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He stepped aside, leaned over the railing that looked down over the facility, and pretended to be watching for an ambush, scoping out their route—anything other than listening intently as Zaeed lectured Shepard about his past and his intentions for the present.
As usual she was quiet and respectful, aware that Zaeed had decades of experience on her; she listened to every word, never gave away her thoughts with a single shift of her weight or movement of her face. But Garrus had seen Shepard like this before. She had been raised in the military; she had navigated politics with the same cool obstinacy with which she approached a battle. She had faced terrors much worse than Zaeed. Through it all she had kept her composure, solemn and confident—until it was time for her to move, to speak, to tear an enemy apart in spectacular fashion.
Zaeed finished his lecture, rolled his shoulders and glared at Shepard. Shepard kept her head high and met Zaeed's eye squarely as she informed him that their rescue mission took priority over his vengeance. Garrus waited for the inevitable explosion, but Zaeed only snarled something vaguely menacing in Shepard's direction.
He knew men like Zaeed. The explosion would come.
He wished he could warn Shepard, reinforce how much trouble the Blue Suns had given him back on Omega, how Zaeed was eleven kinds of deadly and if he decided he wanted Shepard dead she would be in danger—but she didn't need warning. On Omega she had walked through the Blue Suns like they hadn't been there, and he'd been told she'd taken out the gunship with her damn pistol when she'd run out of rounds for her heavier weapons—
He felt a sudden clenching in his gut, and in a brief moment of panic wondered if he'd been careless in the mess on the Normandy. Gardner was always careful to make something separate for Garrus to eat, but one never knew.
The sensation passed. Shepard gave the signal to move out, and the three of them sped forward.
On their way through the refinery they shut down the fuel flow and turned on the fire suppression system in order to save the refinery's workers—but as a result they were mere seconds too late to stop Santiago. As the ship sped away, Garrus was ready for Zaeed's violent reaction. He kept a finger loosely over the trigger of his own weapon in case Zaeed turned his on Shepard.
In the midst of his rage, Zaeed carelessly ejected a thermal clip. Garrus saw the spilled fuel ignite too late to do anything but dodge when the resultant explosive fire caused a beam to crash down. Pinned beneath the beam, Zaeed struggled and continued to curse at Shepard; in a heartbeat Shepard had her gun to the veteran's head and Garrus wondered if the party would be returning to the Normandy short one member. But Shepard spun the weapon with flair seen only in the vids, presented the grip to Zaeed, and informed him she needed to trust her team members, to know they could focus on the mission, no matter what.
The hellfire in Zaeed's good eye was instantly doused. Shepard freed him from the beam that had landed on him, helped him to his feet, and Zaeed limped back to the shuttle with them in silence.
A lesser commander would have wanted to break Zaeed, to make him submit, to humiliate him for his actions. Shepard simply wanted him to respect her position as the commander of the Normandy, without relinquishing her respect of him as a veteran of more wars than she might ever see in her life.
And she had done it. She had come at Zaeed in the only way she could have, the only way that wouldn't have resulted in one or the other—or both of them—dead.
She had charmed him on the Citadel, back when he'd been a devoted, if conflicted, C-Sec officer. Why should he be surprised that she had done the same to Zaeed? He noticed the older man watching Shepard openly on the shuttle ride back to the Normandy. Shepard simply leaned back on her seat, folded her hands over her belly, crossed her ankles and closed her eyes for a short nap.
His chest tightened a little, and his skin grew warm. Had he eaten something—? He tried to think. The reaction usually manifested first with cramping and muscle spasms, though. He shifted his arms and legs, stretched them out a little, careful not to disturb Shepard, and noted no discomfort. Beside him, Zaeed shifted irritably.
"All leg, turians," he grumbled. "Not enough room in here."
"Maybe we should tell Cerberus to build a wider shuttle," Garrus suggested humourously.
Zaeed grinned. "That'd go over like a lead balloon," he said, and returned his attention to his gun.
Garrus glanced across at Shepard, who hadn't moved.
The scars on her cheeks and jaw had healed rapidly, and her skin was as smooth as it had been when he had last seen her, the day the SR-1 had been destroyed. The scar over her eye, though, that had interrupted her eyebrow with a gleam of white, was gone. He had kind of liked that scar. He had always wondered how she'd gotten it, but had never thought seriously to ask.
It made sense that Cerberus hadn't replicated it when they'd restored her body. It wasn't the details of Shepard that Cerberus wanted from her, after all, nor even any of her personal history. It was the mythology of Shepard they wanted, in order to use her as a shield and a weapon at once, and in that they would soon see that they had made a fatal mistake. Shepard had never been one to tolerate being used. She would wait, would keep her expressions straight and her threats implied, and only when it was the right time, would she shoot Cerberus in the kneecaps and walk away.
He reached up and absently scratched his own vast scarring. It was healing, but the doctor had told him it would never go away.
Chicks dig scars, Joker had told him confidently.
Did Shepard?
One eye opened and focused on him, as though she was aware of his thoughts. Garrus turned his attention swiftly to his weapon, examined the damage on one side. He'd been caught out for a second in the refinery, while attempting to reach cover, had probably cost Shepard a more effective shot as she'd covered him.
"She all right?"
Garrus looked up. Both of Shepard's eyes were open now, and he was acutely aware of her focus on him. "Who?" he asked.
She nodded to the rifle. "Your weapon," she said. "She got hit when you were dodging, back there."
"A little," he said. "Just cosmetic."
Shepard smiled faintly, slouched a little in her seat, stretched out her own legs and relaxed. The side of her boot pressed against his but she made no move to reposition it. "Few scars don't matter," she said.
"Glad you think so," Garrus said, and his chest grew tight again, his skin warm.
It wasn't the food.
"Oh, get a fucking room," Zaeed muttered, as he glared at his own rifle, irritably rubbed a little blood from its barrel.
Garrus opened his mouth to reply, but Shepard beat him to it.
"That's the plan," she said. She folded her arms and let her cheek rest on the pauldron of her armour, closed her eyes and fell silent once more.
Nothing more was said until they reached the Normandy. Shepard headed to the comm room for her debriefing and Garrus and Zaeed made their way to the crew quarters, where Garrus carefully detached his armour and began to put it neatly away.
"Well," Zaeed said gruffly.
"Well?" Garrus clenched his fingers and toes and stretched them out, savoured the sensation of lightness that came with being out of his armour.
"You know you don't have a chance, right?"
Garrus eyed him carefully. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Zaeed said, and rolled his shoulders each in turn, "Shepard has her sights on you."
"I—" He snapped his mouth shut, folded his arms defensively. "I know."
"I wondered," Zaeed said with a slow nod. "Better make a move soon, or she'll do it for you." Garrus shifted his weight. "Or is that what you're hoping for?" He grinned viciously. "It is, isn't it? Commander's an older woman—"
"Not that much older."
"—and you want her to take the reins. Well, you won't have any problem with that. I don't see her ever not getting what she wants." He sighed rather ruefully, and Garrus bit down on a grin. "Go on, then," Zaeed snapped, and gestured to the door. "Go calibrate your big gun. I hear Shepard likes a man who's accurate."
His mocking laughter followed Garrus out of the crew quarters.
The main battery was quiet save the humming of equipment and Garrus gratefully lost himself in myriad calculations.
He hadn't been there long before the lock slid open to admit Shepard, freshly showered and dressed down in her comfortable civs. The outfit with the little open spot at the back. The one that made his fingers itch to slip inside and see what her skin felt like, ever since they'd had that conversation about 'relieving tension'.
Zaeed was right, of course. He didn't have a chance at resisting her, even if he had wanted to. He had known it, he realised, the moment he'd spotted her casually strolling over the bridge on Omega, picking off mercs as easily as picking flowers—though he hadn't recognised what he'd been feeling at the time.
Shepard looked up at him now, her eyes clear and warm, her mouth faintly turned up in a smile. "Got a minute?" she asked quietly.
"Definitely."