a/n: M for implications of rape and violence.
The air stank. His hard suit had filters, it was sealed against environmental contaminates. He knew this, he knew he shouldn't have been able to smell it but he did and the air of this planet choked him. He wanted to throw up as his boots crunched on the limp corpse of the slaver he'd put a dozen fist-sized holes in. Instead he swallowed the bile, kept his rifle steady.
The Marines spread out behind him were quiet for once. The first colonist the bastards had shot for them to see had strangled their smack talk and laughter. The pirates were beneath their feet or twisted up with the shards of their ships in orbit but they'd been too late for far too many. If he closed his eyes he could see them dying.
This colony was still young, austere prefabs only beginning to peel away into houses of red brick permanency. Now the buildings burned, soot painting the clear blue sky gray and black, their residents wet with their own blood. They'd been piled like trash or left where they'd fallen, discarded dolls and he couldn't look at them.
"Sir?" His PSG asked, her voice low, like they might disturb the dead, "You alright?"
He wanted to laugh then, felt it bubbling up in his throat, because how could any of them be alright when people were willing to do these sorts of things to each other? But he choked it down and his voice was surprisingly calm, "I'm fine, Service Chief. Platoon! Spread out and search for survivors!" Just rely on his training. Think like an officer not a man.
The presence of the Chief at his shoulder faded as she turned to bark orders at the platoon, the air splitting with her voice. He ended up with one of the privates watching his back-a kid not too much younger than he was, if he thought about it. They didn't talk as they entered one of the buildings that had a hole in the facade but no sullen burning. His footsteps were heavy and loud and they clicked against the floorboards.
A holo of a dark-haired family smiling spluttered out when it crunched underfoot. He kept walking; they spoke in short, sharp professional sentences. Clear. Move up. The ones they hammered into you until you started checking corners even when you were just walking to the convenience store.
He wasn't expecting the shot. It caught him in the chest, cracking the fetid air in half and his shields flared bright and bluer than his armour, his suit's computer squealing his shields were down to 87%. His rifle snapped up, his finger tensing on the trigger. Preparing to release a grouping of three mass accelerator rounds into the centre mass of his enemy.
Blue eyes like ice, tangled dark hair, thin wrists too fragile for that gun. The muzzle of his standard-issue rifle dropped. The steps of his Marine about to burst in. Quick, frantic.
"Wait outside," He ordered, not looking away from the girl with her trembling hands holding the batarian handgun pointed at his chest. That was a terrible firing position, he noted distantly.
The Marine hesitated, then, "Yessir."
Her knees were curled to her chest, her eyes wide and vacant as those of the batarian slumped too close to her, his pants down and a hole in his head. Fury was bright in him, closing a fist around his chest-he could barely breathe.
He wanted to empty a clip into him just for the hell of it. He wanted to go back and be there when he'd burst in so his bullets would find living flesh and this girl wouldn't be curled around herself.
His movements were slow as he put his rifle away, that pistol still pointed at him. Then he lifted his hands carefully, his eyes on her and took off his helmet. He nearly gagged as the unfiltered air dwept into his nostrils and mouth, tasting of animal fear and drying blood.
"You're not one of them," She said, her voice cracked.
"No," He agreed quietly, setting his helmet down, "I'm with the Alliance Marines." Her eyes remained blank. "My name is Lieutenant Zabaleta." He took a step forward, a steady, cautious movement.
"My mum was in the Alliance," She told him, the words as hard and empty as marbles. There was blood on her hands, on her torn clothes. It wasn't hers.
"What's your name?" he asked, kneeling beside her, aware of how fragile she was when contrasted with the hard lines of his armour.
We were supposed to protect her.
She whispered it, "Cameron. Shepard." She said the words like her name had cracked in half. Her eyes never left the dead man, "He's still in me."
He didn't know what to say to that. So instead he croaked, "Alright Cameron, I'm going to get you out of here, okay? You're safe now." She trembled when he gently prised the gun she'd killed a man with from her hand, trembled when he found a blanket that didn't smell too badly of desperation and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Don't look," he told her as he carried her out, her limp head against his shoulder-plate. A pitiful mercy, but all he could give her. She closed her eyes and shook so hard he was afraid she might break in half.
His platoon is silent. No one cracked jokes about his sensitivity. The girl clung to him like he was the only real thing.
We were too late, he thought, despair thick on his tongue, we killed them but we were too late.
He told her, "Everything is okay." But he lied.
(He will meet her again, when she is tall and dressed in Alliance blue like he used to be. They will call her a hero and they will never look into her eyes and see the shards of that girl in her eyes.
He will see but she will look away.)