For this chapter and all following chapters, Bioware own all the characters and incidents. I'm just borrowing their toys.

This is a series of messages Kimbri Shepard wrote to Kaidan throughout ME2, serving as a chronicle of her choices and thoughts as she made her way through the series of adventures.

None of the other stories have to be read first, although they all center around this same version of Shepard.

Kimbri's background is Spacer, Sole-Survivor, and Adept. She saved the Rachni Queen, Wrex, and Kaidan. She focused the attack against Sovreign, losing the council-an choice she regrets (most of the time).

Thanks to Brodyaha, Aslanasadi, and NICKjnp for beta-ing this for me and giving me support and constructive criticism.

Post-Resurrection Day 1

Shuttle between space stations

Dear Kaidan,

Two years.

Its been two years since we saw each other last-the day that the Normandy went down.

And I died.

I've been dead for two years.

I...I don't know how to wrap my mind around even just one of those concepts. Together, they are simply beyond my comprehension.

Instead, my mind focuses on what is more real to me-you.

From the moment I awakened my thoughts have been of you. Did your pod make it out safely? Did you survive? Despite the klaxons alarming around me and the gunfire when I awoke today, my worries were for you-that I had to find where you were on the station and get you to safety. I didn't have any way of knowing that two years had passed-that this wasn't a medical facility that was treating the crew of the Normandy after its demise-my demise.

As I made my way through the station, I walked through a room filled with macabre images and holographic files of some anatomy experiment gone wrong. The images were disturbing as much by their gruesomeness as by the fact that it was like a hovercar accident-you just couldn't pull your eyes away from them. It wasn't until I talked to one of people that helped me to escape the station that I was made aware of awful fact that it wasn't just some random experiment. The pile of burned and mangled tissue had been me-in death, before they somehow brought me back. And that the process had cost me two years of my, well I guess not of my life. But it I felt a chasm open before me, separating me from all that I had held dear before. If I hadn't been in the midst of battle, I think that reality would have made me retch over the railing of that sterile facility. The one saving grace of that conversation was the intel that you had made it out of the Normandy, alive and well, along with all of my team except for poor Pressly. But you were safe and hadn't suffered my fate as well that day.

It wasn't until now, sitting on this shuttle that a fuller implication of those two years hit me. A lot could happen in someone's life in two years. You could have been KIA during that time even though you escaped the Normandy. You could have found a new life, a new love in that time. Or you could have been suffering with survivor guilt for some portion of that time. All of those possibilities make my heart ache for you.

As soon as I am out from under the watch of these people I will try to send this and return to the Citadel and to the Alliance. And to you. Whether that be as a crew mate, a friend, or a lover, I plan to return to you, Kaidan. I miss your calm, supportive presence.

I guess I had better return to the main cabin before my babysitters storm the lavatory to check up on me.

Sincerely yours,

Kimbri