may I get flower prompt Daffodil for Hannah please?
I know it’s taken a bit to put this together, but I finally have something for you :D Thank you for the prompt, and I hope you like it!
Also on AO3!
Daffodil: A new beginning
The two years that passed between the first call and the second had felt more like twenty. It had been like a pocket dimension, not apart from but beside her main reality. While Hannah had noticed some grays starting to glisten in her hair after the Battle of the Citadel, a shock of white now streaked her hair, a constant reminder of what Alchera had taken from her.
Not that she hadn’t known at least some of what happened after the attack. Right when she’d started to put her life back together, her eyes and ears on the inside of Cerberus had broadsided her with the news: Alli was alive. That archeologist had helped those terrorists to recover her daughter’s burned and broken body, and they proceeded to do unspeakable abominations to her.
“Han, I can hear you grinding your teeth from here, and I’m several mass relays away,” Dess’s voice called Hannah back to the present.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Sorry, sweetheart. I was just . . . Alli’s remanded herself to the Alliance. She’s under house arrest while a tribunal figures out whether to indict her for treason.”
“So when do you plan to go see her?” Dess’s voice was carefully even, but Hannah heard the question all the same. Are you going to see her?
“I . . . don’t know.” Hannah untwisted her hair and let it fall over her shoulder so she could run her fingers through it. “What if . . . what if it’s not really her? What if she’s a clone? Or worse, what if she’s not all there anymore? What if Cerberus did something to her to make her easier to control, emptied her out? What if she’s . . . not Alli, anymore?”
Dess hummed as she considered. “But what if it is her?” she said at last.
Hannah nodded. “You’re right. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
#
Hannah had been part of the Alliance Navy her entire adult life, and still, the brick wall walking her down the hall to the brig, his face gently lit by the haptic interface of the datapad he held, was a rare specimen. The tattoos, the muscles, the yellowing bruises and pale pink, healing scars across his face. She wondered briefly if those were Alli’s handiwork, but dismissed the idea. However bulky this marine was, Alli could take him down using only her feet if she really wanted to, and it would be a while before he could walk upright again.
“I’m glad you’re here, Ma’am,” the walking mountain—Lieutenant Vega, that was his name—said as they progressed toward Alli’s cell. “The commander has been pretty antsy since she arrived.”
That sounded like Alli. A wave of nausea overtook Hannah, and she had to place a hand on Vega’s substantial arm to pause for a moment.
“I guess it’s been a while since you’ve been on Earth, huh,” he said, his demeanor more casual than Hannah was used to. “If you need to use the head, it’s just around the corner on the right. I’ll wait here.”
She nodded and walked stiffly in the direction he’d pointed. By the time she pushed open the door, she was sure she wouldn’t need to make use of the facilities, but she’d take the time to collect herself all the same.
Running a paper towel under cool water, she pressed the compress against the back of her neck and closed her eyes. As she leaned over the counter, Hannah wondered if Vega had just been trying to be delicate. Was it obvious how nervous she was to see her daughter—her dead daughter, no less—for the first time in more than two years, knowing what she did about how Alli had become not-dead again?
Part of Hannah wanted to run to Alli, hold her as tightly as her body would allow, never let her go again. The other part was terrified of what she would find when she looked into Alli’s eyes. No one goes from death to life unaffected by the transition.
Taking a final deep breath, Hannah tossed the now-warming compress and returned to Vega, her hands only shaking slightly. No time like the present.
They walked the rest of the way to Alli’s quarters in silence, not that Hannah had said much at all up to this point. She was saving all her words for her daughter.
Finally, they came to a stop in front of what Hannah could surmise was her daughter’s door. “You ready?” Vega asked, his hand hovering above the red lock.
The door hissed open and Vega walked inside ahead of Hannah. “Commander Shepard, you have a visitor. Captain Hannah Shepard.”
Whatever opinion Hannah had been forming of Vega, his insistence on referring to Alli by her rank had permanently endeared him to her. He saluted, and Hannah returned it, dismissing him. The door closed behind him, and Hannah finally brought herself to look at the woman standing in front of her.
For a moment, it felt like she was looking in a mirror of herself from twenty years ago. Alli had let her hair go back to its vibrant red—or perhaps she just hadn’t had a moment to dye it black again. She had the same straight posture from the years of training Sana had given her, her shoulders square and her knees loose. Light scars criss-crossed her jaw and cheeks—those were new . . . and glowing? And her eyes. They were determined and curious and pleading all at once.
There was no mistake.
“Alli.” Though barely a whisper, Hannah’s voice broke as the tears welled and spilled freely.
It was a blur after that. Alli rushing across the room and sobbing into Hannah’s shoulder. Hannah hardly able to breathe as she held the child she feared she’d never see again. Tear-soaked sorry’s and pleas for Hannah to believe her.
Hannah stroked Alli’s hair and breathed deep, taking in her scent the way she had when Alli was a baby. It was a different smell now—standard-issue shampoo, sweat, and a hint of sweet pea blossoms, the same subtle perfume she’d always worn. She shuddered to think what Alli had been through, what she’d seen waking up lassoed to Cerberus’s whims. No amount of shushing or cradling would heal anything Alli had been through in the last months and years, and Hannah felt helpless to soothe her.
“Tell me everything, Starshine,” Hannah said instead.
And Alli did. The destruction of the SR-1. Lazarus Station. The missing colonists and the Collectors. The battle at the Galactic Core. Project Rho and the three hundred thousand batarians. Hannah had heard some of it from scant intelligence reports and her moles in Cerberus itself, but nothing like what Alli described.
“They want to try me as a war criminal,” Alli said as she swiped at the tears that had started to dry, her voice deflated and overworked. “But I swear, Mom, I did everything I could. It was either the colonists or the rest of the galaxy. Not both.”
Hannah squeezed Alli’s hands. “I know, Starshine. I know.”
A flash of anger came into Alli’s eyes and she began to pace the small room. “The Hegemony has had it out for me ever since Torfan. What they can’t seem to get into their thick, wrinkly heads is that I’m trying to save them too.”
Hannah sat at the edge of the bed and let Alli work off some of her energy. Alli never had been one to take a breath and calm down. She was like a hurricane—once she’d started there was no stopping her. All anyone could do was let her burn herself out.
“This Harbinger,” Hannah said instead. “Did they say how long we have?”
Alli crossed her arms and shook her head. “Of course not. But it’ll be sooner rather than later. And the more time I’m sitting in the brig waiting for this stupid tribunal to figure out which platter they want to serve my head on to the batarians, the less time we’re out there hardening our defenses and comm buoys and supply lines.”
“What about your team?” Hannah prodded. Alli had always inspired such trust and loyalty from the people she led. If any one of them took some initiative, they might be able to make progress where Alli couldn’t right now.
She let out a long breath, like the oxygen escaping a compromised air lock, and dropped next to Hannah, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees. “I honestly don’t know. Tali went back to the Fleet, and even if I was on the outside, I doubt I’d have much communication with her. Miranda and Jacob disappeared almost as soon as we landed to get away from The Illusive Man and his goons. Everyone else pretty much scattered, and I don’t really have a way to communicate with them. I’m sure the Alliance even has this conversation bugged.”
Hannah hummed. Alli was probably right about that. “What about Garrus? Do you think he still has contacts in C-Sec?”
“If his dad still worked there, then maybe.” Alli’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Dess could help him! Do you think she would pull some strings?”
Hannah bit her lip and slowly shook her head. “She’s volunteering on Taetrus, Starshine. She hasn’t been to the Citadel in months.”
Her brows knit together in apology. “Oh, Mom, I didn’t know. How are you holding up?”
Hannah shrugged and swallowed whatever emotion threaten to rise in her throat. “We’re not talking about me.” She reached over and placed her hand behind Alli’s head, pulling her close to kiss her forehead. “We’ll figure something out. I’m just so happy to see you, Starshine.”
“Oh, come on, Mom,” Alli said, a tone of embarrassment in her voice that belied her leaning into the affection. “You’re going to start crying again if you keep that up.”
Hannah chuckled. “Believe me, I’m not done crying over you. Now. Speaking of Garrus.”
“Mother, please,” Alli said, pulling away from Hannah this time. “I’m not a teenager anymore.”
“I met him at your . . . before.” Hannah still couldn’t bring herself to say funeral. “He seems like a good sort. A little confused, but earnest. I think he was taken with you.”
“I’m not talking about this with you.” Alli stood and paced toward the small desk by the window, color starting to creep up her cheeks. “And whatever you do, don’t . . . speculate with Dess, okay? She’ll probably threaten to break his mandibles if he hurts me or whatever.”
“So, there is something going on!”
“Mother!”
Hannah put up her hands in surrender. “All right, all right. I won’t pry. I promise.”
Alli turned around again, her shoulders visibly relaxing. “Thanks. I’ve got enough on my plate. I don’t need . . . distractions.”
Before Hannah could respond, the door to the room opened and Vega stood with all his hulk on the other side with an apologetic look in his eyes. “Time’s up, Ma’am.”
Hannah nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Just one more minute, please.”
He nodded and stepped aside, leaving the door open. Hannah stood and walked the few steps to Alli, putting her arms around her daughter one more time.
“Sometimes the important things look like distractions when you’re not paying attention,” she said lowly in Alli’s ear. “We have some very hard times ahead of us. So pay attention.”
Alli returned the embrace and buried her face in Hannah’s shoulder. “Thanks, Mom. I will.”
Hannah did an admirable job, if she did think so herself, of not falling apart as she left Alli’s room. For as dark as the future looked, a dizzying lightness had overtaken Hannah.
Oh, that fic is both one I’m very much looking forward to finishing and also one I rather dread picking up again. Not because it’s a bad or boring story, mind you! Just emotionally taxing. It deals largely with the aftermath of Shepard’s (Alchera) death and how it affects Hannah (the idea behind the title being there’s no word, in English, for someone whose child is dead), but that’s really just the beginning. The meat of the story is Hannah’s knowledge of and involvement in Shepard’s resurrection—which is to say, late, limited, and adamantly against but incapable of stopping. I can’t get too much further into the details without spoiling some late chapters of Family Resemblance, but here’s a snippet:
The image of Alli lying still and breathless flashed through her mind unbidden, and Hannah’s inside turned cold and hollow. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, inhaling and exhaling one slow breath at a time.
Keep it together, Hannah. Just get home.
How many times had she watched Alli breathing in her sleep as a baby? She could still feel her quick heartbeat against her chest. It had seemed miraculous that something so small and fragile could ever exist—and so frightening to think Hannah might one day fail in protecting her. Alli had grown strong and quick and even ruthless—a soldier in every sense—but that day had come all the same.
Hannah glanced up to see she was nearly to her door, and put a hand over her mouth. Just a little farther.
She jumped out of the sky car almost before it stopped and took long, quick strides toward the door. Through sheer force of will, she made it all the way to the kitchen sink before her stomach turned itself inside out. When there was nothing left inside her, she let the water run and scooped it into her mouth to rinse out the foulness.
Memories of sitting up late at night when Alli was sick came to mind, and her hand tingled with the feel of Alli’s fevered, clammy forehead beneath it. She’d been so afraid, she couldn’t have slept if she wanted to. When the fever broke the next morning, Hannah nearly cried. Part of her thought that if Alli would’ve had any siblings, Hannah would’ve handled those common emergencies more fluidly. But that had been pointless speculation. Alli was all she ever had. And now she was . . . somewhere. Nowhere.
Was she floating, frozen through space? Had she burned up in the atmosphere over that strange planet? Was she battered, burnt, broken—
“Han!” Dess broke through Hannah’s increasingly worse thoughts as she rushed past the kitchen, saw her, and hurried back. “Drescher called me and said—” she stopped short as Hannah turned off the water and didn’t look at her. “No.”
Hannah barked a bitter laugh. “You got it a hell of a lot faster than I did.”
For the WIP title meme, what's He Who Fights Monsters about?
Ah! I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about this headcanon before but here we go :D
So in ME3, Grissom Academy. It’s near the end of the mission when you come across a group of students holding off two Cerberus dicks with a homemade barrier that the lead student designed herself. There’s a lot of emphasis on her name, Octavia, and she’s also young black girl, so I like to think that was BioWare’s way of nodding to Octavia Butler—truly a giant in the SFF field. And where have we heard the name Butler before?? That’s right! Garrus had someone on his team named Butler. With as much as the Shadow Broker dossiers uncover how much Garrus does quietly in the background, I like to think Octavia is the daughter of the teammate who died on Garrus’s watch, and he arranged for her to get as far away from Omega as possible, to Grissom Academy. I feel like Garrus would feel at some kind of guilt or duty to take care of the kid of someone who was in his command and got killed for it.
Now, the title is a pretty well-known reference to Nietzsche: “He who fights monsters should take care he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” (Or something like that, I’m going from memory here.) I think that’s what happens to Garrus on Omega, which you can see pretty clearly with the way his kill list goes from clean and efficient to sadistic and darkly poetic. There has to be some kind of light, from my perspective, that keeps him from succumbing to a darkness so complete there’s no road back. And that’s where Octavia and her family come in, along with the rest of his team.
Unfortunately, this is my least developed story :( I knew it would be a fic that would take up all my attention once I started it, and I had other fics I needed to finish first. This is the only thing I have written for it (beyond outlines, that is):
The Butler girl was like—what was it Shepard used to say?—a bad penny, and her timing for turning up couldn’t have been worse.
Ah yes. Illium Holiday. Tbh, I was hoping this one would kind of get lost in the mix, but rules are rules :P
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s my first attempt at smut :D In fact, it’s not technically a WIP because it’s finished (heh), but I can’t post it yet because of other plotty things. Though, I suppose it doesn’t really spoil anything I haven’t spoiled here? I dunno, I’ll have to take a look at it again to reconsider :P
The gist: Dess goes to Illium for a much needed vacation and meets someone very interesting. Things progress from there. Here’s a snippet:
At the moment, she stood behind another guest with an exceptional waist—for a human, at least. And the way her dark red hair was pulled into a tight rope of a braid that swayed down her back afforded Odessus a view of her long and slender neck and strong shoulders. Not that she was into humans or anything. But she could appreciate the way her waist twisted and moved as she leaned and shifted her weight, right?
“Lines are the worst part of traveling don’t you think?”
Odessus snapped her eyes back up to the human’s face, which was now turned enough that she could talk to her over her shoulder. Odessus felt her neck warm and she fumbled for a response.
“That and lost luggage,” she offered, chiding herself internally for having leered so openly.
The human’s mouth turned up, and the corners around her sea-green eyes wrinkled. It was a nice smile. Friendly but in an easy, intimate way, like she’d known Odessus all her life. The human turned the rest of her body so that they could talk more easily.
“I’ve been lucky enough not to have that happen to me,” she said. “What about you? Are you lucky too?”
Odessus flicked her mandibles out. “I usually get lucky, yeah,” she said, and the human’s smile grew.
She put out her hand, “I’m Hannah. Hannah Shepard.”
Odessus took her hand and shook it, surprised by her firm grip. “What brings you here, Hannah?”
She shrugged one shoulder and said, “I had some shore leave to use or lose, and I thought I’d explore the galaxy a little bit. I took the names of a few places I’ve been curious to see and put them through a randomizing program. The first one to pop up was Illium, so here I am. What about you?”
“Something like that,” she said and flicked her mandibles in a grin. “You’re military?”
Hannah nodded and gave a little salute. “Yes, ma’am. Alliance Navy. I’m currently stationed at the Citadel, so it’ll be nice to get my feet on some solid ground for a bit.” Odessus thought for a moment the human’s eyes looked her up and down, but she was probably mistaken. “Where are you coming from?”
Odessus felt a small thrill go through her. “The Citadel. I work for C-Sec.”
Hannah cocked her head to the side, and Odessus carefully kept from looking at what the gesture did to the length and curve of her neck. “What a coincidence. We might’ve passed each other a hundred times before and never known it.”
“Oh, I’d remember you,” Odessus said without thinking and felt her neck warm again.
THANK YOU!! It’ll be a different experience not being able to go anywhere special for my birthday, so I’m planning on a mostly chill day, maybe getting a movie on Amazon, maybe making some cookies or a pie. We’ll see where the day takes me :D
When I’m a Sentinel, I’m pretty much always wearing Tech Armor, but besides that one, I wear out the Throw and Overload powers. Usually, I set up a Warp from a biotic teammate before I use a Throw. I like the explosion :D And I’ll use an Overload then have Garrus use a Concussive Shot for an equally satisfying murder :P
21: Favorite non-Normandy character?
It’s probably cheating if I say Hannah Shepard :P So besides her, I think my heart goes out most to Charr. He’s just so sweet and romantic and HE DESERVED BETTER.
28: What’s the most hilarious thing that’s happened to you while playing (a glitch, a mission that went haywire, etc)?
Most of the glitches I’ve encountered have been more frustrating that hilarious. But the one glitch I most appreciated was on Eletania when you have to chase a pyjack around for a lost nodule. Once you catch up to it, in one of the caves, there’s this one pyjack you can keep hitting that doesn’t die and each hit gives you Renegade points. So if you’re playing full Paragon like do, this is the perfect opportunity to fully max out your Renegade points :D
