Chapter One:

In Which We Meet Our Reluctant Hero

At first, the dream is one of the good ones. There's music, of course; his mother sings as she helps his father fix a hole in one of the pasture fences. He feels as though he should be the one helping his father, but then he realizes that the weight on his hip is Willa, her chubby arms wrapped around his neck as she whispers to him about the things she wants for her fifth birthday next month. The dream is better than a memory, because this day never happened; nothing can ruin it. But then his father speaks those words: "Take your sister back to the house and start dinner, why don't you." He wants to say no, that he hates cooking, that he won't leave his parents, but his father gives him a look and so he hitches Willa higher and walks back to start boiling rice and beans.

In the kitchen, there's no music, but Willa's babbling has a rhythm all its own, and he realizes he's stirring the rice in time with her words. Slowly, his dream-self lets his guard down, and he thinks that maybe he will have a restful night for once. He smiles at Willa.

Explosions rock the house. The boiling pot on the stove slides dangerously, and he yanks it off, takes control of it before it can spill and burn Willa. Water and rice come over the side anyway, turning his left arm into a block of intense pain. Some of it splashes upwards, and he thinks his face might be melting.

Everything now is black smoke and earthquakes, pain, screaming, and gunfire. He's fairly sure he's still in the kitchen, but he can't find Willa. She has to be somewhere in the tiny room. He starts to panic and shout her name.

Shepard woke up still panicked, the room pulsing with echoes of shouts and biotic flares. He forced himself to lie still and focus on breathing until he'd regained enough self-possession to remember he had left Mindoir behind thirteen years ago. As long moments passed, his heartbeat began to slow, and the blue flicker from his emotionally induced biotic charge began to fade. His eyes traveled to the nightstand, searching for a bottle of the sleep aids he'd stopped taking years ago. Every nightmare that came made him wonder why he'd ever given them up. Unconsciously, he lifted a hand to his nose, fingers settling into familiar positions on the overly smooth lines of the scald scars. More deep breaths. He did his best to wonder whether or not he'd forgotten to pack anything for the Normandy's shakedown run tomorrow, not whether or not Willa might be alive somewhere.

Giving up on sleep, Shepard sat up and stared at his hands. When did I get this pale? he marveled. Growing up, the skin of everyone he knew had been baked light brown by Alioth, the system's star. Now he spent all his time in space, serving on Alliance warships as an important member of humanity's military. No dirt or starlight or fresh air for war heroes. Not unless they were just popping in to save a colony from slavers, pirates, or a natural disaster even science couldn't mitigate.

It was ridiculous to ask when his skin had lost its tan. He didn't even have a fixed permanent residence. Motels, or furnished apartments willing to offer week-to-week leases, once, a girlfriend's home. These days Shepard only ever briefly touched down on land before being called back up into the stars. He frowned and shook his head. The Alliance had been his whole life for so long now. Most days he just accepted that reality and tried to forget that there might be something more for him to want. When he thought about Mindoir though, about what he had grown up with…There was plenty of money in his bank account, and Elysium had been seven years ago. His career had been relatively quiet ever since. Maybe after this tour on the Normandy he would leave the Alliance and find a place to live.

He reminded himself that he wasn't ungrateful. The Alliance had saved his life more than once—Mindoir had just been the first time. When he needed a reason to keep waking up every morning, the Alliance had been there, offering him a career, self-respect, a new kind of family. Even if it was only a weak substitute for what he'd lost, the Alliance had given Shepard something to care about. What Shepard had forgotten about family though, was that you couldn't just walk away from it. He'd been on Elysium for leave, yes, but the day of the Blitz, he'd been at the local Alliance headquarters, applying for a groundside transfer. After four years on active duty, he felt as though he was finally ready to start thinking for himself again, to try to build a life like the one he'd wanted before enlisting. More than anything, he had wanted to spend his two reservist years on some out of the way homesteader colony where he could buy some land and start planning his future.

Then batarian slavers had attacked, and somehow, Shepard had stumbled into the limelight. Later, he'd try to find someone who would believe that he had had to keep moving, had had to keep thinking like a soldier, because if he stopped, he would've started thinking about Mindoir, would've been too afraid to be useful. No one wanted to hear that though. Both official stories and survivor accounts painted him as concerned for the civilians, calm and collected as he organized defenses, took control of the other marines, and single-handedly plugged a hole in the defensive wall until the attackers gave up and retreated right into the hands of slow-responding Alliance cruisers.

After Elysium, what little control Shepard had had over his life quickly evaporated. Everyone else knew what was best. Heroes didn't get crappy reservist postings on unimportant colonies, even if they wanted them. And all the arguments had made sense: he was a good soldier; he did want to help humanity; there wasn't anyone waiting for him to finish his tour and come home. So he kept doing well, kept being 'necessary' to the Alliance right up until now, when he'd been chosen to serve as the executive officer of the Alliance's newest stealth ship. Handpicked by the brass for two years of top-secret missions.

Thinking about Elysium had started his biotics up again. The blue sparks that swam over his skin irritated Shepard, their presence serving as a reminder that he didn't even have full control over his own body. Standing up, he stalked over to the window, pushing back the curtains to let in light from the street lamps and neon signs that would mask his own glow. Aside from basic training, which didn't count, he'd never been to Earth, and he'd found his stay on Arcturus Station fantastically disappointing. Not that he should have been surprised. With all the unexpected responsibilities that had come with his appointment as the Normandy's XO, there hadn't been an opportunity for him to go groundside. All he could do was stare out the window of whatever Alliance Navy office he'd been allowed to borrow for the day and wonder what the planet his parents had been born on was really like.

Someone in the street screamed incredibly vulgar epithets after the shuttle as it pulled away from the station without him. Shepard's forehead wrinkled in disapproval. He had never liked cities, and staying on the deep space station that served as the Alliance's capital did nothing to improve his opinion of such compact living arrangements. If anything, Arcturus was worse than other cities Shepard had visited; its ceiling made him feel claustrophobic. With a sigh, he turned away from the window, closing the curtains and making his way back to the bed.

In the darkness, Shepard lay down without bothering to get under the blankets. Only a few hours until he set out for the Normandy. He closed his eyes and made a promise to himself that this would be the last tour. After that, it didn't matter as much that he couldn't fall back asleep.