Sunset ^beta

Back on the first Normandy, Ashley used to read to Shepard. After the Commander had recognized a few of her quotes, she'd tried to find something she wouldn't know, and while she had a decent success rate, Shepard had enjoyed listening to her so much that they'd made it a nightly thing. You have your prayers, Shepard had said. I have you.

Naturally, when she wakes up to Shepard's voice reading Tennyson ("her heart is like a throbbing star"), Ashley isn't sure she's awake. Shepard doesn't read to her. Shepard especially doesn't read to her after she walked away from her on Horizon and kept those walls up on Mars.

Then she shifts just slightly, and pain sweeps through her body from her shoulder and head and spine like a shockwave, and she knows this is real.

"Ash," Shepard says, alarmed, and somehow even after telling her not to "'Ash' me" on Mars, she doesn't at all mind. "Hang on, love, I'll get someone in here to help —"

Shepard hits a button above her head, and within moments everything blurs into a rush of doctors and nurses and questions and information (shattered shoulder, concussion, potential spinal injuries, Liara's fine so it wasn't for nothing) and finally, the blessed haze of painkillers, but through it all her eyes keep looking for Shepard, and Shepard stays, the look on her face not one of a CO watching out for her subordinate, but something they had a long time ago. Someone tries to get her to leave, and she simply says, "I'm a Spectre" when really, that's not why Ashley's okay with her staying put.

(More than okay. Surprised, even. After Virmire, Shepard had simply left her in the medbay, leaving Ashley with only Chakwas for company as she woke up and remembered that her best friend died because of her. Though Shepard had pulled her aside after the debriefing to apologize, it wasn't enough to soothe the sting even in her memories.)

Eventually, the last of the medical staff clear out of the room, leaving Ashley with just Shepard and the drugs.

"Saved my life again, Shepard," she says weakly. "Eden Prime, Virmire, Horizon, Mars... and now a hospital room."

With a surprised laugh, Shepard leans over and kisses her forehead. "And you scared the hell out of me again."

"I can't promise I won't do it again."

"You wouldn't be my Ash if you didn't keep finding new ways to get into trouble," says Shepard.

Her fondness floats between them like a baby bird: warm, trusting, fragile, something Ashley isn't sure how to handle. So she doesn't, asking instead, "Does my family know I'm here?"

"They couldn't reach your mom," says Shepard, which she'd braced herself for. Comms on Earth must be hell. "But they got through to one of your sisters - Sarah, I think."

Ashley nods, and immediately regrets the motion. "Okay. Thanks."

"How are you?" asks Shepard. "Those painkillers kicking in? You need another blanket, or water, or —"

"I'm fine," she says quickly. "Sore, but... whatever."

"Good," says Shepard, her eyes soft. "Maybe I should go; let you get some rest."

"No, don't," Ashley says, surprising herself with how strongly it comes out; she didn't think she had it in her. "Stay."

Shepard pauses. "Are you sure?"

"I want you here," she says honestly, and then second guesses herself. "If you want to be here."

Unlike her last question, this answer is immediate. "There's nowhere I'd rather be."

"I guess that answers my next question." A lot of things have answered it - 'love', the kiss to her forehead, 'my Ash' - but it's hard to be sure.

"Hm?"

"I just wanted to know where we stand," she says. "After Horizon... I was hurt, I was angry, and you didn't even write back when I tried to apologize."

"Ash, I didn't want to risk your career," says Shepard. "I was with Cerberus, you've told me about the kind of scrutiny you get - I was surprised you'd risked e-mailing me in the first place."

Ashley struggles to sit up so she can look Shepard in the eye properly. When Shepard reaches out to help her, she settles for taking her hand. "You're worth that risk," she says firmly.

Shepard's gaze slides away. "I'm worth an e-mail but not worth a visit."

"What?"

"Six months in Van," Shepard reminds her.

"When you didn't write back, I thought we were over," she protests. "I thought you wouldn't want to see me."

Shepard gives her a thin smile and squeezes her hand. "You know what they say about assuming things..."

Ashley chuckles, and regrets it. "Ow."

Immediately, Shepard recoils, yanking her hand back into her lap. "Crap - sorry, did I hurt you?"

"No, of course not," she says quickly. "It was me —"

They both glance up as the door opens, and a smaller medical team led by Dr. Michel of all people enters. "Commander Williams, we have an operating theatre ready for you. If we can talk you through your surgery...?"

Shepard stands. "I should go," she announces. "I don't want to get in the way again."

"Shepard —" she starts.

"The Council might be ready for me by now, anyway."

Reluctantly, Ashley nods. As much as she wants Shepard to stay, Earth comes first. "Can't keep the Council waiting."

With one last soft but significant look, Shepard makes for the door, the medical team parting before her. "Doctor, let me know if there's anything I can do," she adds as an aside.

"Here's what you can do," says Ashley. "If you're gonna leave - write me back this time." She looks to the staff. "Someone get her my contact details off my Alliance file."

"I'll have an administrator forward them through," says Michel.

Shepard cracks a smile. "Sure thing, LC. Good luck with the surgery."

She slips out of the room, but Ashley can't keep the smile off her face as the doctors and nurses explain what they're going to do to her. Her body may be broken, her family may be missing, and the galaxy may be in a war they'd tried to warn everyone about, but at least one thing in her life is going right.

Even after surgery, even once she's cleared on any spinal injuries, recovery always feels like two steps forward, one step back. Ashley hasn't been so frustrated since Shepard died and still no one would take the Reaper threat seriously.

At least there's no going backwards in the recovery of her relationship with Shepard, despite Shepard turning out to be somewhat uncommunicative long distance even when she's not working for terrorists. Her writing's sparse, and she confesses that she doesn't know what to say in vidmails (and isn't that a strange thought, that the woman who talks down terrorists and diplomats alike doesn't know what to say to her, a fellow soldier and the woman she loves). But she makes up for it: she forwards along her (admittedly equally perfunctory) mission reports, sends location tagged photos in between missions and sometimes on the shuttle (James cooking in the mess; Garrus talking to Liara in the shuttle before Shepard's Menae report comes in), and she sends presents.

An enormous bouquet arrives the day after she leaves, and while the card's hopelessly generic, the flowers are beautiful, and until Sarah arrives on the Citadel, they're the only flowers she has. Ashley writes one morning that she's finished the Tennyson book Shepard had brought, and by the evening she has a book of Whitman. Experimentally, she snaps her tray of hospital food and captions the photo boring; a candy assortment arrives with dinner.

"Are you spending all your funding on me?" Ashley asks, when Shepard visits with a book of Rumi in hand.

"No," Shepard protests, but she pauses and adds: "Maybe a quarter of our salvage."

It's adorable, she thinks helplessly. The most Shepard bought for her on the first Normandy was equipment and much later, a few drinks at the Battle of the Citadel afterparty. They hadn't wanted to flaunt their relationship, especially with Shepard outranking her. Now, it's only Spectre status Shepard has over her (and that could change if she decides to take Udina's offer), and with her in hospital instead of in Shepard's chain of command, she's fairly certain no one's looking.

Out loud, all she says is, "You don't have to. There must be some new armor or a gun mod you have your eye on."

"An aquarium VI," Shepard says sheepishly.

"You have an aquarium?"

"And a space hamster."

As Shepard starts telling her about her pets, Ashley realizes that it's not only Shepard who's missed out on two years of her life by dying, but she's missed out on a year of Shepard's life with their separation. Those months apart have turned Shepard into someone who keeps pets on a warship. The thought of more changes to get to know should be daunting, even overwhelming, but somehow, Ashley's excited instead.

"I know it's a little stupid," Shepard finishes. "I'm still amazed they made it through the Omega-4 relay, and it's not the best use of credits."

"But they make you happy," says Ashley. Even talking about them, there's been a light in her eyes she doesn't see on people that often since the Reapers attacked.

Shepard nods. "They're almost... reassurance. I can't save everyone, but I can save these guys."

"Then I'm glad you have them," Ashley decides. "And no, you can't save everyone, but no one can, and you do a damn good job saving as many as possible."

"Sounds like you've been saving people too, if Udina's offering you Spectre status."

Ashley presses her lips together. She's had other, more successful missions since, but her bad reaction to seeing Shepard again wasn't the only reason Horizon dwells in her mind. "Not that many. Feels like I haven't earned it."

"You have," says Shepard. "And I'm not the only one who thinks so - you know the whole Council would have had to approve if he offered it to you. With you stuck in here, they've had the time for all the background checks and psych evals they skipped on me."

That honestly hadn't occurred to her. She looks up at Shepard, studying her. "Do you think I should accept?"

Shepard's silent for a moment, then she says, "I think you deserve it. I think you'd make a great Spectre. But I think you should do what makes you happy. And from what I remember about you, feeling useful makes you happy."

It's true. And she's been feeling useless lately, stuck in bed while Shepard's out saving the world. Being a Spectre, especially once she gets out of hospital, might help, depending on the assignments they give her, but... She needs more time to think about it.

These days, she has nothing but time to think, and very little time with Shepard. Rather than waste it, she lets her gaze turn sly, lingering in strategic places as she looks Shepard up and down. "That's not the only thing."

With a chuckle, Shepard slides her seat closer so she can stroke her hair, which counts as a win in Ashley's book. "Hospital rooms don't really do it for me."

"Yeah, same here," she says with a grin. "But I really have missed you. It's been rough."

"Bed rest is hard."

"Not just that," she says. Gingerly, though not without pain, she scoots over, clearing just enough space for Shepard. "Come here."

Shepard climbs into her bed, and just as carefully wraps her arms around her. It's the first time Shepard's held her since Horizon, the first time she's let herself really believe that her body's memories of their night before Ilos were real, and Ashley almost wants to cry from the relief of it. But she doesn't cry. She just tucks herself more securely into Shepard's embrace for some comfort as she tells her about her family, about her mother and sisters still incommunicado on Earth, her youngest sister ending up alone on what was supposed to be her honeymoon, her brand new brother in law being MIA.

"I'm sorry, love," Shepard murmurs. "I'll see if I can pull any Spectre strings to find out what's happening."

"You don't have to —"

"I want to," says Shepard. "Please, Ash - let me do this for you."

"Okay," she relents. "Thank you." And then, because it's been months since she's said it and that was in the past tense: "I love you, Shepard."

Shepard smiles, the most hopeful she's seen her in years. "I love you too."

Ashley shifts just enough to kiss her, her lips tentative on hers. At first, Shepard goes still, and she panics for a moment before Shepard kisses her back, one hand sliding up to her cheek the way she's dreamed about for three years. There's a new scar on Shepard's top lip but otherwise it's their first kiss all over again: shy, unsure, but wanting so much more.

The thing is, it's not their first kiss, and Ashley's not a Gunnery Chief coming to terms with her sexuality and her crush on her CO on a mutinous one way mission anymore. She draws Shepard closer, deepens the kiss by degrees, summons up old memories of what Shepard likes. Shepard's touch is hesitant until Ashley takes her hand and places it on her own waist, and then Shepard moans and hitches her leg over her hip.

Annoyingly, Ashley has to pull away, has to ease onto her back and just breathe. It's still harder than it should be for anything more challenging than sitting or lying still and holding a conversation or very careful physio. "Sorry —"

"Don't be," Shepard says, her voice low, and she ducks her head to press her lips to her jaw, her neck. Ashley tangles her fingers into Shepard's hair and wonders again if she's dreaming.

There's a pointed inhale from the door, and Shepard almost falls off the bed in her haste to scramble off of her. Ashley looks up, then down to find one of her volus nurses in the doorway.

"I'm a Spectre," Shepard blurts out, and Ashley wants to laugh at the Savior of the Citadel trying to use her Spectre status as an excuse for being caught in bed with a patient.

"I'm well aware, Commander Shepard," says the nurse, shaking her head. "But I need to check Commander Williams's obs."

"Sorry, nurse," Shepard mumbles, getting out of bed, and this time Ashley does laugh. "I should go see a few people, anyway. Ash, let me know what you decide about that offer."

"Will do," she says, grinning.

Two days ago, she e-mailed Shepard saying she'd accepted Spectre status and she's thinking of sneaking out. Yesterday, she'd received another bunch of flowers, this one mainly in Spectre blues, with a card reading, Don't go yet! which she can't help but be intrigued by. Today, she's staring out the window, again giving serious thought to strolling out of the ward and never turning back. They've started letting her go on leave for some hours on her good days. The only things stopping her from a self discharge are her nursing student sister glaring at her every time she so much as looks at the door and how stupid she'd feel if she managed to hurt herself again.

Strong arms wrap around her waist from behind, and while her military instincts interpret this as an attack, her body recognizes the hold, and she grins before she even knows she's doing it.

"Hey, Spectre Agent Williams," Shepard murmurs in her ear, and Ashley chuckles and laces her fingers through hers.

"Not yet," she protests. "I haven't had the induction ceremony yet. That's when it's official."

Shepard nips at the side of her jaw. "When?"

"Next few days, hopefully," she says, tipping her head onto her shoulder to give her better access. Sadly, Shepard doesn't take the bait, but it's still nice just to be held. "When I finally get discharged. They're fine with making someone who's still doing outpatient physio a Spectre, but not an actual inpatient. Kind of a bad look for the Council."

"They've made some crappy choices for Spectres," says Shepard. "But you, love, are not one of them."

"You're biased," Ashley points out.

"A little," Shepard concedes. She pauses, giving Ashley the opportunity to turn around and face her. Eventually, she takes her hands and says, "Cortez asked me what you were to me the other day, because I spend so much time here, or reading your e-mails, or taking photos for you. And I didn't have an answer for him."

They never did label it, Ashley realizes. Not on the old Normandy, not now. Shepard was simply hers, never anything tangible or official.

And now Shepard's letting her choose.

"Let's be girlfriends," she decides. "We'll be equal ranks after my Spectre induction, and I haven't been in your chain of command since Mars - nothing to say you're taking advantage of me."

"Okay," says Shepard, grinning. "But I do want you back in my chain of command once you're out of here."

"We'll see where the Council wants me," she says. Really, she's glad the main person she cares about on the Normandy wants her back aboard. Not that she'd doubted she would, but it's one thing to know something and another to hear it.

The Council wants her in a glorified guard post.

"It's only while you complete your physical therapy," says Tevos, as Ashley struggles to keep a straight face instead of protesting. "So you can stay on the Citadel, near your doctors, but still do important work."

She accepts, of course she does, anything to feel useful after that protracted stay in hospital, but standing around with a gun (not even an assault rifle, just a pistol) and making sure the councilors have logged off their computers and keeping an eye out for any confidential datapads left around wasn't what she expected when she accepted Spectre status. Shepard was given a ship when she became a Spectre.

The thought of Shepard keeps her going, her photos making her smile in the middle of the long, boring Council meetings that Shepard never had to sit through. But maybe she's not paying enough attention, because embarrassingly, she doesn't suspect anything of Udina besides brownnosing and an understandable need to save Earth until they're on top of Shalmar Plaza, her girlfriend and her old squadmates pointing guns in their direction, and Udina says, "She's with Cerberus."

Shepard is not with Cerberus. She knows this now like she knows her own name.

That's what makes Ashley immediately turn around, but it's not what makes her go to Shepard's side as soon as the Council's safe nor what keeps her there all the way onto the Normandy. It's her smile, flooded with relief that Ashley believed in her, that they're okay. It's Shepard's fingers lacing through hers once they're alone. It's her arms around her, her body against hers.

Stepping back onto the Normandy feels like part of God's plan. Knowing she's the CO's girlfriend makes it feel more like home than it did on their escape to Earth and subsequent rush to Mars, which had been a mess of wariness of both Shepard and the ship's apparently fully artificial and unshackled intelligence, fear for her family, and unease from things not being quite where her memories of the Normandy SR-1 expected them.

"It's good to be back," she says, unpacking her meager belongings into the lockers throughout starboard obs.

"I'm just happy to have you back, love," says Shepard. She pauses before saying, "You know you're welcome in my quarters any time you want."

She sounds adorably unsure. Ashley lets a smirk spread slowly across her face as she turns to her. "I know," she says. "But I want my own space if anyone wants to come see me, and we can't have the rest of the crew getting jealous. Besides, look at this view."

Shepard doesn't look away from her. "I have a skylight," she says. "I usually keep it closed after, uh, Alchera, but you can —"

Of course Shepard wouldn't want a constant view of where she died while she's trying to sleep. Ashley steps closer to her, tugging her by the hoodie collar so she's facing away from the window. "Let me give you a better reason to see it."

"All I want to look at is you," says Shepard, with her talent for somehow sounding utterly sincere even with the cheesiest of lines.

Despite her words, Shepard allows Ashley to lead her up to her cabin and knock her flat on her back. There isn't a lot of looking out the window involved until afterwards, and even then, Shepard's looking at her more than the stars, a soft smile on her face as she rubs Ashley's sore shoulder.

"God, I missed that."

"I missed you too," Ashley says dryly.

Shepard chuckles. "Yeah. I'm glad you're still up for it... up for us." Her gaze turns serious, a little sadder. "After Horizon, after Mars, I thought that was it. You didn't want me; you didn't trust me."

"I told you, I just needed time," she says. "And I think that time's going to be a lot easier now that we're actually on the same ship instead of trying the long distance thing. Hard to get to know someone again when she can't write an e-mail worth a damn."

"Hey, I tried," Shepard protests, grinning.

"Yeah, you did," Ashley says fondly. "That was worth as much as the content."

"Mm." Shepard's silent for a moment, before saying, "Want to sleep over tonight? I've got Joker and EDI on a course for Arrae to rescue some scientists on the run from Cerberus - I want you in the shore party tomorrow."

"Of course."

If this assignment is some kind of attempt to make Ashley realize Shepard's not the only reasonable, non-racist person to get caught up with Cerberus, it's working. She winces every time she sees a kid among the adults, and her next shot's always sharper.

When they're well away from the civilians, though, it's almost like the old days again: Shepard up close (albeit with a submachine gun instead of just her pistol; when did she retrain?) and glowing alternately blue or orange, her providing covering fire with her assault rifle (but now she's grenade certified too), Garrus keeping an eye on both of them with his sniper rifle (he has the blueprints for proximity mines now), so well coordinated Shepard barely needs to give orders after the first facility breach gives them enough time to remember how they work together. Instead, she listens to the new way Shepard teases them over the comms, to Garrus humming something by Expel-10. It makes her smile; it makes her realize that if she'd gotten her head out of her ass on Mars, she could have had this sooner.

This is her place in the war, she realizes, as Shepard warps some armor and Garrus times a headshot with the start of a bass drop. Not on the Citadel, playing security guard. On the Normandy, having Shepard's back as much as she has hers.

Garrus nudges her in the armory later, cleaning up their guns together even though they have an official Arms Master now ("Ash, Scars, you're gonna put me out of a job!"). "So, are you and Shepard back on?"

Their avoidance of public displays of affection has been because neither of them really enjoy it, not deliberately hiding it. Still, she smiles. "What gave it away?"

"I was a detective, Ash."

"You quit," she objects. "Twice."

"I still know my stuff," he says, rolling his eyes. "Shepard's happier now. She's better rested; she smiles more. And look at this." He pulls up a spreadsheet of people's kill counts from missions he's been on, adjusts it to show percentages, and then highlights Shepard's column. "She fights better when you're in the shore party."

"She was stealing your kills today," she demurs.

"She stole a lot fewer when we worked with Javik," he says. "I can't tell if it's because she knows you better or because she's trying to impress you."

"Can't it be both?"

Ashley can feel herself lighting up as she turns towards Shepard, who's walking towards them with her own guns for cleaning. "Hey, skipper."

"Good work today, both of you," she says. "I didn't realize until today how much I'd been missing having more of that long distance support."

"How's Jacob?" asks Garrus.

"Sounds like he's going to be just fine, thanks to you two."

"Good," says Ashley. She'd inferred from the way Shepard and Garrus talked to him that they'd been squadmates under Cerberus last year.

Shepard sets her guns on the bench. "Ash, I still like my guns the same way,” she says, and Ashley nods. “I’ll leave these with you, then - I’ve got to go feed my fish.”

They both salute, and Ashley allows herself to watch Shepard's ass as she heads to the elevator ("I can feel that, Williams!").

Garrus snickers, returning his attention to the guns. "I'm glad you're back. She was a mess after Horizon."

"So was I," she says quietly.

It's one of the reasons she was scared this wouldn't work again. And while they don't work exactly like they did before, in many ways it's easier for them to work better, with both of them on equal ground and, in the middle of a war that this time the whole galaxy knows about, a little less mindful of the rules. She'd always been gunshy before, too used to the extra scrutiny that comes with her surname to want to risk her career for love, but if she learned anything over Alchera, it's that life's too short to deny herself happiness.

Self denial and fraternization are nowhere near her mind when they're at Apollo's weeks later ("is this our first date?" "I think it is") and Shepard responds to her musing about how her father would react to her by saying, "That sounds great, Ash. But right now, I can't focus on anything but you."

Ashley doesn't think of herself as a words person. She prefers action. And the only action that feels appropriate is pulling her girlfriend close and kissing her, even if they are in public.

No, not appropriate, she decides, as Shepard smooths her hair from her face with one hand and rests the other on her waist. Perfect.