"N7, yeah…or you could get my name. Somewhere special."

Vega was a tease so she never told him that she already had an N7 tattoo. She didn't tell him because she didn't want him to know that once she hadn't been so different from him, not really. She had been head strong and impulsive. She had dashed in, guns blazing, not for glory but because she felt like she was born to do it; like it was the one thing she was good at. She didn't tell him about the time in Rio when her and some of her old buddies went out, got drunk and got inked. She would save those revelations for another time.

Eventually she did get a tattoo of a name, though not in such a special place as Vega would have imagined.

She didn't get it right then at some makeshift lean-to in the Citadel while the world went to hell around them but later, when her body had healed from the Reaper War and she wore an engagement band on her finger. It was after she had been discharged from the Alliance and yet not so long after she said goodbye to the bitterness that followed the decision by Alliance brass to retire her.

When she finally went Vega went with her. He stood at her shoulder as the gun buzzed and the sting of the needles drew more of her attention than it had when she was younger. When he saw it he teased her, saying it wasn't his name but nodding in approval because he knew it was the right one. It was the one that would be associated with Shepard's for as long as that ink showed on her skin…at least to those closest to them.

It was a little bit impulsive and more than a little crazy, but she liked it. It made her feel a bit like the daring Shepard of days long past. She didn't mind the person she'd become; she was more than just Shepard now. People called her 'hero', or 'legend', or 'veteran'. Her father called her 'kiddo' again. Kaidan called her 'fiancée'. She was pretty damn sure she liked that best of all. Still sometimes it was nice to feel like the person she used to be, even if only for a moment.

And she was learning to love this new life, though it had admittedly taken some time. She loved that she and Kaidan had been together long enough to form habits. She loved how he laid his hand between her shoulder blades, his long fingers skimming the back of her neck when he returned from work. It was as much of a greeting as the whispered I'm home in her ear.

That's why she'd gotten the tattoo there, somewhere special, where his hand always rested; where even when he was across the galaxy she could still feel his touch.