higher up has power over the subordinate? Invites a whole host of evils…"

"Like?"

"Well, that power can be abused. Coercion, blackmail….the r word…"

Garrus fiddled around with his Mantis again. "And…you're saying that you would do those things to Tali?"

Shepard's eyes widened in shock. "NO! Good god, no!"

"So what's the issue then?"

Shepard's mouth opened, he wanted to press on and say something, but upon realizing this, he couldn't form words.

"Seems to me then that the problem with coercion, blackmail and the r word isn't the subordination, but the coercion, blackmail and the r word. Clearly being her captain doesn't automatically mean you would resort to these things…I mean it is you we're talking about here, Mr. Savior of the Citadel."

Shepard just furrowed his brow and stared at the ground in disbelief of himself. That's far too good of a point. Jesus, cultural brainwashing really takes away any nuance…

"I suppose you're right…"

"You know, this is all very weird…" Garrus said, prompting Shepard to turn his eye on him. "Usually it's you who is making philosophical arguments and changing my mind. Suddenly, we talk about girl problems, and the dynamic reverses. Spirits, Shepard, it's Turians who are supposed to be the sexually repressed ones!"

"Well…I don't exactly come with dating experience…"

"Maybe you should've dated Liara then, get yourself a little experience," Garrus said, while looking over at his friend in anticipation of his reaction. As expected, Shepard gave him an annoyed glare, to which Garrus let out a laugh. In response, Shepard couldn't help but scoff and laugh through exhales of his nose. Only then, a pain shot through his spine into his lower back which caused him to wince and reach his hand around behind.

"Ah, shit…"

"Cybernetics again?" Garrus went. His expression wasn't one of concern, but instead it was straightforward. He knew his friend's issues.

"What else?"

"Could've just been me being a pain in the ass."

Shepard let out another laugh, "lets just say it is."

The two worked for a bit, but Garrus eventually came back to it.

"So what's the hang up, really? You gonna get with her or not?"

"Well, I'm a Naval Infantry SFO; we're all a bunch of stiffs. On the other hand, there is also her…Immune system."

"Oh…right…immune system…yeah, you're on your own with that one," Garrus said. "And in case you have forgotten, she is ALSO technically Naval Infantry…or was it Marine? Can't keep up with all the classifications these days…so she's just as much of a stiff."

"When it comes to you, maybe."

"Exactly. See? You two were made for each other," Garrus said, then laid a hand on Shepard's shoulder. "If you can make it through being killed and resurrected, then you can certainly confess to the girl whose obviously all about you. So stop the self-doubt and make her the happiest girl in the galaxy." Shepard nodded his head, finally relenting.

"Alright, but…" Shepard started.

"Another but? Am I going to have to give you an inspirational speech? You're the one whose supposed to be cut out for that kind've thing. As for the whole Immune system fiasco, I'm sure Mordin and Chakwas could help you out on that." Garrus said, then went back to his Mantis. "If that's too much of a problem then…Im sure some over the armor action is intimate enough…" He said, while ironically running his talons down the rifle's shaft. Shepard shook his head in amusement, not certain if that was a purposeful joke or purely coincidental, but hilarious, nonetheless.

Oh Garrus, never change.

"I guess I just don't know what to say to her," Shepard said. "Training never came with a fraternization manual. Just regulations, not exactly a good life skill."

"You ever realize that you're not in the Alliance anymore?" Garrus pointed out. Shepard sighed once again as this brought his thoughts to Horizon.

"Yeah, Kaidan made that clear enough," Shepard said. Garrus waived a talon at him.

"For your sake and mine, let's not go there," he said. "Let's just say that working with a terrorist group comes with surprisingly little regulations on fraternization. And even if they did, then screw them, it's your operation after all."

"I never did like them either," Shepard said.

"But…you do like Tali, and she likes you," Garrus said. "Why else would she willingly come on a Cerberus ship?"

"Why would you?"

"Because it's you," Garrus answered, giving him an intent stare. "That's her reason as well, just times 10."

"Have a thing for me too Garrus?" Shepard, with all the tension breaking jokes Garrus gave, teased him back for once, drawing a laugh out of him.

"Yeah, but not the way Tali does," Garrus said. "So don't expect her and I to…what was it that Joker said about Jack and Lawson? Catfight?"

"Don't even get me started on those two…" Shepard said, remembering the time he had to break up Jack and his XO's little 'Catfight'. Joker was disappointed that he didn't take pictures. After a brief pause where they had focused on their work, Shepard resumed.

"You know my story," Shepard said, continuing his work on his pistol, acknowledging this unprofessional therapy session. "The only family I had was my sister. Never had any resemblance of a normal healthy life. I joined the Navy to get off Earth and find a better life for the both of us: a roof over our heads, health insurance, the whole nine yards. I had a purpose…then my sister followed suit…Elysium happened…and that better life would never come."

Garrus listened quietly, ceasing his work with the rifle and giving his full attention. Shepard's mention of Elysium, to Garrus, knowing him innately, was a much more painful memory than the people calling him the 'Lion of Elysium' realized.

"From then on, my only purpose was my duty, to humanity… the galaxy, whatever. I figured there would be no retiring and my end would be me dying in a foxhole somewhere. Friends, family, lovers, that was off the table. Alliance fraternization policies made sure of that and for a while I was ok with it, even if I knew it was misguided. Then I become a Spectre, I get a new crew, I meet you and I…meet her, and suddenly everything gets put into perspective. That maybe that life isn't off the table; maybe I don't have to find my end in a foxhole, maybe I can find love in someone if they truly mattered to me."

Garrus was speechless, compelled by his commander's—no…friend's dialogue. Rather than words of encouragement, like usual, Garrus found inspiration in Shepard just pouring his heart out to him, even if there was no corny sobbing.

"I found friends in people for the first time since Elysium, like some family I never had. You and Joker; and then there's her. She's just…" Shepard said pondered for a brief moment. "So sweet, selfless, caring, loyal. Always was, since the old Normandy. Then I ran into her on Freedom's Progress, and something about her was different. She's more mature and experienced, and yet still so sweet and selfless. And then after her trial, what she said to me, that's when I knew; she was no longer just my friend."

"It seems like you already answered your own doubts," Garrus said. "Maybe you should tell her that." A smile hit the corner of Shepard's mouth. Garrus was smooth; a little arrogantly so, but with little effort he helped him see his doubts were misplaced.

"Alright buddy, you got me."

"Damn right I do; but just don't forget who's becoming the awkward third wheel here." Shepard nodded with a smile, and eagerly worked away at his Carnifex, emboldened by his friend's encouragement.

"So…what else should I say to her?" Shepard asked.

"Hmm…" Garrus thought out loud. "What's that thing you called her? Her 'ship' name or whatever?"

"Miss vas Normandy?"

"That. Keep calling her that. I know for sure that'll make her heart melt."

"Teach me your ways, Recon Specialist."