012 ⌥ VIDEO. re-entry.

[femshep]

[ The camera switches on, turning left and right briefly--she's looking the device over, because if she remembers right, she left hers in the dome and fuck if she'd ever get that back--then it focuses on a face. She looks... like she's seen better days, let's say. Shepard may have left her injuries on the Crucible, but she sure as hell feels like she came out on the wrong end of this one. ]

This is Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy SR-2. [ But it's flat, a forced formality.

This is the part where she asks if anyone reads her, asks for a status update, asks someone to put her the fuck back in that pod so at least she knows how it ends... No. None of that's going to happen. She settles for a slightly (just slightly) more emphatic: ] Somebody tell me how long I've been out.

[ Because somebody has to recognize her. ....Right?

Some of those who don't might at least recognize the distinct OA-fashioned collar around her neck. Y'know, from back when they were the things that go bump in the night.

Shepard doesn't wait around long after the camera's turned off, though. She's heading for the mouth of the ship to see if that'll give her a good reading... ]

Comments

[galacticheroine]

[Shepard frowns slightly as Kaidan points that out. She honestly hadn't thought of it like that, before. But then, she also hadn't realized how different she'd look from the other Shepard. Beyond the hair, at least, which had been pointed out to her several times, now.]

So we're both Shepard, not imitations or substitutions. Or, as the case may be, imposters. [Because there was enough of that in their own universes, already.]

[femshep]

[ This Shepard, however, isn't as bothered by Kaidan's declaration. She didn't realize quite how different his own Shepard is, but she always did know it wasn't her.

What gets to her is the list of names. Tali, Ash... ]

Tali and Ash were here?

[ Missing the point? Maybe. But Shepard has priorities, and around here, her squadmates are always at the top of that list. ]

[standsentinel]

Tali, I never really saw. It was... brief, and the timelines were messed up. Shepard-- Jane Sheperd[The amendment is hurried, as he tries to differentiate between the pair of first human spectres.] --would probably know more than me. Ash was here for a few months, though.

[He falls silent to mull over that, before running ashoal of the fact that there's really not much you can say when someone's gone back to the pods.

Kaidan changes the subject instead.]

So, ah, nobody really uses the Old City much any more, except the Outer Authorities who use it as staging space for patrolling the quarantine line. The Flop's still around, but it's in Poseidon, which you'd remember as rubble and is not a pretty decent little port town.

[galacticheroine]

[Shepard nods her head a little at Kaidan's affirmations about Tali and Ashley]

Tali woke up while time was messed up, myself and several others were in the future of this place, and she joined us. She was gone shortly after time fixed itself again. Ash... not long after that.

[She doesn't rest easy with either of those losses, though Ashley's stings a little more. Getting a second chance with someone you lost in the line of duty was a gift, and losing them a second time wasn't easy.

At Kaidan's subject change she nods a little.]

As you saw the Authorities are a very different creature from what they were. They're more interested in working with us, rather than against us. There's also a local sheriff, and I work with her, so do several other people from the ship. Bandits are still a problem.