Hi there :). First off, I would like to thank all of you for the reviews/follows on this story. I really just threw this story together for fun, and to get feedback is just super cool. I know the last chapter gave very little to go on with this story, and I'm not sure this chapter is really any better haha. I guess I'm trying to take it slow :P. I wasn't really sure about this chapter when I started it, and I'm still not quite sure about how much I like it, but I hope you guys do. I'll try to update this again soon, but unfortunately classes have started up for me again, and apparently science stops for no one. With what free time I have, I'll be writing/updating as quick as I can. Have a lovely rest of the weekend, and I hope to see you guys soon :)

Chapter 1

Rory Shepard was burning. Her insides and outsides felt ablaze in a way that made her certain she must have finally made it to hell. She wanted to scream but everything she had seemed to be caught in her throat, swallowed by the smoke. She couldn't seem to bring herself to even form a thought, and finally after what felt like years she gave in to the pain, letting it engulf her until it was all she knew.

Then the pain was gone, and she was just...warm. Warmer than she had ever felt in her entire life. The only thing she could compare it to was the warmth she felt when she was with Liara, but even that didn't feel anything like this. It didn't feel possible...Where did the pain go?

Her senses started to come back to her, and she realized for the first time that she was breathing. The scent that filled her with every breath was so familiar to her, but she couldn't place it. She took a breath, then another. She knew she recognized the smell but...no it couldn't be, it smelt like...Mindoir.

Her eyes flew open. She squinted as they were met by bright light, and soon her eyes adjusted to find a cloudless blue sky. She expected there to be pain as she tried to sit up, but to her surprise she raised herself into a sitting position with ease. She looked around her to find that she was on a small hill overlooking a field, and beyond that a settlement. After a moment she realized she recognized the buildings. It was the settlement she grew up in on Mindoir, her family's farm was a half mile south of the town behind the trees in the distance. But it hadn't looked like this since before the batarian attack.

Shepard knew she must be dreaming, but she never had a dream that felt this...real. Her hands flew to her face as if somehow checking every feature would prove to her that this was a dream. She checked for injuries, perhaps for signs of head trauma but everything felt alright. Except, suddenly, she realized that she couldn't find her usual scar across her left eyebrow. Shepard immediately lifted up her shirt to find that the small circle shaped scar she had received from a bullet wound had disappeared from its usual place near her hip bone. And her clothes...she was wearing worn out jeans and a t-shirt, clothes she hasn't worn since she was a teenager on Mindoir.

"What the fuck?" She exclaimed as it all came back to her. Earth. The Crucible. The Citadel. The Catalyst. Her choice. The burning. Was she knocked out or was she dead? She started to panic as her mind spun away from her.

"Shepard."

She froze. She knew that voice. It had haunted her dreams whenever she was lucky enough to even able to fall asleep. Well at least I know its probably a dream now.

Rory looked behind her to find him walking towards her, wearing a white Alliance casual t-shirt and dark pants. She also noticed that he was carrying two beers.

"Kaidan?" She found herself asking, like she wasn't already fully aware of who was coming towards her.

"C'mon Commander, you know you can't a forget a face like this." He sat down next to her in the grass as he proceeded to laugh at his own joke. She had almost forgotten his laugh, it reminded her of down time on the original Normandy in the mess hall when they would sit with Ashley and play cards.

"Don't flatter yourself." She shot back automatically. Everyone had always thought of Kaidan as being serious, but Shepard knew once you got to know him it was impossible not to joke with him.

"Well we both know I'm not blue enough for your liking anyway." He smiled at her as she laughed. Everything about him was exactly as she remembered. His brown eyes, his hair, his laugh, his voice. It was all so real, she couldn't even begin to believe it.

"Here, I brought you this." Kaidan twisted one of the beers open and handed it to her. "It's uh...a Canadian lager, I hope you like it."

She thanked him as she took the beer and took a sip. To his credit it tasted fantastic, though that could just be because she hadn't had a real beer in awhile. Somehow anything at Afterlife or Purgatory just didn't match up. She couldn't help but take in her surroundings as they sat and sipped their beers.

Everything around her reminded of her childhood. The big trees in the distance that she used to climb with her brothers. How she would walk into the main town with her mother to sell and trade what they grew on their farm. How she used to skip school with her friends and do nothing but lounge and skip rocks by the river. And how mad her father used to be when he found out. He would make her do chores all day, and later she would hear him laughing with her mother about how sometimes she was somehow more trouble than all three of her brothers combined.

Sometimes she couldn't believe that she was the same person as that girl who lived on a simple farm with her normal family. She almost had forced herself to forget that her younger self had even existed, it was too painful to even revisit the memories. She couldn't remember the good ones without going back to the old ones, so why bother? She had trained herself not to care. She honestly hadn't even known she remembered them until she sat here with Kaidan looking over the very place where that person had existed.

"It's a beautiful view." Kaidan said, finally breaking Shepard out of her thoughts.

"It is." She agreed. "It's so strange, I had almost forgotten how beautiful it was here. After all that destruction..."

"You shouldn't let the tragedy keep you from remembering what was really there." He said thoughtfully. She realized she couldn't tell if he was talking about Mindoir anymore or Virmire. She knew that even though this was probably a dream she now had a chance to say what she never could. She was always close to Kaidan, always felt she could confide in him, and somehow him sitting next to her allowed her to be more honest with herself.

"Kaidan I'm so sor-"

"I know Shepard." He cut her off. "C'mon, you should know I would never blame you for that. And it's a sacrifice I was willing to make, I mean look at where it got us, you blew those Reapers to hell."

I what? As a light breeze it her face everything was suddenly starting to feel all too real. She didn't even know what happened...how could Kaidan?

"Kaidan, is this..." She couldn't even finish the sentence, she wasn't sure she could even begin to let herself believe it.

"Is this what Commander?" He asked her with that same smile.

Heaven...

She wanted to say it so badly, have him confirm it for her. She wasn't even sure if it would make her happy or sad to hear a "yes" from him. Is it where she would want to be? In the past she heard others talk about it, and she would have loved to believe it herself, but she always thought a heaven was too much to hope for, especially for her. She decided to take a long swig of her beer in place of answering his question.

"You made the right decision." Kaidan said, his voice as calm and steady as ever.

"Which decision?" she asked. Was it Virmire? The Catalyst? The Alpha Relay? All her decisions came with a serious price, Shepard didn't know if she could ever feel totally sure that any of her choices were the right ones.

"You made the right decision." All he did was repeat himself and turned his head back toward the view of her old home.

Shepard sighed in frustration. "You always did think you were pretty fucking deep didn't you Alenko?"

"With all due respect Shep, even Wrex is deep compared to you." There he goes making her laugh again.

Shepard couldn't remember a time where she felt like this-so carefree. She knew she should be concerned about exactly where she was, but for some reason she couldn't bring herself to care. What could beat feeling this warm? Or sitting with a close friend drinking a beer in a place that was as beautiful as this?

"You know Alenko, I could get used to this." She sighed as she leaned back and closed her eyes, relishing the breeze.

"You can't."

"Why? Got somewhere to be Lieutenant?" Shepard responded lazily not even bothering to open her eyes.

"No I don't," Kaidan said softly as he started to get up. "but you do."

"What do you mean? I thought you said I blew the Reapers to hell."

"We both know you're not ready Shepard, there's still more things you need to do." He said as he helped her get to her feet. "People that need you."

Liara. Rory Shepard understood then that she wasn't going to staying here...wherever that was.

"Tell her and Ash I say hi okay?" His face actually started to look sad, and Shepard knew he was about to leave. She didn't want him to, but something inside her stopped her from asking him to stay.

"I...I miss you Kaidan." Shep felt her eyes start to sting with her rare display of emotion, but she couldn't hold it back. "We all do."

"Me too. You were always more than just a Commander to me Shepard, you're my friend." he told her while he actually pulled her into a hug. Shepard was never much of a hugger but she made the exception just this once. He felt so warm and so real, all her suspicions about this being a dream

"I don't know where you're going," Shepard said so softly she wasn't sure Kaidan would even hear it as he started to walk away. "or if this is even real or some really fucked up dream. And I don't know if they are even there...but could you tell my family just... that I love them, and I haven't forgotten about them?" The tears started to pool in her eyes and were dangerously threatening to spill over, and she couldn't bring herself to say anything else.

"Yeah, I will." Kaidan said like it was the simplest goddamn thing in the world. "I'll be seeing you...Victoria."

The tears finally spilled as her friend shot her one last smile before walking away and disappearing into the trees. The last time Shepard had been called by her birth name she was 16, and she had changed it to her nickname Rory the moment the Alliance marine who rescued her had asked for her name. No one knew the name except her family, not even Liara. She had almost forgotten that she had ever been called that name at all.

She didn't know where exactly she was, or why she was here. Maybe she really could never know for sure if this was real or not, but what she did know was that she was ready for whatever came next.

Shepard sat down again to look over what was once her home one last time. She had a new home now, and it was time for Rory to go back to her. She could feel the pain starting to creep up through her limbs again. The warmth began to turn back to burning, the comfort to agonizing pain. The clear blue sky of Mindoir was starting to blur as she started to struggle more and more with the pain. And as Commander Victoria "Rory" Shepard began to feel herself give into it and pass out she remembered one of the last things Garrus said to her before they made their way to the beam:

"May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows your dead."