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Kaidan spent the following day cooking up a storm, shooing Juniper out of the kitchen any time she offered to help. She would have tried to talk him out of it, but he seemed to be enjoying himself, so she focused on the relatively easy task of prepping the apartment.

By the time Ann Bryson, the last to arrive, made her appearance, the party was in full swing, everyone hanging out with each other. Shepard was glad to see that all her guests seemed to be getting along well, even those who hadn't worked with each other very much.

She spent a few minutes making awkward small talk with Ann before surrendering her to Emily Wong, who had promised that everything tonight would be off the record, but seemed quite interested in asking Ann a lot of questions about her research.

In the kitchen, Shepard found Traynor hovering near Liara, Tali, and Garrus. The young officer started when she saw Shepard standing next to her. "Oh, hello, Commander. I'm trying to socialize. I'm not particularly good at it."

"Not much for big parties?"

"Well, when I know everyone, sure. But some of your friends are legends. I can't just ask them if they've tried the hummus."

"Hey, Liara. Traynor would like to know if you've tried the hummus."

Traynor looked frightened, but Liara only shook her head. "No. Is it any good, Specialist?"

"Well, I thought so, but …" Traynor's voice trailed off as she realized that Garrus and Tali were both looking at her, as well. "I'm sorry. I must admit, I still feel like something of an outsider. You all have such a history with Shepard."

Garrus chuckled. "It's mostly a lot of running and shooting and usually, somewhere in there, a button needs pushing. But Shepard always hogs that part."

"Yes," Liara said nostalgically, "a history of close calls, narrow escapes, and more near-death encounters than I care to remember."

Tali took a long sip of her drink through her straw. "I remember first meeting Shepard. All I kept thinking was 'I hope she took a shower, because my filter needs replacing and humans carry a lot of germs.'"

"And here you are now, years later, drinking her alcohol through a straw. I'd call that progress," Liara said dryly.

"Now, now, Liara. That's not a straw. It's an emergency induction port."

"Thank you, Garrus." Tali took another long sip.

Liara rolled her eyes.

Traynor started to edge away. "Shepard, are we sure the Normandy is still there, that no one else has tried to steal it?"

Next to Shepard, Kasumi appeared out of thin air, saying contemplatively, "Stealing the Normandy. Now there's an idea."

"Don't even think about it, Kasumi."

"Too late, Shep." Kasumi disappeared again; Shepard devoutly hoped it wasn't to go steal the Normandy.

Traynor stared hard at the space where Kasumi just was. "Wait, what? Who?"

"Don't ask," Garrus advised her. "We've seen a lot of good times on the old girl."

"That we have," Tali agreed.

Liara added quietly, "Hear, hear."

"Some of you more than others. I'm just glad to have squeaked in," Traynor said, giving admiring glances at the original crew.

Shepard raised her glass. "To the Normandy!" And they all toasted with her.

Liara took Traynor's arm and they went off together to investigate the hummus.

Garrus sidled closer to where Tali was sitting on the counter.

"Garrus, did I ever tell you that when I first heard about it, I thought Archangel was some sort of mascot for a perfume company?"

He chuckled, getting even closer. "Glad I got your hopes up, Tali."

"Well, I didn't say that," she purred.

And Shepard headed off to find someone else to talk to, leaving them the kitchen to themselves. She was about to pass by Joker and EDI in the den for the same reason when Joker called out to her.

"Hey, Commander, we were just talking about the days when Cerberus was just hilariously incompetent. Remember?" He did a parody of a Cerberus operative. "'Uh, hi, Commander, this is Cerberus. We were studying some rachni … and they got loose and killed all our guys. Can you take care of that? It's one system over from where we hooked some guy up to the geth … who then got loose and killed all our guys.'"

"They did rack up quite a body count," Shepard agreed. "At least back then, it was mostly their own bodies."

"True. However, Cerberus did successfully revive Shepard from a near-death state," EDI pointed out.

Shepard grinned. "And after taking down the Collectors, I cut ties with Cerberus, got loose … and start killing all their guys."

Joker raised his beer bottle. "Here's to killing all their guys!"

"I'll drink to that."

On Shepard's way out of the den, she noticed the two krogan, with Javik and Zaeed, on the balcony where some of Anderson's most valuable artwork was kept. She hurried upstairs, just in time to see Grunt and Wrex squaring off against one another, preparing to fight. "Okay," she said, holding up a hand to keep them from starting anything. "What'd I miss?"

"The Prothean here wants to know who would win in a fight between me and Wrex," Grunt told her.

Zaeed studied both krogan carefully. "You've gotta admit, Shepard, it's a pretty good question."

Wrex flexed his massive arms. "No, it isn't. Baby pyjak here wouldn't stand a chance."

"Don't listen to that fossil," Grunt responded. "The only thing he could defeat is a glass of warm milk."

"You boys done talkin'?" Zaeed raised his eyebrows, waiting.

Grunt head-butted Wrex, who returned the gesture. Shepard sighed and stepped between them. "Another time, guys. When I have time to buy new furniture."

"Yeah, you could use an excuse to upgrade," Wrex remarked, looking around.

Shepard shrugged. The apartment wasn't really her taste, but then, it wasn't as though she'd ever had a chance to learn what her taste was. "Tell you what, we defeat the Reapers, you boys can have an epic showdown. Until then, save it for the giant machines."

Both krogans grumbled, but they stood down.

Javik frowned at her. "Fifty thousand years from now, no one will remember this party. What is the point?"

"To have fun, Javik. To relax. To get to know better the people who are going to have your back in the final battle."

He considered that one. "That reason I accept." Leaning closer to Shepard, he lowered his voice. "Be wary, Commander. Something called a 'Kasumi' is loose on the premises. It pretends to be invisible. Foolish primitive. Nothing escapes these eyes."

"You let me know if you see her stealing anything I might need later, will you?"

Kasumi appeared next to her, briefly. "I would never."

As Shepard headed back down the stairs, Zaeed was saying, "Sure, I could take out a hundred vorcha. Better if I could shoot some kind of death-ray out of my bad eye here, though." She considered what it would take to make that happen. Maybe next Christmas.

In the living room, Vega and Cortez and Kaidan were hanging out on the couch. "Hey, Esteban, did I ever tell you that back in school, they called me 'Party Vega'?"

Cortez winced. "That was the best they could come up with?"

Vega shrugged. "What can I say? I ran with a simple crowd."

"You guys having fun?" Shepard asked.

"I'm relaxed," Vega said, "but fun? I think my kindergarten graduation was more fun than this."

She grinned at him. "You must have been quite the kindergartener. Did you see Ann Bryson is here?"

"Damn, Lola, you aren't subtle, are you?"

"No time to be subtle." Shepard looked at him pointedly until he got up and headed toward the dining room, where Ann and Emily Wong were still deep in conversation.

"This was Admiral Anderson's place, wasn't it?" Steve asked.

"It was. Technically, it still is. I look forward to giving it back to him when all this is over—if he wants to come back to the Citadel, anyway." She sank down on the couch next to Kaidan, smiling at him when he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"In my dreams, I have a place just like this overlooking the Pacific," he told her.

"Sounds nice." But the last thing Shepard wanted to do at this party was talk about a future none of them really knew they had, so she squeezed his thigh and said, "Didn't you have some appetizers in the oven?"

His smile said he knew what she'd done, but he got up from the couch and started pulling trays out of the oven, calling to everyone to come and get the food while it was hot.

Shepard let them all congregate in the kitchen, content for the moment to sit back and look at them all here, her family, and be glad they had made it this far.