A/N: In case it isn't already obvious from the title of this chapter and things said in the previous one, this chapter involves the death of a parent. If you are sensitive to such issues, feel free to skip this chapter.

-Broken Promises-

Hayley squirmed on the sofa. She had regularly been going to day care since her mother left for the First Contact War 3 months ago, her father not entirely ready to do the single parent thing on his own.

She didn't really like it there. The other children were mean to her, the boys happily punching her while the girls called her ugly. No one ever played with her because she was always more interested in pretending the dollies were astronauts than actually playing happy families, which the girls found unappealing and the boys found weird. When her father came to pick her up early, she was overjoyed.

Terry had said very little to his daughter on the car ride back though, and Hayley had quickly gathered that, for whatever reason, she wasn't meant to be happy that she had been picked up early. Something had happened and her father was taking her home to tell her.

Her brain ran through the possibilities: No more ice cream, her room had been painted pink, Admil Tom (Hayley was unable to pronounce Admiral) had returned from his mission to her toy chest missing an arm. For a brief second, her mother came to mind, but then she remembered that she had promised she would come back and quickly cast the thought aside.

When they were home, Terry asked his daughter to sit down while he went to get some water and now he had returned and taken a seat beside her.

"Hayley…" he started, his voice catching on the little girl's name alone, "something happened. The fight your Mommy went to is over-"

"Is Mommy coming back?" Hayley quickly jumped up onto the cushions, speaking with so much glee that it almost completely shattered Terry's heart. If the fight was over, her mother would surely be coming back, and they would spend the day eating ice cream and playing in the park with dollies. Everything would be so much fun and Hayley's mother would never leave again.

"Please sit down," her father's voice was weak and quiet, so much so that she almost hadn't heard him speak, "Mommy got hurt when she was fighting the aliens."

Terry searched his daughter's face for any sign of distress and upset. She was only three, but he had full faith in her that she would understand what he was trying to say so that he wouldn't have to say his wife's true fate aloud, for both his and his daughter's sake.

"She can put a bandage on it. A pretty one with stars on it because they will look pretty on her!" The redhead said, not at all understanding what her father was getting at, much to his dismay.

He was trying to use a psychological buffer, knowing that it is easier to accept something if you don't hear the blunt version of what it is. He had learned it when he was taking a psychology degree, which he promptly dropped when he was no longer able to keep up with the workload. He had hoped he could apply the tactic here, but alas it was not to be.

"I'm sorry Hayley…your mommy was more hurt than that. She isn't coming back, sweetie," Terry began to cry as he finished the sentence, unable to look at Hayley who he guessed must have been distraught by her mother's fate.

At first, Hayley had resigned to calling her father a liar, convinced that he wasn't telling the truth and that any minute now, her mother would come walking through the door any moment now with everything she had told her she could have. She had promised to come back, she wouldn't have broken it.

It was near 10 minutes before the girl accepted that her mother was not returning, that she was hurt as bad as her father had said and that had therefore meant she was unable to return. That she had died.

"She promised me she would come back," Hayley half sobbed, half screamed, throwing her arms around her father and crying uncontrollably into his shirt.

He returned the hug, pulling her as close as possible while he tried to silence his own sorrow knowing that the sight of him crying would do nothing to calm his daughter down. He wanted his wife back, and wished she had listened to him, but resenting her now seemed foolish as she was gone and was never coming back.

Hours passed before either of the remaining members of the Shepard family pulled apart, Hayley wanting nothing more than to be close to her father now that she was never to see her mother again, and Terry wanting to hug the one person who his wife was survived by.

Hannah would be home in a couple days, alongside many of the other 623 humans that had been killed. A large ceremony would be held for all those who had died, but the families had the option to have their own, smaller, private funeral as well, meaning Terry had preparations to make. The distraction would be good, melancholy as it may be.

Hayley had taken herself to her room, suddenly uninterested in all the toys she had planned to play with when she got home. She just sat on her bed and stared at the floor for the rest of the evening, hoping that this was all a nightmare and that she would wake up any second now.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

The Shepard's had already held their funeral for Hannah by the time the large memorial came around. They wanted it over with as soon as possible and now there was nothing to do other than mourn the many others who had been lost fighting the alien race who came through the relay.

The race was called the Turian's, but all Terry and Hayley saw them as were the freaks who killed their respective wife and mother. Sure, humans were now in amongst a range of aliens in a galactic society, but that did not mean that the abominations should be trusted.

The Turian's were on a council with two other species: one where individuals lived for a thousand years and another who were incredibly intelligent yet with much shorter lifespans. Terry was unsure of the names, but to him they were all the same; just freaks who attacked lesser species without remorse.

Terry was so caught up in his thinking that he hadn't noticed that Hayley had wandered from his side. He scanned the people around him, refusing to let panic set in, and quickly spotted the vibrant red hair next to a boy who appeared the same age as her, allowing himself to fully relax while he kept an eye on her.

Hayley recognised the boy she was talking to: Xander Jet. He was 3 years older than her yet attended the same day care and frequently pulled her hair and gave her Chinese burns on her arm –in fact her right arm was still slightly bruised from the last time- and generally just someone who hated her for acting less like a 'normal girl'.

Currently, Xander was crying his eyes out, one of his father's having been killed while the other was currently hospitalised, although no one expected him to pull through. Hayley assumed he was with his grandmother, a stern looking woman who was wearing Alliance dress blues, like many of the other people in attendance. She hadn't seemed to have noticed her grandson crying.

"Are you okay?"

"My daddy is dead, stupid!" He shouted, although the name he frequently called the young Shepard sounded half-hearted, as though he didn't have the energy to put any feeling behind the word. Understandable, giving the circumstances.

Hayley ignored her bully's name calling and hugged him, rubbing her hand along his back as her mother had always done when she was comforting her. She kept saying shush into his ear as she rested her head on his shoulder, "it will be okay."

Xander was unsure of how to react at first, but he eventually returned the hug, gripping on to the girl he had tormented so much with all he could, enjoying the contact from someone who understood how he felt.

Terry watched on as he saw his daughter overcome her dislike for the boy to give him comfort when he needed it. He hadn't expected her to understand empathy too well, and at the current event, he wasn't expecting much more than for her to be standing next to him, too distraught to do much else that stare into the distance.

All he could do was smile and say, to no one in particular, "I can see so much of her in you."

A/N: Thanks to my friend who looked up the number of fatalities in the First Contact War for me! My internet was gone while I was writing this so I couldn't check myself.