Character: Garrus

Pairing: FemShep/Thane

Vulnerability

"What are you doing here?" demanded a voice from behind him.

Garrus knew he was in trouble even before he turned around. He didn't need to look at Shepard to know that she was glowering at him, the line between her eyebrows fully visible. He wasn't an expert on human facial expressions, but he'd been around her long enough to know that the line only appeared when someone was stupid enough to antagonise her.

Reluctantly, he turned to face her. The line was firmly in place and she was shooting him a look that could freeze lava. Despite that, he was more concerned about the dress she wore. It was bad enough that humans lacked any kind of natural armour without exposing more vulnerable flesh to an enemy. It was the dress that had propelled him off the Normandy and through the back alleys of Omega to Afterlife's VIP section. The thought that Shepard would act as bait to help Samara was uncomfortable enough, but the knowledge that she would do it without back up, armour or weapons was unbearable.

"What are you doing here?" she repeated.

He shrugged casually, flaring his mandibles in what approximated a grin. "The usual. Getting a drink. Maybe picking off a couple of straggling mercs, I haven't decided yet."

"Uh huh," said Shepard sceptically. "You decide to go for drinks in a place you can't stand on the night I've declared it a no go zone."

"Things get a lot more appealing when they're forbidden."

"Garrus," she said warningly.

"Fine," he said, dropping the playful tone. "I just wanted to watch your back."

"I told you I need to do this alone. Morinth won't approach me if she knows you're with me."

"She won't know."

"She will," she insisted. "She's been doing this for centuries."

"This isn't right!" Garrus flared. "You're completely unprepared for whatever she might throw at you. That thing," he gestured at her dress, "isn't going to give you any protection, and you're not even armed!"

"I'm here to entice her, not fight her. I don't know how turians do it, but my seduction technique has a little more finesse than bragging about the shininess of my armour or the size of my gun."

They stared at each other for a moment, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. The grin became a full blown smile and they both erupted into laughter, the tension between them now completely dissipated.

"How about this," she said once they had quieted, her expression much softer now that the lines of annoyance had been smoothed away. "You wait in the main bar, not the VIP section, and after I'm done with Morinth we'll have a few drinks." She smirked. "Maybe we can even go after a few mercs, revive Archangel's reputation."

She was offering a compromise. He couldn't come with her but he wasn't being sent back to the ship either. It was the best offer he would get and more than she would concede to most people. At least he'd be close enough that he could get to her quickly if she needed him.

"It'll do," he grumbled.

Grinning, she patted him on the shoulder and gave him a firm push away from the door. He left reluctantly, glancing over his shoulder when he reached the end of the alley. Hands on hips, head cocked slightly to one side, Shepard still watched him. Muttering quietly to himself about her lack of trust, he made his way back to the main entrance of Afterlife. He skipped straight past the queue, the bouncer casually waving him inside. The people at the door had received instructions from Aria that Shepard and her crew were not to be kept waiting. While he wasn't comfortable with the fact that they were so well known, he appreciated not having to wait in line all night.

Inside, he took a seat and ordered a drink. He had barely taken a sip before he felt the tingling at the base of his neck that meant he was being watched. Before his fingers could even twitch towards his gun, a polite cough announced Thane's presence. Resisting the urge to groan, Garrus returned to his drink.

"Garrus," Thane greeted him courteously. "Has Alex arrived yet?"

Surprised, and suppressing a smug smirk, Garrus glanced at him. It was unusual for Thane not to have all the information, but right now he wasn't even looking in the right room. Although Garrus still hadn't mastered judging the facial expressions of other species, Thane looked as calm and collected as ever. There was something unusual about his stance, a tense set to his shoulders that seemed to exude a nervous energy. Wondering exactly why he was so agitated plunged Garrus back into his original irritation.

"She's not coming," he said shortly.

Thane blinked. "I was under the impression that-"

"She's in the VIP area," interrupted Garrus, "and she won't be happy if you follow her down there. We're meeting for drinks after she finishes up."

"May I wait with you?"

No! he thought, his hand clenching convulsively into a fist. He tried and failed to think of an excuse. What could he say? There was no good reason why Thane couldn't join him. He allowed his fingers to unfurl and grunted noncommittally, which Thane seemed to take as assent as he swiftly settled himself on the neighbouring stool. He ordered a drink but allowed it to sit untouched when it arrived.

Watching him covertly, Garrus considered that in another time and place he could have liked Thane. Their styles were different, but Garrus couldn't deny that he was an effective assassin. When the drell had first joined the crew he had no strong feelings about him at all. That had changed quickly. It hadn't taken him long to notice the way Thane's unfathomable eyes followed Shepard constantly. What was it he called her? Siha. He had no idea what it meant, but the affection in Thane's voice was unmistakeable and it made Garrus want to punch something.

It wasn't born out of jealousy; he didn't have those kinds of feelings for Shepard. Even though he didn't love her romantically, they were more than just crewmates. He had joked that agreeing to join her crew would have him walking into hell, but he would follow her through much worse than that. It was rare that she didn't ask him to accompany her on a mission, and the reason was that she trusted him to watch her back just as he trusted her to lead wisely. They were friends. If he was honest, she was his only friend.

Perhaps he would have felt differently if they hadn't run into Alenko on Horizon. Traitor, he'd called her. Garrus and Tali hated Cerberus as much as he did, but they trusted that Shepard would never have accepted their help if she had seen any other option. Unable to see past the Cerberus logo, Alenko had quite literally turned his back on her. There was no thought to what she might have suffered, just grief twisted into bitterness and directed at the source of his unhappiness. She had been quiet for days. To most of the crew she seemed unchanged; she still checked in with everyone at least once a day, making sure they had everything they needed. Garrus noticed the difference. When she spoke to people she was direct and to the point; she no longer made jokes or asked after this or that relative she had heard about before. Things had only gone back to normal the day he stepped into her cabin and narrowly avoided being hit in the face by a flying glass. He never got the precise details but the gist was that Alenko had sent her an email that pushed her out of sadness into a towering rage. To his shame, he was glad. He could deal with an angry Shepard. It was the quietly unhappy Shepard that he didn't know how to handle.

Even if Thane didn't betray her as Alenko had, his time was limited. In a couple of years, perhaps even months (Garrus had never inquired how much longer Thane expected to live) he would die. He didn't want to think about how that would affect Shepard should she choose to begin a relationship with him.

He acknowledged that a small, selfish part of him was worried that if Shepard became involved with Thane she would stop dropping by to see him. No more chats in the battery room, no more of the gentle teasing he had come to look forward to. He hoped that he would have been able to put his feelings aside were they his only concern.

After a long and decidedly uncomfortable silence Thane announced, "I confess I am uneasy about this situation. Samara's insistence that Alex face a deadly enemy without a weapon unsettles me."

Garrus tilted his head in acknowledgment. "Try telling her that."

"It probably makes me a hypocrite," said Thane reflectively. "She helped me find my son. She has helped many of us."

"She tracked down Sidonis with me, even if things didn't turn out quite as planned. Difference is I never put her in such a vulnerable position."

Out of the corner of his eye Garrus saw Thane stiffen. Turning to face him, he saw that his eyes had taken on an unfocused look. He had never seen this happen before, but he was almost certain he knew what was going on. Shepard had told him that drell had perfect memory; sometimes the recollection was so strong that they could become lost in it and blurt it out. Unfortunately for Thane, this was one of those times.

"Lying in the shadows, he has the target in his sights. There is a problem: she won't move.

She talks to him gently but he is angry. His finger tightens on the trigger, and I wonder whether he will shoot her to get to him.

I reach for my gun.

The moment passes. His finger eases off the trigger. He sighs in defeat, relinquishes his gun."

Garrus was on his feet before he realised what he was doing. A part of him knew that Thane couldn't control what he was saying, but he was in no condition to listen to logic. Duty was everything to a turian; to question his loyalty to a commanding officer was a terrible insult. To imply that he would even consider harming Shepard, who he followed not just out of a sense of duty but because of friendship and a deep respect, was the worst kind of personal attack. He probably wouldn't have been able to land a punch on Thane in normal circumstances. He was fast, but Thane was faster. Slowly emerging from his memory, however, Thane was not expecting the fist that slammed into his jaw. His head snapped back and he stumbled, thrown off balance, before collecting himself. Now fully emerged from his trance, he caught Garrus's next punch and thrust him away – into the waiting arms of a krogan. Thane himself was seized in an iron grip, and before either of them could begin to struggle they were frozen in place by a wave of powerful biotics.

Garrus groaned internally. If he'd been thinking straight he'd have known better than to start a fight so close to Aria. She appeared at the edge of the balcony, drumming her fingers against the railings, staring down at them imperiously. A small circle of clear space had formed in the crowded club as people scrambled to get away from those stupid enough to draw her attention. She considered them in silence for a moment, lip curling in annoyance.

"You're lucky you're with Shepard," she pronounced finally. She snapped her fingers and a guard appeared at her shoulder. Her voice shouldn't have been audible, but in the absolute silence that had descended Garrus could hear her perfectly. "Send a runner to the Normandy. I want Shepard here now."

The blue flare of Aria's biotics disappeared, freeing them for a second before the krogan guards grabbed them by their arms and hauled them away. Garrus bit down on the urge to yank his elbow free, knowing that it would only make things worse. They were dumped unceremoniously in a side room, ordered not to make trouble and locked inside.

Even though he was staring determinedly in the opposite direction, he could feel Thane's eyes boring into the back of his head.

"You attacked me," he stated simply. "Why?"

Garrus rounded on him. "You have no right to suggest that I would ever hurt Shepard. You've been part of the crew for five minutes; I was with her when she was fighting Saren."

"I didn't intend to offend you." Thane's voice was calm but unapologetic. "Sometimes my memories slip away from me."

"That's not the point; you should never have thought that in the first place."

"Have you never questioned my loyalty?" demanded Thane.

"That's different," grunted Garrus. "I've been around much longer than you."

Thane stared at him silently for a long moment as if trying to figure something out. "I didn't think..." he said slowly. "Are you pursuing Alex?"

It took Garrus more than a few seconds to realise what he meant. "No!" he almost shouted when he worked it out. "No. I don't feel that way about her."

"But it bothers you that I do."

Garrus just blinked at him stupidly for a moment, surprised that he had stated it so boldly. He opened his mouth, fully intending to explain himself, but the words wouldn't come.

If Shepard started something with Thane it would put her in a place where Garrus couldn't help her. It would be like Horizon all over again, watching her trying to stay calm as Alenko hurt her and knowing there was nothing he could do to help. Thinking like this, like she was someone who needed protection, made him feel guilty. It hadn't been a problem before she died, but since she charged back into his life a few months ago the thought of her in a vulnerable position made him extremely anxious.

There was the heart of the problem. Admitting that Shepard could be vulnerable meant admitting that she could die again. They talked about death on a daily basis – they were on a suicide mission, after all. But he didn't really believe it. She was Shepard, the woman who performed what others called impossible on a daily basis. Anyone else on the crew could die. He could die. Hell, he'd accepted death when he first sighted her in his scope back on Omega. But not Shepard. She couldn't die, not again.

"Forget it, Krios," he finally grunted. "This is my problem, not yours."

Thane looked as if he wanted to argue, but was prevented by the sound of the door sliding open. They both whirled to face it, expecting to see Shepard. Instead they found Kelly Chambers.

"Yeoman Chambers," greeted Thane, polite as ever but with a hint of confusion colouring his voice. "We were expecting Commander Shepard."

Kelly beamed at them both. "She sent me." Her smile faded slightly as she adopted a more serious expression. "She says that as you're brawling in bars, you clearly have some unresolved issues that require discussion. As the ship's unofficial counsellor," here her smile brightened again, "I'm here to facilitate the process."

She shrugged her bag off her shoulder, and from it produced a thick file with what Garrus was certain was his name printed on the front.

"Officer Vakarian," she said brightly. "Should we start with you?"