Haha, S+S is shorthand for my Shepard/Thane/Garrus poly* fic, A Song of Sea and Stars. The idea of it goes, Iolana Shepard is a half and half haole and Hawaiian**. Her mother, Hannah Shepard, is an Alliance Captain; her father, Kahele, runs his family’s inn on Oahu. The inn is named The Hokule'a, in reference to the famous canoe that sailed to Tahiti and back using the ancient wayfinding techniques of sailing. Kahele’s ancestors, and by extent, Shepard’s, had a history of wayfaring and navigating.
Shepard grew up spending half the year on Alliance ships and around the navy, and half the year on Oahu, learning about her heritage and family stories. Her name comes from the family guardian or ʻaumakua, a hawk that lives only in Hawai’i and was once a symbol of royalty, called Io. What makes this background fun (and yes, was written before Moana came out) is Shepard originally wanted to go into space navigation and exploration, but after enlisting in the navy for school, the Batarian riots on Elysium cemented her as a Good Leader.
The first two rewritten chapters of S+S are already up on Ao3, along with a few snippets. The next is post-destroy ending, and the rebuilding of Earth from Hannah Shepard’s POV:
The two guards at the door give her crisp salutes as she enters; by the time she reaches the fourth floor—Why hadn’t the damn Geth repaired the damn elevators by now?—she’s exhausted, panting, and infuriatingly sick of being saluted and ‘Ma’am’d at. The ache in her chest offsets the reminder that she’d come within a hair’s reach of shattering both patellae when her ship landed abruptly—she refused to use the word ‘crashed;’ crashes were for untalented pilots and stock markets— on the outskirts of London after the Crucible fired.
As she steps toward the flickering terminal, bitterness rises in the back of her throat. She and Steven are friends—have been for years—but hoping for anything other than bad news may be foolish.
Bad news is our business these days. I finally understand Kahele’s reasons for staying on the islands.
Some days, I wish I'd stayed when he'd asked me to.
* - If you like the idea of poly bioware fic, there are others I’m working on too. *slaps BioWare’s hood* this baby can fit so much poly
** - my girlfriend is Hawaiian, and has been helping me with culture, language, and other things so I don’t become That White Person