Chapter 1: Ordinary

Carina is staring at me.

I drum my fingers against the table and stare into the living room, listening to the dog barking in the backyard as I pretend not to notice, but the kid keeps staring straight into my averted eyes. I hate when people do shit like this. Could it be any more obvious that it makes me uncomfortable? I wait a few more seconds before bracing myself and looking back at her, and I swear the girl just whips her head to the side and tries to act like she hasn't been drilling holes in me with her eyes for the past few minutes.

I keep my eyes fixed on her for a few moments, now that our roles have been switched. Her head is turned straight to the left and her eyes dart from the floor, to the wall, to the bedroom door, anywhere except back to me. I stifle a laugh. Is she really this stupid? Then I realise that whatever look my face is displaying, it's probably not one I should be giving a six-year-old and that Sam would be livid with me if she was here right now, so I look away. The kid's stare slingshots back to me immediately, but I don't even care anymore.

Where is Sam anyway? Oh, right, getting dressed in the bedroom. I imitate the girl just a moment ago and look at the door, giving my mind something to distract itself with by imagining Sam undressing in there, black underwear being slowly removed from her body by her small, slender hands…

The door opens and interrupts my train of thought before it can get anywhere interesting. Sam steps into the modern kitchen, fully dressed in her work outfit, how disappointing. Not that she doesn't look good in it, she's Samantha; she could wear absolutely anything and still look hot. But still, her formal clothes are far less exciting than pictures my brain had been conjuring up.

For a moment Sam's face reflects my dissatisfaction, most likely due to the awkward air hanging over the kitchen. She really shouldn't be surprised at this point; it always gets like this when I'm left alone with the kid. She walks over to Carina and starts babying her. Sam asks how she slept, if breakfast tasted good and all that. And like always Carina just mumbles a quiet "Yes" and nods slightly in reply. I know some people are shy, according to my therapist I qualify as antisocial myself, but I can't help thinking that there's something seriously wrong with this kid.

Sam turns to me and begins tying her hair up into a bun, a look I'm not exactly crazy about. "Get her to school on time, okay?" she says. I copy Carina and nod and mumble a yes. Sam seems satisfied with this, because she kisses her daughter on the forehead, says goodbye and walks out into the hallway and leaves.

I rise from my chair, sighing. "Be ready when I come back."

Knowing I won't get a reply, I drag myself into the bathroom without waiting for one. I shower and pull on a shirt and a pair of jeans, all while dreading the day ahead of me.

By the time I park the sky-car outside the private school in Oxford Sam picked for Carina I'm feeling slightly less tired, though still uncomfortable after having spent 15 minutes in an enclosed space with this kid.

She gets out of the car and I tell her to "Have… fun… at school", trying but failing to sound somewhat motherly. The kid just stares at me like she always does so I close the door and drive off; hoping she at least doesn't need help getting into the building.

This is my life now, and has been since about two months ago, when the man at the Alliance orphanage in London closed the door behind me and Sam and left us alone with Carina after warning us that she had been traumatized during the war and had barely said a word since they took her in. She had apparently been found among the rubble of a house in London after the final battle, not far from where they found me after I destroyed the Citadel, saving the galaxy in the process. They had been unable to get her to tell them anything about herself, other than her name, and so she was placed in an orphanage, along with countless children whose parents had been killed by the Reapers.

We sat down by a small table, a tiny girl with black stripy hair down to her shoulders carefully looking us over from the other side of it. On the way home Sam said she looked like me. I thought about it. Black hair, pale skin, thin, Asian facial features mixed with Caucasian; I supposed I could see the resemblance. We said hi, she just stared. Sam did most of the talking, and eventually managed to get a few "Yes's", "No's" and "I don't knows" out of Carina. But whenever Sam let her voice die down and waited for someone else to speak the room would fall eerily silent, and I would look over at her to see her trying her hardest to repress her frustration.

I spent most of the meeting twitching anxiously in my chair, thinking of all the places I'd rather have been right then. When the twenty minutes were up I almost sprang out of my chair, only to be stopped suddenly by the girl's voice. "You're Commander Shepard, right?"

I'd introduced myself as Xiola, but she must've recognised me from some news vid. "Yeah", I said, though technically I wasn't "Commander" anymore.

"The Commander Shepard?"

"Yeah."

I looked over at Samantha who looked back at me, seeming just as surprised as I was that the girl had suddenly gained the ability to speak in full sentences. Our eyes returned to Carina, who had retreated back into her reclusive shell. We said our goodbyes and left.

When we went to bed that night Sam said she loved Carina, that she wanted to adopt her. I wanted to ask her why, what the hell that girl had done to deserve her affection. I said "Okay."

The adoption process was fairly speedy since earth was flooded with war orphans at the time, still is, really. Around the same time Sam got a job at a communications agency. I was a little annoyed since we'd just gotten the child that she wanted, but realised it was necessary as the Alliance had seen it fit to give me over a dozen medals but no benefits and or entitlement to pension until I'm 75.

I still don't quite know what it is Sam does there. I ask her how work was every afternoon when she comes home, but that's really just so I can zone out and listen to her beautiful voice, since most of what she says these days is directed at Carina and not me. But her job pays well, well enough to take care of all three of us and pay our mortgages and bills, so I don't complain.

That's my day. I watch Sam leave, drive the kid to school, wait for Sam to come home with the kid, then watch her play with Carina and help her do her homework before she makes dinner, then a couple of hours later we go to bed. It's incredibly boring. Some days I see a therapist and… shit.

I'd completely forgotten I'm seeing her today. I check the time: 09:53. I drive faster. "You can make it" I tell myself, trying to make it sound like I care. Dr Whatever-the-fuck-her-name-is' office is in Oxford too, but still far enough from Carina's school that it takes a good 20 minutes to get there, even by car. Why we have to have our sessions ten in the fucking morning I'll never understand. And now I feel a headache coming to life in the back of my head, great.

I end up being late, not that it matters since these therapy sessions are entirely useless. Once we had moved into the house outside town Sam insisted I go see someone, "because of the things you saw in the war" she said. I laughed and pointed out that she'd been in the war too, desperate to escape of the nightmarish idea of me talking openly with anyone other than her. She countered by saying that she had not seen battle or even fired a weapon, and though I could have argued further I backed down, not wanting to have an actual fight with the only woman I cared about. Since I wasn't Alliance anymore they couldn't provide me with anyone, so Sam found me some expensive, ancient, totally unfuckable woman on the 161st floor in a building on Longwall Street. "I heard she's one of the best in the country." I remember Sam saying.

The therapist (whose name I still can never remember after several months) hates me. Of course she can't actually say it, but she has ways of making it clear. I don't mind, because the feeling is reciprocated. She says I don't take our sessions seriously, which is absolutely correct. There's no place in this city, on this planet, I hate more than her office, and the fact that she's terrible at her job doesn't help. Hell, even Kelly Chambers knew more about psychology than this cunt.

When I step into her office she's is already glaring daggers at me. I plop down into one of her armchairs. "You're late."

"Yep."

The old hag looks even angrier and her shrivelled up face gains at least a dozen new wrinkles. I suppress a laugh. She hates me, but I just know she's breaking her code of silence to brag to all her psychiatry buddies that Xiola Fucking Shepard is her client.

It doesn't get any better from there; she asks me about life at home, Sam and Carina, the same inane questions as always. I make most of what I say up; occasionally telling the truth if I think it'll get a funnier reaction out of her. Imanage to provoke her to grunt irritably and frown a few times, which is the only thing I enjoy about these meetings, but the hour and a half still crawls by at an excruciatingly slow rate and I have to resort to picturing myself murdering the good doctor in a variety of ways in order to pass the time. Suddenly I realise she's moving on to the topic of my military career, fan-fucking-tastic.

"Do you miss it?" she asks in an attempt to get something useful out of me, something worth scribbling down in that little notebook of hers, something that will inflate her ego and make her feel like a true professional.

Do I? Do I miss firing bullets at 5000fps into batarian skulls from miles away? Do I miss slamming asari into the ground with my biotics so hard their blood colours my visor purple? Do I miss the screams of dying soldiers haunting my mind in my sleeping hours as well as waking?

Yes I do I do oh god oh dear fucking god I do I fucking do I miss it so fucking badly.

"No."

By the time I leave her office my headache is beating against the inside of my skull with the force of a berserk krogan. My immediate instinct is to contact Vilana and once I'm inside the elevator down I act on it. It only takes a few seconds for the holo of her face to pop up on my omni-tool, bushed eyes and a tired scowl plastered on her features.

"What do you need?" the holo asks. That's the one good thing about Vilana; she gets straight to the point.

"Can you be at my house in 30 minutes?"

"Sure." Vilana dissipates.

Five minutes later I'm in the car, probably breaking the speed limit and some traffic laws due to how recklessly I'm driving, but all I can think about is getting home and taking a fix that'll kill this headache.

Vilana's already standing outside the door when I arrive, that permanent frown of hers even more apparent than usual. I can hear the dog barking inside the house, it never stops.

"You're late." She complains.

"Yep."

I walk past her, unlocking the door and stepping inside.

I first met Vilana… somewhere. I honestly don't remember. All I can recall is an asari coming up to me in a crowded room and asking me if I wanted any red sand. I've never liked dusting up, the euphoria only lasts a few minutes and it barely enhances my biotics for some reason, I like to think that they're already as powerful as they can get. I think I told her this because as she led me into a bathroom conveniently located in the vicinity she said something about how she'd forgotten humans even had biotics. I said something equally insulting about her race and she gave a me a dust-like substance called creeper and told me how to contact her. I gave her whatever amount of credits that cost me. The next day she was in my house, and the day after that.

I go into the bathroom to wash my face while she waits in the kitchen, and I'm about to go back to her when I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I stop. Other than the headache I honestly don't feel that bad, but the woman in the mirror looks like she just rose from the grave. My skin is pale, paler than usual, I mean. There are dark half circles under my bloodshot eyes and I think I might have lost weight. I pull off my shirt and stare at my torso. My ribcage is obtruding from under my skin, making itself far more visible than it should be. When the hell did this happen?

I consider putting on makeup, but decide not to since I really don't give a shit what Vilana thinks of my appearance. When I return to the kitchen the wares are already waiting for me on the table, she knows what I like after coming here several times a week for almost two months. I have no idea what an asari is doing selling drugs in Oxford of all places over a year after the war, but I also don't care. I transfer the money to her with my omni-tool, and then go straight for the hallex bottle. I've been a fan of the drug ever since Morinth introduced me to it. I pop a couple of the pills and I'm about to fetch something to wash them down with, as they leave a sour feeling in my throat, when I hear Vilana's hoarse voice from behind me. "Hey."

"What?"

"Wanna fuck?" she rasps. Like I said, she gets straight to the point.

I turn around and look her over, and realise immediately that I have no desire whatsoever to sleep with her. I want to believe that this is because of my undying love and devotion to Sam, but knowing me, if I'd been into asari the offer would probably have been very tempting.

I want to enjoy the moment of turning Vilana down, but the hallex has already started working its magic and my senses are too dulled for me to come up with a clever way of doing it, so I just smile maliciously and say no.

Her face tenses up a little and looks even bitchier than before. "Fine", she says bitterly before seeing herself out.

I waltz into the spacious living room and collapse onto one of the leather sofas and stare out at the white picket fence surrounding the house through the large panoramic windows while I wait for the pills to fully kick in. When we bought the house Sam told me that the picket fence wasn't important, that it was just a detail that I didn't need to bother with, but I was insistent and made all the arrangements to have it put up myself. It was the only thing I was insistent on.

After 10 minutes, all the pills have accomplished is to make me ridiculously horny, almost enough to make me wish I'd taken Vilana up on her offer. I masturbate and think about Thane, then Sam, then Thane again. After I finish I go back to the kitchen, do a line of creeper instead and then stash away the remaining drugs before lying back down on the couch. I can already tell the creeper is better for it, and before long I'm slipping in and out of a wonderfully hallucinogenic dream.

This is really the only reason I started with the drugs, to pass the time. Between dropping Carina off at school and Sam coming home with her in the afternoon, I do not exist. I don't interact with anyone other than them, my therapist and my dealer, and though I'm certainly not complaining about my lack of social life, it leaves me a lot of spare time to kill. The absence of the medical drugs I was given during my many months in alliance care after they found me in London could possibly be adding to my need for chemical stimulation, but it's not an addiction, I'm still in control of my want.

At one point I start to slip out of the dream and my half-conscious mind starts thinking about the hospital, white sterile walls and beeping machines, Sam sitting patiently by the bedside. At first she was very emotional, she'd often cry, both from happiness and sorrow, but her visits were still pleasant. But after a month or so she began to steer our conversations at the hospital towards houses, the upcoming wedding and other things that didn't interest me. But I was agreeing, not caring where we lived or what kind of retriever we would buy once I was admitted from the hospital.

"You're leaving the Alliance, right?" I remember her asking this on one of her visits, and I realised immediately that I was. Not because I wanted it, but because Sam wanted it. "Yeah", I said and felt a stabbing pain inside me. What would I do when I was no longer in the military? I knew no other life. Sam smiled, took my hand and said "Good". The pain went away.

Once the memory reaches its conclusion I fall back asleep. My thoughts and dreams merge and suddenly Sam is Kaidan, then Thane, then a husk. It spirals more and more out of control from there and after a while it stops being entertaining and starts making me uncomfortable. I don't wake up until Sam comes home with Carina in the afternoon.

It takes a while for me to gather enough strength to pull myself off the couch, and once I do and walk back into the kitchen Sam is already making dinner while Carina stands haphazardly in the corner, unsure what to do now that her mother's attention is directed elsewhere. I'd be lying if I said I couldn't relate, that I hadn't experienced similar scenarios, but I'd also be lying if I said I didn't find her discomfort kind of funny. I get the urge to stick my tongue out at her, but then I remember she's the six-year-old, not me.

I turn to Sam instead, who's standing by the stove with her back to me. "Hey."

"Mmm" is the response I get. She doesn't even turn her head. Now I can relate to Carina in two ways.

I place my hands on her hips and bury my nose in her hair (which now has been freed from the wretched bun). This manages to get a reaction out of her, but not the one I had in mind. Just as I'm about to kiss her neck and reach in under her clothes she spins around and before I can even react her hands are clasped around my wrists and her eyes stare into mine with a look that screams "No". When she sees the confusion apparent on my face she nods towards Carina who's still frozen in the corner of the room.

Sam turns back to the stove and I roll my eyes in annoyance, doubting I was scarring the kid for life. I turn back to Carina, wanting to direct my anger at her somehow, but with Sam here that's not happening, so I just look at her and pretend I don't hate her, until I notice something.

Carina is holding a cardboard box in her hands. It's fairly large, in contrast to her small hands and body it's seems gigantic. It's a wonder I didn't see it before, and since I'm getting increasingly bored with every second I stand in this kitchen I decide to find out what it is.

"What've you got there?" I do my best imitation of Sam as I say this; she knows how to do these things. Carina looks away and says nothing.

I walk over and take the box from her, which feels heavy in my hands. It looks just like a normal package, but there's no label, sender or address, just a single word written on it in red ink: Xiola. The handwriting is strangely familiar. I haven't read many handwritten texts in my life, but I know I've seen this before.

"Where did you find this?" I ask. Again, nothing.

After a moment of silence I hear Sam's voice from behind me. "It was outside, by the door."

I sit down by the table and place the package on it and start ripping off the brown tape it's been sealed with. For some reason I do not ask myself how a package with nothing but my first name on it ended up on my doorstep. Maybe it's the drowsiness from having taken a drug-fuelled nap through the entire afternoon; maybe it's my hunger for something new to breach this ordinary life I've found myself in. Whatever the reason, my hands shred efficiently through the cardboard and before long I'm looking down at what's inside it.

It's a rifle, an M-7 Lancer. The moment I recognise the weapon an avalanche of facts concerning it come back to me, drilled into my head during my childhood. "The M-7 Lancer was introduced shortly after the First Contact War. Its weight is identical to that of the M-8 Avenger. A Lancer line of assault rifles were later released by earth-based weapons manufacturer Hahne-Kedar."

It only takes one glance for me to recognise that it's real, not a replica, not an imitation. Then I begin to realise everything that's wrong with this situation, the package, the rifle, the writing on the lid, and suddenly I'm asking myself the obvious question; who sent me this? Where I live isn't public knowledge, and the rifle in the box is a relic from a war three decades ago. It shouldn't be in my house.

Suddenly panicking, I close the box without even touching the Lancer, but then I see my name on the lid and in an instant I realise where I've seen it before, and I remember who made me memorize all those things. My mother. On the other side of the table I see the deceased Hannah Shepard push her thumb down on the top of a blue Alliance fountain pen and putting it to paper. My mouth is dry, sweat is pouring down my forehead and I feel I am about to vomit. My chair clatters to the floor as I run towards the bathroom. Behind me I can hear Sam's confused voice ask something, but I'm already gone.

When I walk back into the kitchen the package is gone and Sam and Carina are waiting for me to sit down at the dinner table.

A/N: I know Shepard was calling her wife Samantha in the prologue and Sam here. I decided to change that and I'm going to go back and edit the prologue eventually.