Shepard sat at the table eating the food she had packed for the trip. She was tired and worried. What was this place. She remembered EDI talking about the possibility of place where the rules of physics did not apply. This seemed to be that kind of place. She saw Edwards getting something out of the cabinet. He came to the table carrying a box of energy bars. "I feel like I could eat the whole box but I'm willing to share," he said.

"Where did you get those?" She asked.

"Off the shelf. I guess there was another box up there."

"No, there wasn't. I inventoried what was on that shelf and there was only the open box that I packed and we ate while were out exploring." She reached into the pack and pulled out the empty box. "The house replaced the empty box?"

Edwards walked back over to the kitchen island and pulled out a bottle of Thessia Red. "Apparently it replaces everything. The empty bottle of this is up in my room. Where's this stuff coming from?"

"Well," Tina said, "as long as it continues we won't have a food problem."

And it did continue. Some days they would repeat their attempts to leave, but the results were always the same. On these days, they would talk and share stories about different missions they had been on, both before and after the start of the Reaper War. Anytime Shepard asked Edwards about one of his missions, he would protest that his stories were boring, and basically all the same.

"The team spent a lot of time gathering intel on targets; usually not a big deal, just research. We'd determine the best candidate to run a mission. Sometimes the best candidate might already have an active assignment so someone else would take it. In either case, we were usually able to slip in and slip out before anyone knew they had been hit. Sometimes it was intel we were after; sometimes we were rescuing someone; on rare occasions it was a mission to take out a target. I usually got those because I was the best with a sniper rifle. The frequency of those did increase after the war started. Some missions were harder than others, and sometimes you had to fight your way out. But," Edwards added, "I don't recall anything as exciting as luring a thresher maw take down a reaper."

Shepard continued to press him, since he obviously knew more about her then she did him, and asked, "So your team had five members?"

"At the start, yes. Lt. Commander Claudia Crichton was the first person chosen for the team, as I think I mentioned. She's the only one I knew before joining the team. The other three were Juarez, Mueller, and Sun. Mueller got killed in an operation around the time you were putting together your team to take on the Collectors. He hit a Cerberus base and was critically injured before making it back to his shuttle. The autopilot got him back to the fleet with the intel, but he was dead by the time the shuttle got there. Claudia," Edwards paused, "Claudia decided that Cerberus was doing more than the Alliance to prepare for the Reapers and changed sides. They turned her into a phantom and she intercepted me on one of my raids."

Edwards stopped walking and looked up at the sky. Shepard could see the tears in his eyes. "You had to kill her," Shepard said. "I'm sorry Bobby, that had to be difficult. You two must have been close."

Edwards took a deep breath and started walking again. "We were. I'd known her since ICT and we'd been friends. When the team was first put together I'd flirt with Sun. Nothing serious there; Sun flirted with a lot of people. Claudia had maintained a long-distance relationship with her high school boyfriend ever since I'd known her. I didn't he had cheated on her and they had split up. One day after I'd been flirting with Sun, Claudia cornered me and asked why I didn't flirt with her. 'Because I've never thought of you in that way' is not the right answer to that question, by the way."

Shepard said, "No, it most definitely isn't."

"She didn't speak to me for a week and would leave the room when I entered. I finally found her alone in one of the labs and went in to try to speak to her. I had no idea what I was going to say but had to try. I startled her and she biotically threw me against a wall, hard. I was sitting against the wall seeing stars and she rushed over to see if she'd hurt me. I told her I was more concerned that I'd hurt her. She sat down beside me, put her head on my shoulder, and told me she and Paul had broken up a month or so earlier. She wasn't the open type, usually, but she was that day. So one thing led to another," Edwards trailed off.

"Did you love her?" Shepard asked.

Edwards hesitated, then said, "Yes, I did. I almost told her once and sometimes I wonder if things would have turned out different if I had. It was an odd relationship in some ways. We were on a large ship with little privacy and frequently one or both of us were away on a mission. When we could find a few quiet minutes alone, we generally weren't talking. I thought, maybe we both thought, there would be time for that after the war. On a raid, looking for a lead to see if I could find her, I found a recorded message from her where she said she loved me. The next time I saw her, she was a phantom. I had one chance to kill her, before she killed me."

Bobby saw the tears in Shepard's eyes. She said, "I'm sorry," and they walked quietly for a while, until the house came back into view in front of them.

Edwards looked at her and said, "Thanks, Shepard. I've not talked to anyone about Claudia except the psych guys and that was too soon after the fact. I hadn't had time to process what happened before I had to meet with them." Edwards was silent for a moment, then asked, "You mentioned fresh wounds earlier; anything you want to talk about?"

"I know too well how you feel. You know about the first Cerberus attack on the Citadel?" Shepard asked and Edwards nodded. Major Alenko and I were close once, back on the original Normandy. I thought it had the potential to be something more. But when I saw Kaidan on Horizon after the Collector attack, we fought. I could have gotten past that, but after the war started we went to Mars and Cerberus was there. He couldn't let it go and kept accusing me of being a Cerberus plant. So, we fought again. He was critically injured there and was in the hospital for a while. When he got out he was made a Spectre and was working with Udina, though I don't think he knew Udina had allied himself with Cerberus. During the Cerberus attack on the Citadel we ended up in a stand-off, neither trusting the other. I knew if I didn't take the shot Garrus would and I wouldn't let Garrus be the one to carry that burden. It wasn't the official story, but I killed Kaidan. With the war, I still haven't had the time to grieve; for him, for Mordin, for Thane, or for Legion."

Shepard paused. They were back at the deck. "I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have worked out. Maybe if I'd escaped with the rest of the crew when the Normandy was destroyed, but in those two years apart he changed. I should have moved on after Horizon, but I hoped things would work out. It wasn't until Mars that I realized he would never really trust me again."

"That's not your fault, Shepard. You can't blame yourself for his lack of trust," Edwards told her.

"No, I can't. But I sometimes wonder if how I responded to his doubts strengthened them. Maybe if I'd said something different on Horizon or after he wouldn't have been as suspicious and would have stood down. The truth is I don't know," Shepard said. She then hugged Edwards, "Thanks. I think I'm going to head upstairs for a bit. I'll be back down for dinner."