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“I've been gone for two years?” Commander Shepard asked softly. But it wasn’t really a question.
She and her new acquaintances, Miranda Lawson and Jacob Taylor, both of Cerberus, were in transit between two stations owned by the shadow-terrorist organization. She hurt everywhere – her face, her ribs, her joints, her brain. This news, however, caused a deep ache in her chest worse than all the others.
She had figured it had taken time to “rebuild” her back into a living, breathing human being from having been spaced and choking to death. Somehow in the fire fights on the Project Lazarus station, the exact time frame seemed to have been skirted around. Now she knew why.
Her first thought was of her crew from the Normandy, and in particular, her lieutenant. He thought she had been dead for two years. It was likely he had moved on, then. She tried not to think about it.
It occurred to her that she might be toeing her morality line more than she used to.
Perhaps being dead for two years had resulted in some kind of pent-up aggression. Shepard watched the batarian Blue Suns sergeant crumple to the ground after giving him a surprise heavy electric shock to the back. She hadn’t enjoyed tasering him (was it a taser?), but it needed to be done. Didn’t it? She wondered if it was something she would have done two years ago. Somehow, she didn't think so.
She left the mercenary there and she and her squad headed out, and she didn't give him a second thought.
Everything felt hazy. Shepard stared at the galaxy map in the CIC of the Normandy SR-2 without really seeing anything.
Her pilot had made some snarky comment or other about bumping into Kaidan. Frustrated, though not with Joker, she’d responded, “Another reminder of how I've lost more than time... I've had enough of this garbage.”
Honestly, she couldn't remember any specific details about her last conversation with her favourite person. But she remembered how he’d made her feel – how she still felt: hollow.
At first, Shepard had been excited to hear the Illusive Man mention his name. Groundside, she had done her duty to the best of her ability, but the entire time during the mission on Horizon, she had been keeping an eye out for that certain person, just wanting to catch a glimpse of him, to know he was safe...
The further she and her team had pressed on, the more anxious she had become. Her work was unaffected; shots didn't stray, her abilities were as powerful as they had ever been. Whether that was a result of her Alliance training kicking in, her Cerberus-rebuilt body, or the desire to see her former lover safe, she couldn't tell.
Then, after the last shot was fired and that hideous monster shuddered to the ground, she could see the Collectors’ ship taking off, giving up. They hadn't taken the whole colony – maybe... She dared to hope.
And then he spoke. She could have picked that velvet sound out over a thousand other voices talking all at once. The words he was saying slipped past her as joy came over her, and she absorbed every syllable – not for the meaning of the words, but just to hear him say them.
They had embraced and she breathed his scent in; she could feel him doing the same. He smelled just as he always had – had two years really passed? Did she smell the same to him?
When he pulled back, she looked up at him, but saw no warmth in his eyes. They were dull, deadened. She had told him he didn't seem that happy to see her. He was upset. Two years she'd been dead – why hadn't she tried to contact him? Was she just letting him think she was dead? He wanted to know if he meant anything to her at all.
“I loved you!”
Those words, which he had never been quite brave enough to say, now escaped from his lips easily in past tense. His voice, that phrase, rattled around in her head. She faltered, again trying to explain, but somehow just couldn't find the right words. He balked at the mention of Cerberus.
“You've changed, Shepard.”
Had she? She realized she’d been avoiding asking herself that question. She cast her mind back to Omega, shortly before she met up with Garrus. Had she tasered that batarian, or—? It was more likely that she had killed him, she realized. She was doing the right thing, but when she really thought about it, was she doing it the right way? Had her moral code really shifted? That batarian would have died regardless, she knew, but at least he could have died fighting.
Perhaps the time she’d spent dead really had changed her.
She closed her eyes, as again that thought came upon her. Two years gone...
Kaidan was pacing in his quarters. He was angry, but what could he do? He couldn't very well storm into Anderson’s office on the Presidium and yell at him for the surprise that had been waiting for him on Horizon. It wasn’t as if the man knew Shepard was going to be there, even if he did know she was alive...
He leaned against the wall and wiped his hand down his face, letting out a lungful of air. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath for so long. The truth, he knew, was that he wasn’t angry at Anderson. In fact, he wasn't even angry at Shepard. She’d made her choice – that much was clear – but she was doing what she believed was right. As she always did. And when she’d made up her mind, there was no stopping her. Sovereign had been proof of that: She’d defied the Council, mutinied and stolen a ship, and then not only did she refuse to let the sentient ship carry out his same routine for who knew how many millions of years, she’d emerged, quite impossibly, from a pile of its rubble when she should have been crushed instead.
Now, coming back from the dead after being spaced... That woman was a force that even death could not stop.
He scoffed to himself when the realization hit him that he still admired her.
So, then, that was why he was angry. He was angry at himself – for getting swept up in the whirlwind that was the woman he had thought to be dead for two years. He was angry he had given her such a terrible “welcome back.” He was confused about his feelings for her, and that made him angrier still.
He began to pace again.
He’d spent the past two years getting over his commander’s death. Yet here he was, reliving the pain all over again.
Seeing her for the first time had shocked his system. He had arrived on the battlefield just as she and her squad – he’d recognized Garrus, and there was a dark-haired woman he didn’t know – had finished off some kind of monstrosity that seemed to have eaten a bunch of husks. His mouth had gone completely dry. That couldn’t be her. She was dead. He saw her get spaced, which had been horrible to watch – although it had probably been slightly worse for the commander. It couldn’t be true, but... the way she’d handled herself on the battlefield, deadly graceful, beautiful in her purpose...
Delan, a colony man, had somehow wandered onto the battleground, upset. There’d been talking, arguing, while the woman who looked and moved like Shepard tried to convince the man that she’d done everything she could. Garrus had said, “More than most, Shepard.”
“Shepard?” Delan had repeated. “Some kind of Alliance hero...”
As the colonist tried to remember where he’d heard the name, the staff commander found his voice. “Commander Shepard, captain of the Normandy, first human spectre, saviour of the Citadel,” Kaidan had said, unable to keep a little marvel out of his voice, which rang clear across the empty grounds. The surrealness of the situation had lent an almost out-of-body experience for Kaidan, and he found his legs were carrying him forward, unbidden.
He couldn’t quite bring himself to look Shepard in the eye, so instead he had turned to the colonist and told him, “You’re in the presence of a legend, Delan.” While he prided himself on his self-control, Kaidan couldn’t stop wave upon wave of emotion from washing over him then. Amazement: here she was, it was really her – was it really her? – standing only a few feet away. Hurt: how long had she been alive without telling him? “And a ghost.”
He’d finally turned to look at her and let his eyes drink in her steady gaze and familiar face, and Delan’s reply was lost upon his ears. Kaidan couldn’t help it any longer – he pulled her into an embrace.
Underneath the scent of battle and sweat, she still smelled the way he remembered. Her hair was different – shorter – and she had a strange pattern of new scars on her face, but they seemed to be fading. After a time, he’d said softly into her neck, “I thought you were dead. We all did.”
Anger: why hadn't she told him? He’d wasted the past two years mourning a woman who didn't even care enough to let him know she hadn’t died. When he pulled away to look at her again, his insides had frozen.
“You don't sound too happy to see me.”
He barely remembered what came out of his mouth after that point, but it was full of bitterness and animosity. He couldn’t really recall what Shepard had said beyond that, either. He wasn’t sure what he had expected from her – that she would make everything all better with just a few words? The woman was charismatic, and she'd fixed more than her share of problems, but he knew well enough that she couldn't wave a magic wand and make two whole years disappear.
She had been dead, according to her. He did remember that. He also remembered that it had been Cerberus that brought her back. What a price to pay for life: a debt to Cerberus. She seemed to be convinced that Cerberus was doing the right thing – or perhaps more accurately, that Cerberus was letting her do the right thing. Had she somehow forgotten all the times they'd bumped into Cerberus on their last mission? All the twisted experiments they’d uncovered? It didn’t make sense. This woman moved like Shepard, smelled like Shepard – but how could it really be Shepard?
Thinking back on it now, Kaidan realized that someone could have explained to him that two plus two equals four and that wouldn’t have made sense either. Still...
How many times had he wished for exactly this – that she would walk into the room as though nothing had happened? Reality was nothing like he had imagined. It was confusing – wonderful and terrible at the same time, heartbreaking and horrifying. Even now, thinking about it all sent a chill through him.
He sighed and stopped pacing, taking a seat at his terminal. Maybe things would be clearer if he could just write them down...
Scanning through unread messages at her terminal, Shepard came across one that caught her off guard.
About Horizon...
A message from her former lieutenant. She read it, then she read it again.
It was so typically Kaidan: she could hear his voice, imagine his pauses in speech, the way he rubbed at the back of his neck when he felt awkward. Yet while she could picture all of this, the message itself was unclear. He seemed to be filled with uncertainty.
If things settle down... Well, that was a long shot. Annoyed, she wondered again how many times she had to tell people the Reapers were coming. Things would not settle down. Beyond that, surviving her suicide mission was – as its name indicated – unlikely, and even if she did, she didn’t know if they could dismantle the brick wall he had thrown up between them.
He’d gone out for drinks with a doctor, probably not that long ago. She wanted to be happy for him... but some part of her was angry. Not angry about the doctor; angry that this message was the only thing she had gotten.
Shepard opened up a new message to reply, then paused. Another part of her felt sad. How had she changed things for Kaidan, showing up on Horizon? She could only imagine the pain her death – and resurrection – must have caused him. Trying to get my life back...
She closed the blank response and left the terminal.
“Wouldn’t you rather get lost in the memory of another’s hand on yours? Or the taste of their tongue in your mouth?” their latest recruited specialist, Thane, asked. He said it so matter-of-factly.
Shepard stared at him, though she didn’t really see him, as against her will, memories of the time she had spent with Kaidan before Ilos flooded her mind. It was the only night they had spent together, and Shepard remembered it well. Her whole body had practically vibrated with her need for him – nerve endings on fire, feeling his racing pulse as she pressed up against him, gasping as he—
Blood rushed to her face, though not from embarrassment.
The assassin met her gaze evenly, as though he could read her mind. “It’s better than spending the night alone,” he said softly.
But as her most recent memory of Kaidan fell upon her, great weight that it was, she asked, “Couldn’t you get lost in the bad memories?”
“Yes,” Thane answered simply. “That is possible. However, while recalling a gunshot wound to the knee is... painful, I can look at my knee and see that it isn’t shattered.”
Shepard could still feel that hollowed-out space in her chest. Some days it burned, some days it throbbed, other days it just... felt empty. Not a recollection. Reality.
Kaidan found himself debating sending Shepard another message. He was simultaneously trying to convince himself not to do it while writing the letter to her in his mind. A few weeks had passed, and he hadn’t heard from her.
Shepard was clearly busy – you don’t resurrect a person so they can relax, he supposed. A pang of sadness bit at him; she would be on another adventure of a (second) lifetime, and here he was, filing paperwork and leading a rather ordinary life. Aside from the fact that his former commander and lover had come back from the dead. He snorted softly in dark amusement.
It was just like Shepard to be involved in the latest messiest mission possible. Making a real difference; making every second of her life (and death, in this case) count. He missed that about her. He missed a lot of things about her. Even though she was alive, the pain he felt was as if she’d died all over again.
“Dammit, Alenko, get it together,” he muttered to himself.
“Still, my feelings have always come after my duty,” Samara was saying as she regarded the stars through the window of the observation deck aboard the Normandy. She often did that while they spoke, never quite meeting the commander’s eyes. As she finished her sentence, though, she brought her large blue orbs up to catch hold of the commander's gaze. “The same is true for you.”
The commander said nothing, but moved to the window and stared at the stars drifting past. Of course, the asari was right.
Shepard found solace in her comrades – all of them, even Jack, the so-called crazed criminal holed up in the darkest, most secluded area of the ship. Samara, though, was particularly good to sit with and have a quiet, reflective moment. Although she was probably doing too much of that these days. Still, it was nice on the observation deck. The quiet hum of the engine relaxed her.
Shepard reveled in the clarity that a fire fight brought. Battles were freeing, when she could go back to a distillation of herself – what she had trained for, and the goal. That was all that mattered on the battlefield. Everything was crystal clear.
However, even with the technology of the mass relays, it still took time to get to those battlefields. So it was that she paced her cabin on the eve of their suicide mission, trying to distract herself from the silence. She went over everything in her head. It had all been planned out as much as possible before they headed into the Omega 4 relay and beyond. All of them were ready. They were a team now, each specialist loyal to Shepard, each knowing how to work with and support one another despite any personal disagreements. They were focused solely on the mission. Shepard was confident even she, herself, would be fine on the battlefield – if she could just get there in one piece. Her mind kept drawing her back to her former lieutenant.
She found herself staring at the picture she kept of Kaidan on her desk. Remembering not just him, but them, as they were, as she once was before Cerberus had rebuilt her. She frowned, thinking again of how she had changed. The added aggression that she put into her words and the choices she made. Still doing what she thought was the right thing, but with… force. Why?
Perhaps she was tired of being treated poorly – after everything she had done, the Council may as well have kicked her to the curb. Even Anderson, a man who had once held so much hope for her, seemed to have given up. In a galaxy that had stubbornly refused to change during her two-year absence, she felt off-balance.
Or was it something else? Worry nagged at her. Both the Illusive Man and Miranda had told her that Shepard had to be rebuilt exactly as she was. It was possible either one had lied. Miranda had expressed regret she couldn't build Shepard to her own specifications, and the Illusive Man himself was many things, but trustworthy was not one of them. Her new attitude did seem to be getting her results, which was exactly what Cerberus was looking for.
But regardless of the reason behind it, did the attitude shift make her a different Shepard than the one she had been two years ago? Had she lost a part of herself? She shook her head, breaking her intent gaze on her former lover’s picture. That couldn't give her an answer. It only spurred more questions.
“Joker, prep the engines,” Shepard ordered into her comm. “I’m about to overload this place and blow it sky high.”
“Roger that, Commander,” Joker's voice crackled in her ear.
As Shepard bent to open part of the Collectors’ ship systems, Joker said, “Uh, Commander? I've got an incoming signal from the Illusive Man. EDI’s patching it through.”
The battle-hungry Grunt pressed a few buttons the control panel and the Illusive Man’s holo came into view. He and Shepard bantered back and forth in the usual manner – he was all charm and grace, and she was churlish. It was only when he brought up saving the Collector base instead of destroying it that Shepard gave pause.
“They liquefied people,” she spat. “Turned them into something horrible. We have to destroy the base!”
“Don't be short-sighted,” the Illusive Man chastised. “Our best chance against the Reapers is to turn their own resources against them. They were working directly with the Collectors; who knows what information is buried there.”
Shepard shook her head. “No matter what kind of technology we might find, it’s not worth it.”
“Shepard, I didn’t discard you because I knew your value,” he said, causing alarm bells to go off in Shepard’s head. Discard. Like a thing. “Don’t be so quick to discard this facility. Think of the potential!”
The commander stopped and stared at the Illusive Man’s holo. Some part of her reasoned that his argument had sound logic... but to what end? Legion had described the geth wanting to build their own future. It had pointed out something Sovereign had once said to Shepard: “By using our Mass Relays, your society develops along the paths we desire.” Accepting someone else’s technology had been unacceptable for most geth. Dr. Mordin Solus had pointed out something similar regarding the Krogan: “Like giving nuclear weapons to cavemen.”
Even with those things in mind, her mind rested finally on Kaidan, saying Cerberus could not be trusted, saying she had changed. She didn’t trust Cerberus, and she never had, and she hadn’t changed enough to be convinced of what the Illusive Man was saying. She frowned, suddenly resentful. She would prove Kaidan wrong.
“We’ll fight and win without it,” she said decisively, turning away from the holo and back to the systems hub. “I won’t let fear compromise who I am. We can beat the Reapers, and we don’t have to sell our souls to do it.”
Shepard isn’t prepared to see him when she does.
As usual, the timing isn’t great.
Despite the looming threat of Reaper arrival at quite literally any second, it hits her that she’s missed him.
“Glad I bumped into you, Kaidan.”
“Yeah, me too.”
As they smile at each other, Shepard feels a brick – from that wall he threw up all those months ago – fall by the wayside.
Well. It’s a start.