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The nightmares started immediately after Alchera. Pretty much the moment he woke up in the hospital, the memory ran on a loop: Shepard, walking away from him, no looking back, her spine ramrod straight. The statue of a perfect soldier, striding off to do her duty the way she did every time.
What could he have done differently? He'd argued with her in real life, and she hadn't listened. The words washed away like rain on stone, leaving no marks. If he tried to stop her—grabbed her arm, threw up a shield—she wouldn't even have said anything. She would only have turned back to him, and he would have felt the weight of her gaze through the visor of her helmet. The weight of every unspoken piece of knowledge between them. They had been sharing a bed since Ilos. He had been closer to her than any person he'd ever known.
And none of it mattered. No matter how deeply he looked into her eyes, no matter how he whispered his love into her skin, he would never come first. Her mission was absolute. He could only count himself lucky he had gotten to peer over the top of her walls, but he knew he would never be allowed past them.
So he had to let her go, but that didn't matter to his dreams. Night after night, Shepard died in a new and more terrible way. Her suit caught fire, and her whole body went up like a candle, without even time to hear her scream over the comm. The invaders struck again, obliterating half the ship right in front of him, just as she turned away forever, and there was nothing left of her but dust. He saw her fall from the ship out the window of his pod, clawing at her helmet as her oxygen failed.
The worst part was—sometimes he thought he rescued her. Sometimes, he coaxed her into the pod after all, promising to go after Joker himself, and the instant her pod ejected, the mysterious ship destroyed it, leaving him standing by the viewport, frozen, until the rest of the Normandy went with it.
Or maybe they got into a pod together, leaving Joker to the fate they both knew he claimed to want. They clutched each other like children waking from a nightmare, breathing each other's air, consumed in each other—until they hit the atmosphere of Alchera and the pod's shielding failed.
Or maybe, somehow, they went to the cockpit together. Propped Joker up, each to a side. Carried him to the pods, shoved him inside, turned to each other just in time for the final strike that obliterated them both.
Again and again, he heard her scream. Again and again, he woke up sobbing, curled in around himself with his hand over his mouth to cover the noise like he was a teenager back in BaAT. Two years was a long time to cry, but somehow, he never ran out of tears.
Kaidan did not listen to the rumors. Everyone in the Alliance knew what Shepard had been to him—even now, two years later, he could not keep the flash of pain from his face whenever her name came up. When he saw her memorial on the Citadel or heard an update from any planet they'd visited together. Most people liked him too much to rub it in his face directly, but that was worse, since it meant everyone kept forwarding every Shepard sighting. No one seemed to care how many redheaded women existed in the galaxy. Every single one might have been her, and his friends thought he needed to know about it. It got so bad he set up a filter to automatically delete the messages—but that didn't stop him from digging through his digital trash to read them all, to squint at blurry photographs and wonder if that could be her. If she was out there.
Except no one seemed to understand it was worse if she had lived.
If she was alive, then every night he had spent curled around his pillow, hoping he would not dream of her, she had lain in bed without thinking of him.
If she was alive, then every time he had paused in a crowd, certain he had heard her voice or glimpsed her face, she had been somewhere else, somewhere beyond his reach.
If she was alive, then every moment he had spent dreaming of her, wishing for one more chance to tell her what was in his heart, she had spent not thinking of him at all.
No, of course he wanted her to be alive. He would gladly take every ounce of pain he had felt in those two years and a thousand more if it meant she was out there somewhere drawing breath. If there was any chance he could see her again.
At least, that was what he thought before Horizon.
Kaidan had always been a good soldier. The Alliance gave him purpose. Maybe he'd only ever joined because he might as well get paid for the privilege of the government's permanent attention, but his time serving meant everything to him. He had done so much good. He was grateful for every life he had ever saved. They would never measure up to the one person he had failed, but at least the list of names gave him something to recite when he woke up at three a.m. with Shepard's name on his lips.
And there was little room for rumination when a mystery reared its head, like the disappearing colonies. All of a sudden, he had a way to fill the hours that needed filling. Far less time for dreaming if he could spend it researching every person who had vanished, committing their name to memory, following every trace of them through the galaxy. They were his people, just like every person in every colony in every star system, and he would protect them or die trying.
Horizon sure made it seem like the latter, though. When the insect stung him, every nerve in his body went numb. This should have been a blessing, since he'd basically had a permanent migraine since Alchera. But without pain, his mind had nothing to focus on but his failure. He'd solved the mystery but faltered at the finish line, and the people of Horizon—good people, people he'd gotten to know like the crew of the Normandy—were going to die because of it.
After that moment, nothing really felt real. He remembered waking up, but the truth—that he had failed, that everything had gone wrong and he had done nothing—was so great he could barely wrap his mind around it.
Then—then he heard Shepard's voice, and everything snapped back into focus. There was no moment of doubt. It was her. Every part of him was made to answer when she spoke. She didn't need his help or his protection, but she sure as hell needed his backup. The words left his mouth automatically—"Commander Shepard, captain of the Normandy"—but if you had asked him even two seconds later, he couldn't have told you what he said. None of it mattered.
She was right there, standing with her feet planted and her shoulders back, her jaw set and lifted just slightly, her eyes blazing with all the words she was keeping in check. She would never tell a civilian off to their face. She was far too controlled for that. Every action she took, every word she spoke, was carefully measured and weighed. But if you knew her tells, you could see the truth.
Kaidan knew all her tells. He knew everything about her. And even as he rattled off the words to defend her, he drank in the sight of her. He did not feel like a starving man at a feast or a thirsty man at a desert oasis. He felt like he had been the corpse, and the sight of her had brought him back to life. Feeling was returning to every part of him, and his heart tingled like fingers gone to sleep. He didn't quite dare to to believe it was really happening—but he couldn't look away, either.
The colonist swore at him—Kaidan knew his name, knew he would feel bad for ignoring him later, because he was correct to be upset—but he didn't matter, any more than the unfamiliar humans standing with Shepard mattered. There was only her, unmoved and unmovable, the fixed point on which the universe turned.
Kaidan wanted to say something to that effect. Instead, when he took a step toward her, his legs gave out. The last thing he remembered was her face as she ran forward to catch him, that facade of stone cracking for the first time to reveal the woman beneath.
When he woke the next time, for one breathless, hopeful moment, he thought he was back on the Normandy. That he would roll over and find Shepard beside him and discover the last two awful years had been the bad dream after all. Then he could take Shepard into his arms, press his lips to the spot on the back of her neck that made her break out in goosebumps, and wake her up a little early to show exactly how glad he was that all of it had been a lie.
Then the room around him came into focus more, and he realized they were still in the colony. He'd been in the med bay often enough; he'd just never been the one on the table. He rubbed his forehead against the ghost of a migraine, not really pain so much as a flinch against the possibility.
He was alone in the room. He could stay there and wait for someone to come looking for him, but the idea made him a little sick to his stomach. He had waited two years already, two years of misery and unrelenting toil. He wanted to pretend anger drove him to stand so quickly his head spun.
It wasn't anger. It was fear. His last image of Shepard was so clear in his mind still—but that was all it was, an image. What if she hadn't really been there? What if he had dreamed it all again, a horrific side effect of those bugs that stung him?
He stumbled out into the hallway. Voices drifted to him from another room at the other end of the building. He thought one of them was Shepard's—low, measured, unreadable—but he didn't dare make any assumptions until he saw for himself. He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders, and only moved forward once he was certain the dizziness had passed. No one would take him seriously if he charged in there like a bull after a red flag. And now that the rest of the scene was returning to his memory, he was concerned about some of the things he had seen. He hoped, fervently, that he would move to that room and discover his memory had made a liar of him.
He did not. Shepard was in a narrow conference room with two other humans, a man and a woman. Both of them bore the orange Cerberus symbol on their armor. Shepard was still dressed like an N7, but that was the only thing that matched his memories pre-Alchera. Her hair had been buzzed off, barely more than stubble on her scalp, and an orange scar split one cheek, gleaming with cybernetics. When she snapped to look at the doorway, more tech shone behind her eyes, like the eyeshine of a wolf in the night.
He swallowed, resisting the urge to grab the doorway to keep his balance.
Recognition lit her face, like sunlight cracking through stormclouds. He should have relaxed immediately, desperate to relax into the warmth of that expression. She wasn't smiling—she never smiled in public—but you could find it in her face if you knew where to look. He knew where to look, and all the signs were present, but for some reason, they did not fill him with the relief he expected.
"You're awake," she said, stepping away from the table and whatever information she was inspecting. "I'm sorry. Mordin said you would be out for another fifteen at least. I meant to be there."
She stepped toward him. He wanted to go to her, but the two Cerberus people behind her stopped him, leaving him frozen in the doorway like he'd been stung again. Shepard didn't have to be told what the issue was. Without turning away from him, she halted at the end of the table. Her voice turned clipped, her features hard again. "Leave us."
"Shepard—" the woman began.
Now Shepard did turn, faster than a striking snake and twice as deadly. "I said go. We'll finish this on the ship."
Had she always been so deadly? Part of him knew the answer was yes. But the rest of him remained trapped in the doorway until the Cerberus goons left through the far door. Neither of them spared him so much as a glance.
Shepard watched them go, her posture still arched, waiting for another chance to strike. When the door closed behind them, she sighed. "Come in here and close the door," she said, more quietly. "I would have brought you to the Normandy, but we'd be overheard. Believe it or not, this is the privatest place we're going to get." Now she looked at him. Though she smiled, her eyes were sad. "Not much of a reunion. I'm sorry."
"I'm just glad you're alive," he whispered, stepping into the room on legs that didn't quite feel like his own. But it was true, and he couldn't regret saying it, not when it erased some of the sorrow from her face. The door slid shut behind him, so he could pretend they were alone for a moment.
"You're probably wondering why I didn't tell you." She could always guess his thoughts before he said them, though in this case he would have called it obvious. "And I hope you'll believe me when I say I haven't had a chance." She swallowed; a muscle ticked in her jaw. She stepped in closer, her voice dropping low in a way that made him stiffen slightly even though she was only making sure they couldn't possibly be overheard. "I'm being watched. All the time. I haven't found a way to get some goddamn time to myself or a comm line that won't be listened in on." Her hands flexed at her sides. "Well, I hope you know the Reapers didn't stop coming just because of what happened to me. They're almost here, Kaidan, and I had to choose. Find a way to get the word out without some freak in Cerberus HQ redacting the message or…"
"Or save the galaxy." He couldn't help the bitter tinge to his voice, even as he knew she was telling the truth. They were alone. She could stand up and tell as many lies as the Alliance needed, but she had never brought that to the two of them. Still. Right now, looking at her, he couldn't see her face, only all those nights he spent staring at the ceiling or the blank screen of his omnitool, trying not to search for her.
She nodded without a hint of remorse. For a moment, her face was stone again, another statue that belonged in the Citadel, distant, untouchable, inhuman.
From the first time he looked at her and realized he was seeing a woman, not his commander, he had known he would have to be the one to bridge that gap. He would have to put his hand on the stone and believe it would soften beneath his fingertips and become flesh, because she couldn't afford to do it for him. She needed someone else to help her with it.
He swallowed. Despite the bitterness still coating his throat, for a moment, he saw this time through her eyes instead. Watched, every second of every day. No clear allies, no one she could confide in. No one daring to reach out to her because they knew they would find only stone.
He pulled off his gloves and reached for her cheek with fingers that shook. Her skin was flushed beneath his palm. She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch.
He swallowed again. He wanted so badly to kiss her, to witness the same transformation he had seen a thousand times when they were alone together. Instead, the truth came out of his mouth. "I said," he whispered, "I would follow you anywhere."
Shepard closed her eyes. Her posture did not change, but all of a sudden, she seemed so tired anyway. "Except here."
Kaidan nodded, since saying anything else to agree would only be grinding salt into both their wounds. "I know you believe you're doing the right thing. But I have my own work to do."
She opened her eyes again, but only a slit, her expression unreadable, too distant for even him to reach. "What if I asked you?" she said, her voice low but not quite a whisper. "Kaidan. What if I begged you? I—" She broke off. He couldn't remember ever hearing her fail to finish a sentence. "I can't trust anyone." Now her voice was a whisper, broken and weak.
"Come here," he said softly, sliding his hand from her face so he could open his arms. With her body tucked against his, her cheek pressed to his hair, it was so easy to imagine saying yes. To picture sliding his hand into hers and squeezing, letting her lead him out of the room and back to the Normandy. To facing whatever came next together.
"You know I can't do that," he said instead, into the side of her neck where he'd kissed her a thousand times. "I love you. I won't give up my integrity for you."
Her arms tightened around him, just for a moment. Then she released him, resting her hands on his shoulders so she could look into his face with that absolute focus of hers, memorizing every detail. "I would never ask you to." Her voice had turned flat, but not in a way that hurt, because he knew it was only covering the same ache he felt. She would never ask him because he could never say yes. Neither of them wanted it that way, but neither of them could love the version of the other person who would bend on that point.
"I should go," she said, after a moment that stretched out so long the weight made it hard to breathe.
"Kiss me first," he replied, without letting himself make it into a question. "Kiss me because this isn't the end. I can't follow you now, but our roads will come back together sooner than you think."
He could see in her eyes she didn't believe him. Whatever she was doing for Cerberus, she truly believed it would kill her. His hands tightened into fists, denying whatever truth she thought she knew. Then she dipped her chin in a nod. She pressed her mouth to his, chaste and dry. It was still the best kiss he'd ever had, because when he closed his eyes, he could feel the light touch of her breath and know she was alive.
Nothing else mattered. They'd work out the rest.
When she pulled away, her face was stone, whole and implacable with no cracks to let the light in. He nodded, unable to trust his voice, and she nodded back, then snapped her hand up in a crisp salute. "LT."
He saluted her back instantly, with no input from his brain. "Commander."
She was already walking away from him, no looking back, her spine ramrod straight.