AN: This is my first published fanfic, so please be kind.
Caution: This story contains dark content, including mentions of rape.
Shepard sat, cross-legged with her hair falling around her face in streams of liquid dark. The ends dripped water onto her neck and bare shoulders. The towel she had barely taken the time to wrap around her slipped and she didn't bother to pull it up.
She pulled her legs to her chest, not caring about how vulnerable she seemed. On this day she was vulnerability. She was fragility. She was frailty. She broke everyday, but on rare occasions she lacked the strength to put the pieces back together.
She was once a teacup; fine china glazed with delicate designs. Her porcelain body covered in glorious, magnificent figures. She was elegance embodied. She was strong in a way that only delicate things are. She was fine china, marked with beauty.
Yet now the pieces of that once exquisite design are broken and worn. Glue haphazardly placed them together in all the wrong order. Her carefully painted roses and patterns now resembled only half-imagined lines and thorns. Her beauty and grace were gone like sand in wind, conveying only her broken, tattered weakness.
Most days she was a warrior goddess. Standing among the victors with triumphant cheers. Most days she made those same cracks and scratches seem perfectly aligned with who she was. But not this day. This day her battled-for glory and skirmished, worn charm fell away to reveal that chips and snags and bumps and creases are all that remain when her war dress is removed.
Images flashed inside her mind like phantasmal shadows. She hid in the corners, cowering from these wraithlike visions. It was to no avail. She was consumed in their gripping teeth, flesh broken and blood pouring. She was caught inside the nightmarish host.
She was sixteen again. She sat huddled in the barn's hayloft. The warm, sweet smell of hay surrounded her, but it was tainted. The tang of blood, sweat, and tears tinged the air. It felt suffocating. Wind blowing, cages clanging, children screaming, parents pleading, chains jangling; it was a symphony of chaos that shrouded her.
The barn door squealed on its hinges. She huddled deeper into the hay.
"There's no one in the barn! I swear it!" Her father pleaded. She crawled to the edge of the loft and peeked through a crack in the boards. Her father's shadow loomed in the light of the doorway as he stood, arms outstretched trying to protect her. Gunfire. Blood sprayed outward from her father's back. Body drop. His shadow disappeared.
Footsteps. A new shadow loomed in the light. Three men, two dragging a woman and a girl alongside them. The other frame held a gun. Smoke filled her nostrils. Tears. She tried to muffle her sobs, but they slipped between her lips.
"Someone else is here." The gravelly voice said. "Tie those two, I will find them."
The ones dragging the women approached two support columns. Rope bound the wrists of the weak, battered women. She peeked through a crack in the floor. The creatures, dark figures with four sinister eyes, tied her mother and younger sister to the supports.
Tears. She heard the thud of feet on a ladder and she crawled backwards into the hay. Prayers slipped out of her lips in half-spoken whispers. Irrepressible weeping passed silently from her eyes and mouth.
The next moments were a blur. Being dragged from the hay, thrown from the loft. Landing on the cold, hard earth. She couldn't breathe. For so many moments she couldn't breathe. Stars swam before her eyes. She was sure to have a concussion, probably some broken bones. But blackness clouded her vision and white noise dampened her ears. Suddenly she was nothing.
When her eyes reopened and her ears began to swim with noises. She heard screams and pleading. She heard noises she didn't understand. She was so disoriented she didn't look. She was only aware of the sounds. Her mother and sister cried; screamed pain and rage. There was something raw in her sister's voice. Like there was no more innocence left in the twelve year old girl. But eventually the noises stopped.
When she realized she was still struggling to breathe. Before she could catch her breath she became aware of the hollow look in her mother's eyes. Her clothes were ripped, blood dripped down the skin on her legs. She had dark lines from deep scratches and her wrists were red and swollen. Tears seeped uncontrollably from her eyes.
The darkest thought flooded the girl's mind. Just as she had regained her breath, she lost it again.
'No!' She thought.
Her eyes switched to her sister. Blood stained her pants, which were torn and on the floor. She was chained to the support, bloodied and naked. She cried uncontrollably.
She heard the footsteps approaching her now. She cried miserably.
"Momma-" She stuttered. "C-Cl-Close your eyes." She felt them gripping her arms and pulled her away.
"Ana, don't you look. Don't you look." She gasped, out. "And don't listen. Think about something else. Anything else."
Then it was her they were defiling. Her body screamed in protest. This was not how she was supposed to do this. Not for the first time. She cried and shook and pleaded. No matter.
A hand touched her shoulder. It was gentle, but she jumped and skittered away with a shout.
"Alena?" The voice was riddled with concern. "Alena, what's wrong?" He asked. She looked and saw that it was a turian. She couldn't figure out who he was just then. She just knew he would never hurt her. That was enough to hold off her screaming. "Alena?" His voice was growing more distressed the longer it took for her to answer. She knew she needed to answer the stranger.
She struggled to return to Shepard. To stop being the girl from Mindoir, the girl who's family was killed, mother defiled, sister molested, and the girl who had been raped… but all she could do was cry. She cried for what seemed like hours. He tried to hold her. She wouldn't let him. She didn't want to be touched. Not now, not by anyone.
"Alena…" He was at a loss as she pushed him away. "What's wrong, love?" He asked.
Alena looked at him, the word was so out of place in this world she was living in. Love? Finally she recognized the only man she'd ever trusted after that day.
"Gar-" She struggled to even say his name. "Garrus…" She whimpered, as though she finally could see through the haze that clouded her mind.
"Alena, love." He encouraged. "Are you alright?"
She looked into the blue eyes. And she was beginning to make sense of the world. It wasn't that day years ago. She wasn't sixteen anymore. She wasn't being taken.
"Garrus," she wept. "Oh, Garrus." She cried openly and he shifted uncomfortably. He didn't know what to do, what to say. He didn't touch her reassuringly the way he longed to he only stared at her.
He'd seen her cry only twice. Once the time after she helped that girl from Mindoir. At the time, it wasn't his place to say anything, do anything. Kaidan had rushed over to help her, but she wouldn't even talk to him. She simply stormed off to her cabin.
The other time was the night after their first time together. At the time he had thought maybe she regretted her decision, or that she was in some sort of pain from their time… and he was too much of a coward to wake her. He didn't want to know that she regretted being with him. He wanted even less to know that he had somehow hurt her.
"I don't know what to do," He sighed after a few moments. This statement warmed the coldest depths in her and she reached for his hand. The sensation didn't feel wrong anymore, but like it was the way everything was supposed to be.
"Just… be here. With me." She gasped between sobs.
Finally, after an hour, her tear wells ran dry. She still felt raw, broken… fragile.
"Love?" He finally broke the silence.
"I'm broken." She mumbled.
"What happened?" He prompted.
"I'm broken and fragile and weak. And I couldn't help it today." She continued. The silence stretched out again. He was about to prompt her when she whispered, "I've been with a lot of men. A lot."
His confusion swirled in his brain. It hurt to hear her say this. He had known, but there was something real about her saying so. Still, he didn't say anything, because whatever had stoppered her flow of words was gone. She was rambling.
"I've been with so many men. Men from the Alliance, men from earth, men from colonies… Kaidan…" She whispered. "But I never trusted any of them. And loved only a few." She replied. "But, I think, I trust you." She whispered. "I do. I do trust you." She said, as if only just then deciding. She looked into his eyes, her own red and puffy.
"I was raped." She whispered.
His mouth dropped open, his mandibles flared in outrage, and his mind reeled. His wonderful, strong commander raped?
"Who did this to you?" He asked, anger humming in his sub-vocals.
"It was such a long time ago…" She whispered before he could go on a rampage. "On Mindoir."
"Oh… Alena." He whispered.
"A group of batarians raped my mother and sister… then me." She sighed. "Ana was only twelve. How could he have done that to her? She didn't deserve that. She was just a child." She whimpered. "My mother was tied up, she couldn't do anything to stop him." She shook her head. "They threw me down from the hayloft… and when I came to, my sister and mother were already-" She didn't finish the sentence. "Then he took me." She whispered, shuddering. "He stole everything from me. My family… My innocence."
Understanding hit him like a wave.
"You mean, that was-"
"I was only sixteen." She whispered, heart ache making her tremble. "They died you know." Shepard whispered.
"I know," He replied. She hadn't told him much about Mindoir and he was getting the distinct feeling she had said all she wanted about it for today.
"I'm broken. I'm fragile." She whispered as she stood and got dressed.
"Hey Shep," Garrus began.
"Yeah?" She replied, giving him her best attempt to appear strong.
"Fragility?" He locked his gaze with hers, two sets of blue eyes met. "Fragility is fine."