#penshep

[k-she-rambles]

monastery mission complicated by two things:

Liara's bad attitude, which I hc is enhanced by the fact that, y'know, she's a pureblood. At a higher risk for having been one of the residents here herself. We hear nasty gossip about the child of two asari being ill-tempered and morally and spiritually corrupt. I'm sure Liara heard it too.

&& how my Shepard handled the Morinth mission in ME2, which was interesting.

(She relied more on tactics than anything else --either Samara or Morinth said something to the effect of "your heart's not in it," which Shepard took badly.

And Morinth did turn on the bedroom eyes there at the end. It didn't work in the moment --Shepard's abnormally resilient brain to the rescue-- but several hours later Shepard did have a delayed reaction. Hardly anyone noticed. Only Chakwas, Samara, and Liara ever knew. But walking herself down to the med bay with what felt like every eye on her when she wanted...everything all at once (anything I want, Morinth had said) felt like walking through soup. Also she kept getting stopped, and lbr, the path from her quarters to the med bay passes 80% of the love interests...)

[k-she-rambles]

Pen actually hates the hoodie.

No, no, that's a lie. The hoodie is fine. She earned that stripe. It's just...difficult to be seen in, anymore.

She's always had a little trouble separating "on duty" and "off duty." (Normandy's recreation officers have traditionally worked more closely with the CMO than most)

The hoodie is relaxed, casuaI. It's soft, unarmored, something that reminds her of hanging out in the cargo bay of the SR-1, telling stories. It's an act of self-discipline, for Shepard, an act of defiance, to keep wearing it. To do game night or say "I have x business on the Citadel and after that I'm not available."

[k-she-rambles]

Fic idea: Cortez tries to pull the "I appreciate the effort, but I don't think you'd understand" card on Shepard. (Cue James wincing in the background --Shepard may not have had access to personnel records, but James looked Shepard's up, and knows how to read them.)

Shepard goes "Maybe, maybe not." And then: "Hell of a way to tell me I'm old and irrelevant, Steve."

[k-she-rambles]

The little fighting sequence with James was great, but also because I hc that Zaeed did the same thing to my Shepard in ME2.

Right after Grunt's loyalty mission, Zaeed corners Shepard in the part of the hold they've turned into a gym to, hmm, ask about her sudden attitude shift spar. (It's not like she just went head-to-slimy-blue-tongue with a thresher maw armed with five heat sinks, two comrades, and plain guts. Satisfying yes. Grunt's fight, yes. But there's something about it being played off as good sport, as "they survived, so they deserve to live" and the opposite --if they hadn't lived then they wouldn't have deserved to --that's eating her.)

Shepard equivocates. ("Fine. I'm grumpy and hungover. Party for Grunt went long. Krogan rotgut's as sweet as they are." "You like krogan." "So?"). (More relevantly, Pen only drinks with friends. Big party where she knows two people doesn't usually count.) Eventually admits to being troubled by her own behavior while on Mordin's mission.

The conversation devolves as they fight and as Zaeed makes a point: as they're traipsing the known galaxy tying up loose ends, Shepard had better be taking care of her own personal problems and laying her own ghosts to rest --or it's not going to be someone's sister or dead or missing family or criminal charges back home that gets them all killed.

It's just going to be her.

[k-she-rambles]

So Shepard probably had advanced SERE training as part of N-school, on top of what officers usually get, and it got me thinking…does my Shepard consider herself a POW?

I think…not really. 

I imagine it’s something that Taylor tried to warn Miranda about. Shepard never left the Alliance military. It is my duty to escape and help others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy…

It definitely factors into my Shepard’s general recalcitrance and depression during the first few weeks of reanimation. (Besides dealing with Cerberus in general, everything that has changed, and the just-slightly-off-ness of everything that Cerberus calls new and improved).

But as soon as it became clear that the Alliance was not going to ask the obvious question –that they were going to treat her as an agent in her own right, and so is Cerberus, and technically she’s still a Spectre…my Shep feels a lot better about rolling with it. She’s still angry about Cerberus, and she still knows she’s being kept. She would very much like to tell the Illusive Man where he can stick his shiny toys. (She discovered, to her surprise, that she’s angry at Joker for choosing to be so thoroughly taken in. She hasn’t said anything, but it’s there).

But she no longer feels guilty about using Cerberus resources to accomplish her goals, which at this point is “take out the Reapers’ new allies.”

[k-she-rambles]

You know it’s funny, I was thinking the other day that my Shep does get that tattoo on a trip to Illium —a simplified (but rather big) mass relay, in black linework either on the inside of her right forearm or on her back, vertically between her shoulder blades.

And then I finished Arrival.

[k-she-rambles]

yes, Shepard could have shot Ashley, but something else would have died too