Marcus Allen groaned as his head slowly swam back to consciousness. He blinked his eyes open, grateful something was at least blocking part of it. Then he realized that something was Jane Shepard, standing over the chair he was tied to. And that she was smiling.

"Have you ever seen someone die in space?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "The air rushes out of your suit. Your chest feels like someone's cracking it open from the inside. You can't breathe. You feel the blood vessels pop out of your skin. And then, just before you'd suffocate? Your throat lining ruptures, your lungs get ripped apart as the last of the air is pulled out of them. You choke to death on your own blood."

Shepard leaned forward, her voice almost like a lover's whisper in his ear. "I can tell you from personal experience that it's the worst way someone can die. Because it lasts just long enough for you to know that you are alone, that no one can help you, and that you are about to cease to exist. And then, just when the pain and terror are worst, before you can deaden to them- then it tears you apart. Worse than torture. Worse than burning to death. And it's something I swore I would never, ever inflict on anyone."

She drew back. One hand flashed behind his head. And Allen realized three things. One, he was in an airlock. Two, he'd been dressed in a space suit. And three, the Marine-issue combat knife had just sliced through one of his air hoses. Shepard grinned.

"So be proud. You're special enough for me to break my word." She took one step back, and slammed her hand down on a control panel. "Rot in hell."

The door slammed closed in front of her. The air roared out of the lock as the outer door open, ripping Allen loose from the chair and sending him flailing off into space. Wormwood's escape velocity was miniscule. He'd never stop falling.

And his chest was starting to hurt.

Inside the installation, Jane Shepard turned on her heel and faced the crowd in back of her. A half-dozen or so slavers who'd surrendered rather than back Allen's play. Jack and Wrex, who were watching them and visibly hoping for an excuse to cut their numbers down. Garrus, who was watching her with a strange look on his face, half proud and half sad. And Ashley. She couldn't look at Ashley yet.

"I didn't come here for prisoners." The slavers flinched at that. Jane locked her hands behind her back and paced along the deck, making eye contact with each one of them in turn. Not one of them could hold her gaze. "Fortunately, that's not what you are. You were all hired muscle. Mercenaries. Worked here, but this wasn't your operation."

She reached the end of her line and whirled around, an animal part of her brain thrilling as they all started. "So what you are? Is messengers. I want you to go to every two-credit dive on Omega, every hiring hall on Ilium, every refugee camp on Earth or Palaven, every backwater bumfuck colony with a two-man security detail, and I want you to pass on a message to everyone you see there."

Her voice rose. "You tell them that the next time someone comes after my family, I won't toss them out an airlock. Because I swear to God Almighty that next time, I'll think of something even worse." Her lips skinned back from her teeth. "There's shit I saw during the Reaper War I still have nightmares about. Some of it I don't think can be done by human beings. But if this ever happens again? I'm going to fucking find out. When I'm done, whatever gutless bastard laid a finger on one of my children will be begging me to toss them out an airlock."

Pause. "And then? I'd think real hard about finding honest work, boys. Because I have a great memory for faces, and if I ever see any of you after today, I'll kill you. Now get the cutters off that freighter and go."

A few hours later, Mom found her in the cabin she'd claimed in the old bulk freighter. They'd loaded all twenty three girls onboard, fed and medicated them as best they could, and were burning hard for the nearest Alliance world. Ash knew it was all they could do for them. But it didn't seem like enough. Because God, it was such a long way back.

"Hey, kiddo." And it wasn't fair, because it was Mom's voice, a little tired, but just the way it had always been. It should be different. Changed, somehow, by what had just happened. "How're you holding?"

All Ash could think of to say was the truth. "I threw up." After the tenth time she'd watched that merc's face dissolve into gore and bone behind her eyelids.

Mom laughed a bit, slid down the wall opposite from her, laying her hands on her knees and cradling her head in them. "Yeah. I did too. The first time, and the one after that."

Ash swallowed. "Does it get easier?"

"Yeah." Mom raised her head, and suddenly her face was vulnerable in a way that Ash had never quite seen before. "I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not."

"Dad on the bridge?" There it was, in the open. Ash hadn't expected either of her parents to let each other, or her, out of the room for at least a few days. It was just how they were.

"Yeah," Mom repeated. She sighed. "I don't think he quite sees me the same way, after some of the stuff we did to get you back. Some of the stuff I did."

"Neither do I." Mom's eyes went wide with shock, and Ashley shrugged. "He told me some of it, Mom. And you kinda blew a guy out an airlock in front of me, then threatened to kill more people in cold blood. I wanted to be there, I had to know he was dead, but the Mom who raised me and I grew up hearing about wouldn't do that." Ash paused, for just a moment, eyes filling as she crossed the room and slipped into her mother's arms. "But I'll talk to him, if he doesn't come around. Because even it's not quite the same…even though it can't be quite the same, how I feel is the same. I love you, Mom."

"I love you, Ashley." Somehow they were both crying now. "My beautiful, beautiful little girl…"

She didn't know, right then, quite how it was going to be all right.

But she knew that it was.