Description: It's the end, the world is growing cold around her yet that voice persist in her head. "Show me Shepard, show me your sacrifice is worth it. What makes this cycle have the right to live?" Her thoughts turn to her crew. But the voice still wasn't pleased and even in her last moments, it was tormenting her. "No Shepard…I want to see everything."
See Shepard's life from the beginning, the defining moments that made her truly the woman she is.
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Mass Effect world or to its characters. My interpretations of these characters are biased of countless hours of game play and thousands of fanfics. If there is any questions you have please feel free to comment them in the review or send me a PM.
Warning: I am trying to really scan the chapters for grammatical mistakes, but I am not the best. So please excuse this inconvenience. If it really bugs you, I am looking for a proof reader to bounce ideas and written chapters off.
"Mindoir"
Within the Attican Traverse of the Milky Way is a beautiful planet by the name of Mindoir. Known for its sprawling forest and rich resources, the colony was formed after the First Contact War in 2157 CE. While the colony experienced decent atmospheric conditions, its precarious place on the edge of the Traverse made the colony secluded never growing beyond the standard 300 people. Many families escaped from council space in hope of building a life from themselves. Somewhere X- Military that wished to be free of bureaucratic red tape, others where simple farmers wanting adventure. Whatever the reason within a few years a close knit colony was formed. In the times of harvest everyone would join arms to harvest the fields, regardless of their occupational standing.
From what I remember my parents had both been within the military, my mother had hated the fighting and was the real reason of us moving into the Traverse. Father wouldn't dare be without her, and when she asked him to hang up his gun he gladly went with her. He was a strong man who often donated his time to the hard manual labor, mostly in construction. While mother seemed to spend her time within an office working on her data pad always. They rarely spoke of their time in the Alliance, though there where the days when dad would become nostalgic. At night he would tell me his stories of the First Contact War, how the turians bleed blue blood as our bullets bit into their skin. Yet with every story about fighting there was another about respect. He believed that you could fight a race and not hate them. That differences in the galaxy made it all the grander. While I never understood these strange lessons at the time, I strived to follow his example. It filled me with a curiosity of what the world beyond our simple colony was like. The aliens in the vids always had their armors on, except the asari, who were supposedly more fearful without a gun in their hands. The Quarians where the greatest mystery, what did they look like below those suits? Where they like the fish in the sea, or the birds that danced within the air? Was it possible that they looked like we did? These questions where constantly in my mind, and I would often fall asleep dreaming of the answers I would never know.
The other children within the colony would get together and play, often we would meet in our 'secret' locations and discuss the latest vids. In those days its toke weeks for Humanity's newest vids. The day the cargo ship would arrive, with other goods bought, was always the best. Those men would always drop off the latest news for us to watch. At first the vids would play on a loop constantly upon the television, so that everyone could enjoy the new data.
Everything was so simple, and while my heart would occasionally yearn for adventure, I found my simple life pleasing. As long as my parents where on Mindoir I would stay with them. Looking back I would have to admit it wasn't just my parents that made me want to stay home, his name was Ethan. Dark short hair, golden tan skin from working in the fields. Large shoulders that would have made him seem bulky if it wasn't for his thin waist. He was safe, simple and enjoyed his life in our colony. His family where merely farmers, and yet they worked harder than anyone around. He never disobeyed his parent's request, unless I asked him too. There was something about me that made him break away from his normal self. That shy kid would turn into a tough rebel if I asked him too. More than once we had sneaked out at night to go lay in the fields and watch the moons. We were caught several times, falling asleep in the soft hay till morning, yet he would always come with me without question. Haha, those where the days. It was Ethan that made me love Mindoir, who made colony life seem perfect and the best path in the world for my future.
It was on my sixteenth birthday that Ethan and I kissed for the first time below the stars. For once Ethan had been the one to initiate our weekly sneaking out. He insisted that we meet exactly at 12:00am, I hadn't even realized what day it was. When we meet he was the most brash I had ever seen him. He grabbed my arm with such force that I had never seen from him. Quickly those squished lips slammed into mine, the heat from his face radiating against my skin. While it only lasted for seconds, that moment affected me for many years. With one action it made me realize something, there where people in this galaxy that I cared for. People that I would want to protect with everything in my power. Of course this lesson wouldn't be realized till it was all taken away.
On my sixteenth birthday my simple colony life was destroyed. It was luck that kept me away from the delivery ships, or rather my massive crush on the tanned boy working in the fields. We should have realized that those ships where different than the normal alliance ones. The markings where all wrong, the blue a dark navy shade. Very unlike the typical alliance vibrant blue known as humanity blue. Unlike the sleek look of SSV Trafalger or SSV Hasting, two frequent Alliance Frigates that often dropped supplies in their rounds, this ship looked like something crafted by the Quarians. The metal siding had been patched together by different metals, as if it had been in combat multiple times. Yet for some reason it didn't strike us as odd. Even for a colony at the edge of the Attican Traverse we had never experienced any real problems. It would be a lie to claim our life was perfect, that we feared nothing. But half of the colonist where x-marines that had endured the worst of the worst. Their definition of a 'bad' situation made the worst case scenario seem like a walk in the park. Occasionally a rouge group of mercs would land on the planet, but often far away from the colony, because they where just looking for a place to lay low and no interest in drawing any form of attention to themselves. We had never prepared, expected…. dealt with an invasion before….
It was the sounds of screams that drew me from the slope of his strong shoulders, how those muscles seemed to flex with every movement. That horrifying sound of fear and desperation, a sound that haunts my dreams even now. It rocked me to my core, and as I stared back at the direction of the sounds Ethan was already in action. I felt his warm skin against mine long before I realized he had been shouting commands at me, telling me to run and hide. Something in his eyes made me move, made me too terrified to see what had gotten him into a frenzy. This was not Ethan, he had always relied on me to be the strong one. Yet this…..this brought for another side of him that I had never seen. Fear made my mind wild, yet as quick as possible I began to run the opposite direction of the colony. I had no clue to where I would go, merely that I couldn't stay here.
