The Normandy, a thing of beauty. She was the most blessed sight I'd seen since I'd found myself on this strange planet. Instinctively, I glanced down at the smooth glass amulet to confirm it's dull luster against my chest. I wasn't dreaming. I was really home. And then, the second most blessed sight I'd seen - Kaidan.

My heart pounded in my chest with a thrill as I spurred Lucy forward to greet him. Hope filled me to answer my deepest longings, and I swiftly jumped down from the leather saddle into Kaidan's arms, every curve and slope of my body fitting perfectly against his. My ache for him grew the more I held onto him, and I never wanted to let him go again. This is where I belong. My swollen cheek throbbed in stinging pain when it brushed against his face, but I didn't care. I'd fight a thousand bandits if the reward was Kaidan's embrace. I took a moment to breathe him in - his aftershave that smelled like an ocean breeze, the salt of his sweat mixed with the sandalwood of his soap - and I was transported to another time and place, Kaidan on his knees, shaking as he pulled a brilliant silver band from his pocket with an expectant gleam in his eye. I felt a pang of regret for losing such a precious symbol of our love at Ostegar, and I squeezed him a little tighter for it. His nose nuzzled my neck, which caused me to push myself more firmly against him in response.

"What happened? You're hurt," he murmured as he pulled away to inspect my face, and I took the opportunity to drink in his features. His face was smooth from a fresh shave and his lips so inviting...I fought a fierce desire to pull him into a heated kiss, but I stopped myself short. There would be time for that later. I'd make sure of it. Instead, I answered his concern with a playful bat at his fingers that were grazing over my sensitive cut. "I missed you, too," I replied with a smirk. "Bandit ambush. We lived, they didn't." Golden eyes like pools of honey locked onto mine, full of concern mixed with a hint of admonishment, and my mind suddenly contrasted this moment against the one I had shared with Alistair after the fight. You've looked better, but you've had worse, he'd said. If only he knew how true that really was. But Kaidan knew. Barring the Omega 4 Relay, we'd practically been through it all together: Reaper invasions, Collector attacks, death, life, love, loss, and now...this. Thank God he was also with me in this.

While craning her neck to take in the Normandy, Leliana was slowing her horse to a trot with wide-eyed wonder, and I realized she and Kaidan had yet to meet in person. "You're about to be introduced to a tiny firestorm," I warned him with a broad smile that I couldn't seem to wipe from my face. "Leliana, rogue and breaker-inner of castles extraordinaire." With a smooth dismount, she came to stand beside me and my eyes caught on Alistair's form in the distance. Instead of Lily's expression of amazement, his was shrouded in hesitation as he hung back on the edge of the glade, and a flash of regret shot through me. That's exactly what shattered trust looks like.

"Shepard!"

Difficult as it was, I forced my eyes to leave Alistair's stanch figure to turn toward Admiral Anderson, who was jogging straight for us with urgency etched in every line of his face. In his hand was an old fashioned communicator definitely looking the worse for wear. "Welcome back to the Normandy," he stated quickly. "The crew's anxious to see you, but before you're overrun, you need to hear this. Morrigan found who she was looking for." With a pregnant pause, he looked toward Leliana before looking back to me. "I really think this should be a private conversation."

I could practically feel Leliana's reaction ripple through the air like an ill wind. If trust was like a broken mirror, I didn't want to scatter the pieces any further than I already had. Although imperfect, pieces could be put back together with time as long as you had them all. Squaring my shoulders, I replied, "She's a friend, and she'll know everything soon enough. She'll have to. Whatever Morrigan found, Leliana can hear about it."

After Anderson exchanged a shrouded glance with Kaidan that didn't go unnoticed by me, he reluctantly agreed. "Fine. No time to argue." He held out the communicator between us and we formed a tight circle around it. "Morrigan, I have Shepard and Kaidan. Can you repeat what you told me?"

"Indeed," she answered, her voice thin and tinny through the small speaker. "I have found Solas, and he claims to know of a ritual that can cure the werewolf. However, we are several days away on foot."

"Several days away?" Kaidan asked with confusion in his voice. "You've only been gone for one."

"Do you wish for the apostate's help or not? Details do not matter, but time does. Your friend may not have days. If the curse is allowed to endure for too long, its effects may become irreversible."

Garrus. Suddenly, all of my doubts and worries drowned me like a riptide that had been lurking under the facade of my new-found confidence. How could I have forgotten Garrus? There was too much happening all at once, and the very idea that I had put the turian's condition out of my mind felt like I had betrayed his loyalty. Picturing him suffering was a sucker punch to my already wounded conviction that we could win against the Illusive Man. The fact was that I had a cure already, and I had shoved it aside. Could there really be another way to heal him?

Lucy shook her mane to bat away the tension that wrapped around us like a shroud. Your friend may not have days. I didn't know what Morrigan was up to, but if it involved healing one of my dearest friends, then delay wasn't an option. "Could we take Garrus to them, somehow?"

Anderson shook his head ruefully. "Not without waking him up, and trust me, you don't want to wake him up."

His tone made me cringe inside. How bad was it? Obviously worse than I had imagined. I bit my lower lip as I looked again toward the Grey Warden in the distance. "Then we take them horses. If we ride hard, it could shave off a few days."

Kaidan's eyebrows knit together in a frown. "We, as in you and someone else? You just got back. If you turned around and left again, I think the crew might revolt." I could tell by the anxiety in his eyes that he could just as easily have inserted "I" in place of "the crew", but I had to admit that the idea of leaving the Normandy made we want to crawl up into a little ball and shut out the world. Would the endless list of code reds never end? Nope, I thought cynically. They never will. So deal with it like you always do.

Okay, if not me, then who? I puffed my cheeks and folded my arms over my chest. Who was the most qualified?

"What about Alistair and I?" Leliana suggested, pointing toward the Grey Warden atop his steed in the distance. "We can fight, Alistair is the best rider, and I'm a good tracker. If we know the direction to go, we can find them."

"That makes sense to me," Anderson replied.

Incredulous, I turned toward her as I motioned toward Alistair myself. "Seriously? You just got here, and you're willing to turn right back around?"

Her features softened as she voiced her answer. "I'm following the Maker's will, and I'll help however I can."

Gripping her shoulder, I smiled affectionately, suddenly flooded with appreciation for yet another friend's support. "Thank you, Lily. Really."

With a deep breath, I looked to Anderson and Kaidan in turn to poise myself for what I was about to add. "When they get back, we need to debrief them. On everything." Before either of them had a chance to interject, I held up my palm as I continued. "They deserve to know what's going on. It affects them as much as it does us, and if we want their help, they need to be a part of the team. Completely."

Bracing myself for push back, I was frankly shocked to see Anderson nod his concurrence with Kaidan soon to follow, and a weight I didn't know I'd been carrying lifted ever so slightly from my shoulders. "Agreed. After Morrigan returns, we'll tell them what we can."

What we can. Which means not everything, then. Well, it was a start, and for now, I was going to take what I could get. After returning the nod, I spun on my heel and began to run away from my ship, away from my crew, toward Alistair. His face twisted in alarm and reluctance, and another jab of guilt went through me. After our argument that morning, I could hardly blame him. I'd dangled the keys to unlocking Andraste's ashes right in front of his face and snatched them away just as quickly. What a fool I'd been. He wasn't a soldier to command; he was an ally, friend, and peer. Soon, he'll know everything, I committed to myself. I'll make it right. Then we can move forward. Together.

Little did I know that soon would be a long time coming.

Returning to the Normandy was sweet with a little taste of bitterness mixed in. Alistair, cold and distant, immediately agreed to travel with Leliana to retrieve Morrigan and Solas. Taking two extra horses, he refused to approach the Normandy and barely met my gaze before turning around and leaving again. Just as he had in Redcliffe, his stallion disappeared through the trees and I watched him go with that same pit in my stomach I had felt back then. They'll be fine, I had assured myself. And yet, being apart from Alistair for any length of time seemed like a violation, a wrongness of separation. It was an altogether odd sensation, and I briefly wondered if he felt the same.

Then, the tidal wave of my crew, hugging, clapping, back-patting, smack-talking, and my love for them swelled, a rightness of being exactly where I belonged.

How can moments contain such feelings of right and wrong side-by-side? It made no sense, but neither could I deny it. I just wished I could understand it.

Directly after the warm reunion, I refused to do anything else before visiting Garrus. Despite all of the preparation, the warnings, the 'brace-yourself's and 'it's worse than it looks', nothing could have prepared me for his condition. Even in the depths of his unconsciousness, I could see the struggle in his clenched muscles and clamped eyelids. He was fighting a battle within himself to retain any sliver of 'Garrus' he could cling to before having it all slip away, leaving only a beast behind. Ignoring the warnings, I couldn't help but grasp his hand and squeeze it, and I marveled at the strange sensation of fur in place of his usual plated skin, warmth radiating from his fingers instead of coolness. If Solas couldn't heal him, could I really refuse to use the ashes? After meeting face to face with the horror of his sickness in vivid clarity, I immediately knew the answer. I'll do whatever it takes, Illusive Man be damned. Garrus was worth the risk.

No break, no shower, no alone time with my fiance. My sense of urgency was too strong. And that brought us to this moment, back in the midst of my crew in the war room, all of us standing in a large circle around the holographic tabletop. Kaidan stood to my right, Anderson to my left. Tali, Liara, Joker, EDI, Sam, and Vega completed the roster. But no Theresa, I noted. The ship was still minimally operational, which affected EDI in ways we couldn't predict. Still, her abilities were invaluable, and we needed whatever she could give us.

I looked to each squad-mate and marveled at the simple wonder that they were even here. The last time all of us were standing in a group like this was in London, right before the final push. I had spoken to every one of them in turn, to tell them how much they meant to me, how proud I was, and, even if unvoiced, how much I was going to miss them. We all knew it was the end of the road. That is, until it wasn't. Here we were, another mystery, another war, another world to save. Could I convince them to stay and fight? Ironically, the Illusive Man made the case more compelling. How could we possibly leave Thedas in the hands of that megalomaniac?

"How is that even possible? It doesn't make sense." Tali's voice snapped me from my reverie, and I took a deep breath to come back into the present moment.

"I have some ideas," Anderson stated with a heavy tone. "But without more evidence, we won't know for sure."

I scratched the side of my neck, trying to piece together what I had just missed, and looked to Anderson quizzically. "Care to expound on these ideas?"

His lips tightened into a thin line. "Fair warning, they might sound crazy, but what doesn't these days? EDI, can you bring up the chart we've been working on?" Placing his palms firmly on the table's edge, he leaned forward as a 3D graphic blinked to life. Lines, orbs, notes, scribbles. It looked like a star chart that a toddler had attacked with a multicolored stylus. But it was all about to make a horrible kind of sense.

"Back in my younger days, I studied quantum mechanics, including black holes. It's part of how I wound up on the Normandy," he stated.

Silence filled the room like an empty word bubble waiting to pop and shower us all with an explanation. Eyes darted to one another, and I swallowed hard. What was he suggesting?

After several long, excruciating moments, Anderson continued. "Bear with me, but what if the extreme force of activating the Crucible opened a black hole that unloaded here, where 'here' is actually much farther away than we originally thought? It's the only explanation that makes sense considering..." The admiral's expression was pained, as though he were about to tell his children their favorite puppy had been run over by a garbage truck. But this was so much worse. "We were also transported to a different time."

I heard a sharp intake of breath and wondered if it was my complete lack of tech, hell, the lack of plumbing harkened back to a time long gone, at least two thousand years ago. Could we really have been transported so far away that it bent time backwards? Everything we knew, Earth, colonization, would all be different. Even the relays wouldn't have been discovered yet. But if that were true, how were humans on this planet, clearly not Earth, if space travel hadn't been invented? It didn't add up, and that wasn't the only reason why.

I shook my head vehemently. "No, that's not possible. While the laws of physics technically grant traveling to the past, it violates the law of causality. You can't go back in time and kill your own father, thereby making you unborn and never able to travel to the past to kill your own father. It's irreconcilable."

Anderson sighed heavily as his shoulders sagged. "I didn't say we were in the past," he voiced softly. "EDI was able to cobble together diagnostics on the eezo that Tali recovered from the caves. Eezo is an element that had a set rate of radioactive decay. And what we've discovered..." He pointed to a lone number circled several times on the holographic diagram that read '5705'. "...is that we're roughly 3,500 years in the future. Plugging that in our formulas, we were able to conclude that we're about 2.2 million light years from Earth. In the Andromeda galaxy."

I felt like the wind had been knocked from my chest. The weight of his words were a spinning vortex pulling my mind into a whirlwind of jumbled thoughts, all circling around one another with no way to organize one question stood out amidst all of the others crowding for space in my brain, and I knew everyone was thinking the same thing: If this is true, can we ever get back to the Earth we knew?

I had the answer to that one, and it was an undeniable, unequivocal no. There was no going back to the Earth we knew. Even if we could reactivate the wormhole that brought us to Thedas, by the time we'd arrive, another 3,500 years would have gone by. Besides, who knew if Earth was even still habitable? Traveling backward through time was out; while theoretically possible, no one had ever solved the paradox of going back to the past, and no one ever would. Life wasn't a game you could reset and play through again. There's no such thing as a do-over. Despite the terribleness of it all, I actually laughed to myself. Thinks the woman who was brought back from the dead.

Of all people, I really, really should have known better.

He checked his analog watch once more before sliding his arms into his suit jacket. "I understand how upsetting that must have been for you," he said with false sympathy while running his hands through his silver mane to ensure each strand was in its proper place. "And yet here I am. Very much alive. I'm sure you're relieved." Tugging on his white sleeves, he stepped nearer to the pawn who stupidly thought she was a match for him. "As far as I'm concerned, we have nothing to talk about. I'm sorry you wasted your time."

Flemeth returned his icy blue stare with surprising boldness. "On the contrary, after discovering your dead body, I had to see for myself that you still live and breathe." Her eyes narrowed to small slits. "You are not as difficult a man to find as you would like to believe."

His lips tugged upward, the resulting smile crinkling the fine lines at the edges of his temples. If not for the intent behind it, it might have actually been pleasant to behold. As it stood, it was as sinister and threatening as any weapon he could have brandished against her. "I'm found when I want to be. As for what I believe..." His tone slipped into a low, velvety growl. "I believe you just missed your opportunity to prevent your daughter from running into a wolf."

Despite her veil of collected calm, a shimmer of alarm raced across her face faster than her mind could mask it. His smile widened in triumph. Another step, another move, another pawn in place.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a more important meeting to attend." A meeting with a certain bastard of King Maric's. In this deadly game of chess, Shepard was the most powerful piece, although woefully predictable. Alistair, however, was the king, that piece the queen was compelled to protect and the one that would force her to move across the board wherever the Illusive Man wanted her. This time would be different. This time, he would win. He could feel it.

Check.

Author's Notes: Yep. There it is. The Normandy and her crew are in another galaxy and flung 3500 years into the future. A tiny sliver of a clue as to what the heck is going on.

And yes, I do totally know that's not really how black holes work exactly. I get it. But I beg you to suspend your shock at my disregard for pure science because let's face it, we're already well off the beaten path at this point. The point is, they're in the future and another galaxy, and that's how I chose to make it happen.

And then more double cliffhangers. Gotta love those; I have to do something to keep you reading this thing, right? You know I love you. And thank you to all of you who have stuck with me thus far. You're all incredible!