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When Kaidan was a kid, he used to get panic attacks sometimes. It got a lot worse at brain camp. He’d be sitting in class trying to ignore his headaches and suddenly he’d realize that there were only a few feet of bulkhead between him and the merciless void of space, and before he knew it he’d be choking for breath on the metal floor. The nurses wouldn’t give him sedatives because they’d interfere with his biotics, so eventually he just learned to focus on tearing a piece of paper into tiny shreds whenever he felt an episode coming on.
The attacks went away after Virnnus’s death. On the ship back to Earth, he spent a lot of time looking out the window at the black emptiness, and it seemed almost comforting. He didn’t list panic as a health issue on his Alliance navy application.
He went seventeen years without an episode.
It seemed like such a shame to break a record like that.
"Lieutenant?" The captain of the SSV Cairo was treating him as the leader of the survivors until a higher ranking officer could be found. So act like a leader, Alenko, not a kid who can’t control his meltdowns.
He raised his head, managed to get out a short “Yes?” He was sucking in air and it was getting louder, oh no.
"We found another pod. It’s been brought on board."
Kaidan looked up, looked at the airlock, saw it hiss open. Looked at the faces. Two of the engineering crew. Liara. Oh, thank God Liara was all right.
The airlock closed again. No one else.
Liara’s blue face disappeared in a swarm of her fellow survivors, no doubt all asking the question ringing through Kaidan’s head. He clutched tufts of his hair in his fingers and rested his elbows on his knees again. Intellectually, he knew he was getting more than enough oxygen. That didn’t help him slow down his breathing. There was one more pod. Shepard and Joker would be on it. Of course Shepard would make sure everyone else got out first. Kaidan still had the right to be pissed at him. He was going to get yelled at the minute he stepped through that airlock. Kaidan didn’t yell often, but this called for some screaming.
Get ahold of yourself, he thought. You’ve been on what, twenty missions at least with the guy. He puts himself in danger practically every minute and you don’t freak out.
But Shepard had always been with him before. Not out there, in the screaming coldness of space, alone. He’d never told Kaidan to leave while he stayed behind.
The deck was growing dark. Kaidan was going to die. People were looking to him for leadership and he was going to pass out on the floor.
Cool fingertips on his jaw. “Look at me.” Kaidan blinked at a blue blur that resolved itself into Liara T’Soni. “Look at me. Breathe. Just breathe, Kaidan.”
Maybe she was using some Asari mind tricks because he actually did start to feel better.
One of her hands dropped from his face to take his fingers and squeeze, and then he was on his feet with his arms around her neck, just holding onto her, a warm solid point in a tilting world. His breathing slowed, his heart with it. “Shhh,” she murmured, and he really hoped no one was watching because this was so undignified. Unprofessional. Unbecoming. He was grateful, though, more grateful than he could possibly say.
"Lieutenant Alenko," the captain said, quietly, carefully. "We’ve brought in the last escape pod."
Over Liara’s lab-coat-clad shoulder, Kaidan saw Joker, being supported by two of the Cairo crew. He met Joker’s devastated eyes.
Fuck you, Shepard.
Liara’s hands dropped from Kaidan’s back. She stilled.
"He fell," Joker told them, sitting down on the hard bench. "He pushed me into the pod and closed the doors and then there was an explosion and something hit him and he just. Fell. I watched, I could see him go spinning out towards the moon."
Nobody said anything. Those suits only contained thirty minutes’ worth of oxygen. It had been four hours since the attack. If Shepard hadn’t died in the explosion, he’d died slowly, choking to death in silence and cold.
Kaidan only vaguely felt himself collapse onto the floor.
He could feel the cold metal beneath him. It seemed like such an inadequate defense for the soft creatures it protected. Bulkheads could be rent, mass effect fields fried, spacesuits torn, so easily, so quickly, so easily. It took no time at all for a ship to go from a powerful cruiser to a shattered wreck, for a living, breathing man, a warm hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, a cautious smile, rough skin and sharp eyes and gentle words to all just vanish into the howling abyss.
His hands were scrabbling for purchase on the smooth floor. Blue fingers pressed lightly over his knuckles. Liara’s strong arm went around his back, holding him up, supporting him, and he slid down against the solid weight of her, leaning into her side, letting himself be held. He closed his eyes against the splitting pain in his skull. The Reapers were coming, out there in deep space, and humanity had lost its hero. None of them could give up now. When they got back to the Citadel he’d get some anxiety medication, wait for his next assignment, and learn how to live with the hollowness in his chest.
Until then, he’d allow himself some weakness, and focus on breathing, one second after another.