A slightly (read: much) shorter chapter as I try to work through the next one. Hannah Shepard is not easy to write. At all. Anyway, it might be a bit before the next chapter is up while I work through getting her to do what I tell her and not go on a small rampage on the new Turian crew of the Normandy. That said, I'm also considering writing a small piece about both of Shepard's funerals, along the lines of 'A Lucky Woman', either from Hannah's or Liara's POV. I don't have anything but basic notes on them now, but if you want to see them, I might just write them (I might anyway, to try and jumpstart Hannah Shepard into cooperating). And after that stupidly long Authors Note: Chapter 7.


Half an hour later, Shepard had made a minor comeback, but not enough to quell the oncoming force of both Amerra and Williams.

"I don't know why you continue to play against me, Commander. I always win."

"I always win..."

"I always win, ma'am."

"And it's just Shepard," the Spectre amended, collecting her cards from the table and throwing them into the pile in front of Ashley.

"Com- I mean, uh... Spectre? Shepard? Whatever. There's a message coming through for you from Admiral Hackett." Joker's voice cut through the banter.

"I'll be there in a minute," Shepard said, standing. "Liara, make 'em pay." For half a second Liara thought Shepard was going to kiss her, and for twice as long Shepard considered doing so, but she settled for squeezing her hand, and casting a dark look at Williams. The other human laughed, and dealt Liara into the next hand.

Shepard made her way back up to the CIC, and then to the comm room. They had pulled the conference table out, and Traynor had mentioned they'd been in the process of upgrading to the newest version of the Quantum Entanglement Communicators. She'd also mentioned, while she and the Spectre had been discussing the finer points of quantum mechanics, that they'd been in the process of moving the whole system from its original location and setting up a command center. For the moment, though, communications were still where it had been when she'd contacted the Illusive Man just sans the, she often thought impressive, sinking table, though most of the updates had been completed. They could contact Earth, for instance. She stepped into the scanner, and smiled as Hackett appeared before her.

"Sir," she said, saluting out of habit, "you wanted to speak with me."

Hackett didn't return the salute, but nodded, "Yes. I've heard reports that Dr. T'Soni has acquired some building materials for our current project."

"Yes. They'll be loaded up in the next thirty hours, and we should be at the project base within the next three days. It's mostly raw ore, from what I understand, though she has some electrical work ups from a salarian science team that she believes will be useful."

"Right. About that. I've been doing what I could, and I know Anderson's been at the Alliance Council for days, but unfortunately, there is a still an arrest-on-sight order for you within Alliance Space."

"Ah," Shepard answered, shoulders sagging, "and I take that to mean that you are building the device inside Alliance space." She'd known about the order for over a week now, but hearing that the organization that she had pledged her life to, that her parents had, that her father had given his life for, was seeking her arrest was not something she cherished. Even if she knew that it was the only option they had available, considering the nature of her departure.

"Exactly. I'm not about to turn away help, but you showing up here might just make an intergalactic scene, and I'm sure we've both had enough of those to last us a few years."

"That's an understatement, sir. I'll head to the Citadel, send the team on without me. I have things I need to do there anyway."

"That is a possibility, however, I might have a better suggestion." His tone said that by suggestion, he meant order.

"Sir?"

Hackett frowned, and picked a datapad up from a table she couldn't see. He read over it for a minute, then nodded and looked back up at her. "The Orizaba isn't far from your location. I've already talked to them, and they've agreed to handle the transfer of your cargo. They've also agreed to ignore your arrest warrant."

"How did you convince my mother of that?" Shepard laughed, "Last I heard from her, she was more than a little upset with me. Something about not telling her I was alive."

Hackett smiled, "It was fairly easy, actually. I can pull rank with her."

Shepard chuckled, and shook her head. "Send us the coordinates and as soon as everything is cleared here, we'll head that way. And tell Anderson not to be too hard on anyone, it's strangely liberating to not be beholden to the Alliance." She'd have liked to have her dress blues back in the closet, and she missed the comforting weight of her dog tags around her neck – she'd even settle for the ones Cerberus had issued her – but none of that was worth Anderson getting in trouble of her behalf.

"You're still human, Shepard," Hackett warned.

"Yes, sir. But then, so's Cerberus."

"Point taken, Shepard. Hackett out."

The connection ended, and Shepard stared at her own feet for a moment. She was on good terms with her mother, but she suddenly felt like she was fifteen again and had failed her history test. She had a feeling she was in for one hell of a lecture.


Liara sighed, stretching as she walked off the elevator. After Shepard had left, she'd proceeded to win back most of what Shepard had lost before Glyph had paged her with a message from Feron. The rest of her afternoon had been spent in her office, and she thought she should probably be there still. Between arranging things for Feron and dealing with her spies on Omega – who reported that Aria had not taken the news of Cerberus' planned attack well – she was finally remembering why she'd been secretly glad that the comm buoy's destruction had eliminated her access to her galactic network after the war. She was fairly sure she'd have ended up a quivering pile of goo had she needed to handle her job as the Shadow Broker and the stress of being a new, single, mother at the same time. It was hard enough now balancing what she needed to do, and what she wanted. Need had taken precedence before, when time had been their enemy. It wasn't exactly their friend now, but she only felt a tiny pull to return to her office and continue working.

And it was easy enough to ignore.

She slipped into the loft, shrugging out of her lab coat as she did. She wasn't sure why she wore it on-board, it wasn't as if she was suddenly going to discover some hidden Prothean ruins in the cargo hold, but she felt strangely under-dressed if she walked around in her shirt sleeves.

She could hear the shower running, and briefly considered joining Shepard, but the hot water, a highly controlled commodity on the ship, tended to run out when she did. She hung the coat up, then started picking up Shepard's clothes where they had been discarded around the room. Shepard was fairly good about cleaning up after herself eventually, but Liara had found that the eternal tidy state of this room that she remembered had been an illusion. Shepard only cleaned up if she was expecting company or when she left for the day. Liara had stopped being 'company' over a week ago.

She dropped Shepard's clothes into the hamper, and quickly stripped herself and tossed her own clothes in with them. She glanced at the chronometer on the bedside table, it was technically tomorrow, threw on her nightclothes and climbed into bed. She pulled a datapad from the pile of them on her bedside table and went back to work. She had forgotten how much her life had revolved around stolen moments with Shepard, being shot at, and work, before. Now, she had yet to be shot at, and she hardly felt like her time with Shepard was stolen anymore, but work still took up most of her time. Even her downtime. Even when she should be sleeping.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there when Shepard finally walked out of the bathroom. Wasn't really sure how long the shower had been off, she just suddenly felt the weight of Shepard's gaze on her. She felt the warm hum in the base of her neck that she always associated with Shepard. Her spine seemed to resonate much like it did when they joined whenever Shepard was thinking of her, or was moving towards her. It had bugged her, during the war the first time, but it had been like losing a limb when Shepard had died. She'd known, as she raced to the field hospital on the battlefield, the moment Shepard's heart had stopped beating. She savored the feeling now, even if she didn't focus too much on it. When she did, she could feel Shepard's presence, her relative position to herself, and that felt a bit like an invasion of privacy.

She looked up from her datapad, a smile tugging at her lips. Shepard was leaning against the bathroom door frame, sporting a fluffy white towel, her wet hair plastered to her face. She smiled back, but Liara caught a tension in it that didn't fit the relaxed pose she held.

"I truly think that you'd get your way more often if you went around dressed like that," Liara teased.

Shepard glanced down at her towel clad form and some of the tension in her smile faded, "You're probably right. The press would certainly eat it up."

"Mmn, good thing you don't then, I have a tendency to get jealous."

Shepard chuckled, and after digging through the clothes Liara had just cleaned up, grabbed the t-shirt she'd discarded before her shower. Liara wrinkled her nose in disgust, and Shepard traded it out for a clean one with a sigh. "Just because you've been able to toss clean clothes into the laundry for the last three centuries doesn't mean the rest of us have had the luxury. That shirt was perfectly clean until you threw it in there. I haven't done anything today." She walked around to where Liara was laying, and sat down beside her, picking up the chronometer. A few deft taps and the date and time it displayed were replaced with a yearly calendar. A large red line cut through a week about three months into the future. It surprised Liara to see how much time had actually passed since she'd been on the beach with her daughter. Time seemed to be slipping away much too fast.

The only saving grace, really, was that the Crucible was moving along quickly. She'd received word that actual construction had started a little over nine days before, and that things were moving along steadily, if not as quickly as they'd hoped. Hackett gave an estimated time of completion at about five months, assuming nothing happened. Part of what Liara had been doing all afternoon was finding teams to speed up the process. As Shepard's calendar showed, they didn't have five months. If things followed what she remembered, Earth would be hit in just over twelve weeks. They'd had the weapon up and running in just under fifteen weeks the last time, and Liara was doing her best to beat that time. She'd sent a team to extract the Cerberus scientists, after giving an overexcited Traynor a push to search for them. She'd written to Garrus, who was doing what he could to get the Turians to send support to Hackett, and apparently trying to find a way to meet up with the ship. She expected he'd be waiting, bags in hand, the next time they docked at the Citadel.

She, additionally, had a little over a dozen teams, which she'd pulled from various positions around the galaxy, hunting for the various relics Shepard had spent much too much of her time searching for during the war. Though she didn't know their locations, she had enough ships that doing a systematic search would find most things. Made all the easier because the ships wouldn't have to dodge invading Reapers as the Normandy had had to do.

Shepard made a quick note on the device a few days into the future, then returned it to the bedside table.

"What was that?" Liara asked, putting the datapad down beside it.

"Hackett wants us to hand over our future cargo to the Orizaba. We're to meet them at the relay in the Arcturus system. With the Normandy stealth systems would should be able to get in and out without Parliament realizing their most wanted is hanging out right under their noses."

"I'm not sure I'm following. I thought we were heading to the construction site."

Shepard moved to the other side of the bed and slipped under the blankets. "That was the plan, but apparently we do that and Hackett can't keep them from arresting me. And then you'd be angry, and that's kind of scary," Shepard grinned at Liara's offended look and kissed her, "Anyway, Mom said she'd ignore the fact that the Alliance wants me in a cell now. We're supposed to rendezvous in two days. If everything goes well on this end anyway."

Liara stared at Shepard, a million things going through her head, none of them terribly good. She had met Hannah Shepard twice, both times right after Shepard had died. The first time had been at Shepard's funeral, and the then captain and XO of the Kilimanjaro had made it very clear she did not approve of her daughter's relationship with Liara. While Liara had done her utmost to not be sick all over the empty coffin, thinking only of the pile of skin and muscle that had once been Commander Shepard she had dropped off at a Cerberus lab, Hannah Shepard had accused the asari of all sorts of things most people wouldn't repeat in polite company. Liara hadn't even been sure some of what Captain Shepard had suggested she had done with the woman's daughter was even physically possible. She had, as Liara had been led away by Garrus, told the broken asari that her daughter's death had been Liara's fault. It was the only time that day Liara had cried, because it touched so closely on how she felt.

The second time had been significantly worse. Three weeks pregnant, bruised, battered, and worn down, Liara had met Hannah Shepard at the makeshift Alliance Headquarters in London. Shepard was to have a very public funeral the following day, followed by a small private ceremony for the few people on Earth who had known the Commander best. She'd walked into the tent to be assaulted by the now-Rear Admiral Shepard. Apparently, the woman had just been informed of her daughter's bonding to Liara, and had some more few choice words to say. In an attempt to ease the woman's suffering, Liara had made the mistake of mentioning the child she had just the day before disovered she was carrying. Shepard had been dead for a fortnight, and Liara had hoped that she and her mother-in-law would be able to make peace with the child that would be Illira.

Instead, Hannah Shepard had called Liara a whore in front of the assembled Admirals, and promised to fight against Liara getting any of Shepard's death benefits. She'd partly succeeded, but Liara hadn't really cared.

Illira never met her grandmother.

Liara was never really all that upset about that fact.

She knew, of course, that her meetings with the older human had been at emotional times for her. That, from Shepard's stories, her mother was decent woman who had poured herself into her daughter and her career. She had been the sole provider for the young Shepard since her father had died during the First Contact War when Shepard was only three, and had never had anything but her daughter's best interests in heart.

Liara could respect that. She'd been there. She couldn't remember the number of humans Illira had brought home over the years. Most barely old enough to be considered at the age of consent. Young men who had leered at both mother and daughter, young woman who were very clearly only in it for a thrill. Liara had never been happier than when she'd received the invitation from Illira about her bonding ceremony with Nillye. At least Nillye she had liked. She couldn't imagine what she would feel if she'd met one of those suitors for the first time just after losing Illira – even Nillye who she often thought of as her own daughter.

But just because she understood, didn't mean she was looking forward to meeting Hannah Shepard again. Even if Shepard would be with her this time.

Unlike Amerra, who she had disliked from the first time she met her, she didn't hate Rear Admiral – or was she still Captain now?- Shepard. She respected her, understood her, and had done her best to be nice to her. She knew why Hannah Shepard didn't like her, and was more than willing to accept that hatred as just part of being with the older woman's daughter. If what she remembered at the tirade at Shepard's first funeral was true, the older Shepard had always planned on her daughter settling down with a nice boy at some point and raising a family. Either while still with the Alliance or not. And Liara, according to her future mother-in-law, was not a nice boy.

"Oh," was all she managed to say in response, though.

Shepard gave her a searching look. "Not the reaction I expected to my telling you it was time to meet the parents. Oh, wait, you've probably already met her, huh? Let me guess, she showed you all those embarrassing baby pictures she has of me. And the world's worst prom picture."

"I've met her yes. But I have never seen any of the images she might have of your childhood." Liara scooted down under the blankets and rolled over. She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to think about it. She would just hide in her office until Hannah Shepard was gone, maybe ask Amerra to share a few drinks in the lounge, because that rated as a much better plan than spending time with the elder Shepard. She was fairly certain that she could avoid Shepard's mother, even if it meant having to avoid Shepard for a few days.

"Oh, no you don't, Liara T'Soni," Shepard said, tugging on her lover's shoulder and rolling her back over, "I want to know what's wrong, and I want to know now. So come on, what did my mother do?"

"I'd rather not talk about it. She is your mother. You were kind enough to allow me to stay silent about my own mother, and I'd appreciate the same in regards to yours."

"I didn't let you not talk about Benezia, if I remember correctly. I kept showing up in the med bay with various different Alliance rations in an attempt to get you to talk."

Liara humphed, and didn't answer. She didn't like to think about the day, and the days that followed, her mother dying. She chose to think of her mother as she'd been when Liara had been young. But if she really thought about it, she could remember the frustration she felt when Shepard would just show up, MRE in hand, a smile on her face, and a question about Liara growing up. But she had never asked about the Benezia they had met on Noveria. She never asked questions of what her mother was doing with Saren.

"Liara." Shepard drug her name across her lips, enunciating each syllable. Her name was a warning, a small chastisement.

"Goddess, fine," Liara sighed, lifting her head and letting it slam back into the pillow. It had been four hundred years since she'd last thrown a temper tantrum, but she felt close to it now. "Yes, I met your mother. It was at your funeral, and she was upset. I do not think that given those events she would like to see me."

"But... that hasn't happened yet," Shepard said with a smile.

"The first time you died, Shepard."

"Right. I had a funeral? Man, I wish I'd been invited."

"It was a long time ago."

"Two years. Not that long, really. She hasn't forgotten that I didn't tell her I wasn't dead. The fact that I was is classified, apparently."

Liara stared up at the stars flying past above her, not sure what to say. She hadn't seen Hannah Shepard since the end of the war. "I suppose it is not. I will stay out of your way when we meet up with the Orizaba. I do not wish to cause a scene."

Shepard leaned over and kissed her again, "No."

"Please, Shepard. Do not argue with me over this. I admit, Amerra is very sweet when she is not being overprotective of Nillye, and I know your mother is a good person. But she does not like me, and I am okay with that."

"Bullshit. I won't let her do this."

"Shepard..."

"No. Liara, once she gets to know you, she'll love you. I do. No one can meet you and not. You're too cute," Shepard said with a grin. Liara rolled her eyes. "I'm going to talk to her, and then the three of us are going to have dinner. And if she isn't pleasant, I promise that you can throw a singularity or something."

"Shepard! She is your mother!"

Shepard chuckled, "Exactly." She kissed Liara's forehead, stretched, then wrapped herself around the asari before falling asleep.


Hannah Shepard had been with the Alliance for longer than she really cared to remember. She'd married Jack Shepard at the tender age of 19, and together they had wreaked havoc on various ships and bases. And then, in a glorious moment of pain and sweat and screaming they had had a baby girl, a beautiful baby girl. For three years, their little family had been perfect. And then Jack had died in the First Contact War. Hannah had tried to take as much leave as possible afterward, but for the most part she'd raised her daughter on various ships and starports, sending the young Shepard to spend her school months with various relatives back on Earth.

Her daughter had always said she'd grown up on military ships, and while that wasn't technically true, her mother had always liked the idea. She'd always thought Shepards were meant to live in the stars. Her daughter's closest friends had been soldiers of one kind of another. Few Alliance vessels had children on them, but that had never stopped what the crews of those ships called 'The Littlest Shepard' from befriending every person from the lowliest ensign on up.

The accident that had left her daughter a swirling mass of biotic power had changed things. Hannah had sent her fourteen year old daughter away, had sent her to boarding school, and hardly even seeing her on school breaks. She just hadn't been able to handle the thought of losing the rest of her family.

But there had never been prouder parent than Hannah Shepard when her daughter had become the first human Spectre.

Then things had gone down hill.

First, the letter from her daughter, telling her all about some asari she'd apparently fallen in love with. It wasn't that Hannah Shepard had anything against her daughter dating a woman... thing... whatever an asari was. Sure, she'd always expected to have a strapping Alliance soldier as a son-in-law, and a couple or three grandchildren, but if her baby wanted to date a girl she wasn't going to stop her. It was a bit hard to get over the fact that she was blue, though. Not that it mattered, Hannah thought. No, whatever made her happy.

Then, finding out her daughter was dead, that had been almost more than she could handle. And the group that had shown up for the funeral. A Krogan and Quarian. That damned Asari. And a Turian. A fucking Turian. Like they hadn't blown her husband away, his ship exploding much like she thought her daughter's had. That creature had no right to be there. She'd snapped when he'd seen her trying to comfort the asari. The asari and the granddaughter of that miserable-excuse-for-a-human-being Williams were talking, the Williams kid crying, the asari looking like she was going to be sick. And the Turian.. he was patting them on the back, acting like he gave a damn.

Perhaps she shouldn't have said some of the things she had to the asari. She probably shouldn't have said any of the things she'd said to the asari. Apparently her daughter had loved the alien, and she could, perhaps, have found someone to confide in with her.

But she'd been blue.

The last few months had thrown her into a loop. Finding out fourth hand that her daughter was alive, hearing her daughter had gone through the Omega-4 relay (she wasn't sure whether it upset her more that she'd been working for Cerberus, that she'd gone through the relay, or that she'd simply been in the Terminus Systems to begin with), and then the whole thing with the Batarians.

She couldn't say she felt all that bad about a solar system full of slavers, but her daughter obviously did, because she'd turned herself in. They'd exchanged a few messages, sent through proper channels, nothing more that polite conversation though. So when Hackett had contacted her, told her about her daughter's run from Earth, and the warrant the Alliance had out on her head, she'd jumped at the chance to see her baby again. Alive, and well, and hopefully asari free.

She watched the Normandy come through the relay, and smiled to herself as she noticed that the ship's scanners didn't pick the ship up.

"Lieutenant, bring us around to the edge of the system. Radio the Normandy, I'd like to go see my daughter."