Shepard sat alongside Kasumi at the small bar built onto the ship. He stares idly at the purple-tinted alcohol as it swirls in his glass with each each gentle rotation of his wrist for some time before downing the drink in one gulp, relishing in the warm feeling it brings inside his stomach. Before pouring himself another shot, the man turns his attention towards the windows, looking out at the vastness that lay beyond.
"It's funny," he said with no real humor in his voice. "I'm out in the middle of these stars all the time, but. . .I've never really looked at them before."
"They are beautiful," Kasumi agreed.
"Yeah. . ."
A long silence seemed to pass between the two, the only sound being the gentle hum from the ship; a noise so soft and constant Shepard almost didn't hear it anymore. Finally the commander broke the silence again, his words slurring ever so slightly; not to the point of indicating drunkenness, but rather a kind of soft euphoria.
"What do you think it was like back then?" he asked.
"Back when?" Kasumi replied as she downed her own drink.
"You know, before we found the mass effect fields and the citadel and. . . and" Shepard made a large sweeping gesture with his hand. "And everything else."
The woman let out a small chuckle. "I think you've had a little too much, Commander."
"I'm serious," he insisted, almost sounded offended. "I try to think about it sometimes, about what it must have felt like to spend your whole like just staring up at the sky and never knowing what's up there; wondering if there are others out there like us and never knowing. I mean, it seems to weird to think about, but at one time there were people like you are me that never knew that there was so much great stuff just waiting to be found."
"Oh," Kasumi teased, enjoying Shepard's rare display of openness. "Like what?"
"Like all of this! All this excitement and adventure and danger and- I could have missed this. If I hadn't been born when I had, I- I could have missed all this great stuff like. . . like. . ."
"Like Tali?" the woman suggested.
"Yeah. Like Tali."
Kasumi chuckled again. "Well, there's no time to waste wondering about all of the 'what-ifs'. The fact is; you're here, I'm here, Tali's here. That's pretty amazing in and of itself, don't ya think?"
Shepard nodded and poured himself another drink. "I guess. Still, I wonder what all of those people, our people, would have to say about this."
"Humanity working its way of the galactic ladder? We have a human on the counsel, a human in the Specters, our species spread out all over this great big black blob of a universe. Shepard, we're living and loving and thriving. I think if those people could see how far we've come, they'd be damn proud."
Shepard barked a small laugh and raised his glass. "I'll drink to that," he said. A moment later Kasumi lifted her own and clinked them together.