Editing Grace Tian (section)

=='''''Background'''''==
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Raised in an upper-middle-class family on Ariel, Tian -- one of four children -- was a cheerful child and a bright student. She showed talent early on for maths and sciences, a situation that her teachers noted and nurtured. By the time secondary school came around, Tian was excelling in her courses and received a scholarship to university as well as another to medical school from the Alliance Navy, both of which she deferred in favor of enlisting when the first UWar began. <br><br>

[[Image:DavidSpencer.jpg|100px|thumbnail|left|David Spencer]] Tian joined the Alliance navy and trained as a combat medic. It was a job she loved; there was adventure and adrenaline, and she was serving. The war took her out to Highgate, and there she met Danny Spencer after a convoy she was traveling with was ambushed. Battlefield romances being what they are, it was something of a whirlwind courtship. They were married quickly and Tian was pregnant even faster after that (rather unexpectedly, thankyousomuch!) She was sent Coreward as soon as that happened and Danny stayed on the front lines. She took the opportunity to go ahead and get her university degree and begin medical school. Danny returned whenever he could get leave, but it was difficult. Then he was killed near the end of the war, having only seen his son once, leaving Tian to raise David by herself.<br><br>

She chose at that time to remain in the navy, helping soldiers recover from injuries and go home to their own loved ones as a way to both honor and grieve for her husband. She continued in what amounted to a reasonably 'normal' life, raising her son, and watching with pride as he took his own oath and joined the navy. When the second U-War began, Tian was assigned to Vandenburg's hospital, placed on the short list for Captain, and groomed to take over the running of the base's hospital.
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All that changed when the Independents took Boros. Tian evacuated all the patients and staff who could get out when the call came but she volunteered herself to stay and take care of those who couldn't be moved. Several of her staff also remained. They were held at Vandenburg for nearly three months, treated well enough in that time, and for Tian it changed the way she saw certain things. She struggled with her feelings about the planetary bombardment of a civilian population, the soldier and the doctor within her at war over the how and why of those actions, the rightness of them. After being traded back to the Alliance in a prisoner trade, she found herself unable to reconcile what happened in her own head. In addition to facing possible actions from the military (she should have tried to escape, etc.) she was also facing a medical review board (which cleared her of all actions on that front) and a bit of a crisis of faith. After seeing posters for the Interplanetary Restoration Program, Tian finally came to the decision that she could be more help out there than she really could in White Sun and chose to put in her retirement papers.
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