#shareyourshep

[lonesurvivorao3]

Eris Shepard

Tiny scene in which, five years before Eris meets Kaidan, she meets his father.

Whilst Anderson was busy gladhanding the latest soldier to call his name, she timed it perfectly; feigning awe at the view from the top of the stairs, stopping abruptly and colliding with the man. Her extra large drink squashed between them, then fell to the floor, liquid and ice scattering. She knelt down, stammering her apologies.

After a terse conversation with Hackett in which he continued to be given the party line, he narrowly avoided bellowing about his drenched shirt; the girl couldn’t be much older than his missing son. He watched in confusion as she righted the paper cup, scooping up the crushed ice.

Crouching down to her level, he caught her attention and gestured toward the cleaning drone that was already approaching to disintegrate the mess. “Is this your first time here?”

She glanced at his uniform, taking in the badges, then nodded. “Yes, Major…?”

“Alenko,” he said, then clarified. “Former Major.” As he attempted to rise, she grasped his wrist. The intensity of her green eyed gaze felt strangely familiar, yet different enough that he forgot all about it in light of her strange statement.

“Whoever you were speaking to is an exceedingly accomplished liar, but a liar nonetheless. I’m very sorry, Major, but wherever they took your son… BAaT is not what they claim it to be.”

[lonesurvivorao3]

Eris Shepard Snippets: 16 / Basic Training

Early in her career, she learned that people often tended not to take her seriously. As an Earthborn stray, she learned fast that making an impression required a measure of arrogance and the willingness to go a little too far.

“There used to be minimum requirements to join the Alliance,” murmured Jackson, his blue eyes sweeping over the skinny girl wandering down the transport shuttle.

Still exhausted from the events in Vancouver, she ignored the sniggering and walked to the back. Speaking louder now, he gestured with his thumb. “Short stack over there. It won’t be long before we find out what else those natural genes failed to do correctly.”

“Please save me the exertion by slamming your head into the nearest brick wall at your earliest convenience,” she sighed, tip-toeing to shove her rucksack on the storage rail above.

The stacked Spacer unsnapped his harness and rose with a snarl, barreling towards the mouthy Grubber; he didn’t see the delighted sneer flash across her face or the hat pin she thumbed at the edge of her jacket sleeve.

Off to her left, the lanky, long-haired nineteen-year-old Deschain noted Anderson’s voice, along with a few others, drawing nearer to the ramp into the transport shuttle.

[lonesurvivorao3]

Dossier: Eris Shepard #1

Earthborn bastard of Admiral Hackett, who is not a nice man. In 2175, he discovers her relationship with Kaidan.

Eris knew Hackett was old money, but seeing it firsthand was something else. After the brute of a Turian took his talon from the bundle of nerves at her elbow, she looked around. Shaking off the pain, her rapt attention on his extensive collection of books was only partly feigned.

“I believe congratulations are in order on your recent completion of the N7 trials.”

She arched an eyebrow. The butler offered her a cigarette, and she took it, allowing him to light it. She met her father’s unrelenting stare and asked. “Do you bring all your bastards to their ancestral home?”

Hackett settled further into his chair, unperturbed. “You’re not some sentimental spacer or colonist; you don’t dither over moral quandaries; you see what needs to be done and do it.”

After a long pull on the cigarette, Eris shrugged.

“The things you have achieved so far are remarkable. I would like to see you continue on this trajectory.”

Neither broke eye contact as she mulled over his calculated, flattering remarks; she flicked cigarette ash onto the parquet floor and threw him her own shark shit grin. “Spare me, and get to the fucking point.”

Most of their Black Ops were orphans, their solitary and untethered status making them ideal candidates. They were fearless, having long abandoned any sense of virtue or morality. Their deaths, often gruesome, elicited no public outcry.

The recent news of her fraternisation - that stretched back two damn years - was a problem Hackett needed to fix. “When a rising star in my ranks breaks their usual patterns, I must ascertain why.”

He knows. Eris laughed, evading rather than admitting. “So I like to blow steam off with a familiar face, what of it?” They were no longer, and likely never would be, in the same chain of command again.

He told her she was lucky it had gone undetected for so long, watching her hand tremble a little as she reached for the glass of bourbon, a clear sign of her stupid temper rising. Good. Hackett leaned forward. “Pay attention, Shepard.”

[lonesurvivorao3]

Eris Shepard: Sixteen, or thereabouts

People seldom realised they were doing it, and it happened with such frequency that Eris should be able to tune it out; but they lived in her peripheral vision, staring at the red haired child with a severely scarred face. Sometimes, to entertain herself, she’d catch their eye, stare back, all calm and even, watching their cheeks burn at the realisation they’d been caught.

Currently, she was garnering more attention than usual due to her location. The limp wasn’t helping matters either. As she was walking, or, rather, being escorted through Arcturus for the first time, she thought better of it, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

Anderson sighed inwardly as her lip curled. The combination of her towering intellect and biotic prowess would make her a damn fine soldier, but the complete lack of impulse control - although, watching her, ignoring them watch her, he caught himself before finishing his thought, wondering how accurate the last part of it was.

[lonesurvivorao3]

22

Eris had a fifth of whiskey in one hand, the other placing the near-empty bottle down on her desk when Anderson entered her cabin; he wordlessly smoothed the crumpled piece of paper - an expensive rarity, these days - beside it, then stood back, raising an eyebrow at her.

I wonder if I will ever see anything other than knives in others hands; if the shame I feel at the knowledge the ashes of us were charred by my own hand or if this sick sadness I feel will abate, if anything other than the way you hold the entire Galaxy and all possible futures in your eyes could ease this. Magnificence, gone as gone can be.

The flame from the match she used to light her hand-rolled cigarette didn’t quite obscure the twitch of her ropey scar as she glanced at it before asking. “Does that look like my hand writing, Sir?” They both knew it didn’t match her almost illegible, block capital scrawl. “Is one is under the impression that Earthborn’s are afforded the opportunity to learn Spencerian script?”

Unable to decide if his instinct about her and Alenko was once again incorrect, he reached to retrieve it, but her scrawny fingers snaking around his wrist prevented him. Caught in the eye of her own personal storm, she whispered. “Don’t.”

[lonesurvivorao3]

Eris Shepard Quotes

Snippets and one liners from Pandoras Box.

“A lie is of no use unless someone trusts you enough to believe it.”

Having defeated a second Reaper, this time on Rannoch, Eris had no trouble confronting the finger in her face steadily. “Your accusations are demonstrably false.”

“She who hesitates is usually fucked.”

“Can’t be all temper and no timing when there are children are crying,” she said again, as if that were explanation enough.

“I’ve never had any respect for bureaucrats.”

Despite knowing she’d acted beyond all logical reason, she barked at Garrus. “You don’t have to agree with me; it’s called the chain of command, and I’m at the very top.“

“Did I seem to give a fuck about that?”

After a few minutes, Eris placed a bookmark then put it on top of the pile. Her hand raked through her hair, effortlessly parting the waist-length ringlets. “By way of an introductory remark, you should know I am extremely miffed about your intrusion into my life and book.”

“You’ve read the stories. You know who I am. Nobody has ever stopped me.”

When asked what happened in the tower with Mordin, she sucked in a breath facetiously and said, “I did the math and found the reproductive rate unsustainable.”

“I watched Fleet and Flotilla with Tali. Let us never speak of it.”

She wept uncontrollably, all of her despair and every ounce of bitterness leaking out. “How many hours I have spent staring up at the sky wondering if there were other choices I could have made, some other path I should have taken.” 

“Lies! You’d fuck this moment if you could.”

Eris asked where the bathroom was and shut the door behind her; she leaned against it, her eyes rolling rapidly under her eyelids. “Don’t make me see it; I don’t want to see it.”

“The best way to pull people together is to give them a mission in which the stakes are so high that the odds don’t matter.”

“I’d wager they did not have subordinates incessantly asking questions and hindering the progress of the task at hand,” grunted Eris, side-eyeing Vega in a way Kaidan hadn’t seen since the days of the SR1 and Williams.

“Faulty logic postulated on imperfect data collection!” 

Lowering himself to a crouch in front of her, Kaidan opened the case and placed a cigarette between her split lip, lighting it with practiced ease. After taking a couple of long drags, she flicked the ash and gestured outside. “There’s a terrible confusion amongst the stars.”

“Do not interrupt me, ever.”

“Well, as they say,” she said, helpless to stop the prick in a suit doing whatever he wanted but determined not to show an ounce of fear nor answer anything he might ask. Besides, what could he inflict upon her that hadn’t already been done at one time or another? “Duh.”

“Rather less than bloody optimal, no?”

“Doilies?” she questioned, striding across the room and waving one underneath Anderson’s nose. “What sort of monster have you become since I last saw you?”

“Are you pulling rank on me, Major?”

But it wasn’t enough to help her find her bearings, stop the furious, frightened tears or make her refrain from asking for the impossible. “I don’t want to. Please take me home. Please.”

“Everyone looking to me as if I know what I’m doing. I can’t afford the cost of a conscience.”

“The volume of your voice and the validity of your arguments always exist in inverse proportion,” sighed Eris, succumbing to the exhaustion that continued to wrack her body. She collapsed onto the bed, still fully clothed.

“The time for careful consideration has long since passed!”

“Forgive my foolishness,” she said, wiping her cheek with the back of her thumb. “I know it’s not possible; I know what I am. A wretched thing, monstrous, barely human.”