[I'm fine. You owe me thirty credits.] Trish breathed a sigh of relief at the message but finished loading the washing machine before she responded, the last thing she needed was Nicholas adding something random into the drum while the door was open (again!).

[I'm glad you're ok but just how do you figure I owe you money?]

[My crew weren't involved in the initial gunfire but Garrus WAS investigating. Fifty minus twenty equals thirty, you owe me thirty credits. See, you're not the only clever one, I can do math.] The reply was so fast she wondered if Nicola had predicted her response and already worked out an answer in advance.

[Well done, I'm very impressed.] Trish smiled as she typed, knowing Nikki would pick up on the sarcasm in her words but not take offence. [Unfortunately for you I never accepted that bet, guess I'm still the cleverer one after all. So, what was it all about?]

[You'll always be the cleverer one and it was just some krogan celebrating his 400th birthday.]

[With gunfire?]

[Well yeah, I did say krogan. Celebratory gunfire is part of their cultural tradition, he just 'forgot' it was illegal on the Citadel. Speaking of the Citadel... I'm not going to be here forever and we should really make the most of the lack of lag, can I call you?]

[Sure, go ahead.] Trish headed into the living room, carefully depositing Nicholas back into his playpen just to be safe, before making herself comfortable on the couch. She smiled as she watched her son crawl over to play with his toys, just because he COULD walk didn't mean he always felt like it, frowning when she suddenly realised several minutes had passed without a call. [Nikki... Everything alright?]

Still no reply.

Normally the delay wouldn't bother her, even after the Alliance had upgraded their communication network to the latest, most advanced technology, there were still some parts of the galaxy that took hours or even days for a message to reach. However correspondence time between the Citadel and Arcturus Stream was usually so insignificant as to appear near instant to a human brain.

Of course attacks on human colonies had been in the news a lot recently and usually started with the comms going down, but while colonists on more remote planets would likely start getting apprehensive by now, being so close to Arcturus station that you could see lights from the fleet at night tended to lull one into a sense of security. Even so, as time dragged with no contact, Trish found herself beginning to wonder. Nicholas had just started chewing on a rubber T-rex when her omni-tool finally pinged.

[Sorry, ran into a reporter. Everybody else in the galaxy I have to convince I'm really me before they'll talk to me. The press on the other hand...] Trish could just picture Nikki running a frustrated hand through her hair as she said that.

[You should have pretended you were Rachel Hale.]

[Who?]

[The actress who played you in Citadel. Weren't you going to call?]

"-eriously!? They made a film?" Trish chuckled at the first words Nikki uttered as the video connected.

"Hello to you too."

"Nuh-uh, don't try to sidetrack me. Citadel. As in like... Battle of the Citadel? Sovereign, Saren, reapers, me. That Citadel? As a film?"

"Yeah. Well, no. They missed out the reapers, made out like it was all just Saren and the geth, but other than that pretty much. I'm surprised Joker didn't tell you already."

"I'm not sure I'd believe it if Joker told me." Shepard muttered before her voice rose in indignation. "Hey, that bastard! I asked him if any good films came out an' all!"

"Well there's his loophole... Maybe it wasn't any good."

"Perhaps... Wait, what do you mean maybe? Haven't you seen it?"

"No. I was nowhere near ready to watch a vid about my dead wife." Trish regretted the words as soon as they slipped out. Nikki's face contorting through a variety of emotions including a heavy dose of guilt. "So, how'd it go with the reporter?" She abruptly changed topics to the first thing she thought of.

"Ugh, that woman gets under my skin far too easily."

"Let me guess, Khalisah al-Jilani, Westerlund News?"

"Yeah. Oh, just so you know, according to her I must have been on a deep undercover mission for the last two years and the fact I've resurfaced now is somehow majorly significant. Why she'd think this and more importantly why she'd think I'd talk about the details with her if it was true I have no idea. I think I need to get a hat with the words 'no comment' printed on it."

"Maybe I'll get you one for Christmas."

"Christmas? That's ages away!" Nikki pouted childishly.

"Not as far away as your birthday." Trish shot back playfully, surprised when the pouting turned into a carefully blank mask. "What, what's wrong?"

"How old am I Trish?" The usually cavalier voice was bereft of emotion and the civilian momentarily closed her eyes, a premonition of the nasty turn the conversation was about to take flashing through her mind. Somehow despite asking for a fresh start between them she kept putting her foot in it, the missing two years constantly drawing attention to itself. She decided to try and joke through it, Nikki usually responded well to humour.

"Are we talking mental age? Because some days I'd have to say around six."

"I'm serious Trish. Normally you just take the date and subtract the year of your birth but that's not exactly an accurate measure of how long I've been alive. Parts of me are only two years old, some even younger than that and-"

"On average humans cycle through a completely new set of epidermis skin cells every 35 days."

"What?" The commander blinked confusedly at the interruption. "...What's that got to do with anything?"

"And that kid from the Normandy that got injured on Virmire, Fredricks I think it was, he went with a clone leg in the end. That leg's newer than the rest of him."

"It's not the same Trish, sure it was close a few times but he never actually died. I..."

"I know, I'm just-" Trish sighed hopelessly, searching her brain for anything that could help. She felt guilty that she'd spent so long moping over Melissa and trying to get her head around how she felt about Nikki's return, she really hadn't given enough thought to how her partner was coping. The soldier always displayed such immense mental fortitude that it was easy to forget that even she had a limit to what she could deal with. "How old do you feel?"

"Hmm?"

"'Age is just a number', I know you've heard that saying before. I'm not- I'm not trying to downplay this or anything I just-... I've got no answers for your questions, there's no precedence to follow, nothing I can think of to make it better so-... How old do you want to be?"

Silence followed. Nikki not looking at the screen as she sat with eyes downcast, Trish giving her time to think things through. Finally after what seemed like an eternity the spectre looked back up, managing to pull off a faint smirk.

"I don't know... About six?" They shared a dark chuckle before Nikki exhaled deeply. "I appreciate the thought Trish, but my date of birth is public knowledge, I doubt anyone else'll let me have a choice in the matter. I just have to get used to the fact I jumped straight from twenty-nine to thirty-one."

"Would you feel better or worse if I arranged extra birthday parties so you can catch back up?"

"I... I'm not sure. Idea sounds kinda nice right now, but not sure how I'd feel once I've packaged this all away and then it suddenly gets dragged back out again. I certainly wouldn't want some big thirtieth birthday bash." By 'packaged away' Trish just knew Nikki meant 'buried deep and tried to ignore'.

"What about something small? Just me, you and Nicholas, a couple of presents and some cake. You don't have to decide now."

"I do like cake."

"Really? I never noticed." Trish smiled as Nicola finally released a gloriously genuine laugh.

"I get to choose the cake right?"

"Within reason, sure."

"Reason? Do you even know me?" The soldier faked offence. "Ooh... I've just had a great idea."

"It's amazing how you make that sound so ominous."

"You know battenberg cake right?"

"I married you, of course I know what battenberg is. I'm pretty sure I know every type of cake in the galaxy thanks to you."

"Part of me really wants to test you on that but don't try and distract the awesome. Now... imagine... a chessboard of battenberg."

"You want sixty-four squares of cake." Trish didn't even bother framing it as a question.

"Yeah and each square can be a different flavour!" The civilian couldn't help but groan at the same time she felt a faint smile grace her lips at the feeling of deja-vu.

"You know Nick, I was almost willing to go along with it if it was just the pink and yellow sponge involved, but you've always got to make things more complicated."

"Yeah, I see your point... narrowing it down to just 64 flavours is going to be pretty hard." Nikki teased with twinkling eyes.

"Idiot, you- Urgh... that smells gross. Like... even worse than usual." Trish declared, standing up from the couch and heading to where Nicholas was still happily playing.

"What? I can't smell anything?" Trish simply shot the commander an unimpressed look.

"That's because you're two relay jumps away. Trust me, if you were in this solar system you'd smell it. Now if you'll excuse me I have to change your son's nappy."

"My son huh? Is this going to be like the whole Jude 'my dog, our dog' situation?"

"Believe me right now, he's definitely yours. Got to go, talk later?"

"Wait! Can I... can I watch?" Trish raised an eyebrow.

"You want to watch faeces and baby bottoms?"

"When you say it like that I sound like a weirdo. I just... like seeing you be a mother. Plus you could make it a live stream, educational, how-to video. I've still not done my parent training and I assume I'm going to have to change a nappy at some point."

"Oh when you get home it is definitely going to be your turn." Trish informed her as Little Nicky stood up and started heading away from her towards a new toy. "Ok, first step: You have to catch the little monster."

...

Author's note: Nice quick update to make up for the delay on the last one, don't get used to it though, next update should have some plot in it so will likely take a little longer to write.

I've been thinking for awhile of introducing some OC squadmates, and the leading contender is a batarian male. I'm still deciding whether Shepard's served with him before or if it's a recommendation from Anderson. One thing's certain though, he was born and raised outside the hegemony. Other possibilities include a female krogan and a male N7. Not sure if there will just be the one addition or multiples but all the canon crew will still be recruited. (Somehow. I'm still trying to work out how to convince Nikki to let a criminal with such a long rapsheet out of prison when she doesn't know Jack's tragic back story yet)

Part of the reason for adding more characters is SomethingProfound11's story 'Encroachment' which (is fantastic) and helped highlight what I already thought: the insane missions in the game being accomplished by such a small squad is ridiculous. The other reason is I'm thinking of doing something a little different for the end of ME2.

Instead of simply replaying the suicide mission on console where I know exactly how to manipulate it so everyone survives, I'm planning to adapt the mission to rpg boardgame or at the very least make key parts of it dependent on dice rolls in order to keep things unpredictable. I'm not just going to kill off characters I don't like in order to keep a sense of danger and tension, while keeping everybody else magically safe. War isn't like that, it's chaotic, unpredictable and despite her success on Virmire not even Shepard is capable of saving everyone.

I admit I'm somewhat nervous and really hope the dice don't end up killing my favourite characters, (turians' natural plating gives plus 20 to toughness rolls right? Right?) but apart from Nikki herself there is only one other person with a free pass to guaranteed survival because they're essential for one of the storylines in ME3 to play out the way I want. There will be injuries, there may be major character deaths, there will almost certainly end up being delays between updates as life gets in the way (sorry in advance).

Anyway thanks for the reviews, it always make an author's day to hear feedback and I look forward to your opinions, hope you're all still enjoying.