"Is it me or does the Captain always sound a little pissed off?"

"Only when he's talking to you Joker."

Flight Lt. Jeff 'Joker' Moreau loved the cockpit. From the warm glow of the lights, to the tightly packed equipment that made walking impossible, and thus unnecessary. It was home.

Granted it was a home that moved at light speed, fired deadly lasers and could kill you a dozen different ways if you didn't watch it carefully. But as far as he was concerned, that kept things interesting.

He glanced over his shoulder. All clear.

"I never figured Shepard would be such a boy scout," Joker looked over at the 'navigator' seat. Kaidan Alecko was a plain faced man in his mid thirties. Nice guy, if you liked vanilla ice cream. "I mean yeah, we're on a mission, but he doesn't have to be so uptight."

"Have you known any XO who wasn't uptight. Especially a new XO." Kaidan shot back.

"But he's N7. You did a tour together right?"

Kaidan shook his head. "Just a mission, once."

"Oh come on. Don't tell me its classified." Joker threw up the air quotes.

"No. It was a couple of years ago and we weren't 'together'. He had an assignment and I was one of the soldiers assigned to support. I don't think he even remembers me."

"You saw him in action. What did you think of the guy?" Joker wasn't even pretending to watch the controls now.

"Shepard's a survivor. I didn't anything could kill him."

"Total bad ass."

"Yeah. But watching all your friends die... it leaves scars." Kaidan didn't look up from the controls.

"Did he ever talk about-

"I never asked."

"I've heard the stories. An entire colony goes dark. So the Alliance sends in a brigade to find out what happened. They all get wiped out. Except for one." A red light catches Joker's attention. Power irregularity. Core feedback event imminent. Joker flushed the excess heat to an emergency shunt. Piece of cake. "Like I said, total bad ass."

A/N: I'm going to take a few unusual steps with this fic. Firstly I'm not going to put any of it in Shepard's perspective (more on this later). As well, some scenes won't have Shepard in them, or really great scenes will be omitted. The reason for this is simple. We all know Shepard's story. It was really well done the first time, and I have nothing of value to add. HOWEVER there is plenty of depth and nuance left in the other characters and other scenes that I'm going to explore.

This story will be updated regularly, while SH – MM is uploaded concurrently but sporadically.