I.
Shepard loves the Mindoir Sky
Shepard loves Melissa
There is no sight comparable to a Mindoir night—the swath of satin dark stretching in every direction, stars scattered like her baby brother’s freckles. She loves Mindoir. She loves this village, she loves this farm, she loves her home. But Fera Shepard loves the sky and the promises it makes and one day, she promises back, she will soar through the deep black—an adventurer, an explorer.
She lies back in the tall grass and drags Melissa with her. “One day,” Fera tells her, “I’m going to be a pilot. And I’ll take you to all sorts of beautiful places. Wherever you want.”
Melissa grins and looks away. It is dark, but Fera can feel the blush spreading under her fingertips. “You Shepards,” she says. “Always trying to impress pretty girls.”
Fera sits up and leans over her, curling hair falling down onto Melissa’s cheeks. “Yes ma’am,” Fera whispers. “That is true.”
It is not the first time Fera has ever kissed anyone but it is the first time she has ever felt her heart flutter in her chest. It is the first time she understands what her mother had meant when she’d said “Love? Why do you want to know about that? Well, for me, with your father, it felt like butterflies in my chest.”
Fera thinks that she could love Melissa. That Melissa could love her too.
But they do not get the chance to find out.
II. & III.
Shepard loves Work & Dirt
Shepard loves Oliver & Nicholas
Even covered in the mud of the training ground, Shepard thinks Oliver is one of the prettiest girls she’s ever seen. And Oliver’s boyfriend isn’t hard to look at either.
N7 isn’t a comfy life, but she loves it. She loves the way her muscles hurt like hell, the way her body feels all stretched out and sore when she drops into bed at night. She loves the way her knees and palms are always scraped with mud or dirt or crumbling rock, the way the stinging keeps her present, reminds her that she’s here, right now, and she’s not weak anymore. She loves the new rank stitched into her uniforms with every rotation she passes, a promise to anyone who’d hurt her again: I’m ready, I’m strong, I’m ok now.
“I wanted to introduce you to Nicholas,” Oliver says one afternoon. The sunsets on this planet are pretty. Soft. And the way the light hits Oliver’s hair, lights up her face—it takes Shepard’s breath away and she hardly remembers to extend her hand for a shake.
“I’m Fera,” she says and he grins.
“I know.”
Shepard decides that regs are meant to be broken, rules meant to be bent, because the three of them? They make exceptional teammates and even better lovers.
It doesn’t last. They’d known it probably wouldn’t—N7 isn’t something that can be replicated elsewhere—but that doesn’t mean none of it mattered. God, it did.
IV.
Shepard loves the Normandy
Shepard loves Garrus Vakarian
This is not how Shepard imagined she would get her own ship—gifted, then stolen, then blown up, then gifted, then stolen, then reclaimed. The Normandy’s been through as many sterilizations and evaluations and refittings as she has.
But goddamn if this ship isn’t home. Goddamn if these people aren’t hers.
And Shepard loves Garrus Vakarian—just as used and abused and tired as this ship is, as she is herself.
Circumstance took her home away, her family, her love.
And Circumstance took her refuge away, her teammates, her lovers.
Garrus has faith when Shepard can’t. He says the Normandy has a spirit: something ethereal, but True, that’s come to be from everything the Normandy is. Circumstance can’t take her Normandy away, not now. It cannot take her people this time. The Normandy, and Shepard too, perhaps, is a Spirit, stretched over the galaxy from one end to the other, an invisible thread that ties her heart to the hearts of her family, her teammates, her lover.
Despite it all, Shepard loves.