When she opened her eyes, it was mostly dark, and the weakness and exhaustion was still so heavy that even the effort of opening them wore her out, leading to their almost immediate closing again and her fading back into sleep.

During that moment-which though swift felt almost like a year-she was aware of the prickly, hot throb through her body and the wrung out weariness that always seemed to come on the tail end of some long bout of illness. She couldn't see much beyond a slab of light from an open doorway, but what she saw in that doorway comforted any feeling of confusion and alarm that might have stirred through her exhaustion.

Two figures, silhouettes in that single slab of light, were facing each other, standing flush with their arms tightly around each other. They were of a height, but one had the elegant sweep of an asari's crest, the other shags of hair. She could see no features, only shapes, but she knew just by those alone who they were.

She had been ill-terribly ill by the feel- but her parents were there and nothing bad could happen so long as they stood guard. Comforted by what she had seen, she allowed her eyelids to fall close again and melted back into a thick and heavy sleep.

The next time Melara opened them, she could tell quite some time had passed, and her head was far clearer. Her eyes snapped open and the last dashes of a dream broke away like cobwebs-a dream full of her cousin's distorted, grimacing, hateful face, and her own fingers digging furiously into her neck.

As reality replaced that specter she realized she was in a small infirmary, no bigger than a bedroom, and completely unfamiliar. The floor was a pale gray blue, the walls white, the equipment gleaming. The ache in her body seemed to have settled in every muscle and joint, but her mind was clear enough that she could tell she was not on any active pain medication.

She tried to sit up, looking around, and a dark haired woman was suddenly there, lightly catching her shoulders. "Not so quickly, Captain," she said. Mel stared at the woman with pure confused bafflement, a sense of eerie recognition filling her at the face of this stranger, before it snapped into place.

"Miranda-?"

The woman smiled a little, but didn't ease up the pressure on her shoulders until Mel relaxed again. "They warned me that you might recognize me."

Melara's eyes closed as memory and understanding filled her mind, her brows knitting. The last she could recall was broken images of laying on the floor in that black ship, Dr. Shepard looming close over her. In the memory her consciousness was failing her, the fever too much to fight any more.

The anchor had been empty.

Seeing her mother's old friend looking so young and hale at her side, centuries after she had passed away with her hair as white as snow, told her just as plain as neon sign that wherever they had ended up in an infinite possibility of volumes, it was not home.

"Is Dr. Shepard all right?" she asked, opening her eyes again.

"Well enough," Miranda told her. "She was all but dropping of exhaustion when we pulled her through, and a bit battered around, but nowhere near as bad as you were. She wanted to treat you but given her state of exhaustion and the fact I was on board, she wasn't allowed."

Miranda gave a little ironic smile, as if the fact of her being there was both an unusual and highly amusing thing, and said, "Your wounds were bad but treatable," she said. "You're going to feel like you've been heavily beaten for the next few days- because you were-but you should do just fine. We found a strange biosynthetic substance in your blood that was breaking down the hemocyanin, we nearly lost you to the fever before we discovered it."

Mel only nodded. Had she been conscious enough she could have told them what was killing her but it didn't matter now. They'd found and treated it, and that was enough.

"Where are we?" she asked. This Miranda seemed to know quite a lot, and also seemed as if two people from another universe appearing through a Fold was quite a usual happenstance, so she knew she wouldn't have to explain the meaning of her question.

"Dr. Shepard's home," Miranda told her, then gently touched her shoulder a moment. "You're on board the Dauntless. Liara wanted to see you when you woke up. She should be on her way down."

Miranda adjusted the bed a bit so that Melara could sit, then brought over a glass of water. Mel sipped at it, and had just handed it back when the door in front of her opened, and her mother came through.

This Liara was the ghost of one that Mel remembered from her childhood, still solidly a maiden, her face and bearing two centuries younger than Melara herself. It was also the bearing of a solider, a straight-backed confidence and military presence that Mel associated more with her father than her mother growing up.

Liara looked at Melara with an odd expression behind her eyes. Melara supposed it was just as surreal for her to see what she knew was her own daughter (one not yet born, if she ever would be born in this volume), and a matron in age.

The pause was only a moment, however, and then Liara looked at Miranda. "If we could speak alone," she said, her tone clinical. Melara got the distinct feeling this Liara did not like this Miranda much, and perhaps that was why Miranda had given that ironic little smile in the beginning. Miranda said nothing, just nodded and stepped out of the room. Liara went over to Melara's bedside.

"We are working on getting you home," she said. "Opening the Fold to retrieve you two drained what energy we had and we are trying to re-establish."

"Home should be able to establish a link here without draining your power," Melara said, and Liara nodded.

"They haven't yet. We are unsure they even know you are here."

Mel felt a bit cold at that. The last they knew, Mel, Sihra, Vina and Pio had gone through the Fold onto that ship and then something happened to close the micro-fold and make them lose connection. Melara still didn't know what that something was. It shouldn't have been a loss of power, not with just a micro-fold and Goruba well charged.

Perhaps the Solvers figured out a way to cut the connection off when they realized intruders had come through, she thought. Maybe they figured out how to cut it off and block that particular signal from re-establishing.

Then she realized that she may never know the truth of it.

When that ship went up, they would think we were still aboard, she thought. They would have no way of knowing we got off. They would think-

"They'll think we're dead," she said in a hushed voice. "My wife, my family-"

"We can do nothing about that at the moment," Liara said gently. "As soon as we get enough power we will open communications and let them know the truth. It should not be much longer now."

But how long will it have been for them? Melara asked herself, feeling suddenly exhausted and wrung out again, her stomach slowly roiling nauseously. We had Pio, and even he couldn't pinpoint back here to the time when Ashley had been sucked through; he could only get within a few weeks.

When she got home, would she find days had passed? Weeks? Months?

Years? Centuries?

She clung to a quick hope. "Do you have Pio?"

Liara shook her head. "All the Pio were destroyed when we took down Osco's ship. We have located no others so far. We are, as the humans say, 'winging this'."

Melara could see in her eyes that Liara understood all the fears going through her mind, and had already considered them herself. Drawing over a nearby chair, she sat down and looked at her otherworldly daughter kindly.

"We will do whatever we can to get you back home to your family, Melara. I swear it."

"I know you will," she said dully, but all she could think about was walking back through that Fold and finding her wife was an old Matriarch, Aleu long since grown and passed away, her mother gone, Sam gone, all her friends…all having spent centuries believing that Melara had died on that black weapon, trying to save the galaxy.

Then Liara said, "We are hoping that your side re-establishes contact with us as soon as they are able," she said. "Even if they think you were killed, it remains that Ashley has not yet returned home."

Mel felt hope renew. That was true. They had the coordinates to this volume, and Ashley still needed to come home. Barring some unknowable catastrophe, months or even years would not pass there before Mel got a chance to get back. Even if Ashley had somehow died (a thought she didn't want to contemplate as Ash had been on the Normandy), they would open communication to let this volume know, and let them know how things had gone regarding biotics and the superweapon.

It was a great relief, though it was still in her mind that days could go by with her family grieving, thinking her dead. She didn't want to put her wife through that, nor her son. Her sister and her mother were still recovering from grievous wounds, adding grief and loss on top of that would make things even worse. Slow their recovery, add to their suffering.

Liara reached out and took Melara's hand, giving it a firm squeeze. When Melara met her eyes, she was a bit surprised to see such emotion in them, even as schooled as she tried to keep it.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for saving her life, for bringing her back to me."

Melara shook her head slightly, knowing that Liara was speaking of her Del. "She's the one that saved my life. More than once," she said. "I would have died in that cargo bay if she hadn't reached out of nowhere and caught me, and the only reason I could be here right now would be if she literally dragged my ass through that Fold. She saved me, not the other way around."

Liara was silent only a moment, then said, "She told me about Pio. About the idea it came up with so that she could escape those grenades. I know that she feels very badly that Pio sacrificed itself so she could live, but it was right, and so were you. She told me that without you, she never would have made it back to the anchor in time if you hadn't half carried her the last few corridors back to it. She would not be here if it were not for you and Pio, and for that I can never thank you enough."

Melara knew what Ashley must have felt when she'd found herself sucked through that Fold into a universe that was not her own.

Within a few hours of waking up Miranda deemed her strong enough to eat and leave the infirmary. By then, the Doc had been into visit, her undisguised depth of emotion and relief moving Melara to tears by its force. She verified Miranda's results and brought Melara some clothes to wear instead of the scrubs they'd put her in. The clothes and hard-suit she'd come in were in no condition to be worn, and probably never would be again. Then she walked with Mel out of the infirmary and showed her the ship, before bringing her down to the cargo hold to see the anchor. By then, Liara had joined them again.

Mel was relieved that they were taking security precautions with the anchor, keeping it sealed behind barriers. Of course they would be, they were not idiots, but it relieved her to see all the same.

The anchor itself was just the same as those back home-a simple black archway of smooth metal buried in the slowly swirling blue shimmers of energy guarding it from use.

A pair of quarians, only one in an enviro-suit for some reason, were studying the console that had been set up beside it, and Mel felt a jolt when the one without the suit looked up. It felt similar to the jolt she'd had when she'd recognized Miranda back in the infirmary.

"We are only half powered," Tali said to Liara. "At this rate, it's going to take another week to get it where we need it."

"Have there been any attempts from elsewhere to establish a Fold here?" Liara asked, and Tali shook her head.

"Not yet."

Melara tried not to feel worried and crestfallen at that, then looked at Del as the human woman took her hand.

"Just remember," she said. "Time doesn't pass the same here as there, even with coordinates. EDI could have linked a Fold back to us within minutes of losing communication with you and from our perspective it could come days later. Time's a slippery thing."

"Eager as I am to get home, I don't mind days passing here, so long as they do not pass there," Melara said. "I do not want to cause my family undue grief."

She clung to the hand in hers, however, holding tight to her father's doppelganger as they went back upstairs.

The three of them spoke together until late that evening, Liara occasionally disappearing to attend to some matter or other, but always returning. She was fairly quiet during the discussion, sensing that Melara needed to speak to Delilah more than to her.

Her mother is still alive back home- at least, she was when Melara left, she thought. How often do you get to sit and talk, however, to a parent that has been dead for hundreds of years? Even if it's not quite the real thing…

As she listened and watched them converse, she couldn't help a sense of pride coming over her. Before she had met Del, Liara had never even considered a life with romance and children in it, but that had changed. She still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about having children- being pregnant and having an infant to tend to were not entirely conducive to Spectre work after all- but listening to Melara and watching her, hearing her tell tales of her family and her sister, Liara felt a little bit of that hesitation melt away.

I would be proud to have a daughter like her, she thought, and then when she heard more of Irie, she amended that to, I would be proud to have daughters like them.

Melara retired back to the infirmary late that evening. The Dauntless was not a large ship, and there were really no spare bunks for her to sleep in. Miranda had been bunking in the broom closet sized lab next to the tiny infirmary herself, having been brought on board when Del discovered she was biolocked with those grenades, to try and help Tali figure out something to try and break that lock.

Mel's mind was swirling with a million thoughts when she laid down, her still sore body sighing in relief, but weariness won out over contemplation and she fell to sleep quickly- only to jolt awake what felt like only a few seconds later when the door opened and Liara said, "Melara, wake up. We have a connection."

She dashed off heavy sleep instantly, surging to her feet and ignoring the pulling ache of her muscles as she did, dogging Liara's heels as they hurried down to the cargo bay.

Del, hair still mussed with sleep and the haphazard looseness of her clothes testifying to how quickly she had dressed, was standing with Tali at the console. Behind the shimmer of the barrier, the archway still appeared to be empty.

Del didn't miss a beat when she saw them. "I'm going to drop the barrier, it's interfering in the clarity of the signal," she said. Melara's hand lit up immediately and she nodded.

"I'll hold it."

A breath later, as Del's fingers moved quickly, the blue shimmer disappeared. Melara immediately replaced it with an exobiotic barrier, then started edging it downward until the tiny black gnat of a micro-fold appeared above it.

Liara had lifted her brows with fascination at the sight of the exobiotics. They had discussed them at length the night before- even surmising how long it would be before the biotics of their universe started slowly morphing into exobiotics as a result of what the Crucible had done entire volumes away-but Liara had not really seen them in action until now.

Almost the instant the micro-fold was clear, the low hiss of static around them suddenly clarified into a voice.

{…is Ashley Williams. C'mon, Captain. Please respond!}

Melara's stomach sank a bit. Ashley had been aboard the Normandy when they'd departed. That she was now aboard Goruba- the only place she could be if she was speaking to them though the Fold-said that enough time had passed for the ships to come back from dark space, and for her to depart the Normandy for the ark.

"Ashley, this is Liara," the Spectre said immediately. "We are receiving you now."

{Thank God! Some weird kind of energy pulse backfed through the micro-fold and all but wiped out all the power and most of the systems in Goruba. Nearly wiped out EDI too but she's back online. We haven't been able to re-establish until now.}

"Do you know what caused the pulse?"

{Negative. We thought at first it might be…it might be the destruction of that superweapon that caused it but the timelines don't mesh. When the pulse happened the superweapon was still intact and had just passed through the Omega Four. The weapon is neutral now, it…the readings say it kind of just imploded, but I don't know how that is possible-}

"We do," Liara said. "We have received a full report. Captain Melara Shepard is here with us."

There was a long, unexpected pause. It stretched on so long, in fact, that Del checked to make sure they hadn't lost contact. As she shook her head at Liara, indicating they were still connected, a voice returned. This one was breathless, thick, and definitely not Ashley.

{Mel? Melara, are you there?}

"Dae, I'm here!" she said immediately, and dropped the exobiotic barrier. With the micro-fold already established it was pointless to keep it up- no hostile Fold could connect to the anchor so long as one connection was already made.

There was a thick sob that cut right through Mel's gut. {Oh Goddess,} Dae said, clearly in tears. {Thank the Goddess! We were told that you had been lost when that ship imploded-}

Mel felt the emotion squeezing her throat, and she shook her head. "I'm sorry, Dae. I'm so sorry. I'm ok, love. I'm all right, and I'm coming home to you, I swear it."

Looking sympathetic, Liara apologetically spoke to give Mel a moment to recover herself.

"We are forwarding a full mission report to you now, but as you can guess Melara is a bit eager to get home, as I am sure Ashley is as well. Do you have enough power to fully open the Fold to allow transfer?"

{I-I believe so, yes,} Daenys said, clearly trying to control her emotion. Then, there was a brief pause, and EDI's voice spoke up instead.

{Affirmative, Captain T'soni. We have enough power now to open a full Fold for exactly four minutes.}

"More than enough time for me to step through, and her to come back," Melara said. "EDI, it's damn good to hear your voice. Are you all right?"

{As it is good to hear yours,} EDI replied. {I have recovered well, Captain.}

"How long has it been?" Melara asked. "You can give me a full debrief when I get back but I need to know…how long?"

{We confirmed that the ship imploded four days ago. Goruba's systems were heavily damaged by an energy pulse that came through the micro-fold and broke link. I have not been able to examine the cause as I was damaged by the same pulse.}

Mel was almost rocked. Four days. Daenys and her family had thought she was dead now for four days. Exactly the grief and heartache she had been hoping to spare them, they had been suffering for days now.

"I think you can be forgiven for that, EDI," she heard herself say. "Anything else can be explained in person. Get ready to open up the Fold on our mark."

Moving away from the anchor, she walked over to the others as Del abandoned the console to Tali and rushed over. She hugged her tightly, and Melara hugged her back just as tightly.

"Get back to your family," Del said softly in her ear, and Melara nodded.

"Thank you," she whispered back, then as Del reluctantly released her, Liara stepped in and hugged her as well.

She did so silently, but Melara understood her all the same.

As Mel stepped back and turned away from them, she said, "Expand the Fold."

A breath later, the tiny gnat of black vanished into a full sheet of darkness. Even as Melara went toward it, a figure strode out of it.

Ashley Williams let out a brief breath of relief as she stepped away from the anchor, then reached a hand out toward the approaching Mel. Melara took it, then tugged the human woman in and hugged her too.

"You stay in contact if you can," Ashley said. "Keep us updated ok?"

"I will if I can," Mel said, but could promise no more. The ultimate dispensation of the existing anchors and Fold technology would not be up to her.

"Go on," Ashley said, releasing her and giving her a quick pat on the back. "Get to your wife."

Mel stepped past her with a quick nod, giving her hand a final squeeze before releasing it, and rushed into that waiting darkness toward home.