Author's note, Dec. 30, 2022. I was never as happy with Sunset and Evening Star as I was with A Star to Steer Her By, which is one part of why I didn't continue the story. But the story has stayed with me, and for the last three years I've been working on rewriting it. Today I'm posting the results of that work. There will be some very familiar material, like the first several chapters, and some that's totally new. Other chapters I've divided to make it easier to track where you are in the story. I think it now gives characters the space to experience the big emotions that should come with these big events. I'm excited to continue it from this point, and I hope anyone coming to the story or rediscovering the story feels the same. — Shades


"Rhiannon Shepard."

"Yes."

The man said her name crisply, without hint of emotion, as he had the last time they'd done this dance, and the time before that. The room was the same, too: gray walls, gray carpet, no windows. Hard plastic seats for her questioners; none for her.

The uniformed batarian sitting with the Alliance team was new, and all four eyes were narrowed to dark, gleaming slits. They narrowed further at the sound of her name.

"Shepard," he growled. "I'd introduce myself, but we probably all look the same to you."

No, she thought, I've killed too many of you for you to look alike.

She said nothing.

One of the humans, a man wearing the insignia of Alliance Intelligence, shot a cool glance at the batarian. "Pertinent questions only, Respected Observer." He turned back to Shepard, and asked in a bored tone, "Why did you go to the Bahak system?"

She clasped her hands together behind her back in a parade rest, feet evenly spaced on the floor, gaze steadily over the intelligence operative's shoulder. The wrist cuffs clinked together when she shifted, buzzing a little as their electrical fields came into contact.

"To extract an Alliance researcher from a batarian prison on Aratoht."

The intel guys had heard this before, twice on the ride from the Normandy to wherever 'here' was, and twice since.

"Did you find the researcher — a Dr. Kenson?"

"Yes."

"What had she been researching?"

"A reaper artifact. She said she had evidence of imminent invasion."

"Reapers," the batarian sneered.

The intelligence man raised an eyebrow, then turned back to Shepard. "Where did you go when you left Aratoht?"

"Dr. Kenson's research station, on an asteroid in the same system. The doctor told me that she'd determined the time until the reapers would arrive in Bahak and use the system relay to access the rest of the network. I went to her station to examine her evidence. Her team had rigged the asteroid with eezo propulsion and guidance systems, with the intent to crash it into the relay before the reapers could use it."

The batarian looked up, his voice ice. "Did you know that destroying the relay would kill everyone in the system? Including 300,000 of my people living on Aratoht?"

"Dr. Kenson said it was a possibility." She kept her voice neutral. "Mass Relays are not my area of expertise."

"What did you find at the base?"

"The researchers had all spent a great deal of time in proximity to the artifact, Object Rho. They no longer wished to stop the Reapers — they'd turned off the engines without completing the burn. They attacked me, and eventually drugged me unconscious. I was out for forty-eight point five hours, by my omnitool clock."

She didn't mention that she'd already been knocked flat on her ass by the visions screaming into her head from the artifact, vast fleets of ships bigger than anything the Alliance had ever fielded, the red and orange of fire, the screams of dying planets. Object Rho had indoctrinated the research team, but to her it had shouted 'doom.'

Military interrogators didn't like to hear about visions.

The questions continued. "And when you woke up?"

"I escaped."

The batarian snorted. "Drugged? Unarmed? Hmph. Unlikely."

She'd already admitted to breaking someone out of a batarian high-security prison. Compared to that, an Alliance research station had been easy. "I'm an Alliance marine. N7 special forces. And Council Spectre." She kept her voice flat. "I escaped."

One of the humans nodded, and the batarian let it go.

"Escaped, and?"

"I killed them." She met their eyes levelly. "And I started the engines back up."

After all your years of service, the Alliance puts you right back where they found you. Jailed and starving.

It had been six days since the last round of questions, as near as she could tell with no natural light. Six days without any contact except for the silent guard bringing her meagre ration. Six days without the sky, or the stars. Her moods swung viciously with her low blood-sugar, each sweep lower than the last.

Being alone made it infinitely worse.

She'd never been good at being alone. She defined her home with people. She collected them, made them hers. Did they know how much they'd stripped from her when they took away her radio? She wanted sound, contact, people she knew. Most of all she wanted to hear Joker, even though he'd be angry, maybe especially because he'd be angry. She'd thought turning herself in was the right thing to do; he hadn't.

She wished she could tell him he'd been right, and see his smug expression when she did.

Does everyone imprisoned for suspected genocide get solitary? Most of them committed their crimes from behind a desk. A clean uniform, a nice office, a home to go to after you'd signed the orders consigning whole peoples to death. No mud on your hands, no blood on your hands. No sweat. No split-second decision making, will-I-won't-I, what can I do, only me, here, now. Genocide was a crime of forethought; of planning. They called the perpetrators 'architects,' and someone else did their labor. Not her. She'd done it all; everything except the planning. The plan had always been Hackett's, and it had been abandoned in the rush of a too rapidly changing situation. p

The final call had been hers, and she'd made it without a second thought, only a curse when the evacuation alerts she'd tried to send had failed.

She'd thought she was going to die then. Alone. Everyone dies alone. Who had said that? She remembered calling for the Normandy, sure it could never arrive in time, but wanting Joker's voice on her radio, a connection to push away the solitude. Wishing she could go out fighting, with her blood running high, instead of waiting. Waiting, watching, while the asteroid she rode hurtled towards a mass relay to set off an explosion that would doom an entire star system.

Waiting was the most deadly thing she'd ever done.

She remembered thinking at least this time it won't be cold.

She'd been wrong, of course. Joker was there, as he always had been, risking himself and the ship to whisk her away to safety beyond the relay.

Safety three hundred thousand batarians would never reach.

One inhabited planet was a small price to pay to hold back the reapers.

She sat on the floor, closed her eyes, and thought of the time before the Bahak system.

They hadn't had the funds to keep the ship running. Her status with the Alliance had been confusing and uncertain. They'd known a war was coming and they hadn't known their next move.

And she'd been happy. Blissfully, stupidly happy.

When they cleared the Omega relay they'd dropped all pretenses. The entire crew had seen her kiss Joker in the middle of the command deck. He hadn't spent another night in crew quarters, and with his flight kit next to hers, the big cabin had felt a lot less barren. While Miranda developed cover identities to help the formerly-Cerberus crew slip back into normal society, they'd made their own plans. One last mission, to help Liara get a friend back from the Shadow Broker, and then Liara — now Shadow Broker Liara, which meant ridiculously wealthy Liara — had paid to dock Normandy on Illium.

They'd actually gotten their vacation. A fancy hotel far from any of Illium's gleaming cities and very near the equally gleaming ocean, with sunny beaches, gentle surf, and a decadently huge bathtub that they both enjoyed far too much.

If she focused, she could go back there. Could feel the sun warm on her skin, hear Joker's laugh. Remember smoothing sunscreen over the sweep of tattoos across his shoulders (very, very diligently, after the day she'd missed a spot and he burned bright red). Relive the time they'd spent doing absolutely nothing, learning all the little, everyday details they hadn't known about each other.

Like, for instance, Joker's family. Which had become real instead of theoretical when they'd left the resort and flown to the tiny colony world of Tiptree. He'd drifted from them after the SR1 went down, and had no idea how to close the breach. She'd been entirely out of her element and ready to stay in the shuttle. And it had all gone fine.

She'd been lucky. There was an aunt there, too, visiting, but that meant she'd only had to deal with four people — dad, stepmom, aunt, and teenage half-sister — and not with the entire extended horde of relations that was apparently still back on Earth. She didn't really know how people dealt with family. But she'd gotten on great with Hillary, and the awkwardness and pain that Joker's depression-induced estrangement had caused had faded away over the two weeks they'd spent helping with farm-colony chores and taking their turns at dishes. Even the familial squabbles had taught her things about the man she was taking to bed every night — and after two weeks, they were both glad to get out of the too-close quarters and away from the too-thin walls, back to the comfort of their cabin on their ship.

She tried to focus on those little things — on the ways Joker and his dad were obviously not suited to live under the same roof; the way he doted on his little sister. The time they'd spent laying on a sunlit beach ignoring the rest of the world.

It was work. Other memories — the wreck she'd been after she'd destroyed the alpha relay, the look in his eyes when the MPs showed up at Arcturus, even the triumphant exaltation of that kiss on the command deck — were almost too much. The bad ones threatened to pull her down, and the good ones made her ache.

Think about the little good things.

She paced in her cell.

Three meters.

Turn the corner.

Two meters.

Corner. Three. Corner. Two. Three. Two.

It made the small space feel even more cramped, but it helped her keep her mind off her stomach, twisting with hunger pangs. Gave her the illusion of control.

She'd spent an hour on stretches; another on calisthenics, bare feet battered by the cement floor. Now there was nothing to do but pace, and think. Bare feet on the cold floor, the prisoner's jumpsuit rustling as she moved.

She had to shorten her stride on the short side of the cell.

She was still pacing when the guards came for her. New ones, heavily armed. She almost laughed at the lengths they'd gone to prepare: six guards in body-armor, with stun guns and truncheons, to stand up to unamped, unarmed her. She thought about telling them not to worry, that she didn't have any asteroids handy, but that was too macabre a joke even for her, so she accepted her manacles and followed in silence.

She couldn't even stretch her legs properly before they lead her into another cell, this one decorated, incongruously, with a barber's chair.

She sat, watching the manacles affix themselves to the chair's arms at a gesture from the warden. Scissors snicked through her hair, heavy dark locks falling to the ground, leaving her feeling oddly light.

She flicked her eyes sideways and saw the barber reach for a razor.

That was too much.

Back where they found you.

Her life was rewinding, spinning backwards, undoing everything she'd achieved. Now they'd take her hair, and she really would be back at the start; shaven, starving, alone. Powerless in a cell. No ship, no crew, no friends. No way to fight. No say in her future.

No chance to enlist for a fresh start, this time.

She pulled with all her will at her biotics, head pounding as she tried to pull power without an amp or physical gesture.

There was a tiny flicker of blue.

The razor flew out of the man's hand and embedded itself in the wall.

She sank against the chair, spent, and the orderly picked up another razor from the table and started to shave.

The next day, the guards brought a med tech, a batarian observer, and a biotics expert. The guards made her kneel while they slid the inhibitor into the implant at the base of her skull.

It felt like fingers crawling through her brain, leaving sick numbness where they touched.

Pull it together.

The air was cool on her shaven head, and she clasped her hands behind her back to keep herself from touching the skin there, or prodding at the smooth surface of the biotic inhibitor nestled against the base of her skull.

Ignore it.

The problem was, there wasn't much else to do.

The first duty of a captive, they said, was attempting escape.

She wasn't supposed to escape. She'd turned herself in.

This isn't forever. It doesn't change me.

She grasped at the scraps of herself.

She was Rhi Shepard, a marine, and a damn good one. One-time commander of the Normandy, in both its incarnations.

And both of mine. Heh.

Wrex and Tali's friend. Nessie's almost-sister. Jeff Moreau's lover.

You're not the scared kid on the street anymore.

Keep it together, marine.

The cell felt the same as that first one, though.

You trained for this.

No.

The first duty of a captive is attempting escape.

I trained for being captured by the enemy.

We never trained for being captured by our friends.

She'd been sixteen the first time she'd been in prison. Then her shaved head had been her own doing, and hunger her normal state of being. They'd wanted to know why she'd been hauling a gun-shot kid through the streets of Vancouver. Why she'd charged a marine to get away. Why she was on her own.

She'd thought she was going to juvie, if not real jail, or another foster home.

Instead she'd gone into the marines, and the man who'd brought her in had kept an eye on her. Alejandro Geltz, N5 hand-to-hand expert, occasional mentor.

She'd tried to contact him, back on the SR2 when she was trying to put her life back together. It had been a hard message to write, but she'd tried, reaching out through the dark to the man who'd pulled her off the street, who'd always had faith in her.

He'd never responded.

Geltz showed up outside her cell. Two guards waited behind him in the hall.

She almost thought he was another vision from her past. It had been three years since she'd seen him, and she'd been alone for… weeks? It was hard to believe he was real, not a remembered figment from when she was a fucked-up teen, but gray was creeping into his thick black hair, new lines crawling over his olive skin.

When she approached the plas-glas she could look down on him, but she'd been able to do that since she was seventeen.

Her gut roiled with mixed emotion; relief at a familiar face, any familiar face, mixed with the bile of abandonment. Of betrayal.

Why are you here now?

"Rhiannon."

He always used her full, first name. He was practically the only person who ever had. It was familiar, his calm, grounding voice. The one adult who'd been, well… a grownup. Trustworthy.

Another part of the Alliance, eager to help her when she was useful and quick to cast her aside once she was awkward.

When she was sixteen she'd called him 'sir', and spat it. When she was older they met on occasion for lunch, and she called him Alejandro. Now she couldn't bring herself to say either.

"Geltz." It came out flat and cold.

"Oh, Rhiannon." He looked her up and down. "Madre de dios, I'm sorry."

She hadn't expected an apology. She wasn't ready for an apology. She just stared at him.

"It's been just over three weeks, Rhiannon. It took that long to talk my way in here. Anderson and I, we've been working on it non-stop."

Over three weeks. She'd been here for almost a month. Alone.

He looked sorrowful; there were new lines around his eyes. "And those months ago, when you wrote me. Things were... tricky, at the time. I couldn't have any contact with you."

"Of course." She nodded. A muscle twitched in her jaw, so strongly she felt it spasm. And then vitriol she hadn't meant to spew came pouring out. "Had to keep me at arm's length because of Cerberus." She spat the word. "Terrorists. Racists. Scum of the earth. But the Alliance are the ones who sent me to commit genocide."

He stepped close to the glass. "Rhiannon! Don't say things like that!"

"Why fucking bother?" She turned away. "We both know how it has to end. Letting me go free would require admitting that I've been right about the reaper threat for years. Admitting that would mean admitting that some very important people were wrong." Her hands shook with rage and exhaustion. She was cold, too, shivering, the air chill against her bare scalp. She hadn't realized she was so cold.

"It would be easier if it didn't mean admitting that Cerberus was right about something, too."

"Is that really so damn hard? Stopped clocks and all that bullshit. At least the Illusive Man had the sense never to put me in the position that Hackett did." The name was a curse. She'd respected Hackett. She'd agreed to his favor so blithely; she'd been pleased to work for someone she could trust, instead of the Cerberus bastard.

Someone I thought I could trust.

She tried to remind herself that Hackett hadn't lied. He was just wrong. What's the difference, when the fire starts?

"Shepard!" He barked her name like a drill instructor. "Control yourself! Complementing the Illusive Man isn't going to win you any points."

"Compliment him?" She whirled, stuck her fingers through the holes in the plasglass, pulled herself close to glare into his eyes, and hissed, "If I wasn't in here, the Illusive Man would be dead."

"Rhiannon." His voice was a shocked whisper. "What the hell's gotten into you?"

Her stomach was cramped with hunger, and her hands shook with the desire to hit something. Trapped and alone. "If the Alliance wanted their good little toy soldier, maybe they shouldn't have broken it." It came out as an almost manic sing-song. "This is why we can't have nice things."

Her old mentor was staring at her as if she were a stranger.

She stepped back from the glass, growling.

His gaze followed her, eyes narrowed, then dropped to the place where she'd neatly wadded up the morning's ration wrapper in the plastic cup.

"What are they feeding you?"

"1700 calories a day." Standard intake for a petite female desk jockey; starvation rations for a tall, heavily-muscled biotic. She leaned back against the wall, suddenly feeling light-headed.

"And exercise? You should be out for two forty minute sessions a day, per standard pro — "

She rolled her eyes at him and snorted.

"Jesus Christ." Suddenly he looked ferociously angry, and not at her. "Jesus fucking Christ."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I have to find out who signed off on that." And beat some sense into them, his tone implied. Now he was almost growling. "This will get better for you."

She stilled, looking at him. Maybe there were still friends here. Could she trust Geltz? Couldn't she?

He used to let me hit him, as hard as I could, just because I was angry and confused and hormonal and he knew I needed something to hit.

Her memory supplied that feeling too easily; an out-of-control body, an abruptly changed life, the desire for a target. She'd already been taller than him, even half-starved as she was, but it hadn't mattered. Geltz was the Alliance ranking hand-to-hand expert, and when he decided he'd had enough he put her on the ground — and then taught her how to block it, and how to counter. He was ridiculously over-qualified to be giving one-on-one instruction to a street brat who wasn't even properly enlisted yet, but she hadn't been aware of the honor at the time.

He'd been the one to bring her in. He'd tackled her in a hospital, dragged her kicking and clawing to a recruitment office, seen her implanted. He'd kept track of her through her deployments, during officer's candidacy school, taken her to dinner when she learned she'd been tapped for Special Forces. He'd been the one to recommend her to Anderson, and eventually her berth on the Normandy.

He'd been thrilled when she made N7. He'd only gone to 5.

Geltz was the closest to family she'd ever had. Had she ever really recognized that? She owed him an effort.

He was still staring at her, quiet.

She took a deep breath. Then another.

On the third, she could manage normal words.

"What," she tried, "What's going on? Out there?"

He jerked his head back towards the guard shadowing him. "It was all I could do to talk my way in here. I'll give you more detail later, if I can, but for now — you're a political grenade with the pin pulled. No one can decide if they want responsibility for you or want to throw it to someone else. Everything is complicated beyond sense by your vanishing act three years ago. Admiral Anderson's arguing for you, and he carries a lot of weight, but the brass are divided, and trying not to let the batarians or the Council realize it." He shook his head. "You made one hell of a mess, kid."

"Figured as much." She shouldn't ask about Joker, or the ship. She shouldn't. Better if no one knew what she thought was important.

She had to know. She'd just… make it general.

"And my crew?"

He snorted. "Not in as much trouble as you are. Seems you hid most of 'em pretty good. The pilot's in custody, but he's got it easy. There's nothing real to charge him with."

The fist that clamped her heart loosened its grip, just a notch.

"Good." She nodded sharply. Then she narrowed her eyes at him. "I didn't 'vanish' three years ago!"

He shot her a level look that meant she'd done something stupid and was about to reap the consequences. It had usually ended with her ass on the floor.

"I got blown out of a spaceship," she said meekly. "There's a difference."

He winced. "And showed up working for the wrong team."

"Only when I agreed with them. I used Cerberus." And they used me. She still didn't like to talk about it, but she owed him. Didn't she?

He was looking at her with that same, steady gaze.

She swallowed. "It's… hard to figure out quite what your options are, when, when you wake up missing two years, Alejandro." Another deep breath. "I don't know that I did everything right, but I tried. Did the work that needed doing. Sent back intel on Cerberus whenever I could. Stole their ship when it was all over."

He just watched her. Maybe he was as confused as she was, inside.

She grinned weakly. "Think you and Anderson can get me dubbed a retroactive double agent?"

That startled a snort out of him.

She bit back the laughter that threatened to bubble out, utterly inane given the circumstances. Of course the Alliance couldn't make such an absurd claim. If they had enough foresight to plant a spy by killing her, letting her corpse fall into the hands of a pseudo-terrorist group, and waiting for said pseudo-terrorist group to bring her back to life so that she could work for them, well... an organization with that kind of vision wouldn't be playing a losing game against galactic chaos.

The guard, who had been waiting at a discreet distance, stepped up to Geltz' shoulder. "Time's up, sir."

Geltz nodded. "Hang in there, Rhiannon. Don't dig yourself any deeper."

She watched him go until he passed beyond the security wall, leaving her alone once more.