Once Shepard had made up her mind, she didn't want to delay any further. She took her first good opportunity to talk to David alone: the next morning, as they were finishing up breakfast. If she was going to have a potentially fraught conversation, she'd rather have it with a rested, well-fed kid. "Honey, there's something I'd like to talk to you about."

David looked up from his last bite of cereal with wary eyes. He put the spoon in his mouth and swallowed. "Okay."

She'd thought the thing over and couldn't think of anything better than being clear and direct. "I thought you should know that Garrus and I are dating."

She watched his face carefully. His eyebrows pulled together and his lower lip stuck out for a moment: his thinking face. "Like... girlfriend and boyfriend stuff?"

"That's right."

He thought that over for a second. "Okay."

Shepard blinked. "Okay? You...what do you think about that?"

"I dunno." David looked down at the table and wriggled in his seat. "I guess I'm kinda not surprised."

Her eyebrows went up. "Really."

"Yeah. I mean...I don't know. It just made sense."

"Hm. Okay." She watched him shift in place. "It's okay to tell me how you feel about it, good or bad. Or ask me questions."

He looked up, frowning. "If I wanted you not to be dating, would you stop?"

Shepard's shoulders tightened. She had a sudden feeling of navigating through a conversational minefield, like talking to... Jack, maybe, when they'd first met and it was hard to know what might send her into a rage, or EDI, with her knack for asking innocent and utterly complicated questions. She took a deep breath. "Well, then I'd have some hard decisions to make. Because you're my son and you're the most important thing in my life, and that's not going to change, okay? You understand that?"

David's head bobbed up and down, his eyes wide.

"But Garrus and I are old friends. I care about him a lot, and it's nice to have a kind of..." She searched for the right words. "...partnership with another grown-up. We can help each other out and talk about the grown-up stuff you think is boring."

"Huh." He seemed to be thinking again. Shepard hoped that was a good thing. "Like being on the same team?"

She nodded. "Yeah. You and I are one kind of team, but grown-ups who care about each other and decide to be partners can be another kind of team. Maybe not yet, but I think someday you'll probably want that kind of partner for yourself, too." His face said he didn't quite believe her, but she pressed on. "Anyway, it would be hard to lose that. And I'm fond of Lexa, too. So, like I said, there would be some hard decisions. Is that..." Part of her didn't want to ask at all, but she forced herself to do it. "...is that something you want?"

David scrunched his face into a frown. "No. I dunno. It's just weird to think about you like somebody's girlfriend. Are you gonna get married or something?"

For some reason that question hadn't occurred to her. It surprised her into a soft chuckle. "You know what? We haven't talked about that at all. Right now, we like spending time together and we'd like to keep doing that, maybe even more than we have been."

"Okay."

She waited, but nothing else seemed to be forthcoming. "You're sure about that?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. We see them all the time anyway, right? That's fun. I like Garrus. And Lexa. I guess it doesn't sound that different?"

"I suppose it's not, in a lot of ways."

"Are we all going to live together?"

"Hm. Maybe?" Shepard laced her fingers together, watching him. "I would make a lot of things easier. But we'd have to find the right kind of place with enough space for all of us."

"Can I have a bigger room?"

She smiled. "Maybe, if we could find the right place. If you wanted to, you and I could look at the ads and see what's out there for apartments? They usually post pictures."

"Okay! Sure!" He sounded genuinely enthusiastic about that, somewhat to her surprise. "So we'd live together and Lexa and I could play all the time?"

"Well, no. You'd still have chores and schoolwork, just like now. But the rest of the time, sure. You wouldn't have to schedule a visit."

He nodded, looking thoughtful again. Shepard started to feel more hopeful about the prospects. He needed some time to get his head around how his life might change; there was nothing wrong with that. "I know it's been just you and me for a few years, and this is a change. If anything about any of this bothers you or worries you, you can talk to me about it. Garrus said you could talk to just him, too, if you wanted to ask questions, or talk about what you want things to be like between the two of you."

"Okay." David leaned back in the chair. "Mom? We can still do stuff with just the two of us, right?"

She thought she heard a bit of a quaver in his voice, and answered firmly. "Absolutely! I'm always going to be your mom, David. Of course we can do stuff that's just the two of us."

David slid off his chair and came around the table. Shepard opened her arms to meet him and got the most solid hug she'd gotten from him in a long time. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her cheek on top of his head, enjoying it. The conversation might not have gone quite as well as she'd hoped, but it hadn't gone nearly as badly as she'd feared. Overall, she thought she could be cautiously optimistic.

They spent the rest of that day with just the two of them: a walk with the dog, watching vids on the couch, homework. She'd sent Garrus a message to give him the gist of the conversation, but she thought David could use some space and quiet time. The plan was, they'd meet up after school for a run to the store and dinner. She wasn't sure if Garrus had had his own talk with Lexa yet. Still, she was hoping they could have a cozy dinner together, and David could get used to the idea of them being more than friends.

Given how quickly her plans often went to hell, maybe she shouldn't have been surprised. Then again, civilian life was a lot more predictable. Either way, she definitely had not expected to be walking to his apartment from the transit station with him and both kids, all of them carrying grocery bags, and to be surprised by a slim, unfamiliar figure leaning casually against the wall near his door.

Shepard tensed when she saw the figure. Even knowing the area was relatively safe, part of her reacted as she might for an intruder, preparing to drop her bags and act.

But Lexa shrieked, "Aunt Sol!" and went running ahead of them.

Shepard stopped. The tall, angular turian woman unpropped herself from the wall with lazy grace, reaching out to catch her bouncing niece into a hug. As the family resemblance came into focus, Shepard blinked and shot Garrus a sideways look. "You didn't say your sister was visiting now."

"Because she didn't tell me," he replied, just as quietly. Clearing his throat, he took the lead, with Shepard slightly behind and David trailing after both of them, watching curiously. "Sol!" Garrus called. "You might have mentioned you were visiting, well, today."

His sister responded with a shrug. "A seat on a transport opened up just an hour before departure. Barely enough time to pack and make it to the port. I would have called, but you know how the Hierarchy is about in-transit communications. Thought I'd surprise you instead."

"I am surprised," he agreed. "Surprised that you didn't just hack your way into my apartment." He shifted the load he was carrying to key open the door.

Solana's mandibles flared. "Ah. I decided not to risk C-Sec's gentle attentions."

"Funny, I thought you might just be getting lazy in your old age."

Her eyes narrowed. "Keep it up, Garrus. You're only four years younger than I am. Anything you say to me now is coming back to you with interest."

"Interest, Sol? Taking up banking, like a volus? That doesn't sound like you." Garrus stepped back and waved them in.

Solana snorted as she sauntered into the apartment and gave Shepard a glance. "Who are your friends?"

"This is my friend David," Lexa piped up. "And his mom."

"Renee Shepard," Garrus added, heading into the kitchen with his own load. "I'm sure you remember."

Solana's gaze turned unexpectedly hard. "The great Commander Shepard. Indeed. It would be hard to forget."

"I've been retired for quite a while, now," Shepard said, her nerves prickling.

Solana said nothing for a moment, regarding her with crossed arms, and then abruptly turned, surveying the apartment. "Nice place. I like what you've done with it."

"Thanks," Garrus called from the kitchen. "I'm sorry I don't have a proper guest room for you."

"I can take the couch tonight and get a hotel room tomorrow." As Shepard went into the kitchen with her own batch of groceries, she noticed Solana stop to pick up the picture frame from the table.

"You can stay in my room!" Lexa said, all but dropping her own bags in the kitchen so she could run back to her aunt.

Solana put the frame down. "That's very nice of you, Lexa, although your bed might be a bit small for me. How's your new school?"

The bustle of preparing two sets of meals for the five of them consumed the next hour or so. Solana leaned on the counter separating the kitchen from the living room, sipping the glass of Palaven wine Garrus had handed her, while Lexa bounced between the two rooms, chattering to her aunt. She was much too excited and scattered to be much help with the dinner preparations. David was more helpful, though he was clearly fascinated by the turian stranger. He was also a little shy with her, though, following Lexa's lead, he offered the occasional comment about their school. Shepard kept a watchful eye on them, but Solana responded to David pleasantly enough. That was good, as Shepard didn't want to have to dismantle Garrus's sister for being cruel to her son.

Solana hardly spoke to Shepard herself throughout dinner, though. She'd listen patiently to the children, and joke with Garrus, but Shepard's efforts to make conversation fell flat. Garrus noticed, and tried to compensate, but then Solana launched on a long series of anecdotes about friends and neighbors back home, and Shepard gave up, sitting back in her chair once she'd finished eating.

After the meal, while Lexa dragged Solana off to see her room and the rest of the apartment, with David trailing after them, Shepard turned to Garrus. "What the hell was that?"

Garrus sighed, starting to clear dishes from the table. "I don't know. She can be difficult, but—"

"She's acting like I'm something she wants to scrape off her boot!"

"She might just—oh." Garrus stopped short, mandibles flicking.

Shepard crossed her arms. She could feel a tight expression cross her face. She had a strong suspicion it was her Commander face. "What?"

"She, uh. She may have found about you and me when you were under arrest and I went home."

Shepard's fingers dug into her arms. "May have?"

"Well..." Garrus rubbed the side of his neck. "I was worried about you, and I was on edge, between that and the task force and Mom—" He cut himself off, shaking his head. "There weren't a lot of people I could talk to about...personal things. We had a lot of things we needed to talk about, and we had a couple of late nights where, uh, we delved into Dad's liquor cabinet." He paused, looking remarkably uncomfortable. "She's my sister, Shepard. I've never been good at keeping secrets from her."

Shepard bit the inside of her cheek. She had an impulse to be irritated with him, but that was entirely irrational. Why shouldn't he have mentioned their relationship to his sister? People told their siblings stuff like that, right? Not for the first time, she cursed her own lack of family ties. Growing up on the street, all her ideas of how siblings related to each other were drawn from books and vids. The picture coming together was all too clear. Garrus had been home for the first time in years, stressed and anxious, but hopeful about their new attachment. He'd confided in Solana, and then he'd come home after the war, exhausted and alone. "Great. So she hates me because I broke your heart, huh?"

Garrus shook his head. "Shepard, you didn't—"

"Didn't I?" She looked up at the ceiling. "At least she has a good reason to hate me."

"I'll talk to her," Garrus offered.

She gave him a skeptical look. "And tell her what? I doubt she'd be thrilled to hear that we're back together, if she doesn't like how I treated you."

He winced, scratching the back of his neck. "Ah. Okay, I see your point."

"Maybe I should just stay out of the way until she goes," she said, half to herself.

Garrus frowned, drawing himself up straight. "No. Not acceptable. I'm not going to just cut you out of my life and pretend there's nothing there."

"It's just for a little while, right?" Shepard tried to sound cheerful and determined. She pushed herself to her feet. "It'll be fine. David can still come over, maybe."

He crossed his arms. "Shepard. Don't be ridiculous."

He looked imposing that way, and Shepard had a moment's thought that maybe she was seeing his Commander face. Under other circumstances, she would have teased him about it. In the present circumstances, she looked away and shook her head. "It's not ridiculous. She came to see you and Lexa. You'll all want to spend some time together, right? That doesn't have to have anything to do with David or me. We can...take a little break. It'll be fine."

"Shepard." His voice gentled. "We can figure something else out."

She shook her head. Her back ached, and she felt tired, unprepared to confront the other woman or explain herself. "Can we just let it go tonight? Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow."

Garrus still looked dissatisfied, but Solana emerged from Lexa's bedroom before he could say anything more. Shortly afterward Shepard collected David and his things and headed home. Wearily, she wondered how long Solana was planning to stay.