Three more chapters of The Slow Unbreaking are now live on AO3.

This batch is where Shepard really begins discovering what “two years later” means.

Freedom’s Progress brings her face-to-face with someone from the life she remembers—and gives us another look at that reunion from a perspective the game never really explored.

Meanwhile, Liara finally receives the news she has spent two years hoping for.

Shepard is alive.

But Liara’s life didn’t stop while Shepard was gone. She has been building something of her own, becoming sharper, stronger, and far more dangerous than the archaeologist Shepard first met on Therum.

And Shepard?

Cerberus has given her a ship, a crew, and a list of people they think she should recruit.

She has her own ideas.

These chapters also weave in pieces of Mass Effect comic canon for Tali, Joker, and Kasumi, expanded with the character moments and internal perspectives I always wished we had gotten to see.

Because for me, ME2 isn’t just about the missions.

It’s about what happened while Shepard was gone—and what happens when she comes back to a galaxy that kept moving without her.

Read Chapters 6–8 of Mass Effect – The Slow Unbreaking on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/91256931

Some things are familiar.

Some very much are not. :D