Lucy swore under her breath and crawled across the snoring man next to her to reach her beeping omni-tool. She settled with the 'tool and her arms folded on Zaeed's chest before she hit the button to answer the hail.

More swearing ensued as she actually read the name of the sender.

"This better be really fucking important, Lawson," she snapped as her XO appeared on the tiny screen.

"Shepard, where the bloody..." Miranda raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow. "I see someone's gotten past their little freak-out over their scars."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Ye who has never had a scar in her fucking life, shut it. But yes, I guess I have. 'Sides, no sense hiding them from you; you're the one who gave 'em to me." She glanced at the time and groaned. "So, what the hell could you possibly want at 0530?"

Miranda ignored her question and asked one of her own. "Is that how you normally go about recruiting people for your missions, by fucking them? Not that I'd be all that surprised with Massani," she muttered as an apparent afterthought.

Lucy scoffed. "Hardly. I let my charm and charisma work in my favor, something you'd know nothing about." She smirked as she added, "So the Illusive Man never told you? I'm positive he knows."

"Oh please. I've got more charm in my pinkie than... Told me what?"

"My deep dark secret." Lucy laughed at the horrified look on Miranda's face.

"Is there a reason I'm being used as a goddamn table?" Zaeed growled as he slowly opened his eyes and looked at Lucy. She grinned and he glanced at the screen. "Fuckin' hell. It's too bloody early in the morning for this. Go away, Lawson."

"I... but..." Lucy feigned a pout as he disconnected the call and tossed her omni-tool back on the bedside table. "You know she might have had something really important to tell me."

He pulled her up in his arms so that she was laying more on top of him than on the bed. "Not at this time of the morning she didn't."

"Why the hell is she even up right now? In the three days I've been... active, she hasn't bothered me before 0900."

"Three days?"

"Yeah. I was busy dodging mechs for two of those days, then there was a Cerberus agent missing in one of the systems near here, so we went to investigate that before we came here." She shrugged. "It was on the way, we took out an Eclipse base in the process and I have info from the dead agent that could bring down Cerberus if I wanted to, so all in all, a win."

"Did you go to Alchera?"

She shook her head. "Dr. Chakwas suggested it, said it might do me and Joker some good, but he won't fly anywhere near it and flat-out refuses to ride shotgun if I'm flying the shuttle. And I sure as hell wasn't going alone."

Zaeed pushed her untamed hair out her eyes and kissed her. "If you want to go, I'll go with you."

"I know. I might, someday, but at the moment it's still too fresh in my mind. It's two years gone for the rest of y'all, but it's, well, about three days ago for me."

"In those three days, have you talked to your uncle?"

"Nope. I've seen exactly four people I know... five if you count Dan I guess."

"Who's the last one? Myself, Joker, Dr. Chakwas... Dan if we're being generous, and...?"

"Tali. First place Miranda, Jacob and I went after we escaped the Lazarus station, before I'd even seen Joker, was Freedom's Progress. It was the Illusive Man's way of showing me what's been happening to the human colonies. Anyway, Tali was there, looking for a quarian who'd been on his pilgrimage."

"Did she find him?"

Lucy nodded. "Yeah. He was the only living thing left in that colony, 'til we all showed up." She rolled to the edge of the bed, snagging Zaeed's t-shirt and pulling it over her head. "Had a bit of an argument with Miranda, since she wanted to keep the kid for a bit, to find out what he knew. She's having a hard time adjusting to not being in charge anymore."

"It'll be nothing if not entertaining then, this mission." He pulled on his jeans and followed her into the kitchen to make coffee. "So, are you going to talk to the Admiral? Ever?"

"Haven't decided yet."

"Lucy."

She glanced at him over her shoulder as she rummaged through his nearly-bare fridge. "Did you even eat in these last two years?"

"Not here, no. Then again, I haven't been here that much." He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her away from the fridge. "He's family, Luce. You have to –"

"'Family means everything to me and I will do anything to protect them,'" she muttered, shifting Zaeed around so she could pour coffee. "What a load of crap."

He put a hand over hers and pried the coffee pot from her grip, setting it on the counter before he turned her back around to face him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It was something Uncle Steven said to me the night he picked me up on Mindoir." She leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. "He said he didn't know where Kevin's ideas that he didn't care about the family had come from. And up until the day I left to meet the Normandy for that last mission, I believed him."

"So you're possibly not going to tell him you're alive because..."

"Well, let's see. He bowed to the fucking Council and sent us on that mission, when he easily could have told them to go to hell. I was a Spectre, yes. But my crew, they were still Alliance, still his responsibility. Doesn't matter for me, since I'm still here. But those twenty other crew members, their families aren't that fucking lucky, are they?"

"He's going to find out eventually, sweetheart."

"Technically, I already told him." She chewed her bottom lip for a minute. "Just not to his face and didn't actually say that it was me."

Zaeed raised an eyebrow. "How's that now?"

"The information I got off that dead Cerberus agent? I kept it myself but also sent Uncle Steven a copy anonymously. Ish."

"It's too bloody early in the morning for riddles, Lucy."

She rolled her eyes and went back to the bedroom to retrieve her omni-tool, opening it to show him the note she'd attached to the information packet: A gift for the Alliance, even if you don't fucking deserve it. – LJM

"And this is anonymous how? You fucking signed it."

"Of course you recognize that, but I have never once signed anything I sent to him with those initials. It was always LS."

"Doesn't mean he won't recognize them." The terminal in the living room went off. A vid-comm hail from Admiral Hackett. "See? Go put clothes on. You're going to fucking talk to him."

Lucy rolled her eyes again as she walked back into the bedroom and quickly redressed in the t-shirt and jeans she'd worn the night before. She ran her fingers through her hair as she stood in the doorway, listening to the conversation in the living room.

"No, it's legit. I met up with her last night. And I've spent the last twenty fucking minutes trying to convince her to talk to you."

"She's there now? And you're absolutely positive it's actually her, not a clone or something?"

"Yes. You really think I would have brought her back to my place if I wasn't?"

"Suppose not. Why have you been having to convince her to talk to me?"

"Think about it. As she put it, it's been two years for us, only a few days for her. She's still fucking pissed at you for sending her on that mission. Or more correctly, that you sent her crew on that mission."

"What the hell was she going to do without them, take the Normandy by herself? Damn ship still would have –"

"The fact that I suck at driving and flying is your own damn fault," Lucy said as she finally stepped into the living room. "You're the one who taught me."

"So I did," he said with a small smile.

"Be nice," Zaeed whispered in her ear before he walked back to the bedroom, leaving her alone to talk with her skeptical-looking uncle.

She sat cross-legged in the desk chair and spun around a couple of times as she tried to think of something to say. Everything that came to mind sounded stupid or forced in her head.

Hackett finally broke the silence. "Where did you get the information you sent? I can't imagine the Illusive Man just had it lying around for you to find. Or that he'll be overjoyed when he finds out you forwarded it to the Alliance."

"It was on a Cerberus agent I was supposed to rescue from Eclipse mercs. Either rescue him or retrieve his information, and he was long dead before we got to him. As for the Illusive Man, he knows it's going to take more than funding the project that brought me back to life and giving me a shiny new ship to turn me into a loyal little lap dog like Miranda."

Hackett raised an eyebrow. "You make it sound like there's still a possibility of that happening."

Lucy scoffed. "Don't be stupid. There is absolutely nothing he could say or do that would make me join Cerberus of my own free will."

"Glad to hear it." He hesitated before he asked, "Will you rejoin the Alliance when you're done with Cerberus?"

"I really can't think of a compelling reason why I should," she said quietly. "I'm not in the habit of giving those who betray my trust the chance to do it again."

"Lucy –"

"Good-bye, Uncle Steven."