Not Like a Turian Warship

By: Light-Eco-Sage

Rated: Teen for some language and safety.

Summary: Garrus had served under more commanders than he sometimes cared to remember, both in the Turian military and in C-Sec, but he'd never had his C.O. apologize to him before. Mass Effect 1 One-shot.

Disclaimer: Mass Effect is owned by Bioware.

LES: Not too sure about the ending. Endings are always the hardest. But I still think it's a rather decent idea.

It was not often that Jane Shepard felt like she had made a mistake. She considered herself to be a good person, a damned good officer, and she always did her best to save as many lives as possible. So once she made a decision, she almost never second-guessed herself unless it led to preventable deaths.

This time was different. It's not like anyone had died, but still the thought kept nagging her.

She made her way down into the cargo bay, cursing the slow elevator the whole way. The best damn ship in the whole Alliance fleet, and they couldn't get an elevator that went any faster?!

Finally, after what seemed an age, the elevator made it down to the cargo level and opened. Off to the side was the Mako, their planetside vehicle. And, as usual, her Turian shipmate, Garrus Vakarian, seemed to be giving himself fits trying to restore it to its previous condition. If the long string of Turian curses coming from where his head was hidden under the carriage of the Mako was any indication, the repairs were not going as well as he would have hoped.

She felt badly about that too. To be honest, she was not the best driver when it came to the Mako. Tali had already gone as far as to refuse to come on missions that involved the Mako. But Jane Shepard really couldn't blame the Quarian girl for that. She had almost cracked her helmet open the last time she had taken the Mako off a cliff accidentally. If she could get the hang of handling the Mako, then Garrus wouldn't be forced to spend a majority of his time trying to wrestle it back into shape.

But, then again, she couldn't imagine why the Mako would need repairs. Their last trip out on the Mako merely required them to survey some elemental deposits, and the terrain had been flat for the most part. The Mako couldn't be that badly damaged.

"Garrus?" Jane Shepard called.

The Turian twitched and she heard a clanging sound like metal-on-metal. "Shit!" He hissed, a curse word that he probably picked up from the human crew members. He pushed himself out from under the Mako with the sort of flexibility that one should not have covered with natural and artificial armor. He ran his three-fingered hand along his forehead tenderly. The clanging sound had obviously been from an accidental meeting of his face with the underside of the Mako. "Oh… Commander Shepard… do you need anything?" He asked, standing up.

"What happened to the Mako?" She asked. "I know that I'm not the best driver in the galaxy…" It was shocking how similar some facial expressions could be between humans and Turians. 'Incredulous' looked exactly the same. "Okay, I'm a pretty bad driver…" Jane Shepard amended. "But the last mission wasn't so bad. What could be wrong with it?"

"Well, it's not something you did… at least, not directly." Garrus said, opening up the shotgun side of the Mako and pointing to the side of the seat. Jane leaned in closer and saw that the seat leather had been torn, practically to shreds. Even if she couldn't tell that the damage was done with someone with three taloned fingers, she would have known who was responsible. Garrus always rode shotgun with her. He and Wrex, having natural armor, were the only ones who could leave the Mako relatively unscathed.

"What happened here?" She asked, working to suppress a laugh at the thought of the bad-ass Turian sniper clinging to the seat until it ripped under his talons.

"I swear every time I get into this thing it takes a few years off my life." Garrus replied. "But Wrex and I are the only ones left willing to travel with you in this death trap. I call it 'taking one for the team'. I was going to replace the seat now, since it's in pretty good shape and I have the time. But the damn seat is welded to the floor. It's a pretty good idea when you're taking the Mako up a mountain or over a cliff, but not when you're trying to replace it." He gave it a hopeful wiggle to see if his work underneath the vehicle had loosened the problem, but the seat did not budge.

"I'm sure that you'll get it. We still have some time before we reach our next mission." Jane Shepard said.

"Good. We won't need the Mako for this one, right?" He asked.

Jane laughed lightly. "Sorry to disappoint you. No Mako."

"Ruin all my fun." Garrus replied with a small laugh.

Jane smiled. To be honest, she liked this Garrus better than the one that had first joined up with her back on the Citadel. She knew it was just a by-product of his Turian military upbringing, but he was incredibly strict during his first weeks on board, yessir'ing and nosir'ing a million times a day. But the general atmosphere of the Normandy had seemed to win him over at last. Shepard had even learned, to her delight, that he was pretty good at banter now that he had loosened up a little.

"Was there something you needed, Commander Shepard?" He asked, jolting her out of her thoughts.

"Oh, yes." Jane Shepard sighed heavily, drawing his attention to her. He was not an expert on human body language, but he knew enough to know that something serious was going to happen. His heart stopped when he thought that she might kick him off the mission hunting Saren down. Had he done something wrong? He couldn't think of anything. "I wanted to apologize to you."

All at once, the fear melted out of Garrus and was replaced with utter confusion. He had been in the active military for half of his life, and the other half of his life he was raised with the purpose of joining the military when he turned fifteen. And, in all that time, he'd never had one of his C.O.'s apologize to him, or to any of their subordinates. Sure, Commanding Officers made mistakes, but the ones that he was familiar with tended to blame those mistakes on their subordinates. The mistake had obviously been because their subordinates failed to accomplish some part of their plan, not because the plan itself was faulty. Turians were trained, from a very young age, to follow any order given to them by a superior, and that's what he had done since joining the Normandy.

But, as he thought back, he couldn't remember any sort of mistakes the Commander might have made. There were hard decisions, and a lot of them, but he could always see why Commander Shepard made the decisions she did, even if he couldn't have done the same thing. "I don't understand. Why are you apologizing?" He asked.

Jane Shepard sighed. "Do you remember just before you joined us, when we were both on Tali's tail on the Citadel…? Doctor Michel's office?" Shepard asked. Garrus nodded. "I stepped into the room, but you were all ready there, with your weapon on the mercs who had Doctor Michel hostage. And then you shot the merc who was holding her hostage in the head." Garrus did remember that moment, and waited for her to speak. He still did not understand where she was going with this talk. "Once all the mercs were dead, I yelled at you for endangering innocent lives. Like you would have shot through Doctor Michel to get the merc without a second thought."

Garrus finally began to understand where Commander Shepard was going with this. "Commander…"

"I didn't know you were a sniper." She said. "I guess that's my only excuse. Back at the Alliance, we always taught our snipers never to take a shot unless you were absolutely sure that you'd bring your enemy down with it. I'm sure that the Turian military trained their snipers the same way. You were not going to hurt Doctor Michel, or allow her to get hurt. You wouldn't have taken the shot if you were not absolutely sure that you'd hit the merc and not her. Because only a bad sniper hits something other than the target and, Garrus, you're the best damned sniper I've ever met."

"Commander Shepard, there's really nothing to be sorry about. You are right. You had no idea about my specialty when I took that shot. For all you knew, I could have been putting Doctor Michel in danger." Garrus said.

"I'm sorry for underestimating you, Garrus Vakarian." Jane Shepard said. "Just keep up those gun skills. We'll need you in your top form when we take on Saren."

"Aye, Commander. I'll make sure not to neglect my sniping practice… as long as I have time to do so between Mako repairs." Garrus said.

"No promises on that, Vakarian." Shepard said as she turned and stepped out.