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As far back as he could remember, he’d always felt… well, ‘alien’ sprung to mind, but that word was a lot less figurative in a world full of extra-terrestrial life. An outsider looking in, maybe.
He could try and pin it on his biotics, on the lasting scars of Brain Camp, or on some deeper quirk of his psychology – but Kaidan didn’t care about blame. His past was an indelible part of himself, and all the good and the bad had shaped him into what he was now: a (hopefully) decent man, with a great capacity for destruction. Someone who loved life, loved people, but appreciated them from a safe distance.
Safe, for all involved...
(...Always leave yourself a way out)
Not that he’d minded it, really. This was a fact of life, something he'd made his peace with for almost as long as he'd been aware of it.
And he was happy.
Easy enough, since he hadn't known the alternative.
But things changed. He’d fallen in l into a gravity well. On the night before Ilos, and in a dozen little moments, looks, and touches before that. Little by little, during long conversations in an empty mess hall, in the heat of battle as they moved so in sync they felt like an extension of each other, on cramped, stomach-churning Mako rides down some nameless planet…
Then, he knew.
He loved this.
No pillow could compare to resting his head in her lap, even if it took the early signs of an unholy migraine to get him there. Her hand played in his hair. Deft fingers idly traced the shape of one curl, then another, pausing every now and then to massage his scalp. Minding his stiff, sore neck, he slowly turned his face toward her. Pain be damned, he was eager to feel more – all – of the person who so easily held his body and his heart.
Indistinct noises spilled from the vid-screen, the volume set just this side of audible. His translator droned in a deep monotone, “Concealed resentment: I shall in all my best obey you, madam...”
Shepard was slouching, and looked away from the screen as she leaned over him. Kaidan couldn’t help himself; a tentative finger lifted the hem of her shirt (his shirt, actually) while his thumb pushed down her briefs, just enough for his nose and lips to find her skin. Soft, warm, that smooth expanse was his to explore, to learn, to remember. Her abdomen trembled as the ghost of a chuckle passed over him. Who’d’ve guessed the Commander was ticklish?
“Did I wake you?” she hummed, shifting slightly to shield his eyes from the overhead light.
“No.” Planting a kiss below her navel, he continued, “But I really wish you would…”
Her thumb brushed across his forehead, smoothing his furrowed brow. “You deserve your beauty sleep, Kaidan.”
She smelled of his soap, and of his laundry detergent. It was his clothes she was wearing, after all: an old t-shirt from before he’d bulked up, and some boxers a size too small that he’d been too cheap to throw away. Hers were in the wash – all of them since they’d never found the time to get her spares.
Didn't matter; his clothes suited her just fine. Clinging loosely to her body, hinting at what lay beneath, and at-
“Despondently:” his translator buzzed again, “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,”
He groaned, letting her shirt fall over his face. “You were watching... elcor theater, Shepard?”
“Thought they’d help you sleep,” she’d said, a smile clear in the sound of her voice. Sinking back into the couch pillows, she added, “’sides, I’ve never read Hamlet. Seemed like a good time to catch up…”
Right – Shepard was running with the Reds while he was playing hockey and writing essays. It still felt unreal, how two messed up kids like them could find their way onto the Normandy. How they could find each other.
“Mmmm, couldn’t they pick a happier play?” he groused, as his hand wandered up over her ribs.
“Hush. No spoilers, please!”
“It’s five hundred years old…”
The elcor plodded on, “Pained incredulity: But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.”
She ran a finger along the edge of his ear, “Hey – I’m invested. Two hours in, just twelve more to go, and-”
Kaidan cleared his throat, interrupting her, “Profound resignation: Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.”
“Ass,” she chuckled, giving his hand a playful tap. “Sorry, ‘With great affection: Ass.’”
It was the little moments that did him in. Precious glimpses at an unguarded, different Shepard. The woman behind the mask, who wore her boyfriend’s lover’s Lieutenant’s (what were they, anyway?) his ratty old clothes, who laughed at his stupid jokes, whose legs were starting to sweat under his messed-up head… The woman who reminded him that it was all a mask in the first place: the Alliance, regulations, stoicism in the face of war, death, and injustice… He’d built up walls, hidden behind them for so long he’d started to believe that he couldn’t – shouldn’t – be, or feel, anything more than that.
He peeked up, and she pretended not to notice. Then she cracked a smile, resting a hand on his hip. Tension left his legs as he stretched, suddenly grateful for the oversized couch that took up most of the cramped apartment. Half-buried in the pillows as she was, it struck him just how small Shepard looked – but shore leave was the time for that. While the Normandy renewed her plating, and geared up for war, there they were: dipping their toes into an unfamiliar, mundane existence. People, not soldiers, or heroes, or mutants.
There was a simple joy in that. In thinking that things were simple. That they were free to learn and love each other, free of all the ties that bound (and dragged, and suffocated). Kaidan hoped she’d felt the same way as him: small, and safe, and happy – despite the malevolent pain coiling inside his brain, and the dizzying aura encroaching on his vision.
He had little need for his sight now, anyway. Closing his eyes, he wrapped an arm around her waist, and pressed his face into her midriff.
The migraine had snuck up on him. They had a way of doing that – even now, after so many years that he could hardly recall life before the implant. Triggers were myriad, practically unavoidable: the Citadel’s loud reconstruction, the constant, too-bright lights of the Wards… And yeah, okay, maybe spending his nights with Shepard meant getting less sleep than he should – but those were well worth a headache or two.
Hot skin, flush against his face. Soft, soothing, somehow.
“Bitter resignation: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
He never told her. Too soon, (too scared) and the risk to their careers… But a man can dream, right?
"I love you," he says, going off script.
“Do you, now?” Shepard teases, her hand settling on his chest. Too heavy.
He has trouble keeping his voice steady, “I do. I have – had – for… well, for some time, and I never got to-”
“Easy there, Kaidan. Don’t say anything you’ll regret when you’re sober.”
Her eyes are dark when she looks down at him: soft, warm brown no more, lost somewhere in the deep black of a starless night.
“I miss you, Shepard.”
“You…” she hesitates. Uncertainty was a rare sight on her face. “Bad dream, I take it?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Well... just know it gets easier. With time, when we start to forget.”
He swallows past a lump in his throat, “And if I want to remember?”
“’s no way to live, Kaidan.” Her fingers trace a line down the side of his neck, then stop. Her index taps twice, “You know how there’s fish that can drown?”
“Wh-”
“They have to keep going, since that’s how they… get water through their gills, or whatever. Stay still for too long and they’ll suffocate.” Her fingertips resume their languid movement, wandering from earlobe to collarbone.
“Are you uh... talking ‘bout sharks?”
“I dunno, yeah, probably. Well, I’m talking about us, really. Human mind’s not so different, right? You’ve gotta keep going, look ahead. Always.” She tilts his head up, just a light touch on his chin. Shepard’s features are muddled – drowned out by the apartment’s harsh lights and the pain building up behind his eyes. “One new day after the other: see, hear, feel, do what you can – then let it pass through you and move on to the next. Otherwise you’ll…”
Kaidan feels too-long fingers wrap around the back of his neck, but he doesn’t resist, won’t tense a single muscle. He’ll relish this moment for as long as-
-a dead hand seizes his throat. Ice cold, it’s crushing his windpipe, thumb digging under his jaw while fingers claw into his implant port. He’d scream, if he could; hot tears (or is it the smoke?) sting his eyes.
She throws him to his feet. Flames lick all around her now-armored frame, and that awful, hollow screech of dying metal assaults his senses. "Go! Get the hell out of here!"
“No.” No matter what he does, it never changes. (Still, he tries. Every time.) “I'm not leaving you, Shepard!”
Another crash, and gravity flickers off, on and off, then on again. More alarms join the chorus. The seals on his helmet clamp shut, and it suddenly feels too tight, a vice crushing his head. Not enough air. No air.
"Kaidan, I need you to make sure the crew-" Her words are tinny, filtered over the comms. Some days he's not sure he remembers what her voice really sounded like.
“I go where you go.” A lie, a wish.
“Move your ass, Lieutenant!”
“Please, Shepard, don't leave me. Just once...” He tries to go after her, but his mag boots engage. Locked. Stuck to the metal floor.
She closes the distance, a black-and-red ghost, and this time he flinches. He expects another jolt of pain, and he’s surprised to feel the press of her palm on the back of his helmet. She tips his head forward to touch hers, visor to visor, just like they did that damned day over Alchera, “Listen to me...”
"Please," is all he can say, pulling back to look at her.
The Normandy shudders under another assault. The lights die out. (Joker, shunting power into the kinetic barriers. It didn’t matter.) Fires bathe his surroundings in a hellish glow – plenty enough to see by.
Shepard turns away, dissolves into smoke and shadows save for the blood-red stripe along her arm. It points the way, "Go, Kaidan! I'll get Joker and we'll-"
You’ll die. You died.
He bolts after her, lurches as something grabs his shoulders.
"You know it's the right choice, LT!" Ashley? Wrenching him by the arm, the Chief hurls him backwards. "We’ll see you on the other side," she adds, running off after Shepard.
Ash, who was nothing but ashes by that time. Because of him.
Ash, who’d always been braver, better.
If she'd been there…
Flames follow in the dead women’s footsteps, and he doesn’t.
His feet carry him down the all-too-familiar path.
He overrides Waaberi’s sleeping pod, pulling the young marine out, then averts his eyes as he passes the others. “They’re gone, Amina,” he says before Waaberi even stops coughing, before she can beg him to help her friends and he has to see their faces again. Emerson and Grieco died with the first hit, when power surged through the Normandy’s mangled grid, and through their pods.
Doctor Chakwas is waiting by the medbay with a dazed, limping Liara in tow. Keep going. Adams, Vargas, Li, Tanaka. This time he pulls Dzurov away before the blast sears her face (and he’s spared the sight, and smell, and screams; he should visit her at the hospital again). The escape pod is so close, “Everybody in! Go, go, go!”
Too late. “Ray-”
Tanaka stumbles, and Waaberi goes back after him. Kaidan tries to Lift the fuel tank away from them but his implant burns, useless. He turns away, shoving Vargas into the shuttle as the explosion kills two more of his marines. Kids. Hopeful, green Corporals, good kids entrusted to him. Gone. It was Raymond’s first posting on a frigate, Amina’s third.
This time he stays. Slams the button. Like she did.
God, why even have a launch button on the outside?
He wonders what she felt, watching the pod shut and shoot off; he feels nothing at all.
Seconds tick by and the dream stretches on. Lingering, as he looks out.
The upside of a massive hull breach is that he gets an enviable view of the stars, and of the cold, blinding surface of Alchera below. Even with gravity gone, his mag boots keep him steady on his feet. Fitting, since some part of him will always be anchored to the Normandy, wherever her dead hull fell on that icy planet.
Kaidan watches the last escape pod fly by. Joker's. A little like a shooting star, if he didn’t know any better.
Maybe, since he stayed, she-
“Kaidan.”
“Shepard?” He turns so fast his head is swimming.
Her helmet’s off. Smiling. Not quite right, not really her – the woman in the posters, in the ads and newsreels, with her too-bright smile and her airbrushed scars, “I knew you wouldn’t leave me...”
Golden light, reflecting in her eyes. Fire. Then pain.
Pain.
Dark. For a moment he’s not sure where, or when.
Heart pounding, thudding in his ears, in his neck. Sat up too fast. White-hot pain, blind spots. He gags.
Couch. Living room. Citadel apartment. Migraine. Right.
“Fuck.”
Drenched in cold sweat (please don’t stain the couch); he’ll deal with that later.
Kaidan turns – very slowly, minding his damn neck – and finds his meds waiting on the coffee table. Two pills should do. (How many did he take before bed? When’d he even fall asleep?)
Water glass. Empty. Meaning he downed it before bed, which has to count for something at least. He pops them dry. No problem.
Then he braces, narrowing his eyes, and opens his omni-tool. 04:41, and the light didn’t even hurt that bad; migraine must be on its way out. Enough time to get his shit locked down before the 09:00 psych appointment. He has to – rescheduling (again) won’t look good on his eval. He scrolls on. Five new messages. Mom, Tali’Zorah, Harris and Cavallo (They’d been on his squad for three tours, including the Tokyo. He can’t even remember where they’re posted now), and… the last one’s spam. He deletes it, snoozes the notifications of the others. The pile’s grown to 21 now, but he’ll definitely deal with it this evening. Just have to ride out the headache.
Deep breath. His heart rate’s settling, and he becomes dimly aware that the vid-screen is playing.
“Mild discomfort: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold,” says Hamlet. Kaidan can tell the actors apart by their voice, by now.
“Matter-of-factly: It is a nipping and an eager air.”
“With trepidation: What hour now?”
“Concealed unease: I think it lacks of-”
She’d been right – the play does help. It’s been the most reliable way for him to fall asleep these past few weeks. The droning monotone is soothing in its own way, and it reminds him of that day, their time together. More importantly, there’s no risk of anything that sounds like explosions or alarms, no chance of an actor’s voice reminding him of her, or of Pressly, Chase, Waaberi, Tanaka… No risk of the news speculating about the Normandy, or playing old interviews of the first human Spectre. No asari’s “By the Goddess!” that’ll bring up memories of Liara crying in the escape pod. No, elcor Hamlet is fourteen hours of boring, safe, white noise.
He hates it, though, when he wakes up.
A few quick taps of his omni-tool land him on… a turian documentary about the fauna of Irune. The narrator’s subvocals express that he finds the animal in question extremely cute, but Kaidan doesn’t risk a glance at the screen. Too much light. (Turian-cute probably isn’t much like human-cute, anyway)
He should get going.
He stands up, shuffles along and–stumbles on–
His breath hitches as he looks at the black bundle, a red-and-white line twisting around it.
Breathe. It’s a hoodie, it just fell on the floor. Calm down.
Her hoodie. Every souvenir shop in the Wards was selling N7-themed clothes after Commander Shepard saved the Citadel. He thought she’d be pissed, instead it was the first time he heard her belly laugh, as she got the hoodie, and t-shirts, and socks, and underwear. He couldn’t keep a straight face that day, watching her ask shopkeepers about The Commander, playing dumb. Turns out they do all look alike to aliens; even humans didn't recognize her with her hair down, dressed in baggy clothes – just a chatty woman out on the town with her guy. A lucky, lucky guy…
He picks it up with shaky hands. Dusty, damp, and it’s got a few crumbs stuck to it, but it’s fine. Just shake them off and-
He buries his face into it. Inhales. Barely there – how could he shake anything off when there’s so little of her left? He presses harder, white-knuckled, and it doesn’t help. He feels tears seep into the fabric, and hears sobbing, and his throat is tight and raw and he can’t stop until a gasp pulls him to his senses.
Why the fuck’s he bawling now?
He’d shed no tears; not when they found Joker, broken and alone in the last escape pod. No tears when the SSV Amiens rounded them up and left Alchera, sparing no time for the lost. None, as he tallied the dead and talked to the living, as he relived that day, play-by-play, racking his brain, writing reports because he was the highest ranking survivor and there can be no gaping voids in the chain of command.
Not even at her memorial service. He hated himself for that.
He never expected the relationship to last – they rarely did, and that was fine. Shepard was bound to see through him soon enough, that he'd somehow fooled her into thinking he was more than he could be. That was fine – he'd treasure the memories (no one could fault him for that, right?) and it'd be enough to know she's out there. In his world, if not in his life.
He hadn't really considered this a possibility. Since stepping into his life, she’d felt like some constant of the universe – he expected her to be there in the same way you expect the Sun to always be out there. Then she just blinked out of existence, not even a body for them to bury, to put to rest…
She made him feel human. But he'd never been that, not really. Because when it all went to hell she said to run (of course she would) and he did just that. Shepard died and he got a commendation for it.
Because he’s a good soldier, and something less than human.