Shepard's Earth
Despite being born there, Shepard doesn't have many good memories of Earth.
His earliest recollections are of the predators who prowled the halls of the institutions that warehoused its most vulnerable young. Then its indifferent, unforgiving streets etched their lessons into him, stroke by ruinous stroke. It was only when Shepard signed his life over to the Alliance that Earth finally relinquished him to the stars and fathomless void (though he would once again fall into its cursed gravity not long after, for the hellish ordeal that is N-class training.)
Years passed in which Shepard cobbled together a life far away from the pale blue dead-end of his youth. But the day came when he had to surrender his wings for doing the only right thing he could while the galaxy tuned out the reaper threat. Earth greeted him with armed guards, detention, suspicion, and vitriol. This time, they would part ways with the planet awash in flames, and Anderson held fast in its grip to check the horror.
Lastly, Shepard returns to Earth in its agonal breaths: reeking with death and soot, rubble and monsters jutting straight up from its grey scalp as if it has gone berserk. And this is the enduring memory Shepard has of his birthplace, as he carves his way to the final madness.
