Her life was nothing but a collection of mistakes. Looking back on the last few years there were more than she could count. The fact that she even was alive today was nothing but dumb luck and more credits than she was worth. It seemed like it were always others who had to pay the price for her mistakes. In credits, in blood, in life. Yet there were only a few things she regretted. Only a few mistakes she would give anything to make undone, no matter the cost.
One of them lay before her, pale and beaten, bloodied and broken. Fragile like she never knew he could be. Instead of bourbon eyes looking at her in a way that could make her heart flutter and her breath hitch, there was a swollen, purple flower blooming on his face, keeping his thoughts hidden from her in a way he was never able to do while looking back at her.
Blood had trickled from his nose down to his lips. It was dark and dry by now, flakes like black snow, refusing to melt. She wondered why nobody had cared to wipe it away. She wondered why she wasn't wiping it away. Not trusting her fingers to do something besides dealing damage, perhaps. To do something other than hurt.
She was no healer. She was no protector, not the savior everybody tried to make her be. She was destruction and flame, death and devastation. Wherever she went she brought death with her. To her enemies, to her own and sometimes to the few people close to her heart.
Like the man only one calamitous touch away, whom she had brought more pain and sorrow than moments of happiness. She wasn't even sure what destroyed him more, when she died or when she lived. It seemed like she could do nothing right when it came to him, couldn't hate but hurt him, in mind or in body. She made no excuses. She knew that it was her fault that he was lying here, one touch away from death, heart hardly beating.
It was her fault. Not only because she should've been faster on Mars, should've seen it coming, shouldn't have frozen in exactly the wrong moment when fear for him made her immobile. It had been her fault even before they set one foot on that forsaken planet. She hurt him one time too many, broke his heart over and over again. And maybe in the course of her selfish, destructive path of refusing to let go of his heart, she made it weak. Too weak to deal with any more damage, no matter what kind. She kept one of the pieces of his broken heart for herself and by refusing to let go of it, of him, she sentenced him to death. But how could she let go? The galaxy depended on him.
The only thing keeping her at bay, keeping her going, was lying on a cold hospital bed, stained with his blood, barely able to breath on his own. The light to her darkness, life to her death or at least a reason if nothing else. A reason she felt slipping away while looking at it, not being able to even grasp at it for fear she would only speed up its downfall further. Were he able, he would no doubt yell at her, a habit he seemed to have taken up after she died. She wondered if he ever yelled at her while she was dead. If he ever wanted to scream at her the way she wanted to scream at him right now. To start taking full breaths, to have his heart beating stronger, to stop dying.
The difference was that he had always been so much stronger than she was. So much more reliable, so much more composed. So much better. Until she came along and started to destroy him. With her selfishness, her anger and her need for his love.
The day he rejected her on Horizon was the day she was the most proud of him. It was the worst day of her life, hurting even more than death. Death was final, in most cases, fairly quick even. Hurt followed by nothing. Seeing him leave on the other hand was a much slower kind of death than dying. And yet she was proud of him like never before. Because he was able to pull free of her in a way she wasn't sure she would ever be free of him.
A tiny treacherous voice in her head whispered that maybe she could be free if he just died. That, sure, it would hurt at first but she would get over it. She always did. And maybe with him dead, she could let go of him in a way that didn't seem possible with him alive. With him looking at her with those beautiful eyes, with the tiny, hypnotic scar on his lip moving when he smiled at her, with his rasping voice calling her name like a prayer, shouted in anger and whispered in passion. Her heart hurt just thinking about it, a cold hand squeezing it, making it hard to think, to breath.
If there was one thing she knew without a doubt, it was that if he died, hope might as well die with him. Of course, she would keep fighting but a fight without a heart, a fight without a reason, would be a lost endeavor.
In the coming weeks, the coming months or maybe the coming years there would be a moment when she would need him, need him more than ever before. When she was pale and beaten, bloodied and broken herself. A moment when everything depended on her will to go on, she would need him. Her heart, her reason. And even if she could fight for weeks, for months, for years without him by her side, in that moment she would fail. In that moment all would be lost.
Every hitch in his breath startled her, made her heart stop only to double its speed when returning to duty. She balanced the verge of losing control. Control she badly needed right now. Not for the war raging on every border of the galaxy but for herself. Her stupid, little selfish self that was to blame at this situation in the first place.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. For herself, maybe for him. Listening for his soft breaths, the beeping of the heart monitor telling her he was still with her. She forced herself to keep her eyes closed, forced the blind panic down that was trying to tell her she would lose him if he was out of her sight. She took matching breaths with his, trying to convince herself to resemble the kind of control he always displayed. The control she loved to test, to rattle, to make him lose.
A tiny smile crept over her lips, gone with the next heartbeat when she opened her eyes to look at him, really look at him. He was pale but not ashen, beaten but not broken, close to death but living. What was more important, he was fighting. And she knew, deep in her heart, in the core of her being, that he would win the fight. He always did.
You could say what you want about Kaidan Alenko but is integrity made him fight like hell for the things that mattered to him. Be it the safety of civilians he needed to protect or the love of a woman who was his commander. He fought and he won. He was too stubborn to even consider the alternative. And this was why she knew that he would live. Because even with a broken heart, he had kept living and kept fighting. What was a broken body compared to that?
The thought made her brave. It helped her forget for the blink of an eye how destructive her touch was, when she leaned close to him, only a breath separating her lips from his ear. The smell of his sweat, some reminder of his aftershave and the biting antiseptic the nurses used made her dizzy. Or maybe it was being so close to him, something that almost felt forbidden after all this time. She wanted nothing more than to bury her face in his hair while his biotic static tickled her nose just like before.
Instead she lingered for just a moment, breathing only three words before standing up and leaving the room in a hurry, pretending it wasn't tears in her eyes fighting to break free, pretending she didn't care more about what happened in his room than anywhere else in the galaxy.
Three words because she failed to remember how to speak after them, losing her bravery if not her hope that three words would be enough.
"Please come back."
Author's note:
This has been my first fanfiction in over ten years, promted by a friend to help me get over my writer's block. She asked for post-Mars angst and she got it. English is not my first language so please excuse any mistakes as well as general clumsiness. Thank you very much for reading.