#Who the FUCK let Shepard get a commission?!
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Fire the headcan(n)on: Problems with long-term management of biotic resources for maximum strategic potential in the Alliance military
It is obviously not ideal* for a ship's CO to be running risky ground missions, but the issue demonstrated by Commander Shepard actually brings to light a larger dilemma that's been discussed within the upper echelons of the Alliance military for years. Biotic personnel are a huge asset as front-line troops, and any still able-bodied biotic moving off the front lines is considered a net loss. This poses a potential retention problem, since the usual route for advancement would remove them from where they're considered most valuable.
A trail of internal communications dating back over a decade (recently acquired by Westerlund News) documents how the Alliance instructed recruiters to push biotics to enlist (with exorbitant sign-on bonuses) rather than attend school for a commission.
It's worth noting that when faced with a similar recruitment-and-retention problem for pilots, the Alliance chose to offer commissions, while technically-skilled Specialists can be brought in as officers or warrant officers, depending on their pre-military career and level of education.
Alliance military doctrine suggests preventing a "Shepard Problem" not by restricting a biotic CO to their ship, but by making sure they'll never command a vessel in the first place. If at all possible, biotic personnel should not be given the opportunity to advance to senior command positions until they are physically unable to serve on the front lines.
*Understatement
#exposé!#Who the FUCK let Shepard get a commission?!#someone screwed up#this will either get no traction or someone who actually knows military shit will rip it apart#but since militaries use very similar words in different ways all over#I shall claim genuine confusion#and point at Bioware's utter disgrace of a rank system#I do like the idea that biotics are a unique 'problem'#because they're not easily replaceable#and their skill requires actually BEING there#Mass Effect's canon ranks are a MESS#don't get any fic author started#many people have tried to fix them#many have perished in the attempt#mass effect#fire the headcan(n)on
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Commission from @bbegrill, and I love it. You can pry my “Kaidan is a god-tier poker player” headcanon out of my cold, dead fingers. :D
From x
Apparently, the original crew of the Normandy had a thing for poker.
It hadn’t come up until Alenko showed up at the docks not even 24 hours after nearly shooting Shepard in the head, and somehow became part of the crew again. James didn’t really get how that worked, but Joker had just shaken his head and muttered something about third time being the charm.
Whatever history those two carry around, apparently poker is part of the package. As soon as Kaidan is on board, weekly poker games are practically part of the duty roster. That’s fine. James likes poker.
At least until Dr. Chakwas stops him on the crew deck coming out of the head, like she’s been waiting for him.
“You’re a good solider, Lt. Vega and after the heroics you pulled on Tuchanka I feel it is only fair that I make a good faith effort to prepare you for what you’re up against tonight.”
“Prepare me? For what?”
Her expression becomes more severe. “A poker game with Kaidan Alenko.”
James relaxes. This is much better than the six nightmare scenarios that just showed up in his mind, all of which included thresher maws. “Doc, it’s a poker game. I’ve handled reapers CQC. I think I’ll be fine.”
She leans her shoulder into the doorframe, crossing her arms in a way that reminds him of his sixth grade math teacher. “You’re about to go into the lion’s den, James Vega, and the Major is going to play you for one hell of a sucker.”
~
Him? Really? James eyes the biotic Spectre, with the easygoing smile that reminds him of Cortez if he’d lighten up every once in a while. The kind of guy who’d stop to rescue a kitten in a tree, volunteer to build houses for the homeless, give you the shirt off his back…this is the guy Chakwas thought it was so important to warn him about?
Alenko smiles affably as he shuffles a deck of cards. James looks for something hidden in it, something nefarious, but only sees a nice guy shuffling some cards. He’s seen good poker faces before, but this isn’t a poker face. This is just…a face.
“Glad you could make it, Lieutenant.”
Nothing off in the voice either. The doc is out of her mind.
Alenko deals the first hand, flicking the cards out with slick precision. Doesn’t mean anything.
It doesn’t mean anything, right? Chakwas probably just had a bad night some time ago and has blown it out of proportion in her memory.
It won’t be that bad.
~
It’s that bad.
Who the fuck taught Alenko to play poker, and why the hell does anyone on this ship ever let him near a deck of cards? James hasn’t won a single hand and is pretty sure that he’s lost about a week’s pay, assuming they’re still going to get paid considering how fucked supply and communication lines are these days.
He’s got to be counting cards. Somehow the biotic bastard knows exactly what everyone has as soon as the last card is dealt. To make it worse, Garrus is holding his own. He probably uses his visor to cheat.
James pours another shot of tequila. Probably time to back off, but right now the poker game hurts more than the booze. Besides, Chakwas has matched him shot for shot and only seems a little worn around the edges, evidenced only by a strand of silver hair that keeps stubbornly pulling loose from the other well-behaved ones.
“How’re you doing, Vega?” Joker asks, with genuine amusement in his voice that makes James hate him just a little.
“Well, let’s put it this way,” he says with a frustrated sigh. “Since getting on this ship I’ve had a drink with the turian Primarch, shot the shit with Archangel, had coffee with the Shadow Broker, given a ship tour to one of the most decorated STG officers in history, run down a thresher maw with the leader of the krogan people and helped foil a plot to take over the Citadel. I thought getting my ass this thoroughly handed to me at a game of poker was about as unlikely as any of those things. So.”
Alenko smiles that quiet smile that James will never, ever again think is a nice guy smile.
#mass effect#mass effect art#kaidan alenko#my fic#kaidan is a god-tier poker player#you cannot change my mind
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Dinosaur Brain
I have the most amazing friends, I swear!
The following ficlet evolved out of conversations about Rhys Shepard and Grunt and dinosaurs ... and then it had to have some commissioned ART, too! Fabulous art by @thepixelagora who somehow managed to take my incoherent ramblings about this and turn it into the absolutely most perfect picture of events!!!! Thank you so much for lending me your talents!!
There is more to this story, but it wasn’t quite working how I wanted, so the rest will come later. In the meantime, have the madness that started it all!!!
The story can also be found on AO3 here.
~~~
Rhys drops into an empty seat and starts eating immediately, his focus less on the food and more on the datapad in his hand. Across from him, a chair squeaks and shadows flicker in his peripheral vision. Still, he pays little heed to the disruption until…
“You going all dinosaur brain?”
He would prefer to flat out ignore the question, but there are times that’s worse than responding to it. Rhys doesn’t bother to look up from the pad. “Not this again.”
Kaidan’s chuckle of amusement drifts across the table. “What?”
“You know what.”
Kaidan leans over and stabs a piece of Rhys’ meal, retreating quickly. He chews with a thoughtful look in his eye, then swallows. “Tell me honestly, when have you never been thinking about them?”
“What’s a dinosaur?”
The table wobbles as Grunt slams his tray down and sits next to Rhys. This time, it’s Kaidan who is taken aback and Rhys whose interest perks up. “You want to know what dinosaurs are?”
“Here we go,” Kaidan mutters, rolling his eyes and reaching for his coffee.
Rhys ignores him and turns to face Grunt. “O’Keer never imprinted them on you?”
Grunt shakes his massive head back and forth. “What are they?”
Rhys peeks over at Kaidan, his blue eyes sparkling with delight. “Translated from the Latin, the word means ‘terrible lizard,’” he explains. “They are creatures that lived millions of years ago on Earth.” He grabs his datapad, pointedly ignoring the sputter of choked laughter from Kaidan, and scrolls to the end of the device before passing it over to Grunt. “This is a Triceratops. About eight meters long and three meters tall. They are known for having three horns on their head; one long one above each eye and a smaller one over its nose, as well as a large frill made out of bone.”
Grunt examines the picture on the datapad then glances back over at Rhys. “Looks like a mighty warrior,” he concludes with a sage nod.
Rhys grins. “Actually, they weren’t the fighters. Not unless they were attacked, of course.” He takes back the datapad and sets it aside. “The real fighters were the Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
“You know,” Kaidan muses as he sits back in his seat, “I’m going to tell Wrex you’re calling him a tyrant again.”
“Oh, shut up!” Rhys hisses over at him. He spends the next several minutes explaining about the two different dinosaurs to Grunt before he reaches into his pocket and nabs the Deinonychus claw he always carries with him. “This is from a much smaller dinosaur, similar to the Velociraptor, called Deinonychus. I found this on our family’s ranch when I was a kid.”
Grunt takes the claw and squints at it, holding it up to the light and tilting his head. “Doesn’t look very dangerous.”
Rhys chuckles. Pushing his chair back, he stands and lifts a hand to about chest level, just above his elbow. “They were only this tall when adults,” he explains. “A smaller version of the Velociraptor, if you will, but older. They were also very bird-like.”
“You know, Shepard,” Garrus comments from down the table, “if you keep making references like that, I’m going to start taking it personally.”
Kaidan almost spits out his coffee. Rhys just grins as he retakes his seat.
Grunt, however, stares at the datapad. “So, what did you do with them?”
Kaidan starts to laugh uncontrollably. Rhys kicks his leg beneath the table. “We didn’t do anything to them. They died out over time, long before humans were around. We’ve spent centuries searching for their bones, fossilized in the earth.”
The krogan sets the datapad down. “Too bad. I would have liked to go up against one of them.”
~
A week later, while on duty in the CIC with his attention focused on planets, minerals, and potential prothean ruins, Grunt comes thundering his way through. “Shepard!”
Caught in the middle of running a scan, Rhys cannot give the krogan his full attention, and calls back over his shoulder, “Yes?”
Grunt makes some sort of disgruntled sound. “Shepard, what’s a ‘shark?’”
With his fingers flying over the haptic keyboard, Rhys’ reply comes automatically. “Water dinosaur.” A heartbeat passes, and he thinks about what he said before turning around to find the krogan standing there, a piece of paper in his hand. It is an image of a Great White shark.
Kaidan is just exiting the cockpit and happens by during the conversation. Giving Rhys a bemused look, he replies, “Really?”
Rhys shrugs back at him, but Grunt grins, a spark of delight in his eyes, and turns back toward the lift, chuckling in his usual, deep, rumbly manner. It’s quite adorable, even if it does leave both men scratching their heads.
~
Late in the Collector mission
Stops at the Citadel are opportunities Rhys never ignores. This time around, however, he isn’t tracking down prothean specialists at the university or the archives, but shopping. He returns to the Normandy a few hours before required, not surprised to find the CIC nearly empty as he walks through, bags in hand. What does surprise him, however, is when the lift doors open and Kaidan steps out. The other man sizes up the current situation and his hand shoots back out to hold the doors open for Rhys. “What are those?” he asks, nodding at the bags Rhys carries.
Hopping inside, Rhys shrugs. “Books.”
Kaidan chuckles. “Obviously.” He reaches into a bag and tugs one free.
Sighing and rolling his eyes, Rhys clarifies. “On dinosaurs.”
The switch from amusement to… well, whatever the look in his eyes is now – half bemusement, half irritation? – is instantaneous. Kaidan drops the book back into the bag without looking at it and slams his hand on the buttons. “You need a fucking lab, I swear.”
Rhys chuckles. “I tried, but Mordin won’t share.” He’s the first one through the doors when the lift stops outside of Kaidan’s cabin. The new arrangement works out better than expected, at least until this topic comes up in discussion. “Besides, these aren’t for me.”
“No?” Kaidan swipes his hand over the door’s interface. “Who?”
“Grunt.”
Almost as if he’s listening in to their conversation, a soft, “Hehehehehe,” whispers through the walls of the ship as they enter the room.
~
2186, Citadel, during the Reaper War
While Kaidan heads off to do Spectre things, Rhys makes his way to Huerta Memorial Hospital. After the incident on Mars and his time spent there, the desire to visit isn’t exactly thrumming inside of him, but Grunt is now a patient there, and it’s more important to check on how the krogan is doing. Wrex’s assurances that Grunt is fine aside, Rhys decides to check in on him anyway, just to be sure. Kaidan promises to meet up with him as soon as his responsibilities are taken care of, hopefully in time to visit the krogan as well.
Entering the critical care ward, Rhys notices not much has changed in the weeks since his departure. In many ways, it reminds him of the rest of the Presidium at the moment; hiding the true nature of what is happening in the Galaxy outside of the Serpent Nebula behind common, everyday things like Blasto movies, home redecoration conventions, and the latest varren races. Nothing like sticking their collective heads in the sand.
Rhys enters to find Grunt sitting up in bed. There are makings of a few scars – two across his face, another on his upper left arm, and one more across the broad expanse of his chest – but he appears greatly improved since receiving his injuries on Utukku. As Rhys enters, Grunt slowly turns his bandaged head in his direction. His voice is on the weak side, but there is an urgency to it that confuses Rhys at first. “Shepard.”
Rhys takes that as permission to enter, removing his cowboy hat in the process. “Hey, Grunt. How’re you doing?”
Grunt ignores the question. “Shepard, what’s a kakliosaur?”
Startled, it takes Rhys a minute to digest the full question. In the space between, he pulls over a chair and takes a seat. “It’s… a krogan dinosaur, I guess,” he replies after a time. “Remember the Triceratops? Akin to that, I guess you could say.”
An added spark of life brightens the krogan’s blue eyes. “Krogan had dinosaurs?”
Rhys chuckles but nods. “I would point out that krogan are dinosaurs, but yeah. They had creatures very similar to Earth’s dinosaurs.”
Lying back, Grunt’s eyes close, but he manages a small laugh as he drifts back off to sleep. “Hehehehehe.” Rhys takes his leave a few minutes later.
After catching up with one another, Rhys and Kaidan reboard the Normandy. Halfway through the CIC, Rhys announces, “We have a mission.”
They’re just passing Traynor’s station and she hands Kaidan several datapads. Absently, he replies, “I know.”
Rhys sighs. “A new one, I mean.”
That, apparently, is enough to catch the man’s attention, and he glances up. “What?”
Using his chin to point to the galaxy map, Rhys continues, “We need to go to the Phoenix System. It’s… important.”
Kaidan frowns. “What the hell are you talking about?”
A grin slips across Rhys’ face. He can’t help it. “We are going dinosaur hunting. Krogan dinosaur hunting, to be specific.”
The blank look in Kaidan’s eyes as he blinks owlishly at him makes it clear he has no idea what Rhys is talking about. Either that or he thinks Rhys has lost his mind. Maybe both. “Check your messages.”
There is a hint of apprehension in his steps as Kaidan walks over to his terminal and retrieves them. “Shit!”
Rhys tips his hat just a bit and turns toward the elevator. “See? Told you. Anyway, let me know when we get there. I know the director of the museum.”
He’s just stepped onto the lift and pressed the button for the cabin when Kaidan calls over, “Have I mentioned you’re a menace?”
Rhys’ grin widens and he winks at him. “Not this week…”
#Dinosaur Brain#ladya writes#mshenko#Rhys Shepard#Kaidan Alenko#Grunt#dinosaurs#OTP: The Music Lives On#Mass Effect#Cowboy Shepard#canon divergent#thepixelagora#Dinosaurs and Grunt#match made in heaven
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Post-Destroy Ending
I bring from the grave of the beyond a fix-it fic serving up fresh angst and some fluff. Mass Effect destroyed my heart and with that major fucking cliffhanger, I just had to write something. But since there's a lot, I decided to break this up into chapters. Well, who knows how many chapters there will be, but just stick around I'm sure you'll have a great time. My writing is still rusty as hell, but I needed to get SOMETHING out. Anyways enjoy this! It's also on AO3 if you want that link.
Go!
It was the last thing she had ordered when she ran off into the jaws of death. He hated watching her go. Hated seeing her run back towards the beam with Harbinger raining down death. Tali had to tear him away from watching her run, dragging him back into the Normandy.
Garrus was on his fourth bottle of alcohol. The other three bottles were littered across Shepard’s nameplate. He ran his fingers across each letter of her name. It had been a couple weeks and Garrus still refused to put her name on the memorial wall. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. And he sure as hell wasn’t letting someone else do it.
They were still grounded on the uncharted world they had crashed into after the blast from the Citadel. While the Normandy was relatively fine, there were still some repairs that had to be made. There was also the issue with EDI. When the blast caused the Normandy to crash, EDI had suddenly collapsed, no longer functioning. Whatever the blast was, it didn’t kill just the Reapers.
The mass relays were destroyed, comm buoys were in pieces, so communication was very limited. Whatever happened back on Earth, whether people had recovered or not, was not making it to the Normandy anytime soon. The Reapers were defeated, but at what cost?
The door to the lounge opened and Liara sat next to Garrus. She grabbed a bottle of wine and began to pour herself a glass. “How are you feeling?” she asked, taking a sip.
Garrus grumbled to himself. He was drunk, his mind fuzzy and numb. “I’m fine,” he mumbled.
Liara nodded, not buying his story, but knew he hadn’t been okay in a while. “Tali has been working on EDI. She also brought Glyph back. In return, Glyph has been helping Tali with bringing EDI back,” Liara explained, hoping some good news would brighten his mood.
He looked at her, his face plates shifting. Part of him was annoyed that she would bring that up, knowing the possibility of Shepard truly being gone was most likely. But he was happy for Joker at the very least. “That’s good,” he mumbled, returning to his drink.
Liara frowned, worry crossing her face. “Garrus...I know you’re hurting, but...” Liara stopped herself. She didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Garrus. I know Joker has been talking about trying to make it back to Earth. But with the mass relays out, who knows how long it’ll be until we get there. Communications have been scrambled too.” Liara put a hand on his back. “It’s going to be okay Garrus. I promise.”
He stayed silent. He had nothing to say. He wanted to go back to Earth, back to the Citadel. He wouldn’t put Shepard’s name on the memorial wall until he had seen her cold corpse himself.
After a few minutes of silence, Liara finally decided it would be best to leave the turian to his sulking. She left with comforting parting words.
༻✧༺
“There’s a body over here!”
Her head was pounding. There were noises. Faint. Distant. Her body burned, stung, felt battered and bruised. She was breathing, but it stung. The voices came closer. She could no longer make out words, but she saw blinding lights come into view. She felt a weight lift from her, probably some rubble, and she couldn’t make out any faces. There were just blurred shapes and bright lights.
“Holy shit, it’s Commander Shepard!”
More shapes rushed over to her. Rubble was being dragged off of her. The light began to fade, her breathing slowing. She felt something cover her nose and mouth. Air filled her easily now. Her eyes fluttered shut and the noise faded away.
༻✧༺
“EDI!” Joker cried out as the robot sat up, blinking. He hugged her, tears forming in his eyes.
“Hello, Jeff,” EDI replied, slightly confused. She returned the hug, tentatively patting his back. He moved out of the way, allowing her to stand on her feet. “What happened?” she asked, looking around the room. She was in the AI core, Tali, Liara, and Glyph all stationed behind Joker, watching with held breaths as she was brought back to life.
“The blast from the Citadel took you out,” Joker explained, his arms on her shoulders. “But the Reapers were taken down too. Tali and Glyph have been working day in and day out to bring you back.”
EDI looked back at Tali and Glyph and smiled. “Thank you, you two. I did not realize I had...died.” EDI looked down at her hands, stretching her robotic fingers. “It felt like I had just stopped working. There was no afterlife.”
Joker put a finger under her chin, lifting her eyes to meet his. “It’s okay, you’re here now.” She smiled and took his hand.
“So what did I miss?” she asked, as they left the AI core. Awkward glances were shared between Tali and Liara.
Joker cleared his throat and took EDI to the bridge of the ship, letting her settle back into her usual co-pilot seat. The door to the cockpit closed as Tali and Liara stepped in. “Shepard activated the Crucible,” Joker began to explain. “Whatever it did, it destroyed the Reapers and other synthetic lives including you. But it also destroyed the mass relays and left comm buoys in scrambles. We’ve been stuck on an uncharted world for about a month now, trying to get you working again.”
“We didn’t feel safe, nor comfortable, taking off without you working again,” Liara added, offering a small smile to EDI. “That and the fact that the Normandy is currently offline.”
“You keep the Normandy in full function,” Tali tagged on.
Joker nodded. “Now that you’re back online, we’re hoping to make it back to Earth. The only issue with that is...”
“We don’t know how far away we are, nor how long would it take, or if we could even get there via FTL,” Liara explained, her voice low and sad.
“Is there a specific reason to going back to Earth?” EDI asked, pure innocence and naiveness in her robotic eyes.
Joker looked at Tali and Liara, asking for some backup with his eyes. Tali rubbed her hands together nervously. “We want to try and find Shepard.”
EDI tilted her head. “Is Shepard alive?”
The three of them exchanged looks once more. “We...we don’t know,” Liara sighed. “But Garrus seems determined to find out.”
EDI lowered her head. “Oh. Right. Garrus and Shepard were in a romantic relationship weren’t they?” Everyone nodded. “I will begin to run diagnostics on the ship then, to see what repairs will be required to get us off the ground once more,” EDI said, more optimistic and hopeful. It seemed to work as Joker, Tali, and Liara smiled a little more.
“I’ll let Garrus know,” Liara said before leaving the cockpit. She went to the crew deck, in the lounge looking for Garrus, but he wasn’t there. She went to the other side, the starboard observatory, but he wasn’t there either. She went to the main battery, wondering if he had gone back to calibrating to distract him, but he wasn’t there either. Liara could think of only one other place he would be grieving in.
As she suspected, the door to Shepard’s cabin was open, a somber tune of a piano playing through the speakers as she stepped out of the elevator. Laying on the bed was Garrus, a picture in his hand. Liara could tell it was the picture of the Normandy crew they had taken back on the Citadel. “Good news, Garrus,” Liara greeted, standing next to the fish tank. He looked up at her, his mandibles parting in curiosity. “EDI is back online. She is going to run a systems check and see what it will take to get us back to Earth.”
Garrus sat up, putting the picture on one of the bedside tables. “That’s what everyone wants to do?” he asked, not looking at her, still looking at the picture.
Liara moved closer, sitting on the end of the bed. “Garrus, you’re not the only one who wants to find Shepard. I, for one, do not want to see her name on that wall either. I want to at least see her body if she is...gone.”
Garrus snorted. “Weren’t you the one who recovered her body last time? After the Normandy’s first destruction?”
Liara nodded. “I was. Until I found her, I never lost hope. Even when I recovered her body, I still didn’t lose hope, especially since Cerberus planned to bring her back. I thought it was crazy, but they did it.” Liara smirked. “Death and Shepard are not good friends. She defies him at every turn.”
“I just...I don’t want to put her name on that damned wall. Because if I do, then it may be as well saying she’s gone. I...can’t accept that.” Garrus’s voice faltered, weak and strained. Liara couldn’t hear his sub-vocal very well, but she knew it was worse than his regular voice. She knew the pain of losing Shepard would be hard on him.
“Then let’s hope we can make it to Earth soon,” Liara comforted, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
He silently nodded as she left the cabin.
༻✧༺
Another month had passed by, the Normandy was still grounded, but basic functions were online. Power kept the basic necessities alive, powering Liara’s room where she spent most of her time, using her Shadow Broker resources trying to gauge the aftermath of the Reaper War. No matter how much she tried to get any information, with comm buoys out of commission and them being on an uncharted world, anything she received was scarce at best. She still had received no status about the Citadel, Earth, or what state the galactic civilization was in. The only information she could glean, was what everyone already knew; the Reapers were dead and the mass relays were broken.
Voices were raised in concern about food supplies. There was still plenty of food for everyone, including Tali and Garrus, but supplies would run out soon if they didn’t restock. James, Cortez, Tali, Garrus, and Javik all decided to explore the uncharted world in hopes to find some food. Tali had a scanner in her suit that could identify whether something was poisonous and dextro-friendly or not. The only thing they had managed to find was some berries for everyone except the quarian and turian.
“Great, we’re going to be living off berries,” James groaned, picking the bright red fruits from the bush Tali had just scanned.
“Be lucky we found anything at all,” Tali retorted. “Garrus and I still have to find food that we can eat.”
“To be fair, you guys are the only dextros on board so you’re not going through your supply as fast,” Cortez pointed out.
“Hopefully we won’t run out in general,” Garrus said, looking aimlessly at the horizon. The system’s sun was equal to the sun, Sol, providing the same warmth and light on this world’s surface.
“If we do run out of food, we can just eat one another,” Javik suggested. Everyone turned and looked at the Prothean.
“Of course the Prothean would say that,” James cackled. “Talking about salarian soup and shit.”
“Let’s try to avoid that outcome,” Cortez suggested.
The idle conversation continued as the group continued looking for more food.
“Liara.” EDI stepped into the Shadow Broker’s cabin, her arms behind her back as she waited patiently for the asari to notice her.
“What is it EDI?” Liara looked up from her computer screen, frustration painted on her face.
“I found something. Upon doing an internal scan of the Normandy, I discovered a signal that was sent about two months ago. A distress signal,” EDI explained.
Liara looked at EDI in curious surprise. “Oh?”
EDI motioned for Liara to follow back up to the bridge of the Normandy. Joker was sitting in his pilot’s seat, the seat turned to face the door of the cockpit. His hands were templed together and worry was bright across his face. “Jeff and I have already listened to the signal. I had to clear it up in order to understand it since the signal was so ruined.” EDI explained as she stood next to Joker.
“Keep in mind, it’s two months old,” Joker grumbled as EDI used her omni-tool to play the signal.
There was a lot of crackling in the beginning and then a cough. “Help...” Liara strained to listen to the static in the voice. “This is...Com...mander...Shep...ard. I’m...still alive...Please help...” The signal cut off then with one more cough from the sender.
Liara’s eyes widened as EDI and Joker looked up at her to gauge her reaction. “Don’t get your hopes up. The signal is two months old,” Joker repeated.
“Do you...do you know if this signal was received by anyone else?” Liara asked, her voice soft and quiet. It was hard to determine what her reaction was.
“No. As I said, I just received this signal when I was doing diagnostics on the Normandy,” EDI answered. “I cannot determine if the signal was sent to any available ships or if it was sent to the Normandy specifically.”
Liara crossed her arms, bringing a hand to her chin, stroking it thoughtfully. There was a reason Joker reiterated the fact that the signal was two months old. With no knowledge of whether or not the signal was received by anyone else, there was no guaranteeing Shepard was alive. Liara sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about it. But whatever you do, don’t show it to Garrus. Unless we can find out whether or not the signal was received by someone else, there is no reason to bank our hopes on this.”
Joker nodded. “I agree. And honestly, Liara? As much as I want to hope...I don’t think she made it.”
Liara smiled sadly. “We can only hope she did, Jeff.”
༻✧༺
Not sure if turian heaven is the same as yours, but if this thing goes sideways and we both end up there...meet me at the bar.
She was standing in the forest. There was no child there this time. No copy of herself. She was alone. There were voices surrounding her. She looked around. Her body didn’t hurt. She couldn’t feel anything. There was a bar on the opposite end of the forest. She could have sworn she saw a turian sitting on one of the stools, a bottle in its hand.
Her legs began moving, but like all the other dreams, she moved slowly, felt weighed down by a crushing force of gravity, moving impossibly slow.
Shepard.
She heard his voice again. All around the forest. She reached out towards the turian sitting at the bar. She wanted to call out for him, but her throat tightened and no sound escaped. Fire started to form around the turian and the bar.
Not again. Please. Not again.
Come back alive. It’d be an awfully empty galaxy without you.
The flames consumed the bar and the turian, just as his head turned to look at her; the blue eyes, the blue colony marking across his face, his visor, his mandibles parting at the sight of her.
We’re in this until the end.
She tried crying out, but the flames consumed him and the noise of the Reapers echoed all around her. A bright flash of red came into her view. She felt sluggish as she brought her arms up in a futile attempt to block the beam from disintegrating her. But the pain never hit.
༻✧༺
Six months had passed since the Reaper War ended. Food supplies had started to run short, even for the dextros on the Normandy. Despite all the exploring the adventuring party had done, they still found nothing more except for berries for everyone else. However, progress on getting the Normandy back online was going well. EDI had predicted that the Normandy would be airborne within the week.
The mood on the ship was tense. Everyone was excited to be airborne again. Garrus still kept Shepard’s nameplate close to him. People stopped talking about the possibilities of Shepard’s fate, not wanting to further upset the turian and the rest of her close friends. Games of poker were used to distract crew members from the low running food supplies and the restlessness of being grounded for so long on an uncharted world.
“Man I can’t wait to get the hell off this planet,” James chattered, fixing himself a plate of berry flavored scrap food. “We’re pretty much out of food and have been surviving off of berries and MREs for six goddamn months. We haven’t been getting nearly enough proteins we need in a daily meal.” He sat down at the lunch table where the other crew members sat. Tali and Garrus looked at him pointedly. He lifted his shoulders. “What? You guys still have food.”
Tali scoffed. “Barely. There wasn’t that much dextro-food compared to your guys’ food. So we started running out around the same time you guys did.”
Cortez smiled, offering some hope around the table. “It’s okay guys. EDI said we should be taking off here soon.”
“Yes, but how long until we get to a known system?” James countered. “The mass relays are still screwed and we haven’t even received communications in forever.”
“Not to worry,” piped the synthetic voice of EDI who had just rounded the corner of the mess room. Liara stood next to her, a small smile on her face. “Communications have been reestablished.”
Liara sighed softly. “The only problem is that the communications we do receive are delayed. Say, if something was sent four months ago, we would just be receiving it now, or later. So any news we do get is going to be late.”
“Fantastic,” Garrus mumbled, looking down at his plate. He had barely touched his food and Tali was half-tempted to snag what he didn’t eat.
“Getting communications up at all is a start,” EDI admitted. “As I said, it shouldn’t be long before I can get the Normandy back into full motion.”
“Please hurry,” James begged, leaning back in his chair. “I’m sick and tired of this planet. If we had more resources, I wouldn’t mind living here. But I’m gonna lose it if I managed to survive the Reapers just to die to starvation six months later.”
Cortez raised a glass towards James. “Cheers to that.”
Liara rolled her eyes just as Specialist Traynor rushed around the corner. “Everyone! Come quick! I just received a message from Admiral Hackett!”
Everyone perked up a bit at that statement. Most of the communications they received were garbage or were so insignificant that Liara had immediately deleted them. But a message from Admiral Hackett? This had to be good.
Everyone rushed to the elevator, cramming inside of it before stepping out into the CIC. Traynor rushed over to her computer and pulled up the message. “I haven’t listened to it yet, I just saw who it was from and decided to call everyone up.” Joker was leaning on the opposite side of Traynor, by Shepard’s personal computer. There was a glint of hope in his eyes at the news of the message from Hackett.
Admiral Hackett played a huge part in the Reaper War, commanding the forces that brought the Crucible to the Citadel. If he was sending a message directly to the Normandy, then hopefully it was good news. Or news in general.
The message came up, but the frequency was all scrambled, too much static to even hear words. A few tweaks later and the old man’s voice finally came through.
“Normandy. This is Admiral Hackett. With the comm buoys in disarray and mass relays destroyed, I don’t know if and when this message will reach you, but you need to come back to Earth as soon as possible. Do whatever the hell you have to to make it back.” There was a pause in the message as everyone looked at each other. Then the voice spoke again and the words that came out struck everyone.
“We found Commander Shepard. She’s alive.”
#mass effect#mass effect 3#mass effect post destroy ending#mass effect legendary edition#mass effect remastered#mele#garrus vakarian#femshep#femshep x garrus#shakarian#mass effect shepard#mass effect garrus#OC: Lyris Shepard#writing#my writing#ao3#G-W76#GalaxyPlaysMELE
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For the fic prompt #18 This will be my last confession, 'I love you' never felt like any blessing , fandom of your choice
Hey anon first of all bless your patience I’m so sorry this is like 3 months in my inbox. I’m hoping you still see it!!!
At first i thought about doing SPN with this given the insanity of the last few months but I decided to do this with my au I want to write for mass effect in the future called: Despite all of their money, and all of their men, Cerberus could never really put Shepard back together again. :)
--
She’s been awake too damn long already.
Shepard can see it, in the way the edges of her vision get fuzzy when she doesn’t focus on them, the way only the sentence she’s currently reading off of the datapad in front of her is in sharp contrast to the glow of the projection. She should have gone to sleep hours ago and regrouped afterwards to get through the latest pile of reports and needs for their suicide mission. But as per usual, there’s far too much to do and the universe has given her too short a deadline to chance putting off what can be done now for later.
Next to her, Thane sleeps like a statue. His breathing is quiet, just the barest hint of air brushing on her arm to let her know he’s still breathing. He hasn’t moved since he closed his eyes a few hours ago and hasn’t made a sound, every inhale and exhale deep, silent and clear. Shepard finds herself losing focus on the requisition request before her and staring openly at Thane instead.
It’s funny, when he sleeps, there’s nothing to indicate that his lungs are on a trajectory to drowning him alive. No stutter, no rasp, no persistent cough. Just quiet, easy breathes.
Her gaze wanders from his face to her own hands and the irony there is as easily apparent. There’s no outward indication that she’s dying either. That someday all her fancy cybernetics and body reconstruction will burn her alive as they short circuit trying to keep up with the rate of cellular decay. For all of their money and all of their men, Cerberus couldn’t even put Shepard back together again. Fuck. She’s too tired for this.
After all, there’s only so many ways you can rationalize being a dead woman walking. Sara’s been through this, done her grieving. It’s not even like she particularly deserved to wake up again after what happened over Alchera. All this is a bonus, borrowed time and all that. Her gaze drifts back to Thane again, everything she’s got now is explicitly an exercise in entropy, the end date more prominent than any other milestone.
She wonders sometimes, when she can’t help it, if that’s why she loves him.
Shepard’s not blind, she can see the chemistry she’s had with the people who have come into her life, she’s knows that she could have pursued something with a number of different option. That she could find someone in the life who she could have loved without sacrificing what she needed to do. Hell, sometimes she finds herself just sitting in the battery with Garrus, cleaning their rifles side by side in silence and thinks, if I had to have a partner for life, I’d want this.
That’s the catch though, she doesn’t get life.
“Siha, shouldn’t you be asleep?”
Emerald and onyx eyes catch hers and Shepard realizes Thane’s been looking back at her for a moment or two, sloppy work on her part. She shrugs, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead again.”
And here’s the reality of why she loves him, why these last months are going to be spent with him and no one else. Thane laughs, loud and unrestrained and with a freedom that no one else in the world can understand than between two people who’s imminent deaths live with them like a house guest. Someone who can understand the joke here is that she was dead and this is just a short stint before being dead again. No one else Shepard has met and could love would have laughed, they don’t understand the language.
Thane smiles, “Very well. Tell me about what’s keep your attention?”
She holds out the datapad so Thane can see it as well as her, “Normandy upgrades, trying to balance finding the time to have the ship out of commission along with the latest mission docket.”
Thane scans the list and Sara can tell he’s mentally balancing the pros and cons of each options, same as she had been doing earlier. “Personally, I think the additional shielding on the reactor core is a good idea.”
“Don’t want to get fried in life support by a reactor overcharge?”
“I’m sure everyone in engineering has similar wishes.” Thane replies easily, “Though in terms of final moments it wouldn’t be a loss, I’ve heard that seeing a reactor core overload up close is envisioned to be terrifying and very beautiful.”
Shepard thinks of spinning out to the light of stars and the fires of her ship in pieces, choking on the lack of oxygen and all on the backdrop of the deep overwhelming darkness of empty space. Terrifying and beautiful and at the line where terror becomes awe.
“Yeah, I can think of worse.”
#writing prompt game#ano answers#ask meme#ask game#mass effect#shrios#I one day would love to write an entire fic about these two. I think shepards story could have been a lot more impactful if Cerberus had scr#Anon asks#Ano Asks
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miranda doesn’t even look up from the machine she’s working on.
Miranda: The Illusive Man is very impressed with you. I’m eager to see if you can live up to his expectations on this mission.
Shepard: I can’t have anyone disobeying my commands when we get there.
Miranda: I know who I report to. As long as you don’t do anything to betray Cerberus, I’ll follow your orders.
... wow, don’t like the implications of that. betray cerberus? i don’t have a hope in hell of getting out of here. sorry, toombs. looks like you’ll be rolling in your grave for what they’re going to make me do.
Shepard: We’ll find out what’s happened to those colonists.
Miranda: Well, at least you’re confident. Let’s hope it’s not misplaced.
so i... have a little bit of a disconnect with miranda already, honestly. she’s saying two completely separate things - she’s devoted a great amount of time to bringing you back from the dead, and succeeded, and then immediately refused to treat you as “““great”““ as someone worthy of her time like that might otherwise been. don’t get me wrong, i like this - i don’t like being paraded around as a figurehead, and i never want to be worshipped just for existing because celebrity culture can bite me, but miranda’s not exactly coming across as someone who was exactly enthusastic to do the lazarus project in the first place.
it is very, very easy to pick the bottom-most line. what is her problem? fuck, i’m shepard, does that mean nothing anymore? but, uh, i’m real bored of the ice-queen trope, so i’m going to be as aggressively nice to miranda as i can manage, because i don’t like walking the same line as people have done before me and write her off as a character that’s “bad” just because of this. i’ve taken worse verbal beatings from other characters so far. hell, i love ashley williams to death and back. i refuse to let this get in my way.
(as an aside, what the fuck is that belt, miranda, there’s nothing to hold up. fuckin nomura’s belts-and-zippers design seems attractive in the future, huh????)
Shepard: I’d like to know more about the Lazarus Project from the person in charge.
Miranda: I wasn’t in charge. The Illusive Man was. If I was running the show, we’d have done a few things differently.
Shepard: Like what?
Miranda: To start, I would have implanted you with some type of control chip. But the Illusive Man wouldn’t allow it. He was afraid it might affect your personality -- alter your character somehow. He wouldn’t let us do anything that might limit your potential in any way.
🙃 oh, miri.
Shepard: Tell me a little about yourself.
Miranda: Worried about my qualifications? I can crush a mech with my biotics or shoot its head off at 100 yards. Take your pick.
this is exactly what i meant when i said that miri feels like the replacement for ashley, even though she’s also got biotic abilities like kaidan and jacob. so far she’s hitting all the boxes - abrasive, militant, very self-confident - but typing that out i realised she’s not just hitting the boxes, she’s going further and beyond what ashley ever displayed. which is good, because if she and jacob were just replacements displaying the same kind of personalities without good reason i’d probably scream.
Shepard: Did you and Jacob serve together in the Alliance?
Miranda: No. The Illusive Man recognised my potential and recruited me at a young age.
Shepard: How old were you?
Miranda: Old enough to know this was what I wanted.
Shepard: I was trying to get to know you as a human being.
Miranda: I’m not looking for a friend, Shepard. Stay focused on the mission.
well, she’s not entitled to make friends on the job. god knows i didn’t ever want to hang out with my retail pals once the clock ticked down to zero. let’s go hang with jacob instead, he seems much more approachable.
Jacob: I’m glad the Illusive Man convinced you to join us, Commander.
Shepard: I just agreed to work with him. I still don’t trust him.
Jacob: Do you trust me, Commander?
Shepard: I haven’t made up my mind about you yet.
Jacob: At least you’re giving me a chance. Most Alliance soldiers hate Cerberus on principle.
Shepard: You said you served in the Alliance?
Jacob: Five years in total. Stationed all over the galaxy. Even spent a couple of years as a Corsair.
Shepard: A what?
Jacob: It was an Alliance initiative. They hired independent starship captains and used them for missions that fell outside official Alliance jurisdiction. Technically, we weren’t part of the Alliance. If we ever got caught, they could disavow any knowledge of us. We were supposed to be free from restrictions and rules, but there was still enough red tape to sink a cruiser. I finally just gave up.
Shepard: So why Cerberus?
Jacob: I just got tired of never making a difference. So much of what we did in the Alliance seemed pointless. I thought things would change after the attack on the Citadel. Humanity was finally invited to join the Council. But nothing hcanged. Politics. Bureaucracy. Same bullshit, different leaders. Cerberus is different. When colonies go mission, we don’t commission a team to write a report to figure out what the hell to do about it. We just go and find out.
i dunno, man, the Corsairs - of which this is the only mention, i believe - seem pretty much identical to cerberus anyway. outside of regular jurisdiction? disavow knowledge of them if things get bad? uh... yeah, that’s kind of what blops units are. well, at least he’s willing to give us this much information... and now i think about it, again, it kinda mirrors kaidan, who was at BAaT before he went anywhere near the military, which was hush-hush enough considering what the kids there were being put through.
there’ll be time enough later to hang out with them again. let’s go find these colonists, i guess.
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*whispering* solavellan sex on the Normandy
ANON. I don’t even know if you’re still out there, I’m pretty sure you sent this like a year ago, but I want you to know that I have been working on this prompt ever since you sent it!!!
Fun fact #1: I have never played any of the original Mass Effect games.
Fun fact #2: I had so much reading about them and watching videos and concocting headcanons that I accidentally put more energy into that than into smut?
(I’m sorryyyy I hope it was worth the wait if you are still out there)
@dadrunkwriting
My Ko-Fi || My Commissions (Slots currently open as of 10/4/19)
Pairing: Solavellan
Rating: Mature/Explicit (it’s right on that line - sexual content but not a lot and not the most explicit I have ever done)
********************
Solas was fairly certain that the new soldier Commander Shepard had brought on board the Normandy SR-2 was doomed to be just like all the others - more brawn than brain, all muscle and no substance. He tried not to let it matter to him too much. He was here to take advantage of Cerberus’s technology and resources to further his own research into biotics. Everything else was window dressing.
In the case of the new soldier, the window dressing simply happened to be rather striking.
She had skin like mahogany, and red, tightly curled hair worn in a flat top hair cut, and eyes like steel. Her name was Ellana Lavellan, and she was the first person to pull him out of the tight cocoon of his lab - really, out of the tight cocoon he’d woven around himself - in years.
“You know, I was under the impression that our doctor was a salarian,” she said when she first wandered in one day.
“I am neither a doctor nor a salarian, as you can see,” he said, gesturing at the insignia that designated him as a scientist. “You are thinking of Mordin Solus. His quarters are next door. My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions.”
She laughed, and it was a surprisingly musical laugh. He wasn’t sure why he expected all soldiers to be gunmetal and grim looks. She was off duty, and in a tank top that bared her toned arms. He took in her pointed ears. He’d known from her name, of course, that they shared at least a race in common. It had been many centuries since their people were considered a separate but lesser species on the planet called Thedas, but there was still a twinge of happy recognition at the sight of her. Every other member of this crew whose ancestors hailed from Thedas was human. There might be some commonality between them, at least, if they were both elves.
Then again, as she sauntered around the lab, her head cocked in curiosity, he saw the tattoo marking the upper part of her back. Three long, arched branches that likely continued all the way down to her hips. She was likely of Dalish descent then. Or, worse, one of the people who got such tattoos and had no idea what they meant.
Solas ducked his head, returning to the readout on his omnitool.
“Well, you have to admit it is confusing. Solus, Solas. What are you doing?”
She was leaning on his workstation. She smelled like gun oil. Usually people backed away by this point, put off by his arch manner. Why hadn’t she?
“Testing this new implant for Commander Shepard,” he said.
“Interesting. You’ll have to explain how it works to me, sometime. When are you off duty?”
That was how she did it in the end, how she drew him out - she was relentless. Like a hunter on a trail with everything to lose. Except she, like him, had nothing to lose. Her parents were long dead - victims of the same slaver raid on Mindoir that had taken Shepard’s own parents, apparently that was how they knew each other - and she had struggled to find a place for herself since then. She’d been in the Alliance military (another connection with their esteemed commander, who Solas had to admit was growing on him too) but left that life behind, hoping for a new start, only to be drawn back into danger once more. The Illusive Man had given Solas no reason to believe that the Normandy SR-2 would be an easy mission, but he was still surprised by the level of violence they encountered - by the bruises and blood he saw on Ellana whenever she passed his lab on her way to Mordin’s, needing healing.
“I thought you were a sniper,” he chided her after one particularly bad episode. He was holding her left wrist, examining a burn that radiated up the inside of her left arm.
“I am,” she said. “And I thought you were a scientist, and not a doctor.”
He had not asked to take her hand, to examine her. He dropped it. But she just reached out and touched his hand - a touch that burned, that brought back memories, that made him remember just how long it had been since he had been touched. He shivered and he knew Ellana saw it. Solas had been living under masks for years now. He knew she saw through them all.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I promise.”
*
He only had the privilege of watching Ellana fight once. Shepard was a formidable biotic herself, and rarely brought other biotics on her missions. But when they went in pursuit of someone called Archangel, she said she wanted the backup.
“I’d also like a measure of stealth,” Shepard went on. “And Jack is, well -”
“Not subtle?” Solas said, dryly.
“Very diplomatic. We’ll bring Lavellan, too.”
Solas tried to ignore the little thrill that ran through him at the thought. He wasn’t successful.
She was a wonder with her rifle. Swift, silent, precise, powerful. She made shots he would have thought impossible, covered him and Shepard with an instinctive ease and tactical awareness. He watched her when he could. He may have even been staring.
“See something you like, Solas?” She asked.
Precise as one of her bullets, blunt as a mallet, and her smile was so sly, and Shepard was distracted by the turian that turned out to be Archangel. Garrus Vakarian, no doubt, if Solas’s research was to be believed.
“Watching you was - impressive. You move differently than any other soldier I have seen. Almost as if it is a dance.”
Ellana slung her rifle over her back and leaned against a wall, her grey eyes alight.
“Are you implying that I am graceful?”
“I am declaring it.” The words slipped out before he could consider them, and that was the danger, wasn’t it, of stepping outside his cocoon, his lab, his routine?
“I was equally impressed by you,” Ellana said. “Your biotics - it’s like it’s totally natural for you.”
He shrugged, pretended he was not complimented, that her words did not light him up from the inside out. “Elves generally take to it better than other Thedosians. Have you read any of the theories that our people were once like asari, with similarly long lives and control over our nervous systems that produced effects so startling they were once called magic?”
Ellana looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. “I was too busy being a dumb grunt to read stuff like that. But I’ve heard of it a little. Maybe you could explain more sometime?”
“Of course.”
*
It was soft and easy after that, except for when it wasn’t, when they talked about her Dalish heritage, her fierce belief that there was something important about sticking to traditions, even if there was little basis in fact for them.
“Of course my tattoos aren’t what made me an adult,” she retorted one day. “But getting them made me feel connected to something bigger than myself. Is that really so bad?”
“But the implications that they were once -”
“Oh, fuck the implications, Solas. I’m tired of the implications. I live here, and now, and I was just trying to share something about myself with someone who I thought cared about me without it turning into a big fucking deal.”
Her voice rang against the metal walls of his lab. She appeared almost immediately ashamed of her anger. He’d noticed that about her too. That was his job. To notice things, gather intel, play the Illusive Man’s game long enough to figure out if it was true, if biotics were inherent to his race, if they could perhaps be made inherent once again, raising the status of all Thedosians in the Council’s eyes…
But so much of what he had been noticing lately was her.
“I am sorry,” he said. He reached out and touched her hand. He’d been getting used to that. Little touches.
Ellana Lavellan kissed him then, full on the lips, without even the slightest warning, and he was sitting on a stool and though she was a slight woman this made her a little taller than him, and he tilted his head back, let himself fall into the kiss, wrapped his arms around her and felt her warmth and life and just how much he wanted this. Wanted a life that was not just secrets and watching and never partaking.
Ellana pulled back, looked down at him.
“I hope that was okay,” she said. “You’re not going to report me to the commander for sexual harassment, are you?”
Solas kissed her again, hungrier this time, fingers digging into her muscles, the solid reality of her. The realest thing he’d felt in years.
“So you are tired of the implications, then?” he asked when they parted.
“Like I said,” Ellana grinned, sliding into his lap, straddling him. “Fuck the implications.”
*
Solas could not help himself, of course. He had to tell her that there were considerations. Well, fuck the considerations too, she’d said jokingly, but she respected his boundaries nonetheless. Because there were considerations. He knew more than even Shepard did. He knew that the supposedly disabled Collector ship they were headed to was a trap. He tried to tell Ellana not to go on that mission. To convince Shepard to bring Garrus instead.
“Don’t go soft on me. Besides - I have to beat Vakarian’s high score,” she said, and kissed him.
He knew that to the Illusive Man, all the people on this ship were merely pawns at play in a larger game. He had guessed at what that larger game might be. He had willingly chosen to be a bigger pawn in that game, to do the things the Illusive Man asked of him as long as he could continue his research. And he knew Ellana now - knew that she would not take any of this lightly, that she had a soldier’s sense of loyalty and honor, old-fashioned as the tattoos on her back.
And he knew that he wanted her in all the ways one person could want another. He knew with increasing clarity as time went on that he wanted her more than he wanted anything else.
But to turn his back now -
The formless shadow of what lay beyond the Omega-4 Relay loomed larger and larger, and in its shadow things grew clearer and clearer. Clear as Ellana’s grey eyes, clear as her perception of the world. They might not come back from this mission. And the Illusive Man would not care, not even if he lost one of his foremost biotics researchers, one of his best spies. And Solas’s work would not care if he was not there to finish it. He looked out at the vastness of space outside the Normandy and that thought grew clearer and clearer.
No one would care except for her.
So he went to her the night before they would make their last stand. Her room was small and cramped and her bed was even more small but she was alive in it, alive in her body, already stripped down to her simple training bra and standard issued underwear when he arrived and yet beautiful as any ancient nebula he’d ever seen.
“Are you sure?” she asked him, finding the buttons on his lab coat, undressing him, her eyes bright in the dark.
“I have never been more sure of anything than I am of you,” he said.
So he stripped off all the things that made her a warrior - the training bra, the briefs, the dog tags - and he stripped off all the things that made him a scientist, a spy - the lab coat and the gloves and every single mask - and he loved her. She was warm and firm beneath him and he slid between her thighs - lingered there a long time, just rocking back and forth, just kissing her, just feeling her, the silky drag of skin on skin - and there, in the darkness of space, he loved her, and she loved him. She rolled him over and took her turn on top, not pushing him inside her yet, not even asking him to touch her, to ease her own wet ache. She just felt, explored, touched.
And then when she did take him in her hand raise herself up, and sink back down on him, taking him within her - when she did lace both of her hands with his and pin them over his head as she rode him, as she kissed him - then she was so impossibly real, so impossibly alive, that Solas forgot of the possibility of death. There was only her, them, the light of distant stars, of his own biotics flaring.
“I love you,” she said, and from another woman’s lips it would have felt false to hear those words said when they were still joined, still making love. But this was Ellana, and Solas had watched her, and he knew she was nothing if not sincere.
“I love you,” he said, surrendering, bucking his hips up into her. “I love you, I love you -”
There were people walking down the hall outside - Taylor, Lawson, Tali, Thane, all on their way to some distraction or another, all of them waiting out the end like they were. They tried to fall silent, to move to a different position, each time they passed, and they wound up on the cold metal floor, cocooned in blankets, Solas on top of her this time, looking down at her, mesmerized, angling himself to make it good for her, so he would rub against her in all the right places, so he could watch her when she came, and she squirmed a hand between them to make it happen because she was nothing if not self-sufficient, but he did get to watch her, to feel her from the inside out as she came. Then he was gone too, wave after sweet wave, and it was all too much and too good.
“Hey,” she said in the aftermath, touching his cheek, drawing him back. “It’s okay, you know. It’s gonna be okay.”
He kissed her hand, pretended she was right, that the Omega-4 Relay was not on their horizon now. It was easier than it ever had been. The pretending. She made it easy, lying there in his arms in the nest they’d made on the floor. It was going to be okay. They would make it through the relay and what came after. They’d walk away from Cerberus, the Illusive Man, Shepard, together. They’d see what the world was like without all of those things, without masks. Together.
Solas slept, and waited for tomorrow.
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Now that we have wrapped up the season, I know a lot of people will be filling the Roswell-sized hole with some fanfic. As someone who comes from a military family, and an Air Force one at that, I thought I could lay out a few things for those wanting to write fic that expands on the military aspect of the show. If anyone has questions more specific than what I put here, just ask and I will answer to the best of my ability!
*Please do note that I do not have a history of military service. All of this is stuff I picked up by proxy, if someone tells you something that is counter to what I’ve written here please listen to them and/or double check. This is meant for ficwriting purposes and nothing more in depth than that.*
- First things first. So far as I can tell, Jesse and Alex Manes are in the Air Force. Flint Manes is in the Army. The two are not interchangeable terms, they are completely separate branches. If you need an all-purpose term use “military”; it covers all the branches (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard). They are also proper nouns, they should be capitalized. (Cam has stated she has a military background, but says nothing else about it. So we have no clues as to her branch or rank.)
- “Soldiers” is an all-purpose term used to describe members of the Army. It should not be used to describe members of the Air Force, that term is “airmen” or “airman” if you want singular. (”Sailor” is for the Navy and “marine” is for the Marines. Not sure about the Coast Guard.) So Flint is a soldier, Alex and Jesse are airmen.
- The Air Force actually developed out of the Army. It was originally the US Army Air Forces and was not declared a separate branch until after WWII, in September of 1947. (The original Roswell incident happened in mid 1947 and official reports state it was actually an Army Air Forces weather balloon that crashed. Do with this information what you will.)
- Character ranks are as follows. (I did not use the ranks from the pilot as those are different from later in the series; pilots tend to have a little weirdness and don’t necessarily reflect actual arcs or details as the series goes on.) Here are further rank references for the Army and the Air Force.
- Jesse Manes is a Chief Master Sergeant (CMSgt). This is an “enlisted” rank, an E-9 to be specific. He is an NCO (noncommissioned officer or noncom) which is a fancy way of saying he has authority but does not outrank officers.
- Flint Manes is a Sergeant First Class (SFC). This is also an enlisted rank, an E-7. He is also an NCO. I’m not sure of all the intricacies of the chain of command, but I know that in situations where multiple military branches are operating concurrently, personnel need to respect the lateral comparison of ranks. Therefore, as an E-7 in the Army, Flint is technically laterally outranked by Jesse, who is an E-9 in the Air Force.
- Alex Manes is a Captain (Capt). This is an “officer” rank, an O-3. It can also be described as a “commissioned officer” which is above an NCO. (Note, you do not abbreviate “commissioned officer” as CO, that stands for “commanding officer”. Idk it’s stupid.) And yes, this means that Alex outranks his father.
- A note about “commissioning”. This is the main difference between officers and enlisted: an enlisted member literally “enlists” in the military, an officer commissions. This is why an NCO is called that, they are still “enlisted” personnel so they have not “commissioned”, but they are given command of units like officers.
- A note about officers vs enlisted. While enlisted members certainly can be promoted to officer status, it is important to know that O-1 is also an entry point into the military. If you go to a military academy (different ones for different branches) or go through an ROTC program in college (the acronym stands for “reserved officer training corps”) you start as an O-1, the lowest officer rank in your branch. (In the Air Force it’s a Second Lieutenant, informally called a “butter bar” because of the color of the rank insignia). It is not uncommon for career military members who are well on their way to retirement to be enlisted and therefore outranked by people decades younger than them.
I would personally bet my eyeteeth that all of the Manes family started from the bottom and worked their way up through the enlisted ranks, Jesse Manes at E-9 is pretty much as high an enlisted rank as you can get in the Air Force and is about right for someone his age who is career military. Same goes for Flint. I am operating under the assumption that Alex entered right out of high school, so he’s been in for 10 years. He’s apparently a Big Damn Hero (see next section) so it’s not surprising that he has been promoted to Captain in that time.
- Medals and decorations. We know nothing about anyone’s except Alex’s so I’ll be going into detail only on his. A note first, while there are literal medals that are given out, they are most commonly actually worn in the form of “ribbons” which are tiny rectangles about an inch long and the width of your little finger that are pinned to left side of the wearer’s chest when in a dress uniform.
They stack in order of “significance”, and you can tell them apart because they are all colored and striped uniquely to mean certain things. (Fun fact, a “plate” of ribbons all stacked together on a person is informally referred to as their “fruit salad”. No, I’m not kidding.) They are also not as big a deal (mostly) as you might think, a lot of the ribbons airmen earn are actually just for the general course of duty. A well-versed person can take one look at someone else’s ribbons and know exactly when and where they served and what operations they have been a part of.
- It is mentioned that Alex was put in for the Air Force Medal and the Air Force Cross, but it does not say that he was actually awarded either. (The Air Force Medal does not exist, I am going to assume they meant “Airman’s Medal”.) Both involve “heroic acts” but the Airman’s Medal is a “lower” honor because it does not involve actual combat. The Air Force Cross on the other hand is a Big Fucking Deal, it is second only to the Medal of Honor which is a Really Big Fucking Deal. Here are more details on the Airman’s Medal and the Air Force Cross. Again, we do not know for sure that Alex has actually been the recipient of either of these medals, but the fact that he was put in for them means that his CO at some point thought he had earned them.
- As someone who has been wounded (I assume) in action, Alex also most certainly has a Purple Heart. Another note on ribbons, if a specific ribbon has been earned more than once it is marked by adding “oakleaf clusters” to the ribbon, one for each additional award. So a Purple Heart with one oakleaf cluster technically equals two Purple Hearts. So far as we know in canon, Alex has one.
- Again, I am making the assumption that Alex joined the Air Force out of high school, which means he has been in since 2008. He has therefore most likely been a part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, Operation Inherent Resolve, and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel; and he would have campaign ribbons for each.
- Additional ribbons/decorations would include unit citations and such, find more about various military awards here.
- Because we know Alex was a code breaker, he may have been classified as either Intelligence or Cyberspace Operations, but he is now operating in the Security Forces after his injury. We know that Flint is a Weapons Specialist, but I’m not sure about Jesse. He may also be Security Forces.
- Alex has mentioned he is going to be “honorably discharged” soon, this is one way to exit military service. (Note, if you serve for more than 20 years you are not discharged, you retire. Jesse is probably on track for retirement.) There are a few levels of discharge for the US Armed Forces, find more details here.
- An honorable discharge is basically given to people who did dun good; they have either completed their tours in good standing or otherwise would have had something not happened to them to prevent it. (Like losing a limb.) Anything less than an honorable discharge is Not Good and can and will affect the recipient in civilian life.
- There are a few in between these two, but I’m just going to list a dishonorable discharge here and let the curious do their own research through the link above. A dishonorable discharge is Super Fucking Bad and in a lot of states is regarded as equivalent to a felony conviction. This type of discharge can only be given by a general court martial, and to earn it you have to seriously fuck up, like commit treason or murder.
- When it comes to “classified” information, your access depends on your security clearance. We have no hints as to what the clearance of any of the characters are, but we know that Alex was a code breaker so it’s probably safe to assume his is pretty high. Flint’s is probably also pretty high given the types of weapons he is working with, and Jesse also potentially has a high level given his involvement with Project Shepard. (Although that has apparently been running unauthorized for a while so idk.)
- The US has three levels, from lowest to highest: Confidential, Secret, Top Secret. Find more information about the levels here.
- Generally speaking, the relations between service branches is that of friendly competition. Like different sports teams or sibling rivalry. Every branch of course believes it is the superior one, and service members will frequently josh each other about the various “failings” of each one. All the branches have their stereotypes and nicknames. I’ve heard “grunts” for Army, “flyboys” for Air Force, “squids” for Navy, and “jarheads” for Marines. If the branches were people stereotypes: Marines are dumb jock gym-bro types, the Navy is prissy (white dress uniforms I mean come on), the Air Force is lazy (heh “chair force” ha ha), the Army is full of try-hards who wanted to be in the Marines but weren’t “good enough” (not true), and the Coast Guard is the red-headed step child who is either “too good” to associate fully with the others or can’t keep up depending on who you talk to. In reality the branches are all apples and oranges, here’s a quick overview.
- Army: ground troops/support. Infantry, artillery, calvary, paratroopers, that kind of stuff. Their motto is “This we’ll defend” and their song is “The Army goes rolling along”.
- Air Force: air troops/support. Planes and pilots of all sorts and weather forcasting. Their motto is “Aim high...Fly-fight-win” and their song is “The US Air Force”.
- Navy: water troops/support. Boats and ships out the wazoo and some pilots. Their (unofficial) motto is “Semper Fortis” meaning always strong and their song is “Anchors Aweigh”.
- Marines: technically the Marines are a branch of the Navy. (It is not a good idea to tell a marine this.) The Marines are essentially the initial landing force troops; it’s not pleasant but they’re basically cannon fodder. Their motto is “Semper Fidelis” meaning always faithful and their song is “Marine’s Hymn”.
- Coast Guard: in times of war, the Coast Guard acts as a branch of the Navy. In peacetime they are under the Department of Homeland Security. They are basically the boat police (don’t tell them I said that), and also do search and rescue. Their motto is “Semper Paratus” and their song is also “Semper Paratus”.
- Jodies. These are essentially marching songs or chants designed to help people keep in step. They are mostly used when drilling, or for infantry troops when they aren’t trying to be covert. There’s a whole lot of them and some of them can get pretty filthy, but there are a few that are “grand traditions”, like “Blood upon the risers” which is sung to the tune of “Battle hymn of the republic”. (It’s about a paratrooper whose chute doesn’t open. It doesn’t end well.) Some of them have been adapted for camp settings, like “Gee ma, I wanna go home”, but every branch has their own special ones and words are often changed around to fit the unit. This is a general overview of the tradition, find examples of some Air Force ones here and here.
- There are a whole bunch of different uniforms that I can get into but I won’t here, this is a good resource for Air Force for the more detail minded. Suffice it to say there are two main ones to know, the service dress and combat uniform.
- Service dress is the mid-level fancy uniform, in the Air Force it’s also called “blues” or “dress blues” because they are blue. This is basically the equivalent of a suit. Service members can wear this to civilian events as well, one member of my family actually refuses to buy a civilian suit because he claims any event he goes to where he has to wear a suit, he can get away with wearing his blues. (He hates suits.) Members can also wear these after they retire.
- Combat uniforms are the everyday service wear, usually in a camouflage pattern of some kind. They’re informally called “fatigues”. The military is actually surprisingly finicky about this sort of stuff, and there are specific acronyms for specific patterns and none of them are allowed to be the same. It’s a mess. The Air Force is currently in the middle of transitioning, the official name for the new uniform is the Airman Combat Uniform (ACU) and the pattern is Operation Camouflage Pattern (OCP).
- The US Military has been around a while, and there are a few things it is really good at because they learned the hard way.
- Discipline. This is going to sound very harsh and dehumanizing (because it is), but in boot camp the entire goal is to break people of independence and foster group cohesion. But there is a reason why. You have to remember, every training exercise is designed around the idea that these people will be in active combat. You cannot question orders or do your own thing in active combat, you will die or worse, your unit will die. Boot camp is designed to turn you from a person into a cog in a machine, because humans cannot function in life or death combat scenarios. Machine cogs can.
- Moral. War is a mind game. Troops in good spirits handle stress better than troops in bad spirits, it is a fact of life. So as much as everyone complains about it, the military is pretty good about making sure deployed members have a way to contact their families at home. Phone banks, computer banks, snail mail, the works. And I’ve heard a story from one family member about the higher-ups keeping track of who isn’t getting mail, and encouraging people to share care packages with them.
- Dependents. These are immediate family of service members, usually spouses and/or children. A spouse is a dependent for as long as they are married, a child is a dependent until 26. The military considers dependents to be their personal responsibility. Widows and widowers will receive their spouse’s pension and benefits until they themselves die. There are support groups out the wazoo for family members.
- Next of kin notification. The military has many strict regulations that it follows pretty closely for this kind of stuff. You can find a good rundown here. Fortunately I have no personal experience with this, but I believe the same principles apply for wounded in action as well as killed.
- It is an option for families of service members to hang a type of small flag in a window that has a blue star on it for every member of family in the military. (Blue star on a white field with a red border, hung horizontally.) If one of those members dies in the service, the star is changed to gold. People who have lost members of their family in active duty are therefore called “gold star families”.
- The ribbon color to wear in support of the military is yellow. We tied a big yellow ribbon on one of our trees in the front yard when one of my family members was on deployment, but it can be as small as a pin as well.
- A note on the general attitude of service members regarding their service and the dangers of what they do. Almost every one I have encountered thinks of their military service as a job that they volunteered for. They are not in it for the glory, they don’t demand to be thanked, and any injury they may have is regarded as an unfortunate result of the hazards of their job. Alex’s flippant line about “doing it for the attention” when Liz thanks him for his service is not only funny and character informing, it’s also typical. His injury happened as a result of his service, it’s a matter of course. One of my immediate family members tells me he always accepts when people thank him for his service, but he personally does it on behalf of the service members who are not able to (KIA, MIA, or past veterans.) He also then thanks that person for their support.
- Dog tags. These are identification tags worn by all members of the military. In the US, each of the branches have slightly different layouts (find details here) but all contain the same basic information. First and last name, social security number, branch of service, blood type, and religion. The main purpose of these is for identifying bodies or rendering aid to wounded; rank is not listed because it’s not important in those situations, and it changes frequently enough that it’s not practical to reissue tags just for that. (Blood type is listed to help medical personnel aid the wounded, religion is listed so that in the event of death services can be conducted appropriately.)
- Small arms handling and hand-to-hand combat. Every service member, regardless of specialty, is trained in how to handle guns and how to fight in close quarters. (They’re not called the armed forces for nothing.)
- Basic gun safety is to treat every weapon as though it is loaded at all times, never aim a weapon at anything you don’t intend to shoot, and don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you are prepared to fire. It should be noted that when Alex disarms Flint and turns his service weapon on him, Alex is not practicing trigger safety. He is fully ready to discharge that gun from the second he has it in his hands, which is to be expected given the fact he was surprised from behind. (What is interesting is that he does not immediately lower the weapon, nor does he take his finger off the trigger straight away after recognizing Flint. Do with this information what you will.)
- Service members are taught to shoot for the “easy” targets on the body, which is basically torso. Fancy sharp shooting is not highly prioritized, the main idea is to hit the enemy before they hit you.
- All service members are taught basic “first aid and buddy care”. This is so that, in the event of incurring casualties during combat, the people closest to you can provide immediate assistance while a medic hauls ass over to you. (Note, a “casualty” refers to both the wounded and those killed in action. Alex is a casualty because he was wounded.) When going into combat situations, service members will have loose tourniquets around their upper arms and legs so that, in the event of injury, all their buddy has to do is pull it tight around the relevant limb.
- The US military uses a 24 hour clock system, when times are written out no colons are used and all four number slots are filled. It seems tricky at first, but all you have to do past noon is subtract 12 and you have the equivalent time. Midnight is also written as “00″. So 12 midnight is 0000, 3 am is 0300, 1 pm is 1300, and 8 pm is 2000. When saying the time verbally, it’s usually “___ hundred (hours).” So 8 am is “o eight hundred hours” (0800), and 5 pm is “seventeen hundred hours” (1700). The “hours” part is optional. Any time in between is usually pronounced like normal (0730 is “o seven thirty” and 1645 is “sixteen forty five”, 7:30 am and 4:45 pm respectively.)
The US military also does a thing with time zones, in order to coordinate internationally. It’s very confusing and I don’t fully understand it, but basically everything is measured off of the Prime Meridian, otherwise known as Greenwich Mean Time or “Zulu Time” (”Z” for “Zero”). Find more details on it here.
- The military uses the NATO phonetic alphabet for spelling or using letters over the radio; this is for clarity of conveyance and is standard operating procedure, any military member is required to know and use it. Basically each letter of the English alphabet is replaced with a word that starts with that letter. (The word for “E” is “Echo”, do with this information what you will.) A complete list of the current alphabet is here.
These are used over a radio to spell something or use letters, to avoid mistaking them. For example, instead of saying “Requesting reinforcements in quadrant A” you would say “Requesting reinforcements in alpha quadrant.” (Numbers are basically all the same, except I’ve heard “nine” said as “niner” quite often. Not sure how widespread that is.) But because this is such standard practice, service members will frequently use the alphabet in civilian life, like when you have to spell your name for someone over the phone. I know A-K really well because that’s what was used when I played Battleship as a kid, for example.
There are other basic radio standards used for clarity of communication, find them here. A note, While “roger” is the proword given for “I have received and understood your transmission”, the word I have encountered more often in my personal experience meaning the same thing is “copy”. My immediate family members will use this in everyday conversation to mean “I have heard and understood what you said.” I don’t know if this is an Air Force thing or what, I can only say that it might be something more commonly used in actual, everyday speech by service members.
#my roswell meta#roswell new mexico#rnm#alex manes#jesse manes#flint manes#jenna cameron#fic reference#military#list#a riley special
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Commission Poll!
Hey!
So. I want to get a commission done of Artemis Shepard and Miranda Lawson. Something from one of my fics About That Uniform and Traitor Martyr Spy.
But like...I’m having a hard time choosing. So! For those of you who have read said fics OR have a sweet spot for this pairing--I’m doing a quick poll.
You can either pick one, or as many as you like! If you pick more than one option, please rank them in order from FAVORITE (1) to LEAST FAVORITE ()
A) About that uniform:
“Did you find me some clothes?”
Pinching her nose, Miranda sighs heavily. “We did. Unfortunately, they are not in your size.”
“Too bad.” Shepard smirks, smirks, as she steps closer to Miranda’s desk. “It’ll be at least few days til we dock at the Citadel.”
Miranda finds herself at eye level with Shepard’s belly button. Her scars don’t detract from her finely cut abdomen--they enhance it. Not until Shepard coughs (and contracts said muscles) does Miranda realize she’s been staring. She also clears her throat, pointedly looking Shepard in the eyes. “The markets of Omega are much closer than--”
Shepard leans down, lowering her voice as she braces her hands on Miranda’s desk. “Oh, I know.” The light in Miranda’s office glimmers across the satin in Shepard’s bra, and it casts soft shadows between her breasts. “But we’re going to the Citadel first.”
B) About that shower:
“Subtle, Miranda.” Artemis lathers up her dark curls, not bothering to turn around. The muscles in her olive-toned shoulders shift as her hands move across her scalp.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Shepard.”
“State of the art ship, and my shower just happens to break down after we enter FTL?”
“Accidents do happen.”
“Not when you’re involved.” Shepard rinses her hair, finally looking at Miranda. “You’re trying seduce me.” Then her hands grasp Miranda’s waist, spinning her around so she’s face to face with Shepard, leaning against the shower wall. The Commander’s hands brace themselves on either side of Miranda’s head, and she stares into Miranda’s eyes with the heat of a planetary core. She says softly. “But am I the one being seduced here?”
C) About that drink:
Suddenly Miranda feels strange drinking next to her. “You were an alcoholic.”
“Still am.” Artemis glares at her glass. “I just haven’t had a drink in years.”
“You’re one of the strongest people I know.” Miranda says it softly, barely audible over the hum of the ship.
Artemis looks at her finally, and Miranda can see the bags under her eyes. The commander reddens and looks away. “Maybe I don’t want to be the strong one.”
D) About that confession:
Artemis slams her glass down on the coffee table, a line forming in what will soon be a critical crack in its face. “I’m gay, Miranda. Do you really think I would go to all this trouble because I like you as a friend?”
Oh hell. She’s going to need a lot more wine. “You’re...interested in me.” This. Well. This is…what is she supposed to say in this situation? God, she feels like she’s fifteen again. “Romantically?” Dare she say it? “Sexually??” The word practically squeaks out of her mouth.
E) Docking Bay--Reunion
“Miranda?” Artemis says her name softly from behind her, making Miranda jump inside her skin. She had just sent that message an hour ago. Hardly enough time for Shepard to make it here, unless this was her first stop. Her voice is thick and her eyes sluggish as she looks Miranda over like she’s stuck in the same recurring dream.
“Shepard!” Coyness has always been Miranda’s default with romantic partners, but then before, she’d never seen the same person twice. She must sound like a lovesick puppy right about now. “It’s so good to finally see you.” Miranda steps closer, close enough to touch.
Artemis steps back, rubbing her shoulder. “You too, Miranda.”
Not the reunion she dreamed of, but Miranda will take whatever she’s offered. She starts walking down the corridor, Artemis picking up speed to walk with her. They never hold hands but their fingers brush against each other as they talk.
“Glad to see they let you out.” Miranda passes it off like a joke.
“Had to. Who else would fight their goddamn war?”
F) Commons Apartment--Persuasion
“Yeah, it’s me.” Artemis smiles, but it fades as she looks her over. Taking Miranda’s hands, she asks “You okay?”
Miranda answers by guiding Artemis’s hands to her clothes, then pulling her into a kiss as hot as the sun. Artemis mumbles something against her lips, her hands tearing away from her zippers to reach for her face, but Miranda puts them back. Her lover breaks for air, so Miranda kisses underneath her chin in that place that always makes her melt.
“Mm. Miri…” Artemis moans helplessly, falling back against the door. She forgets her protest, clutching Miranda as she undoes the buttons on her uniform. Does Artemis ever wear casual clothes? Does she own any? A laugh escapes her lips. “I’m glad you’re alive, too.”
Shoving her back against the door, Miranda murmurs in her ear, “Less talking.”
G) Sanctuary Control--Confrontation
It’s not professional, not in the slightest, to pull Shepard into that kiss, but Miranda’s past caring. Her mouth tastes like blood and smoke, and right now it’s the sweetest thing Miranda’s ever tasted. They’re alive. They’re all alive.
Artemis kisses back at first, equally elated and desperate for her touch. Soon enough the high of it passes, and she wretches herself away. “Holy hell, Miranda. Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”
“You had enough on your plate.” Miranda wipes her mouth, leaning heavily against the console. Strange, how the excuse fails to hold up when she says it out loud.
“Hundreds, if not thousands of refugees dead, and I’m too busy? Fucking hell.”
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fic notes: garrus’s crew
miscellaneous notes on garrus’s crew of the parentia that never made it into “down girl” part 1
1. lucret xamius, xo
mid-30s, high class tier class
from a long standing military family like the victuses; similar expectations of naval command passed down to her
like miranda in professionalism/workaholic sensibilities, more like ashley in temperament/personality
in retaliation for a strike her uncle carried out against the hegemony, batarian slavers attacked her family’s villa where her part of her extended family lived, and they kidnapped (young relatives) those who could be sold and killed those who couldn’t (elderly relatives). 7 were taken, 3 were killed. this occurred when she was about maybe 27.
before that point, she felt kind of pressured to uphold her family name by staying in the service, but after that she began taking her job more seriously and decided to stay past her mandatory service
was a little bitter about getting turned down to captain the parentia herself, but she respects garrus, so she doesn’t mind serving under him. is privately hoping that after he (presumably) becomes a spectre, she will be asked to helm the parentia permanently.
2. thilma, pilot
mid-20s, lower tier class
never picked a last name for her oops
shy and a little quiet until you get to know her.
she’s a little starstruck by shepard and garrus because she’s never been this close to war heroes before but once they get to know her she’s much more relaxed. mostly she just has a severe case of imposter’s syndrome which affects her ability to interact w the crew but she’s very easy to talk to one-on-one
like joker in that she was top of her class in pilot school. her drive in school was more out of her desire to escape a poor/unprotected colony, so it surprised her when she made top of her class, but she just puts her head down and works her ass off and only comes up for air once someone puts a hand on her shoulder and reminds her to eat
3. azymadus, cook
late 60s, lower tier class
never picked a first name for him lmao so i just hc all the crew calls him by his last name and only garrus and lucret know his first name
served in the first contact war, retired in the years since
didn’t give a shit about humans/was against their expansion/serving in government roles. after the battle of the citadel he started to come around, after commander shepard ‘died’ he felt a little more sympathetic. re-enlisted when the reapers hit palaven, killing most of his family and destroying his mandible. due to his age and health he wasn’t approved for active combat, so he became the cook on whatever ship would take him just so he could take his mind off of the deaths of his family
garrus knew him as the field chef on menae and thought he would enjoy being ‘put to use’ as it were after the war so he wouldn’t have to go back to palaven, so garrus requested him personally
4. stilx, gunnery officer
late 30s/early 40s, lower tier class
stilx is a nickname off of her much longer surname. hates her first name. you’ll never get it out of her; the one on her record is probably a fake anyway.
oh man she’s my favorite. she left a bad home life as soon as she turned legal. went off the grid to escape her mandatory service. removed her colony markings to disappear more thoroughly. joined a gang for several years, hated it, went on the run from them too. it was in the gang she learned how to take care of weapons; but she’s only seen active combat in omega-style gang wars. after that, for money she boxed for several years and entered mma-style underground fights, and eventually gained a name for herself under a fake name. unfortunately she was deep in the owner’s pockets, so years later when a bet went sour and her sponsor abandoned her, she ran back to the hierarchy for protection and in exchange agreed to live the rest of her “active years” (hierarchy law says this up until the common retirement age, until about 60/70-ish) in the service. so she sold out to survive in the end. never put her colony markings back on though.
has a huuuuuge thing for lucret but has kept it under wraps pretty successfully. the girl scout is three floors above her doing paperwork or whatever and she’s perfectly content down in the cargo bay cleaning the crew’s guns and out-drinking the guys in engineering. it only gets dicey when lucret comes down for her morning workouts around the same time stilx is checking the cargo and she has to resist her immense urge to challenge the ship’s xo to spar......
likes/respects shepard a lot. if shepard ever wanted to work out alone/without prying eyes, she’d clear the cargo bay for her with just a word. she understands what it’s like to be forced to work for somebody you hate just to survive, and she’s just glad a woman like that is still around.
5. yelfrex, tactics officer
late 20s, middle tier class
more like joker in personality. talented, excelled at tactics training in the navy, but is aimless/not very driven or inspired, doesn’t really know what to do with his life, kind of gets pulled around wherever life/his friends/his parents take him.
left the hierarchy early to join a civil rights group (that he got talked into by a friend) because he’s against the mandatory service law, but the reapers cut that short. he was part of garrus’s task force and lost both feet and hearing in his left ear when the first wave hit menae, and was out of commission for most of the rest of the war.
garrus found him after the war ended and asked if he wanted to serve on the parentia, hoping it would give him some stability/a sense of something to do as he recovered
looks up to garrus because of his sense of humor/capabilities/everything garrus did at such a young age. i have a feeling garrus gave him a bit of a pep talk when yel was having major career doubts post-war so that.
he’s kind of fascinated by shepard bc she joined cerberus and quit them and got arrested for war crimes and now she’s like this huge hero, like that doesn’t happen to everybody, haha that’s messed up but in a cool way, i wonder what she’s like lol? so that’s why he asks her so many invasive questions in that one scene in the comm room. he’s also trying to calm his own nerves/ease the tension in the room because the boss has never gone into a mission alone before
6. elaria, ground team
late 20s, middle tier class
garrus’s favorite to take in the field, though he tries not to let lucret know this
quiet, calm, professional, but a fucking beast in the field, very reliable, won’t hesitate to tell garrus if she thinks he’s making a bad call
not unlike shepard on the outside (sans the trauma shepard gone through at that age), but much less experienced obviously and a bit more easy going/humorous once you talk to her
7. quernus, chief engineer & technician
early 30s, lower tier class
left the service early (unauthorized) and then
was kind of a ‘plan c’ choice for the crew because the first few candidates were unavailable, and he knows it so he’s determined to prove himself by taking his job super seriously and never joking around, proving he deserves to be there, etc
therefore doesn’t take yelfrex’s joking around very well -- quernus has a sense of humor, he just doesn’t mesh well with yel. personality clashes, plus a bit of resentment on quernus’s side because yel is a higher tier than him and knows he has more protection in his position
has a crush on elaria but due to their experience difference/desire to he doesn’t think it’s professional to bring up
and that’s all i can think of for now
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Fuck it all
I'm out of patience out of care out of commission.
I buried three relatives in the last three years: my grandmother in 2015, my aunt died in 16, my granddad in 17.
My grandparents on my father's side cut us out of their lives two years ago because he stood up for my mom when they decided to be rude to her AT HER MOTHER'S FUNERAL.
My other maternal aunt is a raging cunt who we now suspect is defrauding my grandparents' estate and are now contesting in court to the best of our ability.
My writing/RP goes nowhere. I try to stick up for the little guy, other spics, LBGT+, women and I keep feeling like a shit ally and a shitty friend. I find myself balancing trying to be Garrus to everybody's Shepard and also give proper acknowledgment to their own personal issues. I feel like I'm 'othering' people ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
We elected (I voted for Hillary - Christ alive that's become a litmus for not being a dipshit apparently) a bigoted bully with all the business acumen of a fucking turtle who lets my cousins go without power for MONTHS, plays nuclear chicken with North Korea, and lets his little nazi friends play in public.
And now the FCC is playing corporate stooge and selling out the internet so that my working class family cannot afford to go online as I'm going back to school.
Jesus fucking Christ. What in the fuck is wrong with this world? No such thing as the brotherhood of man. We all bleed red on this rock but we gotta find ways to kick dirt at the darker skinned one, the poor one, the one who likes other men/women and fuck them out of their last buck. It's sick.
Just give me a break. Can I win SOMETHING? a goddamn participation trophy a blowjob a winning lottery ticket something nice? I can't keep getting fucked like this. I must have severely wronged someone in a past life to have to be dealing with all this shit this year.
Enjoy some funk as I'm trying to get out of this funk but keep sinking deeper.
https://youtu.be/3a8_c8nyWYA
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Shoddy design
Hackett stood silently in the cockpit, taking in every movement passing the windows and screens. He was vaguely aware of how the pilot, the abrasive Jeff Moreau, was fidgeting more and more. Hackett could not blame him, the whole ship was caught in a slight nervous air. Too many unanswered questions.
Was it over? What had happened to the Reapers? But most importantly, the question whispered in every corner of the Normandy, where was Commander Shepard?
In the confusing aftermath the Normandy had, like so many other ships, been commissioned to survey the quiet battlefield surrounding the Citadel. So far they had, luckily ,located several survivors, inert ships and escape-pods mingling with the debris. But until now, there was no sign of the Reapers, nor of the Commander.
"Admiral, I am picking up movement, it has a Reaper signature." And there is was, suddenly appearing out of the wreckage. But something was off, instead of the menacing glide usually applied by the monsters, this one was floating irregularly, it tentacles flailing in the vacuum.
Hackett paused, frowning as the Reaper rammed into the remains of a Turian Cruiser, sending it spinning into a new direction. "Target it with all we got, we don't want it to surprise us." he said, as the cockpit exploded in action.
As their systems locked on to the Reaper, it seemed to increase it flailing, flipping around its own axis multiple times.
"Admiral, the Reaper is hailing us. It has clearance codes bypassing my firewalls, it will-"
"Don't shoot! It is me!" The cockpit was flooded in sound as the Reaper attempted to align itself with the Normandy.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, please don't fire, this is Commander Shepard!" There was a moment's hesitation. "At least I think so. Shit, how the fuck is this supposed to work!?"
"She-Shepard?" Moreau said, looking at the AI for confirmation. Said AI actually seemed confused, something Hackett would have sworn was impossible for the synthetic.
"Identification codes mach up, but they are intermingled with Reaper coding. I have never encountered this type of code before, it is closer to that of my own programming." The platform turned towards Hackett.
Hackett cleared his throat. "Commander Shepard, we will need some sort of proper identification, we will withhold fire until provided additional information for peruse."
The Reaper had now grabbed on to the remains of a inert Reaper, using the tentacles in a fruitless attempt to hold still, only resulting in the wreckage flipping around as well.
"Shit, well what do you need? My whole serving history?"
"Tell us something only Shepard would know." Moreau said.
"Uh, well, how about that if you don't shoot me, I promise you that I will get you the leather seats back?"
Moreau snorted. "Try harder, everyone have heard me complain about those by now."
"Well then I promise not to tell exactly what you and EDI did to the sofas in the lounge."
"WHAT!?" The voice of the Comm Specialist could be heard through the ship, and the pilots neck had turned a beet red.
"Oh God, it really is Shepard." The pilot coughed uncomfortably.
Hackett paused, anecdotal evidence was far from acceptable, on the other hand the Commander was infamous for the close companionship with the serving crew, it would be folly to ignore their judgment.
"Commander, can you explain how you came to your current" Hackett frowned, "way of existence?"
"Well that is just it, I have no idea. Following team Hammer I managed to enter the Citadel, and found the connection point to the Crucible, after that my memory becomes unreliable. Anderson and I confronted the Illusive Man, and Anderson doubled back to find assistance. I then found myself somewhere above the citadel, there was, there was this light and - Fuck," a large piece of rubble had slammed into the Reaper's 'head'. "Next I know I wake up like this! And let me tell you, Reapers have the most shoddy design in all of the galaxy! I don't know how much time I spend on just figuring out how to start the engines, and don't get me started on the maneuverability of this thing, there is nothing even resembling a manual anywhere."
Moreau began to laugh.
"This is not funny." The Reaper Commander whined.
"Sorry Shepard, but this just," the pilot chuckled, "this is just so much you. I mean, who the fuck else would disappear, possible die, twice in fact, and then come back as a Reaper of all things. I, I just missed you so much Shepard."
"Don't make me come over there and hit you Joker."
Said pilot erupted in laughter once again. "R-right on on, bbb-but sorry Commander, I don't, I don't have the time to wait for you to get here."
The Reaper managed to shake one of it tentacles in a way that might have been threatening, if not for the fact that it send it spiraling away from the Normandy, causing Moreau to nearly collapse from laughter.
Hackett merely stood silently observing. Just how was he going to inform the remaining galaxy about this?
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TMI tues! Does Duke feel like a hero?
The uncomplicated answer: not really.
The complicated answer: kind of. Anxiety has held them back from a lot of stuff, including their self-esteem most of the time. They were hailed as a hero after Elysium, of course, but all they could think of was that ship that went down in the sky after making a suicide run and the N6 they screamed at to pull himself together when they knew damn well that he must have just lost someone. They hated having to be that callous, and they hated having to watch that ship go down. They’re always wondering if there was something they could have done, some little bit more effort they could have put in, that could have saved that ship. They always regret yelling at the N6; they feel guilty about it, having never lost anyone like that. (Boy does that come back to bite them in the ass at the beginning of ME2.)
The fight against Saren was good. They were constantly worried about going against a Spectre who the Council trusted, always worried about the repercussions. They breathed a sigh of relief when the Council started believing them--and then the Council grounded the Normandy. The hijacking of the Normandy was the first time since Elysium that Duke’s anger won out over their anxiety. Only when they were speeding toward Ilos did Duke worry about what might happen to them for stealing a top-of-the-line stealth frigate. But they were proven right, and they won, and for the first time in a long time, Duke felt really proud of themself.
Suffice it to say that was over quickly. Story short, Cade died, and Duke’s world shattered. The Alliance and the Council reversed their position on Reapers, and Duke’s anger trounced their anxiety just long enough for them to let the Alliance brass have it about disrespecting Cade and ignoring evidence right before them in favor of a comfortable lie. The anxiety caught up, and Duke resigned their commission and disappeared rather than be punished for their insolence.
Those two years were a bad time. Duke fell into an awful, awful spiral with their anxiety, depression, and psychosis. They picked up bounty hunter work when they could, and dancer work when they couldn’t. They fell out of contact with everyone they used to know, their mother included. And since Duke doesn’t do well with depression, as it’s an emotion (or lack thereof) that they can’t handle, they turned it into an emotion they could handle: anger. Anger taken out on their targets, mostly, but sometimes on an innocent bartender or other person (if there’s such a thing as innocence on Omega).
When they heard talk of human colonies getting hit more and more often, everyone disappearing with no trace left, Duke’s thoughts went to the one place they might go besides Omega, somewhere where they could fight back and make themself into what they wanted to be once again. They’d done exactly that exactly there once before, after all.
Duke went to Elysium. Duke tried to be a hero again.
And after a few months there, the only way Duke could see to be a hero again is to give themself up. With other species reluctant to trade with or travel to human colonies, the ones in the Verge were left pretty stark, excellent targets for pirates and raiders. The leader of a faction of batarian pirates attacking Elysium heard Duke was back on the colony and wanted revenge, calling for Duke to surrender themself if they wanted attacks on the colony to stop. Duke and the other leaders couldn’t beef up security enough to prevent or stop the renewed attacks, and Duke finally decided to hand themself over to the batarians. They were ready to go down a hero.
And then, like he always fucking does, Cade Shepard turned their universe upside down. He came back. He came back, and he offered them the chance to be a hero again. Duke fought with themself over leaving with Cade or keeping Elysium safe; ultimately, they decided on the latter. But they asked Cade to come with them. Having Commander Shepard there might make the batarians think twice about breaking the deal.
The batarian leader ordered Duke to leave their weapons behind. Even as Duke walked toward him, unarmed, hands in the air, the batarian leader raised his gun to shoot them. Both Cade and Duke saw, and both reacted. Duke held him fast with biotics, even as a bullet whizzed past them from Cade’s gun to embed itself in the batarian’s head. “I don’t need a weapon,” Duke told his dead body. “I am a weapon.” After a long, bloody fight, the leadership of the raiders lay dead around them, and Duke rejoined the Normandy crew. Even so, their own words haunted them. They weren’t a hero, even though they’d given themself up. They were a weapon.
They tried to come to terms with that. If they were a weapon, they were Cade’s weapon. Duke devoted themself to Cade’s mission, planning to go down on that Collector base. They didn’t see any problem striking up a relationship with the convicted murderer. Jack was no hero. Neither was Duke. It was a nice fit--until Duke started catching feelings.
The night before the suicide mission, Duke’s determination faltered. They had something to live for again. Cade, Noel, Jack, every friend they’d found on the Normandy, everyone this mission had put them back in contact with. For the first time since the destruction of the first Normandy, no part of Duke wanted to die.
And they didn’t. They came back. For a few glorious months, they might not have been a hero, but they were alive, and they celebrated it. They helped rescue Noel from the Cerberus control chip in his head, helped Cade take down the Shadow Broker. An unsung hero was as good as any, right?
And then Cade destroyed the Alpha Relay, and it all came crashing down. They were nothing like heroes anymore, not as they let most of the crew escape, not as Noel and Duke stayed with Cade, not as the three of them were court-martialed and put under what was politely called “house arrest.” Duke was a criminal.
Six months later, they were shoved into heroism, and they didn’t want it. The Reaper War was a clusterfuck of ups and downs for Duke. Watching Palaven burn, curing Tuchanka, foiling a coup, losing Thessia, that last party... Duke didn’t feel like a hero. Not until that last beam run. Not until they lay, too injured to move, in the open where any husk or Reaper could reach them, and used the last of their energy to kill a husk that was gunning for Cade. They told him go, and they laid down to die.
They didn’t die. The galaxy was a mess after the war, and so was Duke, but the first thing the leadership did after it reorganized was honor the Normandy crew, particularly Shepard, Moynihan, and Wilder, as heroes.
tl;dr Duke is a hero. Just doesn’t feel like it a lot.
#THIS IS LONG AS FUCK I'M SRRY#duke wilder#tmi tuesday#character asks#more like character biography holy shit#thank u jubbsy#jubb-jubb
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‘Wet Ass Postage:’ Sexualizing the Post Office to Save the USPS
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stops the mail, so the USPS slogan goes—but sometimes, a bored and horny housewife can, in porn tropes at least.
The United States Postal Service, long underfunded and under-appreciated, has accelerated its slide into a threat of collapse due to terrible decisions made by the new postmaster and the Trump administration. It's a mess, and in an election year when more people than ever are going to vote by mail-in ballot to avoid coming into contact with a deadly virus at the polls, it's terrifying.
In early August, Twitter user @BonniePuns put into words something we all felt deep down: only a mass effort of making the post office sexy could salvage it, now.
Writer Ira Madison III tweeted the incredible idea that the post office should start an OnlyFans—since everyone else is doing it, from Bella Thorne to Cardi B—which also went viral:
People in uniform—cops, firemen—are a common porn trope, so it's no surprise that mail carriers are hot again. I've probably seen more of William Harper Jackson's Good Place character Chidi in a tight little mailman uniform in the last month than any other image—and in the episode he wears it in, Kristin Bell's character admits a sex fantasy about fucking a mailman.
Now that it's in danger, everyone's got a boner for the post office, but the thing is, slipping packages on doorsteps and mail through slots has always been sexualized.
Like the stripper-cop trope, the mailman-meets-horny-resident has been around forever, too. The trope used to be the milkman stopping in every day to visit the bored housewife, but that shifted to the postal worker when milk delivery became obsolete. One of the most popular examples of this in pop culture is attributed to the show Kids Say the Darndest Things, where one of the kids says, "I don't look like my Mommy or my Daddy. I look like the mailman.
In a more modern example, Paige Steele plays a pissed-off customer who makes the mailman come inside and watch her test the dildo he just delivered.
Interestingly, there's a notable lack of women mail carriers in mail-porn, even though there are lots of them in real life—slightly less than half of carriers are women, and women have been letter carriers since at least 1845.
Even with years of porn and film and TV examples, horny mail goes back farther than that. Jean Shepard and Ferlin Husky's 1953 song "Dear John" was about sending a breakup letter to let a soldier know he'd been cucked back home by his own brother, and became shorthand for dumping someone via letter. Brian Hyland's 1962 "Sealed With A Kiss," the Marvelettes' 1965 "Mister Postman"—these songs all eroticized descriptions of the act of sending and receiving mail, in a time when getting a letter that smelled like your lover was probably the hottest thing imaginable.
Here in 2020, things are a little different. We slide into DMs, not mail slots, and our mailboxes are mostly virtual. And with precarious funding and incompetent leadership, the post office is in trouble.
Inspired by the "sexualizing the post office" tweet, TikTok user Siete White bought a mail bag from the USPS store and paired it with shiny black short shorts to twerk on a mailbox:
She told Buzzfeed News that the bag sold out after her post, which got more than 605,000 likes. "It’s empowering to know, wow, I made a 15-second-long video and people actually went and used their hard-earned coins to go and make their own individual difference," White said.
Others on TikTok and Twitter took a page out of K-pop stan fancam playbook and made video mashups of postal workers delivering mail and petting dogs to "WAP" and "In the Party" by Flo Milli:
Much like artists who coped with Covid-19 lockdown by sketching toilet paper and hand sanitizer Corona-chan waifus and sex workers who sold nudes to raise money for Australian wildfire relief efforts (2020 has been so weird), people are turning their concerns about the fate of the USPS into art.
Alexandra Kiselyov, a graduate student studying television writing and producing, is also selling art in exchange for proof of USPS support—but instead of nudes, she's taking illustration art commissions. While they aren’t necessarily sexualized, she was inspired by others doing similar fundraising campaigns. For every $10 or more spent on USPS stamps with proof of receipt, she'll illustrate whatever you want.
"I wanted to give people incentive to buy stamps for the USPS, primarily because I'm extremely concerned about mail-in voting and what the Trump administration has been doing in the background," she told me. She's concerned about the state of mail-in ballots for the election, but also since she runs a small business through eBay, she relies on the USPS to ship to customers.
"I'm eternally grateful to those that did purchase stamps, and I hope people will continue to support artists and the USPS in the future,” she said. “The most important part is that people are learning that the USPS is in dire straits, and that small businesses and rural communities are going to be affected by it."
Cosplayer Katie Simrell told me she decided to do a postal-themed look after being inspired by the @BonniePuns tweet. "Immediately I thought about how I could make a cosplay from this idea to raise money from the USPS," she said. "Making silly lewd/sexy costumes out of innocuous characters or inanimate objects or ideas or… govt agencies apparently (lol) isn't a new idea of course."
The USPS doesn't sell uniforms, so she found an old one on eBay, and like White, she bought the messenger bag from the USPS store. A matching blue and red microbikini and ingenious stamp pasties complete the look.
Like Alexandra's commissions, sending proof of purchase from the USPS store got you a lewd photo in her USPS-chan outfit, as does proof of texting "USPS" to 50409—which returns a Resistbot that automatically emails your local representatives to urge them to support the Delivering for America Act. Simrell said her DMs exploded with purchase receipts, she said, "which could either be a great sign of people really wanting to help the USPS and they love the idea, or equally, people just being horny."
The response has been mostly positive, which surprised her. "Usually I brace myself for a torrent of misogynistic or mean-spirited comments but there have only been a few small outliers," she said. "The most baffling response has been the handful of political retorts. Somebody tried to say 'the dems are offering nudes now to join their party,' I guess trying to demean me? Or as if the USPS is a service that only one political party can use."
Urging individuals to buy stamps and art commissions probably won't, in itself, save the post office. The job of funding one of the country's oldest and most important institutions is a lot bigger than OnlyFans can handle. But if the postal worker ever goes the way of the milkman, future generations could find themselves jerking off to a lot more UPS and FedEx porn fantasies.
Subscribe to The Mail, our newsletter about the USPS, voting security, and democracy.
‘Wet Ass Postage:’ Sexualizing the Post Office to Save the USPS syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/
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Drunk Punch Love 2: Chapter 6
Pairing: FemShep and Garrus Vakarian (Shakarian)
Rating: PG-13 (with some tossed F-bombs)
Summary: Their awkward, badass journey through saving the galaxy and accidentally falling in love
AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22089466/chapters/54170929
Part 2- Chapter 6: The Lobsters
Walking up the steps out of the hold under engineering, Shepard was half convinced she needed to wash out her fucking ears. She'd spent the past 24 hours with Jack, helping her set up her room in the lowest deck of the ship. While she thought it was a little claustrophobic, the mildly crazy biotic insisted it was cozy. With a more colorful vocabulary, of course.
After spending some time with her, Anya just found it best to accept her statements at face value. At the very least, she had a richer breadth of swear words and new ways to insult people. Maybe she could get Jack to spend some time with EDI so that the AI didn't just learn all her humor from Joker.
Overall, though, she was a little overwhelmed. Everything with Jack was anger, sharp objects, and a paint bucket of angst. It was exhausting. Anya would normally complain about her to her face, but she was pretty sure she just learned what kind of person she'd be if she went mob instead of military, and she wasn't sure she liked that.
And she had to admit, the woman was damn powerful. So, she just tried to be as understanding and civil as possible. From what the dossier said, and the few snippets in conversation, she went through hell. Made sense she'd be pissed as hell, too. For now, she'd just give Jack some space to adjust.
Granted, she might've been open to a little more "space" after bedroom setup because a few hours before Chakwas had pinged her that a certain turian was awake and setting himself up in the main battery. Despite the fact she needed a damn nap, she was headed there the second she could sneak off away from Jack.
She also had already pinged EDI on a private channel to please not interrupt them unless it was an emergency, and not to tell anyone where she was. The AI was lovely and compliant. Anya had to admit, over the last few days, she was growing on her.
Couldn't tell Joker that, though, he'd call her a traitor.
Walking up to Garrus' new door, she took a deep breath and knocked. He didn't even ask, or say anything. The metal just slid open and Garrus was there, smiling at her. "Heard you might be coming down to see me."
Anya bubbled with awkward laughter as she walked into the battery and the door closed behind her. "W-who told you that?"
"EDI. She said you wanted to see me and wanted to get permission to shut off comms to my room." He chuckled and Anya wished it was more annoying than it was endearing. "Guess you really want to talk, huh?"
With a glare tossed to the ceiling comms, Anya said, "Okay, I'm with Joker. The AI's a traitor."
"What?"
"Nevermind. I'm just happy you're up and walking around." Anya leaned her elbows against the railing by his station. "Like the new space?"
Garrus followed suit and stood right next to her, but he faced the tech instead of the door. All that really mattered was that his blue eyes were looking at her. "Do I like having a room to myself where I can calibrate guns and not hear Wrex and Williams bicker? Of course." His laughter faded and Shepard knew what he was thinking, talking about the two of them. Garrus beat her to the punch, though, saying, "Granted, I don't think I'd mind hearing them bicker again if I could."
"Me neither."
"How'd the mission go?"
"Perfectly fine, Jack almost tore the ship in half with us in it and the warden was secretly selling his prisoners for spare parts. Oh, and I had to do some Commander bonding to make both Jack and Miranda less domineering assholes. But, y'know, typical."
"For you? Definitely."
Anya felt her cheeks blush at her next thought, but she couldn't help herself. Not when it was true. She did avoid looking at him, though, instead staring at her fingernails like there was anything interesting about their short, pink nubs. "It was distinctly lacking a sniper who likes to back-talk, though. I think it threw me off my A-game."
"I'm pretty sure we can have you covered for the next mission." Garrus paused, and Anya was tired of the weird distance she was putting between them by facing the door. She turned and copied his posture.
But when he got to talking again, his shoulder slumped and his eyes wouldn't meet hers. "Sorry I had to go comatose for a couple days. Doctor's orders, because apparently I didn't follow them well enough while conscious."
"Not a bad call. You're pretty damn stubborn." Lightly, almost like he might break, she bumped his shoulder with hers. Anya didn't know it would feel so nice, doing the casual friendship stuff with him again. Taking a deep breath, she asked, "How are you holding up, after Omega?"
"I don't know." Garrus laughed, but she recognized it as the hollow, empty kind he used when shit really wasn't that funny. Before she could ask more, he sarcastically countered, "How do you like coming back from the dead and waking up a Cerberus play toy?"
"Not funny."
"I'm mostly kidding." He bumped her shoulder back, the way they used to on the old Normandy, like they were tossing little touches of support at each other with each brush. "I just want to know how you're coping. We can go back to my fun new trauma if you really want, but I need to know you're doing okay. I won't shut up about it until you tell me."
"I don't want to let your whole deal slide, but I will for now since you sound annoyingly sincere. Honestly? Being reborn in a Cerberus lab isn't the worst. They give me a lot of liberties and I get to call the shots. It's like Spectres but with a much shinier, much shadier bank account." Anya leaned harder into her elbows, bit her cheek, and looked at him. He looked so genuine and kind that she could vomit. Made her want to talk more than she was used to with the others. There he was, back at it again, making her talk about everything. "Funny thing about Cerberus, no matter how much of an asshole the Illusive Man is and how their ideals suck, it's the treatment that's the worst. I'm more like a godly legend here than I ever was in The Alliance. There, at least I was still one of the soldiers. Here, I'm a multi-million dollar resurrection project to save the universe." Anya sighed and got a little anxious at Garrus just staring at her. "Not that I wish I was still dead, but does mean I have had to accept the fact that I'm not really human anymore, not to the galaxy."
He was silent before poking her in the arm. She remembered the last time he did that; on her couch after Ash's funeral, when she didn't know if he was reaching for more. Luckily, this time, she didn't have any stupid expectations. It was just nice to be poked again. "Still seems like the same squishy human to me."
Anya laughed; laughed like she hadn't in ages. Everything about being here with him, it felt like her skin was ripping away, exposing every inch of muscle, every motion unbearably raw and painful. But she wouldn't dare thinking about being anywhere else, because she'd rather be raw with him than safe outside those. Doors. Looking up at his eyes, she said, "I missed you, Garrus."
"You think you missed me? You've missed me a couple weeks. I've missed you a couple years." Garrus chuckled and leaned in deeper to the railing, like his shoulders were getting too heavy. But his eyes didn't look like he was laughing. "You gave me a lot to agonize over. I should've known "I'll find you" was just heroic bullshit." But then, softer, more bitter, he laughed again. "But I guess you did find me, in that Omega deathtrap."
"How'd you end up there, anyway?"
"You really are going to make me do the tragic backstory thing, aren't you?" When he looked at her, he shook his head. Guess she wasn't the only one who felt like their friendship made them talk, even when they didn't really want to. "I wasn't in the best headspace after you died. Pent-up. Angry. I still am. My sister, Sol, helped me find a place to vent my frustrations and stop hearing your name." Garrus winced and flashed apologetic blue eyes at her. They were nicer than he probably realized, but Shepard felt that one in her gut. It was like a needle suddenly appeared and was threatening to pierce through. "No offense."
She looked away from him, because she knew he had every right to be upset with her. Hell, she was just happy he didn't hate her. But that didn't erase the years of pain that were all her fault and she couldn't forget that. Anya said, "I was the asshole who got myself killed, can't blame you."
But then his shoulder bumped hers, a little harder. "Not that. After all those talks with you about how being a hero hurt, I couldn't stand them turning you into a martyr. I knew Spectres would've been hell about that. I needed to find a place where you weren't a hero. Omega fit the bill."
Anya didn't know what to say. What could she say to someone who hated the galaxy she left behind because she leaned on him? Instead, she asked, "And then what?"
"What else? I ended up doing justice my way. And then I got too high on being team leader to realize it's weaknesses. We were betrayed by one of our own. I got lured away, and by the time I came back, everyone but two of my guys were dead. And those two only lasted a little over a day. I was alone, at the end. Just like when I lost you."
Again, Anya felt lost. Normally, her answer was to fix everything, but she put her own ass out of commission. Now all Garrus had were tragic memories that she couldn't change. The best she had were lame-ass condolences. "I can't bring back your team, but you have me." Even though she was starting to feel overwhelmed, Anya placed her hand on his and looked up at his face, something she cared about so much, and tried to make it clear that the universe hadn't forgotten him; she hadn't forgotten him. She wouldn't let it. "The dossier was a fluke, but I always planned on finding you. When The Illusive Man said you were missing, I couldn't think-."
Old Garrus would've pulled her into his arms and held her, but he just pulled away from her, stared down at his hands, and she could've sworn he looked guilty, maybe even angry. "I had to go underground. You were my best friend and you were dead. I had to do something."
Even though she didn't mean to, Anya felt her skin bristle. "So you turned into a merc-killer?"
He wouldn't even look at her now, just lost in the lines on his own talons. "Better a dumb hero than a useless one, buried under tape."
"You really would've been useless if you died." She wanted to reach for his hand again, but he already pulled away once. She just gave him a lame, weak bump against his shoulder again. With all the feelings washing over her, how could she have much else? Anya just tried her best to keep her composure, thinking about Omega. "You almost did, Garrus."
"On that balcony, I did die. That team got me through losing you. Without them, I was ready to take down as many goddamn mercs as possible before I went out. And then you showed up to save my ass, like you never died in the first place."
In that battery, there was definitely some tension and anger and guilt neither of them really knew how to process yet. And while they could talk in circles over things they weren't ready to face, Anya couldn't sit here, next to the turian she cared most about in the galaxy, and just make him think about the misery of it all. God knows how much she'd already done that while she was gone.
Instead, she just wanted to make him feel better.
"I'm sorry. Everything's fucked up." Anya shook her head and said what she should have said years ago, instead of always falling in his arms like he was made to hold her. It wasn't fair, not when he didn't... Well, she always pushed his boundaries and that wasn't fair, either, not when she knew she'd probably die. "I'm sorry if anything I did back then pushed you away. Or hurt you. I can't fix the fact that I died, but I should've been better, maybe left you with something more inspiring than-"
"Shepard, shut up."
"Don't. Let me try to start making up for what I did to you. I leaned on you. I made you participate in things that meant different things for each of us. I left you. I said I'd find you, but I didn't and I can't go back. Now is all I have."
When their eyes met, Garrus wasn't bitter or guilty anymore, but he still looked angry. And when he stood straight up, so much taller than her, she even felt somewhat intimidated. He looked down at her with such seriousness that it did make her shut up. "You don't need to apologize for being the hero you are." Suddenly, he was placing a hand on her arm, looking all over her shoulders, her skin, her legs, like he still couldn't believe she was there. "You're right, they're gone, and you're back and that's what we're dealing with. But if I could go back, I'd tell the most amazing woman in the galaxy that I was a scared idiot who kept pushing her away." Anya's brain was too fried to understand what he was saying, but he grabbed her hand and kept on going. "I couldn't believe what I felt. Not when you were... you and I was a lost ex-C-Sec officer clinging to you. I don't know if I feel sure or comfortable about any of it, but of course I care about you."
Scanning his face for any certainty, all Anya found was this desperate gaze that she'd never seen on him before. She just started blubbering, thinking of that morning after Noveria. Maybe he was talking about their friendship, and he thought her final words were about something platonic. She couldn't blame him, she never said anything overtly romantic, but she couldn't lie about it either. "I know that, but I meant-"
"Dammit Shepard. I know what you meant. I didn't know how to deal with it. But you died. I'm not going to push you away anymore so you can play perfect Commander. I thought you deserved Alenko or Liara back then. Closer to home, y'know? I was being an insecure asshole." If he knew what she meant... But Garrus just kept on talking before she could process, like if he stopped talking he'd lose the nerve. His hand squeezed hers. "But look at you. I never thought I'd see you again, let alone touch you or talk to you. For all the fucked up things that have happened to me, I don't know how I got so lucky."
"...Garrus..."
He took a step closer to her and Anya couldn't think over the sound of her heart beating. "I'm not smooth or romantic, and I'm not going to pretend I have a thing for humans. Just- Noveria meant something, okay? You chose me over Kaidan. You wanted me to stay the night. I'm not that fucking clueless. And I wanted it. But you were my CO and I thought we could never be anything but some drunk fantasy you got stuck on because you were lonely and hurt. I didn't want to encourage it." Another step, and he looked from their hands intertwined to her face with this screwed up look, like he was somewhere between vomiting and panicking. She understood the feeling. What also was there, though, was this softness that made her speechless. "But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep away from you."
"So you did know what I meant. But you said..."
"I know what I said and I was a damn liar."
With her heart drilling a jackhammer through her brain, she couldn't quite keep anything straight. Anya asked, "Are you sure?"
"You're impossible." Laughing, Garrus took a deep breath and kept going. She was thankful, because she would be stuttering and stumbling so hard by now that this conversation could've been classified as a verbal break. "Let's put it this way. All of us were devoted to you. But look at me. Everyone else moved on; I didn't. If I couldn't have you, the best I could do was be you."
"You did a pretty damn good job."
"No, I didn't. Yet even now you won't shut up about believing in me. Dammit Shepard, the fact that you believed my bullshit is absurd. I'm pretty sure everyone else knew how I felt. The least I can do is tell you now: I want to be with you." His handsome face and eyes fell, but his voice kept going and that was good. Because she could swear that voice was something she wished she could hear forever. "But we gotta be real here, I'm not the same person you said all those things to anymore. Omega and my team changed me. Losing you changed me. I don't know what that means for... us. If there even is an 'us". I'm half convinced none of the things I've just said make any sense."
Garrus might've been holding her hand, but he looked so unsure. She wished she could give him a good old Commander Shepard pep talk, but that wasn't what this was. This was something a lot more beautiful, and so very human.
So, all she had was an awkward human to give him. With a crackling cough, she said, "Call me Anya."
His eyes flicked up and met hers, confused. "What?"
"Off-duty, it's Anya. We can start there." She smiled and added, "I don't really know what to do about this either. I missed two whole years and I never knew you could- I know there's a lot I have to catch up on. But what I said before..." Anya was going to throw herself into a laser if she couldn't finish a sentence. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and then looked up at the handsome turian who made her feel like no one else. And she was fucknig terrified, but she said, "All it took is one look on Omega and you made me feel myself again. That matters. That's why you matter so much." When she laughed, it was so awkward that she wondered if someone could off her right now. Why in the hell did Garrus have any interest in her? That was far harder to wrap her head around than reciprocation.
Pulling her hand away, she ran her fingers through her hair and said, "And maybe next time we pass a bar, you can buy me a drink."
"I- I can do that."
"Good."
They stood next to each other for a minute, not really knowing what to say or do. Her entire body was an embarrassing, life-size blush and Garrus kept scratching his neck and wrists like he'd itch away how tragically embarrassed they both were.
Anya was a little upset she'd never bothered with relationships before. It would make her a lot less of an idiot at this moment, which was otherwise very important to her. Hell, maybe this is why Joker and Oksana used to tell her to go on dates and try out romance more, instead of focusing on work and dance. She hadn't felt so inept in years. Thank god they were alone, because he was the only one she could stand being so-
But then his voice cut through her thoughts. "One last confession?" Anya's head swiveled to look straight at him. His smile looked a lot more hopeful than she'd ever seen before, but it also kept wavering like he might pop a gasket. How sincere he looked made up for it and melted her heart all the way through the damn floor. "I respect Commander Shepard like hell. But those last few weeks on the Normandy? I was starting to like Anya a lot better."
Tragically, Anya felt her eyes tear up. Even without the confession shit, hearing someone she cared about say that? Damn, did that mean a lot to her. Garrus put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed it, which did not help the weird whirlpool of overwhelmed feelings. She knuckled away any stray tears as quickly as she could. "Now that I'm not being a lying asshole, I gotta admit you're pretty adorable when you try not to cry."
Anya punched his shoulder. "Vakarian, I swear I will kill you-"
"Also cute when you try to threaten my life."
"Both you and Wrex need to work on what you find endearing." She crossed her arms and tried to take slower breaths and prayed her face cooled off. She needed to stop being such an embarrassment. Garrus also needed to work on what he found endearing since he liked her like this, messy and red and almost crying.
Next to her, he cocked his head sideways. "What do you mean?"
"Before... When we dropped him off, he was proud of people wanting to kill him? And I told him he shouldn't find that charming?" Anya realized that even though the memory was fresh for her, only a few weeks ago, Garrus hadn't seen Wrex in two years. She grimaced and facepalmed. "This whole time jump thing is going to be weird for a while, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it will be. But I'll be here for you like always."
Anya had to deflect; at this point she needed to, or her best friend was about to turn her entire body into a giant tomato with no chance of turning back to its normal color. With a very uneven laugh that cycled through several pitches, she said, "Just realized, you don't even know if I still feel the same way about you. You just assumed. Bold of a so-called insecure asshole."
"How could anyone not love this face?" He paused, and poked her cheek. "And no offense, but look at your face." Before she could get mad, he continued, "In all seriousness, I didn't know until you looked at me in med-bay."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, it was when your Commander face was finally down. Even though you only looked for a few days and I looked for a few years, I knew that smile. And I can't tell you how much I wanted to hold you again, seeing you look as relieved as I felt."
Anya wanted to curl up in the corner because her entire body was warm and awkward. She had to be upgrading from tomato to cooked lobster. "You say you're not good at romantic..."
"Give me a minute. I'll say something wonderfully unsexy."
No matter how much she totally loved being embarrassed and impressed and feel her heart beat out of her chest, she did say what she came down here to say. And, she had other things to do. Looking up at his bright blue eyes, she sighed in disappointment. She really couldn't stay down here and look at them all day, could she? "Would love to, but I have some mission reports to go over." She also needed a cold shower and a nap, too.
They stood in front of each other and just kinda stood stiff, neither really knowing what to do. Anya just nodded and started sliding her way towards the door. When she was almost out, all the fuzzy feelings in her chest couldn't help but add, "Two years, and I still found you."
"Yeah, you did, A-Anya." Garrus winced so hard that she could see his flexing muscles ripple throughout his shoulders. Yep, needed a cold shower. Scratching his head, his face looked pained when he said, "Dammit, first time using your first name and I say it like you have a gun to my head. Perfect."
Anya just kept walking very slowly through the open door. "And there it is. The awkward turian of my dreams." After she said that, her entire body caved in, turning into some sort of horrific modern art piece about social suffering. Covering her face with both hands, she rubbed her cheeks and shook her head. How were they two of the galaxy's top soldiers? The universe had terrible taste. They were pathetic. "Fuck, we both need to work on this. But for now, with that horrible, cringey statement, I should go."
Before she could reach the hallway, he stepped forward and squeezed her hand, giving a wink. Every organ in her abdomen fluttered. She was a little bitter that the man had his moments of being so damn charming. "As long as you promise to come back."
Like the horribly awkward grub of a human she was, she shook his hand, then let it go. "I will."
Turning on her heel, she walked away from the battery and hoped space lightning struck her dead before she ran into anyone. Luckily, no one paid any attention to the freshly embarrassed, cherry-colored human walking across the crew deck and into the elevator.
Anya was absolutely pathetic, definitely even more than he was, but she also couldn't help but feel her heart dance a goddamn jitterbug in her chest.
She did need a shower and a nap and to go over some mission reports, but before that she pinged the only other confidant she had. My answer changed. The reunion was good. Really good.
Joker responded a few seconds after she started prepping the water. She checked her datapad one last time to read, Great! Do I get to win the dating pool, then? I bet 50 credits on your big, obvious turian crush.
Staring at her screen, Anya snorted, but played coy. I didn't say anything about dating.
Don't make me force EDI to pull up the footage.
With an eye-roll, Anya replied, I'll send you 300 credits if you shut up.
Sounds like a deal. A pause. Extorting you about your dating life is great, I've really missed out all these years.
Fuck off, Joker.
Happy you're happy, Anya.
///
I love this chapter sososososo much. It's super long, but I always knew I wanted them to talk about their feelings instead of playing the slow burn forever. I feel like people who were as close as they were would always struggle not just letting their feelings fall out of their mouths. Instead, our conflict is them being awkward middle schoolers falling in love and trying to save the galaxy.
Thanks so much for reading. Even more thanks to my lovely patrons:
Danyell Jones
Amy Connolly
#Drunk Punch Love#Shakarian#Femshep x Garrus#Anya Shepard#Garrus Vakarian#Friends to lovers#Awkward flirting#Confessing Feelings#The Lobsters#Mass Effect Fanfiction#Bioware Romances
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Hyperallergic: How the New Bowery Wall Commission Puts Rape Culture on Display
David Choe painting his mural (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
Last week, well-known muralist David Choe painted New York City’s iconic Houston and Bowery wall. Did everyone forget that this guy openly bragged about raping a woman a few years ago? Does that not matter at all?
In 2014, Choe spoke in vivid detail on his podcast DVDASA about an experience he had at an LA massage parlor where he forced his masseuse to give him a blowjob. In his recounting, Choe said, “She has given me no signs that she’s into me or that this is appropriate behavior. … So I go back to the chill method of you never ask first, you just do it, get in trouble and then pay the price later.” After Choe finished his story, his co-host, adult film actress Asa Akira, said, “You raped [her].” Choe responded that he considered his actions to have been “rapey behavior” but not actual rape. “But the thrill of possibly going to jail, that’s what achieved the erection quest,” responded Choe. Akira pressed, “You’re basically telling us that you’re a rapist now and the only way to get your dick really hard is rape.” To this, Choe responded simply, “Yeah.”
While he later claimed that his confession was simply “bad storytelling in the style of douche,” it’s still pretty fucked up. Even if it’s an embellished anecdote, it’s still one about sexual assault that Choe used to show how “cool” he is and to brag about how thrilling the interaction was. Worse, while it was perhaps the most extreme, that wasn’t the first time Choe has done something like this. The artist has an impressive history of making public statements that attempt to normalize or make a joke out of rape. And last week he was in New York City, painting a mural on one of the most iconic walls in the country.
The recreated Keith Haring mural installed at Houston and Bowery in 2008 (photo by Dan DeLuca/Flickr)
Barry McGee and Josh Lazcano’s mural, installed in 2010 (photo by Andrew Russeth/Flickr)
The Houston and Bowery wall is curated by Goldman Properties, which has allowed it to display rotating murals since 2008. Since the passing of Goldman Properties founder Tony Goldman in 2012, the company has been run by his daughter, Jessica Goldman Srebnick, and its art practice has fallen under the banner of Goldman Global Arts, currently curated by Sarah Sperling. Being tapped to paint a mural at Houston and Bowery is a major career achievement for those in the street-art world, and the honor has previously been given to Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Os Gemeos, Lady Aiko, JR, Barry McGee, Faile, Crash, Maya Hayuk, and Futura, among others. Despite the fact that two women run the show at Goldman Global Arts, only three of the 20 or so artists they’ve invited in nearly a decade have been female. And now they’ve chosen a self-proclaimed (and self-congratulating) rapist.
When Goldman Properties sent out the press release announcing that a man who brags about committing rape would be the next star to paint their legendary wall, I had to wonder: Will there ever be a day when things don’t suck?
I shared my surprise on social media and got dozens of private messages from people who had never heard about Choe’s behavior. In the age of Trump, I guess this should all come as no surprise. America was outraged at the Access Hollywood tape on which Trump said “Grab ’em by the pussy” and “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” but the country ultimately decided that sexual assault wasn’t a deal-breaker and elected him anyway. Apparently we’ve moved on with Choe, too. Dangerous rhetoric written off as “locker room banter” is the bedrock of normalizing rape and misogyny, and apparently when they’re “stars,” we let them do it.
The 11th Principle’s Rape Culture Pyramid by Ranger Cervix & Kate Seewald of ActionAid / Safe Cities for Women (via Creative Commons)
The left-leaning arts community considers itself enlightened and immune to sexism. But if you were disgusted by Trump and you’re not pissed about Choe, you’re supporting the same system. Both men use stories of predatory sexual behavior to feel powerful, and Goldman Properties has either ignored Choe’s behavior or bought into it.
Tell me again that sexual assault will ruin a man’s career. Choe being chosen to paint this wall is just one more example of there being no consequences whatsoever for men who glorify predatory behavior toward women. There are hundreds of qualified muralists whom Goldman Properties could have chosen, whose contribution to the art world doesn’t include normalizing sexual violence.
If the past is any indication of the future, the sad truth is that we will quickly forget any outrage over this and move on. Choe has no incentive to change unless he stops getting opportunities or until his fans turn against him, and neither seems to be happening. But as long as his mural is on the Bowery wall, my response will not be to stay silent or to succumb to society’s drive to treat sexual violence like it’s not a deal-breaker. Sometimes your only power in a situation is saying “Fuck you” to the right person. Part of creating a culture of accountability is for all of us to say “This is unacceptable and we must do better,” then taking a stand with a physical boycott or pushing the story out to a wider audience.
So on that note: Fuck you, David Choe. Fuck you, Sarah Sperling. Fuck you, Jessica Goldman. You must do better than this.
The post How the New Bowery Wall Commission Puts Rape Culture on Display appeared first on Hyperallergic.
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