#opus!art

A mad scientist, a marksman with the galaxy’s shortest fuse, the Butcher of Torfan, a space wizard, and a goat all walk into a bar.

In 2178, Sam Shepard boarded an Alliance frigate as XO, but it wasn't the Normandy.

Heroes are built, not born, and Cantata is the story of the crew that built Commander Shepard.

Top row: Captain Anya Oseguera and Service Chief Clay Beaudoin

Middle row: Lieutenant Commander Sam Shepard and First Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.

Bottom row: Private Muriel Aslany & Corporal Kara Pendergrass (and Stabby the Space Roomba)

Cover art by the utterly phenomenal @legionofpotatoes!

Mezzo

Pairing: mshenko | Rating: M Tags: Canon-typical violence, trauma, dealing with your problems poorly, body autonomy struggles   Summary: The twists and turns of ME2, through the eyes of everyone but Commander Shepard. Chapter Summary: Death was the only way

Chapter 1: Stars | Read on Ao3

At first, you think you can survive this. Your ship is in pieces, your momentum catapulting you away from the wreck, the planet you call Alchera watching serenely as your life burns. You tell yourself, you’ve faced worse. The first time you fought death was the first breath you took, into lungs that weren’t ready, in a body too small and fragile to survive on its own. You struggled for days in a vessel adrift between our stars, an insignificant speck of heat in our cold universe, determined to burn as bright as a sun. When your mother finally held you for the first time, she showed you to us and asked if we were what you were in such a hurry to see for yourself. You have always been ours. You were ours when your father sang you to sleep while we gleamed through the shutters. You were ours when you rose for the first time on unsteady legs because you wanted to see us. You were ours when you felt our power come to life under your skin and understood that we are part of you in ways you’d never imagined. How many times did you palm the glow of dark matter in your hand and imagine you were one of us? But no matter how bright you burn now, it won’t be enough to save you. There is fear, now, but you swallow it back.    The second time you fought death it wasn’t your life you were fighting for. You begged, pleaded, to march into the unknown and rescue a father who didn’t come home, and when no one listened, you turned to us in the dark and begged to take his place. That was when you learned we could be cruel.   We felt your pain, we heard your anger, we wi ditnessed your tears and did nothing. And you forgave us. We wonder if you will forgive us now.

I sketched Sam :)

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Joe, this is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my GOSH, I love this!!!!!!!!! This screams Cantata-era Sam to me, which is so hard to capture. I am going to stare at this FOREVER.

Kaidan exhales. “Three years ago. How did you know?”

“The porch swing,” his mother says with a thoughtful cant of her chin. “The morning you two sat outside to watch the sunrise. I was up early to take care of the horses and saw you out there. You were asleep on his shoulder.”

“I tried to stay awake,” he recalls. “He was dead set on seeing an Earth sunrise. He’d never...just watched one before.”

“Well, he did that morning. Only it wasn’t in the sky. You were the sunrise, Kaidan. He couldn’t take his eyes off you. That’s how I knew.”

I asked @okenkrow-art to bring to life one of my favorite moments from Opus, in which Sam Shepard sees his first sunrise. It just wasn’t in the sky. 

The gravity well roars, Shepard’s corona burning to life like a collapsing star. Too late, Kaidan understands the true danger in the room.

And it’s not the pirates.

x

I commissioned @bbegrill to draw the original Normandy crew at the Alenko orchard after the war. Thank you so much for this - it’s above and beyond what I imagined. 

Thanks to the incredible generosity, creativity, and talents of @mrsd-writes and @theoriginalladya...I have my own Kara Pendergrass cross-stitch wall.

I have no words for how incredible this is. It's right by my desk, where I can look at it constantly.

Y'all made this fictional thing of mine REAL.

That's fucking AMAZING.

For Christmas, Real Life Romance Option told me to commission @me1onmi1k to draw one of my favorite scenes from Cantata, in which Kaidan must rescue Sam from a bug at the Alenko orchard. It’s GORGEOUS, and I am delighted. 

~

Kaidan’s still chuckling when the water turns on in the bathroom. He pulls off his own shirt and digs though his bag for a clean one to sleep in when a throat clears in the doorway. He turns around to find Shepard standing there, naked save for a towel wrapped around his waist and a chagrined expression on his face.

Kaidan’s eyes flick to Shepard’s bare chest, something he’s seen hundreds of times before, but…not in the house he grew up in. Not kilometers away from the nearest Alliance facility. Not on shore leave.

“Hey,” Kaidan says, voice faltering just a little. “Um. Need something?”

Shepard blinks. “Uh.”

A flush builds at the back of Kaidan’s neck. Wait. Was he staring at me?

Shepard clears his throat. “I, uh, need your help, yeah.”

“In the shower?” Kaidan asks, then clamps his mouth shut.

“There’s a bug.”

“A…bug.”

Shepard gestures helplessly. The towel shifts alarmingly on his hips. “There’s a spider in the shower.”

“…Okay.”

“It’s looking at me.”

A slow smile spreads across his face. “Do you need me to remove the spider from the shower for you?”

“…Yes.”

“The N6 spec ops solider, XO of a frigate, and the most deadly person I have ever met—”

“Why thank you.”

“—needs me to take care of the spider.”

“Unless you want me to go find a pistol, yes. I am coming to you in my hour of need, Kaidan.”

Shepard readjusts his towel. Kaidan’s eyes wander again ever so briefly before he snaps them back up to Shepard’s face.

“You endured all that outside for me today. Least I can do is remove nature from your safe place.”