An old cargo shuttle streaked across Mindior's grey afternoon sky, its battered, chipped paint much a match to the tangled settlement of metal prefabs below. The craft slowed as it descended, heading for a muddy open patch between the buildings. The shriek of its engines dropped to a deep rumble as it set down, kicking up mud and grass as it touched down in the narrow courtyard and prompting the scattered handful of souls milling nearby to shield themselves.
The door opened with a loud groan and a single lean figure walked quickly down the ramp, their head low and their hands dug into the pockets of a utility jacket as they ducked through the team of laborers that convened on the shuttle and began to unload cargo.
A safe distance from the crowd, the woman paused and looked back. Satisfied she had drawn no notice, she flipped the jacket's hood down and surveyed her surroundings.
The months since the end of the Reaper War had seen Jane Shepard a different woman. She was no longer the Alliance poster girl she had been after she'd become a spectre. The fiery red curls that had once hung to the nape of her neck were gone—another causality of London—and Jane had styled what little had grown back into a short fohawk that was sorely missing its vibrant hue.
Her freckles had faded away against her pale face and the long months in a hospital bed had made her pointed jawline gaunt, giving her face a lean, half-starved looked. The Battle of London had been cruel to her, and even after the countless surgeries her body still bore wounds that she would carry until the day she died. It had taken a toll on more than her body as well, and if eyes could fade one would surely swear that hers had.
It hadn't been the pain. It hadn't been the days lost in a confused daze of morphine and bleating heart monitors or the brief moments of lucidity that had cut through the haze. It had been the aloneness.
It had been the weeks spent praying she'd wake to a familiar face only to keep opening her eyes to mute strangers who never lingered for long. It had been the nights she'd lay awake, her knuckles bloodless and white on the rail of her bed because there had been no hand to hold.
She'd left her dogtags on her pillow—Hackett would understand. She hoped it would be enough.
Jane had bought, bartered for, or outright stolen enough clothing her size to fill the worn grey sea bag she wore on her back. There were a few other things in there as well, a few days' worth of packaged rations, a spare set of bootlaces, but little else—come to think of it, Jane didn't even think she'd kept her service pistol.
She'd slipped out late one morning, retrieved the bag from where she'd stashed it, and disappeared into the sprawling cityscape of rubble and refugee camps that had once been London. In hindsight it would've been smarter had she waited until after she'd had lunch, but the need to escape that hospital had never been a matter of thinking—it had been an urging. An instinct, even. It had been fortunate she'd made it to the spaceport before nightfall. She'd found a freighter headed to the Attican Traverse and given the captain a fake name and some yarn about how she desperately needed to get back to her family in the human colonies. While she doubted the captain believed a word she'd said, he took her credits all the same.
She'd spent two long days in one of the ship's dark storerooms with a dozen other refugees before the freighter had touched down and they'd been hurriedly driven out an auxiliary airlock before a customs agent arrived to inspect the cargo. The small, decaying supply station where they had landed had proved a good place to disappear into the crowd and offered a number of worlds to go to.
The ex-soldier had pulled up the hood of her jacket and had become perfectly anonymous. The station, filthy and packed with transients, had seemed a safe place—at least from what she was running from. Jane considered staying for a few days, it would've been a welcome change to be invisible for a while. Or so she had thought.
The station, as tiny and wretched a place as it may have been, hosted a badly undermanned company of Alliance soldiers that patrolled the concourses and main corridors—the only visible symbol of order in the sea of desperate migrants. It was possible that they'd been garrisoned there to help keep the peace, but Jane found it more likely that they'd been cut off from their line of supply and were waiting for a ship to come collect them. Still, she'd been careful to keep her head down when the patrols passed and they hadn't caused her any trouble.
Then she'd gotten curious and stolen a look at one of the soldiers as they passed.
He was young—no more than nineteen and his blond hair looked as though it had been cropped to regulation length only a short while ago. The rifle in his hands was clean, but well-worn. When their eyes met amidst the sea of faces and there was fleeting a flash of recognition as Jane quickly vanished back into the thick of the crowd. After that, she found the first ship off-station and bought passage.
She could've gone anywhere in the Traverse—but she'd come back to Mindior.
The shuttle had touched down in a town on the outskirts of Blackbarrow, a smog-choked industrial center where most of the planet's industry was located. It was a long two hours by shuttle to the quiet hamlet where the Shepard farmstead had once stood and that was fine by Jane—any happy memories she'd had there were long since gone.
Just the same, it was a homecoming of sorts.
It was the wet season, and though no rain fell as Jane meandered her way through the alleyway to the street, the low, gray sky and fresh mud underfoot was a reminder that it soon would.
The season was a period of frantic activity by the colony's farmers as they tried to seize the fleeting harvest that arrived with the warm summer rains before they withered in the fields when the storms retreated.
As Jane emerged from the alleyway, a small, rusty wheel transport rumbled by with a trailer in tow. The vehicle bounced along the slippery gravel avenue, its aging biofuel engine spitting puffs of dark smoke as it chugged along.
Mindior, much like the decaying buildings and the weathered transport that passed between them, was a world far past its prime. Settlers still came, but there were fewer of them every year, and after each attack the colonists rebuilt their homes, but not quite everything was the way it was before.
It seemed as though the rocky little world, with the entire galaxy to crash down upon it, might one day be washed like a sandbar by the tide and that not another soul in the galaxy besides Jane would ever notice its absence.
So why had she come back?
Was it because she had needed to feel some sense of vindication that time had worn heavily on all things, not just her? Because she needed some affirmation that she hadn't been the only one that the years had killed by inches?
Or was it because, somewhere, amidst the scars old and new and the fractured memories that kept her awake at night, was that the sunny little cottage she'd helped her father paint the summer she was twelve was still home? Did those sun-kissed green fields—the ones she'd splashed through in rain boots that were too big for her feet—still call to her?
As she walked with the gravel road crunching underfoot her thoughts were silent for a long moment as she searched herself for an answer.
There came the distant rumble of thunder and she gazed upward. She could see the rain begin to fall in the distant hills and there was a steady wind that would soon bring it to town.
The rustic hamlet, already dreary and lifeless, began to quickly withdraw in the shadow of the approaching storm. Doors and windows snapped shut, and the passing farm carts hurriedly rumbled by before disappearing from sight.
By the time the first raindrops began to drum on the rusty metal roofs of the houses, Jane was alone in the street.
It only sprinkled at first—a few fat drops to darken the gravel, but it quickly rose to a driving cascade.
Jane pulled off her jacket, stuffing it into her seabag dropping it beneath an overhang where she hoped it would be reasonably dry. She kicked off her heavy black boots and socks, leaving her barefooted and wearing only her long dark pants and a soft, black tank top. Laying her boots down where they wouldn't collect water, she stepped out into the downpour.
The rain met her pale skin gladly, and she flinched before surprising herself with a sudden laugh.
It was hard and piercingly cold, but somehow pleasantly so—exactly like she remembered it.
She spread her arms and gave a twirl, the rainstorm rolling down her shoulders in long streams and leaving her hair and tank top soaked and clinging to her body.
Slicking her wet bangs back out of her eyes, Jane spied a puddle growing along the side of the road and raced to it with long strides, the rough gravel unnoticed beneath calloused feet.
With a leap, she triumphantly landed in the middle, spraying water everywhere and drenching anything the storm hadn't gotten to yet.
She looked up into the falling rain with a tearful smile—no more the worn and broken soldier she had been for so many years. For moment her twinkling emerald eyes were no longer dulled by the pain she carried with her.
Her hands were wet with the fresh summer rain instead of blood and as she danced beneath the storm clouds her thoughts weren't troubled with the memories of those she had lost.
The rain danced with her, kissing every pale scar war had marked her with, her partner and lover where another face no longer smiled at her.
Commander Shepard was dead—a name to be carved into plaques and spoken of with lofty reverence. They would bury her legend in bronze and stone.
But in the muddy streets of Mindior, Jane splashed barefooted in the rain.
A/N: I didn't mean to find this sitting half-finished while I was sorting through some old files, but it seems fitting that I'd do it on the four-year anniversary of Mass Effect 3 as the series moves onto to another story. At one point in time, I considered turning this into a medium-length work, and it would eventually have a happy ending when the Normandy came to find her. But I guess we don't always need 'happy'—sometimes peace is enough.