Samantha

"Specialist Traynor."

Sam turned to see Shepard in full hardsuit – white with blue detailing – stepping off of the lift, helmet tucked under one arm. It was a rather attractive pose, and Sam found herself blushing slightly as the thought occurred to her. She wished she could see Ashley like that.

She also really needed to get laid.

"Yes, Commander?"

"I'm sure you know we'll be at Grissom in about ten minutes."

"Yes, Commander, I'm aware."

Shepard nodded, looking away for a moment before her eyes met Sam's, her gaze intense. "I need you to be real with me, Traynor. Should I relieve you of duty for this mission? I can have Rajad come on duty early, have you finish the second half of his shift later."

Samantha's heart sank. "I… if you think that's best, Commander…"

"I didn't say that's what's best, Traynor," Shepard responded. Samantha's eyes snapped back to Shepard's as the commander continued. "I'm asking you: Do you think I should? Can you handle this? I know it's your little brother, and with Mars…"

"I understand, ma'am," Sam said, nodding. "I lost it that day. You can't trust me-"

"That's not what I'm saying, Traynow." Shepard's voice was low and gentle, her gaze sympathetic. It was almost unnerving to see in the normally playful and flirty woman, dressed for battle as she was. "I'm asking you what you want. You're easily my best communications officer. Your work is miles ahead of Rajad's, and your initiative outmatches his as well. Halanz is good, too, but she's timid. She hasn't learned when to be proactive. I need you on this mission, with Cerberus here. But only if you think you can do it."

Samantha, her face fully flushing as Shepard listed off her attributes, straightened. "I can do this, ma'am," she said simply. "The outburst with Lieutenant-Commander Williams was an isolated incident. I was ill-prepared for combat and taken by surprise by the day's events. That is no longer true, and will not be true again in the future. I… would like a chance to prove myself, Commander."

Shepard smiled. "And no doubt to help save your baby brother. Be the techie hero."

Samantha couldn't keep the smile from her lips. "That, too, ma'am. I can't let you take all the techie glory." Her face fell, however, as she continued. "I know I can do this, Commander. I… I won't let you down again."

Another sympathetic expression from Shepard. "You haven't let anyone down, Sam."

Samantha didn't know what to say in response, but was saved the need as Shepard nodded, reaching up and pulling her helmet on. "Just keep doing that good work, and we'll save these kids. Oh, and, uh… strap yourself into your safety harness. I asked Joker to use the ship as bait so my team can slip in unnoticed."

"We're… bait?"

She couldn't see it, but Samantha knew the commander was grinning behind her helmet. "What? You never been on a ship baiting a bigger ship before?"

Sam shook her head, unable to keep a smile off her face. "No, ma'am, I can't claim that particular achievement on my résumé."

"Well, give it another fifteen minutes, and you can," Shepard said, then turned, heading for the lift. "I'll be in touch."

"Right, ma'am."

As the lift opened, the white and blue helmet turned to face her. "Sam?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"What's his name?"

Sam felt warmth spread through her at the question, and she smiled slightly. "His name is Timothy, Commander. Timothy Traynor."

The helmet nodded, and the commander disappeared into the lift. This time, as the doors closed, Sam felt only hope blossoming in her chest, instead of the dread she'd felt as Ashley had disappeared two weeks earlier.

Joker's voice sounded not in her ear but all the way from the cockpit. "Woo-hoo! Got the last one of those sons-a-bitches!"

"Does that mean we can stop swooping around like a bloody jetfighter?" Sam murmured under her breath, taking advantage of the calming of the ship to look at the screen in front of her. Her safety harness, around her shoulders and waist but anchored underneath her console, had kept her from flying when she lost her footing, and the inertial dampeners were working stellarly, keeping the stumbling down to a minimum, but even still she would sport several bruises come the next morning. Nothing compared to what the ground team is going through, Sam reminded herself as she took in the scene on the space station through Shepard's helmet camera.

Shepard, Liara, Garrus, James, and EDI's mobile unit had worked their way steadily through the station, taking out Cerberus soldiers as they went. It was bloody work, but the team was efficient, dropping the enemy soldiers without too much fuss and moving on. The chatter was down to a minimum, as they wanted to keep their presence as confusing as possible and Sam had informed Shepard that Cerberus was attempting to hack their communications. Sam had been waging a war against the multiple hacking attempts ever since.

Shepard had the biotic students now, but Timothy was not among them. Sam's heart had nearly fallen right out of her and onto the floor when she'd realized this, but she soldiered on regardless. These were only the biotic students, after all. The students working in the tech program – among which Timothy numbered – were not with the teacher. Someone named Jack? Shepard and Garrus seem to know her…

She watched as the door in front of Shepard opened… onto a huge battlezone.

{Run!} Shepard shouted. {Scatter!}

The camera jostled, the floor coming up to meet Samantha's screen. It took her a moment to realize Shepard had probably taken a running leap, rolling and popping back up behind a pillar. The fighting was furious. There was an atlas off in the distance, sending rockets toward them, the resulting explosions showering the ground team in white-hot twisted metal debris.

{We need to take down that atlas!} she heard Shepard shout after the view showed the atlas surrounded in a halo of smoke before ducking back behind the pillar. {It's gonna blow a fucking hole in the side of this station!}

{You and me can take care the foot soldiers,} Garrus's voice piped in through Sam's radio. {Let Vega and Liara get in there and take it down! We just need someone to take down these damn external shields!}

{I will disable their shielding, if someone can get me close enough.} It was strange hearing EDI's voice through the radio, knowing she was on the ground and running many of the ship's systems. I hope she has the processing power for all of that…

The plan worked, and Samantha watched in awe as James and Liara got close, ravaging their way through the ground troops so EDI could disable the external shield pylons. She then took out the atlas's shields, allowing Garrus and Shepard the opportunity to snipe the pilot of the thing from afar. A well-placed biotic pull had the power unit of the machine in Liara's hands, disallowing anyone else from piloting the thing, effectively disabling it without further explosions.

The last few Cerberus soldiers fell without a hitch after that, Shepard making an incredibly impressive shot through the slit of one of those seemingly-impenetrable metallic shields. Sam had a rather off-putting realization that Ashley could likely do that, too, if she was truly as good as she said she was. It was never a brag when Ashley said it, merely the statement of fact, an ability of hers that might go on her résumé or something like that. Very much like how Samantha was good at strategy games and compiling multiple QEC sources into a single communications network, Ashley could snipe an elusive target from too many meters away for Samantha to even be able to distinguish a still and silent person from the background.

She had no time to linger on it, however. Shepard's team was moving now, heading for the shuttle. They still had not found the missing students from the tech program…

Up ahead on Shepard's screen, Sam saw a group of students behind some kind of energy barrier. Shepard was already speaking to them. {Hey, kids, it's okay, we're Alliance, here to help you. We've already got Jack and her biotic students.}

{How do we know you're telling the truth? That could be a convenient lie to get us to listen to you.}

That voice!

"Commander?" Samantha said shakily, her heart suddenly pounding a million miles a minute.

{What is it, Specialist?}

"The boy who just spoke… that's Timothy."

{Good. Maybe you can convince him to listen to me, then. I'm gonna broadcast your voice, okay?}

A second later Sam saw the icon letting her know she was on speaker-phone, as it were. "Timothy?" she tried, hoping her voice wasn't too shaky.

The boy, whose features were now recognizable with Shepard's closer proximity to them, straightened, his determined scowl faltering. {Sammy?}

She nodded, then realized he couldn't see it, ignoring the tear falling down one cheek. "Yes, Timothy! There's no time to explain, but you can trust Commander Shepard. We're here on the Normandy to help Grissom Academy."

{I… yeah, okay. I'll… see you on the ship?}

Shepard answered for her, as the icon disappeared on Sam's console. {Damn right you will. We just have a little more push left. Go join Jack on the upper level, kids. We'll draw their fire while you guys get on the escape shuttle.}

Samantha tried not to pace. Her shift was not technically over, and there was plenty of work that needed to be done now they had evacuated those Alliance personnel (Kids! They're kids, not personnel! Damn this war!) on the station. So she threw herself into it, knowing she would be able to see and speak with Timothy when she was done, when her shift was over and Rajad (wanker)took over her work station. In the meantime, she would simply arrange for their care with Alliance Headquarters.

She was never allowed to finish, however. {Sam, get down here!}

Samantha furrowed her brows, looking to see that the team's synced communication was off and Shepard was speaking to her over the ship's internal radio.

"Ma'am?" she answered, not sure what was going on.

{There's a celebration going on in the mess, and the only person we're missing is you! Get your ass down here!}

"I… I have work to do, ma'am. They need to go somewhere…"

{Let EDI do it. She just demonstrated she can be in combat on the ground and in the air as the Normandy. She can arrange the transfer of the kids.} There was a pause before Shepard continued, her voice gentler. {Your brother is asking after you, Sam. You should be here. Captain's orders.}

Samantha's heart warmed. She could see how Shepard was so charming, so easy for people to fall in love with. She was a badass woman who could take down an atlas with a sniper… and incredibly warm and caring when the situation called for it. And she could take a joke, too. Really, what wasn't to like?

What did she do that has Dr. T'Soni so reticent?

"Captain, is it? Did I miss the promotion?"

Shepard's bark of laughter sounded before she answered. {Laugh it up, Specialist. One day. One day I'll get that fucking promotion. Seriously, Spectre and war hero, but they can't make me a damn captain? Technically this isn't even my ship yet – I'm commanding in Anderson's absence. Ugh. Get your ass down here, Samantha, and stop reminding me of my failings. That's an order.}

Samantha smirked. "Aye-aye, ma'am. I'll be down in a moment."

"I will handle the arrangements, Specialist Traynor," EDI intoned, and Sam watched as her console was logged out and shut down without any intervention on her part.

"You know you're kind of scary sometimes, right EDI?"

"I like to occasionally remind the humans of who is really in charge," the AI's voice deadpanned. After a pause, in which Sam merely stared up at the ceiling open-mouthed, EDI qualified her statement with, "That was a joke."

Shaking her head, Sam chose to ignore the creepy AI's attempt at humor and headed for the lift. Her baby brother was alive and well. But she needed to see him in the flesh, just to make sure.

The scene presented to her when she stepped off the lift was pandemonium. Drinks and food had been brought out from God only knew where. She didn't have eyes for any detail but one, however, and she stood at the edge of the mess, scanning the crowd of thirty teenagers plus ten or so adults, unable at first to find the dark skin of her brother's face. But then a boy in the corner, speaking with Commander Shepard, turned around, and it was Timothy, and she shouted his name, uncaring that it caused a cessation of background noise in the room.

She ran, and he ran, and then her feet left the ground as her baby brother, anything but a baby, lifted her off her feet in a great bear hug that engulfed her in his familiar scent. He smelled like their father, and like grease and metal and the smell of military-grade laundry detergent, and it was familiar and wonderful and she couldn't help the tears that finally escaped. It had been nearly two weeks since the invasion of Earth, and the stress of being unable to get a hold of her family, or Ashley's, of not feeling her fiancée in her arms or hearing her stupid brothers' voices, of not speaking with her mother about wedding plans or her father about how the family dog was doing, had taken their toll on her psyche and she was only really realizing how much her worry had preoccupied her thoughts in this moment.

"Hey, Sammy," her brother murmured, not shying away from her tears, merely putting her back down and keeping hold of her. "I'm here, I'm okay, nothing happened to me."

She got control of her tears rather quickly, shaking her head and laughing a ridiculous laugh. "Of course nothing happened to you. But I worried regardless." She moved away from him a little, taking in his tall frame, his tousled hair, his cadet's uniform. "You cut a striking figure in that uniform, Tim."

He smiled, moving away fully. The noise in the room started up again, but Sam heard the whispers. Were they related? Was that Tim's girlfriend? What the hell was that all about? She was suddenly embarrassed by the spectacle she'd made.

It didn't last long, however, as Tim asked her the question of the hour. "Have you heard from Mum? Dad or Rich? Is Ashley on the ship?"

Sam sighed, her heart sinking. Shaking her head, she threaded her arm through his. "Let's go somewhere quieter to talk, yeah?"

Worry knitting his eyebrows, he nodded. "Yeah, okay. No one's dead, though?"

"I don't know, Tim. I don't know…"

"So you're engaged."

Sam nodded, smiling as Tim inspected her hand.

"But you don't have a ring…"

She laughed. "I proposed to her. She has a ring. She's… working on getting me one in return."

He nodded. "I suppose that makes sense. When are you going to do it?" He winked, fully aware of the double entendre he'd just made.

Sam just rolled her eyes, taking a sip of the beer she'd found under the bar in the lounge, where they now sat. "That's… kind of a difficult question to answer at the moment. She doesn't even know when she'll be fit for duty and able to return to the ship." If she can return to the ship, Sammy. You should think about talking to Shepard about that one at some point.

He nodded again, sipping at his own drink. "I can see that." He paused, looking out the window at the stars. "You think we'll ever see them again?"

Her heart broke at the way he said it. So stoic. Nothing like the emotional little boy who had come running and crying to her when his cat was killed when he was five. This was harder. This was so much harder than if he would just be sad, show how much it hurt him to not know if he'd ever see his twin brother, their mother, their father, again.

But no. He had to be bloody stoic.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I don't know, Tim. Communication with the colonies is… nonexistent at the moment. I don't know if we'll ever hear from them."

He just nodded again. "Fuck."

She snorted a laugh. She couldn't help it. But it subdued quickly.

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, she got up.

"Where are you going?"

"Fancy a game of chess?" she asked.

He smiled. He knew her well enough to know that's how she processed things. A good solid game of chess did wonders for one's mood. At least, it did for Samantha.

"Sure, Sammy. But don't expect me to go easy on you."

She smirked, heading for the door. "As if I need you to."

Retrieving the GUI board she'd bought on the Citadel after seeing Ashley in the hospital, Sam set them up to play at the low table in the middle of the room. It would be a quiet, somber afternoon, but they would be together, and that was what they really needed. She just felt bad she couldn't make something like this happen for Ashley.