2183 CE - Citadel Docks
The woman was broken.
Shepard stood in front of her, her eyes listless as she swung the gun recklessly - her shaking hands, her fear and confusion imminent. How long would she continue to suffer from this nightmare?
She was pulled back into herself, the sixteen year old girl covered in her father's blood, hiding from the slavers who had captured this poor woman at the tender age of six.
What kind of life had she suffered?
"The masters-" tears swelled into her eyes, streaking through the dirty skin. She'd smuggled herself aboard a ship and now she was facing an unknown. C-Sec officers surrounded her and Shepard was frozen in place.
Abandoned - she'd been abandoned to the slavers while she was safely tucked into a shuttle heading to Earth. Kaidan wasn't too far behind Shepard, his thoughts going over the situation.
Kaidan couldn't believe it - a Mindoir survivor and an escapee.
The stark realisation that this could have been Shepard hit him in the gut. A frightened woman trapped within the mind of a child. Shepard moved closer, her hands out as she whispered hushed words to her but the woman would hear none of it. She screamed at her to back away, Shepard would take one step back but she didn't stop talking.
The woman curled into herself, still clutching the gun, aiming it at her temple. There was a rush in Shepard's voice that made Kaidan wince, it wasn't really about saving the woman at this point, after everything Shepard had told him the other night, it was about pleasing the ghosts that haunted her.
She had to save this woman to absolve her own sins. Kaidan watched his commander as she squatted down next to the woman, Talitha Raven. Shepard's hand stroked the other woman's cheek, there was a fierceness in her eyes that seem to fire up the other woman, Talitha was furiously nodding and even smiled a little.
She rose to her feet, Shepard lead her carefully to the C-sec officers who fretted over the young woman for a moment, thanking the commander. She shrugged, mumbling "Part of the job," but he knew better.
The haunted look in her eyes, the way she twisted her hands as she watched the young woman walk away, he knew.
"Did you know her, on Mindoir?"
Shepard stood silent, worrying her lower lip before she took in a deep breath.
"Yeah, she was my neighbour, always teased my little brother that he was going to marry her someday." He didn't miss the tight sound of her voice. He was starting to be able to read through her masks, peeling back the layers she carefully draped herself with.
"I wonder... what he'd say now, seeing her like this," she murmured mostly to herself, but Kaidan heard it, and he resisted the urge to put his hand on her shoulder. Instead he stood next to her, letting his closeness comfort her and later, if she let him, he'd help her pick up the pieces of her past she'd forgotten on the dock that day.