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The way it worked around here, people tried hard to forget—lose the memory by waiting it out, and the pain of loss from both life and limb, sight seen and belief suffered, would become duller, numb, nonexistent….Everyone could move on.

For some reason, she couldn't….That worked for everyone else and it didn't for Shepard. No one could figure out how she had survived—those who knew her story….How a woman reborn managed to survive the destruction of the Citadel without life support, in the cold vacuum of space, the fall over Earth onto London…She should have burned, suffocated, lost her life again and maybe six times over if she was that hard to kill. She shouldn't be there in that house by Cherry Crater….Shouldn't be walking, breathing, sleeping now he hoped….She should have died, and what kept her alive, well….No one who knew what she'd done was going to put her in a lab and imprison her for the rest of her life. So they let her go where she wanted after she came back to them from the wreck and no questions asked…That was their thank you…No one bothered to ask what she would do next or where she would go.

She stayed around for a while looking for colleagues, hoping to find faces she'd said goodbye to…Everyone was missing.

A few weeks later, she left London. She may have found a shuttle that could bring her Stateside…but from word of mouth, someone saw her board a boat on the river and sit down with her back against a rower…Woman was resourceful. No trains, only a few cars with gas cans for filling, and a whole lot of walking on busted highways….No doubt she enjoyed that lonely kind of journey.

And at the end of it, Cherry Lake.

The day he saw her go into the bar, he nearly dropped his tools…No way it could be her—so he closed up shop for a minute, went into the port bar, and sat down in the same booth he was in there waiting for her tonight. She only gave him a warning look—Don't come over here. In that glare, he was certain….It was the woman who had saved the galaxy….Right there in Verne's buying liquor to start forgetting, or healing….Whatever one chose to call it. She might have warned a few others who recognized her, but he wasn't sure if they did or were just checking out the eye candy….Not many women came to Verne's port bar, and mostly the men were a blue collar black collar sort from the rough wear of their labors outside…Colorado was for mining and most people still had homes inside the rock. But she maintained a distance about her, one that most instantly picked up on and respected so far as a glance would allow them to enjoy her sight without getting some sort of unpleasant repercussion out of it….She had that type of power. Beyond that, no one knew really what her story was…but him.

Not ever introducing themselves to each other, they became companions at a distance—he saw she lived a walk from the port bar and would cross his mechanic shop daily….She'd see him stand—not to wave at her, nor offer a salute, just a pause like someone were taking a moment to say grace or appreciate a flag in silence—she didn't acknowledge him but she was aware of his face….Maybe even understood his silent standing was a show of respect. He grew to feel protective of her…The way in which a woman kept walking by alone on her way to an unsafe watering hole….It was kind of his territory, too, and he felt responsible somehow for managing her safety.

It might have been a tad close to stalking, but he never did anything to threaten her…Always keeping apart and giving an air about him and her that they were together and not—nothing had happened so far with respect to those admiring her with their eyes, or even when they tried to be aggressive….She kept some type of ward up and no one laid a hand on her, so perhaps his obsessive following to and from the places she went may have served no good or useful purpose. The drinking became worse—he knew because he was closing up the shop more frequently and falling behind in jobs….He was the best mechanic in Cherry Lake so no worry about the competition picking up on what he left delayed for order. It was the anniversary of the end of the Great War the day it happened—she basically crawled from Verne's bar down the road late one night after drinking that moonshine shit.

Not wanting to pity her, he kept a distance while she struggled home, picked up her key which she had left in the gravel, and when she was leaning against the fence post just at the end of the lane down to her house's front door, he used it to unlock the house….Set the key down on the stoop, a few steps to a porch with open air view of Cherry Crater and the Rockies, then backed himself away so she would be inclined to enter her home without worry of his intentions.

She passed into the house without bothering to pick up the key.

Next day, she was at his shop ordering a spare and left him with the original. Not a word more.