My therapist insists I keep a journal. This format appears to be acceptable. Albinus Shepard, son of Mindoir-- for whatever that title is worth now-- and current ward of the Systems Alliance.
(Pre-Game writing project) (M!Shep, Colonist/?) (AU) (OCs involved)
Not on Earth, no-- Most cultures that still celebrate the day, whether on Earth or beyond, do it on the 24th. Our seasons were close to Earth's, but not quite the same: Summer was much longer, and as such the āmidsummerā date (and the summer solstice) would occur around late May and early June this year. To make it simpler for everyone, it was decided to celebrate on June 1st. Every year the date changed, of course-- Mindoir's years don't quite match up with Earth years, as our years incorporate an extra seventeen days, which makes planning holidays far more complicated than they need to be. (Fitting in our new year with Earth's new year and the Chinese new year was always entertaining.)
The holiday is always well timed: The corn harvest is over (thank every power that may be), and the wet season begins shortly after, which means we get to look forward to days spent inside trying to avoid drowning. The growing season is year round, you don't really have a winter until you get closer to the poles, so we alternated crops depending on the wet and dry seasons. Dry, corn, with wheat every few years to turn the soil. Wet, coffee and rice.
With everything still so dry, the traditional midsummer celebration, which involves bonfires and fireworks, is incredibly dangerous-- So, naturally, we went ahead and did it anyway, and I'm fairly certain we only nearly burned the forest down twice in my lifetime. There was always a large fire in the middle of town with fireworks and vendors selling all kinds of foods, and families would have bonfires in their backyards where the adults would sit around and eat and talk and their kids would jump over the fire and shoot fireworks off and generally just tempt burns all night. Much later at night, once the parents had finally retreated to bed, we would go out into the forest to the river, and use the large rocks there to construct fire pits to start our own fires once again. We would swim if the river was high enough, and drink and smoke whether it was high enough or not, and set off whatever fireworks we hadn't yet set off in town. How we never managed to drown or otherwise kill ourselves is a mystery I doubt I'll ever solve.
I'm not writing this out of nostalgia-- Honestly, I don't miss the burns. I'm writing it because anything is better to think about than life in this ward. The sheer routine here is starting to get on my nerves. Wake up, take your pills, breakfast with the other patients who are fascinating to watch but a pain to try to speak to-- which is unfortunate, because Kitt's trying socialization therapy with me, which means I have to deal with groups of these nutcases. Everyone is so... trusting. Open. They actually like talking about their issues! The guy who doesn't feel better until he's destroying something: his house, his relationships, himself. The woman dealing with bipolar disorder, some days smiling and effervescent and speaking with her squeaky voice that drives me up walls, other days flat and unsmiling and giving me dirty looks if I watch her too openly for too long. The woman who needs attention and can only get it through increasingly reckless stunts-- her, her I like. She's easy to wind up, and once you get her going you can derail the entire session quick enough. The man who's convinced he's being watched, who keeps smiling sadly and shaking his head and bemoaning our ignorance toward this power that's controlling our every move. The soldier with PTSD who watches me far too closely.
The list goes on and on. There are more people in this ward than I'd expect. A lot of them have stress related issues. That's less surprising.
I really hate these group therapies. I don't want to talk to them any more than I want to talk to you, doctor. And they keep trying to call me Al. I abhor Al. Al is a really unfortunate, really uncreative nickname, and reckless keeps calling me it, probably to get even for me setting her off all the time.
Dr. Rhodes, how much longer am I going to have to tolerate this? Look at this: Four days and I'm already whining. Do you reallyĀ want to see how much I can complain in a week's time?
Giving in, mon sembable? Regrettable-- where's that fighting spirit that earned you your Holy Book? I have no interest in listening to the people who had me committed like some sort of madman. I'll bide my time here, uphold whatever pretense I need to to appear to be ārecovering,ā and then get out as soon as humanly possible.
Kitt's just trying to do her job? Slavers just try to do their job. Occupation isn't an excuse.
How terribly immature would it be on my part to type āHAHAHA I WINā?
I'm still a minor, I believe I can get away with it, so: HAHAHA I WIN.
The Systems Alliance laws on rights of minor mental patients areāwere non-existent, and as such the court had no choice but to adjust the current laws for adults to my age. The current law only allows for involuntary commitment for a maximum of two weeks, after which the patient must be either transported back to their country or colony of origin for continued treatment, or prove that they are stable enough to end the need for involuntary commitment, even if that does result in placement in a less secure ward. Furthermore-- and this is my favorite part-- I always had the right to legal counsel at that first hearing that resulted in the involuntary commitment order and could have challenged it, as well as the second hearing that resulted in the extension past the first 72 hours.
Strange how no one mentioned that to me.
Of course, being a minor, most of this information would have been given to my legal guardian, which, as my parents are quite dead at the moment, would have to be appointed to me by the court. Which they never did as I was originally taken in as a ward of that court, and thus that status was never changed thanks largely to the confusion the Mindoir committee and my own commitment order by two different psychologists caused. Naturally, they had to cover that oversight right quick, and a social worker has been assigned to be my legal guardian for now, a Dr. Pravin Rhodes. Holds a doctorate in social work, apparently has published several monographs about evolving social roles in newly established colonies and others on developing human-alien relationships in the mass effect age. He's a decent, educated fellow, soft spoken with a thick English accent, wears clothes that are terribly out of date and seems completely oblivious to that fact.
He also knows quite a bit about the laws concerning involuntary commitment for a man who's life work doesn't seem to come close to abnormal psychology. It wasn't difficult to convince him that I was quite sane-- or, well, sane enough that I don't warrant involuntary commitment and treatment. Both yours and Yorkey's testimony that I was still suffering from some acute stress disorder and possibly a brief psychotic episode brought on by the stress managed to sway him into asking that I still be held in an open ward at the psych house.
So that's where I am now. The best part of the deal is that I was allowed my omni-tool back-- I have a few things I need to check up on now that I'm not limited to that damn datapad. I still am not allowed anything that can begin to resemble a weapon. Believe it or not, I have no desire to attack at least half of the people around me, and only occasionally think of hanging myself off the corners of these doors.
For the record, doctor: That was a joke.
I'm not currently homicidal or suicidal.
Please calm down.
Dr. Rhodes spoke to me after the hearing that got me moved here, told me he believed I would normally be fine outside of the psych ward, but between the anti psychotics I've been on and the current maelstrom of laws I've been placed in the middle of, it'd be for the best if I cooled my heels in the open ward for a while and did my best to convince the psychologists that I was fine. Then, he promised, he'd sort out the issues concerning possible placement for me away from the station (he did not say foster care, interestingly enough) as well as (and he broached this topic lightly) what could be done about the estates and any assets I inherited from my parents after their deaths.
I would mention Seneca now, but that would probably only complicate things further.
For now, I'll take his advice and work more on looking like the innocent flower, and less on being the snake beneath it.
No need to justify yourself to me-- I fully endorse any means to get even with the doctors here.
Although I do suggest you drop the āthou shall notā and lie if she specifically asks about the swallowing. If anyone finds out you're not taking the medication as directed, the nurses will check your mouth after the rounds to see if you did swallow them. Or evenĀ turn back to the shots on occasion.
I now endure both indignities.
Good luck. Kitt isn'tĀ quite as stupid as she looks.
No answer today on your holy book, you were not allowed to eat in the cafeteria, and-- well, she, at least, never gave an answer to your request to keep your drawing supplies, so technically they did not deceive you there. Watch what others say, mon semblable, or don't say for that matter. (You'll have to thank Kitt for adding that transcript to your journal. Saves me the trouble of having to find it through another means.)
Really, is it deceit if you lie to avoid having something forced upon you beyond your will? I'm sure your god will understand. Don't waste your time feeling guilty.
She certainly does not feel guilty about what she does to you.
Doctor, I remember. I didn't just attack a slaver; I killed him.
Valerija and I had been cutting through an alley, and there had been a Batarian taking care of his business alone. We all but ran over him when we turned a corner-- cowardice, perhaps, stopped him from venturing deeper into the space. His mistake. Before he could even get his gun, I had been on him. I cut his throat, doctor. I've never done that before, so I was naturally clumsy. It wasn't one clean cut, but several cuts before I got it right. Kind of like sawing.
Batarians, like humans, have a multitude of essential arteries in their neck, I learned. Gods, he bled everywhere.
You know what the best part is, doctor? I know he isn't the only one I killed. He can't be, because I remember other moments that felt like it, but... I've always known I killed on Mindoir, but the specifics had eluded me. They're just starting to come back.
We both know I was covered in blood when the marines found me, some of it mine from that graze on my leg and theĀ legion of cuts on my face, and some of it was Valerija's from trying to stop her bleeding, but not all of it came from the two of us. And I remember cleaning that knife repeatedly. That knife had been my mother's-- I'm sure both my parents took the guns, because they weren't in the house when I looked for them. Just my mother's mean combat knife. In a gun fight, they wouldn't have thought to take it.
At least one of those kills are mine. I hope I remember more. I hope I remember five.
Ira furor brevis est, and you assume I wanted to stop myself from hitting that senator. Though this be madness, there is method in't-- if I can hide behind said insanity to accomplish something inexcusable sane, then I will do so. It's no fun being mad if you can't abuse it.
But try me, hypocrite lecteur. I haven't shut you out yet... although it seems your doctor may yet do so for me.
Mad? Me? Tu quoque-- Yet I don't doubt it. I am, as you just said, reveling in it, after all.
Hallucinating, are we? I haven't spoken a word to you. I wouldn't know you even exist except for my journal showing me your entries. So you can add another symptom to talk to your doctor about in the morning. Perhaps you shouldn't be taken off that medication of yours. Would hate to have an episode, I hear they can be pretty violent.
I have no interest in cooperating with your delusions. Say something worth listening to and maybe I'll pay attention-- None of this mad babble of yours, either.
Just so adorable. Really cute. You think this is funny? So you can somehow see my entries and you think it's a capital endeavor to write your own. I'm not impressed. This network is so full of holes, I can't be expected to hide these entries from everyone with the technological savvy above your average idiot in office. Even locked, I know you'll find this. I can certainly find yours.
Look, stop it, whoever you are. I don't know if you're just some delusional nutcase or a class-A asshole or even both, but I'm really in no mood to entertain you. You weren't there, you don't know my Cai, and everyone knows the Batarians resort to drugging their slaves, so that little detail really is impressing no one.
I don't know why your entries keep appearing in my journal, but I'll figure it out once the drugs stop making everything unbelievably difficult. Until then, this is your only warning.
Captain Ryder came back, again with the projection, again with you behind her, carrying out your sacred duty to be present at all our meetings. I would thank you for easing up on the shots, but it seems silly to thank the hand that slaps you for not hitting you again. (Besides, the round of pills the nurses watch me take three times a day is hardly an improvement.) Again, the Captain set up the projection, and asked me if I had thought about her question from the day before. Guess she doesn't read this, then. I told her my answer, and she just accepted it. She didn't apologize for her mistakes, didn't look disgusted by how radical an action would have been, she just accepted it.
She recounted what I had told her about the forest and how my friends and I had managed to make it back into the town. She wanted to know what I did from there, as well as rough time estimates.
You pointed out that I didn't have to answer if I didn't want to. I ignored you.
I guess the three of us had sat in the woods for about four hours before we had been spotted, and then it had taken us two more hours of avoiding groups of slavers and crawling through the farms to make it back to the edges of the city. Six hours. From there, time gets a little harder to judge, because we would spend a lot of time hiding in one spot, broken up by periods where we moved to a new hiding place. I guess it was about three hours later, around the time when the Einstein arrived and when the ground forces arrived (she informed me there had been a little under an hour's discrepancy between the two) when we were spotted for the first time and when Cai was killed.
The captain interrupted for a moment, gave me one of the stripped down models of omni-tool from her bag, showed me how to interface with the projector and asked me to give estimates for location as well. I figure we were in the eastern parts of the city, around where all our homes had been, because Cai died three blocks from his house, and Valerija and I wound up losing our pursuers because we knew the area very well, and because we were able to get into my home. I showed all of this on the projection.
We hid inside there for another four hours or so, but couldn't stay because the Batarians had begun setting entire blocks on fire. From here, we decided to play into their strategy, going deeper into the city before veering north, toward where the bulk of their forces had been instead of south, toward the Alliance forces. I had predicted that they would assume we'd try to go toward the friendlies, not the other away around, and I was right. Mostly. Going was so slow, since we had to stop and hide often. Once north a bit, we started getting a bit too close to their forces, and since it was late afternoon by this time, Valerija and I hid inside a dumpster until nightfall. Night falls around eight, and I guess we were traveling for about two hours on the streets, so we must have spent at least four hours in the dumpster. We would have stayed, except the sounds of the fighting getting closer were making us nervous, so we got out and tried going east, back toward the forest.
Wrong thing to do. A sizable force had gathered to the east and were setting ambushes for the marines, and we managed to walk into one. Well, not exactly-- we just managed to walk into the Batarians setting the ambush. They fired on us, and we ran again, hiding out in a store further north and further in their controlled area. We both got hurt that time, me getting that little scratch on my leg and Valerija receiving a round in the back.
I quickly lost track of time after that, as I spent all night trying to find anything to help Valerija, so I was on my own. I managed to mostly stop her bleeding, but she was so exhausted from the running and the wound that I knew leaving the store wouldn't be a choice for her. She hid in the back room of the store, behind a bunch of crates, and I stupidly went out to try to make it to the emergency medical center on the hope that there might be anything available that would be better than the basic first aid kit we found in the store. I'm not sure what I planned to do with it once I found the supplies, since I knew nothing of first aid beyond stopping the bleeding and finding medical attention, but it was a plan at the time and I was intent on sticking to it.
Couldn't go east, south or north, so I really didn't have too many options open to me. I went deeper into the town, knowing the medical center was a few blocks from the space port. I traveled easier and faster on my own, but I still had to be careful, so it was nearly morning by the time I came across the first group of slaves. I couldn't go around them, so I wound up hiding and playing dead among a bunch of trash and debris of a burned out building and just watching what they did until well after the sun came up. (Sunrise was six am, so that set my time estimates back up.) A lot of the slaves were herded to the space port a few blocks over, but many more were killed, their bodies strewn about for the marines to find.
I arrived in time to see my mother's execution.
Didn't mention that then, but I did. I know she knew I was there-- there was a moment when I'm sure we made eye contact before she looked away. I think a couple of the slaves noticed me, but they never said anything. My mother, she faced her death with a lot of courage. It's such a stupid thing, but she never begged or pleaded like a lot of the executed did. She just realized that resistance was futile and she refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her beg. I would honestly rather her be alive than know she died like that, but maybe it'll be some comfort some day, knowing that she didn't cry when the Batarian's walked down the line and put a bullet through her skull.
That was such a bullshit sentence, I don't even know what to do with it.
After the group had finally dispersed, I realized the fighting had drawn too close and I wouldn't be able to make it to the medical center. I had to back off quite a bit, but the streets got easier to navigate for a while. I had foolishly started to have some hope.
Then I ran into the wall of burning buildings. The Batarians had set a lot of fires as they lost ground, and a lot of the east side was up in flames by the time I returned to it. The sun was fully overhead, so I guess it was about noon when I finally made it back to the store where I had left Valerija. Or, well, what was left of the store. The entire block was on fire, and I couldn't even begin to get close to try to find my friend. At least Cai died running with us-- Valerija died alone.
I think it was about that time where I just began wandering. I had no plan in mind except try to stay alive, and the streets were pretty much clear of the living on the east end. There were dead bodies, human and batarian mostly, though there were a lot of those vorcha, just lying where they fell, and blown out buildings and skycars smoldering in the middle of the street and glass and blood everywhere. I don't remember much of what I did here, only that eventually I stumbled into a squad of marines that demanded I identify myself. Apparently I went at the first marine with my knife, but I was too exhausted to put up much of a fight and he subdued me relatively easily.
IĀ don't remember much after that. I don't remember being on the Einstein at all, though the captain says I was. I don't remember getting all those stitches, either.
I don't even remember a lot of what's written in these entries, to be honest. Whatever happened in those days between the 31st and the 5th are pretty much gone.
This is... unsettling.
We stood in silence, the Captain looking over the haphazard map my experience on Mindoir produced, me just trying to remember what I could. At some point, she asked me if I could remember when I attacked my first slaver.
Something is wrong with my journal, and without my omni-tool it'll take hours to figure out what, and I don't have the ability to focus for that long quite yet. The only reason I'm even typing this is so that I'll remember in a few hours. Damn that woman and her drugs, damn her to hell. I hate, I abhor, I resent having to work this hard to remember the simplest of thoughts.
I'll just hide the errant journal entries that come up and try to figure out what's up later. With how terrible the network is in the civilian sectors of this station, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just some major glitch that's causing me to see other journal entries.
If I'm right, it completely destroys the notion of privacy for the patients here. Not that we really have any privacy. Here's looking at you, nurse who continually checks up on me. I'm psychotic, not helpless. Perhaps I'll have another "episode" to remindĀ you of that.
Captain Ryder came back, as promised, a bag over one shoulder and you over the other, looking about as happy as youĀ did yesterday.
She proceeded to set up a projector in the middle of the room and interface it with her omni-tool, bringing up a projection of Nouveau Roma. You turned the lights back on, started objecting-- again. I've said my piece to you, but for the sake of it being present in these journals every time you and your superiors pour over them:
You're a joke of a psychologist, and I will never understand how you managed to graduate with all those degrees decorating your desk, let alone be assigned to my case. I have no interest in cooperating with you, now or in the future, and that you were so quick, so willing to resort to involuntary medication despite my MANY PROTESTS against any form of medication has managed to severely damage my faith in therapy as a whole. Am I damaged? Yes. Would I like to talk about it? No. Do I want your help with any of this? No. Absolutely not. In fact, I'd really appreciate it if you stop trying to talk to me at all, because I have nothing left to say to you.
Now then.
The Captain turned out the lights again and continued on. She pointed out key facts about our capital, size of twenty square miles, the planned, gridded layout, the docking bay near the center of the colony, the forest to the east, the buffer zone between the colony and the forest, and the farmland spreading out north, west and south. Then, several red ships appeared, circling the colony, with the two of the three largest landing to the north and west, the last landing in the port in the center.
I corrected her; the ships came low, over the forest, not straight down where our radar would have spotted them. She looked at me with this expression that, irritatingly, I still cannot place, and then corrected the simulation, asking me if it looked right. It did, and she continued. The slavers (she did not say Batarians) were methodical; a large force immediately took the center of the town, firing artillery on many of the larger buildings clustered around the space port to quickly get those segments of the population out of the way, as well as destroying certain administrative structures and both our emergency medical center and armory. Meanwhile, a smaller segment covered the south and east while the bulk of the forces combed the city from the west to the east and the north to the south simultaneously, killing anyone who resisted or was too young to come on their own and rounding up those who came voluntarily and bringing them toward the space port. Occasionally, buildings were bombed or set on fire, seemingly random in the destruction. To destroy morale, she hypothesized. It certainly worked.
She asked me again if this was accurate. I couldn't tell her much-- I had been in the forest with Cai and Valerija, keeping our distance, and thus could only tell her what I saw of the smaller forces to the east. I told her about the kill zones the Batarians set up, wherein they predictably slaughtered anyone who entered them. I told her how most didn't try to cross it after the first failed mass breakout: A mixed group of adults and children had made a break for it, the adults doing everything they could to draw attention to themselves and the children keeping low, trying to run for the woods.
I didn't mention that my father had been apart of the group of adults that had gone ahead at a different point, one of many distraction groups. It had been a futile and stupid effort, anyway. The slavers fired artillery down on them, and went through the bodies after, shooting any that appeared anything less than completely mangled.
Swiftly moving on. The slaver's operation had gone on for eight hours before the SSV Einstein arrived. When they finally made it, their fighters were able to quickly destroy the rag-tag collection of ships in orbit around Mindoir, and the Captain elected to send her ground force to take the town back, knowing that the three carriers on the ground would likely be full of prisoners and thus they couldn't risk destroying them. The ground teams landed south of Nouveau Roma, and tried to storm it, hoping to break through their weakest front, but again, the presence of slaves stopped them in their tracks. It was made worseĀ when the Batarians began publicly executing slaves in front of the marines, letting groups āescapeā toward them only to be mowed down. Destroying morale. Effective here, too.
Finally, the Captain had to adjust, and thus ordered fighters to begin attacking around the edges of the city where she presumed the humans living within had already been removed toward the center, and with the assistance of the ground forces, slowly began forcing the Batarians to move closer to the heart of the city. It was during this time the two carriers stationed to the north and west took off and were allowed to flee with whatever prisoners they had managed to grab-- she refused to order them fired upon. The Batarians, always clever, blocked off streets to slow the marines progress, trying to buy time to load as many of the slaves onto the main carrier in the center of the colony. The Captain used this āboughtā time to completely surround the center of the city, and when it was sufficiently surrounded, to make a last push into the center of the colony, mowing down any not already in the space port. The stranded slavers were either captured or killed, with the rest escaping with the carrier when it finally took off.
The total time of The Raid, counting the eight hours before The Einstein arrived, was thirty-seven hours.
I immediately began asking questions. Why not come through the forest? She explained that they couldn't gain any accurate information about it, and didn't know if there were any slavers lying in wait within, as they had spotted groups combing through it. Yes, there had been groups going through it; the three of us had been spotted while trying to get a clearer picture of the colony, and had to run to avoid being killed. I had expected them to go deeper into the forest to try to find us, so we had gone to the north-west edge of the trees, where they met with the northern farms, and then followed the farms back into the edge of town, where the majority of the fighting and pillaging had already come and gone. She conceded that this was a good move on my part, but that the marines didn't know the farms or the forest, and thus it wasn't viable for them to try a tactic they didn't even realize was open to them.
Why not try to get better intelligence, then? She said that they had wasted enough time as it was, and she had made the call to act now rather than later. I told her that that had beenĀ a mistake,Ā and she didn't argue my point, only stuck to her belief that they felt they could not wait any longer.
Why not target the carriers? She looked confused at the suggestion, reiterating the point that they were operating under the (correct)Ā assumption that there were colonists on those ships already. IĀ corrected myself:Ā to damage, not destroy. Any attacks on the carrier would have inevitably led to friendly deaths, she said. Yes, but it also would have forced the Batarians to leave to protect their carriers, I pointed out. Any deaths from friendly fire would be acceptable collateral damage if it forced the carriers away sooner.
We were quiet for a long time after that. I don't think the Captain had been expecting me to suggest that. You spoke up again, saying you believed that was enough for the day.
The Captain agreed, packing the projector back up. Before you both left, she asked me how much collateral damage could they have caused before it wouldn't be considered āacceptableā any longer. My attention was elsewhere, and by the time I even remembered the question, you were both gone.
Captain, I don't know if they let you read this or not, but Nouveau Roma doesn't exist any more. There are other towns on the colony of course, which mostly escaped The Raid except for smaller bands that had been more intent on killing instead of slaving, so Mindoir will likely rebuild in the future, but our capital is nothing but a lot of burning skeletons and decaying corpses.
I'm the only one left.
Any amount of collateral damage would have been acceptable if it led to but one more colonist here with me today.
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