A/N I own nothing. Mass Effect is owned by Bioware

*WARNING*

This chapter contains depictions of torture. If you feel you can't read it or that you may be affected by this, I advise you skip this chapter.

Ok, so yes, this chapter is going to be heavier than the others. It may be the darkest part of the whole story. You may have noticed that I changed the rating of this story to M. That was because it was done as a precaution. I don't know if everyone here would think that this was bad enough to warrant such a rating but I thought it would be better to be safe than sorry. Let me know what you think in the reviews.

Honestly, I tried to not make it too explicit. I had actually thought it was going to be more graphic than this, but I didn't want to turn away you readers who have been enjoying this. Still, I didn't think I could do the MC justice if I didn't have him describe his backstory at least a little.

Other than that, there are still going to be longer delays between chapters as school is getting more hectic. I will continue updating but there may be delays of unknown lengths.

ALSO, on a different note, I also published another story on here; a Mass Effect x Dragonball Super fic. It is not intended to be a main story at this stage, nor is it a replacement of this one. It was something I decided to do just for fun but I am not planning on putting too much effort into it if there is no reader interest. I do have ideas of where I would want to take it though if there is the interest. So take a look if you want, link through my profile. The intro explains what I mean about it.

Comments:

frankieu, Artyom-Dreizehn, zapper25, ArchAngel319, Nipplegunz, Madman123456, Skittertale, VODKA18, Bobobobobobon, Quietsound – thank you all

mk0008 – we meet her here

betapike, guest(1) – thanks. I gotta say, I do like the Magnificent Bastard characterisation. It helps when a plan comes together!

Guest(2) – I have something planned that may make more sense when it comes up in a couple of chapters time. Hopefully it addresses your 'elephant'.

DahakStaz – a little of both I should think.

HoloObsession – a cop and a prison guard… gotta be friends, right?

PyromaniacSquib – Maryssa may very well come back. I think it would be a nice fun conflict, don't you?

Now, on to the story!

...

CHAPTER 11 - THERAPY

The next day started with me having a positive outlook.

I spent the morning getting accustomed to my new shadow. It was an asari matriarch who only gave the name Malitae, pronounced Ma-lee-tay. She was a tall asari with light blue skin and a seemingly random collection of facial tattoos, clearly following the turian style with their face paints. However, she had also tattooed on some human style eyebrow markings.

She didn't say much at all. In fact, our entire conversation could be pretty much summarised as the following:

Me - "Hi. Brock Neilson, pleased to meet you."

Her - "I am only here to make certain that you stick the bounds of your agreement with Councillor Tevos. I don't care about you in any way."

After that she pretty much ignored everything I said to her and just walked around next to me. That was fine, so far as I was concerned. I had plenty of things I needed to do, even before the money from the asteroid came in.

The first thing I did was find a nice little café for breakfast. I offered my security escort some food and she just stared at me with a completely bored expression.

My food came, plain toast and a poached egg. I don't know exactly what animal the egg was from but the yoke wasn't the traditional gold that I was used to from chicken. It was some pale pink colour. I looked at it uncertainly, wondering briefly if it was actually edible. I looked over at another table and luckily there was a human on the opposite side of the café chowing down on the eggs without a second thought. I looked back down at my food and shrugged. When in Rome…

I took a mouthful and chewed thoughtfully, trying to analyse the taste. It tasted almost the same as an egg that I was familiar with, if not slightly sweeter than expected. I splashed a little salt and pepper on it and went back. Not too bad.

After a few mouthfuls, I looked at Malitae and just stared at her for a long moment.

"So, what did you do wrong?" I asked eventually.

That got a reaction. Her face went from neutral to stone instantly. "What do you mean?" she demanded.

I shrugged casually. "I got a minder because the councillor is concerned I might try to disappear with her money before I fulfil my end of our bargain. No matter that I don't want to push my luck any further with her at this stage. So what did you do wrong to be lumped into what is effectively babysitting a human. That seems a little beneath someone as important as an asari matriarch. A maiden desperately looking for approval, maybe. So that means that for you to be the one doing this, either the councillor has a lot of personal influence over you or you have done something that annoyed someone up the line. So what was it?"

She didn't say anything but she did give me a vicious and ugly scowl before opening up her omni-tool and ignoring me.

After breakfast I spent a great deal of time looking over the job openings I had been working on and posting them on the extranet. Then I called up the two quarians that I had interviewed at the same time as Ely and Hectar. While I had ultimately gone with Sel, both of those candidates had shown they were both suitable to work for me, far beyond the rest that I had talked with.

The first applicant had already found a proper job and thanked me for thinking of him but he was contracted for six months. The second one said she was also grateful but she would be returning to the fleet in the next week, having stumbled upon something she could use as her Pilgrim gift. So I needed to post a job for at least one more engineer. I got another job advert posted quickly.

At lunch I took my shadow to the café in the Bachjret Ward to wait for Torrin and Klara. I guess they had been waiting for me. Not even five minutes after Malitae and I had sat down, the two duct rats arrived at the table.

Almost immediately Torrin grew suspicious.

"Who is she?" he demanded, pointing at the asari with a talon. Malitae for her part was sneering disdainfully at the two urchins, as if offended by the sight of the dirty youngsters.

"Just ignore her," I said, being purposefully dismissive. "She's here for me, not for you. Take a seat."

"What do you mean that she is here for you?" Torrin asked suspiciously.

"Oh, I had a private conversation with the asari councillor yesterday. Apparently she didn't like everything I had to say so I have been assigned a watcher for a few days to make sure I behave as I agreed to do. Really, she is just here to make sure I don't leave the Citadel. So long as I don't do that, she doesn't really care. Though it is tough to stop her raw feelings of physical attraction she has for me."

Malitae glared at me, marring her otherwise generically attractive features. Then she got up and moved over to the next empty table and sat with her arms and legs crossed tightly. Torrin looked at me, his features I assume were sceptical.

"Hey, attraction can be tricky sometimes," I mock protested. He and Klara laughed.

"So, what did you mean the other day when you said that thing about us not living in the ducts?" Torrin asked, more comfortable now that the asari had moved to another table.

A salarian waiter arrived with drinks that I had ordered for the four of us. I directed the Thessian tea to Malitae's table. She looked up as it arrived and glared at the waiter. I couldn't hear their exchange but the fact that the waiter pointed to me as he spoke to her left the meaning of their conversation clear for interpretation. She looked suspiciously at the cup in front of her and sat back, not touching it. Oh well, I guess being nice doesn't work for everyone.

I turned back to Torrin. "Simply that," I said. "I want to open an orphanage here in the Wards for street kids like yourselves. I want you to be able to pick the location, somewhere near a common C-SEC patrol route and close to a duct entrance. I would supply carers, teachers for the younger kids and access to doctors so the kids can get a check-up. For the older kids I would start looking at getting employment advisors so that they can get decent jobs. If needed, I would also look at hiring more permanent security to make sure that you feel safer from the slavers."

Klara looked at me with no small amount of shock on her face. Torrin was back to peering at me suspiciously. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you help us?" he asked. "What do you get out of this?"

"Honestly?" I replied. "I actually like little Klara here. I don't want her and other kids like her to have to keep hiding from slavers and being suspicious of people all the time. That's no way to live through your childhood." I was very much aware that this may have been a little hypocritical as that was basically how I was living my own life, but they didn't need to know that. "Honestly, what kind of future do most of you and your friends have? Keep running messages for the local gangs and mercs until you are old enough to be initiated? Become a low level red sand smuggler where you can scratch out a tiny living for the rest of your days before you die young in a prison cell or become hunted for the rest of your lives? And that's if you don't die falling into a ventilation fan or a protein vat now. Klara here deserves better than that. So do you."

I looked Torrin right in his eyes. "Don't you get tired of being the one looking out for everyone all the time? Of feeling responsible every time that one of them gets killed or kidnapped?"

I gestured to Klara. In the short time I had got to know her I already felt fond of the cute little girl. "I don't want that future for her. I want her to be able to work wherever she wants. If she wants to wander the stars or stay here on the Citadel, it doesn't matter. What matters is that she gets to choose."

I took a breath and looked down for a moment, feeling an ache in my heart. "I lost my son already. His future's gone. I can still help you though."

Torrin stayed quite for a while. Klara got up from her chair and gave me a hug. It felt good. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Yes," Torrin finally said quietly. "Sometimes I do get tired. But they needed me to do it."

I nodded. "And now, I can help." I braced myself a little for the next bit. "I would like you to come with me."

He sat up straighter and looked at me, his posture stiff. "What do you mean? You want a servant?"

I shook my head impatiently. "No. haven't you been listening? I don't want servants or slaves. What I am doing is offering to train you. I have an asari in my crew and it's possible that there will be more in the future. They can help you learn how to use your biotics. You know, have a proper teacher instead of you just guessing. The kids can stay at the orphanage where they will be looked after and you can come with me on my ship. You can learn how to use biotics, how to fight. You would work with me and train with me while I learn how to fight. Then I want you to help me save some slaves."

He stared at me, his mandibles flared in shock, matching Klara's open-mouth stunned look. "Are you serious?" he asked incredulously.

I nodded my head casually. "Very. There are lots of people to be saved out there. I want you to help me get do it."

He grunted. "What, you have some sort of hero complex?" he asked sarcastically.

I let my face harden, showing how serious I was actually being. He sat up and leaned away slightly, mandible twitching uncertainly.

"Let's just say that I was recruited into it," I said, my tone cool. "I saw a great deal and I need help."

I gave them a small sarcastic smile. "If nothing else and I turn out to just be crazy, at least you can get some training for free and your friends can get free food and warm bedding in a safe location every night with people to watch over them and keep them safe. Hell, I'll even pay you. What do you say?"

"Why me?" he asked, obviously stalling.

"Well, your biotics are a strong argument," I said dryly. "Besides, I still feel out of place in this whole thing. I thought you might be able to relate to that. Plus, everyone that you are looking out for will be taken care of now so you are going to have a lot of free time. And," I leaned forward conspiratorially, "it would give you a chance to take on some slavers. Give them a little payback."

His mandible clenched tightly to his face and his eyes grew wide. I couldn't tell if that meant excitement, concern or surprise.

He looked to Klara, who simply nodded her head enthusiastically. I guess after not talking for so long she had gotten used to not saying much.

"How long do I have to think about this?" he asked, still looking at Klara.

"Well, I won't get the money I need to do things until tomorrow, then I will be here for another week but I want to be well and truly started by then. There is a lot to do and not much time to do it. So, day after tomorrow at the latest. Speak to some of the other kids and let them know. I want you to look at a few places that I could do it. You know the Citadel better than I do at any rate. Make it somewhere near the ducts so that if kids still want to travel through them they can. Or if they just want to run away at a moment's notice. They have no obligation to stay. Except maybe the really young ones. They definitely need to be looked after."

He nodded slowly. I gave him my contact information so he could call me on his stolen omni-tool. Then it was a quick lunch with some casual chatting with them both, getting to know them. Klara started to open up and talk about her life in the ducts and which friends she liked the most and where to get the best food from unsuspecting venders. She was really growing on me and the way she was so animated while she talked was really fun.

The afternoon I had booked for the appointment I was looking the least forward to. My meeting with Aleria's psychologist aunt Selaen.

Aleria met up with me and basically ignored Malitae still following me arounds like a stray dog.

"Are you ok?" she asked, her voice tinged with concern.

I gave her a mirthless smile. "I haven't even started yet," I said.

She flushed prettily and looked away. "I know, I just… I hope that she can help you with everything." She looked up at me, her face in a slightly worried frown. "It will be just you and her in there," she said, pointing to the room the appointment was going to be in. it was kinda like a fish bowl get up. There was a wall about waist high with a glass panel that went the rest of the way to the roof. My blue shadow had insisted on being able to see me at all times. Aleria had argued on my behalf to let me have privacy but as long as I couldn't be heard I didn't care who could see me.

It was certainly an improvement on what I remembered in the games. I remember in ME3 there was that part in Huerta Memorial Hospital where anyone could literally walk around the wall to watch and listen to the therapist talking to asari commando with PTSD after killing Joker's family on the colony Tiptree. Hmmm. I should probably do something about that. Joker seemed pretty cool in the games. Still, if I can get things going according to the way that I want then it should never happen.

"You don't have to tell us anything that you say in there," Aleria continued into my thoughts, biting her lip. "But she will be able to help you best if you tell her as much as you can. If you can. I mean, I..."

"It's alright," I said as soothingly as I could, reaching a hand out to her shoulder to try comfort her. She surprised me by wrapping me up in a big hug. I hesitated only a moment before returning it. I looked over her head to see her aunt watching us patiently through the window. I let out a sigh. Time to do this.

I untangled myself from Aleria and walked into the room, closing the door behind me. I saw her still worried face through the glass, gave her what was an attempt at a reassuring smile and turned to face my newest opponent.

Ok, maybe it was a little harsh to describe a woman who was trying to help me get over some of my problems as an opponent, but I really felt nervous about this. I just knew that I was going to be reliving nine months of hell in this conversation. Maybe it would work, maybe not but at least I can say that I tried. And other comforting half-truths I tell myself…

"Hello, Brock, isn't it?" Dr Selaen, Aleria's aunt asked. Her voice was already soothing. Like warm honey being poured in my ear. It was strangely comforting and enticing but not in a sexual way. More like a warm blanket on a cold night sort of way. It helped my nerves to lessen a little. I nodded a reply to her.

"A pleasure to meet you Brock," she said reaching out a hand. I shook it. "I am Dr Selaen N'Tavis, Aleria's aunt. Please just call me Selaen."

I nodded again. "Pleased to meet you too, Selaen," I said.

She smiled. "Please take a seat." She gestured to a couple of long half lie-back chairs where I could sit and lean back. It was almost like a poolside bed, just with more cushions. I took a seat and leaned back. It was actually really comfortable. Selaen took her seat opposite from me but refrained from leaning back.

"Now, Aleria has told me a little bit," Selaen admitted. "She told me those things in confidence so that I would be prepared and to help me know what sort of talk we would need to have."

I felt a little bit of disgruntled annoyance flicker through me before I squashed it. I didn't like the idea of people talking about it behind my back but I knew that Aleria's intentions were pure. She was just doing what she thought was right to help prepare me for this.

"But to do this properly, I think that you should really tell the whole story from the beginning," the therapist continued calmly. "As you let it out of you, it will be like your soul is releasing the poison that it has taken in by the treatment you have suffered. The most likely feeling that you will have at the end is a feeling of emptiness, or hollowness inside of you. I want to emphasise that there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, try to imagine that you managed to remove all of the damage to your soul and from that moment on you are able to replace them with the positive things that you have been deprived of since the start of your ordeal. It gives you the chance to heal, by purging out the sickness to your soul. You already experienced a little of this when you opened up to Aleria. Now, I want you to do it here with me."

Well, her voice was calming, her words were logical in some strange sort of way, and to be completely honest, doing this was why I had agreed to the appointment in the first place. Even so, I hesitated. To let it out, I would have to relive it all over again. Doing that… was not on my list of preferred activities.

Selaen could obviously sense why I hesitated. Probably came from decades of doing this with slave victims. "This is a safe space, Brock," she said encouragingly. I tried not to laugh. Back in my time, safe spaces had been a bit of a joke to me. But then, they weren't really a thing in Australia, just something on the news that made me shake my head. There was no such thing as a safe place for me, even back then.

I let out a shaky breath. Here goes nothing.

"Well, I guess that first I should probably give you some background," I began. "I was born on Earth in a city of the south east coast of the continent of Australia. I moved to the west side when I was twelve. At seventeen I met a girl called Felicity. Two years later we got married. At around the same time I took a job as a prison guard for the local civilian prisons.

"I had worked there for about three years when my wife gave birth to our son, Jason." I stopped and took a deep breath, fighting the tightening of my throat at the thought of where this conversation was going to go. "Jason became the brightest thing in my life. My relationship with Felicity had not been good for more than a year before Jason's birth. After he was born, she… got sick. Physically and mentally. It was not good for a long time. I had to take about six months off work because she wasn't able to take care of him. Post-natal depression. It hit her hard. Physically she got better after six months but mentally, emotionally… she never got better. Never returned to the way she was before. Whatever it was, she never seemed to connect to Jason like I did."

Jason was crying as I came through the door, sitting strapped in his highchair. Felicity was nowhere to be seen. I quickly unbuckled him and lifted him out. He had soiled himself. The dampness was cold, meaning it had been there for a while. He wasn't messy, like he had eaten. Where the hell was Felicity?

I shook off the memory. "Anyway, so three years goes by and she never got better. Our relationship never recovered. We stopped talking except for fights about stupid things. I slept on a mattress on the floor in Jason's bedroom every night that I wasn't working the nightshift. Work was the same it had been for the last few years. High and low level criminals. Some getting in my face to threaten me, others trying to proposition me sexually. More propositions than threats, actually. It was a comfortable routine. I had managed to get some shifts in a partial promotion as a temporary unit manager, which meant a little more money. We had a couple bad incidents around that time, with some gangs going to war with each other inside the prison. It led to fights and a couple of prisoners being beaten to death. We were ordered to be harsher with the prisoners to prevent them from getting time to organise gang fights." I sneered to myself. "It was a stupid idea. All it did was make it worse for relations between staff and the prisoners. Respect was lost. Mutual respect is what a prison in Australia was supposed to run on. Don't make life inside harder than it needed to be and they didn't make life harder for us either. And they wouldn't seek retribution outside when they got released.

"Anyway, things came to a head and I was involved in a major riot. I managed to stop some high level crims from getting out during the fighting. They were furious and tried to get past and I stopped them." I looked at her serene, neutral face. "I was a bit larger then, more muscular than I am now." She just nodded at me to continue. I grunted in wry amusement to myself. "I couldn't manage that now, though. Not without a lot of time at the gym.

"So a bunch of us got awards for what we did. The main thing I remember was when I got home and it had been in the news, Felicity just glared at me and said: 'I suppose you think you're some big hero now.' I didn't say anything. I just took Jason to bed and lay down next to him. I had been so scared during that riot but I had just done what needed to be done in the moment. When I got home, it all just hit me that I had come so close to losing it all. Jason could have grown up without a dad; left alone with a mother that didn't care for him. He was too young for that. I just wanted to stay close to the boy. I loved the kid so much." I feel my eyes sting at the memory of those times, my heart twisting in my chest. It was one of the most precious memories I have. I coughed in an attempt to pretend that I was clearing my throat. Really, I was just trying to fight against the tightening that seemed to be trying to stop me speaking.

"Then, a couple weeks after things had calmed down, I was lying in bed asleep. Next thing I know there is a lot of banging, Jason was crying and someone grabbed my arms and held me down. Someone else threw a bag over my head. Then I guess someone hit me hard enough to knock me unconscious because the next thing I remember was waking up with a headache and arms over my head and chained to the ceiling of some room. It was all stone walls and concrete floors. I had to stay standing or the cuffs would cut too much into my wrists. I don't know how long I was there but someone finally came in. It was some of the gang members that I recognised from the prisons. None of the leaders, just grunts. They didn't say anything; they just walked over and started to use me as a punching bag.

"They went at me for a while. When they were done, everything hurt. I was pretty sure that some of my ribs and my nose were broken. Maybe an eye socket too because I couldn't really see out of my right eye. My groin had been kicked a couple of times and I had thrown up on myself. When they left they shut the lights out and slammed the door shut. There were no lights, no windows. It was pitch black; the sort of black that your eyes don't adjust to. Then came the music."

I was feeling some agitation as I relived the memories of those early days. At the time, it had seemed bad. It hadn't taken long before I was wishing for the relative ease of those early beating.

"Music?" Selaen asked, clearly not understanding.

I nodded. "They had some speakers in the room. They blasted music so loud that the very air seemed to pulsate. In the small room, the soundwaves only amplified off the stone walls and I could almost feel the sound pushing against my skin. Think of the worst nightclub and have them turn the volume up so loud that when you speak, you can't even hear yourself. It gave me constant headaches and stopped me from being able to get any sleep.

"I don't know how long it went. Time was hard to judge in there. It might have been a few days, maybe a couple of weeks. I might have only been a single day as far as I could tell. The only thing that changed was that sometimes the door would open and someone would come in and give me water or food. More than half the time they would punch me in the stomach when they had finished giving it to me and I would end up vomiting it back up."

Her face changed a little from its neutral mask to a slightly crinkled look of concern. I spared a look out through the window. Aleria was still watching me with a worried face. Malitae was still scowling at me suspiciously.

"It's alright, you're ok. Please, continue," Selaen said, drawing my attention back to her.

I swallowed. This is when the bad stuff happened.

"Eventually they finally shut off the music. By this point I was basically delirious from the lack of food, water and sleep. The pain from that first beating had basically gone but because I was tired all the time, I wasn't so good at standing up properly and the cuffs were cutting into my wrists badly. They started bleeding at one point. Even though the music had been turned off, it had been so loud for so long that it left a ringing in my ears all the time. They would use it later to wake me up every time that someone was coming in to beat me.

"Anyway, they came in and undid the chain from the ceiling. I didn't have the energy to keep standing and collapsed straight onto the floor. I think I chipped a tooth there, though they might have just kicked me when I was the ground. I don't really remember much for a while. I think they gave me water and food and let me eat and drink normally to let me get my strength back. The next thing I remember is waking up at some point and seeing that they had attached my cuffs to a short chain that was bolted to the floor." I hesitated for a moment, not sure how I wanted to explain the next parts of process. I was no longer sitting back in my chair. I was sitting up and my hands were tapping against my thighs as the agitation started to build inside of me.

"From then on, every time they came in, I got beaten or stabbed or worse, even when they fed me. They would bring knives in and would slash me on the arms or legs just for the fun of it. That was the easy part. One of them had a steel pole that he would hit my wrists and feet with. I am pretty sure he broke more than a few bones. Other times they would bring in the hammers and smash my hands and fingers. My fingers got mangled repeated.

"They eventually figured that just hurting me wasn't enough. They weren't satisfied with making me vomit by punching or kicking me in the stomach after eating. They started to tamper with my food. They put things into my drink like ipecac."

"Ipecac?" Selaen interrupted. "I'm sorry, I don't know what that means."

"It's a drink that is made from some form of tree root that induces chronic vomiting," I explained.

Her face took on an alarmed expression for a small moment before she schooled back to her calm business face. "I see. Please continue."

"So sometimes they would use ipecac, other times they would use hallucinogenics. I imagine that they took great please in hearing me scream at things that weren't there," I growled the last statement. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to settle my nerves. "After a while I stopped eating, so they force fed me."

"He won't eat Gaz," the bald one said, looking at the untouched plate on the ground. The water bottle had been tipped over and had turned the dried up vomit into a sodden paste.

"Well bloody make him," Gaz spat back. "We can't have him wasting away yet. He's lost enough weight as is."

"Last time I did that he nearly bit my finger off!" Baldy protested.

Gaz reached back and grabbed something. Moments later, pain exploded in my face as the business end of a hammer smashed my teeth into shards.

"He won't bite you any more, now, will he?" Gaz said sarcastically.

Selaen had her hand over her mouth as I shook off the memory. My hands clenched themselves as I fought off the growing rage. The asari quickly made her face return to its normal, calm and friendly expression.

"Things were like that for the entire time. One of the worst ones was when they had an argument about something in my cell and I chuckled. One of them didn't like that so he got a Hoffman Knife and cut my left ear off. He thought it was ironic because the Hoffman Knife is what we used in prisons to cut people down who had hung themselves."

"Now you shouldn't have to worry about what you can hear," the man laughed viciously, carrying my ear out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

"The second worst physical thing was the branding," I continued, my voice now strained as I pushed back against the memory. I don't remember having stood up but now I was pacing the room. My nerves were on edge and I couldn't stay still. I had my hands clenching and unclenching as I tried to work off the jitters.

The unnamed man hit the ignited and the welding flame burst to life in a bright orange glow. He twisted a dial and the flame turned blue. He turned it aside and put it in the pit.

"Now, there may come a time," the man said, his tone casually conversational, "when people see you and wonder how this came to be. And our boss wants us to use you to send a message. So, regardless of whether you die here and we dump your body somewhere or if we let you loose, however unlikely that may be, whenever anyone sees you we want there to be no doubt that we were the ones to do it."

He picked up and the now cherry-red branding iron, personalised with their gang insignia. I tried to pull away but both the rusty restraints and the two other men kept me from getting away.

"No, no," I pleaded, incapable of saying anything else. "No, n-NOOO!" The brand held against the skin on my back ribs. The pain was unbelievable and the smell of burning flesh made me nauseous. After what felt like an eternity the brand was taken away and I just collapsed back to the concrete floor. Laughter, followed by a slamming door finally announced the men leaving the room.

"Goddess," Selaen gasped. "And you say that this is only the second worst thing they did to you?"

"Physically," I corrected, almost automatically. "What they did later was worse." I pulled up shirt showing the brand mark on my stomach. "That's the brand. I had the gang symbol removed but I kept the burn mark. There are several more on my back." I lowered the shirt and this time pulled down on my collar and showed her the jagged circular scar on my shoulder. "That was the worst thing they did to me physically."

Gaz and Baldy were back, this time accompanied by random thug number four, six and seven. I didn't know any of them, at least not by name. If they had done time, which was more than likely, then they had managed to avoid me wherever I had been. They were all standing around grinning like crazy fools. That was never a good sign. That usually meant that the worst beatings or slashings were on the way. At least they hadn't brought the welder and the brand.

"You know," Gaz began in that sadistically conversational tone, "you've been here for a while now. We've got you with the branding iron a bunch of times now and we were getting a little bored so we decided to try something a little new."

He looked over my shoulder at the thug behind me. All I heard was a grunt of effort and suddenly pain forced me to bellow like I hadn't done since I was place here. My arm felt as if it was being torn off. I looked and saw the back end of a hook hanging out the front of my shoulder, the tip visible out the back in the edge of my peripheral vision.

Gaz said something but I didn't hear him. There was a roaring in my ears and I hadn't felt such intense pain ever before. Not even the branding had hurt like this.

Eventually I stopped screaming and reverted to pained grunts and breathing, trying to fight against the pain. It was all the vain as the thug yanked on it, making me yell again. I quietened down again and they yanked it. This time my scream was less forceful as my nerves seemed to be adjusting enough to let me be aware of the room again.

"Good," Gaz said, squatting in front of me. "I see that you are already fighting it. That's good." He leaned in right close. "That means that we can fight back too."

The next part of my life, what felt like days, was full of inescapable agony as they unclipped the chain and dragged me around the room by the hook. Every time it moved I thought it was going to tear my arm off or at least snap my bones or pull out a muscle. The hole became wider the more it was pulled in different directions.

Eventually they got bored when I was too weak to even scream any more. They yanked out the hook and reattached the chain to my cuffs.

"Don't want him to get an infection from that," Baldy said somewhere in the background. I was having trouble focussing.

"True, get the vinegar."

My brain was too damaged to realise what that meant in that moment. The next thing I knew was burning that seemed to travel through my whole body as they poured liquid all over me. It finally all became too much because I don't remember them leaving. My guess is that I passed out.

Selaen was trying valiantly to keep her professional calm demeanour but her face had paled considerably.

"That is barbaric," she said, her voice oddly hoarse. "Only the worst batarian slavers would do something like that."

I shook my head. "The mongrels didn't even stop me getting infection. After a while I noticed that everything was looking funny and I felt hot. I had thought that they had drugged me again but I went to sleep and woke up with an IV drip in my arm. They had apparently watched vids to learn how to place it. My arm had more than a few jabs for them to get it right. I still have no idea where they got the antibiotics from though. Probably did a raid from a hospital for their own drugs."

This therapy session was making me feel really unsettled now. The memories were vivid and it almost felt as if I was going through the experiences all over again. I hated it immensely. I just wanted to get out.

"Brock, please look at me," Selaen said soothingly. I look at her. Her face is paler than normal but she schooled it into a calm, patient expression. Her decades of dealing with slaves must have really helped her to be able to deal with the worst things in the galaxy.

"I want you to close your eyes and focus on my voice," she continued. I reluctantly obeyed. "That's right. Focus on my voice. You are safe here. There is nothing here that will hurt you. You have a friend right outside who is waiting for you, who is willing to comfort you if you need it. Now take a deep breath, nice and slow." I inhaled slowly and let it out. Whatever magic this was, it was helping to take away my agitation; helping me to calm down.

"Good, now open your eyes."

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

"I know that you are hurting by having to relive your trauma," she said, her tone measured and professional. "I know that it will be for the best if we continue and try to get everything out so that you don't leave without feeling some level of closure. Do you think you can do that?"

I hesitate for a long moment, then slowly nod.

"Good. Well, take a moment, then when you are ready, please continue."

I let out a sigh, trying to settle my nerves for the part that I am about to get into. The part that always gives me the worst nightmares.

The lights in the hallway flickered on, showing as a slit of white under the door. No music was being played. They hadn't played music to wake me up for a long time now. I don't know why they stopped. Maybe they were bored of it. Maybe they had almost gotten caught. The sounds of multiple footsteps were approaching. Something was different; one of the sets of footsteps was faster than the rest. Like they were shorter.

The door opened up and the brightness that came into the room blinded me. Before my eyes could adjust to the sudden light, I heard a voice that froze my blood instantly.

"Daddy?"

Selaen's face broke her perfectly calm expression and she looked horrified for only an instant before her practiced mask came back. "They brought your child to see you?" she asked. Her voice almost sounded… hopeful.

I shook my head violently, trying to shake the images away from what happened next. I didn't want to see it. I just wanted this to be over with, as quickly as possible.

"No," I said, my voice hoarse as I fought back tears. "Not to see me. For me to see him."

A long pause came as I fought against the mental images that had been prevalent through my earlier explanations. She could make me tell her, but I refused to see it again.

"They brought him into the room. Then they tortured him while I watched," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. I was fighting to get the words out as my head tried to betray me and make me live those scenes again, anger and sickness clashing inside my stomach violently. "Then, when they were done, the killed him in front of me and left his body in the cell."

A tear leaked out and ran a warm trail down my face. "I never felt so helpless as I did hearing my son screaming for me, while I was bolted to the floor and unable to help him. They damn near cut him in half when they killed him. And I felt like the world's biggest failure, almost like I let it happen because I couldn't stop it."

A long pause came as I furiously wiped my eyes, trying to prevent any more tears from coming out. I heard a sniffle come from Selaen. I didn't look up at her. I couldn't. Just talking about this had drained me more than I would have ever expected. I just sat hunched over on my chair.

"What happened then?" Selaen's voice came out slightly strained.

I let out a sigh. "I gave up," I said honestly. "I just lay there on the floor and wanted to die. They came into the room and I didn't move. They kicked me and hit me to get a response and I didn't even flinch. I couldn't look at Jason's body. I just waited for death. I hoped to die. They tried to make me eat and drink and they almost choked me because I wouldn't swallow. I was ready to die and join Jason.

"Then, I heard one of them making a joke about it. About Jason's death. From then on I knew that I wanted to get out so that I could punish them. I felt a rage that I hadn't felt in years, only far more intense. So I started to eat and drink again, even when they went back to drugging my food. And then came a moment that I hadn't expected at all

"They brought my wife in."

"Your wife?" Selaen asked, trepidation filling her voice. "They killed her too?"

I shook my head. "No, they didn't. She admitted to being in on it. On having me captured, on my torture. She had known about it."

"Why?" Selaen asked, her tone full of morbid curiosity.

I shrugged. "I don't know," I admitted. "I knew that we had stopped loving each other a long time before and I knew that she had never fully recovered after Jason was born. I've heard stories about mothers reaching a breaking point and killing their own children but I never found out all of the reasons why. She admitted that she had gotten into taking drugs before the end and that the gang that had captured me were her suppliers but that was it.

"So anyway, she starts coming into the cell more regularly and mocking me, spitting on me. Then she starts to have sex with the gang members in front of me. While I was chained to the floor in a room with our dead son rotting a few feet away she would let the gang members have their way with her over and over again. A lot of the time there was more than one at a time. No explanation, just doing it.

"It finally came to a head one day, after she had sex with Baldy, she walked over to me, spat in my face as I stood there as best as I could and then she said, and I don't think I will ever forget the words: 'I can see why Jason turned out so pathetic.'

"I snapped at that. It set me off into a full blown rage. I broke out of my cuffs and head-butted her, then I kicked Baldy in the balls and stole his knife. Then I went through the building and disabled every single person in there."

"Wait," Selaen interrupted me. "How did you manage to escape?"

I finally looked her in the eye. "How much do you know about human physiology?" I asked.

She shrugged herself. "Admittedly not a great deal," she replied.

I gave a twisted bittersweet smile. "Did you know that human stomach acid is corrosive enough to dissolve steel?"

She looked alarmed. "You cut your stomach open somehow?"

I shook my head. "No nothing like that," I said, actually feeling that even though this was a weird conversation to have, after the previous parts of my session, it was far more normal. "You see, when a human vomits, part of that vomit actually contains stomach acid. Now, it's only a very small amount. I read somewhere that out of the average human regurgitation only 0.5% was actually stomach acid. That percentage went up if there was less food or liquids in the stomach to absorb or dilute it, but not drastically. Still, when my food was being tampered with and I was being fed things that would make me vomit…" I let the sentence hang.

"Don't get me wrong, it wasn't something that happened from Jason. I actually got the idea for it when I was still in the early days and they had my hands cuffed to the roof, when they would punch me in the stomach after feeding me. When they changed it so that my hands were bolted to the floor, it meant that I was finally able to do it. So every time I threw up, I just aimed it at my hands and made sure the cuffs got a good coating.

"Now, 0.5% doesn't do much on its own. But when that happens nearly every day for months, and sometimes multiple times a day, it adds up. The metal became corroded and started to rust as the acid did its job. I specifically tried to get it on the inside metal of the hand cuffs, which is harder than you'd think, to try and wear it away where it would be less likely to be spotted. Combine that with the fact that after nine months of forced starvation and a lack of exercise and I had become a lot skinnier, including my wrists. Much of my muscle had worn away too. The only reason I was able to take them all out was surprise and the adrenaline that was flooding through me which kept me going.

"I had been afraid that they would see it and change the handcuffs but I guess they were overconfident and never looked. The only time they touched my restraints was when they undid the chain for the butcher's hook thing and put it back on. My hands were cuffed the entire time and they didn't notice it. It also meant they didn't notice when the handcuffs became a lot looser through weight-loss and the very slow work of the stomach acid.

"So after Felicity said that about Jason, I just snapped. I lost all control of the rage that had been building for a while. I don't know how long but I think it was have been weeks from when I first heard them joke about Jason's death. I pulled hard on the cuffs and, even with them being looser, I think I broke a bone in each hand and the rusty insides basically scraped away the skin of my hands." I raised my wrists to show her the jagged scars that bore proof to my words. "I almost degloved myself.

"When it was all over, they were dead. All of them. I had killed them and if they hadn't died immediately, I took my time. I carved pieces of their flesh like they had done to me. I cut off ears, cut out eyes, stabbed tongues. I saved Felicity for last." My voice caught and I felt the shame again. It was the same shame that I had felt sitting in the dungeon when I had first been visited by Manuel.

"When it was over, I felt sick with myself. I was disgusted."

"I can understand how doing that to them may have been distressing…" the therapist started.

"No," I cut her off, scenes of the bloodshed floating before my eyes. "I wasn't disgusted because of what I had done. I was disgusted with myself because I loved doing it to them! It filled me with joy to make their pain last, to make them feel a small part of what they put me through. I was the happiest I had been in nine months when I was able to cut them to pieces."

I let out a huge sigh and buried my face in my hands. "When it was over I was disgusted with myself for having enjoyed it so much. And I was disgusted because I wanted to do it again."

I looked up at her, my expression turned pleading. "I don't think I am a bad guy. I always tried to do the right thing by everyone. Even the prisoners. I never made life more difficult for them than it needed to be. But good guys don't enjoy mutilating people the way that I did. It doesn't fill them with happiness the way that I was filled."

I looked back down, hanging my head as I felt the shame flood through me. "I don't think I was wrong to kill them. I don't regret that at all. But what I did and how much I enjoyed doing it… I was afraid that there was no forgiveness for that."

That was it. I had finally run out of words to say. I was exhausted. I was drained physically and emotionally from reliving the darkest moments of my life, seeing flashes of those tortures that were forced upon me. It sunk deep into my bones. I just wanted to sleep.

"I see," Selaen said after a long moment. "I must say that I am amazed, Brock. Your story is a singularly horrible one. I have been a counsellor for nearly two hundred years to many different people who had suffered tragedy. There are very few that could say that they had suffered as you did. There have been slaves that have been forced to receive horrible abuse and who were forced to watch family die but not all that many of them. It tends to cut into the slaver's profits. But every time that someone has suffered as you, I must say that none of them would be able to have started a company and function on a day to day level as you have. I take it you still have nightmares, from what Aleria has told me?"

I just nod, not even bothering to look up.

"That is normal. I would expect you to have them for a while. It is entirely likely that they may continue for years, though they will become less frequent. That has already started from when you first talked to Aleria. As for the joy and the guilt that you felt: the joy, I believe, is easily explainable. These people had punished you and your child. It was not something as quick as death, it was protracted torture. You had your power taken from you. As you did that back to them, you felt your power returning. You were getting retribution for your treatment and that of your son. Your inner mind was acknowledging that you had conquered your situation and felt justified in your response. The guilt, again I believe, is from your conscience. You know that people ought not to do that sort of torture to others. That guilt is what would stop you from just going out and doing that to every person who offends you. That guilt is what means you are completely normal and suitable for functioning in civilised society. I would be far more concerned if all you had felt was the joy of torturing. But your conscience recognised that as an inhumane act and is what prevents you from repeating it. Appreciate that guilt but don't let it destroy you."

I nod, feeling a spark of something akin to relief. As worn out as this had made me, I felt as she had told me I would feel at the start; empty. A lot of the darkness I had been carrying felt like it had been purged. Purged rather forcefully but purged nonetheless. Now, maybe I could fill that darkness with light.

Then I remembered where I was and what I was going to be doing in the next few years. Ok, maybe mostly filled with light.

We finished up after that, seeing as there was nothing really left to say. Selaen offered her services to me any time that I felt the need to talk about things some more and I thanked her for the offer.

When I walked out of the office I was quickly embraced by a concerned Aleria.

"Are you ok?" she asked. "Things didn't look so good there for a while."

I shook my head slightly, feeling emotionally drained. "That was heavier than I wanted it to be." I extracted myself from her grip. "I am going to go back to the hotel. I think that is enough for the day. You go have fun. Enjoy your shore leave. I will call you when I am ready."

She looked conflicted, like she wanted to ignore me. I reached up and cupped her cheek. She leant into it slightly. "It's alright," I said. "I just need some time after that."

Her lips compressed into a thin line but she nodded and gave me another hug.

I looked over her head at Malitae. For the first time she wasn't glaring at me with any hostility. She was staring at me as if I was an unknown alien. At this rate I am not sure which one was better. I had no idea what she was going to tell Tevos after today.

"I am staying at the Hotel Allure near the Presidium in Bachjret Ward. I don't care what you do, I am going back there and going to rest. Do whatever makes you feel like you are obeying Tevos's orders. I will see you tomorrow."

With that, I left the group of asari and headed back to the nearest aircar stand. I just needed some rest.

A/N Please Follow/Favourite/Review as you please.