AN: Hey! I'm sorta around, but not so much here. I'm on AO3 now as jhoom and on tumblr as jhoomwrites. Come visit :)

Commander Jane Shepard is a goddamn hero. Ask anyone, human or otherwise, and they'll tell you just that. They'll sing her praises til the end of time. She was strong, she was brave, a helluva shot, cunning, merciful and merciless, she was everything you'd want in your commander and more.

Hero worship from outsiders makes it hard to know the truth of it. That she was just as broken as the rest of them, maybe more so. It had started so early and happened so gradually, but it happened to her as thoroughly as it would've to anyone else who had lived her life.

Like all in her generation, it started before she can really remember. A child of the First Contact War, her family was hit more directly than most. Two parents in the military. Two parents on the front lines. Jane was sent to stay with her mom's sister on their farm in Montana while her parents disappeared into the stars. She was young, too young to remember, but old enough not to truly forget. It shaped her in ways even she can't fully understand.

After that moment, the moment when her parents step safely off that transport after the war, her childhood is unextraordinary. She's a spacer, a military brat through and through no different than any other.

No, it's not until she's 19 that tragedy strikes again. Her dad's family is military, has been for five generations. Her mom is a little hesitant, but as far as Jane Shepard is concerned she never had a choice. The military's what she knows, what she wants in life. She wants to help people and, god damn, she's good at it. Ask any of the sergeants in basic.

She's studying for some exams - she's elected to take some training to become an officer - when she gets the news. Her bunk mates see her tense up at her terminal, no longer at ease and laughing with them about whatever that other cadet did on leave last week. It takes them a moment to realize something's wrong, and it doesn't really hit them. She ignores them all as she wordlessly packs her bags. They try to be understanding when they find out from news vids that Captain John Shepard as been KIA.

The funeral is as low key as it's allowed to be for someone of her father's rank. There are only family, alliance officers, and members of his crew in attendance. Jane doesn't cry, just sniffles slightly and keeps blotchy, puffy eyes down as she reads a poem. Her mother is just as stoic, always at her side. The only exception is when she lets Hackett - family friend who had been a cadet with her father - pull Jane aside.

He offers his condolences, the usual, and his support if she should ever need it. Jane is dismissive at first. He offers no more than the rest of them and will follow through no more than they will. But he's insistent, and sincere in that insistence. She asks him why, still disbelieving.

"I've heard about your great-grandad, who was a decent man and compotent officer. I met your grandfather, and he was a good man and a good first officer. I've known your father since I've worn a uniform. He was a good man too, better than his dad and twice the captain. The way I see it, the Shepards have been building up to something for generations. Your daddy and your granddaddy and all of them were good men. You, Jane Shepard, I've got the feeling you're going to be great."

The faintest hint of a blush creeps across her face, but Jane doesn't thank him. Greatness isn't something she wants promised to her. She wants to be a good soldier and a good person, make her parents proud. She doesn't want to have to make anyone else proud, owe anything to anyone beyond that. But his words settle in deep, growing in the back of her mind.

She's 22 when the Blitz hits. She was on leave with some friends, other members of her crew - a couple of them she's known since basic - when her life goes to shit. None of her friends survive the attack. It's the first time Jane Shepard kills in anger and doesn't feel any remorse afterwards. And then the guilt that comes for not feeling it.

They'll call her a war hero. There will be medals and ceremonies and praise and probably a promition. When she boards the ship to leave Elysium, whispers of "you're going to be great" twist in her gut. If this is what great feels like, she wonders what the point is.

Years later they're considering her as a spectre candidate. She's pleased at the recognition but it's at odds with the idea of greatness she's been skirting around since the Blitz. Greatness comes at a price, and she's paid more than she's wanted to already. She's tried so hard to be good at what she does while avoiding the lime light. It irks her that she's failed at that. Her mother says she's being silly. Jane doesn't respond.

There's a certain excitement in chasing Saren. The pressure doesn't quite get to her the way it maybe should. She enjoys the challenge, the fight, the distraction from her own concerns. If she focuses enough on this job, this mission, she can almost forget about the stakes. They're just so high, she doesn't allow herself the option of failure.

The excitement dies on Virmire.

It looks like a small tornado has ripped through her quarters, a testament to her frustration and devestation. Losing people in the Blitz had been bad, but losing someone under her command. Ordering them to die...

Part of Shepard dies then too. Some vestiges of hope that had survived the Blitz. She finally gives up on the notion that she can ever bring her whole crew home safe and sound. She swears to Ashley's ghost that she will try, that she'll always try, but the few tears she allows signal to herself a certain resignation that she just can't.

And then a war hero becomes something more. She tries not to scowl at Hackett at the award ceremony. He's gracious enough not to remind her of their first meeting, of his prophetic words or praise. Still, they know it's on both their minds. An unspoken argument.

"Don't say it. Don't say, 'I told you so.'"

"I won't."

"You said I'd be 'great.' How could you have possibly known? How'd you know I'd end up here?"

"End here? Jane Shepard, you're only on the precipice of greatness. You have further yet to go..."

She hides amongst the crew and her ship. She doesn't the attention or the fans or the praise. All Jane has ever wanted was to be a good soldier and make her parents proud. With a sigh, she realizes she's done just that. She's just done a lot more on the way there.

If asked, she will deny that she's brooding. But no one asks.

Heroes rarely live to be old and gray. They die young and they die painful. If in the back of Jane's subconscious she would allow herself to be called a hero, then she must have been expecting this. Maybe not in the agony of burning lungs and decompresion. As she blacks out, Jane laments that it wasn't in a barrage of bullets.

And so the part of Jane Shepard that ever thought she might see the other end of this story dies above Alchera.

Perhaps the real tragedy is her aborted death. There's an ache in her joints that's never been there before and a soul deep kind of loss she can't explain. Miranda worries they put her together broken. Jane tries to explain she was already broken when Cerberus got their hands on her.

It's not until Archangel takes off that damn helmet on Omega that she understands what the loss was. She might have been resigned to losing her crew, but it didn't stop her from missing them. Even in death.

She starts to wonder if she really was (is) a hero. She worked so hard to warn everyone, and yet nothing has changed. The galaxy went on without her, it seems. Is this what it's like to die a hero? Thinking you mattered but then seeing proof that your efforts, your life was in the end meaningless.

The tragedies that are Aratroht and the collectors are felt as deeply by Shepard as if they were her own. And they are, aren't they?

When the Alliance finally comes, she doesn't put up a fight. War crimes, they'll say. She won't argue.

While she's stuck on Earth, she has two missions. The first is obvious - warn them about the Reapers. Her personal catastrophe of a life isn't allowed to be for nothing. That's not fair to the people who died to make it a tragedy. The second is to ponder Hackett's warning of greatness. Great hero or great failure? At this point, the stakes are so high it would be spectacular either way.

Spacer or not, she spent time on Earth as a child. It may not be her home, but it's her people's home. And the pain of watching it burn is mirrowed in Garru's eyes above Palaven and in Liara's on Thessia, in the quiver of Tali's voice when she speaks of Rannoch. Tragedies are being written all around her, written by blood and fear and inaction. Every failure now has a face to it, it's no longer a nameless promise of future loss.

So she gets to work.

It might be selfish, but she mourns more for her own crew than the nameless millions. Jane Shepard can't help grieve for Mordin and Legion even as whole worlds fall.

But Jane has to be strong. For herself, for her crew, for the galaxy.

She's happy - they'll all say she's happy - but really, the only chance she gets are the moments inbetween. Between the missions and the doubts and the guilt. The stolen moments when she gets to laugh with Joker or chat with Liara or unwind with Chakwas or give chaste kisses to Garrus. And as bright as those moments of joy can be, they become smaller and smaller, constantly overshadowed by the growing tragedy unfolding around them.

On Earth, she manages to ignore the future looming over her. She's known accepted her fate for years. We all know how this story ends. It still breaks her heart to walk away from Garrus. There's a silent plea in her eyes before she turns, begging Liara to take care of him.

Because she won't be around to do it herself.

Keep him away from Omega.

When Anderson dies, she stops herself from feeling it. The end is near for her, too. There's so little left, she can't spare tears for her mentor.

The Catalyst's words should scare her, but Jane breathes out a sigh of relief. She's 100 feet away from the end, whatever end she might want.

She takes a deep breath and starts walking. She's so lightheaded, either because of the blood loss or being overwhelmed by what's about to happen, that she doesn't feel the pain anymore.

In Jane Shepard's last moments, she finally knows the truth. Yes, she is a hero. But as she thinks of blue eyes and trilling subvocals, she finally understands that the tragedy isn't hers.