Talitha

From Mass Effect Wiki

Talitha is a young woman who appears in the Citadel: I Remember Me assignment (which only appears if Commander Shepard has the Colonist backstory). Shepard is called by Lieutenant Girard to handle Talitha, who is on the Alliance docking bay threatening to kill herself with a pistol. If Shepard chooses to talk Talitha around, the commander discovers she is a fellow survivor of Mindoir.

Confused and speaking in the third person, Talitha gradually tells her story. She was six when the batarian slavers slaughtered her family, forced to watch her parents burning to death under their weapons. The young Talitha tried to hide from the batarians and hoped they would go away, but they captured her and implanted a control device in her head. She became a slave, mistreated and beaten even for crying, but Talitha gradually adjusted to her new life. Shepard believes Talitha developed Stockholm Syndrome over the years of her captivity. Eventually, Alliance marines raided the slaver encampment, killed the batarians and freed their captives. Talitha was so inured to her existence as a slave that she even tried to help her 'masters' after they had been shot.

Shepard realises it was a terrible life but it was still the only life Talitha knew, and though the Alliance marines saved her, their rescue also left Talitha adrift in a world she doesn't understand. She becomes angry at Shepard for surviving the raid at Mindoir with a sound mind, angry that Shepard isn't 'broken' as Talitha is.

If Shepard approaches Talitha too fast, she will shoot herself. However if Shepard is careful, Talitha can be gently made to face her past, then to take a sedative and go to a psych facility for treatment. If she refuses to take the sedative, Shepard can force her to swallow it. Alternatively, Shepard can decide she's too much of a threat, and give Lieutenant Girard the order for a sniper to take her out.

[edit] Trivia

'Talitha' is a Hebrew word meaning 'young girl' and also the Aramaic word for a maiden or virgin. The Bible recounts that Christ restored a girl to life by speaking the phrase "talitha kumi", meaning "little girl, arise" in Hebrew or "maiden, get up" in Aramaic (wikipedia article).