i think that young and beautiful would be a great theme song for this story. just a thought. enjoy the chapter.

Hey guys, sorry for not updating yesterday! I have a chapter that's longer than any of the others, and the introduction of a certain person is also included. :D

Please continue to R&R! I absolutely adore reading them!

xoxo

THR

Chapter 8

Your name was Admiral Steven Hackett and you didn't know how you were going to compose a certain email.

Telling the Council how you had royally fucked up on purpose was never easy. In fact, you had never had to live through the harsh experience before. You had undergone your own instances of failure. An unsuccessful invasion or a lost crew had come up before in your career, and shrugging it off with ease had never been unproblematic.

You were a strong man, though. Or, at least that's what the media said about you. You could handle things like that without having a chip on your shoulder. These statements were somewhat true.

Getting ratted out by the Council for military matters was hardly brutal. They were diplomats, anyway. Their perception was hardly accurate when it came to war. But revealing that you had divulged classified documents, revealed Shepard's confinement location and didn't arrest an offender would be out of character and in their playing field. Leveraging diplomatic matters was their job and fighting was yours.

They should have been expecting this, to be honest.

Anything just having to do with questioning their reasons behind Shepard's containment left their intergalactic panties in a wad. But revealing information to someone who lacked prior approval, let alone someone who was technically a civilian and former vigilante? You could get discharged yourself.

The questions they would ask were already playing in your head. Why was a crazy old man being trusted with this knowledge, anyway? They would have to spend their precious relief funds to initiate a cover up. You'd get called rash and sentimental for caring about the Commander. You shook your head and looked at your omni-tool in question.

Caring wasn't exactly the word that was the best for the situation. Sure, you knew the Alliance and the Council cared about Shepard. She was supposedly under house arrest for a good reason: her own mental health.

They cared enough to drive her insane with a limited amount of visitors. Anyone who wanted contact had to go through an approval process first. Most were denied. Others were told that she really wasn't alive.

She couldn't go shopping or go on even the simplest of missions to satisfy her constant thirst for adventure. She had to be confined to a house. It was supposed to help her recover independently for her own good. Turning a penthouse into a makeshift asylum had been effortless for the government despite your protests.

The Alliance had been forced to comply with the Council's decisions regarding their soldier. She was, after all, a Spectre.

"Keep her secluded," they had said to you and your other important colleagues at the Alliance. "If you let her out of your sight she'll do something imprudent and hurt herself. Don't you see what she does? A path of destruction follows her everywhere and we don't need more drama and the loss of the best goddamn Alliance soldier falling into our laps. Not to mention her position as a Spectre! The galaxy doesn't need Shepard to turn into the next Nihlus or some other fallen veteran."

You knew there were other motives for her second house incarceration. Former crimes and grudges were still there. Although the two parties agreed on most things, the fate of an infamous commander was not one of them.

And as you sat at your worn wooden desk with your omni-tool still blinking, you made yet another decision that came with much self-reproach on your part.

You cancelled the email that was to be forwarded to Alliance agents and the Council members themselves. This could be another secret that you could throw away into the wind and let go of.

It certainly mattered, but you were willing to face the consequences. It was for the greater good, wasn't it?

Even if it wasn't, you were still going to be able to sleep better at night.

Your name was still Admiral Steven Hackett, and you wanted what was best for the victims.

Your name was just Liz Shepard right now.

As you sat on the glass counter of your master bathroom, the Presidium was staring back at you again with that false façade that you had grown to hate. The next mock up night cycle had started again, and the soft light of the stars were spilled all across your own face as well as your partner's. The watercolor was gone now. It was just blue.

Garrus had gotten on one of his old C-Sec comm channels and told C-Sec to hold off on investigating the biotic accident. "Under control," he had said. This was a lie; neither of you liked to lie, but you supposed that it was for a good cause this time. You were in a good place right now. You didn't feel crazy.

The look of the Turian in front of you right now was breathtaking. With his carapace shining and reptilian skin giving off a cobalt hue, he straddled you and wiped a talon across your scabbed over cheek. In theory, the damage your face had taken on was minimal. Needless to say, though, Garrus was protective. He had sprung into action from the second he had shown up.

You hadn't expected anything less from him even though it still felt so surreal.

The glass was all gone now, and you two seemed to have nothing else to say. He had remembered the normal conduct for reunions and you knew better than to speak to him right away. He may be the most friendly face you could ever wish to see right now, but that didn't mean that you weren't downright scared.

The feeling of him embracing you while you were still in your armor was now gone. Your outer shell for protection was now sitting on the floor in pieces. In agony, you touched the tags around your neck almost like a form of security. What would happen if you screwed up while talking to him? In the blink of an eye, he could get up and leave.

He could never come back and maybe find someone of his own. Turian women were endowed with a thinner waist and more supportable hips than the ones that you possessed. They would be more attractive to him, anyway.

"Shepard?"

His voice. He had said something and you weren't listening again.

You jerked your head up, noticing the glowing blue target visor. It was one of the few things in the room that was still alive with light, minus the cars flying outside.

The way he looked at you was practically endearing. His talon moved to your chin and tilted it up, but you couldn't look straight.

"You don't belong here." he muttered. His tone was angry, and you couldn't help flinching.

Why were you afraid of him? Your hand turned into a fist around the tags and bit down on your lip.

"You should be out there fixing what the Reapers ruined."

Instead of touching your chin, he moved to your hand and took it away from the tags. You didn't know if he knew what those meant to you.

Sensing that this was turning into a one sided conversation, he cut out the romantic advances and moved towards the big window. His eyes narrowed at the view; you could tell that he wasn't impressed, either. He had been on this damned station for way too long to feel anything more than apathy most of the time.

"I'm tired of seeing this place." he continued. It was almost as if he was speaking to himself, but it became obvious that neither of you minded much. "I'd rather be somewhere warm, if you know what I'm saying."

You remembered exactly what he was talking about, but a different sentence slipped out of your mouth.

"I'm tired of feeling like I'm fucking crazy."

Your name was Jeff Moreau, but you preferred being called Joker. Two things you had never really been good at were walking and manipulating technology that didn't deal with piloting ships.

Parts.

Parts were everywhere in the small Citadel apartment you called home. With the salary you got on the Normandy, you could have afforded better if you wanted to. Since then, you had also picked up a few Alliance relief effort jobs that involved flying, but they were petty. You got nothing out of them. Besides, inflation on the Citadel was only getting worse due to limited space and you needed its resources. You wanted to be there so you could reassemble her.

Recovered files.

As you sat at your personal computer station, you typed as rapidly as you possibly could. Fingers flew. They cramped sometimes, and the Vrolick's didn't help. You had to slap some medi-gel on them from time to time, as they were almost too prone to fracture.

Since you had left the Alliance on personal leave, you had one objective that you were determined on completing. In fact, if you were capable of completing it, you could for sure say that you would be able to feel some sort of fulfillment in your life.

One would think that you would be able to say that your life was pretty damn good. You had served on the Normandy three times, been called the most prestigious pilot in the Alliance and had some of the best friends a guy could ask for. You were still youngish and you had learned so much in your thirty-something years of life. You had faced challenges and celebrations. Being on the verge of death throughout the past few years made calling yourself a badass a little more justified, too.

During these times, you also had one person who had been much more than a friend.

There was one sole problem in that person that had ruined everything.

That person had in fact not been a person.

Your hand swiped across the computer in front of you, and you were one button away from trying out your newest experiment.

Her name had been EDI. Some people hadn't called her a person. To them, she was the Enhanced Defense Intelligence.

You knew that she had been more than that.

She was an AI, a friend, a colleague and someone who had saved your own life more than a few times. You could never admit it, but you wondered if you were in love with her.

EDI had been destroyed in the Reaper War along with all other synthetic life forms. The transition to life without her had been everything but seamless. When you were in a ship cockpit, nobody was there to tell morbid jokes. Nobody would make the witty comments like she could and you couldn't think of a single person that would be allowed to make your helmsman's chair spin out of control other than her.

Sometimes you were even convinced that she was the one who you wouldn't mind spending a lot of your troubled life with. You knew you couldn't marry her, but having a lifelong bind would suffice. Besides, inter-species relationships were hardly tolerated. Organic-synthetic ones would be out of the question and were looked upon as a fetish.

You had grown so attached to her during your time together. Some would call it a sick attraction. Others found it to be an engaging relationship that was different than most.

The precautions you had taken in case of a sudden shutdown of her systems were the single thing left that could save her. She laughed at you when you backed her up before the final assault on Earth, saying that she was omnipresent. You tended to be on the paranoid side, though, and for once your intuition surpassed hers. The computer in front of you held everything: her program files, her memories, and even logs of all of her previous conversations.

The one mission you had left was to bring her back to life. Since you had been back, you had tried before. All of those attempts failed.

You weren't sure why this time felt different.

The button on the computer was simple.

"Launch system synthesis?" it asked. Your finger hovered above it.

The risk of losing the data was high. The success rate was low.

With your top teeth gnawing on your lips, you pressed it anyway. It was one of the last chances you had to get her back.

With that, you waited. Minutes turned into hours, and the small progress bar that felt endless kept filling up in front of you. You could count the pixels as they got closer to the end.

You didn't really know what time it was when you looked up.

"Synthesis failed."

You stared at it with a blank expression.

You had failed again.

In a huff, you stood up and yelled in agony. You couldn't stand this anymore. Being so alone and helpless never felt so bad. Never finding someone like her made you feel even worse.

Yells turned into tears, and you soon found yourself on the floor with a broken arm.

"It's a motherfucker without you here, EDI…" you muttered. "I'm sorry you can't—"

"Shall I send for a car to Huerta, Jeff?"

You looked up, your eyes wide. You knew that voice. It was mechanical and funny sounding and beautiful in every way possible.

It was her.