"You sure I can go?"

I knew the answer, as did she. Even if she said no, I'd still be able to leave. For some reason it felt better when I followed her orders, despite myself heading off (which meant I wasn't obliged to). When I told her about me having the chance to be a leader of my own clan—Clan Urdnot—her eyes lit up and she was in a jolly mood for looking so sad most of the time.

"Clan leader," she repeated for what seemed like the one-hundredth time today. "That's big stuff, Wrex."

"Yeah, so?"

Shepard crossed her arms and bobbed her head off to the side slightly. "Don't tell me that you'd rather stay on this stuffy ship with a crew that gets on your nerves more than a screaming pyjack ever would, a bossy commander, and deathly situations that leave us wounded and in mental pain."

"They don't annoy me all the time," was my only reply. I purposely left out the 'bossy commander' bit, just so I could make her laugh. I succeeded. She wasn't very demanding at all. Made smart choices; only time I ever doubted her was on Virmire. Fortunately she convinced me that blowing up the planet was the right choice.

But we don't really talk about Virmire very often.

The mental pain she mentioned was part of this; most of the crew got nightmares. I was one of the lucky ones, allegedly, seeing as I never dreamed anything to begin with. Not very often, anyway. Shepard, Alenko, the pilot, and the doctor got it the worst. Me, the quarian and Vakarian were just fine.

Her face was healing nicely; her old scars remained, but the newer cuts were fading away; the dark bruises were now a light yellow. Good as new, she told me the other day. Except not really, because she still had bandages around her arms and her torso, if I remembered correctly.

The deck was cold. Well, I liked it, and the commander didn't seem to care too much. Vakarian came from that hot planet, so that explained how he was practically hugging himself. Turians.

My observations were cut short when I heard Shepard sigh.

"We'll make it, don't worry. We're just going to be fighting geth for a little while, anyway. Tali always has a passion for killing geth." Her smile was off.

"I guess I should go, then," I rumbled. "I'm not one for long goodbyes." Fortunately, I didn't have much crap, but Shepard still walked me to the elevator (A.K.A. longest thing since my quad's brother), and then to the airlock. The ETA was only a few minutes to Illium. Damn shiny and perky planet, but I had business there before I took a public shuttle to Tuchanka.

Poor lass looked like she wanted to say something. She did not.

"Shepard," I said as a farewell.

She pecked the side of my face with her lips; that damned human gesture never seemed logical, but I knew that this was her friendly goodbye. Something important to her, and, well, to me as well. "Wrex," she answered, still smiling. If I allowed it, she probably would have gone off on a speech-run about how she hoped I did well, etc. etc.

I did not. Of course, I had already bid goodbyes to the other squad mates.

That smile was the last thing I saw when I left the Normandy. These idiots on Tuchanka better be worth it, I thought.

Wrong.

I did not like to be wrong, but there I was, basking in my wrong-ness.

I loved my clan (or the idea of everyone uniting under my command—ha!), I loved Tuchanka, but I hated anyone else here. I hated being talked to death by Gatatog Uvenk, or any other idiot that waltzed into my territory and criticized the way that I worked.

Deal with it, I wanted to say.

Unfortunately for him, most of the time I had been lost in thought about saying goodbye to Shepard and the rest of the crew. My commander would pulverize this krogan easily, if she wanted to. Not that she would, the damned paragon. I always told her to have a little more fun when it came to handling other beings. She dismissed my claims with air quotes.

"Halt! You must wait till the clan leader summons you. He is … in talks."

That's great, too. Another pathetic krogan here to bother me, I bet.

"You know what tradition demands—Clan Urdnot must respond," Uvenk went on. "Your reforms will not go unopposed. You risk appearing weak at a critical time."

I shifted in my stone throne and caught sight of the new visitor. Three new visitors, I noticed. Three faces that I recognized. That turian had a bandage on the side of his face—serves him right—and had some different, new armor, but I knew that was Vakarian. The quarian … well, I couldn't really tell quarians apart, but she was dressed in purple, and that was all the confirmation that I needed.

Well, Shepard? Last I heard, she was dead. I tried not to think of it too much, but that's what the reports said. We didn't have much technology down here; all of our credits went to machinery, weaponry, and supplies to survive. Why need that crap rotting your brain? I didn't know the story, so maybe it had been fabricated.

Uvenk could wait.

"Shepard," I called loudly, standing up. Unbelievable. After more than two years of not seeing that damned woman, there she was.

She looked at one of my guards and smirked—hey, I remember that. "Good enough?"

I shoved Uvenk out of my way carelessly; she, being the polar opposite of me, simply brushed pass two guards with an "Excuse me." Figures.

"Shepard!" It was her. Hah. Tough broad, I thought once again. It was obvious that it was the commander when I practically ripped her arm out of her socket and she didn't even wince. My hand on her shoulder and our hands joined, I was greeted with the same smile I saw when I left. It was good to see she hadn't changed—minus the scar loss, I noted. "My friend!"

"Hey, Wrex."

"You look well for dead, Shepard. Should have known the void couldn't hold you."

She offered me a place back on the new Normandy. Her tone was kidding, because she knew I couldn't, but the words were sincere. Hard to resist, but I had myself a clan. Sadly enough, I was stuck for quite some time. Maybe one day I'd pass on my knowledge to some krogan that isn't incompetent. Ha. That'll be the day.

I gave her new pet krogan the Rite of Passage. Little runt did better than everyone expected, what with being genetically modified to be perfect. We all spit on Okeer's name, but the kid's got it in him.

He's not me, but he'll do good on the Normandy, I think.

When I watched the hidden videos of the Rite, I noticed that Shepard was doing most of it anyway. As she was the commander of the two mates, this was to be expected, but hell … I was the last person to take out the Thresher Maw. It's incredible that they could do it, too (even if that Grunt got all the credit for it), but then again—Shepard's all about the impossible. Not that Maws were all that hard to take down. Just time-consuming is all.

Upon their return, Shepard and I said goodbye once more. Maintaining professionalism, she simply gave a wave and headed back to the SR-2 Normandy. I had been told earlier that the tank-bread krogan received a hell of a lot of breeding requests after successfully completing the Rite.

A slow smirk appeared on my face. I wondered how Shepard would react if she had also gotten one. I forwarded all the requests (including Grunt's) to the ship's computer, and Shepard began talking to it as they wandered away. Their voices faded out, but …

Any second now. Three … two … one …

"What?" echoed Shepard's voice, high-pitched and utterly surprised.

Music to my ears.

Author's Note: There ya have it! I almost—almost—debated making this Shepard/Wrex. However, I resisted. Maybe some day; and that day most likely wont be too far away. Thanks!