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“Don’t go…please, don’t go.”
It’s a theme, for them. One of them says it. One of them always goes, eventually.
—
She says it first. Kaidan had thought she was asleep.
It was after they investigated the distress signal on Edolus, the first time they ran into a thresher maw. He knew her history, everyone did; the official story, anyway. The Tragedy on Akuze. But she seemed fine afterwards. She dragged Ash and him to her quarters with promises of beer and cards.
They drank a lot. They played spoons until both girls had bloody knuckles -neither could stand to lose- and then they bullshitted for even longer. Ash talked about her sisters. Kaidan told stories about training; proper military training, not BAaT. Shepard talked about food; she said all of her other childhood stories were criminal. Kaidan wasn’t surprised. The basics of her pre-Alliance life were public knowledge, too. Plus, there was just something about her. On recon missions, she was stealthy in ways he was fairly certain the Alliance wouldn’t have taught her. She was covered in tattoos, but none of them were very good. She ate almost as much as he and the other biotics would; all the nourishment in the world didn’t seem to be enough to soften the wiry street-kid she had once been.
With Ash snoring softly from the bed and Shepard’s steady breathing on the couch next to him, Kaidan made to get up. Special mission or not, it would break about a thousand rules to spend the night in the Commander’s cabin. But as soon as he moved -
“Don’t go…”
It startles him, and he glances down at Shepard. She hasn’t moved, still curled up on the couch beside him. She could have been asleep, except her eyes were open now, fixed on him.
“Please?”
It was hard to tell for certain, in the dark, but she looked scared. Helpless. Almost soft.
He settles back into the couch, and that time he doesn’t go until he’s certain she’s soundly asleep.
—
They trade it back and forth, after Ilos and the Citadel, on shore leave. A plea from the bed of a shitty hotel room in the smog-choked center of industry that had moulded and spat out Shepard along with the steel and smoke. As good a place as any for privacy.
“Don’t go…”
Mumbled into shoulders and sheets, lazy limbs grasping to hold on.
“Just for food.”
“Don’t need it.”
At which point their own stomach rumbles, betraying them.
“We should try someplace nice for once.”
“Okay. But later.”
They don’t. They order delivery pizza or Chinese takeaway and they barely leave the bed for the entire week.
—
Don’t go…please, don’t go…please…don’t go…
It’s a mantra in his dreams, after the SR1 goes down. After Joker shows up in an escape pod alone. After they can’t even find her body to retrieve.
He wakes up in a cold sweat and a panic most nights. Wishing he’d asked her not to go. Knowing she wouldn’t have listened if he had.
Most nights, he doesn’t get much sleep.
—
He doesn’t say it on Horizon; he’s so pissed off when he finds out the Cerberus rumors are true. By the time he’s safely out of sight and glances over his shoulder, she’s hopping onto a shuttle with Garrus and the woman in the Cerberus uniform. He doesn’t let himself acknowledge that he’s thinking it.
Watching him walk away on Horizon, in her head, she’s screaming it. But she doesn’t say it. Instead she radios for a shuttle. Pretends to listen to Miranda over the constant drone of please don’t go please don’t go please don’t go in her head, but he’s gone.
She doesn’t cry until she’s in her quarters. There, she allows herself a moment of pathetic weeping. Then she sees the bathroom shelves; stocked, as they have been since she first got on board the SR2, with things she never had to request. Her brand of perfume, henna hair dye, her favorite eyeliner and shade of lipstick. For the first time, it upsets her. It feels like an invasion, or a trick.They’re tricking me into trusting them. Or into thinking I’m really me. It’s infuriating.
She destroys everything on the shelves. Breaks the mirror. Leaves her cabin and nicks a bottle of dextro-vodka and something amber and strong and probably worth more than its weight in gold from Kasumi’s bar. Kasumi probably lets her; Shepard’s in no state to be sneaky and Kasumi’s ten times the thief she ever was anyway, even on a good day.
She sits on a crate in the battery and gets drunk with Garrus. She doesn’t let him acknowledge that she’s been crying or that her palms are covered in glass cuts and lipstick smudges. He talks about the guns and his calibrations and she lets him. It’s not a particular interest of hers, but it makes him happy and the collaborative problem-solving keeps her brain occupied until she’s drunk enough everything goes fuzzy.
Garrus helps her back to her cabin. She lets him leave her at her doorway - no one else needs to see the mess she made earlier. When she goes inside, there’s no mess. The mirror is replaced, the shelves restocked. There’s a faint smell of perfume, but otherwise no evidence of her tantrum.
Her stomach drops, and she vomits more than a month’s Alliance salary of Scotch into the toilet before crawling into bed and letting the tears flow.
Why didn’t they just let me stay gone?
—
Don’t go, please, please, please don’t go.
A silent prayer over his bruised, broken, unconscious body. In the med bay and in the hospital. She doesn’t really believe in prayer, hasn’t the slightest clue who or what she might be praying to, but she doesn’t know what else it would be.
She doesn’t think he’d even want her to stay. She doesn’t care.
I’ll go, I’ll leave you alone, if you want. But you have to stay.
—
“Next time, wake me before you go.”
His voice trails after her as she leaves the lounge, teasing and tempting. There’s a selfish part of her that has never been this happy. They’ve talked things out. Regs don’t matter so much anymore; they don’t have to hide.
Unfortunately, regs aren’t an issue because the death of the fucking universe is rapidly approaching.
How many times had she thought, would it be the end of the world if I could be happy for once?
Apparently it would be.
Next morning, she’ll wake him.
—
“Don’t go…please, Shepard, don’t leave me behind.”
He’s hurt, and she knows she has to go, and he has to stay. She loves him so much, and she tells him so. She doesn’t tell him that she won’t be back. She knows she won’t. One of them was bound to die in this, and she’s used up too many lives, too many narrow escapes.
When she’s sure he’s on way to relative safety, she pushes on toward the beam.
Maybe she really will save the world. There could be worse ways to go.
—
He’s nodding off in a chair in a makeshift hospital suite. The third time his head droops and wakes him with a start, he moves to get up and get a coffee. When he hears the raspy voice from the bed, he nearly falls on his face.
“Kaidan?”
Green eyes open, finally, and locked on him - not sharp anymore, not now at least. She’s blurry from exhaustion and pain and painkillers. But she knows him.
“Don’t go, please?”
He sits back down and scoots the chair closer to the hospital bed, reaches out to carefully touch her bandaged hand. Relief courses through him more than the caffeine would have.
“Of course.”
He’ll stay as long as she wants.