Thanks to everyone who has favorited, followed, and/or reviewed.

Thanks also to Bioware for the Mass Effect universe and its characters. Anything and anyone you don't recognize from the game is probably a result of my own ruminations and experiences.

March 14, 2170 - Chambers of the Consort, the Citadel Presidium.

"Mum, why are we here?" Sigren asked listlessly, barely aware of where they were walking.

"Sha'ira wanted to speak with you," Hannah said while guiding her daughter up the steps to the Consort's chambers

"Oh," Sigren murmured distractedly.

It was but a moment to pass Nelyna's desk and walk up the steps to Sha'ira's luxurious inner chamber; a space with which Hannah had become all-too-familiar over the last ten months.

On passing through the beautifully carved double doors, Sigren's face came up and Hannah was reminded just how horribly her daughter had suffered for doing the right thing.

Sigren's formerly oval face was now very sharp, her high cheekbones starkly visible under limp red hair that in no way resembled the glorious mane her Scottish father gave her. Sigren's eyes, which, behind her height, were the most apparent of Hannah's gifts, were dull, lifeless and half lidded, not the intense green lasers always focusing on everything around her to which Hannah had become accustomed.

"Oh, child." Sha'ira sighed softly. "What have we done?"

"The best you could do under the circumstances," a harsh voice croaked from a corner. "But now it is time for Sigren and me to overcome injuries caused by bad decisions taken on our behalf."

If the effects of the broken bonding were frightening to see on Sigren's formerly athletic form, they were equally terrifying on Sithana's far slighter frame. The formerly lush curves were gone, the unusually soft medium dark blue skin dry, cracked and sloughing off in patches. Sithana's big silver eyes a dim and hazy gray.

"Sithana?" Sigren gasped, eyes filled with tears.

"Yes," Sithana croaked. "I am here my love."

While the reunion of two parted bond mates was often a rush of joy and erotic action, the reconnection of these two who had gone through so much to save both of their futures, was more of a collapsing of two exhausted spirits against each other, desperate for peace after a long and painful parting.

Hannah and Sha'ira turned aside, not wishing to embarrass the two any further by making it obvious that they were closely monitoring the kisses and touches that would have been utterly inappropriate in a public setting for moves to strip off clothing or otherwise engage in behavior that, in any other circumstance, Sigren would not have been ready for yet. When things began to go too far, Sha'ira moved quickly to grasp Sithana's attention. Once done, her acolyte regained control of herself and, in doing so, helped Sigren step back from a place she was desperate to go but wasn't ready for yet.

"I am so sorry things got this far," Sithana sighed verbally and over their reestablished mental connection. "I should have fought harder to follow another path after your treatment was done."

"Yes, you should have." Sigren cried both mentally and verbally. "I can't do this anymore. I can't be cut off from you again. It was like having my leg cut off and my heart ripped out of my chest."

"Then we'll make sure you have time together," Hannah said through the tears she so rarely shed while squeezing the shoulder not occupied by the head of an Asari who was weeping quietly but in a way that tore Hannah's heart nearly as much as her daughter's tears did.

"Thank you, Mother." Sigren said through the tears that poured down her normally stoic cheeks, flooding on to Sithana's crest which lay between Sigren's head and right shoulder. Seeing the two deeply wounded beings holding each other while crying mixed tears of pain and relieved joy finally gave Hannah hope that this horrible period of their lives might, just might, have, if not a happy, at least a workable, ending.

August 4, 2170 - Shuttle docking port 59-C, Zakara Ward, The Citadel

"Are you sure you want to go straight to the Asari's apartment?" John Shepard demanded.

"Yes," snapped Sigren, tired of her father's unwillingness to let her see the most important being in her life.

"Wouldn't you rather see Dr. Harper again?"

"Why would I want to see that incompetent fuck?"

"Sigren!"

Sigren didn't even deign to respond to his objection verbally. The glare she sent her father more than sufficient to tell him that she wouldn't take correction on her language.

"He is the best Human psychologist on the Citadel,"

"Maybe for normal Humans but I'm not normal anymore. He nearly killed me and Sithana too. I need to see Sithana because my hands are still shaking from killing Batarians and watching almost everyone on Mindoir die—some because I accidentally killed them—or get kidnapped. If mum hadn't gotten there in time, I wouldn't be seeing anyone. Since I am alive to see people, I just want to see my bonded—who is probably the best psychiatric specialist in Citadel space—and have her tell me that I couldn't have done any better."

"But everyone on the rescue party told you that already."

"Sure, and I know they think that, but there's a big difference between being told they believe it and actually being able to feel that someone you love believes it."

"OK," John said sighing. Whereas Hannah had feared losing Sigren in the spring, he knew he was losing her now. Ever since the incident sixteen months ago, his seemingly strong rapport with his daughter had disappeared. She rebelled against everything he suggested, particularly where the Asari to whom she had become so attached was concerned. Whereas he'd hoped Sigren might someday join him in the Navy, she was even more determine to follow her mother's footsteps into the Marines. This cut him more deeply than he wanted to admit, particularly to a daughter who was distancing herself from him at FTL speed.

"I'll meet you at our apartment."

"No reason for you to stay here—just go back to your ship." Sigren said. "I've still got three weeks before school starts and I'll hardly be alone since Sithana took emergency leave at Huerta Memorial."

"I'm not really comfortable…."

"Why?"

"She's … and you're…. and I just don't like having the two of you together unsupervised."

"She's 269 years old and we're not doing anything that you and mother weren't doing with your friends at my age. IN fact we're doing a lot less if what mother says is right."

"All right," Sigren's father sighed. "I don't like how close you are to your Asari but I trust your mother and she has given her the ability to act as your guardian when both of us are away from the Citadel."

She kinda had to," Sigren said softly. "By Asari and citadel law we're married."

John frowned, not liking being reminded of this fact one little bit. Sigren, wanting to try to keep some kind of a bridge to her father sighed and tried her best to mend their rapidly deteriorating fences. "Even though you don't believe it, neither of us is stupid. I love her a lot and she loves me too. Yes she's special and amazing and beautiful and … but I'm not old enough for everything yet and Sithana would never force me to do anything physical that both of us weren't ready for."

"But she is ready, and a very experienced Asari if what I'm told is true."

Her father's unbending dislike of the Asari in general, and Sithana in particular, frustrated Sigren no end. When asked many years later, Sigren would describe this conversation as their last calm discussion on the issues that were quickly driving them apart. "Of course she's experienced, she worked for Sha'ira for thirty years. The Consort's acolytes—and Asari in general—aren't nearly as loose as Humans like to paint them but they're not celibate either. She understands that I'm not old enough to deepen our bond that way and she's willing to wait until I'm ready. I know I'm getting closer but I'm not there yet. Trust me to know when I am and we'll be OK. You used to trust me so easily."

"That was before you saved one of the most beautiful, and scandalous, Asari in the galaxy. Someone whom you're considered married to and even though I know you've not had sex with her yet, I know that will happen soon, even if you're not quite yet ready to go there. I might be OK with that if your Asari was close to your age but the reality is she was born while Victoria I was on the throne."

"If she was my age she'd look like a four year old kid." Sigren snapped, disgusted by the image her father had unintentionally put in her head.

She took a breath and shook herself before she could say what she really wanted to.

"….It doesn't matter when she was born or what she looks like, just what her intentions are. I spend enough time in her mind to know she wouldn't hurt me. If you don't trust me then trust Sha'ira and Justicar Samara. They both say her intentions are good. If Samara thought she was acting in an unjust way Sithana'd be under a deferred death sentence."

John Shepard couldn't argue with that. He had pressured the Navy to arrange his patrol schedule to let him be on the Citadel when Samara put Sithana to the question four months earlier. He would never forget the tall, curvaceous, and incredibly intimidating Asari's words when she sat down across Sha'ira's desk from Sithana:

"I am the Justicar Samara. I am here to determine whether the steps that have led to the premature bonding of this Human child were taken with justice at their heart. If you are telling the truth and have acted with intentions that were just, there will be no problem between us. If not, you will die either moments after the Human does or as soon as a way to break the bond can be found. Are you ready to answer a justicar's questions?"

"Yes, the younger Asari had said, not a tremble in her voice. As was true for Sigren, Sithana had only slowly recovered from their forced separation. Weeks after his wife and the Consort allowed Sigren to see Sithana again, Sigren's Asari…friend? Lover? Bond mate? Fiancé?'s voice was only part way back to its sultry timbre. Her skin still dry and only slowly returning to the gorgeous hue it had been only a few months earlier. Whatever the Asari maiden was to his daughter, John knew fear about the Asari's feelings had kept Sigren running to the Asari's apartment almost every night during the spring to prove to herself that the Asari was alive and still cared for her. The rare nights Sigren wasn't at the Asari's apartment, the blue woman could usually be found in Sigren's bed.

John was as staggered by the Justicar's statement and its calm delivery as he was by Sithana's acceptance of it. What powers did justicars have? Could they really assign summary justice and if so, what kind of people was these Asari anyway?

After fifteen minutes of mental contact that appeared to be extremely painful for Sigren's Asari…whatever she was, Samara had risen, bowed deeply to the younger being and said:

"There can be no question that in spite of Asari law and tradition that say otherwise, your actions and intentions in this matter have been, and are, just." With that flatly delivered statement, Samara turned around and walked out of the Consort's chambers, not to be seen by a member of the Shepard family for more than a decade.

August 18, 2170 - Apartment 1418, Tiberius Towers, the Citadel Presidium

"Come back here you bastards!" Sigren's voice rang out from what had become her bedroom in Sithana's apartment. Rolling out of bed as she had done too many times of late, Sithana cursed the distance from her bedroom to Sigren's, wishing that a two-bedroom apartment with a better floor plan had been open when she left Consort Sha'ira immediately after the condition caused by their damaged bonding was allowed to stabilize. Unfortunately, Tiberius Towers was the only option within easy walking distance of the Shepard's' diplomatic apartment and Huerta Memorial where Sithana had joined the psychiatry staff after leaving Consort Sha'ira's practice. Giving up the dream of becoming a consort had been hard but once the depth of their connection had become clear there had been no other choice; one simply couldn't make the intense connections that a consort often did and have a bonded partner, too.

Sithana was increasingly afraid for the young Human who she expected to be the father of her children someday. Because of this worry, Sithana was now very glad she enjoyed her work as a psychiatrist; she now knew she would need her reactivated clinical skills in order to help Sigren with the horrific experiences she had gone through while she was on Mindoir. Sigren evinced terrible nightmares, often several times a night. The episodes reminded Sithana of the abandonment theme nightmares both had for months when the bond between their minds and spirits formed during treatment for Sigren's blindness was fractured on the advice of a narrow-minded Human psychologist. Sithana occasionally saw the idiot who recommended the breaking of her bond to Sigren in the hallways of Huerta Memorial. If she ever had to interact with him, she would not take responsibility for her actions.

Sigren's current nightmares were on the fight-for-life theme and often very violent. Sithana was often forced to gently restrict Sigren with her biotics as her bonded was now ten centimeters taller, more than fifteen kilos heavier, and far stronger than she. Sigren was also infinitely better at self-defense and this gap was only growing wider as time passed. The restraints Sithana had to employ in order to protect herself would only cause Sigren to fight harder until Sithana could reach out over their mental connection to ease some of her beloved's stress.

Sithana ran into Sigren's room and saw that the Human female wasn't in bed anymore. She had crashed through the now-shattered glass door separating the room from its small attached balcony. Sigren now stood, one foot on the railing, seemingly ready to leap into open space.

"No!" Sithana screamed, hands moving for the biotic pull she had never managed before. Whether desperation or the goddess' will, Sithana would never know, but the next moment she was flattened by seventy-five kilos of flying Human teenager.

Fortunately, the impact with her roommate seemed to waken Sigren who quickly rolled off of Sithana's slender frame.

"What happened?" Sigren groaned.

"You had another nightmare and nearly jumped off of the balcony in pursuit of whomever you were chasing."

"Oh,"

"Sigren, love, I don't think we can wait to talk about Mindoir anymore. If I'd been half a moment later you would have been splattered all over the Asari gardens and … and…." Sithana burst into tears, reaction to what had nearly happened finally catching up with her.

There was a terrible pause while Sigren shut herself away, even from the link between them which was fully active since both were wearing little and had a great deal of skin contact.

"OK," the tiny voice came across their link. "But I don't think I'm ready to talk about it yet. Can I show you? "

"Yes, of course," Sithana sighed, thankful for this step. "You'll need to vocalize what happened to you soon—to someone who is less emotionally involved than I am—but for now; I'll come with you in your memories. Thank you for being willing to share your pain with me and for letting me help you bear some of it."

"I wouldn't share it with anyone else." Sigren said, while rising and moving toward the bed.

Sithana lay wrapped around her Human, some unknown time later. She was unaware of the red blood from the numerous small cuts Sigren had caused herself by crashing through the closed balcony door; blood that stained Sithana's skin a very uncharacteristic purple. She wept in sadness for the horror of what Sigren had seen and been forced to do on Mindoir. She also wept in thankfulness that the shuttle she had taken back from the colony after spending two weeks with Sigren while she did groundside study for her forthcoming final year project on Human agriculture and its importance to the Systems Alliance, had left the planet only a few hours before the Batarians arrived in force.

Sithana had used innumerable comparatively shallow mind links to help thousands of clients work through issues they faced in their lives but she had never carried out a link with someone was as close to as she was to her incredible Human.

Everything in her training could not have prepared her for the intensity of the connection and of Sigren's memories. When the memory opened, rather than seeing it in the third person or at most in three dimensions, it was Sithana who jerked in surprise on seeing the unknown landing craft descending on the colony some distance away. It was Sithana who ran nearly fifteen kilometers from where she had been target shooting with an old assault rifle gifted to her on her sixteenth birthday by her mother to a tree near the village. It was Sithana who realized that there wasn't a lot she could do to help the villagers now as it was four hours before dark and there simply was no hope of taking offensive action by herself while it was still light out. It was Sithana who counted every one of the thirty-one shuttle trips that launched from the village over the next four hours while also watching women get raped, men die in numerous and unpleasant ways, and children being implanted with some kind of chip technology via surgery that she could see through the rifle's scope was done with no regard for their pain or for sterile conditions. It was Sithana who thanked the goddess that Sithana had left the colony that morning on what she desperately hoped was the last shuttle to escape the system via the local mass relay and it was Sithana who, after hours of waiting, took joy in the fact that she finally had a chance to do something to hopefully slow the Batarians down long enough for help to arrive.

Overwhelmed by the intensity of the memories Sithana reflexively pulled partway out of the link so she could try to gain some distance.

"What's wrong?" Sigren's mind voice came across their link.

"This is extremely intense for me. I'm not used to living someone else's memories instead of just being a witness to them. I … I can't imagine what this must have been like for you."

"It gets a lot worse," Sigren's mental voice came quietly.

"Thank you for the warning. I am afraid of what I will experience but I know I will survive it because you are here to show it to me. I will shield you from fully reliving the memories if I can." Sithana said before reimmersing herself in Sigren's memories, determined that even if she had to live them in full detail for the first time, Sigren would not have to do so again tonight.

Sithana ran quietly across the fields nearly bent double to remain below the level of the crops on either side of her. She cursed her height for the first time in a while, wishing that she stood 165 cm, not over 185 CM as she did now. Fortunately her growth was slowing down. This was a good thing since if she got much taller the intense snogs she now enjoyed with Sithana would require bending or lifting to properly kiss her lover's beautiful purple-lipped mouth. Thankfully, the rows were straight and although she tripped once, she didn't take any other falls. Once she was within a hundred meters of the village she dropped to all fours, knowing that even though Mindoir had no moon, star-shine would be bright enough to make her visible to a sharp-eyed guard if she didn't start using whatever cover she could find.

Fortunately, the guards weren't very attentive, or they had too many potential slaves to roust out of their homes. She could hear the occasional crack of weapons fire and see the even less frequent muzzle flashes from old-style chemically powered guns. So long as the villagers could keep fighting and distracting the Batarians, she would be able to successfully interfere with the bastards' plans.

The first thing she needed was a pistol or a knife. After all, her assault rifle would be too loud and too unwieldy in many circumstances and an omniblade too loud and too bright at night in a small colonial village. Problem was, she had no idea who owned pistols on this planet and even if she did, she didn't know the village well enough to be sure of knowing who lived where. A butcher knife would work but finding one and getting close enough to cut her target's throats would be difficult in the first case and very very risky in the second. She would also have to choose Bastards who were either getting lazy or not wearing helmets; not easy to do from a distance in the dark. It might be best to just creep up behind one of the guards who had a pistol and wasn't wearing a helmet. Once she found one she could try to break his neck. She'd gotten a lot stronger than she was when she stopped the Asshole who tried to kidnap Sithana a year earlier and she thought she might be strong enough to break one of the bastards' necks now. With a pistol she could kill a few more while she found a place from which she could cause trouble for the bastards when they were loading the colonists onto their shuttles which she wanted to destroy if she could.

Unfortunately, she knew damaging or destroying the shuttles would be possible but very difficult. If she could find or make some explosives, she could maybe blow up or damage one of the transports enough to make it unspaceworthy. That would slow the bastards in taking colonists off planet. If the shuttle blew up, that would take out the crew but it would kill some colonists. Still, being dead was probably better than being a mind-controlled Batarian slave.

Frustratingly, potential innocent casualties weren't the only problem with this strategy. Another was that finding or making explosives would be tough. Getting close enough to use explosives on a shuttle would be hard because the guards would probably be watching their landing area too closely. Using her gun on a shuttle from a safer range wouldn't work because an assault rifle didn't have enough punch to damage the engines of most spacecraft unless fired at point-blank range, or at just the right angle. So, for the moment at least, trying to blow up a shuttle was probably a no-go.

This left sneaking around and doing her best to disrupt the bastards' operations. Getting up on the roofs would not be an option because the houses were far too widely spaced to allow her to jump from one to another. If Mindoir had had a moon, she would have had even bigger problems than she had already since moonlight would make sneaking from one house to another very hard. Fortunately, with no moon she only had to contend with star shine which she had to remind herself would seem even brighter to her than to either the Human residents of the colony or the Batarians, neither of whom had her increased ultraviolet perception. Star shine, no matter how it was perceived, would be problem enough on Mindoir whose unusually bright background light would make sneaking from house to house at ground level difficult given her larger-than-average shadow and the bright light from the Galaxy's relatively nearby core stars on this clear night.

The memories paused and then skipped a little, as the next thing Sithana saw was a door leading into a house.

"Why did you pass over some time?" she asked curiously.

"I was just sneaking across the rest of the field and past some houses. I didn't really think you needed to see an hour of that."

"OK. As hard as the last couple of weeks have been on you I definitely don't want to go through whatever it is you have to show me again if we miss something this time."

"Trust me," Sigren thought wryly. "I won't let you miss any of the blood, brains and other bodily fluids."

The back door of the prefab house opened slowly, Sithana making her way into the kitchen more due to familiarity with the common design than either the star shine that lit the room a dull blue-white or the increased perception of light and motion she had received from Sithana during her treatments. There was a small table that she nearly tripped over but fortunately she saw it at just the last moment.

She immediately saw that she'd gotten lucky when she entered the kitchen. Apparently this family still used knives as opposed to omniblades. Sithana knew that many families didn't like the new option because it could be activated by mistake and so extremely dangerous to younger kids. Fortunately, the family's knives were stored in what appeared to be an antique knife block just to the right of the sink.

She had just picked out a knife with what appeared to be a 25 cm blade when a strange noise drew her attention toward the door leading further into the house. The gurgling grunt told her that someone was in the house. Since she'd seen the Bastards clear it before night fell, Sithana had to assume that either someone had snuck back in later or that one of the guards was doing something that he shouldn't. Either way, she needed to be careful not to be caught herself.

Knife in hand, she turned around, fully ready to leave when she heard a high-pitched voice groan in the front room: "Ooooh, master, do it harder, deeper," it said.

She jerked in shock, surprised that someone was taking the time for … that during what had to be a rushed job to capture as many slaves as possible….the Alliance couldn't be *that* far away….could it?

Young though she might be, Sithana had been told she had the discipline and training of a standard Marine about halfway through basic training. She was smart enough to know that whatever was happening with the Alliance, she had to deal with the current situation as it stood now. Rescue might come in five minutes, or five days but until it came, she would have to rescue herself and as many of the colonists as she could.

That started now.

Sithana crept down the hallway, the grunts from either a small woman or … well, she didn't want to think about that much,…covering any noise her footsteps might make. As things were getting louder and louder in the prefab's living room, she came into a position where she could see what was going on. The scene that met her eyes was a true horror. A partially armored Batarian was lying above a much smaller form, hips thrusting up and down forcefully. Whether it was truly a small woman or … well, something else, Sithana didn't really want to know, particularly given the slowly spreading pool of red blood under the intertwined beings.

The reaction was all instinct.

Her assault rifle came up, and the three round burst cracked across the room loudly. The bullets struck the Batarian in the mid back, exploding out his chest and, to Sithana's growing horror, blasting the face and neck of what she now realized was a nine or ten year old boy into bloody pulp.

To her even greater horror, the little body rose up, screaming: "You killed my master!" he cried before collapsing from blood loss caused by the red geyser literally spouting from his shredded neck.

Sithana pulled out of the link to see Sigren's terrified face awash in tears.

"You probably hate me now," she nearly screamed.

"No!" Sithana cried. "I could never hate you, particularly when it was an accident! It was not! Your! Fault!"

"But…"

"That little boy's death may be your responsibility but it was not your fault!" Sithana said firmly, pushing her awareness toward Sigren's as strongly as she could to show her that she truly meant everything she said. "You acted on instinct, you did not fire to hurt him, and in fact you were trying to save him. Most importantly, you probably saved him from a life even worse than the future you saved me from."

"But I fired the gun," Sigren sobbed, the horror of her actions washing over her in spite of Sithana's best efforts in the link.

"Maybe so," Sithana said quietly, "but you certainly didn't aim to hit the boy. Could you have told the Batarian you were there and made him stop?...Maybe, but maybe he would have just kept going while someone you couldn't see shot you. You are only sixteen years old. You were in a situation where you were outnumbered dozens to one and you acted on reflex. You could have made different choices but you did not mean to kill the boy. This is, as your friends in the Marines would say, a case of friendly fire."

Sigren shifted slightly as if wanting to say something. Sithana was, however, not done speaking yet.

"Should you feel sad that he died? Of course. Should you keep learning so that if you are ever in that situation again you can try to make it happen differently? Definitely. But never believe that I or anyone else would think you had anything but the best intentions in that incredible, beautiful heart of yours."

"That's about what the military psychologists said," Sigren sniffled, "but it sure feels better to hear and feel it from you."

"I'm glad," Sithana said and sent as strongly as she could.

"There's more," Sigren sniffled.

"That may be," Sithana said, but I think you've had enough for tonight. Let's go to my room and I'll hold you while you sleep."

"You sure?" Sigren asked. "I think I might be ready for more than just cuddling."

"Not tonight," Sithana said softly. "I would love to deepen our bond in that way but we need to make that connection in a way and at a time when you aren't hurting as much as you are now."

"I think I really want to now," Sigren murmured while caressing Sithana's crests.

"Not tonight," Sithana said, gently pulling her bonded's hands from her body before she could get any more stimulated than she already was from the incredible mix of unbelievably intense emotions she had experienced in the last few hours. "I want this as much as you do. I have never shared a deep bonding with someone I loved. I want it badly, so badly, but I won't do it now. I want you to be in a better place and I need to be more balanced, too in order to give you the best of myself and get that from you, too."

"But…."

"I promise you it will happen soon, but not tonight." Sithana said, wrapping her arms tightly around Sigren while sending her the love and passion she felt for her incredible bonded.

"OK," Sigren sighed, rising and lifting Sithana with her. Both looked toward the smashed door, and then consciously turned away from what had almost happened, choosing to head down the hall toward the master bedroom and whatever might lie in their future instead.

A/N1 the scene with Shepard being rescued by someone biotically from a potentially dangerous fall is not mine originally. I can't remember the fic in which I saw the concept and although I've modified it heavily the idea is definitely not mine alone.

A/N2 With this we come to the end of my prepared material. The idea for this story came from the recognition that the ME fandom seems to dislike stories that ask the question: What if "X" happened? How would the flow of events change? In starting to ask that question I felt I had to recognize that the ME universe would really not be the same unless one overwhelming reality remained: The Reapers are coming.

A/N3 I want to ask the question: What would happen if Benezia lived and could offer testimony. I need a co-author to help me answer this (to me) fascinating question. I am more productive when working with someone than on my own. These five chapters can be considered a "sample" of my writing. They also help to establish the personalities for some of the characters pre-ME1 while also setting the galaxy up in a somewhat more "realistic" way (according to my training in politics, policy and economics) with respect to the balance of powers etc., than it seems Bioware felt would be possible to market given gamers' natural bias toward Humans. I have lots of ideas that would permit almost all of the characters introduced here to live or die. Depending on whether someone takes interest, and how their ideas mesh with mine, nearly any outcome is possible. This story can be either "complete" or can be driven further to explore the lives of the characters and Shepard's experiences from 2170-2183, with a re-exploration of the 2183-86 period coming later, depending on discussions with any potential collaborator. If you're interested in a possible collaboration after reading what I've sent out, please feel free to pm me and let me know if you've written and/or collaborated on fanfics before.

AN4 Due to some requests for one shots to cover gaps in the story so far I may get one or two of them out co-author or not. Please stay tuned for those.