The Collectors had been destroyed, and Shepard had been on her way to turn the Normandy and her crew over to the Alliance when Admiral Hackett sent her a message, requesting her help in the Batak system. She of course agreed, as she was technically still outside of Alliance channels and they needed to keep this assignment that way. Oh how she wished now that she had insisted it been an officially sanctioned mission by Alliance brass. Even if it had been she doubted it would have improved her current circumstances by much. 

She had been immediately placed under house arrest when she returned to Earth. She was waiting to stand trial for working with Cerberus and for causing the destruction of the Bahak system and its 300,000 batarian colonists. She was stripped of her rank and title, for the time being anyway. Granted, almost everyone still called her Commander. She was confined to her quarters for the most part, permitted to leave for meals and if she was summoned by Alliance brass for some meeting. Not that she wanted to leave her quarters much anyway. She'd fallen into a bit of depression when they took the Normandy away from her. 

The crew of the Normandy had not kept in touch with the Commander. She knew it was because her communications were being tracked and no one wanted to be on Alliance brass radar anymore than they already were. No, for the time being it was best to distance oneself from the Commander.

Shepard had the option to customize the quarters she'd been given but felt no need, it wasn't like she was going to live her forever, no matter how much it felt like that. The apartment was sparsely decorated with functional furniture. A coffee table and some chairs, a small dining table and the bedroom had a single twin bed and a small desk with an extranet terminal. Shepard knew every stroke she made on the GUI interface would be relayed back to high command and so spent little time on it. In all honesty, she was beginning to feel like a caged animal.

The Alliance had [I]started[/I] to take her warnings about the Reapers a little more seriously but not as seriously as Shepard would have liked. They needed to be making alliances with the other races, not investigating the role the Normandy had in destroying the collector base or the Bahak system (which had been necessary to stop the imminent Reaper threat). She rarely got visitors and had almost forgotten that Agent Bellastrum would be stopping by to see her from DID. 

Shepard was wearing the new Alliance "fatigue" uniform, muted tones of navy blue with shoulder pads that extended just beyond the edge of the shoulder with gold trim. She wore the sleeves rolled up revealing the white underside but it was still in regulation. Her boots were polished to a mirror like sheen, she hadn't had time to pay that much attention to her boot polishing when serving on the Normandy, there had been other priorities. Here she wasn't constantly getting mud and blood all over her boots so they stayed shined longer, leaving her with less things to do during the day.  Her auburn hair was slightly too long to be worn down according to Alliance regulation but she didn't care, it was too short to pull back into an effective bun. All that mattered to Shepard was that her hair was out of her bright green eyes, it was a habit of always needing to be able to see what was going on without wiping hair out of her face to do so.

When the intercom rang to let her know that agent Bellastrum had arrived she didn't respond, simply buzzed the agent in and waited. She offered the agent a salute when she entered though she technically wasn't required to with her current status in the Alliance up in the air. "Agent Bellastrum," Shepard stuck her hand. "Commander Shepard. How can I help you?" She wasn't entirely sure what DID wanted her assistance with but she had nothing better to do than talk to them so why not?

Shepard motioned her over to the couch so they could sit, no need to stand and talk when there was a perfectly good and hard couch to sit on.