City Life

Shepard stepped out of the shower, towelling herself off. After getting off her train at Friedan City Central Station, the Spectre had entered the nearest branch of her gym, and made a beeline for the changing rooms.

Hot water and soap had scoured away any evidence of her indiscretion, and not ten minutes later, she was dressing. She kept a change of clothes in her bag as a matter of precaution. Nothing fancy, a hoodie, a pair of jeans and some sneakers. Her treasured N7 hoodie, unfortunately, was back in the Milky Way.

No, this was just a simple black number, without even a red and white stripe on the arm. Since most of the women who were jumped to Tierra had been from the early 21st century, by statistically improbable chance, most of the clothing produced in the kingdom had that fashion sense in mind. There were women, such as Queen Sansa, or Agent Carter, who spurned the early 2000s styles, going to extra expense and effort to dress as they had in their own worlds, elegant gowns or 1940s business attire. And then there were women such as Shepard, and Ashley, who came from outside that temporal causality, but augmented their wardrobes with the more commonplace fashions.

Not that she was the biggest follower of fashion, but Shepard actually found the (to her conception) retro fashions to be pretty chic. Clothing after humanity had discovered interstellar travel had become a little more homogenised, impersonal... alien. Not that she would ever let Liara catch her saying that. T'Soni may not have been like the typical member of her species in a lot of ways, but when it came to the superiority of asari couture, she could get snobbish, completely without realising.

Shepard guessed it only made sense. Benezia had always dressed to kill. Literally.

Straightening her outfit, Shepard crossed the street, and stepped into a little coffee shop she'd grown quite fond of.

"Commander!" the tinkling chimes above the door were complimented by the greeting of the proprietress.

"Good to see you, Dana." Shepard smiled.

Dana was a cute brunette, a few inches shorter than Shepard. Her black hair was cut pixie short, and she wore a stud in her nose. Down her right shoulder, laid bare by her only wearing a tank top, was a sleeve of tattoos. Shepard scanned for any additions, Dana was passionate about her ink, and had added to it a couple of times since Shepard had met her.

"Black coffee?" receiving Shepard's nod, the barista set about making it up. "Comin' up, on the house."

Dana was what some in the kingdom called a Blackbird. No special skills, no super powers, no combat experience. Just your average human woman. With the Blue Birds out keeping the forces of Carduelis at bay, the Blackbirds, named for the common nature of said birds, kept the kingdom chugging along. They worked in factories, operated gyms, served coffee. It had started as an epithet, used by some haughty super or another to refer to the little people her work kept safe. Some, like Dana, who wore a minute blackbird tattoo on her wrist now, had embraced the term, resolving to do their part, and support the women keeping them safe.

"Say, where's Alison?" Shepard said, scanning around for the co-owner.

"Hardware store." Dana remarked. "One of the freezers in the back is on the fritz, and she's convinced she's gonna fix it herself. That woman..." she said, smiling with affection.

Dana came around from the counter, carrying Shepard's coffee cup on a saucer. She passed a few smiling, relaxing patrons, workers on their lunch break, and set it down on Shepard's table.

"That reminds me, you haven't been in in a while, so you won't have seen." Dana began, obviously brimming with excitement. She offered Shepard her hand. It took Shepard a half second to realise what she was looking at, until she noticed the sparkling on Dana's ring finger.

"Wait, Ali proposed?!" Shepard gasped, a beaming grin breaking out on her face.

"Last week!" Dana said, practically squealing, her excitement matching Shepard's even after the fact. "I mean I knew it was coming, but..."

"Dana, I'm so happy for you! The both of you!" Shepard said, giving her friend's hand a squeeze.

"Do we dare hope you and Liara'll come to the wedding?" Dana asked hopefully.

"That might be difficult. Our work, you know..." Shepard said with a sigh. "But you can just name the gift, anything you want, it'll be on the stack after you walk down the aisle together."

"Commander, you don't need to get us anything. Just knowing you gals are out there, doing what you do... well, there's a reason you drink for free here."

Prompted, Shepard took a sip of her coffee, savouring just as much as she had done Sansa's ice cream, or Sansa herself.

"Outstanding." Shepard chuckled.

"Oh, no doubt. Admiral Isabela's fleet just brought in a new boosted shipment, all kinds of blends we've never had before."

"Alison still wanna run off, become a pirate?" Shepard asked. Dana turned her nose up at the thought.

"A little. Some of us take Blackbird life a little harder than others." Dana said. "Say, how is Liara doing?"

"She's been keeping busy." Shepard said simply. So soon after her little romp with Sansa, thinking of the asari made her cringe somewhat.

"I know, it's been too long since we've seen her." Dana whined. "She's not worried about being the only asari in the kingdom, is she? Cause we strive to keep the atmosphere inclusive in here."

"It's not that, Dana." Shepard said, rocking back in her chair a little. "Liara's used to being the odd girl out. She was the only asari on my ship, back in our world."

"Hey Commander," Dana sits down, inclines her head towards Shepard, her tone low, conspiratorial. "Were there really whole entire planets of women like Liara back in your universe?"

"Thessia, population 5.5 billion. Pretty much all asari." Shepard says. She can't help grin at the way the young lesbian quivers upon hearing it.

"No wonder you wanna get home." Dana says, positively lovelorn.

"That's not the reason." Shepard says, nursing her coffee. "You're better off not knowing, but let's just say, I left behind some unfinished business."

The Reapers, The Crucible. The Illusive Man and Cerberus would have an easy time of it with Shepard gone.

"I know it's not the most popular opinion, but I'm glad we all ended up on Tierra." Dana says, staring down at the table, she begins neatening up the sugar packets.

"You're happy we got yanked out of our worlds?" Shepard asked. "Away from our friends and families?"

"I didn't have a family. Or any real friends. Hell, I was still in the closet." Dana confesses.

"I didn't feel safe letting people know I was a lesbian." Dana elaborates, sensing Shepard's confusion with the idiom.

"What about Carduelis? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to deal with an entire country whose stated goal is quote unquote, "making us their cum dumpsters"." Shepard argued.

"Commander, in my world, men could say things like that, or worse, and get elected president." Dana says, rolling her eyes. "Here we get a totally kickass Queen, and superheroines standing between us and those bastards. Uh, and space marines." Dana adds with a smile.

"I don't know about Power Girl, but personally, I'm only doing it while the free coffee keeps coming." Shepard said, raising her cup and playfully toasting the proprietress, eliciting a nerdy snort from her.

"And... I almost don't want to say this, cause it makes me sound like a man-hating feminist, but... in a kingdom without men... I feel safer." Dana sheepishly admits.

"You don't have to feel ashamed of saying it, Dana." Shepard said, tapping her friend's hand.

"I can walk down Main Street in a bikini top, and know I won't get catcalled. I can bend down to wipe the counter, and know no one's creeping on me. And last month, me and Alison had a midnight picnic in Nymeria Park. We got wine drunk and slept under the stars. We were perfectly safe. Neither of us knew what that was like, until we came here."

"God, I'm just blathering on. Your coffee'll be cold. Let me get out of your hair." Dana said, catching herself mid-effusion.

"No, Dana, thank you." Shepard said, putting her hand on the barista's once again.

"For what?" the short-haired brunette asked.

"For reminding me what my team's fighting for." Shepard said. Standing up, she pulled the shorter woman in for a hug.

Dana's surprise turned to pleasure, and soon she had her arms around Shepard.

"I can't believe I'm being hugged by the Commander Shepard!" Dana squee-d. Conrad Verner vibes, Shepard sighed.

"I'll leave you to finish your brew." Dana said, still bearing a girlish smile, when they broke apart. "Hey, did you see the new Gazette came in?"

Dana pointed out the free periodical placed on every table. Picking the glossy magazine up, Shepard turned it over.

The Friedan Gazette was part newspaper, part gossip rag and part promotional tool for Project Blue Birds. Lifestyle articles stood next to reports on the defence effort, (usually highlighting Friedan successes of course, one had to check out Friedan Occurrences, a wildcat publication put out by a hard-edged Bostonian for something a little more... unfiltered.), stood next to gossip and speculation about say, for example, if Wonder Woman and the misthios Kassandra were more than just friends. And always, there was advice on the best ways for civilians like Dana and Alison to pitch in. And, perhaps unsurprisingly for a solely female civilisation, the entire back half of the double-thick publication was devoted to style and fashion, advice on how to get Supergirl's flowing tresses or rock fishnets like Zatanna.

Shepard scanned the cover. A promotional pic of Sansa in one of her fine gowns, sat on the throne, Wolf-crown on her elegantly-coiffed head. A title dubbed it, "THE MARRIAGE ISSUE", with the sub-heading "AS CITIZENS MARRY IN DROVES, WE HAVE TO ASK: IS ONE QUEEN ENOUGH FOR FRIEDEN?", with reference to a user poll on who they thought Sansa should select as her Queen-Consort on Page 3.

"I don't wanna spoil anything, but Wonder Woman took it." Dana said with a smirk. Not surprising, a significant chunk of the population had been trying to will the Amazon into the queen's bed since the kingdom had been formed.

As the leader of the Friedan Army, Wonder Woman was basically seen as a living saint by the women of the kingdom, and the last best hope against domination and destruction. Shepard was just glad it was someone else, here. That role had been beginning to wear her down back in the Milky Way. Besides, Diana looked better than she ever had doing it.

There were a couple of other items worthy of headlines, sensational reports of a hooded, ballet-shoed human spider causing the Carduelian's no end of trouble in one of their metropolises, and a wide-ranging interview Harley Quinn had given from her padded cell.

"You get briefed by Queen Sansa, right?" Dana asked. "You got any thoughts, on her whole, dating situation thing?"

"N-nothing springs to mind." Shepard thought, even as images, memories of her face down in Sansa's lap, paraded through her mind's eye. If Shepard was being completely honest, she knew exactly who she would have written in to that poll. "Anyway, I should go."

"Are you heading back to your team?" Dana asked, friendly as ever. "Let me set you up with some coffess, I remember what everyone likes, it'll only take a second."

As Shepard waited, tapping awkwardly on the slightly sticky surface of the table, she took her copy of the Gazette, and flipped "The Marriage Issue" face down. Right now, she couldn't think of Sansa.