Work Text:
i.
Someday, a mark would appear on his arm, words written as if tattooed into his skin, to tell him he had met his soulmate. Everyone had one person who was meant for them, and everyone would have a mark. It was just one of the cosmic laws of the world. A blank patch of skin inside your wrist, where the words would coalesce from nothing as if by magic. No one in his seventeen years had been able to explain it to him, but everyone knew it happened.
The curse of the mark was that it was your partner’s last words to you, not their first. Otherwise Kaidan would have known right away it wasn’t Rahna, and he wouldn’t have fallen for her so hard and been stupid enough to hope it could be. The romantic in him had wanted her to be the one. His first love, his soulmate. How poetic and beautiful that would have been.
It was too good to be true. His body trembled uncontrollably as he stared at Vyrnus’ dead body. He’d done that. He’d killed someone. And now Rahna was looking at him with the coldest expression he’d ever seen. It was a mistake to reach out to her. Unthinking, he raised his hand, his fingers shaking. “Rahna?” he choked out. “I didn’t mean to…” I just killed someone. I just killed…
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
It didn’t really matter to him what the words would say anymore. No one could love the monster he’d become when Vyrnus’ neck snapped.
ii.
“You make me feel... human,” he told Shepard in the dim light of her cabin. He’d never planned to fall for his commanding officer, but he couldn’t help it. Kaidan had been a goner since the first time he’d seen her on the bridge of the Normandy. Her red hair, her bright green eyes, the dusting of freckles across her cheeks and the scar that split her right eyebrow. He’d been a fool to stare, but she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“Bunk here tonight, Kaidan. With me.” His heart pounded. What they were doing broke every one of the fraternization regs that he unfortunately knew verbatim, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He knew in that moment, he loved her. He loved her, and he wanted her, and if they died on Ilos, then at least they would have tonight.
He hadn’t thought about what the words on his arm would say in a while. Shepard would have them too, as would everyone on the Normandy crew. They sometimes liked to wonder what the words would be and who would say them when they got a little too drunk in the mess hall, though the aliens weren’t too forthcoming. Everyone’s marks would be in their native language, and Kaidan remembered Garrus saying the translator would butcher it anyway. The words of Palaven were too beautiful.
For the most part, no one took much stock in it because they wouldn’t know until the end. And for soldiers, the end could come at any time and then it would be too late.
But when Shepard’s lips met his in a searing kiss, and again when she breathed his name in ecstasy, he wished to every god in the universe that she was the one. She had to be.
His biotics flared in a dazzling blue corona. The energy danced across her skin, making her cry out once more, and she didn’t shy away. She held him close. “You’re so beautiful like this, Kaidan,” she gasped.
He didn’t need the words to know.
iii.
“Go. Now.”
Kaidan didn’t want to leave her. But he knew an order when he heard one. In uniform, he couldn’t disobey her. She was the commander right now, not Shepard.
“Aye, aye.” Kaidan felt hollow. Walking away was the hardest thing he ever had to do. Only a small sliver of hope kept him from going out of his mind with worry as he ordered the crew into the escape pods. There was one in the cockpit, he reminded himself. She’d get Joker and make it out alive. They would make it work. He would finally tell her he loved her, more than anything in the world. He would admit he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
When the escape pods crash landed on Alchera’s snowy surface, Joker was alone, a blank stare on his face. And she was… gone. When Kaidan finally got off that godforsaken planet and removed his armor, his body frigid from the cold and the emptiness of losing Shepard, he saw that her words weren’t written on his arm. He’d been wrong.
His grief consumed him like a black hole. He didn’t remember much else of the days that followed, drowned in tears, and alcohol, and all-too-real dreams of her.
The mark still wasn’t there. He kept hoping it would show. Maybe whoever or whatever played cosmic matchmaker had made a mistake. Because no power could make him want to search for anyone else. Fuck soulmates, he thought.
The rest of his night was lost in his bottle of whiskey.
iv.
On Horizon, it couldn’t be her. People didn’t come back from the dead.
And not only was she back, but she was with Cerberus. How had he been so wrong about her? The only explanation was that she had somehow faked her death and went to work for them. She claimed they had taken the past two years to resurrect her, but that wasn’t possible. No matter how long she stood in front of him, he couldn’t accept she was his Shepard.
“I loved you,” he confessed. Past tense. He had loved the woman he’d known, but this was not her. It couldn’t be.
Later, when he thought of another explanation for why the words on his arm hadn’t materialized, he knew his admission must have felt like a slap in the face. His realization gnawed at him for hours, days. Until he finally sat down and wrote her a letter.
If she was alive, if she was real, if she was the woman he’d made love to the night before Ilos, then maybe her words hadn’t been written on his skin because he’d been right all along. The creator of the marks had known, somehow, that she’d come back to him. And those words that he’d tried not to think about for so long could still be hers.
Kaidan hated himself for fucking up their second chance. He’d been granted a miracle, but he’d thrown it away.
v.
“I was so fucking glad no words showed up after Mars,” she told him. She stood over his hospital bed, caressing his chin and staring at him with watery eyes. He hadn’t seen her look so vulnerable in a long time. Then it dawned on him.
“You still think it’s me?” he asked quietly.
Shepard blushed, her cheeks and ears reddening vividly. She looked down. “I hope so.”
They had only really talked about it once. On a night before Alchera, she had brought his wrist to her lips, her breath ghosting over his skin where the mark would eventually be. “So you think it’s me?” she had asked.
“Yeah.” He’d kissed her then, slow and deep, tangling his hand in her fiery hair. “But I don’t want to think about your last words to me.”
“We don’t have to.” She had answered with another kiss. “But I want you to be mine too.”
Now, in this hospital room, looking out over the presidium, they were in another world. They weren’t in Shepard’s bed, tangled in the sheets, blissfully unaware of what was to come. So much had changed between them. They weren’t the same people anymore.
“I hope so too,” he admitted. Kaidan vowed to not let Horizon and Mars get in their way any longer. He was alive; he’d survived the unthinkable. With the damage to his implant, he shouldn’t be on his way to a full recovery. But here he was. And, better yet, Shepard was at his side.
It was the magic of the universe, the same mystical power that controlled the marks. There was no other explanation. They kept coming back to each other despite impossible odds. It was just their thing.
“We were good together.”
She walked out the door with the hint of a smile on her face.
vi.
Holding your ex lover at gunpoint sure killed any chances of redemption. Or so Kaidan thought. It was a miracle she’d let him back on the Normandy, welcomed him with open arms even.
He would make this right. He’d make it up to her. That was all he could do.
For hours he sat in starboard observation, looking at the blank space on his arm and tracing patterns across the skin with his fingertips. He thought back to their conversation in the hospital. After everything, after all the shit they’d been through, they had still wanted each other. And now he’d gone and fucked it up all over again.
The metallic hiss of the door startled him. It was her. He swallowed. And the words spilled out of him before he could stop himself. “I swear, I never could’ve pulled the trigger. Please, Shepard. Please know that. I could never hurt you. Not…” He paused. He had hurt her. On Horizon, on Mars, earlier that day on the Citadel. “Not anymore than I already have,” he finished. His voice was barely above a whisper.
“I know,” she said. Her red hair was like a halo. “Neither could I.”
vii.
At Apollo’s he told her everything.
They traced each other’s wrists, wondering in silence if they would see their words written in the empty space. And in that moment, he knew it didn’t matter anymore. “I’m yours,” he said suddenly. “Even if I’m not supposed to be, I am. I don’t want to be anyone else’s.”
Shepard smiled, her whole face lighting up and her green eyes brimming with tears. “I’m yours too.”
When she kissed him again, he didn’t ever want her to stop.
Later, in her cabin, they discovered the place where only they existed. Kaidan was sure it was a whole other plane. It was so pure, so perfect, where war and reapers couldn’t touch them.
“I love you.” He couldn’t stop saying it. I love you, I love you, I love you… He breathed it into her neck, sighed the words into her mouth, whispered them in her ear. “I never stopped.”
After, when she fell asleep in his arms, it was the first time in a very long time that Kaidan had truly been happy.
viii.
In London, they both knew it was goodbye. “So… take care, Major,” she said. But he couldn’t let her walk away without one last kiss. And it had to be a good one. He pulled her to him, and held her close, and kissed her with everything he had. He hoped she knew his lips were saying what he couldn’t make them speak. It wouldn’t matter if the words didn’t appear because his soul was bound to hers no matter what a mark on his arm might say. There was nothing that could change Kaidan’s mind about that. About her.
She kissed him back fiercely, running her tongue over the scar along his bottom lip. The world could swallow them whole right now, and he would die happy.
When she walked away, his heart sank. It would be so cold without her. He didn’t know if he could survive losing her again.
On the beam run, there was no way of knowing if the words were there. He wouldn’t know until later, just like when he had landed on Alchera, that the space where words should have been was still blank. The marks were bullshit. No one could have made him feel this way if they weren’t made for each other. “Don’t leave me behind,” he choked out, holding back tears.
“No matter what happens, know that I love you. Always.” Shepard cradled his cheek in her hand, brushing her thumb across it. He couldn’t feel the warmth of her fingers through her armor, but he could imagine it.
“I love you too. Be careful.”
And then she was gone. Again.
ix.
They had survived. Against all odds, they had made it. And now they were old, their bodies weary and withered. “Guess we really are old soldiers now, huh?” Shepard whispered, repeating his words from long ago. Her voice was so quiet, and it wouldn’t be much longer now. Tears flowed freely down his face as he stood over her hospital bed, holding her small, frail hand in his.
The words wrote themselves on his arm, vivid and crisp like ink from a new tattoo even on his wrinkled skin.
Her fingers trembled as she reached up to dry the wetness from his cheeks. “We haven’t been soldiers for a long time,” he sobbed. He leaned his forehead against hers, softly pressing his lips to her hairline. “Rest easy, my love.” And his words were painted on her skin, a stark contrast to her paleness.
Kaidan had chosen her a long time ago, and she had chosen him. The marks were just a gift from the gods. A celebration, an ode to their star-crossed love.
x.
Kaidan wondered if it was possible to die from a broken heart. If so, his time wasn’t far off.
He said goodbye to the world a few days later, succumbing to the darkness in his sleep. He was ready to meet her again.
xi.
Thane was right, Shepard thinks. It is across the sea.
She looks down at her arm. The mark is gone, disappeared without a trace, not even faded like a tattoo, black ink turning grey with age. Instead, it looks like it was never there at all. Not that it matters. Her soul was entwined with Kaidan’s long before the words he spoke materialized on her wrist.
That’s when she sees him. She’s been waiting.
She sprints through the water, splashing everywhere, her body young and whole and strong again. Kaidan catches her with a smile on his face, and their lips meet in a hungry kiss. She hasn’t felt this alive in so long.
Ashley’s voice echoes from behind them. “I knew it, but, god, get a room.”
They ignore her.