Huff.

A stream of warm, white cloud billows into the air. It vanishes as it floats up and cools into nothingness.

Pufffff.

A more drawn out exhale produces a longer stream of white, flowing continuously like the ancient steam engines of centuries past.

Shepard watches in fascination as her breath turns into visible vapour in the cold air, creates little bursts of mists by blowing on empty air and giggling like a little girl as they cloud her vision. Soft white fluff blankets the ground everywhere as far as the eye could see. The bare branches of bald trees are heavy with it. A sense of stillness hangs about the wintry air. It has been a long while since Shepard has seen snow. In fact, the last time was –

The smile slips from her face; her expression darkening, shadows come over her eyes as she remembers. Earth. The last time she had seen snow had been back on Earth – back when she was an orphan girl in a rowdy gang of misfits surviving off the scantiest of supplies on the dingy streets.

Wintertime had been a curse back then, the harshest and most unforgiving time of the year. If you were too weak or starved during the fall season, you would be expected to die before Christmas. Simple as that. Fights were waged with other gangs for food and shelter. The dry corner of a dirty alleyway. Any spare clothing found discarded by a trash site – which was as good as gold. Caution was needed – if you suffered an injury during a scuffle or any injury that rendered you unable to fight really, you were in for a hard time. If you got an infection or broken bones during a fight then – well, good luck.

As a result, winter was the time the Reds lost most of its members and emerged in the spring with only a handful of survivors, though they were usually very much the worse for wear. Among that handful would always be present the same few individuals who made it, no matter how tough the conditions had been, year after year. Shepard was one of them.

She remembered the frigid cold, which bit at her skin and stole every ounce of warmth and the freezing wind that blew right through her too few clothes and chilled her to the very marrow of her bones. Nights spent pressing up against once another for body heat, air blowing from between chattering teeth to warm numb fingers. The lucky ones would have torn, aged loafers or thin, tattered slippers to protect their feet - some went barefoot. A friend might share one side of their footwear with them, though.

She remembered dark days when the hours were spent looking for any unwary passer-by to pickpocket for a few credits or a distracted shopkeeper to loot a few morsels from. People would curse and swear and scream their heads off at them over losing a credit or three or a loaf of stale bread. And they did all this while they hung on to their rich winter finery and furs and their expensive Christmas shopping, buying presents for the dozens of family members and friends at home. Not one spared a thought for them, the filthy strays who roamed the cold, grubby streets looking a scrap of discarded food or a place to sleep while they carried on with their comfortable, luxurious lives.

She remembered watching from the shadows of a grimy alleyway as a patrol officer dragged little, screaming Jared after a failed thievery attempt into a police shuttle and taking him away. Sometimes one of their own would be caught and they were hauled off kicking and screaming to the dreaded and much-hated orphanage. Granted, you were given three meals a day and a roof over your head, but that imprisonment and degradation was not worth their freedom – many would rather die on the streets, the only place they had known.

She remembered, when night began to fall, scuffles with other kids from other gangs for territorial rights – clenched fists and drawn switch-blades split the air and pants of exertion manifesting in clouds of white before their faces. She remembered one particularly vicious fight one winter with a rival gang – the Falcons – when she had taken on a boy twice her size while her fellows found opponents of their own. The boy refused to go down, so she had drawn her knife and slashed. The Falcons were forced to sleep in the bitter cold that night, the boy she had fought with missing one eye. She never saw him again after that and could only assume the obvious.

She remembered long nights when the temperature dropped further and they would all huddle together to ward off the unnerving cold. The younger, littler ones usually kept closer to the centre of the group with the elder, more resilient ones towards the fringes to watch for any cut-throat rival gangs that might come and spring them a surprise in their sleep. When morning would finally come, there was a chance it would bring the realisation that one or more of them was not moving and not breathing. She remembered once, going to sleep next to a girl the same age as her – twelve that year – whose name was Madeline. Shepard woke up the next day beside a cold, unyielding body – frozen to death during the night

Life on the streets during winter boiled down to this: if the cold didn't get you, the fights would. If the fights didn't get you, the hunger would. If hunger didn't get you, the authorities would.

Survive or die. A hard and fast rule of the streets.

Shepard let out a heavy sigh, the gush of warm air turning into a massive vapour cloud that enveloped her head as the wind began to blow gently against her face. Her fringe brushes her forehead as her eyes turn to the heavens, cheeks pink from the cold. Times were hard then and the future was dark, especially for a homeless orphan on Earth. Half the time when Shepard woke up to a new day, she wondered if she would still be alive by the end of it.

"Shepard?"

The calling of her name. The crunch of a heavy boot on snow. Shepard shook her head, clearing her mind and turning her thoughts away from those days – they never did her any good.

Instead she reminded herself to focus on what was with her in the here and now, in the present. Looking over her shoulder, she smiled up at a large turian with blue clan markings on his avian face and a battered-looking set of armour that looked like it had seen better days.

"Hey Garrus. Missed me already?"

He gave her the turian equivalent of a smirk – a slight opening of the jaw and a slight flare of the mandibles – as he came closer to stand next to her. "Hardly. I think the team and I have had enough of your stunts during missions without having to put up with them while off-duty."

Shepard returned the smirk. "Says the guy who braved the ice and snow to find his commanding officer in the middle of nowhere on a winter planet. I thought turians didn't like the cold?"

"Says a lot about my courage, doesn't it?" says Garrus in a mock-bragging tone. "Actually, I came to tell you that we'll still be here for a while longer – the problem with the Normandy's communication systems was more complicated than expected. Adams and Tali are doing the best they can but looks like we'll still be stuck here for some time while they fix it."

Shepard could do no more than shrug her shoulders in assent before he continued, "And I… came to see if you were all right, Shepard."

That took her off-guard. "Huh?"

"You… seem a little out of sorts. Is something bothering you?"

"I – " Shepard began, not knowing what to say. He must have noticed her dark brooding from a moment ago. Her shoulders sagged slightly as she seemed to deflate and returned her gaze straight ahead at a cluster of trees. "Nothing. It's nothing." God damn it, why did she have no problem lying to bureaucratic dipshits but sounded like an eight-year-old with their hand caught in the cookie jar when around her crew?

"Doesn't sound like nothing to me," Garrus retorted. "Didn't look like it either."

"I... don't really want to talk about it. " And she was even worse around Garrus specifically. It wasn't as if he was interrogating her, but she sometimes thought that he still had that C-Sec officer I-know-you're-not-telling-me-something-and-you-better-do-it-now aura about him.

Shepard started when she felt a touch on her arm. His flanged voice dropped a few octaves. "Shepard, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

"But I don't – " She automatically tensed but began to relax in spite of herself as he carefully curled his talons around her forearm so that the points didn't touch her skin. His touch was gentle, his voice comforting and his presence warm in the frigid cold. He was her comrade, her companion, her friend. And before she knew what was happening, the words were spilling forth from her unimpeded.

"It's just… I was remembering the last time I had contact with snow. That was more than ten years ago, on Earth when I was still a street orphan and not old enough to be an Alliance recruit yet. Heh." Shepard turned her eyes skywards again, at the same time reaching out with her other hand to lay it over his three-fingered one on her arm. It should have felt weird, it later occurred to her, except it didn't.

"I was in a gang that time, The Reds – I guess you know that. Remember Finch? The braggart who approached us outside Chora's Den? Wanted me to bust out another Reds member, the blockhead. Anyway, winter was the toughest time for us street kids. No food, no shelter – just cold and each other. Lots of us died during winter." She closed her hand over his to feel his reassuring solidness, an anchor to reality. "We fought with other gangs for whatever resources we can get our hands on – sometimes to the death if everyone was being particularly stubborn. Which we usually were, we had to be. You know, survival of the fittest and all that." God, she didn't even know what she was saying any more. It was like her mouth had taken on a mind of its own. But he just stood there silently and listened intently, eyes wide but never leaving her face even though she was not looking at him.

"I think that was when I had my first kill, indirectly. One winter my gang and another gang were having a scuffe and I took out a guy's right eye with a rusty switch-blade – nicked it from an old lady in an antique store, God knows why she had it – and that put him out of the fight. Thing is, it's already hard enough to survive with both your eyes let alone only one. Last time I ever saw him. He could have bled to death during the night or someone else might have finished him off while he was handicapped.

"And then there was this nine-year-old kid with really bright green eyes, he was one of our youngest. He usually got the easier thieving jobs that called for light fingers and fast legs. He could really run, I can tell you that. Best pickpocket we had. But one morning he tried to get a bit too smart and climbed up on to a roof to escape the bakery shop owner – made off with his entire wallet, the little blighter – but slipped on the ice and fell. Twisted his ankle. Wasn't so fast after that." Shepard let out a heavy breath, producing another miniature white cloud.

"Got caught and hauled off to the orphanage. You won't die there like you might on the streets at least, but it's a different kind of hell. You either stay in there until you're old enough that they can kick you back out on your ass anyway or you get adopted and thrown from one foster home to another like a toy. So we knew Jared was safe, but we didn't know if he was okay. Never saw him again either."

Garrus had moved to stand closer to her, so close that they could feel each other's body heat and have the other's breath-cloud-vapour blow in their faces. But neither of them was really bothered.

"Knew a girl named Madeline, same age as me. We got along okay – she was my usual scouting partner. We liked to target this guy selling ship models – I'd cause a big enough commotion while she made off with his creds. Lighting up a firework or two in his shop usually did the trick. Even stole a model from him once, I think. One night - our gang didn't fight so well that night so we ended up sleeping right next to the trash dumps - we just slept beside each other like we sometimes do and I woke up the next morning to find her dead. Guess she wasn't warm enough. Finch became my partner after that. Never was as good as Madeline, too clumsy.

"On most years there was an off chance one of us would catch pneumonia. Once you do, it's pretty much a ticket to a slow death. We'd have no medical supplies nor the creds to get them some so the best we could do was look after them until they died. It's how we lost Ryan one year. He was like our big brother, the one we would always look up to. We did whatever we could; gave him the best shelter, brought him food, but even then he still barked at us to forget about him and look out for ourselves. Not that we listened. But he didn't really listen to us pleading for him to stay either so I guess we're even. That made us grow up a little faster though, I think.

"And if we're unlucky, we'd get into shuttle accidents too. Well, accidents happen all year-round but traffic is particularly high in December – you know, Christmas and New Year and all. Humans are pretty big on those. Anyway, there was this one time; this sweet girl, Ling – really clever one, she was – was just walking down a main pedestrian road. She wasn't even doing anything wrong – okay, maybe looking out for potential targets but that's beside the point – when this asshole driver drunk with too much asari wine was driving his shuttle too low along the ground. And too fast. She couldn't react in time. I saw the authorities doing the clean-up later. Some of her limbs had been stripped off her body and part of her was burnt from the thrusters. Not pleasant."

When had her voice began to shake?

"And – and then there was – "

She was abruptly cut off by Garrus crushing her into a sudden bear hug – or as close to a bear hug as a turian could give, what with their awkward angles and planes and spurs. And she, Commander Shepard, saviour of the galaxy and first human Spectre, found herself bawling her eyes out into her best friend's shoulder.

A/N: Well, Happy New Year, everyone!

I initially planned this to be a one-shot, but it looks like it's getting a bit out of hand (as all my fics seem to get) so a two-shot would seems more appropriate, no? xD At first I retardedly wrote this with the ME2 timeline in mind so instead of Adams and Tali fixing the communications system, it was LEGION and Tali fixing up EDI's comms. Then I realised that in ME1, Shep would have been on Noveria which has... snow. So I amended it to have the timeline set somehwere in ME1. Could be in Noveria or some other winter planet now. Crisis averted. xD

This was written with an Earthborn FemShep in mind. I did some very, very light skimming of the hardships faced by street children when out of juice while writing this and came across something in Wikipedia about how, in really extreme cases, street kids were gunned down by vigilante groups. I was thinking of incorporating that but decided not to in the end for multiple reasons.

Okay now, to bring the subject away from such dark stuff, I would say the next and concluding chapter should come in two weeks max (beware: I am a procrastinator). Until it comes, please do leave a review! It would make this author so, so happy! Did you know, leaving even two or three words is enough to brighten up a writer's day? :D

See ya!

- Kasumi.

P.S.: My brother gave me a glitter lamp as a belated Christmas present today! Basically it's a lava lamp except instead of lava, there's glitter - the kind with large flakes. It's reddish orange. I've always wanted one and now I have one! Though I didn't know about this glitter variant of the lava lamp. Heh, it's far more better glitter than what Bella Swan can ever hope to have... if you know what I mean. ;D

-prepares curbstomp shield from the Twihards-

5/1/2012: Made some adjustments. Added a few sentences to the body.

4/1/2013: Corrected some typo errors. Thanks to Naishu for bringing my attention to them!

16/1/2013: Made more minor correctments and adjustments. It was brought to my attention that some may not recognise that the word 'fringe' is synonymous with 'bangs'. Yup, so if you didn't already know, they both refer to the front part of our hair that's always in our eyes. xD