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Chapter Text

The talon gripped him suddenly, the sharp edges of the turian’s hands pressed down against his teeth, and he felt one tooth snap under the pressure. Kaidan groaned helplessly at the pain, his own smaller hands trying to pry the talons off his jaw, out of his mouth – all he could see were the sharp edges of the alien's teeth snapping together like the mouth of an eel, the grin malicious.

“Come on, Alenko – flare up, push me off.”

Kaidan stiffened, his eyes opening slowly as the memory faded into the background noise of the shuttle’s engines. It felt like a dream, but he knew better - this was a nightmare; a reality he still couldn't swallow with the rest of the bullshit he had put up with since he'd been taken to that training camp. That particular memory was the first time he’d stood before the bitter old turian at BAaT, the first time he’d managed to flare his biotics to life without injuring anyone around him. More importantly, it was first time he understood he was nothing more than just a living weapon to be wielded.

The rest of the memory filtered in against his will - the sour copper taste of his own blood flooding his mouth, the steel grip of the turian talons getting tighter with every second he didn't comply. He pulled his lower lip into his mouth, teeth lightly scrapping at the old scar there. The puckering bump was an irritating reminder that it had split under the pressure while he had struggled in vain under the strength of the alien.

Vyrnnus sneered, the disgust evident with the hard clicking noise in the back of his throat. “You humans are pathetic, can’t even do a simple thing like -“

Kaidan felt the dark energy amass as a result of his panic, the nodes of eezo in his system trembled and heated - the amp in the back of his head buzzed and ached strangely with the scar still fresh from the surgery. Adrenaline flooded his blood in a rush and he let the energy flow at the simple thought. The sharp tangy scent of eezo slipped between student and teacher and the commander finally let him go.

He fell to his knees, wincing at the pain from both the amp and his abused flesh. He spat out the partially broken tooth, wiping at his mouth between pants and stared warily at the Turian who only stepped back, eyed the next candidate and wiped the blood off his strange hands.

“Next time, I won’t be so patient.” The voice quipped, metallic syllables grating on his ears.

Kaidan carefully brought his bandaged hand up to his chin, the bright white of the gauze still crisp despite the split of bone and skin hiding under it, and rubbed at the corner of his mouth with the injured knuckle. There were fresh scabs still forming across both his lips from the last and final fight with the commander and the memory alone was making them itch.

"What happened, Alenko? Rahna won't even come out of the room!" Fists pounded on his door, Kaidan could hear her crying down the hall.

What had happened? Kaidan wondered quietly to himself, staring at the back of the metallic door. He looked away after the pounding grew silent and his friend walked away - gaze stumbling across the room and into his window to stare out to the vast sea of stars twinkling in the distance.

The sound of chaos was crashing around him, time trickled to a standstill and the question hung between his lips and wrapped around his tongue.

Control, he'd lost control.

His gaze lingered on his fisted hands. Closing his eyes, he took in a slow breath, trying to get the unsettling feeling in his stomach to pass. He clenched his jaw, the muscle tensing as the shuttle trembled again, he looked up towards the orange holo showing the trajectory of the shuttle and saw that they had entered Earth's upper atmosphere.

He tried to ignore the mounting whispers and the way the hair around his amp puckered up with anxiety, he could feel more eyes on him as they neared their destination. The question hung in the air - what was going to happen to him, to them, when they got to Earth?

Kaidan knew there wasn't going to be an inquest into the incident- the investigation had already been dealt with, the questions put to rest with Vyrnnus when they swept the whole thing under the rug and shut down the program... but still. He was dangerous, an outsider in a group of people who were already alienated.

It was lonelier than he anticipated but he couldn't blame them either.

The shuttle trembled again for a moment, the pull of gravity taking his thoughts away from the darker path they were flirting with and he looked out the small window to see the endless puff of clouds under them.

He frowned, dark brows meeting for the hundredth time that day, his stomach flipping strangely at the thought of seeing his parents again. It'd been... years since he'd last laid eyes on them. He knew it wasn't their doing - if anything, he knew they didn't want the separation. Kaidan understood that the nature of fear was the culprit. Those who did not understand biotics, the capabilities of it in humans were to blame for driving the wedge further and harder.

When his biotic abilities had manifested, his mother had been concerned to say the least - but not because of what he'd become, but because of his inability to control it. She had heard all the horror stories - who hadn't with all the vids running wild on the extranet?

His parents had seen all the kids from the eezo spill either die or be taken away to the BAaT camp.

He remembered her reaction like it was yesterday, when he felt the first prickle of the eezo nodules heat and fire inside him, when the blue biotic mist enveloped him and fired into all sorts of directions. The chaos had been frightening to him but... his mother hadn't even budged from her spot in the door way of their messed up living room.

While he had been struck dumb with fear, the apology still lingering on his tongue, she'd placed her hands on his shoulders, shook her head slightly and smiled at him while he struggled with the terrifying discovery that he wasn't normal. Once he'd been able to focus on her, she bent down to his level, eyes to eyes, and spoke soft words he would never forget.

"Kaidan, you need to learn how to use this power properly, you need to learn to control it to keep yourself and those you love around you safe."

Those words meant she wanted to report him for the training.

His father had disagreed to his mother's plan vehemently. Despite the best intentions behind such a plan, his father knew it meant abandoning their son to an experiment and the Alenkos were not lab rats. His parents had argued and after several weeks of stern, endless discussion, Kaidan had put an end to it.

He'd lost control - that seemed to be a recurring theme, now that he thought about it.

Besides that, he sighed - his mind wandering back to the memory; he'd tried flaring up on his own. Thoughtless as he was, he had tried to remember the feeling of the nodules heating when it first happened a few weeks prior but he wasn't amped yet and the power wasn't focused. It wasn't contained.

He can still see the damage - clear as day. The room had shook under the pressure of the wild mass effect fields, the walls warping into themselves as the expanding energy swallowed everything in its path of destruction. His skin had felt hot, like it had been set on fire, his nose had bled and he remembered crying, his mother's arms around him as she checked him over. Scrapes, cuts and bruises from the flying debris - nothing that couldn't be fixed with a Band-Aid and a few soothing words.

That had convinced his father.

Kaidan looked up towards the shuttle ceiling when the pilot's voice broke through his thoughts, announcing their imminent arrival. He bent down, reaching under his seat for his personal bag, his entire livelihood fitting into one small shore bag. They hadn't been allowed to take anything back from their rooms.

Everything had been confiscated, swept away like a bad memory under the rug and denied its existence - he wasn't sure how he felt about that. Denying the accident was denying the death of the commander; denying his responsibility in snuffing a life even if the guy had been a complete twisted bastard.

The shuttle's hydraulics flickered to life, the familiar sound of the hissing air reminded him of the small claustrophobic space of the detention cell they'd put him in after Vyrnnus had been declared dead. And for a brief moment, his first meeting with Rahna fluttered at the edges of his memory as he watched her disembark.

Hair like silk, bright eyes, a soft smile - graceful fingers that moved as fluidly as her laughter...

She didn’t look back when she stepped ahead of him. She refused to look, he was sure - he doesn’t blame her. He frightened not only her but himself. His biotics... he wasn't sure what to make of them; he knew he couldn't use them again - he couldn't protect.

He stared at her retreating form, regret lingering thickly between them. Brayden stood next to her, his hand on the small of her back as they walked away towards the terminal of the space port. Kaidan pulled at his lower lip with his teeth, nibbling at it for a brief moment as he adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder. He waited for the other students to step off the shuttle before he gathers the little strength he has left and leapt off the ledge.

The light of the sun was too bright and he squinted, his hand rising up to shield his eyes for a brief moment as he adjusts from the darkness - the air was humid and damp, it hadn’t changed much over the years - unlike him.

"Kaidan!"

He heard her before he actually saw her - her arms up high, waving in the distance; her bright smile caught his attention immediately. His mother's voice constricted his heart for a second. He'd spent a long time thinking about this moment and when it actually happened, he couldn’t decipher the emotion welling up inside of him.

As she approached, he practiced his best hello inside of his head Hi mom - Hey, long time... Mom, how are you? Hey... I missed you, mom but it all sounded wrong. His step was steady even though his center of gravity is off kilter and he could feel the world tilting sideways under him.

He stopped mere feet away, uncertainty flooding him. His memory didn’t seem right – he was staring down at her and she was smaller than he remembered. Wasn't it the other way around? Wasn't she the one always high up in the clouds? Wasn't she the one always larger than life itself?

He bit down the halfhearted words of greeting, his jaw flexing at the effort and she slowed down, her arms spreading open to gather him within her embrace that he thought he didn’t deserve. His brows knit together again and he stared at the floor, his greeting wedged between his teeth as his mother's gentle hand leaned against his face, forcing him to look at her. He noticed then that her eyes had new wrinkles and her temples were graying but her smile was still the same - welcoming, warm.

Loving.

Art by meseerhawk @ tumblr

"Welcome home,” he heard the words and he let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding back. Her smile trembled a little but he placed the blame of that on the wind and the cool autumn temperatures, not because she was happy to see him - The sinful boy who killed a commander to protect a girl that won't even look at him in the eyes anymore.

He knew he didn’t deserve such tenderness, there was blood on his hands but his mother didn’t know that so he attempted to smile, a crooked, carefree smile but he felt it pinch, he felt his throat closing with an emotion he refused to name. He accepted her embrace and took in a deep breath, her scent gave him the feeling that he was finally home but it reminded him of something he'd pushed away all these passing years.

His heart was pounding under his ribcage, his fingers squeezed his mother's shoulders as he tried to get a grip on the memory of that day - the smell of baked cookies teasing his nose then and now was still the same as the day they took him away. He could still see his mother clutching the spatula and his father's arm around her shoulders as the men in black coats pulled him away.

That sad expression still haunted him.

"Thanks, mom," he murmured, releasing her as he blinked away the memory. "Where's dad?"

"In the car," she let him go and she looked him up and down to see just how much her little boy had grown. She frowned a little, as though she knew there was something amiss - maybe she could sense that something was wrong, he wasn’t sure but he shrugged off her attention and stepped around her. She fell in step next to him and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and led him to the car.

He took a moment to look around, the kids from the training academy are gathered by the silent shuttle, waiting for their rides and he then realised that they wouldn't be coming home to the same warm greeting. Their parents probably believed all the propaganda from back then and probably wouldn't be coming. What would happen to them? He wondered as he bit the inside of his cheek, his jaw flexing and his mother took his hand, squeezing it once as though she knew what he was thinking.

He focused his attention on the one hover car running in the distance, the soft hum familiar and different at the same time. He saw his father inside, one hand draped over the steering wheel, the other scrolling through the paper data pad.

Things were the same, but different at the same time. Kaidan's steps still didn't falter, taking him farther and farther away from the memories he wanted to forget but he knew they would follow him no matter where they went.

Rahna's ashen face, the copper taste of blood in his mouth mixed with something acidic. He felt sick, the rush of screams and buzzing in his ears as his powers flared down and went offline...

Kaidan pressed the door of the hover car open, allowing his mother to enter first, his father looked up, narrowing his eyes for a moment. There was silence between the two men, Kaidan bit his lower lip, his amp itching oddly and he resisted the urge to scratch at it.

"Hey, dad."

His father blinked, the sound of his son's voice unfamiliar but welcomed to his ears. He straightened in his seat, wedging the data pad between his seat and the floor. Kaidan didn't miss the brief curl of lips at the corner of his father's lips for a brief second.

"Son."

Simple , was all Kaidan could think of, with his father's little smile and comfortable silence. His mother shook her head, rolling her eyes. Kaidan wanted to grin but he pushed it away and opted to rub his forehead instead as he sat down behind the seat of his mother. He watched the hydraulics kick in to close the door and shut out the past.

The hover car couldn't leave fast enough.

Kaidan leaned back against the seat, eyes following the moving horizon against the greying sky of Vancouver - he could smell it in the air, it was going to rain. He noticed his mother rub her wrist absently as she spoke softly to his father and he wondered if the old injury from the eezo accident still predicted the weather.

By the looks of it, it did.

He looked away, the normality of the situation was unusual for him - drills, schedules, regulations and a strict regimen of biotic training was all he could remember, that's all he lived. He felt out of sorts, out of place in a family car traveling down a highway surrounded by concrete and civilians.

What was he supposed to do now?

He didn't know, didn't want to know, really. What could he do? He leaned his head against the cool pane of glass and closed his eyes. The motion of the hover car lulling him into a slumber, the voices of his parents bickered for a few seconds before his father turned on the station to some old music that melded into the background. Kaidan sighed, comfort wrapping itself around him as Rahna's eyes watched him from inside his memories.