Dear Roy,

I'm glad to hear you arrived to Arcturus with no further incident. It sounds like you're doing fine. Keep it up.

I worry about Jasmine (that's the name of the quiet girl, we only just got the records back from Earth). We found out her entire family, from grandparents down, had moved to Mindoir two years before she was born. We found all of them dead. If she saw all of it happening, it may be a long time before she can recover. Immediate aid is very important, and I'm not sure I did enough for her.

Lucid dreaming? It's really not my area, but getting the children to draw or describe their nightmares is not a bad idea. I assume you cleared it with the local doctors? Regardless, that will help for sure. I'm not too sure about the dreaming. Can you really control it when you know you're dreaming? It's quite amazing if you can!

Things are not great here. We have started rotating the troops, it's hard to take everything we've been finding. Unfortunately they are a bit shot on people with my field skills, so I'm staying for the time being. I could really use the break, there's just so many people... I'm not sure anyone knows what to do with all of them.

Well, that was suitably glum. About joining the Alliance, your supervisor is right. Don't rush your decision, you could find yourself wasting some of your best years before finding out you really didn't want it in the first place.

Be well.

Marie.

I had to give it to the Alliance, they moved fast. Three days after our arrival, and Joe was ready for shipping. A nice couple with two teenage kids of their own came to pick him up, and I managed to give him a last goodbye before they took off. The only reason I was surprised was because I didn't know Arcturus was literally a hop away from Earth, which was where those folks were from. We chatted for a bit, they seemed nice enough, and they were quite happy to give me their contact details and invite me to visit any time I wanted.

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to take them up on that, but I was going to keep in touch. Omni-tool messaging was so easy and convenient, it'd have been a crime not to.

That day I headed out to the recruitment office. It wasn't particularly odd they'd have one in Arcturus, really, but there was a surprising number of people around. My paranoid self had me sitting quietly, virtually invisible in plain sight – a skill I had mastered through hard work and involuntary training, I could drop out of conversation and become part of the furniture in any situation – and listening. It wasn't hard to pick on the mood, it was all about Mindoir. The brutality of the attack, the fact that a human colony had been raided for slaves, the images of the brain-damaged, catatonic survivors – if they could be called that – had all made the rounds, and pissed off a lot of people. In a way, it felt good to see the response. Everyone treated me like I was from Mindoir, so some of that was starting to seep into my subconscious, I guess.

Soon, it was my turn. I got to one of the several available desks, and was greeted by the sight of an old, tired, and very annoyed looking grizzled man. He was sitting in a chair that looked five sizes too small for him, and I swear I felt like he could have picked me up and broken me in half with his bare hands just as an afterthought.

I better not piss him off.

"Okay, tell me why you are wasting my time here," the man said. Great start, didn't even introduce himself.

"I want to join the army, sir."

"Yeah, I got that," he replied curtly.

I took a deep breath and decided to go for the expected, obvious excuse. "After the attack on Mindoir, I don't feel like I can just go back to quiet farm work."

"A farmer," the man spat. "You think a gun and some guts is all you'll need to go save the galaxy?"

That hit a little bit closer home than he knew, but it wasn't that I thought I could save the galaxy myself. Learning to shoot would help though.

"Not really, but I'd like to know what I'm doing next time a batarian comes shooting at me."

"Kid, when was the last time you even saw a batarian?"

I narrowed my eyes and looked at him straight in the eye. "Two weeks ago. On Mindoir."

I guess it was my fault, everyone had been treating me like they knew who I was, so I had expected the recruitment office to be the same. And then I realized I hadn't actually said I had been on Mindoir, I just said I wanted to join because of that – like plenty of people sitting there that day. So yeah, he was surprised, and so was everyone within earshot. To his credit, the man only looked surprised for about half a second.

"Right. You think this is some kind of charity, that we'll just roll the carpet out and give you a hug?" he said. I liked the guy, after all the whispers behind my back, and the shifty looks of pity, it was actually refreshing.

"No sir, I wouldn't learn a thing if you did that. I want to join, work hard, and become the best damn soldier I can possibly be."

He gave me a very long appraising look, not changing his expression. The whispers had already started, and after a rather loud "poor guy" from a woman right behind me, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. It sounds ungrateful, but I was really getting tired of the kid gloves.

"Welcome to the army, kid," the man finally said, and for a brief moment, I saw a lopsided smile play across his lips. The image was gone in a flash, and he was all business again. "Name?"

"Roy Morgan."

"Date of birth."

"October first, 1994."

He looked up from his terminal, and gave me a look that could have withered an oak. Then I realized what I had said.

"I mean 2150," I said, plucking a number out of thin air. Was that right? Crap, I think that makes me one year too old.

It went more smoothly from there, and soon I was enrolled. With no tech expertise (or knack for it, I was fine with 21st century tech, but I was so out of my depth here I needed a buoy and a boat), no space experience, no biotics, the only place for me was being a groundpounder. So marines it was. I was also given a chance to choose which rotation I'd join, something I learned later on was somewhat irregular, and chose to join in a month. Four weeks to hopefully see all the kids off safe.

That wasn't going to happen.

When I went to see Shepard the next day, I found her scribbling on her notepad, drawing furiously with the black marker. It looked like some sort of fanged terror, only with two pairs of yellow eyes.

"Hey Aliana," I said, sitting down at the table. There were three datapads around her, which I then knew were books. She was always reading, a way to keep herself looking busy, I found out later. It didn't surprise me, I knew from experience that it worked, although in my case it had been more of a "thing I can do by myself away from everyone else".

"Hey."

I looked at the notebook. "Bad night yesterday?"

She stopped drawing to look at me. By the wide-eyed look she was giving me, mouth partly open, she was surprised. And more than a little angry. I had a closer look at her face for the first time that day, her eyes were quite red, and she was pale; paler than usual.

"What happened?" I said.

"You... You don't know?"

"No, what?" I said. When I looked around, I saw the other kids. Robert and Liz were there, even quieter than usual, she sitting on a chair, he on a mattress and curled up with his legs against his chest. "Where's Jasmine?"

Shepard looked down at her notebook, and a cold, sinking feeling seized my stomach.

"Ali," I said in a low voice. "What happened?"

"She... I went to the bathroom this morning, and she was there. On the floor. So much blood..."

Oh crap.

I saw where that was going, so I sat down by Shepard, while she kept talking. "She got a piece of glass and just...Nobody helped..."

"Hey, hey," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "I'm here, no-"

She snapped her head to turn right at me, and for a moment all that was left was anger. I let go of her shoulder almost immediately, although she didn't really say anything. She didn't have to. At that moment I saw the first glimpse of Commander Aliana Shepard. Her meaning was obvious, "where were you?"

The image was gone as soon as I moved my chair back to give her some space. Back to the worried, scared teenager.

"Aliana," I said, still failing to sound reassuring enough for her. In truth, I had no clue what to say. "That's not going to be you, okay? You know you'll be with people who'll take care of you." She didn't answer, so I opened my omni-tool, flicking through the menus until I got to the messaging app. "Look, this is the latest I've got from Joe, he just arrived on Earth."

I showed her the screen. It was a picture of Joe with his foster family, standing in front of what looked like an old-fashioned ranch, horses far in the background included. He wasn't smiling, but he was looking at the camera. It was the closest thing to happy I had seen on him in a while.

"I think his foster family is going to be great, don't you?"

Shepard looked away. "It's not my family," she muttered. It didn't take much effort to realize she wasn't talking about Joe's.

"No, but that doesn't mean they won't love you or take care of you."

"What about you?" she said.

Looking back, if I hadn't completely misunderstood her then, things would probably have turned quite different. As it was, my reply likely made things worse.

"I'm too old for that, I've got to strike it out on my own." She looked at me again. "It's not too bad, I've done it before. I like being by myself. I'm... actually, I'm joining the army. They're shipping me out to bootcamp in a month."

I saw her nod, but she didn't answer. It set the tone for the rest of the visit that day, she didn't want to speak much, and as I had been instructed, I tried not to push her. But I was there for her.

Three weeks till bootcamp, and Robert had also been found a place to go. As it turned out, he had some distant relatives on Shanxi, and the military had been able to track them down. It was a pretty good place, that; a very safe colony and a decent place to live. As before, I managed to get the contact info, and the old couple seemed only too happy for me to keep in touch.

With two weeks to go, Liz had also been found a place to stay. A member of the diplomatic mission to the Citadel, of all places. That one didn't go so well for me. I met them while I was there with Shepard, and she and her wife both seemed rather cold towards me. But they were very nice and friendly towards Liz, so that was all fine. Not that I had a say in the whole affair, but I really wanted to see them all do well. They also tried talking with Shepard, after blowing me off, and all they got for their troubles were very polite but short answers from behind a frozen, inexpressive half-smile.

So Shepard already had her "deal with unpleasant politicians" persona down pat. Good girl.

As it was a whole two weeks to go, I was quite positive they'd find a good place for Shepard. I spent my time preparing for bootcamp. Found a shooting range (hard, that, considering this was Arcturus station), found a gym, and very quickly found out that being reasonably fit as a civilian in the 21st century was very different from being fit enough for the Marines in the Mass Effect universe. I looked at the PFT that I was supposed to match, and damn near crapped my pants.

Which reminded me that I hadn't visited a doctor yet (how I made that connection, you don't want to know). I was supposed to check on one before being shipped, and it was free too, so no reason to put it off.

There were several medical stations in Arcturus, and the one I had been sent to was the one that handled the "fresh recruits". So it didn't surprise me to see a very similar atmosphere in the waiting room to that of the recruitment office. A few of the people in the waiting room seemed to recognize me, which was a bit of a surprise; I expected everyone would have been shipped already.

It didn't take long for the doctor to see me. He was about my height, somewhat thin, with a bushy beard and a very thick Russian accent. I liked him already, Russian accents make everything cooler.

"Good, here you are. I'm doctor Belov, call me Olev," he said, extending his hand to shake mine. He then gestured at the stretcher in the room, and started looking through a datapad. "Well, Mr. Morgan, I hear you ship in two weeks. Have to make you ready. Why didn't you come when signed up?"

"Uh, I... I thought I had time, you know. This would be just a formality, I'm in good health."

"No, no, no good," Olev said, shaking his head. "Have to be better than good. You're in the army now!"

I stifled a laugh, and settled for humming the Status Quo song as he gestured for me to lay down. He put some sort of robotic arm over my head, and soon the machine was scanning me from head to toe. Completely unconcerned about interference, Olev handed me a datapad.

"Here, this the list of gene enhancements. Alliance standard is top two, if you want third, have to pay yourself. Alliance will refund you if you complete bootcamp for other two."

Wait, what? "Hold on, gene what?"

"Gene enhancements! What, you live under a rock? Have them now, or you'll be sick as dog during camp," he finished, and laughed rather loudly at that.

"I thought there was some kind of moratorium on genetic engineering like that," I said dubiously.

"Naaaah, all this legal. You want something not on list, can't help you, but have cousin back on Earth. Good prices, but no guarantee."

I couldn't tell whether he was joking and just hamming up the "dodgy Russian" persona or not.

I decided not to inquire any further.

The list of genetic modifications available was surprisingly long, and the Alliance covered the cost of enhanced strength and enhanced stamina, but that was it. To tell the truth, I wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of genetically modifying myself, specially as I had no idea how the technology worked. The notes next to them were quite clear though, without the standard mods, more than eighty percent of new recruits washed out in the first week. With them, success rate was over ninety percent. With an asterisk.

*Ninety percent refers to the percentage of recruits able to graduate from bootcamp, further specialization may lower chances of successful development.

"I guess the two standard ones will do. Can I add the third later if I want to? Or more than three?"

"You can add later, more than three not recommended. Side effects can be very nasty, with few combination exceptions."

"Wait, side effects? Should I-"

"Naaaah," he waved me down. "Standard ones only have side effects on little girls. You're not a little girl, are you?"

I admit it, I laughed. For about a second.

"Wait, stop laughing and hold breath," Olev said.

He was looking rather intently at the holoscreen, and quite frankly, seeing my doctor look at my scan with that expression really took the laughter out of me. I did as instructed, and after a couple of seconds, the machine let out a double beep.

"What is it?" I said, taking that as a sign that the scan was finished.

"Don't know, you tell me," he replied, and turned the holoscreen towards me. The scan had highlighted my right lung, and there were a whole lot of red marks and lines all over it. It looked like a freaking treasure map.

"Oh, right. That."

"VI doesn't know, looks like old calcified tissue."

"Yeah, nasty infection. Wasn't pretty, but it got treated."

The look he gave me, I may as well have been an alien. And given how there were aliens in the galaxy that I was pretty sure he didn't look at like that, it was even worse.

"Not good, will have to replace this," he said, shaking his head.

"REPLACE?!"

"Yes, flash-cloned organ. Very safe, will make you ready for bootcamp. Also, damaged disc will be fixed. Will take a sample now."

"How the hell are you going to replace my lung in two weeks?"

"Easy enough, you live under a rock?" he said again, and gave me a curious look.

"Something like that, apparently," I muttered.

He just laughed and gestured for me to pull my sleeve up. After a blood sample, and a whole bunch of vaccines I wasn't up to date on, he gave me a slap on the back to send me on my way, and told me to be back in three days – and not a day longer, or the transplant wouldn't be properly finished before I had to go.

I had promised Shepard we would go watch a vid, so I set off towards the psych ward. Ever since we had arrived, that was all we had done: watch vids (I found out Fleet and Flotilla was a soap opera the likes of which I hadn't seen since Eastenders), listen to music (and turned out that Shepard's taste for godawful techno music was already in place), I brought my guitar from time to time (which she seemed to enjoy, even though all my repertoire was hopelessly out of date; seriously, I don't care how far in the future we were, how can anyone not know Bad Company?), and in general we didn't speak much at all. I was the one to start most of the conversations, and even though I didn't have much success, I still tried. I was still trying to find a book that she liked that I'd be able to recommend, our tastes in literature didn't seem to cross much either.

The one thing we never could talk about was family. Every so often she'd slip up and say something about a member of her family doing this, or liking that, and she'd immediately clam up, walls up and all. If I tried to follow up, she'd always retort to telling me to speak about my own family if I wanted to say something.

But little by little, she was getting more comfortable with my company. In a more normal way, if there is such thing.

That day, as I walked though the door, one of the doctors at the clinic stopped me.

"Ah, Morgan, I was waiting for you," he said. He was a man in his mid thirties, black short hair with a splash of white here and there, thick eyebrows, brown eyes, a large, sharp nose, and always wore a pair of glasses. I knew damn well that eyesight problems were easy to correct with modern technology, so he only wore them because he wanted to. I think he thought they added to his feigned sense of superiority.

"Doctor Kay," I said as a greeting. The guy was called Brian, but I never used his first name. He didn't particularly like me, so the feeling became mutual.

"Care to join me?" He gestured towards the seats by reception, so I shrugged and walked with him. Once we were both seated, he took a deep breath and turned to look me straight in the eye. Unusual, he never looked straight at you, one of the reasons I didn't trust him. "We found a foster family for Shepard. Good couple with a kid of their own. They live in Demeter, very nice place."

"That's great," I said.

"Only Shepard doesn't seem to want to go. In fact, it's not the first time she's blown off a possible place for her to go."

I blinked a few times. "Okay, so what do you want me to do?"

"I normally wouldn't ask unqualified personnel," he said, and the way he sighed made clear exactly what he meant with that little quip. "But since you seem insistent on keeping her here, I thought you could talk sense into her. You are leaving for your bootcamp in two weeks, so you can't take care of her."

"I'm not stopping her," I replied, annoyed.

"Not that we could prove it, anyway," he retorted.

The only reason I didn't punch him in the face was that the reply had been so unexpected, I didn't know what to say. I settled for standing up and leaving without saying a word.

I found Shepard in her usual spot, reading a book. Whenever I came to see her, I'd find her reading a book. I knew she read so much because it made her look busy. People don't bother you if you look busy with a datapad in your hands.

"Hey," I said. She didn't look up. "Aliana?"

"Are you here to tell me to leave too?" she finally said, not looking up from her datapad.

It took me a moment to process that. "You saw me with Doctor Kay," I said, and sat down on a chair across from her.

"I'm not going," she muttered, curling up further into her chair.

"Ali," I said softly, and as usual, that caught her attention. Everyone called her Shepard, a few people used her first name, and I was the only one that ever called her that. "You can't stay here forever. You need a stable family to-"

"They're not my family!" she retorted, interrupting me.

"No, they're not. But if they are good people, then you will be better off than here by yourself. I don't know anything about your family, but-"

"I don't know about yours either," she snapped.

Shepard's little retort didn't surprise me at all. Forced as it sounded, I recognized it for what it was. Defensive, deflecting away from something she just didn't want to talk about. She did it a lot. I wondered whether that was my fault, I kept expecting Commander Shepard, and finding only Aliana Shepard, teenage survivor of Mindoir.

"Okay, fair enough," I said. My answer startled Shepard, it had taken so long for me to speak I don't think she expected me to. "What do you want to know?"

In the space of three seconds I saw pretty much everything go through her face. Surprise, doubt, fear. She looked like I had sucker punched her, and now was cornered on the ropes.

"It's fine. Go ahead. I'm not setting you up or anything." I waited, but she didn't say anything. "Can you give me a little trust?"

"I... I guess."

"So," I smiled, relaxing back in my chair. "Where do you want to start?"

Shepard shrugged. "What were they like?"

"Dysfunctional," I deadpanned.

She raised her eyebrows, and leaned forward to look more closely at me. "Dys... functional?"

"Oh yeah." I raised my hands, and used my right's index finger to count the fingers on my left. "I was the youngest of three siblings." Count one. "My father hated me," count two, "mostly because my mother, who was an alcoholic with a gambling problem, cheated on him and had me," count three. "My sister treated me like crap, and beat me up regularly until I got to be too big for her to really hurt me, although she never got tired of verbally demeaning me every chance she had," count four, "and my brother beat me up whenever my sister pissed him off, which was pretty much constantly." Count five.

By the time I was done, Shepard was giving me such a weirded out look I couldn't help but chuckle. Which only seemed to annoy her.

"That's not funny."

"No," I agreed, still smiling but with no humor behind it. "But it's all true." I wasn't looking at Shepard now, just had my eyes focused on the table in front of me. "Not funny at all. Really, finding myself in freaking Mindoir as far away from them as possible? Just perfect. Of course, I had to show up when the batarians came." I realized what I was saying, and looked up at Shepard, my smile disappearing. "Sorry."

Neither of us said anything for a while. I was waiting for her to ask again, but not particularly relishing the prospect.

"Why did your sister beat you up?" she finally said.

Of all the things, that was what she was focusing on? Come on!

"I don't know, I never asked her," I replied, shrugging. "Because she was-" mental check, no cursing, "-evil, because she was frustrated with my mother, because we rarely saw their father, because she could... Beats me." I wasn't looking for a pun, but chuckled at it anyway.

Shepard just lowered her gaze, and started wringing her hands together.

"Not what you were expecting?" I said.

"No."

At that point, I was convinced that nothing would happen unless I pushed Shepard a bit. Maybe that was what she was waiting for, I always had the feeling she was waiting for something whenever an uncomfortable conversation between the two of us happened.

If only I had a clue what I'm doing...

I reached over the table and took her hands in mine. Immediately, she looked up at me. For some reason, I thought she looked scared. Not of me. I didn't know what of.

"Ali, whatever you're afraid of, you can talk to me."

She made a show of gulping, her eyes looking away. Twice she opened her mouth to speak, but she didn't make a single sound. All she did was press on my hands harder and harder. But I didn't flinch, and just waited her out. I didn't want to push her any further, and didn't want to venture a guess at what she was afraid of. There were too many possible things in that list. Way too many.

"I... I don't..."

She looked at me, and I raised my eyebrows inquisitively.

Come on Shepard, I know you can. Go ahead.

"I don't know where..."

"You don't know where to start?" I offered. She nodded. "Why don't we start somewhere easy? What were they like?" I said, bouncing the easy question back at her.

"I don't know. Normal?"

I probably shouldn't have, but I let out a chuckle at that. She looked at me again, and there was some hint of anger behind her insecure exterior.

"Ali, I wouldn't know normal if it fell out of the sky and punched me in the face. Actually, scratch that. I may see that as normal then."

She offered a weak smile back, but still took her a while to get going. Once she did, and with a deep breath, it started. Like a dam had been broken, it all started pouring out.

I learned about her life in a farm colony, left of nowhere and past the double end of the Galaxy. You'd think that a century and a half in the future, things would be a lot different, but it was all so familiar to me, it was easy to fall into the narrative. Early mornings, long hours. She loved going to feed the cows in the cold winter mornings; they'd all come to her as she unloaded the silage, some of them even licking her arms as she did. She got lost once when she was younger, ran off to the forest and ended up too far for her short self to see the house, and when she started crying in the middle of a paddock, a whole bunch of cows came to see what was wrong; kept her safe until her parents found her. Or that's what she remembered.

She also told me about her father. How he was always the first one up, cooking breakfast for the family. How he ran a barbecue every other Sunday for all the neighbours, which being farms meant some really far away people. How she always had a huge rack of ribs her dad made for her just the way she liked them. How he'd fall asleep in the sofa in the evening and would have to be gently coaxed to go to bed. How he didn't like any of the modern automations many other farmers used, because he liked the "human touch" in his work. And a dozen other little things.

And she told me about her mother. How she was a teacher in the small rural school. How she would never eat beef, because of the cows they kept on their dairy farm. How she always made sure the house was full of flowers, and made it smell so nice. How she giggled like a teenager whenever her dad would whisper something in her ear. How she was always humming, and when she wasn't humming, she was singing.

Then there was her little brother. This she was very careful to bring up, and the way she looked at me, it took me a bit to realize it was because of what I had told her about my own sister. But she told me about all the trouble the two of them got into. That she loved his imagination, and how the world was so much better when seen through his eyes. And how much she loved him, and how much she missed him. Him, and all her family.

It was all so disjointed, no sense or order in her memories. She laughed, cried, and both of them at once; it was everything she had been bottling up.

And I found out what she had really been afraid of. In a lull of the conversation, after what seemed hours talking – which it was – and us sitting in an easy silence for several minutes.

"Lana," I said. Oh yeah, that was another thing I found out. Everyone called Shepard, Aliana, or, in the case of her parents and most of her family, Lana. The only one that ever called her Ali (stress on the A, just like I did) was her brother. So it startled her quite a bit when I sounded just like him. "Are you feeling better now?"

She shook her head, not looking up.

"Not even a little bit? Isn't it better to remember them like this?"

"No... I... I don't want to lose them."

It took me a few seconds to process that. It made more sense later on, but at the time, it just didn't click. She was afraid that talking about them, sharing her pain, it would made it feel real. Like her family wouldn't really go away if she didn't talk about them ever again.

"You won't. As long as you remember them, you won't lose them." It was a bit lame, but it was all I could think of.

She bit her lower lip and nodded, her eyes stubbornly fixed on the table as a few tears streamed down her face. She didn't put any resistance when I pulled her towards me in a hug, and let her weep on my shoulder.

It was the last time I ever saw Shepard cry.

Author's Notes: Well... What can I say. We know from the in-game information that the Alliance people who participated on the Mindoir defence all suffered substantial psychological damage. For the kids that survived it, it had to be a lot worse. Not the happiest chapter I've ever written.

Oh yeah, and I really hope you were hearing a thick Russian accent when reading Olev's lines, because I absolutely do. Dodgy Russians are awesome :D

Mizuki00, yah, I'll likely have chapters covering bootcamp and such, and Roy's adventures. There will be quite a bit going on before we get to the "game timeline", so to speak, even if it'll be substantially altered! :)

Archer83, I admit it, I laughed at that scene. Roy has other plans for Shepard (although there's that saying about the best laid plans of men and mice), but if I get the chance for something like that to happen, it likely will! :D

And of course, thanks for the faves, follows, and specially reviews and thumbs up!