░░░░ ░░n░ 2░, ░1░░

The frigid water of the shore pulled over her feet slowly. The steady crash of the waves was interrupted only by the distant cracks of thunder on the horizon. The beach had been empty when she arrived. People smarter than her had stayed away. Or maybe the threat of the hurricane heading her way was just a welcome one. The water had always called her to it.

Darrius had told her not to come home. That he'd handle things, but what could he handle? The shore had grown quiet in his absence, and the sky dark. He should have been here hours ago.

Lila wasn't alone on the shore. There was a woman that had come with the dark. Her body was decorated with thick twisting scars, twisting down her exposed arms. Her hair was buzzed short, the back of it slightly uneven as if she'd done it herself.

The woman raised a hand, feeling the first drops of rain as they fell. It wouldn't be long before the storm came in force.

"It figures that you would linger here." The woman knelt, her hands tracing the wet rocks. "I lingered here, too, after all."

Lila glanced over at the woman, her voice barely audible over the waves. "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you? This is where we died the first time," The woman turned to face her with green eyes and a bitter smile. "Welcome home, Lila."

Lila flinched. "My home hasn't been on Earth in years."

"Right, right, we saved Darius this time, didn't we?" The woman laughed. She leaned over, closing the distance between them. Her left hand caressed Lila's cheek. "My memories, guiding your future away from this horrid place."

"I wouldn't call it horrid. Unpleasant, maybe…"

"You have no idea how bad things will get, Lils. Give it a few years," The woman pulled away, looking towards the house on the cliffs behind them. "Maybe it's for the best. Your optimism is one thing I never had."

The woman took a breath, steadying herself. Her eyes were trained on the horizon as the wind picked up.

"You'll do better than I did, Lils. I won't let you lose yourself like I did, stuck in the same feedback loop of bad mistakes. We've changed so much already, but the real storm's just starting."

Normandy March 3, 2183

The turian in the bed next to her was alive but only barely. The life support keeping him alive was meant for human anatomy, not turian. It blipped warnings with every breath he took, keeping Shepard on edge as she half-listened to Doctor Chakwas.

"Nihlus is stable, Commander," the doctor repeated.

Shepard grunted an acknowledgement. "It's unnerving. I saw how bad it was in the field, and he's just… I don't like how still he is."

Shepard turned away from Nihlus, picking at her arm. It was asking too much for him to be conscious. That he'd lived at all was a miracle — a lesson in turian tenacity. Or was it just stubbornness? Garrus was the same way.

"You still haven't told me how you feel, commander," the doctor eyed her tablet. "I highly doubt you 'remember nothing after you touched the beacon'. You twitch every time it's mentioned."

Shepard winced. "You aren't wrong, but I don't think I should say anything. It's not information the council wants to hear."

"When has that ever stopped you from speaking your mind?"

"It's not just that. Prothean tech interfaces directly with the mind. Human brains don't work that way, so it's hard to interpret it." She lied.

It wasn't a complete lie. Human brains had a tendency to fry when interfacing with prothean tech. It was why humanity had developed tech to do it for them or hired asari interpreters. That Shepard had lived was a miracle in itself.

There was also the matter of the woman on the shore. Taking her word as truth — believing she'd travelled through time… it explained a lot, but it also raised new questions. How and why?

For every answer the woman had given her, there were a dozen left unanswered. It was better to pretend her time on the shore hadn't happened, but that didn't change the vision from the beacon.

The warning it had forced into her mind had shown a very real threat — fully sentient AI that wiped out all life in the galaxy time and time again. Reapers.

"I won't push if you're unwilling to tell me." Doctor Chakwas sighed. "You know I…"

"There's nothing to say." Shepard cut the doctor short. "Really."

Citadel March 3, 2183

Earth's ambassador was lucky he'd gotten a report from her, but that didn't stop him complaining. Udina was an arrogant man, the kind that saw every problem as a nail to be hammered down. He was abrasive and annoying and held himself like he was better than everyone in the room.

He wasn't. Didn't stop him from believing it, though.

Anderson had insisted that Shepard bring her ground team to brief him. His strange optimism about ambassador Udina betrayed the fact that they had never met. It hadn't taken more than ten seconds to realize that his optimism was misplaced.

Of her ground team, only Kaidan had been able to fully hide his disdain for the man. Ashley hadn't bothered. She rolled her eyes every time Udina spoke, miming mockery when he wasn't looking.

Anderson kept better composure. His poker face remained intact through Udina's outbursts. Though, Shepard saw the way his hands balled at his sides.

"This file you received from Nihlus," Udina glared in her direction. "Your report says nothing on what it is."

"That would be because I don't know, ambassador," Shepard drawled, leaning back against his desk. "The beacon corrupted it."

"And you didn't bother trying to recover it!" He snapped. "That information-"

"It is incredibly hard to recover data while I am unconscious." She cut him off. "If you've read the report, you'll see I only woke up a few hours before we docked. You're lucky you have a report. I spent most of that time in medical."

She watched Udina's fists ball at his side before letting out a sigh. "I will attempt to recover the file before we meet the council, but I can't guarantee anything. It might be beyond me."

"It will have to do," he conceded. Udina waved a hand as if he had the authority to dismiss her and her team.

Shepard didn't budge, looking to Anderson instead.

The captain nodded. "Meet us at the council chambers, Commander."

Shepard hummed, relishing the way Udina's face twitched with rage. She stood, gesturing for her team to follow as she stepped into the white halls of the embassies.

The familiar sterile walls kept her company as she waited for Ashley and Kaidan to follow. She'd never felt comfortable in the embassies. Or in any part of the presidium for that matter. It was too open, too clean, too fake. The way the simulated sun never fell put her on edge. The way the people looked at her like she didn't belong, like the grumpy teenager accompanied by c-sec was a nuisance.

She was, of course, but it was still uncomfortable. It was too different from Earth, from the Wards where she wreaked havoc on anything she could.

She wondered if Darrius still lived in their shitty apartment and if he'd managed to get the scorch marks off the ceiling...

"The gall of that man, I swear," Ashley complained, pulling Shepard out of her musings. "He can't seriously expect you to recover the data before the trial. It's in an hour."

Shepard snorted, leading them out of the embassies. "Of course he expects me to, he's a politician."

Ashley cursed under her breath. "I hate politicians."

"Are you going to?" Kaidan cleared his throat. "Recover the file, I mean."

"Are you kidding?" Shepard laughed. "Sorry, I'll just pull out my unfuck-the-prothean-corruption script for the ambassador. It would take me weeks to salvage anything. Contrary to what Udina believes, I have looked at the file. It's a scrambled mess of data trying to be a video. If we're lucky, we might get part of the audio. If not, we'll have to wait for Nihlus to wake up."

"It's amazing that he pulled through." Kaidan mused.

"Yeah, he's a tough bastard." Shepard agreed. His survival wasn't much help at the moment, though.

All things considered, their case against Saren was weak. They had one traumatized dock worker, an unconscious spectre, and her word against Saren's. It was part of why she'd kept the beacon's vision to herself. She also didn't want to be dismissed as being crazy. Visions were exactly the kind of information they hated.

She knew the politics of the council fairly well. She'd been in and out of the embassies more times than she liked since leaving Earth — an unfortunate byproduct of her contract work. Officially, she didn't do that kind of work anymore. Unofficially, she was still called in for 'favours'.

Still, politics had been bludgeoned into her by Earth's last ambassador. If the man had taught her anything, it was that dealing with the council required two things — hard facts and manipulation. She didn't have hard facts yet, but manipulation was still on the table.

Shepard took her time navigating the presidium, humouring her crew's comments as they pointed out familiar landmarks. In a way, she felt like a tour guide. Though, as far as destinations went, the presidium was far from her favourite. It was little more than a pretty shell.

"The wards have less politicians," Shepard hummed, stepping into the elevator up to the council chambers. "I'll show you around sometime. I'm sure C-Sec won't mind so long as we don't cause a scene."

Kaidan laughed. "Right, I'll be on my best behaviour."

Shepard snorted. "It's me they worry about. This whole trial is in line with my usual entrance to the Citadel. I'm surprised I haven't been banned from docking."

"Seriously?" Ashley shot her a confused look. "But you're-"

Shepard raised a brow. "Let's be real here, chief. If it wasn't for my connections to Anderson and the embassies. I would still be on Earth." Or dead.

Sure her skills were good, better than most even, but they came with her, and she was a hassle. She was a well-documented hassle.

She pressed a hand against the glass watching the Citadel's false sky grow closer as they rose to the top level.

Shepard could hear the arguing as soon as they stepped off the elevator. Though, she couldn't place the voices until she was much closer to it — Garrus and his boss.

"Look, your investigation is over, Garrus. Drop it before I suspend you." The older turian snapped, cutting Garrus off. He scowled in Shepard's direction as he saw her approach. "And you. I should have known you'd be at the center of this."

"Well, Executor, you can rest assured it wasn't planned," she crossed her arms.

"This time," the executor added. He gave her a final scowl before pushing past her.

"It's just good to know nothing's changed." Shepard offered a half-hearted smile to Garrus. "Pallin still has a stick up his ass."

"Yeah." Garrus snorted. He hesitated. "You know, when I said there was going to be a report with your name on my desk when you got back, I wasn't serious. I was expecting maybe a call."

"My bad."

"Some warning would have been nice, Shepard." He tsked. "You always did have a flair for the dramatic, though."

"I take it from the argument, you didn't find anything on Saren."

He let out a disgusted sigh. "No. He's a Spectre. Everything he touches is classified." He rolled his eyes.

"I'm heading to the trial now. I can see about buying you some time if you want it."

"I…" he paused. "That might work. Be careful up there, Shepard."

"I'm not going to get mauled by politicians, officer Vakarian."

"You better not," he grumbled.