Chapter 1: Demons, Lovers, and Friends

When most people breathe in the scent of leather it provokes memories of an old jacket or the first time that they sat in their brand new car. For me, the scent is synonymous with my father's leather bound college books. He read to me every night before bed. He was the reason that the majority of Robert Frost's works have been committed to my memory. One poem in particular resonated through me from the moment that I decided to step foot on the Normandy and cruise into the endless black abyss with Jane Shepard, The Road Not Taken. It's not that this piece doesn't carry weight with so many aspects of my life, but this particular scenario just seems to make those words feel like daggers that are being plunged into the very center of me. When I boarded the Normandy, I took the more treacherous path, dragging the people that I loved along with me.

"Amber…" I heard Dylan's voice cooing to me as the bed shifted from him sitting down near my knees. I'd built this blanket fort to keep the outside world at bay and at that moment it included him. While I had been plagued with being homesick, he had opted to attend his daily duties on the Normandy. My fort remained the one safe place away from everyone that stared at me like I didn't belong and not even Dylan be allowed to breach it.

"Dylan…" I responded back to him as I secured the blanket around me. This game of getting Amber to see the doctor had become a daily occurrence. Part of becoming integrated as a Normandy crew member meant Dr. Chakwas gave you a physical and entered your information into the ship's system. I no longer desired to be on the ship, let alone be part of a system.

Dylan came in after his daily shift in engineering and found me still in bed. He had found his niche on the ship, just like the rest of the 2013'ers. The fact that he fit in so well gave me hope that maybe I didn't screw the entire situation up. Or maybe…

"You have to get out of this bed." He gently rested his hand on my side, making me turn away from him while hoarding the blanket a little more.

"I don't have to do anything. The last time you made me do something, Lucas saw me naked… You know what it's like to have the blonde demon stare at you in shock before pointing and laughing?" I snapped at him as I relived that moment in my head.

After about three days in my cocoon of safety that I had made in my bunk, Dylan had started goading me about taking my first shower on the Normandy. It's not like I didn't like taking showers or being a clean person, but I was still reeling in self-loathing and didn't feel like getting up. Not even ten minutes into our little argument, I was hoisted over his shoulder while kicking and screaming and tossed underneath an ice cold stream of water. The liquid death drenched my grey scrubs that I had stolen from Casey Hudson's place three days earlier. Facing my defeat by Dylan, I turned on the hot water and did what any normal person would have done, I took a shower.

The moment that I turned the water off I had felt a million times better than what I had when the altercation with Dylan started. He had been right, taking a shower was a good way to make me feel like my bubbly blonde self. That's when it all horribly backfired. I reached for the navy blue towel that he had left for me to dry off with when my eyes met his. Lucas, there he was with his big mouth hanging open as he scanned every inch of my naked body. I tried to cover my more sensitive areas as I turned bright red almost instantly.

"I've already say that I should have taken you to the women's side. I apologized for that, hon." Dylan shook his head as his voice snapped me back to this horrible reality. He had frustrated me to the point were keeping my face hidden was no longer something that mattered.

"Your apologies don't make him unsee me naked! Lucas has seen my entire body twice in the past two weeks and you haven't seen me naked once in the past two months. You're losing to the king of the morons and don't even seem to care about it!" Being focused on conveying my point to Dylan, I'd not realized my green eyes were looking directly into his blue ones. "You have any idea what it's like to have him see me dripping wet without even a towel covering me?"

"You've made it pretty clear that it was a horrible experience." He grabbed the edge of the blanket and started to pull it away from me.

"Horrible doesn't even begin to describe it!" I barked at him over Lucas as I realized that the blanket crept away from me inch by inch. He was still going to try and get me up. "You aren't getting me out of this bed, Owens. There is no way in hell that I'm letting that happen. Go back to your hole in engineering and leave me be." Now he would know that I meant business. Calling one another by our last names was something that was reserved for when we were being serious. I always called him: my Dylan, Dyl, my Dyllie, but never Owens unless I was royally cheesed off. If he pushed this with me, I was going to do everything in my power to make him suffer.

"Yes I am, Boeshanz." My own last name drawled from his mouth like molasses. "I promised Jane I would get you to medical bay so that we could integrate you into the systems. It has to be done before we jump." So that's what this was all about. The Normandy needed to make a time jump and I still needed to have my information in place before it happened.

We were still floating in space in the year 2013, far from the reapers, Cerberus, and TIM that were all over a century ahead of us. As things sat now, Jane Shepard had no war to fight or galaxy to protect until we managed to get back to 2189. I personally didn't pay much heed to Dylan's theory about time being a pretzel that he preached non-stop for the past two days. The thing on my mind dealt with the fact I agreed to leave everything behind for something unknown.

"Why does it matter?" I sit up and look at the blanket that was now down by my knees, "I can just be added afterward and nothing will happen. Your pretzel theory is nothing but a load of crap."

"They don't know what's going to happen when we jump and having us all in the system would keep things from getting more jumbled if I'm right. Now get up!" Just like that, the blanket that had served as my own little barrier was ripped away from me.

"I don't want to do this!" I yell at him as he grabs my arm to start coaxing me back up. I never fought with Dylan about trivial things before, but this time the nagging idea I had condemned them all to a reaper filled hell pushed me over the edge. The path that I chose filled me with a fear that I wasn't able to put into words. Seeing Chakwas made things official and ended the fact that Amber Boeshanz was a normal southern girl from Texas. It made me part of a future full of uncertainty and doubt.

"It's really not that bad, Amber." Dylan grunts as he uses his body weight to pull me out of bed and onto my feet. "It's just a medical work up, and they put your name in the computer. That's all there was to it for me." The more that I sat there fighting with him the more determined he was becoming. This time he wasn't going to let me win, just like the stupid shower debacle.

"Not that bad for you. Let's think about all the times you've been shot in the chest by an idiot… or had your biotics make you feel like you were being torn apart from the inside out… Hmm.. Is your number higher than mine?" I ran my hands down the front of the atrocious looking Alliance jumper I had been forced to wear when my scrubs were drenched from my ice bath.

"Things happen and you move on. You've blown off seeing her since the day we stepped foot on this ship. It's happening today whether you want it to or not." Dylan grabbed my hand and interlocked his fingers around mine as he pulled me a little towards the door.

"Because there is nothing that she can do that's going to make me feel any better about getting you all stuck here!" I bellowed at him, "It's bugging the hell out of me and there is nothing I can do to get any of you home." Finally I let the words pour from me. I had gotten them all into this mess and there was nothing I could do about any of it.

"Is that what all the moping is about?" I watched as he raised his other hand to my cheek. I couldn't look at him anymore, the disgust with myself making me feel more and more ashamed with each passing moment.

"I made a reckless decision that cost you all so much, how can you even stand to be near me?"

"Every single one of us willingly came with you, Amber. Amiee, Adam, me… we all knew the risk that we were taking in leaving everything behind. This is all so worth it." My eyes met his as a smile came across his face, "So stop worrying about making us go on some adventure with you. It was still our choice to go down this path." He drops his left hand and starts to tug on me again to make me follow him.

"After that confession, you're still going to make me go in there? Maybe you're forgetting who else likes to hover around that place like a damn gnat." I started to sluggishly walk with Dylan, taking my time to make it anywhere near the Canadian bastard that had seen me naked again.

"He's not even in there right now, Chakwas sent him down to the cargo bay with Wrex, so you have nothing to worry about. You will be the only one in there with Chakwas during your work up." At least there was something to be thankful for. Even though I had been on the ship with the rest of the 2013'ers for the past week, I was the only one that seemed to avoid the rest of the ship's crew. At night, Dylan would come in and tell me stories about getting to know the characters that we had spent so much time with during our game play, but I still wouldn't leave my bed for one reason or another.

"Good." I say flatly as I watch the green light on the door flash from his touch. "Stupid, fancy, high tech doors." I muttered as I watched the thing fly open.

That had to be one of the worst things about not being registered into the system like the rest of the crew. Everything you were permitted to aboard the Normandy was based on whatever Chakwas did to you when she synced you to the ship. I guess part of her "assimilation" process was getting the high tech whatsits to register to your biometrics and make it possible for you to interact with just about anything. I had learned this when I pushed the green button on the door and walked face first into the hunk of metal that hadn't moved

"Ms. Boeshanz, I'm so glad that you decided to grace me with your presence." Dr. Karin Chakwas spun her chair around slowly to face me. It reminded me of something that you would see on a Saturday morning cartoon when the super hero comes face to face with the villain for the first time. It was odd letting my eyes focus on the doctor who was really standing in front of me. I had seen the doctor a dozen times when I had played as Shepard but this was a foreign concept. I could interact with her and say whatever was on my mind rather than make a decision based on the little dial thing on the bottom of my screen.

"Dr. Chakwas." I watched her fingers dance across the data pad in her lap as I tried to let the personification from the game slip away from me. "Your reputation precedes you."

"I can say the same for you." I frown at that, knowing that if Lucas had been gabbing about me like a school girl he didn't say anything that would boost my standing with the crew. She sets the data pad back on her desk and brushes her gloved fingers through her grey and white hair "You've managed to avoid me for over a week. I don't believe that even great Commander Shepard has even been able to accomplish that during all the time that we've served together."

"I was sleepy. I guess a gunshot to the chest can take a lot out of you." I run my fingers through my blonde bangs and realize that it's about time that I took another shower. "It's not like I meant anything personal by it, I just didn't want to bother you when I knew that I needed time to heal."

"If you wouldn't have avoided me in the first place I would have ensured that you had healed properly." I watch as she stands up in front of me and motions to one of the beds, "Not that it matters currently, I'll address all physical issues you might have while I do the rest of the procedures." I look at Dylan who makes a little shooing motion at me.

"Damn it Dylan." I whisper faintly as I take a seat on this surgical steel slab on wheels, "Okay, so now what? You knock me out and I wake up fully loaded like the rest of them?"

"Clearly you aren't thrilled about the prospect of the things that I will do to you. Rest assured, these things I do are for your own wellbeing. There is one thing that you and I will need to discuss in regards to the biotic dampener that's been placed at the base of your skull." I watch as Dylan nods his head at me and heads back out the door. This was the conversation I had been avoiding for the past week. I was abnormal and had some piece of tin at the base of my brain that I was sure needed to be tinkered with. Let's face it; it's enough to make you feel sick.

"It seems like you already know all the interesting stuff about me, Doc."

"Your friend Lucas is quite vocal about what he had managed to accomplish with pieces of our technology. Had we known that you would have been accompanying us I would have done the procedure then." Of course he would've been bragging about me as a medical marvel that he had a hand in. I was probably Earth's first biotic and he would be looking to attach his name to that in any way possible.

"I'm guessing something about technology falling into the wrong hands applies here?" It was the only reason I could think of that all the information on the Normandy hadn't been given to Hudson's team. At least they had been smart about something during the whole ordeal.

"Indeed. Now, about your biotic abilities…" I watch as she starts to scan me with her orange omni-tool. It was weird watching her use the same thing to test me that Dylan had been poking at every night since he was given the damn thing. I shrugged, guessing that once I was integrated I would learn to use the thing for one reason or another.

"It's not like they're worth anything. The blue glow freaks me out and makes me feel like my soul is on fire." I roll my eyes, "I don't think they're strong enough to make me a biotic that's worth a damn."

"You do seem have some incredibly strong nodes along the base of your spine. How long have you been dealing with these flare ups caused by your uninhibited biotics?"

"A few weeks, since I found Shepard."

"Well, it's apparent that you've always had the biotic nodes. It just appears that you are a late bloomer when it comes to your abilities." I stare at her for a moment as she pauses to thumb through some information on her omni-tool, "An LX7 implant should work well based on your current physiology."

"A what? No, no… That's the experimental one that Jack was given towards the end of everything. There is no way in hell you're giving me something that strong when I don't know how to use this… this nightmare." I hold both my hands out and shake them, "I'll kill myself with them, or even better yet I'll kill someone on the team with them."

"I only have the one model on board at this point in time. It was put in as a last minute requisition order before we fought the last battle with the reapers. I was going to make an attempt to give the amp to Commander Shepard, although she seems partial to her LX5."

"Are you even listening to me, Doc? I'm going to kill myself! I'm not trained like Jack, or Jane!" I open and close my hands a few times as I try to understand what's getting ready to happen to me, "This is so stupid. It's like you want me to do some damage or something."

"It will be fine, Ms. Boeshanz. I will complete the upgrade and ensure that you get the biotic training needed. You're forgetting that you have some of the finest biotic beings that the galaxy has to offer on board the Normandy. With training you could become quite an asset."

"Or a ticking time bomb waiting to get us all blown to kingdom come."

"You seem to encompass the same negative attitude as your counterpart, Lucas. He's seems to have had the same reaction as you when it came to allowing you to use your biotics." I was almost snarling as I took in what she had just said. Lucas had been in here bad mouthing me to the doctor while I had been slumbering away in my bunk.

"Did he now?" I ask as she pulls a tray of medical instruments over towards me. I tried not to pay too much attention to them as the glistened in the lighting, but the especially sharp and pointy one almost seemed to laugh at me.

"It seems as though he can't quite keep your name out of his mouth for some reason. The entire crew is aware of who you are in some capacity due in a large part, to him." Lucas had never been able to keep his mouth shut when it came to anything that was personal to me. It was part of the reason that him and I seemed to have so much hatred for one another.

"I'll have to thank him for that somehow." I glance at Chakwas as she gives a curt smile at me.

"Now, I'm going to begin getting you into the system and run some basic diagnostics. The sedative…" I couldn't even make out her last words as a felt myself slump over on the medical gurney.

Clicking? Is that what that noise was? No, this sound was more familiar than some random clicking. It was snapping. Who the hell is snapping at me and why is everything bright white in one eye?

"Hey redneck, you can get all the beauty sleep you want but you aren't going to look any better to me than when I saw you in the shower a few days ago." Lucas started to chuckle as he clicks off the pen light and stops snapping his fingers over my face. It took me a minute to understand just what I was looking at as my eyes focused on the idiot that was struggling to wake me from my slumber. I was still lying on my back in the med-bay, on what appeared to be the same gurney that I had passed out on.

"Lucas… Oh god, why am I waking up to the damn devil?" Being that I wasn't even fully conscious yet, the possibility of this being another one of my nightmares featuring him came to my mind. I ball my fist at my side as he continues to laugh above me.

"Don't worry, there's no love lost here for me either." With my brain still switched to sleep, everything that happened next could be blamed on what could only be described as my autopilot function.

My hand was a fury of pain that was intent on sending Lucas to whatever level of hell he had crawled out of. It smashed the bridge of his nose sending him back and away from me while I screamed like a banshee. Wide awake and full of adrenaline, I practically jumped out of bed and onto my feet, landing a mere yard in front of Lucas. I took a few steps over to the demon, who was leaning against one of the medical counters on the opposite side of the room.

"That's for pointing and laughing when you saw me naked, you asshole." I unclenched my fist as a watched him cover his face. I knew that I had broken his nose as soon as my fist had made the connection with his stupid Eskimo face. "So much for you having a pretty face, jerk."

"When did you learn to hit so hard?" His voice was nasally as he tried to regain his composure without me seeing the actual amount of carnage his face had taken. I smirked as I watched a few drops of blood start to coat his fingers and drip onto the floor.

"Did you forget that I have Adam for a brother? Punching someone in the face is a daily occurrence in our house." I gently rolled my neck to check for signs of tightness from where the implant would now be. Everything felt better than fine for me having to undergo some kind of surgery that required me to be knocked unconscious. I reached for the back of my neck and noticed that there was still a small bandage over where the actual procedure had taken place. "Hopefully that's the last time anything back here is messed with."

"I still can't believe that you're a biotic… I mean, you have a hard enough punch as it is and we just added to your arsenal." Lucas sounded muffled as he covered his face with the white cloth that he had found to control his still bleeding face. I ignored him as I continued to give myself my own personal little examination. "This is going to be great…" He said with renewed sarcasm, "Screw worrying about the reapers, we just created the ultimate super villain by giving this country bumpkin a damn experimental amplifier."

"Did we do the time skip thing while I was knocked out?"

"We jumped a few hours ago, babe." I had never been so thankful to hear Dylan's voice than I was in that moment. It felt like it had been eons since I last felt his skin beneath my hands or seen his blue eyes looking at me. I managed to get my arms around his waist before another word was spoken from anyone in the room and pulled myself against him. "Glad to see you too." He kissed the top of my head as I rested my cheek against his chest.

"This is just great. First I get punched in the face by a screaming banshee and get to bleed all over the place… and now I get to feel sick from watching the two of you do... all of that." Lucas groaned while he was still leaning on the counter. "Can this day get any better?"

"You know she can't stand you, that just being anywhere near her makes her violent, and you wanted to be the one that woke her up. If you ask me, you got what was coming to you." Dylan ran his hand over my shoulder as he leered at Lucas.

"So the whole time skip thing is over?" I didn't even lift my head off his chest as I spoke, just enjoying the feeling of being so close to him again.

"In a manner of speaking… yes." That wasn't the answer that I had been hoping to hear. When Dylan had spoken to me about the whole idea of going forward in time, he oozed confidence. This answer seemed lackluster in comparison, causing me pull away from him.

"Okay, when are we?" I asked flatly as my eyes met his, "You seemed to think that it would all work without an issue. Did something unexpected happen?"

"They messed it up because Dylan here thought he knew better than Liara." Lucas interjected quickly, "I guess we decided to trust the engineer from 2013 over the dozen educated minds from the future for some reason." Dylan glared at Lucas as he finished his sentence.

"I didn't calculate for spatial…"

"Please!" I scream to interrupt the two of them, "Lay off the sci-fi speak. I really don't care about the details on why whatever happened, happened. When are we?"

"2183…" Lucas says in a matter of fact fashion, "The beginning of the Mass Effect series, not 2186 like where we were supposed to be."

"We missed it by three years? I think that's damn impressive babe." I smile at Dylan as he frowns at me. "It can't be that bad, I mean we were taking a shot in the dark of this even having a chance to work." Both sets of eyes were on me as my optimism was met with dismay, "Am I missing some big part of all of this?"

"Remember the whole time being a pretzel thing I told you about?" I nod my head in understanding as I try to remember gist of what he had told me a dozen times over.

"Yeah, something about backwards and forwards adding up to make one destiny that blah, blah, blah…" I wave my hand nonchalantly, "What about it?"

"All the events that we knew based on the Mass Effect games haven't even happened yet. That means that the people on this ship have the ability to do things differently than they would have the first time. There is a possibility that the entire timescale can be slid around or of some of the major events not even occurring."

"Do things differently? What in the blue blazes are you talking about?" I fold my arms across my stomach as I wait to hear what sounded like good news to me. I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it seemed like something was being lost on me.

"Like we already know that the genophage is going to be cured. We already know about Cerberus and how TIM is going to use indoctrination against us towards the end. We are aware of what happens on Virmire."

"You might be aware of what happened on Virmire, but I never played that part. I didn't make it past Noveria when it comes to the ME1." My arms drop as I shrug my shoulders, "I hated the part with the buggies and never made it past killing Liara's mother."

"I thought Adam bought you the trilogy?" Dylan asks me as I look from Lucas to him.

"He did but…"

"Figures she would be the slacker of the group." Lucas pulls away the cloth looking thing he was using to soak up the blood away from his face. "Leave it to Amber to make things even worse."

"Shut your mouth, Lucas!" I bark at him as I try to understand just what all of this meant for Jane and fulfilling her destiny when it came to the reapers. "So we're going to have to go through all of it? Every single mission and all the recruitment? What happens if we change something? Will the universe implode or the reapers come early?"

"It's all a huge unknown. There are so many things that can be impacted by the smallest change and there is no way for us to know if this is all supposed to happen or not." Dylan looks to Lucas, "Us being here is already a huge difference."

"Well it's too late to worry about that now. So, where are we headed?" I ask the two of them with a quiver in my voice, "I don't even remember where we are supposed to start all of this."

"You idiot redneck, we have to go to Eden Prime. Remember the whole beacon thing?" At that moment I wanted to punch him in his smug albino looking face again. It wasn't my fault that I had to dedicate my time to school while he played video games in his underwear all day.

"Wait? Eden Prime?" I pause for a moment as I think about an experiment that would show us if time was really a pretzel, "We can pick up Javik when we get there and get that part out of the way! Think about having the prothean guy with us the entire way in comparison to waiting till the end!"

"Maybe, but there are other things that we need to talk about first." Dylan puts his hand on my shoulder as I stop bouncing up and down. I couldn't help my fascination with the guy, he had always been one of my favorite characters in Mass Effect 3.

"But Dylan, think about all the times he could threaten to throw things out of the airlock! Oh! Just wait till he meets Lucas, it's like a guaranteed execution of the blonde headed demon!" I couldn't stop thinking about all the things that I we could do differently now that we had the knowledge of how everything was going to play out.

"Amber, there's something else we need to talk to you about." Dylan's voice was colder than I was used to, making my foolish dreams come to a halt as my eyes met his again.

"This is going to be great. You can't talk sense into that woman and now she's hell bent on making the universe a chaotic nightmare for the rest of us." Lucas rolls his eyes as he takes a look at his face in a mirror that he found on the counter behind him. "Just look what she did to my face, and we hadn't even really pissed her off yet." Dylan ignores Lucas as he spins me to face him.

"You know how I made a big deal about getting your name into the data base before we jumped? Well my theory on the Normandy linking to the extranet was correct, all of our information was placed in the databases without a hitch." I smile as I think about how smart he was when it came to all of this.

"Well good? I think? I mean you said "without a hitch"… so, what's the problem?"

"Amber, I don't know how to tell you this but…" Dylan was stopped before he could tell me just what he was talking about by the med-bay doors opening. There was Jane, looking better rested than I could remember seeing her since she had found me on Earth.

"Don't tell her." Her voice was tense and it set me on edge right away. I had missed something important on our data getting uploaded with the extranet and I wasn't supposed to know about my own past from the looks of things. If Jane was keeping this from me it wasn't good for anyone.

"Jane, you know that you're going to have to tell me eventually anyway." I say with a smile. I pull away from Dylan and try to get closer to her to see just how hostile she truly was about everything. "It's not like I can't take whatever it is, or did you forget about your little prank that you pulled the last few hours that we were on Earth?" Her eyes lit up as she gave me a genuine smile.

"It's just not the time. You have more important things to worry about right now anyway." She crossed her arms as the peered down at me.

"Like what?" I asked her as I mimicked her stance, crossing my arms over my chest and giving her a coy smile.

"You're biotic training with Wrex starts in the next hour. He's expecting you."

A/N Hola hola! I hope that you are ready for a story that will be a little canon and a little crazy! Thanks to my biggest supporters and friends for letting me use you as the basis for some of the characters that are in this fiction! Love you all!