Shepard faced down the huge, scarred krogan before her with narrowed eyes. His own blood-red gaze regarded her soberly, with a distinctly alien intelligence that might have made her squirm had she been anyone other than Commander-Goddamn-Shepard. He'd just finished staring down a C-Sec agent, daring the poor guy to try and arrest him, and the human had looked away almost immediately.

"I'm trying to bring down Saren," she said. No long prelude, straight to the point. He liked that. "Barla Von said to talk to you."

"Barla Von is a wise man. We may share a common goal, human." There was a measured cadence to his voice that hinted at the quick mind that lay beneath his brutish exterior. He went on to explain that there was a quarian on the Citadel with proof that Saren was a traitor, and she was being sold out by Fist. It was the first real lead they'd had so far, and Shepard was eager to be off so she, Kaidan, and Wrex hustled over to Chora's Den to take care of business.

Wrex, for his part, was impressed with the short, red-haired human. She stayed calm and collected in the middle of the firefight that broke out as soon as they arrived and didn't even blink when it came to taking down Fist, one of her own species. Added to all that the fact that every time she mentioned Saren, her eyes blazed with a righteous fury that matched his own, and he knew he had to go with her. She was throwing herself headlong into what was promising to be one hell of a fight, and he could practically hear the long-dead krogan ancestors who preceded him crying out for the battle to end all battles—the kind one would be proud to die in.

Back aboard the Normandy, she shucked off her armor and with it went some of the stoicism she wore around the Citadel. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on right away—she still radiated that almost tangible aura of command—but after a while, he found himself being systematically disarmed by her. She took the time to get to know every member of her team, Alliance or no, and she seemed to harbor no prejudices at all, preferring to judge people based on merit. It was confusing as all hell; he was used to having everyone look at him as a krogan first, then make assumptions from there.

"Not used to fighting with a woman," he mentioned one day as they sat and cleaned their armor. She was still digging sand out of the joints two days after their last mission, which involved the Mako and a quick jaunt off the side of a mountain (thank the powers that be for low-gravity planets, or else they'd all be dead by now).

"Oh yeah?"

"Krogan females tend to stay on the home world. They're too valuable to waste in battle."

"Damn, that must be boring," she said with a shudder. The idea of never being able to leave Earth, forced to stay behind to be a brood mare for her species . . . ugh. Although, if the humans had been inflicted with the genophage, she might think differently. "I love this job too much, flying through space, the whole galaxy spread out before me . . ." She stopped cleaning and smiled contentedly, which took about five years off her face. Wrex was struck for the first time by just how young she really was. It was easy to forget; she had old eyes, and he wondered (not for the first time) what happened in her past that had aged her beyond her years.

"Sounds familiar," he said with a gravelly chuckle. Shepard though that if mountains could laugh, that was what they'd sound like.

"So why did you become a mercenary, Wrex?"

"Basic necessity, mostly. I needed to get out of our system. I needed to eat, to survive."

"Why not stay back and help your people?" She seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say, and it was that more than anything that had him spilling everything: his plan for strengthening the krogan by avoiding war, his disagreement with his father, the subsequent betrayal and patricide. She'd abandoned all pretense of working and just listened.

"Jesus, Wrex."

"It had to be done. Jarrod was a menace, and it was because of him that I can't go back to Tuchanka. My people have become shadows of what we were, and I can't . . . stand to watch anymore." He couldn't look at her, didn't want to know if her face held pity or something else. He didn't want sympathy, and he rejected apologies. This was his burden to bear; why he'd decided to share it with a human, this human, was beyond him. He'd never had any patience for the 'talk it out' mentality of some people, and he wasn't about to admit to himself just how cathartic it was to talk to her.

"Any other family?"

"None that live, just some unfinished business."

"Sounds familiar," she said, echoing his earlier words with more sadness in her voice. Her eyes went dark with the weight of her past, and a part of him wanted to say something to take it back. It was irrational, he knew—they were going to need her, as the commander, just as she was—but there it was, just the same. "What kind of unfinished business?"

"My family armor. I made a promise to my father's father that I would get it back, but it's being held by a turian named Tonn Actus. He's a turian scumbag who made millions off the krogan, selling stolen artifacts from the war. I know he has my family's armor, I just don't know where he's hiding it. It could be in any number of his bases, all of them heavily fortified and guarded." He had to force his hands to unclench before he could continue cleaning his armor, making sure to affect an air of nonchalance that he wasn't even sure was fooling anyone right now.

"Just tell me where to start looking." She stood up and brushed off her legs.

"Just like that?" he had to ask.

"Well, yeah," she replied, like there was never a question about it. "Every little bit helps, right?" But she glanced away at the last minute and her face started to turn a funny shade of pink, which was somewhat perplexing.

"I'll upload the data to your nav system," he said and she nodded before heading to the armor locker to store her gear. "And Shepard?" She turned to look at him, and his gaze was steely. "I want to be there when you find him."

She smiled, and he found himself smiling back. Damned human, she was making him soft, and he wasn't sure he was entirely opposed to the idea. "Sure thing, Wrex." She left then, the elevator engines humming as it took her to some other part of the ship, and he stared after her for a long time, until he felt someone watching him. Garrus was leaning against the Mako with what would have been a shit-eating grin if his mouth was capable of something like that. Wrex scowled at him.

"What are you looking at, whelp?" he growled, rumbling like a landslide.

"Nothing, nothing." He shook his head and went back to his repairs.

Noveria was a cold frozen armpit run by a salarian who was the embodiment of businesslike chill. Wrex calmed himself by picturing himself putting a bullet in the pompous little frog's head, but he apparently got too into the fantasy when he got a strange look from Liara and realized he hadn't been paying attention.

"I said, let's get out of here. He's not going to be any help," said the asari, and they filed out of the office, quietly formulating a plan to get out to Saren's research facility until the woman behind the desk just outside the doors told them to go talk to a turian named Lorik Qui'in. After she was sure they were out of earshot, Shepard sighed.

"Why can't it ever be easy?" she asked no one in particular. "I mean, just once I'd like it if there weren't a hundred hurdles to jump through every time we try to do something. Saren'll end up annihilating the entire galaxy while we go collect some Prothean artifact, or deal with Lorik Qui'in's personal crap."

Wrex laughed and nudged her with his shoulder. He must have underestimated his strength, though, and she stumbled into the wall. Before he could apologize, she recovered and slapped his hump with a mock-indignant expression. "Not getting disillusioned already, are you Shepard? You're too young for that yet."

"I'm rounding the bend to thirty, I'll have you know. I have crow's feet already." She pointed to the fine creases in the corners of her eyes. "See?"

"Yeah, I see them. Thirty years old, you're practically ancient," he said dryly.

"I know, right?" She tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't quite pull it off. "Come on, let's get this over with."

As soon as they burst into Qui'in's office, he and Shepard fell into the rhythm they'd established—they'd both storm into the thick of the fighting, right through the enemy lines, clean house, then move on to the next target. It was nice to have someone at his back that not only understood and mimicked his fighting style, but trusted him to watch her back and vice versa. He'd been too long among mercs and bounty hunters, mostly worthless scum who'd sell their mothers if the credits were right; having a proper companion at his side in battle was something he'd been missing but hadn't known it. He roared, lost in the heat of battle, and Shepard whooped loudly as she vaulted out of cover and blasted a hole the size of a football through a man's chest, showering the wall behind him with blood. He knew not many other species would understand, but the mixture or sweat, adrenaline, the burnt ozone smell of spent heatsinks, and the bitter copper scent of blood was making his pulse race and his armor feel too tight. This was what he lived for, and he suspected Shepard felt the same way.

After the smoke cleared and the last man lay dead on the cold floor she turned to Wrex, breathless and flushed, and his breath caught for just a moment. Her eyes held a smoldering heat that burned low but with an intensity that threatened to eat him alive . . . and part of him wanted it. He would have said something to her, something inconsequential maybe to alleviate the tension that built between them like a rubber band pulled too tight, but Kaidan chose that moment to step between them and tell Shepard they should head back to Qui'in. With one last glance his way, she headed back to the lobby, the LT hot on her heels, Wrex and Liara pulling up the rear. At least the view was nice from back here, he thought-a thought that would never see the light of day if he had anything to say about it. Didn't stop him from staring, though.

The Mako caromed across the frozen tundra, Shepard at the wheel and driving it like the snow had insulted her honor. She bore down on attacking geth and turrets alike, hell-bent on killing the damn things if it was the last thing she did.

Which, judging by her skills behind the wheel, was looking more and more likely by the second.

Liara and Kaidan sat in the back, slamming back and forth in their harnesses. Wrex was pretty sure Kaidan was praying and Liara had finally stopped yelling and was instead making little whimpering sounds with her eyes squeezed shut. Wimps, the both of them. Shepard downshifted and swung the tank around just as they crested the ridge in front of them and she whooped, a savage grin on her lips and a gleam in her eye.

Wrex had never felt so alive.

"Punch it!" she hollered, and Wrex aimed down the long barrel of the front-mounted cannon, then fired. A geth trooper's head exploded in a mass of synthetic innards, and Shepard clapped him hard on the back of his hump. "Now that's what I'm talking about!"

"Does this mean we can head to the facility now?" Liara asked, her eyes still closed.

"Yep," Shepard replied, a satisfied smile crossing her features.

"Thank the Goddess."

"Can I drive?" Kaidan asked hopefully.

"Hell no, LT, you drive like my grandmother." Kaidan groaned and Wrex just laughed. "You haven't bitched once about my driving," she remarked, and glanced sideways at him as she launched the Mako over a snow drift and they hung in the air for a good five seconds before landing with a bone-jarring thud.

"I can't complain." Well, he could, but she was having too much fun and her good mood was infectious. He'd been out with her before and the rest of the crew hated it, but her insatiable lust for battle was so . . . krogan that it was hard not to admire.

"You can't be serious," said Kaidan. His eyebrows had shot up so far that they looked ready to crawl up into his hairline.

"What can I say? I live on the edge." Shepard laughed out loud at that and grabbed his hand. Wrex was totally unprepared for the way such a casual touch made him aware of her body, ensconced as it was in light armor and just on the other side of the gear shift. If she moved three feet to the right, she'd be in his lap.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you." She winked at him and took her hand back, but he could feel the residual warmth for a long time afterward.

Fighting through the rachni had been one hell of a nasty surprise, and seeing the queen under Benezia's tender mercies hadn't been much better. The matriarch had put up one hell of a fight, but in the end fought through the indoctrination just long enough to die with dignity. A good death, Wrex thought.

Shepard leaned against the rachni queen's enclosure, an inscrutable expression on her face, and they listened as she spoke through an asari proxy. The queen spoke in a cadence, almost poetic, and Wrex grew impatient before too long. Shepard, though . . . she listened to her, giving the alien being the same consideration she afforded everyone. It was hard to look at the rachni and see anything other than a giant insectile creature, a beast, but Shepard was trying her best.

After the rachni explained her plight and that of her children, Shepard paused for a long moment as she considered what to do.

"There are acid tanks hooked up that thing. Set them off, Shepard. Millions of my people died to put these things down, don't let them come back."

"Wrex, if we kill her we kill an entire species. Do you really think that's right?" She turned slowly to look at him, like she was waiting for him to understand but he didn't know what she was asking of him.

"Your people didn't fight these bastards, so maybe you don't get it." How could she be thinking about releasing the rachni again? After all they went through to drive them back the first time?

"What do you think the difference is between genocide and the genophage?" she asked. "Would you inflict either on another race, even the rachni?"

And that was when the other shoe dropped and he understood what she was trying to make him see. But, the rachni . . . maybe for any other species, but there was too much bad blood between them for him to make this decision. "Point taken, Shepard," he said, a little more harshly than he had intended. "Do what you want, I won't stop you."

She ended up letting the queen go free with the promise that she would find a secluded place to raise her children and teach them to sing the songs of their people, or something like that. Wrex was still uneasy about all this, but he had to trust her; if he didn't, this mission was over before it began. They left Noveria soon afterward, one step closer to stopping Saren.

Later on, after they'd returned to the Normandy and she'd changed back into her ship suit, she came back down to the cargo bay with two bottles—beer for her, ryncol for him. "Join me?" she asked, cocking her head toward the Mako. He nodded, and they climbed up onto the top of the tank and cracked open their respective bottles. They drank in companionable silence for a while, content to just sit and enjoy the quiet.

"So, the rachni." They both knew it was coming, and she just sighed and leaned back against the turret, taking a deep drink of her beer before continuing.

"Yeah, I know," she said. "I just couldn't be the one to make the decision to wipe out an entire race. Felt too much like playing god."

"Or doing the universe a favor."

"You heard her—it sounds like the rachni who started the war were indoctrinated by the Reapers. I still have a lot of reservations about this, believe me, but it just seemed . . . wrong to deny them their chance at redemption."

"I don't know, Shepard. I still say they're a pestilence that should be wiped out."

She turned to him and met his eyes, green to his red, and she fixed him with a searching gaze. "You realize that the salarians once thought of the krogan the same way, right? I don't think they would have inflicted the genophage on your people if they didn't think of you, at least on some level, as lesser beings who need to be controlled because you're incapable of controlling yourselves."

"Watch yourself, Shepard," he rumbled in warning. She put up her hands in a placating gesture.

"Hey, I never said I believed it, just that you and the rachni might have more in common than you think." He brought the bottle up to his lips, the ryncol flooding warmth down to his stomach where it bloomed with a welcome burn. The more he thought about what she'd said, the more sense she made. He'd always thought of himself as more diplomatic than some, but she was really giving him a run for his money in that regard. It wasn't an act at all, like he'd initially thought—she really did have a knack for seeing people as they were. Probably the reason she was so comfortable with him, he thought, so unlike other races who thought of the krogan as stupid beasts useful only for their strength. Once, long ago, his people had created, made things of great aesthetic worth. There had been bards and artists, sculptors and writers when Tuchanka was younger and they hadn't taken to the stars yet. Sometimes he wondered if life wouldn't be better if his people had just stayed home. It was with that sobering thought that he fell silent and she didn't break it for a long time, sensing that he needed a minute to process what she'd said, and the implications.

"What are you gonna do when this is all over, Wrex?" she asked, staring at the bay doors, her beer clutched loosely in her fingers.

"Hmmm. Hadn't really thought about it much. I suppose I'll go back to bounty hunting. What about you?"

"I'll probably stay with the Alliance . . . provided I don't kill Udina first and get court-martialed." Wrex harrumphed, remembering the infuriating human he'd had the misfortune of meeting back on the Citadel. "After that, I don't know. I've always wanted to go on a road trip, though. A proper one with a wheeled car, driving coast to coast across America. That's where I grew up, back on Earth." She'd never spoken about her past before, with anyone. Even her file was vague on that subject, he understood—the scuttlebutt surrounding the young commander ran the gamut from innocent curiosity to outright scandal, and he suspected the truth lay somewhere in between.

"You have family there?" he asked, and her face fell a bit. She took a drink to cover it up, but he'd seen it.

"Not anymore. My parents died when I was little, and the people who raised me . . . well, let's just say we're not on the best of terms right now." She chuckled, a totally joyless sound. "This crew is the closest thing I've had to a family in a long time."

Maybe it was the alcohol, or the way she was like gravity, pulling the people she needed into her orbit, himself included. He didn't know his reasons for reaching out then to pull her against his side and wrap his arm around her, but then he'd never been one to explore his own feelings much. She let herself be drawn to him and nestled against the hard contours of his armor, relishing the heat of his body that seeped into her bones and chased away the worries that had weighed her down since Eden Prime. It was nice, being like this. The sheer size of him and the tremendous strength in his heavily muscled arms made her feel safe, a feeling more precious for its transient nature in her increasingly dangerous life. With every passing day, it was looking more and more like this mission could be her last as they faced down impossible odds and ever more powerful enemies, but Wrex could somehow make her believe that it would all be okay just by being there, a solid presence at her back and by her side. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she idly stroked his forearm.

"I don't know if the LT would appreciate you thinking of him as family." It was meant as a casual comment, but once it was out there, hanging in the air between them, he realized it wasn't.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on, Shepard. We've all seen the way he looks at you, like a lost varren."

She sat up slightly to see if he was joking. "What, you think Kaidan and I are together?" She scoffed. "He's an all right guy, but he's really not my type."

"Oh? What is your type?" He leered at her and she punched his side playfully.

"You old letch." She settled back against him and laid her hand on his thigh. He was pretty sure she meant it innocently, but he couldn't help entertaining the idea that she knew exactly how she affected him. Why, after all this time, was it a human who got his blood up and not one of his own kind, he wondered. The answer was not forthcoming, but that didn't change the way his pulse quickened.

"You didn't answer my question."

"And I'm not going to."

"You're no fun."

"Oh, I'm plenty of fun for the right person," she said with a wink, and his eyebrows shot up to the red armored plate on his forehead. She grinned, sat up, and stretched, then tilted her beer from side to side to ascertain that it was, indeed, empty. "We're going to the Citadel for shore leave tomorrow, so rest up. The first thing I'm doing is buying everyone a round of drinks."

"Hope you have deep pockets, Shepard," he grumbled as Shepard stood up and started climbing back down to floor level. As she walked away, he called, "Plenty of fun, huh?"

"Yep!" she answered, chuckling to herself as she rounded the corner to the elevator.

This human was going to be the end of him.