DISCLAIMER: I don't own Mass Effect, its characters or anything else associated with it. Everything belongs to BioWare and EA (unfortunately...). I'm simply paying tribute to one of the greatest universes in modern gaming history and my absolute favorite couple in the Mass Effect Trilogy (and gaming in general): Commander Shepard and Tali'Zorah vas Normandy.

Also, I don't own the cover image (just my author name and the story title, haha. Oh, and the image effects). It's by a lovely artist on DeviantArt named *neehs, and I'm simply using it because it's just that awesome (plus I think it matches the tone of this short collection in some chapters). Please go check out his work!

SPOILER WARNING: For those who have not had the pleasure of playing the new Citadel DLC, there are some major spoilers in this chapter and in future ones to come. Best skip to the next chapter (when it's released) if you want to remain in suspense. On that note, do yourself a favor and go download Citadel already. It's absolutely brilliant and a beautiful send-off to some of the most beloved characters ever!

-Picking Up the Pieces-

-Present Day
Citadel, Silversun Strip, Tiberius Towers

Aedan Shepard felt a slight kick to his shin, but his sleep-addled senses barely registered it. His heavy eyelids fluttered open to a pitch black, quiet room. Instinctively, he started to rise. Instead, he felt the entire left side of his body ensnared by a familiar pair of arms. Arms, with three-fingered, gloved hands.

At first he thought he was back in his cabin aboard the Normandy SR-2, but then everything came back to him.

Bedroom, fancy sheets and walls...Anderson's apartment, that's right. We're all on shore leave.

The unfamiliar words "shore leave" brought back a rush of memories. By this time, his mind was almost fully alert. He remembered it all.

Oh yeah, that's right. That party Joker had more or less "suggested" I put together.

To say the small get-together he hosted for his crew had been a success would be a gross understatement. From Miranda and Jack's awkward sexual tension, watching Grunt turn curious neighbors away (and later end up in the shower a damp, rambling mess), watching James be lifted off of his feet by Liara's biotics, dancing with Tali, Garrus, and the rest of his friends...

In short, it had been one of the best nights of his life.

Another swift whack to his side, along with the pressure around his chest tightening like an old-fashioned letterpress, jarred him out of his thoughts.

Aedan grinned as he looked over at the sleeping quarian who had captured his heart. She was doing that thing again where she would unknowingly kick him in his sleep. It was annoying sometimes, but he never had it in him to bring it up when she was awake.

She's too damned cute for her own good, he thought with a wistful smile.

Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, the quarian admiral who not only helped her people reclaim their homeworld, but also now represented them as their unofficial ambassador, grumbled something incoherent in her sleep as she rolled over. She loosened her grip on Aedan just enough for him to slide out of her grasp. He gingerly sat up, gave his girlfriend a small peck on her visor where her cheek should be, and carefully lowered his feet to the wooden floor.

He really needed some water; his throat felt drier than the wastelands of Tuchanka.

Padding along the floor on the balls of his feet, he walked as silently as he could through the master bedroom. He muffled a few curses when he tripped over a dozen beer bottles someone had left lying around. To his relief, Tali didn't so much as stir.

Aedan tiptoed into the darkened bathroom, listening to the bubbling of the luxurious Jacuzzi as he shut the door. He turned on the light, grabbed a cup off the sink, and poured himself some crisp, cold water.

He delightfully sighed as he put the cup back down; his throat refreshed. He turned the water back on to splash some water on his face. The cleansing liquid felt great against his pale complexion. He stared at his haggard appearance and the dark rings under his eyes as he reached for a towel.

His parents once mentioned, when he was young, that both sides of the family hailed from America, but he also had family lines tracing back to England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Italy, and even Belgium, supposedly. Not that he had ever seen any of those places, being a colonist kid and all.

Nor will I, probably, thanks to recent events, he grimaced. He shoved that unpleasant thoughts back down into his subconscious before he could dwell on it further.

Aedan had inherited his father's rugged facial structure and thick brunette hair (which he kept trimmed to military regulations, though he did grow it out a bit so that he had short-bangs. He never was a fan of buzz cuts like some of the other recruits that enlisted with the Alliance). He had even grown a beard like his old man used to wear, in place of his usually clean-shaven face. But his gentle, azure eyes were his mother's. They had a touch of dullness to them now though; weary from nearly a decade of military service. It seemed like each time he looked at himself in the mirror, he recognized himself less and less.

Not surprising, considering we're still at war...

The thoughts started again. Those of Earth and Palaven, of Thessia and the countless other worlds that were being ravaged by the Reapers even now. Every second he spent staring at himself in the mirror, he knew the casualty count continued to climb in to the trillions and beyond. He practically fought Admiral Hackett and Anderson when they suggested he and the crew take some time for a little shore leave on the Citadel.

-Several Days Ago
Systems Alliance Frigate Normandy SR-2, War Room

"Commander, I understand your concerns, but trust me when I say we need more time to gather the fleets for a swift strike against Cerberus' base of operations. That'll take awhile."

"But sir, what about the Crucible?" Shepard asked.

"We have all the help we're going to get with the Crucible right now. Nothing else you can do will speed things up. It's all up to us now."

He paused for a moment, arms folded and a hand gripping his chin in thought. "Besides, I have a feeling that such a large concentration of our forces will alert the Reapers to our intentions. If that happens, we'll have no choice but to launch our final offensive against them. This very well might be the beginning of the end, Commander. And if that's the case, I need you and your crew fully rested and ready for duty. That includes the Normandy, too. While you're on the Citadel, I'll have an Alliance team finish retrofitting anything that wasn't finished on Earth. So until we send word, consider yourselves on shore leave. I heard Admiral Anderson has a nice apartment on the Citadel. He told me to tell you it's all yours now."

"But—"

"No 'but's,' Shepard. You've rallied the entire galaxy to the cause. You've done everything we've asked and more. Now go to the Citadel, and get some rest. That's an order, Commander. From me, and from Anderson. Hackett out."

Aedan finally relented after that, albeit grudgingly. Though he hated to admit it, Hackett had been right. He needed this just as much as the crew did, especially after Thessia and Horizon. True, finding out that Cerberus had illegally cloned you and having to fight said-clone over your very identity and ship didn't exactly qualify as "relaxing" by civilian standards. But that was all in a day's work for the Normandy crew. At least spending time with the crew the past few days had been enjoyable.

Speaking of the crew...

Curious, Aedan accessed the security footage in the entire apartment by using his mirror's built-in holographic interface. The system could be even linked directly to his omni-tool. What he saw had him covering his mouth, shaking from fits of laughter.

Zaeed, the hardass tough-as-nails mercenary, was curled up on the landing above the living room, cradling his treasured Lancer assault rifle he called "Jesse" in a death grip. Garrus was slumped up against the wall nearby, snoring loudly. Miranda and Jack were nowhere to be found, curiously enough (along with Kasumi, though Aedan wasn't surprised). However, he noticed that the door to the guest bedroom on the second floor was shut, most likely with Grunt still passed out inside the shower.

What a wake-up call that'll be, he grinned.

Most of the crew (namely Liara, Kaiden, Jacob, Cortez, and James) had crashed on some of the couches and chairs on both floors. Joker was fast asleep on the couch near the piano, holding onto EDI, who was at least feigning sleep for Joker's sake. Interestingly enough, Specialist Traynor was at the foot of their couch, right near EDI. Aedan shuddered; he really didn't need to know why she was so close.

When he checked the final camera above the bar, he was amused to see that Wrex and Javik were still awake. The two of them were sitting with drinks in hand, talking quietly. The feed didn't have audio, but if their expressions were any indication, Aedan had a feeling they were swapping war stories.

He was glad Javik had become more open with the crew. He couldn't imagine what a culture shock waking up 50,000 years later must have been, especially when you find out the species you once thought of as "primitive" was ruling the galaxy.

We got humans, an asari, a krogan, a turian, a quarian, an AI, and now even a Prothean all under one roof, Aedan grinned. We're quite the group. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

After checking the time (4:52 AM Citadel time), Aedan stifled a yawn and shut off the bathroom light. Several memories, some from the hunt for Saren, and some more recent, flashed in his mind's eye as he slid back into the comfortable covers of the bed.

It's funny, he thought, as he stared up at the ceiling. Eight months ago we did the impossible and traveled though the Omega-4 Relay, wiped out the Collectors and their base, and came back alive with no casualties at all. If someone told me then we'd be where we are right now, I would have called them crazy. But then again, chasing after a rogue Spectre and fighting a Reaper wasn't exactly what I envisioned doing when I completed N7 training.

The subject of Sovereign and its Reaper brethren darkened his thoughts again. I thought we had more time to prepare; that the sacrifice I made in the Bahak System would have paid off far longer than six short months.

He gave a remorseful sigh as he recalled Bahak, along with the 300,000 batarians he condemned to death by destroying the Alpha Relay. More than that, he thought about the fallout. He had been court-marshaled and confined to Alliance HQ on Earth. Not only that, but he was stripped of his rank and ship. His team, his family, was forced to disband.

It was his own personal hell.

Those six months, spent in near-isolation, had been some of the worst times of his life. The only thing that could compare was when Batarian slavers raided his home colony and slaughtered his parents and little sister. That had happened when he was only ten years old. Until Anderson and the original Normandy, he kept everyone at arm's reach. It wasn't until those excruciating few months in solitary that he realized just how much he depended on his friends. They truly were his family; his home.

To the galaxy at large he was the fearless Commander Shepard. Reaper-Killer. Collector-Destroyer. Hero of Elysium and the Citadel. Council Spectre. The last, best hope for humanity and the entire Milky Way.

If only they knew the real Shepard; the one with insecurities, survivor's guilt, PTSD, even a hard liquor problem. Karin Chakwas probably knew a few more things she could diagnose him with, but those were what immediately came to mind.

But that was Aedan. Aedan wasn't Commander Shepard. Shepard was a symbol; an incorruptible force that had no limits. Shepard was the Paragon of his race; the best humanity had to offer the rest of the galaxy. Whenever he was in public, aboard the Normandy or leading his crew through bullets and hell-fire, he was Commander Shepard.

Only a precious few individuals, ones he could count on one hand, knew the simple human known as Aedan. Only four of them truly knew who he was, deep down. One was his best friend, brother in all but blood, and unofficial XO (despite his protests) all rolled into one. Two others were like a mother and father to him; one was at Huerta Memorial right now treating refugees, while the other was fighting on Earth. The final one; the one who mattered the most, was the angelic woman sleeping beside him.

Aedan, unlike Shepard, didn't know if the galaxy would survive the Reapers. But that was something he'd worry about later. For now, he would simply treasure the solace he can only find in the warm embrace of his quarian engineer. It was her opinion that he valued at the end of it all. Tali had seen almost every side of Aedan.

She had seen him at his best—laughing and joking with the crew, celebrating an impossible triumph over the Collectors with food, music and stories.

She had seen him at his worst—a bottle of whiskey in one hand, eyes bloodshot and wet with fresh tears. His M-6 Carnifex pistol near his trembling hand. The wall above the couch smoking from the fresh bullet lodged into it-

He took a chance by letting her inside his heart. She had come to know him far deeper than anyone else in his entire life since that day on Mindoir. And, despite his fear that she would leave him, like many others had before, she stayed. She stayed, and he loved her all the more for it.

"Mmm...eeemergency, induction...port...awesome sauce..."

Aedan couldn't help but chuckle. He kissed Tali's visor one more time before snaking his arms around her. He sighed as he felt her body instictively mold itself against his.

No matter how horrid this war's been, at least it brought me back to her. He smiled as he closed his eyes, burying his face into the pillows.

For all the pain and misery I've endured since Eden Prime all those years ago, she's totally worth it.

Well, not too bad for my first crack at the Mass Effect universe (at least I thought so. Let me know what you all thought in a review!). Honestly, I had a hard time with this one, as it more or less serves as an intro to the meatier stuff that I really want to write.

As you've probably figured out by now if you've played the new Citadel DLC, the "present" takes place just after the party in Shepard's swanky apartment. From here on, I'll be turning back the clock and examining moments in ME3 mainly centered around the relationship between Tali and my Shepard, Aedan (and yes, DA:O fans who played as a human noble will get the reference. What can I say? I love that game!).

So far I have this small story set at fifteen chapters, according to my outline. Originally I was going to simply write a one-shot, but then I played the new DLC, and ideas came to me...

Again, let me know what you guys think in a review. I'm hoping to post the next short within the next week, as its one of the ones I've been dying to put down into text, but please check my author profile for periodic progress updates. Thanks for reading, until next time!

-Sheik