A/N: I guess you know what's coming now, don't you... Seeing how long it took me to return to these stories I guess it's no surprise if I say this story won't be as long as the others. I'll upload two chapters now and there will be one last one, but that will be it. To be honest, I think I'm done with Miri for now. There might be some one-shots in the future but there's just not much more material for me to work with...

Still, thank you everyone for sticking around, waiting patiently for my updates, letting me know what you thought about the chapters, being a great inspiration and just being awesome in general. Thanks a lot. :)

Of apples and trees

.

"Well shit!"

Emily wrapped her arms around herself as she stared up to the window above her, the small, red light on its frame telling her there was no way to open it from outside and quietly slip into her room without alerting the house's occupants like she'd planned...

She nervously tapped her foot and chewed on her lower lip while she contemplated her options; the night was cold, so sleeping outside was out of the question, and since her parents had chosen to buy a house in the middle of nowhere, walking back into the city where she'd just come from was out of the question as well since the walk here had taken her about three hours already (Yup, middle of nowhere!)... She had decided to walk here because the sound of a skycar might have alerted her parents to her late return, but it seemed that was inevitable now anyway... Oh how she missed those times when her parents hadn't known about the tree right outside her window offering a great way back into her room, undetected... But there was no way around it now...

Maybe, if she was very careful...

Emily activated her omni-tool and tensed as the front door hissed open. Her eyes scanned the dark living room and settled on the light coming from the kitchen at the far side of the house...

Maybe they had just forgotten to turn it off, there was still hope...

She took a few slow steps into the house and turned back to the door, locking it carefully before she silently approached the stairs, evading the light coming from inside the kitchen. She had just reached the stairs and a confident smile had already started forming on her face when a voice made her freeze immediately.

"Where do you think you're going, young lady?"

Emily's eyes widened. She could have sworn there was no one in the kitchen... No way someone could be this quiet while waiting for her... but apparently, her mother could...

Shit...

Taking a deep breath, Emily turned away from the stairs and approached the kitchen, wincing slightly when she saw Miranda sitting by the kitchen counter, a cup of tea in her hand, her watchful eyes immediately locking with Emily's.

"You shouldn't have stayed up for me..." Emily offered sweetly, trying to shoot her mother her most charming Shepard smile, which quickly faltered under Miranda's glare – after all, the former operative had had years to become immune to that technique...

She nervously ran a hand through her short, black hair while waiting for her mother to say something... anything...

Miranda took a sip from her tea, obviously enjoying her daughter's nervous fidgeting in front of her. She made a show of swirling the freshly brewed tea in its cup before taking another sip until the silence between them became almost unbearable – at least for Emily...

"All right, you win." Their oldest daughter sighed in defeat. "Let's just get it over with... What's it this time? Grounded for a month? No omni-tool? Wash the dishes for the next year?"

"Oh I'm not going to punish you," Miranda simply stated before taking another careful sip from her tea, her collected expression hiding her inner amusement.

Emily's eyebrow rose. "You're not?"

This time Miranda couldn't stop her smile; their oldest was her other mother's perfect clone in so many ways... She placed the cup back on the counter and shrugged. "I can hardly punish you for your mother's corrupting genes, now can I?"

Her daughter's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Still smiling, Miranda nodded towards an empty cup next to the steaming tea kettle between them in invitation. "You remind me a lot of your mother, you know..."

"Yeah, right..." Emily snorted but still sat down on an empty chair and reached for the tea. "What was it? My daring heroics?"

Now it was Miranda's turn to snort, which earned her a questioning look from her daughter. "Shepard wasn't always the hero people make her out to be nowadays..." she added in explanation, a faint smile playing around her lips at memories of past times.

Emily shrugged. "Well, it's all I got..." she murmured into her tea cup. "Since you both refuse to talk about those times, all I know I learned from vids and books..."

Miranda put her own cup back on the counter and eyed her daughter in surprise. They had decided to spare their daughters the gruesome details of the Reaper War and had, in general, tried to raise them as normally as possible, away from the still existing "Shepard hype", but during all this time they had never considered the possibility that their children might actually want to know about their pasts... Or rather, Miranda was sure Helena had already browsed the Shadow Broker's entire network for every tiny little, incrimidating detail she could find about her parents, but Emily had never expressed any interest so far...

"All right." Miranda nodded to herself and leaned forward on the counter to get Emily's attention. "You and Helena will both stay at home tomorrow and I'll prepare a little something..."

The gleam in her mother's eyes told Emily it was useless to ask any more questions regarding its nature, but the fact that there wouldn't be any punishment was good enough for her, so, without giving her mother time to reconsider, she got up from her chair and headed back to the stairs.

Miranda watched her daughter leave, her mind already planning all the details for tomorrow's "event" when a sudden suspicion made her pause. She just couldn't resist...

"What's that on your back?"

Emily froze before she spun around, finding Miranda's gleaming omni-tool aimed at her that showed a full scan of her body with the fresh tattoo highlighted on her back.

"Don't..." she helplessly gestured with her arms through the air, "...do stuff like that... God, Mum, that's just creepy!"

"Would you have preferred me searching for it myself?"

With a dramatic sigh, Emily turned back to the stairs.

"Why couldn't I have become the daughter of some boring colonists instead? Oh how easy life could have been..."

"I doubt a pair of colonists would be able to afford your expensive lifestyle..."

"Ha!"

. . .

"Oh my god, Mum... that outfit..."

"It was practical," Miranda murmured defensively, not for the first time that day wondering if gathering the entire family in front of the huge screen in their living room had been a good idea...

It had certainly seemed like one at first; calling up their friends to gather all the pictures and vids that had been made over the years to give their daughters a more private insight in their parents' background, but so far all Emily and Helena seemed to care about were Miranda's choice of clothing and Shepard's facial scars.

"They're so cool," Emily commented once again when a picture of Shepard was shown – judging by the gleaming scars Miranda placed it somewhere between the Illusive Man's trap on the supposedly deserted Collector ship and Garrus' request for help...

"Yup, they sure were impressive, kid." Shepard gently nudged Emily who was sitting to her left, her daughter's eyes gleaming with admiration.

"Can I get cybernetic scars?"

"Absolutely not!"

One of Emily's eyebrows rose in mischief. "What about your skimpy outfit then?"

"All right, that's it." Miranda huffed in annoyance and got up, a wave of her omni-tool stopping the flow of pictures on the screen. She turned back to the grinning audience on the couch and placed a hand on her hip, the other waving at them dismissively. "I give up. You had your fun, now go and..." she shrugged, "do whatever it is you young people do these days... Play games or search the extranet."

With a simple shrug – yet both still grinning – their daughters rose from the couch where Miranda landed with a tired sigh only seconds later. "I blame your genes for all of this," she declared in a hushed voice, shooting Shepard an annoyed glance.

On the stairs, Helena turned to her older sister. "So, is it out the window again for you now?"

Emily shot a quick look over her shoulder back to her parents before she shrugged in feigned indifference. "Eh, you know, I... think I'll stick around for today... As soon as they're done devouring each other with their eyes..."

"Well, Ms. Lawson, now that we're finally alone- what the? No, Cal! Bad varren! Get off the couch, I don't wanna play with you right now! Goddammit Miri, stop laughing and help me, he's crushing my legs! Oh I am so going to remember that the next time you need my help defending your skimpy outfit!"