"Lieutenant, please, have a seat," Admiral Steven Hackett said, taking his own place behind the raised table. "I'm sure you are aware of why we have called you here."

Shepard sat down in the small, wooden chair in front of the platform and folded her hands in her lap. Hackett, whom she'd met briefly once before when she'd been raised to N4, was joined by two others whom Lillith had never met. The room was dark, the overhead lights dimmed, with a single spotlight over the dais. It wasn't a court martial, but she felt as nervous as if it was one.

"I believe so, sir," Lillith said, trying not to slouch and make herself a smaller target. She remembered the cold stare of the woman she had lived with after the attack, the way she had looked down on her with that same steely gaze. If she was lucky, that look meant nothing more than a busted lip or a missed meal, but usually it meant swollen bruises and cracked ribs. That was a long time ago, though, she told herself as she tried to make herself meet the eyes of the assembled admirals and generals. The Alliance had never taken to physical violence in disciplining their soldiers.

"I have a report here from Lieutenant Aimee Jones, N3. She was under your command on Torfan, was she not?"

"Yes, sir," Shepard replied. She had no idea what Jones had written, but she didn't think it could be that good. The cold glare she had received when they had finally drug themselves out of the bunkers had left no question as to what Jones thought of her.

"She says here that the other teams pulled back due to heavy losses about three hours before you finally left the underground structure," Hackett continued.

"That sounds about right. Kyle radioed me just after we'd cleared the first major artery. He was down to about 40% strength. Havensworth was at about the same. My own team had suffered minimal losses and were nearing a major slave hold."

One of the others, a high ranking general, leaned forward, "You were aware that there were human slaves close to your position? You had scout reports?" he asked.

"Not exactly. Most batarian strong holds have a similar layout, however, and logically since we had not reached one yet, we had to be getting close."

"And yet you split your team. If your plan was to get the slaves out alive, wouldn't it have been better to keep your team together?" Hackett questioned.

"With Kyle and Havensworth pulled out, we needed someone to watch our backs."

Shepard answered a flurry of questions. About the woman she had killed - Jones apparently had reported the woman as murdered, despite evidence that she had been slaver herself. About the lines of surrendered batarians. About the rounds she had put between each of their eyes.

Kyle had sent down a large portion of the troops he'd pulled out when she hadn't shown up. He'd kept only the wounded topside. It was that call that had him locked in a mental facility right at that moment, apparently. He claimed he'd sent them all to die. And die they had. Three out of every four of her soldiers had fallen to enemy fire. Kipling had fallen in the last hour. It was for him that she'd killed the kneeling monsters. For Casey, lying in a pool of blood in the main corridor. For her father, torn to pieces by a shotgun blast years before. For her mother, in a cage when she died. For Jack, his head a corona of blood.

For her sister.

She'd gotten a call earlier that day from Clara. News of what had happened had filtered through the news reports. The batarians weren't keeping silent. Women and children, slaughtered, they claimed.

There had been women there, yes. All armed to the teeth, most of them giving orders. A few children, perhaps. Strapped with explosives, and sent, crying, toward the Alliance soldiers. It was an old tactic, older than the Alliance, but they'd fallen for it. Six dead when the small batarian boy had exploded in the arms of one of the soldiers Kyle had sent down. They didn't fall for it again. A round in the head, well before the children could reach them.

Jones had retched in a corner, the first time she'd shot a child. Lillith had held her hair, and apologized.

They'd moved systematically, after that, wiping them all out. At the end of the three hours, not a single batarian had been left alive. They'd been tired, bloody, and less than half of them had still been standing.

She'd tried to explain that to Clara, that the creatures she had killed weren't people, that they were the monstrosities that had killed their parents, but she hadn't listened.

Monster, she had called her.

Demon.

Clara had cried, sobbing over the vidchat line, her makeup running down her face. The paint on her hands had smeared with the mascara, leaving black and blue streaks when she wiped the tears away. She'd asked what Lillith thought their parents would make of what she'd done. Lillith had had no answer. What she had done, she had done for them. For their souls.

When the call had ended, Lillith had stared at the small screen for a long time. She'd been conflicted about writing Clara, calling her. She'd always known she was a monster, hadn't been horribly shocked by Clara's words, yet she was the last of her family, the last part of her previous life, and it was hard to let go. But it had been over a year since she'd seen her sister's face. Despite all the things she had said, despite everything she had called her, Lillith's only reaction was shock at how much her baby sister had grown.

It was with those thoughts that she had entered this room. Had saluted Hackett and the others. Had taken her seat and tried not to flinch. It was with that thought that she answered all their questions. The questions slowed, but became increasingly nitpicky. She found she had trouble meeting their eyes. Their tone kept reminding her of standing in a kitchen, a hardwood cane coming at her head. She refused to wince, much as she had refused to even when the cane had made contact.

She answered as best she could, her hands and the back of her neck sweaty. She kept her pace calm when she was dismissed. It could take weeks before they gave her an answer. She would probably be discharged. There was proof that the batarians were in fact enemy combatants, so it was unlikely that she'd be brought up on criminal charges. She leaned her head against the glass of a porthole, and took a deep, shaky breath. She closed her eyes and shoved all her emotions into a corner of her brain. They achieved nothing. Feelings did nothing but get in the way. What was going to happen would happen, and there was nothing more she could do about it.

She'd done this before, after the attack on Mindoir. She'd shoved everything good about herself away, locked it up tight, protected it. But time, Clara, friends and lovers, all of them had slowly opened that door, and Lillith had come crawling back out again. Only to be hurt.

The Alliance was her life. The first good thing that had happened to her since her parents had died. And it was being taken from her. She wouldn't let herself be hurt again. That door would never open again.

She stood up and straightened her shoulders, running a hand through her hair. She turned, thinking maybe she should go get a sandwich, she was kind of hungry. She spotted Jones talking with someone at the end of the hall and moved toward them. She was fairly certain she owed Aimee a lunch or three.

"It's the Butcher of Torfan," a whisper came as she grew closer. There were perhaps a half dozen people behind Jones and the woman she was talking with. They had all stopped speaking when she grew close, and only that name echoed through the halls. The Butcher of Torfan. She'd first heard it the day before on an ANN broadcast. She'd watched, her hands shaking. She felt nothing hearing the name now.

"Jones," she called, ignoring the stares, "I was thinking of grabbing a bite. I'll buy."

Jones stared at her, her jaw dropping. She shook her head slowly, her face contorting in disgust. Before she could answer, though, a woman approached from the far end of the hall. She moved with the deadly grave of a high ranking spec ops officer.

"Lieutenant Shepard?" she asked. Lillith nodded, looking for any sign of rank of the woman's uniform. There was none. Spec Ops certainly then.

"I'm Lieutenant Riley, I'm to accompany you back to Earth."

Jones' face slipped from one of disgust, to one of sympathy. They were placing her under arrest then. That was too bad. She wondered what she would do with herself, afterward. She wondered if they'd still let her work with tech while in prison. She'd like that, she thought.

"Of course Lieutenant. Should we leave now?"

The woman nodded and half turned to let Shepard walk in front of her. "Admiral Hackett wants you in Brazil by Friday."

Lillith glanced at Riley out of the corner of her eye, "Brazil? Headquarters is in Canada, isn't it?"

Riley chuckled, as if it were a joke, "Well, yeah. But you're not going get through N5 training listening to a bunch of stuffed shirts argue with Parliament."

Lillith thought she should be happy. They weren't arresting her, they were, after a fashion, promoting her.

She shrugged.

"Do we have time to grab lunch before we go?"