(The Present)

'Jack?'

From his lips, her name travelled through the dark twilight, and born as it was with the strength of love, it led her back, if only for a few moments more.

'Jack?'

One of her eyes fluttered open. What happened to the other, she knew not.

'Jack, can you hear me?'

The beam still stretched into the sky, but around its base the smoking husk of Harbinger had become a part of the London skyline. Just beyond her dimming senses, she thought she heard cheering. Exhaustion, unlike any she had ever known, pulled her toward serenity, but his voice…his voice let her linger.

'Jack?'

'Shepard?', she whispered, dragging the single word for several beats longer than necessary.

'I can…hear you. Are you okay?', his words carried their own stalemate of suffering and fatigue.

Unable to move because of her shattered spine, Jack rolled her eye to the left, where the Salarian's decoy still displayed Shepard resting right beside her.

Though separated by several hundred miles, the lovers sat together on the battlefield.

'I can see you,' Jack answered though her words took a while to pull from her throat; a faint breeze, once a gale, blown from a far off place.

'The beam,' Shepard surmised. 'It must be…carrying our comms.'

Shepard's hologram looked around, as if trying to find her,

'Where are you, Jack?'

''Beside you,' a tear rolled from her eye. 'Always.'

Somehow despite not actually knowing her position, Shepard's eyes met her's and his cracked and broken face smiled.

'What did you mean earlier? One of us would make it…you'd made sure of it?'

Another tear fell from her eye, pulling more of the light, more of the life from the orb,

'You proved them wrong, Shepard…Cerberus said I'd never have children…but you showed those sons-a-bitches…you made a 'mommy'…out of…their psychopath, their barren experiment, their Subject Zero.'

'A child?', Shepard wept.

'A…boy…don't ask me how I know…just do,' Jack's eye clouded. 'Liara…has him…he's safe…'one' of us made it…the very best of us made it…we won, Shepard.'

'Yes,' the hero's face softened in the singular affection reserved only for soul mates. 'We did, Jack. Thanks to you.'

Shepard's face seized in pain and locked his breath inside his throat. Several moments later, he managed a whisper hot with suffering.

'Going to be…little late…getting back to the…Normandy.'

'Me too,' Jack's voice lost even more strength. 'I'm so…tired.'

Shepard's chin trembled and a tear slipped from his eye, travelled down his cheek and danced among the stubble on his face,

'You just…rest, Jack. Just rest. You're relieved…soldier.'

Jack's lid began to flutter,

'Soldiers are pussies.'

Shepard grinned,

'What's that make me?'

'The person…I didn't think…I deserved…the love…of my…life,' Jack breathed in little more than the thought of speech.

Sensing the end, Shepard swallowed his sorrow long enough to send his love on her way,

'With all my heart, I love you, Jack…meet you at the Normandy.'

'Normandy…see you…there.'

For a moment the lovers curled together on the battlefield, side-by-side despite the distance separating their physical forms. Shepard's hologram crumpled in grief.

'Don't go too far, Jack. I'll be along soon.'

Then something unseen drew his attention and his hologram stood, stumbled forward and disappeared.

While in London, the wind, rough with war, blew over the fallen woman; squalling hard, pulling love and memories toward the sky.

Jack rode the wind too, her promise kept, her child safe…her mission done.

(Seven Years Later)

The frosted gust blew, and snow swirled, carrying far more than the frigid breeze and frozen flakes. Mixed among the unique ice crystals, the ghosts of the past danced and twirled, lived and died, all before the glistening gaze of Liara T'Soni.

The fortress around her, a home now of seven years, had once held the condemned of her kind, the Ardat-Yakshi. The Reapers had claimed the monastery on Lesuss temporarily, but through the work and devotion of Falere and Samara, it had been restored. Though Falere remained a resident, the place no longer titled 'prison' as its primary function; now it played a contradictory role, one meant to protect the inhabitants from the dangers of the universe entire.

A mountain fortress on an isolated world, the perfect place to guard the universe's greatest treasure.

'Mommy!'

Like it had for seven years, the simple word carried with it the ticking clock of Innocence's expiration.

Peeling the sorrow from her face, Liara spun, a smile adorning her beautiful features before the circuit was completed. Though unnoticed by the child, the Asari's jubilant reply came coated with the last few sands of borrowed time.

'My sweet!'

The little boy leapt into her arms and buried his head into the warmth of her lined jacket. Though too big to be lifted, Liara still tried. He had grown so fast; the advanced aging patterns of humans making his development seem nearly instantaneous to the long lived Asari. To her it had seemed as if he had cooed in her arms one moment and taken his first step the next.

The blinking of her eyes seemed long by comparison.

A few blinks more and he would be old enough to leave this place.

Still more and he would be the same age as his father.

Goddess willing, in the next couple of blinks, he would have a family and make a grandmother of her.

And she would look the exact same.

But those blinks, those wonderful dilemmas, were for a time not yet here, not quite.

No, now had come the blink she had been dreading for seven years; the blink where he was old enough.

Old enough to know.

'Mommy, Falere said she would teach me some more about the Krogans, if it was okay w…' his kind voice turned pensive. 'Mommy, why are you crying?'

Liara hadn't realized she'd let a tear escape, but instead of concocting a false excuse for its existence, the heroic Asari opted to tell her son the truth.

'Oh I was just thinking of old friends.'

The child's face brightened a bit,

'Uncle Garrus?'

Liara smiled, knowing that his question contained a thinly veiled exploration, one that hoped his favorite uncle was coming to visit and perhaps already en route.

'No, but Uncle Garrus knew them…very well.'

'Who were they, Mommy?'

The question echoed into the future and back into the past. It marked itself as a moment by which all that followed and all that preceded it would be measured; for after it was answered nothing could ever be the same.

Another tear fell from Liara's eye.

'You are getting so big,' the Asari tried to buy more time, time where she was the child's one and only 'Mommy'.

Liara knew it was selfish. Others had carried greater burdens, and others had surely sacrificed more, but to change the way the little boy 'looked' at her?

She would rather face a hundred Reapers.

However, that moment like all the others was finite. Now was the time.

She had a promise to keep.

Tell our story.

''Who were they?'', Liara repeated the question, trying it on as one might a dress not worn in decades.

A sorrow-free smile touched her lips.

'They were heroes…the greatest in all the universe.'

Upon hearing the mention of heroes, the boy's dark expression lifted and an eager light flashed through his eyes.

'Did they have adventures?'

'They did indeed, many adventures.'

'What were their names?'

Again the simplicity of the question tugged at Liara's heart, making her feel a great guilt for not having told him sooner. But, seven had been the age upon which she had decided; a time come too soon yet a time come none-the-less.

The Asari's eyes travelled back into the past, and though a smile still tickled her lips more tears fell,

'The first was a knight, the greatest of all the knights; handsome, trustworthy and selfless. His name…'

Liara's voice caught and her chin trembled,

'Was Shepard the Brave.'

The little boy's eyes glowed even brighter and his mouth dropped open,

'Just like me?'

'Just like you,' she said and cupped his cheek.

'And who was the other hero?

Again Liara smiled through her tears,

'The other was a powerful witch. The most powerful witch there has ever been.'

The boy's eyes narrowed,

'A 'good' witch or a 'bad' witch?'

Liara paused for just a beat,

'She was a very, very 'good' witch, though I'm not so sure she would've wanted anyone to know that.'

Satisfied by the answer, the boy's smile returned in full,

'What was her name?'

'Her name,' Liara's eyes simultaneously saw the mother from the past and the son from the present.

'Her name was Jack…Jack the Giant Slayer.'

The wind swirled and the snow fell, and in that cold climate so warm with the love and devotion of three parents, a story…a love story was told.

(At the same time)

The young Ensign stared down the dimly lit steps with a flashlight in one had and a heavy spanner in the other; the latter raised defensively.

'Who's there?', the young man whipped the beam of light down the steps trying to access every shadowed corner of the Normandy's engineering sweeps.

'Listen,' the Ensign's voice rose a bit adding the tonality of fear to his command.

'I'm going to call security.'

At that moment, Chief Engineer Adams's familiar form breezed through the automated door and onto the grated decking. He was about to great the younger man, when he noticed the tension in his counterpart's face.

'What is it, Ensign? What's got you spooked, Paul?'

The young man continued to shine his light down the steps into the access-ways beneath them.

'I heard something, Chief.'

Adams smiled, immediately lightening the mood,

'It'd be a real problem if you didn't hear anything, son. This is Engineering, you're smack dab in the middle of the nosiest part of the ship.'

Still the Ensign's torchlight sought to clear the shadows, but the common sense in Adams's words eased the concern from around the young man's eyes. Within a few beats, he switched off his flashlight and turned to his superior.

'I'm sorry, Sir. I haven't been to sleep for a bit. Mind's playing tricks on me.'

Adams clapped the Ensign on the shoulder,

'Nothing to apologize for, son. In fact you go right on 'hearing' things. Could be the next one is a faulty bypass line that you catch early enough to save us a weeks worth of slog work.'

'Yes, sir!', the ensign grinned.

'Now get some sleep,' Adams ordered.

Without another word, the younger man turned to head for the lifts, when his superior asked one final question.

'Just in case, Paul, what did you hear? I'll keep my ears perked.'

A tinge of crimson touched the young man's neck,

'N-nothing, Sir. It seems silly now.'

'Humor an old man.'

The Ensign bit his lower lip before continuing.

'I thought I heard laughing. It sounded like there were two people down there…carrying on.'

Adams's eyes softened,

'I'll make sure no one snuck down there with a bottle of brandy. Goodnight, Paul.'

'Goodnight, Sir!'

With the skip of relief in his step, the younger man vanished into the main hallway.

Adams turned and looked down into the shadowed depths of the access ways. With his eyes glistening, the engineer snapped a perfect salute.

'Goodnight, Commander.'

The door closed behind him, leaving the area in peace.

THE END

(Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading. Your interest and support means the world to me!)