AN: As I said, a lot didn't make the cut between concept, draft, and finished story. Here are three of the larger, more palatable chunks from cut scenes and stories.

(AN: This would've come between "One Step" and "Other Friends," but I found that I could put everything I wanted to say here into "One Step.")

Liara T'Soni
Old and New

As a child she loved playing in Thessia's parks, playing her little archaeology game and digging deep into the dirt. Sometimes she'd find an insect clinging to the stem of a flower. An inappropriate comparison, Liara T'Soni concluded. The insect and the flower went hand-in-hand, two parts of an ecosystem—albeit an asari-crafted ecosystem, as all the parks of her childhood were. The geth ship and the AI who used them, meanwhile, used the crumbling tower in service to those who destroyed the Prothean species.

You're trying to save the galaxy, Liara told herself. Not protect a Prothean ruin. And everyone alive was a scavenger feeding on their remains in some way.

A brief gust rushed over the Feros skyway, scattering dust and dirt in its wake. Liara wiped her helmet's visor clean, then continued forward. Usually the display of data before her eyes showed her analysis scans: dating, mineral and chemical compositions, matching artifacts from other dig sites. Now it showed her the status of her hardsuit, the absence of hostiles, the locations of her new crewmates.

Tali'Zorah and Lieutenant Alenko remained behind at Zhu's Hope to aid the colonists. Entering the geth base were the krogan battlemaster, the turian C-Sec officer, the human marine, the first human Spectre… and her, the archaeologist. She'd spent decades in a different sort of field from these people entirely, where the dead bodies had long decayed and lost their smell. Yes, she had trained her biotics and her marksmanship under excellent teachers, but only for a few years. A few years. That's probably all human soldiers get before their first battle.

Yet Gunnery Chief Williams carried herself with the confidence of an asari commando. As did Commander Shepard. But with the Prothean message in his mind, did his experience really measure in mere years?

The ancient doorway and a high ceiling swept over their heads. The howling of the outside died down to a whisper. Dusty beams of light poked through windows and holes, casting over debris both ancient and new. The elements—and the humans and the geth—were not kind to these ruins.

"Huh," Williams said, "no geth."

"Do you remember the last time you said that?" Vakarian asked. "An armature came down on our heads. Not to mention those… jumping geth."

(AN: "Knock on Wood" went through a lot of trials before I got something I was satisfied with.)

Jeff Moreau
Knock on Wood

"Fraternization, Joker," Kaidan said. "Capital-'F' fraternization."

"It was a joke."

Shepard had taken Liara and Garrus to Port Hanshan to tango with Noveria's research corporations. Joker, meanwhile, sipped on a fresh cup of black coffee in the mess hall. The better end of the bargain—freezing his balls off only for executives to sell them to some hapless krogan wasn't his idea of a good time.

"Besides…" Joker took another sip. "You're one to talk. Remember LT Vanderloo back on the Tokyo?"

An unamused frown crossed Kaidan's face. "I told you, John thought it was a thing."

"John?" Joker chuckled. "I didn't know you two were on a first-name basis."

"When Shepard uses 'Kaidan' or 'Liara' or 'Garrus,' does that mean he wants us to sleep with him?"

"No, but they don't use his first name."

"Nobody does."

"'Commander V—" Joker wiggled his tongue. "Yeah. Can't say it." Not Victor Shepard, just Shepard. Must be a big damn hero thing.

(AN: "Not a Social Call" was originally a novelization of the Matriarch Benezia encounter and its aftermath. Then I got an idea for an entirely different direction.)

Liara T'Soni
Hold Back the Darkness

An audience with the rachni queen. An explosive escape from the hot labs. A debriefing on the contents of her mother's disk. A puzzle that had another piece but still an unclear picture. Since then, Liara had washed the sweat and grime off, forced down an Alliance MRE, and put in a requisition order to replace her ruined hardsuit. Doctor Chakwas told her that most of her wounds were superficial and required only medigel and time.

The next days saw the Normandy travel to the Styx Theta cluster, stamping out pockets of rachni that had somehow entrenched themselves there. Shepard opted to leave her aboard the ship—a gesture both kind and cruel. The Normandy's corridors seemed narrower, almost suffocating. The crewmen gave her looks again, not out of suspicion like when she first came aboard, but with a cautious pity in their eyes. That kind of attention was even more embarrassing.

The Normandy returned to the Citadel for repairs and supplies. Liara found it all too easy to lose herself gazing at the Relay Memorial. Beyond, the Presidium torus curved upwards, patches of blue, green, and white vanishing into the artificial daytime sky.

"Circles," her mother once said, "our people love the concept." She talked about the siari belief in spiritual energy cycling between the universe and the individual, about Athame's maiden, matron, and matriarch aspects. "But what is the place of the circle in the progress of civilization when going forward returns you to where you started?" So many expected Liara to follow her footsteps and guide the asari into the future, posing and answering those questions. Instead she looked towards the past. Easier to decipher the latter with science than the former with philosophy, she told her mother.

But the truth of the Reapers made both painfully clear.

"Liara." Shepard stepped up next to her and leaned forward on the railing. "You wanted to talk?"

"I did. I decided to take your advice and ask you directly about yourself." She smiled, remembering the embarrassment of one of their previous talks. The smile faded when she realized she'd missed something. "If… that's all right."

"Go ahead."

"Your file said you were orphaned at an early age. Do you… remember your parents?"

Shepard looked towards the lake. "I don't. I remember being told that my mom died in childbirth and that my dad abandoned me. That's all."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Liara averted her gaze. She couldn't imagine her own childhood without her mother, but Shepard seemed content with the fact that his parents played no role in his. "I'm sure that if your mother lived, she would've… she would've loved you."

"I appreciate the thought, but you don't need to worry about me. How are you holding up?"

I'll remember her as she lived, she told him on the Normandy. "I admit, after we first talked about my mother, I wasn't sure if I could move on as quickly as I said I would. It's been… difficult, but easier than I thought. Maybe the decades I didn't speak to her helped. Though I wish…"

"You wish you could've seen her one more time."

She nodded. How many times did she spend the travel time to dig sites doing other things? A few words through the extranet, typed or spoken, seemed so easy in hindsight. But then again, "I'm so proud…"

"I know it's easy to look at every missed opportunity. But it doesn't help." An age crept into his eyes that defied his mere twenty-nine years.

"You speak from experience? From the Blitz? Or from Earth?"

"I lost a few friends on Elysium. Some of them I went through basic training with. Maybe I could've saved them, but thinking about what I could've done wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. So I move forward. I carry on."

Humans, she supposed, couldn't dwell on things when their lifespans acted so strongly against them. Shepard in particular seemed set on looking towards the present and the future rather than the past. In that, perhaps he was more like her mother than she first thought.

(AN: This Garrus story developed into too much novelization than I wanted for this fic, so out it went. It got summarized in "Fade Away.")

Garrus Vakarian
Hopes and Expectations

He recognized that freighter.

It poked out from the foot of the enormous mountain, a white-gray steel speck against dusty red. Entire sections of it had been torn out in its haphazard fusion with a two-story prefab. A monstrous work of Terminus Systems construction. Given its owner, Garrus Vakarian supposed it fit.

Months of calling in favors, in exchanging favors, in exchanging information had led to this. Garrus once watched the thrusters of that freighter grow smaller and fainter the further it rushed into the Widow Nebula. Into the mass relay. And out of his grasp. Not this time.

"Remote place for a research lab," Kaidan said, jumping down from the Mako with Shepard behind him.

"More of a factory. Saleon needed somewhere out of the way to run his business. Like a remote planet in the Terminus Systems." Garrus took a step towards the structure. "Fortunately, he made just enough of an impact on the black market organ trade for me to notice. And that's why we're here." On a corner of his helmet UI he had the camera zoom in. Two figures, too rigid and thin to be anything organic, stood by the prefab's entrance. "LOKI mechs."

"Not actual guards?" Shepard asked.

"Saleon probably doesn't want to pay for any."

"Hey Commander," Joker said on comms. "Picking up chemical readings from the prefab. Might want to keep your suit sealed when you head inside."

"Noted." Shepard gestured forward.

When the three of them got close enough, the commander waved his omni-tool. The mechs' patrol mode lasted half a second before they instead turned around and unlocked the door. Two shots from Garrus later, the squad walked by sparking scrap heaps on the ground.

Past the airlock, wisps of vapor filled the air. A chemical warning beeped red on his UI. "Looks like he gassed the place when he found out he had unexpected guests," Garrus said.

A radar check showed no hostiles, or at least not yet. He glanced back at the exit.

The lab area was an organized mess of vats and jars. Within the latter he saw salarian livers, turian kidneys, krogan testicles—every organ imaginable, suspended in dark green liquid. What lurked within the murky contents of the latter, he didn't want to know. Tall cages stood in the back of the room. Corpses lay inside. Dried blood ran down their chins and their chests. Marks stretched around their necks.

On a hunch Garrus knelt down. The dead asari stared back at him. Tiny cuts riddled her swollen, miscolored, and malnourished body. "This… this is definitely Saleon's lab."

"You had doubts?" Kaidan asked.

"My investigation said this lab belonged to a Doctor Harat. But this is his work." Saleon's test subject had almost bled out on Garrus' desk. But the multitude of cuts seemed so minor next to the mess of organs that medical scans revealed. How many kidneys did you stick inside her? Garrus wondered, gazing down at the asari.

Energy signatures flared on the radar. He rose into a crouch and took cover next to Kaidan as doors whirred open.

"Please vacate these premises. Trespassing is strictly prohibited." The sing-song synthesized voice announced the opening volley. The jars above shattered. Glass and fluid and organ bits pattered against his helmet. Kaidan threw a grenade into the LOKI squad. At its explosion Garrus sprung to his feet and fired.

The last one crumbled between falling green drops on Garrus' visor.

"If the prefab is entirely gassed," Shepard said, "Saleon must be in the freighter. And that," he gestured to a circular door on the far end of the lab, "looks like the airlock. Unless he put in other exits, we have him cornered."

Cornered. Garrus liked the sound of that.

They found the salarian huddled in what looked like an office. The blue light of a computer illuminated a breather strapped to his long face. At the sound of their footsteps, Saleon gasped and jerked his head up. "Oh, rescuers." The tone of his voice implied distress, but his body remained still. "There was a chemical leak in my lab. I've been trapped here for—"

"Trapped." Garrus placed one foot forward. "That's right. There's nowhere left to hide."

Saleon slid his chair backwards. "You?" His eyes widened slightly—recognition. "I—I don't know who you are."

"You're a terrible liar, Doctor Saleon."

"Saleon? My name is Harat. Doctor Harat." He looked past Garrus' shoulder. "He's insane. Please, stop him."

Garrus aimed his rifle. His finger pressed against the trigger, demanding him more than ever to twitch it.

But Shepard pushed the gun down. "After what we saw in your lab, doctor, you should watch how you use that word. I half want to let Officer Vakarian shoot you."

Half want? Garrus thought.

"Doctor Saleon," Shepard said, walking forward with his omni-tool active, "you're under arrest by Citadel Special Tactics and Recon."

"Under arrest?" Anger flared in Garrus' chest. He nearly gunned Saleon down right there. "Commander, we can't—"

"You'll be detained in our ship's brig and transported to the Citadel, where you'll stand trial. The corpses in your lab? Evidence."

"These are the Terminus Systems." Saleon stood up, still backing towards the wall. "You have no power here, Spectre."

"I'm not here to argue jurisdiction."

"Why give him a trial?" Garrus asked. "He deserves justice right now."

"You're not going to shoot him."

At the end of Shepard's approach Saleon jerked his hand behind his back. "No!" A pistol whipped out. Shepard sidestepped around Saleon's arm, pressed his omni-tool to his chest. A crackling burst of electricity. Saleon's body snapped rigid, then collapsed.

Shepard rolled Saleon onto his chest and wrangled his thin arms around. "Alenko, look around for a salarian hardsuit."