Work Text:
Shock turned to overwhelming joy in the span of mere seconds and before Ashlyn even had a chance to say a word, Kaidan's arms were thrown around her neck, pulling her close to his body. He clung to her, desperation and disbelief practically radiating off of him. Swallowing thickly, she allowed her eyes to slide close and she reciprocated the embrace, her arms snaking around his torso and giving him a light squeeze. Ever since waking up in the Cerberus research facility, everything had been an absolute whirlwind and she'd barely had a moment to herself, a moment to think.
In Kaidan's arms, however, everything suddenly felt right. Despite her initial reservations when they had first gotten together, she loved him enough to have missed his embrace.
When they finally pulled away from each other, she glanced back at the companions she had brought with her down to Horizon’s surface. Miranda seemed to be picking through the buildings and containers surrounding them, presumably searching for any remaining colonizers, while Garrus stood on lookout for Collectors that may still be lurking about. The turian eventually glanced over and met her gaze. She jerked her head to indicate a spot a short distance away and quirked a brow in a silent question; he nodded in response.
Ashlyn flashed him a grateful smile and she turned back to Kaidan, taking him by the hand and dragging him away so the two could have a bit more privacy to catch up with each other.
As Ashlyn turned to face Kaidan, she saw his disbelieving gaze move across her face, eyes seeming to hover on the scars there. The ones that he was accustomed to--the one across her chin and the one that bisected her right eyebrow--were long gone. In their place were the residual scars from the Lazarus Project. They were not nearly as prominent as when she'd first woken up, but they still spiderwebbed across her face; a few still emitted a faint red glow, like a light held beneath cracked porcelain. One of his hands then went up to her head, his gloved fingers brushing against her scalp, the shaved style the only remnants of her long, black locks. With something of a wistful sigh, his hand fell back to his side and his eyes finally fell on the small Cerberus logo stitched into the collar of her undershirt and his expression hardened.
The giddiness she felt upon seeing him again dissipated as she felt her stomach drop.
“So...The rumors were true.”
“Kaidan…”
“Why? You know what they’ve done! Surely you remember how many of their research facilities we shut down together? You should have come home instead of working with that… that… parasite of an organization!”
“Kaidan, I didn’t have a choice. I--”
“Two whole years and you couldn’t have bothered to keep in touch?”
Without warning, anger bubbled in the pit of Ashlyn’s stomach. She straightened up, throwing her shoulders back and lifting her chin in defiance. “Being on a lab table for those two years kind of impedes one’s ability to write, Lieutenant,” she replied, her voice clipped but surprisingly even, despite the emotions threatening to overwhelm her.
Some semblance of surprise flickered across Kaidan’s face; whatever he had expected Ashlyn to say, it seemed her actual response was far from it. In the end, however, it seemed his anger won out over all his other emotions. “But I doubt Cerberus sent you here directly. So what have you been doing since you woke up, Ashlyn?”
“Are you saying that I wasn’t allowed to get my bearings first? You expected me to get in touch as soon as I came out of the coma?” she snapped in response.
Ashlyn knew full well that if they continued to feed the fire, one or both of them would be leaving Horizon even more emotionally hurt than when they’d arrived. A part of her screamed at her to stop arguing with Kaidan, trying to convince her that the two of them just needed to take a deep breath and return to the conversation as civil as possible. Another part of her seemed too unbothered to care.
“Maybe a little bit, yes!” he shot back. “I thought we had something. Something special . The past two years, wondering if I could go back and do something different…” Now, a wistful expression passed his face. “Just... It would have been a relief to know you were alright.”
“Would it have really? If you thought I was dead, then I doubt I would have helped matters by telling you that I actually wasn’t. Hell, if the situations had been reversed, I would have thought someone was playing a sick prank on me.”
Another flicker of surprise crossed his expression and the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease a little bit. “I...Well…”
“Exactly. So you can’t fault me for not sending word,” she said firmly.
Kaidan sighed a little and nodded. “Yes… I suppose you have a point.”
Ashlyn also relaxed once it seemed that the crisis had been averted. The tension left her own body as she lightly crossed her arms over her chest. “Now, what are you doing here?”
“Well, on the topic of Cerberus, the Alliance received some intel that suggested they were the ones responsible for the missing human colonies.”
She frowned a bit. “I see…”
He nodded. “I’m on Horizon specifically because there were also rumors that this colony would be the next target.”
“And that coupled with the rumors that I was working with Cerberus… Were you hoping to run into me?” she asked.
Kaidan laughed once. “Maybe a little. Still… I hoped the rumors were false. And yet here you are… I can’t believe you’re working for the enemy.”
Ashlyn sighed a little. “Well, it’s more out of convenience than choice. As terrible as Cerberus is as an organization, they at least share my concern about keeping the colonies safe. Just because I’m here because of them does not mean I answer to them.”
“And do you really believe that, Ashlyn? Or is that just want they want you to think?” Suspicion and anger once more creeped into his voice.
She bit back a frustrated sigh and opened her mouth to respond, though she was cut off by Kaidan continuing his tirade.
“Do you know what you’re doing by working with Cerberus? You’re turning your back on everything that we’ve fought for. You’re turning your back on humanity. You’re betraying the Alliance.”
Before she could even think to stop herself, Ashlyn slapped him across the face, her frustration now turned to boiling rage.
Kaidan blinked a few times and slowly turned back to face her.
“How fucking dare you?” she demanded, her voice barely above a whisper even while it drowned in venom. “How dare you accuse me of betraying the Alliance? I would never, ever disgrace my family like that.”
“And yet here you stand.”
“At least I’m thinking about the bigger picture here, Kaidan! Whole colonies are going missing but no one else seems to be doing anything about it! As much as I love the Alliance, I know for a fact there would be too much red tape for me to resolve that I am still considered to be KIA. But the missing colonies is an issue that has be dealt with now . If Cerberus is the only one that’s going to give me the resources I need to stop this, then I will gladly sell my soul to the devil to do what I have to so that I can help people.”
Now she jabbed a finger into his chest. “Unlike someone who has his head shoved so far up his ass that he can’t even stop to consider that I’m only doing this because I don’t think I have any other choice. You of all people should know me better than that, Kaidan.”
He glared at her for a long while but he eventually sighed and looked away. “Look, I believe you, Ashlyn. You . But Cerberus? I don’t trust them, not even for a second. For all I know, they’re manipulating you by staging these attacks.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take, Kaidan.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m an Alliance soldier and I know where my loyalties lie. Speaking of the Alliance, I need to head back to the Citadel and report in. Hopefully they’ll have a better solution for how to deal with the Collectors.” He turned away from her.
“Come with me,” she blurt out, suddenly desperate to keep him by her side. “It’ll be like before.”
“But it won’t. Not really. You’ve changed and I’m not sure I like that change.”
Ashlyn almost immediately took a step back, reeling as if he had slapped her in return, an overwhelming sense of loss suddenly threatening to swallow her whole. As angry as she was with Kaidan, she didn’t want their relationship to end. As angry as she was, she still loved him. The possibility that this might be the end made her feel as if all of the breath had been drawn out of her lungs. It made her feel like she was once more lost in dark space, suffocating with no way of knowing which direction was up. She swallowed thickly, trying to pull herself back from that vague memory.
“Kaidan… You don’t mean that…” she said, her voice sounding small even to her own ears.
“Goodbye, Ashlyn,” he said, not even bothering to dispute her. “Despite everything… Just try to stay safe out there, okay?”
She watched as he walked away, frozen in place. Long after he was out of sight, she forced herself to make her way back towards the others, tapping her comms link as she did so, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over. “Joker, send a shuttle down to pick us up. I’ve had enough of this damn planet to last me a lifetime.”
As soon as they had returned to the Normandy , Ashlyn had retreated to her cabin, demanding that EDI ensure no one could come up to disturb her. In the privacy of her own room, she finally allowed herself a chance to break down.
With a strangled scream, Ashlyn grabbed the digital frame with Kaidan’s photo off of her desk and threw it across the room. It hit the wall just above the headboard of her bed, making a satisfying cracking sound before dropping onto her pillows. Her breathing was heavy and uneven, nearly on the verge of becoming harsh hiccups, as tears streamed down her face and she collapsed into the couch tucked into the corner of the room. She let out a shuddering breath and buried her face into her hands, wondering just how her life had gone so astray… So wrong .
“Shepard?”
“Not now, EDI…” she mumbled.
“Garrus is rather insistent about having access to your quarters.”
Ashlyn sighed a little, opening her mouth to say that she was not allowing any exceptions to her desire for privacy. But she stopped herself, falling silent for a few moments to think it over. The Normandy did not have many members of her original crew… Ashlyn actually wanted at least one other person to talk to, so long as they were from that group of people. And out of everyone else, Garrus had seemed to be the only one that wasn’t hung up over the fact that she was still alive.
She sighed again. “Yeah… Go ahead and let him up. But no one else.”
“Yes, Shepard.”
Ashlyn hurried to the bathroom to wash her face before Garrus arrived. While she knew he could probably guess about what had happened on Horizon, or at least could guess that she was upset about something, she was still loathe for him to see her cry. She dried her face just as the door to her quarters slid open with a hiss.
Garrus’s familiar, flanging voice reached her. “Hey… Are you… holding up alright?”
She laughed once, a very hollow sound, and stepped out of the bathroom to cross to her desk chair. She flopped down into it and shook her head. “Not at all.”
He crossed his arms and watched her for a few moments, his expression unreadable. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She sighed heavily and began to idly spin around in the chair, not quite meeting his gaze as she did so. “Not really, to be honest… But… More so because I don’t even know where to begin.”
“I have time to spare.”
“You don’t have some calibrations to work on?” she asked with a hint of a smile.
He snorted. “I think the ship will survive for a few hours.”
That drew a small, genuine laugh out of her before she let out another heavy sigh and murmured, “I… don’t think Kaidan is going to forgive me for this…”
“What happened back there?”
“He… He’s upset with me. I… He doesn’t like that I’m working with Cerberus.”
“Neither do I.”
She quirked a brow. “Yet here you are.”
“Because you asked me to help you,” Garrus said in a matter-of-fact tone. “The Collectors are the bigger issue here, so I’m more than willing to deal with some unsavory people in order to help you stop them.”
An unexpected warmth spread through Ashlyn’s chest as she became overwhelmed with gratitude over Garrus’s response. It was how she had hoped Kaidan would have reacted… How she had expected him to react. It was nice that someone understood why she was working with an organization she normally would have had nothing to do with.
“Thanks…” she told him. “That means a lot to me, Garrus. I tried to tell Kaidan that my opinion mattered less than helping the colonies, but he wasn’t having it.” She sighed once again and wrapped her arms around herself. “He accused me of betraying the Alliance.”
His mandibles flared a little in irritation. “He shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, he probably shouldn’t have… But he did say it. So… I guess that’s where we stand right now.”
“I’m sorry, Shepard.” Garrus sighed and stepped closer to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I know you two were close.”
She shrugged a bit, trying not to let on just how much she was hurting. “It’s probably for the best. It gives him a better chance to move on.”
“Well… I’m here, if you ever need to talk.”
“I appreciate that.” She smiled faintly and reached up to put a hand over his. “I also appreciate that you haven’t pestered me about this whole not being dead thing.”
“Honestly? I’m still just glad that you showed up on Omega when you did. Sure, I did my own share of mourning, but… I suppose I just saw it all as a miracle.”
“Thank you,” she repeated.
The two of them were quiet for a long moment, seeming equally content to just be within each other’s company. For a wild moment, Ashlyn wanted nothing more than to ask Garrus to stay in her quarters for a couple of hours. Maybe pull up a vid to watch together. She just wanted a few moments alone with a man she considered a good friend. Maybe even her best friend. But she knew that time was not something had in abundance. They still had to stop the Collectors and she could not afford distractions. So she shrugged away from Garrus’s comforting hand and rolled her shoulders back, donning the mantle of Commander once more.
“We should probably head down to the briefing room and plan our next move. We don’t have time to lose.”
Garrus looked like he might protest, but instead he simply nodded. “Alright, Shepard. Lead the way.”