-Scarred by Conflict-

This was not expected.

Hayley had had a nightmare that caused her to wake in tears and had wanted to find her mother, who would inevitably hug her and make all the terrifying monsters that she had dreamt about go away, but instead she was sat, huddled in the bottom of the doorway while covering her ears and squeezing her eyes at tightly shut as she could.

"Do you realise how stupid you are being?" Yelled Hayley's father, although his voice was muffled to Hayley due to the fact the girl was pressing her hands as tightly to her head as possible, but the shouting had caused the three year old to open her eyes and observe the scene in front of her.

"Don't you realise how stupid you are being?" was the reply from Hayley's mother, "people are dying, Terry, and you are telling me to stay here and do nothing!" the older redhead was furious with how her husband was acting and was standing as menacingly close to him as possible, allowing her to look intimidating despite the height difference.

Terry just paced back and forth, his anger threatening to spill out as he tried to think about what to do. He knew there must be some way to convince his wife to stay and not go to Shanxi, but trying to find it and put forward his argument forward in a way that Hannah would understand was nigh impossible. There was Hayley, and she may be a great bargaining point to win the older female Shepard over, but so far this war hadn't pulled in many casualties and Hannah would clearly push that fact forward to back up her argument.

"Look, Hannah," Terry kept his voice calm and collected, still oblivious to his daughter in the doorway, "I know that the number of casualties is low right now, but what if the Alliance aggravates those things? They could slaughter you!"

Hayley had now uncovered her ears. She didn't understand many of the words being said, but she could already tell when someone was panicked, which her father clearly was. Whatever 'casualties' and 'slaughter' meant, she had gathered that they couldn't be good.

"The aliens we're going after? They are as advanced as us, from what we can gather. Even if they get pissed off and try to take us down, our weapons should be more than enough to blow a hole in them and liberate Shanxi," Hannah spoke as though she was briefing the squad she would inevitably be taking to the human colonised world, already knowing roughly what awaited her. She did not entirely believe what she had said, but it was enough to supress the anxiety she was already feeling towards the war.

Her husband let out an irritated sigh. He was familiar with propaganda, knowing the Alliance used it regularly to recruit marines. Conveniently forgetting to mention the amount of people who die each year was a great way to get recruits; similarly, mentioning that the space flight of an alien race was similar to the humans but omitting the mention of any other technology was a fool-proof way to get people behind the war. His wife's belief that this would be easy was just a product of the facts that had been twisted and omitted by her employer.

"What if they're lying? What if more than 394 have been killed? What if it's in the thousands?" Terry kept his voice quiet, as he had never believed yelling solved anything following the initial outburst of anger, "these aliens could be as advanced as the Prothean's, but because we are so weak in comparison, they are doing us the kindness of sending out smaller, less outfitted troops so we aren't entirely annihilated before we put up a good fight."

Hannah was about to respond when a small pair of arms wrapped themselves around her legs with a shocking amount of force for how tiny they were.

"No!" Hayley's tear stained face was pressed into the back of Hannah's calf, the young girl refusing to alleviate her grip. While she hadn't understood many of the longer words, she was fully aware of 'killed' meant, and the idea of her mother being stolen away from her had destroyed the three year old, "don't go, Mommy! I don't want you to die!"

Both of Hayley's parents were unsure what to do. They had definitely not noticed her before and were unaware that she had witnessed much of the argument. They were heartbroken to see her small form trembling as she cried while whimpering 'don't go' over and over.

"What about her?" Terry asked quietly as Hannah slowly turned around to pick up her daughter and wipe her eyes (and her nose, she noted with a hint of disgust) with her sleeve.

Hannah shook her head before turning to leave the room and take Hayley back to bed, feeling awful that the young girl had had to witness her parents arguing, something they had always avoided due to Hannah knowing how emotionally scaring it could be to see the people who made you in conflict with one another. She mouthed an apology as she left.

Hannah stroked Hayley's red hair behind her ear, smiling at her as the final sobs escaped her. She knew she should stay for her, but she had been in worse conflicts than the one she was preparing to go into, even after Hayley had been born (although most of those had been 'we were in the neighbourhood' conflicts). If she had survived those, she could survive this.

"Are you going?" Hayley asked, her eyes as red as her hair due to the amount of tears she had shed.

"I'm coming back," her mother said softly, the caring smile only a mother could pull off still on her face, "I promise."

The girls face scrunched up again as she processed what her mother had said, relating it to her father's words about people being killed. Hayley knew that if someone was killed, you could never see them again and the thought of never seeing her mother again was too much for the toddler to bear, "but Daddy said-"

"Hey," Hannah shushed her daughter, "Daddy is just scared. I'll be okay, and when I come back we can go to the park and play on the swings together, and I'll buy you all the ice cream and toys you want and when we come back here, we can play with all your new dollies all night."

Hayley grinned in approval, loving nothing more than playing with her toys alongside her mother. Also, all the ice cream she wanted? Now there was a fun point that the child couldn't wait to get to when her mother was back.

"How long will you be?" she asked, all the former sorrow replaced by joy at what she had been promised.

Hannah didn't know how to answer that question. She would be back, but she didn't know how long she would be. In the end, she could only answer with "soon," although her daughter seemed to accept the answer with ease, probably not yet old enough to realise that that word could mean anything from days to years. The day she had that epiphany would be the very day she would grow to hate that word.

Eventually, Hayley was off to sleep again, no longer worried by her nightmares or the prospect of her mother leaving yet never coming back. Her mother had never broken a promise before, and there was no reason that three year old had to believe she would break one now.

As Hannah left, she found Terry standing outside Hayley's room, his look asking the question that Hannah had hoped he would already have assumed the answer to.

"I'm sorry," she said, solemnly, "I'm going."