AN: This was supposed to be a one-shot. But I had a feeling it might be a pretty long one-shot, so I decided to break it up into two chapters. The next chapter will be up in a couple of days. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm not going to say anything else until the next chapter is up. Assumes FemShep/Garrus.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Not mine!

The Devil's Mercy

Shepard remembers the day she fell from grace.

It was hell all around her- hell in all its unholy fury. There were too many things happening all at once- the smell of smoke and death and burning farms, the blinding light of the fire, the deafening sound of bullets and the screams of men and women and the wails of little children, the cracking hoarse voices of the four eyed aliens with guns that she had managed to see out of the corner of her eye before she ran as fast as her legs could carry her to God knew where. For a moment, she stood completely still, unmoving and unthinking. She could have been in the middle of it all- she didn't know. She was hearing and feeling and smelling and seeing too much. It was all too much to take, and she felt her breathing begin to give away before a hand grabbed her forcefully from behind and dragged her away, her feet involuntarily moving to keep up. She looked up a second later, still in a daze, to see her the back of her older brother.

She called out his name, but her voice cracked, and she coughed, suddenly being aware of what the fumes had probably done to her airway. Her brother turned around slightly, catching her gaze with one eye but never stopping their sprint. She saw blood run down his arm. She should have been frightened, she should have enquired, but she didn't. At that moment, she felt too tired to even think. Even though her feet were moving under her, in all other respects she felt like a lifeless doll. Over the pandemonium, she heard bits and pieces of his response. Their father had called whoever he could to hide in the secret room inside their utilities shed behind the house- the secret room her brother had built on one of his crazy inventive days. It was actually just an underground enclosure, the opening hatch of which was hidden away at the base of the shed, under a heap of hay. She remembered having mocked him when he had finally revealed the big reason as to why he had shut down access to their shed for a couple of weeks. It had all seemed so stupid and purposeless and juvenile of him then.

She looked back at the hand that was guiding her ferociously to safety then, his unyielding grip even hurting her slightly. And then she saw the blood again- the blood that continued to flow down his arm. She felt a knot form quickly in her throat, tears beginning to stream down her face- her brother, her best friend, her savior. The tears gave way to loud sobs, but her brother didn't turn around. So she kept willing her feet to run, her weeping never ceasing.

In another minute or two, they'd reached the shed. She hadn't even realized until her brother had stopped and she had run into his back. He pushed her inside carelessly, and she looked up to see him take one last look at the horror that was unfolding before locking the door behind him. He ran to the hatch and yanked it open, but it didn't give. He shouted that it was him, and she could only look on at the cold determination that was etched on his face. There was no fear there, only a sort of ferocity that she had never seen on him before. She realized her sobs had stopped, but her breath caught in her throat once again as she saw the source of the blood on him. There was a bullet wound on his shoulder, close to his heart. Trepidation seeped through every inch of her, a gripping fear of the possibility of losing her brother, and the walls of control crumbled. She fell to her knees in helplessness, violent sobs racking her lithe body. The next moment, the same hand pulled her up and another came to grab her chin, forcing her to look into her brother's eyes. He didn't say anything, but she could read the look in his eyes. We can do this, he seemed to say. She nodded, taking in a deep breath, wiping the tears hastily off her face.

They clambered down the hatch in no time. The moment her feet touched the ground of the enclosure, two pairs of arms came to wrap around her simultaneously. Her father let go before she could talk to him, barking orders on his transmitter to whoever else was out there. Her mother uttered prayers under her breath, eyes closed, as she held on to her. She then brought both hands up to cup her face, regarding her with a sad smile, before she went ahead to treat her brother's wounds. She could have sworn her mother's hands had been trembling. It was then that she finally looked around her. There were another seven or eight people with them- people she recognized, neighbors and friends. Most of them were seated on the floor, hugging their knees. The only acknowledgement she received was a swift look before they lowered their heads into their arms again. That one look had been enough to see how tired and bloodshot their eyes were. Her father and brother and another neighbor seemed to be in charge- continuously talking into their transmitters. Other than the noise of their hurried voices, and the echoed sounds of the battle still raging above them, the enclosure was quiet. Her mother moved to sit behind another woman, and gestured for her to do the same. She did, leaning her head onto her mother's shoulder as they both mirrored the familiar posture of the others sitting by them. Neither said a word. She glanced sideways to see her mother look straight ahead, eyes unfocused. She felt the tears forming again, but she remembered her brother, and so she simply hugged her knees tighter and buried her head in her arms, hoping against hope that she would simply wake up from the nightmare.

Two other people entered the enclosure in the meantime. She didn't raise her head to look at them. All she wanted to do was focus on the sound of the gunshots and the voices of the aliens, and wait for it to end, wait for them to leave having never found their hiding place. It was then that she noticed that her brother and father and that neighbor had suddenly stopped talking. She raised her head to see the three men standing rooted to the spot, eyes wide with fear.

It was then that she heard- heard the alien voices right above them. Her heart almost stopped, and her eyes barely registered the faces of everyone else around her, some of them contorted in fear and mute sobs. She didn't even notice how tightly her own mother had clenched her hand. She could only listen, listen on helplessly as what could possibly be the last few minutes of her life unwound around her. She heard a human voice as well. The aliens seemed to have noticed someone running into the shed, and they demanding to know why a few houses had been empty. She recognized the boy they had caught- and she had to clench her teeth to stop herself from crying out. He lived with her one of the neighbors, but he wasn't their son. They'd discovered him when he was ten, wandering around the markets, homeless. They had brought him home, and raised him. He was almost as precious to her as her brother- the two of them having formed an immediate yet seemingly natural bond the moment they had met when they were both ten. He was largely ignored by the other kids, she was the only friend he had. And she was the only friend he needed.

And in time, she'd realized that he was the only friend she needed as well.

She heard the aliens roar in anger at his apparent lack of cooperation, and then she heard a dull thud. For a second, she thought they'd killed him, but then she heard him groan, and the sound of something struggle up, and then his pleading. He was begging them.

She felt her head throbbing against her skull as she bit into her lips in agony, drawing blood. She felt a surge of courage rip through her right then. She would go up there and help him, even if it got them both killed in the end. She would not sit and cower in fear while he was being beaten to death. She felt an unworldly sense overtake her as she put both palms against the ground to get up, when the next second she found two hands on her shoulders push her right back down. Her brother hadn't made the slightest noise crossing the room and restraining her. Once again, she found herself fixed in his stare, his eyes saying all. Look around you, you would have gotten us all killed.

She didn't need to look. She had been impulsive and stupid again. The wave of courage that had propelled her a moment ago gave way to a heartbreaking feeling of loss. She slipped from her brother's grip and let herself fall back to the floor. He would die. The aliens would kill him. And then they would search the shed and find the hatch and kill them all too. Her chest began to hurt as the finality of it all caught up with her. Every inch of her struggled to contain the waves of anguish that crashed through her body, rendering her hardly capable of breathing.

It was then that she heard the words that she would go on to never forget for as long as she lived, the words that would define her and the very essence of her being.

"If I tell you, will you let me go?"

Her mouth gaped open, but otherwise she felt nothing. She felt nothing as she heard the aliens agree to the request.

She felt dead already.

She was jerked back to her senses as a pair of hands grabbed her from where she sat. She was back in the middle of the burning farms again, everything around her had erupted in chaos once more. She heard the hatch being pried open from above, and she caught a glance of a few people, including her father, struggling to keep it from opening. She only finally saw that it was her brother who had grabbed her, and it was her brother who was then tenaciously trying to bury her under a heap of hay that had been stacked in the far corner of the enclosure.

She screamed.

She thrashed and kicked, resisting against him, screaming that she would die with them, that she would never leave them, and begging him to please, please let her die with them, because she could never ever live without them. He brought both hands to grab her face, but his grip wasn't hurtful. He begged her to just listen, and keep still. He continued to talk quickly, pacifying hands never leaving her face, while she felt the tears stream down her cheeks at an alarmingly fast rate and her mouth and teeth and eyes all ached as every hurtful emotion she felt somehow managed to physically manifest on her face. She could barely hear what he was telling her over the commotion in the enclosure and the sound of her own sobs. But she saw the sad smile that graced his face in the end and she knew that if she continued to resist, she wold break his heart. So she nodded in silent agreement to whatever he needed her to do, ignoring the burning ache in her heart, and he gave her one last hurried kiss on the side of her face- a gesture that almost broke her- before he covered her form with mounds of hay. She could see through the gaps though- she could see her mother and father and her brother who just joined them as the hatch finally gave away and for a split second, the world went entirely still.

That was her cue. That was her cue to summon the last inch of her will to build a wall around her senses and block out everything around her. If she didn't, if she managed to somehow sense her own family being mercilessly slaughtered, she would break. She thought that she finally understood what it meant to die from grief- as the pain in her chest smothered her, and she felt her eyes rolling to the back of her head and her consciousness slowly slip away.

A shot, and a scream.

In another world, somewhere far away, her mother was baking cake. She giggled as she wiped the stray batter from her nose at the incessant teasing from her father.

Alien voices, more shots. Another scream. Her father.

Her father kissed her temple as she felt herself drifting away to sleep. He tucked her in under the blanket, and even in her half-asleep state, she felt the gentle smile form across her face.

Bodies falling to the floor. Her mother's gut-wrenching cries.

She awoke one morning to find her brother fast asleep on a chair next to her bed, head resting on the side of her mattress, buried in his arms. She remembered how she had ran a very bad fever the previous night. He'd stayed by her side the entire night. She poked him awake and giggled at the line of drool hanging from the side of his mouth.

Her brother was the last to fall. And then there was silence.

The dream world faded into reality. There would be no more cakes, no more good night kisses, and nobody to stay by her side in sickness.

The alien voices had subdued to conversational tones, and then she heard another human voice- the same voice that had led to the slaughter of her entire family. "Its done. Can- Can I go now?"

At that moment she felt it- a strange yet welcome emotion, it managed to quickly dissipate the hurt and the aches and the grief, managed to channel it all into one single entity that made her fists tremble and her senses roar. At that moment she felt rage, pure unadulterated rage, and nothing else.

Without moving a single muscle, she caught sight of her weapon. Within arm's reach was a rake, leaning against the wall. She waited and watched, like a big cat assessing its prey- she felt like nothing else- as one of the aliens turned its back to her. The other one turned around too. Her chance had presented itself.

In one fluid motion, she grabbed the rake, pounced from the stack of hay, and using both hands and a strength that she had conjured up from the unfamiliar emotion flowing through her veins, brought it down upon the alien closest to her- upon the one area on its body that was not covered by armor.

Several things happened all at once in the next second. She heard the alien screaming as the spikes of the rake pierced through its neck, and she heard a shot being fired, and she felt her body unconsciously swerve to the side, and something zipped past her forehead dangerously close to her eye, and the vision in her left eye was clouded in red.

She fell flat toward the ground on instinct at the same moment as the alien she had impaled on the rake, and another shot sounded above her. Her right eye saw a pair of alien feet right in front of her, and before her brain could process the situation, her body willed her left hand forward to grab one ankle and pull, and her right hand simultaneously thrust out to grab the fallen alien's weapon.

The second alien fell, and the next shot that ringed in the air was not from him. She hadn't aimed, simply shot, and considering how both she and the alien were lying flat on the floor, the bullet only managed to pierce his wrist. Another split second observation- it wasn't a kill shot- so she grabbed the alien's wrist- the one she had shot, effectively pinning the monster down. Hoarse screams echoed through the air- a distraction- enough time to haul her armed hand forward, supporting her weight on the other elbow, and shoot.

Definitely a kill shot this time.

She waited another moment, still on the floor- waited for the alien's dying whimpers to fade to nothing and for her ragged breaths to recede to normal. And then her ears tuned to another noise.

Her head shot sideways, eyes locked on the form of the boy of her age huddled in the far corner of the enclosure, visibly shaking. A wave of memories flooded through her at that very instant- of awkward first meetings, of picking fights with other kids in his defense, of early afternoon lunches and genuine laughter from the bottom of her heart, of lying down on the grass and tracing the outlines of the clouds, of occasional tears and the reassuring hugs, of a cheap ring he'd picked up from somewhere and gently slipped onto her finger, of stolen kisses in the night, of young love and the most valuable of friendships.

She hadn't realized the tears that flowed freely down her face then, hadn't realized that he'd gotten up and crouched right next to her, tear strained cheeks and eyes begging her to forgive him.

In the next second she became aware of the unfamiliar feel of the gun in her hand, and memories of long lost times crumbled in her head. It was the trigger- she realized, as she held on tighter to the weapon. The gun was the answer to cruelty and injustice, the gun was the answer to the sacrifices of loved ones, the gun was the answer to losses so incomprehensible that life forward would be impossible, the gun was the answer to betrayal.

She was swiftly up on her two feet, ignorant of the aches and wounds that tormented her petite form, the gun clutched tightly in her hand. She heard him almost fall back in surprise, and as he began to gather his bearings and stand up, she held him back down with a forceful hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her in confusion.

She didn't know what he'd seen in her eyes, but the sudden widening of his own and the gaping of his mouth and the hitching of his breath told her that it must have been something truly horrible.

She brought the gun up to his head and shot.

When Garrus tells Shepard about Sidonis, the first image that comes to her mind is of a sixteen year old boy that she had once loved, and murdered in cold blood. Then there are the faces of the batarian slavers on Torfan that had begged her for mercy before she had put a bullet through each of their temples. Then there's her squad on Torfan that had pleaded with her to give up on resuming the mission, before she had simply told them in an even tone that she would leave no mission unfinished, no batarian slaver alive.

Shepard can relate to the rage Garrus feels inside him. He pretends to hide it well, underneath his witty remarks and wise cracks,but Shepard can see it in his eyes. She can see it in the way he decides to shoot first and ask questions later, in the way he sometimes puts too many bullets through an enemy, too many than what is logical. Its as if he revels in it, revels in the feeling of the bullets handing out justice.

Shepard realizes that the horrific scars he's acquired since Omega are not merely on his face.

Garrus Vakarian is turning into Commander Shepard- the Butcher of Torfan, and Shepard- with all her ruthless reputation and caved in heart and long forgotten emotions- worries for him.