A/N: Sorry for the wait. I just had to release another game.

Section 2-3

Dust and Echoes

On Eden Prime, Corporal Richard Jenkins had been spared the mission that left without him over a year ago. He wasn't quite pleased that the Normandy had left him back on his home planet and then subsequently embroiled itself in a mission that would've given him everything that he wanted and more action. That's what he had thought as he was exchanged out with a Chief Ashley Williams (A Williams no less!) and told to be on guard on his home for more Geth attacks during the rebuilding.

He had cursed his luck until he knew what had become of the Normandy and the attrition rate that came down to its direction action team: Of over twenty, only a handful had survived, taking with it even one of the Naval special operators.

Jenkins had been left to Eden Prime, and so he lived. He still, even as an adult, went back to the plateau of his youth and laid there and looked at the spaceport, so busy now with rebuilding and supplies in and out, and thought of going back out there. But out in those wilds of the Galaxy which had been turning for millions of years in civilization before, there had been danger that would've taken his life. So as he laid there at night again a year out in an Eden Prime summer, off duty, he did count himself lucky, and if he had wist, they were only the wist of his childhood.

Still, looking up at the stars that night gave him front row seats:

The pride of the Alliance Navy, and it comes to his home and he, like all those there, obliges.

Emerging out of the relay that had started all the story which Humanity found itself in now, the Enterprise emerged in front of the remains of Charon and made its way back to Humanity's home. The battlestars of the carrier had numbered long and far and as old as the First Contact War: the Enterprise, the second in a class of Humanity's largest warships in its unique art of space fighter carriers, had been at the forefront of nearly every active confrontation with the Turians and the Batarians, and now the Geth and pirates in its several decade history. A new ship was never made due to tonnage treaties, and thus the Enterprise that had been there had been of the same hull, albeit refitted over and over again, maintaining the ferocity and power needed as beheld the ritual of holding the name Enterprise.

Of all ships that had been the pride of Humanity, from Jon Grissom's own Rainbow to the Normandy, the Enterprise had been a ship steeped in both cultural, military, and naval history that when it arose for the first time in space all, from the vestigial West to the vestigial East accepted that Enterprise was right.

Sitting at her chair was Admiral Hoshi Hirano, seeing her homeworld come into view through the viewing screen as her crew buzzed with activity around her. She glanced at her watch, an old fashioned watch, for she preferred it as omni-tools did not offer the novelty or the intimacy of physicality like the picture of her family as beset inside of the watch's face: two children, five and seven, a daughter and son. Her husband stood over all three of them in the photo, his hands on her shoulders. In Japan, it was morning, and being this close to Earth again, she would spend the time to call them on time that was fair to them for once, but she had a job to do, and she was on duty.

She rose from her chair as admirals like her still on space duty and as captain of ships, rare in their position, had done and the crew waited.

"All shuttle teams prepare for immediate deployment, maneuver all ships but the picket fleet for atmospheric operations."

"Aye ma'am." Her crew responded back, and Earth approached ever onward. She looked to her XO, however, entranced, not by Earth, but by a black dot that had appeared as they approached at their speed that one by one, more and more of the crew had seen and looked upon: that black dot that sat above Kenya like a hole in an image.

Earth had not faced a threat yet directly in all of the Alliance's history. Not even the Turians had been able to push past those first colonies that would put Sol at hazard. And here had been that threat finally brought in, but it was not an active, malicious threat, not outside of its immediate vicinity, but Mankind did not regard threats and the unknown differently in the end.

Throughout the planet, echoes of doomsday, people clamoring for a dome to be made around the place, or for it to be destroyed in fear. Cacophony, chaos, a million voices, and only a few that mattered to them.

"Alert Admiral Shepard we'll be on station in a day." Hirano ordered, bringing her XO out of his reverie as he affirmed and went to it.

And so the Enterprise was, a majority of its fleet taking to the Earth outside of the danger zone of the Anomaly, close enough away to FOB Alpha, and when it was in position squadrons and squadrons of Kodiaks coming off of it and many of its ships down to the Earth below with supplies from Eden Prime.

On those first shuttles had been her, and Shepard had been expecting her.

Shepard had known this woman, and she never forgot a face, a mission, especially not the one that connected them together. She had stepped out of the Kodiak before it had even touched down, the dust that they all kicked up as hundreds of shuttles came down and were organized by Alliance Marines striking flares. All eyes were looking up. A great flock of relief, blue and white crossing the sky like plagues of old inverted in their nature.

"Admiral."

"Admiral."

They both greeted each other as Hirano held onto her cap. "Been a while." Hirano went on, placing her admiral cap back on her head as her shuttle dusted off to join the rest. Hirano hadn't met Shepard on Virmire when her fleet had been the one to arrive there for assistance, but she had been the one left to pick up the pieces, and then told to leave by the Covenant and the Krogans.

"I'm glad you're here now." Shepard spoke. Between the two women, Shepard had still been the most rugged for it, African dust combining with her sweat. She always belonged to the Earth in a way, born of it.

Hirano held onto Shepard's words. "I've never seen colonial governors just up and out like that."

"My name still carries weight some places." Shepard had given a small smile that the last few years of her life were not for nothing.

The 7th Fleet had brought with it massive number of supplies from both Eden Prime and Terra Nova, food supplies from a planet where in its planning entire countries had been devoted to agriculture, and with the frontier expanding out from them there was no need for such emergency stockpiles to be so diligently piled up. The issue of colonies sending supplies back to Earth had been touchy, but Shepard did not care, and called in the orders anyway. Terra Nova had owed her when she saved them from Balak's asteroid, and Eden Prime had been still all too fresh in memory. The fruits of her labor descended from the sky, all because she asked, all because she had bled for them.

Her officers would handle dispensation, but throughout those thousand crowds beyond those walls, reprieve was had, and the day was cloudy in relief from the heat.

Again, Hirano looked out to the distance to the Anomaly. "You know, I thought Batarian reinforcements was the worst thing I ever saw on the horizon. I don't know what the hell that is." She pointed out, and Shepard had known of the feeling. And yet she had the last year and some to deal with the unknown that brewed and promised danger.

"Come inside," Shepard beckoned instead. "I can get you up to date on the situation on the ground and what the 7th can do for me."

Hirano had been of those admirals that had remained on the frontline of the Galaxy instead of sequestered away in Arcturus or the Citadel on diplomatic or advisory posts as Anderson had now. To be trapped there had been a privilege but trapped all the same, and a choice few flag officers saw what it meant and remained in space, working duty, either bound by blood and familial history or the belief in something better. "I'm sure the fleet is up to it. It'll be a reprieve from what we've been doing otherwise."

"Oh?" Shepard had beckoned as they both walked beneath shuttle storm clouds.

"You should see what it's like out there now, Admiral Shepard. Normandy-class frigates out of Mikhailovich's command are on constant sortie, pushing further into the Attican and back carrying QRF or settlers, sometimes both. Tons of old stones being turned over, pirate bases, secret societies. The Old West is alive again and my group has been chasing fires, rubbing shoulders between every single Citadel race and the Covenant."

The Galaxy was on fire, expansion again came with the Covenant's inherent knowledge of where planets had been and the knowledge given to both Humanity and the Quarians for its cooperation. With a rival power rising then, the Citadel had issued a new project, a new initiative for the colonization of worlds even outside of relay lanes. In one year, the Galaxy had been racing toward some unidentifiable goal, built upon an unknowable truth of its new order.

Hirano had seemed tired, as all officers of her rank were, especially at such a young age, but she had been of Shepard's generation, the first with the idea that perhaps the Galactic community would be made whole in their lifetime. This was taken away, and it left people ragged, it left people disillusioned, and war, as was its penchant, felt inevitable in some form.

Shepard had only patted her back once. "Wish I could be out there, Admiral."

"Don't we all." Hirano responded, and in it she communicated the wishes of all those in space for Humanity, and perhaps more, that had missed where she had been: to know that somewhere across all the Galaxy and all of its horrors that there had been an undeniable hero out there to save them.

That's who Shepard had once been, and when Hirano came down and saw a much tanned Shepard, down to her bare necessary uniform as an Admiral amongst that camp organizing, she had thought she had seen where she had been all along, and not put to Earth for safe keeping.

The two women entered the prefab and in its moderate space, the size of a small house, dozens of officers coordinated over tables over security and logistics and transport, a third of the cadre to each, and each pausing and rendering salute as Shepard came in and came to her main table, a digital display of the entire area as concerned by her command with the arrival of the 7th Fleet noted. Cleft-Lip had been there, data pad in hand and busy on a comm as he acknowledged the two admirals arriving, on his own business. That's when they worked best.

With practiced movement, Shepard had begun speaking to Hirano as she stood ready for briefing. "We've been able to ballpark about five million displaced residents here from the city of Mombasa, Voi, and Miasenyi, many of them without their own transportation. Now we've been lucky because we're still along one of Kenya's main highways, leading all the way out to their capital, but as it stands if people aren't walking they're staying around the facilities that have been set up here, and although the idea of becoming a mayor at some point isn't that scary to me, I don't think it's what I want now." The tent cities had been expanding, day by day, but they were purposeful and the rule of law was maintained as more and more Alliance assets showed up in either troops or supplies, with the Enterprise and the 7th being perhaps the greatest.

"We've been getting transportation up to other cities within country, and we have a program set up that those cities are getting reimbursements for however many refugees they take in, but that's not something that's draining enough people here."

Hirano took a long look over the displays and the holographic tablet with all of its information on it, spelling out a humanitarian crisis kept within hand, but without any help would spool out of control. Incident reports piling up, medical stations accruing higher and higher specialized needs, a thousand issues that came with the massive displacement of millions of people by force. Hirano took it all in once and then nodded, staring right at Shepard.

"Admiral, we are at your dispensation until the situation resolves."

Shepard had been pleased to hear, but as the drone of shuttles above skirting the danger line with helicopters began to fill in, she had to think, to know what the Admiralty was thinking truly. They had hardly said a word to her since she had been enroute from California.

"This is the 7th Fleet. That's not a light asset at all." Her skepticism remained. "Galaxy's too busy for it to be home. So what's the catch?"

"No," Hirano agreed. The 7th Fleet had been some of the Alliance's most battle-tested and needed, "but this isn't, as far as we know, a combat deployment. My ships will be going refit and rearm here as we can, but it's obvious you need at least a fleet's worth of support as we deal with this situation. It's my orders to support you."

Shepard breathed out tiredly even as she agreed with Hirano. "It'd be nice if the Admiralty told me this directly."

"You know how proud some people get." Hirano had reminded Shepard. "Especially when they still need someone that they might not be on the best terms with."

Shepard shook her head and recounted her own lessons of life, speaking them. "Some people never pray to God unless they're desperate enough."

In silent agreement, the two women had known of the faults of who they were under. Always those above them. Always, even as they neared the top.

"Honor to be working with you again." Hirano had said with a smallness despite her rank, despite her duties.

Here before, Shepard had been one of many. Hoshi Hirano was unique in her position, who she was, but she had been part of a long line of people that had come to be involved in the story of Shepard. For Hirano, it had been the day she started her life anew. For Shepard, it had just been another day on the job.

Shepard remembered, because she always did.

"Likewise."

In that week a literal army descends again from space like angels above onto Kenya, coming on hundreds of shuttles delivering the fruits of other worlds. Alliance Marines and Seamen walk among the refugees and the displaced, and for the first time since this had started, Shepard feels like the situation has stabilized, even as the Anomaly pulses on distantly.

Her concerns go from the day to day of the humanitarian issues, to the thoughts of a mission, far away. She never was an explorer like Ryder was, and although space, and all that it did to the Human soul had affected her just as majestically as it had when she left the first time, she knew that there had been deeper frontiers inward, not outward. Those were the frontiers she lived on: the hearts and the minds.

Yet, even then, all frontiers people could get lost in.

She passed by those three crystals each day as they were set up in the ops room of FOB Alpha, but none had been destroyed, so out there at least the Fallujah had still be existent. It meant that she didn't have to worry, but worry she did.

Hirano sees it on her face each status meeting as Cleft-Lip and their officers go through reports on the situation on the ground and the incoming resources and plans for more permanent housing solutions on top of the proposal that families would eventually be let back in under escort to recover any belongings before leaving.

The Anomaly had not been lethal outside of its arrival and what it had done to the eezo fields. No more was it to blame for any deaths than the ocean would be for taking sailors, but it remained some hole in the world that spoke to primal fears, and the 7th Fleet did little to guard against it as it loitered outside of its cancellation zone.

Community leaders would come to Shepard in the day, and she would listen to them and do what she needed to do for their peace and sanity.

This is the work of governors she does, and yet she falls into it naturally.

For a little while, this is her normal: useful again to the world.

Her fair skin tans over, her red hair is so unique in that place that people stop and stare even if they don't know who she is.

Watching men who had never come to Earth walk side by side with those of Earth that have never stepped on a spaceship, she feels Mankind vindicated, at least for a little while, until she looks up at the Anomaly and remembers better. All of it, itself, a distraction for another purpose of hers.

Garrus Vakarian remains, and they have their lunches, but there is uneasy tension. The Galaxy couldn't wait for this situation to resolve.

But she would make him wait. He would owe her that much for what he had offered her, and the threat that he took made her listen.

In one week's time she does not hear from Ryder and the Fallujah, and in two weeks, the timeline has been clear: If no contact is reaffirmed, then another expedition would be prepared and sent through.

On the day marking two weeks, the Covenant arrive to Earth, not by way of Charon, but rather just above them all.

They appeared with hardly a word, the bubble of Slipspace ushering them forth into Earth orbit. Twenty-five ships, ranging from cruisers to frigates, all surrounding upon initial exit the one ship that had been responsible for initially ferrying the Covenant across the divide of universes: the Ardent Prayer. It remained unique in the Galaxy, a singular example of what the Covenant had been capable of, if not in what it had been, but what it was in the place of. The Ardent Prayer was only a corvette by their standards, but it had taken down the "Geth" dreadnought that had been Saren's with hardly a scratch. It could bend space and time around it, ignoring the relays completely; a visitor without boundary and now it was not alone.

The ships of the once Quarian flotilla had been repurposed. A vast majority of the ships remained within the official Quarian Navy, at the service of the Quarian Authority, the now planetary administration and state of the Quarian people on Rannoch. However, 30% of it now laid beneath the command of the Covenant. The Covenant Navy had been reborn anew, Quarian ships brought back to Altis and being reformed, reshaped with pieces of the Long Night of Solace until they were wearing the shell of the Covenant, superior now to the rest of the Galaxy pound for pound, shield for shield.

The Ardent Prayer alone, however remained the lone holder of a drive able to go into Slipspace. The fleet that followed it had simply piggybacked off its threshold.

"They're having difficulties as well being able to reproduce their own drive, which is lucky for us." Cleft-Lip muttered to Shepard as he and she stood on the landing pads of FOB Alpha, awaiting transport up. Hirano, too, had been there with her squad of Marines.

"Lucky us." Garrus had been dressed in as formal a wear he could gather as well, by her side. He had been Council representative, brought out. He seemed so unfit, uncomfortable in it. His clan markings had been greying in the African sun in the time he's been here, but he hardly seemed to mind.

Shepard did level a small smirk with him as they waited together.

Up above, a squadron of ships that represented the Ardent Prayer's fleet held themselves in defiance of the void, purple and violet in their paneling. For as much strain as Shepard could, looking up into the sky at them, she wasn't able to keep her gaze to that far horizon. She was going to bite her fingernails into her palms through her gloves; blood drawn, for memories of bloody massacres. The image in her memories line up, so well, to the image of reality before her.

The Covenant came to Earth, and they came, to everyone's knowledge but hers, in peace.

They in the day before had said that an organizational meeting was needed for those in command, and Shepard, Hirano, and thus Cleft-Lip as well were called up to be the Alliance's representatives. It was cruelty at this point, but Shepard had taken worse as she stood there with two others also in Alliance formal uniforms.

A shuttle would be sent for them, the Sangheili on the static speckled comm had said, and so they waited as one dot of many shed from the Ardent Prayer, and flew down that distance, crossing over the cancellation zone without care, right to FOB Alpha. Those in that refugee city all looked up at this strange ship from a place so distant that even the universe could not contain it, and silence held over a habitation that had not been quiet yet in its existence.

It was a Phantom transport; its sides popped open as it approached, revealing the standard complement of a Phantom for security: on its open platform, a Kig-Yar had manned a plasma turret as a Sangheili, armor blue denoting their status as a Minor, hung onto a handhold, looking down upon FOB Alpha in one pass before it circled around again and settled above an open landing space. Out from it, its belly glowed a fog, translucent, the humming of the shuttle like a purr above the wind. In the circle it made on the ground contained the path down for one Sangheili, one known to Shepard and to Cleft-Lip.

Usze Tahamee stepped on Earth for the second time of his life, the weapons on either of his hip: a plasma carbine and then a silver hilt of an energy sword, untouched as he as Elites did lumbered over with purpose and even grace, towering over the three Humans and their bodyguard complement.

He was leader of Covenant Special Forces: the Shadows. Looking the part as he did, His helmet had been all-encompassing, leaving only two orange bulbs where there would be eyes for him.

This close to an Elite, the part of her brain, her memories, that had been Mai's returns in actions that could happen: She sees herself, taking a knife, throwing it in her left hand and into Usze's neck as she used her momentum to swing herself onto his back, taking the knife out and planting it at the base of his skull.

She sees herself unloading a full thermal capacity's worth of fire into him until his shield's broke and his head was free to pop.

She sees herself as a different beast, and returns to herself as her teeth grits.

Her thumb runs over her knuckles, and in that last year, her knuckles are now shined from the way they are rubbed. She doesn't remember when she started doing that. She hasn't even noticed.

Usze stands before her less than a few feet away, and there is recognition in his body language, something she alone can tell there.

"You are Shepard." He says as a greeting. Her name out of a Sangheili's mouth sounds full.

She nods, hand brought forward out of habit and out of the need to be normal. "Rear Admiral Shepard."

How many times have they crossed paths now? Three? The Citadel, and then Virmire? They were initiated, and that much Usze can recognize as his large claw reaches out and shakes once, his claw encompassing hers as best an approximation that his species can do. A concession of the society they were in now.

Admiral Shepard shook hands with a Sangheili, and then they were off. Usze had, as he turned away, expecting them to follow, left his gaze upon Garrus, also recognizing him. "It appears that you, Turian, have gotten a promotion since we last met." He stood still, half in his turn as he spoke to Garrus.

One year ago, Garrus Vakarian had approached him, Master Chief Jonathan-Jameson Durante, and Master Chief Mai Gul on a pursuit to find a certain Quarian.

How one year changed all their paths, and yet Usze seemed to remain as he was, unaffected.

"I work hard." Was all Garrus said, unconsciously nodding to Usze as he returned it with a stern noise from his throat, as if in evaluation of them.

"Come." He beckoned them all, and one dozen Humans walked across the landing pads to where the Phantom hovered, following Usze as he stepped into the light that emitted from its belly and was risen up.

Shepard stepped in first, easily, her physical memory not quite lining up with her borrowed ones, but more prepared than most to take on the first step in Covenant anti-gravity. She was pulled in one smooth jerk, all the way up before naturally her momentum landed her inside of the Phantom, nearly into Usze's chest.

He didn't move, and for that moment her muscles strained, scanning the passenger compartment, seeing over a dozen that her mind's eye called hostiles: Other Sangheili, like him, and Kig-Yar and Unggoy, standing guard.

One by one the rest of the Humans came up, Hirano the last, grasping her admiral cap on the way up, eyes wide and surprised by the motion. By professional conduct alone, she didn't swear as she let out an uneven breath.

"Easy, sailor." Shepard whispered. Hirano steadied her breathing, locking eyes with Shepard. Cleft-Lip seemed at ease, hands held in front of his belt near his waist at idle. No doubt a handgun had been tucked in his appendix as if any of that mattered. The Marines, she read their faces, worried and apprehensive, but orders were orders, and the Covenant were, in the end, supposed allies.

The last man had barely made it in before Usze nodded toward the direction of the cockpit, the Phantom kicking forward out toward the fleet. Most kept foothold, some stumbled a handful of steps in the opposite direction, but none fell. The Covenant rimmed that space as the gunner doors were shut tight. Cramped conditions, but this was a troop transport, and all of them there were troops.

Usze had kept his hand near his waist, scanning the compartment, head habitually tilting up and up as if smelling a stench none there could know except by memory.

"She's not here." Shepard whispered amidst the sound of the transport. None other of the Humans spoke.

Usze, faceless, froze before looking down upon Shepard again. "How do you mean?"

"Your Demon."

Mai was a long way gone and missing in that world from all but those that needed to know.

Usze took minutes to take it in, orange visors that stood in for his eyes staring down upon Shepard; the ward of the Demon that made it with them, this woman who had never lied, never failed in the light of her God, as the Covenant understood it: the truth. Admiral Shepard told Usze Tahamee the truth.

There were no Spartans there, hiding in shadows and the dark.

He let his hand near his sword rest, and he turned away.

The memories of Operation Uppercut survive in Shepard as some of the clearest, some of the most violent and real. They are her most lucid, and if there were any doubts to accuracy, they were wiped away when the Phantom returned to the Ardent Prayer above into that hanger that had started everything.

In that hangar, an ODST, sole survivor of his squad tasked to sealing the ship's troop holds from seizing back the hangar and the command deck, returned and found her: the Spartan. In her memory, the sound of a whistle; how they first meet, and then the rest.

In that hangar now, the Alliance and a representative of the Council stepped back into the light and were let down into a hangar bustling with activity before they came, now all looking on from platforms on high or from maintenance work on other transports and fighters. They all looked, and those visitors all had felt like condemned men and women, walking in that cavernous, alien place that felt more place of worship than a warship. Among Jiralhanae and Sangheili and Unggoy, there had been new faces too, visored and in suit: Quarians who stood there and worked with the Covenant.

The Quarians had, all but officially, joined the Covenant, and they stood there in vestments and in equipment not of this world. The Quarians that remained at large in the Galaxy stood at odds at a lesser few who never trusted the Covenant, and who did not answer the call as so many others did. Tali'Zorah, now Kell'Tass, was the antithesis to those here in the Ardent Prayer wearing the colors of the Covenant, in service to those that gave them back their homeland.

Here, in that place, was where the story of JD and Mai started, and Shepard had felt it as she kept a step to herself, and looked, and saw, the past of a man and woman out of time.

She went on.

There was no time to strategize or to talk about plans. Shepard and Cleft-Lip had outlined to all else that they were there on the Ardent Prayer to formalize the Covenant response in unison with the Alliance, because the Covenant had experience, as they said, with exactly what was happening here. They knew, and because of that, they would come to Earth and explain what they were doing, but not before then.

"They seemed overly busy." Nihlus whispered alone to Garrus's ear. "Something's up."

The Humans and lone Turian walked through, led by Usze, a path that Shepard knew already by heart: through the hangar, through the corridors, through gunnery stations where the UNSC Savannah was laid to waste, and then, at last, to a location of a firefight, and the bridge: It opened, and a Covenant ship at work had been revealed at its very head. Looking through the viewing screens at the vastness of Earth and the Anomaly, a single Sangheili, smaller in stature, but no less imposing in gold adornments, Usze going to her as a flick of his hand directed the representatives to stand at one side of the room's center before a holographic arrangement that reeked of command and information. The bridge crew went on, not noticing, not caring.

Fleetmistress Seylu Karonee stood at the head of the Ardent Prayer as she had for over a year now. She now stood alone in her stature and her history, as a Sangheili Shipmistress, a Fleetmistress no less, that had been in command of a Covenant not at war. First among the new ranks of shipmasters and mistresses that had been raised up in Destiny's Covenant. The families and clans that had survived in all of the Long Night of Solace, the many Kaidons of the many houses caught in the Solace's sections that had housed entire societies reacclimating themselves to a shared Sanghelios, and, more than that, affirming their place in this new Covenant.

Seylu Karonee, of City-State Karon and indeed not the only Karon of the Solace's complement, had been the natural choice to become a Kaidon on Sanghelios, leading her people, but she had rejected the decision of the elders.

Her keep had been the Ardent Prayer.

She turned, gold armor shined, a full cape around her shoulders bearing the emblems of Destiny's Covenant and of Sanghelios fluttering. With a paused tilt of her head, she recognized Shepard, but made no other consideration as she went from the panoramic glass of the Ardent Prayer's bridge back to her gravity chair and sat upon it, the divide of a holographic display between her and the representatives shut down, but still a gap nonetheless.

At her side had been Usze, standing at guard and at ready for inquiry if needed.

Behind them still at the bridge consoles, a Jiralhanae stood with his hammer always near. He wore the blue power armor as if a knight at his post. He had ignored the new visitors, opting for the ship operations instead, as was his duty. Mercaius had become the XO of the Ardent Prayer, and for that, the first of the Covenant to serve in such a position as the species he was. He did so with honor and skill.

Karonee put much trust in him.

"Fleetmistress Karonee." Cleft-Lip had greeted, spoke first ahead of even the admirals holding his own cap beneath his arm. "We're glad for your arrival."

"Dispense with the pleasantries. Me and you, if not all in this room, are well already introduced to each other." Karonee flicked her hand by one of her jaws, her eyes briefly tracing over Shepard. "Am I to be expecting a Demon, as well? Her ward is here, after all." Usze twitched once in his armor, looking to Shepard briefly before assuming a neutral stance.

Hirano had worn her confusion on her face, slightly turning to Cleft-Lip and Shepard, but Shepard had answered first. "There's no reason to expect her." Shepard had said heavily. "She's tasked to other assignments."

"I see." Karonee slightly adjusted over to Usze, her head slightly shaking. Usze did not react. "It is a shame. Commander Tahmee still believes familial property remains in the Demon's possession."

"Is that so?" Shepard asked, looking to Usze.

He nodded, allowing himself to speak. "A sword. I possess several, and although on the battlefield they are weapons, tools, first, some do have history to them. The sword which I granted the Demon during the Victory at Virmire was a sword given to me by the one who taught me swordsmanship, and I have already made several requests for it to be returned to me."

His father, no less, but perhaps that had not been an important fact as much as the skills that he had taught his son.

"We'll make a note of it." Cleft-Lip had nodded once, passing it by. "Let's get to the situation at hand."

If Usze had been annoyed, his sealed helmet did not show it, arms behind his back.

"Of course." Karonee moved on. By her side had been a holopedestal, and when it had went on, a ghostly figure emerged, draped in the robes as befit a galactic leader: The High Prophet of Destiny.

The San'Shyuum, young for his species but now the most powerful leader of his Covenant, had stood on the other end respectfully, the crown of ivy on his head fully sprouted. He remained on Altis, as had most of the Covenant civil leadership: the Round Table. Altis and Rannoch-Sanghelios both had become center points for the Covenant, and for as much as it might've burned either side that a Human colony had become a center of the Covenant, there was no particular recourse for the existence of the Solace and its wreckage there, still closely kept and used by the Covenant.

He opened his arms once in greeting.

"High Prophet." Cleft-Lip had said wordlessly. Shepard's mind's eye burned. "We weren't expecting you."

The resolution of his projection hid his reaction. "The Covenant is not so vast and wide in its affairs that I cannot oversee it, especially in regards to such a," he waved his hand once. "peculiar manifestation." He looked over to Karonee, and she nodded, one arm of her propping up her head only to be click upon her gravity chair's console and summon up a representation of the Anomaly. "To whom am I speaking first?"

He knew who he had been, but he wanted them to say anyway.

"My name is Commander Lucy Cyma." Cleft-Lip started again, taking the lead with no able protest from Shepard or Hirano. "Alliance Intelligence." He motioned his hand to the two women and then the Turian to continue.

"I'm Admiral Hirano, Alliance 7th Fleet and captain of the SSV Enterprise, the fleet which you see occupied with the relief efforts in Kenya." Hirano gestured out to the world beyond the Prayer, in between atmosphere and space. The Enterprise, its grey plating, shined amidst matte blue lines in the distance, staying its position. Shepard had been offered to relocate to the Enterprise as a command center, but she declined. She wouldn't let herself be so far away from the problem, to remove herself from being able to see the problems firsthand. In the year that she had been complacent and domesticated, she had missed the world outside of San Francisco.

"Agent Vakarian." Garrus spoke up next behind the three of them as if cover, but pushing forward momentarily, flashing his omni and the insignia of the Spectres. "I'm here as oversight, the Council has not rendered official action yet." He said straightly, slinking back behind Shepard afterwards.

"And I'm-" Shepard started.

"Rear Admiral Shepard." Destiny spoke. "You need no introduction."

Shepard had been caught half into a word, coughing it back down as she straightened her blue jacket. "I'm glad to hear." She forced out.

"I could think of no other in the Alliance more qualified in handling this situation."

"Just… doing my job." She spoke to a target whose death would've justified a hundred Spartan lives. Destiny smiled at her.

Destiny looked back to Karonee once, providing her permission to go on, which she did, her tone settling between genuine business and her tone, royal unto itself. "This… congregation, has been called to make sure that all parties involved are aware of the context of this situation, this "Anomaly" which you have found yourself with, and then our responses. I believe the Systems Alliance already has its own report on it?"

Cleft-Lip stepped forward, nodding. "Yes, Fleetmistress. All data we've been able to share was sent to you twenty-four hours ago before your last jump into Slipspace. Your own definitions and knowledge base which you have availed to us have helped immensely."

Neither Destiny or Karonee dignified that thanks, but Karonee went on. "This data does point to certain conclusions to what we are dealing with, however if our hypothesis is correct we wish to change the diction of how we refer to this… Anomaly."

The air changed, Shepard felt it in her lungs.

"Of course, Fleetmistress. May I ask why?" Cleft-Lip asked.

"We believe it to be Holy in nature." At the end of the day, the Covenant had been a holy institution, and for that, they were beholden to it. "Our gods work in mysterious ways, and although that we very much understand that their technology, their fruits of their civilization do have practical use for us in our mortal affairs, there are times when those lines blur."

This was one of those times, quite obviously. Karonee went on. "We detected this event before the Alliance reached out to us."

"How so?" Shepard tilted her head.

"A presumption, at least, assuming a relationship. We detected an… ebb, in what, colloquially we now refer to as Slipspace." Karonee explained.

"An ebb?"

"Slipspace as we understand it in our own universe, has been a method of traversal for millions of years, and perhaps beyond that earlier. The plane by which it is done is… well adjusted to such travel. They are pathways that are accustomed to those of us with our Borers or equivalent technology."

Slipspace and its theory was something well shared by the Covenant. Akin to showing ancient cultures electricity, a moving screen powered by circuits and diodes: The results would be bare to see, but the replication? Impossible. At least in that generation.

The process by which ships, using a spatial dimensions tangentially related to their current plane of existence as a means of circumventing galactic distances, traveled made sense both in the literal and the simplistic explanation. The execution, however had been unique to only one ship and one ship alone: the one that all of them stood in currently.

"We've had to calibrate our Borer naturally, given our position here now." Karonee gestured to the ship abstractly. "And, given this, compared to data of this ship's own service history, which was no more or less remarkable than others of its class in its duties, we have been able to compare and draw certain conclusions about the scientific nature of your- this, galaxy."

"And what conclusion is that?"

"The dimensions which our Borer inserts into in our jumps is virgin in its usage by the way we traverse." Karonee spoke, actual cohesive curiosity in her voice. "The effects of our travel far more pronounced, and thus, any changes to this sun space are far more readily apparent to us." The difference between disturbing a sandbox which had been played in, or a sandbox with a near perfect surface, untouched.

"How does this relate to what's happening here?" Shepard urged her on.

"Several weeks ago during a routine transitory jump, our estimated time of travel was… vastly underestimated. We had initially thought it mechanical issues, however no such problems manifested in our diagnostics. Further journeys raised this same, delaying issue, but we could not identify any issues in the Ardent Prayer." Karonee spoke with confidence, knowing her ship, and the story which she told. Shepard couldn't help but notice it. Of this tone, of these words, they were not covered in subterfuge. This was a captain reporting on the events that she has been summoned to explain. "These occurrences of course have to do with what we know as reconciliation. Reconciliation is this sub space's natural capacity in a sense, or rather, it is the ability of sub space to settle itself and its waters after a journey through it. Given that we are only one ship, and even then, a fleet, we are the only ones traversing this plane, and thus have had free use of its capacity." Karonee had spoken as a sailor comfortable in her trade had been: with complete and utter honesty. "There is, has been, a massive reconciliation of sub space happening, and we are not its cause." A ripple, its origins so distant that it could not be identified, and yet so grand that it had affected them in their waters all the same.

She lets that statement sit. Even the CSO-super carriers, of which the Solace was one of, did not ever produce such a latent wave of subspace reverberations with it and its entire fleet. "Something has arrived using our new waters. Something massive." Karonee went on. "And it is no small coincidence that this Pathway has emerged at the same time."

The ships that surrounded the Ardent Prayer were of the Galaxy, Quarian in acquisition but now slowly morphing into the odd shapes of the Covenant in color. Each of them, despite their origin, had been subsumed into something wholly other. That was the promise of Covenant. The Citadel did not seek to subsume, only to arrange, to make tidy the many varieties of people that came to the stars. The Covenant sought to make those that came orient themselves toward one universal project: salvation.

Cleft-Lip and Karonee talks further on technical data, hypothesis of what she was saying as Hirano and Shepard's eyes roamed the Ardent Prayer, so different from any other ship there.

In Mai's memories, blood and violence. Shepard thinks, she knows, that she could punch in some muscle memory magic of someone else to send this ship to some distinct flight plan to its own destruction, but it had been a memory out of place, both in time and person.

Destiny had been silent all the same, a quiet observer, considerate, every once and a while glancing toward Karonee and they sharing something of non-verbal conversation, even through projection. The Prophet in Destiny, in this last year, had presented himself as the face of the Covenant if the Covenant had needed a face. He had been completely comfortable in the field of politics, avoiding the pitfalls of those species that came to the Galaxy, arose, and were quickly scooped up by those who had been long well-established. He was as the entire Covenant was: unphased by his new place, and every week he would broadcast out from the heart of the Long Night of Solace, talking of hymns and the religion of the Covenant; of forerunners and what they had left behind and what of the history of their own Galaxy.

Converts to his faith of the natives in this Galaxy did not number more than a few hundred outside of the newly arisen Kig-Yar native in the Galaxy and the Yanme'e; lost souls looking for something different, but they were a religion with all of its history, only barely less tangible than the Protheans. If anything, some had thought the Forerunners and the Protheans as the same, separated by a barrier that now had been crossed.

The Prophet of Destiny to most had been a quaint, humble religious leader who had been inoffensive and a new light in that Galaxy. Shepard knew better, however, as she always had. In Destiny, she saw war and genocide.

The year was 2185, and according to the Covenant, it had been a new age; the Age of Destiny.

"Our hypothesis is that our observance of the reconciliation, and the events here in Africa, are related." Karonee went on. "We only very recently upon getting information that your Alliance was sending probes into your so-called Anomaly, that we were able to surmise this completely: This Anomaly is, indeed, a portal into slipspace. When we accounted for this, the data which our own councils on this issue urged us to be as we are now: here."

Hirano had looked out to the fleet and then back to Karonee. "What led you to bring a capable fleet here, Fleetmistress?"

"They are necessary." Destiny had answered for his Fleetmistress. "Necessary for the course of events that we need to take on our Great Journey." The Great Journey; a Path left to the Covenant by their Divine Ones. By each step they took in another galaxy, it had been toward that great idea of ascension, to go where their gods went. And it, more than any, had been a truer religion than most, for their gods had been in the physical world and had left behind their implements. "This Pathway was created for us who, have not strayed from the Path, even though we may have found ourselves lost here."

Their language had been translated out to their faith, and in its holy bounds, flowery language, urgency had been no doubt lost, but even that tongue could be brought down.

"Could you help us understand? We aren't as acquainted with your inherent understandings of this world, Prophet." Said the woman who alone knew better. Destiny had lowered his arms and held them at his side as he looked to Karonee to do as Shepard asked.

"This Pathway has not been generated here." She explained. "And more than that: This cannot be made on its own. It is not natural phenomenon." Karonee shook her head. "Whatever has created this Pathway, it is here, existent, in this universe, and one of this magnitude? The facility, the construct that could do it? Massive."

"You think there's a massive object sent here via slipspace, to create another slipspace portal, because of you?"

Karonee had crossed her arms and both she and Destiny nodded across hologram and presence. "Lost as we are. We may not be forgotten." Destiny proclaimed.

"Forgive my skepticism," Shepard started and the other Humans had tensed. "But if that is the case then why over Earth? And how can you be so sure that it was made for you?"

Destiny had let the question sit, Cleft-Lip had tugged at his collar as Hirano more respectfully glanced between Shepard and the Prophet, but the Prophet seemed no more trussed by the question than anything, more casual than impropriety. "If our Gods had been so forthright in their messages to us in the generations of Covenant history, through all Ages, then the Great Journey would have been completed long ago. But that is not the case. What we are left with is faith alone, and for this long, if I may say, the Covenant does know how our Gods speak, even in the least of occurrence, the least of things."

"Blind faith, then." Shepard spoke.

"What faith isn't?" Destiny looked from Shepard back to the portal as displayed through either his own systems or the view of the Ardent Prayer's own. He seemed reflective, as his people were often charged with being. "Still, your questions are natural, I understand. We do not know everything, which is why we are here. Or, at least, a secondary purpose as to why we are here."

"Then what is the primary?" Hirano asked now.

"To go through it." Karonee answered with the metal resolve of a commander. Around her, a fleet that had been readying for action was brewing in plain sight.

Nothing had been new from the Fallujah and Commander Ryder, but the systems in place had at least stated the Fallujah was still operating, not entirely destroyed. It burned at Shepard, but she had to wait; it was no choice of her, the circumstances of her mentor's mission. All she wished for was his safety.

For all her ire, her hatred secretly festering beneath it, she was still who she was. She worried for them in that moment. "You don't know what's at the other end of that…Pathway."

"We are, this one year on," Destiny started. "Well acquainted with the ideas of an known unknown: That we are here, after all. And how could we have possibly known that this was a place in existence at all? Our arrival in this Galaxy was a fluke of action, and not the intended result of an action." The Solace was a UNSC target, and as long as it was dealt with, whatever happened to it was non-issue. None, however could anticipate the result of weaponizing a slipspace drive. It could not have been predicted at all. "A borer was used… recklessly, and it simply did its function: to transport whatever was within its purview to a place, even if that place was not defined."

So still they did dance around the nature of their arrival in this Galaxy and what they had come from, but no one seemed to care in those whispers of the war the Covenant had come from with some undefined threat that had been taken on their word that may or may not have been Human. The past was always the past, which had no bearing on the present, even in its course. All that mattered for people who dictated galactic events was the now, not the past and its sins or the futures and the failures to come.

"The data which the Alliance has forwarded us regarding this anomaly is rather illuminating." Karonee started, her words slow, as was typical for her species, even through the universal translator. "It would be a particular falsehood to say that the Covenant is familiar with this, although there are… aspects of it which we are. Our ability to traverse the Pathway is not in question, neither our faith. You are here because we recognize that this is of some concern to the Systems Alliance and Humanity. Nothing more."

"You don't have any idea where this might lead you?" Shepard asked head tilted.

Karonee shook her head. "It is not up to us to question, however we do have our own suppositions, fanciful thoughts, toward where it would go… The possibility that this may very well be a portal, a pathway, back into our original Galaxy is certainly intriguing to us."

"Ah, but do not worry." Destiny nearly cut off Karonee. "It's presumptuous to imagine that we would leave. We are all engaged now, aren't we?"

Were it so easy, Shepard thought. "Say," a thought arose in her. "If this is a way back for you, that you are able to reconnect with the Covenant as a whole, would you return with them too?"

"Of course. The High Prophets would rejoice in knowing that there are but more frontiers for which the Covenant to practice our faith." Destiny proclaimed resolutely, but Shepard had not been without her own wiles. She saw Destiny not as a prophet. She saw him as a leader and all that entailed.

"Certainly the Covenant here hasn't already made certain concessions that the rest would find questionable?" A rhetorical question from Shepard, one answered by they being there at all. Destiny and Karonee had silenced for a moment as Karonee turned away to attend to the ship in some miscellaneous, seemingly invisible affair as Destiny alone fielded that question.

His long fingers tapped along his own arms cloaked in long billowing red sleeves. "The Covenant is not… intractable. As we have been here, we are simply an extension of them, and circumstances that surround you will spare- will illuminate High Charity. I am well in concert with the High Prophet of Regret, after all."

The spook and the captain of the Enterprise found them under an unsayable, unknowable union of being at the wing of Shepard despite themselves as important peoples who held their own responsibilities. They were beholden to Shepard and Shepard alone in their formation. They did not dare speak up. Garrus had been long used to it, and he a free man at this point from it, yet still binded to her. He bid his own silence as he looked around the room as a soldier like him did, ascertaining situations and what-if battles.

"Me and my compatriots here today for the singular purpose of seeing how the Covenant can assist us with this Pathway, expressly: the removal of it. Is that something you can do? Will going through that Pathway make our current situation here in Kenya worse?" Shepard moved along, her hands at her back and shoulders squared. If the Covenant wanted to go into the void, that had been their own prerogative, and she wouldn't stop them in the end, but what she had been charged to do was handle the situation there in Kenya and Kenya alone. The affairs of anything else had once been hers, but now she had been focused down, brought to heel. If nothing else, she was a good dog of the Alliance like that in the end as per her duties to Humanity through them. "Millions of people are displaced from their homes because of it. Something needs to be done to it."

"As we said, we are not familiar with the Pathway expressly anymore than you, however, the place of its generation is more likely than not also the place where it can be controlled. So the solution to your predicament is more than likely our desire as well." Karonee spoke to Shepard but Destiny had chuckled.

"As is the nature of our Gods. Their truth is the same truth for all. Perhaps then would you accept that perhaps that this is now a permanent fixture above your planet?"

"That's not something we'd accept at all, unfortunately." Shepard had straightened her back, her entire form going rigid. "This phenomena has resulted in a Humanitarian crisis and is blocking out eezo usage throughout a wide, wide area. Even here I can feel it." She could feel it in her blood and bones and implant. Only by the lack of her own development of her powers did she not mind it as it lay, but for others, it was a dull headache, a debilitating numbness. "The Alliance's prerogative is to remove the pathway and to make this part of the world safe again, and if it is, as you say, opened by something, we have to find that something and close it."

"Shepard." Cleft-Lip had tried to warn, but it was no matter. Shepard had been speaking about Humanity's interest, regardless of what she knew.

"Humanity has been blessed by this." The Prophet responded. "It is such a shame that you view such an event as dangerous."

"Thirty-eight." Shepard responded, a number said on her lips that was more than a number with her weight.

"Hm?" Destiny posited.

"Thirty-eight." Shepard repeated again before stepping forward to the edge of the Earth in its hologram. "Thirty-eight people were dead in the first day when this arrived. Dozens more in the week after by preventable causes, further more still in the future, undoubtedly. Even though I have Admiral Hirano's fleet here as support this Pathway has created a state of affairs that could spiral to more deaths, needless deaths." And in her, she so wanted to say, to ask them what they thought one Human life was worth, but that was a line too far. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Yet she knew that answer already in her restless dreams of another History. The Covenant had known that a Human single life to them was no more important than a speck of stardust, and more than that, had to be wiped clean. "The Alliance, nor I, will sit idly by as we let this continue."

Shepard was used to making promises, beneath many of them had been threats that she knew that she could carry out.

"What the Admiral Shepard means to say," Cleft-Lip had taken a half-step forward. "Is that these events transpiring over Earth has a great deal of the populace worried, and the effect of that is not to be understated."

She felt her fingertips burn, her muscles shake, her breath vibrate. It'd been a long time since she spoke with her full chest like that. Been a long time since she spoke truth to power, or rather, Destiny.

The face of the Prophet was unreadable behind the hologram, but the two Sangheili, Usze and the Fleetmistress were rigid, unable to speak between themselves before that audience as they looked at each other than then to deference to the Prophet.

"Then do not be afraid, Admiral Shepard. This Pathway is for us. Not for you. Our affairs with it will be squarely within our responsibility and the Alliance can focus moreover on its internal issues."

"If you proclaim that the Pathway is for you, then we are engaged nonetheless, and thus we hold you responsible for these deaths." She felt it in her throat before she could stop it, fists curled, a billion dead within her. "This is Earth—the birthplace of Humanity, and its heart and soul. The Pathway as it is an unknown, and it scares people; it's killed people, and for the millions more that are out of the immediate danger zone it has displaced their lives. Even one death was too much, and Earth is not going to be safe until we know what it is, what's on the other side of it, and what we can do to mitigate what it's doing if not get rid of it."

Admiral Hirano stepped forward at Shepard's back. "I concur. Fundamentally this is affecting space transit over Earth, and we've already lost a cruiser to it." She cleared her throat, her voice naturally on the higher side, but command had given it its grit. "For decades we've, despite peace time, had entire fleets parked at the Arcturus Station because it's guarding the relay that leads to Earth. It's a natural thing for safety's sake. If this Pathway is another portal, a thing that would enable someone to come through? We'd have to double whatever we have at Arcturus and bring them back here. It's that serious: There is a point of entry here on Earth and that's not something we can take lightly."

Who's to say that the Covenant gods, their Forerunners, in a spiritual sense had not been real than that of the god of Christian reckoning? But reality had been regardless of Others. There was something true to the Pathway in that it existed. Shepard had felt the pressure that had always been there on her shoulders, the burden of an unsayable responsibility, alleviated in Hirano's solidarity. She wondered if the Admiral knew about the true nature of the Covenant. She wondered how many knew in totality.

"No one here is taking this situation lightly." Karonee sterned slowly, a hand of hers pointed a claw at them before they returned to her side. "But you should be wary of your position. Humanity is children compared to us." The thousand-year Covenant and the Sangheili had been among the first among them in the time-tested role of champion and master. Here, even before Destiny and Karonee, the old positions remained.

"And you, be wary of what Humanity you're dealing with." Shepard dared and the room had gone still save for the beeping and finger machinations of the crew, who they themselves seemed to glance from their stations at the Humans. The Marine guard had been rigid still. Shepard had always been one to fight wars for those who couldn't, and so true was it now, even in the smallest move, the smallest action. It was what was demanded of her.

"Prophet of Destiny," Cleft-Lip had seemed to plead. He walked over that distance to his side. "Forgive the forwardness of my more military and technical minded compatriots, but the relationship of the Covenant and the Alliance thus far has been fruitful, and will be maintained. So we can come to an understanding then regarding the Pathway."

The job of a spook was a hard one. Groveling, agents of an order that went behind all notice of what was right and moral in exchange for the continuing narrative of Historical control, Historical powers. She knew her part in it; her service had rubbed shoulders with them for years, and she had taken orders devised by them down from the Admiralty. The N7s were born for wet work, and yet she had fought herself into something else entire before becoming a Spectre. She had done her wet work, and after that day with the blood of the unarmed at her feet, guilty of sin by her judgement, she never wanted to do it again. Here, people like Cleft-Lip had made it their trade, and he had been good at it. The Prophet had looked fondly upon the Alliance Intelligence Agent. "I presume the Alliance would not stop efforts of the Covenant to set themselves upon this journey?"

"No." Cleft-Lip had said.

"And how say the Council?" Destiny pivoted to Garrus, quiet and waiting and observing. He had straightened his form as he was addressed, careful with his words.

"I don't speak for them. I'm only here in an observational capacity."

"Has that always been the sole capacity of the Spectres, Agent Vakarian?" Destiny tilted his head, his palms clasping each other expectantly. Garrus said nothing more as he yearned for shadows he had become accustomed to. Shepard looked at him, the slight against him felt by her. Hirano had caught her looking, and when the two had locked eyes, Shepard had leaned into the admiral's ear and spoke. Hirano had heard her words and had nothing to respond for it except to lean back and look at her with no rebellion.

She had her command presence as a rear admiral and always knew how to use the tools invested in her. "The Alliance will accompany the Covenant into the Pathway. We have a vested interest in its exploration."

Destiny and Karonee had bristled, taking in breaths each before looking to each other. "So scared of it, and yet…?" Destiny's inquisition had been unsteady, and before Cleft-Lip could intercede, Shepard went on.

"This is a matter that involves Earth, and that fact cannot be removed from this situation." She gestured to Hirano. "The 7th will have an attachment assigned to the Covenant as they move through the Pathway."

Karonee growled. "Humans. You are unworthy of-"

Destiny's hologram moved its arm to Karonee, staying her tongue. "In this Galaxy, the Great Journey is but a myth, but for us it has been our truth for generations. The Alliance speaks of skepticism and deference, but, perhaps, the best way for them to see the way of the Covenant is to set themselves upon this journey themselves. After all, if this Pathway is as we think it is, then, perhaps, our Gods are waiting for us."

"Prophet Destiny," Cleft-Lip started. "This is by no means an official measure, and that-"Destiny rose his hands and silenced the Human intelligence agent.

"We invite the Alliance, the Shepard and her allies, to come with us on our Great Journey. Perhaps there all will find their answers. Here, now, forever. Let us plan."

At Shepard's nod, turning to all, for better or worse, she let them work out toward such ends.

Hirano had gone to Karonee and the two had begun to talk candidly as fleet admirals had been known to do so, and there had been more familiar between them than differences but none could be worked upon in opposition. Cleft-Lip had made a bee-line to the hologram of Destiny and what conjuring and devilry of talk between them was something that Shepard wanted to keep out of her head. It was Usze. She took a breath, steeling herself for an Elite approaching her with such consideration, but there was a specific connotation with him. He had been the one marked by Mai, who, by all reports, had gone to her on Virmire and fought with her to the last Geth for his honor, and for war's sake itself. This was an Elite that fought with a Spartan.

He approached her, crossing his arms as he stood, towering over her not unlike how large Mai had been over most. "I would cast caution on embarking on our path, Human. It is one that we have known all of our lives, but you? You are children."

"You know more than any what Humans can do, and what we can become."

"Hmph." He made a sound from his chest. "I remember how you operate, Shepard." He flashed an omni surprisingly in front of Shepard, contact information requests sent off to her own on her wrist. "If you are to come I'd like to make this as painless as possible. Coordinate with me."

"Familiar with me already? I don't even know how to address you."

"Commander Tahamee is acceptable." Shepard had put it to her mind, to give an Elite a name. "Do not mistake my forwardness as allyship, but, of all my ilk, it seems that I am the one who is… "used" to working with you or your own the most in all our Covenant."

"You and Chief Gul were initiated more than me."

Her name pauses him before he answers, grappling with the fact that every Demon had been an individual, and she a person. "Every Demon had those that they answered to. This I knew even before I battled her, when she was yours."

"She's not mine."

Usze sniffed the air, looking down upon Shepard. "Do not be blind to your own ranks. Sin is among them."

If Usze had not turned away and gone back to his posts on the Ardent Prayer, she might've been liable to let him know she agreed, but his words had offered her thoughts. Specific thoughts, specific people. The next hour or so had been a terse affair smoothing out the joint effort to come. Hirano had done the heavy lifting as far as ships were concerned, and she had a great deal of synergy, or at least conversation with Karonee that Shepard had more than once looked longingly at. Once, perhaps, she would've been in that dialog, but she had relented and instead bounced between different Covenant section chiefs to clarify what they could expect from her effort, and their stipulations thereof. Kig-Yar and Sangheili and Jiralhanae all giving their two cents, all, save for their origins, not different than any other alien crew that she as a Human could've found across her duties. They seemed much accustomed now, either now, or maybe by the nature of the Covenant, that they had come to expect new faces, new problems. The last for her that day among the Covenant had been the Brute Mercaius. Karonee's XO for the Prayer. They both remembered each other from Virmire and their meeting there as eyes had been caught between them. He struck a large figure among the Brutes there, but not by size. He alone carried a gravity hammer which had been his own, and although he had not been a Chieftain, he had been one in all but name among the clans that came with the Solace. Son of the last Chief, left behind on Reach. He was different among his type, quiet and observatory, and considerate even. This Shepard knew by as she approached he had taken off his blue helmet, winged in the shape nearly like that of Earth, oriental origin, and looked down upon her with red eyes. His face had been smooth and well taken for, but bearing its own amount of scars, fresh and old.

"Admiral Shepard." He said with much respect, tucking his helmet between his arms as he stood at the con of the Ardent Prayer. Shepard had been surprised, but hid it well. "I'd like to alert you that with the Alliance following the Covenant into the Pathway, more likely than not we'd have to be aligned with this ship during the slipspace transfer. Be caught in your bubble that is."

With Karonee returning to more fleetwide matters, just as he had been technical chieftain, Mercaius had become technical captain of that SDV-class ship. The first of all he knew in the Covenant: a Jiralhanae shipmaster. First Human Spectre and first Jiralhanae of incredible responsibility stood before each other. Mercaius nodded once. It was as if he had been on her crew. "I've already taken the liberty and started calculating the limits of what ships you may bring from the fleet stationed nearby."

"Have you now?" Shepard had moderate concern about such anticipatory scanning and analysis, but Mercaius did not hold any hostility or scorn in his voice as the other Covenant she discussed with had been.

He nodded again. "Although drive systems in this galaxy are not able to independently use our methods of travel, we have been able to provide slipspace traversal ability to any who remain in this ship's manifold."

"Hence why Quarian ships that you've taken on could do so?" She looked out and saw them. Half-Covenant and Half-Quarian in formation, but to call them Quarian at all was a misnomer. To be a Quarian ship was to be a Batarian, Turian, Salarian, Volus, or any other species whose kind had sold to the Quarians. All of them following the Prayer as a fleet now despite no borer on their own. Mercaius affirmed, his shoulder barely gesturing. There was some pride in his eyes, but no other part of him shared it.

Hirano would stay with her guard into the night to smoothen and to affirm that this mission on Shepard's behalf would be assured, and as the Admiral and her Marines walked Shepard and Cleft-Lip out she had held Shepard's hand from their departure shake and drew her inward. "You stuck your hide out for me once." She said quickly, to explain, but Shepard could not say anything back as they pulled back. All she could do was smile and nod.

The ride back on the Covenant Phantom had been far more sparse, far quicker. The Elite guards all melting into the shadows of the shuttle, and when the two Humans had been deposited back onto FOB Alpha they had gone as if they never were, leaving Shepard and Cleft-Lip on the tarmac and again immersed in the sounds of a refugee camp and the Earth itself.

"Productive day." Cleft-Lip tried to disengage casually, but Shepard wouldn't have it as they both walked into the prefab HQ building. She stopped him at the entrance of the building, in between out and in in that African night where staffers who were traversing in those hallways adjacent stopped and stood at the ends waiting for them to pass, to finish their business, to not intercede. They heard nothing.

"I've gotten the 7th. Now I'm gonna requisition two other people." She looked into Cleft-Lip's eyes. He knew who they were, and his face furrowed stubbornly. "I'm within my right to ask for them." She clarified.

Cleft-Lip squared his own shoulders in his own type of resolute. "Master Chief Petty Officer Gul is predisposed beneath the Alliance Navy Special Warfare Group on internal security matters. Simply put, she's doing what she's good at."

What she was good at: the suppression of Mankind.

"You're using her, just the same as they did." The UNSC, ONI, all of them. The iron of a cosmic divide so infinitely big, and yet here a Spartan had remained what she was.

Cleft-Lip considered it, blinking several times before moving past Shepard, saying all the while: "When you have a tool, Shepard, you use that tool as it is supposed to be made for."

Garrus Vakarian, in the last three weeks, had been quite busy, but compared to the work that he had been accustomed to as a Spectre in that last year, this was, in all regards, a reprieve. For every mission on the level of hunting Saren, there had been at least a handful beneath that that, in any other intelligence service or special operations force would've been missions of a lifetime. Yet for the Spectres, it had been just another day on the job. In that year since Virmire, Garrus Vakarian had become a veteran five times over it felt, but still, he had remained himself. That tether, back to what he had been: a younger man, chasing that perfect, absolute justice.

He didn't trust the Covenant. He didn't trust too many governments and overarching powers to be fair, but the Covenant, baked in its religious connotations and greater purposes had special notation in his head even before the great truth that had been given to him by Nihlus: That this Covenant had been at its very ferment a genocidal force that in every other pretext, if they had the power, they would've conquered the whole galaxy through blood and force. But as he worked at behest of Council interest, who among them could count their races more own, dark histories as not comparable? At least the Covenant had been honest in where they came from collectively: God and religion

On a whim, Shepard had called for a scouting party led by her into Mombasa and he had followed, and on that night it had been raining in Africa. Lightning and thunder, black sky above, teardrops of Heaven that framed the Covenant above and the Alliance fleet in the distance. It was quiet in Mombasa, a city of its population forever alive, now dead, and left with a vision of abandonment as its automated future systems went on and gave it its neon heartbeat. In the night, one could mistake the Pathway above as a part of space, a starless sky, but at its intervals, it would silently breathe itself, and those in touch with their biotic powers would feel that slight choking feeling within them and their implants that would slow them down and bring them back to what they once were: men and women unaffected by powers that cast them as different, special. Shepard as she walked in an officer's field uniform with only a pistol at her side did so walk against this tide, but she didn't mind as beneath the portal, the rain had been stopped by it, weather itself bound and misaligned. It was raining in Mombasa and here she had a deference for the darkness that kept it quiet, kept it a world apart from the refugee camp she managed.

She walked before a great park and found a seat on a bench where a stagnant lake with its reeds and scum floated beneath ambient street light and it was peaceful, and she looked out on that surface and wanted that peace herself. With a hand signal, her Marine guard had been called to her and she told them to disperse, to give her and Garrus privacy. They accepted without question and went to the rim of that world beyond them and Garrus, offered a side by her, sat.

"You look like you have something to say, Vakarian." Shepard said cooly, lowly, half lost inside of herself.

"I always look that way." He tried to play off, resting his arms on his knees.

"Not always."

"You seem so sure for a woman who knew me only for a few months."

Shepard hung her head back, looking up above at the Pathway before just closing her eyes entirely, the rain instead offering that inner solace in distant patter. "I like to think I'm able to see people for how they really are pretty easily. I've solved enough of their problems to see their intentions, their wants."

"A judge are you, now?" Garrus scoffed amiably.

"I've always been a judge. Everyone's a judge. Everyday. You know that."

He was a Spectre, and he knew what he was asked to do, every day he carried out those duties and was brought as the judge, jury, and executioners of those who had stepped against the order of the Galaxy. Knowing someone's mood was something far lesser than that. He sighed, breathing deeply that urban air now wet with the world that seemed to come down on all of them save for that city, and then he spoke.

"We need you back in Council Space, Shepard. Your testimony could end all of this." Nihlus had been, as always, waiting in his head. Some days he'd be there, some days he would be absent, but Nihlus had always by an ear bud been present with Garrus in some way, the Turian having been well accustomed to a wider range of being now. Nihlus was not there at that moment then. Shepard considered his words in her closed eyes before opening them again and looking down on Garrus.

"This? End this?" She asked him.

"Yes… Well. No, not this exact situation, but the Covenant has a certain power over this. You can see that, can't you?

Shepard brought her own self forward, her own arms and elbows on her knees as those hands which have mended a thousand trials wrapped amongst each other and she stared at those callouses. "I've had one year to think about the Covenant, Garrus. And you know, and I know, that there are people in the Alliance that know the truth. Reasonable, intelligent people. Not evil bastards like Cerberus. There are people that know what you're trying to prove to the rest of the Galaxy and they've done nothing but play ball with them. What makes you think the Council will do anything that they haven't tried already?"

"Because it's the right thing to do, Shepard. Spectres can't do the work we do without the Council and the galactic community giving us our mandate."

"The right thing to do." Shepard parroted softly. "Saren thought he was doing the right thing, you know."

"Well it wasn't."

"I know." Shepard clarifies. "But what's right and wrong in this world is defined by people. Not powers. The Council really stopping you from bringing galactic peace Garrus? You and every Spectre?"

He had forgotten what it was like to talk to Shepard like this and Garrus had then felt very small, very wrong with himself, and for his time as a Spectre he had been more of an operator than a diplomat. Death, killing, was easy. The justification and the orders preceding had been harder.

"You don't think it's right to put pressure on the Covenant and reveal what they really are?'

"Oh I think it's right, but what will be done for it? What will be done to the Covenant that would make right what they've done for a thousand years?" And there is one answer there that Garrus is a part of: to kill, to go to war. "I want them all dead." She said, but inside of herself was a conflict that pained her to say that. She wanted them dead. Mai wanted them dead, she knew, she felt so strongly that it was the clearest particle of her that resided within her heart. "But is that not right itself?"

Word of Shepard's command had ran through the Alliance Admiralty like wildfire, every other admiral having differing opinions of it to her and making it known save for Hackett himself and Prime Minister Shastri. She'd always been one to ask for forgiveness other than permission, but a consequence of her being promoted to a rear admiral to get her out of the Galaxy had been that she had now that rank to throw around. Hirano had said no counter-order had come down, and that if it had been a mission set, it was a mission to be carried out on. Cleft-Lip had no words to say to her afterwards. He played by his own rules, his own game.

Garrus could not answer Shepard without bearing his own sins. In a just, right world, to believe someone better off dead was an insanity, a crime, and yet this was not that world and he had thought of many people he wanted dead and had seen to it that many ended up so. Doctor Heart had just been the beginning for him. But death had been a constant: a solution, a finality of problems brought to those that had deserved it by judgement of him, and those like him.

Shepard leveled her eyes up and opened them, and saw into that abyss. "I don't trust the Council, even with your word, Garrus. At least, not completely. Politics are too slow, and can be bent to whim by any who press in. There are people here who think the Covenant being here is good and I know they'll try to stop what we would start."

"Not the Council."

"It's not just the Council out here, you know."

"…Shepard." Garrus pleaded. "Who else do you think can do anything at all?"

She sat there beneath the dark of the world and thought a long time, and her answer, as it had been back then, was perhaps still now, even if she did not want to admit it, even if she knew it was an impossibility. Somewhere along the line, if she became herself again, if she was given a final mission, she knew she would find a perfect answer for an imperfect world, and all sins from two worlds could be subsumed into each other and resolved for all time. She hoped for a future, but she knew that she had failed it.

"I'm going to go with you because of my child." She nearly wanted to laugh the moment she said that, to reassure Garrus that she was still going to go with him. How many people had she taken on at their deeds that put the innocent at hazard because of that? Balak wanted Humanity dead for his own revenge, but she knew that of the many Batarians that followed him and knew that their children would by on their mind.

She knew of that one woman which Chief Gul encountered during their mission for Saren, Kelsie Oruma, who had in her misfortunes had to end up working with the Geth probably on some ancillary mission from Saren, and she had been dead, a gunshot through the head by Mai, because she needed this job to support her child. Of man's oldest reasonings, children are there of them, and she is but an old soul now.

"I'll go with you." Shepard reminded him, her voice dark and dry. "But that doesn't mean I've lost my obligations to the children at hazard now. Once we finish this, we'll go. I promise you. And from there you can find out what to do."

Duty, pragmatic obligations of a mission, they flash by Garrus's head. If he were Nihlus, if he were Avitus Rix, if he were like any other Turian Spectre, perhaps now would've been a good time to incapacitate Shepard and bring her to the Council because that much was at stake. But he wasn't any of those Turians. He was Garrus Vakarian, and he knew how hard it had been to be Commander Shepard. His mandibles, slightly flaring and closing in his deeper thoughts give his own inner turmoil away, but Shepard rises and touches his shoulder softly. She understands his lot, and so too she hoped that he understood her own.

With operations in Kenya steadily going and heavily bolstered by the 7th Fleet's resources, Shepard had left it in the hands of her officer cadre. She was going through the Pathway with the Covenant, and if anyone could stop her, it had only been herself:

She sat there in her office, a crate of gear delivered. Her gear. A sealed metal box that had sat in a warehouse not too distant from her but had been used that day after Virmire when she had shed the skin of a Marine back into that box, perhaps forever. This box, the faded text of the Normandy on it, sat in her office before her desk, and she had spent nearly two hours signing off on forms and confirming orders before she had finally gone to it, deposited by some logistics officers. She kneeled before it, her palms upon that dust where on a digital panel read her name: J.K Shepard.

"Come on, Janie." She spoke to herself. "It's just a box."

She flashed her omni, and with a hiss, that box opened, air as old as a year leaping free, revealing the contents therein. On top of that small pile of gear had stared back to her onyx armor emblazoned over its heart: N7. Her mark, her distinction, achievement, and parable. She was once one of Mankind's best, and here had been the clothing of such. She needed to see if it fit still, that she hadn't become as flabby as some days she felt, but she knew that the fear of finding out physically if she fit had not been the issue. The issue had been deeper. She failed her mission as a Spectre, and failed her mission as a commander. For her to return to Earth was a punishment on two parts: that quietly, politely given to her by the Admiralty, and then her agreeing to it. She was not the Shepard that had to be who she needed to. She was the Shepard, meek and ineffectual. Her hands had reached out and touched the armor, no dust having accumulated in that air-tight container and pressed her hands to that material she had called her own for years prior. This had been her armor: black and red and admittedly pressing upon a certain aesthetic that made her glad to wear it. This was the armor that had become associated with her for years following Elysium into the Blitz. If she was a Human knight then this was her Human armor, microfibers and synthetic coatings which let her go to war against the Galaxy and all those who fought against peace. N7 was a badge that told all that she had been capable of that and so much more: A soldier in an army that had gone from her all the way back to Odysseus and the war for Troy. This was a badge, and she had not been worthy of it.

But armor was armor, and where she was going, it was better to be than without. She, in that temporary room, dons what what had been her and she catches herself in the reflection of that room's sheen, barely distinct amidst the color plain. She is a woman in black, piece by piece, leg and arm at a time. Her shirt rides up and she feels that mark be exposed and it alights her senses; that memory that the scars she bore, none could be more deep than the cesarean that crept up her body like a snake. Gloved fingers traced that line once, and then not again. Not that day.

What she told Garrus was true: she wanted to know what had become of her child.

She tried to put her helmet on, but she was on the long end of a period without going to her salon. Long, red hair bunched up below the cusp of the helmet, and with long practiced tangle of her hands she had brought her strands into a low bun, tucked at her nape as she slid the helmet on and stood again as Shepard.

A bit tighter than she remembered, but it fit.

She remembered the fitting for this armor on Arcturus Station, she and her graduating class of N7s of which numbered less then a dozen, and each piece of armor had been pressed and crafted by the same armorsmith that had hammered out the shield and surface of each N7 since the first, especially the armor of Alec Ryder, who had resided over them all with the hint of pride he had often hid beneath a stony exterior. This armor had been there at her advent, and it had lasted longer than her ends.

She thought of the Old Man, then. She thought of him, who had his own legend, his own History, and how he had failed at the end of it yet lived on still. His tragedy had been personal and professional, and at the time, she had revealed what he had been doing with AI but at least understood why he had done it. Now, she had known his plight completely. Alec Ryder had been a father of hers, and the father's sins had never come down to her. The Alliance Admiralty would never have allowed it, but she had found her own failures.

The door to her office had been knocked. "Admiral Shepard." A voice called, and she nearly didn't recognize it until it called for her again. "Shepard, it's me."

She flared her omni at revealed with the slide of the door had been none other than a Ryder.

Scott Ryder, sister of Sara, son of Alec, Systems Alliance Marine assigned to QRF. Lieutenant beneath, and she had forgotten until that moment, with the 7th Fleet. He wore on his face that of a man very tired, despite his age, and in it she can't help but think Chief Durante has returned. She sheds that thought as a family friend instead returns to her. He's a man of his age: born into a galaxy where Humanity had been a member of a galactic community and the stars were ample and reachable and yet unforgiving. This was a man who knew what he wanted out of his life, but was denied all.

He stepped in, catching her very obviously donning her gear. "Oh. Should I go?"

"No," Shepard shook her head, approaching the Marine in his field uniform, reaching out and taking his shoulder, shaking it once. "Of course not, Scott. What do I owe the pleasure?" Lieutenant Scott Ryder had come on a personal inquisition, and she knew it on his face as the door shut behind him. This man, twenty-two years alive, had a front row seat to galactic History and infamy as it unfolded, for his blood had written in with his father. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Ellen- it's, I'm sorry. The Admiralty had me pinned after Virmire."

Scott's face drops, shaking his head. "It's okay, Shep." He nodded once. She led him to her desk, and he sat on the chair before it as she sat on the desk facing him. "The family knows what it's like when the Admiralty has you on their shitlist."

"I'm still sorry though."

"It's alright." He nodded again once before looking up at her with conviction. "You can make it up to us by telling me what orders you sent Dad on."

He didn't know. Why would he? "Scott." Shepard warned, crossing her arms. "What makes you think that I can even talk to you about what your Dad may or may not be doing."

"Well you and him were always very candid about your so called secret missions. If I recall he even helped you plan for a hit on a convoy of Cerberus scientists in the middle of day light."

She looked away as if it had been a blow to her, and in a way it was. "What's got you asking?"

"Over a week ago, he called in a few favors with Hirano and the Alliance Science Command, got me and Sara together at Arcturus. He told us that he was proud of who we became and that the Galaxy would be a lot better off if there were more people like us than like him. And then he disappeared, on orders here on Earth." Scott Ryder is a Marine, like all those that came before him. A soldier, simple, but more man than soldier at that. His career in the military was not who he was. He was his father's son in one part. He stepped forward and took her hand, and Shepard let it stay. She had known this man as a teenager, a child who had shoes to fill that had been historical in their place. She had known his family and known of its trials and tribulations and knew too that he had been to war against pirate raiders and that there had been no more rubicons for him to cross save for age and History itself. "Shep, I've never asked you for anything. I know this entire Galaxy seems to want to, but I've never. We didn't want to drag you into Dad's problems with the AI, we didn't come to you for referrals when we started our own careers, and even Mom, when she was… when she was passing, she didn't want to bother you on your mission against Saren." All this and more, and Shepard knew that if Scott, if Sara, if Alec had asked of her, she would go to them all the same. They were family to her. "But I'm asking you now, what is Dad doing?"

Regulation, confidentiality, what was right and what was wrong spun within Shepard's mind as she sat before the child of her mentor. Maybe another version of her would be better off, would know what to say without pause or distinction, but that was not her. So the silence between them carried off, distant sounds of the world beyond those walls rumbled; a shuttle craft arriving with more supplies and personnel, the murmuring in congregate of the refugees living in that tent city beyond her base's walls, and in that far distance the low hum of an impossibility.

Finally, she spoke. "You're assigned as part of the Enterprise's Marine Regiment, correct?" Scott nodded, and for that, Shepard would let him know this. "We're all going to be doing the same thing as Alec soon."

The words come out of her and she isn't quite sure if she's said them at all as Scott keeps looking up at her, but eventually he responds.

"Is he alright?"

In the control room, the quantum device that had said that he had been alive, and apparently still alive still, had not changed its state. Somewhere the Fallujah at least had been still operating, beyond the Pathway. She looked out her window at the black hole over Mombasa and hoped to divine more answers, but it gave none.

"We'll find out."

She sent him away after, saying that really that was all she could allow and that if she heard a peep of this from him she would make sure that he would never hear the end of it from her or his father, but the time was approaching soon where this had all been common knowledge and she would have to step off as a commander once more.

Cleft-Lip hadn't stopped her motions for this operation as much as she could tell. Maybe he had been hoping that she would be dead in this great attempt, this great journey as well, but if there was a course to her life that she could see, she knew that her death would be messy and take as many bad men down with her.

The armor had melted back into her senses like old hat, and so she sat there, closed her eyes and hoped for blackness and not a Covenant War.

Four ships is all they get. There would be more, but of those four, one is the Enterprise herself. Of all the flagships of the Alliance, the Enterprise had been among the most powerful. The very command center of the Alliance security operation during the Skyllian Blitz, it wore most battle stars out of any vessel in the Alliance, followed only by the ships of its own fleet. Cruiser Budapest and the destroyers Waterloo and Okinawa are assigned as her escorts. This budget had been of Karonee's accounting in the event that the Pathway had been one way and that the Ardent Prayer would need to manually make a slipspace jump back to safety.

There would be cross-pollination of the crew. Some of the Covenant on the Human ships, and vice versa. For that, it meant that already on the Enterprise had been a host of Sangheili and Quarians with their Unggoy, Kig-yar, and Huragok. Oversight for the journey to come, one that the Marine security chiefs had bellyached about, but regardless of the tension between them, what had been more absolute was the transition itself through the Pathway. The Covenant could be wrong after all, and to know that they were all in it together was a reassuring thought.

The captains of the Budapest, Waterloo, and Okinawa were summoned first and told of their orders and each of them had taken it differently. The Waterloo's captain had been ambivalent, an older man that had reminded her of Pressley, following orders as they arose and trusting the fates as they may be to his ultimate destination. Okinawa's captain had been quiet, not too pleased with the idea, but had trusted her ship and her crew. It was the last, Captain Trotsky of the Budapest, that had protested. "I'm not letting the Covenant on my ship."

"Mikita." Shepard and Hirano had summoned all the captains to her room in FOB Alpha, and Hirano had been shocked at Trotsky's protest.

"We've seen how they are out in the Corridor and the frontier. The Sangheili alone are shock troops we've never seen before. The zealotry of the Batarians with the actual tactical prowess of the Turians and the cunning of the Salarians. If it was just them I don't know. But we can't even account for the synergy they have with the other races of the Covenant. You're telling me I'm inviting them onto my ship?"

Shepard had nodded. "It's a necessary concession. I'm no more a fan than you about this Captain Trotsky."

"Concessions is how disasters start."

"All of military service is a concession to higher commands, Mikita." Hirano had a rapport with Trotsky. She had a rapport with all of her fleet's ship captains but the Trotsky had been in the same out of line as Shepard and could not be faulted outright.

Outside the Covenant fleet with the Ardent Prayer at its heart had been receiving bolstering forces from the wider Covenant armada, the Quarian ships now turned over to the Covenant reforming into a force bent on the grandeur that the Pathway had promised. The rest of the 7th had been nearby, watching closely this alien fleet above Earth.

The captain of the Waterloo had looked to Shepard, speaking. "Admiral Shepard, I have great respect for you, and I believe that we all share that opinion of you here, but I'm very reluctant to send my people on a one way trip."

Shepard shook her head. "It's not one way. Not with the Covenant. Besides, you've been given access to the reports of the mission Commander Ryder and the Fallujah have been underway on. The ship at least is still functioning."

"Still a lot of unknowns, admiral."

"That's what space travel is, Captain Hobbes."

Hobbes scrunched her face, the doubt on hers the same as the rest in different fashion. "I suppose just leaving the Anomaly here is out of the question?"

"The Covenant think that this is their faith manifested here. To leave it would be to invite a far more dangerous situation." Hirano advised, and that had been that.

"Still doesn't mean I have to like Covenant on my ship." Trotsky continued, leaving the silence between them all as Shepard formed an answer that would work:

"I presume that security considerations will be left to a per captain arrangement, Admiral Hirano?"

Hirano pursed her lips at Shepard's suggestion, considering, and then nodding. "I believe that would be prudent."

Trotsky had held his cap in his hand, a long sigh following before he had fit it back on his head, glancing at his two compatriot captains who seemed to either agree or urge him on in silent dialog. "They're bringing their own bunks."

Shepard had cracked a smile. "I'll clear it with the Covenant liaison."

Usze had been cordial over text, at the very least, prompt; he spoke over such dialog a being unused to that form of communication, but it had been his duty, and so when Shepard had asked for arrangements and crew manifests, he had sent 'Understood.' beneath each one and complied. Here in this world, she had been trading messages with a Sangheili, and if it had been a normal thing now in that galaxy, she soured at that thought. They were fine to work with as long as she forgot who they were.

The three captains had been dismissed after several more procedural points: what to expect, what type of forces to prepare and to make sure a ground complement for each ship had been ready to go on top of security functions. It would be insanity for the Covenant to attack them, but religion had its way around that logic.

"That's about ten-thousand sailors and Marines, Shepard."

"Hm?"

"Between the Big E and her escorts that are coming, that's ten-thousand."

"Small gathering for you, Admiral Hirano."

"No, but I imagine this is new for you."

"Realistically, they gave me a battalion's command during Torfan and after that I didn't want a command larger than a frigate. They knew I worked best like that so they never assigned me anything much larger than a Normandy, before the Normandy. Any bigger and people just start becoming numbers and objects."

"You're betting that many lives in trying to stand up to the Covenant." The captain of the Enterprise reminded her. There was a longer silence. Shepard at her desk had been swiping through reports on her data pad, but not reading, letting the question unsaid sit between her and the other admiral.

"It's Earth, Admiral Hirano." A fair point, perhaps the only point needed, given by Shepard. "Covenant says stuff can go through it, who's to say something won't come out?"

Threats arisen and always someone had to go out there to face it down. That was their lot as soldiers, but the enemy, at least, was always known. "Yeah. I get it." She said tiredly. "But I trust you. No matter what happens."

Shepard had stopped her swiping, frozen, knowing that type of voice that Hirano confided in her. She looked up.

"And you're okay with that?"

Hirano nodded. "Shepard, do you remember how we met?"

Shepard huffed once. "You tend not to forget the way a destroyer breaches atmosphere and smashes into a moon."

Five years ago during the Alliance counter-action against the Batarian raiders, the Alliance had put together a small fleet no more different than the one that had been gathered today to follow the Covenant in flight. At the moon of Torfan where the forward stronghold of the Batarian raiders just out of Human space, two years after the Skyllian Blitz, that Alliance fleet had gone to that moon and begun the process of killing every single pirate that had been responsible for the pain and suffering of Earth and her colonies before then. The pirates did not go quietly. Rail guns and mass drivers embedded in the moon's surface opened up on the fleet in orbit as Marines descended upon the surface. In that one-month siege, Shepard had been a ground pounder, leading Marine fireteams into each facility as they were blown open from orbit, but the Batarians did not go quietly. Ships were slagged, entire companies of Marines cut down in brutal hallway to hallway fighting, if the First Contact War had been an indictment of the Alliance Navy on its own turf then Torfan had been an indictment of its military offensive capabilities. The lessons learned from there had redefined the Alliance military, but all rules and all lessons were those that were born in blood, and so too had been the relationship between Hoshi Hirano and Jane Shepard.

Hirano's first posting had been on the destroyer New Delhi, and a shot from one of Torfan's defensive batteries had disabled the entire ship, dragging it down to the ground where it remained still to that day. Batarians had surrounded the crash site, laying their own attack against the survivors. Hirano, a lieutenant then, would've died as many did that day on the New Delhi, but as always there had been a hero, waiting in the wings, arriving with the calvary to save them all.

"You dug me out of that ship."

"You coulda dug yourself out. I just got rid of the Batarians."

"Batarians would've put me in the ground for good, and as far as I read from after-action reports, no other unit commander wanted to even try and break the enemy formation around us. They would've rather used us as bait to have those bastards surrounded in turn. But not you. Willing to bet you had a lot of people at hazard too then, but it all worked out, didn't it?"

"Don't you think that's a bit of a less than ideal way of looking at why you're falling under my orders, Hirano? Something emotional?"

"Don't you remember who you are, Shepard? You're the closest thing that Humanity has got to a champion. I don't think anything's changed. If you got a good reason to go, I'll go. I owe you my life and, chances are, if you're going one sorta way it's a good way."

What she had spent her life doing remained, here Shepard sees children of her own expressions and magnitude for the missions and war she waged and they fall cold on her, for as much as she thanks Hirano for backing her, it comes from a place to pure for her to reckon with. People owed their lives to her by saviorship or favor so great, and for all the galaxy's turning, those weights remained still on each and every person she came across.

In steel and in metal the Shepard had stood over the broken hull of a ship that once Hoshi Hirano thought she would be entombed in, but there lifted the great weight off of her and a promise that she would live yet: Shepard had made that promise to her, and it was not the only time Shepard had promised those that. But to Hirano, there had been no distinction from then to now and whoever else had been blessed. She was living, she lived her life best, career officer to captain to admiral of the 7th Fleet with no less than half a decade experience, all this owed to Shepard.

"I trust you, Admiral Shepard." Hirano had said with her reverence, placing her cap back on and walking out of the room to her own duties. Shepard stared at her hands a long time, those blue sleeves that denoted her as an admiral now.

Of eighty men and women she took to save the survivors of New Delhi, she had lost twenty. Right or not, blood was traded, and she had been the one who made that deal. Doomed enterprises with righteous intentions and yet still lives were ruined forever, no matter what was saved.

If for nothing else, Alec Ryder had been beyond that inky black rubicon, and he needed to be brought back. That's what she told herself.

It's not what she would tell the fleet that formed, the fleet that would go with her.

On one day in late August, the orders came down, the ships were put in place, and amongst a flotilla of twelve Covenant ships were a huddle of four from the Alliance.

"Nihlus is gonna lose contact with me for as long as we're gone, but he expects you back." Garrus had informed her succintly.

"Not you, Garrus?" Shepard posed back to the Spectre that rode up the shuttle with her toward the Enterprise.

"We're always expendable."

"Not to me you're not."

"Pshaw."

They went up together from FOB Alpha, her in her black N7 armor, and he in the gear that she had known him in: steel and blue, the markings on his face that of his family and clan. From afar one might've mistook them from a different version, a different pair, but in this world odder still had been their relation and their mission as the Kodiak rose above the tent city managed, above FOB Alpha, to the wide expanse of Africa rolling beneath them and then up further into the sky and out into space in short order to rendezvous with the Enterprise.

"Last chance." Shepard warned Garrus before the doors to their Kodiak were closed up to breach atmosphere.

"If I don't keep you safe I'd rather be dead than deal with Nihlus."

"I'm not out of range yet." Came Nihlus himself in both of their comms. "Shepard," he addressed her, cold and steely. "Remember what's at stake."

She didn't respond to the voice in her own earpiece. She only stared out onto the Earth from her ascending place and let it get hazy, hazy until the clouds below came to texture the view and then her eyesight could not beat through it. The Kodiak's door was shut and the two of them had taken their seats. Hirano had already been on the Enterprise and the Covenant, save for a few smaller discrepancies and procedural frictions, had acquiesced well to the conditions of the Alliance joining them on their voyage through.

Destiny had made sure that his Covenant let them.

It was an odd thing: to see Covenant ships hailing from Quarian acquisition mixed and mingled among the finest of the Alliance fleet, all beset center formation by the Ardent Prayer. This itself was a view, maybe, from a different world where none of the tension existed and all had been at peace and unison. But in Shepard's own mind had been two worlds at once. The fleet had made all the sense to her, and she hated it.

It was Hackett, finally, in those last few hours that reached out to her as one of the few powers above her now, and in his words still remained the shame for putting her to pasture. "Shepard," his eyes dipped below his hat. "I hope you know what you're doing."

In truth, she didn't. All she knew was that the Covenant were not to be trusted, but yet they knew more about what had been happening to their world. They needed to be followed, to be accounted for, and, at the end of that path she needed to know where her mentor had gone and if he had been alright, because by all indications he still was. Those old motions came up in her: that she knew what was right, what was wrong, and what she had to do, and that day it meant that she had to follow the Covenant into that portal, to pacify its danger, and to let History keep going.

Easier said than done.

"It'll be like the good ole' days, Shepard." Garrus whispered to her across the distance they sat. He saw her, inside her own head.

"Hunting down Saren was the good ole' days?" She rose an eyebrow to him, but yet she understood him already.

"The simplest mission I was ever on." He rolled his head once fondly. "Anyway, I'll be on you the entire time, that's what I mean."

"Been a while since I've had wingmen."

"It's- forgive me if I'm messing up this Human term, like riding a bicycle. I think you Humans have an instinct for it."

Shepard smirked. "I've never ridden a bicycle in my life."

Amidst that Alliance-Covenant fleet, Kodiak had made its way into the Enterprise, a flattened fin in some measures an equal to Destiny Ascension, at least on a flat plane, a grey angular shape like a flattened fish with blue markings denoting its allegiance. A definition of a flagship. The Kodiak had entered one of the hangars, the steel doors sealing behind them, atmosphere returning to the deck and allowing those sailors that operated without EVA or at least breath apparatuses pasture to walk. Admiral Hirano had been of them in the hangar, the Kodiak opening, and before Shepard, a procession of Marines outlining the path that had revealed Hirano at the end.

All bore salute, and Shepard had stepped from shuttle to hangar and had heard the telltale whistle announcing the arrival of the flag officer that she was.

She had arrived on the Enterprise with fanfare, and at first, she thought it because she walked with Hirano, the captain of the ship, but slowly she had been reminded whether she wanted to or not that she had been someone. She had been Shepard. From the Kodiak shuttle she arrived on to the halls of that carrier, men and women of the Alliance had all come out to see her, to salute her as she passed them by in her black armor. Here she had been like a prophet of History, and people had known it: that this, her return, meant that each of them was prescribed to some part in her story. The halls had been lined with Marine and Seaman both who wanted to see that she was real, that this was real, and in their faces she had seen in them Humanity absolute. In them she wanted to see herself, but long ago that reflection had disappeared.

She passed by more than Humans. Garrus had been the sole Turian at her side, and some had even recognized him as the Turian that had been with Shepard as a Spectre, but more of note had been the Unggoy, the Kig-Yar, the Sangheili, the Jiralhanae, and, at last, the Quarians. They had been at viewing ports and crew areas, left to idle, and left to be on hand for "greater cooperation". Of all of the Covenant, however, it had been the Quarians that struck as the odd members out. Known faces, known quantities in that galaxy that now flew another flag in exchange for a long, near holy goal of their own being attained.

The idea of great journeys had not been a foreign concept to the Quarians.

Some had taken to the religion of the Covenant, some not, keeping their distance as the Kig-Yar had been known to, but in each Quarian had been now the language of the Covenant in insignia and equipment, the shields and armor once only seen on Sangheili now being slowly grafted onto the Quarians like an evolution.

Somewhere in the Galaxy, Tali'Zorah, now Kell'Tass naz Aimer had fought against this evolution of her people.

Shepard didn't spend too much time investigating what had become of Tali in what little downtime she had gotten managing the affairs in Kenya, but what she did learn had put a cold lump in her soul. Tali had become a terrorist, rebelling against the very thing that reviled Shepard in her nightmares, in her dreams, and in every other pretense she couldn't help but know what Tali had been trying to stop. But how had turned her into a monster.

Cyber warfare attacks, infrastructure hacks, suicide bombings. All of these and more, Kell'Tass had turned to her own mutant evolution named the Morningstars.

The Quarians there all looked upon Shepard as she was led to the bridge, and in each of their visors, Shepard had seen another choice taken by all of them: a deal with a devil that had borne fruit, and now they were complicit in the Covenant.

In each group of Covenant Marine security had ghosted them but the divide between them had been present.

Of those Marines she passed by Scott Ryder in uniform and on duty and without a hint of their prior conversation he had been a well disciplined Marine and stood at attention with some of his cadre as both she and Hirano passed on the way to the bridge. Rumor of the orders had come down naturally, but nothing official, not until Shepard had her say, her announcement.

They came to the elevator that would've led to the bridge and she and Garrus and Hirano had stepped in.

As the elevator rose Hirano had let her sleeve ride up slightly, beneath it on her left wrist an analog watch, gold in color, on its face that of a picture: her family.

"Kids?" Shepard asked. She already knew, she knew Hirano by dossier already before that day just as a refresher, but she still liked to hear it.

Hirano nodded fondly. "A boy and girl. Five and seven." She gestured the watch toward Shepard, and there they had been, and they were very beautiful to Shepard. Garrus held his breath but could not feel any tension there as Shepard's face had been at a peace so unlike her, looking down on that small picture. "Layla and King." Hirano rolled her sleeve down, covering the personal object. "I met my husband before I enlisted, and the both of them they were born on Arcturus. I was too good of an officer for the Alliance to put me on the sidelines for long though. In exchange, I was able to get them a place here on Earth, over in Kyoto."

Hirano spoke fondly, without pain, and here had been an officer who had gone beyond Shepard's own parable. There was nothing lost in the end for her having two children, and something inside Shepard breaks more along that crack along her core. Things could have been different, always, but she could never always make the right decision.

"You call them?"

"I will." Hirano answered with a professional tone. "But I don't want to miss your announcement."

The doors to the bridge had opened up from the elevator and at once the XO had yelled out: "Admirals on the bridge!"

The difference between the Turian-minded Normandy and then the Human Enteprise had been apparent. There had been a hierarchy to the ship's bridge layout that had made the captain sit at the near head of the ship's bridge. Layers and stations, all serving one as opposed to that one being among them. She enjoyed the Normandy as it was then: that she was a part of the ship and not its master purely. Sailors and Marines all had stood at attention from their stations as there stood two admirals of the Alliance, and one of them one of its most legendary.

She was the one asked to do the fleetwide announcement, and, as remiss as she was to such pomp and power the military, life itself, was all about concessions. She passed them all as she walked the head of the bridge out to its sparse windows lining out, ahead of them that great anomaly, a black sphere, hovering above Earth itself. On either side of them, ships of the Covenant. Hirano's chair had been worn from Hirano's own sitting, armored hands touching the back of it for handhold alone. Hirano slid back into her seat, Shepard standing by her side as she keyed into her console and the XO had already been on the PA:

Another whistle, digital, calling attention throughout the entire ship as at once the XO announced for all to listen to an announcement by Admiral Shepard herself.

"All yours, Admiral."

Shepard did not learn where she had come across the skill to orate, to know her words and know which of them affected other people. If it was a skill of deceit, she used it as a skill of hope, of Humanizing awe and wow. Everyone loved a good speech, and, perhaps, she knew in herself that she did love a certain amount of drama. But that childish inclination was gone. There was no stage, there was no epic being written. All eyes were on her, and yet she still felt like a player in a story. She gripped the very edges of Hirano's chair and knew that her voice was to be transmitted to thousands, and she had done so many times before. This had just been the first time in a while where the rust of her was being picked off, bit by bit.

"Shepard?" Garrus whispered.

She took a deep breath, and then she was whole again, at least for now.

"Crews of the Budapest, Waterloo, Okinawa, and the Enterprise, this is Rear Admiral Shepard speaking. For nearly two months now, an unknown anomaly has appeared over the Kenya and displaced millions, and have resulted in tragedies that have never should have come to pass. The 7th fleet, in its entirety, has offered more than I can ever express, and you've all done so much in the name of alleviating the suffering of the Kenyan people in this time. However, what has happened here is not just a natural disaster. What has transpired is nothing less than an unknown, not seen since Charon relay was discovered." From behind them, all the elevator doors opened, and a procession of Sangheili emerged. Of them: Usze Tahamee himself. All of them wore his blood-red crimson armor, and they, like the predators of Sanghelios, had stalked that floor quietly, witness, observer, accounting. They came to Shepard, and she put her back to them, and she spoke the truth of her mission. "This anomaly, it is a portal, and we do not yet know what is through it, but what we do know is that if we can go in, something can come out. With Earth itself at hazard, we cannot let that stand. Our mission then is to go through it and find out what caused it and what, if anything, it may be a part of. Is this a fluke accident? Is this a start of something far more sinister? I do not know, but we need to find out.

"We are the inheritors of History. As Jon Grissom before us, we may not know what lies beyond this, but that does not mean that we cannot go. In fact: just the opposite. That we must go, that we must step up and make known what is unknown." She finally turned, and Usze stood, arms folded. She spoke on. "The Covenant say that they are going through this Pathway to meet their Gods. But us? Humanity? We're going through so that any threat on the other side of this Pathway will be left there, and the innocent people of Kenya, of Earth itself, can rest easy. That is real. Maybe more real than any God that might be: that people need help, and that Humanity will be there to attend to them."

He had no face, just his helmet's eyes. She stared into them and declared: "Humanity needs to do this. For the good of our children. For the good of all children to come and may be."

The Humans stood there, basking in her sound, from the bridge to every ship. The words of Shepard, how righteous she was, the mission they were on. Did they all know of her failures against Saren and what she had lost? Did they know what Shepard this was?

On the Ardent Prayer, the Brute Mercaius listened as his captain, Karonee, focused more on the operation of her ship. He listened alone and understood.

Usze Tahamee, a special ops commando who had waged war against the Humans as goal and as life affirming rite, stared down another and kept his thoughts to himself on this Shepard.

Hidden conflicts, forgotten stories, and no souls with which to sorrow them.

So she would fight.

"All crews," Hirano stood, taking the reins. "Your captains will be filling you in on operation parameters and the mission. Standby for Slipspace."

"Aye Captain!" The Enterprise called out in affirming unison, and the world, once frozen in attention, now flowed in action. Sirens rang out. Only Usze and Shepard remained still. Behind Usze: his own Elites, veterans of a genocidal war. Behind Shepard: Garrus Vakarian. Then and there, it seemed equal.

Comms across Alliance and the Covenant ships were connected, and the voice of the Fleetmistress ordered. "All ships, stay within designated range of the Ardent Prayer, lock velocity and heading. Verify."

"SSV Budapest. Locked.

"SSV Okinawa. Navigation synced."

"This is the Waterloo, ready."

Hirano's helmsman, the only crew member forward of her, had yelled back her affirmative. Hirano cleared her own throat. "The Enterprise is condition green."

The Ardent Prayer had only been less than 1/3rd the size of the Enterprise and yet it had been the flagship of that combination fleet, and with its authority that imperceptible bubble that erupted from its borer, the Covenant slipspace drive, had reached out at all ships in that area of Earth orbit. The Enterprise shuddered once and then no more. Directly ahead of them, the Anomaly, the Pathway, the unknown.

"Are you sure that that is what you think it is?" Shepard had looked back, and she and Usze had been alike in observance out the bridge window. Turian and Sangheili and Human together looking out toward a hole come bigger with every moment as the Ardent Prayer slipped forward and the fleet followed.

"It's not what I think, Human." Usze had held his claws empty out of reverence for what was to come. Closed fists were not how one was to walk the Great Journey. "It is."

Garrus had been at her shoulder as all stood and watched the darkness approach, an elbow of his bumping her side for attention. "Last chance."

The Turian was wrong though. Her last chance had been a long time ago.

A crewman yelled out a countdown until the ships had passed by the hazard barrier, which would knock out Eezo and mass effect fields, and when zero came, the ship again shuddered. The Ardent Prayer, however had kept them all aloft as closer they came.

None spoke, but there was singing. Not from any Alliance ship. From the Ardent Prayer a glassy canticle was sung, ordained, to distant Gods, distant Fathers, distant Forerunners. It was a song that was of a child crying out for parents long dead in their grave, only to realize that death was a different kind of ascension.

At the head of the front, most Alliance ships had been the Budapest, and it first slipped into the dark. Shepard's eyes darted to the side to look at Earth one last time and she saw her refugee city, Africa, Mankind's birthplace. It would do.

One by one, the ships disappeared until it was the Enterprise's turn. None could, or would turn away. That view, that darkness with their own eyes, was not removed from reality, and they too were not separate from it. It was there, it would come forth, and it would take them all. If only death even would be so certain and come with such a lead up. None that could see, did not do otherwise.

The Enterprise's nose touched the Pathway after the Ardent Prayer itself became fully immersed in it, and as they went in, they lost the light of the stars that had been burning for all that they knew. No great upheaval, no great crash. Just a shifting phase that took the outside world from them and put them somewhere else:

From the view screens of the Enterprise, they saw what had been outside: pure blackness save for the ships themselves. A sea without stars, where only dust and echoes existed.

As he had for every day for the last six months, Jonathan-Jameson Durante lays dormant in a hospital bed in a military hospital on Terra Nova. It's a unique hospital, it being filled with ghost stories, walking wounded and not-yet dead from the First Contact War and the black conflicts the Alliance had waged in the years since first exposure to the wider galactic community. People too important to languish away to history, and yet too proud to die were here; broken men and women that the great technological advances of the future they lived in could not fix or heal completely.

Lone survivors and vindicated officers, last stand subversions who had taken their piece of flesh from the world and had gotten their medals pinned on them even as the shellshock had rotted their brain. Space explorers who had seen beyond time and found the only thing left to see was an infinite starfield in their eyes.

Purgatory was a name, but this punishment was of mortals against mortals.

On Terra Nova's furthest reaches, attached to a military base, Jonathan-Jameson Durante waits to live or die, his body withering away as his mind is somewhere else.

No one knows who he is save for the people that put him there and then one very particular woman.

She herself lives on the military base in assigned housing. Her duties of the day range from explanation to evaluation of training regiments that come to the base, but it is an unremarkable job. She is known not by name but only by rank by those trainees. However, those are secondary duties. Her main duties are those that take her off planet, for weeks at a time, into the Traverse and where Alliance interests needed her to apply pressure. She does not want to leave, but she knows the deal she has made. It means that she returns to him, no matter how long those missions are, as she waits for him to return to her.

They tell her that medical procedures are being worked on, that the doctors that come in and out under her supervision and treat JD, what little they can do, are bit-by-bit helping him. She doesn't know, all she can do is let it happen. She has no other recourse.

Until that day, she sets out as she had her entire life: She goes into space on behalf of Earth and her Colonies, and then she kills Humans who step out of line. Rogue colonies, private ventures who seek their own dominion, terrorists. It was all the same to her, and they all blurred together, target by target, day by day. The galaxy didn't matter, not anymore to her.

Master Chief Mai Gul does not complain. It means she remains close to him.

She's back from a deployment skirting near the Terminus Systems. An Alliance representative who instead set up his own colony away from wider Alliance jurisdiction and promised a new, separate demesne for Humanity was now cremated, along with five hundred believers. The site of his colony was empty, like a ghost town. Men and women. The children were taken by her handlers. It was a three-week deployment, and half of it was travel. Actual fighting less so, if fighting was the correct word. More stalking, more picking apart, piece by piece, a whole. She doesn't even remember if they had at all shot back during that time she was on mission.

The techs take her armor from her, another sheen of new, onyx-colored texture applied to it for another mission. It's a routine process now. What had once taken her five minutes now is a process done in thirty seconds with a machine and rig now designed and made just for her operation. MJOLNIR is stored on base, guarded, studied, a being apart in a glass case where very few even knew it existed.

Then they take her arm from her. A prosthetic, far more advanced than any that she knew, the same color as her armor now and, if hidden beneath a sleeve, might've been mistaken as a whole arm and now the artificial mold of one. It is taken all the same from her. She doesn't need it, and none there who handled her didn't need a reminder that, if she did go rampant, her being down an arm would be preferable. But she wouldn't, despite herself, despite the cold emotionless affectation to her whose range went from affirmatives to negatives to elaborations and interrogatives on tactical missions or, when interacting with her own training classes, corrections.

Only with one man does she change. Only in one place.

After every day of her duties while she is on Terra Nova, she walks through several security gates into a cordoned section of that hospital, and there in a sparse, sterile hospital room, she smiles at the body on a liter.

She's home.

"Hello, JD." Mai Gul says. It's so quiet of her. She uses the nub of her right arm, tucked beneath a folded uniform sleeve, to quietly shut the door behind her into his room. In her left hand, she carries a book. It's older, faded, but on it is a simple title: American Sign Language: A Comprehensive Study. It has many note leaves coming out of it, all of them made by her. With practiced form, she holds against her body dinner from the base's mess hall, a simple table by her side where she deposits it.

Her hair is down near to a buzzcut, her eyes are sunken in deeply; her skin paler. She becomes as her forefathers and foremothers were: the Spartan-IIs.

He is thin, his body withering away. They shave him on a regular basis for sanitary reasons, and he is like a baby in this aspect. There is a window sill, despite the fact that this room is nestled deeply within that complex. The view outside, offering its saccharine, country blue and green glow, is artificial. The plants on that windowsill, however, are real; they get enough light to grow. They were Mai's additions to that room. Garlic and parsley and small little flowers that she had agonized over with her tactical precision, worrying for their death, for she had never done anything like it before. They are living objects nurtured and cared for by her by snipping and watering, and they are now one year on continue. She looks at them fondly, and then more fondly, she looks at JD as he lies. The machine monitoring his vitals beeps along a slow heartbeat's pace.

"This time-"her voice croaked, unused to even talking still, for she only talked to him like this. "On- on the way…" words outside of tactical matters had again become foreign to her. She took a breath, coughing. "My mission this last month took us along an underused route. There was a station there that we resupplied at. It was… there was… a family. A restaurant. An Italian family- They… I can just show you." From her pocket, she drew a small wrapping of aluminum foil and plastic. It was warm, hot from her usage of a small oven in the mess hall meant for reheating and it smelled of garlic. She unwrapped it, the crinkling sounds so delicate by her hands as she unveiled a small portion of bread in little knots. "I liked this, I liked it a lot."

She admitted, looking to his face for any response. It was okay to her if there wasn't. She moved forward, leaning toward him, that knot of garlic bread in her hand as she brought it near his face, letting it stay and sit before she brought it back and let it rest on the table by his bedside. "I remember that… I remember that you wanted to show me how to make something like this and…" She led off, her words dropping. The air she breathed became very heavy, very cold for a moment, and then she stopped breathing entirely until something within her hardened. She blinked, her vision clear. She didn't know when it became blurry.

For nearly one year, this had been how she lived.

She spends her days here until, at the very latest hour, she goes back to her quarters and simply collapses on her bed, readying for her duties again. In those hours she spends there in the quiet she reads, she studies ASL, she shares where she had gone, what she had seen. Not the wars, not the battles, not the killings. But everything else if she can, if she herself could understand how to say and parse them. Some days, however, she can only do something else. This is one of those days.

She is shaking, her entire body with a pain that had been new to her each time, spreading from her heart and making her raw with a darkness that quieted all and reminded her of this: She was so alone.

She was so alone, and even as he lived and breathed before her in those hospital linens, beneath that blanket she had made sure was tight around him each day before she left, she missed him.

Mai Gul missed Jonathan-Jameson Durante. So close, yet so far. It was like a stake through her heart, monster that she was.

She missed the man that thought of her as Human.

She moved closed, moving the chair by his side and putting the table and the meal aside. She did not care for her hunger. She only cared for him. She didn't remember when she first started doing this, but it was something put to her a long time ago, before she became a Spartan, when she was a cold, poor girl on the streets of New Jerusalem, huddling with her mother. She leaned in, her head, her upper body resting upon the bedside, her both her arms reaching for his side and threading, holding, his arm to her. Her remaining hand had threaded through his own, and out of fear of breaking him, their fingers lay together limply. He was warm, she could hear his heartbeat. This was the closest she could get to him to know that he still was. She buried her face in the bedding by his side, and her forehead had touched upon his shoulder. This and no more. Any further and she would want to take all of him in, but he was a broken man, and she was that born and made into something that Man broke themselves upon.

This was all she had. For her service, for her life, this was all that she had.

This is her home, this is her comfort, this is all she wants, resting her head on the same bunk as he and feeling that faint ghost of body heat emanating from him.

She would whisper his name into his side like this, so small, so frail, so much like the child that she had once been, as if that he could be called back, to come back to her, and if she was allowed she would spend the rest of her life doing just that. But for now this is all she gets and her mercy, little as it is, is the way his breathing fills her ear, and his heartbeat matches her own.

It's nearly midnight when she hears the door opened to that room. Her sorrow is brushed aside immediately, and the chair she sits in is sent back as she stands immediately. She knows the routine of the nurses and doctors that attend to him, and none should be there for him now. Her eyes dart across the room to look for a weapon, but in the half-second that she lets that thought process, she finds none and settles that, as always she herself is a weapon. No violence manifests, however.

It's a high officer that walks in, stark white uniform, indicative of Alliance military honors: decades of service. He's a stern man just by his face, greyed skin and sharply kept hair. He's from the Alliance Army, she knows, her feet going to attention as he enters the room and lets the door close behind him. She looks at him expectantly, but he, instead, looks to JD on his bed.

"At ease." He allowed her, but she doesn't. Not entirely. He goes to his bedside, looking down on him, respect in his form. There's a name tag, a visitor's pass, even on a lanyard that pokes out of his breast pocket, but before she can read it, he pivots to her and tells her who he is and why he is there.

"I am General Oleg Petrovsky, and me and my benefactors have something that we can offer you."