Before Mass Effect 3
To say that the last six months had been frustrating barely began to describe the way Melanie Shepard was feeling. She'd turned herself in to the Alliance in the hope that she could persuade them to finally take the Reapers seriously, but for all the good it had done, she should have stayed in space. It wasn't that she'd been mistreated: she had a soft bed to sleep in, better food than she'd gotten used to, and absolutely nothing useful to do. After the de-briefs and the laughable good cop/bad cop attempts to find out if she was still with Cerberus, they'd just left her hanging. She suspected the Alliance didn't want to put her on trial for doing what was right, but they also didn't want to admit why she'd been correct to destroy the Alpha Relay.
The Alliance's indecision left her with a lot of time to kill. She did have visitors; soldiers who stopped in to meet the legend, or maybe the lunatic, would often stick around to play cards or just talk. She enjoyed that sort of camaraderie and it was something that had been largely absent during her time with Cerberus. Of particular note was a Lt. Vega, a bit of a meathead, but seemingly also an excellent solider, and capable of getting a laugh out of her, which wasn't easy in her current frame of mind.
Mostly, though, she was alone. It was hard not to spend her time fixating on the imminent Reaper invasion. After the Battle of the Citadel, after Bahak, she had some hint of how bad this war might get, but to stay sane, she tried to keep her mind on other things. She read, she watched vids, she played the 36 different versions of solitaire loaded on the terminal in her rooms, and she remembered.
She recalled the good times and the bad in her life: the girls she'd been with, her N7 training, the Blitz. She reminisced about the places she'd seen, both beautiful and terrible, that she could hardly have dreamed of as a street kid. She thought about her squad, and wondered what they were doing now, if they were having any more success than she was in getting the galaxy to prepare.
Most of all, she thought of Liara. Samara was beautiful and powerful, but she hadn't been what Melanie wanted, not deep down. She'd never entirely stopped thinking about Liara, and right now, all she could do was regret the opportunity she'd missed to be with her and remember all the reasons she wanted that now. She thought about the soft, comforting sound of her voice, and the way that steel that could suddenly enter it. The loyalty that she'd shown, recovering Melanie's body, saving her when everyone else had given her up for dead. The way the red dress she'd worn the last time Shepard had seen her flowed over her soft curves. She considered a hundred ways to say she was sorry for having said no, to ask Liara for another chance, but those conversations had never come naturally to Melanie and nothing she could think of felt right. Maybe when she got out, if they could just have some time together, in the moment, perhaps the words would come to her.
Reality however intruded on the pleasant delusion that there would be time for such things. When James came to her door she suspected and when she saw Anderson again she knew. The Reapers were here, and the same people who'd refused to believe that they were coming now needed her to be Commander Shepard again.