A/N: A drablet for to start things off right for the new year. Takes place just after meeting Tali for the first time in ME3. Doing things slightly out of order, because I can. Possibly because it's the only way I can not tear what's left of my hair out. Anyways, something to start the New Year off right.

The Normandy reflected off of Tali's faceplate as we stood on the dreadnought. She stood at a conspicuous distance from me. I didn't blame her. We hadn't hardly spoken a word. After fighting our way through the geth dreadnought with Ash, Liara and Jack picking away at her, I guess she felt a little out of it. I remembered the look of her eyes as we made love.

She turned to me, and she was unreadable as she had been when I first met her on the Citadel.

I didn't know how to feel. I was happy to see Tali, a little hurt that she hadn't sent so much as a letter...and now this. She turned back to the war room to confer with the other admirals while I stood there, a little shocked. Her hug was hesitant, her exit abrupt.

"Well, that was interesting," Kasumi managed wryly. I nearly jumped out of my skin as she decloaked, and she yelped as I made a startled squawk.

"The hell, Kasumi?"

She shrugged, put a hand on her hip. We had picked up Kasumi and Zaeed among others on the Citadel during a pitstop. Greenshirts rejoiced to have Zaeed back- especially those he had collected himself.

"I was coming to see you about something, anyways."

I grumbled something under my breath, and turned to her.

"So?"

"So what? Tali's a lot more serious now, isn't she?"

"Yeah. What did you want to see me about?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter anymore, what about you and Tali?"

I grunted as I started walking.

"What about us?"

"She wants to hide you from the Admiralty, even though you're a hero in the Flotilla?"

I grunted again, stepped through the scanner. Westmoreland cocked an eyebrow as Kasumi stepped through behind me.

"Excuse me miss," she started, holding up a hand at Kasumi. I just shook my head. "No, she wasn't cleared. Yes, she got past you...but she's probably the sneakiest person I've ever met. Don't worry about it."

The private just shook her head, leaned back and glanced at the greenshirt with the tan beret across from her. The young man had shrapnel scars, deliberately left over from the suicide mission. He nodded at me with a half a smile.

"Sir."

"Lancejack. See you still haven't fixed your face."

"Chicks dig scars, and it's one hell of a story," he said with a glance at the private. She blushed a bit, and he adjusted the sling on his Eviscerator.

"Carry on, then," I said, and Kasumi followed. The bridge bustled around me. Greenshirts and former Cerberus engineers worked with Alliance personnel to bring the Normandy back up to snuff. After having her guts re-arranged by the Alliance, there were still plenty of hiccups. Having Ken and Gabby around again made things slightly easier, but after three months Joker still complained about how the old girl felt, and the ship's batteries were still so far off that Garrus advised me not to call in danger-close bombardment. I stepped over a particularly conspicuous and thick coil of cable and stepped into the elevator.

"Mess please, EDI," I said before turning back to Kasumi. "Listen, it's none of your business..."

She snorted at me.

"Commander, you've been all over the place since we boarded the dreadnought."

It was true, taking a boarding party onto the geth ship had been kind of terrifying. Put me in a Hind, a Kodiak, give me a grav chute or drop pod and I'm happy as a clam. Spacewalks always unnerved me, even with a section of commandos with me. Tali, Jack, Liara, Ash and I gone over while Cortez and Garrus stayed aboard the Normandy. Jack even wore her old boonie and managed to find Bessie in stores. Cortez had given her a once over- improvising a lighter nylon bag for the belt of heat sinks, throwing on a lighter bipod. She had pulled on her cuiriass as her class watched. A few even begged to come along. She had just shaken her head, and opened Bessie's feed tray. Laying the first heat sink in, she racked it.

"I can't be babysitting you, and if the geth get aboard I want each of you to break off into pairs and go with teams of marines. We're going to try this biotic artillery idea out on a smaller scale," she told them as she racked her gun. "Seanne, you're in charge. Prangley, you're second in command."

The two nodded as she fitted her mask, and the rest of us fitted our suits. Then, we jumped. The cattiness once we got there was surreal. Liara, Ash, Tali and Jack simply sniped (verbally) at one another as we floated across to the dreadnought, and once we arrived. The only thing that slowed them down was the gunfire headed our way once the geth figured out we were there.

*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****

Once the quarian fleet was safely in orbit around Rannoch, we headed back to the Citadel for a resupply. The entire trip was surreal- the Citadel was growing more and more crowded. I caught a glimpse of what looked like an asari in greens, but she was lost the the crowd. Kelly ploughed ahead. She had found us easily enough, invited us back to her quarter of the refugee area- well, at least the part she administered. It seemed like she had finally found her element, looking over all those people. She had been there almost a quarter year. A glance parted crowds. A smile concealed firearms in the hands of batarians, krogan, turians. I pressed myself against her back- not strictly out of paranoia, but at the same time I was scared. Crowds. It doesn't matter how fast you are on the draw, or how good you are in a fistfight if there's a hundred people wanting your blood. They'll gladly tear you to pieces with their bare hands, and any guilt just fades back into the mob. I kept my hand on my revolver as we pressed through the masses. Zaeed did the same, I saw.

Kelly didn't seem to quite get why were were so nervous as the people slowly let us through to her little shack, though. I never liked crowds, and ever since Al-Jilani had tried to bushwhack me I was worried about how deep her words had sunk into people. If they really felt that I had abbandoned them- they might actually try to take a shot at me. The whole attitude was 'the universe is burning, why care?'. You could smell it in the air, the desperation and apathy. I didn't want to be looked up to - and if I had to be, I didn't want to let anyone down. I was terrified of two things: spiders, and disappointing people. I felt Zaeed breathe deep, and heard the holster snap open. Something was wrong. One moment, there was a gawking crowd. The next, a green-shirted krogan shoved his way through. And an asari in greens. A surly young woman in a blue beret. Two immense elcor. The woman snapped a cursory salute as an easy dozen greenshirts- well, at least that's the uniform they wore- surrounded us, pushing through the crowd. I didn't recognize a single one of reached our destination, sure enough though.

Liara glanced at Zaeed, then at me.

"Those are greenshirts."

"Well, they're wearing them, like some sort of Goddamn fan club," Zaeed said, lighting up as we walked into the tiny converted shipping container that Kelly lived in. She waved her hand.

"Do you mind, Zaeed?" she said, scolding with her hands on her hips. She looked different, older. Jaded.

"Go fuck yourself, Yeoman," he said, puffing out a long cloud of smoke at her as he pressed up against the doorframe. He had his sidearm drawn. "You're not staring down a bunch of armed strangers with a mob behind 'em. I don't care that they're facing away from us, it's still Goddamn bizarre."

"They're not a mob!" she all but yelled, throwing up her hands. "They're fans. And those are legitimate greenshirts," she vocalized...loudly. There was a moment of silence before I peeked outside. More had shown up, and stood at ease between the curious looking crowd and us.

"There's more of them out there than there are on the Normandy and at the base combined, Kelly. I've never met a one of them. So who declared them legitmate?"

She raised an eyebrow, and her jaw dropped.

"You really don't know?"

We glanced at each other, and Zaeed's hand was full of Talon as he watched the people outside. Liara stepped towards Kelly, the old Shadow Broker personality surfacing in an instant.

"Who?" she asked, voice low and full of menace.

Kelly gulped and held up her hands.

"Rolston had a lot of volunteers, so he comissioned a few people to come here and recruit a bit."

"A bit? Goddamn it, Yeoman, there's three fucking sections out there," Zaeed barked. I glanced outside, and there they were, shoulder to shoulder. All of them were armed, and one salarian with captain's bars on his shoulders talked to a small group of others around him.

"Yeah, well, there's a lot of grateful krogan," she said wryly. "Most of them defected from the clans less loyal to Urdnot."

"And the asari? Salarians? Is that...is that a fucking hanar?" he asked, squinting as he looked at the troops keeping back the refugees. Kelly just shrugged, crossed her arms across her stomach.

"There's a lot of refugees, Zaeed. Most of them have no place to go, nothing left but anger. Recruiting is way up across the board, and the Commander's speech only drove more people into his camp. Once they figured things out...well, that's when Ratch released his vid on the extranet."

"Ratch?" I asked. She nodded. "He came here after he saw your speech, and he called up Rolston. Rolston didn't know what to do with him, so he made him the Citadel's official recruiter. I'm told he even tried to recruit an Alliance admiral."

It dawned on me, and Liara looked concerned. She gently touched me on the shoulder. "Are you alright, Shepard?" she asked, her voice charged.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. So, Kelly, what did you want me to do?" I asked, turning away from Liara. Her hand stayed on my shoulder.

"Speak to them. It's New Year's Eve, and they've lost a lot. They could use some hope, don't you think?"

So I took a deep breath, stepped outside, and talked to them.

*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****ME*****

Kasumi's blowout buzzed, and Jack snorted at the sound. Tali pressed her horn to her mask, looked at it and shrugged when nothing happened. The human greenshirts broke into cheers as krogan, turians, asari (and even a volus) simply shrugged at one another and watched. We took the very finest of Rolston's greenshirts from the Citadel, adopting them as best we could. Many of them were alien- a whole two sections of krogan, and a mix of everything from batarian to all had different year counts, and the new year wasn't always celebrated. Garrus reclined with Liara and Ashley. Well, sort of with Ash. She was singing at the top of her lungs with her arms wide, like everyone else who knew the lyrics:

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne!"

I was reasonably drunk, admittedly. Cortez had the watch, so I was gonna try to enjoy it. Some of my beer nearly sloshed out of the bottle as I swung the bottle along to the tune. Zaeed grunted along as he lit his own cigar, then Liara's. Jack was even playing along, even though her students didn't know the words. The chorus rang, and a few of the krogan began to follow along. Even EDI, both her body and ship over the loudspeakers, sang along. In the blink of an eye, she had copies of the lyrics on any screen she had access to.

"And there's a hand my trusty friend !

And give us a hand o' thine !

And we'll take a right good-will draught,

for auld lang syne."

"So, Commander...if I remember right from last time we did this, humans just celebrate getting through another year alive?" Garrus grunted as he sipped his brandy.

"Seems especially fitting this year, doesn't it? The Reapers keep coming, and look at us."

He glanced at Liara, and the laughing Ash. Zaeed, even Gardner. We were all still kicking, somehow.

"Well Shepard," Garrus grunted, "I've come to terms with humans taking any opportunity to celebrate. And what the hell...turians could learn a little from embracing the little things and unwinding every now and again."

Joker glanced around, EDI's arm slung over his shoulder.

"Commander, I think I'm hallucinating. Garrus isn't being all grim," he said, raising an eyebrow. I just shook my head and raised my glass.

"We're seeing another year. We should celebrate what we still have, while we have it. And with all we've been through, isn't it something of a minor miracle we're still here? To good friends, and farway times, ladies and gentlemen."