She heard the alarm and rolled over to shut it off. She stayed in bed trying to force herself back to sleep when she smelled something strange. Pancakes. She hadn't had pancakes since the attack on Mindoir, that was the last time she had eaten them. Kaidan had found out the hard way of her hatred for them on their shore leave just before there first tour on the Normandy.
She was laying in their bed, she reached out to feel the warmth of his body, but all she received was the coolness his absence. She found his shirt that had been thrown onto the floor last night in their haste to make it to their bed and slipped it on. She walked into the kitchen as he began pouring the pancake mix into the pan. She froze. "Kaidan," she whispered before her eyes suddenly stopped working and she felt a sharp pain go through her skull. When she had finally woken back up and told him what had caused it, he had thrown all of the pancakes out of the house.
She opened her eyes to find herself not on the Normandy, but in her bedroom on Mindoir. She was wearing her favorite sleep shirt. She had thrown it away during an anxiety attack her first night on Earth. She stood from her bed and sure enough she was back in her sixteen year old self's body. She went downstairs, determined to take every moment of this memory that she could.
Her dad had his arm around her mother as he tossed the pancakes into the air. Her older brother Brock was sitting at the table playing with his omni tool. Damn, she hadn't realized how much they had changed through the years it was so gradual. Her younger brother Blaze was sitting on the floor playing with his new friend. Toby? no, that wasn't his name. She stared at the back of the boy's head trying to remember it until he turned his head and looked at her, the boy from Earth. No, no this kid was on Mindoir she remembered him. He had asked to stay over at there house that night, she had heard the screams, she had assisted in his death. He was on Earth. She remembered him, she looked at him and thought of the nights her and Kaidan had talked about having a family. She remembered smiling as she watched him play with his ship. Her nose began bleeding accompanied by the feeling of a sledge hammer to her skull. The woods. He was the boy from Elysium. He was the boy from Mindoir. He was the boy from Earth. He was the boy she had seen die so many times over, and over. Her dreams, hell she could still hear him. Suddenly the world was spinning and she was no longer in her kitchen with her family, but standing at the foot of a light house; the boy stood next to her. He said nothing, but his blue eyes turned into whiskey colored eyes and he looked at her begging for some sort of answer as he began sobbing, she reached out to touch him and he smiled. He reached into his pocket and gave her an apple, the pair ate their apples in silence as they watched the sunset together. He had laid his head on her shoulder as she stroked his hair and absentmindedly began singing a lullaby that her mother used to sing. He had fallen asleep and she didn't dare move for fear of causing this paradise to crumble. Then, the boy was everywhere, in the family's barn on Mindoir, in the makeshift hospital on Elysium, right outside of her apartment, Horizon, Virmire, the collector base, and then there was just the two of them again. He was still sound asleep on her lap, but now they were in a hospital, the Illusive man had his back turned to her and she heard him laughing. He turned to face her, in his arms was a small baby who wailed at his new world. "Don't hurt him," she heard her voice say as he began walking towards them. "Please," she said softly as she began falling through the ground.
"Shepard." The soft voice of the A.I sounded through the room. "I detected an increase in your heart rate commonly associated with stress. Given your recent fainting spell I thought it best to wake you. Are you alright?"
"I'll... I'll be fine EDI. Can you tell me how far we are from Menae?" She said as she regained control of her breath.
"ETA twenty minutes Shepard. I would advise that you go see Dr. Chakwas, you do not seem to be in good shape at the moment."
"I'll be fine, tell Liara, Kaidan, and Elizabeth to suit up and meet me in the hangar soon we need to talk." She stood up from her bed and wiped away the blood from her nose.
