Authors Note: Bioware owns Mass Effect and all characters. No infringement intended in this slightly AU expansion of what happens between a romanced Kaidan and Commander Shepard. I thought the dialogue was more than a little lacking in clearing the air between those two. Some of the dialogue has been readjusted to include some lost lines published on Tumblr.

Tram Platform

Alliance Mars Archives:

"Shepard! I found something!"

Shepard nodded to Liara, who was still working with the computers, then strode for the door to the adjacent tram station. "What've you got?"

Kaidan was hunkered down next to one of the Cerberus troopers they'd terminated earlier. "He's got a transmitter in his helmet. If I can just..." The seal opened on the corpse's faceplace with a slight hiss, revealing blank cybernetic eyes and grotesquely altered features. Kaidan jerked back in shock. "Oh, God. He looks like a husk."

Swallowing, Shepard pasted the coolly professional look she usually reserved for the Illusive Man on her face. "Not quite." She walked over to the body and crouched down to check the corpse. A few taps at the helmet, and the transmitter came free. "But they definitely did something to him."

"And by they, you mean Cerberus? They did this to their own guy? Now do you see why I was worried about you?" Kaidan stood, looked at the Cerberus creature, then his whiskey gaze flew over to her. For a single unguarded second, his expression showed panic and horror. "Could they have done this to you?"

Shepard's head snapped around, and she shot to her feet, eyes blazing. "How can you compare me to him?"

Kaidan schooled his expression to a careful blankness. "Shepard, I don't really know what you are, or who. You've done a lot of things since Cerberus rebuilt you, things I never thought the Commander Shepard I knew would have done." The ghosts of three hundred thousand Batarians hung between them. "For all I know, you could be a Cerberus puppet, controlled by the Illusive Man himself. I guess I'm still looking for an explanation, even though you sure as hell don't owe me one."

Shepard felt her blood go cold. "Kaidan..."

"No, don't try to explain it." He rubbed a hand across his forehead. "I wasn't there. I can't ever understand, even if I want to." He took a step toward her, that look he'd given her in the Normandy's medbay back in his eyes. Hope and fear and uncertainty, and a simmering anger she wasn't accustomed to having directed at her. The Kaidan of her memories had possibly been this complex, but never this hard. "Shepard, all I really want to know is, is the person I followed to hell and back on Ilos, the person that I loved, is she still in there... somewhere?"

Shepard paced away from him. She had to. Rage and grief and a thousand other feelings were coiling through her, and she didn't trust herself not to lash out. "Are you really sure you want to do this now, Alenko? Really? Because we are on the clock and I am definitely not in the mood to take it easy on you."

Kaidan wouldn't let her keep her distance. He closed the space between them with three long, angry strides. Blue flames shimmered in the corners of his eyes for a brief moment before he banished them. "I never asked you to take it easy on me! I just want... I need answers. Dammit, Shepard, you said I should know what you're about. It goes both ways. You know me. You know how I operate, and you damn well know why. Stop trying to protect everyone around you!"

"I. Can't. Stop!" She was in his face, shouting and furious, not caring if Liara could hear them in the other room. "Don't you get it? Cerberus didn't save me because they wanted to put my face on the damn recruitment posters, Kaidan! For whatever reason, they wanted to stop the Collectors, and they wanted it badly enough to scoop up my corpse and bring me back from the grave to do it."

"Why stay with them so long?" he asked quietly. "Why didn't you leave as soon as you could?"

Why didn't you come back to me? hung unspoken in the air between them. Shepard ignored it. "Because I had a mission, Kaidan. After everything the Normandy crew suffered, everything we did, the Council didn't want to believe us. The Alliance didn't want to believe us. Ash was dead, our colonies were being decimated. Everything and everyone we lost would have been for fucking nothing because of cowardice and political bullshit. So when Cerberus brought me back, I shut my mouth and I did the job the Council was too chickenshit to admit they wanted done. I put up with the bugs all over the ship. I lived with knowing that every word I said, every gesture I made was being analyzed for weakness and loyalty and getting reported back to the Illusive Man. I put up with never knowing if they were going to put something in my head under the guise of routine maintenance on my cybernetics that would make me not me anymore. I even learned to live without you." She was trembling, she knew she was, but she couldn't seem to stop. "And then I got word that you were on Horizon, and the Collectors were on their way there, and I knew I hadn't learned that well enough." She shoved her gauntleted hand into her hair, reliving that chilling panic that had ridden her as the Normandy raced to Horizon.

"Why didn't you just tell me what was going on?" Kaidan's voice was painfully quiet. "I held you. You could have whispered something to me. Why didn't you?"

She looked him straight in the eye. "Would you have believed me?" she asked in a level tone. "Would you have betrayed the Alliance for me?"

"Shepard... " Kaidan's hands fisted at his sides, swirling blue coruscating around his fingertips.

"No." Shepard shook her head, took another step away from him and the regret she could see in his eyes. "Your honor, your nobility, has always been the greatest part of you, Kaidan. I don't have that. I'll never live up to the ideals you set for me, and I don't want to see you have to live with the kind of decisions I've had to make." She slashed her hand down between them. "We're done. I'm through justifying myself."

Trembling, Rose turned toward the railing. She wanted to punch something. Hell, she wanted to cry. Frustrated at her own weakness, she yanked the band out of her hair and shoved her gloved hands through the black waves that cascaded messily around her shoulders. What had she just done?

"You're still you." She hadn't really heard him move, but suddenly Kaidan was crowding her, pressed up against her back. Their armor clanked together awkwardly as his arms came around her and he buried his face in her hair. Shepard could feel him shudder, even through the armor. "Ah, God... You are still you, Shepard."

"What? Dammit, Alenko, what are you doing?" She fought his hold, but didn't want to damage him, which left her at a disadvantage.

Kaidan refused to let her go, hands locking onto her armor. "Maybe Cerberus could have programmed you to act the way Commander Shepard acted in public. Maybe they would have gotten your voice, your mannerisms right. Maybe. But they wouldn't have seen the way you take your hair down when you're angry, the exact way you scrub your hands through it. You never do that in public." His voice lowered, and she felt his breath whisper across her ear. "They wouldn't know that little sound you make when I do this... " He bit down gently on the shell of her ear, drawing in a breath when her own caught.

She shuddered, hands locking on the railing. "Kaidan. Don't."

He pried her grip loose and spun her in his arms, and his hands, his wide, long-fingered hands, framed her face, the gauntlets cold against her skin. "I listened to you. Now you listen to me. Didn't you ever have something that you wanted so badly, it ripped you apart inside, and when you finally got it, all you could think was "Why? Why now?"

The image of a snow-swept spaceport landing on Noveria swirled through Shepard's memory. "You know I do."

"Yeah. I know." He took a deep breath, exhaled harshly. "After the Normandy went down, I was a wreck. It took at least a year before I stopped having nightmares every night, hearing your last breaths rattling in my comm. And when I finally pieced myself back together... there you were on Horizon."

"But then... you weren't as I remembered you. The little details, the way you move had changed a little." His fingertips traced the arch of her cheekbone with the sure touch of an artist, and she knew he was tracing the path of the scar that had once been under her right eye. "You were different, you acted so cold, and all I could think was that Cerberus had desecrated you. They'd taken your face, your voice... and you weren't really you. I felt like I was watching you die again in front of me." Kaidan closed his eyes. "I didn't handle it well. I'm sorry."

Of all the things she could have imagined him saying, that was absolutely the last. Shaken more than she wanted to show, she let her forehead rest on his chestplate. The ceramic felt cold against her skin. "Kaidan, I want to believe you. I do. But I don't know if I can."

He kissed the top of her head. "It's okay, Shepard. I don't blame you, not really. I said... well, I said a lot of things. Even meant them, at the time. I... I lost control with you, Shepard. I can't promise it won't ever happen again. You talk about honor and nobility like I'm some sort of saint. I'm not. I'm human." He laughed, but it was a low crackle of sound that held more pain than humor. "God, am I ever human, especially with you. I know I don't deserve a second chance, but... I'd really like one. Just... don't go away again. We deserve to figure this out, if you want to."

Shepard's hands curled into fists at her sides. "This can't affect the mission. You know that."

"It won't." Kaidan rubbed his cheek against her hair. "We don't have the time. Seems like we never have time for us." Kaidan chuckled a little, but it was rough, bitter. "I want that time. If I have to steal it, I will."

The tiniest smile curved her lips and she pushed at his shoulder. "You always were stubborn."

"Me?" He let her shove him back enough to get them both away from the railing. His eyes were still too dark, but she was relieved to see a spark of humor at her accusation. "I'm stubborn?"

"Yeah, you. C'mon." Shepard flashed the transmitter she still palmed. "Let's see what Cerberus is up to. Maybe we'll both get some answers."