Hello old and new readers alike! Sorry the updates for this story are so spotty. I won't promise they'll become any more frequent, but I will say that no matter how long it takes, I will make sure those of you who are still reading will get the full story as I imagined it.

Something definitely worth noting; seeing as it has been almost a full year since I posted Chapter 1, I decided to do some editing to the story. Some of it is minor, but a few big things have changed (i.e. fight in chapter 3, length of time Garrus and Shep don't speak in chapter 8, omission of Kaiden reference in an earlier chapter, etc.). I'd love if you went back and reread the edits, but you should be able to get along fine without them if you don't.

Again, thank you for reading! I greatly appreciate your comments and would love to keep on hearing from you. It definitely lets me know you guys are digging it! Now enjoy!

-raconteurr

Leaning out of the door to her quarters, Shepard groggily looked to where Garrus now stood in front of the elevator as if her saying his name had somehow frozen him. She was tired but was busy working on paperwork and mission reports. While she wasn't technically required to do them anymore, it was her way of keeping track of what she had done and where she had been, just in case she did have to answer to someone one of these days.

Shepard noted that Garrus was wearing what she assumed were some sort of night clothes, though if Shepard was to be believed Garrus never took off his armor. As he finally turned around, Shepard could tell he had not only been having trouble sleeping but was also intoxicated. Shepard sighed, but before she could say anything Garrus immediately jumped to speak.

"Shepard... Didn't mean to wake you." Garrus sounded extremely uncomfortable, though he was trying to sound like his usual nonchalant self. "Didn't realize the time, sorry. I'll just let you get back to... well, sleeping." He shuffled for a moment as he ran his talons over his fringe before trying to turn quickly and enter the elevator.

"Wait!" Shepard said firmly, stopping Garrus dead in his tracks yet again. "I wasn't sleeping, if you can't tell," she motioned down to her t-shirt and cargo pants.

Garrus straightened up awkwardly as he looked back at Shepard over his shoulder. "Well, I mean, you should get some rest then... big day tomorrow."

Shepard raised her eyebrow. "Garrus, tomorrow is a supply run." Garrus dropped his shoulders and sighed as he realized his attempts at lying to get away were failing. She gave a small smile before motioning him toward her. "Come on, you know you came here to talk." Finally, Garrus turned around and walked towards the door, only moving inside once Shepard turned and entered as well. Shepard keyed the doors manually closed and turned off elevator access to her deck from the data pad next to the door before turning to see Garrus awkwardly staring at the fish in the fish tank.

She decided to try and start the conversation lightly. "You know, I didn't think you had any other clothes besides that torn up armor."

Garrus jumped slightly but turned to face her nonetheless. "Well, ah, I normally sleep in my body suit but I had to get it washed." He cleared his throat and straightened up, and Shepard noticed that, unlike usual, he was standing in at a very tight attention, almost like Thane did at times. She frowned as she considered that his actions probably had to do with her yelling and screaming at him about his subordination. Having this conversation in the entrance area she could tell, would not make him feel any more comfortable.

She sighed. "Garrus, follow me." She turned and led him down the steps over to the couch in her bedroom area, taking a seat. Garrus simply stood in front of her, still standing at attention. Again Shepard felt her brow rise. "Garrus, you can sit."

He politely shook his head. "With all due respect, ma'am, I'd rather stand."

Shepard had to keep her jaw from dropping as he called her "ma'am." She hadn't heard anyone seriously call her that since she was back on the original Normandy. She had heard it once or twice from Joker, but it was always jokingly. But here Garrus stood, completely serious as he addressed her as a superior. Was he that bent out of shape over the argument? For God's sake he was drunk and he was still acting like a respectable soldier, almost as if he was trying to impress her or something along those lines.

She leaned back, her right hand instantly coming to her temples and massaging them. She closed her eyes as she spoke. "Garrus, don't be like this. Just sit down and we can talk."

"Be like what Commander?" He maintained his stiff back even now, though Shepard could tell from his voice that he was beginning to get agitated, just as she was. She leaned forward, pushing off of her knees with her hands, and stood, walking over to stand directly in front of Garrus.

She said nothing for a minute, simply looking Garrus dead in the eyes as she tried to probe his expression for clues as to how he was truly feeling. Shepard had always had trouble with figuring out how turians physically emoted. They didn't really have muscles in their faces like humans did, so many subtle hints one could get from a human were completely unobtainable from a turian. What little she could tell, though, was that his overly stiff stance and his averted gaze meant he was either extremely uncomfortable or just plain stubborn as hell.

He didn't move an inch in the time that she looked him over, and it was honestly killing her to have him treating her like this. She couldn't stand it for another moment. "Garrus, come on, talk to me... I haven't seen you at all in two weeks, and you're just standing here staring at the ceiling? What are you thinking?"

After shifting his weight around, Garrus looked down at Shepard. "That I have calibrations that need to be done."

Shepard thought she was going to tear her hair out. "Your god-damn calibrations can wait until you're back on shift!" His head lashed up again, but she quickly grabbed his jaw and forced him to look at her. "Dammit, Garrus, stop looking away from me, stop standing attention like I'm your drill sergeant, and start talking to me!"

Garrus knew he was getting Shepard angry, so he wasn't surprised when her small fingers grabbed at his face and made him look down at her. He really was sorry for everything that had happened, which was part of the reason why he was acting like this. He stared into her eyes, his vision surprisingly clear as her yelling had made him feel incredibly sober. Garrus saw the anger, but yet again she was showing some other emotion through her eyes that Garrus couldn't read. I really need to brush up on my human-relations skills...

Garrus wanted to wait to speak until he found the perfect way to say what he was feeling to her, but unfortunately for him, he felt himself begin to talk. "What do you want me to say Shepard?" Realizing his error, he went with the blurted out question, pushing Shepard's hand off of him as he turned away and paced a few steps before stopping to lean up against the wall. "That I was wrong? That you were right? That I'm sorry?"

"Well," Shepard interjected, "that last one would be a start."

Garrus closed his eyes and sighed, but he complied. "Look Shepard, I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am for what happened..." Garrus tried to continue, but he felt his voice leave him as he thought about all of the hell he had put her through in the matter of a few days. She hadn't done anything to deserve that treatment save for blocking his shot, and now Garrus felt like a damned fool for getting so bent out of frame, as humans put it. Even if it was for Sidonis's death, he shouldn't have shot her. He had betrayed her trust, and there was no taking that back.

Garrus felt a hand touch him on the arm, he looked down and saw Shepard standing there, smiling sadly as she gave him a very light shake and motioned over to the couch. "Sit down and then you can tell me." Garrus couldn't help but follow her to the couch, following her lead as she sat down turned towards him. He felt himself grow extremely nervous; even though he came here to tell her how much she meant to him, how sorry he was for everything, he couldn't find it in him to start talking to her. He ended up staring at her for at least a minute, feeling his mouth part ever few seconds as he tried to start voicing what he was thinking. Finally he let his head drop, ashamed that he couldn't speak.

Obviously aware of his discomfort, Shepard shook her head, moving closer to him on the couch. "Okay, I guess I'll start with what I want to say." Garrus again felt her hand on his jaw, thought this time the touch was much gentler and less forceful as she lifted his gaze to meet hers. "I'm sorry for screaming at you at the motel. You may have been out of line, but I stepped out of line then too. It wasn't fair to you for me to yell like that." Silence over came them again as Shepard finished speaking, her hand leaving his chin and moving to rest on her lap.

Confused, Garrus spoke. "Why are you apologizing? You're the commanding officer. It was insubordination, what I did; you had every right to react that way."

Shepard shook her head. "Maybe on paper I'm a 'Commander,' but you should know me better than that by now. We're getting ready for a suicide mission, Garrus. We may not make it back. I don't want people to boss around; I need people who will work together with me... who will be my friends and support me when the time comes." She smiled at Garrus, whose mandibles clicked as he started to find what he wanted to say. But she hadn't finished her thought quite yet, so he let her continue. "I need to know that you want to be here. I never, ever want you to feel like you have to do anything you don't want to."

"Shepard, I followed you through hell and back when we were fighting Saren and the geth, and I'd do it all over again if I had to... hell, even Noveria." Garrus chuckled. Shepard knew he had hated the planet because of the extreme cold and had even offered to take someone else along for the mission even though he was her first choice. But Garrus did the mission anyways because he knew she depended on him to watch her back when she was in-fighting with their enemies. He knew she appreciated his sarcasm to lighten the mood. Most important, he knew she trusted him. And those facts alone made him want to do anything in the world to protect her.

"Look, Shepard, I didn't leave Omega because I wanted to get away from the mess I had created," Garrus continued. "I wanted to, you know, relive the glory days and actually make a difference in the galaxy..." Garrus looked down at his lap, rubbing the back of his neck. "I tried so hard to make a difference on my own after you were gone... at C-sec, on Omega... I even trained to be a Spectre for a while. But everything just seems to fail in the end for me." Garrus looked up for a moment to see Shepard still looking at him. Was that look happy? Sad? Disappointed? Garrus couldn't tell. A small tear made its way down Shepard's cheek, though, and he instantly became worried. Great, you made her upset, Garrus nervously thought. Or worse, you've disappointed her and she's going to tell you to get off of the ship the next time we dock.

Shepard quickly wiped away the lone tear as Garrus paused his explanation about how he had tried to live after she was gone. She wished there had been something she could have done to help him, but of course, those wishes were for naught. All she could do now was try to comfort the hurting turian in front of her, let him know that she was here for him.

But for now, she listened as Garrus began to speak again. "The reason things went so wrong on the Sidonis mission was because I was trying to force them to be right. I was determined to kill Sidonis no matter what. When I saw the chance slipping out of my hands, I panicked." Shepard heard him choke on his last word, and he leaned forward while cradling his head in his long talons.

Shepard gently placed her hand on his back. "I know things went badly. But at least we're both still sitting here."

Garrus shook his head, leaning up slightly and looking over at her. "Shepard, things went more than badly... If I had disobeyed orders like that on a turian ship, if I had so much as bumped into a commanding officer, not to mention..." His voice trailed off, but she knew exactly what he was referencing. The fight they had that only happened a metre or two from where they now sat was one of the scarier things that had happened to her in the past few weeks, but she could tell Garrus regretted it now.

"Shepard," he finished, "any turian commander in their right mind would have thrown me out of the nearest airlock for the things I did to you."

Shepard nodded. "Believe me, Garrus, I know. I won't lie and say that I didn't think about kicking you out..." She had indeed. He didn't just break her physically; he had broken her emotionally as well. Thane and Miranda had seen it, and despite how much she wanted him to be there for her she knew it might not have been an option. But she was past that now. "I already told you the way I want this crew to work, and that's why I have handled this whole mess the way I have."

Garrus put his head back in his hands. "I'm so sorry Shepard, for everything." His voice was strained, and he choked out the words. Shepard wasn't sure if the same things she'd do to comfort her human counterparts would work for him, but Shepard instantly closed the small gap between them anyways and, after putting an arm around his back, laid her head gently on his shoulder as she moved her hand up and down his back to hopefully comfort him.

Garrus jumped, not seeming to expect her touch, but he did not push her away. "I just wanted so badly for things to go right for once. But they just slipped out of my control."

Shepard nodded against his shoulder. "I understand. We both changed so much over the past two years, but we both assumed the other would act like we did during our hunt for Saren. That's why I think things ended up the way they did."

Once Shepard finished speaking the two of them sat in silence for quite some time, with Shepard still half-holding Garrus. It seemed to Shepard that they had both realized what had been wrong. Garrus still seemed upset, but it would probably take a bit more time for the two of them to fully get over their anger. After all, it had taken them almost a whole month to talk after the incident. But they were already getting through it. And she could tell they were already back on the path of being as close as ever.

Maybe it was strange, but there was something about all of this that Shepard liked. Well, not the argument or the conversation they were having, but there was something about having her head on his shoulder that just made her feel more comfortable than she had in a while. At some point in their silent meditation she felt herself close her eyes, her lips curling into a contented smile.

Before she knew it, words softly spilled from her lips. "You're the closest friend I've ever had Garrus... Don't ever leave me, okay?" She was starting to feel groggy, her mind slowly drifting off. She felt him move, though not enough to usurp her from her position on his shoulder. A soft, flanging chuckle sounded from Garrus, and it was as if it reverberated through Shepard's whole self.

"Don't worry, Shepard," Garrus said, though his voice was fading away as he spoke. "I'm here..."

It was somewhat strange, being this close to Garrus. The only times Shepard had even been remotely this close to him were when they would huddled behind cover or patching each other's armor during a mission. Come to think of it, she hadn't been this physically close to anyone in for quite some time. Being the savior of the galaxy doesn't leave a lot of time to get close to people.

It was nice, though.

Her body growing limp, she slowly moved the arm that hadn't been around Garrus and slipped it under her cheek. She felt her hair fall down in front of her face, but she was too comfortable to care. She could have sworn Garrus said something else as she had felt the same reverberating sensation she felt when he had laughed, but Shepard couldn't make out anything above a soft murmur. Once the reverberations were gone, she could only hear the hum of the fish tank as she fell asleep.