I'd love to see your Mindior headcannon notes. Always love hearing about Colonist Shepard's upbringing.
You would? :D This is just copy and pasted from my OC page project. I'm working on making a full OC page from scratch with a locations codex included, because I've also done some world building on Akuze and Elysium. It's VERY slow-going.
Here's my version of Mindoir. Adara is my colonist Shepard, so she is mentioned.
Mindoir is a temperate, fertile world of rolling hills, orchards, and wildflower fields, where the rhythms of life move with the seasons rather than the clock. It's central settlement, Ilianthi Hills, is built into the slopes themselves, with terraced homes, flowing whitewashed walls, and balcony gardens that seem to grow out of the landscape. The colony exudes warmth and charm, a rare harmony of human habitation and nature. Mindoirians take pride in their carefully tended vineyards, lush orchards, and the vibrant fields of flowers that ripple across the hillsides with every breeze.
Community is at the heart of Mindoir. Multi-generational families work side by side, celebrating the harvest and other seasonal events with shared feasts, storytelling, and music under the stars. The Solstice Feast is the pinnacle of these celebrations, bringing the entire colony together in a display of color, light, and song. The people of Mindoir are forthright, passionate, and fiercely protective of their traditions, balancing openness and hospitality with a strong sense of self-reliance.
The colony’s landmarks give it a unique character. The Phygaion Tree, a massive solitary tree on a gentle hill, has long served as a place of reflection and inspiration, particularly for artists like Adara, who spent much of her childhood painting beneath its branches. Galipsi Grove, with its softly glowing canopy and quiet, winding paths, offers a place of solitude and meditation. Beyond the forest, the Bloomline Fields stretch across the hills, their wildflowers, vineyards, and orchards forming a patchwork of color and life that defines the colony’s identity.
Mindoir’s economy is rooted in sustainable agriculture and viticulture. Its wines are highly prized across the galaxy, from the deep, ruby Solstice Red to the rare and syrupy Krystallion Icewine. Artisans craft textiles, ceramics, and other goods that are as much a product of culture as they are of commerce. The southern coastal spaceport, Notia's Landing, known to the locals as Thaloris, is the colony’s trading hub, where goods are shipped out and news from the wider galaxy arrives.
Life on Mindoir is shaped as much by its climate as by its people. Warm summers and cool winters, soft breezes carrying the scent of flowers and fruit, and evenings bathed in golden light give the colony a dreamlike quality.
Despite its tranquility, Mindoir was not untouched by the wider conflicts of the galaxy. On May 6th, 2170, violence erupted with little warning. The colony came under sudden assault by a band of Batarian slavers, who targeted its central settlements with brutal efficiency. Buildings were scorched, wildflower fields were trampled, and the bright, orderly streets of Ilianthi Hills became chaos. Many colonists were caught in the destruction, and the colony that had long seemed a sanctuary suddenly felt vulnerable and fragile.
The outlying areas of the colony fared slightly better, as the attackers focused on the densely populated center. Rescue efforts by Alliance patrols began almost immediately after the assault, bringing aid and evacuating survivors to safety. The attack left a deep mark on Mindoir, altering both its landscape and its communities. Fields and forests bore scars alongside the memories of those who had lived there, and the colony’s identity as a haven of peace was forever changed.
Please let me know what you think, I've read it out loud to myself so many times in editing it becomes more mush to me each time. But I think overall I'm really happy with how far I've come with it.
For NaNoWriMo 2015, I’ll be writing a Shrios fic titled Solipsism. This is a prequel of sorts -- it’s not necessary to read for Solipsism, but it will provide background for a somewhat major plot point.
Also on AO3.
--
“Shepard?”
Relief flooded through her at the sound of his voice. “Anderson.”
“I’ve got news.”
Shepard’s spine stiffened at the Captain’s three short, but very vital, words. “Good news?”
Brief silence rang from the other line. “You know I can’t sanction this, Shepard.”
“You also know I’m not asking you to.”
Anderson sighed. “This didn’t come from me.”
“Of course it didn’t.”
“A batarian ship just docked on the Citadel. Bay E36. The captain is one Zhek Gar’Ilan.”
At the sound of that name, Shepard’s mouth became dry and her blood felt like it had frozen in her ventricles. “You’re sure?” she choked out.
“He used his real name, Shepard. Bastard’s got a set of balls.”
“His arrogance can be used against him. Any more info for me?”
“Just one: he’s only rented the dock for the evening. If I were you... I’d get to work.”
“I will, Anderson. Sir.” Shepard swallowed down the lump that rose in her throat, and the words that came after were strained. “Thank you.”
Anderson whispered, “Good luck,” before Shepard closed the call.
Zhek Gar’Ilan.
You fucking bastard.
Today, you die.
Her moment had come, the moment she had been waiting for since she was sixteen. The timing couldn’t be more ideal: she was on shore leave for another 24 hours, just enough time to track the bastard down before putting a bullet in his brain.
Sweeping the hotel room, she suited up: first pulling on her underarmour, then clipping on the pieces of her armour, clicking her pistol and SMG into place on her back, and sliding her shotgun into place.
She had no idea what Gar’Ilan had in store for her, after all, so she needed to be prepared.
Leaving the rest of her things locked in the hotel room she entered the Citadel Wards, making straight for the Docks. She walked with purpose, her boots clanging against the floor with each step, her brow set in a determined furrow. Years of anger that she had so carefully stowed away were rising to the surface again. Crowds parted as she walked, fearing the heavily-armed woman equipped with a deadly gaze.
They should be scared. She was out for blood.
Quicker than ever she reached the C-Sec checkpoint to the Docks. Resting her elbows on his desk, she surveyed Officer Bailey with dark eyes.
“Something you need, Shepard?” Bailey was a likable man with a kind demeanor, but the moment he saw Shepard’s expression he stiffened, nervous.
“You seen a few batarians pass through here? Out of Bay E36?”
Averting her gaze, Bailey rubbed the back of his neck. “I think so, about an hour ago. Rowdy bunch, looked like they might have been heading for Chora’s Den or Flux, somewhere with drinks.”
Before Bailey even finished the names, Shepard had turned on her heel to head straight to the dingy club, knowing it was closer than the Den. She turned to Bailey, nodded, and muttered, “Thanks.”
“There gonna be any trouble, Shepard?”
Holding his gaze, she schooled her expression into something closer to neutrality. “With me? Never.”
Looking down at his keyboard, Bailey shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “If I hear anything, you were never here, got it?”
With an affirming nod Shepard took off, very grateful that she had befriended a man like Bailey.
--
She saw him.
In the scope of her pistol, she could see Gar’Ilan.
Flux had been filled with sweaty youth trying to drown their problems in either gambling or alcohol, but no batarians had been situated there. Chora’s Den, however, was another story: a group of five of them were perched in front of an asari who was down to her skimpiest lingerie, dancing while sending nervous glances towards her clearly drunk patrons.
She easily recognized Gar’Ilan by his heavy armour and single missing eye. The sight of him turned her blood to ice and her skin to electricity, her biotic implant prickling from the desire to rip him apart limb from limb. Had she a choice, she would have killed him slowly, but life was not always kind enough to provide such options. Just killing him would have to suffice for the deaths of every member of her family.
Mom.
Dad.
Eric.
Olivia.
Marcus.
I will avenge you, all of you.
As she thought of each of her family members, their faces flashed in her mind. Her memories of her family were a double-sided coin: sometimes she saw them happy and laughing, and sometimes she saw them dying in agony. Gar’Ilan had turned each happy memory with her family into poison, and he had turned each sleep of hers into a nightmare. Killing him would perhaps ease the nightmares, but never again would she be able to bring back her family. His death would be a small respite, yet the only respite she would ever be granted.
Gar’Ilan was laughing, clutching his chest as he spilled his drink. She wondered why. Was it a joke one of his fellow slavers had made? Were they recalling fond memories of murdering innocent people who weren’t ‘suitable’ to be slaves? Her blood seemed to shift as she watched him laugh, from ice cold to boiling hot, shooting out each of her limbs, propelling her forward to finally exact revenge.
She would have to be smart; he was surrounded by the club’s security as well as his own cronies and bodyguards. Not to mention the fact that he was far from a stupid man, in spite of his arrogance. Through her scope she analyzed her situation: one krogan stood beside Gar’Ilan, holding his assault rifle out with a scowl on his face. Gar’Ilan was also surrounded by four of his slaver friends, but judging by the volume of empty glasses on the table, they were all inebriated enough to make her task at least a little easier. Two other krogan security guards were posted at the corners of the club, but she hoped that she would be able to provide a distraction for them. Everyone else in the room appeared to be an innocent patron, and she hoped to keep civilian casualties to a minimum in this situation, although she accepted she would do what she had to in order to rid the galaxy of Gar’Ilan.
In the back of her skull her implant buzzed, as eager for revenge as she was. Ducking low, she slid underneath a table beside the entrance, one of the krogan security guards only feet away from her. When he was turned away, she projected a singularity towards the second krogan security guard, making it look like it came from the guard directly in front of her. The second guard began to cry out the name of the first guard while he rolled helplessly in the air. With the two of them distracted for the moment, she acted fast: keeping low she rolled into the line of Gar’Ilek’s cronies. Gar’Ilek was farthest from her, so she used a Stasis on his krogan bodyguard to eliminate him first. The four of Gar’Ilek’s batarians stood and blocked him, pistols aimed at Shepard; two shots from her own pistol, one into a kneecap and another into a skull, dropped two of his cronies. Patrons stood and began to scream, scrambling towards the doors until they were blocked. Once those in the back realized that their exit was blocked they began to climb over those in the middle, as helpless as a herd of sheep without a shepherd being chased by a wolf.
But neither the crowd of people nor the remaining two batarian guards were her concern; the cold barrel of a shotgun being pressed into the back of her head was.
“Valiant effort,” a cold voice hissed, “But do you really think Zhek was foolish enough to only bring five guards with him?”
Internally she cursed at her foolishness and brashness. Of course he would have guards hidden in the crevices. Her eagerness would, once again, keep her from her goal.
At very least, she could survive the encounter; she grabbed the barrel and, before the voice could shoot, used it to flip herself to gaze into the cold grey eyes of her turian captor before she unleased a powerful Throw, sending him careening against the wall. However, the move had pulled her from cover so she dove back behind a wall. By the time she had recovered, she turned to find Gar’Ilek and his two remaining batarian guards gone, most likely out the back door, with his krogan guard starting to resist his Stasis and his turian guard beginning to stand, rubbing his head, his eyes red with anger.
Her expression pulled into a grimace from exhaustion, she reached into the depths of her biotics and attempted to unleash a Pull; it was met with the feeling of scraping into the bottom of an empty bowl, her reserves completely tapped, and all that she received in turn was the first vestiges of a migraine from overexertion.
“Fuck!” she cried, her teeth clenching so hard that her jaw ached, angry tears spotting in the corners of her eyes. She could try and chase Gar’Ilek but with her biotics tapped out there was no way she’d be able to face three batarians with a turian and a krogan on her heels; not to mention the fact that C-Sec was doubtless on their way to investigate the commotion.
Her heart ached at the thought of letting Gar’Ilek escape when he was within her grasp, yet what would her family say if she killed herself to avenge him?
It’s not worth your life to avenge ours, pumpkin.
Disappointment flooding through her in heavy waves, she turned and jostled into the middle of the crowd, feigning fear as she slipped away from the failed chaos she created.
--
“I read an alert over the ‘Net about one batarian killed and one injured in the Den by an unknown human, although neither of them were Gar’Ilek. No luck?”
Shepard was unable to look at the screen as she shook her head slowly, shame weighing down every muscle. Through heavy lips she whispered, “He got away.”
Anderson’s words were punctuated harshly through pursed lips. “We’ll find him, Mia. It may not be today, but we will find him.”
The use of her first name was a rarely afforded treat, one she knew Anderson was using to comfort her. “He’ll only increase his guard after this. I won’t be able to do it alone next time.”
“You won’t be alone next time.” New tears prickled hot in the corners of her eyes, but they were gracious tears, not shameful ones. “I’ll keep you updated on any news on his movements that I receive. Anderson out.”
The screen flickered black, and Shepard rested her face in her hands, muffling her frustrated scream with her palms.
This time, she hadn’t been ready for Gar’Ilek. She was too young and rash. But next time, she would be. And next time, she would capture him, and make each of his last moments as agonizing as her life had become after watching Gar’Ilek murder her family.
It was a place she had only ever seen in vids, but she was absolutely certain that was where she was. It was a place with layer upon layer of bright green, so vivid the sky appeared white in contrast. Occasional flowers and bark accented the green-centric mosaic, and out of the corner of her eye, she watched some sort of monkey gracefully leap from one branch, extending its arms out to grasp the next branch in its path.
There was a group of people around her: a tourist group, perhaps? They were all wearing those typical Hawaiian t-shirts and beige caps you see on tourists, anyways. One of them was even wearing a fanny pack. The jungle was too hard a place for people so soft.
They were walking, with her at the lead, which was a foolish decision really seeing as she had no idea where they were going. But lead she did, following the most heavily-trodden path along the jungle floor, keeping her eyes trained down to step around the droppings of monkeys and who knows what else.
She heard a crack of branches before her, and when she looked up, it was into the mouth of a snake.
It had to be a python, or a cobra, or whatever those ones are that grow to over twenty feet; but it had four pointed, glistening teeth (are they venomous? she wondered, for a fraction of a second) aimed at her, and it began to lunge --
By the time Mia woke and shot up in bed, she realized she was screaming. She swiftly covered her mouth, hoping she didn’t wake either of her siblings or parents with her outburst, and felt foolish that she had been so frightened by a dream.
Eyes adjusting to the blackness, she peered out her bedroom window; it was so dark outside she had no concept of time. She realized that she was thirsty so she quietly sat up in bed, listening intently for if she had woken any family members in her outburst, but the house was as quiet as it should be in the dark of night.
Bare feet slithered across the floor, her legs covered to her ankles by her nightdress, as she made her way into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water from the sink. After she drank she turned, and noticed with a hint of surprise that her father’s light was on in his office, streaming through his cracked open door. She wondered if he had fallen asleep at his desk again. He worked so hard sometimes.
She crept along the laminate floor, her head cocked in curiosity, until she reached the door. With a tentative push it opened before her, and instead of sleeping her father was in his plush reading chair, his reading glasses perched on his nose, a thick novel opened on his lap. His office was more of a library than an office, really: novels thick and thin, colourful and dark, yet all old lined the walls on mismatched bookshelves. In the center of it all was his reading chair, illuminated by his favourite lamp. His desk to complete the farm’s paperwork was pushed into the corner, pushed purposely to the back of his mind but never forgotten.
Most libraries nowadays were able to fit on a datapad in the palm of your hand. Michael Shepard, however, preferred his relics of the past, collecting as many paper novels as he could. Mia shared his passion, preferring reading words on paper as opposed to on a screen.
He pushed his glasses up onto his head and looked up from his book. His eyes were as green -- no, greener -- than Mia’s, though his hair was closer to strawberry blonde than her copper. His nose was long (Mia’s short nose came from her mother), and his lips were thin (her full mouth came from her mother, too).
“Can’t sleep, pumpkin?” he asked Mia. He looked tired. She wondered why he was still awake when he looked so tired.
“Had a dream about a snake. You can’t sleep either?”
He smiled, softly but sadly, the type of smile she saw more and more often when the harvests were bad, the type of smile he put on to show the family a brave face even when they were struggling. She preferred his open, carefree smiles, the ones reserved for when the weather is cooperating for the crops and the cows are producing more than their quota of milk. “Thinking too hard about the harvest,” he responded. He rested his book on the small table beside his chair, folded his glasses, and placed them atop the book. He patted his lap to call Mia over, and, relieved to have her father’s support from the bad dream, she dashed over and sat, not caring that she was nearly fourteen and still finding comfort in her father’s arms.
He asked, “Want to tell me about the dream?”
“Just a snake jumped out at me and scared me.”
“I thought I heard you make a noise.” He had a soothing voice, one that seemed to come from his chest rather than his throat. It made Mia think drinking hot apple cider while being wrapped in a wool blanket on a cool fall evening.
“I’m ok now,” she insisted. “What’s going on with the harvest?”
He sighed, a sigh of wanting to internalize his fears, yet the deep night and the concerned gaze of his daughter weakened his resolve. “It’s been at least five degrees lower every day than Mindoir’s average temperature for our area. That means that the frost is going to arrive sooner, by about two weeks or so if I had to guess. We’re going to have to harvest early, which means crops that are of lower quality with less quantity.” He sighed again, but this was one of frustration. “We’re going to have to ration this winter if I’m right.”
Mia wanted to cry out in frustration, but instead her lip steadied in resolution. She would not weaken in front of her father, just because they’d have to have a light winter. “We’ll make it,” she instead insisted. “We always do.”
He pressed his thin lips to her hair, inhaling deeply as he did. She nestled her head into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her whole body.
Alone she felt fragile, but with her father or her mother or her brother or her sister she became strong. The Shepard family worked as a unit, not just individuals, support and honesty being the family’s adhesives.
Whatever the harvest threw at them, they would survive. As a family.
And with that in mind, Mia slipped into sleep in her father’s lap, all thoughts of snakes forgotten, and Michael shortly followed her.
I'm very interested in this one; Loggerhead, Mia/Thane?
Loggerhead: Unexpected Aggression
This... got long.
Also available on AO3.
--
The wind whispered through the trees, bringing with it the sweet smell of hay and the sharp tang of manure. Yet she didn't mind either of the smells; they meant that the summer harvest was near, and with harvest always came an influx of income.
The breeze brushed leaves against her cheeks, reddened beneath a layer of freckles by too much time spent in the sun. She closed her eyes and smiled, pushing her lashes against the apples of her cheeks, clutching her just-finished novel against her chest.
There were few things in life she could ask for beyond what she had in this moment: tranquility, while she sat on her perch in 'her' tree; contentment, brought by the joy of diving into and leaving another finely-crafted world, contained in the novel she clutched; and the thought of a good winter for her family, as this harvest promised a higher yield than they had yet seen.
They lived simply, the Shepards, but she would trade the simple life for nothing else. For as a new colony, their focus was caretaking for their people, by growing and tending to food, excavating trees and stone for building, and collecting solar energy to power their homes. There were a few scientific outposts, designed to study the atmosphere and land, but after the preliminary terraforming tests completed on a planet, scientists would not occupy it in full until the society was flourishing, which was usually a half a century-long process.
As Mindoir was in its second decade of occupation, her generation would be growers. Being given a generous amount of land upon settling, the Shepards chose to grow hay -- a commodity most farmers could not grow due to limited land -- and house dairy cows. Profit in the summer came from hay, and year round from milk. Beef cows were more profitable, but her mother and father could not abide with owning a slaughterhouse. Not that dairy farming was all playing-with-cows and watching-them-die-of-old-age: male calves were kept in confinement until they reached three months, when they were sent off to veal farmers.
Mia never ate veal. Ever. She couldn't bear the thought of eating one of her old friends.
She stretched her arms above her head and let out a wide yawn, the warm air tickling the back of her throat. She checked the time on her omni-tool; she only had about ten minutes of peace and quiet left before she had to go back and feed the cows.
She scanned Mindoir's horizon; from her elevated vantage point she could see the red soil stretch for miles upon miles, occasional farms, houses, and trees breaking up the horizon. She briefly wondered what other planets, especially Earth, would be like; she had grown up on Mindoir, and it was all she knew. Other children who had visited the Citadel told her stories of the massive space station, how it was dominated by tall buildings and cars whisking people from one point to another at a hundred kilometers an hour. Other than on special occasions, the combine was her fastest mode of transport.
Her mind was wandering to the next day's harvest when she spotted the ships.
(Gets rather dark/violent underneath the cut.)
Immediately she knew something was amiss; the Alliance only visited them during emergencies as it was, but these ships were not sporting the white and blue of the Alliance.
She thought back to her Galactic Politics class, and as she realized what the colours meant, she became so afraid that it was like someone dropped an ice cube down her spine.
It was the Batarian Hegemony, and they were dropping down only a half a kilometer from her family's farm, where her whole family was currently residing.
But what were the batarians doing? The Alliance had promised her parents when they had landed here that they had reached an agreement with the batarians, and that the colonists did not have to fear them. From their numbers, she feared that this was no friendly visit.
What could she do? She momentarily considered running into town to raise the alarm, but just as the thought crossed her mind, she heard the high-pitched whine of the alarms ringing, and she had no doubt that whoever had set off the alarm would be calling the Alliance now.
The first three ships had landed. They weren't warships, they were sized for passenger travel, but that began to worry her even further. Droves of batarians were filing out, all armed with assault rifles, and she began to tremble at the sight.
No one in her family was armed.
And the batarians were spreading out, approaching her home and the homes nearest to hers.
Behind her she could hear more jets as they landed into the center of town, even larger ships this time, even more batarian soldiers climbing out in droves.
She felt cold, ice cold, her entire body shivering like she was outside in nothing but her skivvies in the middle of winter despite the fact that it was a warm summer day. She pulled her legs up to her chest to warm herself, her wide, shocked eyes trained on her home.
A large batarian kicked down her door.
She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing could come out. She wanted to jump out of her tree, run to the house, run into town, run to another part of the planet where they weren't being overrun by alien soldiers with massive guns, but she had become frozen, curled up in a ball high up in her tree, on her perch.
What could she do, after all? At sixteen she was gaunt and gangly, five foot four and just under a hundred pounds. She had some muscle from farm work, but she could lift no more than her own weight. She had biotic power, yes, but nothing more than it took to lift a bale of hay from the ground into their cart. Her vision was so poor that she was considered legally blind without her glasses, and she wasn't able to get corrective surgery for another two years. She had a few big shovels that she could use as weapons, but what would a shovel do against a fully automatic assault rifle?
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit shit.
The batarians were filing into her home now. Her home, where her mother, father, brother, sister, and nephew were quietly living their lives.
Behind her, from the town, she heard a blood-curdling scream. She squeezed her eyes shut like it would block out the sound, but oh, oh God, it didn't. She heard a woman scream and a batarian laugh. She heard "no, please, stop!". She heard a series of gunshots.
Then silence.
Her neighbours were being slaughtered.
She felt bile rise from her throat when she heard gunshots coming from her house.
Who were they shooting? Her kind, slightly overweight but in the way that meant that she gave the best hugs, mother? Would she never again hear her loud, jubilant laugh?
Perhaps it was her father, who worked so hard that his palms were hard from callouses and who had taught her almost everything she knew? Who had patiently told her that her biotics were not a curse, they were a gift, and showed her how to lift objects?
Screams came from her house. Screams of fear and protest. The screams were followed by more gunfire. Tears began to pour from her eyes, and she covered her mouth to keep the sobs from escaping, lest she be discovered.
Behind her, men were being pulled from their homes, bound and beaten and thrown into the ships.
The batarians were slavers.
By God, they were slavers, come to make them all slaves for the hegemony.
And she was completely helpless to save any of her neighbours, her friends, her family.
Her eyes snapped open when she heard her father's hoarse cry. He and her brother were being dragged out of their home towards a waiting ship; he was far, but she could see that he had a big black eye and what looked like a broken leg. Her brother looked dejected, gazing at the ground and crying.
The rest of the house was silent.
Where were her mother, sister, and nephew?
Were they dead?
Infants didn't make good slaves, nor did old and recently-pregnant women.
She bit on her knuckles to stifle the scream that threatened to escape her.
Her father had started to fight back, screaming at the batarians, trying to kick the legs out from underneath his captor. The captor responded by hitting her father in the head with the butt of his rifle, and her father collapsed like a sack of potatoes.
It was then her brother's turn to fight; he squirmed and screamed and lunged towards his fallen father as blood pooled around his head. Her brother kicked the batarian who was holding him straight in the groin.
In retaliation, the batarian shot him in the head.
Mia's eyes ached from the tears that fell and fell and fell, and she tasted copper when she bit her knuckle so hard it bled.
For good measure, they shot her father before moving onto the next house.
Mia was broken. Her brother's and father's bodies laid eerily still, their limbs twisting every which way, so far from peace that she needed to vomit at the thought.
What had they ever done to the batarians to deserve this? Unable to find work on Earth her parents had chose to settle here, forgoing aspirations for a simple life where they could raise a happy family.
And what do they get in return? Sudden, unexpected aggression in the form of batarian slavers descending to capture and kill them all.
And where were the Alliance? Half an hour had passed since the alarm had rung, where were they? They had promised that they would always be close to the colonies to protect them, and where was their fucking protection now?
Her family was dead.
She was alone.
She held herself and rocked and cried, and cried, and cried.
She cried until the batarians had cleared the town.
She cried until all of the ships, satisfied with their load, rose and left.
She cried until a lone Alliance ship landed, too few soldiers leaping out of the ship to scan the area.
She finally released her knuckle from her mouth and screamed and one of them heard her: a dark-skinned man with kind eyes wearing an N7 hat and wielding his own assault rifle.
She cried when he brought her onto his ship, wrapped her in a blanket, and offered her water.
All joy had been pulled away from her, and all that was left was misery and pain.
Yet the kind-eyed man held her while she cried. He soothingly ran his fingers through her hair. He even found a chocolate bar hidden in the rations and offered it to her.
And she wondered if, with this fragment of life she had left, she could dedicate herself to something like this: rescuing those who had lost everything, and trying to stop those who had taken it away from them.
Maybe she could ensure there would be no more slavers, and no more abducted colonists.
The thought provided her with a sliver of hope on her darkest day.
Okay, something for Mia. Did she have a big family on Mindoir? Does losing them still affect her later on in life?
“Mia Evelyn Shepard.”
“Please, just Shepard.” As the last surviving Shepard, she believed she owed the family name its due.
“Alright Miss Shepard, let’s –”
She reiterated, “Just Shepard. Please.”
The therapist – no, psychoanalyst – peered at her over the rim of his glasses. Why he even had glasses when laser treatment was so easily accessible, she didn’t know. Perhaps it made him appear more approachable. More likable. Yet at the moment, he didn’t seem to her to be much of either.
“Right,” he drawled. “Shepard. The Alliance has hired me to have a small discussion with you, make sure that certain matters have been taken care of.”
Wordlessly, she crossed her arms and gazed at him warily. She knew exactly what shit to expect from this type of conversation, and she was ready for it.
“Let’s talk about your family.”
“My deceased family,” she corrected.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” His condolences were almost convincing. “Can we take a moment to talk about them?”
Feigning nonchalance, she shrugged through stiff shoulders. “What do you want to know?”
“There were… four of them, lost that day?”
“Five,” she corrected, again. “My mother, Hannah. Father, Michael. Younger brother, Eric. Older sister, Olivia, and her son, Marcus.”
The therapist leaned forward in his chair, tenting his fingers. “That must have been extremely difficult for you, losing so many loved ones.”
No, dipshit, it was the most fun time of my fucking life. “I miss them all very much.”
“And do you ever wish that you could get revenge on those who caused you such pain? The batarians?”
Of course I do. Of course I want revenge on the bastards who murdered my family and slaughtered an innocent toddler in cold blood because he’d be useless as a slave. But if I tell him that… there’s no way in fucking hell they’re going to let me into the Alliance. “The blame does not lie on a single race. We need to focus on the eradication of slavery itself.”
He nodded slowly, but seemed unconvinced, so she elaborated. “I also think we need to have the Alliance do a better job of protecting it’s fringe colonies. To allow an attack so atrocious fly under their radar is something that cannot happen if we want our colonies to continue to have faith in us.”
His gaze fell to his clipboard, and he made a few swift notes. Shit, she hoped she was being convincing. She wanted nothing more than to join the Alliance; not to take revenge on the batarians, but to work on ridding the galaxy of the darkness seeping in at the corners like a tipped bottle of ink.
To ensure no other family would suffer the way hers had.
“So you believe the fault lies on the Alliance?”
“I believe the Alliance could do more, yes. But to do more, they need more recruits, which is why I’m here.”
More scribbling. More nodding. More hope that she was passing their test, that she would be sane enough to enter their ranks.
Not that everyone in the Alliance was entirely sane.
“Thank you for your time, Mi– Shepard. The Alliance will review all aspects of your application before contacting you.”
They both stood and briskly shook hands before she left, her stomach roiling in nerves at the thought of her pending application.
