Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: This is a birthday gift fic for the lovely tlcinbflo.
Written with the same Shepard and Kaidan from "Phantom Heart", but can be read as a stand-alone.
Blood or Not
"A galaxy won and bled for and none of it – none of it – hers to pass on." - The struggles of post-war domesticity in the Shepard-Alenko household.
When Francesca Shepard woke up that morning she thought maybe it was actually the worst day of her life. And not because she knew something disastrous would occur later during the course of the day, or because she remembered some terrible event from the night before that would scar her for years to come, or because of Reapers or Cerberus or any scheduled comm. calls with the Council (she shivered in terror at the memory). No. That was all in the past.
It was more because light shouldn't be that annoyingly bright at seven-thirty in the morning. And her blanket should be covering more than the half of her body that actually wasn't cold. And no one should have to be woken up so early on a Saturday by an angry bladder about to reduce them to a four-year old.
Shepard groaned. And then she realized she was already staring at the ceiling, eyes blearily focusing. She groaned again and rolled over to her side, smushing her face into the pillow.
And the bathroom was just so far.
A whole seven feet.
With a strength she didn't think she was capable of in such a drowsy state, Shepard managed to push herself up on the pillows and swing her leg over the edge of the bed. She glanced at the prosthetic leg leaning against the night stand, and then down to her scarred thigh, now only a stump. And then she realized she was entirely too lazy and her bladder was entirely too impatient to bother securing her prosthesis. So she stumbled out of bed and hopped over to the bathroom in the filtered light of the bedroom. And then sweet bliss.
Shepard looked up at the bathroom ceiling panels as she sat on the toilet relieving herself, attempting to reason out whether it would even be worth it to try falling back to sleep again. Her bladder finally attended to, Shepard cleaned up and hopped back out of the bathroom to tumble onto her bed again, half-sighing, half-groaning as she gathered the sheets beneath her face and curled up in a fetal position across the width of the bed.
And then her husband opened the bedroom door and peeked in.
Shepard popped one eye open to watch Kaidan as he entered the room, smiling upon seeing her. He was wearing Blasto boxers and a white undershirt. Her first thought was something mocking and entirely too mean. Her second was far saucier than her current state of awareness should be capable of. She grinned into her sheets and sat up.
"Morning, Franky," Kaidan said as he crawled onto the end of the bed and sat back on his legs, watching her.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and adjusted the large Alliance tee she was wearing so that it didn't pull over her knee when she moved to sit Indian-style on the bed. She sat unabashedly with her panties in full view, smiling sleepily at him.
Kaidan offered a crooked grin. "I heard you fumbling around in here. Why are you up so early?"
She shrugged one shoulder, head cocking toward the bathroom. "Had to pee."
"Ah."
"You?"
"Saturday morning cartoons." His grin broke out a bit wider.
Shepard rolled her eyes at that. "Yet again."
"Hey," he started, hand braced to his chest as though in defense. "If you'd prefer I could always play them in here on full blast."
A glare. That was all she could muster this early in the morning.
Kaidan settled back in his lean along the end of the bed and grinned smugly at her. "You're looking quite terrible this morning."
Shepard clamped her hands down on her frizzy head and tried to smooth her hair down, albeit pointlessly. "Okay," she started, "you're taking this marriage thing way too far. You're not allowed to say that shit to me."
He laughed, waving her off. "How you doing, babe?"
Another glare, but with a hidden, playful quirk of her lips. "Peachy. Keen that is. Peachy keen." And then she inwardly cringed because she couldn't even remember the last time she had been this off her game. So she tacked on a "shut up" at the end and sat up a bit straighter, hands falling to her lone ankle and grasping it as she rocked back and forth. "It's too early for this shit. I want to go back to bed."
"We can't."
"I'm Commander Shepard. I do what I want."
He laughed at that one. "I won't argue with that. But we have plans today, remember?"
"Ugh." She plopped back against the pillows. "You know how uneventful I prefer my Saturdays."
"I know." He rubbed at her knee comfortingly. "But we already promised."
"Can't we just hang out with the dog today?"
"You'd rather hang out with the dog than the old crew?"
She scrunched her nose up at his question and burrowed deeper into the pillows, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly. "Yes," she huffed.
He laughed again. "Okay, but, you know the dog licks his butt, right? Not particularly high-end company."
She perked up a bit. "Yeah, but then he licks your face! So I guess I should call you Licky-Butt-Face, huh?" Her grin stretched wide, her laugh bubbling at the edges of her mouth with the near-delirium of her exhaustion.
Kaidan shook his head, chuckling. "You know I kiss you with the same mouth, right?"
Shepard drew back and grimaced. "Ew. You're fucking gross, you know that? See, this is why we're never invited anywhere."
He barked a laugh. "Uh, excuse me, but that is clear and utter bullshit. I'm the civilized one between us, remember?"
"That's not what the papers say," she sing-songed, grinning smugly from her position amongst the pillows.
"Yeah, well, if only the galaxy knew the truth behind Commander Shepard…"
"They'd still love me more than you."
Kaidan's brows rose into his hairline. "Well, aren't you a cocky one this morning?"
She scoffed playfully. "It's called 'Shepard's Day' for a reason, Kaidan."
He narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head. "I knew marrying a celebrity was bad news."
"Too bad, sucker. You're in it for life."
He shrugged, his grin slowly returning. "Fair trade, I'd say."
"Oh god, fucking stop with the mush." She rolled her eyes and pursed her lips.
"You love it," he teased, jostling her knee.
"I love few things in this life."
Kaidan snorted his laugh, his fist coming up to cover his mouth at the noise. "Geez, you're so dramatic."
Her only answer was the tight line of her mouth where she tried desperately to hold in her grin. She only partially succeeded. And she didn't particularly care if he noticed.
After a few moments of comfortably shared silence, Kaidan nudged her knee once more. "Hey."
"What?"
"You are going to Tali's birthday party, right? You weren't being serious about staying in with the dog?"
"I mean, I was but…"
"Come on."
She waved him off. "Of course I'm fucking going."
"Good." Kaidan leaned back on one arm and smiled warmly at her.
"Yeah, yeah. But…what are we bringing again?"
"Fruit salad. For the levos of course."
"Oh, yeah." She nodded sagely. "No mango, right?"
"No mango." He swiped a hand through the air with the affirmation.
"I hate mango."
"I'm aware."
"Okay, just making sure."
"I've done this before you know," he began, chuckling.
She raised a brow in question.
"This whole 'married to you' thing." He cracked a grin at the words, motioning to the air between them.
"Oh har fucking har," she retorted, head jostling from side to side with her mocking. "What, you want an award now or something?"
He shrugged, flicking some invisible lint from the comforter. "I mean, marriage with you is rather like a war if you think about it. I'm probably back-logged for a few medals at this point."
"Sure," she plays along, her smile suspiciously menacing. "Here's one: the fucking Cross of Marital Smartassery." She opens up her hands as if presenting an invisible medal. "There you go, buddy. And all you had to do was be an asswipe."
"I think we may have both earned that one then." He raised a purposeful brow, his smirk widening out.
Shepard opened her mouth as thought to protest, and then thought about it, and finally raised her hands in an 'eh' motion, a lop-sided grin plastered to her face. "Alright, I'll concede that."
Kaidan laughed again, and the sound was so bright and so weightless and Shepard was sure that nothing in the galaxy had any right to sound like that.
Not when it made her heart clench in unnatural ways.
She cleared her throat. "Well, I guess no one ever said this marriage thing would be easy."
"We've never taken the easy way," Kaidan added on, as though an afterthought, but his eyes lingered on her a bit longer than would have been seen as casual.
She smirked at his words. "I never did think you were easy."
"Only for you."
And wow. So suddenly sexy. He leaned in toward her, and her breath hitched, her hand gripping the sheet beneath her, her eyes riveted on his incoming mouth.
But then that train of thought bled into something else, something far less laughable, and the goofy smile slid easily and instantly from her face.
Kaidan stilled before he could reach her, noting the sudden change. Slowly, with the kind of precision and patience that spoke of familiarity, he eased back into his seat along the bed and laid a hand on her knee.
She didn't even realize she needed the touch until the warmth of his palm had already saturated her skin and she found her hand unconsciously moving to her stomach.
Kaidan's eyes followed the motion in silent knowledge as she spoke.
"My uterus is broken."
And she fucking hated how it came out. This fractured breath of a sentence caught somewhere between her mouth and her heart – the words a desolate plea that no one could hear. She always thought that maybe one day, this day even – please god, some day – that she would wake up and be okay with it. At peace. And maybe it was a foolish thought, a foolish hope. To think that there was any peace to be had about it. To think that it would ever be anything other than gnawing and painful and every day.
Maybe it was foolish to think that time could heal all wounds.
Her fingers curled into the fabric of her tee, gripping at her stomach as she began to tremble.
Kaidan's hand on her knee tightened reflexively and she looked up at the motion. Their eyes locked. Everything that had already been said and shouted and sobbed before, passed between them again. And what else was there? What did they have left after that? After all was said and done – nothing had changed. Because she was still – and always would be –barren.
Barren, they had said. Barren, the doctors had said. Fucking barren, they had said. Completely dead from the inside out, which, truth be told, wasn't surprising to either of them when they thought long and hard about it. Because hadn't death always been her talent? Hadn't that always been her calling? And wasn't it right that death would also be within her?
Shepard drew her lip in and held it so tight between her teeth she almost drew blood.
Get over that? Get over that?
A galaxy won and bled for and none of it – none of it – hers to pass on.
She was just so tired of smiling when there was this emptiness in her that would never be filled.
Shepard sniffed loudly and swallowed back that aching cut of longing, buried it far and deep and drowned it in anger so pungent she could taste it on her tongue. Her nostrils flared as she spit her words. "This is bullshit." She shook her head, her free hand now clenching into a fist in the sheets. "This is just stupid. I don't care. I don't. And I don't know why I'm even talking about this shit right now because it's not – it's not even important really and…and why is this even a thing? Because it shouldn't be. It isn't. Kids are stupid." She wiped at her nose and drew her gaze down. Blinked away the wetness on her lids furiously. She was just so angry and she couldn't stop it. "I mean, they crap everywhere when they're babies, and then you have to fucking teach them shit and buy them shit and take them places and it's just…it's just exhausting is what it is. And they're always asking you shit and always fucking things up – simple things, too! Like, I don't have the time to instill that kind of basic how-to knowledge in another human being, you know? I just don't. I've got stuff going on in my life, okay?" She caught the crack in her voice before it could fully rupture her words, swallowed it down to brew with the fear and the shame and the regret – everything that had always felt wrong but was still – invariably – part of her now. "Oh fuck, and then when they get all hormonal and psychotic and pubescent and shit and – I can't – I can't deal with that. And college is so expensive and all they're going to do is waste our money and our time anyway and hey – that's really all that kids are anyway, you know?" The tears were falling long before she realized she should be holding them back and it just made them come even faster once she did. She hiccupped and drew another long, ragged breath. "A fucking waste. Because you have nothing to show for it at the end of the day, you know? Because that's all they are. That's all you get with kids. A waste of time, a waste of space, of money, a waste of youth. A waste of a fucking life!" She was screaming now, but she barely registered it. Her knuckles were white where they gripped at the sheets, and she couldn't even see Kaidan's face because the tears were so hot and so many and she couldn't look at him then.
She could never look at him when she was like this.
And she just hated herself even more for it. Because this was never her dream, never her hope or wish or even an inkling of a thought when she was younger. She was never that little girl that threw pennies into the fountain and clasped her chubby hangs together, squeezed her lids so tightly closed she saw flashes of light in the backs of her eyes, moved her lips on a silent prayer, wished and wished and wished for that day she would hear the word "mommy" and it would be her and hers and everything she wanted, bundled up perfectly and unexplainably in an innocent, lovely, miniature version of herself. And maybe she never was this girl because as she grew older and as she became the person she was and did the things she did – maybe she finally came to understand that there could never be an innocent version of herself. Maybe she always knew that what was hers was never worthy of passing on.
There was enough blood on Shepard's hands to make her wonder if she would ever be deserving of holding such pure a thing as a child.
Francesca Shepard's own experience with mothers wasn't enough to inform her of the weight of the role. She couldn't tell you whether she'd make a good one or not. All she could tell you was what she knew. About herself. About her life. She knew she liked to worry sometimes – mostly because it made her feel powerful, mostly because it meant there was something she was responsible for, that she could look after. She knew she was kind of full of herself at times – a little too mouthy when she shouldn't be, a little too arrogant when everyone around her was screaming their objections. And she knew she was all about the control. It came with running a state of the art Alliance frigate throughout Reaper-infested space and living (mostly) to tell the tale. It came with steering her crew through thin and thinner to get to the other side. It came with knowing that lives – even ones she would never know and never meet and never even dream of someday – were dependent on her coming out of it the victor.
She couldn't tell you if any of this made her a candidate for mothering. Only that it made her own depression over discovering the truth of her barrenness that much more surprising.
Because she hadn't wanted kids. She really didn't. It was the farthest thing from her mind. And she didn't…she couldn't…
Kaidan's hand squeezed her knee and she blinked up at him.
He was smiling.
He was fucking smiling.
But it was this watery, quivering, hook-at-the-ends-of-his-fucking-mouth kind of smile.
And she didn't think anything could hurt so much. Because there. There it fucking was.
Her reason.
That fucking smile said everything about why it suddenly hurt so much that she couldn't bear him children. That fucking smile said everything about why it meant so much that they should be his.
She never wanted children until she wanted them with Kaidan.
Shepard pulled a deep breath in, held it tight in her chest, let it drag out slowly. She wiped at her wet nose and saw snot gleaming bright on her hand when she pulled it away. She couldn't care less. She sniffed loudly and shook her head, felt the frizzy strands of hair settle on her wet cheeks. She couldn't be bothered to wipe them. Her gaze settled securely on the sheets beneath her scarred and severed limb.
And then Kaidan spoke. Simple and soft and aching. "I know."
Shepard looked back up at him. She was flushed with anger at his words. And she couldn't understand why. She couldn't even explain it. All she could do was whisper a tight breath of "don't" as she stiffened.
His hand remained on her knee. His eyes stayed bored into hers. "I know," he repeated, this time a broken exhale, his mouth quivering.
She seized up. Because he couldn't. He couldn't know. He never would.
She stiffly extracted his hand from her knee. "Stop."
"Franky…"
"I don't want to fucking hear it." She could see his throat constrict from where she sat across from him.
"Franky."
She didn't think she had tears left to shed. But there they fell. "I said to stop. Please." Her fists quivered in their locked hold of the sheets. She hadn't even let go. She never could let go.
Kaidan moved toward her and she screamed, loud and quick and sharp. Her mouth clamped shut at the end of it.
They sat staring at each other for a long moment, bodies locked in anticipation, eyes unblinking.
Something cracked between them at her first shaky exhale of breath. "I don't…I don't want…"
And then she found her face squished into his shoulder and his arms wrapping around her and before she knew what she was doing she was reaching her own arms around his waist and anchoring there, her fists lodging in the fabric of his undershirt and she squeezed. Hard.
She never could let go.
She couldn't stop squeezing and she couldn't stop crying and she buried her face further into his shirt and smeared snot and tears and worse into it. Clutching the material of his shirt in her death-grip, she finally took a long-awaited breath. And all she could smell was him.
A bit of oil, a bit of mountain fresh laundry-detergent, and an underlying layer of wheat.
Like some golden fucking horizon. Like some golden fucking field of everything she'd ever wanted but never knew how to put into words.
And if she thought long and hard on it she'd find that really she was angry at herself. For all the wrong reasons and maybe just a bit of the right ones, too. Angry because she'd never been helpless about anything in her life before. And angry because it meant there was no fixing this.
She squeezed harder, cursed beneath her breath.
It took many long moments before Shepard was able to speak again, before the tears were shed and the cries were released and the desperate trembling had stopped, before her hold of him slowly loosened and they sat clutching each other at the ends of their arms – only just within reach.
Because he knew her well enough not to hold too tight and it has always been their way.
She never tells him, but she loves him for it.
"I'm sorry," she finally said, her words muffled in his sleeve.
He shook his head at the words. "You have nothing to apologize for."
Shepard finally released him, wiping her hand under her nose once more, sniffing loudly and shoving her hands into the sheets in her lap. She didn't look at him. "Still…"
"It's okay," Kaidan whispered, his hands falling from her shoulders and sliding down her arms.
Her gaze snapped up. "But it's not. It's not okay, babe."
Kaidan sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose.
Said and shouted and sobbed all over again. This was the way between them. This was the war inside them. They would never be done fighting – even themselves.
All Shepard wanted was some peace.
He was the closest thing she ever found to it.
"Franky, look." Kaidan took her hands from the sheets determinedly, holding them tight between them. "I've never lied about wanting children. You know it's something I've always looked forward to but…the thing is…" He sighed and shook his head, licking his lips before continuing. "Yeah, okay? Sure. I've always wanted to look my son in the eye and see a little of myself, see a little of you even."
Her heart clenched painfully in her chest and she tried to pull her hands away but he held fast.
His eyes seemed to harden on hers. "But…I only want children because I want you to be their mother. And if you're not…well, then I don't see the point. You are the most important part of this equation here, Franky, do you understand?"
Shepard stared at him, her lip caught between her teeth.
"I only want kids with you."
Suddenly she understood. She understood her fear and her anger and her unexplainable rejection of his comfort. And it was humbling to discover that he had figured it out before her. It made her shift her gaze to the sheets in shame.
"I'm not going anywhere," he finished
And that was it. That was it, plain and bare and unabashed before her.
She couldn't give him what some other woman might have. And the lingering, gnawing question of 'Am I enough to keep him without that?' had rooted itself deep and immovable in her heart.
Angry at and with and because of herself. Angry because he had been the one good thing in her life and she was utterly terrified that she would be the reason she lost him.
"We can adopt."
She looked up at his words.
His slow, tender smile lit something in her chest she was too frightened and too tentative to name.
Kaidan chuckled, rubbing up and down her arms. "I don't really care if they have my smile or your hair or either of our eyes because, you know what? They'll have your courage. And my patience. And your wit. And my –"
"Sappiness?" She managed a half-hearted smile.
Kaidan laughed. "Sure. Probably." He sighed, his hands falling back to hold hers. His smile pulled softly at the edges of his mouth and she wanted nothing more in the world then to kiss him, right then. "Troublemakers, all of them," he chuckled. "Because I figure, blood or not, they'll all somehow inherit that trait."
Shepard dug the knuckles of one fist into her eye, wiping the tears, sniffing and clearing her throat. She dropped her hand back into her lap. "And who's to say they should be human, right?" Her smile was shaky and weighted but real.
Kaidan nodded. "Yep. I mean, let's be honest, if we're going more for a spirit likeness rather than a physical one, we should really be looking off-world for you. I'm thinking krogan. The head-butts alone would be a dead giveaway you're their mom." He snorted in laughter after his own joke, and then broke into a clear, unabashed guffaw when she threw a fist into his shoulder. He flinched back dramatically, laughing all the while. She flung her fist again, but this time, her own laughter tinkled through the air. She tackled him to the bed, and they rolled around shrieking and chiding and laughing, until Shepard found herself sprawled across his chest, both of them panting and smiling blindingly.
Her cheeks were still wet, and she was sure he could tell but she didn't care at that point. Not when he reached a hand up to cup her cheek and breathed a sigh of relief that sounded like he had been holding it all his life. Her eyes shifted between his as she nodded mutely, and they both leaned in to kiss, a little too fast.
"Ow."
"Sorry."
Shepard shook her head, still smiling. "S'okay."
They tried again, and this time, lips met lips.
His hand on her hip told her he wasn't leaving, and her sigh into his mouth told him she wasn't afraid.
Not anymore.
Because, blood or not, they were already family.