Kaidan slowly made his way up to the helm as the shuttle departed the Normandy. He nodded to the suspicious crew and opened the doors to the helm and had his pistol in his hands in an instant, pointed at the metallic bitch with her hand on Joker's shoulder.

"Back up!" he ordered it. When the robot looked up at him, he tightened his hands around his pistol. "Last time," he warned. "Back. Up."

The robot regarded him with surprise. "Good afternoon, Major Alenko," it said as though it didn't have a gun trained on her chest.

"Oh, shit!" Joker said suddenly, spinning around. "No. This isn't that Doctor Eva chick, Kaidan! This is EDI!"

Kaidan kept his pistol trained on the robot's chest and frowned slightly. "This is definitely the thing that sent me to the hospital."

Joker sighed and shook his head. "EDI is in the body of the robot that kicked your ass. She's not a threat to you or anyone on this ship."

He narrowed his eyes as the robot remained perfectly still. "You sure?"

"I would sacrifice myself for the life of anyone aboard this ship," EDI informed him kindly.

Kaidan pursed his lips and then nodded, slowly putting his pistol back onto his side. "Is everything from the…former owner…of the body gone?"

"I assure you, Major, I am alone in the possession of this body." She looked at Joker and nodded before exiting the helm without a spare glace at Kaidan.

Kaidan slowly made his way to the co-pilot chair and eased himself into it as Joker smirked at him and said, with a bit of taunting in his voice, "That's my co-pilot."

Without skipping a beat, Kaidan fell back into their old manners aboard the SR-1 and said, "Well, I guess since you can't get a real woman, an AI is a good substitute."

"Damn!" Joker chuckled, adjusting the screens in front of him and sent one of them over to Kaidan (the one that he knew that the other man would want. "Still better than you, though. At least I have a woman."

Kaidan forced a laugh. "If you call a program a woman, sure."

"You've been practicing, haven't you?" Joker cackled.

"You do realize that you pressed into my private comms when you started your jokes, right?" Shepard's voice informed them over the comm.

Joker about fell out of his chair laughing at the look of horrification on Kaidan's face. "Sorry, Commander. You've got to admit, though, the Major has improved in his smart-assery."

Shepard chuckled over the comm. "Just what I need- another smart ass aboard my ship. Between you, Garrus, and James, I don't think I could handle another one."

"You forgot one," Kaidan said suddenly, not thinking before the words came out of his mouth.

"Oh?" she sounded vaguely curious.

Kaidan smirked at Joker. "Yeah- yourself."

That sent Joker into a violent fit of laughter- clutching his ribs. "One point Alenko, Zero Shepard," Joker managed between fits of laughter.

Shepard was silently for a long time and Kaidan began to get nervous. "You're only saying that because you can't think of anything that clever when we're face-to-face," she informed him.

"Damn!"


This was a different part of Eden Prime than she had seen the first and only time she'd been there. It made it…slightly…easier to be there.

Especially since she didn't bring any human team mates.

Of course, neither James or Kaidan was green, everyone knew that the Geth were frequently outside the veil, and she rarely- if ever, anymore- gestured others ahead of her unless she was 99.9% sure that the area was secure and they were at their most readiness.

"Shepard," Garrus prompted her.

Straightening her shoulders, she stepped onto the planet that changed her life so drastically.

"Give me a location, Liara," she ordered (feeling pretty damn proud of herself for not sounding as bothered as she actually was), scanning the area through the scope of her Mattock (she knew that she couldn't rely entirely on her helmet's HUD.

"Not far," Liara assured her, messing with her omni-tool.

They began the slow walk through the abandoned settlement.

"Eden Prime…where it all began," Garrus murmured, looking from empty building to empty building.

Shepard shook her head (feeling a sadistic glee that it would make whoever was watching the vid slightly motion sick). "Where it started for us- for our cycle," she corrected. "The place where I lost Jenkins and found Ash."

The squad fell silent for a moment. "These colonists haven't had the easiest time- first Geth and now Cerberus," Liara pointed out.

"I was raised on ships…one ship gets destroyed, we'd just move to another and replace it with a new one. I can't imagine having to live on solid ground and rebuilding after every destruction."

"Some people need this stability, Shepard," Liara murmured.

And, what, I don't- someone like me doesn't? she thought bitterly.

She hated having those thoughts. It wasn't fair to think things like that…that hadn't been what Liara had meant.

"Commander," Joker's voice came over her comm, "EDI's reading that your blood pressure is raising- everything okay?"

Closing her eyes for a minute before taking a breath, she nodded. "Yeah. It's nothing," she informed him as she gestured her squad forward. "Don't worry about me."


Kaidan kept his focus between her vital readings (they really were outrageous) and the squads vid feed. To watch her on the vid, a person would hardly notice the slightly tense set of her shoulders and the jerk of her head as opposed to the fluid movement that was her norm.

"She's lying," Kaidan informed Joker quietly.

Joker gave him a look that pretty much said that he already knew. "Eden Prime," Joker said instead of a snarky comment.

"I should be down there with her," Kaidan sighed, leaning his head against the co-pilot chair. "She needs someone who's been down there with her before."

It looked like Joker was fighting some kind of internal battle. "Yeah, but not someone who's questioned her about her motives and ethics." Apparently he lost.

"You can't make me feel any worse than I already do," Kaidan muttered.

Joker stared with uncanny focus on the screens before him. "What was she like?"

Kaidan jerked his attention to Joker, his eyes wide. "What the hell?"

"Not like that," Joker said, trying to calm Kaidan. "Your doctor…what was she like?"

Shepard and squad were involved in a pretty heavy firefight. Kaidan sighed and shrugged. "Well, you know what Shepard's like. Adria is pretty much the complete opposite of everything Shepard is. Well, not in the way that she's a bad person or anything.

"It's not like I sought out someone after Shepard. Had a friend who was worried and he set me up with Adria. She's…she's gentle and understanding…doesn't have an ounce of fight in her body…not when it comes to arguments or physical fights."

"And you went for someone like that?" Joker prodded.

Kaidan stared at the vid as a shot grazed through Shepard's shields and hit her at a weak point in her armor on her leg- her left leg buckled slightly, but she quickly stood back up straight and took out the agent that hit her. "No."

Shepard froze on the battlefield and looked over to Garrus.

"I tried."


Shepard pulled out her Widow- trying to ignore the voice of the two men up on the Normandy. Joker thought that he was doing her a favor, but it just drove a knife into her heart.

It caused her to lose focus and get shot in the leg!

"Joker," she whispered as she sighted down on a Cerberus agent.

"Commander?"

She pulled the trigger slowly and was awarded with the recoil of the rifle and the dropping of the operative that she had been aiming for (and the one behind him too).

"Inform Doctor Chakwas that I was shot in the leg and that I'll require medical aid when I reboard. Damn bastard was using Shredder rounds and it feels like they worked."

She stowed away her rifle and pulled out her Mattock and gestured for Liara and Garrus to follow her back to the platform.

"Aye-aye, Ma'am."


Garrus and Liara stood on either side of the pod as Shepard inputted the data that she had received between killing Cerberus and listening to Kaidan and Joker. She stepped back as the pod hissed opened and revealed a Prothean.

He was marvelous.

The memories that the beacons had forced into her mind didn't do justice to the being in front of her. Of course, she had seen and killed plenty of Collectors- but they were a cruel abomination of the actual being which they were created from.

The Prothean stumbled out of his stasis pod and looked around frantically. He looked past Shepard, Liara, and Garrus- not understanding what was happening.

"Be careful!" Liara warned. "It's been 50,000 years for us, but no time has passed for him!"

Shepard stepped into his path and he ripped her helmet off of her and threw it to the side. She held up her hand to halt Garrus from taking a shot. The Prothean gripped her face between his hands like a voice- she couldn't have moved if she wanted to.

Be still! A foreign voice, in foreign words, spoke in her mind.

The memory of their fall began to play in her mind. The Prothean- Commander Javik- was forced into stasis…knowing that so few of his own would make it with him into the new cycle.

Suddenly, Shepard was released and she stared up at the Prothean.

"How many more?" he asked, speaking in perfect English.

Shepard lowered her eyes and shook her head. "You're the only one."

"Wasteful," he spat.

She laid a slightly shaky hand on his and allowed him to see images of the Reaper's invading Earth- darkening the sky with their very presense.

"So it has begun," he murmured. "I was not awakened early enough."

"We're fighting them," she informed him, assuredly. "Will you join us?"

Javik stared at her long and hard, trying to read her soul without touching her. "For now."


Gravity.

Kaidan knew the dictionary definition of the word.

The Force that attracts a body towards the center of the Earth or towards any physical body having mass.

As Kaidan sat watching the live vid from Eden Prime, he couldn't help but compare her Charisma, personality, and confidence to gravity…and she was the mass.

She pulled people to her (it didn't matter what race, gender, or age they were) and made them do things that they would never have done without her.

Look at that escaped convict: she was now working for the Alliance- teaching kids how to harness their Biotic ability. Miranda, her former XO, gave up Cerberus because Hope opened her eyes.

The Prothean decided to fight with her.

Hope Shepard, like gravity, was an impressive force of nature.

Hell, she had even convinced Saren to kill himself all those years ago.

"She's impressive," a voice murmured from behind him.

Turning, Kaidan saw James watching the vid over his shoulder. "Always has been."

"How many other people could get a pissed off Prothean to decide to play nice and join us?" Joker snorted.

James chuckled. "Is this how it always is around her- her taming a beast and inviting it aboard?"

Kaidan and Joker looked at each other and, together, said, "Yes."

"Lola is one chica loca," he snorted, missing the annoyed expression on Kaidan's face.

"Give it another week or two- this is nothing," Joker assured him.