Man in Uniform
("Nothing like a man in uniform," "Mom?")
When Dylan Shepard graduates from boot camp, his mother isn't there. She's on-mission somewhere on the borders of Alliance space, she probably won't get his message for days, and some part of him can't help but be bothered by it. He knows it's not her fault, he knows she can't just drop everything, especially if gunfire, even ship-to-ship, is involved.
It doesn't last long, because it's part of the job, and it's going to be part of his job now. His boyfriend is there, and listening to him sheepishly admit that he really, really likes the way Dylan looks in his uniform gives Dylan a certain sense of pride that his mother's absence denies him, even if it's over something so silly.
When Dylan Shepard finishes the N7 program and earns his commission (not his butterbars, no one calls an N by their ranks' nicknames,) his mother is there. It's not like finishing boot and taking a stroll out on the parade grounds, it's small and subtle, a gentleman's party where no one even talks about the matter at hand.
Hannah Shepard brushes a hand over her son's shoulder even though there isn't any dust to brush off. She stares at him good and long, quite sure that he can tell she's thinking about his father. She's a naval officer, her husband was a Marine grunt, and they both know he died on the ground, in a gunfight.
She doesn't say that. She says, "You look good."
This moment feels like it happened years ago when, two weeks later, Dylan is watching the UT-47 he's brought a team of Marines to Akuze with melt down the middle into a blob of green goop. The moment is gone from his thoughts entirely when two of those Marines meet similar fates. The rest of his life feels like someone else's memories when he leads the survivors into the research outpost, reasoning that its mostly intact, that the things, the monsters must ignore it because it's not meat.
When he realizes the mistake, that they can still sense their meat inside the complex put together from pre-fabs, the rest of the universe is gone from his mind, only this place remains. When the monsters fail to take him, one of the smaller baby ones ripped apart by his biotics for its attempt, they take the others instead.
Dylan Shepard doesn't give up before the monsters do. When he wakes up in the hospital and looks down at himself, he's relieved to see he somehow has two arms and two legs, then horrified by the teeth marks on his chest, the chemical burns on those limbs, the knowledge that he'll never be able to see himself without seeing Threshers at the edge of his eyes.
He finally gives up when his boyfriend visits, and it's not to express relief. He has the decency to do it in person. "I can't handle this again," he says, "I just can't. I wish you'd never signed up."
His mother says something similar when she finally comes, but she doesn't abandon him. She can't hate him for being declared KIA for two weeks and then miraculously found after everyone who cares have all spent days trying to figure out how to grieve and move on.
Dylan's mom hugs him and he thinks, right then, it's finally okay to cry.