I promise I'm not dead! Thanks for sticking with me, guys. As a reward for your patience, here's an extra-long chapter.

She had spent years planning out this conversation. She had played the possibilities over and over again in her head until she felt sick with nerves and gone to bed to dream it all over again in horrifying clarity, but her imagination had not done the situation justice. Not at all.

Uncle Tib's craggy, tanned face betrayed nothing. Shepard couldn't exactly blame him; twelve years was a long time to refrain from sending a Christmas card, and coming back from the dead seemed to inspire all sorts of unpleasant emotions in the unlikeliest of people. Her mouth suddenly felt dry, her tongue thick and useless. She searched for something to say to her uncle—sorry for being dead these past two years didn't quite cut it, and the comment would no doubt raise questions that she didn't have the answers to. She had to tell him something… but what?

As Uncle Tib inched closer, Shepard took a deep breath and clenched her teeth. She was ready to deal with whatever reprimand she deserved.

The reaction she received, however, was nothing she expected.

Shepard couldn't help it—when the shadow of her uncle crossed her face, she flinched. But the fist she expected failed to make contact with her face. Instead, Tib's monstrous arms encircled her, crushing her to his chest and lifting her feet up off the ground, practically squeezing the life out of her. His shirt smelled like stale cigar smoke and fabric softener, a comforting mix that brought back memories of sparring in the backyard on warm summer evenings, dodging jabs and grappling with the old man until her shirt was more grass-stained than not.

"Jesus Christ, Lou," Uncle Tib murmured. His gravelly voice vibrated through her body, warm and familiar. "I never thought I'd see you again."

A plastic button on the front of his shirt was digging into the side of her mouth. Struck speechless, Shepard merely grunted in response, twisting her head so she could breathe a little better. Move your arms, dammit. With tremendous effort, Shepard shifted her shaky arms to hug him back. She pretended not to feel the lump in her throat.

"When we got the news—"

"Never trust anything that isn't straight from the source," Shepard replied sagely, her voice muffled through his shirt. "You taught me that."

"I'll be damned. Some of my advice got through your thick skull after all," he marveled gruffly, releasing her from his vice-like grip. He kept his meaty hands on her shoulders and peered down into her face, scrutinizing her. "You look different, kiddo."

"I should hope so. Time has been known to have that effect on people."

"Quit bein' a smartass. I meant you look like your mother."

"I—thank you, sir," she said quietly, dropping her gaze to the scuffed toes of her boots. "It means a lot to hear you say that."

"That haircut is a damned disgrace, though," Tib grumbled, reaching up to yank on one of her loose wavy tresses. She winced and massaged her scalp. "Just because you're a Spectre doesn't mean you should be wearing it that long. I taught you better than that."

"Well, I thought you'd appreciate me not showing up in full armor."

"You're right on that account, but it's no reason to be careless."

Shepard felt the tips of her ears get hot. "Yes, sir."

Tib leaned back to get a better look at her. Nothing ever escaped her uncle's notice—the man was more bloodhound than human at times. Nate was the only one who could ever get something past him, and she had never figured out her brother's secret. Every time Shepard tried sneaking out of the house or tucking a knife in her boot before heading into town, Tib knew it.

Shepard fought the urge to squirm beneath his harsh scrutiny. Would he detect the whirring cybernetics beneath her skin? Would he notice the absence of certain scars that had mysteriously disappeared? Would he believe that she wasn't a clone or a puppet controlled by some invisible third party? Hell, even Shepard wasn't sure about that last one.

After what felt like hours of torturous silence, Tib's face finally softened. "I'll admit, seeing you walk up the road dressed like that did throw me for a loop," he mused, looking her up and down. His eyes met hers. "I thought you were your mother back from the dead to yell at me for leaving rings on her coffee table or something like that. Scared the hell out of me for a second."

"Just one second?"

"Maybe two."

Shepard's lips curled up in a smile. "Well, I'm glad you didn't shoot me."

His hard gaze softened a fraction at her words and he squeezed her shoulders, leaning forward as if to share a secret with her. "I always hoped, you know. When they didn't find your body—"

"You should know better than to worry about me. I've disappeared before. Always came back after a while."

"I didn't worry," Tib argued. "Nate was a whole different story, though. I've never seen the kid so pissed at anything, and that's saying something. He threw his datapad when he read the news online, and you know how attached he is to that thing."

"I don't know why you're surprised," she scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "He's got mom's temper."

"Like you don't?" Tib shot back. "At least your brother doesn't destroy houses when he throws a tantrum."

"I never destroyed houses."

"You came pretty close a couple times."

"Horseshoes and hand grenades, old man," she said stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest.

Tib raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her, but his eyes were warm. "Lou, you are a hand grenade."

"Hey, I like to think I've got a better hold on my temper these days."

Tib waved her off, ignoring the sour note in his niece's voice. "I knew the Alliance would set you straight one way or another. Anderson seems to have taken pretty good care of you."

Shepard cleared her throat awkwardly and shrugged. She wondered how Anderson was doing back on the Citadel. "Yeah, he kept an eye out. He's the one who recommended me for ICT, believe it or not."

"I wasn't surprised when you made N-school," Tib told her. "That promotion was a long time comin', but I was impressed when you made N7. You've got your daddy's determination, that's for sure. Even he couldn't get past N6."

Tib chuckled, his voice rumbling through the ground beneath Shepard's feet. Despite the situation, she felt herself relax as she smiled along with him, absorbing the warm, familiar sound like she had never left. The whole situation almost felt normal.

Almost.

"Anyway," Tib barked, clapping her on the shoulder, "where have you been for the past two and a half years? You'd better have one hell of an excuse."

"I—," Shepard started.

"What was it, deep-cover? More training with the asari commandos?"

Shepard winced and rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. This was the part she wasn't looking forward to—lying.

"Well, I… was leading an undercover op in the Terminus systems for a while," she explained slowly, articulating each word carefully. "It was all very hush-hush. You know how these things are. If one person knows about it, then thirty other people know about it, and pretty soon everyone starts getting killed." She shot him a what are you gonna do? smile and prayed that Tib wouldn't question her further.

"Nobody alerted us," he muttered, his voice laced with skepticism. "I'd better call Anderson and give that tight-lipped asshole a piece of my—"

Shepard held up a hand to cut him off. "The mission wasn't sanctioned by the Alliance. It was a Spectre mission, so the Council didn't want me to involve anyone. Even Anderson was out of the loop. No one was supposed to know the truth except me and a few other operatives who were in on the whole thing. Don't take him off your Christmas card list, okay? You'd hurt his feelings."

For several terrifying seconds, he looked like he wasn't going to buy it. Shepard bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, forcing herself to stand tall under his gaze.

Tib regarded her carefully. "Did you get the job done?"

She let out a breath of relief, nodding. "Yes, sir. Things got a little messy there for a while, but my circumstances improved about two months ago and we managed to pull through with minimal casualties."

It wasn't a lie. Not really. Still, Shepard felt her gut twist.

Even as perceptive as he was, Tib failed to notice her inner strife. Instead, his craggy face split into a proud smile and he clapped her on the shoulder firmly. "Your daddy would've been proud, Lou."

At this, Shepard's spirits brightened slightly. She couldn't help it. "Thank you, sir."

For several blissful moments, Shepard looked up at her uncle and smiled. Really smiled. The judgment and betrayal she had expected to see in his eyes was not there, replaced instead with happiness and shining approval. Seeing such emotion plastered on his face rendered him almost unrecognizable to Shepard, though the unkempt facial hair did nothing to help her cause. She opened her mouth to comment on his appearance—going for the homeless Rambo look, are we?—when the sound of crunching footsteps from behind caught her attention.

"You're going to have to write down all of the different names you use, Shepard," Garrus remarked. "I'm not sure I can keep up with all of them."

It all happened so fast.

The second Tib heard Garrus' flanging voice, his friendly gaze sharpened and his entire face shuttered. Faster than Shepard could react, Tib stooped to the ground and snatched up his rifle, priming it and aiming at directly at the spot between Garrus' eyes with deadly precision borne of years of Alliance training. Shepard thanked her lucky stars that Garrus was equally as fast with his rifle, having leveled it at Tib. She could hear the low growl emanating from her sniper's chest.

Shepard hissed sharply through her teeth and stepped underneath the barrels of their guns to stand between them, putting up her hands to rest against their chests. She shoved them both back a half-step. "Let's think very carefully about this before you both do something stupid," she advised them both, narrowed eyes darting between the two males.

"I don't know why you thought it was necessary to bring a pet home," Tib spat, not taking his eyes off of Garrus. "I want it gone, Lou."

"I go where Shepard goes," Garrus told him, his voice deceptively even.

"I'm not about to let some scaly-ass turian set foot in my house," Tib growled.

"Well, I'm not going to let some paranoid—"

"Gentlemen," Shepard interrupted him, her voice cold. Garrus flinched, but kept his gun raised. Tib didn't bat an eyelash. Frustrated sparks jumped between Shepard's outstretched fingers as she primed her biotics, looking between the both of them. "We have bigger things to worry about right now, so either you both put your guns down or I put you down. Your choice."

For several horrifying seconds, it looked like neither Tib nor Garrus had any intention of letting the situation diffuse, but the latter finally nodded and dropped his weapon to his side—his talon remained near the trigger, however, and Shepard knew he could have it raised and aimed again in under a second. She hoped it wouldn't come to that. Turning from Garrus, she raised a questioning eyebrow at her uncle, who had not moved a muscle. Reluctantly, Tib lowered his rifle. His eyes were narrowed and suspicious as he regarded the turian across from him with nothing short of disgust, but he wisely said nothing. They settled for glaring openly at each other.

"Well, isn't this just… charming," Shepard muttered, rubbing her temples. "Look, why don't we go into the kitchen and have a nice chat that doesn't involve gunfire or yelling? Because I would really, really enjoy that."

Tib bristled. "That thing is not—"

"That thing," Shepard bit out, rounding on her uncle, "has a name. Officer Vakarian is a part of my crew so you would do well to show him some respect. Understood?"

Tib's eyes bugged out at her authoritative tone. She had never said anything but yes sir or no sir to the old man and, for several moments, Shepard thought she had made a mistake in addressing him like that.

He looked like he wanted to argue more, but at the sight of Shepard's steely eyes, he instead muttered something under his breath and spun on his heel, storming up the front steps and into the house. The front door crashed shut behind him, bouncing a few times against the frame until it stilled, leaving Shepard, Tali, and Garrus in tense silence.

Shepard curled her hands into fists, breathing until her biotics were under control. She exhaled deeply, her shoulders deflating, and ran a hand over her face. "Well… that went about as well as I expected."

Garrus collapsed his rifle and clipped it to his back, raising a browplate at her. "You expected this to happen?"

"More or less."

"More or less of what, exactly?"

"Gunfire and yelling."

"And you decided not to tell us this ahead of time…" he trailed off, "why?"

Shepard dropped the hand from her face and shot him a dry look. "Contrary to popular belief, I do enjoy being wrong once in a while. It keeps me humble."

"Shepard," Tali said nervously, lowering her omnitool and powering down her drone. "Maybe coming here wasn't such a good idea. Not to insult your family, but your uncle seems a little…"

"Unhinged?"

"I was going to say abrasive, but yes."

"He's certainly a character," she agreed. Her eyes followed the path Tib had taken and lingered on the familiar front door. If she knew the old man, he was probably stomping around the kitchen right now, searching for a bottle of whisky and muttering xenophobic sentiments under his breath. "I'll admit he's not the most delightful human alive, but he's not all bad. He's a good man underneath all of the paranoia and close-mindedness. The First Contact War did a number on him. I was worried he might not take kindly to you two—especially you, Garrus. Turians rub him the wrong way. It's one of the million reasons I didn't want to bring anyone with me," she finished, looking pointedly at him.

He flared his mandibles indignantly, crossing his arms over his chest. "I can handle a retired Alliance soldier."

"Just because he's retired doesn't mean he's any less dangerous. The old bastard taught me how to shoot, if that tells you anything. Stay alert, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Tali tilted her helmet to one side, eyes narrowing. "So, why does he call you Lou? Does it mean something in your language?"

Shepard shook her head and reached for her duffel bag, swinging it over her shoulder. "It was the alias I was using when I left the city with Nathan. Short for Louisa, which was my grandmother's name on my mom's side. When Tib found me, I was still going by it and the nickname just sort of stuck, I guess."

"How many times would you shoot us if we used it?" Garrus asked.

She glared and elbowed him sharply, but her lips betrayed her by curling up at the corners. "There's not enough ammunition in the galaxy." She turned and started up the main walkway toward the front door, gesturing to them both over her shoulder. "Come on, time's a-wastin'. Let's get inside and get this over with."

Garrus didn't like it. Not one bit.

Shepard's uncle was clearly unstable—any man willing to shoot his own family (all right, she wasn't technically related to the man by blood, but it was close enough) clearly wasn't worth trusting, or even consulting on a mission, especially one as time-sensitive as this. He was a loose cannon. The fact that he had such an incredibly engineered tactical cloak didn't put Garrus at ease in the slightest. In fact, it merely made him even more paranoid about getting stabbed in the back at any given second, no matter how many times Shepard reassured him that her uncle would probably play nice and help them out. Keyword being probably. Garrus was no stranger to xenophobic humans, but this was a special kind of paranoia—it was the kind that got a turian like him killed.

Garrus and Tali watched Shepard walk up the creaky front steps of the house without moving from their spots in the front yard. Neither of them moved a muscle.

"Garrus, I have a really bad feeling—"

"I know how you feel."

Tali glanced at him sidelong. "You don't think he will actually try anything, do you?"

Garrus shrugged, adjusting the strap of the bag that was slung across his shoulder. "With Shepard right next to us? I doubt it. Still, let's keep a close eye on him."

"Roger that."

Stepping onto the white wooden porch, Shepard turned and looked over her shoulder, frowning down at them both. She called out, "I'm sorry, did that order sound optional? Let's move."

"Right behind you." Garrus exhaled through his nose and followed her into the house, Tali trailing slightly behind.

The house itself was a strange mishmash of new and old technology, none of which Garrus recognized. For the first time in a while, Garrus was reminded that Shepard was human—he oftentimes forgot that she belonged to any species at all. She acted so comfortably around the rest of the people in the galaxy, no matter the planet; Shepard always found a way to adapt to her surroundings. But for the first time since Garrus had known her, in her childhood home, she looked like she truly belonged. Like a piece of a puzzle finally put back into its place after being lost under the carpet for so many years, she fit into the foyer of the house like it had been built specifically for her.

Garrus watched closely as she kicked her boots off and dropped her duffel bag in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair that rocked back and forth smoothly under the sudden weight. Shepard's socks were bright green, he noticed.

"Home sweet home," she murmured, peering down the hallway that led to the back of the house, presumably toward the kitchen, "if I can even call it that anymore. It feels… I don't know. Different."

"Maybe you're different?" Tali suggested quietly.

Shepard's gaze lingered on a few framed photos that lined the staircase at her left—Garrus watched her scan them as if looking for one image in particular, but when she noticed that he was staring, she averted her gaze to the other walls of the foyer. "Maybe. Both of you, leave your stuff here for now, all right? Have a seat in there. I'll talk to Tib really quick and then we can get going."

"Aren't we staying here tonight?" Tali asked.

"That was the plan, but I think we should head out sooner than that. The way he talked about Nathan earlier makes me think he doesn't have any information that will help us. I'm going to make sure, though. Be ready to leave in an hour."

"Understood."

"Do you want us to stay here or can we look around?" Garrus asked.

Shepard blinked up at him, eyes wide as if he had spoken a completely different language. "What?"

Garrus raised an inquisitive browplate. She had to have heard him correctly. "I asked if it's okay to look around. I've never been in a human house like this before and I don't know if I'll ever have the chance again."

She didn't miss a beat, her eyes shadowed with an emotion he wasn't able to place. "No. Just stay here and be ready to leave in a hurry. I'll only be a minute."

Garrus pressed his mandibles close to his face and frowned at her, noticing the twitch of her fingers at her side. Was the commander… nervous? No, that couldn't be right.

Abruptly, Shepard turned on her heel and walked down the hallway toward the back of the house. She pushed past an old wooden swinging door; light spilled through the opening, revealing a large, bright room with a low table cluttered with dishes and spent thermal clips. Uncle Tib was bracing his hands against the flat surface and his head was hanging low, his shoulder drooped in exhaustion. The door shut behind Shepard, swinging a few times until it finally came to rest. The muffled sound of voices reverberated throughout the house from behind the closed door, but Garrus and Tali could not understand what was being said.

Next to him, Tali put her hands on her hips. "That was… weird. Right?"

Garrus flipped on his infrared scanner. In the other room. Shepard's lissome figure paced back and forth across the kitchen, her arms gesturing wildly as she talked to her uncle. Absentmindedly, he replied, "Very weird."

"I'm starting to wonder if we should have come here at all. Maybe heading to Chicago first would have been a better option."

"Mm." Shepard was running her hands through her hair—a nervous habit, like popping her knuckles. Tib's arms were crossed stubbornly. What was she saying to him?

"I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this will be good for Shepard. I've never heard her talk about her family before, so this trip is at least educational—"

"Yep." She had hopped up one of the kitchen counters near her uncle. Her legs were swinging back and forth—another nervous habit? He'd never seen her do that one before.

"…the furniture is hideous, don't you think? How can that be comfor—bosh'tet, are you listening to me?"

"Not at all."

Tali huffed and narrowed her eyes up at him, planting her hands on her wide hips. "Can you quit watching Shepard's heat signature for five seconds and talk to me? I don't think her own family member is going to kill her while we're standing out here."

She was right. It was pretty unlikely. Reluctantly, Garrus turned off the infrared scanner and looked down at Tali, pointedly flaring his mandibles. "You have my undivided attention."

"You really don't feel the strange vibe in here?" Tali asked, gesturing to their surroundings. He could hear the frown in her voice. "You can't deny that Shepard is acting strange. I've never seen her get this flustered over anything before, and I was there when she first spoke to Sovereign. I understand her frustration about her brother, but the way she's acting around her uncle… it's odd, right?"

"I know what you mean, and that's why I'm not going to stay put and twiddle my talons until she comes back."

Tali stiffened and looked up at him. She took a wary step back. "Shepard gave us an order to stay put."

"I'm well-aware, trust me."

"You're going to ignore a direct order?"

Her horror wasn't completely unfounded. A small part of him wanted to obey the order as it was given without question—the thought of disobeying Shepard so blatantly made his plates itch—but he knew a bad order when he heard one. Something was off about the whole situation: her flustered demeanor, the way she had snapped to attention under the man's scrutiny, the way her hands twitched nervously at her sides when she thought no one was looking. It was all so wrong.

What was that phrase she was so fond of?Better to ask forgiveness than permission?

"Something isn't right, Tali. I don't know what it is and I sure as hell don't trust that uncle of hers. If we're going to be spending any time here at all, I want to be absolutely sure that we're not about to get a knife in the back." He pulled up his omnitool and did a quick scan of the room. Multiple bugs and sensors had been placed all around them, most of them outdated beyond belief, but he wasn't detecting anything dangerous—yet. He gestured toward the bookshelves at the other end of the adjoining living room. "Run diagnostics on the bugs in that room. I want to know what they're picking up and where the information is going. I'm heading upstairs. Ping me if you find something."

Tali shook her head slowly, her eyes wide behind her violet faceplate. "Shepard is going to kill you if she finds out."

"She's not going to find out. Besides, this is for her own good."

"Since when do you care this much about Shepard's well-being?"

"Since always," he scoffed. "It's our job to keep her breathing. You know that."

"That's not what I meant," she corrected herself. "I meant that you're acting like Shepard can't take care of herself anymore. You're caring too much."

Garrus' fingers faltered over the keyboard of his omnitool. He knew she was right—Shepard was more than capable of taking care of herself. He'd seen her disarm a dozen trained mercenaries with a wave of her hand. She'd survived her own death, as ridiculous as that statement was. She was virtually unstoppable. But, at the same time, something was seriously off about the situation. She was the lynchpin, the only thing standing between the Reapers and the rest of the galaxy, so of course he had to look out for her.

He also had feelings for her. Feelings he didn't quite know what to do with. Feelings they hadn't officially discussed.

Garrus cleared his throat awkwardly. "Call me curious, then."

"Curious," she repeated flatly.

"Shepard is hiding things from us. I want to know what they are."

"I'm shocked," she replied sardonically. Her eyes narrowed imperceptibly. "But really, this is Shepard's private life. Maybe we should respect that. You saw how hard it was for her to talk to us on the shuttle."

Steeling himself, Garrus jerked his head in the direction of the living room. "I've never been good at following bad orders. Search that room and I'll take the upstairs. If we move fast, she'll never know we left."

She glared at him and crossed her arms over her chest resolutely. "You are notdragging me into this. I'm just as worried as you are, but I trust Shepard to know what she's doing."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"We have very different definitions of the word adventure. Mine involves not having my brain turned inside out by our commanding officer!"

"Come on," he pressed, elbowing her. "We can do a security sweep in five minutes, tops."

Tali looked like she wanted to argue, but she instead clenched her fists and rolled her eyes, muttering, "Keelah, Garrus. If we get caught—"

"We're not going to get caught," he assured her. Setting a hand on her shoulder, he turned her toward the living room and pushed her gently forward. "See what you can find in there. Ping me if it sounds like she's coming back, okay?"

As his foot touched the first step, he heard Tali whisper to herself, "This is what I get for asking to come along. Stupid turian..."

Garrus ignored her, taking the first few steps upstairs in a single stride—this house was obviously made for small humans with legs shorter than his own. His eyes scanned the holographs that lined the walls above the ornate wooden railing, each frame spaced equally apart from one another.

The first few holos were purely decorative—vistas of the surrounding land, some kind of weird abstract art thing that Garrus didn't care for, and a few stills of a large body of water that looked unnaturally blue, but still beautiful. The next image stopped him in his tracks, though. He did a double take at the woman who was standing in the picture.

Shepard?

No, not Shepard, he told himself, but very close. He remembered Tib's comment to Shepard—you look like your mother—but the longer he looked at the picture, the less he agreed with the man's sentiment. The woman in the photo was elegant and statuesque with long, dark hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail that curled gently over one shoulder of her crisp lab coat, and her piercing grey eyes were narrowed coyly at the camera, but that was where the similarities ended.

Her eyes sparkled with a chilling emotion that Garrus couldn't place, but made him feel uncomfortable nonetheless. It was like she was judging whoever had snapped the holo and wasn't altogether pleased with what she saw. With a start, he realized that it was the exact same look Udina usually wore when he strolled the Presidium, a look that said you are all beneath me and that will never change—Shepard always joked about wiping that smug look off his face. The woman's thin lips were curled up at one edge in a similar fashion to Shepard's smiles, but her mother's smile bespoke cold indifference rather than approval.

Garrus blinked. He disliked everything about the woman, from her haughty expression to her manicured fingernails. Quickly, he copied the image onto his omnitool so he could ask EDI to run facial recognition software once they were back on the Normandy. Perhaps he could pull up her personal records.

Garrus walked up a few more steps and stopped at the next frame. This one was a group picture, maybe taken at a family reunion or holiday of some kind, and featured what he assumed were both of Shepard's parents with Shepard and her younger brother. Her parents stood behind the children in casual clothes, fingers entwined between them—her mom was smiling tightly this time, a far cry from the half-smile of scorn from the previous holo—and Shepard's father was beaming down at his children with a look of pure adoration on in his dark eyes. Her father looked… friendly. Happy. He was everything his wife wasn't, which struck Garrus as strange.

But that wasn't what caught him off-guard. Not at all.

"Spirits," he breathed, leaning in closer.

Garrus had always been terrible at gauging human ages, but if he had to venture a guess, Shepard looked to be about six or seven in the holo. Her gray eyes were dull and bulging out of their sockets as if they were too large for her face, half-lidded with translucent skin that looked ashen and paper-thin. Her hair had been shaved completely off—she reminded Garrus of Jack, minus all of the tattoos and anger—and her limbs were skeletal beneath the thin material of her oversized clothing, her cheeks gaunt and pallid. Garrus noticed that her mother's free hand was clamped onto one of her bony shoulders and her knuckles were blanched white.

"Hey," Tali whispered from the bottom of the staircase, startling Garrus out of his horror. "If you don't get moving, Shepard is going to catch you and, by extension, me. Quit staring at the pictures and go!"

Garrus beckoned her up the stairs. "Come look at this really quick."

"We don't have time for this. If Shepard comes back—"

"I don't care," he said lowly. Tali straightened up at his solemn subvocals, eyes widening fractionally. He gestured toward the holos on the wall. "Look at these pictures."

Tali muttered under her breath, but tiptoed up the wooden steps to stand beside him. He pointed wordlessly at the photograph of Shepard's mother.

She inhaled sharply, peering at the image. "Is that—"

"Not Shepard," he told her. He pointed at the woman's thin mouth to prove his point. "But it's probably her mother. Her lips are different, see?"

"She looks… unfriendly."

"I was thinking the same thing," he said gravely. "She reminds me of those Cerberus scientists we used to catch back when we were on the SR-1."

"It could just be a bad picture."

"Or not," he murmured, glancing back at the other holo. Tali didn't appear to hear him.

"I never knew Shepard's mother was a scientist," she murmured tilting her head to the side as she scrutinized the picture. "I wondered what she studied. That lab behind her looks pretty high-tech, and the insignia on the lapel of her lab coat looks like the one for Alliance R&D."

"You're sure?"

"Pretty sure. This one is probably an older version of the logo, but the center part is the same. Engineer Cameron on the SR-1 had that logo on his shirtsleeve. He was always rubbing it in my face that he was a real engineer and I wasn't, even though I could code circles around his tiny head all day long."

"Did you find anything downstairs that could tell us what she worked on? Maybe a research journal?" Or notes on her daughter? Anything at all?

"Even if I did find something like that, all of those books down there are in some weird human language that I can't translate quickly." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Why?"

Wordlessly, Garrus pointed to the second holo.

It took her a few seconds to take in the contents of the image, but when her eyes fell on Shepard's frail form, Tali stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. "That can't be her. There's no way."

"I'm not an expert on humans, but I know Shepard. It's her."

"She looks like Jack," she whispered, horrified. One of her hands crept up to cover her vocal modulator. "No, she looks worse than Jack. I've never seen anyone so skinny. Keelah, what happened to her?"

"I don't know. Maybe Shepard had some kind of illness when she was younger, or… something. What I don't understand is why the rest of her family looks so happy. It's like she's not even there."

Tali shuddered as cold horror gripped them both. "I can't look at it anymore."

"I think we should search the upstairs, see if we can find anything else."

"I can't believe I'm agreeing with you," she murmured. Tali squared her shoulders and looked up at the turian, taking a deep breath. "But I guess I'll risk getting reprimanded. Let's go."

As they crept up the staircase, Tali pointed out the occasional holo: one was a picture of Nathan on the front porch swing, glasses slipping down his nose comically; another was Shepard's father in his dress blues, dark hair trimmed and neatly slicked back, his expression serious; the last holo showed Shepard perched on the railing out front, gangly legs swinging over open air; her eyes were sunken in their sockets and her cheekbones looked as sharp as knives, but a short crop of dark hair covered her head that made her look a little more human. Her expression was haunted as she looked out over the surrounding cornfield.

Tali gently pushed him further up the stairs, breaking him out of his reverie. He shook his head to clear the thoughts away. Too many questions, not enough answers.

Once at the landing, Garrus looked down the hallway to his left to see multiple closed doors; slivers of light cut sharply against the dimness, casting strange, angular shadows on the dingy wallpaper. Garrus looked back at Tali—she nodded and urged him forward, gesturing silently toward the first door knob. Tentatively, he reached out and turned the knob, careful not to open it too far to disturb anything that might be on the other side, and peeked into the room. He saw a large unmade bed, multiple gun lockers, with stacks of assorted magazines—thermal clips, concussive rounds, every other possible kind of ammunition imaginable, including real bullets—but nothing else in the room appeared to be useful. As quietly as possible, he closed the door.

"Anything?" Tali whispered.

"Negative. Besides, I'm pretty sure that's her uncle's room and the guy already hates me enough. Let's not push it."

"Fair enough. Try the next door."

The next two doors were nothing more than simple storage rooms packed from floor to ceiling with metal crates, some of which looked brand new and others that looked like they were a hundred years old. Both rooms, Garrus noticed, had bars over the windows and the blinds were closed tightly, blocking out the rest of the world from the room's contents. He wondered what was in the boxes, but Tali reasoned that they didn't have time to look and ended up pressing on down the hallway.

The door at the far end of the corridor was where they stopped. Deep, jagged grooves traversed the door and it was hanging lopsided on its hinges, which were rusted in several places. There was a small keypad where the handle should have been—obviously jury-rigged by an amateur some time ago—and the door itself had large sections that had been broken or splintered at one point and subsequently glued back together multiple times. Garrus and Tali exchanged concerned looks.

"I'm going to venture a guess and say this is Shepard's old room," he deadpanned, pulling up his omnitool to hack the rudimentary lock. "Are those scorch marks?"

"There's some kind of writing on this side," Tali commented, tilting her head.

"Can you translate it?"

"No, the words go off the edge. Could say anything."

"This door looks like it was kicked in by a damned krogan."

"Sounds like Shepard," she admitted. She ran her fingers over the jagged edges of the door, tracing the fractured pieces that didn't fit together as well as they should have. "Still, I've never seen her do anything like this before."

"You didn't see her quarters when we left the ship."

"That bad?"

"Worse."

Tali shook her head and took a step back from the door, keeping her eyes trained on the distorted wood grain of the door. "I— I don't know if we should go inside, Garrus. This whole place feels wrong."

"I've felt that way since we stepped foot on the property. If she isn't going to tell us what's going on, we have to figure it out for ourselves."

Tali put a hand on his arm to get his attention. "I realize that you care for Shepard, but this really isn't the best way to go about helping her." Taking a break from his typing, he looked up at her and tried not to flare his mandibles in surprise at the sad tilt on her helmet. She softly told him, "Garrus, she wouldn't want this. You know that."

"I know," he admitted quietly. "But if we're going to help her and she won't talk to us, we have to get creative."

It was a lie, and they both knew it, but Garrus couldn't bear to admit how selfish he was.

Garrus dropped his gaze from Tali's and focused on matching sections of code for the hack. Within seconds, the lock turned green and he heard the latch release with a soft creak. They exchanged nervous looks—don't go in there and I need to do this raced through their respective minds—but before Garrus could lose his nerve, he reached for the handle and pushed the door open.

"More stairs?" Tali asked incredulously. She leaned through the doorway and peered up the steep stairwell. "This place didn't look this large from the outside."

"Humans seem to like using every bit of space they have in their architecture," he murmured, looking over her shoulder. The air was hot and stale as it spilled out into the hallway.

"I'm not going up there," Tali said resolutely. She crossed her arms. "For all I know, that could be where Shepard's uncle hides the skeletons."

"Quit being so dramatic. It's an attic, not an evil lair."

"How would you know? You haven't been up there."

"Oh, come on—"

"I'm not going."

"Fine," he said, throwing his hands up in the air exasperatedly. He pointed down the hallway from which they had come. "If you're so content to sit this one out, go back downstairs and ping me if Shepard finishes talking to her uncle. Distract her if need be. Sound good?"

Tali looked like she wanted to punch him, but ultimately decided to roll her eyes and mutter under her breath as she retreated down the hallway. Once she disappeared around the corner and he heard her soft footsteps descend into the foyer, Garrus turned back to the steep staircase that led to Shepard's bedroom.

"So you infiltrated Cerberus to use their resources to defeat the Collectors and save the galaxy," Tib repeated slowly, trying to absorb what his niece had just told him.

Tick.

Shepard bit the inside of her cheek and flattened her hands against the surface of the kitchen table. The old analog clock on the wall was ticking dutifully. Loudly. She nodded carefully, keeping a close eye on her uncle's reaction. "Yes, sir."

"And you had to pretend you were dead for two and a half years for our… safety." He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Tock.

"Yes, sir," she repeated, making sure to keep her back ramrod straight. "Cerberus has the funds and resources to hurt the people closest to me, so the Council wanted me to be extra careful. I'm sorry, sir."

Tib exhaled heavily and rubbed a hand over his face. "And the two aliens in the foyer were in on the whole operation?"

"Yes, sir."

Tick.

Tock.

"Well," he started, lacing his fingers together, "that's quite a story, Lou."

"I realize that, sir. Most people don't believe me when I tell them." Shepard lowered her gaze to the table, focusing intently on the endless whorls in the dark wood grain. "But I hope you believe me when I say it's the truth. Every word."

Shepard waited for him to say hell no or get out of this house, but she was instead greeted with pensive silence. She didn't dare look up at him for fear of seeing his disbelief plainly written on his face. Her uncle had always been a man set in his own ways, unwilling to believe things without definite proof—asking him to believe such a fantastic story was asking a lot of her old mentor. Maybe too much.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

After what felt like hours, Tib let out a mirthless chuckle and reached for his glass of whisky, downing it in one gulp without flinching. "At this point, Lou, I wouldn't care if you went AWOL and started a career dancing on Omega. You're home and that's all that matters."

Shepard let out a controlled breath of relief and fought to keep her face neutral. He believed her—sort of. But hell, even if he didn't buy some of the parts of her partially-fabricated story, he didn't care. She was home, and for the first time since landing the stepping out of the Kodiak, it was starting to feel like it. Suddenly, the clock wasn't as loud as before.

"At ease," he muttered, sinking back into his chair. Shepard allowed herself to relax as he refilled his glass and began swirling the liquid in the cup, staring deeply into it. Shepard bit her lip nervously. Where was she supposed to go from here?

"Your hair is so long," he murmured, tilting his head to the side. "Longer than I've ever seen it. You're wearing it like your mom did before she had you and your brother."

Small talk. I can handle that.

Shepard reached up to finger the ends of her loose hair, wincing slightly. "I don't like having it this long, but I haven't had a lot of time to get it trimmed since we finished the operation. I plan on doing that before I report back to Hackett in a few weeks."

"Don't," he stopped her. "It looks a lot better than that buzz cut you kept in Chicago. You'd better keep that shit tied back when you're on duty, though, or else I'll scalp you myself."

"I miss my short hair sometimes," she admitted, running a hand through the tangled strands. "But I have to care a bit more about what people see now that I'm in the spotlight."

"You're talking about your scars."

Instinctively, Shepard's hand went to the base of her skull, touching the smooth patch of skin that should have been covered in thick, white scars from her mother's surgical instruments. When Shepard had woken up in that Cerberus lab that was the first thing she had looked for, blindly reaching up to trace the ridges and bumps that should have crisscrossed the back of her head. Miranda later told her that they were removed for aesthetic purposes. She hated Cerberus for taking them away. She hated her mother for giving them to her in the first place.

She hated herself for missing them.

"Yeah," she lied, her voice hollow. "I don't like people seeing them."

"Never bothered you before."

"Things change."

Tib shrugged and took another swig of whisky, sighing deeply. "Well, you can do whatever you want now that you work for the Council. You could even wear goddamn makeup on the battlefield if you wanted to like that one female salarian Spectre from Sur-Kesh. I forget her name." He snapped his fingers repeatedly, squinting at the ceiling as he racked his brain.

"Torvala," Shepard supplied.

"That's the one!" he crowed. "I don't understand why the freaks even need makeup—it's not exactly going to help them look any better. Even so, I suppose you can break all of the Alliance's rules now and not get reprimanded now. Too much freedom, if you ask me."

"Just because I'm a Spectre doesn't mean I don't have my own set of principles. I run a tight ship."

"Your old man was the same way. Christ, if he could see you now," he mused, humming contentedly. "Spectre Shepard. Sounds god-awful."

"I prefer Commander Shepard. My close friends just call me by my last name, though."

"I noticed that," he murmured, regarding her carefully. "Aren't you worried about getting too comfortable with your subordinates? Bad things happen when rank gets thrown out the window."

"We've been through a lot together, so I don't mind most of the time. But I draw the line at my first name. No one is allowed to use that one."

Jane wasn't a bad name—normal, approachable—but calling her Jane led to people calling her Janie, which sent chills down her spine every time she heard it. She was sure that, in time, she could overcome her hatred of the nickname, but that required time the galaxy didn't have.

"How are your headaches?"

Shepard blinked, allowing her gaze to fall back on her uncle's weathered face. "I don't get them as often as I used to. The Alliance gave me an L4 implant when I enlisted. It keeps me pretty stable."

Tib let out a low whistle. "L4. That's fancy."

Not as fancy as the L5n implant Cerberus gave me, but that's neither here nor there, she mused darkly. "It gets the job done. Now I only get headaches when I exert myself too much, but I can squeeze off a couple dozen good bursts before that happens."

"No more accidents?"

"None, sir."

"Good," he acknowledged, looking strangely proud of his niece. "Your mom would be happy to hear you say that. She worked really hard to get you to that point."

His words kicked her harder than Grunt's shotgun. The floodgates of Shepard's mind unexpectedly burst open, releasing a deluge of memories—some were hazy and half-formed, but others were sharper than her mother's scalpels: she remembered the frigid, bitter glint of surgical steel; the sour aftertaste of anesthesia that burned her throat and sinuses unforgivingly, numbing her entire body until reality seemed more like fantasy than not. She remembered hold still, sweetie and it'll all be over soon and suddenly, Shepard wasn't sure why she came home at all.

On the outside, Shepard knew her face hadn't changed. Her breathing was the same. Her heartrate was steady and sure. Not a hair was out of place on the level-headed Commander Shepard, despite how her mind raged with seemingly-endless torrents of agonizing recollections.

Shepard placed her hands on the table, lacing her fingers together tightly to distract herself. "I'm not here to talk about my mother, Tib. I'm here to talk about Nathan."

If Tib sensed her internal strife, he did not show it. Instead, he nodded and took another sip of his whisky—no doubt homemade and horrible, based on the acrid scent that wafted through the air around them both. "I know you're probably nervous about seeing him after all this time, but the boy will see reason once you explain yourself." Tib paused, frowning. "He'll probably have you reimburse him for your funeral, though."

"As much as I'd love to have that conversation with him, I… can't," she explained slowly, enunciating every syllable of each word as she debated how to continue. The clock was growing louder. "When's the last time you spoke to him, Uncle Tib?"

His eyes narrowed suspiciously at her serious tone. "Last Tuesday for Wheel of Fortune. He fed me some new-age bullshit vegetable from Illium that's supposed to help my immune system. Fun fact: it didn't fuckin' work."

"Do you know where he's been since then?"

Tick.

Tock.

Tib scrutinized her carefully and set his glass of whisky down, pushing it aside. Lowly, he asked, "Lou, I don't like your tone right now. Is Nate in some kind of trouble?"

Tick.

Tock.

Shepard took a deep breath, steeling herself for the reaction her uncle was undoubtedly about to have. She focused on the rush of blood in her own ears and the toaster on the counter behind Tib's shoulder as she explained, "I got a message yesterday from the—from Beckett."

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

Abruptly, Tib swore and swatted his glass off the table with one of his enormous, calloused hands. It smashed into the fridge door and shattered into a million pieces, but Shepard didn't flinch.

"Report, Lou. Now," Uncle Tib hissed, slamming a hand on the table.

Shepard straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin in the air obediently. "Yesterday at 1800 hours I received an encrypted transmission from the Tenth Street Reds, completely untraceable past Earth's extranet satellite. Enclosed in the message was a video which showed Nathan tied to a chair in an abandoned apartment complex or hotel."

"What does Beckett want?"

"He wants me in exchange for Nathan. I need to turn myself in five days or else he will kill him. He also asked that I come alone."

"Tell me you have leads."

"No, sir," she said. "No police reports of any kind, but limited security footage shows that he was taken in West Englewood in Chicago, though the precise location of his capture is unknown. I have no more information on the situation, but my team is doing their best to track him down as we speak."

Tib stood up from the table and ran a hand over his face, squeezing his eyes shut. "And you expected me to know how he ended up in Chicago? Or why he was there? Jesus, Lou. Didn't I always tell you to—"

"Check your corners," she filled in, standing up to face him at eye level. She flattened her palms against the surface of the table and leaned toward him. "I remember everything you taught me, actually, and you're my first corner. Tell me what you know about Nathan's whereabouts, if anything, and make it fast. I have a lot of ground to cover."

"I don't know anything," he breathed out, running a hand through his ratty mop of salt-and-pepper-hair. He began to pace back and forth in the kitchen. "After we ate dinner on Tuesday, he told me he would be back in a week. Meridian probably knows more than I do."

"Who?"

"Meridian's his girlfriend. She's a museum curator over in Wichita and she has a daughter named Talisa. Nate's been seeing her for about a year and a half, I think. If anyone knows why Nate went to Chicago, it'll be her."

"I'm going to need her contact information."

Tib leaned heavily against the edge of the kitchen counter, his shoulders sagging. He suddenly looked much older than his sixty-four years. "I can do you one better, if you're willing to wait."

Shepard frowned deeply. "What do you mean?"

"Meridian is supposed to go to London this weekend to broker some kind of trade deal with the British Museum over some Prothean artifacts from Mars. She's dropping Talisa off here tomorrow morning so I can watch her while she's gone. Last I heard, she'll be here around 0900 on her way to Kansas City, so you can ask her all the questions you want."

Shepard felt her chest tighten. "That's over 24 hours from now. You can't get me in contact with her sooner?"

"Meridian doesn't use an omnitool at home. She only uses it at work."

Shepard rubbed her temples and cursed under her breath, squeezing her eyes closed. Tib was right—Meridian would be their best lead on Nate's location—but would it be worth the sacrifice of what precious little time they had left to locate him? What if it was nothing more than a dead end? Her mind was racing with every possible outcome of this situation, none of them good.

Her thoughts were so tumultuous that she almost didn't hear the ceiling creak above her head.

Shepard's eyes snapped open and darted upwards, previous thoughts abandoned. Tib didn't seem to have noticed the faint sound above them both, shockingly enough—perhaps the older man's hearing was finally beginning to fail after years of concussive grenades and gunfire—but Shepard strained and listened closely to see if the sound repeated itself. Please tell me I imagined it.

A cold chill settled in her stomach when the soft creaking noise presented itself once again. Although it had been over ten years since she had lived in the house, she knew that sound.

Someone was in her room.

Goddammit, Garrus.

"Uncle Tib," Shepard started coolly, lowering her eyes to meet his. She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. "Permission to stay the night here, sir? With my team?"

Tib's bushy dark brows were furrowed, the creases around his mouth deep with worry over Nathan, but his face managed to soften slightly at her question. "As far as I'm concerned, you're the real owner of this house. You shouldn't even have to ask."

He was wrong—the property had been passed down to Nathan when she died over Alchera—but his words still warmed her heart. Shepard smiled softly and walked closer to him, stopping just within arm's reach. "Thank you, sir. I—well, it's good to be home. Finally."

Tib reached up and settled a meaty hand on her shoulder and squeezed firmly. He looked at her remorsefully, his eyes full of regret. "I may not have seemed especially… grateful earlier, but I'm glad you're back. I only wish the circumstances were better."

"We'll find him, Tib."

"I know, Lou. I know."