Holy Night
What the actual hell is Cerberus doing on Tuchanka, is what Kaidan wants to know. Because taking shelter under a pile of radioactive rocks between an overly excited krogan and an extremely annoyed prothean is not how he imagined spending Christmas Eve.
Not that he had grand plans. Hard to get in the spirit of things when your father is presumed KIA and your mother is stranded in the Vancouver countryside with no comms access. Not to mention the entire galaxy trying to come down around your ears. Still, Cortez had mentioned trying to see if they could make some kind of imitation eggnog. Maybe play some Christmas songs in the lounge and see if they could get Vega to sing Jingle Bells.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan spots Shepard ejecting the thermal clip on his shotgun, utterly unimpressed by the cloud of debris from the dozen or so fresh mortar holes above his head, courtesy of one of those damn Cerberus turrets.
Of course, this is nice, too.
Maybe it wouldn't seem so bad if he could stop thinking about two years ago, when a Christmas tree had randomly appeared in the Normandy's mess hall. All day Shepard lingered in the doorway to his quarters with a shit eating grin to watch the crew discover it.
Kaidan never asked Shepard how he got a tree on board a starship. He didn't want to know.
Just another part of the legend.
From here Kaidan can't see much under Shepard's faceplate, but the shit eating grin is there. It always is in these kinds of situations. Shepard is the only person Kaidan knows who finds delirious joy in taking shelter under a pile of radioactive rocks between an overly excited krogan and an extremely annoyed prothean.
In fact…if Kaidan is being honest, it's the grin that finally convinced him Shepard was…Shepard.
Cerberus couldn't have reconstructed that grin.
On his right, Kaidan hears the whine of Javik's particle rifle moments before the blinding beam of energy slices through the air with a rush of heat. Somewhere across the tumbled masonry a trooper mewls as the directed energy overwhelms his shields before searing a hole through his armor and whatever flesh waits beneath. The prothean mutters something Kaidan cannot decipher, but the disdain in his voice needs no translation.
Neither does Grunt's running commentary, which isn't muttered under his breath but bellowed at the top of his lungs, and covers everything from the centurion's mother to the creative ways in which Grunt plans to break their spines.
"He got that from Zaeed," Shepard shouts to Kaidan, with something akin to pride in his voice.
Another name Shepard doesn't have context for. One of many.
Shepard takes advantage of the distraction to take aim on that turret again. Which is the whole reason they're stuck behind this pile of rocks in the first place. Damn engineers. Damn engineers and their backpacks from hell. Who the hell can actually carry a turret in a backpack?
And again, because it bears repeating, what the hell is Cerberus even doing here? Shepard had managed to cure the genophage. Helped the turians diffuse the bomb. There's nothing left to win. What difference was a couple of AA guns going to make?
"Bureaucracy 101," Shepard yells in reply, ducking when the whir of the turret starts back up again. A fresh barrage of slugs drill into the rocks right at the level of the commander's head, showering them with fragments of stone and a hailstorm of dust. Kaidan grits his teeth and clutches the grip of his pilfered Harrier a little tighter. He doesn't know why he bothered to snatch it off the corpse of a centurion – the damn thing chews through heat sinks way too fast to be useful. No wonder these assholes liked to park over supply crates.
"I thought bureaucracy generally involved a little less gunfire," Kaidan yells back. Beside him, Grunt's lips pull back into a scaly grin that exposes his teeth. Kaidan hasn't been around the tank-bred krogan much, but he recognizes that look just from knowing Wrex. The turret is not long for this world. Thank God.
Sure enough, Grunt gathers himself, rises to his feet, vaults over the rocks with surprising grace and charges the turret point blank, bellowing a roar as a flurry of slugs pepper his shields, creating dimples of kinetic energy like rain on a pond.
"Is he…."
"Yes," Shepard replies, as Grunt grabs the barrel of the turret in his bare hands and twists, the metal giving way with a terrific groan that is quickly drowned out by the krogan's own battle cry. The engineer tending the weapon freezes – Kaidan would give good credits to see the look on his face – and Javik takes the opportunity to wrap his body in a skein of biotic energy and yank him into the sky. The crunch his body makes when he lands almost makes Kaidan feel sorry for him.
Almost.
"You've been dealing with the wrong kind of bureaucracy, Alenko," Shepard informs him, rising to his feet. "Ten to one says someone in the chain of command just forgot to change these bastard's orders."
Kaidan opens his mouth to respond, but before he can push words out Shepard's corona flares to life, transforming him into a blinding blue torch as he barrels over the pile of rocks. With the turret eliminated, he's free to go back to what he does best. Chaos.
"Merry Christmas, assholes," Kaidan hears him mutter a moment before the dark energy he's called to himself turns him into a human projectile, shooting him across the battlefield with a trail of light. Kaidan is less surprised by the recklessness – there's still a nemesis, a pair of guardians, and one of those goddamned dragoons left in addition to a handful of troopers – and more surprised by the fact Shepard remembers it's Christmas.
Shepard's got his sights set on the dragoon, completely ignoring the two guardians that are all too happy to punch at his barrier with their Talons. His barrier ripples, absorbing the kinetic energy of each shot as he knocks the dragoon off balance just as one of those whips arcs over his head. Kaidan sees Shepard's heart rate spike on his HUD, the physical and mental exertion of maintaining his barrier while on the offensive displayed in numbers on his biofeed.
"Javik!" Kaidan calls out, and flags the two guardians on their combat scanners.
The prothean sneers before snatching the shield away from the closest guardian with a snap of biotic energy. Kaidan can feel the alien slither of his corona even from a few meters away. The way the gravity well shifts, cants around him when Javik is on the field is strikingly different from another human biotic, or even Liara.
"Grunt – take him out!" Kaidan yells with a wave of his hand. It's like second nature, remembering how to watch out for Shepard on the battlefield.
"I don't take orders from you," the krogan bellows in response, moments before he barrels into another trooper and knocks him clean off his feet.
Of course, it was easier with a more cooperative squad.
Not that Wrex was ever what you would call cooperative. He also didn't follow Shepard around like a puppy on a walk the way Grunt did, something Kaidan didn't yet understand, maybe never would.
That's the kind of thing that happens when you walk away. You miss things.
One thing he does know however, is that Shepard and Grunt share recklessness in common. The guardian squeezes the trigger on his Talon until the heat sinks are spent, each shot finding its home in the barrier protecting Shepard's back, before reaching for his fallen shield. Feverishly Kaidan sets his omnitool to manufacture and charge a tech mine, fervently wishing for the days when built in heat syncs made this trick a lot more effective than it does now. Still, he just needs to buy a few seconds.
Kaidan lobs the grenade just as Shepard grabs hold of one of the dragoon's flailing whips and yanks, his corona seething as the two rival sources of dark energy collide. The sizzle of lightning mingles with the dull boom of biotics. Over the din climbs the roar of the krogan, who grabs the tottering dragoon and rams his crest into its head. The boom of Shepard's shotgun is almost quiet against the backdrop of raging sound, but there is nothing quiet about mass-reduced shotgun pellets impacting an unshielded target. The miniscule slugs chew through the dragoon's armor like a chainsaw through paper, fountains of red blood erupting from the newly formed holes. Grunt drops the corpse and moves on to the next target, as Shepard stalks towards the remaining guardian.
Ok, so perhaps those two have a stunning amount in common. The difference perhaps being that Grunt is indifferent to backup, and Shepard almost seems to call it into being through sheer force of will. Or maybe…just maybe he still trusts Kaidan that much.
This time Kaidan doesn't wait for Javik, whose particle rifle sings to his left. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end he delves deep into the gravity well, a gauntlet of dark energy sluicing down his arm. He snares the shield and yanks, ripping it from the guardian's hands. Half a breath later Shepard plows into the shieldless operative at full speed, corona bright and angry, like fire discovering oxygen. As the guardian goes down Shepard's fist rises up, enveloped in a blue glow so bright it hurts Kaidan's eyes. As he slams it down the biotic energy explodes outward like a star gone nova. Kaidan throws his arm up, skin tingling as the latent tendrils of dark energy dissipate, the beacon of light enveloping Shepard like a shroud temporarily extinguished.
It's an awesome display of power Kaidan still isn't used to witnessing. The L5 implants Cerberus had outfitted Shepard with combined with whatever other…enhancements they'd made under his skin had transformed Shepard's biotics into something that always seem on the verge of gravitational collapse.
Control has never been Shepard's forte.
Neither is watching his back.
That's what Kaidan is for.
Except this time.
He doesn't see the red dot from the nemesis' Raptor on Shepard's skull until Javik is already in motion, green corona flaring as he calls out a warning that Shepard won't have time to heed.
His barriers are down, a voice screams inside Kaidan's head, the remnants of that miniature supernova still ghosting his skin. His barriers are down!
But the laws of physics, common sense, hell, mortality rarely seem to apply to Shepard anyway. He is the exception to the universe. An oddity cut from the fabric of space and time, set adrift amongst the stars to wreak whatever goddamned havoc he can manage. God help the three wise men if they ever had to follow his star. They'd wind up in the Outer Rim instead of Bethlehem. And that's why, that has to be why, the bullet hits him in the leg instead of the back of his head.
Kaidan hears the bone splinter even as his HUD alerts him of the damage to Shepard's hardsuit. The alarms attached to Shepard's biofeeds start to wail, but Kaidan is already on his knees at his side, medkit in his hands, armored fingers seeking for the cracked ablative. Dimly he hears the nemesis' almost mechanized cry as Javik snares her from her roost in the control tower and disposes of her. Somewhere in his periphery Grunt eliminates the remaining cannon fodder with his bare hands.
"Fuck," Shepard gasps. "Fuck."
His stream of cursing continues, a panic under the words that tells Kaidan far more than the biofeeds do. Shepard doesn't panic. Kaidan didn't even think he knew how.
The medical scanner doesn't exactly comfort him, either. The bullet did exactly what a mass accelerator designed it to do: shatter on impact, each fragment transferring a titanic amount of kinetic energy to its target.
It's easy for most people to forget that all the armor in the word can't protect you from mass reducing technology if your shields are down.
Shepard's femur is in pieces. Femoral artery hemorrhaging. You'd never guess from the small pool of blood forming on the ground beneath him. But that's because most of it is pooling in his hardsuit. A quick diagnostic shows that the medical exoskeleton did its job, but the job is too big for it to handle. He's still bleeding.
A lot.
"Alenko, you look like you've seen the ghost of Christmas past," Shepard says through gritted teeth.
Kaidan's mouth is dry, instinct taking over. Medical training. You can't see it as flesh and blood. It's a problem to be solved. Work the problem. Just work the problem.
He draws in a deep breath. "We have to get your thigh plate off."
"I'm bleeding out and still managed to make a Scrooge joke. Do I at least get some credit?"
"You're not bleeding out," Kaidan replies, focus never leaving Shepard's leg. Not on my watch.
"It appears that he is."
Kaidan doesn't even bother to turn his head towards the prothean standing behind him, who is more interested in his rifle than his commanding officer, who is in fact bleeding out.
"Get Cortez on the comm," he orders instead. "We need an evac, now. Make sure Dr. Chakwas is on standby."
He doesn't wait for a response. Instead forces his gauntleted fingers to enter in the medical override that will allow him to release the damaged ablative. Shepard's hardsuit accepts the code and the seals release with a hiss. Kaidan works the fragmented pieces free and tosses them aside. Underneath, the reactive fibers from the soft armor are red and sticky, the sharp tang of copper hitting Kaidan's nostrils so strongly he holds his breath.
Shepard is bleeding from three separate punctures to the femoral artery. All three are small, but the size matters little. Using his HUD, Kaidan isolates the location of the worst of the artery damage and dispenses the medigel manually.
Seal, you bastard. Seal.
After a long, painful moment the medigel hardens and the bleeding slows. For now. Kaidan's scans show there is still shrapnel present, several fragments embedded within the damaged bone. Shattered bone if he's being honest. Shepard isn't walking any time soon, and definitely not without Dr. Chakwas' bone knitter. But there's nothing he can do about that until they get him to the medbay.
"Kaidan," Shepard says. His skin is disturbingly pale. Too much blood loss. Shock will be setting in. Even that superior clotting factor in his Cerberus-enhanced blood isn't enough to shake this off. "Relax, ok? I've seen worse."
"Sure," Kaidan replies, tightlipped. "I was there for a few of them."
There's one in particular they're both trying not to think about.
"We have a problem," Javik says, the flange in his subharmonics maddeningly indifferent. "The shuttle pilot wishes to speak with you."
Kaidan activates his comm feed as he dispenses another dose of medigel. There's still a bleeder. "Talk to me, Cortez. Shepard is down. We need an evac."
"Reaper inbound, Major. Those AA guns got its attention in an ugly way. It's landing south of your location, but it's vaporizing everything it sees. I can't get to you."
"Lieutenant – "
"I see the biofeeds, sir. Wrex is sending a company your way to draw off the reaper ground troops. Garrus and Primarch Victus are on the horn with the turians to see if they can divert some fighters this way to give us a window. We're doing everything we can. Can you hold out for a few hours?"
Kaidan turns his eyes briefly to the sky, where the bald, bright Aralakh sun sits heavy on the horizon. Their position is vulnerable. The bunker offers some shelter, but it's too easy to get flanked should any Cerberus stragglers – or reapers – find their way past the krogan.
Not to mention those dark clouds starting to gather behind them don't exactly look inviting.
He draws in a deep breath."Whatever it takes."
"Your medigel supplies will not sustain wounds of this nature for long," Javik informs him quietly.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Javik," Shepard replies. "Cortez. Are you trying to tell me that the giant AA guns we just brought back online are the reason you can't extract us from this rock?"
"…looks that way, sir. Those guns aren't going to be enough to stop a reaper. Best case scenario they draw you a lot of attention you don't want right now."
Shepard mutters under his breath. "Fucking fuck ass operation of fucking bastards. I am really getting tired of Cerberus."
"Understood, Commander."
"Tell Wrex if I die on this planet, saving the galaxy becomes his job." There's a hitch in Shepard's voice that shouldn't be there, but it's not from fear or grief. The air is warm, uncomfortably warm, and it sounds like his teeth are chattering. There's a pause before Cortez replies. He heard it, too.
"Aye, sir."
The comm disconnects. For a beat, the only sound they hear is the wind on the rocks, and the echo of Grunt's armored feet as he crosses the open ground headed back to their position. The darkening sky brightens momentarily with a violent flash of light. A peal of thunder grumbles in the distance.
"Heat lightning," Grunt declares. "It never rains. But the sky'll light up like a drive core exploding."
Alenko swallows. Shepard's face doesn't change. He's in too much acute pain to feel any from Alchera. The suit should have delivered an anesthetic. Either it isn't functioning or it just isn't enough.
"This is going to be fun," Shepard mutters.
You have to keep him warm, Kaidan thinks. At least in that respect, Tuchanka is going to help them out a little. The temperature will be considerably cooler after nightfall, but still mild. Another scan of Shepard's hardsuit shows that the TCL is at least still functioning normally, and trying to compensate for the drop in his body temperature.
"We should seek high ground," Javik says, and points ahead of them with the barrel of his particle rifle. "The control tower will offer better shelter."
Kaidan eyes the solid stone structure across the compound, where less than an hour before they had managed to re-activate the AA guns Cerberus had been after. Javik is right. It will be easier to fortify their position from the control tower, which offers better shelter than the bunker. The problem is getting there.
"We can't risk moving him."
"We cannot remain in the open."
Grunt comes to a halt beside Shepard and crouches down, reptilian eyes narrowing slightly. "I can carry your sorry ass," he growls.
"I would hope so," Shepard replies, the tightness in his voice sharp enough to slice concrete. "You wouldn't be much of an Urdnot if you couldn't drag me up a ramp."
"The injury isn't stable," Kaidan cuts in. "We move him and we might lose that artery."
Another growl of thunder. The bruised and black sky crawls closer to the fading horizon.
"We do not have a choice," Javik answers.
"Then let's do it and get it over with," Shepard grimaces. "Just try not to leave enough of my blood lying around for some husks to fingerpaint with.
Somehow, miraculously, they manage. They lay him down in the center of the control room, surrounded by haptic panels built into stone. Kaidan reviews basic first aid treatment over and over in his mind like an incantation, administers a round of medigel just to be sure, and follows it up with a shot of morphine out of his medkit. It takes a lot more than it should to touch Shepard's pain. Kaidan is pretty sure he can thank his new Cerberus-built metabolism for that.
He runs one of the medical programs stored on his omnitool to figure out how long he can make their medigel last. He doesn't mention the results to Shepard.
One problem at a time.
"You were right, you know," Kaidan says.
"About what?" Shepard asks.
"Cerberus." Kaidan picks up a datapad that he'd lifted from the same corpse he'd procured the Harrier from. "They were assigned to take the tower before the genophage. They never got a change of orders. We're here because of an administrative fuck up."
Shepard grunts. "I'll be sure to pass that along to the Illusive Man. He'll be thrilled that it took a paperwork glitch to finally kill me."
"Not gonna happen," Kaidan insists.
"What do we do now?" Grunt interrupts. He still has blood and bits of graymatter stuck to his crest.
"We wait," Kaidan says with a sigh.
Four hours pass.
At first Kaidan tried to keep the conversation going, but talking to Javik was like speaking to an unfriendly brick wall, and if the topic didn't involve dinosaurs and sharks Grunt quickly lost interest. Before long Shepard had fallen into an uneasy sleep.
Kaidan sends Grunt out on patrol, just to give him something to do. That's one order the krogan doesn't argue with, anyway. Javik takes sentry duty at the top of the ramp leading into the control tower.
As his chronometer passes midnight, Kaidan silently wishes Merry Christmas. He just doesn't know to who.
The heat storm continues outside the tower, a discordant oscillation of searing light and crashing sound. Their last update from Cortez had been two hours ago. Wrex's company had successfully engaged the reaper ground forces. Just waiting for the turians.
In the corner by the ramp the silhouette of the prothean occasionally shimmers with a sickly glow of dark energy.
"He calls himself the Avatar of Vengeance," Shepard says, one eye cracked open. "He takes it very seriously."
Kaidan grunts, unwilling to let show how good it is to hear Shepard's voice. "And you take nothing seriously. Never have. Nice to know death didn't change you much."
"That why you came back?" Shepard asks, tilting his chin ever so slightly. Even through his faceplate his eyes look glassy and feverish, an almost alien look for someone like Shepard. It's too…mortal.
"You know why I came back," Kaidan says without meeting his gaze.
"I know what you said."
Kaidan bristles a little. "What the hell does that mean? And put your damn feet back up."
"I'm not dying of shock," Shepard says with a grimace, but he props his feet back up on a pile of rocks just the same. "At least not tonight."
"No," Kaidan agrees. "The universe isn't wired for that level of irony."
Now it's Shepard's turn to bristle. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," Kaidan says with a sigh. "Forget I said anything."
Despite the glassy eyes and narcotic-fueled haze, Shepard's gaze is just as shrewd now as it is when he's staring down turian generals and asari councilors. "I swear to God, Kaidan, if you're about to make some kind of Christ analogy I will shoot you."
Kaidan chuckles. "Only if Grunt shows back up with frankincense and myrrh."
"I think on Tuchanka you're more likely to get sandstone and varren meat," Shepard muses.
"See, I was thinking about the varren as camels."
Shepard's laugh is thin and papery, quickly becoming a hiss of air through his teeth.
"Easy," Kaidan says, placing a hand on his shoulder without even thinking.
"Hell of a way to spend Christmas," Shepard says with a gasp.
"Not the first hellhole I've been in on Christmas," Kaidan replies, fingers tightening ever so slightly. At the top of the ramp Javik stirs and looks in their direction, the light from the control panel reflecting off each eye.
"Remember last year?" Shepard asks.
Kaidan freezes, because he does, and it wasn't pleasant. And not because of where he was, or who he was with. It was because of where he wasn't, and who wasn't there. But that's something no one else knows, including Shepard. Especially Shepard.
But then he remembers – for Shepard, last Christmas was on the Normandy. With that Christmas tree and the shit eating grin. For him, those two years filled with pain and guilt and regret don't exist. They never would.
"Yeah," he says softly. "We almost poisoned Garrus with that candy cane. Tali was determined to figure out a dextro equivalent of gingerbread. And Ashley raided everyone's socks and hung them all around the crew deck."
"Pressly was pissed about that," Shepard says, something fond in his voice that Kaidan doesn't usually hear. "Who knew the man was so particular about socks."
Kaidan opens his mouth to say something about the Greico's attempt at fixing Christmas dinner, but he's interrupted by the heavy tread of krogan boots echoing at the rear entrance of the control tower.
"Cargo transfer is clear," Grunt declares as his crested head appears on Kaidan's right. "I'm bored, Shepard. I didn't come out here to sit on my hump."
"You came to reclaim this facility from Cerberus," Javik sniffs. "The mission was a success."
Grunt growls, his beady gaze shifting to the silent AA guns. "A lot of good it's doing us."
"At least they're not shooting at us," Kaidan points out.
"Small miracles," Shepard mutters. "Now all we need is a three course dinner and a Christmas ham."
Grunt tilts his head, savage eyes bright with curiosity.
"You keep speaking this word, Christmas," the prothean says. "I do not know what it means."
"Earth holiday," Kaidan replies.
"With lots of food," Shepard says ruefully, grimacing as he shifts a little. "Which we could certainly use right now."
Grunt blinks and jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "If you're that hungry I can haul one of those Cerberus corpses up here."
Shepard's features curl with distaste. "I'd like to avoid cannibalism, thanks."
"Wouldn't be cannibalism for me," Grunt says with a shrug. Those ferocious eyes blink once more, and Kaidan can almost see the wheels turning in his head. He just doesn't want to know where they're going.
"How would you even prepare human?"
Nope. Definitely didn't want to know.
"Liver. Kidney. Heart," Javik says, in a soft, ghostly tone that sends chills down Kaidan's spine. "You spice them with k'vellah and govannen. Boil the heart. Lightly sear the liver over an open flame. For the kid—"
"Thanks, Javik," Shepard interrupts. "That's helpful."
Grunt shakes his head a bit, as if coming out of a trance. His scaly lips quiver. "What about turian?" he asks.
"Enough," Shepard says, the force he applies to the words bleeding away into an unpleasant rasp that sounds like he's chewing glass. "Christmas is about helping your fellow man, woman, krogan, prothean, whatever. Not eating them."
Javik sniffs. "I do not understand. You said it is an earth holiday with feasting."
Kaidan retracts his face plate to poke at his eye. He's not sure if he wants to rub it or jab it with something sharp and rusty. "It was celebrated by certain human religions that believe in a god who sent his son to live in the world as flesh and blood so he could die and save mankind from their sins. Christmas celebrates the day of his birth."
"Did he die in battle?" Grunt asks, sinking ungracefully to the ground, not unlike a child sitting cross-legged and eager for a story.
"No, his own people murdered him," Shepard says.
"To become gods?"
"Not quite."
The prothean's lips curl in distaste. "Foolish."
Kaidan shrugs. "Don't think there's much about most religions that isn't a little foolish."
"Religion has its purposes, some useful, some not," Javik says. "But to make one of your gods flesh and blood makes it weak. Destroys its power."
"Didn't quite work out that way on Earth," Shepard says, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "For better or worse. Mostly worse." His heart rate is slow, respiration threadier than it was an hour ago. When Kaidan used the last dose of medigel.
Another hour or so and they're going to have to get really creative.
"Doesn't actually matter what the origins of it are," Shepard continues. Each word is slower and more labored than it should be. "People celebrate it because it brings families together. They cling to peace. Believe that for one damn minute everyone will just get over themselves."
"Goodwill to all," Kaidan murmurs. "Hope and miracles."
"You know…in old wars on earth, rival armies would call for a ceasefire on Christmas," Shepard says. "Don't suppose the reapers will decide to give us a break for a night."
The prothean blinks. All four eyes, in unison. "Miracles are for the weak."
"Sure about that?" Shepard asks. He gestures towards the krogan. "Few weeks ago the krogan had no future. Now, in the face of the biggest threat the galaxy has ever seen they're going to thrive. That not some kind of a miracle for you?"
"That was the work of a salarian scientist and a thresher maw."
"I helped, if I recall," Shepard mutters.
Javik shakes his broad head. "Celebrations breed complacency. Where I come from, that means death."
"Where you come from we lost," Kaidan points out bitterly.
"Perhaps you will as well," the prothean says simply.
Shepard shifts again. It's not until he moves that Kaidan realizes his hand is still on Shepard's shoulder.
"Tell you what," Shepard says. "I get out of here alive, and you have to pose for a holo photo wearing a Santa hat and a godawful Christmas sweater."
"Sweater?"
"Don't worry about it. Traynor will handle the details."
Javik nods solemnly. "Very well."
Kaidan swallows a snort. "You know, if he had hair he could almost pass for a Grinch."
Shepard's lips curve in a smile, but he shakes his head. "Nah. Not a Grinch. We're a fucked up living example of A Christmas Carol."
Kaidan raises an eyebrow. "How do you figure that?"
Shepard indicates Javik. "We've got a literal ghost of Christmas past." He nods to Grunt. "A more figurative ghost of Christmas future."
"Not a ghost," Grunt growls. "I am Urdnot."
Shepard ignores him and shifts his gaze to Kaidan, the look in his eye sharp enough to stop his heart. "Guess it's up to you and me to handle the present."
"Yeah," Kaidan says, voice soft. It's the narcotics, he tells himself. It's Shepard. He doesn't mean anything else by it. Subtlety and double meaning simply aren't Shepard's game.
At least not the old Shepard. There's apparently lot about the new one he still has to learn.
If he gets the chance.
The first rays of dawn aren't far off.
Christmas day. Shepard is dying. Shepard is fucking dying and there's nothing Kaidan can do about it. He's been unconscious for the last hour. Kaidan is out of medigel and out of options. He's never been religious before, but right now he wishes he were. If for no other reason than having someone to plead to, someone to blame.
But that's not how things work. You can't place someone's fate in the hands of a higher power. The only hands you've got are your own. And there is nothing more Kaidan's hands can do.
So he uses them to hold Shepard's.
If you live through this, he thinks. I'll even tell you why.
"Normandy to Major Alenko."
It takes Kaidan a moment to sufficiently clear enough of the cobwebs from his brain to recognize Joker's voice. He's not sure how long he's been asleep. Before he even thinks about answering he frantically checks Shepard's biofeeds.
Somehow. Somehow. He's still alive. Hand still firmly grasped in Kaidan's.
"Still here, Lieutenant," Kaidan replies, heart thudding a little in his chest.
"We're ready to try something. The turians just arrived. They're going to provide a distraction while I bring the Normandy in and use the IES to try and sneak in under the reaper's nose."
"Understood."
"Send me a nav point. Between the dinosaur wise men and reptile shepherds we're going to find you some room at the inn."
"Joker," Kaidan says, the relief in his voice on the brink of laughter.
"Sir."
"That was awful."
He can hear Joker's grin.
"Thank you, sir. Sit tight. We're coming."
Kaidan activates his omnitool, and sends their pilot the nav point. Then he does a little grinning himself. "Hey, Joker?"
"Go ahead."
"Just follow the star."
There's a pause. Followed by, "Merry Christmas, Alenko."
It's three days and several rendezvous with the bone knitter before Shepard is back on his feet. Dr. Chakwas still doesn't know how they managed to salvage the artery.
"I thought you were going to lose that leg for sure," she informs him, at least four times that Kaidan has heard, probably more that he hasn't. Kaidan folds his arms across his chest and watches Dr. Chakwas run one last scan.
"Probably one more reason I should thank a Cerberus officer right before I shoot him in the face," Shepard replies, adjusting his fatigues. He's had his eye on the medbay door since they'd hauled him in on a stretcher. Because Shepard.
"I'm sure he'll appreciate the gratitude," she says smoothly, hands hovering in case his balance doesn't hold. But it does. Of course it does. It's Shepard.
"Looks like I missed Christmas," Shepard laments as he reaches the door, Kaidan right behind him. "Not exactly one to remember, anyway."
"Not so sure about that," Kaidan replies. "You said Christmas was about miracles. And you got one. You made it off Tuchanka. Again. I think by this point you actually are immortal."
Shepard rubs his leg. "Not so sure about that. But I appreciate the vote of confidence. Javik is a little lacking in the optimism department."
"Speaking of that," Kaidan says. "As I recall, someone owes you something."
The doors swish open. Javik is waiting on the other side, dressed exactly as promised.
The grin on Shepard's face starts small and slow, then spreads, growing wide and fiendish until no part of his face is left untouched by it. Javik is not nearly as amused. Which only makes it better.
After the prothean's humiliation is over, Shepard chuckles, staring at the holo image. "I'm putting this right on my desk," he says.
Kaidn draws in a deep breath, heart beating so loud he's amazed Shepard doesn't hear it, replaying the moment in his head where he'd taken Shepard's hand in a never ending loop.
If you live through this, I'll even tell you why.
"Shepard," he says, hesitantly, hands behind his back so that Shepard can't see them shake. "There's something I need to tell you. I should have told you a long time ago."