There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.

Lewis Carroll

Back aboard the vacant, quiet Normandy, I changed out of my armor and into my fatigues. My asari dinner had been good, even if I couldn't technically pronounce or understand exactly what I had been eating. I was assured that I wouldn't be killed by it, and even though I had my order doubled, I still wasn't necessarily full. I don't think any active biotic ever really felt not hungry. Just a spectrum of hunger, a perpetually pubescent appetite, ranging from I'm not hungry, but I could eat something to absolute catatonic coma. My father had a hard enough time making sure I had been getting enough to eat when I was 16 and gaining two inches of height a semester without the additional challenge of feeding a fledgling biotic.

Now I was twenty-eight, nine, twenty-nine, and still trying to find a way to eat three thousand calories on a rest day. I had mostly just given up on variety in my diet and had given into Alliance issue nutraloaf to keep costs down. But I had noticed that Kaidan had resisted succumbing to my fate and still ate a variety of food, just more of it than the rest of the crew. I admired his tenacity.

I sat down at the table in the mess with my neatly boxed free chocolate cheesecake with extra sprinkles, brutally aware of the quiet. My cover was finally blown once I had to present the woman across the counter my ID so she could confirm it really was my ESD birthday. Once she realized that I was indeed that Commander Shepard, she would only let me leave if I accepted an entire cake from her. I didn't put up much of a fight.

I had the cake in front of me. It wouldn't keep very long, and even if I could easily eat the entire thing by myself, it seemed rather selfish.

Maybe I felt uneasy about having an entire cake because I was sitting alone on a practically empty ship. Most of the Alliance engineers that had come on board for service had left at the end of their shift. Even Dr. Chakwas had gone out to the Citadel and, by the fact the lights were dim in the medbay, she wasn't back yet.

But I was no stranger to empty ships. I actually enjoyed the solitude, but in a different way than I enjoyed being on a fully-staffed ship. I liked the feeling of being one of the only people on board, like the ship was mine in the same way a child likes being the only one in their quarters when their parents are away.

Maybe it was the lack of candles that was bothering me. But there were no open flames allowed anywhere near a ship, so unless I wanted to peel off some of the straws from Tali's pre-packaged meals to stuff into the cake for effect, I was just going to have to do without. And messing with a quarian's food induction method was probably a good way to get them killed.

What was Tali doing? She might be down in the drive core still. I wouldn't blame her if she didn't want to leave for the Citadel. After all, she wouldn't be able to get on the Presidium without me, and I didn't think she was about to go wandering the Wards any time soon after nearly being assassinated. Being on the Normandy was dangerous enough, what with me planning to contaminate her supplies with food she shouldn't eat. It was disappointing I couldn't even share part of my cake with her.

Wait.

That was it.

I looked down at my free cake. Somehow, I didn't even feel remotely hungry anymore.

What was the point in having an entire birthday cake without anyone to share it with? Wasn't that the point of recognizing a birthday, to have a celebration? I would have been perfectly content with a single slice. Why did that woman have to insist on giving me an entire cake?

Somewhere on the Citadel, the crew was probably celebrating someone's belated birthday, staking claim to some corner of the bar as their own, raising their glasses in toasts and cheers.

Maybe Joker would want some? Bringing him one would probably make him feel uncomfortable. Maybe I would save him a slice, label it with his name, and stick it in the deep freeze for him to find later.

I remember some of the best advice my mother ever gave me. I had just finished my technical degree and was awarded my commission. My mother told warned me, in a way so vague I couldn't understand what she had been implying, about how there is loneliness in command. But I understood it now. The more people who serve under you, the less there are that serve with you. And the better leader you are, the more pride and relief your subordinates feel when they stand beside you. But once you're the person that they rely on support, you give up that feeling of relief for responsibility, and the privilege of command becomes a lonely burden.

I wish I had understood then what she had been trying to tell me.

I put down my fork and sighed. If I waited another two hours, I'd be hungry enough to just eat the whole damn cake and be done with it.

"Shepard," a familiar turian voice said, distracting me from my thoughts. I could recognize surprise in his higher register. "I thought you left for the Citadel?"

I look over gracelessly to my right. Garrus was walking over to where I was sitting. I hadn't noticed anyone exit the elevator.

"Just for a few hours," I replied, trying to look relaxed in my chair. "Why didn't you leave?"

"I came aboard the Normandy to get away from the Citadel," he replied dryly. I gave him an appraising look that I don't think he noticed. I wondered what was drove him more to join the mission, wanting to make Saren pay for eluding his investigation, or his desire to get away from C-Sec?

"Is everyone else gone?"

"Tali went out earlier with the crew from engineering earlier," he said, motioning over his shoulder.

"That's good that she got off the ship for a while," I said. Garrus pulled out the seat across from me and sat down. "No real point on going on a Pilgrimage just to be stuck on another ship."

"Is Liara still here?" he asked.

I nodded. "She's sleeping. We were going over data before I left."

He nodded, his face shifting into what I assumed was an expression of acquiescence. But his gaze was fixed on my cake. I looked down at it, untouched by any eager fork, and looked back up at him.

"Is that a whole cake?"

"Maybe."

His brows came together. "Why do you have a whole cake?"

"Well, why not? Why don't you?" I retorted, trying to sound playfully offended. He glanced up to see if I was serious or upset. I wasn't, and after a moment he just flared his face at me.

It was so strange how easy it seemed to be to read people that weren't even my species. I remember talking with Lieutenant Alenko before, about the revelation of how 'human' the other species were. I wondered how relatable we were to them and at the same time how inscrutable?

When all humans were earthbound, there were deep separations between cultures. But most had evaporated and reformed as divides between different species once humans had hit the galactic stage. Old Earth conflicts of religion and economy seem petty in comparison to planetary rights and contact wars. And even those divides between organic species seemed just as insignificant after Eden Prime and seeing the destruction of the protheans by synthetics. How it repeated over and over again in my mind. Wandering the Citadel had at least helped for a little while.

I was getting to know and understand all of my crew. But out of everyone I was serving with, even if I had to learn new nuisances and expressions of faces I wasn't biologically or culturally equipped to understand, the non-humans I had brought aboard the Normandy were easier for me to understand than any human. There was a candor I held with the four of them, Wrex, Tali, Liara, and Garrus, that I had found impossible to build with anyone from my own species for years.

Perhaps it was because I held no official rank over them, or perhaps they were forced to be more guarded and friendly aboard an Alliance ship. Maybe they didn't already feel like they had me figured out by my service record. Whatever the reason, even if I got along well with my human crew, there was something so easy about talking with the four of them. Sure, it would be easier for me to offend them on accident, but any offense would come with the kind of forgiveness that was required of comrades from across cultures. The effort made the experience of communication all the more worthwhile. And the more time I spent with them, the more I felt like they were just easy to be around. I was beginning feel like I belonged on my own ship.

I had received plenty of training in linguistics, cross-species communication, culture, and ignoring anthropocentric biases, but most of it had been from a diplomatic and xeno-anthropology angle. I remember there were a few others who failed to see the value in such education and they had been gently released from the ICT program. Learning how to read and interact with humans was important, but out in Alliance space and beyond, being able to communicate with all races without causing a political incident was paramount. Being able to call a batarian pirate on a bluff could mean the difference between diffusing a hostage situation or watching hostages get spaced.

It was always interesting to see the things I learned in training pan out. I studied Garrus, the minor movements of his brow and the sides of his face, the inflections in his voice – all the signs were all there when you knew how to look. Humans used their eyes and their mouths to send sensitive signals. Turians did all the same things humans did; they just did things a little bit differently.

I picked up my fork again and shrugged. "Turians celebrate birthdays too, right?"

Garrus leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in his lap. "Well, sure. Someone's fifteenth birthday is usually a big deal. But you always have some who aren't into the whole idea of birthdays."

"Same with humans," I said.

"There was always the occasional office party back at C-Sec," he told me. "You humans were usually the ones that insisted on trying to sing about it, though," he said, pointing at me. I laughed.

"Well, according to the solar year back on Earth, today is my birthday," I admitted. "I got the cake free from the Citadel."

"Really?" he asked, sounding surprised. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. "I didn't suspect you as being into this sort of thing."

"I'm not, normally. But why pass up the opportunity for free food? It was just supposed to be a free slice," I said in a hushed voice. "But when I showed my ID, the woman working found out who I was and made me take the whole thing."

"Abusing your Spectre status already, Commander?" he chided. "At least now you have enough to share. I assume you were planning on sharing."

I gave him a wry grin before I realized my mistake and moved to apologize. "Oh! I didn't even think to bring back something you could have."

He held out his hand to stop me from getting upset. "Don't worry, I'm good." He leaned back in his chair and grinned. "You should try it," he said. "Just don't expect me to sing. I'm really over that."

"That's fine," I said, trying not to imagine what a turian would sound like trying to perform a song that even humans could hardly sing correctly. And with only slight trepidation, I tried a bite of my chocolate cheesecake with extra Spectre birthday sprinkles. And even if it meant I was another year older, this birthday had turned out pretty darn good. Although I suspected, as I watched Garrus' amused expression as I made a show of how delicious my cake was, that it was only good because I had someone to share it with.