Chapter Text
David Anderson never had children, but he had Shepard. She was sixteen and staring at the ceiling; tomorrow she would go through the placement process to see where she was going to end up, but until then she would stay in his tiny appointments around the barracks.
He’d been the one to find her hiding under piles of bodies on Mindoir, looking just as blank and withdrawn as she did at that moment. She’d been ushered along and rustled around— hell, he’d felt bad for the kid. Figured if she had to wait anywhere, maybe she’d appreciate having another person there to remind her that there were still living people around.
Not that he was an expert on grief, or teenagers. Just felt right, and she hadn’t turned down the offer and so he made himself comfortable on his couch. When she got up the next morning, shuffling into the kitchenette so early that he figured she’d barely blinked her eyes closed, she started making coffee without prompting. He gave her his email, in case she needed someone to talk to.
When she left, he didn’t see her again for two years, but his inbox was full of her messages and pictures of the farthest flung places on Earth he could imagine. Faust Shepard wasn’t made for any sort of sitting still, so he wasn’t surprised at her last email before he finally laid eyes on her again.
Think I’m gunna enlist. Sick of this planet. Be back in like, two days.
. . . . .
David Anderson never had children, but every Father’s Day Shepard got him a gift. The first time she’d done it, she was seventeen and hanging around in a desert somewhere; she’d found a real old mug with some old sci-fi spaceship captain on it, and sent it along. Neither of them mentioned the date. He drank out of it every morning until the Reapers landed on Earth.
When she eventually became his XO, the trend continued. Every Standard Galactic Time Father’s Day, she had some trinket or another to give him. One year it was some weird Salarian candy that ended up not being bad at all, the next an exact model of the Tokyo. He kept every single one of them, even the weird stuff that he wasn’t precisely sure what the Asari used it for but now he had one anyway. He had a special trunk in his quarters where they were kept, with a few newspaper clippings. Faust was the sort of grab attention, and he wanted to remember when it was the good kind.
. . . . .
Faust wasn’t Anderson’s biological child, but when she became a Spectre pride rose up in his throat enough to suffocate him. She stood defiant in front of the people who were giving her this appointment as an inevitable boon— they had to give it to some human, and might as well be the famous one that they recently wronged.
He remembered Akuze, when he’d lost contact with her and only been fed need-to-know updates on the Alliance’s rescue efforts. To learn that only one soldier— his soldier— had made it out? Relief and guilt, bone-sagging relief because she was alive, his damn kid was still alive because she was a scrapper and she’d never allow anything else to kill her. Guilt and pity, because people were dead— lots of good people were dead, and she was going to carry them with her for the rest of her life.
She’d come to stay with him for a month after that, and he’d known she was destined for great things. Miracles like that didn’t just happen. Faust was scrappy but she was also lucky.
Her luck ran out in Alchera, and she wasn’t technically his kid but he felt gutted all the damn same. It was what pumpkins must feel like, being all emptied out and having your guts yanked out of you— that empty feeling in your head like it was simultaneously too heavy and too light. He sat down at the behest of the officer with him, trying to figure out how to breathe after his lungs got scooped right out of him.
. . . . .
There was a sliver of hope in him, despite himself, when he heard that his kid might still be alive. Working for a terrorist organization and rebuilt like some weird Frankenstein, but alive. Certified, bonafide Shepard, somehow...
He sent her an email and expected a long wait, if she responded at all. She might still be dead and these rumours might just have been playing fast and loose with an old man’s heart; even if she was alive, she might be busy. She was going after the Collectors that the Council seemed content to ignore, so he couldn’t really say how much time she’d have to check her email.
He waited for five minutes before getting a response. If I have to talk to the Council after all this shit, you owe me a really nice dinner.
. . . . .
He isn’t her dad and the turian is a perfectly nice guy. Anderson never talked with him at length— he was just a friend of Shepard’s that used to be a cop before he got booted off the squad. Insubordination, unlawful use of force, taking risks and breaking rules… damn it he really should have seen this coming.
Faust came to visit him and if it wasn’t her he’d eat his dress blues one stitch at a time. She was brash and annoyed, the Council meeting devolved rapidly and she told them where they could shove their Spectre status. She badmouthed Udina to his face and slouched too much…
And the turian was with her, and Anderson should have seen all this coming. Vakarian was attentive beyond the role of even a partner. He leaned over and mumbled to her and she laughed like a kid all over again. She dragged him down by the carapace when she suddenly decided he was too tall for her at that moment. When Faust wasn’t looking, the turian gave her this look like she was the best damn person he’d ever met in his life.
“So you got Vakarian back, eh?” he asked her one night when she visited again, in civvies and slouched against his balcony. She grinned, more of a baring of teeth than anything, and shrugged.
“Yeah.”
“Must be nice.”
“Yeah.” That came out almost like a sigh and he should have seen this coming.
. . . . .
She was as sullen when she got arrested as she was when she’s being promoted, his perpetual teenager. The only time she really kicked up a goddamn fuss is when she was told she’s being grounded and relieved of duty— and she almost goes and undoes all the hard work he put into keeping away a dishonourable discharge. He was proud, at the same time he was annoyed. She spoke her mind, but if she’d just keep it to herself once in awhile…
The turian came to see him, looking a little off. “Can I talk to her?” he asked, and Anderson shook his head. They weren’t calling it house arrest (well, Faust was), but the process of getting someone in there— especially part of the Cerberus crew and an alien— was so involved that the Reapers would hit before he got approved. “Shit.”
“I can pass something along, if it’ll make you feel better.” Him and some greenhorn named Vega were the only ones allowed unlimited access. Everyone else was either on rotation or had to go through a little song and dance to get close, especially with the tech shutdown that encompassed her house so she couldn’t get messages.
“I… don’t think she would appreciate me saying what I have to say to her through her dad. Thanks, though,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. Vakarian’s younger than Faust, which always strikes Anderson as strange. Call it an ugly leftover from first contact, but… the concept of an alien being younger than a human is sort of bizarre to him, like they were all born long before humans even got to Mars properly.
He doesn’t realize that Vakarian called him her father until the turian is gone. It sits a little oddly— he doesn’t actually know if Garrus is honestly under the impression that he’s Faust’s dad— but when he goes to see her, he mentioned that her boyfriend was along. “Dunno if he’s my boyfriend,” she said, but was smiling down at her paperwork all the sudden.
He did what he should have done before she got arrested, and settled himself down. “Tell me about your crew.”
“They sending you in to interrogate me now?” she asked flatly.
“No, I’m curious. We didn’t really run introductions and you’ve got a talent for bringing some odd people together.” She inclined her head and settled down on the chair opposite him.
“Start with Miri I guess. I kind of met her first,” she said without anymore arguing.
. . . . .
Faust Shepard doesn’t do fear. Ever since he met her, he’d seen her cycle through variations of anger. Sometimes it was sulking, sometimes it was rage, sometimes it was smugness, but all with an underlying anger at the whole wide world for dealing her the wrong cards. She had a resting sullen expression and her posture was closed off— it was just how she was.
When he told her he wasn’t getting on the Normandy with her, she looked terrified.
“The fuck do you mean you’re not coming?” she demanded, and he explained to her precisely what he meant. She needed to be on that ship because she had a talent for getting what she wanted and had just the right sort of fuck you, I’m done attitude that the whole galaxy needed to be hit with. She wasn’t biased towards humans or any other race— she was a perpetual explorer who knew enough to know what had to be done.
His best bet was to keep the resistance on earth going. He’d been through more shit than anyone left standing there, and they needed a calm head and a spirit that refused to be broken by impossible odds.
The anger returned, and he wasn’t sure where it was directed but he felt a little better for it. “Don’t fucking die,” she ordered, and he tossed her dog tags— his own, since he didn’t have hers handy at the moment— and reinstated her. She gave him a look and he could tell she would have rather done this as a wildcard, but that isn’t how he wanted her to do it. Space pirates didn’t get paid hand over fist for running Alliance errands, and she’d need as much help as she could get.
She took off, and despite himself he was relieved that his kid was off the planet. Things were about to get real ugly.