There she sat with drink in hand, reading a data pad from the rather large data pad pile scattered across the table. Garrus made his way over to the kitchen first, rummaging through dextro snacks until he found what he was looking for. He grabbed some of Shepard's favorite things too, assuming she probably forgot to eat again, before taking his pillage and sitting by her side.

That familiar crease between her eye brows was present as she read, and she didn't look up from her pad as he began separating lethal snacks from edible ones. A few minutes of quiet passed as he waited for her to finish.

"They attacked the Flotilla," she blurted out loudly.

"Hm?" he answered with a mouthful of chips.

"Cerberus attacked the Flotilla. No wonder Tali wanted nothing to do with me," she seethed, throwing the data pad away from her in disgust. She decidedly slammed her drink down at the same time, sloshing its contents onto the table.

"From what it sounded like, Tali wanted to come with you. She just couldn't. You aren't Cerberus Shepard."

"No, just its puppet," she bristled.

Garrus pushed the pizza he grabbed in place of the data pad.

"Here, eat their food with a vengeance. It'll make you feel better."

She gave him a dirty look, but took the plate anyway. Rather than rain her vengeance upon the meal she merely picked at it in an absent-minded way.

"Besides," he continued, "they're your puppet. You're using their resources to kick some ass and you'll be on your way. At least you're mustering a good crew again. The people aboard this ship aren't awful, Shep."

"No," she reluctantly agreed.

"Maybe a bit mental, but so are all of your collective members."

"Like you?" she asked, eyebrow raised.

"Definitely mental."

She let out a short laugh.

"And besides the besides, they answer to you. Not Cerberus."

"As far as we know."

"Trust me on that one. I can hear them all talking," he pointed to his head, but Shepard was already aware of his superior ears more than most.

"I trust you."

"Then I suppose if this all goes to hell and everyone here utterly betrays you, we can commandeer the ship. With Joker, of course."

"My thoughts exactly." She didn't look as if she was remotely joking.

"Good thing you and Mordin have already stripped the place of bugs and rewired technical Cerberus overrides," he chuckled.

"Garrus, you know that was the first thing I started doing when I got this ship. Craziness aside. Or, well it probably made me look even more insane," she laughed, remembering her disheveled figure walking about the ship and tearing out huge parts at a time. Joker almost had a heart attack. Miranda wouldn't let it go for weeks.

"I would expect nothing less of you," he grinned. "Bet you scared the shit out of the new people though. Now that I would have liked to see."

"Oh yeah, it was priceless. Only, I guess if someone dies it sort of excuses you from that shit for a while. They were all apologies and scared shitless smiles. And too much pity," she wrinkled her nose in contempt at the word. She was still picking pieces off the offending pizza, but with an angrier motion now.

Garrus was desperately trying to think of some smart ass line to get her mind off that small, yet powerful emotion that seemed to bother Shepard immensely. Before he could fire off the shot, she spoke again in a quiet murmur.

"Except for you, big guy. You never pitied me. Helped me sure, but never looked at me like I couldn't handle it anymore."

"Hell, you've always been crazy. I'm probably just used to it by now." There it was, ass back in full. Damn his shit timing.

She smacked him with the abused pizza.

"Lethal! Lethal!" he called out.

"Only if you swallow, idiot."

He snickered. "So," more snickering, "in other words…"

"Don't swallow," she snorted.

After grinning at each other stupidly and muttering "don't swallow" under their barely contained laughter, Shepard finally did begin to eat her pizza. Swallow and all. Garrus' smile stayed put.

After a while Shepard pushed her cleared plate and empty bags of chips to the side.

"Where did everyone go?" she wondered aloud as she got up to find a new drink.

"Shep, it's like bed time. For normal people anyway."

"I must have lost track of time," she sighed.

"What were all these for anyway," he indicated the still sitting pile of data pads. There had to be at least twenty.

"I was…doing research. I had Miranda help me, um, bring up a bunch of news stories and such. Things that happened during the two years I was busy being dead and all that."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Sorry. Saying it out loud is supposed to be a therapy thing."

"Like you actually follow Ms. Chambers' advice?"

"That one I do. Other than that, not really. She just talks about stroking alien skin. And mine."

"She tries to talk about you, but you veer the conversation on purpose to get her out of your head."

Shepard gasped in an overly dramatic way.

"You listened," she accused.

"Only once," he admitted. "You were sitting in the mess and I was in the battery. It was entertaining. I'm also not surprised your sharing abilities are still lacking."

"Oh Ms. Chambers, help me! I feel as if I'm stuck inside my own mind, pounding on the walls, screaming for help but no one can hear!"

"She doesn't know you all too well, that's for sure," he laughed darkly. "Learn a lot from the news though?"

"I learned they used me to recruit soldiers for the Alliance for almost a year after my death. They tried hard to cover up it all up because I brought in so many recruits," she nearly spat.

"Erm, yeah. That wasn't easy to see your face displayed around every corner of the Citadel. Another reason I couldn't stay anymore. So many lies you begin to wonder if there was ever a truth. I needed to remember you for you, not the version they made you out to be."

"Exactly why half the time I don't know what to believe, reading all of that shit. It's too biased, covered in so many lies."

"If you ever have questions you can always ask me. I know I spent most of my time in a pisshole of corruption, but I heard quite a bit from people who stopped on Omega."

"Thanks. It's not even catching up on the news that bothers me so much as…catching up with old friends. It's what I did to everyone in my old crew that gets to me."

"Shep, you did nothing. You didn't choose to get spaced."

"It hurt a lot of things though, Garrus. It set back progress with the Council, the Reaper threat. Most importantly it hurt the people I was close with. What Kaiden said on Horizon… it summed everything up for me, really. A nice big smack of 'you fucked up'"

"What Kaiden said was asinine. He's blaming you for things entirely out of your control!"

"It doesn't stop it from hurting. Maybe if I had been there, I could have prevented the hurt you went through on Omega," she looked at the ground as she uttered the last part.

Garrus was suddenly standing too, Shepard still in the kitchen holding an unopened drink. He was at her side in a flash.

"Do not," he gently set her drink on the counter behind them, "ever," he held her hands together in his own, "blame yourself for that. Ever, Shepard."

His voice was almost menacing, but Shepard knew better. Her words had upset him.

"Please look at me," he said, softer this time. Shepard couldn't, not yet. She couldn't agree to his terms, so it was best to just ignore the contract completely.

He sighed audibly. Stubborn woman.

"You're blaming yourself for not doing anything because you were dead. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?"

"Pretty stupid," she let out.

After several long moments she lifted her face to his. There was a determined look settled on it, but he could see past so easily. Another expression lurked beneath, the expression he hoped would never return for her, but so often did since she came back to the living.

"Shepard, what was that song called? The old human one you were listening to the day before we banked on Virmire."

She remained silent for a moment longer, caught off guard by his sudden conversation swing.

"Uh…oh, Ring of Fire? By Johnny Cash. Why…?" she was almost smiling again. Mental indeed.

"EDI? Can you play Ring of Fire? I bet you can do stuff like that. Quiet, so we don't wake anyone up."

"Sure I can. Music ensuing, Officer Vakarian."

"Garrus, what in the world-"

He lifted her to place each foot atop his own.

"Don't let go, you'll scare EDI away if you start dancing on your own," he grinned.

She scoffed.

"Do not worry Shepard, I cannot dance either," EDI reasoned.

"You don't have a body!"

"Shhh, Shep. Just pretend you're dancing while I do all the work," he soothed.

She was about to retort some more not so friendly remarks about his own dancing, but he gave her a smile only a Turian could and she let out a true laugh this time.

She thought back to all those years ago, really only a year for her, to a time when she and Garrus shared this song together. It was before their fated mission, before they lost Ash and things were set in motion they couldn't undo. He had walked into her quarters and found her working on model ships of all things, and singing to the old human song with an upbeat tune. He couldn't help it, his infallible Commander looking so…human, it made him smile that same Turian grin. She never did stop her singing when he emerged in the doorway. Instead, she invited him in and they stopped thinking about the missions they had or were to have and simply spent time together they would both treasure in moments when peace was only an ideal.

The words echoed from memory into the present as Shepard swayed in his arms, utterly lost in the happiness of their friendship she had never found in anyone but him.