I do not own Mass Effect, any of its characters, or any of its settings. Thanks for reading!

"Ah, son?" Elizabeth said, pulling at Kaidan's arm until his head was on a level with hers. Shepard was still folded in against his chest, his other arm wrapped tight around her waist, so she heard Elizabeth's whisper. "I'm always up for billeting soldiers. You know I am. But . . . aren't there rather a lot of them?"

Kaidan's mom had a point, Shepard thought. She glanced around at the students from Grissom Academy and the agents from Biotics Division. Jack was chivying her kids to help unload something from the troop transport that had dropped them right on the Alenko lawn. The old orchard house was big. So big it had two kitchens. But it wasn't nearly big enough for this. Not unless the biotics wanted to sleep four to a room.

"I've got another load of students coming," Kaidan said. Shepard watched Elizabeth's knuckles go white on Kaidan's arm, and was close enough to catch his wince when her fingers dug in. "They're bringing tents, Ma. It's nice out. Enlisted will sleep in the tents, officers in the house. We've got room."

"Kaidan," his mother hissed. "What are they going to eat?"

"That's what they're unloading right now," Kaidan said. He seemed just as unmoved by his mother's panic as he ever was by Mako crashes and biotic explosions. Shepard had to smile. "Provisions. I'm going to set them up in a K-P rotation. We'll need to feed them well, because we're going to work them hard. I hope Garrus and Tali have fixed up the summer kitchen."

Shepard noticed the turian and quarian had come out to investigate the commotion, and now were trading stories with Jack. The three of them had served together on the SR-2 back when it was a Cerberus ship. They doubtless had a lot of war stories to catch up on.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at Kaidan, but whatever she was going to say next was interrupted by a tall, lanky soldier with a beak nose who came up to them smiling. She saw his eyes flick to her, then Kaidan, as if asking a silent question, before he descended upon Elizabeth with a wide smile.

"Ma Alenko! Thank you so much for having us out to your orchard again. Your hospitality is the only thing that makes my service bearable," the man said. Elizabeth released her son's arm and gave the soldier a motherly hug. As distractions went, it was masterful.

"Shepard, I'd like to introduce you to Jake Quinn. One of my students from Biotic Division," Kaidan said. Shepard held out a hand for Jake to shake, which he did. His eyebrows shot up at the mention of her name. "Jake, this is Commander Shepard."

"Good God, man," Jake muttered, giving Kaidan a look Shepard was entirely unable to interpret. Then he turned his attention to her. "It's an honor to meet you, Ma'am. I served under Admiral Anderson in the fight for Earth. We were all very encouraged by the news he brought us about your victories."

"Thank you," Shepard said gravely. "It's an honor to meet you as well. Without each and every one of you there wouldn't have been an Earth left to save."

The soldier blinked at her, a grin spreading across his face.

"I'll spread that word around, Ma'am," he said. Then he cleared his throat and turned to Elizabeth. He led her off, talking about where to have the younger students take the provisions they'd brought from Vancouver.

"You broke him," Kaidan breathed a chuckle directly into her ear. She had to smile. "Poor man doesn't have any idea what to do with a Commander Shepard wearing my old BDU's."

"I'm not exactly living up to the legend, am I?" she said ruefully. Kaidan dropped a kiss on her forehead and stepped back. He did it like they'd done that a thousand time before, even though they'd never done any such thing. Not where people could see. After all that time maintaining a professional soldierly facade even a kiss on the forehead felt illicit.

"To hell with legends," Kaidan said, his face grave and earnest. "Let's just be us."

She smiled in answer, and he went off to co-ordinate the biotic students. Shepard turned to see two young people waiting for her attention shyly. She recognized the young man as Prangley and the young woman as Rodriguez from Grissom Academy. Jack's students. She schooled her face to the open neutrality that let people know she wasn't too busy for their questions. Sometimes even in oversized BDU's a legend could be intimidating.

"Commander," Prangley said, saluting. Rodriguez, after a sideways look at her comrade, followed suit. "We're glad to see you up and about, Ma'am."

"Thank you," Shepard said, returning their salutes. Nobody was in proper uniform, but so what? If saluting made them happy she'd do it. Anderson would have approved.

"You probably don't remember us," Rodriguez said. Her lips twisted up wryly and she was about to say that yes, she did remember saving their butts, when the young woman continued. "We were with the rescue crew that pulled you out of the Citadel."

A chill rushed through Shepard's veins. She looked at the two students with new attention. They regarded her steadily, with excitement, not fear or revulsion or smugness. They were proud, then, of what they'd accomplished. She didn't remember much of that rescue. Just fragments. It was all mixed up now with the nightmares she had about it, and she didn't know what it was they had seen when they pulled her carcass free. But apparently whatever it was it didn't make them recoil from her.

But they had seen something very few people had. They'd seen her totally helpless.

She blew out a slow breath and tried to let her knee-jerk defensiveness go with it.

"Thank you," she said, gravely. "Both of you."

"It was an honor," Rodriguez said. Then she remembered to say, "Ma'am."

Oh yeah. These were Jack's students.

"But we actually had a question," Prangley said. "We saw the devastation on Earth. We got a lot of people asking us to do more, to be closer to the front lines, to do the biotic artillery strikes we trained for. Jack always had a lot to say about that. And if it looked like she was losing a fight on that score she'd always invoke your name."

"I saw a Major back down after she told him it was your idea to have us doing barriers and modding ammo," Rodriguez put in.

"But we were wondering why you did that," Prangley said. Shepard considered the pair in front of her. They looked impossibly young to her, even though their biotic metabolisms had aged them a bit. But everyone under thirty was beginning to look like a kid. Hell, half the time she had to remind herself that Vega was a grown ass N7 not some raw Lieutenant sent to polish her sniper rifles.

She could tell them a lot of things that would be true. That Jack had asked her to save them, and Jack would know better what their odds of survival were. That she really didn't think one more artillery unit would make as much difference as a benefit to be shared among several such units. That she knew soft when she saw it and the bunch of them had been dough when she first met them.

But she knew what Anderson would say.

"You know what Anderson called you guys when I told him about the rescue?" she said. Their eyes widened. Rodriguez shook her head, faintly. "He said you were humanity's brightest and we were just throwing you to the Reapers. And you are. How could I risk losing that for the future by throwing you into a meat grinder?"

Prangley swallowed, convulsively, and saluted. Clearly at a loss for words. Rodriguez followed suit. Shepard saluted back. It was beginning to feel a little weird doing it in Kaidan's old clothes.

She'd seen soldiers that overwhelmed, that touched, in Anderson's service. She wondered if he had felt as hollow and uncertain as she did now. If all his confidence was a facade.

She straightened her shoulders just in case.

It was hours before the biotics were all set up, and then it was time for dinner. Kaidan and Jack jointly announced that training would begin after nightfall. But first, of course, they'd need to eat and get their strength up. They had brought collapsible camp tables with them. And enough food to feed three armies. Watching all of them tuck in to their food, their voices raised in cheerful cacophony, Shepard felt more like a soldier than she had in years. It was the first time since she lost her old unit that she really thought about how small her teams had been. Had she really spent this entire war as part of a pinpoint strike force?

She managed to snatch some food and found a seat near Garrus and Tali. If the two of them had talked about their romantic issues no trace of that tension showed. They weren't even intimidated by the huge crowd of human soldiers. Before the Reaper War a turian and a quarian sitting down to eat with this many humans would be a real event. Now they coolly exchanged ideas for how to train the youngsters like the old officers they were.

"If they're going to be front line units they need more tech training," Tali argued. "How many times have we blasted through an enemy unit just to find an engineering problem staring us in the face?"

"But that's why you put adepts and engineers in the same unit," Garrus argued back. "Specialization, not universal training. A lot of these people won't have the aptitude. Biotics are more for making big explosions anyway."

"Hey," Kaidan said, setting a plate down next to them. Shepard raised a brow at him. "Okay. Fine. Yes, I like to blow things up. But that doesn't mean I can't do tech work."

"You're the second human Specter," Garrus waved this off. "You and Shepard aren't representative. We're talking about what these kids need to be better at their new jobs."

"Well, actually, Jack and I have some thoughts on that," Kaidan said. "The problem is that we just don't know what their new jobs are going to be. It's easier to throw someone across the room than it is to put up a barrier, and it's easier to put up a barrier than it is to do something with fine control. There's a lot of rubble that needs clearing. Their first job could be demolition."

"You want to take the best and brightest war heroes and tell them that their new job is grunt work?" Shepard asked, her voice very mild. Garrus held out a hand in her direction as if to say he couldn't have phrased it better himself.

"That's where we come in," Kaidan said. "They'll do anything if they think you're doing it too."

"I'm not moving rubble tonight, Alenko," Tali warned him. Kaidan grinned around a mouthful of food.

"No, tonight they're mine. Tomorrow they're Jack's. Got to start them off easy," he said. "I figured we'd play Bait the Biotic. Make a proper mess. And then tommorrow make them clean it all up."

Shepard's hand stilled. Bait the Biotic was a drill Ashley invented. Well, calling it a drill was generous. Shepard had walked in on her gunnery chief flicking nuts and bolts at her staff lieutenant. Like a little kid trying to pester her big brother. When asked what the hell she was doing Ashley had explained, very blandly, that she was working on a barrier drill with Kaidan. The idea, she'd said, was to help him raise his barrier more quickly. If he could notice the bolt coming at him and raise the barrier before it hit, he'd only ever get shot once. It was true that Kaidan was very fast at putting his barrier up, so it worked. But Shepard didn't buy for a moment that Ashley's real intention was to be helpful.

"So you're going to have them throw metal shards at each other? Where will this be happening, so that I can be somewhere else?" Tali asked dryly.

"South fields. I was thinking I'd do it like a free for all. Really wear them out," Kaidan said. Something flared bright blue behind him. Shepard stood, ever on the alert, and saw Jack's barrier shimmering across her body like blue flame. Vega stood in front of her, already in a fighting stance.

Jesus, how could those two possibly have pissed each other off this fast?