Chapter Text
Admiral Jane Shepard inhaled a lungful of clean, salty air and stretched out her legs. The sun peeked hazily through the morning mist that hovered over the slate-grey stretch of ocean in front of her.
Forcing her focus back to the datapad on her lap, she opened the message addressed to her from the Council. It still surprised her to see herself addressed as an Admiral.
She’d taken the promotion, but it hadn’t meant much to her any more. After saving the galaxy from certain destruction and dying twice, ranks lost a certain shine to her. She avoided the trappings and formalities of military life when she could now.
These days life was quiet for Jane. Officially she represented Earth on the GRC, Galactic Rebuilding Committee. Unofficially she was retired, taking things one day at a time with her partner Kaidan and their one year old daughter. She and her family split their time between their shoreside home in the Pacific Northwest- what had been ground zero for the Council’s initial efforts on Earth- and a new apartment on the Citadel, one the first high-end models to be built after the uglier, more practical units had been hastily thrown up.
This month was spent at the Vancouver house; still in a thick robe, she sipped her coffee on their upper balcony and finally slogged her way through the long-winded email. From downstairs came the soft sounds of Kaidan talking to their daughter Ashley about breakfast; she singsonged her responses in a nonsense language. It had surprised her she could even have children; a happy surprise though, as her brushes with mortality had finally kicked her biological clock into gear. Kaidan was more than happy to become a father and he took to it like a Hanar to water. On the days they were both called away his mother took over the role of caregiver; the two women got along startlingly well, more so than Jane did with her own mother. People clung together after near-death and destruction and she had wondered before if they would have ended up this way if the Reaper invasion hadn’t happened.
She heard Kaidan climbing the stairs behind her, lifted her head and smiled at her partner as he carried their daughter into the room and set her down. The toddler gained her bearings then clomped across the rug to a pile of books she began flipping through upside-down.
Kaidan leaned back, hands on lower back, cracking his lower vertebrae; though still active duty, most of his time had been spent behind a desk since his injuries during the war. “You got a lot to do today?”
She scanned the datapad in front of her. “Just putting the final touches on my presentation.”
He began absentmindedly tossing stray toys into a basket in the corner. “The refugee housing?” She shook her head.
“Haestrom.”