Chapter Text
Shepard always thought her first name was a little bland. Yet another reason military life suited her. There, everyone called her “Shepard” or “Commander.” Eventually, once she saved a few thousand lives and became the military equivalent of a celebrity, everyone called her Shepard.
When Shepard woke in a cold sweat, she thought about the last time someone called her Jane.
Was it her parents, back when she could even look at Mindoir? Was it her brother, John, who always teased her about the similarities in their names but not in their looks? Was it Anderson, the man who had essentially become her father after her parents’ death, reprimanding her for stepping out of line yet again? Was it one of her crew, screaming her name as she was forcefully launched into space-
God dammit.
Shepard prayed that the professor call her Jane.
With a groan, Shepard cracked her neck and stretched her arms above her head. The bed underneath her was certainly no cloud, but it was a hell of a lot better than military issued mattresses. The only light that spilled through her draped windows was the little bit that always leaked from the campus courtyard. It tumbled past the white cloth standard for Serrice and spilled onto the mostly-empty space of her room. Through squinted eyes, she could barely make out the time displayed on the digital clock at the other end of the room.
4:00 am. Of course, she thought. Two hours to just sit around and do nothing.
Shepard decided waiting on a spaceship was much easier a task than waiting in a college dorm room.
Alone.
She should have known the administration was going to give her a room by herself. Besides, who would want to share a room with an ex-military, PTSD-riddled invalid who didn’t even have a damn couch?
Shepard sighed and reached her right hand underneath her pillow. When her nearly bitten off fingernails clacked against plastic, she quickly grasped her omni-tool and slid it out. Her left arm- or what was left of it- twitched in annoyance when she once again attempted to flex a hand that wasn’t there. Shepard glared at the knot of flesh just past her elbow.
I’ll never get used to this fucking arm. Shepard inhaled deeply and sighed, the anger carried out on the cool air, quickly replaced by that familiar apathy on the next breath.
She fastened the omni-tool on her upper arm- a mildly uncomfortable and weird-looking location to fasten it but the only place she could while still being able to type on it.
Another groan and Shepard pushed herself into a sitting position with one arm, swinging her leg off the edge of the mattress as she opened the light on her omni-tool. It glowed orange and reflected off the stark white walls of her room. The blankness was not meant to be comforting, but for Shepard, it was the perfect shade of nothing. It kept her from staring at it for too long; there weren’t any dots to count like at the hospital.
Lost in her thoughts, Shepard forgot to account for her left foot. Or rather, lack thereof.
Her elbow caught most of her weight when she fell, but sent tingles straight into her shoulder. “Ah, shit, fuck,” Shepard hissed, rolling onto her back.
She never forgot her right leg. The cut off was above her knee, leaving not much other than a mound of flesh past her hip that was essentially useless and therefore very obvious. Her left leg, however, was easier to ignore. She still had it halfway down her shin, so until it made contact with the ground, she often forgot her foot was gone.
Shepard ran a hand down her face then pushed herself into a sitting position. The carpet was soft, sure, but it still itched her skin, over-sensitive from whatever nightmare she had but couldn’t remember.
Where the fuck did I put them..?
She glanced around her room, neck craning to look behind her, but when she swiveled back around, the light from her omnitool reflected against something plastic underneath her bed.
Aha.
She reached and pulled out the first prosthetic she touched. It was her right leg. The leg wasn’t meant to look realistic, hence the simple plastics and metals that made it up. The foot and the arm, both still under her bed, were almost indistinguishable from real appendages.
She remembered the day she received them clearly- one of the only things she could remember in detail.
A quiet knock on her door followed by her (surviving, former) crew, missing only James , looking sheepish but excited. Even Samara, her ancient, ever-wise justicar, couldn’t keep a smile off of her face. (Shepard had been surprised to see her there. She thought the asari had to leave for... justicar reasons. The Code and all that jazz.)
“We all pitched in on these,” was the general consensus.
Ashley came up with the idea and acquired any funding necessary. Tali, with the “begrudging” help of Javik, designed the blueprints. Joker used his experience with his own leg braces to make them, as he put it, “comfortable but stylish enough that you get all the ladies.” EDI built them, perfecting the weight and aerodynamics. Legion made them all wireless, enabling them to connect to Shepard’s nervous system. James, in a surprising show of artistic talent, painted the right leg N7 colors, then shipped off to get the title himself. Wrex threw them against various objects a couple of times to make sure they were as sturdy as possible. Grunt was one of the objects Wrex threw them at. Mordin conducted the surgical operation on Shepard, meticulously placing nodes and weaving them into her nerves where they were needed to connect with her new limbs. (He said it was much easier since Shepard had already died and been reconstructed before. She already had a few synthetic components inside of her.) Kasumi “may or may not have put tiny knives in there that can’t be picked up by weapon sensors.” Garrus calibrated them to fit her exactly, because of course he did, and told her that if she ever needed them recalibrated, she could just give him a call.
Though most of them had to leave shortly after gifting her with the prosthetics, those who were left reassured her through physical therapy. When her body rejected the prosthetics and her recovery was delayed even further, Kelly Chambers came into her room and talked at her every night for fourteen days before being called off somewhere. Shepard knew Kelly thought Shepard was going to kill herself. Shepard also knew Kelly could have been right.
Shepard contemplated leaving her prosthetic leg off and just using crutches and her foot for her walk around campus, but she figured if she had to go to class, she didn’t want to go back to her room first. Shepard often walked in the early morning to shake off whatever nightmare she had the night before, but today was the first day of actual classes. Before, when she arrived about a week ago, no one was around that early, so she could leave her leg off and not worry about someone seeing her with a crutch. Now, students were getting just as early a start as she. Unfortunate.
Shepard awkwardly placed her residual thigh in the leg’s black socket with one arm and pressed a button, reaching for her foot while the socket compressed and hissed as it released air. She grabbed her much-more-realistic foot and arm (sometimes Shepard liked to imagine she had someone’s chopped off limbs like some sort of serial killer) and placed the foot on, then the arm. She opened the Tali-Legion-Kasumi-designed prosthetic program on her omni-tool, swiftly entering the codes for each, and shivering when feeling slowly seeped into the appendages. Her arm had been the hardest when they were making it because it required more sensors. It had been hard enough that they didn’t bother putting every nerve in the right leg- her mind likely wouldn’t have been able to handle that much artificial input. She could feel pressure and could move her leg with ease, but unless something was burning hot, she couldn't feel the temperature. She also doubted she would feel the difference between someone shooting her in the leg and touching her.
She flexed her foot, hand, then thigh and calf in turn. Both made quiet robotic swishes when she moved them around, but if you couldn't see the rubber sockets where they connected with her flesh, they were entirely real.
Shepard glanced up at the clock again. 4:30. Time to get moving.
Barely grunting with the effort, she used the bed to lever herself onto her feet. She shuddered when a little bit of excess air hissed out of her prosthetic foot, the rubber readjusting around her stump to make up for it. Shepard knew the tech sometimes missed a spot, that it was normal, but she gnawed on her lip anyways, dreading the social nightmare should her prosthetics fall off in public.
She bounced from one false leg to the other, testing her weight, before walking to the built-in closet for two located on the opposite side of the room. The space felt melancholy, sad that only Shepard, with her meager fatigues, few t-shirts, and maybe a dusty old sweatshirt or two, used it as it were meant to be used.
Shepard snatched some black joggers, a white tanktop, and a grey sweatshirt, before tossing them on her bed and darting into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
She looked at her naked body in the mirror, littered with damage, and thought about maybe even putting on gloves and a hat. A scar cut through her eyebrow, leaving her hairless along a line that trailed down just past her cheekbone. A similar scar, likely from the same shrapnel that gave her the other one, split her lip and ran across her chin. A knot twisted the skin next to her navel- a puncture wound from very aggressive rebar. A bullet scar practically split her hip in two, leaving a dent in the skin there. Two raised bumps rested just below her left breast where her ribs had rent through muscle and skin.
Shepard ran thoughtful fingers over them. Her hand (she said hand because technically she only had one left) was ruined for the most part, calloused and practically drenched in scar tissue. It was even missing the tip of her middle finger where it was cut off by angry batarian pirates.
Shepard grimaced. That had been a bad day.
Shepard quickly brushed her teeth then brought her nose to her raised arm. Her nose wrinkled at the smell.
But I already put my prosthetics on…
Shepard pulled open a drawer below the sink and grabbed the complimentary deodorant from the college (its scent was gaeia, an asari fruit that smelled like peppermint.) She popped the cap of her deodorant then spread it over her red underarm hairs in an attempt to smother the rankness. Shepard sniffed again and when it didn't make her flinch, she shrugged and exited the bathroom.
She quickly tossed her clothes on, pulled her hoodie up, laced her specially-made shoes meant for prosthetic feet, then exited into the hallway.
One lap around campus then right into class. 401 Alpha. Galactic Politics. Shepard frowned. I think I already know enough about those.
“Hey! You! Hoodie!”
A sharp voice broke Shepard from her thoughts and her hand shot down to her hip to raise her pistol. When her fingers touched nothing but clothing, she remembered she didn’t have a pistol anymore. She didn’t need it. Letting out a breath, she turned on one foot, raising an eyebrow at the woman who had shouted to her. She was wearing next to nothing, despite it being a chilly asari-world morning. Nothing but overalls and baggy brown cargo pants protected her from Jack Frost.
“You’re a freshman, right? You got one of those fancy maps or some shit?” the woman asked, scratching her shaven head. Shepard could almost describe her haircut as an Alliance-regulated buzzcut, but thought better of it. This was no soldier. Shepard could see it in the way she walked, loud and leg first as if she could literally run into something before it dare harm her. She could see the anger in the woman’s eyes, boiling beneath her skin, and the barely-noticeable fear that it hid. Yes, this woman had been through something, but war? Never.
“Sure,” Shepard nodded, reaching into the pocket of her hoodie. She had stuck the map in there the first day she arrived then never took it back out. Memorizing the layout of a building came natural to her.
The half-naked woman seemed slightly taken aback, blinking in surprise as Shepard held out the folded paper. She quickly snapped out of it, though, and snatched the map from Shepard’s hand.
“Freshman,” she muttered under her breath, snickering a little.
Shepard fought the urge to roll her eyes and turned to leave, then had to fight the urge to sigh when the woman called her again, “Hoodie!”
Shepard turned her head and raised an eyebrow again. The woman’s lip curled in some weird combination of a snarl and a smirk.
“Name’s Jack.”
Shepard smiled in amusement. So it was Jack Frost after all. She began walking and didn’t turn back when she heard herself being called again.
“Oi! Ain’t you gonna return the favor?!” the woman called.
Shepard felt like being rude, so she simply waved a hand in farewell, shouting a quick, “Jane” in some direction over her shoulder.
Jack scoffed behind her.
“Well, fuck you too, then, Jane .”
The day was a rainy one, because when wasn’t it a rainy day. Shepard remembered it being similar on Illium, the sky consistently opaque with clouds. It matched her glum mood, because when wasn’t she in a glum mood.
Shepard grunted as her neck cracked to look up at the enclosing building. She knew of it- the great Galactic Politics and Economics of Serrice- but she had never ventured long or often into West Wave. On a normal jog around campus, she stuck almost exclusively to the Southern or Eastern Waves (East Wave had all the arenas and gyms, physical things she was accustomed to.)
Serrice University’s famous Galactic Politics and Economics Building, with its adjacent Debate Halls, stood tall. She could practically smell the pride exuding from its pristine white walls, only diluted from the rain dripping down its slick sides. Shepard blew a huff out of her nose and jogged the rest of the way into the building’s sliding doors.
If she were lucky, she could get away with doodling for the entire class. There wasn’t anything she was interested in learning from the Professor, not that Shepard thought there was anything the Professor could teach her.
A loud thunk distracted Shepard from her thoughts and she jumped, pulling down her hoodie to widen her peripheral vision.
“Oh, Goddess.”
The voice that she heard was nothing like Jack’s from earlier. Where Jack’s had been sharp and scratchy, fitting the image she was presented with, this voice was smooth as milk and crisp as the air outside. With just one mutter, the speech had rendered Shepard speechless. The veteran let the breathiness of it brush up her arms and trickle down her spine, actuating shivers more effectively than the cold Serrice autumn ever could.
Shepard blinked to snap herself out of her own reverie and stepped further into the building, almost stumbling over her own false feet. The light inside was bright but gentle, exuding from inside tiles or panels in the walls and ceiling. It was milky white and caressed the asari’s face, softer than a feather’s touch. It wouldn’t dare press too hard, lest the asari’s delicate smattering of freckles be scared away.
The asari was on the floor, books and papers scattered around her as she tried to shove them back into the fold of her arm while using the other to rub a seemingly sore spot on her side.
“Let me help,” she offered, lowering herself to the ground and balancing herself on her left knee (because she isn’t comfortable balancing on just her prosthetic one.) Shepard began carefully picking up the papers and folders, glancing at the words Prothean and History that seemed to jump out on them all.
“Oh, you don't have to, it’s alright,” the asari fretted, her blue hands freezing in alarm. Shepard kept her focus on the documents, afraid to look her in the eyes.
“Please, it’s no trouble,” Shepard retorted. She swiftly piled the papers and knocked them against the ground to arrange them properly before straightening. She suddenly found herself plunged into the icy banks of the ocean in this asari’s eyes, desperate for air that she left on the surface.
“Thank you,” the asari breathed, seemingly just as lost as Shepard.
Shepard blinked and it snapped her out of her reverie, cut off from those depths of cerulean. She offered a hand and too late realized it was her right one, not her left. She screamed internally when delicate blue and smooth made contact with rough, scarred, and thick. Shepard’s heart dropped to the ground and shattered when she saw the asari flinch- it seemed she had felt Shepard’s incomplete digit.
Shepard tensed her arm and let the asari decide if she still wanted to rely on the human’s obviously damaged arm.
Guilt flushed the asari’s face purple, exaggerating those spots along her crest and nose even further, and she used Shepard’s strength to pull herself into a standing position. Shepard was going to let her make the decision to pull her hand away, but those scales remained against her palm. She wasn't pulling away. The asari seemed fixated to her hand, eyes scanning the flesh like the Karin had when Shepard first got the injuries.
As much as Shepard wanted to keep touching her, she knew she had to pull away. She cleared her throat and the asari jumped, jerking her hand back to her side.
“M-My apologies,” the asari stuttered. Shepard opened her mouth to reassure her but the asari had already snatched the documents from the crevice of Shepard’s arm. She bowed. “Thank you,” she squeaked before making a hasty exit, heels clicking against the hard floor as fast as Shepard’s heart was fluttering.
Shepard found herself at a loss for words. She was almost 29, had been in the army for ten years, once had to give speeches of remembrance for 207 soldiers, had to tell the family of a dear friend and comrade that they would no longer be seeing him- never had she before been unable to surmise words. Such simple thoughts, noises arranged to make a noise that another person could understand, and Shepard couldn't even begin to form them. In her head nor her mouth.
Silent as the footsteps of a thief, Shepard took a deep breath, turned, and continued walking to her class.