.

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

- Edgar Allan Poe

(AN: Hello, dear readers! It's been nearly a year since I completed Loyalty and Limerence, and in that time I have fully written this story. For those returning readers, thank you for your patience! For those newcomers, welcome! I'm so happy you can all join me on this journey. This story is complete, and I will be updating every week as I did with my last one.

CW: This first chapter contains non-graphic mentions of past suicide by side character and death of a parent.)

.

A Dream Within a Dream

Part 1

Chapter 1

The Citadel

Shepard's eyes snapped open, her heart hammering in her chest. Images swirled in her mind, vestiges of the dream gripping at her with vice jaws. She shot up, her sheets pooling around her as her breath came in panicked gasps and her stomach churned.

Even as she looked around her dark, cramped apartment, she could still see the unsettling red world of her dream. She could still see the small window through which she had peered, the gaping chasm that lay beyond, the unsettling warmth that had cocooned her, and the terrifying drum of the heartbeat that had thrummed in her ears, echoing in her veins. Endless red windows stretched upward into infinity, glaring down at her and filling her with dread.

Glancing at her alarm clock, it felt as though she were still dreaming, even though every passing moment brought a greater level of consciousness and recognition. Nothing around her appeared real, and she half expected that if she were to stretch her hand out, it would pass through objects as though they were made of smoke.

She pulled her legs around to dangle off the bed with jerky movements as she attempted to will her heartbeat into submission. Around her, the room undulated and spasmed like the flame of a candle in the breeze. She wanted to scream as she brought her hands up to grip her hair, the tightness in her chest building to unbearable levels. She had to move.

Slowly, Shepard pulled herself up to standing. With deliberate steps, she navigated to the bathroom, a tiny closet with just enough space for the essentials. She palmed the faucet, and warm water began flowing. She fought her blurred vision as she thrust her hands into the water, and though experience told her to expect it, her chest clenched as she failed to register any sensation of wetness.

It was always the same after the dream, every single damn time. She focused on the rivulets as they trailed down her wrists to her fingertips, willing herself to detect any sort of feeling in them. At length, she finally began to feel the damp moisture, the sensation growing more and more discernible with every passing moment. She finally let herself breathe normally as tension slowly leeched out of her cramped shoulders.

Leaning down, Shepard let the water pool in her palms before bringing it up to splash over her face. With relief, she felt it, every blessed drop of it. She took in a deep breath as the water trickled down her face, dripping off her nose and chin, collecting on her eyelashes. She gave herself a quick shake and reached for the towel she knew to be hanging nearby. Bringing it to her face, she stood taller as she basked in the rough sensation of the threadbare fabric against her skin.

She brought the towel down, and with a start, her gaze met that of someone else's in the mirror. Her body jerked with fear as haunted hazel eyes bore into her own wide green ones. They were treasured and familiar hazel eyes, ones she hadn't seen in almost ten years.

Shepard blinked, and the phantasm vanished, leaving behind her own shocked and terrified face. She leaned forward and gripped the sides of the sink with white knuckles so tightly that spasms of pain shot through her hands.

She wasn't going insane. Her mother was dead and had been for years. The only person in the mirror was herself. Her mother was dead and gone. Her mother was not in the mirror. It was only Shepard. Not her mother. Only her.

Slowly, she forced her breathing to steady again and she let her arms drop to her sides limply. Her expression sank back into her usual blank mask as she refused to break eye contact with her reflection. She could feel herself settling back into reality as she breathed, grounding herself as she took in the sensations of her quiet, dark bathroom. She had no idea how much time passed. She never had any sense of time during these episodes.

She couldn't keep this up. It was getting worse and was happening with more frequency. She'd spent her life watching her mother's doomed battle, but Shepard was determined not to suffer the same fate. Not if she could help it.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe more deeply, focusing inward. Her mother's voice whispered in her ear, instructions shared years before for handling these episodes. The visualization was nearly second nature now, the exercise so well practiced that it hardly required effort.

She floated in emptiness, a void of nothingness. Before her was a single flame, small like a candle. There was nothing but the flame, and nothing mattered but the flame. With each breath, Shepard took all of her fear, her anxiety, her anger, her tension, everything, and fed it into the candle. It devoured the emotions voraciously, leaving nothing but peace. There was nothing left but cold, hard focus, the flame, and Shepard. As calm began to saturate her, she felt a familiar warmth, just within her grasp, if she only she could just-

Her eyes snapped open, and she ripped them away from the mirror. With purpose, Shepard strode out of the bathroom and grabbed a shirt hanging in the open closet. She picked up a pair of folded pants and began dressing herself with focused determination. Her hoodie followed suit, and with a quick return to the bathroom, she had her not-quite-shoulder length hair in order and her teeth scrubbed. Sliding on her boots, she stuffed a protein bar and a water bottle into her bag before shouldering it and palming the door's holo-controls.

The door slid closed behind her as she stepped out into the dreary hall and made for the nearby elevator. Pulling up her omni-tool, she flicked through her music playlists until she found one that looked acceptable. Hitting play, she felt the telltale flicker of her holo-buds shimmering into existence, and a moment later, a song began to play in her ears as the elevator door opened with a soft ping.

She stepped out into the neon lights of Kithoi Ward a few minutes later and made her way towards the nearest public transport station with a quick stride. Time waited for no woman, and neither did work. The ride to her office building on the Presidium wasn't a long one, but if she missed the next train, it would be impossible to get there on time. Checking her omni-tool, she picked up the pace.

"Is that her? With the red hair?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"How has she flown under our radar for so long?"

"I'm not sure. She hasn't left much of a trace until recently. No keywords, no relevant searches until a few days ago."

"Interesting. Have you made contact?"

"Not yet. I've been trying to gather what information I could first."

"Get on it. We need to make sure we get to her before they do."

"Understood."

Shepard had been quite young when she'd first realized something might be wrong with her mother.

Growing up on the Citadel, they lived in a series of small, shabby apartments by the time she started school, just large enough for the two of them. If she'd ever had a father, his name never passed her mother's lips. It was always just the two of them. Her earliest memories of her mother were of a tired but caring woman who doggedly did her best to provide what she could for them.

One day, however, when she'd been about five, Shepard returned from school to find the apartment almost completely dark, the lights out and the windows shuttered. The only light was a dull orange flicker coming from the shattered remains of their desktop console. It cast eerie, oblique shadows across the walls, creating terrifying shapes that leapt out at her as she stepped into the tiny room.

"Mama?" Shepard called out as she inched forward, fear gripping her spine tighter with every step. The words echoed through the silence, broken only by the sounds of the city beyond the darkened windows. A terrified whimper finally reached her ears, and Shepard called out again. "Mama? Is that you?"

An angry shushing sliced through the air, followed by a sharp sob. She followed the sounds to the tiny, single bedroom, only to find her mother curled up on her side in the middle of the floor. Shepard stood there in confusion for a moment, unsure what she was looking at as her mother shook and sobbed quietly.

"Mama? Are you alright? What's wrong?" She hurried closer, only to freeze as their eyes met. It was as though she were staring down a wild-eyed beast, an injured one, scared and alone. They were wide and bloodshot, and in them she saw no sign of recognition, no sign of the kind, loving mother she'd grown up with. Her mother's wild gaze leapt to the door, then the window, then back to her.

"He's getting closer." She whispered, her voice guttural and harsh, nearly unrecognizable. "I know he's out there. Sniffing. Searching. Hunting." She began panting, her breathing labored as she curled further inward. "We need to leave. We need to run. We're not safe here. Neither of us are safe. He's hunting for me, and he'll come just like he came for all of them. He'll come for you, too, someday. You'll see." The words came out garbled and slurred as her hands tightened in her hair, fisting through her auburn curls. "We need to go."

Shepard crawled closer, carefully reaching up a hand to comfort her mother, but drew back as the older woman winced away from the contact. When the episode finally subsided and her mother started to seem like herself again, they quickly and silently packed up their few belongings and left in the night.

It wasn't the first time her mother suddenly relocated them without warning, and it wouldn't be the last. But from that point forward, Shepard began to fear something was deeply wrong with her mother, something that made her different from her classmate's parents. As the years passed, her mother's condition slowly deteriorated, both physically and mentally, and Shepard did her best to keep the situation as hidden as she could. She worried that doctors would whisk her mother away if someone found out, leaving her alone, or worse, thrust into the care of random strangers.

And so she kept her head low, kept to herself, and struggled to support them both when things got rough. Her mother's paranoia prevented the creation of any lasting friendships, and even the extranet was banned while at home, lest they be 'tracked'. But even as her mother's condition worsened and she began wasting away, Shepard still saw glimpses of the wonderful, strong woman who had once been Hannah Shepard.

Right up until the sudden end.

"Jane!" Shepard frowned as she looked up, stepping out of the elevator into the harsh lights of the office floor. She hated that name. It had always felt unnatural, even when she'd been a child. Scanning the office floor, her eyes landed on an asari with a friendly smile as she waved enthusiastically. "Good morning, Jane!"

Despite Talina's cheerful expression and bright eyes, there appeared to Shepard a sort of specter hovering just behind her. The ghostly image was that of Talina, cold and dark as though she were underwater, her eyes closed in peaceful slumber. Even though she knew from long suffering experience that it would do no good, Shepard gave her head a quick shake, failing to dislodge the image as her stomach churned uneasily. No matter how many times she experienced this, it never seemed to get any easier.

"Good morning, Talina." Shepard said flatly as she ignored the phantasm and began walking toward her cubicle, her gaze firmly set on the floor at her feet as she fought the headache threatening to overpower her. It had begun as a dull ache, but was quickly building in intensity. She just needed to make it to her desk so she could put her holo-buds back in and pretend she was alone.

Shepard reached her cubicle and glared at the name tag that stared back up at her.

'Jane Smith'

She held attachment to neither her first nor her last name, particularly after learning the latter was just some name her mother had adopted at random while on the run back before her birth. She'd immediately felt an affinity for the name 'Shepard' upon learning it had been her mother's original last name at birth, and it had been some years since she'd begun to think of it as her own, too. She didn't use it legally, nor did anyone outside the anonymity of the extranet know her by it, but it was hers nonetheless.

Shepard read over the name tag again and shivered as an old unanswered question flitted through her mind. Why was it that they all used the same writing system even though each species on the Citadel developed separately? The extranet, every sign, every data-pad, every public notice, they were all written with the same letters in the same language. It made no sense, and yet everyone else just waved it off like it wasn't some sort of strange mystery.

Shoving the thought from her head, she sat down. She put her bag under her desk and turned on her console, watching as the orange omni-display sprung up across her desk. The Novarian Innovations company logo danced before her eyes as the software loaded. It was the large, fairly well known tech company which Shepard had worked at for nearly four years, ever since she'd graduated with a cheap computer science degree. She was perfectly content with her position as a cog in the corporate wheelhouse, as it kept her fed and paid for her apartment, a blessing in a difficult housing market, and she had no complaints. If she kept her head down and completed her work on time, no one bothered her and very few noticed her.

Shepard preferred it that way.

"How was your weekend?" Shepard looked up from her console to see that Talina had followed her. Hiding her sigh, Shepard plastered a smile on her face and did her best to ignore the sleeping hallucination hovering behind the asari.

"It was fine. Uneventful. How about yours?" She asked mechanically, counting the seconds until she could politely ask to be left alone. She hated small talk. Being around people in general was difficult when the hallucinations appeared, which were becoming close to constant the past few weeks. Especially after the dream.

"Oh, it was fine, I guess. Except we did get some bad news. Jaelern's brother took a turn for the worst, so we have to cancel our trip to Thessia." The asari sighed dramatically as she frowned. "I'm so disappointed! I've always wanted to visit the homeworld, but I guess it's just not meant to be, for now at least. We'll make the trip, eventually. But most likely not until his brother is well again, assuming he recovers."

Shepard frowned, her fingers pausing their movements across the holo-screens at her console. "That's rough. Sorry to hear that."

"Yeah." Talina signed again, her brows drawing down sadly. "Jaelern's getting older, we might not have that many years left until… you know. Salarians are just so short-lived. I'd hoped we'd get to visit Thessia together. But we'll see. There's still time."

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll make it to Thessia one day." Even as the words came out of Shepard's mouth, she knew they weren't true. Her frown deepened. It was never worth mentioning this other strange little detail of Citadel life, since no one else seemed to notice how difficult it was to just leave.

But Shepard noticed. It kept her up at night, one of many inexplicable questions that raced through her mind with no answer. They crept under her skin, gnawing at the back of her brain, and no amount of logic helped make sense of them. The more she considered them, the less sense they made.

"I really hope so." Talina sighed, and Shepard shook the thoughts from her head, lest they dig their claws in deeper and ruin any hope of focus for the day. "I want him to see it with me. It's not fair that asari live five or six times as long as salarians." Shepard muttered an absent agreement as she stared down at her console, and the conversation swung back around to their weekend engagements. Eventually, Talina said her goodbyes and left Shepard in peace.

Even as the asari walked away, the woman's words echoed in Shepard's ears as she fought a shiver. She, too, had attempted to plan a vacation just a few years ago. Ever since she'd first seen pictures of it as a child, she'd dreamt of visiting Earth. After her mother's death, she'd begun putting away money in order to save for a trip. But just as she'd begun making plans, her omni-tool had shorted out unexpectedly, and so too had died her vacation fund as she'd been forced to buy a replacement.

Shepard looked down at the small strap wrapped around her left wrist. She ran a finger over it, careful not to accidentally activate the omni-tool. On the surface, it seemed like nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed. She'd begun to realize she didn't know anyone who had traveled beyond the Citadel. Everyone she knew had grown up there, moving only as far as another neighborhood or ward. There were people on the extranet that talked of traveling, of seeing various planets and space stations and colonies, but Shepard couldn't think of anyone she'd actually met in person who could share stories of Earth or any other planet.

No one else seemed to notice or be bothered by this, though.

When she was home on Kithoi Ward, she could look up and see the huge ships floating by, arriving and departing silently like enormous birds, so she knew people could leave the Citadel. She'd seen pictures and videos of the cities on Earth and various other planets, all full of people bustling about and living their lives. And yet, she had never heard a single first hand account. Why was that?

Shepard's console pinged, and she looked down to see a work message. Her brows knit, and she set to replying as she forced the thoughts from her mind. Dwelling on that particular incongruity wouldn't pay the bills, and she had work to do, no matter how sharp her headache was becoming.

But she could feel the itch in her mind worsen despite her efforts, and suddenly her desk began to feel as substantial as smoke. She struggled to fight down the panic building in her chest.

Not now. Please, not now. The desk is real. I can see it. It's holding up my console. It exists, and it's as real as I am. The desk is real. It's as real as I am.

It was not the first time this had happened with an object, and much like her other hallucinations, she had a technique for handling it. She closed her eyes.

There was nothing but the flame, floating in nothingness. Everything fed into it, leaving nothing but calm. She was the void, she was empty of everything but calm. She was calm. Warmth tickled the back of her neck, a comforting presence. It would be so easy to lean back into it, to embrace it, to-

Shepard took a deep breath and opened her eyes. The desk felt solid again as she laid her hands gently down upon it. Her fingers ran across its surface, taking in the sensation of the cool, smooth material. But the momentary peace began to crack and splinter as a single question whispered in her ear.

Am I real?

Shepard had been almost eighteen when her worry shifted from her mother to herself. It had been slow, almost unnoticeable at first. Nothing but an itch in the back of her mind, the sinking feeling that something was wrong. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but something important. Then it quickly began spiraling out of her control.

It was as though she'd begun to develop a double vision, retaining her view of the normal world alongside some sort of new hellish dreamscape, full of sleep walking phantasms and illusionary objects that slowly faded from existence before her eyes.

It grew exponentially worse when the dream began. It was always the same. Looking out through the window, the chasm below, and infinity stretching upwards. She had no idea why it affected her so much, but every time she awoke from it, she had terrible disassociative episodes that left her feeling rattled for hours afterwards. The first time she awoke from it while her mother had been lucid, she tried to explain it to her, only to be met with a horrified expression plastered across her mother's face. She'd burst into tears, hugging a very confused Shepard to her tightly.

"Mom… Mom, what's wrong?" Shepard asked quietly as she held her sobbing mother, but it was another few minutes until she calmed enough to answer.

"I-" Hannah struggled to regain control of herself as she drew back, only to let her head fall forward to rest on her daughter's shoulder. "Oh, honey." She trailed off as she brought a hand to cup Shepard's cheek for a moment, before letting it fall limp. "I thought- I thought you were going to be free. I had hoped, I had wished…" She sighed as she sat up again and looked her in the eye. "I'm so sorry."

"Mom, you have nothing to be sorry about. It's not your fault, whatever this is… Whatever's happening to me." Her mother looked away, her face pained as tears welled in her eyes again.

"In this dream of yours…" Hannah began, her voice a fearful whisper, "Do you hear the heartbeat, too?"

Shepard froze. The heavy beat of a heart, a thundering drum beat that drowned all other sounds. She hadn't mentioned that detail aloud.

"How-" she choked out, eyes wide as she searched her mother's face for answers, "How did you know about that?"

Tears trickled down Hannah's cheeks silently as the seconds ticked on. Shepard waited as the air in her chest turned to ice, each breath becoming tighter. When Hannah finally answered, it was in a hoarse voice that carried like a whispered prayer.

"Because it's the same dream I have every night."

They spoke long into the night, and bit by bit, Shepard was able to coax from her mother the story that had shaped her own life. Hannah had grown up on the Citadel and had fallen in with a ragtag group of teens, rebels that had stumbled upon the inklings of a secret. It was something they all knew in their bones to be true, even if they lacked the words to explain it logically. They couldn't put words to it, but it drew them all together. And even though they never even exchanged their true names, they grew close, almost inseparable. She even fell in love.

But on the day before she and her beloved had planned to escape to Earth, he disappeared. One by one, they all disappeared. Silently, without a trace, and no one else seemed to notice their absence but Hannah. No notices posted. No C-Sec investigations opened. Nothing. No one even seemed to remember they existed.

Hannah found herself the only one left, and that was when she ran. She'd never stopped running, even when she discovered she was pregnant. It was around then that she first experienced the hallucinations, the dream, and the intermittent disassociation. Despite that, she did the best she could to raise her daughter, to give her the best life she could. But with every passing day, it became harder to avoid those who she knew were on her tail.

Shepard listened with a growing dread, her own shoulders sagging with the leaden weight of her own inevitable fate as she gazed down at the sobbing, broken woman before her. In that moment, she could see her future self, equally broken and unstable, and all she wanted to do was collapse and cry alongside her mother.

But she couldn't. Because if she lost herself, too, then there was nothing standing between them and a life on the street or a mental ward. So she tucked her mother into bed, kissed her on the forehead, and left for her evening job. The next day, Hannah taught her the meditation that had helped her find calm when it became too much. The visualization that Shepard still used to this day.

It was about a week later when she was pulled from her math class and sent to the principal's office. The stricken face of the usually uptight woman instantly put Shepard on guard, but the news she received was nothing she could have prepared herself for.

When she stepped into the coroner's office some time later, she'd looked down upon the remains of her mother's shattered body with a shocked numbness that threatened to seep into her very soul like an all-consuming poison. She listened vacantly as the medical examiner explained that she'd been found in the street, the evidence suggesting that she'd jumped from the roof of a nearby building. The words passed through her like needles, the pain sharp and hot. But the tears refused to fall as she stared blankly, watching as the hand that had once held hers so tenderly disappeared under a thin, white sheet.

Shepard signed the papers positively identifying Hannah's body, and let the assigned social worker assist her with arranging everything that needed to come after. She moved through the following weeks like a ghost through the fog, caught like a leaf in the storm of her crippling grief.

And yet, she could never quite shake the intense relief that her mother was finally free.

The work day inched onward, and Shepard's ability to focus on the text on her console continued to fragment as time passed. She gazed out the window closest to her cubicle, the artificial light of the Presidium filtering through the glass. Not a day passed where she didn't see that light and dream of what it would be like to feel true sunlight on her face.

She looked down at the clock on her console and groaned. Instead of returning to work, she pulled up her omni-tool as she sat back in her chair. It'd taken time, but she'd slowly begun leaving behind some of the anxieties imparted to her by her mother. She now allowed herself to do things like browse the extranet with some amount of confidence.

There were a few forums in particular that she'd begun to frequent, their lack of traffic and popular topics being part of what had drawn her to them for some reason. She got the distinct feeling that the crowds dwelling there might be more likely to be the sort to have the answers she was looking for.

But despite her recent searches, there and elsewhere, she'd found little to suggest anyone was experiencing anything like her. There were whispers, a few people wondering and questioning, noticing things like she had. But no one seemed to have answers.

Until, perhaps, now.

There was an urgent private message in her inbox, and she noted with unease that it'd been somehow marked as Sender Unknown. She opened it, her eyes widening in surprise as she read.

Shepard-

I know what it is that you see when you dream at night. If you're interested in discovering the answers you're searching for, meet me at Eden Prime on Tayseri Ward tomorrow night. I can introduce you to someone who can help.

Be careful. You're being watched.

-Archangel

Cold dread pooled in her belly as she read through the message again. She looked up as she considered the words, but when she looked back down, the message was gone. No trace was left to even suggest she'd received a message. Shepard shut off her omni-tool and leaned her elbows forward onto the desk. She brought her hands up to scrub at her face, her shoulders hunched as her mind raced with questions.

Who the hell was 'Archangel'? Was it some sort of pseudonym? What did they know? Did they suffer the same dreams and hallucinations she did? Had they noticed the strangeness of the Citadel, too? Did she dare meet with this person?

And who was 'watching' her? What could someone possibly want with her? There were too many questions, too many possibilities, and they swam through her mind, her thoughts racing faster than she could keep up.

Goosebumps broke out over her arms. Had the message even been real? Had it just been the next step in the same psychosis that had stolen away her mother?

Throwing her hands down, Shepard stood abruptly. She couldn't do this, not here. Not in this fishbowl of an office. She needed to be alone, to think and consider. With shaking hands, she gathered up her things, stuffed them back into her bag and slung it over her shoulder before making for the elevator. She was careful not to let her eyes linger on the specters that haunted her coworkers, their ghastly faces blank with sleep.

She hardly registered the short trip down to the public transport station as she recited the message over and over in her mind. She paused just as she stepped outside the building to watch one of the pale green Keepers skitter past as it made its way toward a bench with a cracked back rest. They were yet another one of the Citadel's odd mysteries, one that had no logical explanation. They moved about the giant space station repairing odds and ends, keeping systems working and up-to-date. Yet, no one knew who created them, who maintained them, or where they got the materials for their various public works.

And yet, very few people beyond Shepard found this odd.

Soon, she was stepping aboard the train, joining the mass of other people as they all jostled for hand holds. There were no open seats, so she grabbed a nearby pole and settled in for the ride.

Shepard's pulse began to settle with the gentle rocking motion of the train and the warmth of the bodies pressing in on her. She kept her head down, taking comfort in the anonymity of public transportation. She leaned into the turn, and suddenly the light dimmed significantly as they entered the tunnel to Kithoi Ward, leaving the brightness of the Presidium behind.

She took a deep breath, willing the tension of earlier to leave her body as she breathed out. There was a flash of light as they passed by an illuminated advertisement, and she looked up as the train was thrust back into darkness. The people around her were silent as they gazed at their omni-tools and datapads, or let their eyes drift shut as they found solace in the motion. There was another flash of light, red this time as they passed a glowing neon sign.

Creeping unease began to return unbidden, though she couldn't put her finger on why. She searched for a reason until finally the last line of the message replayed itself through her mind.

You're being watched.

Shepard looked up, a sudden fear gripping her chest. They approached another illuminated billboard, and her eyes raked over the faces of those around her, searching for something… anything.

The light faded, and she saw nothing. No one was looking at her, no one seemed in any way abnormal, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She relaxed again as she leaned into the pole, somehow infinitely more exhausted than she'd been only minutes before.

Another flash of light, and she froze. Across the train car, almost entirely obscured by other passengers, stood a turian. He was tall, with pale, angular face plates that could almost be called sharp. Despite the rocking of the train, he stood utterly still, his gaze unwavering as it drilled into her with pale, icy blue eyes.

They narrowed and his mandibles flared to expose a row of terrifyingly sharp teeth. Though Shepard knew very little of turian facial expressions, it conveyed a hunger that gripped her with a primal terror. She was prey.

And he was awake. Everywhere around them, the other passengers were haunted by the ghosts of their own sleeping faces. But not him. He was awake in a way that Shepard couldn't express or understand.

An instant later, the train left the billboard behind and they were thrust back into darkness. Shepard's breath caught in her throat, and a moment later, a tall woman bumped into her, causing her to stumble. When she looked back up, the turian was gone.

(AN: Thoughts and comments are always welcome and enjoyed, thank you very much in advance! I hope to post occasional sneak peeks for future chapters, so if you are interested, please come find me at Tumblr, serendipitys-teapot

A big thank you to those who have helped make this story possible, including Kalliesa, Angry Jager, dwarrowdams, Sinelaborenihil, and thelordofdarkreunion!)