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They ask you what shaving cream you use in the same breath as they ask your bra size. If the war correspondents were bad before, the gossip rag writers are worse, because their only priority is making you into a good story. Something to grace the front page of Species magazine. COMMANDER SHEPARD UNDER THE ARMOUR. THE MOST FAMOUS HUMAN IN THE GALAXY TAKES IT OFF.
They want shirtless pictures, and when you say no, they want to dress you up, and then it's all inseam and waist size and "should we account for a bustline?" They want to put you in a suit. They want to put you in a dress. You tell them you're wearing turian formals and that's the picture they get. It turns the article toward your relationship with Garrus Vakarian and the strengthened ties between human and turian. You hope.
You put it out of your mind for about a month. Plenty of distraction, in the wake of the end of the war. The rebuilding of the mass relays, the rebuilding of Earth, the rebuilding of your own ravaged body. Synthetics powered your vision, the nerves along your whole left side, your knees and hips and ankles. The best doctors in the galaxy are working on it, and Miranda's working with them, carefully configuring your new joints and connections to run in sync with your battered but organic brain.
For forgoing synthesis, you don't say, you sure are turning into its banner child. The Most Famous Organo-Synthetic in the Galaxy. EDI would have liked to see this. Legion might have expressed excitement.
Does this unit have a soul? you don't ask, because it still hurts, and because you're not sure there's such a thing anymore. If you'd had one, it should have escaped the first time you died. If it was ever there, it's probably orbiting that frozen grave where you bit it, with all the others souls who didn't get a chance to come back.
Liara shows up to help you with PT, and also bring the news you care most about. "Urdnot's got another baby on the way. Wrex is writing me directly now; I believe he found my informant and got mad that I was relying on 'secondhand accounts'. So he implied in the first message. He asks if you have a name beside 'Shepard,' and if so, can he use it for the new baby?" Liara pauses then, twists her mouth to one side. "I told him it was something of a delicate matter, but I would ask for your input."
"I've been reborn," you tell her. "I need a cool new robot name to go with my cool new robot gender."
She chuckles like she was supposed to. "Are your new pronouns to be the plural they, instead of the singular?"
"Last time I checked, I contained about sixty separate programs running in my synthetics, so that's probably not so far from the truth. I'm changing my name to Legion." Soften the mouth, clench the heart; you're still not ready for the drop in your stomach when you remember the people who aren't around. It's synthetics doing that, now, but it feels the same. Grief didn't get left out of your programming. "You know, I never actually asked about geth gender."
"It was a war," Liara says, and pulls your leg forward -- stay focused, Shep. "You thought you'd have time later."
She doesn't know. None of them know -- the choice. Your secret, that died with a little bit more of your humanity and all the rest of the synthetics in the galaxy. You left your dogtags there to mark the spot, and maybe someday someone will find them, the little metal rectangles with the first part of a name scratched away. And they can wonder all they want, what that bit of metal said, but that name died with you on the Citadel and when they brought you back again, this time they had the decency to leave it alone.
Miranda offered, carefully, to have them reconstruct you in another shape. Remove the remnants of the body you never quite conformed to. Said you've always transcended what humanity thought possible, and she was prepared to help you do it again. You haven't given her an answer.
COMMANDER SHEPARD, UNDER THE ARMOUR announces the magazine in one of the racks in the waiting area. Liara has you hobbling beside her on legs that don't really want to hold you up. There's your picture, goofy grin and clear eyes, padded turian suit carefully airbrushed into a less ambiguous figure. You didn't realise the cosmetics they applied would be so bright.
"Is that the shape of the future?" you say, mostly to yourself, and the joke limps as bad as you have been.
"Don't read it." Liara squeezes your hand, and you shut your eyes. You might read it yet. You had a couple good lines about galactic inter-dependence, directions you might go. A few good dodges when they popped the gender questions. You'll take a copy with you, maybe, when they've finished constructing you and you can take your crew and your ship and just go away for a while. And then your crew can all have a good laugh at the gender this magazine has synthesised for you.
You grin at Liara, which still sort of hurts as it pulls on new scars. "I decided. I'm having them reconstruct me as a krogan. My gender is headbutting. Pronouns 'wham' and 'kapow.' Wrex can name the kid Jonna or something."
"I'll alert him at once," Liara replies.