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Commander Natasha Shepard doesn’t hate many things. Slavers, batarians, ninety percent of mercenaries and a few more almost too petty to mention like the color yellow, thong underwear, and Khalisah Bint Sinanal’Jilani. But, at the forefront of her ‘hate list’ as she’s so creatively dubbed it, is Cerberus. Even if they did bring her back to life, something she’s more than big enough to admit she’s grateful for, if not for her sake than for the galaxy’s, she still doesn’t trust them as far as she could – or would like to –throw them.
She hates that they bought child slaves from batarian raiders, that they attacked Alliance marines on Akuze and Argos Rho both, and the untimely demise of Rear Admiral Kahoku is something she’ll never truly forget – or forgive. To put it simply, she just isn’t a fan of the xenophobic bastards or their enigmatic Illusive Man.
But the thing she hates about them more than anything else…is the fact that they took her scars.
She knows that the goal of the Lazarus project was to bring her back to life, to restore her to exactly the way she’d been before the destruction of the SR1. And, though she has no intention of ever telling Miranda, she knows they, her and Wilson and whoever else made up the science teams, failed.
This is because one of the first things she noticed after waking from what she’d come to think of as her ‘coma period’ was the lack of the scar that had marred her face since she was fifteen, a mark she’d received during a particularly brutal gang battle against the 12th St. Saints.
She’d had other scars of course, far too many too count, and each one had its one story but none could compare with that one. Every time she saw it she remembered being drug into the hospital by the guys who, luckily for her, paid far more attention to her blood loss than her protests. She remembered the cool, healing touch of medi-gel against her face, though it wasn’t first application or her last, as well as the twittering of the nurse as she flittered about.
She remembered the awed look Harris and the rest of the Reds got the first time they saw her afterwards, the wound already reduced to a single, slightly jagged red line that stretched from the far side of her right temple to the edge of her left cheekbone.
And, despite the years that passed, reactions to the wound never stopped coming. When she enlisted she remembered the expression on the recruitment officers’ face as well as the suspicious, almost fearful, looks from the other FNG’s. Even Anderson had bulked the first time they’d met, his hand jerking slightly away before coming to rest against her own as he introduced himself.
In retrospect she had to admit that those memories weren’t all that pleasant but they were still important to her, to who she was, to who she’d become. Besides, there were happy ones, like the tender look in Liara’s eyes as she ran a gentle finger along the faded line, the whisper of her lips against her skin. And Shepard knows that, even if thinking of those times makes her heart ache now, one day she’ll be able to look back on them and smile. But…without the scar itself to remind her of all those moments, how will she hold on to them?
Her scars, every one of them, told the story of her life surer than the stars formed the constellations. They portrayed her every loss and every victory, no matter how large or small. They were an affirmation of everything she was and everything she had been; the unblemished skin between them a far more important reward for her evasiveness and skill than any of the medals on her officers’ lapel. The loss of them meant the loss of her humanity, her identity, her very existence. They might as well have made her an altogether different body; then, at least, she wouldn’t miss what she should’ve had.
Logically, she knows that isn’t true, that she’d have hated being someone else even more than being almost herself. But logic doesn’t matter right now. She just wants – needs – to hate. So she does. Cerberus, the Council, the Alliance, the whole damned galaxy; she hates them all. But it doesn’t make her feel any better, not that she really expected it too.
That’s why right now, standing in front of the mirror fighting back tears, she isn’t too proud to admit, at least to herself, that she doesn’t know how she’ll make it through this. But she does know that she’ll try. Because, though she’s many things, she’s not a coward. She knows that, like any other enemy, this one can be defeated if she fights hard enough and no one fights harder than her. Because, no matter the packaging, she’s Commander Natasha Rowe Shepard, the first human Spectre, Savior of the Citadel.
And her story isn’t over yet.