Identity (a Mass Effect fanfiction)

Shepard

Shepard took a seat at the end of the bar, letting the noise and chaos of Chora's Den wash over him. With Fist dead, it had come up a bit in respectability, but only a bit. Tonight, it was just the escape he was looking for, and he fit in nicely. No one would think to find the famed Commander Shepard drinking alone in a bar, and while his crewmembers would recognize his cargo pants, scuffed boots, and battered leather vest, no one else would expect him to wear that kind of thing.

The turian bartender certainly thought he belonged here amongst the other intergalactic flotsam and jetsam. Bracing his hands on the bar, he looked sharply down at Shepard. "You start any trouble in here, I'll finish it."

"I'm not here for trouble. Just the opposite."

"Well, you can't sit here for free."

Shepard tossed a credit chit onto the bar, watching the turian's gaze sharpen when he read the name on it. "Mention that name out loud and trust me, you'll have all the trouble you can handle."

"Message received, loud and clear." The bartender's tone had changed, and Shepard glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed it, relieved when no one seemed to be paying attention. "What can I get you?"

"Got any Earth bourbon?"

"That's a little above the grade for this place."

"Fine. Whatever's cheap and wet."

"Coming up." The turian poured two fingers of something blue into a glass and slid it across the bar.

Shepard tasted it, grimaced, and nodded. "Keep it full."

"Whatever you say."

Coming to the Citadel had been a mistake, clearly. Damned Udina, so smug and self-righteous, and the Council, so willfully blind to what was really going on in the galaxy. Shepard had never trusted Udina, not since the Ambassador had turned traitor on him and grounded him instead of letting him go after Saren, and that made him more prickly than usual when the Councilor was around—which was saying something, because Aaron Shepard was famed for his prickliness across the galaxy.

"You make me sick, you miserable coward!" Shepard had shouted at him at last.

Udina had come right back at him: "I wish I'd never heard the name Shepard. Humanity would have been better off if you'd died in that miserable slum you were born in."

Of course Udina would know his history—or at least, the carefully crafted one that had made it into his official file, made up of just enough truth to pacify anyone who went looking. Shepard took another swallow of the terrible blue liquor, grinning to himself, wondering what Udina would say if he knew Shepard wasn't his real name—that he didn't know his real name at all, in fact.

About two years after she'd taken him under her wing, Rachel came bounding down the steps from the library. "Aaron, I've got news."

He looked up from his book—Steinbeck, the one he had looked at that first day, something called Travels with Charley, about driving around the country with a dog—and noticed that at some point, Rachel had grown up. She looked more like a woman than a street kid now. His pulse quickened in alarm. He knew what happened to teenage girls on the streets, more often than not. He'd have to step up his knife-fighting skills if he was going to protect Rachel from that. He was getting bigger now, but not big enough to scare people off, so he'd have to be scary through skill instead.

"Aaron, did you hear me?"

"Sorry. What's up?"

"My father's coming home! The mission's over, and they're on their way back."