01

This woman was a hardened warrior. A big goddamn hero. He'd once seen her charge at a Krogan Warlord, fueled with enough rage and biotics to knock it on its back. She then proceeded to pry open its jaw with her boot and blast a shotgun shell into its open mouth.
Needless to say, he was impressed.
Shepard was a real blonde, blue-eyed bitch. The kind you don't want to fuck with.
Obtaining the Reaper IFF was going to be a regular grab-and-go.

But then came the Husks and Abominations, the only thing that woman really hated to fight. He knew they scared her, though you'd never hear it from her mouth. It took a hunter's perspective to even sense her fear. The way she tensed up when they first heard those unnatural sounds echoing underneath the catwalk. Her brief inhale and the immediate tightening of her grip on her pistol.
But they were easy enough to kill. They were soft and squishy things, as Grunt would say. You could shoot 'em in the legs and they'd go down. Or toss them up in the air with biotics and they'd splatter on impact.
Obviously that couldn't be what scared her. She was as deadly as a thresher maw. He was pretty sure she could spit acid too with how much sting was behind her voice.
But no, she was still human.
It was probably the memories. Knowing what they once were: people.
Once living, breathing human beings now cursed to a fate worse than death. A swarming hive that just ran at you, no thought for self-preservation. Glowing eyed and slack-jawed. "Creepy," as the Turian put it.
And boy, there were a fuck of a lot of them on that derelict Reaper.

She took it like a soldier though.
That initial tenseness led to a flare up of her biotics and she pushed the first wave of them off the ledges and against the walls. They painted their path in cybernetic slime or whatever leaked through those creature's veins now.
Every time they came crawling onto the catwalks, she'd let loose a shockwave and bark orders at him and the Turian,
"Scions! Get to cover!"
"Grenade, Massani!"
"Shoot the crates, Garrus!"

The Turian would end up real sore about that last one; those crates were explosive. She was too close to them for comfort but the husks were swarming. She had nowhere to run. She was out of heat sinks and didn't have enough time to build up her biotics to knock them all away on her own.
When the crate exploded, it did its job. It also sent a bit of shrapnel flying at the Commander's face.

The area was clear after a couple more well-placed shots. He and Zakarian cringed when she turned to them to ask for another sink before the next wave showed.
A couple of deep gashes under her cheekbone, burn marks from the heat.
She turned her head in time not to get any serious damage; some medigel would help it heal up fine.
Still, it was a shame she had to mar her pretty face like that. Especially after all that trouble she went through to hide those cybernetic implants and scars.

What was he saying?
The rest of the mission went on without much of a hitch. They tore through the Reaper carcass, found what they were looking for, and ended it all with a nice explosion and a little credit bounty for the Geth they recovered.
Another satisfying mission complete.
But no one was prepared for how real it was going to get.
Shepard was supposed to be a hardened warrior. A hero.
But everyone has to break at some point.