"Will you hold still? I'm almost done," Liara muttered as she adjusted the collar of Shepard's dress blues. The uniform had arrived that morning, freshly pressed and laden with heavy new medals.
"Liara, it's fine. Just leave it." Shepard groaned though she secretly enjoying the attention.
"There." the asari announced, backing up and admiring the uniformed woman before her.
"How do I look?"
"Gorgeous," said Liara as she moved to give Shepard a kiss on the forehead, smoothing the Commander's hair back. "Do you have your speech memorized?"
Shepard gave a nod. "All up here," she said she pointed to her head.
"Good. And I will be sitting in the audience the whole time, okay?"
Shepard's response was cut short by a knock on the door leading into their room. The door opened and Garrus poked his head in. "Taxi's here to pick the two of you up." He glanced at Shepard, taking in her uniform. "Wow. You look nice for a change."
"Save it Vakarian." Shepard shot back, grinning widely.
"Are you coming to the ceremony with us?" Liara asked.
Garrus guffawed. "To an Alliance ceremony full of First Contact War veterans? Please. I'm surprised enough that Liara is going. You'll be a little out of place.
"I'm going to support Shepard. I don't care that I'll be the only non-human there."
This got a smile out of the turian. "You're a good girlfriend, you know that?"
Liara smiled knowingly. "Come on," she said, turning her attention to the Commander. "We don't want to keep the taxi waiting much longer."
"Good luck!" Garrus called as the couple made their way out of the hotel room and into the taxi.
"I'll be needing it," Shepard murmured under her breath, her mask of confidence fading away as she slipped out of view.
The taxi pulled up amongst heavy traffic to the front door of the auditorium where the ceremony was slated to be held. Crowds of Alliance soldiers were exiting from their hover cars and taxis and making their way into building. The chaos of the crowd took a form of order the second Shepard emerged from the backseat of her own vehicle, standing at attention and saluting the Commander.
"Been a long time since I've experienced this," Shepard whispered to Liara, as she nodded to the saluting crowd.
"It's a strange experience," Liara returned.
"You don't know the half of it."
The crowd suddenly began to part as the figure of Admiral Hackett made his way towards the Commander. She quickly moved to salute him. Hackett gave a nod of acknowledgement and offered his hand to Liara. The asari took and shook it.
"It's good to see you Admiral." Liara said.
"You as well, Liara," said Hackett before turning to address Shepard. "You're the primary speaker for this event. I decided that an introductory speech would be unnecessary. Once everybody is seated you'll be brought out to give your speech. Then we'll present some medals and dedicate the ceremony to some of the fallen veterans. And that will be the end. That crowd is excited to see you, Shepard. Like I told you, you're a hero to these people. This whole thing will be simple."
Two men approached from the mass of soldiers behind Hackett. They gave Shepard a quick salute. "Shepard, this is Sergeant Moore," The brown-haired man on the left nodded. "And Corporal Frost." The other, a slim man, slightly younger than the first also gave a sign of acknowledgement. "They're here to take you backstage. Liara, I'll take you to sit with me in the front row."
Liara thanked the Admiral before leaning in to give Shepard a peck on the lips and took the Commander's hands in her own. "You will do wonderfully, Shepard. Best of luck."
A wide smile crossed Shepard's face as she squeezed the asari's hands. "Thanks Liara." As the couple dropped each other's hand, she swore she heard one of the men mutter "Lucky" under his breath. She chuckled.
The two groups separated as Shepard followed the young soldiers into the building, past the members of the crowd beginning to take their seats in the large auditorium and through a door that lead them directly behind the curtains on the stage where the presentation would take place.
"Do you need anything, Commander?" Moore asked.
"Just water."
As Moore busied himself with the water glasses, Shepard took a seat in one of the set up folding chairs. She mentally began running over her speech in her head, putting all of her concentration into the task.
"Um, excuse me Commander." She looked up to see the other man, Frost, standing above her. "I know this is incredibly unprofessional of me but my daughter absolutely idolizes you and it would mean so much to her if you could-"
"Sign something?" She smiled. "Of course. How old is your daughter?"
Frost looked surprised that she would agree, "She's, uh, she's 6," he stammered, reaching into his pocket and pulled out a piece of white paper and a pen and handed it to her.
Moore returned with a glass of ice water. "What are you doing, Frost?" he hissed. "You know that we're not supposed to be asking her for anything."
"It's fine," Shepard said as she signed her name. "I won't tell. I hope she enjoys it." She handed the autograph back and took the glass of water. As she did so, something in the corner caught her eye. "What's that?"
Frost bent down to examine the object. "It's some sort of gift basket for you. Looks like there's a bag of coffee beans from Earth, some cheeses, and, wow, a bottle of Noverian Rum!"
Shepard was impressed but she knew that she would have to get rid of the bottle of rum later in order to keep her promise to Liara and the doctor. "The military really goes all out on stuff like this."
"Apparently."
She quickly moved to change the subject. "How long until I go on?"
Moore slightly pulled back the curtain and glanced out at the audience. "Right about now. It looks like everyone is seated."
She took a big drink of water before standing up and passing her glass off. "Let's do this." The curtain was pulled back as she was escorted onto the stage and brought to the podium situated in the center. As she approached, the crowd stood, the military men and women saluting, the civilians applauding. Shepard moved to adjust the microphone stand attached to the podium. She took a deep breath to center herself and glanced down to see Liara giving her a smile from the front row. That was all she needed to coerce her into speaking.
"Good afternoon," she began. "I was asked to be the one to speak to you today in the first ceremony that is being held in honor those who fell fighting for the Alliance in the war against the Reapers. I was asked to do so because I was told how significant of a part I played in the outcome of the war. But it wasn't me that led to the positive end to this war. It was every brave man and woman who were willing to leave their loved ones behind to go to the ends of the galaxy to fight against an enemy that they had only heard of. It was because all of these soldier's willingness to lay their lives on the line and sacrifice them in order to protect humanity."
Shepard paused briefly to take a breath but she had yet to begin speaking again before a voice rang from the back of the room. "Traitor." All heads in the auditorium craned back to see who had spoken.
"Excuse me?" Shepard asked, her voice caught somewhere between confusion and anger. The figure of a woman stood up in the back. She was older and dressed in civilian clothes.
"I said you're a traitor," the woman called, making her way into the aisle as she said so. "You claim that everything you did, this entire war, was to protect humanity. But in the end, who died? The Reapers, of course. But how many humans died in that war? How many humans like my son who had never even seen Earth?"
There was absolute silence from the crowd. They were in such a state of confusion that no one had moved a muscle to help defend Shepard.
The woman continued her rant. "My son volunteered for the Alliance after seeing all of your damn speeches on the Alliance News Network. He got it into his head that it was his duty as a human to help defend Earth from the Reapers. He had never seen Earth. Our family has lived on Elysium since it was founded, before he was even born. So he enlisted all the while praising the great Commander Shepard. He would talk non-stop about you and saving humanity and all that, that nonsense. And what does he get for it? A trip home in a body bag. He was hit with one of those thing's lasers while he was fighting in London."
The woman was half way to the stage and was visibly crying. Still the crowd did nothing. "How many people have died because of you Commander? Does it even affect you? Do you even give them a passing thought or do you just go on with your life being worshiped by people like those here?" The woman stopped her rant for just a moment to wait for a reaction from Shepard.
"I…"
"You what?" the woman spat.
Shepard gulped, trying to compose herself. The words hit hard. She had always known that young soldiers had died for her war. She had seen that with her own two eyes, seen them fall right in front of her. But for some reason this hurt. She was embarrassed, ashamed, and absolutely disgusted in herself. The woman was right. How many people had died because of her?
"I think you're completely right," she managed to choke out.
The woman had not been expecting this response and was stunned into silence. It was then that a marine in the crowd finally spoke up. "Leave Shepard alone, you bitch," he cried. That was the catalyst. The room erupted into chaos. There was shouting and screaming, the previously displayed order was completely gone. Everyone was moving from their seats, either trying to leave or apprehend the woman who had accosted Shepard.
She frantically scanned the room for Liara, looking for a spot of blue in the sea of humans. Finally she spotted the asari who was trapped in the center of a large, rapidly moving group. "Shepard!" the asari called, waving her arms to try to draw attention to her small figure.
"I see you," Shepard shouted back. "Meet me backstage!"
"Alright," Liara bellowed, trying as hard as she could to make her voice heard over the sound of the near-riot. Admiral Hackett was currently trying to restore order nearby but his authority was having minimal effect.
Shepard was able to run off behind the curtains before breaking down. She collapsed into the chair, drawing her knees up and hugging them in a childlike pose and put her head on the top of her knees and squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she possibly could, trying to calm herself down. She breathed out deeply and lifted her head. As she did so, her eyes snapped to a familiar object; the gift basket. Leaving the chair, Shepard approached the basket and bent down to inspect it. She tore off the clear plastic wrapping and reached past all the other items to grab the bottle of Novarian Rum.
The second her hand made contact with the bottle Shepard knew two things; one, she had never wanted something so badly in her entire life. And two, she needed to get away from this place and everyone that she knew.