I do not own anything. Mass Effect belongs to EA/Bioware.

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"How are you doing kid?"

I barely gathered the energy to look up, it was all such a mess.

I had failed.

I had failed to protect my family.

That's why my parents were dead. That's why so many people I had known died.

Because I had failed.

This last week has been hell. I spent every waking moment crying and breaking down, and every time I went to sleep, I was plagued by ceaseless nightmares. Images of Batarians gunning people down, the agonized faces of my parents. They haunted me even in my sleep.

Talitha. She was pretty much the only reason I hadn't fully lost it. Whenever she was near me I put up a strong front... I had failed her brother, but I refused to fail her.

But that wasn't important for the voice that had just spoken up.

It was a woman in a blue uniform, she had blood red hair tied in a bun and very expressive green eyes that sharply contrasted with her pale skin. Speaking of contrast, her kind expression definitely contested with the brutal scar running down the left side of her face.

"..."

I stayed silent because I didn't know how to answer. I was alive, but was that better than death at this point, was living worth it after my failure.

The woman sighted and sat down on the bunk next to me.

"Listen. I won't pretend to fully understand what you feel, but I have an idea." She began, "back during the First Contact War I was a Lieutenant Commander in command of a frigate. My husband, Jason, was in command of the marine compliment. And then the turians attacked. Our ship managed to fall back from the relay to Shanxi, and I managed to get to an escape pod and find myself ground side. Jason was crushed by a support beam, he pushed me away from it, saving me but damning himself in the process. I tried to get to him, but some of the other crew members dragged into the pod."

She was looking into my eyes now, seeing as how I had raised my head.

"I still feel the pain, I still think that it was my fault for being too weak to do anything. But after the war ended I had too many responsibilities to take care of to just kill myself. My daughter chiefly. She was three at the time, I left her with my father while I was on deployment. But when he passed away three years later I had no one to turn to, so I brought her with me. She moved from ship to ship with me."

"Does it get any better?" I finally found the strength to speak up, my voice barely above a whisper.

"No." She answered bluntly. "It doesn't get better, really. Not until you accept that you still have something left to live for, to fight for. For me that was my daughter. And for you, well, I know you still have some family left, I checked your file, and don't think I haven't noticed the strong act your putting up for the kid. We all have." She smiled at me. "You remind me a lot of myself."

I slowly nodded. After that we lapsed into silence, but a more comfortable one.

"I wanna make them pay." I gripped my fists so hard I almost drew blood.

"I wanna make those bastards pay for what they did and I wanna make sure they never live to do it to anyone else."

I heard her sigh next to me.

"Revenge is a slippery slope kid. You can loose yourself easily. It's a lot easier to be consumed by it than controll it, I know I, myself, almost became obsessed with killing every turian I saw. I still don't like the damn turkeys. But that's neither here nor there."

She looked me right in the eyes, again.

"Your thinking of joining the military aren't you?"

I hesitantly nodded my head, the thought had definitely crossed my mind. The emotional pain making a revenge fueled crusade sound wonderful.

"I won't tell you how to live your life, and I'm sure you've got what it takes to make it big in the military. But, don't make a blind move. Think it through carefully. It's gonna be the biggest decision in you life."

"Okay." I replied, a bit more lively than I was before.

She got up, and lifted me up with her.

"Cmon. You need to talk to someone, get yourself doing something, you don't need time to think right now. And distracting yourself will definitely do you good right now." She replied, probably reading my confusion. "So, your gonna come and meet my daughter."

"But-"

"No butts. Cmon." She cut me off with a firmness and finality that left me incapable of saying no.

And that's how I met her daughter. A young woman who looked just like her mother, albeit a younger and unscarred version of her mother. It was then, much to my embarrassment, that I realized that I had never gotten the woman's name.

Hannah Shepard and her daughter Jane Shepard.

Well she was definitely lively, quite excitable as well. We talked for a long while, well talked is a relative term, more like she talked and I listened. But as the days flew by I found myself taking more and more active a part of the conversations.

I enjoyed them. They got my mind off of the massacre at Mindoir.

It was exactly what I needed.

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"You are no longer black! Or brown, or yellow, or white! You are now green! Light green! Or dark green! Do you understand!?"

"Sir, yes sir, Drill Sergeant!"

Angel Daskalov stood in his cadet training uniform, lined up in front of his bunk, well over a dozen other cadets (including Sara) lined up in front of theirs.

The Drill Sergeant, a towering man covered in scars and wearing a dress uniform, slowly walked between the two rows of cadets, before rounding on one of them.

"Swaford! Are you the dumb piece of shit whose father served in the Contact War!?"

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Did he have the balls to die there!?"

"Sir, no sir!"

"Too fucking bad! Did he talk to you about it!?"

"Sir, only once sir!"

"Good! Then he wasn't lying!"

He then rounded on me.

"Daskalov! Are you eyeballing me with those baby eyes!? Are you!?"

"Sir, no sir!"

"Are you in love with me Daskalov!?"

"Sir, no sir!"

"Oh! So you don't think I look good in my uniform Daskalov!?"

"Sir, the Drill Sergeant looks fabulous in his uniform sir!"

"Oh! So your gay then and you love me!?"

"Sir, I'm not gay sir!"

"Do you have a girlfriend Daskalov!?"

"Sir, no sir!"

"Good! So then she's not cheating on your sorry ass!"

As the Sergeant rounded on another cadet, I couldn't help but think on whether or not I made the right choice with joining the Marine Core.

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For those who noticed it, yes the boot camp scene is essentially taken almost entirely from the movie Jarhead. It's just that when I thought of a decent introduction to marine training, this scene just jumped into my head.