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let me die, let me drown
lay my bones in the ground
I will still come around
when the time for sleep is through
over hill, over dale
through the valley and vale
do not weep, do not wail
I am coming home to you
- The Oh Hellos, “Thus Always to Tyrants”
——
pain
awful, excruciating pain
why
why can I feel pain
I shouldn’t be here
I should be done
I made the choice
a choice between three, but not a choice
not really
only one option, pull the gun, fire at the weak point blow the whole thing to hell blow all of them to hell for us for them for him
Kaidan
I’m here
Kaidan
—-
He grunts as the bulkhead in front of them collapses forward. “That was too easy,” he mutters into his comm.
“Commander Bailey, what is that?” comes the low, terrified voice of the kid on his flank. Not a soldier, not even an adult, just a teenager he’d found huddled in a corner of the Presidium when the Reapers invaded. One of the few survivors he’d managed to hide in a burned-out storefront while the Reapers transported the whole goddamn Citadel to Earth.
Earth. He can see it up there, in the cracks—the chasms—in the ceiling above his head. The automatic mass effect fields are holding the air in for now, but he’s got no idea how long that’s gonna be for, not since that wave of red energy burst through the Citadel and fried anything with an on switch, from the internal communications array to his gun’s targeting computer to the fucking keepers.
But not everything electrical. Not the mass effect fields automatically keeping gravity constant and the atmosphere stable. Not the helmets he and the kid are wearing on the off chance the atmosphere becomes unstable. And not the display screens all around the station, every one of which had started displaying the same message in the instant before the red wave swept through.
FIND HIM. And a set of coordinates.
“That,” Bailey says, answering the kid’s question, “is what we’re looking for. I think.”
It’s a pile of rubble, but it’s not. He’s no expert, but even with just a glance he can see that the tech half-buried amongst the twisted metal and sheared polymers is far, far beyond anything he’s ever seen on the Citadel or in any Alliance installation. He can’t even begin to guess what some of those pieces do, or even what material they’re made of. And really, he doesn’t care.
FIND HIM.
Somebody needs to be found.
“Alright folks,” he calls into his comm, gesturing to the gathered team behind him, “just like the last two times.”
Getting to this part of the Citadel was no mean feat. Along the way, they’d encountered more than a dozen other survivors who’d somehow survived the Reaper invasion, some of them drawn this direction by the message on the screens, others needing to rescued from rubble just like this.
Well. Not just like this.
But rubble’s rubble, and the team seems just as determined as Bailey to figure out what that final, unblinking message means. So they go to work.
It’s hours of digging. Hours of moving massive pieces of who-the-hell-knows-what. Hours of breaks, working in shifts, wondering out loud what that red wave was, why all the Reaper troops they encountered on the way were dead, why the Reaper ships they can just barely see through the chasms in the ceiling seem to be just floating derelicts, who it is that’s waiting under the rubble. Hours.
Until the moment comes.
“Commander, I think I found something!” the kid yells into his comm. Immediately, Bailey’s on his feet and running, lead in the pit of his stomach. He stops where the kid’s crouched, struggling to pull part of a bulkhead up.
Up and off of a pair of N7 greaves.
Bailey’s heart stops for the barest of moments. Holy shit. Then he bellows, “Over here!”
In seconds, dozens of hands have joined his and the kid’s, clutching at the bulkhead, lifting it carefully, revealing more of the buried figure. Precious seconds tick by as more of the rubble is cleared, more of the body is revealed, legs crushed but held together by state-of-the-art armor, chestplate all but melted away, bits of metal fused to the skin underneath but moving—somehow moving—with labored breath. The unmistakable red stripe on the right pauldron. The face, bruised and bloodied almost beyond recognition. Except for the single, piercing blue eye that locks onto Bailey.
“How…” Bailey says breathlessly.
“Who is it, Commander?” the kid asks.
Bailey kneels down next to the figure, gently takes his broken hand, feels the fingers weakly grip his. Something stirs within him, an emotion he doesn’t dare name, something he hasn’t felt since the Reapers took Earth.
Maybe it’s gonna be alright.
He squeezes back and whispers, “It’s Shepard.”
—-
pain
sharp, poking, prodding
where am I
how am I
antiseptic smell, harsh lights, soft touches everywhere making sharp pains as they put the pieces back together my pieces but there’s a piece missing still
Kaidan
I’m here
Kaidan
—
It is impossible that Chloe Michel is still alive. She knows this. When the Reapers invaded, a quick-thinking lab tech had pulled her into a room, shoved her under a cabinet where she’d stayed, barely breathing, for hours. When she couldn’t stay put any longer, she crept around Huerta, finding other survivors, treating the patients that hadn’t been taken, doing her best to keep them all alive.
And then the red wave swept through, and every Reaper soldier fell down, dead. It’s impossible that she’s alive.
How much more impossible, then, is the life of the man on the bed behind her.
The doorway to the darkened room swishes open. She looks up from the monitor she’s frustratedly typing on, giving Bailey a nod as he comes in.
“How is he?” Bailey asks. Michel smiles quietly. He’s asked that same question at least four times a day for the last seven days, every time in the same hushed, fearful tone, ever since he’d arrived at the head of a procession of weary, worn survivors, together carrying a makeshift backboard—which might as well’ve been a palanquin, for all the reverence with which they held it—bearing the still-breathing body of Commander Shepard.
Impossible.
She looks over her shoulder at the bed where the Commander lies. “Still holding on, but I’m not sure for how much longer,” she answers, shaking her head. “I’ve done as much as I can without getting the diagnostic equipment back up.”
Whatever that red wave had done to the Reapers, it had absolutely scrambled every bit of tech in the hospital. Things still worked, like the laser scalpel and defibrillator, but anything that required programming, like the medi-scanner? It was like the programming had never existed. But she’s a doctor, not a programmer, so she’s done her best to keep the patient stable while the engineers do their work.
It help keeps her fear quiet if she thinks of him as “the patient.”
“Well, I might have some good news on that front,” Bailey says in his slow drawl. “The techs finally got the comm array reprogrammed and functional this morning, and we made contact with Earth. Same as up here, all the tech’s blown to shit, but the Reapers are gone. All of them.”
“Excellent,” she says, “then we can have some of those techs come down here to get my equipment up and running again.”
“How about I do you one better,” he responds. “You and him—“ he nods toward the bed, as if he also dare not say the patient’s name out loud “—on the first shuttle going planetside, in about an hour.”
Her eyes get wide as she finally turns to look at him, speechless, taking in the twinkle in his eye, the triumphant square of his shoulders. He nods.
“The guy I talked to down there, Coats, he thinks we need to evacuate the Citadel, and I agree. With the keepers permanently offline, we don’t know what’s going on in the guts of this place. Safer to get everyone off before we figure out what to do next.”
“But that’s…Commander, the Citadel houses thirteen million people.”
His looks down grimly, and her face softens. They’d found the areas where people were being turned into…slurry on day two. Surely there are fewer than thirteen million on board now. Far fewer. She hadn’t known the C-Sec commander at all a week ago, but he seems to have taken the invasion, the number of people lost, as a personal failure. She gently puts a hand on his arm.
“It’ll take a while,” he says roughly, “but Coats says they’re better set up down there than we are. For food, for safety.” He looks back up at her. “For triage. He says they’ve already reprogrammed some of their medical equipment. And when I mentioned his name…” He nods over at the bed again, eyes glistening in the emergency lights. “He said bring him. Now.”
Michel has been racing for what seems like forever, even though it may only have been a few days. Racing from the Reaper troops, racing to find other survivors, racing to perform the equivalent of field medicine in a fully-equipped, broken-down hospital until the passive monitors showed the patient’s heart rate steady, his pulse ox normal, and nothing else. But now, for the first time, she has room for a new thought. An impossible thought.
It’s going to be alright.
“I’ll get Shepard prepped for transport, then.”
—
pain
full-body, suffusing pain
it never goes away it never goes away
I don’t deserve this
I deserve every part of this
all of the lives I’ve ended, all of the hurt I’ve caused, all of the choices I’ve made that I had to make that no one else could make all of the people I’ve left behind it’s only right I should be left behind please don’t leave me behind
Kaidan
I’m here
Kaidan
—-
“Admiral. Welcome home.”
Hackett returns Coats’ sharp salute, then grips his arm tightly. “Major. It’s good to be home.”
He nods at ease to the rest of the staff on the shuttle landing platform—noting with disinterested interest the salutes of the turians, asari, even the single volus over in the corner, all directed at him—and starts walking inside with Coats on his flank. “Report.” He doesn’t need a report, but he asks anyway. The fleet arrived in Earth orbit six hours ago, and since then his staff has been furiously gathering data on everything from repairs to the planet’s infrastructure to the deployment of personnel on the ground. But he’s never met Coats before, so he needs to get a measure of the man, and fast.
“Alliance forces took point in repairing communications,” Coats says as he walks, “setting up triage, and securing supply lines, in that order, within the first week following the discharge of the Crucible.” Two servicemen hold the door to the facility open as they approach, posture academy-straight. Coats nods to them as they enter. “We recruited from the general populace to refill our ranks shortly thereafter for security purposes, but the planet’s been surprisingly quiet.”
“People’re tired. Can’t imagine they want to fight amongst themselves if they’ve got the resources they need.” Hackett drops a half-step behind Coats, subtly encouraging him to lead the way while saluting at the medical staff—some Alliance, but not all—along the halls.
Coats nods as he turns down another corridor. “We had to put down a few riots over food in the first days, but yes, once comms and supply lines were up, it was easy to get the people set up into administrative units.”
Hackett hums in approval. Interesting. Anderson chose Coats well; a fighter who knows the importance of admin work. Rare, especially now. “And Shepard? How did they find him?”
If Coats minds the abrupt change in subject, he doesn’t show it. Clearly used to dealing with Command, then. Also interesting. “Six milliseconds before the discharge, every screen on the Citadel was overridden with a message: FIND HIM, and coordinates for Shepard’s location.”
Hackett already knows this. “Theories?”
Coats leads him into an elevator, presses a button for two floors down. “Nothing solid, sir.”
Hackett’s intimately familiar with that tone. Anderson used it anytime he didn’t agree with the consensus. So Hackett treats him like he would Anderson, and just stares him down.
Coats looks away, back toward the buttons on the elevator panel. Heh. “If I had to hazard a guess, sir…one of Shepard’s crew’s a sentient AI.”
“You think it was EDI?”
Now Coats looks him square in the eye. “I think someone tracked Shepard—and only Shepard—through the superstructure, calculated what the Crucible would do from all the available data, and was able to send a message that couldn’t be ignored in the exact moment between the Reapers taking their eye off the ball and the discharge disabling all programmable equipment.” The elevator dings, and the door opens behind him, but Coats doesn’t break eye contact. “Sir.”
The corner of Hackett’s mouth quirks upward as Coats turns around, continuing to lead him through the facility. Coats’ll do. So he allows himself to ask a question he doesn’t have an answer to. “Shepard’s status?”
Coats’ step hitches, though his stride never breaks. “Commander Shepard has been mostly comatose since he was recovered on the Citadel.”
“Mostly?”
Coats shakes his head. “I’ll introduce you to Dr. Michel, she can explain better than I can. His physical condition’s been stable for weeks now, but—“
They turn a final corner, and now Hackett stops cold. Coats gets quiet, letting Hackett approach the observation window alone.
The first thing that Hackett notices is how small Shepard looks underneath the blankets and tubes and wires and bandages. So small. Hackett can’t help notice. He’s too used to sizing up his opponents, too accustomed to looking for weaknesses he can exploit, strengths he can undermine. Playing people like chess pieces on a board is how he got to be Fleet Admiral in the first place. Hell, it’s how he got Shepard to be the first human Spectre, how he got Shepard the resources to stand against the Reapers, and how he got Shepard all the way back to Earth in time to save it.
Sacrificed his knight. To win. Not to capture the enemy’s king, but to wipe all their goddamn pieces off the board. He should regret it.
Standing here, seeing Shepard like that, he almost does.
“Dr. Michel’s theory is that it’s his implants,” Coats says quietly, stepping up to Hackett’s left shoulder.
Hackett nods once. Of course; the discharge would’ve disabled cybernetics too. And if they haven’t fixed his yet, it’s because they don’t know what Hackett knows. “Find Miranda Lawson,” he says, voice soft but with the tone of an order.
They stand quietly for a moment, two, watching Shepard’s labored, mechanically-assisted breathing, before Hackett figures out the other thing that’s wrong.
“Where’s Alenko?” he asks.
“Sir?”
Hackett regards Coats with a wry lift of his eyebrow. “Command may frown on fraternization, but even I know the two of them are a thing. Don’t tell me you’ve got him assigned somewhere else.”
Coats shakes his head slowly, brow furrowed. “The Normandy never returned, sir. We assumed they escaped with the fleet.”
“No,” Hackett responds, slowly in his surprise. “They didn’t.”
He turns back to the window, unconsciously putting one hand on the glass. When the fleet finally made it back to Earth after traveling through deep space for three solid months, Hackett had expected the worst. Whatever the Crucible had done to the mass relays and the fleet—and especially to the geth on the quarian ships—Earth had been ground zero. So to hear an Alliance voice on comm when they pulled into orbit was almost too great a victory to bear.
And then, to hear that Shepard had survived…but, no. Everything the Alliance sacrificed—everything the whole goddamn galaxy sacrificed—for this victory over extinction is embodied by the battered, broken man in that bed, fighting for his life. And he’s doing it alone.
It has to be alright.
Hackett turns around, and leads Coats out. There’s nothing more to say.
—-
pain
dull, throbbing pain
everywhere
and nowhere
but definitely everywhere
how long until it stops
how long until I stop
I thought I was done, I did what I had to, not what I wanted to, what I was made to but I want to stop please let me stop please let me be what I want to be please
Kaidan
I’m here
Kaidan
—
Kaidan stirs uncomfortably in the chair.
When had he fallen asleep? Some time ago, by the absence of light on his face. He keeps his eyes closed for a moment longer, listening to the beeps of the equipment keeping Shepard alive.
Shepard. Alive.
Six months since Shepard had kissed him and shoved him to safety on the Normandy. Six months since they left Shepard for dead, Kaidan screaming from the medbay for Joker to stop, knowing they had no choice. Six months altogether, two months of repairs to the ship on the jungle planet from what the red wave did, of helping Joker mourn EDI, of mourning Shepard alone; then four more crawling back through interstellar space, back toward the place where Shepard died, where Kaidan lost everything.
Except.
A lot of “excepts” in the last week. They limped back into the Sol system expecting the worst, except they were met by an Alliance patrol ship at the Oort belt and brought in with distinction. Hackett addressed the Normandy personally to thank them for the service in the Battle for Earth, except there was a data packet buried in the feed with Hackett’s personal signature, addressed to Kaidan, reading only, “Shepard’s alive. Find him,” and a set of coordinates. They landed in the middle of London for a big celebration in their honor, except the crew helped him sneak out the side door so that he could run at a dead sprint through the crowds and the rubble and the rebuilding, all the way into this facility, past the guards and the doctors and Miranda freaking Lawson, straight to Shepard’s side.
Kaidan’s been living in the space created by that last “except.” That “except” means everything. He’ll sit in this chair for the rest of time if he has to, because Shepard died, except he didn’t. He didn’t. He’s alive.
He’s alive.
Not that sitting in this chair is comfortable. Kaidan grunts, finally opening his eyes as he stretches, trying to work out the knot in his back. He adjusts to the dim light in the room, squinting against the brightness of the monitoring equipment. He can just about make out the steady rise and fall of Shepard’s chest. And his hand curled gently on the mattress. And his wide-open eyes.
His piercing, starlight-blue eyes. Staring directly at him.
Kaidan’s heart stops.
“Kaidan.”
Kaidan inhales sharply.
“You’re here,” Shepard whispers, voice shaky and weak.
Kaidan closes the distance between them in an instant, hands reaching out to grasp Shepard’s hands, his arms, his face, but too afraid to actually touch him, afraid to hurt him, afraid this isn’t real. Kaidan hovers over him, mouth trying to form syllables but unable to actually say anything, eyes locked on Shepard’s.
“Kaidan,” Shepard says again.
“I’m here,” he responds, stilling himself, barely breathing.
“You’re here.” The relief in Shepard’s trembling voice almost breaks Kaidan.
The touch of Shepard’s bandaged hand on his does.
Kaidan collapses onto Shepard, oh-so-carefully protecting him but unable to help himself from embracing him, squeezing his hand, stroking his arm, sobbing into his neck. Six months of grief, on top of two years after Alchera, and so many weeks of confusion before Earth fell, all of it crushing Kaidan from the inside out, released now like dandelions on the wind. He feels light. He feels free. He feels Shepard, with his hands and his forehead and his lips.
It really will be alright.
“I’m here,” he says again, voice thick and muffled and so, so happy. They very carefully don’t say anything else for a long while.
—
pain
only a dull ache
only
what a relief to have an only
just a twinge in my leg
like normal
what a beautiful normal, but it’s fucking annoying and it won’t let me sleep so time to get up I guess and try not to wake him but don’t worry
Kaidan
I’m here
—-
The sky is just barely streaked in pre-dawn purples when the ache in his leg nudges him awake. He rolls his eyes as he gently tries to readjust his positioning on the bed, but he knows it’s no use.
And anyway, he doesn’t want to wake Kaidan.
Shepard carefully leans over and kisses Kaidan’s shoulder, who mumbles something incoherent in his sleep, and quietly pivots out of the bed. He grabs his cane, leaning less heavily on it than he did even a week ago. As he shuffles out of the bedroom, he glances back at the dark-haired, bare-chested, comforter-stealing, loudly-snoring beautiful man in his bed, and smiles.
The trek down the stairs takes a hot minute, though. Damn stairs. Kaidan wanted to put a lift in; Shepard glared at him until he sent the engineers home. Shepard proposed using his biotics to just, you know, float up and down; Kaidan threatened to use his own biotics to put up a barrier. The compromise instead had been pretending the slow ascent and descent was a part of Shepard’s physical therapy.
How wonderful, to bicker with the man he loves about something so trivial. The man who, more often than not, carries him up and down the stairs anyway.
By the time he reaches the cabin’s front porch and the rocking chairs facing the eastern treeline, he’s a little winded, a little sore, a little glad for the bracing chill of the Canadian air. He sits down heavily in the right-hand chair—always the right-hand chair—and tilts his head up. The last of the stars are fading from the lavender sky as the bright rays of dawn start stretching over the tree-masked horizon. He grew up among those stars. He’s seen nebulae with colors more vivid than these, interstellar darkness deeper than this, trees on worlds more elegant and alien than those. He’s experienced wonders beyond description.
This morning, like every morning here, puts all of that to shame.
The porch door opens, and Shepard’s suddenly covered in warmth, a well-worn blanket thrown gently over him. Kaidan settles into the other rocking chair with his own blanket. “You’re here,” Kaidan says sleepily.
“I’m here.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Just a twinge,” is what Shepard says. No nightmares, is what he means.
Kaidan says nothing, just hums low in his throat and reaches out to take Shepard’s hand in his, together watching the light slowly arrive, as their joy meets the day.
Because everything is alright.