Shepard

"Shepard… are you… shaking?"

"What? No, I'm not shaking."

"She's shaking?"

"I'm not shaking!"

I turn to glare at the Turian with the stupid grin on his face and the Quarian with her arms folded across her chest and one eyebrow raised. Well, if one could see Tali's eyebrows I have little doubt it was quirked questioningly. Do Quarians even have eyebrows? Turians don't. Salarians and Krogans don't either. Not even Asari—well with the exception of—crap! I whirl back around to stare at the closed door to her office in front of me. Focus! I scold myself.

"So uh, Shepard… you wanna open that door right about now?"

"I'm going, Garrus, jeez! Relax!" I snapped back at the amused voice. I take a slow breath before reaching for the interface flickering in the center of the door.

"And for the love of god, stop shaking!" Garrus hisses as the metal spins and pulls apart, out of the way giving us a view of the office behind it.

"I told you I'm not-!"

"Have you ever faced an Asari commando unit before?" A familiar, softer, silkier voice cuts me off, "Few humans have." No, more like it cut through me—with an edge that is anything but familiar.

When I finally turn to look, the fact that her back is turned to me doesn't prevent the infuriatingly cliché butterflies from fluttering around my gut. Damn metaphorical butterflies.

"I'll make you a deal: either you pay me or I flay you alive. With my mind." I find myself swallowing thickly. Well, that's one way to get rid of the butterflies.

"Shepard!" A flash of a memory flickers behind my eyes. Normandy SR-1, Medbay, Liara smiling at my return from a routine survey mission. In a blink of an eye—more accurately, a few blinks of my eyes—the memory is gone. I'm back to reality, just in time to hear Liara say something to someone behind me, back there… somewhere… or something… Can't think. I'm too distracted at the fact that she's barely a foot away, reaching for me.

"Aeryn." She barely whispers my name.

So much for reality. My brain gets blurry and my world hazy as soon, not only do I feel her hands on my arms but her breath on my lips. No, I'm most definitely not shaking. I'm trembling—though not for long. A whisper of a touch between our lips and for once I can actually believe I've been gone 2 years.

But just like 2 years ago; when everything I loved and cared about was taken from me within minutes, it ends. She pulls away, denying me more of what I had been yearning for, pretty much since I'd woken up on that damn Cerberus operation table.

Her face is turned. I can't look into her beautiful blue eyes but as my senses return I begin to realize I don't have to. The kiss… couldn't really have been called a kiss—it was barely a peck. And all I felt was pain and sorrow; all I tasted was anger and regret. It was strange, foreign and… wrong. I open my mouth to say something—anything—but she pulls more than her lips away, leaving me staring blankly out of the unnecessarily wide window of her office, overlooking the trading floor. And here I am again, back to being torn between whether or not I'm dreaming.

Shifting my eyes to follow her as she moves behind her desk. I notice that even the way she carries herself now is dramatically different. She's no longer the clumsily cute, adorably awkward Asari scientist I helped out of a Prothean security bubble; or fought for against a Krogan battlemaster and his squad of Geth troopers.

I died two years ago but was brought back exactly as I was then. She… She's changed. Understandable but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Besides, she changed in a way that couldn't be explained by just grief concerning my death. I decide that I would discover the source of this shift in personality. If the cause was an incident, I'll do everything in my power to fix it; If it were a person, I'll make them pay.

"My sources said you were alive, but I never believed-" Her voice breaks the strange silence as I move to stand across from her, "It's so very good to see you." Her voice still tickles my ears; even now, when there is a soft sadness in her voice that tugs at my heartstrings. Whatever may or may not have happened in the past two years, my feelings for her haven't changed—of this I am certain.

Wait, did she just say sources?