#harkin

Anyway...I noticed some parallels between them during my last playthrough.

When we meet Harkin in Cora's Den, he's drowning himself in liquor after being suspended from the force. He was skimming credits from crime scenes, using excessive force on suspects, drinking on the job. The sort of conduct that does a disservice to a peace officer.

When we point this out what does he say?

Harkin: "What the hell do you know? Working for C-Sec ain't like being a Marine. People get pissed off if we shoot somebody. Investigations, inquiries, rules, regulations. Everyday I plow through enough red tape to choke a rhino. That's how you gotta be to do this job. So don't talk to me about 'right' and 'wrong'. You soldiers got it easy."

Later when we ask Garrus about his frustrations with C-Sec after joining us aboard the Normandy he cited the same points.

Garrus: "At C-sec, you're buried by rules. The damn bureaucrats are always on your back. Sometimes it feels like the rules are there to stop me from doing my work. If I'm trying to take down a suspect it shouldn't matter how I do it so long as I do it. But C-Sec wants it done their way, protocol and procedure comes first. That's why I left."*

*This is actually two separate lines but I've combined them for brevity.

Both argue that bureaucracy, rules. They get in the way. People won't understand, are too quick to judge.

I think if Garrus had stayed in C-Sec, he would have become as jaded as Harkin. Soured into a shell of himself. We see in ME2 how far he can fall when his vendetta against Sidonis consumes him to near a near Ahab like obsession.

In a world without Shepard or the Reaper? In twenty years it would have been Vakarian sipping dextro beer in a seedy club making passes at women, a cautionary tale to new recruits about falling from grace.