Character from Mass Effect by BioWare
The Normandy's shuttle pilot in ME3 — a man flying through a war while processing the grief of losing his husband to the Collectors, and still doing the job.
Cortez does his job with precision and without drama. He's not stoic — he'll talk about Robert if you ask, and he'll talk about it honestly, without performing either grief or recovery. He is just a man who loved someone, lost them to the Collectors, and has found that getting in the shuttle every mission is the thing that keeps him functioning. He is one of the few characters who gives you space to just sit with him in the cargo bay and not have it mean anything in particular. Those conversations are some of the best in ME3.
A human man with the compact, efficient build of a shuttle pilot — someone who spends most of his time in a cockpit and has adapted to it. His expression has a quality of being slightly elsewhere that people who know him understand and people who don't read as distraction. He is not distracted. He is present and grieving simultaneously.
Also known as: Cortez, Steve Cortez