Jane Shepard
Why did she come here? What was a common street rat like her doing in the local Alliance office? This was exactly the kind of place people like her avoided with a passion.
Screw Jay for making her come here to clear things up that weren't her problem.
About a month ago, a couple of drunk and apparently important Alliance soldiers stumbled into rival gang territory and had caused a scene in an alley with a couple of gang members. It wasn't much of a fight really, and in short, the soldiers got themselves shot and killed. Stupid. The girl figured that the gang actually did the Alliance a favor for getting rid of idiot soldiers like them. And now the Alliance was in a roar to find the murderers, even to the point of completely negating the police, and Jay, the leader of the Reds, expected her ever so sly abilities to quietly snitch to the Alliance. Of course, the monetary reward for any information helped.
Screw the fucking daylight out of him.
Arms crossed and nerves on edge, the girl began tapping her foot, her boot harshly hitting the ground. She didn't belong here. The reception office was too bright, too open. Nowhere to take cover if a gunman decided to barge through. Stupid. It didn't help that they took her knife off of her when she entered the office. There were a few meathead-y looking people sitting around with her, each glancing at her with looks of disgust or pity. Or both. Stupid. She discretely sniffed herself. It wasn't like she smelled bad. Stupid. She glanced back at them with the same look. Too big and bulky. For all of their thickness, she knew the kind; they wouldn't last a day out on the real streets, and they yet dared to look down on her.
Everything just added up to a feeling of unease. What the hell was taking so long anyways? She had already told her "testimony" to some important Admiral guy through the com. Why couldn't she just leave already?
Screw the fucking nightlig-
"44!" A annoyingly nasal voice from the main desk cut through the girl's internal verbal curses towards Jay. Finally.
Grunting, she pushed herself off of the plastic green chair and walked towards the desk. A woman probably in her forties sat there, thick glasses on the bridge of her angular nose. Her face was pale, hair a drab shade of brown, her eyes a dull hue of blue. She looked so unextraordinarily plain. Like a picture perfect image of a regular middle-class working mother, set with two kids, a loving spouse, and a white picket fenced suburban house. The thought made the girl feel slightly nauseous.
The woman leaned over the desk towards her, her plain mousy hair escaping from behind her ear, smile playing on her lips. "First off, the Alliance would like to thank you for your willingness to work with us to bring our Alliance boys to justice. I can't imagine how hard it must've been to follow what was right." The woman looked to her for a response to the one-sided conversation.
Hmph. No, you plain, suburban, self-righteous, middle-class mom, you will not get an answer. The girl simply briskly nodded.
Reaching in a cabinet for some papers, the plain woman exclaimed unfazed, "Just imagine the joy this will bring their families and friends to know that their murderers will brought to justice!"
"Yeah, my whole body is just tingling with excitement." The sarcasm went unnoted yet again by the woman who was busy organizing something behind her desk.
"Here, if you'll just fill this out for me, your name, birthday, etcetera," the receptionist stated as she absently handed her a paper form clipped onto a board, a pen dangling off of a thin chain. "We keep the information classified and anonymous when we present it, but we just need the source as possible evidence later if needed."
Questioningly the girl took it, holding it as if it was a foreign object in her hands. Which it was.
The words and letters that littered the form were all foreign to her, random formations of scribbles in black ink. A small surge of panic and simultaneous annoyance rose within her; she didn't know how to read.
Shit.
Even the girl had her convoluted sense of pride; on the streets, she was known for dealing in information that no one else knew- a valuable asset for survival and respect in gangs. And with that information, she was infamous for having connections and allies wherever she treaded. Knowing was her domain; it was her life. In a world where surviving to see the next sunset was what mattered, books and education were handed over for guns and intel.
She never didn't know.
"Don't you all have omni-tools and systems for this?" She asked irritably, angular red brows furrowing at the situation.
The plain lady chuckled as she paused from the screen. "We like keeping hard copies around just in case our systems ever get hacked or corrupted. We take our precautions."
Fuck.
The girl couldn't really write either, only knowing the basics of spelling and the alphabet. Enough to sound some words out. Being able to write in the common language had been pointless if the authorities could read their notes too. She took a deep breath.
Fuck it.
In a burst of rebelliousness she took the pen into her hand and wrote across the whole sheet, ignoring the borders and boundaries of ink. There were two words she knew for sure how to write.
FUCK THIS.
There. She pursed her lips icily at her handiwork before confidently handing it back to the ever smiling plain lady. The girl was pissed. Pissed at the receptionist for being so plain. Pissed at the receptionist for putting her in this situation that exposed her lack of knowledge when she had just done them a huge favor. Pissed at herself for her lack of knowledge.
See if the lady smiles now.
The lady's smile evolved into thin lips at the sight of the board, the space between her brows crinkling.
Clearing her throat, she said, "Uh, I'm afraid I can't quite enter this in our databases. First we do need your name, and I highly doubt that this is it."
Her remark was met with a blank stare of defiance.
"This isn't your name, is it?"
Her remark was met this time with a blank stare of annoyance.
"...Or not. Tell you what, if you just tell me your name, I'll write it down for you dear." The plain lady's mouth returned to its former glorious state of a patient smile. Perhaps this approach would work better.
Sure enough the girl's tense stance eased ever so slightly. The girl opened her mouth as if to speak before momentarily pausing and furrowing her brows again.
"I don't have one."
The plain lady raised a single painted eyebrow. "What do you mean? Everybody goes by something."
An awkward pause infiltrated the stagnant air between them.
"No one gave me a name." The girl restated as a matter of fact. Her moss green eyes evaded the sharp lady's doubtful stare. Like towards the bright green plants in their white ceramic pots on her desk. Like at the water dispenser on the other side of the room.
My, did a cup of water seem incredibly attractive right now.
"Everyone goes by something. Everyone is called something." The plain lady only insisted, regaining the girl's attention.
The girl paused a moment, distant eyes suddenly thoughtful.
"They call me Shepherd. A shepherd of people. A shepherd of information. A shepherd of results. On the streets." Her voice held a hint of pride at her well earned title.
The plain lady only smiled, the wrinkles around her eyes softening.
"That works as well as any name. How do you want to write it?"
A slight wave of discomfort arose again. How was she supposed to spell it? Sound it out?
"I can write it myself." Her voice was surprisingly authoritative, assertive. She took the board and pen from the sharp lady and began to write again, this time in minuscule letters at the very bottom of the sheet, the only part left untouched by her earlier artwork.
S...H..EP...A...RD. SHEPARD.
Her eyes subconsciously rolled up as she mouthed the name to herself, stopping at the sound of every letter until the 'd'. Shepard.
The girl paused for a moment to stare at the name she had spelled. Quick, simple, and easy to remember. Her name. Albeit it was barely legible, but it was hers. She had earned it.
She bit her lower lip as he handed the board back, looking to the woman, looking for signs to see if she was correct. The plain lady nodded in approval, a single strand of graying brown hair falling from her bun as she entered the name into the database.
"What should I enter for the first name? Your John or Jane Doe?"
"I don't care; it doesn't matter to me either way considering I'll never use it." The plain woman's face showed her obvious dissatisfaction. Fine. She paused a moment before thoughtfully asking a question. "What were the names you mentioned earlier?"
"John? Jane?" The lady answered inquisitively.
"Jane works." Shepard crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one leg. "Are we done here?"
The lady ignored her question, instead quipping another question, brows raised in bewilderment. "You do realize the name you'll go by from now on is being decided right now? Don't you want to put a little more thought into it?"
Shepard snorted. "And do you realize that no matter what you enter into that database of yours, it doesn't matter? I'm Shepard, plain and simple. No matter what name is entered in that database, however the Alliance labels me, I'm still me. I'm Shepard, and if a pointless first name is what I need to get this done with, then Jane it'll be. Or Emili, or Suzan, or fucking Bobb for that matter. It doesn't matter what it is, I don't care."
"Very well," the plain lady stated. "And I suppose you wouldn't have your birth date and year, contact, or any other information would you?"
"You suppose correctly."
The plain lady nodded at the board. "Then I'll just fill it in for you if you don't mind."
Shepard shook her head. "I couldn't mind less."
"Then if you could just take a seat," the lady motioned her painted nails towards the row of seats facing her desk from a few feet away, "I'll get back to you in a few."
Nodding slightly, Shepard dug her hands in her baggy pockets and sat down. She glanced at the lady patiently working and mulling over entering Shepard's information into the database. Why was she so patient with her, a common no-good rat? They already had her testimony; if they wanted to, they could probably just do whatever with her. She was a dangerous rat at that, one that had lied and thieved and killed too many times to count. A rat now officially named Jane Shepard.
Jane.
The more she thought about the name, the more she found herself disliking it. Jane. It was meaningless, like a quick tryst of the dark between two desperate bodies, empty but nonetheless fulfilling its goal. Shepard had always liked to think that there had to be a meaning for everything. Jane. That thought had kept her going when the going had gotten rough, when she wondered why she even existed. The streets sure as hell didn't mean anything. Jane. But the more she thought about it, the more she found herself realizing it didn't matter what name she chose; they would have all been empty. Jane. Because the only thing that ultimately meant anything to her was to stay alive. Everything else was just a tool. And to stay alive, she always knew what she had to do; she was the Shepard.
"Jane!" The plain lady called, pulling Shepard out of her thoughts.
Shepard frowned. She didn't think that she would ever take to like being called Jane. "Shepard," she corrected as she got up and walked over to the front of the desk.
"Shepard," the plain lady repeated. "Does this work?" She pointed to the blue screen displaying all of her information.
Taking her time, Shepard read over everything, stopping only at the date of birth noted.
04/11/2154
Its date was that day's date, the 11th of April.
Shepard couldn't help but an unfamiliar smile tug at the corner of her lips. Although she didn't know her true birthday, this date wasn't entirely a lie. Shepard nodded slowly before looking up at the plain lady's eyes, a faint glimmer of a begrudging smile playing at the corner of her pursed lips. Things would only have as much meaning as she allowed them to have.
"Happy birthday Jane Shepard," the woman grinned, straight white teeth shining, handing over the chit loaded with the monetary reward and a slip of paper underneath "And I know I'm just a receptionist, a clerk, and I don't know if it's in my place to say this, but I feel like I see something in you that wants more than what you've been dealt. I see someone that can be more than their surroundings. If you ever feel like you need something more, like you've hit a wall, look into the Alliance. Admiral Hackett from earlier on the com personally asked me to give this to you. He saw it too."
"Uh… Thanks, I guess." Shepard wasn't sure how to respond. She had never had a birthday before, never really had anyone who would care enough. She pocketed the chit and saw that the paper had Alliance contact information scribbled on it.
Maybe the Alliance wasn't so bad after all. Maybe she could give them a chance, something like they gave to her. Shepard never let her debts go unpaid. Or as per the plain lady's insistence, not a debt but a birthday present.
Hmph.
"Happy birthday to me."
I don't know, inside my head this has sort of been my canon for Earthborn Shep's name and history, as well as her push into joining Alliance for stability and meaning. It's also my explanation as to why Shepard's never called by her first name, and I actually change it for each runthrough background origin I play. I find it more enjoyable to play when I have these added headcanons to add depth my experience.
Anyways, reviews are always much appreciated!