Author's note: First things first a couple of apologies, one for the delay in updating and second for the time jump. I know a lot of you wanted to know what happened to Trish during the two years after Shepard's death and I promise I did try to write it, but what little I managed was quite frankly awful. She certainly didn't stop living for those two years and things happened, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait and find out at the same time as Nikki. Sorry.

Also with regards to ME2 I'm mostly going to be following the game, but there's going to be a slight detour at the beginning. Basically I tried playing the game again for inspiration and Nick just folded her arms, stubbornly declaring: "I ain't saying that. Nope, not gonna do that either!" Hopefully you won't all hate it when it happens.

Anyway, enough babble from me, on with the story:

The experience was a lot like coming round after being put under anesthetic for surgery, and by that Shepard didn't mean the carefully constructed facade of calm and making everybody laugh by completing the sentence she'd been halfway through speaking several hours earlier. There was definitely that same sense of disorientation however, AND the bit immediately before where your actions and emotions carry directly on from what was happening before you lost consciousness.

Except before she lost consciousness she had been fighting a losing battle against a sense of panic, and engaged in an even more desperate struggle over the ability to breath, so that was how she returned to the world: fighting. Her panic only grew when she felt something in her throat and heard indistinct voices, the fact that she was no longer in the great empty void above Alchera only really sinking in when she caught sight of her unarmoured arm, an unknown woman catching hold of it before she could reach up and tear out what she was slowly coming to realise must be a ventilator machine.

"Shepard, don't try to move. Just lie still, try to stay calm." Now that she was aware she tried taking in more details of her surroundings. The people present weren't wearing Alliance medical uniforms so she assumed she must be in some kind of private facility, that could get expensive quickly, she hoped Trish wasn't footing the bill. Free health care was supposed to be one of the perks of being Alliance military after all. Her attention was caught by the logo on their clothes, she was sure there was something familiar about it.

"Brain activity is off the charts." That's because I'm trying to think! Now shush moron, you're distracting me. "Stats pushing into the red zone it's not working!" What? Err, that doesn't sound good. Hey lady, can I start panicking again?

"Another dose. Now!"

Another dose of what? No! No sedative, I don't want any more seda-

...

"Wake up Commander."

-tive... Dammit.

"Shepard do you hear me? Get out of that bed now." Mmm, no. Five more minutes! "I need you to get moving." Seriously your bedside manner sucks, I want Chakwas back. Shit, the Normandy! Nikki opened her eyes suddenly, blinking at the light bouncing off clean white walls and raising a hand to her throbbing jaw. Please tell me Chakwas got out ok? What about everyone else? Did I manage to save Joker? What abo-

"Shepard! This facility is under attack." What!? Why didn't you say so? All other thoughts fell to the wayside as the mystery voice's words finally penetrated and Nikki sat up, clutching at her ribs with a gasp as they protested the movement. Weapons fire was visible through the room's windows as she twisted to the side to allow her body to fall off the bed, grunting when her legs didn't hold her weight quite as well as she'd been hoping and her hands rushed out to the recently vacated cot for support. How long was I out?

"There's a pistol and armour in a locker on the other side of the room." Where? Oh there. Fu- Argh... Ok, try again, one foot in front of the other. And left, and right, and left and... balls, there's no more bed to lean on. This is going to hurt.

"Hurry!"

"Oh sure, hurry she says." Nikki grumbled to herself as she grit her teeth against the pain. "Me and you are going to have a falling out at this rate." Fortunately if there was one thing N7s were good at it was keeping going through pain and she finally made it to the locker, opening it to find the familiar sight of a suit of Kassa Fabrication's light colossus armour that she quickly put on, and a less familiar pistol that she examined closely. Something about the weapon didn't seem quite right.

"It needs a thermal clip." The voice that she was 98% certain was coming from the loud speakers and not inside her head helpfully offered.

"Thermal clip?" Oh no. Please no. The idea of disposable heat sinks had just started being thrown around when she last left Arcturus and she had been vehemently opposed to the plan. Sure she understood where the proponents were coming from, nobody knew when the reapers would make their next move and the turians were the only species with compulsory military service, it would be much easier to train people to shoot guns on short notice if they could simply replace the thermal clip rather than having to remember to let the weapon cooldown during combat. But as someone for whom the different weapons' optimum firing and cooldown patterns were second nature, she had had concerns about the inevitable supply problems that were bound to arise in a prolonged campaign. Her first experience with a prototype was not changing her mind on the subject.

"There aren't any in the med bay but you can get one from-" Little Miss Bossy continued to instruct her and it wasn't long before she had both a thermal clip and something to shoot at. A frustrated growl tore from her throat as her first two shots went wide, unsure if it was the pistol or her prolonged inactivity that was at fault. Fortunately whatever the issue was she was able to compensate for it, her accuracy not quite up to usual standards but good enough to destroy the mechs that were trying to kill her.

...

"Something tells me this is NOT an Alliance approved 'back to work' physiotherapy training session." Shepard groused as she ran as fast as she could between the flames. Honestly who thought using a grenade launcher that close to pipes of flammable gas was a good idea? Especially when they were between me and the way out. Luckily the only burn she felt was from muscle fatigue and she was used to ignoring that. Although normally it took a lot longer to get to this level of exhaustion, not a mere twenty minutes of combat.

The voice on the comm cut out and she was left to navigate the hallways alone. The further she travelled the more she came to realise that she wasn't in fact in a private hospital like she first thought, but rather some kind of science facility. The glimpses of the experimental project she caught sight of on various monitors as she cleared each room left her feeling immensely uneasy, and was far more unsettling than the dead bodies that littered the corridors, their uniforms displaying the same logo that was emblazoned on the windows and doors.

Nikki couldn't help feeling that she aught to recognise the emblem, but she was a bit preoccupied with getting out alive. So much so that when she finally found a survivor who didn't die two seconds after she clapped eyes on them, the only question she could think to ask was: "Which way to the shuttle pad?"

...

Cerberus. I'm in a Cerberus lab. How the hell did I not realise? And I woke up here, what kind of sick crap could they have done? Two years! 'The Alliance declared you dead, Cerberus spent a fortune to bring you back'. The biotic's words rung in Shepard's ears. She tried to ignore the roiling turmoil inside her head, the nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach, to just focus on surviving, making it off this station in one piece, but it was hard when she'd just been sucker punched with so much insane information all in a row. 'You were just meat and tubes'. Two years. Cerberus. 'Anyone else would have stuck you in a coffin'. TWO YEARS!

Strangely enough she made sure her co-survivors took point after that little bombshell. No way was she having armed Cerberus personnel to her rear, she wanted the bastards where she could see them. She still remembered the disturbing allegations Toombsey had made about the organisation a handful of weeks back. Except apparently it wasn't. A handful of weeks that is. It was two years.

One moment the Normandy had been exploding in front of her as she desperately searched for the source of her suit breach. The next she had been waking up here. It had been instantaneous, no different from any other time she'd woken up without warning in the med bay. Well, except for the hostile mechs of course. That was certainly a first.

As if summoned by her thoughts, more of the walking scrap metal appeared and she was forced to focus on the here and now. No more time for introspection until their little group (plus one Miranda and minus one Wilson) was safely sequestered away on the evacuation shuttle.

Afterwards there was plenty of time for reminiscing, in fact Miranda insisted upon it. 'Making sure the memories were all there' apparently. The Cerberus operative also caught her up on a few of the changes since Shepard last roamed the conscious plane. Such as the fact that the pistol casually balanced on her knee like a safety blanket was not, in actual fact as she believed, a prototype weapon; but rather a mass produced, standard issue sidearm. It seemed a lot had changed in two years.

There was that number again. Maybe it shouldn't be so hard to accept, but it was easier than focusing on the other can of worms Cerberus had opened, the whole 'death and rebirth' topic. Point was it couldn't have been two years. She'd had plans dammit! She'd missed her 30th birthday. And her wedding anniversary. Twice! Oh god, Trish! She could only begin to imagine the heartache her wife must have suffered through.

Nikki kept her back to the wall for the duration of the shuttle ride, gaze never leaving the two Cerberus operatives sat opposite her as she waited for the inevitable double cross. Inside she was a mess, struggling to come to terms with her new reality, questioning whether what they told her was even the truth, but outside she remained stoic, refusing to let them see her distress. Not allowing any sign of weakness to slip through in front of her historical enemies. That simply wouldn't do.