I'm a total newbie to fanfic writing, this is the first piece of fanfic I have ever written.I just feel very strongly about the Shepard (female) and Kaidan romance in Mass effect and their encounter on Horizon, and wanted to give my take on her death and her relationship with Kaidan.
Also, english isn't my first language, so I'm sure my text is filled with grammar- and spelling errors. I still hope that you like the text and that you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.
He had left her on the Normandy.
That was the one thing he couldn't stand, and which played over and over in his mind.
The last time he spoke with her she had told him to get to the escape pods while she took care of Joker, and he had followed orders. He shouldn't have. That was the one thing he was certain about afterward, when he was no longer certain about anything else. He should have waited, helped, made sure she got out of there alive. He had trusted her to get out of there safely- he had watched her take on husks, geth, Saren, reapers, and god knows what else and come out of it with nothing more than scratches and bruises. He had almost come to think about her as invulnerable. Of course, he had always known she wasn't. Nobody was.
All those times when he had been left on the Normandy while she took the shuttle or the mako to some mission, he had watched her go with a sense of dread and the feeling that he should go with her to protect her. She always came back alive and well, though, demonstrating that she could do anything she set her mind to, that she did not need anybody to protect her. And that was what part of him had come to believe.
The urge to follow her on those missions never subsided. He still always wanted to go with her just the same. Just in case, in case she needed him. But he had learnt to deal with that feeling of dread. After all, these missions were their job. He could not have prevented her from taking risks in the line of duty any more than she could have prevented him- so he usually just convinced himself that she would be fine, that she did not need his protection no matter how much he wanted her to have it. That was what he had told himself that last time on the Normandy too- that she didn't need his help there, that she, as always, would be fine. He had hesitated to leave her, but had left her there all the same.
Only this time she HAD needed him. This one time, and he hadn't been there for her. That thought always made his chest tighten. That order she had given, he should have disobeyed it, every part of him had told him to. But he hadn't. He had gone to the escape pods, which had been shot out of the burning Normandy into vacuum and empty space to bring him and the rest of the crew to safety.
They had hit the ground virtually unscathed, but he had seen the Normandy go down in the distance. He had stood midst the clouds of stirred-up dust, watching the fire from Normandy's burning engines stretch high against the night sky, while the crew of the Normandy crawled out of their escape pods.
He had looked for the pod Shepard would be in. He had seen it eject from the spaceship before the crash, knew it had landed, and searched everywhere in the tumult and confusion for it. Then he saw Joker, climbing out of the last, otherwise empty, pod with his face twisted in agony from broken bones and from shock. Alone. And that was when he knew that something was terribly wrong.
And then? Afterward he had trouble sorting out the details of what actually had happened. He didn't remember when the alliance came to their aid, but they eventually did. He would remember being led into the alliance rescue vessel, moving as if in a dream, all sounds muffled, all edges blurred, filled with emptiness but also with a strange calm, knowing that nothing of all this was real, expecting to wake up. He'd remember the silence as they all desperately tried to grasp the unthinkable, and Liara's quiet sobbing, almost drowned out by the soft humming of the engines. He'd remember being shipped to citadel space. Filing reports. Watching the team scatter because there was nothing left to say, nobody with the will or strength to keep them together. The crew disperse as new orders came.
There had been ceremonies. Memorials. Her death even made the news. They carved her name into the great stone wall which listed the names of alliance marines who had died in the line of duty. He remembered thinking she had deserved more.
He had been offered a longer than normal shore leave, but didn't take it. There had been no point to. He had asked to be put on a mission as soon as possible. Something to keep his mind busy and occupy him. He might as well, because every idle minute reminded him of what he should have done differently. To everybody else he must have seemed busy, but in reality all he did was to wait for that call telling him she was alive, telling him that she hadn't actually died. For months he waited. And then he stopped, knowing it was all in vain. She was not coming back.
She was gone, and there was nothing he could ever do about it, only move on.
That way it continued until the rumors.
He first heard them from other soldiers in the alliance quarters. He didn't believe them. By then, he had since long given up hope to hear from her again. He had begun getting used to life without her. It was not the kind of life he had wanted, but he got up in the mornings, he did his job, and tried to live as there had been no past, no great hunt for Saren, no Normandy, no Shepard, no Ilos. And the night before Ilos was something out of a dream, a figment of his imagination, at least he preferred to treat it as such. But the rumors kept coming, from all kinds of sources. Rumors about Cerberus, mostly, vague ones, about the terrorist organization being behind the disappearance of human colonies. But also rumors about Shepard. They had hit him like a slap in the face. He had taken them for lies, trying to stop that initial spark of hope from waking and growing too large to quench again.
And when he had pulled all the strings he could find, contacted all the sources he could think of to find out if there was any truth to the claims, he still did not know anything more than what little the rumors told him. Even Captain Anderson stonewalled him.
And then he was sent to Horizon. Expecting Cerberus, but really not expecting her, not daring to expect her, until she stood before him.
At first he thought she was an illusion. A mirage, even. In one way, he had almost forgotten what she looked like, but in another it was as if he'd lost her just days ago.
Everything about her was so familiar he could have sworn no time at all had passed. Her armor was different, and her hair may have been a bit longer, but everything that was her was the Shepard he remembered. Her eyes. Her lips. Her body, the way she moved. Everything.
It felt like Shepard, when he put his arms around her. It smelled like her, when he buried his face in her neck and hair. At that moment, he never wanted to let
her go.
But how could it be her?
She had been lost. They had all believed she was dead. She must have known they would be looking for her. That HE would be looking for her, and that they had needed her, all of them. She had chosen to disregard that. To discard them. Chosen to abandon them. Him. Without caring about the months when their lives had been in ruins from losing her.
Two years. Two years, when a single word from her would have meant everything. Two years, when he had constantly blamed himself, blamed her, blamed life. When he had believed he saw her everywhere, when his memories had kept him awake during the nights, and when his dreams, when he could finally get some sleep, were filled with her voice, and her presence. Not a letter, not a message, not a single transmission to let him know she was alive and alright, to save him from going through hell.
He would have wanted to tell her just how much she had hurt him by leaving. He would have wanted to let her know how long he had waited for her, expecting, hoping, every day that he would hear from her. Hoping that she'd miraculously turn up, alive, well.
He had known he would never see her again. Never hold her. He had known it for certain, and he had learnt to live with that knowledge, as much as it had hurt him.
And then he found himself standing in front of this woman, this ghost, who he had never stopped loving, and he didn't know who it was.
It looked like Shepard, but Shepard would never have caused him all that pain and grief.
It looked like Shepard, but the Cerberus-marked armors of her companions hinted otherwise. The Shepard he knew would never work for Cerberus.
And this watchfulness, this distance, when their embrace ended. Like she didn't know him anymore. Like she didn't care.
"It's been too long Kaidan. How have you been?" After two years, that was how she greeted him.
Her voice was painfully familiar, and painfully calm, tearing him up inside.
Two years, and that was all she had to say?
It was Kaidan.
Thank god, was her first thought.
Every step she had taken on Horizon she had wondered where he was. Every step since she woke up in the Cerberus lab, to be honest, but especially on Horizon. Every paralyzed body they'd seen since they landed on the planet she had approached with a sense of dread, praying it wasn't him, but also praying it was because it would have meant he hadn't been abducted by the collectors. And now that they had reached so far into the colony as the defense towers, and the collector ship took to the sky without her having found a trace of him, she had begun to wonder if he wasn't disappearing along with the ship.
He had changed. At least she thought he had. His face looked the same, his body the same. But there was something harder about him. Harsher.
Two years, Shepard, she reminded herself. You have been dead for two years. He has moved on. He could be seeing somebody else. He could be married. Two years, and you were dead. Why shouldn't he have moved on?
He had changed, but she hadn't. Of course he had. In her mind she was still only weeks from having defeated Saren and saved the council, but for him months had passed. Seasons. Years. And in two years, alot could happen. She still loved him- but he had gotten over her.
The thought of the unfairness of it all struck her.
She had done everything that could be expected of her. She had stepped up when it was clear that she was needed. She had defeated the geth, defeated Saren, defeated Sovereign. She had done everything right. And the reward for it was this...having to work for Cerberus whom she despised, not being trusted by anybody, being viewed as a maniac by the council, losing friends...Losing Kaidan.
Let somebody else do it, she thought in a moment of defiance I'm done playing the hero. It has cost me my life, and more...The cost is too high.
But of course, it was only thoughts, because nobody else could do it. It had to be her.
She wanted to kiss him as he embraced her, but it would have been too much. She did not want to tear up old wounds, to complicate his life which she was no longer part of.
She did not want him to see the emotional mess she felt.
She was surprised by the calmness of her own voice when she asked:
"It's been too long, Kaidan. How have you been?
She had sounded like she believed every word she said. About being rebuilt. Rebuilt, for god's sake! How was it possible to bring dead persons back to life?
And Cerberus were supposed to have revived her out of pure benevolence, so that she could help preserve humanity? He had seen Cerberus' experiments, and so had she. He knew she was well aware that Cerberus was behind the blood bath on Akuze. How the hell could she be working with an organization like that? And how could she try to convince him that she wasn't when she supposedly owed Cerberus her life, when she travelled in a Cerberus vessel, with a Cerberus crew?
She had seemed so sincere when she claimed that the mission was hers and that she wasn't working for them. But how could it be, when everything she did had their prints all over it?
He had almost believed her, then, when she said that she was not a traitor.
But then, she had always been persuasive.
And even after he had left her there, on Horizon, he couldn't get rid of the feeling that she wouldn't lie to him. That perhaps there was truth in what she told him.
She's done nothing but lie, ever since the normandy was lost, he reminded himself. Hell, maybe even before that, what do you know? People are not ressurected. No matter what tech you have you cannot bring the dead back to life. How do you know this isn't part of some bigger plan? Why do you believe her?
And even if she told the truth...
It was too much.
She had been standing in front of him, talking about targeting the collectors. About being on another suicide mission.
Even if she hadn't been working with Cerberus and if he could have joined up with her- would he?
It was just like her. The first impossible mission after the other.
The collectors, for god's sake. The very same beings that had supposedly blown her apart the first time- they had already killed her once, who was to say they wouldn't do it again? And if she survived,
then what, then she was going to target the reapers? Each mission was more dangerous than the last one.
He had lost her once.
He could not go through it again. Not the waiting, not the searching, not hoping and hoping and hoping just to have all hopes smashed to pieces time and time again.
He understood the need to save the galaxy- he just didn't understand why she had to be the one to do it. She had done her part. Let somebody else die for the sake of humanity. Let somebody else throw themselves head first into one suicide mission after another, for the galaxy.
You could only survive against all odds for so long, and you could only do the impossible for so many times.
If she died again, he would die too. He was certain of it. He did not want to be around to receive another message of her passing. He could not go through it again. And that was why he couldn't have joined her even if she hadn't been with Cerberus. Because eventually these suicide missions would kill her, and that would kill him too.
But in the back of his head, still that nagging feeling...If you think she'll die, don't you want to be there for whatever time she has left?
He tried to send another message.
A time after his letter to her explaining about Horizon he sat down and put all his feelings into writing. For weeks he thought about what to write, and how to word it.
He wrote that he still loved her. That he wanted to join her crew, Cerberus or not. He wanted to write that he wanted to protect her, because that was the truth of it, but he suspected she would have objected that she didn't need his protection. But she had, and she did. Cerberus were not to be trusted, and even if she didn't realize that, he did. He could not persuade her to leave Cerberus, but if she wouldn't, he could at least be there to keep her safe when they did turn on her. In fact, he would give his life to make sure she was.
And this time he wouldn't fail.
When he pressed "send" the message wouldn't transfer.
He sat in front of the blinking light on the screen, which told him there was no such vessel known as the Normandy to be found, and therefore nowhere to send the message.
The first thought to hit him was that this Normandy, like the first, had been destroyed. But then he realized how improbable that was.
No. No, it had not been blown up. She was somewhere else.
It struck him with a chill.
She had entered collector space.