A marine's life isn't easy.
Then again, she never signed on for easy. Easy wasn't her style.
She liked a scope on her pistol and an amp tuned to the edge of regulation limits.
And the spaces in between she fills with bar fights, and casual trysts, and the occasional vid to her mother.
The first batarian she allowed to surrender slit her commanding officer neck to belly. She never makes the same mistake again. She does not forgive.
She is ruthless.
After the moon is won, whispers reach her ears. They call her the Butcher of Torfan. She ignores them.
And the spaces in between are filled with echoes of her footsteps in an almost-empty barracks.
Commander.
It's what she wanted. She tells herself that. She hadn't busted her ass to stay a sergeant until retirement.
It's what follows next she isn't sure of. Saren. Spectre status. Geth. Reapers. The images in her head of the Prothean's death cry. It's too much for one woman, any woman, to take alone.
The spaces in between she fills with rough hands and soft touches, and the crush of his lips on hers.
