Memories of Mindoir

By Kodiak Sage

Written to fill a prompt on the Mass Effect LJ Kinkmeme (part XVII, p. 1). Warnings: Violence and (non-explicit) rape.

The sweet smell of spring blooming in the newly plowed fields, the trilling chirps of the native wildlife in the woods beyond the settlement, and then the deep, strange rumbling of ships low in the gray-blue sky.

Rose Shepard dropped her boyfriend's hand and shaded her eyes as she looked up, trying to identify the make and model of the ships flying too low and too close to the settlement for comfort. "Supply ships?" Colin suggested. For a split second, Rose believed him, but then a horrible premonition settled over her. "Pirates," she murmured.

Shepard awoke in a cold sweat, with tears in her eyes. It was starting. The anniversary of the attack on Mindoir was approaching, and like clockwork, the dreams were back, just as they were every year. Not a single detail faded in her mind. Every scream, every drop of blood, every painful thrust of the Batarian's stinking member as he violated her, it was all as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. Most of the time Shepard didn't even think about her past, but the dreams…they brought it all back.

She got out of bed and poured herself a cup of coffee. She couldn't go back to sleep, not when she knew what was waiting for her the next time she closed her eyes. She called Garrus on the com and invited him up. Maybe sex could take her mind off of this bullshit. He came up and they fucked, but it didn't really help.

The acrid fumes of burning chemicals, the screams and sobs of women and children, and then the angry shouts of colonists with guns all drifted through the open bathroom window of Colin's family's prefab farmhouse. A shot fired in the other room and Rose knew that it was Colin with his dad's shotgun. He'd killed plenty of the hog-like predators that threatened the livestock with that gun, surely one nasty Batarian couldn't be that different.

"This one's dead," a deep voice snarled, followed by a chuckle. Tears streamed down Rose's cheeks as she clattered out the bathroom window as quietly as she could, her green sundress catching on the latch and ripping.

"Your shirt is ripped," Garrus noticed. They were sitting on her couch together, sharing some wine. His talons fingered the shorn fabric with interest. "How did that happen?"

The dream came back to her and she put a hand to her forehead, trying to push it out of her mind. "I don't know. I don't want to talk about it."

Garrus raised a brow at her. "You don't want to talk about ripping your shirt?"

"Just leave it alone," Shepard snapped. She pulled away from him and stood up, downing her glass of wine in one breath.

Her legs burned and her throat was raw, and the soles of her feet were on fire in the little white sandals she'd opted to wear on her private walk with Colin, but she didn't stop. It was half a mile to her family's home, half a mile until she could make sure that her mother, her father, her little sister were all safe. Half a mile of darting from tree to barn to tractor to house, dodging the armored Batarians with their four searching eyes and their guns and their shackles, the screams echoing in her ears, the sound of that shotgun blast that had killed Colin sounding over and over in her ears.

"Mom!" She screamed as soon as her family's house was in sight. "Dad! Cara!"

"My sister called me yesterday. I found out that she and my father both made it off Palaven," Garrus said.

"What?" Shepard was only half listening, her mind still intent on replaying her dreams in her head. Memories, she corrected herself. They were dreams about things that had really happened. Memories.

"Solana. I think you'd like her if you met her, Shepard."

"You should go." Shepard said.

Garrus stood and moved to put his arms around her, but Shepard backed away, her green eyes downcast. She didn't meet his gaze.

"Are you alright Shepard? You seem…distracted." There was genuine concern in his voice, Shepard knew even without meeting his serious ice-blue gaze, but she didn't want his concern. She wanted the memories to go away, but she didn't know how to make them go away. The only thing she could make go away was Garrus.

"It's nothing. I just need to be alone. Thanks for the wine and.."

"Yeah," Garrus glanced at the rumpled bed behind them. "I'll see you tomorrow."

#

The Batarian's hands were rough and disgusting against her skin. He had her hog-tied, her face pressed against the floor. She closed her eyes so that she wouldn't have to see the others ripping her mother's clothes off, slapping her, cutting her, touching her…but she couldn't close her ears to her mother's sobbing pleas.

"You're next, bitch," The Batarian told her, shaking her roughly again. When Rose opened her eyes, she saw that her father's corpse was beside her, his blue eyes open and familiar, unseeing. His blood pooled under Rose's stomach, warm and wet. On her other side, Cara lay as if dead, her eyes wide and staring and unseeing like their father's. Rose had arrived too late to witness the pirates rape her. Too late to watch her father's struggle to protect his family end in five bullets to the chest. Too late to do anything but become a victim herself.

"Let's fuck up some Cerberus grunts," Shepard shouted as she leveled her Mattock and lined up her sights. She had only slept on and off for the last few days and avoided Garrus completely. Every time he saw her he asked what was wrong, but she couldn't talk about it. She'd even left him out of this mission in favor of Tali, using the excuse of needing her tech expertise to analyze the reaper tech Cerberus was hoarding. She pulled the trigger and popped the head off of an armored Cerberus guard, exploding his brains all over the helmet of the guy behind him. She took the other guard's momentary blindness in stride and popped his head off too. Her hands automatically unloaded the heat sink on her gun as she darted forward to the next block of crates, pushing forward towards the objective. Nearby, Liara and Tali were doing the same, zigzagging in and out of cover and laying waste to the enemy.

She kicked a Cerberus corpse aside so that she could crouch behind the crate he had been using as cover in order to shield herself from enemy fire while her shields recharged. He was one of the headless ones that she'd taken out with her Mattock. She liked headshots. Headless corpses couldn't watch her keep living while they lay still and dead. The open, staring eyes of the dead had been on her mind lately, what with the dreams about Mindoir that plagued her every time she closed her eyes.

"Shepard?" Liara's melodic voice cut through Shepard's introspection. "We made it to the objective, there are no hostiles in the immediate area."

Shepard stood. "Right then, Tali—do your tech thing. Liara, you and me will stand guard. I don't expect that they'll just leave us alone to mess with this stuff. Another wave will be incoming any minute."

The pirates' com chimed and they stopped their abuse. Rose ached everywhere, her legs could hardly support her weight. The Batarian cut the bond on her wrists and looped a shackle around her neck. As soon as her hands were free, she lunged forward and took his gun right out of its magnetized holster on his back. In another second, his brains were splattered on the dusky green kitchen wall.

The other two pirates started shouting and aiming their guns wildly. One was pointed at her mother who was still tied and sobbing on the floor. Rose popped off another shot but it missed. The Batarian's pistol didn't miss its point blank shot into Hannah Shepard's head. Rose screamed and fired again, spraying the assault rifle at everything on that side of the room. The two pirates collapsed in a pool of blood.

Shepard popped her head up from behind the console and sent a barrage of shots at the men hanging in the air where Liara had levitated them with her biotics. When they fell to the floor they lay unmoving, their blood pooling across the floor. Another wave approached just as Tali declared her upload complete. Shepard switched to her pistol and stood, letting her shields take a few hits while she focused on taking out enemies while they were moving. Her concentration was razor sharp, her aim impeccable. The Cerberus thugs dropped in their tracks before they could even fire a shot at her. It was like slow motion, each enemy that fell was a Batarian slaver, Liara and Tali behind her were her goddam family.

"Shepard!" Liara's hand was on her arm, pulling her out of her warped fantasy. "We should get back to the shuttle!"

Shepard nodded and switched back to her Mattock, motioning for Tali and Liara to follow even as she signaled Cortez to circle back down and pick them up.

Cara didn't move even when Rose cut the ties on her wrists, or when Rose slapped her lightly across the face. She didn't try get up when Rose whispered her name in her ear or pleaded or cried. Finally Rose gripped her sister by the arm and pulled her over her shoulders. She was petite for 14, a late bloomer, but her weight was staggering to Rose's abused body. And there was nowhere to go. Shapes were moving outside the door, coming to investigate the gunfire, and Rose couldn't carry Cara and the gun at the same time. Tears ran down her cheeks as she staggered towards the back of the house, kicking the assault rifle ahead of her every few paces.

She got to her parent's bedroom just as the front door opened. She half-dragged, half-shoved Cara into the closet and then climbed inside, her heart pounding. A coathanger in the back of the door control sensor locked them inside. Cara's soft breathing was reassuring on her neck. An eternity passed like that, still and dark and silent in the closet. Rose's hand trembled as she clutched the assault rifle in front of her. Footsteps and gruff voices sounded, but no one checked the closet. Silence returned for another eternity.

Liara's eyes never left Shepard the entire ride up in the shuttle. Shepard ignored her Asari friend with her jaw clenched tight, her rifle still cradled in her arms despite the fact that they were safely back on their way to the Normandy. She knew that Liara knew that something was wrong. But how much did Liara know? They had shared a mind meld a few years ago, who knew how much of Shepard's past had been transferred during that strange experience.

When the Kodaik landed in the cargo bay and the doors swung open, Shepard was the first one out, without giving her crewmates so much as a "good work," or a goodbye. She needed a hot shower and some hard, liquor, the kind she had stashed in her closet. Maybe if she was drunk enough she wouldn't dream.

"Shepard wait!" Liara called, but Shepard was already in the elevator. She watched Liara, flustered and hurt, standing in the cargo bay as the elevator doors closed and it began to ascend.

#

"We might as well just kill ourselves now," Kaidan joked grimly. "Save the Reapers the trouble." Shepard was on him in two strides and her synthetically reinforced fist made contact with his face in another instant.

"Holy fuck Shepard!" He staggered, cradling his jaw. "What was that for?"

"We don't joke about that on my ship. We never give up. Understood Soldier?"

"Of course Commander, I was only—"

But Shepard had already stormed away, her green eyes flashing murder at anyone who might challenge her. She punched the elevator code to take her up to her quarters with shaking fingers. Her reflection in the polished metal made her look like a husk of herself. Her skin was sallow, with dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep.

"Help is on the way," The steey-eyed military man reassured Rose.

"Help is too late!" She sobbed, collapsing onto the terminal. "They killed my mom and dad! They took half the colony! They—" but she couldn't voice the horror of watching her mother being raped in front of her. She couldn't voice her own abuse at the hands of the pirates. She could only cry. A gunshot startled her out of her wretched grief. She'd left Cara in the closet with a pistol to defend herself. Had someone discovered her?

Rose abandoned the terminal, leaving the alliance man to shout worriedly after her and crept down the hallway as quietly as possible. "Cara?" She asked the empty air. There was no answer. "Cara?" Rose asked louder. She broke into a stumbling run. The closet door was open, but there wasn't a Batarian anywhere in the house. "CARA!" Her sister was dead, slumped over the pistol Rose had given her. Blood soaked the front of her dress, splattered over her parent's nice clothes still hanging behind her. Rose pulled Cara's body from the closet and cradled her head, wailing an incomprehensible curse at the universe that had let her save her sister only to lose her again.

"Let me in Shepard!" Garrus demanded on the other side of the door. Shepard lay on her bed, fully dressed, staring at the stars above her head. She felt mildly bad about punching Kaidan, a little bit like a bitch for ignoring Liara's heartfelt concern, but not seeing Garrus—that was killing her. She didn't want to admit how much she missed him, and not just in her bed. She missed his laughter, his company, his jokes.

Maybe not seeing him was a form of self-punishment. Punishment for letting her family die, for letting those Batarians rape her. For leaving that pistol with Cara.

"Enter," she said in a flat voice, unlocking the door control without moving from her place on the bed. Tears blurred her view of the stars through the window above her bed and she put her arms over her head, fighting back the sobs that threatened in her chest.

They'd had to pry the pistol out of her shaking hands and then finally sedate her in order to drag her away from Cara's body. When Rose came to she was strapped into a padded seat, watching the ruins of her home fade away below her out the back window of the Alliance shuttle. She closed her eyes, thinking through those excruciating minutes when she was holding Cara's limp body in her arms. Why hadn't she shot herself too? Silent tears streaked down her freckled cheeks. When there was nothing left of her life, what was a body anyway? She should have shot herself. Then at least she would be with her family.

Suddenly Garrus was at her side, his large, warm form a comforting presence. She rolled over and transferred her head to his lap, the sobs coming in long choking gasps, accompanied by more tears than she knew were in her.

Garrus made a soft sound deep in his chest and stroked her tear-soaked red locks of out of her face gently. "Please just tell me what's going on Shepard."

She could only shake her head and cry. Garrus pulled her up into an embrace, so that her wet cheek was against his neck, his mandibles tickling her ear. She pressed herself into his arms, afraid that if she let go she would fly into a million pieces. She couldn't remember ever letting go like this around anyone. She'd always handled her stress by shooting things, her sorrow by beating the shit out of people. Even after that Alliance shuttle had dropped her at a base with a team of therapists and medics she'd kept the worst of her sins to herself.

"You don't have to be strong with me Shepard," Garrus reassured her. He stroked her hair and held her until her tears slowed and her sobs quieted. When she pulled away from his embrace, her eyes and face were almost as red as her hair.

"Mindoir," she said finally. "Today is the anniversary of the attack on Mindoir,"

"That's the colony you're from," Garrus said. She had mentioned it once, in passing. She was surprised that he remembered.

"My whole family was killed that day." She rubbed her face roughly in her hands, massaging the aching muscles of her face, sore from so much painful grimacing. "I've been having these dreams…"

"Dreams, or memories?" Garrus asked. He took her hands in his and met her gaze solemnly.

"Some of both."

"What happened?"

Shepard was quiet for a long moment, getting her nerve together; she'd never told anyone the whole story, not even the therapist during the mandatory sessions after her rescue. "Batarian slavers attacked the colony when I was 16. They killed my boyfriend and my dad, raped my mom and sister and me…but that wasn't the worst part."

"It gets worse?" Garrus' hand clenched around hers instinctively. Shepard knew he was bracing himself against the onslaught of horrors, living them in his mind's eye just as she relived them in her dreams. Maybe he imagined himself in that place, watching his own mother and sister be tortured and violated while he was helpless. "How did you escape?"

"There were three of them in the house. I grabbed one of their guns and killed the one I took it from, and then I fired and missed one of the others. They shot my mom in retaliation before I could get them. She died because I was too slow—because my aim was shitty—because I didn't know how to use a gun." The tears that she had managed to keep in earlier streamed down now, hot and wet on her pale freckled cheeks.

"Fucking hell Shepard!" Garrus looked utterly bewildered. "Your mother died because she got shot by those slaving sons of bitches, not because of anything you did."

Shepard wanted to believe him, and a part of her did, but the guilt, "survivor's guilt" she knew it was called clinically, wouldn't let her revise her feelings or avoid the raw pain of her mistakes. She raised her eyes to look up at the star-studded window above her while she regained control of her voice, her eyes, her face.

"I carried Cara to the closet and hid until I thought the slavers were gone. When the coast was clear, I called the Alliance on the emergency channel on the terminal in the study… While I was gone. While I was gone…Cara used the pistol I gave her to—she killed herself. I saved her—I saved us, and she threw it away. Why did she do that?" Shepard's tears were back in force, her voice rising. "Why did she do that Garrus?" Her fists pounded on the turain's resilient chest, but the blows were feeble. He pulled her in for another embrace.

"I don't know Shepard. But I know that it's not your fault. Every person has to make his or her own choices. If you hadn't left the pistol, she would have found another way."

"It feels like my fault. When I joined the Alliance, I was determined that I wouldn't let anyone hurt me like that again. But every year it comes back to me. I can never really forget my darkest sins."

"Shepard, you were untrained, traumatized, and taken by surprise. To me it sounds like you did the impossible and not only survived, but managed to make your life mean something. How many people live and die without effecting change in their world, much less in their galaxy?"

"Everyone's life means something to someone," Shepard said, her voice hard. "It's not up to us to judge. It's for God to sort out."

"I didn't know that you were religious."

Shepard hesitated, struggling with how to explain it. "I…I am. After what I've been through…I have to be. I can't imagine that my parents and my sister just ceased to exist when those bullets went through their heads. The comfort of believing keeps me going another day. If not for that, I'd be tempted to put a bullet through my brain."

"Have you ever been tempted?" Garrus asked nervously.

"Once," Shepard said, but she didn't elaborate. She just rested her head on Garrus' shoulder and breathed deeply. He was content to hold her and know her secret heartaches, to share a piece of her soul she hadn't bared to him or anyone else before this night.

Later, Garrus helped Shepard to the shower to clean up. Her face was a mess from all the crying and her throat hurt from sobbing. As the hot water washed over her naked body, she imagined that it was washing away all the trauma, all the memories. She let them swirl around her feet and then slip away down the drain. She knew they'd be back next year, just like always.

They made love that night, more tender than the fucking session from a week ago, when Shepard had called Garrus up after that first dream. She cried again, but softly and quietly, when she came in Garrus' arms, her legs wrapped around his waist, his gentle mouth on hers.

Afterwards, they lay under the blankets, watching the galaxy whirl by above their heads faster even than the speed of light. Shepard sighed deeply, safe and warm against Garrus' bare chest. He was surprisingly pleasant to cuddle with when he was out of his armor, and they fit together like pieces of a puzzle, the curve of her backside fitting into the hollow of his hip, his long lean arm draped across her slender waist.

As she drifted off to sleep, she knew that she wouldn't dream. Not about Mindoir anyway—until next year, of course. Cara might have chosen death, but 16-year-old Rose had chosen life, and Shepard wasn't going to waste that choice. The dead were waiting for her somewhere. She would meet them again in time.