(This post is way longer than I intended, but I had this idea and it kind of grew from there... I'll try to keep it shorter next time.)
Dahlia Shepard put down her datapad and rubbed her eyes. It was almost noon on a sunny Vancouver day, the light streaming in through the large apartment window. She turned and stared forlornly out the window, gazing out at the other buildings outside.
It had been another restless night. Increasingly over the past six months she had been having the same recurring dream. Dressed in her armor, she found herself in a dark forest shrouded in a thick mist. She thought she could see shapes moving about, dark apparitions that walked amidst the trees. She ran toward them, but found only shadows.
And the wispering. In her dream, the voices of the dead called out to her, a haunting chorus of the lives long lost. Of the lives she had failed to save.
Over six months ago, a mysterious race called the Collectors had been abducting human colonies. With the help of Cerberus -- a despised pro-human terrorist group -- Dahlia recruited a small team and traveled through the Omega-4 relay in a desperate attempt to stop the Collectors. They succeeded, but at heavy price. Along with the Normandy-SR2's pilot, Jeff "Joker" Moreau, only Dahlia and three members of her squad made it back alive. Over half her squad and the entire Normandy crew died during the attempt. Including Jacob.
Dahlia pressed her fingers tightly over her forehead. Remembering Jacob hurt the worst. Before they had left for the Omega-4 relay, she and Jacob had shared a special moment. She thought she had found the one person in the galaxy who understood her best, who she could spend the rest of her life with. But it was not meant to be. Jacob had died during the assault on the Collector Base. It felt like her life had ripped apart.
Not wanting to relive that dark moment, she picked up the datapad again. She looked at the black screen for a moment, at her reflection. She could make out her brown skin, and her blach hair tied up in bun. Her soft brown eyes stared back at her.
Enough!
She turned the datapad back on. Another Alliance military report. As she read it, she wondered if the Alliance had given her the full report, or if they had given her a sanitized version of the report.
She was under house arrest at an Alliance building, which was highly unusual considering the charges against her. She suspected someone or some high-ranking people had managed to pull some strings to prevent her from being thrown into one of several Alliance military prisons. She knew Captain David Anderson had vouched for her on several occassions. She heard rumors that Admiral Stephen Hackett may have been involved as well.
Fed up with the report, she stood up and walked to the window. Outside, she saw a little boy, probably no older than 10, running around on a small patch of grass. Arms outstretched, he held a small model of an Alliance fighter. He looked like he was flying along with it.
Dahlia smiled. A small pang of regret touched her. She never had much of childhood. Orphaned at a young age, she ran around with gangs in the streets until she somehow, miraculously, ended up joining the Alliance military where she found what she had been missing: purpose.
Years later, when stationed at a colony on Elysium, pirates attacked. With a small group of dedicated colonists, Dahlia managed to hold the attackers off long enough for the Alliance military to arrive. The Alliance and colonists called a hero. She did not feel like a hero. For every colonist she managed to save, one colonist was lost to slavery or death because she could not get to them in time. She knew it was not her fault -- she and her team were outmanned and outgunned -- but it still felt like a loss.
Dahlia heard the apartment door open and she turned toward the sound. It was her constant shadow, a bull of a man named James Vega, a Lieutenant in the Alliance military. She could not go anywhere without him following her around. A mass of muscle and tattoos, James Vega always seemed to be upbeat and jovial, but he could also be deadly serious when needed.
James entered and saluted. "Commander."
"You're not supposed to call me that anymore, James." The Alliance had stripped her of her rank soon after her arrest.
"Not supposed to salute you either. We gotta go. The defense committee wants to see you." The defense committee had been meeting with her several times during the length of her incarceration. They questioned her about Cerberus. She told them all she knew about the Reapers, a race of sentient starships that destroy organic life every 50,000 years. If only she were lying...
"Sounds important." Dahlia threw the datapad on the bed. The report would have to wait.
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