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brightly shone the moon at night

Five Christmases in Olivia Shepard’s life. ~5k, G, includes references to parental death (not Hannah, she’s fine). [if you’d like background music] | AO3

one, mindoir.

Yawning, Charles quietly pads down the stairs, sidestepping the edge of the landing and the squeak that developed during the fall. He should’ve checked the weather before even getting out of bed – easier to plan how many layers he’ll have to pile on – but at some point, cold is cold, and they reached that point two weeks ago. At least the new heater Mark built for his engineering class seems sturdy enough for the chicken coop, even in the snow and subzero temperatures.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs and turns toward the kitchen to start coffee, but pauses with his hand hovering over the coffee maker. It isn’t nearly as dark as 3:30am should be: the kitchen lights shine into Mark’s room if the door hasn’t shut just right, so they turned off the motion sensors until he has a chance to fix his son’s door. He starts the coffee maker and, suppressing a yawn, looks around. His brow furrows when he looks into the living room.

The Christmas tree is on. And there are two mismatched socked feet sticking out from underneath it.

As the coffee maker burbles to life, Charles walks over, nudges a few gifts out of the way, and lies down next to his daughter. “Morning,” he says quietly. He follows Olivia’s line of sight up into the tree, smiling at the sparkling white lights Hannah carefully threaded through the branches.

Olivia huffs the kind of quiet little sigh only possible from nine-year olds.

He turns his head to look at her. His children are early risers, but 3:30 is pushing it. “You okay?”

She sighs again. “I didn’t get my homework done,” she admits, a twinge of guilt in her voice. She covers a yawn, and doesn’t take her eyes away from the lights and glittering ornaments above.

Charles knows that tone. What she means is I couldn’t get my homework done. “That’s okay,” he assures her. School’s almost over for the winter, one more missing assignment won’t matter. And if any of her teachers decide to say something about it, there isn’t a single one of them he wouldn’t fight on his daughter’s behalf. There’s an Alliance ship due in January with supplies; he and Hannah have already decided to have the ship doctor work with Olivia. They both have their suspicions about why she’s having trouble reading, but an official diagnosis would open a few doors. “Can I help?”

Shaking her head, Olivia scoots closer to him. Charles takes the hint and lifts his arm, letting her cuddle into his side. He brushes her hair out of her eyes and kisses the top of her head. “I love you,” he says, hugging her close. She nods and rests her head on his shoulder.

They lie side by side in silence for a while. Charles lets his eyes drift out of focus, turning the tree above into a blur of white lights and shiny smears of color. Water runs through the pipes from upstairs – Hannah’s awake. “We should get up before your mom comes down. She’ll think we’ve finally lost our minds.”

Olivia giggles and sits up with him. He stands and offers her his hand, then tugs her up and into a tight hug. “You’re my favorite daughter,” he says.

“I’m your only daughter,” she points out, hugging him in return.

“Yeah,” he grins as she steps back, “but I don’t have to like you,” he teases lightly.

She scrunches up her nose and, after a moment, sticks her tongue out him.

Charles laughs. “Do you want to help with the chickens?” He doesn’t need the assistance, though Hannah does need a truly tremendous number of eggs for today, but Olivia doesn’t look like she’s interested in trying to go back to sleep yet.

“Yeah,” she nods.

“Go get bundled up,” he says, and then heads into the kitchen for at least a sip of coffee before he has to pile on three layers of warmth.

The snow’s deep enough outside that he goes first so Olivia can step in his footprints. He keeps his stride shorter in deference to her nine-year-old legs, and holds the coop door open for her. Olivia makes quick work of collecting all the eggs while he feeds the chickens, changes their water, and checks the heater.

He lets Olivia go first on the way back, smiling into his scarf as she carefully steps in his footprints in the snow. Cold moonlight glitters over the ice that’s covered the trees and the vines, but warm welcoming candlelight shines from every window in their house.

“Thanks for your help,” he tells Olivia once they’re back inside.

Tugging off her purple hat, Olivia smiles up at him, a happy smile a billion miles away from the sigh she gave him earlier. She wraps her arms around his waist, hugging him tight even through two sweatshirts and a jacket. “I love you,” she says, a little muffled.

Charles smooths out her hair, and settles his hands on her back, hugging his daughter close. “I love you too, Liv.”

two, citadel.

Olivia glares at the stove, and her third attempt at toffee. It goes into the matter recycler with the other two, but at least she didn’t set off the smoke alarm this time.

“This is not difficult,” she mutters, rising up on her toes as she scrubs at the burnt bits. They only have one saucepan, and she’s getting tired of cleaning it. Toffee is fussy, it was fussy on Mindoir even when she knew all the quirks of the stove, but it’s never made her want to throw the pan out the window before.

Well. It did last year, but that’s because it was smoking so bad she genuinely thought it would catch fire, and the kitchen window was conveniently open. After staring at her for a minute, Mark told her to try out for softball in the spring, and then went outside to fetch the pan.

Olivia thoroughly dries the saucepan – even brings out a fresh towel, just in case – and sets it back on the stovetop. Lights and decorations went up around the human sectors of the Citadel over a month ago, and she’s heard nothing but carols on the walk home from the transit station for two weeks. She can count six brilliantly-lit trees and three menorahs in the windows of the building across the street, and someone’s gone to great lengths to hang garland and ribbons along the stairwells of their own building.

And yet, their apartment remains dark. No lights, no tree, no stockings on the wall, no wreath hung on the door with jingle bells that ring every time a cargo skycar flies past. No nutcrackers on the shelf or Santa figurines tucked into every corner, no candles in the windows.

She thinks the candles bother her most of all. She bought one, a little electric thing she found in a shop while she was taking the long way home last week; she turns it on every night after Mom comes home, but it’s not the same. It’s just one candle. They have six windows.

Sighing, Olivia dumps sugar back into the pan for one more effort. They don’t have a tree or decorations, Mom didn’t even ask what she wanted (which is fine; Olivia’s throat gets tight whenever she passes the Santa at the center of the upper Zakera shops, has to duck her head down and blink hard when she hears him ask a small child what they want; it’s better that nobody ask, lest she tell the truth and finally tumble over the same cliff her mother catapulted over six months ago in a small room on an Alliance transport), but it’s Christmas. And at Christmas, even though it hurts so badly to remember laughing while Mark dashed outside for the scorched pan, she makes toffee. Burning it a few times is part of the tradition, even if there’s no one around to see.

She’s spreading melted chocolate over the hardened toffee when Mom finally gets in. Olivia looks over her shoulder and offers her a smile, and not just because she’s carrying a pizza that smells wonderful. Olivia tries to be a little less sad on Tuesdays and Fridays; therapy days are hard for both of them – she dreads Monday and Thursday evenings so much she’s about to call it quits – but Mom always seems fragile afterward, like a gust of wind would shatter her into pieces.

“You’re making toffee,” Mom says, a strange, distant tone in her voice. She sets the pizza down and takes out two plates.

“Fourth attempt,” Olivia admits. She pokes at a particularly-stubborn corner until the chocolate finally covers it.

Mom laughs – it’s a tiny thing, more of a slightly-upbeat huff than a true laugh, but it’s more than Olivia’s heard in months. She bites her lip as she sprinkles toasted walnuts over the chocolate, determined not to cry into her candy.

“I was thinking,” Mark says once they’ve sat down to pizza.

“That’s dangerous,” Olivia says, out of habit. But when she looks up, it isn’t Mark sitting across from her – it’s Mom. “Sorry,” she immediately apologizes. Maybe she shouldn’t quit therapy after all – Mom and Mark sound nothing alike.

Mom simply shakes her head and smiles. “I was thinking,” she starts again, “this place could use some decoration.”

There’s a sadness in her eyes – but it isn’t the sharp, stabbing sadness of half their family just suddenly gone. It’s a dull sadness, an ache. Guilt, maybe.

Olivia realizes that her single little candle in the window isn’t as secret as she thought. Her vision blurs and she swallows hard, willing the tears not to fall. “Yeah,” she says quietly after a moment, “it could.”

“Meet you after school tomorrow? We can go shopping, grab dinner?”

The tears fall anyway, and Olivia quickly wipes them away. She sniffles, but manages a smile. “Sounds like a plan,” she says as Mom squeezes her hand.

three, thessia.

“I’m gonna murder this paper,” Olivia says, hauling the box into their apartment, “do you want to help me set up this tree?”

Liara looks up from her laptop with her brow furrowed, trying to figure out what one thing has to do with the other. “Where did you find a Christmas tree on Thessia?” she asks, standing up to help Olivia. The box is just about as long as Olivia is tall, which bodes interestingly for the rest of their evening.

“I didn’t,” Olivia says. She hangs her coat and scarf on the hook by the door, drops her hat and gloves in the basket, and toes off her boots. “It’s freezing outside.”

Liara looks at her roommate’s reddened cheeks, then outside to the snow that’s been falling for three days, and then back to Olivia. “That happens during winter.”

Olivia presses her lips together and stares flatly at Liara for a moment before walking into the kitchen to find something that can pry open the plastic box. “I ordered it from the Citadel months ago,” she says, coming back in with, of all things, a metal offset spatula. “Never again am I going for the free shipping option,” she grumbles.

“Is this,” Liara gestures to the box and steps out of the way, “why you’ve been living on noodles and coffee for the past two months?”

“No,” Olivia grimaces, working the spatula into the seam of the box.

For a moment, Liara considers videoing this endeavor, but decides she’d prefer the video of her at a karaoke bar for Olivia’s birthday not ‘mysteriously’ end up on the archaeology department’s internal website, so leaves her omnitool where it lies on the table.

“I’ve been living on noodles and coffee because I have five research papers and a thesis proposal all due within forty-eight hours of each other next week.” With a twist, she pops open one corner. “And because the universe hates me, I also have to present that thesis proposal in person on Christmas Eve, and Dr. Aridana can’t reschedule, so even if I could afford to go home, I can’t,” she growls at the box and glares at it. With one last shove, the lid pops open with such surprise force that Olivia loses her balance and falls on her rear. She sighs. “Hence the Christmas tree.”

Liara still isn’t sure what one has to do with the other, but doesn’t say so. She offers Olivia a hand up. Though they’ve lined up neatly the past few years, Serrice’s winter break just barely misses human winter holidays this year, and instead they have finals the whole week of Christmas. She’s heard no end of complaints about it from her human colleagues, though Olivia has been silent on it until now.

“Is everything alright?” She helps Olivia lift the tree from the box and set it aside, revealing even more decorations underneath.

Olivia huffs and bats her hair out of her eyes. “Christmas is…weird for me. I don’t know how I feel about it anymore.” She looks away toward the windows, and when she looks back, she looks a little distant. “I feel like I should be there though, for Mom. It’s five years, this year,” she says quietly, almost to herself. Blinking, she shakes her head, clearing her thoughts, and hands Liara two strands of lights.

Liara nods, and gently bumps her friend’s shoulder before she begins to unravel the twinkling lights.

After a few minutes of silent working, Olivia turns on some quiet Christmas music. Liara defers to Olivia on how best to string the lights up on the tree and instead goes to work on the garland. They don’t have a fireplace, as she’s given to understand is a traditional location, but they do have plenty of bookshelves.

While Olivia is shoulder-deep in the tree, Liara subtly types a message to her mother – would you mind terribly if I brought Olivia home for holiday? She doesn’t even have half the next sentence typed – an explanation of why she’s asking to bring her roommate home – before a response appears.

Not at all. I will make sure the guest room is ready.

Liara smiles and deletes her half sentence. You might also want to stock up on human coffee, she suggests, and then sets her omnitool back down so she can focus on the task at hand.

When Liara leaves her room later, in need of a slice of cold pizza and a glass of juice to fuel the next three hours of research, she’s surprised to find the apartment darkened. Olivia usually works in the living room, needing space to spread out star charts and maps, and she hasn’t gone to sleep before Liara for at least three months. Olivia’s bedroom door is open, and the little string of lights she’s hung up around the window illuminates enough for Liara to see that her roommate hasn’t simply tripped over her own feet and just decided to stay where she landed face-first in bed.

Puzzled, Liara walks down the short hallway to the main living space. She pauses at the edge of the room, wondering if she can get her snack without intruding, or if she should tiptoe back into her room and leave Olivia to her solitude.

Olivia sniffs and wipes at her cheeks, but doesn’t look away from the small candle-shaped lights they’ve placed in the windows. A quiet rumble heralds the heat kicking on, and warm air gently blows into the room; the Christmas tree glitters in the dark behind her. The hollows under Olivia’s eyes cast haunted, cold shadows against her pale skin. Liara wonders when she last slept. Olivia blinks, and the candles reflect off tears trailing down her cheeks.

Liara shuffles her foot against the carpet, letting Olivia know she’s here, and then walks over and sits beside her. Snow falls softly outside, sparkling in the lights.

“They’re my favorite part,” Olivia whispers, “the candles.”

“What do they symbolize?” Liara sets her arm around Olivia’s shoulders, letting her friend lean into her.

Olivia rests her head on Liara’s shoulder. “That there’s safe harbor inside. A warm place to wait out the storm.” She wipes at her eyes again. “We had them at the farmhouse,” she says softly. “The colony got battered by blizzards a few years, and Dad always opened the door for anyone caught out in the snow and cold. Neighbors, mostly, but sometimes transients, even people whose company he couldn’t stand.”

Liara hugs her and presses a kiss to the top of her head. The matriarchs have a similar tradition, though it lasts all year; she’s met her share of unexpected houseguests over the last several decades. “Would you like to come home with me over break?” she asks after a while.

Sniffling, Olivia sits up a little so she can look at Liara. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and nods. “Yeah.” A smile – small and trembling, but still a smile – quirks at her lips. “Thank you.”

Liara smiles in return, and tugs Olivia back into a hug.

four, normandy.

She has to hand it to her crew. Middle of a war, and they’ve still managed to decorate the entire ship for Christmas. Wreaths in the hallways, candle lights in every window (her doing, two nights ago, when her insomnia thoughts took an ugly turn toward something she wasn’t sure even her meds would be able to lift her back out of), strands of multicolored twinkling lights looped around cables and cabinets, an incredibly tacky Santa Claus next to the armor fabricator. A stocking for each member of the crew – including the aliens – hangs along the medbay windows, candy canes hooked on each one. Someone’s even found a Christmas tree.

Such as it is.

They’ve done what they can with lights and garland and ornaments (mostly weapon mods balanced precariously on the branches), but it still looks like it was the last one on the lot. Given wartime rationing and that fake Christmas tree manufacturing likely isn’t a high priority for anyone, Olivia would bet that it probably was.

“That is the most pathetic Christmas tree I’ve ever seen in my life,” Joker says, lifting his glass of eggnog in mockery.

“I can return it,” Ashley offers, light enough to be joking but with enough bite in her tone that she means it. She peers over the gifted baked goods from Hannah, and selects a snowflake-shaped sugar cookie. The icing sparkles with decorative sugar and Ashley breaks the cookie in two, offering one half to Cortez. He takes it with a smile.

Joker holds up his hands in defeat. “Hey now, let’s not be hasty. Where else is Shepard gonna put our presents?”

Olivia snorts into her coffee. “Look who thinks he’s getting more than coal.” Truthfully, she’s bought gifts for all of them. Some are practical, some are very not, and each of her crew will find something tucked away in their bunk or locker when they turn in for the night.

“It’s perfect,” James steps in. “It’s scrappy, just like us.”

Olivia raises her mug. “To the Normandy, and her amazing crew,” she toasts.

“The Normandy!” everyone shouts.

“Enjoy the party,” Olivia says as Ken turns on music and several brave souls go in for another glass of Vega’s eggnog. Christmas itself isn’t for another three days, but there’s no guarantee about tomorrow, let alone three days from now. Tonight’s a quiet night of travel, surrounded by mass effect fields and inky space as they fly toward the Caleston Rift in search of Garneau and Leviathan. They might as well celebrate when they can.

Olivia makes the rounds, chatting with her crew and politely turning down every offer of eggnog (she saw what went into it). She pauses beside Gabby, and stands quiet as the other woman says a prayer and lights seven candles on her menorah. She asks about family for the crew who are still in contact with theirs, and doesn’t for those whose families are missing or gone – she offers them a warm hug instead.

Eventually, she makes it through everyone and gets a refill on her coffee before looking for Garrus. She finds him leaning against the wall, apart from the others. Frowning a little – he’s usually not this quiet amongst their friends – she walks over to him. “You okay?” she asks, sitting on the table beside him. She bumps her shoulder against his.

He blinks silently, and the deep breath he takes immediately tells Olivia that, despite whatever he might be about to say, he is very much not okay.

But he doesn’t try to deny it. “I miss my mom,” he says so quietly that it’s almost lost amidst a very rowdy – and incorrect – rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Olivia quickly does the calendar math in her head – Alterra isn’t for another few months, but she supposes any winter holiday, especially right now, is enough to bring up memories of lost family. “Come on,” she says, taking one more sip of coffee before sliding off the table. She catches his hand and tugs him away from the wall and toward the elevator.

They leave the party to a number of teasing ooooohs, and she makes sure to walk them underneath the mistletoe. Despite his melancholy, Garrus smiles as she lifts up on her toes to kiss him. She squeaks a little in surprise as he dips her low to the sound of cheers and a few wolf whistles.

“Have fun and don’t trash the ship, please,” Olivia calls before rounding the corner.

They ride the elevator in silence, and once inside their quarters, she withdraws a wrapped package from her desk drawer. She’s also bought him the boots he’s been lusting after every time they walk past the store; they’re in his armor locker, shiny blue bow on top of the box. But this one is more important tonight.

“Merry Christmas,” she says, sitting on the couch with him. She offers Garrus the package.

He leans in and brushes a kiss to her cheek, and then turns his attentions to the package. She’s given him wrapped gifts before – last Christmas and Alterra, and a belated birthday gift once he was back on board – and he always treats them the same: like the paper is just as precious as the gift inside. She has no idea how he manages to get the paper off in one sheet, without a single rip: she has five fingers and no talons, and can’t manage that kind of delicate work.

Garrus opens the lid and sets it aside before unfolding the tissue paper to reveal the gift. He gently lifts the candle light out of the box. “It’s a candle,” he says quietly, almost reverently.

“Well, I was going to get you a garage door opener,” she smirks, grinning even wider when he pokes her in the side; they’ve been joking about that for a year. “But,” she settles back to serious, “I thought this might be better.”

Garrus looks over to the window behind their bed, and the two candles she’s set there. He looks down at the candle in his hands, and then over at Olivia. “Why are there two this year?”

She sighs, and tucks herself deeper into her sweatshirt. “Everything’s a horrible mess,” she says softly. An understatement. “I just wanted Mark and Dad to know I was thinking about them.”

He nods, and looks down again. “And so, this is for…my mom?” The tight, thin rumble in his voice betrays his outward calm: he’s far more upset about his mother’s death than he’s told her.

Olivia scoots across the couch toward him. She leans up and kisses his temple. “Yeah.”

Garrus pulls her into a tight hug and nuzzles her neck. “Thank you,” he whispers softly, holding her close.

five, citadel ii.

“She doesn’t talk much, does she,” Hannah says, more of an observation than a question, as she rolls out sugar cookie dough.

Olivia looks over her shoulder, and finds Nora in the living room playing with her brothers. Quentus, already almost as tall as the other two put together, places the last block high on the tower and crows in victory. Nora and Nico silently share a look – a look that, even from kitchen, Olivia can tell is nothing but a conspiracy – and Nico subtly shifts position under the pretense of stretching out his knee, and knocks the tower’s base with his foot.

There’s a moment where everything hangs still, and it looks like the tower might only just wobble, but then the whole thing crashes down around her children in a shower of brightly-colored plastic blocks. Quentus’ slightly-irritated subvocals vibrate through the air, countered only by Nora’s giggles.

“No,” Olivia says, turning back to her chocolate once she’s sure they’re going to start building again and she won’t have to break up another block-throwing fight. “She can,” she clarifies, stirring the chocolate chips, encouraging them to melt faster, “she’s just quiet.”

Hannah bumps Olivia’s shoulder with her own and gives her daughter a small smile. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

“And then that someone else you know ended up shouting at people for a living, so look how well that turned out,” Olivia teases. She doesn’t shout much these days, not in the sense of raising her voice to dalatrasses and primarchs and clan leaders who forget that they’re on her ship by invitation only, but she’s nearly perfected her tone of parental disappointment. She never uses it with her children, though it seems to be tremendously effective on diplomats.

“I think she turned out just fine,” Hannah says, a surge of pride catching in her throat. She swallows and rummages through a plastic box, searching for the star cookie cutters amidst rabbits and pumpkins and hearts.

Smiling, Olivia looks over her shoulder at her children once more. They’ve begun the tower again, but shorter and wider this time so they can all reach. She turns back and pours the chocolate over top of the set toffee she made earlier. She only burned it once, a personal record.

They work mostly in silence for the next hour, Hannah cutting out cookies and sliding batches into the oven while Olivia starts on another round of candy, until muffled voices rising from the basement herald the return of Garrus and Zaeed. Both women look up when the door opens, twin expressions on their faces of it cannot possibly have taken two hours to simply find all the lights. The two men stop in their tracks, Zaeed half-in-half-out of the doorway, and Garrus trying to hide behind him on the stairs below. Neither one of them are carrying anything at all.

Olivia breaks first. “What password did you change?”

“That was one time,” Zaeed says, defending both of them.

“It was my coffeemaker. It exploded.”

“I heart Garrus isn’t a difficult password,” Garrus says.

The corner of her mouth quirks up in a grin she’s trying very hard to hold back; they’ve held this exchange countless times in the last ten years. “It is when the keyboard in question doesn’t have an emoji setting.”

“It was voice-activated.”

“Well, your instructions were unclear.”

Hannah clears her throat. “Weren’t you two supposed to be getting the lights?”

Garrus and Zaeed share a look, and sheepishly retreat back down the stairs.

Much later, once cookies are iced and lights are hung and candles placed in the windows, and once everyone else is asleep, Olivia brushes a kiss to Garrus’ mandible, and sneaks out of their bedroom and downstairs. Despite her quiet, frustrated requests to the stars, the galaxy does not come to a halt just because it’s Christmas; her office released an updated relay repair schedule earlier this week, and she’d promised her staff she’d keep an eye on her email in case there was any resistance to the new schedule order.

She stops on the landing and smiles softly. The glass has shifted to nighttime mode, blocking most of the ambient light outside, and the candles shine bright in the windows – one in each, except for the window on the end, holding three. A quiet noise draws her attention toward the Christmas tree, casting soft warm light over the living room.

Three pairs of feet – two turian, one human with mismatched socks between them – stick out from underneath the tree.

Her smile widens as she walks the rest of the way down the stairs, and turns toward the tree instead of her office. The galaxy can wait half an hour.

“Enjoying the view?” she asks her children. Quentus scoots over, making room, and she lies down between him and Nora.

“It’s really pretty this year,” Nico says, looking up through the branches.

She reaches an arm around Nora to rest her hand on Nico’s shoulder. She gives him a squeeze, and his subvocals rumble happily. Quentus nudges her arm and she lifts it, letting her eldest son scoot in close; his crest has started to grow out, he might not be able to lie on his back like this next year. Nora makes a content little snuffle and cuddles into her side, eyes wide and fascinated by the lights and shiny ornaments of her first tree.

“I love you,” she whispers after a while. She presses a soft kiss to Nora’s and then Quentus’ forehead. Her engagement and wedding rings glitter and shine in the lights as she squeezes Nico’s shoulder again.

“Love you too, Mom,” Quentus says, and the other two echo him.

Nora yawns twice in a row, but Olivia decides they can all lie here for a little longer. She looks up at the tree and lets her eyes drift out of focus, turning the green branches, white lights, and multicolored ornaments into a sparkling, cheerful blur.

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