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Omega was a piss hole, a cesspit, the dark spot in an otherwise bright galaxy. But it was my soul-sucking black hole.

Some people spent their entire life cursing their existence and the bad luck that had brought them to this section of the galaxy. I tried to take a more positive outlook on a situation that was largely out of my control.

To be honest, if you grow up on Omega and live there for years, you get used to it. And people get used to you. Most of those who dislike Omega see it only as a den of criminals and the disadvantaged children of criminals. In reality, the children had it the easiest here. People weren't completely without morals; and besides, no one wanted the reputation of harming or harassing a kid, so I hadn't ever felt the pressure of a supposedly "dangerous" life.

When I matured, everyone still thought of me as "Cyrus's little girl". Everyone in my neighborhood and the business district had known me since birth, which couldn't be said about too many teens on Omega. I was more or less the sweetheart of this sector on Omega.

The bartenders at Afterlife would give me a hard time on occasion, but they gave all the girls trouble.

That's not even to say that I spent much time there. While I did get out of the apartments quite a bit, my mom encouraged a more reclusive lifestyle for me. She had been a professor at the Vatta King University in Nos Astra, on Illium, for more years than I had been alive it seemed. Studious by convention and a little wary by nature, my care-worn mother liked to keep me within the sights of her steel-blue eyes. While my father would never allow her to homeschool me, she may as well have with how much she taught me on her own. Nalah Butler was the department head of Post-Contact Galactic History at Vatta King, meaning she knew everything there was to know about spacefaring species and their cultures for the past 200-300 years. That was a lot to teach me, but my mother cared enough to start with me at an early age. She was passionate about the knowledge she had, and just as passionate about sharing it.

While I enjoyed all this just fine, I found myself more interested in ancient cultures when I was old enough to begin reading the texts on my own. Of course, you couldn't get much grander or more captivating than the Protheans; I had a many century-spanning love affair with them.

Rather shortly after discovering Prothean culture, I found a series of scientific journals by an asari named Dr. Liara T-Soni; and although she was young, it was obvious that she had devoted most of her life to this research. She was something to inspire me, because we weren't so different. We both came from important and influential mothers, born into a respectful position, and were expected to be useful if not exceptional. Dr. T'Soni had done so much, knew so much; I wanted to know it all too.

When I eventually left Omega for the Vatta King University, I had much more access to information on the Protheans. Instead of just published journals, I could request research notes from Dr. T'Soni's past discoveries and even some raw data from more recent field expeditions.

But of course some things weren't readily accessible, even to a promising archaeology student. Thankfully I'd picked up a rudimentary understanding of hacking while on Omega; most everyone did. I knew it was wrong, but if you needed to get to something worthwhile on Omega you'd have to know how to hack a door or two. Hacking extranet security lockouts and firewalls wasn't that different; and the payout was infinitely more valuable to me.

Being able to enter more secure databases meant the difference of 5-year-old data and 2-year-old data. One time I even got lucky enough to break into a government-secured document only a few months old; it hasn't happened again since though.

I'm not an expert; I'm not even an authority. At beat, I could be called curious and knowledgeable. And a bit obsessive. In the future I saw myself working at dig sites and discovering amazing new things, maybe even new cultures or civilizations. I at least saw myself graduating from upper-level graduate school...

However, the galaxy never cares about your personal desires and the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry… And much in the way my mom's influence got me on Illium, my father's doing got me on the Normandy.

My father, Cyrus Butler, had been a soldier most of his life. He came from a military family and had early memories of the First Contact War; he was living on a military base when his parents were spaced off to man Alliance ships. Miraculously losing neither of them to the conflict, I could understand why my father didn't have any ill will against being a soldier. He enlisted at the age of eighteen.

He met my mom three years later on Earth when she was just about the graduate college early with a bachelor's in archaeology. It was star-crossed love at first sight. He had only just started his service and had several years left to put in before he could move into the reserves, and she had plans to complete her doctorate. It wasn't for another seven years that they were ready to be together; and another four years after their marriage before I finally came about.

No one would think to call Cyrus Butler sensitive; kind perhaps, or even soft at times, but a man's man through and through. However, my mom loves to tell the story of my father's reaction the very first time he held me. The way she tells it, I refused to open my eyes for quite a while after my birth and everyone was starting to worry. That is, until my father picked me up into the crook of his arm and called my name, Modly Butler. Mom always says that I must have recognized his tone and finally opened my eyes to what must have been my name. "They're blue," mom always quotes him, "the most beautiful blue you've ever seen."

This story always goes over especially well when both of us are present for it, firstly as a means to poke holes in my father's tough-as-nails ex-military façade; and secondly because my eyes are not actually blue. Over the next few hours in the hospital my eyes adjusted and became the faded brown they are today. The doctor said it happens to many babies as the melatonin levels in the body increase. It's one of those little stories every family has that gets a laugh from its face value but also shows the character of those it's about.

I was a daddy's girl from that moment and for the rest of my life, and his death a few months ago has no bearing on that. Honestly, the love my father had fir his only little girl is mostly why I'm standing outside the airlock to the Normandy as it stands docked with the main port skyscraper here in Nos Astra. A very important letter was saved to my omni tool but weighed much heavier on my mind.