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After things calm down somewhat - they take out Fist's men, Dr. Michel's safe, Wrex kills Fist, the quarian's safe, the Council strips Saren of Spectre status and make Shepard the first human Spectre- Garrus has his first real conversation with Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams in an elevator, going from the Council Chambers back down to the Presidium. He asks if her military training prepared her for this; she wryly says they didn't cover taking down a rogue Spectre and his geth army in Basic.
It's a pleasant surprise to learn she has a sense of humor about this surreal situation. All he'd really found out about her during the hectic scramble to find evidence against Saren was that she's a soldier, she's almost as good a shot as he is, and her family name sounds vaguely familiar. It's short, but it's nice. It could be the foundation of a good squad relationship.
Later, much later, he will realize it's the one elevator conversation he has with one of his new squadmates that doesn't immediately set his squadmate on edge. For now, he's merely sorry when the elevator doors open, and the idle conversation lapses as they follow Shepard onto the next mission.
He's gotten used to Ashley being somewhat restless in elevators, always wanting to get to the next fight; like him but without the turian military physical discipline about it. This is the first time the energy coming off her is angry. As such, he hesitates a moment before breaking the silence with, "You took that Terra Firma candidate awfully personally."
Ashley looks at him like she'd forgotten he was there, then folds her arms, glancing off. "If your party has racist supporters and doesn't say anything against them, your party's racist."
"Sure," he says: there are certainly turian parties with their own racist supporters. "Still, I'm not sure I've ever heard you snap at a civilian to shut their - what was it you said? 'Pie hole'? He didn't appear to have a pie."
She sighs in what he's come to recognize as her 'someone's translator didn't catch an idiom' sigh, but more annoyed. He's pretty sure the annoyance isn't at him. "'Pie hole's an English saying for 'mouth'. It's a hole in your face you put pie in. He needed to close his."
"I see."
It feels like he has an evidence board in front of him, he can't connect the pieces, and Ashley's worked it out but has no interest in telling him. Shepard had mentioned the First Contact War, which his human coworkers at C-Sec had told him is the human name for the Relay 314 Incident. Saracino had mentioned - and Ashley's hackles had risen at the mention of - Shanxi, the closest human colony to Relay 314. Turians had led quite the siege on Shanxi in the Relay 314 Incident, until that clever surrender trick by that human general - what was that name in his history classes?
"General Williams," he blurts out, accidentally vocalizing his last thought. Ashley's flinch at the name just about confirms it. "You're related to General Williams."
"My grandfather," she says, and oh, there go the red strings on his mental evidence board.
"He was clever," he offers. "Getting turians' guard down before that other admiral came in."
She looks back at him now, but in confusion. "... by surrendering?" He nods. "Garrus, that's a war crime on Earth."
"Oh." You learn something new every day.
"Humanity doesn't see him as clever: they see him as the first human to surrender to aliens. And the Alliance held back both me and my dad in our careers because of it."
"What? That's insane." No wonder it was the mention of Shanxi that really set her off. "What do a man's choices under bombardment twenty-six years ago have to do with you?"
"Hell if I know," she says heavily.
He considers. He can't do anything about her career, especially now that the Normandy's locked down. He can't do anything about people being racist in her family's name against her will. But.
"I know a shooting range that lets you project holos of people's faces over the targets and choose how realistic you want the animation. Do you want to project that guy's face over some targets?"
Ashley cracks her first smile since Saracino flagged Shepard down, which he counts as a win. "Nah. But thank you."
He tips his mandibles up.
"It'd be fun to go make him mad, though," she contemplates. "I made this joke to Shepard once about kissing turians - after what that asshole said about 'alien appeasers', imagine his face if he saw it."
Kissing isn't a turian thing, but he's seen it in vids and among the turians in C-Sec who had human or asari partners, so he can picture it pretty easily, along with the man's no doubt disgusted and outraged face. He laughs, which makes Ashley's smile wider and more genuine, which feels better than the laugh.
Of all people to see when the Citadel elevator doors opened, he wasn't expecting to see Ashley. Or particularly wanting to, really, after their last encounter on Horizon, although probably not as much as Shepard wouldn't want to see her. So it's probably for the best that it's him standing here.
He boards the elevator. Ashley glares at him. He looks pointedly away. All he wants right now is to go buy some graxen, because while Cerberus certainly has more creature comforts than the Alliance, they are no less challenged by dextro snacks.
The silence is so thick it's like he's riding with a stranger.
"Why are you working with Cerberus?"
Okay, he wasn't expecting that outburst. Still. Ashley was - maybe still is - a friend, and, he had thought once, maybe something more, if not for the Alliance's personal restrictions, Ashley's determination to stick to them for the sake of her stalled career, and his leaving the Normandy to try and make another run at Spectre training. There is enough between them that he'll try his best to answer.
"Shepard saved my life, for one thing," he says, and if he rubs the blasted side of his armor, it's not deliberate, and nor, he thinks, is the way her gaze darts towards the movement. "But also, the Collectors are a danger to the entire galaxy, and I haven't heard of the turian military doing anything about it. Or the Alliance, which is odd since the Collectors are going after human colonies."
"We are," Ashley insists. "Those defense towers I was installing on Horizon were for the Collectors, not just Terminus pirates or whatever."
He hums in faux thought. "Didn't look like that was going so well for you."
Her shoulders slump. "They got to me before I could calibrate the targeting matrix. Don't know why they didn't take me with them like the rest of the colony."
Ah, he accidentally rubbed in the survivor's guilt she must be feeling. "Sorry."
She waves him off with a twist of her mouth as well as a hand gesture, and they settle into a silence more awkward than tense.
"Garrus," she starts, right as the door opens for his floor. He sticks a hand in the doors to wait. "... I sure hope you know what you're doing with Cerberus."
"So do I," he mutters, and steps outside.
"You said you'd take me out for fresh air, not more filtered stuff in an elevator."
Garrus glances at Ashley: a twinkle in her eye, which had only a week ago still been framed by bruising, betrays the joke. "It is fresh," he claims. "It's different to the hospital's filtered air."
"I guess," she concedes.
"We'll get out soon, Lieutenant Commander Flight Risk."
She splutters laughing. "'Flight Risk'?!"
"They think you'll make an escape," he says. "Your nurse made me leave something with the receptionist to make sure I'd bring you back."
Ashley squints at him. "... Your visor?" He nods. "I thought you looked weirdly symmetrical. Thanks, you really didn't have to do that."
"I wanted to," he says with a tip of his mandibles. It's not like he's going to be listening to his music while he's with her, and if anything happens, he's still a good shot without all the targeting software.
All the same, she looks terribly touched by his small sacrifice to give her a break from the hospital she's been stuck in since the war started, and he doesn't need his visor to realize that's doing something to his heartrate. Since they talked out the whole Cerberus thing in her hospital room and he's been dropping in on her whenever the Normandy docks and he can spare time from the turian refugee camp, he's pretty sure that feeling between them on the SR-1 is coming back.
"There's a bakery I know with both a dextro kitchen and a levo kitchen," he says rather than acknowledge any such feelings. On top of the war, she's still recovering from injuries, she's considering an offer of Spectre status, and she's supporting her suddenly refugee and in one case widowed family. It's not a good time. "They have outdoor seating and the best dumplings. The best dextro dumplings, anyway, but Vega still likes the levo dumplings even if he won't admit they're the best."
"Ooh, that sounds great," she says. "Sarah's been bringing me outside food sometimes, but it'll be nice to sit outside with it."
"A taste of the freedom you'll have as the second human Spectre."
She snorts. "I haven't said 'yes' yet."
"Why not?" he asks, genuinely surprised. "I can't think of a more deserving human."
Pink stains her cheeks, which is kind of cute. "I dunno," she says, in the tone of someone who in fact knows too many things to decide which one to say first. Her eyes drop to her gloves. "I just can't shake the feeling that the offer's political for Udina. Like it's not that I'm amazing, he just wants an Eden Prime War hero for a Spectre without Shepard's stubbornness and, uh, baggage."
'Baggage' is perhaps the most understated euphemism one could use for blowing up the Bahak system; he's almost impressed. "Little does he know that you're stubborn too," he says. "I'm sure you could stand up to him if you felt it was right."
She gives him a soft smile, and he thinks she steps closer. "Thanks for believing in me."
He thinks he steps closer too. "You're welcome."
One of them moves, he's not sure who, but then the elevator doors open, and she just about springs out.
"Did Spectre candidate training ever mention the amount of people looking for something in another system they can't get to?"
A scan of Gei Hinnom had turned up a Prothean sphere. Stuck in a meeting with the asari councilor, Shepard has charged him and Ashley with bringing it to a human refugee who'd mentioned its location. The care with which she's holding the sphere is, absurdly, making Garrus jealous of a Prothean artefact.
"Once or twice," he says, wrenching his gaze back up from her hands. "They did say that despite the amount, it was up to the individual Spectre to decide whether or not to accept those missions, since they're not directly from the Council. My mentor didn't do many of them. Said it's the rare Spectre who takes them all on."
"Oh, great, we just got lucky," Ashley grumbles, and he chuckles.
"This, coming from the woman who insisted on returning the Code of the Ancients to that elcor."
She blushes. "I just wanted to tell him to digitize and make copies of it! That's what my people did with our holy book - you don't see the Alliance trying to recover the only copy from Earth."
"I'm sure."
"Anyway, I'm not the one who decided to bring the guy and his family a meal," she says, nodding towards the numerous takeout bags he's carrying.
"There was an Armistice Day special," he excuses himself. "Buy one combo, get the opposite amino acid version free."
"Armistice Day was two weeks ago." With a smile, she bumps his leg with her hip; his visor unnecessarily alerts him to the stutter of his heart. "It was really kind of you, Garrus."
He tips his mandibles, not trusting himself to speak. Truly, he wasn't trying to impress her when he'd bought the extra meals: he'd just wanted to help. A comfortable silence takes hold.
"So what are you doing after playing delivery--"
The elevator doors open.
"Here: vodka and Paragade."
Ashley settles onto the landing of the stairs with him before taking the drink. "Thanks. You remembered my drink order."
"We've had squad drinks how many times now?" he asks rhetorically. She raises her glass to him before taking a drink. Changing the subject, he nods up to the balcony she's just left. "Thought I'd see you in the push up contest."
"Those are way more fun to watch than do," she says. "And it looked like you were busy downstairs, so..."
Rather than finish her sentence, she blushes and drinks some more, and maybe it's the alcohol talking but he thinks he may just stand a chance.
"Would you, uh... Would you like to dance?"
Smooth, Vakarian. Smooth. Even so, she looks up at him with a smile. "Maybe after I've finished my drink."
It's not a no, and really, he did only just give it to her, after all. "Take your time," he says. "Traynor remade it when she saw me pouring, said I was getting the proportions wrong for levo tastes."
"Aw, you tried to make one for me? That's sweet." He opens his mouth, and then-- "You're really sweet."
"I wouldn't leave my visor behind for just anybody," he finally admits. "You're special that way."
"So are you," she says. "Special, not the visor thing."
There it is: the closest they've come to verbally acknowledging this thing between them. He lifts a hand to cup her cheek - she looks tired these days, everyone does, but content. "Is this..."
She hums in enjoyment, then says, "Hang on," to his bewilderment, and ducks down to set her vodka and Paragade on the floor. When she straightens, she's tiptoeing, her gaze on his mouth. "Okay."
That settles it, then. He leans down to kiss her, and while it's not his first ever kiss, it's his first with her, and that makes it so much nicer than those lonely nights on Omega when he'd first learned. As she reaches up and laces her fingers together at the back of his neck, he settles his own hands on her waist, and for a moment, there's no party, no apartment, no Citadel, no war: just her, and the feeling of finally coming home.
"Hey, everyone! Come on over here for a minute."
They break the kiss, though their hands remain where they are, and Ashley chuckles softly as Shepard calls everyone for a group photo.
"Took us long enough," she says wryly.
He leans his forehead onto hers. "I'm just glad we got here in the end. Stand next to me in the photo?"
"We can pose like we're at prom," she says with a grin, and he's left to wonder what she means while she picks up her drink again.