Notes:
My gift for ovo_lexa in the masseffect livejournal Yule exchange. It was so much fun to write. Made me laugh when I was assigned the prompt I was really intrigued by. :D!
Prompts used:
a) Kaidan. Kaidan/FemShep or Kaidan/Ashley would also make me happy. Kaidan, FemShep, and Ashley platonic bonding (with or without either of the above pairings) would make me ecstatic. I'd also be happy with Kaidan backstory.
b) FemShep and the Protheans. I don't know... A reaction, a new habit, something she recognizes from another life maybe amid the ruins... Just some philosophy or something interesting regarding the Protheans from the beacon/cipher connection. Alternately, the reactions of the people around her to her situation.
It was when Shepard started to change how she moved that Kaidan began to worry. Instead of simply tipping her head to the side or even shrugging a shoulder like a human would, she would roll her entire torso in a curve starting from her hip and ended with her short hair just barely brushing her shoulder.
The first time she did it in conversation with him, he had advert his eyes back to the main control panel before answering her question. He knew, intellectuality, that Shepard was a well muscled and flexible marine. That didn't mean he was prepared to get an up close and personal demonstration while she teased him with a loose, half smile he was still trying to decipher.
The entire movement was graceful in a way that Shepard just... wasn't. Last liberty, she scared everyone off the dance floor except an all too-pleased elcor (...and himself, but he had his reasons) with her stomping and gyrating. This was something new.
Kaidan stopped outside her quarters after the B-shift started, time when most of the crew was either on-duty on the bridge or asleep in their pods. He was probably safe from scuttlebutt (at least, he hoped). He pressed the call button and the doors swished open to reveal... a jungle. He blinked.
The temperature had been turned up. Way up. And there were plants hanging from shelves and any high space; ivys, ferns, and anything else that had long, dangling stems to drape over the walls. The lights, that were normally kept fairly low, were turned to their maximum setting. Shepard was seated at her table, a hand twisted in her short, red hair while she stared at a datapad.
"Commander."
No answer.
"Comm- Shepard."
When she still did not answer, Kaidan entered her quarters and reached out to lightly touch her shoulder. The Commander looked up before they touched and stared at Kaidan.
"I-" he started. He pulled back his hand and rubbed at this back of his neck. "You didn't answer when I announced myself."
She blinked slowly at him.
Entirely unsure what to say, he finally tried, "I didn't know you liked plants so much."
Shepard finally spoke. "I hate them." The data pad was set face down on her desk, and she rested her chin on her palm, watching Kaidan.
He took that as an invitation and sat down. "Then, why...?" She turned her eyes away from his when he tried to make eye contact. "It was the cipher, wasn't it? You've been acting strange since Feros."
She shook her head. "Not that simple. The cipher only... put things in context. All this?" She waved at the plants, the room, the way she rotated her wrist and twisted her fingers at an odd angle. "It's been there since Eden Prime."
Kaidan absorbed that. Shepard watched him, keeping her other thoughts to herself for the moment. He knew what she was doing: putting the cards on the table, letting him form his own conclusions. No pressure to think she wasn't crazy (it was Shepard: of course she was crazy. Just... not that way).
"The Protheans liked plants like that?" he finally asked.
"Like that," she hedged. "In my head, I can see... these sort of blue dangly things that give off this really heavy, sicky sweet smell. Honestly, it smells like rot, to me."
"So...you stuck up plants. That look similar but aren't."
"Yes," she admitted.
"To remind you that plants don't smell like rot?"
She made a face at him, twisting her mouth and scrunching her up her nose .
Kaidan held up his hands and tried not to laugh. "Okay, wrong conclusion. Why did you put up plants?"
Shepard sat back in her chair and was quick before admitting, "I dream about them. The Protheans. Some nights, I'm... I'm seeing through their eyes. I'm staring up at their red velvet sky through all the blue leaves, and I know the weird texture is from the different mix of gases in the atmosphere. That the plants are blue because of a side-effect from the filtered sunlight that reaches the plant surface. And I know I'm supposed to feel some sort of nostalgia or warm, fuzzy feelings about being on their homeworld."
"And you don't?" Kaidan pushed.
"Not a damn thing," she admitted. Then, shrugged. "I do things. I know I do things. I can see myself do them. Move how they did, twist some logic how they would. Their backbones were fussed together more than ours, and they didn't really bend like we do. When I'm thinking like them, I just..." she waved her fingers at air. "I do things. It's annoying as hell."
Kaidan almost laughed, then covered his mouth and tried to make the gesture look like he was just rubbing his face. "Shepard. Only you would get a dead, alien civilization downloaded into your head and have the reaction, 'this is annoying, I hate plants'."
Shepard snorted and didn't even bother covering up her own laugh. Kaidan joined her.
Finally, after they both had caught their breath again, he asked, "Are you okay, Shepard?"
Kaidan had his hand resting on the table between. Shepard slid her hand close to his, let their fingers touch. "I feel guilty I don't care that these people that lived 50,000 years ago are dead. They would be dead no matter how they died. But I can feel their tentacles twisting around in my memories, and I sometimes can't help but act. I think..." She brushed her thumb across Kaidan's knuckles. "I think I will be. Once we stop Saren."
He turned his hand over, pressing his open palm against hers, and tangling their fingers together. "I'm here. How ever you need me. Ma'am."
Shepard turned the corner of her mouth up, the closest she ever came to a real smile. "Thank you, K-"
"Commander," Joker announced over the comm, "we've just reached the Artemis Tau relay. Your orders?"
Kaidan fought rolling his eyes at the comm overhead. Shepard smiled again and withdrew her hand. "Have Pressley, Williams, and Wrex report to the bridge. I'll be there in 5. Shepard out." And with that same, loose half smile that he was starting to getting a feeling he understood, she said, "After you, Lieutenant."