Disclaimer - I'm not affiliated with BioWare, don't have any claim to the Mass Effect universe or its characters, and don't receive any compensation for writing this. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
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2183 – 3 weeks after the destruction of the Normandy

The book flew from her hands, powered by a pent-up range she hadn't previously been aware that she possessed. For a moment, she was jealous of its movement – strong, decisive, purposeful – as it careened across the surface of the desk in front of her. It impacted perfectly with a glass left there the night before and paused only a second before resuming its course, sailing through the flying shards to thud on the floor.

A brute laugh tore from her chest, burning her throat as it escaped her mouth. More messes to clean. More pieces to pick up. Once again, helpless to do anything but watch events unfold.

She studied the jagged edges of the ruined glass. It had been rendered a stub, dangerous and unusable, no longer fit to perform the duty for which it had been made. It would have to be discarded – but it was so beautifully imperfect in its death. The fragments that littered the table caught the rainbow hues of early morn as they streamed through the small window above her, newly rough-hewn edges glimmering in silent, eulogistic dance. She idly wondered if others could observe such beauty in her imperfection, in the dangerous and unusable woman left after her own breakdown.

As her brown eyes surveyed the scene before her, Ashley Williams laughed once again, a sound made ugly by the pain and rancor fueling it. She, an Alliance marine, was sitting in the dark of early day, empathizing with and mourning, of all things, a broken glass.

Three weeks had passed since she'd seen Shepard hurtle through space, unable to do anything but watch the life slowly ebb from his body with each gasping breath. It had been celebrated as a hero's death; to Ashley, it was the epitome of futility. The man that had done the impossible had been brought to his end by an unknown enemy, ultimately to be killed by the very air and space he strove to protect. If he were to die that day, he deserved a better end than that. Shepard, in life, was strong, decisive and purposeful, compelled to greatness by force and circumstance outside of his control. Shepard, in death, had been seized by panic, limbs flailing in a violent struggle against an unseen and intangible foe.

She had been vocal in her desire to shoulder the blame for the death of the humanity's greatest man. Through the silent hours in the escape pod, she had effectively convinced herself that, had she ignored Shepard's order to leave, they both could have dragged Joker to safety. And, she was now positive that it was that this insistent self-flagellation that had earned her immediate and indefinite leave at Councilor Anderson's suggestion. Begrudgingly, she had left the Citadel for home to await the first of what would be several "general well-being follow-ups" with Alliance psychologists at the nearby base. She pursed her lips at the thought, noting that she had just over a week left until her first.

Ordering her to sit idle and grieve was, in Ashley's opinion, the least helpful thing she could have been ordered to do. She should have been carrying on Shepard's fight, doing her part to campaign against the Council's judgment that the Reapers were not real. Shepard deserved more than to be discredited in death by the people he'd been concerned with saving, to be plastered over Alliance recruitment centers as the posterboy of humanity, to be sold for endorsements for energy drinks, to be the subject of seemingly ceaseless news reports and features, to be smiling up at her from the cover of a Wheaties box.

Her body craved action, and the inability to satisfy it was adding to her current disturbance. Certainly, she recognized that Anderson believed he was acting in her best interest; she had not yet allowed herself the realization that Anderson knew, in her current state, she would get herself killed in her first engagement – or, worse, get those relying on her killed as well.

She needed no babysitter, no white-coated caretaker to tell her the depths of the discordant and conflicting emotions raging within her. She needed work to soothe idle hands, a purpose to distract that troubled mind. She had been denied anything but than to grieve.

Through it all, she had refused to cry; in truth, she was afraid. To mourn was to acknowledge that something needed mourning. Of things unfelt – of words unsaid!; naught but fuel for pyres of the dead.

Helplessness was not a feeling to which she was accustomed. It was her singular feeling now: helpless to save Shepard, helpless to fight back against Anderson's judgment, helpless to stop the destruction that she herself had set into motion by hurling a the book into a forgotten glass.

The first tears slowly fell as she shook her head, laughing at the idiocy of her situation. After everything – everything! – that she had experienced in the past weeks, it was something as stupid and simple as breaking a damn glass that had spurred the first tears to fall.

She finally succumbed to what she had long denied, silent sobs tearing through her. It was all too much.

After a moment, breath catching in her throat, she stopped, unable and unwilling to cry anymore. Through bleary eyes, calloused fingertips set to work gently batting small fragments of glass into the center of the desk.

There, in the stillness of early morning, in the darkness before the dawn, Ashley learned that some pieces were easier to pick up than others.