"Hey, Wrex."

"Shepard."

Commander Shepard, CO of the starship SSV Normandy, stared into the unblinking eyes of her reptilian squadmate as he lounged against a bulkhead in the cargo hold. She started to say something to the alien, and then stopped, as a very odd thought occurred to her. "Wrex? How come you never use my first name?"

Wrex blinked. Like all Krogan, he didn't need to, but after spending several months around the Normandy's mostly human crew he had picked up the movement as a good way to express surprise. "Shepard isn't your first name?"

"Uh, what?" Shepard hadn't been sure what his answer would be, but she sure hadn't expected that! "Of course not! Shepard is my last name."

"Oh," Wrex rubbed his chin, "Well, you know that when a Krogan introduces himself, they say their clan name first, right? So if I was feeling respectful, I'd tell ya my full name, Urdnot Wrex. As in, Wrex of clan Urdnot. I assumed that everybody else did it the same way, and no one ever corrected me… Huh. I've lived over eight hundred years, and I still learn something new every day. Galaxy's an amazing place sometimes."

"Hey, Tali!"

"What's up, Commander? More questions about the flotilla?"

Commander Shepard looked Tali in where her eyes most likely were; Quarians like Tali need to constantly wear an environment suit to prevent opportunistic infections from environments their immune systems cannot handle. Most of them choose face masks that are mostly opaque from the outside, to the mild annoyance of the rest of the galaxy. What most people didn't know was that the masks doubled as flash goggles. Quarians often have at least a passing interest in engineering, and Tali was particularly talented. Changing helmets in a clean room whenever she wanted to weld something would be inconvenient, to say the least. "No, nothing that serious," the commander assured Tali, "I was just wondering if you knew why nobody ever uses my first name."

"Humans can have more than one name?!" Tali pressed both palms to the speaker covering her mouth, practically vibrating in excitement. "That is so cool! What's yours?"

"Forget it. I'll ask someone else."

"Liara, can I have a word?"

The blue-skinned alien archeologist looked up from her e-reader, probably having been engrossed in some academic text that the human commander would have found incomprehensible even if it was displayed in English. "Of course, commander. I always have time for you."

"Great. Anyway, I just have one quick question. A simple one, really, much more than usual," Shepard explained hopefully, "Do you know why no one ever calls me by my first name?"

"Well, I cannot speak for anyone else, but I do not know it," Liara answered with trepidation, "I- I do not feel our relationship is at that level yet. It seems f-forward to ask."

"Seriously?" Shepard rolled her eyes, "This is starting to get ridiculous."

"Hey, Joker, how's life in the cockpit?"

The human pilot looked up at his commander, taking in the too-stiff stance, the slightly forced smile with a single perceptive glance. "Is something bothering you commander?"

"Yes, actually," her smile took on a genuine tone, "I've noticed lately that nobody ever uses my first name. You have any idea why?"

"Well," Joker ran a hand through his scraggly goatee, "I always assumed you were minted that way. Yanno, mighty Commander Shepard, Citadel Council Spectre, representative of our united government, celebrity-hero of the universe! Yanno what I mean?"

"What? Minted?" Shepard felt like she was missing something. "I wasn't minted. I was born. With a first name. Just like you. Just like everyone else on this ship. Everyone else gets called by their first name or a nickname, like you; I don't. You may have noticed."

"Oh, uh, this is kind of embarrassing," Joker was well-known on the ship for sarcasm and over-the-top jokes, as well as for being possibly the best pilot humanity had ever produced. It was where he'd gotten his nickname, after all. So, if he was embarrassed, whatever he was about to say was bound to be pretty shocking, to say the least. "Well, I kind of, may have, sort of thought you were a robot. Or maybe a remote-control clone. That the Systems' Alliance created you to be the perfect representative of humanity to the Citadel. The perfect human to be the first human Spectre agent. I mean, you're like, friendly to everybody! Including obnoxious reporters! Nobody's that perfect! No offense, Shepard, but you don't seem quite… real. Not to us plain folks."

Shepard heaved a sigh, "I can't even tell if you're joking or not. That's probably a bad sign."

"Hey, Garrus! I've got a couple of questions for you, if you aren't too busy."

"Oh, not at all commander. Ask away," Garrus Vakarian, former police sniper, current master of the motor pool and occasional away-team member aboard the Normandy, wiped his hands on a rag and turned expectantly to face his commanding officer, what was probably a smile on his face. Turian facial structure is decidedly odd, from a human perspective, including mandibles, armored, metallic plates covered by a thin layer of pebbly, scaled skin, and dozens of needlelike teeth. Reportedly, Turians had just as much trouble reading humans as humans did with them.

"Do you have any idea why nobody ever uses my first name? I've asked around, but no one's had any idea," Shepard masterfully concealed her frustration, not that the Turian would have picked up on it.

"Well, I don't know your first name," Garrus admitted, "In fact, I don't think anyone on the ship does. When I first came on board, I figured I'd listen around, and when someone else used it I could pick it up. It's actually considered rather rude back home to ask for someone's name. They're supposed to share it, or let you overhear it. So I've been listening, but no one's ever used it. No one on board, anyway, as far as I know. Well, you could ask Kaiden. He's known you the longest." Garrus finished lamely.

"You know what? I think I will."

"Hey, Kaiden! I have a question for you that you are uniquely suited to answer!" Shepard's expression could best be described as frazzled and predatory. "No one else on the entire ship is as qualified as you, lieutenant."

"Uh, sure," Kaiden responded nervously, "Although I'm not sure what it could be. Between Liara's degrees, Tali's talents, Wrex's experience, and Garrus's friends, they've pretty much got the entire galaxy covered."

"Not everything," Shepard assured him, as Kaiden started looking for a way out. He didn't find one in time. "Why does nobody, nobody ever use my first name?"

"What is your first name?" Kaiden asked in perplexity, "I don't think I've ever heard anyone use it."

"That's the point!" Shepard screamed, near tears, "Nobody ever uses it. I- Oh, shit."

"What?" Kaiden immediately transitioned from slightly amused and trying to cover it to concerned friend. "What's wrong, commander?"

"It- It's been so long since anyone used my name," she wailed, "I can't remember it! Oh God!" She buried her face in her hands, tears openly flowing now.

"Uh, there, there?" Kaiden rubbed her back in soothing circles, "I'm sure we can sort this all out. We'll check your service records, and it'll be there, and it'll all be better, OK?"

"Commander Shepard? Hackett here, and since you're using my private number this had better be- You lot are not Shepard. How'd you get this number?"

"Sorry to intrude, Admiral Hackett, but we're out of options. We've got no one else to turn to," Squeezed into the holographic communicator's pickup range, Garrus, Kaiden, and Liara all did their best to make apologetic gestures/expressions without bumping anyone out of the call. "We need your help. Shepard needs your help. She's having, well, I guess you could call it a bit of an identity crisis. It's bad. Really bad. She's turned to Ben and Jerry's for comfort instead of Jack Daniel's. The only other time she did that was after our squadmate Ashley was killed in action on Virmire," Kaiden explained, "We were hoping you could clear up some facts about her past for us, so we can help her. You know, give us a look at her official service records? Please? We don't seem to have a copy on board."

"Well, since my trace shows that you three are actually calling from the Normandy, I'd be glad to help you," Hackett said, "But, I don't exactly pay personal attention to every soldier under my command, no matter how important. And, the official reports always say 'Commander Shepard'. I'd send you the records, but the Citadel had us turn everything over to them and delete all the copies. They do this for all their Spectre agents, of all races. You'd have to ask them, and I know for a fact that the records are sealed. Until she retires, you'd just be beating yourselves bloody against the bureaucracy. And we all know Shepard can't quit until she finishes her mission. The traitor Saren must be caught. Too much is at stake here."

Several Hectic Weeks Later

Saren Arterius, rogue spectre agent, herald of the homicidal, mechanical Reapers, would-be harbinger of the apocalypse, turned about from a console in the Citadel, which he was invading, at the sound of a rather impressive explosion. Stepping over the body of a civilian, the traitorous Turian beheld Commander Shepard, his self-proclaimed nemesis, and her mismatched squad of allies advancing on him, weapons drawn. "I suppose it was too much to expect that a small army of attack robots, a rapidly closing warp portal, thousands of light-years of hard vacuum, dispatching an entire frigate to sit on your position, and several tons of high explosives would keep you from confronting me here?" It was an obviously rhetorical question, as was the one that followed, "I don't suppose you've come to pledge your loyalty to me and my cause? Confrontation can get ever so… messy."

"Not unless," Shepard's left eyelid ticced rapidly, causing the other members of her squad to dive for cover. They knew what was coming next. "You can answer one simple question."

"Of course I can," Saren was quite confident he could find the answer for any question this pitiful human could ask. He had recently implanted himself with Reaper technology, linking his mind to both the extensive memories of the Reapers and the galactic Extranet. His literally computerized mind could access any data that had ever been written down in seconds, "Ask away, that we may embrace the fate of the galaxy together."

"What," Shepard asked in a dead voice, "Is my first name?" Saren drew a total blank. The sum total of the collected information of a galaxy of intelligent beings at his fingertips, and he couldn't find the answer. To Shepard, now practiced in reading Turian facial expressions after spending a lot of time with Garrus, it showed. Oh yes, it showed.

Thirty Seconds of Incredibly Graphic Violence Later

Commander Shepard ripped the twitching head from Saren's body, fluids seeping from the spine where several bullets had penetrated while he was alive, and the commander's fist had penetrated after the Reapers had attempted to use Saren's dead body as a puppet. Screaming incoherently, she slammed the head into the floor and began jumping up and down on it, emitting a choking sob with each impact. Garrus turned to Wrex, looking over the heads his wide-eyed, less experienced squad-mates. "All things considered," the Turian observed, "I think that went rather well.