Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: A little exercise in poetry-prose fusion.
Reckoned from One Midnight to the Next
Chapter One: Dusk
"He takes his carrion heart with him everywhere. Lays it in his lap and watches it. Pulls the blankets over it in the night and tries to smother it." - Kaidan in the aftermath of Shepard's death over Alchera. A tale of heartache and healing in two parts.
Day 1
What is a day?
An increment of time.
A measured length of duration corresponding to a rotation of the earth on its axis.
A particular period of the past.
(but what is a day?)
Kaidan can only think of one word for that question:
endless.
The day Shepard dies Kaidan stops living as well.
Day 2
The second day is harder than the first.
Kaidan's spent hours telling himself it didn't happen.
(it didn't, it didn't, it
did)
Telling himself he didn't break from the sealed air of his escape pod and into the biting cold of Alchera. Frantic. Body aching. Eyes searching. The frozen plain littered with other escape pods along the distance.
He tells himself he didn't call out Her name. Again. And again. Didn't plod through the snow. Trip. Push himself up at the knees. Gasp for air through the filter in his suit. His arms shaking as they push against the snowy banks. Everything spinning. His breath, hot and panting in his helmet. Her name.
"Shepard!"
(they never found her body)
He sits along a snowy bank in the makeshift camp, waiting on an Alliance ship passing through the sector to receive their distress beacon. It is night. Minimal flares cast harsh slants of light around the small huddle of salvage and tents. Kaidan looks at his hands, gloved and trembling. Palms up.
He takes a ragged breath in. Blinks furiously behind the glass of his helmet. He curls his fingers into fists, then slowly, unfurls them. He does this several times. Clenching. Releasing. His breath catches.
The second day is harder because now he knows it did happen.
he is knee-deep and filthy in it
Day 3
He doesn't feel much.
Not because of the frigid cold. Not because of the armored suit keeping him from the world.
Kaidan trudges through the snow with the other officers that survived the crash, headed across the frozen lake to the snow-filled banks that hold the Normandy wreckage. They go to gather any undamaged equipment. They go to gather any salvageable supplies.
Kaidan goes to see.
It takes them several hours to sift through the aftermath, cataloguing the damage, taking what they can. An ensign, face pock-marked and red, voices a question.
"Where are the bodies? They deserve a burial."
Kaidan stills mid-crouch as he's pushing a seared metal sheet of hull from over a navigational console. His mouth forms a tight line. His elbow locks.
Someone behind him answers. "Burned up, son. Nothing left to bury."
Kaidan wants to throw up. But he's trapped in his suit. Can't get out. Can't get away. Can't breathe, can't fucking breathe, can't –
Kaidan drops the piece of debris and jolts up. Stumbles over the snow to the edge of the broken hull. Leans up against the hulk of Normandy, one hand curling around a jutting barb of metal, the other slamming in a tight fist against the hull. Snow rattles from the wreckage and he screams. Once. Short and broken.
(like the last moment between them)
He pants helplessly inside his helmet. The tears are hot on his lids and uncontrollable. The salt sting of sudden loss. He slams his helmet into the hull with a gasping sob, holds it there. Tries to breathe. His chest hurts. It hurts unlike anything he's ever felt before.
fingers blood-slicked and sure, skimming along his heart
(not Her touch)
The wind whips against him harshly but he doesn't move. He squeezes his eyes shut and keeps his face pressed against the dead metal of the Normandy. His jaw hurts with the harsh clench of his teeth. A choked, wet sound bubbles up from his throat and he slams his fist back against the metal.
He sees Her face behind his lids and can't fucking breathe.
(oh, how She must have struggled)
"Sir?"
A woman's voice jolts him.
But it isn't Her voice.
Kaidan flattens his palm against the hull and looks up, locking gazes with the woman. She has a hand spread tentatively toward him.
Her face is young. Too young.
Too pure and freckled and
kind.
Kaidan tastes bile along the back of his tongue.
"Are you alright, sir?" she ventures softly, taking a step closer. Her grey armored suit is stark against the white snow.
Kaidan swallows thickly and pushes from the wreckage, his hands going limp at his sides. He simply stares at her for long moments.
The young ensign shifts uncomfortably. "Sir?"
but what can you say?
They make it back to the campsite by nightfall. Engineers re-pressurize and oxygenate the escape pods and use them as food stations. Oxygen tanks are distributed throughout the crew and they cycle clean air back into their suits. They establish a med-center and a waste station. And they wait.
Kaidan is persuaded to finally eat. Nothing has any taste.
He lies awake in the night and watches the stars. He tries to count them. Tries to recall the constellations. He recites the names of the solar systems and the planets. Then tries to mentally alphabetize them. He makes up stories for the names. He creates histories and fantasies and legends around them. He gives each world a soul and then tries to learn it.
Inside, he is screaming.
(flaring like dying stars)
Day 5
The Alliance finds them on this day.
Kaidan gives his initial report and lets the doctors examine him. He doesn't understand why he misses the suit when they take it from him. He stands in the med-bay in his grey Alliance issued tee and boxer briefs. He is ushered to a bed.
He asks for a shower.
Later, they tell him. Later.
He is dehydrated and fatigued but none the worse for wear. He watches the others being brought in, some on stretchers, some ambling slowly in on their own feet. His implant is scanned. He starts slightly at the sharp injection in his arm. He looks down and sees the needle in his flesh, and then watches it pull back out. He blinks and licks his dry lips. Someone's hands are urging his face to turn. Another pair of hands lifts his arm and wraps a band around it. He feels a bit dizzy. Lays his head back against the pillow. His vision inks black for a second and he opens his mouth to speak but it is a croak that comes out, raking along his throat. His lids are heavy. His whole body feels weighted and immovable.
(dark space)
(is this what it felt like?)
Kaidan isn't aware of Her name along his lips as he loses consciousness.
He wakes to find his cheeks wet with tears he doesn't remember shedding. The med-bay is dark, only the faint dim of the deck lights allowing for Kaidan's sight. He glances around and finds his fellow crewmates in a similar state around him. All lying on medical beds and hooked up to monitors. There are several makeshift cots throughout the room, all filled. He can glimpse the image of a doctor sitting at her desk across the room, the orange light from her terminal flickering across her broad face. She does not notice he is awake.
His throat is dry. He smacks his lips and tries to swallow. He blinks up at the ceiling. Tries to curl his fingers and stretch his toes. His breathing is a bit uneven. The sound of steady ticking monitors is like a staccato to his ears, the light fuzz of static filtering toward him. His nostrils burn from the sharp antiseptic.
Shepard is dead.
Kaidan sucks in a sharp breath and holds it. Feels the air burning hot in his chest and it doesn't hurt near enough. It doesn't hurt near enough to take his thoughts from that one inevitable, unavoidable thought.
He coughs a disbelieving laugh.
(laugh because you can't cry, you can't, you can't, you
Everything shatters suddenly. His face crumbles, his hand rising up to cover his eyes and the tears are instant. He pulls a ragged breath in and shakes with the unexpected sob. He cannot stop. He cannot stop this wave of sharp agony that rolls over him, threatening to overtake him. Sweeping him up. Carrying him out with the quick and breathless sobs that rack his body. He cries and he cries and he cries. Unending. Unrelenting.
He doesn't think it will ever stop.
Shepard is dead.
He doesn't think he has tears enough for such stark grief.
Day 9
Kaidan is on medical leave in Vancouver. He sees the appointed therapist and counts the seconds of his sessions. None of them know. None of them will ever really know.
He takes his carrion heart with him everywhere. Lays it in his lap and watches it. Pulls the blankets over it in the night and tries to smother it.
He keeps it tucked inside his coat at the funeral. It is not for the world to see. They don't deserve his tears.
The service is stark and simple. The way She requested.
He is not surprised to see the others. Garrus keeps a heavy talon along Tali's shoulder through it all. Wrex is awkwardly large in the crowd, and the krogan ends up walking away halfway through Hackett's eulogy. Kaidan wishes he had as well.
Something about Liara's tears angers Kaidan. Just the sight. The uncontrollable sobbing. The quaking hand held against her mouth. Her eyes when she looks at him.
Kaidan clenches his jaw tight and flexes his fingers. Is that what he looked like when he cried? Is that what his sobs sounded like? Is that how his own desolate grief tastes?
like chalk and syrup
He cannot look at her. Turns away and tries to still the tremor in his jaw. Tells himself not to cry. They don't deserve his tears.
They are only for Her.
You can cry your piece when you've made sure that bedroom door is closed. Made sure it's locked.
Kaidan leaves the funeral silent and worse for the world.
(look at how he quivers)
Day 12
Endless.
days and nights and days again
Too many hours and not enough time.
Day 17
He is brushing his teeth when it hits him.
He remembers a glimpse of the Normandy in space as it burst into bright blooms of ruin. Sailing through the space above Alchera, wisps of smoke and fire licking around the escape pod's window.
Kaidan stills his hand on his toothbrush, slowly pulling it from his mouth.
There was an explosion. Sharp and brilliant and deafening.
He had watched it happen. He had watched the destruction and wailed.
Kaidan feels the bile rising in his throat a second before he retches into the sink, his whole body shaking with the force of it. His hand slips along the sink edge and he heaves again, intensely, his skin bursting red with the effort. He coughs and spits, his knuckles white along the smooth porcelain. His knees give out and he is falling to the floor.
Falling.
Fallen.
Day 21
His mother calls and calls but he never answers. His leave is over soon. He hardly notices. His kitchen is ripe with the scent of half-empty food cartons and the sour tang of old milk.
Kaidan sits at his couch and stares at the glass of whiskey on the coffee table. He doesn't drink it. Just stares at it.
His personal terminal is flashing in the corner of the room. There are 37 unread messages waiting to be opened. Waiting to be read. To soothe. To offer. To plead.
He doesn't want any of it.
He looks at the glass before him, amber liquid glinting in the steady flash of the terminal across the room. The tears appear unannounced. Again.
He is just so tired of crying.
He has been washed dry and only wishes to wrap in on himself like the dead, curling leaves of autumn. Wants to catch the coming winter wind and let himself be dragged away. Up and up and into the air. Dancing in the chill, bright sky as the sun beats down. Searing his dry, bristle edges until they light magnificently. Burning as he dances.
Ash on the wind.
embers like stars
Day 23
Kaidan wakes to Anderson pounding on his door. He opens it.
They stand watching each other for several moments. There is everything and nothing shared between them.
"You look like hell, son."
Kaidan tightens his hold of the door until his knuckles are white. "There are worse things," he croaks. A moment. A heavy swallow. "Sir." A puff of tired breath.
Anderson brushes past him into the apartment.
They talk and scream and pretend to listen.
(there is no one there to listen)
Nothing is said that hasn't been said before, and so Anderson leaves, face grim, pulling his cap harshly down along his forehead.
The sun is sweltering outside.
Kaidan goes to sleep that night curled in on himself. He has no tears left. No wails. No screams.
But the nightmares don't stop.
His fingers dig into the sheets and he sweats heavily, forehead pressed into the mattress, sweating. Still sweating. As though She were a fever he could drown from his body.
(but She is not the one drowning)
Day 31
Liara is at his door.
His mouth is open in refusal when she ignores him and steps through the threshold, fingers smoothing down the length of her dress. She clears her throat and walks past him.
Kaidan holds the door open and glares at her. "Get out, Liara."
She pulls a heavy breath in and watches him, hands linking together before her awkwardly. "I'm going to bring her back."
Kaidan's face darkens with rage and he stalks toward her.
Her eyes widen minutely, and her nervous gulp is visible to Kaidan as he stops just before her. "I said 'get out'," he growls.
Liara lifts her chin, undaunted. Her eyes soften. "I mean it, Kaidan. I'll find a way. For her. For you." Her voice cracks and she is looking down at her hands.
Kaidan's skin is tingling, his body flush. Even his teeth ache. Clenched jaw. Tight and strangled words. "Stop."
She looks up at the dangerous crack to his voice. Splintered. Fractured. Somewhere between this world and the next.
the afterlife is with us now
She swallows tightly and reaches a hand toward his cheek.
He flinches, but doesn't tear his gaze away.
She lays her palm along his cheek. Cold. Trembling. His grief is bleeding into his skin. "It can't be over, Kaidan." It is more a plea. More a desperate wish than anything.
His breath rakes through his chest as he holds back the sob.
(but he is all out of tears)
"Please," he chokes. Like the dying light of the sun. "Please, just let her rest."
Liara's eyes shift back and forth between his, her hand slipping from his cheek. She sighs. "I can't."
"Please." He steps closer. He needs this. Needs this more than he thinks he might need Her because She's dead and She's dead and –
She's dead.
Immutable.
The dark abyss of the sea when it sighs in the night. Yearning.
Kaidan shakes his head, his voice lodged in his throat.
Liara steps back, takes a look around his house. Sees the glass of whiskey on the coffee table that makes her pause. She doesn't know that he stares at it in the night. Doesn't know that he has seen Her face innumerable times in the toffee colored liquor.
Doesn't know that he wonders, endlessly, if he will still see it when he gets to the bottom of the glass.
Or if She will still be
(gone)
Liara looks back to him. "I can't," she repeats, this time surer. This time shoulders back. There is something adamant in her gaze and it almost breaks him right then. "Just like you can't," she whispers. So lost.
And then she is gone and Kaidan is wondering if he hadn't died himself, over the cold and barren Alchera.
Day 33
Kaidan resumes his duties with the Alliance because he doesn't know what else to do.
Because it is better than hearing Her voice in the still death of his own home.
(like corpses in his bed)
Day 47
It is slow-going. Most days are lost. Somewhere between searing pain and unfathomable emptiness.
He has a blank look whenever someone speaks to him. His face, unrecognizable.
not his own
Nobody asks.
He discovers how to speak without speaking. How to touch without touching. How to live without living.
(he doesn't, really)
Day 68
He is stilled based in Vancouver.
He has learned to hate the city.
(smells too much like Her)
snow and pears and metal
Kaidan goes home. Streams a vid on his projection terminal. Walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge. Grabs the milk. Finds the cereal in the pantry.
He remembers that he must call his mother. And then Tali.
The quarian's voice, pitched and tear-laced, filling up his inbox.
Kaidan takes his bowl into the living room. Sits down and finds himself holding a bowl of just milk in his hands. Walks back into the kitchen and opens the fridge.
Box of cereal on the second shelf.
He laughs. Short and catching. As though he has forgotten the sound.
his throat doesn't remember what it feels like
The laughter dies before it is well and truly formed.
He stares at the open fridge for long minutes.
Day 93
Kaidan's fellow crewmen ask him out for drinks. He has said no too many times. He can see the expected resignation lighting their skin already.
Something in him says yes before he is aware of the words on his tongue.
(he is sick of resignation)
On the fourth whiskey he has lost sight of Her face at the bottom of the glass.
Day 94
He finds that hangovers don't hurt nearly as much anymore.
(not when there is worse pain in the world)
Day 142
Anderson tells him his new orders have him stationed on the Mayback for a year.
Kaidan finds himself standing on the dock looking at the ship, duffel back slung over his shoulder. His knuckles are white with his grip, the string thin and threatening in his grasp.
"She's a beauty," comes a voice beside him.
Kaidan turns his gaze smoothly, catching sight of a young man with a face like dusk and summer.
(so, so eager)
The man turns, smile wide, eyes catching along Kaidan's rank insignia. His grin falters, but only slightly, his hand coming up in a quick salute. "Sir."
Kaidan narrows his eyes on the man's face. His cheeks are dusted with freckles. There is the hint of dull brown hair peeking out of his cap. Kaidan sighs, returning the salute. "I'm no general, son. Nor are we on duty yet."
The man relaxes, shoulders loosening. "Sorry, sir. Habit."
Kaidan is silent for a moment, musing. Then he is nodding, adjusting the bag over his shoulder.
The man cocks his head, thrusting out his hand between them in greeting. "The name's Latner, sir. First time space-bound. Blitzed as all hell." His smile returns and it is too bright for Kaidan.
bright, burning, blazing
Kaidan shakes Latner's hand reluctantly, his jaw set. "First time, huh," he mumbles, hardly audible.
But Latner catches it. He beams once more, looking off to the Mayback. "Yeah. Fresh out of the academy. Been waiting for this my whole life."
The dark expanse of space stretching out past the dock. Murky.
(if only you could touch the darkness, you know, you know you could)
"Do you know the average force an Alliance cruiser can withstand?" Kaidan's question is smooth and unassuming in the space between them.
Latner glances at Kaidan beside him. "Sir?" His voice. Like honeybees and wet stone.
(two months, tops)
Kaidan keeps his gaze on the vastness of the stars stretching out past the Mayback. He has no eyes for the ship. For the cold, metal coffin that keeps his death (for now) at bay.
there is no maybe to death
there is only when
(how he stinks of mortality)
"Fifty four thousand metric tons," Kaidan supplies.
Latner breathes uneasily beside him, voice gone, brows furrowed in question.
"Do you know the speed at which a ship this size would plummet through the atmosphere?" Kaidan's voice is dark and unreachable.
Latner opens his mouth but nothing comes out.
The lieutenant's breath is slow, easy in his chest. Not like he remembers. Not like how Hers must have been. "Roughly twenty eight thousand kilometers an hour. Know what the temperature would be outside the hull?" He looks beside him and finds the man's eyes wide and unblinking.
Latner slowly shakes his head, lips parted, trembling.
Kaidan's smile is small and regretful. "Anywhere up to twenty five hundred degrees Kelvin. The usual Alliance ablative heat shielding wouldn't last more than three minutes if the hull is ruptured." He blinks casually, shifting his weight to one leg.
"Sir, I don't –"
"What about how long your suit can cycle oxygen, huh? Know that one?" Kaidan presses, leaning closer to the lad.
"Uh, I don't…I mean…" He takes a step back.
(no more dusk and summer)
Kaidan's mouth is a thin line. "Forty seven minutes if you keep calm, don't hyperventilate." His chest rises with the heat of his words, his brows furrowing. "But you're shit out of luck if a line's cut."
Latner's shoulders sink in on himself. "I think I better –"
"It's a vacuum out there, Latner. Cold. Silent. Your skin would crack and freeze if you touched it." Kaidan's eyes are wild. He doesn't know how to stop. He doesn't think he even could. Thoughts after thoughts after thoughts. Images. Sharp cutting wisps of epiphany.
What it must have felt like.
What it must have looked like.
How She must have screamed.
(and oh, how She did)
Kaidan swallows tightly, voice stretched thin like his sanity. "Think about it." It is a dangerous whisper and he is lost somewhere between word and thought, so that he doesn't even know if he is speaking. Or if it's just the long stretch of wonder in his mind that takes him. "Drifting through that kind of emptiness. Reaching for something, anything. Grasping at the cold nothing. The hiss of an oxygen leak in your suit. Lungs tight. Searing breath. Still reaching, still grasping. The fucking flames of your ship – your safety – that peaceful, humming death ship, really, the roaming grave, broken up and falling – fiery, destructive, following you down and its hot, it's absolutely fucking searing your skin inside your suit but then it's cold and sharp and your skin feels like glass but you can't touch it – only cool, only breakable – because you're flailing in the dark and then there, there, that looming orb of brilliant blue, a sea you think, an ocean and vast and everywhere and you embrace it because it's so fucking beautiful, just gleaming in the dark, but then you think it can't be real – not this, not this feeling, this blue, this brilliant – and you're sailing toward it, fiery ship trailing you down, right on your heels, burning along your back but you're still sailing toward that blue, that cool, but not cold, not like space, not like that tight, breathless vacuum of dark, no – this – this is not that, couldn't be, because the air has already left your lungs and you can't smell the fire and the glass of your skin has already shattered because you're falling – falling not sailing you idiot, not fucking sailing – and it's not beautiful anymore and it's not blue and it's not brilliant, no, it's white – desolate, barren, like your heart, your heart, your shriveled, bleeding heart, that fucking organ you can't tear out and you would – oh yes you fucking would if you could only reach inside and pull, keep pulling, no more reaching, already fallen, already dead, laying in the white, the desolate, the red sickly stream of your blood staining the snow and the taste is on your tongue, along the back of your throat and the fire has followed you down, down, followed you down where you both lay burning and bloody and waiting – because you never stopped fucking waiting – for the end to come, for the fall, for the break, the rupture – that empty chasm you fall asleep in, where the light should be but not for you, not for you because there is no sleep now, only death, only death and cold and emptywhyisitsoemptypleaseletmeoutjust –
Kaidan stops. He might have said it all. He might have said nothing. All in his head. All in the silent throbbing of his heart. But he cannot be sure.
(please just let me out)
Latner blinks and sucks a breath in.
Kaidan tightens his grip on his duffel back, tasting the coppery film of those words, dying, festering, waiting on his tongue.
(he has nothing to say)
"Welcome to the Alliance, kid." He walks toward the ship and doesn't look back.
Day 173
Kaidan gets an encrypted message from Garrus. Can't trace it. Can't even reply. But it is the first he's heard from the turian since the funeral. He sits in the mess of the Mayback and soldiers wander by. The projected orange screen of his omni-tool is muted in the bright lights of the ship.
He just stares at the words.
"I'm sorry", they read.
And then like a match –
brilliant and momentary
– the pain is less.
Day 207
He wakes up this morning and breathing is easier. Lighter.
He doesn't understand how the pain isn't instant.
(time is cruel even when it heals)
Day 233
Laughter, though tight and unfamiliar, is not forced.
A crewmate slaps a hand along his shoulder and it just
feels
so
good.
(he had forgotten warmth)
Day 271
He feels guilt when he manages a whole shift without the thought of Her.
And then She is everything he thinks about until the exhaustion takes him.
Day 309
"Always did love the outer colonies," Gunnery Chief Molina observes, arms crossed beside Kaidan as the two stand before the observation lounge windows of the Mayback. The planet just past the view is green and verdant.
Kaidan lifts a brow toward his friend (not the right word but there is nothing else that equates).
Molina throws a warm smirk his way and looks back out the window. "I was a colony kid myself," he says, shrugging.
"Ah." Kaidan watches the planet and just listens.
"Too much metal and space will make you sick, you know? Got to have some ground beneath your feet sometimes."
Kaidan remembers the feel of dirt between his toes.
(five years old, scraped knees, a slow sunset)
Molina scratches at his chin. "Someplace to come back to. Once we've stopped searching the stars."
"What's with the sudden wax poetica?" Kaidan's words are harsher than he intends. He softens them with a playful smirk.
Molina's smile falters, his arms tightening in their cross over his chest. "My little girl turned one today."
Kaidan opens his mouth for obligatory congratulations but stops at the look on Molina's face. "That's supposed to be good, right?" His eyes dim.
"I missed her birth too. I was out here." He sweeps a hand out to encompass space.
(out here)
it's everywhere
Molina sighs.
Kaidan cocks his head and looks out past the glass. "She has years yet ahead of her that you'll be there for." It's just speculation, he knows. She could die tomorrow. Molina could die tomorrow. Kaidan has gotten good at false comfort.
"Yeah, I guess." A low hum of thought and then, "You got someone waiting for you, Alenko?"
Kaidan is silent for many moments before he finally speaks. "Yes."
She is really. Waiting.
(just not on this plane)
Molina nods in satisfaction. "Something to come home to," he muses.
The stars are glittering and unreachable behind the glass.
Day 328
The Mayback reaches the merchant vessel sounding out the distress call too late. The crew is dead. The cargo stolen. Kaidan is assigned to the boarding party. They have to wear their suits because of the chunk of hull blasted out of the port side.
Kaidan breathes in the limited confines of his helmet, his eyes sweeping along the wreckage as the team moves through the small mess hall of the vessel, slow and deliberate in the non-gravity. A food tray and something that looks like corn floats close by and he brushes a hand through the still air to send them out of his view. There is a body, leg tangled in a power cable so that it doesn't drift off into space.
Kaidan looks at the dead man, face unrecognizable. Purple and shriveled. Hands frozen into claws at his throat. He cannot take his eyes from the corpse.
"Sir."
Kaidan turns at Lance Corporal Summers' address and the petite woman is coming out of the hall to his left, body dragging in the loss of gravity, boots heavy on the floor. She pushes a steel sheet of plating out of her way.
"Report." The word comes out like it was made of ice.
"Logs say it was a batarian raid." The woman looks around, the light affixed to the side of her helmet sweeping past him. "They had no chance. Minimal defenses. They surrendered." She growls then, low and tight. "Damn batarians killed them all anyway."
Kaidan watches the woman's slow fisting of her palms, the heavy exhale, the barely there film of wetness over her eyes. He remembers the personnel records he went over when he boarded. "Your sister," he breathes softly, not really sure himself whether it is a question or a statement.
She snaps her gaze to him. The shafts of light from the other crewmen's helmets flit about the dark cabin. "Yeah," she chokes out, her voice like a fish struggling at the end of a hook. "Yeah," she repeats. "She died on Mindoir."
Kaidan nods, understanding.
"I was sixteen," Shepard had said.
Kaidan closes his eyes and feels the tingle of non-gravity light along his bones. It would be so easy. Take so little effort. Just a push. Just the lightest pressure of his boots along the hull and then he could be off. Through the blown hole in the ship. Off into the dark. Sailing. Drifting.
Falling.
(maybe she's out there waiting)
It always comes back to Shepard.
"I'm glad you're here, sir."
Kaidan's eyes snap open at Summers' words. She is looking at the ground, fists slowly uncurling. Her shoulders sag, like water-logged wood. Brittle.
He forgets to breathe.
She catches his gaze, head lifted up. "Someone of your experience, sir," she half-mumbles, "well, I know we'll find them. I know we'll make them pay."
It would be so easy.
"Keep looking," he answers, nodding around the hollow ship.
His boots are heavy and weighted along the cold hull.
Day 364
They catch the batarian pirates mid-raid of another merchant vessel in the Hoplos system of the Hades Nexus. They give the pirates ample time to surrender. The pirates refuse.
Kaidan is part of the boarding party again. The batarian vessel is blown apart by the Mayback's weapons system while he is gunning down batarians aboard the merchant frigate.
It is over within minutes. They have lost half the merchant crew and three marines.
Kaidan stands over Summers' still body in the cargo hold of the merchant ship. She has a shotgun blast straight through her stomach, entrails spilling out over the grey metal floor. Her hand is stiffly gripping her unfired weapon. Her eyes are wide open and bloodshot.
Kaidan slides his fingers over her lids and lets her rest.
(he thinks the blood should bother him)
He straightens and walks past her to the merchant captain.
(it doesn't)
Kaidan sits in the empty mess hall of the Mayback that night. He has been granted one of his allotted two beers since finishing his required 60 consecutive days onboard to satisfy Alliance alcohol regulation. The beer sits untouched and slowly warming on the table. His eyes are fixed to the foamy head of the beer as it gradually settles. Millimeter by millimeter.
He thinks about the first time he saw Her.
(brown hair, brown eyes, scar curling across her upper lip and cheek)
didn't spare her a second glance
She hadn't even been pretty.
Kaidan reaches out and grasps the glass. Takes a long, steady sip. Feels the slightly bitter tang and golden wheat of it slide down his throat. He raises the glass once, into the empty, silent air.
"Jenkins."
Another sip.
"Ashley." Wetness at the corner of his eyes.
Another sip.
"Pressly."
This time longer, a heavy gulp. He pauses.
that carrion heart, it beats
"Summers." She had looked everything and nothing like Her.
Half the beer gone.
"Shepard."
He says Her name and She is
She is finally
gone.
He sobs into his hands and finds he still has tears. But they do not drag him down like before. They are not heavy. They don't smell of salt and denial. They are warm. And they are welcome.
And they feel like Her touch, gentle and soothing, on his cheek.
She holds him, palms soft and loving on his face. Her breath, fanning his lips. Her voice.
(not screaming, no)
Her voice.
He can hear Her smile in the dark.
He leaves the rest of his beer untouched. He is done toasting the dead. He lifts his fingers to his lips and tastes Her there.
like pears and gun polish
She does not leave him. Even into the night, when he curls around a pillow and dreams
dreams
dreams
of Her.
he sees her face in nebulas of light and dust and sound
and she is not
(gone)