Disclaimer: Andromeda doesn't belong to me; it belongs to Tribune. This was written for entertainment onlyand no money has been exchanged (unfortunately).

Rating:15 (suggestion of violence but nothing too graphic, mild swearing, this prologue is about as bad as it gets)

Spoilers:None

Archive:Probably but please ask me first anyway.

Summary: I really suck at these. B/H friendship. Quite a lot of angst. Flashbacks and instances of violence but nothing too graphic.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil

Frederick Nietzsche

Prologue

This place can't be real. All of this, it has to be a nightmare. The screams I can hear they wouldn't be coming from her, it's not possible that anyone would lock another person up in this hell hole where that smell of rotting flesh and blood cling to every dark, stained stone.

Finally I see and end to this corridor but it is not a welcome one, the shiny steel door is the only clean thing I have seen so far but the marks on the walls and floor surrounding it do nothing to inspire confidence. This is where the screams are coming from. Carefully I creep forward trying not to think about what I am walking through.

The door isn't locked – but to my mind that just meant nobody inside would be in a fit state to escape, and nobody would be expected to voluntarily break in to this prison. I pushed the door open and went in firing immediately hitting the two of the thugs, just standing there, watching. As the others turned away from their subject to see what the commotion was I fired on them too.

Then I saw what their bodies had been shielding and fired again, and again. They were long dead but if I focussed on them I couldn't see what was on the small wooden pallet. Finally I stopped and slowly hesitantly walked over to the figure lying deathly still staring blankly up to the ceiling. Her slim frame now naked and marred by brutal scars.

As I reached out for her she flinched away and that single motion caused a flood of pain and anger to course through me. Hesitantly I reached out to her and this time she didn't move – didn't show any recognition that I was there at all. The only sign that she was breathing came from the shallow rise and fall of her chest.

Pulling off her jacket I wrapped her in it and to my surprise I could lift her easily, the fact she had lost so much weight in so short a time scared me all the more. I walked as fast as possible out of the stinking pit vaguely aware of alarms now ringing and people running at me. I shot them all, those bastards had done this to her and deserved to be punished. After a while no more came and the building rang with a cloaking silence.