Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

It turns out there are perks to saving the Citadel. Ashley's not the one being called the Savior of the Citadel in the media (that would be Shepard), but she's being put up in a fancy hotel room compliments of the grateful Citadel Council, who have booked rooms for the entire crew of the Normandy. Between the military beds (even the one in the captain's quarters isn't great) and the sleeper pods on the ship, she'd almost forgotten what a real bed feels like.

Of course, she's not spending much time in her own room. Once everyone else is occupied, she slips down the hallway to Shepard's and gives the knock they'd agreed on.

Shepard opens the door, already bundled up in a hotel bathrobe. "You're the first here," she says with a grin, and Ashley chuckles, stepping inside.

"Always had to be faster than everyone else," she explains. Faster, stronger, smarter, just to avoid the suspicion that her surname cast on her.

"Hm," Shepard says, backing her against the door. "That hasn't been my experience with you lately."

Ashley blushes, thinking of some of the tag teaming that she's been subject to, and Shepard leans in and kisses her, her fingers finding her hair. Shepard's lips (and the rest of her) are becoming much more familiar to her now, but this is definitely the most relaxed they've been together, none of the desperation of the night before Ilos nor the adrenaline of the afterparty for saving the Citadel. She skims a hand down the side of that fluffy bathrobe, then back up the front, settling on Shepard's breast to realize she's not wearing a bra. Pointedly, Shepard presses closer, then as Ashley takes the hint, starts unpinning her hair, yet somehow nothing feels rushed, it just feels right.

She almost misses it, but, being the one pinned to the door, hears the second secret knock. Gently pushing Shepard off of her, she opens the door to let in Kaidan, who raises an eyebrow at her loosening bun and Shepard's loosening bathrobe.

"Are you two getting started without me?"

"A little bit," Shepard says, not bothering to close up her bathrobe, and Ashley chuckles as she goes to kiss Kaidan on the cheek in greeting. "But, uh, hey, now that you're both here..."

Shepard takes a moment to root around in her foot locker before emerging with two small presents in crumpled giftwrap and too much tape.

"It's not even Christmas," Ashley says, looking between them and trying to figure out which one's hers.

"I know we've barely scratched the surface of this and the Reapers are still out there in dark space," says Shepard. "But I wanted to get you two something, because it's not fair that I've been getting all the glory for saving the Citadel, and to say thank you, and, I..."

"And?" Kaidan prompts her, when she falls silent, but Ashley can guess what it was.

"It's not anything you can use in the field," she says instead, a little apologetic. "I didn't want things to look... you know."

Ashley does know, probably the best of any of them, how the power imbalance makes this all more dangerous, how special guns or armor or mods might make it look like she or Kaidan are trading sex for favors.

"And I thought you two deserve something that's just for you," Shepard adds. "Not for the Alliance."

"We do have something," Kaidan says, cupping her cheek in his hand. "We have you."

Ashley smiles as Kaidan kisses Shepard, watches them lean into each other (carefully leaving space for the gifts). Seeing them flirting in front of her had used to hurt, back when she'd thought she didn't stand a chance with either of them and the two of them getting together was much more likely; seeing them together now just makes her happy for the two people she loves.

"You're wrapped about as well as the presents," she points out, tugging at the belt of Shepard's bathrobe, and though they disengage to laugh, she does have a more serious gift to add. "But we also have each other - that's thanks to you too."

Shepard saved her life on Eden Prime, then promptly passed out there, leading Kaidan to recommend her to Anderson, and then later Shepard saved them both on Virmire - if just one step had been missed, they wouldn't be here, together, tentatively feeling out a relationship of three.

"Shut up and accept your presents," says Shepard. "Ladies first."

She passes Ashley the gift in deep blue paper. Ashley rips into it to find a digital projector - when she turns it on, a model of the Milky Way glows in the air, and she quickly discovers it's touch sensitive.

"That first time we went to the Citadel, you were looking at the nebula, too," Shepard says eventually, and Ashley blinks. She didn't think anyone had noticed. "I only figured it out when I kept catching you up in the CIC, just looking out the windows at the stars. I thought you might still want to see them."

This, with its ability to zoom in and focus on different systems, is much more convenient than trying to find a space in the CIC. "Thank you," she breathes, moving between systems with an ease impossible in actual space flight. "Thank you so, so much."

"Do you have a favorite system?" Kaidan asks.

It's hard to tell whether he's teasing or the question's genuine, but she finds the system anyway. "Alpha Centauri. It's the closest system to Sol, so there's actually a small human colony out there, independent of the Alliance and the Council and galactic politics. And it has three suns."

Shepard smirks. "Three suns, humans, and close to Earth, huh?"

"Go, Team Milky Way," Kaidan adds, grinning.

Ashley scrunches up her nose. "Shut up. I liked it before I even met you two."

"Okay, okay," says Kaidan, always the first to back down and soothe instead. "Why do you like it?"

"It's three interesting suns really close to Sol," she says. Even before the rediscovery of the Manswell colony, she'd been fascinated. "Proxima Centauri's a red dwarf; Alpha Centauri A and B are a binary star, which means it's two stars that orbit each other, like Vamshi A and B."

"I had no idea you were such an astronomy nerd," Kaidan says in wonder.

Sheepish, because it's true she hasn't talked to either of them about this the way she's talked about poetry, she shrugs. "I always wanted to be out there," she says. On every colony her family lived on, she'd look up, and on the way to each one, her nose would be pressed against the glass. The first star systems she learned were the ones with humans, in case her family would be sent there; it had come in handy when she enlisted.

Shepard's eyes are alight with amusement. "So which star's which of us?"

"I'm not answering that," Ashley says, rolling her eyes.

As Shepard slowly suffocates in their earpieces, she looks at Kaidan by her side in the escape shuttle, and she knows that either Shepard was the red dwarf, or the three of them were an unstable system anyway.

She doesn't turn off her feed, because that would mean losing Kaidan's voice too, and Tali and Liara in another pod, and everyone else still alive on this channel, and the part of her desperately trying to find some small measure of control still needs to keep in radio contact with any survivors, but keeping it on means listening to one lover running out of air and the other one running out of hope.

They drift. When Shepard finally falls silent forever, Tali speaks up so she and Kaidan can talk each other through putting out and amplifying the shuttles' distress signals. Ashley pops her own restraint even though she can't help with Kaidan's tech work, and by the time the Alliance picks them up hungry and thirsty (there are pods unaccounted for), they're holding each other tighter than gravity. They only let their rescuers pull them apart because otherwise they won't fit through the shuttle door.

When the 212 had been killed, Anderson had offered her leave. She hadn't taken it then, too eager to do something about the geth, but she takes the offer now, because though fewer people had died on the Normandy, Shepard alone meant more to her than anyone in the 212, and the Normandy itself had been another life for her which she also needs to grieve. Rather than go home to her family in that house on Amaterasu she only sees on her mandatory week of leave every year, she stays on the Citadel with Kaidan, who's also taking leave and is the only thing that feels remotely right in the galaxy. It's only remote, because she'd been so used to their trinary system and now they're a binary, but everything else feels wrong.

Garrus, back in his C-Sec armor, catches them holding hands in the Academy on their way to what used to be the Normandy's dock, but only asks, "Are you here on shore leave, or just resupplying?"

Ashley bites her lip as tears suddenly well up - not here, not in public - and when neither of them answer, Garrus adds, "Where's Shepard? I'd love to catch up."

"Garrus," Kaidan says, his voice hoarse. "Do you have a minute?"

They end up breaking the news to him in one of C-Sec's interview rooms. Garrus looks at them, at the tension in Kaidan's jaw, at the tears still in her eyes, and says nothing for a long moment, and then eventually says they can stay at his place while they're on leave. He takes the couch and doesn't blink an eye when they share the bed.

Three moody days later, he hands her the keys and asks if they can housesit. Neither of them can get where or how long he's going out of him. An internal memo about the Alliance declaring Shepard missing in action does not lift their spirits after his sudden departure.

"How can they do this?" Kaidan demands, pacing Garrus's tiny studio. "Just give up?"

"I don't know," she says, looking out the dingy window. The view's awful. Garrus couldn't have been making much with C-Sec. Idly, she wonders if he was getting paid on the Normandy. "Maybe they're too broke trying to replace the Normandy and the First and Third Fleets to look for one missing, suffocated Lieutenant Commander."

Kaidan comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist. "She wasn't just a Commander."

"I know," she says. "They don't know that."

"We should go look for her," he says, impulse heating his voice. "How long do you think it'll take us to catch up to Liara? Or Garrus - maybe that's where he went so quickly."

He's looking up shuttle rentals and she's packing their meager replacement belongings when Anderson shows up with new assignments that take them out of each other's orbit. It's more notice than she usually gets but it's still too short to join Liara's search for Shepard even if only for a little while.

They make love that night for the first time since the attack, and while the sex itself is fine, Shepard's absence is so strong that without discussion, they don't try again until their last day together.

"I love you," he says, the morning of his flight to somewhere she doesn't have the clearance to know. "It wasn't just the two of you together; I love you for just you, even without her."

Ashley shifts in his arms, studying him in the light that made it through Garrus's blinds. "I let myself love you first."

"You 'let yourself'?" he echoes, amused. "What, I wasn't your CO, so it was okay?"

"You're a guy, so it was okay," she says, and his eyes grow serious. "I wasn't into girls before meeting Shepard - it still might just be her, it's not like I've found any other women attractive. It took me a long time to figure out if I wanted to be with her or be her, and then figure out what that meant for... me."

As if to soothe her, he starts stroking her hair, his fingers gentle. "I had no idea," he murmurs. "I mean, I noticed you seemed a little unsure of things with her those first few times we slept together, but I thought it was just the fraternization and maybe less experience with women, not no experience with women."

"Now you know," she says, and he kisses her forehead. "Point was, I love you separately too."

"I don't want this to be over," he says. "I don't want to lose you too."

She pauses. "Are you trying to break up with me?"

He shakes his head. "The opposite: I promise to keep in touch, to come see you if we're on leave at the same time in the same system."

"Long distance." Sarah's trying this with a military boy, and it seems hard enough with one person staying in one place.

"If you want," he amends it.

"I want it," she says, and she kisses him slow and thorough, to prove it. "I want you, Kaidan."

His eyes are dark in the Citadel lights. No matter what he promises, she can't help but feel like this is the last time she'll touch him like this; the last time his hands, his mouth will be on her body; the last time they'll be together.

Kaidan keeps his promise and writes to her every day, but she doesn't know how to write back. His e-mails start off fairly ordinary, with a sketch of his new assignment (all he can give) and anecdotes of his new unit, but they spiral quickly into the same survivor's guilt she carries in her veins, the same grief she carries in her skin, the same ache she carries in her heart.

I miss Shepard. I miss you. I miss us.

His Chief does not answer him, her fingers pale and still. Shepard had pointed out the Captain dies in that poem when Ashley had referenced it the night before Ilos and now she can't help but wonder if that was a mistake. Kaidan would only feel worse if he knew this wasn't the only way she thinks this might somehow be her fault: The 212 had died, and most of Aeghor Team. She should have known it was only a matter of time before she lost the Normandy. She should have known she didn't deserve to have a relationship with two people instead of one.

Ash, I haven't heard from you. Are you okay? I worry about you.

The only way she can help him is to ask a higher power. She prays that he'll find peace, both from his mourning and from his worrying about her. She prays for Shepard. She prays every day, and wonders if she'd let the regularity of her prayers lapse before the Normandy went down.

I've put a read receipt request on this so I know if you're even getting these e-mails.

The receipt is all she can send. All the Tennyson she reads (thinking of Shepard, thinking of him, thinking of how she'd done this after her dad died) can't give her the words to reply, and the stars in her projector are silent and sure where she is silent because she's speechless.

Okay. I can't pretend that I'm not confused, not hurt. I still love you, Ash. But if you don't want to or can't reply, I'll respect that. You have my comm address if you ever change your mind.

She's not sure if this is a breakup, and can't figure out how to ask.

He's not the only one writing. It is easier, somehow, to deal with this complete stranger offering sympathies about the Council's lack of action on the Reapers and for humanity, about the atrocities she saw at Eden Prime, about her grandfather and the attempts to exonerate him. Maybe it's the lack of emotional attachment to someone who saw her name in the news vids and guessed her e-mail address from Alliance standards.

She does not expect the stranger to be from Cerberus and she certainly does not expect a job offer. Ashley says no. She's seen their work, their experimentation on humans. She's seen Shepard wake in the middle of the night and frantically check her pulse and Kaidan's, making sure she's not the only one who made it out of a thresher maw attack. She's seen the needle marks in Kahoku's arm. The Alliance is as much a part of her blood as brown eyes and a love for poetry, and she won't - can't - betray that.

You can contact me at this comm address if you ever change your mind, writes the would-be recruiter, and she promises herself she never will.

Instead, she reports it to the Alliance. It's so ridiculous that she finds the words to tell Kaidan, and is halfway through an apologetic e-mail when orders from higher than she should be getting as a Gunnery Chief tell her to say yes.

We need someone on the inside. This is an opportunity we've been working for, dropped into your lap. Infiltrate Cerberus. Learn as much as you can about their plans.

The orders come with a training schedule for deep cover operations and a potential promotion. She never wanted to be a spy and with her honesty which both Kaidan and Shepard have called "occasionally brutal", part of her suspects she's not going to be very good at it, but the look on Shepard's face seeing Corporal Toombs alive and unwell keeps replaying in her head.

"I love the Alliance," she tells the recruiter, on a vidchat with a voice distorter and an ever changing human face. "But they've never loved me. And I want to make a difference."

She couldn't make a promise to her lover who's still alive, but she can promise the dead one she's going to try and make sure no one goes through what she or her old squadmate faced.

Chapter Text

After an abbreviated orientation ("You're ex-Alliance," they say, "we work similarly enough that you don't need the full training," and she feels sick), her first assignment is security on a space station where they're working on a "Project Lazarus" - all they say about it is that it's not potentially dangerous to others, which is not at all comforting to a woman who knows her Bible, and that protecting it, not anyone nor anything else on the station, is her main priority in the event of an attack. Unlike the operatives she'd found wearing cobbled together armor to defend Cerberus bases on the colonies, she's issued with a slick monochrome uniform with gold highlights, their new insignia on the breast, and a small shield generator in the back which the Alliance would consider too expensive.

She reports to "another ex-Alliance" operative, who looks vaguely familiar - it's a week before Taylor's the one to realize he remembers her face from Eden Prime, where he'd been with the 211.

"I ended up on the Normandy," she says. "I worked under Commander Shepard until she..."

Damnit. It's been months since the Normandy went down and she still can't bring herself to say it.

"Huh," he says softly, patting her on the shoulder when it becomes clear she's not going to finish her sentence. "Think I might've just worked out why they assigned you here."

Ashley tries to look confused rather than pinning him with the weight of her sudden focus, because she'd assumed this assignment was somewhat random and/or skills based. "What do you mean?"

"It's just a hunch," he says, shrugging. "Not worth talking about yet."

"Maybe they just thought I'd work better with someone else who was on Eden Prime and didn't realize we were in different units," she theorizes, and watches Taylor visibly relax.

"Maybe."

Every time someone asks her why she joined up, or she sits down to write her heavily coded report to the Alliance (on an unassuming e-mail address that looks like it could be one of her sisters), or someone insults the Alliance in front of her, she feels like all eyes are on her, like one wrong word or facial expression will reveal her as a spy. Gritting her teeth and staying quiet in the face of abuse is easy compared to outright lying or even stretching the truth, no matter how much practice she had with her Alliance trainers.

For once in her career, the fact that Cerberus's assignment is boring and easy is a blessing, since just being here is stressful enough even without actively spying (her orders say to wait until you're well established and more comfortable with the passive recon). Taylor tells her the only time he's fired his gun here is for target practice, and he's right: This isn't like the bases they'd found on planets; this is in deep space, with no planets around for lightyears upon lightyears. Their supplies are dropped off weekly, and external shielding, cannons, and security mechs are their first lines of defense. An attack seems even less likely than it had on the parade of agricolonies she was assigned to.

(Of course, she'd thought nothing would ever happen on Eden Prime, and then her whole life turned upside down, so she can't rule anything out here.)

During one of her many quiet duty shifts, it's tempting to finally e-mail Kaidan. To get his read on this assignment (he would know what to look for, have suggestions on files to hunt down once she has clearance from both organizations), to apologize for losing touch when he (she) needed it the most, to see what he's up to now.

But that would be against orders and put him at risk too, and she could never put him in Cerberus's sights, no matter how much she misses him. Her own family doesn't know she's here, fed a cover story with people within the Alliance ready to back it up. He can't know.

She projects Alpha Centauri and drafts him e-mails about her cover story but never, ever sends them. The idea of lying to him is even worse than the reality of radio silence.

(She never did promise to write him back.)

Taylor - no, Jacob now - is easy enough to get along with that the friendlier they become, the worse she feels about lying to him. The frustration that led him to leave the Alliance for Cerberus is much the same as hers, he doesn't beat around the bush, and his warm, steady presence almost reminds her of Kaidan. It's hard to reconcile a friendly human being with the atrocities she's seen from Cerberus in the past.

(It's similarly hard to believe such a friendly guy is hooking up with the cold lead scientist, but something had to be wrong with him besides the whole Cerberus thing.)

She's almost enjoying an after shift beer with him (she never allows herself to get drunk here, too scared she'll lose control and let the wrong thing slip) when he looks over at her and asks, "Williams, did they tell you what they're working on here?"

She shrugs. She's been speculating based on the name, but doesn't have enough information yet to confirm it. "Just that it's not likely to be dangerous to other people."

He tells her.

It doesn't sound any less crazy written down in her report. It sounds so crazy that the reply demanding confirmation is almost immediate, but of course she doesn't have any proof more concrete than what Jacob told her, and there is no way she can get it this early into her assignment here.

He's sleeping with the head scientist, she argues, to no avail. He's in a damn good position to know.

Her mission abruptly gets refocused to confirming the purpose of Project Lazarus. As the weeks go on, she watches her assigned guard shifts and patrol routes get into the bio wing and closer and closer to the main lab, until finally she can see Officer Lawson, Wilson, and the other scientists through a window, clustered around an operating table.

A lab technician moves for equipment, and suddenly she forgets how to breathe, because there's the side of Shepard's face on the table.

"I didn't believe you," she tells Jacob later, when he asks how her first shift guarding the lab went. "Not until I saw her in there."

"Yeah," he says, nodding. "I figured she might have been why you were assigned here: You were on her crew; you'd want to protect her above anyone else here."

"I heard her die," she says. It's the first time she's told anyone besides the Alliance psychiatrist who evaluated her before they let her train for this assignment.

Making a sympathetic sound, he squeezes her shoulder, far less awkwardly now than a week after her arrival. Eventually, he asks, "Did you recognize her?"

She nods. "I only saw a little, but... Yeah. That was her."

"Huh," he says, surprised. "She was meat and tubes when they brought her in."

"It's really her?" she asks, hardly daring to hope. "Not a clone or a really well disguised mech or something?"

"I'm pretty sure it's her," he says. "Miranda's orders are to bring her back exactly as she was."

"Jesus," she murmurs. She pauses, contemplating another beer, because after seeing her dead lover being operated on, she feels she needs it. "Do you really think they can do it?"

Jacob's silent for a long moment, and then says, "If anyone can, it's Miranda."

Find out how, says the Alliance. And what for.

Actually seeing Shepard makes her mission so much more real. She spends every guard shift and patrol that takes her by the lab looking inside. She swaps shifts to get into the bio wing, and when other security officers question it, reminds them exactly whose squad she was on in the Alliance, and never gets questioned again. She starts uploading data miners provided to her by Alliance techs, trusting her siblings in arms to write them so that they can't be traced back to her. Never mind her orders, never mind how much Shepard helped the galaxy, she needs to know this for herself, needs to know what exactly a human supremacist terrorist organization wants with the woman she loved.

She's on her fourth straight night cycle shift and trying to put the pieces together when one of the security mechs unexpectedly starts up and turns to face her. The geth and Sovereign left her twitchy around synthetics, so she shoots it before its bullet even activates her shields, but it's not the only one.

"Shepard," she says aloud, her assigned first priority in the event of an attack (and she's assuming this is an attack; the mechs and their software are too well maintained for this to be a bug), and then she's off, shooting her way towards the lab. If this was an Alliance facility under attack, she'd feel worse about not helping others evacuate beyond taking out the mechs in their mutual way, but this is Cerberus, and she has her orders from both organizations she's working for.

(The survivor's guilt will hit later; she knows that from Eden Prime. Though this is Cerberus and many of them are more gung-ho about Cerberus's purpose than she pretends to be, she's been working alongside them for over a year now, and they've been working to resurrect the woman she loves.)

Some of her usual routes get blocked by debris and fires bigger and hotter than her uniform's shield generator can handle. When she gets turned around by a goddamn YMIR because she frankly doesn't have the thermal clips to solo a heavy mech, she ends up running into Lawson behind a crate, shooting the leaders of what looks like a steady stream of mechs pouring into the hall with accuracy Ashley can only approve of. She didn't even know Lawson could use a gun.

"Have you seen Shepard?" they say at once, and Ashley follows hers up with a "Damnit," because if Lawson's asking too, that's not a good sign.

"I woke her up," says Lawson.

"You what?!"

"I've had visuals on her, and we've been in radio contact," Lawson continues calmly, as if Ashley hadn't said anything. "I've lost contact now, but we had a set of armor and a gun ready for her in the lab in case of an emergency like this."

"You gave a gun to a woman who died in '83?" Ashley echoes. "Does she even know how to use thermal clips?" The transition as the new technology had developed and spread had been rough enough for her, but the last gun Shepard used was an HMWP Master Pistol - with a cooldown system.

She usually finds Lawson hard to read, but there's no mistaking this deadpan look. "She figured it out fast." Lawson's fingers fly in what takes Ashley a second to recognize as a biotic mnemonic, slamming a mech into the floor. She hadn't known she was a biotic, either. "Operative Williams, I was directing the Commander to the shuttle bay. I suggest we secure a shuttle for her in the event that she makes it - the Illusive Man wants to see her on another facility."

"Good plan," she has to admit, and she takes out a couple of mechs that were pinging too close on her radar. "Did you personally piss off all the mechs or something?"

"I suspect our traitor figured out I was helping Shepard," says Lawson. She studies Ashley for a moment. "He didn't count on me getting help in return - we can cut through a lot faster now than I would have on my own."

Ah, to be as arrogant in her assumptions of survival as this woman. Ashley bites her tongue, instead repeating, "'He'?"

"Wilson," she says, and then clears another few mechs. "Williams, let's move."

Little by little, as they make their way to the shuttle bay, she gets Lawson's theory out of her, and she has to admit it sounds solid. While she hasn't interacted much with the science nor medical teams, her limited impressions of Wilson had been poor enough that this doesn't seem entirely out of character for him.

"Do you think Shepard was ready?" Ashley asks, watching Cerberus staff take the other shuttles the way she'd watched the Normandy's crew bundling into the escape pods. She's leaning on the last one.

"She wasn't fully healed."

And yet she sent her off in an attack with a gun which has an unfamiliar mechanic. "What do you mean?"

"We implanted her with cybernetics, both to help hold her together and to strengthen her." Lawson shifts, watching the door closest to D wing. "Her body, particularly her face, has had some adverse reactions to them; we were planning to fully insulate them."

"I'm not a scientist," Ashley reminds her. "What kind of adverse reactions?"

"Scarring."

Ashley scarcely has time to imagine this before the door opens to reveal Shepard, Jacob, and Wilson. Lawson shoots Wilson immediately, and Shepard clocks this, then looks up only to catch sight of her over Lawson's shoulder.

"Ash?"

All it takes is one look and her nickname for Ashley to realize that she's still in love with Shepard, that two years broke her heart but did not leave the pieces of it behind. Loving her and Kaidan had been like breathing, so natural once she gave into it that she didn't notice it any more, but right now she's incredibly aware of both.

"Shepard," is all she can think to say.

Pushing past Lawson, Shepard goes straight to her side, turning around to draw her gun on the Cerberus operatives. All they really need is a hardsuit for her and Kaidan or someone else from the Normandy and this could have been two years ago. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Wilson was behind the attack," Ashley explains, putting a hand on her arm to gently lower it, only for Lawson to cut in with the laundry list of his crimes.

"You're the woman from the comms," Shepard realizes, and Lawson nods. "Okay. Is this Cerberus's idea of due process?"

"Ah, Jacob," Lawson sighs. "I should have known your conscience would get the better of you."

As Jacob starts to argue, Shepard turns to face Ashley, with that look that says she's the only person in the room to her. It's her first real look at the red, glowing scars across Shepard's cheek. Ashley has to hold herself steady. "Ash? What is happening here?"

"Cerberus has spent the last two years bringing you back to life," she says, trying not to completely break down in the presence of two Cerberus operatives who outrank her. "The Illusive Man wants to see you once we get out of here, probably to tell you why he did it."

Shepard looks at Lawson, then at Jacob, then back at Ashley, and puts two fingers on the Cerberus insignia on her uniform, her eyes halfway from questioning to accusing.

"It's me," Ashley says softly. "I'm still your Ash."

It goes quiet enough for her to realize that Jacob and Lawson have stopped talking and may have in fact heard her last sentence. Ashley stands at attention in an attempt to regain some composure. "Let's get out of here, Shepard."

"What about the other people on this station?"

With a sad smile, because that question is definitely the same Shepard she was before her death, Ashley shakes her head. "This is the evac area. I've seen a lot of people leave." And a lot of people on the floor. "You're our first priority, Shepard, not anyone else."

Frowning, Shepard indicates Jacob and Lawson with a nod of her head. "Do you trust them, Ash?"

Hers is the only familiar face Shepard's seen since her revival, she realizes, her stomach twisting. Ashley nods. "I've been working with Jacob for over a year, and I got here with Lawson's help."

Shepard takes one last surveying look around the station, then nods, opening the shuttle door. "Okay."

They pile inside, Lawson programming the autopilot to another station whose name Ashley doesn't recognize from the files she's seen. Shepard sits close enough to feel the tension in her posture, and without thinking Ashley puts her arm around her, only to immediately feel Jacob and Lawson's gazes on her. She has to wonder, then, how much Cerberus really knew about the woman they spent two years and seemingly unlimited credits bringing back to life.

They don't mention it, though; Lawson merely suggests more evaluations which Jacob, to his credit, tries to veto.

"The Illusive Man needs to know that Shepard's personality and memories are intact," Lawson replies.

"It's her," says Ashley. She hasn't removed her arm from Shepard's shoulder.

"With all due respect, Operative Williams, your personal relationship is likely clouding your judgment," she says, and Ashley chalks this up as another use of with all due respect to mean kiss my ass. "Jacob?"

He pulls up a file on his omni-tool, and both Shepard and Ashley bristle when the first question is whether she remembers Akuze.

"Yeah, I remember that Cerberus attack," says Shepard. "And I also remember meeting the only other survivor after you'd tortured him for years."

"Our cell wasn't involved," Lawson says coolly, as Jacob cringes in his seat.

"So, the Battle of the Citadel," he says, a blatant attempt to change the subject. "What happened next?"

"Humanity was offered a spot on the Council," Shepard says, still glaring at Lawson. "I recommended Captain Anderson for the position."

"He's the first human Councilor now," Ashley says, thinking of the news vids, internal memos, and post induction rumors. "And he hates it."

"I feel like I should track him down and apologize," Shepard says with a grin at her, and Ashley can't help but grin back.

"We should run some more tests," Lawson says, but this time Jacob successfully shuts her down.

While Shepard 'meets' the Illusive Man, Ashley opens her secure line to the Alliance, demands further encryption, and then lays out the attack and Shepard's revival. She hopes - she prays - for orders to take Shepard and go back to the Alliance.

What she gets is orders to stay in place, to keep an eye on Shepard as well as Cerberus. You are in a good position to study whether this is really the Commander or whether they have her under control, without any collateral damage to our personnel and assets.

What about me, she wants to demand. I'm the collateral damage - I can't keep doing this - but all she types is, Understood.

Chapter Text

There's a lot to take in after Minuteman Station. Freedom's Progress looks so much like the colonies she grew up on, except that it's empty save an anxious quarian on pilgrimage. Shepard moves and fights exactly the way she remembers. Tali's running around human colonies with an adult name, a squad who barely listens to her, and a grudge against Cerberus too venomous to only be about their general human supremacist stance. Cerberus built a bigger Normandy with a true AI, and hired Joker to pilot her ("Shit, Ash, I didn't know you were here too!") and Chakwas as her CMO.

Ashley hides away in the starboard observation deck (an extravagance that would never see the light of day on an Alliance ship) to write up her report. She's reviewing her helmet cam footage when the door opens, and she hurriedly closes her omni-tool windows.

"Hey, Ash," Shepard says, coming around the couch to join her. "Everything's been crazy - we haven't really had a chance to talk."

They'd become friends and later, she'd developed a crush because Shepard kept coming to talk to her after missions. She should have seen this coming. Still, Ashley tries to stall. "Not just talk."

She stands up to embrace her the way she didn't dare in front of Lawson and Jacob. With a contented sigh, Shepard hugs her back tighter than she'd started. It feels so familiar, but not perfectly: Shepard's a little more solid in a way that says cybernetics and tech rather than muscle, and her skin feels hotter against hers than she remembers, too hot to just be her own skin flushing with shame as she analyzes her old lover for a damn report.

"This is so fucked up," Shepard murmurs, and she withdraws from the hug, but keeps her hands on Ashley's side and shoulder. "What the hell are you doing here? You were the last person I would have expected to join Cerberus after everything we saw."

I am spying on them and now I am spying on you, gets stuck in her throat. What comes out is so well rehearsed that she finds she can say it even with Shepard touching her like she used to: "After you died, the Alliance, the Council, weren't doing anything about the Reapers - I couldn't just let your work die with you. And the Alliance were hamstringing me like they always did before you came along. I wanted to make a difference, and Cerberus is out there."

The worst part, and the part that makes it easiest to say, even to Shepard, is that it's half true. Cerberus is trying to help the colonies; she didn't see any trace of an Alliance team on Freedom's Progress.

Shepard shakes her head. "'Cerberus is out there.' The Ash I knew wouldn't have given them that much."

"The Ash you knew grew up," she says softly. Spy or not, she's closer now to Shepard's age on the first Normandy - Shepard's age now, if one doesn't count the years she was dead.

"I hate that I missed that." Shepard draws closer to her face, either to kiss her or to touch her forehead to hers like they sometimes did, and Ashley can't help flinching. "Sorry - was that too much?" She pauses. "God, you probably found someone else -"

"No," she says quickly. "There's no one else."

"What happened to Kaidan?"

Every day, she wonders that herself and feels like more of a coward than she ever has for her field work. "We... kind of drifted apart after you died. We were grieving, you know? And we never drifted back together."

Her eyes solemn, Shepard nods. "I keep forgetting it's been two years for you." She pauses, and lets her hands drop; it comes as both a relief and a disappointment. "We don't have to go back to us if you don't want to, but I do want to get to know you again. Having someone I trust here, someone who's coming out in the field with me - that means everything to me."

She doesn't deserve her trust. Ashley swallows, but smiles. "I'd like that."

The more Shepard gets to know the parts of her she can show while undercover, the more Ashley finds Shepard hasn't changed at all. Lawson and her team did good work. Working with the organization that killed most of her squad is clearly a struggle, but she still has that charisma that pulls the most disparate people into her orbit, she still talks to everyone after missions and tries to make new squadmates feel welcome (especially Mordin, Ashley notices; she hadn't tried this hard with the aliens on the SR-1), she still nerds out with Garrus (finally, an answer to where he went when he left the Citadel) about programming, she still loves explosions, she still argues with Ashley that Tupari's superior to Paragade.

It's hard not to notice that she's still interested. Shepard still gives her those soft looks and smiles she used to, she still takes her ashore more than anyone else to the point where Ashley has to ask for rest, she still gives her first dibs on rifle mods (Garrus has second), and she still occasionally checks her out and smirks only half-embarrassed when Ashley catches her. Ashley finds herself thinking of her in her bunk and double checking Cerberus's (surprising lack of) rules on fraternization. As much as both of them still want it, rekindling part of their relationship would be risky to her investigation and just plain unfair, both to Shepard, who doesn't know the real reason she watches her so closely, and to Kaidan, who'd been part of their relationship on the SR-1 and as far as she can tell, had never broken up with either of them.

When they see Anderson on the Citadel, Shepard asks about Kaidan, gets a "classified" non-answer (Ashley's interested to learn that he's been promoted to Staff Commander), and then asks if she can come back. The answer has her face crumpling in an elevator while Lawson inspects armor upgrades in a store.

"Hey," Ashley says gently, pulling Shepard into a hug on instinct. "I've got you."

Shepard buries her face in her neck as she wraps her arms around her waist in turn. "I hate this," she murmurs. "They won't help us or tell me anything because I'm with Cerberus, but I wouldn't be with Cerberus if they'd just reinstate me!"

Ashley makes soothing noises, though she's wondering about that herself. She'd understand the Alliance's distance from Shepard if she wasn't here with her sending reports about how she's not at all being controlled by Cerberus, but as things stand, she has to wonder if the Alliance is making Shepard stay put so they don't have to use their own resources on Terminus colonies that don't want them around.

They hold each other in silence until the elevator doors open again, and then they hurriedly step apart when Lawson enters, surprised that they didn't get very far ahead of her. But Shepard holds her gaze in the shuttle back to the Normandy, and it's all she can do to not take her hand.

Three new squadmates later, the Illusive Man sends them to the Iera system, a familiar name from her memorized list of star systems inhabited by humans. As Garrus goes to get ready, Shepard catches Ashley by the wrist.

"Kaidan's there."

The idea of seeing him again after two years where she went silent on him and then, to all appearances, turned traitor, is both exciting and terrifying. "You think this is that classified mission Anderson mentioned?"

"I don't know," Shepard says. "All the Illusive Man said about him was that he's around."

She can't stop thinking about him once they land on Horizon. It's hard to see these civilians in stasis and not think the next person she'll see frozen is Kaidan, hard to see the Collector pods and not fear that they've already taken him away. The latter seems more and more likely as they don't see him, until they defeat the Praetorian and Kaidan appears from behind some tall crates at the sound of Shepard's name.

"Commander Shepard: Captain of the Normandy. The first human Spectre. Savior of the Citadel." Kaidan's gaze slips sideways to land on her, and he adds, "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams - on Shepard's squad when she saved the Citadel."

(She received her commission recently, but no one here can know.)

"You're in the presence of legends, Delan," he goes on. She'd personally count Kaidan as a legend too. "And a ghost."

As Delan leaves in disgust, Kaidan steps forward with his arms open. Ashley can't help but follow Shepard into them for one of their old three-way hugs, but this is tighter than any they had back in 2183, shock and relief (and at least in Ashley's case, the knowledge that they're not in front of Lawson or Jacob who could almost certainly read this correctly and would report it) tangling them together, and she realizes then that like Shepard, she hasn't fallen out of love with Kaidan yet; it's just twisted up by their lack of contact and her undercover work. They don't loosen until Garrus puts his arms around Shepard and Kaidan, commenting, "I hope this wasn't a humans only group hug."

Laughing, Kaidan brings him into the circle, but when they draw apart, it's not Garrus's hands he's holding onto.

"I heard you die, Shepard," he says. "We all did. And Ash, I didn't know what happened to you."

"I'm sorry," Ashley says, squeezing his hand. "I didn't know what to say."

"For two years?" Kaidan asks. "I thought we had something, the three of us. Something real. I... I loved you."

Loved, in the past tense. Her heart suddenly feels blocked, and it's hard to say anything in the subsequent argument over Cerberus and the colonies and who's a traitor (everyone, apparently: Kaidan can't seem to decide whether he's in more disbelief over Shepard appearing to fake her death, her radio silence leading to their work with Cerberus, or Garrus joining up when he's an alien). Even her usual excuses for joining Cerberus which she's been saying for over a year feel flat and inadequate when she tries to give them to the man she loves who no longer loves her back.

With one last barb about where his loyalties lie, Kaidan declines Shepard's desperate offer to join the Normandy. Never before has Ashley wanted so badly to tell someone that she's still Alliance. But she holds her tongue like a good Alliance soldier in deep cover, adding to the silence in the shuttle as they leave. She's thankful for Garrus's lack of comment, at least. She doesn't think she or Shepard could answer questions about their relationship right now.

"Did you really hear me die?" Shepard asks eventually, her voice small.

The only answer Ashley can muster is a nod.

Kaidan e-mails her.

Ashley reads it, then retreats to the ship's elevator with one hand on the door close button to read it again. She rests her forehead on the cold metal of the door, holding in the tears in case someone hacks in and catches her.

When the doors open, she almost falls over into Shepard's arms, but Shepard catches her and closes the elevator again, and Ashley allows her to hold her.

"Hey."

"How'd you get in here?"

"Asked EDI nicely," Shepard says, and Ashley realizes what ratted her out. "Is there a reason you're hiding?"

Waving her hand at her omni-tool window (off to the side of their embrace), all she can get out is, "Kaidan."

"Mind if I...?"

Once she nods, Shepard draws away and moves the window in the air so she can read it: He's sorry. He's disappointed. He doesn't know who she is any more. He's thinking about the night before Ilos, about their private afterparty, about the hotel. He wants her to be careful. He wants something when things settle down, but doesn't know what.

"He sent me something similar," says Shepard.

"We really hurt him," says Ashley. "Being here, not telling him."

Shepard studies her, and she tries not to squirm. "Why didn't you tell him you were here?"

I was under orders not to. She shrugs helplessly. "I didn't know how to tell him, especially when we hadn't talked in so long. 'Hey, babe, I defected'?"

"He'd be more suspicious of you calling him 'babe'," Shepard says, so seriously that Ashley has to smile. She pulls up an e-mail on her omni-tool and angles it for her to read. "Here. 's only fair."

It is similar to the one he'd sent her, but talks about his grief and survivor's guilt where he told her about how confused he'd been when she didn't write back. Like in her e-mail, he mentions drinks with a doctor on the Citadel.

"'Pulled hard to port'," Shepard says, pointing out the phrase. "That's your thing. I don't think he got anything from me."

Ashley taps both e-mails closed, then leans into Shepard's waiting arms again. "I know it's for the colonies, but I hate doing this to him."

Shepard's lips brush the top of her forehead in a gesture Kaidan had liked, being only barely the tallest of the three of them. "So do I."

Their faces are too close together when Ashley turns her head to look at her because she hadn't expected that forehead kiss. Her eyes go to Shepard's mouth, and she can't guess later whether either of them moved first but it doesn't matter while Shepard's lips are on hers; the only thing that does is the give and take, the sureness of Shepard's hands on her, the way her body sings at the most intimate touch she's had since the morning Kaidan left, the way the gravitational pull between them suddenly asserts itself the way a mass effect field takes hold in battle.

By the time they draw apart, Shepard's unpinned Ashley's hair from its bun and is flushed and looking apologetic.

"I'm sorry," Shepard says. "I shouldn't have done that; you haven't said anything about getting back together and I meant to respect that, and you deserve more than post combat, post Kaidan -" She waves a hand, which Ashley interprets as something between 'tension' and 'bullshit'. "Look, do you want to have a coffee in the mess, or - something?"

She hadn't meant to start anything either, too wary of her undercover status; the close quarters in private and high emotions had started things for her. The mess is public and therefore far safer than the elevator. Ashley nods, and bends down to start gathering hairpins and hairties, because Shepard apparently hasn't lost her bad habit of just dropping them after taking them out of her hair.

"Like we used to." They don't normally take their coffee the same way, but they'd shared a mug, sometimes with Kaidan, after missions like Feros (fighting human colonists had been hard for Ashley), the biotic commune (Kaidan felt he'd had a glimpse of what he could have been), and the time they'd met Corporal Toombs.

Shepard joins her, and when their hands brush as they reach for the same hairpin, Ashley pulls her hand away and lets her pick it up.

They manage to keep their hands off of each other for several weeks, more assignments around the Terminus systems, and the recruitment of three more squadmates (having Tali back means not just another old friend she has to lie to, but also finding out what Cerberus did to the quarians). It isn't until they help Liara chase down the Shadow Broker and the Broker throws a desk at her (she's pretty miffed to miss out on the fight) that Shepard helps her limp onto the shuttle and then to the medbay, and though the touch itself is strictly professional, the look of relief on Shepard's face when she came to spoke volumes.

After Liara leaves the next morning (she'd slept in Shepard's cabin, which Ashley justified to herself with Shepard reportedly having couches up there and the bunks and sleeper pods being pretty full), Shepard drops in on Ashley while she's working on her report for the Alliance. "Hey. You okay?"

"Still a little sore, but yeah," says Ashley.

"You'll heal," Shepard says, patting her knee. "But that wasn't the kind of okay I meant."

"I'm okay emotionally too," she says, puzzled. She is fairly certain Liara didn't sleep with Shepard, and even if they did, Shepard can do whom she likes. Her claim on her is relinquished.

"You sure?" asks Shepard. "Nothing you need to get squared away? Family problems? Walk your sister to school one last time?"

"Sarah's in her second year of university," she points out. "And a shodan in aikido, and engaged."

"Oh," says Shepard, backhanded by the passage of time as she occasionally is, but she recovers quickly. "Anyone you want revenge on? Exoneration for your grandfather?"

Ashley stares. (Shepard's facial scars have healed now; she looks much more like her old self.) "Where are you going with this, skipper?"

"Everyone's been asking me if they can clean up some unfinished business so they can concentrate on the mission," she says, and it clicks. "Everyone except you, when you always seem to have something on your mind."

Damn, damn, damn, she's noticed. "Shepard -"

"I'm okay with you not sharing everything," Shepard says, with the kind of effort that says she isn't as okay as she wants to be. "I just want to make sure your head's straight when we go through that relay."

She needs to be sure as well, but Shepard is part of the problem and if Ashley told her, it would break her heart, and then Shepard's head wouldn't be straight for the mission, and she'd probably bring her rage down on the Alliance, and then the Alliance and Cerberus would probably fight over who got to fire and kill Ashley. She's been down this road of terrible likely consequences in her head many times before.

On the other hand, maybe part of the problem is Shepard's problem too, seeing as the sexual tension between them since the elevator has so thick that Tali asked about it during one of their little catchup chats in engineering. Shepard's not the only one who still wants what they once had. It's stupid, and risky, but maybe this is unfinished business she can clean up for Shepard as well as herself.

Ashley takes a deep breath and asks, "What if my head's bi?"

Shepard snorts, but follows it up with, "Ash, seriously."

"You're what's on my mind all the time," she says, and watches Shepard's breath catch. "I was lost without you, Shepard - kind of how I found myself here, of all places. And then you made it back, and I've been trying to figure out if it's still you ever since. But it is you. The woman I care about. The woman I..."

The way Shepard's face was steadily lighting up while she spoke makes her heart soar at the same time as it makes her stomach twist, because so much of it is true, but the unspoken truth beneath will make this all seem like a lie. She can't bring herself to finish the sentence.

"The woman you what?" Shepard prompts her eventually.

"I'm not telling you," Ashley decides, and Shepard chuckles, shaking her head. It's not like Shepard can't guess, and it doesn't feel right to say it with her secret between them. Good thing she has an excuse to recycle. "You'll have to come back again. Sorry, skipper, I don't make the rules."

"I love you too, Ash," she says, taking her hands with a tentative smile. "But, um... Last time we tried this, it wasn't just us."

"Kaidan." Shepard nods, biting her lip, and Ashley sighs. "I still care for him too, but I'm pretty sure he dumped us."

"That was how I read it too. I just wanted to make sure -" Shepard shrugs. "Maybe you were only in it for both of us, or maybe your unfinished business is actually tracking Kaidan down for one last -"

"Shepard!"

"Which, I can't lie, I'd be down for if he was, the two of you together were the best in bed, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be, and it'd be even harder to justify to Cerberus than these other side trips."

Maybe it's a good thing she hadn't seen herself as that great in bed, because it means being called half of the best someone's slept with isn't going to shoot her confidence dangerously high, but: "We'd also get him into huge trouble."

"Or he'd try to bring us into custody and it wouldn't just be roleplay."

Ashley pauses. "Are you into that?"

Shepard gives her a smirk she'd always found sexy for its slowness but hasn't seen in a long time. "I bet you'd be good at it."

She laughs, but shakes her head. You have no idea. "Not my thing." It's too, too close to real life.

"Okay," Shepard says with a grin, and when she leans over to kiss her, this time no one tries to apologize for it. "I'm so glad we're together again - we're in this together. Things are more bearable already."

"Yeah," Ashley says, and hopes the pain in her smile looks like it was caused by having a desk thrown at her yesterday. "They really are."

She's surprised to find that rekindling her relationship with Shepard actually does make things a little more bearable. Sure, she's strengthened her old friendships with Tali and Garrus, and she's befriended some of the crew, but she'd forgotten what it was like to have someone put her first, someone who makes her feel stronger, someone who sees her faults and loves her anyway. The tension between them melts into affection given without restraint, and they orbit each other like a binary system.

Of course, where Shepard's breathing easier and smiling more, she's working twice as hard to hide her true mission at the same time as the traitorous side of her brain takes this as an opportunity to keep an even closer watch on Shepard, but the scales narrowly tilt towards this all being worth it.

Even after Shepard destroys a geth base, Ashley's too furious that she put a geth on the team to speak to her in the shuttle. She's not buying this sob story about the geth that followed Sovereign being a splinter faction, and Shepard's compromise of not making her work with Legion isn't enough.

And then they get back to the Normandy to find that the crew's gone, and her fury finds a new target. She hadn't expected she would end up feeling so strongly about the Cerberus crew, but the people here have been far more down to Earth than those on the Lazarus Research Station, and many of them are from colonies like she is, giving them a more personal stake in their mission than the scientists contemplating the science of bringing a person back to life. Plus, there's something about being on a ship that regularly goes into danger zones that brings people together the way being on a relatively stationary space station doesn't.

When Shepard announces they're going through the Omega-4 Relay immediately, Ashley prepares her guns with Garrus, Jacob, and Thane, and then heads to Shepard's cabin. She's been sleeping elsewhere in silent protest of recruiting Legion, but Shepard needs to know that she supports her in this suicide mission.

It's not even her first suicide mission with Shepard, she reflects, catching sight of a framed photo of her and Kaidan laughing together in that Citadel hotel so long ago. They'd thought they either weren't coming back from Ilos, or would come back to an Alliance firing squad. Even trying to start a relationship of three people, life had seemed simpler back then. They weren't working with terrorists or geth; no one was undercover and hiding it.

Ashley brushes her thumb across Kaidan's face in the frame, then awakens her omni-tool.

From: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
To: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
Subject: Goodbye

Kaidan,

I'm sorry. For everything.

We're heading through the Omega-4 relay tonight and I don't want to die without you knowing that. I never meant to hurt you. I still love you. Can't help thinking of our night with Shepard before Ilos.

If we make it back, I'll try to explain it all.

- Ash

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"Hey," says Shepard, and Ashley looks up after sending the e-mail. "What are you writing?"

It's become a frequent question between them, usually when Ashley's reporting in because her luck is that terrible. She's been pretending she's keeping a personal log, inspired by the way the Council had always demanded proof of everything. In this case, though, she can tell the truth.

"I just finished an e-mail to Kaidan," she says, and Shepard nods, expression flickering more serious. "And before that, I set up a few e-mails to automatically send to my family if I don't log back in within a week - I'm assuming the Collectors don't have galactic standard comm beacons."

"Look at you, getting all technical," Shepard says, moving to straddle her in the chair; Ashley belatedly realizes she should have sat on the couch or the bed instead of staying in the office. "You would've asked me or Kaidan to do this for you a couple of years ago."

"I had to ask Miranda how," she admits. It's funny: When this had started, she hadn't liked Miranda; the Cerberus officer had rubbed her the wrong way on Lazarus Station and she was the personification of all her problems with Cerberus and with this mission. But after they rescued her sister, she had a new respect for their XO, and they'd found more common ground than she had with anyone else on the ship whom she hadn't known from the SR-1. Apparently that respect was returned, if Miranda had found time in their preparations for the Collector Base to talk her through setting delays and conditions on e-mails.

"Ah. I guess some things don't change." Shepard drapes her arms around her shoulders, which Ashley takes as a cue to put her hands on Shepard's waist. "So, am I out of the doghouse?"

"There are more important things," Ashley says. "The Relay, the Base. And you -"

She uses Shepard's first name, and watches as a smile melts across her face.

"I love it when you call me that."

Ashley smiles back, brushing Shepard's hair back from her face. Getting to see her like this, finding a moment of happiness before she leads them to their probable deaths, is a goddamn privilege and a bright spot on this stressful undercover mission. Maybe the last bright spot.

"Remind me to thank Miranda if we make it back," she says.

"You didn't thank her?"

"For bringing you back to me," she clarifies. "I'm glad I'm here, saving our people, back by your side."

"Having you at my side has made all the difference," Shepard says, her eyes warm, and then mischief tilts her smile. "Or under me."

Raising an eyebrow, Ashley rolls her hips. "Don't lie, you like it when I'm on top too."

Shepard hums in mock skepticism. "Remind me?"

As they dress again later, thoroughly reminded of where Shepard likes her (everywhere), Ashley kisses her cheek. "I believe in you," she says. "Let's go get our people and give the Collectors hell."

From: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
To: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Goodbye

Come back to me, Ash. And bring Shepard with you.

--Kaidan

Chapter Text

Ashley Williams requested a read receipt be sent when message 'Cards on the table' is read. Do you want to send a receipt?

From: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
To: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
Subject: Cards on the table

Kaidan,

We're back, and my real mission is over. I'm sure it's still classified, but I don't care any more. You are more important to me than my old orders.

I couldn't tell you that I was with Cerberus because I was infiltrating them for the Alliance. Cerberus tried to recruit me after Shepard died, giving me all this crap about how they felt for my grandfather. I turned them down but when I reported it to my CO, I got orders to go in under deep cover and find out what they were up to. When it turned out they were trying to revive Shepard, of course the Alliance wanted me to stick around and keep an eye on her. You know I'd never want to join Cerberus, being an Alliance soldier is in my blood. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that I was there or that they brought her back before we ran into each other on Horizon.

I've left Cerberus - we all did after destroying the Collector Base - and I'm back out of cover with the Alliance now. They pulled me out after Hackett asked Shepard for a favor and it ended badly, you probably saw it on the news. Shepard's under house arrest at Vancouver HQ if you want to see her.

And I'm sorry I never replied to you after Shepard died. I was a mess without her, without you, and you being a mess too was too much for me. Once I pulled myself together, it seemed like it was too late, and then I was undercover and I didn't want to lie to you. If I could go back, I would have tried harder. Maybe we could have helped each other.

I miss you. But I understand if you don't want to talk. I just need to know that you read this, that you know why I was with Cerberus and why I never wrote back.

- Ash

From: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
To: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
Subject: Read: Cards on the table

Your message

To: Kaidan Alenko
Subject: Cards on the table

was read.

Ashley Williams requested a read receipt be sent when message 'Reaper testimony' is read. Do you want to send a receipt?

From: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
To: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
Subject: Reaper testimony

Kaidan,

I'm testifying about the Reapers at Vancouver HQ next week - hopefully this means they're finally going to do something about the metal bastards. If you're free, and you want to be there, your testimony could really help. You always had a way with words. We'll just be two Alliance soldiers who went through Reaper hell and lived to tell the tale, not... what we were once.

- Ashley

From: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
To: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
Subject: Read: Reaper testimony

Your message

To: Kaidan Alenko
Subject: Reaper testimony

was read.

Ashley stares at the door before her in the Alliance home base barracks. All she has to do is knock. Anderson's not only confirmed that she has clearance to visit if she wants, but specifically requested her presence. The guy assigned to guard duty is someone she's served with before. The Alliance could not have made it easier for her to make amends.

She raises her fist.

And then lowers it, and backs away. She'll try again after her testimony, she decides. She could bring some good news along with her apologies. Maybe that will help make up for everything.

As she makes her way towards the mess hall, she goes over in her head what she's going to talk about this afternoon. She heard Sovereign, she fought Saren, she downloaded EDI's scans of the disabled looking Reaper before she left, she has her helmet cam vids of the human Reaper on the Collector Base. They have to listen to her this time.

"Ash?"

There aren't many people in the Alliance who call her that any more, her new covert operations teams still sticking to "Commander" or "Williams". She whips around.

"Kaidan?"

In the months since she saw him on Horizon, he's started to gray, he's put on muscle, and though he's still within grooming regulation standards, he's scruffier than he'd usually let himself get on the SR-1. It's a good look for him, though one that makes her wonder what her former lover's been up to. Better still is his face as he looks her up and down, despite his pointed read receipts and lack of real response to her e-mails.

"I just gave my testimony about the Reapers," he says. "I... was hoping I'd catch you."

Ashley tries not to hope for too much. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He steps aside for some officials passing by; she follows suit, and doesn't miss how his eyes remain on her rather than watching for when they can resume their place. "Are you free? Do you want to get off base for a bit?"

She hadn't thought she'd ever end up back in his orbit, but she can't waste the opportunity. "Sure."

He takes the wheel of a skycar she doesn't recognize as Alliance or rapid transit, taking her through downtown Vancouver. Always coming straight into the Alliance spaceport means she doesn't actually know the area, whereas Kaidan, who grew up in Vancouver, whose gift from Shepard after defeating Saren was inspired by his hometown, navigates with ease.

Only when they've exhausted their comparison of what they mentioned or plan to mention in their testimonies and their recaps of the last six months does it occur to her to ask, "Where are we going?" as skyscrapers give way to suburbia.

"My parents' place," he says.

Huh. She'd thought he'd have his own, since he likes coming home between assignments rather than staying on the Citadel. "Are you introducing me to your parents?" She lets the corner of her mouth tilt up a little, testing how much she can tease him.

Laughing, he shakes his head. "They're out shopping. It's Mom's payday, so they'll be a while."

"Ah."

His eyes slide over to her, studying her closely. "I just thought we could get away from work, have some privacy."

"Yeah, I'd like that."

He parks by a house overlooking the bay. Getting out of the car, she's distracted for a moment by the view, her hand resting on the door, until he says, "It's even better from inside," his smile fond and familiar when she glances over at him.

She follows him upstairs to the house, pausing to remove her boots and pat a cat he explains is his mother's, and sinks into a couch facing a floor to ceiling window.

"Damn," she breathes, as he hands her an open beer, and then thinks to add, "Hey, I have my testimony about the Reapers this afternoon."

"I'll feed you," he says, so she nods and takes a sip: Some kind of craft beer that she'd never think to order for herself, but it's good.

"Damn," she repeats.

"That one's a local brew," he says. "They're too small right now to export off-world."

"That's it," she says. "Tell your parents I'm moving in: I like the view, the couch, and the beer too much."

He laughs, heading for the kitchen. "You can share my room," he says, and maybe something in her face is a little too serious when she meets his eyes, because he quickly ducks into the pantry.

"Why am I here, Kaidan?" she asks, once he's in the safer territory of making a salmon sandwich.

He pauses to take a swig from his own open beer on the counter - for courage, she's guessing, because he follows it up with, "Your e-mail. You were undercover in Cerberus, that's..."

"Yeah," she says, when it becomes clear he's not going to finish his sentence. "I was there for two years all up, and looking back on it is like remembering a really weird dream."

"What was it like? What did you have to do?"

"At first, it was just a security detail on a research station in deep space," she starts, and it's such a relief to finally explain it to someone who cares more about her than the mission that she doesn't notice Kaidan's finished her sandwich until he puts it in her lap and sits next to her.

"I'm glad you never had to fight any Alliance soldiers," Kaidan says as she starts eating (it is better than a sandwich has any right to be). "Seeing you in the black and gold after the way you spoke out every time our assignments ended up involving them... That was hard, Ash."

"I hated it," she says. "I didn't enlist because I wanted to be a spy; I did it because I believed in serving humanity. And the worst part of being at Cerberus was that in a crappy, twisted way, so did they. My Alliance trainers told me that was my way into pretending I was one of them."

"Bringing back Shepard is a hell of a way to serve."

"Yeah. At least it wasn't, say, experimenting on captives like Corporal Toombs, but I still wonder, if she'd had the choice..."

"Would she have chosen resurrection?" he finishes for her. "It's not a choice you really expect in life."

She nods, and keeps eating and drinking. He watches her, his face more thoughtful than a former lover with lunch probably deserves. When she raises an eyebrow - credit for your thoughts? - he says, "You say what's on your mind. You don't hold back. And you had to hide in plain sight."

"Finally," she breathes. "Someone who gets why I was the last person who should have been sent undercover."

"I get you," he says, tentatively tracing his fingers over hers, and it's been so damn long that she twines her fingers through his, even though it means she'll have to finish the sandwich one-handed if he holds on.

"I was so scared," she says, still looking at their joined hands, and he raises them to press his lips to the back of her hand, the gesture far more romantic than she'd thought she'd ever get from him again after Horizon making her breath hitch. "I thought they'd see right through me. Forget the reprimands or dishonorable discharge from the Alliance, I thought Cerberus would kill me, or put me on the table in one of their weird experiments."

Kaidan lets go of her hand to wrap his arms around her. "You're safe now, Ash."

Somehow, even though she still has no idea what he thinks of her after everything she's done, here in his arms is the safest she's felt since Shepard's death, because she's not lying any more and she probably can't break his heart any more than she already has. Even in the afterglow with Shepard last year, her secret and her guilt had twisted her stomach so that she couldn't entirely enjoy it. She sags into his touch, and eventually, allows herself to touch him back, her hands spreading across his back.

In time, he withdraws, takes a drink and her hand, and says, "Tell me about working with Shepard."

She winces. "Working with Shepard, or spying on Shepard?"

He considers, then nods. "Yeah."

Both, then. "Working with her was..." She shrugs, unable to come up with a succinct adjective. "She's still the same. She wasn't happy to be working with Cerberus, but she was her: Driven, always trying to save everyone she could, getting everyone's take after missions. Cerberus brought her back exactly the way she was."

After another bite of the sandwich, she continues. "So spying on her was hell. I was basically talking about her behind her back, and no matter how much I said it was the same old Shepard, please bring us back, I had to keep watching, and reporting on her." She swallows, thinking of the hurt and betrayal on Shepard's face when they'd returned to Earth after her disastrous solo mission in the Bahak system: The Alliance was waiting for Shepard with handcuffs and for Ashley with her handler, the sheer difference like a mass effect field altering the gravity between them. "I hated lying to her most of all. I hated having to hide my mission from her, especially once we..."

She trails off, realizing she'll have to tell him.

"Once you what?" he prompts her.

"Once we got back together," she says, and an odd frown crosses his face. "This was a while after Horizon. I still loved her -" still does - "and she still loved me. I'm not proud of it."

As she finishes her lunch, he's far quieter than she'd expected. She'd have thought he'd be mad about them getting together without him, or about her entering a relationship with someone she was spying on and hurting someone he'd loved too. Hell, she thought he'd at least be more surprised.

She puts the empty plate and bottle aside. "It doesn't seem like this is news to you," she says, rather than suggest those reasons for anger.

"She's kind of implied it," he says, and she raises an eyebrow. She didn't know he was in contact with Shepard. "I visit when I'm around. She doesn't say a lot in front of her guard, and she certainly didn't spell that part out, but we've talked a little."

Ashley tries not to feel too hurt about him visiting Shepard and not replying to her e-mails, but fails. "I try to visit her every time I come to Van," she says instead, and then admits, "I chicken out every time." Almost knocking today was the furthest she's gotten in six months.

"She's hurt," he says, and she shuts her eyes as if this can block that fact out, but he puts his other hand over hers. "So I wanted to hear your side of things - more than you said in your e-mail, and in person."

Opening her eyes to look at him, she has to wonder: If their fledgling relationship of three had had time to grow more serious before Shepard died and orders pulled them apart, would he have been like this with her and Shepard, always trying to be fair to both of them? But she's also wondering, "Then why didn't you ask to meet me sooner? It's been six months since we left Cerberus, since I e-mailed you."

Without letting go of her, he shrugs. "I was wrapping my head around it all - corroborating your e-mails and Horizon with what I had access to, what I knew of you. Then I was promoted, and commanding a biotic covert ops unit doesn't exactly leave a lot of downtime for hunting down your old..."

They had never really named their relationship in '83, only called each other mine and ours and exchanged I love yous. "You were busy," she says, rather than trying to name it now.

"I was wondering whether I could forgive you."

She stares at him, floored that this had been a consideration. "So?" she asks. "Now that you've heard it, am I forgiven?"

"I'm getting there," he admits. "I do forgive you for hurting Shepard, for being with her without me."

"Hold on," she objects. "Horizon felt like a breakup to me."

"You weren't the only one lying on Horizon, Ash," he says, his voice as thick with emotion as it had been back then. "I didn't stop loving you. I still do, even with everything so messy. And there wasn't anyone else, after you and Shepard."

Even after he's been so touchy-feely with her today, she wasn't expecting him to still love her; the most she'd hoped for was old interest torn up by her mission. "What happened with that doctor on the Citadel?"

Kaidan looks briefly confused before he visibly figures out whom she's talking about and shakes his head. "Nothing happened with Ryota - it really was just drinks. I haven't heard from him in over a year."

His interest in men is news to her but utterly irrelevant in the face of his love for her. "I still love you too," she says, and he gives her his first real smile since they started talking, as hopeful and joyous as the first time she admitted she was interested in him. "But I also still love Shepard, and I can't hurt her even more."

He squeezes her hand. "So do I. I want us back, even with work, with her house arrest."

Damnit, his faith in them as a unit is still adorable, and still a little contagious. Three years ago, he'd been the one to raise the possibility that maybe, just maybe, no one would have to choose. "Do you really think she'd ever forgive me for this?"

"I think it's worth asking," he says. "I'm in town a few more days. If our schedules line up, we could go see her; I'll go in first and try to smooth things over a little for you."

"What, all this in front of Vega?" His shrug and earnest look say, Why not? She laughs and shakes her head, but says, "Yeah, okay. When are you free?"

He lets her use his omni-tool to set a time while he washes up. As he rinses out their empty beer bottles for recycling, on impulse she enters Dinner with Ash - you pick where into his calendar too, because if they're going to try this again, this time she wants just a touch of tradition.

She looks up to find him a breath away, though looking more at her than at his omni-tool.

"When did you cut your hair?" he asks, tucking it behind her ear.

"When we got back," she says, trusting he'll mentally fill in, from Cerberus. "I needed a change." She also started dabbling with makeup at the same time and for the same reason.

"I like it."

Three years ago, she suddenly remembers, touching her hair while it was down had always been a prelude to Kaidan kissing her, but today he holds himself back, even though his gaze is on her mouth. Maybe he thinks it would be too soon after hearing more details about her work with Cerberus and agreeing to try a relationship again. Maybe he's right.

Maybe, just maybe, he's wrong this time.

"Kaidan," she says, surprising herself with how steady her voice holds. "I'm going to kiss you."

"Please," he breathes, so soft that she only hears it because he's in so close, and she's not about to turn that request down.

She puts a hand to his cheek and kisses him, and for a moment, all the world is still. And then she shifts, her lips moving against his, and he whines low in his throat and kisses her back, wrapping his arms around her waist. Emboldened, she nips at his lower lip, and he opens up to her. It's all too easy to refamiliarize themselves with each other, to remember each other's mouths and what they like, until they have to stop to breathe, their foreheads touching.

"I missed you, Ash," he says, his voice aural whiskey.

"Mm, I missed you too," she says, absently brushing her thumb across his stubble until she thinks to add, "I can't believe they let you testify with this."

"It's just within regulation," he says. "I checked."

"I like it," she replies, and his eyes darken, and as he tilts her chin up to kiss her neck, he's careful to let the stubble graze her throat.

His hands drop to the back of her legs while he makes his way down her neck, and she realizes the second before he does it that he's going to lift her up onto the kitchen bench, standing between her legs. She hooks her ankles together behind his back and uses them to tug him towards her and keep him there, then grips his shoulders tight as he progresses incrementally down her neckline. Slowly, he slides his hands up her thighs; she doesn't miss how his thumbs trace abstract patterns on her inner thighs, nor does she object to it.

What she objects to is the time, when she happens to catch a glimpse over his shoulder of the clock on the oven behind him.

"Kaidan, wait," she says, loosening her legs, and he surfaces, his pupils blown and confused. "I should go."

His eyes widen, but he nods. "Sorry - too fast -"

"To my testimony," she specifies, and relief sweeps over him. She's not willing to call this a mistake just yet.

Chapter Text

Working with Cerberus had made Ashley well aware of the Collector attacks on human colonies. It had led her to put on civvies to vidcall her mother and beg her to move the girls from Amaterasu to Earth. Sure, the Collectors had only been targeting colonies in the Terminus at the time, but if they did start going after colonies with better defenses, Earth had the best defenses of all.

And those defenses were no match for the Reapers.

Too afraid to see the damage, she resists the urge to go up to the Normandy's CIC to look out the window like the old days. Instead, she stares at nothing as she stretches by the shuttle, trying not to think about her family (about Kaidan, who had dropped her off and kissed her goodbye and good luck for her testimony mere hours before the Reapers had hit), barely listening to James's continued whining about having to leave Earth and then speculation about what they're looking for on Mars.

His sudden silence doesn't really register, not until Shepard says, "So. Lieutenant Commander."

She looks up to find Shepard nearby, leaning an elbow on the procurement terminal with a casual pose that doesn't match the tension in her spine.

"Shepard," she replies cautiously. Sure, Kaidan (please, God, let him be safe) had thought it would be worth asking for her forgiveness, but he leans more optimistic than she does.

Her tone is dangerously light. "Did you get that promotion for spying on me?"

On paper, only her commission was for spying on Cerberus, but she knows it's not the specific rank Shepard's asking about. "Shepard -"

The look Shepard directs at her is an even one she's seen given to politicians. "Were you ordered to seduce me too?"

"Holy shit," James blurts out, and then quails under their combined glares, and he makes a hasty retreat to the elevator.

"That was all me," she says, once he's gone. "I still cared about you -"

"Oh, so that's why you reported on my every move to the Alliance!" Shepard peels herself off of the terminal, ditching all attempts at her indoor voice as she comes towards Ashley with a predator's precision usually reserved for their enemies. Kaidan was so wrong this time. "That's very caring."

"Look, I was under orders, and I didn't know if it was really you," she points out. "If they'd messed with your brain so you'd believe in them, or if they'd put in a control chip -"

"Yeah, well, they didn't -"

"I figured that out!"

Shepard stops before her and snaps to attention, her eyes finding the wall. "'Dear Hackett, it's the real Shepard, a Cerberus one wouldn't be staring at my ass.'"

"I wasn't reporting to Hackett, and I didn't report a thing about us," she protests, and Shepard drops the report impersonation to roll her eyes. "I have never told the brass about us, because that was for us, not for anyone else -"

"Do you know how much it would have helped me to know that the Alliance would accept someone working with Cerberus - would assign someone to Cerberus?" Shepard thrusts an accusing finger into her face. "You were there when Anderson said they wouldn't take me back, and you didn't say a thing!"

"We were with Miranda with EDI linked into our comms; I couldn't reveal myself to Cerberus!"

"You couldn't even reveal yourself to me!" Shepard cries. "I would have kept your secret - hell, I would have given you all the dirt on Cerberus I had! But no, you just lied to my face, you made me believe that you'd turned traitor, you told me that you -"

She's doing this all wrong, Ashley realizes. Kaidan had said Shepard was hurt - defending herself doesn't help Shepard heal; it just hurts her more.

(They were planning to talk to her tonight.)

"I'm sorry," she cuts in, stopping Shepard in her tracks. "I'm not lying now - I think about what I did to you every single day. It's the worst thing I've ever done and I'm never going to do it again: I'm retired from undercover work, and I'm done with lying to you."

"Every single day for six months?" Shepard demands. "Because I've been in that cell for six months for shit I never would have done if I had a choice, and six months ago you just walked away and I never saw you again until today!"

"I was a coward," Ashley confirms. "I kept trying to come and see you but I could never think of how to tell you how sorry I am."

"Yeah, right."

"It's true," she says, and wonders if HQ's security footage is backed up off site somewhere, because HQ itself is no doubt destroyed by now.

"Too much of a coward to say no," Shepard says, shaking her head. "You know what I did when I received orders I disagreed with? I stole the Normandy."

"What do you need me to do, Shepard?" Ashley pleads. "I'm sorry for lying, for not coming to see you, for not working harder to save you from Cerberus and from house arrest. How can I make this up to you?"

"You can't," she spits. "You ruined a year of my life, and let me believe you were making it better. I'm not a stuck rifle you can fix."

Shepard walks away, and at the terminals, doesn't bother turning around to add, "Oh, and so there's no ambiguity the next time you try to start a relationship: This is a breakup. I'm done with you."

Desperate, Ashley blurts out her first name and follows it up with, "Damnit, I love you!"

Abruptly, Shepard stands stock still. Ashley decides to press her luck. "That was real - I lied about Cerberus, I lied about the Alliance, but I never lied about the way I feel about you. I never made that up. My love for you was the most real thing about that tour."

(She'd told her on the way back through the Omega-4 Relay. Soaring confidence after leading the distraction fireteam without losing anyone, a narrow victory, a narrower escape, and a heavy dose of painkillers after the Collectors had shot her in the side right where the geth had hit her on Virmire had overridden her previous reservations about saying she loved someone she was lying to. Shepard had been so happy to hear it that she'd forgotten to feel guilty.)

Without a word, Shepard whips around and storms back up to her, and then slams her backwards against the shuttle. Unlike last year, she's putting her heavy bone weave into it, but Ashley doesn't complain, can't complain because Shepard's mouth is crushed to hers in the most vicious kiss she's ever had. Why would she complain, when she's dreamed about this even if not under these circumstances, when she'd thought only seconds ago that Shepard would never touch her again? She kisses her back without thinking, even as Shepard bites hard on her lip, even as Shepard's tongue is in her mouth like she wants to conquer her, even as Shepard makes a fist in her hair. Ashley reaches for her, tentative even by her normal standards, unsure of what she's allowed with Shepard in this mood, only for Shepard to grab her wrists and hold them so tightly it's almost painful.

Well. Okay, then. Ashley arches against her, because she can't give her the last year back but at least she can give her this. Shepard lets go of her hair in favor of squeezing her breast, finding her nipple through her officer's jacket and pinching, making Ashley moan into her mouth, her legs parting just in time for Shepard to shove her thigh between them. They thrust against each other, Shepard eventually using both hands on her breasts, until Shepard withdraws from the kiss and goes for the side of her neck that's usually covered by her hair.

"Fuck, please, Shepard," Ashley groans, rolling her hips.

Shepard stares just long enough for Ashley to wonder if Kaidan left her a hickey or stubble burn; no one on base had mentioned anything. The hurt and anger in Shepard's eyes when she looks up at her could be confirmation or it could just be about her lying; it's hard to tell. More worryingly, there's a hint of red light in her cheek where her resurrection scars had been.

"Put a fucking hardsuit on, Williams," she snarls, stepping decisively away from her. "I'm not waiting for you to get dressed when we touch down on Mars."

"I'm sorry," Ashley says, almost begs. Shepard stalks off, and once the elevator doors close, she repeats, "I'm sorry," to the empty shuttle bay.

She's never felt so off axis.

The tension in the shuttle is a thousand times thicker and a thousand times worse than the sexual tension between them while they were working with Cerberus. Ashley's grateful to get out onto Mars, to have a mission to focus on and the ability to put more space between her and Shepard since Shepard so clearly despises her even if she still wants her.

She's less grateful for the mission when it turns out Cerberus is here as well, executing people on the road to a research facility, which isn't, in their experience, Cerberus's usual MO. Though they're the same rank now, Shepard takes command and Ashley falls in line, sniping two operatives on Shepard's surly command before Cerberus catches on and the firefight becomes a little less one-sided. As on Freedom's Progress a year ago, she can't help but watch Shepard in between taking down operatives: She's a little slow, as one might expect from six months on house arrest with no access to gym equipment nor weaponry, and she's not entirely familiar with James's abilities, but her voice still carries the ring of authority and her strategy's still solid.

And then Shepard catches her staring and says, "What, are you planning your report about me?"

Ashley winces, and takes out an operative Shepard's hanging in the air with her biotics. It's this that gives her the courage to say, "Can't a girl watch the woman she loves in her element?"

Hearing this over their comms, James walks into a crate and she has to laugh, but Shepard just huffs in her helmet and darts forward.

When they run into Liara, she's surprised enough to see them working together that Ashley wonders what all in the Alliance the Shadow Broker has access to, but she holds her tongue. She already has the Savior of the Citadel stoking a grudge; the Shadow Broker's probably a more dangerous person to piss off. Besides, Liara's a much more calming influence between her and Shepard than James had been, quicker to turn the subject back from "I hope I'm not coming off as too off book in your report" cattiness onto what she's found in the Archives and how Cerberus might have gotten in. Ashley's glad to have her around, gladder as she and Shepard momentarily deafen her with biotic explosions.

(Biotics had always been the one thing she couldn't join Shepard and Kaidan in, whether it was discussions of amp models or collaboration in the field. They'd done their best to not make her feel like a third wheel by using their biotics on her in bed, the tingle of dark energy multiplying the sensation of their actions or once in a rare moon replacing fingers or mouths when they were feeling particularly ambitious.

(She doesn't kid herself that she'll ever be lucky enough to have that again.)

As Ashley pokes around the armor of a dead Cerberus operative for a helmet comm, Liara says something she doesn't catch, and Shepard loudly replies, "Yeah, turns out you learn a few things while you're spying on your ex."

With a sigh, Ashley waves a hand. "This one's got a short range transmitter."

Shepard strides over and simply raises an eyebrow, so she pops open the operative's helmet.

And immediately regrets it.

"He looks like a husk," she says, the image burnt into her brain by Eden Prime.

"But not quite," says Shepard, bending down to examine him, and on second glance she's right; there's something a little off. "They did this to one of their own - and sent him into the field?"

"This is what I was worried about," Ashley says, trying to keep her voice calm. "That you were like this guy. But I found out you're not, you're still the woman I love. So if we're working together again for the Alliance, I need you to trust me."

"How can I?" Shepard asks, more pain than fury in her voice and face now. "Finding out you'd defected was bad enough; finding out you lied to me broke my trust in you and my heart."

"At least give me a chance to earn it again," she says. "Let me do my job and support you without all the backtalk. Get to know me again. I might have grown up some but I'm still me."

The scarring across her cheek looks more pronounced than it had on the ship as Shepard stands and faces away from her. "I need time, Ash," she says; Ash cautiously decides to take the switch back from 'Williams' to 'Ash' as a minor victory. "I haven't seen you in six months. The last thing I knew about you was that you'd been lying to me since Cerberus brought me back, and then suddenly you're a Lieutenant Commander. You say you're still you, but I don't know what that means any more."

This is more progress than she'd hoped for after their earlier confrontation and makeout session. "You can have all the time we can steal from the Reapers," she says. She's a sniper. She can be patient.

Shepard gives her the smallest of nods before crouching to remove the Cerberus operative's helmet comm. Watching her, Ashley wonders if Kaidan might have been right after all.

Chapter Text

Spectre status is not exactly an offer she's expecting while trapped on bed rest. Udina, Ashley thinks, is insane to keep pushing it, let alone to offer it in the first place. She of all people does not deserve it, much less as humanity's second Spectre.

"Councilor, I'm honored by your offer, and I still need more time to think about it, but may I make a recommendation?" she asks, and at his confused look and nod, she continues, "Major Kaidan Alenko would be much more deserving of Spectre status. He leads a biotic company, he's been in the service for a long time, and he's... the most loyal person I know."

Udina huffs, and stands to leave. "I'll take that under consideration, but I need an answer, Lieutenant Commander," he says. The doors open just before he gets there, admitting Kaidan; Ashley thinks she might see Shepard behind him. "And I'm still waiting to hear from you, Major."

"Councilor," Kaidan says with a nod as Udina leaves. In the doorway, Ashley catches a glimpse of Udina talking to Shepard, and feels she's woken up in some kind of bizarre alternate universe. Then Kaidan's taking the seat Udina just vacated and pulling it closer to the bed. "You gave us a scare, Ash."

Ashley tries and fails not to read too much into the plural pronoun on top of him arriving with Shepard, but succeeds in not mentioning it. "Sorry, I'll try harder not to get my ass kicked by Cerberus bots."

He chuckles, looking much more like her Kaidan than the formal Major who'd greeted Udina. "How are you feeling?"

Her shoulder hurts. There's nothing to do in hospital. Her family's still on Earth except for her baby sister who's all alone. There's a war going on and she's stuck on bed rest. She has an offer of Spectre status. Ashley settles for, "A lot. I'd shrug, but my shoulder's broken."

"There's a lot going on," he agrees. "Shepard told me you were hurt - I came as fast as I could."

"From where?"

"I got off Earth on - you're never going to believe this - Shepard's mother's ship. And she said she'd heard about me from her daughter." Ashley starts laughing, and regrets the movements, but continues to grin as he adds, "I'm not sure if I want to know what Shepard told her."

"Geeze," she says, sobering. "Wonder what she's told her mom about me."

Kaidan smooths her hair from her face, and she closes her eyes at his touch. "Probably not what she was telling you on Mars and on the Normandy."

"You've heard, huh?"

"I've heard," he confirms. "She wanted to come and talk to you about it, but she's using me to check you're not too mad at her."

"Me, mad at her?" she echoes incredulously. "Like I have any right to be."

"Yeah, I thought you'd be feeling that way."

She studies him, then says, "Do you really think I have a chance?"

In lieu of an answer, he takes something out of his pocket and places it on her side table, then looks at her.

"You kept it," she murmurs. The tiny British Columbian jade carving of a bear had been Shepard's present to him after they'd saved the Citadel.

"I missed her," he says. "And I missed you." He pauses, and then adds, "And it's still nice to hold when I get migraines."

"Yeah, I bet."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Top drawer."

With a nod, he opens the top drawer of her side table and retrieves her projector, placing it behind the bear and projecting Alpha Centauri. He watches the stars orbit, and she watches him.

"When I saw you and Shepard on Horizon..." He points at the model. "I felt like the red dwarf."

"Proxima Centauri," she says, and he nods. "Most trinary systems are a binary star orbited by another star. Not really a model I'd want to follow with relationships."

"You've tried it?"

She shakes her head. "No more threeways since us. Just Shepard."

He nods. "Shepard didn't have anything to hold onto like we did, but I know she missed us," he says. "I think she'd like to at least try to forgive you."

Ashley looks at Alpha Centauri and imagines a non-hierarchical trinary star system - imagines her and Kaidan and Shepard together, but as they are now, older and tired and hurting and trying to heal, instead of the honeymoon period of their time together before the Normandy was attacked.

"Okay," she says at length. "Bring her in."

Kaidan gets up to let Shepard in from where she's no longer talking to Udina. Her eyes soft with concern in a way Ashley hasn't seen since last year, Shepard sits next to her on what had been Kaidan's chair and leans her elbows on her knees.

"Hey," Ashley says, since Shepard seems to be hesitating, and for lack of anything better, adds, "Your face is looking better," with a weak gesture towards her cheek, where she can't see the red light any more.

"So is yours," Shepard says, over a little scraping on the floor as Kaidan pulls up a second chair. "When we brought you in, you looked like - I thought I was going to lose you."

"You can't get rid of me that easily, Shepard," she says. "As I recall, you had to die to get away from me the first time."

There's an appalled edge to both Shepard's laughter and Kaidan's that makes Ashley smirk, but eventually Shepard quiets.

"I... I couldn't lose you with some of our last conversations being me bitching," she says. "Sure, I meant it at the time, but the Reapers have a way of making you realize... There are more important things."

Recognizing her own words from the night before the Omega-4 Relay, Ashley has to blink back tears. "It was well deserved bitching," she says. "You were right about everything except orders to seduce you - and I'm sorry for all of it."

"I didn't need to hurt you for it in return," Shepard insists. "I'm sorry."

"I don't expect, or need you to be the bigger person all the time, Shepard," says Ashley. "I love you for you, even when you're awful; I didn't fall for the perfect hero you play in the interviews."

"We can all be sorry," Kaidan offers. "I'm sorry for how I acted on Horizon."

"You already apologized for that," Shepard says, but she takes both their hands as she turns back to Ashley. "Look, it's going to take time for me to trust you, to forgive you. But I still love you, so I want to work towards it. Especially if we'll be working together again."

It's not complete forgiveness, but hearing that Shepard still loves her is enough for a smile to break across Ashley's face. "I can wait. Or help. Whatever you need." She squeezes her hand, then adds, "Kaidan, please hug her for me," because she can't sit up enough to do it herself.

Watching their embrace - as close and intimate as an old couple, rather than two friends - she also asks, "Where are you two at, anyway?" They were talking on Earth, Shepard told him she was here, and they came here together even if Kaidan came in first to butter her up; Ashley doesn't miss how they sit a little closer both to her and to each other after the hug.

"Rebuilding," says Shepard, with a look sideways at Kaidan. "Getting to know each other again."

Ashley glances at Kaidan, who gives her an encouraging nod, then she looks at Alpha Centauri next to her. Clocking the movement, Shepard follows her gaze.

"You both kept them," she says, soft with surprise.

"Because we both still loved you," Kaidan says gently.

Taking a deep breath, Ashley gathers her courage. "Which is why I want to rebuild with you," she says. "The three of us, together, in a relationship again. The way we were strongest."

Her eyes bright, Shepard looks between them. "Are you two ganging up on me again?"

They'd come to her together on the SR-1, first when they were locked down and then as they left for Ilos. Ashley chuckles. "A little bit."

"I'm happy to take the blame again," says Kaidan. "I ambushed Ash for lunch the day the Reapers attacked, and we talked."

"We also made out," Ashley adds, because she's done with keeping secrets, and then tells Kaidan, "And Shepard made out with me on the way to Mars."

His eyebrows lift. "You had a fun day."

"Oh, yeah, made out with two of my exes, fought with one of them, almost died."

"This is a lot," says Shepard, looking a little stunned. "I, um. I'm going to get back to you on that, because I want it, but I don't know if it's the best idea right now with, well, us." She gestures between her and Ashley to specify. "And also because I'm going to need some alone time with the mental image of the two of you. But I will give you two an answer."

Holding in a smirk at the thought of Shepard imagining them, Ashley nods. "I can wait for you on that too." She looks to Kaidan. "Speaking of waiting, what's Udina waiting for an answer about?"

"Oh," he says, looking bemused. "He offered me Spectre status. I said he should try you instead because you'd do anything for humanity, for the galaxy. I'm still thinking about it."

Ashley beams. "He offered it to me too, and I recommended you."

"Stop being cute for the Council," Shepard says, amused despite herself. "First rule of being a Spectre."

"I'll keep that in mind," says Ashley, and she suddenly wonders if fraternization is among the limited rules for Spectres. Not that it matters too much now that she's an officer; now that they're not in the same chain of command. "Do you think I should accept?"

"I think that's up to you," says Shepard. "But I think you deserve it - I think both of you deserve it."

"That helps, Shepard, thank you," says Kaidan, and Ashley nods in agreement.

With all their apologies and wishes for a relationship out in the open, it's easier to talk, to catch up on what everyone's doing now, to worry about each other's families (Kaidan's parents were on Earth too). It's even easier to say goodbye when Shepard and Kaidan mutually decide to let her rest, knowing that this time they'll keep in touch.

Kaidan writes her, and this time Ashley writes back. Shepard calls, even though the time differences as she dips in and out of different systems means that half the time it's while Ashley's omni-tool is switched off for sleep. She presumes they're contacting each other.

When they're on the Citadel, they visit her in hospital, sometimes separately, sometimes together. Shepard holds her hand on her visits, the awkwardness between them evaporating with every stroke of her hair. Kaidan kisses her hello and goodbye when he visits alone (they agree not to rush Shepard for a decision), on her forehead or her cheek or her hand (they also agree not to go far without her), except for the one time he visits while Sarah's there as well.

"Kaidan, this is Sarah, my youngest sister and the only one of us with a hyphenated surname," Ashley says, because Sarah added her husband's surname after they got married. "Sar, this is Major Kaidan Alenko, my, uh..."

"Old squadmate from the SR-1," he rescues her.

"The cute one," Sarah recalls from the news vids she'd seen three years ago, and this time Ashley laughs and laughs instead of wanting to kill her, and Kaidan blushes scarlet and stammers his next few sentences, but after that initial hiccup they get along great, and Ashley entertains fantasies of introducing him and Shepard to her mother.

Shepard does not give them an answer, but they both give Udina theirs. After Ashley gets discharged from the hospital, they become the second and third human Spectres in an unusually big induction ceremony (Jondum Bau, a salarian Spectre, theorizes that they're recruiting more Spectres for the war effort) and accept assignments on the Citadel, Ashley reluctantly staying for her continued outpatient physiotherapy, Kaidan quietly staying for her in a tech role she doesn't really understand.

Cerberus contacts her again, and she sends the e-mail upwards, but this time she's not ordered to accept their (surprisingly generous, for someone who by all appearances, quit with the entire Normandy) offer; both the Alliance and the Council merely say not to reply, as they've assigned someone to look into it.

"I wasn't planning to," she tells Kaidan, sitting too close to him as they watch an old Blasto vid ("they did not get a lot right about being one of the first Spectres of your species"). "Except maybe with, 'Go fuck yourselves, working for you ruined my relationships.' But it's nice to know they're both backing me up on no more undercover work."

"I like out of cover Ash," he says, and leans his head on her shoulder as he texts Shepard, Ash and I are watching Blasto. Wish you were here.

With Shepard off to Tuchanka with a cure for the genophage (their opinions on this vary), they don't expect an immediate reply.

Chapter Text

Forwarding an e-mail she probably shouldn't was at the bottom of the list of things Ashley thought might save her life one day, but as Shepard explains on the Normandy, it saved her life on top of Shalmar Plaza.

"For a moment there, I was wondering if you were working with Cerberus undercover again, and that was why you were protecting Udina," she says, pacing by her wardrobe. "And then I remembered your e-mail, with the bits from the Alliance and Special Tactics, and how you said you were done with undercover work. And I knew I could trust you in this."

"I knew I could trust you," says Ashley, who had realized she was facing the wrong way even as Udina claimed Shepard was working with Cerberus.

"Thank you for that." Shepard looks down at Kaidan, lying across her couch with his head in Ashley's lap, his jade bear in his hand, and his eyes closed, starting a migraine after a futile hunt for Kai Leng following a game of tag with Cerberus forces along the mall. "I'm sorry I took so long, but I've made my decision about you two. Hell, I made it before I left for Tuchanka, but I couldn't get the two of you in the same place at the same time. Today just... solidified the need for it."

"I'm listening," Kaidan says without opening his eyes.

Shepard presses her hands together, uncharacteristically nervous. "If you'll still have me, I want a relationship with you. I love you both, and I want you by my side in everything, not just in battle."

Ashley bursts into a smile. "Oh, I'll have you. I love you guys."

"Me too," says Kaidan, looking between them with a weak smile. "But I'm not having anyone tonight. You two can have fun, though."

Crossing the room to them, Shepard kneels down so she's level with Kaidan and kisses his forehead. "Do you want me to go ask Chakwas for your hard meds?"

"I already took something after unpacking," he says. "I just need to wait for it to kick in. Go on, celebrate us all being back together and shooting a corrupt Councilor instead of each other."

It's not the first time Kaidan's had a migraine at bed time, although it is the first time this has coincided with them having something to celebrate. Falling back into an old protocol, they take care of him first, and he doesn't protest as they strip him down to his boxer-briefs (they hastily discuss fetching his pajamas from downstairs but decide this would be too obvious to the rest of the crew) and put him in bed. He doesn't notice until Ashley pulls Shepard down next to him that they've given him what should be a decent view even in the lowered light, and then he watches through half-shut eyes as Shepard kisses her with all the care she'd tossed aside on the way to Mars, her rebuilt weight split between her and the mattress.

Warmth blooms and unfurls through Ashley's body with every touch, and it isn't just Shepard's heavy skin weave, hot to the touch. Finding one of Kaidan's hands and lacing her fingers through his, she kisses Shepard back slowly, familiar rather than forceful. Besides the knowledge that one of her lovers is in excruciating pain, it feels right, more than it ever did when they were with Cerberus, because there are no secrets or lies between them, only love and the relief of having each other back and perhaps a little leftover adrenaline from the day's fighting.

Ashley lets go of Kaidan just long enough to roll Shepard onto her back, then takes his hand again as she cups Shepard's cheek with her other hand, her lips returning to hers like she'll drown if she's away from them too long. Shepard arches pleasantly beneath her, and they move against each other more through this kiss, slow at first and with a surprising lack of groping, then more urgent until Shepard pulls away to groan, "Less clothes."

"Yes," Kaidan breathes, and Ashley smiles when she looks at him to find him still watching and now half-hard in his boxer-briefs.

"You sure you don't want to join in?" she asks. Mid-migraine orgasms have sometimes helped before, but sometimes he's winced and curled up tighter before they could finish him off, and he claims to have once thrown up while masturbating.

"For now."

"Okay."

She kisses his cheek before sitting up with Shepard. Ashley pulls her gloves off, then reaches for the zipper of her officer's jacket only for Shepard to stop her with a hand on hers.

"Why do you wear the new officer uniform option?" asks Shepard. "I couldn't do it - it reminds me too much of Miranda's Cerberus uniform. Hell, I don't know why she still wears that catsuit."

Searching her face, Ashley finds nothing but open curiosity, but still has to ask, "Do you want me to stop wearing it?" She'd hate to bring back unpleasant memories with what she wears.

"Right now, I want you to stop wearing clothes," she says, and Ashley chuckles. "But no, you can wear what you like. I just want to know why."

Turning her head away from both of them, Ashley mumbles, "I didn't feel worthy of the BDUs. After months of lying to you. To some of my best friends." Garrus and Tali had been warm and familiar from the SR-1 (she still hasn't told Garrus and isn't sure if Shepard has), Jacob had always believed in her even on Lazarus Station, and she'd had a surprising connection with Miranda.

For a moment, all is still. Ashley studies the bedsheets, wonders if she shouldn't have brought up the lying, and assumes she's about to get kicked out of bed.

And then Shepard's taking her chin in hand and peppering her face with kisses as Kaidan murmurs, "You're worthy of them, Ash. You are worth everything you fight for; how many times do we have to tell you?"

Relieved, Ashley smiles, curling her hands into Shepard's hair. "Maybe just one more time?"

"You are worth it," Shepard says firmly, and takes the zipper of her jacket in hand. "But I'm going to take this off you because I want you naked."

Giggling, Ashley shrugs out of the jacket once Shepard has it open, then raises her arms for her to remove the tank top she wears underneath. Before Shepard can go for her bra, she unclasps Shepard's shirt, hastily undoing the catches to leave her in a surprisingly lacy bra that shows more than it covers, definitely not Alliance regulation.

"Shepard," she says, grinning. "What's this?"

She flushes. "I... was hoping I'd have the second and third human Spectres in my bed tonight."

"You've got us," Kaidan says helpfully.

"I was hoping the second wouldn't have a migraine," Shepard amends.

"Is that a set?" Ashley asks, hands at her belt and fly, and she tugs Shepard's slacks down to reveal panties just as lacy and useless, not to mention already damp. As Shepard turns to shove her pants off the bed, Ashley gets more of an eyeful of her ass than she'd expected.

"Spin," Ashley orders when Shepard's facing them again, and Shepard complies, looking abashed. "Very, very nice."

"Oh," Kaidan says softly, and at first Ashley thinks it's just that Shepard's dressed up (down?) for them - he'd always liked Shepard's ass, back in the day - but then when she glances at him, she realizes this is the first time he's seen Shepard undressed since her resurrection. The rebuilding scars Ashley remembers have healed considerably since the last time they slept together, but they're still very different to the map of scars from an active life that Kaidan last saw on the SR-1.

"I know," she says. "Freaked me out when I first saw them, too."

"And me," says Shepard, moving to cover some of the more prominent scars with her hands, and Ashley grabs her wrists.

"Hey. We love you no matter what skin you're in."

"This is just part of getting to know you again," says Kaidan.

"Okay," says Shepard, and then as Ashley presses her mouth just above one of the scars, "Okay."

"You'll wear those again some time, right?" Kaidan asks. "When I can better appreciate them."

"I can do that," Shepard says.

Ashley kisses three more scars and cups her hand between Shepard's legs before Shepard remembers she was trying to get her naked, and then she gets her hands on Shepard's ass instead as Shepard divests her of her pants.

Possibly compensating for the shuttle bay, Shepard pins her with the look in her eyes as she asks, "Can I go down on you?"

"Of course you can," she breathes, spreading her legs, and Shepard breaks into a smile and starts tonguing her abs, making her sigh and fall back to the bed.

"God, Ash, you have the best abs."

"Agreed," Kaidan says fervently, and as Shepard descends, she takes his hand and lays it on her abs. He doesn't do anything, just rests his hand there, but Ashley likes including him, likes having his touch.

When she's not pressed for time, Shepard can be a terrible tease, like right now, pressing her nose against her mound and then dipping below to run her tongue over her, all through her panties. Ashley groans, tangling her fingers into Shepard's hair but not making a move towards her panties, as that tends to make the teasing longer. Putting one arm across Ashley's leg to hold her down, Shepard presses languid kisses against her, and doesn't tug down her panties until Ashley's almost sobbing with need.

"I always wonder just how long a sniper can wait," Shepard says smugly, and Ashley's about to complain when Shepard starts lapping at her, and then she's moaning instead, her legs tightening over Shepard's shoulders.

Last year, sex with Shepard had been an opportunity to forget everything. For a while, she wasn't Second Lieutenant Ashley Williams, undercover as an operative in a terrorist organization, lying to and reporting on her lover and her friends. The black and gold and deception all fell away until she was just Ash, until the only things that mattered were the most incredible woman she knew and how good they could make each other feel. Now, Ashley wants to remember everything: The short and shallow strokes of Shepard's tongue for what feels like an eternity, Kaidan's hand warm on her abs, Shepard moaning and creating vibrations that are small but so good as she licks deeper into her, Kaidan's murmured praise and encouragement beside them, the glistening of Shepard's jaw and the darkness in her eyes when she surfaces to look over at Kaidan.

"She tastes so good, Kaidan," she says, her voice husky, and she dips her fingers into Ashley's fluids to bring to Kaidan's mouth. Ashley watches increasingly slackjawed as Kaidan licks her fingers and then sucks them clean, as thorough as a blowjob.

Kaidan murmurs Shepard's first name, then says, "Give her more," so low and quiet Ashley almost doesn't hear him.

"Aye aye, Major," says Shepard, saluting, and Ashley laughs shakily at the use of his rank in bed before Shepard slides her fingers into her, finding her G-spot with the ease of experience and massaging insistently, and then finds her clit with her mouth and sucks.

Trust Shepard to hear 'more' and give too damn much for her to take after a lengthy teasing session. Ashley comes hard, both their names falling from her mouth, writhing against Shepard's mouth and hand, what feels like sparks racing through her veins. Shepard works her through it, and when Ashley finally falls still, withdraws her hand (Ashley protests despite herself) and holds it for Kaidan to lick clean again. Ashley looks lower: He's still hard, his boxer-briefs soaked with precum.

"You want us to take care of that for you?"

"I," he stammers as Shepard lets her hand drift south, and then he takes a moment to consider. "Look, I'm not up for much movement, or... reciprocation."

Shepard gets up, and Ashley caresses Kaidan's chest like she's wanted to since Vancouver until Shepard returns with a large bowl, which she places on the bed to their confusion.

"In case you throw up," Shepard explains.

Ashley stares. "Why do you have a bowl in your room?"

"I got hungry one night and keep forgetting to bring it back downstairs," Shepard says with a shrug.

"Well, you can keep it here," Kaidan says, giving them a thumbs up. "I trust you. Sorry in advance if it doesn't work for me - it's not you; you're always wonderful."

"Not as wonderful as you," Shepard says, kissing his forehead as Ashley scoots down the bed.

As a general rule, Ashley doesn't like to tease someone who's already been waiting so patiently, especially when he's already contributed to her own orgasm. Without preamble, she tugs his boxer-briefs down, then takes him into her mouth. Kaidan groans, but true to his self assessment, doesn't move, allowing her to set her own pace of bobbing up and down on him. Shepard joins her to lick at his base and everywhere that doesn't disappear between Ashley's lips; she plays with his balls with one hand and strokes Ashley's hair back from her face with the other.

"I love you," breathes Kaidan, finding it within him to put a hand on both their heads; Ashley deeply appreciates that he doesn't use this to hold her down on him.

It's been three years since she's sucked his or anyone's dick. She savors him, his taste when she presses her tongue against him, his scent, how lost (to pleasure, or to his migraine?) he looks when she moans around him and glances up at him. They're lucky her skills haven't atrophied, judging by the relatively short amount of time before he follows up something incoherent with a much clearer, "I'm gonna -"

"Puke?" Shepard asks.

"Come," he says, a split second before it happens, and Ashley tries to drink down as much as she can, as fast as she can without choking; thank God her muscle memory still holds how to do this.

With her absolute focus on Kaidan's pleasure, she doesn't realize her eyes are watering and there's saliva and precum dripping down her chin until she releases his softening cock and sits up to find Shepard staring at her and then reaching out to wipe her chin.

"Oh, Ash," she says, reverent. "You're so beautiful like this."

Ashley smiles, pleased, but looks down at Kaidan, who has his eyes shut again and a smile on his face. "How's the migraine?"

"Not gone, but better," he says, his voice thick with satisfaction. "Endorphins. And the meds kicking in while I was, uh, watching. Nothing else I can do about it now except try to get some sleep."

"I could use some shut eye myself," says Shepard, reaching to the bedstand to put the bowl aside and turn off the lights. "I've called a rest day tomorrow, so we can sleep in."

As she and Shepard remove their bras for bed, Ashley suddenly realizes her mental scoreboard of orgasms is reading 1-1-0.

"Hang on - one last thing before sleep."

"Huh?" Shepard asks, and then she laughs as Ashley tackles her, her mouth on her breasts and her hands making quick work of her silly (sexy) lacy panties.

She's so wet from getting both of them off that Ashley's fingers all but glide into her and miss her G-spot on the first pass, but she gets it from the second, her thumb stroking her clit all the while. Ashley sucks hard on her nipple, making Shepard's breath shaky and hands tight on her shoulders, and then gets her free hand under her to get a handful of her ass on Kaidan's behalf. The weight on the bed shifts beside them, letting her know without looking that Kaidan's moved so he can watch, but she doesn't change a thing, just keeps plunging her fingers into Shepard's wet heat, keeps licking and sucking Shepard's nipples, keeps squeezing Shepard's ass, keeps her name and Kaidan's on Shepard's lips.

In time, she blows across one of Shepard's saliva-cooled breasts and says her first name and, "Come for us."

Shepard comes with a wordless cry, clamping down on the hand inside her; Ashley kisses her as filthy as she knows how and keeps rolling her thumb over her clit until Shepard gasps into a second orgasm. It only seems fair after she's literally had a hand in both of theirs.

"No more, I love you, but no more," Shepard protests, pulling her hand away; Ashley holds it to Kaidan and is rewarded with his tongue on her fingers. "Save some for tomorrow."

"Oh?" Ashley says, all faux innocence as she rolls to her side and snuggles up to her. "Are we celebrating some more tomorrow?"

"I'd like that," Kaidan says sleepily. "I want to play too - missed my girls."

"Missed our boy," Ashley says, reaching over Shepard to touch him.

They tangle together, legs and arms and hands intertwined so that everyone's in physical contact with everyone else; not their usual sleeping arrangement, especially after sex, but the years apart and the barely sorted emotional mess mean they're too relieved to be together not to touch. It's an embrace of tangible proof for their quiet disbelief that they're back together.

"Good night," Shepard says, her voice quiet in the dark, and Ashley smiles.

"I love you."

She knows that it's not always going to be like this, that their relationship has to be more than the sex and skirmishes it leaned towards on the SR-1. She knows Kaidan might not always fit into the routines she and Shepard created without him. She knows Shepard's trust in her is much more tentative than her trust in Kaidan. But she's more confident now that they can do this, and that's experience talking rather than the rare blind optimism she'd entered their first relationship with.

With a look at the stars in Shepard's skylight above, she knows they've finally found an equal, stable orbit.