1. Sacrifice

A platoon for a city: it's all just numbers. She makes the calculation with a gun in hand and a flak jacket over her tshirt. She buys time with her friends. She trades them to a grenade. She trades them to a sniper round through the stomach. She trades them, one by one, until there is only her own life left to bargain.

She trades that too, with bodies beneath her feet and her gun half melted in her hand. But the difference is: she wakes up.

They give her a medal. She shoves it in a drawer, until Alchera.

2. Intimacy

Ashley Williams kisses like she fights - all direct passion and controlled aggression. Her mouth is hard and warm, and she likes to fist her hand in Shepard's dark hair, tug just enough that she bares her throat for her. Ashley Williams kisses like she makes love - with a hint of tenderness that makes Shepard's knees a little weak, makes her breath catch in her throat.

They strip each other of the hardness they have learnt to survive, seek out the soft places beneath with hands calloused by guns and violence. War has sculpted them, but that's not everything they are.

3. Tattoo

She winces as the gun traces black across her shoulder blade. The other Marines laugh amongst themselves, throwing around jokes and teasing words. Some of them reminisce about the moment that has brought them here.

The moment in which Private First Class Shepard propelled a pirate into a wall so hard his helmet caved in.

When the tattoo artist is done, her squad leader pulls her to his feet and grins. "You're a real Marine now, Shepard."

The year is 2173. It's the first blood on her hands, and the first tattoo on her skin, but far from the last.

4. Mother

Hannah Shepard hadn't ever thought about being a mother until she married Isabel Alves. Until one day Isabel smiled at a baby and the sunlight glanced off the dark of her cheek and Hannah thought oh. That's that then.

But now her daughter is screaming, flailing little fists, and give Hannah a fighter and its controls, a squadron to command and she'd feel less helpless than this. She's read ten parenting books, but reading doesn't make up for what she lacks. Isabel was meant to be here.

Izzy would know what to do, and God, Emilia looks just like her.

5. Offbeat

Talking to Ash used to be like breathing. Easy, automatic, didn't need much active thought. She made a fool of herself sometimes - god, that awful baggage metaphor - but that was okay too. Now she feels like the space between them is filling up with the things she wants to say but can't put into words.

Stupid shit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you, I wish you trusted me more. I'm still in love with you.

Sometimes Shepard thinks that it's over. But sometimes Ash smiles at her and her chest hurts, and despite everything Shepard hopes , damn it.

6. Different

"We're friends, right?"

The air always feels heavy when it's just the two of them in the room, like gravity is trying to pull them together, like a moon and a planet. Shepard still isn't sure how she's ended back in orbit with this woman. Alone in a darkened room, the stars blurring outside the window and the taste of fernet on her tongue.

Friends. They'd never been just friends. She's not sure she knows how to be friends with Ashley Williams. How to not want her.

Between them is the ghost of a gun.

She forces a smile. "Yeah."

7. Regret

There's an unloaded pistol in her pocket. They're not that difficult to get on this colony - not when there's the constant threat from the blue sky. It's heavy as a brick in her pocket and the shape of it is strangely alien.

The white marble headstones are like rows of teeth. His name is printed on one, still fresh with black paint. That's how you tell the new graves before you even look at the dates.

His wife has left red flowers because she likes the contrast. Shepard leaves nothing. He gave her everything - only living will ever repay that.

8. Expectation

Hannah's fingers are cool against the skin of her collarbone as she fastens the little gold bars to Shepard's collar. Butter bars. She'd made as many jokes about those as her friends had - but her mouth hurts from smiling so much.

"I'm proud of you," Hannah murmurs lowly, her eyes touching on the bars and then her daughter's face. "I think I don't tell you that enough. I've always been proud of you."

"Even..." the words die in her mouth. Even when she'd thrown away the acceptance letter from SANA, signed on the dotted line?

Hannah smiles, eyes sad. "Always."

9. Refuge

There's a part of Shepard that stands in the portside viewing deck and thinks waste.

Garrus flares his mandibles, peering at his cards and Shepard knows his game. The confused alien act doesn't work when she knows full well that Nick (dead four years) had taught him how to play on the SR1.

"Don't let him fool you," she leans forward to warn Vega "he's just trying to take your stuff."

"Traitor," Garrus hums, amused, and for a moment it's easy to shut up that voice. Sometimes it feels like this - these people - are the only thing holding her upright.

10. Stage

The only thing Emilia Shepard has ever really wanted is to do her job. That's all any of it has ever been - trying to do the right thing and having it blow up in her face in new and exciting ways. After Elysium they do their best to scrub away all her sharp edges. Don't get too drunk, don't get in bar fights, don't swear, don't make jokes about killing people.

In front of the cameras she smiles and keeps her dress uniform sharp, free of loose threads. Hackett tells her to provide hope. She's always been a liar anyway.