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He only realised the monster he’d created when they hit The Avengers.
Everything else had gone perfectly.
Her post-war recovery was going well. Remarkably well, in fact. He wasn’t sure whether it was something Cerberus had given her or a natural predisposition of hers to heal quickly, but she was healing very quickly.
However, even very quickly was apparently not quickly enough for her. She’d been… Well, he wasn’t one to use the word depressed lightly, and especially not to refer to Shepard, but yes, that was what she had been.
Chakwas had confined her to quarters for her own safety, to make sure she wasn’t pushing herself and harming her recovery. Which, objectively, was all very sensible, but it left her wandering about their home, unable to do even the simplest tasks. Nothing to fill up her time.
He’d asked for an extended leave of absence after the third day he’d come home to find her deadened eyes red rimmed, while she grimly insisted she hadn’t been crying. Since then he’d done all he could to distract her. The Marvel movies had definitely been his best idea. An entire series, more than a decade long, of successive teams of wise-cracking, ass-kicking friends saving the world.
Exactly her kind of thing.
They’d been binge watching them all day. First she’d appreciated, as he knew she would, the genius and ‘don’t-give-a-shit-ness’ of Tony Stark, in both his first and second movies. They’d bypassed the Hulk movie. Everyone did.
Thor had been an interesting one. She’d appreciated the physical form of the actor, which was fine. It wasn’t like he could pretend he hadn’t been ogling Black Widow in the previous movie… Actually his perpetual fondness for Widow probably explained a few things. Red hair, ass-kicking, sarcastic… Yeah. There was something to that.
She wasn’t Widow though. Widow worked in the shadows, Widow sneaked, Widow manipulated and tricked, and she was more or less a straight up shooter. Maria Hill would be a better fit or maybe even Captain Marvel.
In any case, while she’d enjoyed Thor’s physical form, she hadn’t been over fond of the movie. Being a god was cheating, apparently. He didn’t point out that Thor wasn’t a god, he was an alien prince who was worshipped on Earth like a god. And anyway, if being a ‘god’ was cheating, surely super-serum was too?
But she’d loved the heroic nobility and general goodness of Captain America, though she’d refused to believe that even with super serum any real human could be that noble.
He decided not to tell her that she was precisely that noble. With or without super serum.
She’d loved Peggy as well, especially the bit where she shot Steve, or, more precisely, his shield. He supposed he should probably be a bit worried about that.
The Avengers was looking to be the favourite so far. (Which was fair enough, it was a damn good movie, but he was fairly certain that when they got there she end up preferring Civil War.) She’d laughed at Tony Stark aboard the helicarrier and the resultant bickering, and she’d adored Loki so much. She watched the entire thing with a broad smile on her face. She had laughed, full blown real laughter, regular full-blown real laughter.
He’d been relieved and glad. So so glad that she was still able to laugh, because God, with what she’d been through, a broken spirit was more than understandable. And she had been broken. For her. She’d been so broken. He’d prayed and pleaded that she wouldn’t remain that way, and now it seemed like he’d been heard.
So yes, he’d been feeling rather pleased with himself.
Until now.
On the screen, Nick Fury stood on the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier, the images of six indistinct people before him, with his hands on his hips, his black coat spreading out behind him, as he said:
“I recognise the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.”
Shepard gasped. Her eyes lit up and, God, it was so beautiful and wonderful to see that he almost, almost didn’t want to stop her.
“No,” he said, knowing that he had to at least try.
“I’m using that,” she said in the same moment. “I am so using that.”
“Shepard…” he began.
“Shh,” she said, scooping a handful of popcorn out of the bowl cradled in his lap and cramming it into her mouth as she turned her attention back to the screen.
He should say something, he knew he should say something. He should pause the movie and explain, in simple terms, exactly why she couldn’t do that. But she was happily grinning away around her popcorn, watching the Avengers trying to hold Manhattan, and he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
*
He didn’t think any more about it until he came home one day, three bags of groceries held awkwardly in his arms, to find her sat on the sofa staring at the screen intently.
“I recognise the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it,” Nick Fury said.
She hit rewind.
“I recognise the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it,” he said again.
Again, she hit rewind.
“I recognise the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, feeling just a little concerned.
She jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Nothing,” she replied, nonchalantly turning the TV off and rising to help him with the bags.
“Shepard…” he tried again.
“It’s nothing,” she replied, cutting him off and peering into the bag she’d taken from him. “Ooh, brownies!” She took the entire box, planted herself back on the sofa and played the rest of the movie.
Maybe she just really liked the line, he told himself as he turned to unpack the rest of the groceries. It didn’t mean she was actually going to use it.
*
The next warning bell came several months later, after she’d been cleared for ‘light duties’ (which was really just code for ‘PR related BS’). She was in her dress blues, brushing her teeth in the sink when he finally dragged himself from their large, oh-so-comfy bed. He was about to step into the shower when she finished brushing her teeth and dropped her toothbrush back onto its holder. She leant forward, bracing herself with a hand on either edge of the sink, staring at her own reflection with a serious and grim expression on her face.
“I recognise the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it,” she said, then made a face as if she wasn’t pleased about it or something.
“Shepard…” he began, thinking that this time he really was going to have to talk to her about it.
“Gotta go!” she said. And then she literally legged it out of the apartment.
He decided he’d talk to her about it another time.
He didn’t.
*
Years later, they were out in the Terminus. Galactic travel was still slow but functioning.
Sadly, once they got to the outer rim, they found that a lot of the more remote areas, left alone to their own devices with no sign that any kind of central government had survived the war, had gone almost entirely wild. Thus the Normandy crew (and several other ships) had been dispatched to help bring order to these areas. Sadly, not everyone was happy with their presence.
They’d been fighting a group of mercenary leaders/ bandits/ kings for the past two weeks. This particular group were particularly nasty, commanding a huge portion of this system and exploiting the people who lived there in a variety of horrifying ways.
They had been close to defeating them when the council had issued the order to return. Shepard had demanded to know why, only to be told that grand celebrations were planned for the anniversary of the end of the war and that her presence would be required. She’d responded with a report on their progress, the risks if they were forced to abandon the mission now, et cetera. She’d even offered to appear via VTC if it would help.
The council had promised to consider her proposal, so now the senior officers were gathered in Normandy’s war room to hear the result.
Unsurprisingly, the result was not favourable. But that hadn’t stopped Shepard arguing. It felt like she’d been at it for hours.
“Nevertheless, Commander.” The asari councillor’s clipped voice echoed from the hologram in the centre of the table. “The council has made its decision.”
Kaidan stilled. Completely stock still as Shepard’s eyes lit up for just a fraction of a second. So quick that he was sure he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it.
And he knew exactly what was going to happen.
She stepped forwards, bracing herself on the edge of the table, just as she’d braced herself on the bathroom sink years ago.
“I recognise the council has made a decision,” she said matching Fury’s dry delivery perfectly. “But given that it’s a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.”
And she slammed her hand down on the ‘end call’ button. The hologram promptly disappeared from the centre of the table as Shepard straightened up, grinning broadly.
Kaidan sighed.
He knew he should have talked to her about it.
But damn it all, he wouldn’t trade that grin for anything else in the galaxy.